Taking the "Girl" out of Girl Scouts

There are several ways in which we can understand ourselves to be made in the image & likeness of God. For example, God has a will and an intellect as do we; God is spirit and our souls are spirit. Another way relates to human gender and sexuality. Theology of the body explains how we can speak of the Trinity in terms of love and persons. From the eternal love between the Father and the Son proceeds a third person, called the Holy Spirit. In a similar way, the love between a husband and wife helps to create a third person, called a baby.

In Catholicism male and female matter and sexuality is not only physical, like it is for animals, and it’s not only spiritual, as if we were angels or “mini-gods”. It’s both.

In secularism, sexuality is spoken of in both physical terms and psychological terms, but seems to be treated as only physical or only psychological when it is convenient to the situation.

 

 

“It’s just sex” appeals to the idea that sex is for adult entertainment and it’s about physical pleasure. In this view the physical nature that brings the pleasure is what matters. Any psychological concerns that arise from extensive and varying forms of fornicating are merely the result of religious oppression, or other societal guilt. Unjust and unneeded remorse is forced onto individuals which keeps them from enjoying what comes naturally.

On the other hand, if a boy believes himself to be a girl or vice versa, the physical evidence of the body as male or female has no meaning. All that matters is the psychological concern.

The psychological only view has found its way into the Girl Scouts of America (GSA). A new GSA policy will now extend membership to boys who identify as girls. The group says on its website, "If the child is recognized by the family and school/community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, then Girl Scouts is an organization that can serve her in a setting that is both emotionally and physically safe."

This basically means that the girls in the organization will be forced to recognize and accept transgenderism as “normal”. Boys from kindergarten through high school can join the Girl Scouts if the boy considers himself to be girl and “others” agree.

Boys in skirts and maybe a little make-up will become a part of the program and one would suppose they must also be allowed to use the same camping tents and bathrooms. It would not matter what the other girls in the troop or their parents think because the boy will essentially call the shots. If the boy believes himself to be a girl and the family and school/community agrees (whoever they are), it’s decided for everyone else. Physical evidence of being a boy means nothing.

I'm no expert on gender confusion, but I can't imaging a situation where the “school/community” leads a boy to think he might be a girl. Rather, it is more likely that the boy does or says things that would relate more to being a girl and the parents think “Let’s go with that lead.” and then look for support in the community.  In other words, the child, whose cognitive reasoning is not developed, leads the way, and we should ask ourselves in what society in human history have children ever been allowed to lead the way.

We’re losing our common sense and it’s a challenge to point it out because… “It is not a pleasant task to call attention to the obvious. To make others appear to be shortsighted, let alone blind, may easily evoke resentment.”

- Fr. Stanley Jaki

 

Are they sold by real Girl Scouts?

 

Divine Availability

Recently, a good friend of mine, who is a candidate for the Diaconate, gave me a copy of an article that appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of the periodical Pro Ecclesia. This article is entitled "Divine Disponibilité: The Hypostatic Ethos of the Holy Spirit" by Khaled Anatolios. This article has changed my understanding of the Trinity, especially in regard to the Holy Spirit.

Khaled Anatolios

It is a fairly heavy article, not read only once and put away. It is one of those that comes in layers. The first reading yields much, hinting at more. The second reading more fully fleshes out the ideas, hinting again at meanings underlying the metaphors and making connections yet unguessed.

A really good post was made about this article soon after it came out by Peter Leithart in the First Things blog here. While it is an excellent summary, I'd like to present the first fly-by of concepts here, 10 years later.

First of all, Anatolios laments that the Holy Spirit's place in the Trinity is vague and confusing and whose acts are often confused and conflated with those of the Son. Yet Scripture clearly demonstrates the discreteness of the divine Persons. He points out that the clearest distinction is made when the Holy Spirit is seen alternately as "gift" or "mutual love." The term "gift" is primarily stressed by the Eastern churches and "mutual love" by the Western tradition. His goal is to create a synthesis of the two different conceptions of the Holy Spirit that more fully shows the uniqueness of the third Person of the Trinity and the surprising unity of both metaphors.

He then introduces the concept of "availability" (French: disponibilité) as applied to human, or interpersonal interactions by the French philosopher, Gabriel Marcel.
For Marcel, there are five aspects of availability for human relationships.

1. Availability to others outwardly, contrasted to un-availability where one is closed-off to others; seeing the other person as someone who could be me
2. Availability to another's appeals; the ability to be appealed to, both to the needs/situation of the other and an active (non-passive) and enthusiastic receiving of the other (being open to others); appealing also in the sense of attracting/delighting in
3. Availability as the openness to commit to another; to allow the other to lay a claim to our response; the Good Samaritan exhibits this par excellence, where the robbed man's tragic circumstances alone appeal for help to the Good Samaritan
4. Availability that sees every situation as an opportunity and every circumstance as gift; placing oneself in the place of the other, not replacing, but standing together in that situation
5. Availability as love; enclosing others within our circle and sharing all with another; the father in the Prodigal Son demonstrates this

These five aspects of availability must now be examined as they apply to the Holy Spirit.

1. The Spirit makes the Word of the Father available to the world through the prophets; it is also the Spirit that is the medium that makes the Father available to the Son and the Son to the Father.  "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me." (Jn 14:10)   He makes communion possible.
2. The Spirit is God's willingness to outwardly extend His Word, thus bringing about creatures that can appeal to Him.  Also, man's fallen state is construed as an appeal to God, thus calling upon God's Word into the availability of the Incarnation.  The Spirit is also the way in which we take joy in the Lord, in which we praise God and in whom the Father and Son take joy in each other.
3. The Spirit is a pledge or "down payment" from God of his gifts.  It is this that allows us to claim the undeserved sonship promised to us, laying claim as heirs to the kingdom.  It is a similar pledge between Father and Son that pledges one to the other through the Spirit.
4. The Spirit is that which transforms every human situation into divine gift.  It is in this way that "discernment" is understood.  The Spirit opens our circumstances to the divine life. Also, it is through the Spirit that the Scriptures were written and only through that same Spirit can they be interpreted.  It is only when divine and human availability meet that Scripture is composed and, again, understood. 
5. The Spirit is love in that He effects the mutual availability between the Father and the Son.  He also brings about a mutual availability of the Father and the Son to others.  The Father and Son face inward individually in love through the Spirit, which then enables the Father/Son to face outwardly to embrace in love all others.  So the Spirit enables both types of love, where both sides love and where only one loves another who does not love in return.

I have found that the concept of availability is extremely useful in understanding human love, but am blown away to consider how the Spirit effects and brings about love both within the Godhead (the Spirit as "love") AND from God to His creatures (the Spirit as "gift").  

The Holy Spirit is both the message and the message's medium.  He is both "love" and "loving."  It is He who makes the Father available here on earth initially through the prophets, then through the Incarnation and ultimately indwelling within us beginning at Pentecost.  He brings God's love to earth to envelop us in its embrace, pulling us in, and then outwardly enables us to bring that same love to those who do not yet know that embrace.

Wow.  

Heterosexuals Caused Same-Sex Marriage

Does this post title shock you? It is a hard teaching. Who could accept it? I too was taken back when I first heard it from someone else, but it didn’t take long to see the logic. Heterosexuals have been watering down the true meaning of marriage for decades. A slippery slope need not be as fast as the metaphor implies. A lava flow can be slower than 1km/hour, but will destroy everything in its path.

The foundation for the marriage slope was laid by ending the idea of “permanent”. No fault divorce laws coincided with a message that marriage is a mere convenience, an institution that exists only for the personal happiness and pleasure of two individuals. For no fault divorce, it's basically enough to declare that a couple is no longer happy (irreconcilable differences). There is no need to “work things out”.  We can hardly blame the gay community for this. In the eyes of God however, divorce doesn’t really exist. A couple may need to be legally parted in the case of abuse or other intolerable circumstance (CCC 2383), but once God joins a valid one-flesh-union, it exists. There is no way to make it stop existing. Consider your life. Once you are conceived, you exist. Nothing that happens down the road will change this.

If no fault divorce is the foundation, artificial contraception/sterilization raised-up the angle for the sliding slope of marriage. Homosexuals have no use for contraception or sterilization, so don’t blame them. If marriage is for the personal happiness and pleasure of two individuals, then children are obviously an unnecessary by-product. Contraception blows apart the triune nature of marriage, sex & procreation, furthering the idea that marriage is about mutual gratification and sex is for anyone’s pleasure, married or not. Once the rationale is fragmented, the gay community can easily pick-up the scattered pieces of marriage and reform them into something “else”, something that does not reflect the image & likeness of God.

My wife and I help with the marriage ministry at our parish. One thing we do for the engaged couples is give a talk on sex & intimacy in marriage, which relates to the theology of the body, which relates to the image & likeness of God, which relates to the way God loves. From the eternal love between the Father and the Son proceeds a third person called the Holy Spirit. In a similar way, the love between a husband and wife helps to create a third person called a baby. Consider the Catholic wedding vows as well:

Ø  Have you come here freely?

God loves freely, so we should love freely. Love is an act of the will that cannot be forced.

“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down (my life) of my own accord..." (John 10:18)

Ø  Will you honor each other as man & wife for the rest of your lives?

God holds nothing back in loving us totally and permanently.

“…he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)

“…And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Mat 28:20)

Ø  Will you accept children lovingly from God?

God’s love is always fruitful and brings life. Marriage does the same.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

"Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” (Gen 9:1)

Procreation is an indispensable part of marriage and the one flesh union should always be something totally self-giving that holds nothing back; it should be God-like. Catholics call this being “open to life”. Whenever procreation is mentioned as part of marriage however, infertile couples are called on the carpet. If infertile couples can marry, why can’t gay couples? We must remember that an infertile male/female union is still of the same procreative “type” just like any male/female union.

Consider a baseball analogy. A baseball team is orientated to winning baseball games. Even if they NEVER win a game, no matter how much they try, they are still a baseball team and are always allowed on the baseball diamond. A football team also NEVER wins a baseball game, but a football team is not relevant to winning baseball games, neither is a soccer team, or any other kind of team other than a baseball team.

It is really heterosexuals that built the slow sliding slope that leads directly to gay “marriage”. True marriage reflects the image & likeness of God. It is meant to be unitive, procreative, mutually exclusive and permanent and none of these aspects can be intentionally separated. This is not true because the Catholic Church teaches it. The Catholic Church teaches it because it is true!

God as Father

Monday is the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas. This reminds me to share something from his compendium of Summa Theologica that helps to explain God as Father.

God is pure spirit and the Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear that He has no gender in paragraph 239, “We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God.” One might conclude that there is no particular reason to call God Father other than our own sexist bias. Why not say “Mother”, “Divine Parent”, “Great Spirit” or “The Big Man Upstairs”?



INTERESTING SIDE NOTE:

Whenever I hear some refer to God as “The Big Man Upstairs” there seems to be a strong correlation between that title and a deficient (or non-existent) relationship with God.

I’ve heard it said that the reason we should call God Father is simply because Jesus called Him Father and we should follow suit. I suppose this is a reason, but it leaves me uninspired. Inspiration (for me) comes from reading St. Thomas Aquinas, and of course, other theologians who help explain Aquinas.

Before getting to Aquinas we can first step into some High Christology from John’s Gospel where we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). We also read, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14). From here we can make some distinction between a word and an idea or a thought. Physical words are meant to express some other “thing”, idea or thought. The Word of God as described in John’s gospel is not a physical vibration from vocal cords formed by the mouth, tongue and lips; a thing of the air. We might say the Word of God is more like the “thought” of God.

We also should make a distinction between the thought and the thinker. If you were to think of yourself, you would have some imperfect image of yourself in your mind. If God were to contemplate Himself, there would be no deficiency in it; this would be a perfect thought or perfect image, or God himself. Going back to the beginning of John’s gospel, it can be helpful to use “thought” in place of “word”, so we would have, “In the beginning was the Thought, and the Thought was with God, and the Thought was God.”, “And the Thought became flesh (God incarnate), and dwelt among us,…”

What do these seemingly useless mental gymnastics have to do with St. Thomas? Chapter thirty-nine of his compendium of theology is entitled Relation of the Word to the Father. Aquinas relates a thought in the mind as a kind of offspring of the intellect when he says, “What is conceived in the intellect is a likeness of the thing understood and represents its species; and so it seems to be a sort of offspring of the intellect”. The intellect itself can resemble a mother, whose function is such that conception takes place in her. The thing thought about resembles a father since it acts on the intellect to make an offspring, which is the idea or thought.

Example:

Ø  An object, let’s say a bird, acts on the human intellect through sensory input from the sight, sound, smell, (taste?), and touch of a bird.

Ø  The bird flies away, but the idea of the bird conceived in the intellect remains as an imperfect image of the bird.

Ø  The image of the bird is a product (offspring if you will) of both the intellect and the bird itself.

Therefore, if the thing being thought of is God, it is God acting on the intellect resembling a father, so to speak. Now if God’s intellect were to contemplate and understand Himself, the thought conceived would be a perfect image of God better known to us as the second person of the trinity (the Word was God). Therefore, the thought, or the Word, or Jesus relates to God as a Son relates to a Father.

Although God has no gender, Father is the most reasonable term for us to use considering the logic above along with the kind of close family relationship God wants with us. The nature of God, the wisdom of the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas all come together to give us a whole new perspective on that modern-day phrase…“Who’s Your Daddy?”