John Michael Talbot has had a link to an interview as status

Lon Pearson

As an Evangelical "ordained" in the "Anglican entity" I felt excited and blessed with the election of Pope Francis and now feel disappointed reading this interview. Words like "Convert you? Proselytism is solemn nonsense. You have to meet people and listen to them." sounds nice but the charge of proselytism has been used to condemn Christians for trying to convert people to Christ. In the New Testament and throughout much of the history of the Church, proclamation (even to strangers) was done with urgency and without apology. I know His Holiness is a very intelligent and compassionate man with far more experience in the world than I have...yet the primacy of a "listening process" may eventually hurt the witness of the Roman Catholic Church as it has damaged the faith of the Episcopal church.

MR

John Michael, on the whole it was a very good interview. But, for all his pastorally good intentions, this Pope sometimes is a theological train wreck. Please explain to me, for instance, what he meant by this, and how it squares with Catholic moral theology: "And I repeat it here. Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place."

CR

I think hes the best pope since pope john paul the second

John Michael Talbot

lon (pearson) - there is a vast difference between evangelizing and proselytizing. catholics have always disapproved of the latter, and promoted the former.

MR - good catholic moral theology recognizes the difference between subjective and objective truth, and that the church's obligation is to preach the universal objective truth, but a person is only accountable for what they know. there is also a difference between natural law and formal revelation. natural law can attain to many revealed truths, as st. paul describes in his letter to the romans. on that level there can be accord between believers and non believers on many things. ( take for example, stopping at a red light, or other areas of basic law and courtesy) that is what he is addressing. but notice he is also quite clear, and personally challenging regarding the interviewer's lack of faith in revelation from god in christ, but always in a respectful and non judgmental way that shares his own views, and does not foist them on others. that itself demonstrates the balance we must all walk in this increasingly secularized world. the entire context must be recognized, or lifting only one part of the interview can do violence to its real intent and content. thanks.

isn't it interesting how we sometimes only hear or see part of a person's statements based on our own concerns and fears? i encourage everyone to look at the entire interview, and then comment on specifics in that context. this is the "listening" we need for real evangelization of non believers.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

accords between believers and non-believers from natural law are one thing, but today we must fear accord between them (if you call modernists believers) against natural law! That interview was one of the drops, I am either without pope or it is someone like Michael I or Alejandro IX.

John Michael Talbot

hans- that is your right and your choice. for myself, i understand and support what he is saying fully. "i stand with peter."

CR

Being a mentally challenged person i cant say that i comprehend that interview its profound but im not so sure that other religions have the right to try to change other peoples faiths this comes from experience with a former friend steve is a diehard evangelistic protestant who believes that catholics are hellbound however im told that i should forgive ignorant people

John Michael Talbot

CR - you understand very well!!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good."

Even if they are wrong and might be corrected by discouragement?

"And I repeat it here. Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place."

Everyone has a duty, but not every man has a right to follow his own idea therein.

He is however right one should not have a society where everyone (or most) is supposed to crush his conscience.

Was it another one or the same (Italian original) where he said salvation still comes from the Jews?

[turning aside to CR]

CR why not give your evangelical friend a few reading tips?

Great Bishop of Geneva
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/

John Michael Talbot

hans- i am afraid that you have missed the point. please understand the catholic magisterial context of the pope's informal statements. check out the catechism of the catholic church for clarification. your fears are fully covered there. thanks. no need for further comment or debate.

[and to someone else]

geeze! i am amazed at a how off point we get in response to an interview. we miss the forest for the trees. we all want to be pontiffs somehow. let him be the pontiff. he's actually earned it! it is good to dialogue in love. it is quite another to criticize constantly. that seems one of the real problems of our culture today. we are polarized, and grid locked, not only in washington, but in our churches too. jesus must grieve!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"please understand the catholic magisterial context of the pope's informal statements"

I am not saying a Pope informally says he dislikes pistaccio ice cream I conclude he is not Pope because he is wrong on ice cream.

I have a problem figuring how someone who is wrong about theology when informal should be considered right about it when formal.

Besides, if a bad man is hampered by Catholic Theology while doing the formal stuff, he can use charisma plus loyalty to the office and do his bad stuff on informal ways.

"we all want to be pontiffs somehow."

Well, no. I am informal. Precisely as Chesterton was. If you take that as wanting to be pontiff somehow, you are in fact acting as if the pontiff was as much pontiff when being informal.

That is very bad Canon Law.

It is not I who envy the Pope - if such he be - his position. It might even seem as if he envied me a position of informal influence which I have earned by writing (and by getting read by some 300.000 or somewhat less readers [should obviously be page hits, not readers as reading people] by last time I checked).

How many pontiffs are trying to be Chestertons as well?

Miriam Carey, RIP!

I was guarding the Royal Palace in Stockholm during military service. I was told: first shout, then shoot into air, then shoot into leg. Kill only as last resort.

If she was driving a car, shooting a tire to stop it might have been a thing. If there had been explosives, killing her would not have stopped explosion, unless she was to trigger it. If she had been delaying it as one delays explosion of hand grenades, killing her would have triggered explosion.

I am so reminded of the scene in Syldavia where Tintin faces the pistol of a King who lost his Sceptre "Don't shoot, Your Majesty, I am no Anarchist!"

But maybe the guards were more into the latest film than into Hergé.

Diverging p o v on Latino Immigrants in US (with European parallels)

friend (status)

I do not understand why so many in Latin America cross the border to come to the USA. I think many Latin Americans regret having came to this country.

CP (friend of friend, Orthodox)

They see it as a land of freedom and opportunity.

friend

This is not the 10s. :D

GP (quoting him, not sharing his p o v)

Because they are shameless, arrogant, hateful invaders, who want to reconquer America. Of course, they will turn the US into just another Latin American shithole.

CP

[@friend] I am not quite sure what you mean by that and your friend GP certainly sounds hateful.

friend

America 'used' to be the land of freedom and opportunity. Don't mind him- he has Asperger Syndrome.

CP

To us living in American true we see the depths our country has shrunk to. But when you think of those people living in Latin American countries America is like a piece of heaven.

JS

Because the wage they earn here pays for a lot more at home than it pays for here.

It's about ruthless wage suppression and upper middle class scorn for the white working class:

National Data | January Jobs: Half of New Jobs Go To Immigrants—96% (!) To Hispanics
By Edwin S. Rubenstein on February 4, 2012 at 12:23am
http://www.vdare.com/articles/national-data-january-jobs-half-of-new-jobs-go-to-immigrants-96-to-hispanics

"For years, farmers throughout the U.S. had access to an abundant, cheap, mostly unauthorized labor force streaming in from Mexico. Workers say they often had to beg growers for even a few hours of work and their wages were low."

Crops Rotting in the Fields, Part MLXXVII
By Steve Sailer on September 27, 2013 at 2:47pm
http://www.vdare.com/posts/crops-rotting-in-the-fields-part-mlxxvii

How is anyone supposed to live on $8 an hour in California? Simple, they only board there, the money is spent in Mexico:

"But farmworkers, whose incomes are some of the lowest in the nation, have benefited, their wages jumping in California to $2 to $3 over the $8 hourly minimum wage and even more for those working piece rate. "

A shortage of $8 an hour labor is an economic catastrophe. What a nightmare for those growers, paying 2 or 3 dollars more an hour! And they even had to hire American high school students! It must be very mortifying for them to have to deal with working class whites of their own nationality.

GP

[@CP:]

Why don't you look at what your wonderful latinos are doing to the US--wage suppression, drug dealing, drug trafficking, litter, drunk driving, rape of little girls, school drop out rates, illiteracy, plus the dispossession of the historic American nation.

HGL, myself:

Drug dealing and drug trafficking? A pretty bad ting when it comes to coke, I am not sure I agree when it's only marijuana (or rather, I do not).

Illiteracy and school drop out rates? In Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religions (unlike Jewish, Muslim and Protestant ones) that is not a sin. (And I am socially dropping out of Academia, after five years' worth of studies in philology mainly classical - if you will call me and Hilaire Belloc drop-outs).

Dispossession of the Historic American Nation ... moot point. During 19th C. US dispossessed a Historic Hispanic Nation.

Litter and drunk driving? Granted. You might add quarrelling. Rape of little girls? I do not think that is at all typical for them.

Wage suppression - now we are talking. Immigrants (meaning the usually so thought of), women at work and machines at work are wage suppressing.

Strawberries ... in Denmark French pick them. In France Spaniards and Portuguese pick them. In Southern Spain Moroccan residents pick them. That is the price for them being cheap to the local consumer.

They cannot be correctly picked by machines.

And in France we have a problem when farmers are so sympathetic to nationalist points of view as soon as the workers without papers have been there just long enough to ask for rights in the French social system. And so sympathetic to the right to choose one's country up to that point.

Reminds me of Anne Frank: so well hid from the Germans until a neighbour boy fell in love with her.

CP

They may be doing everything you say but that does not give you the right to call them "shameless,arrogant, hateful invaders." And not all Latin Americans are like that.

GP

They are shameless, arrogant, hateful invaders. Have you seen how they march demanding that the US completely open its borders? Have you seen Mexican (as well as other) Latin American politicians demand the US cease all border controls? Have you heard of organizations like MECHA? Have you heard the Marxist junk taught in "hispanic, latino, and chicano" studies? Do you know they call us "gringos" IN OUR OWN COUNTRY? How they don't care that they don't speak English.

And no, Hans, please take your cultural Marxism elsewhere. There was no historic hispanic nation within the borders of the present-day USA. Spain planted a flag in those regions, and largely left. That flag was then replaced by a Mexican flag. The only people there where Indians who were not at all hispanic. So, no, take your hispanic racism and anti-americanism elsewhere. Mexicans and Central Americans do not belong in the US, are not wanted, and should bugger off.

Also, yes, Mexicans especially have a huge predilection for raping little girl (who they view as slutty--exactly like Muslims), littering, and driving drunk. And no, marijuana is not nice, cute, or cool. And I don't want them trafficking it, dealing it, or using it.

CP

Gabriel for calling Hans racist you certainly reek of it. They call us "gringo" because we are. Mexicans and Central Americans are not wanted. Well neither are racist haters but they are still here. And drug trafficking, rape of little girls and drunk driving is by no means limited to Latinos. White people do it just as often and so do blacks.

MJO

Not all Latin Americans are as you describe, Gabriel... you can't judge ALL of them for the bad ones that you describe and decide to focus on.. Some are here, legally, and are good, hard-working, upstanding citizens. There are plenty of white and black Americans who do many of the things you describe as well, should we judge the entire country's population based on the rapists, sex offenders, murders, thieves, etc? Also, not all Latin Americans are Mexican... jus' sayin'.

HGL

I am not a cultural Marxist. It is true that Spain and later México planted their flags in country that was more Indian than originally Hispanic. But I think Apaches, though hating Spanish-Mexicans, learnt Spanish sooner than English. I also think they had a worse deal under the US Americans. It is furthermore true that in Tejas a US Citizen was invited to help with plantation by the government - on the understanding he bring French speaking Catholics from New Orleans. Instead he brought Ulster Scots Calvinists. That is the background to what Santa Ana was fighting for. Not meaning he necessarily used the best means ...

[@friend]

- I will not excuse him on the ground of his having Asperger Syndrome.

For one thing I do not believe there is such a diagnosis. If I were believing it and were a doctor, I would be all too tempted to label him with that, just to get even with him, and as rubberish as the three main symptoms are, it would be easy for me to do so with my bias, which as a doctor I would of course not acknowledge, and maybe for my consciousness sake do some lame efforts to balance with strained efforts at objectivity.

[Rubberish is not a misspelling for rubbish, but a mistaken wordchoice for rubber like elastic. Caoutchouc.]

For another thing, such words are not excusable. A real fool would not be able to say them, and thus his words cannot be excused as folly, of any kind.

If he calls me an Antiamerican racist, it is not totally false. I am for Irish, Scotish and Welsh against English. I am for the French in the Seven Years War (not sure that squares totally with my Austrian loyalties.) I feel the two parts of the English nation have been governed badly - as far as ultimate loyalties go - since before the Reformation, like since the Hundred Years war when they burned St Joan of Arc (oh, in a purely nationalistic way of looking at it, the people who did so were probably French - but they identified themselves as English subjects) and since 1401 when Owen Glendower was hung and quartered and when Lollards were brought under the same kind of Inquisition that later burnt St Joan of Arc - unique for Latin Church insofar as it was just under King and Bishops, not at all under Papacy except indirectly as long as these were subject to Popes.

[Two parts, i e I am now going on to the other part:]

Later US helped Juárez overthrow Maximilian of Austria (and that Antiamerican and Antijuarez stance does square with my Austrian loyalties, whatever be the case with Seven Years War), and later still install the infamous Porfirio Díaz, the anticlerical and the exterminator of Yaquis.

Pancho Villa and up to the régime that killed the Cristeros, that was US that had its finger there. Overthrowing Austria and setting up the heavily Marxist and Masonic Czechoslovakia was Woodrow Wilson's doing.

When the Russian Revolution started, two powers launched the Communists. They were perhaps already at War with each other, at least they were a few months later. Willy of Potzdam lauched Lenin. Woodrow Wilson launched Trotski.

[@GP again:] You called me a Marxist? Are you aware how the Marxists in France hate and mistrust me, when they are honest and when they do not hide behind pitying me as a mental case? Are you aware that while PRÉSENT boycotts my articles, probably because I am for Gipsies and Caroline Parmentier not at all for them, the kind of people they leave me to live off despise me equally for not hating Germans and for not hating each and every Fascism, especially Franco, along with Nazism? Are you aware of how many Catholics consider me a Protestant because I refuse their cultural Marxism of Evolutionism and Heliocentrism and Freudianism?

This is not at all saying I would get along better with Hispanics than with English - I do not and English is indeed part of my culture - as is Swedish.

Oh, one thing more, being against people for their illiteracy is cultural Marxism. You, GP, are the Cultural Marxist. Even if it existed before Marxism, Victorianism and Judaism and Prussianism are not very much better things than Marxism. If anything Marxists, though worse in immediate violence agaist the Church, are so far better as they have a care for the poor. So, if not Marxist, at least you are pre-Marxist.

A Catholic does not despise a man or a woman for not going twelve years to school while growing up, and a Catholic does not despise a man or a woman or child for begging.

Because, you know, one standard complaint of Prots of the worst sort as well as Jews and Marxist (I noticed Mark Steyn whom you like is Jewish), against the Church of Christ is not sending every child to school to learn the three R's. And another one is allowing married people to "litter" the world with paupers. By not condoning birth control, of course.

It is not anti-Turkish racism to be against the High Porch. It is not anti-American racism to be against much that US has historically stood for. When Chesterton interviewed Mussoloni, this man had not yet published any Carta della Razza, which was probably the infamous Galliani's idea when he came back from a butchering spree in Ethiopia in 37. Mussolini was asked what he thought of racism and eugenicism, back in 35. Note this was one year before even Hitler became actively racist. And Mussolini answered he despised racism and eugenicism as a Protestant fad.

It was. Two states in US, two states in Canada, my own poor old Sweden, all of them were braving Casti Connubii. It was of course also an Evolutionist fad and a Modernist fad. And probably still is. And every state which so far carried out that tyranny was a Parlamentarian democracy. Franco and Salazar never went so low (unless Salazar encouraged lobotomy before US did), and when Chesterton heard that answer and wrote it in his book about Rome, Germany had one year to wait before that madness and Italy three years. Though they were fascist states.

Of course fascism is inferior to the old Monarchies like, especially, Austria. But it is superior, in some of its forms and some of the stages of the other forms, than certain things that go on today.

Shaw, Hitler, no, no. Chesterton, Dollfuß, yes, yes

status of RA linked to

GB Shaw : George Bernard Shaw Defends Hitler, Mass Murder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQvsf2MUKRQ

[I recommend you to read the description before watching the clip.]

DC

"Hitler got it all wrong, absolutely different people needed to be killed." CREEPY

KF

Shaw himself could have been considered expendable under this!

LLM

oh dear!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

guess why I prefer chesterton to shaw and dollfuss to hitler?

[By chesterton I meant of course Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the Catholic convert - not his cousin.]

Quoting Professor Hingest on the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society

B McL

“There are no sciences like Sociology. And if I found chemistry beginning to fit in with a secret police run by a middle-aged virago who doesn’t wear corsets and a scheme for taking away his farm and his shop and his children from every Englishman, I’d let chemistry go to the devil and take up gardening again. ... I happen to believe that you can’t study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to .... take away from them everything which makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors.”

-- Professor Hingest (fictional character from "That Hideous Strength" by C. S. Lewis.)

St H

I love that quote, and Bill Hingest. The context in which he says 'There are no sciences like sociology.' is a reply to the poser Mark Studdock who began saying 'With a science like sociology...' Fantastic put down and so true. Sociology is basically a whitewashed form of applied Marxism.

St Robert Bellarmin contre Galilée de Pise et contre Modernité

Statut de groupe, 17-IX-2013

St Robert Bellarmin

Hans-Georg Lundahl

très franciscain alors! Naquit le jour de St François, célébré le jour de ses stigmates

Micheline Albert Tawil Tramp, Une Séculiaire des Carmélites

Saint François de Sales disait de lui : « Il sait tout, excepté faire le mal. » Il fut aussi l'ami de saint Philippe Néri et de saint Charles Borromée. Henri IV conseillait aux cardinaux français partant au conclave de donner un saint pape à l'Église en la personne du cardinal Bellarmin.

Il y aurait beaucoup à dire sur sa science et sur ses ouvrages d'une haute science théologique.

Roberto Bellarmino a été beatifié le 13 mai 1923 et canonisé le 29 juin 1930 par le pape Pie XI(Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, 1922-1939) qui aussitôt après le proclama docteur de l'Église.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Je le considère le St Patron des Géocentriques de nos jours. Vous connaissez Robert Sungenis?

(Il est aussi assez invoqué - ses textes et j'espère aussi ses prières - par les Sédisvacantistes)

Micheline Albert Tawil Tramp, Une Séculiaire des Carmélites

Tu parles de l'american apologist?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sungenis est Américain, il est d'origine italienne - San-Gennisi - et l'apologiste sur The Bellarmine Report, effectivement. Aussi un ami (pas trop fréquents contacts, mais q m) de moi.

Galileo Was Wrong : Why is it Important to Show that Galileo Was Wrong? Here is Your Answer
http://galileowaswrong.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-is-it-important-to-show-that.html

Quand à moi, j'ai eu un débat en Suède avec un pro-avortionniste, contraceptionniste, adhérant au système "consens au sexe depuis 15, consens au mariage depuis 18"* etc qui narguait l'église pour le Géocentrisme.

Ou encore cette athée américaine qui disait que la Terre ne pouvait pas être 7200 ans vu le problème de la lumière des étoiles distantes (supposément selon les calculs de millions d'années lumières de distance - et les calculs reposent sur un présupposé héliocentrique).

Micheline Albert Tawil Tramp, Une Séculiaire des Carmélites

Seigneur, prends pitié! J'en ai plusieurs ici de ce specimen

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Ah ... et si la parallaxe (par laquelle ils mesurent "les distances proches de 4 années lumières" et par absense de laquelle ils mesurent "les distances lointains de millions d'années lumière") n'étaient pas des vraies parallaxes ou fausses observations de mouvement d'étoile, mais plutôt des vrais mouvements d'étoile? Alors, au lieu d'une distance "connue" entre la terre en hiver et la terre en été plus deux angles ("terre-hiver" et étoile depuis "terre-été", et ensuite "terre-été" et étoile depuis "terre-hiver") on n'a qu'un angle (étoile-hiver et étoile-été) et aucune distance connue, sauf que celle vers l'étoile doit être supérieure à la distance connue aux planètes qui réfléchissent la lumière du soleil. Donc, aucune preuve pour les distances interstellaires de millions d'années-lumière, aucune preuve pour un vieil univers.

*Note:

Majorité sexuelle à 15, majorité matrimoniale à 18 = trois ans de majorité pour péché mais pas pour vertu, pour fornication mais pas pour stabilité ou maternité. En Anglais on dit "age of consent" dans les deux cas. Évidemment un âge dans lequel selon le Créateur la majorité peut déjà faire d'enfants et selon le péché originel la majorité est déjà tentée sexuellement ne doit pas être un âge socialement fermé à la maternité et à la paternité ou juridiquement fermé au mariage. Ce que je soutenait la loi canonique traditionnelle à la main et que le Suédois contestait à partir du factoïde que l'Église eusse bien eu tort dans l'Astronomie.

On Teens, Marital Consent, Schooling without Consent, Roman Rota

RA (status):

And the apologia for child abuse continues, brought to you by the Washington Post.

wp:Sex between students and teachers should not be a crime
By Betsy Karasik,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sex-between-students-and-teachers-should-not-be-a-crime/2013/08/30/dbf7dcca-1107-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html

KB

Indeed, the media didn't really care about the abuse scandal within the Church except as a bludgeon against Her.

LLM

Louise Le Mottee "I’ve been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all of my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us." LIES LIES LIES!

HGL

"I don’t believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized."

1) If he wanted to have sex with her - marriage or anything else - he should have stopped being her teacher. And wood in a proper fashion.

2) Since she was 14, she was clearly OF age to be married, and not under age, nor a child.

If you say anything against those points, you are not a Catholic. Obviously, the perpetrator was not a Catholic, since he could feel such guilt about a child abuse that never really happened.

Supposing it was guilt that stopped him from wooing properly.

Neither was she if she committed suicide.

And top consideration:

Why should male teachers be teaching female students aged puberty or above at all?

LLM

I don't agree with you, Hans-Georg. It is true that in canon law the minimum age for a woman to marry validly in the Church is 14, but canon law does speak of the norms in each country. Since the US tribunals are happy to consider anyone under the age of 50 as being "not mature enough"to have given their informed consent and thus be eligible for a dodgy annulment, I don't think the age of 14 applies here really. Also, we're not talking marriage are we? We're talking fornication. When the people of the US generally agree that women at age 14 or even 25 are mature enough for Holy Matrimony, your point may be taken. (Hyperbole used in this comment).

HGL

My point is that the problem is a culture where women age 14 are supposed to prepare for academic carreers and not supposed to start motherhood carreers. It is also on a depopulationist agenda.

I can add that: 14 is a recent raising from 12 (male part was raised from 14 to 16), and norms of each country is a recent addition.

One other problem - if she committed suicide after the act, she belonged to a culture closer to the rape of Lucretia being cause of her suicide and end of Roman Monarchy than to a Hebrew and Christian culture in which rape victims often pardon and sometimes marry perpetrators.

LLM

There are more problems with the West than one can poke a stick at, but until the normative marrying age for a girl in the US is 14 or just over, I think your point about the non-criminality is not quite on target. I don't think the particular custom in the West of statutory rape are inherently unjust, although I'm open to persuasion on that point. And I agree with all else you say.

HGL

In SC normative marrying age was 12 (or undecided) as late as back in 1995. It was raised and is now 16 in SC.

LLM

It wasn't culturally normative though, was it?

HGL

Depends on what part of SC culture, doesn't it?

LLM

I don't know enough about it - I'm Australian. Tell me more.

HGL

In 1995 a girl of 12 married an old man to finish school - it was legal and as she married she could not be forced to stay in school.

Clinton promised to change that. Alas, he did.

LLM

Yes, but that's an exception, not the norm. Is there a sub-section of society in SC where it is normative for very young women to marry?

HGL

Well it is partly hillbilly and redneck culture - an option that was not frowned at.

LLM

That must be quite a long ways out in the sticks! Well, what can I say? If that be the case, if it's just to lower the age of marriage to 14 or even 12 for a girl, then let the States each do so, but let's also have some consistency and insist that the age of 14 or 12 is sufficiently mature to know one's own mind and properly consent to Holy Matrimony so that at least we hear no more nonsense in the Church's marriage tribunals. And let the fornicators be flogged.

HGL

No more nonsense in the Roman Rota? I heartily agree to that!

(Unless of course that Roman Rota belongs to a counterchurch and the real Rota is in Elx or Vatican in Exile or even Palmar ...)

Now, this here culture is being remodelled by ideas not if Christian origin - like Betty Friedan's about how women are free and a Republican of how literacy is a civic duty with the three R's ...

continued on FB

and updated here

EKJ

So teachers are the victims here? This whole "move and rehabilitate" idea she expounds seems like exactly the idea that the Church was sold as a solution that caused the issues in the 80s.

PC

But I think the fundamental question is, should sexual relations with a teacher and an underage student always constitute rape, from a legal standpoint? Without affirming anything else, I can't say I think every act can be blanket blanket labelled rape. I have a relative who is spending 5 years in prison for "rape" because he was 18 and his girlfriend was 15 and everything was consentual - and, here's the kicker - they later got married, and he was arrested and charged with rape years later, when he was 25, she was 22 and they had been married and had a kid for years! No, just saying every act of a certain kind equates to rape is unjust.

HGL

unless the kind in question is - rape? I suppose you mean!

DL

There are certain relationships where sexual contact must always be criminal--that includes teacher/student and psychologist/patient. Until that relationship ends, consent can never be certain. There is always the strong danger of subtle coercion.

PC

I didn't say it must not always be criminal, but must it always be rape? Or are there no other classifications for criminal sexual conduct other than rape? Why not make a new classification of "Sexual contact between a teacher and consenting student"? Can we diversify the criminality to distinguish between true rape (forcible sexual violation) and inappropriate acts that are illegal not because they are forcible but because of the status of one or more of the parties?

DL

We could, but this is hardly unique. Statutory rape is considered rape even though there is no forcible sexual violation.

PC

That's what my problem is...statutory rape should not be considered rape in the strict sense. I'm not for decriminalizing the situation described in the article above, but there are too many cases where people are charged with rape when it really should be something less.

Like I said, a relative of mine is serving 5 years and will be labelled a sex offender forever because he had consentual sex with a girl 3 years younger than he, whom he subsequently married and had children with. The charge of rape, brought retroactively 7 years later because of the statue of limitations had not expired, disrupted the whole family.

DL

And just who brought the charges against someone for sleeping with someone who he subsequently married? That seems absurd. Getting married typically covered all such sins from a legal standpoint in the past.

PC

He applied for Medicaid, and the state worker who read the application did the math - saw he was 25, wife 22 and son 8. Since statute of limitations on statutory rape is ten years in MI, the state worker turned him in. He got a 5 year prison term.

HGL

Idiotic!

@DL - I read this one of you while scrolling up:

"There are certain relationships where sexual contact must always be criminal--that includes teacher/student and psychologist/patient. Until that relationship ends, consent can never be certain."

You might be interested to scroll back a few comments, click the "see more" button on one of mine and read:

"1) If he wanted to have sex with her - marriage or anything else - he should have stopped being her teacher. And wooed in a proper fashion."

Note that by stopping to be her teacher I do not mean stopping all teaching, but take him to another class or her to another class and inform all school about the reason. If that had happened, she might have been alive and his wife and a mother by now.

As to psychologist patient it is a relation that should not exist at all. It is a secularised version of confessor penitent or at worst exorcist possessed. It is also a bad reason stopping many patients who would be better off marrying from precisely marrying.

DL

The social worker was an idiot. Marriage should end the state's interest. However, the nanny state is never satisfied.

Hans-Georg, I agree with you. I only partially agree with you on psychologists. In Greece, one spiritual father sent neurotics to a pious psychologist --- and the psychologist sent psychotics to him. There can be a healthy relationship between confession and psychology---mostly, however, you are correct that there is not.

LLM

That's terrible, Philllip. Sounds like a case of the letter of the law overcoming thoroughly the spirit of the law. If the law is as it is regarding statutory rape, why are not teens informed of this properly as part of their so-called sex-ed? I know we were never informed at all about the legal side of things. Is this not a dereliction of parental/teacher duty?

HGL

Who says there was any good spirit of the law either in such a legislation?

Teens are very probably informed about what constitutes statutory rape. In Sweden we were informed that even consensual sex before 15 is a crime (not named rape but "sexual intercourse with minor of below 15" - there are two words for minor, and the other one means below marital consent age) and we were also informed that if both are young teens close in age, there is usually no prosecution.

In other words the law - letter and spirit and application - force girls age 14 or 13 to prefer an oaf their own age who in our society cannot be a breadwinner as the market is now to someone whom she could normally - in a sane society - marry.

Even so what is our counterpart to statutory rape happens. A really sad case was when a 14 year old Muslima married a Moroccan slightly older and when she was fifteen and gave birth, social workers did the maths and concluded the Moroccan was guilty. He was sent to prison, then exile. She was sent to a kind of boot camp with their child. But cases when the boyfriend or adult lover begs for abortion to hide the so called "crime" are far worse.

"that includes teacher/student and psychologist/patient. Until that relationship ends, consent can never be certain. There is always the strong danger of subtle coercion."

For shrinks, I agree.

Now, for teachers and pupils, that might be the case if either or both (but especially the girl) were idolising school in the first place - giving it a place which belongs to God, to the Church, to the Sacraments.

A normal person would not have dubious consent due to subtle coercion in such a case.

What would even in normal persons be of dubious consent is the scholarly part.

A pupil should not take every word of the teacher as the Gospel and should not "jurare in verba magistri". Would not a love affaire falsify her mind's consent to his teachings in class?

A teacher should grade the pupils according to merit, and being his lover may be a merit but is not a scholarly one.

That is why I think a teacher getting romantically involved with a pupil of his class (I am not speaking of cougars to male pupils, which would normally not end in marriages due to the shorter common period of fertility) should either change class himself or let her do it so that they were no longer teacher and pupil of same class.

"This whole 'move and rehabilitate' idea she expounds seems like exactly the idea that the Church was sold as a solution that caused the issues in the 80s."

The reason why this solution was sold in the Church was that shrinks were waiting for the moment when Catholic Church would give up celibacy of priests and thus make possible a full rehabilitation.

In teachers who are not bound to celibacy it makes much more sense.

Now, for teachers and pupils, that might be the case if either or both (but especially the girl) were idolising school in the first place - giving it a place which belongs to God, to the Church, to the Sacraments.

A normal person would not have dubious consent due to subtle coercion in such a case.

What would even in normal persons be of dubious consent is the scholarly part.

A pupil should not take every word of the teacher as the Gospel and should not "jurare in verba magistri". Would not a love affaire falsify her mind's consent to his teachings in class?

A teacher should grade the pupils according to merit, and being his lover may be a merit but is not a scholarly one.

That is why I think a teacher getting romantically involved with a pupil of his class (I am not speaking of cougars to male pupils, which would normally not end in marriages due to the shorter common period of fertility) should either change class himself or let her do it so that they were no longer teacher and pupil of same class. And in either case of course tell the school, colleagues and comrades and parents and all.

As I reread story, it seems there was no actual rape.

And the girl may well have committed suicide not because the teacher was so in control of the situation (I have heard idiotic things said about a fourteen year old and an adult it is always the adult who is in control, and if not he is not mentally stable or something), but probably because the now prevalent ideology made an issue in marriage between the man now serving 30 years and his pupil impossible.

LLM

Just as a side note to all this - and I can see where you are coming from, Hans, you are talking of marriage for young people - but I do wonder where the push for a lower age of consent comes from in the general community? Surely it is just that they want to be able to fornicate with ever younger people? Such persons are not interested in marrying young people (or anyone much it seems).

It sounds like the youth of Sweden are informed of the laws relating to under-age sex. It was not so in Australia when I was growing up and I doubt it is now.

HGL

Such persons as are not interested in marrying young people are not either interested in lowering the age of matrimonial consent. Having a lower age for consent to fornication than for marriage is an eldorado for them.

And even heightening the age of consent to present absurd ages of matrimonial consent is an eldorado for some who count on being above the law. And believe me it is already very much harder than hundred years ago to abide by the law, in this domain as in others, so the marginal for trickstering has very much increased.

No, I would say it was the push for lifting that age of matrimonial consent that came from people sexually but not matrimonially interested in the young.

LLM

sorry, I didn't understand what you mean by eldorado. The lowering of the age of consent for fornication is what some people want, but with no interest in a lowering for the age of marriage. That's what I was talking about.

What you say about schools is quite right, btw. It's absurd that people should now assume they'll be in school until their early to mid-twenties! Instead of marrying etc. Quite ridiculous.

HGL

Eldorado - a Spanish word or rather phrase for unlimited opportunity.

Of course age of marital consent should be quite as low as age of other consent or possibly lower. And when it comes to unnatural acts, there we have a real reason for attacking the love between old and young and especially between even teacher and pupil, since in such relations very easily a polarity of domination and submission replaces the natural one of two poles of fertility. Even in heterosexual relations using lots of contraceptives there is a real danger of that polarity (subsidiary to absent in normal heterosexual relations) becomes the main spur of desire.

I think the legislations back a few hundred years ago dealt with it correctly. Supposing John Calvin was branded in 1534 (as a Catholic convert from Anglican heresy discovered in Noyon after his death, he could not answer), it may well be that he was the passive part and therefore regarded as just seduced and therefore let off without death penalty.

The phrase El Dorado was a city or kingdom some Conquistadors were searching for. In some versions of legend it really meant their ruler, who regularly sacrificed himself into a volcano after dipping all his skin in gold dust. In others it was a city where you could pick gold as in normal places you can pick figs or pebbles or ... and from that version comes that phrase or meme "X is a [real] Eldorado for Y".