Speaking of objective morality…
I’ll take a break from following the “new atheists are the rudest people in the history of the universe” discussion, to take a sad and pitying look at Ronald Conte, a Catholic theologian. (Professional? Amateur? He doesn’t say. Oh I take it back, yes he does. Amateur. Self-appointed. Not affiliated with any church or college or university that he mentions. Like me – but then I don’t call myself a theologian.)
We’ve seen him before, talking vicious murderous nonsense about the life-saving abortion in Phoenix. Now, in jocular vein, he’s talking about whether or not married people are allowed to do things to each other’s genitals with their hands (or, godforbid, their mouths). His answer is absolutely not.
Yes really. No. That’s right out. It’s a Sin. It’s inherently evil.
The love of God and neighbor requires that each and every sexual act be marital, unitive, and procreative. When a sexual act is non-marital or non-unitive or non-procreative, then the act has a deprivation in its moral object, making the object evil and the act intrinsically evil.
Evil. Using a hand to turn on a sex partner – evil.
any sexual act that is intrinsically evil, is not only always immoral, but always gravely immoral. Some intrinsically evil acts are venial sins; other intrinsically evil acts are mortal sins. An intrinsically evil sexual act is always an objective mortal sin.
And by that he means – make no mistake – using a hand to turn on a sex partner. It’s intrinsically evil and a mortal sin – it is the worst.
The guy’s a maniac.
Read the whole thing if you have time. Pale with horror and disgust, and try to feel some sorrow for Ronald Conte and his airless little mind.
“The love of God and neighbor requires that each and every sexual act be marital”
God? Sure. Neighbor? No thanks. I mean, they mostly seem perfectly nice (except that guy who didn’t even say thanks when I shoveled his sidewalk, even though he walked past me doing it), but they really have no say in my sex life. I don’t want any say in theirs, either, as long as they’re not frightening the neighborhood dogs and children. Even then, I’d just ask them to consider blinds and soundproofing.
Here is a perfect example of projecting, suppressing of desires and twisted immature nonsense. Clothes are unnatural too, and those planes are unnatural, and computers with blogs on. This guy needs therapy.
In response to a comment, he clarifies that:
So, as far as I can figure, you can tie up and spank your partner while he/she is clad in a latex nurse’s outfit and you’re wearing a panda costume, and lick caviar out of his/her navel, but you can’t give head.
Now that’s freaky.
This, of course, is all tied to the open to children nonsense. Looking around the Catholic world, I wonder if the hierarchy imagines there is a crisis of fertility.
(as long as married participants are only aroused, not lustful)
The difference being what, exactly? If by the latter he means “I’m having my fun; the hell with what you enjoy or want” then, OK I understand and agree. Otherwise…..?
As someone on the Pharyngula thread pointed out: this guy is probably fringe even within Catholicism (I have a very hard time believing my devout RC friends with the seven kids followed his advice. We know them a little better than that ;-)).
Yeah, this is fringe even within the Catholic community. After all, official Catholic morality allows couples to have intercourse at periods of non-fertility and to use this as a method for sex without pregnancy, so the idea that every single sexual act must be procreative is not in keeping with the party line.
@#2: It should be kept in mind that “natural” in Catholic moral theology is at best only very loosely related to “stuff that happens naturally; stuff that animals do”. It seems to be more like “shit we made up and dubbed ‘natural'”. It doesn’t even rise to the level of attempting to commit the Naturalistic Fallacy ;-).
Hmmm. Seems in 50 years of (fairly busy) sex I’ve never once done it right. Smacks of hubris.
This is a perfect example of why the Catholic Natural Law Theory of morality utterly fails.
@#6: That’s a glaring inconsistency my Catholic friend has never been able to explain to us in a satisfactory manner. Apparently, carefully planning one’s sex-life around non-fertile periods (as determined by methods of greater or lesser reliability) is still “being open to the transmission of life” in a way that using condoms, the Pill, or permanent surgery is not. And that’s Very Important. Just Because.
Eamon #10
That’s interesting. I wonder what explanation could be given for the sinfulness of using a condom during a period when the women is not fertile?
“The guy’s a maniac”. That’s not surprising, he’s a theologian, imagine spending years studying an imaginary entity, that’s a threat to anyone’s sanity. I don’t think that formal qualifications in theology make any difference whatsoever,statements by professors of theology don’t make any more sense than those by amateur theologians.
“Each and every sexual act in a marriage needs to be open to the possibility of conceiving a child.”…..
I didn’t count how many times he repeated this in one form or another (while contradicting it when someone asked about infertile couples) but it seems he’s just a one-trick pony – that seems to be all he knows. I shouldn’t worry about him, his derangement is his own and no catholics I know take this nonsense seriously….
BTW did anyone understand the relevance of his four quotations from “sacred scripture”? I sure didn’t. And since when are masturbation and oral-sex “unnatural”?
The guy really is fringe if he’s ruling out all contact with the sexual organs leading up to, y’know, good ol’ penis-in-vagina sex. It’s not clear from the quotes whether he is ruling that out, but I haven’t clicked on the link so I’ll take OB’s word for it that he is.
Catholic morality is stupid but not this stupid. The essential idea is that on each occasion when you have sex you do nothing extra, such as using a condom, to prevent pregnancy. If pregnancy would naturally not occur in any event because of the time of month or the age of the woman, then it’s kinda not your fault. But it is the fault of those involved if the guy deliberately has an orgasm outside a woman’s vagina. As Felix hints above on the thread, this is a bit contrived, especially if technology is being used to fine-tune exactly when you and do not have sex, but it’s a reasonably consistent rule. It rules out masturbation, handjobs to orgasm, etc., because in these cases your taking what the church sees as additional precautions to avoid any possibility that the semen could produce pregnancy. But it certainly doesn’t rule out a woman stroking/sucking/whatevering her sexual partner’s penis to arouse him and give pleasure – provided that he eventually has his orgasm inside her vagina.
Again, the whole framework is pretty daft, and I’m not going to defend it, but it sounds as if this guy doesn’t understand it.
There are passages in some of the Church Fathers that he could probably bring out in his support, suggesting that it’s a sin to enjoy sex too much, even within marriage, and to kind of do more than is required for orgasm in the way of giving pleasure. But that’s a separate issue, and it’s not orthodox teaching, or at least not an emphasis, in the modern church.
Don’t feel sorry for him – he’s horrible. He doesn’t care at all, and knows even less, about real people.
My one cent: IT’S NOT TRUE.
So there.
Sigmund, “unnatural” doesn’t mean “doesn’t happen in nature”. It means “in violation of the natural law” or “in a manner contrary to the proper purposes of the things involved”. These proper purposes are supposedly discernible by reason. Within the Catholic system, the natural law requires that the human sexual organs be used for their “proper purpose”, which then gets a certain gloss along the lines of my comment above. The place you need to go to for all the detail about the current teaching on union of unitive and procreative purposes, etc., is the Vatican document known as Humanae Vitae, which is google-able (though sickening to read).
Again, I think it’s all daft, but we should try to get a handle on how the system works so we can understand just why it’s daft.
Oh I do think people should read at least some of the “argument” itself; it’s so fascinating.
I’m not worrying about him – I assumed he’s quite fringe. The stuff about paling with horror was hyperbole. There is something vaguely shocking about that degree of pointless insanity though – like this, in response to a question:
Good stuff, Humanae Vitae.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html
It’s about birth control though. I think the bit that says “no manual stimulation” got left on the cuttring room floor. Ron Conte is making it up.
So basically he’s saying that “every sperm is sacred” is blasphemy because it doesn’t go far enough in limiting what you can do with your naughty bits.
Has Ronald Conte ever masturbated? And if he has, how does (or did) he feel and what does (or did) he do afterwards? Perhaps, tortured by the agenbite of guilt, he sits down and frantically writes screeds about sex and its horrors – such as this one.
It’s about absolute control: what we do, what we say, what we think, even who we are. And RC wants to do the controlling.
Bizarre, beyond words. And laughable. Poor man.
I figure that, using the natural law argument, if you use your mouth to hold extra nails while making a house, that is evil, because it is obvious the mouth was not intended to be an extra hand. Its obvious natural purposes are eating, talking, and breathing.
Oh, I’ll bet you could get Rick Santorum to sign on in totality.
Translating that, doesn’t that just mean “Unnatural sex acts are immoral… because such acts are intrinsically immoral”? I also love the rejection of intent and circumstances; if you don’t take into account intents and the specific circumstances and the outcomes, how are you judging an act’s morality?
SATSQ: “The man with the biggest hat said so!”
Although perhaps if you write this sort of thing you don’t need to indulge in the physical act of masturbation any more…
Oh, Russell, I think you’re wrong there. I’ve read some Catholic moral theology and pastoral theology, especially about confession, and Catholic moral theology of sex is pretty nearly this stupid a lot of the time. Sex is, after all, really sinful, and the only thing that makes it morally acceptable is procreation. Otherwise, sex is mortally sinful. This is standard RC ethics. The natural law is procreation. That is the purpose of sex, period. So any other use is forbidden. Augustine, after all, condemns sex because it’s irrational, uncontrollable — he’s thinking of his erections — and therefore sinful. One of the main reasons that IVF is ruled out is that in most cases it includes masturbation. A Canadian Roman Catholic theologian who wrote a book on sexuality pointed out that it is impossible to take something that 95% of men do (the other 5% are lying), and say that it is immoral. But that’s just what Roman Catholic moral theology does. And its nasty, narrow-minded, life-destroying and stupid.
Don’t forget, by the way, that the encyclical in which Pius XI condemned artificial birth control — in response, it needs to be said, to the limited Anglican acceptance of artificial birth control at the 1930 Lambeth Conference — is entitled: Chaste Marriage (Casti Canubii).
“The morality of sexual acts is not based on whether the act is wasteful (a waste of bodily fluids)”…
Just for a second the shadow of General Ripper passed the window…..creepy!
No, themann, they’re immoral because they are in contradiction to the “proper purpose” of the sexual organs. That’s not the same as saying they’re immoral because they’re immoral. Admittedly, there may be a larger circularity here, but it’s not a direct circularity. I take it that the proper purpose of the sexual organs is the purpose ordained by God, so ultimately they may be immoral because they are against God’s will. And that, in turn, could lead us to the Euthyphro problem. But I don’t see any tight circularity here. Any circularity will be quite wide and need to be brought out through argument.
Eric, I was referring near the end to those passages from Augustine and others. But to be fair, I don’t believe that contemporary Vatican teaching fully embraces them (as it were). That’s not to deny that Augustine remains influential – and not just on Catholics. Augustinean shame about sex and the body remains ubiquitous in Western culture.
Can anyone tell me why ‘theologians’ like Ronald Conte are so obsessed with who sticks what into whom? Most of them are pathetic little people who write about something they have not experienced and are not qualified to speak about. The golden rule states, ‘Do no harm.’ Lovers giving pleasure to one another concerns them alone and is not the business of self ordained religious kill joys.
David Amies
Russel #14″There are passages in some of the Church Fathers…” I suppose even they have to poop.Russel #30But I figure the proper, and more usual, purpose of my … er well … anyway, is to pee.Where does that leave me? Is this a dual purpose organ then, and if so couldn’t one argue the same for the hands, mouth, etc, etc (I don’t want to be too explicit here lest I incite lust). “Breast are like trainsets: they’re meant for children but men end up playing with them.”Eric #27I think you’re saying “God invented sex so we could please him by having nothing to do with it” is the Catholic line.This man is just cuckoo, and Russel, THERE’S an explosive, and dangerous, idea for you. I think he needs to be locked away with a “bad” woman who might teach him something about real life.
Hmm, gotta learn a few things about punctuation.
He ignores Song of Solomon:
My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening;
my heart began to pound for him.
I arose to open for my lover,
I opened for my lover,
but my lover had left;
he was gone.
Her nether regions — there I go
My fingers enter, sure and slow.
And then my hand — still tentative,
As her sweet juices start to flow.
She rises, all appreciative.
My fingers probe, all sensitive
Deep is my fist, now full within,
To make all pleasure I can give.
She shudders, then to joy gives in.
Such pleasure cannot be a sin!
Nor can it last — ‘twill not be so,
We kiss, and then, alas, I go.
Sorry — I don’t know what happened to the format there or here
Everything before “he was gone” is Song of Solomon.
Everything after is PoxyHowzes’ interpretation of the quoted SoS.
I think I pity his wife more … Guess that means she’s stuck with a boring sex life.
“There are three fonts of morality: (1) intention, (2) moral object, (3) circumstances. The Magisterium definitively teaches that to be moral an act must have three good fonts; any one bad font makes the act immoral and therefore sinful.”
Fascinating stuff. Added to this is the complication of distinguishing between arousal (permissible) and lust (bad).
So if a priest (say) were to engage in a sexual act with a parishioner with the intention of fathering a child, that would have a procreative intention (+ 1 point) but be outside of marriage (- 1 point). But if the moral object at the same time was to bring the parishioner nearer to God (who after all moves in mysterious ways) that could be + 1 point. And if the circumstances were that it happened behind the choir stalls during Mass, heightening the religiosity of the whole thing, that would again be +1 point for circumstances, but – 1 point for being extramarital.
I am not a professional theologian, but as I in my amateur capacity see it, so far we are in positive territory. However, I am not sure how the fonts and magisterium would be affected if the priest were promoted higher into the hierarchy. It is very confusing. I suppose that is the reason that Pope Ratz worked so hard to cover up that paedophilia business. The theological jungle is very thick and entagling.
entangling
Phil #32 Ok you tried, but I’m still getting uncomfortably warm . . . mmmmmm train sets – can’t you feel that long hard engine pulsating in your hand, that hot oily smell, the little signal going up and down, up and down. I think I need a little lay-down.
You know, you just know, that this guy is fully engorged as he writes this detailed screeds on exactly what people should never ever ever ever do.
Engorged is so pedestrian. Theologians are tumescent.
And in an ineffable, apophatic way.
“The Magisterium definitively teaches that to be moral an act must have three good fonts; any one bad font makes the act immoral and therefore sinful.”
This “teaching” is based on one or two papal encyclicals. As such some catholics hold that these are therefore so-called “infallible” teachings. In fact they are not, not having been papal pronouncements “ex cathedra”, and need not be observed by anybody (and many catholics do indeed ignore them). It’s always amusing to see a wannabe theologian appealing to the authority of the “magisterium” – a code word for bogus.
Is it the case that only ex cathedra teachings have to be observed? This ex-Catholic was never taught that, although to be honest, I was never really taught much about the relative status of various popular beliefs among Catholics. Given the relative infrequency of ex cathedra pronouncements, though, I would be surprised if only such pronouncements were considered required beliefs.
Ophelia,
Please be more considerate when pointing out how fucking stupid (oops!) people sometimes are. They might actually get the point.
Tulse: there are three ways a teaching can be ‘infallible’.
An ex cathedra pronouncement by the pope. It was decided by the Vatican 1 council in 1870 that the pope would be ‘infallible’ when pronouncing on matters of faith and morals only. To date the pope has made only two such pronouncements neither dealing with marital sex.
A pronouncement by an ecumenical council. Ecumenical councils are themselves ‘infallible’ because – well they just are. Any fule kno that! Conte’s article does not (because he presumably cannot) cite any ecumenical pronouncements concerning marital sex.
Conte therefore relies on the third kind of infallibility, the ‘sacred and ordinary magisterium’. Unfortunately for a teaching to be ‘infallible’ in this manner it has to be a teaching that has been held unanimously by all the bishops at a particular time. It’s actually impossible to know whether a teaching has been so unanimously held in the past, so no infallibility there either. BTW this third take I did check with my cousin in the UK who is a jesuit with years of studying this kind of question. He agreed with me that it’s not possible to know and therefore not possible to state categorically that a teaching is or is not infallible under this rule. Also under this rule, supposedly, not all teachings are actually claimed to be infallible. The criteria for which are and which aren’t are very unclear.
So yes, there are many teachings laid down by ecumenical councils since the fourth century that are theoretically ‘infallible’ – if you accept the circular thinking that what I say is ‘infallible’ because I say I am ‘infallible’ – and two items by the pope…..
@Ian MacDougall
I asked Mr. Conte a similar question on his blog but strangely enough my comment did not survive moderation.
#6: There isn’t really such a thing as a definite period of non-fertility for women*. As any girl/woman should know from sex education classes (if she was lucky enough to get any!), she can get pregnant at any time during her cycle. Hence why the ‘rhythm method’ is the least effective method of contraception to the point where it’s not really (imo) a method of contraception at all. (Hence why the Catholic Church approve of it, I assume – because every shag still has the potential to result in pregnancy, and around 20% do according to Planned Parenthood, I believe.)
In terms of touching genitals being a mortal sin – are couples allowed to touch them to help get it in? Or do they just have to get into bed with their hands by their sides, thrust their hips in each other’s direction, think of the Lord Jesus Christ and hope for the best?
*Unless they are post-menopausal.
I was wondering the same thing, Amy! The rule is totally hands off, so apparently yes, the man is just supposed to act like a drill or a screwdriver and do his best to find the right location – do his best to act like a screwdriver held by no one, or by god. The woman is just supposed to act like the thing being drilled or screwed. No cheating! No touching! Keep those nasty fingers to yourselves.
When it comes to Fonts I think that Conte has been making too much use of dingbats.
OB: You could market that idea to those offering Catholic ‘sex’ education. Imagine the leaflet for men: “You are God’s holy screwdriver.” And the one for women: “Prepare to be screwed.” :o(
Presumably Ron belives god is watching when we’re getting busy, otherwise how is the ‘no hands’ rule policed and sins tallied? If so, that would surely make god the biggest consumer of porn in the universe (not to mention a tatty old perv).
Unfortunately with the RCC Inc prescription for marital sex both parties get screwed – no wonder they do it in the dark with gritted teeth!
Wow. This guy’s a wank…
Rabbi Wolpe recently described SIN as an acronym for ‘Self Inflicted Nonsense’, he obviously had this undividual in mind.
And congratulations to anybody who had the strength to finish reading the article, I started loosing the will to live after about 60 seconds
Holy crap, this dude is a stone-cold freak! Good find.