Revolutionary special snowflakes

In a recent discussion it struck me how pervasive the ‘special snowflake’ phenomenon is in the post-protestant West. For anyone unfamiliar, the term “special snowflake” refers to the human tendency to view one’s own self as somehow uniquely positioned to … well, to whatever happens to be the subject matter: win the hunky handyman millionaire that God intended her to have, emancipate sodomites as a basic existential category of humanity, pronounce on what the book of Revelation really really means for ecclesiology — the list of subjects is as long as the list of possible subjects. It involves seeing the rest of humanity in the present and throughout history as benighted and ignorant and unspecial, whereas our special snowflake occupies a unique place at the center of the universe.

In the particular discussion a man was claiming that Scripture sanctions polygyny: that despite thousands of years of contrary Christian tradition and praxis, this special snowflake of a man was able to see what the Scriptures really mean. “Right here right now, watching the world wake up from history”, sang Jesus Jones in the now ironically anachronistic 1980’s. This now is the age of Progress, of Revolution, of universal freedom and equality, of immanentized eschaton: the age in which the priesthood of all believers takes off its mask and reveals itself as the priesthood of special snowflakes.

Guest post

The same false teachers who try to dim the luster of conjugal faith and purity do not scruple to do away with the honorable and trusting obedience which the woman owes to the man. Many of them even go further and assert that such a subjection of one party to the other is unworthy of human dignity, that the rights of husband and wife are equal; wherefore, they boldly proclaim the emancipation of women has been or ought to be effected. This emancipation in their ideas must be threefold, in the ruling of the domestic society, in the administration of family affairs and in the rearing of the children. It must be social, economic, physiological: – physiological, that is to say, the woman is to be freed at her own good pleasure from the burdensome duties properly belonging to a wife as companion and mother (We have already said that this is not an emancipation but a crime); social, inasmuch as the wife being freed from the cares of children and family, should, to the neglect of these, be able to follow her own bent and devote herself to business and even public affairs; finally economic, whereby the woman even without the knowledge and against the wish of her husband may be at liberty to conduct and administer her own affairs, giving her attention chiefly to these rather than to children, husband and family.

This, however, is not the true emancipation of woman, nor that rational and exalted liberty which belongs to the noble office of a Christian woman and wife; it is rather the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family, as a result of which the husband suffers the loss of his wife, the children of their mother, and the home and the whole family of an ever watchful guardian. More than this, this false liberty and unnatural equality with the husband is to the detriment of the woman herself, for if the woman descends from her truly regal throne to which she has been raised within the walls of the home by means of the Gospel, she will soon be reduced to the old state of slavery (if not in appearance, certainly in reality) and become as amongst the pagans the mere instrument of man.

— Pope Pius XI

I’m sure my invitation to the extraordinary synod is in the mail

Seems like the Archbishop Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (for my Protestant friends, that used to be called the Holy Office of the Inquisition) has been reading my blog:

Today’s mentality is largely opposed to the Christian understanding of marriage, with regard to its indissolubility and its openness to children.  Because many Christians are influenced by this, marriages nowadays are probably invalid more often than they were previously, because there is a lack of desire for marriage in accordance with Catholic teaching, and there is too little socialization within an environment of faith.

(Emphasis mine).

He mistook it for a sin

Intrinsically immoral acts take place when an acting subject deliberately chooses an objectively immoral kind of behaviour.  Behaviours are objective, and many can be observed by a third party.

To a third party observer an objectively immoral action can be the result of a defect of the acting subject’s knowledge, or it can be the result of a defect in his will.  It is a moral evil when the defect resides in his will.

Consider a married man who sleeps with a woman who is not his wife.

Suppose he suffers from a defect of knowledge: that is, he really thinks that she is his wife.  In this case he is not guilty of moral evil.  But he has still chosen an objectively evil action: he made a mistake.  Legitimate mistakes are always accompanied by regret upon their discovery and never take on the status of a morally good act.  They at best remain, in the words of the Catholic magisterium, a disorder in relation to the truth about the good.  It is not a sin strictly speaking but it is still accompanied by regret and remorse.

If the man does know that the woman he is sleeping with is not his wife, then his choice of action suffers from a defect of will not of knowledge: his choice of action is sinful.

In order to know if the choice of an objectively immoral action is deliberate, we have to place ourselves into the perspective of the acting subject. Otherwise we can’t tell if the action was the result of a defect of knowledge or a defect of will.

But we can still categorize adultery as an objectively immoral behaviour, which no person can deliberately choose in full knowledge without committing moral wrong.

Abuse is assumed

A lot of our Christian separated brethren over the years have expressed a fear of becoming Catholic not because of any development of doctrine the successors of the Apostles have actually taught and affirmed over the last two thousand years[*]; but because of what they fear the Church might teach and affirm in the future.

Isn’t that a lot like a daughter refusing to obey her father because she fears he might become abusive?

[*] Once our particular Protestant friend has become familiar with what the Church actually does and does not teach, and with what authority. This of course does not encompass all Protestants, many of whom actually do reject Catholic doctrines with a clear understanding of the doctrines they reject.

Popes are human too

I was musing on Pope Benedict’s resignation recently and had a few “what if I was in his shoes” thoughts.  They are worth what you paid for them, but I thought I’d blog them anyway because, well, why not?

The first thing to understand is that the conclave that elects the Pope doesn’t have the capacity to confer super powers on the new Pope.  Popes put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.  Infallible proclamations are extraordinarily rare, and even invocations of fallible magisterial authority on matters of doctrine are not all that common.  Denzinger isn’t the fattest book on my bookshelf, and it covers magisterial documents over the entire history of the Church over a huge range of topics.

My impression of Benedict is that his primary concern, above all others, was liturgical reform and in particular reconciliation with the SSPX.  For those who don’t know, the SSPX is a traditionalist group which broke off from the Church over the changes to the Mass that happened in 1969.  Benedict was, clearly, very sympathetic to their concerns.

However, in the end, the SSPX refused to re-enter into full communion with the Church.  They got a Pope who was willing to work with them, but they ultimately just couldn’t bring themselves to submit to the authority of the Roman Pontiff — not even an extremely conciliatory Pontiff with deep sympathy for their cause.  Too much time in the wilderness had taken its toll, and now the SSPX had become just a different kind of Protestant.  I can only imagine how discouraging this was to Benedict, already an elderly and frail man with failing health.

So now we have a different kind of Pope.  He is human too.

Salvation history tends to work that way.  God is always offering us gifts we don’t deserve; and when we refuse there are consequences.

An infertile contention

Catholic consequentialists who pretend to follow Veritatis Splendour and the tradition of the Church are always trying to recast the “object” of an act as, not the objective part of the act – the behavior chosen by the acting subject – but as the goal of an act or what motivates the act. The objective part of a human act (the “object”) is a “goal” only in a very limited sense: as you initiate a behaviour in the will your “goal” is to move your body or use other powers under the control of your will to make that specific behaviour a reality.

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An intrinsically immoral act is one in which “that specific behaviour” – the object – is knowingly chosen by the acting subject and is an immoral behaviour.  In the case of sex, “that specific behaviour” is either the sort of behavior that sometimes naturally and without interference results in pregnancy and children, or it is a modified unnatural behavior which by its nature qua behaviour attempts to gain the other benefits of sex while ruling out pregnancy.  The former kinds of behaviour are consistent with the telos of sex; the latter are not.  Choosing natural intercourse is consistent with the telos of sex.  Choosing sodomy or condomistic sex isn’t.

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But Catholic consequentialists are always trying to conflate the deliberate choice of specific behaviors with intentions – with what the person is ultimately trying to accomplish, with whether or not the couple is actually trying to and wants to get pregnant, etc.  That is tommyrot.  Veritatis Splendour:

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Such theories however are not faithful to the Church’s teaching, when they believe they can justify, as morally good, deliberate choices of kinds of behaviour contrary to the commandments of the divine and natural law. These theories cannot claim to be grounded in the Catholic moral tradition.

[…]

One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic of teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species — its “object” — the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned.

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Recent attacks on the traditional understanding of the telos of sex are ill founded, because they rest on a faulty understanding of what the natural law is and is not.  Natural law is not “basically law which can be derived by a fair minded and reasoned look at the facts.”  Natural law is moral precepts derived from the metaphysical nature of persons and things.  The nature of persons and things are such that certain kinds of sexual behaviours are the kind of behaviours which produce children.  This doesn’t mean that they always actually do produce children; just that they are the kind of behaviour which produces children.

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Other kinds of sexual behaviours, intrinsically by their nature qua behaviour, block the generation of children.

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The Social Pathologist writes:

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The natural law tradition which Humanae Vitae sought to uphold was right in upholding the traditional principle that coitus should not be privated  but wrong in its understanding of what constituted a privation.  In asking men to conform to the laws of nature they were asking men to conform to the understanding of the laws of nature as understood in the medieval period, not the laws of nature as understood by modern science. The document has the remarkable distinction of being right in principle but wrong in application due to an error of fact.

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Modern scientific triumphalism cannot change human nature and the metaphysical nature of sexual acts, and it is more than a little precious to propose that those benighted people who lived in the dark and ignorant past didn’t know that some sex acts are infertile.  Heck, surgeons have been doing vasectomies for 500 years or more.  St. Augustine knew all about a woman’s infertile periods more than a millennium and a half ago.   There has been absolutely no new “scientific” information, for thousands of years or more, that could affect the metaphysical nature of the sex act.

Homeschooled and sheltered, what a shame

A common cultural theme is to blame hedonistic immoral behavior on a sheltered upbringing.  The idea is that once the homeschooled or private-schooled child grows up she is inevitably overwhelmed by twerktastic “reality” and goes feral.

This cultural theme serves two purposes.  First, it provides a ready-made excuse for people of weak character who were given all the advantages of an orthodox upbringing and squandered it.  Second, it blames the parents and shames the communities who dare to attempt to bring children up in a healthy environment.

Another possibility to consider

The lockdown was lifted after just half an hour, but for Carey’s family and friends as well as the police, postpartum depression was becoming an explanation for what otherwise seemed inexplicable.

There is always the possibility that what turned ordinary problems into extraordinary problems wasn’t the postpartum depression itself, but the treatment for postpartum depression.

UPDATE:

Investigators found two medications in Carey’s apartment this week — one used to treat schizophrenia and symptoms of bipolar disorder called Risperidone; the other was Escitalopram, an antidepressant, the source told CNN.

The tree of knowledge and a girl called John

I’ve proposed the idea before that modern romance novels and movies are a form of pornography for women, and that the main difference between pornography targeted at women and pornography targeted at men is that the latter is still subject to at least some degree of social stigma, whereas the former is celebrated.

I’ve also suggested that beta orbiting behavior in men corresponds to slutty behavior in women: that some women have “harems” of beta orbiters in much the same way that some men have “harems” of sluts.  Again, the main difference is residual societal stigma of the latter.

Men and women are different, so when it comes to matters of moral vice they tend to play different roles in society.  In some parts of the blogosphere which discuss our modern sexual dystopia it is often stated, as some kind of big point of existential outrage, that women can get sex any time they want, while men cannot.  But this isn’t actually true.  A man of modest means can get sex as quickly and as easily as a woman of modest looks, provided neither is particularly picky.  She just has to use her looks to attract a cad; he just has to use his money to purchase the services of a prostitute.

So another vicious symmetry in amoral modernity is between the pickup artist (PUA) or cad, and the prostitute.  This implies symmetry between the slut and the john: a slut is the female equivalent of a john.  Once again the main difference is residual disproportionate disapproval of male bad behavior versus female bad behavior.  Fornication and adultery used to be illegal in many or most jurisdictions; prostitution still is.

What further follows is that men going to cads to learn about women is rather like women going to hookers to learn about men.   Sure, you might learn a thing or two.  But watch what you catch in your filters.