It's called the woke mind virus for a reason. Working much like a computer virus, wokeism is code that makes those, whose mind has been infected with it, unable to perform basic cognitive functions and renders them defenceless against attacks. In fact, it is such a smart virus, that it will make the infected defend those that want to destroy them and attack their own. I guess we should now collectively refer to these people as the "infected", inspired by The Last of Us. In a perverse way, you have to admire the woke mind virus's genius, especially when seeing news of "Queers for Palestine protesters", who I'm sure will soon be joined by "Turkeys for Christmas" and "Billionaires for Communism".
I grew up in a left-wing totalitarian dictatorship (though that was during its dying days) and the tactics used by left-wing activists, like the one described in the beginning of the post, are just so typical of the tactics they have used throughout history. I feel that those of us that have grown up in this part of the world and during that era have been inoculated against woke / left-wing tactics, like shaming and calling someone *-ist (insert preferred -ism you want to tar your opponent with).
He can make money off this in some way is likely the main explanation. Also, for there to be a new world order, the old one must fall. He helped the Nazis take inventory of Christian homes ( I know...he was 14) and I don't think opposition to his acts is in any way anti-Semitic. But I think also Soros has a special dislike for the Jewish people, as it appears a majority of non-Jewish leftists do in our day.
You are aware Soros crashed the British pound in order to make money? And he has given hundreds of millions of dollars to elect prosecutors chosen because they will not prosecute crime in the United States? So, he wants money, and he wants the present world order to end so he (or his son if he dies) can be at the top of a new one.
I didn't break any rule of writing. Not everything that is implied by context is stated in every sentence. The implication was - Soros has not yet seen the "old world order" cease and the "new world order" come substantially to the fore. If he dies *before* he sees that, then his son will be able to enjoy it. So he still has a motive, even at his age, to continue to try to bring about collapse. Anyway, my Dad's first cousin in 100 years old and in good health - most people don't think "Oh, I'm going to die soon, I'll stop trying to enjoy myself". Soros enjoys destruction.
I'm not a fan of Soros either, but I think he has been demonized unfairly by the global right wing, particularly in the USA and here in Hungary.
Sure, he gives a lot of money to leftist and globalist causes and his foundations stir up trouble in various global hotspots, ferment rebellion and revolution, etc...
That is not always a bad thing. For instance, he was instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union (ironically) and freeing Eastern Europe from Moscow's grip. That is the main reason he is so hated by Putin and Russia. He supported democracy movements in this region, whilst we were still living in a totalitarian far-left dictatorship. Viktor Orbán went to Oxford on a Soros scholarship as did many public intellectuals of that era. His foundation distributed copier machines and printers to dissident groups that were opposed to communism and Moscow's rule, so they could print and distribute leaflets and samizdat literature.
He is also unfairly blamed for stuff he had nothing to do with. Malaysia's leader, Mahathir Mohammed, blamed Soros for starting the 1997 financial crisis, which he had nothing to do with, it's well established what financial excesses lead to that particular crash. There is certainly a whiff of antisemitism about it, when Muslim leaders like Mahathir move blame on him, instead of taking responsibility for their own fiscal and economic mismanagement. We know how the Islamic world loves a Jewish financier with global influence...
His supposed role in the deportation of Jews is also grossly mischaracterized. First of all, he was a kid and Jew, in the middle of the most vicious episode of the Holocaust, the sudden and rushed deportation of Hungarian Jews between 1944-1945, after the country was occupied by Germany (though some limited deportations happened prior to that, under the proto-fascist Horthy regime). His father had government connections and knew, that mass deportations of Jews were coming. He concocted a plan to save his family, handing them off to various gentile families where they would assume a false identity. In George's case it helped, that he had that classic aryan look Nazis were so fond of, so nobody suspected him of being a Jew. He was handed off to a government official, a friend of his father and pretended to be his Christian godson.
He did accompany him on his rounds, where they surveyed empty properties that were left behind by deported Jews. But the way it is often portrayed by right-wing commentators, you'd think he was standing there in a Nazi uniform shouting at deported Jews and putting them on trains, laughing in delight. None of that is even remotely accurate and frankly, his father did the right thing to save his family, hiding them in plain sight, where nobody would think to look for them.
In any case, a large proportion of Budapest Jews survived the war, not least because local officials delayed their deportation for as long as they reasonably could and foreign diplomats, like Raoul Wallenberg issued passports, letters of protection and established diplomatic safe houses, to save as many Jews from deportation as they could.
Even today, Budapest has a substantial Jewish population, about 100.000 strong and a thriving Jewish cultural and religious life. My first girlfriend, when I was 18, was a Jew from the Rózsadomb (Rose Hill) area of Budapest, at the time probably the nicest and most upscale neighbourhood in the country. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, the only ones from their extended families who survived the war.
It was sort of an education getting to know her family as they thought of and saw the world very differently. Her mother was a very successful businesswoman, vice president of one of the few companies that thrived in the new economy after the fall of socialism. They were all in with MSZP, the Hungarian Socialist Party, which was basically just a rebranding of the previous Moscow-sponsored party that used to run the country.
I just couldn't understand how they could support a party, that was responsible for major crimes against humanity, ran concentration camps in the fifties and suppressed freedom and free elections only a decade earlier.
However, I quickly discovered that the Budapest elite and Jews in particular saw the world very differently than a "country boy" like me (I was from a small industrial town in Transdanubia, the western part of the country). First of all, in a less extreme version of what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia, the communist party (later rebranded several times), deported a large proportion of Budapest's population to the countryside, those that they deemed as class enemies and political opponents, for instance, families that supported conservative or right-wing politics. Their homes were given to communist party functionaries and loyalists, so in the end, Budapest's population was significantly altered to become far more left-wing, with communist party loyalists and functionaries present in every house.
Jews in particular saw the Soviets as liberators when they arrived in Budapest, so they joined the communist party in large numbers and enthusiastically. This gave them leverage in gaining positions of power they were excluded from by the right-wing, proto-fascist and fascist governments that ruled Hungary from about 1920 to 1945.
Since every right-wing government up to that point was openly anti-semitic, whereas communists embraced them with open arms, they really had no other political home to turn to. This dynamic endured after the fall of socialism as well.
At that time my family were Fidesz-supporters and I was also more sympathetic towards them than any other party at the time. In the nineties, they were the hip new party for young people (they excluded anyone over 35 from their membership ranks, to make a clean break with the previous regime) and the college I went to was filled with Fidesz-supporters, we thought only old people would vote for the failed left-wing.
However, in Budapest (my Alma Mater was in Szombathely, a western town) I saw a very different reality, an elite that was deeply embedded in left-wing politics and had their agents and "people" planted in positions of power, so even though there was ostensibly a "regime change", it didn't last long and MSZP was back in power by 1994, only 4 years after they were forced to concede to democratic elections.
To put that in context, it would be like Germany voting for the NSDAP in 1949 and letting them take control of their country once again, only 4 years they had to relinquish power forcibly and free elections were allowed to take place.
Even as a kid, I was shocked, that the socialists were back in power and Fidesz coming in after them in 1998 was a huge relief. I was in college at the time and helped collect endorsement slips for the local Fidesz activists at my uni, going around, knocking on doors and asking people to endorse the Fidesz candidate. When they won, there was a huge celebration at uni, everyone I knew supported them over the stodgy old party cadres of the previous regime.
However, the mood in Budapest, particularly among Jews, was very different, even apocalyptic, I'd say. My by then ex-gf's family admonished me for supporting Fidesz. How could I? - they asked. It is true, that at the time, Fidesz had a handful of anti-semites amongst its ranks and neo-nazism in general was in vogue amongst Hungarian youth, partly as a response to the suppression of any form of right-wing politics previously and as a rebellion against the old, who were all seen as dyed-in-the-wool socialists.
Miép was the main Neo-Nazi party, but it cannot be denied, that Fidesz wasn't explicitly opposed to anti-semitism and had flirted with it at various times during its history. This all changed after Orbán first met Netanyahu and visited Israel, after which he took his party in a direction of explicit philo-semitism and steadfast support for Israel. This proved to be a smart political move, as every time foreigners criticize his government for "Stop Soros" policies and legislation, he can point to his government's pro-Jewish and pro-Israel policies as proof that being against Soros doesn't equal anti-semitism. In general, I think he's right, though there are exceptions.
Amazing - thank you so much for this post. I will make two replies to the two main parts of the post Soros and 1990s Hungary- I realize Judaism is a theme in both parts. I will do more research on Soros and come back to you - yes I knew exactly what he had done in WW2, and my post was not meant to imply anything else.
My favorite thing to learn about it the fall of totalitarian societies and its aftermath. The aftermath is the hardest thing to learn about - information seems both sparse and disorganized. But not yours - you put so much together here. With this and with having read the super-excellent article you linked on Orban/Netahyanu (I will like it again below) I have gleaned so much.
I was fascinated that originally no one over 35 could join Fidesz. Wow. And wha a relief Hungary has been able to keep "the elites", that is the left, from power for all but a couple of terms.
I live in the Jewish Quarter of Budapest. It is not majority Jewish, though I have Jewish friends there. I was assuming not many Jews survived after the mass deportations of 1944 but looking it up, 31% of Hungarian Jews did survive, according to Wikipedia. As you probably know, there are concerns, especially with the new memorial statues, that some do not speak of Arrow Cross actions against Jews just as loudly as those of the Nazis.
I have hope for the world today as the left is being revealed as something more than the mythical "opponent of Nazis". OK, yes, Russia initially sided with them and then fought them. But the National Socialists are a Nationalistic form of Socialism - with both right and left wing characteristics, they certainly were not "right wing", and just recently, the anti-Semitism of so many oonthe left has become plain.
It also seems to me that Chabad is right wing, at least economically? The right-wing new president of Argentina, you may know, is closely relating to a Chabad rabbi and states that after he is out of office and can follow ceremonial law (Sabbath laws won't work for him) he will convert. I've seen the Chabad office in Budapest.
Thanks for a very enlightening post - I loved having a better understanding of these things. I'm off for an appointment but more about Soros later.
I know Soros at one time was a mixed bag, did some things to help in Europe, particularly in earlier times. I did not know he had anything to do with bringing down the Soviet Union, so that you for that information. (I’m reading now that he learned Soviets raped his mother.) If Soros is sill doing any good things, you could let me know, I just do not know of them. I know you are not a fan.- - Overall, I believe Soros would like a world “rule by elites”, to include himself and his family, and that he believes bringing down the current world order is necessary to being about this elite rule.
I read the book “The Shadow Party” by Horowitz and Poe, and thought it was full of well documented information about Soros. It was pretty frightening.
Soros has done only evil in the USA as far as I can see. He currently bank-rolls the vile Pro-Hamas protests and recruitment efforts for the protests. Literally dozens of American cities now have prosecutors who won’t prosecute crime due to his donating millions to campaigns of people who intended to do that when they were elected as prosecutors.
I guess I highly suspect - but would not know - that Orban was a genius to get rid of CEU. Look what the universities in the USA have done.
But most important: What do I know? You have a lot to teach me and I am open to amending opinions in light of information. Please keep informing
No. Soros has been anti-Israel for many, many years. He has often stated that being born a Jew means nothing to him, let alone having anything to say on Israel. He funds J-Street, which claims to be 'for Israel' but in fact has never done anything in its defense, only arguing the Arab point of view. Jewish Voice for 'Peace' along with Independent Jewish Voices have broken bread with known terrorists and their sympathizers. 'The Man Behind The Curtain' (Matt Palumbo) will give you an idea of who he is, what he's done, and what seems to make him tick.
You give those who choose these absurd perspectives too much of an out: "Its not my fault, I was infected by a mind virus." Its true that many are swayed by faddish assumptions that are not supported by detailed historical research. But they are at the least responsible for being sloppy and running with the crowd. (The same could be said of most lynch mobs). Hopefully the majority will ruefully settle down and get on with their lives at some point.
Re: homosexuality as a sin, the mainstream position of the Christianity subreddit on Reddit is that the New Testament doesn't condemn homosexual relationships and romance. I've been told by one of them that only homosexual sex is considered sinful. I followed up with my own sarcasm but there's no point in quoting scripture or pointing to traditions with these people. One of these cretins is a self-described pagan but most actually claim to be Christians who know better than the bigoted conservatives do.
In better news my work schedule changed to that I can pick my own hours. I can now bring my 9 year old son to Trail Life several towns away. There's a pastor who studies in Greek and Hebrew there (not all protestant pastors do this), there's a coast guard guy who is well versed in some of the VERY WEIRD stuff I've learned from the Dreher blog and recommended books, and there are other gear dads. At Royal Rangers I felt like the smartest guy there, at Trail Life I'm definitely smarter than some and definitely not as smart as some others. Not only that, but the values are better. The Rangers group had a good leader and a bunch of parents who seemed to be the type who wore Christianity as part of their cultural costume (yea, who am I to judge, but I did), and many kids who misbehaved. At TL cellphones are banned and are confiscated from kids if they're seen and the men are all Mr Lastname, at Rangers it's all first name. Above all the deeper understanding of how bad the times are and how it makes things like TL necessary make me feel blessed to have this group.
Now I need to get the wife to bring our daughter to the American Heritage Girls group that's run by the wives of many of the men from Trail Life.
It's a Scouts alternative that's been around for more than half a century. It's a nominally Pentacostal group but it lets in non-Pentacostal groups. The one we tried was based out of an area megachurch that bought a BSA camp at an auction and relocated to it. The final straw with this Rangers group was a dad who kept burning his plastic garbage in the camp fire. The whole group was a clique who knew each other from the church and I was the outsider, so I said nothing about that. The church that sponsors this group has three pastors and none of them have attended seminary. I haven't heard anything wrong from them when visiting or watching online, but I'm definitely weary of a church led by a guy who makes a big deal of that he reads the whole Bible in a year every year. That's great but I expect more depth from a pastor.
Hey Rod - a heads up - Chris Koncz has a long post near the end of the thread dealing with Hungary that you possibly wouldn't want to miss. I am really glad I read it.
Re: I've been told by one of them that only homosexual sex is considered sinful.
Er, that is the standard orthodox (small "o") teaching.
And a "non-sexual homosexual relationship" is an oxymoron. If there's no sex in it, it isn't any kind of "sexual" anything. The fancy-pants word "homosocial" has been coined for this, but we have a good old Anglo-Saxon word already: friendship.
They believe that homosexuals can have romance and even marriage and that it's not sin. Somehow this is all separate from sexual activities in theory but when challenged go find examples of this being true in practice they can't come up with any.
They probably think that Paul was writing romantic letters to Timothy
Nevertheless it's the sex that is sinful, not love. We are told in Scripture that David loved Jonathan "passing the love of women" and that Jesus loved one of his Apostles especially well. Some have tried to read sexuality into that, which, No, nothing whatsoever points to that. Over among those pesky old Greeks Plato and Aristotle agreed that friendship is the most vital of social relationships. We go down a very dark path if we start opining that love and friendship, without any sexual involvement, should also be suspect.
I can love my daughter without having sex with her, but we all know what these "love is love" people are talking about and what things like cohabitation and same sex "marriage" entail. I agree with the Catholic stance on this stuff.
I really don't think it is. The condition of having same-sex desire is disordered. Acting on it is sinful, that's correct. Living chastely in spite of having those desires is not sinful. What I meant was that churches who agree with Scripture and Tradition that same-sex desire is disordered are fundamentally and irreconcilably different from churches who believe that it is within the divinely given order of creation. I think even a pro-LGBT liberal Christian would agree that the two positions are irreconcilable.
There was a blogger that I used to follow who would occassionally comment on one of Rod's former sites (and a few others that I followed at the time) who was in a difficult relationship. He was living with a man, in a committed relationship but finally (in his 50's, I think) committed to chastity and publicly renounced his former lifestyle. He nursed his companion through a long sickness and death.
Of course he found himself in the middle of many hard-left/hard-right disputes. He rejected gay marriage. I'm not going to post his name because I think he became a bit distraught with how his engagement in this debate depleted him. He got pummeled from both sides. I haven't seen a blog entry from him in a long time......some here may remember him.
I suspect a similar relationship from one of my elderly female neighbors. I think we may be surprised at how many of these situations are out there.
Watch this—it’s short—and actually *listen* to what he says. McClellan is a well-respected scholar and a practicing Mormon, but he calls it as he sees it on interpretation of Scripture.
Not sure how this a response to what I stated above. Homosexual sex is a sin. Being homosexual is not. I am stating standard orthodox Christian teaching.
I'm not sure it's standard orthodox Christian practice, however.
Rods "misstatement" is probably better reflective of life on the ground, I think, for many I've known and read about coming from standard orthodox Christian homes and churches.
We don't seem to have a setting that falls in between ostracization and celebration, unfortunately.
Re: We don't seem to have a setting that falls in between ostracization and celebration, unfortunately.
But we do, and we employ that standard all the time when we deal with people whose religious beliefs we reject-- we have happily gotten over that era when "heretics" and "Infidels" were to be persecuted. I can't see why such a "live and let live" cannot apply in this area too.
It could but the left won't permit it. You must "celebrate" the LGBTQWERTY orientations, you understand; to not celebrate it is tantamount to hatred. You must applaud; you must wear the pin; you must march in the parade. You can't merely sit on the sidelines watching it all go through, keeping your own thoughts to yourself - silence is violence, right? You must acquiesce to the raising of the "Pride" flag in the classrooms, outside government buildings and whatnot. You must be a participant - there can be no spectators. That is the attitude of the Pride left.
You referred to friendship. The question is what is included under that rubric. Is it everything up to actual sex (genital involvement)? That is all other kinds of homosexual physical affection short of sex fall under the rubric of "friendship" (as you suggested in your comment to which I was responding).
If you look at ancient and even Medieval sources, same-sex friends in fact frequently kissed each other on the mouth (not “making out”, but certainly more than moderns are comfortable with), embraced, spoke of their love for each other, used very intimate terms in personal correspondence (“I long for your return”; “Do not make me suffer from your absence”; “I cannot wait to kiss you and hold you again”, “Dear”, “Beloved”, “Darling”, etc.), and often shared beds. One’s best friend was generally seen as a more important relationship than one’s *spouse*. Some contemporary cultures approve of same-sex friends holding hands or kissing in greeting, even in public. So what comes under the rubric of friendship is a lot more than most modern Westerners, particularly Americans, think.
As another poster notes there are times and place where men hold hands and even kiss-- Judas kissing Jesus in Gethsemane was a betrayal but it isn't treated as an unnatural act of lust.
I think all of these are a little off. First, there is no question biologically that the human species, like all species more complex than a hydra or a sponge, is sexually dimorphic and heteronormative. Second, it is mathematically and biochemically almost inevitable that there will be variations -- that is people who for various reasons, whether genetic predisposition or epigenetic shifts or traumatic experience will feel something a little different, such as same-sex attraction. Think of a graph where data is recorded in dots. There is always a dense clumping toward the center, and gradually thinning patterns of variation from the norm, which is the dense cluster.
That's all materialistic. Spiritual criteria could be applied in many ways. Its not unreasonable to say, same-sex attraction occurs, but its not something to indulge but to resist. For those to whom the sheer joy of sex is the point, its not unreasonable to retort "Easy for you to say, you get to have all the fun while you deny this to people who are different." None other than Giusppe Scalas opined that social order alone might require some legal arrangement for same sex couples to formalize whatever their bond is. But it doesn't have to be sacramentally recognized as a Marriage. We should recognize that for those who experience same sex attraction, this is the only life they have to live.
Somewhere between actual penetration and platonic friendship, there is of course a range of possibilities, like hugs and kisses that go far beyond the usual friendship between individuals of the same sex. Then there is the article in Touchstone magazine some years back, lamenting that the rise of social acceptance of homosexuality has made what previously was a respected bond between two men, even calling it love, is now almost impossible without mistaking it for a sexual relationship. David and Jonathan could have been either one. I have little doubt what the bond between Achilles and Patroclus was, given the cultural they existed within.
I'm active on reddit, in fact I'm a moderator on a smallish sub. I saw that new rule on some (most) Christian subs, really quite ridiculous given that it indubitably goes against standard Christian doctrine. These rule changes come from above, I'm convinced of that. Reddit is a typical woke silicon valley company, DEI and adhering to woke dogma matters more to them than even profits. I have had several incidents that clearly indicated this to me and Reddit policy simply filters out anyone who isn't on board with the woke agenda.
My old reddit account was first suspended for three days, when I expressed the incontrovertible fact, that it is not possible to change one's biological sex, it is a scientific impossibility, at least with current technology, though we can of course play around with societally defined gender as much as we want. Somebody reported me for hate speech and I got a 3-day reddit-wide ban.
Then my account was banned permanently, when I made a joke, which was a direct quote from Monty Python's Life of Brian. No appeal, no review, just a forever ban for making a light hearted joke.
In comparison, it took the concerted effort of 6 or 7 reddit moderators, the FBI and Scotland Yard in the UK to get an Islamic Fundamentalist and black magician, who was cursing people and sending specific death threats, permanently removed from reddit.
Every time I try to link to an article from a right-wing website, like Zerohedge or Vdare, the link is automatically removed from reddit, as it is on their blacklist.
So, inevitably, with time, people who are not on board with wokeism will get weeded out from reddit and it will become a left-wing liberal echo-chamber. I'd say it already is, it is impossible to express any opinion that is even centre right on the Hungarian subreddits for instance. Every post or comment gets voted down into oblivion, so it's never seen and wokesters tend to react with ad hominems and malicious slurs.
I'm very mainstream. Most of my links came from Hot Air or RealClearPolitics. My old account was permanently banned for "transphobia". They flagged the IP and would ban any new accounts I created or used from it. I'm far less active now than before, as being normal is a bannable offense there.
To paraphrase Ramparts magazine on the demise of Students for a Democratic Society, "One, two, three, many Boy Scouts of America!" That's not such a bad thing. If cultural patterns and expectations are different, there is no particular reason there should be Only One Boy Scouts organization. In the long run, perhaps some of them will develop a collegial mutuality while recognizing their differences, as many Protestant denominations have. I have even heard of devout Roman Catholics on private school accreditation commissions praise how well Lutherans practice their faith.
"There is something about the paralysis of ruling-class elites on both sides that renders them incapable of carrying out the clear will of voters on this matter."
Because these elites have painted themselves into a corner. So dead-set on brandishing their (supposed) moral bona fides, they paint everyone to the right of them on immigration as racist. That makes it impossible to tack right in the slightest on the issue; they're wedded to the narrative of "anyone who opposes immigration in any way is racist." And the problem is, the country just isn't as "enlightened" and virtuous as they are.
I’m always amazed by the abrupt shift in liberals here in the US. Only a few years ago Bernie Sanders socialism was all the rage. Now they trumpet a roaring capitalist economy that can accommodate mass migration— despite decrying it 4 years ago as exploitive, unjust, and failing. And if anyone mentions inflation, interest rates etc, they’re told to basically stop whining.
It didn't take long for the Russian Bolsheviks to evolve an oligarchical collectivism, with dachas and mistresses and good things eat, and Zil limousines for me but not for thee. Sometime around 1983 it occurred to the pink diaper brigade that being rich was fun, and if you could have that and hate your neighbor too, why on earth wouldn't you sign up for THAT?
Very true. Once the White Russians were defeated and executed, the Communists got to go on nice little vacations in expropriated dachas. Ian Fleming hints at this extravagant lifestyle in "From Russia, With Love." Stalin and his cronies had a fine time, eating and drinking and watching American films until three in the morning.
Have you read the descriptions of the banquets Stalin used to throw before during and after the war--at Yalta, too, when more than half of Europe was starving? Even the hapless 1939 allied delegation coming to Moscow hat in hand to beg Stalin to be nice to them got treated like royalty.
Sure. And Mao was worse. In 1962, the Communist Party met on a boat on the Yangtsee River and had several days of banquets while the surrounding countryside was starving during the Great Leap Forward.
and let's not forget that just about every night Mao had a fresh young virgin delivered to him for some righteous revolutionary raping—it's good to be the king!
That's a stretch... do you have thoroughly researched empirical data? That kind of story is easy to manufacture. He did have a wife, and she was no pushover. That hasn't stopped many men in history having mistresses, but a fresh young virgin every night sounds like manufactured propaganda.
The woke left still theoretically supports socialism as long as they can keep their affluent lifestyles. Capitalism is still evil. Taxation of conservative pigs is still important so that the leftist elite can be provided for and the Third World immigrants can survive and vote for the leftist elite.
That's why I keep telling you they are NOT socialists at all. Its like utterly depraved hedonists insisting "But I'm still a Christian." (There are of course species of prosperity gospel Christians who insist that because they have professed faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior they can sin all they want, because they are already forgiven.)
That, like most stereotypes, depends on the personality, time and place. There have been many communist leaders who talked that way, some who enforced it, some who lived by it. On the other hand, free love did tend to be cherished by some in the various Young Communist Leagues. You can even find such sentiments in Stalin-era novelists expounding the glories of Socialist Construction.
I am of course well aware that there were Communist leaders who lived lives of womanizing while preaching sexual puritanism. Mao is the obvious one. Stalin was also something of philanderer, and with teenage girls. Lenin I think was one who behaved himself. He strikes me as such a cold fish I imagine him and Krupskaya in bed together debating the dialectic.
There is some question whether Lenin and Krupskaya's marriage was ever consummated. Like all speculation on that subject with any couple, there is no way to know. They married when Lenin was in exile in Siberia and needed a capable secretary, but they wouldn't be allowed to live together, nor she to even travel to the vicinity, unless they were married. Naturally she made the most of being Lenin's widow, although Stalin is reputed to have told her on one occasion "Shut up b___ or we'll find someone else to be Lenin's widow."
Our trust fund revolutionaries are all beneficiaries of our capitalist system so it makes sense that at some point they'd stop biting the hand that's fed them so well.
But it's that "stop whining about inflation" bit that's really going to bite them in the *ss this election year. We just spent a week in California (live in Florida) and I was floored at grocery and gas prices. Eggs $6/dozen; gas $4.79 a gallon or higher (I paid $5.99/gallon right outside the San Fransisco Airport - obvious airport markup, but still).
The trust fund revolutionaries just aren't as impacted by this. I came away from the experience thinking - I guess poor people in California don't eat eggs, and probably only fill up their gas tanks halfway at each pit stop. But stop whining, pleb.
True. Very true. If a copy remains in print, look up Don West's "Romantic Appalachia: Or, Poverty Pays if You Ain't Poor." These trust fund revolutionaries are not new, they didn't even first appear in the 1960s.
Meanwhile gasoline prices are falling, and at a time of year when it's usually the opposite.
Re: The trust fund revolutionaries just aren't as impacted by this.
Everyone is affected by rising prices, albeit their particular situation may differ in the details. If you don't drive you don't care about gas prices. If you own a house, or have a fixed rate mortgage, you don't care about rent inflation.
Well, that depends on who you ask. But liberals are more the ones who were really enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton, and insisted Sanders couldn't win. Liberalism is by origin and history the ideology of capitalism. Liberal Republicans are the ones who shut down Reconstruction so the nation could get on with subsizing massive business investments while obtaining cheap labor from pitting newly freed "black" workers against "white" workers who sometimes suspected that's the agenda that would really dominate the Republican Party in the long run. I have immigrant coal mining ancestors who joined the Abolitionist movement on arrival, and remained Republican right down to my late mother, but nothing is categorically true for any given demographic. It IS true that many would-be socialists are letting themselves get distracted by culture war issues, which is why there isn't an emerging socialist movement grabbing about a quarter of the Trump vote and merging it with disaffected working class families who so far still vote for Democrats.
The recordings are a James O'Keefe level stunt. And yes that is intended to point out that rightwing flacks have done this too (Yes, I seer Rod pointed this out)
Re: it is unjust for a church to regard the condition of being homosexual as sinful.
Huh? The state of "being homosexual" is not sinful. Only homosexual sex acts are. That is mainstream teaching across multiple churches, including the Orthodox Church. (Rod, if this was your cold meds fogging your brain, you're excused for the misstatement).
Re: I dunno — have you considered reducing immigration?
In the US a major bipartisan immigration bill was tanked because a certain presidential candidate wants to run on the issue. The same guy is even complaining about the President's recent action even though they reiterate some of his own acts while in the Oval Office. Apparently our narcissist-in-chief wanna-be doesn't care about immigration; he just cares about whether actions on that front rebound to his credit. (A saner man would respond to such developments with "See? They're following my advice now! Elect me and you'll get the whole enchilada!")
"I bring this up not to embarrass the late Father Neuhaus, who was a great man."
Nope. Sorry. His support of the war takes that off the table. HIS support of the war. Not everybody who did think invading Iraq was a good idea is morally compromised, but he certainly is. You could start and end with "he was a Roman Catholic priest", but that's not good enough.
Back in the mid- to late '90s when I was still a fan and enjoying the display of his very formidable polemical skills, I told my confessor, an Opus Dei priest, that I thought he, Neuhaus, was "slick". This was not received well. But it was true. He was trying to square the circle between his backers (this is a family show, so keep it at that), was too into "building bridges" to evangelicals (a fool's errand, in my opinion), and mostly just toeing the neocon line a little too strictly. But I did admire him. (I will say I first heard about John Lukacs in the pages of First Things, and Lukacs became the great discovery of my reading life's middle years.)
In trying to put words to what I felt when I heard him quite fiercely screaming to invade Iraq, I can't do better than to say, "It doesn't matter to him whether this is a just war or not. He wants it too bad." I knew plenty of people (my wife, for example) who believed there were WMD and ended up recoiling in horror at what we wrought in Mesopotamia. But I knew from the get-go it was a put up job, partly because I have a dirty mind, and party because of who was screaming for it. Like Neuhaus.
So no great man laurels, sorry. If there's anything that divides the sheep from the goats it's that war, and those who dragged us into knowing it was a lie.
Though I don’t know Neuhaus’ record in much detail, I have to agree on the general sentiment. For me too support for that war was a litmus test. It was too glaringly a bait and switch, as anyone who did even a bit of homework could see.
Those who were pulled in emotionally, as I think Rod was, having been in New York when the Towers fell—well, they deserve a lot of slack. I think many good conservatives in that era hadn’t yet developed enough scepticism vis a vis claims coming out of Washington. But those who played it for what we might call neocon points, they deserve only contempt.
Fr. Neuhaus's defense of Maciel shocked me at the time. I was then a contributing editor at the National Catholic Register, recently acquired by the Legionaries. The staff had already discovered that our new employers were, as one of my colleagues put it, "ignorant, arrogant, and incompetent." The charges against Maciel sounded entirely plausible to us, even before the whole picture emerged.
But on the matter of misjudging one's heroes, when Fr. Bruce Ritter, founder of Covenant House, was accused of sexual involvement with some of the teens sheltered there, I wrote a fiery defense of him for Catholic Twin Circle. I was so sure that he'd been set up by criminal elements who profited by exploiting youth. The column was peculiarly difficult to write: something kept telling me over and over not to do it. Turned out, it must have been the voice of my guardian angel, because Fr. Ritter really was guilty. That error has been a thorn for my pride ever since.
Fr Ritter spoke at my High School in about 1981. Many were climbing over each other to defend him. Being a believing Catholic is (or at least should be) a humbling experience.
I found some of Neuhaus' writings quite moving (e.g., "Death on a Friday afternoon"). But his defense of all things Bush in the 00s was full bore disgusting.
Fr. Neuhaus had a great conversion story after so many years as a Lutheran pastor. "If you were with me before, you are with me now" and "I wanted more of what I already had."
His writing opened the door for protestants to convert while not burning bridges, but few people walked through. I'm grateful that I could be one of those people.
I also blame the people who didn't come. They lacked a natural law background, or they had it and thought they could afford to discard it.
It's possible that we believing Protestants lack what you call a natural law background.
Poor us, we have the Bible.
I do not understand Protestants who became Catholic unless their Protestantism was inherited, not acquired, and who when they became Christians, moved to Catholicism.
We really do have reasons of belief which prevent our doing so, you know.
To broaden the situation beyond my own conscience for my life path, there were two honorable paths. Convert or fix. I didn't expect everyone to convert, but I was skeptical of the fix. No fix was to be had and the seriousness about what the Bible says was lost at that church. While I suspect some faithful people landed at a good protestant church they would have been the ones taking new jobs and moving away, so I don't know.
To be very specific, I believe that things have an essence, contra Judith Butler. You don't have to call it natural law, but anyone who thinks the way God set it out means something can have a conversation with someone using a natural law framework. I cannot have an honest conversation with Judith Butler because she insists certain things don't have meaning when I find it spiritually intuitive that they do.
Everyone I have lost refused natural law type arguments along with looking at what the Bible says. For example God made them male and female means something. If I can get someone to agree with that, I can be friends. That's where I see small o orthodoxy. Maybe they want female pastors but not head pastors. I disagree, but fine. A huge number of women will dismiss anything they don't like because they have their own vision for what they want for women in the church and are too eager to explain away the Bible.
Some Baptists, to use the best example I have, have a practicality which lines up pretty well with natural law (at least the ones I was reading when considering all this, they are a broad group.) I guess we could call it a Bible culture, but it's not something one can make out of nothing, it would be received to at least an extent.
I am in the Northeast. I could imagine a conservative church with a school doing what you outline, Bible or tell people to take a hike. The public school and non Christian college environment plus media was an acid bath. I wasn't even focused on calling it natural law back then, but looking back a sense of the pattern of creation meaning something is an extremely accurate sieve of who kept a serious faith in an outward way and who hid behind liberal feelings that the Bible can mean anything.
If one can't receive a Bible culture, and I think it is getting harder and harder to do so, natural law is the other way to approach it and get to the truth. It also builds bridges to some people at some times to say that our best reason and the God of the Bible can be reconciled.
First, Hope, I apologize for my cuteness, and thank you for your graciousness in not calling me an ass. Second, thank you for taking the time with a long, articulate reply.
What I want to tell you is that I have never known any "Bible or take a hike" types, either in terms of what would clearly be rudeness or their supposed narrowness of interest.
Unless they have a personality problem ( I did have phone contact, thankfully brief, with such a man thirty years ago ), any serious Protestant, as opposed to a nominalist, delights in explaining what we believe to inquirers, so much so that Protestants are not infrequently the objects of Catholic and Orthodox insinuation that not only do we lack the Sacraments ( we don't ), but that our faith is such an intellectual thing that outsiders can't help being dismayed by our dismissal of the supernatural, or at least the mysterious.
And it just is not true. About this I can do no more than borrow the Orthodox invitation to come and see.
As for the idea that we are a "Bible or scram" people, I suppose I can fairly cite only my own conservative Presbyterian church. ( I have been in others, and can tell you that their practices are similar to what I'm about to describe. )
We have a men's reading group which meets at a Celtic pub. The group recently worked its way through Augustine's Confessions, and is about to move on to St Basil. Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World is a book which we all love.
I think I'm more Catholic inclined than most of them. Most of my favorite writers are Catholic: Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Waugh, Walker Percy. I love Flannery O'Connor's stories but take particular delight in the collection of her letters, The Habit of Being. I have her newly arrived book of essays, Mystery and Manners, by my chair, but haven't started it yet. Her prayer journal, which was on sale on Amazon recently, is in the queue.
Ah, I have made that very appeal to various Presbyterians, that didn't they know they were Reformed Catholics, and it fell flat. I've done it both seriously and as a gentle tease, and neither hooked any interest. It goes to show the extent of the decline in some places.
I have one low protestant in mind who has great faith but was attending a faithful church without the sort of denominational guidelines that I would look for. Simple but honest churches are just blessed sometimes. It can work, but the Bible and nothing else is not a recipe.
Maybe a month ago I remarked in these boxes that I missed protestants. Soon after I had the opportunity to pray with a protestant friend, small o orthodox, although not nearby. It was a small sense that we can find enough common ground to pray together. Not for a service, because for that everyone ought to follow their conscience, but an extra prayer.
I'll also say this. I saw growing up how to run a Presbyterian Sunday School program, with great effort and volunteer involvement, and the total result being much more failure than success. I don't think the belief was right enough, too liberal at times and it showed the difficulty of getting it just right because some of it over the years was pretty good.
Telling kids about Jesus through stories of the Saints delightfully just works. I was skeptical. I looked extensively for ways around this. It was not how I came to faith but it is done because it works. I think it's human to hear people's stories about trusting Jesus and relating them to our own lives. There is a demand for Saint stories in my house that I never would have predicted. Previously I thought Catholics were just being difficult.
The highest complement I have heard a Catholic give a Protestant is "he is living out his Baptism" from Charles J. Chaput to one of the folks at First Things. That phrase has power, because it references the sacraments we have together and it is one of the most unifying things I have read about small o orthodox Christians saying about one another.
I have no problem with advising Christians to look to dead saints to be encouraged by them, because the Bible tells us to remember them. I do have a problem with praying to them, though I understand and am sympathetic to the Catholic rationale for doing so. I'm just not so sure that those who are with Christ are that aware of us, if they're aware at all.
My fancy is that the recognition that they're face to face with the Lord of Glory is so staggering that it obliterates more than a dull and dim remembrance of us, if even that is possible for them. This is, well, temporary is a difficult word to use in regard to Eternity, so I'll just say I think their memory of us may be in suspension. Post resurrection, of course, everything changes.
I think most people who were blessed to grow up in a two parent home have tended to feel closer to one parent than to the other. Genetics may account for this. In that sense, I'm my mother's son: same relish for storytelling and history; common ability to pick up on subtle, momentary things in a person and read, correctly, much more into them than the person intended to convey; same ruthless sense of humor. ( Once, while a group of us were laying flowers at the graves of my maternal grandparents and great grandmother, something occurred to my mother which she probably hadn't thought of since 1930. With a perfectly straight face, she asked me a question. I didn't realize I was being set up. I answered as she knew I would. Then WHAM!! she punchlined me with a joke which had probably died with vaudeville. I didn't laugh, I shrieked, thereby annoying other mourners nearby, which pleased my subversive mother very much. )
She died in 2001. She was a Christian. As close as she and I were, it actually pleases me to speculate that the presence of Jesus Christ is so gobsmacking that in the almost twenty - three years since her death, my mother hasn't thought of me at all.
Yup, NPR just interviewed the hack "reporter" responsible for this. It was a big assed nothingburger, whose big REVEAL was that Justice Alito says that Christians need to recapture the culture. Nothing about his job or how he does it, but him having an opinion on something outside the job and saying it to someone.
His only mistake is, as you say, Rod, being to free with his opinions to a stranger, for a guy in his position.
The implication is that his opinions get in the way of him doing his job, when the record is the Leftward jurists do that, not all, not always, but far more. Along with Leftward talking heads, for various reasons, opine that the Constitution SHOULD be ignored by jurists.
Ruthie Marcus sends out a text during term on Supreme Court rulings, and matters relating to the court. Even she was appalled at the recording, but it didn't stop her from basely mocking poor Mrs. Alito, who sounds like a formidable person.
I'd never heard of the Appeal to Heaven flag, but I'm getting one for the house my apartment is in. On the street I live on, I have a good chance of not having a window smashed in because of it.
Seems to me there is a media effort to publicly discredit / pressure the conservative members of the Supreme Court. Failing that, the negative attention serves to make any conservative jurist think twice before accepting a prospective nomination. Saul Alinsky stuff.
Joan Walsh has the vapors right now in her short hit piece (not worth reading; it's a discredit to the author) at the 'Nation' describing Samuel Alito's wife as a "far-right Catholic crackpot" who "fantasized" about flying her "freak flag" aka the Sacred Heart of Jesus flag.
My liberal sister was a briefly a neighbor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's grand niece. They compared notes on their relative upbringings one day. The grand niece recalled her youth growing up in a very politically engaged New York City secular Jewish family as a one of near endless political activism and events. Summer brought relief in visiting a tony private summer camp in New England.
Lefty media would have us consider the Alitos religious faith as disqualifying; they might bring their personal beliefs into the court. Ginsburg family activism was fine because secularism is somehow considered level playing field neutrality.
By the way, the left is freaking out over Trump's possible triumph in November. A scribbling creature named Ian Millhiser in Vox has demanded that Justices Sotomayor and Kagan must resign now so Biden can pick two Supreme Court justices before Trump gets in.
That's exactly what this is about, attempting to vilify conservative members of the court - maybe in some attempt to impeach them, maybe in an attempt to make the case for packing the court, maybe just to discredit/delegitimize expected conservative rulings to come.
After all, if the court is just a bunch of "right-wing extremists" maybe "our democracy" is best to ignore their "partisan" rulings, right?
Oh, this would motivate me more as a conservative jurist to accept a posting. What are they going to do? Whine about it? Impotent Leftist rage, spiced with spite, is delicious. Any jurist frightened by them or by media complaining does not have the mettle to be on that court, especially in this day and age. So you don't get invited to all the cocktail parties. Do you really want to drink with and talk to "them"? I really don't.
*If Scripture is correct and it is sinful, then it cannot be normalized.*
Rod, as an Orthodox Christian, you do not hold a belief in *sola scriptura*. The same is true for Catholics, as you’re well aware. You also are aware the “clobber verses” approving of slavery, oppression of women, and genocide exist aplenty on Scripture. The understanding of these passages has been reinterpreted and renegotiated in modern times as not truly reflective of God’s will and not applicable in modern times.
It is by Scripture scholar Dan McClellan. He is a well-known and erudite scholar who is a *practicing* Mormon and a married man. In the video he explains why there is no basis for accepting the anti-LGBT clobber verses as either meaning what we think they mean, or being applicable in the present day. I ask to watch the video, hear him out, and really *hear* what he says and not just dismiss him out of hand.
It may not change your mind. The point is that it is *very* tiresome when you say that “Scripture teaches” that homosexuality is sinful. It *also* teaches that homosexuality should be punished by death, that slavery is A-OK, that we shouldn’t eat blood sausage (see Acts 21:25), and a ton of other things we don’t abide by now. I know you’ll argue that those are different for reasons XYZ. The point is that all such XYZ arguments depend on later tradition or factors external to the text itself. This is exactly what happened with the verses on slavery, or long hair on men (not only does Paul condemn long hair on men in 1 Corinthians 11:14, he says it’s a matter of *natural law*), and so on.
Bottom line, tl;dr: When you talk that way you sound like a fundamentalist Protestant arguing that the Bible *clearly says* the earth was made in six days, only on a different topic. You can oppose LGBT issues if you insist—but PLEASE don’t do so with facile and simplistic appeals to Scripture that just don’t hold up. Is that fair?
No offense, but I was hearing the same arguments 30-odd years ago when I was a religious studies major at a liberal Catholic college. In fact, one of the books cited, by a Catholic theologian no less, was called something like "What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality."
The fact of the matter is, and I say this as an Orthodox Christian who rejects sola scripture (indeed my graduate honors project was a historical critique of it), the Scriptures are quite clear about homosexuality when taken at face value, and it's the liberals on the subject that have to do all the hermeneutical turnings and twistings to make the peg fit the hole (pun intended).
Scriptures are quite clear about homosexuality when taken at face value that the cosmos was created six thousand years ago; that people in Mesopotamia tried to build a tower that would reach into space; that the entire planet was covered with water to a height of over five miles; that slavery is not forbidden; that a man can have multiple wives (nothing in the New Testament abrogates polygyny, except maybe for deacons, priests, and bishops—cf. the letters to Timothy); that it is forbidden even for Christians (see the book of Acts) to eat blood (goodbye, blood sausage); and many, many, *many* other things.
Now one can argue that one or more of these are different from the verses on homosexuality, but no one is *ever* consistent. Creationists defend a literal six-day creation as passionately as Rod defends the sinfulness of homosexuality. Antebellum slaveowners defended the legitimacy of slavery based on the Bible. There is actually a Christian polygamy group (https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/2000/01/17/my-three-wives-christian-polygamists/50499817007/) that—correctly— claim that the New Testament does not *explicitly* condemn polygamy; and so on.
So if one were debating with a creationist or polygamist, the first necessary thing is to admit that they are *correct* in that Scripture, when taken at *face value*, indeed *supports* their contentions. Then one must go on to explain why it *shouldn’t* be taken at face value. So homosexuality is the same—yeah, taken at face value, Scripture condemns it. What the arguments of McClellan do is explain why Scripture should *not* be taken at face value in this case, just as I’d try to explain to a creationist why the Genesis account should not be taken at face value.
So you’re not wrong; but *why* should the clobber verses on homosexuality be taken at face value, but not those on slavery or creation or even divorce (Jesus gives no exceptions in Mark, and the exception in Matthew—“except in case of *porneia*, literally, “whorishness”, which implies adultery—is construed more broadly in the Orthodox Church, which does not limit valid cause solely to adultery)?
The other things that you mention have in their historical understandings long-standing traditional interpretations/explanations -- they have what one could call a hermeneutical patrimony or continuity. The subject of homosexuality, not so much. The Church was virtually unanimous on this subject until approximately yesterday.
The Church was virtually unanimous on the sin of usury, defined not as excessive interest, but *any* interest (hence Jewish moneylenders) until about the 18th century. Creationists would take *strong* issue with you that there’s no “hermeneutical patrimony or continuity” for their views. In fact, until after the enlightenment and scientific discoveries that showed the earth’s true age, most Christians *did* believe in a young earth, and this was what started the controversy of young earthers in the first place. Hell, it could be argued that a young earth has *stronger* hermeneutical continuity—even gay people thought the universe was six thousand years old!
Wrong on all counts. Disagreements over interest/usury began much earlier, in the 13th/14th centuries if memory serves, and the eventual approval of it caused many problems afterwards. The anti-usury tradition should have been left alone, as many argued at the time.
You read me wrong. I said that the other questions DID have hermeneutical continuity, including the creation story. Homosexuality is the outlier.
OK, correction taken. Still, that’s a millennium and a third before usury was questioned. As to interpreting what you said, I did get confused. What I was trying to say was this:
1. The change in teaching on usury (which, FWIW, *!* think was a bad idea, too), took thirteen hundred years even to come up, and took almost another five hundred years to be changed. That undermines the “consistent teaching of the Church theory.
2. Hermetically continuity is often partisan and difficult to establish. Catloics, for example argue that Apostolic Succession, Marian devotion, and teaching on the Real Presence in the Eucharist go back to the primitive Church. Protestants argue that these are later accretions or innovations. The problem is that the sources in the first three centuries AD are spotty enough that if you squint right you can make them say lots of different things. E.g. a Catholic might play the Irenaeus card (“where the bishop is, there is the Church”) to argue for unbroken Apostolic succession. A Protestant might respond that it takes a long time before there’s even a clear distinction between bishops and presbyters (Wesley noted this three hundred years ago), and that “episkopos” and “presbyter”, being secular terms in Koine Greek, cannot be construed to indicate a sacramental office passed down in an unbroken chain. The sources we have can’t conclusively demonstrate either position.
So some things that are argued to be in hermeneutical continuity are often difficult to *prove* to be such; and some things that strongly seem actually to have *been* in hermeneutical continuity have been *reversed*. Both of those facts undermine arguments in regard to homosexuality.
You probably still won’t agree with my position, but maybe it’s clear what I’m getting at now.
I am. You're not a brother in Christ. You're a false teacher. And John, in his second Epistle, commands us to veritably slam the door in the faces of such people.
Harry, the LGBT position of the church isn't rooted in what you call the "clobber verses". It's rooted in the Garden. It's rooted in the most basic pieces of human anthropology: "male and female He created them" and "be fruitful and multiply" and "it is not good for man to be alone". This applies to the Orthodox Church especially, which claims its tradition as "what all Christians have believed in all places and at all times." One need not quote Paul to arrive at the conclusion that homosexual behavior is inherently against God's order (both Natural Law and Divine Law in an Aquinas sense).
There is no corresponding "what is man" related issue with slavery, for example, or with the role of women. God didn't say "black and white He created them". He didn't say "with long and short hair He Created them". He didn't say "be fruitful with thy own kind alone". Ironically, it was these very Garden verses (the innate dignity and equality of man before God) that inspired the Enlightenment, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, and the Civil Rights movement. On this issue though, those verses work against liberalism instead of for it, which is a hint that homosexual behavior is anthropologically different than race or sex. (And it is: it is a "behavior" not a trait.)
As a side note, using a Mormon scholar to backup your position that portions of Scripture should be reinterpreted probably isn't the most convincing argument to Christians.
1. The Garden narrative didn’t prevent the Jews from allowing polygamy (which is not actually abolished in the New Testament) and divorce, which is allied in the Orthodox Church and many Protestant denominations. Also, the Catholic Church uses the same logic for banning contraception, with which most other churches would disagree.
2. Slaves were thought to be a “lower” form of humanity *fit* for slavery—see many of the pro-slavery arguments of the century before last. To say of a human that he may be *owned as property* by another *indeed* seems to be a “what is man” issue. What, indeed, is man, if he can be bought and sold like *livestock*?
3. Paul *literally said* that long hair on men is against nature!
So in light of all this, how does the creation narrative in and of itself indicate that all homosexual behavior is wrong?
By the way, I post McClellan because he’s well informed and articulate. Having seen a lot of his videos, I’m prepared to say that he doesn’t let his church affiliation influence his scholarly views. To dismiss him on that basis is the genet fallacy. But honestly, if he were Catholic or Orthodox or Baptist or whatever, would that *change* your assessment of his argument?
1. Not relevant to your point. Or at least, not the way you want, since the church's teaching on marriage and adultery is intimately tied to the rest of its teachings on sexual ethics. There is no reconciling normalization of homosexuality with the church's teaching on the nature of the human person and the nature of the male/female relationship.
2. Yes, and it was precisely the "made in the image of God" narrative as the human anthropology articulated by the Church (and the Jews) for over 3000 years which made people gradually stop viewing slaves this way. The first millennium Popes got there first; the Protestant Reformation rolled the clock back, and the Enlightenment finally put the nail in slavery's coffin. But in both cases, the argument hinged on the Church's teaching on the nature and innate dignity of man.
3. Only relevant to fundamentalists who adhere 100% to sola scriptura. (And those are as rare as Hassidic Jews.)
Comments on Rod's blog are not the place to articulate the entire argument for the proper role of human sexuality. Many great books have been written on this subject; the best is likely Pope JPII's Theology of the Body. My response was only to point out that your claim about Paul's "clobber verses" being the core of the Church's LGBT teaching is simply not accurate at all.
You’re right that there’s no room to do a proper exposition here, so I’ll leave it at this. I’ve read extracts from the *The Theology of the Body*, and have not found it plausible. I recently acquired a copy of it though, and intend to read it. I’ll give it a fair chance, but it’ll take awhile to get through.
The main issue I had with “clobber verses” is that Rod, an Orthodox, is always saying Scripture this, Scripture that in much the way that a sola scriptura Protestant would. It’s more complex than that, and I wish he’d be a *little* more nuanced.
Scripture does nowhere say that slavery is A-ok or the oppression of women. That is the problem with Sola Scriptura, it completely lacks context.
Rules were given to deal with the reality of slavery, how to treat people. Same for description of how women were treated, or that polygamy was a thing. Scripture is descriptive, not condoning things.
If you have to reinterpret or renegotiate text in modern times, you are not doing the text justice. You need to get into the mind set of ancient near east civilizations. And actually read the early church fathers. Many of these topics have been addressed with a better understanding of the context. The problem is if you try to interpret the text without context.
I highly recommend "The Whole Counsel of God", by Fr. Stephen de Young. Podcast and blog.
It's called the woke mind virus for a reason. Working much like a computer virus, wokeism is code that makes those, whose mind has been infected with it, unable to perform basic cognitive functions and renders them defenceless against attacks. In fact, it is such a smart virus, that it will make the infected defend those that want to destroy them and attack their own. I guess we should now collectively refer to these people as the "infected", inspired by The Last of Us. In a perverse way, you have to admire the woke mind virus's genius, especially when seeing news of "Queers for Palestine protesters", who I'm sure will soon be joined by "Turkeys for Christmas" and "Billionaires for Communism".
I grew up in a left-wing totalitarian dictatorship (though that was during its dying days) and the tactics used by left-wing activists, like the one described in the beginning of the post, are just so typical of the tactics they have used throughout history. I feel that those of us that have grown up in this part of the world and during that era have been inoculated against woke / left-wing tactics, like shaming and calling someone *-ist (insert preferred -ism you want to tar your opponent with).
"We are the Borg, resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated into the Hive Mind. "
I am trying to figure out why George Soros is funding the looniest, most extreme pro-Palestine groups.
My lizard brain conspiracy theory is that he's elevating them in order to discredit the whole movement. But I am open to alternative explanations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/s-palestinian-protests-us-rcna143666
He can make money off this in some way is likely the main explanation. Also, for there to be a new world order, the old one must fall. He helped the Nazis take inventory of Christian homes ( I know...he was 14) and I don't think opposition to his acts is in any way anti-Semitic. But I think also Soros has a special dislike for the Jewish people, as it appears a majority of non-Jewish leftists do in our day.
You are aware Soros crashed the British pound in order to make money? And he has given hundreds of millions of dollars to elect prosecutors chosen because they will not prosecute crime in the United States? So, he wants money, and he wants the present world order to end so he (or his son if he dies) can be at the top of a new one.
"If" he dies? Do you think he's aiming for immortality, like some of these transhumanists are talking about? Soros is quite elderly by now, no?
He has admitted to having a 'god complex' and 'messiah complex' on several occasions.
I didn't break any rule of writing. Not everything that is implied by context is stated in every sentence. The implication was - Soros has not yet seen the "old world order" cease and the "new world order" come substantially to the fore. If he dies *before* he sees that, then his son will be able to enjoy it. So he still has a motive, even at his age, to continue to try to bring about collapse. Anyway, my Dad's first cousin in 100 years old and in good health - most people don't think "Oh, I'm going to die soon, I'll stop trying to enjoy myself". Soros enjoys destruction.
Hi Linda,
I'm not a fan of Soros either, but I think he has been demonized unfairly by the global right wing, particularly in the USA and here in Hungary.
Sure, he gives a lot of money to leftist and globalist causes and his foundations stir up trouble in various global hotspots, ferment rebellion and revolution, etc...
That is not always a bad thing. For instance, he was instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union (ironically) and freeing Eastern Europe from Moscow's grip. That is the main reason he is so hated by Putin and Russia. He supported democracy movements in this region, whilst we were still living in a totalitarian far-left dictatorship. Viktor Orbán went to Oxford on a Soros scholarship as did many public intellectuals of that era. His foundation distributed copier machines and printers to dissident groups that were opposed to communism and Moscow's rule, so they could print and distribute leaflets and samizdat literature.
He is also unfairly blamed for stuff he had nothing to do with. Malaysia's leader, Mahathir Mohammed, blamed Soros for starting the 1997 financial crisis, which he had nothing to do with, it's well established what financial excesses lead to that particular crash. There is certainly a whiff of antisemitism about it, when Muslim leaders like Mahathir move blame on him, instead of taking responsibility for their own fiscal and economic mismanagement. We know how the Islamic world loves a Jewish financier with global influence...
His supposed role in the deportation of Jews is also grossly mischaracterized. First of all, he was a kid and Jew, in the middle of the most vicious episode of the Holocaust, the sudden and rushed deportation of Hungarian Jews between 1944-1945, after the country was occupied by Germany (though some limited deportations happened prior to that, under the proto-fascist Horthy regime). His father had government connections and knew, that mass deportations of Jews were coming. He concocted a plan to save his family, handing them off to various gentile families where they would assume a false identity. In George's case it helped, that he had that classic aryan look Nazis were so fond of, so nobody suspected him of being a Jew. He was handed off to a government official, a friend of his father and pretended to be his Christian godson.
He did accompany him on his rounds, where they surveyed empty properties that were left behind by deported Jews. But the way it is often portrayed by right-wing commentators, you'd think he was standing there in a Nazi uniform shouting at deported Jews and putting them on trains, laughing in delight. None of that is even remotely accurate and frankly, his father did the right thing to save his family, hiding them in plain sight, where nobody would think to look for them.
In any case, a large proportion of Budapest Jews survived the war, not least because local officials delayed their deportation for as long as they reasonably could and foreign diplomats, like Raoul Wallenberg issued passports, letters of protection and established diplomatic safe houses, to save as many Jews from deportation as they could.
Even today, Budapest has a substantial Jewish population, about 100.000 strong and a thriving Jewish cultural and religious life. My first girlfriend, when I was 18, was a Jew from the Rózsadomb (Rose Hill) area of Budapest, at the time probably the nicest and most upscale neighbourhood in the country. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, the only ones from their extended families who survived the war.
It was sort of an education getting to know her family as they thought of and saw the world very differently. Her mother was a very successful businesswoman, vice president of one of the few companies that thrived in the new economy after the fall of socialism. They were all in with MSZP, the Hungarian Socialist Party, which was basically just a rebranding of the previous Moscow-sponsored party that used to run the country.
I just couldn't understand how they could support a party, that was responsible for major crimes against humanity, ran concentration camps in the fifties and suppressed freedom and free elections only a decade earlier.
However, I quickly discovered that the Budapest elite and Jews in particular saw the world very differently than a "country boy" like me (I was from a small industrial town in Transdanubia, the western part of the country). First of all, in a less extreme version of what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia, the communist party (later rebranded several times), deported a large proportion of Budapest's population to the countryside, those that they deemed as class enemies and political opponents, for instance, families that supported conservative or right-wing politics. Their homes were given to communist party functionaries and loyalists, so in the end, Budapest's population was significantly altered to become far more left-wing, with communist party loyalists and functionaries present in every house.
Jews in particular saw the Soviets as liberators when they arrived in Budapest, so they joined the communist party in large numbers and enthusiastically. This gave them leverage in gaining positions of power they were excluded from by the right-wing, proto-fascist and fascist governments that ruled Hungary from about 1920 to 1945.
Since every right-wing government up to that point was openly anti-semitic, whereas communists embraced them with open arms, they really had no other political home to turn to. This dynamic endured after the fall of socialism as well.
At that time my family were Fidesz-supporters and I was also more sympathetic towards them than any other party at the time. In the nineties, they were the hip new party for young people (they excluded anyone over 35 from their membership ranks, to make a clean break with the previous regime) and the college I went to was filled with Fidesz-supporters, we thought only old people would vote for the failed left-wing.
However, in Budapest (my Alma Mater was in Szombathely, a western town) I saw a very different reality, an elite that was deeply embedded in left-wing politics and had their agents and "people" planted in positions of power, so even though there was ostensibly a "regime change", it didn't last long and MSZP was back in power by 1994, only 4 years after they were forced to concede to democratic elections.
To put that in context, it would be like Germany voting for the NSDAP in 1949 and letting them take control of their country once again, only 4 years they had to relinquish power forcibly and free elections were allowed to take place.
Even as a kid, I was shocked, that the socialists were back in power and Fidesz coming in after them in 1998 was a huge relief. I was in college at the time and helped collect endorsement slips for the local Fidesz activists at my uni, going around, knocking on doors and asking people to endorse the Fidesz candidate. When they won, there was a huge celebration at uni, everyone I knew supported them over the stodgy old party cadres of the previous regime.
However, the mood in Budapest, particularly among Jews, was very different, even apocalyptic, I'd say. My by then ex-gf's family admonished me for supporting Fidesz. How could I? - they asked. It is true, that at the time, Fidesz had a handful of anti-semites amongst its ranks and neo-nazism in general was in vogue amongst Hungarian youth, partly as a response to the suppression of any form of right-wing politics previously and as a rebellion against the old, who were all seen as dyed-in-the-wool socialists.
Miép was the main Neo-Nazi party, but it cannot be denied, that Fidesz wasn't explicitly opposed to anti-semitism and had flirted with it at various times during its history. This all changed after Orbán first met Netanyahu and visited Israel, after which he took his party in a direction of explicit philo-semitism and steadfast support for Israel. This proved to be a smart political move, as every time foreigners criticize his government for "Stop Soros" policies and legislation, he can point to his government's pro-Jewish and pro-Israel policies as proof that being against Soros doesn't equal anti-semitism. In general, I think he's right, though there are exceptions.
Amazing - thank you so much for this post. I will make two replies to the two main parts of the post Soros and 1990s Hungary- I realize Judaism is a theme in both parts. I will do more research on Soros and come back to you - yes I knew exactly what he had done in WW2, and my post was not meant to imply anything else.
My favorite thing to learn about it the fall of totalitarian societies and its aftermath. The aftermath is the hardest thing to learn about - information seems both sparse and disorganized. But not yours - you put so much together here. With this and with having read the super-excellent article you linked on Orban/Netahyanu (I will like it again below) I have gleaned so much.
https://www.direkt36.hu/en/az-izraeli-szovetseg-ami-atirta-orban-politikajat/
I was fascinated that originally no one over 35 could join Fidesz. Wow. And wha a relief Hungary has been able to keep "the elites", that is the left, from power for all but a couple of terms.
I live in the Jewish Quarter of Budapest. It is not majority Jewish, though I have Jewish friends there. I was assuming not many Jews survived after the mass deportations of 1944 but looking it up, 31% of Hungarian Jews did survive, according to Wikipedia. As you probably know, there are concerns, especially with the new memorial statues, that some do not speak of Arrow Cross actions against Jews just as loudly as those of the Nazis.
I have hope for the world today as the left is being revealed as something more than the mythical "opponent of Nazis". OK, yes, Russia initially sided with them and then fought them. But the National Socialists are a Nationalistic form of Socialism - with both right and left wing characteristics, they certainly were not "right wing", and just recently, the anti-Semitism of so many oonthe left has become plain.
It also seems to me that Chabad is right wing, at least economically? The right-wing new president of Argentina, you may know, is closely relating to a Chabad rabbi and states that after he is out of office and can follow ceremonial law (Sabbath laws won't work for him) he will convert. I've seen the Chabad office in Budapest.
Thanks for a very enlightening post - I loved having a better understanding of these things. I'm off for an appointment but more about Soros later.
Thanks for this.
Regarding Soros:
I know Soros at one time was a mixed bag, did some things to help in Europe, particularly in earlier times. I did not know he had anything to do with bringing down the Soviet Union, so that you for that information. (I’m reading now that he learned Soviets raped his mother.) If Soros is sill doing any good things, you could let me know, I just do not know of them. I know you are not a fan.- - Overall, I believe Soros would like a world “rule by elites”, to include himself and his family, and that he believes bringing down the current world order is necessary to being about this elite rule.
I read the book “The Shadow Party” by Horowitz and Poe, and thought it was full of well documented information about Soros. It was pretty frightening.
Soros has done only evil in the USA as far as I can see. He currently bank-rolls the vile Pro-Hamas protests and recruitment efforts for the protests. Literally dozens of American cities now have prosecutors who won’t prosecute crime due to his donating millions to campaigns of people who intended to do that when they were elected as prosecutors.
I guess I highly suspect - but would not know - that Orban was a genius to get rid of CEU. Look what the universities in the USA have done.
But most important: What do I know? You have a lot to teach me and I am open to amending opinions in light of information. Please keep informing
No. Soros has been anti-Israel for many, many years. He has often stated that being born a Jew means nothing to him, let alone having anything to say on Israel. He funds J-Street, which claims to be 'for Israel' but in fact has never done anything in its defense, only arguing the Arab point of view. Jewish Voice for 'Peace' along with Independent Jewish Voices have broken bread with known terrorists and their sympathizers. 'The Man Behind The Curtain' (Matt Palumbo) will give you an idea of who he is, what he's done, and what seems to make him tick.
Builds support for Israel among Jews in diaspora.
You give those who choose these absurd perspectives too much of an out: "Its not my fault, I was infected by a mind virus." Its true that many are swayed by faddish assumptions that are not supported by detailed historical research. But they are at the least responsible for being sloppy and running with the crowd. (The same could be said of most lynch mobs). Hopefully the majority will ruefully settle down and get on with their lives at some point.
Re: homosexuality as a sin, the mainstream position of the Christianity subreddit on Reddit is that the New Testament doesn't condemn homosexual relationships and romance. I've been told by one of them that only homosexual sex is considered sinful. I followed up with my own sarcasm but there's no point in quoting scripture or pointing to traditions with these people. One of these cretins is a self-described pagan but most actually claim to be Christians who know better than the bigoted conservatives do.
In better news my work schedule changed to that I can pick my own hours. I can now bring my 9 year old son to Trail Life several towns away. There's a pastor who studies in Greek and Hebrew there (not all protestant pastors do this), there's a coast guard guy who is well versed in some of the VERY WEIRD stuff I've learned from the Dreher blog and recommended books, and there are other gear dads. At Royal Rangers I felt like the smartest guy there, at Trail Life I'm definitely smarter than some and definitely not as smart as some others. Not only that, but the values are better. The Rangers group had a good leader and a bunch of parents who seemed to be the type who wore Christianity as part of their cultural costume (yea, who am I to judge, but I did), and many kids who misbehaved. At TL cellphones are banned and are confiscated from kids if they're seen and the men are all Mr Lastname, at Rangers it's all first name. Above all the deeper understanding of how bad the times are and how it makes things like TL necessary make me feel blessed to have this group.
Now I need to get the wife to bring our daughter to the American Heritage Girls group that's run by the wives of many of the men from Trail Life.
Dang autocorrect. I don't see an edit button on the app.
What are Royal Rangers?
It's a Scouts alternative that's been around for more than half a century. It's a nominally Pentacostal group but it lets in non-Pentacostal groups. The one we tried was based out of an area megachurch that bought a BSA camp at an auction and relocated to it. The final straw with this Rangers group was a dad who kept burning his plastic garbage in the camp fire. The whole group was a clique who knew each other from the church and I was the outsider, so I said nothing about that. The church that sponsors this group has three pastors and none of them have attended seminary. I haven't heard anything wrong from them when visiting or watching online, but I'm definitely weary of a church led by a guy who makes a big deal of that he reads the whole Bible in a year every year. That's great but I expect more depth from a pastor.
Hey Rod - a heads up - Chris Koncz has a long post near the end of the thread dealing with Hungary that you possibly wouldn't want to miss. I am really glad I read it.
Re: I've been told by one of them that only homosexual sex is considered sinful.
Er, that is the standard orthodox (small "o") teaching.
And a "non-sexual homosexual relationship" is an oxymoron. If there's no sex in it, it isn't any kind of "sexual" anything. The fancy-pants word "homosocial" has been coined for this, but we have a good old Anglo-Saxon word already: friendship.
They believe that homosexuals can have romance and even marriage and that it's not sin. Somehow this is all separate from sexual activities in theory but when challenged go find examples of this being true in practice they can't come up with any.
They probably think that Paul was writing romantic letters to Timothy
Nevertheless it's the sex that is sinful, not love. We are told in Scripture that David loved Jonathan "passing the love of women" and that Jesus loved one of his Apostles especially well. Some have tried to read sexuality into that, which, No, nothing whatsoever points to that. Over among those pesky old Greeks Plato and Aristotle agreed that friendship is the most vital of social relationships. We go down a very dark path if we start opining that love and friendship, without any sexual involvement, should also be suspect.
I can love my daughter without having sex with her, but we all know what these "love is love" people are talking about and what things like cohabitation and same sex "marriage" entail. I agree with the Catholic stance on this stuff.
Re: I agree with the Catholic stance on this stuff.
Then we're in agreement. Rod's formulation above about "being homosexual" is badly phrased.
I really don't think it is. The condition of having same-sex desire is disordered. Acting on it is sinful, that's correct. Living chastely in spite of having those desires is not sinful. What I meant was that churches who agree with Scripture and Tradition that same-sex desire is disordered are fundamentally and irreconcilably different from churches who believe that it is within the divinely given order of creation. I think even a pro-LGBT liberal Christian would agree that the two positions are irreconcilable.
There was a blogger that I used to follow who would occassionally comment on one of Rod's former sites (and a few others that I followed at the time) who was in a difficult relationship. He was living with a man, in a committed relationship but finally (in his 50's, I think) committed to chastity and publicly renounced his former lifestyle. He nursed his companion through a long sickness and death.
Of course he found himself in the middle of many hard-left/hard-right disputes. He rejected gay marriage. I'm not going to post his name because I think he became a bit distraught with how his engagement in this debate depleted him. He got pummeled from both sides. I haven't seen a blog entry from him in a long time......some here may remember him.
I suspect a similar relationship from one of my elderly female neighbors. I think we may be surprised at how many of these situations are out there.
https://youtu.be/94QhX1p8lMU?si=m479GQtbmnVCYmeI
Watch this—it’s short—and actually *listen* to what he says. McClellan is a well-respected scholar and a practicing Mormon, but he calls it as he sees it on interpretation of Scripture.
Do two male friends make out with each other?
Not sure how this a response to what I stated above. Homosexual sex is a sin. Being homosexual is not. I am stating standard orthodox Christian teaching.
I'm not sure it's standard orthodox Christian practice, however.
Rods "misstatement" is probably better reflective of life on the ground, I think, for many I've known and read about coming from standard orthodox Christian homes and churches.
We don't seem to have a setting that falls in between ostracization and celebration, unfortunately.
Re: We don't seem to have a setting that falls in between ostracization and celebration, unfortunately.
But we do, and we employ that standard all the time when we deal with people whose religious beliefs we reject-- we have happily gotten over that era when "heretics" and "Infidels" were to be persecuted. I can't see why such a "live and let live" cannot apply in this area too.
Oh, I agree. My comment was an observation about our current reality.
It could but the left won't permit it. You must "celebrate" the LGBTQWERTY orientations, you understand; to not celebrate it is tantamount to hatred. You must applaud; you must wear the pin; you must march in the parade. You can't merely sit on the sidelines watching it all go through, keeping your own thoughts to yourself - silence is violence, right? You must acquiesce to the raising of the "Pride" flag in the classrooms, outside government buildings and whatnot. You must be a participant - there can be no spectators. That is the attitude of the Pride left.
You referred to friendship. The question is what is included under that rubric. Is it everything up to actual sex (genital involvement)? That is all other kinds of homosexual physical affection short of sex fall under the rubric of "friendship" (as you suggested in your comment to which I was responding).
If you look at ancient and even Medieval sources, same-sex friends in fact frequently kissed each other on the mouth (not “making out”, but certainly more than moderns are comfortable with), embraced, spoke of their love for each other, used very intimate terms in personal correspondence (“I long for your return”; “Do not make me suffer from your absence”; “I cannot wait to kiss you and hold you again”, “Dear”, “Beloved”, “Darling”, etc.), and often shared beds. One’s best friend was generally seen as a more important relationship than one’s *spouse*. Some contemporary cultures approve of same-sex friends holding hands or kissing in greeting, even in public. So what comes under the rubric of friendship is a lot more than most modern Westerners, particularly Americans, think.
As another poster notes there are times and place where men hold hands and even kiss-- Judas kissing Jesus in Gethsemane was a betrayal but it isn't treated as an unnatural act of lust.
What about homoflexible?
Like I'm not gay or anything but if my buddy offered a $10k bill...
Thankfully, inflation hasn't reached that point.
I saw this t-shirt once that said, "I'm not gay but my boyfriend is." Now that's funny.
I think all of these are a little off. First, there is no question biologically that the human species, like all species more complex than a hydra or a sponge, is sexually dimorphic and heteronormative. Second, it is mathematically and biochemically almost inevitable that there will be variations -- that is people who for various reasons, whether genetic predisposition or epigenetic shifts or traumatic experience will feel something a little different, such as same-sex attraction. Think of a graph where data is recorded in dots. There is always a dense clumping toward the center, and gradually thinning patterns of variation from the norm, which is the dense cluster.
That's all materialistic. Spiritual criteria could be applied in many ways. Its not unreasonable to say, same-sex attraction occurs, but its not something to indulge but to resist. For those to whom the sheer joy of sex is the point, its not unreasonable to retort "Easy for you to say, you get to have all the fun while you deny this to people who are different." None other than Giusppe Scalas opined that social order alone might require some legal arrangement for same sex couples to formalize whatever their bond is. But it doesn't have to be sacramentally recognized as a Marriage. We should recognize that for those who experience same sex attraction, this is the only life they have to live.
Somewhere between actual penetration and platonic friendship, there is of course a range of possibilities, like hugs and kisses that go far beyond the usual friendship between individuals of the same sex. Then there is the article in Touchstone magazine some years back, lamenting that the rise of social acceptance of homosexuality has made what previously was a respected bond between two men, even calling it love, is now almost impossible without mistaking it for a sexual relationship. David and Jonathan could have been either one. I have little doubt what the bond between Achilles and Patroclus was, given the cultural they existed within.
I'm active on reddit, in fact I'm a moderator on a smallish sub. I saw that new rule on some (most) Christian subs, really quite ridiculous given that it indubitably goes against standard Christian doctrine. These rule changes come from above, I'm convinced of that. Reddit is a typical woke silicon valley company, DEI and adhering to woke dogma matters more to them than even profits. I have had several incidents that clearly indicated this to me and Reddit policy simply filters out anyone who isn't on board with the woke agenda.
My old reddit account was first suspended for three days, when I expressed the incontrovertible fact, that it is not possible to change one's biological sex, it is a scientific impossibility, at least with current technology, though we can of course play around with societally defined gender as much as we want. Somebody reported me for hate speech and I got a 3-day reddit-wide ban.
Then my account was banned permanently, when I made a joke, which was a direct quote from Monty Python's Life of Brian. No appeal, no review, just a forever ban for making a light hearted joke.
In comparison, it took the concerted effort of 6 or 7 reddit moderators, the FBI and Scotland Yard in the UK to get an Islamic Fundamentalist and black magician, who was cursing people and sending specific death threats, permanently removed from reddit.
Every time I try to link to an article from a right-wing website, like Zerohedge or Vdare, the link is automatically removed from reddit, as it is on their blacklist.
So, inevitably, with time, people who are not on board with wokeism will get weeded out from reddit and it will become a left-wing liberal echo-chamber. I'd say it already is, it is impossible to express any opinion that is even centre right on the Hungarian subreddits for instance. Every post or comment gets voted down into oblivion, so it's never seen and wokesters tend to react with ad hominems and malicious slurs.
I'm very mainstream. Most of my links came from Hot Air or RealClearPolitics. My old account was permanently banned for "transphobia". They flagged the IP and would ban any new accounts I created or used from it. I'm far less active now than before, as being normal is a bannable offense there.
To paraphrase Ramparts magazine on the demise of Students for a Democratic Society, "One, two, three, many Boy Scouts of America!" That's not such a bad thing. If cultural patterns and expectations are different, there is no particular reason there should be Only One Boy Scouts organization. In the long run, perhaps some of them will develop a collegial mutuality while recognizing their differences, as many Protestant denominations have. I have even heard of devout Roman Catholics on private school accreditation commissions praise how well Lutherans practice their faith.
"There is something about the paralysis of ruling-class elites on both sides that renders them incapable of carrying out the clear will of voters on this matter."
Because these elites have painted themselves into a corner. So dead-set on brandishing their (supposed) moral bona fides, they paint everyone to the right of them on immigration as racist. That makes it impossible to tack right in the slightest on the issue; they're wedded to the narrative of "anyone who opposes immigration in any way is racist." And the problem is, the country just isn't as "enlightened" and virtuous as they are.
I’m always amazed by the abrupt shift in liberals here in the US. Only a few years ago Bernie Sanders socialism was all the rage. Now they trumpet a roaring capitalist economy that can accommodate mass migration— despite decrying it 4 years ago as exploitive, unjust, and failing. And if anyone mentions inflation, interest rates etc, they’re told to basically stop whining.
It didn't take long for the Russian Bolsheviks to evolve an oligarchical collectivism, with dachas and mistresses and good things eat, and Zil limousines for me but not for thee. Sometime around 1983 it occurred to the pink diaper brigade that being rich was fun, and if you could have that and hate your neighbor too, why on earth wouldn't you sign up for THAT?
Very true. Once the White Russians were defeated and executed, the Communists got to go on nice little vacations in expropriated dachas. Ian Fleming hints at this extravagant lifestyle in "From Russia, With Love." Stalin and his cronies had a fine time, eating and drinking and watching American films until three in the morning.
Have you read the descriptions of the banquets Stalin used to throw before during and after the war--at Yalta, too, when more than half of Europe was starving? Even the hapless 1939 allied delegation coming to Moscow hat in hand to beg Stalin to be nice to them got treated like royalty.
Sure. And Mao was worse. In 1962, the Communist Party met on a boat on the Yangtsee River and had several days of banquets while the surrounding countryside was starving during the Great Leap Forward.
and let's not forget that just about every night Mao had a fresh young virgin delivered to him for some righteous revolutionary raping—it's good to be the king!
That's a stretch... do you have thoroughly researched empirical data? That kind of story is easy to manufacture. He did have a wife, and she was no pushover. That hasn't stopped many men in history having mistresses, but a fresh young virgin every night sounds like manufactured propaganda.
The woke left still theoretically supports socialism as long as they can keep their affluent lifestyles. Capitalism is still evil. Taxation of conservative pigs is still important so that the leftist elite can be provided for and the Third World immigrants can survive and vote for the leftist elite.
That's why I keep telling you they are NOT socialists at all. Its like utterly depraved hedonists insisting "But I'm still a Christian." (There are of course species of prosperity gospel Christians who insist that because they have professed faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior they can sin all they want, because they are already forgiven.)
Marxism, at least in public poses, tends to be very puritanical.
That, like most stereotypes, depends on the personality, time and place. There have been many communist leaders who talked that way, some who enforced it, some who lived by it. On the other hand, free love did tend to be cherished by some in the various Young Communist Leagues. You can even find such sentiments in Stalin-era novelists expounding the glories of Socialist Construction.
I am of course well aware that there were Communist leaders who lived lives of womanizing while preaching sexual puritanism. Mao is the obvious one. Stalin was also something of philanderer, and with teenage girls. Lenin I think was one who behaved himself. He strikes me as such a cold fish I imagine him and Krupskaya in bed together debating the dialectic.
There is some question whether Lenin and Krupskaya's marriage was ever consummated. Like all speculation on that subject with any couple, there is no way to know. They married when Lenin was in exile in Siberia and needed a capable secretary, but they wouldn't be allowed to live together, nor she to even travel to the vicinity, unless they were married. Naturally she made the most of being Lenin's widow, although Stalin is reputed to have told her on one occasion "Shut up b___ or we'll find someone else to be Lenin's widow."
Our trust fund revolutionaries are all beneficiaries of our capitalist system so it makes sense that at some point they'd stop biting the hand that's fed them so well.
But it's that "stop whining about inflation" bit that's really going to bite them in the *ss this election year. We just spent a week in California (live in Florida) and I was floored at grocery and gas prices. Eggs $6/dozen; gas $4.79 a gallon or higher (I paid $5.99/gallon right outside the San Fransisco Airport - obvious airport markup, but still).
The trust fund revolutionaries just aren't as impacted by this. I came away from the experience thinking - I guess poor people in California don't eat eggs, and probably only fill up their gas tanks halfway at each pit stop. But stop whining, pleb.
True. Very true. If a copy remains in print, look up Don West's "Romantic Appalachia: Or, Poverty Pays if You Ain't Poor." These trust fund revolutionaries are not new, they didn't even first appear in the 1960s.
Meanwhile gasoline prices are falling, and at a time of year when it's usually the opposite.
Re: The trust fund revolutionaries just aren't as impacted by this.
Everyone is affected by rising prices, albeit their particular situation may differ in the details. If you don't drive you don't care about gas prices. If you own a house, or have a fixed rate mortgage, you don't care about rent inflation.
Well, that depends on who you ask. But liberals are more the ones who were really enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton, and insisted Sanders couldn't win. Liberalism is by origin and history the ideology of capitalism. Liberal Republicans are the ones who shut down Reconstruction so the nation could get on with subsizing massive business investments while obtaining cheap labor from pitting newly freed "black" workers against "white" workers who sometimes suspected that's the agenda that would really dominate the Republican Party in the long run. I have immigrant coal mining ancestors who joined the Abolitionist movement on arrival, and remained Republican right down to my late mother, but nothing is categorically true for any given demographic. It IS true that many would-be socialists are letting themselves get distracted by culture war issues, which is why there isn't an emerging socialist movement grabbing about a quarter of the Trump vote and merging it with disaffected working class families who so far still vote for Democrats.
The recordings are a James O'Keefe level stunt. And yes that is intended to point out that rightwing flacks have done this too (Yes, I seer Rod pointed this out)
Re: it is unjust for a church to regard the condition of being homosexual as sinful.
Huh? The state of "being homosexual" is not sinful. Only homosexual sex acts are. That is mainstream teaching across multiple churches, including the Orthodox Church. (Rod, if this was your cold meds fogging your brain, you're excused for the misstatement).
Re: I dunno — have you considered reducing immigration?
In the US a major bipartisan immigration bill was tanked because a certain presidential candidate wants to run on the issue. The same guy is even complaining about the President's recent action even though they reiterate some of his own acts while in the Oval Office. Apparently our narcissist-in-chief wanna-be doesn't care about immigration; he just cares about whether actions on that front rebound to his credit. (A saner man would respond to such developments with "See? They're following my advice now! Elect me and you'll get the whole enchilada!")
"I bring this up not to embarrass the late Father Neuhaus, who was a great man."
Nope. Sorry. His support of the war takes that off the table. HIS support of the war. Not everybody who did think invading Iraq was a good idea is morally compromised, but he certainly is. You could start and end with "he was a Roman Catholic priest", but that's not good enough.
Back in the mid- to late '90s when I was still a fan and enjoying the display of his very formidable polemical skills, I told my confessor, an Opus Dei priest, that I thought he, Neuhaus, was "slick". This was not received well. But it was true. He was trying to square the circle between his backers (this is a family show, so keep it at that), was too into "building bridges" to evangelicals (a fool's errand, in my opinion), and mostly just toeing the neocon line a little too strictly. But I did admire him. (I will say I first heard about John Lukacs in the pages of First Things, and Lukacs became the great discovery of my reading life's middle years.)
In trying to put words to what I felt when I heard him quite fiercely screaming to invade Iraq, I can't do better than to say, "It doesn't matter to him whether this is a just war or not. He wants it too bad." I knew plenty of people (my wife, for example) who believed there were WMD and ended up recoiling in horror at what we wrought in Mesopotamia. But I knew from the get-go it was a put up job, partly because I have a dirty mind, and party because of who was screaming for it. Like Neuhaus.
So no great man laurels, sorry. If there's anything that divides the sheep from the goats it's that war, and those who dragged us into knowing it was a lie.
Though I don’t know Neuhaus’ record in much detail, I have to agree on the general sentiment. For me too support for that war was a litmus test. It was too glaringly a bait and switch, as anyone who did even a bit of homework could see.
Those who were pulled in emotionally, as I think Rod was, having been in New York when the Towers fell—well, they deserve a lot of slack. I think many good conservatives in that era hadn’t yet developed enough scepticism vis a vis claims coming out of Washington. But those who played it for what we might call neocon points, they deserve only contempt.
I too already had a dirty mind in 2001. Well put.
Fr. Neuhaus's defense of Maciel shocked me at the time. I was then a contributing editor at the National Catholic Register, recently acquired by the Legionaries. The staff had already discovered that our new employers were, as one of my colleagues put it, "ignorant, arrogant, and incompetent." The charges against Maciel sounded entirely plausible to us, even before the whole picture emerged.
But on the matter of misjudging one's heroes, when Fr. Bruce Ritter, founder of Covenant House, was accused of sexual involvement with some of the teens sheltered there, I wrote a fiery defense of him for Catholic Twin Circle. I was so sure that he'd been set up by criminal elements who profited by exploiting youth. The column was peculiarly difficult to write: something kept telling me over and over not to do it. Turned out, it must have been the voice of my guardian angel, because Fr. Ritter really was guilty. That error has been a thorn for my pride ever since.
I believe Father Neuhaus was a company man at heart. His apology for defending Maciel struck me as grudgingly done.
Not my recollection at all.
Fr Ritter spoke at my High School in about 1981. Many were climbing over each other to defend him. Being a believing Catholic is (or at least should be) a humbling experience.
I found some of Neuhaus' writings quite moving (e.g., "Death on a Friday afternoon"). But his defense of all things Bush in the 00s was full bore disgusting.
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were as bad. Of course, they weren't men of the cloth.
Right. Those guys were political flaks. One expects spiritual discernment and a degree of prudence from clergy.
Fr. Neuhaus had a great conversion story after so many years as a Lutheran pastor. "If you were with me before, you are with me now" and "I wanted more of what I already had."
His writing opened the door for protestants to convert while not burning bridges, but few people walked through. I'm grateful that I could be one of those people.
I also blame the people who didn't come. They lacked a natural law background, or they had it and thought they could afford to discard it.
It's possible that we believing Protestants lack what you call a natural law background.
Poor us, we have the Bible.
I do not understand Protestants who became Catholic unless their Protestantism was inherited, not acquired, and who when they became Christians, moved to Catholicism.
We really do have reasons of belief which prevent our doing so, you know.
To broaden the situation beyond my own conscience for my life path, there were two honorable paths. Convert or fix. I didn't expect everyone to convert, but I was skeptical of the fix. No fix was to be had and the seriousness about what the Bible says was lost at that church. While I suspect some faithful people landed at a good protestant church they would have been the ones taking new jobs and moving away, so I don't know.
To be very specific, I believe that things have an essence, contra Judith Butler. You don't have to call it natural law, but anyone who thinks the way God set it out means something can have a conversation with someone using a natural law framework. I cannot have an honest conversation with Judith Butler because she insists certain things don't have meaning when I find it spiritually intuitive that they do.
Everyone I have lost refused natural law type arguments along with looking at what the Bible says. For example God made them male and female means something. If I can get someone to agree with that, I can be friends. That's where I see small o orthodoxy. Maybe they want female pastors but not head pastors. I disagree, but fine. A huge number of women will dismiss anything they don't like because they have their own vision for what they want for women in the church and are too eager to explain away the Bible.
Some Baptists, to use the best example I have, have a practicality which lines up pretty well with natural law (at least the ones I was reading when considering all this, they are a broad group.) I guess we could call it a Bible culture, but it's not something one can make out of nothing, it would be received to at least an extent.
I am in the Northeast. I could imagine a conservative church with a school doing what you outline, Bible or tell people to take a hike. The public school and non Christian college environment plus media was an acid bath. I wasn't even focused on calling it natural law back then, but looking back a sense of the pattern of creation meaning something is an extremely accurate sieve of who kept a serious faith in an outward way and who hid behind liberal feelings that the Bible can mean anything.
If one can't receive a Bible culture, and I think it is getting harder and harder to do so, natural law is the other way to approach it and get to the truth. It also builds bridges to some people at some times to say that our best reason and the God of the Bible can be reconciled.
First, Hope, I apologize for my cuteness, and thank you for your graciousness in not calling me an ass. Second, thank you for taking the time with a long, articulate reply.
What I want to tell you is that I have never known any "Bible or take a hike" types, either in terms of what would clearly be rudeness or their supposed narrowness of interest.
Unless they have a personality problem ( I did have phone contact, thankfully brief, with such a man thirty years ago ), any serious Protestant, as opposed to a nominalist, delights in explaining what we believe to inquirers, so much so that Protestants are not infrequently the objects of Catholic and Orthodox insinuation that not only do we lack the Sacraments ( we don't ), but that our faith is such an intellectual thing that outsiders can't help being dismayed by our dismissal of the supernatural, or at least the mysterious.
And it just is not true. About this I can do no more than borrow the Orthodox invitation to come and see.
As for the idea that we are a "Bible or scram" people, I suppose I can fairly cite only my own conservative Presbyterian church. ( I have been in others, and can tell you that their practices are similar to what I'm about to describe. )
We have a men's reading group which meets at a Celtic pub. The group recently worked its way through Augustine's Confessions, and is about to move on to St Basil. Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World is a book which we all love.
I think I'm more Catholic inclined than most of them. Most of my favorite writers are Catholic: Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Waugh, Walker Percy. I love Flannery O'Connor's stories but take particular delight in the collection of her letters, The Habit of Being. I have her newly arrived book of essays, Mystery and Manners, by my chair, but haven't started it yet. Her prayer journal, which was on sale on Amazon recently, is in the queue.
We really are Reformed Catholics, you know!
Ah, I have made that very appeal to various Presbyterians, that didn't they know they were Reformed Catholics, and it fell flat. I've done it both seriously and as a gentle tease, and neither hooked any interest. It goes to show the extent of the decline in some places.
I have one low protestant in mind who has great faith but was attending a faithful church without the sort of denominational guidelines that I would look for. Simple but honest churches are just blessed sometimes. It can work, but the Bible and nothing else is not a recipe.
Maybe a month ago I remarked in these boxes that I missed protestants. Soon after I had the opportunity to pray with a protestant friend, small o orthodox, although not nearby. It was a small sense that we can find enough common ground to pray together. Not for a service, because for that everyone ought to follow their conscience, but an extra prayer.
I'll also say this. I saw growing up how to run a Presbyterian Sunday School program, with great effort and volunteer involvement, and the total result being much more failure than success. I don't think the belief was right enough, too liberal at times and it showed the difficulty of getting it just right because some of it over the years was pretty good.
Telling kids about Jesus through stories of the Saints delightfully just works. I was skeptical. I looked extensively for ways around this. It was not how I came to faith but it is done because it works. I think it's human to hear people's stories about trusting Jesus and relating them to our own lives. There is a demand for Saint stories in my house that I never would have predicted. Previously I thought Catholics were just being difficult.
The highest complement I have heard a Catholic give a Protestant is "he is living out his Baptism" from Charles J. Chaput to one of the folks at First Things. That phrase has power, because it references the sacraments we have together and it is one of the most unifying things I have read about small o orthodox Christians saying about one another.
I agree with all of this.
I have no problem with advising Christians to look to dead saints to be encouraged by them, because the Bible tells us to remember them. I do have a problem with praying to them, though I understand and am sympathetic to the Catholic rationale for doing so. I'm just not so sure that those who are with Christ are that aware of us, if they're aware at all.
My fancy is that the recognition that they're face to face with the Lord of Glory is so staggering that it obliterates more than a dull and dim remembrance of us, if even that is possible for them. This is, well, temporary is a difficult word to use in regard to Eternity, so I'll just say I think their memory of us may be in suspension. Post resurrection, of course, everything changes.
I think most people who were blessed to grow up in a two parent home have tended to feel closer to one parent than to the other. Genetics may account for this. In that sense, I'm my mother's son: same relish for storytelling and history; common ability to pick up on subtle, momentary things in a person and read, correctly, much more into them than the person intended to convey; same ruthless sense of humor. ( Once, while a group of us were laying flowers at the graves of my maternal grandparents and great grandmother, something occurred to my mother which she probably hadn't thought of since 1930. With a perfectly straight face, she asked me a question. I didn't realize I was being set up. I answered as she knew I would. Then WHAM!! she punchlined me with a joke which had probably died with vaudeville. I didn't laugh, I shrieked, thereby annoying other mourners nearby, which pleased my subversive mother very much. )
She died in 2001. She was a Christian. As close as she and I were, it actually pleases me to speculate that the presence of Jesus Christ is so gobsmacking that in the almost twenty - three years since her death, my mother hasn't thought of me at all.
Yup, NPR just interviewed the hack "reporter" responsible for this. It was a big assed nothingburger, whose big REVEAL was that Justice Alito says that Christians need to recapture the culture. Nothing about his job or how he does it, but him having an opinion on something outside the job and saying it to someone.
His only mistake is, as you say, Rod, being to free with his opinions to a stranger, for a guy in his position.
Conservative jurist has conservative opinions: Film at 11. Or at least audio
The implication is that his opinions get in the way of him doing his job, when the record is the Leftward jurists do that, not all, not always, but far more. Along with Leftward talking heads, for various reasons, opine that the Constitution SHOULD be ignored by jurists.
Ruthie Marcus sends out a text during term on Supreme Court rulings, and matters relating to the court. Even she was appalled at the recording, but it didn't stop her from basely mocking poor Mrs. Alito, who sounds like a formidable person.
I'd never heard of the Appeal to Heaven flag, but I'm getting one for the house my apartment is in. On the street I live on, I have a good chance of not having a window smashed in because of it.
Editor in Chief of the Jewish News Service (JNS) wrote a pro-Hungary/Orban article today: https://www.jns.org/notes-from-the-safest-place-in-europe-for-jews/
Seems to me there is a media effort to publicly discredit / pressure the conservative members of the Supreme Court. Failing that, the negative attention serves to make any conservative jurist think twice before accepting a prospective nomination. Saul Alinsky stuff.
Joan Walsh has the vapors right now in her short hit piece (not worth reading; it's a discredit to the author) at the 'Nation' describing Samuel Alito's wife as a "far-right Catholic crackpot" who "fantasized" about flying her "freak flag" aka the Sacred Heart of Jesus flag.
My liberal sister was a briefly a neighbor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's grand niece. They compared notes on their relative upbringings one day. The grand niece recalled her youth growing up in a very politically engaged New York City secular Jewish family as a one of near endless political activism and events. Summer brought relief in visiting a tony private summer camp in New England.
Lefty media would have us consider the Alitos religious faith as disqualifying; they might bring their personal beliefs into the court. Ginsburg family activism was fine because secularism is somehow considered level playing field neutrality.
You're right. The clou in that expectoration ("far-right...") is "Catholic".
By the way, the left is freaking out over Trump's possible triumph in November. A scribbling creature named Ian Millhiser in Vox has demanded that Justices Sotomayor and Kagan must resign now so Biden can pick two Supreme Court justices before Trump gets in.
That's exactly what this is about, attempting to vilify conservative members of the court - maybe in some attempt to impeach them, maybe in an attempt to make the case for packing the court, maybe just to discredit/delegitimize expected conservative rulings to come.
After all, if the court is just a bunch of "right-wing extremists" maybe "our democracy" is best to ignore their "partisan" rulings, right?
Oh, this would motivate me more as a conservative jurist to accept a posting. What are they going to do? Whine about it? Impotent Leftist rage, spiced with spite, is delicious. Any jurist frightened by them or by media complaining does not have the mettle to be on that court, especially in this day and age. So you don't get invited to all the cocktail parties. Do you really want to drink with and talk to "them"? I really don't.
*If Scripture is correct and it is sinful, then it cannot be normalized.*
Rod, as an Orthodox Christian, you do not hold a belief in *sola scriptura*. The same is true for Catholics, as you’re well aware. You also are aware the “clobber verses” approving of slavery, oppression of women, and genocide exist aplenty on Scripture. The understanding of these passages has been reinterpreted and renegotiated in modern times as not truly reflective of God’s will and not applicable in modern times.
As a sincere, non-trolling request, I’d urge you to watch this video, which is just over an hour long. https://youtu.be/94QhX1p8lMU?si=H2mA2DNsHyRyMluz
It is by Scripture scholar Dan McClellan. He is a well-known and erudite scholar who is a *practicing* Mormon and a married man. In the video he explains why there is no basis for accepting the anti-LGBT clobber verses as either meaning what we think they mean, or being applicable in the present day. I ask to watch the video, hear him out, and really *hear* what he says and not just dismiss him out of hand.
It may not change your mind. The point is that it is *very* tiresome when you say that “Scripture teaches” that homosexuality is sinful. It *also* teaches that homosexuality should be punished by death, that slavery is A-OK, that we shouldn’t eat blood sausage (see Acts 21:25), and a ton of other things we don’t abide by now. I know you’ll argue that those are different for reasons XYZ. The point is that all such XYZ arguments depend on later tradition or factors external to the text itself. This is exactly what happened with the verses on slavery, or long hair on men (not only does Paul condemn long hair on men in 1 Corinthians 11:14, he says it’s a matter of *natural law*), and so on.
Bottom line, tl;dr: When you talk that way you sound like a fundamentalist Protestant arguing that the Bible *clearly says* the earth was made in six days, only on a different topic. You can oppose LGBT issues if you insist—but PLEASE don’t do so with facile and simplistic appeals to Scripture that just don’t hold up. Is that fair?
No offense, but I was hearing the same arguments 30-odd years ago when I was a religious studies major at a liberal Catholic college. In fact, one of the books cited, by a Catholic theologian no less, was called something like "What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality."
The fact of the matter is, and I say this as an Orthodox Christian who rejects sola scripture (indeed my graduate honors project was a historical critique of it), the Scriptures are quite clear about homosexuality when taken at face value, and it's the liberals on the subject that have to do all the hermeneutical turnings and twistings to make the peg fit the hole (pun intended).
Scriptures are quite clear about homosexuality when taken at face value that the cosmos was created six thousand years ago; that people in Mesopotamia tried to build a tower that would reach into space; that the entire planet was covered with water to a height of over five miles; that slavery is not forbidden; that a man can have multiple wives (nothing in the New Testament abrogates polygyny, except maybe for deacons, priests, and bishops—cf. the letters to Timothy); that it is forbidden even for Christians (see the book of Acts) to eat blood (goodbye, blood sausage); and many, many, *many* other things.
Now one can argue that one or more of these are different from the verses on homosexuality, but no one is *ever* consistent. Creationists defend a literal six-day creation as passionately as Rod defends the sinfulness of homosexuality. Antebellum slaveowners defended the legitimacy of slavery based on the Bible. There is actually a Christian polygamy group (https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/2000/01/17/my-three-wives-christian-polygamists/50499817007/) that—correctly— claim that the New Testament does not *explicitly* condemn polygamy; and so on.
So if one were debating with a creationist or polygamist, the first necessary thing is to admit that they are *correct* in that Scripture, when taken at *face value*, indeed *supports* their contentions. Then one must go on to explain why it *shouldn’t* be taken at face value. So homosexuality is the same—yeah, taken at face value, Scripture condemns it. What the arguments of McClellan do is explain why Scripture should *not* be taken at face value in this case, just as I’d try to explain to a creationist why the Genesis account should not be taken at face value.
So you’re not wrong; but *why* should the clobber verses on homosexuality be taken at face value, but not those on slavery or creation or even divorce (Jesus gives no exceptions in Mark, and the exception in Matthew—“except in case of *porneia*, literally, “whorishness”, which implies adultery—is construed more broadly in the Orthodox Church, which does not limit valid cause solely to adultery)?
The other things that you mention have in their historical understandings long-standing traditional interpretations/explanations -- they have what one could call a hermeneutical patrimony or continuity. The subject of homosexuality, not so much. The Church was virtually unanimous on this subject until approximately yesterday.
The Church was virtually unanimous on the sin of usury, defined not as excessive interest, but *any* interest (hence Jewish moneylenders) until about the 18th century. Creationists would take *strong* issue with you that there’s no “hermeneutical patrimony or continuity” for their views. In fact, until after the enlightenment and scientific discoveries that showed the earth’s true age, most Christians *did* believe in a young earth, and this was what started the controversy of young earthers in the first place. Hell, it could be argued that a young earth has *stronger* hermeneutical continuity—even gay people thought the universe was six thousand years old!
Wrong on all counts. Disagreements over interest/usury began much earlier, in the 13th/14th centuries if memory serves, and the eventual approval of it caused many problems afterwards. The anti-usury tradition should have been left alone, as many argued at the time.
You read me wrong. I said that the other questions DID have hermeneutical continuity, including the creation story. Homosexuality is the outlier.
OK, correction taken. Still, that’s a millennium and a third before usury was questioned. As to interpreting what you said, I did get confused. What I was trying to say was this:
1. The change in teaching on usury (which, FWIW, *!* think was a bad idea, too), took thirteen hundred years even to come up, and took almost another five hundred years to be changed. That undermines the “consistent teaching of the Church theory.
2. Hermetically continuity is often partisan and difficult to establish. Catloics, for example argue that Apostolic Succession, Marian devotion, and teaching on the Real Presence in the Eucharist go back to the primitive Church. Protestants argue that these are later accretions or innovations. The problem is that the sources in the first three centuries AD are spotty enough that if you squint right you can make them say lots of different things. E.g. a Catholic might play the Irenaeus card (“where the bishop is, there is the Church”) to argue for unbroken Apostolic succession. A Protestant might respond that it takes a long time before there’s even a clear distinction between bishops and presbyters (Wesley noted this three hundred years ago), and that “episkopos” and “presbyter”, being secular terms in Koine Greek, cannot be construed to indicate a sacramental office passed down in an unbroken chain. The sources we have can’t conclusively demonstrate either position.
So some things that are argued to be in hermeneutical continuity are often difficult to *prove* to be such; and some things that strongly seem actually to have *been* in hermeneutical continuity have been *reversed*. Both of those facts undermine arguments in regard to homosexuality.
You probably still won’t agree with my position, but maybe it’s clear what I’m getting at now.
It's interesting that the Devil is a Substack subscriber under the username, "Harry Craft."
I didn’t expect to be promoted to Prince of Darkness…. I would suggest you be mindful of Matthew 5:22.
I am. You're not a brother in Christ. You're a false teacher. And John, in his second Epistle, commands us to veritably slam the door in the faces of such people.
Devil *and* heresiarch—wow, double promotion….
Yes, this is an old and VERY tired argument, completely dismantled in the excellent book *The Bible and Homosexual Practice,* by Rob Gagnon.
I am downloading it and will see what it has to say.
Harry, the LGBT position of the church isn't rooted in what you call the "clobber verses". It's rooted in the Garden. It's rooted in the most basic pieces of human anthropology: "male and female He created them" and "be fruitful and multiply" and "it is not good for man to be alone". This applies to the Orthodox Church especially, which claims its tradition as "what all Christians have believed in all places and at all times." One need not quote Paul to arrive at the conclusion that homosexual behavior is inherently against God's order (both Natural Law and Divine Law in an Aquinas sense).
There is no corresponding "what is man" related issue with slavery, for example, or with the role of women. God didn't say "black and white He created them". He didn't say "with long and short hair He Created them". He didn't say "be fruitful with thy own kind alone". Ironically, it was these very Garden verses (the innate dignity and equality of man before God) that inspired the Enlightenment, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, and the Civil Rights movement. On this issue though, those verses work against liberalism instead of for it, which is a hint that homosexual behavior is anthropologically different than race or sex. (And it is: it is a "behavior" not a trait.)
As a side note, using a Mormon scholar to backup your position that portions of Scripture should be reinterpreted probably isn't the most convincing argument to Christians.
1. The Garden narrative didn’t prevent the Jews from allowing polygamy (which is not actually abolished in the New Testament) and divorce, which is allied in the Orthodox Church and many Protestant denominations. Also, the Catholic Church uses the same logic for banning contraception, with which most other churches would disagree.
2. Slaves were thought to be a “lower” form of humanity *fit* for slavery—see many of the pro-slavery arguments of the century before last. To say of a human that he may be *owned as property* by another *indeed* seems to be a “what is man” issue. What, indeed, is man, if he can be bought and sold like *livestock*?
3. Paul *literally said* that long hair on men is against nature!
So in light of all this, how does the creation narrative in and of itself indicate that all homosexual behavior is wrong?
By the way, I post McClellan because he’s well informed and articulate. Having seen a lot of his videos, I’m prepared to say that he doesn’t let his church affiliation influence his scholarly views. To dismiss him on that basis is the genet fallacy. But honestly, if he were Catholic or Orthodox or Baptist or whatever, would that *change* your assessment of his argument?
The Jews got crossways with God. A lot. He punished them for it. This is also recorded in detail in Scripture.
1. Not relevant to your point. Or at least, not the way you want, since the church's teaching on marriage and adultery is intimately tied to the rest of its teachings on sexual ethics. There is no reconciling normalization of homosexuality with the church's teaching on the nature of the human person and the nature of the male/female relationship.
2. Yes, and it was precisely the "made in the image of God" narrative as the human anthropology articulated by the Church (and the Jews) for over 3000 years which made people gradually stop viewing slaves this way. The first millennium Popes got there first; the Protestant Reformation rolled the clock back, and the Enlightenment finally put the nail in slavery's coffin. But in both cases, the argument hinged on the Church's teaching on the nature and innate dignity of man.
3. Only relevant to fundamentalists who adhere 100% to sola scriptura. (And those are as rare as Hassidic Jews.)
Comments on Rod's blog are not the place to articulate the entire argument for the proper role of human sexuality. Many great books have been written on this subject; the best is likely Pope JPII's Theology of the Body. My response was only to point out that your claim about Paul's "clobber verses" being the core of the Church's LGBT teaching is simply not accurate at all.
You’re right that there’s no room to do a proper exposition here, so I’ll leave it at this. I’ve read extracts from the *The Theology of the Body*, and have not found it plausible. I recently acquired a copy of it though, and intend to read it. I’ll give it a fair chance, but it’ll take awhile to get through.
The main issue I had with “clobber verses” is that Rod, an Orthodox, is always saying Scripture this, Scripture that in much the way that a sola scriptura Protestant would. It’s more complex than that, and I wish he’d be a *little* more nuanced.
Scripture does nowhere say that slavery is A-ok or the oppression of women. That is the problem with Sola Scriptura, it completely lacks context.
Rules were given to deal with the reality of slavery, how to treat people. Same for description of how women were treated, or that polygamy was a thing. Scripture is descriptive, not condoning things.
If you have to reinterpret or renegotiate text in modern times, you are not doing the text justice. You need to get into the mind set of ancient near east civilizations. And actually read the early church fathers. Many of these topics have been addressed with a better understanding of the context. The problem is if you try to interpret the text without context.
I highly recommend "The Whole Counsel of God", by Fr. Stephen de Young. Podcast and blog.