Is artificial insemination wrong?

Is artificial insemination wrong? Even among married couples?

• FATHER TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK

Artificial insemination introduces sperm into a woman's body by use of a thin tube (cannula) or other instrument to bring about a pregnancy.

 Artificial insemination can be either homologous (using sperm from a woman's husband) or heterologous (using sperm from a man she is not married to).  Both forms of artificial insemination raise significant moral concerns.

Treating people as objects

Bringing about a pregnancy by introducing a cannula through the reproductive tract of a woman and injecting sperm into her body raises concerns about reducing her to a kind of conduit for the purposes of obtaining a child.

These actions fail to respect the most personal and intimate aspects of a woman's relational femininity and her sexuality.  She ends up being treated or treating herself as an "object" for the pursuit of ulterior ends.

A man also violates his sexuality, as his involvement becomes reduced to "producing a sample," usually by masturbation, which technicians then use in order to impregnate his wife or another woman.

Similarly, any child conceived in this manner is potentially treated as an object or a "project to be realized," rather than as a gift arising from their shared bodily intimacy and one-flesh union.

Moral concerns

Back in 1949, a prescient Pope Pius XII already recognized some of these moral concerns when he wrote:  "To reduce the common life of a husband and wife and the conjugal act to a mere organic function for the transmission of seed would be but to convert the domestic hearth, the family sanctuary, into a biological laboratory.  Therefore . . . we expressly excluded artificial insemination in marriage."

The Catholic Church addressed this matter again in greater detail in 1987 in an important document called Donum Vitae (On the Gift of Life), noting that whenever a technical means "facilitates the conjugal act or helps it to reach its natural objectives, it can be morally acceptable.  If, on the other hand, the procedure were to replace the conjugal act, it is morally illicit [unacceptable].  Artificial insemination as a substitute for the conjugal act is prohibited."

Any exceptions?

Some Catholics have nevertheless suggested that artificial insemination might occasionally be permitted in light of another passage from the same document which they interpret as allowing for an exception: "Homologous artificial insemination within marriage cannot be admitted except for those cases in which the technical means is not a substitute for the conjugal act but serves to facilitate and to help so that the act attains its natural purpose."

These actions fail to respect the most personal and intimate aspects of a woman's relational femininity and her sexuality. She ends up being treated or treating herself as an "object" for the pursuit of ulterior ends.

Interestingly, at the present time, there do not seem to be any real-world examples of insemination technologies that facilitate the conjugal act.  Hence, while the statement above is true in a theoretical way, in practice there do not appear to be any specific technical methods to which the statement would in fact apply, so the claim of some Catholics that an exception exists for homologous artificial insemination does not appear to be correct.

The core problem remains that even if sperm were collected without masturbation, the subsequent steps of introducing a sample into a woman's reproductive tract, through a cannula or other means, would invariably involve a substitution or replacement of the conjugal act, which would not be morally acceptable.

To procure sperm without masturbation, a couple could use a so-called "silastic sheath" during marital relations (a perforated condom without spermicide).  This would allow some of the sample to pass through, and some to be retained and collected, and would assure that each marital act remained ordered and open to the possibility of transmitting the gift of life.

Yet even when using a morally-permissible sperm procurement technique, the subsequent mechanical injection or insemination step itself would raise serious moral concerns.  Clearly, a marital act would not cause the pregnancy, but at best would cause gamete (sperm) collection.  The pregnancy itself would be brought about by a new and different set of causes, whereby the mechanical actions of a technician would substitute for, and thus violate, the intimate and exclusive bond of the marital act.

Homologous artificial insemination, in the final analysis, does not facilitate the natural act, but replaces it with another kind of act altogether, an act that violates the unity of the spouses in marriage and the right of the child to be conceived in the unique and sacred setting of the marital embrace.

The beauty of the marital embrace and the noble desire for the gift of children can make it challenging for us to accept the cross of infertility and childlessness when it arises in marriage, even as it offers us an opportunity to embrace a deeper and unexpected plan of spiritual fruitfulness that the Lord and Creator of Life may be opening before us.

Acknowledgement

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph. D. "Is artificial insemination wrong? Even among married couples?" Making Sense Out of Bioethics (September 4, 2014). 

Father Tad Pacholczyk, Ph. D. writes a monthly column, Making Sense Out of Bioethics, which appears in various diocesan newspapers across the country.  This article is reprinted with permission of the author, Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph. D.

The Author

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk earned a Ph. D. in Neuroscience from Yale University.  Father Tad did post-doctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital/ Harvard Medical School.  He subsequently studied in Rome where he did advanced studies in theology and in bioethics.  He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.  Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk is a member of the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.  See http://www.FatherTad.com.

Welcoming Gays: How Do I Do That?

• FATHER DWIGHT LONGENECKER

The buzz word in the synod on the family, and in the general discussion about homosexuals is the word "welcome."

We are to "welcome homosexuals".

The problem is, no one is really explaining what this means.

I hope those who feel strongly about this matter — who have responded with visceral compassion on the poor homosexual persons who have been the victims of bullying will not mind examining the question with an open mind.

How, exactly, does one "welcome gays" and how is the welcome we offer gays any different than the welcome we give to every other person?

Furthermore, what do we mean by "homosexual" or "gay"?

For the sake of argument I'll use "homosexual" to mean any person who experiences a predominantly same sex attraction.

I'll use "gay" to refer to those who are sexually active and committed not only to sexual relations with a person of the same sex, but also to what might be called "gay activism".  In other words, their "gayness"  is more than sexual activity.  It also involves political activism and an ideological stance.

I realize it is more complicated than that, but the distinctions are useful for the sake of discussion.

If Catholics are called to "welcome gays" then it is obvious that this is impossible except in the case that the "gay person" begins the process of repudiating their false, anti-Catholic ideology and lifestyle.  Gays would be welcome in the Catholic faith as a Communist would be welcome in the Republican party — welcome to change his mind; welcome to convert; welcome to adopt a different viewpoint, lifestyle and belief system.

The gay lifestyle is repugnant to any right thinking Catholic.  The gay ideology is anti-Catholic and the gay manifesto is manifestly un Christian.  Any attempts to meld the two and create some kind of gay Catholicism is unthinkable.  It would be a new religion which could only exist through the destruction of the old.

In saying that, there is no cause for persecution of gay people.

The Catholic Church is clear that everyone is to be treated with respect, recognizing the innate human dignity of all persons.  Catholics should therefore regard gays with the same objective compassion and concern that we have for all people.  We see gays, as we see all people, as first and foremost brothers and sisters, fellow human beings created in the image of God and therefore good and precious eternal souls.  Gays may define themselves by their sexual proclivity.  We do not.  We look beyond that to see that they are more than their sexual desires.  To accept them as fellow human beings, however, is not to condone their sexual choices or to agree to their ideology.

The welcome of homosexuals is a different matter.  The homosexual, as I defined it here for the sake of discussion, is a person who experiences same sex attraction.  They may not act on their desires and remain celibate.  They may choose to marry and defer their homosexual desires.  They may be sexually active with various partners, but regret their choices.  They may follow the path of friendship — living with a member of the same sex while not being sexually active.

If they want to be faithful Catholics, seeking to follow Jesus Christ in the path of self sacrifice, service and the pursuit of sanctity, then they are already welcome just like everyone else.

The Catholic Church already welcomes such people with the full range of pastoral care.  I therefore fail to see why there is so much discussion and pressure to "welcome homosexuals."

Of course there may be harsh attitudes towards homosexual persons in some quarters.  There are harsh attitudes to anyone who is unusual or who challenges the norms.  That's life.  Anyone who has looked into the subject, rather than simply adopting the mindless attitudes and cliches of the mass media, will know that Catholics already have a range of caring, open ended and intelligent approaches to welcome and help homosexual people.

The welcome homosexuals are given is within the context of the teaching of the Catholic Church.  With compassion and care homosexuals are welcomed as anyone else is welcomed.  If they need extra pastoral care, counseling and assistance they may receive it just as anyone else can.  If they do not wish for that assistance they don't have it forced on them.

This brings us to another core problem no one is really discussing, and that is the question, "What kind of 'welcome' exactly do homosexual people desire of the Catholic Church?"  Do they wish to be welcomed in the same way everyone else is, or do they want some sort of special treatment?  If they want to be faithful Catholics, seeking to follow Jesus Christ in the path of self sacrifice, service and the pursuit of sanctity, then they are already welcome just like everyone else.  Do they want to be assured that simply because they experience same sex attraction they will not be vilified, ostracized and excluded?  Gays may be vilified because they are perceived as the enemy, but I can't imagine homosexuals experience such exclusion.  I would have thought in most Catholic parishes, and amongst most Catholic clergy the exact opposite happens — that the homosexual person is welcomed without prejudice if he or she truly wants to be part of the family of faith.

What, therefore, is the discussion on "welcoming homosexuals" really about?

It is not about welcoming people with same sex attraction.

Let's be honest.

The only reason for this discussion is that  certain pressure groups wish for the Catholic Church to change her basic stance on homosexuality.

What the lobbyists want is for the Catholic Church to endorse same sex relationships as a viable alternative to marriage.

"You must welcome homosexuals" means "you must approve of gay sex"

If I am wrong in this assessment, then I'm happy to be corrected.  If "welcoming gays" means something else what could it possibly be?

We are called to discuss the issue and to listen.  I am doing so.

Acknowledgement

Father Dwight Longenecker. "Welcoming Gays: How Do I Do That?" Patheos (Standing on My Head) (October 22, 2014).

Reprinted with permission from Father Dwight Longenecker. See the original article here.

Standing on my head is the blog of Father Longenecker on Patheos.  

Man died in Medjugorje

Alan’s Wish

By June Klins

     Every Monday evening, the website, marytv.tv broadcasts a wonderful program called “Fruit of Medjugorje” at 8:00 P.M. Each episode features the testimony of one or more people whose lives have been changed through Our Lady of Medjugorje. All of the programs can be accessed in the archives on their website. The following testimony was taken from Episode #133, which was originally aired on September 29, 2014. This is the testimony of Barbara Labrosse.
     As she introduced herself, Barbara explained that she wanted to share a story that happened to her brother, Alan. She began by saying that her family was from a town in Northern Ireland called Ballymena. Her mother was Catholic and her father was Protestant. After her mother’s first pilgrimage to Medjugorje in the 1980s, she began leading pilgrimages there, and after 25 years of going there and praying, her father converted to Catholicism.
     In 2009, Alan, the youngest of Barbara’s three brothers, was invited to go on a pilgrimage with his cousin and aunt. Alan protested, “I’m not going there among those holy rollers.” But his cousin did not want to go without him, so he finally agreed.
     His aunt attested that Alan was the first one to come up with the deposit. Barbara was surprised at that, because Alan, who was 29 at the time, spent what little money he had for partying.

Ave Maria” spelled out in stones on Cross Mountain

     The first day that Alan arrived in Medjugorje, he climbed Cross Mountain. He did the same on the second day. He said that he did not know why he was in Medjugorje, but he knew that there was a reason. On the third day, he mentioned to someone, “If there was anywhere I’d like to die in the world, it would be here.” On that same day, he climbed Cross Mountain again, while his friends waited for him in the café below. He asked them to keep an eye on him because it was very dark. He sent a text message which read, “I knew I was meant to come here. This is the most beautiful place on earth.” When he descended the mountain, he met his friends in the café.
     As he was leaving, Alan phoned his mother, Teresa, in Ireland. He told her, “I love it here. It is the most beautiful place. I was meant to come here.” His mother said that he sounded happy and said that he had had a full Confession – a good Confession. His mother was pleased because he had not been attending Mass and had not gone to Confession for many years, although he had been brought up in the faith. His mother said, after that, there was a pause, as if he wanted to tell her something. But they hung up, and she went to bed at midnight, after saying her prayers. At 2:45, Teresa was awakened to use the facilities. Upon her return to the bedroom, she heard a voice she described as coming from the Holy Spirit, clearly say, “Teresa, you must pray for Alan’s soul.” She really didn’t think much of it, because she had just spoken with Alan hours before and he sounded good. Nevertheless, she prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet for him, and then went back to sleep.
     The next morning, Barbara’s aunt went to awaken Alan and her cousin, who were sharing a room. As her cousin tried to wake Alan, he realized that Alan was no longer alive.
     Barbara’s aunt called two priests in Ireland with the news and they came to the house to break the news to Teresa and her husband. Barbara was living in England at the time, so she flew back to Ireland. She tried to make some phone calls to find out about Alan’s body, but it was difficult with the language barrier. Finally she was able to connect with someone who spoke English. They explained to her that Alan’s body could not be released until an autopsy was done. Alan died on Saturday, September 26, 2009. The following Wednesday, they got a phone call saying that Alan’s body was sent to Mostar for the autopsy and would be sent home after that.
     The undertaker who most of the Catholics in Ballymena used, Wally John, came to see Barbara and her family and explained that they would not be able to see Alan because he would not be embalmed. He said that in Bosnia, they do not embalm the bodies and usually bury them within a day because of the heat. Teresa and her husband were very distressed. Teresa cried, “I will not accept that. I need to see his face. I need to see that it was my son!” So Wally John explained that all he could do was put a glass thing over his face and under a special light, and they could see him for 10 minutes.
     In the meantime, Barbara’s aunt was still in Medjugorje, and she shared with the people there how distressed Teresa was because she would not be able to see the face of her son. People in Medjugorje they didn’t even know started to fast and pray that Barbara’s mother and father would be able to see the face of their son.
     After the autopsy in Mostar, Alan’s body was flown to Vienna and then on to Heathrow. His body stayed overnight there in a car and was brought to Belfast the next day, where it was picked up. It had been seven days now since Alan’s death. His body, which had not been embalmed, had traveled in the heat through all those different countries and climates.
     When Wally John, the undertaker, arrived at their house, they were surprised to see a smile on his face. He brought the body into the sitting room. While they sat in another room waiting, Barbara dreaded what would happen when her parents would see their son. Soon Wally John called the family into the room and opened the coffin. They were all shocked when they saw that Alan had no signs of rigor mortis. There was not a mark on him. Barbara related, “He actually was dressed and looked like a saint. He had a black suit on him, a white shirt, and a black tie.” Wally John the airport that morning. Apparently a gentleman in Mostar dressed her brother. He personally bought the suit. On the pocket it said, “To my Mama.” This gentleman wrote a letter to explain that he wanted Alan’s mother to see her son in a beautiful suit to go home.
     Wally John said that he couldn’t understand – that this was a miracle – a miracle due to the people’s prayer and fasting in Medjugorje. He said that after 25 years of being an undertaker, he could only describe it as a miracle. Alan was laid out until the third day. He was buried on the feast day of St. Faustina, October 5.
     As if this were not incredible enough, Barbara said there was more to the story. When they got the autopsy report, it said that Alan had died of natural causes. It is called “Sudden Death Syndrome.” He did not have a heart attack; his heart just stopped beating. The report said that he had died between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning, but the pathologist in Mostar said that his heart stopped beating at 3:00 A.M. When Barbara told her parents this information, her mother jumped off the sofa and was hysterical. After she calmed down, Teresa related that the night that Alan died, she was praying at 3:00 A.M. for her son’s soul as Our Lord had requested, as He was coming for him. Here she was thousands of miles away, praying for his soul as he passed away!

     Theresa passed away 18 months later. Up until that time, she had been to Medjugorje 60 times! She had witnessed many miracles, but this one was the greatest. Barbara said, “And the greatest thing that Our Lady repaid her back for was my mother needed to see the face of her son. And [through] Our Lady – due to the people of Medjugorje praying and fasting and believing – she got her wish. She didn’t just get to see his face – she got to spend three beautiful days with him.” Barbara repeated that Alan was sent home looking like a saint – no marks or embellishments. She concluded her testimony: “And in his pocket, when his body was taken from the hotel where he had passed away – there was a medal. And on this medal was the Divine Mercy. It was sent home with him in his coffin. Amen.”
     Following Barbara’s testimony was the testimony of a funeral director from Ireland. He said: “My name is Martin and I’m a funeral director in Ireland and I just listened to Barbara’s testimony and I’m just giving a professional opinion in regard to the human remains being dead for 10 days. We’re sitting here [in Medjugorje] at the minute and it’s into the middle of September, and it’s quite warm. The human body can start to break down quite quickly after death– within a very short period of time, discoloration of the body. The more the body is moved, the more discoloration takes place… I think the family has received a great grace from the prayers and fasting of the people of Medjugorje, that [they] were able to see their brother [and son], which is a very important part of Irish culture – to be able to see this body before burial. Our Lord came back to the apostles to let them see Him after the Resurrection. I think that tells us as human beings that a loving God has given them a great grace where he has allowed the family to do their goodbyes.”
http://www.spiritofmedjugorje.org/Nov2014Article1.php

Purgatory - All Soul's Day

ON ENTRY TO HEAVEN THE SOUL IS GREETED BY THOSE FOR WHOM THAT SOUL HAS PRAYED

It is the time of year to think of the deceased. It is All Souls' Day. Are we ready? Are we preparing ourselves for the afterlife? Have we prayed enough for those who have gone before us?

Those questions were taken up by Catholic author Susan Tassone in a beautiful book, Praying with the Saints for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. She has now also penned a new one, Day by Day for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.

"Purgatory is an emergency entrance to Heaven for those who have wasted grace on earth," writes Susan. "What God considered the exception became the rule, and the rule -- to go straight to Heaven -- has become the exception."

She quotes St. John of the Cross as saying, "Divine Providence always provides in every life the purification that is needed to allow us to go straight to Heaven."

Are we headed there? And what have we done for our loved ones?

"This is a loving purgatory, not a purgatory of punishment," she says. "God is a God of unspeakable purity. The very vision of God causes eternal purity and blessedness. It is the sublime beauty of God that ravishes these souls, and they will not go before Him with the least stain."

In the afterlife, all that we are is visible. We "wear" it. Where is our "dirt"? What will our robes look like?

Will there be the brilliant white clothing of Heaven -- described by one woman who claimed to glimpse it as a combination of spun glass and spun cotton; will it be that or the stained ones seen in purgatory? 

We enter "clothed" with the state of our innermost chambers.

"Every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected, " the great John Paul II once said, as Tassone relates. "Purification must be complete, and indeed this is precisely what is meant by the Church's teaching on purgatory."

When we pray, we help souls purify their heavenly attire. And they are aware of us. When we pray for them, the Blessed Mother once said, reality "scrolls" up. They can see us. And as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once intoned:

"As we enter Heaven, we will see them, so many of them, coming toward us and thanking us. We will ask who they are and they will say: 'A poor soul you prayed for in purgatory.'"

"One day I asked the Lord, ‘Lord, who else should I pray for?’" said St. Faustina of Poland. "Jesus said that on the following night He would let me know for whom I should always pray for.

"The following night, I saw my Guardian Angel who asked me to follow him. In a moment I was in a misty place full of fire in which there was a great crowd of suffering souls. They were praying fervently, but to no avail, for themselves; only we can come to their aid." 

One day, we will not only see the effect of our prayers but the entire interaction between natural and supernatural, living and dead.

Back on August 11, 1983, Susan, who lives in Chicago, was in an accident with a cab that her left leg paralyzed. The doctor said it was permanently damaged.

This was rather intriguing because fifty years earlier -- to the day -- a great aunt known as "little Mary," who was ten at the time, was also injured in a car accident (in her case fatally).

What forces were at work with the message of "coincidence"?

"She died, I survived," writes Tassone in her new book. "A priest told me that my life was spared and that I had a mission. He said that sometimes a sacrifice is made in the family for a greater cause."

It shook Tassone up. Eventually, she visited a famous Marian pilgrimage site, and was cured. But let's get back to that family issue:

Susan's mission, as it happens, ended up being purgatory -- and since the visit to that shrine (in 1993), she has become the most well-known advocate for those poor holy souls who have not yet attained Heaven, writing bestselling booklets about them and raising two million dollars for Mass stipends.

It is her cause. It is her obsession. Was it also the tug of "little Mary"?
http://www.spiritdaily.net/tassonebook.htm

Up from Hell: Dante’s Lessons for Millennials

ROD DREHER

Dante speaks to a new generation, and what he has to say may save your life.

I was late coming to Dante.  Never read him in high

school or college, and after my formal education ended with my bachelor's degree, why on earth would I have bothered?  As a professional journalist, I read voraciously, but a seven-hundred-year-old poem by a medieval Catholic was not high on my list.

And then, a year ago, I stumbled into the Divine Comedy by accident.  I was going through a deep personal crisis and couldn't see any way out.  One day, browsing in a bookstore, I pulled down a copy of Inferno, the first book of the Commedia trilogy, and began to read the first lines:

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in some dark woods,
For I had wandered off from the 
straight path.
(trans.  Mark Musa)

Well, yes, I thought, I know what that's like.  Like me, Dante (the character in the poem) was having a midlife crisis.  I kept reading and didn't stop until months later, when I slogged with Dante through Hell, climbed with him up the mountain of Purgatory, and blasted through the heavens to see God in Paradise.  All made sense after that pilgrimage, and I found my way back to life.  I was, in a physical and spiritual sense, healed.

That's the testimony of a forty-seven-year-old writer, late to wisdom.  What if I had encountered Dante as a young man and taken the lessons the pilgrim learned on his journey to heart back then?  Would I have had an easier time staying on the straight path?  Perhaps.  At least I would have been warned how to avoid the false trails.

Countercultural Icon

Most readers of the Commedia never go past the Inferno, which is a serious mistake.  It's impossible to understand Dante's teaching without Purgatorio and Paradiso, which tell the reader how Dante, enslaved by his passions in the thicket of despair, finds his way back to light and freedom.

Nevertheless, Inferno is the book most relevant to young adults, most of whom will not have yet made the errors of passion that landed the middle-aged Dante in the dark wood.  The pilgrim Dante must listen to the words of the damned with skepticism, for they are all liars — and, in fact, the chief victim of the lies they told themselves in life.  "Be careful how you enter and whom you trust," says Minòs, the judge of the underworld.  "It is easy to get in, but don't be fooled!"

What's more, the testimonies of the damned reveal precisely the nature of the deceptions to which they fell victim — and to which Dante himself, like all of us, is susceptible.  All the damned dwell in eternal punishment because they let their passions overrule their reason and were unrepentant.  For Dante, all sin results from disordered desire: either loving the wrong things or loving the right things in the wrong way.

This is countercultural, for we live in an individualistic, libertine, sensual culture in which satisfying desire is generally thought to be a primary good.  For contemporary readers, especially young adults, Dante's encounter with Francesca da Rimini, one of the first personages he meets in Hell, is deeply confounding.  Francesca is doomed to spend eternity in the circle of the Lustful, inextricably bound in a tempest with her lover, Paolo, whose brother — Francesca's husband — found them out and murdered them both.

Francesca explains to Dante how she and Paolo fell into each other's arms.  How could she have controlled herself?  she says.

Love, that excuses no one 
loved from loving,
Seized me so strongly with 
delight in him
That, as you see, he never 
leaves my side.
Love led us straight to sudden 
death together.

She ends by saying that reading romantic literature together caused them to fall hopelessly and uncontrollably in love — unto death, at the hands of her jealous husband.

To modern ears, Francesca's apologia sounds both tragic and beautiful.  But the discerning reader will observe that she never takes responsibility for her actions.  In her mind, her fate is all the fault of love — or rather, Love.  We know, however, that it is really lust, and that her grandiose language in praise of romantic passion is all a gaudy rationalization.  It's a rationalization that is quite common in our own time, as everything in our popular culture tells us that desire is the same thing as love, and that love, so considered, is its own justification.

For me as a writer, there is a more subtle lesson here, one I wish I had learned before writing so many column inches of cruel, clever journalism in my twenties.

Dante faints at the end of his encounter with Francesca, apparently overcome by the shock of her suffering in eternity for what he would hardly have considered a sin at all.  It's not hard to suspect, though, that Dante's shock came at the recognition that the love poetry she read on her road to perdition included some of his own verses.

Francesca's fate is not Dante's fault, exactly, but that doesn't mean he is not implicated.  The lesson here is to think carefully about the things you say in public, because your words can have unintended consequences.  This is not a warning to avoid ever saying anything critical or harsh.  Sometimes, harsh criticism, even mockery, is necessary.  But it is necessary far less than we think, and, in any case, one should never be deliberately cruel.

In the age of social media, this is even more important to keep in mind.  Words written or spoken in public can have terrible private consequences.  We all live in a narcissistic, confessional culture in which speaking whatever is on your mind and in your heart is valorized as "honest" and "courageous" — just as calling lust love falsely ennobles it by dressing up egotism with fake moral grandeur.

What Disney Gets Wrong

Believe in yourself.  Many graduates hear some version of that advice in their commencement address.  It's as common as dirt and shapes virtually the entire Disney film catalogue.  The pilgrim Dante hears it as well, deep in the heart of Hell, from his beloved teacher and mentor Brunetto Latini, thrilled to see his pupil passing through.

Brunetto suffers in the circle of the Sodomites, though Dante never mentions his old master's sexual activity.  Theirs is a tender meeting, with Brunetto full of praise for Dante's work.  "Follow your constellation," the old man says, "and you cannot fail to reach your port of glory."

It is terrific flattery, and it comes from a Florentine who was greatly admired in his day as a writer, scholar, and civic leader.  Addressing Brunetto with great respect and affection, Dante says, "You taught me how man makes himself eternal."

It's enough to make the reader forget that Brunetto is damned.  If Dante isn't talking about sexual immorality, why is Brunetto in Hell?  It becomes clearer later in Purgatorio, when Dante meets other Italian artists and learns that art pursued for the sake of personal glory, as distinct from the service of God or some other high cause, is in vain.  Brunetto is a vain man, a writer who thought the way to pursue immortality was to serve his own cause in his work — and a spiritually blind teacher who sees Dante's fame as bringing glory to himself.

How much happier would young people be if they began their careers thinking not of the fame, the fortune, and the glory they will receive from professional accomplishment but rather of the good they can do for others and, if they are religious, the glory they can bring to God through their service?  Dante Alighieri's early verse was good, but he would today be as forgotten as Brunetto Latini if he had not written the Commedia, which he composed for transcendent ends.  Few if any of us will accomplish a feat like that, but what good we may do in this world, and what glory may remain after we leave it, will come only if we serve something greater than ourselves.

Tales of Selfish Ulysses

Following one's own constellation can only get one lost — or worse.  This is the lesson Dante learns in Canto XXVI of the Inferno, when he meets Ulysses, the great voyager, suffering in the circle of the False Counselors — that is, those who used their words to mislead others intentionally.

In the version of the Ulysses myth that informs Dante, the silver-tongued Greek cast aside his obligations to his family back home and to his faithful crew, urging them to keep rowing into forbidden waters, in search of discovery.

"You are Greeks!" Ulysses exhorts them.  "You were not born to live like mindless brutes but to follow paths of excellence and knowledge."

Who among us would disagree with that noble sentiment?  Certainly not Ulysses's crew, whose hearts blazed with desire to follow their courageous captain.  Except it was a lie.  Ulysses rationalized wanting to indulge his own boundless curiosity by sailing in uncharted waters, and he led himself and his men to their deaths.

Two lessons here stand out for the modern reader.  First, selfishness that knows no limits, and that tells itself it is pursuing a worthy goal, can have terrible consequences that affect more than just the individual.  Ulysses didn't think about what he owed the old and worn-out crew that served him so loyally in war.  Nor did he think about his own wife and son waiting for him at home on Ithaca.  All he cared for was his "burning wish to know the world and have experiences of all man's vices, of all human worth."

Second, excellence and knowledge are fine things, but they do not justify themselves.  The pursuit of excellence and knowledge must be bounded by moral and communal obligations that rein in the ego and hamstring hubris.  Today we live in an age when science often refuses limits, claiming the pursuit of knowledge as a holy crusade.  The world praises as daring and creative the transgression of nearly all boundaries — in art, in media, in social forms, and so forth — inspiring those who wish to pursue this debased form of excellence to be even more transgressive.

All these damned souls — Francesca, Brunetto, and Ulysses — suffer hellfire because they worshipped themselves and their own passions.  In Dante, egotism is the root of all evil.  Yet this unholy trio would be admired, even heroic figures in twenty-first-century America for their bold passion and fearless individualism.  Love as you will, whatever the consequences, says Francesca.  Follow your bliss and navigate by your own stars, says Brunetto.  Honor that burning curiosity in your breast and pursue knowledge and excellence no matter what, says Ulysses.

For most of my twenties, I more or less believed these things, because that's how our culture catechizes us.  But then, Dante is rarely on the syllabus.  Had I read the Divine Comedy as a younger man and taken its lessons to heart, I would still have been eager to pursue romantic love, achieve professional success as a writer, and explore and know the world — but I would have grasped that these goals can be understood as good only if they are subordinated to right reason, to virtue, and, ultimately, to the will of God.

Dante shows us that you can just as easily go to Hell by loving good things in the wrong way as you can by loving the wrong things.  It's a subtle lesson, and a difficult lesson, and a lesson that is no less difficult to learn in the twenty-first century than it was in the fourteenth.  But it's still necessary to learn.  Happy is the man who embraces this wisdom at any point in his life, but happier is the man who does so in his youth.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0583.htm

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Rod Dreher. "Up from Hell: Dante’s Lessons for Millennials'." The Intercollegiate Review (Fall 2014). 

Reprinted with permission of ISI and The Intercollegiate Review. The Fall 2014 issue of The Intercollegiate Review is here. 

For more than 50 years, ISI has been the publisher of American intellectual conservatism's leading scholarly journals. Here you can access the archive of three of ISI's journals, Intercollegiate Review, Modern Age, and Political Science Reviewer. In these volumes, you will find the early writings of young academics who have become the intellectual giants of today. You will also witness the timelessness of the battle to defend the West and to preserve the truly permanent things. Visit ISI's journal archive here. 

THE AUTHOR

Rod Dreher is a senior editor at the American Conservative. He is currently writing a book titled How Dante Can Save Your Life. He is an Orthodox Christian and the author of Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plant to save America (or at least the Republican Party).

Copyright © 2014 Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

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Real Victims of the Gay Bullyboys

AUSTIN RUSE

Her essay at Public Discourse has more than 48,000 Facebook shares and 2,600 Tweets. It is the anguished cry of a woman, a wife and a mother who has been deserted by her husband who took her children with him into that dark gay world.

Janna Darnelle, a pseudonym, tells the story of her ten-year marriage disintegrating when her husband decided he was sexually attracted to men. She says, “In an instant, the world that I had known and loved—the life we had built together—was shattered.”

Janna says she tried to get him to stay, appealed to him as a matter of vows and of honor and of fatherly responsibility. She and her children, though, had become “disposable … being gay trumped commitment, vows, responsibility, faith, fatherhood, marriage, friendships, and community.” We discover later, on a gay website, that her husband was a Christian pastor, but more on that in a minute.

She says the judge legislated from the bench and tried to right all the wrongs against gays historically on the back of her and her children. She says the judge told her husband, “If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.”

Janna’s husband went on to marry, first illegally, and then legally when her state made same-sex marriage legal. She said in “both cases, my children were forced—against my will and theirs—to participate.” In the second “marriage,” when her husband’s faux-marriage became among the first in her state, USA Today was there to take pictures including of her children. She said she was not allowed a voice in whether her children would be used as “props to promote same-sex marriage in the media.”

The response, as always expected and largely orchestrated, was oh what a happy family this new gay family. How happy they are! See! Janna points out that in any picture of the new happy family that someone is missing and it is the woman who made it possible.

There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally. Every same-sex family can only exist by manipulating nature. Behind the happy façade of many families headed by same-sex couples, we see relationships that are built from brokenness. They represent covenants broken, love abandoned, and responsibilities crushed. They are built on betrayal, lies, and deep wounds.

She goes on to condemn assisted reproductive technologies used by gay couples to have children. She considers this yet another form of exploitation and that “wholeness and balance cannot be found in such families, because something is missing. I [the mother] am missing.”

Her children were thrust into a deeply gay world. Her husband and his gay lover took the children to live in a gay-only condo where one of the men has a 19-year-old male prostitute “who comes to service him” and where a man in his late sixties has a boyfriend in his twenties, and where her children are taken to gay parties, “transgender baseball games, gay right fundraisers, and LGBT film festivals.”

I had missed this column but was alerted to it because of the great and brave Robert Oscar Lopez, who famously came out a few years ago as a man who was raised by lesbians and how harmful that was to him. He has subsequently become a global leader for children’s rights. On his Facebook page, Lopez said this woman was under attack from the gay bullyboys for something she had written on Public Discourse.

I discovered a cabal of pernicious gay bullyboys who are dedicated to tracking down and ruining the lives of anyone who steps out to tell their own story.

We are often told that we live in a narrative age and that no stories may be discounted. Read the response to Janna and you can see that not all stories are welcome. Most especially unwelcome are stories that do not march in step with this particular brand of sexual anarchism.

The first thing to note is how careful Janna was in her column. She used a pseudonym to protect herself, certainly, also her family and even the privacy of her husband. Among the very first things the gay bullyboys did was to discover her identity and announce it to the world.

Jeremy Hooper, who works with the thugs at GLAAD, runs a site called “Good as You,” went after Janna but the real action was in the comment section. In fact, among the first commenters was the pseudonymous Janna’s husband who promptly told everyone her full name, all the better to stalk her with. He did more than that, he published a photo of him with his lover and his children, obviously at some LGBT event because in the background are other gay men with their lovers lounging on the grass.

When you look at the picture, I think you can see pain in the eyes of their son. He seems embarrassed to be there with his father and his father’s lover and all the gay men around. The girl seems happy enough, she’s smiling. We are told that Lopez and others raised by gay parents also had smiling faces, but their smiles masked real pain and confusion at being thrust into the gay world.

The boys piled on after that. They hung poor Janna from a viral meat hook. One particularly creepy guy named Scott Rose even went onto her company’s Facebook page and complained about her:

This is a COMPLAINT against […], an executive assistant in […]. Under the nom de plume of “Janna Darnelle,” […] has published a horrifying, defamatory anti-gay screed on the website “Public Discourse.” The first problem would be that she is creating a climate of hostility for eventual gay elders and/or their visiting friends and relatives. The second problem would be that in the screed, she comes off as being unhinged. Her public expressions of gay-bashing bigotry are reflecting very poorly on LLC.

This is standard operating procedure for the gay bullyboys. They cannot stand even a single dissent from their march to dominance and punishment. Look what happened to Brendan Eich at Mozilla Firefox. All he did was donate to the Prop 8 campaign and the gay bullyboys drove him from his job. Here is a woman totally unknown to them, on a website that is hardly the largest in the land, and they track her down, expose her identity, besmirch her reputation and try to get her fired.

Someone came to her defense. Yet another pseudonymous writer published a column at Public Discourse explaining what had happened to Janna after she published her piece.

Rivka Edelman is a feminist writer, a scholar, a children’s right activist, who was raised by a lesbian. She rose to Janna’s defense and laid out the tactics of the gay bullyboys and lashed out at their misogyny.

Rivvka writes, “For those of you who avoid the subterranean landscape of online same-sex parenting debates, it is useful to be introduced to Scott “Rose” Rosenzweig, a virulently misogynistic LGBT activist. As soon as Darnelle’s essay was published, Rose went into action, darting from the blog Good As You to other sites in an effort to destroy her personally.” She goes further: “certain wings of the LGBT-rights movement function as all-white men’s rights groups. In our contemporary climate, these men are allowed to do great harm to women and children with impunity.” Hers is a feminist critique that social conservatives will find compelling. Robert Oscar Lopez makes the same arguments.

To gay men, women are no more than breeders to be used or parodied. “Practically speaking, Scott Rose and his compatriots have formed a men’s rights group that seeks to use women as breeders. These egg donors and surrogate mothers supply infants for a bustling market full of same-sex couples, for whom reproduction is naturally and biologically impossible.” Edelman says they are out to erase women.

Guess what happened to Rivka Edelman? They tried to crush her. They say they have found out her identity. Maybe. Maybe not. How they do this is remarkable and frightening, and they want us frightened though it is far from clear that they have found out her identity. After all, the sexual anarchists are known to tell a fib or two.

Let’s say they found out someone’s identity and, like Janna, they want to get her fired. They have dug up some aggressive comments she is supposed to have made in various comment boxes about gays and transgenders in order to show what a vicious bigot she is and how she should be punished for it. They want her. Oh do they want her. The comment boxes are full of vulgar attacks that I cannot and will not repeat.

These women are not only victims in their person lives; one was left by her husband for another man and a lesbian raised the other; they are victims here by the gay bullyboys simply for telling their personal stories.

One must believe that the likes of Jeremy Hooper and Scott Rose and all the nasties in the comment boxes are far from representative of gay culture. One hopes so. We look forward to the day when Hooper-Rose et al are ostracized for their behavior.

Just like marriage is wanted only by a tiny subset of the 1.6 percent of gay men, such bullying can only exist among a small but vocal minority. The problem, among many, is that the radicals tend to chase out the moderates. We see this in the Arab and Muslim world. We see this in many political movements. Moderates are considered sell-outs, soft, also to be punished.

So, the gay bullyboys number only a few, I hope. And they have likely waited all their lives to get even. They were teased in junior high and have not gotten over it. One of the problems is that the gay bullyboys include those at powerful organizations, the Human Rights Campaign, for instance, and GLAAD. Naturally fund-raising has a lot to do with that. HRC needs to raise $50 million a year so they have to find discrimination under every bed.

The few gay bullyboys are going to do great damage to women, children and society before they are done. The only ones to hold them off are the more sensible of the LGBT movement. Where are they? They should step in now to defend these two women who have come under vicious attack.

Tagged as Gay Lobby, GLAAD, persecution of Christians, Political Correctness, Same-sex "Marriage"

By Austin Ruse

Austin Ruse is president of C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute focusing on international legal and social policy. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of C-FAM.

Telling the Truth About Islam

Why has it become so maddeningly difficult to make judgments about other people? About the actions especially of people who want to kill us? Indeed, whose stated aim is to bring the Great Satan (i.e., America) to its knees, and then to cut off its collective head? Is it too much of a stretch to imagine bearded men who bellow “Allahu Akbar!” (that blood-curdling “God is the Greatest!” jihadist jingle), just moments before blowing up busloads of women and children, as being animated by a passion for radical Islam? Yet such is the mindset of so many opinion-makers in the media today that they simply will not make the connection.

The problem is not recent. When Newsweek’s Evan Thomas weighed in some years back following the Fort Hood massacre, in which a Muslim by the name of Nidal Hasan murdered a dozen or more people, he positively recoiled from having to identify the obvious origins of Maj. Hasan’s homicidal rampage. “I cringe that he’s a Muslin,” reported Thomas.  “I think he’s probably just a nut case.”

The government apparently agreed, calling the multiple terrorist killings a case of “workplace violence.” This notwithstanding Nidal’s own insistence that he be regarded as a solider in the growing Army of Allah, intent on targeting American soldiers in the name of holy jihad.

That so many journalists and reporters exhibit their skills in traversing these minefields is no doubt due to the long practice they’ve had in perfecting the art of selective suppression. Of which the earliest and still most egregious example is the front-page headline that ran in the New York Times following the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh for his involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center: “Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center.”

Imagine a comparable headline reporting the capture, say, of Adolph Hitler, architect of the Final Solution, in which the editors are at pains to avoid any reference to his passion for Nazi ideology, lest it leave in its readers’ minds the invidious impression that ideas have consequences. “Ex-Bavarian Paper-Hanger Arrested for War Crimes.” Would that about cover it?

Perhaps we’re expecting rather a lot from the secular sages in mainstream media. Why should their standards be any higher than the public to whom they pander? Maybe not. But when it comes to the Catholic Church, aren’t the standards supposed to be high? I mean, by the Church’s own admission, she is the keeper of the tablets. And so when Churchmen fall short of the very standards God himself sets—in the authoritative accents of whose Name they speak—the resulting crash of credibility is pretty hard to contain.

Have I someone in mind here? Yes, I do. A whole panoply of people, in fact, who work for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB)—which, incidentally, has enjoyed a shelf life far in excess of whatever usefulness it might once have exercised on behalf of individual bishops. So let’s get rid of it. By year’s end perhaps? What a nice Christmas present that would be to give to the Bishops, who are quite beleaguered enough without the added encumbrance of a national conference co-opting their job as Shepherds of souls.

In the meantime, the paper trail from some of the Conference’s more recent statements do not invite confidence in its capacity either to lead or to think. For example, back in August, a USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (CEIA), chaired by Auxiliary Bishop Dennis J. Madden from Baltimore, released a brief statement on the urgency of continuing the dialogue with our Muslim brothers and sisters. What we need here, he seemed to be saying, is more sweetness and light. And the upshot, of course, is that since we’re all equipped with an equal set of credentials already (after all, asked the authors of the statement, had not “Both Jesus and Muhammad loved and cared for all whom they met, especially the poor and oppressed”?), there’s really nothing to keep us from building still more “networks of dialogue that can overcome ignorance, extremism, and discrimination and so lead to friendship and trust with Muslims.”

Have they completely lost their bureaucratic minds? Do the authors of such feel-good flapdoodle really not know anything about the religion of Islam? Forget the so-called silent Muslim majority we pretend to ourselves represents the lion’s share of Islam. The fact is, Islam remains fundamentally and unmistakably a religion of violence. The murderousness of Muslim theology is not an accidental or episodic affair, such as from time to time overcomes the better angels of their nature. It is entirely intrinsic to the beliefs all Muslims profess.

How could it be otherwise when its founding document, the Koran, is replete with what can only be described as the poisonous rhetoric of hatred and intolerance? If we are reviled by so much of the Muslim world, it is because the children of the Prophet have been carefully coached to regard everything in the West (except our technology) as loathsome and therefore deserving of destruction.

Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be there home: an evil fate.   (Koran 9:73)

Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them.   Know that God is with the righteous. (Koran 9:123)

Is this the message of Shalom? Do we now get to walk hand in hand into the sunset singing Kumbaya?   And there is more. Think of all those timorous souls who still hesitate to strike out at the infidel in their midst. God help them. Islam is utterly unforgiving. Not only of those who happen not to be Muslim, but of their own kind who decline the use of the sword with which to smite the enemies of Allah. Indeed, the penalty for those who dare to deviate from the purity of Muslim doctrine is death. The apostate having placed himself beyond the pale, the task of taking him out becomes a matter of simple justice. When that crazy Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the death of the writer Salman Rushdie in reprisal for his literary sins, there was no outcry from the Muslim world. For those who read and revere the Koran, such things make perfect sense.

So while the disagreements we have with the Islamic world continue to fester in all sorts of politically and militarily unpleasant ways, the root cause behind every dispute is always the same. It is the fact that we inhabit two diametrically opposed universes of faith. “Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran,” wrote Pope Saint John-Paul II in Crossing The Threshold Of Hope, “clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation” (italics in the original). And while it is true, as the pope goes on to say, that among the “most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran,” it cannot finally satisfy because such a God, “is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption” (again, italics in the original).

It is very instructive, I think, and not a little duplicitous, that while the statement issued by the NCCB cites this remarkable book written by the late Pope, indeed, praising its author for acknowledging the prayerfulness of Muslims, it includes none of the sentences quoted above. Such omissions, it seems to me, mutilate its larger message.

So what have we got here but two peoples intractably divided along theological lines. Open the Koran anywhere and see how it bristles with contempt on nearly every page for those whom Allah himself is already bent on “mocking,” “cursing,” “shaming,” “punishing,” “scourging,” “judging,” “burning,” “annihilating.” In upholding the truth of the text divinely dictated through the mouth of the holy Prophet, Islam can do no less than unleash the dogs of war.

Have we the courage to say so? Will our leaders insist, in the teeth of the bloody terrorists who commit evil acts licensed by their religion, that not only are they to be held accountable for what they do, but also for the ideas that justify what they do? “Not to act in accordance with reason,” wrote Pope Benedict in his now famous Regensburg Address (September 12, 2006), “is contrary to God’s nature.” In reminding us of the evils of irrational violence, most particularly in the name of religion, he had dared to put the question in a way that forces Islam to face the dilemma in which it now finds itself. If it be the case that Muslim teaching empties even the Godhead itself of reason, and thus the unfettered exercise of the Allah’s all-powerful will trump even the Logos itself, then if follows that sheer irrationality becomes a category inscribed at the heart of the religion of Islam. There are a billion or more people on the planet at this moment who believe that, as Benedict put it, “God himself is not bound even by his own word, and that were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.” Can we honestly hold dialogue with these people? It will take heaps of grace to move that discussion along. The grace of conversion.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/telling-truth-islam

(Photo credit: Akhtar Soomro / REUTERS)

By Regis Martin

Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Martin is the author of a number of books, including Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (2012) and, most recently, The Beggar's Banquet (Emmaus Road). He resides in Steubenville, Ohio, with his wife and ten children.