Moral Chaos Says 3 = 17

 And the hits just keep on coming from Pope Francis' Fiducia Supplicans which allows priests to bless inflatable sex dolls or something like that.

First, let's posit, with no little justification, that all of this was done with the very best of intentions. Pope Francis wants everyone to feel welcome and loved. His problem is that he also wants three to equal seventeen or, if that's too difficult, he wants us all to ignore that it doesn't.

It's that impatient dismissal of logic that blows everything to kingdom come.

Many, many people within the Church are not willing to say that 3=17. Africa, for example, is rising up in great discontent.

Today's newspaper in MALAWI: Say no to "Blessing same-sex couples in Malawi. pic.twitter.com/J4JVgpDrMi

— Rev Fr Petros Mwale (@fr_petros) December 20, 2023

Plenty of priests are registering their unhappiness. Father Dwight Longenecker's essay on the topic, a howl of despair, is a good sample.

The recent document Fiducia Supplicans signed off by Pope Francis is probably the most disastrous piece of work in what will be seen as the worst papacy in the 20th-21st centuries...

I can’t help wondering what the motivation for the document was. Who was pushing for this? Not just Fr James Martin SJ and the gang at New Ways Ministry. I suspect if you “follow the money” there would be some other interesting links. Was this pressure from the fabulously wealthy German church? Was it pressure from the Uber-rich international pink lobby? Who knows? But what I do know is that the perception and reception of the document is disastrous.

The first problem is with the whole question of blessings. Did the authors of the document really not understand that their “theology of blessing” doesn’t matter one little bit compared to the popular understanding of blessing? Yes, yes we know a blessing is a benediction, a solemn prayer for God’s grace and goodness to be bestowed on a person or object, and that it is okay to ask for this blessing for anyone.

OK, but that is not what ordinary people think. They think to give a blessing is to grant approval of a person and permission for their actions...

The vast majority of people do not know about the “theology of blessings”. They simply believe the headlines–that the Catholic Church now approves of gay sex.

In attempting to make more people feel good by dismissing any need for logic or consistency, the pope has managed to make more people feel bad.

At a macro level, this is the same problem as the open border. We want to be compassionate to the migrants. We want to give them a better life. To get what we want, we ignore reality. No thought is given to the practical realities of housing 150,000 migrants in NYC.

It's the same problem as equity. We want black kids to do as well as white kids in school. We ignore the reality of their home life and simply grant them all the same titles and rewards. We ignore the need for objective and empirical data and we get rid of standardized testing. No thought is given to the practical realities of giving high school diplomas to functionally illiterate students.

At the micro level, the laity is trying to cope. Here's a sample of what is happening at the local level at some parish here in the US.

The advice I gave my RCIA class last night: we don't know how to read this in a way compatible w what we know to be true via Scripture and the perennial Magisterium.  Therefore we are irremediably confused.  Therefore, ignore and carry on as before.  The advice was well received.

Illogical good intentions produce chaos and pain.

And on and on it goes. Moral Chaos gives us a brief frisson of pleasure, but it doesn't take long for 3=17 to wreck all kinds of things.