The role that eroticism plays in today’s world and in the Church is not well understood, even by those who are concerned about it in the first place. While everyone knows that there has been a change in sexual mores, often called the sexual revolution, the depth of the problem has more often than not been overlooked, even by those who express their concerns about it. It is necessary to trace its historical and philosophical roots in some detail before attempting a proper diagnosis.1
The genesis of eroticism
The first problem is that even many critics fail to see that eroticism is far more than a shift in moral thinking concerning one dimension of human existence. It is rather one of the firm bedrocks of our entire civilization and has been for some time. Threats to what we might call “the erotic project” are threats to an entire conception of civilization held to militantly by cultural and political elites. Any interference with the course of the erotic project (which now includes full recognition of same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism) is a threat to the entire conception of the human good, rights, and law fundamental to the progressive view.
For example, during the debate over the contraceptive mandate handed down by HHS as part of the “Obamacare” legislation, supporters contended that the entire conception of human rights at the basis of democracy was at stake. Democracy itself, it was said, would fall if women could not have access to free contraception to be doled out by their employer’s health care plan. Those opposed to the mandate tended to see this as rhetorical excess, not believing that any serious person could really hold such a view of an alleged “right” never advanced by the Court or proclaimed by any legislature, when there were obviously other ways that Congress could have delivered contraceptives free of charge.
Yet, if we take a deeper look at the erotic project historically, we come to see that this way of thinking, grounded in no political or cultural tradition, is in fact part and parcel of a whole way of thinking.
Eroticism is historically linked to a radically atheistic worldview. It is a worldview opposite of that which informs Genesis and the Ten Commandments. It arose initially in the Marquis De Sade as part of the Enlightenment’s less-publicized, darker side, resurrected in the 1930s by relatively obscure figures, but never advanced beyond smaller pockets of militant atheists due to the influence of moral traditions coming from Christianity.2 It was in the midst of the decay of global Marxism’s political base and the corresponding rise of the high-tech, affluent society, that the radical project of eroticism began to re-enter the West and eventually take hold.
From the beginning, eroticism was linked to scientific positivism and secularization in the West. A deep revolution was taking place that was insufficiently recognized. Reason itself underwent a shift in meaning. Increasingly, reason came to mean science and science alone. The broader understanding of reason that had undergirded the development of Western thought got largely obliterated. Under the reign of scientific positivism, reason could not demonstrate a “scientific basis” for traditional moral reasoning, which was based on commonly accepted understandings of the ends and purposes of human acts, which could be evaluated morally.3
Eroticism emerged with the skepticism of traditional moral reasoning, itself linked to the broader processes of secularization, which really accelerated in the 1960s. Natural law has always been buttressed by Revelation, wherein God was the ultimate source of law. Having lost its support from its traditional sources in the teleological understanding of nature and Revelation, natural law faded quickly as an influence in the West. In this context, arguments favoring traditional sexual self-discipline were swamped by unimpeded human instincts. All the defenses of that ethic now appeared hopelessly archaic and non-rational.
Eroticism and Modernism
Eroticism also made serious advances into theology. It was missed at first because it was smuggled in as part of a broader theological revolution that actually was well explained by Pius X in his landmark encyclical, Pascendi Domenici Gregis4. A key dimension of Modernist theology was an alleged respect for modern science. For the Modernists, theology must always respect these determinations. At the same time, religion shifted into the subjective realm of feeling, intuitions, and historically and culturally bound formulations; in essence, theology could no longer deliver objective truths in the sense that science can.
Originally, Modernist theology largely avoided discussions of sexuality. Its biggest influence, especially after it was condemned, was to shift the focus of theology away from metaphysics, transcendence, and “the last things.” The ways that individual human persons, communities, and the universe itself were tied to God became less the focus. Following positivism, theology would now focus on “horizontal causality,” that is, relations of cause and effect among observable, worldly things. New theorizing in the modernist vein would focus on this-worldly realities, precisely the topics that science could study and offer more definitive conclusions. The situation has only intensified in the ensuing decades.
The erotic project as it came to be embraced in the West was originally developed by Wilhelm Reich, a lesser-known figure in the psycho-analytic movement.5 Although arguably a very disturbed person himself, Reich remains one of the few who did grasp the depth and significance of the erotic movement he was proposing for the West. The goal was not simply to relax or change sexual morals. Reich was a revolutionary who had a profound and valid insight, which was that revolution of the kind Marx talked about would never succeed without a corresponding moral and cultural revolution. So long as the Christian-based moral thinking remained intact, there would be no real Revolution. The goal was to attack the Christian civilization at its core.
The fundamental problem is that families transmit a pro-family morality incompatible with revolution. One has to attack the enemy at his roots. So, the goal of the sexual revolution was to destroy Christian civilization by destroying the family, which could only be accomplished by disconnecting sex from reproduction. The more children could be produced and raised outside of traditional family environments, the better the prospects for revolutionary change. This was the true, metaphysical root of the sexual revolution, which most would miss over the years, even those who could see that the sexual revolution was harmful to civilization.
It is important to underline this incorporation of psychoanalytic thought into the entire project of the left in this century. As a professor of political theory, I can say that discussion of this dimension is almost always excluded from discussions of Marxism, as is the influence of the cultural avant-garde and Surrealism.6 For our purposes, I want to focus on only one dimension of Reich’s thinking, precisely because it became such an influential component of the erotic project. This is the idea, expressed very clearly by Reich but fully mainstreamed by the 1960s, was that traditional morality prompted people to do something that from the scientific-positivist view was very “unnatural,” that is, restrain from consenting to sexual impulses. While it was arguably not put forth by most psychologists in the stark terms of Reich, nevertheless it became mainstream to identify the consistent failure to give in to sexual impulses as “repression,” which came to be seen as the origin of other pathological behaviors. Even though the original Freudians would not go this far, popular psychology would shift in this direction under the combined influences of positivism and secularization.
Eroticism became mainstreamed into the civilization under the larger influences of scientific positivism and secularization. Two points here need be emphasized. The elimination of original sin was an important component of this as it was a key to the understanding of sexuality in the Catholic view. Catholic moralists had emphasized, correctly, that sexuality was a particularly weak link in the armor of human nature, and probably the most frequent source of serious sin for most people (although the contemporary claim that other serious sins were ignored or played down is pure fantasy). Secondly, positivism and rationalism fatally undermined natural law, which was based on the claim that we could truly know right from wrong through a reflection on the ends and purposes of human sexuality, which themselves could be known through reason.
At the magisterial level, the Church held the line against the erotic invasion of the Church, most clearly in encyclicals written after Vatican II: Humanae Vitae, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and of course in the Catechism promulgated by John Paul II. But at levels closer to the Church’s pastoral contact with people in the parishes, chinks in the armor developed quickly. The most egregious failure was that of the bishops mounting any effective opposition to the takeover of most Catholic universities by Modernist theologians clearly influenced by the erotic project. The magisterium was not defended in the principal locations where it needed to be.
I believe even many clergy who formally accepted Church teaching became influenced by Modernism, which manifested itself in two ways: (a) an unwillingness to assert any vigorous defense of the teaching, because they knew it was against the grain and that their own theological formations, themselves influence by Modernism, were inadequate to the task; and (b) a tendency to miss the depth of the evil that the erotic project represented. They saw no more than exercises of bad taste emanating from the literary avant-garde and the sad effects of commercialism and consumerism. They did not see that eroticism was intended as an attack on Christianity itself by undermining its roots in the civilization, that its philosophical roots lied with militant atheism, of the kind clearly expressed by Reich and the literary avant-garde of earlier decades.
“Rigidity” and “sins below the waist”
A more subtle but equally effective argument put forth by the progressive theological establishment does not directly attack the traditional position, yet fatally weakens it. Since the 1960s we have seen in various forms something of a “division of virtues.” The theology which focuses on the mission of allegedly making the world better emphasizes patterns of behavior such as “engagement with the world,” “solidarity” and whatever leads to social justice, itself defined increasingly with no reference at all to the Ten Commandments. This is taught in a way that tends to make traditional moral virtues seem by comparison rather narrow in range and effect. A virtue such as chastity comes across as having an overly individualistic emphasis, as do other expressions of temperance.
And then we find again and again what became the pop psychology concern about “repression” associated particularly with Catholicism (hence the widely accepted term, “Catholic guilt”). So, chastity comes away as either a second-class virtue, or, if we top the analysis off with a little Marxism, (always popular in academic circles), a “distraction” from the real task at hand. If one takes the time to read progressive moral theology, one finds a consistent unwillingness to participate in any Catholic movement grounded in traditional moral views. Even when they do not go so far as to say that traditional morality is wrong, somehow for them these movements, such as pro-life endeavors, are simply a kind of false consciousness that distracts people from the broader concerns of social justice. Given the oversized role that universities play in the formation of elites, it is little wonder that Catholic progressivism is effectively of no help to Catholics attempting to promote traditional morality. Catholic progressives are ultimately no different from secular progressives, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
I find nothing more disturbing in the contemporary Church than the painful fact that the Holy Father frequently speaks in a manner exhibiting the influence of what I have called the erotic project. Let me be clear. I am not saying he is a member of the group, but his way of talking demonstrates a disturbing pattern of influence. The most obvious example is his repeated use of the term “rigid” used as a criticism against those whose only crime is a specific adherence to Church teaching. This is coupled with the claim or inference that such rigidity further manifests itself in psychological and spiritual maladies he intends to rid the Church of (in at least one case by closing an orthodox seminary).
Insufficient attention has been paid to the intellectual origins of that language. So, what does rigidity mean exactly and what does it do to the one who embraces it? It is clearly associated with the radical psychoanalytic view that “repression” is a bad thing and causes distortions in a person’s character. Clearly, in his use of the term, a “rigid” person is one who clings to what the Church teaches despite the circumstances, which is exactly what the Catechism says to do! Moreover, rigid is only meaningful when held in contrast with its conceptual counterpart, which would be a non-rigid person who would be more “fluid” in his views.
Even worse, I claim that the entire usage here ultimately goes back to the sexual revolutionaries arguing for a less rigid and more “fluid” exercise of human sexuality. I do not say Pope Francis holds those views. I do not think he does, but he is unwittingly playing into the arguments of very bad people. Another very unfortunate choice of vocabulary has been his reference to sexual sins as mere “sins below the waist”. To look at the sexual revolution as some mere subset of “issues” among other “issues” indicates that the Holy Father has not grasped the depth of the evil involved in eroticism and how it is actually one of the pillars of the anti-Christian civilization we now live in.
A very similar term is “pelvic issues,” which I have heard many times in my life. But I have never heard it come from the mouth of anyone defending the Church’s teaching on family and sexual life. In my hearing, it is linked to a negative judgment on the Church for unduly talking about these matters. It is directly out of the progressive playbook, which itself is directly out of the playbook of the sexual revolutionaries. The Church needs effectively to give up its combat here and focus on the “real” problems like racism, sexism and global warming. If one thinks I am misinterpreting the Pope here, he or she should consider his oft-repeated belief that concern about eroticism is characteristic of exactly the kind of “clerical” mentality he hopes to rid the Church of.
As this Synod continues, we need to take an honest look at the most disturbing situation the Pope has led us into concerning the role of eroticism in the Church and in the world, which currently has become completely radicalized, wherein not even something as basic as gender is to be free from revolutionary change. In the midst of this, our situation in the Church is unparalleled. While the Pope has never pronounced in favor of the various components of the erotic project (contraception, extramarital sexuality, homosexuality) and while he has, to his great credit, strongly denounced “gender ideology”, he has often acted with indifference with respect to the invasion of eroticism into the Church. He manifests this through his offhand comments, but more significantly through his appointments, including for this very Synod, and including the cardinalate.
In the Church today, to believe explicitly in one component or other of the erotic project is no longer an impediment to being named a Bishop or Cardinal. Moreover, the Pope manifests a clear bias in favor of these types of clerics and laity. It is worthy to note that the greatest and most respected cardinal of Africa, Cardinal Robert Sarah, is not invited, but open opponents of Church teaching are invited and given special positions in the Synod (Grech, Hollerich). No, the Pope has not changed any doctrine, but the place of the erotic project has clearly changed. It is nothing to be condemned. It is now clearly and unambiguously inside the Church, with no sign of any exit. This means that the entire Catholic Church has been opened up to the pernicious influence of the sexual revolution.
In addition, it is abundantly clear that the likes of Fr. James Martin, SJ, and Cardinals McIlroy, Grech, and Hollerich feel no threat whatsoever to their roles in the Church coming from their advocacy. Martin sponsors a yearly Conference wherein there are no voices supporting Church teaching. Nothing could be clearer than that to embrace various components of the sexual revolution is no obstacle to clerical advancement.
[Editor’s note: As this essay was preparing to be published, it was reported that “Pope Francis met Tuesday at his residence with leadership from the U.S. LGBT organization New Ways Ministry, which was previously denounced by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office for causing confusion on sexual morality among the Catholic faithful.” Martin, who accompanied the group, predictably offered congratulations, calling the meeting a “significant step forward in the church’s outreach to LGBTQ Catholics.”]
Lay people must rethink their role here. What I see is a belief that the Pope should not be criticized, and that we should support him and his Synod, come what may. Many lay people are unhappy with this state of affairs, but little is said. For my part, I believe the Pope should be respected, because he is the Pope. But his actions concerning the matters raised in this article merit respectful but real resistance. We should pray for this Synod, but that prayer should include honest words about what situation we are praying about.
Endnotes:
1 The views on the role of eroticism in the West today are derived principally from the genius of Augusto Del Noce, particularly as expressed in the volume The Crisis of Modernity, ed. Carlo Lancellotti (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014). Del Noce is a distinct figure in any discussion related to the sexual revolution. He removes it from any secondary discussion of contemporary culture, where in fact it is placed by almost all academic political philosophy, if discussed at all. He argues persuasively that eroticism is one of the pillars of the entire contemporary Western civilization, linked at its roots with scientific positivism and the entire phenomenon of secularization, to which he devotes a second volume: The Age of Secularization (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). [Editor’s note: Also see Dr. Rourke’s Dec. 14, 2020 essay “Atheism: The core of modern Western culture in the thought of Augusto del Noce”.]
2 For a discussion of the intellectual origins of eroticism, particularly the role of Wilhelm Reich, see Augusto Del Noce, “The Ascendance of Eroticism” in The Crisis of Modernity, 157-186.
3 The commonly accepted sense of ends and purposes went back to Aristotle and was strongly reaffirmed by Thomas Aquinas and the entire natural law tradition flowing out of his thought.
4 Del Noce notes the truly prophetic character of Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. He writes: “[T]he encyclical Pascendi contains, in its most rigorous form, the definition of the essence of Modernism. It is so organic that none of its theses can be left out: the assertion that it strikes at the old Modernism but not at the new is entirely baseless. Therefore, forgetting its teaching for even one instant is equivalent to recognizing that Modernism is true. But the outcome of Modernism is necessarily atheistic, as was shown already in those distant years. … by two philosophers who certainly were not concerned about Catholic orthodoxy, Giovanni Gentile and René Berthelot.” (The Age of Secularization, 154). My own reading of Pascendi confirms its prophetic nature. While it is a good summary of what in its time was a clear minority of theological writing, it is the best summary of all the directions academic theology will go after Vatican II, from the emphasis on science, to the “scientific” and “historicist” approach to the Scriptures, to the relativization of doctrine and dogma. The fact that most seminarians will never even read it is the best critique of post-Vatican II Theology imaginable.
5 Reich’s classic work on the subject was first published in 1930 but has four subsequent editions with changes in the Preface. See Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution, trans. Theodore P. Wolfe (New York: Noonday: 1963). Given that the movement as it arose has always been linked to Reich’s ideas, it is entirely appropriate that the movement bears the name of this book.
6 Surrealism is almost never discussed at all in the standard of Marxist histories of Marxism. But the dispute between Marxism and Surrealism led to the longer-term embrace of the literary avant-garde, which itself had absorbed the thinking of people like Reich. See the famous essay, “Inaugural Rupture” in Michael Richardson and Krzystof Fijalkowski, eds. Surrealism Against the Current: Tracts and Declarations (London: Pluto Press, 2001), 42-49. The Surrealists argued for a more explicit rejection of Christian morality and culture, along the lines of Reich.
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For this mess, and that is no other description for it, a mess, I blame JPII!
He was told by Hovenbach the Jesuit superior general that Francis should NEVER be made a bishop and ta da! Look what has happened?
We must not overlook the part played by the Holy Spirit in the selection of Popes. It seems quite short sighted to place the blame on one very human, fallible person.
free will exists in the selection process
The Holy Spirit does not choose the Pope
The very shabby silver lining to this debacle is that it has crystallised the problems in the Church. All of these folks with odd theologies have been in the Church for decades, dissembling or otherwise keeping their powder dry. Now that they think they have a chance at prevailing, they’ve made their apostasy quite clear.
Outstanding definition of a movement and the terms used to disguise its deficiencies and errors, as well as its attacks on Catholic teaching.
Thank you!
I, for one, would like to hear more from this writer. He speaks from a position of expertise and clearly is not afraid to lay his cards on the table. The more outspoken informed laypersons are about the evils being perpetrated upon and within the Catholic Church, the better off we’ll be. It’s in this where the Holy Spirit’s indwelling might be found and not among some of the hierarchy attending this faux synod.
Dr Rourke has given a new perspective on the dissolution of sexual morality- never heard of Reich or paid any attention to the ‘intellectual’ classes who embraced promiscuity.
As a simple minded person it seems to me that Satan’s war against the Church exploded with Martin Luther who deformed the Church and eventuated its devolution into 40,000 babbling sects. Then it seems Lucifer, happy with cleaving the Church, launched a trinity of ‘scientific’ frauds against it:
Darwin- removed God from Creation with his absurd theory of evolution – this by a man who had no knowledge of the stunning complexity of the cell
Marx- a demonic academic fraud whose bizarre economic theories were intended to remove God from governance- fait accompli one might say- the attraction of academics to this cruel and perverse individual does not reflect very well on intellectual intelligence
Freud- another pervert who expounded an absurd notion of sexuality to remove God from procreation.
With a hat tip to Dr Rourke it is time to review Pascendi. Thanks for that impetus.
My guess is that the current head of the CDF (so forgettable I cannot remember his name) took an intensive course in the thinking of Reich. Reich’s ideas were perverse. I remember something from my undergrad study about his “organ box.”
Theology, though very necessary, tends to complicate the simple unnecessarily to the point that we get lost and confused. Jesus’ teaching, on the other hand, when disentangled from the parables , which were intentionally vague and confusing-aimed at challenging closed minds- was very simple and to the point and left little wiggle room. There is clear right and wrong, black and white. I think if we all get back to reading the New Testament ( and particularly the Gospels) over and over again, we would be able to distinguish the truth of the Gospel and see how to live it out in our very alien culture. We must think , speak and act differently. We must learn to be in the world and not of the World.
“Theology, though very necessary, tends to complicate the simple unnecessarily to the point that we get lost and confused.”
Bad theology can certainly lead to confusion. Or theology poorly done. But theology is indeed necessary. In fact, so much of bad theology is the result of a failure of Catholics–including the laity, perhaps especially the laity–not taking theology seriously enough. After all, theo-logy (theo=God; logos=word) is, at the core, the contemplation and study of God. It’s purpose, as Aquinas said, is “to refute error, to teach sound morals, and to contemplate truth.” Theology, according to a Scholastic adage, “teaches of God, is taught by God, and leads to God.” Christ, in fact, is the greatest and perfect theologian, precisely because he is “the Way, the Life, and the Truth,” being the Incarnate Word (logos), thus revealing God as He really is: “‘Theology’ refers to the mystery of God’s inmost life within the Blessed Trinity…” (CCC 236). I recommend reading the chapter “Why Study Theology?” in Frank Sheed’s little classic Theology For Beginners. And, of course, Sheed rightly emphasizes the need to study and know Scripture, precisely because is theological in nature; that is, is reveals God to us.
I saved everyone the trouble. ..
“Warning: misuse of the Orgone Accumulator may lead to symptoms of orgone overdose. Leave the vicinity of the accumulator and call the ‘Doctor’ immediately!”
That would be the controversial Doctor Wilhelm Reich, father of orgone energy (also known as chi or life energy) and the science of orgonomy. Wilhelm Reich developed a metal-lined device named the Orgone Accumulator, believing that the box trapped orgone energy that he could harness in groundbreaking approaches towards psychiatry, medicine, the social sciences, biology and weather research.
Discovery of Orgone Energy
Wilhelm Reich’s discovery of orgone began with his research of a physical bio-energy basis for Sigmund Freud’s theories of neurosis in humans. Wilhelm Reich believed that traumatic experiences blocked the natural flow of life-energy in the body, leading to physical and mental disease. Wilhelm Reich concluded that the libidinal-energy that Freud discussed was the primordial-energy of life itself, connected to more than just sexuality. Orgone was everywhere and Reich measured this energy-in-motion over the surface of the earth. He even determined that its motion affected weather formation.
Orgone Accumulator
In 1940, Wilhelm Reich constructed the first device to accumulate orgone energy: a six-sided box constructed of alternating layers of organic materials (to attract the energy) and metallic materials (to radiate the energy toward the center of the box). Patients would sit inside the accumulator and absorb orgone energy through their skin and lungs. The accumulator had a healthy effect on blood and body tissue by improving the flow of life-energy and by releasing energy-blocks.
The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy
Not everyone liked the theories Wilhelm Reich suggested. Wilhelm Reich’s work with cancer patients and the Orgone Accumulators received two very negative press articles. Journalist Mildred Brandy wrote both “The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy” and “The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich”. Soon after their publication, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) sent agent Charles Wood to investigate Wilhelm Reich and Reich’s research center, Orgonon.
Troubles with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
In 1954, the FDA issued a complaint about an injunction against Reich, charging that he had violated the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by delivering misbranded and adulterated devices in interstate commerce and by making false and misleading claims. The FDA called the accumulators a sham and orgone-energy nonexistent. A judge issued an injunction that ordered all accumulators rented or owned by Reich and those working with him destroyed and all labeling referring to orgone-energy destroyed. Reich did not appear in person at the court proceedings, defending himself by letter.
Two years later, Wilhelm Reich was in jail for contempt of the injunction, the conviction based on the actions of an associate who did not obey the injunction and still possessed an accumulator.
Death
On November 3, 1957, Wilhelm Reich died in his jail cell of heart failure. In his last will and testament, Wilhelm Reich ordered that his works be sealed for fifty years, in hopes that the world would someday be a place better to accept his wondrous machines.
FBI Opinion
Yes, the FBI does have a whole section on their website dedicated to Wilhelm Reich. This is what they had to say:
This German immigrant described himself as the Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, Director of the Orgone Institute, President and research physician of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, and discoverer of biological or life energy. A 1940 security investigation was begun to determine the extent of Reich’s communist commitments. In 1947, a security investigation concluded that neither the Orgone Project nor any of its staff were engaged in subversive activities or were in violation of any statue within the jurisdiction of the FBI. In 1954 the U.S. Attorney General filed a complaint seeking permanent injunction to prevent interstate shipment of devices and literature distributed by Dr. Reich’s group. That same year, Dr. Reich was arrested for a Contempt of Court…”
But the erotic revolution and the push for contraception was already underway in the 19th century. “Free love” (not to mention “the love that dare not speak its name”) and birth control were the subjects of very public controversies in Victorian England and America. The demographic transition from “natural” natality had occurred in Europe by 1870. This means that enough people were practicing some form of family limitation to show up in demographic statistics. Illegitimacy was also rising in Europe due to multiple socioeconomic factors. Co-habitation without marriage was common among the urban working classes.
I agree with the arguments above but the starting should be set earlier.
It only takes one mistaken belief (e.g. concerning the Sixth Commandment) to turn a Catholic into, at least, a material heretic. The issues here aren’t primarily philosophical, they are spiritual. The false philosophy and errors surrounding eroticism is a form of rationalization.
I would say that the real issue is false teachers and their eclipse/suppression of moral truth. To knowingly withhold vital information or to “disinform” (i.e. lie to) from who stand in need of knowledge is very evil.
Silence can be reasonably taken as, at least suspicion of, complicity with evil. The silence – e.g. lack of censure – of those with a duty to speak the truths of morality is the main evil.
There are reasons behind this state of affairs and they do involve successfully executed conspiracies. Certainly this article doesn’t praise Francis. He is merely the latest and best example of what is wrong.
Basically, the fact is that the only way to counter false teachers and their errors/lies is with truth. However, those who control the (mass) media are very aware of the importance of maintaining dictatorial control over what truths AREN’T publicized and what errors/lies (e.g. “abortion rights”) ARE.
The errors to be combated here are legal liberalism, moral legalism, moral relativism, and the separation of Church and state.
Legal liberalism or the idea that one “can’t legislate morality” (e.g. especially regarding “intimate behavior”) apparently came from John Stuart Mill. The more that I read, the more that it seems apparent that many current evils have come from his false teachings. “Free speechism” (i.e. license of speech) and feminism both are indebted to him. His “Principles of Political Economy” managed to be place on the Index of Forbidden Books.
Moral legalism takes positive/human law as the exclusive guide for moral human conduct. All that is necessary for this to cause problems is for the repeal of just laws (e.g. “cohabitation in a state of fornication”) and the introduction of unjust laws (i.e. “laws”). However, previous sentence, itself, is a matter of morality. Errors with regards to jurisprudence stemming from morality errors (e.g. non/anti-Catholic “teaching”) appear to be at the root.
Moral relativism is the denial of objective moral truths. Typically, it takes moral behavior as a matter of changeable convention and not unalterable prescription. It likely comes from the failure to understand that morality is a matter of human nature and sound reasoning concerning the same. Nominalism and the error that law is ultimately a matter of will is the issue.
The separation of Church and state is the error that the Catholic Church ought not to have any effective influence on or cooperate in any way with the various civil authorities.
This has played itself out in the USA by means of the “taxation of religious speech” with regards to the hinging of tax exempt status on the silence of false religion sects and the Catholic Church concerning politics. However, technically, the Catholic Church can’t be subjected to the civil authorities. She has Her own sphere which can’t be infringed upon.
A very good article, but I will disagree with one statement that you made – “I do not say Pope Francis holds those views. I do not think he does, but he is unwittingly playing into the arguments of very bad people.”
Pope Francis has been pope for ten years. If he is listening to the arguments of very bad people, they are the very bad people that he has put into positions to advise him. He eliminated those advisers whose advice he did not like. As many others have said, personnel is policy. Look at the people he has appointed. And, not only that, look at who he meets with, and who he refuses to meet with. He has just met with officials from New ways Ministry, Whoopi Goldberg, Cindy McCain etc. And these are just recent cases. He has a history of meeting with people such as pro-abortionists, and refusing to meet with people such as Cardinal Zen.
Nonsense. I do not agree, the vast majority of the laity use contraception and all this right wing, pseudo intellectual claptrap will not change this.
“… right wing, pseudo intellectual claptrap…”
Cogently argued.
On this Feast day of St.Luke the ‘beloved physcian ‘, beloved of The Mother too , the efforts to diagnose and treat – well intended indeed ! The concerns apt enough ..and the remedies – well, the Holy Father with his compassion for the ‘poor’ , the prodigals and those on the margins, the wounded – whom he has genuinly loved as can be grasped by his life of being at home with those in the slums of Argentina ..relating well to the wounds of the Sacred Heart, revealed again in the Eucharistic Miracle there … not seeing him as a timely gift from The Mother may be at the root of the fears and even deafness …the best gift given through him by the Holy Spirit is the use of the keys to pronounce the blessing – for the ‘oneness ‘ in the wounds – to live in our Covenantal relationship with The Mother , bringing all wounds , of those in our lives and of even of generations as our own unto her, to recieve in turn the grace as the gift to thank and praise The Lord with her and all – the very remedy as the antidote for the carnal wounds / passions , envy , greed and pride that divide us .. without such a Way , how easy can it be to ponder over wounding words and memories , to sink into the bitter swamps ..those whom the Holy Father warns as being rigid etc : possibly not relishing such a role , ? instead afflicted with a subtle pride of seeing themselves as far above such weaknesses, thus not faithful enough to be in the role – to bring the wounds of others as one’s own with compassion and love , for its joy and gratitude on behalf of all… OTOH, those who had to deal with such wounds / wounded , possibly cherishing the grace and the gift without a condescending attitude ..
Lord’s promise to St.Faustina – ‘one soul can make a diffrence for the world ‘ – the Holy Father very likley such a soul who is faithful to his given role to carry all of mankind , united to The Lord ..as did St.Paul and St.Luke – former who once disdained the gentiles .. The Synod as a sort of pleading for the Church to walk with The Lord in The Spirit – to make possible surprises and miracles, for the snakes around the arms to be cast into fires ..and St.John Paul 11 telling us too – ‘be not afraid ‘!
I’ve read St. Faustina’s Diary. There are places where she is willing to cover unpleasant subjects. Try reading passage 153 about the wide road that leads to hell and the narrow road that leads to heaven. Passages 445-446 deal with the sins of impurity, the condition of the human race, the malice of ungrateful souls, and crucified souls. There is passage 741 where St. Faustina was shown a vision of hell. All too often we get a less than complete presentation of her writings in her Diary. If there is no serious prospect of going to hell, it empties the Cross and Christ’s offer of mercy of their meaning
The Marxist-Leninist and socialist revolutions of the Third World, emerging during the course of the twentieth century and continuing today, have rejected, in essence, colonialism, imperialism, and unrestrained capitalism. Their theoretical formulations have not been critiques of Christianity (or Islam or any other religion). They appropriated from Marx, Engels, and Lenin, but also from the Enlightenment, Western bourgeois revolutions, Western social democracy, and the religious and philosophical traditions in their various lands. When conflict between the revolution and the Church occurred, it generally was a result of the accommodation of the Church to the colonial project.
Cuban socialism is pro-family. It has not attempted to transmit revolutionary values through the destruction or weakening of the family. To the contrary, the Revolution supports families and enlists the support of the family (as well as the school) in the transmission of socialist values, which are seen as the highest expression of human civilizations. Every morning in Cuba, I see parents and grandparents walking children, dressed in school uniforms, to their neighborhood school, where they are taught the value of scientific knowledge and universal moral values, including the right of all nations to resist the impositions of an unjust world order.
In my view, we Catholics ought to study more the practices of real socialism in our time. If we were to do so, we possibly could arrive to collectively appreciate that socialist thought and Catholic theology (like socialist governments and the Catholic Church) are allies in a great world struggle against post-modernism and nihilism.
Dr. Rourke is correct in his insightful argument that the sexual revolution is an attack on Western civilization and Christianity. But real socialism is not an attack of Western civilization or religion. Real socialism seeks a structural transformation in the fulfillment of Enlightenment, democratic, and Christian principles. As Fidel, educated in Catholic schools, once said: “If the Church were to organize a state in accordance with its beliefs, it would do exactly what the Cuban Revolution has done.”
https://charlesmckelvey.substack.com/
“If the Church were to organize a state in accordance with its beliefs, it would do exactly what the Cuban Revolution has done.”
Hysterical. In every sense of the word.
If I understand your intention, perhaps I should suggest that your statement, like Kiehl’s, is “cogently argued.” Possibly you should ponder another sentence from my reply: “In my view, we Catholics ought to study more the practices of real socialism in our time.”
Sure, joining Christianity in the “struggle against nihilism”. Nothing like mass murdering 150 million people to make the moral point that moral nihilism is bad!
I believe that you are speaking of a socialism that used to exist in the minds of its enemies. I am referring to nations that today are constructing socialism in the Third World plus China.
Apparently, the moral nihilism and mass murder inherent to socialism, which still goes on today, doesn’t bother you. Having done missionary work in the third world where socialists are tyrannically “constructing” such things as universal poverty and mandatory abortion practices, such might comport with your vision of a Christian utopia, but it doesn’t quite square with actual Catholic social doctrine.
Are you writing this from your jail cellbin Cuba?
Abortion is free in Cuba…
By 1977, the Cuban population reached 420 legal abortions per 1,000 pregnancies, one of the highest legal abortion ratios in the world during the 1970s. From Wikipedia
Thank you for another excellent article.
God is Love. Sin is not loving. Sin is the only act that can separate us from God’s Eternal Love. We cannot change God. It is never God’s fault that He is Perfect. All are called to repent and believe.
God’s Peace to all.
Eros, Gk for our human passions is as old as the hills, perhaps older, Tom Bombadil in his passion for the beautiful Goldberry, symbol of nature.
Rather than paraphrase Dr Tom Rourke’s well researched interpretation of an age old reality subject to the bumps and turns of history I reference the simple proposition of Aquinas, that evil, in this case unrestricted eros or eroticism, is a willed privation of direction to a due end. For the modern Church, A “theology now focused on horizontal causality, that is, relation of cause and effect among observable, worldly things”, rather than upward and ordered to God.
Rourke’s criticism of Francis the First’s below the belt sexual morality is clearly indicative of the horizontal approach. A cheapening dismissal of the beautiful in God’s creation. What would Goldberry think?
What the hell are you talking about?
The diminution of “sins below the belt” is quite frustrating, and leads to two distinct but closely related problems:
One is the ability to proceed in thinking one is righteous by focusing on “social justice” rather than one’s own defects. Thus, a thirty-something can march enthusiastically for divesting from apartheid nations or promoting indiginous rights, despite not having been to church in years, despite contracepting and/or cohabitating, and despite myriad lies or other grievous sins — all seeming inconsequential in the face of racism, colonisation, or whatever. Bringing justice to the world is heady stuff, and it’s demoralising to have to waste time with the beam in your own eye when industrial strength sins elsewhere seem so obvious. And thus, as Dr Rourke notes, “Catholic progressives are ultimately no different from secular progressives, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.” Neither prioritises God’s will or His Commandments.
And secondly, as for that beam, we know that sin darkens the intellect, weakens the will, and disorders the passions. As long as souls drift from God and His Church, they will not have the grace necessary to differentiate good from evil, to discipline themselves to pursue virtue, or to part ways with what Saint Paul calls “the present evil aeon.” Modernism allows them to shift the goalposts, entirely missing “the depth of the evil that the erotic project [represents].”
The temptation is completely understandable, for the stark reality is frightening: sins of the flesh matter, both on a personal level (salvation), and on a wider scale, for they distort our ability to make other prudent decisions (whether related to civic order, the genuine needs of children, or national security). It’s all of a piece, and when we read the tea leaves, it’s not a comforting message.
Thank you, Genevieve, for your wisdom and for expressing it well. Shalom.
We can know through both Faith and Reason informed by our Catholic Faith, that the “synod on synodality is all smoke and mirrors –
The Good News is, if it were not clear before, it is certainly crystal clear now-
It is not possible for a counterfeit schismatic church to exist within The One Body Of Christ, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque); for it is “Through, With, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, that Holy Mother Church, outside of which there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost(Filioque) exists. To deny The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), is to deny The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, which is Apostasy.
You can only have a Great Apostasy from The True Church Of Christ, Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, outside of which there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost
Where Christ’s Church is, there is Peter, and while the Ministerial Office may now be vacant, the Office Of The Munus remains forever, Through, With, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), Through Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, And The Teaching Of The Magisterium, The Deposit Of Faith, That Christ Has Entrusted To His
Church, shall not be broken, and the gates of Hell will not prevail.
Error has no rights, but error can sometimes illuminate that which is True and thus void of error.
May The Peace Of Christ Be With you, and May Our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart Triumph 🙏💕🌷
An excellent essay that summarizes sober Catholic thought in opposition to the sex revolution that I’ve encountered over the decades doing pro-life work and reading hundreds of similar themed essays for moral support.
The most upsetting thing about Francis is that he seems like such a shallow man, especially when he tries to sound profound to not very bright secular reporters who will never challenge him. It is difficult to understand what level of resistance enters a soul that willfully rejects sober consideration of the damaging effects from viewing guilt-ridden behavior as a one-sided exercise of alleviating a conscience while remaining unmindful to evil consequences. I do not believe I have an obligation to accept anyone at his word when he claims to find abortion abhorrent, especially when he has taken contradictory actions. But if Francis is sincere what level of delusion can be occurring to not connect abortion to the sex revolution?
A few tidbits on sexual perversion and revolution, possibly “concrete” enough to intrigue the “leadership” of the Synods. First, two universes:
First: Revolution is “liberty, equality, FRATERNITY”; Reality is liberty-OR-equality + PATERNITY.
Second: About the Left and erotic and even necrophiliac perversion, we have a foretaste in the complex Spanish civil war of the late 1930s:
“The Loyalists have shown themselves faithful disciples of de Sade and the Bluecoats in the Vendee. The horrors of the Congo were anticipated in this war, and the great leftist delight, i.e., the defilement of cemeteries, was practiced as an exquisite art. I had the chance to see the cemetery of Huesca […] The vulgarities, the obscenities, the corpses torn out of their graves [or now wombs?] and assembled in obscene positions gave one a never to be forgotten impression of the fine spirit which received such enthusiastic support from the American and British left [….] the counterrising …had indeed been an orgy of rape, sadism, torture, and unspeakable obscenities perpetrated by our dear friend, the Common Man, and which has its analogies wherever leftism lifted its ugly head” (von Kuehnelt-Leddhin, “Leftism,” 1974).
The well-traveled and scholarly author’s overall thesis is partly that the un-rooted Left creates movements, while the original Right, by its nature, can only organize, then to be swept aside. de Sade, Pol Pot, Marx, Hitler, Mao, Marcuse and many others come under his scrutiny.
“The crisis of our time,” he writes, “is also a crisis of manliness and true masculinity which the left always suspected as ‘reactionary’”…or maybe “rigid” and “backwardist?” Maybe it wasn’t so much the decapitated seminary theology of the 1970s, but rather those persons then in teaching positions who, for personal reasons (?), simply sidestepped moral theology altogether.
Yours truly can point to cases where even the Documents of Vatican II were never mentioned: “we never had any of this stuff!”
The killing of an unborn human being can be acceptable only if he/she has no value. If he/she has no value, the process that led to his/her existence, human sexuality, can have no value and therefore anything goes. If sex has no value, the institution within which it is to be freely engaged in, marriage, can have no value. If abortion is accepted, all else must be destroyed.A cloth woven from a single thread, ever increasing in size. I have rewritten the First Commandment to fit the times, and the crimes. It now reads, ‘I am the lord my god. I shall have no false gods besides myself.”
A very well thought out perspective I had never considered! We must reject the Synod’s outcomes if they violate the time-tested teachings of our Catholic faith! The current occupant of the Chair of Peter has done more harm to the Church in his way-too-long tenure than can be imagined with precisely the kind of thinking and obfuscation the author describes. There are times he appears orthodox, and yet, often within the same paragraph or sentence in his communications, he then launches into borderline or outright heresy consistent with Modernism and eroticism. I am surprised that the author didn’t mention among Bergoglio’s many heterodox appointments the present occupant of the Prefecture of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, Fernandez. He himself wrote an erotic book about kissing. Was this Jesuit the best fit for that august office Bergoglio could come up with? Far from it! It proves he truly has bought into the whole modernist, eroticist movement.