This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
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."
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link