Prominent Dominican publishes book claiming Thomas Aquinas said homosexuality is ‘natural’

Lifesitenews ^ | 12 November 2015 | Jeanne Smits

[redleghunter]

Analysis

Nov. 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - A Dominican friar, Fr. Adriano Oliva, has celebrated the 800th anniversary of his religious order with a book about “the Church, the divorced and remarried, and homosexual couples.”

Amours (“Loves”) is a study of St Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love and aims to show that the “Angelic Doctor” recognized the “natural” character of homosexuality. In the wake of the Synod on the family, Oliva pleads for new ways of welcoming divorced and remarried and homosexual couples into the Church and of recognizing their unions in civil law.

His editor, the “editions du Cerf” publishing house, is the historic Dominican editor in France, founded at the request of Pope Pius XI in 1929. It still functions under religious supervision.

[Salman]

Satanism

Or wishful thinking?

[Mad Dawg]

Short response: Yeah!

Longer response: the scientific, descriptive idea of “natural” is by no means identical with the Realistic idea. In the Realist view, one could say that every crime is a crime against nature.

So, I want the caffeine buzz and restful sleep, the chocolate pleasure, but not the waistline, the fondling and the embraces and orgasms, but not the relationship and puppies. I neither KNOW nor DESIRE wholeness; or rather I want it while I also want to dis-integrate things.

Who will save me from this body (and psyche) of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

[Mad Dawg]

I wouldn't say “indicates.” I'd say, “argues.” What will come of this, I suspect, is a bunch of counter-arguments and, I hope, a refinement in the use of the word “natural.”

And we Dominicans will sneak into his room and short-sheet his bed.

[Mad Dawg]

What would constitute a “proof” in your opinion?

[redleghunter]

And we Dominicans will sneak into his room and short-sheet his bed.

Careful...might be exactly what this friar is up to:)

[Mad Dawg]

LOL!

[redleghunter]

That’s a good question as only snippets and a brief precis is offered in the article.

[Slambat]

“warp and woof”

Never heard that term before,

warp and woof:
The essential foundation or base of any structure or organization; from weaving, in which the warp - the threads that run lengthwise - and the woof - the threads that run across - make up the fabric: “The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are the warp and woof of the American nation.”

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/warp-and-woof

Great reply thanks.

[Iscool]

If the apostles passed down some oral tradition, where is it??? Who was it given to, and when??? Something that shows up in a book a number of centuries later doesn’t cut it...

[Mad Dawg]

So proof would be a written oral tradition?

That seems a little like a square circle.

[Iscool]

So proof would be a written oral tradition?

That seems a little like a square circle.

Seems to me every Catholic oral tradition ever produced is written not just somewhere but every where...

You guys claim that the apostles passed down oral tradition to you guys...Do you have any evidence??? Nope...Any of those traditions we can look at or discuss??? Nope...There aren't any...

If your so-called Ignatius would have said something like, 'I traveled to the Isle of Patmos to visit with the apostle John and while there John gave this command to me'...Blah, blah, blah...

Ignatius allegedly wrote a number of things to pass on to you guys, I'm sure he wouldn't have neglected to write down something that came from the lips of the apostle...

We all know that there are no oral traditions passed down from the apostles...We all know that you guys back paddle when that topic comes up...And we all know you guys use this fabrication not to prove that oral tradition was passed on (because you can't) but to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...

'The apostles passed on oral tradition and they also passed on that authority to the Catholic church'...So a few centuries later an 'oral tradition' shows up in someone's writing and 'abracadabra', that tradition must have come from God because it is written in one of our books so it is Tradition even tho there's never a source of this tradition...

[Daffy]

The Jewish religion had an oral traditon, outside of Scriptures, firmly established well before the time of Christ. It was later recorded. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?

[Iscool]

The Jewish religion had an oral traditon, outside of Scriptures, firmly established well before the time of Christ. It was later recorded. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?

Yep...And like the Catholic religion, their tradition didn't line up with the scriptures either...

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Uh... NO.

From the article.

Several fallacies are present in the statements that homosexuality is connatural to the individual and that its finality is the virtuous love of another person.

In the first place, Oliva leaves aside the fact that St Thomas speaks of a corruption of the natural principle of the species which leads the human person to be orientated towards a person of the opposite sex, an orientation that allows human life to be transmitted in the sole framework that is fitting to its dignity: marriage, says Collin. Contrary to what Oliva writes, St Thomas does not designate the origin of this corruption as being in the soul but in habit: an acquired disposition that becomes a second nature. This habit, in opposition to mere biological processes, is on the side of the soul because only the potencies of the soul can be disposed by the repetition of identical acts that create a habit. The same could be said of drug abuse or any other addiction.

In the case of counter-natural sexual pleasure that an individual experiences as connatural, St Thomas considers it to be rooted in a habit that is against reason: which is defined as a vice, a disposition to what is evil, explains Thibaud Collin. St Thomas, in the text quoted by Oliva, is describing the non-natural pleasure some people experience as being natural in an act that is opposed to human nature and therefore to the objective good of man – in this case sodomy – without looking for the source of a psychological type that 19th century psychiatry would later end up calling homosexuality.

The second main point of Oliva s reasoning in view of legitimizing homosexual unions is that this inclination should be accomplished in faithful love that pastors should bless and support: A homosexual couple has a fundamental right to form, because homosexuality is a constitutive component of the individualized nature of two individuals who unite in natural and in some cases in supernatural friendship, writes Oliva. Blessing such couples would help them on their way in fidelity.

Thibaud Collin comments: Here, there is confusion between true friendship and sexual and affective attraction. When Oliva argues that homosexuality, being rooted in the soul, should also express itself and be lived out in the body, he is contradicting the whole of St Thomas teaching on natural moral law and the virtues.

Fr. Oliva, in fact, replaces truth with sincerity: moral truth shows a person s reason the good that should be accomplished by his free acts, that is proper to human nature as God created it, explains Collin, indicating that Oliva reasons inversely: For him, natural law ends up by adjusting to an individual whose natural principle is distorted, according to St. Thomas.

[redleghunter]

Frankly I agree with you. I believe this Friar is way out there.

Of course someone in the lavender mafia put him up to publishing this tome. Shows their hand a bit.

[Daffy]

Can you give an example or two?

[Iscool]

Can you give an example or two?

Aww c'mon...How long have you been reading these threads???

[Daffy]

Thank you for your answer, dressed-up as a question.

[Mad Dawg]

Well of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But I think when you say tradition (I don't think I hear the phrase “oral tradition” a lot in this context) we're probably thinking of different things. And the word itself is used equivocally.

But, really it's hard to figure out what you are saying. For example:

And we all know you guys use this fabrication not to prove that oral tradition was passed on (because you can't) but to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...

I can't tell what that means. Let's break it down syntactically:

.... you guys use this fabrication
not to prove that oral tradition was passed on (because you can't) but
to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...

So if we take out what we DIDn’t use it for we get:

... you guys use this fabrication ... to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...

Well, I don't understand that. I don't know what it means.

---

The Bible itself is a "tradition," and we have inadequate records of how it was passed down. We don't have many records, and some of them are suspicious, from the early days. There wasn't a library or archive.

But I think that the charisms handed down don't need records, though if we had them it would be interesting. The documents that weren't considered canonical NT writings are interesting, but they don't have the oomph of those that were approved. Somebody, some group of somebodies, made a good, even an inspired, decision.

You know, Al Ghazali of Iran, who died 904 years ago, said that Allah was pure will and that man's response should be utter obedience. He said Allah might throw a good creature into ever lasting torment and promote and evil creature to everlasting bliss, and all we could or should do is assent, because he is Allah.

Because his thinking took over, Falsafa, philosophy, was slowly driven out of Islam. There's good reason to believe that this is why advances in science and mathematics ceased and the Muslim world was left like a blind man holding a lamp.

Like you, the Muslims would say these were all philosophies of men and not God's word.

Now we COULD say that the Muslims just ended up backing the wrong horse, so to speak. If Reason (and therefore "philosophies of men") have nothing to do with it, then it's just a matter of whether one has the grace to believe in Jehovah and Jesus or in Allah and Mohammed. And there's no way to discuss it. They wave their Korans (and weapons,) and we wave our Bibles (and weapons.)We're reduced to angry yelling.

And so you think it a scandal that seminarians study philosophy. And, it seems, confidence in the position you take while eschewing philosophy may lead to what appears to be difficulty in stating your position and what certainly seems to be hostility (not just disagreement, hostility) to any other.

But, without philosophy, there's no way to discuss this. And we're left not only with

... you guys use this fabrication ... to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...

But with an ideological rejection of the very instruments (logic and reason) which might help us talk about it -- or which might lead us to think that talking about it was worthwhile. This isn't a personal clash. It's what you get when the tools of discourse are rejected because of a particular take on what Paul says about philosophy.