Notes: Friday, July 2, 2010

Mr. Croome and Mr. Raj on so-called gay marriage

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/australia-lags-shamefully-on-gay-marriage-20100701-zqia.html?skin=text-only
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/new-pm-same-old-stance-on-gay-marriage/

Both these opinion pieces are rubbish, but both are worth highlighting, Mr. Raj's because it provides a useful summary of the standard (fallacious) arguments for 'gay marriage', and Mr. Croome's because it's good for a laugh: He begins by considering some reasons why The Hon. Julia Gillard M.P. might have a 'personal view', as has been reported, against gay marriage, one of which is the following astounding non sequitur:

She has no children, so it can't be because she believes there's an obligatory link between procreation and the right to marry.

Did it not occur to Mr. Croome that the link between marriage and procreation might be precisely why Ms Gillard has neither married nor procreated? Whether it's a matter of not wanting to marry because there would be an obligation to have children, or not wanting to have children because it would entail an obligation to marry, either way, there's clearly no reason inherent in the condition of childlessness to think that the childless reject an obligatory link between marriage and children. Quite the contrary, in fact--a desire not to marry might be precisely why they haven't had children.

And I was interested to learn the following:

["[M]arriage equality advocates"] have asked the Icelandic Prime Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, who married her same-sex partner a few days ago, to explain to Gillard why marriage equality is so important to same-sex couples and their families, and to a just society.

The Icelandic leader would also do well to ask Gillard if the Australian government will officially recognise her wife, should the couple visit Australia, and, if so, why that recognition can't be extended to the hundreds of Australian same-sex couples who are also legally married overseas.

Ha! What a sight that would be! Mr. Croome goes on to ponder why Ms Gillard might be personally opposed to gay marriage:

Perhaps she believes the overreaching claims of Pentecostal pastors about the influence of their mega-churches in key marginal seats. Perhaps she owes something to those right-wing Catholic MPs who are, in turn, under the unhealthy influence of Rome. Perhaps she simply wants to convince voters that she is a leader of conviction, even when she knows those convictions are wrong.

Perhaps Mr. Croome's intellect is under the unhealthy influence of Sodom, because it seems not to have occured to him that marriage, in any sense of the word, is the uniting of two complementary parts into a whole, that in marriage, in the sense of matrimony, the complementarity is primarily sexual (not merely semi- or quasi-sexual), and that, since two persons of the same sex have no sexual complementarity, then just as an opposite-sex couple in which at least one member is relatively or absolutely impotent cannot have matrimony, neither can a same-sex couple have matrimony. Could it be that Ms Gillard is, her atheism notwithstanding, clear-minded enough to recognise this, and hence she is opposed to so-called gay marriage?

Link to an on-line transcription of the 1859 Haydock Bible commentary:

http://haydock1859.tripod.com/index.html
(Discovered here: http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=367400#367400)

A couple of observations regarding the recent Roman Curial appointments

From LifeSiteNews via AQ:

In his seventh year as a Cardinal and at age 66, Cardinal Ouellet still has at least 9 more years to be in a prominent role of service to the Church (official retirement age is 75). His appointment as Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops comes at an especially opportune time given that nine of the 19 Latin Rite bishops in his home province of Quebec are set to retire in the next two years. And within that number are four of the five most powerful posts or 'metropolitan sees' as they are known.

Quebec's bishops, with the current exception of Cardinal Ouellet and perhaps one or two others, are known to be the principal force behind the spread of damaging liberalism throughout the Church in Canada - a situation many hope will change with the appointment of Cardinal Ouellet to head the Pope's 'bishop selection committee.'
[http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32324]

From Dr. Brown at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's blog:

If the cardinal cannot appoint orthodox staff to his own seminary, I have no idea how he is going to appoint orthodox bishops to the universal Church.
Comment by Deimater

He won’t because it will not be his job. Bishops are nominated by the pope. Of course, the Prefect does have power, and there was a difference between the Congregation run by Gantin. On the other hand, the nominations are the result of a complex process involving the Prefect, the Sec (who seems to be a Re clone), the members, the nunzio, and certain powerful members of a nation’s episcopacy.

IMHO, of equal importance is that another Sodano ally is out of power. When BXVI became pope, Sodano was Sec of State, Sandri the Sostituto, and Re was at Bishops. That made it possible to frustrate whatever BXVI wanted to do.

Comment by robtbrown — 1 July 2010 @ 8:19 am
[bold type in the original,
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/06/important-appointments-made-by-pope-benedict/#comment-212584]

Mr. Obeid refutes some of the standard Fundamentalist objections to Catholic beliefs and practices

http://davidobeid.blogspot.com/2010/07/reply-to-onesimus.html

H.H. The Pope appoints The Lord Bishop of Basel as President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

From today's Vatican Information Service daily e-mail bulletin:

OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS

VATICAN CITY, 1 JUL 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father appointed Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel, Switzerland, as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, he succeeds Cardinal Walter Kasper whose resignation from the same office the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.
NA/ VIS 20100701 (60)

A couple of blog comments by me:

At "For the Sake of Science", by Mr. Michael Hawkins: I just couldn't resist making this comment:

Cardinal Pole, on July 1, 2010 at 2:08 pm Said:

“No new data is gained from logic.”

No new data are gained from grammar, either.
[http://forthesakeofscience.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/thought-of-the-day-126/#comment-5889]

which I published after my introductory comment:

Cardinal Pole, on July 1, 2010 at 2:07 pm Said:

Hello Mr. Hawkins, I came across your blog while looking for a transcript of the comment by Ms Gillard which you’ve quoted here.

I’m trying to work out why you support same-sex marriage. (Naturally I checked your “gay marriage” and “Same-sex marriage” labels first, but they contained links to posts from other blogs; I also skim-read your blog’s first page, to no avail.) Could you explain why, or direct me to a post where you do so? I can understand how, as an atheist/anti-theist, you would see no moral reason to oppose it (no higher being than man => no such thing as true and proper moral obligation, no natural law, &c.), but there would still be the logical reasons (following from the definition of marriage, in its most general sense, as the uniting of two complementary parts into a whole, with marriage in the particular sense of matrimony involving sexual complementarity) .

(I’ll be back on Monday night, Australian time.)
[http://forthesakeofscience.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/gillard-is-against-gay-marriage/#comment-5888]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of the Visitation of The Blessed Virgin Mary, A.D. 2010