Sexuality

The gatekeepers of liturgical language are so concerned that the average Joe in the pew can’t understand the word “ineffable”, yet we’ve already dumbed down the language into insensibility. Witness today’s second reading, 2 Corinthians 6:18:

Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.

Read at face value, this translation, the New American Bible, seems to say that there are some sins that are immoral and some that are not and that sins committed “outside the body” are not immoral. That makes no sense. But that’s because of the poor translation. The Greek word translated as “immorality” is “porneia”. Look familiar? Look like any English words we know?

This word also appears in several other places in the New Testament. In Matthew 5:32, where Jesus forbids divorce, he says, “Whoever divorces his wife, except on the grounds of unchastity (“porneia”), makes her an adulteress.” It has also been variously translated as fornication or to more specifically refer to homosexuality or bestiality or another sexual perversion. So Paul could be translated as saying, “Avoid sexual perversion. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexual pervert sins against his own body.” While that may be too blunt for a Mass where children are present, it has the benefit of clarity.

Perhaps we could tone it down a bit to “sexual immorality” or even “unchastity.” Oh, but will Joe Six-Pack in the pew be able to understand a subtle word like “unchastity”?

Instead we offer translations of Scripture that obscure meaning rather than convey it because we’re afraid of shocking people with straight talk about sin. Is it any wonder that collectively we’ve lost a sense of sin? Is it any wonder people have abandoned the sacrament of confession?

Photo credit: Arpingstone via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Right on line with my previous post on parents abdicating their responsibilities to their children and institutions arrogating it to themselves, I received an email today from Catholic Parents OnLine, which has produced a DVD entitled “A Parent’s Guide: Teaching the Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality.” (There’s a trailer on their site; go watch it.)

The video is based on the 1995 document from the Pontifical Council for the Family entitled “The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality - Guidelines for Education Within the Family”. The document was a response to the growing push for sex education in schools and even in religious education programs, everywhere but in the home. However, this document reiterates the Church’s teaching that parents are the “primary educators of their children,” including in matters relating to sexuality. This is primacy not just in chronology (i.e. because they’re the first to have contact with the baby), but in the order of authority. Not even the institution of the Church can usurp that primacy.

The web site also clarifies that the DVD is not intended as a sex education program, quoting Father Robert Altier:

This video does not attempt to teach sex education not does it attempt to bypass the parents or take their place, rather it is an attempt to provide a context and some confidence to parents as they strive to educate their children.

Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto, who will become the ordinary of Sacramento, California, at the end of November, was invited to speak to the conference of the National Association of Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. These are people who work directly for bishops.

Bishop Soto simply repeated the Church’s teachings.

“Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals, but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all,” Bishop Soto said. “For this reason, it is sinful. Married love is a beautiful, heroic expression of faithful, life-giving, life-creating love. It should not be accommodated and manipulated for those who would believe that they can and have a right to mimic its unique expression.”

At least five audience members walked out during his remarks and afterward he endured a group of audience members who berated him for what he said. A board member of the organization was overheard telling one of the tables in the room: “On behalf of the board, I apologize. We had no idea Bishop Soto was going to say what he said.”

Democrat House lawmakers in Massachusetts are mad at their leadership because they’re being forced to vote on a same-sex marriage bill in an election year.

“He has no concern for the members,” said one legislator, who requested anonymity. “This is stuff we should be dealing with in the first year (of the session). It’s a lose-lose for anyone facing a challenger.”

Let that sink in for a second. Despite their claims, the politicians admit that the same-sex so-called marriage is so unpopular with the voters, even in liberal Massachusetts, that they don’t want to be held accountable for their vote. Instead they’d prefer to expand it into the rest of the United States, but only if they can do so when they have the maximum possible time to let voters forget. Or they could emulate their craven Senate brethren and just hold a voice vote so as to avoid being counted in the crowd.

These are your legislators, ladies and gentlemen. Cowards.

The fact is that they know that if they let democracy actually work, they would never be able to push their re-engineering deconstruction of society forward. This is why they also hide behind legislative tricks and gimmicks to avoid allowing a popular referendum on a constitutional amendment. It’s the traditional disdain for the average voter inherent in the liberal worldview. They see all of us as so bigoted, so stupid, so incapable of doing the “right” thing— as they envision it—that they must circumvent our right to self-governance and impose the solutions of a minority on the majority. We don’t live in a democracy nor a constitutional republic anymore. We are ruled by oligarchs who blind us with bread and circuses, or to use a more updated phrase, earmarks and pork-barrel spending.

The good news is that the legislators are feeling the pressure and are worried that going on the record today will affect their electoral chances in November. It means that constituents are contacting their legislators. Some representatives’ offices are reporting that calls, emails, and letters are coming in 6-1 against the bill that would repeal a 1913 law that keeps Massachusetts from spreading her errors.

(The law makes it illegal for out-of-staters to be married in Massachusetts if the marriage would be illegal in their home state. Homosexual lobbyists make much of the fact that the law’s original intent was to prevent “miscegenation” or mixed-race marriages. Whatever the original intent of the law, it’s effect today is to prevent out-of-state homosexuals and lesbians from getting marriage licenses in Massachusetts and then suing back home by invoking the “full faith and credit” clause of the US Constitution. The clear propaganda goal here is not just to repeal the law, but also to create the mental equivalence in the minds of the public between race and sexual preference.)

Photo: Kjetil Ree (Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0)

As we were driving to and from the farmer’s market Saturday morning, all of the intersections in Salem were clogged with pink-shirted peddlers raising money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Melanie and I agreed that until the group —and other groups supporting research—was truly open to looking at all the possible sources of breast cancer, such as birth control pills, we were interested in giving them our money.

I’m not saying that I’m convinced that the Pill is the source of breast cancer. It’s much too complex for a layman like me to draw a conclusion like that. But it’s ideology, not science, that prevents organizations like Komen and the American Cancer Society and others from even being open to the possibility.

But even a cursory glance at the scientific data shows that something is up. Consider the Global Cancer Statistics, 2002 in “CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians”, published by the same American Cancer Society. Look at the incidence of breast cancer across the various regions of the world. North America is number one with 99.5 per 100,000 women, while Middle Africa is lowest. The most developed countries are all grouped at the top of the chart, while the least developed are at the bottom. The same goes for ovarian cancer, with almost the exact same chart. Why?

There could be many factors, including diet, exposure to chemicals prevalent in First World consumer goods, etc. But when you consider that 22.9 percent of all women in the US 15-44 years old use a form of chemical contraception, (PDF from the Centers for Disease Control’s National Survey of Family Growth; see Table 56, “Number of women 15–44 years of age and percent distribution by current contraceptive status and method, according to age at interview: United States, 2002”). Another 16.7 percent seek surgical sterilization. In what ways do these artificial frustrations of the body’s natural systems contribute to cancer in a part of the body intimately associated with the reproductive process?

(Incidentally, I’ve found a number of online sources that claim 80 to 90 percent of women 15-44 use contraception, which is only true if you include all forms of regulating births, even natural family planning! This “90-percent” is used to push young women into accepting prescriptions for the Pill, convincing them that “everyone’s doing it” and that it’s completely normal and safe. I’ve known young, faithful Catholic women who were convinced by their doctors to take the Pill to regulate and suppress their periods. Anything to get them on the Pill.)

The fact is that while liberals have blasted conservatives for introducing ideology into vital health education with regard to abstinence-only sex education, it is liberals who have put ideology ahead of science in cancer prevention and research. God forbid that one should suggest that perhaps unfettered sexual license does have consequences. For too many of them the Pill represents freedom from male oppression, freedom to emulate the worst impulses of the male psyche. Well, that “freedom” comes with a price.