A Reason to Invade Mother Teresa's Privacy [UPDATED]

Richard Rodriguez in The Nation:

The Catholic Church is brilliant to publish these letters, though Teresa asked that they be destroyed. The church realizes these are very helpful to the world. The world of religion is in chaos, not because there is too little faith in the world, but because there is too much faith. People are killing each other in the name of God. In Iraq at the holy shrine of Karbala, Shia were killing Shia. It seems to me the world is afflicted with people who have no doubt.

They have no doubt that they know what God wills, that God is on their side, that they know God. It seems to me very useful in the world that there be someone, a woman of great, great holiness to be presented as someone who lived with doubt as a way to moderate this extremism in the world.

Everything in the world that is most worrisome is this black-and-white sensibility. It has infected religion, brings scandal to religion, it seems to me, that people in the name of God have erased all doubt from their mind and denied the human experience of doubt.

That's what the Vatican has done with these documents. I think the real value of these documents is that they teach us that certitude is not what we want in the world. [...]

America now is very, very religious or very, very secular.

This feeds atheists. They say, "See, even she didn't believe."

People like Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens --they are precisely the kind of problem that they present the religious world to be afflicted by. They are people who have no faith. Period. The whole idea of transcendence, a metaphysical reality beyond that which they normally experience, is foreign to them. This is very dangerous. They appeal to the political left when they should have learned its lesson.

What lesson?

For thirty years the political left has ceded religion to the political right in America. It has given all expression of religion to right-wing Christianity.

It seems to me what the left needs to do is shy away from this teenage-boy irreverence, these "farts in the chapel" that you hear from Hitchens. It's not persuasive, not intellectually challenging because it does not admit to doubt. Like the fundamentalists, they live in a world of such certitude the rest of us are left wondering, "Where do we belong?"

It seems to me what Teresa was looking for in the face of suffering was the face of God. It's very moving to me that she did not find that face so often but kept on doing it. It's an example of great heroism. If I were looking for a saint right now, she would be it.

Rodriguez goes on to talk about what he finds in the Church in spite of its condemnation of him as a noncelibate gay man.

I don't know how many times I've heard priests refer to the love I have for another man as a "lifestyle."  My own church denies me the central emotion within Christianity; the experience of love is denied me by own church. [...But i]ts inability to teach me about my experience of love is insufficient for me to walk away from it.

In some way the people in the pew teach the priest--the Church--what it means to love. The left, like spoiled children, having been accused of being sinful by the Church, they decide the Church is really sinful. That's not useful. More useful is to spend a life of service to a Church that is not easily yours.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE:  Here's yet another provocative take on Mother Teresa's involuntary revelation:

Mother Theresa was obviously severely depressed. Duh, folks! While the depression was probably chemically based at some point, you have to admit that the things she saw and experienced would drive anyone to depression.

There's no indication the Roman Catholic Church got her any help. She was their poster girl for Roman Catholicism, and they didn't want to muck things up by helping her with antidepressants and therapy. Oh my! Someone might think she's not a saint if she gets help for depression! So they told her the symptoms were "proof" that she was loved by God and being specially tested. [...]

Their treatment of her (as their treatment of pedophile priests) shows a consistent and frightening propensity to do evil for the sake of appearing good.

When it comes to depression, "Rob" (neither a Catholic nor an atheist) knows whereof he speaks:

Recently, my church offered me the position of Acting Director of Communications. [...]

I told them flat out how depressed I was. I told them that emotionally, I did not feel God, and that the only reason I continued was because of what I have experienced and know logically. I hope none of you ever have to find out what it's like for an ENFP to run entirely on logic — it's not natural and it's not fun.

To help you understand, I also lost faith in Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I've done the experiments and have seen both theories proven by my own hand/eyes/really expensive equipment. I've done the photoelectric effect, calculated and measured the spectrum of hydrogen, and found peculiarities in the heat capacity of gases. I've heard the relativistic doppler shift of a radio signal from a satellite, measured the speed of light several different ways, and shown the gravitational redshift with the Mossbauer experiment where you shoot radiation upward and measure how much is reabsorbed at different heights. But I lost the feeling that both theories were right. I lost the intuitive sense that let me work with them on some bizarre unscientific (but really, really good) level. I had to run on logic and not intuition. [...]

They hired me anyway — and told me they supported me and would pray for and with me.

And, after being hired, and after working with what has to be one of the best office environments possible [and also after getting on medication, mentioned elsewhere in the post - ed.], I find my depression is gone. I can feel faith again — faith in God, faith in quantum mechanics, and faith in relativity.

And trust me — if you want to find stuff that is irrational, illogical, and just obviously wrong, there's no better place than Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. As far as mysteries go, religion is a piker at it. If you think you understand either of those theories — you're not paying attention! That's why they're so cool, actually…

Funny, that relates back to this.

In the comments, Funky Dung (to whom the hat is hereby tipped) then took the next step:

I think you’re being rather presumptuous on at least a couple fronts.

You have not read the book containing her letters.

You have no evidence that Mother Teresa was clinically depressed.

You have overlooked the fact that the letters were to spiritual directors and as such were (until recently) private communications.

I would not presume to second guess a spiritual director without having so much as a hint of the counsel he offered.

Isn't it fascinating that this is provoking one of the most fruitful public discussions of our time?"

 

Comments

[michael Reynolds]

It seems to me what the left needs to do is shy away from this teenage-boy irreverence, these "farts in the chapel" that you hear from Hitchens. It's not persuasive, not intellectually challenging because it does not admit to doubt.

Baloney. Sam Harris admits to doubt and explicitly holds the door open for mystical or transendant experiences. Hitchens is being Hitchens: he's incapable as a matter of rhetorical style of admitting doubt. He's a counterpuncher, poking holes, not a promulgator of grand philosophical visions. I don't recall having elected Hitch to represent all atheists and I imagine he'd be appalled at the notion.

This oft-repeated accusation that atheists are fundamentalists is bull. Every atheist I know takes essentially the same position I do: no evidence for God exists, and we don't make a habit of believing in things which are on their face unlikely in the absence of evidence.

There is nothing even remotely fundamentalist or absolutist about that stand. Saying, "Prove it," is not a denial of doubt, it is an expressed openness to evidence, the exact opposite of fundamentalism.

[amba]

Dawkins goes well beyond that.

[PatHMV]

It is a denial and an absolutist position. As I've said before, faith is not subject to proof. The existence of God is not subject to proof, which is one of the real problems I have with the Intelligent Design folks.

Thus, by categorically refusing to accept that which cannot be proven, you have taken an absolute position which denies the existence of God and which ridicules, ultimately, those who are not so grounded in material proofs as you are.

Annie, the left needs to do that with patriotism, too. We've got a link up over at our site today to a real whacko woman, a 9/11 truther type. She does a piece of performance art (thanks to Tully for finding that demented work) where she basically trashes and soils the American flag. Of course, most people on the left are decent, patriotic people, but they've mostly allowed the right to coopt all the symbols of patriotism, such as the flag. A lot of the Democrats right now are afraid to do anything which would allow the President or the GOP to "wrap themselves in the flag." Well, I say, take back the flag yourself. Chastize those who mistreat it, even as you defend their right to do so. Wrap yourselves in the flag and display the symbols of patriotism while you make opposing political arguments.

There's actually a growing movement of liberal evangelicals out there, that nobody's paying much attention to right now. That's a political and social movement to watch out for.

[wj]

Michael, your description of your own position sounds far more like an agnostic than an atheist. What you seem to be saying is "There is no evidence to support this position [belief in God], and until there is I'm not accepting it."

An atheist, on the other hand, says: "I believe that there is no God. Period." Which is actually, you will note, just as much a statement of belief-in-the-absence-of-evidence as the profession of faith of the true believer. That's probably why so many individuals go from rabid faith to rabid atheism: they must believe, and cannot accept (as you seem to) that reality might be indeterminate.

Of course, maybe you just like the label of "atheist." It does have a certain shock value, which I'm sure can be really amusing.

[michael Reynolds]

Thus, by categorically refusing to accept that which cannot be proven, you have taken an absolute position which denies the existence of God and which ridicules, ultimately, those who are not so grounded in material proofs as you are.

Which is why you hold open the possibility that Zeus is the true God? That leprechauns have pots of gold at the ends of rainbows? That unicorns have a thing for virgins? That Huitzilopoctli needs to be fed with fresh human hearts?

You categorically reject a thousand unproven beliefs, choose for reasons of your own to accept only one, and then denounce me for applying honestly the same standards of proof you apply only intermittently and in a way calculated to ratify your own prejudices.

Yeah. That's very compelling logic.

[michael Reynolds]

WJ:
I disagree. An agnostic typically holds open the possibility of a god as a distinct possibility superior to many other possibilities listed above: other gods, fairy tale creatures, etc...

Agnostics typically take seriously the monotheistic world view, wonder whether it might be true, and refuse to reach a firm conclusion.

I reach the firm conclusion that I cannot accept the reality of unlikely things which have no basis in evidence. Should evidence surface I'll change my stand.

But I can no more declare myself undecided on the subject of Jehovah than I can on the subject of ten thousand other deities, or orcs, or dragons, or fairies. Subject to correction should evidence appear, I'm going to go forward believing that neither Jehovah nor Loki nor The Daghda exist.

[PatHMV]

I didn't "denounce" you, Michael. I said:

Thus, by categorically refusing to accept that which cannot be proven, you have taken an absolute position which denies the existence of God and which ridicules, ultimately, those who are not so grounded in material proofs as you are.

How is that "denouncing" you? I think you are wrong. My faith, which is an entirely subjective feeling, tells me that you are wrong. That faith also allows me to reject leprechauns and the tooth fairy while accepting that God exists.

I'm simply pointing out the consequence of what you yourself said, that you don't believe in God because God's existence cannot be proven, and you will not believe in anything which cannot be proven to exist.

I certainly did not lay claim to having any "compelling logic," nor am I trying to convert you. You said that you position was not "fundamentalists" or absolute. But by categorically rejecting EVERYTHING which cannot be proven, you have done precisely what Annie said, taken an absolute position against any God whose existence cannot be proven. You are thus absolutely and fundamentally denying the existence of my God.

[Pastor_Jeff]

Michael, you're a smart guy, and I know you know the difference between proof and evidence.

I will admit there's no objective proof for God's existence. But I will also assert there is evidence supporting belief in Jesus Christ. You may not find the evidence compelling and thus find faith unreasonable, but that's not the same as there being no evidence at all.

[Dan]

What the things Amba has posted demonstrate is how utterly unfamiliar, and uncomprehending, the secular world is with Catholicism and Catholic spirituality. There is nothing remotely new or scandalous in the portions of Mother Teresa's writings that have been published. It is very common for saints to have bemoaned the loss of mystical union. St. John of the Cross and St. Therese of Lisieux are perhaps the most famous cases but there are many others. Joan of Arc for example complained to God about losing her direct connection with God and His angels -- just before she began to lose battles too. And of course there is the pre-eminent example of Jesus Christ and his cry from the cross: "Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?"

Richard Rodiriguez's theory that the Church released the letters because "there is too much faith in the world" is one of the most singularly ludicrous things that I have read in quite a while. Mr. Rodriguez and the Church live in different worlds. It is a major understatement to say that "too much faith" has not been a theme of this pontificate -- or of any in the history of the Church. Notably, Mr. Rodriguez does not cite any evdidence for his theory as to the Church's motivation for releasing Mother Teresa's letters. Here is part of what Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Papal Household, has said about the letters:

"Some have completely misunderstood the nature of these writings, thinking that they oblige us to reconsider the personality of Mother Theresa and her faith and holiness. Far from undermining the stature of Mother Theresa’s holiness, these new documents will immensely magnify it, placing her at the side of the greatest mystics of Christianity.

Jesuit Father Joseph Neuner, who knew her, has written, 'With the beginning of her new life in the service of the poor, darkness came on her with oppressive power.'

A few brief passages suffice to give an idea of the density of the darkness in which she found herself: 'There is so much contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so deep that it is painful, a suffering continual — yet not wanted by God, repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal. ... Heaven means nothing to me, it looks like an empty place.'

It was not difficult to recognize immediately in this experience of Mother Teresa a classic case of that which scholars of mysticism, following St. John of the Cross, usually call 'the dark night of the soul.' Tauler gives an impressive description of this stage of the spiritual life:

'Now, we are abandoned in such a way that we no longer have any knowledge of God and we fall into such anguish so as not to know any more if we were ever on the right path, nor do we know if God does or does not exist, or if we are alive or dead. So that a very strange sorrow comes over us that makes us think that the whole world in its expanse oppresses us. We no longer have any experience or knowledge of God, and even all the rest seems repugnant to us, so that it seems that we are prisoners between two walls.'"

This is not the Gospel of Doubt that Rodriguez, Andrew Sullivan and others preach. Rodriguez presumably believes that his theory of "doubt" is grounds for not being able to know whether sodomy and abortion are wrong, etc. Mother Teresa had no such doubts. In this regard, I highly commend her February 3, 1994 speech to the National Prayer Breakfast.

Father Cantalamessa does recognize a parallel between Mother Teresa's anguish and that of some atheists. In another part of the same essay that is quoted above, he says:

"The world of today knows a new category of people: the atheists in good faith, those who live painfully the situation of the silence of God, who do not believe in God but do not boast about it; rather they experience the existential anguish and the lack of meaning of everything: They too, in their own way, live in the dark night of the spirit.

Albert Camus called them 'the saints without God.' The mystics exist above all for them; they are their travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they 'sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them' (see Luke 15:2).

This explains the passion in which certain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, the two Maritains, L. Bloy, the writer J.K. Huysmans and so many others over the writings of Angela of Foligno; T.S. Eliot on those of Julian of Norwich.

There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun. Few know that Samuel Beckett, the author of Waiting for Godot, the most representative drama of the theater of the absurd, in his free time read St. John of the Cross.

The word 'atheist' can have an active and a passive meaning. It can indicate someone who rejects God, but also one who — at least so it seems to him — is rejected by God. In the first case, it is a blameworthy atheism (when it is not in good faith), in the second an atheism of sorrow or of expiation.

In the latter sense, we can say that the mystics, in the night of the spirit, are 'a-theist,' that Jesus himself on the cross was an 'a-theist', without-God.

Mother Teresa has words that no one would have suspected of her: 'They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God. ... In my soul I feel just this terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing. Jesus please forgive the blasphemy.'

But one is aware of the different nature, of solidarity and of expiation, of this 'atheism' of hers:

'I wish to live in this world that is so far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to help them — to take upon myself something of their suffering.'

The clearest sign that this is an atheism of a completely different nature is the unbearable suffering that it causes to the mystics. Normal atheists don’t torment themselves because of the absence of God.

The mystics arrived within a step of the world of those who live without God; they have experienced the dizziness of throwing themselves down. Again, Mother Teresa who writes to her spiritual father: 'I have been on the verge of saying — No. ... I feel as if something will break in me one day. ... Pray for me that I may not refuse God in this hour — I don’t want to do it, but I am afraid I may do it.'

Because of this the mystics are the ideal evangelizers in the post-modern world, where one lives etsi Deus non daretur (as if God did not exist).

They remind the honest atheists that they are not 'far from the Kingdom of God'; that it would be enough for them to jump to find themselves on the side of the mystics, passing from nothingness to the All.

Karl Rahner was right to say: 'Christianity of the future, will either be mystical or it will not be at all.' Padre Pio and Mother Teresa are the answer to this sign of the times.

We should not 'waste' the saints, reducing them to distributors of graces or of good examples."

In sum, Mother Teresa's anguish was of a deeply spiritual nature and niether she nor the Church ever remotely considered offering it up as a justification for the Gospel of Doubt or to reduce faith in the world or to justify sodomy or abortion or to combat "fundamentalism." On the contrary, the anguish is understood in a fully orthodox way: it is understood as a penance, as suffering that is offered up for the suffering of a world that has turned away from God, in solidarity with the suffering of Christ.

The issue is not whether there is anguish and doubt -- there always is, they are part of the human condition -- but whether one gives into them and how one lives with them. Mother Teresa responded by living a life of exemplary faith. She was a beautiful saint.

[Dan]

"In some way the people in the pew teach the priest--the Church--what it means to love. The left, like spoiled children, having been accused of being sinful by the Church, they decide the Church is really sinful. That's not useful. More useful is to spend a life of service to a Church that is not easily yours."

All I will say about this is that I used to have views about sex and sexuality that were probably not too different from Mr. Rodriguez's but now that I've come back to the Church I feel that everything I know about how to love I have learned from the Church. I find "the people in the pews" to be the worst guides, to the extent they deviate from orthodoxy as most of them do.

It is interesting, and sad, how Mr. Rodriguez conflates "the left" and those who oppose the Church's teachings on sexuality. Everyone already knows that the Democratic Party has become the party of abortion and gay sex but Mr. Rodriguez's off hand assumption that this is so is nonetheless remarkable.

[Tom Strong]

Wow, Dan. You didn't even try to understand anything he wrote after the third sentence, did you?

You could read into him a little bit and try to understand, if not agree. But instead you just heap contempt.

I pity you.

[amba]

Because of this the mystics are the ideal evangelizers in the post-modern world, where one lives etsi Deus non daretur (as if God did not exist).

Dan -- I don't think what you're saying is that far from what Rodriguez is saying. If that same piece had been presented to you without disclosure that he was homosexual, I wonder if you would have reacted differently. I suspect you are assuming that Rodriguez's (and Sullivan's) whole aversion to dogmatism revolves around his homosexuality. I wonder, though, if there are heterosexuals who share it, and whom you might "hear." Lucky you that God didn't make you gay. (There might be a prayer of thanksgiving for that, like the Orthodox Jewish prayer of thanksgiving for not being made a woman.)

The experience of painful doubt, or of the dark night of the soul, undoubtedly makes the saints compassionate rather than dogmatic towards people who don't share their faith. As you say.

[Funky Dung]

"The experience of painful doubt, or of the dark night of the soul, undoubtedly makes the saints compassionate rather than dogmatic towards people who don't share their faith."

Having an extended dark night of the soul may well make one compassionate in dealing with those of other or no faith (and rightly so), but it needn't make one a relativist or a universalist. If the Church had any reason to doubt the orthodoxy of St. John of the Cross he would not have been canonized.

Looking at the other side of the coin, defense of dogma is not mutually exclusive to compassion and meaningful ecumenism.

[Dan]

The fact that Rodriguez and Andrew Sullivan are gay has no significance whatsoever for me. What does is that they attack Church teaching and openly admit that they wish to subvert it.

I agree it is not just homosexuals. Mother Teresa's letters are being cited by many others also as support for combatting "dogma." The problem for them is that they provide no such support.

The compassion of the saints derives not from doubt or existential anguish but from the Christ's love and their deep love of God and His creation. They will all, without exception, tell you this.

I do not think it is compassionate to endorse homosexual sex. That is a false compassion. This is what the Church teaches (and Mother Teresa would have fully agreed) and it is what I believe, not only because the Church teaches it but from what I observe.

[amba]

Having an extended dark night of the soul may well make one compassionate in dealing with those of other or no faith (and rightly so), but it needn't make one a relativist or a universalist.

Do you think Rodriguez is a relativist or a universalist?

[amba]

I do not think it is compassionate to endorse homosexual sex. That is a false compassion. This is what the Church teaches (and Mother Teresa would have fully agreed) and it is what I believe, not only because the Church teaches it but from what I observe.

It's not what I observe. I have two friends who've lived faithfully together for something like 15 years. The one I know best tried manfully to be married to a woman and was miserable. Is there unhappy and/or promiscuous homosexual sex? Sure. Is there unhappy and/or promiscuous heterosexual sex? If homosexuals have a higher rate of unhappiness and/or promiscuity (and I don't know if this is statistically proven), which comes first causally: their homosexuality, or the condemnation of it by society's authorities?

[Funky Dung]

Yeah, of a sort. Witness:

"I think the real value of these documents is that they teach us that certitude is not what we want in the world...The public face of the Church is of certitude, unchanging and truths that are unchallengeable. But anyone who has grown up within the Catholic Church as I have realizes that it is an institution of great failure, compromise, moral and otherwise, and disappointment."

Blind men may indeed grope about and wrongly describe a beast they have not seen. Then again, there may also be others - John of the Cross, Mother Teresa, etc - who have stepped away from the comfort afforded by their senses and even the comfort of the "warm fuzzies" of faith to enter naked and vulnerable into the dark night. To the world they are blind, but the eyes of their souls see more clearly than those of us put off or terrified of the dark night can imagine.

Contrary to what I read between the lines of Rodriguez's article - I humbly request that I be corrected if wrong - and the comment to which I responded, the dark night does not blur the world "outside" the night, but instead brings sharper contrast.

[Dan]

It is difficult to condense down to "combox" size my opinions about sex. But I do not believe that the key to happiness is satisfaction of the sexual urge with a person to whom one is sexually attracted. I also believe -- as unpopular as this belief is -- that centering life around sex is contrary to the spiritual life, even for married heterosexual couples. (See Galatians 5:16-18.) This is my own personal experience.

It is also my personal experience that those who live with the modern, secular view of sex -- whether heterosexual or homosexual -- suffer a lack in their lives. I used to be one of those persons.

The real hope of those who are for gay marriage is that it will destigmatize homosexuality. I am completely convinced that this is a false hope, just as there once was a (false) hope that abortion could be acceptable if society would just say so.

If you want the Catholic homosexual perspective, I highly recommend that you read things written by Eve Tushnet and David Morrison. Each has written, and currently blogs, about their experience in living out orthodox Catholic teaching on sexuality while having same sex attraction. Each finds greater joy in the faith then in the renunciation of sexual relations.

Those who say the Church's teachings on sex are cruel or unrealistic or whatever never say "I'm trying but I just can't do it"; rather, they assume it can't be done and urge change. It can be done, and those who do it are far better off than those who don't as far as I can tell. There are far harder things in life than accepting a call to celibacy.

I don't want to get too personal here, but there are things that I thought I could never do that I have done after asking God for help. I can't prove that God granted me the grace to do it but that is the only explanation that I have.

Back to Mother Theresa: if her writings are somehow contrary to dogma, why was she such an orthodox Catholic?

[Dan]

"I think the real value of these documents is that they teach us that certitude is not what we want in the world...The public face of the Church is of certitude, unchanging and truths that are unchallengeable. But anyone who has grown up within the Catholic Church as I have realizes that it is an institution of great failure, compromise, moral and otherwise, and disappointment."

This quote makes no sense. Yes, the Church has taught unchanging truth and yes members of the Church have sinned. So what? That members of the Church do not sin is not one of Her teachings. On the contrary. (He says the Churh is an institution of "moral compromise" but of course offers no specifics. This sort of provocatively vague innuendo is what they pay him the big bucks for. Also, does the man have no self respect? Why does he belong to a church that he believes is morally compromised?) As for the "disappointment," I would tell Mr. Rodriguez to speak for himself. The Church is the only thing is this world that, at the most fundamental level of being, has not disappointed me.

Further, note how he starts from Mother Teresa's letters and ends up slamming the Church even though Mother Teresa loved the Church and never slammed it.

[Tom Strong]

Dan,

I owe you an apology. My words before were hasty and childish.

[amba]

Funky: I don't know if you're right or wrong about Rodriguez. I don't know him, and I'm not a Catholic. All I can say is that he seems committed to Catholicism and admiring of Mother Teresa even if the Church does not want his kind of commitment, which is not unquestioning obedience.

Catholicism allows such a narrow path, or shall we say Procrustean bed, for the expression of sexuality that it sometimes seems you are all almost yearning towards celibacy, like the original Shakers. Does this come from Jesus or is it from Peter and Augustine?

[amba]

I do not believe that the key to happiness is satisfaction of the sexual urge with a person to whom one is sexually attracted.

I don't know how you separate out "sexually" from the attraction of the whole person. I've been merely "sexually attracted" to people, and I've loved people -- there's a huge difference. In the latter case, sex is only an expression. It is a form of emotional vulnerability most of all.

Each finds greater joy in the faith then in the renunciation of sexual relations.

But that is a calling. It's not for everybody. That's what I mean by a Procrustean bed.

It can be done, and those who do it are far better off than those who don't as far as I can tell. There are far harder things in life than accepting a call to celibacy.

Some people are called to celibacy. It is not one size fits all. God, shall we say, did not make everyone the same.

[Dan]

"Does [the yearning for celibacy] come from Jesus or is it from Peter and Augustine?

Jesus and St. Augustine and many, many others: St. Paul, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, St. Joan of Arc, Saint Maria Goretti, St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), and Pope John Paull II are just a few who specifically championed the spiritual value of celibacy. It is not insignificant that the greatest of the saints -- St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. Francis -- made a point of the importance of celibacy. But it is not just them. Very few of the saints were not actually celibate. And of course we remember Mary, the mother of Jesus, for her virginity among other things.

But believe it or not this is not anti-sex. It is just that celibacy reflects a higher love than does sex. Although St. Paul ranks marriage below celibacy, he and the Church recognize that not all are called to celibacy. (I think St. Francis noted the obvious: the human race must reproduce.) The Church elevates marriage to the status of a sacrament: the marital union is a visible sign of God. Pope John Paul II called the marital union an icon of the trinity: just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the love between the Father and the Son, a child proceeds from the love between a man and a woman and orgasm is a foreshadowing of paradise. As the Pope put it in a book he wrote in Poland in the 1950s: "...So it is with human beings, with the man and the woman who use the sexual urge in sexual intercourse and enter as it were into the cosmic stream by which existence is transmitted."

[Dan]

As to the issue you raise about whether one thing works for all, I would analogize it to food. Some people like junk food, some are gourmets. But the people who say they like junk food really don't appreciate food; if they developed their knowledge about food, they too would become gourmets. So yes, a lot of people out there are eating at Jack-In-The-Box but it doesn't mean Jack-In-The-Box is good.

Much of this is susceptible to rational argumentation, starting from the point of questions such as: what is the proper way for two humans to relate to each other? what is love? what is a correct sexual ethic? what is the spiritual value of mortification of the flesh? These are all complex questions obviously, but they can be answered and, when answered properly, they all point to a better understanding of sex. That understanding must be tested of course against the reality of experience. The reason I cited Eve Tushnet and David Morrison is that they have tried to live Catholic teaching on sex whereas the "Catholic" critics (Richard Rodiriguex, Andrew Sullivan, etc.) never come at the question from the Catholic vantage point. I agree that to live successfully according to Catholic teaching it helps to have the faith but that does not mean that what the faith teaches is wrong or is not true for everyone. It is true that not everyone is called to celibacy. But no one is called to a peverse, unwholsome sexuality. The Church condemns many heterosexual behavoirs, some of which I delighted in. It was by working through that sin and seeing above and beyond it that I enriched my own spiritual life. So I am fundamentally unsympathetic to arguments that are premised on the observation that there are many predilictions out there. I know that; it in no way contradicts my views.

[michael Reynolds]

I find celibates boring. I find libertines boring. Both seem overly concerned with something which is a hell of a lot of fun, but not worth much discussion. Screw, don't screw, who cares?

The issue with gay marriage is not sex or celibacy. It's love and committment. To deny gays the same rights I have is un-American, cruel, and frankly sickening to me.

Dan, it is none of your goddamned business whether two guys want to spend their lives together and enjoy the same legal rights I do. Dress it up however you like, it's not your business. And to continue to demand the right to impose your peculiar sexual mores on people you don't know, whose lives impinge on you in no way, is not godly or Christian. It is simply mean.

[Dan]

"All I can say is that he seems committed to Catholicism and admiring of Mother Teresa even if the Church does not want his kind of commitment, which is not unquestioning obedience."

The Church does not ask for "unquestioning obedience." She asks for sincere faith and understanding, from which obedience naturally flows. To have the faith of the Church is to believe what She teaches. If you do not have that faith, the Church would not want you to feign it through "unquestioning obedience." Why would She? We are transparent when we stand before God.

Also, how can you say that Rodriguez seems to be committed to Catholicism when, according to him, the Church is "an institution of great failure, compromise, moral and otherwise, and disappointment"? Why would anyone who believes this be a Catholic? Further, he rejects the Church's teaching on sexuality. This alone implies a deeper rejection of the Church's entire teaching authority and a fundamental lack of communion with the Church. As I've often commented on blogs, one either takes Catholicism whole or not all. Cafeteria Catholicism does not make intellectual sense. It is indistinguishable from Protestantism.

All that said, the Church encourages all the cafeteria Catholics to stay. Not so She can listen to all their confused blather, but because it is better for them to remain within Her protective reach than out in the wilderness.

[Dan]

"Dan, it is none of your goddamned business whether two guys want to spend their lives together and enjoy the same legal rights I do."

Why is the definition of marriage not my business? Is it your business but not mine?

[michael Reynolds]

Dan:

It is not your business what other people do. So long as they don't harm you, or victimize anyone else, it is none of your business. This is a free country. MInd your own life. Mind your own business. Tend to your own relatiionship with your own God.

Or as a wise man (can't quite recall who) once said: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

You are pharasaical and cruel and in no way Christlike. I cannot imagine that the Christ who said the above would endorse your cold, superior indifference to your fellow man.

[PatHMV]

Michael, that's the first time I've ever seen you say something truly mean, cruel, and ignorant. If you want a real example of intolerance, just come back and read your own post again. Dan has given a heart-felt explanation of his faith. He hasn't been insulting or screaming hellfire and brimstone.

The definition of the fundamental building blocks of our society is indeed the business of all of us. You are free to advocate for your vision of society, but we must all make the decisions together. That's all Dan said, after you intolerantly demanded that your vision is the only conceivable possible point of view. And for that, you criticized him and his religion in cruel, personal terms. Shame on you.

[michael Reynolds]

Pat:

People made equally heart-felt defenses of racism. They cited the Bible in support of Jim Crow laws and laws against inter-marriage. This is no different.

To deny a person the opportunity for happiness is cruel. It is nothing but cruel. There's no excusing cruelty.

As I said, you can dress cruelty up with religion but it does not cease to be cruelty.

How dare he, or you, deny two American citizens of legal age the right to form a contract that expresses nothing more sinister than love and committment?

As I said before, if you ar honestly concerned with the institution of marriage, outlaw divorce. Gays are no threat to that institution, or to society, and to continue to insist against all evidence that they are is simple bigotry. It is the deliberate scapegoating of a minority for purposes of concealing the culpability of the majority.

[Funky Dung]

"How dare he, or you, deny two American citizens of legal age the right to form a contract that expresses nothing more sinister than love and committment?"

The key word there is "contract". There are those who believe that either America was founded on the basis of social contract ideals or came to embrace those ideals, and there are those who believe that either America was not founded on the basis of social contract ideals or should not have embraced those ideals. Most folks opposed to same-sex marriage are in the latter group and I suspect most believe that America was founded on ideals at least vaguely resembling Judeo-Christian values. Furthermore, they'd interpret those values to exclude active homosexuality as acceptable behavior and deny marriage to gays on that basis. Both groups believe that societies have the right to decide which behaviors are acceptable and which are not, but they are bitterly divided over how to make such distinctions.

[Funky Dung]

Almost forgot:

The conclusion from my rambling thoughts above is that those who oppose gay marriage don't see it merely as a contract.

[Funky Dung]

"a contract that expresses nothing more sinister than love and committment"

Would you object if polygamists used similar arguments to lobby for the right to marry multiple partners? (serious, not flippant, question)

[michael Reynolds]

FD:

I don't personally have an objection to polygamous marriages. So long as we have and enforce laws against spousal abuse, underage marriage, and incest -- frequent components of polygamous marriages. I'm at a loss to imagine why anyone in his right mind would want two wives, but I'm a libertarian on social issues.

However, it is hard for a man to make the argument that the only way he can be happy, and be part of a stable family unit and acheive full legal protection, is to marry several women.

My guess is it would prove to be less than popular since it makes very little economic sense.

But as it is we allow serial marriages in which men and women marry, have children, break up, remarry, have more children, break up again and remarry again and pass their children back and forth like shuttlecocks. As witness the GOP front-runner. If you put that concept on the table in the abstract it sounds pretty unsavory, no more attractive than one man and three women or two men and one woman, or whatever.

[michael Reynolds]

Let me add that part of the reason I find the "harming the institution" objection to gay marriage so offensive is that straights have managed to utterly mangle the institution all by themselves, and clearly have no interest in changing those laws.

This sanctimonious concern for marriage as a building block of society at a time when straight people have voted themselves free rein to undercut the institution at whim is jaw-dropping hypocrisy.

[Funky Dung]

"This sanctimonious concern for marriage as a building block of society at a time when straight people have voted themselves free rein to undercut the institution at whim is jaw-dropping hypocrisy."

Well, concern on the part of those who did the voting, those who elected those who voted, and those who stood idly by while elected officials made such votes is indeed "jaw-dropping hypocrisy". However, that hypocrisy does not by itself refute the arguments against gay marriage.

1) Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because no-fault divorce is morally wrong, doesn't mean gay marriage is morally right.

2) Saying that straights have wrecked the institution of marriage is not an argument for gay marriage. In fact, some might argue that it's an argument against it. That is, some would say that if we can't undo the damage done, at least we can attempt to prevent further damage.

3) Saying that gays should marry because straights have wrecked the institution of marriage is like saying "Gays have a right to be as shallow, selfish, and miserable as straights!" It may be in some sense true, but it's hardly an attractive argument.

How would you respond to someone arguing against gay marriage who also rejects divorce (and other straight-inflicted damage to marriage), i.e., someone not exhibiting "jaw-dropping hypocrisy"?

[Dan]

I'd like to add a comment in response to the notion that the Church asks for "unquestioning obedience."

The principal architects of Catholic theology are St. Augustine, who harmonzied Christianity and Platonism (which anticipates Christainity to a remarkable degree), and St. Thomas, who harmonized Christian though with Aristotelian thought. In doing so, St. Augustine and St. Thomas laid down in formidable fashion the rational, philosophic basis for Christian thought. They did not do so, obviously, by avoiding questions but, on the contrary, by confronting them head on, and answering them. Pope Benedict on multiple occasions, not least of which in his Regensberg address, has beseeched the world to enter into a dialogue with the Church about the fundamental questions of how we should order our society. The response, where there has been one, has been a mixuture of incomprehension and ridicule (interestingly, Muslims are the one group that did respond in a respectful and intelligent manner to the Regensberg address). The Church also constantly asks for reasoned dialogue about abortion and gay marriage. These entreaties to reason together about these matters are usually ignored. And it is the Church that silences questioning and reasoned dialogue?

I am not particularly familiar with Richard Rodriguez but I follow fairly carefully the arguments that Andrew Sullivan advances and I am underwhelmed by their quality. The Church does not silence the questions that he raises; the Church addresses them thoroughly and with rigorous logic. I am not irritated when people respond to the Church's arguments with reasoned counter-argument. I do find irritating the claim that the Church is some sort of brainwashing operation that compels its members to accept in drone-like fashion things that could not otherwise be accepted. This claim is not within the ballpark of what the reality of the Church is.

The Church says that a by-product of faith and Her teachings is happiness. Richard Rodriguez and Andrew Sullivan are not in a position to challenge this claim based on personal experience because they have never accepted Her teachings.

[david]

Michael:

You're almost enough to make me an atheist. 'Cause if you're not God, I can't imagine there being one.

[michael Reynolds]

FD:

1) That's not the argument I make for gay marriage, it's the argument I make to counter the "damaged institution" rationale. The argument I make for gay marriage is a) equal rights under the law, b) the civilizing influence of committment between people who love each other, c) that to forbid such committments is cruelty, and d) the lack of any compelling counter-argument.

2) This is a restatement of (1) with a bit of (3), I believe, so see above and below.

3) It isn't an attractive argument in favor of gay marriage, which is why I don't make it. It is however a convincing proof that the opponents of gay marriage are masking naked bigotry as high-flown concern for society.

But as it happens, gays do have a right to be as selfish and etc... as straight people. This is the United States. We don't have different classes of citizenship. We don't allow straights to behave badly and deny that right to gays, any more than we would allow whites to behave in ways we don't let blacks behave.

How would you respond to someone arguing against gay marriage who also rejects divorce (and other straight-inflicted damage to marriage), i.e., someone not exhibiting "jaw-dropping hypocrisy"?

I would give points for consistency. Then I would say, "Okay: you first."

More seriously that argument will never be made by anyone seeking votes or hoping to exercise power. So it is politically irrelevant. I'll pay uou a housand dollars for every mainstream presidential candidate who suggests outlawing divorce.

[amba]

I think "reasoning together" is exactly what we're doing here, even if some of us get mad and intemperate sometimes.

Here's what bugs me: the Bible is read selectively and interpretively by absolutely everyone, including the orthodox and self-described fundamentalists. So why has anti-homosexuality become a seemingly central tenet of Christian dogma, when so many other Biblical injunctions and precedents are quietly ignored as obsolete? It is, I believe, simply the sacralization of a prejudice.

There is plenty of sense that everyone not besotted can see in being opposed to promiscuity, sex with minors, incest, etc. Society's commercial glorification of recreational sex is unquestionably harmful. But how one couple's committed love can be harmful to another's is beyond me. And, as stated above, "It's in the Bible" is insufficient justification.

[amba]

To give the Catholic Church credit where due, however: they do oppose serial monogamy. And to prevent the ruling from being draconian cruelty to the truly trapped in unbearable circumtances, they provide the loophole of annulment.

[david]

Lewis Black does a hysterical riff on Christian mis-interpretation of the Bible. He basically says "my people" (the Jews) write the oldest part of the Bible, so they get to misinterpret it any way they want.

Meanwhile, the Buddhist philosophy of Emptiness is one among several holding that it is impossible not to interpret, and that only through understanding all things and perceptions as co-arising dependently do we understand that everything -- including the philosophy of Emptiness itself -- is subjective, and therefore both not what it seems and inseparable from what it seems.

In other words: we build our arguments around our prejudices. We have to be willing to puncture them, and all our other perceptions, all the time.

At least, that's part of what it means. I think.

[Tom Strong]

amba,

It's not that anti-homosexuality has become central to Catholic dogma; its that Catholic dogma resists all forms of sexuality not explicitly endorsed by tradition - i.e., one-man-one-woman, married to each other, open to having a baby. Being against gay marriage is just part of that larger argument.

I happen to disagree with that larger argument, but I also don't believe in the Christian God, and think any static "natural law" that ignores our actual study of nature is hooey. But that's me - I'm no Catholic.

To me, a better question would be: why have people who are not resolutely orthodox remained so fixed on the sexual laws of tradition, while simultaneously discarding many of the laws regarding diet, dress, work, and so on? What is it about sexuality that makes people so much more resistant to change?

[Dan]

"I think 'reasoning together' is exactly what we're doing here, even if some of us get mad and intemperate sometimes." I agree, which is my point.

As to why homosexuality has become such a big issue, one must look to the gay rights movement. The Church's teaching on it has been the same for 2,000 years. In all that time the teaching on homosexuality has not gained or lost prominence within the dogma. Opposition to it has however increased dramatically in the last twenty years.

What other "Biblical injunctions and precedents are quietly ignored as obsolete"? Not eating shell fish? There is very old Christian teaching about that. To love one another? That is not being ignored, but rather is preached incessantly (as it should be).

By the way, even within secular intellectual history it is a very, very new idea that homosexuality is not an unhealthy perversion. Freud believed homosexuality to be both a perversion and a psychological disorder. Whether it is the latter, I don't know, but it is obviously a perversion under any reasonable definition of the word. Freud defined perversion as any sexual act that did not tend toward procreation. This seems to me to be a quite reasonable definition.

[Dan]

"the loophole of annulment"

To the extent this reference is to suggest that the Church's use of annulments has been a scandal, I tend to agree although, to be honest, I'm not that informed about the situation. I did see however that the women who married a Kennedy contested an annulment and ultimately won, although it took years and had to go all the way to the Vatican.

[amba]

Then why is there homosexual behavior and pair bonding (separately and together) in nature, in percentages similar to its occurrence in human groups?

Also, your definition of "always" is almost comically nearsighted. The Greeks, who by your own admission made certain philosophical contributions to the development of Christianity, thought a certain kind of homosexual relationship was not only not a perversion, they thought it was an ideal -- more "of the mind and spirit than," and therefore vastly superior to, the necessary procreative heterosexual relationship with a woman. By contemporary anthropological accounts, many American Indian societies apparently had a respected institution of what we would call gay marriage -- "berdache" or cross-gendered individuals married to straight members of their own sex.

[Dan]

"But how one couple's committed love can be harmful to another's is beyond me."

No one is arguing that "one couple's committed love can be harmful to another's." The argument is that by legalizing gay marriage we will simultaneously make illegal the legal privileging of biological parents in family law matters and, more generally, culturally. Michael Reynolds is right that no fault divorce already has gravely wounded marriage. Gay marriage would be the death blow.

[Dan]

All sorts of wrong desire are prevalent in nature, including in my own nature. That proves nothing. I also feel at times the inclination to steal, to cheat, to lie, and to lust. All are prevalent in nature and all are wrong.

Yes, the Greeks had different ideas than does Christianity about homosexuality. About slavery too. They were wrong about both.

[amba]

Here, I wrote a post on that. Particularly striking:

* Spiritual sanction. Berdache identity is widely believed to be the result of supernatural intervention in the form of visions or dreams, and/or it is sanctioned by tribal mythology;
* Same-sex relations. Berdaches most often form sexual and emotional relationships with non-berdache members of their own sex.

Now go ahead and talk to me about the evils of cultural relativism and how Christianity is the culmination of human destiny. That is a matter of faith (and I'd even grant you that nothing surpasses the core teachings of Jesus; I personally would have trouble attributing that same status to all the details of various orthodoxies).

[amba]

an, what does your "legal privileging of biological parents" do to adoptive parents? Certainly gives them second-class status, no? And here we are trying to promote adoption instead of abortion?