At least the rationalization hamsters are fecund

Natural, un-mutilated heterosexual intercourse has – qua kind of behaviour – an intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.  This is easily demonstrated by the fact that if all natural, un-mutilated heterosexual intercourse (as a kind of behaviour) ceased then human life would cease to procreate.  There is an intrinsic relationship between this specific kind of behaviour^[1] and procreation of human life.

Mutilated sexual acts (including but not limited to masturbation, sodomy, condomistic sex, and masturbation into a deliberately poisoned womb) do not have – qua kind of behaviour – this intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.  If all instances of this kind of behaviour ceased it would have no effect on the procreation of human life (except to the extent that people would substitute natural sex for unnatural sex: the cessation of unnatural sexual behaviours would certainly not impair procreation).

The Catholic Church teaches that all sexual acts must of necessity – in order to be morally licit – retain their intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life, in just this sense.

Whatever one may think of the moral implications of this particular distinction in kinds of behavior, it is certainly both intelligible and entirely consistent with scientific facts.  Substituting a different meaning into the words “intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” does not actually alter the consistency of the original and actual meaning; let alone does such substitution falsify Catholic moral doctrine as a “empirically observable fact.”

In other words, in an “average” 28 day cycle, there is no potential for procreation in roughly 22 of the 28 days present. Sexual activity during this period has no “intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.” This is not my opinion, it is an empirically observable fact, like the Earth’s rotation around the Sun.

This kind of nonsense on stilts might make one wonder where the rationalization is coming from.

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[1] Knowledge about human fertility, or its lack, obviously does not alter the nature of the kind of behaviour itself. If all instances of (e.g.) sodomy (both by people who know lots about human fertility and those who know nothing about it) ceased, that would not impair procreation of human life.  If all instances of natural heterosexual intercourse (both by people who know lots about human fertility and those who know nothing about it) ceased, human procreation would cease.

Dubia

It is asked whether, following the affirmations of Pope Pius VIII and Gregory XVI, and additional rulings by the Sacred Penitentiary, it has now become possible to grant absolution in the Sacrament of Penance and thus to admit to Holy Communion a person who, while bound to observe the Church’s categorical and infallible condemnation of usury, deliberately and unrepentantly contracts for profits from a mutuum loan.  Can the expression “in certain cases” found in note 351 (n. 305) of the exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” be applied to unrepentant usurers and contraceptors?

Speaking of Nazis

The left doesn’t actually care about nazis, because there are no nazis. They care about destroying you. Your history, your culture, your traditions, your future, your family, you. That is their operational principle. Even their own are capable of recognizing it in other forms—and yet so many of you are not.

So stop bleating about not being racist to enemies who racially attack you. Stop believing that colluding monopolistic corporatism equals free enterprise. Stop believing that legal immigration won’t swamp you just the same. Stop applauding wildly wasteful military misadventures on behalf of Our Greatest Ally. And finally, stop thinking that a government instruction pamphlet is the basis of civil Western society. There’s only so many maladaptive mistakes a side can make before it is defeated with finality. No one is going to praise your virtues once that side is yours.

Maybe you are a freedom-loving equality-before-the-law liberal yourself – which is what makes you a good and respectable person.

This will not save you, nor will it save anything or anyone that you love, from utter destruction. Conservation of the things you love requires the unapologetic exercise of authority. Exercise of authority under liberalism is always sociopathic, carried out via unprincipled exceptions, because of the way liberalism frames the question of authority.

There are no Nazis. There is only you.

Why different kinds of liberals think each other are Nazis

Liberalism is a theory or understanding of the just exercise of authority.  It is specifically commitment to political freedom and, concomitantly, to equality before the law.

Commitment to political freedom is commitment to rights, that is, to the empowerment of certain people or claims; empowerment always and necessarily achieved via authoritative discrimination against other people or claims.  I’ve used the metaphor of a coin with a pretty side and an ugly side as an image of how liberalism approaches the question of authority: both sides of the authority coin are always present, but liberals see only the pretty side – the empowerment side that they personally like – of their own coins.  Liberalism is thus ultimately a mechanism for people to beg the question in favor of their own preferred exercise of authoritative discrimination.

Picture liberal society, then – the whole society as opposed to individual liberals – as composed of liberals carrying around their coins held high, gazing raptly at (what they personally believe to be) the pretty side. Other people walking along with them in the same direction holding similar coins (where the coins represent each person’s understanding of the just exercise of authoritative discrimination) also see the pretty, empowering side.

When groups of liberals come across other liberals walking a different direction, though, they see the ugly, authoritative side of each others’ coins and accuse each other of being tyrants: of being the Low Man. Each sees the other as inauthentically liberal, as selfish, sick, insane power hungry tyrants who mouth the words of freedom and equal rights but don’t really mean it.

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Note: this was originally a comment, but I’ve had to search for it and reference it enough times now that I thought it deserved promotion to its own post.

A future “conservative” Catholic blog post

Some folks are getting all breathless about Pope Arius’ decision to officially recognize the dignity of homosexual marriages.

Is he going beyond his authority? Is he changing the catechism and breaking with centuries of church teaching? Is it true that if he does this he can do most anything? Rod Dreher over here seems  to think so.

I’m not so sure.

The classic example is the Catholic teaching against usury. In the Middle Ages the church taught that usury was a sin. It was argued that it was a sin because it was un natural. It used money to make money rather than honestly selling goods and services. Furthermore, it was invariably seen as a way for rich people to oppress the poor through high interest rates.

However, in the modern world the practice of lending money is far more complex and it is arguable that the money lender is indeed honestly selling a service–making loans. Furthermore, with loans being available to everyone, rather than oppressing the poor it is arguable that the poor are empowered by being able to borrow. They can get an education they could not otherwise afford and purchase things on credit to improve their lives. Is money lending still abused? Of course, but that’s not the main question.

When it comes to the death penalty the real change happened not with Pope Francis, but with Pope John Paul II.

Undemocratic racist kill ratios

I don’t know if the sleeping Anglo-European white warrior will ever really reawaken. It doesn’t seem that likely to me, frankly. It certainly isn’t something to hope for: if he does, the world should tremble. No other creature has ever shown anything close to the capacity for organized mass violence that we have within us.

One of the things that I find interesting about man-hating white-hating politics though is the democratic political assumption: the assumption that once the white man is a ‘minority’, the POC-SJW coalition of freaks will have him right where they want him, because – wait for it – they will be able to outvote him. Tremble at the power!

These folks don’t seem to have taken stock of actual historical kill ratios when small handfuls of US marines have taken on large groups of more pigment-challenged enemies.

Euthanizing papal credibility

He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth. – Jesus Christ, second Person of the Holy Trinity

Addressing the announced changes to the Catechism on the death penalty, changes categorically asserting its ‘inadmissibility^[1],’ Joseph Shaw writes:

If [the Holy Father’s theological advisers] are not bound by past popes, there is no reason why future popes should be bound by this statement, and indeed the authority of Pope Francis over Catholics today is called into question.

…

[Compatibility with the teaching of previous popes, councils, etc] is not the natural reading of the text, but one might argue that since it is purporting to represent the teaching of the Church we must read it if humanly possible in accord with previous authoritative statements of that teaching. On the other hand, bishops and theologians supposedly friendly to Pope Francis are loudly saying that the natural reading is the correct one…

This is no accidental ambiguity: it is a design feature. In this case the mouse-hole of ambiguity conservative Catholics need to crawl through to maintain the continuity between the two editions of the Catechism is humiliatingly small. When they have crawled through it, moreover, they will be ignored.

Indeed.  We are all Jesuits now; and if we don’t unequivocally reject Jesuit excuse-mongering for usury, we ourselves and like-minded people are part of the problem.

Accepting the modernist usury-sodomy paradigm is a categorical, either/or proposition.  We are either for it, or against it.  Be against it.

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[1] It takes a certain skill to effectively make ambiguous categorical assertions.  But that skill is required when the point is authoritative self-immolation of authority.

Neo-Borgia-ism, or, the new pornocracy

I’m not a historian, let alone a historian of Catholicism.  But I know enough to be familiar with what has sometimes been referred to as the ‘pornocracy,’ the rule of medieval Borgia popes more interested in their mistresses and political power than in their often neglected job as appointed guardians of the Faith.

I am not a sociologist either.  But I’ve noticed that when heterosexual sins are condemned, the response of people who indulge in them tends to be something on the order of “Meh.”   By contrast, I’ve noticed that practicing homosexuals tend to find it utterly intolerable that anyone, anywhere, in any context, might slightly disapprove of their sexual behaviors.  As always there will be many individual exceptions; but I think there is enough truth in this observation to create a social gradient.

So I guess it should not be surprising that the thing that really contrasts the old pornocracy to the new, the medieval heterosexual clerical cabal to the Current Year homosexual cabal, is the accompanying internal assault on moral doctrine.

Also, I can’t be the only person to notice that applying a hermeneutic of whatever to moral doctrine makes a nice smokescreen, kicking up dust and hiding the writhing usury-sodomy nest from sunlight.

Liberalism as a non-authority theory of authority

Liberalism treats the question of what authoritative discriminations in particular are just, as if it were a question of whether authoritative discrimination in general is just.

Freedom means putting the right kind of people in prison

To say that Bob has the freedom to do X is to say that Bob has the authority to do X.

To say that Bob has the authority to do X is to say that anyone who acts in a way contrary to Bob doing X may be punished or face consequences for that interference.

To say that anyone who acts in a way contrary to X may be punished or face consequences is to constrain people through authoritative discrimination: to classify people along some attribute or behavior and discriminate against them based on that attribute or behavior.

So freedom means constraining classes of people through authoritative discrimination.