Heresy

By Carolina S. Ruiz Austria

The word "Heresy"

was used by Irenaeus in Contra Haereses to discredit his opponents in the early Christian Church. It has no purely objective meaning without an authoritative system of dogma.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Potter and Parenthood

"Our ethics, morals, conduct, values, sense of duty and even sense of humor are often developed through simple childhood parables and fables. From them we learn what is socially acceptable in the society from which they come. They define good and bad, right and wrong, what is natural, what is unnatural among the people who hold the myths as meaningful."

Merlin Stone
When God was a Woman, 1976



Many serious "Potterheads" (some though admittedly not all, Harry Potter fans/fanatics and J.K. Rowling devotees) might not agree with my own musings on the series, most of all, my take on the ending in Book 7. But while many are arguing about the real meaning behind Book 7 (The Deathly Hallows) or for that matter, whining endlessly about how the last movie (on Book 5, The Order of the Phoenix), wasn't "good enough," I have to say I really liked the last Book, particularly the sense of closure it gave to what was a really good story.

I liked it that Harry didn't die and didn't have to just to prove himself capable of heroic acts, or to be worthy of being considered extraordinary. The truth is, I didn't realize how much I liked the ending and how I actually thought about it until I spoke with a teenager, not unlike others her age who were teasing (or seriously - I may be mistaken) ridiculing the ending's lack of heroic death, saying "it's a children's book!"

Maybe its because I am a mother myself (and also getting old?) that somehow it delighted me to realize that "young death in a blaze of glory" would have been too easy a way out for these kids. Sorry, kids but you don't get an easy ticket, you'll have to realize that in the end, while you are very important, its not (and will not be) always about you. Sure, not everyone of you will opt to raise kids but still, as a grown up, you will have to realize at one point that its going to be about the younger generation.

I realized that at that age, the prospect of having to grow up and face the real world, (live as muggles do, or worse as your muggle parents did!) is even more terrifying than a real rock and roll, bursting in flames, sort of ending that many young people expect from rock concerts as well as story books (apparently).

I can understand I think how a teenager would cringe at the prospect of becoming just like her/his parents someday, much more than they would cringe from handling a Horcrux?

If there is one thing I have noticed about JK Rowling's writing, it's that she has always sought to break out of the bind of "binaries," through both her storytelling and her characters.

Nobody's perfect in the Harry Potter series. Not in good, not even in evil. Okay, granted that Bellatrix, the Dementors and Voldemort are as dark as they come but even Voldemort had a background which neither justifies or excuses his behavior but at the very least offers insights about his choices. Snape's character of course is the best example of debunking the myth of two dimensional characters in real life.

This is one of the reasons why I think Rowling's work has facilitated a much needed wake up call to a generation on the verge (in the midst even) of changing mediums.So many generations of readers, listeners and viewers of media have been doing so as mere receivers of information. Mind you, our media "consumption" still smacks of the linearity and myopia of still dominant TV programming and the influences of "banking" theory styles of education. Rowling doesn't simply tell an interesting story in the HP series but she asks of her readers to do more. She asks them to think. The cross referencing part of the Harry Potter experience from book to book, right down to piquing interests in languages Latin and Greek, should already be familiar terrain for young readers so adept at surfing the internet and cross-linking.

One colleague says that having observed the virtually invincible anime characters of on-line gaming that her children play on the computer, Harry Potter is so much more human and therefore so much more real. Sure Harry and friends could do magic but even they had to work hard to be able to do good magic.

Like Harry, many young people often feel "alone" even in the company of friends, when they have problems weighing them down. Emotional responses tend to get heightened at the crucial stages of adolescence and when we say "raging hormones," its actually an accurate depiction, albeit wholly inaccurate if we were to isolate the "effects" as purely on the sexual side of things.

I'm glad I still remember the feeling of being young and being always so insecure because that means it was fairly recent? (Or so I try to fool myself) Well when I look back, I know that even when it is still possible to feel insecurity as an adult, it was always so much worse when I was a teenager.

That tendency to think everything revolves around you, making a mountain out of a molehill, feeling like you could die of embarrassment from a single look, and simply seeing your parents as the most uncool people on the planet, may not exactly be true for everyone but its common enough during those years.

Now Harry also learns that depending on others is not something to be afraid of, or to be guilty of. I may be chided for over reading but I think its a wonderful indictment of the enduring myth of "Individualism" and "Autonomy/complete separation" in the most classical liberal sense.

Sure the individual remains important and autonomy itself is a positive value but Rowling's tale reminds us that complete separation from others is hardly ever reality, nor a desirable place to be.

Yes, Lupin died but not before he lived. Fred is dead but he didn't suffer. Harry lives. (Somewhere in Muggle London, I think)

Monday, July 16, 2007

Latin, Heresy and Meaning

There are ___ words with Latin origin in this essay.(I'm still counting)
I found out that the issue of popularizing the Latin Mass is not an easy thing to ponder about. First because I don't speak Latin although as someone with a law background I once committed a few maxims to memory (and they are there somewhere in the depths of my mind although I suspect Harry Potter's spells are easier to recall at this point). But second because I have never attended a pure, honest to goodness, authentic Latin Mass.

Reviving the Latin Mass ought not to be anything worrisome for many Catholics after all, like old buildings and religious artifacts and relics, it is just that, a symbol of the past, an old ritual which lends our religious rites a modicum of quaintness, if not relives a tradition. Or is it?

Some have opined that the Pope's reaching out to the Lebferve flock is a sure sign of his turning away from Vatican II. But the way I see it, the problem with assigning a whole lot of meaning to Pope Benedict's announcement last week is that it can just as easily contribute to the reinforcement of such (if any) real intentions.

I figured that if we were to consider "meaning" as mediated, that it rarely ever is a product of only one point of view, even Latin deserves a fair trial. :-)

Latin has its own history. We often hear its "dead" but that's not entirely accurate. It's really easier to think of it as having mutated, or branched out, or if you like those sort of movies - the living dead. (Ok I'm trying to be funny)

English, most linguists would agree is the most living relic of Latin. Apart from English, the family of languages with Latin origins include German, French and Spanish. But for the most part, 3/4 of English is influenced or words with Latin origin, making it the most influenced by Latin of all the current "Western" languages here mentioned.Read more here...

What is Latin also depends on when it is you are referring to by way of history, usage and well, influence. Even Latin was influenced heavily by Greek, particularly the Classical Latin we often hear referred to by way of the literary achievements (Ceasar, Cicero).

The use of Latin (as opposed to Greek) marked a turning point for Catholic church history. At a certain point in history, Latin was also more popularly spoken than Greek which was the preferred language by the clerics, of course largely due to the fact that early translations of manuscripts in Armaic and Hebrew were in Greek. (Now remember that when we don't understand a word of what is spoken, not only because it is foreign but rather sounds too complicated, we say "that sounded Greek to me," not Latin. Well maybe we say it because we know of Greek and Latin...well its dead isn't it? It depends but I digress...)

Yes, in the old days, Latin was THE language of the faithful and Greek, only understood by a few clerics. Translation into Latin (again, not classical, but popular, vernacular) Latin became a necessity when more of the faithful, particularly in Africa, spoke it and not Greek.

Of course which Latin to use became a complex issue of various considerations: closer to classical style, which was of course preferred by the learned scholars, and had a distinctively upper class origin, as opposed to the vulgar Latin, which suffered from too many sub-set “Latin” languages that lacked the form and consistency of classical style Latin.

There were reportedly so many translators of the scriptures from Greek to Latin that even St. Agustine noted that while there were only a handful who translated the scriptures from Hebrew to Greek, it was impossible to count those who translated the scriptures from Greek to Latin. At this point, its easy to picture the story of the "Tower of Babel," but with all of the people speaking in different kinds of Latin!

Its a great metaphor for the world we live in where English itself is spoken all over the world but in many different ways. (of course its an incomplete story because so many more languages do not derive from these Western languages but I'll try to get to that later).

One Catholic Encyclopedia also tries to explain the historical import of Latin's survival as Church language through the dark ages:

"Hardly had it been formed when church Latin had to undergo the shock of the invasion of the barbarians and the fall of the Empire of the West; it was a shock that gave the death-blow to literary Latin as well as to the Latin of everyday speech on which church Latin was waxing strong. Both underwent a series of changes that completely transformed them. Literary Latin became more and more debased; popular Latin evolved into the various Romance languages in the South, while in the North it gave way before the Germanic tongues. Church Latin alone lived, thanks to the religion of which it was the organ and with which its destinies were linked. True, it lost a portion of its sway; in popular preaching it gave way to the vernacular after the seventh century; but it could still claim the Liturgy and theology, and in these it served the purpose of a living language. "

Indeed, on this profound level, Latin, as a language, symbolizes the Catholic church's linkage with the past, way back to the original scriptures. True the original scriptures were Armaic, and Hebrew and then translated to Greek but up until this point, "Church Latin" also came to symbolize more than this tie with original scripture. When authors say "Church Latin" survived the "dark ages," it doesn't get any easier to explain does it?

"Dark ages" or the "antiquity" (depending on what you mean historically or when) after all also has its own "historical meaning."

The "term" for the dark ages is of course (from the perspective of Catholic history) associated with the decline of the Roman Empire that is the lack of Christianity.

Interestingly enough it was also used (secular fashion) to describe the "death" of Classical Latin, according to the Italian Scholar, Petrarca the years, 474-1000. For Petrarca, the Roman Empire was not Catholic expansion but rather literature and the arts.

By the time of the renaissance, what the "dark ages" were (and when it was exactly) was of course expanded by the rationalists (the age of reason) and used it widely to refer to the overly religiously influenced middle ages. Religious reformation also contributed to the term's usage to refer to the Catholic Inquisition.

Now reviving the Latin Mass per se ought not to have any other meaning apart from what we as celebrants will make of it. Of course the trouble is, the way the "Tridentine Mass' is structured, we aren't really celebrants in the same sense we have been able to assume after Vatican II. Therein lies the rub: we won't really know what the religious authority meant to do by reintroducing the Tridentine Mass until they tell us so. Somewhere I remember having read about being inclusive but what this inclusion entails is yet to be seen.

Plus of course without clearing up what was precisely the meaning of Vatican II’s move towards inclusion (masses in the vernacular, challenging the ,anti-semitism of preserved Latin in the Tridentine Mass itself!), we lose a lot on making sense of this entire issue of reintroduction!

We also ought not to forget that “translation” in the Catholic church’s past often meant ,heresy --- that it was itself an act proscribed by the official church. When ,William Tyndale first translated the Bible into English (and he was a Theologian!), he burned for it at the stake!

Archbishop Lebferve considered many of Vatican II reforms too much like “Protestantism.”

In the meantime, the more I read about Latin (its history and its syntax), the more I am fascinated by it. Not a few of my favorite English writers were probably learned in Latin, one of them who comes to mind is James Joyce.

One of the more interesting reflections I have about old languages (Latin included) is the difference between ways of using language over the ages. Yes, I'm back to quoting Marshall MacLuhan (who also probably knew Latin, being considered Joycean himself). Latin of the antiquity and beyond that was a spoken language more than a written one but certainly having been recorded and preserved in writing was eventually key to its "survival."

If I remember my McLuhan right, spoken language also relies on "meaning making" that involves the act of listening and hearing unlike the written word. Hot media like the phone give us more of the "personal" touch than the "cooler" media like TV. To actually hear the voice and character of the person you talk to, not really just because you are able to "hear" words but experience how they say it (and vice versa), makes this medium a "hot" one.

Now the TV "communicates" but it doesn't really leave too much room for exchange or for that matter, THOUGHT. It feeds really. (Don't get me started on how much like vegetables especially kids end up like when always left in front of the TV. This was probably the look on the students' faces MacLuhan first noticed!)

But even the way we "read" now is different from how others "read" and "wrote" before so even if we are just talking about one language, following MacLuhan, there would still be losses in translation.

One more thing I find fascinating is that a long time ago, language, that is speaking and writing were synonymous with thinking.

Articulation and meaning-making going hand in hand in our own age has become such a rarity.

Postcript:

How then have we come to this, a discussion of Latin, which I do not speak or read and write, in English, a language, which is not even my country’s native tongue?

Am I a whole other being in my own tongue, the language I speak everyday to my closest, most intimate relations? One thing I know is that when I speak and think in Filipino, I am usually in the present, in active state, of the here and now.

So despite my Filipino grammar teacher’s better judgments (I had consistently low marks in Filipino and high marks in English), I am very much attuned with my “native presence” and acutely aware of the depth of my inner and outer connections with the language they almost taught me to detest.

I know how clumsy I feel “in it” whenever I try and express myself in profound thought, or even with depth of feeling. The only thing it seems appropriate for given my tremendous insecurity with it, is the chore of everyday living. (But living in such a binary surely has to suck big time on one significant psychological level but even I know I lack the knowledge to grasp this sort of realization. I’ll leave that to Sikolohiyang Pilipino).

I speak and write this language - which somehow often feels like it can best mirror the thoughts that (I want to say run on a rampage) flit and flicker in my mind or does it really?

Now I know what prompted James Joyce to say this about “readers” of English was basically his critics (specifically H.G. Wells) “Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives” but it sure feels familiar.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Theories of Rape: Breaking through Socio-biology


A condom ad was recently barred by several television networks in the US. While it wasn’t “censorship” in the traditional ways we (legally) recognize censorship to be, that is, as state exercise it really didn’t feature material we often encounter as worthy of “censorship,” either or the type that would get conservatives’ knickers in a twist, so to speak.

No, it didn’t feature naked people or even semi-naked couples, or even show a scene anywhere near a bedroom. (Locally, I have heard condom manufacturers complain that their own ads featuring loving, married couples in condom ads were constantly disapproved by the Ad Board, which is also is a private entity.)

This US ad showed a bar with gorgeous women bored by, well, pigs who didn’t as it seemed to imply, stand a chance of getting lucky. One of them goes to the condom dispenser and buys himself a Trojan and turns into a gorgeous guy. He in turn gets all the attention of the women in the bar. The only copy: “EVOLVE.” (Trojan Condoms)


I’m as surprised as anybody out there but also in huge measure disturbed at the decision of networks to not air such an ad. I mean, where is everybody’s sense of humor and fun? Or maybe it hit too close to home to be considered anything but tongue in cheek?

Of course the copy: “EVOLVE,” is the reason I picked the story to begin this piece in the first place. The issue after all of what is naturally given (between the sexes and genders), and what is changeable remains the core of important discussions in addressing sex/gender equity, equality, justice and fairness.

Many things have been asked about rape in the past (not just by feminists), why it happens, who commits rape and what its consequences are.

Before the most compelling feminist literature on rape by Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will: 1970), theories on rape however, were predominantly offered by psychologists who considered “raping” as the behavior of the mentally ill.

Men who rape “act out of an uncontrollable” and irresistible impulse, was what psychiatrists used to say in the 1950s and through the 60s. In 1965, over 30 states in the United States adopted laws defining rapists as “sexual psychopaths” in law.

Over the years, there have been generally the feminists (as they are usually portrayed) on one side of the discussion, espousing more social, sociological, and cultural theories about rape, and on the supposed other side of the divide, proponents of “biological/behavioral” theories on rape.

In a nutshell, biological/behaviorist theories on rape trace the origin of the behavior to the biological make-up. In this case of course this refers to “raping/copulation and resisting rape/copulation,” as male/female behaviors.

Now for feminists, such biological determinism of the why around rape happens is not just taken issue with because of the tendency to all but portray “rape” as innate, natural and even a fixed given (it will never end, is not likely to?). More recently, M.Sheets Johnstone, a feminist with expertise in both natural and social sciences, also debunked such theories as not founded on available empirical data. That is to say: It was never good science.

Socio-biological theories of Rape

One author seeking to reconcile biological/social theories and while also making sure not to disparage feminist theories on rape, which he categorized as for the most part, about the social/cultural aspect, points out that in so doing, offers a more balanced view.

On the other hand, his discussion (as many others who seek to explain behavior through biology often do), still comes dangerously close to reinforcing the usual assumptions of fixed differences (male/female) alongside a blurring of the difference between rape/copulation.

The usual socio-biological explanation for “raping” behavior is of course nothing else but the same explanation for “copulation.”

“Because maximum male reproductive success is most limited by access to fertile females (rather than production of sperm) while maximum female reproductive success is most limited by less frequent and more energetically costly reproductive episodes (rather than by sexual access to willing males), two critical features of sexual selection typically emerge:

(1) Greater male to male than female-female competition for mates;
(2) Greater female than male choice, on average over a population, regarding who one’s mate will be.” (Jones:1999)

Somehow, even without going into the social and cultural aspects of rape in social practices and societies at large, accepting “rape” simply as borne out of the (“biological” urge to copulate, and in turn equating the “urge to copulate” singularly with “reproductive strategy” still leaves too much unexplained.

For one, to credit pre-historic peoples (men, in particular) with a comprehension or consciousness of the male contribution in human reproduction, is inconsistent with even the theories of non-feminist historians and anthropologists.

“Archeological and anthropological data indicate that in prehistoric times, reproduction was attributed to a fertility goddess that required no sperm for this purpose. In the early historical Middle East it was believed that a godly being brought about pregnancy by using male and female semen. It was the merit of the Greek philosophers of the 6th-3rd century B.C. to realize that reproduction was governed by natural laws. Several theories were developed to understand how reproduction could occur. The haematogenous theory of reproduction, developed by Aristotle, has received the most attention. The essence of this theory is that the male sperm, with a haematogenous origin, causes the development of an embryo from menstrual blood present in the female uterus. The theory survived about 2000 years, with modifications, and was also introduced into Christianity. It was only about I50 years ago that the reproduction theory based on hypotheses was changed into a reproduction science based on facts.” (Kremer: 2003)

Honestly, even if by any stretch of the imagination, we were to overlook the premise of “copulation as procreation/reproduction” here (and deny the part about sexual pleasure), the next step also equates male sexual experience in “rape” as no different from heterosexual sex in general. (In fact not a few feminists have pointed this out as the result!)

Sheets-Johnstone in her work, "The Roots of Power" demonstrates how even the data used as basis to explain "rape/copulation" as reproductive strategy among primates has long revealed that "rape" or forcible sex/copulation is less likely to result in pregnancy.

What also makes the premise “men rape” because of a “biological urge” to “reproduce” suspect is the absence of sexual pleasure, that is of course if we aren’t equating rape with pleasurable sex (from a male vantage point).

Therein lies one glaring issue: the erotization of "male" violence and "female" submission. It seems in this case, the so-called feminist "socio-cultural" explanation (that this erotization had to have happened over a period, across societies through history) offers a more hopeful explanation than any non-feminist "socio-biological" ones. Consider this: a socio-cultural explanation offers a way out, and unlike the socio-biological one, does not view things (sex roles or even identities)and even behavior as a fixed given. We can change this and we ought to.

In so saying, "Evolve" actually puts a lot of faith in (so-called) "men."

Photo credit: This photo appears at La Russophobe