Wednesday 29 November 2017

Moral Doctrine with Mark P. Shea


He wrote an article called People of the Lie:

People of the Lie
November 28, 2017 by Mark Shea
www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2017/11/people-of-the-lie.html


So here we are now in 2017 and the prolife movement is now the passionate defender of a sex predator eager to damn his 16 victims as liars, as well as now being absolutely In The Tank for Roy Moore, a visible-from-space child molester.


Excuse me, Mark Shea, but by "child molester" do you refer to the kissing of a girl of 14 who did not become his wife?

Because, if so - you are in the US, of course, you might know about more than I do - either you are lying by calling the victim (if that is the right word) a child, back then, or you are calling the Canon Law of the Catholic Church for centuries a liar, which said a girl could marry from 12. At 1917 revision, that was raised to ... 14. As far as latest source on when revision happened.

Note, in the present version of the paragraph (supposing 1983 code is valid, which I do not, but you do) there is an added proviso : respect for the marital laws of your country. In US, the minimal legal age for marriage, however, is not a union matter, but a state matter. 30 years ago, Alabama required more than 14 for marriage? I don't think that is all that probable.

If he in fact molested girls, that is bad, but not necessarily child molestation. If he did so after marriage, that is kind of adulterous, but still not child molestation. If he did so with girls other than the one he married, that is, even before marriage, kind of fornicational in his heart - and still not child molestation.

I don't know if he has 16 accusing victims or not. I do know, that with his agenda, some degree of false accusations can be expected by desperate leftists. I also know that if he did in fact molest girls, they would be having a choice to use real victims.

Whichever be the case of his guilt or innocence on molestation charge, it is not child molestation in my eyes, if he did not go as young as 11, or if between 12 and 14, girls clearly not visibly puber, yet. A Pope in the 18th C was telling a Pole, or the Polish king or sth, that:

  • while such and such a girl of 11 and a half could theoretically be already married, that required a Papal dispensation from the 12 year old limit;
  • and it could obviously not be given so she (Catholic, I presume)* could marry a Protestant heretic, to the detriment of her faith.


If you are calling the girls who back in the days were 14 children, you are calling a lot of Catholic marriages (and Alabaman ones too) child molestations or rather even statutory rapes.

While lying is never a just act per se, there are degrees of lying. Lying about a fact (like whether so and so actually did or did not molest so and so) is less grave than lying about doctrine.

If I had grown up in a Catholic country under the old rules, my plan at 14 of declaring my love, engaging myself to and later marrying a girl in the parallel class would not have been - as it probably was - stamped as a kind of mental derangement, sth teachers and others needed to find a cure for. And probably she and I would not have been going to the same school, and I would have had the possibility, before Prussia and others made school compulsory, to have finished my apprenticeship and started as a paid worker, a k a journeyman (if certainly not yest master craftsman) at 14.

My prospects at 14 would, in other words, not have been bad enough to drive me to consider suicide, even if only very briefly.

As for the rest of the story, WaPo (Washington Post, I presume) practises journalism by verifying stories. Well, the fake story of O'Keefe was probably his way of practising journalism by verifying the journalistic quality of WaPo. Do you seriously think such momentous things like checking stories are never ever done by lying or suggestio falsi in order to get a possible liar off guard? I suspect it is.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Vigil of St Andrew
29.XI.2017

* I do not have the reference fresh, which is often my case, so, if Mark Shea catches me in an error of fact, it was not a deliberate lie.

2 comments:

  1. It seems Mark Shea still doesn't get it:

    "So, for instance, if Roy Moore wins today it will be because his base of Christianists both told and believed the lie, “We must support a child molester because Jesus was accused too and beside Mary was a teenager so that means sexually assaulting teens is great. And besides God can use sinners and if you don’t vote for him you love abortion and hate Jesus!”

    The Blessed Virgin was a teen.

    In the posterity of King St Louis IX, up to 1500 c. which I started looking at (non-royal posterity, mostly, if royal is taken as ruling monarch or consort), the marital age for girls was between 12 and 22, mostly. One remaining unmarried to 28 or 27 was not too fertile. One or two or three married before 12 got annulments for those marriages, as the Popes counted that as "child marriage" and ipso facto invalid (a child marriage can be validated later, like if the marriage when - hopefully later than even if 12th birthday - it is consumed is agreed on by the younger party, but it can also be disputed later - part of the problem was, some pretended so and so was older than he or she was, Louis XI pretended to have been married before 14, but it could not be checked).

    Now, Roy Moore may or may not be a teen molester.

    But if he is, that doesn't make him a child molester. The youngest victim or presumed or presented such I heard of was 14, which is the change in canonic age made in connection with CIC 1917, so, she was, canonically, not a child.

    I don't think molesting teens is great. I am awaiting the court decides whether he was guilty of that. But I would not support the description "child" molesting, even if he was guilty, the charges I have heard of.

    As a Catholic, I feel more concerned he married and remains married to a divorcee, as I am also about Kent Hovind seems to have been ditched by Jo and is now living in adultery too, since he erroneously thought I Cor 7:5 and I Cor 7:9 imply a right for a divorce victim to remarry.

    I'd prefer he - and your "Pope Francis", see Amoris Laetitia - check with Mark 10:6 on that one (with surrounding context).

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