A Sound of Sheer Silence

Perhaps the most beautiful passage in Scripture is the 13th chapter of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians.  It is, ultimately, a beautiful ode to love and the qualities of love.  Perhaps its most famous part, often read in the context of weddings, is verses 4 through 7: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That part is undoubtedly lovely, but for me the most interesting section comes at the end of chapter 13.  There, it seems to me that Paul is making a case for prioritizing love as a religious principle (or, really, a principle for anything) above any other possible religious principle.  This is because, Paul argues, all of those other principles are one way or the other grounded in some form of knowledge...

In the previous post, I took a look at the idea of a taboo, and whether people are freaking out about homosexuality because it is a taboo.  If homosexuality is a taboo, we would expect it to be "protecting" some social division or structure.  And I think homosexuality is "protecting" a social division--the division between men and women, and the notion that this division manifests itself in rigid roles respective to each gender. Let's go back to St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3: 26-28. Other than the resurrection accounts, I think this is the most radical passage of the New Testament.  St. Paul is naming three of the most profound divisions in his society and declaring them to be irrelevant in light of the coming of...

One of the true joys that has come from writing this blog is that it has given me the chance to make what I call "Internet friends."  These are people that I have not met in person, but people who I have interacted with via Twitter or email as a result of something I written, or something they have written, or both.  Frank Strong of Letters to the Catholic Right   is one such person (by the way, you should absolutely check out his recent post on the goings on in the Episcopal Church , of which he is a member), as is Bill Lindsey of Bilgrimage .  Another one of my Internet friends is Maureen Clarke, a woman who lives in Manchester, England, and maintains an active Twitter feed involving the Catholic Church, UK politics, and healthcare issues in her neck of the woods. On Saturday, Maureen tweeted the following: The debate on LGBT dominated the Synod on the family yet nothing changes.  Why is sin always synonymous with sex?  What about greed power, etc W...