VOTF SPEAKERS:

 Top heavy with priests promoting the gay agenda and former friends of Shanley.

Some from among The Boston 58.

Freely using Church facilities to spread their message.

It's not easy to find Catholics who want "structural change" in the Church, who are not promoting: women ordination and sexual liberation.

 

SIDEBAR:  On Monday July l4, 2003 @ St. Eulalia’s Church, Winchester, Mass., A Professor of Moral Theology, Edward Vacek, S.J.. from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, spoke on the

Negatives and Positives of the Church’s Sexual Ethics.

Fr. Vacek’s lecture was about the evolving church.  The church that needs structural changes.

especially in the scope of marriage, sexuality, and of course, Our Beloved Holy Father.

 

One would have to bring down upon himself a formal ecclesiastical curse involving excommunication

to call Our Holy Father …… A Cafeteria Catholic, and to say his ideals are too high and lofty . I stand ready, Fr. Vacek to call you ANATHEMA , who deserves the imprecation of divine punishment, in not only speaking, but in teaching such outrageous dribble.

 

The Maid.

 

 

CASUISTRY, CAUSALITY AND CASUALTIES: G.K. Mondello PhD.  14 July 03

 

The notion that human sexuality does not play a significant role in our

moral orientation, or even in the way of the imputation of sin in an order

of magnitude that equals, or even verges upon, sin of a presumably graver

nature is a very queer notion indeed. This rather summary dismissal of the

role of sexuality in the order of grace and nature is one that, regrettably,

or perhaps conveniently, is deeply flawed inasmuch as it is quite myopic in

nature, focusing on the physical act to the exclusion of its consequence. It

is a curious fixation on the functionality and even the adaptability of

human genitalia that prescinds from a much broader scope incorporating the

person, through his or her sexuality, into a community of events as well as

people; in other words, into the social fabric within which he is understood

to enact his being as moral.

 

To argue this odd notion is not, I suggest, merely gratuitously innovative,

nor is it simply shallow theology, or even bad philosophy --- and what is

even more surprising, even poorer sociology. 14 million children, all dead,

as a result of human sexuality casually understood, are, I suggest,

numerically compelling, and morally cogent objections --- casualties,

really --- to this, well, casual and casuistic line of reasoning. I think

that 40 million AIDS cases --- more than casually growing --- are equally

strident in their existential objection to this casual notion of human

sexuality as a mere tangent to deeper moral issues, but possessing no

sufficient warrant of itself. This, of course, is to say nothing of other

STD's (Sexually Transmitted Diseases), but then, perhaps they are not

diseases after all, for that has a negative connotation relative to sexual

license, but "anomalies", or, perhaps better yet, really socially

progessive "inevitabilities" around which other "communities" can be

built to further the activity--- even legislate it ---  that results in what is now, in

retrospect, considered as only an historically reprehensible phenomena

(except, of course to those dying from it) from which our Jesuit colleagues

will lead us to the promised land of enlightenment --- even if it is

ultimately a necropolis..

 

Being sexually liberated from the odor of sin and disrepute attending such

finely nuanced activities that are, according to Fr. Vacek ,only marginally

moral in nature, we are free to pursue a more progressive agenda, addressing

more pressing, popular, and vital issues: homosexual marriages, homosexual

adoption, the ordination of women, the establishment of a truly American ---

and therefore democratic catholic church, (although the "demos", or

the masses, are curiously few in number), much more consonant with our way of

thinking --- and more focused on our genitalia than our immortal souls, and

certainly discerning no nexus between them. And oh, yes, I mustn't forget

the shibboleth: "empowerment". "Blessed are the meek."  How

quaint. Who was the Jewish Rabbi who said that.?

 

Our Jesuit colleagues have ever been avant-garde and the darlings of the

pseudo-literati --- that they should preach to the converted at a VOTF

meeting of the largely elderly at a (Catholic?) Church, St. Eulalia's, in

Winchester, is most condign. The elderly Pope whom he routinely lampooned

has --- he at least conceded - much higher moral standards, than those he

presumed to address. That the moral and theological formation of our future

clergy is entrusted, not to the Magisterium of the Church, but to the queer

idiosyncrasies of such self-esteemed scholars, is, I also suggest, at the

very root of the problem from which VOTF emerged ... seeking, apparently, to

remedy the problematic by underwriting the very aberrations they ostensibly

deplore. A very queer remedy indeed. Rather like bleeding the anemic to cure

them ... Post-modern medicine for a post-modern disease ... and their

patients keep dying ... very queer.

 

 

 

G.K. Mondello's report on the presentation by Fr. Edward Vacek,S.J., at St. Eulalia's Church, Winchester on Mon. evening,July 14, appears to verify the fact that  in his talk: "Positives and Negatives of the Church's Teachings on Sexual Ethics" .Fr. Vacek is mouthing the ethical theories called "teleological" which are condemned in Veritatis Splendor(VS),p.p. 90-104. The warning against those who teach these theories is given in the words of this  1993 encyclical: "This "teleogism", as a method for discovering the moral norm, can thus be called-according to terminology and approaches imported from differennt currents and thoughts- "consequentialism" or "proportionalism". The former claims to draw the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely from the calculation of froeseeable consequences deriving from a given choice. the latter, by weighing the various values and goods being sought, focuses rather on the  proportion acknowledged between the good and bad effects of that choice, with a view to the "greater good" or "lesser evil" actually possible in a particular situation."( VSp.95). The moral specificity of acts, that is the goodness or evil, would be determined exclusively by  the subject's intention and the "faithfulness of the person to the highest values of charity and prudence, without the faithfulness necessarily being incompatible with choices contrary to certain particular moral precepts (read:Commandments)"(p.96).

Veritatis Splendor warns that those who teach  are teaching  false ethics: "These theories cannot claim to be grounded in the Catholic moral tradition... The faithful are  obliged to acknowledge and respect the specific moral precepts declared and taught by the Church in the name of God, the creator and Lord. When the Apostle paul sums up the fulfillment of the law in the precept of love of neighbor as oneself, he is not weakening the commandments but reinforcing them, since he is revealing their requirements and their gravity."(p.97) Veritatis Splendor goes on to explain how this false ethical system denies the Commandments. "Consequently, as the catechism of the catholic Church teaches, "there are certain kinds of behavior that are always wrong to choose, because choosing them involves a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil."(p.99) Further,"One must therefore reject this thesis, characteristic of  teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species- it's "object"- the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behavior or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned."(p.100).

Fr. Vacek and many other theologians who follow these false "proportionalist" and "consequentialist" ethical theories would have their students and the alypeople who turn to them for direction, believe that they can justify such acts as in the situation in which two men who are engaging in same-sex acts and are living together  as partners in this manner are choosing the "greater good" and the "lesser evil" because they otherwise would be acting in a promiscuous manner of same-sex acts with a number of different "partners". Or , another scenario that they would weigh would be if a girl who was  trying to stay out of poverty became pregnant she would choose the "greater  good' and the 'lesser evil' if she aborted her unborn child and thereby stay out of poverty. Basically, the proportionalist/consequentialist  "etics" theologians who subscribe to this false method of teaching are teaching how to rationalize under the guise of a sophisticated rhetoric intended to obfuscate the truth! Pick up a copy of Veritatis Splendor, or better still, get the audio tapes from the pauline Books and nedia store in Dedham and listen to Fr. George Rutler explain the whole encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, in a far better manner than I ever could!!   ---Alice

 

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