tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post8308382202478783456..comments2024-01-20T00:00:10.459-08:00Comments on Mudblood Catholic: The Ethics of Compromise; Or, WitteringGabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-69396241032596615992018-01-02T18:37:12.359-08:002018-01-02T18:37:12.359-08:00I think I see your point, but I'd define a mor...I think I see your point, but I'd define a moral code pretty differently. My own reaction to a moral code that can be kept without any exceptional effort is that it's not much of a code. To quote Wislawa Szymborska's strange poem 'In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself':<br /><br />If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.<br />A jackal doesn't understand remorse.<br />Lions and lice don't waver in their course.<br />... On this third planet of the sun, among the signs of bestiality,<br />A clear conscience is Number One.<br /><br />This is not to say, for one instant, *either* that conscience is merely an aspiration and should be treated as trivial accordingly, *or* that corrosive guilt is in any way a healthy feeling. The paradoxical fact that both of those attitudes are bad is, in my opinion, one of the things divine grace is meant to deliver us from: both heroic attempt and honest realism have their place in the economy of grace. But if I personally were genuinely able to *satisfy* my moral code, either entirely or as near as made no important difference, I don't see how I could avoid self-righteousness, nor how I could sincerely believe that my code corresponded to moral reality rather than to what I wished to believe about moral reality. If you will, I regard *every* moral code as an aspiration, because I know of none that hasn't been broken on every point by its own adherents.<br /><br />My personal experience -- I cannot speak for others -- has been that breaking rule X hasn't at all weakened my confidence (objective or subjective) in rules A through C, *provided that* I don't try to adjust what my moral ideals actually are. It is those, rather than my own conduct or capabilities, that give me a sense of moral 'north' for my compass to aim at; when I break rule X, I certainly *ignore* my compass -- but that's different from breaking it or messing it up with a magnet.<br /><br />That said, I'm aware that the consequences of my personal flavor of immorality are comparatively self-contained (compared to other sexual sins, anyway), since nothing that I'm likely to do is going to conceive a child. Given the real differences in gravity of consequence -- which seem to me to impact the gravity of an action as a whole -- I'd hate to act as though the same response must be made to *every* situation that's logically analogous to mine. E.g., I'd be prepared to believe that a married couple, if they can't manage to do better, should use contraceptives, whereas someone like me should try and fail and try again indefinitely; or vice versa. I really, honestly do not know.Gabriel Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-52505568685701456312018-01-02T04:34:05.625-08:002018-01-02T04:34:05.625-08:00I've been debating this myself. I fall on the...I've been debating this myself. I fall on the side of having a moral code you can keep, or else it's not a moral code, it's just an aspiration, like a New Year's resolution. I don't judge people on whether they say they're going to lose weight starting in January. I judge people based on what they actually do. And if your "moral code" isn't really a moral code because deep down you know you're not going to be following it ... do you even have a moral code? If you constantly break rule X of your moral code, does that make you less confident in it in general, so that you start breaking rules A, B, and C as well? Does it, in short, habituate you to ignoring your own conscience?<br /><br />In my case it was a bit more difficult, because where NFP is concerned, there's always a way out. You just get pregnant. That's not objectively sinful. And it's as easy as falling off a log, with no quick moment of weakness that can undo it. And that, I have always understood, is what a married couple can do if they can't be abstinent.<br /><br />Of course you may find out later that all your children suffer from this, that your physical or mental health collapses, that you can't parent adequately, that one of your kids needs therapy that you can't afford .... but none of those things are *sins,* are they? But I'd challenge any parent to shrug off the suffering of their children as easily as we are told to shrug off our own suffering.Sheilahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10853868724554947854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-53884538103439077912017-12-29T07:54:50.986-08:002017-12-29T07:54:50.986-08:00When I go down the road of reasoned compromise, I ...When I go down the road of reasoned compromise, I always find myself at the other end knowing that what it really meant was, "This is wrong but I feel like I should do it anyways because there is some part of my life I don't want to abandon to Jesus."Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11820668897554751944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-64691668839098431872017-12-29T07:03:38.505-08:002017-12-29T07:03:38.505-08:00I wrote something like Ms Selmys’s point a few yea...I wrote something like Ms Selmys’s point a few years back:<br /><br />“The problem with the "self-discipline" or "doing battle with oneself" discourse is actually that it usually ends up as a weird sort of dissociative dialogue. "How could I do something like that?! Bad me!" is actually phrased as a second-person address to oneself, it grammatically takes the second-person form "How could you do something like that?! Bad you!" So there is this bizarre dissociation and disconnect between the "scolding" speaker (the internalized voice of authority) and the "scolded" subject. The "superego" is identified in that moment as the "real" self, totally blameless, which is punishing this other "bad" agent inside ones mind (the "ego") for not obeying it as master, but rather doing these things that some third competing party (ie, the "id," a demon, The World, The Flesh, etc) told it to. When really they're all the same person!!! This isn't real ownership or contrition or integration, because the voice of "conscience" that is doing the "repenting" or abnegation totally dis-identifies with the bad action and attributes it to some second-person agent and external temptation. So there is no responsibility taken, it's just exactly the same passing of blame that happened with Adam, Eve, and the snake!<br /><br />The result is a cycle of guilt, repression, confession, swearing it all off, and then falling again...that I think many people get trapped in, but it only reinforces the behavior. It's the common cycle of an addict.”A Sinnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05083094677310915678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-72468032279318639772017-12-27T20:22:42.647-08:002017-12-27T20:22:42.647-08:00And maybe that is the answer. I don't know -- ...And maybe that is the answer. I don't know -- seriously. If that *is* the answer, I hope that I (and others) find out that it is. The reason I wonder is simply that I don't *know* that that's the answer.Gabriel Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-47577711395271179402017-12-27T19:21:38.630-08:002017-12-27T19:21:38.630-08:00Well, I don't know, but millions of people use...Well, I don't know, but millions of people used to confess the same sins week after week, back wHen we went to Confession every week. They knew that they'd commit them again, but they also knew they those were sins and they wished, in some way, that they could stop. It was good enough.<br /><br />The fact that one can't stop, the fact that one is reasonably sure that one won't stop before one's next Confession, does not make one's attrition (imperfect contrition) insincere, much less show that it is folly.<br /><br />We are impatient. We want immediate results. God is patient and will convert us when he knows it is possible (here or in purgatory).<br />naturgesetzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15268507379933286863noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-23943274596269838532017-12-27T18:49:51.295-08:002017-12-27T18:49:51.295-08:00I am so very glad that you still enjoy the practic...I am so very glad that you still enjoy the practice of sacramental Confession, Gabriel. You see, for me, it has become a cheap a thing as commenting on some forum or blog online for a presbyteral parodohymnodist to take up in mockery or jest. Your genuine experiences and freely sharing of them of your own will remind me of a time long past where the sacred seal actually meant something. Hard to find that nowadays either among clergy or community. Wishing you a blessed Christmas....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com