Veritas et Sapientia-When Books Called Fornicators Sinners & Sodomites “Bituminous”

Mandeville, LA – It never occurs to [Fr. Benedict] Merkelbach that we should consult the feelings of usurers as to their usury, liars as to their lies, the irreligious as to their disdain for God, and fornicators as to their fun in bed. After all, most sins are accompanied by passion, and an evil man is not rendered harmless by his doing his evil with a will. Satan may whistle while he works; what of it? We need not go to Scripture to learn that passions can muddle the reason and cause us to do foolish or wicked things. We need only watch the madness of youth, or sit quietly in a room and be honest with ourselves for five seconds.

With Warr and hostile snare such as refuse
Subjection to his Empire tyrannous:
A mightie Hunter thence he shall be styl’d
Before the Lord, as in despite of Heav’n,
Or from Heav’n claming second Sovrantie;
And from Rebellion shall derive his name,
Though of Rebellion others he accuse.
Hee with a crew, whom like Ambition joyns
With him or under him to tyrannize,
Marching from Eden towards the West, shall finde
The Plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge
Boiles out from under ground, the mouth of Hell; – John Milton – Paradise Lost, Book XII

Nor does it occur to him to consult the opinions of highwaymen as to their robbery, monopolists as to their avarice, greasy politicians as to their graft, and sodomites as to their bituminous deeds. Every man on the verge of turning one bad deed into a habit becomes a moral philosopher, an advocate and a judge in his own case. Idiots and saints can fail to find cause to do the bad things they want to do; the rest of us are notably inventive in that regard, inventively blind. The world is what it is, and our deeds are what they are, but we will not see them, so we fashion for ourselves a fantasy world, where all the trees are green and the flowers in bloom, and all that I do for my pleasure is really, you know, perfectly harmless, indeed more than harmless, downright praiseworthy. There are Pharisees of vice as well as of virtue.

The reader will note that I have concluded my two lists of sins with the sexual. That’s not because I believe that sexual sins are worse than others. They are not; I accept Dante’s view, that if you are going to commit a deadly sin, the deadly sins between the sheets are less foul, less inhuman, than are the deadly sins you commit for money or power or hatred. – Professor Anthony Esolen – The Physiophobe-Modern Man Against Reality

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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