Lying

August 27, 2013 in Moral Theology 21 Comments Tags: Aspergers, Catholic Cathechism, lying, Schoenborn

An occasion of many venial sins

Over at Mark Shea, there is a heated discussion of whether lying is ever not sinful. We should never deliberately commit any sin, venial or mortal.

The Catholic Catechism seems to say that all lies are sins:

By its very nature, lying is to be condemned. It is a profanation of speech, whereas the purpose of speech is to communicate known truth to others.

But is that the ONLY purpose of speech? Is it an intrinsic part of all speech? Cardinal Schönborn wrote the catechism; he is a Dominican and a Thomist, and he certainly presents Aquinas’s position here.

But is that really the only purpose of speech? If you tell an ugly and deformed person, “You are very beautiful,” in Aquinas’s view would be sinful and should never be done, even if the purpose were to dissuade the poor person not to commit suicide in despair.

I suspect that Aquinas had Asperger’s Syndrome, and his view of the purpose of speech is that which Aspergers and autistic people have.

Speech had many purposes, and “communicating known truth” is only one of them, and is not an intrinsic part of every statement.

The Greek Fathers had a very lax attitude to lying, which led to a lot of Anglo-Saxon sniffing by their English translators. God deceived Satan into killing Christ, according to one school of theology.

BTW, the bishops and the Vatican certainly do not follow the Catechism. They lie frequently, copiously, and by habit.

The Curses of the Oppressed

March 31, 2010 in Austria, Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, guilt 9 Comments Tags: penance, Schoenborn, Vienna

Cardinal Schonbörn and Wir sind Kirche, the lay reform group in Austria last night held a penitential service in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. (from Die Presse, Der Standard, and n-tv).

3000 entered a cathedral darkened except for the candles of the victims around the altar. Cardinal Schonbörn entered clad all in black, except for his red cardinal’s cap. He sat under a crucifix of the tortured Son of God, and all his body language spoke of humility, sorrow, and acknowledgment of guilt.

The Cursing Psalms were read:

“I will pour forth my anger, my scorn, my hate before you. I wish upon him poison and gall, he shall be blind, starving, and lonely. God, do you not see my helplessness?”

Heavy drum roll.

Schönborn says nothing for this is the time for the victims to speak: One cried out

“Night after night the memories come back, like howling dogs. I cannot cope with them.”

Another accused his tormentor: “From him nothing shall remain, his name extinguished. Strike it out of the Book of Life.”

Drum roll.

It continued:

The student in a girls’ boarding school, who with head shaved bald and in a straight jacket lay in her own excrement, who at the point of a cane held by a nun had to clean herself up.

The far-too-premature boy, who through the love of his parents developed so well that he could study theology – and after sexual abuse by a priest mentally fell back to a four-year-old level.

The pedophile pastor, who despite the pleas of a mother of one of his victims was after a year’s pause sent into other parishes.

Drum roll.

Schonbörn at last spoke

“We acknowledge that we would not recognize the truth, that we have covered up and given false witness.”

I have often wondered why abusers and bishops did not fear the curses of victims. God hears the cry of the oppressed and vindicates them His wrath will fall upon those who tormented children and on those who stood by and let the children be tormented. Their names will be blotted out of the book of life – don’t they fear that? Perhaps they do not fear God’s wrath because they do not believe He exists – maybe that is what Benedict meant when he said a lack of faith was the source of the abuse and the enabling of the abuse. How many abusers, how many bishops are at heart atheists? How else to explain what they did?

News: Cardinal Schönborn is Catholic

January 10, 2009 in Austria, Population, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Austria, depopulation, Schoenborn

Herbert Lackner writing in the Austrian newsmagazine Profil is shocked, shocked, to discover that Cardinal Schönborn is Catholic and supports the teachings of the papacy (whose current occupant happens to be his professor at Regensburg and I believe his dissertation director).

In March 2008 he spoke to priests of the neocatechumate.

His theme: the fall of the birth rate in Europe. Schönborn described three reasons for this: the abortion law that was liberalized in the 1970s, the increasing tendency to government recognition of homosexual partnerships, and contraception. In regard to the last themes Schönborn made his predecessors responsible: it as a sin that the Austrian bishops’ conference in 1968 in the Mariatroster Explanation said a strong No to the anti-pill encyclical of Pope Paul Vi. One did not have the courage to say Yes.

Sein Thema: der Rückgang der Geburtenraten in Europa. Drei Gründe machte Schönborn dafür aus: die in den siebziger Jahren liberalisierten Abtreibungsgesetze, die zunehmende Tendenz zur staatlichen Anerkennung von homosexuellen Partnerschaften und die Empfängnisverhütung. Beim letzten Thema machte Schönborn auch seine Vorgänger mitverantwortlich: Es sei eine „Sünde“ gewesen, dass die österreichische Bischofskonferenz 1968 in der so genannten „Mariatroster Erklärung“ „Nein“ zur strengen Antibabypillen-Enzyklika von Papst Paul VI. gesagt habe. Man habe „nicht den Yes.Mut gehabt, Ja zu sagen“.

Schönborn had to backtrack on his criticism of the bishops, but it seems undeniable that the acceptance of abortion and contraception by Austrian Catholics has led to a catastophic decline in the birth rate (I doubt that hosmoexuality is a cause of the decline).

Young Austrians are more anti-immigrant than older Austrians, according to Carl Djerassi („Warum wir bald sehr alt ausschauen,“ Der Standard, December 13, 2008) one of the inventors of the pill, but young Austrians don’t want to have children. Something has to give.