Magic Statistics

After reflecting on this item I posted yesterday, I have to disagree with the policy that the pope is said to have endorsed. If the news report is accurate—which is still not certain—the Roman Catholic Church, with the pope's approval, will soon announce that men with homosexual tendencies, including celibate homosexual men, will not be accepted for ordination as Catholic priests or as students in Catholic seminaries. I think this is a mistake and at odds with a Christian understanding of sin and grace.

First of all, I do agree that it would be proper and, indeed, obligatory for the Catholic church to exclude non-celibate homosexuals from the priesthood. Given that Catholic priests are all required to abstain from sexual relations, the Catholic church would be right to defrock priests who engage in sexual activity and to refuse to admit to its seminaries men who are sexually active.

Slight digression: Caveat with respect to priests: such a policy should, I believe, leave room for repentance and reform on the part of wayward priests and spiritual discernment on the part of those charged with guiding such priests. In my view, "zero tolerance" is usually an unChristian policy. When applied in the church, it has detrimental effects on church life; for one thing, it destroys honest communication between overseers and those who speak with them in confidence. As Richard John Neuhaus has said (see here and here), in the context of the Christian church, zero tolerance is synonymous with "no mercy".

My misgivings with the Vatican’s proposed policy apply only with respect to homosexual men who are determined, with God's help, to refrain from indulging their sexual desires–i.e., men who are committed to living celibate lives. I think that imposing the proposed policy on such men would be a bad idea.

The Bible teaches that all human beings are fallen creatures living in a fallen creation. As such, we are all prone to sinful desires and to being tempted to fulfill those desires. But being tempted is not in itself sinful; it is only in indulging and acting upon such desires that we enter into sin. The writer to the Hebrews says of Jesus: "[W]e do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted just as we are, yet without sin." So, clearly, being tempted is not sin.

The Bible also says that, in a fundamental sense, sin is sin: All sin is disobedience against God, and so all sin merits God’s wrath. There is no biblical warrant for thinking that homosexual behaviour is any worse than adulterous behaviour or theft or slander or idolatry or blasphemy. (I realise that Roman Catholic moral theology makes a distinction between mortal and venial sin, but the examples I just listed are all forbidden by the Ten Commandments and thus on a moral par.)

So, by what biblical moral principle can the Roman Catholic church say that homosexual orientation deserves to receive a sanction not imposed against adulterous orientation or greed orientation or any other tendency to commit sin? We are all oriented to sin; that’s a basic implication of the doctrine of original sin.

I would not be surprised if 100% of applicants to Catholic seminaries are tempted to sexual sin of some kind or other. Why are those tempted to homosexual activity to be excluded while those tempted to heterosexual are not? The news report gave this rationale: homosexual orientation "suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers". Well, to repeat, we all suffer from a serious personality disorder: sin. As Kierkegaard said, we all have a sickness unto death, the only cure for which is the gospel of grace that our Lord has entrusted to the church.

If this policy goes ahead, then celibate homosexuals will feel that they been unfairly singled out by the Roman Catholic church for unfavourable treatment. I think they would be right to feel that.

Wendy Shalit reviews a new book by Ariel Levy entitled Female Chauvinist Pigs which reports that "liberated" women have become just as raunchy and promiscuous as the most sexist frat boys.

How did this happen? Why did feminism sell its soul to the sexual-liberation movement in the first place? After all, the original feminists were fighting to be taken seriously. Hugh Hefner, by contrast, said that his ideal girl "resembles a bunny . . . vivacious, jumping—sexy." There seems to be a contradiction here.

Ms. Levy's answer is that, after a brief and failed fight against pornography, feminism joined forces with Hef & Co. to fight for abortion rights. This is a plausible explanation, as far as it goes. Abortion has indeed assumed a primary importance in both feminist "rights" thinking and in the whole culture of soft-core libertinism: Mr. Hefner is a big fan of abortion, for obvious reasons.

But something else may be going on. Feminism grounded itself, in its early days, in the idea that there were no differences between the sexes. A girl wanting to keep her virginity was bad, for sexual reticence amounted to asserting a separate standard, a Victorian one at that. To Hef, modesty was a "hang-up," and to the feminists it was a "patriarchal construct." Ms. Levy believes that feminism was on the right track but then veered off-course: "What has moved into feminism's place . . . is an almost opposite style, attitude, and set of principles."

Ms Levy finds that women have not found fulfillment in being sexually "equal" with men. Ms Shalit agrees that modern feminism is a bad idea for women, but her view is that the movement has not so much "veered off-course", but rather set off on the wrong course from its outset. The fact is that women are made differently than men, and women have very different desires and experiences than men when it comes to love and sex. Our culture used to recognise those differences and, accordingly, encouraged women to behave modestly. Ms Shalit maintains that rejection of modesty is at the root of feminism's discontents. "Only if feminism can embrace the more traditional ways that men and women have courted throughout the ages can it have anything practical to offer young women."

As the father of a teenage daughter, I agree 100%. Sexual "liberation" is a degrading and painful dead end for girls and young women.

Ms Shalit wrote about these forgotten differences in her 2000 book, A Return To Modesty: Rediscovering The Lost Virtue. I read it when it first came out and I recommend it very highly, especially for parents of young children.

The BBC reports:

A new version of the Bible which its author says can be read in less than two hours has been launched.

The 100-Minute Bible, written as a page-turner for those who do not have the time to read the full version, was unveiled at Canterbury Cathedral.

Hmmm . . . I wonder if these two verses are included in the 100-Minute Bible.

via Matthew Ingram.

The collect for today, the Day of St Matthew, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O almighty God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the receipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist; Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires, and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Matthew is included in several lists of the twelve disciples (Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Lk 6:15; Acts 1:13). Matthew 10:3 describes him as a tax collector, or as the KJV puts it, "publican". Jewish tax collectors in first-century Palestine were pariahs among their own people. They were considered untrustworthy, dishonest, and, because they had become agents of the Roman oppressors, traitors to the Jewish people.

All three synoptic gospels include the story of the call of a tax collector who is called "Matthew" in Matthew 9:9, "Levi" in Luke 5:27, and "Levi, the son of Alphaeus" in Mark 2:14. Thus, Matthew is to be identified with the "Levi" of Mark and Luke. Jesus called him to be a disciple while he was sitting in the tax collectors’ place at Capernaum.

From very early times, he has been regarded as the author of the first gospel. The Bible tells us nothing about his life after Pentecost. Later accounts of his life vary, some reporting that he was martyred, others that he died a natural death. The Christian church since early times has commemorated him as a martyr.

I know very little about art, but IMHO Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew is one of the most remarkable and riveting paintings ever created. (Click on picture for larger view.)

The scene is one of mundane reality: Tax collectors are sitting around a dimly lit table counting money. Peter and Jesus intrude upon their quiet labour. A shaft of light over Christ’s head illuminates his hand and shines right in Matthew’s face. Jesus points at Matthew and says, "Follow me". Matthew’s surprised demeanor is priceless: he’s pointing at himself and, from the look on his face, you can tell he’s thinking, "Who, me?" But we know from the gospel that Matthew responds to our Lord’s call and is transformed from a despised social outcast into a holy saint among God’s people.

Caravaggio seems to be saying that miracles take place among the ordinary things of life—and then they change everything. Through divine grace and power, everyday people become saints doing our Lord’s work.