Language Abuse Watch--Clerical department

I didn't realize that the Roman Catholic prohibition against contraception was any older than the creepy Victorian gimcrackery of the Immaculate Conception, but in fact the theological basis for it has been around forever. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa contra Gentiles, explains it thus:

God has care of everything according to that which is good for it. Now it is good for everything to gain its end, and evil for it to be diverted from its due end. But as in the whole so also in the parts, our study should be that every part of man and every act of his may attain its due end. Now though the semen is superfluous [jump]

German chess bishop, 14th-15th c., British Museum. From the Game of Kings exhibition, Cloisters, 2011.

for the preservation of the individual, yet it is necessary to him for the propagation of the species: while other excretions, such as excrement, urine, sweat, and the like, are needful for no further purpose: hence the only good that comes to man of them is by their removal from the body. But that is not the object in the emission of the semen, but rather the profit of generation, to which the union of the sexes is directed.... The emission of the semen then ought to be so directed as that both the proper generation may ensue and the education of the offspring be secured.

Hence it is clear that every emission of the semen is contrary to the good of man, which takes place in a way whereby generation is impossible; and if this is done on purpose, it must be a sin. I mean a way in which generation is impossible in itself as is the case in every emission of the semen without the natural union of male and female: wherefore such sins are called 'sins against nature.' But if it is by accident that generation cannot follow from the emission of the semen, the act is not against nature on that account, nor is it sinful; the case of the woman being barren would be a case in point.

A model of clarity: you know exactly what he's trying to say, and you know exactly why you disagree with it, point by point, because, for instance, the gods clearly would not have given us that much sperm if it was only supposed to do the one job. That would be crazy.

Now here is John Paul II, Uomo e donna lo creò. Catechesi sull'amore umano, 1995, in what looks like a not too happy translation:

As ministers of a sacrament, which is made up of consent and perfected through the conjugal union, a man and a woman are called to express that mysterious language of their bodies in all their truth. Through actions and reactions, through the whole, reciprocally conditioned dynamism of tension and enjoyment, through all this, man, the person speaks (…) And, precisely on the level of this 'body language' — which is something more than just sexual reactivity and, as an authentic language of persons, is placed under the requirement of truth, i.e., objective norms — a man and a woman mutually express themselves to one another in the fullest and deepest way, insofar as possible for them, through the very somatic dimension of masculinity and femininity: the man and the woman express themselves in the whole truth about their persons....

[But] the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.

What you get in this dangerous fishhouse punch of code words and metaphors and passive verbs is the opposite of clarity. What is it that's being called a sacrament? Marriage? Then why are the man and woman ministers of it instead of the priest? Or sex itself? But it's made of up consent and perfected through the conjugal union. And what is the language of the body, and why is it "expressed" rather than spoken? (Do you express Italian? No, but I can express a little coffee.) If it is more than sexual reactivity, then I guess that means sexual reactivity is part of it, but if it's "placed" (by whom?) under the requirement of truth, i.e., objective norms, is that its semantics? As in, maybe, an expression in body language is true if it corresponds to objective norms and false if it's abnormal? Oh! I think I see a little light over here, but... No, it's all gone black again.

Honestly, you guys who go around analyzing the writing of Anne Althouse and Jonah Goldberg (speaking of disorderly emissions of seed) are shooting fish in a barrel. Those people are pikers compared to the Magisterium.

It's language abuse is what it is, really, with all these loaded expressions—sacrament, and perfected, and objectivity, and body and language and truth, and innate and total and positive and personal, used not so much for meaning as for the incense smell, wrapped around the dumb old Augustine-Aquinas argument like shreds of papier mâché slathered around a balloon to hide the fact that there's nothing, after all these centuries, left inside. Not even air.

From Schuyler's Monsterblog.

Meanwhile, the National Catholic Reporter's Robert McClory invites us to consider a new document from the International Theological Commission, a kind of advisory council to the Magisterium on theological issues, which has something to say about the "sense of the faithful", sensus fidelium, or "what the Catholic faithful actually believe":

"The sensus fidelium is of great importance," declares the text. "It is not only an object of attention and respect, it is also a base and locus for their work. Theologians depend on the sensus fidelium because the faith that they explore and explain lives in the people of God ... Theologians help to clarify and articulate the content of the sensus fidelium, recognizing and demonstrating that issues relating to the truth of the faith can be complex and that investigation of them must be precise."

It seems that the Catholic theologians actually care about the thoughts of the congregation, not to mention reality in general, and this is what puts them historically at odds with the bishops (who are not theologians but administrators, as they say, except of course for the Big Bishop who is the World's Greatest Theologian, just ask him or his docile press). And by the way it's nice to take a look at the Catholic Reporter from time to time and be reminded what a lot of really lovely people there are in that church, down at the bottom of the hierarchy.