The greatest of human friendships

"if a husband were permitted to abandon his wife, the society of husband and wife would not be an association of equals, but, instead, a sort of slavery on the part of the wife [(non esset aequa societas viri ad mulierem, sed servitus quaedam ex parte mulieris)]."

"the greater the friendship is, the more solid and long-lasting will it be.  Now, there seems to be the greatest friendship [(maxima amicitia)] between husband and wife, for they are united [(adunatur)] not only in the act of fleshly union [(in actu carnalis copulae)], which produces a certain gentle association [(quandam suavem societatem)] even among beasts, but also in the partnership of the whole range of domestic activity [(ad totius domesticae conversationis consortium)].  Consequently, as an indication of this, man must even 'leave his father and mother' for the sake of his wife, as is said in Genesis (2:24).  Therefore, it is fitting for matrimony to be completely indissoluble [(omnino indissolubile)]."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, ScG (revised and completed 1260-65) III.123.4 & 6, trans. Vernon J. Bourke.  Latin from Corpus Thomisticum.  Note that ad by comparison with that in, both of which qualify adunatur:  "in the act of fleshly union," but "towards" or "with an eye to" or "for" partnership in the whole of domestic association.
     The sacramentality of marriage:  But then note that friendship (amicitia)—which is realized first and preeminently within the life of the triune God himself (Dictionnaire de philosophie et de théologie Thomistes, 18)—is, for Aquinas, precisely what the heavenly Bridegroom seeks with us.

"the perfect friendship of the sort which exists between a man and his wife [(perfecta amicitia qualis est inter virum et uxorum)], for whom man even leaves his father and mother (Gen 2:24), cannot be had with many wives."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram (1251/52, i.e. before the Commentary on the Sentences) 4.1.136, trans. Robert St. Hilaire.  "what, for Aquinas, is [truly] essential to marriage, the communion of life between the spouses and [their] perfect friendship, is the sole true reason for avoiding polygamy.  If, three years later, in the commentary on the Sentences, he evokes also the good of children and mutual aid, this is because he expresses himself [there] in a manner more complete.  [But] the early commentary on Isaiah manifests already very clearly the conception of the essence of marriage that we encounter [again and again] in the course of his teaching" later on (Adriano Oliva, O.P., "Essence et finalité du marriage selon Thomas d'Aquin pour un soin pastoral renouvelé," Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 98, no. 4 (2014):  611 (601-668), translation mine).
     Against the argument that this conception of the true essence (or first—as distinguished from consequent—perfection) of marriage renders it vulnerable to the reformulations of our time would have to stand, among other things, the fact that "male and female have different operations," and that "the vice of sodomy," as "entirely unnatural," can "in no manner stand with the stated end" (135 and both often elsewhere in the Thomistic corpus).  More important still:  "things that are ordered to some one thing are said to be united together in their ordering to it [(in ordine ad aliud)]. . . .  And so, since by marriage two people are ordered to [1] one single generation and education of children, and also to [2] one single domestic life, it is clear that in marriage there is a union, because of which a man and a woman are called 'husband' and 'wife'; and such a union, by the fact that it is ordained to some one thing [(ex hoc quod ordinatur ad aliquod unum, most distinctively that 'one single generation . . . of children')] is marriage" (In IV Sent. 27.1.1.1.Resp., italics mine).

PSEUDO St. Catherine of Siena: "What is it | you want to change? | Your hair, your face, your body? | Why? || For God is | in love with all those things | and He might weep | when they are gone."

YOUR HAIR, YOUR FACE

What is it

you want to change?

Your hair, your face, your body?

Why?

For God is

in love with all those things

and He might weep

when they are

gone.

     Daniel Ladinsky, Love poems from God:  Twelve sacred voices from the East and West (New York:  Penguin Compass, 2002), 203.  From the prefatory "Genesis of these poems" (xiii-xiv) a strong indication that this one, though attributed to St. Catherine of Siena, is inauthentic:

Penguin Random House

Any liberties I have taken with these poems was an act, I hope, void of self-interest and done with the sole intention of trying to help emancipate our wings. Several translators have been helpful to me with this work, though most of what is in this book could be said to be an avant-garde portrait of these remarkable historic figures. I have used and mixed whichever of their colors I felt were the most genuine, the most relative to the present, and were the most capable of bringing the reader into the extraordinary experience of these great souls. For their experience of God foretells our own.

What to say to academia about these poems? Well, I think scholars have made important contributions to unveiling God, yet millions of people continue to be persecuted by frightening untruths stemming from archaic concepts of Him that took root in many of us as children. I hope there is enough benevolence—and reality—in my interpretations of these poems to alleviate some of that suffering; truth frees and makes us laugh. We need to know that God is the source of all humor and that God is Infinite Intelligence, a Beloved that does not defy our deepest sensibilities and the innate, glorious compassion of the heart. . . .

"No one could ever paint a too wonderful picture of…God." But I feel He doesn’t mind that I tried. In studying the lives of these wonderful saints, I can’t imagine any of them saying "no" if they were asked if we could freely adapt their words to a few blue-grass tunes or whiskey-soaked jazz. I think they might shout, "Go for it, baby; set the world on fire if you can, kick ass for the Beloved with some great art."

     My suspicions have been confirmed in correspondence with two specialists in St. Catherine studies dated 6-7 October 2021, Dr. F. Thomas Luongo, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of History, Tulane University ("it doesn’t sound like anything Catherine would say. She is not exactly the patron saint of body-positivity!"  "I don’t think it’s something that Catherine or any other fourteenth-century author could have written"), and Dr. Karen Scott, Associate Professor of Catholic Studies and History, DePaul University ("Ladinsky's text is in no way a real translation of authentic texts by Catherine of Siena").

"the utter sufficiency of revelation on its own"

Truett, Baylor

"[Albert] Outler[, who invented the so-called 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral,'] was a brilliant historian but a dilettante in philosophy.  Despite his vast learning, he had no real need for issues in theory of knowledge, and this shows up dramatically in the original version of the thesis.  Hence he completely missed the extent to which Wesley was a medieval figure in his treatment of Scripture.  For Wesley, Scripture mattered because it mediated divine revelation; and, like Aquinas, he was more than ready to come to the aid of revelation with sundry appeals to the tradition of the church, philosophical arguments of one sort or another, and experience—religious and otherwise.  This, of course, looks like the Quadrilateral; but the resemblance is entirely superficial.  Outler misread both the content—involving as it does an appeal to revelation—and the structure—involving as it does a keen sense of the utter sufficiency of revelation on its own."

     William J. Abraham, "What Should United Methodists do with the Quadrilateral?," Quarterly review 22, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 86 (85–88).

"Isn’t the 'binary' thinking we sneer at precisely a taking seriously of difference, after all?"

Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC

"Isn't the 'binary' thinking we sneer at precisely a taking seriously of difference, after all?  Why is a culture so preoccupied with difference so reluctant to acknowledge anything that might significantly distinguish a man from a woman?  And just here we see the confusion implied in the ambivalence:  to reject binary thinking . . . is to affirm nonbinary thinking:  nonbinary thinking, in other words, is good, while its opposite, binary thinking, is bad.  This division of the world is just as 'binary' as the division it rejects; the only difference (!) is that, precisely unconsciously (in fact necessarily unconsciously), it denies the difference between its terms.  And it does so in the name of difference!  In short, we in the modern world affirm difference, only to absolutize it to the exclusion of all else; and we reject difference, only ruthlessly to divide the world into pluses and minuses, Sneetches with, and Sneetches without, stars on thars."

     D. C. Schindler, "Perfect difference:  gender and the analogy of being," Communio:  international Catholic review 43 (2016):  196-197 (194-231).

"the construct of 'gender' is the ultimate 'morning-after' pill because it hides all the tell-tale signs of our being 'whence and whither.'"

Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC

     Margaret H. McCarthy, "The emperor’s (new) new clothes:  the logic of the new 'gender ideology,'" Communio:  international Catholic review 46, no. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2019):  647 (620-659).

Christians today "are the lonely custodians of realities that are not technically speaking matters of faith, even as they are dismissed as [such]."

Pontifical John Paul Institute of Washington, DC

"We should not fail to notice the unique situation that Christians are in today:  they are the lonely custodians of realities that are not technically speaking matters of faith, even as they are dismissed as 'matters of faith.'  Chesterton described this unique situation over a century ago.

Everything will be denied.  Everything will become a creed.  It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them.  It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake.  Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four.  Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.  We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face.  We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible.  We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage.  We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed."

     Margaret H. McCarthy, quoting Heretics (1905), 305, in "The emperor’s (new) new clothes:  the logic of the new 'gender ideology,'" Communio:  international Catholic review 46, no. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2019):  658 (620-659).

"a more basic distinction, prior to cultural variety"

Pontifical John Paul II Institute of Washington, DC

"I do not dispute that there is a distinction between [1] the fact of being sexually distinct (a boy or a girl, a man or a woman) and [2] 'living that difference out in a variety of cultures.'  But there is a more basic distinction, prior to cultural variety.  It is between [1] being one sex or the other (a boy or girl) and [2] growing up to become a man or a woman, which involves both [2a] the person 'living out' what he or she already is and [2b] those helping to raise him or her (parents, society, culture).  If we begin there, and not immediately with cultural variety, we allow ourselves to speak positively about the necessary role a culture has in forming a boy or a girl to maturity as a man or a woman. . . .  We extricate ourselves, in other words, from the agenda that originally inspired the search for cultural variety (beginning with Margaret Mead) to show how cultural 'expectations' are per se imposed externally in the arbitrary sense, according to the 'social construct' model belonging to the nature-nurture dualism.  Furthermore, in my view, the distinction as stated draws too sharp a distinction between [1] the biological and [2] the living out of sexual difference.  By using the modifier 'biological' for 'sex,' the terms are prey to the implication, however unintended, that 'living out' or 'expression' is not biological, and conversely, that 'sex,' or 'bodily, biological reality' is not always already socially embedded and in need of formation and personal 'living out.'  But that, of course, is not the case.  It is the one human organism (body and soul) that both is and then acts.  Think, for example[,] of the nursing of a child or the education of children and the making of a home, all of which are indivisibly human acts.  Think, too, of the fact that the human child is born 'too early,' and in need of the 'social uterus' of the family.  Perhaps the problem that the above distinctions are prey to arises from the preference for the use of 'biological' over 'natural,' the former being an abstraction of the latter.  As Karol Wojtyła said, 'The expression "order of nature" cannot be confused nor identified with the expression "biological order," as the latter, even though also signifying the order of nature, denotes it only inasmuch as it is accessible for the empirical-descriptive methods of natural sciences' (Love and Responsibility, trans. Grzegorz Ignatik [Boston:  Pauline Books and Media, 2013], 40).  In sum, by choosing the more abstract term, it is very difficult, especially in current circumstances given the history of the invention of the 'sex and gender' dyad, to designate the whole human organism who is male or female and then grows up to become a man or woman (quite apart from the actual intentions to the contrary of those using the modifier).  Finally, by using the 'sex and gender' pair . . . to indicate a proper distinction is to imagine, naively in my view, that anyone today is able to detect in the pair anything other than the dualisms the distinction has always existed to create and perpetuate."

     Margaret H. McCarthy, "The emperor’s (new) new clothes:  the logic of the new 'gender ideology,'" Communio:  international Catholic review 46, no. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2019):  629n24, underscoring mine (620-659).  630n26:  "it would not be correct to refer to me as having a 'sound theory of gender,' as I do not recognize 'gender' as a thing distinct from sex."