Answering Robert W. Jenson on contraception

Robert W. Jenson (pictured right), a prominent Lutheran theologian, understandably has questions about Catholic teaching concerning contraception. I say "understandably," because the Catholic rationale for the Church's teaching on contraception is so widely unknown, often even by Catholics. At the end of an article entitled "Reading the Body" (The New Atlantis, No. 9, Summer 2005, pp. 73-82), analyzing John Paul II's Theology of the Body, Jenson raises an interesting, if common, question concerning the controversial Catholic prohibition of contraception. In doing so, he draws an inference that seems to have all the prima facie plausibility of a cogent syllogism, but which thoroughly misses the point of Catholic teaching and also illustrates why that teaching is generally not well taught. He writes:

We perhaps cannot conclude without some mention of John Paul's discussion of licit and illicit prevention of conception. And here I must register a query. John Paul of course continues the established Catholic condemnation of contraception by technical means, and he devotes several of these catecheses to it. But it seems to me that his particular argument, and that of Humanae Vitae which he expounds, has an unexpected consequence. He explicitly declares limiting intercourse to the woman's infertile period licit, if done for responsible reasons. And he devotes several catecheses to the character of responsible choice, which he allows can include the decision to prevent conception even over a long period. What then of the pill? Which works precisely by extending an infertile period? And does not interfere with the "the nuptial act?" It will not at this point do to say that it frustrates the end of procreation, since that has already been allowed if done for responsible reasons.

Invention of the pill has indeed unleashed disaster: the "sexual revolution" and the European peoples' demographic suicide. But from the argument of Humanae Vitae and here of John Paul, it seems to follow that it is licit as a means to carry out responsible decision.

To sum up Jenson's question: If the Catholic Church allows avoiding conception for responsible reasons by sexual abstinence during periods of fertility, why shouldn't it also allow for avoiding conception for responsible reasons by use of birth control pills, which would achieve the same end while allowing one to exercise conjugal relations even during fertile periods? This is one of the most common queries raised by Protestants trying to understand Catholic teaching, as well as one of the most common excuses raised by Catholics who make use of birth control pills. As I say, it has considerable prima facie plausibility, because it fails to fathom the deeper substance of Catholic teaching. It deserves a clear answer.

First, it's important to state that the answer has nothing to do with the question of whether the means of avoiding pregnancy are artificial or natural. It's true that artificial contraceptives have various known and unknown side-effects, of which some of the known are clearly detrimental and even harmful. For example, it's well-established that birth control pills (1) increase irritability, (2) increase propensity to depression, (3) cause weight gain, and (4) reduce libido. Furthermore, birth control pills work in three different ways: (a) by preventing ovulation, or, if that doesn't work, (b) changing the viscosity of the fallopian mucus so as to prevent the sperm from getting to the egg, or, if that doesn't work, (c) preventing nidation -- i.e., the implanting of the fertilized ovum in the mother's uterine wall. This means that birth control pills may function as an abortifacient (inducing abortion), which alone is grounds for dismissing them as immortal.

It's also true that Catholics promote the use of natural means for avoiding pregnancy for those with morally acceptable reasons for doing so -- called Natural Family Planning (NFP) -- which involve various well-documented and highly accurate natural means, of which there are several medically proven methods (e.g., the Sympto-Thermal Method promoted by the Couple to Couple League and One More Soul; the Billings Ovulation Method; the Ovulation Method promoted by Family of the Americas; the use of the Ovu-Tech Fertility Detector, and so on) -- none of which should be confused with the inaccurate and ineffective so-called Rhythm Method. These methods, when followed conscientiously, boast a 99% accuracy, which not even the birth control pill can match, and has no undesirable side-effects. It's a wonder that our New Age-saturated culture, which is so concerned about natural foods, natural herbs, and natural remedies, still insists on its artificial, chemical contraceptives, when, according to R.E.J. Ryder's article, "Natural Family Planning: Effective Birth Control Supported by the Catholic Church" (British Medical Journal, Vol. 307, No. 723 [Sept. 18, 1993], pp. 723-726), thousands of poor, uneducated women in Calcutta have successfully learned to make effective use of NFP. And who do you expect was teaching NFP in Calcutta? Mother Teresa, of course! Ryder reports that most of those whom she taught were Muslims and Hindus. NFP is described as having a virtual zero (.004%) pregnancy rate among those employing it to avoid pregnancy.

Nevertheless, as I've said, none of these matters concerning the question of whether the means of avoiding pregnancy are artificial or natural gets at the real matter at issue in Catholic teaching. What, then, is the matter at issue at this point.

First, the Catholic Church has always based its teachings on natural law. Natural law teaches us to treat things according to their proper natures. We don't give a dog gasoline to drink, any more than we pump water into our gas tanks at the filling station. We learn how to take proper care of our cars and dogs by treating them according to their natures. If we want things to prosper, we treat things according to their proper natures. Now what are the purpose and meaning and nature of sexual intercourse? Professor Janet Smith (pictured right), in a well-known talk she gave at the Pontifical College Josephinum, in Columbus, Ohio, May, 1994 (entitled "Contraception: Why Not?"), offers a convenient and simplified summary of Catholic teaching on this point. She says:

What are the purpose and meaning and nature of sexual intercourse? It seems to me to be quite clear. It's for two things. It's for babies and it's for bonding. And that's what happens when you have sexual intercourse -- you have babies and you bond. My view is, if you don't want to have babies and you don't want to bond, then you shouldn't be having sexual intercourse. My view is that the babies and bonding that comes with sexual intercourse belong only within marriage.... We have a whole culture that says that having sex, and having babies and making bonds, are two different things; absolutely two different things. Today one can say, "I want to have lunch with you, I want to play tennis with you, I want to go to the movies with you, and I want to have sex with you." No big deal. It's the contraceptive that allows us to do this. Again, if a woman finds herself pregnant, she's shocked. If two individuals find themselves attached to each other, they're shocked. We all know all these really wonderful women who seem to be attached to these terrible men. "How does this happen?" She can't let him go. She's engaging in sex with him -- that's bonding.

So, our society has this view that these three things -- sex, babies, and bonding, are separate and the Church says, "No, they're together." Now some people want to say, "Well, no, no, no. You've left something out here. Clearly, sex is for pleasure. And those who are having sex, they're doing what sex is for; they're having pleasure." And I'll say, "No, no, no. You've missed the point." There are lots of things that have pleasure attached to them. Pleasure is not the purpose; pleasure is the motive; pleasure is the consequence; but it's not the purpose. As a matter of fact, God attached pleasure to the things that he really wants us to do, that are necessary for our survival and for our happiness. So, it's pleasurable to eat and it's pleasurable to drink and it's pleasurable to sleep and it's pleasurable to exercise, and it's pleasurable to have sexual intercourse. It's pleasurable. That's not the purpose. That's not the reason we eat though some of us do. That's not the reason we sleep though some of us do. That's not the real purpose for these acts. They're restorative in many ways. They're necessary for our survival. So, God attached pleasure to everything he wanted us to do for, not our salvation, so much, as just our well-being. But we have to do it at the right time, and the right place, and in the right manner, with the right person, etc., etc. -- in the right way. Sure, eating is pleasurable, but there are limits to what you should be eating. Sexual intercourse is pleasurable, but there are limits to what you should be doing, and you have to seek that pleasure in accord with the nature and reality of what you're dealing with.

But Jensen's question is this: What different is there in principle between (1) avoiding conception by abstaining from sexual intercourse during fertile periods and (2) contracepting while having sexual intercourse during fertile periods as well? The first step toward understanding the Catholic answer to this question is well-illustrated by the answer Janet Smith gives to this kind of question, the kind that Jenson asks:

The first thing I want to say to such couples, such people, is, "Well, if contraception and Natural Family Planning are the same, why not just use Natural Family Planning?" And you know what they say, "But that would be completely different. I'd have to change everything." I say, "Wait a second. You just told me there's no difference and now you tell me it'd be completely different." But, of course, what they mean is no moral difference, but they recognize that there'd be an enormous lifestyle difference. I say, "But wait a second. If there's an enormous lifestyle difference, then that may be a hint that there's some kind of a moral difference as well." At first, I try to point out to them this simple principle in ethics that the ends do not justify the means. Stated another way: "You must have good means to good ends. Not only your goal must be good, but also the way you get there must be good." So consider a couple who doesn't want a child for probably a very good reason. A couple who is contracepting. Another couple using Natural Family Planning. Consider two men, or individuals, who both want to support their family. One robs a bank and one gets a job. They're both doing the same thing -- they're both supporting their family, but they've chosen very different means.

Let us grant that NFP may entail significant lifestyle changes, and that ends don't justify immoral means. That still leaves the question: What, apart from the problems with abortifacient contraceptives mentioned above, is wrong with using contraceptives that allow one to have conjugal relations during fertile periods without fear of conceiving a child? How is that different, in principle, from NFP methods that require one simply to abstain during fertile periods? In three ways: (1) it locks God out of His creative act, (2) it typically denatures and degrades our understanding of fertility, and (3) it ironically has an undermining effect on the proper unitive effect of sexual intercourse.


I. Contraception locks out God's creative act

Beginning with the first point, that contraception says "No" to God in His creative act, we again quote Janet Smith:

Now, this is the most amazing thing when you think about it: Sperm, this little sperm, it does not have an immortal soul.... It has a short and sometimes very happy life, but it does not have an immortal soul. And the ovum, you see, it does not have an immortal soul. It can have a short and happy life, but it doesn't have an immortal soul. And when the two come together, where does that immortal soul come from? The sperm doesn't carry it. The egg doesn't carry it. Where does it come from? It comes from a new act of creation by God. In each act of conception, there needs to be a new act of creation by God. One of my priest friends says that "When a new human life is created, the whole universe is changed because something has come into existence which did not exist before and will exist forever." It's just like when God made the whole universe, He made something from nothing. And now, He's made a new soul from nothing. It didn't exist. There's not a whole group of souls out there that are sort of waiting around for a landing place. God actually performs a new act of creation. So, when male and female participate in the sexual act, they have opened up this arena which God has designed for bringing forth new human life. And when they contracept, they are slamming that door in God's face. They're saying, "We want to enjoy this pleasurable act that You gave us, but we do not want to let You perform Your creative act." Now, I'm not saying that couples who are contracepting, are conscious that this is what they're doing. But, this is what the act itself means. It's much like drinking a little bit of poison in your orange juice. You might not know it's there, but it will have its effect on you. You're not intentionally doing that, but that's what the act itself means.

As Smith notes, NFP doesn't say no to God when God says, "I want to be there at the fertile time. I made the fertile time for bringing forth new human life. If you engage in the sexual act, I want my option of making a new human life. But I gave you a half of a month, three quarters of a month, where you're infertile and if you want to pursue the bonding power of the sexual act without babies, do it then. I'm asleep. I'm out of town. I don't expect to be invited at that time. I'm not around. You can't even make me come. I won't come. I can't. I made your body in a certain way." Hence, couples who practice NFP respect the fertile period as though it were sacred ground: they don't walk there unless they're prepared to accept the consequences.

In one respect, the difference between NFP and contraception is analogous to the difference between dieting and Bulimia. Bulimics eat and then throw up. That's a bit like contraception. You want the pleasure without the consequences. But this violates the nature of the act. It's contrary to natural law. It precisely reverses the relationship between the essence of an act (like the nutritive function of eating) and its accidental properties (like the pleasure of eating). Thus contraception separates the essence of sex (procreation and bonding) from its accidental property (pleasure), so that their relationship is exactly reversed and its essence (at least the procreative element) is now widely viewed as an "accident" to be controlled and prevented.

Hence, NFP doesn't lock God out of His creative act during periods of fertility when procreation is possible.


II. Contraception denatures and degrades our understanding of fertility

A second reason is that contraception typically involves a subtle but profound disparagement of human fertility. One needs only listen to what OB/GYN physicians ask their patients to see this: "Are you taking contraceptives?" "Do you want to continue this pregnancy?" etc. Again, Janet Smith:

Now, along with our disregard for the value of human life, there is an enormous disregard for fertility. We don't have any high estimation of fertility. Contraceptives are manifestly related to a hostility to fertility. Think about the word contraception. It means "against the beginning," against the beginning of a new life, and what makes a new life possibility is fertility. So, we talk about "the pill." It's one of my favorite words -- the pill. When do you take a pill? You take a pill when you're sick. But pregnancy is not a disease and fertility is not a disease. Fertility is a healthy condition in an adult person. It's those who are infertile who need assistance in becoming fertile. They are the ones who need the medication. Fertility is a perfectly healthy condition. I would like to challenge doctors in this way, and anyone else who wants to straighten me out afterwards, you're welcome to have a shot at it. But when I think of a fifteen year old boy who goes into the doctor's office and says, "Doctor, you know, I want to get the girls. I want the girls," he says. "And the way to get the girls is to have big muscles. So, would you please give me some steroids." Any doctor worth his salt will say, "Son, get out of here. Join the wrestling team. Lift weights. Do push-ups. I'm not going to give you steroids. They're bad for you. They could ruin you. I'm not giving you steroids." But, a fifteen year old girl trots into a doctor's office and says, "Doctor, I want to have sexual intercourse with my boyfriend or boyfriends." And the doctor says, "I'll write you a prescription." It's a whole lot worse for her health psychologically and physically in the long run, to be launched on the kind of lifestyle that a contraceptive launches her on than that steroid is for the young man and I want to know what's going on here. Why has our culture told us that this makes sense? Why has our culture told us that this is a sensible thing for a doctor to do?

III. Contraception undermines the unitive function of sex

The third reason why the Church contemns contraception is found in John Paul II's observation that contraception violates not only the procreative meaning of the sexual act, but also the unitive meaning of the sexual act. As Smith says, "It prevents not only babies, but it also prevents bonding." John Paul II has a beautifully developed theology of the body in which he talks about the "language" of sexual intercourse as a language of "self-donation." The "grammar" of the sexual act implies "self-donation." You want to give yourself in your entirety to someone you love. Accordingly, when you withhold part of yourself, as when you withhold your fertility, you're witholding something that belongs to the grammar of the sexual act. The language of the sexual act becomes dishonest. It says more than you're intending to say. Again, Smith:

I heard someone compare contraceptives to someone who says, "You know, you're having a bad hair day. Would you mind putting a paper bag over your head? You know, I want to make love to you, but I can't stand looking at that hair. It's driving me crazy." That's what a condom is and that's what a contraceptive is. It says, "I love you but I don't want a very important part of yourself here, something that actually belongs in this act."

By contrast, NFP fosters bonding and commitment. Smith says:

Couples who've abstained before marriage, have little or no problem with Natural Family Planning.... In fact, they think that abstinence is a way of expressing love. It's not this huge deprivation. The reason that they abstained before marriage was not because they weren't attracted to each other, not because the hormones weren't raging, but because they loved each other. They said, "I'm not going to have sex with you before marriage because I love you. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to have a stronger commitment than I've made here. I don't want to put us in danger of having a baby when we haven't really prepared for that baby. Marriage is preparation for those bonds and marriage is preparation for that baby. And I love you and I can wait. That's how much I love you." Within marriage, abstinence has that same aspect. "It's not a good idea for us to show our affection at this time. We know how to be loving to each other at this time because we've done it before." And they can do it.

Women who use Natural Family Planning have an amazing sense of self-respect and well being. They think that their fertility is revered by their husbands, and they think that they've got themselves particularly good husbands. "I've got my husband who's particularly good. He's a wonderful man. He's got high moral standards. He doesn't treat me like a sex object. I can trust him. He likes me even when we're not having sex together. He's a great guy. I got myself a good one." And males have a great reverence for their wives, for their fertility. They don't want to damage her body. They don't want her to take all these pills and use these devices. They say, "No. I love her. I wouldn't put her through those risks. And this willingness to have a baby for me, that's a wonderful thing. What a woman puts herself through! And I am going to respect that." So, there is this deep bond between the two of them.

NFP doesn't lock God out. It respects a woman's fertility. It has no bad physical or social consequences. In fact, there is reportedly almost a non-existent divorce rate among couples using NFP. In fact, as Smith points out, NFP fosters communication between spouses:

Couples will tell you, they've always told me this, you read this in all the NFP literature: Those who use Natural Family Planning communicate better with each other. I've always wondered what that meant. Does it mean that people are either having sex or talking, but not both, and because they're not having sex during the fertile time, does that mean they're talking more? But, there's something to that.... But the important thing is that they're having this conversation and it's a conversation that's focused around the most important things, which is why they're having babies and why they are not having babies. And how their life is going together and are they sharing the burdens or not.

Couples using contraception tell me they can go for a very long time without having that conversation. They can say, "We're not going to have babies for another three to five years and we'll talk about it then," and that's when they talk about it. And they go apart. They go to their jobs and come back for dinner and go to their jobs and come back for dinner. And that's about all there is.

So, I'm saying Natural Family Planning does not have bad social consequences. It's very difficult to use outside of marriage. It does not say not to God in his procreative act. It treasures a woman's fertility and it enhances, not alienates, the relationship between spouses. It is not subject to the same objections as contraception.

For further consideration:

• Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body According to John Paul II: Human Love in the Divine Plan
• John F. Kippley, and Sheila K. Kippley, The Art of Natural Family Planning
• John F. Kippley, Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality
• Janet E. Smith, "Contraception: Why Not?" (complete online version with Q & A following her talk)
• Janet E. Smith, "Contraception: Why Not?" (audio version available on CD for $5.00 + S & H from One More Soul)
• Janet E. Smith, Beginning Apologetics 5: How to Answer Tough Moral Questions--Abortion, Contraception, Euthanasia, Test-Tube Babies, Cloning, & Sexual Ethics
• Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later
• Janet E. Smith, Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader
• Christopher West, Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary on John Paul II's "Gospel of the Body"

Golf and wisdom

"I regard golf as an exercise in Scottish pointlessness designed for people who aren't strong enough to throw telephone poles at each other."

-- Florence King

Fr. O'Leary's unorthodox "hot tub" Christology (Part I)

Fr. Joseph O'Leary, a liberal Catholic priest teaching English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo, has written an essay entitled "Demystifying the Incarnation" (posted June 20, 2005 to his website, apparently first published in Archivio di Filosofia, vol. 67, 1999). His purpose is to offer a constructive critique of the Fourth Ecumenical Council -- the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) -- which is traditionally seen as having definitively defined the full humanity and divinity of Christ. Chalcedon affirmed the "hypostatic union" of Christ's two natures, meaning that His divine and human natures, though distinct, act together as a unit subsisting in one person, Jesus Christ.

Ecumenical Councils typically yield carefully-worded dogmatic formulations employing precise metaphysical conceptualizations borrowed from Greek philosophy. O'Leary grudgingly grants such formulations have a legitimate role, but is quick to observe how narrow and limited and negative he thinks this role is. At best such dogmatic formulations provide a check against obvious heretical tendencies like monophysitism (a favorite scapegoat of his, as we shall see). But even then, words like "dogma" and "metaphysics" seem to leave a sour taste in his mouth. Thus, he tends to describe formulations like those of Chalcedon derisively as "cold," "logical," and "bloodless." By contrast, he is fond of describing his own theological alternatives in language laced with warm expressions like "personal encounter" and "personal experience." It seems only proper, then, that we do him the favor of referring to his own Christological proposals in the thermal vocabulary he favors, and envision him vested as Gandalf, but in warm Pink, shepherding us out of the frozen wastes of Chalcedonian tundra into the warm, welcoming waters of his own existentialist hot-tub Christology.

This is not to suggest that O'Leary, as liberal as he may be, is simply a flake. He is clearly a deeply-sensitive, broadly educated man, familiar with the outlines of patristic and medieval tradition, appreciative of St. Thomas Aquinas, fluent in Latin, intimately conversant with the richly speculative currents of contemporary biblical theology, and deeply wedded to the Heideggerian vision of "overcoming" the onto-theological tradition of Western metaphysics. His concern here, quite simply, is with "overcoming" (there, that word again!) what he regards as certain historical and metaphysical "limitations" of the Chalcedonian formulation in order to more effectively call Catholic theology back to the Bible. (Who could possibly object to that!) Ultimately, he says he wants to reestablish the primacy of divine revelation over dogma and "reroot Chalcedon" in a living "encounter with Christ." (Who could possibly object to that!)

Nor is this to suggest that O'Leary is unappreciative of Chalcedon's dogmatic formulation as it stands. Indeed, he readily affirms the importance of doing justice to "the necessity and truth of Chalcedon on its own terms," as well as appreciating "how well this rule of faith ... served classical theology, holding in check the monophysite [note that scapegoat again] tendencies recurring throughout the tradition." (p. 2) Further, he asserts: "Even today, Chalcedon can be effective in correcting speculative distortions in Christology, such as the popular theories of a 'suffering God' which undermine not only divine transcendence but also the integrity of Christ's human nature." (p. 3) Moreover, he insists that "Chalcedon can be applied still more radically than its defenders have done." (p. 3) Hence, there is no question of O'Leary brushing aside Chalcedon as having no relevance.

Yet there is a profoundly disturbing unorthodox undercurrent running through O'Leary's essay that verges at times towards open apostasy. He would deny this charge, portraying his own proposals as faciliating the ongoing "development" of Christian doctrine and merely fleshing out implications embedded in Christian theology from its inception. He would also respond with countercharges of Catholic "fundamentalism," "rigid literalism" and "ossified traditionalism" against any "rigid" adherence to the dogmatic decrees of the Church. Yet by any traditional canon of orthodoxy, O'Leary cleary goes over the edge in this essay. He makes some attempt at concealing the bald implications of his own proposals by conceding a provisional value in the formulations of Chalcedon (as noted above) so as to cover his flank. But his clear intention is to push well beyond Chalcedon, and as one progresses through his essay, it quickly becomes apparent that he is heading towards conclusions that bear little conceivable affinity to traditional Catholic orthodoxy.

The first hint of this occurs in his opening paragraph in which he describes what he calls the "two realities" at issue in the Chalcedonian formulation as follows: "One is fleshly: the life and death of a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth. The other is spiritual: an encounter with the living God ...." The first, he says, is a "matter of fact"; the second, a "self-authenticating" matter of "Christian experience." Notice that the matter of fact here includes the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Not His resurrection. The resurrection, of course, is consigned to the "self-authenticating" realm of "Christian experience," which, please note, is beyond the realm of fact.

The distinction O'Leary is assuming here comes from that tired, old dichotomy of the biblical historical-critics, which severs the "Christ of Faith" (the resurrected Christ) from the "Jesus of History" (the historical man who lived and died). This dichotomy is simply a transposed, religious version of the "value/fact" dichotomy that runs back through Kant's "noumenal/phenomenal" dualism to still earlier versions of that bifurcation. It is that dichotomy that now pervades our culture's dictatorship of relativism and has gone to seed in such blithe sophomorisms as "Your opinions about religion are true for you, and mine are true for me," based on the uncritical assumption that opinions about religion, because they pertain to the realm of personal "values" and not to the realm of empirically varifiable "facts," cannot be objectively right or wrong.

All of which is silly nonsense. This dichotomy, long defended by logical empiricists and other positivists of yesteryear, has been soundly exposed for the piffle it is. The problem is that the dichotomy is utterly contrived and collapses the moment it meets with reality. For values are facts too; and facts are permeated with values. The positivist notion of a value-free fact is no more tenable than the postmodernist notion of a fact-free interpretive construct. What is positive in positivism is the healthy and robust insight that a real world of objective facts exists beyond our subjective efforts to interpret it and that it can be known. What is negative is the assumption that this reality can be known and described without the intrusion of any value-laden bias. What is positive in postmodernism is the fact it dispels the positivist illusion that reality can be known and described without the bias of value-laden presuppositions. What is negative is its denial that there is any reality beyond interpretative constructs to be known or described.

(To be continued ...)

NB:

• All pagination is from the printed internet essay (which may be vary with printer specifications), not from the published article in Archivio di Filosofia, vol. 67, 1999.
• Anyone wishing to access an online copy of O'Leary's essay my do so from O'Leary.Org.

O'Leary in the dock ...

An anonymous commentator on my last post suggests that this blog is much better without Fr. O'Leary dominating the comment boxes. He may be right. But he also asks us to let "sleeping O'Learys lie." In response, I said that I have a couple of reasons for not giving Fr. O'Leary the brush-off quite yet. I mentioned my friendship with him, which goes back to my graduate school days. I also mentioned that his views represent a particularly articulate challenge to orthodox Christians that warrant honest answers. "At least to a point," I said: "I don't intend to pursue this little debate forever, having pleny of other fish to fry."

For those of you interested, the widely-respected Al Kimel of Pontifications fame has posted an extensive discussion of O'Leary's theology, contextualizing his discussion within the framework of several key questions he says that he always asks himself when reading a theologian. The results are quite revealing. Perhaps Fr. O'Leary will enjoy the give and take as well. Al Kimel jumps in with both feet from the get-go, entitling his post, "Is the 'Spirit of Vatican II' Christian?"

The already extensive discussion in the comment box on Kimel's site carries some very interesting exchanges between Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox Christians. One of the most interesting summaries of O'Leary's thought I've seen is Michael Liccione's succinct observation:

In the subtlest and most plausible of ways, he has elided from a thinker who assesses things from the standpoint of the Gospel to one who assesses the Gospel from the standpoint of other things. Such is the occupational hazard of theologians who don't keep in full view the ecclesial vocation of the theologian. The Church is now more his platform than his home.

I plan to publish (in installments) a detailed analysis of O'Leary's essay, "Demystifying the Incarnation." I think it's a key discussion for the purposes of understanding his perspective, and, as a friend, I think I owe him at least a careful reading of this piece, which he recommended to me. I realize that I will be taxing the patience of many of my readers with more on O'Leary, but I ask them simply to bear with me for the next couple of weeks (if it takes that long). Eventually, I'll post the completed piece off site, on my "Scripture and Catholic Tradition" blog, for anyone who wishes to consult it entire. In the meantime, I ask for your prayers.

Fr. O'Leary on the Resurrection

Commenting on a recent post by Christopher entitled "The Perplexing Sayings of Fr. O'Leary" over at Against the Grain, which we mentioned recently ("Sorting out O'Leary," Aug. 2, 2005), Randy managed to smoke out Fr. O'Leary with the following remark:

I always wonder how guys like this can remain priests in good standing in the Catholic church. When you deny the resurrection you have pretty much denied the essense of the christian faith. I just don't understand why the church doesn't react when a priest does this. (Source)

I was on the verge of responding to Randy myself, suggesting how O'Leary might respond to him, when I noticed -- Lo, and behold! -- the very next comment was by O'Leary himself, or, should I say, by our notorious old friend, the "Spirit of Vatican II." Responding to Randy, O'Leary writes:

Randy, denying fundamentalist literalism in handling the Resurrection narratives is not the same as denying the Resurrection. Phil Blosser has to regard the vast majority of Catholic exegertes as denying the Resurrection -- and this cannot be right. (Source)

True to form, alright. I though it appropriate to add my two cents, so here's what I said to Randy (with a few emendations):

Randy, I just KNEW that if anything, you're remark about the Resurrection would smoke out Fr. O'Leary. I was about to remark on what you'd said when, sure enough, the next comment was by our old friend, the "Spirit of Vatican II" himself!

First, O'Leary's references to "the majority of Catholic exegetes" is a red herring, designed to distract. Even if it were true, it wouldn't prove anything. Sad to say, far too many Catholic biblical scholars have bought into the "historical-critical" legacy of Protestant Liberalism and are flirting with heresy, and the Vatican hardly seems to know what to do with them.

Second, the key is the dualism implicit in O'Leary's reply to you: "Randy, denying fundamentalist literalism in handling the Resurrection narratives is not the same as denying the Resurrection" (emphasis added). The ambiguity created for the traditional Catholic by many liberals is that they don't always outright deny the Resurrection. Rather, they re-interpret it, by classifying it an "eschatological" event, which means that it's relegated to the non-empircal, non-factual, non-historical realm of the noumenal "Christ of Faith." This leaves them free to deny that the Resurrection ever happened to the "Jesus of History" without denying that the "Christ of Faith" has been resurrected (... em, yeah ... whatever that means).

In fact, here's a quotation from Fr. O'Leary on the matter from another venue, and notice the dualization implicit in what he says:

"... the historicity of Paul's witness is beyond doubt and the reality of the Resurrection presence to the early Church is persuasive to faith."

[Comment: That sounds encouraging, at first, I admit. But note the word "faith" here, which clues us in to how he means what he's just said: it isn't intended as referring to the "Jesus of History" at all. It's not a matter of empirical "fact." It's a matter of "faith." This is confirmed by what O'Leary says next.]

"The Resurrection as such in its inner essence is an eschatological event and to equate it with a historical event -- even with the reanimation of the corpse of Jesus and its transformation into a spiritual body as an empirically observable matter -- is misleading -- such a reanimation, like the empty tomb, would be a SIGN of the resurrection. Even in the seminary, students would discuss whether the discovery of the body of Jesus in Palestine would refute the reality of the Resurrection, and the feeling was that this remained an open question. A common joke at the time was that Paul VI phones Paul Tillich -- 'Paul, this is Paul. Can you help me, we got a problem. Our archeologists have found the bones of Jesus!' Tillich is struck dumb. Then after a pause, 'What? You mean he really existed...?'"

Funny, eh? O'Leary has a great sense of humor. But notice the ambiguity. Is the Resurrection being affirmed or denied here? It isn't clear, until you see that it's being affirmed on one level (the level of noumenal "faith") AND being denied on another level (the level of phenomenal, empirical, factual history). Only O'Leary is cautious enough to put it more tentatively, suggesting that in his seminary days it remained "an open question" among the students whether the archiological discovery of Jesus' body in Palestine would refute the reality of the Resurrection. So what is the "Resurrection" then? What existential theologians call an "eschatological event" (i.e., it doesn't belong to history). Perhaps, like me, you may wonder what Paul would have said about all this in light of his discourse on the bodily resurrection of Jesus in I Cor. 15:12-20. I do not doubt for a moment he would have regarded it as an utter delusion. (Source)

St. Paul's words, by contrast, lack the academic tentativeness and ambiguity of contemporary historical-critical Bible scholars, and have the logically tight structure of a deductive syllogism, replete with "If_____, then_____" statements:

Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. But in fact christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. (I Corinthians 15:12-20)

But of course, the "Spirit of Vatican II" would regard us as sophomoric tyros and antedeluvian fundies for taking Paul literally. . . along with patristics like Ambrose and Augustine, medievals like Anselm and Aquinas, and moderns like Bellarmine and Newman. What shall we say? I consider ourselves in good company.

Another great book from Zaccheus Press

John O'Leary (not Fr. Joseph O'Leary) of Zaccheus Press was kind enough to send me this new reprint edition of this long out-of-print gem by Hugo Rahner (not Karl Rahner), Our Lady and the Church. The original German edition of the work, Maria und die Kirche, appeared in 1961, quickly followed by the English translation by Sebastian Bullough, O.P., also in 1961, which is reprinted here. The book carries two endorsements -- one written by the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, and another by Avery Cardinal Dulles. Cardinal Ratzinger says: "This marvelous work is one of the most important theological rediscoveries of the twentieth century.... Hugo Rahner's great achievement was his rediscovery, in the Fathers, of the indivisibility of Mary and the Church. This marvelous work is one of the most important theological rediscoveries of the twentieth century." Cardinal Dulles says: "With engaging clarity, this pioneering study sets forth the vast range of biblical metaphors the Fathers applied to Mary and the Church: ark of the covenant, valiant woman, treasure-laden ship. This rich theology of poetry and image has much to say to our more prosaic age."

Rahner's book, published just prior to Vatican II, reflects the movement of ressourcement or "returning to sources" gaining momentem at that time. This can be seen in Rahner's repeated turnings to biblical themes as interpreted through the Marian typologies and metaphors of the early patristic theologians. The book, which is filled with quotations from Greek and Latin Church Fathers (Ambrose, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Ephrem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Irenaeus, Origen, various popes and many others). One reviewer writes that the book is "images of Mary that are fertile for prayer and meditation," and says: "For example, you will never think of the sacrament of Baptism in the same way again when you focus on the baptismal font as representative of the womb of Mary so that Mary is indeed our Mother as she was the Mother of Christ. You will also see the Marian character of evangelization in which we as Christians become "other Marys" as we give birth to new Christians."

I myself found particularly interesting Rahner's account of the "Woman of Revelation" (Rev. 12) -- "clothed with the sun ..." The only way of making sense of the passage is by keeping in mind, he says, that she is "at the same time a symbol of the Church and the Church's fate that is both earthly and heavenly. It is only in this way that we can resolve the occasional apparent contradictions in the vision: she is clothed with the sun in her heavenly glory and yet is in the pains of childbirth: she has already entered heaven and yet is still on the painful journey here below: she is at once the gracious queen and the sorrowful mother." (p. 112) He goes on to show how the early Church Fathers saw this image teeming with metaphorical surplus of significations, the "sun" representing also the "Son," so that the woman who is both the Church and the Blessed Mother is "clothed with the Divine Logos."

If you like to have your spiritual imagination stirred with a panoply of Marian metaphors, typologies, and images; and if you like to be more deeply inspired by Our Lady, whose vocation was, is, and forever shall be to "magnify the Lord," then get this book. (Gratia tibi, John O'Leary!)

Sorting out O'Leary

Christopher (Against the Grain, August 2, 2005), offers a detailed analysis sorting out Fr. O'Leary's theological ideology in a post entitled "The Perplexing Sayings of Fr. O'Leary." (Gratia tibi, Christopher)

"To err is divine"???

The August, 2005, issue of U.S. Catholic (or should I say U.S. Heretic) carries an article by Alice Camille, entitled "To err is divine." A heading beneath the title reads: "Jesus' humanity is an oft-forgotten element of his dual nature." This reminds me of an angle of attack taken frequently by our liberal friend, Fr. Joseph O'Leary, when he would on various occasions accuse non-revisionist, orthodox Catholics of being "docetic." Docetism, of course, is the heresy that denied the full humanity of Christ, which the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) made a clear point of condemning in its assertion of the full humanity of Christ along with His full divinity. What is legitimate here is the claim that Jesus was (and is) fully human. What is precariously speculative is whether or not Jesus, because He was fully human, was not also prone to the common sorts of memory lapses, miscalculations and errors to which all human beings are prone. Assurances are always immediately offered (as one finds also in Camille's article) that we're not talking about peccability (sinfulness) here: nobody is accusing Jesus of falling into sin, they insist. But that still leaves fallibility. Even if Jesus was infallible in his divine nature, was He not perhaps fallible in His human nature? Surely we know from the Gospels that Jesus seems to have expressed ignorance about certain matters that were known only to the Father. So the questioning goes.

Perhaps you can see where this is headed.

O'Leary, for example, suggests (ignoring all the traditional interpretations) that Jesus may have erred in His eschatological thinking, assuming (mistakenly) that His parousia (His return to earth) would occur within the lifetime of the Apostles (Mk 9:1; Mt 10:23). Further, O'Leary claims that Jesus may have erred in the elements of his teaching that gave rise to anti-Jewish supersessionist doctrine (Mk 12:9) and even in His notions of eternal punishment. You see how convenient this is. You don't like a Church doctrine? Attribute it to the erroneous human nature of the "Jesus of History," which can be overridden by the non-historically rooted and therefore free-floating and more malleable "Christ of Faith," which, according to historical-critics, anyway, is a construct of the later community of Christian fideists in any case -- or so the reasoning goes!

The insistance that Christians take the full humanity of Christ seriously, against the encroachments of Docetism, is a point well taken. This is simply historical (Chalcedonian) orthodoxy. But the suggestion that Jesus erred in His own teaching because of the fallibility of His own human nature is a denial of Chalcedonian's own affirmation of the communicatio idiomatum, which means that the properties of the Divine Word can be ascribed to the man Christ, and vice versa. A consequence of this is that there is nothing in Christ's human nature that is incompatible with His divinity. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, distinguishes between Christ's divine, uncreated knowledge and His human, created knowledge, which is twofold: a natural knowledge based on the senses and on receptive learning, and a supernaturally infused vision of things in the divine Word and of the Word itself, which is not immediate, but conferred by a superadded habit "through which a created intellect is elevated to what is above it" (De Veritate, Q. 20, a. 2).

What, then, about Jesus' seeming ignorance about certain things known only to the Father? For example, Jesus is recorded as saying in Mk 13:32 -- "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (cf. Mt 24:36); and in Acts 1:17 -- "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has fixed by His own authority." These passages were interpreted by the Arians, Nestorians and Agnoetes, a monophysite sect of the 6th century, as implying the ignorance of Christ. A leading exponent of this notion was Deacon Themistios of Alexandria. Yet this view was explicitly condemned on the basis of Chalcedon's formulation of the hypostatic union.

How, then, are the above passages explained? One answer is that a self-imposed epistemic limitation in Christ's human nature, along the lines of the Kenotic Christology of Philippians 2:5-11, is not at all incompatible with the omniscience of His divine nature, and fully consonant with the Cosmic Christology of Colossians 1:15-20 and the Logos Christology of John 1:1-18. St. Augustine (354-430) calls Christ's seeming ignorance in these passages an "economic ignorance" founded on God's decree, or a scientia noncommunicada, which is to say that it was no part of Christ's teaching duty, in accordance with the will of the Father, to make known the day of the General Judgment. Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) says that Christ as man, in view of His innermost connection with the Logos, knew the day of the General Judgment, but did not have this knowledge from His human nature. Which is entirely consonant with what St. Thomas says above.

In short, Christ's human knowledge was free from positive ignorance and from error (D 2184), and any assertion otherwise is incompatible with orthodoxy. We cannot lose sight of Chalcedon's affirmation of the hypostatic union of Christ's two natures in the single person of Jesus Christ. The notion of a fallible human Jesus Christ who would mistakenly teach error contrary to His own divine will may be eminently convenient for contemporary Catholic dissidents; but it is also as heretical as any form of Docetism. In fact, it verges toward the opposite Arian error of denying the full divinity of Christ, except in a sense completely emasculated from the historical Jesus. When you encounter charges of "Docetism" and affirmations of Christ's "full humanity," beware: while this language may be fully orthodoxy, there's a good chance that it's also a smoke screen for the rationalization of dissent and heresy.

New light on Vatican II & its aftermath

I've just read one of the most significant articles on Vatican II and its aftermath written in the last twenty years. This, at least, is my judgment based on my own admittedly shallow puddle of experience. The article is by John Lamont, a Canadian convert to Catholicism with a doctorate in Theology from Oxford and currently a Gifford Fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland researching natural theology. He is also author of Divine Faith (Ashgate), a defense of a Thomist understanding of the theological virtue of faith.

In his article, entitled "Why the Second Vatican Council Was a Good Thing & Is More Important Than Ever," he addresses the question of external and internal problem that the Council sought to address and shows why the Council failed to achieve its aimed results. For the first time in nearly twenty years, I felt that I understood a number of reasons, at least, why the Council was both necessary and failed.

The external problems Lamont mentions, rather baldly stated here, are three: (1) The fact that for the most part the Church had ceased in the 20th century to benefit from the protection of governments that recognized her claims and promoted her activities, and instead had to exist under regimes that were indifferent or hostile. Hence its declaration on the right to religious freedom, to protect the rights of Catholics -- a position entirely consonant with Catholic tradition when contextualizes within the larger picture of that tradition. (2) In view of the rapidly accelorating deterioration within Protestantism from the 18th to the 20th century, as well as loosening of anti-Catholic prejudice and paranoia, the relations with non-Catholic Christians -- particularly Protestants -- had to be clarified (both for rank-and-file Catholics and for non-Catholics) in order to facilitate the return of the latter to the Church. (3) The record of anti-Semitism in Church history needed addressing.

The internal problems, far subtler, focus on the legacy of the influence of nominalism in Catholic thought that let to Protestantism, among other things. This is where Lamont breaks particularly new ground in my opinion. I can't go into the necessary detail here, but he mentions three things: (1) the tendency to identify Catholic religion with obedience to orders (in a nominalistic sense), in isolation from an understanding of happiness and truth (in a Thomistic sense). Admittedly, more clarification is needed here that the article provides. (2) Spiritual weakness stemming from a truncated understanding of spiritual "vocation" that created a bifurcation between the spiritual goals of the religious and the secular estates in life. (3) A defective attitude toward the world. This is the most detailed part of Lamont's analysis and goes beyond what time I have available to finish this post before the first class I have to teach this morning (in 8 minutes).

The article, which is printed in the July-August, 2005, issue of the New Oxford Review, and available online without a subscription only in part (here -- though you can purchase the rights to read it for $1.50), will be available to read in its entirety on this weblog site on September 1st by agreement with the publisher.

Separation of Church and State gone to seed and silliness

This just in from the Harold Sun:

... a high school brass band in Columbia in the US has been told it can no longer practise Christmas tunes that mention Jesus, even though the songs are all instrumentals.

Meanwhile in Tennessee, primary school children have been banned from reading Bibles during recess after a complaint from atheist parents.

And, in Milwaukee, a man has been sacked from his Chamber of Commerce job for wearing a cross on his lapel that could "offend" non-believers.

In England, a local council ordered the removal of a wooden cross from a crematorium chapel for fear of offending non-Christians.

And hospitals in England and Canada moved to remove Gideon's Bibles from patients' bedside tables to "control infection" and also because "the patients might not all be Christian."

Meanwhile, Students in Scotland voted to ban the Bible from the halls of residence at Stirling University because they thought the book's presence might bother followers of other religions.

Of course, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists in Western nations seem less offended by such things than politically correct secularists.

In the name of respecting all religions, a new form of secular hostility against Christianity has emerged.

Speaking at a conference on religious intolerance this month in Spain, the head of a Vatican delegation called on Europe to halt spiralling anti-Christian discrimination.

Archbishop Antonio Canizares said: "This must be combated with the same determination with which we combat anti-Semitism and discrimination against Muslims."

Read more here. (A tip of the hat to Adam Holland)

From two-bit whore houses to Bertha-sized Berlin brothel ...

Back in the olden days, Bertha, Brunhilda and their sisters in the red lantern district of Kiel used to service the maritime clientele who frequented that northern German port on the Baltic coast. Much later, in the 1980s, Frankfurt and other central German towns, boasted Sex Mit Herz, a line of "full service" short-order sex franchises across the German midlands. And today we've come all the way to this: "Berlin readies giant brothel for 2006 World Cup." Netscape News reports:

BERLIN, July 29 (Reuters) -- A German company is looking to cash in on an expected boom in the sex trade during next year's soccer World Cup with a 60-room brothel a walk away from Berlin's Olympic Stadium, German media reported on Friday.

Named after the virgin huntress of Greek mythology [pictured right], the "Artemis" complex is due to open for business in September with whirlpool, sauna, cinema, buffet restaurant and a staff of 100 prostitutes, mass circulation daily Bild reported.

"This is no flash rip-off joint where clients are taken for a ride," a spokesman for the Artemis GmbH investment company behind the project, told the newspaper.

"No flash rip-off joint where clients are taken for a ride"? Oh, come now! [You fill in the
blank: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _!] This is pathetic.

"The Roe Effect"

A friend of mine just sent me James Taranto's remarkable article, "The Roe Effect" on how the right to abortion has diminished the number of Democratic voters since 1973, published in The Wall Street Journal's online editorial page, Opinion Journal (July 6, 2005). Here are a couple of paragraphs from the piece:

Compounding the GOP advantage is what I call the Roe effect. It is a statement of fact, not a moral judgment, to observe that every pregnancy aborted today results in one fewer eligible voter 18 years from now. More than 40 million legal abortions have occurred in the United States since 1973, and these are not randomly distributed across the population. Black women, for example, have a higher abortion ratio (percentage of pregnancies aborted) than Hispanic women, whose abortion ratio in turn is higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. Since blacks vote Democratic in far greater proportions than Hispanics, and whites are more Republican than Hispanics or blacks, ethnic disparities in abortion ratios would be sufficient to give the GOP a significant boost--surely enough to account for George W. Bush's razor-thin Florida victory in 2000.

The Roe effect, however, refers specifically to the nexus between the practice of abortion and the politics of abortion. It seems self-evident that pro-choice women are more likely to have abortions than pro-life ones, and common sense suggests that children tend to gravitate toward their parents' values. This would seem to ensure that Americans born after Roe v. Wade have a greater propensity to vote for the pro-life party--that is, Republican--than they otherwise would have.

If you have not yet read this, by all means do. It's full of pages of hard statistical data revealing the effect of political liberals literally aborting themselves out of office. (Gratia tibi, Chris Garton-Zavesky)

40 goats offered to buy Chelsea

On a recent trip to Kenya, former US President Bill Clinton was apparently offered 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter by a love-struck African government official, named Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor. The Sky News report stated that the dowery was a very generous one by the country's own standards. The report failed to note, however, whether Chelsea was flattered by the offer or not. Mr. Clinton is reported as saying that had the offer succeeded in wooing Chelsea, he would have had a grand wedding, at which he would have invited South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu to preside. The report concluded by noting that Chelsea's suitor, Mr. Chepkurgor, said he was impressed by Mr. Clinton's wife, Hillary, for standing by Mr Clinton during the Monica Lewinksy scandal. He said Mrs. Clinton acted like a "like an African woman." Indeed. I wonder how many cows and goats it would take to persuade Mr. Chepkurgor to adopt the whole Clinton family and have them nationalized as Kenyan citizens. A brief but pleasant daydream ...

Hell, the apotheosis of the self, & the Schiavo killers

Gilbert Meilaender, in an articled entitled "Being Dependent" in The Cresset (unavailable online), a Lutheran publication out of Valparaiso University, does a take off from the Terry Schiavo case to illustrate our dislike of dependency. We, as human beings, want autonomy. He points out that in his book on Augustine and Modernity, Michael Hanby traces out in detail the way in which Descartes' "modern self," instead of being a natural development of the Augustinian tradition, actually "deforms and distorts it." The reason for this, says Meilaender, is because Descartes has a "Deus without Trinitas." That is to say, he has no "God-man" to mediate between time and eternity, or between creature and Creator. This loss, according to Hanby, "is always accompanied by the substitution of another figure: the Man-God." Accordingly, "the individual will -- distinct and separated from the love of beauty, the longing for God, or the praise of Christ -- becomes a will to power."

Meilaender concludes his brief but fullsome article, which devotes significant space to such phenomena as "living wills," with the following observation:

Yet, of course, to be dependent on no one -- that is hell. As Iris Murdoch once put it, "Kant's man [offspring of Descartes's] had already received a glorious incarnation nearly a century earlier in the work of Milton: his proper name is Lucifer."

Unless we want to be dependent, to share in the kind of giving and receiving that is the leitmotif of God's triune life, we cannot be saved -- saved from our isolated independence, from our illusory will to mastery, from (as C.S. Lewis wrote) "that ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self that is the mark of hell."

Which brings me to an article about George Felos (pictured below), the lawyer Michael Schiavo hired to see to it that Terry was soon dead. The article, entitled "Portrait of a Spiritual Killer: George Felos, in His Own Words," is by Benjamin D. Wiker, Senior Fellow with the Discovery Institute, and published recently in Crisis magazine. The article is profoundly disturbing, not in any way that reflects negatively on Wiker, in my opinion, but in what he reveals about Michael Schiavo, and particularly about his lawyer, Felos. The article begins thus:

I don't believe I have some kind of extraordinary spiritual sense, but something alerted me the very first time I saw George Felos (pictured left), the lawyer responsible for killing Terri Schiavo: Something is deeply wrong with this man. Very deep, and very wrong.

I had no such spiritual warning on the radar in viewing Michael Schiavo. He looked like the kind of man who could kill his wife. And he did. On March 31, 2005, he successfully starved and dehydrated Terri Schindler Schiavo to death. Cold-blooded murder, but entirely transparent. ... He finally finished her off with the death-camp treatment: no food, no water.

Cold-blooded murder, sanctioned by the state of Florida, watched by millions. Horrible; but again, quite transparent. Michael wanted the money. His wife, Terri, had to die for him to get it. And so he hired a "right-to-die" expert, lawyer George Felos.

But what he says about Felos is what makes your hair stand on end:

Felos exudes a different moral odor than his client, and I wasn't the only one who noticed. He wasn't just morally wrong; he was creepy. One has the nagging feeling that he represents a more hidden and poisonous evil.

His words were foul enough. The continual cheerful chanting of "death process," "peaceful," and "beautiful" during Terri's final torture. The chastisement of Rev. Frank Pavone, who had the dignity and courage to describe the death of Terri with blunt accuracy: "This is a killing." Tsk-tsk, cooed Felos. "Instead of words of reconciliation, words of healing or words of compassion, which you might expect from a spiritual person," Felos retorted in an unctuous scold, "he used it [i.e., press coverage] to drive his ideological agenda."

But this was only the bubbling up of something fouler still. His looks, his voice, his clothes, his mannerisms -- all set off a profound danger signal. Not being able to ignore my spiritual alarm, I was forced to yield to its signal and look more closely at Felos. I bought his book and think I now understand the inner alarm. Reading it, I am convinced that he represents an entirely new and even more dangerous aspect of the euthanasia movement -- the spiritual killer.

From here the article launches into a biographical history, backed up by plenty of hard data, of Felos and his psychological development and his pathological necrophilia that is profoundly disturbing. Wiker also reveals what both Michael Schiavo and Felos (pictured together right) stood to gain financially from Terry's death. The case is appalling. Furthermore, and here I can't help making a connection between Wiker's article and Meilaender's: at the heart of the "spiritual killer" in Wiker's portrait, is a man who embodies the neurotic apotheosis of a soul curved in upon its self (curvatus in se), which is the essence of psychological hell described by Meilaender. Profoundly disturbing. Read more of Wiker's article here.

"Ex-gay"

"In 24 years of clinical experience, I've never had someone come to me troubled over his heterosexuality and wanting to change."
( -- Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, Director of Comprehensive
Counseling Services, West Conshocken, PA.)

"Ex-gay." That little word touched off explosive controversity back in July 13-15, 1998, when a coalition of Christian organizations ran a series of full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. Dominating the first ad was a photo of an attractive young woman identified as "Anne Paulk -- wife, mother, former lesbian," above the headline: "I'm living proof that Truth can set you free." A second at showed a large group of smiling faces with the headline: "We're standing for the truth that homosexuals can change." A third featured NFL football star Reggie White making a plea for homosexuals to take the cure.

Reporting on the event, Mike Aquilina published an article in Our Sunday Visitor (September 6, 1998) entitled "Debate: Can homosexuals be 'straightened out'?" The newspaper ads, he says, were largely the work of Exodus International, a worldwide network of ex-gay ministries. Co-sponsoring the ads were 15 organizations, including the Christian Coalition and Family Research Council. The article reports:

Reaction was swift -- and shrill. Within days, a coalition of pro-gay organizatins contributed their own full-page ad, in the same newspapers, countering Exodus' claims.

In the opinion pages of The New York Times, columnist Frank Rich attacked the premises of the ads, countering with his belief that homosexuality is "innate," unchangeable and normal. The ads' sponsors, he charged, "are putting [homosexuality] in the same category as kleptomania and alcoholism."

The article continues by suggesting that probably neither the members of Exodus or the Catholic Church would deny the charge. The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is an objective moral disorder (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, amended edition, no. 2358). This is where Christian tradition parts company not only with the "gay" subculture, but also with the mainstream of the medical, psychiatric and psychological professions -- at least since 1973 when, not for reasons of science but under pressure from the National Gay Task Force, the board of the American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Other professional associations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, have followed suit. Members of the APA who specialized in the treatment of homosexuals protested their board's decision, but to no avail. Yet a growing number of professionals have dissenting from these positions from their onset in the early seventies and have continued to treat homosexuality as a curable disorder. The article continues:

That is the position, for example of Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, director of Comprehensive Counseling Services of West Conshocken, Pa.

A psychiatrist, Fitzgibbons draws from his own clinical experience as well as published research. He dismisses as nonsense the APA's claim that homosexuality is a normal variant. "In 24 years of clinical experience," he told Our Sunday Visitor, "I've never had someone come to me troubled over his heterosexuality and wanting to change."

Fitzgibbons said he has, however, helped many homosexual clients to develop an opposite-sex attraction. "People can overcome same-sex attractions and behaviors," he said.

"There are at least nine major studies that show that the recovery rate is about 30-50 percent, which is the recovery rate you'd expect from most addictive or emotional disorders." He added that, if patients "bring in the spiritual component," the recovery rate is "significantly higher."

Fitzgibbons does not hesitate to classify homosexuality with disorders such as slcoholism and kleptomania.

"A growing number of professionals see same-sex behavior as a type of addictive disorder," he said. "We're looking at a lifestyle in which people have, on average, 20 to 40 sexual partners per year, sometimes engaging in sadomasochistic practices. Forty percent engage in unsafe sexual practices in the era of AIDS, when 50 percent of males in the homosexual lifestyle are HIV-positive by the time they're 50. All of this indicates the sort of highly reckless behavior usually associated with addictions."

Still, while the Catholic Church calls homosexuals -- along with those who struggle with any moral disorder -- to "chastity" and "self-mastery" (CCC, no. 2359), the Church takes no position on whether or not they should seek to develop heterosexual attraction.

For example, Fr. John Harvey, the founder of Courage, an international Catholic support group for men and women who struggle with homosexual attractions, admitted to Our Sunday Visitor in an interview with Aquilina that for 20 years he doubted that homosexuals could develop a true heterosexual attraction. But he began to change his mind in the 1970s.

That was when two men I knew became heterosexual without really trying. They had had homosexual attractions and had acted out physically -- it wasn't just a mind game -- but they later turned over. One of them is married now, with several children. I watched another young lady, who fought me in the beginning, become happily married, now with her third baby on the way.

I changed my mind because I saw the facts. Against a fact, no argument is valid.

Nevertheless, it remains also a fact that some men and women fail in their attempts to change. Many critics of The New York Times ads were quick to point out that the two founders of Exodus eventually "fell in love," left the movement and moved in together in a "familial" partnership. To be fair, however, Fitzgibbons counters by noting that such behavior occurs in recovery from any addictive disorder. "People fail for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the sexual addiction is accompanied by substance abuse and alcohol abuse. That makes it very hard to walk away from it. In any recovery, you might have to stop five times before you really stop." Aquilina continues:

Carl's experience seems to bear this out. Speaking with Our Sunday Visitor on condition of anonymity, Carl (not his real name), an East coast man in his 30s, admits that he proceeded to recovery only by fits and starts.

A former gay activist who had been sexually active for seven years, Carl made the decision to leave the lifestyle behind in 1992. But he stopped short of pursuing a heterosexual attraction. "I could have, but I didn't -- on purpose. I had such a bias against it that I chose to seek chastity only."

But, after three years, he noticed that, in pursuing chastity, he had begun to change anyway. "I began to notice a gradual growth in heterosexual attraction and a diminishing of homosexual attraction and identity. I guess God is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Carl acknowledged that the change is difficult. "I didn't have a heterosexual adolescence, and in some ways I had to go through that at 35. I had to look around for role models and reliable men who could give me advice."

Though once a skeptic, Carl said he now believes that change is possible. "I know from my own experience, and I probably know around 30 others who have successfully made the transition."

To be fair, again, Aquilina reports Carl as saying that he does not believe that heterosexual attraction is possible for everyone who seeks it. "It's wrong to say that everyone can change," Carl says, "just as it's wrong to say no one can. Some can and do. In general the younger the person is and the less they've acted out physically, the better their chances of a complete change."

Carl follows Fr. Harvey in placing the main emphasis on chastity. "Whether or not you can develop a heterosexual attraction, you can be chaste, and you can be happy. People need to know that, no matter what the media say, there is a way out."

For further reading:

• Anne Paulk, "Former Lesbian."
  
• Anne Paulk, Restoring Sexual Identity: Hope for Women Who Struggle With Same-Sex Attraction (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 2003).
  
• Frank York, "Important New Book Offers Help For Struggling Lesbians," review of Restoring Sexual Identity: Hope for Women Who Struggle with Same-Sex Attraction.
  
• National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality website.
  
• Fr. John Harvey, The Truth About Homosexuality: The Cry of the Faithful (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996)
  
• Fr. John Harvey, The Homosexual Person: New Thinking in Pastoral Care (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987).
  
• Courage (homosexual support group founded by Fr. John Harvey, official website)
  
• Fr. Benedict Groeschel, Courage to Be Chaste (Baltimore: Paulist Press, 1985).
  
• G. J. M. Van Den Aardweg, Gerard J. M., Phd Van Den Aardweg, The Battle for Normality: A Guide for (Self-)Therapy for Homosexuality
  
• Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996).