DarwinCatholic

Bill, You didn't read my criticism very caref...

2012-05-26T14:56:38.570-04:00

Bill,

You didn't read my criticism very carefully. I didn't 'denigrate' the passages as youthful Aquinas; I pointed out (1) that your passages contribute nothing new to the discussion, which you seem now to have conceded; (2) that even if they did, they are actually very early passages and would have to be qualified as such. (2) is actually quite important and can't be dismissed, because we are talking about a sacrament, and Aquinas's theology of the sacraments is one of the areas of his theology that undergoes the most extensive development and re-working. Thus I still don't see any point to your references: they contribute nothing.

We've tangled on Aquinas on conception before, elsewhere, and on precisely this tendency to try to build an interpretation of Aquinas out of bits and pieces without any regard for the danger of anachronisms, so it's somewhat amusing that after having said you have no idea what I am talking about you go on to precisely the sort of thing I am talking about.

I have difficulty grasping any line of reasoning in the last part of your comment, so I still don't know what response you are giving to my major points. To put them in question form:

(1) Surely you don't think that husbands have the right to demand sex from their wives regardless of whether it would involve being just to their wives? That is all that is ruled out by one of your quotes.
(2) Surely you are not denying that for a Christian the only things that are moral are those things that are done out of and in a way consistent with love of God and neighbor? It's no good saying "Love is not mentioned at that time as a motivator of the act," if this is what you intended (I'm not sure) because it's built in to Aquinas's conception of Christian marriage as charitable friendship and is moreover required by Aquinas's account of what makes an act morally right and meritorious in the first place.
(3) How exactly do you manage to draw any conclusions about 'natural method' from what Aquinas actually says, given that Aquinas doesn't address the matter and given the general principles of Aquinas's moral philosophy that I mentioned above?
(4) What, precisely, did Aquinas get incorrect in this passage given later Church pronouncements?

Neutral readers have my three references.....which...

2012-05-26T13:24:14.846-04:00

Neutral readers have my three references.....which you talked past and then denigrated one as youthful Aquinas.
But that supplement passage is simply in perfect accord with his later passage and with Augustine. Your references to my usual approach to Aquinas as anachronistic and selective is something irrefutable for a bad reason...ie I have no idea what you are referring to and I suspect others don't either. Aquinas followed Augustine on sex and concupiscence and that led both to be incorrect on the Immaculate Conception since where parents had pleasure (Mary's parents) original sin was passed on. Then both held that Mary contracted original sin but was cleansed of it prior to her birth. When Aquinas was not adverting to Augustine quotes,
he actually wrote a concept of Aristotle's that led to the Church affirming the natural methods centuries later...ie pleasure in a rational act is itself rational. This opened the way to asking for the debt being void of venial sin for the asker in addition to the responder. Love is not mentioned at that time as a motivator of the act and thus for the asker of the act. Aquinas linked it in one passage to its producing a communal affectionate reality but actually seeing love as intrinsic in the act itself begins more than microscopically with Von Hildebrand according to John Noonan who did a century by century history of the topic in "Contraception" ( Harvard Press) which was not a book, despite it's title, affirming contraception though years later, Noonan did such. Affirming each other and de-stressing is never mentioned by the old authors as motivators for sex.

I confess I'm also a bit puzzled about the int...

2012-05-26T12:47:40.339-04:00

I confess I'm also a bit puzzled about the intended function of your quotations. A husband who has sex with his wife solely because he wants it, and not for (and in a way consistent with) rendering what is owed to her as his wife, is certainly engaging in an act of lust and not an act of virtue. But that's all that's implied by your first quotation. Surely you're not arguing that husbands have the moral right to have sex with their wives whenever they please regardless of whether it's just to their wives?

Further, neither of your quotations adds anything to the quotation in the post; and, what is more, since both your quotations are from the Supplement, they weren't written as parts of the Summa Theologiae by Aquinas -- Aquinas never finished the Summa, so the Supplement consists of summaries made by other people from Aquinas's earliest writing, the Commentary on the Sentences. So I'm not at all sure what's the point here: your quotations don't actually give us anything different from what is said more fully in the passage from the 1 Corinthians commentary, and even if they did, they couldn't be assumed to represent Aquinas's mature position.

As usual, Bill, your reading of Aquinas is anachro...

2012-05-26T12:34:36.525-04:00

As usual, Bill, your reading of Aquinas is anachronistic and selective. Aquinas holds that the only way to have sex virtuously is to do so consistently with love of God or love of neighbor; this has nothing to do with sex as such and is simply the structure of moral acts in general. What Aquinas gets from Augustine is that marriage is a procreation-directed friendship consisting of fidelity and sacred sign; and he gets from Scripture the fact that this is approved of by God as the proper context for sexual acts and (with additional arguments, some from Augustine, some from elsewhere) that it is a sacred sign through which God actively works grace. Therefore when we are considering Christian activity, sex can only be done within the context of marriage in a way consistent with these basic features of marriage; this means it must be an act of justice either to God or to spouse. That is all that Aquinas's account tells us; it does not address 'natural methods', nor does it have any necessary implications on the subject. Indeed, it can't; the options are a logical disjunction (acting out of religion before God or acting out of justice to spouse), which means that you have acted morally if you have genuinely done either; and since prudence is on Aquinas's account a necessary presupposition of every moral virtue, including religion and justice, you have a moral responsibility to do whatever you do in the way that most prudently fits one's circumstances.

These are in fact the same principles on which some (although not all) of the later arguments in favor of accepting natural methods were based. There were arguments drawn from Thomas against, too, of course, since nothing in the principles militates either way; what conclusion you will draw will depend not on the principles in Aquinas but on one's position in casuistics on moral safety. (Which, in fact, was the major issue in moral theology in the nineteenth century.)

Aquinas was simply being incorrect. He got the id...

2012-05-26T09:27:59.387-04:00

Aquinas was simply being incorrect. He got the idea from Augustine that sex was only moral if procreation was willed or if one was not asking for the debt but simply rendering the debt. Asking without willing children was venial sin. Here are some references:

Aquinas. Summa T. Supplement question 49 art.5 Reply to Objection 2.
“If a man intends by the marriage act to prevent fornication in his wife, it is no sin, because this is a kind of payment of the debt that comes under the good of “faith.” But if he intends to avoid fornication in himself, then there is a certain superfluity, and accordingly there is a venial sin, nor was the sacrament instituted for that purpose, except by indulgence, which regards venial sins.”

Supplement...question 49 art 5 “I answer that”:
“Consequently there are only two ways in which married persons can come together without any sin at all, namely in order to have offspring, and in order to pay the debt, otherwise it is always at least a venial sin.”

The source of this error is in "Marriage and Concupiscence" by Augustine Bk I, chapter 16, which newadvent gives as XIV in parenthesis meaning? perhaps 14 in some editions? The acceptance of the natural methods explicitly starting in the 19th century by the Vatican nullifies their position. Many clergy and moral theologian, Arthur Vermeesch at that time therefore were loathe to accept the acceptance of the natural methods.

I sometimes wonder, too; it's dry, but there&#...

2012-05-25T23:46:53.897-04:00

I sometimes wonder, too; it's dry, but there's arguably a sort of delight or relish that bubbles up here and there. I forget where but somewhere where he discusses the angel choirs, which he actually discusses in a fair amount of detail, he says something like, "Since we cannot be part of the angel choirs, at least we can talk about them."

The purpose of the sed contra is pretty much just to show that there is a real matter of dispute to be resolved (that not all the arguments are on the objection side). Sometimes Aquinas agrees with it; sometimes he explicitly disagrees; sometimes it's hard to say.

I wouldn't recommend reading the Summa straight through; but it's always worthwhile to read a few topics that interest you. What's sometimes called the Treatise on Happiness (First Part of the Second Part, questions 1 through 5) is pretty straightforward, and the Treatise on the Life of Christ (Third Part, questions 27-59), while long, is full of good things. And, of course, there are lots of interesting individual questions all over.

How much fun do you think Aquinas had while writin...

2012-05-25T23:25:46.896-04:00

How much fun do you think Aquinas had while writing the Summa? This reads not only as a neat piece of reasoning, but as Aquinas playing a big logical game with himself. Also, I'm tickled by the image of the Angelic Doctor contemplating pre-lapsarian pleasures. And he's right.

Are the "On the contrary" sections Aquinas's opinions or simply a counter to the objections? I had an instant knee-jerk reaction to the statementthat the only way woman is fitted to help man is in generation, until I considered it as a statement of reproductive fact rather than a reflection on the "weaker sex", although the next clause about another man being a more effective help did make me raise an eyebrow. Oh yeah? I thought. Who'd do the laundry in that case? And then I remembered that in the garden they were naked anyway.

Believe it or not, I've never really read any of the Summa, though I'm familiar with the objection/"I answer that..." formula. I think I might have to remedy that.

I think you're essentially right. Aquinas uses...

2012-05-25T14:21:38.890-04:00

I think you're essentially right. Aquinas uses concupiscence in different senses that are more broad and less broad, and he isn't very clear here or elsewhere, but it seems to me that the basic idea, which he is getting from Augustine, is that of not-rationally-ordered attachment to sensible good, i.e., grasping after a lesser good as though it were a greater good. Lust, in this case.

Thus the idea is that conjugal sex done primariliy because it is a good gift of God is an act of the virtue of religion (rendering God His due) and conjugal sex done primarily because it is a good for one's spouse and because one's spouse is one's spouse is an act of the virtue of justice (rendering one's spouse their due). In both these cases, one is acting primarily out of love of God and neighbor (in this case, one's spouse) -- hence the merit of charity, which makes it a very good deed indeed, because there is no higher form of good deed than an act of charity.

But if it is done without primary regard for either God or the good of the spouse but due to attachment to pleasure, it is an act of the vice of lust, because a lesser good is given a greater place than it actually deserves. But such is the character of marriage that as long as one approaches conjugal sex in a way that is still consistent with marriage itself, any lust is always only venial, because love of God and spouse still are able to have a place (it's just that the act is defective as a way of loving them). If, on the other hand, conjugal sex is done in a way inconsistent with marriage as such (e.g., without genuine fidelity), it is lust in the full sense, inconsistent with genuine love of God and spouse, and thus a mortal sin.

So I would read it. I think it's interesting to read it in comparison with Aquinas's brief discussion of sex in the garden of Eden (which, of course, would have had no problem with concupiscence) at ST 1.98.2 (especially the reply to the third objection), in which he firmly says that of course Adam and Eve would have had sex, and not only that, they would have enjoyed it much more intensely.

There's a big difference between people using ...

2012-05-25T13:15:33.961-04:00

There's a big difference between people using the word marriage, and the government enforcing a single definition of marriage in a top-down fashion... would catholic catechesis be harder if the government had an officialy position that Christianity was the same thing as sola scriptura protestantism? I think so. Likewise, on this issue, if we insist the government endorse our view of marriage, (and we inevitably lose) we are setting ourselves up to be objectors to a monolithic legal definition of a religious term instead of one religion among many in a genuinely pluralist society.

And it's helpful in a second way -- it releases the tension of the gay marriage debate. I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a pretty toxic divide running through society over this issue.

Maybe the person should read "City of God&quo...

2012-05-25T12:02:29.715-04:00

Maybe the person should read "City of God" -- of course it is biased, but St. Augustine was writing to a pagan audience, so they would have noticed if he were outright lying. In general, he spoke how Christian barbarians held themselves to a higher standard -- respecting rules of not attacking people who sought sanctuary in churches, whether the individuals were Christian or Pagans, while the pagans did not do likewise.

To quote some folks I know and love, biological fa...

2012-05-25T02:07:05.883-04:00

To quote some folks I know and love, biological father ain't "daddy."

You need more than genetics to be a mom or dad. An adoptive parent is that "more."

The lawsuit for survivor benefits for someone who didn't exists until most of a year after their bio was dead is ludicrious on the face of it. They never depended on the person, they just happen to share his genes.

(...I may be a bit angry about this because I count children of rape, kids whose biofather was an abusive SOB who only got the mother pregnant as another form of attack, and folks with bioparents who only care when the kids are useful to them among my friends and family.)

Oh, other disclaimer: I think Jaeger is a great th...

2012-05-25T02:00:07.163-04:00

Oh, other disclaimer: I think Jaeger is a great thing to sip, and am still in mourning about Fireball Whiskey (it's cinnamon syrup made with whiskey, basically) not being available from the bases' supplier.

bearing - at my sister's "I'm pregnan...

2012-05-25T01:58:32.675-04:00

bearing -
at my sister's "I'm pregnant" bar-hop (she was the DD) I ordered a jack and coke, and the bartender hit on me for the rest of the evening as someone who knew her drinks. So I'm guessing no, not a usual girl drink. It was so freaking strong I nearly gagged, but that's another point.... (The proper proportion is somewhat less than 50/50 in my book.)

I favor an amaretto sour, myself, or a simple gin and tonic. (Bonus if there are black lights--takes me back to my first Real Date with TrueBlue, in the PI.)

I've been mixing drinks since I was five or so, and my most prized possession is a just-barely-post prohibition reprint of a pre-prohibition drink book.
(Has awesome things like a very long, round-about suggestion that the bartender deck any drunk that harasses ladies that are drinking. Named "How To Mix Drinks.")

Didn't they have the whole "exploding bee...

2012-05-25T01:51:00.665-04:00

Didn't they have the whole "exploding beer kegs" miracles, too? (IIRC, a group was going to give a keg or two of beer to a pagan god, a saint was around, pronounced that wasn't gonna happen, and BOOM the keg exploded?)

I love Njall's saga. I'll have to reread i...

2012-05-24T14:18:49.749-04:00

I love Njall's saga. I'll have to reread it; it's been too long.

Which reminds me: HBO really needs to make one of ...

2012-05-24T12:56:04.485-04:00

Which reminds me: HBO really needs to make one of their high class sex-and-violence series based on Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks. Hoo boy.

Amusing to see the slaughter of the Saxons on the ...

2012-05-24T12:46:00.228-04:00

Amusing to see the slaughter of the Saxons on the list. Does anyone suppose, given the history of Saxon depredations on the Frankish realm, that a pagan Frank king would have behaved any differently?

The problem with such lists is that they are shorn of context. They also assume that a Frankish king has somehow become less Frankish simply because he has been sprinkled.

It's not outrageous. Often, a bit of the mara...

2012-05-24T12:35:20.509-04:00

It's not outrageous. Often, a bit of the maraschino syrup from the jar of cherries gets into our Manhattans.

Darwin, have you tried Dolin vermouth? I can't speak to the dry, but the sweet is good.

Wait, wouldn't it be instructive if the gov...

2012-05-24T11:36:49.565-04:00
Wait, wouldn't it be instructive if the government stopped using the terminology of "marriage"? Catholics already believe there is an important ontological difference between sacramental marriage and the civil convention of government "marriage". Wouldn't it be a big help to us if those two very different things were called by different names? Wouldn't that make it easier to catechise our children?

I'm not sure it would necessarily be all that helpful, especially as I don't see it as likely that culturally everyone but Catholics (or Catholics and other serious Christians) would stop using terms like "marriage" and "spouse" just because the government did.

You may scoff at this, but my dad made his Manhatt...

2012-05-23T22:01:44.053-04:00
You may scoff at this, but my dad made his Manhattans with a dash of grenadine syrup. They were always a big hit at the Holy Name Society's annual winter dance.

When I was taking a tour of the Uffizi gallery in ...

2012-05-23T19:43:13.798-04:00
When I was taking a tour of the Uffizi gallery in Florence , I saw the Venus of Urbino by Titian. Mark Twain called this painting "the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses." Now perhaps Twain had a high dose of yankee prudishness, but I think this would fall into the category of art you are talking about. To each his own. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Urbino

I completely agree with you about Michelangelo's women. They are basically men with breast implants.

Wait, wouldn't it be instructive if the govern...

2012-05-23T13:47:45.252-04:00
Wait, wouldn't it be instructive if the government stopped using the terminology of "marriage"? Catholics already believe there is an important ontological difference between sacramental marriage and the civil convention of government "marriage". Wouldn't it be a big help to us if those two very different things were called by different names? Wouldn't that make it easier to catechise our children?

Now, I agree it seems that government needs a way to deal with multi-person households as a single unit. But why do we need to equate that with marriage? What about a monastary full of monks? Don't we want the government to treat them as a single entity? What about grown siblings who never married? What about a large household of three or four generations that pool their resources?

And for that matter, if the religious freedom of Catholics to use their own definition of marriage is protected, why the heck do we care if a gay couple is allowed to pool their resources before the law? My objection to gay marriage is that my faith teaches me that marriage has a specific definition that can't be changed. There's no Catholic Sacrament of civil unity, so why not drop the issue at that point?

Tony, The problem is the assumption that peopl...

2012-05-23T12:42:38.399-04:00
Tony,

The problem is the assumption that people who live together in a household and have sex and produce children are required to comingle their assets. With more and more women claiming autonomy and working for themselves, the "roommate" paradigm is nothing the state has to involve itself in. If you put both names on the house or car, or he owns the house and she owns the car, etc., normal contract law will apply.

This just strikes me as unrealistic. People who are living together for any length of time will necessarily end up with all sorts of muddles in regards their assets, especially once they get into arguing about who contributed more time and other non-monetary assets to allow the other to accumulate actual cash, etc. All societies up until this point have had to deal with these issues, and I don't see how we can imagine that human nature has changed so much that we no longer do.

I don't believe I should be required to get state permission in order to receive a sacrament from my church. Don't we have a law forbidding my free exercise of my religion? What will I need next? A holy communion license?

This I do agree with. The fact that the Church in general requires at this place and time that people have a civil marriage license in order to get married in the Church is more an accident of the times than it is necessary. I don't think that how the state defines marriage means that Church has to accept it, or that in all situations the Church would have to require that people be recognized as civilly married in order to be married in the Church.

However, since I think that society does need to have some definition of marriage it seems to me only natural that Catholics would want that definition to match as closely as possible their own.

Kevin, I guess I'm unclear how the proposal y...

2012-05-23T12:36:33.467-04:00
Kevin,

I guess I'm unclear how the proposal you outline would constitute "getting the state out of the marriage business". Really, all it would be doing would be changing the name from "marriage" to "civil union" and then removing all restrictions on who is allowed to get married. If we're okay with the polity doing that, I don't see why a name change is necessary. As Catholics, we already don't recognize many civil marriages as being "real" marriages in the sense that the Church means the term, so why get hung up on the term "marriage"?

I would tend to think that that actual problem being debated is not a terminology one. All societies have treated some people as forming a household which the society views as a single entity rather than as a group of independent individuals who happen to be near each other. Different societies have had different rules as to who controls that household, to what extent, and if the household can break up, how it's assets are to be divided and what continuing obligations the former members have to each other.

Typically, this household definition has centered around marriage to an extent, since it's through marriage that people had offspring and passed down property, social position, name, etc.

The Church has, for its part, encountered this extant social structure, has provided Sacramental Marriage as a special source of graces for those who head such a household, and has stated its own laws for who may marry and how. Because the West has been primarily Christian for the last 2000 years, there has been a lot of similarity between Church rules and state rules during that time. (Many states didn't allow divorce or did so very little. Polygamy and incest were banned, etc.)

Now I think it's natural that Catholics, if they believe the Church is right in its understanding of marriage, would want to see that of the broader society reflect the Church's understanding as closely as possible. However, even if we set aside religious considerations entirely, our society, like any society, clearly has to recognize which groups count as valid households and which don't. And since our state is so large by historical standards, and has all sorts of involvements with marriage in determining taxes, ownership, inheritance, legitimacy of offspring, etc., the state necessarily has to determine who is married (necessitating a definition of marriage).

Given that, it seems to me that whether the state uses the name "marriage" is irrelevant since that's clearly what it's doing.

Lauren, Certainly, I don't want to suggest th...

2012-05-23T12:21:50.401-04:00
Lauren,

Certainly, I don't want to suggest that anything old is therefore okay -- though the Ancient Roman pornography (and similarly ancient Indian, Chinese and Japanese) that I've seen examples of (not as a young teen) is weird and alien to our culture as not to be terribly arousing.

Similarly, as you point out, not all depictions of women in pre-modern art focus on beauty. (Michelangelo's women always look really man-ish to me anyway, though I gather there may be a reason for that...) Though if it's one of his main aesthetic outlets you can definitely rely on a teenage boy to sort through and find the stuff that does have an emphasis on beauty.

I think my main thing in relation to art (and this even relates to better modern art photography as compared to pin ups as compared to soft core) is that when a teenaged boy is developing his sense of what is attractive in female beauty, you want that to be based a kind of idealization that isn't focused on trashiness. Pin ups or soft core photos are definitely idealizations of a sort, in that they don't look just the way real women normally look. Similarly, images of women in classic art are idealized. However, the idealizations are different and emphasize different ways of looking at women. And my point is basically just that you want to have your aesthetic sense formed by the latter kind of idealization rather than the former.