I could tell you were frustrated and I was trying to relieve it. Thanks for accepting my explanation.

To Fr. Johannes Jacobse:
Ok, I overreacted than I guess, so it must be me to apologize! My sincere apologies! It was frustration speaking. It seemed to me at the time I was delibaretly misunderstood or ignored. (fellow Fathers helping each other out, you know) I guess this was not true!

I will keep my big mouth shut than, I said what I wanted to say and I guess that’s enough. Let the freewheeling begin 😉

Yes, I didn’t really discuss the essay. You are right about that. Fr. Gregory pointed that out too and I concurred. Sometimes though things get a little freewheeling around here, but that makes it interesting too.

Some people are convinced by divine gestures, but get suspicous by arguments.

It seems clear to me now the essay was only written for those kinds of people.

So forget it, this was my last post and you can relax, I won’t be coming back here again.

It probably has more to do with the fact everybody is discussing other things right now. You are right though. This essay is worth a lot more discussion than we have given to it.

Why does nobody here seem to actualy want to discuss the essay? (You know, the one on the top of the page here).

Is that because the essay is causing everyone trouble in understanding it? Is the lack in understanding because the author appearantly has different meanings for the words he uses than the rest of the world (and the meaning of ‘privacy’ is NOT the only example here)? Should we as readers ‘just feel’ the correct manner of the way the author ment it? Or is because the author makes assumptions that are ‘not wrong’ so they must ‘automatically’ be right? Or is it because of its conclusion, which is rather silly? Maybe this is all just happening in my mind, but I wouldn’t know would I? Could someone actually tell me what they think of the essay, and discuss it!

Essentially yes. The Supreme Court, in justifying Roe v. Wade under the argument of “privacy”, took unto itself the right to define privacy as a tool of social policy. Once taken, it gets extended in ways that actually destroys privacy (Obamacare as an example).

I think we have to be careful of speaking of privacy as a “right.”

Dennis,

I believe the phrase is ‘Lonliness wants, Solitude has’. One of many ‘Rorsach Moments’ we find when looking through the Christian lens at the world. And like any lens, what is of importance yet not in view is the majority of what is.

None of it allows or considers properly for the dimension of electing and if so blessed be in a position to accept the joys and burdens and immense risks and sacrifices required to bring forth the future in the form of raising a family. Those who deem sex and so on in such a context ‘spots’ in some manner of character are having a ‘Rorsach moment’ I think.

The people who have accepted the family responsibilities historically had so little time to spare to judge or get involved in the monastic’s life you just don’t hear much those like us. While the monastics wrote books — we brought forth those who might read them and of course including all the future monastics. Busy doing what we are given to do.

I suppose only because of the internet it becomes possible (statistically, broadly speaking, looking over the decades in general) for us to take a moment and chime in on these spaces of detailed writing and responding where previously mostly the monastics had the time/education to explore.

The monastics that frost me are the ones who while able-bodied do not do for themselves but expect and indeed order their affairs to be paid in excess of the married clergy w/families. Today those are defacto ordained young never married CEO’s, not what I think of when ‘monastics’ come to mind.

I’m so impressed with the ones who live in community (beyond two-person common-law gay marriages) and produce more than they require to sustain their personal needs.

Thank you Fr. Gregory, this helped the big ‘huh?’ I had while reading the essay. I would like to place a beautiful quote here taken out of the Alexander Pope’s poem “Eloisa to Abelard”. It illustrates the issue I have with regard to monasticism beautifully.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.

The quote is about Elosia’s desire– and inability– to forget her love for Abelard. She refers to herself as a ‘vestal’– a virginal nun, because she has been forced to take orders. She believes that if she were a more faithful nun then she would be able to forget her love, and her lust, and be happy in her confinement.

Fr. Gregory Jensen writes in his essay: “Monasticism is a tangible sign that such a life of solitude and of civic engagement is possible.” The question is: is Elosia correct to try and give up her wishes? Are they not also the source of our happiness?

The most tragic state of man is loneliness, his total isolation. According to Saint Cyprian of Carthage: “Everyone falls alone, but we are been saved in the community”, in the community of the church. To be alone means to fall, to get lost. Being along implies thinking only of oneself, or perhaps not even so, because you’re overwhelmed by the suffering in which you lie. You are overpowered by the futility of life. For if your life is lonely, and without God, it becomes useless and lost. A life whose meaning has vanished from the moment you became estranged.

My beloved faithful, our contemporary society and most authorities, not only the communists – are increasingly isolating us. So we may become lonelier, less bound to each other and less communicative, in order that they may lead us to their intended destination. They are trying to isolate us, because communities are much harder to lead than isolated individuals.

The communists have done it through violence. The West doesn’t use violence but another way; a way of proclaiming you “unique”, that you have “all rights”, you are an “independent man”; you need to be unique/isolated, not confined to your parents, not obedient to them or to anyone as a child, because you are a “free man”.

This misunderstood freedom is a revolt against God, it is nihilism.

Yes, I think you could substitute “individualism” for “privacy” at least in my essay.

+FrG

The article would make more sense to me should in most places where the word ‘privacy’ was used, it be replaced by ‘individualism’.

Is that how I should read it or am I misunderstanding something?

Let me clarify: you have privacy. I think of privacy as a right for me to seclude myself from the outside world to, well, do want i want to do, or think what i want to think, for me, some time for myself.
Linking privacy with social isolation and community life in the way Fr. Gregory Jensen does is well, silly. They aren’t really related.
If a psychologist analyses a person, and finds that person lives in social isolation, he’s not going to tell him:”Boy, you’ve been having to much privacy”.

There was no mention of governmental restrictions on privacy in the article to which I commented (and referred to)… I think we’re talking about different kinds of privacy here….

Fr Hans,

If I may, it seems to me that the problem you are highlighting is less the right to privacy as such and more the idea of the government as the source and arbitrator of privacy. Or have I missed something?

+FrG