Because of this Special Report, we interrupt our regularly scheduled tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. It returns next week.
The Archdiocese of New York held its first ever men’s conference on Saturday. Your Roving Reporter was there.
It was packed. Five hundred souls stuffed into the upper reaches of Fordham University. There was less room than on a Delta Airlines flight. More than a hundred were relegated to a waiting list. Besides the comforts of the liturgies of the hours, a eucharistic procession, and a mass, there were three speakers.
Joe Klecko, ex-defensive linesman of the New York Jets, loomed over the crowd and dared anyone to disagree with him. Damon Owens, director of the Theology of the Body Institute, told us that he had “Eight children; all of them boys…except for the first seven.”
And also Timothy Cardinal Dolan, who punched up the day’s theme, Men, Be Who You Are, starting with remembering St John Paul II’s lamentation on our culture’s emphasis on “having and doing” rather than on “being.” The loss of essence. This leads to the failed philosophies of utilitarianism and pragmatism, systems where people are “judged worthy by their utility”, which might sound all right, until you consider that when people can no longer fulfill their assigned function they become “a burden, an inconvenience, and without a second thought, are disposed of.” For instance, abortion.
Dolan said a man came to him and said, “I’m gay.” “No, you’re not,” Dolan replied. “You’re a man.” We are not, and cannot be, defined by our urges, especially our sexual urges. If we are so defined, what do we make of woofies, those individuals who desire relations with (non-human) animals? Are they a breed apart? No longer men but animals themselves? And what of those with even more curious sexual desires, such as men who pretend to be women? Do these people become something other than men? Yes, says society. The loss of essence.
Now a man claims to be a woman “trapped” inside a man, or, anyway, that he is not a man in fact but instead a woman. How does this man know he is a woman? To answer that, we must first understand the terms in the proposition. To know is to assert a truth, which is easy enough. So what is woman?
Any attempt at answering that inevitably leads to inescapable scientific truths such as “A woman is a human being without a Y chromosome”, and “A woman has naturally developing breasts and certain reproductive organs: ovaries, fallopian tubes, Bartholin’s glands, and the like,” and other such propositions.
Suppose a woman develops breast cancer and subsequently has mastectomies. Nobody would say that this unfortunate lady is not a woman because of lack of breasts, because we know that in the absence of the cancer and surgery it is in the nature of a woman to have breasts. Similarly, a man having surgery to implant bags of silicone under his chest has not turned into a woman because silicone bags are not breasts.
Neither are the swellings caused by estrogen injections in males breasts. Gynecomastia does not produce “working”, which is to say, real breasts; for instance, a baby could not be fed with them. No surgery can swap two X chromosomes with an X and a Y in any, let alone every, cell in a human’s body. Some rare males have two Y chromosomes, and others are born with other abnormalities, a term which recognizes that human nature exists and its qualities are known.
Finally, for instance, a person who has an artificial heart is still a person even though it is in the nature of persons to have real hearts. The artificial heart has not “turned”—magically transformed—the person into something which is not a person, e.g. a robot.
So everybody knows what a woman is. And so everybody knows that a man pretending to be one is not one. Just as everybody knows, or should know, that there is no such thing as a “sex change” operation or treatment. You cannot change what you are. Not by desire and certainly not by artificial means.
The loss of essence, of the knowledge of nature, insists there are no differences between men and women, a preposterous proposition that contains its own refutation. We would not be able to state it without knowing—truly knowing—that it is false. We cannot be what we desire. We must be who we are. We must be men.
Men can lactate. They also get breast cancer. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-males-can-lactate/
Men are much more than you imagine!
If your statement about “men who pretend to be women” refers to cross dressing, I totally disagree with this being any kind of problem.
The Y chromosome determines one’s sex as a starting point for a number of processes that can go wrong in the sense that resulting human is not a male. Apparently the process can turn a human with an Y chromosome into a female because the process executes the “become a female” version instead of the “bult a male” version. Either for the entiere process, or for some steps of the entiere process.
And that is what makes these people natural. They are not essentially male or female, they are essentially male enough or female enough. The natural process does fail sometimes, which is completely natural for something cobbled together over billions of years.
Good enough for reproductive work.
I strongly object to your use of “woofie” as a degenerate label!
Slywolfe,
If you have alternatives, I’m all ears.
And by “all ears” I do not mean I am all ears.
“furries” is what I have heard used
Time travel does exist, Briggs just traveled back to 1950.
Proficiat.
Sheri,
It was taught in Medical Schools since the 1070’s and definitely as I heard it in the late 1980’s that “Cross dressing” men are not “pretending to be women.” They are men, who enjoy being men that love and enjoy sex with women, do not have sex with other men, and do not consider themselves as anything other than men. Apparently their cross dressing is not a fetish as donning women’s clothing is not an adjunct for sexual arousal.
Why then do they wear women’s clothing? I don’t know. the one man I talked to who was a cross dresser described it as an urge to be quenched.
For those who don women’s clothing but to whom the specifics of the definition does not apply, well they are something other than “cross dressers.”
Reminds me of the late 1970s devolution:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/54/Are_We_Not_Men_We_Are_Devo%21.jpg/220px-Are_We_Not_Men_We_Are_Devo%21.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43gKl9xIME
People will behave in whatever ways they derive pleasure and satisfaction from. I would prefer it, although my preferences mean little, that people not identify themselves by their sexual preferences. It strikes me as a rather unimportant thing relative to the far more important things that make us human. But we live in a self obsessed age.
You just knew someone would post this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVXmMMSo47s
Lola – by The Kinks
The loss of essence is not because of gays coming out. There have always been gays. Everywhere. They just want full rights now, here, in America. I don’t see how that would be a loss of anything for anyone.
Let’s face it, America was founded in a very Protestant sort of way. Our culture and government strongly reflects Protestant traditions with strong emphasis on self-reliance, efficiency, work, etc. We were so pragmatic, we had essentially no theoretical science going into the 20th century, even though by then we were the world’s premier inventors. We had to import theoretical scientists just to establish studies.
Hyper-individualism is the problem, and our Protestant tradition does significantly feed that beast. It is the problem with people who go out of their way to identify themselves by their sexual preference, and it is the problem with Wall Street and the big banks taking us to the cleaners in 2008. It is vanity. Pure and simple. You don’t need to go on and on feeding the beast of some vain extrovert to make this point. Humility is something the Church should be stressing right now. I think Il Papa is stressing that now. Dolan’s being his usual self.
JMJ
JMJ as usual WTF
All,
World War T continues:
CNN
Video: When your young daughter says “I’m a boy”
http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2015/03/22/video-when-your-young-daughter-says-im-a-boy/
A piece on two views of identity: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/3762/camping_anyone_gender_theory_personhood_and_catholicism.aspx
Bert: Yes, that was what I was taught in psychology, too. Of course since that time, homosexuality was erased from the mental illness category and dozens of other behaviours added, so who knows? I find the whole “cross-dressing” men a ridiculous term since women do exactly the same thing all the time and they are not called “cross-dressers”. A women in pants is no difference than a man in a dress.
JMJ: The Man/Boy love society thanks your for your support and recognition that this has been going on for years and recognizing it is beneficial to all.
Briggs (general): Another example– Your twenty year old son confides he has a thing for 10 year old boys and has been secretly engaging in sex acts with the neighborhood kids. You ask yourself “Would I rather have a free, living pedophile son or a possibly dead or jailed one?” You help him cover up his actions and hide his true sexual identity, that of one who loves young children. You cannot shame him for his true desires. His what he believes himself to be.
Interesting comment on Katie’s link: “So-called ‘gender theory’ has about as much in common with genuine science as Creationism…” so why do schools embrace the first and denounce the second?
“Men, Be Who You Are.” I do like the theme. Men, be who you are! Women, be who you are! Yes, LGBT people, be who you are, too! Or just, “Be Who You Are.”
I see that 500 or so men received some lecture on gay men and transgender in the invisible presence of God. I imagine someone talked what “be who you are” means and how to be who you are.
I always feel that I am who I am, though I have more wrinkles and gray hair than ever. And it wasn’t me who told Mr. Briggs that being transgender is not natural.
What are you? On your judgement day, would you be judged by your body or your deeds or whatever? I obviously don’t have the answer.
I am a naturalized alien, who has been striving to be ‘the good man” of Confucius.
I have no doubt that the transgender people know their birth sex is (typically)different from their gender identity or expression, and somehow is a problem they have to face. They also clearly understand no surgery can make the switch between XX to XY. I can imagine why some of them want to go through certain medical procedures. I hope, in the future, our entire society would be able to see them as a natural kind of people. Without the ridiculing them or joking or just talking about them in a condescending way. Lend them a helping hand if indeed it becomes a problem to them.
Changeling is one of my favorite aliens in Star Trek. No going to judge whether it is natural to be a changeling because they are powerful, instead, they’d get to talk about whether human beings are natural.
So if Theseus has a ship, and replaces each and every plank with a new plank, etc., is it still the same ship?
“Now a man claims to be a woman “trapped” inside a man, or, anyway, that he is not a man in fact but instead a woman.”
Briggs:
I was trapped inside a woman once, so I asked her to uncross her legs.
Cheers,
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