John Henry Newman died on this day in 1890. He was, of course, one of the great English prose stylists of the nineteenth century and exerted a major influence on Victorian intellectural culture, but--to paraphrase something Alasdair MacIntyre once said about Edith Stein--his impending canonization and declaration to be a doctor of the Church all but ensure his eventual marginalization. As many of us prepare for a new academic year amid much political and economic turmoil, here's a passage from Newman's The Idea of a University to ponder:
And so in the intellectual, moral, social, and political world. Man, with his motives and works, his languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is from Him. Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His gifts. Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. The pageant of earthly royalty has the semblance and the benediction of the Eternal King. Peace and civilization, commerce and adventure, wars when just, conquest when humane and necessary, have His cooperation, and His blessing upon them. The course of events, the revolution of empires, the rise and fall of states, the periods and eras, the progresses and the retrogressions of the world's history, not indeed the incidental sin, over-abundant as it is, but the great outlines and the results of human affairs, are from His disposition. The elements and types and seminal principles and constructive powers of the moral world, in ruins though it be, are to be referred to Him. He "enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world." His are the dictates of the moral sense, and the retributive reproaches of conscience. To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the intellect, the irradiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the sagacity of the politician, the wisdom (as Scripture calls it), which now rears and decorates the Temple, now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The old saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the luminous maxims of law, the oracles of individual wisdom, the traditionary rules of truth, justice, and religion, even though imbedded in the corruption, or alloyed with the pride, of the world, betoken His original agency, and His long-suffering presence. Even where there is habitual rebellion against Him, or profound far-spreading social depravity, still the undercurrent, or the heroic outburst, of natural virtue, as well as the yearnings of the heart after what it has not, and its presentiment of its true remedies, are to be ascribed to the Author of all good. Anticipations or reminiscences of His glory haunt the mind of the self-sufficient sage, and of the pagan devotee; His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane, or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He all but concurs, according to His good pleasure, and in His selected season, in the issues of unbelief, superstition, and false worship, and He changes the character of acts by His overruling operation. He condescends, though He gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, and is dimly discerned in the ode or the epic, as in troubled water or in fantastic dreams. All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from Him. ("Bearing of Theology on other Branches of Knowledge")
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The New York Times Magazine explores the "stigma" (undeserved? archaic? regrettable?) surrounding the emerging trend of eliminating one fetus when IVF results in twins. This is a very sad paragraph, among many:
Jenny’s decision to reduce twins to a single fetus was never really in doubt. The idea of managing two infants at this point in her life terrified her. She and her husband already had grade-school-age children, and she took pride in being a good mother. She felt that twins would soak up everything she had to give, leaving nothing for her older children. Even the twins would be robbed, because, at best, she could give each one only half of her attention and, she feared, only half of her love. Jenny desperately wanted another child, but not at the risk of becoming a second-rate parent. “This is bad, but it’s not anywhere as bad as neglecting your child or not giving everything you can to the children you have,” she told me, referring to the reduction.
I don't mean to minimize the hardship that can accompany multiple births, but this excerpt reflects an unfortunate (though increasingly common) view of parental love: a limited commodity that, when extended to one child, necessarily reduces its availability to another child. Not to mention the underlying premise that non-existence is preferable to existence in a household with "too many" kids.
Today’s The New York Times has an interesting article on the New York City proposal mandating a particular kind of sex education for students in the public school system. [HERE] For the time being, there is an exemption for students in private schools, and there also appears to an opt-out for parents who choose not to have their children attend classes which appear to promote an active sexual-relations life.
Education is a good thing. Teaching young people and future citizens about who they are is also a good thing. But there are significant problems with the sex education proposal as it now stands. Some of the problems are commissions; however, others are omissions. From the commission perspective, the proposal appears to encourage or promote sexual activity by young people. For those who may disagree with me, their argument might run along these lines: if young people are going to engage in sexual relations, it’s important to teach them how to be “safe.”
But are they really safe? The mandated program makes certain assumptions about teaching “safe sex,” but does it, in fact, encourage promiscuity without responsibility? If the program’s “responsibility” element focuses on how to properly use prophylactic devices and contraception, where is the content about resisting temptations to satisfy sexual desires? The current proposal as described by the Times appears to emphasize autonomy and self-gratification without paying attention to educating responsible young people who fully comprehend the sexual nature of the human person.
A major omission with the proposal as reported is the need to introduce the youth of New York City to understanding virtue so each of them can lead a virtuous life. One can learn about sex, the sexual nature of the human person, human reproduction, and all that without promoting sexual indulgence. Moreover, the City could also instill responsibility in its future citizens by discussing forbearance, the courage to resist self-satisfaction, the gift of prudence, and the development of just, that is, right-relationships between and among young people.
The likelihood of these thoughts ultimately being considered, let alone adopted, by the civil authorities is probably small. Still, there may be time for the good people of New York to consider alternatives to the current plan for educating today’s youth and tomorrow’s citizens.
RJA sj
Empirical support for Jesus's caution about the rich?
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
In addition to John Stott, another hero to evangelical Protestants died in recent days: Senator Mark Hatfield. There were almost no openly declared, non-Southern evangelicals in Congress in the mid-1970s, and so Hatfield (like John Anderson) was someone to whom my Midwestern Republican evangelical family pointed with pride, even when he turned against Vietnam while they still defended it. Christianity Today describes his set of passionate faith-based beliefs and touches on why almost no politician today reflects the same mix:
For nearly four decades, perhaps American evangelicals' most prominent and admired politician was a man associated with liberal politics, one of the country's leading voices against the Vietnam War and military spending, and a critic of the nascent religious right.
As the Vietnam era waned, Hatfield maintained his opposition to military funding, especially nuclear arms. But he was also staunchly pro-life, introducing the first constitutional amendment on abortion, and joining Rep. Henry Hyde in prohibiting federal funding for such procedures. But as his influence as a senior senator grew—he twice became chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee—his presence as an evangelical icon diminished somewhat.
"Part of the issue is the political parties hardened in the mid to late '70s," said [David] Swartz, whose history of the Evangelical Left will be published by University of Pennsylvania Press next year. "It wasn't clear where they would come out on abortion, for example. So an evangelical progressive could function in that earlier system better than they could later, in the '80s and '90s...."
And here's a reflection by an evangelical leader on Hatfield's "freedom and joy and humility" as a politician of Christian conviction. For those interested in church-state issues, Hatfield was also the prime legislative mover behind the 1984 Equal Access Act, which allowed religious student groups to meet on high school campuses on equal terms as other student clubs.
Tom
Last month Jonathan Turley filed a complaint challenging Utah's criminalization of polygamy. I hadn't even heard about it until a reporter called to ask about it, but now that I've had to give it some thought, I find it an extremely interesting and challenging case. Turley is not challenging the exclusion of polygamy from the state's definition of marriage; he's simply challenging its criminalization. Not surprisingly, he relies heavily on Lawrence v. Texas, and there is something to be said for this argument -- just as the state cannot intrude on the privacy of two individuals' intimate same-sex sexual relationship, so (Turley says) is the state forbidden from intruding on the privacy of multiple adults' intimate plural sexual relationships. The potential distinction lies in Turley's characterization of "plural families" as "private conduct between consenting adults." I agree that, if a group of adults decided to engage in multiple sexual relationships within the group in the privacy of their home(s), the state would have a hard time prosecuting them in the wake of Lawrence. But Utah is only threatening to prosecute adults who are living openly (and very publicly, given the television reality show, "Sister Wives," that is based on the lives of Turley's clients) as a polygamous family in fact, if not in law. Crucially (in my view), they are also raising children within that polygamous family. When we're talking about raising children, we're not talking about strictly private conduct and we're not under Lawrence. That doesn't settle the matter, though. Three lingering questions:
1) Assuming that the state portrays its interest in criminalizing the conduct as relating to the well-being of children, who bears the burden of proof to show the link between polygamous families and children's well-being? Does the state have to come forward with empirical evidence to support its interest, or is enough to say, "We believe that there is a plausible basis for enshrining in law the importance of having parents equally committed to each child within the family?" In the SSM context, it appears that courts are becoming more inclined to give the states the burden of proof, and I'm not sure if Utah would be able to produce evidence to satisfy the burden here. Of course, it's very difficult to come up with empirical evidence justifying a prohibition unless the prohibition is lifted.
2) Should advocates of parental rights be concerned if the state is permitted to criminalize parental conduct based on assertions of children's well-being absent demonstrable evidence? Assuming that straight moral condemnation is taken off the table by Lawrence, if courts interpret children's well-being loosely, could that create problems down the road for families who rear their children based on other sorts of counter-cultural norms?
3) Though Turley claims to have no interest in challenging the marriage laws, if he wins this suit, will there be a state interest sufficient to justify polygamists' exclusion from state-recognized marriage? Of course there is a conceptual difference between throwing someone in jail for their relationships and giving their relationships official recognition, but is there an articulable difference in the state's interests in this context? We've seen Lawrence invoked in some SSM cases (as Scalia predicted); if there is no good reason for the state to criminalize polygamy, is there any good reason for the state not to recognize polygamy?
That's the by-line to this New Yorker piece by James Wood, discussing the book, The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays For How We Live Now edited by George Levine (the checkerboard cover evokes for me "The Joy of Cooking"). The book contains essays by people who in various ways address issues of enchantment and disenchantment (see also Steve Smith's excellent book) in the modern age, including pieces by Philip Kitcher and Charles Taylor. The piece by Wood is an interesting read, with much to agree and disagree with.
Today is the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Some may know her as Edith Stein. In either case, she is the same individual of gifted intellect who still teaches us much almost sixty years after her execution at Auschwitz. Born in 1891 in a devout Jewish family, she declared herself an atheist during her teen years. But like many other gifted intellects who studied philosophy, her encounter with the fundamental questions of life and the meaning of human existence, along with the influence of the writings of Teresa of Avila, led her from a denial of God into her embrace of Him.
Her short time on this planet of fifty-one years still enabled her to encounter the temptations and the evil of this world with grace that was established on her profound faith in God. Her persecution by National Socialism and her keen mind were sources of confidence and strength that no human power and no temporal authority could overcome. In the face of the human-generated tempests of her day, she saw what she had to do with her life and proclaim time and again her trust in God. Her witness to the faith fortified her to write to Pope Pius XI about the need for Peter to respond to the terrors of the 1930s. Her correspondence was a likely catalyst for the encyclical letter Mit Brennender Sorge, (1937). Fellow philosopher and successor to St. Peter, Blessed John Paul II declared her a saint of the Church in 1998.
What does she have to teach us today? Much.
She lived in turbulent times, but so do we. Her faith and humility before God showed her what she had to do in her troubled times. May that same faith and humbleness we share with her enable us to do the same. Clearly her faith and her reason charted the course for her as she walked toward her death. As we consider laws to address the chaos of the present age, may we be bold enough in our faith and wisely exercise the gift of reason God has given us to craft norms not only for the present moment but for our posterity. The human powers and temporal authorities of the present age may say otherwise and disagree, but Teresa has demonstrated an alternative path that is superior and enduring. She followed the counsel of the Old and New Testaments and was not afraid. With God at our side, we, too, can put aside our anxieties. Let us also pray today for Teresa Benedicta to intercede on our behalf and those others for whom we also pray.
RJA sj
