ON BEING A "HERETIC"

A  NOTE  TO  THE  READER:   THIS  WEBSITE  IS  NOT  A  WEBSITE  OF  THE  CATHOLIC  CHURCH,  OR  PAID  FOR  BY,  OR  SPONSORED  BY,  OR  PRE-APPROVED  BY  THE  CATHOLIC  CHURCH.

I  love  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.

But,  a  few  weeks  ago,  as  I  was  engaging  in  my  "daily  filing"  at  home,   I  came  upon  an  old  envelope  on  which  I  had  scrawled,

Shut  up
Shut  up
Shut  up
Shut  up
Shut  up

Heretic
Heretic
Heretic
Heretic
Heretic

For  a  few  moments  I  was  puzzled.  But  then  I  sadly  smirked  as  I  remembered  what  it  was.

Some  time  ago,  I  had  been  sitting  in  a  chapel  conference  room  participating  in  a  Catholic  Bible  study  session  at  one  of  our  local  Catholic  churches.  We  had  just  begun  the  Book  of  Genesis   as  our  object  of  study  a  few  Bible  study  sessions  before  in  our  once-a-week  Bible  study  meetings,  after  finishing  up  one  of  the  New  Testament  epistles.  

But,  simply  beginning  Genesis  had  proved  to  be  a  very,  very  difficult  task.  Why?

Because,  for some  reason  that  initially  mystified  me,  our  deacon  Bible  study  mentor,  whom  I  shall  not  name  because  he  turned  out  to  be  a  man  of  anger  and  deception  (and  so  I  would  not  trust  him  to  simply  admit  to  what  I  am  saying  here),    had  suddenly  taken  to  commencing  each  1.5  hour  Bible  study  session  with  1.4  hours  of  reading  encyclicals.

At  first  I  kept  silent,  because  I  wondered  if  doing  this  was  possibly  a  continuation  of  some  discussion,  outside  of  our  Bible  study  sessions,  between  himself  and  one  of  the  participants  who  somehow  needed  to  have  encyclicals  read  to  him  or  her.  In  other  words,  I  thought  that  maybe  the  deacon  was  ministering.

But  then,   at  this  particular  Bible  study,  as  the  deacon  droned  on  and  on  and  on,  study  group  members  began  to  get  up  and  leave,   obviously  because  of  deacon  mysteriously  reading  one  tedious  line  of  encyclical  after  another.  I  thought  to  myself,  in  my  naive  innocence,  "He  doesn't  realize  that  he's  destroying  the  Bible  study  group!"

So,  I  raised  my  hand  to  ask  a  question.

"SHUT  UP!"   he  answered  with  an  angry  tone  and  cross  look.  "This  is  MY  Bible  study!!!    If  you  don't  like  it,  GET  OUT!!!"

"'Shut  up'?"  I  asked  in  an  agitated  voice,  because  all  I  had  done  is  raise  my  hand, "Why  do  you  say  that?   Aside  from  initial  'hellos,'  no  one  but  you  has  talked  for  45  minutes."

"Shut  up!"  he  insisted  again  angrily.

So,  I  shut  up.

After  several  more  minutes  of  reading  encyclicals,  another  Bible  study  group  member  got  up  and  left.  I  raised  my  hand  to  talk  again.

"Shut  up,  heretic!"   he  proclaimed.

I  thought,  "Whaaaaaaaat???!!!  'Heretic'???!!!"  And  then  it  dawned  on  me  that  for  some  unknown  reason   this  incessant  reading  of  encyclicals  was  personal  --  that  it  had  to  do  with  anger  at  me.   "I  have  no  idea  why  he  suddenly  hates  me,  but  Deacon  is  reaching  some  kind  of  emotional  crescendo,"  I  thought.  "Something  is  going  to  happen  here,  today.  I'd  better  start  taking  notes  regarding  bad  behavior."

Since  he  was  up  to  3  'shut  ups'  and  1 'heretic,'    I  started   making  a  list  of  each  on  the  envelope  I  had  slipped  into  my  Bible  as  a  book  mark.   I  also  firmly  resolved  to  myself  to  speak  only  very,  very  gently,    so  that  none  could  accuse  me  of  bad  behavior.  I  knew  from  years  of  litigation  experience,  as  an  attorney,  that  innocent  witnesses  walking-in  on  a  confrontation  in  which  someone  is  yelling  angrily  readily  characterize  even  the  slightest  raising  of  voice  by  the  other  as  "yelling"  or  "screaming"  in  response.     I  had  to  keep  my  volume  very,  very   low,  pleasant  and  calm  at  all  costs.

And  walk  in  the  witnesses  did,  as  the  next  group  to  take  over  the  conference  room  after  Bible  study  began  to  crowd-in,  as  they  normally  did,  about  15  minutes  before  the  end  of  Bible  study.

One  of  the  other  Bible  study  group  members  was  getting  really  cranky,  and  he  said,  "I  WANT  TO  KNOW  WHEN  THE  HECK  WE'RE  GOING  TO  START  DOING  ACTUAL  BIBLE  STUDY!"

Deacon  looked  up,  but  then  continued  reading  encyclicals.  The  study  group  member  who  had  just  raised  his  voice  gathered  up  his  things  and  left.  I  raised  my  hand  again.

"Shut  up,  heretic!"  Deacon  angrily denounced  with  a  black  look.   I  added  a  fourth  "shut  up"  and   second  "heretic"   to  my  list,  while  I  thought  about  blog   items  I  might  have  posted  on-line  about  Scripture  that  he  might  be  taking  objection  to.  I  thought,  "Why  does  he  call  me  a  'heretic'?  Is  he  calling  me  a  'heretic'   maybe  because  I  am  raising  my  hand  to  interrupt  readings  of  encyclicals???  Or  maybe  because  I  reject  pure  Bible  literalism???"  I  wondered  if  possibly  he  had  actually  read  in  one  of  my  published  items  on-line  that  Bible  literalism  leads  to  absurd  results.

 I  also  love  posting  on-line  about  Bible  types  and  typological  word  pictures  in  the  Bible.   These  are  symbolic  structures,  which  I  believe  were  placed  in  the  Bible  by  the  Holy  Spirit. However,  some  poorly-educated  Catholic  priests  and  deacons,  caught  up  in  fundamentalist-style  Bible  literalism,   will  sometimes  nastily  deny  the  existence  of  Bible  types  and  Bible  words  pictures  in  Scripture  --  denying  a  part  of  the  Catholic  Faith,  when  they  do:    The  encyclical  Dei  Verbum  requires  that  we  believe  that  the  Bible  includes  Bible  types.  In  other  words,  the  "heretic"  is  the  one  who  denies  the  existence  of  Bible  types.  Possibly,  Deacon  was  expressing  nasty  distaste  for  Bible  typology?

But  in  the  previous  meeting,  the  Deacon  had  actually  distributed  my  own  list  of  common  Bible  types  to  the   group.  I  wondered,  "Did  he  get  in  trouble  with  the  pastor  for  doing  that?  Is  something  like  that  behind  the  anger  I  see  here  today?"

I  raised  my  hand  again  to  interrupt  his  reading  of  whatever  encyclical  he  was  endlessly  reading.  "Shut  up,  heretic!"   he  said.   "Heretics  don't  get  to  talk  here!"  I  added  "shut  up"   #5  and  "heretic"   #3  and  #4   to   my  list.  

At  this  point  I  honestly  don't  remember  when  he  said  heretic  #5.    I'd  be  lying  if  I  paraphrased  that  part  of  the  conversation,  here.  

As  more  people  from  the  next  group  to  have  the  conference  room  crowded  into  the  conference  room,   I  very  quietly  and  gently  said,  

"Deacon,    in  10  minutes   it  will  be  time  for  the  next  group  to  take  over  the  conference  room.    We  haven't  actually  done  any  Bible  study  today.   3  members  of  our  group  have  left  because  they  don't  want  to  hear   endless  readings  of  encyclicals  rather  than  do  Bible  study.  Couldn't  we  please  do  Bible  study  for  at  least  a  few  minutes?"

Perhaps  because  the  sides  of  the  conference  room  were  now  filled  with  members  of  the  next  group,   all  straining  to  hear  what  I  was  almost  whispering,  the  Deacon  did  not  tell  me  to  "shut  up"  or  call  me  a  "heretic,"  again,  but  instead  honored  the  request.   Deacon  asked  someone  to  commence  reading  Genesis  where  we  had  previously  left  off,  at  Genesis  2:17.    

"Any  questions?"   he  asked  after  interrupting  the  reading.   I  at  first  intentionally  kept  my  hand  down  to  give  other  Bible  study  group  members  priority.    No  one  else  indicated  that  he  or  she  had  any  questions.    So,  I  raised  my  hand.

"Yes,  Pete?"  deacon  asked.    

I  thought,  "He  has  a  big  audience  now.  He  doesn't  want  to  be  seen  as  mindlessly  attacking,  attacking,  attacking."  I  said,

"We  just  read  Genesis  2:18-20.   Doesn't  that  portray  perfect  God   as  making  an  error?  God  sets  out  to  make  a  suitable  partner  for  Adam,  creates  a  bunch  of  animals  in  that  effort,  but  the  words  of  Genesis,  inspired  by  the  Holy  Spirit,    admit  that  'none  proved  to  be  the  suitable  partner  for  the  man.'  It  is  clearly  telling  us  that  God  erred."

The  question  is  important,  because  it  is  one  of  the  tangible  demonstrations  of  the  fallacy  of  pure  Biblical   literalism  found  early-on  in  inspired  Scripture.    

The  room  fell  dead  quiet.    Deacon  himself  fell  into  shocked  silence.  It  occurred  to  me  that  he  did  not  know  the  simple  answer,  or  that  he  had  previously  told  someone  else  in  the  room  something  like,  "That  Pete  is  a  heretic  because  he  doesn't  believe  that  every  jot  and  tittle  of  Genesis  is  literally  true!"  --  in  other  words,   it  occurred  to  me  that  he  might  be  calling  me  a  "heretic"  because  I  reject  the  fundamentalist  position  many  Catholics  mistakenly  ascribe  to.    That  was  only  speculation,  though.    I  really  did  not  know  if  he  even  had  an  opinion  on  fundamentalist-style  Bible  literalism.   In  other  words,  he  had  accidentally  created  a  trap  for  himself  and  I  had  then  accidentally  caused  him  to  fall  into  it.

I  went  to  deacon's  rescue.

I  suggested,  

"Most  competent  commentators  agree  that  Genesis  is  not  a  literal  history,  but  rather  a  fictionalization   teaching  infallible  religious  truth.  The  truth  of  Genesis  does  not  lie  in  the  literal-level  story.    The  Adam-and-Eve  story  is  a  Dr.-Seuss-level   fiction.    Instead,    the  truth  of  the  first  parts  of  Genesis  lies  not  in  the  details  of  the  fictional  story  they  comprise,  but  rather  in  the  true  theology  which  those  fictional  facts  teach  us  with  the  help  of  the  Holy  Spirit."

"There's  the  explanation,"   deacon  said  with  apparent  relief.  "And  that's  the  end  of  our  session  today.  See  you  next  time!"  he  announced.

"Well,  maybe  not  all  of  us,"  one  of  the  remaining  male  members  of  the  group  suggested.    "After  the  way  you  treated  Pete  earlier,  will  he  return?"

I  thought,  "God  bless  that  man."    And  in  fact    I  was  at  the  moment  very,  very  deeply  depressed  by  the  Deacon's  "shut  up  heretic"  business.

And  then  one  of  our  senior  citizen  members  of  the  Bible  study  group  said  to  me  from  the  far  end  of  the  conference  room  table,  "You  know  too  much  about  the  Bible."

I  noted  her  use  of  the  words  "too  much"   and  realized  that  I  was  being  criticized.   I  thought,  "OH!  SHE  is  the  one  the  deacon  must  have  spoken  to  before  the  Bible  study  session,  so  that  he  felt  conscious-bound  to  commit  himself  to  a  fallacious  literal-meaning-only  position."   I  also  apprehended  that  her  implication  was,  "You  don't  belong  here.  Leave  us  alone  with  our  Bible  literalism."

So,  I  addressed  that  perspective ...    

"We  don't  have  to  be  afraid  of  analyzing  the  Bible.  God  is  a  'big  boy.'    He  is  cleverer  than  all  of  us.    So,  inspired  Scripture  will  stand  up  to  careful  analysis.    God  gave  us  our  inquiring  minds  to  think  about  things.    He  doesn't  want  us  reading  His  Book  without  thinking  about  His  words.  To  not  think  about  His  Book  is  an  abuse  of  the  Book.   So,  feel  free  to  analyze  Scripture.  Again,  God  is  a  'big  boy.'   He  can  take  it!  We  pray  to  the  Holy  Spirit  at  the  beginnings  of  these  sessions.  The  Holy  Spirit  will  help  us  to  come  to  good  conclusions  when  we  ask  questions.   Rely  on  it.    This  is  the  nature  of  prayer.    And  beware  of  Bible  literalism.    It  doesn't  work.     For  example,  who  killed  Goliath?"

The  lady  fell  quiet.  "His  question  is  too  obvious.  It's  a  trap,"    she  probably  thought.

"I  Samuel   says  that  David  son  of  Jesse  killed  Goliath,"  I  supplied.  "II  Samuel  says  that  Elhannan  son  of  Jair  killed  Goliath.    People  who  don't  actually  read  Scripture  don't  know  about  the  second  Goliath  killer.   If  the  literal  meaning  of  the  Bible  is  God's  perfect  truth,    then  literalists  have  to  figure  out  an  impossible  thing  --   which  contradictory  'truth'  wins.   Believe  me,  Bible  literalism  is  wrong.  Properly  understood,  absolute  Bible  literalism  is  immoral.   You  should  instead  internally  give  God  permission  to  teach  us  nonfictional  theology  through  fiction.    The  Church  has  been  around  for  2,000  years.  It  is  time  to  understand  such  things.   And  Bible  literalists  are  alienating  our  children  from  God  and  from  the  Church.     All  they  have  to  do  to  find  such  literal-level  contradictions  is  punch  a  few  keys  on  their  computers  or  I-phones  now.   When  they  read  about  them,  since  they  weren't  forewarned  about  such  by  their  Catholic  elders,  they  conclude  that  Catholicism  is  false  and  that  their  elders  are  a  bunch  of  ignorant  baboons.  It  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  there  are  few  young  people  in  church  on  Sunday.  Please  don't  be  a  Bible  literalist.   It  hurts  God's  Church."

After  the  meeting,  I  received  a  certain  telephone  call.  My  participation  in  another  group  that  night  had  been  called  off.   And  I  realized  immediately  that  this  was  being  "arranged,"  and  that  I  was  being  handed  my  hat.  I  thought,  "Huh!    Unbelievable!"

A  later  appeal  to  the  pastor,  asking  him  to  deliver  on  a  written  promise  to  talk  to  me  about  setting  up  my  own  Bible  study  group  in  the  parish,  failed.    All  he  did  in  response  is  give  me  excuse  after  excuse  why  he  couldn't  meet  with  me.  I  had  seen  this  before.   The  excuses  are  always  more  wordy  than  the  word  "yes."   So,  why  give  them?  In  other  words,  it  really  is  clear  that  they  are  "Greek"  meaning  "no."

So,  I  stopped  going  to  Bible  study,  stopped  going  to  Sunday  Mass   at  that  parish,   and  eventually  found  a  different  Roman  Catholic  parish  within  which  to  be  a  Catholic.

In  any  event,    the  incident  brings  into  extraordinarily  sharp  focus  the  question,   "Was  there  an  Adam  and  Eve?"

As  far  as  I  know,  the  current  official  Catholic  position  on  the  Adam  and  Eve  story   is  an  extremely  debrided,  intentionally  innately  unclear  one.

It  is  not   that  every  jot  and  tittle  of  the  Adam  and  Eve  story  in  Scripture  is  absolutely  true  nonfiction  as  set  forth.   

Presumably,   for  example,  the  Catholic  Church  would  condemn  as  a  "heretic"    a  priest  or  bishop  who  insisted  on  teaching  from  the  pulpit  that  Genesis  2:18-20  --  the  portion  of  the  Adam  and  Eve  story  which  portrays  God  as  mistakenly  attempting  to  match  Adam  up  with  "lions  and  tigers  and  bears"  (oh,  my!)  --  is  nonfiction.

Instead,  what  the  Church  is  doing  these  days,  in  the  Catechism,  is  saying  what  Catholics  must  believe  about  the  creation  of  man,  and  then  --  diplomatically?  --  saying  little  else  on  the  subject.

Catholics  must  believe  that  we  are  all  descended  from  a  set  of  male  and  female  first  parents  --  what  theologians  call  "monogenesis"  --   and  that  Original  Sin  is  both  proper  to  them  and  proper  to  each  of  us,  except  that  the  extent  to  which  it  is  "proper"  to  the  first  parents  is  founded  in  a  particular  incident  of  sin   in  the  history  of  time  which  in  fact  was  engaged-in  by  our  first  parents,     in  response  to  which  death,  and  entitlement  to  Hell  only  in  the  absence  of  saving  grace,  entered  our  species,  and  in  response  to  which  Nature  itself  became  our  corrosive  adversary.

In  digesting  our  Church's  current  theology  of  human  creation  and  Original  Sin,    I  find  myself  trapped  by  logic  --  something  which  we  should  regard  as  "God's  property"  --  to  "add  details"  to  the  teaching.

The  problem  with  "monogenesis"  --  descendancy  from  2  first  parents,  1  male,  1  female  --  is  something  no  encyclical  would  ever  clearly  discuss:  That,  logically,  to  achieve  what  the  doctrine  requires,   our  first  2  parent's  children  had  to  have  either

(1)  engaged  in  incestuous  sexual  intercourse  with  their  siblings,  which  would  have  violated  synderesis  --  the  human  moral  sense  giving  rise  to  Natural  Law,  or  "conscience";    or

(2)  to  avoid  incest,  that  would  have  had  to  engage  in  a  form  of  bestial   sexual  intercourse  with  unensouled  members  of  their  hominid  troupe  (since,   if  God  had  ensouled  them  beforehand  to  avoid   an  incident  of  bestial  intercourse  --  sex  between  a  human  and  an  unensouled  ape  --  then  the  doctrine  of  monogensis  as  stated  would  be  innately  mistaken:  We'd  have  an  instance  of  an  ensouled  human  outside  of  the  issue  of  the  first  2  ensouled  humans,  and  --  worse  --  an  instance  of  an  ensouled  human   outside  of  the  issue  of  the  first  2  ensouled  humans,  sex  with  whom   began  a  line  of  humans  numbering  in  the  millions,  or  billions.

To  try  to  get  around  this  problem,    zealous  theologians  run  around  and  crash  into  each  other  like  a  bunch  of  panicky  Keystone  Cops.

The  arguments  of  those  foolish  theologians  are  usually  framed  in  terms  of  poor  Cain's  alleged  sexual  activity,  since  Scripture  expressly  affirms  (under  the  Fundamentalist  literalist  interpretation)   that  "Cain  had  relations  with  his  wife"  (Genesis  4:17).

What  wife?

The  "Keystone  Cop"  theologians  sometimes  suggest  that  the  first  few  generations  after  Adam  and  Eve  were  "closer  to  God"  so  that  there  was  as  yet  "no  need  for"   a  Natural  Law - based  incest  taboo.    "Sisters  and  brothers  were  free  to  seduce  and  have  sex  with  each  other,"  in  other  words,  under  their  argument  --    "party  time,"  as  we  might  express  it  colloquially.

Assuming  the  implicit  correctness   of  the  second  cousin  incest  taboo  rule,    limiting  the  impact  of  the  incest  taboo   to   children,   grandchildren   (first  cousins)   and  great  grandchildren  (second  cousins)  would  have  suspended  the  rule  for  4  generations  --  (1)  Adam  and  Eve's  generation,   (2)  Cain  and  Abel  and  Seth's  generation,   (3)  Enoch's  generation,  and  (4)  Irad's  generation.

The  problem  with  taking  this  route  is  that  it  violates  the  common  understanding  of  Natural  Law  --  that  mankind  has  always  had  all  aspects  of  Natural  Law,  including  the  incest  taboo,  to  deal  with,  so  that  this  business  of  "not  needing  it"  is  evil  --  yes,  evil  --  nonsense!   A  quick  and  casual  reading  of  the  Genesis  account  lends  immediate  support  to  that  contention.

See  how  Cain  --  the  one  alleged  to  have  been  "closest  to  god"  after  Adam  and  Eve  --  treated  his  siblings:  He  murdered  his  own  brother  for  an  absolutely  evil  reason!

If  anyone  needed  protection  from  a  brother,  it  would  have  been  evil  Cain's  sisters,  right?  Cain  was  a  completely  disgusting  murderer!

The  theologian's  use  of  the  argument  that  the-Biblical-patriarchs-were-so-close-to-God-that-they-did-not-need-the-incest-taboo  in  this  case  to  justify  monogenism  seems  silly,  agreed?

In  fact,   the  unensouled   hominid  cousins  of  Cain  in  the  same  hominid  troupe  would  have  needed  to  run  from  a  guy  like  Cain,  too,  right?!  Cain  was  "deeee-scusting"  (as  a  wonderful  little  Vietnamese  girl   I  used  to  know  liked  to  say).

The  "bottom  line,"  here,  is  that  the  literalists'  Cain  arguments  are  ridiculous.

How  do  I  ascribe  to  monogenesis  without   abandoning  it  because  it  leads  to  "holy  incest"  or  "holy  bestiality"?  

I  look  to  the  purpose  of  the  monogenesis  doctrine:    The  purpose  of  monogenesis  is  to  assure  all  that  we  are  all  "of  the  same  sin-loving  flesh."  Without  grace,  all  humans  are  "sin  machines."  We  are  each  of  us  made  of  6  trillion  cells,  every  single  one  of  which  is  screaming,  "When  do  we  eat???!!!"  Under  such  a  shower  of  naturally-generated  "propaganda,"   our  free  wills  "have  no  chance"  --  our  free  wills  are  in  fact  un-free  --  without  God's  inspiring  grace,  lovingly  purchased  from  God's  own  nasty  justice  by  Christ's  suffering  and  death.

Thus,  the  prophet  Jeremiah  assures  us  that  the  heart  of  man  is  naturally  "desperately  wicked"   (as  the  KJV  so  charmingly  rewords  the  Douay-Rheims  version,  at  Jeremiah  17:9).  In  my  opinion,  that  naturally-occurring  pre-grace   "desperately  wicked"  state  is  "Original  Sin."

So,  what  do  I  say  about  monogenesis?   I  say  that  we  are  all  of  the  same  sin-seeking  flesh  because  we  are  all  of  us  descended  from  the  same  2  unensouled  progenitors  of  the  troupes  from  which  we  are  all  descended.  Such  a  doctrine  leaves  loving  God  free  to  ensoul  any  and  all  of  the  hominids  of  the  opposite  sex  from  the  same  troupe  which  the  children,  grandchildren,  and  great  grandchildren  of  the  first  two  ensouled  hominid  ancestors   were  "checking-out,"    without  violating  His  own  doctrine  or  consigning  His  ensouled  children  to  bestial  or  incestuous  relationships.

One  non-Catholic  Christian  friend  said,  "Well,  Pete,  you're  still  implicitly  requiring  the  unensouled  progenitors  to   engage  in  incest!"

No,  I  am  not.  There  is  no  explicit  incest  requirement  in   the  Monogenesis  Doctrine.    If  you  don't  believe  it,  ask  the  Church!     In  other  words,   the  important  thing  is  that  we  are  all   "G  to  the  n  grandchildren  of"   --  "great  great  great  great  great  ...  grandchildren  of"   --  a  progenitor  population  made  of  flesh  which,  as  such,  in  the  context  of  reality,  will  be  sin-sniffing  and  sin-seeking.   So,  I  couldn't  care  less  if  our  progenitors  mated  with  non-siblings  to  generate  our  line.

By  interpreting   Scripture  the  way  they  do,  our  fundamentalistically-inclined  brothers  and  sisters  have  turned  "Monogenesis"  into  "Incest-o-genesis."

So,  you  fundamentalists,  you  go  ahead  with  your  idiot  belief  in  the  "original  sacredness  of  incest."  Your  implicit  worship  of  incest   as  "originally  correct"   is  an  eloquent  comment  on  your  belief  system.

Under  the  preceding  analysis  of  monogenesis,    Original  Sin  was  not  an  incident,  but  a  state  of  being.  

Some  might  object  to  such  an  allegation  as  an  accusation  against  God  --   that  God  "couldn't  cut  the  ice,"  for  some  reason  --  He  couldn't  create  "perfect  people."

Not  a  problem.     Perfect  God's  sovereignty  is  consummate.     Just  as  creating  a  fellow  God  is  "against  God-ness,"  because  His  sovereignty  is  consummate,    creating  a  fellow  being  who  partakes  of   God's  perfection  --  who   is  a  "fellow  God"   in  part,  independent  of  God --  is   "against  God-ness."   (Thus,  to  achieve  moral  perfection,  we  have  to  have  grace,  an  ineffable  participation  in  God's  perfection  while  in  ineffable  union  with  God  during  the  time  we  continued  to  be  "engraced,"  right?)

Viewing  Original  Sin  as  a  state  of  being  rather  than  an  incident  in  history  solves  the  problem  of   the  "sin  entering  the  world"   analysis  arising  from  a  literal  rather  than   a  figurative  understanding  of  Paul.       No,  Adam  and  Eve  weren't  two  "belly-button-less"   humans  who  at  first  lived  in  a  world  where  they  pet  purring  lions  and  were  free  of  mosquito  bites  and  poison  ivy.   Ascribing  to  such  a  world  defies  all  of  the  science  of  the  cosmos,  where  science,  instead  of  being  independent  of  and  opposed  to  religion,  is  actually  a  department  of  theology  --  part  of  God's  property.

Almighty  God  Himself  is  the  Owner  of  science!

Science  is  not  the  enemy  of  religion!  That  is  the  utterest  of  utter  nonsense!

Instead,  when  God  ensouled the  first  humans,  they  were  made  of  exactly  the  same  junk  we  are  made  of  --  seething  with  all  kinds  of  desires  for  entertainment,  for  food,  for  safety,  for  sex.

But  He  engraced  them,  immediately,  with  the  grace  of  the  cross.

And  the  full  extent  of  Natural  Law  was  implanted  in  them  from  the  first  moment  of  ensoulment.

I  believe  that  as  the  gonads  of  the  children of  the  first  few  generations  of  ensouled  hominids  --  humans,  in  other  words  -- "turned  on,"  and  their  children  looked  around  for  mates,    they  were  naturally  repulsed,   by  the  prospect  of  "sexual  commerce"  with  their  siblings  by  their  God-given  synderesis-based  Natural  Law  prohibition  of  incest.   And,  they  were  naturally  repulsed  by  the  prospect  of  "sexual  commerce"    with  their  "dumb  animal"  unensouled   hominid  cousins  in  their  troupe.  They  would  have  seen  the  "lack  of  light"  in  their  cousins'  eyes,  arising  from  their  cousins'  lack  of  ensoulment,   and  have  been  led  the  the  synderesis  underlying  their  Natual  Law  sense  to  be  repelled  by  the  undignity  of  sex  with  a  "dumb  animal."

The  "heretics"   are  the  fundamentalist-style  fools  who  believe  that  the  Biblical  patriarchs  had  some  kind  of  Natural  Law  "license  to  seduce  bothers  and  sisters"  from  God.

I  believe  that  as  they  began  to  look  around,  God  ensouled  their  prospective  hominid  mates  in  the  troupe  --  all  of  whom  were  offspring  of  the  same  unensouled   ancestors  --   so  that,  when  they  looked  into  their  eyes,  they  saw  the  same  thing  I  did  when  I  looked  into  my  wife  Rise`'s  eyes  --  not  a  "dumb  animal,"  but  a  beautiful  ensouled  not-too-closely-related  fellow  human,  with  whom  it  was  a  privilege  to  establish  a  relationship.

So,  you  judge:   Who  is  the  "heretic"?

He  who  believes  in  "blessed  incest"   or  "blessed  bestiality,"  and  that  poor  Cain  engaged  in  intercourse  with  his  sister  or  with  a  non-closely-related  unensouled  hominid?

Or,  he  who  believes  that  Genesis  is  not  a  nonfictional  history   book,   and  who  believes,  instead,  that  it  is  teaching  nonfictional  theology  in  a  fictional  novelette,  and  that  when  God  created  our  species  it  was  in  a  way  which  did  not  make  it  necessary  for  someone  to  have  sex  with  his  sister?

It  is  so  strange  that  in  the  21st  century,    there  are  still  so  many  Christians  who  believe  that  our  progenitors  were  trapped  by  God  into  fulfilling  the  "be  fruitful  and  multiply"  mandate  by  having  sex  with  siblings.

Those  Christians,  and  the  lazy  clergy  who  do  not  help  those  Christians  disabuse  themselves  of  that  argument,    are  helping  to  destroy  the  Faith  in  the  world  today.