In addition to the papers mentioned in my previous posting, I would recommend John Finnis's paper "Marriage: A Basic and Exigent Good," from the 2008 volume of the philosophy journal The Monist, to anyone interested in the deeper arguments that can be made in support of Archbishop Dolan's position and against the redefinition of marriage being promoted in New York by Governor Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg, and others:
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Finnis on marriage
Dolan and double standards
Eduardo:
I don't see why Timothy Dolan should be held to higher standards of argumentative depth and analytical rigor than those to which Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, and John Shelby Spong, for example, are held by those sharing their belief that marriage should be redefined in such a way as to include same-sex partners. Do you? I would note that, like Archbishop Dolan, those seeking to refedine marriage did not seem to take Father's Day off from their crusade against traditional norms of sexual morality. What you say of the Archbishop, one could with equal or greater justification say of his opponents in this debate: Perhaps if they put a bit more thought into their comments, and paid more attention to the arguments on both sides, it would help those of us who are struggling to understand their panic in the face of the possibility that American law could continue to honor the historic definition of marriage as a male-female partnership.
One searches the comments of the Cuomos, Bloombergs, and Spongs in vain for reasoned arguments (as opposed to slogans or question-begging claims) or for answers to the very specific challenges to their position that defenders of conjugal marriage have advanced. Instead we find a series of conclusory zingers (such as "love makes a family," or "you had better get on the right side of history") and defamatory insinuations (e.g., those who disagree with us are "haters" and "bigots").
I can't pretend to speak for Archbishop Dolan, but if you're interested in how defenders of conjugal marriage might answer the central questions you pose in your post, you might have a look at an article I've written with Sherif Girgis and Ryan Anderson entitled "What is Marriage?" (available here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1722155). If you can identify errors in our premises or fallacious inferences towards any of our conclusions, I would be grateful to you for pointing them out. Some of the most able scholars supporting the redefinition of marriage, including Kenji Yoshino of NYU and Andrew Koppelman of Northwestern, have labored to find defects in our arguments. You can judge for yourself whether they've succeeded. While you're at it, perhaps you could form a judgment as to whether they have met---or have even attempted to meet---the specific challenges we have put to them in Section I.E. of our paper. Have they, for example. been able to identify a principle consistent with their premises that explains why marriage is the union of two people, and not three or four or more in a polyamorous sexual partnership? Can they explain why marriage is a sexual partnership at all, as opposed to a parternship that could equally well be integrated around tennis-playing, or bird-watching, or some other shared interest or activity? Have they identified a principled basis for marriage as an exclusive (as opposed to open) sexual partnership? I think you will find that they have failed---or failed even to try. (Koppelman ends up claiming that marriage is a "social construct" that has no essential properties---such as monogamy as opposed to polyamory, fidelity as opposed to sexual "openness," etc.---at all. Yoshino, it turns out, signed a statement urging that we go "beyond same-sex marriage" to embrace the idea of marriages that include multiple sexual partners.)
Here are links to Kenji Yoshino's attempts to refute our arguments, followed by links to our replies:
http://www.slate.com/id/2277781/
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/12/2217
http://www.slate.com/id/2278794/
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2295
Here are links to Andrew Koppelman's efforts, followed by links to our replies:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-marriage-isnt.html
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/12/2263
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/12/that-elusive-timeless-essence-of.html
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2350
In defense of the view that marriage is intrinsically related to procreation, but not as mere means to an end, here are links to a two-part analysis I did with Patrick Lee and Gerry Bradley:
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/03/2638
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/03/2637
Again, I am not pretending to speak for Archbishop Dolan. But I hope these articles prove that a great deal can be said in support of his position. In fairness, it could be pointed out that the writings of serious intellectuals like Yoshino and Koppelman (and Bill Eskridge and others) can be cited in support of the position being advanced by Governor Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg, and Archbishop Spong, though they themselves clearly do not attempt to provide analysis of the sort that their scholarly supporters offer. In truth, I don't blame Cuomo, Bloomberg, or Spong for making their arguments at the level of depth at which they make them, even though their arguments (or assertions) seem straightforwardly question-begging to those of us who don't share the presuppositions they leave undefended (and unacknowledged). But I really don't think we should demand that public figures, including Catholic bishops, who defend the opposing point of view meet a different standard. To be sure, the deeper and more compelling their arguments, the better. But that's true for people on both sides.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
On Blogs and the Meaning of Marriage
Thanks to Patrick for his insightful remarks about the issues surrounding blogging. I think all of us who contribute to web logs and those who offer comments to authors’ postings can take stock of what you said. Of course, this is a prevalent means of communicating ideas today. This does not mean that it is a good or desirable method, but it is one that exists and its impact cannot be underestimated.
I am also grateful to Eduardo for his posting entitled “Dolan on Gay Marriage.” There are many things that can be said about the Archbishop’s post and Eduardo’s commentary on it. Today I’ll restrict my commentary to Eduardo’s thesis that Archbishop Dolan about the definition of marriage. But before I do, I think it important to take stock of this reality about blogging to which Patrick has referred: is the medium of the web log the place where any of us really expect a detailed analysis of every nuance, no matter how important, in a few hundred words? I for one think that it would be impossible to achieve this, and, therefore I do not expect in-depth discussion in blogging. Web logs are better as providing catalysts for discussion and debate, but they are not the substance of the detail that must inevitably accompany discussion and debate. Justice to the positions that emerge in blog posts and the justifications that should undergird the positions presented require more than a few paragraphs that are the limit of blogging. I also think that Archbishop Dolan realizes that detailed argument is necessary on this vital subject and on many other issues, and that is why he can and does write pastoral letters where sufficient detail can be mustered in explaining the views which he is proposing. I don’t think that Eduardo believes that the Archbishop is incapable of “reasoned argument”; moreover, I am sure he shares with me the perspective that Archbishop Dolan has demonstrated that he, like us, would be dissatisfied with “conclusory zingers”.
So, on to one of Eduardo’s contentions that “Dolan himself can hardly make up his mind on the subject of marriage’s meaning.”
Now I must get to his principal critique. Eduardo makes the point that the Archbishop is inconsistent in the three definitions that he, the Archbishop, has provided in the postings to which he, Eduardo, refers. The definitions of marriage provided by Archbishop Dolan to which Eduardo refers are these:
- marriage is “one man, one woman, united in lifelong love and fidelity, hoping for children”
- marriage is “a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children”
- marriage is “loving, faithful union between one man and one woman leading to a family”
At this point, it might be helpful to take stock of how the Church teaches what marriage is and is not:
Marriage is explained in some detail in Part Two, Section Two, Chapter Three, Article Seven, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is evident that what the Archbishop asserted in his several postings does not deviate from the Catechism.
Moreover, the Archbishop’s formulations are consistent with the lengthy discussion of marriage in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.
In the 1983 Charter of the Rights of the Family, the Church more succinctly defines marriage as: “that intimate union of life in complementarity between a man and a woman which is constituted in the freely contracted and publicly expressed indissoluble bond of matrimony and is open to the transmission of life... [and it] is the natural institution to which the mission of transmitting life is exclusively entrusted”. Once again, the Archbishop, using various formulations, captures this.
The Code of Canon Law specifies that marriage is the “matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized.” Again, I think that the Archbishop is faithful to this formulation.
In spite of what Eduardo contends, I think that the Archbishop has capture accurately the essence of what the Church teaches not only for Catholics but for the good of civil society and, therefore, the common good. And he does this using an economy of words that is vital to the medium that he used in his blog.
I share Eduardo’s point that the Archbishop did not address the perils of divorce. But that is not the subject which the New York lawmakers are presently considering, and, therefore, this grave issue is not treated in the Archbishop’s postings. Neither is abortion. Ditto with euthanasia and assisted suicide. All of these issues have some bearing on marriage and family, but they are not what are at the heart of the present legislative debate. The legislators are, however, contemplating a radical redefinition of marriage, and that is the issue to which Archbishop Dolan is responding.
I disagree with Eduardo that the Archbishop has authored “unconvincing screeds aimed at producing nice sound-bites for the press.” By contrast to Eduardo, I think the Archbishop has distilled for a particular medium (i.e., blogging that does not favor detailed discussion) the essence of important moral teachings that have a bearing on not only where Catholics should go with the legislative proposals but where the entire state of New York ought to proceed. Eduardo confuses the issue addressed by the Archbishop and the legislature by introducing another matter dealing with what is the family. While they are related, they are not the same; moreover, the legislature is not defining the family—yet. But it is considering redefining what constitutes a marriage. I am confident that the Archbishop is capable of addressing the family definition issue elsewhere, but that is not what the New York legislature is now in the processing of attempting to redefine.
If Eduardo is dissatisfied with the Archbishop’s efforts in explaining marriage, I think many would point out that the Marriage Equality movement which favors the redefintion of marriage for “equality’s” sake has failed to demonstrate what is equality, first of all, and why the union of a man and a man or a woman and a woman is the same as, or is equal to a union of a man and a woman who, by themselves, have a far greater chance of procreating children than any same-sex union, by themselves, of doing the same.
As this is a blog entry, I guess this enough for one posting...
RJA sj
"Becoming a Catholic . . . in 95 steps"
My friend and colleague, rock-star sociologist of religion Christian Smith, recently came into full communion with the Catholic Church and has a new book, available at Amazon, called "How To Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five [get it?] Difficult Steps." I read the book in draft, and loved it. It has, I think, as much (maybe more) to teach (or remind) and challenge Catholics as it does to help curious Evangelical Protestants. It's not a polemic, by any stretch, and isn't really "apologetics", though it does have an Apologia Pro Vita Sua dimension. Highly recommended.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Cesar Chavez's California
To steal a line from Stanley Hauerwas, I don't really believe in California. But even I will admit that California in the decades following World War II was about as ideal a time and place as American life can offer. Caitlin Flanagan has a nice essay in the current Atlantic about the California of her childhood and one of its sainted heroes, the devoutly Catholic Cesar Chavez. Flanagan winsomely recalls the labor activism of her Berkeley English prof father ("In the history of human enterprise, there can have been no more benevolent employer than the University of California in the 1960s and ’70s, yet to hear my father and his English-department pals talk about the place, you would have thought they were working at the Triangle shirtwaist factory."), but she's especially perceptive about Chavez:
To understand Chavez, you have to understand that he was grafting together two life philosophies that were, at best, an idiosyncratic pairing. One was grounded in union-organizing techniques that go back to the Wobblies; the other emanated directly from the mystical Roman Catholicism that flourishes in Mexico and Central America and that Chavez ardently followed. He didn’t conduct “hunger strikes”; he fasted penitentially. He didn’t lead “protest marches”; he organized peregrinations in which his followers—some crawling on their knees—arrayed themselves behind the crucifix and effigies of the Virgin of Guadalupe. His desire was not to lift workers into the middle class, but to bind them to one another in the decency of sacrificial poverty. He envisioned the little patch of dirt in Delano—the “Forty Acres” that the UFW had acquired in 1966 and that is now a National Historic Landmark—as a place where workers could build shrines, pray, and rest in the shade of the saplings they had tended together while singing.
For much of the twentieth century, California was a parable for America, including American Catholicism. But the story doesn't end on a happy note:
Growing up here when I did meant believing your state was the most blessed place in the world. We were certain—both those who lived in the Republican, Beach Boys paradises of Southern California and those who lived in the liberal enclaves of Berkeley and Santa Monica—that our state would always be able to take care of its citizens. The working class would be transformed (by dint of the aerospace industry and the sunny climate) into the most comfortable middle class in the world, with backyard swimming pools and self-starting barbecue grills for everyone. The poor would be taken care of, too, whether that meant boycotting grapes, or opening libraries until every rough neighborhood had books (and Reading Lady volunteers) for everyone.
But all of that is gone now.
the layman keeps things under surveillance
I am by no means the first to mention this, but the widening phenomenon of blogging bishops is really getting me down. If a bishop has an expertise on, say, Shakespeare, beef bourguignon, or golf, for example, then I perceive no necessary problem with his blogging about it, though I can imagine some questions that could be raised. My immediate concern is with bishops' undertaking -- or appearing to undertake -- to exercise their teaching office through the medium of the blog. It's not electronic media per se that I'm concerned about; it's the blog format in particular. Eduardo's link to Archbishop Dolan's blog prompted me to check it out. The comments in reply to the Archbishop's statement there begin with things like "Mr. Dolan," and it gets much, much worse. By "worse" I don't refer to the fact of disagreement as such; the disagreement was to be anticipated, alas. The problem I have in mind is this: the way the dialogue is conducted -- indeed, invited -- confirms the hoped-for perception by many that the bishop's voice is one among countless equal voices in the usual sort of chatter that is familiar on blogs. I concede that the Church's authoritative teachers have difficult choices to make about how to use modern media to advance the work of the Word Incarnate, but I'm increasingly doubtful that authoritative teachers' blogging about, say, the just wage or the nature of marriage will do more to advance the Church's teachings on either of those questions than it will do to undermine the authority with which the Church in fact teaches. I have great admiration for Arch. Dolan. When I have been around him, I have been impressed by the strength of his exercise of his teaching office. I hope I am wrong about the long-term effects of the blogging. Though it involves a more serious venue, I would note that the Holy Father himself, by reducing himself to the status of a mere interviewee in the recent book Light of the World, created considerable difficulties concerning what the Church was teaching there, if anything, on the topics the Holy Father discussed with Mr. Seewald. Those who seek the Church's authoritative teachings will not have reason to believe they find them in blog exchanges or in interviews, and it is perfectly plain that many of those commenting on Arch. Dolan's blog already treat his voice as just one among an endless babel. Which reminds me of something I read recently about where Ockhamism leads in terms of ecclesiology: "Under these conditions, it would be more frank to say, as Luther would say later, that there is not and there cannot be any doctrinal authority in the Church other than the letter of the Bible as clarified by the Holy Spirit. Ockham only goes part of the way. He maintains the principle of authority, but so well ruins the substance of it that its recognition is nothing other than an occasion to organize a distrust, suspicion, and, if need be, the revolt of the Christian in the face of it. The doctor teaches, controls, and condemns the pontiff. The layman keeps things under surveillance and, if necessary, punishes the doctor, the cleric, the bishop, or the pope. In the name of the faith, one justifies an anarchic and disordered activism of the entire ecclesiastical body, and the logic of the system forbids any institution within it whatsoever from controlling it efficaciously. If there were any reforming ferment that Ockham set into motion in the Church, it was indeed through his theory of the doctrinal magisterium that, while claiming to safeguard the principle of all traditional institutions, irremediably undermines the base of them."
Hosanna-Tabor
MoJ-ers Tom Berg and Rick Garnett have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor (the ministerial exception case) on behalf of the Christian Legal Society, the Baptist Joint Comittee, the National Association of Evangelicals, and others. This is an important case, and whether or not you have followed the proceedings, the brief is well worth your time.
Dolan on Gay Marriage
[Cross-posted at dotCommonweal) Archbishop Dolan's blog refuses to take Father's Day off from the crusade against gay marriage. I applaud Dolan's embrace of the blogging medium, and Dolan's posts have attracted a great deal of media attention, but I wish he would put more thought into his posts on this topic. I think it would be a much more powerful use of the medium, and would be helpful for those of us struggling to understand the Church's state of panic in the face of gay marriage, if he would engage in a more detailed way with the arguments on both sides of this issue. One searches his posts in vain for reasoned argument, finding instead a series of conclusory zingers like the one with which he ended his most recent post. "Government presumes to redefine these sacred words at the peril of the common good." How does expanding the definition of the family to encompass same sex couples threaten the common good? Dolan doesn't tell us. His post simply ends.
I looked back at his earlier post, and it also fails to adequately explain his views, except to tell us that the family is the foundation of our civilization and that tinkering with its definition is dangerous. I suppose I agree with both of those points, but neither one rules out same sex marriage. After all, the definition of marriage varies across time. Polygamy is approved in the Bible, though it is now illegal. Dolan doesn't discuss that, despite his reference to Genesis in his most recent post. Divorce used to be prohibited but no-fault divorce is now ubiquitous. Interracial marriage was legally forbidden in many US jurisdictions until just a generation ago. Now it is constitutionally protected. Telling us that revising the definition of the family is dangerous either means that all of these past changes were wrong or that, more likely, some were better than others. But if it means the latter, it adds nothing but a cautionary note to the present debate. It cannot be decisive.
Indeed, Dolan himself can hardly make up his mind on the subject of marriage's meaning. In this two posts on the subject, he tells us that traditional definition of marriage is "timeless" and "as old as human reason and ordered good." And, yet, in his two posts, separated only by four days, Dolan himself actually gives us THREE different definitions of marriage. In his first post, he says that marriage is "one man, one woman, united in lifelong love and fidelity, hoping for children." His second definition, in the same post, is similar but not identical: "a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children." In his Father's Day post, he says that marriage is a "loving, faithful union between one man and one woman leading to a family."
Of course, marriage has not been "lifelong" or "permanent" by law for a long time, and yet no blog posts urging NY legislators to prohibit divorce as a grave threat to the common good. Perhaps someone pointed this out after the first post, which might explain why he dropped any reference to duration in the most recent post.
As for procreation, "hoping for children" and "to pro-create children" are far from identical. Both might be read to rule out marriages among the non-fertile, though the "hoping for children" formulation is less exclusive on that front. But this leads to the question -- which is it to be? Does the marriage of two 80-year-olds threaten the timeless definition of marriage or undermine the common good? If not, why not? In his most recent definition, the reference to procreation is replaced by "leading to a family." Of course, this is somewhat circular, since legal recognition of same-sex couples as "families" would allow their unions to also "lead[] to a family." That's the whole point.
These blog posts were useful opportunities for some thoughtful reflection on these questions, but the Archbishop chose instead to write little unconvincing screeds aimed at producing nice sound-bites for the press. Those who agree with him will no doubt take heart from his vocal opposition to New York's proposed legislation. For the rest of us, we are no better able to understand the foundation for his fears than we were before.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
A joint letter against porn on campus
Mercifully, Princeton has not followed Yale's degrading example of celebrating "Sex Week" on campus. From time to time, however, campus organizations have sponsored pornographic exhibitions. In response to one of these, Cornel West and I wrote to Shirley Tilghman, Princeton's president, to urge the University to oppose the presentation of pornography on campus and to deny requests for the use of University faciities for pornographic activities.
Dear Shirley:
As you know, we are strong advocates (and practitioners) of freedom of speech, especially in the context of university education where the exploration of ideas and the exchange of reasons and arguments are vital to the success of the enterprise. We would defend the right of any member of our community to express and make reasoned arguments for any view, even if we regarded the view as reprehensible and judged the arguments to be poor or fallacious. For example, we would defend the right of anyone to argue that pornography is psychologically healthy and morally liberating, despite our judgment that pornography is, in fact, degrading, damaging, and incompatible with a sound understanding of men and women as possessors of profound, inherent, and equal dignity. However, we think that the judgment that pornography is, in truth, de-humanizing and de-personalizing, and in these and other ways damaging to individuals and communities, does matter in some ways that are relevant to University policy decisions. In our judgment, the University should do what it can do to prevent, or at least to discourage, the identification of Princeton University with the dissemination of pornography and the use of University facilities and other resources for showing pornography.
We recognize that there are borderline cases as to what counts as “pornography,” and we would be happy with a policy that erred on the side of freedom. But there are clear cases as well. Indeed, there are cases where what is expressly being proposed is to screen or display pornography under the auspices of University-affiliated entities using campus facilities and resources. We believe that the common good of our community is poorly served when such proposals go forward. They contribute to an environment of objectification and de-humanization. They impoverish our efforts to instill in our students a sense of the profound worth and dignity of the human person and the need for true self-respect and respect for others.
In our view, Princeton has no obligation, as a matter of academic freedom or otherwise, to make its facilities available for pornographic activities, and would be not only within its rights, but right, to refuse to do so. Yet, even if a libertarian impulse were to stand in the way of forbidding the use of University facilities for pornography, we believe it would be extremely valuable for the University to go on record as opposing the presentation of pornography on campus, lest anyone believe that it is the University’s policy to treat the screening or other exhibiting of degrading and dehumanizing material as something perfectly legitimate.
Yours in friendship,
Cornel West
Robert George
Friday, June 17, 2011
Catholicism and political categorization
Thanks to Rob for his interesting post about Archbishop Nienstedt's coming under attack from some folks on the right edge of the political spectrum for advocating "socialist" policies. It has long seemed to me that being a Catholic means that certain positions at the extremes of the spectrum are off the table. One cannot be a socialist, strictly speaking. The Church's strong endorsement of private property eliminates the option of supporting state ownership of the means of production and also rules out (in most circumstances) radically redistributive policies. At the same time, being a Catholic is incompatible with being a radical individualist or "libertarian" of the Ayn Randian sort. (To her credit, I suppose, Rand herself understood this, though some of her disciples, including some Catholics who seem to have fallen under her influence, don't seem to have noticed it.) The Church's teaching on the preferential option for the poor is only one of many principles placing Catholicism radically at odds with Randianism.
So whether it is a union rally in Madison, Wisconsin or a tea party in Doylestown, Pennsyvania, Catholics in attendance ought not to be wearing Che Guevara tee-shirts or waving Ayn Rand placards.
But, to get back to Archbishop Nienstedt, he would be the first to affirm (just ask him) that his own views on budgetary matters, the provision of social services, and the like necessarily include prudential judgments that are not themselves dictated by definitive teachings of the Church. He would not maintain that his fellow Catholic citizens of goodwill who have, on reflection, arrived at different judgments (while affirming core moral principles, such as the obligation to design and maintain a system in which the welfare of the poor is attended to in a way consistent with their full humanity and equal dignity) have broken communion with the Church or placed themselves in opposition to its teachings.
At the same time, I'm sure the Archbishop would say that Catholic legislators, for example, or citizens voting in a referendum or engaging in public advocacy, who seek to deny to any class of human beings (the unborn, let us say, or the severely cognitively disabled) the law's fundamental protections against killing, have broken communion with the Church. They differ with the Archbishop not merely in respect of judgments he has made on which his fellow Catholics and other men and women of goodwill can reasonably disagree while maintaining fidelity to the principles of justice solemnly proclaimed by the Church; they have placed themselves in opposition to those principles of justice. They have broken faith on the Church's fundamental teaching that every member of the human family, irrespective not only of race, sex, and ethnicity, but also irrespective of age, size, stage of development, cognitive capacity, and condition of dependency, possesses inherent dignity and an equal right to the law's protection against lethal violence.
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