I actually know you did not say that. Someone else did though. I admit to a great degree of appeal to emotion in my recent posts. But I think people here often delude themselves into thinking they are making purely abstract argument based on logic. Religious belief is deeply personal and rarely based on reason. Nor should it be.
Sorry to butt in, McTeague, however, I disagree. Perhaps religious adherence, in the wild, is like that. But, maybe not so much in these fora.
The argument about definitional change is interesting. We know that the meanings of words change. There are few proscriptive dictionaries. Some resistance to definitional change is good. We do want things to actually have meaning. This is all part of a natural dialectical process. This is often difficult and painful.
It can be the same thing with poker. No one would relish sitting in on a game when the rules (words) change from time to time throughout the game. Altered words do find their way into the lexicon, but, usually by accident, or from minority languages.
A change in the definition of marriage for the broader world would not necessarily change it for Catholics. Well probably it might eventually.
Yes. It probably would. Religionism, in this country, is a minority. Yes, a big one, but, still considered a minority. Can Catholics and Protestants usurp Ramadan?
But to what degree is it appropriate to deny others the right to define themselves and their relationships using language that they have as much right to as we do.
For the same reasons that you (maybe) or I (for sure)
would not want a marriage-like relationship to be called so, that was between a man and his dog. I wouldn’t want it called a civil union either! Perhaps, an
uncivil union?
It presumes that gays are what postmodern and postcolonial theorists call “the other”. It presumes a supremacy in the authority to define marriage in the straight and Christian world. I question whether this is a proper attitude.
And, so, the problem with that?
Catholics, believing their authority comes from God are I think particularly prone to that kind of thinking.
I think Catholics are the least likely to embrace that “type” of thinking, whatever that means.
One of the criticisms I would make of Catholic reasoning is that because of the way they view God, and the the foundational beliefs of their epistemological systems they are often guilty of the error of bifurcation in their analysis.
I don’t know what you mean by that, but, Catholics take the heat from other religions, all the time, for our relaxations of such things that other religions find very disdainful. In general, gays are murdered in the most of the mid-eastern world.
The idea that a thing could have more than one essence or essential purpose, and that the absence of one of them does not exclude a thing from being grouped within a particular definition seems almost beyond them.
You continuously forget that Catholicism, and Christianity, take their marching orders from the Bible. We can’t pick and choose. That’s not our prerogative. Unfortunately, some do. That’s operating
ex cathedra.
God bless,
jd
