Friday, November 19, 2010
I would like to follow up on Rob’s earlier post of today (Worst op-ed of the year) regarding anti-Catholic opinion publishing. It strikes me that one can find a type of anti-Catholicism or anti-Church attitude among some members of the Church, too. How can that be?
For example, Professor Lisa Fullam posted yesterday at dotCommonweal [HERE] a contribution entitled “Marriage Becoming Obsolete” which served as her commentary on the recent Pew Research Center survey report suggesting that 39% of Americans consider that the institution of marriage—be it civil or sacramental or both—is becoming obsolete. I will not offer my thoughts on the Pew conclusions today, but I do address the personal points made by Professor Fullam. She has previously been the subject of discussions by other members of the Mirror of Justice company. [HERE and HERE] For those who do not know her or unfamiliar with her, she is an associate professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley (JSTSCUB). Amongst the courses she teaches are fundamental moral theology and sexual ethics.
In her commentary on the Pew Research Center report to which I have referred, she makes some startling assertions that, if they were not made by someone who is a ranked faculty member at an institution that prepares candidates for ministry in the Roman Catholic Church, could readily be classified as uniformed, perhaps even anti-Catholic. Although the JSTSCUB states that it “discharges its apostolic commitments by means of its critical fidelity to the Roman Catholic tradition,” it seems that Professor Fullam’s commitments which might be critical of Roman Catholic teachings stray from being faithful to them. Perhaps I am mistaken in this claim, but then I recall what she says in her recent posting.
She begins by relying on a statement by one of the Pew researchers that “there are several ways to have a successful family life, and more people accept them.” Well, the fact that some noticeable group accepts alternatives to norms that are made by intelligent persons taking stock of the intelligible reality does not make these “ways... [which] more people accept” normative or moral or consistent with the Church’s teachings.
Professor Fullam gets on board of a project to rethink “the Church’s pastoral strategy on matters including same-sex marriage and cohabitation.” As she states, the Church’s views on these two topics are, in her estimation, “sub-optimal”, but she does not explain why this is the case. She does acknowledge that the Church teaches that marriage is ordained to two objectives: the loving union of the couple—presumably constituted by one man and one woman—and the procreation of children. She further contends, however, that only the first objective is necessary. Moreover, she believes that the union of the couple is “prioritize[d].” While she believes that children are a great good, she further opines that they are “not necessary to the sacramentality of the bond.”
She attempts to justify these positions by making reference to Pope Pius XI. While she does not specify any particular written source authored by this pope, it is likely that she has in mind his 1930 encyclical letter Casti Connubii. But her reading of Pius XI regarding the priority of the loving union of the couple does not accord with what he actually said in this encyclical. As Pope Pius XI stated,
This sacredness of marriage which is intimately connected with religion and all that is holy, arises from the divine origin we have just mentioned, from its purpose which is the begetting and education of children for God, and the binding of man and wife to God through Christian love and mutual support; and finally it arises from the very nature of wedlock, whose institution is to be sought for in the farseeing Providence of God, whereby it is the means of transmitting life, thus making the parents the ministers, as it were, of the Divine Omnipotence.
In the end, her posting is not really intended as an exercise in “critical fidelity to the Roman Catholic tradition.” Rather, her intention is to provide for the coming of an ecclesiastical embracing of same-sex marriage. As she says, “So where people see same-sex couples loving each other deeply, raising children lovingly, and the USCCB describing even civil recognition of those unions as a ‘multifaceted threat to the very fabric of society,’ what are people to think we believe about marriage?” She contends that such relationships “should be supported and encouraged.” By whom? Well, by the Church! But she believes that the Church’s leadership does not understand how same-sex relationships are the equivalent of heterosexual unions. In her estimation, the bishops replace her understanding of the righteousness of same-sex unions with “gross and untrue insults.”
But she offers a kind and gentle response to these “insults.” Her rejoinder is for “a new, pastorally sensitive theology of marriage, one that recognizes the importance and the beauty of the institution, that takes sexual orientation seriously, and that strives to support fallible and striving human beings in our attempts to become more loving.” Well, that is quite a proposal! But it is not a Catholic one.
Rather, it is tragic, misinformed, and anti-Catholic. It is tragic and misinformed because Professor Fullam assumes that any disagreement with her support of the normativity and righteousness of same-sex relations must necessarily be “gross and untrue insults.” But, they are not. To disagree with someone with different views on any subject—including same-sex marriage—is precisely that, to disagree—a disagreement that is based on intelligence comprehending and intelligible world. The nature of disagreement is to enter a debate with reasoned analysis and objective commentary supported by factual analyses. She fails to take stock of the inexorable, ontological differences between same-sex and opposite-sex relationships; moreover, she passes over the incapacity of same-sex couples to procreate without artificial reproductive technologies being utilized. So, to disagree is not to demean; to debate is not to insult; to contradict with objective reasoning is not to marginalize or unjustly discriminate.
In addition, her proposal is anti-Catholic because she does not explicate why the Church’s teachings about marriage versus same-sex unions are wrong. She only states that they are wrong by labeling the Church’s teachings as “gross and untrue insults” because they do not accord with her view—a view that would substitute sound and intelligible argument with subjectivism, relativism, and exaggerated autonomy.
RJA sj
I have now posted Lawmaking, Administration, and Traces of Civic Republicanism: Thoughts on Jean Porter's Ministers of the Law, a short paper I prepared for Villanova's recent Catholic Social Thought conference that was devoted to Porter's new book. I heartily recommend the book (though there's plenty in it that I disagree with). Some of my friends at the Fed Soc won't like some of what I've got to say in favor of Porter's account of the purpose of law, but that's okay.
There is an art to crafting good anti-Catholic commentary. I enjoy reading Christopher Hitchens, for example, because he's smart, writes well, and, beneath the bluster and hyperbole, many of his allegations need to be taken seriously. It seems, though, that the bar to getting anti-Catholic commentary published is getting lower by the day. In the Star-Tribune this morning, an op-ed by Bonnie Erbe opened with the following:
There's a raging debate about the state of the Catholic Church in America. Some church officials still cling to the hope that massive influxes of recent immigrants will fill the pews left empty by more educated, fallen-away parishioners. But clearly the Church has receded as a religious and cultural force, like a steroid-pumped bicep to a withering muscle.
Aside from offending immigrants (who are, by definition apparently, less educated), Erbe premises her inquiry on the equation of the Church's proper role with brute power. Even in the purported "glory days," would any Christian want to think of the Church as a "steroid-pumped bicep?" The whole problem, of course, is that the Church is too strict with all those darn rules:
Dogmatic, dictatorial churches do not resound with today's spirituality, and young people are not clamoring to join them. So sending a message that says, in essence, "Follow my rules or go to hell" might be a good way of retaining older parishioners used to such harsh boundaries. But as elderly parishioners die off, they take the church's message with them.
Hmmm. Let's take a complicated cultural dynamic and dumb it down so that we can assign clear blame to the folks with whom we disagree. If the mark of a healthy church is that we have young people clamoring to join, then we probably want to keep hell in the picture: evangelical megachurches are doing a lot better among younger Americans than the mainline.
Since this is Minnesota, of course, the attention eventually turns to Archbishop Nienstedt's DVD mailing:
[He] defended his mailing anti-gay marriage DVDs to the area's 800,000 churchgoing Catholics, a tactic that angered many of them. Machiavellian diplomacy has never won followers. In case the church hierarchy has not already noticed, it's too late to return to the Middle Ages.
What? Has she read Machiavelli? Why is open advocacy for a policy position "Machiavellian?" And since when does teaching on a matter of public concern represent "a return to the Middle Ages?" Let's debate the merits of Church teaching without substituting cheap labels for real argument. Taking potshots at the Church in print is by no means a new phenomenon, but our quality control seems to be slipping. I'll take Hitchens any day over this drivel.
Relying on various stories from the Gospels, Mark Galli offers some interesting observations about the limitations of using Jesus as the model for peacemaking discourse. In some of the stories, Jesus is clearly intending to humiliate the Pharisees, even though there were options that could have accomplished the same miraculous result but allowed the Pharisees to save face:
The point is this: There were moments in Jesus' ministry when he denigrated—that is, according to the dictionary definition, "attacked the reputation of another"—and inflamed—"excited to excessive or uncontrollable actions or feelings." What we find in the Gospels is an uncomfortable reality: There is something about Jesus that makes some people want to kill him.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
I've just concluded a session in my Professional Responsibility class dealing with the selling of legal services by non-lawyers and their solicitation of legal business. In this particular section of the excellent book by Stephen Gillers, there is a brief discussion of the common law crime of barratry: the instigation of a law suit, including by payment and other inducements, with the intent to obtain economic advantage. Suffice it to say that Gillers is skeptical about the offense for at least some good reasons, one of which is the issue of vagueness. A number of jurisdictions have dispensed with barratry altogether, and my own class generally dismissed it as the relic of a bygone era.
I tried to sketch out for them some of the intellectual heritage of the crime. In Dante's Inferno, i barratieri are punished way down in the 8th Circle along with other fraudulent types. They are perpetually dipped in boiling pitch by several unsavory and disgusting little demons. Barratry in that time was understood as the selling of public duties or civil offices (Dante himself had been accused of barratry and exiled from Florence by the Black Guelphs). I wondered how it was that the crime of selling public offices -- what sounds naturally like bribery to the modern ear, or perhaps some other public corruption offense -- over time took on the rather different meaning of the practice of instigating law suits, of inciting legal malcontent for profit. It might be that these are simply unconnected meanings, and that is the way they are presented in various on-line sources.
But I think that's not right at all. There are deep-rooted connections between what I'll call the ancient and modern meanings of barratry.
Continue
reading
Over at The Immanent Frame, a number of scholars were asked to reflect on the question -- occasioned by the launch of a new research project at Notre Dame called "Contending Modernities: Catholic, Muslim, Secular":
What is gained by framing research on religion, secularity, and modernity in terms of “multiple” or “contending” modernities, and what “new paths for constructive engagement” might such a frame afford?
The response of Robert Orsi, who holds the Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern, was particularly, well, bracing:
. . . The various goods of modernity were hard won; the language of multiple modernities obscures the fact that Catholicism was one of the major obstacles to their achievement. This is not to absolve the modern of its horrors or to deny that sometimes Catholics stood in courageous and necessary opposition to it (although the church itself mostly did so for its own ends, otherwise it was quite willing to come to terms with even the vilest moderns). It is to call into question the positive valence of the phrase “multiple modernities,” to question the history it elides, and to recognize the brave opposition of secular modernity to Catholicism, which has been on balance a great good. . . .
The "brave opposition of secular modernity to Catholicism . . . has been on balance a great good." I'd say the issue is joined!
Get Religion tries to make sense of the labels being thrown around to describe the election of Archbishop Timothy Dolan as president of the USCCB.
