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].

  • How school is going.

    Oscar, age 5, has been "doing schoolwork" for a while now. We started Saxon Math K in January, mainly because I thought it would be a good idea to get myself used to sitting down a few days a week at the table with him. Now we’re a few lessons away from finishing the "Purple Book." He’s got a vacation coming up — going to spend a week with Grandma and Grandpa — so we’ll finish the book up, give him a couple weeks off, and start the "Green Book" when he comes back, a month from now.

    I’ve made up my mind to move pretty swiftly through it. The gently plodding, repetitive, scripted nature of Saxon was reassuringly easy for us as we got comfortable with Doing School, but I think now that we have the routine down, Oscar can go a little faster. Maybe not double-time, but certainly more than the prescribed four lessons per week.

    I don’t remember how long we’ve been working on reading.  Months.  Oscar can decode pretty well, as long as the words only contain spellings he has been taught.  He’s learned one spelling for every common phoneme in the English language, and can read just about any word that uses only those spellings.  That part went pretty fast and he was excited about it. 

    It swiftly got painful as soon as I broke the news to him that well, we have more spellings for all of these sounds, and some of the spellings could represent several different sounds, and there’s no easy way to tell in advance which combination is right.

    I think that he’ll feel positive about it again as soon as he starts to notice that he can decode the words by trying the different possibilities.  When, faced with words like "hive" and "give" on the same page, he whines, How do you know which sound it is? and I answer, After you have been reading for a while your brain will figure it out, I don’t think he believes me.  But I know his brain will figure it out.  I just hope that he doesn’t feel too miserable in the meantime.

    Although he is chronologically in kindergarten, I don’t really think of where he is in terms of grade level.  I have adopted the so-called "classical" model in my head, and am thinking, instead of kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and so on, of the Trivium:  grammar, rhetoric, dialectic.   (Here’s the famous Dorothy Sayers essay on it.) 

    Oscar isn’t up to grammar yet.  He’s in pre-grammar, or preparatory:  a chunk of lifelong learning that began when he was two or three, after he learned to talk, and will last until somewhere between age seven and nine.   The only academic goals of this chunk of his life:  learn to read, and learn to add and multiply.  I’ve also set the goal of reading all the stories in the children’s Bible to him this year.  That leaves lots of time for singing, exercising our bodies, reading aloud, going to the zoo, that sort of thing.  And of course making beds, sweeping the floor, visiting friends, cooking dinner.   

    Living, in other words.  Keeping the priorities straight is an important thing for me to learn, too, as we go along.

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  • SCHOOL ROOM.

    The homeschool kindergarten looks very, very different from the institutional kindergarten. At first glance the environment seems far poorer. For example, the environment is not gaily decorated with pumpkins in October, paper snowflakes in January, pastel eggs and construction-paper flowers in April.

    But if you pause to think about it, a lot of the stuff in an "ordinary" kindergarten is artificial, put there to make up for the absence of the real thing. If my kids and I want to have a palpable sense of the change of seasons, we don’t cut out paper pumpkins. We go outside.

    I remember the sturdy toy kitchen in my kindergarten classroom twenty-five years ago, with its wooden toaster that had a hidden spring in it to pop up two slices of wooden toast. I have no such toy kitchen in my homeschool classroom. However, my children have been known to make toast from time to time. They butter theirs, and jam it too, and eat it hot.

    I have been thinking about the homeschool environment a great deal lately, because I have had a great opportunity land in my lap this year: we are to build a new house in the city. We always hoped we’d be able to build a house of our own design someday, but we never expected to have the chance to do it so early in our family’s life together. So when it came time to draw floorplans, we put in a "School Room." There it is on our final draft: SCHOOL ROOM, among the more normal labels like KITCHEN, LINEN CLOSET, and BATH #2.   (We carefully arranged it so it might someday have a mythical resurrection as FORMAL DINING ROOM, just in time for resale.)

    SCHOOL ROOM is adjacent to LIVING ROOM and separated from it by pocket doors.  It has two tall cabinets that flank a south window, beneath which is a length of base cabinet, like in a kitchen.  The west windows, three of them, look out on the street; I imagine that my children and I will watch the school buses go by.  There will be a table and chairs.  There will be a comfortable curl-up-and-read chair.  Beyond that I have not imagined. 

    Will I hang schooly-things on the walls, like maps and alphabet strips?  Frame the kids’ artwork?  Oscar has a school desk (attached chair, hinged top) that I found abandoned by the side of the road and lugged home; will that go in there?   Will we water plants on the countertop?  Will we install racks for books?  How will we spend our time in there?  I don’t know, but it’s exciting.

    It strikes me that in moving to a SCHOOL ROOM, we are changing, a little, the manifestation of our philosophy.  If there is a SCHOOL ROOM, does that mean SCHOOL is something special that deserves a special ROOM to do it in?  Maybe it’s better to have learning be a normal, everyday, every-minute-of-every-day part of family life.  But then, eating is also a normal, everyday part of family life, and many homes have a DINING ROOM.   The point of DINING ROOM is to create a pleasant atmosphere that is particularly well suited to dining; it’s not to make DINING into a different sort of activity (although if that is your goal, having a DINING ROOM ordered toward that goal will undoubtedly  help). 

    So SCHOOL ROOM should be.  It’s important for me to remember, as I furnish the place, that it’s above all part of my home, and the point is to create a pleasant atmosphere that is well-suited — not just to learning, reading, writing, studying — but to learning at home, reading at home, writing at home, studying at home. 

    That’s different from doing it in a school or office.  What a lovely challenge!

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  • A rare luxury.

    Every Saturday morning, I am free for a couple of hours.   Mark is still asleep with the kids when I sneak out.  I get to the restaurant just as it opens, 7 a.m. sharp.  I have breakfast — alone.  I leave the restaurant and go to a coffee shop, where I can access free wireless, and I do a little bit of paid work, technical editing mostly.  I go home at lunchtime.

    Today, I have no work to do.  Wow!  Here I am, fed and with a full, still-hot mug of dark roast at my elbow, and… I can read.  I can blog.  I can sit here with a silly grin on my face and just look around.

    I won’t stay long.  Mark has lots of work he can do on the house, getting it ready for sale.  I can be helpful if I go home to keep the kids occupied while he paints the spare bedroom.  But I think I’m going to enjoy it for just a little while.

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  • Tertullian vs. C. S. Lewis.

    Part of a series.

    Today I wonder:  Is it better for Christians to emphasize that God is exceedingly merciful and generous and might allow everyone to be saved, or is it better for us to emphasize that the only way we know to salvation is narrow?

    I’ve been going roughly from earlier to later writers in this series on the early Christians, but I’m jumping ahead to Tertullian (160-230) today, because I came across a passage just this afternoon I wanted to discuss.   From his On the Resurrection of the Flesh:

    Now such remarks have I wished to advance in defence of the flesh, from a general view of the condition of our human nature. Let us now consider its special relation to Christianity, and see how vast a privilege before God has been conferred on this poor and worthless substance.

    It would suffice to say, indeed, that there is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, except it believe whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service.

    The flesh, indeed, is washed, in order that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed (with the cross), that the soul too may be fortified; the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands, that the soul also maybe illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may fatten on its God. They cannot then be separated in their recompense, when they are united in their service.

    Those sacrifices, moreover, which are acceptable to God — I mean conflicts of the soul, fastings, and abstinences, and the humiliations which are annexed to such duty — it is the flesh which performs again and again to its own especial suffering. Virginity, likewise, and widowhood, and the modest restraint in secret on the marriage-bed, and the one only adoption of it, are fragrant offerings to God paid out of the good services of the flesh.

    Lovely bit of writing, isn’t it?  Well, what caught my eye (technically, ear, since I heard it on Mark Shea’s bit on Relevant Radio) today was the bit I’ve highlighted in bold/underline. 

    The reason I took notice of it is that I just finished re-reading, for probably the fifth or sixth time, C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.   In this short work, a narrator "dreams" that he accompanies a tour bus ride out of a dreary Hell into the foothills of Heaven. There blessed spirits come to meet the grumbling, suspicious travelers and attempt (mostly unsuccessfully) to convince them to stay and journey deeper into Heaven with them. 

    Lewis’s main point is really that Hell is something we actively choose rather than something chosen for us.  Still, this and other works make it clear that he considered it possible that God gives souls a chance to choose after death.  Tertullian, on the other hand, emphatically insists that we must make our choice "whilst in the flesh."  And so did most Christian writers throughout history, if I’m not mistaken.  But Lewis isn’t the only one I’ve heard venture a guess:  maybe we get a chance after death, when everything is much clearer.

    I think we all want to believe in, and speak about, a God who gives humans every imaginable chance of salvation.  I know I want to believe in that myself!  It is so very hard to love a God who seems capricious and punitive.  And it is so hard to convince unbelievers that a God of that sort is worth believing in.  We want to paint Him in the best possible light.  And we want to paint ourselves and our Church in the best light too:  If we say our God might not accept this person as he thinks and behaves, then we fear we will be seen as not accepting the same person.  So for these and other reasons, we project the most generous conditions of salvation that we can out to the world.

    So, take this simple formula as an example:  Outside the Church there is no salvation.    Well, that used to mean something quite straightforward:  You’ve gotta be a baptized Christian, preferably a Catholic, to make it to heaven!  Nowadays we don’t say that.  We say things like:  Well, we don’t know for sure that you have to be explicitly a member of the Church to be saved.  All we know is that salvation comes through the Church; if you are saved it is due to the saving work of Jesus Christ through the Church, whether you know it or not.  God can save whoever he wants, after all. 

    This sounds good.  It makes God sound nicer than the old interpretation did.  I hope that it leads more people to feel a welcome that leads them to become believers.

    Still, though, might it be safer to believe that the gates of salvation are narrower than that?  I am not sure.   We have actual promises of Christ in the Gospels that if we participate in the life of the Church as faithful members, we will be saved.  There  are no other kinds of promises.  The possibility that non-Christians can be saved somehow is left open, yes.  But there are no other kinds of promises. 

    I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.   (John 3:5)

    I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  (John 6:53)

    Tough call.  When you get down to it, all kinds of possibilities are open, but we only know of one Way that is certain.

    And it’s a tough call, too, when it comes to that whole "can-you-choose-after-death" question, the one that Lewis struggles with in TGD.  I heard a priest speculating in a homily once — to his credit, he did make it clear that it was only speculation — that perhaps we all get a moment of perfect clarity in the instant after our deaths, and it is with that perfect clarity that we are given the moment to choose God or not-God.  He wanted to believe in a God that would give everyone equal opportunity to say Yes or No. 

    Lewis didn’t come up with the main idea in TGD; the refrigerium, or excursion from Hell, is an old idea.  And he tries to reconcile Protestant and Catholic notions to it, uniting it with ideas of Purgatory and even of predestination, by appealing to the idea that in eternity a particular moment "contains all moments," all choices.  But in any case, Lewis’s vision is far more liberal than Tertullian’s.  If Lewis is right, then we have a chance to move the pieces after the game is over; if Tertullian is right, we do not.  Yet Lewis is likely to convert more people of the modern mindset; does Tertullian have any appeal at all anymore?

    What is the solution?  Maybe it is simply that we project the generous version of events to the world, and then hold ourselves and each other — all of us already within the Church — to the higher standard.  Bait-and-switch?  I don’t know.   But once we become aware of the kinds of demands that Jesus makes of us in the Gospels, and once we believe He is who He says He is, can we really take any chances?

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  • A moving post from Dooce today.

    "Christie."

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  • A strange search that got someone here today.

    "testing your selves with fruit when pregnant"

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  • Ignatius of Antioch: on bishops, priests, and deacons.

    Part of a series.

    Back to Ignatius of Antioch today, whom I wrote about a little while ago.  Recall that Ignatius died around 107 AD; he is therefore one of the earliest Christian writers.  He was also prolific, or at least well-preserved, for at least seven of his letters survive.

    Ignatius has a lot to say about the duties of bishops, priests ("presbytery"), and deacons in the primitive Christian Church, and about the duties of the faithful towards them.   From the Epistle to the Trallians:

    For, since ye are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, ye appear to
    me to live not after the manner of men, but according to Jesus Christ….

    It
    is therefore necessary that, as ye indeed do, so without the bishop ye should
    do nothing, but should also
    be subject to the presbytery, as to the apostle of Jesus Christ, who is our
    hope, in whom, if we live, we shall [at last] be found.

    It is fitting also
    that the deacons, as being [the ministers] of the mysteries of Jesus Christ,
    should in every respect be pleasing to all. For they are not ministers of
    meat and drink, but servants of the Church of God. They are bound, therefore,
    to avoid all grounds of accusation [against them], as they would do fire.

    In like manner, let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of
    Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father,
    and the presbyters as the sanhedrin of God, and assembly of the apostles.
    Apart from these, there is no Church.

    It is clear that there already exists, in Ignatius’s time, a definite hierarchy in the Christian Church:  bishops ("as Jesus Christ"), presbyters or priests ("as the sanhedrin of God and assembly of the apostles"), and deacons ("as an appointment of Jesus Christ"); all serve the remainder of the Church, i.e. those who are united with them in the confession of faith.    The letter to the Trallians contains a number of warnings against breaking unity with the bishops, for example:

    He that is within the altar is
    pure, but he that is without is not pure; that is, he who does anything
    apart from the bishop, and presbytery, and deacons, such a man is not pure
    in his conscience.

    Interesting — seems almost to deny that one can in good conscience disobey the bishops, priests, and deacons.  Perhaps he means to say that one’s conscience itself must be damaged somehow to disobey them.  We still have with us the concept that one’s conscience must be properly formed before it can be a reliable guide.

    There’s more on this subject in the Epistle to the Philadelphians, from the very beginning of the letter:

    Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church of God the Father, and
    our Lord Jesus Christ, which is at Philadelphia, in Asia….which I salute in the blood of Jesus Christ, who is our eternal
    and enduring joy, especially if  [men] are in unity with the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons, who have been appointed according to the mind of
    Jesus Christ, whom He has established in security, after His own will, and by
    His Holy Spirit.

    …For as many as are of God and of
    Jesus Christ are also with the bishop.

    … Do not err, my brethren.
    If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit
    the kingdom of God. If any one walks according to a strange opinion, he
    agrees not with the passion  [of Christ.]    .

    Ignatius compares the oneness of a bishop in the particular church to the oneness of the flesh of Jesus in the Eucharist.  There can be no other.

    Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to  [show forth] the unity of His blood;
    one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my
    fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to  [the
    will of] God.

    We even have a letter from Ignatius to another bishop:  The Epistle to Polycarp.  He has lots of advice for this younger bishop:

    I entreat thee,
    by the grace with which thou art clothed, to press forward in thy course, and
    to exhort all that they may be saved. Maintain thy position with all care,
    both in the flesh and spirit. Have a regard to preserve unity, than which
    nothing is better. Bear with all, even as the Lord does with thee. Support
    all in love, as also thou doest. Give thyself to prayer without ceasing.
    Implore additional understanding to what thou already hast. Be watchful,
    possessing a sleepless spirit. Speak to every man separately, as God enables
    thee. Bear the infirmities of all, as being a perfect athlete [in the
    Christian life]: where the labour is great, the gain is all the more.

    If thou lovest the good disciples, no thanks are due to thee on that account;
    but rather seek by meekness to subdue the more troublesome. Every kind of
    wound is not healed with the same plaster. Mitigate
    violent attacks [of
    disease] by gentle applications. Be in all things "wise as a serpent, and
    harmless as a dove." For this purpose thou art composed of
    both flesh and spirit, that thou mayest deal tenderly with those [evils]
    that present themselves visibly before thee. And as respects those that are
    not seen, pray that [God] would reveal them unto thee, in order that thou
    mayest be wanting in nothing, but mayest abound in every gift. The times call
    for thee, as pilots do for the winds, and as on  tossed with tempest seeks for
    the haven, so that both thou [and those under thy care] may attain to God. Be
    sober as an athlete of God: the prize set before thee is immortality and
    eternal life, of which thou art also persuaded.

    Let not those who seem worthy of credit, but teach strange doctrines,
    fill thee with apprehension. Stand firm, as does an anvil which is beaten. It
    is the part of a noble athlete to be wounded, and yet to conquer. And
    especially, we ought to bear all things for the sake of God, that He also may
    bear with us. Be ever becoming more zealous than what thou art. Weigh
    carefully the times. Look for Him who is above all time, eternal and
    invisible, yet who became visible for our sakes; impalpable and impassible,
    yet who became passible on our account; and who in every kind of way suffered
    for our sakes.

    It would be nice if all today’s bishops would heed these words!  Read the rest.

     

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  • The early Christians: On the transmission of epistles.

    Part of a series.

    Ever wondered how these various epistles got around in the early Church?  We have a primary source writing about that in Polycarp (70-156), bishop of Smyrna.  His Epistle to the Philippians, in a section dating probably to 115 AD, includes this passage:

    Both you and Ignatius wrote to me, that if any one went [from this] into Syria, he should carry your letter with him; which request I will attend to if I find a fitting opportunity, either personally, or through some other acting for me, that your desire may be fulfilled.

    The Epistles of Ignatius written by him to us, and all the rest [of his Epistles] which we have by us, we have sent to you, as you requested. They are subjoined to this Epistle, and by them ye may be greatly profited; for they treat of faith and patience, and all things that tend to edification in our Lord.

    Any more certain information you may have obtained respecting both Ignatius himself, and those that were with him, have the goodness to make known to us.

    "Ignatius" is Ignatius of Antioch, whom Polycarp knew personally. 

    Polycarp was martyred by stabbing and possibly burning;  an account survives.

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  • Boxing.

    Mark Kleiman explains why it’s beneath contempt:


    …[B]oxing is an exercise that uses two
    remarkable devices in a very odd way. One of them is a servomanipulator
    of incredible versatility, delicacy and precision, a gadget that can
    play a violin or caress a cheek or fix a watch or carry a suitcase. The
    other is a computer with capacities we still haven’t exhausted. It’s
    small enough to carry around at all times, and it can write a sonata
    for the violin, do rocket science and every other kind of science, and
    give advice to children. Try that with your laptop. Oh yeah; this
    computer is capable of love…the real thing, not reciting a script.

    What’s truly amazing about boxing is how these
    wonders are used. You might think the computer could be hooked up to
    instruct the servo to make something incredibly cool, but you would be
    wrong. In boxing, the game is to take the servomechanism and use it
    like a hammer to whale on the computer until its little lights go out
    and it stops working    .

    Yup.  Nothing good happening there.  (H/t Asymmetrical Information.)

     

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  • The early Christians: The Didache.

    Part of a series.  Today:  The Didache, a.k.a. The Teachings of the Twelve Apostles.

    An encyclopedia entry on the Didache goes like this:

    (dĬd´ekē) [Gr.,=teaching], early Christian work written in Greek…. Dates for its composition suggested by scholars have ranged from AD 50 to AD 150. Discovered in 1875 by Bryennios, Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Nicomedia, it is an invaluable primary source for the primitive church. The first part is a collection of moral precepts, perhaps based on rabbinical teachings (there are many quotations from the Old Testament); the second portion gives directions for baptism and the Eucharist; the third contains directions for bishops and deacons. The Didache may be of composite authorship. A short work, it has been published in English translation in collections of patristic literature.

    I’m interested in the directions for baptism and the Eucharist.  Here is the Didache on baptism:

    And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But before the baptism let the baptizer fast, and the baptized, and whoever else can; but you shall order the baptized to fast one or two days before.

    I assume that by living water the writer means "running water," as in a river or stream.  Notice that immersion is preferred (otherwise, why "baptize into other water?") but that pouring the water is allowed. 

    This passage implies an adult baptism, I think, because of the reference to fasting.  (It doesn’t exclude baptism of children, though.)  Today, we ordinarily receive adults into the Church, baptizing them if necessary, during the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday.  Good Friday, the day before Holy Saturday, is a day of fasting; so the catechumens (those to be baptized) indeed fast one day before their baptism (although not typically on Holy Saturday).

    What does this work from c. 100 A.D. say about the Eucharist?

    Now concerning the Eucharist, give thanks this way. First, concerning the cup:

    We thank thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which You madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever..

    And concerning the broken bread:

    We thank Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which You madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever. Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom; for Thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever..

    But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs."

    Mainly, a formula for the Eucharistic Prayer, and an admonition that the Eucharist is reserved to the baptized.

    There’s a vague reference, too, to some type of confession, probably a public one:

    In the church you shall acknowledge your transgressions, and you shall not come near for your prayer with an evil conscience.

    It’s a very short work, a quick read.

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  • To nonmarket, to nonmarket, to buy a fat pig.

    A reasoned, if dry, economic analysis of the social costs of highly-educated women leaving the workforce, from Becker-Posner Blog:

    Even at the current very high tuition rates, there is excess demand for places at the elite colleges and professional schools, as shown by the high ratio of applications to acceptances at those schools. Demand is excess–supply and demand are not in balance–because the colleges and professional schools do not raise tuition to the market-clearing level but instead ration places in their entering classes on the basis (largely) of ability, as proxied by grades, performance on standardized tests, and extracurricular activities. Since women do as well on these measures as men, the student body of an elite educational institution is usually about 50 percent female.

    Suppose for simplicity that in an entering class at an elite law school of 100 students, split evenly among men and women, 45 of the men but only 30 of the women will have full-time careers in law. Then 5 of the men and 20 of the women will be taking places that would otherwise be occupied by men (and a few women) who would have more productive careers, assuming realistically that the difference in ability between those admitted and those just below the cut off for admission is small.

    While well-educated mothers contribute more to the human capital of their offspring than mothers who are not well educated, it is doubtful that a woman who graduates from Harvard College and goes on to get a law degree from Yale will be a better mother than one who stopped after graduating from Harvard.

    But I have to try to be precise about the meaning of "more productive" in this context. I mean only that if a man and woman of similar ability were competing for a place in the entering class of an elite professional school, the man would (on average) pay more for the place than the woman would; admission would create more "value added" for him than for her….

    I like this kind of analysis, which bypasses emotional appeal and goes straight for the costs, very much.  He has some intriguing ideas (involving gender-blind tuition raises). 

    But perhaps the bit that stuck in my mind most was a new (to me) term to describe what women who leave the workforce are doing:  "nonmarket activities."

    Forget all this nonsense about "working mothers" vs. "non-working mothers," or the slightly-too-precious (and linguistically useless) "every mother is a working mother."  Forget, too, the under-descriptive "housewife" and "homemaker" and the patently untrue "stay-at-home mother," even though we Internet users are all familiar with the term SAHM.  No, no, we finally have an answer to that loaded question…

    — So, what do you do?

    — Oh, nonmarket activities mostly.

    I’m a nonmarket activist!  No, wait, a nonmarket activities specialist!  No, wait, I’m in… nonmarketing.  Nonmarket research!

    Sometimes I just kill myself.

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  • Ann Althouse tackles “objectively disordered.”

    Classified under Sacraments, because what’s being discussed is Holy Orders.

    Interesting discussion over at Althouse, prompted by rumors (probably true) that the Church will ban outright the ordination of males who self-identify as "homosexual."

    This prompted me to wonder in the comments:

    I was wondering today exactly how people can read the Church’s statement "homosexual acts are intrinsically evil" and understand it to mean "people who engage in homosexual acts are intrinsically evil." It’s certainly not there in the plain text. Yet so many claim they mean the same. How to explain it?

    It occurred to me that such a mishearing can only (logically) come from a philosophy in which a person is wholly defined by his or her acts. Only if the person is synonymous with the act can an evil act imply an evil person.

    (Of course, this doesn’t rule out that those who make the mistake simply aren’t thinking logically.)

    I am a Catholic. It is an article of my faith that a person is more than the sum of their acts. So it isn’t hard for me to see the distinction between "this act is evil" and "this person, the actor, is evil" — or, far worse, "this person, who is merely inclined towards that evil act, is evil."

    Some creative snipping of Ratzinger’s writings was used to support the "gays are evil" claim.   It’s getting harder to get away with this sort of thing, now that we have Google.

    UPDATE.  Also in the comments there, I prove how dorky I am by showing that a sample of Ann’s posts containing the word "gay" attract fewer comments (4.6 on average) than an identically obtained sample of Ann’s posts containing the word "Catholic" (7.0 on average).

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