A Sound of Sheer Silence

Now that we've gotten this climate change thing sorted out , it's time for all of us to refocus our attention back to where it belongs--sex!  Yes my friends, this summer, and into the fall, are going to bring us a number of events that are going to place the attention of many on who is doing what to whom and under what circumstances.  The first domino fell on Friday, in the form of the Supreme Court ruling on the gay marriage cases.  But it's not over yet, not by a long shot.  Observe: Last week,  we got the prepatory document for Synod on the Family Part II, Electric Boogaloo . [Ed. Note:   Official English translation here ]. If you have been following this story, you will not be surprised to hear that it is a mixed bag!  For example, it calls out "a certain vision of feminism that considers maternity a pretext for the utilization of women and an obstacle to their full realization."  (Boo!).  But then it follows up with praise for "[a] s...

Over the course of the last twenty-four hours, I have come across three articles that have left me shaking my head.  On the surface, the articles cover unrelated topics, but I think they are all at their core about the same topic.  That topic is the degree to which we are seeing the opening up of a broad and increasingly unbridgeable chasm between two identifiable "sides."  I believe this chasm is fundamentally an intramural divide among Christians, but given the fact that the U.S. is 70% Christian it also plays out in the broader culture as well.  The problem is not that the two sides don't agree  on things; the problem is that they increasingly can no longer even relate to one another.  The two sides stare at each other with a look of mutual incomprehension. 1.  The first article is clearly the least significant-- the ever-strident Fr. Dwight Longenecker's praise of "militant American Catholic men."   As I read the piece, my overwhelming thou...

The word in Hebrew is "qedesha."  It comes from the root "q-d-sh," which has to do with things that are "holy" or "set apart," both in Hebrew and in Hebrew's cousin languages from around the Middle East.  Despite the positive connotations of the word, the Torah makes clear that one should not be a "qedesha," or its male form a "qedesh."  Indeed, Deuteronomy specifically forbids it. Temple of Bacchus, Jupiter, and Venus.  Baalbek, Lebanon Modern English Biblical translations render "qedesha" as "temple prostitute."   See Deuteronomy 23:17 .  Such people were "set apart" for religious rituals by the cultures that surrounded the People of Israel, rituals which involved some form of sexual activity.  It appears that there is scholarly debate as to the nature of these rituals, and surely they varied from place to place within the ancient Near East and beyond.  As an example, the Greek histori...

At the heart of traditional Christian sexual morality is a fundamental disconnect.  On the one hand, you see St. Paul saying things like this: The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.   (1 Cor. 7:3-4). This passage, one of the few that deals directly with the morality of sexual relationships between husband and wife, point to a fundamental, even radical, equality between men and women.  A woman has the same amount and type of authority over her husband as her husband has over her.  As a practical matter, since sex requires the participation of both parties, this means that a married couple has equal "bargaining power" as they negotiate their sexual lives.  Or, more accurately, they should  have equal bargaining power in the relationship. On...