[Cathleen Kaveny teaches law and theology at the University of Notre Dame.]
My esteemed Notre Dame colleague, John
Finnis, will receive the third annual Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence
in Bioethics from the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC), a
conservative Christian think tank. Paul Ramsey (1913-88) was a pioneer
in the field of bioethics. He was also one of my teachers at Princeton.
I wonder whether the CBC would consider Ramsey himself suitable for the
award it issues in his name? Firmly prolife, Ramsey still considered
some questions-such as the status of the early human embryo-to be
legitimately debatable by committed Christians. I’m not sure the CBC
feels the same way. The chair of its nominating committee, C. Ben
Mitchel, has said that denying that the early embryo is a human being
is analogous to denying the humanity of Jews and slaves. Would Paul
Ramsey agree?
I don’t think so. In fact, Ramsey had serious
reservations about the position that individual human life starts at
fertilization-an opinion Finnis shares with the worthy previous
recipients of the Ramsey Award, Germain Grisez and Edmund
Pellegrino-both Catholics. In Ramsey’s classic and wide-ranging essay
“Abortion: A Review Article” (The Thomist, 1973), he engages in
vigorous, detailed, and still-relevant debate with Grisez’s Abortion:
The Myths, the Realities, the Arguments (1970).
In that book, Grisez argues that individual
human life begins when egg and sperm unite, creating a fertilized ovum
(a zygote) with a full complement of forty-six chromosomes. That zygote
then undergoes cell division, becoming an embryo. But there is a
wrinkle to the argument: for about two weeks after fertilization, that
embryo may split, resulting in identical twins. Less commonly, two
embryos may combine, resulting in one individual. As Ramsey notes,
“there is fluidity and indeterminacy in either direction during the
earliest days following conception.” So how do we think about the
various entities involved in twinning and combination?
In the case of twinning, Grisez argues, we
must think in terms of three distinct human individuals. The original
embryo-let’s call it A-is a human individual distinct from its parents.
The twins-let’s call them B and C-are human individuals distinct from
each other and from the fertilized egg from which they sprang. What is
the relationship among A, B, and C? Grisez explains that “we should
think of the twins as the grandchildren of their putative parents, the
individual that divided being the true offspring, and the identical
twins of that offspring by atypical reproduction.” In other words, A is
the child of the parents, and B and C are the grandchildren. This is
odd, since A neither died nor gave birth. Rather, A split through a
form of asexual reproduction. Grisez likens the split to the way in
which “two individual animals of many lower forms of life can develop
by the division of a single, existing individual.” In his article,
Ramsey conjectures, with a note of incredulity, that Grisez must be
talking about halved earthworms.
What about two embryos combining to form one?
Grisez says this involves two individuals, A and B, combining to form
C, who is a distinct new individual. He suggests this scenario is
analogous to that of “a grafted plant.” Ramsey’s response: “With
considerable astonishment we may ask whether any such ‘individuality’
is the life we should respect and protect from conception. In trying to
prove too much, Grisez has proved too little of ethical import.”
Analogies to earthworms and plants seemed
implausible to Ramsey. So did Grisez’s invitation to think of identical
twins as the grandchildren of the woman who gave birth to them.
Grisez’s attempt to preserve the claim that individuated human life
begins at fertilization sacrifices too much of what we know about human
nature-both from a Christian perspective and a scientific one. After
all, human beings reproduce sexually, not asexually. Humans are mortal;
they die and their bodies disintegrate. They don’t split neatly into
two with no loss, cost, or remainder (as in twinning), nor do they
merge fluidly into one another (as in combination).
Ramsey thought it plausible that an
individuated human life does not begin until the possibility for
twinning and combination has passed, a stage called restriction, about
two weeks after fertilization. Assuming Ramsey was right, what does
that mean for research on human embryos that destroys them in the
process? If the embryos have not reached the stage of restriction, such
research would not count as homicide, because it wouldn’t involve
killing a human being.
If it’s not homicide, is such research
morally permissible? Perhaps, given its potential benefits. But not
necessarily. Ramsey was deeply suspicious of the scientific imperative
to manipulate human destiny in the name of progress. He was keenly
aware of the slippery slope such research puts us on. Should the
research prove effective, the inevitable temptation will be to use more
developed embryos and even fetuses in our research to get better
results. On his view, that would be homicide.
Paul Ramsey’s powerful and fearless intellect
led him to differ not only from secular liberals, but also from
religious conservatives. If the CBC issues an award in his name, its
leaders ought to refrain from demonizing as Nazis or slaveholders those
who hold positions that Ramsey himself considered defensible. _______________ mp
Cardinal Mahony responds to criticism of his earlier statement that he would encourage his priests to disobey a proposed immigration law:
Current law does not require social service agencies to obtain evidence of legal status before rendering aid, nor should it. Denying aid to a fellow human being violates a law with a higher authority than Congress — the law of God.
Loyola (LA) law prof Robin Kar has posted his new article, The Deep Structure of Law and Morality, in which he argues that:
The structure of obligata is the deep structure of morality and law. This suggests that much of the legal literature - including familiar descriptive and normative accounts from law and economics scholars - have been presupposing a psychological picture that is deeply at odds with how we naturally think about obligation. Morality and law do not arise from, and could not be sustained only by, separable beliefs about the world and preferences for states of affairs. The challenge raised here runs deeper, however, than recent empirical work showing we deviate from instrumental rationality in numerous, systematic ways. Our capacities to reason instrumentally may not figure very centrally at all in our moral or legal practices, and we may necessarily misunderstand these normative phenomena if we keep trying to shoehorn them into that model. To understand morality and law, we must instead understand how our distinctive capacities to identify and respond appropriately to obligations function.
Richard S. writes, in response to my post about the possible execution in Afghanistan of a convert to Christianity:
On the other hand, it would be a great tragedy for the integrity of the Afghan conscience for them to put fear of the USA, or (worse) desire to be liked by world opinion leaders, ahead of what they conceive to be God's command. As long as they are not convinced that the Quran permits converts to live, they must seek to kill him.
Hopefully, that tradition can be reinterpreted from within to permit conversion. But if not, I suggest that we must be careful to use methods to protect converts which do not involve getting the Afghans to pledge allegiance to something above Allah (e.g. international human rights). To think that one has betrayed God should make one sick unto death, a fate clearly worse than martyrdom.
I disagree. It is one thing to say -- and I imagine that Richard and I would both say this -- that we need to be careful about imposing our contested and contestable understandings of international human rights, by force or otherwise, in contexts where those understandings threaten the religious consciences of those who disagree with us. It is another thing, though, to say that what Christians must regard as a monstrous and objective evil -- i.e., the killing by the public authority of a human person for becoming a follower of Christ -- is to be excused, or even tolerated, on the ground that to do otherwise might burden the consciences of the would-be killers. Obviously, one would hope that these would-be killers would abstain, or change their minds, for reasons other than a "desire to be liked by world opinion leaders."
I do not mean to be flip, but it seems to me that Sir Charles James Napier got it right. Napier was the British commander-in-chief in India, and he prohibited the Hindu practice of sati ("suttee"), i.e., burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. When some Hindu leaders objected, Napier is said to have replied:
You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
Now, of course, my point is not to endorse British colonialism, or cultural imperialism, or hanging people. It is to say, though, that intentionally killing people who convert to Christianity, or who are widowed, is immoral, period, and it is appropriate, period, for the public authority charged with -- or, in the current case, stuck with? -- promoting the common good and protecting human life to forbid and prevent it.
On the one hand, I certainly hope we can rescue the fellow who is about to be executed in Afghanistan for becoming a Christian. We must try to do so. And we are also mandated to seek converts.
On the other hand, it would be a great tragedy for the integrity of the Afghan conscience for them to put fear of the USA, or (worse) desire to be liked by world opinion leaders, ahead of what they conceive to be God's command. As long as they are not convinced that the Quran permits converts to live, they must seek to kill him.
Hopefully, that tradition can be reinterpreted from within to permit conversion. But if not, I suggest that we must be careful to use methods to protect converts which do not involve getting the Afghans to pledge allegiance to something above Allah (e.g. international human rights). To think that one has betrayed God should make one sick unto death, a fate clearly worse than martyrdom.
Apparently, a man is on trial in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity, and is facing the death sentence. (Here is another story). And this is after the ouster of the Taliban!
The U.S. State Department is watching the case closely and considers it a barometer of how well democracy is developing in Afghanistan.
"Our view … is that tolerance, freedom of worship is an important element of any democracy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "And these are issues as Afghan democracy matures that they are going to have to deal with increasingly."
I hope the United States State Department -- and, more particularly, the armed forces of the United States -- are doing more than "watching the case closely." It would be, in my judgment, grossly immoral to permit this farce, given the current presence and role of American troops in that Afghanistan, and the not-insignificant responsibility the United States has for the current government in that country.
One would hope that the execution of a convert would prompt at least the same level of hand-wringing by Western watchers as, say, the publication of insensitive and juvenile cartoons.
I know that many MOJ readers and bloggers are interested in the Solomon Amendment case, in part because of its relevance to questions of associational freedom, mediating institutions, subsidiarity, etc. Professor Jack Balkin has a (very) long post, here, analyzing the opinion and explaining why he participated in the lawsuit.
Brian Tamanaha has this very interesting post over at Professor Jack Balkin's blog. He notes that some "prominent conservatives" have been rethinking publicly their previous support for the war in Iraq, but insists that these conservatives continue to miss the point. For example, he writes, Andrew Sullivan has confessed to "three huge errors. The first was to overestimate the competence of government, especially in very tricky areas like WMD intelligence.... The second error was narcissism. America's power blinded many of us to the resentments that hegemony always provokes. . . . The final error was not taking culture seriously enough. There is a large discrepancy between neoconservatism's skepticism of government's ability to change culture at home and its naivete when it comes to complex, tribal, sectarian cultures abroad."
But, Tamanaha insists:
The first and overarching error of neoconservatives, Mr. Sullivan, is their willingness (nay, eagerness) to use war to achieve their ideological objectives. Neoconservatives see war as a tool, perhaps messy and unpleasant, not to mention expensive, but sometimes useful.
War is the greatest horror we inflict upon one another, destroying bodies and lives, inflicting untold pain, often on innocent bystanders. War must be a last resort, undertaken with great reluctance, when no other option is available--appropriate only when necessary to defend ourselves against an immediate aggressor (as international law recognizes).
That was not the case with Iraq. Bush and the neoconservatives were bent on starting a war in Iraq for their own ideological and personal reasons and they made sure it came about. Bush's premptive war doctrine, recently reiterated, is more of the same failure to recogize the utimate horror of war.
None of the neoconservative mea culpas I have read have recognized this true (moral and pragmatic) error of their vision and understanding, which is more fundamental than Sullivan's three so-called "huge errors." If neoconservatives understood that war is appropriate only as an absolutely last resort to defend ourselves against an attack, the war would never have happened--hence no WMD debacle (because there was not enough to justify war), no offending allies with our arrogance of power, and no attempt to shape another country in our own image.
I suspect -- but maybe I am wrong -- that Tamanaha and I would disagree about what it means, operationally, to commmit to the constraint that "[w]ar must be a last resort, undertaken with great reluctance, when no other option is available--appropriate only when necessary to defend ourselves against an immediate aggressor (as international law recognizes)." And, I am not convinced that, in principle, ousting a dangerous and murderous regime can never provide a justifiable purpose for waging war (though any such war must, of course, be conducted in a moral way). That said, the post is worth reading in full.
Thanks to Michael for posting the Brinkley review of Kevin Phillips's new book, American Theocracy. I am curious to know Michael's, and others' reactions to it. I have not (and probably will not) read American Theocracy, but I found the review insular and ignorant. "Harrowing picture of national danger"? Whatever. The idea that so-called "Christian Reconstructionists" do or ever will pose any threat of "theocracy" in the United States is just silly. So is, in my view, the idea that there is anything particularly "radical" about evangelical Christianity, as it is lived and believed in the United States today. Brinkley is, I realize, an accomplished scholar, but it is not clear to me that he really has any idea who evangelical Christians are, or what they believe, do, and want. (Brinkley would do well to read Christian Smith's, Christian America: What Evangelicals Really Want, or, for that matter, Alan Wolfe's The Transformation of American Religion -- a flawed but still useful book).
Here, by the way, are Martin Marty's thoughts on the Brinkley review:
In his new book, Baptizing America, Rabbi James Rudin speaks of a developing American "Christocracy." Kevin Phillips, in American Theocracy, writes about a developing "theocracy." Rudin is a moderate and Phillips has carefully detailed his own odyssey. Reviews of Phillips are coming in furiously fast, so we will concentrate on the "Radical Religion" theme of his subtitle, which is linked with two others, "Oil" and "Borrowed Money." Not swimming in oil or debt money, but recognizing that Phillips interweaves "theocracy" inextricably with these other two themes, I have to specialize on Sightings ground.
Phillips, once a Republican strategist and speech-writer, has read widely and well in the historical records and the political and social scientific works of our decades, and documents his work thoroughly. Would that there were space to quote or even outline his case, which I hope our readers will "sight," sometimes if only to argue with the author. My advance copy of the book is all highlighted and scribbled up with quotations and judgments, graphs and charts, that I will not be alone in using. But here we have to hurry to a set of questions about "theocracy."
For whatever light it sheds on the subject, let me say that I tend, or try, to dampen hyperbole on subjects of this sort. In the sixties and seventies, when it was the fashion among radicals to call America "Amerika," implying that European-style fascism was developing, my kind and I stepped back, contending that one can make a case about repression and its styles without invoking the extreme, even an often demonic aura of "the other." The same goes for "theocracy." Why give people a name they might savor and favor, or apply the term to near-miss phenomena? Phillips quotes many leaders of far-right and near-far-right Christian groups who want Christianity to have privilege, status, and even a monopoly on the spiritual front of a lame pluralist society, and sees -- yes -- theocracy in their goals.
Advice to myself, after reading Phillips's counsel: 1) Don't assign to people a label and a position they don't exactly hold; 2) Don't lump all people called "conservative" or "born again" into the mix of the theocracy-minded; 3) Don't label anyone "theocrat" who does not bear most of the marks of the theocrat; 4) Thus remember that, for people of faith on left or right, to try to influence foreign or domestic policy is not by itself a mark of theocracy -- not by any means; 5) Do urge fellow citizens to be Madisonian (Federalist Papers X and LI), to work for the republic, against favor or privilege or establishment for particular religions (e.g., "Christianity" or "the biblical worldview"); 6) If you must blame, blame fairly, including the Republicans-not-on-the-right or Democrats-wherever-they-are for leaving a moral vacuum that exploiters can invade and exploit; 7) Make the point that theocracies have always corrupted communities of faith that favor them, noting that such polities are bad for religion; 8) Read and profit from Rudin and especially Phillips as they make their cases; 9) Be ready to link up with others, to see if at this late date the republic can be invigorated and survive; 10) Arrange with people you can trust to help you live with new strategies and old hopes, as you try to find a means of sleeping peacefully after you've read this unsettling script -- and then awaken, for thought and action.
