Some years ago I was invited to participate in a debate about sexuality at a meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature.  One of the opposing parties claimed that the Old Testament’s rules about sex aren’t really moral rules, but merely ritual purity regulations.  In other words, they weren’t about right and wrong, but only dirt.  This would have made them inapplicable to Christians, who are not bound by Old Testament ritual purity rules.

A word about this might be helpful, because in one form or another, a lot of people make the same mistake.

Ritual impurity made a person ineligible to enter the tabernacle or participate in holy rites.  All sorts of conditions could have this result.  Some of them were bodily:  For instance, having leprosy or some other disease.  Some of them pertained to office:  There were things the priest could do which other people could not do.  Some of them concerned ritual errors:  For instance, a person may have offered a sacrifice in an improper way.  Some of them were symbolic:  For instance, among the members of the covenant community it was a grave matter to consume blood, because blood is the principle of life.  But yes, some of them were moral:  A person may have committed adultery, or some other sexual wrong.

To confuse ritual impurity and moral fault is merely sloppy thinking.  The fact that they are different things in no way implies that moral fault cannot be a reason for ritual impurity, and of course it can be.  This is true in Christianity too, for a person in a condition of grave sin must not present himself for holy communion until he has repented and been absolved. 

Besides, from the perspective of natural law, we can give reasons why we should still follow the moral precepts of Torah.  Why shouldn’t I commit adultery?  Because it radically undermines the integrity of the marital bond.  Why do we marry at all?  Because the distinctively human way of turning the wheel of the generations involves a loving covenant between a man and a woman.  As I have often said in these pages, matrimony is the only institution which can give a child a fighting chance of being raised by a mom and a dad.  We are not like the animals who reproduce their kind impersonally and anonymously.  For us, it is cooperation with God’s own act of creation.  That is what sex is for.

NEW STUFF

Andrew McDiarmid’s two-part interview with me on the “ID the Future” podcast:

PART 1

“Reclaiming Common Sense in a Pandemic of Lunacy”

Video:  https://youtu.be/CEA7-rvg3rY?si=OTpntRJz5xG1fv1S

Audio: https://idthefuture.com/2211/

PART 2

“How to Restore Sanity to Scientific Debates”

Video: https://youtu.be/YGP3N3C_aHE?si=rMii-c0JW5VXmHxL

Audio: https://idthefuture.com/2212/

ALSO:

A brief review of Pandemic of Lunacy in World magazine: 

https://creedandculture.com/living-in-light-of-biblical-wisdom/.

AI isn’t really artificial intelligence, but simulated intelligence.  It works by statistically predicting what string of words will follow the previous string of words, based on a huge number of samples (the so-called Large Language Models) and a set of grammatical rules.  Thus, it is utterly unoriginal, doesn’t understand anything, and is so unreliable that AI researchers quip that it sometimes “hallucinates.”  Yes, I know AI is useful for things like company voicemail systems.  However, if you want to learn to think, it’s poison.  Try reasoning with a voicemail system, and you’ll see what I mean.

But AI is getting so good!  It sounds just like real writers!  Well, it does sound like a certain subset of real writers:  Unoriginal ones.  The reason why it can mimic them so convincingly is that they compose in pretty much the same way that it does.

Folks, I never thought I’d be recommending Tik Tok videos, but you may be interested in these one to fourteen minute outtakes from my recent long-form interview on Matt Fradd’s “Pints with Aquinas” podcast.  (No, they’re not all from Tik Tok.  So sue me.)

Short-Short Ones

Being a conservative professor:  https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas/video/7636122701823806734

Atheists and their fathers:  https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas/video/7636074244002172174

Nihilism as a version of the sin of despair, cloaked in the garments of philosophy:  https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas/video/7635768124867890446

Materialism is awfully silly:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt__mPfq73DeiI

Slightly Longer Ones

Things some students believe:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_uomiE3_1-do

A new gender was just released:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_1ywiG0krQKE

You don’t understand nihilism and Nietzsche:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_d3mGNe-nwz8

C.S. Lewis warned us about this:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_euDwTvWeLmM

The occasion for these conversations was my new book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.

Interest in Pandemic of Lunacy continues to grow, and I’m glad to tell you about two new interviews.

In the long form for which he has become famous, Matt Fradd interviews me on his excellent Pints with Aquinas:  “Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Return of God.”

Steven Greene does a long interview with me on his own fine podcast, Reasonably Rational:  “Why Has Everything Gone Crazy?”

I hope you enjoy the interviews!  They've both been added to the Listen to Talks page, so they'll be easy to find again.

Dignitas infinita, the 2024 document of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, lists capital punishment as one of the acts which “violate[] the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances.”  Recently, Pope Leo has been pressing this claim more and more aggressively.

The bare word “dignity” is distressingly malleable.  Why is it that executing a man is contrary to the inalienable dignity of every person, but locking him in a prison, away from his family, freedom, and friends, is not?

In fact, Genesis 9:6 seems to maintain that capital punishment is legitimate precisely because of the inalienable dignity of every person:  “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.”

Many other passages of Scripture speak similarly.  According to the Vatican II document Dei verbum, “since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

Someone might say, “Yes, but we understand things better now.”  Perhaps, but we don’t understand things better than the Author of divine revelation.

Someone might say, “Yes, but Holy Scripture must be interpreted by the Church.”  True, but a reversal of the meaning cannot count as an interpretation of the meaning.

Someone might say, “Yes, but Genesis 9:6 doesn’t imply that the ultimate human punishment must always be carried out.”  True again, I think, but this fact hardly implies that it may never be carried out.  Mercy cannot imply abolition of justice.

Someone might say, “Yes, but today we have prisons, and as Pope Leo said, “effective systems of detention can be and have been developed that protect citizens.”  But if the premise is protection, then the argument is not that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong, but that now we can protect people better.  This is a prudential judgment, not a matter of principle, and it can be disputed.  Our prisons do keep criminals away from citizens -- for a while.  But not only are we reluctant to sentence criminals even to prison, but our prisons tend to make them worse, so that they are often even more dangerous after incarceration than before.  And if protection is the goal, then shouldn’t it be pointed out that concentrating criminals in prison takes away most of their protection from other criminals?

The fundamental, the inescapable problem is that Holy Scripture says P, but recent Catholic teaching seems to say not-P.

A contradiction cannot be the authentic Magisterium.  Not even the Holy Father can oblige a faithful Catholic to embrace a logical contradiction.  Not even if he claims that the Church has consistently taught the inconsistency – which she has not.  What she has consistently taught, for centuries and centuries, is the opposite.

Speaking as a representative Catholic, I have changed my mind about a lot of things under the guidance of the Church.  I am prepared to change my mind again, if I can be shown that I am not being asked to embrace a logical contradiction.

But show me.