Romancing the Rocks

For the longest time, I misunderstood romantic love to be the love between a man and a woman. The love properly ordered toward marriage. But I am beginning to understand that there is romance in everything.

Also, along the same lines, romantic love is often tied in with sex, as if the two went hand-in-hand. It's not that the two are entirely unrelated, but properly ordered, most romance is not sexual in nature (or perhaps, as taught in John Paul II's Theology of the Body, it might be better to say that not all our sexuality is ordered toward sexual activity).

Romance starts with our experience of the beautiful, whether something looks beautiful, sounds beautiful, smells beautiful, and so on. But it is not only from the experience of the senses directly, but also the mind. We can experience a beautiful idea or a beautiful personality.

Thus, we can "fall in love" with things as well as people. We see a beautiful mountain in the distance, and we want to get closer and climb it or touch it. At the least we want to take its picture, so we can preserve a part of our experience with the mountain to bring with us.

One of the things that helped me realize the greater dimensions of romance was having children. You fall in love with the beautiful little faces, the cute voices, the new personalities. You want to hug them and kiss them. You can sit and stare lovingly at them (when they aren't driving you crazy).

Of course, each love, for each person and each thing, is unique, but they are not an entirely different kind of thing. They are different in intensity, they have different components, they are associated with different roles and duties, but they are all loves of the beautiful.

And properly ordered this all points to God. As Plato discovered using pre-Christian philosophy, God is the perfect beauty, and the source of all beauty. And as the the scriptures tell us, Christ came as Lover, to be the bridegroom of the Church, to unite himself with us in a kind of heavenly marriage.

So all that is beautiful, all that we love, should remind us of God. We should be thankful for all the good that he presents to us here on Earth. And when we marvel at the beautiful things he has given us, we should feel even greater awe, wondering how much greater is the source of all beauty and love.

Double Standards

Here's another example of the lengths the media (in this case the New York Times) will go to attack Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church, even when they don't really have a case. In the case discussed in this Inside Catholic article we see the New York Times trying to place special blame for lax enforcement of church rules regarding the abuse of children on Cardinal Ratzinger, when their own facts show that he was at the forefront of a push to clean up the church.

And then, in a piece looking at another NY Times article, we see the double standard made quite clear. While the Times, like the rest of the media, goes out of its way to attack the Catholic Church, it also, ignores most other cases of child abuse, or worse condones them. In this op-ed we see the Times convey the idea that it is "heartwarming" for the U.S. troops in Afghanistan to learn such tolerance that they will ignore the actions of Afghan allies on "love Thursdays" when older men have sex with (sometimes violently raping) younger boys.

"Blessed are those who persecute the Church, for they will be awarded editorial positions" -The Media Bible SRV (Secular Relativist Version)

Another One

Adding to my list of people who believe the media is treating the Catholic Church unfairly in the abuse issue, is Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City. A Jew who believes the Catholic Church is wrong on just about everything liberals tend to think it is wrong about (abortion, contraception, homosexuality, etc.), Koch still states, "I believe the continuing attacks by the media on the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI have become manifestations of anti-Catholicism. The procession of articles on the same events are, in my opinion, no longer intended to inform, but simply to castigate." See the full blog here.

Posts on the Scandal

Although it is not my preferred area of discussion, the sexual abuse scandal keeps coming up, so I'll address it here by referring you to better writers! It's better you read some of these posts than anything I have to say, so I'll keep it short:

I'll start you where I started today, with Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary blog. As always, she's a wonderful writer, who provides lots of links to back up her points. For a bit of background, Jennifer was raised an atheist. She first began looking into Protestant Christianity, and eventually decided that the truth was found in its fullest in the Catholic Church. I highly recommend her blog.

In a trail from there I came across an article providing statistics comparing abuse by priests to family members, ministers, psychologists, and teachers. The statistics show that even at their worst, the priests were the safest group (completely demolishing the "caused by celibacy" argument).

Then there's a bit of comedy relief, as the Associated Press, desperate for news, reports on the man who shot John Paul II saying he wants Pope Benedict to "resign over the Catholic Church's handling of clerical sex abuse cases." Now there's someone the Catholic Church can look to for guidance. To his credit he does say he doesn't want the Pope arrested.

And finally, an interesting piece by an atheist humanist, who certainly doesn't favor Catholic teachings, but sounds just as opposed to the media bias and public hysteria against the Catholic Church as I am. This is useful, both as another perspective, and as a confirmation that we aren't imagining the media bias. His primary concerns in the article are the dangers of the anti-free speech stance of "new atheists," and the "culture of victimhood." [note that I have not read, and cannot recommend any other articles on this humanist website]

Pseudogamy 101 & 102

I have to recommend this brilliant set of articles by Anthony Esolen. I'll give a little bit of the first one here, but make sure to go and read them both!

I've written [...] that the real social problem we in America face is the number of people who are not married who behave as if they were. I'd like to revise that claim. Our problem is pseudogamy, false marriage, and it assumes many forms. Same-sex pseudogamy is but the latest and most flagrantly absurd, but it is not the first. We find the most fundamental form, from which other corruptions rise up like diseases, when a man and woman go through the ceremony and utter the traditional words "as long as you both shall live," while harboring the mental reservation, "as long, that is, as I am happy," or "as long as the marriage 'works,'" whatever that is supposed to mean. In other words, in the fundamental form of pseudogamy, we don't have people who are not married behaving as if they were, but people who are married (or who present themselves as having been married) behaving as if they were not.

Read the rest of the article and then the next article by following the links below:

pseudogamy-101

pseudogamy-102

Hopefully there are more in this series.

Pope vs. Condoms in Africa

As happens every time I can remember, the media has once again sided against the Catholic Church. Now, as the Pope visits Africa, they are attacking his stance on condom use in the fight against AIDS/HIV.

Here's a portion of the story I saw on PBS:

Pope Claims Condoms Worsen AIDS Crisis

The interviewer's slant isn't that strong in this particular segment. The part this page doesn't show is that much more time was spent hearing from some restaurant that distributes condoms in another African country.

The first comment on the story read in part:

"As leader of the Catholic Church, the Pope has a moral duty and obligation to ensure followers are educated and lives are saved from HIV infections and AIDS deaths! Around the world, condoms are seen as a necessary requirement for engaging in sexual activity. Promoting condom use has not and does not promote promiscuity... The Catholic Church is promoting practices of abstinence and fidelity, which are widely known to have a high failure rate and allow more HIV infections!"
-Bradford McIntyre

My response follows:

The Pope has a moral duty to do what he is doing. He is teaching the consistent teaching of the Church. It has taught this for nearly 2000 years.

It is certainly a hard teaching to understand, and a hard one to follow, but that does not make it a false teaching.

People should not be so quick to judge the very institution that has passed on the fundamental idea, taught by Jesus Christ, that every human life has value. Without this idea, which has been implanted in the heart of Western society by its Christian past, we would not care at all about the fate of the Africans.

But, sadly, we have rejected so many other teachings of Jesus, and only the Pope continues to teach them clearly.

The Pope certainly would not deny that condoms can prevent AIDS infections. The problem is that they often fail, and they also contribute to a general promiscuous culture which really only makes the problem worse in the long term.

They are certainly not the only factor, and may not even be the primary factor, which is why abstinence education can not stand on its own. It needs to be a part of a far more comprehensive solution.

The other commenter was right, to an extent, that condoms themselves don't cause promiscuity, but he is wrong in thinking that they do not contribute to promiscuity. They are just one of many contributing factors, and we need to address them all to see real success, but success can not be found by abandoning our morals.

TV Makes People Go Crazy

A new survey of 173 research efforts, spanning 30 years, shows more evidence than ever that TV (as well as music, movies, and other media) contributes to obesity, drug use, tobacco use, sexual behavior, alcohol use, low academic performance, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

That's a long list, and this article doesn't mention the studies that link TV to depression and anxiety.

I've read that there is a connection between TV watching and depression in adults too, but I can't find that info right now. If anyone has a good link, leave a comment.

I imagine that all these things that are harmful to children are also harmful to adults, but since adults are not learning so many things for the first time, and are more set in their ways, the effects would not be as sudden or pronounced.

Is it Possible to Teach Abstinence?

Secular and liberal groups of various sorts like to claim that high school and college students are "going to do it anyway," so we shouldn't "waste" time and money on abstinence education, when what the kids "really need" is contraceptives. They back this reasoning up with studies showing the lack of success seen in areas with abstinence education.

My reaction has always been to just groan in annoyance at such ignorance. Of course we won't see great results from the mere fact that we put money into abstinence education. It would take years of research to find effective forms of abstinence education. Psychologists have been studying depression and anxiety since psychology (and psychiatry) began. They are better at influencing unhealthy minds today, but they still don't have a simple cure. Why should we expect it to be so much easier to influence minds in other difficult but helpful directions? It should be obvious that a teacher rolling his eyes as he says, "The state requires that I tell you not to have sex until you're married," is as likely to hurt as it is to help. So it should also be obvious that the quality of the programs is as important as the existence of the programs.

And even more obvious, is that neither abstinence education nor contraception education happen in a vacuum. How can we expect adolescents to listen to their teacher who says "no" when all their friends, their favorite celebrities, their magazines, and sometimes even their parents are shouting "YES!" If we want success, we need a comprehensive form of "wait until you're married" education that would entail sweeping changes of education, media, and who knows what else.

There is clear evidence that watching sex on TV can double teen pregnancy rates. There is also evidence that college professors promoting use of contraception makes college students 10% more likely to engage in premarital sex during their last year in school. How many other factors might be contributing to this problem?

We live in a society that is overflowing with sex. We can't just protect our kids (and ourselves) from one angle; they will just absorb what comes at them from every other angle. For now it takes a multi-pronged approach from individual parents to protect their own children. For the future we need to work toward a multi-pronged approach to protect everyone's children.