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Traditional Catholic Faith => General Discussion => Topic started by: Pravoslavni on May 05, 2008, 12:40:00 PM

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Pravoslavni on May 05, 2008, 12:40:00 PM
Anybody else have problems with the sorry excuses for moderators on Fisheaters, the pseudo-Traditionalist site? The moderators of the site could care less when members of the forum break their own rules by bashing sedevacantism. However, (when they finally decide to do some moderating after-all) they bann everyone who is not a Ratzinger worshipper!
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Matthew on May 05, 2008, 01:10:20 PM
Fisheaters has had "problems" for some time. Many CathInfo members used to frequent that forum many months ago, so some of you know what I'm talking about.

It's certainly a different place now. Virtually ALL of the old "regulars" (from, say, the summer of 2006) have quit/left/been banned and moved on to other fora.

It was all downhill when the owner and one of the mods decided to get civilly married, despite the fact that they both were married and would need annulment(s) before they could proceed in a morally correct fashion.

It was discussed here, in what was probably the longest thread EVER on Cathinfo --
http://www.cathinfo.com/bb/index.php?a=topic&t=2557

Apparently the owner isn't even posting on her own board anymore these days.

The times, how they change!

Matthew
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: roscoe on May 05, 2008, 01:57:17 PM
What the present situation at FE is I do not know. Before I was banned, it seemed as if  more people there  had a genuine knowledge of Church History.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: sedetrad on May 06, 2008, 07:30:21 AM
The site owner and many of the mods also justified many perverse sɛҳuąƖ practices under the rubric that -- let's just say sodomy -- are ok if the idividual is married and finishes the act in the natural way with thier spouse. The above posts seem to be indicitive of a warning that people should stay away from that site.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 06, 2008, 10:16:25 AM
Quote from: sedetrad
The site owner and many of the mods also justified many perverse sɛҳuąƖ practices under the rubric that -- let's just say sodomy -- are ok if the idividual is married and finishes the act in the natural way with thier spouse.  


Fr Heribert Jone's "Moral Theology" does give that impression.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: sedetrad on May 06, 2008, 10:49:37 AM
That would seem to indicate to me that one should flee in horror from Father Jones Moral Theology book. It would be diabolical to assume that one could commit the above acts with ones spouse and then go receive communion and that is exactly what they tried to justify.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 06, 2008, 10:53:44 AM
Quote from: sedetrad
That would seem to indicate to me that one should flee in horror from Father Jones Moral Theology book.


Fr Jone's "Moral Theology" is used by the SSPX and it is thoroughly pre-V2.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 06, 2008, 10:56:06 AM
(https://www.tanbooks.com/shop_image/large/mora1209x.jpg)

A reprint of Jone's classic 18th English edition. A handbook for the busy priest that will boggle the mind with its organization, thoroughness and detail. Hand pocket size. Every priest should have Jone at his fingertips. There is no other book like it! Impr. 610 pgs, PB

Tan Books (https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/page/shop:flypage_gr/product_id/383/)
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: sedetrad on May 06, 2008, 11:02:15 AM
Their are many pre-vat 2 books in english that had hints of modernism in them. Vat-2 did not happen overnight. The rot had set in for many hundreds of years prior to it.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 06, 2008, 11:09:48 AM
Quote from: sedetrad
Their are many pre-vat 2 books in english that had hints of modernism in them.  


Yes, but Fr Jone's book isn't one, or else TAN wouldn't be stocking it, and the SSPX wouldn't be making use of it.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: gladius_veritatis on May 06, 2008, 11:40:45 AM
Although I do not wish to speak of details, so long as the marital act is not brought to completion in an unnatural manner, it is not considered a sin - on that account.  I say "on that account" because there could be other sins involved when one is following the spirit of the flesh.  Indeed, one could always proceed "lawfully", yet sin habitually through excessive attachment to the acts and pleasures involved.  Analogously, eating is necessary and lawful; excessive, unnecessary eating, for mere pleasure, is gluttony.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: sedetrad on May 06, 2008, 11:42:28 AM
We are going to have to agree to disagree. If you and Father Jones think that it is permissable to commit acts of sodomy with your wife and them go to mass right after without fear of mortal sin, then that is fine with me.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: sedetrad on May 06, 2008, 11:44:18 AM
Please forgive my typos.

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: gladius_veritatis on May 06, 2008, 11:53:02 AM
I do not wish to discuss it further, as it is a delicate matter.  Suffice it to say Fr. Jone is not alone in this assessment.  God speed.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 06, 2008, 01:38:39 PM
The opinions of Augustine and Liguouri on what constitutes Venial Sin in the performance of the Marriage Act are well known.

It is difficult to see how Jone does justice to those venerable opinions in his treatment of what is permissible and prohibited in this area.

Yes, it is a delicate issue.

But that's no answer to a valid question.

What's this all about, anyway?

Pre-Vatican II moral theologians with fine reputations scandalizing the post-Vatican II remnant flock?

Jone could rightly be accused of representing the very devil of all that was wrong with moral theologizing before Romanist moral theologians rediscovered Jesus Christ and Human Dignity somewhere in the 1940s and 1950s.

In a sense, Jone was a fraud and a hack, parading around as a disciple of the Galilean and the Umbrian.

He was a lazy Aristotelian slob.

"Here, boys! Here's the nuts-and-bolts logic of it all and now you go wash it in the blood of the Lamb if you can! Good luck and Ave, um, Maria!"

Thus far Father Jone. In my opinion.

But having said that....

Laymen should be very, very slow to think that there could be something so VERY wrong with the opinions of a moral theologian who was a big noise in the days of Pope Pius XII. The fact that Jone's work was permitted means that it cannot be along the lines of, say, Chuckie Curran's.

Is Father Jone wrong on the point at issue?

It would be false to say that he COULD not be wrong on this point.

That's the kind of point on which "trained clerics" are not often honest when they give pious ruffled-feather lectures about how much laymen don't know and can never know etc... etc...

And that very clericalistic dishonesty is part of the system in which the Jones of this world were operating.

Jone COULD be wrong. Jone COULD have gone too far and allowed a certain laxism to creep into his high and mighty opinionating.

Which means that he could also be a bit of a sicko.

But we have to allow that the point is debatable. It's just not Catholic reality to pretend that it isn't. If you don't get the moral logic of the issue and don't see how Jone COULD be right you really should keep away from all moral theology textbooks.

They're the pits. Always. Because the human heart is. The pits.

The antidote is the Spotless Lamb.

"Be ye perfect... From within him will come Living Water..."

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 06, 2008, 01:45:08 PM
Going to Mass afterwards has nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of the acts under discussion.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: roscoe on May 06, 2008, 01:53:51 PM
Quote from: sedetrad
Their are many pre-vat 2 books in english that had hints of modernism in them. Vat-2 did not happen overnight. The rot had set in for many hundreds of years prior to it.

Because it is not a perfect world, there has always been an element in society that has attempted to bring 'rot' into Holy Church. However, it is only with ben 15 that we see it start to 'set in'; 94yrs -OK.

I personally do not trust any Pope past Pius X with the exception of Pius XI. If the Jone book equivocates on sɛҳuąƖ perversion then it is heretical--end of story. TAN has for years sold a Bible with the Imprimateur of a sodomite/homo-- 'card' Spellman. I wouldn't trust them, SSPX-or any other 'alleged 'church' organisation that does not explicitly condem the v2 sect of anti-popes. Ciao
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Pravoslavni on May 06, 2008, 01:58:24 PM
Quote from: sedetrad
We are going to have to agree to disagree. If you and Father Jones think that it is permissable to commit acts of sodomy with your wife and them go to mass right after without fear of mortal sin, then that is fine with me.


Has anyone even read what Father Jone wrote? He certainly never wrote that it is possible for a  man to engage in such a act, and not commit mortal sin.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: roscoe on May 06, 2008, 01:58:42 PM
Cletus--I am not familiar with Jone, but why are you referring to him as an 'Aristotolian slob'?
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 06, 2008, 02:05:36 PM
Quote from: Pravoslavni
Quote from: sedetrad
We are going to have to agree to disagree. If you and Father Jones think that it is permissable to commit acts of sodomy with your wife and them go to mass right after without fear of mortal sin, then that is fine with me.


Has anyone even read what Father Jone wrote?

Yes.

Quote
He certainly never wrote that it is possible for a  man to engage in such a act, and not commit mortal sin.


Sigh.

Here's what he wrote:

Quote
Section 757 Part I

"Imperfect Sodomy, i.i., rectal intercourse, is a grave sin when the seminal fluid is wasted."

"Excluding the sodomitical intention it is neither sodomy nor a grave sin if intercourse is begun in a rectal manner with the intention of consummating it naturally or if some sodomitical action is posited without danger of pollution. - Positive co-operation on the part of the wife in sodomitical commerce is never lawful, hence, she must at least offer internal resistance. However, she may remain externally passive, provided she has endeavored to prevent the sin. She thus applies the principle of double effect and permits the sin to avert the danger of a very grave evil which cannot otherwise be averted; it remains unlawful for her to give her consent to any concomitant pleasure."

Page 539.

Chant, feel free to delete if you consider this TMI for the audience.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 06, 2008, 02:15:21 PM
Even if the far from compelling evidence against Cardinal Spellman turned out to point towards real sins, the idea that what a Churchman does in his capacity as a private sinner annuls his spiritual authority is what's heretical or bordering on that ballpark.

It's such a pitfall to be indulgent and lax in one area and then become hysterically scrupulous in another. Look at the Zealots at the time of the Fall of Jerusalem. It was the other way around with them. They had been the holy roller sticklers. Then, when everything fell apart, they became regular little sons of Belial.

I think that the cruelest thing that happens in Traditional Catholic circles is the kids who were born in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s are hooked up with a way of being a pious Roman Catholic which goes back to 1910s or the 1880s or the 1720s. The winds of the 1960s roar and the rains of the 2000s fall and great is the wreck of those faux-Baroque interior chapels...

You can trust all the popes whom Archbishop Lefebvre trusted. John XXIII and beyond? It all gets arguable, to say the least. But if you're looking for some orthodox El Dorado in the reign of Pius X or Gregory XVI or Pius VI (VII was a nice man, but SO soft on N.B.) you're looking for something as fantastic and unreal as the Life of St Christopher the Giant or the Virtues of St Margaret the Dragon Killer, and you're going to have a wretched, blasted, crabbed, and ultimately Godless life in this world. Just like those Zealots.

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 06, 2008, 02:30:07 PM
Roscoe, someone did my work for me. The quote was given. What further need have we of witnesses?

Only an Aristotelian slob could leap from the abstract world of the marginally licit to the real world of shame and oppression and disgrace and defilement in this bland and indifferent -and confusing- manner.

A Christian gentleman would have written very differently.

Not confusing to "trained clerics'? Those textbooks are not written for trained clerics. They are written, mostly, to TRAIN... impressionable boys.

I think that it's impolite to ask "Has anyone read the text?" when at least two posters have clearly indicated that they have read it and have written in such a way that they want it to be understood that they have indeed read it.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Pravoslavni on May 06, 2008, 03:08:22 PM
Quote from: clare
Quote from: Pravoslavni
Quote from: sedetrad
We are going to have to agree to disagree. If you and Father Jones think that it is permissable to commit acts of sodomy with your wife and them go to mass right after without fear of mortal sin, then that is fine with me.


Has anyone even read what Father Jone wrote?

Yes.

Quote
He certainly never wrote that it is possible for a  man to engage in such a act, and not commit mortal sin.


Sigh.

Here's what he wrote:

Quote
Section 757 Part I

"Imperfect Sodomy, i.i., rectal intercourse, is a grave sin when the seminal fluid is wasted."

"Excluding the sodomitical intention it is neither sodomy nor a grave sin if intercourse is begun in a rectal manner with the intention of consummating it naturally or if some sodomitical action is posited without danger of pollution. - Positive co-operation on the part of the wife in sodomitical commerce is never lawful, hence, she must at least offer internal resistance. However, she may remain externally passive, provided she has endeavored to prevent the sin. She thus applies the principle of double effect and permits the sin to avert the danger of a very grave evil which cannot otherwise be averted; it remains unlawful for her to give her consent to any concomitant pleasure."

Page 539.

Chant, feel free to delete if you consider this TMI for the audience.


I stand corrected. When I did a search to find what Jone wrote, the quote that I discovered, only dealt with the giult of the wife. I'm not surprised that the quote was edited so.

Jone's book should be burnt!
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 06, 2008, 04:21:04 PM
My Jone will have to be wrested from my cold dead hands.

He does better on other issues.

He wasn't any kind of heretic. He can't be mentioned in the same breath as the Currans and the Haerings of the so-called Conciliar Church.

"To treat unequal things as equal is unjust," as the Philosopher said.

Jone would not have been allowed to roam loose if he had been really so abominable and heretical in the reign of Pope Pius XII.

Jone was just grossly incompetent as a Guide for the Perplexed on the issue at hand and related issues.

On the sixth and the ninth commandments Jone stinks. Here and there he tries to mix his abstract Aristotelian mechanics with X-rated Freudian depth psychology with potentially disastrous (and knee-slappingly comical) results.

It's also pretty funny when they write the "delicate" stuff half in Latin and half in the vernacular. Enquiring minds want to know! And choir boys with three digit IQ's who sang the Requiem Mass and Benediction always knew.

I think that it has to be pointed out in all fairness that Father Jone was NOT writing for laymen or for impressionable boys who were not also exposed to other (and better) authorities.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 07, 2008, 03:23:10 PM
If the question is whether of not a person engaging in the repugnant Act Z under any circuмstance can be considered free of Grave Sin it's just an evasion to point out that even the indisputably licit Act A CAN be sinful or even gravely sinful under certain circuмstances.

Celibacy can be Gravely Sinful under certain circuмstances too.

If you really do read the classic moral theology books you know that that is true and you understand why it is true.

It's fine to be delicate. It's not so fine to be clericalistic and evasive. Being delicate matches up better with being silent.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 08, 2008, 03:17:37 AM
Eating is necessary and lawful.

If I am very hungry, may I stick my head into my kids' aquarium and gobble down all their pet goldfish?
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: roscoe on May 08, 2008, 01:13:15 PM
Cletus--Have you been making things up again?
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 08, 2008, 01:50:56 PM
I just asked a question that I think makes an important point here.

But even though the question is intended as a statement, it's NOT a rhetorical question.

Anyone have an answer?

May I licitly and without sin of any kind gobble down the goldfish if I am just VERY hungry? Oh, and if the kids are bound to be heartbroken and become hysterical.

Making things up? That's not MY style. Jone was the one who was kind of making things up as he went along. He made what are called in the trade permissible but improbable theological statements and did Grave Harm to Souls by so doing. Read over his words carefully. There are all the unmistakable signs of writing on a delicate matter with an unclear conscience. The word GRAVELY is extemely problematic in this context because of a well-known saw about the nature of ALL sins against the sixth and the ninth commandments as traditionally stated by the Approved Authors.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: MaterDominici on May 08, 2008, 02:15:04 PM
Quote from: Cletus
Making things up? That's not MY style. Jone was the one who was kind of making things up as he went along. He made what are called in the trade permissible but improbable theological statements and did Grave Harm to Souls by so doing. Read over his words carefully. There are all the unmistakable signs of writing on a delicate matter with an unclear conscience. The word GRAVELY is extemely problematic in this context because of a well-known saw about the nature of ALL sins against the sixth and the ninth commandments as traditionally stated by the Approved Authors.


I've not read Jone. Would the others of you who have agree or disagree with Cletus' assesment? I think it's important to know as I've seen him used as a very popular reference in discussions among laymen.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 08, 2008, 03:22:43 PM
Quote from: MaterDominici
I've not read Jone. Would the others of you who have agree or disagree with Cletus' assesment? I think it's important to know as I've seen him used as a very popular reference in discussions among laymen.


Fr Jone's book was recommended to me by an SSPX priest, and I bought it from a traditionalist book seller (Carmel Books). I think it's pretty balanced. I've not read the whole thing, just referred to it from time to time.

-------------

Cletus:

Quote
The word GRAVELY is extemely problematic in this context because of a well-known saw about the nature of ALL sins against the sixth and the ninth commandments as traditionally stated by the Approved Authors.


What well known saw is that? I'm not understanding you completely!  :confused1:
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: gladius_veritatis on May 08, 2008, 03:30:23 PM
Quote from: Cletus
If I am very hungry, may I stick my head into my kids' aquarium and gobble down all their pet goldfish?


Considering that you may, as an example, eat the fruit right off another's tree - given certain conditions (true necessity, lack of other options, etc.) - without even asking, you most certainly may 'gobble down' the goldfish.  Bon appetit. :ready-to-eat:
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: JoanScholastica on May 08, 2008, 05:15:52 PM
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 08, 2008, 05:57:13 PM
I think that I would wait until I was starving, and not just very hungry, until I ate my kids' goldfish.

I think that I would wait until the kids were in bed even if I were starving.

Actually, I don't think that I would gobble it all.

I would find some other way. I'm real deep when it comes to thinking about these thorny issues. Unlike certain troublesome Franciscan moral theologians I know.

In much clerical theological writing belonging the Scholastic tradition there is an element of idle and vaguely perverse self-amusement. There is also the element of cynical obesiance to sinfulness (especially MALE sinfulness) as a respectable power structure.

Good Lord. We hear so much about Father this and Grace of State that. Now look at the mess that this Jone's purple passage has created. We should be generous. We should not make wild accusations and talk about burning TAN books. But we can learn. We can evolve. We can develop healthful reservations towards "trained clerics."

Making mistakes while engaged in tough, tricky work that takes guts to engage in at all in service to Christ and the Church is only part of the story with these notorious clerical goof-ups that are scattered here and there like minefields waiting to blow us all up to Kingdom Come.

Standard operating procedure among clerics and clericalists is to resolve all practical controversies resulting from clerical incompetence in treating of delicate subjects iin public in favor of the clerics.

Idle? Vaguely perverse? Let's leave the domain of the delicate.

"Whether Christ should have gotten the measles...."

"Whether Christ should have sneezed..."

The "old saw" is that offenses againt the Sixth Commandments do not admit of light matter.

Underneath all his clumsily expressed qualifications, Jone still would seem to posit the activity in question as sinful. That point is often overlooked.

You have to watch out when you hand your mind and your soul to these characters. In my part of the world these people are called "crazy makers." This same cleric could have written a lovely book of Pious Considerations in which he went on and on for pages about how the least venial sin of a devout little girl (a lay person, of course) was worse than if, oh, if everyone on earth died in torments grim of cancer, or if the earth were hit by an asteroid, or if, or if, the seven seas turned to boiling blood.

If you've ever wondered why the really great Saints seem to have invented their own devotions, their own "Little Ways", and marched to their own chants, maybe this is it. All that by-the-book, hackneyed Horror of Sin hocus-pocus starts ringing pretty hollow when it starts seeming that all is not necessarily according to holy Hoyle in the way Trained Clerics are permitted to present delicate moral matters to run-of-the-mill parish priests or seminarians.

It's easy to blather piously and generally about Horror of Sin. Not so easy to deal justly and charitably with others' horror of being led astray, perhaps, by clerical defects along Jone's lines. How about a little Horror there? Looks like some folks showed some Horror here.

I've been waiting twenty years for Jone and his clerical ennablers to be taken to task for the grave fault of Father's extremely shoddy treatment on matters pertaining to Holy Chastity.

Bon apetit to anyone who wants to stick that in his pipe and smoke it.


Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 08, 2008, 06:06:23 PM
May I publicly denounce as a freakish sicko my next door neighbor who was VERY, VERY hungry who ate my kids' puppy right in front of them without even killing it first and quoted Thomas Aquinas in his defense between chomps and gulps?

He knew that there was can of Spaghettios in a vacant house four blocks away.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: roscoe on May 08, 2008, 06:09:49 PM
Is there a point to all of this?
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 08, 2008, 09:16:47 PM
Yes. There is a point to all this.

I think that the point is quite obvious.

Another forum was criticized for offending against the way, the truth, and the life in various ways.

Then someone brought up something REALLY compromising and shocking about that forum. Red letter alert and everything.

Promoting a certain revolting notion having to do with a delicate point of Sixth Commandment-related morality was attributed (rightly) to some who call the shots and pull the strings at that other forum.

Then someone rightly pointed out that a pre-Vatican II moral theologian who is considered kopacetic and then some in some venerated Traditional circles would seem to have lent some authority to the shocking opinion being promoted as standard Catholic morality at this other forum.

Then... Well, the record stands above.

We've got scandalization. We've got outrage. We've got shock. We've got Savonarola-style recommendations about what's to be done with a book that is in good standing with TAN and the SSPX. We've got a few other things that are a little odder. We've got very different kinds of lay "company men" trying to get past the personal frame of reference and relate the Jone text to the wide, wide world of Catholic theological history.

We've got people talking modestly about gluttony and gobbling goldfish instead of, well.... What's the point there? I think that the most  important point of all is being made there. Let FE be FE and let cathinfo be cathinfo, folks!

My main points are these:

Theologians have always been permitted to express improbable opinions.

There is no need at all to leap to the defense of Jone's opinion as a knee-jerk clericalistic, wagon-circling reaction. He COULD be utterly wrong as to what he finds permissible even with his whole litany of qualifications. (Wrong in the sense that other theologians with snazzier credentials- say, a semi-official nod of approval from the Pope- disagreed with him and said so, and demonstrated that their contrary opinion was grounded on the doctrine of such authorities as Aquinas and Alphonsus.)

Those who can't see why Jone's opinion is at least marginally tenable in principle would probably be better off keeping clear of ALL Roman Catholic moral theology textbooks and popularizing handbooks. It only gets "worse" once you delve in. But you always have to be just and remember: the Bible Thumpers never even TRIED to spell out good morality in certain areas of human experience (and depravity).

It is a valid function of humane evolution to be horrified by all that Romanistic Scholastics such as this Jone character did not seem to know or care about human dignity and the feelings of nice ladies and the rather important contributions of a man named Jesus of Nazareth (6 BC?- AD 30?)  to the very framework of moral discourse.

(There is a reason why St Clement Mary Hofbauer came out with the shocking quip that I have seen rendered thus: "The reason why Germany became Protestant is that she cannot but be Christian." Source for a less eloquent rendering: Karl Adams' SPIRIT OF CATHOLICISM, which I think is still in print from TAN.)

It can be a legitimate strategy of spiritual warfare to "get back" at an adversary who gives every indication of just being badly mistaken and far from malicious by treating him as someone who deserves to be treated with a certain good-natured levity. Clerics and clericalists do that all the time to uppity laymen: it can go both ways.

Look at Garrigou-Lagrange. Greatest Thomist of the 20th century and all that jazz. And the six year old lad who pulls the plow would not have come out with something as idiotically naive as the great Dominican's gleeful run-down of all the ways in which people are hopelessly cut off from Christ and His Church and therefore (let's REALLY stick it to Feeney) probably in the way of salvation.

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 08, 2008, 10:02:46 PM
As to the goldfish gobbling there WERE other options.

What difference does that make?

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 09, 2008, 03:54:48 AM
Quote from: Cletus
Underneath all his clumsily expressed qualifications, Jone still would seem to posit the activity in question as sinful. That point is often overlooked.

The "provided there's no danger of pollution" bit? It could be argued that there usually would be that danger, I guess!


Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 09, 2008, 04:02:27 AM
Quote from: Cletus
We've got scandalization. We've got outrage. We've got shock.


Modernist Catholics are shocked about things the Church permits which they consider contrary to the 5th commandment. Some rigorist Catholics are scandalised that the Church might allow things they consider contrary to the 6th and 9th.

I dunno. I confess that my eyebrows were raised at the possibility that pretty much anything goes within marriage, but, perhaps it does.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 09, 2008, 05:38:08 AM
A moral theologian worth his salt makes it his business to be in some sort of contact with what we may discreetly call medical reality.

Jone clearly failed in this regard.

"Would still seem to posit the activity as sinful..." Well, I think that that's fair assesment of Jone's text considering it as the popular work that it really is. One speaks of "serious sin" in the popular vein as opposed to not so serious sin. In Serious Theological Writing an author may say that Act Z is "neither sodomitical nor seriously sinful" with no implication that it is in any way sinful. In a popular work one reads "It is not SERIOUSLY sinful": in a learned work one might read "It is neither sodomitical-nor-seriously-sinful...", there being an implied "as dumb laymen might imagine it would have to be, that is, seriously sinful."

So Jone could be saying that 'IT" is not sinful at all.

I think that this issue would be clarified most tellingly if we pictured what the good, pliable court priest would tell the Most Catholic King of Christendom what he could and could not force the queen to do.

SOME Catholic moral theologians of Jone's era wrote as mature adults and civilized human beings. There's no need for despair here.

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 09, 2008, 05:40:16 AM
Jone is not the Church.

The Church permitted Jone.

Not everything Jone permits.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: MaterDominici on May 09, 2008, 10:54:33 PM
Quote from: clare
Quote from: Cletus
Underneath all his clumsily expressed qualifications, Jone still would seem to posit the activity in question as sinful. That point is often overlooked.

The "provided there's no danger of pollution" bit? It could be argued that there usually would be that danger, I guess!




Cletus is almost as hard to read as Jone, but I think there's more to what he's saying than just the factor of pollution or no pollution.

I picked up Moral Theology last night to see if Jone had more to say about this than the section you quoted. It's seems that the following would be an important addition to the section you posted in terms of understanding Jone's position.

Quote from: Jone
The malice of sodomy consists in ... the attraction towards the wrong method of sɛҳuąƖ gratification.

Sec. 230


I think what Cletus is saying is that Jone fills plenty of page space explaining all of the exceptions to the rule, but fails to adequately express that likely there would be sin involved in such an action. Therefore, he leads the layman to believe that there is plenty of room for imperfect sodomy to exist without sin.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 09, 2008, 11:48:37 PM
I think that my my recent post before this one is clear enough and makes an important point.

The question now becomes: Do ALL the pre-Vatican II moral theologians agree with Jone? Do they all treat the whole subject as he does?

I think that the best thing for most of us to do would be to make sure that WE are not following "the wisdom of the flesh", to realize that even a revered and well-intentioned pre-Vatican II big noise such as Jone can have written in an extremely unfortunate manner, and to have the idea at the back of our minds that the Holy Ghost lmay have led other authors to express themselves on this delicate issue in a far better way.



Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 09, 2008, 11:54:24 PM
My MOST recent post before this one.

My, my, my.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 10, 2008, 02:31:56 AM
I think it's reasonable to say that Fr Jone's book was intended by him to be filtered through priests, and not get straight into the hands of amateurs like me!
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 10, 2008, 01:18:57 PM
But the priests are the amateurs in some areas of Life.
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 10, 2008, 01:48:11 PM
Quote from: Cletus
But the priests are the amateurs in some areas of Life.


That's a charge liberals would level at priests whom they consider too lax!
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 10, 2008, 01:48:51 PM
Quote from: clare
Quote from: Cletus
But the priests are the amateurs in some areas of Life.


That's a charge liberals would level at priests whom they consider too lax!


I mean strict, not lax!
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 10, 2008, 02:12:44 PM
I realize that.

It's funny how things work out in Life. All the little ironies.

Take St Clement Mary's rather shockingly "unorthodox" flight of fancy about Germany and Protestant "Christianity." That bothered me for the longest time. For decades. St Clement devoted so much of his life to trying to bring Protestants into the Fold. And then he comes out with a line like that? But now I think that I know exactly what he was driving at. There are some really creepy things at the heart of what's called "the human side of the Church."

Yes, there are Catholics who would poke fun at St Alphonsus' opinions on the prevalence of Venial Sin at least among the married saying the same thing I said here in an opposite vein about priests' being amateurs in some areas of Life. But
there are some "Novus Ordo conservatives" who say that Traditionalists are "just as bad" as the Modernists.

And then too, look at Christ. The Pharisees could have said with some appearance of justice and truth, "You sound just like the liberal Jєωs who wanted to lower standards of ritual purity in the days of the Maccabees."

We can't be deterred by the fact that the good A might seem to some like the bad B.

This is this. That is that.

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: clare on May 10, 2008, 02:33:50 PM
Quote from: Cletus
It's funny how things work out in Life. All the little ironies.

Take St Clement Mary's rather shockingly "unorthodox" flight of fancy about Germany and Protestant "Christianity." That bothered me for the longest time. For decades. St Clement devoted so much of his life to trying to bring Protestants into the Fold. And then he comes out with a line like that? But now I think that I know exactly what he was driving at. There are some really creepy things at the heart of what's called "the human side of the Church."


My history's not up to much. What line did St Clement come out with?

Quote
Yes, there are Catholics who would poke fun at St Alphonsus' opinions on the prevalence of Venial Sin at least among the married  

"Remind" me of those opinions!  

Quote
But
there are some "Novus Ordo conservatives" who say that Traditionalists are "just as bad" as the Modernists.

Well, I'm no NO conservative, but I was thinking more along the lines of something Bishop Williamson said about the danger of falling into the opposite error in reaction to another error (though, IIRC he was talking about Feeneyites).
Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: JoanScholastica on May 10, 2008, 04:49:13 PM
I think this is what you're talking about... Indeed, I completely agree with His Excellency!

Quote from: Bp. Williamson
Many Catholic positions are a balance of truth between an error of excess and an error of defect. The 1962 missal is not substantially defective even if it is less rich than the missals that went before it. The failings of recent popes are not - at least yet - sufficiently manifest to prove that they cannot have been popes. (The Catholic Church and God's Truth are tougher than that!) Similarly, Catholic social doctrine has not by modern man been made so difficult to put into practice as to make it untrue. Here are three errors of excess into which the Devil pushes traditionalist Catholics when he sees he can no longer push them into Liberalism. He topples them over in the opposite direction!

On the other hand the grace of God can work upon Newchurch Catholics to bring them to realize that the Tradition which they have been ordered to despise and to spurn may contain rather more Truth than they had thought. Hence a number of them are little by little coming to a truer appreciation of the "####s".

In brief, the Lord God and His adversary Satan are all the time at work upon all souls alive; God to bring souls towards Tradition and Heaven, Satan to get or to keep them away.

Title: Fisheaters, pseudo-Traditionalist moderators
Post by: Cletus on May 10, 2008, 10:59:54 PM
I cited the line from St Clement Mary Hofbauer in a post in this very thread.

Here's the version in Chapter 10 of Karl Adam's THE SPIRIT OF CATHOLICISM.

"The revolt from the Church began because the German people could not and cannot but be devout."

St Alphonsus' opinion was that it is rare that the marriage act is perpetrated without the commision of Venial Sin.

I was just thinking of the vast difference between those "lay experts" for whom St Alphonsus' "amateur" opinion rankles and those lay "Jansenists" (?) who are shocked and disgusted by the lines from Jone which have been discussed in this thread and might not deem it out of order to point out with some sarcasm that Jone was obviously an amateur when it comes to certain "medical realities."

The kind of worldly-wise Catholics who would mock the priestly disciples of the Fathers and the Doctors and the Approved Authors for speaking of that of which (we must suppose) they have no personal experience are really just expressing contempt towards the Heavenly King of Virgins and the rather dismissive attitude He evinced towards marrying and being given in marriage.

It's a very different matter for a layman to point out with good reason that in one instance one learned priest seems to have taken as Gospel what he must have heard boastful Don Juans saying as they rubbed their knuckles against their lapels.

A is not B.

A is A.

"A" here is orthodox Catholic reaction to FE's pressing into unholy service of Jone's text.

I have found it to be a gross defect of the trained clerical mentality to argue all over the map from A to B to Z and back again.

Has Bishop Williamson dealt with THIS issue particularly?