Article Re: Clergy/Penitent Privilege

[smac97]

4 minutes ago, webbles said:

Not all mandatory reporters get a set of metrics.  In Arizona, all parents and guardians are mandatory reporters (section A.3 at https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03620.htm).  I'm pretty sure that Arizona doesn't hand out a set of metrics to all parents and guardians.  I would bet that a lot of parents and guardians don't even know they are mandatory reporters.  In Wyoming, everyone is mandatory reporters (section 1 at https://law.justia.com/codes/wyoming/2011/title14/chapter3/section14-3-205).  I'm also pretty sure Wyoming doesn't hand out something to every single person to tell them what they are mandated to do.

But they sure can be punished for failing to comply with a mandatory reporting law, at least in Arizona.

The Arizona law:

Quote

A person who violates this section is guilty of a class 1 misdemeanor, except if the failure to report involves a reportable offense, the person is guilty of a class 6 felony.

"Class 1 misdemeanors are the most serious type of misdemeanor crime. They are punishable by up to 6 months in prison and $2500 in fines." (Source)

Class 6 felonies:

Quote

Punishment for a class 6 felony in Arizona depends on the number of prior felony convictions that a person has.

• No prior felonies: Probation eligible, or prison time from 4 months to 2 years.
• One prior felony: Prison time from 9 months to 2.75 years.
• Two or more prior felonies: Prison time from 2.25 to 5.75 years.

Thanks,

-Smac

[bluebell]

57 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I agree with you.

In this case, though, just like issues like slavery, I find that the harm created by underage marriage makes it fundamentally bad. It may still need to happen from time to time because we don't live in an ideal world. That doesn't change the fundamental badness of it.

Since you don't like the label being applied to child brides, perhaps you could provide an explanation of how it is good - not in a particular context (where it might be better than something else) but how it is good in its own right. If you cannot, then I think that we can conclude that it is fundamentally bad (or - to soften it a little - that at the very least that it is fundamentally not good).

I don’t believe it is fundamentally good though. So why would I need to support that argument?

[Calm]

48 minutes ago, webbles said:

Not all mandatory reporters get a set of metrics.  In Arizona, all parents and guardians are mandatory reporters (section A.3 at https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03620.htm).  I'm pretty sure that Arizona doesn't hand out a set of metrics to all parents and guardians.  I would bet that a lot of parents and guardians don't even know they are mandatory reporters.  In Wyoming, everyone is mandatory reporters (section 1 at https://law.justia.com/codes/wyoming/2011/title14/chapter3/section14-3-205).  I'm also pretty sure Wyoming doesn't hand out something to every single person to tell them what they are mandated to do.

I didn’t know Utah was mandatory reporting until it was mentioned on the board and am rather shocked because of the more usual conservative positions.  I wonder if antivaccine is anti mandatory reporting or not….btw, when I went to look it up, “mandatory reporting” brought up nothing on the child protective services site.  I guess they are avoiding the label even if it is required of anyone.

https://dcfs.utah.gov/services/child-protective-services/#:~:text=Utah law requires any person,physical%2C emotional%2C or sexual.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

Not all mandatory reporters get a set of metrics.

Yeah, there was supposed to be a "not" in there. The only people I have ever worked with who had some specific training relative to this were professionals who had training relative to their professional roles: physicians, social workers, etc.

[webbles]

1 minute ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yeah, there was supposed to be a "not" in there. The only people I have ever worked with who had some specific training relative to this were professionals who had training relative to their professional roles: physicians, social workers, etc.

Those type of people make sense to be mandatory reporters.  But forcing everyone to be a mandatory reporter with a threat of fines/prison if we fail to report and then not giving any indication that we are mandatory reporter and not giving us any information on how to make good reports is problematic in my mind.

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Except that these don't represent a scholarly consensus. Kyle Echols, after all, who authored that link works professionally in digital marketing. He has, for the past six years, been the Director of Marketing for North Texas Clinically Integrated Network.

We can go the other way just as easily, right?

Scholars are generally not interested in trying to ask this question because there isn't any real answer in the texts. Raymond Brown, for example, in his mammoth work The Birth of the Messiah, doesn't even attempt to put a guess in as to the age of Mary at the time that Jesus was born (or conceived). He does include a lengthy discussion about the early Christian tradition though, that Mary was much older, and had made a vow of celibacy:

Brown dismisses this idea. And, Brown goes on to suggest that the best reading is a literary one, where the Mary's age isn't even a consideration in the purpose of the text. We aren't meant to draw out an age for Mary in these references but information about Jesus. This points out the problems we have with the text and with the conclusions people have and do draw from it. I stand by my comment that there is no scholarly consensus about the age of Mary when Jesus was born. Given the differences between the two accounts (Matthew and Luke) as well as the relatively late writing of the texts, most scholars aren't particularly interested in taking these accounts as some sort of first hand witness of the events they describe.

 

Like I said, it was just one website of many, randomly chosen.  Mary's estimated age doesn't come from the biblical text but from the common age of Jewish women during that period and place in history (since we have no reason to believe that Mary and Joseph's betrothal were out of the ordinary).  

Here are a few other quotes on the subject, from this website.

Quote

Richard & Jeni Holzapfel:
“The usual age of a girl’s betrothal was between twelve and twelve and a half…at puberty or a little before. The engagement constituted a legally ratified marriage, since it began her transfer from her father’s authority to her husband’s, giving the [husband] legal rights over her and giving her the status of a married woman for many purposes. She could be called his wife or become his widow. The betrothal…lasted about a year….[Then came] the wedding proper….When the angel of the Lord first appeared to the young Mary, she was perhaps not more than twelve years of age and almost certainly not more than fourteen” (Sisters At The Well, p. 48). 

Quote

Susan Easton Black:
“Typically, Jewish men were betrothed at age sixteen or seventeen, and almost never later than age twenty. Jewish women were betrothed at the somewhat younger age, usually fourteen. It can be assumed that both Joseph and Mary were young, even though apocryphal stories depict Joseph as an elderly widower” (Life and Times of Jesus Christ, Questions and Answers, p. 11).

Quote

Donna B. Nielsen:
“The age for marriage was quite early in Israel. Most rabbis held that young people ought to be married by age eighteen, at the latest. They were often married younger than that. Technically, one month after his Bar Mitzvah (Son of the Law) at age thirteen, a boy was considered to be of marriageable age. For girls, the youngest acceptable age was twelve years and one month” (Beloved Bridegroom, p. 2).

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

But they sure can be punished for failing to comply with a mandatory reporting law, at least in Arizona.

True, but it is awfully hard to prosecute on the basis of belief outside of certain (usually professional) contexts. Some very specific areas are detailed in the Arizona law that wouldn't apply to the vast majority of mandatory reporters - like this one:

Quote

A health care professional who is regulated pursuant to title 32 and who, after a routine newborn physical assessment of a newborn infant's health status or following notification of positive toxicology screens of a newborn infant, reasonably believes that the newborn infant may be affected by the presence of alcohol or a drug listed in section 13-3401 shall immediately report this information, or cause a report to be made, to the department of child safety. For the purposes of this subsection, "newborn infant" means a newborn infant who is under thirty days of age.

That's pretty specific.

I think that historically, criminal prosecutions were really uncommon (and usually unsuccessful). In recent years, some high profile events (Jerry Sandusky for example) and the aftermath of those high profile events have encouraged institutions where specific mandatory reporting requirements exist to place more emphasis on reporting and training - the criminal issues probably had less impact than the threat of fiscal penalties in civil suits. The impact is that institutions are generally (its improving over time) much more responsive to reports. Additionally, at least in my personal experience, organizations have become more inclined to avoid trying to keep investigations internal - they turn over the report and relevant information to regulatory and law enforcement agencies quickly (even if they continue their own investigation at the same time). In my organization, we have our first report turned into state agencies within a couple of hours of a report being made to us - whether we believe it can be corroborated or not. This is followed by at least two additional submissions within regulated time frames containing the documentation we can provide into the incident (interviews, video footage, etc.). Our regulatory and law enforcement agencies then decide whether or not to do their own investigation (they are generally required to do so before they can act on a report).

In short, what has really changed in recent years is that if someone claims to have been abused, or claims to have witnessed that abuse and reports this in a professional context (to a mandatory reporter), the default position has shifted from discounting it to accepting it and acting on it. Not much has changed outside of those professional contexts - and I suspect that as far as prosecutions go (and I am not aware of any non-professional reporters being charged - but I don't have a lot of knowledge here) - these charges could be used in contexts where someone was clearly aware of abuse, but isn't directly liable for it. If for example, prosecutor's didn't think they could get a charge of child abuse to stick with Jodi Hildebrandt, they might have gone this route.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

I don’t believe it is fundamentally good though. So why would I need to support that argument?

I am not asking you to show that it is fundamentally good. What I am asking is this - separate the child bride issue from any historical context and evaluate it on its own merits. We can do this with all sorts of things. We can describe marriage more broadly as fundamentally good. The question is, what is there that is good about having child marriages? If you can provide any good at all, then it isn't fundamentally bad. I am suggesting that there is nothing good about child marriage when it stands on its own merits apart from any social or cultural contexts. And given that there is nothing good about it, it becomes fundamentally bad.

Saying that it is fundamentally bad doesn't mean that it was wrong in every historical context - sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils (as someone else put it). But that still makes it the lesser of two evils.

I am just curious if you can find anything good to say about child brides that doesn't come in a historical context in which it is only better than something worse.

[Benjamin McGuire]

33 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Like I said, it was just one website of many, randomly chosen.  Mary's estimated age doesn't come from the biblical text but from the common age of Jewish women during that period and place in history (since we have no reason to believe that Mary and Joseph's betrothal were out of the ordinary).  

You have to take it from the text. It is the only source of biographical data that we have. And because it isn't the text, most scholars (contrary to your assertion) don't make guesses about the age of Mary at the time that Jesus was born. Now, there are certainly a lot of websites and a lot of blogs that are willing to make such statements - and it has certainly used by several recent southern legislators trying to defend underaged marriages. But, these things aren't the same. And, as I pointed out, for a huge chunk of Christianity (both today and in the past), there has been a belief that Mary was not a young teenager when she was married to Joseph ...

Anyway, saved that too soon ...

Sisters at the Well is not an academic work. It is not a scholarly work. It is a faith promoting work, and the quote you provide doesn't deal with the age of Mary at the conception of Jesus, but at the time of her betrothal (usually a year or more before she would have moved in with Joseph). The same is true for the other authors you provide. Why not provide me with something from an academic or scholarly press (that last one you quote from is published by a vanity press).

Edited December 13, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[webbles]

5 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

True, but it is awfully hard to prosecute on the basis of belief outside of certain (usually professional) contexts. Some very specific areas are detailed in the Arizona law that wouldn't apply to the vast majority of mandatory reporters - like this one:

That's pretty specific.

I think that historically, criminal prosecutions were really uncommon (and usually unsuccessful). In recent years, some high profile events (Jerry Sandusky for example) and the aftermath of those high profile events have encouraged institutions where specific mandatory reporting requirements exist to place more emphasis on reporting and training - the criminal issues probably had less impact than the threat of fiscal penalties in civil suits. The impact is that institutions are generally (its improving over time) much more responsive to reports. Additionally, at least in my personal experience, organizations have become more inclined to avoid trying to keep investigations internal - they turn over the report and relevant information to regulatory and law enforcement agencies quickly (even if they continue their own investigation at the same time). In my organization, we have our first report turned into state agencies within a couple of hours of a report being made to us - whether we believe it can be corroborated or not. This is followed by at least two additional submissions within regulated time frames containing the documentation we can provide into the incident (interviews, video footage, etc.). Our regulatory and law enforcement agencies then decide whether or not to do their own investigation (they are generally required to do so before they can act on a report).

In short, what has really changed in recent years is that if someone claims to have been abused, or claims to have witnessed that abuse and reports this in a professional context (to a mandatory reporter), the default position has shifted from discounting it to accepting it and acting on it. Not much has changed outside of those professional contexts - and I suspect that as far as prosecutions go (and I am not aware of any non-professional reporters being charged - but I don't have a lot of knowledge here) - these charges could be used in contexts where someone was clearly aware of abuse, but isn't directly liable for it. If for example, prosecutor's didn't think they could get a charge of child abuse to stick with Jodi Hildebrandt, they might have gone this route.

Do you think the push for "universal mandatory reporting" is worth it then?  Because you seem to focus only on professional mandatory reporters but the vast majority of people affected by universal mandatory reporters aren't professionals.  And the laws aren't really that specific.  For instance, Utah is a universal mandatory reporting state.  The law is https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title80/Chapter2/80-2-S602.html.  The things to report are:

Quote

has reason to believe that a child is, or has been, the subject of abuse or neglect, or observes a child being subjected to conditions or circumstances that would reasonably result in abuse or neglect

That's pretty generic.  If I have a "reason to believe", then I must report.  And if I fail to report, I can be convicted with a class B misdemeanor (https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title80/Chapter2/80-2-S609.html?v=C80-2-S609_2022050420220901).  I think that is up to 6 months in jail and/or $1000 fine.

Saying that the charges would only be used in obvious cases doesn't help.  A prosecutor can still threaten it and I'd still have to defend myself, which is more time and money.  Even if the prosecutor isn't successful, I'm still affected.  This happened in the child abuse case in Bisbee, AZ.  AZ isn't a universal mandatory state but they tried to argue that section A.5 in the law ("Any other person who has responsibility for the care or treatment of the minor.") encompassed the visiting teacher (as she was also the primary teacher).  It took months to argue that point and the judge finally ruled that she wasn't included in that section because the law was targeted to licensed professionals and she wasn't a licensed professional.

[Calm]

49 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

- separate the child bride issue from any historical context and evaluate it on its own merits.

No behaviour exists within an isolated case, without context though practically speaking.  Is there not an issue of loss of meaning if one does this?

[webbles]

24 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And, as I pointed out, for a huge chunk of Christianity (both today and in the past), there has been a belief that Mary was not a young teenager when she was married to Joseph

I'm surprised you believe that.  The Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1913, wrote:

Quote

When she was fourteen, the high priest wished to send her home for marriage. Mary reminded him of her vow of virginity, and in his embarrassment the high priest consulted the Lord. Then he called all the young men of the family of David, and promised Mary in marriage to him whose rod should sprout and become the resting place of the Holy Ghost in form of a dove. It was Joseph who was privileged in this extraordinary way.

...

Jewish maidens were considered marriageable at the age of twelve years and six months, though the actual age of the bride varied with circumstances. The marriage was preceded by the betrothal, after which the bride legally belonged to the bridegroom, though she did not live with him till about a year later, when the marriage used to be celebrated.

They are getting that from the Protevangelium of James which is a 2nd century text:

Quote

And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of the priests, saying: Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, test perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord?

...

And the priest said to Joseph, Thou hast been chosen by lot to take into thy keeping the virgin of the Lord. But Joseph refused, saying: I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl

I'd say the vast majority of Christian history, it was believed that Mary was a young teenager.  The earliest text we have that gives an actual age is from 2nd century and she is just a little over 12.

There's also a 4th century text (Sanhedrin (tractate)) that says marriage should happen shortly after puberty:

Quote

One who loves his wife as he loves himself, and who esteems her by giving her clothing and jewelry more than he esteems himself, and one who instructs his sons and daughters to follow an upright path, and who marries them to appropriate spouses adjacent to their reaching puberty, ensures that his home will be devoid of quarrel and sin.

 

[Calm]

51 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

We can describe marriage more broadly as fundamentally good.

But we do this by placing it in context, don’t we?  As in saying something like ‘in these circumstances marriage results in these positive benefits’. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

38 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Technically, one month after his Bar Mitzvah (Son of the Law) at age thirteen, a boy was considered to be of marriageable age

I wanted to follow up on this ..

Bar Mitzvah as a ceremony is first recorded in the 13th century in France. In the Old Testament, the age of majority is 20 years. That is, Leviticus 27 is the only passage in the Old Testament that divides up the stages of a man's life - and the adult part of his life starts at age 20. That this continues for quite some time in the history of Israel is evident in other references, e.g. - Num. 1:2-3, 18; 1 Chr. 27:23; 2 Chr. 25:5. But it is reasonably clear from the text that individuals don't become legal adults (and responsible to the requirements of the law as an adult) until they reach the age of 20. The idea of becoming a man at age 13 doesn't show up until Talmudic sources around the 11th or 12th centuries A.D.

You won't find any actual scholars using evidence like this to make these arguments ...

By comparison, when we start to look at scholarly sources, we might find this one (its a part of my collection):

Quote

Despite our inability to establish how "most" Jews married in antiquity, we can tease out a relatively complete picture of how the rabbis saw marital norms. The paradigmatic marriage was the first one between a man and a woman. In Palestine and the West, a man married when he was around thirty to a woman ten to fifteen years younger. By waiting until he was thirty a man was able to establish a household, the crucial assumption underlying Palestinian and Western marital ideology. (132)

Earlier there is a long discussion about the sources. But the gist of it is that the popular sources that are most often invoked in popular discussions of this question are those that are pushing for a different marriage practice, not documenting what was actually going on. Consider this:

Quote

When one looks at sources other than those that explicitly moralize about age at marriage or those that implicitly portray a caustic norm, things look very different. There is much data, supplied incidentally, that suggests that Jews in Palestine and the Western Diaspora married at higher ages than the sources surveyed above might like. Despite the Palestinian prescriptions for men to marry by the age of twenty, those other sources suggest that thirty was a more usual age for men to marry. The book of Jubilees consistently portrays the biblical patriarchs as marrying relatively late, even when not compelled to do so by the biblical account. Abram is 49 when he marries Sarai, and Jacob is 76(!) when he marries Leah. In their respective Testaments, Levi is said to have married "young," that is, at 28, and Issachar at 30. Josephus himself apparently married for the first time when he was around 30. Philo thinks that the proper age of marriage is between 28 and 35, and for support appeals to a fragment attributed to Solon. The epigraphical record is small and ambiguous, but it does not testify to any early male marriage among Jews in Palestine. There is no evidence that Jewish men who lived in the Greek and Roman worlds regularly married for the first time before their mid- to late twenties.
...
There is even less evidence regarding female age at marriage. As noted, the overwhelming impression given in the legal sources is that fathers betrothed their daughters while they were still minors. Without doubt, this happened. We do not know, however, how often it happened. Several sources indicate that the practice was not universal. A survey of epitaphs of Jewish women from late antiquity reveals relatively few women who married in their early teens (all from a single Jewish graveyard in Rome), with far more marrying in their mid-teens or later: not a single Jewish inscription from antiquity records a woman married while under twelve years old. A twenty-year-old Jewish woman from Egypt who died while, apparently betrothed, is described as "ripe for marriage like a rose in a garden nurtured by fresh rain." Some of the literature from the Second Temple period assumes that women were old enough to be involved in choosing a mate. In Joseph and Aseneth, Aseneth is actively involved in choosing Joseph. Rabbinic legal sources themselves hint that (many?) women married on their own initiative. Rabbinic law concerning "blemishes" in the bride, for example, assumes that women married when they were at least old enough to be looked over. ... (105-107)

The evidence that we have would suggest that it would have been completely normal for Mary to have been as old as 20. The chances of her being even older are probably just as likely as the chances of her being thirteen or fourteen years old. The push to make Mary young comes out of text that are trying to 'explicitly moralize about the age of marriage.' And, of course, Jews along with their neighbors in the diaspora tended to marry younger or later depending on a geographical context - eastern European Jews married earlier, western European Jews married later. My point, however, remains the same. Once you start dealing with actual scholarly research and publications, you stop seeing all of this about a thirteen or fourteen year old Mary. That idea is possible - but it isn't exactly probable. And I think that the efforts to use those ages as a way of bolstering the appropriateness of child marriage today are more than a little revolting (which I recognize does not describe you).

[Benjamin McGuire]

48 minutes ago, webbles said:

Do you think the push for "universal mandatory reporting" is worth it then?

I think that it's problematic. I think that one of our struggles is that we don't have a way of making sure that all of our children encounter some sort of mandatory reporter regularly. On the one hand, we try to do this by making educators mandatory reporters, but then we see some of the more heinous abuses occurring with children who are too young to be in school or who are allegedly home schooled (this is not meant to denigrate home schooling). As I noted very early on, it is difficult to walk that line between privacy in the family and the need for the public sphere to protect children (and elders). When we move mandatory reporting beyond professionals, we generate a lot more uncorroborated reports - but at the same time, roughly twenty percent of corroborated abuse reports come from these non-professional mandatory reporters. That's a pretty large number. There is always a matter of cost - but part of our problem has always been providing resources to marginalized groups.  I think that whatever we do with mandatory reporting, if we are really committed to reducing abuse, we need to work towards dealing with risk factors - including working to overcome poverty and working to find ways to make marriages more appealing to our youth (I have written on this more than a little bit).

The thing about universal mandatory reporting is that it doesn't come with a price tag - and this makes it appealing to legislators. And if we could add some resources to the process (whether that means more investigators or public awareness campaigns or whatever) then I think that we would have better outcomes. I am hesitant to back away from universal mandatory reporting because that sends the wrong messages I think - and I think that the resources we have generally will not be able to find those twenty percent that will get lost.

[Benjamin McGuire]

24 minutes ago, Calm said:

But we do this by placing it in context, don’t we?  As in saying something like ‘in these circumstances marriage results in these positive benefits’. 

I don't think so. Marriage (although the term itself has a lot of connotations that might not be helping here) has what we might consider fundamental properties. On the other hand contextual benefits would include things like tax issues - which are unevenly applied to marriages in the US - some people are advantaged by them and some people are disadvantaged by them. When we look at the fundamental nature of things, we need to get rid of all the extraneous stuff. What is it that a marriage is - a definition of sorts that encompasses what we would consider a marriage to be. Are these fundamental outcomes good? Are they bad?

This isn't quite analogous to my question about underage marriage because there is, in the term, already a comparison. What is good that comes from getting married as a child that wouldn't come with getting married as an adult? What is the good or the bad that is exclusive in this context to child marriage. We don't want to deal with circumstances that are subjective - where we can say, well, in this situation, getting married at 14 is a good choice - because it is dependent on that situation. We don't want to deal with a situation where it would be bad based on the situation either. We want to eliminate the situational parts of it. When we do this, we are closer to the fundamental nature of the thing.

From my perspective, there are a number of things that I could say that are fundamentally positive about marriage as an adult. There is nothing that I can see that is fundamentally positive about child brides.

[Danzo]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am not asking you to show that it is fundamentally good. What I am asking is this - separate the child bride issue from any historical context and evaluate it on its own merits. We can do this with all sorts of things. We can describe marriage more broadly as fundamentally good. The question is, what is there that is good about having child marriages? If you can provide any good at all, then it isn't fundamentally bad. I am suggesting that there is nothing good about child marriage when it stands on its own merits apart from any social or cultural contexts. And given that there is nothing good about it, it becomes fundamentally bad.

Saying that it is fundamentally bad doesn't mean that it was wrong in every historical context - sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils (as someone else put it). But that still makes it the lesser of two evils.

I am just curious if you can find anything good to say about child brides that doesn't come in a historical context in which it is only better than something worse.

I provided an example of something good that came from a child marriage. Really good.  Sealed in the Temple good (when they joined the church later in life).  Still Good (marriage is still strong). 

[Danzo]

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

But, to go back to your point - what if, the certain practices are in fact evil? Shouldn't we call the police (or whoever)? And if we don't, aren't we complicit in the problem?

The problem is that calling the police often doesn't make things better, it can make things worse. 

Our government has never really done a good job at taking care of children in their custody.

 

A few years ago I worked a bit with a woman in our ward who was prostituting her children for drugs.

The police were called.

The children were taken away and then . . . guess what happened? 

The children were brought back when the woman showed remorse and guess what happened?

Same thing.  wash. rinse. repeat.

People in our ward wanted to take the children in to take care of them but just didn't have the heart to do it only to return then children back to the mother, who according to state has a special right to them.

 

 

 

 

 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am not asking you to show that it is fundamentally good. What I am asking is this - separate the child bride issue from any historical context and evaluate it on its own merits. We can do this with all sorts of things. We can describe marriage more broadly as fundamentally good. The question is, what is there that is good about having child marriages? If you can provide any good at all, then it isn't fundamentally bad. I am suggesting that there is nothing good about child marriage when it stands on its own merits apart from any social or cultural contexts. And given that there is nothing good about it, it becomes fundamentally bad.

Saying that it is fundamentally bad doesn't mean that it was wrong in every historical context - sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils (as someone else put it). But that still makes it the lesser of two evils.

I am just curious if you can find anything good to say about child brides that doesn't come in a historical context in which it is only better than something worse.

It can't be evaluated on its own merits though.  Context is everything.  It's like you are asking me to separate having sex from all context and evaluate whether it's good or bad on it's own merits.  That's impossible though because context is what determines whether it is good or bad.

I think in the vast majority of contexts, marrying very young is bad--detrimental to those involved--but I don't think that's true for all contexts.  And that's why I can't judge it as fundamentally (which is to say inherently, intrinsically, elementally) bad. 

It has no merits outside of the merit that context gives it, so it cannot be evaluated on its own merits.

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

48 minutes ago, webbles said:

They are getting that from the Protevangelium of James which is a 2nd century text:

And we find it in Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine (and probably other places). There is a lengthy section on this in Raymond Brown's Birth of the Messiah starting around p. 303. Granted, the idea of Mary taking a perpetual vow of virginity doesn't require that she is older, but, as Brown points out in this context:

Quote

there is nothing that would explain why a twelve-year-old girl would have entered marriage with the intention to preserve virginity and thus not to have children. (304)

Brown describes the development of the idea in this way:

Quote

Such a theory became popular as part of a belief that Mary remained a virgin all her life, even after the birth of Jesus. It presupposes that her marriage with Joseph was a mutually agreed upon marriage of convenience in which he had agreed to respect her resolve of virginity and to lend her the protection of marriage, lest she be annoyed by more ardent suitors. To support this picture Joseph is portrayed as an elderly widower, in harmony with his statement in the Protevangelium of James 9:2: "I already have sons and am old, but she is a girl." This approach flourished at a time when Christian women were entering ascetic or monastic orders to live a celibate life; and so it was even proposed that Mary made a vow of virginity as if she were a nun. The oldest attestation of the vow theory in the East is Gregory of Nyssa in 386 (PG 1l40D-1l41A), but it spread to the West through Ambrose and Augustine and became the classic interpretation of 1:34. (304)

This leads to the current doctrines on the perpetual virginity of Mary (the vow is optional).

[Benjamin McGuire]

24 minutes ago, Danzo said:

I provided an example of something good that came from a child marriage. Really good.  Sealed in the Temple good (when they joined the church later in life).  Still Good (marriage is still strong). 

No, you didn't.

In fact, there is nothing that is better about that marriage than a marriage that happens that isn't a child marriage. You provide a context in which you said:

8 hours ago, Danzo said:

The marriage took her out of a circumstance of deprivation and neglect. 

And that is the sort of particular example that we need to avoid - because it isn't the child marriage itself that is good or bad on it's own, it is the context that made it good.

[Benjamin McGuire]

12 minutes ago, Danzo said:

The problem is that calling the police often doesn't make things better, it can make things worse. 

And? This isn't a valid reason not to involve the appropriate authorities when we believe something bad is happening. There is no doubt that from time to time (even frequently) involving law enforcement can make things messier. Law enforcement is not there to be friendly. But, they also make things better. If there is actual abuse, then law enforcement needs to be involved. You seem to be trying to say that the potential false positives outweigh the benefits of the real positives.

15 minutes ago, Danzo said:

Our government has never really done a good job at taking care of children in their custody.

Undoubtedly. But, they still do a lot better job than our worst offenders out there, don't they. Let's not try to confuse the issue here.

15 minutes ago, Danzo said:

People in our ward wanted to take the children in to take care of them but just didn't have the heart to do it only to return then children back to the mother, who according to state has a special right to them.

Yep. And a good thing too. The problem with using exceptional situations is that you don't have to deal with the implications of your own statements. What would happen if mothers did not have a special right to their children?

[Benjamin McGuire]

15 minutes ago, bluebell said:

It can't be evaluated on its own merits though.  Context is everything.  It's like you are asking me to separate having sex from all context and evaluate whether it's good or bad on it's own merits.  That's impossible though because context is what determines whether it is good or bad.

This isn't true.

What makes something fundamental is that it applies all the time - and not just in a particular context. There is no doubt that sex in some contexts is good and in some contexts is bad - but those contexts don't reflect on the fundamental nature of sex because they aren't there all the time.

Sex is good (assuming you mean the physical act and not gender) because it is a biological mechanism for reproduction. The continuance of our species is a good thing - and we are built in a way that encourages this. And of course, we think that it is important enough that we (in our culture and society) have declared it a constitutional right under the 14th amendment. On the other hand, the fact that it can be good or bad in other ways depending on context suggests that in those circumstances, the context is important - and so cannot be considered a fundamental characteristic of sex ...

[Benjamin McGuire]

25 minutes ago, bluebell said:

It has no merits outside of the merit that context gives it, so it cannot be evaluated on its own merits.

I will simply take this a statement that you are really unwilling to try to do so. As I said, I cannot find something that is fundamentally good about underage marriage. And you haven't managed to convince me otherwise. We can end the discussion if you want.

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You have to take it from the text. It is the only source of biographical data that we have. And because it isn't the text, most scholars (contrary to your assertion) don't make guesses about the age of Mary at the time that Jesus was born. Now, there are certainly a lot of websites and a lot of blogs that are willing to make such statements - and it has certainly used by several recent southern legislators trying to defend underaged marriages. But, these things aren't the same. And, as I pointed out, for a huge chunk of Christianity (both today and in the past), there has been a belief that Mary was not a young teenager when she was married to Joseph ...

Anyway, saved that too soon ...

Sisters at the Well is not an academic work. It is not a scholarly work. It is a faith promoting work, and the quote you provide doesn't deal with the age of Mary at the conception of Jesus, but at the time of her betrothal (usually a year or more before she would have moved in with Joseph). The same is true for the other authors you provide. Why not provide me with something from an academic or scholarly press (that last one you quote from is published by a vanity press).

You really don't only have to take it from the text.  It would be dumb to ignore historical references and data.  All is useful.  

Here's an article discussing a presentation by Tirzah Meacham, associate professor of near and Middle Eastern civilizations at the University of Toronto, discussion (among other things) Jewish marriage during Talmudic times.  She says:

The multitude of mishnaic and Toseftim texts that discuss issues related to the marriage of female minors – including virginity, hymeneal and menstrual blood – indicate, Meacham argued, that “we must conclude that marriage of younger girls existed in the mishnaic and talmudic periods.”

She said the typical age of betrothal, if not marriage, was probably before 12-1/2. After that age, a father lost the authority to annul his daughter’s vows and the legal right to her handiwork or profits she brought to the household, including the bride price.

“Because a father was obligated, at least morally, to provide a daughter’s dowry [even beyond age 12]… it’s likely that in situations of marginal economics, the father would use the bride price to help dower his daughter,” Meacham said. This means that families not part of elite or rabbinic circles likely married off daughters before 13, and rabbinic discussion suggests that even some in the latter camp sometimes did.