We talk a lot here about social pluralism, by which we mean, roughly, that authority is not a monopoly of the civil government. The social pluralist maintains that authority can also be found in the Church, in families, and certain other groups. Those of us who think about and write on these topics are familiar with many of the best historical and philosophical accounts of how social pluralism was "discovered," how it is has been theorized, how it has been applied, and how is has been -- and is being -- denied. I mention this only in order to mention an old book upon which I happened recently, Frederick Watkins, The Political Tradition of the West (Harvard University Press, 1957). The first sixty some pages of the book (which runs some three hundred and sixty pages) tells the story of the emergence of pluralism, through the emergence of the Church, with remarkable economy and elegance. It's one of the best accounts I've read, even if one might want to quarrel a tad here and there. Jenkins doesn't shrink from stating the Church's understanding of its role vis-a-vis "the state" (49): "With regard to the value and importance of the state there was room for a legitimate difference of opinion among Christians. Although Augustine might seem to dismiss it as nothing more than a robber band, the general view was that political authority should be respected as a useful and necessary agency designed for the salutary chastisement of men. All were agreed, however, that the church was the primary instrument of salvation, and that other interests should be subordinated to its all-important mission. In this way the age-old primacy of politics was suddenly reversed, and the state was reduced to the position of a secondary agency subject to the moral authority of another organization." Watkins presciently worried that pluralism -- and with it liberalism -- is threatened by "the absolutist concept of the sovereignty of the state" (359), and he wasn't talking primarily about the USSR.
Monday, March 15, 2010
pluralism
Friday, February 12, 2010
"the not numerous center" does not equal centrism
I have been accused of trading on a "conceit." I didn't mean to trade on any conceit, and I don't believe I did. After all, the full quote I posted indicts people who self-describe as on the "right" for this: wanting to live in a world that no longer exists (not an appealing place of residence), just as it indicts those on the left for this: being captivated by one thing after another (not a serious way to live). In other words, the quote specifies what's supposedly wrong with the right and and what's supposedly wrong with the left. To the extent those are not in fact characteristics of the right or of the left, then there's no relevant problem with being on the right or on the left.
Nor did I trade on the rhetorical appeal of Aristotle's doctrine of virtue's being a mean. This is because I did not say, as Steve says I did, that the truth is in the center. I didn't say it! I simply didn't say it!!
Longergan's "center," as those familiar with his work know, is not some splitting of the difference and merging in the middle. But one doesn't have to be familiar with his work to know this. As the quote itself makes quite clear, the "perhaps not numerous center" is those people who are "painstaking enough to work out one at a time the transitions to be made." Such people, as those familiar with Longergan's work know, are performing the epistemic operations of which he gives an account in his book Insight (1958). Longergan doesn't say that the truth is in the center!
In the end, Longergan himself is a perfect instantiation of what he himself was talking about. On some issues he came out on what we happen to describe as the "right," other times on the "left." But it was always the questions that led, not the label of the anticipated answers. Nor did Lonergan suspect that by following the questions to their answers we would know everything, let alone with (as the cliche has it) "absolute certainty." His notion of the "limited absolute," which is achieved when all relevant questions (not just the questions that happen to occur) are answered, meets the anticipated objection that those who belief true judgments are sometimes achieved are guilty of hubris.
As I said, I never said that the truth was in the center. As Steve I think knows, the conclustions I reach in my own work aren't easily reducible to "right," "left," or "center." This is in part because I've never imagined that one side had it all or even close to right. I try to follow the questions where they lead, and, for my part, I don't suppose labeling the answers is a particularly constructive enterprise, though I could of course be wrong about the last point, as about so many others. But I am right that I did not say that the truth is in the center. I did say that I hope MOJ will be a center of the sort Longergan had mind, that is, a group that is "painstaking" in working out the answers to the hard questions we raise and should raise.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
"[W]hat will count . . . . "
I am reminded of this well known quote from Bernard Longergan SJ, sometime Stillman Professor in Harvard University: "There is bound to be formed a solid right that is determined to live in a world that no longer exists. There is bound to be formed a scattered left, captivated by now this, now that new possibility. But what will count is a perhaps not numerous center; big enough to be at home in both the old and new; and painstaking enough to work out one at a time the transitions to be made."
I like to think of MOJ as a community where we are working to be that "perhaps not numerous center" that will count -- big enough and painstaking enough not to rest in the past nor to be scattered and captivated by anything less than the truth, which is neither left nor right.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
"only mildly interested in either God or the world"?
In response to Michael Perry's posting the blurb for Fr. James Keenan SJ's new book on the history of moral theology in the twentieth century, I was tempted to ask whether this book from Continuum bears the imprimatur. But that jocular inquiry would have detracted from the seriousness of some questions that we should ask about what is being advertised. I haven't read the book (though I shall), so for now I'm just reacting to what Michael P. has commended to our attention. I should add at the outset that I have always held Fr. Keenan in high personal regard, and I have learned much from his writings over the many years I have studied them, even when I have disagreed with his conclusions.
To the point, are Fr. Gerald Kelly SJ (who essentially founded Catholic medical ethics in this country and to whom Richard McCormick acknowledged owing a tremendous debt) and Fr. John Ford SJ (who wrote one of the most important articles in 20th century just war theory on the morality of obliteration bombing) best captured by (or reduced to) the phrase "classical gate keepers, censoring innovation?" And notwithstanding the genre of the book blurb, what underlying philosophical and theological commitments are being advanced by setting in opposition the views that "the locus of moral truth is in continuous, universal teachings of the magisterium or in the moral judgment of the informed conscience?" Perhaps Father Keenan's valuable task of recounting these internecine struggles and staking out his own position on them goes to show, as Alasdair MacIntyre remarked 30 years ago, "Roman Catholic theologians all too often give the impression of being only mildly interested in either God or the world; what they are passionately interested in are other Roman Catholic theologians." I believe Father Keenan's real concerns bear on God and His creation, but unfortunately the blurb perhaps suggests otherwise.
But, as I say, I look forward to reading the book. Perhaps we can revisit these questions here once some of us have had a chance to study what Fr. Keenan has written.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
unconditional forgiveness -- not for Christians?
Last year, I wrote and posted a paper on the forgiveness that we humans are capable of and called to. I argued that we are called to forgive one another *unconditionally.* Further, I take *unconditional* forgiveness to be the Christian norm. But some Christians seem to hold the view that those who have been wronged are entitled -- or maybe even required -- to condition their granting forgiveness on the offender's apology and contrition. I understand that view, but I don't see a basis for it in the Christian revelation. If there is one, I'd like help finding it. Please note that forgiveness is distinguished from reconciliation; prudence may counsel against the latter (as in cases of abuse by a spouse, for example), but prudence cannot (I argue) justify placing conditions on the act of forgiveness. Am I wrong about the Christian understanding of forgiveness?
Friday, January 15, 2010
a case for subsidiarity?
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
unfriend
I read on p. 32 of the TLS dated January 1, 2010 that "Oxford University Press has chosen 'unfriend' as the Oxford Word of the Year, in view of the fact that it has recently gained currency as a verb -- as in 'I had to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.' Unfriend, says OUP in that annoying see-how-unstuffy-we-are way, 'has real lex-appeal." Lex, as if you needed to be told, is a contraction of lexicographer."
That unfriend is the OUP word of the year reminds me of something a *friend* who teaches Aristotle to undergraduates told me a little while back. Though they liked some of what they discovered in Aristotle, the undergraduates didn't like at all Aristotle's judgment that, given what friendship really is, we can't possibly have very many of friends. I don't myself know how Facebook operates, but I know enough to conclude that "friending" on Facebook doesn't involve the claim that the souls one "friends" and potentially "unfriends" have, as Aristotle said true friends do, a shared vision of the good. Given the popularlity of Facebook, it's a real shame that its choice of terminology for an action of potentially trivial inclusion continues the work of cheapening the concept of friendship. And yes, I know I sound like a fuddy-duddy, and my friends know why.
Monday, December 21, 2009
yes, Myles Connolly!
This news of the providence of Steve's happy spiritual connection to Myles Connolly quite took my breath away, and reminded me of this, the last paragraph of the Breslin introduction/foreword to Mr. Blue: "In 1954, when Connolly was in his late fifties and the father of five children, he backed off a bit from the message of Mr. Blue in a foreword to the book's silver anniversary edition: 'I feel that Mr. Blue, like Thoreau, failed to make the deeply important distinction that what is sauce for the bachelor may not be sauce for the married man and father at all.' Wiser? Sadder? Perhaps just older, which is why Jesus always insisted that the kingdom of God belonged by natural right to the young and the poor. The rest of us are allowed in on sufferance."
Mr. Blue
Michael P.'s and Lisa's welcome discussion of movies and culture reminds me of something I've been meaning to mention here since Bob Hockett introduced, maybe two months ago now (I haven't looked back), the issue of spiritualities such as the Franciscan, Ignatian, Carmelite, etc. The thing I would like to mention is Mr. Blue, a short and wonderfully rich book by Myles Connolly. Maybe lots of folks already know about this book, but it was new to me when I discovered it on the shelf of a very fine Christian book store. Originally published in 1928, it's now out in a fresh edition that begins with a preface by John Breslin SJ, which includes this: "Blue . . . was a uniquely American personality. As Myles Connolly wrote him, J. Blue was the man whom the ambitious Jay Gatsby might have become had he steered by a higher truth than the sound of money in Daisy Buchanan's voice." Blue is a contemporary St. Francis figure. When he inherits a fortune, "he exchanged money for everything possible. He exchanged it with the poor for their delight. He exchanged it with the helpless for lighter hearts. I thought at one time he was setting a bad example for other plutocrats. But the fear was unfounded. Nobody imitated him." (p. 9) There is reason to believe that Connolly wrote Mr. Blue after reading Chesterton's life of St. Francis. Anyway, it's a delightful picture of what it might look like to take Christianity seriously, in the Franciscan way, in the modern world.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Villanova Law Dean Search
I would like to encourage MOJ readers to nominate outstanding candidates for the deanship of Villanova School of Law. The search for a new dean is now under way in earnest, and details about the process and its goals, including the method for making nominations, are here .
For my part, I especially hope folks will nominate candidates who are capable of setting high intellectual standards for the School and who will be eager and able to continue the hard and creative work of building an inclusive but distinctively Catholic law school. As those of us who labor in the vineyard of Catholic legal education know only too well, there was no Golden Age in American Catholic law schools. There is no template that awaits implementation. The project of discerning how to bring faith and reason to bear on what we do in law requires vision and boldness. Correlatively, it also requires a spirit of openness and respect for competing visions and priorities. There is no requirement that the next dean be a Catholic.
With our spectacular new building (opened in summer of 2009), a strong faculty and several lines likely to be filled within the next few years, and a firm financial footing, not to mention fine students, a loyal alumni base, and a wonderful location in the beautiful suburbs of Philadelphia, this is a tremendous opportunity for the right person to make a real difference in the life of an institution. Villanova is among the very few American law schools that have a fair claim to being meaningfully Catholic, and the right leader should be able to have a transformative effect on the life and aspirations of what is already a vibrant and very promising community of scholars and students.
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