February 1, 2015

"The body for women – as also happens for men – is, in a cultural and biological, symbolic and natural sense, the place of one’s own identity."

"It is the subject, means, space of development and expression of the self, the place rationality, psychology, imagination, natural functionality and ideal tensions converge. The feminine body, then, is a filter of communication with others, in a continuous and inevitable exchange between individuals and contexts. So the feminine identity is the point of convergence of daily fragility, of vulnerability, mutability, and multiplicity between emotive interior life and exterior physicality. Plastic surgery can be counted as one of the many manipulations of the body that explore its limits with respect to the concept of identity. A specificity that is placed under so much stress in the contemporary world as to provoke pathologies (dysmorphophobia, eating disorders, depression...) or 'amputate' the expressive possibilities of the human face which are so connected to the empathic abilities. Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the 'season' that is being lived out. If the body is the place of truth of the feminine self, in the indispensable mixture of culture and biology, it is also the place of the 'betrayal' of this truth. The indiscriminate and undifferentiated use that the media and communications industry has applied in all its forms, in advertising (sexual allusion and debasement of its role), is undeniable proof. No political or social battle has been able to do without a mechanism so profoundly rooted as that of the exploitation of the female body for commercial benefit."

From the "Outline document for the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome 4-7 February 2015: WOMEN’S CULTURES: EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE. (PDF.)

Via The Daily Mail "Vatican condemns plastic surgery saying it is 'like a burqa made of the flesh.'" That headline is deceptive: The phrase "like a burqa made of the flesh" is a quote from an unnamed woman and is characterized as "harsh and incisive," which is a weird way to approve of the observation without entirely adopting it. The quote appears on a bullet list of questions, and the questions it supposedly sets up are : "Having been given freedom of choice for all, are we not under a new cultural yoke of a singular feminine model? What do we think of women used in advertising and in the mass media?"

What is meant by the introductory clause "Having been given freedom of choice for all"? I'm not sure, because that is the only place in the document where the word "freedom" appears ("free" never appears) and the only place where "choice" appears. "Choose" appears in a discussion of the "egalitarian wave" in "all areas of social life and almost all human institutions and cultures." This egalitarian wave, we are told, "is so strong that, in the last years, in the West, some have even affirmed that... the subject is neuter and chooses and builds his/her identity; owns him/herself and answers primarily to him/herself."

So I think the "freedom of choice for all" is this ability (in the West) to design and invent your own individual form of gender expression, and the question relates to whether this freedom is squandered on efforts to conform to the culture's superficial and idiotic image of a beautiful, sexy woman.

92 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I gave that hot mess a quick skim and I think they're trying to say that your body is a temple.

traditionalguy said...

Wow! Does this mean that make-up and jewelry are again targets of the Roman Catholic Legalistic Enforcement Office of Laws that enforce Laws that are needed to enforce Mosaic Laws that the Apostle Paul said Christians are no longer under anyway?

What a tangled web we weave when we first deceive.

madAsHell said...

Too many meaningless words, and strung out sentences....but I think it says "fat chicks don't get laid".

James Pawlak said...

"Like the speech of an idiot, full
of ....."

Rob said...

Incredibly dense and impenetrable prose. Perhaps it's more easily understood in its original language--Doubletalk.

YoungHegelian said...

The paragraph the Professor choose to highlight is, by far, the most "post-modern-y" of the entire document. Read the rest of the document at the link, and the tone of most of the document is standard Vatican "Encyclica-ish".

I suspect the document was written by committee, and someone wanted to show off their Identity Studies degree in the paragraph quoted.

chickelit said...

The body for women – as also happens for men – is, in a cultural and biological, symbolic and natural sense, the place of one’s own identity.

That's a Jennerous description.

rhhardin said...

Having a body is incredibly convenient.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Indistinguishable from the text of the ACA.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Of course, neither has been read in it's entirety.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

By anyone

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Except, apparently, YH.

Michael K said...

The Pope and the Church descend into irrelevance, The growth in Catholics is in Africa, the last time I read about it, and they are under attack by Muslims with machetes. Plastic surgery is the least of their problems.

Laslo Spatula said...

"...the culture's superficial and idiotic image of a beautiful, sexy woman."

What is superficial and idiotic about Scarlett Johannson? I don't even mind if she bleaches her anus or not.

Maybe that part is for another discussion, although one could argue that anal bleaching is a symbolic "point of convergence of daily fragility, of vulnerability, mutability, and multiplicity between emotive interior life and exterior physicality."

Indeed, anal bleaching can be seen as the physical opposite of the desire to "'amputate' the expressive possibilities of the human face which are so connected to the empathic abilities": it is a mutability that few will ever see or judge, and the anus rarely changes expression.

I realize that there are those who want us to see, say, Lena Dunham as fitting culture's image of a beautiful, sexy woman, but no amount of anal bleaching will do that for her: America does not want to see her anus.

I am Laslo.

Ann Althouse said...

It's not about plastic surgery in some trivial way.

I liked the philosophical examination of these subjects.

I was going to write about the term "generative." There was some interesting development of the subject in there.

It's written in a somewhat annoying way, but there must be some reason for that rhetoric.

Ann Althouse said...

"What is superficial and idiotic..."

Idiotic was my word, not the Vatican's. What motivated me to use it is the limited scope of what's seen as beautiful today and the idiocy of individual women putting their effort into getting to something that so narrow and so unrelated to their individuality.

One of the reasons I basically stopped going to the movies is that the actresses don't look different enough from each other (which is confusing). What's the point of staring at the faces for 2 hours if there aren't new and interesting things to see?

YoungHegelian said...

@Althouse,

It's written in a somewhat annoying way, but there must be some reason for that rhetoric.

Yes, there must be some reason, and if any of us were Vatican politics watchers, we'd probably have a good guess which cardinal/bishop or cabal of cardinals/bishops was behind it.

But, what's interesting about it is how out of place its vocabulary is, in specific & in general. Then again, that may be the "big picture" story here: that under Pope Francis there will be more use of the "philosophical resources" of post-modernist Identity theory. God, I hope not, but it's a distinct possibility.

buwaya said...

Translated from Italian, and full of Euro liberal arts academese. The American flavor was originally imported from France.
As for why worry about plastic surgery, apparently this is a huge deal in Argentina.

YoungHegelian said...

@bp,

As for why worry about plastic surgery, apparently this is a huge deal in Argentina.

And Brazil. And Thailand, too, but, hey, the Pope's really has got bupkis to say about how those Buddhists get their butts, bleached or not, to Nirvana.

Sam L. said...

No, I can't take any more of that writing. No CLICK for me!

buwaya said...

As for plastic surgery, it is a vain thing to do and implies a misdirection of personal interests from virtuous other-directed things, such as God, children, charity, service and work, to pleasure, fashion and self-image.
At best it seems justifiable if it assists a woman in finding a husband, if her appearance somehow makes that difficult. Though men are rarely as picky in that department as women seem to think.

Sam L. said...

I don't know much about anal bleaching, but anal tattooing I dowanna think about.

Laslo Spatula said...

I do not mean to imply that understanding anal bleaching can only be understood in a Catholic context. Natalie Portman is Jewish, and if she bleaches her anus my point still stands.

I am Laslo.

William said...

I don't think a lot of people clicked for more. That was some eye glazing prose......,I don't think wrinkles look bad on women. Angela Merkel looks better than Nancy Pelosi. Fake tits are a different story. If a young girl feels self conscious about being flat chested,then go for it.

Laslo Spatula said...

Gwyneth Paltrow's steaming of her vagina is entirely different theologically than anal bleaching.

Vagina steaming strikes me as vaguely atheistic.

I am Laslo.

buwaya said...

Argentina, because the Pope is Argentine. I suspect there was some history there of controversies when he was Archbishop and now he gets to pronounce on it from Rome.

jr565 said...

words... words...words... jargon...jargon...words.

Smilin' Jack said...

WTF?

Laslo Spatula said...

Anal bleaching can be seen as the attempt to return to the purity of Eve before the apple.

Vagina steaming is telling God he didn't make the vagina correctly.

I am Laslo.

buwaya said...

Catholic view is that ethics are universal, and if its bad for Catholics its bad for anyone.
So G Paltrow and N Portman are covered. Well, not physically, maybe, going by some of their movies. But that's another thing they shouldn't be doing.

Laslo Spatula said...

The part of the body devoted to the elimination of waste -- and sin is waste -- becomes clean again with anal bleaching: is this not a form of baptism?

I am Laslo.

jr565 said...

This writing style reminds me of reading Foucault in college. SO dense and jargon filled its like wading through molasses to get basic meaning.

buwaya said...

Waste, as in what we are discussing, is not sinful, nor are any bodily functions as such.
Nor is baptism a sort of sorcery intended to modify the physical body. The implication thereof is blasphemy and, no expert I, probably more sinful than the cosmetic procedure in question.
For a proper grounding in theology and ethics, Aquinas' Summa is essential, and substantial familiarity with this work would prevent much confusion. A fine English translation is available at newadvent.org

YoungHegelian said...

@bp,

Waste, as in what we are discussing, is not sinful, nor are any bodily functions as such.

BP, you're talking about Laslo here. Do you really think LS has Manichean tendencies? Do you think LS has any theological tendencies at all?

buwaya said...

We all have both ethical and theological tendencies, though these may not be apparent through casual observation. Who can say that the shallowest coxcomb does not have depths and virtues.

James Pawlak said...

It is not plastic surgery that is needed, but "plastique"
used against Mosques and other such generators of terrorism.

Biff said...

Ann Althouse wrote: One of the reasons I basically stopped going to the movies is that the actresses don't look different enough from each other (which is confusing). What's the point of staring at the faces for 2 hours if there aren't new and interesting things to see?

I've seen the same criticism quite a few times regarding today's male actors, and I tend to agree that male actors are largely homogenized.

Professor, I'm curious: do you think that female actors are more homogenized than male actors these days, or less, or perhaps equally so? Or is the answer dependent on one's own gender-attuned lens?

Marc in Eugene said...

I think the text is interesting and thoughtful, if so jargon-laden as to be a trial to read. If only scholars and professional people continued to write in Latin....

It probably doesn't hurt to remember that documents like this are analogous to the reports of think tanks, perhaps, or 'advisory commissions' to the US president. They don't implicate the magisterial authority of the Roman Pontiff, and will or will not be used for this or that. Cardinal Ravasi is perhaps rather too enamored of contemporary social media etc etc and is a bit of a... gadfly. Don't want to begin Septuagesima by criticizing a prince of the Church in a public forum. :-)

rhhardin said...

One of the reasons I basically stopped going to the movies is that the actresses don't look different enough from each other (which is confusing).

Sandra Bullock "Two Weeks Notice," entertaining, no confusing look-alikes, and a nice speech to win her back by Hugh Grant near the end, that hits what men and women want in relation to beauty. The text won't do it justice compared to the delivery.

One of the occasional romantic comedies with some insight, thoughout the film, of how people fit together.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Does anyone find this unpredictable or not boring? A church that hates female sexuality and sees itself in competition with Islam, attempts to kill two birds with one stone. Why should anyone take an institution so enamored of its own gloriously powerful history of creating inane rules to dictate life at all seriously?

Throwing a rock at Islam doesn't help its cause - Europe knows that only secularism or even atheism is the only way to discredit the murderous jihadist ideology in a continent that is still seen as the patrimony of a theological institution that was always almost nearly as intellectually and politically corrupt.

It's almost comical the way the church tries to perpetuate its agenda while attempting to attack and distinguish itself from Islam. These guys aren't one and the same, but nearly enough so when it comes to moral and intellectual dunderheadedness that you might as well call them Islamo-Catholic. If they were less of a joke, then Europe wouldn't have any other option than militant atheism to turn towards when turning away from the Islamist hordes.

Laslo Spatula said...

Western Civilization could be seen as the Age of the Mouth, the conveyance of words held tantamount to understanding.

The Age of the Mouth supplanted the Age of the Vagina, wherein society was defined by the relative safety to procreate and nurture; the Age of the Vagina, of course, supplanted the Age of the Penis, wherein the ability to fight the dangers of the Natural World reigned supreme.

However, as concepts of gender and sexuality become more fluid, and the genitalia of the body loses its role as arbiter, the Age of the Mouth disappears in correlation with the loss of ability to define substance in words.

I believe we are entering a new era: the Age of Anal Aquarius. When the need for words and understanding recedes the Anus takes prominence: it is the common denominator, and it deals only in expelling and accepting, the yin-and-yang primary human condition. Indeed, today we are witness to the Age of Anal Aquarius in expelling the Age of the Mouth as the excrement of False Civilization.

Anal Bleaching is just the first signal of this New World. Soon there will be Anal Mascara and Anal Rouge and Anal Lip Gloss, all available at your local drugstore in a wide variety of colors. Is it too much to imagine that, eventually, people will only recognize celebrities by their anuses?

In this spirit, I claim Scarlett Johansson.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

The Theory of the Age of Anal Aquarius also fits neatly with the dissolution of Individualism into Collectivism: the parallels should be obvious.

What will not change is that -- although all anuses are equal -- some will be more equal than others.

I am Laslo.

rhhardin said...

Bataille, l'auns solaire

Laslo Spatula said...

'The Anal Monologues' will be written by a trans-gendered person. But of course.

I am Laslo.

chickelit said...

Laslo Spatula said...'The Anal Monologues' will be written by a trans-gendered person. But of course.

The "Anal Monologues" will sound with gusto and bluster, befouling the very stage. And the bellows will not self-detect.

buwaya said...

The church does not hate either male or female sexuality. But like any human desire or capacity or function or emotion these are easily abused, and always have been. There are more important purposes for human life than indulgence of the senses, or of satisfying pride for that matter. Greed and hatred, violence and envy, contempt and indifference are all sins alike with sexual misbehavior.
Europe can't fight Islam if its culture teaches no higher personal purpose than self indulgence. This is already leading to sterility, both biological and intellectual.
Islam has a purpose, a personal reason to live and die. In many respects and interpretations, these purposes seem fraudulent and antithetical to the mainstream of Christianity and Western culture. But they exist.
Modern western society does not provide a personal purpose, a justification for existence and a reason to care for the future beyond ones existence. Whatever there is of this, in institutions and in personal mental programming, even in the atheistic mind, is an unexamined echo of Christianity, that is fading away as the generations pass.

Jupiter said...

"It's written in a somewhat annoying way, but there must be some reason for that rhetoric."

The Catholic church is in the process of succumbing to O'Sullivan's Law.

buwaya said...

The reason for the bad prose is that far too many churchmen have gone to secular universities and picked up bad habits.

ELC said...

I think a lot depends on who is doing the writing. I have found St. John Paul's writing to be nearly impenetrable. Pope Benedict's, on the other hand, is plain and straightforward. The text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reflects, I think, his style of thinking and writing. On the other hand, the text of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is unfortunately very dense. I would recommend the Catechism to anybody; I don't think I'd recommend the Compendium (of Social Doctrine) even to other Catholics. :)

mishu said...

I thought it was about trannies.

Mark said...

Our culture has sunk into the pit, with its laughable notion that the human body has no meaning, much less truth, with large numbers of people having contempt for their bodies, particularly their sex organs, and it's the Church that has the problem when it points out that there is a truth to the body (including the truth of sexual differentiation, i.e. the body and therefore the person is made male or female), and that, having been created by God, it is necessarily good and to deny that truth is something other than good?

While it is true that there has been an increased appreciation for the body ever since John Paul II presented his Theology of the Body, the fact is that at the center of Christianity is the Incarnation -- the Word made flesh. From the very beginning, the body has played an essential role. We experience and learn things in and through the body. We communicate with others in and through the body. We are saved, not by God engaging in a spiritual act from the comforts of heaven, but by becoming man, taking upon himself a human body and taking the totality of sin upon that body.

Maybe if we weren't in such a Twitter culture, where some people are too simplistic to think or engage in complete paragraphs of thought, people here would have the capacity to grasp what is completely non-exceptional, and easy to grasp if one bothers to read each essential word.

buwaya said...

I dont see that the compendium of social doctrine is unreadable, not most of it anyway. Much is reasonably straightforward for such an ambitious document. A lot of the specifics called out in it are questionably supported, IMHO, due to the Church sticking its nose in matters of economics and technology beyond its competence.

Ann Althouse said...

"Professor, I'm curious: do you think that female actors are more homogenized than male actors these days, or less, or perhaps equally so? Or is the answer dependent on one's own gender-attuned lens?"

I'm not a good source of information, since I don't go to the movies enough, but my general sense of it is that males can have a more raw or rugged look and that more exaggerated features are acceptable. But there are a lot of new male actors who mean nothing to me, who all look just weak and bland.

Generally, over the whole course of movie history, the beauty of women's faces has been immensely important. I am heterosexual, but I can really enjoy an old movie with, say, Ingrid Bergman filling up the screen. There's great aesthetic pleasure in the old we-had-faces-then actresses.

Ann Althouse said...

"This writing style reminds me of reading Foucault in college. SO dense and jargon filled its like wading through molasses to get basic meaning."

LOL. So true!

Well, these Vatican people went to college too.

Ann Althouse said...

"The "Anal Monologues" will sound with gusto and bluster, befouling the very stage. And the bellows will not self-detect."

I don't want to take the air out of your fun, but it should be "The Anus Monologues" because it's not "The Vaginal Monologues." That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it.

The monologues do not belong to (or emerge from) the vaginal/anus, nor are they characterized by their resemblances to this orifice. The monologues are on the subject of the vagina.

chickelit said...

I don't want to take the air out of your fun, but it should be "The Anus Monologues" because it's not "The Vaginal Monologues."

Tell that to Lazlo why don't you?

I am chickelit

Freeman Hunt said...

This seems like a good place to write that I think Botox makes people look like Vulcans. I don't know how it's caught on. "You can have a smooth forehead, but you will also look like a fictional space person." "Sold!"

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Geez buwaya. What made you such an expert on the Imperial Catholic Church?

chickelit said...

@R&B: Obama of course!

Mark said...

Given that today's culture considers the body at best to be irrelevant, like John Paul II, Pope Benedict spoke often of the body as well.

the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves
--Deus Caritas Est, 5 (2005)

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

R&B,

Well put, but somehow the beheadings and massacres and misogyny and homophobia and medieval bullshit (in practice, not just dogma) make it appear that there's a greater distinction than you suggest.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Europe can't fight Islam if its culture teaches no higher personal purpose than self indulgence. This is already leading to sterility, both biological and intellectual.

Nonsense. Europe's population grew just as fast if not faster after the decline of the church. And freedom needs no "higher personal purpose". It is its own purpose. That is its strength.

Islam has a purpose, a personal reason to live and die.

That's nice. Who cares?

Modern western society does not provide a personal purpose, a justification for existence and a reason to care for the future beyond ones existence.

Nor does it need to. That's where all the trouble starts. As soon as people propose a commonly defined "need" for this higher gobbledygook, that's when you get all sorts of tyrants proposing to be in charge of defining the sort of mind control for everyone to abide by in order to weave together the common philosophy - or as you call it, "justification" for their existence.

Whatever there is of this, in institutions and in personal mental programming…

I think your use of a phrase like "mental programming" just about says it all. Will there be software reboots, too? Talk about making man into a machine. More pliable slaves to "program." Damn.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I thought it was about trannies, too. Steering a wooden ark through the magnetic mines of the zeitgeist.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

That greater distinction is no credit to Roman Imperial Catholicism, Cracker. It's due to the accidents of history, or, depending on how much credit you give to the reformers and kings who fought against papist political, theological and intellectual hegemony - to their praise for doing so.

There's a reason why Christendom came to be called "Western Civilization," and it's because the pointy hat guy stopped getting license as a spiritual dictator for the continent and the ideas and religion he put himself at the helm of, waned.

That's not to say unreformed Christianity was worse or as bad as unreformed Islam (although perhaps in some ways, in different ways, it was). But that's beside the point.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Right, but that was then and this is now. Unless, of course, you believe in Original Sin. Which would be weird and ironic.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Original sin probably was and remains where the church had to get everything wrong.

But I could be wrong. It's its emphasis on sex that I find most weird. But who knows? Perhaps in mideival Europe scaring people away from too much sex was just the right prescription given food limitations, medically primitive pregnancy care, more dangerous childbirths, etc.

buwaya said...

Because of the broad and comprehensive issues raised, it would take libraries to respond, but I will attempt some few of these points -

Freedom is nice to have. Total freedom, within human limitations, was always achievable, to a few anyway. A goatherd hermit in the Caucasus, with no other people to worry about, or Mithridates of Pontus, who could ignore any will other than his own, were both free, more free than we are here and now.

The trick is how to be free in a human society. The problem is other people. You rub up against other people and their notions, and all of a sudden you need to develop ethics, and freedom is constrained.
No ethics can be derived from a sterile, solipsistic concept like freedom.

And there are millions of free men waking up at 3am, or on their deathbeds, wondering why, what was the point, now that its not fun anymore. Lots of free men are suicidal.

As a motivator its also lacking. We are free to be cowards, to run away, and to give up freedom. It also does not persist. You are free to be free now, but not bother that anyone else is. You are free to be the last free man.

It is a fact that men willing to die to get their way, and to sacrifice for each other in their group, will dominate any number of atomized individuals. That's why some hundreds of ISIS characters control millions. Freedom itself does not preserve freedom. Some other concepts are required to win wars.

We are social animals, and we live in societies that persist beyond lifetimes. You are free not to care, but if the society is to continue beyond lifetimes someone has to. That requires some constraints. Children are huge limiters of freedom. Without children a free man is a failed animal, who could not reproduce, and a society is ruins and dust.

People are programmable, its an unavoidable fact. We spend a great deal of effort programming children. A child raised in one society will not behave, in important ways, identically to one raised in another. How they are programmed matters a lot to you, as this may determine whether they are helpful or dangerous, or willing to put up with your freedom.

buwaya said...

What Christianity gave the West was the concept of rights. All men were equal under God, as moral agents, which was a new thing. Christianity began as an egalitarian movement which made no social distinctions. The ancient world had no such idea, being completely unconstrained in its exploitation of the weak. If one had the power, one was favored by the gods or by fate, and could freely kill, enslave, torture, even for fun, those unprotected by a balance of power (belonging to a powerful tribe say) or local legislation. Beyond power there were no morals; at best there were traditions that easily wore away. This is why Rome, with ultimate power, degenerated to a slave-society of latifundias and gladiators.
Christianity put the idea of rights into everyones conscience, not ending human evil, certainly, but adding a powerful constraint. Arrogant kings were regularly brought low, as in the penance of Canossa.
As part of this the church in the middle ages finally ended the ancient practice of slavery in Europe.
Without Christianity there would be no underlying assumptions for the Magna Carts, the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights,

buwaya said...

I am no expert on the Church, or religion, I am just a Catholic layman. I was educated in some very good schools (Christian Brothers and Jesuits), many years ago, but am by no means a scholar.
If you want a good discussion of all the points you raised there is a tremendous amount of material, available free, covering every little bit. C.S.Lewis (Mere Christianity for example) is an excellent start, if you want to start somewhere.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Speak for yourself on programmability. I don't go by anyone else's program. Or if you can't abide that, muse on the idea that I program myself.

And the concept of rights of which you speak was predated in Christianity by Judaism - and greatly abetted by the philosophical and political musings of Greece and Rome. Grafting a concept of personal salvation onto the office of Roman Emperor (Papacy) did not do away with abuses by kings, flatten the (feudal/papist) social hierarchy or seriously challenge any earthly power. It did provide a religious rallying cry around such ideas, but only entrenched the power of the people claiming to rule in its name. Only with the reformation and English enlightenment did this change significantly, and any rights dating back to the English political developments from Magna Carta onward had nothing to do with religion. "The church" was and is an impediment to these things, regardless of whatever latter, more progressive, rational and humanistic branches of Christianity contributed to them. "The church" was and is simply too interested in its own earthly power to have ever been a driving force for individual freedom, which is the essence of individual dignity.

buwaya said...

One very important difference between Christianity and Islam is the matter of moral philosophy.

Christianity (or most flavors of it anyway) has a process of determining what "good" is, in any given case, through applications of first principles and reason, and moral agency is purely in the hands of the individual (who has free will).

Christianity has never included the practice of violence in its virtues, nor required killing or torture as moral acts. There has been a very strong strain of pacifism in it, pretty much the mainstream, from the beginning. Most churchmen in most times were far more concerned with preventing wars than preaching them.

Islam has rules, not philosophies, and the judges that interpret and apply these rules worked mainly through textual analysis, though these days they depend largely on precedent. There is no reason in Islam, as we would recognize it. Pope Benedicts famous address gets to the heart of this.

And humans have no free will, being as everything "is written". Anything happens purely through the will of God, which is predetermined and unchangeable.
One could derive a "liberal" flavor of Islam, comparable perhaps to the liberality of the Christian church in the middle ages, by stressing the various texts concerning mercy, perhaps, of which there are a lot. However it is difficult to avoid the others, and the ongoing and ineradicable mass of precedent.

buwaya said...

You were programmed by your parents, your teachers, your peers, and the media you consumed plus all the other circumstances (poverty or wealth, sickness and health, diet and exercise, country or city, etc.).
You can react against some of this now, but it can't be erased, and it drives your attitudes and values in ways that you probably don't realize or understand.
As for the rest, I recommend broader reading in history.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I'm not arguing about the difference between Christianity and Islam. I'm arguing about the credibility of the RCC as a defender of the civilization that Islam seeks to either challenge or threaten.

Everything any parent, teacher, peer or media ever told me I was open to questioning.

If you were not, then that speaks to your penchant for slavish emulation, which is a temperamental quality that is not shared by everyone. Even children differ in how gullible they are, despite the fact that they all generally tend to be more gullible than a comparable adult. And yet, I was never someone who was ever all that gullible to begin with.

It is ultimately individual people who choose to lead or whom or how to follow, not just hordes en masse.

It seems your affection for the RCC as a community of believers prevents you from recognizing those individual people who ultimately decide not only their own fate, but contribute to how collectively we follow or deviate from any given fate.

Western rights, the very thing that makes the west special in any way, are necessarily individual. Nothing else you can or refrain from pretending to teach me about history can change that fact. It is the essential conclusion of what the enlightenment was all about and what it left us with, your sectarian jealousy over that fact notwithstanding.

Fernandinande said...

Clothing that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, but not the male identity.

No political or social battle has been able to do without a mechanism so profoundly rooted as that of the exploitation of advertisers and audiences by females.

It's a good idea to take advice from people who believe in ghosts.

YoungHegelian said...

Western rights, the very thing that makes the west special in any way, are necessarily individual. Nothing else you can or refrain from pretending to teach me about history can change that fact. It is the essential conclusion of what the enlightenment was all about and what it left us with, your sectarian jealousy over that fact notwithstanding.

And those very same Enlightenment authors that you refer to came up with more ways to bring God into the picture than the Ancients ever dreamt of. Do we need to review how many of them needed God to underlie the certainty of causality and with it, human knowledge?

Your idea that the Enlightenment was somehow nothing but a bunch of atheists spreading the Gospel of individual rights is, let's be kind here, misinformed. The Enlightenment was many things, & for you to pick a "favorite theme" that agrees with your modern prejudices is just missing the point.

As a matter of historical fact, the political culture that permitted the rise of individual rights arose out of Christendom. And no where else, ever, except if a Christian nation brought the concepts by sword or mission. Did you ever consider that the foundation of a legal person with inalienable rights arose because Christianity had to think long & hard about what a "person" was if they were going to understand the Trinity & that we were made "in the image & likeness" of those Three Persons? You may want to think that historically we moved from a human person to the divine, and I'm saying we went the other way.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

No one ever said that Locke's culture was atheistic or that our current rights grew out of that, Y. Hegemon, so keep your pants on. I'm well aware that Locke spoke in the same religious language that anyone debating the nature of rights and monarchy would have found natural and familiar in 17th century Europe. For someone who pretends to read as much philosophy as you, it shouldn't be difficult for you to find where I said, as you allege, that atheists developed these ideas - if I did. But I obviously didn't.

That said, the "ancients" (by which I assume you mean antiquity philosophers) were less constrained by theistic presumptions in debating political rights. This is only natural, given how much the American Founders were inspired by them. By that point anyway, the enlightenment had progressed enough for most of the founders to be unitarians or deists, or otherwise feel no need to maximize theological presumptions in their arguments for and their ideas about liberty. It had returned to being much more or less the sort of naturalistic, patrimonial sentiment that it had been back when Athens and Sparta fought Persia.

I have no doubt that you will refuse to read the thrust of any of all this and instead proceed to split more hairs than you massage each day on your gnome-like troll nut sack.

ken in tx said...

R&B says that Original Sin is a mistaken doctrine. I ask that person if he or she has any children or ever known any children.

You do not have to teach children to be selfish, to hit or bite or lie. You have to teach them not to do these things. A typical two-year-old would kill his or her parents if they were strong or smart enough. That, my friend, is original sin. We are born with it.

We are born with a thirst for blood. Christ has offered us his blood to slake that thirst. That's what Christianity is all about.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Speak for yourself and your own violent, savage, Texas barbarian children, ken. Kids, like adults, have the inclination to cater to selfish impulses and social impulses. The ones that win out are the ones that are stronger in their own temperaments or encouraged by their parents and environment, regardless of how much more unbounded they are with any urge to sort them out that early.

And your understanding of original sin seems a little less sexualized than the one fixated on by the RCC. But a hell of a lot more violent. I suppose it really is true that people bring to their religions what they feel most in conflict about in themselves. Texas and Rome must really be quite very different places in the vices they find most appealing.

jr565 said...

Rhythm and Blues wrote:
But I could be wrong. It's its emphasis on sex that I find most weird. But who knows? Perhaps in mideival Europe scaring people away from too much sex was just the right prescription given food limitations, medically primitive pregnancy care, more dangerous childbirths, etc.

It's still a good idea. What with all the unwanted pregnancies, millions of abortions a year, not to mention the record number of venereal diseaes for sexually active teens.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Yup jr. The RCC is really doing a lot of good about all of that. I really see the connection being made. Along with mandating that governments in Africa discourage condoms - exactly what countries with epidemic levels of HIV infection need.

Who fucked your brains? Was it painful?

jr565 said...

Ritmo wroteYup jr. The RCC is really doing a lot of good about all of that. I really see the connection being made. Along with mandating that governments in Africa discourage condoms - exactly what countries with epidemic levels of HIV infection need.

Who fucked your brains? Was it painful?

You were talking about the idea that it might be good to scare people off of too much sex in ancient Europe. As if that idea is no longer valid.
Africa also makes the case that there is a problem with too much sex.
So, stick with the response before veering off on tangents, dick wad.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Africa also makes the case that there is a problem with too much sex.

And too many condoms, too - according to "His Holiness".

Sounds like you agree.

jr565 said...

Ritmo we have cheap condoms, sex ed in schools and 1 in 4 teenage girls with venereal diseases.

jr565 said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2152150/STD-fears-70-single-women-admit-regularly-having-unprotected-sex.html

70% of women admit to regularly having unprotected sex with men. 1/3 of women get swept away in the moment and forget to use birth control
18% of women are too drunk to use contraception.
8% just don't like condoms.

Lack of condoms and/or education about condoms, especially in westernized countries which have been pushing sex education on kids since the 70s is not the real problem.

A lot of people have all the information. They are just irresponsible.

YoungHegelian said...

No one ever said that Locke's culture was atheistic or that our current rights grew out of that, Y. Hegemon, so keep your pants on. I'm well aware that Locke spoke in the same religious language that anyone debating the nature of rights and monarchy would have found natural and familiar in 17th century Europe.

No, R&B, I'm claiming that Locke's language HAD to come out of that religious background & is foundationally dependent on it. Not only that but that the historical record on the political "human rights" follows the expansion, imperialistic or otherwise, of Christendom.

It had returned to being much more or less the sort of naturalistic, patrimonial sentiment that it had been back when Athens and Sparta fought the Persians.

Is that why you think Athens and Sparta fought the Persians? Do you think the average Spartan or Athenian hoplite or sailor was all about agnosticism & "naturalistic sentiment"? Do you think they were all Socrates & Plato? I'm sorry, I don't know where to start on the anachronisms of that sentence.

I have no doubt that you will refuse to read the thrust of any of all this and instead proceed to split more hairs than you massage each day on your gnome-like troll nut sack.

This is your problem, R&B. Someone calls you on your bullshit & the goalposts get moved & the insults come out.

We've been through this many times with you, R&B. Why can't you stop being an asshole & actually have an decent conversation? I'm sorry, but I can't believe that this is the first time you've heard this criticism, in the virtual world or in person.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Clearly you think we should decrease the use of condoms if HIV infection is a problem, then.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

No, R&B, I'm claiming that Locke's language HAD to come out of that religious background & is foundationally dependent on it. Not only that but that the historical record on the political "human rights" follows the expansion, imperialistic or otherwise, of Christendom.

Obviously we agree, but your aggressiveness apparently prevented you from seeing that. You cannot argue against the "divine right of kings" unless you address a divine source for that supposed right. You need to stop assuming disagreement where there is none.

Is that why you think Athens and Sparta fought the Persians? Do you think the average Spartan or Athenian hoplite or sailor was all about agnosticism & "naturalistic sentiment"? Do you think they were all Socrates & Plato? I'm sorry, I don't know where to start on the anachronisms of that sentence.

I'm not sorry that you felt a need to read some abstract philosophy into what I'm saying was just an obvious, organic patriotism.

This is your problem, R&B. Someone calls you on your bullshit & the goalposts get moved & the insults come out.

Your problem is your testosterone is so off the charts that your frenzied coconut willfully misinterprets everything I write, to the point where you burrow for disagreement where there isn't even any. I really wonder what sort of "bullshit" i'm getting called on while agreeing with you. I guess that would mean that what you really said is a bunch of bullshit and you want to take it out on me for agreeing with what you feel is also then necessarily your own bullshit.

Your problem is that you use aggression when there is no need. And then complain about a cute quip about it.

We've been through this many times with you, R&B. Why can't you stop being an asshole & actually have an decent conversation?

When you inject your replies into someone else's comments, you have an obligation to read them honestly and not willfully misrepresent.

I realize it must be a burden being so perfect, but the least you could agree to is that.

If not, then it's obvious who's being an asshole.

If you fight even that point, then I obviously have nothing further to say to you.

wildswan said...

I think in the offending paragraphs the Vatican is trying to apply the standard church teachings to the ideas of Lyotard and Foucault and such. Trying to show how you could take the good points those guys were making, without giving up main points of Church doctrine. People influenced by very new sociology speak jargon and regard the habit as liberating. They aren't saying any of the bad old excluding things, they tell themselves.

It reminds me of the Claude mirror. In the old days people used to look at landscapes through a special mirror with a blue tone so that all landscapes would look like a landscape by Claude Lorraine - would have that special tone. And this jargon makes all human landscapes, i.e. situations, look like an article by Foucault. It won't last in its present form any longer than it takes people to get used to that way of talking - it's like a new dance, like the macarena or the twist.

But the jargon is what is being used to bludgeon young men going to college and call them rapists so it behooves us all to learn this mental twist.

YoungHegelian said...

@R&B,

If the others who are here think I've misread you, then I'll apologize. Somehow, I doubt that's going to be the case.

But, once again, this is you moving the goalpost. If you agreed with my reading of the history & genealogy of the idea of "person" & "inalienable rights", you couldn't think what you do about the Enlightenment. Nor about the Catholic Church for that matter. Don't you see that?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

If the others who are here think I've misread you, then I'll apologize. Somehow, I doubt that's going to be the case.

This is disingenuous. I'm the only one who knows both what I said and what I meant. The idea that you wold need to query others on what I meant is insane. I could apologize for being vague or speaking in a more easily misinterpreted way, but you are the only one responding to what I wrote here today in such a way as to take issue with what I didn't say. If you need others to corroborate or refute that, then there is no point to discussing anything with me, because you make your presumption of alleged bad faith on my part evident.

But, once again, this is you moving the goalpost. If you agreed with my reading of the history & genealogy of the idea of "person" & "inalienable rights", you couldn't think what you do about the Enlightenment. Nor about the Catholic Church for that matter. Don't you see that?

I am getting confused on this point. I agree that the culture out of which the enlightenment arose was throughly Christian. And so, it had to resort to arguments pertaining to Christian doctrine in order to challenge the power that rested upon that doctrine. The rest of what you are talking about re the Catholic Church I am not understanding. I do know that Locke went through a biblical genealogy starting with Adam to refute the divine right of kings. I don't remember exactly how, but yes, I remember that much. I think sometimes you assume me to be way more ignorant than I really am.

Sure, sometimes I get creative ideas of how to look at the history I do know, which isn't altogether bad. But if I take interpretive latitude that is not tenuous or flat-out in error, I don't have a problem with you calling me out, or at least seeking to clarify.

Sorry about how you think I came across earlier or in earlier exchanges.

DougWeber said...

Well it is interesting to see that the Holy See has finally decided to reject logic completely. This asserts as proof something does not come close to proving anything unless one begs the question
.

jr565 said...

Rhythm and Balls wrote:
Clearly you think we should decrease the use of condoms if HIV infection is a problem, then.

I never said that. Only we can't pretend like we don't know about sex education, OR that, at least in the western world we don't have access to birth control. Condoms are better than nothing, but if 18% of women are too drunk to remember to use birth control maybe impulse control is a bigger problem.