quote:The document goes farther, and establishes that women derive their identity from service to "the other."
I didn't get that "the other" refers to just men, or just spouses, but to the world in general. I didn't see anywhere where women were supposed be unequal to men or lose all self esteem. And suggesting that lds has such a better system based on your interpretation of one document seems a little bit harsh.
Posts: 1990 | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Theca, if I didn't think the LDS had a better system, I wouldn't be LDS.
I'm not going to apologize for thinking that; anyone is free to disagree.
-----
I think there's a difference between service and obedience. Service to our fellow men is the best thing to do and live for, but only if its freely given. Service done when compelled doesn't count.
I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I agree with Theca. It doesn't single out women as servants:
quote:but they are also called to exist mutually ‘one for the other'...
And I think the LDS stance is very similar to this document. Really, how many fundamental differences are there between the Catholic document and this proclamation?
quote: The Family: A Proclamation to the World
The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children.
All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.
In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.
The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God's commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.
We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God's eternal plan.
Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. "Children are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.
The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.
We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.
We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.
quote:Ideally, a constant population would work perfectly in paying for retirees. Unfortunately, most western European countries don't even have this.
I don't believe many, if any, European countries are actually decreasing their overall population. The crises that threaten the pension systems are mainly caused by an increased living span and, at least for Sweden, an abnormally large generation born during the 1940th reaching retirement at the same time. Barring a growing population, the first problem can only be solved by an increased retirement age, lower pensions or higher productivity; the second is a fluke that the system must be flexible enough to handle.
Posts: 896 | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hrm. I don't think this document really "confronts feminism" as it has been spun. I think it emphasizes again traditional family values. THere really isn't much new here -- even the application to daily life hasn't really changed except for a dig against homosexual marriage, which they are blaming on feminism?! That's the only real "message" I got out of this text other than a basic repetition of be good families and support and rejoice in each others masculine/feminine qualities.
I guess from the headline, I expected more of the traditional "be subserviant to your husband" doctrine that the Catholic church can't seem to decide about. Really, it wasn't until the late 90's that the church even realized how offensive that was even to good practicing Catholic women otherwise in occordance with the church.
quote:Most European countries have low growth rates. In the United Kingdom, the rate is 0.2%, in Germany it's 0.3%, and in France, 0.4%. Germany and other European countries' natural growth rate is actually negative (on average, women in Germany give birth to 1.5 children, which is below the number to yield zero population growth, approximately 2.1 children). Germany's natural growth rate of -0.1 can not be used to determine doubling time because the population is actually shrinking in size. It's immigration that brings Germany's overall growth rate up to 0.3%, with a doubling time of about 233 years)
(source) The countries are growing, but only because of immigration. An immigrant population, receiving on average minimum incomes, is not going to provide the economic support for an aging demographic.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:The countries are growing, but only because of immigration. An immigrant population, receiving on average minimum incomes, is not going to provide the economic support for an aging demographic.
Not to mention the fact that their time working (and thus, paying taxes) in Germany will be much shorter, but the time they spend on goverment support after retirment will be virtually the same.
quote:Not to mention the fact that their time working (and thus, paying taxes) in Germany will be much shorter, but the time they spend on goverment support after retirment will be virtually the same.
Well, to estimate the economic impact of the situation we would need to know the age of the average immigrant. Don't forget that the states save money on not having to provide schooling, health care and child support for immigrants arriving as adults.
posted
Yeah, I didn't think the document says anything surprising, really.
Katharina, I know you think lds is the perfect religion, that's fine with me. I wasn't looking for an apology and your reasonings were interesting to read. I was surprised that you thought this document was so different from LDS beliefs, actually.
But if I posted an lds document, then took a sentence or two out of context, reinterpreted it, and then started talking about how much better Catholicism is based on that one document, I'd probably find my posts deleted.
Posts: 1990 | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
One thing that always bothers me about conservative institutions complaining about the evils of feminism is how they conveniently forget how important the feminist movement was is addressing the ways that they specifically screwed up society. The Catholic Church used to support a definition of marriage that made the woman more or less chattel of her husband. Her job was to do whatever he told her to, up to accepting without complaint his drunken beatings. There wasn't this perfect order that feminsits came along and decided to screw up. They were reacting to very real problems in part caused by the Church and definitely not something they Church was interested in doing anything about.
I think that the Church, and others, would have much better credibility on this issue if they acknowledged that there were past problems that the feminists actually addressed depsite the objections of the Church and then moved on to explain why the current situation is different, as opposed to putting out this fantasy golden age that the nasty feminists had to come along and ruin and that we need to get back to.
It's like talking about the Golden Age of America that the evil civil rights people had to break and how marriages stopped working because people were pushing for everyone to get divorced.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I thought the letter was well written and a call for equality for women in whatever they chose to do, be it family or profession. I do not understand, then, why Pref. Ratzinger says
quote: In this perspective one understands how the reservation of priestly ordination solely to men22 does not hamper in any way women's access to the heart of Christian life. Women are called to be unique examples and witnesses for all Christians of how the Bride is to respond in love to the love of the Bridegroom.
which, to me, seems to be at odds with what he writes in the rest of the document and, therefore, hypocritical. If, as he writes earlier, women engaging in leadership roles in secular society is perfectly acceptable and welcome, why not Catholic society? That is, if women can engage their feminine perspectives sufficiently from the rank and file as examples, why is this not true in secular society?
I would also like to point out that while it is perhaps not advisable to percieve the sexes in a solely hierarchical power struggle, neither is it wrong to understand that, as Pref. Ratzinger notes, women *are* sometimes constrained in their various societies by their biology (in sin, etc) by that society and that patriarchy does exist edit: and that feminism was and is an important ideology to help women achieve the complimentary parity that Ratzinger speaks of.
I think this letter is, on the whole, a positive force. I do not agree, though, with the premise that feminism through its ideas is solely responsible for the changes that Pref. Ratzinger notes--increased acceptance of homosexuality, women working outside the home. I do think that there are technological changes manifested in society that make these options more viable.
quote: The document goes farther, and establishes that women derive their identity from service to "the other." Whereas men merely rely on women for the future of the race.
Heh.
Anyway, the letter is boring. Tedious. The Church loses its power as time passes. Of course, it changes itself every now and then to try to preserve it.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
To continue on with my thinking from above, I think that the Church often runs into problems when they apply their predominantly static thinking to dynamic concepts, like society. There's a claim early on in the letter that the Church is an expert of people. I think that this is patently absurd. They don't understand people as dynamic systems, they understand how they want people to be, as the static model they have fitted out for them.
I think, from the Church's perspective, if they got those crazy feminists to stop all that agitating, then men and women would come back to the Church's way of doing things and that marriages and the relations betweeen the sexes would be great. And therein lies the main problem. This is an idea incredibly divorced from reality and history.
Returning to the Church's view of marriage will exchange the problem we have now with other problems, probably ones like there were when the idea of male dominance was the accepted way of things. And, I'm pretty darn sure, if this actually happened, the Church would again not do anything about these problems, because the ideology of the world would fit with what they wanted it to be.
To put it another way, it wasn't feminists that came up with the idea that being a housewife and washing and cooking and cleaning was degrading and of little importance. This grew out of the male-dominated world that preceded the feminists. Women, and so-called "women's work", were seen as distinctly inferior. It wasn't that a man shouldn't or couldn't do this work, it was that it was beneath them.
Feminists didn't come along and change people's perceptions of women doing these things to them being inferior. They said that there was no reason why women should be prevented into doing those things that society believed were superior to being a housewife. They didn't change perceptions that women were being controlled. Before they came along it was considered only right that women being totally controlled by their men. Feminists changed the perception, not that women were controlled, but that it was right that they were so.
The problem I see is that the current feminists buy into way society sees power and it's importance. They still blieve that no woman would choose to do the housework or whatever and that they would only be oriented towards a career and towards the sort of power that society still values. This is the issue that we should be concerned about and not trying to get women to again believe that the only place for them is in the home.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I would say that the feminists (of the 70s) were the ones to define domestic work as "crap work," but they were doing so coming out of the context of aristocratic life of the early 20th century. Refined ladies of the Victorian era (and this is a wealthy European practice stretching back centuries) hired help to clean up after the basic human needs of them and their families. What started as disdain for the lower class of peasant woman who cleaned up and cooked for her own family translated into contempt for the woman of the large middle class demographic with aristocratic attitudes but middle class resources.
I would venture to say that the reason this is such a debate in first-world rather than developping countries is that we feel superior to any kind of menial labor and have subverted that irritation to bickering between the sexes rather than bucking up and just getting the dirty work done.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
"I would say that the feminists (of the 70s) were the ones to define domestic work as 'crap work,' but they were doing so coming out of the context of aristocratic life of the early 20th century."
You would be wrong. There's ample literary evidence to suggest that men -- even bachelor men -- considered such work to be petty and "beneath" them, well before the 20th century.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tom, I appreciate your input but I have read a lot on the issue and my opinion is not entirely uninformed. Please don't tell me "you would be wrong." It's a very subjective issue.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, no, it's NOT very subjective. I know you've read Shakespeare; his characters have some very unflattering things to say about women's work and the kind of unmanly men who'd stoop to doing it. <snarky>Shakespeare was written well before 1970, even according to the Baconites.</snarky>
The most you can say about modern feminists is that, around 1920, they stopped arguing that housework WASN'T crap work -- which had previously been their focus -- and then said, "Okay, yeah, you're right. It IS crap work. And we're sick of being demeaned by being associated with it. So we have the right to do other things." And by about 1970, this was gospel.
posted
Annie, Check out the theological and philosophical writing about the role of women from 13th century Europe. Everything I said is evident in this. The 1200s were also the time where it became accepted Church doctrine that women who stepped out of their place were to be beated by their male relatives, much like in fundamentalist Islam today.
This attitude towards women is evident in many other sources through the years. Consider the rule of thumb, the English law that a man may beat his wife without explanation as long as he used a rod no thicker than his thumb. Treatsies on domistic life from the 1800s specifically defined "women's work" as being degrading for a man to do, it being beneath his dignity. Because of the influence of the Enlightenment idea of the equality of the sexes, some of the American colonies and later states granted women the right to vote, only to have it later revoked because women lacked the ability to decide for themselves what was right and that their place was in the home, not in the world. During the later debates over women's sufferage, many detractors (and not a few supporters) of it claimed that giving a woman the right to vote was the same as giving her husband two votes.
You tell an interesting story, but it's wrong. If you're basing your beliefs on feminists based on your fairy-tale version of how things worked, you're doing both them and yourself a great disservice.
posted
Society's concept of women is dynamic and complex. History, literature, art, sociology, and many other factors all contribute to it. To speak for such large numbers of people and incorporate all relevant factors requires either nearly omniscient comprehension of many disciplines (many of which are speculative at best) or gross over-simplification.
I don't pretend to have a complete understanding, but I'm doing my best to read and learn all I can on what I see as a very important and fascinating subject. I wrote two term papers on the subject last semester, and my conclusions are based on many factors. Rather than turning this into a pissing match, let's just acknowledge that there are a lot of factors involved and give credibility to different interpretations of the evidence at hand.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
In my ideal world, people would work their ideal jobs for 4 days a week, and then would do a community job like collecting garbage for one day a week.
I think both men and women should live to serve 'the other'. Strange as it seems, I think that for LDS, giving the priesthood to every worthy male rather than just a clergy, makes men more inclined to serve others because it impresses upon them the need to serve. Okay, I think I might be agreeing with AK here (in regards to the muslim thread)
And I think men and women are different on many levels. I don't think it is conditioning. I was very much allowed to be a tomboy, I went to college studying the sciences and had many good talks with my dad about things scientific. I was always very good at math. I feel out of place with much of what other women enjoy talking about/doing. And yet, I feel very much a woman, and my husband is different from me in ways that I've come to see as very much a part of his gender. There are too many gender similarities through every culture to see it as cultural indoctrination.
Posts: 438 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
"Who was writing and reading in the 19th century, Tom?"
Is your argument that we can't trust the historical record prior to the 1900s, Scott, at least on the subject of women, because women didn't write it?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just remembered hearing about what a huge uproar there was in England or America a couple centuries ago when doctors first started giving women pain medicines to take for childbirth. There was some sort of religious basis for believing that women OUGHT to feel the pain of childbirth. So the men said. Ugh.
Posts: 1990 | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
The middle ages is an interesting period in women's roles, and thus makes the standard "Catholics have always believed X" argument rather simplistic.
I've studied Christine de Pizan and her proto-feminist works, which I believe come out of early traditions of lyric literature and the cult of the Virgin that gained wide acceptance in the 12th century. Prior to the rise of absolute monarchies after the Renaissance, woman's role was very different. The Salic Law, France's infamous policy that prevented women from passing on the royal line or weilding monarchic power, was based on a medieval law from the Frankish period but not re-discovered and instituted until 1372. Thus, oppresion of women that we now relate to the pre-revolutionary period was not standard practice in the middle ages and was far from being the status quo.
You can go further to explore differences in how females were accepted in France versus England. Wheras the Salic legacy promoted a very misogynistic attitude on the continent, British society was much more progressive and by the time Mary Wollstonecraft came along, England was seen as being very advanced and liberal in the field.
My point? Attitudes in the Victorian era can not be expanded to cover "the past." 20th-century "enlightenment" is not unique in history. We have to get over this grossly distoreted view of our own history and stop dismissing everything from the past as barbaric. We're missing some very important ideas and truths when we do so, and systematically shooting me down as uniformed does not bolster your argument.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
My goodness, this is the kind of debate that makes me wish I was pagan...oops, too late.
quote: Recent decades have seen a plunge in birth and fertility rates, particularly in the Roman Catholic heartland of southern Europe, as women struggle to combine jobs with their traditional roles as mothers, homemakers and carers.
Church representatives have argued that this is symptomatic of a breakdown in values, and particularly a greater selfishness among young couples more interested in consumer goods than creating life. Feminists have long held that it is a result of the reluctance of men to share household tasks and the failure of governments to provide adequate support for families.
I don't see that as a symptomatic breakdown in values, but as more younger people choosing to pro-create at their discretion, or not at all. I have a close cousin who has, as a mutual decision with her spouse, chosen to not have children at all. Her husband is in the military, and as so travels quite a lot. They have chosen not to conceive as neither one of them would want a family where a child would have to deal with the absence of his/her father. My fiancee and I, in our five years together, have decided that we are not ready yet to have any children, although after we have been married for some time and are mentally and financially ready to, we plan to have one and adopt another. These are our choices, they do not have anything to do with being 'selfish', or wanting 'more consumer goods'. The choices I see young people making today are responsible choices, preparing a stable foundation for the household they will in the future have. Perhaps, this is also what is happening in Italy.
However, I also do not agree with the femenist perspective, at least so far as it goes in my relationship. Rick and I do equal work to sustain our living conditions; we both work, he cleans the kitchen and takes care of cooking, while I do our laundry (which really is like a full time job in itself). Rick shares in our household tasks, perhaps he is the exception to the rule, but it is enough to show me at least that not all men are like the description that is given.
Probably the only part of that statement that I agree with is that perhaps governments should require workplaces to provide adequate support for families. Of course that should be done while not singling out and seeming to discriminate against single people or couples without children. I've always felt that corporate America at least has run amuck in maintaining efficiency in the workplace.
Posts: 701 | Registered: Jul 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
1) A man works from sun to sun, but a womans work, listed here as crap work, is never done. That is why it was called crap work--because it was necessary, difficult, dull, and boring.
It still is.
And it was completely underappreciated.
It still is.
My hat is off to anyone who does this work.
2) Let me paraphrase the letter.
Yo! We Catholics are loosing the race. All our good European Catholic woman just aren't producing enough babies. Now I don't want to suggest that you are JUST baby machines, nor do I want to stop you in pursuing other jobs, but if we don't start popping out some good Catholic kids, we are going to have to close up shop.
Big problem is all the women are working and not getting married until wel past they are 13. That is bad. It also confuses the rest of us when it comes to marriage.
So here it is.
Women marry men and have children.
Men marry women and help the powerful women have children.
Gay women who don't want to have children, you can be nurses and teachers.
Any gay men who don't want to have children? Join the priesthood where you've been for the past 1000 years.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
What records do we have of the poor to lower-middle class cultures in the contested time period?
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
We have a few literary records of that time, which don't reflect the idea of the equality of the sexes; we also have records of legal cases which occasionally pertain to the poor, which again don't reflect any perception of equality. Beyond that, there's not an awful lot -- but given that, why believe that the poor were in some way "special" compared to the rest of their society, especially when the few records we have don't suggest this?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Annie, You claimed things that aren't true. You said that the idea of women's work being beneath men came about as a result of it being delegated to domestic servants in the 1920s. I tried to show that this idea that women's work was degrading for a man to do and beneath them is evident from literature before that period. This isn't a pissing contest about who knows more. It's about a statement you made that is contrary to the facts I had. I wasn't trying to say "look how much I know", I was trying to point out cases that specifically disagreed with your assertion.
---
As to women's work being "crap work", my assertion is that that was how society viewed it and how society still views it (as dan said). The feminists didn't create this idea. They said, we're not going to do your crap work anymore. I think that the specific problem we have is that society still views it only as crap work, or, on the otherside as this glorious wonderous thing that only women can do. Both of these ideas, I think, are extremely limiting.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
Yo! We Catholics are loosing the race. All our good European Catholic woman just aren't producing enough babies. Now I don't want to suggest that you are JUST baby machines, nor do I want to stop you in pursuing other jobs, but if we don't start popping out some good Catholic kids, we are going to have to close up shop.
Big problem is all the women are working and not getting married until wel past they are 13. That is bad. It also confuses the rest of us when it comes to marriage.
So here it is.
Women marry men and have children.
Men marry women and help the powerful women have children.
Gay women who don't want to have children, you can be nurses and teachers.
Any gay men who don't want to have children? Join the priesthood where you've been for the past 1000 years.
If this was a joke, I didn't get it. If this is serious, it's far beneath the level of thought I've come to expect from you, Dan.
posted
To me, although there are debatable points before this, the following is where this statement goes off track completely. I think this is typical of Catholic Church logic, so I'd like to explore it and maybe decode it for those with less experience in the Church:
quote:7. Original sin changes the way in which the man and the woman receive and live the Word of God as well as their relationship with the Creator. Immediately after having given them the gift of the garden, God gives them a positive command (cf. Gn 2:16), followed by a negative one (cf. Gn 2:17), in which the essential difference between God and humanity is implicitly expressed. Following enticement by the serpent, the man and the woman deny this difference. As a consequence, the way in which they live their sexual difference is also upset. In this way, the Genesis account establishes a relationship of cause and effect between the two differences: when humanity considers God its enemy, the relationship between man and woman becomes distorted. When this relationship is damaged, their access to the face of God risks being compromised in turn.
God's decisive words to the woman after the first sin express the kind of relationship which has now been introduced between man and woman: “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gn 3:16). It will be a relationship in which love will frequently be debased into pure self-seeking, in a relationship which ignores and kills love and replaces it with the yoke of domination of one sex over the other. Indeed the story of humanity is continuously marked by this situation, which recalls the three-fold concupiscence mentioned by Saint John: the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life (cf. 1 Jn 2:16). In this tragic situation, the equality, respect and love that are required in the relationship of man and woman according to God's original plan, are lost.
The relevant Bible verses from Genesis 1 are:
quote:16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree in the garden, 17but you shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
Here's the deal.
1. They claim that this is a "positive command followed by a negative one. In actual fact, it is only one command (albeit negative as in "don't do xxx" preceded by a permissive statement, not a command at all.
It is important to understand, I think, why this slight "mistatement" is worth even mentioning. I don't have all the theological writings, etc., to back this up, but pay attention to the obvious use of symmetry in the whole piece and you'll see, I think, that the Church's argument is all about showing a balance to what God wants (it believes) versus an imbalance whenever things don't go God's way.
It's a nice thing to believe, but it leads them into forcing these weird little assertions of "balance" even when the text doesn't support it.
But ask...why bother?
Because... the entire argument is that God created us in a balanced relationship and the only thing we're able to do is screw that up with our various wants and needs.
Buy into that, and the rest of the piece will be logical if uncomfortable.
Realize, however, that you are just assuming that to be the case. I think we could just as easily make a case for other relationships with each other besides the one that the Catholic Church has fixated upon. And the question is whether or not things that are different from our original creation (as implied by the two Genesis accounts) are permitted under God's plan.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Realize, however, that you are just assuming that to be the case.
Bob, how do you leap from your textual analysis to this statement? By no means does the article contend solely on this one point to make its case for balance.
The point of mentioning the positive v. negative command (the analsysis of which isn't nearly as simple as you show here) is that God doesn't just tell us what not to do, he also makes it clear what we should do. The may indicates that there is considerable room left for the exercise of free will; which fruit to eat, when, how much. But it's clear God expects them to eat this fruit.
posted
I thought I made it clear that this was the point at which the article departed into the realm of assumption leading their conclusions.
Sorry if I didn't make that point explicit. It's the first point in the article where they start down this path, not the only or the last.
This is fairly typical of the expository style of the Church. I just wanted to point that out. Make the assumption explicit at this point since from this point on in the article, they are just going to assume that their major premise is proven and accepted.
"We say Genesis means xxx, so it does."
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
"One can interpret Genesis 1:16-17 as outlining two balanced commands from God. In that context, we can see that God had in mind a balanced approach to the sexes..."
I might at least be able to follow their argument through to the end and say "yes or no" to whether it makes logical sense.
But the Church will insist on it's authority to speak for God and the Bible's content. I just don't believe it. And they aren't really talking to me, then, are they, but to the millions of faithful Catholics who take the Church as the earthly authority.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
This document is not designed to give an exposition on the possible meanings of biblical passages; it's designed to give a Catholic exposition on an important issue.
I still think your analysis is pretty weak, and I think you've dramatically overstated how much the article relies on this passage.
The article isn't trying to prove the balance doctrine; this is a starting premise for the points made in the article, with hundreds of years of theological writing behind it. It seems as if you're asking them to prove every aspect of Church theology referenced in the article, with each proof going back to first principles. It's a fairly unreasonable request.
posted
Well, shucks, Dag - it ain't unreasonable. Geometry teachers have been expecting valid, logical proofs of mathematical theorems for centuries . . .
And it's perfectly acceptable for Bob to ask us to apply some formal logic thinking to it . . .
I actually really enjoyed going over some of the old greats in philosophy and logic classes years ago - it was good for inspiring thoughtfulness.
Questions are good things.
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
That wasn't a question. It was extracting a 2-line summary of an idea that probably has thousands of pages written on it, deciding that summary isn't a valid proof, and then rejecting the whole conclusion (edit: of the thousands of pages) without ever addressing the thousand pages of underlying thought.
To extend your analogy, you don't have to include the entire proof of the Pythagorean theorem in every single proof you write that uses it.
I KNEW my geometry teacher was asking for too much . . . .
frankly, I appreciate that folks are willing to even consider anything about this statement -
as for me, I have an inherent distrust of any organization that didn't decide the world was round until the 20th century . . .
although I do like the idea that we might decide to support families more strongly and work to encourage diversity of voices in government and communities . . .
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:I have an inherent distrust of any organization that didn't decide the world was round until the 20th century
The Church accepted that the world was round well before Columbus' time - in fact, before Gallileo's time. OSC actually summarizes the current types of thinking quite well in Pastwatch.
posted
My apologies, Dag - I was typing too fast between too many projects. I "meant" the debate regarding whether or not the earth revolves around the sun -you know, that great debate that didn't get resolved prior to the 20th century. Galileo suffered quite a bit under the Inquisition for expostulating upon his views -
posted
Still, this is not when the Church acknowledged that the sun moved around the earth, but rather when they decided Gallileo was not guitly of heresy, the facts of which involved more than whether the sun moved around the earth.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Geometry teachers have been expecting valid, logical proofs of mathematical theorems for centuries . . . ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
