There is an editorial by a person named Mark Shea at the NC Register, which bills itself as “America’s ‘Most Complete’ Catholic Newsweekly.” Yes, its own site puts “most complete” in quote marks, making you wonder exactly whom they’re quoting. Jesus? And what does it mean to be the “most complete” Catholic newsweekly? Is that like being the most complete idiot?

By and large it’s probably not worthwhile to engage in a back-and-forth with a writer at a conservative, religious-based newspaper. The opinions of an adult tend to be too completely embedded in deeply held beliefs to change very drastically through debate. He could say “God lives” and you could reply “God is dead” and the conversation won’t go much further than that.

All the same, it is enlightening to see what the other half is saying. Here is what Mr Shea writes in a recent piece called “How Sin Takes Over” — a title that most PervScan readers will probably interpret as a how-to, whereas he doubtless intends it as a diagnosis of a world gone to hell.

Sin blinds as it kills. The more depraved a culture is, the less it can see its depravity. That is why a culture like ours can reach a state where a professor entrusted with passing on the riches of the Western philosophical tradition can instead be hired by a major university in order to persuade students of the glories of bestiality.

There is a subtle tautology in the assertion that the “more depraved a culture is, the less it can see its depravity.” The phrase is true, in a way, but the reason is not that it becomes blind to its own depravity. (”I’m a pervert and I don’t know it!”) The reason is that it no longer defines certain acts or behaviors as perverse. (”I’m gay. A generation ago, to be homosexual was depraved. Today, not so much.”) In other words, what was once depraved becomes normal. Perhaps Mr Shea would agree that depravity has become the norm. But if that is so, then to be religious may itself be the new depravity.

Meanwhile, presuming that the professor to whom Mr Shea refers is Peter Singer, the Princeton philosopher who has indeed offered radical arguments about bestiality and consent, it is surely overstating the case to say that any university hired him “in order to persuade students of the glories of bestiality.” Why would a university want to convince its incoming freshmen to doodle dogs or shag sheep? It’s funny. It used to be that bestiality was associated with the dim-witted, as though it were the perversion particular to illiterate, uneducated farmers. Now it’s the perversion of the Ivy League elite?

You could carry on analyzing the rest of Mr Shea’s text, most of which concerns society’s “ongoing descent into grave evil,” which somehow he equates with — of all things — consent. Or wait, he thinks consent is just a slippery slope toward enslavement and the “culture of death.” And Catholic doctrine is the one thing “which alone can help us live in ordered liberty.” Shit, maybe it would be better for universities to hire professors to espouse the “glories of bestiality.” At least bestiality, unlike Catholic dogma, need not habituate a mind to thinking in contradictions. Evidently it is only a short step from “virgin birth” to “consent is enslavement.”

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