Sunday, January 20, 2008
Jack Balkin reports that the new Great Wall of China -- i.e., its Internet-filtering systems -- is not blocking Mirror of Justice. Why the heck not, I wonder? Are we doing something wrong? Note to the PRC: We are subversive! Maybe this will get us blocked: Freedom! Jesus! Three-kid familes! Yao Ming is not that good!
There. That should do it.
I would like to thank the Michaels, Perry and Scaperlanda, for providing the catalyst for this contribution. I am further grateful to Michael S. for his thoughtful post which contained a portion of Archbishop Chaput’s letter On Human Life. Here I would like to indicate that I was indeed born when the encyclical was issued by Pope Paul VI; moreover, I know Michael P. was because I saw him on campus during this time. Now the readership of MOJ know that we are both over the age of forty by more than just a few years.
I would like to begin my commentary of today with some remarks directed toward Elena Curti’s The Tablet article cited by Michael P. First of all, it is unclear on what evidence Ms. Curti relies in her claim that Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae “is barely heeded by many Catholics in the West.” I cannot dispute the possibility that some folks who consider themselves Catholic do not honor the encyclical’s instruction, but I wonder if that is the only teaching of the Church that they do not follow? It seems that most of us are sinners, and there are times in our lives when we do not follow a host of the Church’s teachings on a wide variety of subjects. However, I think it possible that people labor to obey Church teachings and succeed on some occasions but fail on others. A remarkable thing about human free will is that we make the decision to do what we should do and avoid what we should not do. We choose whether we are in a state of grace or a state of sin. Neither God nor the Church forces us to do something against our will. But the question remains: is the exercise of our will in accord with what God and his holy Church teach?
This brings me to a second point made in the Curti essay. She asserts that some couples may be disobeying the Church’s teachings against artificial contraception, and she may well be correct. They exercise their freedom in accord with the subjective standard of their “inner voice” and little beyond it. That The Tablet is a British publication does not diminish the fact that there are some people across the globe who likely subscribe to the kind of liberty described by Ms. Curti and defined by Justice Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and the mystery of human life.” But this subjectively formulated sense of liberty insulates the human person from any objective determinant of what is right and what is wrong. However, the exercise of this form of freedom does not diminish the Church’s authority; it ignores it because of an exaggerated mode of liberty that can ultimately be self-destructive. It is self-destructive because sooner or later individually determined conceptions of the meaning of human existence and human life will confront and conflict with one another. While this type of liberty may be attractive to some people, it will inevitably lead to chaos. The wisdom of what the Church teaches, on the other hand, demonstrates how a person in communion with its teachings can avoid this collision and chaos.
My third point about Ms. Curti’s essay concerns her claim that because of its particular teaching about human sexuality and artificial contraception, the Church is “out of touch and lacking in compassion.” Is it? Is it really? While it may present challenges, as Michael S. points out, the Church’s teachings can be followed and be rewarding. I would like to add that the route chartered by Ms. Curti’s assertion leads to permissiveness, infidelity, and a false sense of invincibility against the harms of sexual activity outside of the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. Ms. Curti appears to be familiar with the argument that the Church’s teachings prevent an HIV/Aids infected spouse from having sex with the other spouse. Keeping in mind her thought, shouldn’t we then ask the question: how did the infected spouse become infected in the first place? Perhaps it was a tainted blood transfusion, but my suspicion is that it is usually something else—infidelity.
My fourth and final point is on the Curti essay’s claim that “The shock that greeted the encyclical was the greater because many Catholics had expected a reversal of the Church’s teaching.” The fact that Pope Pius XII may have approved the so-called rhythm method (or natural family planning) ought not to lead to the inevitable conclusion that approval of artificial contraception would follow. But Ms. Curti introduces further evidence to substantiate her claim: the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World—Gaudium et Spes. It indeed contains several paragraphs about married life and conjugal love, but Ms. Curti’s statement that this important text from the Second Vatican Council “which identified conjugal love and responsible parenthood as the pillars of married life” does not reinforce her claim that “[h]opes of reform had further been raised” by Gaudium et Spes. In fact, the text of this document from the Second Vatican Council supports a conclusion very different from the one suggested by Ms. Curti. In N. 51, the Council states,
the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honored with great reverence. Hence when there is question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature of the human person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love. Such a goal cannot be achieved unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practiced. Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law. All should be persuaded that human life and the task of transmitting it are not realities bound up with this world alone. Hence they cannot be measured or perceived only in terms of it, but always have a bearing on the eternal destiny of men.
Ms. Curti’s article reminds us about the work of the Pontifical Commission appointed by Pope Paul VI to study population issues. Amongst its members were two Jesuits who were also renowned professors of moral theology: John C. Ford, SJ who taught in the United States and Joseph Fuchs, SJ who taught in Rome. They held opposing views on the permissibility of the use of artificial contraception by Catholics. Michael P. has graciously reminded me in the past that other Jesuits appear to hold views different from those which I propose in my contributions to Mirror of Justice. It seems that times have not changed since the days of Fathers Ford and Fuchs. Since I need to conclude this post, I do so with the words of Pope Benedict XVI who recently sent a letter to the then Superior General of the Society of Jesus and to the members of the 35th General Congregation now meeting in Rome. The Pope reminded us of what it is to be a Jesuit:
The Church has even more need today of this fidelity of yours… in this era which warns of the urgency of transmitting in an integral manner to our contemporaries—distracted by many discordant voices—the unique and immutable message of salvation which is the Gospel, “not as the word of men, but as it truly is, as the word of God”, which works in those who believe. That this might come to pass, it is indispensable—as earlier the beloved John Paul II reminded the participants of the 34th General Congregation [1995]—that the life of the members of the Society of Jesus, as also their doctrinal research, be always animated by a true spirit of faith and communion in “humble fidelity to the teachings of the Magisterium.”
I for one try to remain faithful to this calling not because I am forced to but because I choose to. RJA sj
Michael P. reminds us that this year we observe the 40th anniversary of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. This encyclical reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s teaching that the unitive and procreative elements of sexual intercourse between husband and wife can not be separated; therefore, artificial methods of controlling births are illicit.
It is my understanding that Protestants and Catholics were united in their opposition to artificial birth control until the Anglicans created an exception in the 1930’s for married couples who had very grave reasons for wanting to prevent pregnancy. Within two or three generations, Protestants had largely forgotten that they ever had this in common with Catholics and many lay Catholics were ignoring their Church’s teaching.
For me, the central questions are these: Were the Protestant churches and many of the rank and file in the Catholic Church correct? Did this new understanding (especially after the technological changes that gave us the pill) of human sexuality and relationships correspond more closely to our human nature than the old understanding? Was the Magisterium of the Catholic Church merely behind the times, holding on to the past without any sound basis? Or, had humanity forgotten things that should not have been forgotten? Did the old teaching, which was preserved by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, hold truths about the human person, human sexuality, and human relationships that should not have been discarded?
As a late Baby-boomer (born 1960) growing up in a college town, I witnessed much of the upheaval of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I came of age in a time of great confusion in society and fluidity in the Church, and I got married at a young age in 1981. In short, these questions were not theoretical for me but very real and concrete as I (we) struggled to understand and follow the Church’s teaching on contraception.
I must admit that the understanding came very slowly. Archbishop Chaput’s pastoral letter ten years ago on the 30th anniversary greatly helped. A more complete understanding came only in the last few years, and here I have to credit my children who encouraged me to read Karol Wojtyla’s groundbreaking work Love and Responsibility and his later work (as John Paul the Great) Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. (As an aside, to those of you who mistakenly think that the Catholic Church is prudish in matters sexual, take a peek at the bottom of page 272 of Love and Responsibility). What a great joy that it was my children who brought me to a fuller understanding of the Church’s beautiful teaching on marriage and human sexuality.
To conclude this post, I turn to Archbishop Chaput’s pastoral letter of a decade ago, On Human Life. The beginning paragraphs are reproduced below:
“Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,
1. Thirty years ago this week, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical letter Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), which reaffirmed the Church's constant teaching on the regulation of births. It is certainly the most misunderstood papal intervention of this century. It was the spark which led to three decades of doubt and dissent among many Catholics, especially in the developed countries. With the passage of time, however, it has also proven prophetic. It teaches the truth. My purpose in this pastoral letter, therefore, is simple. I believe the message of Humanae Vitae is not a burden but a joy. I believe this encyclical offers a key to deeper, richer marriages. And so what I seek from the family of our local Church is not just a respectful nod toward a document which critics dismiss as irrelevant, but an active and sustained effort to study Humanae Vitae; to teach it faithfully in our parishes; and to encourage our married couples to live it.
I. THE WORLD SINCE 1968
2. Sooner or later, every pastor counsels someone struggling with an addiction. Usually the problem is alcohol or drugs. And usually the scenario is the same. The addict will acknowledge the problem but claim to be powerless against it. Or, alternately, the addict will deny having any problem at all, even if the addiction is destroying his or her health and wrecking job and family. No matter how much sense the pastor makes; no matter how true and persuasive his arguments; and no matter how life-threatening the situation, the addict simply cannot understand -- or cannot act on -- the counsel. The addiction, like a thick pane of glass, divides the addict from anything or anyone that might help.
3. One way to understand the history of Humanae Vitae is to examine the past three decades through this metaphor of addiction. I believe the developed world finds this encyclical so hard to accept not because of any defect in Paul VI's reasoning, but because of the addictions and contradictions it has inflicted upon itself, exactly as the Holy Father warned.
4. In presenting his encyclical, Paul VI cautioned against four main problems (HV 17) that would arise if Church teaching on the regulation of births was ignored. First, he warned that the widespread use of contraception would lead to "conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality." Exactly this has happened. Few would deny that the rates of abortion, divorce, family breakdown, wife and child abuse, venereal disease and out of wedlock births have all massively increased since the mid-1960s.
Obviously, the birth control pill has not been the only factor in this unraveling. But it has played a major role. In fact, the cultural revolution since 1968, driven at least in part by transformed attitudes toward sex, would not have been possible or sustainable without easy access to reliable contraception. In this, Paul VI was right.
5. Second, he also warned that man would lose respect for woman and "no longer [care] for her physical and psychological equilibrium," to the point that he would consider her "as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion." In other words, according to the Pope, contraception might be marketed as liberating for women, but the real "beneficiaries" of birth control pills and devices would be men. Three decades later, exactly as Paul VI suggested, contraception has released males -- to a historically unprecedented degree -- from responsibility for their sexual aggression. In the process, one of the stranger ironies of the contraception debate of the past generation has been this: Many feminists have attacked the Catholic Church for her alleged disregard of women, but the Church in Humanae Vitae identified and rejected sexual exploitation of women years before that message entered the cultural mainstream. Again, Paul VI was right.
6. Third, the Holy Father also warned that widespread use of contraception would place a "dangerous weapon . . . in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies." As we have since discovered, eugenics didn't disappear with Nazi racial theories in 1945. Population control policies are now an accepted part of nearly every foreign aid discussion. The massive export of contraceptives, abortion and sterilization by the developed world to developing countries -- frequently as a prerequisite for aid dollars and often in direct contradiction to local moral traditions -- is a thinly disguised form of population warfare and cultural re-engineering. Again, Paul VI was right.
7. Fourth, Pope Paul warned that contraception would mislead human beings into thinking they had unlimited dominion over their own bodies, relentlessly turning the human person into the object of his or her own intrusive power. Herein lies another irony: In fleeing into the false freedom provided by contraception and abortion, an exaggerated feminism has actively colluded in women's dehumanization. A man and a woman participate uniquely in the glory of God by their ability to co-create new life with Him. At the heart of contraception, however, is the assumption that fertility is an infection which must be attacked and controlled, exactly as antibiotics attack bacteria. In this attitude, one can also see the organic link between contraception and abortion. If fertility can be misrepresented as an infection to be attacked, so too can new life. In either case, a defining element of woman's identity -- her potential for bearing new life -- is recast as a weakness requiring vigilant distrust and "treatment." Woman becomes the object of the tools she relies on to ensure her own liberation and defense, while man takes no share of the burden. Once again, Paul VI was right.
8. From the Holy Father's final point, much more has flowed: In vitro fertilization, cloning, genetic manipulation and embryo experimentation are all descendants of contraceptive technology. In fact, we have drastically and naively underestimated the effects of technology not only on external society, but on our own interior human identity. As author Neil Postman has observed, technological change is not additive but ecological. A significant new technology does not "add" something to a society; it changes everything -- just as a drop of red dye does not remain discrete in a glass of water, but colors and changes every single molecule of the liquid.
Contraceptive technology, precisely because of its impact on sexual intimacy, has subverted our understanding of the purpose of sexuality, fertility and marriage itself. It has detached them from the natural, organic identity of the human person and disrupted the ecology of human relationships. It has scrambled our vocabulary of love, just as pride scrambled the vocabulary of Babel.”
Here is a excerpt of a piece by Steve Chapman in today's Chicago Tribune on the decline in abortions.
"Laws often alter attitudes, inducing people to accept things -- such as racial integration -- they once rejected. But sometimes, attitudes move in the opposite direction, as people see the consequences of the change. That's the case with abortion.
The news that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years elicits various explanations, from increased use of contraceptives to lack of access to abortion clinics. But maybe the chief reason is that the great majority of Americans, even many who see themselves as pro-choice, are deeply uncomfortable with it.
In 1992, a Gallup/Newsweek poll found 34 percent of Americans thought abortion "should be legal under any circumstances," with 13 percent saying it should always be illegal. Last year, only 26 percent said it should always be allowed, with 18 percent saying it should never be permitted.
Sentiments are even more negative among the group that might place the highest value on being able to escape an unwanted pregnancy: young people. In 2003, Gallup found, one of every three kids from age 13 to 17 said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. More revealing yet is that 72 percent said abortion is "morally wrong."
By now, pro-life groups know that outlawing most abortions is not a plausible aspiration. So they have adopted a two-pronged strategy. The first is to regulate it more closely -- with parental notification laws, informed consent requirements and a ban on partial-birth abortion. The second is to educate Americans with an eye toward changing "hearts and minds." In both, they have had considerable success.
Even those who insist Americans are solidly in favor of legal abortion implicitly acknowledge the widespread distaste. That's why the Democratic Party's 2004 platform omitted any mention of the issue, and why politicians who support abortion rights cloak them in euphemisms like 'the right to choose.'"
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Were you even born?
The Tablet
January 5, 2008
Humanae Vitae 40 years on
Elena Curti
The headline “Pope bans Pill” reverberated
around the world when Humanae
Vitae was published on 29 July
1968. Forty years on, Paul VI’s teaching against
contraception contained in his famous encyclical
is barely heeded by many Catholics
in the West.
Spain and Italy, for instance, have among
the lowest birth rates in Europe. Either the
form of natural family planning has improved
to a remarkable degree, or couples are disobeying
the Church’s edict on artificial birth
control. And it is hard to avoid the conclusion
that such wholesale disobedience has diminished
the Church’s authority.
The publication of Humanae Vitae was a
seminal moment in the modern history of the
Church. It caused a breach among Catholics
that survives to this day, and among outsiders
cemented an image of a Church out of touch
and lacking in compassion.
The latter point gained force when
HIV/Aids spread through the developing
world and the Church’s position on the use
of condoms, formally at least, remained unchanged.
The shock that greeted the encyclical was
the greater because many Catholics had expected
a reversal of the Church’s teaching. The
so-called “rhythm method” of natural family
planning had been sanctioned by Pius XII
in the 1950s. Later, many Catholics felt that
this signalled the green light for artificial birth
control, particularly the contraceptive pill,
which became available in Britain in 1962.
Hopes of reform had further been raised by
the pastoral constitution on the Church in the
modern world, Gaudium et Spes (1965), which
identified conjugal love and responsible parenthood
as the pillars of married life. But perhaps
the biggest cause for hope was the
findings of a pontifical commission on birth
control which concluded that the ban on artificial
contraception “could not be sustained
by reasoned argument”. The commission included
among its members bishops, moral
theologians and married couples. Its leaked
report was published in The Tablet in April
1967, much to the anger of Paul VI.
Paul VI deliberated for two years before publishing
Humanae Vitae. Among his principal
concerns were his fear that appearing to
reverse the teaching of previous popes would
be damaging to papal authority, a belief that
allowing the use of artificial birth control
would lead to even greater promiscuity in what
was becoming known as the “permissive society”
and that it would give encouragement
to countries that wanted to introduce controls
on population growth.
The latter two objections made their way
into the final draft of Humanae Vitae together
with a restatement of the Magisterium’s
teaching on the impossibility of separating
the unitive and procreative purposes of the
“conjugal act”. Pope Paul went on to express
his support for married couples who wished
to avoid pregnancy for “honest and serious”
reasons, though he stressed that this could
be done only using “the natural rhythms immanent
in the generative functions”. The
Church, he wrote, was absolutely certain that
“means directly contrary to fecundation”
were “always illicit”.
In what was a huge understatement, the
encyclical acknowledges that it “will perhaps
not easily be received by all”. The then editor
of The Tablet, Tom Burns, ended his leader,
headed “Crisis in the Church”, on a note of
defiance: “Loyalty to the faith and to the whole
principle of authority now consists in this:
to speak out about this disillusion of ours, not
to be silenced by fear. We who are of the household
and can think of no other have the right
to question, complain and protest, when conscience
impels,” he wrote.
Such was Paul VI’s dismay at the manner
in which his encyclical was received that he
never wrote another in the remaining 10 years
of his pontificate.
In his anti-Thompson op-ed, to which Michael linked here, Michael Gerson asked:
Should we increase the amount of money devoted to our generous cancer research efforts at the expense of African lives that can be saved for about $90 a year?
An interesting question, I think.
Now, I agree with Gerson that the United States should, for strategic and moral reasons, generously fund (effective, efficient, not-corrupt) development and health-care initiatives in Africa. And, although I support Thompson's candidacy, I'm happy to agree that it was a mistake to answer the (inappropriate?) "as a Christian, as a conservative" question about President Bush's the global AIDS initiative (for which, it seems to me, he gets little credit) the way he did (i.e., by appearing to invoke Jesus as the authority for a particular application of Thompson's limited-government philosophy).
Still, what about Gerson's question? How do and should we allocate scarce resources among competing, worthy goals? (It is not an answer, in my view, to say, "increase government's role and revenues" because, even if we do that, resources will still be scarce). Can we justify, say, our space program, or the National Gallery, or expensive carbon-output-reducing regulations, given that, for relatively little money, we could provide clean drinking water to tens of millions of children, saving them from death and disease? What criteria should we use?
And, given that we do have to have some criteria, is it as obvious as Gerson seems to think that among the criteria a Christian may employ is not a (rebuttable) presumption in favor of responding first to domestic challenges? Maybe so. (Again, I strongly support -- for both policy and moral reasons -- generous-but-careful support for poverty-relief and development efforts in poor countries.) But, if Gerson's right, then I suppose all those who support, say, labor and trade policies that put the needs of American industrial workers above the needs of workers in the developing world can expect a in-print spanking from Gerson, and a failing grade on his Christianity-test, too?
Here is a "top ten list"-style collection of the various reasons Sen. Barack Obama -- who describes here, in his "Call to Renewal" address, the importance to him of his Christian faith -- has given for his vote against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
New York Times
January 19, 2008
Lawyer Reveals Secret, Toppling Death Sentence
By ADAM LIPTAK
For 10 years, Leslie P. Smith, a Virginia lawyer, reluctantly kept a secret because the authorities on legal ethics told him he had no choice, even though his information could save the life of a man on death row, one whose case had led to a landmark Supreme Court decision.
Mr. Smith believed that prosecutors had committed brazen misconduct by coaching a witness and hiding it from the defense, but the Virginia State Bar said he was bound by legal ethics rules not to bring up the matter. He shared his qualms and pangs of conscience with only one man, Timothy G. Clancy, who had worked on the case with him.
“Clancy and I, when we were alone together, would reminisce about this and more or less renew our vows of silence,” Mr. Smith told a judge last month. “We felt that there was nothing that could be done.”
But the situation changed last year, when Mr. Smith took one more run at the state bar’s ethics counsel. “I was upset by the conduct of the prosecutor,” Mr. Smith wrote in an anguished letter, “and the situation has bothered me ever since.”
Reversing course, the bar told Mr. Smith he could now talk, and he did. His testimony caused a state court judge in Yorktown, Va., to commute the death sentence of Daryl R. Atkins to life on Thursday, citing prosecutorial misconduct.
________________________________________________________________________________________
What would *you* have done, in the same or a similar situation, had the state ethics counsel not reversed course? Read the rest of this interesting, troubling article, here.
Friday, January 18, 2008
I'm responding to Rick's post about the new Guttmacher numbers, which I'm sure we all agree are welcome. Apropos of our discussion before the new year about the connection between morality and legality, the LA Times (via Kevin Drum) had this nugget:
Some of the biggest drops in the abortion rate, however, have come in states that do not impose tight restrictions. Oregon, for instance, was rated this week by Americans United for Life as the nation's "least pro-life state," yet its abortion rate dropped 25% from 2000 to 2005 — more than any state except Wyoming. California also was ranked hostile territory by Americans United for Life, but its abortion rate fell 13%, significantly more than the national average. "Abortion rate" refers to the number of abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age.
Now, this is not exactly on point, since our discussion was about the effectiveness of prohibition and (for the moment) states are not permitted to ban abortion, but it does suggest that there's a lot of low hanging fruit out there that permit significant drops in the abortion rate without legal prohibition, or even restriction.
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