Letter to a Suffering Church IV: Corruptio optimi pessima

“The corruption of the best is the worst”–Bishop Barron relates to us the ancient adage. I don’t know if it truly is an adage, I’ve never heard it before. I’ll take his word for it…and it is Latin so that’s probably good then.

The adage comes to us during Barron’s discussion that the Church doesn’t hate human sexuality. To repeat from last week: this is cherry picking. Of course they don’t hate human sexuality, what they hate is human sexuality for the purpose of anything other than human reproduction. Barron even cited the command by God in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply” which was subsequently used by the church to forbid most forms of birth control.

The obvious relevance here is that the priests who engaged in child rape have corrupted human sexuality resulting in the worst crimes. However, this buries the problem, because the worst crime isn’t the rape. The worst crime, to repeat what has become a mantra for me, was the coverup and facilitation of those crimes.

Let’s back up a second. In order to prove that the Bible approves of human sexuality the first story he brings up is that of Abraham and Sarah. It’s probably for the best that this is one of those stories that gets skipped over by religion teachers. We here of Abraham and God, but the relationship between Abraham and Sarah is seriously messed up. Sarah has to pretend to the Pharaoh that she is Abraham’s sister because they think that the Egyptians will kill him and leave her alive. There’s no reason for this decision, but because of the lie–Abraham lets the Pharaoh keep Sarah in his harem for the price of cattle and slaves. This is the good guy in the story (Gen 12). Abraham then knocks up his slave Hagar, who Sarah forces to leave because of that–which then God forces Hagar to return to his rapist master (Gen 16). Skip to chapter 18 and Barron picks up the story,

“After the patriarch (Abraham) received (three angels) and served them, the visitors predicted that, despite their advanced years, Abraham and Sarah would have a son a year hence. Overhearing the conversation, Sarah laughs at the absurdity of the suggestion that she and her husband could still experience “sexual pleasure” but the Lord remonstrated with Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really bear a child, old as I am?’ Is anything too marvelous for the Lord to do?”

The story is mostly correct, he’s only abbreviated the language. Barron however, has committed the old bait and switch. Abraham has had sexual pleasure as old as he is, he’s got two kids with two of his slaves (ahem, servants). Yet the age of a woman to have sexual pleasure isn’t really an issue biologically, it’s men that fail to execute the deed–billions of dollars in Viagra sales back me up on that. Yet this, again, isn’t about sexual pleasure it’s about the elderly barren Sarah being able to conceive long past the point where even a healthy woman would be able to become pregnant. The story is about Abraham’s descendants, not about whether two old people could orgasm together.

That’s the good story of human sexuality from the Bible. It kind of has to be because there are very few named female characters in the Bible. Quick what was Noah’s wife’s name? What was Lot’s wife’s name? It’s not because you fell asleep during religion class, it’s because they don’t have names. They’re not important. Lot however is important as the first story of sexual perversion is going to come from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

I don’t even understand why we call this the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Gomorrah isn’t really involved in the story other than to mention it also being destroyed. The whole story strikes me as one of two things: either the writer of Genesis had a personal problem with some guy in Sodom or they heard about a city getting destroyed and then wrote a narrative about it. I will use the word “narrative” here very loosely because like most stories in the Bible this runs about three paragraphs but is given an over inflated sense of importance. It’s like Atlantis, Atlantis is a page, maybe two, in Plato and I’ve got to pretend the German guy and the crazy haired guy might be on to something when they talk about ancient alien civilizations on Earth.

Sodom gets its first mention in Gen 13:13 when Lot goes there and the Bible author comments that “the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” At 18:20 we hear that the cry of Sodom is very great. Let’s be absolutely clear: by Genesis 18:20 God, the good guy in the story, has already decided to murder the city. He claims that he’s going to investigate the cry of Sodom–but before he gets to do so, Abraham has to talk him out murdering everyone. Also, it’s important to know that we have no idea what the crime of Sodom is, Barron wants us to go with the “normal” story that they are homosexuals. This kind of fits in with what happens: the investigator angels are threatened with gang rape by the men of Sodom. However, rape isn’t an expression of a person’s sexuality. A person that rapes a member of their own sex isn’t necessarily gay. It’s also contradicted by a number of other verses. Matthew and Luke 10 both have the crimes as being inhospitality to strangers; Jude 7 has the crimes as being lusting after strange flesh; Isaiah 1 and Ezekiel 16:49 have it as pride, wealth, laziness, and ignoring the needs of the poor (which is interesting because God will kill the poor of Sodom); general immorality in Jeremiah 23:14; and finally, unlawful deeds and filthy conversation in 2 Peter 2: 5-9.

The crowd threatens Lot to turn out the angels for the gang rape. Lot pleads with the crowd to restrain themselves on the strangers and instead offers them his two virgin daughters (Gen 19:8). Lot tells the people that the strangers are my guests and I must take care of them. The crowd is committing every crime mentioned above except ignoring the poor, but Barron’s insistence that the sexual perversion is the problem here isn’t made in the book he’s citing. He focuses on Lot’s counter offer: “In order to stave off a brutal sexual assault, he presents his own virgin daughters for a violent gang rape. Could we imagine a more thoroughgoing undermining of the Creator’s intention regarding sex?”

So Lot is a terrible human being right? He stood up against the crowd’s wishes but then says, “no no rape my daughters instead.” Are we to believe that the Bible is condemning Lot for this offer? Barron seems to want to twist the story that way. At 2 Peter 2 Lot is referred to as a “just” and “righteous” man. He was vexed at the crimes of the people of Sodom which was not his crime of offering up his kids to the crowd: because his kids were girls and the strangers weren’t. That’s why he was just and righteous.

Barron leaves the later esteeming of Lot out of the story because he needs to tell of sexual perversion in the Bible and this is the most well “known.” Lot is saved by the heralds of god because of his just actions, he’s not condemned for any of it. There’s no divine justice for his offer, instead the angels save him from the crowd by blinding them (which they could have done at any time). Lot, is the good guy in the story, we should remember that this is how he’s portrayed both in the Bible and by most later commentators.

Letter to a Suffering Church 3: Chapter 2

Bishop Barron begins his second chapter by extolling us to set aside the analysis of the current crisis from the points of view of sociology, psychology, the justice aspect, and its impact on culture and instead let us analyze it from a scriptural point of view. Oh please, let’s do that–but are you sure your eminence you want to go down that road? I’m reminded of a time in Rochester, sitting on the front porch of a Starbucks when some street preachers approached me and asked me I had heard of the great “prince of peace.” I asked them if they were referring to the guy who said that he came not to bring peace but a sword, or the guy who said he would divide sons against their fathers and mothers against their daughters (same guy, hint: it was Jesus). They then replied that scripture was full of peace, and I asked, “You sure? You want to have this conversation?”

My favorite retort to these people is not to quote them science, Hitchens, or some philosophy; but like Thomas Paine sitting in his jail cell in France–never to go outside of their book. The reason is that they are counting on no one else having read it. Bishop Barron is counting on the idea that most people have no idea what is in the book. He is counting on the idea that the Catholics reading this book are only going to remember the parts from Sunday school or the hundred or so selections of readings from Catholic services that are rotated in four year cycles. So when he wants to analyze the crisis from a scriptural point of view–I’m in let’s do this.

“The Bible is not the least opposed to bodiliness or sex. In fact, over and against all forms of dualism, it insists that everything that God has made–from the stars and planets to animals and insects–is good.”

First, this is tricky thing for a Catholic Bishop to be arguing. The Catholic religion isn’t against sex–just as long as it is done in marriage and for the purposes of procreation. We are talking about a religious organization that opposed the use of condoms until 2010! Even during rampant AIDs epidemics in African nations, the church’s position was still–no protection only abstinence. This killed people and furthered an epidemic. Because the idea of sex for fun is anathema to the church AIDs spread further than it had to. The Bible isn’t pro-sex it’s pro-reproduction, there’s quite a difference there.

The Bible forbids bodiliness with regard to masturbation as well. The sin of Onan (Gen 38:8-10), where he pulls out and spills his seed onto the ground is used as their justification for this as well as any form of birth control other than the rhythm method (birth control is also forbidden by the doctrine of double effect as long as the pill form is used to prevent pregnancy. If it is used for regulation of the menstrual cycle with pregnancy prevention as a foreseen but unintended side effect then it’s find). Sure the body is a temple, but as Revered Lovejoy once said to Lisa, “technically we’re not even allowed to go to the bathroom.”

Barron, I suspect, must have past engagement with atheists but knows is not writing a book they are going to read (hint: we read your books too), otherwise he wouldn’t toss that softball of all created things are good. There are just so many examples of terrible things that are completely natural: baby cancer, Bot Flies, Twain gives us a weird foot parasite, polio, wasps, gamma ray bursts, etc. All things are good but like 99% of the universe wants us dead, and horribly so as well. Most of this planet will kill us. Why Bishop are you throwing this out there because it’s so easy to come up with examples counter to your point?

Of course as a Catholic Bishop, and truthfully as a general Christian…and as a religious person believing in a monotheistic deity–he can always toss out “the plan” that we don’t understand as being the good. The bot fly lays its egg inside a human being where the grub must dig its way out before it can repeat the cycle. The larvae has spines on it that resist being pulled out and create infection when they do so. This creature only exists for this purpose. This better be some plan.

Barron continues, “Moreover, practically the first command that God gives to human beings in the Garden of Eden is to be fruitful and multiply.” I don’t understand why he’s saying “practically” here since it is the first thing that God tells the two people he made in the first account of Creation. In the second the first command is to tend the garden (of Eden) and then stay away from the tree of knowledge. Nevertheless, the command is “practically” the first command since the God also told the whales to be fruitful and multiply a few verses ahead of man. It doesn’t read like a command but that might be my ignorance of the original Hebrew.

The problem is that this isn’t an endorsement of sexuality anymore than telling a person to eat is a celebration of culinary artistry. It’s mystifying as to why this part is even in this book. I don’t know of a single person that thinks the Bible is responsible for the sexual molestation or the conspiracy to hide the perpetrators. Unless, he’s trying to deflect from the hypothesis that the priesthood’s focus on celibacy has a triggering effect for the behavior of the priests who have committed these crimes. I admit that I’m reaching with that last one, but the important point in this post is that hte Bible is only pro-sex when it comes to men needing to multiply, it is pretty explicit about this fact.