The Great Gatsby, "Terrible...But Great," and True Greatness

Emily Stimpson has written an interesting  review of Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby.  I thought this bit was particularly telling, re: the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.  Excerpts:

..."Pretentions to divinity always end in death.”

You see, we are called to greatness, each and every one of us. We are called to be sons and daughters of God. That instinct—in Gatsby, in Millennials, in anyone—isn’t wrong. But power, wealth, and fame don’t make a person great. Love does that—love for God and love for one another. Likewise, we’re not born sons and daughters of God. We’re made that way by baptism. It’s a gift, not a given.

If we assume the gift without realizing how gracious it is, and then pursue greatness by trying to blaze through the sky on an ever-upward trajectory, we will crash and burn. There will be no life. There will be only death.

If it’s life we want, then it’s love we need to pursue—not the type of self-seeking, self-satisfied love the world glorifies, not the type of love which looks to another human person for meaning and fulfillment—but love which denies itself for the sake of the other and which knows true fulfillment and meaning can be found in only one Person, Jesus Christ...

Or, to put it another way, it's the difference between the Dark Lord of the Horcruxes and the Master of the Deathly Hallows:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is hell. (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

For more on the dynamic unleashed in creation's history by those who grasped for divinity and the antidote by the one who did not see divinity as something to be grasped but rather emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave (Philipians 2:5-11), see A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God's Covenant Love in Scripture, Bible Basics for Catholics: A New Picture of Salvation History, The Real Story: Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible, and/or Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library).

What Difference Did Roe Make?

Mark Steyn talks Gosnell back in February 2011. Many links and graphic details in original.  Excerpts:

With Planned Parenthood aiding and abetting child prostitution, my friend Rich Lowry argued that the back alley is back:

Legal abortion was supposed to end "back-alley abortions," both their dangers and their entanglements with shady characters. But the practice and the mores of the back alley are with us still, tolerated by people for whom the ready provision of abortion trumps all else.

Rich is right. Ever since Roe v Wade, proponents of a woman's "right to choose" have warned us against going back to the bad old days of rusty coat hangers and unsterilized instruments from money-grubbing butchers on the wrong side of town. Now, happily, the back alley is on the main drag, and with a state permit framed on the wall...

For years, the supposed regulators averted their gaze - as a matter of policy. For abortion's ideological enforcers, the official euphemisms trump reality. For those on the receiving end of infection, mutilation, sterilization and death, reality has a way of intruding...

The back alley is back, and supersized: The above New Jersey clinic performs 10,000 abortions a year. When the pro-choice rally ends and Cameron Diaz, Ashley Judd and other celebrities d'un certain age return to Hollywood, and the upper-middle-class women with the one designer baby go back to their suburbs, a woman's "right to choose" means that, day in, day out, the blessings of this "right" fall disproportionately on all the identity groups the upscale liberals profess to care about - poor women, black women, Hispanic women, undocumented women, and other denizens of Big Government's back alley.

A government back alley, licensed and supposedly regulated, is worse than the old kind, because it implies the approval of the state, and of society. That's what Gosnell thought he had, when he murdered those babies and mutilated those teenage girls. That's what Planned Parenthood think they have, when they facilitate the sexual exploitation of Third World children. And, given the silence of the PC media, maybe they're right. Aside from the intrinsic evil of not only Gosnell but a state that knowingly colludes with him, these "little" abortion stories reveal an almost totalitarian mindset in the "pro-choice" movement's determination to brook no intrusion of reality upon the official myths. You may be one of those wealthy suburban "feminists" or "new men" indifferent to the fate of eight-pound "blobs of tissue" or 14-year old "women", but the gulf between propaganda and truth, between the fatuous feelgood bumper stickers and the rusty crochet hooks, is profound - and, in a world where statists and social engineers serve as ruthless enforcers for the prevailing ideology, its deep moral corruption will eventually swallow you, too. America should be at the very minimum deeply disquieted by these revelations. That it is not - that it is dismissed as a "little thing" - is even more disquieting.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL, once discussed the reason why abortion tends to attract the worst doctors--why the Gosnell case is unlikely to be the last such.  He listed a number of reasons, both personal and professional, including the technical ease of the procedure, the distaste amongst many younger physicians who'd rather not perform it, the effect of ultrasound on people who could now see what it was that they were killing, and the high profits to be made by those willing to perform abortions quickly.  Gosnell is not alone.  Update:  Gosnell is not alone.

If these conditions are persisting, even after abortion is legalized, we need to start asking whether illegal abortions were awful because desperate women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the illegal for money, or whether they were awful because women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the unthinkable for money.

Gosnell Coverage, Clinic Regulation, and the Pro-Life Movement

"The picture above, for what it’s worth, is of the reserved media seats at the Gosnell trial. It was taken by JD Mullane, a news writer and columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, The Intel and the Burlington County (NJ) Times. He says:
Sat through a full day of testimony at the Kermitt Gosnell trial today. It is beyond the most morbid Hollywood horror. It will change you.
I was surprised by the picture and asked 'really?' He responded 'Local press was there, Inky, PhillyMag, NBC10 blogger. Court staff told me nobody else has shown up.'"--GetReligion

Well, coverage is finally picking up, compared to the early days of the trial (see picture of an empty press section above).  A friend recently raised the following concern:

One week ago, clinic regulation represented a political compromise, a half-measure of a defeated movement. Today, discussing regulation would be surrendering on the verge of a route. Admit it, both "sides" used regulation tactically--it is no one's goal, nor should it be. But the value of the tactic has now increased exponentially for one side, and could accomplish its critical need to weather this unprecedented storm.

I think this piece answers that concern quite well. Excerpts:

...Normally, like a game, the media will only admit to this kind of oversight long after it is too late to do anything about it. Worse still, the admission of the mistake is generally just a convenient excuse for the media to talk about their favorite subject -- themselves.

That doesn’t appear to be the case this time. Last night on CNN, Jake Tapper (one of the few who had already covered Gosnell), Erin Burnett, and Anderson Cooper devoted extensive time to the story. And as you can see above, the media are promising to do more next week than just navel gaze.

And I for one am very grateful for that, because even marginally bad coverage, like what we saw from CNN's Erin Burnett last night, is a win. (Anderson Cooper's segment was flat-out outstanding and a must-watch.)

Regardless, let the left-wing media spin the Gosnell horrors into a pro-choice argument for safer abortion clinics. As someone who considers abortion a moral abomination, as long as it is legal, I don't want to see that abomination made worse with unsafe clinics and the horrific exploitation of desperate women.

But that is the worse-case scenario (which is still a plus). What is also likely to happen is an increased  public knowledge of the act of outright infanticide known as partial-birth abortion. For over a decade now, the media has tried to turn that horror into a "right-wing myth." But now we not only have an example of a doctor eagerly engaged and made wealthy by the practice, but other doctors referring patients to him.

New Media has a responsibility now, as well. We need to use this opportunity to do our own reporting on Gosnell, not just to peck away at the mainstream media for not covering the story in the way we would like...

More shame-faced acknowledgements that the story deserves coverage from Bloomberg and Politico.  My main post on the case.  And we need to keep asking:

If these conditions are persisting, even after abortion is legalized, we need to start asking whether illegal abortions were awful because desperate women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the illegal for money, or whether they were awful because women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the unthinkable for money.

See, This is Why Catholic Sexual Teaching is Mocked

Because this is probably not an uncommon attitude towards marriage.  Excerpts:

...A fundamental reality of human relationships is that two people are not meant to be in a single monogamous partnership for all eternity (or even until the end of their lives). Humans crave sexual novelty. We get bored. We lose interest after just two years. We find our intimacy crushed by the weight of daily routines. Marriage is a voluntary commitment that flies in the face of all scientific research and human evolution.

We enter this voluntary (some say insane, and they’re not entirely wrong) pact because we do a cost-benefit analysis and decide that the benefits of getting married (or otherwise partnering for life) outweigh the potential costs -- breakups, emotional pain, financial disarray, the list goes on. We make just about the biggest emotional leap of faith a person can make, because we think, feel, and hope that the rewards will be great...

Compare that to a sexual ethic designed around this:

Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?”  He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”  They said to him, “Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss [her]?”  He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.  I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.”  [His] disciples said to him, “If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”  He answered, “Not all can accept [this] word, but only those to whom that is granted.  Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it.”--Matthew 19:3-12

Let it be noted that the author declares herself to be married and that all the work is worth it. However, her dismissal of the notion that marriage is the ordinary state for human beings doesn't take into account a ton of information. See, for example:

• The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially
• Family and Civilization
• What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense
• Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution
• Love and Economics:It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, Collegiate Edition
• Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem 
• Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce
  

WaPo Opposes Traditional Marriage Advocacy

GetReligion is on the case.  Their summation is excellent.  Excerpts:

...He ends by saying that despite their feverish and idiotic Bible-thumping ignorance, perhaps the Post — when doing basic journalistic work — should treat them better.

Wrong. Here’s what needs to happen. Right now. Every reporter — no matter the beat, no matter how much in the tank for redefining marriage, no matter how close-minded they’ve been to this point — every reporter needs to stop what they’re doing and read “What is Marriage.”

It’s a very easy-to-read book that succinctly explains the traditionalist arguments surrounding marriage. Refusing to learn the arguments of those who oppose changing the law must end. It simply must end. The ignorance and bigotry with which reporters have covered this topic is a scandal. It’s destroying civil political discourse, it’s embarrassing and can’t continue.

Reporters don’t need to change their deeply-held biases in favor of changing marriage law. But they do need to learn even a little bit about the arguments of those who oppose such a change.

No reporter working today should ever make the error of comparing arguments against marriage redefinition with anti-miscegenation laws. It’s clownish and easily disputed.

I thank Pexton and this unnamed reporter for revealing their ignorance and bigotry when it comes to coverage of this topic. It is helpful to have this transparency. But the solution lies not with zealous indoctrination by media types about how “fairness” requires redefining marriage. The solution to the problem of the bigoted way that reporters handle this topic lies with reporters themselves. Reporters: open your mind to the actual (not imagined) arguments of your opponents. Learn to report their views as accurately as you would want someone to report your own beliefs.

When it comes to news writing — and not voting or op-eds — stop thinking of people who retain traditional arguments on the institution of marriage as your opponents. And, most importantly, start doing your jobs...

They discuss the ramifications of the ombudsman's approach to this story here.

Gay Marriage And Interracial Marriage: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Dr. Francis Beckwith explains why.  Excerpts:

...Anti-miscegenation laws, therefore, were attempts to eradicate the legal status of real marriages by injecting a condition—sameness of race—that had no precedent in common law. For in the common law, a necessary condition for a legitimate marriage was male-female complementarity, a condition on which race has no bearing.

It is clear then that the miscegenation/same-sex analogy does not work. For if the purpose of anti-miscegenation laws was racial purity, such a purpose only makes sense if people of different races have the ability by nature to marry each other. And given the fact that such marriages were a common law liberty, the anti-miscegenation laws presuppose this truth. But opponents of same-sex marriage ground their viewpoint in precisely the opposite belief: people of the same gender do not have the ability by nature to marry each other since gender complementarity is a necessary condition for marriage. Supporters of anti-miscegenation laws believed in their cause precisely because they understood that when male and female are joined in matrimony they may beget racially-mixed progeny, and these children, along with their parents, will participate in civil society and influence its cultural trajectory.

In other words, the fact that a man and a woman from different races were biologically and metaphysically capable of marrying each other, building families, and living among the general population is precisely why the race purists wanted to forbid such unions by the force of law. And because this view of marriage and its gender-complementary nature was firmly in place and the only understanding found in common law, the Supreme Court in Loving knew that racial identity was not relevant to what marriage requires of its two opposite-gender members. By injecting race into the equation, anti-miscegenation supporters were very much like contemporary same-sex marriage proponents, for in both cases they introduced a criterion other than male-female complementarity in order to promote the goals of a utopian social movement: race purity or sexual egalitarianism.

This is why, in both cases, the advocates require state coercion to enforce their goals. Without the state’s cooperation and enforcement, there would have been no anti-miscegenation laws and there would be no same-sex marriage. The reason for this, writes libertarian economist Jennifer Roback Morse, is that “marriage between men and women is a pre-political, naturally emerging social institution. Men and women come together to create children, independently of any government.” Hence, this explains its standing as an uncontroversial common law liberty. “By contrast,” Morse goes on to write, “same-sex ‘marriage’ is completely a creation of the state. Same-sex couples cannot have children. Someone must give them a child or at least half the genetic material to create a child. The state must detach the parental rights of the opposite-sex parent and then attach those rights to the second parent of the same-sex couple.”10...

The War on Women

It has claimed many lives, and looks to claim many more.

Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.--Pope Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae: On The Regulation of Birth, July 26, 1968, article 17

The God Who Is Hungry

"Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of he-goats? Offer praise as your sacrifice to God fulfill your vows to the Most High. Then call on me on the day of distress; I will rescue you, and you shall honor me.”--Psalm 50:12-15

And yet, God became man.  No, more shocking still--God became conception, became fetus, became baby.  God became helpless.

Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether be likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God...

Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. --G. K. Chesterton, "The God in the Cave," The Everlasting Man, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press)

When God becomes baby, then we can no longer say, "He has never told us when he was hungry, or when he was thirsty."

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.”  There was a vessel filled with common wine.  So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth.  When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.--John 19:26-30

We cannot say, "He has never asked for something to eat or drink."

While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”  They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.--Luke 24:41-44

We cannot say anymore, "God is never hungry. God is never in need."

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’  Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’  And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'--Matthew 25:34-40

And the first people to be given the privilege of feeding God, of tending to the needs of God, are Mary and Joseph. God, who would not have said to the priests and leaders of the nations in the times of the Old Testament that he was hungry, thirsty, or needed a house, now calls two human beings "Mother" and "Father."

But that same night the word of God came to Nathan:  Go and tell David my servant, Thus says the LORD: It is not you who are to build the house for me to dwell in.  For I have never dwelt in a house, from the day I brought Israel up, even to this day, but I have been lodging in tent or tabernacle.  As long as I have wandered about with all Israel, did I ever say a word to any of the judges of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people, Why have you not built me a house of cedar?--1 Chronicles 17:3-6

The Son of the Father, the Son of God, looks at two human beings and sees in them a true reflection of the parental love and care which he'd had from all eternity from God the Father.  He obeys them and, in so obeying, grows in grace, wisdom and favor.

He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.  And Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.--Luke 2:51-52

God honored his earthly Father and Mother. How can we avoid doing the same?

When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.--G. K. Chesterton, "The God in the Cave," The Everlasting Man, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press)

Children, Working Moms, and Learning to Love

Finally, whereas before I had been convinced that having children would prevent me from using the years of learning and experience I had amassed at school and at work (where would I find the time?), I have come to see that I have good things to share in large part because of the ability to love that children have provoked in me.  St. Thomas Aquinas was right:  "Lord, in my zeal for the love of truth, never let me forget the truth about love."  How does this work?  In practical terms, of course, one discovers that she can get off the couch at 11 p.m. to pick up a child somewhere, simply because that child needs a ride.  One learns that she has the fortitude to pick up an extra job in order to pay for braces or a school trip.  Maybe most importantly, however, one learns how to communicate with other people, to decide in advance to give them "that look of love they crave" once you begin to see them as other people's children.--Helen Alvare, "Fear of Children," in Helen Alvare, ed., Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves, (Our Sunday Visitor, 2012), pg. 31.

The Meaning of Life is Love

As proven by the fact that no one is born alone, no one dies alone (thanks to the communion of saints, the omnipresence of God, and your guardian angel), and the path to deepest satisfaction, joy, and peace is through agape love.

Gay Paris Joins the Protest Against Gay Marriage

This is very, very interesting.  Excerpts:

Perhaps as many as a million people marched in Paris last Sunday and at French embassies around the world against proposed legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in France. One of the surprises in the French campaign for traditional marriage is that homosexuals have joined pro-family leaders and activists in the effort.

“The rights of children trump the right to children,” was the catchphrase of protesters like Jean Marc, a French mayor who is also homosexual.

Even though France is known for its laissez faire attitude toward sex, pro-family leaders were quick to organize huge numbers. When President Hollande announced his intentions to legalize homosexual marriage last November, a demonstration against the proposal gathered 100,000 protesters. And then what started as a debate about homosexual rights changed to one about a child’s right to a mother and a father, and the numbers in opposition exploded and has come to include unlikely allies.

Xavier Bongibault, an atheist homosexual, is a prominent spokesman against the bill. “In France, marriage is not designed to protect the love between two people. French marriage is specifically designed to provide children with families,” he said in an interview. “[T]he most serious study done so far . . . demonstrates quite clearly that a child has trouble being raised by gay parents.”

Jean Marc, who has lived with a man for 20 years, insists, “The LGBT movement that speaks out in the media . . . They don’t speak for me. As a society we should not be encouraging this. It’s not biologically natural.”

Outraged by the bill, 66-year old Jean-Dominique Bunel, a specialist in humanitarian law who has done relief work in war-torn areas, told Le Figaro he “was raised by two women” and that he “suffered from the lack of a father, a daily presence, a character and a properly masculine example, some counterweight to the relationship of my mother to her lover. I was aware of it at a very early age. I lived that absence of a father, experienced it, as an amputation."

"As soon as I learned that the government was going to officialize marriage between two people of the same sex, I was thrown into disarray,” he explained. It would be “institutionalizing a situation that had scarred me considerably. In that there is an injustice that I can in no way allow." If the women who raised him had been married, “I would have jumped into the fray and would have brought a complaint before the French state and before the European Court of Human Rights, for the violation of my right to a mom and a dad."

A pro-family coalition that includes homosexuals is certainly different than in the United States and likely most places around the world. It is unclear why at least some French homosexuals would not only favor man-woman marriage only, but would campaign against homosexual marriage. It could be that France has allowed for civil unions, for all couples, for more than a decade. Whatever the reason, this potent coalition may stop homosexual marriage in France...

There's more here on the European situation and the debates on gay marriage. Excerpts:

...Every time Benedict XVI speaks out against marriage between homosexuals, he is immediately besieged with criticism. But the last time he did so, in the annual pre-Christmas address to the curia, this did not happen. Everybody silent.

Acting as shield for the pope was the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, whom he cited in support of his own ideas. And none of the opinionists on the other side felt like taking aim against a luminary of European Judaism, in addition to the head of the Catholic Church.

In effect, the French case is teaching a lesson beyond its borders, in the battle for and against what the Church calls “nonnegotiable principles,” central among which is marriage between man and woman.

The intention of the Hollande presidency to extend legal legitimacy to marriages between homosexuals has seen the lively reactions not only of the Catholic Church, led by the archbishop of Paris, but also of authoritative representatives of other religions and of the secular world, including the feminist philosopher Sylviane Agacinski, wife of the socialist (and Protestant) former prime minister Lionel Jospin, and, of course, chief rabbi Bernheim, with a 25-page document in which he overturns one by one the arguments in support of homosexual marriage and of adoption by same-sex couples.

In citing the manifesto by Bernheim, Benedict XVI called it "carefully documented and profoundly touching.” And with this he extracted it from its French context and offered it to the attention of the whole world.

In Italy, the pope's invitation was promptly accepted by the nonbelieving intellectual Ernesto Galli della Loggia, who in "Corriere della Sera" of December 30 not only reiterated with abundant citations the arguments of the chief rabbi, demonstrating their consistency with those of Benedict XVI, but wrote that he fully shared them and hoped that they could finally be discussed without having to bow to the reigning conformism in favor of gay marriage.

Galli della Loggia is an intellectual who has always been read with attention in the Vatican. His wife, the historian Lucetta Scaraffia, writes regularly for “L'Osservatore Romano,” and is a close friend of its director, Giovanni Maria Vian. And in fact, the newspaper of the Holy See gave great emphasis to this shift in "Corriere," as if it were the symbolic falling of a wall.

Galli della Loggia is not the first nor the only one, among secular Italian intellectuals, to have distanced himself from the chorus of accusations against the “obscurantist” Church.

After him, on January 2, also in “Corriere Della Sera,” a famous psychoanalyst, Silvia Vegetti Finzi, took a stance against the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

And before him there was the declaration of the “Ratzingerian Marxists”: the philosopher Pietro Barcellona, the theorist of operaismo Mario Tronti, the political scientist Giuseppe Vacca, the sociologist Paolo Sorbi, all of them members of the Partito democratico and previously of the Partito comunista, and all of them now converts to the “anthropological vision” of pope Joseph Ratzinger, in defense of life “from conception to natural death” and of marriage between man and woman. They held their last meeting in December in the quarters of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed with the imprimatur of the secretariat of state...

Something's going on in Europe. This is really unexpected. How will this affect the gay marriage discussion in the US? Will it affect the gay marriage debate in the US?

Some further interesting datapoints to add to the discussion. Excerpts:

...John D’Emilio, noted professor of history and pioneer in the field of gay and lesbian studies has, as a gay man and leading LGBT theorist, been vocally opposed (shown here and more recently here) to the idea of working for the legalization of same-sex marriage. He contends it is contrary to queer ideals and unjust to gays in other types of relationships. D’Emilio and our French friends are not odd outliers. Here is another and another and another and a few more and one more leading gay voices that assert the passage of same-sex marriage can actually be discriminatory and limiting. Uhm...

And more. Excerpts:

...France—the country in which a former head of state could be buried from a Catholic cathedral, with his wife and his mistress in the front pews, and no one showing the slightest discomfort with the arrangements--seems to epitomize the moral fatigue of the West. So why is the French opposition to same-sex marriage so much stronger than anything we have seen elsewhere in Europe or North America? Why has the public opposition come not only from Catholic prelates and defenders of traditional morality, but even from avowed homosexuals, who make the compelling point that they are not the same as heterosexual people?

Could it be because the French—while they are as exhausted as we all are by debates about sexuality—are always ready for an energetic debate about language and the meaning of words?

Unlike Americans, who revel in the use of slang and in the changing patterns of words’ connotations, the French expect a level of precision in their language. For nearly four centuries the Academie Francaise has been issuing authoritative rulings on the meaning of words. The French understand that a change in the meaning of a word can mean a change in the way people think and act; it is a step that should not be taken lightly. The word “marriage” has a meaning, and the French instinctively realize that if that meaning is altered, the institution itself is changed.

French proponents of same sex marriage insist that they are simply opening up the institution to homosexual couples. “Marriage for all” is their slogan. But marriage has always been open to all. A homosexual man has the same legal right as a heterosexual man to enter into a marriage—which, over the centuries, has always been understood to mean a union between a man and a woman. The government does not ask prospective spouses to demonstrate that they are sexually attracted to each other before issuing a marriage license. The state only observes what is obvious—the gender of the two partners—before determining that a legal marriage is possible.

The real debate, in France and elsewhere, has never been about whether everyone should have the right to marry. The important debate has always been about what marriage is. Words have meanings. The French, of all peoples, understand that...

Men, Women, and The Couple That Prays (Ritually) Together

An interesting point.  Excerpts:

...We women, who buy and read nearly all of the popular Catholic Marriage books sold in this country, frequently read about the importance of Husbands and Wives Praying Together. And we’re told that family rosary with all the kids kneeling or slumping around the living room does not count. We’re talking about a special, quiet, set-aside time with you, your spouse, and God, where the two of you join hands and offer your spontaneous and heart-felt praise, thanks, and petitions. Out loud. Together. Well, together but taking turns.

Are there more than 100 Catholic male, non-Steubenville graduates * in this country who enthusiastically go along with such a program? (not just tolerate it out of love for their wives, but really enjoy it?) I’d be surprised.

This type of intimate, spousal prayer might sound beautiful to women. But to most guys–good, devout guys–not so much. It requires seat-of-the-pants verbal skills that many of them do not have. Not to mention a willingness to, at times, express emotions that are hard for a guy to discuss with his wife in an ordinary conversation, let alone talk to God about with his wife listening in. It’s one more example of a woman finding it therapeutic to talk about her problems, and the man finding the same activity to be close to torture.

So wives who want to persuade their husbands to pray with them, but find them recalcitrant, would be well-advised to drop the hand-holding, spill- your- guts- to -God- together idea, and go for something that is more realistic. That is, utilizing the type of prayer that the Catholic tradition excels at. Namely, reciting formal prayers that were written by someone else! Or I should say, reciting formal prayers while investing them with your own will, intentions, feelings, etc...

On Suffering and Bravery

Not just on today's tragedy, but more generally, as well.

The Anchoress reacts.  Excerpts:

Christmas is coming. These beautiful children, who likely had written their letters to Santa, or perhaps had opened a new window in an Advent calendar before going to school, are lost to us — now — in these weeks where nothing gives us a sense of promise, a future and a hope, than a child’s smile.

God help us.

In Advent, the days are short; the light is scarce and darkness gathers more fully every day. And today it nearly encompasses our hearts. We need light; we need illumination, because we do not understand...

We all of us struggle, every day, with God and with mankind. Today, our name is Israel, and we struggle...

God help us. There are no words. No one has new wisdom. We are broken and in our wounds evil enters in and battles goodness, and all I can do is run to the crucifix and bend low before it and remember these parents, these children, in my prayers, and turn to Christ and his Mother, who understand...

Msgr. Pope shares the tragedy and self-sacrifice of his parents with regard to his mentally ill sister.

Father Longenecker celebrates St. Lucy on her recent feast, a child who suffered at the hands of evil for the sake of good.  Excerpts:

...This is why I love Lucy–because she did not compromise. Finally, as I love St Therese, I love Lucy because she was a little girl. It was not the great soldier, the great he-man, the great warrior who stood up bravely for Christ….it was a little girl, and this reminds us that unless you become like one of these little ones you cannot see the kingdom of heaven...

The Crescat talks tragedy. Excerpts:

...My prayers are with the victims and their families. The pain of losing a child is the hardest thing ever. Of this I know personally.

“In the face of horror … there is no other answer than the cross of Christ: Love that descends to the abyss of evil.” — Pope Benedict XVI...

From a discussion of The Hobbit.  Excerpts:

"The more truly we can see life as a fairy tale," said G.K. Chesterton, "the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland."

On the Suffering of Innocents. Excerpts:

...As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new...”

And a reminder of happier realities, of every day life, of children home and safe, of families living and working together.

Christianity, Women's Empowerment, and Pagan Misogyny

Rodney Stark makes some very interesting points.  Excerpts:

...Amidst contemporary denunciations of Christianity as patriarchal and sexist, it easily is forgotten that the early church was so especially attractive to women that in 370 the Emperor Valentinian issued a written order to Pope Damasus I requiring the Christian missionaries to cease calling at the homes of pagan women. Although some classical writers claimed that women were easy prey for any "foreign superstition," most recognized that Christianity was unusually appealing because within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large (Fox 1987; Chadwick 1967; Harnack 1908).

But if historians have long noted this fact, they have made no serious efforts to explain it. Why were women accorded higher status in Christian circles than elsewhere in the classical world? In what follows I shall attempt to link the increased power and privilege of Christian women to a very major shift in sex ratios. I show that an initial shift in sex ratios resulted from Christian doctrines prohibiting infanticide and abortion and then show how the initial shift would have been amplified by a subsequent tendency to over-recruit women. Along the way I shall summarize evidence from ancient sources as well as from modern archeology and historical demography concerning the status of women in the early church. Finally, I shall explore the relatively high rates of exogenous marriages by Christian women and suggest how these would have generated many "secondary" conversions to Christianity...

And many women paid the ultimate price for their fidelity to Jesus (make sure your sound is on.)  Further points from here, out of Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief. Excerpts:

...In a Greco-Roman world where women were severely disadvantaged and many upper-class women even were relegated to nearly complete seclusion, Christianity (like the other “oriental” faiths) accorded women considerable status and an opportunity to lead. Beyond that, Christianity made life far more attractive for all female members.

The advantages of Christian females began at birth. Infanticide was widely practiced by Greco-Romans, and it was especially female infants who were dispatched. A study of inscriptions at Delphi made it possible to reconstruct 600 families. Of these, only six had raised more than one daughter. As would be expected, the bias against female infants showed up dramatically in the sex ratios of the imperial population. It is estimated that there were 131 males per 100 females in the city of Rome, and 140 males per 100 females elsewhere in the Empire.

The advantages of Christian women continued into the teens. Roman law suggested that girls not marry until age twelve, but there were no restrictions on earlier marriage (always to a far older man). A study based on inscriptions determined that about 20 percent of pagan girls married before the age of thirteen, compared with 7 percent of Christian girls. Only a third of pagan girls married at eighteen or older, compared with half of Christian girls. Once married, pagan girls had a substantially lower life expectancy, much of the difference being due to the great prevalence of abortion, which involved barbaric methods in an age without soap, let alone antibiotics. Given the very significant threat to life and the agony of the procedure, one might wonder why pagan women took such risks. They didn’t do so voluntarily. It was men—husbands, lovers, and fathers—who made the decision to abort. It isn’t surprising that a world that gave husbands the right to demand that infant girls be done away with would also give men the right to order their wives, mistresses, or daughters to abort. Indeed, both Plato and Aristotle advocated mandatory abortions to limit family size and for various other reasons.

Christian wives did not have abortions (nor did Jewish wives). According to the Didache, a first-century manual of Church teachings, “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.”

Christian women also enjoyed very important advantages in terms of a secure marriage and family life. Although rules prohibiting divorce and remarriage evolved slowly, the earliest Church councils ruled that “twice-married” Christians could not hold church offices. Like pagans, early Christians prized female chastity, but unlike pagans they rejected the double standard that gave men sexual license. Christian men were urged to remain virgins until marriage, and extramarital sex was denounced as adultery. Henry Chadwick noted that Christianity “regarded unchastity in a husband as no less serious a breach of loyalty and trust than unfaithfulness in a wife.” However, this was not paired with opposition to marital sexual expression….  (pp. 320-321)

The Costs of Catholicism: HHS Mandate Fines

This is why repealing the HHS mandate matters for the future of religious organizations and for businesses and organizations owned and operated by people of certain religious convictions.  Excerpts:

The owners of Hobby Lobby asked to be exempted from providing the "morning after" and "week after" pills on religious grounds, arguing this would violate their Christian belief that abortion is wrong.

Judge Joe Heaton of the U.S. District for the Western District of Oklahoma denied the request for a preliminary injunction.

Heaton ruled that while individual members of the family that owns and operates Hobby Lobby have religious rights, the companies the family owns are secular, for-profit enterprises that do not possess the same rights.

The family operate 514 Hobby Lobby stores in 41 states and employ 13,240 people. It funds a variety of Christian charities, closes its stores on Sundays and plays inspirational Christian music in its stores...

...The Food and Drug Administration lists the "morning after" and "week after" pills as emergency contraceptives. But abortion opponents like the Green family consider them abortion-inducing drugs because they are often taken after conception.

Hobby Lobby faces a January 1 deadline to comply with the mandate to provide all FDA-approved contraceptives. Failure to do so would entail a penalty of up to $1.3 million per day...

Synod's Guide to the New Evangelization

Plus a Dolan clip at the bottom!  The Synod of Bishops gave Pope Benedict XVI the following proposals on how to pursue the New Evangelization.

Marriage, Family, and the Christian Faith

From Pope Benedict's homily opening the synod on the new evangelization. Excerpts:

...matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a Good News for the world of today, especially the dechristianized world. The union of a man and a woman, their becoming "one flesh" in charity, in fruitful and indissoluble love, is a sign that speaks of God with a force and an eloquence which in our days has become greater because unfortunately, for various reasons, marriage, in precisely the oldest regions evangelized, is going through a profound crisis. And it is not by chance. Marriage is linked to faith, but not in a general way. Marriage, as a union of faithful and indissoluble love, is based upon the grace that comes from the triune God, who in Christ loved us with a faithful love, even to the Cross.

Simcha Fisher: "Pro-Choice Catholics Worship an Idiot God"

Wow.  Excerpts:

...The God of the pro-choice Catholic says, “On Mount Horeb, I shattered the barrier between heaven and earth, and I will led an entire nation of people out of slavery and into the wilderness to give them My commandments.  The history of the human race was changed forever because of the gift of My law, which will protect them and will guide them to the promised land.  So, which commandments affirm your lifestyle?  Follow those;  don’t sweat the rest.”

The God of the pro-choice Catholic says, “I will send my Son who will give up His body to show you that there is something worse than suffering, something worse even than death. That God Himself expressed the truest form of freedom by obediently and humbly giving Himself over to death so that weaker creatures might have life.  This is the message of the Cross.  But maybe for you, freedom is best expressed with a suction machine.  Your body, your choice.  Who am I to say?”

An African Woman Tells Us What She Wants, What She Really, Really Wants

rather than the extensive contraceptive distribution programs of such charitable organizations as the Gates Foundation (via Mark Shea).

Father Barron and Philosophy

Brandon Vogt brings us Father Barron's philosophy reading recommendations.