A quick response to Robby's "rebuke"

[Robby’s words are in non-bold type; my response, in bold type.]

Well, well now.  What are we to make of that rather aggressive Christmas Eve greeting from Michael P.?

I hadn’t thought of my post as aggressive.  I had thought of it—and continue to think of it--as an honest statement of my views.  Now, some readers, perhaps many of them, will judge my views misguided and even ignorant.  So be it.  But I wasn’t being—I certainly didn’t mean to be—aggressive.

I appreciate Brother Michael's describing me as decent and admirable, but I would forfeit whatever claim I might have to either of those qualities if I were to let his post go unrebuked.

Yes, Robby is both decent (as a human being, a husband, a parent, etc.) and admirable (in his scholarly accomplishments, his unstinting work in the service of what he believes, etc.).  If I didn’t believe that Robby is both decent and admirable, I would not have nominated him, as I recently did—and as Robby knows I recently did—for the deanship at Villanova Law.  Robby also knows that I judge his position that homosexual sexual activity is necessarily immoral to be not merely misguided, but the basis of profound injustice towards gays and lesbians in our society and elsewhere.

Liberal Catholics frequently lecture us "Rambo Catholics" about the need for respectful discourse, the importance of engaging "the other" with civility and openness to competing arguments and points of view, etc., etc.  Indeed, Brother Michael himself pleads with us to have "open, truly open minds."  Yet like so many liberal Catholics Michael seems to have trouble imagining that people could have "open, truly open" minds yet actually dissent from liberal ideology on matters of sexual morality. . . .  How can it be that there are people who disagree with sophisticated, open-minded, liberal people like Michael?

“Liberal ideology”?  “Liberal people”?  Robby overlooks, in his rhetorical slap at liberals, that many of those who agree with me on the issue at hand—and disagree with Robby—are not at all liberals:  Jonathan Rauch, Dale Carpenter, Dick Cheney, etc.  Government’s role in regulating the economy is a right/left, liberal/conservative issue.  But the issue at hand is not such an issue—and should not be so characterized, however useful in may be to do so in polemical statements and fundraising letters.

Michael's post caricatures and ridicules those who don't share his views.  Evidently he regards us as unsophisticated schlubs whose idea of a moral argument is to exclaim "Yuk!" In that most predictable of liberal tropes, he insinuates that we are like racists -- "Black bonding sexually with white?  Yuk!"  Gentle Michael is understanding of our schlubbiness, though, and even offers an exculpatory diagnosis. After calling for moral theology to take on board the "yield of modern and contemporary experience," he says:  "Think, here, human sexuality. I fully understand that for many of us [that would be us poor unsophisticated schlubs--RG] this is hard to do---for some of us impossibly hard:  those whose socialization and psychology have bequeathed to them a profound aversion---I am inclined to say, an aesthetic aversion (though, of course, they do not experience it that way)---to unfamiliar modes of human sexuality."

My point was and is that the “Yuk”—my shorthand for an emotional disposition of disgust—is what animates, in many, the search for and construction of a rational vindication of the disposition.  The “Yuk”—the disgust—is not the argument but an important factor animating the search for and construction of the argument.  Now, I know that this is not true for everyone who is in the grip of the conviction that homosexual sexual conduct is necessarily immoral, but it is certainly true for many.  See Martha Nussbaum, Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law:  From Disgust to Humanity (Oxford Univ. Press, 2010); Martha Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity:  Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton Univ. Press, 2006).

In any event:  Am I not correct that moral theology should be informed by the yield of modern and contemporary experience—and that it loses credibility if it is not so informed?  Am I not correct that today, there is good reason to reevaluate traditional attitudes toward, and judgments about, the morality of homosexual sexual conduct?  Even good reason to think differently about the morality of homosexual sexual conduct than our parents and grandparents did when they were young?

Don't worry, it can be explained.  They are victims of forms of "socialization" and "psychology" that have bequeathed to them an "aversion" to "unfamiliar modes of human sexuality."

Isn’t it clear that in the world’s most established liberal democracies, there is ongoing a generational shift in attitudes toward, and judgments about, the morality of homosexual sexual conduct?  What are the principal determinants of this generational shift?  Are we to believe that shifts in socialization and psychology, due to a contemporary experience of homosexuality that is rather different from that of our parents and grandparents, do not play a significant role?

This is as absurd as it is offensive, so I'm not sure whether to laugh or protest.  I have never been in doubt about the insincerity and hypocrisy of many (certainly not all) who preach about "civil engagement," "respect for the views of others," "openness to argument," and so forth.  I have suspected that in their heart of hearts they don't believe a word of it.  Usually, though, they at least keep up the pretence.  They don't plead for the virtue of open-mindedness, for example, while publicy manifesting the vice that is its opposite.

Well, at least now I know what Robby thinks of me:  insincere, hypocritical, keeping up the pretence.  It’s clear that Robby wouldn’t want to nominate *me* for a deanship!

In the course of his remarks, Michael mentions my mentors, John Finnis and Germain Grisez, together with two liberal scholars he admires, Cathleen Kaveny and Jean Porter.  Michael claims that the liberals are the ones more faithful to the great tradition that runs from Aristotle through Aquinas.  This strikes me as preposterous, but MoJ readers needn't rely on my judgment of the matter or Michael's.  Readers can (and I hope they will) have a look at some work by Finnis and Grisez and some work by Kaveny and Porter and judge for themselves which writers are superior to the others in analytical rigor, logical precision, interpretative soundness, and depth of insight.

Preposterous?  Wrong, maybe, but preposterous?  That’s a unduly harsh judgment, given that, as Robby well knows, there are very many highly regarded Catholic theologians (and other Christian theologians) who judge Jean Porter’s important, ongoing work on natural law to be much more insightful and persuasive than that of John Finnis and Germain Grisez, whose natural-law defenses of traditional Catholic teaching about such matters as contraception, masturbation, and non-marital sex, for example (“always and everywhere gravely immoral”), they regard as unpersuasive.  Preposterous?