Bryce, Chapter 38 - Another Monday

 

Monday morning began in the usual way.  Bryce put in his time at the gym, where he was joined by Curtis.  Curtis joked that Bryce was a good example: he had been exercising more regularly than he used to.  Bryce replied that he showed up every morning because he would be embarrassed to think that Curtis would notice his absence and be disappointed in him.  This was an example of how peer pressure could work to the benefit of people.  We all know about its deleterious effects.  What is it that the peer group, or public opinion, is pressuring one to do or believe?  It seemed to Bryce that the phenomenon itself was neutral, but content made all the difference as to whether it was a good or bad thing.

 

Bryce roused Damon by the usual method.  He found that, with cooler weather, the water in the cold water pipes was colder than it had been.  This made an even stronger impact on Damon than this method of arousal used to.  He laughed as Damon sputtered to wakefulness, emitting a sting of vulgarity which would do a sailor proud.

 

When Damon emerged from his shower, he said, “That water is getting colder and colder.  You’re going to have to find another way of getting me up.”

 

“Well,” Bryce grinned, “you could get up without all the drama, you know, like normal folks.”

 

Damon just looked at him.

 

The Survey of French Literature had at last finished with Voltaire, and was now considering Denis Diderot (1713-1784), editor, along with Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783), the mathematician, of that great work of enlightened propaganda, L’Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des artes, et des métiers, published over a twenty year period between 1751 and 1772 in 28 volumes, to which were later added a six volume supplement and two volumes of tables.  This was truly the first modern encyclopedia.  In the ‘prospectus’ or advertisement inviting subscriptions Diderot announced that every subject would be covered except two, religion because it was too controversial, and history because it was too dull.  That did not endear Diderot to Bryce, the history major.  In his Lettre sur les aveugles (Letter on the Blind) of 1749, Diderot followed in the footsteps of Locke, but took his ideas a few steps further, maintaining that our ideas about God and morality are derived from society, not from objective reality.  In his plays, Le Fils naturel (The Natural Son) of 1757 and Le Père de familie (The Father of the Family) of 1758, Diderot helped to create what is known as bourgeois drama, departing from the traditions inherited from the classical world that great drama had to involve nobly born individuals.  Like Voltaire, however, Diderot found himself in a philosophical dilemma.  In accordance with the Newtonian science of the day, he believed in a totally deterministic universe, but he found it intolerably inhumane, as he wrote in a letter to his mistress, Sophie Voland, “I am furious at being entangled in a confounded philosophy which my mind cannot refrain from approving, and my heart from denying.”

 

During his Freshman Orientation class, while the TA was lecturing on how to take exams, Bryce allowed his mind to wander.  Thinking about Voltaire last week, and Diderot today, he considered that the abandonment of sound theology brought with it many unanswerable questions.  All the more reason why he had to pursue his own understanding of theology with Father Miller this afternoon.  He did not want the same mental anguish Diderot experienced, but rather wanted an outlook - call it a philosophy if you like - which actually satisfied both mind and heart.

 

That outlook was definitely not to be found in the kind of Psychology propounded by Dr. Greeley.  Whether it was Freud or Skinner, it was more of the same deterministic outlook.  Why was it, he wondered, that everyone seemed determined to prove that we have no choice over what we believe or do.  Then something occurred to him.  Was it possible that these people felt guilty about some aspect of their lives, but had abandoned the theological solution for getting rid of guilt?  By abandoning the sacrament of confession, they have also abandoned the means God has provided for obtaining forgiveness, and thus neutralizing guilt.  Bryce remembered the old priest he had visited after coming home from that mind-blowing bender which caused a real turn around during the summer between his junior and senior years.  He was probably eighty years old, and a little absent minded, but it felt really good when he pronounced the words of absolution, even if he did slip into Latin: Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti - I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Of course, in his day he would have said ‘Holy Ghost’ rather than “Holy Spirit,’ but that is a distinction without a difference.  So, if these guys were oppressed with feelings of guilt, but had no way of absolving themselves from it, the next best thing was to try to convince themselves that they were not really guilty.  I had no choice.  I’m not responsible.  Like the defendants at the Nuremberg War Trials after World War II.  It was some cosmic force, or the ineluctable working of physics, or at least society, which was guilty, not me.  I was just following orders, the orders of my genes, perhaps.  Who was the comedian who had this skit, “The Devil Made Me Do It”?  Society is the devil.  I’ll bet some psychologist has all this worked out.  I’ll just have to find out who he is, and read what he has to say, Bryce told himself.

 

When Bryce shared some of this with Damon over lunch, he had no trouble at all coming up with the name Flip Wilson as the author of the quotation, “the devil made me do it.”  “The devil is great at making you do things you want to do anyway, but know you shouldn’t,” Damon stated.

 

“Words of wisdom from Damon the Philosopher,” Bryce congratulated him.

 

“Right now, I’d rather be Damon the Mathematician.  This afternoon, after my regular Math class, I have to make up the test I missed after I was attacked.  Dr. McGee won’t let me put it off any longer.”

 

“Damon, we’ve gone over the materials and over them.  You know this stuff.  All you need is to believe you can do it.  Confidence, my man, confidence,” Bryce assured him.

 

Damon gave him a sour look.

 

On the way to Biology, Bryce thought to stop Damon from worrying by making it humorous.  “You’ve got to be like the Little Engine Who Could.  I think I can, I think I can.”  Bryce began making puffing and chugging sounds, like a train engine straining to ascend the hill.

 

Damon eyed the pile of leaves still (or again) by the sidewalk, where he had deposited his boyfriend not too long ago.  “See those leaves ...,” he began.

 

Bryce immediately shut up.

 

Biology class proved interesting in that Dr. Harris was discussing what happened to be his specialty, genetics.  He mentioned the pioneering work of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, and went on, rapidly tracing our increasing knowledge of such matters through the work of James Watson, down to contemporary work with genetics, including the Human Genome Project.  He touched on a number of interesting issues, but did not have time to dwell on any of them.  The scientific basis for the traditional prohibition of incest in most, but not all, cultures was the tendency of incest to increase bad characteristics.  If there is anything amiss in one’s genetic make-up, and it is combined with the same questionable trait in the other parent, the result might be a deformed or severely handicapped child.  Not all children of incest are deformed or handicapped, however.  It all depends on the genetic make-up of the two parents.  If both parents have a tendency to cancer, the chances of the child getting cancer are significantly increased, whether or not the parents are related to each other.  In most instances where a brother and sister had a child, as was done in ancient Egypt and some other cultures, the chances of healthy offspring were still better than 90%.  “You hear a lot about mongoloid offspring,” Dr. Harris stated, “but if you look more closely, you’ll find that the parents were not exactly Phi Beta Kappa to begin with.”  Each individual received half his or her genetic make-up from each parent, so each individual was unique, in a combination which was unlikely ever to be exactly duplicated, even in twins.  That reminded Bryce of something Father Miller had said in an earlier session, about the offspring being a distinct individual from the moment of conception.  Dr. Harris then passed on to the uses of DNA testing in criminal cases.  He finished up with the uses of DNA and other types of genetic testing in genealogy, something Bryce’s relatives were very interested in.  DNA testing, generally speaking, is valid only in the straight maternal line, or the straight paternal line.  “If you’re tracing your ancestry back to some king of England, and you switch back and forth between male and female lines, DNA testing will be of no value to you,” he informed the class.  Well, so much for my royal ancestry resting on scientific evidence, Bryce kidded himself.  Then Dr. Harris noted that numerous African-Americans had been able to establish ancestry with a particular tribe or region of Africa, even if not a specific individual, through DNA testing, utilizing such agencies as African Ancestry in Washington, D.C.  That certainly caught Damon’s interest.  However, Dr. Harris cautioned, it has also been established that about a third of African-Americans have white ancestry, in former times as a result of abuses during slavery, and in more recent times as a result of more accepting social customs respecting interracial marriage.  Still, Damon retained a flicker of hope that he could establish some roots of his own.

 

Damon went off to prep his math some more as Bryce headed for his class in Stuart England.  Dr. Dickinson lectured on the Court of Queen Anne, and the matter of the succession to the throne.  Anne was the younger surviving daughter of King James II and his first wife, Anne Hyde.  She was married to Prince George of Denmark, and they had thirteen children, none of whom survived childhood.  Four were stillborn, six died shortly after birth.  The most long lived was William, Duke of Gloucester, who died four days short of his eleventh birthday in 1700.  It was this death which was the immediate background for the Act of Settlement, discussed in a previous class.  Dr. Dickinson went on to discuss the Jacobite movement, and the bad conscience Queen Anne had about excluding her half-brother, Prince James Francis Edward, but Bryce’s mind wandered back to his Biology class.  He wondered what it was that led to such a horrendous child mortality rate.  Anne was related to Prince George, but not all that closely.  A question directed to Dr. Dickinson resulted in a tangent which elicited the information that Anne’s great-grandmother, the wife of King James I, was Anne of Denmark, sister of Prince George’s grandfather, King Christian IV, so they were second cousins once removed.  It must have been something other than inbreeding which caused the problem.

 

After his History class, Bryce met Damon briefly, and encouraged him as he went off to his Math class, followed by the make-up test.  After downing a snack, Bryce then made his way to the Newman Center for his next appointment with Father Miller.  As he approached the Center, it struck him that he did not know Father Miller’s first name.  He remembered seeing somewhere the name ‘Rev. G. Miller, S.T.D.’, but he could not recall ever actually seeing or hearing what the ‘G’ stood for.  So, after greeting the receptionist, Patricia Murphy, he asked.

 

She giggled.  “If I tell you, you have to promise never to reveal the source of your information,” Pat stated.

 

Intrigued, Bryce promised.

 

“Gervase,” Pat whispered.

 

“Gervase?  I never heard that name before.  It sounds like something out of King Arthur or something,” Bryce said.

 

Pat pulled out a copy of John Delaney’s Dictionary of Saints and turned to page 255.  Obviously, she had done this before.  There, Bryce read that Gervase and his twin brother Potase - that would have been even worse, he thought - based on what the book called “untrustworthy tradition” were first century martyrs from Milan, in northern Italy.  He also noted a Blessed George Gervase, a more historical figure, executed in 1608 for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance recognizing King James I as head of the church.  He was hanged at Tyburn.  Unlike the Milanese martyrs, that was documented history.

 

“I think there’s an actor or something with that name,” Patricia noted.

 

Before Bryce and Patricia could make more of this, however, Father Miller himself appeared from his office, as usual escorting a student after a conference.

 

With a smile lurking on his lips, Bryce entered and sat.  Somehow, knowing Father Miller was named Gervase made him less intimidating.  After some preliminaries, Father Miller asked, “Where do you want to go today, Bryce?”

 

“Well, I’ve been thinking, we agreed that there was nothing specifically prohibiting gay sex in the Gospels, but St. Paul has a few passages.  Where did he get that?  And where did the later Fathers of the Church get their anti-gay outlook?”

 

“A good point, and one which follows from what we have been discussing,” Father Miller agreed.  “I must admit, I anticipated this coming up, not necessarily today, but eventually, because of the way our conversations have been going.  You’ve caused me to do some research, and it’s only partly complete, but I’ll give you the benefits of what I’ve learned so far.  On a tangent, I might say it’s people like you, who ask interesting questions and demand to be convinced, which keep me on my toes.”

 

“Unlike the parish priests and deacons, who seem only to repeat the same things over and over,” Bryce said with some bitterness in his voice.

 

“Let’s not make comparisons.  The parish clergy perform a valuable task for the majority of the faithful,” Father Miller cautioned him.

 

“Sorry, Father.  I guess I get impatient,” Bryce admitted.

 

“Patience is a virtue,” the priest said.  “Not one that comes easily to most of us, however.  It needs to be cultivated.”

 

“Okay.  Mea culpa.  Now, what about St. Paul?” Bryce insisted.

 

“Patience,” Father Miller smiled.  “In many ways, St. Paul was the first Christian theologian.  You should be grateful to him, even if you cannot accept his take on gay sex.  You see, Christianity is almost unique among the major world religions in having theologians in the strict sense of the word.”

 

“Oh, come on, Father.  Surely every religion has theologians,” Bryce protested.

 

“Every religion has scholars devoted to studying that religion, but that’s not the same thing.  All right, let’s begin with a definition of ‘theology.’  St. Augustine says theology is ‘reasoning or discussion concerning the Deity.’  Theology then, in the strict sense, has to be based on reason.  Let me bring to your attention the following passage in this book by Rodney Stark.  He’s not a theologian, but a Professor of Social Science at Baylor, a Baptist institution, with a Ph.D. from Berkeley.  But I think he’s on the right track in this passage from his book, The Victory of Reason.”

 

Father Miller read: While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth.  Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek philosophy.  But the more important fact is that Greek philosophy had little impact on Greek religions.  These remained typical mystery cults, in which ambiguity and logical contradictions were taken as hallmarks of sacred origins.  Similar assumptions concerning the fundamental inexplicability of the gods and the intellectual superiority of introspection dominated all the other major world religions.  But from early days, the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift from God and the means to progressively increase  their understanding of scripture and revelation.  Consequently, Christianity was oriented to the future, while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past.  At least in principle, if not always in fact, Christian doctrines could always be modified in the name of progress as demonstrated by reason.

 

“Now, you see what that means,” Father Miller asserted.  “While mysticism is an admirable undertaking, it is also primarily an individual one, not geared to society as a whole.  If the Church is to minister to all people, as Christ charged her, we have to go to some other source of religious knowledge than contemplation of the divine and personal inspiration.  That’s why I can’t accept your personal revelations as controlling elements in our discussions, Bryce.  It’s not that I deny their validity.  I make no statement about their validity, as I have no evidence on which to do so.  But any solution to your questions has to rest on something more, something you can share with the whole Church.

 

“You have several times made uncomplimentary remarks about Postmodernism, with its tendency to deny objective values and ideas.  I do not disagree with you.  But don’t you see that by basing your approach on such a very personal experience you’re doing the same thing?  You’re tapping a ‘reality’ that only you have access to.  But, remember our discussion about the nature of the Church.  Church is community.  While the community can and should have room for individual expressions of the Faith, it cannot be based on that alone.  There must be basics, foundations, doctrines if you wish, which we all accept.”

 

“Put that way, Father, I can’t disagree,” Bryce admitted.  “When you started in on my personal experiences there, I was ready to protest.  I believe they’re real, and they’re Jesus’ way of guiding me through this difficult process of reconciling my faith with my sexual orientation.  But I admit that this has to be in the wider context of the Catholic Faith.  After all, if we throw that out, then there’s no reason to believe Jesus any more than some ‘contact’ through a medium at a séance.  I certainly don’t want to insult Our Lord by putting him on the same level as some imaginary Cherokee princess or Egyptian mummy.”

 

“Good.  And I’m glad to hear you put this in the context of the Faith, that is, in the context of the Church.  In my experience, people who wish to forego the Church, and communicate only with God, are in fact communicating only with themselves.   With this understanding, let’s get back to your original question about St. Paul,” Father Miller said.  “Now, St. Paul was, as I said, the first real theologian in the Christian Church, in that he attempted to reason about the revelation which had been given him, and share the results of that reasoning with his converts.  This is essentially what we have in the thirteen letters which we refer to as the Pauline epistles.  You do know that the world ‘epistle’ is simply the Latin for ‘letter’?”

 

“Yes, Father.  I did have some Latin in school,” Bryce reminded him.

 

“All right.  Now, when we reason about anything, we need to be aware of the assumptions we bring to the table.  It is a basic premise of logic, since the days of Aristotle, that if we begin with inaccurate information, we will arrive at inaccurate conclusions,” Father Miller explained.

 

“I’m aware of that.  Even someone as limited as I, knows the basic dictum of the computer world - GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.”

 

“Good.  Now, as St. Paul was attempting to reason about the revelation he was given about the saving power of faith in Jesus, I think we can take as given the doctrinal truth of his writings.  But when he goes off on other topics, we might consider that as his efforts to apply his knowledge of Jesus to contemporary living.  This is similar to the distinction we made before between the doctrinal and the disciplinary decrees of councils.  And in doing that, he would have been guided by the dominant outlooks of his times.  Tell me, Bryce, what was the leading intellectual outlook of the first century A.D.?”

 

Bryce paused to think.  It had been a while since he had read anything in the field of the history of ideas in the ancient world.  The basic schools of Plato and Aristotle had changed so much by then they could hardly be called Platonic or Aristotelian, he recalled.  Stoics!  That was it.  The leading school of thought during the Hellenistic period was Stoicism, in its various guises.  “Stoicism, Father.  I’m pretty sure I remember that correctly.”

 

“Yes, you’re right.  Now, as we know, Stoicism has many parallels with Christianity, and many positive contributions to human thought.  However there are certain dangers in accepting Stoicism uncritically.  In particular, the Stoics had a very limited view of the role of human feelings, emotions, passions.  They tended to see anything which disturbed the calm of reason as being a product of the physical or animal side of humans, and therefore automatically inferior.  Any action which was based primarily on the emotions was, therefore, unworthy of the sage, or wise man, and consequently wrong.  I think you can see where this can lead.”

 

“Yes.  If I have it right, that would mean that sex was a very iffy topic for the Stoics, as, in my experience anyway, at some point the emotions play a major role in sex,” Bryce said.

 

“Right.  Now, to be fair, our knowledge of Stoic teaching is incomplete, and it went through several phases of development, but in general we can say that the Stoics are responsible for the notion that the sole legitimate purpose of sex is procreation.  Sex engaged in for this rational purpose was virtuous, but sex engaged in for any other purpose was giving in to the lesser, that is to say, the animal side of humanity, and therefore wrong.  It was stepping down from the rational level to which humans are called, and putting ourselves on the same level as the unthinking beasts.  Virtue consists in controlling the emotions for rational purposes.  Vice consists in giving in to the emotions,” Father Miller explained.

 

“I can see how this is going to affect one’s view of gay sex.  After all, gay sex does not result in offspring,” Bryce said.

 

“Quite so.  Now, for the Stoics, reason and nature were much the same thing.  That which was natural to humans was that which was rational.  That stepping down or lowering oneself from the lofty realms of reason, and descending to the bestial realms of the physical, or the emotional, was therefore unnatural.  Does this sound familiar?”

 

“It seems to me,” Bryce said, “that I remember reading words to that effect in the documents released by the American bishops when they discussed gay sex.  Again those hateful words, ‘inherently disordered’ and ‘unnatural’ stand out in my mind.  I cannot tell you how insulted I felt, how much like I was being relegated to the level of the less-than-human, when I read that.”

 

“Well, Bryce, the bishops got it from the Church Fathers, and the Church Fathers got it from St. Paul, and St. Paul got it from the Stoics,” Father Miller said.  “That’s not entirely accurate, because the Church Fathers absorbed much more of Stoic philosophy than is found in St. Paul, and there are other factors at play, but this is the basic line of reasoning for that position.  Now, can you go back to some of the things we have talked about previously, and relate them to this development?”

 

“Well, let’s see,” Bryce pondered.  “We started out some time earlier today with the idea that if the information fed into a logical syllogism is mistaken, then the conclusion would be mistaken.  Okay.  Then, you said the position of the bishops on gay sex is based on the Stoic idea that the only legitimate purpose of sex is procreation.  But I seem to recall that we agreed some time ago that this is not necessarily true.  If the human soul is distinct from the animal soul, then human sexuality can also be distinct from animal sexuality.  Human sexuality can have as a legitimate purpose the promotion of love between the two partners.  But, the bishops have agreed that sex has this other function, haven’t they?”

 

“The bishops and the Vatican, thanks to John Paul II, have agreed that human sex can have a purpose distinct from procreation, yes.  The problem is, there is a strong tendency to say it must have both procreation and this other function of expressing love, rather than allowing the expression of love to exist as a purpose without the procreative aspect,” Father Miller explained.