This morning I'm preparing for a Family Law class in which we discuss, by way of review of the various topics covered in the course, how the law has been emptying itself of moral content. (Think no-fault divorce, the rise of prenuptial contracts, the narrowing of permissible rationales for child custody decisions, the demise of alimony, the elimination of fault as grounds for property division, and the decriminalization of adultery, fornication, etc.) I don't consider all of this to be a bad thing (though some of it is), in part because the state is not always the most effective means by which to maintain and/or implement moral norms in society. This assumes, however, that society has other means for maintaining those norms. An open question, I admit, especially when I come across stories like this one from Russia. I do wonder what it takes for a society to reach a tipping point on social practices related to the family that we currently take for granted, and whether there is a role for the law in supporting those practices long before the tipping point is reached. (I will note that the formidable threat to the family in Russia appears to have little or nothing to do with same-sex marriage, as that conversation, in my understanding, hasn't even gotten rolling there yet.)
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Family law, social norms, and tipping points
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
"Political" as a pejorative
In the new Commonweal, I weigh in on the controversy surrounding Archbishop Nienstedt's DVDs opposing same-sex marriage, using the episode to draw some tentative lessons about what critics might mean when they accuse the bishops of being "too political." After exploring three other possible meanings of "political" in this context, I address the partisanship charge:
“[P]olitical” as a pejorative may suggest that the bishops have become partisan—that they are not just overreaching, but doing so in a way that reflects their capture by a particular ideological camp or political party. Now, a single DVD does not necessarily constitute evidence of partisanship, and so such a criticism would need to assess the entirety of the bishops’ (or a particular bishop’s) political advocacy. The accusation of partisanship cannot justly be based on a single issue to which the church has given its voice unless that voice is accompanied by a noticeable silence on other issues encompassed by church teaching. Of course, if the bishops believe that we are at a crucial point of social change on same-sex marriage, they may consider their advocacy on this issue particularly urgent.
Yet while one policy issue might be more pressing than others in a given election cycle, keeping the entirety of church social teaching before the public is always a pressing need. The danger exists that the power of advocacy will be weakened by perceptions of partisanship—by the sense, that is, that the underlying goal is to influence a particular election in favor of a particular candidate, rather than to bear witness to the full weight of the church’s social teaching, which defies simplistic political categories. When an election rolls around, we know where labor unions will line up, and we know where the Chamber of Commerce will line up; if voters begin to tune out the bishops’ statements for the same reasons, we have a problem.
I welcome feedback, but it would be most helpful if you read the whole thing before you give me your reaction.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Opposition to SSM as hate speech
Apple has pulled the Manhattan Declaration app from its App Store, apparently in response to customer complaints that the declaration amounts to hate speech. Is this part of a broader trend? See, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center's recent report, "18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda," in which the National Organization for Marriage is included as one of "a hard core of smaller groups, most of them religiously motivated, [which] have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities." To be clear, I do consider some of the rhetoric employed in opposition to SSM to amount to hate speech (under virtually any imaginable definition of "hate speech"), but I fear that we're approaching the point where opposition to SSM itself is considered hate speech, regardless of the rhetoric employed.
Long live reason! Return to the Scriptures, America!
Apparently, the American Atheists have grown tired of being falsely accused of waging a "war on Christmas," and thus have decided to do something to warrant such accusations by launching a direct attack on the holiday, erecting this billboard on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Judging by the billboard, at least, their attack is a bit toothless. I hope that every Christian will stand together in support of the billboard's claim. The notion that the Magi visited Christ as an infant in the manger is, of course, a myth. A reading perfectly compatible with "reason" is found in an ancient source often disregarded by modern-day Christians. See, e.g., Matthew 2:11 (referring to Magi visiting Mary and "child"), 2:16 ("When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi."). Thank you to the American Atheists for helping bring attention to our nation's woeful level of biblical illiteracy.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Why are Pope Benedict's comments on condom use controversial?
MoJ readers are probably aware of the controversy arising from published comments by Pope Benedict characterizing condom use by male prostitutes as a step toward moral responsibility to the extent that it reduces the risk of disease. (I won't even purport to offer a direct quotation, as there appears to be some dispute over the proper English translation.) To the extent that observers leap to read into this comment an endorsement of condoms in general, I can see why the comment would be construed as controversial. But if Pope Benedict indeed was limiting his statement to male prostitutes, who overwhelmingly serve male clients, what would be the argument against condom use? If there is no contraceptive function to the practice, why would the comment be remotely controversial? A New York Times article quotes experts pointing to the different weight that various Church statements carry, as does George Weigel, who offers this argument, among others, in responding to the controversy:
The second false assumption beneath the condom story is that all papal statements of whatever sort are equal, such that an interview is an exercise of the papal teaching magisterium. That wasn’t true of John Paul II’s international bestseller, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, in which the late pope replied to questions posed by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori. It wasn’t true of the first volume of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth, in which the pope made clear at the outset that he was speaking personally as a theologian and biblical scholar, not as the authoritative teacher of the Church. And it isn’t true of Light of the World. Reporters who insist on parsing every papal utterance as if each were equally authoritative — and who often do so in pursuit of a gotcha moment — do no good service to their readers.
Why do we even have to go this far? Why can't the Church just say that it is better for a male prostitute to use a condom than for a male prostitute not to use a condom? (For the present inquiry, I'm putting to the side the question whether the doctrine of double effect would justify condom use to prevent the spread of disease in other situations.)
Friday, November 19, 2010
Worst op-ed of the year
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.
Whom Would Jesus Offend? (Plenty of people.)
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
Adventures in labeling
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.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Saletan on "Open Hearts" conference
At Slate, William Saletan offers his reaction to the Princeton abortion conference, including a list of five lessons for pro-lifers. (His lessons for pro-choicers will be posted tomorrow.)
Monday, November 15, 2010
Waldron on Religious Argument in Politics
Thanks to Paul Horwitz for flagging this new paper from Jeremy Waldron, Two-Way Translation: The Ethics of Engaging with Religious Contributions in Public Deliberations. The arguments may not be new, but it's nice to see someone like Waldron lend his substantial intellectual heft to the cause. Here's the abstract:
Using as an exemplar, the 2007 "Evangelical Declaration against Torture," this paper examines the role of religious argument in public life. The Declaration was drawn up by David Gushee, University Professor at Mercer University, and others. It argues for an absolute ban on the use of torture deploying unashamedly Christian rhetoric, some of it quite powerful and challenging. For example, it says: " [T]he Holy Spirit participates in human pathos with groans and sighs too deep for words. The cries of the tortured are in a very real sense, … the cries of the Spirit." The present paper considers whether there is any affront to the duties of political civility in arguing in these terms. There is a line of argument, associated with John Rawls's book, "Political Liberalism," suggesting that citizens should refrain from discussing issues of public policy in religious or deep-philosophical terms that are not accessible to other citizens. The present paper challenges the conception of inaccessibility on which this Rawlsian position is based. It argues, with Jurgen Habermas, that all sides in a modern pluralist society have a right to state their views as firmly and as deeply as they can, and all sides have the duty to engage with others, and to strain as well as they can to grasp others' meanings. It is not enough to simply announce that one can not understand religious reasons, especially if no good faith effort has been made, using the ample resources available in our culture, to try. Of course, many peoeple will not be convinced by the reasons that are offered in religious discourse; but to argue for their rejection - which is always what may happen in respectable political deliberation - is not to say that the presentation of those reasons was offensive or inappropriate
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