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Originally Posted by nohands
Uhhhh... That's the Pope on half of the things you brought up.
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Originally Posted by you
There is a strong homosexual problem within the Church and have been infested with effeminate men.
The Pope's position on gay leaders in the church wasn't the thing I found odd. It was this "infested with effeminate men" thing.
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Saints aren't around to comment and I don't think the Church will say how they messed up so I think knowledgeable priest are the next best thing to gain insight.
Do you see the irony of this statement? The Church won't say how they messed up, so the next best thing is someone in the church. You simultaneously want to reject that the Church is an authority to speak into the situation while also holding that your spokesperson is in good standing with the Church. If you really wanted to go down this path, you should have found someone that's been defrocked. This is just empty posturing.
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I'd agree with you that I'm biased to some extent. Full disclosure I'm attend a Parrish that celebrates only the Traditional Latin Mass. Can go into the differences if needed, it's more than just the language and thinking people are effeminate
But I don't think my bias should influence someone that digs in to form their own conclusion.
That's fine. You're free to do and view the world as you please. But both your original statement, the general disposition, and your pride in your particular choice of mass here is going to suggest that you are going to be *highly* prone to all sorts of biases. Most notably, you're almost certainly going to read information in a confirmation bias sort of way. And in fact, it's absolutely clear that this is happening.
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My logic is effeminate men give into their disordered passions and short term pleasure in stead of submitting to gods will. Because the Church has ordained these type of priests disordered acts are happening.
The fundamental issue is that language changes over time. The way that Aquinas is using the term has basically NO resemblance to how the word is used today. You are linking it with homosexuality when the context clearly shows that this isn't at all how the term was being used. Rather, the term was used in contrast to perserverance.
But you (and based on what I've seen of Father Ripperger) have conflated the use of the word in the original writing with the contemporary usage of the term, complete with the added expression of sexuality.
Here is what Aquinas originally wrote:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3138.htm
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I answer that, As stated above (II-II:137:1 and II-II:137:2), perseverance is deserving of praise because thereby a man does not forsake a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils: and it is directly opposed to this, seemingly, for a man to be ready to forsake a good on account of difficulties which he cannot endure. This is what we understand by effeminacy, because a thing is said to be "soft" if it readily yields to the touch. Now a thing is not declared to be soft through yielding to a heavy blow, for walls yield to the battering-ram. Wherefore a man is not said to be effeminate if he yields to heavy blows. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7) that "it is no wonder, if a person is overcome by strong and overwhelming pleasures or sorrows; but he is to be pardoned if he struggles against them." Now it is evident that fear of danger is more impelling than the desire of pleasure: wherefore Tully says (De Offic. i) under the heading "True magnanimity consists of two things: It is inconsistent for one who is not cast down by fear, to be defeated by lust, or who has proved himself unbeaten by toil, to yield to pleasure." Moreover, pleasure itself is a stronger motive of attraction than sorrow, for the lack of pleasure is a motive of withdrawal, since lack of pleasure is a pure privation. Wherefore, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 7), properly speaking an effeminate man is one who withdraws from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, yielding as it were to a weak motion.
The word "effeminate" in this context clearly has nothing to do with homosexuality per se. You can lump that in with the various types of pleasure, but to take this and try to focus it specifically on homosexuality is completely devoid of intellectual merit.
Mostly, what I see here is that you've found yourself a little pocket of people who agree with you, and you're just willing to take in whatever they shovel out without actually thinking about it carefully for yourself. It has taken me about an hour to read through Aquinas' statements on effeminacy AND read
the thing he was responding to to see that there's very little sense of sexuality intended in these writings.
Maybe you should strive to be a more independent thinker.