Pope Francis On Transgender Ideology And Same Sexton Unions

[Anomaly]

If you have to argue about a concept ideal family, then it's pointless to discuss anything. 

There is a big difference of having an ideal as standard for measurement,  and tolerating, accepting, or rejecting and fighting the many, many non-ideals.   Era comes across (to me, anyway) as very bitter and desirous to point out and dwell on the imperfections. 

[Era Might]

12 minutes ago, Peace said:

If you want to understand human behavior I suggest that you invest in a psychology textbook. There are many good ones out there.

Again, you do not believe that any action,  such as raping and murdering an infant, is always evil, is that correct? You do not believe that there is an "ideal" concerning our actions towards infants or anyone else, that would make raping and murdering an infant always unacceptable. Correct?

I just want to confirm that, because if that is true, then there really is no point in us discussing much else. We have a fundamental disagreement in world view, as you seem to put it.

I don't know. The Psalmist lamented Zion by the waters of Babylon and longed to see his enemy's children dashed against a rock. Every day we live comfortable lives off the labor and misery of women and children around the world. And we do this while professing our Ideal (which, by some coincidence, affirms our middle class family life at the expense of those women and children). So if there is some Ideal, I don't see any difference in believing or disbelieving in it, because we still find a way to justify our actions...bombing women and children, exploiting them, deporting them, drowning them in consumerism, whatever. Everything is possible when you have an invisible Idea to justify it.

6 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

If you have to argue about a concept ideal family, then it's pointless to discuss anything. 

There is a big difference of having an ideal as standard for measurement,  and tolerating, accepting, or rejecting and fighting the many, many non-ideals.   Era comes across (to me, anyway) as very bitter and desirous to point out and dwell on the imperfections. 

Huh? We're discussing a radical social change in family life...unless I'm a fanboy for the political agenda, the while point is to discuss where we're going wrong. This thread was about the Pope's stark denunciation of homosexuality, it's not a Mother's Day thread about your family. I'm glad everyone has families...even the screwed up ones, because eventually you realize all families are screwed up, they're made of humans.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Era Might

[Era Might]

Just to add, I do believe in an ideal of measurement, but it's the paradoxical ideal of the Gospel, where your neighbor strikes you on one cheek and you turn the other, where Jesus brings division between parents and children, and where love is greater than giving your body to be burned or having all knowledge and prophecies. IMO that's the only ideal because it's only measure is love, and that Gospel ideal, paradoxically, destroys all ideals, because an ideal that can be measured is like a god that can be seen...it's an idol.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Era Might

[Anomaly]

Lol.  Not all families are screwed up.    Most are terrific and loving families.  Few, if any are perfect. 

Most people are wonderful, and great.   Few if any are perfect.  

Most LOVING relationships are great.  Few, if any are perfect.  

Homosexual, loving, relationships can have good and laudable characteristics.  Heterosexual, loving, relationships can have good and laudable characteristics. 

Most happy people don't dwell first on imperfections, but discuss and compare the good, contrasting and discussing the imperfections. Fundamentally, a homosexual is not ideal because it doesn't work procreationally. As such, it isn't fundamentally an ideal for society within sociological context.  The Pope is speaking within religious context, comparing homo with an ideal.  We can have ideals, and tolerate non-ideal. 

Catholics don't have to burn gays, or hate them.  They don't have to say their relationships are as ideal as an imperfect hetero marriage because they aren't the perfect ideal either.  Imperfection isn't the most important thing, but closeness to becoming reasonably close to ideal is. 

Youve mentioned in other posts before, I specifically remember, that you measure by imperfection. Your tone in mosts posts strike me as very negative, dismantling, and rejecting any good with found or perceived imperfection.  Not that I think I should or could help you since I rejected religions and most concepts of God and have my own embraced negativity, but  srsly guy, you seem like you may want to cheer up a bit and not be so wick to be Danny Downer. 

Edited May 25, 2016 by Anomaly

[Era Might]

22 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

Lol.  Not all families are screwed up.    Most are terrific and loving families.  Few, if any are perfect. 

Most people are wonderful, and great.   Few if any are perfect.  

Most LOVING relationships are great.  Few, if any are perfect.  

Homosexual, loving, relationships can have good and laudable characteristics.  Heterosexual, loving, relationships can have good and laudable characteristics. 

Most happy people don't dwell first on imperfections, but discuss and compare the good, contrasting and discussing the imperfections. Fundamentally, a homosexual is not ideal because it doesn't work procreationally. As such, it isn't fundamentally an ideal for society within sociological context.  The Pope is speaking within religious context, comparing homo with an ideal.  We can have ideals, and tolerate non-ideal. 

Catholics don't have to burn gays, or hate them.  They don't have to say their relationships are as ideal as an imperfect hetero marriage because they aren't the perfect ideal either.  Imperfection isn't the most important thing, but closeness to becoming reasonably close to ideal is. 

Yeah, me and you speak different languages. You interpret my criticism as bitterness, but to be bitter assumes you have an Ideal that has failed you. And if I have an Ideal it is this: the New Man personified in Christ. When you speak of an ideal you mean something positive, some good organization or harnessing of our humanity. So I guess we talk at cross-purposes because my God is Christ, who destroys all our goodness in the Law and creates a New Man who does not yet exist...we are all becoming Christ, but to become Christ means to destroy the Old Man, indeed, to "become sin" as St. Paul put it. I criticize Man not out of bitterness at his failure to perfect the Law, but out of awe at his self-destruction which alone can bring about Christ, the New Man.

Tolstoy famously starts Anna Karenina with the line, every happy family is alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Why? The happy family has achieved an ideal, it has conformed to a model and thus has no reality, no personality, it is a dead idea, pure role-playing. But the unhappy family has gone off the rails, rebelled against the model, and only in that real, historical, anti-idealism do we really find our humanity, our salvation.

But, since you commented on how I come across, I'll just say you come across to me as a good-natured American Pragmatist. You look for the good and are content with the good-enough. I'm more of a Tolstoyan myself...I see the good in the mirror of the worst. That's the mystery, for me at least.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Era Might

[Peace]

14 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Yeah, me and you speak different languages. You interpret my criticism as bitterness, but to be bitter assumes you have an Ideal that has failed you. And if I have an Ideal it is this: the New Man personified in Christ. When you speak of an ideal you mean something positive, some good organization or harnessing of our humanity. So I guess we talk at cross-purposes because my God is Christ, who destroys all our goodness in the Law and creates a New Man who does not yet exist...we are all becoming Christ, but to become Christ means to destroy the Old Man, indeed, to "become sin" as St. Paul put it. I criticize Man not out of bitterness at his failure to perfect the Law, but out of awe at his self-destruction which alone can bring about Christ, the New Man.

Tolstoy famously starts Anna Karenina with the line, every happy family is alike, but evert unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Why? The happy family has achieved an ideal, it has conformed to a model and thus has no reality, no personality, it is a dead idea, pure role-playing. But the unhappy family has gone off the rails, rebelled against the model, and only in that real, historical, anti-idealism do we really find our humanity, our salvation.

But, since you commented on how I come across, I'll just sat you come across to me as a good-natured American Pragmatist. You look for the good and are content with the good-enough. I'm more of a Tolstoy an myself...I see the good in the mirror of the worst. That's the mystery, for me at least.

If Christ is your ideal why do you seemingly disagree with most of what He teaches in the Bible, concerning sin in particular?

For example, He teaches against lust, but you seem to be perfectly fine with that.

Or do you just have your own personal conception of Christ, which is nothing more than a personification of your own desires?

Edited May 25, 2016 by Peace

[Maggyie]

26 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Yeah, me and you speak different languages. You interpret my criticism as bitterness, but to be bitter assumes you have an Ideal that has failed you. And if I have an Ideal it is this: the New Man personified in Christ. When you speak of an ideal you mean something positive, some good organization or harnessing of our humanity. So I guess we talk at cross-purposes because my God is Christ, who destroys all our goodness in the Law and creates a New Man who does not yet exist...we are all becoming Christ, but to become Christ means to destroy the Old Man, indeed, to "become sin" as St. Paul put it. I criticize Man not out of bitterness at his failure to perfect the Law, but out of awe at his self-destruction which alone can bring about Christ, the New Man.

Tolstoy famously starts Anna Karenina with the line, every happy family is alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Why? The happy family has achieved an ideal, it has conformed to a model and thus has no reality, no personality, it is a dead idea, pure role-playing. But the unhappy family has gone off the rails, rebelled against the model, and only in that real, historical, anti-idealism do we really find our humanity, our salvation.

But, since you commented on how I come across, I'll just say you come across to me as a good-natured American Pragmatist. You look for the good and are content with the good-enough. I'm more of a Tolstoyan myself...I see the good in the mirror of the worst. That's the mystery, for me at least.

Tolstoy was wrong about that, and I never could appreciate Anna because of that. In reality it's the UNhappy families that are all the same: money problems, infidelity or addiction. It's monotonous for those who work in family counseling. 

I mean really, Oblonsky is a self involved dude who thinks his wife has gotten too fat and old after babies, and starts messing around with the nanny. That's like the oldest story in the world. Repetitive to the point of boring. I think a Kennedy did that. Literally unhappy families are copies of each other. I have sometimes tried to assume Tolstoy was being sarcastic with that opening line given the scene he describes. 

[Era Might]

1 minute ago, Maggyie said:

Tolstoy was wrong about that, and I never could appreciate Anna because of that. In reality it's the UNhappy families that are all the same: money problems, infidelity or addiction. It's monotonous for those who work in family counseling. 

Lol. I don't think Tolstoy would necessarily disagree with you. But the ordinary "family problems" that you refer to are often just necessary escapes from the family and the society it incarnates. In other words, it's an extension of the life they're already living, just in a less respectable or controlled manner. Tolstoy himself remembered the dreariness of his own sins...but he also knew the dreariness and meaninglessness of respectable society. War and Peace ends with a beautiful and realistic depiction of domestic life, but only after the characters have known the heaven and hell of war and peace. In order to be born again one must die, and marriage and family are, by nature, safeguards against death...we're too busy living to die, and that causes so many of our problems.

[Not A Real Name]

39 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Why? The happy family has achieved an ideal, it has conformed to a model and thus has no reality, no personality, it is a dead idea, pure role-playing. But the unhappy family has gone off the rails, rebelled against the model, and only in that real, historical, anti-idealism do we really find our humanity, our salvation.

 

Christ tells us we must be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect and gives Himself as the model of this perfection.  When we imitate Christ and strive for this perfection we become who we are truly meant to be! The unity in Faith the Saints had did not destroy their personality! Heck the Holy Trinity itself shows that unity does not remove individuality. It perfects it! . 

[Anomaly]

35 minutes ago, Era Might said:

 

Tolstoy famously starts Anna Karenina with the line, every happy family is alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Why? The happy family has achieved an ideal, it has conformed to a model and thus has no reality, no personality, it is a dead idea, pure role-playing. But the unhappy family has gone off the rails, rebelled against the model, and only in that real, historical, anti-idealism do we really find our humanity, our salvation.

But, since you commented on how I come across, I'll just say you come across to me as a good-natured American Pragmatist. You look for the good and are content with the good-enough. I'm more of a Tolstoyan myself...I see the good in the mirror of the worst. That's the mystery, for me at least.

Lol. Paint me happy enough!

You and Tolsty see happy as conforming to the ideal, so it's dead and to be rejected?   You search for unhappiness as desirous, because the futile battle against everything and anything is authentic.  

Yes, we are polar opposites.   I seek happy for me and those around me.  I appreciate and am grateful for instances of happy, or happy enough.   You may call it pragmatic, as if it's a derogatory term.  I call it living in the now.  I don't count on an afterlife for reward, punishment, or cosmic meaning. I don't believe it.   But I do believe in the importance of the journey, not the destination.   Our beginning and end mean nothing.   A direction for the journey matters as it helps determine who and what we encounter, and maybe who and what the other travelers encounter in their journeys.   No point in dwelling in the ditch and weeds.  Just because I don't believe in religion's ideals as goals, doesn't mean I can't travel the same direction.  

Rejecting all ideals as "dead" eliminates any willful direction for our brief journeys.   Especially rejecting happiness.  I don't think Jesus' message and purpose (as proposed by Christianity) is to seek misery in this life for happiness in the next.  Rather sad, and to me, bitter for a thinking person.  

[Maggyie]

17 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Lol. I don't think Tolstoy would necessarily disagree with you. But the ordinary "family problems" that you refer to are often just necessary escapes from the family and the society it incarnates. In other words, it's an extension of the life they're already living, just in a less respectable or controlled manner. Tolstoy himself remembered the dreariness of his own sins...but he also knew the dreariness and meaninglessness of respectable society. War and Peace ends with a beautiful and realistic depiction of domestic life, but only after the characters have known the heaven and hell of war and peace. In order to be born again one must die, and marriage and family are, by nature, safeguards against death...we're too busy living to die, and that causes so many of our problems.

Mmmm again I'm trying to make connections between themes of your posts. Is it really middle class "Christian" respectability that is the issue? The most authentic Christianity is absolutely the opposite of respectable, and family life isn't necessarily respectable, not if it is a Christian family. Family is meant to be a death, an encounter with the crucifixion. Truly for most people it is. 

[Era Might]

29 minutes ago, Maggyie said:

Tolstoy was wrong about that, and I never could appreciate Anna because of that. In reality it's the UNhappy families that are all the same: money problems, infidelity or addiction. It's monotonous for those who work in family counseling. 

I mean really, Oblonsky is a self involved dude who thinks his wife has gotten too fat and old after babies, and starts messing around with the nanny. That's like the oldest story in the world. Repetitive to the point of boring. I think a Kennedy did that. Literally unhappy families are copies of each other. I have sometimes tried to assume Tolstoy was being sarcastic with that opening line given the scene he describes. 

I think you're taking it too literally. This is kind of just an aside because I don't often get the chance to talk literature on Phatmass, but I'd suggest not reading it as an absolute statement or a philosophical statement defining happy and unhappy families, but as an artistic statement that gets at something true even in a contradictory way. 

1 minute ago, Maggyie said:

Mmmm again I'm trying to make connections between themes of your posts. Is it really middle class "Christian" respectability that is the issue? The most authentic Christianity is absolutely the opposite of respectable, and family life isn't necessarily respectable, not if it is a Christian family. Family is meant to be a death, an encounter with the crucifixion. Truly for most people it is. 

Yes, I agree, but I don't equate Christianity with our social institutions. To live marriage as an incarnation of the Gospel's ideals is, in my opinion, a great struggle against marriage as a social institution, just as to be a disciple brings into question our entire social life...political, economic, etc.

[Anomaly]

3 minutes ago, Maggyie said:

Mmmm again I'm trying to make connections between themes of your posts. Is it really middle class "Christian" respectability that is the issue? The most authentic Christianity is absolutely the opposite of respectable, and family life isn't necessarily respectable, not if it is a Christian family. Family is meant to be a death, an encounter with the crucifixion. Truly for most people it is. 

This is demented and sad, but religious (social).

[Era Might]

7 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

Lol. Paint me happy enough!

You and Tolsty see happy as conforming to the ideal, so it's dead and to be rejected?   You search for unhappiness as desirous, because the futile battle against everything and anything is authentic.  

Yes, we are polar opposites.   I seek happy for me and those around me.  I appreciate and am grateful for instances of happy, or happy enough.   You may call it pragmatic, as if it's a derogatory term.  I call it living in the now.  I don't count on an afterlife for reward, punishment, or cosmic meaning. I don't believe it.   But I do believe in the importance of the journey, not the destination.   Our beginning and end mean nothing.   A direction for the journey matters as it helps determine who and what we encounter, and maybe who and what the other travelers encounter in their journeys.   No point in dwelling in the ditch and weeds.  Just because I don't believe in religion's ideals as goals, doesn't mean I can't travel the same direction.  

Rejecting all ideals as "dead" eliminates any willful direction for our brief journeys.   Especially rejecting happiness.  I don't think Jesus' message and purpose (as proposed by Christianity) is to seek misery in this life for happiness in the next.  Rather sad, and to me, bitter for a thinking person.  

You misunderstood. I believe in happiness in this life. I also believe in rebelling against all that obstructs real happiness. If a certain way of life makes you happy, it's your life, not mine. I don't seek to tell you what happiness is, but I believe in the wisdom of art and literature and sages and philosophers, where man had always rebelled against the world he was born into in search of real happiness, not its shadow.

Tolstoy has a beautiful character in War and Peace, a peasant who was genuinely happy, so simple and really at peace. That was probably Tolstoy's vision of happiness, which was hard for him to attain given all the obstructions he was loaded with from birth.

My ideal is humanity, nothing more, nothing less. Which is to say my ideal is Christ, the New Man, the grain of wheat which dies and bears much fruit.

I think happiness is simple: always be honest with yourself, and strive to live in that honesty.

[Not A Real Name]

26 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

Lol. Paint me happy enough!

You and Tolsty see happy as conforming to the ideal, so it's dead and to be rejected?   You search for unhappiness as desirous, because the futile battle against everything and anything is authentic.  

Yes, we are polar opposites.   I seek happy for me and those around me.  I appreciate and am grateful for instances of happy, or happy enough.   You may call it pragmatic, as if it's a derogatory term.  I call it living in the now.  I don't count on an afterlife for reward, punishment, or cosmic meaning. I don't believe it.   But I do believe in the importance of the journey, not the destination.   Our beginning and end mean nothing.   A direction for the journey matters as it helps determine who and what we encounter, and maybe who and what the other travelers encounter in their journeys.   No point in dwelling in the ditch and weeds.  Just because I don't believe in religion's ideals as goals, doesn't mean I can't travel the same direction.  

Rejecting all ideals as "dead" eliminates any willful direction for our brief journeys.   Especially rejecting happiness.  I don't think Jesus' message and purpose (as proposed by Christianity) is to seek misery in this life for happiness in the next.  Rather sad, and to me, bitter for a thinking person.  

Anomaly the life you speak of is religious. The hight of love (a love that doesn't care about/seek reward) is the love saints sang about! It is a love that is supernatural since God likewise loves us in this manner. There is no reward for Him. No benefit. 

St Francis Xavier’s Hymn of Love

O GOD, I love Thee for Thyself,
And not that I may Heaven gain, 
Nor because those who love Thee not,
Must suffer Hell’s eternal pain.

Thou O my Jesus! Thou didst me
Upon the Cross embrace;
For me didst bear the nails and spear 
 And manifold disgrace; 

And griefs and torments numberless, 
And sweat of agony; 
E'en death itself – and all for one
Who was Thine enemy. 

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, 
Should I not love Thee well: 
Not for the sake of winning Heaven, 
Or of escaping Hell; 
Not with the hope of gaining aught,
not seeking a reward; 
But, as Thyself hast loved
me, O ever-loving Lord? 

E'en so I love Thee, and will love,
and in Thy praise will sing; 
Solely because Thou art my God 
And my eternal King