Saturday, January 28, 2017

"Abba Anthony said, 'A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, 'You are mad, you are not like us.'"

Wikimedia Commons
Εἶπεν ὁ ἀββᾶς Ἀντώνιος, ὅτι Ἔρχεται καιρὸς, ἵνα οἱ ἄνθρωποι μανῶσι, ἐπὰν ἴδωσί τινα μὴ μαινόμενον, ἐπαναστήσονται αὐτῷ λέγοντες, ὅτι Σὺ μαίνῃ, διὰ τὸ μὴ εἶναι ὅμοιον αὐτοῖς.

     Anthony the Great, no. 25 in the alphabetical collection, as trans. Benedicta Ward (The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection (New York:  Macmillan, 1975), 6).  Greek from PG 65, col. 84.

"Sanger herself was anti-abortion"

"It is important to note the unstable ground of these shifting political alliances.  Twenty-first-century anti-abortion and anti-birth-control activists condemn Sanger for her post-World War I alliance with American eugenicists.  But Sanger herself was anti-abortion, as were many of the eugenics organizations.  The American Eugenics Society, in A Eugenics Catechism, declared abortion was murder, except to save the life of or prevent serious injury to the mother."

    Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal reformers:  race, eugenics & American economics in the progressive era (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2016), 216n39 (in the context of an exposure of the illiberalism of a eugenicism that, however, wasn't just characteristic of progressivism, but rather "crossed all ideological boundaries (115)).  Leonard cites Diane Paul, "What Was Wrong with Eugenics?  Conflicting Narratives and Disputed Interpretations," Science and education 23 (2014):  265 (259-271), and Daniel J. Kevles, In the name of eugenics:  genetics and the uses of human heredity (New York:  Knopf, 1985), 92.  If this transcription of A eugenics catechism is accurate, then the wording was "Abortion except on strict medical grounds is murder and eugenists [sic] do not advocate it except to save the life or serious injury of the mother."  Sanger herself:  "nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide" (Woman and the new race (New York:  Brentano's, 1920), 25, among, probably, other passages).  Presumably, then, this means that the often tendentiously cited statement, "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it" (63), was a claim about the impersonally lethal "effects upon the child" (61) of the conditions created by the unavailability of contraception, not a claim that "the large family" should choose infanticide.  (But I haven't really read any Sanger.)

Friday, January 27, 2017

"The Holy Spirit might lead you to take a class...."

Department of Political Science,
Emory University
     Dr. Andra Gillespie, Veritas Forum conversation on race, faith, and politics, Seattle Pacific University, 29 January 2017.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

"About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter."

     Joan of Arc on Saturday, 17 March 1431, at her trial before the Bishop of Beauvais, as translated at Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 795, the original Latin version of which cites the French text in Procès de condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, ed. Pierre Tisset and Yvonne Lanhers, Société de l’histoire de France, Paris. Publications 466, vol. 1 (Paris:  C. Klincksieck, 1960), p. 166 (on request).  The two-volume Procès de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc ed. Pierre Champion (1920-1921) is here, where, on p. 142 of vol. 1 and p. 101 of vol. 2 we get the Latin and Champion's modern French respectively.  The official Latin of early 1435, as reproduced by Tisset & Lanhers (above), reads as follows:
     Interrogata utrum se referet de dictis et factis suis ad determinacionem Ecclesie : 
     Respondit :  Ego refero me ad Deum qui me misit, ad beatam Mariam et omnes sanctos et sanctas paradisi.  Et videtur michi quod unum est idem est de Deo et de Ecclesia, et quod de hoc non debet fieri difficultas.  Quare facitis vos de hoc difficultatem? 
Whereas the more or less original French version of early 1431, taken down during the trial, reworked each evening, and supposedly re-put to Joan for clarification, when necessary, each next day, as well as near the end of the trial-in-condemnation (again as reproduced in the edition ed. Tisset & Landers, above), reads as follows:
     Interroguee de dire s’elle se rapportera a la determinacion de l’Eglise : 
     Respond :  Je m’en rapporte a nostre Sire qui m’a envoyee, a nostre Dame et a tous le benoictz saincts et sainctes de paradis.  Et luy est advis que s’est tout ung de nostre Seigneur et de l’Eglise, et que on n’en doit point faire de difficulté, en demandant pour quoy on fait difficulté que ce ne soit tout ung.
Here is the modern French as given by Tisset & Lanhers (vol. 2, p. 139):
     Interrogée si elle s’en rapportera de ses dits et faits à la détermination de l’Église : 
     Elle répondit :  « Je m’en rapporte à Dieu qui m’a envoyée, à Notre Dame et à tous le saints et saintes de paradis.  Et il me paraît que c’est tout un de Dieu et de l’Église et qu’on n’en doit pas faire de difficulté.  Pourquoi faites-vous difficulté de cela? »
And here is the modern French as given by Champion:
     Interrogée si elle s’en rapportera [de ses faits et dits] à la détermination de l’Église, répondit : « Je m’en rapporte à Notre Seigneur, qui m’a envoyée, à Notre Dame, à tous benoîts saints et saintes de paradis. »  Et lui est avis que c’est tout un de Notre Seigneur et de l’Église, et qu’en cela on ne lui doit faire de difficultés.  « Pourquoi faites-vous difficulté que ce soit tout un? »
Note that the Latin reads "God", not "Our Lord", but the French of 1431, "Our Lord".  Note also the extent of direct quotation in the different versions.  The 1931 translation by W. P. Barrett (The trial of Joan of Arc) follows those versions that insert an indirect quotation in between two direct quotations:
     Asked if she would submit [her deeds and words] to the decision of the Church, she answered: 'I commit myself to Our Lord, Who sent me, to Our Lady, and to all the Blessed Saints of Paradise.'  And she thought that our Lord and the Church were all one, and therein they ought not to make difficulties for her. 'Why do you make difficulties when it is all one?'
What I have not yet found in the 1920-1921 edition ed. Pierre Champion, or vol. 1 of the 1841-1849 edition ed. Jules Quicherat, below, or on p. 166 of vol. 1 of the 1960 edition ed. Pierre Tisset and Yvonne Lanhers and actually cited by the Catechism, is the very wording of the Catechism, also an indirect quotation, namely
« Et eius est opinio quod totum est unum de Domino nostro et de Ecclesia, et quod de hoc non debet fieri ulla difficultas ».
In the French version of the Catechism, however, to which the Latin version of the Catechism refers us, the wording is direct:
'De Jésus-Christ et de l’Église, il m’est avis que c’est tout un, et qu’il n’en faut pas faire difficulté'.
     The five-volume Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc, dite La Pucelle, ed. Jules Quicherat (1841-1849) is here.  See the 3rd rev. ed. of the ODCC for the 1952-1961 edition of the Documents ed. Paul Doncœur and Yvonne Lanhers.