In attack on pope, polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay makes crude joke about multiple orgasms.

here is no cesspool so foul that John Bugay will not jump into it with full-throat­ed glee if it serves his hatred of the Catholic Church. The man lost his shame years ago. Con­sid­er that it was this very same polem­i­cal rogue who once pho­to­shopped a Hitler mous­tache onto St. Therese of Lisieux, removed it only under the strong per­sua­sion of his pas­tor, and all the while whim­pered that he had been much maligned and abused by the Catholics who called him out. Well, dear read­er, the dog has returned to his vom­it, this time with a foul and smelly joke about orgasms. But I’ll get to that. (For those who real­ly don’t wish to read it, it comes up in sec­tion 3 of the post; you can skip that part.)

•••

The first prob­lem with Mr. Bugay’s post (it’s here, if you insist) is that he does not know what Pope Fran­cis said. He quotes the pope as saying—for he puts it in quo­ta­tion marks, which is a claim that these are exact words—“Don’t breed like rab­bits.” But that’s not what the pope said. So Mr. Bugay could not have read the actu­al tran­script of the inter­view, which had already been pub­lished in many places (like this one) by the time he post­ed his arti­cle and could eas­i­ly have been checked. How irre­spon­si­ble of the man.

Instead, Mr. Bugay relies on this arti­cle in USA Today—which itself does not even attribute the words “don’t breed like rab­bits” to the pope. Is John Bugay just mak­ing up stuff now? Is truth his agen­da, or some­thing else? Is he a seri­ous apol­o­gist or a will­ful hack? One has to ask the ques­tions.

Now, if Mr. Bugay cares at all to know (and, giv­en his behav­ior, I doubt he does), here is what the pope real­ly said in the inter­view. This comes—pay atten­tion Mr. Bugay—from the actu­al tran­script, and not from some sec­ond­hand report in a sec­u­lar, lib­er­al rag like USA Today:

God gives you means to be respon­si­ble. Some think that—excuse the language—that in order to be good Catholics, we have to be like rab­bits. No. Respon­si­ble par­ent­hood. This is clear and that is why in the Church there are mar­riage groups, there are experts in this mat­ter, there are pas­tors, one can search; and I know so many ways that are lic­it and that have helped this.

Far from the pope say­ing to Catholics that they must not “breed like rab­bits,” Fran­cis does not use the word “breed” at all, and says that no one should feel that Catholics must be “like rab­bits” in order to be good Catholics. There’s not even any indi­ca­tion in his actu­al words that, when the pope says “some think,” he means “some Catholics think” or “some peo­ple out­side the Church think.” The pope could be talk­ing about John Bugay! And what he tells us is that the Church teach­es no such thing, but rather that it affirms respon­si­ble par­ent­hood through the use of Nat­ur­al Fam­i­ly Plan­ning.

Nor is this some new idea nev­er heard before by man. Pope Paul VI said the very same thing in Humanae Vitae (here):

If there­fore there are well-ground­ed rea­sons for spac­ing births, aris­ing from the phys­i­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion of hus­band or wife, or from exter­nal cir­cum­stances, the Church teach­es that mar­ried peo­ple may then take advan­tage of the nat­ur­al cycles imma­nent in the repro­duc­tive sys­tem and engage in mar­i­tal inter­course only dur­ing those times that are infer­tile, thus con­trol­ling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral prin­ci­ples which We have just explained. (§16)

Pope St. John Paul II also speaks about “respon­si­ble par­ent­hood” here.

But after refer­ring to these teach­ings, Pope Fran­cis goes on to praise large fam­i­lies and speak of chil­dren as a gift:

Anoth­er curi­ous thing in rela­tion to this is that for the most poor peo­ple, a child is a trea­sure. It is true that you have to be pru­dent here too, but for them a child is a trea­sure. Some would say ‘God knows how to help me’ and per­haps some of them are not pru­dent, this is true. Respon­si­ble pater­ni­ty, but let us also look at the gen­eros­i­ty of that father and moth­er who see a trea­sure in every child.

It is said that, if you real­ly want to empha­size a point for peo­ple to remem­ber, you should repeat it three times. In this pas­sage, the pope says three times that “a child is a trea­sure.”

So, for any­one who both­ers to look into the mat­ter, it turns out that the pope is only telling us what the Church has always said. He explains the full teach­ing: that chil­dren are a trea­sure, that arti­fi­cial birth con­trol is wrong, but that par­ents also have an oblig­a­tion to be respon­si­ble in their par­ent­hood: NFP is a moral­ly just way to do so.

John Bugay, sad to say—because the man is a spectacle—does not both­er. He makes no attempt to both­er. Per­haps it would be too much effort for the poor man. So rather than try­ing to get the basic facts or mean­ing right, he sput­ters on about whether or not this tru­ly counts as an infal­li­ble state­ment.

Well, to answer that ques­tion in a three­fold way for the edi­fi­ca­tion of Mr. Bugay, who won’t care any­way: (1) No, it does not; (2) Nev­er­the­less, the pope is faith­ful­ly reit­er­at­ing mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing; (3) the ques­tion of infal­li­bil­i­ty is not rel­e­vant here in the first place. The rel­e­vant thing is that the pope was mis­quot­ed and John Bugay believed it, did­n’t check it out, and made up his own quo­ta­tion to put into the pope’s mouth.

This hap­pens every day on Fail­ablogue. (He calls it Tri­ablogue, which I think is opti­mistic.)

•••

In the com­box, Steve “Pur­ple” Hays (who also posts at Fail­ablogue) gives us a list of obser­va­tions, only a few of which inter­est me. The first is a ques­tion: “What’s so bad about a C‑section?” Well, noth­ing at all is “bad about a C‑section,” Mr. Hays; and in fact, if you had both­ered to read the tran­script, you would have noticed that the pope was speak­ing of a woman who had already had sev­en of them and was going out of her way to get preg­nant again. A Face­book friend and fel­low Catholic blog­ger, JoAn­na Wahlund, explains why the pope was right to be con­cerned. (This was in a Face­book thread on my own page.)

All preg­nan­cies have the poten­tial to be risky. But sev­en C‑sections dras­ti­cal­ly increas­es the risk of pla­cen­ta acc­re­ta, which can cause the uterus to rup­ture (killing both mom and baby). If a woman has had sev­en C‑sections, her uterus is paper thin, and doc­tors tell her, “Anoth­er preg­nan­cy could very well kill you and your child,” then yes, it is risky and irre­spon­si­ble to delib­er­ate­ly seek to achieve preg­nan­cy in that sit­u­a­tion.

Now, what the pope says, in effect (if Mr. Hays had both­ered to read the tran­script and not just the lib­er­al media), is not, Don’t have a C‑section but, If you’ve had sev­en of them, maybe going out of your way to get preg­nant again isn’t the best thing. Don’t tempt God. There are lic­it ways for you to avoid preg­nan­cy, which you should use. If you do oth­er­wise, you risk that you will die, your baby will die, and your oth­er chil­dren will be left with­out a moth­er. Respon­si­ble par­ent­hood.

A “crazy uncle” (as Mr. Hays calls the pope) does not say this. A very pru­dent adult does when he is giv­ing some­one wise coun­sel.

Mr. Hays also says that Fran­cis tried to “walk back” his remarks lat­er on. Now, because I read the media, I know what he is refer­ring to. He is refer­ring to reports, like this one at CBS News, which quote the pope, after the inter­view, say­ing that chil­dren are a bless­ing. The only prob­lem here is that the pope said the very same thing in the first place, in the inter­view. If Mr. Hays had read the tran­script, he would know this. The pope is not “walk­ing it back”; he’s repeat­ing him­self. I quot­ed that very sec­tion from the inter­view ear­li­er in this arti­cle. (Remem­ber?) And the pope said this right after his state­ment about rab­bits. It’s not in some dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the inter­view where the con­text has changed. Go read the tran­script, Mr. Hays. Make an effort to get it right. I mean, some effort.

•••

In the last para­graph of his post, the polem­i­cal rogue writes this. (This is your last chance to skip over it.)

[I]n light of the Pope’s com­ments, the Vat­i­can has updat­ed its clear and cer­tain guide­lines for con­fes­sors, affirm­ing that the state­ment “my wife not only is capa­ble of hav­ing intense mul­ti­ple orgasms dur­ing her most fer­tile days of her cycle, but she asserts her right to do so” is not an ade­quate pen­i­ten­tial rea­son in the con­fes­sion­al for using arti­fi­cial birth con­trol meth­ods. In such instances, abso­lu­tion should be refused.

Now, hon­est­ly, what is the point in writ­ing this? It con­tributes noth­ing, it’s crude, it’s hate­ful, and it tells us only that Mr. Bugay is in des­per­ate need of the grace of God. I hope he finds it.

•••

So here’s the chance for Reformed apol­o­gists to come out with a clear state­ment that they are dis­tanc­ing them­selves from John Bugay until he proves that he has cleaned up his act.

This is the kind of post that shows that Mr. Bugay is not worth treat­ing seri­ous­ly. He is only worth expos­ing. He has utter­ly removed him­self from any mean­ing­ful cat­e­go­ry of seri­ous­ness or even decen­cy. And if Reformed apol­o­gists have any integri­ty at all, they will dis­tance them­selves far, far from this man and his crude and self-sham­ing ways.

This blog post, dear read­er, is an absolute, unmit­i­gat­ed piece of garbage. Mr. Bugay should be embar­rassed by it, but he won’t be. And the rea­son he won’t be is because he has proven time and again that writ­ing garbage is his objec­tive. Sor­ry to say.