Patrick O'Donnell sent me this review, which appeared in Santa Barbara's weekly paper, "The Independent."
The Ultimate Transport
By Special to The Independent
Originally published 12:00 p.m., March 1, 2007
Updated 03:19 p.m., March 1, 2007
An Essay on Into Great Silence
By Pico Iyer
It begins as a shock. A hooded figure is seated in the dark, so close to us he might be a piece of wood. Flames flicker here and there against a field of black. We pull back and see a figure in all white, head down, in a bare room. There’s no patter, no background music, very little movement. The camera breathes it all in in long, unswerving takes. You’ve entered another world in this silent, snowbound cluster of small cells. Each unworldly shot is a still life that says there’s still life — vibrant, shifting, human life — in this other world; the only thing that’s likely to move is you.
And very slowly, as the scenes go on — pealing bells, a monk carefully snipping some fabric, another one reading a book — you begin to see the textures in the wood, to notice the slanting of the light, to make out sunlight and birdsong as you would never do at home. The film starts to work on you — and in you, too — as its subject might. You feel a clock ticking, a bee buzzing all around you. The sound of monks gathering for prayer is thunderous. And then one of them breaks into song and the sound is ineffably sweet.
Into Great Silence (or The Great Stillness, as its title was in German) is like no other movie you’ve ever seen, though it has some of the slow attentiveness of a Terrence Malick epic, something of Andrei Tarkovsky’s uncompromising intensity. It is more a meditation than a film, really, a 162-minute observation of life in La Grande Chartreuse, a charterhouse of the Carthusian order of Catholic monks in the French Alps. There is no story, no script, and certainly very little in the way of characterization. Some viewers may run out screaming, as from a Noh drama, hungry for movement and color of a more conventional kind. Others will find it moves them as a prayer might; till a heart of stone, as the film puts it, until it becomes a heart of flesh.
The documentary, directed by Philip Gröning (who waited 16 years for a green light from the monks, and then was allowed to come in alone and live with them for several months, shooting and recording by himself with no artificial light), was called “exhilarating” by Variety, and “entrancing” by the New York Times. It won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and was nominated for a European Film Award. …
For the rest, click here.
Friday, June 1, 2007
I posted on Brownback's op-ed yesterday over at dotCommonweal (I didn't cross-post because I thought it might not be sufficiently legal). I'm glad to say that Rick and I are largely on the same page regarding the op-ed (thogh likely not regarding Brownback more generally).
In defense of Brownback, Michael says:
Does he believe that God used a macroevolutionary process to get us to where we are today?
In short, Brownback doesn't fail to follow the evidence where it
leads, he refuses at this point to enter that debate. Or, at least
that is my reading of it.
But surely this is the debate that people care about, right? I hesitate to even use the word "debate" in this context, because for people who accept mainstream standards of scientific inquiry, there is no real debate about the reality of so-called macroevolution, as John Paul II ackwnowledged a decade ago. Brownback sidesteps the main issue by creating a false dichotomy between an aggressively athiest, scientistic materialism and microevolution, as if those were the only options worth discussing. That strikes me as either obtuse or disingenuous, but he parses his words carefully enough to make me favor the latter reading. So I guess I am in complete agreement with Rick that Brownback was trying to have his cake (i.e., seem like a rational sort of fellow to the readers of the NY Times by seeming to approve of some form of evolution) and eat it too (not alienate his base in the evangelical, intelligent design community). By quietly limiting his approval to microevolution (one of the central tenets of the intelligent design position) without actually mentioning intelligent design, and by dodging the most important question, he was hoping to sneak a fast one by people who are not plugged into to the code-words of the intelligent design discussion.
Last night I went to see the film "Into Great Silence," which is playing through the weekend at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. More an experience than a documentary film, the filmmaker does an excellent job of bringing to the screen the lives of the Carthusian Monks at the Grande Chartreuse, which was founded by St. Bruno in 1084. Philip Groning, the filmmaker, wrote the prior of the Grand Chartreuse in 1984 asking permission to do the film. Sixteen years later they responded, giving him permission.
The film is 162 minutes long and mostly silent. I overheard one person coming out of the theatre say that he liked it but that the movie was too long. For me, it was just right because it took me a long time to get quiet. For the first 20 or 30 minutes of the film my whole being was rebelling against the quiet. I wanted to fill my head with some noise, some distraction, or with sleep. After this initial - and quite unexpected - reaction, my body, mind, and spirit relaxed, allowing me to enter into the rhythm of the film. The film is causing me to reflect on my own prayer life, which includes 20 to 30 minutes of quiet most mornings. If I fill the rest of my day with noise - immediate and remote - then all or most of my formal morning prayer time will be spent fighting the silence. Hmm!
After the movie, we came home and supported the monks by drinking their Chartreuse.
Paul Horwitz, at Prawfsblawg, has a post up about Kimberly Yuracko's new paper, which argues that the state has an obligation to make sure that home-schooling parents provide children with (what she regards as) a basic, appropriately liberal education. Paul invites the reactions of MOJ readers and bloggers, so head on over to Prawfsblawg and comment!
Here is a sample of Paul's post:
Kimberly Yuracko, at Northwestern Law School, has just posted on SSRN a fascinating and provocative paper titled Illiberal Education: Constitutional Constraints on Homeschooling. Here's the abstract:
Homeschooling in America is no longer a fringe phenomenon. Estimates indicate that well over a million children are currently being homeschooled. Although homeschoolers are a diverse group, the homeschooling movement has come to be defined and dominated by its fundamentalist Christian majority many of whom choose to homeschool in order to shield their children from secular influences and liberal values. In response to political pressure from this group states are increasingly abdicating control and oversight over homeschooling. Modern day homeschooling raises then in stark form questions about the obligations that states have toward children being raised in illiberal subgroups. Surprisingly, the legal and philosophical issues raised by homeschooling have been almost entirely ignored by scholars.
This paper seeks to begin to fill this void by making a novel constitutional argument. The paper relies on federal state action doctrine and state constitution education clauses to argue that states must — not may or should — regulate homeschooling to ensure that parents provide their children with a basic minimum education and check rampant forms of sexism. This paper argues, in other words, that while there is an upper limit on how much states can constitutionally regulate and control children's education, there is a lower limit as well. There is a minimum level of regulation and oversight over children's education that states may not with constitutional impunity avoid.
It is extensively researched and elaborately argued, and is well worth a read by those with a variety of constitutional interests: in state action doctrine, in constitutional enforcement, and certainly those with an interest in law and education and (although more on this later) law and religion. (Take it away, MOJ!) Yuracko makes a reasonably convincing argument on policy grounds that the states and Congress have abdicated a "duty," of some sort, to ensure that homeschooling meets at least miminal educational desiderata, at least through a reasonable testing mechanism.
Her broader argument that this is, in fact, constitutionally required, is far more contentious and deserves attention, if only to tease out the implications of the piece. For instance, once having attempted to bring homeschooling under the constitutional umbrella, Yuracko argues that the state is constitutionally obligated to ensure that homeschoolers do not treat girls differently from boys. If it's a question of ensuring equal resources, this is a less controversial move, if you buy the initial moves that turn homeschooling into a constitutionally relevant area in the first place.
But she also argues that the state may be obliged to "preclude the teaching of certain counterfactual claims such as the natural superiority and inferiority of the races or the danger to women's health of intellectual development. In addition, the basic minimum [educational standard required by the state and federal constitutions] may limit the extent to which parents may teach their children idiosyncratic and illiberal beliefs and values without labeling or framing them as such." So, in Yuracko's argument, there is a constitutional obligation for the state to ensure not just that homeschooled kids receive at least a minimally competent education, but also to ensure that they receive at least a minimally liberal education. That is controversial.
Given the breadth of the argument, which surely could apply not just to questions of race and gender but also questions of what moral or religious lessons children are being taught, I might have expected a good deal more discussion of any countervailing First Amendment speech or religion claims here, although the paper's cup already runneth over. And this little statement, tucked away early on, should also be provocative to readers on MOJ and elsewhere: the paper "highlights the legal distinctness of parents and children and emphasizes that parental control over children's basic education flows from the state (rather than vice versa)." . . .
On your way over to Prawfsblawg to comment, stop here and pick up Michael Scaperlanda's essay, "Producing Trousered Apes," and maybe also my own, "Taking Pierce Seriously: The Family, Religious Education, and Harm to Children."
I think Sen. Brownback's statement affirming belief in "microevolution" and rejecting an "exclusively materialistic" macroevolution is more nuanced than Rick suggests. He answers two questions about evolution but is silent on the third, neither asking nor answering it. 1) He believes "microevolution" to be true. And, from my limited understanding of science all reasonable people must believe this just as they must believe that the earth is not flat because it has been proved by observation. 2) He doesn't believe in an exclusively materialistic evolution. This seems to be a reasonable position. Even Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist and evangelist for atheism) called macroevolution a "blind watchmaker." A watchmaker because the evidence seems to suggest design (his observation) but blind because there really is no design (his philosophical or theological commitment). (I am doing this from memory so open myself up for correction on both what he said and my understanding of what he said). 3) Brownback doesn't ask or answer the question that could get him into political trouble no matter how he answers it (assuming he has an answer): Does he believe that God used a macroevolutionary process to get us to where we are today?
In short, Brownback doesn't fail to follow the evidence where it leads, he refuses at this point to enter that debate. Or, at least that is my reading of it.
I have never met Sen. Brownback, but I respect him, and tend to like his "pro-life, whole-life" package of views. (He is willing to question capital punishment, he does not demagogue on immigration, he's good on aid-to-Africa, Darfur, and international religious freedom, etc.). I was disappointed, though, by his recent op-ed in the New York Times, "What I Think About Evolution."
Now, it is perfectly understandable that the Senator was frustrated by the (inane) questioning during the first "debate" among the Republican presidential hopefuls. And, it is entirely appropriate for him to insist that the answer to the question "who believes in evolution?" should involve "nuance and subtlety," and that the question itself (that is, the way it was posed) did a "disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason." This sounds just fine to me:
People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart.
But then there's this:
If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.
I'm not a trained scientist, and so I'm open to correction on this, but my understanding is that Sen. Brownback's professed embrace of "reason" requires more than "simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species[.]" Maybe the Senator is trying, in his op-ed, to simultaneously (a) assure the New York Times that he is not an ignoramus and (b) assure those Christians for whom it is important that evolution involve no more than "small changes over time within a species" of his bona fides, but I hope not.
What's this have to do with our "Catholic legal theory" project? Maybe this: The foundational claim for us, I think, is that there is a truth about the human person, and that moral truth is accessible and built into all that is. This claim requires, I take it, that it not be the case that the world is only matter in motion. At the same time, it seems to me -- again, I'm open to correction here -- that a project which purports to have truth as its touchstone simply has no room for Sen. Brownback's stated view on "microevolution," a view that appears to reflect a refusal to follow the evidence where it leads. (To be sure, Sen. Brownback is hardly the only politician, nor are anti-evolution Christians the only people in today's world, who refuse(s) to follow evidence where it leads. Still . . . .).
