Father Jerome Murphy-OConnor has a common sense breakdown....let's hope it's brief

Father Jerome Murphy-OConnor, a renowned expert on the New Testament, has what some are referring to as "a bold view of what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane."  I would call it something else entirely: asinine.  Demonic even.  How about blasphemous?

In an article for the Catholic Herald which may be found here, Fr. OConnor is quoted as having said that Jesus suffered a "nervous breakdown" and adds, "When realizing the imminence of His own demise, Jesus was deeply distraught and troubled, out of control."  A nervous breakdown, otherwise referred to as a "mental breakdown," is statically defined as "a specific acute time-limited reactive disorder."  See here.

Jesus out of control?  Jesus so distraught that he momentarily suffered from a reactive disorder?

Anyone even remotely familiar with the New Testament knows full well that Jesus was subject to emotions.  We know that He wept when His friend Lazarus died.  We know that He experienced various emotions.  We read for example, "He began to grow sorrowful and be sad" (Mt 26: 37); that He "began to fear and be heavy" (Mk 14: 33); that He "looked round about on them with anger" (Mk 3: 5) and that He said, "I am glad for your sake" (Jn 11: 15).  But Jesus was also free from concupiscence.  As a result, His emotions could not be directed to a sinful object nor could they arise within Him without His consent.  Jesus emotions were always completely under the control of His will and could never obscure or dominate His mind in any way.

Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., notes how, "In this regard there is a significant difference between His emotions and ours.  For, our emotions arise spontaneously, often against our will, and sometimes totally dominate our power of reason.  Thus, they can lead us into sin.  Not so with Jesus.  Jesus was capable of suffering and experienced emotions, but everything was under the control of His will which was totally obedient to His Father." (Fundamentals of Catholicism, Vol. II, p. 269).

This is the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae:

"Since the soul gives form to the body soul and body share the same existence, and when the body is upset by physical suffering the soul existing in the body is also indirectly affected.  So because Christ's body could suffer and die, his soul too was affected by suffering.  The soul is also affected, in a different sense, by activities it exercises by itself, or that belong more to it than the body.  Knowledge and sensation are sometimes called affections of the soul, but the description applies most properly to emotions of the sense-appetite, which Christ possessed along with everything else natural to men.  But whereas in us emotions often bear on unlawful objects, frequently anticipate the judgment of reason, and sometimes draw reason after them, in Christ they were always under reason's control."

And so, Father Murphy-OConnor is simply wrong.  Jesus suffered no mental breakdown.  He was never, even for the slightest moment, "out of control."

Would that we could say the same about Father.

Homosexuality must be normalized and Christianity demonized

Dianne Williamson: Annihilator of Common Sense


Five years ago this month, I explained in detail how the media would first plea for "tolerance" of aberrant sexuality and eventually would come to the point of legitimizing homosexuality and lesbianism and demonizing Christianity. See here. And increasingly such is taking place. Dianne Williamson, an anti-Catholic columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette with a long history of attacking the Church and her teaching*, is now accusing Professor Michael Pakaluk of spewing "anti-homosexual blather disguised as intellectual morality" because of his recent column in The Pilot [ official newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese] addressing the recent controversy in Hingham, Massachusetts over the child of lesbian parents being denied admission to a Catholic school.

Williamson, annihilator of common sense that she is, writes, "Pakaluk's screed should come as no shock to anyone familiar with the intolerance of the Catholic Church, even as it's written on the heels of a well-publicized, 25 year study showing that the children of lesbian parents are less likely to have behavioral problems and 'rated higher in social, academic and total competence.'" See here.

Dutch psychologist Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D., a specialist on homosexuality [unlike Ms. Williamson] says that the claim that homosexuality is normal is one of those statements that are "so foolish that only intellectuals could believe them." It is like saying that anorexia nervosa is healthy. See here. Dr. Aardweg notes that, "The term neurotic describes such relationships well. It suggests the ego-centeredness of the relationship; the attention-seeking instead of loving...Neurotic, in short, suggests all kinds of dramas and childish conflicts as well as the basic disinterestedness in the partner, notwithstanding the shallow pretensions of 'love.' Nowhere is there more self-deception in the homosexual than in his representation of himself as a lover. One partner is important to the other only insofar as he satisfies that other's needs. Real, unselfish love for a desired partner would, in fact, end up destroying homosexual 'love'!" (Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, The Battle for Normality, Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 62-63).

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has warned that the adoption of children by homosexuals "would actually mean doing violence to these children" whose situation of dependence would place them "in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development" which this study has shown.


Dianne Williamson is blinded by her hatred for the Catholic Church. As a result, she is incapable of anything even remotely approaching objectivity when she writes on the Church. The irony here is that Ms. Williamson is guilty of the very thing she accuses Professor Pakaluk and the Catholic Church of: intolerance. Tolerance is for external conduct; it is not for the mind. The mind cannot tolerate error for even an instant. To do so would be to declare truth and error equally good. Which is why the Church so zealously protects and guards the truth even while showing love for those in error. The Church says with Saint Augustine: Kill the error, love the one who errs. She proposes while the world imposes.

But Ms. Williamson has demonstrated her intolerance toward the Church time and again.


Related reading: The health risks of homosexual sex here. And Homosexuality and mental health problems here.


* See here, here, here and here for example.