Mark Kirk.
U. S. Rep. Mark Kirk, preferred by GOP ticket-planners to run for either governor or senator, will decline both jobs in order to seek reelection to his House seat, I have been told on what I believe is excellent authority.
The reason is not political but personal. His decision will likely be spun as acknowledgment that no Republican can win either race…a conclusion the liberal media will quickly buy and propagate: but the true reason lies not in politics but with other concerns. This decision leaves the list wide open for the two top spots, governor and senator. Kirk was the odds-on favorite of liberal media and prominent GOP fund-raisers who have sought to raise double-digit millions for him and the ticket, if he were to have run for governor. At the same time, it was noted that Kirk’s strong pro-abort positions and other liberal stances…i.e. his support of the so-called “hate crimes” legislation…would deprive him of social conservative support in the primary—but the ticket-builders argued that this could be offset by other candidates on the ticket: a conclusion that has been widely disputed. My own feeling is that Kirk would be a better choice for U.S. Senator than governor—although I wouldn’t have voted for him for either job.
Ernie on Homosexuality.
[My apologies for having run out of gas yesterday but after a good night’s sleep am ready to roll. This is Part II of Ernie, which deals with homosexuality, he being as you know, Fr. Ernest Kilzer, OSB, chairman of Philosophy at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota—the lecture delivered in 1948…which means that it was long before Vatican II. But the theology is still quite valid…although there are few lecturers filling Ernie’s role today, even in Catholic universities. Again, the sniping between Ernie and Bede Hall reflects good natured but sometimes brutal joshing by Ernie who was the same age as Hall…occasionally in bad taste as this example shows but which I have refrained from censoring.]
Fr. Ernest. We turn now to the issue of homosexuality. It is a more difficult subject since the natural inclination to carnality centers on heterosexual sinning. Conventional wisdom is that homosexuality is contained in the genes. I beg to differ. Carnality is contained in the genes. Yielding to carnality either via heterosexuality or homosexuality springs from spiritual vacuity. There is a widespread supposition that for males, lusting after females is normal but lusting after males is not. Again: lust is the operative word. Seeking to attain what we call carnal knowledge outside the married state is the sin. I see Mr. Bede Hall has a question but it will just have to wait until I make a few points, Mr. Hall.
Beginning with the misnamed, so-called Enlightenment, the idea has grown that man can conduct himself by reason alone and that spirituality ought to remain out of it. That has led to relativism, the notion that what is good for me may be bad for you and vice-versa. Which in turn has led to the conjecture that every man should be the master of his own enjoyment—so long as…the popular dictum goes…he “does not hurt anyone.” But widespread licentiousness hurts everyone. When I see my neighbor running around with either my neighbor’s wife or his brother, the nature of my human condition is that I wonder what it would be like to enjoy such carnality.
But the Enlightenment was and is wrong. God has made His will known not just by means of reason but by supernatural revelation—something the Enlightenment denied existed—or at the least ignored. Thus the Church teaches several absolutes. One is that the sexual nature of man is essentially superior to lower forms of life. Why? Because it pertains to marriage and the conception of children. Animals copulate with no realization. Humans are meant to fall in love, be monogamous and generate progeny. Now, Mr. Hall your question.
What? WHAT? Although he is an ex-GI who went through long and distinguished wartime service in the South Pacific, Mr. Hall has emerged to us with a thoroughly disreputable vocabulary—and I am tempted to clean it up for the benefit of some of the younger men who are here. But I will not clean up after Mr. Hall but will abjure him to refrain from such explicit questioning in the future in this class. But we will consider his question in the ugly language with which it was asked of me. Mr. Hall says he read somewhere…he even thinks it’s in an epistle of Saint Paul…that, to quote him in his scatology, allegedly the statement goes “it is better for a man to plant his seed in the belly of a whore than to spill it on the ground.” First of all, nothing like this is in the Bible but has gone around for centuries. You are wrong, Mr. Hall and are enjoined from repeating this with some kind of secret knowledge which would mislead that you are a Biblical scholar when you are not. [Laughter].
Second, the reference to “spilling one’s seed” IS in the Bible but is related to the sin of Onan which is known as coitus interruptus, not masturbation—although masturbation is itself a grave sin. I can tell Mr. Hall that this fiction about the belly of a whore is cited by people…no personal reflection on you necessarily meant, Mr. Hall…who are likely to seek justification for deriving illicit pleasure with prostitutes. [Extended laughter]. Aha, Mr. Hall says that he is done asking questions for this class period—for which we are very grateful, Mr. Hall. [Laughter].
What is the reason for homosexual occurrence? It is nothing more than what the Bible has called sodomy which has been with the human condition almost since the beginning. One major reason is the acceptance on the part of a growing number that sexual congress is acceptable BEFORE marriage. The human condition then says “if heterosexual congress is okay before marriage, why not this?” It thus presents the sin of two people having mutual sexual experience free of the purpose for which God created the two genders. Homosexual relations exclude procreation of offspring. It is the sexual indulgence of two persons of the same gender whose claim that they love one another excludes the love of children who cannot be conceived.
Then you may ask: what is the prevailing attitude of those who may defend homosexuality? Essentially we are back to the misnamed Enlightenment again: each person has the right to determine what is morally good or bad. A great fallacy. Why? Because it gives to the human will the right that belongs to God alone—the determining of what is morally virtuous and what is sinful. There are those who defend homosexual practice by saying that there is no injunction against it in the Bible. Not true. The story of Sodom is described in Genesis 19:1-11 and Leviticus 18:22, 20:13. It is condemned by Paul in Corinthians 6:9, in Romans 1:18-32; and in the first chapter of Timothy.
The bell is ringing and I thank you for indulging this disquisition, a departure from our lesson, really but which is needed in my view for the occurrences that have happened leading to the expulsion of two men from this university.
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