And such some of you were

Is Homosexuality an innate or conatural preference?

Some Greeks thought so:

4:13 ...as habbard points 4:16 out some forms of sexual preference were 4:19 considered a distinguishing 4:20 characteristic of individuals herard 4:22 notes that many texts regard such 4:24 preferences as inborn qualities and thus 4:27 essential aspects of human identity 4:30 the earliest philosophical account of 4:32 male sexual passivity from the 4:34 presocratic philosopher Parmenides traces it 4:37 to a failure of male and female seed to 4:40 blend properly at a moment of conception 4:42 interestingly other medical writers 4:44 consider effeminacy in men and 4:46 masculinity in women to be genetically 4:49 determined Aristotle believed that the 4:51 desire to be uh now how can I say this 4:55 in a very um YouTube appropriate way 4:58 Aristotle believed that the desire to 5:01 have a male within oneself as another 5:04 male arose from a physiological 5:06 deformity I know either a congenital 5:09 defect or due to abuse as a child later 5:13 Aristological (?) texts considered all manner of 5:16 sexual preferences to be determined by 5:18 the position of heavenly bodies at one's 5:21 birth

I'm not sure if she* means Aristotelic or Astrological ...

As some would be aware of Romans 1, I could mention, St. Paul makes another diagnosis. God punished certain people (as groups, it would seem) by unnatural desires for idolatry.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians, shall we?

Chapter 6: 9 Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, 10 Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. 11 And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God.

In other words, St. Paul doesn't consider sodomy more of a personal characteristic than stealing is. The Christian view would be, if you identify someone (yourself or someone else) as "homosexual" rather than as (if that's the case) "having committed sodomy", it's like considering that someone like a cleptomaniac rather than a thief.**

It was about an hour later. Dr. Cyrus Pym had remained for an unprecedented time with his eyes closed and his thumb and finger in the air. It almost seemed as if he had been “struck so,” as the nurses say; and in the deathly silence Michael Moon felt forced to relieve the strain with some remark. For the last half-hour or so the eminent criminologist had been explaining that science took the same view of offences against property as it did of offences against life. “Most murder,” he had said, “is a variation of homicidal mania, and in the same way most theft is a version of kleptomania. I cannot entertain any doubt that my learned friends opposite adequately con-ceive how this must involve a scheme of punishment more tol’rant and humane than the cruel methods of ancient codes. They will doubtless exhibit consciousness of a chasm so eminently yawning, so thought-arresting, so—” It was here that he paused and indulged in the delicate gesture to which allusion has been made; and Michael could bear it no longer.

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “we admit the chasm. The old cruel codes accuse a man of theft and send him to prison for ten years. The tolerant and humane ticket accuses him of nothing and sends him to prison for ever. We pass the chasm.”

Krafft-Ebing and Kinsey were obviously in the same field as certain people describing*** kleptomania:

In the nineteenth century, French psychiatrists began to observe kleptomaniacal behavior, but were constrained by their approach.[36] By 1890, a large body of case material on kleptomania had been developed. Hysteria, imbecility, cerebral defect, and menopause were advanced as theories to explain these seemingly nonsensical behaviors, and many linked kleptomania to immaturity, given the inclination of young children to take whatever they want. These French and German observations later became central to psychoanalytic explanations of kleptomania.[37]

So, Greek philosophy + modernity = both of them sth like doctrines of demons. Let's confer a voice of sanity from Paris. In a Syllabus formed document, bishop° Tempier of Paris the condemned proposition 166 (later reused in England as proposition 1 of chapter XX) which goes:

Quod peccatum contra naturam, utpote abusus in coitu, licet sit contra naturam speciei, non tamen est contra naturam indiuidui.

That the sin against nature, like abuse°° in the coitus, while it is against the nature of the species, at the same time is not against the nature of the individual.

So, condemned on Laetare Sunday of 1277, a total of 219 condemned sentences, but we are concerned with this one. We must conclude, it is as much against the nature of the individual as it is against the nature of the species he's a part of. There are no such things as people with a special quirk of nature "homosexuality" as there are people with a chromosome 21 more than usual. There are no such things as people with their nature tied to a fetish as there are people who are colourblind. There may well be people identified as such or identifying themselves as such. We need not share their error.

To St. Paul and bishop Tempier, sodomy is a bad habit, like wasting your fortune on gambling, and it is a thing you can cease to do, like wasting your fortune on gambling. And one of the things leading to this vice is idolatry, like for instance believing the stars made one homosexual.

Therefore, to hinder someone from seeking marriage because you, as a priest or doctor or policeman or relative or whatever consider him a homosexual fulfils another word of St. Paul, in 1 Timothy:

Chapter 4: 1 Now the Spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error, and doctrines of devils, 2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy, and having their conscience seared, 3 Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and by them that have known the truth.

Here°°° is Bishop Tempier on astrology:

Quod effectus stellarum super liberum arbitrium sunt occulti.

No, we don't have any effects of the stars on freewill hidden in such a way that they are for experts to figure out. Pretending we do is a species of idolatry.

There are people who consider homosexual couples should have a right to register. There are people who consider homosexual persons should live in celibacy. But are there any people left who say, homosexuals have the same right to natural marriage, one man and one woman, as everyone else has? Charles Chaput, the good eagle#, since 2020 is no longer in charge of Philadelphia, and his successor has asked the LGBTQ community to forgive his attempts at "conversion therapy" which seems to have simply consisted in him allowing these people marriage. If Michael II were not pope, I'd consider him a far better candidate than Viganò, somewhat better than Athanasius Schneider.

When it comes to "diagnosing" homosexuality, I disqualify circumstantial evidence such as preoccupation with this issue.

• I am a Swede, and as such aware of how Gardell and Levengood each has a child with a woman in a lesbian couple they knew (they are no longer "married");
• I am a Swede, and as such aware that Swedish law forbids discrimination against homosexuals, well, by stating they have the right to hetero-sexual marriage, I am not discriminating against them;
• I was on a dark forum for the discussions I had, and part of my apologetics was countering the charge "Christianity states that homosexual people have no right to sex" ... I answered "no body as a right to homosexual practises, homosexuals have exactly the same rights as everyone else to marriage and to fertile and faithful sex within marriage";
• I have been targetted as a homosexual, and I am aware anyone who would want to deprive homosexuals of the right to marriage might strike me as collateral damage, I think this has been done for quite some time.

Plus, I have a debt of gratitude. A homophile helped my mother, when my father had left her when she was pregnant.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Alexander of Caesarea
18.III.2024

Caesareae, in Palaestina, natalis beati Alexandri Episcopi, qui de Cappadocia, ex propria civitate, ubi erat Episcopus, sanctorum locorum desiderio Hierosolymam petiit; atque ibi, cum a Narcisso, ejusdem urbis Episcopo, jam sene, illa regeretur Ecclesia, ipsius gubernacula, divina edoctus revelatione, suscepit. Postmodum vero, in persecutione Decii, cum jam longaevae aetatis veneranda canitie praefulgeret, ductus est Caesaream, et clausus in carcere, ob confessionem Christi, martyrium complevit.

* Cinthia Dubois, here is her video, where this is from:

Did Netflix "Make" Alexander The Great Gay?
Lady of the Library | 13 March 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faMTR7WWZ2I

** MANALIVE By G. K. Chesterton, Part II : Chapter II
The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1718/pg1718-images.html#link2HCH0007

*** Kleptomania: History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptomania#History

Reference to Juqueller, Paul; Vinchon, Jean (1914). "Revue de Psychiatrie et de Psychologies Experimental". L'Historie de la Kleptomanie: 47–64.

° Paris shifted from "bishopric" to "archbishopric" in the time of Lewis XIV, between an uncle and a nephew of the Gondi family. This means that for instance nowadays the "bishop of Nanterre" is under the "archbishop of Paris" but this was not the case in the Middle Ages. Here is the document from Stephen II Tempier, who was just bishop:

Index in stephani tempier condempnationes
https://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/index-in-stephani-tempier.html

Capitula XIX - XXII, explicit
https://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/capitula-xix-xxii-explicit.html

°° Abuse here = abuse of genitalia. Non-procreative uses of them.

°°° "That the effects of the stars on freewill are hidden.
13 of Capitulum IX or overall 161
https://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/capitulum-ix.html

# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_J._Chaput

In Defense of Freewill and Logic

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Determinism Fails to Grasp Freewill (Or Should I Say a Determinist or Two Does?) · When Watching the Same Video · New blog on the kid: In Defense of Freewill and Logic

On a debate, I came across this tirade. My answer, so far, was a bit lame. I'll try to make up for it by a more detailed answer.

The reason ARE my choices, but what is the reason for my choices? No. Potentials are imaginary what ifs, reality only exists in one way from what we understand. Even if we invoke quantum physics and the multiverse reality exists in one single way within this particular timeline. Reality's "worldview" is deterministic, and you are the one confusing your own false worldview with reality. You always are "the kind of person" who choses to do an action, or you never act, and that may be an action on of its own. A homosexual is not the kind of person who choses sodomy, a sodomist is. A cleptomaniac is not the kind of person who choses stealing, a shief is. Here is the thing, we operate on reason, if you have homosexuality that is a reason for "sodomy" and in the absense of reason against it the act is inevitable. In the presence of reasons for and against it the stronger reason prevails, and when both reasons are equally strong its randomness and not any meaningful free will. Except that is the definition of rationality, perhaps your retionality does not seek to find out the truth but that would not be rationality in my opinion. Cause-effect is part of surroundings. If i poke a lion, humans like any other animal are utterly bound to evolution. Or at least materially, if there is a soul it seems to also operate within the constrains of instincts while it inhabits a body, before leaving it in order to enter another. Which we do have some scientific evidences for, its not like all of science rejects spirituality and there are absolutely no evidences for such things. For the most part it seems that way but there is one exception: We have a pretty good database of potential reincarnation cases. If its free to follow rationality that means its free not to, so why would it? Wrong and irrational are synonymous, people can act irrationally when they are ignorant, so there is not enough data to calculate the best path based on the available resources. But yet again, why should we follow rationality instead of irrational thoughts or impulses if we are free to choose? Rationality extends to emotions too, its rational to do what feels right to you. Even cases where a rational thought is rejected in favor of irrational emotions, that is still influences by which cause acts more strongly within an organism. Its literally called reason, its the path of following reasons, that is calculating potential outcome, that is determinism in action. Your action is determined by reason, your reason by data. And seeking pleasure is deterministic. Domination is to a great degree an illusion, similarly to free will. Its about what we have, we have data for determinism, we have no reason to exclude humans from the way we have studied that the world works. AND ITS MOSTLY LOGIC THAT CONTRADICTS FREE WILL, not any claim that we know how the world works to a perfection. Well no, we know we are not free. Feeling a subjective choice is being made does not equal an objective reality. You can logically prove it is an illusion, if you do not invoke quantum physics. But randomness is chaos, randomness is NOT free will. So free will has literally been debunked, maybe where you stand you cannot see it, but i see it clearly as anything. Its not a matter of belief, perhaps as a human you are inevitably bound to clinging onto such ideas, maybe your brain struggles to comprehead the true nature of reality, or perhaps your primal absolute fear that is the terror of death has led you to push towards a worldview where that event does not spell annihilation, but that is simply nature, and perhaps you have grown up in a household where you have been trained to believe in a particular sets of beliefs, thus leading to your attemt to justify them, which is nurture. Either way, in the absense of a supernatural factor operating on entirely different logic than the materium, i cannot account for free will in the calculation. Yah we do. Logic dictates causality, something cannot be born from nothing. What we ask here is what the reason is behind the subject choosing so, not what the reason for the action they chose is. Yes. Yes we are. They may or may not be material, but they use material tools for the material world, like logic, which your imaginary free will contradicts sharply and severely.

Logic is not material. Matter reflects logic, because no configuration of matter can be such that an accurate description of it would contradict logic. This is sometimes used in computers to simulate logic. But computer logic is not logic. Computer logic is not how we do logic, comprehension is. Precisely as with translations, also a thing computer's can't do.

Freewill does not contradict logic.

It only contradicts the pseudologic of "if this was the actual future of x, then no other could be true" (spoken of the retrospect) "therefore" (no!) "no other future was ever an option" (does not follow). The necessity of an enunciation does not mean that the thing enounced happened from necessity, some enunciations are necessarily true from the fact of knowledge rather than the fact of previous necessity.

The reality may only exist in one way, but this is not automatically of necessity. Some potentialities are not realised. If an egg is picked for breakfast, it can never thereafter hatch, but previous to it's being picked by the farmer, it could have remained there and become a chicken.

"we have data for determinism,"

Not the least. We have data for some causes causing in deterministic fashion, i e not having any freewilled control over their outcomes. Electromagnetic fields of certain strengths and directions will work in certain ways, unless counteracted or turned off. As long as the electromagnetic field is there, it has no free control over what it causes. But in each such experiment, very obviously free will is involved in the people doing the experiment.

"we have no reason to exclude humans from the way we have studied that the world works."

We most certainly do. We know we know things. We don't know, and we have all reason not to believe, that electromagnetic fields know things. We know we can snap a finger or not snap a finger. We have no reason to believe an electromagnetic field has any choice.

This makes the study of ourselves radically different from a study of an electromagnetic fields.

Even apart from ourselves, we have no reason to believe the universe overall is deterministic like electromagnetic fields rather then at least partly and in some detail perhaps wholly guided by free wills differring from electromagnetic fields like our own. Even with lightnings, while as a Christian I don't believe precisely in Thor or Perun, that is, I would not deem them worthy of worship, I don't think Benjamin Franklin has disproven them.

You could claim the electric charges in the cloud sooner or later had to be released, I agree. But if you continue to say "and exactly when, that was also predetermined" I disagree. It's clearly within the works of normal providence, rather than obvious miracle, for God to make a lightning break 5 minutes sooner or later than it otherwise might have broken. Or one km further here or there, than otherwise. It's clearly a thing angelic beings could bring about too, and that might include fallen ones, indeed, those of the atmosphere seem to be precisely that, according to St. Paul (a good reason not to worship Thor!). It doesn't take all that much tampering. How quickly the lightning strikes depends on how quickly the electric charges build up. That would depend, among other things, on friction, which is increased by density (I think), and the density would depend on the thickness of the cloud. Given angels have powers to move objects other than by already existing physical vectors, tampering with that would be "child's play" for a demon or occasionally angel. The good angels acting usually on God's orders, the demons with His permission.

So, no, even on so close an item as the weather, we have no direct evidence (unless we bring such into it by your twisted logic) for complete determinism. Astronomy, well, the patterns are very clearly reoccurring very regularly, but whether this is due to an inherent necessity or to some free willed agency, does not immediately appear from the regularity. The direct evidence we have when we look up is for Geocentrism with planetary patterns as introcate as spirograph patterns. And that seems closer to the work of a dancer or a dance ballet than of gravitational orbits.

Some might find fault with my mentioning ballet, considering that Erik Bruhn was apparently the great love of Nureyev. Too bad, to me that makes the Bolshoi a bit less great. However, Benjamin Millepied has been married for soon twelve years to Natalie Portman or Herschlag. They seem to have children together. French Right Wing Catholics might do well not to be over-conscious in every issue of how Russians will take it, as if that were the be all and end all of all righteousness. My reflections on angelic dancers have never been specifically about Nureyev and Bruhn. Both of whom, unlike angels, were born as children of a disobedient first parent called Adam. This means, freewill has been reduced. It has not been annihilated.

So far, the ontological questions. But the debater has shown a deontological side, which I definitely do not like.

"Wrong and irrational are synonymous, people can act irrationally when they are ignorant, so there is not enough data to calculate the best path based on the available resources. But yet again, why should we follow rationality instead of irrational thoughts or impulses if we are free to choose?"

No, wrong and irrational are not synonymous. Not every error is irrational. The error of determinism has a tiny slip of logic, inside a cascade of nearly good logic around it.

But here, the determinist pretends his security* of making the right choice depends on necessity. If he were free to make the wrong choice, he would.

If someone else were free to make the wrong choice he would. How about not allowing someone else that freedom, then? Well, that seems to be the guy's rationale, and in case anyone accuses him of being too domineering, he can always pretend domination, like free will, is an illusion. Voilà l'ennemi.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris, Bpi
Saint Alexis Falconieri
17.II.2024

PS, if my own, on his* opinion wrong world view was the result of necessity, and every one is under necessity, that's precisely why anyone would ask how come his world view for some reason couldn't be the wrong one. It's a secularist version of Calvinistic determinism, it's an atheistic version of a black and virus infected TULIP's "Unconditional election" and "Irresistible grace" .../HGL

PPS, the ultimate spiritual roots of both Calvinism and modern Materialism are probably found here:

The only option in the royal inscriptions to elaborate the consequences of sinfuland wrong behavior of a king is obviously the depiction of the enemy king. So the Babylonian king is clearly depicted as the exact counterpart of Sennacherib. He has a bad character, he is not reliable and he commits evil acts. The moral judgment is clear – the Assyrian king is the darling of the gods because he fulfills their wishes and acts according to their regulations ...

https://www.academia.edu/42918410/Different_Sources_Different_Kings_The_Picture_of_the_Neo_Assyrian_King_in_Shigeo_Yamada_ed_NEO_ASSYRIAN_SOURCES_IN_CONTEXT_THEMATIC_STUDIES_OF_TEXTS_HISTORY_AND_CULTURE_SAAS_28_Helsinki_2018

* Or her, but the character seems to suffer of an overdose of testosterone.

Principle of limitation? NOMa? What would Augustine say?

I was just writing to Dimond Brothers that in an encyclical by Benedict XV, the passage relating to Heliocentrism being just possible correct or rather Geocentrism being just possibly incorrect is not at all the matter of the encyclical.

The encyclical was an endorsement of Dante. More precisely, of Divina Commedia. He did NOT expressis verbis endorse De Vulgari Eloquentia or De Monarchia, which contain Dante's ideology in clear ideological terms. He did not for that matter endorse La Vita Nuova, which might be taken to be about an illicit passion (nor did he condemn it as doing so). He chose Divina Commedia [henceforth abbreviated DC].

It is a peace of theology fiction. It contains pieces of Medieval science some of which we can be sure are wrong, although it is less certain these are involved in DC - apart from crystalline spheres. By this encyclical Benedict XV maintains that Dante while writing theology fiction was not overstepping his bounds, was not "lying about things pertaining to God", since everyone knew and knows it is meant as fiction. The dream setting was a typical code for "don't take this as Gospel truth".

The list of things he cites would include Dante knowing nothing of Harvey, not sure how that is irrelevant for DC, but that is because I haven't read all of it. And in that list, which is a list of concessives embedded in an "even if" clause, comes the concession to modern critics of Dante who would say his cosmology was flawed.

He maintains that DC retains its edifying quality despite any possible errors of science, including in that area.

Benedict XV was not involved in making any specific point about each of these scientific discoveries, real or just presumed, he was not sifting, he was just thinking of what a modern reader would perhaps be aware of like a difference in Dante's learning from ours. That was the point, this did not matter.

I had said this to them a few years earlier, but this time I added that DC was, in his book, licit presumable even if it included admiration for an enemy of the Church - namely Henry VII. My new point was, even some errors about things involving morals do not ban us from reading DC by DA.

Obviously, what he says in that encyclical is not (as I had said earlier too) concerned with taking sides about the matters he regarded as scientific possible advances. Any single example of that list would be to the encyclical an obiter dictum.

Now, Galileo not only takes it that the Bible also has obiter dicta, but he cites St Augustine as support for his theory.

He even interprets a point of Trent that way.

I found this here:

Could There Be Another Galileo Case?
Galileo, Augustine and Vatican II
Gregory W. Dawes
University of Otago, New Zealand
http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/philo/ArticleDawes.htm

[6] A helpful starting point for our discussion of Augustine's position is Ernan McMullin's excellent essay on Galileo's hermeneutics. In this essay, McMullin tries to spell out the interpretive principles which Augustine outlines in De Genesi ad litteram. Among the principles which Augustine employs, McMullin argues, is one which he calls the "principle of limitation." As articulated by McMullin, this states that "since the primary concern of Scripture is with human salvation, texts of Scripture should not be taken to have a bearing on technical issues of natural science" (1998: 298). The key text here is one found in chapter nine of book two of Augustine's commentary, where he deals with the question of "the form and shape of heaven according to Sacred Scripture." Here Augustine states that while "in the matter of the shape of heaven the sacred writers knew the truth, but . . . the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men these facts that would be of no avail for their salvation" (1982: 2.9.20).

[7] This passage from Augustine is one of those cited by Galileo in his letter to the Grand Duchess (Finocchiaro: 94-95). In describing this as a "principle of limitation," McMullin is certainly offering a correct description of Galileo's intention. In a way which echoes his predecessor Johannes Kepler (60-66), Galileo understands Augustine's remark to mean that biblical authority should not be invoked in debates about astronomy. He develops his argument by making, in effect, two points. Galileo's first point is that it was not the intention of the sacred writers to teach astronomical matters. As he writes,

it is the opinion of the holiest and most learned Fathers that the writers of Holy Scripture not only did not pretend to teach us about the structure and motions of the heavens and the stars, and their shape, size, and distance, but that they deliberately refrained from doing so, even though they knew all these things very well (Finocchiaro: 94).

Nor was it the intention of the Holy Spirit, who inspired the sacred writers, to teach us about the working of the heavens:

the Holy Spirit did not want to teach us whether heaven moves or stands still, nor whether its shape is spherical or like a discus or extended along a plane, nor whether the earth is located at its center or on one side. . . . But if the Holy Spirit deliberately avoided teaching us such propositions, inasmuch as they are of no relevance to His intention (that is, to our salvation), how can one now say that to hold this rather than that proposition on this topic is so important that one is a principle of faith and the other erroneous? (Finocchiaro: 95).

[8] These statements could be read as nothing more than an application of Augustine's words, cited above (1982: 2.9.20), regarding the purpose for which Scripture was given. But Galileo's second argument takes this idea further. He not only argues that the purpose of Scripture is different from that of the natural sciences; he draws the conclusion that the authority of the Bible is effectively limited to matters with which the natural sciences cannot deal.

I would say that the authority of Holy Scripture aims chiefly [principalmente] at persuading men about those articles and propositions which, surpassing all human reason, could not be discovered by scientific research or by any other means than through the mouth of the Holy Spirit (Finocchiaro: 93-94).<4>

Galileo's attempt to limit the range of matters with regard to which biblical authority could be invoked is also evident later in the letter, when he makes reference to the Council of Trent (1545-63). The Council had decreed that in matters of faith and morals (in rebus fidei et morum) no one should presume to interpret the Bible in a way that is contrary to the teaching of the Church or to the consensus of the Church Fathers. In paraphrasing this passage Galileo makes a significant addition (not evident in at least one English translation, i.e. Finocchiaro: 109): he speaks of "those passages alone which are matters of faith or of morals" (quei luoghi solamente che sono de Fide, o attenenti a i costumi; emphasis mine). What Galileo wishes to highlight is what he sees as the restriction implicit in the Council's words.<5>

I have found this council canon cited here, even if note 5 doesn't open:

Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent
The Fourth Session
Celebrated on the eighth day of the month of April, in the year 1546.
English translation by James Waterworth (London, 1848)
http://www.bible-researcher.com/trent1.html

Praeterea ad coercenda petulantia ingenia decernit, ut nemo, suae prudentiae innixus, in rebus fidei et morum ad aedificationem doctrinae Christianae pertinentium, Sacram Scripturam ad suos sensus contorquens, contra eum sensum, quem tenuit et tenet sancta mater Ecclesia, cuius est iudicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum Sanctarum, aut etiam contra unanimen consensum Patrum, ipsam Scripturam Sacram interpretari audeat, etiamsi huiusmodi interpretationes nullo umquam tempore in lucem edendae forent. Qui contravenerint, per Ordinarios declarentur, et poenis a iure statutis puniantur.

Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, It decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall,—in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, —wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church,—whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures,—hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published. Contraveners shall be made known by their Ordinaries, and be punished with the penalties by law established.

[I have reworked this from my first scratch, since originally misrecalling as if the phrase was absent.]

As Gregory Dawes rightly says, the word solamente is not there.

[9] Perhaps the clearest indication of Galileo's desire to limit biblical authority is to be found in a third set of passages, where he discusses what should be done when the results of the natural sciences seem to come into conflict with the Bible. Galileo first adopts the traditional line - for which he also cites Augustine - that biblical authority should not be invoked in opposition to the firmly established results of natural enquiry (Finocchiaro: 96, 105). But he then goes further in suggesting that biblical authority should not be invoked to oppose any claims that might be firmly established in the future.

I should think it would be very prudent not to allow anyone to commit and in a way oblige scriptural passages to have to maintain the truth of any physical conclusions whose contrary could ever be proved to us by the senses and demonstrative and necessary reasons. (Finocchiaro: 96)

The same point is made later in the letter, where Galileo attributes his view (somewhat rashly, it seems) to the Church Fathers.

The intention of the Holy Fathers is that in questions about natural phenomena which do not involve articles of faith one must first consider whether they are demonstrated with certainty or known by sensory experience, or whether it is possible to have such knowledge and demonstration [o vero se una tal cognizione e dimonstrazione aver si possa]. When one is in possession of this [la quale ottenendosi], since it too is a gift from God, one must apply it to the investigation of the true meanings of the Holy Writ at those places which apparently seem to read differently. (Finocchiaro: 105; see also 110).

Here, too, Galileo refers to matters which might be established in the future. It is not only matters which have been demonstrated with certainty which are - in practice - to be exempted from the authority of the Bible. It is also matters which are capable of being "demonstrated with certainty or known by sensory experience."

Gregory Dawes is very right in saying "somewhat rashly".

If we look at the quote from St Augustine, given here embedded in the commentary of Dawes:

The key text here is one found in chapter nine of book two of Augustine's commentary, where he deals with the question of "the form and shape of heaven according to Sacred Scripture." Here Augustine states that while "in the matter of the shape of heaven the sacred writers knew the truth, but . . . the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men these facts that would be of no avail for their salvation" (1982: 2.9.20).

If God did not intend to instruct us "in things which would be of no avail for their salvation", this does not mean that we can assume He allowed any author to make any direct error about them either. If that had been the case, He would not have been truly author. Note, verbal inspiration does not in any way take away freewill from the human authors.

Whatever God says with exactitude about anything, even for ill, will not in itself (unless specifically stated, as not so with Pharao's hardened heart, but too so with Nebuchadnezzar's seven years of madness) take away freewill from human actors who need to do exactly the right thing in order for God's word to be true.

God has other ways of bringing about exactitude than taking away freewill. He is, for instance, the root cause of its freedom.

I like to give as analogy what CSL writes about God as a novelist. A novelist doesn't ignore what his characters want to do. He just writes the novel so that characters do what they want to do while the novel goes where the author wants. NOTE, it is not the Bible, but the total of creation and of created existence which is the parallel to the novel. The Bible's inspiration would be the equivalent of a novelist speaking to his characters. Truthfully - and by some means included in its action. Say that I write a paragraph about Susan Pevensie (yes, I am not very original, I write fan fiction of what another - C. S. Lewis - already invented), and next to it on the paper I write a true paragraph about sth which is true in the novel (whether generally outside it or not). This does not make Susan Penvensie in my novel grasp this as a message from me. So, I would (and I won't, I'm not the hero whose truth she needs to hear!) have to write some other thing in which this paragraph was conveyed somehow from me to the characters in the novel.

Now, God knows me and you and sundry and the real Pope and the real Antichrist and the real first men and everything else, and, point in case, the real Gospellers and Moses and Joshua far better inside out before He decided to create them. THis may seem a paradox. God has from all eternity known them. And God has from all eternity decided to create them. THere has never been an actual time in which God already knew them but hadn't decided to create them. BUT the ones He did decide to create, He knew much better than I know anything about Susan Pevensie or my own Spivvins (I invented a secret for him I bet CSL had not thought of, when HE kept Spivvins' secret as much though not as heroically as Eustace). This means that though in the creation He granted them they and we all enjoy exactly the same freewill as when God studied them (or us) He chose to create precisely those whose precise freedom woul give the exact precise effect for His word to be entirely true. This includes freedom of naming and freedom of action for Antichrist - but it also includes the freedom of thought and expression of the hagiographers. Nothing they chose to think or express (and sometimes in voluntary and loving obedience to dictations or admonitions - these are not the same - from God), would be their word, in those sacred texts, in such a way that it was not also God's own.

So, no, Galileo means that the Holy Ghost did not want to instruct the hagiographers, and St Augustine is saying the opposite, He did very much instruct the hagiographers, but also tell them not to waste many words on those matters.

In cases like Heliocentrism and Darwinism, I think their most explicit rejections in Holy Bible were very much included for our salvation - for us not to swallow Galileo's attitude or catastrophic practical consequences of the theories therein rejected (like questioning special creation of Earth due to proposed, not so much vastness of universe - that was known - as its supposedly non-perspicacity from our point of view, or like treating men like cattle, because both are supposed to have evolved from sth lower even than cattle).

And Heliocentrism turns Thomistic philosophy and knowability of the visible creation upside down too. That would be why Saint Robert Bellarmine, better informed than Galileo, condemned the thesis in 1616 (Galileo himself got a warning not to repeat it, not a condemnation or even vehement suspicion of his person, like in 1633). Unless one should rather say that he gave a blanket approval for using Bible in science (if done without hasty interpretations) - because it is the Bible, simple as that.

Now, St Augustine would not allow us to take this or that passage in the Bible without all the rest and build a remote cosmological description on it as if the passage had been given as a text book. But neither would he have allowed us to go with Galileo and treat the passage as if text books could be written correctly while actually contradicting what the passage actually, well analysed, says. Unlike encyclicals of Benedict XV, there are no obiter dicta in Holy Writ. If they are very unconcerned with the salvation of people in one time (or seem to be, when we look only at theological debates, might be less so if we could see and sometimes we do glimpse, what they meant for poetry), they may even so be extremely concerned with the salvation of people in our time.

And Dawes actually tells us so, straight off:

[11] What may we conclude? Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina contains a variety of assertions about biblical authority, which stand in some tension with one another. But there can be little doubt that in this letter Galileo was attempting to impose limits on the scope of biblical authority. Indeed his preferred view seems to alternate between the weak and the strong positions espoused, respectively, by McMullin and Pera. What I want to argue is that neither position - neither a principle of limitation nor a principle of independence - can plausibly be attributed to Augustine. It is worth noting that McMullin himself seems uneasy with doing so. He does so only with the concession that Galileo holds to a much broader form of that principle than Augustine would have accepted. Augustine holds only that Biblical authority should not be invoked when it comes to "technical issues of natural science" (emphasis mine), while Galileo suggests it should not be invoked with regard to any kind of natural knowledge (1998: 306). But this is a slippery distinction. At what point, for instance, does a knowledge of nature in general, where Augustine does invoke the authority of Scripture, fade over into "technical issues of natural science," where apparently he would not? In any case, a close examination of De Genesi ad litteram suggests that Augustine's position is not accurately described as a "principle of limitation," in any sense of those words. Unlike Galileo, Augustine is not interested in limiting the authority of the biblical writings. He therefore holds to an entirely different principle, with a rather different set of implications. Augustine's hermeneutical principle in the matter of what we would call science and religion is better described as a "principle of differing purpose." It corresponds to only the first of the two points made by Galileo.

[12] It would be easy enough to show that Augustine does rely on Scripture for knowledge about the natural world, knowledge which we might describe as "scientific."<7> But that would only suggest that Augustine does not espouse the strong form of the principle of limitation (Pera's "principle of independence"), as McMullin rightly suggests. Augustine does not distinguish natural and revealed knowledge by arguing that they deal with subjects which never overlap. He would have no time for Gould's NOMA principle! ...

And later:

To test this idea, we need to find a passage which deals with something corresponding to a "technical issue of natural science," so that we may examine Augustine's attitude to the authority of Scripture in such a case. The only clear example I can find in De Genesi ad litteram is in another passage from book two, where Augustine tackles the question of whether the sun, moon and stars are of equal brightness. As he writes,

certain persons are also wont to ask whether the luminaries of heaven, that is, the sun, moon, and stars, are in themselves equally bright, on the supposition that the unequal distances from earth may cause them to appear with greater or lesser brilliance to our eyes. Those who hold this opinion have no hesitation in saying that the brightness of the moon is less than that of the sun, by which, they say, it is illumined. Concerning the stars, they go so far as to maintain that many are the size of the sun, or even larger than it, but that they appear small because of their greater distance (1982: 2.16.33).

...

[13] How, then, does Augustine respond to this question? His initial response might seem to be in accordance with McMullin's principle of limitation, that is to say, the principle that "texts of Scripture should not be taken to have a bearing on technical issues of natural science." In Augustine's words, "for us it would seem sufficient to recognize that, whatever may be the true account of all this, God is the Creator of the heavenly bodies." In other words, the true account may be left to the natural philosopher to decide; all the Christian need do is to acknowledge God as Creator. Yet the words which follow suggest that Augustine's view is not so simple. For he immediately adds: "And yet we must hold to the pronouncement of St. Paul, There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another of the stars; for star differs from star in glory [1 Cor 15:41]." In other words, whatever position one accepts, Augustine insists it must be compatible with 1 Corinthians. If he truly held to a principle of limitation, he would not have regarded 1 Corinthians 15:41 as having a bearing on this matter at all.

I can only concur.

Anyone who is presented with an extra corny misapplication of a very well known text from De Genesis ad Litteram Libri XII can from exactly same book quote a shorter and more to the point one:

"And yet we must hold to the pronouncement of St. Paul, There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another of the stars; for star differs from star in glory [1 Cor 15:41]." [Said in context of discussing cosmology.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Ember Friday of Lent
19.II.2016+AD

A Modernist Catholic Not so Bright on Almsgiving Gets a Refutation

He [Chen] had announced the event in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on June 16. “Leading Chinese philanthropist teams up with famous American charities to host charity luncheon for 1,000 poor and destitute Americans,” the ad said. “Each will receive 300 dollars.”
***
On Sunday he met with officials from the New York City Rescue Mission and asked them to supply the homeless people as guests. They said they would participate in the event as long as he did not hand out any cash, said Craig Mayes, the group’s executive director. Mr. Mayes said he was concerned that some of the clients might use the cash to buy alcohol and drugs. In return, Mr. Chen agreed to donate $90,000 to the organization, and the two parties signed a contract.
***
Mr. Chen addressed the audience and then uncorked the news the crowd had been waiting for: “I will give $300 for every participant today.”

The homeless men and women shot to their feet, whooping and applauding.

“No he won’t,” Michelle Tolson, the mission’s director of public relations, said. “The police will shut him down.”

Officials from the Rescue Mission quickly brokered a deal with Mr. Chen’s assistants, allowing him to hand $300 to several chosen homeless clients in a symbolic gesture. The clients, however, would have to return the money.

Quote attributed to:
NYTimes : Gifts of $300 to Homeless Are Reduced to a Lunch
By KIRK SEMPLE, JUNE 25, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/nyregion/300-gifts-to-homeless-by-magnate-are-canceled.html
Given on:
The TOF Spot : Homelessness and Freedom of the Will
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/06/homelessness-and-freedom-of-will.html

Under which these comments:

Xena Catolica
June 28, 2014 at 9:15 AM

Is it illegal to give cash to the homeless in NYC? Because police enforcement of a private "contract" without a judicial review looks really sketchy to me, unless there's an immediate threat to public order & safety....

Looking forward to the eventual arrival of Brennan's "Thomist Psychology" via Interlibrary Loan. Mr. Chen looks like he'd be someone's entertaining case study.

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 18, 2014 at 2:29 PM

Chen served as a prop in a piece of paedagogy.

You know the story when a widow asked Buddha to raise her son? He did no miracle. He asked her to find something from a house where nobody had died and bring it back to him. She found no such house and got the point: everyone is missing someone, request impossible.

Chen very possibly wanted to do an offer that he knew and had arranged in advance it should be impossible.

Anonymous
June 28, 2014 at 7:03 PM

Newt Gingrich used to tell the story of how the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program of the Social Security Administration used to — quite literally — kill people.

The problem was that it could take years for the Social Security bureaucracy to process a claim for SSI. If the claim was allowed, the claimant would immediately get a lump-sum payment of benefits, back to the date of the claim.

Drunks were taking those big SSI checks to liquor stores, cashing them and immediately buying enough booze to drink themselves to death.

Maiki
June 30, 2014 at 1:28 PM

Whether is it "good" to give money directly or indirectly, it is definitely wrong to lie about who you are giving money for a publicity stunt. Either give money directly to a charity or give money directly to the homeless, but don't stage a dog an pony show. The homeless are not props for a philanthropic dinner.

Sophia's Favorite
June 30, 2014 at 1:36 PM

It wasn't a lie when he said it. He was made a liar by those who wouldn't let him do what he said he would. It may not have been a good idea, but it was not a lie until he was prevented from acting on his promise.

Maiki
July 1, 2014 at 4:17 PM

If you "broker a deal" to hand out money and then take it back, it is not the law forcing you to do this. If the charity org is not letting him do it, say... oh well, I can't do it, legally i need to do X. But he brokered a deal to allow him to "symbolically" give away money and get cheers but take it back. Nobody is going to stop him from privately going up to panhandlers and giving them 300$ each.

Sophia's Favorite
July 2, 2014 at 10:46 PM

Given the ad appeared on Monday, it is quite likely it was placed before the final negotiations had been conducted on Sunday. If he "brokered the deal" after the initial promise was made, then, I reiterate, the promise was not a lie, at the time he made it. To qualify as a lie, a statement must be known to be untrue, at the time it is made. You must prove that, at the time the initial promise of $300 was made—in an ad that, again, was probably placed before the negotiations were concluded—he knew he wouldn't be allowed to act on it.

You are making an accusation based on assumptions RE: "facts not in evidence". (Also, I wouldn't be so sure New York City wouldn't stop someone from going up to panhandlers and giving them large amounts of money, if they were doing it systematically rather than sporadically. That might be the kind of thing many cities not run by psychotic totalitarians like De Blasio or Bloomberg would prefer you didn't do, it being likely to cause a riot if anything goes even slightly wrong.)

Also, we put currency symbols before numbers, in English.

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 18, 2014 at 1:01 PM

But the Mission people, who work every day with the homeless and perhaps know something of the reasons for their homelessness, may well be right.

They may well be wrong and God damned Calvinistic heretics too.

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 18, 2014 at 1:31 PM

Most of the homeless are in that state because of mental illness and/or drug/alcohol addiction.

Homelessness is not a state, it is a situation.

It is a situation which is not only dependent on the homeless persons' own efforts to improve his situation to remedy (insofar as it is felt as a burden), but also on the perception other people have of that homeless person.

Now, if it were admitted that most homeless are neither addicts nor insane, then it would follow one had a certain problem about people getting the opportunities they deserve.

Some people do not like that conclusion being even possible. Some of such people have donated very heavily to medical and academic institutions.

Some such institutions and some such people themselves have a very great influence over the volunteers, at least on the level of their leadership. The ones enjoy that influence as benefactors and therefore obviously honest and well meaning people, the others as medical and psychological expertise.

Therefore such volunteers are very likely to give the account that "most" homeless are either addicts of mad. My own experience among homeless is that the least part are so. But some are heavily Stockholmised by psychiatry and perceive themselves as insane, though in fact they are not. Or as addicts, when in fact their consumption is normal.

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 18, 2014 at 1:39 PM

That would be $300 of booze and crack. The homeless individuals would be no better off — indeed, in many cases, worse off — whereas the Mission would spend the money on food, clothing, and such.

300 dollars on booze and crack?

Not my experience even with those who are in fact addicts (though, to be fair, I have not yet seen them handle 300 dollars, and known they were doing so).

Still less with those who are stamped as mad without being so, or even with those who are in fact mad. There are a few, not very many of those too.

Regard a bit this piece of information from an anonymous commenter:

Newt Gingrich used to tell the story of how the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program of the Social Security Administration used to — quite literally — kill people.

The problem was that it could take years for the Social Security bureaucracy to process a claim for SSI. If the claim was allowed, the claimant would immediately get a lump-sum payment of benefits, back to the date of the claim.

Drunks were taking those big SSI checks to liquor stores, cashing them and immediately buying enough booze to drink themselves to death.

Since he is anonymous, we cannot be sure it was in fact Newt Gingrich who told such a story. Or, if it was, we cannot be sure he is not Newt Gingrich or a very good friend of his himself.

But supposing Newt Gingrich had told such a story - would you take Newt Gingrich's authority for it?

And supposing this were true. The story does not tell how many of the drunks who would do this, and how many of them who would in fact die when having done it.

If a few did, is that a reason to cut the freedoms of the many to save a few who would otherwise ruin themselves?

As if people were not equally ruined by such as try to save them from themselves without any real warrant this is needed!

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 18, 2014 at 1:57 PM

One of the reasons why the freedom of the will is a manifest observation is that although the will is determined to the good, it is not always possible to know what the good it, and therefore not always possible to know what means are best to achieve it.

• a) it is usually well knowable what is good either in the realm of reason (like good behaviour) or in the realm of the flesh (like gratification); BUT man is not predetermined to prefer one of the goods over the other so as not to be able to do the opposite (what St Thomas means on a similar note, verbally, is that it is not always immediately easy to know where the TRUE good is);
• b) given what kind of good one decides for - grace, flesh, or flesh insofar as one can also have grace (the choice of most married Christians who bear thirtyfold fruit), it is not always but most often obvious what leads to it: obvious how to please God, obvious what one wants for one's flesh, obvious what kind of compromise between grace and flesh one can go for;
• c) and there are also a few cases where there is reasonable doubt of what is the best means.

When one knows how one's chances have been circumscribed by people judging one as charitably as NYPD (New York Police Department or perhaps Nouveau-York Pé-Dés) judged their city's homeless, it can however be a question of what means is least unlikely to take one out of trouble.

As for those guys, I am so sadly reminded of the story of one Christmas enemy, that NYC police corps was originally founded to deal with Christmas rioting.

And I suppose the Christmas rioting originally arose out of Calvinists protesting against Catholic Christmas festivities (sometimes taken too far) in ways reminiscent of Belfast Catholics protesting against Orangist Battle of The Boyne Memories. I e by interrupting the feasting. Then a Catholic would hit back ... you get the picture?

And the Calvinist would have been thinking he was doing a work pleasing to God while in fact they were killing the Catholics' and their own freedoms, hear the video associated with my comment:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... against Yet Another Puritan as in Stupid Attack on Christmas
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2014/07/against-yet-another-puritan-as-in.html

As for yourself, you started out your article nominally as a defense of the dogma of free will. You ended it with an attack on the freewill of the homeless. You are saying they are mostly anyway slaves to their flesh and therefore no worse off if also treated as slaves.

How can any Irishman not be ashamed of you? Ulster Scots excepted, if you call them Irish, and even CSL (though rather Anglo-Irish than Ulster Scots) was hardly as uncharitable to the poor as you.

Recall the occasion when Tolkien had asked him why he gave a pound or five pounds or whatever to a homeless? "He is going to spend it all on booze" said JRRT (with some shade of his Methodist stepfamily). "So? That is what I was going to spend it on," answered CSL.

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 18, 2014 at 2:40 PM

I wonder how many times that I have asked people at homeless missions to find musicians for my compositions and once or twice I specifically offered what is anyway included in my general licence - they could keep money raised on a concert for them. In that specific case, the money they would have kept would have been kind of a payment for the coffee I had had there.

musicalia : What's the deal? C'est quoi ce truc?
http://hglundahlsmusik.blogspot.com/2008/11/whats-deal-cest-quoi-ce-truc.html

Or when I gave the blog to a young female unmarried volunteer. Instead of this starting a relation and giving her some money for playing piano and me some for composing for it - here are the piano pieces, btw:

musicalia : Guitar, Piano, Lute, Bouzouki
http://hglundahlsmusik.blogspot.com/2008/11/guitar-piano-lute-bouzouki.html

... or most of them, as well as earlier half or so of guitar compositions - she was sent away or it was at least somehow arranged that she left the day shelter where I was having breakfasts.

As a result my homelessness and obscurity and poverty has continued a few years more.

PROBABLY because there were jerks among those leading that day shelter (including a Novus Ordo parish priest or two, and the black one - whether he led or only attended "my" breakfasts - probably considering me an anti-black racist, though I am not) who thought this solution would be as useless to me as 300 dollars were deemed by those other jerks according to story for the homeless who might otherwise have had some days better off thanks to Chen.

TheOFloinn
(author of multicited article)
July 18, 2014 at 5:13 PM

Hans, you're spamming a post again.

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 19, 2014 at 11:43 AM

I am refuting in detail.

Thereby adding value to your original post.

If you are too cowardly an intellectual to take debate with people who REALLY disagree with some of your principles, why have a blog at all?

I am debating with Modernist "Catholics" like you, with Atheists, with Protestants (both on minor details of Creationism, such as if - ok that is not so minor - Geocentrism solves the Distant Starlight Problem, and on real hard and tragic issues, as which of e-LL-en go-VLD VV-h-I-te and Vicarius Christi adds up to the number of the Beast).

I have never ever called any commenter a spammer simply because he contradicted me, nor for such a matter as if his comments in answer to my post were longer than my post itself.

What a sad state of affairs when a man like you can pass for representing Catholicism in the Intellectual world!

HGL
July 20, 2014 at 12:31 PM

Besides, you might want to look up what the word spam means.

SPAM used to be portmanteau for SPI-ced h-AM.

Hence, spam for ubiquitous, unwelcome and obviously irrelevant to watched programme or movie, commercial.

If under a post on Heliocentrism I state Geocentrism is true, I am not spamming. If under this post I say there is superstition against freewill and Communism against the freedom of alms going on in New York and that you are Calvinist for supporting it, I am not spamming either.

I would be spamming if, under either of the posts, I posted links to "payday loans", "grow your virility", "UGG boots" or diverse medications, to name things I have come across.

I suppose what you mean is filibustering. But that word has less sense on the internet, where the debates are not limited in time beforehand, and where therefore using much time oneself is not stealing time from another.

Hans Georg Lundahl
July 24, 2014 at 1:57 PM

By the way, since you did after all use the word "spam" about my action under this post, might you perhaps know of others who consider my commenting as such?

And who might just possibly, theoretically, be prepared to "spam me back" (but with things that are really spam!) for my so-called spamming?

I mentioned the guestbook spamming, it is not the only type I have to live with.

[No answer, so far, from TheTOFSpot/TheOFloinn]

[This one seems to have remained unpublished due to stress while I was draughting it. Now's as good a time as any to publish it. Notification was given under blog post.]