"Above all taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one" – Ephesians 6:16
Author:The Chivalric Catholic
Hello, I am the Chivalric Catholic or the Catholic of Honor. I conform all my beliefs to the Magisterium founded by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit. The short explanation of who I am is a teenager with nostalgia for the Middle Ages. I have a love for apologetics, honor, and literature (especially adventures). I believe it is important and honorable to respect my opponents in this. If anything I write is contrary to the Faith (after all, I have no degrees) please write to me and inform me.
Yes… I am doing this. Believe it or not, I used to like these people—back when they were actually funny… once upon a time.
Studio C is an American sketch comedy television show created by Matt Meese and Jared Shores, produced by Brigham Young University Television or BYU TV, and it was good, in my opinion, for the most part—although with later seasons as the budget apparently got better the sketches became less funny and more terrifying in my opinion and more alike to a horror movie. It was a Latter-day Saint family production and therefore tried harder than most to actually keep clean and appropriate comedy. Most notably they did not even do things that are allowed in children’s programs nowadays, such as propagate taking the Lord’s name in vain or fake marriage and whatnot. Now between 2012 and 2019, there were roughly ten major actors. Then, however, the old actors left, being replaced by new ones, and they founded JK Studios and alleges itself to also be “family”. I did not love it as much. Some of their longer episodes felt too dry and pointless, and I don’t think sketch comedy works well in longer form without something more serious to balance it out, but I still enjoyed a few I found rather comical, notably one entitled Who Is Undercover? There are others, nevertheless, which I did not particularly like or made me uncomfortable, notably Angels Designing Humans. I do not know the precise Latter-day Saint view on the subject, but it seemed to be making a joke about the alleged uselessness of aspects of the body, making it seem to me rather irreverent when one considers that God’s design was wise, and I rather imagine many Latter-day Saints would agree with me on his subject.
And then they made “Emma Stone Tinder Match”…
Please do not click on this… I would hate to give it more views.
It has the same problem with being too dry that I have with most episodes of JK! Studios, and that most of the jokes not landing as well as the jokes in Studio C did. More importantly, this sketch also speaks borderline blasphemy.
The sketch begins with three people, Matt, Natalie, and Stacey sitting in a room together. Matt is on his phone, and Natalie remarks that he is on Tinder which surprises her because she thought he was dating someone called Jessica. Matt responds that she “dumped” him, so he is “rebound swiping” (no, I have no idea what that means). Then suddenly Matt is shocked because he just matched with Emma Stone (another person with whom I am not familiar, but I think she is some actress or something). Stacey and Natalie both seem skeptical, however, and Stacey remarks that it is a fake profile. Then Stacey reads Stone’s Twitter and sees that she just tweeted “I just matched with a guy who looks like Captain America before he takes the serum” and everyone is shocked because that could only mean Matt. The recurring joke that Matt is extremely weak definitely gets old for me, especially here when it feels more like roasting, but… we will move on because it has yet to get horrible. Then everyone freaks out and jumps around while drums are playing because they think it is impossible and the mail-lady climbs in to say she is living beneath her potential and should be dating someone called “Shakeil O’Neil” or someone (I have no idea if that is spelled correctly), if Matt (who apparently orders “male Spanx”) can land a date with Emma Stone which made little sense to me. Yes, it is improbable in general that someone could get a date with a celebrity, but the whole thing seemed to me just like they were bullying Matt for allegedly being lame. A lot of comedy writers seem assume that friends being mean to each other is automatically funny, when it is not. The jokes about Matt being lame were in Studio C, but typically they gave reasons why the character he was playing was incompetent and it did not feel like a shade on the actor as it does here. More often, there were just jokes about him being physically weak, which as far as I know, may be true without saying anything bad about his character. Matt’s father then shows up (whom Matt hasn’t seen in ten years) and he says he is proud to call him his son. Matt sends him away. I have no idea how he got in in the first place because they are still in a house already and he does not even have the decency to come through the window as the first lady did. I know it is a sketch comedy, but seeing as no one comments on it and the sketch never makes it clear that it is aware of this, I can only call it a gaping plot hole. Stacey then remarks that he is gay but if he were to match with Emma Stone, he could not say no. To this, Matt remarks “You’re gay?”, but Stacey exclaims that this is not about him. I have problems with this exchange, to which I will get in a moment. Matt’s alleged “friends” then start questioning whether Emma Stone is ill in some way (once again, people bullying a so-called friend is not necessarily funny). Then Matt exclaims that Stone sent a message that says “hi” and people start screaming again (also, the mail-lady is there again because why not?) The mail-lady remarks that the tabloids are going to eat up that “Emma Stone dates average man”, to which Natalie corrects her to “below average”. Again, this is not fun. I am just confused why everyone is bullying Matt. Matt doesn’t have a chance to respond because a priest comes to the door, saying he was sent by the Vatican on account of an alleged miracle. When the priest learns that Matt matched with Emma Stone on Tinder with “a face like that”, he decides it has proved God’s existence (other than the extreme lack of realism here… no one has remarked how people have been getting into their house). Matt gets concerned and decides he has to call off the date (rather than remarking either on the now three random intrusions into his house or that all his friends are awful), and everyone freaks out and tries to take his phone away. The priest just reaches out his hand as if he is trying to Force-pull it out of his hand (for goodness sake, Catholics are not Jedi!), and Matt’s father pops in through the window to grab the phone as well (so now he has to use the window to get in), but Matt manages to click “not interested”. Once again, I am not laughing. I just feel sorry for him to have such terrible friends who used reverse psychology, willingly or not, to get him to do this.
Then… this is when it happens—the most terrible, horrible, disgusting, abhorrent, abominable thing happens, perhaps in all the history of Studio C and JK! Studios combined. The priest announces that he matched with Emma Stone on Tinder, in spite of the fact that he does not have Tinder somehow. Then he immediately tears off his collar, kneels down, and says “Thank you” as the room brightens and heavenly music plays. One might think he is talking to God, but considering the context, I am inclined to believe the priest is speaking to the Enemy.
Before I should address the elephant in the room, I should probably mention the line about being gay. Stacey Harkey, the actor in the sketch comedy, is actually gay. He revealed this in a 2018 facebook post, about a year before this sketch I find so blasphemous came out. And that is fair. In his post, he said that he was doing this to encourage others with same-sex attraction because “many people are living quiet lives afraid and unsure of themselves and I’m coming out for them”. Apparently, LGBT teens have the highest suicide rate in Utah of any state and I do not mean to undervalue their suffering. We are all broken, and yes, it is hard, I imagine, to have same-sex attraction, such as I will probably never fully understand. However… that said, although in some ways I cannot fully disapprove of his motives in posting this, I still cannot help but think that Mr. Harkey is shying away from the idea that this is a problem and not how it is meant to be. The one paragraph in his Facebook post that made me very uncomfortable was this one:
“A little while back I found myself at an ultimate low, praying and begging God for answers, pleading for direction and guidance. In that moment I felt so much peace and love. I instantly felt like this part of myself that I’ve grown to demonize is an integral part of who I am. This part of myself that I’ve spent my whole life fighting isn’t my enemy. This part of myself that I’ve shoved into a dark dungeon deserves light. It was the sweetest feeling and it taught me that God expects me to be who he made me to be and expects me to develop myself and magnify who I am.”
Now, I understand the feeling, when dealing with temptation, of sometimes feeling overwhelmed and begging God for answers. Nevertheless, where I disagree is calling same-sex attraction “an integral part of who I am” and I suspect an orthodox Latter-day Saint would probably agree with me. It is a disorder. No, disorders do not necessarily make you a bad person. I used to have a friend with Down syndrome. He has a disorder. He is slower than the average person, intellectually speaking, but he is no less a beloved child of God. Still, the line God expects me to be who he made me implies that God intended him to be gay rather than seeing it as an unfortunate side-effect of the downfall of man.
Now, I do not mean to get too far into the personal side of Mr. Harkey’s life as I am sure it was difficult for him to admit he had same-sex attraction in the first place. Also, as far as I know, he is unmarried, so perhaps, at least for the present, he is living a chaste life.
However, I do mean to address the line, “I’m gay, but if Emma Stone asked me out, I couldn’t say no!” First of all, I do not think this should be placed in a family program, at least in the modern era where homosexuality is being normalized. Yes, it is fair to tell people that you have struggled with the same things that others have in order to give encouragement. However, I am doubtful whether it is fair to throw it into a family-friendly sketch comedy so carelessly. Also, the word “gay” often implies a willingness to act upon the same-sex desires rather than seeing it as a mental illness which is not as people are supposed to be (although, like with any other mental illness, those who have it must have our compassion).
But believe it or not, that is not the part that offended me the most. Obviously, the part of the priest—of all things, did you have to insult priestly celibacy? I know and I understand the understanding of marriage is different among Latter-day Saints (if a Latter-day Saint would consider these people orthodox), but why just casually mock the way of life among priests. They have 1 Corinthians 7:8, “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do.” Again, various people who accept the Bible have different interpretations than I. Priests, brothers, and nuns do not marry because for several reasons, one being that in that way they can concern themselves more with God. But they do not believe it, and that is all well and good or at least, do not allow me to get in the way of it. I will not mock things considered sacred by the Latter-day Saints such as temple garments and the like, even if I disagree with them. All I ask is that they do me the same favor and not mock the things that we as Catholics find sacred, among these holy celibacy.
Bonum Certamen Certemus I am the Chivalric Apologist
Hello! It is June, which, according to the Catholic liturgical calendar, is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which symbolizes our Blessed Lord’s love for humanity. As we know, Jesus Christ has a human heart by virtue of becoming man. The Sacred Heart of Jesus denotes the entire mystery of Christ Jesus, as the Son of God and the cause of our salvation.
Our Lord gave these twelve promises to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque to those who devote themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:
I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life.
I will establish peace in their families.
I will console them in all their troubles.
They shall find in My Heart an assured refuge during life and especially at the hour of their death.
I will pour abundant blessings on all their undertakings.
Sinners shall find in My Heart the source of an infinite ocean of mercy.
Tepid souls shall become fervent.
Fervent souls shall speedily rise to great perfection.
I will bless the homes where an image of My Heart shall be exposed and honored.
I will give to priests the power of touching the most hardened hearts.
Those who propagate this devotion shall have their names written in My Heart, never to be effaced.
The all-powerful love of My Heart will grant to all those who shall receive Communion on the First Friday of nine consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they shall not die under my displeasure, nor without receiving their Sacraments; My heart shall be their assured refuge at that last hour.
This is an issue I have wanted to discuss for a long time. I have seen it used all the time in apologetics circles. Obviously, among the worst instances I have experienced has been from atheists—but also theists, Christians, and even Catholics have at times acted in ways antithetical to Christianity. However, there are other issues, I might note, for which people do it, including trivialities such as fandoms, I have noted, because the internet appears to be a place for people who are guilty of this to congregate unfortunately (and do and say worse things).
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the sin of rash judgment is when one “even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor.” (CCC 2477) This is why I am entirely against, on religious grounds, accusing people without reasonable proof of intellectual dishonesty. What I mean by this is that very often when I say, “I think this miracle seems very convincing, enough so that it appears to me that the supernatural must exist for this reason alone”, I often receive, rather than an actual intellectual rebuttal, the response of something to the effect of “Actually, no, you are lying because you want God to exist.” Now, obviously, if I were just being intellectually dishonest in order to prop up a false belief that God is real, that would be wrong of me, and if that fact were known, I ought to be condemned. However, on this very account, what my interlocutor is doing is harming me by assuming evil of me without evidence, as, seeing that even if I were wrong, it could easily be explained by me just not knowing a lot or being severely intellectually impaired (I do not think I am, but that would be the more charitable interpretation). So if someone says something that seems ridiculous to you, still respond with kindness and try to understand your interlocutor’s views. Typically, in my experience, if your interlocutor’s views seem absolutely ridiculous, chances are the reason for this is that you do not actually understand those views.
Further, even if one disregards the moral perspective, even from a rhetorical perspective, it is a fallacy which C. S. Lewis calls bulverism, which is basically a combination of circular reasoning, the genetic fallacy, and presumption. Other than that it proves nothing because anyone who does this is already presuming that he or she is right, which does nothing for productive discourse, in my mind it actually discredits the one who is making the argument. Think about it this way: if your opponent’s arguments really made as little sense as you say, why can you not rationally debunk them? By committing the fallacy of bulverism, you are rather revealing your own incompetence in that area.
I think it is used as much as it is because, although logically and rhetorically, it is ineffective and useless, from a human and emotional perspective, it is incredibly effective. If a debater is unaware what the technique is, he may be confused and not know how to respond. Further, those who struggle with the sin of pride (a thing with which I think we have all struggled to some degree as it is the primordial vice), it may offend us, making it harder for us to argue rationally. To put it another way, it evades the question while, if applied carefully, making the opponent look like an idiot rather than doing it to one’s self.
If you are arguing with someone who implements the fallacy of bulverism, I suggest you say something akin to, “Well, if what I am saying is as ridiculous as you claim, then you shall have no trouble explaining to me why I am wrong.” If you find yourself guilty of it, try to avoid it in the future.
Bonum Certamen Certemus I am the Chivalric Apologist
According to Science, God Does Not Exist—this is likely one of the most bold and, dare I say it, rather foolhardy things I have ever read, and I simply felt I had to respond. I see a fundamental problem with the very title, but I let the article I am debunking first speak. The article is written by someone called Austin Cline, which I found on LearnReligions.com. It is an old article, written on June 25, 2019, but I think it deserves a response because I find that this line of reasoning embodies what is wrong with a lot of atheistic apologetics. Let us begin.
In the debate over whether God exists, we have theists on the one side, atheists on the other, and, in the middle, science. Atheists claim there is scientific proof that God is not real. Theists, on the other hand, insist that science, in fact, has been unable to prove that God does not exist. According to atheists, however, this position depends upon a mistaken understanding of the nature of science and how science operates. Therefore, it is possible to say that, scientifically, God does not exist—just as science discounts the existence of a myriad of other alleged beings.
As noted above, there is so much wrong with the very basis of this line of reasoning. Yes, science does not prove and never will prove that God does not exist. This, I think, is not only because God does, in fact, exist, but also, more importantly, because Mr. Cline does not understand the nature of the question, “Does God exist?” The God-debate is not, and never has been, a question pertaining primarily to natural science in the first place, nor should we expect it to do so. Rather, the question is philosophical. The reason for this is that God is not part of the physical or natural universe. On the contrary, He created the laws of physics to begin with. Therefore, He should not be expected to be subject to being proved or disproved by natural science in the first place. Yes, it is true that God can interfere with the natural sciences through miracles. However, that is not the way we ought to expect our main source of evidence for God, as that is philosophical, not scientific. This problem will emerge again throughout the article.
To understand why “God does not exist” is a legitimate scientific statement, it’s important to understand what the statement means in the context of science. When scientist say, “God does not exist,” they mean something similar to when they say “aether does not exist,” “psychic powers do not exist,” or “life does on the moon does not exist.”
All such statements are shorthand for a more elaborate and technical explanation, which is that this alleged entity (or God) has no place in any scientific equations, plays no role in any scientific explanations, cannot be used to predict any events, does not describe anything or force that has yet been detected, and there are no models of the universe in which its presence is either required, productive, or useful.
What should be most obvious about the more technically accurate statement is that it isn’t absolute. It does not deny for all time any possible existence of the entity or force in question; instead, it’s a provisional statement denying the existence of any relevance or reality to the entity or force based on what we currently know. Religious theists may be quick to seize upon this and insist that it demonstrates that science cannot “prove” that God does not exist, but that requires far too strict of a standard for what it means to “prove” something scientifically.
Statements such as “psychic powers do not exist,” or “life does on the moon does not exist”, though perhaps perfectly legitimate as scientific statements, do not hold up to philosophy. Philosophers almost always would say something more to the effect of “I do not know if there is life on the moon”, unless there is proof to the contrary. But be that as it may, with the same stroke I could say “love does not exist” or “honor does not exist” or even, (dare I say it) “the laws of logic do not exist”. And before anyone tries to argue that the universe seems to follow the laws of logic, I challenge you to prove it without appealing to the laws of logic, which would render your reasoning cyclical.
Anyway, science cannot prove these things either because, unlike aether or life on the moon, God is not a scientific concept because He invented science, rendering this reasoning irrelevant.
In “God: The Failed Hypothesis—How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist,” Victor J. Stenger offers this scientific argument against the existence of God:
In the upcoming argument, pretty much every premise has a problem with it, so I will have to deal with them one at a time. This will be fun.
1. Hypothesize a God who plays an important role in the universe.
God does play an important role in the universe. He made it in the first place, and He is constantly working in our souls. He did other things as well, such as inserting Himself into our history, dying, and rising again. However, apart from miracles, many of God’s actions are not actually scientific or deal with the laws of physics, because, as I said, God invented physics in the first place. Therefore, we should not expect any repeated consistencies in any even miraculous actions God does, as His main concern is with our spiritual wellbeing. Nor indeed do I think it is fair to God to do so. So yes, I agree with the first premise, but I am not sure I agree with what was probably intended by it.
2. Assume that God has specific attributes that should provide objective evidence for his existence.
As there are—for instance, His Omnibenevolence as is shown by the fact that we live in a moral universe where human beings are naturally disposed to praise good and punish evil or His Omnipotence, as is shown by the splendor of the universe, or His Oneness and Simplicity, as is shown by the general unity and fine-tuning of the universe. But, I assume, these people are not going to go with any of these.
3. Look for such evidence with an open mind.
That is good, and I applaud these people. However, if Mr. Stenger is looking by the method of the natural sciences for a being who is not part of the natural sciences or subject to them (He invented them), I think he is very much limiting his resources.
4. If such evidence is found, conclude that God may exist.
Very well. That is fair enough.
5. If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does not exist.
That is also fair enough. I agree with more of this than I expected. However, I am still somewhat afraid what they mean is “scientific evidence”, which is narrowing a field of study. But let us continue.
This is basically how science would disprove the existence of any alleged entity. If God existed, there should be concrete evidence of His existence—not faith, but tangible, measurable, consistent evidence that can be predicted and tested using the scientific method. If we fail to find that evidence, then God cannot exist as defined.
“Not faith”—I have heard atheists cling to that a lot and put an insane amount of emphasis on the words “faith” and “believe” as if to claim that we have no evidence because we use that term. Seriously, I beg of you, write to me if you wish: give me a single example of one situation, outside of religion, where anyone would use the word “believe” to mean “accept a claim without any evidence to back it up”. I doubt it will be easy to find such a circumstance.
Now, as for tangible and measurable evidence, why should I expect that when trying to consider an intangible and immeasurable Being? Yes, we do have evidence based on His actions in the universe—we are evidence based on His actions in the universe. However, I have the feeling these people are looking for something else. But seriously, I would like to see Mr. Cline’s tangible scientific evidence for the validity of the laws of logic, or his tangible scientific evidence for the validity of the laws of arithmetic, or even his tangible scientific evidence for the statement, “If God existed, there should be […] tangible, measurable, consistent evidence that can be predicted and tested using the scientific method.” None of these can be substantiated tangibly.
Of course, nothing in science is proven or disproven beyond a shadow of any possible doubt. In science, everything is provisional. Being provisional is not a weakness or a sign that a conclusion is weak. Being provisional is a smart, pragmatic tactic because we can never be sure what we’ll come across when we round the next corner. This lack of absolute certainty is a window through which many religious theists try to slip their god, but that’s not a valid move.
That is true, and I can respect that, because scientists are always dealing with only a limited supply of data, for which reason science always has to change as new evidence presented itself. However, with equal truth, I would argue that God, quite wisely, for this very reason, did not concern Himself with making Himself scientifically verifiable according to rules that were not put forward until the Seventeenth Century. Instead, He went for a method that could be used just as effectively by Aristotle as it could by Mr. Cline if he got his epistemology right. Philosophy does not have this same doubt that natural science does. Not everyone can understand the theory of general relativity, but they can understand the theory of the Prime Mover or that effects come from causes, thus leading to one necessary Uncaused Cause. That is a thing that is not contingent on scientific development. Now one can disagree with the choices of evidence God decided to give us, but in that case, all you are doing is disagreeing with your Creator. You are free to accept the evidence that you are given or not, but I do not think it is wise to refuse evidence before you just because it cannot be illustrated by fancy equations on whiteboards.
In theory, it may be possible that someday we will come across new information that will lead us to further explore the God hypothesis. If the evidence described in the above argument were found, for example, that would justify a rational belief in the existence of the sort of god under consideration. It wouldn’t prove the existence of such a god beyond all doubt, though, because belief would still have to be provisional.
See my point above. Also, I would note Mr. Cline did not actually even address a single philosophical argument for God’s existence.
It may also be possible that the same could be true of an infinite number of other hypothetical beings and supernatural forces. Zeus or Odin, Christian or Hindu—every possibility of a God or gods is up for exploration.
But then again, most arguments for classical theism actually preclude the existence of Zeus or Odin, both of whom had causes of their own—the former having the Sky and Earth of his grandparents and the latter having a cow for his grandmother. Therefore, neither of them work in the theory of the “Prime Mover” or “Uncaused Cause”.
Finally, for such a proposition as “God exists” to have meaning to science, we need to define what “existence” in this case means. When it comes to God or a series of gods, their existence is dependent on evidence that they have had or continue to have an impact on the universe. In order to prove impact on the universe, there must be measurable and testable events that could best or only be explained by whatever this “God” is we are hypothesizing. Believers must be able to present a model of the universe in which some god is “either required, productive, or useful.”
God might explain why we see a chain of causes and effects throughout the universe in a better way than an infinite string of causes would. God might also explain the reason the universe is finely tuned. I could elaborate on these reasons, but I see no reason why I should when Mr. Cline seems unwilling to bring them up.
This is obviously not the case. Many believers work hard trying to find a way to introduce their god into scientific explanations, but none have succeeded. No believer has been able to demonstrate, or even strongly suggest, that there are any events in the universe that require a supernatural being to explain.
Instead, these constantly failing attempts end up reinforcing the impression that there is no “there” there—nothing for “gods” to do, no role for them to play, and no reason to give them a second thought.
The fact that you feel that way is noted. Feel free to explain if you wish. You say we “constantly fail”—in other words, we do put forth evidence, albeit evidence you do not find conclusive. Therefore, you are aware that we have evidence but rather than addressing any of it, you just go ahead and argue that science proves God does not exist from the assumption that we have no evidence. If I thought there was no evidence for God’s existence, I would be an atheist. Prove to me that my evidence is wrong, and even if you cannot prove to me that God does not exist per se, I will cease to believe. I eagerly await for you to address any of it.
So far, everyone who has tried to scientifically prove that God exists has failed. While it’s technically true that this doesn’t mean that no one ever will succeed, it is also true that in every other situation where such failures are so consistent, we don’t acknowledge rational or even serious reasons to bother believing.
And here the word “scientifically” is brought up again. The only way I could scientifically prove God exists is by pointing to various historical miracles. Although I find some rather convincing, I do not think they are necessary to show God exists. Nor indeed has Mr. Cline proven that a supernatural Being should be subject to the natural scientific method.
Bonum Certamen Certemus I am the Catholic of Honor
What is Your Gender Identity? Some might enquire why I am even doing this because I am a Catholic who does not find new gender ideologies to be consistent with Catholic anthropology. Although I agree with that, nevertheless, I want to examine what other people are saying and hopefully highlight the problems with this ideology. This might not be too serious, but I would still like to try it and see how it goes. I found a quiz, posted by an individual who writes under BroadwayManatee who says he made it because he has “questioned my gender and sexuality for a long time, and now I want to help other people who are questioning! I hope that this quiz can at least give you a few identities to look into and explore.:)”. Now, obviously, we should have compassion for anyone who is ashamed of his or her body, as it is the way God made it, but I have always wondered what it is to question one’s gender. I have heard some claim that transgenderism is a health problem that can be somewhat solved by making someone look like the opposite sex. However, I have wondered how one can know that that person is a man or a woman in the opposite body. I imagine it is not just by examining stereotypes, because I imagine many feminists would be quite irate about the implication that they are men because they prefer to wear pants rather than skirts. Besides, behavior can change. Perhaps a biological girl who is younger might mostly enjoy toy trains in her youth, contrary to stereotypes, but when she gets older, she takes an interest in romance novels, as well as nylons and lipstick and invitations (and congratulations to anyone who got that reference). So, surely she should not get a phalloplasty or metoidioplasty (a surgery made to simulate a masculine genital) only to find she is a woman and try to reverse it. And before someone says they do not typically do bottom surgery to minors, maybe this lady is twenty and still enjoys cars, trains, and sports but develops a love of good-looking clothes and fantasy romance novels in her late forties. And before anyone says that it is just about one’s internal sense of self and people can do whatever they want with their bodies, should we really encourage self-mutilation for people just because they do not feel comfortable with their bodies? Certainly, genitalia are important organs, and therefore cutting them off is self-mutilation. Or would you do the same if someone were to identify as a cyclops or even just feels self conscious about one eye if that person were just to have it removed? That seems to me similar to removing one’s genitalia. But let me talk no more. I will examine the quiz and find out what my gender identity is.
1. How do you feel about your assigned sex at birth?
A. It feels partially right, but doesn’t capture my whole gender. B. I feel comfortable with it and that it fits me well. C. Sometimes it feels right, but at other times, it feels wrong. D. It feels wrong. I feel like I’m the OPPOSITE of it. E. It feels wrong, but so does the other binary gender.
First of all, I would like to know what is meant by my “whole gender”. A common problem I have found in dialogues on the issue is that sides do not always define terms properly. It is clear that gender, in this context, is something entirely different from biological sex. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, gender identity is defined as “a person’s internal sense of being male, female, some combination of male and female, or neither male nor female”. I do not know exactly what that is because I have no internal sense of being either as far as I know. I am a man. I do not apologize for being a man (or a boy, depending on your perspective, considering that I am still a high school student), and I have never questioned my masculinity. If one were to ask me how I know I am a man, I would say, delicately, that I have body parts and organs that are designed for impregnation. From now on, however, I will assume that my “gender”, more or less, relates to how well I feel my biological sex fits into societal expectations or whatever is typical of men in general.
So, as for an answer to the question, I usually feel comfortable with liking the things I do as a male. I may not be quite so tough, stone-faced, and emotionless as I would like to be. Also, I like fantasy and creative writing, which appears to be a stereotypical feminine thing. So, in conclusion, I will go with A. Anyway, the societal expectations of my sex typically feel fine but at times it does not capture my whole personality. I recognize that God gave me my biological sex and I am not one to dispute it, but I am also aware that some aspects of my personality are not always expected from men.
2. How do you feel about the gender binary?
A. I might fit with a binary gender, but not just one.Or I feel like I am part binary gender and part non-binary. B. I fit inside of it, but not as my assigned sex at birth. C. I feel like I fit inside of it. D. I don’t feel like I fit inside of it. The words “male” and “female” just don’t fit me. E. Sometimes I fit inside of it, but at other times, I don’t.
Once again, let us keep in mind that by “gender”, we are not using the Christian understanding of sex signed at birth but rather some aspect of one’s personality. This is actually my problem with critical gender theory. In regard to biology, almost everyone perfectly fits into the binary. In regard to personality, however, no one perfectly fits the binary. As there are varied personalities among men and varied personality among women, anyone is going to have some personality characteristics more typical of the opposite sex, though not others.
In other words, s the average woman more likely to care about a love triangle than a man is? Yes, that is obvious. Whether the reason is biological or societal, anyone who has spoken to obsessive fans of love triangles will know which sex they are more likely to be. However, if a man is obsessed with a love triangle, that makes him no less a man. I may not understand anyone’s interest in it, but just because he likes love triangles for some reason does not mean I will argue with his masculinity.
I definitely am not into love triangles, but I am a nerd and have no interest in sports, which are typically considered more masculine. Many of my interests, such as fantasy, mythology, and creative writing, seem more common among men than women. With this in mind, I have to go with E—sometimes I fit inside of it, but at other times, I don’t. I have the feeling most people would have a similar response.
3. Have you ever thought about using pronouns besides the ones associated with your assigned sex at birth (ASAB)?
A. The pronouns that feel right to me change. Sometimes I like one set; at other times I like another. B. No, the ones with my ASAB feel right. C. Yes. The ones with my ASAB feel wrong. I like the ones for the other binary gender. D. I think I would like a mix of pronouns like she/they, or something that represents multiple genders. E. Yes. I like they/them, or neopronouns.
The short answer: no, I have not considered changing my pronouns. I am a man, so I will not dispute being called “he”. Still, I cannot help but wonder how I do decide what pronoun is best for me. Are pronouns just whatever rolls off the tongue best for me? Surely, my own is easy to pronounce, but perhaps “His Most Venerable and Exulted One” would be more complimentary toward me, albeit rather defeating the point of pronouns because of its length. However, I like he/him/his, so I will go with B, the ones with my ASAB feel right.
4. Is your gender identity only one thing, or multiple?
A. I feel that I only have one gender, but it’s neither male nor female. B. I feel that I only have one gender. C. I feel as though my gender is only one thing at a time, but that it changes from time to time. D. I feel that I only have one gender, but that it’s the opposite of my ASAB. E. I feel that I have multiple genders
This is another difficult question. Once again, I am assuming “gender identity” means roughly the same as “what is generally expected or typical of the average man or woman”. However, I doubt anyone fits perfectly into two groups in regard to personality, so if that were true, I think everyone would be non-binary or gender-fluid. Still, as my personality (unlike my body) does not fit neatly into one of two categories, I must go with C—I feel as though my gender is only one thing at a time, but that it changes from time to time.
5. How do you like to present yourself?
A. The way I like to present myself varies based on how my gender feels. B. I like to present myself in an androgynous or gender neutral way. C. I like to present myself in a way that corresponds with multiple genders. (Example: If you wanted to look masculine and feminine at the same time). D. I like to present myself in a way that corresponds with the other binary gender (not my ASAB). E. I like to present myself in a way that corresponds with my ASAB.
I do not think a lot about this, especially because nowadays I often get the feeling that anything men can wear, women can wear, but what women can wear, men cannot wear—probably because masculine clothing is more practical (not to mention modest nowadays) anyway. However, I would never wear a dress for understandable reasons, so I will go with E—I like to present myself in a way that corresponds with my ASAB.
6. Do you experience body dysphoria – i.e., discomfort with your body?
A. I wish that my body were more androgynous. B. I sometimes experience discomfort with my body, but at other times, I feel comfortable in it. C. I feel comfortable in my body. D. I wish my body had more characteristics of the opposite sex. E. I wish that my body had characteristics of multiple genders
I have never really felt discomfort with looking masculine, but I would be lying if I said I never felt discomfort with my body. I am not sure how feeling discomfort with one’s body signifies that the body is wrong rather than that God is just giving one something to offer up by designing the body in this way (and I would note that God invented bodies and therefore should know better than I what is best for it), but I have to go with B—I sometimes experience discomfort with my body, but at other times, I feel comfortable in it. This has nothing to do with me being a man, but this quiz did not specify.
7. How do you feel when you’re referred to in a gender neutral way?
A. I don’t really care, but I would rather be referred to as my ASAB. B. Sometimes it feels right, but at other times, it doesn’t. C. I don’t really care, but I would rather be referred to as the opposite of my ASAB. D. It feels partially correct, but not fully. E. It feels right. I like to be referred to in this way.
I would think it odd if someone were to call me “they” or “it” when I am obviously a man. However, I would not be greatly offended, so I would go with A—I don’t really care, but I would rather be referred to as my ASAB.
8. How do you feel about your name?
A. It is binary, but it fits my gender. B. I wish it were more androgynous/it’s androgynous and I like it that way. C. Sometimes it fits my gender, but at other times, it doesn’t. D. It doesn’t fit my gender. It feels too feminine/masculine. E. Other.
My name is… fine. I mean, masculine names are sometimes given to women. I once met a girl named Rory, for instance, and Rory is definitely traditionally a masculine name. Evelyn, on the other hand, was initially a male but now is almost entirely female. As for myself, I have a masculine name and have no problem with that, but I do not see how that relates to a “deep-seated internal gender”. Still, I will say that I have no problem with my name and therefore must go with A—It is binary, but it fits my gender.
9. When you have to choose between the men’s and women’s bathrooms, which would you rather go in?
A. Neither feels right! I wouldn’t want to go into either. B. I was AFAB and would rather go into the mens’/I was AMAB, and would rather go into women’s. C. The one that corresponds to my ASAB is fine. D. My preference changes based on the gender I feel like at any given time. E. Both are fine/I feel partly non-binary, but I’m fine with one of the binary ones.
Assuming AFAB is “assigned feminine at birth” and AMAB is “assigned masculine at birth”, I would definitely pick B—I will go at my sex assigned with birth. That relates more to my sense of propriety, however, rather than my internal sense of self, so I do not see how that is relevant.
10. In your heart of hearts, which of these genders do you think you might be?
A. I think I’m cisgender. B. I think I’m binary trans. C. I think I’m genderfluid, genderflux, or something else that shifts. D. I think I’m non-binary, genderqueer, agender, or something else that isn’t male or female. E. I think I have multiple genders.
I think I am cisgender, but only because I do not think any of these other things are real. Otherwise, I think everyone would be genderfluid. So I will go with A.
And let us see what my gender is…
Apparently, I actually am 50% cisgender. At a point, I thought I probably would get genderfluid, but apparently I am 30% genderfluid, “might have a gender that fluctuates, changes, or shifts”. So in other words, there is a 30% chance it might be better for me to get surgery to look more androgynous—I, a Catholic man who has never thought of myself as anything but that. Make of that what you will.
Bonum Certamen Certemus I am the Chivalric Apologist
This is an issue I have wanted to write about for a while now, but for some reason have never gotten around to it. I once ran into this passage some time ago and I was confused myself. The issue is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about Muslims. Although I do not argue with what is meant by this passage, I do contend it was needlessly vague and probably ought to be revised. So let us jump into it. What does the Catechism say on Muslims?
The quote says the following:
The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”
One common objection I have heard to this quote is the idea that “they adore the one, merciful God”, being in some way heretical because they do not acknowledge the trinity or else people read it as a claim that Muslim worship is equal to Christian worship or something. First of all, the Jews do not believe in the Trinity either and I have trouble supposing that Moses, Elijah, and Abraham were idolaters. To quote the Catechism of St. Pious the Tenth about infidels “though admitting one true God, they do not believe in the Messiah, neither as already come in the Person of Jesus Christ, nor as to come; for instance, Mohammedans and the like.” (Those Outside the Communion of Saints, Q. 3, Emphasis added) So yes, Muslims do worship God. They have a number of extremely erroneous beliefs about God and many worship God in very heinous ways such as beheading the followers of Christ, but they still worship God. They are better off being numbered as heretics rather than idolaters. You can disagree with this statement, but all you are doing is disagreeing with the Magisterium.
Nevertheless, on first glance, I do see why someone might be confused by this paragraph. In the first place, how is “the plan of salvation” extended to Muslims who do not acknowledge the divinity of Christ? The Church teaches, of course, that she is the sole means of salvation (Lateran IV, Const. 1). Second, some might object to saying they are in the “first place” when we owe salvation first to the Jews. So, how can this be reconciled?
This is actually a quote from the dogmatic constitution, Lumen Gentium, promulgated in the Second Vatican Council. Here is a lengthier quote from the document:
In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues. But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.
Lumen Gentium ¶16
This deserves some unpacking. In the first place, the line “we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh” is clearly talking about the Jews and they are mentioned before the Muslims, so I suppose the group of “those who acknowledge the Creator” is not including religions that were founded by the Creator. This is actually covered in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well, so see paragraph 839 for more details.
The second problem, however, is likely greater. In what sense does the plan for salvation include Muslims? Does the Second Vatican Council deny the doctrine that the Church is the sole means of salvation? The short answer is no, it does not. This is shown just two paragraphs before, the same dogmatic constitution states: “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved” (Lumen Gentium ¶14), so the document therefore clearly did not attack the doctrines of the Catholic Faith in that area.
What Lumen Gentium is doing, however, is reaffirming the doctrine on invincible ignorance. This is not a new doctrine. As early as 1863 by Pope Blessed Pius IX, who stated:
There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace.
Quanto Conficiamur Moerore 7
So is there salvation outside of the Church? No, there is not, but some people can be part of the Church implicitly without realizing it. To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church again, “Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.” (¶1260) However, if one is aware that Christ formed the Catholic Church to save us all but then refuses to be part of it, I think it is fair to say such a person is going to hell.
So let us look again at the quote about Muslims. So, in what sense are they included in “the plan of salvation”? They are in the sense that everyone who tries to act justly is. Turning back to the paragraph in Lumen Gentium, it can be noted that that section of the document does not talk solely about Muslims. Let me quote this at length:
¶14. This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.
They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion. He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a “bodily” manner and not “in his heart.” All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.
Catechumens who, moved by the Holy Spirit, seek with explicit intention to be incorporated into the Church areby that very intention joined with her. With love and solicitude Mother Church already embraces them as her own.
¶15. The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter. For there are many who honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal. They lovingly believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ, the Son of God and Saviour. They are consecrated by baptism, in which they are united with Christ. They also recognize and accept other sacraments within their own Churches or ecclesiastical communities. Many of them rejoice in the episcopate, celebrate the Holy Eucharist and cultivate devotion toward the Virgin Mother of God. They also share with us in prayer and other spiritual benefits. Likewise we can say that in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood. In all of Christ’s disciples the Spirit arouses the desire to be peacefully united, in the manner determined by Christ, as one flock under one shepherd, and He prompts them to pursue this end. Mother Church never ceases to pray, hope and work that this may come about. She exhorts her children to purification and renewal so that the sign of Christ may shine more brightly over the face of the earth.¶16. Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues. But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved.Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life. But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator. Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, “Preach the Gospel to every creature”, the Church fosters the missions with care and attention. (Emphasis Added)
So let me break this down. First, the document reaffirms the teaching that the Catholic Church is the sole means of salvation but then explains, first of all, that Catechumens are already part of the Church, in a way, through desire. Then the document recognizes non-Catholic Christians such as Protestants and Orthodox and all the good things within their doctrine that they have taken from the True Faith, followed by a call for Christian unity. Finally, it brings up non-Christians. The document commends the Jews for being the first to receive Divine Revelation, even before we did, and the Muslims for maintaining many Christian ideas. Then, it speaks of those who are not particularly religious, saying that they can still be saved, if they are nonreligious through no fault of their own.
Then finally and most importantly, the document says “Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, “Preach the Gospel to every creature”, the Church fosters the missions with care and attention.” In other words, Lumen Gentium is saying that we do still mean to bring them to the Catholic Church. However, the Church still recognizes the good things in those religions that we share and also recognizes that individual members of that faith may be part of that faith through no fault of their own, wherefore they are included in the “plan of salvation”.
Now once again, I grant that if someone just reads the short quotation in the Catechism, he might not understand this, and I think there is a fair argument that that paragraph should be revised to explain the context. Nevertheless, to say this is contrary to the idea that the Church is the sole path to Salvation is inaccurate.
Bonum Certamen Certemus I am the Chivalric Apologist
Well this is not what I expected to be writing about this week. “Pagan Origins of the Days of the Week Summary”. Yes, the names of the days of the week are based on pagan gods for the most part. I did not expect it to be considered worthy of writing a whole article on it and how it is a sign of the Church being influenced by the world on that account. Anyway, this is written by a fellow who calls himself Reverend Bruce, who is apparently involved in something called “Life Path Ministries”. The main reason I am responding to it is because I am cited in it and in my mind, misused. Let us dive into it.
That is mostly true in English. However, in other languages, that is not always the case. For instance, in Spanish, Galician, Portuguese, and Mirandese, the word for “Saturday” is literally sabado, which is derived from the Hebrew name “Sabbath”. The modern Spanish word for Sunday, domingo, literally means “day of the Lord” as Sunday is the day our Lord rose from the Dead. Also, I would note that not all of these things are Roman as Reverend Bruce seems to say. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are all from Germanic gods, namely Tiu, Woden, Thor, and Frigu. The only language which clearly comes from a Greek god is Saturday, which is derived from Saturn. Sunday and Monday’s names may be related to pagan feasts, but all their names reference is “sun” and “moon”. These are only natural, as English is a Germanic language with many Latin derivatives. However, any religious or pagan aspects to these names are now all but forgotten by modern culture so it does not bother me much.
Out of all of these days of the week, Saturday and Sunday seem to be linked to the Word. This is not by their names by any means. This is due to the significance of the days. Saturday is connected to the sabbath and the day of rest, while Sunday is the celebration of Christ risen. Albeit very loose connections, the two days are still linked to the Word in some form of reverence for the people of God.
For those unaware, “the Word” is the name of Jesus Christ used in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. I would note that Friday also has a very important significance to many Christians, as that is the day upon which our Lord died on the cross, for which reason at least among Catholics it is traditionally a day of penance. Also, I am unclear why these connections are “very loose”. The Hebrews celebrated the Sabbath as the final day of the week in Old Testament times and the Jews do now. Meanwhile almost all those who call themselves Christians consider Sunday to be the Day of Rest because Christ rose again on a Sunday (see Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1), so regardless of the English name, it is still the day of our Lord’s resurrection. Also, in Catholic tradition, every day has some Christian significance. Monday is the day of the Most Holy Trinity. Tuesday celebrates the Holy Angels. Wednesday is the day of St. Joseph. Thursday is for the Holy Eucharist (because Jesus instituted the Eucharist on Thursday). Friday is the day of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Saturday is the day of the Virgin Mary. None of these have any bearing on the pagan origin of the names in English, but the seven-day week is older than the English language anyway. If I were in charge of changing all the names of the week, however, I would probably call them Christday (Christ-day), Thrinesday (Trinity-day), Engleday (Angel-day), Joesday (St. Joseph’s day), Husleday (Eucharist’s day), Throwungday (Passion-day), and Mariday (Mary’s day). But unfortunately, I am not the emperor of Earth, so for better or worse, we will have to live with the pagan-origin names.
Sadly, when we step back and see the big picture, the world seems to dominate this realm of daily life. The world has made its decree and dictated how these names have remained in place for ages.
Our educational systems have served to support it. In my own upbringing, I was taught both English and Spanish in Southern California. We learned the days of the week and the months of the year in both languages. Our educational system solidifies the continual practice of keeping these names from generation to generation. Imagine what business and other institutions are upholding and affirming day by day without any consideration of its spiritual impact on others.
This is true, and I agree. In this society, we are allowed to kill babies on the altar of convenience in many places (or on the altar of Moloch, depending on your point of view), and we are not allowed to call men men and women women. I am not sure the names of the days of the week have much to do with it since days like “Wednesday” and “Thursday” are just words now and I do not think they will lead anyone to worship Woden and Thor. Also, as I said, since he says he learned the days of the week in Spanish, the word domingo, “Sunday”, comes from the Latin word dominus, meaning “Lord”, so the Spaniards call Sunday “day of the Lord”.
This is where he misuses something I said, but I will get to that in a moment. Reverend Bruce claims that Constantine, the Council of Nicaea, and the Popes have played a role in maintaining the infusion of paganism into Christianity. The reverend links an article called Constantine Converted to Christianity . . . Didn’t He?, written by someone called Steve Ruis, an atheist who fairly openly mocks Christianity and Scripture on his blog. Nowhere in this article, however, does Mr. Ruis mention Constantine infusing paganism into Christianity but only calls into question Constantine’s deathbed baptism (for reasons wholly unconvincing to me). Likewise, to back up the claim that the Council of Nicaea played a role in maintaining paganism (in spite of the fact that it also declared Christ’s divinity as dogma for the first time) is written by someone who in the same article claims St. Paul invented Christianity, which, considering he quotes Ephesians later on in this article, is probably a claim Reverend Bruce would reject. The argument about Paul is actually the main point of that article, so if Reverend Bruce trusts this article’s word on Nicaea, he should also trust it on Paul—and I really hope he does not.
However, as for Nicaea, the only dogmatic statement it made is the following:
“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten (γεννηθέντα), not made, being of one substance (ὁμοούσιον, consubstantialem) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not (ἤν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion [τρεπτὸν in Greek; convertibilem in Latin] — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.”
So, most Protestants would agree with everything here, so I imagine Reverend Bruce does as well.
Reverend Bruce gives no citation as to how the Popes are responsible, but in the phrase “Christian conversion” (which I suppose is probably supposed to back up the claim that Constantine infused Christianity with paganism), he links an article called A Brief Look at the First ‘Christian’ Emperor by David Ettinger where Ettinger questions whether Constantine was actually a Christian or “saved” as he calls it. I am unclear what point Reverend Bruce is making by citing it, however. Maybe Constantine was not a good person. He is long dead and therefore in my mind that is between him and God. Ettinger actually admits good things came out of Constantine’s reign in his article, saying, “Constantine’s Christianizing of the Roman Empire took a big step forward when in 313 he published an “edict of toleration,” which extended freedom to all religious cults. It also mandated the return of all Christian property which had been confiscated during the recent persecution, and gave Christians access to public office.”
And as for the final citation… that is where the thing I wrote comes in. Reverend Bruce claims that the world’s ways influenced how the church handled some things and cites my article, Is Easter Pagan? The point I was making there was that it was not pagan. Granted, it is about as pagan as Wednesday is, and I admitted in the article that the English word Easter (not reflected in most other languages) comes from the name Ēostre, who appears to have been a localized goddess of the Spring about which barely anything is actually known. I also admitted that eggs and rabbits may or may not have had vaguely pagan origins (not that those have much to do with the point of Easter). However, the feast of Easter, as I argued there, is not pagan, and in most languages, the name is some variant of the word Pasch, as in the Hebrew word “Passover”. According to Bede, who, as I mentioned in the article, is the main source of all we know about Easter, the name was simply chosen because Ēostre’s time of celebration was around the same time as Easter, and so as the Anglo-Saxons converted, they kept the same name. Besides the word Easter, ultimately comes from the Anglo-Saxon ēast, meaning east, and there is nothing pagan about that. After all, Christ rose in the East.
Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge; their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched with thirst. Isaiah 5:13 (ESV)
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. Hosea 4:6
I agree with everything said here, but I think there are more important things to worry about than words descended distantly from the names of pagan gods in the English vocabulary when most people do not associate them anymore anyway.
With the Lord’s authority I say this: Live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Ephesians 4:17 (NLT)
Note my point earlier that Reverend Bruce probably does not think St. Paul founded Christianity.
Cut out the confusion. Cut through all of the complications that man has added to your faith. Come to know God through His Word. Daily devote time to spend in communion with Him as search His Holy Word.
Once again, I agree. However, I would also contend that more people nowadays associate Sunday with worshipping our Lord than with worshipping the Sun.
but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Psalm 1:2-3 (ESV)
And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32 (NLT)
Yes, but I am once again confused how that relates to English words distantly descended from pagan gods. When I reference Tuesday, I rarely think of a god who sacrificed his hand to a gigantic wolf. On Saturday, I am more likely to think of the Mother of God or even of the Jewish Sabbath than of a Titan who swallowed his children whole lest they challenge his reign (as if that were not a recipe to be challenged) and apparently could not tell the difference between a child and a rock.
Bonum Certamen Certemus I am the Chivalric Apologist
I do not know how many of my readers have been exposed to this idea, but I have found that there are many people who consider abortion to be immoral because they admit a fetus to be a human child yet nevertheless, do not think it should be illegal. I thought it wise to address this. Without further ado, let us begin.
Objection 1: Abortion should not be illegalized yet. For indeed, it would be unjust to do so now, for there are many troublesome pregnancies. The government should be sure that no pregnant woman is in need before it outlaws abortion.
To this I respond that I have no doubt this objection is born out of compassion for the pregnant woman, and indeed, I do not argue with the truth that there are many difficult pregnancies, especially in the case of rape. However, to say this alone makes it justified to keep abortion illegal, is, in my mind, hugely troublesome and reminiscent of a common justification for slavery in the past, that if all the slaves were emancipated, the economy would be ruined—or worse, saying that slavery should not be abolished until robots are developed to do these things for the slaves.
The poor are still capable of virtue. Or are we supposed to also legalize infanticide because it is easy for them? I understand that situations can be difficult, but that does not justify killing children.
Objection 2: Immoral though abortion may be, the fetus is not the only person who is relevant to this discussion. There is also the woman to consider. Because outlawing abortion would disproportionately affect one specific group of people, namely women, who are often struggling in difficult circumstances, abortion should not be made illegal.
To this I respond that if one is going to say that every law that disproportionately affects one group of people is unjust, I find the consequences problematic. Not only could I argue that this should make abortion illegal, as allowing abortion disproportionately affects unborn children because it is they who are being treated as subhuman, but also by this same logic do I think rape could be justified. Men are more likely to commit rape and they are the only ones who can physically impregnate someone. Does that mean rape should be legal because anti-rape laws are more likely to disproportionately affect men? If not, why should abortion be legal just because anti-abortion laws might just as well affect women?
Objection 3: It would seem it is unpractical and unjust to outlaw abortion, for were abortion to be illegalized, the rich would go to other countries to commit abortion, such that the only ones who would be affected would be the poor. This would disproportionately harm the poor, which would be unjust.
To this I respond that this assumes abortion harms anyone, as the law encourages parents to live better and more virtuous lives. Preventing anyone, rich or poor, from killing children, is never harming them.
Besides, this misses a critical point: yes, it still would be possible for some people to have abortions, but they would be significantly fewer and therefore more lives would be saved. Furthermore, it is our goal that abortion should be legal in all countries, so we have no choice to go with one country at a time.
Objection 4: It would seem that abortion should not be made illegal, for if such legislature were to be proposed, the people may refuse it and the bill may not be passed, but rather all that will happen is that pro-lifers will become a laughing stock.
To this I respond that I grant that this argument is prudential rather than moral, but I still find it rather extreme to say that one should not even try to pass such a law because it will make pro-lifers look bad. Not only, at least in the United States, has this been proven wrong with the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade,but also because if we are going to avoid passing laws just because it makes us look bad, where is the justice? I do not think being afraid failed laws will give us a bad name should prevent us from fighting to do our best to save what lives we can.
Bonum Certamen Certemus I am the Chivalric Apologist
To see Idealist’s own website, click here. Once again, by posting this, I am not saying I agree with everything here but simply find this a good way to understand our Latter-day Saint brothers and sisters lest we start repeating myths or lies about their beliefs which, unfortunately, is far too common, just as we as Catholics would prefer if others did not believe we thought we could merit salvation by our own power. For this reason, I will not try to argue against all these points here, but I imagine apologetical arguments can be found elsewhere. Without further ado, I would like to thank Idealist At Large again (and apologize for asking so many questions—I did not think this through) and let us begin.
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Could you shed some light on what your church’s historic stance was on African-Americans?
This page is from Jeff Lindsay’s blog. As he states, his positions on the topics he writes about aren’t officially endorsed by the Church; they are a Church member’s attempt to answer questions he has often heard. He’s quite good with his answers to many questions, is both intelligent and faithful, and has a lot of experience, so I find him a reliable source. His explanations here are clear and detailed, including important context, and give a good answer to your question.
Hell can mean a few things: the experience of unrepented sin while on earth, the spirit prison in the spirit world, and what is called ‘outer darkness’. I’ll explain what is meant by the last two.
Spirit Prison
This is a part of the spirit world and refers to the condition of those who were wicked or disobedient in mortality. These spirits include those who rejected Noah’s preaching before the Flood. The spirit world is a temporary place where all spirits of those who’ve lived on Earth go until the Resurrection and Final Judgement. For the ‘righteous’, it’s a place of rest and beauty – although ‘rest’ is more in the spiritual sense. It seems that these righteous spirits are very busy, especially with the work described below.
Spirit prison is also where people who haven’t yet had the opportunity to accept the Gospel go. Spirits dwelling there are unable to make further progress, and experience less of a situation of spiritual rest than those who have accepted the Gospel, because there’s unresolved business and they still need to accept Christ and go through the processes of repentance and so on. Those who do this then experience a state of rest, like those who accepted the Gospel in mortality and were righteous.
The Gospel is preached to those in the spirit prison, so that everyone has the same opportunity – every person who lives on this earth, whether on earth or in the spirit world – to hear of it and accept it. Those who accept then receive the same blessings we do when we make sacred covenants with God and receive the saving ordinances. However, those ordinances can only be performed on earth, not as spirits, so those who do accept the Gospel in the spirit world rely on us here to perform those ordinances for them, vicariously. This is a large part of what occurs in temples.
This preaching and offering of the light of the Gospel is referred to in Isaiah 24:22, 49:9 and 61:1, Luke 4:18, John 5:25, and 1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6. (Of course, some of these verses, like the Isaiah prophecies, also refer to the spiritual prison of sin and ignorance, and the light that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to those who recognise Him).
Everyone except Satan and those who followed him in the peremortal existence, plus anyone who commits the ‘unpardonable sin’ of denying the Holy Ghost, will experience a place of eternal rest and beauty after the Final Judgement. There will be many differences in experience, glory and beauty – including how much progress a soul can make, eternally – but all who have decent desires will be blessed, even if they don’t accept the Gospel. There’s just a limit to how much wholeness and goodness they can then experience, due to their choices.
Outer Darkness
This is the state or dwelling of those who have known the reality of God and the truthfulness of the Gospel, and then completely reject it – crucifying Christ anew, in a sense, because they have experienced His saving power, and then denied Him and chosen Satan and darkness instead.
Two groups experience this hell:
Those who will later inherit a telestial glory (the lowest level of eternal glory) – murderers and basically the worst of humanity. They are consigned to this hell for some period of time, to suffer for their sins, since they don’t fully accept the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But they don’t commit ‘the unpardonable sin’ of denying the Holy Ghost (what I described above), so they will eventually be saved or removed from this condition and given an inheritance in a place of telestial glory. (This is how I understand it, but the Gospel Topics entry and Bible Dictionary indicate something different – that this group only experience the ‘hell’ of spirit prison, but right up until the end of the Millenium and the final resurrection – the righteous taking part in the first resurrection, before the Milleniun. So I’m not sure exactly which it is. Perhaps I’ve been wrong in what I’ve thought this ‘hell’ meant in D&C 76.)
The Sons of Perdition, who commit ‘the unpardonable sin’ – denying the Holy Ghost and completely rejecting Christ and truth and everything they have known. This is going to probably be a very small group, comparatively, since it seems like it’s quite hard to do this. (They will be joined, though, by the second segment described below, who would be a much larger group). They are called ‘sons of perdition’ because (a) ‘Perdition’ is a name for Satan, and (b) they are lost – the meaning of ‘perdition’ (specifically, it’s a noun, so it means the state of being lost. In French, ‘perdre’ means ‘to lose’). Lost from the light of Christ, from salvation, and from God and us all. Lost eternally.
The ‘sons of perdition’ are also those spirits who followed Satan in the premortal ‘War in Heaven’, where he drew away a third of the ‘hosts of heaven’. These spirits never came to earth to receive bodies; they rejected God’s plan of salvation from the beginning, and never have a chance to participate in it. This is really sad.
This is the origin of the ‘evil spirits’ existing in this world. They work with Satan to stop as many other children of God as possible from experiencing salvation and exaltation. Their final ‘resting’ place will be Outer Darkness.
It has been exactly three years since my first article ever was posted. In celebration, I decided to write about something other than apologetics. It is a thing that amuses me, however, and is rather light-hearted. So this might not interest many apologetics enthusiasts but, then again, many devout Catholics are Lord of the Rings fans so… who knows?
If I have not made it clear, I am a Tolkien geek. I do not apologize for being a Tolkien geek. I obviously do not expect all my readers to be Tolkien geeks as well. However, if you are not a Tolkien geek (or at very least are not somewhat familiar with Middle-Earth), you might not care what I am saying. However, like many Tolkien geeks, I was rather disappointed with Amazon’s recent series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. If my readers enjoyed it, I have no right to stand in your way. However, in my mind, aside from several major lore changes (without spoiling anything, I will simply say one word—mithril; if you have seen the show, you will know what I mean), it rather missed the point of the story Amazon was trying to tell. The story of the Second Age, which they are adapting, surrounds roughly two stories—the tale of the Rings and the tale of the Island. Both are one of hubris, the hubris that led the Elves of Eregion to seek to turn Middle-Earth into a paradise it was not meant to be and the hubris that led the Men of Númenor to covet immortality that was not theirs. However, there are, in my opinion, many criticisms of the series that were extremely misdirected. For example, a remarkable number of people were claiming that beardless women among the Dwarves somehow ruined Tolkien’s lore. Yes, Tolkien did say it was easy to confuse male and female Dwarves in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings and some of his materials published posthumously in The History of Middle-Earth series say that female Dwarves have beards but it does not seem to me that Tolkien ever settled on it or why a single poor aesthetic choice would be enough to ruin the entire story. Further, there is a much clearer lore-break I caught, namely that Elendil has a beard in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and Tolkien explicitly stated that:
I myself imagined Aragorn, Denethor, Imrahil, Boromir, Faramir as beardless. This, I said, I supposed not to be due to any custom of shaving, but a racial characteristic. None of the Eldar had any beards, and this was a general racial characteristic of all Elves in my “world”. Any element of an Elvish strain in human ancestry was very dominant and lasting.
The Nature of Middle-Earth p. 187
Elendil is also a descendant of Elves, so he should also be beardless. I personally suspect that the main reason no one cares is because Peter Jackson did not implement this with Aragorn or Boromir rather than for every lore reason. Looking at this quotation, I do now realize that in that case, if Elves actually do have pointed ears, so would Aragorn and Elendil, yet I imagine many fans would be irritated if Elendil and Isildur had pointed ears in the Amazon series, probably because Aragorn did not in the Peter Jackson films. Personally, I doubt that either do, seeing that the hobbits do not notice Aragorn’s ears in The Lord of the Rings when they first meet him, but I do not mind that they included them on Elves because it distinguishes them from Men and frankly I think it would be more or less impossible to render them with beauty “beyond all other beauty that Ilúvatar has caused to be” (The Silmarillion p. 46), even with CGI (because, you know, I doubt a computer can make greater beauty than anything God did).
Similarly, there was a huge knee-jerk reaction, presumably because of Peter Jackson’s movies, about short-haired Elves for some reason. I admit some of Amazon’s elven hair seemed rather modern (although I hear that is common among period pieces), but I have yet to find any remark about Elves having long hair as a universal rule. I have similar opinions about the cast looking ethnically diverse. Are most characters in Middle-Earth probably meant to be European-looking? Probably, at least in Tolkien’s head (although I would note that Númenor was around the equator and Cuivienen, where the Elves originated, was in the far East), but color-blind casting is almost a standard for every life-action film set based upon the life of Christ, so I do not see why we should blame Amazon for it.
If we were to follow these rules, someone should riot over Sam Gamgee being blond in the film, since I highly doubt he is. Blond hair is very rare among hobbits and Sam is most representative of the four among the hobbits, so I doubt he would be an exception. Also, Frodo should be unusually fair-skinned among hobbits, who are described as usually rather “brown”, and we do not clearly get that (the skin-tones of Frodo and Sam strike me as very close in the movies). The same could be said of Gandalf having a gray hat in the movies when in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings it is explicitly stated (see The Hobbit p. 4 and The Lord of the Rings p. 25) that Gandalf’s hat is blue. This one still gets on my nerves far more than short-haired elves or depicting women without beards.
But none of these violations bother me as much as what Peter Jackson did to the Mouth of Sauron and Gríma Wormtongue…
Both of these characters are more or less ordinary-looking humans in the book…
And this is where we come to “warrior” Galadriel. Do I have problems with the characterization of Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power? Absolutely. For one thing, she struck me as remarkably incompetent in everything that did not involve stabbing people. For another, they basically made her an antiheroine, which I did not like for Galadriel. In some ways, I almost think they likely based her on Fëanor, who, for those who do not know, was arguably Tolkien’s most evil elf. But as for discussing whether Galadriel took part in physical combat, I am not talking about it in order to defend the series exactly (about which I do not care), but rather simply because I think people underestimate the complication of Galadriel’s character and I want to enjoy a relatively little-known and little-developed aspect of it.
But before I do this, I must address a very unfortunately common claim I have heard—the claim that any presentation of Galadriel bearing arms is somehow automatically “woke” or feminist. I generally disagree with accusing people of inserting politics unless someone has clear reason to suppose that was the motivation. In other words, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance (I need to write an article on that maxim some day). In turn, I would recommend to anyone who accuses such of Amazon to be sure he is not inserting his own politics into Tolkien rather than defending Tolkien’s own views. I like to keep my politics and my Tolkien very separate. Therefore, in this discussion, the only thing that is important to me is whether Tolkien was in favor of or against women in battle.
C. S. Lewis, Tolkien’s close friend and the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was clearly against women in battles, considering his rather… unpopular line in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Father Christmas tells a nine-year-old girl that she is not to fight in an upcoming battle because “battles are ugly when women fight” (p. 160). With that in mind, I could understand the accusation of “wokeness” in the 2008 adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, as it presents Susan Pevensie taking part in battle multiple times, contrary to the views of Lewis. Whether we agree with this is beside the point, but these are the facts.
Susan Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) Unlike in the book, she takes place in several battles
However, Tolkien almost certainly cannot have shared his views. For one thing, unlike Lewis, he was a Catholic, and therefore would have venerated Joan of Arc as a saint and believed she was asked by God to lead the French armies to victory (St. Joan was actually canonized when Tolkien was a young man in the year 1920 by Pope Benedict XV). Besides, there are plenty of females presented in a positive light who fight in battles in Middle-Earth, notably Éowyn, Emeldir the Man-hearted, Lady Haleth, and possibly Idril Celebrindal among others. This is rare, as it was rare in real history in the societies from which Tolkien took inspiration, but it still can happen and Tolkien was well aware of this. Therefore, whether Tolkien specifically intended Galadriel to be a warrior or not, it is not “woke” but at most an incorrect lore violation, of which Amazon has made many that clearly are not woke but simply poor decision making (I still cannot get over what they did with mithril…). Amazon’s intentions, whether “inclusive” or not, are none of my business nor concern, and I would rather consider the finished product. The sooner we can get past these things, the better, and let us consider what Tolkien actually said about Galadriel herself.
Before we get into the meat of this article, I would like to give a very brief history of Galadriel for context. Now, it should be noted that Galadriel (and Celeborn) have many inconsistencies and problems with their lore, more than any other major characters in the lore. However, I will give my brief and heavily condensed summary such as is consistent with the published Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion, but if anyone would like more information on this issue, I recommend The Silmarillion and especially The Unfinished Tales.
Galadriel was born in the West, the Undying Lands, Valinor, which was ruled by the Valar, Powers of Arda who aided Eru Illúvatar, God, in shaping the world. She was young and proud, a great athlete and lore-master. She was self-willed and dreamed of ruling far off lands, though deep down she was generous and good heart. Nevertheless, her proud and power-hungry nature won over, and she joined her uncle and “unfriend” Fëanor’s rebellion against the Valar, but then she turned on him once Fëanor committed genocide against some of her relatives so as to take their ships and sail to Middle-Earth. This was the Kinslaying at Alqualondë. But unwilling to turn back admitting defeat, Galadriel took the longer way to Middle-Earth with her uncle, Fingolfin, and her brother, Finrod, the hard way to Middle-Earth. There, she came to Doriath and met Celeborn who became her husband. She also met Melian, a Maia (basically an angelic being) who taught her many arts, which is where she seems to have learned some of her power as well as skills such as making lembas. At the end of the First Age in the War of Wrath and the overthrow of Morgoth, the ban from Valinor was lifted from exiles who had followed on the rebellion, save for a few of the chief actors, among whom was Galadriel, but Galadriel had replied proudly that she had no wish to do so because she did not want to admit having done any wrong and basically wanted to reign in Middle-Earth rather than serve in Valinor. She got her wish and apparently at least ruled three places along with her husband, Celeborn: Harlindon, Eregion (with Celebrimbor), and Lothlórien. However, around this time, it seems that Galadriel’s pride was gradually chipped away and she hungered for the West. It was actually not until a test was placed before her when the ban was lifted. The test appeared in the form of a little hobbit who offered her a ring of power—a Ring which could have allowed her to conquer the world. But she rejected it and, in her own words “passed the test”. This is the meaning of her words in The Lord of the Rings, “I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.” It was only then when she could finally leave Middle-Earth and reunite with her kin.
This is a very brief summary, but now we know enough to move on, at least if one is familiar with The Lord of the Rings, and finally, we can move on to the question: was Galadriel ever a warrior? By this, I am using the word “warrior” broadly. I doubt she was a professional commander of armies, not at least as The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power depicts her. What I mean is that she may have fought in more battles than the average elven-woman and by choice rather than simply by necessity. By this broad usage of the word “warrior”, I would call Gandalf a warrior as well.
If the reader has followed this debate at all, he has likely heard this quotation from The Morgoth’s Ring:
“And the Eldar deemed that the dealing of death, even when lawful or under necessity, diminished the power of healing, and that the virtue of the nissi [Elf-women] in this matter was due rather to their abstaining from hunting or war than to any special power that went with their womanhood. Indeed in dire straits or desperate defence, the nissi fought valiantly, and there was less difference in strength and speed between elven-men and elven-women that had not borne child than is seen among mortals. On the other hand many elven-men were great healers and skilled in the lore of living bodies, though such men abstained from hunting, and went not to war until the last need.”
Morgoth’s Ring p. 213-214
In other words, the elven-women did not typically fight but they did occasionally in desperate times. Likewise, elven-men did not typically heal—unless they did, in which case they did not usually hunt or go to war. I would note that this superstition that hunting and war decreased the efficacy of healing was likely nothing more than a superstition because Aragorn was both a healer and a warrior at the same time. Elrond may not have been both at the same time, but he fought in the War of the Last Alliance and then was known as a healer by the Third Age. It also is made clear that there are some exceptions where the roles are reversed, such as men who chose to be healers. It only names elf-women who fight in dire straights, but seeing that it is juxtaposed with how elf-men are occasionally healers, it might just be a generalization rather than an absolute rule. With that in mind, I might read what Tolkien is saying as: Elf-men don’t typically heal wounds, except occasionally when they do, and Elf-women don’t typically hunt or fight, except occasionally when they do.
I do not know of any obvious statement that says Galadriel was a healer or a doctor in the way Elrond was. If the reader knows of any, feel free to place it in the comments. However, there is at least one well-known exception, that being Aredhel, Galadriel’s cousin, who was not a warrior but a great huntress. To quote the Silmarillion, she “was younger in the years of the Eldar than her brothers; and when she was grown to full stature and beauty she was tall and strong, and loved much to ride and hunt in the forests.” (p. 61)
Galadriel and Aredhel were more or less on the same level of the hierarchy of Elvish and specifically Noldorin royalty, so if one is going to argue that Aredhel can be a huntress because she is a princess, Galadriel could also easily be a huntress or a warrior as well for that reason. Further, she is specifically described in The Unfinished Tales as, “the greatest of the Noldor, except Fëanor maybe, though she was wiser than he” (p. 229) and in The Lord of the Rings Appendices, “greatest of Elven women” (p. 1082), so if there were any exception to this rule that Elven women do not fight, who is more likely than Galadriel?
But these are all circumstantial pieces of evidences. Is there anything more direct? As a matter of fact there are several. In The Shibboleth of Fëanor, quoted both in The Unfinished Tales and The Peoples of Middle-Earth, Tolkien explicitly states that, “Her mother-name was Nerwen (“man-maiden”), and she grew to be tall beyond the measure even of the women of the Noldor; she was strong of body, mind, and will, a match for both the loremasters and the athletes of the Eldar in the days of their youth.” (p. 229) Tolkien also said in one of his letters, “She was then of Amazon disposition and bound up her hair like a crown when taking part in athletic feats.” (Letter 348)
Galadriel’s mother called her “man-maiden”, so Amazon basically got Galadriel right in regard to physical prowess (and for those who call her “Guyladriel” or whatever to express their contempt, 1) as long as she has a body made for gestating rather than impregnating, she is not a guy because one’s sex is not dependent on personality, but 2) Galadriel’s mother said basically the same thing first, so Amazon technically got that right as well). It should be noted that a mother-name was a public name given to Elves by their mothers and typically had some prophetic significance. For instance, Fingolfin’s mother name was Aracáno, meaning “High Chieftain”, which I suspect prophesied that he would one day be High King, even though at the time there was no logical reason to predict it. With that in mind, I imagine Galadriel’s quality of being man-maiden would last longer than just her having liked sports in her youth when she still lived in Valinor before she left. Whatever it was, it was very important to her character. Also, it definitely was not only height because Galadriel was actually two inches shorter than the average Elven male. (see Unfinished Tales p. 286 and The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 194) Interestingly enough, that makes Celeborn unusually short.
So, from these two quotes, we can gather that she was at least of great physical prowess and an athlete. Obviously, however, not all athletes are warriors. That said, these words do at very least suggest that she could be a warrior and she would likely have the physical abilities to do so.
The description as being of “Amazon disposition” is also noteworthy. Yes, in context, Tolkien was talking primarily about her athleticism. However, Tolkien was a student of mythology and knew that the Amazons were a tribe of warrior women in the stories of the ancient Greeks. Further, as far as I can tell, every other time Tolkien uses the word “Amazon”, he is referencing a warrior-woman. For instance, when discussing a character, Haleth, and her people, who can be found in the pages of The Silmarillion, he says, “their chieftainess Haleth was a renowned Amazon with a picked bodyguard of women.” (The Unfinished Tales p. 377) Similarly, he actually says of Éowyn, “Though not a ‘dry nurse’ in temper, she was also not really a soldier or ‘amazon’, but like many brave women was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis.” (Letter 244)
Seeing that multiple times, Éowyn is described as a shield-maiden, “amazon” can only mean warrior-woman. Also, Éowyn was the lady who slew the Witch-king of Angmar, so if she was not an “amazon” while Galadriel was at least of “Amazon” disposition, that might suggest that having her as a warrior was in Tolkien’s mind, at least toward the end of his life (the letter where he describes Galadriel as such was written in the final year of Tolkien’s life). I would also note that Tolkien capitalizes the word “Amazon”, just as he does when describing Lady Haleth, which more plainly calls to mind the mythic people and therefore could more easily be read to read “warrior woman” than simply “athletic woman”. Even if I grant that this was in Valinor and there would not have been much in the realm of battles (although the one battle there was in Valinor, the First Kinslaying, she fought in, as I will get to in a moment), the fact that Tolkien is basically saying, In those days, Galadriel had the body and fitness of a warrior-woman is itself conspicuous, in my opinion. Yes, Tolkien uses the word in context of primarily talking about her abilities as an athlete, but it should be remembered it was a very short letter where Tolkien said this was very hasty, only three sentences long, and written six months before his death, so I doubt it was especially thorough. Therefore, I think it is very possible that the word choice likely signifies that idea was in the back of his mind for some point during Galadriel’s youth, though not explicitly stated. Obviously, this is not solid proof, but I do think it can fairly be added to the pile of evidence. But let us move on, as more is to come.
In the text of The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, “when the Shadow passed, Celeborn came forth and led the host of Lorien over Anduin in many boats. They took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed.” (LOTR p. 1094) It is also heavily implied she was present decades before when Sauron was driven from Dol Guldur, as supported by earlier in The Tale of Years, “The White Council meets; Saruman agrees to an attack on Dol Guldur, since he now wishes to prevent Sauron from searching the River. Sauron having made his plans abandons Dol Guldur.” (LOTR p. 1089) Galadriel was a member of the White Council and lived nearby, she presumably took part in casting out Sauron from Dol Guldur. Now, was this done primarily by magic? In my opinion, probably, at least originally in Tolkien’s mind. The former calls to mind the quote from the Silmarillion, “Then Lúthien stood upon the bridge, and declare her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare”. (p. 207) However, it should be noted that unlike Elrond, for instance, Galadriel and Celeborn were first invented in The Lord of the Rings. These characters first appeared here and therefore they may not quite reflect Tolkien’s final intent on the subject. Anyone who has read The Quest for Erebor, as found in The Unfinished Tales, will know that Tolkien is a master of retcons, so if Tolkien did have in mind Galadriel as a warrior later in life, I would not be surprised if he would have interpreted these words differently later on. That said, I have no proof for this.
A much more relevant line is found in The Unfinished Tales, which explicitly states that she fought in the Kinslaying of Alquilondë, saying, “she fought fiercely against Fëanor in defence of her mother’s kin, she did not turn back.” (p. 231) This is repeated in a later version, written in the last month of Tolkien’s life (a weird one where Galadriel is no longer a member of the rebellion against the Valar and Celeborn is a Telerin Elf named Teleporno or Telepornë) which says, “indeeed she with Celeborn fought heroically in defence of Alqualondë against the assault of the Noldor, and Celeborn’s ship was saved from them” (p. 232). Now, this is likely not just saying that she was using magic the way she likely was in Dol Guldur. This is before she went to Doriath and learned much from Melian. Also, magic is subtle in Middle-Earth, so it is not as if she is likely to be throwing fireballs. Also, most Elven heroes, even if they have powerful magic (other than Lúthien who is basically a demigoddess and therefore would not need one), still wield weapons (notably Fëanor), so Galadriel probably took up a sword. Further, the phrases “fought fiercely against Fëanor” and “fought heroically in defence of Alqualondë” suggests she was in the thick of the action rather than acting as a commander.
The Kinslaying at Alquilondë by Ted Nasmith
There are also a few other battles Galadriel probably would have fought in, including the Battle of Lammoth, where Fingolfin’s group was attacked by some orcs when they first came to Middle-Earth. It is only briefly mentioned in The Peoples of Middle-Earth, but she would undoubtedly have been present there. Also, according to Christopher Tolkien (our usual authority when J. R. R. has said nothing), “it is a natural assumption that Celeborn and Galadriel were present at the ruin of Doriath (it is said in one place that Celeborn “escaped the sack of Doriath”), and perhaps aided the escape of Elwing to the Havens of Sirion with the Silmaril – but this is nowhere stated.” (Unfinished Tales p. 233) Anyone who is familiar with The Silmarillion would be aware that this could easily place Galadriel in several battles—but as Christopher said, this is only an assumption.
To this, I anticipate the response that every single instance here is a dire straight, which is the situation where Tolkien says elf-women are most likely to fight. Let us focus on the Kinslaying of Alquilondë because that is the only time Tolkien explicitly describes it. Although it is possible that all Elven women fought in that battle, at least toward the end when they were getting slaughtered, Tolkien does not say so and in neither version does he say, “Galadriel fought with the other Elven women,” as I would expect him to do if that was his intention because as far as I can tell, the reference to the custom for Elven women to only fight in dire straights is fairly isolated and any reader is likely to link this back to what was said earlier in the same essay that Galadriel is physically strong, called “man-maiden”, and a great athlete. At any rate, Tolkien never said explicitly that all Elven women fought in this battle, so I suspect Galadriel joined much more quickly than others. It is also not as if Galadriel appears to have been living there (at least not in the original version) but was already “the only woman of the Noldor to stand that day tall and valiant among the contending princes, was eager to be gone.” (The Silmarillion p. 90) Hence, she was already not acting fully with the social norms of an elven woman prior to this point, which makes her later becoming a warrior. This, coupled with the “Amazon” line and the “Nerwen” line, in my mind easily paints a certain picture in one’s mind. Although nothing is stated definitively, I still think a strangely large number of pieces of evidence that are lining up, which would only be expected if “warrior Galadriel” were somewhere in the back of Tolkien’s mind.
Now, for completion’s sake, I probably ought to reference the quotation, “She looked upon the Dwarves also with the eye of a commander, seeing in them the finest warriors to pit against the Orcs.” (The Unfinished Tales p. 235) I agree this is not particularly strong evidence as the eye of a commander is obviously a metaphor. Further, this comes from Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn which, though undated, seems to be an early text. For instance, Celebrimbor is still an Elf of Gondolin and not the last descendant of Fëanor, and so it was clearly written prior to The Shibboleth of Fëanor where Galadriel is first text described as the “man-maiden” and described as having fought in the First Kinslaying, so if Tolkien did intend for Galadriel to be a warrior-woman, that was probably an idea that did not emerge until later. That said, I do see how some could read it as suggesting that Galadriel had military experience in the past, perhaps having been given her own regiment to lead as a “commander” when they first came to Middle-Earth and were attacked by Orcs at Lammoth. She was a leader of the Noldorin rebellion, after all. I am still not convinced by this, but I understand how it could support the theory. Another similar statement is found in Morgoth’s Ring, where Tolkien describes her as “the fairest of the house of Finwë and the most valiant” (p. 177) which does at least suggest the courage of a soldier, although whether she is or is not one is not said. In general, I think these are the weakest arguments and do not prove much, but the reader may make of it what he will. We might as well place it on the growing pile of evidence, little though this one might be.
Of course, I admit that any of these could interpreted differently, especially the last two I quoted, and frankly, if any one of them were solitary, I doubt I would make much of it, other than perhaps the detail about her fighting at the First Kinslaying. However, as it is, although they might not make foolproof evidence on their own, if we take it as a cumulative case, considering all these facts together, it certainly seems to me much more compelling as the fact that there are so many texts that could be read this way becomes stranger and stranger if we do not suppose that Galadriel was something of a fighter. Also, Galadriel’s backstory is highly conflicting on many details, but this sort of description only seems to have grown rather than diminished, as the last two quotes which I thought were weak seem to have probably been relatively early while the detail about her being the man-maiden and fighting at the First Kinslaying appears later on and was repeated (once in 1966 and once in 1973), which conveys to me that Tolkien did settle on these details for Galadriel definitively and doubled down upon it rather than moving away from them.
However, none of these are even the greatest evidence that Galadriel was a warrior in my opinion. The greatest, I think, comes once again from that final version where Galadriel was never a rebel and Celeborn was not a Telerin Elf named Telepornë. Now, obviously, this is not the favorite version of most Tolkien fans but I think it still tells how Tolkien saw Galadriel late in his life, and it shows how Tolkien saw Galadriel toward the end of his life, and this version is what convinced me that Tolkien was saying that Galadriel was a warrior, at least in her youth.
This is what it says:
In the years after they [i.e. Galadriel and Celeborn] did not join in the war against Angband, which they judged to be hopeless under the ban of the Valar and without their aid; and their counsel was to withdraw from Beleriand and to build up a power to the eastward (whence they feared that Morgoth would draw reinforcement), befriending and teaching the Dark Elves and Men of those regions. But such a policy having no hope of acceptance among the Elves of Beleriand, Galadriel and Celeborn departed over Ered Lindon before the end of the First Age.
The Unfinished Tales p. 232
Now, obviously Tolkien is saying they did not join a war. However, he follows this up with a reason and it is not that Galadriel is a woman but rather that she and Celeborn judged it to be hopeless under the ban of the Valar and without their aid. Why would he say this if there were no way Galadriel would fight anyway because of her femininity? Further, I would contend that these words directly imply that she would fight, at least in this final version, in the War of Wrath because then the Elves did have the aid of the Valar. Obviously, Tolkien never got a chance to update The Silmarillion accordingly, and I am rather glad about this overall because I much prefer Galadriel’s backstory as a Noldorin rebel who had to repent, but I imagine if he had, he would have likely drawn out the “Galadriel as a fighter” aspect much more throughout the First and maybe even the Second or Third Ages, though I have no doubt by the Third Age, she did so little if at all.
In conclusion, I think Tolkien probably intended Galadriel to be a warrior in a sense, although never a professional soldier. I suspect this idea was not, however, present in the composition of The Lord of the Rings, but neither were many other things, such as the origin of the Dwarves, which are accepted now within the Tolkien community and I suspect it grew in his mind, probably appearing at least by 1966 when Tolkien wrote The Shibboleth of Fëanor and almost definitely by 1973 when he introduced Unstained Galadriel. I also suspect she took part in battles less and less frequently as the history of Middle-Earth went along because most obvious references appear in the Years of Trees or the First Age. I have some problems with depicting Galadriel as a great commander in the Second Age, as Amazon is doing, most notably because considering that by the Second Age Galadriel was still apparently ambitious and power-hungry (as evidenced by her not returning to Valinor), she probably would not even agree to act as a servant to Gil-Galad, who was her younger cousin.
But before I end, I think I ought to address the question as to why so many people seem so immediately averse to Galadriel fighting in battle, because I myself was almost shocked when so many people became so angry in the name of alleged “faithfulness” to the lore (although, then again, people became angry about other strange trivialities such as beardless women and short-haired elves rather than more major things such as Celebrimbor and Isildur being contemporaries and Harfoots not being a breed of Hobbits but rather their “ancestors”). I think some people are too entrenched in Galadriel only being the ethereal, Marian figure we meet in The Lord of the Rings or worse, the creepy, untouchable, out-of-this-world Galadriel in the Peter Jackson films (I mean, let us be real: if it were not for Peter Jackson, no one would be overreacting so greatly over elves having had haircuts some time in their thousands of years of life). With all respect to Peter Jackson and Cate Blanchette, personally, I do not particularly like Galadriel’s depiction, just because she seemed too out-of-this-world and impossible to approach (her main method of communication to talk in people’s minds and once evaporating into thin air in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), which did not strike me as fitting for a character inspired by Mary, the Mother of God and our Mother—nor indeed did it strike me as quite fitting for a character with as relatable a story as her own.
I was particularly interested in your remarks about Galadriel. …. I think it is true that I owe much of this character to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary, but actually Galadriel was a penitent: in her youth a leader in the rebellion against the Valar (the angelic guardians). At the end of the First Age she proudly refused forgiveness or permission to return. She was pardoned because of her resistance to the final and overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself.
J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter 320
As seen from the quotation above, Galadriel was not always a Marian figure. This is what irritates me so much about this discussion—it seems to leave out all the struggles it took to get to this point, from a young, proud, and ambitious Elf-maid, little more than a teenager in our understanding, to a woman of great stature, the greatest and wisest of the Elves in the Third Age. This is the meaning of this line of dialogue:
‘And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!’
She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.
‘I pass the test,’ she said. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.’
The Lord of the Rings p. 365-366
Frodo offers Galadriel the Ring in the 2001 film, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
By I pass the test, it is her way of saying “Look at how far I have come”. It was a long and complicated history that led Galadriel to this point, and frankly, I think it is a great disservice to the character if one only looks at Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings outside of the larger context. Once again, do I have problems with Galadriel depicted in Rings of Power? Many, and frankly I have given up on this series, but I am not going to object to a more ambitious or arrogant Galadriel in her youth—nor indeed more of a fighter.
Thank you all for being with me for three years! I am the Chivalric Apologist
Chivalric Apologetics 