3 December 2018

Coleridges and billabongs

An Australian prelate of this name (a relative?) is reported to have expressed the view, with regard to homosexuality, that "'Love the sinner, hate the sin' ... no longer communicates with ... the real world" in which sexuality is "part of [your] being".

I beg regular readers to forgive me for making yet again a point I have often made before when similar speakers have advanced similar ethical hermeneutics: Why does this gracious tolerance not also apply to paedophiles?

Or, perhaps, it does. Mgr Coleridge - I assume he has not been misreported - should tell us. It could help us all to be so much more relaxed and understanding about "pervert" priests. Who are we to condemn them? And to call them nasty names? After all, it is "part of their being", isn't it? God Made Them Like That, didn't He? We mustn't suggest that their sexuality is in any way "disordered", must we? Get cool, Man! Chill out! [Have I used those last idioms correctly?]

Psychopaths too ... I'm not an expert in these matters, but isn't their condition 'part of what they are'?

And perhaps the Most Reverend cobber could add an explanation of his words "no longer". When was the time when the aphorism did "communicate with the real world"? How long ago was that? What has happened so that, apparently, it now "no longer" does so? What has made it cease "communicating"? In what other areas of Moral Philosophy would he expect this principle to apply?

Or has such an important paradigm-shift so far only taken place in the gay billabongs of the Antipodes? When will this joyfully inverted and liberating morality reach us stodgy unsophisticates in the Podes, labouring as we still are under the cruel and deadening yoke of Heterosexuality? Is some Jolly and Most Reverend Swagman perhaps even now already making his topsy turvy way with it packed in his episcopal Tucker Bag? Verily verily I say unto him, "Advance Australia Fair!"

The ethical pronouncements of the proponents of Bergoglianity are so hard for us ordinary chaps and chapesses to construe, whichever way up you stand them.

(Is it true that 'a Matilda' is the idiomatic Oz term for 'a Bergoglianist bishop'? Does Mr Gammarelli supply their Tucker Bags? Does the ever-watchful eye of PF check to ensure that the Tucker Bags are neither Rigid nor Pharisaical?)

(Apologies to Joshua ... and my many other friends down under ... I will try to control my racism better ...)

13 comments:

Marcus, der mit dem C said...

"Is it true that 'a Matilda' is the idiomatic Oz term for 'a Bergoglianist bishop'?"

Is the song "Waltzing Matilda" a prophetical song then?

Nicolas Bellord said...

The question is whether this is the Church founded by Christ or a club for predatory homosexuals.

Joshua said...

Strewth, mate, you fair dinkum got stuck into the Flemington confetti that boofhead banana bender's been spruiking: your blood's worth bottling – even if you're a bloody Pom.

Tony V said...

Regarding paedophilia and the academy, see:

1. Seto, MC. Is Pedophilia a Sexual Orientation? Archives of Sexual Behavior (2012) 41:231–236
2. Mirjam Heine's TEDx talk: Pedophilia is a Natural Sexual Orientation. (And yet they flage Rupert Sheldrake?)

Patrick said...

I'm afraid Father we will have to send you to Idiom Usage Retraining School. Everyone knows that all usages such as the ones you mentioned have to be preceded with the word, like i.e.
like cool man, or like chill out. You might like get away with leaving out the "like" on a good day. Of course using "man" in any such phrase would get you into trouble. Like very old hat like.

Banshee said...

One of the notable things about psychopaths and sociopaths is that, although some of these people do horrible things, others live reasonably blameless lives. They may have to deduce or imitate moral behavior instead of having the standard access to instinctual knowledge of right and wrong, but they manage to figure it out and choose what is right.

So what is the excuse of these normal people who train themselves to forget morality, and want the rest of us to do the same? If people who are "born that way" (or rather, made that way in early childhood, by abuse in most cases) can resist evil impulses, other people should at least be trying.

GOR said...

Well it would appear that we now have three countries divided by a common language – four, if you count Ireland (County Kerry might make five…). Or is it united by an uncommon language? I’m confused…again.

pj said...

Along with the inversion of sexuality comes in inversion of theology. Before it was taught that human nature is "original sin" and that our very selves need to be improved to meet God's demands; now our original human nature is the determinant of morality and Christ needs to be de-proved in order to match it.

Donna Bethell said...

Lol. This Yank would have no idea what you are talking about except that she learned that song from her uncle who learned it from Aussie troops in Korea c. 1953. You can title your excellent piece "Waltzin' Matilda in the Age of Bergoglio."

I am sure Gammarelli will whip up a tucker bag in the appropriate prelatial color. Maybe even a set in the spectrum of liturgical colors. But not that other spectrum.

Paul-A. Hardy said...

Dear Father Hunwicke:
Given Apostolicae curae , issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void" on the basis of defect of form and intention, why does not the same apply to priests unable to fulfill their proper role as males? Certainly, physical self-castration would be seen as a barrier to the priesthood, why not psychological self-castration? Or in cases where effective sexual object choice is undermined by psychological events out of the control of the aspirant, why would this not render him unable to function as a priest? Upon research I discovered that the Church, while considering the homo-erotic state of mind as objectively disordered, nevertheless only requires that priestly candidates not enact their fantasies. But when those fantasies enter a state of intensity to the degree that a would-be priest is unable to function as a males, even in a hypothetical relationship with a female, would not this tell us something about his failure to symbolically represent our Lord at mass? If this doesn't matter, why not admit women to the priesthood as the Anglicans have done? I find myself unable to attend Anglican ceremonies that parody the mass by having females enact the role of priest. These Anglican "masses" seem to me like dragshows in that the woman is always clad in male vesture. The same feelings of revulsion well up as I contemplate how many Roman Catholic priests are in fact homosexuals even if they are not acting out their sexual preference. These feelings are akin to those I might have if I encountered an unrepentant and unconverted Ian Paisley or Enoch Powell as a celebrant at mass. Please try to answer. But if you are unable, I'll ask someone else.

ccc said...

It must be disconcerting after crossing the threshold to Communion with the Church to see it going through the exact same thing your previous ecclesial communion did --- albeit between 40-100 years later.

Dan said...

It's a club. Francis finally made it possible to be public about that....

E sapelion said...

That sentence may quote accurately something Archbishop Coleridge has said, but without context we do not know what conclusion he draws. He may go on to say that because people do not understand the message we have to find other ways of expressing it, not that we are changing the message. He has said that same-sex 'marriage' cannot be recognised by the Church as marriage in any sense that the Church understands.