Sad Bad SAD

November 30, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

I mentioned in a fairly recent post that I suffer from seasonal depression. It’s not something that I talk about a lot, partly because I don’t want my critics saying “oh look, another crazy queer person,” and wondering about whether my depression is caused by my “father wound.” Partly because depression is the thing that makes me the most deeply and profoundly irrational, and there’s nothing that I hate more than being deeply and profoundly irrational. Seasonal affective disorder comes... Read more

Crucifixion of Desire

November 28, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

Is the only true way to deal with a homosexual inclination to “crucify” it? This is the question that has recently been raised at Crisis. Readers who are familiar with this debate will not be surprised to know that Crisis’ answer is “yes.” I’d like to open my response by sharing the reaction of a friend of mine: The problem with [this article] is that it seems to occupy a moral universe where the sole responsibility of the homosexual person... Read more

The Other “N” Word

November 26, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

Years ago, when I moved in more traditionalist Catholic circles, I recall often encountering the idea that there’s a fairly simple, straightforward way of telling whether a person is speaking the mind of God, or whether they are whispering the seductions of the evil one: Clarity. God, so the theory went, is always perfectly crystal clear. He utters direct, straight-forward pronouncements. His light is so strong that there is no room for gray, for muddiness: by its illumination, you can... Read more

Update on the Books I’m Writing Now

November 24, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

Winter has come to Canada and we’re having a run of snow-days. My older kids are home from school and that means I have more time to write. Currently I’m working on two book projects: a book on gender minorities, and a book on NFP. With the first project, I have an absolutely killer proposal that I’ve shopped around to lots of different Catholic publishers. They are all unanimous about it: this is a tremendously important book… that someone else... Read more

Dear Rich People: Please Keep Giving Us Your Junk

November 23, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

It’s nearing Christmas time, and an article from Aleteia is making the rounds again – talking about how giving junk to the poor is kind of self-serving. Instead, the author argues, we should give things that are truly valuable, rather than just the crap that we can’t see a use for ourselves. “It’s all too easy to make ourselves feel good that we’re “giving to the needy” when really we’re just finding an excuse to get rid of our junk.... Read more

Backseat Creator

November 18, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

My recent post, Wayward Creatures, dealt with one aspect of the problem of suffering – namely, the question of why allowing evil is necessary if you’re going to create creatures with free will. There are a lot of comments in the com-box that are basically angry, not angry with me but angry with God for permitting certain, specific evils. I have to be honest: the problem of suffering has never bothered me all that much as a Christian. This is... Read more

Transgender Awareness Week

November 17, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

It’s transgender awareness week. A lot of my trans friends are afraid right now: it’s not just that Trump is in the White House, but that the Republicans achieved an overwhelming political victory across the board this election season. Under the Obama administration trans people saw improvements in their legal status and rights – but under state-level Republican governments they’ve faced harmful legislation. Unfortunately, trans people are kind of low-hanging fruit in the Culture Wars. Gender minorities are a very... Read more

Mad Makes Right

November 16, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

In a recent piece, I discussed how liberal expressions of rage and fear can be counterproductive because they are processed by Trump supporters as evidence that liberals are faint-hearted losers. I got a really useful response from one reader who describes himself as a “recently politically-orphaned Republican.” He points out that the centre-right (some of whom voted for Trump while holding their noses, others of whom voted third party) is more likely to be sympathetic to liberals’ fears about... Read more

Wayward Creatures

November 15, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

One of the issues that arose in the comments from yesterday’s post is the question of why God would allow people to do evil in His name. Why wouldn’t He intervene? This is basically a variant on the problem of evil: if God is omnibenevolant and also omnipotent, then wouldn’t it make sense for Him to step in and prevent humans from performing certain kinds of evil acts, or from committing certain types of error? For me, this kind of... Read more

Sola Vatican Document

November 14, 2016 By Melinda Selmys

Last May, the publication of Laudato Si stirred up a scandal that I’ve been wrestling with ever since. From the time that I converted to Catholicism, about fifteen years ago now, I constantly heard Catholics who identified as “faithful” and “orthodox” sneer at “liberal,” “heterodox” Catholics – usually because the latter took exception to Humanae Vitae. The party line was very simple: Papal documents are an infallible expression of the teaching of the Church, and if you don’t accept the... Read more