Defending Jim Zeigler

Citing:

altmuslim : Cherry Picking Religion – Roy Moore’s Twisting of Faith
November 20, 2017 by Guest Contributor
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/altmuslim/2017/11/cherry-picking-religion-roy-moores-twisting-of-faith/

As has been widely reported, Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler excused Moore’s behavior by saying, “Take the Bible: …Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here.”

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Aside from the apparent Biblical inaccuracies (the Bible states that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, not the sexual congress of two mortals), Zeigler’s statement is troubling because it follows a trend of using cherry-picked religious texts or concepts to justify the exploitation or subjugation of a disadvantaged group to the benefit of the group in power. In this case, it was a powerful, professional white man and a 14 year-old girl, but it could have just easily been a Southern Baptist preacher in 1860 justifying slavery, or the council of clerics in Pakistan who dismissed a reform effort to raise the marriage age for women from 16 to 18 and curb child marriage as “blasphemous.”

Well, for the inaccuracy, supposed, Jim Ziegler said the Blessed Virgin as a teen ager and St Joseph the most chaste spouse as an adult (according to Proto-Gospel of St James, even an old adult, a widower) became parents of Our Lord.

"Became parents" is accurate. The Blessed Virgin was real and natural Mother of God. The most chaste spouse St Joseph was God's fosterfather. He was by neighbours taken to be the actual father, and God was leaving them in that misunderstanding without considering it blasphemous.

Luke 3: [23] And Jesus himself was beginning about the age of thirty years; being (as it was supposed) the son of Joseph, who was of Heli, who was of Mathat,

In other words, if God allowed anyone (back then, before the publishing of the Gospel) to think Our Lord was made the usual way, He was allowing them to take Joseph for the actual father.

In other words, God was not shocked by an actual marriage between a teen and a man definitely older than she. That was the relation between the parents of St Francis of Sales. He was pious because his young mother was pious. He managed to dismiss Calvinism rather easily, in the end (despite a doubt of his being among the foreknown in the Calvinistic sense), because his father was old enough to recall a world in which Calvinism did not yet exist.

As to defenses of slavery, no person whom Catholics revere as a saint or a patriarch was holding slaves captured in a far land. St Joseph was kept as such a one, is it a coincidence that the traders selling him to Potiphar were a mix of Ishmaelites and Madianites, the two half Hebrew nations of Arabian Peninsula North of Yemen? So, as Christians, we don't share that problem with Muslims.

As to Pakistani marriage law, I think it would be wrong to raise marital age to 18. It is indeed blasphemous, not just because of the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph, but because the medium age at which puberty occurs is not 18, 18 being instead an extremely high (as 9 is an extremley low) age for puberty.

We can credit God with punishing Adam by saying "some will be mentally ripe for marriage and still infertile and impotent" and "some will be genitally ripe (or half ripe, excepting the pelvis) for marriage before being mentally ripe for the choice", but we can not say He went as far as saying "nearly all will be genitally ripe for marriage while still mentally too young". Boys at 14 are about half of them physically ripe and other half not, boys at 16 are nearly all physically ripe, and we must imagine the mental ripeness is there from 14. Girls at 12 are about half of them physically ripe and other half not, girls at 14 are nearly all of them physically ripe, and we must imagine the mental ripeness is there from 12.

Imagining the opposite is claiming God is cruel, by tempting adolescents from 14/12 while refusing them the possibility of valid marriage up to 18.

No, it is certain evil states which are refusing them the possibility of legal marriage, legal recognistion of the validity, up to 18. They are usually leftist, like Italy which fought against the Pope in 1870, or like Soviet Union after the fall of the Czar. It is not God, but these states, who are tempting their youth to sin.

"Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils, and he tempteth no man."
[James 1:13]

It would have been better for England not to raise marital age to 16, both sexes, and it is certainly better for Pakistan not to raise marital age from 16 to 18. It was bad for France to raise marital age for girls from 15 to 18 under Chirac, had the old marriage law been there as to age, the old marriage law as to sexes would probably not have been altered about 7 years later as to configuration of sexes, French would not have allowed female teachers to marry 15 year old students and pervert them permanently to Lesbianism.

So, while it is sad that Roy Moore 40 years ago kissed a girl he didn't marry, a girl of 14 who was 16 years his junior and therefore not his wife, since his wife is 14 years his junior, and therefore another person, it is not sad that he found a girl of 14 attractive.

Someone said, only ignorant "liberals" take Moore for a paedophile. I would agree that it is a leftist thing to take that for "paedophilia". And there are Biblical considerations to prove that, Jim Zeigler said nothing wrong.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St Clement I, Pope and Martyr
23.XI.2017