bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Phenomenology and the Passion.

    Morning of Holy Thursday

    Lots of people, especially in conservative circles, don’t like phenomenology, which is the philosophical movement that John Paul II drew upon in formulating his Theology of the Body.  Here is a brief explanation of phenomenology as the late Holy Father understood it:

    Phenomenology is a subjective, inductive, and experiential philosophical method. [Edmund] Husserl[, its founder,] was interested in discovering how things are in the world (the being of things—what philosophy always investigates) through the interior perception of the world by individual people.  …. Through his studies, which focused on ethics, [Karol] Wojtyla saw that phenomenology was able to provide a link to reality, a way to ground ethical norms in reality, and not only in interior ideas. … Wojtyla saw that phenomenology provided a way to re-link ethical norms to reality… [and] a powerful tool for the study of Christian ethics.  If the Christian norms taught by Revelation could be understood as interior norms, i.e., if these norms could be perceived through experience, they would cease to have the character of external laws imposed on one from the outside. Further, one could speak about these values in a subjective way appropriate to the modern world.

    Phenomenology studies human experiences from the interior point of view.  … It is precisely because the person is vital to revealed truth that there can be a synthesis of phenomenology and the faith. Phenomenology … begins with our conscious experience of ourselves as acting agents. Phenomenology then leads to the mystery of human personhood. Phenomenology, subjective as it is, “opens the door” to the full truth about man revealed in the objective order by God. John Paul II makes this link between phenomenology and the objective order of the faith through the text in Genesis: “Let us make man in our image.” 

    Conservative critics of phenomenology construct a dichotomy between "experience" and "truth."  They argue that St. Thomas Aquinas’s scholastic philosophy, dependent as it is on reason with its postulates, proofs, and corollaries, is far superior; or indeed, that Aquinas’s approach

    Morning of Holy Thursday

    Lots of people, especially in conservative circles, don’t like phenomenology, which is the philosophical movement that John Paul II drew upon in formulating his Theology of the Body.  Here is a brief explanation of phenomenology as the late Holy Father understood it:

    Phenomenology is a subjective, inductive, and experiential philosophical method. [Edmund] Husserl[, its founder,] was interested in discovering how things are in the world (the being of things—what philosophy always investigates) through the interior perception of the world by individual people.  …. Through his studies, which focused on ethics, [Karol] Wojtyla saw that phenomenology was able to provide a link to reality, a way to ground ethical norms in reality, and not only in interior ideas. … Wojtyla saw that phenomenology provided a way to re-link ethical norms to reality… [and] a powerful tool for the study of Christian ethics.  If the Christian norms taught by Revelation could be understood as interior norms, i.e., if these norms could be perceived through experience, they would cease to have the character of external laws imposed on one from the outside. Further, one could speak about these values in a subjective way appropriate to the modern world.

    Phenomenology studies human experiences from the interior point of view.  … It is precisely because the person is vital to revealed truth that there can be a synthesis of phenomenology and the faith. Phenomenology … begins with our conscious experience of ourselves as acting agents. Phenomenology then leads to the mystery of human personhood. Phenomenology, subjective as it is, “opens the door” to the full truth about man revealed in the objective order by God. John Paul II makes this link between phenomenology and the objective order of the faith through the text in Genesis: “Let us make man in our image.” 

    Conservative critics of phenomenology argue that St. Thomas Aquinas’s scholastic philosophy, dependent as it is on reason with its postulates, proofs, and corollaries, is far superior; or indeed, that Aquinas’s approach is the only legitimate thinking about God and man. They are suspicious of phenomenology’s "subjective" nature, arguing that human experience leads us to error and that excessive reliance on experience tempts us to moral relativism.  In doing so, they construct a dichotomy between "experience" and "truth."   Here’s an extreme example, taken from a sedevacantist (i.e., schismatic) website:

    Phenomenology attempts to base human knowledge on the "phenomena," that is, what appears to the human mind, rather than on an exploration of external existing things. Whether a thing truly exists or not is unimportant to a phenomenologist; only what he cogitates exists for him.

    Moreover, phenomenology describes "meaning" as the combined observations of a multitude of observers, past, present, and future. Thus, meaning can never be isolated. The true meaning of a symphony may never be known, because it resides alternatively in the written score, what was in the mind of the composer, the variety of performances different orchestras and different conductors, and also involves future performances.

    One can easily see how this philosophy is one of the modernist "subjectivist" philosophies, basing itself not on an external reality or standard, but upon one’s own personal conceptions. Thus, it easily leads to moral relativism and dependence upon personal or subjective opinion ("what feels good") as opposed to external or objective reality (e.g., the Ten Commandments).

    Of course, John Paul II viewed experience not as an alternative to objective reality, but as a means of grappling with objective reality.  The dichotomy is false:  Thomist rationality, and (???) Johannine-Pauline (???) experience, both help us find the truth.  (Anyway, human reason isn’t exactly infallible — and leads to sins of pride and presumption as easily as human experience leads to relativism.)  And even Aquinas recognized that we come to knowledge of the truth first through our senses.  Human experience, fallible though it is, is a necessary means of encountering objective reality.

    More important than these arguments is one single fact, which silently and incontrovertibly and eternally proves that human experience can be, and must be, united with Truth:  God Himself chose to experience life on earth through the senses of a human being; indeed, chose to experience death. 

    We do not know how the Atonement works, but we agree that it was accomplished through
    God’s experiencing of human life, human suffering, and human death.

    God is omniscient.   Even were there no Incarnation, he would understand human bodily being, its sensations, pains, and  joys, completely.  Even were there no Passion, He would have perfect knowledge of suffering and of death. 

    Yet God did not deem His perfect intellectual comprehension of human life, suffering,
    and death sufficient to accomplish the Atonement.  In His Wisdom, He deemed it necessary also
    to experience these things, in flesh taken up of His own free will.

    If God can accomplish something through His experience, then man can accomplish something through man’s experience.

    Have a blessed Triduum!

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    2 comments on Phenomenology and the Passion.

  • A milestone.

    A couple of days ago, I rushed into the bathroom to comb my hair before leaving for a meeting, and discovered my first gray hair.

    More precisely, I suppose, the first one I’ve noticed.  I mean, there might be others I just haven’t found yet.

    I took a closer look and found three, right at my hairline above my forehead.  Wow!  Just like that.  I’m thirty-one.  So it begins. 

    Just this past October I added some comments to this post at Althouse about graying, in which Ann wrote, Gray hair? It’s just not done anymore.  I wrote,

    Does one really have to color?

    I always said I never would do it. My hair is still brown all over at this point, but I wonder how much time I have left, and I really don’t want to "have to" color my hair when the time comes. Yuck. It makes me think of makeup, which I also hate.

    Are you sure that one can’t pull it off? Maybe if I started hanging out at the food co-op more.

    After reading that thread, I caught myself noticing, here and there, the rare woman with really beautiful, silver or white or salt-and-pepper, gray hair.   It really stands out in a crowd if it’s done right — elegant, classy.   At the same time, I started paying attention more closely, and noticing how often women’s hair is obviously colored.   This market research discussion thread  mentions some numbers about hair coloring:  in 2000, twenty percent of Americans were projected to color their hair; Clairol controlled 39% of the hair coloring market in 2001, with annual sales of $1.6 billion; U.S. salon hair coloring revenues were estimated at $10 billion in 2002.  Some of that wasn’t to cover gray, of course:  young women have always changed their hair color for one reason or another.  Still, that’s a lot of people trying to deny the reality of aging.

    Here’s another take on it.

    I probably have some time before anyone even notices, but to be honest, I can’t see myself ever coloring my hair (well, I might dye it magenta or something, but I can’t see myself trying to match my so-called "natural" color).    I can’t stand even to wear makeup.   Too much trouble. 

    I like to think that I’m not a terribly vain person.  Still, here’s hoping that when there’s enough of them to be noticed, the gray hairs make a cool streak that looks like I did it on purpose. 

    Silver hairs.  Yeah.

    UPDATE:  On the other hand, perhaps it’s just a B-12 deficiency.  Woo-hoo!  Break out the… beef liver.  Um, never mind.

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  • OK, another floor method. Bear with me.

    I know I said just last month that I’d already optimized floor-cleaning as a process.  Nevertheless, I recently came across a method (for wood floors) that was new to me.  Completeness requires me to evaluate it.

    Materials needed:

    Procedure:

    Attach dust mop cover to dust mop.  Spray dust mop cover with Endust.  Push around on the floor.  Spray again when necessary.

    That’s it.

    The "dust mop" is obviously the archaic technology on which the Swiffer(TM) was modeled, lo these many years ago.  The cover is machine washable and reusable.  I don’t know if the Endust is strictly necessary, or if water or some other inexpensive liquid would work just as well.  Have to try that next.

    This method isn’t going to work in my kitchen or around my dining table, I can tell you that — far too much sticky crud.  But it did a good job removing the miscellaneous smudges and footprints on the hallway, living room, and schoolroom floors — the kind that pop into relief when the light hits the floor just right. 

    The big benefit:  Quick, simple, and un-messy.   Keep the dust mop and Endust handy, and you could easily get it out just to do thirty seconds’ worth of touching-up (which would cover about a 5-foot-square patch of floor).  No puddles, no spills, no hands and knees.

    One drawback:  the microfiber cover, plus Endust, has a surprisingly large coefficient of sliding friction in contact with the floor.  That is, it’s hard to push.  I suspect this is crucial to the microfiber cloth’s success as a cleaning tool.  Anyway, you can work up a bit of effort just moving it around.  (At least if you’re five months pregnant you can.) 

    Speaking as someone who makes her own glass cleaner and tends to scrub things with baking soda, I consider it a drawback that this method requires the purchase of a bona fide Consumer Product.  In an aerosol can, no less.  I feel a little less crunchy than usual, kind of fifties-housewifeish, when running around my house spraying anything out of an aerosol can.  In fact, I think that this can of Endust is perhaps only the third aerosol can to enter my home in the last five years.  (The other two cans contain, respectively, mosquito repellent and WD-40.)  Furthermore, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, who has sprayed himself twice in the face with nonstick cooking spray and is generally fascinated with anything that shoots out really fast from any other thing.   Believe me, aerosols are a drawback.

    Nevertheless, it looks like a pretty good solution.  I didn’t want to clean the whole living room on my hands and knees, anyway.

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  • Listed!

    Many, many evenings have passed with Mark in the "old house" — the duplex next door where Milo was born and where we lived for three years — refinishing floors, painting, pouring concrete.  Various friends have come over and helped out, too.

    Finally, today, we listed.  And tomorrow’s our first showing — so tonight Mark’ll be cleaning up again.

    Interesting, the MLS search.   This is how I wanted to describe the house:

    Just-refinished solid maple floors, claw foot tubs, whirlpool tub, built-ins, sun room, wraparound sun porch, custom stained-glass window, new carpet and paint.

    This is how our realtor described it:

    Great location – close to everything.  Hardwood floors and lower level washer/dryer.  New Carpet.  Fresh Paint.

    I have trouble with the "close to everything" designation, and also with the "lower level washer/dryer" — (a) there are two washers and two dryers, this being a duplex; (b) all four appliances are in the shared basement, not the "lower level," which in an up/down duplex strongly implies "the lower apartment."  Makes it sound like only one apartment has the W/D.

    Not only that, but the square footage is all messed up too.  We will have to see about this.

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    1 comment on Listed!

  • Palm branch confetti.

    A confession:

    I have been a Catholic for thirteen years this Easter, and I  still don’t know what to do with the palm branches I carry home dutifully every Palm Sunday.

    They’re blessed, right?   So I can’t just toss ’em, unless I burn them or something.  Yet I can’t see myself standing over the sink and setting light to them. 

    I never learned how to weave one of those nifty little crosses out of them.  And it’s too late this year to learn, because they’re all dried up and stiff and I am pretty sure that the cross-weaving thing only works when they are green and pliable. 

    I have seen them artfully arranged by sticking ’em through the back of a crucifix.  But we moved house a couple of months ago and I haven’t gotten around to hanging any up.  (Subsidiary confession:  I have gotten around to making curtains and buying several pieces of furniture.)

    But I seem to have inadvertantly come up with a good, or at least a final, solution this year: 

    Leave them lying around where a two-year-old with a pair of scissors can find them.

    Now that it can no longer be recognized as a blessed palm branch, I think I’m allowed to compost it. 

    At least I hope so, because the shreds of plant fiber that are left will look rather unconventional stuffed into the back of a crucifix.

    Maybe I can save it for the creche this Christmas.

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  • Psalm 95, day in and day out.

    I wonder why Psalm 95 is the usual invitatory psalm for the Divine Office, a.k.a the Liturgy of the Hours? (Unfamiliar with it?  Lots of info) Since the invitatory is prayed every single day that you pray the Liturgy of the Hours, that’s a lot of Psalm 95 — I’m sure most people who do the DO have it memorized by now. 

    Here’s Psalm 95 as it appears in Christian Prayer (the one-volume breviary published by the Daughters of St. Paul, which uses the ICEL translation), with the antiphon for Holy Week inserted:

    Come, let us sing to the Lord and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us.  Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving and sing joyful songs to the Lord.

    (Antiphon)  Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great king over all the gods.  He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the highest mountains as well.  He made the sea; it belongs to him, the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands.

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Come, then, let us bow down and worship, bending the knee before the Lord, our maker.  For he is our God and we are his people, the flock he shepherds.

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Today, listen to the voice of the Lord:  Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meriba and Massah they challenged me and provoked me, Although they had seen all of my works. 

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Forty years I endured that generation.  I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not know my ways."  So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest."

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:  as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.  Amen.

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    The main point of the invitatory, it seems, is "a call to praise God," since one has the option of substituting any of Psalms 100 (Cry out with joy to the Lod, all the earth), 67 (Let the peoples praise you, O God), or 24 (O gates, lift high your heads… Let him enter, the king of glory!).

    Still, Ps. 95 is the default psalm.  The whole psalm is used, not just the first part that is mainly praise — although in other parts of the DO, occasionally, parts of psalms are used.  Why the stuff about enduring "that generation" and God swearing that they "shall not enter" into his rest?  It’s a bizarre note to end on, if your point is praise.  Unless one of the things you want to praise God for is, well, exclusion of the undeserving.  Which may be all well and good — it has to be, if it’s an aspect of the divine — but isn’t generally something we tend to highlight.

    The fact that we read Ps. 95 day in, day out, every day that we pray the office, though, may mean something.  Maybe the bit about the forty years in the desert is a reminder not to get discouraged, even when picking up the breviary and starting the Invitatory is the same old same old same old thing.  We endure God, and He endures us, too.  Do not grow stubborn.  Harden not your hearts.

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  • You should have seen last year’s office Christmas party.

    So, I visited some out-of-town friends last weekend.  They’re expecting their first this summer.   Milo, 29 months old, came with me.

    We were sitting at the dining room table having some chips with my friend’s husband, trading mild stories about the past week.  At a lull in the conversation, Milo piped up:

    One of my daddy’s co-workers pooped on the floor.

    He took another bite of his bagel chip and added:

    I have co-workers too.  My co-workers didn’t poop on the floor.

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  • Ten reasons for a Catholic man to wear a ponytail.

    Speaking of gender and hairstyles, John of J. D. Carriere challenged the rest of us involved in a recent discussion of gender, clothing, and hairstyles (as they relate to the theology of the body) to come up with an answer — other than vanity — to the question "What use has a man got for a ponytail?" 

    The blogless James Fitzgerald managed some — why, he even managed ten!  — which I’m reposting here with permission.  According to James, the top ten reasons for a man-tail are as follows:

    – A ponytail avoids all this silly dashing to the hairdressers for the monthly trim and chat about the weather.

    – No need for the Carryhair-products (apparently John, whose last name is Carriere, peddles girls’ cosmetics or something — bearing) as all is ‘au naturel’.

    – You get to look a bit more like icons of ‘Christ Pantokrater’ (also portrayed with ponytail of sorts) than if you were to go for the JDCarriere short backandsides, French crop on top.

    – They are an evangelistic tool as you get mistaken for Jesus regularly, which leads to conversations about Him more often.

    – It avoids all need to ‘style’ to tame the outofbed look.  Just tie back, and go.

    – Ponytails are great for wiping crumbs away from mouth area, if there is no serviette.

    – They keep the back of your neck warm, saving those poofy scarves.

    – they can work as a tassle on the end of a chotki (Byzantine prayer rope)…to mop up your tears, when weeping because of your sins. Vital for when your chotki has gone missing.

    – they can be so positioned to cover up areas of thinning hair, and therefore avoid vain comb-overs.   (I am still trying to imagine this — bearing)

    – They increase your attractiveness to your wife, making marital relations more regluar, thereby promoting more conceptions and thus increasing the numbers of catholics in the world. 

    Ponytails are therefore a must-have for all radical male Catholics.

    If you say so, James.  Stop by again soon…

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    5 comments on Ten reasons for a Catholic man to wear a ponytail.

  • Gendered hair and clothing.

    I’ve been in an email discussion, with John of the creatively named blog  J. D. Carriere, about gender-specific clothing and hairstyle.  In short, he thinks women should wear skirts and long hair, and men should wear short hair, except when necessity forces otherwise; I don’t think that "feminine" clothing has to include skirts, and I don’t think that long(ish) hair on a guy is automatically un-masculine, either.  I think it has less to do with structure than with style.

    At the very bottom, though, we don’t disagree.  Our dispute is about how to implement a principle that we agree on:  Men and women are different, and should dress the part.  (Sing it, sister, says John.)

    But the rub is, what’s "dressing the part?"  What’s "clearly" masculine and "clearly" feminine these days?  I think there are a lot of things that are clearly one or the other, but there has been
    a certain migration across the boundaries in the past couple of generations.  Except for the "all skirts and dresses are feminine" law, now it’s less a matter of what sort of item it than how it is styled. 

    Blazers and pants — yes, even a pantsuit — can be worn by men or women and can be "masculine-styled" or "feminine-styled."  And certain things that you might think of as exclusively masculine can look very feminine, at least I think so, with the right accessories
    or modification.   A lot of stuff, the form is simply practical, and the style is where the femininity comes in.

    It looks way worse when you stick with something rigid like "women must wear skirts" and then try to relax it by slapping on a STYLE that is basically masculine, rather than the  more flexible "women’s style should be feminine, but the form of the clothes can vary."  Think of all those Pentecostal young women with their church-festival matching tee shirts and their ankle-length denim skirts…. YUCK.  It’s, like, anti-feminine!

    Another example of this is the eighties-style "corporate attire" women’s suit with the skirt and the suit jacket.  Clearly, masculine styling stamped onto "women’s clothing," i.e., a skirt.  But that looks terrible and un-feminine compared to a very stylish women’s suit, obviously cut for a woman, even if the bottom half of it is trousers. 

    Certainly the word "pantsuit" coming out of John’s mouth is shorthand for a whole fashion syndrome….   But not every women’s suit with pants is a "pantsuit."

    It’s the same thing with hairstyles.  By now, long hair can be a masculine hairstyle, at least around here.  It depends on the execution.  You know that sort of discreet, low ponytail, that looks like short hair from the front?   I like that.  It certainly doesn’t look feminine.  And conversely, short hair isn’t always masculine, but can look quite feminine if it’s cut right. 

    If it’s just style, surely I should be able to isolate the characteristic that, at least in North American culture, makes the difference between masculine and feminine when it comes to hair, or clothing for that matter.   I think that, with hair, it comes down to freedom of movement or fluidity. 

    A woman’s hairstyle has to be long enough to be a little free, at least part of it, for it to be feminine.  So it could be, for example, very short on back and sides, even under-cut, but long
    enough on top to have bangs and to come down on the sides — this is a hairstyle I have had — and still be very feminine.  And of course long and flowing qualifies. A man’s hairstyle, to be masculine, has to be short enough not to move much, or else constrained somehow — say with the ponytail, or even in something like dreadlocks — to be masculine. 

    As I think about it more, it does seem that the rules should change once the hair goes gray though.  Don’t know why… ask me again after mine starts to turn.

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  • Avoiding RadTradism.

    Good series of posts at JimmyAkin.org on rad-trad-ism and liturgical abuse and the like.

    It begins with a 2001 This Rock article by Jimmy, which he entitled "Problems in the Church," but which he ought to have entitled "Spiritual Fruit-Chuckers."  Has more of a ring to it.  In this article, Jimmy points to the story of the high priest Eli and his two sons as a precursor to today’s liturgical abuses and moral failings among the clergy.  Another is a historical incident that doesn’t appear in the Bible:

    At the time, the man in charge was named Alexander Jannaeus (ruled 103-76 B.C.).

    One of Israel’s more important national festivals was (and still is) the feast of Tabernacles (a.k.a. Sukkoth). In Alexander Jannaeus’s day, one of the customs for celebrating Tabernacles was for the people to bring luabs to the Temple and wave them in celebration. A luab was a bundle of branches from trees in the vicinity of Jerusalem-palm, myrtle, willow-to which a citron had been tied. A citron is a fruit similar to a large lemon.

    While the people held their luabs, one of the things the high priest was supposed to do was pour out libations from two silver bowls-one of water and one of wine. According to the custom of the Sadducees, the high priest was supposed to pour out the water bowl on his feet, but the custom of the Pharisees disagreed with this.

    Alexander Jannaeus, who was a Sadducee, followed the Sadducee custom in performing the ritual, but the Pharisees were so popular at the time that the people became enraged, tore the citrons off their luabs, and pelted Alexander with them in the middle of the liturgy.

    Well, that’s one way to deal with perceived liturgical abuses-though I wouldn’t recommend using it today. (In fact, it didn’t work so well then, either. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Alexander took revenge by killing about six thousand members of the citron-lobbing crowd.)

    His point is that there’s a wrong way and a right way (actually, several of each) to respond to liturgical, and other problems.  And that you shouldn’t "give someone else permission to control your spiritual peace."

    More recently, Michelle Arnold (alluding to that article) has a good blog-piece, "Surviving Sunday Mass," describing how that advice worked for her in a specific situation.

    Then she goes on with a two-parter:  Suggestions for "Overcoming Temptations to Rad-Trad-ism." In Part 1 she offers a definition of rad-trad-ism (distinct from the sensibility and preference-set that she calls Catholic Traditionalism) and suggests these tactics:  don’t church-shop unjustifiably, support your priests, get to know your priests and religious, pray, and examine your conscience.   In Part 2 she adds more:  accept that you don’t know it all, don’t relyon hearsay, seek the good, and appreciate spiritual fatherhood.

    All good advice.  The comboxes get a little heated (mostly from miffed folks who recognize themselves, I’d wager) but it makes good reading.

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  • The two kinds of, for want of a better term, plural marriage.

    Lots of good stuff over at Family Scholars Blog today. 

    The discussion around this post about so-called "plural marriage" got a bit heated and confused:  no one seems to be able to agree on whether poly-whatchamacallit-marriage is something that liberals and feminists will support as a lifestyle choice, or whether it is something that they will repudiate as a backward, unequal, misogynist institution.

    It’s a perfect example showing why it’s necessary to define your terms at the start of a debate.  Some of them are thinking of one kind of legal structure in which one person is "married to" two or more other persons, and some of them are thinking of an entirely different legal structure in which one person is "married to" two or more other persons, and they are trying to use the same name for it. 

    Let’s play a game.  Cue Sesame Street music:

    Three of these groups are doin’ the same thing, three of these groups are kinda the same; one of these groups is doin’ its own thing, now it’s time to play our game;  it’s time to play our game.

    Who doesn’t belong?

    • A male member of a fundamentalist church in rural Utah, who is already legally married to one woman and who wishes to marry a second woman
    • A Muslim man legally married to three  Muslim women in Nigeria
    • A hypothetical upper-caste woman in a hypothetical matriarchal society in some forgotten golden age of matriarchal societies, married to two men who must both provide for her
    • A group of three people in, say, Toronto, one of one gender and two of the other, who are all deeply devoted to one another and who wish to enter a legal marriage in which all are bound together

    Ready?

    If you guessed "the Toronto threesome," you’re right… but the key question is, Why?  What’s objectively different about that bunch?

    Here’s the distinction that makes a real difference:  the number of marriages involved in each case, and who is married to whom. In the set of "like" legal structures, a marriage is always between one man and one woman; but one person can enter multiple marriages which are independent of each other, independently meet the local criteria for "marriage," and can be independently dissolved.

    • The Utah man has formed one marriage with his "first wife," and he seeks to form a second marriage with another wife.  If he is successful, the two marriages would be (1) man/first wife, (2) man/second wife.   The two women would not be married to one another.
    • The Nigerian man has formed three separate marriages:  (1) man/first wife, (2) man/second wife, (3) man/third wife.   The three women are not married to one another.
    • The hypothetical matriarch has formed two separate marriages:  (1) matriarch/first husband, (2) matriarch/second husband.  The two men are not married to one another.

    Technically, the term "polygamy" should be reserved for this type of legal structure, with "polyandry" describing the marriages of one woman to two or more men, and "polygyny" describing the marriages of one man to two or more women.

    Contrast this with the Toronto threesome, which hopes to form a single marriage — a single covenant or contract — that includes three people.  If there are two women and one man (it really doesn’t matter who’s outnumbered here), then the women are married to each other while each of them is also married to the man, because they’re all one big happy marriage. 

    Technically, this is not polygamy.  I don’t think there is an accepted word for it; "polyamory" might do it, except that "polyamory" doesn’t imply legal sanction of any kind, only, well, affection and/or sex.

    (UPDATE:  MrsDrP, in the comments, says she’s heard the term "group marriage."  I suppose that would do, except that it’s numerically imprecise; two is a group, after all.   Well, what do you expect — the ones coining the term have imprecision on their side.)

    These two systems are not at all the same.   And it’s easy to see that they’re not the same:  just make an analogy to business partnerships or corporations.  If Mary forms a business partnership with Joe and another business partnership with George, is that equivalent to Joe, George, and Mary all forming a partnership together?   Obviously not.

    So, here’s why the debate got all muddled over at FamScholBlog:  Some, thinking of "traditional" polygamy, specifically polygyny, claims that liberals and feminists will never go for it ’cause it’s inherently unequal.  Others, thinking of polyamorists entering legal menages-a-trois (and -quatre, and -cinq, and so on) claims that liberals and feminists will attack the two-person marriage the very first minute that the opposite-sex marriage battle is over.

    Sloppy thinking won’t do here. Does the legalization of same-sex marriage imply that there is no legal reason to prohibit "polygamy?"  It rather depends on whether by "polygamy" you mean, well, polygamy — one person entering into multiple marriage-style unions — or whether you mean "marriage-style unions of more than two people." 

    Old Testament polygamous marriages were valid marriages.   There’s nothing inherently at odds with natural marriage there.  One man, one woman:  that’s what it takes to make babies; and each marriage was exactly that.   If a man could provide for more than one family, he could enter more than one marriage.  Simple.  Natural.  Theoretically, I suppose, it could go the other way round, but practical considerations made it primarily if not exclusively a polygynic system rather than a polyandric one.

    Enter the Church, and a new understanding of marriage, not merely as a natural, biological institution, but as a sacramental one:  and the new sacramental understanding of marriage, added the dimension of no Christian may be in more than one marriage at a time.  Because now Christian marriage is an image of the unique union of Christ and the Church, see?  And multiple marriages obscures that. 

    A legal system that respects the biological origin of marriage, but not the sacramental one (which makes sense if the state is never to be informed by any church) would stamp its approval on traditional polygamy while rejecting outright all unions-of-three-or-more.

    A legal system that respects neither biology nor sacrament would approve of unions-of-three-or-more.  What other reason is there to forbid them?  And if that same legal standpoint views egalitarianism as all-important, then traditional polygamy, with its inherent inequality, would be rejected.   The original reason that multiple marriages were legally excluded — foreignness to Christian understanding of the meaning of marriage — has quietly gone away (it was probably unconstitutional to begin with) and been replaced with an unwritten "something else" that doesn’t inconveniently refer to religion.  I dunno, maybe it’s economics.  We can’t afford to put two wives, plus children, on one guy’s insurance. 

    That’s why legalization of marriage between two individuals of the same sex is a sign that legal marriage of three-or-more individuals is more likely:  Inherent biological realities are officially irrelevant. 

    But it’s probably not a sign that polygamy is more likely. 

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    1 comment on The two kinds of, for want of a better term, plural marriage.

  • Local news articles on the “Talking about Touching” controversy.

    Bishops fault local archdiocese’s sex-abuse program:  Child-protection guidelines fall short amid parents’ opposition   (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3/31/06)

    Archdiocese late in starting sex-abuse education (Star-Tribune, 4/1/06)

    (h/t:  Primary Educators League)

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