Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Dreher on the religious liberty and SSM debate
Rod Dreher has this essay at The American Conservative about the ongoing debate -- to which many of us have contributed -- about the extent to which religion-based objections to expanding the legal category of marriage to include same-sex couples can, will, or should be accommodated in the context of, e.g., anti-discrimination laws.
I Always Suspected I Liked Books
But I never knew how much until I read this article by Evan Hughes. Books seem to possess some surprising 
virtues, including:
* Unlike other more pliant media, they resist what the author calls "disaggregation" but what one might also call "fragmentation" or perhaps even "atomism."
* They resist the opposite phenomenon: bundling or lumping. They are difficult to market as a packaged good. The book consumer wants his book--all of it, and nothing else.
* They are insulated from the charms of "sensual verisimilitude." Or, where such matters of the flesh are concerned, sensuality peaks in a low-tech medium and increases with age.
* "Sharing" isn't at all the point. Keeping is the point. Living together with--for a good long time--is the point. Seeing them with you, year after year, is the point. If you borrow a book, for heaven's sake (and for the lender's) return it.
Books want to be attached. They want to be conserved and they don't want to leave your side. They want to be loyal and they expect loyalty in return. Books don't want to be free.
Monday, October 7, 2013
On Coherence and Confusion
Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, formerly known as Our Lady of Victory. The memorial commemorates the victory of the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire on this date in 1571. The Christian victory over the superior Ottoman forces was an important milestone in preserving, at least for a while, the Christian identity of Europe. Today the Board of Trustees of Loyola Marymount University (LMU) may vote on the whether the university’s health coverage for staff and faculty maintains or jettisons elective abortion coverage. This vote is a different milestone which will substantively affect the Catholic identity of LMU.
Some within the temporal media have chimed in the matter of LMU’s crossroads. For example, yesterday, October 6, 2013, The New York Times in an article by Ian Lovett, entitled “Abortion Vote Exposes Rift at a Catholic University,” begins by mentioning that not three weeks have passed since Pope Francis asserted that the Church is obsessed with abortion, but the author cites the pope with his words, “We have to find a new balance.” The New York Times did not mention that within hours of his La Civiltà Cattolica interview being published and from which these words were taken, the Holy Father addressed the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and discussed the matter of abortion in greater depth. If one were truly interested in what Pope Francis has to say about abortion, I would think it relevant to consider in coherent fashion his statements on this, or any, subject so that a brief, perhaps casual remark could be put into its proper context.
In remarks of September 20, Pope Francis exhorted the members of the Catholic Medical Associations to be witnesses and diffusers of the culture of life. Well, this same exhortation should apply to any institution that uses the moniker “Catholic.” As the pope explained, being Catholic entails a great responsibility, in accordance with the Christian vocation to culture, to remind others of the transcendent dimension of human life that bears the divine imprint of God’s creative work. In order not to leave any ambiguity in the meaning of his words, Pope Francis further asserted that, “Every child who, rather than being born, is condemned unjustly to being aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who even before he was born, and then just after birth, experienced the world’s rejection.”
Coherent explanation is important to the law as it is to presentation of news and opinion. In the law, a segment of the law ought not to be read and applied out of the context of the rest of the same law or laws that relate to the same subject matter under in pari materia. But coherence is also important to informing the public of important matters of general concern that affect the common good, and the issue of abortion is one of these matters. To suggest, as The New York Times does, that matters of “academic freedom” and “social justice” are at stake if the Trustees of LMU discard elective abortion coverage from the health care plan is incoherent and confuses this important decision that goes to the soul of what LMU is and is not. Regarding academic freedom, there is little attention paid to the freedom of LMU to remain true to its Catholic nature. It seems that only the freedom of those who are not faithful Catholics is worth protecting. When it comes to the matter of “social justice,” does “social justice” demand the continuance of the snuffing out of innocent human life? Since 1973, there have been over fifty million abortions attributed to the United States. This is for me, and I am sure for others, a genuine concern about social justice, but this factor is also relegated to important facts not worth mentioning by some in the temporal media.
If today’s vote is a “symbolic battle for the university’s soul” as The New York Times suggests about the LMU vote, then perhaps Our Lady of Victory will bless her faithful sons and daughters at LMU with the wisdom necessary to confront the challenges of this struggle which are more than symbolic.
RJA sj
Movsesian on St. Vartan's Armenian Cathedral
My colleague Mark Movsesian gave this fine address on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the construction of St. Vartan’s Armenian Cathedral on the east side in Manhattan (I was privileged to attend a service there with Mark a couple of years ago. It is quite lovely). A bit from Mark’s talk, which touches on matters we frequently discuss here at MOJ:
[T]he builders chose to dedicate the cathedral to Vartan. We all know the story of Kach Vartan—“Brave” Vartan. In the fifth century, Armenia was under the control of the Persian Empire. The Persians were Zoroastrians, and they deeply distrusted Christianity. Christianity provided a link to Byzantium, and thus posed a threat to Persian rule. So the Persians attempted to force Armenians to renounce Christianity in favor of the Persians’ own religion.
Some Armenian nobles did convert. But others, led by Vartan Mamigonian, organized a revolt. In 451, at the Battle of Avarayr, Vartan led a vastly outnumbered force against the Persian army. In a letter to the Persian commander before the battle, Vartan and his companions explained that they were willing to resist—and die, for they could hold no illusions about their chances of success—in order to remain Christian:
From this faith no one can shake us, neither angels nor men, neither sword, nor fire, nor water, nor any, nor all, horrid tortures… If you leave to us our belief, we will, here on earth, choose no other master in your place, and in Heaven choose no other God in place of Jesus Christ, for there is no other God. But should you require anything beyond this great testimony, here we are; our bodies are in your hands… Do not, therefore, interrogate us further concerning all this, because our bond of faith is not with men to be deceived like children, but to God, with Whom we are indissolubly bound and from Whom nothing can detach and separate us, neither now, nor later, nor forever, nor forever and ever.
The Persian army crushed the Armenians at Avarayr. Vartan and eight of his generals were killed. The revolt continued, though, and the Persians eventually concluded that their campaign of forced conversion was too costly and gave it up. Our Church has viewed Avarayr as a great moral victory and has honored Vartan and his companions as Christian martyrs and saints to the present day.
It’s easy to understand, then, why the builders dedicated this cathedral to St. Vartan. First, it was a way of linking the Armenian story to the American. St. Vartan’s story fits very well with foundational American ideals. It would be wrong to understand Avarayr completely in today’s categories, of course; one should avoid that sort of anachronism. But the history of Vartan and his companions resonates with the concept of religious liberty that is so fundamental in American culture. Vartan and his companions were, in a sense, standing up for religious freedom—for the right to worship God. When they told the Persians that they would be loyal subjects, but that they would not give up Christ, they were anticipating, by many centuries, the arguments of waves of immigrants to America, many of whom came to this continent precisely so that they could worship God free from state compulsion. Naming the new cathedral for St. Vartan was thus a way to introduce the Armenian story in terms that American culture would find immediately recognizable.
Second, the choice of St. Vartan also links the cathedral with another, older theme, one that predates America by millennia and which, sadly, continues, in parts of the world, even today. The other epithet for Vartan, besides “brave,” is Garmeer: “Garmeer” Vartan– Red Vartan, as in “bloody.” The story of Avarayr, after all, is a story of blood and sacrifice; of martyrdom—and survival. It is thus emblematic of our history as a Christian people from the beginning. Many times in our history, it has seemed as though Christianity in Armenia would die at the hands of persecutors: Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Bolsheviks. Always, with God’s help, the faith has survived; not without great cost, but it has survived.
This lesson would have been immediate for the people who founded this cathedral. The Armenian Genocide of 1915, which some of the cathedral’s builders experienced firsthand, and which all of them had heard about from friends and relatives who had survived, was only one of many trials that Armenian Christians have had to endure. Surely, the choice of Brave Vartan, a martyr for the faith whose legacy down the centuries is one of strength and triumph, was meant to associate this new, American cathedral with the message of survival and rebirth.
For Armenian Christians in America today, the future looks secure. We apparently are not called to suffer persecution and martyrdom. For our brothers and sisters in other countries, though, very grave threats remain. Many congregants at St. Vartan today escaped the pogroms that took place in Baku and Sumgait in the 1980s; they know what persecution means. In Syria, Armenian and other Christians are being forced to flee, lest they become victims of a radical Islamism that seeks their subjugation. Our cathedral’s name, St. Vartan, should serve as a reminder to us that in other parts of the world, Armenian Christians continue to pay a price for their faith. The name of our cathedral is an admonition: We must do what we can to help our brothers and sisters who are persecuted for their religion—our religion–and welcome them when, like our ancestors a few generations ago, they come to America to seek a more stable life. May this cathedral be a symbol of hope to them.
Justice Scalia talks about some things-Catholic in interview
Lots of people are blogging and buzzing about the recent wide-ranging interview Justice Scalia gave to nymag.com. Here is a link to some parts of the interview having to do with things-Catholic. Interesting stuff. I hope that this bit reminds everyone of a certain great scene in a certain great movie:
Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.
No.
It’s because he’s smart.
So what’s he doing now?
What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.
Some sad news
Edward Lev, beloved husband of MoJ friend Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School, died unexpectedly this weekend after being hospitalized for what was thought to be a non-life threatening infection. He was 86 years old. Deepest condolences to Mary Ann and their daughters and grandchildren.
When he was 16 years old, Ed tried to sign up to fight in World War II. Later, he became a marine and fought in Korea. He then went to law school and on to a distinguished career as a labor lawyer and litigator with the firm of Sullivan and Worcester in Boston. In retirement, he often did legal work for good causes and also pursued an intellectual interest---one which he and I share and enjoyed discussing---in Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.
He was a fine man in every way.
Requiescat in pace.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Evangelizing Mars
Suppose we discover an advanced human civilization on another planet marked by a great divide between economic and educational classes but suffering at both ends of the spectrum from a quiet desperation caused by a gnawing emptiness and hunger that grows continually deeper despite continuous consumption of everything from the latest technology to cheap and often vulgar entertainments to food to sex. An almost endless array of choices faces members of this society with no concrete criteria by which to choose among goods. Loneliness abounds. This civilization’s mythical religious traditions of the past no longer provide meaning and guidance in their lives. Although “reason” had always had a tough time supplanting the impulse of arbitrary power, “power” now reigns supreme in the face of collapse of faith in reason. The family structure is fractured as are the political structures. Social bonds have become completely untethered. In this “civilization” many employers view workers as disposable means to the end of production and the fetus in the womb is often viewed as a disposable by-product of sexual autonomy.
As we begin a natural process of interacting with these neighbors, Pope Francis encourages missionary orders to proclaim the Gospel to this newly discovered civilization. How to bring Christ to this particular world with its myriad problems and dysfunctions? As the missionaries discern how to preach the Gospel to this particular people at this particular time, they begin to realize the daunting nature of the task. But, they have a powerful ally – the law written on the heart - on their side. Even if the people of this planet deny it, these missionaries know and trust that the natural law resides deep within each person. Following the tried and true method of Alcoholics Anonymous, and risking the label relativist, the missionaries will take the people of this civilization and their consciences as they are, trusting that with this starting place, these consciences will develop to conform to the objective truth as their world is re-enchanted with the message of a God of mercy; a God who is Love – who loves so much that He sent His only Son to be one with them and to suffer and die for them.
The missionaries know that to be successful they must live the Gospel and literally become Christ for these people. As hope comes to this lost people, the missionaries know that they will be open to hearing about the authentic freedom and happiness that comes from living according to God’s design. Although it will happen in fits and starts (after all, how many centuries did it take for the Christian West to root out the evil of slavery?), license – the false freedom of choice – leading to emptiness and despair will be replaced with living a moral life. For these people who breathe the narcissistic air of their culture, the saving hope of Christ must precede the Church’s moral teaching just as the adulteress experienced the loving gaze of and act of mercy from Christ BEFORE He tells her to go and sin no more.
This alien world is our world, or at least I suspect that Pope Francis thinks so. Despite the multiple signs to the contrary, many of us live, breathe, and operate as if this post-Christian civilization can be re-Christianized from within by re-membering our Christian, including moral, heritage. Pope Francis, I suspect, thinks we are wrong. He thinks that that this iteration of Western Civilization – the civilization that emerged from the ashes of the Roman Empire – is dead. We may not see it yet, but the dual projects of Reformation and Enlightenment, which have taken root over the last 500 years with the accompanying divorce of faith and reason and ultimate collapse of both, have run their course effectively destroying this iteration of Western Civilization.
Vatican II prepared us to respond to this reality, but we needed 50 more years or so to make clear that the Church was not changing its fundamental teachings before we could begin to proclaim the Gospel to this alien civilization in which we live. As this iteration of Western civilization dies and a new one rises from the ashes, we can rest assured that Christ will not abandon the Church. Come Holy Spirit!
Saturday, October 5, 2013
So What Is Papa Bergoglio Really Saying
Once again another Pope Francis interview hits the temporal media with the La Repubblica interview written by Eugenio Scalfari, a well educated man who left the Church but desires to engage the Holy Father. It is clear from the La Repubblica publication that the Pope's comments were not recorded digitally or in notes but in a mental reconstruction by Senor Scalfari. Once again, the temporal press is taking elements of the interview out of a much deeper context so their selective emphases distort what the Pope actually said, some of which has a bearing on juridical and ecclesial issues, particularly the social teachings of the Church which are of interest to many in the Mirror of Justice community.
The United States Assistancy has an interesting publication called the "Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits." The current issue, which came out today, has the first of a two-part publication of some of Father Bergoglio's writings as Jesuit Provincial and formator. These writings are translated and edited by Father Philip Endean, SJ of the British Province. Philip and I are friends even though we don't always agree on certain points. But agreement on everything is not essential to authentic friendship. Father Endean has done an important service in this translation project by showing what underpins the contemporary expressions of Pope Francis that are hitting the press today. I have just read the first installment of the translations of some of the early Bergoglio writings, and the contrast on some matters between Father Ratzinger and Father Bergoglio appear from time to time. But what demonstrates a union of the minds of this two men who became the Vicar of Christ is their mutual concern about sin, salvation, and elitism or self-referentialism.
The Assistancy has kindly made Father Endean's most helpful work available HERE . I am confident that readers will find Father Bergoglio's past words informative and indicative of who he is and where he's going.
RJA sj
Kontorovich on the Council of Europe's Recommendation to Ban Circumcision
Eugene Kontorovich has an interesting and, to my mind, in portions persuasive comment on the Council of Europe's new recommendation that nations should consider banning circumcision. I say this as someone who disagrees with Professor Kontorovich about the constitutional merits of the test laid out in Employment Division v. Smith. Indeed, as I have written here before, there is a largely unfounded optimism in the wisdom and good will of democratic majorities that is presumed in the approach of Smith--a presumption that is borne out beautifully when the majority is with you, but less well when it turns against you. An aristocratic (in the Tocquevillian sense) buffer (see the judiciary) on the moral certitudes of popular, democratic fancy is a healthful thing, particularly when that buffer serves to remind the people of its fundamental, deeply rooted political traditions.
That is why I have some questions about the first half of Professor Kontorovich's comment, and it is also the reason that though I sympathize with the final line of his post, I find that the Smith approach is likely to make things much worse. But the second half seems right on target to me. A bit:
Yet from a broader perspective, such measures are [an] historic, epochal, dizzying step backward for religious liberty. They are illiberal and intolerant in the deep sense. Jews have been allowed to fully practice their religion on the Continent since even before the Enlightenment (though subject to other restrictions). Now, at the time of the supposed greatest openness and freedom, the end of religious wars, the central Jewish rite would be banned.
It requires an extraordinary moral certitude to conclude that one established the evil of a universal normative practice of the oldest monotheistic religion, a practice that Europeans, including anti-Semites, have tolerated for as long as Jews have been there. Burkeans they are not, at the Council of Europe.
This represents a massive failure of the liberal imagination. Tolerance requires, perhaps more important than legal restraints, habits of the mind. All religious practices seem odd and bizarre to outsiders. Tolerance requires understanding the importance of these practices to the practitioner – a lack of total certitude . . . .
Indeed, the new European conscience might find circumcision repugnant, but certainly not as repugnant as Protestants and Catholics in Europe for centuries regarded each other’s practices. Yet for over 300 years, they have been able to live and worship fully in each other’s countries. On this backdrop, anti-circumcision legislation shows how far back we have gone while making progress.
It seems that such laws are a product less of an anti-Semitic mind-set than an anti-religious one, in which a practice that seems odd is more likely to be barbaric if it is a religious rite. Today’s secularism may be less forgiving than yesterday’s pietism. . . .
There are important lessons for the U.S. Religious freedom depends in many ways on the tolerance of the majority, if one thinks as I do that Employment Division v. Smith was rightly decided. That tolerance has long existed, more or less, in a predominantly Protestant America, a Christian America, and a simply religious America. But it is not guaranteed.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Virtue and (or?) Happiness
My old friend Charles Krauthammer, with whom I served on the President's Council on Bioethics in the Bush years, is someone with whom I more often agree than disagree. But here is a recent exchange on which we part ways on some pretty basic ideas about political theory. I should note that both of us were speaking extemporaneously, rather than from prepared texts. (What you have here is a transcript prepared by J.R. Benjamin.) So Charles was responding to my remarks immediately after hearing them, with no tme to prepare his reply. Moreover, as my respondent, I suspect he felt an obligation to offer something of a critical perspective. I'm not sure if the two of us really disagree on the points under discussion quite as much as it appears we do here. What pleased me enormously was that after the exchange (which was at a Bradley Foundation symposium in Washington, D.C.) the great Gertrude Himmelfarb sought me out to say how much she agreed with me. To me, than whom she has no greater admirer, that was like getting a commendation from Olympus. Anyway, here is the transcript:
http://jrbenjamin.com/tag/robert-p-george/
Had I been given a chance to reply to Charles' reply to me, I would have struck hard against his contrasting of virtue with the concept of the pursuit of "happiness" in the Declaration of Independence. The term "happiness" in the 18th century--and, in fact, until quite recently--did not refer simply to a pleasing or desirable psychological state--one that might be induced by virtue, vice, or, for that matter, some pharmacological product. It included the idea of flourishing or all round well-being, which necessarily was understood to involve virtue. (As in "happy the man who walks the path of justice.") In other words, it was a morally inflected locution. So Charles, I believe, got tripped up a little by an anachronism. Incidentally, I've noticed a similar problem with old translations into English of Aristotle's works on ethics. "Eudaimonia" is translated as happiness. That used to not mislead people, since the term was understood to mean something like "integral flourishing," not to refer merely to a desirable psychological state. Today, students read the old translations and are easily misled. A better translation of "eudaimonia" in contemporary English, I believe, is "flourishing"--but perhaps this claim will trigger a big debate.
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