Chocolate cake in Charleston, the rematch

During the trivia night competition during the BookCrossing convention last year, I ordered a piece of cake as a dessert to enjoy during the event. I was a bit stunned by the size of the piece of cake they gave me, and it provided a fair bit of entertainment to a roomful of people who hardly needed an excuse for more general silliness.

As the invitations to the unconvention were being sent out this year, there were a number of hints that there was a certain interest in witnessing a rematch between me and the cake.  Since I had finished the cake last year, I didn't feel that I had anything to prove, but perhaps the cake felt the need for a rematch.  I'm not sure.  In any case, it appeared that the public demand for me to eat cake was not to be ignored.

So, when trivia night rolled around during the unconvention, I was a bit disappointed to see that the shop didn't have any cake on display in the dessert case.  All was not lost, however, because we were celebrating two birthdays in our little gathering, so there was cake to be had, and it was even chocolate.  After the cake was cut, a piece almost magically appeared in front of me.  Thankfully, the cake was cut into more normal serving sizes, so that the much anticipated "rematch" ended up being anti-climactic.  Any photograpic evidence to the contrary is the result of perspective and creative camera techniques.  :o)

The trivia night was a great deal of fun, if somewhat less hyperactive, than last year.  The score was close, with our team holding onto a very thin lead going into the final question.  We gambled (successfully) that no one knew the correct answer to the final question, and bet conservatively, sealing our victory.  It was a great evening of laughter and fun, one I look forward to repeating another time.

On writing about being Catholic and an invitation

Those of you who have followed my postings here over the last few years may recall the occasional entry in which I talk about the Catholic Church and my little place in it. I don't always agree with my Church, and at times I struggle to understand why I feel so strongly attached to it. I get frustrated and angry, frequently wonder if it is really worth it. Sometimes, I find moments of sublime inspiration, and they give me reason to continue the struggle.

There are a number of topics in this area that I've toyed with writing about. I think it would help me understand my own beliefs better to write them down, and I enjoy discussing these topics with others, as long as the conversations remain polite and respectful. But, because discussions about religion can easily become uncivil, I am reluctant to post my thoughts for the world to see. I'm thinking of creating a new filter to use for these entries, but I really don't know who I should include. I'm sure my thoughts on these topics will be of very little interest to some of you, so there's little reason to include you.

So, I'll put it out to you, my readers. If you are interested in reading my entries on this topic, please comment here. I'll add you to the filter so you can see the posts as I make them. I doubt that these posts will be terribly frequent, but it would be nice to have a place to write my thoughts and discuss these topics.

Thoughts from last Sunday's sermon

My pastor appears to have a deep, meaningful spiritual life. Too bad he has absolutely no talent for sharing it with others. He is a painfully poor public speaker...slow, monotone and he feels the need to repeat his main point over, and over (and over, and over,...). So it's gotten to the point where I normally just tune him out during the sermon, letting my mind wander.

Somehow, this week, I actually found myself listening to him. The Gospel reading was Matthew 22:15-21, ending with the famous quote "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." The typical sermon I've heard given for this passage is about respecting legitimate civil authority. My pastor took a different approach.

He argued that we choose to give to God or the Caesar every time we enter the voting booth. In our choices, we should be careful not to give to Caesar that which belongs to God. The specific example he used was gay marriage. As he presented it, if we don't oppose gay marriage in the voting booth, then we are giving to Caesar something that belongs to God. Marriage, he said, is part of the natural order, created by God, and to extend it to homosexuals would be a perversion of God's plan.

In my view there are two different problems with this argument. First, as I've argued before, there are two separate and distinct definitions of marriage. Clearly, my pastor, as one would expect, is talking about the religious sacrament, but he (along with many opponents of gay marriage) doesn't seem to recognize that marriage is also a civil contract conveying a certain legal status and rights. The use of this same word to refer to both concepts has seriously muddled the debate on this issue, as has our failure, as a society, to enforce the separation of church and state in this area. Because religious leaders are authorized to officiate over both the religious sacrament and the civil union, it becomes more difficult for people to distinguish between the two.

However, once we acknowledge this distinction, my pastor's argument makes little sense. The government can only control the nature of the civil contract, so that allowing gay marriages (by the government) is NOT giving to Caesar what is God's, but rather giving to Caesar what is Caesar's. The government doesn't have any authority to address the religious sacrament, and cannot force religious institutions to open the sacrament to homosexuals. Note that this separation already exists: Divorce and remarriage is perfectly acceptable in the civil marriage, but the same is not universally true with the marriage sacrament (the exact position on this matter varies from one denomination to another). So, as long as we take care to recognize and distinguish between the civil and religious institutions of marriage, there is no reason that allowing gay marriage constitutes a surrender of God's authority to Caesar.

In addition, I also have a problem with the argument that concept that the nature of marriage limits it to heterosexuals. There is a growing body of evidence that certainly suggests that there might well be a biological basis for homosexuality. If science does conclusively demonstrate that homosexuality is, in fact, based in biology, then it would seem that both heterosexuality and homosexuality are part of nature. The Church has a long history of ignoring the findings of science when they conflict with the prevailing Church teachings of the time. In order to maintain its credibility, the Church needs to learn from this history and adapt its teachings to the valid findings of science. In my view, God provided us with our intelligence and reason specifically so that we can better understand creation, in all its vast diversity. Our understanding of God's plan is necessarily limited by our limited understanding of his creation. As our understanding of the universe improves, we should also recognize that it requires us to change our understanding of his plan.

Finally, I think that one of the key tenets of Christianity is Jesus's message of mercy and compassion. To me, denying gays their civil rights as couples simply because of their sexual orientation flies in the face of this principle. I'm not completely convinced that gays should be allowed to marry in the church (though I'm open to the idea), but I do believe that it is criminal to deny gay couples the civil rights solely on the basis of their sexual orientation. And I think my pastor has missed the point.