Vice the end of conscience...

The other night I was watching the O'Reilly Factor and they were discussing gay marriage in light of DOMA and the Supreme Court debating whether they will take up the case or not.  On the program, both O'Reilly and his guest stated that "the compelling arguments are on the side of gay marriage." O'Reilly stated, "I want all Americans to be happy."  This is an interesting philosophical comment because what one defines as "happy" could determine what we think is ethical or not.  I thought as I watched the program, "No, the compelling arguments are just not presented."  Honestly, I don't know how compelling of an argument is "We love each other, so we should also be allowed to marry."  The humanistic side of us wants to be understanding, because who can detest love? Who can stand in the way of love?  It begs the question, "What is love?"

In thinking this through, freedom of conscience often came to mind.  As a Catholic, am I impinging upon the freedom of homosexuals to deny them the opportunity to marry?  In another context, what if homosexuals were in control and told the Catholic Church it needed to marry homosexuals or face civil and criminal penalties?  Would that be considered tyranny in my eyes?  Perhaps this is what homosexuals think now of the current laws denying them the ability to "marry," although homosexuals tend to not be able to define marriage.  When we can't even determine what we are talking about, it's tough to build any argument.  Logic is a part of argument, so definitions are key if we are to argue. Homosexual "marriage" advocates lose on this point.

So it seems we are at a stalemate with regards to freedom of conscience, since depending upon the eye of the beholder, tyranny is that of being forced or blocked from excercising conscience.  Of course, if we start to think about what freedom of conscience is, we quickly realize that freedom of conscience cannot extend to criminal vice and injustice.  That is,  freedom of conscience only stands the test if it has demarcated lines of where we cross the line into vice.  Otherwise, we have the issue of the Nazi who killed Jews in good conscience not being guilty of a crime because he did it in good conscience.  That is, he did it without guilt because his conscience was unformed.  Obviously, such a view is terrifying in the consequences that it renders.  Such a view of freedom is Nietzschean, the strong create morality, or when it comes to American culture, the sodomite customs have obtained the force of reason, although not stemming from reason, because they've been repeated loud enough and long enough.  The "popular" view of accepting gay "marriage" has been intimidated into us.

So in the two opposing views presented above we see a very real distinction.  The freedom of religion has its restraints at vice. No religion is allowed to practice, say, human sacrifice because it is contrary to the natural law.  No matter how far you push it, being contrary to reason, murder is a vice that is disallowed.  Similarly, when it comes to the gay marriage debate, we are forced to ask whether or not it is vice?  Is it good for the community to allow this practice?   Denying someone the ability to commit vice is not tyranny, but the essence of true liberty as it trains that person in virtue.

Socially, we can look at what happens per accidens and legally when homosexual "marriage" is made legal.  First, it is backed by the state as a right; if the state backs it, then it is considered "reasonable behavior" and becomes customary.  Since we are atheist as a culture, and might makes right, if something is backed by the law, then it becomes what is morally right.  A scary proposition, but exactly the world Obama and his ilk have created.  It's amazing to think, under the atheistic governance, we could say that slavery was moral because it was legal.  I can't imagine anyone really wanting to hold that position now, but since there is no moral truth, if the winds changed direction tomorrow, we could be having the state tell us it is a good thing, and we would accept it.  See why we need the check and balance that is God?

Legally, what follows is no restriction on any kind of "marriage" because the essential definition of marriage jumps from "Permanent covenant between man and woman for the good of procreation and society," to "Two beings that 'love' each other." With the change in definition comes the "distributive justice" of allowing all to marry animals, objects, polygamy, bigamy, and homosexual unions.  Secondly, the ramification of cultural acceptance leads to real tyranny of conscience. Church's, based on the (false) philosophical presuppositions of the state and it's recognition of the so called rights of homosexuals, are forced to perform weddings in violation of their conscience. First they will face civil penalties, then criminal.  So yes, America, tyranny is knocking on the door.  This tyranny will silence opposition and imprison (or possibly worse) the virtuous.  The state is now the arbiter of Nietzschean relativism and it's consequences will be like all democracies who lost virtue; democracy without virtue will become tyranny.

Socially, the consequences are devastating beyond the tyranny it creates.  Dumbing down the dignity of sexuality and removing its purpose opens the gate for broken families and godlessness. These are two of the principle causes of social disarray we face today.  We have a sodomite culture; the battle to stop unwarranted lust and concupiscence, the battle that each of us face (should we listen to reason or our members?), was lost when we dissassociated sex from procreation.  As Paul VI warned, we would see a continuous breakdown of family life, children in fatherless homes, children in gay homes, abuse of women, increased abortion, and ultimately, with the breakdown of the family comes the breakdown of society.  The "new ideology of evil" has attacked the fundamental element of society, and is now seeping into legal justice.  The internal individual tyranny of the members on a wide scale leads to real tyranny on the governmental scale.  Gay 'marriage,' like abortion, will be the harbinger of the death of American democracy. We have seen the existentialist musings coming out of Casey vs. Planned Parenthood; and the self righteous atheist morality will soon attack freedom of conscience. Priests will be imprisoned for failing to perform homosexual unions.  I could foresee, one by one, the Protestant church's giving into the demands of the state.  Of course, the Catholic Church being guided by the Holy Spirit, and with divine authority, would never give in.  So it is our priests that will suffer.  In a theological context, we get what we deserve.  God has given us up to our own members, and now we'll have to live with the bloody consequences.

Often in debates, the emotional argument comes forth, "If people love each other, they should be able to marry."  We also hear that "I don't understand why Christians care so much about gay marriage, let people do what they want. It doesn't hurt you if there is gay marriage."  Perhaps on an individual level, this statement has some truth.  On an individual level, it does not hurt me if two men choose to have relations.  We are already seeing the cultural impact of existentialist morality, depressed and suicidal kids, murders in schools, shooting rampages.  The gay mentality is part of a larger practical atheism and lack of a fear of God.  The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the lack of that fear leads to folly.  So the cultural impact of the anti-true family mentality is something that we could gather empirical data for. So in a sense, gay "marriage" does hurt me on some level.  I am saddened, but also forced to laugh, when I see talking heads discuss the school shootings that have become so normal in our atheistic society. They always blame the means and not the cause.  Being part of the blind existentialist atheism, they see evil and attack how it is done, not it's source.  They throw water on the burn instead of putting out the fire.

The problem Christians have with gay "marriage" is that they are being told to give up truth for a lie.  The outrage is over truth!  I once heard a comedian saying, "Why should Christians worry, if they are right, homosexuals are going to hell anyway. You win."  It's not the homosexual person that bugs us so much, it's the being told to accept a lie.  We are by nature truth seeking beings, so no matter how much you scream, intimidate, banter, or bully, someone, somewhere, will go against the mob mentality and stand for truth.  Socrates did it, Christ did it, and many of the martyrs did it.  The outrage from homosexual activists about this is not about "justice" or "rights," it stems from the inner sense of their nature that their lifestyle is immoral.  The outrage at being told to accept gay marriage from Christians and natural law theorists is the sacrificing truth for a lie.

These are strong words, so how can we say homosexual "marriage" is a lie?  We currently live in an existentialist society.  Our ethic is a personal preference/will to power morality.  Basically, there is no ontological or formal good, so therefore each person is free to choose what they think is good.  Our politics are not about truth, but about competing wills, with competing conceptions of what is good.  Opinion of the powerful is what we call right, and who is powerful changes with the wind.  Sexual ethics in this context become "sex is good for me in how I determine it. It is my right as an individual to invent the correct sexuality for me. I am a sexual self-creator."  So we have transvestites, homosexuals, bigamists, polygamists, traditionalists, and on and on.  Is this the correct view?  Are we essentially self-creators or do we have a definite nature that determines how we ought to behave sexually?

Let's examine the case.  It certainly seems we have an internal directedness towards a few things.  We seek to do what is good to the best of our ability. We would automatically be repulsed by what is evil.  We move away from it. Of course, evil finds a way to present itself as good, but we are directed to do what is good an pleasing to us.  That seems to be natural.

We also seek to preserve ourselves.  We have an internal directedness to eat, sleep, and take care of ourselves.  Again, we seem to have a nature that we don't simply invent.

We also seek to preserve the species.  We have an internal directedness, often times vehement, to have sex.  This directedness is for a purpose of procreation.  If we are honest with ourselves, the immense pleasure that is intercourse, seems to be directed simply to preservation of the species, otherwise it seems nature would have made sex superfluous.  If we accept evolution, we would have to say sex would be extinct, except that it serves the purpose of procreation.  (On a side note, isn't it strange that atheists always want us to accept evolutionary theory, but also support homosexual "marriage."  If we accept evolution, given that species only do what preserves them, it seems homosexuality should've disappeared thousands of years ago.  Perhaps there is a spiritual/moral element?)  So it seems "natural" or that we have a nature determining our behavior. We are not total self-creators.

If this last paragraph is true, then we can begin to formulate an essential argument against homosexual "marriage."  No more of the "slippery slope" arguments, which are all true, but we can see homosexual marriage for what it is, a lie.

The Church teaches that sexuality has a twofold purpose - procreation and unity.  Obviously, homosexuality fails the procreation litmus test for the ethical use of sexuality.  Remember that ethics are studies of theories of action.  What is good for human beings to do?  The good coincides with the true. What is good is also true and vice versa.  So, the truth of our being says that sexuality should be used for procreation?  Why? Because sexuality is designed for that purpose. To deny it that is to deny reality.  Of course, you will get the per accidens/red herring of an argument that we allow old heterosexual couples to marry, and they cannot procreate, so that defeats your argument.  Not really because the essence of the sexual union between man and woman is the ability to procreate; take away the accidental characteristic of age, and children are the fruit of that union.  With homosexuality, it is essentially barren. There are no accidental characteristics that can be removed to make that union procreative.  In philosophical terms, homosexuality is per se barren, while heterosexual union can be per accidens.  The homosexual red herring here fails.

The second part of what the Church teaches is that sexuality must be unitive.  Prima facie homosexual marriage is unitive.  Friendship can be had between people of the same sex, and virtuous friendship at that.  The question becomes whether adding the element of sex to the equation can create a true friendship of virtue?  An argument can be made to the contrary.  Love and friendship are defined as "willing the good of another."  By acting contrary to the purposes of nature, can we be said to be willing the good of that other person? Or are we simply satisfying concupiscence?  Contraception comes to mind, as we have very real evidence that a true frienship of virtue, a friendship that is a permanent state of character and is never lost, is very difficult to heterosexual couples who practice the same barrenness.  Divorce rates are substantially higher amongst contracepting couples.  Unfortunately, we have no data for homosexual couples, but I would imagine the survival of the unions is on shaky ground.  Given this, it seems that homosexual "marriage" fails on the unitive side of things.

So it seems homosexual "marriage" fails on the two principles that make a marriage a marriage.  Let's not sacrifice truth for a lie.  Let's love the truth more than our friends.  Too bad O'Reilly and his co-host only listen to emotional arguments and make claims like "The arguments are on the homosexual's side."  The emotions are on their side. Not necessarily the arguments.  Of course, the arguments are on their side if we accept the cultural existentialist morality we live in. If that morality is true, then the arguments are on their side. Unfortunately, I don't think our cultural morality is the most rational one. 

In the next post, we will examine homosexual "marriage" in light of virtue theory, and see if it can teach us anything.

Virtuous sex....

We saw in the last post what constitutes virtue on Aristotle's definition (i.e. that virute is a state of character consisting in a choice of the mean as made by the practically wise man.)  I wish to apply this, in my opinion the most rationally cogent and worthy of assent ethics there are, to a realm that is always sure to draw attention and admirers, sex.

We live in an age that likes to poison its wives, murder its children and grandparents, and is in love with mammon.  There is a shining light upon the hill, the Church and her sexual ethics, but hers is a voice in the wilderness.  Ruled by lower desires we have yet as a culture to gain the strength to shurk off the insane master we are all ruled by. Aristotle, and the Church, offer us a freedom for the perfection of our natures, if we'll only listen.

Catholic, and Christian sexual ethics usually draw the ire of progessives, sometimes rightfully so, for being rigid, or even stoical.  There are Christians who misinterpret the Gospel in a Manichean, dualistic, or Kantian way, and then brow beat moderns with a categorical command of the wickedness of sexuality.  This, of course, is anti-Christian and wrong.  God gave us sexuality, and all that exists is good, so He must have meant for us to enjoy it.  Of course, when talking about sexuality, you always walk a thin rope, as visions of Mary have often revealed that the number one thing that gets souls banished to hell is lust.  Sexuality gives us the power to be co-creators, a great power indeed, but with great power comes great responsibility.  Sexuality, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden, is the place where the first dehumanizing gaze took place, and it was the beginning of murder and all other sin.  Pride was the initial sin, but then our first parents realized they were naked. As John Paul the Great said, Adam looked upon Eve not as a person for the first time, but as an object of his gratification.  Lust is like a seed that dehumanizes others and can lead to all sorts of other crimes.

I say, then, that I walk a tight rope in talking about sexuality, but it is a tight rope that needs to be walked.  And, the last paragraph probably looks like the beginning of a dualistic diatribe against sex and sexuality.  Sed contra, God told us to be fruitful and multiply, which to my mind suggests he wanted us to enjoy our sexuality.  But as in all things with virtue or perfection, the correct context must be realized.  Let's just put it this way, those large Catholic families give us a hint that Catholic couples know how to enjoy sex, and they should.  God gave it to us as a very wonderful and humanizing gift.  It is a way in which we can realize our full humanity, our full perfection, a truly dignified life as gift, a fully human life.  And the place where you can realize your most human perfection, is also the place where the slightest errors can help you realize your most beastly attributes.  Small mistakes in the beginning result in large mistakes at the end. 

So what can Aristotle teach us about sexuality? What can the Church?  I am going to write today about virtuous sex.  In the last post, we talked about how temperance is the mean between self-indulgence and insensibility.  Self-indulgence being the over gratification in pleasures of touch, namely food and sex.  Insensibility being the under-indulgence as regards sex and food.  Speaking in the context of marriage, we actually have vindication for virtue theory as practiced in Catholic married couples.

The Church teaches, number one, that the only context in which sexuality is valid is within marriage.  This may seem boring to the modern slave, but to be virtuous there has to be a purpose, or telos, and a context for which something is done.  In the case of sexuality, its purpose is twofold, unitive and procreative.  Sexuality obviously serves the purpose of preserving the species, but it also serves the purpose of creating the greatest friendships on the planet, that between husband and wife.  Outside of the context of marriage, while in the ephemeral sex may be "fun," in the long run it leads to injury to individuals and society.  We have disease, fueds, violence, abortion, divorce, and real crime as the result of uncontrolled sexual desire.  Of course, these evils would exist even if sexuality was realized exclusively in marriage, but de-contextualized sex does lead to very real social evils.  As John Paul II said, the new ideologies of evil are more sinister than the old because they attack the cell of society instead of institutions, the family.  John Paul II didn't see the America of today, or he might say that they are now attacking both, the family is broken and our institutions are starting to reflect that with top down tyranny creating laws that contradict the natural law.  Obama has only begun to show his fangs.

So, the Church teaches that sexuality should be unitive and procreative.  Our culture wants to say all it need be is unitive.  "If they love each other, marriage between two individuals of the same sex is ok." "If they love each other, then marriage between a man and his dog should be ok."  Disturbing, but legally if "love" loosely defined is the prerequisite of marriage, we undermine society at its very principle.  The purpose of giving married couples special incentives is to preserve the nation, it's not based on some false jus naturale or false freedom.

From Catholicism, we get the context then. Sex must be within marriage; it must be unitive; it must be procreative.  Outside of that, the Church says be fruitful and multiply.

This doesn't seem too restrictive, but it is a challenge.  Virtue is a challenge.  The Church in her wisdom has given us NFP, which maintains both of the purposes of marriage, it draws the couple closer in communication and desire, and serves the function of procreation.  When paralelled with virtue theory, NFP is lifted from the musings of celibate men stuck in some archaic fideism, to a rationally cogent and defensible ethic.

NFP demands that the man and the woman, if they seek to avoid having a child for the time being for legitimate reasons, restrain their passions during the woman's fertile time.  So they are forced to communicate about their struggles, their desires, and even creates time for romance (the emotional romance women crave, not the physical romance men crave.) 

In general, men tend to the physical, or in the scheme of virtue theory and temperance, they tend to want to overindulge in sex (darn that testosterone.)  Women, on the other hand, in general, tend to the insensible when it comes to sex.  In layman's terms, the man always wants it, and the woman rarely wants it.  NFP forces their hand to the mean, not over indulging, and not under-indulging.  During the fertile times, the man must restrain his passions and see his woman for all her other gifts; he must be temperate in the area where vice is most pernicious to him.  During the infertile periods, the woman must give way to her natural bent to insensibility if she wants a happy marriage.  NFP requires the couples meet the mean and have virtuous sex lives. (Incidentally, the non-difference in homosexual couples eliminates this balance to "bend" them to virtue. A truly virtuous sex life, praise God for His wisdom, requires the balance of the sexes.  Crazy, this thing we call nature.  Men need women and women need men.  Like a true philosopher here, I know, stating the obvious.)

The beauty is there is statistical  vindication of both what the Church teaches and virtue theory realized in NFP.  NFP couples have a statistical divorce rate of less than 3%, outside of the margin for error.  Even better no poisioning of the wife or giving up of masculinity as in vasectomy. Non-NFP couples that rate is at 51%.   Most people don't get married hoping to get divorced, in fact, no one does (unless the marriage is set up on false pretenses anyway, say for economic gain or something.)  So living temperance in marriage means a satisfying marriage; a true and perfect marriage (as perfect as it gets for we sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.)  Aristotle's virtue theory claims that living virtue through a complete life is the happy life.  We have statistical vindication of virtue theory, and proof that the Church does not seek to hinder us.  She wants us to be happy. And being happy means living virtuously, and having reason and will in charge of the lower members.

So, my advice to married couples?  Have virtuous sex.