Author: Richard Chonak

Typical. I didn’t understand Greg’s question! Well, he says. Anyway, at least he can focus in on it now.
He writes at HMS: “the incarnation raised God’s relationship with humanity to a more intimate level for all time. I am asking, did God’s coming as man raise his relationship to men to a more intimate level for all time? And if so, what is the significance of that intimacy and how does this intimacy not cause women to ‘lose out’ on something?”
There are some limits to this sort of direction: when we think about the change in status to humanity caused by the Incarnation and the Pasch, we have some Scriptural markers like St. Paul’s “neither male nor female”, and the theme that we are all “sons of God”; the NT doesn’t call the men “sons” and the women “daughters”.
So I think he’s getting into some speculative territory.

But why not.
Greg Popcak, when not supervising the St. Blog’s Institute for Nervous Patients, spends his time wondering about things. Today he wonders whether we can find any particular meaning in the fact that God became incarnate as a man rather than as a woman.
A 1999 article by Mark Brumley from The Catholic Faith confirms that the answer is yes. That meaning is to be found in the Christian understanding of human sexuality and in what Pope John Paul calls the “nuptial meaning of the human body”. God created human sexuality to represent something about Himself.
To start with: fatherhood and motherhood, while complementary, are not the same in character. They’re not quite parallel.

What is the difference between fatherhood and motherhood? A father is the “principle” or “source” of procreation in a way a mother is not. To be sure, both father and mother are parents of their offspring and in that sense both are causes of their offspring’s coming-to-be. But they are so in different ways.
Both mother and father are active agents of conception (contrary to what Aristotle thought). But the father, being male, initiates procreation; he enters and impregnates the woman, while the woman is entered and impregnated. There is an initiatory activity by the man and a receptive activity by the woman. Furthermore, modern biology tells us that the father determines the gender of the offspring (as Aristotle held, though for a different reason).
Thus, while father and mother are both parents of their offspring and both necessary for procreation, the father has a certain priority as the “source” or “principle” of procreation. (This “priority as source” is complemented by the mother’s priority as first nurturer, due to her procreating within herself and carrying the child within herself for nine months.)

This “initiatory” character of fatherhood is an earthly representation of God’s initiatory role vis-a-vis … everything else! Whether we speak of Christ and the Church, God and the soul, or God and the created world, God’s initiative comes first. We can even find this masculine-feminine polarity of God and creation in a play on words: “material” = mater.
Even within the inner life of the Holy Trinity, the Father generates on his own initiative:

Again, we draw on the analogy of human fatherhood. As we have seen, a father is the “source” of his offspring in a way a mother is not. The First Person of the Trinity is the “source” of the second Person. Thus, we call the First Person “the Father” rather than “the Mother” and the Second Person, generated by the Father yet also the Image of the Father, we call the Son.

So yes, there is something iconic about bridegrooms and brides: a cosmic dance is going on.

Let’s go see the Virgin Mary’s image in a window right after we check out Jesus on the doughnut shop wall.
Now, if it were Krispy Kreme, I might believe it.

Sometimes the accusations are even anonymous:

The Rev. Edward McDonagh was removed from St. Ann’s in West Bridgewater in May, two months after the archdiocese [of Boston] received a letter from a woman claiming her brother, a prostitute who died of AIDS, told her 20 years ago he’d been raped by McDonagh in the early 1960s. The family has not sued and McDonagh’s lawyer, David Sorrenti, said he hasn’t been told the identity of the accuser or his family.
”It makes it difficult to defend,” he said.
In a letter to the archdiocese, Sorrenti said the allegation was ”an unsupported, unreliable, hearsay statement” that wasn’t worthy of belief.
Sorrenti said in an interview that the archdiocese, buried under civil suits from about 400 victims, is ”definitely taking the safe way out.”

The Times presents a statistical overview of the abuse scandal based on their survey of 4,268 cases.

• Half of the priests in the database were accused of molesting more than one minor, and 16 percent are suspected of having had five or more victims.
• Eighty percent of the priests were accused of molesting boys. The percentage is nearly the opposite for laypeople accused of abuse; their victims are mostly girls.
• While the majority of the priests were accused of molesting teenagers only, 43 percent were accused of molesting children 12 and younger. Experts in sexual disorders say the likeliest repeat offenders are those who abuse prepubescent children and boys.
• Those ordained in 1970 and 1975 included the highest percentage of priests accused of abuse: 3.3 percent. More known offenders were ordained in the 1970’s than in any other decade.

One detail in the article connects ‘Sixties dissent with a weakening of morals among the clergy:

Over all, 256 priests were reported to have abused minors in the 1960’s. There were 537 in the 1970’s and 510 in the 1980’s, before a drop to 211 in the 1990’s. The numbers do not prove that the upheaval in the church and society in the 1960’s and 70’s caused the abuse, but experts who reviewed The Times’s research said it was important to consider the historical context in which the scandal occurred.
The church was jolted by two earthquakes in the 1960’s. Vatican II was the first, and Humanae Vitae, the papal encyclical upholding the church’s condemnation of artificial birth control in 1968, was the second.
Amid surging use of the birth control pill, many priests say it fell on them to promulgate a teaching they could not agree with. And many said the controversy removed their inhibitions about criticizing or even disregarding church teachings on sexuality.
“People were beginning to decide that the church couldn’t make the rules anymore,” Mr. Dinter said.

Hey, I didn’t say it.