Pope Leo at the presentation of his first encyclical letter ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ yesterday
To his credit, Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor Pope
Francis, is trying to shift Catholicism away from the near fixation on “pelvic theology",” the obsession with sexual morality, that has come to define Catholicism,
especially in the United States. The concern is that decades of focusing on
“sins below the waist,” in Pope Francis words, has fueled the church’s culture war agenda
and driven many people away from the central teachings of the Gospels.
Not only that, the obsession with these absurd “natural law”
violations have driven millions of us from the RC church entirely. True, most
popes since Leo’s predecessor, Leo XIII, have published encyclicals about social teaching. But the subject has remained
overshadowed by the absolute moral law regarding sins of the flesh. Which is
absurd, because absolutist moral laws against sexual sins are inherently
contradictory.
This is why it was gratifying to read about Leo’s
encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent
Humanity.” According to the NYTimes: “this document is
inspired by the teachings of Leo’s eponymous predecessor, Leo XIII, whose 1891
encyclical “Rerum Novarum” responded to the plight of exploited workers in the Industrial
Revolution.”
Leo warned that artificial intelligence “threatens to
normalize an anti-human vision” and said that the concentration of immense
digital power in the hands of a few private actors must be countered."
As a sign of the subject’s importance, the pope made an appearance at the news conference presenting the encyclical. He
thereby emphasized the importance of placing social justice issues over the
‘mock’ morality of personal chastity. In Leo’s own words, replying to a
reporter’s question last month:
“We tend to think that when the church is talking about
morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe
there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality,
freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority
before that particular issue.”
In truth, sexual sins, like masturbation and premarital
sex, were favorites because they were easy to judge — you either had sex in some grievous way (i.e. fornication) or you
didn’t. Figuring out when a corporate honcho has exploited his workers to reap profits was harder. As a result, sexual sins became the gravest by virtue of being ‘low
hanging fruit’. The trouble was this elevated them into a category by
themselves - that assumed an outsize place in the hierarchy of truths that
ordered beliefs.
As I wrote in my first atheist book, The Atheist’s
Handbook To Modern Materialism’ (p. 185):
“Consider: If it is an equally grievous sin to kill twenty
people with an AK-47 as it is to manually induce a single orgasm in oneself,
then where is the proportion? The equalization of gravity in terms of
postulated penalties (“eternal damnation”) leads to an inherent logical
inconsistency that permeates and weakens the entire moral foundation. It’s as
if the nature of an action (e.g. sexual) automatically elevates it into the
realm of severe moral unlawfulness, despite the fact no evidence exists that
anyone was harmed. Yet the credulous Catholic is asked to balance this on the
Vatican’s scales of eternal justice, with twenty lives lost to an AK-47.”
This hearkens back to a
conversation 15 years ago between my atheist friend Rick, and Krimhilde, my
Eckist sister -in law. Both basically agreed that sin is a Macguffin invented
by conventional religions to keep humans in an inferior state as opposed to
attaining mastery over their lives. Sin is also a ridiculous concept.
As Rick put it, "How can a finite tiny flesh being
'offend' a supposed infinite Being? It's totally ludicrous.”
As Krimhilde then added: “How could eating meat on a
Friday be an insult to the divine, or cause it grief and pain?” And
Rick, not to be one-upped, added: "How could a teen jacking off in his
bedroom to a Playboy centerfold do the same?"
Further, both agreed that the Church’s natural law invention was likely at the
root of most sexual sins. Much of the sin obsession, at least since Pope Paul VI, has focused on artificial birth control. I can even recall a Loyola Ethics professor (Fr. Alvin Holloway):
Referring to it in one lecture as "mutual masturbation". Also worthy of capital Catholic punishment, i.e. damnation to Hell. So one must ask what keeps this looney tune obsession so stoked? As recently as 3 years ago, Francis X. Rocca, the Wall Street Journal's Vatican correspondent, warned in his Dec. 30 column:
"Conservatives warn that lifting the categorical ban on artificial birth control would open a Pandora’s box by contradicting the reasoning behind other prohibitions."
Contradicting the "reasoning" behind the other prohibitions? There isn't any, only knee jerk moralistic reactions.Let's note that Rocca’s term "conservatives" refers
to that faction of the Church that had basically been under the hegemony of
Joseph Ratzinger, or Pope Benedict XVI. But since his death it might well be
the case, as Rocca surmised, that the RC Church re-examines the morality of
contraception (by which I will always mean the artificial form, not the 'rhythm' method). But in truth that was only a half-hearted gesture at best.
I did predict (see my Jan. 2, 2023 post) a tentative allowance of artificial contraception would be considered by Pope Francis for
married couples. This in contravention of the encyclical Humanae
Vitae - which was more a declaration of unthinking dogma based more on a
specious pseudo principle ("natural law") than a reasoned
moral argument. Rocca in his original WSJ piece goes on:
"The church has traditionally taught that it is wrong to prevent procreation except through abstinence from sexual intercourse. The explanations for this teaching have varied over time in accordance with developments in theology, philosophy and science, as recounted in John T. Noonan, Jr.’s book, “Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists.”
But in her chapter 'The Lessons of Zoology' in the book Contraception and Holiness (p110) Biologist Elizabeth A. Daugherty asked:
"Why do we call secondary the ends of the sexual act which have been accorded in fullness to us, and why do we call primary the end which we share with the lower animals?"
She's referring to the fact that the core of Pius
XI's original anti-contraception encyclical Casti
Connubii was that the "sin" of artificial contraception
inhered in making primary a sexual aspect that in reality is only
"secondary". According to that pontiff:
"Since therefore the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature
for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately
frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature."
Which is irredeemable codswallop. As Daugherty notes in her chapter (op. cit.) what
the pontiff and his ilk really sought to do was reduce humans to the state of
lower animals, at the behest of their "natural" reproductive
cycles. In this sense, unlike the lower animals, humans have the
intellectual capacity and sense of novelty to introduce a vast variety of
pleasure-play into their sex relations. They aren't yoked
to primitive instincts to simply mount and hump at specific times.
As Daugherty notes (pp. 96- 97):
"After ovulation, all mammalian females are under the influence of progesterone from the corpus luteum. This is a period of rapidly declining estrogenic activity which ends the sexual receptivity of the lower mammalian female, whether or not fertilization occurs.
But (in humans) marital relations continue during this progesterone -dominated period before the abrupt onset of menstruation. It is the period of lowest estrogenic activity and the progesterone-dominated period after ovulation which are known as the 'safe period' for marital relations."
This then, is what the Catholics' “rhythm method”
(of Ogino-Kaus) seeks to do: establish the "safe
period" for a particular woman and then ordain that this is the time to
safely have sexual relations if one wishes to not have any kids. The trouble
is, it requires meticulous temperature taking at various times during a cycle
to establish where that safe period begins and ends, and often this will be for
no more than 10 days or so in a given month. Presumably, the couple is quite
happy to do without sex the other two thirds of the time!
Thus, the moralizers of the Vatican are actually demanding that
married couples act UNNATURALLY, since as Daugherty observes (ibid.):
"Humans are free from physiologically determined sexual desires so we possess a more or less permanent sexuality from adolescence to old age."
What confirms that the Church's focus on "pelvic theology" is actually steeped in ignorance, comes from the repeated citations of Thomas Aquinas, i.e. from another WSJ columnist:
“the first argumentation against the unnaturalness of contraception rests on its contradiction of the natural purpose of the genital organs and the genital act.”
Aquinas views in this reference to the 'natural purpose of the
genital organs and the genital act' betrays an allegiance to Aristotelian modes
of thought. These tend to fix behaviors to mistaken 'norms' of the time and
fixed definitions of the 'normal' construed as 'natural' but which are not.
Indeed, as contributor Julian Pleasants observed in the same monograph Contraception and Holiness (p. 88)
the RC Church has always been hostage to:
"Aristotelian modes of thought which tend to fix behaviors within very limited and fixed definitions and categories."
Thus, the Church once believed it "natural" that some men be enslaved because they were “unable to manage their own affairs” (ibid.) So why be surprised when the same Church seeks to ordain all her members abide by a sexuality more fitting of lower primates? The abiding question for me is: Why should 21st century rational adults- Catholics or not - be yoked to Aristotelian modes of thought regarding the so-called "pelvic sins".
Viewed from a scientific Materialist’s perspective, Aquinas’ (and similar RC clerics’) statements reflect an exaggerated, over solicitous concern for the biology of one higher ape relative of the chimpanzee, on one ordinary planet. Worse, it signifies a brazen attempt to intrude in personal affairs that don’t concern Catholic moralists or theologians. Especially after the RC sexual abuse scandal (which Ratizinger helped to conceal) that essentially deep-sixed the Church’s “pelvic” sins moral offense category one time.
Natural law then was invented purely as a theological sophistry; a device to control and manipulate people's lives. Hence, Pope Leo was quite correct to ignore these pelvic transgressions in his encyclical. Incidentally, Leo also merits plaudits for renouncing the Church's support for slavery based on the natural law bunkum. Maybe now, the entire concept of a theological 'natural law' can be consigned to the dustbin of history.
See Also:
Excerpt:
Pope Leo XIV on Monday set out a sweeping vision for
corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped
by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity
from A.I.’s most disruptive effects.
Leo’s declaration came in the form of a papal
encyclical, an open letter to “all people of good will” that ran to roughly
42,300 words in its English version. It outlined his desire to protect
human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace
humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside
Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a major A.I. developer, in a
symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological
worlds.
While emphasizing that “technology should not be considered,
in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he wrote that “the pursuit of
greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”
Among other things, Leo called for:
- government
regulation of the private companies that are driving the development of
A.I.
- protection
and retraining for workers whose jobs are threatened
- education
to help students think critically about the technology
- action
to protect children from violent, hypersexualized or fake information
online that is often generated by A.I.
- safeguards
to ensure that humans, not artificial intelligence, remain responsible for
all decisions regarding the use of weapons.
And:
