On Being Same Sex Attracted and Catholic

I remember, years ago, sitting, minding my own business, but able to overhear a conversation between two fellow Catholic, one male and one female. The female mentioned a guy who regularly attended the same Sunday mass as her to whom she was attracted and from whom she she had thought she was picking up a “vibe” indicating that the attraction was mutual. Over time, however, she thought she had dropped some pretty clear hints which he didn't seem to pick up on or at least he wasn't showing any interest. The one she was talking to replied “maybe he's a fag.” Her response was “he can't be a fag, he's Catholic.”

I'm a practising Catholic. I accept, to the extent I understand them, all the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church, including the currently very unpopular ones on human sexuality. I'm also attracted to people of both genders.

My intention here is not to debate the merits of the Church's teaching on these matters, I've done that in other forums and I'm sure I'll do so again. What I want to talk about here, however, is something different.

The other day, Catholic Apologist, Mark Shea, had a post at the National Catholic Register dealing with certain issues relating to same sex attracted Catholics. I think Shea's article is a good one and I'd recommend everyone read it. I also recommend that you read the discussion underneath in the comment thread. One question that a few people raised could be phrased like this: “Ok, being same sex attracted is not a sin, but why do same sex attracted Catholics need to make a point of identifying themselves.”
 

A number of good reasons were raised in answer to this question, I'd like to raise one more reason, we need, to a certain extent, to identify ourselves and make ourselves visible because of the people I mentioned in the first paragraph. Those people weren't of ill-will, when I made clear to them how offensive I found what they had to say, they were apologetic, sincerely as far as I could tell. But what they said stung, sending the message that same sex attracted people aren't practising Catholics, aren't part of the Church. I've heard this, and worse, from a lot of well meaning Catholics. Other same sex attracted people have even worse stories to tell.
 

I dislike the term “homophobia”, which, as has been pointed out by many before me, literally means fear of the same. I dislike even more the way in which the label “homophobic” is frequently applied to any person who defends the traditional Christian teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts. Having said all that, homophobia is real. Acts of bullying towards people who actually are or are perceived to be same sex attracted are real. Uncharitable speech and behaviour by people, including by Christians, towards same sex attracted people are real. These things are real and they do a lot of damage to our fellow human beings. They also bring disgrace upon the cause of Christ and get in the way of the preaching of the gospel.

I don't advocate same sex attracted Christians announcing our attractions on our t-shirts, but we do need to be willing to talk about it and to identify ourselves when appropriate because we need to bear witness to fellow Christians.

A Few Quick Links

First, last week, I mentioned philosopher, Dan Fincke's appearance on The Atheist Experience. I said that Fincke had mentioned a particular post on his blog as a good starting point to understand his thinking. Here is the post in question and here is a critique of it by Prof. Edward Feser which says essentially what I would have said but he says it a lot better.

Second, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Fr. Andrew Greeley. For a number of years, I read his columns with considerable regularity; it would be an understatement to say that I didn't always agree with him, but I did frequently find him interesting and engaging. I was touched to read this tribute to him by his fellow Chicago priest, Fr. Robert Barron.

Third, having, in my last post, criticised Jimmy Akin, I'd like to recommend this post of his on prayer.

Finally, speaking of theistic evolution, have a read of this.

Just one Evolution

Jimmy Akin is a Catholic Apologist who I'm generally a fan of and who has written a lot of stuff that I have found very helpful over the yeras. Having said that, I think this article, which he wrote recently is more than a little off-base.

Mr. Akin attempts to examine the debate on the origins of the human species. He notes that views on said question fall on a broad spectrum and divides that spectrum into four groups: Creationism, Intelligent Design, Theistic Evolution and Atheistic Evolution. He does acknowledge that the spectrum could be divided in other ways but says that “... it seems that, today, most participants in the origins discussion would say that they advocate one of four major positions.”

I have to say, I doubt this very much. I am a theist (I believe in God) and I am also a person who accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that evolution happens. I reject the label “Theistic Evolution”, however, because I don't see the two issues as directly related. This isn't to say that I see no link, I'm philosophically convinced that the very existence of scientific laws requires a certain metaphysic and that metaphysic implies a God. This however, is a philosophical question. The question of whether or not humans are evolved from other species is a scientific one. To lump a person's positions on the two questions together seems arbitrary and silly. People's beliefs about physics are not divided into those who believe in “theistic gravity” and “atheistic gravity”, there is just gravity.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me repeat myself; in saying that the two subjects are not directly linked I am not saying there is no link at all. As I said, I'm convinced that the very existence of scientific laws requires a certain view of reality and that view of reality, if consistently applied, leads to God. Alternatively, I am aware that many atheists see the regular structure of the universe as doing away with the need for a God.

Having said the above, I'm quite confident that, if you asked the majority of practising evolutionary biologists, by which I mean people actually studying evolution, they would tell you that they and their colleagues, whether theistic or not, are all studying the same process and believe in the same evolutionary process. There is no such thing as theistic or atheistic evolution; there is just evolution.

p.s. There are other things in Mr. Akin's article that I disagree with. If anyone writes a critique of some other part of his article, send me a link, if I agree with it, I'll happily post the link.

Short Break

Hi everyone (or after my last post, should that be everypony?) . Just a brief not to let you all know that I won't be blogging for the next few days. Prayers for the study that I'm supposed to be working on would be much apreciated.

Thanks for reading me.

Talking About Ponies

Hi, my name is Jason, I’m 37, I’m male and I’m a passionate fan of a show targeted at pre-teen girls. About two years ago, friends of mine, told me that I really needed to watch the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I was, skeptical at first, but they were insistent and I decided I should at least give it a try. Within a month I had joined the growing tribe of the Bronies (a portmanteau of bro and pony).

To give background, My Little Pony is a range of toy ponies made by Hasbro Toys. They first appeared in the 1980s and have since gone through four major incarnations (known as “generations” by the fans.) The cartoons which accompanied the third generation ponies have been widely derided as essentially just extended infomercials for the toys with boring stories and nothing resembling character development (the one gen three episode I could bring myself to watch certainly supported this conclusion.) When, in 2010, Hasbro released the fourth generation of ponies, they took the radical step of hiring people, most notably Lauren Faust, of Power Puff Girls fame, with actual experience making quality children’s television. The result has been a show which not only charmed its target audience but won for its self a wide number of fans of all ages and given rise to talk to “the Brony Phenomenon.”

Season Three Spoiler Warning. All of this is background to this article by blogger Amanda Duncil. Ms. Duncil criticizes the conclusion to season three as well as the soon to be released Equestria Girls spin-off movie and related toy line.

Concerning the conclusion to season three, in which mane (misspelling intentional per fan convention) character Twilight Sparkles becomes a Princess, Ms. Duncil writes:

I didn't know that the ultimate end goal of learning was to suddenly become royalty. I'm still somewhat concerned that it sends mixed messages to little girls. Implying that all girls want to grow up to become princesses is destructive… I was under the impression that My Little Pony wanted to shake gender barriers, not reinforce them.

I can see where she is coming from, but I think her concern here is a bit misplaced. Twilight doesn’t become a Princess through the standard means of marrying a Prince (actually, that trope is reversed; her brother becomes a Prince by marrying a princess who earned her royal title.) nor by the other fairytale means of discovering that she is a king’s long lost daughter. Twilight’s royal title is bestowed up on, not by any pony laws but by reality itself. Actually, for someone unfamiliar with the show, the term “princess” is misleading. In Equestria, royalty is apparently not a matter of blood or even of purely political authority. When a Pony reaches a sufficient level of virtue and magical ability she transformed into an alicorn, a pony with pegasus wings, a unicorn horn and enhanced mystical control over reality. The Princesses of Equestria are not merely political rulers; they are responsible for such tasks as ensuring the sun and moon rise and set. What happened to Twilight, while it is called “becoming a princess” would more accurately be described as a sort of quasi-deification. (So, Jason, how do you, as a Catholic, feel about such obviously pagan themes in children’s entertainment? I’m fine with them, but that’s another post.)

I feel much more sympathy with the concerns which Ms. Duncil raises over the upcoming Equestria Girls movie. I’m looking forward to the movie and expect it to be fun, but I think it’s reasonable to feel uneasy about the images of the mane characters which we have seen thus far. I’m particularly unhappy about the look of Rainbow Dash. For those unfamiliar with the show, Rainbow is a tom-boy, indeed, the ultimate tomboy. Take a look at the Equestria Girls picture linked on Ms. Duncil’s page, I’m not seeing anything remotely suggestive of the personality I’ve come to know and love.

I’m still hopeful the movie will be worth watching, but I agree this raises cause for concern.

An Intersting Argument about Ethics.

The latest episode (no. 817) of The Atheist Experience was an interesting one. The show is usually devoted to answering calls from whomever happens to call in. On this occasion, however, about half the program was taken up with a pre-arranged call from an atheist philosopher by the name of Dan Fincke. You can find the relevant section here. I'd never hear of Prof. Fincke before but, after hearing what he had to say on the show, I went over to his blog “Camels with Hammers” and, after reading for a bit, I added his blog to my list of those I plan to read regularly.

The Prof. seems to have a double mission, on the one hand he wants to convince his fellow atheists to embrace objective morality, on the other hand, to convince we theists the objective morality can exist without God. This a subject of no small interest to me and I was interested to here his views. I, of course, will be attacking his arguments from one side, I believe in objective morality but don't think it can be meaningful without God. I suspect, however, that many of my atheist friends who reject objective morality will agree with at least some of my disagreements with him
 

Before commenting on what Prof. Finke had to say, I have to note, at several points during the program I felt a strong desire to throw something at the show's co-host, Martin Wagner. For example, at at 7:40 minute mark, Wagner states that “Christians” not some or many Chrustians but Christians generally, when we argue for objective morality, “always” his word, always, claim that such things can't be gotten to rationally but require divine revelation. Mr. Wagner, if that;s what you think Christians always argue, I'd ask you to do some reading on the natural law tradition in Christian moral thought.

Mr. Wagner then goes on to tell us that many Christian apologists, he explicitly mentions Willaim Lane Craig, openly encourage disdain for reason and argue that reason and evidence have no value in getting to truth. Now, I'm sorry, I'm no fan of Dr. Craig, but Mr. Wagner's characterisation of his views is either shockingly ignorant or an outright lie. Craig is known as an evidentialist apologist, as someone who seeks to show that evidence and reason lead to the Christian faith. I could go on, listing Mr. Wagner's incredible distortions, but this is supposed to be a blog post about Prof. Fincke.
 

The central part of Prof. Fincke's argument, if I understand him correctly, come between about the eleven and sixteen minute marks. His argument stands on two main points. One of these is formal consistency. He argues that, just as we can't believe what we see to be contradictory, so there are certain acts which are contradictory. The argument seems to be that, if we attempt to hold others to a standard but fail to live up to that standard ourselves, we would be aware of an inconsistency. There are any number of arguments I could make to this, but I'll confine myself to this reply: I agree that we would see as inconsistent to hold others to a standard and fail to live up to it ourselves, but that simply begs the question of why we should seek to hold people to such standards in the first place.

The second prong of Prof. Fincke argument has to do with the fulfilment of various powers.
According to the good Prof. We have certain powers, our intelligence, our our capacity for technology, our capacity for enjoyment. He thinks it is self evident or something we would all intuitively recognise that we should seek to maximise these powers in order to flourish. Now, in many ways, this seems very close to the Aristotelian and Thomist position. I certainly agree that developing our human powers is a desirable thing. Having said that, I don't think this is self-evident and it isn't intuitively obvious, nor is it clear to everyone. My belief in the moral desirability of developing these powers is based on certain metaphysical beliefs which I assume Prof. Fincke doesn't share. (If he does share them I'd love to here how he reconciles those with his lack of belief in God.) Absent those metaphysical beliefs, many people will in no way see the desirability of developing such powers as obvious, indeed plenty of people seem quite content to drown those powers in drugs and alcohol.
 

Prof. Fincke ended his call with a recommendation to check out his blog and recommended one particular blog post of his. I had originally planned to include comments on that post in this post. I decided, however, that it deserves a response of it's own. God willing, I should get to that in the next few days.

Movie Review: Epic (which actually is)

This past Saturday, I saw Epic, the new movie from Blue Sky Studios. First off, in case there is any confusion, this is a movie marketed at kids. I am a firm believer in C.S. Lewis' dictum that a children's story which can't be enjoyed by adults is a bad children's movie. Second, everyone should read this review, by Stephen Greydanus; I don't agree with everything he says, but he says a number of things rather well.

I have to say, on the whole, I loved this movie. On the other hand, there were a few things I hated, including one which bordered on unforgivable.

Mild Spoilers from here on: The basic story: a forest is the seen of an on-going epic struggle between the heroic leaf-men (a bit like a cross between the Jedi and Tolkien's rangers) who seek to preserve the life of the forest, and the boggans, who seek to lay the forest to waste. Humans are unaware of this partly because sides take care to conceal themselves from “stompers” as they call us and also because both sides are only inches tall.

Near the forest lives an eccentric professor who has destroyed his career and his marriage with his monomaniacal determination to prove these creatures exist. His ex-wife has just died, and his teenage daughter Mary Katherine (she prefers MK) is coming to live with him. On the relationship between the two, I have nothing to say, read Mr. Greydanus, he says it all.

The leaf-men are servants of a Queen Tara, the source of life in the forest, without the Queen, the leaf-men can't do there jobs and the forest is doomed. Tara is beautifully animated and drawn and there are a number of scenes which show her the centre of a wonderful pageantry. She is the perfect embodiment of what the queen of a mystic realm should be... until she opens her mouth, at which point I begin to wonder if anything could be more seriously deficient in gravitas. There is one scene when the (oddly named) leaf-man general Ronin kneels before her, every inch the archetype of the valiant, yet humble warrior, the queens response is to make fun of him. Modern Hollywood, it seems, can not to hierarchy or gravitas.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, there is an ambush, involving boggans, M.K. Who happens to be passing by, is mystically shrunk to the size of a leaf-man and, next thing we know, M.K., Ronin, a young leaf-man name Nob and two comic-relief gastropods are on an epic quest to save the life of the forest.

Mr. Greydanus, and a number of other critics, have criticised what they see as the lack of individuality in the main characters. I feel I must disagree. It's true, these are not the deepest or most well-rounded characters I've seen, Mr. Greydanus' phrase is “generic archetypes”, but, here;s the thing. I think they are such good, solid, realisations of their archetypes. Ronin (aside from his name) is the embodiment of what a brave, loyal warrior ought to be, Nob captures both a wonderful free-spirit and the journey of a boy reluctantly embracing the duties of man-hood. M.K. Is harder to describe in archetypal terms, but her banter with Nob frequently reminded of similar banter between Han and Leia.

Slightly less mild spoilers. I said earlier that, when Tara spoke, I wondered if anything could be more deficient in gravitas; unfortunately, the movie answered my question. About midway through the film, we come to the house of Nim Gallu. Nim is,the librarian who keeps the scrolls of knowledge which record, in full, the history and wisdom of the forest. I was prepared for such a character to be eccentric, even for him to be played for a certain amount of comedy. What we got, however, was just awful; a jazz singing glow-worm played by Stephen Tyler. Seriously; memo to the script-writers, the keeper of wisdom is an archetypal figure deserving of way more respect than this.

Heavy Spoilers: The film climaxes in an appropriately epic battler in which M.K., with some help from her dad, manages to save the day. I have to say, however, I was annoyed by one thing. Ronin, who had earlier sacrificed himself to enable the others to get away, and was left fighting for his life against impossible odds, suddenly turns up at the last minute to battle the head boggan. This was vaguely reminiscent of Gandalf in Moria, but there Gandlaf's sacrifice and return had a fundamentally transforming effect on him, as well on those around him, here it just seemed mindlessly deus ex machina. I was especially annoyed because, when Ronin seemed dead, I thought it a bold move for such a central and likeable character to be killed that way. I know, I know, this is a kid's film, but I think a battle of this magnitude needed causalities on the good side as well as the bad.

The movie had some real faults, typical really of the culture in which it was made, but I still liked it. If the story-telling doesn't exactly break new ground it was, for me, a reaffirmation of the value of traditional themes in storytelling.

How not to Evangelise.

I'm a Christian. I'm also a sufferer from a long term mental illness. I can remember one day, many years ago, when my depression was unusually bad; I was walking through the Central Business District in Canberra when I was approached by a fellow who mentioned that I looked like I was unhappy. He went on to tell me that he was a pastor at a certain church. I won't name the church, but the senior pastor (presumably this guy's boss) was, at the time, a fairly well known name in Canberra’s evangelical community.
 

The gentleman told me that he could see I looked unhappy and assured me that, if I would simply embrace Jesus, he'd take away my depression, just like that. I didn't particularly feel like discussing theology at the time so I just smiled politely, thanked him, took a leaflet from him and went off to get some lunch. (If my memory serves, the lunch cheered me up considerably.)
 

I thought about this today, for the first time in a while, while watching the most recent episode of the T.V. Show The Atheist Experience. You can find the episode here.

At approximately the twelve and a half minute mark of the episode, they receive a call from a gentleman who identifies himself as an atheist and as suffering from long term depression. As he tells it, various Christian friends and family who knew he was an atheist before this and never made any particular effort to convert him have suddenly started using is depression as a way to tell him that he needs God and blaming his depression on his atheism.
 

Now, obviously, I have to offer a caveat here that I haven't heard what his friends actually said to him and don't know their side of the story. Having said that, if they really have been blaming his depression on his atheism or suggesting that embracing Christianity will make it all go away then they need to wake up and discover reality. Christians suffer from mental illness, Christians get depressed.
 

I'd love to say that the behaviour of this gentleman's friends was an isolated incident, but I think we all know I'd be lying. I've met too many Christians who seem to think in this way. I also wish, as a Catholic, I could say that this sort of stupidity was confined to evangelical protestantism. Sadly, while thinking of this nature seems to jibe well with the prosperity gospel embraced by a certain for of evangelical, we Catholics are not immune it. I can well remember a Catholic telling me that they couldn't understand how any Catholic could be depressed because we are called to rejoice in the Lord.
 

I should also add, while I don't know exactly what his friends have and have not said to him in the past but, if he is accurate in saying that his friends never tried to evangelise him until the issues with his depression arose then the co-host of the show was probably fairly accurate in describing them as opportunistic (word I won't say.)

Word to the wise, my fellow Christians, embracing Jesus does not grant you automatic immunity from all of the crap that comes with being human. To suggest that it does makes us look like idiots. It also makes us look like jerks.

p.s. On a semi-related note, my friend Karl Hand recently had a post on unhelpful ways to evangelise. While I'm not sure if I agree with everything Karl says, I defiantly think he raises some points worth pondering.