Sweeter Than Honey

The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech,

and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words,

whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world…

The law of the Lord is perfect,

reviving the soul;

the testimony of the Lord is sure,

making wise the simple;

the precepts of the Lord are right,

rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the Lord is pure,

enlightening the eyes;

the fear of the Lord is clean,

enduring forever;

the rules of the Lord are true,

and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold,

even much fine gold;

sweeter also than honey

and drippings of the honeycomb.

Psalm 19: 1-4, 7-10

Reflection – Monday Psalter time again, and again we have a psalm that is too long to include in its entirety. Psalm 19, many of the scholars argue, is actually two psalms combined into one. There is a marked change in rhythm, vocabulary, and subject matter half way through that seems to indicate some kind of stitching together of diverse source material.

The first section is all about the heavens declaring the glory of God, the beauty of creation, and specifically of the sun running its course each day through the sky ‘like a bridegroom, a champion’. There is a rapturous joyous tone to this, the very structure of creation ‘pouring out speech’ about the greatness of God, while remaining utterly silent all the while.

The second section is equally joyous and rapturous in its praise of the law of God, its sweetness and goodness. Sweeter than honey are the commandments of God. I have always loved the Jewish feast of Simchat Torah, ‘Rejoicing in the Law’, where the men dance with the Torah scrolls and there is much jubilation and bucolic festivity.

So different from our typical modern attitude to the law. We agree, with deep heaving sighs and much frowning, that God does indeed have authority in our lives. God (sigh…) does indeed have a right (pout…) to tell us what we can and cannot do (sniff…). Since we don’t want to go to Hell (boo hoo…), we have to do what he tells us (humph). And so we can go, the reluctant son in the parable who doesn’t much want to do the father’s will but reluctantly goes about it, and so somehow manages some kind of half-hearted obedience.

This is so very different from the proper Jewish sense of the Law, and this psalm—both halves of it—give a welcome and much needed corrective to our modern anomic and rebellious spirit. God’s laws are good—this is the main thing. The moral life is the good life. Sin is bad, harmful, death-dealing to ourselves and others. Virtue and moral living are sweet and beneficent. And it all springs from this ordered and beautiful creation which rapturously tells us of the beauty and goodness of God—his glory.

In light of this psalm, if we really take it to heart, of course we should dance and sing and be radiantly happy when we read the laws of God, the moral commandments. God has shown us how to live in such a way that our lives declare the glory of God just as creation’s beauty does. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t God good to us, to show us the path to a beautiful life, a truly good life?

And yes, this path may (and indeed does) involve sacrifice, struggle, effort on our part. If morality was a law in the same sense that gravity is a law, He wouldn’t have needed to teach it to us (you don’t need to teach a stone to fall). It is a law in that it is the assured and certain way that our lives become glorious and not tragic, a living life and not a living death.

It’s all in Psalm 19, and we need this psalm and those like it to keep us in that vision of moral law and life, the wisdom, joy, and light of God expressed in our humanity for his glory.

Learning the Meaning of the Law

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5: 17-20

Reflection – I’m going through the Sermon on the Mount, bit by bit, as a Year of Faith project. The light of faith illuminates the whole of human life, and so my focus in this series is on the ability of these core teachings of Jesus to shed light on how we are to live—the true wisdom of God, and not of the world.

I have to admit, though, my first thought when I conceived of doing this series was, but what will I say about Matt 5: 17-20? Because, if we’re honest, I think we can all admit that there are at least one or two Gospel passages that utterly elude our attempts to understand them, right? Probably, if we were wiser, we would realize that we truly understand very little indeed of the Gospels which are so above and beyond us.

But this is one of ‘my’ passages, one which I have never quite been able to penetrate. Because of course we know that the Christian church has never practiced the whole of the Jewish law, and in fact it was determined by the apostles and promulgated at length in the writings of St. Paul—all of which is Spirit-authored canon, just as much as Matthew’s Gospel—that we are not to do so.

And yet a plain reading of the text of Matthew 5 yields that we are supposed to practice and teach the law of Moses. I say this, not to sow doubt or confusion in anyone’s mind, but to share with you honestly that I have never quite succeeded in resolving this passage’s meaning in my own mind. I have no doubt whatsoever that the problem lies between my ears and the immoveable mass of concrete found there, and not in the sacred text!

Meanwhile, what light does it shed upon my life and yours? Well, certainly we see from this passage that a lawless Christianity is not from the Lord. Whatever Jesus means by these words, He does not mean that He came so that we could all do just as we please and not before with any silly rules and commandments any more.

And this is of course a bright light shining upon post-modern man. Anomy—lawlessness—is prevalent in our world, and likely to be even more so in years ahead. I won’t inventory the various social pathologies that make this so. And in some Christian circles there has been an anomic sense, an idea that freedom means doing what you wish and that God’s love is permissive and laissez-faire.

Matt 5: 17-20, besides doing a good job of showing Fr. Denis Lemieux that he’s not especially smart, makes it impossible for us to sustain this view of Christian freedom. And perhaps the fact that the Christian Bible retains the whole Law of Moses as canonical writ has this meaning. Whatever function the Law has in Judaism (which I have studied, actually, and is very beautiful and rich), in Christianity perhaps the Law of Moses teaches us that God does indeed providentially order every dimension, every bit of life in His loving wisdom, and that the response of loving freedom is not to do as we will, but to do as God wills in every slightest detail of our life. It has never been the norm of Christianity to find the specifics of this will and this ordering of life in the precepts of the Law of Moses, but rather in the Law of Christ, which is the law of love guided by the gifts of the Spirit.

Freedom consists in allowing God to shape our whole life, every corner, every moment, every smallest letter and stroke of the pen, by his loving will and the action of His Spirit. And so the law abides with us to remind us of this and to keep our eyes and hearts earnestly turned heaven-ward, to order our days in peace and our lives in love.

A Question of Law, Part Two

I’m spending a few days on the blog talking about marriage, sex, the Church’s teachings, and the whole difficult issue of same-sex marriage (ssm) and its civil recognition. My effort here is to establish a dialogue that is respectful and charitable, and to present the anti-ssm argument and the Church’s teachings on the moral meaning of human sexuality in a clear respectful manner.

Yesterday I presented a short and simple argument against the civil extension of marriage to same sex couples. It was essentially a soft libertarian argument, that the government can only extend its authority into the private lives of its citizens for a reason, and the more intrusive or significant the government’s intervention is, the more serious the reason is. Marriage only is a concern of the state because of that pesky reality of fertility, that opposite-sex couples routinely produce children, and that children’s interests need to be protected by at the very least encouraging men and women to commit to one another in marriage and family life and offering various incentives (tax breaks, etc.) for them if they do so.

I would say that that is strictly it. The government—the full coercive power of the modern bureaucratic state—has absolutely no business sticking its oar in on the personal domestic arrangements and emotional bonds of its citizens. And I must say I am truly surprised at how few people seem perturbed by that. Even if you have no moral objection whatsoever to homosexual intercourse, surely the notion that the state has some role in adjudicating the legitimacy and value of your personal life is troubling, isn’t it?

And if it is a question of promoting social acceptance of homosexuality, then I consider that a morally noxious project. There are many of us—millions of us, actually—who still consider homosexual intercourse to be a moral evil. This is grounded in a moral view of reality that has endured for three thousand years and that has produced the whole of Western Civilization,  To use the power of the state and all its resources to bully people into silence or enact various penalties upon them for dissenting from state-sanctioned ideology is simply wrong and smacks of fascism, the exalting of the power of the State to the exclusion of all other powers.

OK, objections. I said yesterday I would address the objections. What about infertile/elderly couples? The Church and the State have always married these. I would answer that sexual complementariness is nonetheless ordered towards pro-creation, even if incidental physical factors make it unlikely at best. 

Also, once the principle is established that marriage exists for the purpose of having a stable family structure surround the creation and nurturing of new human beings, and hence is a stable lasting bond between a man and a woman, I would prefer the government to wash its hands of the matter. Less government intrusion into personal arrangements—that’s my motto.

What about the same sex couples who have children, either by adoption or by a previous heterosexual relationship or by some kind of assisted technology? Well, I realize in a morally pluralistic society it is hard to frame an argument that same-sex couples should not be allowed to adopt. Personally, aside from my own moral convictions, I believe there is specific developmental value in a child having a mother and a father, but I realize that many people just don’t see that point.

It seems to me that it has always been the case that children, while normally raised by mother and father in a committed family structure, have always found themselves being raised in other circumstances due to various happenstances: generally the death of one or both parents or the incapacity of one or both parents to provide for them. This is hardly a new situation, and surely the long-standing civil law around adoption/wardship suffices to protect the interests of the child without state intrusion into our private lives?

What about the fact that there are lots of lousy parents out there, who may be married as all get out and are abusive and neglectful of their children? Well, yes. And the state already has a whole bureaucratic structure in place (imperfect as it may be) to address the issue of child abuse and neglect. But surely we don’t mean to suggest that because a small percentage of parents abuse their children, the whole norm of mother-father-baby is thereby negated and discarded?

The norm of life remains, and continues to remain, that man and woman come together in sexual union, and that is how a new human being comes into existence. The norm remains that this new human being is best served if mother and father are in a stable, committed relationship in which they provide and protect the nascent life of this small person. Same sex marriage, by declaring that there is no connection whatsoever between commitment and love and the creation and preservation of human life, weakens our social commitment to our most vulnerable members and reduces the whole reality of marriage to a matter of personal private affection, which is oddly overseen and maintained by the force of the bureaucratic state.

That’s all I have to say about the political and civil side of things. Tomorrow, God willing, I will write in a more spiritual and religious vein, about the vision of sexuality the Church provides, and our need to love and care for those for whom this vision comes with a heavy price. See you tomorrow.

A Question of Law, Part One

I’m spending a few days on the blog talking about marriage, sex, the Church’s teachings, and the whole difficult issue of same-sex marriage (ssm) and its civil recognition. My effort here is to establish a dialogue that is respectful and charitable, and to present the anti-ssm argument and the Church’s teachings on the moral meaning of human sexuality in a clear respectful manner. A commenter yesterday asked (rather rudely) why I was bothering to do this. I am doing this because I wish to persuade my readers that I’m right, of course! Because I believe I (and my Church) are right, and I believe it is important for human happiness and flourishing to strive to be right in our heads about the crucial matters of life.

Today I want to provide an argument against the civil recognition of ssm.  Now, I fully realize that ssm has been the law of the land in Canada for over ten years now, and that it is the law of the land in twelve states of the USA, and realistically is likely to become the law of the land in many of the remaining ones over the next decade. Nor is there any reasonable chance for anything I just wrote to be changed, any time soon. I hold these laws to be bad and harmful, and that is why I am continuing to contest them.

As an aside, I have noticed a most strange attitude in some, that once the matter is ‘settled’ by the courts, the debate is supposed to end. Isn’t that an odd, quasi-fascist notion? A close relative of mine, who cast off the shackles of Roman Catholicism at an early age, told me in tones of utter finality that ‘the Ontario supreme court has declared that marriage includes gay people.’ And that was the end of the conversation. In old-school Catholicism there is the saying ‘Roma locuta est, causa finita est’ (Rome has spoken, the matter is closed.) Whatever one thinks of that saying, it is the height of absurdity to reject Rome in this equation and immediately substitute in the Supreme Court, or Parliament, or Congress, and think one has scored a major goal for liberty of thought and action.

Every court, every legislature in the world may establish ssm as the law of their land, or any other law, and I will maintain to my dying breath that any of us has a right to say ‘And that’s a bad law, and here’s why!’ So here’s why I believe ssm is a bad law.

As far as I can understand, the only reason the State has for sticking its nose into the marriage business is to encourage stability in pro-creative sexual relationships. There is an essential and irreducible difference between same-sex couple and opposite-sex couples that no one can deny, regardless of one’s moral beliefs about this difference.

Namely, a man and a woman can (and often do!) make a baby. Two men, two women, cannot make a baby. It is a social good that babies be made, as much as is possible in this messy old world of ours, in conditions that are conducive to their thriving. And there is no question that human babies are best served by being born into a stable family system where both parents have affective bonds to them and are bound in law (insofar as that is possible) and in custom (that quaint notion) to create a stable nurturing environment in which to raise their children.

That environment is called ‘the family.’ And I can see no other reason possible why the State and its coercive powers should enter the realm of human domestic arrangements to express its preferences. The only reason why the State should privilege certain benefits around taxation and access to social welfare systems to the family is to foster and encourage stability in sexual relations that are likely to produce children, as children born into stable social situations are more apt to grow into adults who are themselves stable and able to form that wonderful unit of a stable thriving society, the family.

Otherwise I would kindly ask the State to butt out of our personal lives. I find it alarming in the extreme that ssm advocates believe they are benefitted by having ‘society’, by which we now apparently mean ‘the government’, approve their relationships. I guess this is a sign of incipient mid-life libertarianism coming out, but I really do believe we are in big trouble when we seek government approval of human domestic relationships. I don’t much care if the Canadian government (or, for that matter, any of youse guys) ‘approves’ of my living in religious community with 200 men and women here in Madonna House, you know!

Now I realize there are a host of objections people raise. What about infertile couples, then? Or same sex couples who have children? Or abusive parents? Seeing my word count for this post, though, I think I had better stop with my basic argument; tomorrow I will address those objections, and then move on to more specifically religious arguments.

Until then, peace and blessings to you all. And let’s try to keep our comments polite and thoughtful, as most have so far.