Questions | Contest Main Page

Virtue, Vice, and Everything (Not-So) Nice

Classically Bent

  1. Most classical authors recognized four virtues; what were they?
    temperance, prudence/practical wisdom, courage, justice

  2. Who was Heliogobalus, and what did he do with the Golden Bull? (Roman emperor; burned slaves placed inside of bull to entertain orgy guests)

  3. What is Euthyphro's dilemma?
    Is the something god-loved because it is holy or holy because it is god-loved?

  4. The Roman lyric poet Catullus responded to two of his critics, Furius and Aurelius, with a poem that begins, "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo." What does this mean?
    loosely: "I will inflict anal and oral vengeance upon you."

  5. The earliest Romans faced a terrible problem; in solving this problem, they incurred the wrath of the neighboring Sabines. What was the problem, and how did they solve it?
    Lack of wives; invited the Sabines to a giant festival, killed the men and raped the women

  6. The Greek word for 'virtue' is drawn from the name of which deity?
    Ares, the god of war; the word is 'arete'

Catholic Firsts

  1. Who was the first...

    1. Christian martyr?
      St. Stephen

    2. Christian emperor?
      Constantine

    3. eremitic monk?
      St. Antony

    4. stigmatic?
      St. Francis

  2. What does EWTN stand for?
    Eternal World Television Network; the Global Catholic Network

We've met our Peoples and Cultures Requirements

  1. Give the more commonly known name of the Aryan Truth of Stopping and list its components.
    The Eight-Fold Path: right view of understanding, right aspiration/thought/purpose, right speech, right action, right mode of livelihood, right endeavor, right mindfulness, and right concentration

  2. What prophet was responsible for the abolition of all the gods in the Persian pantheon except for Ahura Mazda, the one great god?
    Zoroaster

  3. The worship of which Sumerian goddess, a consort of Yahweh, often included cultic prostitution?
    Asherah

Moral Legislation and Reform

  1. Arnold of Brescia and Hildebrand were leading critics of unvirtuous priests during the Middle Ages. What did the Catholic Church do to each of them?
    Arnold was hanged; Hildebrand was made Pope

  2. What are the two conditions under which Catholic priests may have wives?
    Priests in Africa, who need wives to be considered 'real men'; previously married Episcopal preists who convert to Catholicism

  3. When Queen Victoria signed into law an edict banning the male homosexual act, she was asked why no such provision was made for women. What was her response, and when was this act repealed?
    "Women don't do such things"; 1967

  4. King Louis IX of France, in an attempt to curb a common vice, prohibited within his kingdom the production of what?
    dice

  5. Which orders of the Catholic Church were initially charged with carrying out the Inquisition?
    the Franciscans and Dominicans, or Order of Friars Minor and Order of Preachers

General Questions

  1. In Book I of Edmund Spence's The Faire Queene, Redcrosse knight visits the palace of Pride. While there, he sees the carriage of Lucifera (Queen of Pride), which is drawn by six beasts, each of which is ridden by a personification of another of the deadly sins. Name the beasts and the personified sin riding each one.
    idleness/sloth, ass; gluttony, swine; lechery, goat; avarice, camel; envy, wolf; wrath, lion

  2. In 1114, the bishop of Soissons made a shocking declaration concerning sexual pleasure; what did he claim?
    that sexual pleasure was a punishment resulting from original sin

  3. What do the initials C. and S. of Anglican theologian and moralist C. S. Lewis stand for?
    Clive Staples

  4. Who are the two individuals, one male and one female, currently closest to canonization (i.e. being made into saints) by the Roman Catholic Church, and what two criteria need they (and all other saints) demonstrate to be canonized?
    Padre Pio and Blessed Sister Faustina; peformance of miracles, evidence of heroic virtue

  5. Who argued that moral virtue is a mean between extremes?
    Aristotle

  6. For what do we know Karol Wojtyla?
    he's Pope John Paul II

  7. Renowned Medieval scholar Peter Abelard impregnated the daughter of a Parisian bishop; how did the bishop respond when Abelard proposed a secret marriage?
    he had Abelard mutilated

President's Corner(ed)

  1. Two United States presidents have had their alleged mistresses die under mysterious circumstances. Name the presidents and their lovers.
    James Buchanan, Anne Coleman: Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer

  2. Which presidents have allegedly fathered illegitimate children?
    Washington, Jefferson, Cleveland, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton

  3. Which president repeatedly made love to a young woman from his hometown in a White House closet while the secret service prevented his wife from entering?
    Warren G. Harding

  4. Which vice-president (and later president) was angered because he felt that his own sexual conquests were greater than those attributed to his predecessor?
    Lyndon Johnson

Notable Quotables

  1. "If I dwell at some length on the tremors and gropings of that distant night, it is because I insist on proving that I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel. The gentle and dreamy regions through which I crept were the patrimonies of poets-not crime's prowling ground."
    Nabokov, in Lolita

  2. "The most dangerous are those that involve violence and sexual violence... until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far. You reachthat jump-off point where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it will give you that which is beyond just reading about it or looking at it."
    Ted Bundy

  3. "Oh Lord, make me chaste... just not yet."
    St. Augustine

  4. "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose."
    J. R. Oppenheimer

  5. "Just like God prattles on in the Bible: 'thou shalt not' blah, blah, blah..."
    Bryan Frederick

  6. "Cocaine isn't addictive. I should know; I've been doing it for years!"
    Tallulah Bankhead

  7. "I would rather have one hundred un-natural vices than one un-natural virtue."
    Oscar Wilde

  8. "We can't do drugs, Keith [Richards]; you did them all!"
    Dennis Leary

  9. "In dwelling, live close to the ground.
    In thinking, keep to the simple.
    In conflict, be fair and generous.
    In governing, don't try to control.
    In work, do what you enjoy.
    In family life, be completely present."
    Lao-Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching

  10. "The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly."
    Sigmund Freud

  11. "Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Stinging Mad" (describe context for full credit)
    New York Daily News headline after the June 27, 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn

  12. "I would only believe in a God who could dance."
    Nietzsche

  13. "You all smoke this sh*t so's to escape from reality? Me, I don't need this sh*t. I am reality."
    Platoon

  14. "I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven't had time for tobacco since."
    Arturo Toscanini

  15. "Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."
    Mae West

Longer Answers

  1. From the perspective of...
    a) ... a Pentecostal Christian...
    or
    b) ... a member of the Taliban...
    ... briefly but explicitly explain why everyone else is damned and you're not.

  2. Rank the following beverages by increasing alcoholic content (for wines, estimate the industry average).

  3. Briefly describe the procedure for taking a bong hit.

  4. You are a man who is attracted to other men; briefly describe your mode of dress and your favorite haunts, as well as society's attitude toward you, in one of the following:
    a) Athens, circa fourth century BCE
    b) New York high society of the 'roaring 20's'
    c) San Francisco in the late 1970's