"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Matt and I are in Montreat for the International C.S. Lewis Symposium. It’s the end of the first day and so we pull out the microphones and have a quick chat…
S2E37: “David and Matt party in Montreat. Day 1” (Download)
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I’m sitting in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, waiting for Matt, so I thought I’d record a quick message and share with you an extract from my interview on The Catholic Man Show where I talk about The Screwtape Letters.
S2E36: “Sitting in the airport” (Download)
The other week I saw this on Facebook:
Now, I don’t have a particular dog i this fight. Whether the United States was founded on Christian values doesn’t make an iota of difference as to whether Christianity is true. Having said that, I was rather dubious about the claims of this meme, so I did a bit of a googling…
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This is just a short episode to announce the launch of our new Pints With Jack logo! This design came from Matthew James Covington from Plena Gratia Designs.
S2E35: “We have a new logo!” (Download)
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The Way is a movie starring Martin Sheen about a man’s journey across Spain, walking the Camino. While I enjoyed it, there were a few inaccuracies I feel compelled to point out:
1. Rain
If this movie were accurate, there would need to be many more scenes of them walking in the rain.
2. Flies
At no point in the movie do we see the walkers getting irritated by or swatting away flies. Depending on the time of year that you walk the Camino, this is something you have to do quite a bit at certain points.
3. Popping blisters
There needs to be at least one scene where the group are gathered around looking at a blister on someone’s foot. By the end of the scene, that blister must be popped, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
4. Arguing about the relative merits on compeed
Following on from the above scene, there needs to be a sharp disagreement as to the relative merits of compeed.
5. Food
Food is a big part of the Camino. I’d have loved to have seen Sheen’s group gathered around a table more often sharing a meal. They could be discussing whether or not Spanish Red Wine should be considered medicine and why vegetables are so hard to find on the trail. I also think we should see them drinking orange juice and eating Napolitana, two staples of the Camino.
6. Miming
Refusing to learn Spanish, at least one character has to express their sleeping and dietary requirements to a hostel owner through the medium of mime.
Another day, another meme… Here’s a picture which a friend posted last week:
As with all memes, before clicking “Share”, it’s worth taking a moment to fully-articulate the argument which is being made. So, what does this meme claim?
The meme draws an equivalency between pregnancy and impotence. We are told that if pregnancy is God’s will, then so is impotence. It implies that Christians are inconsistent if they’re okay with tax dollars being available for the purchase of viagra, but not for contraceptives or abortions.
So…does this argument hold water? There are three points which I think are worth making.
1. Ordained or “ordered towards”
Is it true that “pregnancy is God’s will”? My suspicion is that what we have here is a misunderstanding (or, at worst a caricature) of the Christian understanding of sex. Sex has two ultimate purposes: the union of the spouses and the the siring of children. We would say that the sexual act is ordered towards procreation. By this, we mean that a natural consequence of the sexual act is the conceiving of children.
So, we can say “pregnancy is God’s will” insofar as God invented sex and children are the natural result of sex. However, the very fact that women have periods of infertility during the month shows that God does not will that every sexual union result in the conception of a child.
2. Both diseases?
Now that we’re spoken a little bit about sex in the natural order, it can hopefully be seen how ridiculous it is to compare pregnancy and impotence. Pregnancy is not a disease! If a couple has sex and the fruit of this union is a child then everything is working as it should! It is a natural consequence of the sexual act.
Impotence, in contrast, is a malfunction, a disruption of the intended sexual union. A better parallel would be to compare impotence with ovarian cysts, since the presence of these cysts prevents a woman’s body from functioning properly.
3. Different consequences
Finally, if this meme is being used as an argument in favour of abortion, it is hopefully clear to see the massive disparity between the moral consequences of paying for medication to allow a couple to have a heathy sex life and paying for medication which causes an unborn life to be snuffed out.
In preparation for our reading of Till We Have Faces, Matt interviews Emily LaPorte.
S2E34: “After Hours” with Emily LaPorte (Download)
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