Time Immortal

Erf writes, in response to my last reply to him:

Great answers, Ken, thanks! Unfortunately I don’t have time to respond to everything in that kind of detail, but I do have a couple more things to say.

(Thanks for the clarification on the tags. I was curious.)

I won’t go into much more discussion on the ACORN business, except to clarify: you’re saying that Slacktivist is wrong (or lying?) when they say that ACORN actually flagged the questionable or unverifiable voter registrations before passing them on to the government, as they’re supposed to?

I didn’t realize Joe Biden is an abortion supporter. He’s also Catholic; has he been excommunicated?

What makes Obama’s “brand” of Christianity more egregious than McCain’s, when the latter supports torture, among other things, and as you say isn’t likely to do anything about the existing abortion laws in the states? Why doesn’t that (especially the torture issue, which he’s explicit about) automatically disqualify him from receiving our support also?

Out of curiousity, what is it about Palin that you find appealing, aside from the abortion issue? I can’t find anything in your tags about it.

Thanks, Ken. Your responses are always well thought out and researched. Keep up the good work.

Congrats to the three of you, and welcome to Ella! (Love the pictures of her and Grace you’ve posted.)

Thank you kindly, Erf; I’ll be sure to pass that along to Grace (although she reads this site daily, so I’m sure she already knows).

Now, as to Erf’s question, good Reader, about what assertions (if any) I am making about Slacktivist, I think it’s safest to say that I’m not making any assertions, but rather simply taking note of a few things that perhaps were missed. I’ll grant, for example, the point that ACORN has some process of identifying fraudulent votes — they’d have to have such a system, since there are thousands (tens of thousands, actually) of frauds being uncovered and reported on. Obviously, someone is discovering these things, in many cases.

This was kind of touched on in my previous observation about fraudulent votes. Obviously, many of the frauds have been uncovered, and that’s good…but the fact that ACORN supporters are nevertheless churning out thousands of fraudulent registrations, and encouraging yet more, is still very concerning, and certainly damages the overall legitimacy of the organization and its branches. The fact that the problem is not isolated to one or two districts, but has in fact cropped up in a wide variety of locales, suggests that the corruption is systemic, or very near to it.

Moreover, there’s also the matter of New Mexico, and the fraudulent votes which were linked to fraudulent ACORN voter registrations. Phony registrations are one thing, and not as bad, since they don’t influence an election’s outcome (necessarily — they have some value as a form of propaganda). But phony votes do influence that outcome, and phony registrations are a part of the process of getting phony votes on record. Obviously, not all of ACORN’s fake voters have been uncovered, since votes were case in the “name” of several of them, and I expect we’ll see more fake votes turned in because of it.

And there’s a real problem with that, and it’s what we must keep in mind when we consider the ACORN issue. In the 2000 and 2004 elections, key “swing” states were won or lost by fairly narrow margins. One recalls that in Florida, in 2000, the difference came down to around 500 votes. Five hundred votes isn’t that many, compared to the total number of people who cast votes…but then, with tens of thousands of fraudulent registrations already on the books, is it perhaps not possible that ACORN or some affiliated group might manage to get, say, 600 fake votes cast in a key county or state, thus swinging a close election toward the candidate who wasn’t actually winning? It’s not an absurd scenario to propose, given how small the numbers may in fact need to be (especially now that John McCain is gaining ground in the polls once again).

Slacktivist isn’t lying, I don’t think, but I note that his(?) source exhibits a curious…quirk. The Guardian article that Slacktivist links to uses many links to references, except (notably) when making reference to ACORN’s oversight procedures. Though obviously, many registration frauds have been caught, was there no linkable document which detailed the various anti-fraud schemes that ACORN employs? Are we to take a British columnist’s word for it that they have comprehensive oversight?

There’s a detail or two missing here, methinks.

But let’s move to the issue of Joe Biden. Yes, he’s a Catholic — or, rather, claims to be — and yes, he’s pro-choice. I’m not a Canon Law expert by any means, but in my understanding of things, there’s not much room for a Catholic to claim to be pro-choice, especially if he or she is a legislator. “Any Catholic who obstinately denies that abortion is always gravely immoral commits the sin of heresy. The sin of heresy also incurs a latae sententiae excommunication…This sentence of latae sententiae excommunication applies to any Catholic who denies that abortion is gravely immoral, regardless of whether they keep this denial hidden or publicly reveal it.”

Additionally, “Catholics who publicly announce their denial that abortion is always gravely immoral, or who publicly promote abortion, or who publicly argue in favor of legalized abortion, also commit a mortal sin and also incur a sentence of automatic excommunication. This sentence of excommunication applies to Catholics who are politicians, as well as to those Catholics who are political commentators, or public speakers, or who write or otherwise publicly communicate their erroneous view that abortion can be morally-acceptable or that abortion should be legal.”

And finally, “[a]ny Catholic politician who casts a vote with the intention of legalizing abortion, or of protecting laws allowing abortion, or of widening access to abortion, commits a mortal sin. When such a vote indicates that the Catholic politician believes that abortion is not always gravely immoral, such a politician incurs a sentence of automatic excommunication, under canons 751 and 1364, because of heresy.”

So while Joe Biden claims to be Catholic, his public pro-choice stance would, I think, seem to mean that he has in fact brought upon himself an automatic excommunication from the Church, which cannot be rescinded until such time as he repents of his erroneous views and offers a full confession for the mortal sin of defending or promoting abortion.

The problem with automatic excommunications is that they require enforcement. Not only does the individual have to humbly accept that he or she has contravened the faith and, in heresy, removed herself from the fold of the Catholic faithful — the local bishop and priests must likewise stand firm and enforce Canon Law, and its consequences, during Mass and from the altar. The principal outward sign of excommunication is, of course, denial of the Eucharist to the excommunicated person; it takes real guts for a priest to actually state, to any person, that he or she is unfit to receive the Body of Christ.

There have been priests who have stood up for Canon Law. There have been priests who haven’t. I don’t know enough about Joe Biden’s church life, or the priest(s) at the parish(es) he attends to say whether or not the Canons have been enforced in his case. But from my understanding of Canon Law, it would seem that Joe Biden has incurred a penalty of automatic excommunication, whether he acknowledges this to be the case or not.

Now, I didn’t really discuss the respective denominations of the candidates, apart from Joe Biden, all that much, so I admit that Erf’s question about what makes one candidate’s denomination more egregious than another’s catches me a bit off guard. I didn’t really make that assertion, did I?

Be that as it may, I don’t actually think that one candidate’s faith is more egregious than that of any of the others, although certainly I will say that I regard the faith of each candidate to be in error to the same degree that it does not reflect full communion with Rome. Of the two presidential candidates and the two VP picks, the only candidate whose faith is, I think, left more or less un-compromised is that of Sarah Palin.

I don’t know much about John McCain’s churchgoing ways, if in fact he is a regular churchgoer. I know even less about his faith overall. It hasn’t really even been an issue in the campaign. We’ve already discussed Biden, of course; the best word for him might be “hypocrite.” Palin is an evangelical, and some have attempted to lambaste her as a Young Earther. I don’t actually know if she holds that view or not, though I’m not inclined to think so; she has said that she favours some teaching of the idea that life was created, although from what I know of her statements in this regard, she wasn’t explicitly referring to a literal, six-day creation, but to the general idea that God is the author of life. Perhaps the strangest aspect of Palin’s church is its emphasis on speaking “in tongues.” Take that with an appropriate quantity of salt grains, good Reader, but do remember that among the various evangelical churches, especially those with a Pentecostal basis, such “gifts of the Spirit” are a common focal point for worship gatherings. Palin’s church is hardly unique in this regard.

The issue of Obama’s faith — and now I think I know from where Erf’s question stems, given my citation of Binky’s observations about the volume of hagiography being directed at Obama — isn’t a question of whether or not his church and its teachings are “more” egregious than the church which McCain attends (if he has a church he attends on a regular basis, mind — this I do not know). The issue is that Obama’s supporters have invested a boatload of effort in casting Barack Hussein Obama in divine terms, prompting some to quip that he is the Obamessiah.

What’s egregious, then, isn’t Obama’s denominational stance, but the fact that whatever he believes about Christ, he seems to not have a problem with the sheer volume of hagiography being directed his way. “As…noted before, no Christian would permit music, accolades and statements to be made about them that infringe on the turf of divinity. The One? Halo-pictures? If that was me being divinized, I’d rightly fear the flames of eternal punishment for presumption. But so far as I’ve heard, Obama hasn’t called it off, whatever he’s heard of thusfar. Indeed, he seems to have deliberately wrapped himself in Religion: healing the planet, change, hope, transformation!”

Remember: “It’s evil to claim God’s proper praise for oneself.”

Obama’s denominational stance concerns me very little; the fact that he has wrapped himself in the mantle of divinity concerns me greatly. Secular messianism can only have a messy end, if history is to be taken as any kind of guide.

Now, I want to end by answering Erf’s question about why McCain’s support for — or, at least, his probable inaction on the issue of — torture does not also disqualify him from our (Catholic) support. I kind of addressed that in the previous post, and will do so again, but let me get the rest of what Erf has said out of the way first.

Concerning Sarah Palin, I think the thing about her that I like is that she’s…real. She’s not an establishment hack, for the most part; she doesn’t come across as a politician as much as she does as normal folk. Since I began dating — and then subsequently got married to — a small-town girl, I’ve come to appreciate the open honesty in the way that people who live in smaller communities see and talk about the world, and I get that same sense of sensibility and graciousness from Palin. Unlike the other three people she shares the spotlight with, she seems to be the one that is the most normal, the most human.

She’s also, apparently, as sharp as a tack. Moreover, she doesn’t play the victim card because of her gender; her career in politics has been marked by taking on — and defeating — one “good ol’ boys” club after another, whether it was the local law enforcement agency, an oil company, or her own political party in the years prior to her election as governor. The fact that she walks the walk, rather than just talk the talk, on the pro-life issue is icing on the cake.

Now let’s come back to the issue of supporting McCain, as Catholic voters. In an article I linked to previously, John Zmirak made an apt comparison: Catholic voters are in the same ugly position as were the guards at the Tsar’s palace on the eve of the Russian Revolution. The mob is approaching, the Tsar is safe behind his walls, and the order to fire has been given. What do we do?

The choice facing American Catholic voters next Tuesday seems to be between a vote that will result in an increase of evil, and a vote will maintain the present level thereof. This is not a good choice, especially if one votes with a Catholic conscience. As such, nobody should be under the delusion that good will come of it; the argument can be made that a vote for either major candidate will be a vote for some manner of evil, and we know that we cannot promote the use of evil in the hope of achieving a good, nor should we be deluded into thinking that good will result from the doing of evil.

Obama’s platform is certainly “transformational,” and what it desires to see America transformed into is a very concerning thing indeed. We’ve discussed the ramifications of an Obama victory before, and many of them center on the issue of abortion. By signing FOCA into law, something Obama has pledged to do, not only would abortion law become substantially less restrictive in the United States (in fact, abortion would become a de facto “fundamental right” of women, legally on par with any Constitutional right), but almost all freedom of conscience protection for doctors and nurses opposed to abortion would vanish. As Zmirak notes, this would essentially result in one of two ugly possibilities: either Catholic hospitals would have to provide abortion services, or they would have to close. This sort of result is just a slightly more convoluted way of doing the equivalent of hanging a “No Blacks” sign in a restaurant window. The effect of FOCA would be the same: people opposed to abortion, including most Christians, would essentially be barred from working in medicine.

There’s other concerns as well. Obama would probably repeal BAIPA, and might even bring back some form of the Fairness Doctrine, which would have the effect of stifling political commentary critical of his administration. Toss in a tax scheme that reflects his desire to see “redistribution of wealth” become a reality in America, and the result is, at the very least, highly concerning. That it would probably also be economically ruinous, and steeped in Censorship, adds an additional measure of evil to a platform that has already failed — utterly and completely — on life issues. And to put a cherry on top of it all, there’s one other tidbit of information that has just come to light: even with his proposed tax increases and other changes, Obama’s numbers don’t add up…his government wouldn’t be able to afford e.g. universal health care, his proposed reforms to education, and all the rest. “If he closes every loophole as promised, saves every dime from Iraq, raises taxes on the rich and trims the federal budget as he’s promised to do ‘line by line,’ he still doesn’t pay for his list.” So if he can’t do what he’s promised, he’ll do something else. But what?”

So, at best, a vote for McCain will maintain evil at its current levels. A vote for Obama, or for a doomed quixotic candidate, risks the possibility of an Obama victory, which will increase evil. Now, there’s obviously a certain logical peril inherent in looking at moral ramifications by means of a mathematical/quantitative framework, but I think the point stands: though Catholics cannot support evil, the option does not exist in the American presidential election to functionally, effectively, reduce the perpetration of evil in America.

To that end, the only — and then sinful, but this is a sinful world — choice remaining is to vote against that which will increase evil. And that means voting to keep Obama out of the White House.

Let’s come back to the soldiers for a moment. They have three choices: fire on the mob, fire in the air, or join the rush and help the mob overthrow the Tsar. In this example, the Tsar is the extant establishment, represented by McCain. If the soldiers fire on the mob, all the evils of the Tsar will continue, as surely as they would have had the soldiers of Russia managed to put down the revolutionaries way back in 1917. If the soldiers do not fire on the mob, either by shooting in the air (an analog to voting for a third party, spoiling a ballot, or prematurely deciding that Obama has won and simply abstaining from the vote entirely) or joining the mob (an analog to voting for Obama), the the evils of the Tsar will perish…only to be replaced by the evils of Lenin and Stalin, as happened in history.

Now, keep in mind: I’m not suggesting that Obama would turn the U.S. into a totalitarian dictatorship. This is a metaphor, not a prophecy. But at a moral level, American Catholic voters face the same quandry as those Russian soldiers would have faced. There’s no avoiding evil in the imperfect scenario of the upcoming election. The choice is between the evil that is, and the evil that could be. And one is worse than the other.

I don’t know how history would have turned out had the Tsar somehow retained power, had Lenin’s little uprising been defeated. I suspect, however, that we would not have seen, in Tsarist Russia, the sheer volume of slaughter and human suffering that we saw in the Soviet Union, even given the corruption and excess of the Tsarist regime. In like manner, I don’t think things will improve under McCain…nor will they get any worse. But under Obama, I think things will get much worse, and then at a moral level.

And when facing a doomed choice to begin with, it behooves Catholic voters to choose that which will not make things measurably worse.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

…here’s a long-winded and meandering example. Or perhaps multiple examples. I really can’t tell.

My aunt and uncle, and their three children, recently stopped attending services at their Catholic Church, in quiet protest over the Catholic Church of Canada’s response to Bill C-38, the recently-passed legislation that allows for same-sex couples to obtain a marriage license in Canada, and the Church’s ‘bias towards homosexuals’ in general. Well and good, and as free people in a free society, given the freedom to choose their own actions by God Himself, they are completely within their rights and power to do so. But as G.K. Chesterton once remarked, to possess a right is by no means the same thing as to be right in exercising it. This is as true for abortion as it is for ceasing to attend Church services in protest over the Church drawing a line in the sand over another morally contentious issue. Were I a little more strict in mind, I’d even go so far to say that it might qualify one for excommunication. But as conservative as I seem to be getting these days, I’m not that harsh.

In an increasingly secular society, it’s more and more common for people to leave the Church, or to leave any Religion really, because they disagree with some aspect of the Church’s moral teaching. This is not a new phenomenon, though — many have left the Church over moral, or other, disagreements. The various early heresies, and the Protestant Reformation, came about for these reasons. What is different in this day and age is the acceptance that goes along with such a separation, acceptance and even praise that is, in most respects, completely undeserved.

I am reminded of a passage written in the National Post — by an atheist — that basically began as a letter to Pope Benedict XVI. It’s no longer in their 7-day archive, but for the interested it was written by , and appeared in the June(??) 13th issue of the Post.

In it, he mentioned Benedict’s desire to see the ‘lapsed’ of the Church (some 20 million people) return to the fold, and the columnist’s response to that was ‘do you really want them back?’. It’s a valid question.

In reading some of posts on Angry’s blog that have been left in reply to one of his articles, it seems clear to me that the vast majority of people who have a beef with the Catholic Church disagree with the Church’s stance on birth control, abortion, sexuality prior to marriage, or homosexuality. In short…sex, sex, sex, and sex. Personally believing these things — all or just some of them — to be valid and not in any way immoral choices to make, the lapsed have taken to calling the Church to task for its incorrect stance on these issues (their stance obviously being the correct one!). It’s really quite a delicious arrogance, is it not?

So it goes in the age of moral relativism, really the ultimate in selfish ideologies: “I don’t agree with this teaching, but I think that this behaviour is right. I don’t have to be told how to live my life, and the Bible is just a book written by a bunch of old men, which means it has no relevance to my life. I think the Church is wrong on this issue.” And it goes even further than that. In many respects, it isn’t just the liberal attitudes of the lapsed coming through, but instead the completion of the pendulum-swing of society into the realm of moral relativism.

I had the opportunity to engage in a debate of moral absolutism vs. moral relativism with a young compatriot of mine recently. At the time, I was discussing morality with a friend, also a Christian, in the Computer Engineering ‘Club’ (read: Students’ Association) at my University. Another ‘CompE’ walked in during our conversation, just when I was getting into talking about moral absolutism with my friend. This unfortunate young man, whom we will call Josh, challenged me on this, asking how I could believe in moral absolutism. I asked if he believed in moral relativism, and his reply was a scoff and a “yes, doesn’t everybody?”.

Implication: I’m an under-educated, misguided neophyte.

“Okay“, I think to myself, “you’re on, buddy.“

At the time, there were two males (myself and Josh) and two females (my friend and her study partner) in the Club office, so I decided to fire with both barrels and chose a suitably relevant question. I asked Josh first if he’d be willing to engage in a little “outside the box” thinking and argue from a morally relativistic standpoint as to under what circumstances a certain action or sin I would name would be morally justifiable. When he agreed, I said one word: rape.

To his credit, he stuck to his guns* and tried valiantly to explain a situation in which rape would be morally justifiable:

JOSH: Well, if the person who…ah…got raped learned an important lesson from it.
ME: Yeah, we gotta learn them uppity womenfolk good, teach ‘em that they belong in the kitchen, right?
JOSH: No, not saying that. But if, you know, a person thought they were on top of the world, and the rape brought them down a notch…
ME: So…like…like it happens in some Middle Eastern nations, where a woman tries to, I don’t know…get an education? Or sleeps with a man outside of marriage…and then the local tribunal sends eight guys to rape her senseless for acting up?
JOSH: No, not like that at all!

And so on. In the end, having made a near-complete fool of himself and forever offended (and probably frightened) the two women I had previously been talking with, he hung his head and switched topics — still convinced his relativism was right. But I kept on. And he said something interesting then. I asked him: if he believed that people can decide their own morality and there is no overall arbiter thereof, whether or not it would be hypocritical for him to judge my actions as right or wrong if I did something…like rape someone. And his answer was that yes, he was allowed to judge me.

And therein lies the rub, as ol’ Bill might’ve said. The crux of the morally relative argument is just that: I am allowed to define my own morality, and I am allowed to judge the actions of others as moral or immoral according to the morality I define for myself. If there was ever a case of having your cake and eating it too, this is it. The ultimate selfish Philosophy. And this example above is no different…the supposed advocates of personal freedom of choice and action and morality are only too quick to impose judgment and restriction on those they disagree with.

* and no, I don’t think it’s right to rape someone. I think it’s a terrible violation of a person on all levels of their being. I credit Josh with sticking to his guns, as it were, because he didn’t back down from his relativism in the face of a difficult question. Other people I have so challenged have, in the past, defaulted to a selective absolutism when asked about rape, saying that in that case, it is never right. Josh did not stray into such hypocrisy.

It’s like Angry said in a recent post: “Me, me, me. It’s always about “Me” with these people.” And ultimately, it is folly, for it stacks the presumptuous moral posing of an individual angry at being told that the way in which they live their life is (dare I say it?) ‘wrong’ in some capacity against the long-established, age-and-persecution-tested, 2000-year evolved belief system and understanding of the Church. Who’s gonna win with that one?

O’Neill goes so far as to say that he, an atheist, would prefer to be seated next to an born-again evangelical Christian than to be seated next to a ‘recovering Catholic’ such as Marg, because while the former might provide some interesting conversation or a reasonably thought-out debate about the nature of religion…the latter will usually only whine about how the Church ‘done them wrong’ (to use the Southern vernacular).

How apt.

And so it is with my relatives. My cousin was only too happy to correct my understanding and curtly inform me that her family would no longer be attending Church services because of the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. All well and good, but it is hypocritical to criticize the Church as having the ‘wrong’ stance on the issue. Marriage, within the understanding of the Catholic Church, is an institution not solely designed to provide a forum for the consummation of passion between two people, nor is it solely about the two people getting married.

A priest whom I respect likened the divine nature of marriage to the divine nature of the Trinity, and I think his point is relevant. The Trinity is the ultimate embodiment of love, being that it is God, and within the human context marriage is the ultimate embodiment of love that a human being can experience in their mortal life on Earth. That is because marriage is a three-part arrangement as well. Certainly it involves, as is quoted in numerous places in Scripture, the unification of a man and a woman into a lifelong, monogamous relationship. But though marriage unifies, it does not complete. The completion of marriage, the culmination of the joining of two people, is in the fruits of their love, and the fruitfulness of their love. It is in children, the coming together to create a new life.

Adoption is wonderful, but even adoption does not cover this base. marriage is fully realized only when the couple that is married can partake of both its unitive aspect and the procreation that results from their sexual union. That is not something that is possible in a homosexual marriage. Two gay men cannot between them produce a baby, for neither has the necessary physical hardware to carry the child to term and deliver it. Likewise, two gay women cannot between then produce a baby, for though either one would be able to get pregnant, the child would not be the product of the sexual union of the two of them. That is not to say that either couple would not find some manner of fulfillment in adopting, artificially conceiving, or surrogating a child, but it IS to say that whatever fulfillment they might find, it is not a fulfillment that would justify the use of the term ‘marriage’.

This is the Church’s stance, and for all I can see it is the correct one. Marriage exists to provide the MOST STABLE framework possible for the rearing of children, because it is designed as a framework in which a man and a woman pledge monogamy to each other so as to facilitate the furthering of the species through natural procreative methods and the bringing of children into a household that is most ideal for raising a properly balanced (emotionally, mentally, spiritually…) child to adulthood. Anything that deviates from that should not be called marriage, for it does not contribute to the good of all humankind in the same manner. Call it something else.