Joseph Bottum writes for Commonweal Magazine about The Things We Share: A Catholic’s Case for Same-Sex Marriage.
Kelvin Holdsworth blogs about Atonement theory and the Naughty Step.
The Church Times has a comprehensive review of Greenbelt: Greenbelt 2013 – Life begins…
The piece by Joseph Bottum repays careful reading, although it is at a length that will appeal to people who read essays in The New Yorker and then say “you know, they should have given the writer a bit more space”. It portrays the same problem that the CofE has in the UK. Bottum speaks regretfully of the decline of Catholic intellectualism as a force in the USA: no longer do people who disagree with Catholicism at root at least still admire the rigour of its thinking. Because what the catholics are saying about homosexuality is so egregious (they’re opposed,… Read more »
From the kind of comments that Bottum is receiving on Commonweal, I think it’s safe to say that he will not receive another invite to appear on (much more conservative) EWTN.
The article by Bottum is well worth reading though as has been said is longer than most articles. It does though come at things from a slightly different angle. Interesting at this late stage in the debate to read something which gives different perspectives on the issue. I hope it can find its way onto Justin Welby’s reading list.
I suspect Joseph Bottum rather regrets that article.
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/2525/joseph_bottum_there_are_a_couple_things_that_i_regret_in_the_article.aspx
It is on ++JW’s reading list, or so he says.
Has Joseph Bottum actually contributed anything to the debate by this article and its subsequent regrets? I think not. I am also saddened that he clings to a ‘Natural Law’ argument that is so weak when applied to ethics. That way lies the most open road to Nazism, which is thoroughly in accord with Natural Law. – Don’t jump down my throat because I mention the N word. But do please give it some genuine thought
Bottum is a machiavellian who urged prolifers to join forces with neocons. His late conversion to marriage equality seems based on machiavellian opportunism as well. He says the metaphysical foundations of marriage have vanished. They haven’t. Gays are not out to destroy those foundations but to build on them.
Bottum seems so far out in theoretical land that he’s not even wrong. His view from on high can’t discern normal human responses in gay people. Marriage to avoid loneliness in old age? A result possibly, but not a first motive. Two people meet, bond, live together, and find that they complete each other. His promotion of any variety of Natural Law (deep or shallow) confuses Intellectual coherence with internal consistency. I have an old text book, Hall’s Dogmatic Theology, that lists the nine orders of angels and the varieties of sin in outline order — all very neat and… Read more »
Bottum wants a re-enchantment — a new mythology of wonder through which to view experience. It occurs to me that the re-enchantment has occurred. It was called Science, and offers wonders large and small, galazies and atoms. Although it functions as much on authority and tradition as former worldviews, it has the advantage of being correctable. Evidence can trump authority and tradition.
Hall’s Dogmatic Theology,sounds like a candidate for one of my altered book projects !
I love olde books that can benefit from eing transformed and thus perhaps, given a new lease of (very different) life.
“He says the metaphysical foundations of marriage have vanished. They haven’t.”
Or, alternatively, they never existed in the first place. Almost all of the discourse of marriage spoken of my soi-disant Christian intellectuals would come as a complete surprise to people who were actually married.
I think St Augustine’s metaphysical foundations of marriage make considerable sense (fides proles sacramentum); perhaps not the language of soi-disant Christian intellectuals today or Theology of the Body groupies. I don’t agree that science or sociology tells us all we need to know about marriage. Classical Christian thought “enchanted” marriage, and the enchantment has just now reached lgbt folk. I found Bottum’s essay unreadable, but we will find lots of bishops completing their education in public in the same embarrassing way in the years ahead.