"as usual," she said in the comments.
I took umbrage at Miss Hutton's reply that the debate was about "sex!" "as usual," as if it is quite commonplace for me to be debating about sex, but then I realized that I chose, as the topic for my research paper, to write about the anthropology behind the treatment of nocturnal emissions in a variety of monastic authors, particularly Cassian [since he wrote a rather lengthy treatment of the subject]. And for the past couple days I've been sort of arguing with somebody that homosexuality doesn't exist per se: there are bodies and pleasures, the rest is interpretation. Perhaps she's right? I suppose I just like sex? Discuss.
EDIT: added a link to more sex.
posted by Mr. G. Z. T. @ 8.5.06
4 Comments:
You are advised to consult Pope Gregory's pastoral letter to St. Augustine of Canterbury in this matter. It can be found in Bede's History of the English Church and People. Recall that Gregory was a monk and thus you can examine the effects of monastic practice on the broader tradition.
As for your latter point, I treat such assertions as I would Ptolemaic astronomy. It might fit the observations but not parsimoniously.
marvellous, this means i have cassian, augustine, "anthony", jerome, and now gregory as well, and i know there's quite a clash between cassian/jerome/etc and augustine on this issue as well [on the same matter as the "Sex!" post]. this should be enough for a 15 page paper.
as for the second post, I was the one making that claim! though I would also say that Ptolemy is an underrated genius and perhaps the first person to understand him was Copernicus.
Someday I may tell you the story of how I brought up Gregory's letter in high school English class and never heard the end of it.
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