God's Church Today: April 2016

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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.

God's Church Today

Friday, April 22, 2016

A REALLY, REALLY NEAT MODERN "GLORIA"

Monday, April 18, 2016

ON BEING A "HERETIC"