Flat Earth?!
I came across my first flat-earther on the Internet this week!
How does one prove that the earth isn’t round? Well, I’m glad you asked:
Category: Catholicism
Friday Frivolity: Confession
Know your heresies
Female priests?
The Last Anchorite
This is a fascinating document about Fr. Lazarus, “The Last Anchorite”:
Why the Byzantine Liturgy is great For kids…
This past week, a friend of mine visited my Byzantine Catholic parish. Afterwards, she admitted that she had been rather apprehensive about how her small child was going to react to the whole experience. After all, she knew that the Byzantine Liturgy was typically ninety minutes long, rather than the forty-five minute Mass which her son had previously been used to experiencing.
Even though I have no children of my own, I offered the somewhat counter-intuitive claim that the Byzantine Liturgy is in some ways better suited to children than a Novus Ordo or Tridentine Mass. A bold claim, I know, but I stand by it! So, here are my top ten reasons why I think the Byzantine Liturgy is great if you have small children…
Read moreThe most sexist Pro-Choice Argument
Yet another person on Facebook recently told me that:
“It’s not for me or any other man or woman to place their beliefs upon a woman who should have the right to choose whether we agree or not. We will all stand before our maker if the story plays out as told.”
In response to these comments, I asked my friend whether or not he would say the same thing if he knew a mother planning on having her toddler drowned. If not, why not? As I’ve come to expect, I received no answer.
Instead I was told that my question was “wholly immaterial and inappropriate to this discussion”. I asked why this was this the case? Why was it inappropriate? Why was it immaterial? Once again, I received no answer.
I think it’s pretty clear that my friend would intervene in the situation with the toddler. The question is, why? After all, by interfering, he’d be “plac[ing] [his] beliefs upon the woman”, something which he’s apparently not meant to do. So, why interfere in one situation and not the other? What is the distinguishing factor? Why does one child demand her protection but another not merit it?
The implication here is that, unless I am directly impacted by a particular issue, I cannot comment upon its morality. That’s about as nonsensical as saying that unless you’re a plantation owner, you don’t get to comment on slavery. I have neither been the victim of sexual assault nor committed sexual assault. Despite this, I do not doubt for a moment that sexual assault is wrong and should be prevented.
The main reason I wanted to briefly blog about this conversation is because there is a deeper problem with what my friend said. He was saying that, because I am a man, I’m not even allowed to express my opinion on the morality of abortion. How is this anything other than textbook sexism? What was the basis for his dismissal of my argument? Was it the argument itself? Did he find a logical fallacy or a false premise? No, it was dismissed based on the gender of the person offering the argument. That’s a variant of the Ad Hominem Fallacy and remarkably sexist to boot!