Request to readers (urgent): please visit and read the following post from MgS:

http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2009/05/difference-between-evidence-and-dogma.html

My dear readers, I’m asking you this little favour because MgS has posted (without warning me) a rejoinder to my “A Herald letter on “trans” matters” post in which she rages against me for “not just misquoting [her], but deliberately misunderstanding what [she wrote]” and my “intellectual dishonesty and typically circular reasoning”, and I fear that she will edit or remove the post once she receives the comment (which I’ll provide in just a moment) that I submitted, and I would like some witnesses to corroborate my version of events. You see, not only does MgS fail to prove that I have misquoted or misunderstood her, but, hilariously, she even reinforces the very point that I am supposed to have misquoted and misunderstood! And so I suspect that, if she receives my comment but does not read this post (if she reads this post she won’t fulfill my prediction, so as not to lose face), she will delete at least the following portion of her pathetic, self-defeating attempt at a smack-down because it only reinforces my point about G.I.D. and feelings (N.B. this time the quotation is her own words, and a full paragraph, so she can’t accuse me of misrepresentation):

Clinical delusion is quite distinct from the symptoms that are descriptive of delusion. Particularly key is recognizing that transsexuals are usually very, very aware of the reality of their situation. They fully understand that their biology is at odds with their emotional sense of themselves.

So there we have it: ‘feelings’, “emotional sense of themselves”, call it what you will, but whatever it is, it doesn’t justify the destruction of an entire system—and a perfectly healthy system at that—of the body. I must warn you though, my readers: as one might expect from a gutter-, nay sewer-level secularist such as MgS there is a foul-mouthed, indecent-looking YouTube link embedded at the end of her post, so make sure to avoid it. (Nice to be perfectly clear about what sort of a person you are though, MgS.)

Now here is the comment that I submitted to her just before writing this post:

***

It would've been fair, courteous of you to let me know that you were going to write this so that I could respond (as I've done for you in the past, even when you've blocked me from the combox) but, as I've said on another occasion, I know to expect neither fairness (a metaphysical concept) nor courtesy (too bourgeois, I suppose) from you.

"... not just misquoting me, but deliberately misunderstanding what I write"

I didn't misquote you (as it says in the very quotation you provide!, it is a quotation, not your own words), and it is utterly preposterous of you to accuse me of misunderstanding you (let alone deliberately so), because as you say--in your own words this time--in this latest post,

"They fully understand that their biology is at odds with their emotional sense of themselves."
(my emphasis)

!!!!!!!!!!

"his intellectual dishonesty and typically circular reasoning"

Hilarious!!!! All you have done in this new post is to reinforce the point I made in my own post! And where, precisely, is the dishonesty and circular reasoning?!

(Obviously I don't expect you to publish this comment--I know how delicate your ego is--but you're always welcome to comment at my own blog, and, as always, uncensored.)
[Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2009/05/difference-between-evidence-and-dogma.html]

***

On the plus side, though, she links directly to my blog, and she now has a “Cardinal Pole” blog post category label! I’m famous!!!!!!! (I little suggestion though, MgS: you might want to change the label to “Cardinal Pole (Australian blogger)” just in case you happen to blog about the real Cardinal Pole one day.)

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Robert Bellarmine, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2009

Beware the Tridentine Fundamentalists! Plus more from Mr. Coyne

Mr. Brian Coyne writes that

The [Ecclesiastical] leadership seem not just resigned to the unwelcome possibility of the Church becoming some kind of remnant of Tridentine Fundamentalists, they seem to want to positively encourage that outcome out of some sense of belief that only the Tridentine Fundamentalists can recognise "truth" and are capable of discerning the will of God.
(his emphasis,
http://www.catholica.com.au/editorial/026_edit_020509.php)

Just who are these Tridentine Fundamentalists, though? Does the term signify Traditionalists alone, or does it apply to Catholics who would identify as ‘conservative’ or ‘orthodox’ but not Traditional? Whoever ever we/they are, it’s a relief to know that our/their security threat status has been downgraded from its previous level:

My honest belief is NOT that the Church is going to become a remnant. I honestly expect there is going to be an enormous showdown somewhere down the track. Yes, there still will be a remnant there that will never let go of the Tridentine/Vatican I mindset, and like Islamic terrorists they eventually resort to chucking bombs in an endeavour to get their way. I don't doubt that that mindset is even shared by very high officials within Catholicism today. I don't believe Christ's promise of the longevity of the institution is vested with that segment of humanity though.

(comment by Mr. Coyne with my emphasis added,

http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/2008/06/and-last-one-before-heading-off-to-my.html)

The only real question that remains to be answered is when a few from within your ranks actually become so stressed out to the point of following the behaviours of the Mumbai 10 believing that such behaviour is totally moral and "God's Will".
(comment by Mr. Coyne,
http://coo-eesfromthecloister.blogspot.com/2008/11/important-anouncement.html)

It’s interesting also how Mr. Coyne characterises his opponents as being driven by a desire to turn back the clock; interesting, because there appears to be a fair bit of nostalgia motivating Mr. Coyne’s vision for the Church (or I suppose in the definite-article-eschewing parlance of Mr. Coyne and those of his ilk that would be ‘vision for Church’):

In the members' forum a suggestion was made a few days ago for compiling some kind of public list of Home Mass or House Church groups around the country. In my own response I suggested that Home Masses today are probably rarer than they ever were simply because of the shortage of priests and they already being stretched providing Masses for parish-sized groups. If one happened to be friendly with a particular priest one might occasionally be able to get him to celebrate a home Mass. Back in the 1970s and 1980s in the Hawthorn Parish I can remember Home Masses being celebrated quite regularly — usually as part of the Lenten cycle — and we often had small home liturgies in a more ecumenical setting. All that seems part of history now but does induce some nostalgia in me because I do carry this sense that it was probably the most vibrant period of my whole experience of institutional Catholicism and, I suppose in a sense, the entire rest of my life in the institution was an effort to try and re-capture the sense of excitement that we'd experienced over that
period.
(http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/forum_entry.php?id=27866&page=1&category=0&order=time)

It's even more interesting, though, how Mr. Coyne’s pathos-laced reflections would seem to suggest that his world-view, or at least Church-view, as it were, evolved differently to the way he usually describes it. Often Mr. Coyne will begin his blog comments by saying something like

Not too many years ago I would have shared the general ethos of what you guys are on about at Coo-ees from the Cloister. Today I basically reject your agenda and methodology for the simple reason that I do not believe it leads to resurrection, paradise or whatever you guys believe is the ultimate objective of our religious beliefs.
(http://coo-eesfromthecloister.blogspot.com/2008/02/spot-difference.html)

and Mr. Coyne, now in his sixties, says that he identified as ‘conservative’ up to about the age of forty-five, or in the 1990s:

I basically followed "the faith of my father" and had a conservative outlook politically and theologically.
(http://www.catholica.com.au/brianstake/042_bt_print.php)

How to resolve the apparent contradiction between this asserted period of conservatism and his participation in Home Masses during the same time?

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Stanislaus, Bishop, Martyr, A.D. 2009