Category Archives: Thought Experiments

Cancel Culture comes to Carmel

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On Father’s Day, my longtime pastor Father Ted Rothrock gave a rousing homily reminding the viewing audience at home and the few of us still in the pews that Holy Communion is the point of church (meaning the Catholic Mass).  He also said we needed to preach this from the rooftops.  After Mass, I asked him in honor of his homily if we could have a Eucharistic Procession along the Monon Trail in downtown Carmel on July 4th.  The City had canceled the usual annual Celebration of Secession from the London Crown parade, so I assumed this was a good way to fill that vacuum.  He intended to take his annual July break to boat on Lake Michigan so passed the duty to his young pastoral associate.  The associate happily agreed to do so. 

I called Father Summerlin to start the planning, and we agreed 10am on July 4th worked best.  I started emailing all this lists and contacts I have in the Carmel Catholic Community.  The next day Father Summerlin asked for me to explore whether the City had any permitting requirements for this type of gathering.  I agreed to do so, though since this was small and was essentially a group of people walking together on a public trail, there probably wouldn’t be any permit requited.  I did not intend to block streets or the trail itself. 

My wife humorously asked whether Jesus asked Pilate for permission to enter Jerusalem on the donkey so long ago.  Since this was not about my views on government (I’m an anarchist in the tradition of Murray Rothbard) but about Jesus, I contacted the police department and parks department to determine whether we needed permission or were required to notify.  Both confirmed my original view. 

In the meantime, Father Ted penned his weekly bulletin article; this one would generate national headlines since he made some pointed remarks about the leaders of the BLM and Antifa movements.  In a church with only about 25% of its normal weekend attendance because of the fear of a virus (which is worse, a virus or Satan?), it is somewhat ironic that this one bulletin article of his finally hit such a nerve.  He has written many similar stemwinders over the years.  He is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly irrelevant and milquetoast Catholic Church.  Some people that didn’t like Father Ted’s article announced they were going to protest our church on Sunday.  Father Summerlin said the Eucharistic Procession was cancelled, in light of this, even though it was just a few parishioners gathering together and taking a walk with Jesus on a public trail. 

Our new administrator appointed by the Bishop invited the protestors onto church property. The church also blocked some people, including a Lutheran pastor, from “counter” protesting on church property. Therefore, so these two groups could get visibility, they both ended up largely protesting on the public easements, including a neighbor’s house across the street. They didn’t ask for permission of the city to do this!

In a side note, there were many more of us who prayed in front of the church most of the day around a beautiful St. Elizabeth Ann Seton statue commissioned by Father Ted than there were protestors. Some people walked out during the Bishop’s comments before Masses this weekend about the suspension; my family did not the night before because his message was so watered down either way that it was hard to get so emotional. We are a large parish and I have been asking Father Ted to get the Bishop here. Sad that this is what it took.

Unfortunately, my takeaway from this: John the Baptist said He must increase, I must decrease. The Church did decrease by not having a Eucharistic Procession, unrelated to anything except Jesus, and protestors increased onto church property to celebrate the scalp of Father Ted’s pastorships (this one and his next assignment, at the largest parish in the diocese). This is a site against militarism, but it does not encourage cowardice either by the Faithful or the Hierarchy. I pray that we listen to John the Baptist.

Self-defense?

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They encountered their next victim – a priest – on Meriburr Lane at approximately 10:10 p.m.

‘A priest. You heard that right,’ Chief Acevedo told reporters, according to KTRK.

The priest said he was on his knees, praying for his life, when one of the suspects pulled the trigger twice.

“For whatever miraculous reason, the gun didn’t fire,” Chief Acevedo said.

https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesmatter/news/teen-who-shot-houston-cop-was-released-without-paying-bail-after-carjacking-lTdMxdJ8bEqAQYN4zpv1zg/?fbclid=IwAR1eSolSnZmv-xtRqzlNdcasMzgGjJQeKS9UlpYhr2sOEN7wl8AaQKxUBXg

Cancel the USCCB!

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Great commentary on the USCCB by Patrick Coffin this morning. He points out that their annual budget is $180 million, and not all of that comes from donations from Catholics. As an example, he says that 64.7% of the total annual budget of Catholic Relief Services is money given to them by the federal government. He says:

“It’s getting harder to know where the Church ends and the State begins…Somehow, somehow the Catholic Church in America managed to preach the Gospel, celebrate the sacraments and teach the faith for over 300 years before the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops began in 1966.”

Check it out:

War at Machine Speed

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So, I wonder what the Catholic “Just War Theory” has to say about robot wars. Will the robots be programmed to care about the Just War Theory as much as the folks at the Pentagon have been trained to care about the Just War Theory of Christianity? (Yeah, that was a joke.)

“So far, new weapons systems are being designed so that humans must still approve the unleashing of their lethal violence, but only minor modifications would be needed to allow them to act without human input. Pentagon rules, put in place during the Obama administration, don’t prohibit giving computers the authority to make lethal decisions; they only require more careful review of the designs by senior officials. And so officials in the military services have begun the thorny, existential work of discussing how and when and under what circumstances they will let machines decide to kill.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/killer-robots-and-new-era-machine-driven-warfare/597130/

What would you do if…?

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Oftentimes, when people ask me about my thoughts on abortion, they phrase it as a hypothetical situation. This is from a recent email that someone wrote to me:

To use an extreme example, a woman is raped, the doctor knows the
child will have severe down syndrome.  The state, whatever state, is
unlikely to care of the child.  Should that woman not be allowed to
have an abortion?

Or a single woman of no resources is to produce a child in an african
country with no reasonable expectation of adoptability and will be
prevented from having the education that might allow her to prosper.
Should that woman not be allowed to have an abortion?

Do not think that I am making fun of these questions, as they are fair and serious and should be taken seriously. Most importantly, they were asked with goodwill.

However, I can’t help but notice the same pattern of questioning when people in the Christian Just War / Just Defense camp ask me about what they call “pacifism.” This is a tongue-and-cheek video that does a good job of showing (though not explaining) what is wrong with logic that is based on hypotheticals: It’s not really logic at all.

Catholics should help Donald Trump!

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To get to Heaven.

If you are Catholic and you don’t understand what’s going on here – one of the richest men in the world honestly confronting his own mortality – then contact me and I will explain it to you.

Donald Trump wants to make a deal with Catholics. Hillary Clinton wants to put us out of business. Pray for both of them but don’t be an idiot and possibly commit a mortal sin by voting for Hillary and the Democrats.

From Matthew, Chapter 19:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘In truth I tell you, it is hard for someone rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven.’ When the disciples heard this they were astonished. ‘Who can be saved, then?’ they said. Jesus gazed at them. ‘By human resources’, he told them, ‘this is impossible; for God everything is possible.’

Merton on East and West

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From the essay “Beyond East and West” by Thomas Merton:

“We are no longer living in a Christian world. The ages which we are pleased to call the ‘ages of Faith’ are certainly not ages of earthly paradise. But at least our forefathers officially recognized the favored the Christian ethic of love. They fought some very bloody and unChristian wars, and in doing so, they also committed great crimes which remain in history as a permanent scandal. However, certain definite limits were recognized. Today a non-Christian world still retains a few vestiges of Christian morality, a few formulas and cliches, which serve on appropriate occasions to adorn indignant editorials and speeches. But otherwise we witness deliberate campaigns to oppose and eliminate all education in Christian truth and morality. Not only non-Christians but even Christians themselves tend to dismiss the Gospel ethic on nonviolence and love as ‘sentimental’. As a matter of fact, the mere suggestion that Christ counseled nonviolent resistance to evil is enough to invite scathing ridicule. One Catholic writer declares in so many words that he will stick to natural law and abandon the Sermon on the Mount to ‘Protestant ministers and Jewish Rabbis.’ It is therefore a serious error to imagine that because the West was once largely Christian, the cause of the Western nations is now to be identified, without further qualification, with the cause of God.”

 

On Precepts vs. Counsels

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The following is an email written by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.

***

Here is John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor, section 52:
“The Church has always taught that one may never choose kinds of behavior prohibited by the moral commandments expressed in negative form in the Old and New Testaments.”

From The Catholic Encyclopedia, with Imprimatur:

“Christ in the Gospels laid down certain rules of life and conduct which must be practiced by every one of His followers as the necessary condition for attaining to everlasting life. These precepts of the Gospel practically consist of the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, of the Old Law, interpreted in the sense of the New. Besides these precepts which must be observed by all under pain of eternal damnation, He also taught certain principles which He expressly stated were not to be considered as binding upon all, or as necessary conditions without which heaven could not be attained, but rather as counsels for those who desired to do more than the minimum and to aim at Christian perfection, so far as that can be obtained here upon earth. Thus (Matthew 19:16 sq.) when the young man asked Him what he should do to obtain eternal life, Christ bade him to “keep the commandments”. That was all that was necessary in the strict sense of the word, and by thus keeping the commands which God had given eternal life could be obtained. But when the young man pressed further, Christ told him: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor”. So again, in the same chapter, He speaks of “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven”, and added, “He that can receive it, let him receive it”.

This distinction between the precepts of the Gospel, which are binding on all, and the counsels, which are the subject of the vocation of the comparatively few, has ever been maintained by the CatholicChurch. The difference between a precept and a counsel lies in this, that the precept is a matter of necessity while the counsel is left to the free choice of the person to whom it is proposed.”

I do not know the Patristic roots of this distinction. I doubt it is in existence in the first three centuries. Today Mt 19:16 is the statement of Jesus used to justify it. McKenzie’s response to this line of thought is, “Nowhere does Jesus call His followers to be imperfect Christians.” It is also interesting that, since the Catholic Church in its official Bibles and documents has refused to translate “Thou shall not kill,” as “Thou shall not murder,” Mt 19:16 has Jesus saying as the first negative command, “Thou shall not kill.”

I know of no official list of the counsels of perfection, only that all that is not a negative command of Jesus is a counsel of perfection.1 Cor 7 is the text from Paul that is normally used to illustrate the distinction. But the general statement that only the negative commands are absolutely binding—and need to be followed to attain eternal life—covers everything else, e.g. “Love your enemies,” “Put up the sword,” ” I give you a new commandment love one another as I have loved you.”

A question that could be asked is this: Since the negative commands have been there for hundreds of years before Jesus, why does the Word of God have to become flesh? Also if Jesus, God Incarnate, names something a commandment, “a new commandment,” how can a commandment be merely a counsel of perfection? The same question could be asked in terms of all those imperative sentences of Jesus, e.g., “Love you enemies.” But without the distinction between negative commands as absolutely binding and positive commands as mere counsel war would be morally impossible for Catholic. Until they found another seeming loophole!