Unreconstructed Modernism at Catholica: Fr. Dresser and Dr. Elmer on (or rather, against) Original Sin and the Redemption

http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=36347

The notorious The Rev. Fr. Peter Dresser had the following things to say in a thread-starter at the similarly-notorious Catholica Australia forum (quoted in full, italics in the original, with emphasis added (bold type) by me to the most salient parts):

***

Original Sin (Main Forum)
by Peter Dresser , Kandos, Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 11:58 (7 days ago)

Tom Lee's manuscript once again raises the question of Original Sin...and so just a couple of my own thoughts on the subject.

The initiates in the early Church were adults and Baptism was the end result of long preparation and planning. Later on the children of the initiates began to be baptised with them and later on infants by themselves. My own readings suggest that Augustine and others struggled to make some kind of theological sense regarding the baptism of infans who obviously had not be instructed or discipled in any way...because the injunction of Jesus was that his followers should firstly be disciples before being baptised (see Matthew 28:19).It was during this time that the idea arose that Baptism made infants children of God by somehow removing a barrier to this relationship, viz. some kind of sin. And so we had the doctrine of Original Sin and Chapters one and two of Genesis were revisited to give some kind of scriptural basis to this doctrine.

The Doctrine of Original Sin as stated in the latest Catechism of the Catholic Church and as expressed in doctrinal documents makes absolutely no sense scientifically. We are led to believe that in some way Adam and Eve once lived in some kind of preternatural existence and did something wrong and were cut off from God's friendship. And in one of the greatest tantrums of all time God drove them from the garden of Eden. And in a strangelyconvoluted way God then devised that having closed the gates of paradise to men and women, he would then sacrifice his Son to reopen them! This gave rise to the fall and redemption theology that saw Jesus as the only perfect sacrifice to atone for violence done against a perfect God. So Calvary was seen as the price of atonement and, certainly to anyone searching for meaning, such thinking unfortunately raises the question of a rather strange God, a rather bizarre God who seeks the painful death of his Son to expiate some injury cause him. A rather small and petty God who thinks like the most miserable of any miserable human being. A revengeful God in complete contradiction to the liberating, healing, forgiving and freeing God that Jesus himself spoke about.

I made the point that Original Sin makes no sense in the scientific world we live in. By suggesting that it was because of a disdemeanour committed by Adam and Eve that death came into the world ignores the fact that our world has been evolving for millions of years and our universe for something like 16 billion years with all the death and all the chaos that goes with this evolutionary process. Men and women did not fall from any kind of preternatural existence. They are the result of an evolutionary process! And so it seems to me that it is not possible for the Doctrine of Original Sin and our cosmologiclall world outlook to coexist.

So in what way is Jesus our saviour? Many today would readily accept that Jesus is our saviour but not so much that he died on the cross; it was more how he died on the cross that was a saving moment for us. It was his darkest hour and in that darkest hour he placed himself in the hands of his God with great hope and trust. His cry from the cross "My God , My God, Why have you forsaken me?" are in fact the opening words of Psalm 22, a Psalm which talks about faith and hope and trust in God. He died freely and humanly. He died with hope. He was teaching us a saving lesson. Indeed the whole life of Jesus was salvific. He showwed us in his own life the freeing, forgiving, healing and liberating spirit of God. He saved us by embracing life with all its joys, hopes, griefs and anxieties. He saved us by his great example of living with faith and hope in God and that the various quarries and valleys and pits of life can be filled with the good soil of a freeing and healing God. He saved us by telling us about tis good and gracious God. He saved us by fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour" (Luke 4: 18-19).

Nowhere in his dealings with people is there the slightest hint of the original sin mentality. Just the opposite I would have imagined.

It is pleasing to note that the Sacrament of Baptism once again is taking its place preeminently as a Sacrament of Christian Initiation and that any reference to Original Sin has been relegated to a passing mention in an optional prayer. Limbo was only ever a theological opinion. As I understand, it is no longer even that!

Let me turn to that beautiful statement at the opening of the Letter to the Ephesians:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love." (Ephesians 1:3-4)

This entire opening passage could have as its theme Original Blessing and one tries in vain to find any substantiation for an Original Sin. Indeed if one considers the question of God's dealingsa with the human race, the notion of an inherited sin seems very difficult to reconcile with any convincing view of God's goodness, mercy and justice. The concept of original sin is not only alien to Jewish tradition; it is not found in any of the writings of the Old Testament and is certainly not in chapters one to three of Genesis. Briefly, the idea of original blessing is far more ancient and more biblical a doctrine than original sin; the Council of Trent never said what original sin means' Augustine mixed his doctrine of original sin up with his peculiar notions about sexuality; whatever is said of original sin, it is far less hallowed and original than are love and desire, the Creator's love for creation and our parents' love, and doctrine is not the basis of faith or its starting point. Creation is the basis of trust which is the biblical meaning of Faith. In any case, doctrine is for people, not people for doctrine, and much pain and sin have come about because of an exaggerated emphasis on the doctrine of original sin. Jesus does not redeem us from original sin. Rather he enhances our lives, lives so richly blessed before the foundation of the world.

Just a couple of thoughts...

Peter

***

Just a couple of thoughts indeed! With this ‘couple of thoughts’ Fr. Dresser is attacking the very foundations of salvation history, and hence of the Catholic Faith itself. The Roman Catechism teaches that the Passion of Our Lord was four things: a redemption, a satisfaction, a sacrifice, and an example. But from Fr. Dresser’s Pelagian/Modernist perspective, it is really only an example: “He was teaching us a saving lesson”. For Fr. Dresser, it clearly wasn’t a redemption—“Jesus does not redeem us from original sin”—and with the following sentence he seeks to expunge from the Deposit of Faith the satisfactory and sacrificial aspects of the Passion: “[The teaching that mankind was excluded from Paradise, a teaching which Fr. Dresser rejects] gave rise to the fall and redemption theology that saw Jesus as the only perfect sacrifice to atone for violence done against a perfect God.” (It’s interesting that Fr. Dresser rejects even the sacrificial aspect of the Passion, because sometimes one finds that Modernists will at least say that the Passion was a sacrifice of some sort, an offering ‘in solidarity with the suffering of mankind’, or some such. Apparently that doesn’t go far enough for Fr. Dresser.)

Presumably, then, since Christ simply “enhances our lives”, it is not absolutely necessary for salvation that we be united to Him and His Passion; rather (so Fr. Dresser’s reasoning would go), Christ’s example is just a helpful—but not indispensable—demonstration of “faith and hope and trust in God”. Hence I described Fr. Dresser’s thinking as Pelagian, and it is obviously Modernist too—as Fr. Dresser says, “doctrine is for people, not people for doctrine”, which is a statement of one of the fundamental principles of Modernism, the principle that doctrine is valuable only insofar as it expresses the religious experience (arising internally from ‘religious sentiment’) of the believer (to the extent that a Modernist can even be called a believer); the corollary of this principle, of course, is that other important Modernist tenet, the tenet of the evolution—not development—of doctrine, since doctrine (which is, according to Modernists like Fr. Dresser, “for people, not people for doctrine”) must constantly change with the changing religious experience of the passing generations in order always to be well-adapted to expressing that religious experience. So presumably Fr. Dresser wouldn’t begrudge people in more ‘primitive’ times adhering to the ‘fall and redemption myth’, but naturally this is unsuitable for the prevailing ‘scientific’ and ‘evolutionary’ perspective, and so must be replaced. (And in the future, when a new perspective predominates, the doctrine will have to evolve again.)

I remember a commenter at the Cath Pews discussion board last year describing St. Pius X’s brilliant encyclical Pascendi Domenici Gregis as a ‘line-up of straw men’, yet more than a century after its promulgation, it remains as relevant as ever, exposing all the errors—not ‘straw men’ at all—of the Peter Dressers and Ian Elmers (we’ll see what Dr. Elmer has to say in a moment) which (the errors, that is) make up ‘the synthesis of all heresies’, Modernism.

Now Fr. Dresser’s ravings were predictable enough, both as to their content and the frankness with which they were stated. But I expected more subtlety from Australian Catholic University ‘teacher of the teachers’ Dr. Ian Elmer. And so I was surprised initially at the tone—though not the content—of his comment, which began with almost slavish agreement with Fr. Dresser (no added emphasis; the whole thing is worth reading):

***

Re-imagining Original Sin
by Ian Elmer, 'Brisbane, Australia', Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 14:34 (6 days ago) @ Peter Dresser

Hi Peter,

Thanks for a great post; and one with which I heartily agree. One other issue that I feel is often forgotten when we focus on Jesus’ death as saving us from sin is the actual message of Jesus. All-too-often Jesus’ moral and ethical principles are seen simply as an “add on” to the salvific events of Easter. I believe that you have hit the nail on the head with your reflections here; and I would say further. We should probably reverse the normal understanding of the relationship between Christ’s death and Christ’s ministry and see Christ’s death as the result of his revolutionary program and Christ’s resurrection as a vindication of his teachings.

Jesus did not die for our sins, or because we had to be ransomed back from Satan, he died because sinful people could not or would not accept his teachings. God raised Jesus from the dead as a divine vindication, or we might call it an imprimatur, on the Jesus message.

I think that we might similarly return to the story of the man and woman in the garden and rediscover its true meaning...and even find that there still is a place for original sin.

The story of the Man and Woman in the Garden is a very ancient story that is meant to “explain” human suffering and limitation. It is not meant to be read literally – that God punished our first parents for their sin. Rather, this story “explains” that when relationships break down (i.e. relationships between god and humans, men and women, humans and nature) things go awry. Humans try to be “like gods”, men dominate women, humans misuse and destroy the earth; and, as a result, we have societies that are beset by crime, immorality, and manmade disasters (like global warming).

In this view, the doctrine of original sin retains a strong mythic quality that continues to speak to human inadequacy and limitation – inadequacies and limitations that can, if unchecked by recourse to God, lead to sin, depravity and tragedy. The concept of original sin evolved out of our shared experience of being limited humans as well as our shared experience of being totally dependent upon God for redemption and salvation from those limitations. As such, I think that the doctrine of Original Sin is far too valuable to simply discard; but we do need to reimage it – which brings us back to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Surely the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were not simply a “fix-it”, a last-minute attempt by God to rectify what we humans had stuffed up. Even Thomists understand that, since God knows everything within the divine being, God knows the whole of creation; every cause and its effect derives from the “First Cause” (God) and is, therefore, an emanation of the divine will. God makes provision for our needs in advance.

Following this line of thought, we may return to the original issue of Jesus’ death on the cross. Given the Divine omniscience and omnipotence, God must have already factored in the death of Jesus and shaped all of human history in advance to bring it to a climax in the resurrection of the Christ. As noted above, through the resurrection, God places a divine imprimatur on the message of love and self-sacrifice taught and, ultimately, lived by Jesus – “even unto death on a cross” (as Paul puts it so eloquently in Carmen Christi in Philippians). The death becomes a symbolic illustration of the message, and the resurrection acts as divine confirmation.

In this sense all of creation and human history have been woven into a tapestry awaiting the final defining thread found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. To that tapestry we add our own meagre colours as we conform our lives to the pattern traced by Jesus and are accordingly liberated from the fundamental limitations of human sinfulness (in the broad sense explained above).

Thanks again, Peter, for your thought-provoking post.

Godspeed,

Ian

***

So Dr. Elmer begins with all but unqualified agreement—“one with which I heartily agree”, “I believe that you have hit the nail on the head with your reflections here”. Clearly he agrees that the Passion was no true redemption—“Jesus did not die for our sins, or because we had to be ransomed back from Satan”—and, remarkably, he goes even further than Fr. Dresser: whereas Fr. Dresser sees the Passion as a lesson in itself, Dr. Elmer “reverse[s] the normal understanding of the relationship between Christ’s death and Christ’s ministry” so that the Crucifixion is just the sort of ‘unintended consequence’ of Christ’s other lessons.

So Dr. Elmer begins boldly, but then that ol’ Elmer subtlety resurfaces: “I think that we might […] even find that there still is a place for original sin.” So this is the Modernist tactic of retaining the terms of a doctrine but completely and blatantly abandoning its substance: no longer is original sin concerned with how “God punished our first parents for their sin. Rather, this story “explains” that when relationships break down (i.e. relationships between god and humans, men and women, humans and nature) things go awry.” There is no place for Divine retribution in his perspective, but he can make room to accommodate global warming!

Earlier I described Fr. Dresser’s views as Pelagian and Modernist; Dr. Elmer’s theology here is just as Modernist—or perhaps even more so—but he takes a step back from Fr. Dresser’s Pelagianism:

In this view [the one which Dr. Elmer is proposing], the doctrine of original sin retains a strong mythic quality that continues to speak to human inadequacy and limitation – inadequacies and limitations that can, if unchecked by recourse to God, lead to sin, depravity and tragedy. The concept of original sin evolved out of our shared experience of being limited humans as well as our shared experience of being totally dependent upon God for redemption and salvation from those limitations.

So we have an explicit statement of the Modernist principles of the primacy of experience and the evolution of doctrine—“[t]he concept of original sin evolved out of our shared experience …”—and an implicit re-statement of Fr. Dresser’s Modernist notion that “doctrine is for people, not people for doctrine”—Dr. Elmer says that “[his heretical] doctrine of original sin retains a strong mythic quality that continues to speak to human inadequacy and limitation”, as, of course, it must if it is to have any value for a Modernist. But I say that Dr. Elmer distances himself from Fr. Dresser’s Pelagianism insofar as he acknowledges that humans are “totally dependent upon God for redemption and salvation from [their] limitations”.

Dr. Elmer’s invocation of Thomism is also rather strange. He says that “Even Thomists understand that, since God knows everything within the divine being, God knows the whole of creation; every cause and its effect derives from the “First Cause” (God)”. But we must be clear that, since evil is a deprivation, it is caused by good things (each efficient cause has existence and is therefore, at least inasmuch as it has existence, a good thing), but indirectly. Furthermore, when Dr. Elmer says that “every cause and its effect derives from the “First Cause” (God) and is, therefore, an emanation of the divine will” (my emphasis), that sounds more like Pantheism—the heresy according to which everything is supposed to be an emanation of the Divine Essence—than Thomism.

And towards the end of his comment, as though we weren’t already clear enough as to where Dr. Elmer stands, he says that “[t]he death [of Christ] becomes a symbolic illustration of the message, and the resurrection acts as divine confirmation.” So there we have it: symbolic original sin, symbolic atonement, … and, therefore, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass just a symbolic sacrifice? This brings me to my penultimate point: what does the Dresser/Elmer doctrine of (symbolic) original sin and Christ’s (symbolic) Sacrifice imply for the theology of the Mass? The implications are spelled out succinctly in the Society of St. Pius X’s excellent The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, and though that work is brief, I cannot hope to do it justice here. Suffice to say that the Novus Ordo Missæ is the liturgical accommodation of this warped theology; it would be impossible to accommodate it in the Traditional Latin Mass, but in the New Mass, the Mass becomes a memorial banquet from whose texts are expunged all but the faintest trace of the doctrine of the Mass as a true propitiatory sacrifice offered in satisfaction of the debt of justice acquired by sin. For the Mass is either one and the same Sacrifice as the Sacrifice of Calvary, differing only in the manner of offering, or it is not. If it is not substantially the same Sacrifice, then it is just symbolic. But even if it is the same Sacrifice, but the Cross-Sacrifice was symbolic, then the Mass-Sacrifice is symbolic too, and will have no propitiatory value, so either way, in the Elmer/Dresser view, we can only end up with the Mass as a symbolic, non-propitiatory sacrifice. Msgr. Lefebvre was right to say that, though the New Mass is not heretical in itself, it comes from heresy and it leads to heresy.

My last point is this: muddled and heretical though the Dresser/Elmer theology is, Fr. Dresser’s ravings at least have the virtue (typographical errors notwithstanding) of showing why Catholics should have nothing to do with Darwinism:

I made the point that Original Sin makes no sense in the scientific world we live in. By suggesting that it was because of a disdemeanour committed by Adam and Eve that death came into the world ignores the fact that our world has been evolving for millions of years and our universe for something like 16 billion years with all the death and all the chaos that goes with this evolutionary process. Men and women did not fall from any kind of preternatural existence. They are the result of an evolutionary process! And so it seems to me that it is not possible for the Doctrine of Original Sin and our cosmologiclall world outlook to coexist.

It seems that way to me too, Father. It’s just that I reject that man is the product of Darwinian evolution and retain the true doctrine of original sin, whereas you do the converse, privileging speculative theory over Divinely-revealed and -protected truth.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Martin of Tours, Bishop, Confessor, A.D. 2009

Mr. Pearson and Ms Zukerman, separately, on euthanasia

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/embroiled-in-a-lethal-argument/story-e6frg7ko-1225795218619
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/states-debate-euthanasia/story-e6frg8y6-1225795713197

Two interesting articles appeared in last weekend’s The Weekend Australian, one by Mr. Christopher Pearson in the Inquirer section, the other by Ms Wendy Zukerman in the Health section. Both the articles shed a bit more light on the staggering finding, mentioned by me in a recent comment at this blog, that something like 85% of Australians support euthanasia. Ms Zukerman writes that

Euthanasia isn't legal under Australian law but is supported by most Australians. Last week, for instance, a Newspoll of 1201 Australians found 85 per cent approved of a doctor providing a lethal dose to a suffering patient with no chance of recovering, after the patient requested the dose.

Mr. Pearson provides more detail, quoting the text of the question put to survey respondents:

The South Australian bill's advocates often cite in its defence what they call overwhelming popular support. They point to a Newspoll that asked respondents: "Thinking now about voluntary euthanasia, if a hopelessly ill patient experiencing unrelievable suffering with absolutely no chance of recovery asks for a lethal dose, should a doctor be allowed to provide a dose or not?" Given the loaded way the question was framed it comes as no surprise that statewide 87 per cent said yes and only 6 per cent said no.

But loaded or not, the question asks the respondent whether or not he or she support the formal, rather than merely material, killing of innocent persons, so the survey’s finding can only excite deep pessimism in euthanasia opponents, myself among them. Nevertheless, there is value in Mr. Pearson’s subsequent suggestions for probing more deeply into Australian attitudes towards euthanasia:

It would be timely for one of the churches or pro-life groups to commission a more sophisticated opinion survey on the subject. Respondents should be informed in non-emotive language about the law and practice in various jurisdictions and invited to specify the range of circumstances in which they'd support lethal interventions, voluntary and involuntary; whether it should be restricted to the aged or the dying, or to any adult; whether it should be available for young people under 18 and, if so, with or without parental consent.

Euthanasia may not lose majority support in such an exercise but I doubt that the results would amount to a ringing endorsement.

Ms Zukerman goes on to report in her article on recent developments in South Australia, to which Mr. Pearson referred:

Meanwhile, South Australian independent MP Bob Such has introducted a similar [euthanasia] bill into the lower house that's yets to have its second reading, but a bill introduced by his Greens counterpart in the upper house, Mark Parnell, last week narrowly passed its second reading and is scheduled for a third reading on November 18. However, the Bill may not be read in the Lower House until the aafter the SA elections next March.

"This bill is bringing into light that things are happening in the dark," says Parnell. According to him, each week four elderly Australians kill themselves by violent and undignified means.

Under the bill, SA doctors would be allowed to administer drugs to end the life of an eligible individual. "The person must be an adult in the terminal phase of a terminal illness or have an illness that results in permanent deprivation of consciousness or irreversibly impairs the person's quality of life so that life has become intolerable," explains Parnell.

Interesting word, ‘intolerable’. Mr. Pearson has more on this:

As Bernard Finnigan, a Labor MLC, put it : "Under this legislation you do not have to have a terminal illness to obtain active voluntary euthanasia or a prescription for a lethal dose. Clause 19 provides `(1) This section applies to the following persons, (b) an adult person who has an injury, illness or medical condition that (ii) irreversibly impairs the person's quality of life so that life becomes intolerable to that person.' That is not a definition that provides a tight restriction on who can access voluntary euthanasia. That definition could apply to someone suffering from chronic depression or rheumatoid arthritis or the early stages of multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's."

It’s hard to see how a more subjective formulation than “intolerable to that person” could possibly be conceivable. At least it’s good to see euthanasia advocates (not Mr. Finnigan I’ll point out, just so that there’s no confusion) being perfectly explicit about what they stand for, though.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Andrew Avelino, Confessor, A.D. 2009

Facts and figures: a couple of the strange requirements of Australian anti-discrimination laws

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/marconi-club-orders-staff-only-talk-english-in-secret-memo/story-e6freuy9-1225795538680

A story in today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph mentioned a couple of anti-discrimination rules, neither of which seem terribly conducive to workplace harmony:

The memo [the subject of the story] also drew opposition from NSW Anti-Discrimination Board president Stepan Kerkyasharian, who described it as "very shortsighted".

One anti-discrimination law guideline issued by the ADB states it is "against the law to stop you speaking in your own language at work unless it stops the work or study being done properly". Another states it is "against the law for an employer to insist that you speak English fluently unless it is reasonable for the particular job".
[my emphasis]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Andrew Avelino, Confessor, A.D. 2009

On the preparatory work for the Second Vatican Council

Here’s an interesting item from the “Out of the Past” column (a selection of brief articles from 100, fifty and twenty-five years ago) in yesterday’s Sydney Catholic Weekly (apparently not yet available on-line):

50 Years Ago – Nobember 5, 1959

THE Vatican Secretary of State, His Eminence, Cardinal Tardini, tonight (October 30) told an unprecedented full-fledged press conference that at least three years’ preparatory work is needed for the forthcoming Ecumenical Council. He said the Council, the first “Summit” meeting of Catholic Church leaders from all over the world since 1870, will be held in St Peter’s Basilica in 1963 or 1964. More than 1000 bishops and religious are expected to attend. Observers from other religions including the Russian Orthodox Church may also be present. The press conference, an innovation of Pope John XXIII’s surprise-filled reign, was packed with more than 300 Italian and foreign correspondents, including at least two Russians.
[The Catholic Weekly, Vol. 68, No. 4492, November 1, 2009, p. 21]

Three years’ preparatory work, indeed. As we know, the Council discarded, in highly irregular circumstances, the meticulously-produced preparatory schemata shortly after its opening. The late Msgr. Lefebvre, who was involved in the production of those schemata (His late Grace worked in the Central Preparatory Commission, if I recall correctly), described them in glowing terms—impeccably Traditional documents in which the formulation of doctrine was updated for the needs of the time but without compromising its Catholic spirit, and copies of which he kept into late in his holy life. (I myself have read the preparatory schema on religious tolerance—a copy is contained as an appendix in the late Mr. Michael Davies’s fine The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty—and I can attest that it is an excellent statement of the Traditional doctrine in those matters). Instead, we got, well, the documents of Vatican II—the French Revolution in the Church: Religious Liberty, Collegial Equality, Ecumenical Fraternity, as Msgr. Lefebvre entitles a chapter in his Open Letter to Confused Catholics (and even Cardinal Ratzinger acknowledged that the atmosphere at the Council was marked by a mood for absorbing into Catholic teaching the ‘best elements’ of the Enlightenment in, if I recall correctly, The Ratzinger Report—as though there can be anything in common between Christ and Belial, between the Deposit of Faith and the tenets of the French Revolution).

So despite having discarded many months of painstaking doctrinal work, the Council had gone on regardless! As Msgr. Lefebvre observed trenchantly in his Open Letter to Confused Catholics, what small business owner would carry on a meeting of his staff if the meeting’s agenda had to be discarded at the outset?! And so a fortiori one can only wonder at what the Pope and Council Fathers must have been thinking in deciding to continue, ad lib, with the Council. Indeed, it was a case of putting God to the test, and on an unprecedented scale. But God did not fail His Church; His protection of the Deposit of Faith consisted precisely in refusing to permit the teachings of Vatican II to be promulgated irreformably. Instead, we await—as the product, one hopes, of the S.S.P.X.-Vatican doctrinal discussions—the clarification of those parts of the documents which can be reconciled with Tradition, and the reform, in the manner of Pius XII correcting the teaching of the Council of Florence in his Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis, of those parts which cannot.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
All Souls Day, A.D. 2009

Some (tentative) good news: pro-sodomite Administrative Decisions Tribunal ruling overturned, case to be re-examined

Today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph carried the following report (to which today’s CathNews also links), billed as an exclusive in the print edition:

Churches welcome gay bans

By Joe Hildebrand

The Daily Telegraph

November 02, 2009 12:01am

CHARITIES and religious groups could discriminate against gay people or anyone else who might offend their values after a landmark decision quashed a finding in favour of a gay couple who wanted to become foster parents.

[…] The couple were refused access to the Wesley Mission's foster care agency because they are homosexual.

They took their case to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal and were awarded $10,000 and the Wesley Mission told to change its practices so it didn't discriminate.

The charity appealed and a highly critical appeal panel overturned the decision and ordered the original tribunal to hear the case again.

The panel headed by Magistrate Nancy Hennessy even instructed the tribunal to this time take into consideration whether monogamous heterosexual couples are the norm for "Wesleyanism" and whether they might have had to reject the couple in order to preserve their beliefs and not offend people in their religion.
[…]
[http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26292177-421,00.html]

I describe this as “tentative” good news in my headline because of course we must now await the new verdict of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal (A.D.T.), but given what a strong rebuff the appeal panel’s decision poses to the original judgment one can only expect that the A.D.T. will have to rule in favour of Wesley Mission this time. This is good of itself, but there are a couple of other connections which Mr. Hildebrand failed to make, and which I will consider here:

1. Earlier in the year I reported, in several posts, on the N.S.W. Upper House Inquiry into same-sex adoption, and the appeal panel decision might have implications for its findings. In its Final Report, the Inquiry Committee “determined that the Adoption Act 2000 should be amended to allow same-sex couples to adopt, but that an exemption from the application of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 be created for faith-based adoption agencies” (Final Report, p. 10). Unfortunately, some “inquiry participants, however, informed the Committee that a recent 2008 decision of the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal put the matter into doubt” (Final Report, p. 124). (The “recent 2008 decision” is the one which, as Mr. Hildebrand reports, the appeal panel has now overturned.) This uncertainty induced the Committee to recommend

That included in any legislative amendment to allow same-sex couples to adopt should be an exemption for faith-based adoption agencies from the application of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 in relation to providing same-sex couples with adoption services.
[This is Recommendation 3.
Final Report, p. 130]

(I note, however, that the Committee decided that “[t]he exemption should not extend, directly or indirectly, to matters outside the Committee’s terms of reference, such as foster care services”, ibid.) Now that the motive inducing the Committee to make this recommendation is likely to cease to exist, I wonder whether the latest developments will influence Parliament’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, and if so then how. (I should point out, though, that Recommendation 4 advises

That, if an exemption from the application of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 is created for faith-based accredited adoption agencies in the provision of services to same-sex couples, the exemption should be linked to a statutory requirement that the agencies refer any same-sex couples who seek their services to another accredited adoption agency that will assist them.
[ibid.]

which, as the Committee notes, arguably “totally compromises the position upon which [adoption agencies opposed to same-sex adoption] relied upon the exemption in the first place” (ibid.), so the Sodomites’ League may well still come out of this the winner.)

2. Mr. Hildebrand reported that

The panel headed by Magistrate Nancy Hennessy even instructed the tribunal to this time take into consideration whether monogamous heterosexual couples are the norm for "Wesleyanism" and whether they might have had to reject the couple in order to preserve their beliefs and not offend people in their religion.

This is highly significant because, according to the same-sex adoption Inquiry Final Report,

The [Administrative Decisions] Tribunal rejected the argument put by Wesley Mission that the exemption in section 56 of the Anti-Discrimination Act applied to this situation. In making its determination, the Tribunal considered (among other matters) the meaning of the terms ‘religion’ and ‘doctrine’ and concluded that the belief that ‘monogamous heterosexual partnership within marriage is both the norm and ideal’ was not a ‘doctrine’ of Christianity so as to attract the exemption in section 56(d).
[p. 124]

So in the original decision we had a State judicial authority ruling what are or are not to be regarded as a given religion’s doctrines of faith and morals! This quasi-Caesaropapism was also evident in the recent Victorian ‘options paper’ which examined ways to curtail the freedom of religious bodies to hire employees based on prospective employees’ compatibility with the religious bodies’ respective beliefs, and was evident in a recent proposed European Union (E.U.) directive against discrimination and harassment (for more on both the Victorian and E.U. anti-discrimination moves , see here). The appeal panel’s decision to rebuke, at least implicitly (but nonetheless strongly, it would seem), the A.D.T. for the reasoning—the notion that the secular(ist) State is a better judge of a religion’s doctrines than the religion itself—underpinning its original judgment is a welcome (though only temporary, I fear) set-back for the secularist agenda.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
All Souls Day, A.D. 2009

Ms Varga on euthanasia

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/elderly-cannot-rest-in-peace-without-humane-new-euthanasia-laws-20091009-gqoj.html?skin=text-only

The author Ms Susan Varga said something striking in an address to The Sydney Institute, an edited extract from which (the address, that is) was published in The Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday. So as not to be accused of taking out of context the part in which I’m interested, I’ll provide other parts as background: Ms Varga says early in the piece that her

mother died almost seven years ago. She threw herself under a train. Grief stricken and depressed after the sudden loss of her husband, she lost all will to live. She began to seek death with the same determination as she had once sought life. After several unsuccessful attempts at more peaceful means, she connived to go in secret to the train station. Her last attempt got her what she most desperately desired - death.

Now Ms Varga does not say whether her late mother was “depressed” in the medical sense of the word. But apparently, for Ms Varga, neither would it necessarily matter:

My mother was a kind of heroine. In the war years in Hungary she fought like a tiger to protect her small daughters, then battled to survive on her own after her husband's death in a labour camp. Postwar she came to Australia with a new husband whose first wife and two little sons had perished in the Holocaust and together they forged a new life.

She was the last person anyone would have thought would commit suicide. Yet in the end she was defeated by the accumulated traumas of her life. She had never had time to grieve, never indulged in introspection, never came to terms with all her losses.

Was she within her rights to say, ''enough, I want to go''? There is such a thing as genuine overwhelming grief or sadness that need not be medicalised as depression. Surely psychic pain can be as legitimate a reason to want to die as physical pain. We can also have good reasons for not wanting to be a part of life.
[my emphasis]

So here we have a reminder that, far from the pro-life movement’s fear of legalised euthanasia endorsing suicides motivated by ‘existential angst’ or an overwhelming feeling that one’s life is not worth living being a red herring, this fear is in fact well-founded, being espoused not just by fanatics like the notorious Dr. Nietschke, but by mainstream advocates like Ms Varga. After all, it’s arbitrary to uphold a right to suicide for those in severe physical pain but to deny it to those in severe emotional distress.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Callistus I, Pope, Martyr, A.D. 2009

Ms Horin on abortion, plus some comments by me

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/time-to-stop-dragging-our-heels-on-abortion-law-reform-20091009-gqom.html?skin=text-only

In her column in The Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday, Ms Adele Horin wrote that

Abortion supporters, on the other hand, can sound apologetic, as if abortion is a bit offensive, a sort of necessary evil. They can be more comfortable defending the abstract "right to choose" rather than abortion itself.
[my emphasis]

Unfortunately, by the time I got around to commenting at the on-line version of Ms Horin’s opinion piece the combox had closed; had it still been open, I would have submitted the following comment:

***

I was interested to see Ms Horin write that
"Abortion supporters, on the other hand, can sound apologetic, as if abortion is a bit offensive, a sort of necessary evil. They can be more comfortable defending the abstract "right to choose" rather than abortion itself."
Does that mean that we can dispense with the labels 'pro-choice' and 'anti-choice'? I have no problem identifying as anti-abortion; why are pro-abortion people so allergic to being called pro-abortion? The issue is abortion, so why can't we speak of 'pro-abortion' and 'anti-abortion', just as, if the issue were the death penalty, we would speak of 'pro-execution' and 'anti-execution'? There’s hardly an aspect of human life in which choice is not involved, so I don’t see why abortion gets to monopolise the term.
Reginaldvs Cantvar

***

Here are a couple of other comments, in rebuttal of what some of the pro-abortion commenters wrote there, which I would have liked to have submitted:

***

Katerina (October 10, 2009, 3:03PM), you wrote that
“A zygote, a fetus, is NOT a human being, biologically or legally, so an abortion is NOT murder!”
But if a zygote is not a human being, then which kind of being is he or she (‘he or she’ since sex is given at conception)? A D.N.A. analysis would surely confirm that he or she belongs to the human species, would it not? And clearly the zygote is not merely a part of another member of the human species, since if you make a clone from the zygote then you’ll produce a new, unique person, whereas if you make a clone from any other part of the mother you’ll produce a copy of the mother.
Nefertari (October 10, 2009, 3:58PM), you wrote that
“An early foetus is NOT equivalent to a living, breathing child which can sustain life outside of its mother. It's not conscious and in the early stages doesn't have a nervous system capable of perceiving pain.”
So you propose four criteria for a right to life: According to you, the subject of the right must be
1. Breathing: but that would disqualify anyone on life support.
2. Self-sustaining: but none of us is truly self-sustaining, since we all need air, food and a suitable environment in which to live.
3. Consciousness: but that would disqualify the sleeping and the comatose, some of whom (the comatose, that is) take longer to become conscious than a newly-conceived zygote takes.
4. Pain perception: but that is to espouse preference utilitarianism.
So your criteria are inappropriate. The only appropriate criterion is membership of the human species.

***

[N.B. The "Louise" to whom I address the first part of the following comment is not the Louise who comments at my blog.]

Louise (October 11, 2009, 12:10PM), you wrote that
“The presence of DNA doesn't make a human being. No consciousness, nerves or anything else viable in a blob of dividing cells.”
But viability is an arbitrary criterion, since no human’s life is viable outside a suitable environment. I can’t survive without adequate shelter, and neither can a foetus, but that’s no basis for denying a right to life.
Betty (October 11, 2009, 4:49PM), you wrote that
“If you chop off your finger and put it on the bench it dies.”
And if you leave it attached it, and the body to which it is attached, will eventually die anyway.
“It has human DNA in it, it has cells in it but if a person decides to just throw that finger away, chop it up into tiny bits, that's their choice. You might think it's "gross" or whatever but you aren't going to protest it's "right to life".”
I won’t protest its right to life because it’s only a part of a person, not a whole person, whereas a foetus is a whole human being at an early stage of development. (I will, however, protest against the finger self-amputee’s mutilation of his or her body.)
“This is just like a fetus in the womb. It contains living cells, it has human DNA, but it is not LIVING, it cannot sustain life by itself. It requires a mother to carry it, much like a host to a parasite, a body to a finger.”
Leaving aside your absurd notion that the foetus is “not LIVING”, the fact that he or she cannot sustain life by himself/herself is, as I said earlier, no reason to deny his or her right to life; you and I can’t sustain our respective lives by ourselves, either.

***

The last of the comments published at that web page provided a useful link to some information about the question of when human life begins:

http://abort73.com/abortion/medical_testimony

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Callistus I, Pope, Martyr, A.D. 2009

How they ‘do liturgy’ in the Diocese of Wollongong

http://www.ceo.woll.catholic.edu.au/resource/60_Yrs_09/index.html

The Sydney Catholic Weekly of two Sundays ago (September 27, 2009) carried the regular “Cross Currents” section on activities in the Diocese of Wollongong. Of particular interest was an item at the top of page 33; the same story is available at the Diocese’s Catholic Education Office (C.E.O.) website:

Students, staff, parents, parishioners, principals, past religious staff, Catholic Education Office representatives, Parish Administrator and Bishop Peter Ingham joined together in celebration of St John Vianney Primary School’s 60th Anniversary at Mass on Thursday August 20.

At a prayerful morning liturgy in the Fairy Meadow Church the history of the school was related by Bishop Peter who praised the Sisters of the Good Samaritan for their pioneering establishment of the school. Current staff and students participated in the mass with readings, song and dance. A generous morning tea followed.
[my emphasis]

At the C.E.O. website there’s a picture, which also appeared in The Catholic Weekly, of four wee lasses, presumably the “students [who] participated in the mass with … dance”. Perhaps their plain white albs and plain green ribands are the Wollongong liturgical intelligentsia’s idea of ‘noble simplicity’. I suppose that I should just be grateful that they managed to find dancers who would wear something less immodest than the usual leotard-and-small-skirt liturgical dance outfit.

The school’s website’s “News and Events” section had the following to say:

The 60th Anniversary of St John Vianney`s.

What a lovely day we celebrated on Thursday 20th August for our 60th Anniversary. We had Mass with the Bishop followed by a morning tea with many of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan who had made a special return visit to SJV. Everyone was very impressed with the music in Mass and our special liturgical dancers. The School Hall was filled with memorabilia which was a great delight to everyone and brought back some wonderful memories.
[my emphasis,
http://www.sjv.woll.catholic.edu.au/page11/page11.html]

Apparently the Most August Sacrifice, one and the same Sacrifice as on Mount Calvary in every respect except manner of offering, renewed and represented on the altar (before which the “liturgical dancers” appear to have done their routine; at any rate it’s clearly quite near the sanctuary), just wasn’t “special” or ‘impressive’ enough for the congregation (or perhaps that should be ‘audience’). Sacrileges like this are nothing new in the Church of Wollongong (or in the other Australian Sees, I expect), but this one’s worth mentioning because of the involvement of the local Ordinary. If any of my readers happened to be present at this disgraceful ‘liturgy’ (it can hardly be so called, since the term ‘liturgy’ implies an order of sacred proceedings without arbitrary, erratic, undue variations, an order which ‘liturgical dance’ obviously violates) could you tell me: was Msgr. Ingham the celebrant, or the presider, or did he just assist in choro (ha), or did he merely attend and “relate” his “history of the school”, or some other form of participation altogether?

(And note well: I certainly don’t mean to impute guilt for this disgrace to the children involved, nor necessarily even to the teachers who conceived of and choreographed the routine, since these teachers presumably know no other way to ‘do liturgy’ than according to the prevailing fashions. Blame lies with the liturgical vandals (and their fellow-travellers) to whom it first occurred to desecrate Holy Mass with this kind of frivolity. And blame lies especially with those fellow-travellers in Holy Orders (particularly those who have the fullness of Orders) and whose formative years occurred before the ‘spirit of Vatican II’ was in full swing.)

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bridget of Sweden, A.D. 2009

Mr. Hitchens on morality

http://www.smh.com.au/national/heathens-above-gods-harshest-critic-smokes-in-the-shower-20091001-ger1.html?skin=text-only

The famous journalist, author and neo-atheist Mr. Christopher Hitchens said the following, among other things, when he spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald for a story in today’s issue:

''Most [believers] believe that without religion their children, and even they, would not know right from wrong. I have two arguments to which no answer has yet been received. One: Name me a moral kindness or action that they can do because of their belief but that I can't. Two: Can you think of one evil action done by a religion person? You can, and you can think of another, and another.''
[square-bracketed interpolation in the original]

There are three things to say about this. The first is in regard to his point one: it misses the mark, because there is no question that the unregenerate can (albeit usually with difficulty) perform acts of “moral kindness”, as Mr. Hitchens calls it. See, for instance, St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, writing in his magnificent Treatise on Civil Government:

… But this justification from sin is said to be a certain liberty, for he who is in sin cannot, until he is freed by grace, will that good which is ordained for eternal life; he has, indeed, free will, since he can choose one evil from among many, and he can even choose moral good, but he cannot choose salutary good unless he at least begins to be freed by the ... grace of God, since he is held captive by the Devil according to his will, as it is written. [Tim. II.]
[http://catholicism.org/oldsite/de-laicis10.html]

So infidels can choose moral good—that is, they can choose to perform acts which suit human nature—but this choice avails them nothing towards salvation, which one can only merit in union with Our Lord’s Passion.

The second thing to say is that Mr. Hitchens’s second point is also ill-conceived, because the contention which Mr. Hitchens is supposed to be refuting is that the irreligious cannot behave morally; whether or not the religious will necessarily behave morally is another matter. Furthermore, abuse does not detract from use: that religious folk do evil in defiance of the tenets of their respective religions does nothing to detract from the fact that the ‘ought’ of moral obligation can issue only from the will of a superior, usually enacted in law.

And that brings us to the third thing, and the most important thing, which needs to be said here. Now Mr. Hitchens says that

''Most [believers] believe that without religion their children, and even they, would not know right from wrong.

Perhaps he is right, and most believers think that without religion (however Mr. Hitchens defines that term) one is incapable of telling right from wrong, though I haven’t seen any data to support this contention. What matters, though, is not whether believers subjectively think that one cannot know right from wrong without religion, but whether, objectively, one can know right from wrong without religion. And one can indeed know right from wrong without being religious; one knows it by an intellectual consideration of the respective natures and ends of things. But the problem for Mr. Hitchens is not knowing what good is but, rather, knowing whether one ought to do good. And, as they say, one cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. An ‘is’ imposes itself by the force of reason, but the ‘ought’ of unconditional obligation can only be imposed by the will of a superior. (I say “unconditional” because one can impose on oneself a conditional obligation—if I want to be good then I should do such-and-such—but a purely self-imposed obligation is not a true and proper obligation, and can be revoked at will.) An obligation obviously cannot be imposed by an inferior, and nor can it be imposed by oneself or one equal in authority to oneself, for reasons just mentioned. Without some being with authority over man who (the authority-figure) can impose upon him (man) the obligation to do good and avoid evil, we just have people following their tastes and preferences—those who have a taste for good do good, those who have a taste for evil do evil, and the two sides can only agree to disagree. (Now an atheist might retort: so only a superior can impose true and proper obligations. Well and good. But why would the superior necessarily impose an obligation to do good? If his authority is absolute, then is he not free to bind his subordinates to do evil if he so wills? The answer to this objection is: not if the superior is good by nature and all-perfect, in which case he would never abuse his freedom and authority by obliging his subjects to do evil.)

The Herald article was in connection with the so-called Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which begins tomorrow and whose opening address will be given by Mr. Hitchens. It will be interesting to see what he has to say. I would be fascinated to see how he elaborates on his moral philosophy.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of The Holy Guardian Angels, A.D. 2009

The latest Australian initiative to reward debauchery

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/money/windfall-for-de-factos-and-love-children/story-e6frezc0-1225777204539

In my first-ever post at this blog I wrote that

I fail to see how any of these principles [of secularism] is compatible with the Social Reign of Christ; in fact, they constitute what one might call the Social Reign of Pontius Pilate, with the State purporting to be neutral at the same time as it promotes grave injustice, permitting all manner of sociopaths and degenerates to prosper.
[http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html]

Here’s the latest evidence for that observation (interestingly, there’s a gay angle to the story as well):

MISTRESSES and love-children of philandering spouses will soon be entitled to a share of the family fortune unless there is a will in place specifically ruling them out.

Controversial new intestacy laws, to take effect in NSW early next year, introduce the concept of "multiple spouses" to increase provision for de facto relationships.

This will have most impact where a married couple has separated but not divorced and the dead spouse was having a relationship with a new partner. The new laws will also benefit same-sex partnerships, where the deceased may have been involved with more than one person, and cultural or religious groups that allow multiple wives.

The laws complement legislation enacted earlier this year that gave more rights to de facto couples and same-sex partners in the event of a relationship breakdown.

"The term 'domestic partner' has been created to accommodate the new laws and includes a person in a de facto relationship with the deceased for two years or more, or, if less than two years, one that has resulted in the birth of a child," NSW Trustee and Guardian principal legal officer Ruth Pollard said.

Whether or not a person is a de facto spouse depends on such factors as the length of the relationship and public acceptance in the community - in the eyes of friends, for instance. […]
[bold type in the original]

The article fails to state precisely when and after what public and Parliamentary discussion these laws came to be enacted; it mentions that the laws “complement legislation enacted earlier this year that gave more rights to de facto couples and same-sex partners in the event of a relationship breakdown”, but I can’t remember hearing about them or any surrounding controversy at the time (whenever that was). Perhaps they went unreported because the media’s attention was consumed by the more sensational pro-same-sex-couple aspect of the story. Whatever the case, the whole situation there is abhorrent.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Thomas of Villanova, Bishop, Confessor, A.D. 2009