Scandalous or not?

This afternoon I went to Mass at OLP for the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
There was a couple who had a child out of wedlock, participating in a ceremony/rite for couples in marriage prep at the parish. It included something (consecration?) for the Sacred Heart, possibly followed by a blessing. I don't know - I didn't stick around to see what was going on. The couples in marriage prep were mostly Latinos/Latinas. There was one attracitve Latina brunette, but unfortunately, "she's taken." Where did the Vietnamese go? (I saw one Vietnamese couple.) There is still a sizeable number of Filipinos at the parish. The other Filipino parishes in the diocese (many of which are in Santa Clara) are not so orthodox or so traditional in liturgical practice.

Fr. Jose talked about ingratitude during his homily; he talked about how we felt when people don't show their gratitude or reciprocate. So of course I could relate. Too bad the homily started to get too long, as my mind drifted.

Anyway, back to the couple. Was their presence for a rite for engaged couples scandalous? After all it was obvious that the woman had a child (probably by the man who was present) and yet not married. Yes, sins can be forgiven, but even if they are forgiven, is their presence nonetheless a true source of scandal? Could it be miscontrued as a permissive attitude towards sexual sin on the part of the Church? Could such a couple be justly excluded from group marriage prep, and instead be pastored privately? How would such a situation be handled in the early Church? Is there a danger that the Church seems too lax in its handling of sin? Should we not hold people to a higher standard when grace is available? What about taking the notion of the near occasio of sin seriously? If the couple were careful not to leave themselves alone for an extended period of time would she have gotten pregnant?

If we really want to be perfect in caritas we must avoid the near occasions of sin, rather than make excuses by saying that we are weak or trying to circumvent the law, seeing how much we can get away with before we sin. We do not have the attitude that we must preserve a woman's virginity at all costs, as if it were the highest good (as some anti-Christian critics might allege). What we want is for the faithful to be held accountable to God through being accountable to others - their parents (or her parents). Some might say that we are not treating people like "adults" because we insist on their being supervised by elders while they are engaged in courtship. But we are taking into consideration fallen human nature and concupiscence. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to prevent an unmarried woman from becoming pregnant - if she does not marry (and there may be reasons why she should not marry the father of the child) the consequences are serious for the child as well as for the mother and father. (And the likelihood of her being married is lowered as well.)

There is also a question of fostering respect for the law. If a couple can show the consequences of their sin in public, without some sort of acknowledgement of guilt, is not respect for divine law also damaged? "We can get away with anything because God will forgive us."

What, then, is the Church doing to restore boundaries to courtship and the relations between men and women? It is not enough to give rules about dating - we have to restore a culture which involves the family and greater accountability. (And there is also the pastoral problem of feminist attitudes.)

God's mercy is abundant, as the Sacred Heart reminds us, but the same devotion also reminds us that our sins against God are serious. How do we strike a balance between good pastoring and avoid causing scandal to others? I would think that a repentent sinner would not be offended by being required to do public penance or to abstain from certain rites beceause charity should motivate them to be conscious of avoiding giving scandal.

Now the couple in question are not guilty, "strictly speaking," of scandal. But is their presence scandalous on the part of the Church not exercising sufficient discretion in its pastoring?


Are sentence adverbs a good development in English?

The impulse to vulgarity in the name of creativity

Peter Hitchens:

The BBC won’t rest until we’re all talking filth

In the superb recent remake of True Grit, I don’t think there was a single four-letter word.

Yet it was a perfectly credible portrayal of the lives of fierce and often violent men in a cruel, half-civilised time.

In fact, half the pleasure of the film was the almost biblical English, spoken naturally by everyone – slower, clearer and a hundred times more powerful than the slurred, jerky newspeak of our day.

But don’t expect the BBC, that propaganda organisation for avant-garde muck, to learn any lessons from that.

Fresh from ruining Winifred Holtby’s thoughtful classic South Riding on TV, the Corporation now plans to insert four-letter words into a dramatisation of Wuthering Heights on Radio 3.

Partly this is attention-seeking, and I know they are hoping for condemnation from people such as me. But that is because they are immoral and cheap.

Many people still loathe swearing and are made unhappy by it. For instance,
a grandparent trying to listen to this classic with a grandchild could not do so without great embarrassment.

The BBC knows this, thanks to the many complaints it gets about on-air swearing. It still does it because it is biased against the older Britain where swearing was done only under strict rules.

Its executives and journalists use four-letter words in front of their own children, and think it fine to use them in front of yours, too. They think you’re backward and repressed for not doing it yourself.

The same impulse lay behind the needless four-letter scene in that overrated film The King’s Speech. Fashionable liberals despise restraint and take special delight in debauching innocent and kindly things.

It is quite important that this dramatisation fails and is seen to fail, and that it receives a large number of complaints when it is aired. If they can get away with Wuthering ****ing Heights, it won’t be long before we have David ****ing Copperfield, Vanity ****ing Fair, Romeo And ****ing Juliet, Paradise ****ing Lost, Gray’s ****ing Elegy written in a ****ing Country Churchyard, Tennyson’s In ****ing Memoriam, Brave New ****ing World and, before you know where you are, Alice In ****ing Wonderland, Lord Of The ****ing Rings and (of course) Harry Potter And The ****ing Goblet Of Fire.

For goodness sake, we already have Martin Amis if you want this sort of stuff.

I am envious of those who can speak slowly (and also authoritatively). Wendell Berry might be an example. He speaks without the appearance of being mentally challenged, though this is what some Uhmericans may assume when they hear his accent and learn of his background. Speaking slowly and deliberately -- this is not an affectation -- it might reflects the fact that the gears in the head are turning. Cantonese speakers are often fast talkers, but the ones I admire in film speak slowly (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love; actors in TVB dramas tend to speak more slowly than MCs and hosts of variety programs). People may talk fast, but often they have nothing to say. It's just gabbing in the worst sense. (I couldn't think of a better onomatopoeia.) The conversation revolving the most inane of things.

I would like to speak with correct grammar; thinking before one speaks, not just with respect to content but also to rules of grammar might be the stage of a beginner, but I'll admit that my speaking skills aren't that great. Is it another symptom of internet-induced ADD/memory impairment/mental diminishment?

Grammar fanatics, check this out.

Top 25 grammar and language mistakes
Are you guilty of making any of these prevalent spelling, word usage or punctuation flubs?
By Daphne Gray-Grant

(via Tea at Trianon)

Items of Interest 13 July 2010

James Kalb, Natural and Unnatural Acts

Free the Animal: T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study: Finally, Exhaustively Discredited and The China Study Smackdown Roundup. More Barefoot Options

Vegans and the Quest for Purity by Harold Fromm

Don Vandergriff, EXCELLENT ASSESSMENT OF COIN

Heute fehlt es den Jugendlichen vor allem an liturgischer Bildung (via NLM)

Zenit:
The Art of Biblical Hospitality
The "Te Deum"
Observance of Liturgical Norms and "Ars Celebrandi"

Since I've been hearing this a lot lately... June Casagrande: 'Have Drank' or 'Have Drunk'? The Answer Is Closer Than Many Realize

Energy Bulletin:
Canada's energy superpower delusion (original)

David Hughes, The Mark

First off, Canada is not now, nor is it ever likely to be, an "Energy Superpower". This term was first used by Prime Minister Harper on the eve of the 2006 G8 meeting.

Grammar recommendations

From the comments to "What is a Participle" by Dr. Esolen --

R. W. Zandvoort, A Handbook of English Grammar (Longmans, 1966)
Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English by Eric Partridge