LETTERS

LETTERS
February 2006

---

WE AGREE?

We agree. The Roman Church is a mess. It started with Humanae Vitae, the unscientific, papal promulgation that at least admitted for the first time that the sexual act was both procreative and unitive. It's the unitive feature that saved the document. Still, an overwhelming majority of Catholics find reproductive control a moral option that the Church continues to disapprove. The best defense of the Church's position was by Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle. It was laughable. So much for consensus fidelium.

Then came Pope Paul VI's 1969 Novus Ordo. There's no polite way to describe this ad hoc liturgy. Then add the hootennany elements that crept in, and the mystical elements that were expunged, and most people rightly felt bereft. Even though the Tridentine Mass was clearly superior, and while the novation to original sources was well intentioned, the execution was abysmal. Many faithful stopped attending Mass or escaped to the Episcopal Church, where at least the rite retained some dignity. Forty years later, many parishes are trying to make "the best" of a bad liturgy. I'm convinced it cannot be done.

In 1986, then-Cardinal Ratzinger issued an instruction on homosexuality. To say that it departed from neo-Thomism and sound doctrine is being gracious. To grant that homosexuals are born as such, but that being such is intrinsically disordered, is to make God the Author of an "evil." It was, and remains, no less untenable as it is inscrutable. Even worse, the author of that travesty is now pope.

Then Pope John Paul II issued a plethora of encyclicals. All of them confused Thomistic natural law for Suarezean natural law. Never mind that the whole notion of natural law is befuddled (see, G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica and the "naturalistic fallacy"), but the Suarez concept was, and remains, unscientific as it is incoherent. At least, the Thomistic notion is defensible, even though teleology remains a feature. That the Church was appealing to Aristotelean concepts in the age of Einstein was the least of its problems. Few people gave the encyclicals any heed; and given the encyclicals' incoherence, rightly so.

Then there was the episcopal cover-up of child molesters (cf., homosexuals). What the bishops did in defense of these monsters is morally contemptible, but then Rome decides to confuse matters by blaming celibate gay men for its own debacle. Gay men are not child molesters; indeed, many of them have been the best pastors and confessors many of us have ever encountered. Gay men, when active, want other men, not boys or girls. Only the sexually immature want children. So now, the Church is undergoing a 21st century inquisition of homosexuals to cover-up its own malfeasance over child molesters. Besides being un-Christian, the whole enterprise is disingenuous, duplicitous, and repugnant.

Ergo: Church attendance among Catholics is down 70 percent. Gee, I wonder why?

D. Stephen Heersink,
San Francisco

Editor replies: It seems Mr. Heersink is a learned man, given his references to various erudite authorities. However, his letter betrays some lacunae in his knowledge. For one, he says Humanae Vitae "for the first time" asserts that there is a unitive as well as a procreative character to sexual intercourse. But the unitive character of the marital act has always been taught by the Church. St. Paul speaks of sexual intercourse as uniting the bodies even of those who engage in it outside of marriage, and the Church has seen the marital act as consummating the vows made by husband and wife, uniting them into one flesh. In his 1930 encyclical, Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI said the marital act bears fruit in mutual love, which is the essence of marital unity, when he wrote that "in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence." Spouses, he said, "are not forbidden to consider" these secondary ends "so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved."

Mr. Heersink calls Humanae Vitae "unscientific," presumably because it asserts that procreation is the primary end of the marital act. But how can anyone deny that the act is primarily procreative? The emission of semen by the man is clearly ordered to fertilizing the ova of the woman. But Mr. Heersink disparages teleology -- the notion that organisms and acts have purposes inherent in their nature -- and so it is not surprising that he would think ascribing any primary purpose to sexual intercourse (or anything else, for that matter) is nonsensical. One wonders if he would deny that the primary purpose of eating is nutrition or that the eye exists for seeing.

Hence Mr. Heersink's seeming defense of homosexuality. Obviously, if seminal ejaculation has no real purpose, it makes no difference in what organ it is carried out. Sodomy, oral intercourse, even bestiality become acceptable. For the relativist (as Mr. Heersink seems to be), the character of any act is determined by the one who acts. But this is merely to assert that nature, the universe, has no purpose. That all is chaos.

The Church has not said that anyone is born homosexual, though she has not denied it, either. But to say one is born homosexual does not make homosexuality a good any more than the fact that one is born blind makes blindness a good. Nor does it make God the author of such maladies. The doctrine of original sin asserts that man, though created perfect, is, on account of a primal fall, born with a moral sickness that communicates disorder to the body. God did not make man to be such, but the sin of our first parents has made man such. We come into the world with tendencies, both of the body and the will, to evil, but this was not in God's original plan for man.

Mr. Heersink's contention that homosexuality is no way responsible for the Church's molestation crisis is an obfuscation. I would remind him that most of the victims of abusing priests have not been children, but post-pubescent boys -- really, young men. The desire for young men is not pedophilia, but homosexuality.

One may criticize the reasoning a pope uses to support a conclusion, but this is not necessarily to disparage the conclusion. The Church has never taught that a pope's philosophical or theological arguments in an encyclical or other pronouncement are infallible. It is his reiteration of Church teaching. Thus, a pope's cited reasons may be insufficient to support the case, but his reiteration of traditional teaching is guaranteed the guidance of the Holy Spirit and thus cannot be in error. Mr. Heersink is free to deny this, but his denial does not render the Church's teaching internally inconsistent. It makes logical sense if one admits that the Church is what she says she is.

Those who cannot admit this are free to leave the Church and become whatever they want, though they must accept the eternal consequences of this decision. But if one prefers, say, the liturgical expression of another group and its more modern approach to moral issues to the admittedly abysmal liturgical reality of most of the Catholic Church in our day, he may do so. "High church, low morals" is definitely an option, though one I would not recommend.

GOSPEL BOOK, NOT LECTIONARY

In his "Roamin' Catholic" article in San Francisco Faith (January, 2006), Stephen Frankini mentions that, at his visit to Mass at Carmel Basilica, "the cantoress chanted the alleluia verse, while Father held the bright colored lectionary over his head." In every Catholic church I have attended, the celebrant holds the book of the Gospels over his head -- as required by the General Instructions of the Roman Missal. The lectionary should already be on the ambo.

M. E. Elliott,
Manteca

FATHER, YES, MOTHER, NO

Regarding the article on page 11 in the Faith January 2006 edition -- "May Catholics Call God 'Mother'?" -- Jesus Christ, Who is God Himself, told us how to pray to God -- "Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name...."

So, I believe that, since Jesus says we are to call the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, Father, then we, His children, ought to call upon Him with that Name of Father.

Claudia Person,
Sacramento

TOP