On N.S.W.’s abolition of parenthood

According to an article in today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph,

LESBIAN parents will be able to have both their names on their child’s birth certificate from today.

As I pointed out some time ago in a comment at the old Coo-ees blog, this development appears to be based on the idea that a mother and a father are not, to borrow the language of microeconomics, perfect complements, as would traditionally be held, but merely perfect substitutes. Hence, for proponents of this madness, a mother and a father are as good as ‘two mums’ or ‘two dads’.

But if this is the case, then why is two the optimum number of ‘co-parents’? It’s a pretty arbitrary number, really, once it’s divorced from conjugal complementarity between spouses and biological connectedness between parents and children. Why must we submit slavishly to such a dreadfully old-fashioned and ‘heteronormative’ model of parenthood? How long will it be before we are called upon, in the noblest traditions of tolerance, to ‘celebrate the diversity’ of three-, four-, five-parent mega-families? How dare we discriminate against the right of bisexuals to take both an husband and a wife?! (Perhaps we will see the pansexuals and the Muslims find some common ground here! One’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend, after all.) The next logical step after ‘Parent 1, Parent 2’ birth certificates is clearly to have just a blank space headed ‘Parents’. (Obviously, a child with 'two mums' already has three parents, since there must have been a dad somewhere along the line, though I understand that there are scientists working to overcome this little piece of discrimination from homophobic old Mother Nature.)

So what I am trying to argue is that by abolishing motherhood and fatherhood we don’t just eliminate a ‘discriminatory’ model of parenthood (which, as usual, is a move that ignores the fact that there is just discrimination and there is unjust discrimination); in fact, we abolish parenthood itself and replace it with a notion of parents as merely long-term carers. But then, the pansexuals were never too good at teasing out all the implications of their deranged demands all at once. It’s always little by little, bit by bit.

Reginaldvs Canvar

Breaking news: Dr. Nelson toughens up

According to The 7.30 Report, Opposition Leader Dr. Brendan Nelson M.P. has called a leadership ballot. He is going to stand again for the leadership as a new, tougher leader who intends, among other things, to advance the cause of same-sex ‘marriage’. What an odd cause on which to stake one’s leadership. But in any case it was the decriminalisation of adultery and the legalisation of serial polygamy that was the death blow for marriage as a social institution; ‘gay marriage’ is just the punch-line to the whole sick joke.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

The clock is ticking: the rush to end the latest ‘injustice’

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/judges-urge-coalition-to-pass-samesex-bill/2008/09/13/1220857873114.html

I see that

[s]enior judiciary members have urged the Coalition not to block or delay Government legislation that will give same-sex couples the same financial rights as heterosexual de facto couples

And the impetus for this? The imminent retirement of the Hon. Mr. Justice Michael Kirby A.C. C.M.G.:

Justice Kirby has become the public face of the proposed legislation. As the law stands, his partner of almost 40 years, Johan van Vloten, would be ineligible to receive part of his pension should he die first. If Justice Kirby was female, Mr van Vloten would receive the part pension.

This discrimination exists in more than 100 areas of Commonwealth law, which Labor has sought to end with two bills.

The question is: is this discrimination unjust? I say: no, it is not, since even a lawful spouse is not ‘owed’, in justice, a part-pension or other entitlements. One could make a tenuous argument, I suppose, that since a wife makes sacrifices for her husband, she should enjoy some of the benefits that he reaps from these. But this would ignore the fact that these sacrifices are part of a mother’s vocation. Also, the law has an educative function, and any discouragement of homosexual activity is a good thing. And the notion that a sinner should be rewarded for the longevity of his state of sin is quite repugnant.

But since the question of human rights and discrimination has come up again, I might make a few more remarks on the topic. We know, or should know, that a right is implied by and dependent on a duty. Now a Christian can point to the Ten Commandments as the source of his or her rights, since they lay down the corresponding duties. For instance, a duty not to kill implies a right to life, a duty not to steal implies a right to private property, and a duty to worship God implies a right to hear Mass offered according to the rubrics. Christians don’t (or shouldn’t) claim too many rights that have no basis in God’s ordinances.

Or, to look at the matter from another angle: each of us has an indestructible ontological dignity, an orientation towards a transcendent goal. We have certain rights in order that we can pursue this goal.

So it is perplexing when one hears secularists like Ms Elizabeth Broderick asserting that “[t]here is no question that legislated paid maternity leave is a basic human right” or the Sodomites League’s calls for same-sex ‘marriage’. What are the new-found duties that evoke these absurd demands?

Or even when a Catholic like Rev. Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf refers to a right to vote as though it were “written into our being”. How can this be, when no-one contests the State’s denial of voting rights to the insane and to convicts, whose ontological dignity is no less than anyone else’s?

But at least with Catholics we know what ‘human dignity’ means. What do the secularists mean, though, when, unable to show the duty from which their asserted rights were inferred, they make some vague appeal to human dignity? If any secularists are visiting here (or anyone who understands the secularist world-view), please let me know!

In Iota Unum, Professor Romano Amerio links such claims to abstract rights without corresponding duties to the conflation of human nature and the human person. But then there are secularists like Professor Peter Singer, who explicitly separate out the two in their scheme of ‘human non-persons’ and ‘non-human persons’. And then one hears the likes of Mr. Paul Keating calling for a society based on the innate dignity of man according to a vague humanist conception. But when man has no goal beyond this world, ‘human dignity’ becomes a very shaky foundation indeed.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

A timely reminder that Pride is the root of all vices

(WARNING: this post is unsuitable for children)

We know well that pride is one of the seven deadly sins. In his spiritual writings, St. Thomas More speaks of pride as the head and root of all vices, and St. Thomas Aquinas “considers it the queen of all vices, and puts vainglory in its place as one of the deadly sins” (http://newadvent.org/cathen/12405a.htm). This pre-eminence of pride derives from the detachment of oneself from God, his Authority and his Laws that is inherent in pride, and by which one opens oneself up to all other sins and vices (vice, of course, being basically habitual sin).

How apt it is, then, that so many ‘Gay and Lesbian’ organisations speak of ‘Gay Pride’ and incorporate this monstrosity into their titles. I commend them for their honesty. One such example is ‘Queensland Pride’, which is reporting on the ongoing St. Mary’s, Brisbane, fiasco:

http://qlp.e-p.net.au/news/vatican-threat-to-gay-friendly-church-2179.html
(found via Mr. Schütz’s Sentire cum Ecclesia)

Pride crops up in the article itself when we learn that

The church [sic] has previously angered conservatives in the church [sic] by welcoming gay couples and allowing the Gay and Lesbian Choir [‘Choir’ gets a capital-C but not Church—C.P.] to perform there in June 2003 as part of Brisbane Pride Festival celebrations. [His Grace Msgr.] Bathersby opposed the performance and said it was “inappropriate”.

“Inappropriate”, hmmm, I can think of other words. Scandalous, perhaps? A profaning of the Lord's Temple? I wonder whether “gay Catholic activist and St Mary’s parishioner” Mr. Tony Robertson kept a straight face when he said that

“St Mary’s is a church which takes seriously its identity as a Catholic community and practices the teachings of the Catholic Church which call for homosexual persons be [sic] accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity,” Robertson said.

“Such acceptance calls for practical action which welcomes gay and lesbian people to the life and worship of the community.

“Those who have concerns about our support for sexual minorities need to remember that the Catholic Church also teaches that every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided …

Mr. Robertson might have been more helpful, though, if he had started from first principles, according to which human sexuality is ordered towards procreation, and that therefore same-sex attraction is rightly called ‘intrinsically disordered’. Sodomy is a mortal sin, and a sin that cries out to Heaven for justice (whether they teach that as part of their ‘social justice apostolate’ in not known to me). His assertion that “homosexual persons [need to] be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity” is correct, but it must be remembered that it is the person, the subject, that is to receive respect, never the objects, the acts, of his or her disordered inclinations. ‘Compassion’, meaning ‘suffering with’, is important, since, as the C.D.F. expressed it well:

What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian's suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.
(my emphasis)
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html

Meanwhile, “sensitivity” must never mean ignoring or distorting the supernatural consequences (as well as the natural consequences—anal fissures, genital warts, A.I.D.S., all manner of infections; it ain’t pretty) of their sins.

Mr. Robertson’s assertion that “[s]uch acceptance calls for practical action which welcomes gay and lesbian people to the life and worship of the community” is highly ambiguous; if ‘gay and lesbian’ means ‘fully immersed in and supportive of the so-called gay culture’ then these individuals cannot participate in Catholic worship, though the Catholic character of the “worship of the community” is a moot point in this case, anyway.

As for “unjust discrimination”, ‘unjust’ is the key word. The Vatican instructed, late in 2005, that men with deep-seated homosexual tendencies or who support the so-called gay culture shall not be permitted to enter seminaries, and Catholic schools reserve the right to bar unrepentant public ‘gays and lesbians’ and their fellow-travellers from teaching (though I cannot find a citation at the moment). Clearly neither instance is unjust, since disobeying the former would involve an occasion of sin, while disobeying the latter would involve scandal to impressionable children.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Where do they find these people?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-heart-divided-finds-a-new-path-to-peace/2008/08/22/1219262525223.html?page=fullpage

A deeply confusing article appeared in The Sydney Morning Herod on Saturday, involving an interview with a “lesbian nun” of the self-styled Reformed Catholic Church. Now, this organization is not a Protestant Revolt-era schismatic sect, but was in fact

founded in 2000 by the Reverend Robert Allmen, a former Catholic priest, [and] is based in Columbus, Ohio, and has communities in 25 US states as well as in Africa, Asia, Europe, Mexico and Australia.

Led now by Bishop Phillip Zimmerman, the church follows Catholic doctrine but welcomes gays and lesbians. It also allows its clergy to be single, gay, married or divorced.

In other words, this sect offers no-holds-barred cafeteria Catholicism, even to the extent that a ‘postulant’ for the ‘order of St. Benedict’, the “lesbian nun” Meg Britton in this report, may pick and choose which vows to take!

The Benedictines observe silence, charity and chastity. But Britton has declined to take the vow of chastity.

Two out of three ain’t bad, I suppose but … she’s giving an interview—she’s breaking her vow of silence!

But apparently this woman is not only a nun but a clergywomen:

"My partner supports me but she doesn't feel that she is called into the clergy," says Britton. "She has always said 'you're the pastor, I'm just the pastor's wife'."

More confusion abounds in the question of this sect’s denominational identity:

Since then, they have founded the St Flora Anglican Mission Parish on acreage in the Glasshouse Mountains.

So, are they Anglicans or Catholics? But I suppose that’s not a very diversity-celebrating thing for me to ask.

Naturally, there is a significance to the choice of Patroness:

Last year, she established the St Flora Mission. It is one of only two Reformed Catholic Church communities in Australia - the other is in Brisbane - and is named after the patron saint of the abandoned.

But it was this woman who abandoned her husband and Christ’s Church! Speaking of her husband, despite the acceptance of her children for her sexual disorder, “[o]nly her husband had mixed reactions”! I suspect that’s something of an understatement!

Reginaldvs Cantvar