Shaun Doyle's and My (Rare) Interaction

Shaun Doyle

10th August (2021)

Religion and spirituality isn't fundamentally about what works for you. It never was, and it never will be. It's about what's true or false. Real or fake. Whether God exists or not isn't dependent on what works for you. Whether Muhammad was a true prophet or not doesn't depend on what works for you.

If your religion or spirituality is about what works for you, you've fundamentally missed the point of religion and spirituality. Even if you feel it works for you, it can still be false.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

There are levels where spirituality is about what works for you, like chosing the celibate or married life, though. Obviously this is way beyond the fundamental question of what is truth (but one argument for Catholicism is, it usually leaves celibate or marriage up to you, corresponding to the 100-fold/60-fold and 30-fold fruit of a certain parable).

Note, my celibate is not about what works for me, it is about what was foisted on me. In a non-definitive, and yet non-ending way.

Shaun Doyle

Hans-Georg Lundahl I'm clearly talking about what religion/spirituality somebody chooses, not optional spiritual practices within a religion/spirituality.

Besides, all Christian traditions leave the choice of marriage or celibacy up to the individual. But, contra Catholicism, most strands of Protestantism are both freer and in line with Scripture for more people, since we don't refuse marriage to clergy (1 Tim. 4:3). Indeed, Paul says 'presbyteroi' should be 'one woman men' (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:6). Whatever the precise implications of that phrase (some say elders should ALWAYS be married, but Paul almost certainly didn't mean to exclude himself from possibly being an elder), Paul clearly allowed married men to be clergy.

Blocked combox

Shaun Doyle a limité qui peut commenter cette publication.

Tried other account

Shaun Doyle limited who can comment on this post.

So, the following cannot be written back to Shaun Doyle in context. First some Apologetics, for Catholicism:

• Pope Michael has restored married clergy in the Latin rite (it has been abolished c. AD 1000 by Pope Gregory IX), and the first priest he ordained is a married one, father Francis Dominic;
• For those not accepting David Bawden's emergency conclave and the outcome at which he became Pope Michael, Eastern Rite Catholics never lost that, since their conditions for reuniting with the Pope were very often to not become involved in the Gregorian Reform;
• I am thankful Shaun Doyle sees - as some Protestants do not see - that St. Paul recommending celibacy and living it did not intend (or at the very least sees he did not necessarily intend) to make "elders" always married (the reference to his own life need not be correct, since he could have considered himself an episkopos rather than a presbyteros, for one);
• "one woman men" is intended as a maximum - under Eastern Rite or under Pope Michael (I presume), a man married once to a woman who is also married to her first man may become priest, but a man remarried after widowhood or married to a widow can't;
• the reference to Scripture in Church discipline is moot - does Shaun Doyle think every woman entering a Church needs to have her head covered (1 Corinthians 11:10) or every woman, man or child who is in the Church (rather than still outside the community of believers) needs to abstain from black pudding (Acts 15:20)? In a similar way as headscarves and abstinence from black pudding are over the Church universal now optional but still obliging in local Churches where the tradition was kept up (view of St. Thomas Aquinas) - the Church was free to change other disciplinary rules mentioned in the Bible, like freedom for married men to be priests and by now has done so twice in the Latin Church, restricting in the time of Gregory IX and rstoring the freedom in the time of Pope Michael and leaving Eastern Rite Catholics outside the changes, and now more in line with the Latin rite of Pope Michael than with that of "Pope Francis"

Since I hadn't counted on his blocking further communication, at least on this topic, I'll say what I had intended to say if he had challenged me on the reference to my own situation.

In Catholic Church law (at least 1983, perhaps 1917 too), a marriage is licit only if the couple has a place to live. A house will do. An apartment in a larger house will do. A gypsy living van will do. A tent will not do. It will not provide the privacy a couple needs to pay the marital debt. This doesn't necessarily mean a couple isn't validly married if they manage to get around this, I think they are and need to search out places of privacy (even if it were in the wild), but it makes it harder to get married if you live in the street.

There are two categories of apolegetics communities that have, so far, boycotted my work. CMI, AiG, and a few more, are seemingly saying they can't use my Young Earth Creationist apologetics as long as I am Catholic (if they think "Pope Francis" has a stance which would put my conscience in internal conflict, let them observe whom I called Pope and capable of changing Church discipline and whom I didn't call so, and yes, Pope Michael is Young Earth Creationist and Geocentric, Palmarian claimants from Clemente Domínguez y Gómez (whom I no longer call "Pope Gregory XVII") to Joseph Odermatt (whom I do not call "Pope Peter III") are Young Earth Creationists with the specification of accepting Masoretic / Vulgate chronology and rejecting literal six days in favour of a one moment creation, basically believing with obligation, what St. Augustine (who didn't use the Vulgate timeline) believed as the better interpretation, but leaving the other option free. I left them after hearing they consider the universe has (at least) 8 dimensions and then they are probably not Geocentric either. But back when I was Palmarian, my Catholicism was also not in any objective conflict with Young Earth Creationism.

The other one are Catholics like Trent Horn, Matt Fradd, Jimmy Aikin, Mark P. Shea, Peter Kreeft, they do great work on the Catholic and general Christian apologetics side (I saw a bad thing by Trent the other day, on evidences for Jesus he would not use, the one where he finally said the right thing was TF), but boycott me because I am Young Earth Creationis and Geocentric and accept Pope Michael.

Both teams seem fine with using C. S. Lewis, though, while he was mostly (up to relatively late, that is) not Young Earth Creationist and in The Problem of Pain directly contradicted that position, and while he was also not even on his death bed in at least visible communion with the Church of Rome (unless there is a covered up story not yet published).

I am actually most shocked by the de facto boycott (not a boycott in principle, though) by Pope Michael on the ground I need to learn to work. I do work, I write./HGL