Notes: Wednesday, December 4-Tuesday, December 31, 2013 (part 1 of 3)

1. "The location of the site of Golgotha and the tomb of Jesus is solidly attested by a critically tested pre-Constantinian tradition. Both are enclosed in the Holy Sepulchre church."

The quotation in that headline was attributed to the late The Rev. Dr. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor O.P. in the feature article "Fr Jerome Murphy-O’Connor: Why scholarship trumps archaeology", by Jill Hamilton, dated Wednesday, November 13, 2013, downloaded from CatholicHerald.co.uk:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/2013/11/13/father-jerome-murphy-oconnor-why-scholarship-trumps-archaeology/

Labels: history

2. "By 1990, support for abortion rights became the one issue on which the leadership of the Democratic Party would tolerate no deviation among members seeking high state or national office."

The quotation in that headline comes from the feature article "Kennedy: the man who led Catholics to a new frontier", by Kenneth L. Woodward, dated November 14, 2013, downloaded from The Tablet's website:

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/features/2/827/kennedy-the-man-who-led-catholics-to-a-new-frontier

Labels: Democratic Party (U.S.)

3. A couple of recent items regarding legalisation of Gay Marriage

3.1 "A strong majority in staunchly Catholic Croatia voted on Sunday[ (presumably December 1, 2013)] to outlaw same-sex marriage"

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Croatians vote to outlaw gay marriage", by Lajla Veselica, dated December 2, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/croatians-vote-to-outlaw-gay-marriage-20131202-2ym69.html?skin=text-only

Labels: Croatia, G.L.B.T., law, marriage

3.2 "Utah became the 18th US state to legalise gay marriage, just one day after New Mexico became the 17th."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "How Duck Dynasty exposed a new Christmas culture war", by Nick O'Malley, dated December 4, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website (though the original text had the "th"s after "18" and "17" as superscripts):

http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-duck-dynasty-exposed-a-new-christmas-culture-war-20131224-hv6qm.html?skin=text-only

See also the article "Utah to force justices to revisit same-sex marriage", by Adam Litpak, dated December 27, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/utah-to-force-justices-to-revisit-samesex-marriage-20131227-hv6zu.html?skin=text-only

(That article was also printed under the headline "Utah's same-sex ruling highlights speed of change", with the same author, on p. 11 in the "WORLD REPORT" section of The Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition, December 28-29, 2013, No. 54981, ISSN 0312-6315.)

Labels: G.L.B.T., law, marriage, U.S.A.

4. A couple of recent items regarding legalisation of sodomy

4.1 "Homosexual sex is illegal, and punishable by life in prison, India’s highest court has ruled."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Gay sex ruled illegal by India's highest court", by Ben Doherty, dated December 12, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/gay-sex-ruled-illegal-by-indias-highest-court-20131211-hv5b7.html?skin=text-only

Labels: G.L.B.T., India, law

4.2 "Uganda has passed an anti-gay bill that imposes life sentences for some homosexual acts."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Life sentence for gay Ugandans", no byline (though the source is the London Daily Telegraph), dated December 22, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/life-sentence-for-gay-ugandans-20131221-2zrzt.html?skin=text-only

Labels: G.L.B.T., law, Uganda

5. On Wednesday, December 4, 2013, at Buckingham Palace, H.M. The Queen handed Lord Guthrie His Lordship's Field Marshal's Baton.

See the Court Circular of the day. For a good, clear, but rather small image of the Baton, see Her Majesty's official flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishmonarchy/11219672955/

Labels: British Army

6. "we are finding more Anglicans than Catholics in high-fee Catholic schools, and as many Catholics as Anglicans in high-fee independent schools"

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Demographics change the schools game", by John Black, dated December 7, 2013, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/demographics-change-the-schools-game/story-fn59nlz9-1226777459375

(That article came to my attention via the version printed under the same headline and with the same byline on p. 29 in the "INQUIRER" section of The Weekend Australian, December 7-8, 2013, First Edition, No. 15286, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited.)

Labels: Catholic schools

7. Prof. Williams on abortion law in Australia

See the opinion piece "Decriminalise abortion: pro-choice in practice is not the same as legal protection", by Prof. George Williams, dated December 3, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/decriminalise-abortion-prochoice-in-practice-is-not-the-same-as-legal-protection-20131202-2ym16.html?skin=text-only

Labels: abortion, law

8. "The unspoken truth about marriage and kids"

The quotation in that headline is the headline of an opinion piece by Bettina Arndt, dated December 16, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-unspoken-truth-about-marriage-and-kids-20131215-2zf3f.html?skin=text-only

In that opinion piece, Ms Arndt restates, in a shorter form, some of what she wrote in the article about which I blogged in item 3.2 of this Notes post.

Labels: cohabitation, demography, marriage, social trends, vice

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Tuesday in the Octave of Christmas, and the feast of St. Sylvester I., Pope, Confessor, A.D. 2013

A comment at The Punch on India’s High Court ruling on sodomy

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/only-now-is-it-legal-to-be-gay-in-india/

As you probably know by now, India’s High Court has capped off “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month” in style, ruling that section 377 of the Indian Penal Code 1860 is unconstitutional. Section 377 says:

Unnatural Offences – Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life …

So another one bites the dust (or should that be pillow?!) and joins Club Buggery, abandoning the natural law in favour of a crude positivism. Here is a comment which I have submitted for publication at http://www.thepunch.com.au/, a website which News Limited bills as “Australia’s best conversation” and aims to develop into the Australian answer to the Huffington Post, in response to an article by Mr. Stephen Keim S.C., examining the ruling in greater depth (but no less approvingly) than the other reports which I’ve read:

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“Only now is it legal to be gay in India”

An inadequate headline because, as the article goes on to note, ‘gayness’ wasn’t illegal; rather, buggery was illegal, regardless of whether the sodomite was homosexual or heterosexual and regardless of whether the catamite was male or female. For this reason, plus the fact that other reports indicate that sodomy might just be de-criminalised rather than legalised, a more apt headline would be something like “Only now can people sodomise other people (and, apparently, animals) with impunity in India”.

“Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code 1860, although drafted by Lord Macaulay, speaks with the coyness of Queen Victoria.”

I don’t think it’s necessarily a matter of “coyness”, or a reluctance to use the terms “buggery” or “sodomy”, or that it’s a “euphemism” to speak of “carnal intercourse against the law of nature”. The laws of morality, and in turn the laws of society, can have their basis only in either natural law—in which the good is that which suits the objective *nature* of the thing desiring it—or in positive law, in which the good is whatever the person desiring it might like to *posit* as good, which is to say, the good is whatever people will consent to, and hence ultimately the good is, for positivists, whatever suits people’s subjective tastes and preferences. (One might suggest that a third alternative would be some combination of natural law and positive law, but since the combination would be determined by the tastes and preferences of the person determining it, it would still be fundamentally positivist, and hence there really are just two alternatives.) But people will consent to all sorts of self-destructive things (just look at the unfortunate David Carradine), so natural law is the only reasonable basis for morality. But India, it seems, has decided to embrace the Western liberal lunacy of positivism, and embraces it for the flimsiest of reasons—anti-buggery laws do not contradict any of the three cited articles of the Indian Constitution, and as for the effects of anti-buggery laws on A.I.D.S. prevention programmes, the role of the *justice* system is to adjudicate on matters of *justice*, not matters of prudence; prudential matters are the concern of the executive branch of government. And the notion of sodomy as a ‘human right’ is laughable: rights can only have what is true and good as their object, and since the good can only be that which suits the nature of the thing desiring it, sodomy cannot possibly be the object of a proper right, since it does not suit the respective natures of the organs involved or of the persons involved.

“The judgment is particularly moving where it recounts …”

Here we have two logical fallacies: the appeal to emotion, and the violation of the principle that abuse does not detract from use. The fact that police abused their authority and used brutality against sodomites does not diminish the brutality of sodomy, and both kinds of brutality should be punished in a just society.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com
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Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Elizabeth of Portugal, Queen, Widow, A.D. 2009