Notes: Thursday, October 7, 2010

A good question in a letter in today's Australian

The last sentence of this letter in the "Last Post" section of the letters section:

Why does marriage need to be between one man and one woman? The arguments for same-sex marriage equally apply to polygamy and polyandry. If people want to fundamentally transform Australia's culture, why stop at half measures?

D. Straface, Perth, WA
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/last-post-october-07/story-fn558imw-1225935108767]

Mr. Magister on the September 20 to 27 meeting of the joint international commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church ("Papal Primacy. Russia Heads the Resistance Against Rome")

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34058

I was interested to read in that article that

the Eastern Churches are slowly approaching the convocation of the pan-Orthodox "Great and Holy Council" that should finally unite them in a single assembly after centuries of incomplete "synodality," [...]

Material preparation for the end of the Eastern Schism after the Consecration of Russia, perhaps.

Mr. Schütz contra Dr. Gray on euthanasia

http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/you-do-not-have-a-right-to-chose-your-time-of-death/

Mr. Schütz uses a very good piece of rhetoric in that rejoinder to Dr. Gray's opinion piece, which (opinion piece) I covered in yesterday's edition of Notes:

To die with dignity is, I would agree, a “human right” – but in a secondary sense: ie. everyone is entitled to that “dignity” which is due to them because they are a human being in BOTH life and death. The question is: what do you mean by “dignity” in this context? Japanese warriors and Jihadist Terrorists both had/have ideas about what a “dignified” death is. We disagree with both their accounts. We disagree with Nigel Gray’s too.
[my emphasis]

Pro-Confessional-State pronouncement from the Vatican?

http://mauricepinay.blogspot.com/2007/03/theyre-making-their-move.html

I was interested to read the following from the text of the conclusions from the meeting of March 11-13, 2007 of the Bilateral Commission of the Delegation of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel's Delegation for Relations with the Catholic Church in an old post at the Maurice Pinay blog:

6. In addition to respecting the freedom of religious choices, the integrity of faith communities should also be guaranteed. Accordingly it is legitimate for a society with a predominant religious identity to preserve its character, as long as this does not limit the freedom of minority communities and individuals to profess their alternative religious commitments, nor to limit their full civil rights and status as citizens, individuals and communities. This obliges us all to safeguard the integrity and dignity of holy sites, places of worship and cemeteries of all religious communities.

A few thoughts:

• To say that "it is legitimate for a society with a predominant religious identity to preserve its character" is encouraging insofar as that it is saying that it is legitimate for a Catholic Confessional State to have Catholicism as the State religion and the Catholic Church as the established Church. (Unfortunately that does not seem to have been Vatican policy in the aftermath of Vatican II.)
• But of course, it is discouraging insofar as it is saying, by the same token, that an Anglican Confessional State, or Lutheran Confessional State, or Muslim Confessional State, or Atheist Confessional State, or, given the context, Jewish Confessional State, is also legitimate, which is false.
• It is also discouraging insofar as it does not affirm, or does not affirm adequately, the right (and duty) of a Catholic Confessional State to repress, where prudent, offenders of the Catholic religion.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of The Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of St. Mark I., Pope, Confessor, and of St. Sergius and Companions, A.D. 2010

Notes: Tuesday-Wednesday, October 5-6, 2010

Unintentionally hilarious critique of a pro-Lesbian movie which is not pro-Lesbian enough for the critic!

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/its-not-all-right/story-e6frg8n6-1225930639218

Long, but worth reading if you have five minutes to spare and need a good laugh. (It occured to me that the article might really have been satirical, but, looking at the article overall, I think that it's supposed to be a genuine critique.) A sample:

Despite, or perhaps because of, the present energetic push towards normalising homosexuality (let's all get married, have babies and not rock the Judaeo-Christian boat), gays remain a menace. Heterosexual men and the society over which they have power are threatened every which way by homosexuality. Lesbians, and lesbian couples in particular, limit male sexual access. Men don't like that.

Dr. Gray on euthanasia

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/choosing-ones-time-of-death-is-a-basic-human-right/story-e6frg6zo-1225934570662

Here's another article from The Australian which had me wondering at several points whether it was really a satire. Points like this:

If we take away the labels such as euthanasia, kill, murder, suicide, we can look at the issues.

The people who join the Dying with Dignity movement simply want to die with dignity. ...

So one euphemism (euthanasia) is replaced with another euphemism--'dying with dignity'. But euthanasia isn't just any old kind of dying; it really is killing (a term to which Dr. Gray objects), either of oneself, or assisting someone else to do it.

And also at this point (Dr. Gray's conclusion):

The reason for wanting choice is that this is one's own business, no one else's. We should not have to give reasons. It may indeed be a terminal disease and one may have consulted a doctor, or one may have gone bankrupt, or the wrong team may have won the grand final, but these are not relevant to anyone else. A personal decision, which is made as a human right, is all that is required. The necessary legislation should be simple enough.

What a disconcerting thing it is to live in a world in which one can no longer be quite sure whether a text is serious or satirical.

Remnant opinion piece on monarchy and democracy

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=382178#382178

This article looks interesting (though off-topic for the AQ thread in which it was posted), but unfortunately its author thinks that "the will of the people ... should determine the shape of any political order", which is too much like one of the condemned errors in Quanta cura for my liking. Nevertheless, the article might be interesting to read in full, which I'll do if I have time.

Book(let?) on the evidence that St. Peter was in Rome ...

After posting yesterday's edition of Notes, in which I mentioned the testimony of Caius to the death of St. Peter (and St. Paul) in Rome, it occured to me that the book which that Catholic Encyclopedia article cited (St. Peter in Rome) might be available on-line. So I searched for it using the N.L.A.'s Trove search service, and though it is apparently not available on-line (though the search results show that there are copies of it, or of books very much like it, to be found in several Australian libraries, including The University of Sydney's one), I found the following booklet, published in 1874 by one John Stewart M'Corry:

http://www.archive.org/details/a591190500mcoruoft

It looks very interesting, though I haven't read it all yet (though it's not too long).

... and a very old letter-to-the-editor citing Protestant affirmation of that Tradition

Found while doing that Trove search:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/25656734?searchTerm=St. Peter in Rome&searchLimits=

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bruno, Confessor, A.D. 2010