Garry Wills is one of the most prominent Catholic " public intellectuals" in the United States. Among his many books are Why I Am a Catholic, What Jesus Meant, What the Gospels Meant, and What Paul Meant. Here are Wills's reflections in a recent blog post, titled The New American Hysteria:
The hysteria shown at town hall meetings this summer is simply the
tip of an outpouring of organized hostility to government that is
unparalleled in our history. We have had wildly emotional opposition
movements in the past—red scares, nativist riots, anti-Catholic and
anti-Semite outbreaks. And there are some parallels with past forms of
extremism. People who think Obama is a Muslim are like anti-New Dealers
who thought Roosevelt a Jew or John Birchers who thought Eisenhower a
Communist.
But there was a kind of crazy consistency in those old causes (if
they can be called that). The institutional Catholic Church was
officially anti-democratic in the past, and the United States was
falsely thought to be a Christian nation. The John Birch Society was
fanatically anti-Communist, but most Americans were at least strongly
anti-Communist. There were always emotional roots behind the formal
position of the extremists. Richard Hofstadter found status anxiety and anti-intellectualism in the right-wing extremism of the 1950s.
Now, however, there is a deeply panicky combination of
pathologies—racist, xenophobic, fundamentalist—screaming about death
camps and euthanasia and baby-killers and 9/11 conspiracies (by the
“truthers”). Every aspect of our present government is considered
illegitimate. Some look at our leaders and recognize nothing of
themselves in them. They see a black man as president and cannot even
consider him a citizen, a Christian, a sane man—he must be a Muslim, a Nazi,
a Hitler. They see a Latina on the Supreme Court. They see a woman as
secretary of state. They see a black attorney general. This is not
America.
The John Birch Society was at least focused on communism. The new
emotions raging have no focus, just an infection and mutual
reinforcement of nameless fears. This is less the pushing of a
political position too far than a multiple-sourced and violent nervous
breakdown, a St. Vitus dance from the Middle Ages. Bircher “extremism”
was mild compared to these anguished roilings. People feel betrayed,
robbed of their country. The waving of the Constitution at the town
halls had nothing to do with constitutional arguments. It was a way of
saying, “Give us back what we thought our country was all about.”
Extremism is normally a protest against what is seen as rapid change.
But the changes these frightened people think they see are not rapid,
they are monstrous.
How serious is this new hysteria? It is hard to say. It is normally
remarked that only “the fringes” hold beliefs like the birther-deather
nonsense. That is probably true. But the willingness of others to
entertain these fantasies—in a recent survey, 42 percent of Republicans said that Obama was born outside the US—
is also a new thing. There is nothing opponents can do about most of
this. In the past, extremism was checked by people who were partly or
nominally on the side of the extremists. Barry Goldwater dissociated
his 1964 campaign from the John Birch Society. William F. Buckley
rebuked the anti-Semites on the right. On the other side, there were
plenty of liberals who denounced the Weather Underground or the Black
Panthers.
But now supposedly responsible Republican leaders, commentators, and congressmen—Iowa Senator Charles Grassley and Arizona Representative Trent Franks—encourage
the citizenship and euthanasia screamers. A recent vice-presidential
nominee endorses the death panels myth. There is little or no
determination to dissociate the right in general from the right-wing
fringes. Why is this? Partly, I suppose, the Republican Party has
shrunk so drastically that it feels it cannot cut away any supporters.
This is the opposite of what was said about the banks, that they were
too big to be allowed to fail. The birthers are too small to be allowed
to fail. Everyone must be kept in the camp if there is to be a camp at
all.
This situation cannot be reversed until and unless the Republican
Party begins to recognize that keeping these people in the camp will
destroy the camp, that the party cannot pretend to respect and
responsibility before the electorate so long as they coddle the
crazies. Barry Goldwater was considered an extremist in his day, but
his movement went on to prevail for a time because he did not temporize
with Birchers, anti-Semites, or religious fanatics.
William F. Buckley became an influential supporter of Richard Nixon
and Ronald Reagan because he was willing to free his movement from
fringes like the John Birch Society, the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby,
the Ayn Rand objectivists, the anti-fluoride kooks, and other exotic
specimens. That is the price of full participation in our national
politics. It is a price the current Republican Party is unwilling to
pay.
Michael Perry has kept us more or less up to date on certain aspects of the Apostolic Visitation of congregations of women religious in the U.S. Most recently, he linked to a report according to which many or most of the women religious involved in the Visitation are refusing to answer the questions posed by the Holy See. See for yourself: http://ncronline.org/news/women/women-religious-not-complying-vatican-study For my own part, I wonder why anyone would think it's a good idea for members of religious orders bound together and to the larger Church through promises (or vows) of obedience to refuse to answer these questions. If there are good and sufficient reasons for this particular refusal, they're not coming to my mind. The "they don't understand who we are" (and therefore we aren't talking to them) line, which I have read over and over again, isn't equal to the task. If "they" don't understand, then help them. That's part of what it means to be Church, even as obedience (to morally licit demands) is the last word. Meanwhile, disobedience of the kind on display here probably makes one of the points under investigation by the Holy See. And, for the record, I would have the same view on this question if men's institutues were under a Visitation, as I wish they were. Who knows why the Holy See has not undertaken an Apostolic Visitation of the men's congregations. Meanwhile, the life of religious orders in the US, whether of men or of women, is a shambles, with impressive exceptions here and there. Thank God the responsible parties in the Church beyond the US are doing something that has the potential to raise hope and expectation, even if some of those in the moribund orders don't yet see it.
I thank Bob Hockett for his gracious comments about the Manhattan Declaration. It does not speak well for those of us on the conservative side of the spectrum that a good and fairminded man like Bob "expected to find anger and hardness of heart in the document." We need to take that to heart. Bob self-critically attributes his expectation to "a bit of unconscious bigotry" on his own part, but I''m sure that isn't true. In any event, it is deeply gratifying to hear him say, "instead what I found was great dignity, manifest compassion, and humane adherence to principle."
In engaging the ideas in the Declaration, Bob mentions his belief that all life, and not merely human life, is sacred, and his inclining towards the view that marriage is an "inherently sacramental" category and that "the state is accordingly not the apt institution to define its countours." I myself would not use terms like "sacred" and "sanctity" in relation to the lives of creatures that do not possess a rational nature, and therefore cannot properly be said to be made in the divine image and likeness. Non-human creatures (as far as we are aware -- of course, we don't know whether there are rational creatures elsewhere in the cosmos) should be treated with a certain respect (not reverence), but they may, in my opinion, legitimately be used for our benefit and need not be treated "as ends and never as means only," to recall Kant's famous formulation of our most fundamental obligation to each other. Having said that, in Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics, Pat Lee and I give some reasons for believing that the wanton killing even of non-human animals is wrong. On the marriage question, my view is that marriage, considered not as a mere legal convention but as a one-flesh union of husband and wife, is a natural, pre-political, and pre-ecclesial form of relationship and basic (i.e., intrinsic) human good. The duty of Church and state is not to define its contours, which are given, but to recognize its necessary and inherent character and the norms that both shape and protect it, and to play their respective (and distinctive) roles in supporting and fostering it. Of course, as the Church herself teaches, Christ elevates the marriage of Christians to the status of a sacrament. But even non-sacramental marriages are recognized, esteemed, and honored by the Church as true marriages possessing profound human worth and dignity. They are true marriages because marriage is, as I say, a natural (pre-political, pre-ecclesial) form of human relationship and basic human good.
Obviously, there is much more to be said on both of the important matters Bob has introduced into the discussion. I thank him for raising the issues, and, again, for his very gracious comments on the Manhattan Declaration.
The current issue of America includes six brief reflections on various issues in Caritas ("Papal Correspondence") - including a brief overview of the "Economy of Communion" project. Enjoy!
The
vast majority of U.S. women religious are not complying with a Vatican request
to answer questions in a document of inquiry that is part of a three-year study
of the congregations. Leaders of congregations, instead, are leaving questions
unanswered or sending in letters or copies of their communities'
constitutions.Read More
Just a quick thanks to Rick for posting the link to the M Declaration, which I've finally just found a moment to read. I'd also like, in my capacity as (I think) one of the resident 'lefties' here, to commend the full document to any who might not have read it thus far. For I must confess that, indulging in a bit of what I now think must have been unconscious bigotry of my own, I expected to find anger and hardness of heart in the document, and instead what I found was great dignity, manifest compassion, and humane adherence to principle.
I am sure that I would quibble on some points in the document, but what I am most happily surprised to be able to report is that I do think that any such disagreements would indeed be quibbles.
1) I incline, for example, while emphasizing the sanctity of human life, to add that I also believe all life to be sacred, and believe that we human beings are charged with the task of serving as what I think of as 'the steward species,' even 'the servant species.' We are here, that is to say, I think in significant part to care for the other life forms our Lord has placed here with us.
2) With respect to marriage and conjugal relations, I incline, as mentioned in earlier posts, to the view that 'marriage' is an inherently sacramental category, and that the state is accordingly not the apt institution to define its contours, which might vary from religious insitution-cum-tradition to religious institution-cum-tradition; but thus far, as I say, I simply incline to this view, upon which I continue to reflect in what I hope is good conscience, with what I hope will be assistance from others.
3) Finally, both because of that developing view on marriage as distinguished from domestic arrangement, and for many other reasons that have been operative in my own humble attempts at thinking for decades now, I can only wholeheartedly support the declaration's principles of religious freedom.
I am eager to read what others among you all think.
This piece is a few days old, but still worth a read, I think. Over at the First Things blog, Michael Liccione reports on Helen Alvare's recent lecture, "The Catholic Voice in the Public Square: Sectarian or Civic?" A bit:
Alvaré suggested that we hammer home two points that ought to be obvious but aren’t: Most Americans are religious in some fashion, and few people are motivated by purely secular considerations to become . . . well, better people. This is why liberalism’s standard prescriptions for addressing various social problems—especially unwanted pregnancies, births out of wedlock, STDs, and family breakdown—just don’t work. The question is not whether religious voices may be heard; the law still says they may. And as we just saw in Congress, they can be heard. The challenge for the darkening future, though, is to mine our Catholic patrimony for language that can appeal to people’s hearts as much as to their minds. Two examples Alvaré gave were Joseph Ratzinger’s theme of conscience as “memory” and Karol Wojtyla’s theology of the body, in which life is defined as interpersonal communion established by mutual self-gift. It’ll be interesting to see whether the secular appeal of such themes can be enhanced in the public square.
Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:
the sanctity of human life
the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
the rights of conscience and religious liberty.
Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
If I've understood you correctly, I believe you have perhaps misunderstood a feature of Michael P.'s position. Of course, Michael can speak for himself, but I'm sure he is not arguing that same-sex unions should be the definition of marital relations, replacing opposite-sex unions. Rather, he is arguing that marriage should be understood and defined as the union of two persons irrespective of sex. In other words, he thinks that biological-sexual complementarity is not essential to marriage, properly understood. So "gay marriagses" and "straight marriages" are both marriages. Of course, marriage, if Michael is right, is not what you and I think it is, namely, a truly (and not merely metaphorically) one-flesh union--a comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life founded on a mutual commitment sealed (consummated) by organic bodily union (the kind of union achieved by spouses in acts in which they lovingly fulfill the behavioral conditions of procreation, irrespective of whether the nonbehavioral conditions of procreation happen to obtain) that has its distinctive character and special meaning and value inasmuch as it is the type of relationship that is naturally fulfilled by the begetting, bearing, and rearing of children. However, since opposite sex marriages would exist alongside same-sex marriages in the event that Michael's view prevailed, there would be no special threat to the reproductive viability of the species. Michael's view, as I understand it, is that there are two (or at least two) sexual orientations: the heterosexual and the homosexual. Persons of each orientation find fulfillment in romantic-sexual partnerships of the type they are oriented towards. Insofar as they are fulfilling of the persons participating in them, such partnerships are humanly good and morally upright. A large majority of humans are heterosexually oriented, and most of them will have children as a result of their ordinary sexual congress. A comparatively small minority are homosexually oriented. Some of them will rear adopted children; some will have children by using assisted reproduction technologies (which are also used by some heterosexuals); and some (like some heterosexuals) will be childless. Michael's belief is that there is nothing morally wrong with same-sex sexual acts and sexual partnerships as such. I don't agree. My reasons, though, which I have set forth in the writings I mentioned in my previous post, do not have to do with a concern that the human race will die out (though historically, as Harvard sociologist and demographer Carle Zimmerman pointed out in Family and Civilization (1948), there does seem to be a cross-cultural correlation between the general social acceptance of permissive views about sexuality--whether or not the acceptance of homosexual conduct is a big part of the picture--and demographic decline).
