VOTF SPEAKERS:
Top
heavy with priests promoting the gay agenda and former friends of Shanley.
Some from among The Boston 58.
Freely using
Church facilities to spread their message.
It's
not easy to find Catholics who want "structural change" in the
Church, who are not promoting: women ordination and sexual liberation.
SIDEBAR: On Monday July l4, 2003 @ St. Eulalia’s Church, Winchester, Mass., A Professor of Moral Theology, Edward Vacek, S.J.. from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, spoke on the
Negatives
and Positives of the Church’s Sexual Ethics.
Fr.
Vacek’s lecture was about the evolving church. The church that needs structural changes.
especially
in the scope of marriage, sexuality, and of course, Our Beloved Holy Father.
One
would have to bring down upon himself a formal ecclesiastical curse involving
excommunication
to
call Our Holy Father …… A Cafeteria Catholic, and to say his ideals
are too high and lofty . I stand ready, Fr. Vacek to call you ANATHEMA , who deserves the
imprecation of divine punishment, in not only speaking, but in teaching such
outrageous dribble.
The Maid.
CASUISTRY, CAUSALITY AND CASUALTIES: G.K. Mondello PhD. 14 July 03
The
notion that human sexuality does not play a significant role in our
moral
orientation, or even in the way of the imputation of sin in an order
of
magnitude that equals, or even verges upon, sin of a presumably graver
nature
is a very queer notion indeed. This rather summary dismissal of the
role
of sexuality in the order of grace and nature is one that, regrettably,
or
perhaps conveniently, is deeply flawed inasmuch as it is quite myopic in
nature,
focusing on the physical act to the exclusion of its consequence. It
is
a curious fixation on the functionality and even the adaptability of
human
genitalia that prescinds from a much broader scope incorporating the
person,
through his or her sexuality, into a community of events as well as
people;
in other words, into the social fabric within which he is understood
to
enact his being as moral.
To
argue this odd notion is not, I suggest, merely gratuitously innovative,
nor
is it simply shallow theology, or even bad philosophy --- and what is
even
more surprising, even poorer sociology. 14 million children, all dead,
as
a result of human sexuality casually understood, are, I suggest,
numerically
compelling, and morally cogent objections --- casualties,
really
--- to this, well, casual and casuistic line of reasoning. I think
that
40 million AIDS cases --- more than casually growing --- are equally
strident
in their existential objection to this casual notion of human
sexuality
as a mere tangent to deeper moral issues, but possessing no
sufficient
warrant of itself. This, of course, is to say nothing of other
STD's
(Sexually Transmitted Diseases), but then, perhaps they are not
diseases
after all, for that has a negative connotation relative to sexual
license,
but "anomalies", or, perhaps better yet, really socially
progessive
"inevitabilities" around which other "communities" can be
built
to further the activity--- even legislate it --- that results in what is now, in
retrospect,
considered as only an historically reprehensible phenomena
(except,
of course to those dying from it) from which our Jesuit colleagues
will
lead us to the promised land of enlightenment --- even if it is
ultimately
a necropolis..
Being
sexually liberated from the odor of sin and disrepute attending such
finely
nuanced activities that are, according to Fr. Vacek ,only marginally
moral
in nature, we are free to pursue a more progressive agenda, addressing
more
pressing, popular, and vital issues: homosexual marriages, homosexual
adoption,
the ordination of women, the establishment of a truly American ---
and
therefore democratic catholic church, (although the "demos", or
the
masses, are curiously few in number), much more consonant with our way of
thinking
--- and more focused on our genitalia than our immortal souls, and
certainly
discerning no nexus between them. And oh, yes, I mustn't forget
the
shibboleth: "empowerment". "Blessed are the meek." How
quaint.
Who was the Jewish Rabbi who said that.?
Our
Jesuit colleagues have ever been avant-garde and the darlings of the
pseudo-literati
--- that they should preach to the converted at a VOTF
meeting
of the largely elderly at a (Catholic?) Church, St. Eulalia's, in
Winchester,
is most condign. The elderly Pope whom he routinely lampooned
has
--- he at least conceded - much higher moral standards, than those he
presumed
to address. That the moral and theological formation of our future
clergy
is entrusted, not to the Magisterium of the Church, but to the queer
idiosyncrasies
of such self-esteemed scholars, is, I also suggest, at the
very
root of the problem from which VOTF emerged ... seeking, apparently, to
remedy
the problematic by underwriting the very aberrations they ostensibly
deplore.
A very queer remedy indeed. Rather like bleeding the anemic to cure
them
... Post-modern medicine for a post-modern disease ... and their
patients
keep dying ... very queer.
G.K.
Mondello's report on the presentation by Fr. Edward Vacek,S.J.,
at St. Eulalia's Church, Winchester on Mon. evening,July 14, appears to verify the
fact that in his talk: "Positives and Negatives of the Church's
Teachings on Sexual Ethics" .Fr. Vacek is mouthing the ethical theories
called "teleological" which are condemned in Veritatis
Splendor(VS),p.p. 90-104. The warning against those who teach these theories is
given in the words of this 1993 encyclical: "This "teleogism",
as a method for discovering the moral norm, can thus be called-according to
terminology and approaches imported from differennt currents and thoughts-
"consequentialism" or "proportionalism". The former claims
to draw the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely from the
calculation of froeseeable consequences deriving from a given choice. the
latter, by weighing the various values and goods being sought, focuses rather
on the proportion acknowledged between the good and bad effects of that
choice, with a view to the "greater good" or "lesser evil"
actually possible in a particular situation."( VSp.95). The moral
specificity of acts, that is the goodness or evil, would be determined
exclusively by the subject's intention and the "faithfulness of the
person to the highest values of charity and prudence, without the faithfulness
necessarily being incompatible with choices contrary to certain particular
moral precepts (read:Commandments)"(p.96).
Veritatis
Splendor warns that those who teach are teaching false ethics:
"These theories cannot claim to be grounded in the Catholic moral
tradition... The faithful are obliged to acknowledge and respect the
specific moral precepts declared and taught by the Church in the name of God,
the creator and Lord. When the Apostle paul sums up the fulfillment of the law
in the precept of love of neighbor as oneself, he is not weakening the
commandments but reinforcing them, since he is revealing their requirements and
their gravity."(p.97) Veritatis Splendor goes on to explain how this false
ethical system denies the Commandments. "Consequently, as the catechism of
the catholic Church teaches, "there are certain kinds of behavior that are
always wrong to choose, because choosing them involves a disorder of the will,
that is, a moral evil."(p.99) Further,"One must therefore reject this
thesis, characteristic of teleological and proportionalist theories,
which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its
species- it's "object"- the deliberate choice of certain kinds of
behavior 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."(p.100).
Fr.
Vacek and many other theologians who follow these false
"proportionalist" and "consequentialist" ethical theories
would have their students and the alypeople who turn to them for direction,
believe that they can justify such acts as in the situation in which two men
who are engaging in same-sex acts and are living together as partners in
this manner are choosing the "greater good" and the "lesser
evil" because they otherwise would be acting in a promiscuous manner of
same-sex acts with a number of different "partners". Or , another
scenario that they would weigh would be if a girl who was trying to stay
out of poverty became pregnant she would choose the "greater good'
and the 'lesser evil' if she aborted her unborn child and thereby stay out of
poverty. Basically, the proportionalist/consequentialist "etics"
theologians who subscribe to this false method of teaching are teaching how to
rationalize under the guise of a sophisticated rhetoric intended to obfuscate
the truth! Pick up a copy of Veritatis Splendor, or better still, get the audio
tapes from the pauline Books and nedia store in Dedham and listen to Fr. George
Rutler explain the whole encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, in a far better manner
than I ever could!! ---Alice
More on Fr. Vacek , S.J.