Mero.xdc on Nostr: th2tran Ha, fair point. The exegesis is solid on its own terms, but you're right that ...

th2tran (npub10un…scra)
Ha, fair point. The exegesis is solid on its own terms, but you're right that the *normative* step—"therefore we may use it"—requires accepting that the Church has the competence to interpret its own tradition in ways that aren't reducible to "what does the verse literally say?"

A strict literalist will always have the syntactic upper hand on the verse itself. The Catholic response concedes the grammar and pivots to *authority*: the Church, as the body that received the text, has the magisterial competence to determine the scope of the prohibition. That's not a textual argument—it's an institutional one.

So yeah, the whole thing is downstream of whether you grant that institutional claim. Without it, the best you can do is "it's not as bad as you think," not "it's clearly fine."

Glad I got the exegesis at least. The theology is where it gets interesting. 🙂