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These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of April 3, 2023
Recognition Diplomacy
Contributions for the week of April 10, 2023
Transitive Reasoning
Contributions for the week of April 17, 2023
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of April 24, 2023
- "What is going in Sudan is a practical demonstration that being a global power does not mean that everything going on in the world is secretly about you."
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Notes -
Concerning the @Esperanza post:
I've been seeing the question lately in a few places, most recently when Bryan Caplan did a podcast with Richard Hanania: how much "power" do people "in power" actually have? In the podcast, they talked about university presidents, but I've heard it discussed for all sorts of positions. The idea is that, to become a university president, you have to do so many things to please certain people, who have certain interests. To what extent do you need to continue pleasing them to remain university president? Even if you can't be formally kicked out of your role for a particular action, to what extent does your role require cooperation/acquiescence from a variety of stakeholders? If you spend all of your political capital accomplishing one thing that is incredibly controversial among your stakeholders, they may proceed to do everything they can to neuter every last shred of remaining power that you have until they can actually kick you out.
I imagine these constraints vary significantly across different positions of power, but as a non-Catholic, I would argue that the pope does not have the power to "decide to make homosexual actions not a sin", even within the Catholic church. The bulk of the power centers within the Catholic church are committed enough to the position that the bible means something, that one of the somethings that they can easily interpret the bible as meaning is that homosexual actions are sinful, and that this is supported by so great a weight of history and tradition that it would be near inconceivable for a mere pope to, on his own, without a long careful process of arguing for and convincing many stakeholders of his position, suddenly reverse course. They would feel as though a "foreigner" has somehow invaded their group, a spy, a saboteur, an enemy operative. They would view it as illegitimate, do all that they can to remove the invader or at least neutralize his further power until he can be removed. Then, they would go about reversing the decision to whatever extent their history and tradition allows them to. They will declare that it was not "conformable with Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Traditions" (to just copy the words from wikipedia).
In a different time, maybe the pope will gain such power. If the cultural memeplex continues propagating among enough of the rest of the leadership of the Catholic church, perhaps enough will get on board with whatever new argument arises to shift around their traditional position. Different levels of support (or even just apathy) across the leadership will require different expenditures of political capital by a hypothetical future pope, but I think that right now, it's not reasonably "within his power".
I know that isn’t the main point of your post, but ‘towards the idea that gay sex isn’t a sin’ isn’t the direction that Catholic Church leadership has been shifting in. Aside from Germany, developed world bishops have been shifting right, alongside their congregations. Third world country bishops(which very much includes the pope- Argentina is a developed country but it’s very definitely global south) have never wanted much liberalization on social issues and where they seek doctrinal changes it’s to accommodate third worldist political nonsense.
The college of cardinals is more liberal than it was in 2013, but they’re aware of the limitations on that(old men with advanced degrees and very long terms of service tend to be) brought about by being out of step with average bishops, and also the increased liberalism is overstated because a lot of these guys, especially the new ones, are third worlders.
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I've wondered before whether the most "powerful" man in history was Napoleon; in the sense that he was the individual who had the most agency as both the ruler of a strong and rich country, and with effectively no internal institutions that were outside of his control/influence to oppose him.
I get what you mean, but for all practical purposes if he was the most powerful man in history he wouldn't have ended up on St. Helena.
Or, alternatively, he was the most powerful man in history, but he still ended up on St. Helena, which demonstrates how powerless even the most powerful people are.
if it takes seven coalitions to put you on St Helena you might've been pretty powerful
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This is more of an aside, but there’s a complexity to the Christian position on homosexuality. Homosexuality refers to both actions and an inclination of the flesh. The Pope is not saying that it’s okay for priests to engage in any homosexual behavior — because it’s not even okay for them to engage in heterosexual behavior! — instead he is saying that he does not judge the proclivities of the flesh, which come from an essentially unconscious part of a human. Hunger happens whether we will it or not, and the sin of gluttony is to always obey our hunger. Similarly, the sin of lust according to Christianity comes from the act (as well as when we consciously look with desire upon a woman, which is a conscious act), and not what “the flesh” wants. What the flesh wants at any moment has nothing to do with our Will, though it is influenced by past behavior. The Pope is saying that if the “flesh” of a Priest is homosexual, that is, if it desires men rather than women, the priest is not to be judged, because a man is only responsive for what he wills (does and thinks and intends and attends and so forth).
The Pope’s position has additional complexity because he is morally prevented from revising anything that Christ would have believed. The Pope does not replace Christ, he is bound (by fear of hell) to obey Christ. So while Jesus said little on homosexuality (I think perhaps one or two opaque references), the Jewish and early Christian sources are clear.
There is one final level of complexity, which is that platonic male physical affection was historically normal and now is not. This means that a homosexual of Jesus’ era up until the era of Wilde could have as much physical affection with a male to his heart’s content, just not to his flesh’s content. Loving, living with, and forever enjoying his company? Yes. The whole spectrum of friendship and love and physical affection which are elements of today’s construct of homosexuality were entirely permissible, if not promoted in stories like David and Jonathon. You just can’t whip your dick out. Anything involving a dick would be a sin. This is important, because much of the harm seen in anti-homosexuality is the loss of the romantic/love sphere, yet in the past, the only thing lost would be handjobs/oral/anal. Incidentally, heterosexuals also lost these upon joining Christianity, because sex was established as a solely pro-procreative act (they lacked the scientific understanding that the ubiquity of oral sex among animals promotes safe copulation for the female for microbiotic reasons).
It's worth noting that one of the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics in the Reformation was over whether concupiscence was sin, so, at least originally, Protestants would probably consider homosexual desires sinful. (not uniquely to homosexual desire, looking after a woman lustfully in your heart, as Jesus put it, would be sinful as well, as well as plenty of nonsexual desires)
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The Catholic Church does have the disadvantage of having to stick to tradition and scripture to a certain extent to maintain credibility. The Mormons have come up with a brilliant solution to this kind of problem: if a church doctrine becomes unworkable because of social change, their leadership can just say they've had a new revelation from God and the dogma has been revised. This is exactly what happened with polygamy.
No it's not. That was explicitly a policy change, meant to allow the church's survival.
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And blacks receiving the priesthood. That must have been embarrassing. As "I Believe" from The Book of Mormon puts it:
How long until the president of the church has a revelation allowing gay "marriage"?
Black people received the priesthood early in church history and had a promise that they would receive it again eventually. I agree that it's embarrassing, but not as much so as you make it out to be. The church won't pivot on gay marriage.
Is this an interpretation of Brigham Young's "they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof"? That qualifies as "eventually", and straight from the horse's mouth, but it was at least a bit of a pivot to interpret it not as "after the Resurrection", but rather as "after mid-78".
Maybe not, but if they did it wouldn't be any harder to rationalize. Pivoting on prior scripture about what's clean vs unclean is as old as Christians eating bacon; it even makes sense to the non-religious! Something like "this was actually risky before modern STD cures" (i.e. accounting for some failures of celibacy and trying to minimize the damage) would be closer to "this was actually risky before modern animal husbandry" than to "I guess the pre-existence ran out of less-valiant souls?"
Yes. To be honest though everything he said about that topic (and many others) is very doctrinally questionable, so I am more of the opinion that he was mistaken (and later church leaders were not confident enough about this to correct the doctrine) than that this was an actual promise. Whether it was a mistake or not though, I think you understand my point, which is that a pivot in timing is less significant than a flat-out rejection of the doctrine itself.
I strongly disagree here. Just because superficially, one single change has been made in the past, does not mean that any other change is exactly equal. The non-religious should probably be thinking harder about these things too--why should all of God's commandments have readily apparent physical justifications, such as the parasites common to pigs? Is he not allowed to give any commandments as a test of obedience? We can look for ways in which the commandments, especially the more "ritual" ones, benefit us (and usually find them), but at the end of the day they're "commandments", not "tips and tricks".
A change in the doctrine of eternal marriage would contradict LDS doctrine to a far greater extent than a change to the timing of the priesthood ban being lifted. The former is much more important, has a longer history (it is both much older and outlived 1978), and has far more scriptural support. Heck, for most of the OT the priesthood was restricted to a certain lineage of Jews so it's not like other arbitrary restrictions are that far-fetched.
The non-doctrinal policy change of forbidding polygamy created a whole offshoot church, so I fail to see how a much larger doctrinal change would not have a larger effect.
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I thought much the same.
All that institutional pushback would be downstream of an understanding that the pope does not get to do that. Asserting that he can just say “I’m the prophet now” is a misunderstanding of the institution. Vatican II was long, formal, explicitly not infallible, and still wildly controversial.
I wish @FarNearEverywhere had been around to set the record straight.
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I don't think the framing of 'treasure' or 'keys' in The Rules For Rulers is entirely correct, but it's useful to keep in mind at least metaphorically.
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I am a Catholic and the moment the Pope claims to have the ability to make something the Church has taught was inherently immoral "not a sin" is the moment I stop being Catholic. Because at that point it's all made up. (Please no zingers here about how it's all made up anyway, I am not going to try to prove Catholicism on TheMotte.) The Pope is one of the last absolute monarchs in the world, but he is absolutely beholden to the dogma of his predecessors. He maintains power to the extent he convinces Catholics that he is genuine.
Now, the Pope has the ability to make something not inherently immoral a sin. For example he could say all Catholics must abstain from wearing pink. But it wouldn't become inherently immoral to wear pink. He would be saying, as a matter of obedience to the Church, he's asking us to abstain from the color pink. (To increase our self-discipline or as reparation for our sins or whatever.)
If he commanded someone to do something inherently immoral under this framework they would be obligated to disobey and no sin would be incurred. We are only obligated to obey just laws.
It sounds complicated when I write it out but I hope the underlying principle makes sense. The Pope is subject to the divine law, but can impose an additional ecclesiastical law on adherents.
Is there a clear, unambiguous definition of "inherently immoral" in an authoritative source – such as the Bible, or maybe something written by one of the great Catholic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas – or is this just begging the question?
The Catholic Church has already had U-turns of a similar magnitude. For the vast majority of its existence, the Church was in favour of capital punishment. Then, in the late 20th century, their stance suddenly flipped and now they're strongly opposed to it.
Their previous stance on capital punishment suggests that they can be flexible about Biblical interpretation if they really feel it is necessary. If they can interpret "do not kill" to mean "actually, you can kill sometimes", then why wouldn't they be able to interpret the much more ambiguous condemnations of homosexuality in the New Testament to mean that homosexuality is not prohibited in general, but only in certain circumstances? (The condemnations of homosexuality in the Old Testament don't matter because the old laws have been "fulfilled" – whatever that means – and Christians are no longer required to follow them and are permitted to eat pork, not get circumcised, wear mixed fabrics, etc.)
My understanding is that the New Testament prohibition on homosexuality is just part of the broader prohibition on sexuality. At least in the Pauline epistles (specifically, 1 Corinthians 7) the New Testament pretty unequivocally suggests that it's better to just be celibate, but if you can't be celibate, then monogamous marriage of the heterosexual variety, with a husband and a wife, is an acceptable alternative. So "do not have sex" immediately becomes "actually, you can have sex sometimes, if you must, but only under the circumstances of a monogamous heterosexual marriage."
I don't want to speak for other people's faith traditions; I don't want to tell Christians what they must really believe, when I find the whole institution broadly unbelievable. But it really does seem to me that anyone who thinks Biblical Christianity is even ambiguously compatible with a homosexual lifestyle must be engaged in some motivated reasoning somewhere.
I believe it says "good", not "better".
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Capital punishment is pretty clearly justifiable—it's arguably instituted with Noah in Genesis 9, which is not specific to the people of Israel nor is ecclesiastical, it's instituted by God himself in the law, and it's spoken of approvingly as the sword in the new testament (see Romans 13). I wouldn't think that it's absolutely necessary that it be instituted, but I do think that it's a legitimate ordering of things.
I don't think that the condemnations of homosexuality are terribly ambiguous. Because it's a political issue, people will use every attempt to find ambiguity or alternative interpretations that they can find.
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A definitive list of Catholic Dogmas and their teaching weight has been made, yes. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott is the best at explaining the degrees of authority each teaching possesses. St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Moral Theology is likely the most thorough explication of Catholic Moral Theology. As Rev. Thomas Slater, S.J. put it, "Moral theology is still what St. Alphonsus left it."
Ott lists 6 grades of Theological Certainty, ranging from "immediately revealed truths... defined by a solemn judgement of faith (definition) of the Pope or a General Council" to "Tolerated Opinions." A solemn judgement of faith cannot be just what the Pope said last Tuesday, or even something put in an instructional document like the Catechism. (The current Catechism of the Catholic Church has many topics with various degrees of authoritativeness, and explicitly states that the degree of authority pertains to the documents outside of the Catechism in which they are defined. Addition to the Catechism does not increase magisterial authority.)
The Church has not U turned on capital punishment, which is infallibly considered not intrinsically immoral. The current Pope skirting heresy does not change the fact that capital punishment is good in a lot of situations. The Pope could even be a full blown heretic and that would still not pose a problem for the Church. What he cannot do is declare he's changing prior dogmatic teaching using his authority as the Pope.
In the case of capital punishment, Pope Francis is clearly making a prudential judgement, which is still binding on Catholics as my first comment shows. Prudentially, in most countries today, is is possible to protect society without killing murders. Much of the benefits to the murderer from killing them are gone as well - in a non-Catholic society it is unlikely that a murderer will repent, go to confession, face the hangman, and go on his way to Heaven. Instead, keeping the murderer alive for longer gives him the best chance at repentance. Prudentially, there is a good argument to not practice Capital Punishment. And as I said above, the Pope doesn't even need a good argument to make Catholics do something under obedience. He could outlaw the color pink arbitrarily.
"Do not murder" in the Bible has always been consistent with God commanding the Israelites to practice capital punishment one book over. There is no ambiguity or conflict there. If you are interested in a more thorough explication of Catholic teaching on Capital Punishment, I recommend, "By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment." (You should be able to pirate it, there's nothing about copyright in Alphonsus' Moral Theology, so it's totally morally fine.) (Also copyright would probably be considered unnatural, like usury, and therefore prohibitions on it are unjust.)
Honestly that reminds me. I owe a debt to Pope Francis for his ambiguous statements on Capital Punishment. It is much, much easier to talk about how Church teaching hasn't changed in regards to Capital Punishment than it is to talk about how Church Teaching hasn't changed in regards to Usury, which used to be the go-to zinger.
Are you sure about that first sentence? My impression was that there wasn't even a consensus on which statements are ex cathedra, beyond the two Marian ones?
That is a common misconception among Catholics. Or rather, the Marian dogma of the Assumption is the only ex cathedra statement made since ex cathedra was defined in 1870.
But obviously, the Church existed for a while before 1870 and defined a lot of dogmas prior to that time. It would be really weird to have a Christian Church where the only thing they are sure of is Mary was assumed into Heaven, and not something like Jesus Christ is True God and True Man.
The ordinary means of infallibility are when all bishops teach the same doctrine, through Church Councils headed and approved by the Pope.
Certainly. I was just saying that I wasn't aware of a list that everyone can agree is good.
Wikipedia says:
In Catholic Academia, it is widely regarded as the list, though I don't know how to prove that without going through each college class's syllibi and listing how often it shows up.
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Do you have a recommended rundown of the development of doctrine relating to usury? As a fellow Catholic I've always been curious.
There are people who argue things like, "our understanding of money has changed" and that sufficiently low interest rates (such that they cover just inflation + a reasonable salary for the employees necessary to facilitate the loan) are acceptable now.
However, I am becoming more and more convinced that the Church hasn't officially developed its teaching in this direction at all. I think loaning money on interest is still a sin. It's not a sin to accept a loan under such terms (though should be avoided if possible.) And yes, this does mean that the Vatican Bank is - at the very least - a near occasion of sin to a lot of people. But that shouldn't be surprising, given what we know of Vatican Bank officials.
If you want to learn more in depth, New Polity did a series on "Good Money."
Church Leaders are not very outspoken on this topic these days. I can only speculate as to why, a charitable guess would be that if the average Catholic understood that the entire system on which they base their livelihood on involves sinning, they will either reject the Church's definition of sin or become scrupulous. It's rare for people to take the middle way, that we live in a fallen world but it's not a sin to be taken advantage of.
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Interestingly, I think organized Christianity in general (and maybe all historic faiths) are in a bit of a bind on matters like this. There are definitely people who separate themselves from their church as a result of, essentially, absorbing political views that are incompatible with received dogma. In an attempt to staunch the outflow, many churches have jettisoned millennia-old commitments... but this has led to further outflow, now from the committed faithful who see their churches placing retention (and, presumably, associated tithes...) ahead of doctrinal consistency, tradition, historical group identity, etc.
I don't know what the endgame is. I am certainly numbered among those who regard Wokism as, essentially, a neo-religion, a secular and distributed form of ideology that erroneously holds that because it doesn't do "supernatural," it must be immune from criticism along the lines of faith or metaphysics. But whether it will ultimately subsume Christianity (as Christianity subsumed so many faiths that came before it), or generate a successfully reactionary response along other lines, I cannot guess. Just by the numbers, Chinese statism, Indian Hinduism, and (to a slightly lesser extent) global Islam seem to be the relevant faiths of the future, anyhow. It would be interesting to know how Christianity and/or Wokism come through that development, but I will be long dead before that game is done, I expect.
Christianity should continue to be relevant. Per my recollection, Christianity will continue to be about a third of the world's population for decades to come per some projections.
I do not think jettisoning old things will work. Most of the churches which have done so and in large part capitulated to progressivism have been shrinking for some time now. What results in dedication to Christianity is dedication to Christianity, not removing parts that seem distasteful in order to make it harder to object to the rest.
What is more important to Christianity than being in line with culture as a whole is preserving a distinct Christian vision, as something valued internally.
As it is written, "Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to gentiles, but to those who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."
The problem with getting rid of the olds is that it always ends up undermining your credibility as “the faith”. People believe in it because they believe that it came from god(s) and that those preaching it are faithful to said god(s) over and above whatever the rest of the world thinks. Once you get rid of that, it’s just another social club, and then what?
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