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*Image: Abraham and Three Angels by Marc Chagall,1966 [Musée Marc Chagall, Nice, France]

By Michael Pakaluk,The Catholic Thing, Jan. 5, 2022

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His acclaimed book on the Gospel of Mark is The Memoirs of St Peter. His new book, Mary’s Voice in the Gospel of John: A New Translation with Commentary, is now available.

Friends: This is the last day to enroll in the five-week course on St. Augustine’s Confessions that begins this evening. If you want to make contact with one of the great minds and hearts of our Catholic tradition, please click here for enrollment information. We think you will be very glad that you did. – Robert Royal

 

Michael PakalukThe Four Gospels in the canonical arrangement begin with Matthew. And Matthew’s Gospel begins with sex.

It’s not a “genealogy.” All those fumbling sermons notwithstanding by pastors trying to find something to say about, “A was the father of B, and B was the father of C, and C was the father of D” and so on and so forth. Those strange Semitic names are hard to pronounce, but “show the fallen race we come from and our need to be redeemed.” Or, “just look at the adulterers and prostitutes in his family!” Or, “how gracious that some women were included!” All of these efforts, however well-intentioned, are based on poor translations and our own impoverished ideas about sex.

The truth, as I see it, is that the Gospels begin with sex. This should be enticing, not tedious, and even something one would want to be a little discrete about. …

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