Dudley then proceeds to attempt to draw a comparison between St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans and his first Letter to the Corinthians whereby he misinterprets the word “nature.” In both passages, the English word “nature” is used, but the original Greek will show that it is in fact two different words. In Romans 1:27 (“…and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another…”), the Greek word is “phusikos” meaning “produced by nature, inborn.” In 1 Corinthians 11:14 (“Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears his hair long it is a disgrace to him…”), the Greek word is “phusis” meaning “the sum of innate properties and powers by which one person differs from others, distinctive native peculiarities, natural characteristics.” Furthermore, Dudley completely takes the latter reference out of context. In this passage from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul is saying talking about how in Greek society at the time, women were expected to wear head coverings when worshipping and it would be shameful for a man to do the same. (The rationale of this comes from the second Creation story, which we will not get into in this post). Hair is seen as natural (phusis) head-covering and thus it would be a disgrace for a man to have long hair.
Then Dudley proceeds to argue that Christians are going against centuries of teaching that marriage was morally inferior to celibacy. The caution here is that when something is morally inferior, it does not necessitate that it is morally reprehensible. The warning that the Church Fathers gave about marriage is that marriage is not an excuse for unadulterated sex. In his critique of Jovinian (Against Jovinianus), St. Jerome writes that “the Church does not condemn marriage, but makes it subordinate.” Furthermore, he states that a man should “govern his voluptuous impulses, and not rush headlong into intercourse. There is nothing blacker than to love a wife as if she were an adulteress. Men who say they have contracted marriage and are bringing up children, for the good of their country and of the race, should at least imitate the brutes, and not destroy their offspring in the womb; nor should they appear in the character of lovers, but of husbands.” St. Augustine also echoes this very sentiment:
Marriages have this good also, that carnal or youthful incontinence, although it be faulty, is brought unto an honest use in the begetting of children, in order that out of the evil of lust the marriage union may bring to pass some good. Next, in that the lust of the flesh is repressed, and rages in a way more modestly, being tempered by parental affection. For there is interposed a certain gravity of glowing pleasure, when in that wherein husband and wife cleave to one another, they have in mind that they be father and mother. Of the Good of Marriage
The Church today still upholds the virtue of chastity for all people, single and married (CCC 2349). That is why any sexual acts outside the context of a conjugal union open to the gift of procreation is seen as immoral, whether it is between straight or non-straight people.
Perhaps the most outrageous claim from Dudley’s piece is that the Church’s stance against direct abortion is a relatively new occurrence. Quoting St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas without context as he did St. Paul, Dudley conveniently forgets seminal Christian works from the 1st Century A.D., which predates both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. The Didache 2:2 says, “thou shalt not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide.” In Tertullian’s The Apology, he says that “murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the foetus in the womb…to hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth.” If these texts are not sufficiently old enough to constitute foundational beliefs, Dudley can refer to a text from the 6th Century B.C., in which the Lord says to the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you” (1:5). While American evangelicals may not have been against abortion until the 1970s, the Roman Catholic Church has always been against abortion, regardless of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi may claim.
Divorce is arguably the biggest threat to the institution of marriage in our country. Ever since Governor Ronald Reagan legalised no-fault divorces in the State of California, this plague has been tearing at the fabric of American society. In a homily to thousands of Catholics in San Marino earlier this week, Pope Benedict XVI said that “hedonistic models that cloud the mind and risk quashing morality altogether” cause many of the difficulties modern societies face. It is precisely this deification of hedonism that has led to the normalisation of divorce, fornication, abortion, and sodomy. The constant advertisements that indoctrinate us to accept that what feels good is good for us unfortunately leads people like Jonathan Dudley away from the faith. I too am far from immune to these messages and not a day goes by when I am not presented with opportunities to question values derived from Natural Law instead of surrendering to societal norms.
The only charade I see is that in which we continue to think that truth is subjective. The truth is that we must protect the life and dignity of each human being, regardless of sexual orientation, and that we must cultivate communities consisting of families led by a man and woman joined in the self-giving, Christ-like love of matrimony, working together to raise children, whose presence are gifts from our Creator.
Posts
»In choosing to sin, we condemn ourselves to eternal punishment, but that is not what God the Father sent Jesus to the world to do.«
ReplyDeleteAgreed, though I think this statement can often be grossly exaggerated. The decrees of God do indeed establish eternal fire as the destination of those who try to live against nature, the destination to which he positively sends sinners in accordance with his own law; quantus tremor est futurus, quando iudex est venturus, cuncta stricte discussurus.
»That is why any sexual acts outside the context of a conjugal union open to the gift of procreation is seen as immoral, whether it is between straight or non-straight people.«
Against the tide of popular opinion among evangelicals, I do hold to this principle, that such sexual acts are unchaste and sinful. There’s a problem with the whole way in which people are marrying and imagining that, once married, they have licence to do whatever they will as long as it’s with the spouse. Until Christians uphold another vision of marriage than the degrading illusion of monogamous lust, we won’t get anywhere. But a question for the Papist: How do condoms differ from NFP if the marriage remains open to procreation in fact as well as profession?
I came upon a good analogy to answer your question about the difference between using contraception and NFP in Christopher West's book "Good News About Sex & Marriage."
ReplyDeleteIn the book, he explains it as NFP is non-procreative while contraception is anti-procreative. In other words, a difference exists between sterilising an act of intercourse yourself and accepting the God-given period of infertility. Similar examples of this difference is also apparent in abortion vs. miscarriage and suicide vs. natural death.