The Morality Quiz

[serious crayons]

I beg to differ, Katherine. I remember Oprah talking about this while she was promoting the movie Beloved. She said it really happened.

Well, that's what I meant when I said it might have been based on a true historical story, but that the book "Beloved," Toni Morrison's Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, is fictional. I looked it up on the internet and found this, from a books and writers site:

Beloved was inspired by the true story of a black American slave woman, Margaret Garner. She escaped with her husband Robert from a Kentucky plantation, and sought refuge in Ohio. When the slave masters overcame them, she killed her baby, in order to save the child from the slavery she had managed to escape. Morrison later told that "I thought at first it couldn't be written, but I was annoyed and worried that such a story was inaccessible to art." The protagonist, Sethe, tries to kill her children but is successful only in murdering the unnamed infant, "Beloved." The name is written on the child's tombstone, Sethe did not have enough money to pay for the text ''Dearly Beloved.'' Sethe's house, where she lives with her teenage daughter, Denver, is haunted by the dead baby daughter. "Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage?" Sethe thinks.

In other words, as you said, there really was a woman who did that. But many or most of the details of Morrison's novel came out of her own imagination.

More fun facts:

Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in an opera, "Margaret Garner," with music by Richard Danielpour. In May 2006, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty five years.

[moremojo]

On the subject of cannibalism: I think that cannibalism, in and of itself, is thoroughly a moral non-issue. It is in and of itself neither good nor bad. I don't see any intrinsic horror in either the idea or the act of a human being consuming the flesh of another.

Remember the 1973 science-fiction film Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston? The great horrific revelation at the end was that the staple food of the desperately overpopulated, polluted future, Soylent Green, was produced from the bodies of deceased humanity. I never saw any reason to be disturbed by this, as long as those who had died had not met their ends unwillingly. Also, the consumers of Soylent Green should have been informed of the product's origins--transparency in commerce, politics, and interpersonal relations is a great ideal of mine.

Many of the horror stories involving cannibalism, whether real or imagined, revolve around people being murdered and then having their flesh consumed, with the killing sometimes being motivated by the desire for the flesh itself, or the flesh being consumed as a corollary/side effect of the killing. Murder is very unethical, and merits the utmost serious attention from any society claiming to be civilized. I find murder horrific, and have been horrified by the cannibalistic elements that are involved in some murder cases, but this has been because of the murderous impulses behind the act, not because of any intrinsic horror in the cannibalistic act itself.

There are nuances and degrees to this issue, as with most everything. I am certainly against corpses being desecrated for acquisition of their flesh, without the approval of the deceased and/or their remaining loved ones. I would be against anyone being forced to consume human flesh, or being deceived into eating human flesh, without realizing what they were doing. Finally, it is worth remembering that Christian communion is at the very least a kind of symbolic ritual cannibalism--if one follows orthodox doctrine, with belief in the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ, it becomes a literal act of cannibalism. And I see absolutely nothing repugnant in this.

[serious crayons]

I was going to say I totally agreed with you, Scott, until I got to your last sentence. I don't think eating flesh (in the absence of murder) is inherently immoral. But I do find it repugnant. I would guess that, to some extent, an abhorrence for eating human flesh is hardwired into us.

Or were you saying only that you don't find the Christian communion ritual repugnant? I guess I could agree with that, partly because I don't take it literally. But -- and I hope those of you who are Christians will forgive me for saying this -- I do find it a little weird.

[moremojo]

I was going to say I totally agreed with you, Scott, until I got to your last sentence. I don't think eating flesh (in the absence of murder) is inherently immoral. But I do find it repugnant. I would guess that, to some extent, an abhorrence for eating human flesh is hardwired into us.

Or were you saying only that you don't find the Christian communion ritual repugnant? I guess I could agree with that, partly because I don't take it literally. But -- and I hope those of you who are Christians will forgive me for saying this -- I do find it a little weird.

I meant to imply that I don't find the ritual of communion repugnant, either approached symbolically or taken literally from the standpoint of transubstantiation. I have taken communion myself at various times (in situations where I thought it would be awkward to refuse it), though I do not profess to be a Christian.

I have no desire to consume human flesh myself, but upon reflection I really don't see anything repugnant in another doing so (again, in and of itself). So I suppose I find it neither immoral nor repugnant, at least as long as it is another who is doing so.

[serious crayons]

OK, thanks for clarifying, Scott.

I meant to imply that I don't find the ritual of communion repugnant, either approached symbolically or taken literally from the standpoint of transubstantiation. I have taken communion myself at various times (in situations where I thought it would be awkward to refuse it), though I do not profess to be a Christian.

Is it possible to literally believe in transubstantiation when one is not a Christian? I would have no problem taking communion, either, in the situations you refer to (that is, if it would be more awkward to refuse it than to, as a non-Christian, take it). But I can't see myself believing I'm literally consuming the literal flesh and blood of someone I don't consider a divinity.

If I did take it literally, I would find it repugnant, as I find all human-flesh-eating repugnant, at least according to one interpretation of the definition. For example, here is repugnant defined by The Free Dictionary:

Arousing disgust or aversion; offensive or repulsive: morally repugnant behavior.

Eating human flesh arouses digust, aversion and repulsion in me. Like you, though, I don't find it immoral, so I don't find it inherently offensive (at least, not under the right circumstances -- i.e., not preceded by murder, not served unknowingly, not in a fancy restaurant), when others do it.

How did we get on this?  Shouldn't we go back to killing babies?

[opinionista]

I beg to differ, Katherine. I remember Oprah talking about this while she was promoting the movie Beloved. She said it really happened. Now, perhaps this was some sort of cheap Hollywood gimmick. I always understood it to be true and factual.

Sorry to go OT here. Actually, Katherine is right. Beloved is fictional. I believe Toni Morrison herself said it. It is loosely based on Margaret Garner's story. In fact, this isn't something that happened just to Margaret Garner. Many enslaved women killed their kids, especially their daughters to protect them not just from slavery but also from being raped by their masters. It is a sad part of slave history in the US and other countries. At least in Puerto Rico many slave women were raped and forced into concubinage, and many killed their daughters to prevent them from having the same fate. 

We'll back to topic.

[serious crayons]

On the one hand you have the Europeans who think they're so high and mighty, and then you have the Native Americans who, after learning about this cornerstone of Christianity, think those nasty white people are cannibals.

Yeah, I was going to say something like that earlier. Forget what we know about Christianity -- if we heard that, say, some tribal people in Africa or the Amazon follow a religion in which they believe that a guy who lived 2,000 years ago was the son of God, and that they perform a ritual in which they pretend to drink his blood and eat his flesh, but actually consider themselves to be doing so due to a miraculous transformation, we'd probably consider it borderline barbaric, at best. We'd rush right over there to convert those people to whatever our religion would be! 

[Kerry]

I feel several issues should be raised re the subject of transubstantiation in the Catholic Mass.

Catholics believe that only an anointed priest (as in, "You are a priest forever, according to the Order of Melchizadeck") can perform transubstantiation. Ergo, before one can accept RC communion, one must believe in the concept of the Melchizadeckian priesthood.

Catholics believe that when the priest speaks the words of transubstantiation, the hosts and the wine literally turn into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Catholics believe that one must be in a "state of grace," before one can take communion; i.e., take the physical body of Christ into your mouth and consume it. Catholic dogma dictates that the way to gain this "state of grace" is by undergoing the sacrament of forgiveness, otherwise known as attending confession.

One must be a baptised and confirmed Catholic in order to participate in the sacraments of the Church; ergo, one must be a Catholic before one can (i) obtain absolution in confession and (ii) take communion.

Before one takes communion at RC Mass, the priest holds forth the host before the communicant and says the words, "The Body of Christ," to which the communicant responds, "Amen." By responding, "Amen," one is proclaiming that one does, in fact, believe that what they are about to consume is the actual flesh of Christ.

If one has not fulfilled all or any of the requirements leading up to the taking of communion at Mass, it is my personal opinion that it is not appropriate to do so. And it all comes down to those four little words, "The Body of Christ." If you cannot honestly respond, "Amen," in accordance with Catholic doctrine, it is not appropriate for you to be responding, "Amen."

This is why I no longer attend Mass. 

[delalluvia]

A relative of mine fits all that RC criteria.  When I brought up the issue of transubstantiation and how kinda gross that sounded, she merely replied, "But I poop Him out again." 

[serious crayons]

If one has not fulfilled all or any of the requirements leading up to the taking of communion at Mass, it is my personal opinion that it is not appropriate to do so.

I kind of suspected that was the case.

she merely replied, "But I poop Him out again." 

I'm afraid even to laugh at that!