All right, let us please dial it down again, continue to keep our heads about us, and ascertain whether we might learn something worth learning from the 'outrage' occasioned by this silly slide that first appeared in an isolated lecture given by a low-placed consultant to some Army Reserve personnel, then was excised and repudiated once brought to the attention of the higher-ups. I believe that there is in fact something very important to learn here - something about our true calling.
I start by restating two questions, then draw what seems to me a single important lesson upon which what strike me as the right answers to these questions converge.
My questions, originally for Patrick but really for all of us, are basically two.
The first is, what will or ought dissipate one's outrage, assuming one experiences it, over the Army Reserve lecture incident that has been under discussion these last several days? If the category of forgiveness isn't thought applicable here, even after the offense in question has been corrected and repudiated, I am happy to hear what other category or categories might be. Ultimately, though, I want to know simply what can or ought bring the evident rage in the outrage, which I do not think helpful and do think 'extreme,' to an end. I hazard my own suggestion, which does indeed sound in forgiveness as well as in cognate categories, below.
The second question is, in what, if any, ways should the standard of outrage (or 'accountability') to which we hold higher-ups in a hierarchy, when an offense occurs lower within the hierarchy and the higher-ups do not at first know about it, differ between important institutions in which all of us have stakes? My own view is that the standard should probably be more or less the same - and, again, sound in forgiveness - again for reasons I offer below.-
It is in connection with both of these questions that the two case studies - that involving the Army Reserve and that involving the Church - strike me as worth comparing.
As I see it, both in the military case that has Patrick outraged, and in the Church child abuse scandals that have others outraged and have Patrick 'grieve[d]' (more on which grief below), wrongs were done lower down, and higher-ups were then called upon to put things to rights. From the looks of things thus far, the wrong in the second case was immeasurably more grave than that in the first case, while, ironically, the higher-ups in the second case showed scandalously less alacrity about putting things right than did those in the first case. That seems to me important in a number of ways, but for present purposes I take it for important only inasmuch as it underscores the suggestion that I shall offer about grief, forgiveness, and 'in-group' and 'out-group' psychology below.
Now, Patrick might disagree with me about the comparative gravity of the offenses in the two cases ('raping priests are relevantly different from officials [i.e., an outside lecturer] lying [i.e., lumping Catholics together with al Qaeda operatives as 'extremists'] in their official capacity'). And I take it he disagrees with me also on the comparative alacrity question (though no one has yet asserted that the military was particularly slow to correct the error that outrages him). I would of course find that troubling, but as suggested above, what ultimately interests me here is something a wee bit more general - viz., again, whether the same 'outrage' or 'accountability' standard should apply between cases. Should it? Does it?
Patrick says, 'I grieve that our bishops did not do more to root about the evil of abuse of children.' He does not profess 'outrage.' In order to get at my 'should it?, does it?' question, I would like first to know why. Is the outrage/grief distinction here inadvertant and not intended to suggest mutual exclusion, or is it deliberate and indeed meant to suggest mutual exclusion? This question is not simply for Patrick. It is for all of us. It is ultimately the question that prompts this post and yesterday's posts. And it is the question whose answer, I think, counsels against rage.
Here's what I'm driving at: I can understand how the category of grief might initially strike one as more immediately salient than outrage if one feels in a certain sense personally implicated in a wrong via one's actual participation in the institution whose personnel have more proximately committed it and whose hierarchy has at least initially missed it or hidden it. But if that's what's at work here in underwriting rage in Case 1 and mere grief in Case 2, then it seems to me ultimately untenable. For surely the message of the Gospel is that we are all of us implicated in all offenses committed by all of our sisters and brothers. We are, that's to say, our brothers' and sisters' keepers. And if that is so, then it seems to me grief is more apt than is outrage in both cases here under consideration - as well as, I take it, in most if not all other cases. That's not to say remonstrance isn't likewise called for in most cases. It's only to say grief is more apt than rage in all cases.
The Church is not and cannot be a sociological 'in-group' in which the category of 'grief' rather than 'outrage' is salient, while other institutions such as our nation's military are 'out-groups' in connection with whose errors we entertain only 'outrage.' Insofar as we treat the Church as an in-group, we render it incoherent and impossible. We render it self-undermining. For its very existence is predicated on the proposition that there are no 'out-groups.' It is the institutional emodiment of the proposition that we are all of us, all of humanity, one Lord-beloved in-group. I propose, then, that we endeavor to emote accordingly.
Bob Hockett asks with *obvious* generosity of spirit: "What must these people do to earn Patrick's forgiveness?"
Did I speak a word about "forgiveness"? No. Bob's just makin' that up. False start.
"Forgiveness" is not a relevant concept, Bob. The reasons for its irrelevance are here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1428512
I am not interested in the hypothetical of "forgiving" the military. I condemn my government's speaking -- no matter the spokesperson or his/her level -- falsesehoods, *especially* about the Church. Don't you?
Ah, so this is Patrick's point: not, after all, that the Army is plotting war upon Catholics, not that Catholics are uniquely entitled to state promotion of our religious beliefs among our non-Catholic fellow citizens, but 'the need for hierarchical accountability.'
Fair enough. Two remaining questions, then:
1) What more is the Army Reserve chain of command, having repudiated and excised the dopey slide of which it was apparently unaware, now to do in order to satisfy Patrick? And how far up the chain of command does Patrick recommend that what ever he has in mind by 'accountability' reach? Will he be content with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? The Secretary of Defense? Or will he reach all the way up to the Commander-in-Chief or the voters? What must these people do to earn Patrick's forgiveness?
2) Back to the gander's sauce, what manner of accountability does Patrick demand of the hierarchy of that Church to which he, if I understand his earlier posts correctly, believes that our nation's Constitution should ultimately guide the full citizenry? As serious an offense as a single anomalous slide ascribing, my goodness, 'extremism' to Catholics admittedly is, I can't help but think that repeated, systematic, and apparently conspiratorially concealed child abuse is a matter of some concern too. And, to complete the parallel with Question (1), how high up this 'chain of command' does Patrick recommend that his brand of accountability reach? The Bishops? The College of Cardinals? The Pontiff? What must these people do to earn Patrick's forgiveness?
The US military is, in my view, much overused. But it is in many ways a distinguished institution in which most people learn to control excesses and, notwithstanding periodic scandals, to comport themselves with restraint. Much the same can be said of the Church - the non-'militant' Church, at any rate. The apt response to cockupery of the sort that has exercised Patrick is dignified remonstration of the sort registered by the AMS (USA), to which Patrick helpfully links and to which it is difficult to imagine anyone in the military not being receptive. Shrill professions of 'outrage,' conspiracy-'theorizing,' and militant clamoring befits only fanatics and, yep, extremists, ultimately making even the silliest of slides look a good bit less silly.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Bob Hockett persists in obscuring my principal point. The offense that I am complaining about (here) is that an official U.S. Army document [mysteriously, that document, which I just tried to reach again, can no longer be reached from the link I have] spoke grave untruth about the nature of the Church. (Bob, do you deny that?) An army author/presenter and publication, the job of which included officially reaching and officially sharing true judgments of fact (no?), told falsehoods about the Church. Whether the offence occurred intentionally or whether it occurred unintentionally is not material to my present point, about the need for hierarchical accountability for false statements of fact. The Army was quick to say that this falsehood came from "outside" of "the chain of command." Good, but too little too late. Let's be clear about the inappositeness of the question Bob won't (he says) bring himself even to type. When a priest or other "responsible" official in the Church rapes a child, such a crime is not perpetrated within the perceived scope of the criminal's office. That's obvious. The lie told by the Army official and publication about the Church -- equating her with al Qaeda, for relevant purposes -- was, by contrast, told within the scope of the official's putative office. I do indeed expect the Army to repudiate lies told in its official name. I do also expect the hierarchy of the Church to repudiate lies told in her name. And, needless to say, I grieve that our bishops did not do more to root about the evil of abuse of children. But raping priests are relevantly different from officials lying in their official capacity. Doesn't matter how lowly the *government* official is.
I am gratified that the Archdiocese for Military Services (USA) made the following statement, here. Perhaps Bob considers the Archdiocese's statement unwarranted?
If I read him correctly, Patrick is somewhat put out by the fact that '[t]he Framers knew what they were doing, alas, when they sought to make it virtually impossible to amend their godless Constitution.' For it turns out that '[t]hirty-two percent of Americans want a Christian constitutional amendment, according to a Huffington Post/You Gov poll.'
There is a fellow I sometimes see in my current DC neighborhood, where I have been residing while back at old IMF stomping grounds during sabbatic, who is similarly displeased. He is pretty sure that he alone knows the identity of the One True God, and that all of the rest of us are walking in darkness. He would accordingly like to amend our Constitution, in order that he might then adapt the apparatus of state to his evangelical purposes. But it seems that the Framers have left it even more difficult for him to commandeer our shared government for purposes of pushing the other 99.999967% of the citizenry toward his faith, than they did for the 'Christian constitutional amendment wanters' to do so for purposes of pushing the other 68% of the population toward theirs.
As for me, I feel for these people, but I must also confess that I thank God for 'our godless Constitution.' And I'm pretty confident that people and institutions who have real, meritorious claims to the Truth will generally be able to convince us without coercive assistance from instrumentalities that properly belong to us all.
No journalist's coverage of the Vatican is better than--indeed, none is as good as, I think--John Allen's superb coverage. Allen has a wonderfully informative and throughtful article here. Many MOJ readers will be quite interested.
Here is a question for Patrick.
First, please consider this pair of sentences, which I’ll call ‘Claim 1’:
Claim 1: A speaker,who was making a presentation at an Army Reserve venue, in the course of so doing likened Catholics and Evangelicals to al Qaeda members as ‘extremists.’ Hence the Army endorses that assimilation and, as an institution that makes war against al Qaeda, now plans a war against Catholics.
[Please follow the link above if you do not know what occasions this remarkable claim, the last clause of which in particular continues to flabbergast me.]
Now substitute a few variables for several key terms in Claim 1, yielding this claim frame:
Claim Frame: A p, who was q-ing in an r venue, in the course of so doing s’d. Hence the r endorses that s-ing and, as an institution that t's, now plans more s against Catholics.
Now fill the variables with the following values, appropriately conjugated or preposition-supplemented where applicable:
p – priest
q – teach or otherwise minister
r – Church
s – abuse children
t – pursuant to its mission, receives regular access to children
I cannot bring myself actually to type the claim that results from thus filling the variables, so let us here leave it unspoken and call it ‘Claim 2.’
Now as all of us know, many people during the thick of the paedophilia scandals made claims along precisely such lines as the lines of Claim 2. And in light of the shocking pervasiveness of the problem that emerged during this painful period, as well as the evidence of systematic cover-up in some quarters that likewise emerged, these charges were in a certain sense understandable. Yet they were nevertheless wrong. It simply did not follow that the institution endorsed or committed itself to further incidents of the unspeakable evil that some had committed in the course of working for that institution.
I wonder, then, what principled ground Patrick might offer for rejecting Claim 2, that does not warrant rejection of Claim 1.
Social atheism, such as the godless U.S. Constitution enshrines, is not inevitable. (I never thought it was, but some Hegelians do think that and therefore would march us all in that direction). Look at what's going on in
Hungary. I celebrated the preconditions of Hungary's now turning its government schools over to religious institutions
here, responding to James Davison Hunter's premature burial of religious institutions. Thirty-two percent of Americans want a Christian constitutional amendment, according to a Huffington Post/You Gov
poll. The Framers knew what they were doing, alas, when they sought to make it virtually impossible to amend their godless Constitution.
