Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Dear Michael P.

By Michael Scaperlanda

I thought that you and Robby had arrived at common ground, agreed to move on, and leave readers to decide for themselves whether either or both of you had engaged in caricature or personal insult.  But, now you continue with "as I explained, that 'equivalent to racists' construal of my post was a misconstrual.  I can't tell  ... whether Robby still adheres to that 'equivalent to racists' misconstrual of my Christmas Eve post."

I can't speak for Robby, but speaking for myself, I take you at your word that you did not mean to equate those who embrace traditional sexual ethics with racists.  But, that doesn't get you off the hook since you are responsible for the words you use. 

In your Christmas Eve post you said:  "Black bonding sexually with white?  Yuk!  Female bonding sexually with female?  Or male with male?  Yuk squared!" in the context of your psychosexual analysis of those with "profound aversion" to "unfamiliar modes of human sexuality."  How else can this language be construed except as implying that those who embrace traditional sexual ethics are "equivalent to racists"?  At the very least, a reasonable reader could construe your words this way. 

Since you didn't mean for your words to be construed this way, could you do us the favor of publicly expressing regret over your poor word choice? 

This may be of interest to some MOJ readers

By Michael Perry

[An interlocutor who has been reading the to-and-from between Robby and me sent this my way:]

I’ve seen this past week’s exchanges on MoJ between you and R. George.  You might be interested in http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/FILM_20091127_1.htm - a film review on the British Jesuits web-site – which bears on some of the themes you raise.

Changing the subject?

By Michael Perry

The issue, which Robby's post immediately below obscures, is whether my Christmas Eve post did what Robby earlier accused it of doing, namely, suggested that there is an equivalence--a moral equivalence--between racists and those who believe that same-sex sexual conduct is always and everywhere necessarily and gravely immoral.  As I explained, that "equivalent to racists" construal of my post was a misconstrual.  I can't tell from Robby's post below, or from his posted response to Cathy Kaveny, whether Robby still adheres to that "equivalent to racists" misconstrual of my Christmas Eve post.

Robby, with your permission, I'd like to put this blurb on the back of my next book:  "Michael Perry is, at least sometimes, insincere, a hypocrite, keeps up pretences, and smears those who disagree with him.  These are among his tactics in the games he plays.  So if you're thinking of reading this book, be on guard!"  --Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University 

Common ground

By Robert George

Michael P. and I have finally found common ground:  the record beginning with his Christmas Eve post is there in black and white for everyone to see and it speaks for itself.  Readers who wonder whether I was right to call Michael out for caricaturing the views of those who disagree with him about sexual morality and for resorting to ridicule rather than engaging their arguments, can easily judge for themselves.  I'm happy to move on.

Response to Professor Kaveny

By Robert George

I owe Professor Kaveny a response.  Here it is.

Dear Cathy:

I appreciate the mostly friendly tone of your most recent comment.  I did not appreciate your earlier comment claiming that my critique of Michael P.'s Christmas Eve post was filled with insults.  It was not.  Although I took no pleasure in doing so, I felt it necessary to call Michael out for grossly caricaturing the views of people who did not share his opinions about sexual morality and ridiculing them rather than engaging their arguments.  Comparing people who dissent from liberal beliefs about sexual morality to racists who believe what they believe because they are saddled with a psychological aversion to things that are unfamiliar was a smear, and I said so. If what I said is true, you were way off base in describing it as an insult.  Was it true?  Have another look at Michael's Christmas Eve post.  Do you find nothing in the mode of caricature and ridicule there?  ("Black bonding sexually with white!  Yuk!")  Frankly, I don't see how you can miss it.

I also appreciate your saying that you've written to the New York Times about the name-callling ("Rambo Catholics,"  "ecclesiastical bullies") that I called attention to when Michael brought your name into the discussion.  You say that you provided context.  I want to make sure that MoJ readers know exactly what the context was.  Your colleague Mark Roche wrote a column for the New York Times in the run up to the 2004 presidential election claiming that voting for John Kerry was the right thing for Catholics and other pro-lifers to do, despite what he admitted was Kerry's very broad and deeply regrettable support for abortion.  Professor Roche is an excellent scholar and a fine man. (He was extremely kind and gracious toward me personally when Notre Dame was recruiting me to be Dean of its law school.)  His op ed piece was, however, poorly reasoned in my opinion, and Gerry Bradley and I, in a response published on NRO, pointed out its flaws.  You objected to comparing voting for pro-abortion politicians with voting for pro-slavery politicians.  Now it is right here that context matters.  Who introduced the analogy of abortion with slavery?  Professor Bradley and I would have been within our rights to do so, but we weren't the ones who did.  It was Professor Roche himself who introduced it.  It was he who said, in his op ed, that history will judge support for abortion "in much the same way that we view earlier generations' support for torture and slavery."  With Professor Roche's point in mind, Professor Bradley and I rehearsed in detail John Kerry's truly appalling record of support for abortion and its public funding.  We then asked:  "By what logic, then, does the author of the New York Times essay conclude that Catholics should vote for the United States Senate's most faithful supporter of what he says ought to be regarded, and some day will be regarded, as an injustice on a par with the evils of torture and slavery?"  Our answer was, by logic that is shoddy.  To defend this claim, we then addressed Professor Roche's argument point by point.  We did not call him names; we did not caricature his views; we did not resort to ridiculing him.  We engaged his argument and gave reasons for judging it to be very faulty indeed.  Readers needn't take what I'm saying on faith.  Here is Professor Roche's op ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/opinion/11roche.html?_r=1.  Here is our critique of his logic: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/george_bradley200410120849.asp.

In my opinion, the key thing when it comes to drawing analogies between legally sanctioned grave injustices such as slavery and abortion is to provide arguments in support of the analogy.  Where I have drawn such analogies, I have tried to do that.  See for example my "Law, Democracy, and Moral Disagreement," Harvard Law Review, 110 (1997), pp. 1388-1406.  It is important not to use the analogies as excuses for resorting to name-calling and ridicule.  It is also important to note the limits of such analogies, since there are significant differences, as well as similarities, between injustices such as slavery and abortion. 

You've suggested that I read Russ Hittinger's book A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory.  In fact, I've done that.  In a post that crossed with yours I mentioned my critique of Russ's critique in chapter two of my book In Defense of Natural Law.  I also mentioned my respect for Russ as a scholar with whom I have had very productive exchanges---exchanges which became the foundation of a deep and abiding friendship.  I share your great respect for Alasdair MacIntyre (whom I consider to be one of the great philosophers of our time, and on whose work I have myself relied) and John Noonan, though I disagree with MacIntyre on some points and with Noonan on some deeper ones.  I join you in encouraging MoJ readers to read their works together with the works of Germain Grisez and John Finnis.  And I reiterate my invitation to you to debate the validity of Finnis's critique of Noonan on Aquinas's understanding of sexual morality.  I think that would be illuminating.

Your accusation (is it unfair to call it that?) that I or Finnis and Grisez pretend that "assertions" made in a "baritone voice" are arguments is one of those ex cathedra pronouncements that I would invite you to take responsibility for by providing evidence.  You hint that the evidence is the claim that basic human goods are self-evident.  But that won't do.  In the technical sense in which the most fundamental principles of practical reasoning (which are not, as you know, themselves moral norms) are self-evident (i.e., per se nota and indemonstrabilia, as Aquinas said), there is no implication that these principles cannot be (or should not be, or need not be) defended by arguments.  I go into quite a bit of detail about the nature and role of such arguments in chapters 2 and 3 of In Defense of Natural Law.

I will read your article "Toward a Thomistic Perspective on Abortion and the Law in Contemporary America."  I had not seen it.  Thanks for providing the link.  From other writings, I gather you think that President Obama's support for legal abortion and its public funding reflects the view of someone who, despite his own belief in the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions, thinks that in a pluralistic democratic nation like ours, broadly legal, publicly funded abortion is the best we can do and we should therefore discourage abortion (since it is the taking of a human life) by means short of prohibiting it and take steps to reduce the number of abortions by enacting better economic and social welfare policies.  Have I got you right on that?  (I'm happy to be corrected.  I'd very much prefer not to be right.)  If I do have you right, I do not think your view squares with Obama's public record or the statements he has made over his years as an Illinois state senator, United States senator, and President.  Perhaps this is another point we could usefully debate on MoJ or in another forum.  Here is a link to an essay of mine (written before the presidential election) entitled "Obama's Abortion Extremism":  http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2008/10/133.
After the election, I had an exchange with Doug Kmiec about the President's record and views on abortion and embryo-destructive research at the National Press Club.  Here is a link to my remarks:  http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2009/05/214.  (The title given to them, which refers to Obama's "apologists," was not selected or approved by me. The word does not appear anywhere in my remarks. Those remarks treat Professor Kmiec with respect while challenging his views about the common ground available for pro-lifers to work with the President.)

You say I'm quite a Republican.  Well, the Republican Party certainly has its faults.  You know, I used to be quite a Democrat.  I worked for Governor Casey.  I helped with the speech he was denied an opportunity to deliver at his party's national convention.  I saw the buttons worn by delegates in good standing---lots of them---depicting Governor Casey dressed as the Pope and bearing vile anti-Catholic sentiments. I didn't feel very welcome in the Democratic Party.  Nor did Governor Casey.  He wanted his Party back.  I had the honor to be co-director of the issues committee for his presidential campaign before poor health brought it to a halt.  I think Bart Stupak is terrific. I've praised Kristen Day's efforts at "Democrats for Life."  I wish that both parties stood firmly against the killing of the unborn in abortion and embryo-destructive research.  I'd love to be able to be a Democrat again.  I hope we can count on you to work hard to shift the Party from its staunch support for abortion and embryo-destructive research so that millions of people who once regarded the Democratic Party as the protector of the "little guy," could return to the fold or at least think well of it again.

Happy New Year to you.

A thought for the season

By Michael Perry


Bertolt Brecht, A Bed for the Night

I hear that in New York
At the corner of 26th Street and Broadway
A man stands every evening during the winter months
And gets beds for the homeless there
By appealing to passers-by.

It won't change the world
It won't improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation
But a few men have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them
The snow meant for them falls on the roadway.

Don't put the book down on reading this, man,

A few people have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them
The snow meant for them falls on the roadway
But it won't change the world
It won't improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation.


Mother Teresa

"I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual.  I can only love one person at a time--just one, one, one.  So you begin.  I began--I picked up one person.  Maybe if I hadn't picked up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand....  The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community.  Just begin--one, one, one."

There you go again, Robby!

By Michael Perry

I have made it clear what I was saying in my Christmas Eve post, and it was not what you imagine me to have been saying:  "equivalent to racists".  You seem, after several posts, invested in your mistaken "equivalent to racists" construal of my post.  But there is no tension between the wording of the post--which is there for all to see--and what I have said I was saying in the post.

Now, consider your tone:  you open your most recent post by referring to--indeed, by sneering at--my "game" and my "tactic".  This is consistent with your intemperate accusations yesterday not merely that I am wrong on the merits, but, worse, much worse, that I am insincere, hypocritical, keeping up "the pretence", and engaged in "smearing" others.  (Have I missed anything?)  Your tone and your insults speak for themselves.  This to-and-fro between you and me has gotten not only tired but, in a word, ugly.  I worry that if it continues I might eventually respond in kind--which I would regret.  It's past time, I think, to take a deep breath, and move on.

Yep!

By Robert George

Michael:

So now your game is to depict me as "angry"---indeed angry to the point of perhaps being "venomous."  Nice try, but I'm afraid that tactic won't work either.  The reason is simple:  Your Christmas Eve post is there in black and white for everyone to see.  Readers can just go back and look at what you said.  Why is it that your fellow citizens who do not share your liberal views about sexual morality do not see the light?  Well, it's because their socialization and psychology saddle them with a deep emotional aversion to forms of sexuality that are "unfamiliar" to them.  Unlike you, they lack "open, truly open minds."

That's sweet, Michael.  Real sweet.

I don't think the people you've smeared will take much solace (nor do I) in your willingness to exempt me and my "mentors" from the charge of being like racists---or (as you twice put it in your most recent post) like racists "in some hideous sense."

Just to make sure I've got this right, by the way, in explaining why people who do not share your liberal views about sex and marriage think as they do, you are appealing to the authority of Martha Nussbaum?

On conscripting Cathleen Kaveny into our dispute, I simply took her at her word.  She said "since Michael apparently conscripted me into this discussion . . . ."  If you say that you didn't contact her and she felt "conscripted" simply because you referred to her in a blog posting, I'm happy to accept that.  It's an odd usage of the word "conscripted," but I don't see that this is much of an issue.

Now for your three points:

I hang around with a lot of liberals.  They don't mind being called liberals or having their views referred to as "liberal" views, just as I don't mind them referring to my views as "conservative."  "Liberal" is not, in my opinion, an epithet or a "slap."  (In fact, I've argued that contemporary American conservatives are, when they are at their best, "old-fashioned liberals.")  That some people who hold conservative views on most issues break with conservatism to embrace the liberal posistion on certain others is hardly news.  I'm such a person myself.  Most conservatives support the death penalty.  I oppose it.  (By the way, I know liberals who break with most of their fellow liberals by favoring the death penalty.)  That there are some conservatives (the exceptionally gifted Jon Rauch, for one) who break with most conservatives on some questions of sexual morality is an unremarkable fact.  I do not "overlook" it.  I've taken note of it in various places, even debating Jon on the question of whether there can be any ground of moral principle for opposing polyamory (which Jon opposes) if one reconceives marriage in such a way as to elminate the requirement of sexual complementarity.  Anyway, I don't object to my critics (or my supporters, for that matter) referring to my views on sex and marriage as "conservative."  Most people I know who disagree with me on sexual morality don't object to their views being referred to as "liberal."

On your second point, I would say that what what we need above all, from both sides, is careful, rigorous, principled argumentation about sexual morality and marriage.  I'd need to know precisely what you mean by "the yield of modern and contemporary experience" in order to say whether, and, if so how, I would see it as relevant to the discussion.  If you mean what Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler mean in their 2006 Theological Studies article, then I reject it for the reasons Pat Lee and I set forth in our 2008 Theological Studies article responding to Salzman and Lawler.  As to whether we should "reevaluate traditional attitudes toward, and judgments about, the morality of homosexual sexual conduct," I'm all for reevaluating anything that reasonable people of goodwill, be they secular or religious, think needs reevaluating.  There are utilitarians and others today who think we need to reevaluate, in view of changing circumstances, our belief and the Church's teaching about the inherent wrongfulness of torture.  Fine, let's reevaluate.  But let's not prejudge what the outcome of the reevaluation will be.  It might leave our beliefs in place, even strengthened.  I've listened to arguments advanced by very smart and capable people who think I should change my mind about sexual morality.  I've listened to arguments advanced by very smart and capable people who think I should change my mind about torture (and abortion, and non-combatant immunity in wars, and the dead donor rule for organ transplantation, and other contested issues).  But so far at least I remain unpersuaded.  I'm happy for the debate on all these issues to continue, though.

There is a generational shift in moral convictions about lots of things.  Sexual morality (including promiscuity ("hooking up"), "open" relationships, etc., and not just the morality of homosexual conduct) is one.  Lying is another.  Cheating on exams is another.  Sociologists are hard at work on trying to identify and understand the determinants of these shifts.  I expect they will discover that they are complicated. 

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Not!

By Michael Perry

Robby began a post some weeks back--a post in the to-and-fro with Chip Lupu--with a comment about how things were getting "curiouser and curiouser".  Well, let me begin this post with the comment that at Robby's end, things seem to be getting angrier and angrier:

"I'm afraid the diversionary tactics won't work, Michael.  Nor will repeating yourself.  Or shifting the discussion to the opinions of Cathleen Kaveny on Germain Grisez's thought.  Your Christmas eve post was a smear against people who do not share your views about sexual morality.  You attempted to tar them as the equivalent of racists and then, in classic passive-aggressive fashion, you claimed to 'understand' how difficult it is for them to escape the 'socialization' and 'psychology' that saddle them with views that reflect nothing other than 'aversions' to the 'unfamiliar.'  I called you on the smear, and now you depict yourself as the victim.  It won't work. . . . [Michael's and my] dispute is about whether his Christmas eve post was a smear against honorable people who deviate from the liberal line on sexual morality.  I say it was, and that is why I called him on it.  It's time---past time---people refused to tolerate this sort of conduct."

That's sweet, Robby.  Real sweet.

Despite Robby's confident interpretation of what I was saying in my Christmas Eve post, the relevant point in the post was not that people who, like Robby and his mentors, believe that same-sex sexual conduct (and masturbation, and contraception, and non-marital sexual conduct) is always and everywhere necessarily and gravely immoral "are the equivalent of racists"--or even that they are like racists in some hideous sense.  I suppose that given what Robby and his allies have had to deal with in their campaign to persuade us that same-sex sexual conduct is always and everywhere necessarily and gravely immoral, it is not surprising that Robby would be only too ready to assimilate *my* point to *that* point--and then fulminate against it and me.  What, then, was my point?  That there is this similarity between many who opposed interracial sexual conduct and many who oppose same-sex sexual conduct:  Their visceral--yes, visceral--opposition is rooted in a deep-seated emotional aversion to--a disgust at--the conduct, which some of them will then naturally try to rationally vindicate by constructing arguments that those who do not share their emotional aversion regard as, to put it charitably, farfetched.  My point--that point--is a far cry from claiming that people who, like Robby and his mentors, believe that same-sex sexual conduct is always and everywhere necessarily and gravely immoral "are the equivalent of racists".  In his passion to paint me as smearing others in making the point I did--a point that Martha Nussbaum elaborates and defends in her two most recent books, which I've cited today--Robby is smearing me.  If Robby continues in the same vein, now that I have told him what I meant, I will have to conclude that he is not only angry but venomous.

What Cathy meant by my "conscripting" her was simply that I, without notifying her,  referred to her work, and to Jean Porter's, in one of my posts.  I took it that what Robby meant, by contrast, was that I had solicited Cathy's comments.  If Robby says that he did not mean the latter, so be it.

Now, I repeat some of what I said earlier, not because I think Robby will respond to it.  He's made it pretty clear he's in no mood to do that.  I repeat it because Robby keeps saying the same things (e.g., "the liberal line on sexual morality") and I want to emphasize what Robby has not responded to today:

1.  “Liberal ideology”?  “Liberal people”?  Robby overlooks, in his rhetorical slap at liberals, that many of those who agree with me on the issue at hand—and disagree with Robby—are not at all liberals:  Jonathan Rauch, Dale Carpenter, Dick Cheney, etc.  Government’s role in regulating the economy is a right/left, liberal/conservative issue.  But the issue at hand is not such an issue—and should not be so characterized, however useful in may be to do so in polemical statements and fundraising letters.

2.  Am I not correct that moral theology should be informed by the yield of modern and contemporary experience—and that it loses credibility if it is not so informed?  Am I not correct that today, there is good reason to reevaluate traditional attitudes toward, and judgments about, the morality of homosexual sexual conduct?  Even good reason to think differently about the morality of homosexual sexual conduct than our parents and grandparents did when they were young?

3.  Isn’t it clear that in the world’s most established liberal democracies, there is ongoing a generational shift in attitudes toward, and judgments about, the morality of homosexual sexual conduct?  What are the principal determinants of this generational shift?  Are we to believe that shifts in socialization and psychology, due to a contemporary experience of homosexuality that is rather different from that of our parents and grandparents, do not play a significant role.

Was it a smear . . . or not? That is the question.

By Robert George

I'm afraid the diversionary tactics won't work, Michael.  Nor will repeating yourself.  Or shifting the discussion to the opinions of Cathleen Kaveny on Germain Grisez's thought.  Your Christmas eve post was a smear against people who do not share your views about sexual morality.  You attempted to tar them as the equivalent of racists and then, in classic passive-aggressive fashion, you claimed to "understand" how difficult it is for them to escape the "socialization" and "psychology" that saddle them with views that reflect nothing other than "aversions" to the "unfamiliar."  I called you on the smear, and now you depict yourself as the victim.  It won't work.

As for whether you conscripted Cathleen Kaveny into the dispute, I'm not the person who initiated that claim -- though you falsely call it "Robby's false claim."  Professor Kaveny herself did.  Don't you recall?  Here are her words: "Since Michael apparently conscripted me into this discussion . . . . "  The two of you can sort the matter out between yourselves.  I'm a bystander on this one.

Off line, Michael Scaperlanda asked why I described Professor Kaveny's comments on Professor Grisez's thought as "ex cathedra."  It is a legitimate question, so let me say exactly what I meant in using that phrase.  I meant that Professor Kaveny's comments were general and conclusory, and the worse for it.  They are difficult to engage because (despite the clarity of Grisez's thinking and writing) they do not identify with clarity and precision the propositions that Grisez allegedly holds and defends and Professor Kaveny objects to; nor do they provide textual evidence that these are in fact his propositions; nor do they give arguments for rejecting as false or unwarranted propositions that he has been shown to hold and defend.  So we get, to cite one of many examples, the claim that "What counts as acting against a good [for Grisez] seems to be defined arbitrarily.  Why does contraception act against the good of marriage but smoking a cigarette not act against the good of life?"  Well, anyone who has read Grisez's work or Finnis's will know that they give careful, reasoned accounts of what it means to act against a basic human good, and they go to great lengths (especially in their treatment of the nature of intention in the theory of action and agency) to show that it is possible to distinguish deliberately acting against a good from performing an act that damages or impedes a good as a side-effect of an otherwise justified choice.  Professor Kaveny does not engage these arguments at all.  She simply declares (without argument, evidence, or any engagement with anything Grisez or Finnis actually says) that "what counts as acting against at good [for Grisez] seems arbitrary."  This will not do.

It is this kind of thing that caused me to characterize Professor Kaveny's pronouncements as "ex cathedra."  What she needs to do if she wants to be taken seriously as a critic of Grisez and Finnis or commentator on their work is to wrestle with what Grisez says about human action and agency as bearing upon basic human goods in, for example, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles, especially pages 215-222, 231-236, 239-243, 244-245, 256-259, 268-269, and in chapter 6 (pp.141-171), which is devoted to the critique of proportionalism and other consequentialist theories of moral reflection and judgment; and in his famous article "Against Consequentialism," American Journal of Jurisprudence, 23 (1978), pp. 49-62; and what Finnis says in, for example, "Object and Intention in Moral Judgments According to St. Thomas Aquinas," in J. Fallon and J. McEvoy (eds.) Finalite and intentionalite: Doctrine Thomiste et Perspectives Moderne (Bibliotheque Philosophique de Louvain, No, 35, 1992), pp. 127-148; and "Intention and Side-effects," in R. G. Frey and Christopher W. Morris (eds.) Liability and Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 32-64; and what Grisez and Finnis say together (with Joseph M. Boyle, Jr.) in their book Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism, especially at pages 77-86 and 275-319.  When Professor Kaveny moves from speaking in general and conclusory terms (which are safe but ultimately unhelpful) to offering a serious critique that identifies with specificity propositions Grisez and Finnis assert, provides textual evidence demonstrating the accuracy of her interpretations of what they are saying, and gives reasons for believing that their propositions embody or rest on factual errors or illicit inferences or are in some other way faulty, then we will really have something to talk about.  (Criticism of this sort is what I myself tried to provide---and what my dissertation supervisor, John Finnis, insisted on---in my own doctoral dissertation, which was a critique of aspects of Grisez's work in political philosophy.)  What will not do---for Professor Kaveny or anyone else---is to criticize philosophical writings---anyone's---in general and conclusory ("ex cathedra") terms that enable one to sound authoritative but which, in truth, fail to engage those writings in any serious way.  (Incidentally, anyone interested in why Grisez and Finnis and others believe that contraception is contrary to the good of marriage, can have a look at Finnis, "The Good of Marriage and the Morality of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical and Historical Observations," American Journal of Jurisprudence, 42 (1998), pp. 97-134, available here: http://www.princeton.edu/~anscombe/articles/finnismarriage.pdf.  Note, by the way the careful and rigorous criticisms Finnis makes of John Noonan's claims about Aquinas on sexual morality.  If Professor Kaveny wishes to attempt a defense of Judge Noonan on this matter, I would very much welcome an opportunity to have an exchange with her about it here on MoJ or in any forum she prefers.  This would be a great opportunity for us to get down to specifics, where people are required to take responsibility for what they are claiming by backing it up with evidence.  It would also enable our readers to judge whether Professor Finnis or Judge Noonan is the more accurate and reliable interpreter of Aquinas. On the question of smoking cigarettes, Grisez has analyzed the question showing with characteristic precision how the choice to smoke bears immorally on the basic human goods of life and health. See The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 3, Difficult Moral Questions, pp, 600-603.)

The dispute between Michael P. and myself, however, is not about the pros and cons of Germain Grisez's thought or Cathleen Kaveny's opinions about it.  (The subject came up at all only because Michael's Christmas eve post included an assertion that Kaveny and Jean Porter were more faithful exponents of the tradition running from Aristotle through Aquinas than Grisez and Finnis.  My advice to anyone who wonders about the truth of the matter is to ignore Michael's opinion and my own and simply read some work by Kaveny and Porter and read some work by Grisez and Finnis.)  Our dispute is about whether his Christmas eve post was a smear against honorable people who deviate from the liberal line on sexual morality.  I say it was, and that is why I called him on it.  It's time---past time---people refused to tolerate this sort of conduct.

Oh yes, one more thing.  Michael's latest move is to bring Russ Hittinger into this.  Russ is indeed a noted critic of Grisez and Finnis.  His criticisms are set forth in his book which Michael mentioned:  A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory.  I have offered a critique of Russ's critique in chapter two of my book In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford University Press, 1999).  Whether they are right or wrong, Russ offers specific criticisms of the sort that can be engaged productively.  Our exchanges led to a deep friendship.  In fact, I invited Russ to teach with me at Princeton, which he did, and arranged for him to be a Visiting Professor to teach my courses when I was on leave.  I would be happy to have Russ weigh in with an opinion on the comparative scholarly achievements of John Finnis and Cathleen Kaveny or Germain Grisez and Jean Porter.  Russ is also a forceful defender of Catholic teaching on sexual morality and marriage.  We might ask him what exactly it was about his socialization that caused him to have an aversion to unfamiliar forms of sexuality. 

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