Final thoughts on the Referendum

                          Jactae sunt aleae (couldn't find a decent singular picture!)


This will be my final post before the Referendum. Ironically, I suppose, I'll probably be out of the country delivering one of my progeny to an educational institution outwith the best wee nation in the world. But the postal vote is in and, for me at least, the die is cast...

I resolved at the very beginning of this journey (and non Scots would do well to remember that we've been at this discussion for almost three years now) that I wouldn't take a public stance on the vote. Looking back, in some ways, I regret this as a slightly cowardly fence sitting. But it reflected both my own undecidedness and my desire to try and represent a Catholic community which disagreed on the issue. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that initial decision, it has had the advantage of forcing me to try to objective rather than partisan. A recurrent theme of this blog has been the place in political thinking of objectivity, of trying to discern (in Straussian terms) the natural right that underlies the eddies of everyday politics. That this is a solidity we never quite reach does not remove its importance as something for which we should strive.

Some last thoughts then.

First, although there has been an upsurge of interest in politics, I'm less optimistic than many commentators about the long term effects of this. There is undoubtedly an ache in many people for a public, political space which feels more like their own, rather than the playpit of a strange, alien political class. I suspect that this ache for a world of public meaningfulness is doomed to continue whatever the result of the referendum. It is an ache that cannot be filled by the modern nation state, but only by culture and, more specifically, a culture which acknowledges transcendent values. If Independence (or devo-maxish) were to solve or ameliorate this condition, it would only be indirectly by way of a revival of Scottish artistic and intellectual culture.

Secondly, there ought to be a grimness about politics in Scotland to match the grimness of some people's lives here. Go to parts of our big cities (or the run down small towns and villages) and get angry. We are, as we are constantly told, a wealthy nation. But there are many in that nation whose lives are blighted by poverty. There's not always a straightforward solution to that. But it should be a running sore, a constant screaming in our national conscience.

Thirdly, decent, thoughtful people have disagreed in this referendum. I think it's impossible for feelings not to run high and, frankly, for people not to slag each other off in a political struggle. But we need in the privacy of our own rooms to remember that the issues and the balancing between competing values is not a straightforward, algorithmic task. Both sides, whatever the result, need to put aside their disappointment and glee in the task of working together for the common good. Am I the only one to have thought, whatever I think precisely of them, that a Scottish political life in which people such as Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown, Douglas Alexander and Jim Murphy engaged on a daily basis (rather than just popping up like Drake at a time of national emergency) would be a better one?

Finally, let me quote John Haldane in his article on the Referendum for First Things:

Scottish Catholics are insufficiently aware of these threats and whatever the outcome of the referendum, they will need to defend themselves against specious arguments and to rebuild an intellectual culture that might appeal to those for whom the world of ideas is currently associated exclusively with secular humanism. The question of Scotland’s independence is an important one, and if achieved the world will be watching to see how an ancient European nation transforms itself into the newest European state. If there is to be a new age of Scottish Enlightenment it must include respect for religion and given past and recent history, and the substantiality of Catholic faith and practice, the principal test of that will be respect for Catholicism.

Whatever the result of the referendum, Scottish Catholics (and. more generally, those who value the solidity of the traditional over the vapours of Jetsonist progressivism) will need to develop both a public presence and intellectual depth that they have not yet managed to do. That is, as Haldane points out, a matter of how others respect this aspect of Scottish life, but more importantly, how we ourselves articulate and fight for our understanding of the world.

Basic Catholic philosophical reading list

                                                      I have been thinking...

This is going to be one of those posts where I mull to no good purpose whilst sticking up some points so that I don't lose sight of them in the future. You have been warned....

I've previously mentioned my conviction that the most serious problem facing the Church is a lack of basic religious education. Let's split that into theological education and philosophical education. The absence of theological education can -to some extent- be remedied by using the Catechism. Either read it (and keep on reading it) yourself or do one of the numerous courses available on it. It's not  perfect solution, but at least it should stop most of the daftnesses of the 'It doesn't matter whether you go to Mass or not' and 'Vatican II abolished that' sort. (If you want a more straightforward summary without any concessions to modernity, keep a copy of either the Penny Catechism or the Baltimore Catechism as a back up.)

That leaves philosophical education. Well, OK, first question: why do we need philosophical education as Catholics? (And here I'm talking primarily about reasonably intelligent laity, not priests or religious.) Why aren't the above Catechisms enough? Roughly, this is because the theology of the Catechisms stands on philosophy: without that background, it is often reduced to simple fideistic statements. The Catechisms mostly sort out the what we believe; but they usually do not sort out the why, particularly that part of the why which is based on natural reason rather than revelation.

Catholic philosophy's status as the 'ancilla theologiae' (the handmaid of theology) is particularly important when we're dealing with a society that is post-Christian and post dead white males. The average (fairly intellectual) Victorian convert would have been a Christian of some sort with a background in Greek and Latin literature: to someone who is worrying about whether to be a Catholic or an Anglican or even a Platonist the sort of material in the Catechism is probably going to be most important. The average (fairly intellectual) modern convert probably thinks that Xena Warrior Princess is genuine history (or at least a genuine post modern jouissance) and that Galileo disproved Aristotle by dropping him off the Tower of Pisa. Nothing in the Catechism is (directly) going to touch  that sort of worldview. (And note that this isn't just a matter of apologetics: what is played out in a public space between individuals has its analogue inside the mind when individuals wonder if Catholic teaching makes sense to them: not only will converts fail to be made, but practising Catholics will start to believe that individual doctrines -or even the whole system- fails to make sense.)

Without a background in that sort of shared classical philosophical Ideenraum which characterizes all Catholic theology, key elements of Catholic teaching are going to look increasingly bizarre. For example, in the recent debate over same sex 'marriage', failure of even many Catholics to understand (in Aristotelian terms which have their analogues in Platonism) the concepts of a nature, embodied in a form, or of potentiality which is actualized, makes it very difficult to explain arguments against same sex 'marriage' which embody claims about the true purpose of marriage. (And those metaphysical points are in addition to the problems which arise from a failure to make clear the classical philosophical assumption that politics is about the promotion of flourishing rather than simply the creation of negative liberty.)

So we need a way of Catholics and others to grapple with the philosophical worldview on which revealed theology stands. (And that way has to be cheaper than (eg) the courses at Maryvale.) There is (to my knowledge) no one single book that even fully explains such a worldview, let alone tries to justify it. (And that of course is in part because philosophy can't as neatly be separated out into the what and the why: to philosophize is to engage critically with the views, not just to know what they are.) What books would I therefore recommend? My answer here is very much a work in progress: what I'm going to say is not right, but it's my best stab at the moment. (So any further suggestions gratefully received.)

Peter Kreeft's reading list won't do (however excellent it is): it's too long and wouldn't serve my main purpose (which is, roughly, to provide an introduction to the philosophical background of Catholic theology which explains primarily the what but enough of the why so that the what retains a plausibility which can be built on if you wish to pursue more detailed studies). There is, for example, not much point in grappling with the intricacies of Descartes and Mill when the absolutely key thing to know about them is that they are wrong and why.

Here's a tentative short leet:

Peter Kreeft: Socratic Logic. One to live with rather than to read through in one sitting.

Edward Feser: The Last Superstition. Polemical, but does make clear why the claim that Plato and Aristotle are still relevant isn't just an antiquarian fancy.

John Vella: Aristotle: A Guide for the Perplexed. Makes Aristotle sound like a neo-Thomist (which is fine for present purposes even if I think Vella oversystematizes the actual Aristotle). I have no idea why I can only find this on Italian Google books! The text is in English (and is still in print).

Leo Strauss: Natural Right and History.  I know Leo Strauss is supposed to be the Neo-Con devil incarnate whose followers eat babies and started the Iraq war. I'm not a Straussian, but this simply strikes me as a good, quick introduction to an approach in politics which is recognizably in keeping with classical models.

John A .Oesterle: Ethics: the introduction to Moral Science. Out of print -so I'm not totally happy about recommending this. But does give a short but clear account of moral philosophy from a Catholic perspective.


I've tried to cover analogues to a three volume traditional cursus philosophiae: typically, logic, metaphysics and ethics. For trying to bash sense into a hostile atheist, I'd try John Haldane's Atheism and Theism, just because Smart and Haldane model what a reasonable encounter between theism and atheism should look like. (If you just want to have fun and don't mind irritating your atheist, give them Feser's work above!)

Perhaps MOOCs will provide an alternative strategy?

------------------------------

Putting all that aside and coming at it from a completely different direction, I came across some discussions on Continuing Anglican websites about what a reading list in orthodox Anglican theology might look like. Both because there are some analogies between our purposes -ie how do individuals with limited resources get a basic grasp on orthodox religion- and because it begins to touch on a question that the Ordinariate will have to wrestle with (ie what is the Anglican intellectual patrimony that can be brought across the Tiber), I include some links below:

The New Contining Anglican: The advantage of a short reading list for study.
                                               Building an Anglican library. (Probably the most useful.)
                                               Anglican Theological Education I
                                               Anglican Theological Education II

Anglican Continuum: See combox on this post for a debate about reading material.

I'd stress that these links aren't to Catholic sites: I'm only including them as a convenient list for some analogous thoughts on what an 'unofficial' education in orthodoxy might look like and how it might be achieved. (And for any Anglicans dropping by!)

Thomistic manuals and Pope Francis

Of all the comments on Pope Francis' interview -well, OK, excluding Eccles' typically brilliant comic turn- Lee Faber's, in response to the Pope's talk about 'decadent textbooks', had me chuckling most:


Ouch! Even I, Scotist though I be, have spent many happy hours poring over Thomist manuals. I can only dream of such an education. [From The Smithy.]

Too right, bro'. I could probably claim a reasonable competence in both theology and philosophy in general, but I'm only a hobbyist when it comes to scholasticism. The thought of having had access to a thorough grounding in the discipline at a young age makes me go all tingly and regretful...

Anyway, as I mentioned in my own post, this remark of the Pope's sent me a pondering:

The church has experienced times of brilliance, like that of Thomas Aquinas. But the church has lived also times of decline in its ability to think. For example, we must not confuse the genius of Thomas Aquinas with the age of decadent Thomist commentaries. Unfortunately, I studied philosophy from textbooks that came from decadent or largely bankrupt Thomism. In thinking of the human being, therefore, the church should strive for genius and not for decadence.

Let's dig a little deeper. I'm currently reading Phillips' Modern Thomistic Philosophy (internet archive version of vol. 1, here). It's perhaps not typical of other manuals, particularly those that the future Father Jorge would have studied, but neither is it so far off that it's unusable as a concrete example. Its atypicality is that it is written in English rather than Latin and, unlike many earlier manuals, isn't laid out in an almost geometrical structure (for comparison, see Jouin's Compendium logicae et metaphysicae). It's therefore slightly more like a modern textbook than earlier manuals and, moreover, received the accolade of being included in the Thoemmes reprints of Modern Writings on Thomism in English, edited by John Haldane -so it's unlikely to be a complete duffer philosophically. (It was originally published in 1934.)

OK, that said, what's wrong with it? Well, looking at a schismatic ultra-Catholic seminary programme (which I take to be similar to a pre-Vatican II programme), the prospective Father Jorge would have been flung immediately into the intricacies of philosophy in the form of logic and cosmology. The Phillips' manual (unlike Jouin's) doesn't include logic, but it does start with cosmology. Now I'm coming at this with a fair philosophical background, but it still doesn't make it an easy read. It suffers from two main problems. Firstly, difficult issues are not explained at sufficient length for them to be fully comprehensible. Secondly, it is very rarely made clear why the various points that are being raised are important. For example, in a discussion of infinity, I could imagine that students might ultimately find it useful both in dealing with some aspects of arguments for the existence of God, or for dealing with modern science. But there is absolutely no hint of this: instead the student is left ploughing through dense material without much of a clue about where they'll end up and why.

Now I can imagine at least two possible replies here. Firstly, there is the 'Platonic' reply. By learning to apply themselves to the abstract and theoretical without the cheap allure of immediate usefulness, the student's mind is prepared for contemplation of divine things. (A bit of this still goes on in academic philosophy. I harbour a (doubtless unworthy) suspicion that, during my time as an undergraduate, the rather large first year class in philosophy was subjected to a deliberately dry curriculum as a pons asinorum: survive it, and you were allowed to enjoy the subject.) Secondly, there is the observation that these are texts which are taught: what is lacking in them is lacking because it was to be provided by the teaching of the lecturer.

Both of these points doubtless have some force. Students do have to learn to knuckle under to a discipline. But for those students for the priesthood who were not particularly attracted by hard abstract theological thought but simply wanted (eg) to serve their fellow man, it does seem an unnecessarily hard apprenticeship. Moreover, even if lecturers supplemented the texts, it seems reasonably clear from recollections such as the Pope's that this wasn't always done well; and that, moreover, that there is only so much such a supplement can do: cosmology is still cosmology.

I'm still mulling all this over. I have no doubt at all that the abandonment of an attempt to articulate Catholic philosophy and theology in a systematic way at least as a foundation for the life of a priest, religious and of an informed laity is the most serious lack in the modern Church, far, far more serious than any problems with the liturgy. Although the Catechism goes a long way to help here, it remains an essentially fideistic document: it does not give an explicit account of the philosophical, reasonable foundations of Catholicism as an ancilla theologiae. The obvious answer here is a return to something like these manuals, but that solution comes up against a continual insistence by many who encountered them as students of the deadening effects of their use, quite apart from the manifest failings I've mentioned above. (And it's hard to imagine present generations, even less well prepared for a systematic slog by modern education, finding the experience much better.) There's also the (not unrelated) problem of apologetics: if you are schooled in a system that has very little contact with the intellectual life of the culture around you, you may be able to salami slice their errors with complete accuracy, but have absolutely no chance of explaining these errors in a way that will get a hearing. In the end, I think this all boils down to my having a diagnosis (a poor standard of (religious) education among Catholics) but not much sense of what a practicable solution looks like. What, for example, should a Catholic, intelligent and well educated in secular terms, regard as a bare minimum of Catholic learning, and how should he or she go about getting it?

And as a final thought....

The Pope talks about the big picture and unconditional love, and I pick up on the need for nineteenth century neo-Scholastic manuals. Might it be suggested I'm rather missing the point? Well, in part, I'd plead guilty to that. I'm much happier fighting an intellectual culture war than actually loving people. That's why, whatever anyone else might say about the Pope, I'm happy he's there: I need him to remind me and challenge me in my own characteristic weaknesses. But beyond that, you can't take what is essentially a sermon and turn it into a rule book. Genuinely caring for people involves nasty technical things like building sewers and getting speed limits right. Equally, it involves getting education right as well as training for future leaders, lay and clerical. Working out what love requires of us involves a change of heart, but also hard, difficult thought and self-discipline. Making sure that you keep a broken and contrite heart does not mean keeping a sloppy mind. But it does mean going back to check regularly that the sharpness of your wits isn't shredding souls as well as errors.

Gerry Hassan, John Haldane and Hegel

                       Wherever you are on the political spectrum, you can feel his eyes watching you...

[This is a repost of something I wrote back in December. Not quite sure what happened, but I seem to have pressed something at some stage which means I either have to repost or to lose it entirely. As I don't want to lose it, you'll have to put up with it again!]

Scottish readers of this blog worried by the suspicion that I am stalking Gerry Hassan and John Haldane may have noticed that, by a happy coincidence, both were present on Newsnicht last night discussing my other obsession, same sex 'marriage'. (12 December episode of Newsnight Scotland available here for seven days. The Haldane Hassan discussion is first up.)

Recovering my mental equilibrium with difficulty at the prospect of such a feast, the discussion itself proved an occasion where a fair amount of agreement was achieved between the participants, not on the substance of same sex 'marriage', but on the wider implications of the debate for Scottish politics.

Both Hassan and Haldane agreed that there was something troubling about the way that the concerns of ordinary Scots were not reflected in the Scottish Parliament. A striking instance of this was of course the debate on same sex 'marriage' where, according to Newsnicht, only eight MSPS (out of 129 seats) will oppose same sex 'marriage' (the Equal Marriage Campaign bumps this up to a whopping 10!) whilst in Westminster, not only are 99 MPs estimated to be opposed, but their opposition is far more vociferous and visible.

Although Hassan didn't seem to regard same sex 'marriage' as a critical issue in the same way that I would, there was clear agreement between the two that the gap between the performance of the Scottish Parliament and public concerns in general -a gap even greater than that between Westminster and the people- boded ill for public engagement in Scottish politics.

Pace Hassan, I want to return to the specific case of same sex 'marriage'. The almost complete absence of opposition to same sex 'marriage' among the commentariat and the Scottish Parliament is not a sign of the effortless superiority of pro same sex 'marriage' arguments, but of the absence of a truly conservative presence in Scottish political life. I'm not a great fan of Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, but it does have a truth at its heart that we need in Scotland to take account of.

Haidt's central argument is that there are six moral foundations in human life, and the way in which they select and weight these foundations defines conservative and progressive (Haidt talks of 'liberals' in the US context) worldviews.

As one review puts it:


But the larger points Haidt makes are that our views are based more on moral intuition than finances, reason or even self-interest. 

Extensive interviews on six "moral foundations" - caring, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity - help explain basic thinking on the right and left.

Both sides place high value on caring, fairness and liberty; although liberals are more into caring, conservatives more into fairness.

Conservatives are huge on loyalty, authority and sanctity; liberals ambivalent.

So conservatives offer a broader moral foundation and liberals need to crank up some moral precepts if they hope to achieve wider appeal.

In essence, both sides have a point and both need to learn from each other.

Whilst I'd want to nuance that approach in a longer discussion, that seems to me about right: a healthy politics has both progressives and liberals in some sort of constant dialectic with each other. Now I don't believe that the 'conservative' worldview has disappeared from Scottish people (God help us if it has) but it has certainly almost disappeared from the Scottish Parliament and the commentariat. And that matters, because it is in those institutions that the top down exercise of state power and the bottom up exercise of popular power meet and are mediated into some sort of modus vivendi. To focus on the Scottish Parliament for a moment, Hegel makes the following points about the Estates (ie the Prussian equivalent of Parliament):

Regarded as a mediating organ, the Estates stand between the government in general on the one hand and the nation broken up into particulars (people and associations) on the other. Their function requires them to possess a political and administrative sense and temper, no less than a sense for the interests of individuals and particular groups. At the same time the significance of their position is that, in common with the organised executive, they are a middle term preventing both the extreme isolation of the power of the crown, which otherwise might seem a mere arbitrary tyranny, and also the isolation of the particular interests of persons, societies, and Corporations. Further, and more important, they prevent individuals from having the appearance of a mass or an aggregate and so from acquiring an unorganised opinion and volition and from crystallising into a powerful bloc in opposition to the organised state.

Estates Assemblies, open to the public, are a great spectacle and an excellent education for the citizen, and it is from them that the people learns best how to recognise the true character of its interests. The idea usually dominant is that everyone knows from the start what is best for the state and that the Assembly debate is a more discussion of this knowledge. In fact, however, the precise contrary is the truth. It is here that there first begin to develop the virtues, abilities, dexterities, which have to serve as examples to the public. Of course such debates are irksome to ministers, who have to equip themselves with wit and eloquence to meet the criticisms there directed against them. None the less, publicity here is the chief means of educating the public in national affairs. A nation which has such public sittings is far more vitally related to the state than one which has no Estates Assembly or one which meets in private. It is only because their every step is made known publicly in this way that the two Houses keep pace with the advance of public opinion, and it then becomes clear that a man's castle building at his fireside with his wife and his friends is one thing, while what happens in a great Assembly, where one shrewd idea devours another, is something quite different.
(S. 302 and S.315 Philosophy of Right)

In essence, Parliament is a place where the relatively unstructured views of the people develop an articulated expression and are moderated by the exigencies of government into forms which in turn are fed back into the populace: without this place of mediation, the executive becomes oppressive and the people a mob.

It's hard to be exact about why there is no visibly conservative presence in the Scottish Parliament. One reason may be the collapse of the Conservative Party here as a result of the loathing for Thatcher felt by many Scots. Another reason may be the paralysis of normal political debate caused by (take your pick) the dependent status of Scotland within the Union, or the emphasis on the independence question by the SNP: either way, conservative energies that would otherwise be devoted to social and economic issues are instead focused on the question of Independence and the Union.

But for whatever reason, the absence of a visible and vociferous conservative voice in the Scottish Parliament is damaging, both because it alienates people from an institution where they have no voice, and because, objectively, something important about loyalty, sanctity and authority is being overlooked in public debate.

We shall fight them in the combox....

                          Fifteenth century Dawkinsians reasoning with a receptive audience

I started this blog about eighteen months ago in part as a reaction to having spent far too many hours scrapping in comboxes with various opponents over topics such as Pope Benedict's visit to Scotland and assisted suicide. My thought was that it would be better to put much of my output into a more stable form on a blog, where I would also be able to put up pieces of a greater length which were not ad hoc reactions to current events. With the approach of same sex 'marriage' legislation and the Independence referendum I could see that the need for Catholic commentary would be increasing and I didn't really think that combox scraps were the best way of reacting to this need.

Well, I think broadly that was right, but I do still get stuck into the comboxes occasionally. The Catholic Herald tends to attract mobs of single minded Dawkinsians who descend on the website at odd intervals to explain, belligerently or with sad condescension, that Catholics are a bunch of deluded/moronic sheeple, and, if only we could be troubled to read chapter 4 of The God Delusion, we'd realize that everything we'd ever read in Aquinas or MacIntyre or Anscombe or Geach or Haldane or Finnis was well wrong and we'd be able to stop ruining the world and have better sex instead.

Now, there are a number of issues relating to such mobbing. Should it be ignored or responded to? If we should respond to it, should we respond nicely or should we respond aggressively or sarcastically? Many academic studies of cyberreligion emphasize nice post-mo things such as fluidity and interractivity. But there's also a place for looking at much cyberreligion as being characterized by rather more un-PC metaphors such as 'besieging', 'colonization', 'territory' and 'invasion'.

It's perhaps not totally unexpected that an orthodox Catholic tends to see the world, even that very modern online one, in terms more appropriate to the Middle Ages than to postmodernism. But the behaviour of cyberatheism is very difficult to describe in any other ways. Perhaps because I was an atheist and perhaps because I've left my basement enough to encounter a few people, I don't think I've ever thought that the lines between religion and atheism neatly follow the lines of thick/smart, uneducated/educated. If I were ever tempted, as an atheist, to think that all Catholics were bead rattling old ladies, then my illusions didn't last much beyond the first few pages of wrestling with Anscombe. Or if now I delude myself that atheists are simply Dawkinsian blowhards, reading (say) Bernard Williams would quickly put me right. This strikes me as so obvious, that it's very tempting to dismiss the plagues of frankly pretty moronic comments that appear on the Catholic Herald site as simply the usual noise of the internet, and to ignore them.

So, on the one hand: the comments are silly, ignore them just as you ignore the drunk shouting on the top of the bus. But on the other....

I'm not sure that the internet can be described without using spatial metaphors. And given that, some parts of it seem like home. There are some sites which I think of as my own or as part of a close family relationship: when, for example, I visit the Catholic Herald site, I expect to meet like minded people looking at articles of interest to us both. If I visit the Dawkins' Foundation for Sniggering at Sky Fairies, it's a bit like walking into a pub in a strange, rather rough side of town: if I'm polite, quiet and drink my pint with reasonable haste and leave, I might escape without getting a kicking. (But probably won't.) And then there are other sites, like The Scotsman, which are public space and, even, space where a certain ritualized agon is expected.

As home territory, I don't really like it when hordes of ill mannered oafs barge in and start vomiting over the furniture. Sometimes, prudence may involve withdrawal, but, in principle, there doesn't seem anything wrong in screaming angrily at them. That of course doesn't mean it's always a good idea. In particular -and this is something that disgruntled atheists often refer to when they meet a less than friendly welcome- is it Christian? And perhaps -and this is something I worry about rather more- is it effective in 'getting the message out there'? (If you   ridicule someone, is it likely that you're going to convince them of the plausibility of your beliefs?)

On the point -is it 'Christian'?- I see nothing in either Catholic theology or the history of the Church to suggest that sharp replies are not sometimes in order. As far as effectiveness is concerned, Ed Feser is particularly good on this:

There are, first of all and most importantly, a lot of people both on the religious side and on the fence who are so impressed by the absurdly self-confident rhetoric and apparent prestige of the New Atheists that they suppose there must be something powerful in their arguments, and this supposition will remain even after one has patiently explained the defects in their books. Sometimes, “breaking the spell” of a powerful rhetorical illusion requires equal and opposite rhetorical force (if I can borrow Dennett’s phrase). When you treat an ignorant bully arguing in bad faith as if he were a serious thinker worthy to be engaged respectfully, you only reinforce his prestige and maintain the illusion that he might be onto something. You thereby make it easier for people to fall into the errors the bully is peddling....

I also think people overstate the extent to which atheist readers will be put off. Some atheist readers, sure. But there are also atheists whose confidence in atheism is largely sustained by the vigor and self-confidence of the people on their side coupled with the timidity, defensiveness, and halfway-apologetic responses of some people on the other, religious side. To see people from the religious side hitting back with equal force and exposing certain prominent atheists not merely as mistaken, but as ignorant and foolish, can shock some of these atheist readers out of their complacency.

In engaging with an increasingly secularized society with diminished numbers of Catholics, there is a temptation to turn to simplistic solutions: if we just do this or that, then everything will be all right. In reality, you have to do everything, engage in every way and in every place you can. Combox scraps, in one sense, are a relatively unimportant part of this engagement. But the alternatives to them are, I think, even worse. If the comboxes of a  Catholic newspaper either become so stuffed with unanswered Dawkinsian attacks that they become unusable for the exchange of Catholic views, or give the impression that such attacks are unanswerable except by the silence of dumb faith, then that is quite an important surrender. If they become so heavily moderated that no dissenting voice from Catholicism is allowed, then that too is, in effect, a suggestion that Catholicism survives only by exertion of brute power rather than by its attractiveness to the human search for truth, goodness and beauty.

In short, I don't see much alternative to the status quo: gruelling exchanges where millions of key strokes are sacrificed over small advances and small retreats. Where young men sacrifice the finest years of their lives to RSI, a diet based entirely on nachos and tepid Dr Pepper, and the resultant ravages of acne. In the Middle Ages, the protectors of Christendom were the Military Orders. Are Catholic keyboard warriors their proud modern successors?

                                                          Lazarus revealed....

Lay Catholics in Scotland and knowing nothing

                                     Like mushrooms, the laity thrive in the dark....

I've been thinking a great deal recently about this business of gossip. Archbishop Nichols ruminated on it in response to Pope Francis' own thoughts (basically, gossip bad).

Although the Archbishop of Westminster got a lot of flak from Catholic bloggers on this, I think he has a point. It's easy to get into the habit of whingeing about things and it's not really something I set out to do when starting this blog.

So what is the virtuous response to the Cardinal O'Brien kerfuffle? As it stands, Cardinal O'Brien has admitted some sort of series of sexual impropriety, and

will be leaving Scotland for several months for the purpose of spiritual renewal, prayer, and penance. 

Now that leaves us (ie laity with no special sources of information) not knowing:

a) Precisely what he has done and, in particular, whether this is simply a case of someone just making some passes at consenting adults, or a long standing pattern of abuse of those (young adults and priests) in his care.

b) Whether he's simply popping off for a couple of months, and then coming back to live openly in Scotland or whether there is some further action to be taken.

Does that matter? At one level, I don't need to know any more in order to be a practising Catholic.  I don't expect priests (or bishops) to be perfect and that means that an extreme few are always going home from Mass to be beaten by their Brazilian male maid, whilst listening to CDs of Judy Garland. It would be naive to assume otherwise. So we just nod sadly, utter a few prayers, and go on without taking a gossipy interest in further details.

But into the space of information steps the media. STV had an interview with Stephen McGinty and Catherine Deveney in which the latter -who broke the story- basically said that the information given and action taken were an insufficient response to the allegations of abuse of power over priests and seminarians and there wasn't much sign of further action being taken. (Video available here for 5 days.)

Then we have Tom Gallagher managing to say a couple of sensible sounding things

No doubt naively, when this crisis broke, I had hoped that it might re-energise the church and ultimately lead to a time of renewal. But unless Rome sees the need for a radical departure in choosing O’Brien’s successor in Edinburgh, there are growing signs that a defensive clerical establishment will seek to ride out the crisis with minimum change.

but then going on to somehow blame it all on the SNP and advertise his forthcoming book. (I believe it's called, How Alex Salmond stole Christmas and is responsible for Climate Change.)

Moreover, in the combox of the SSPX-ish Catholic Truth Scotland, much sharing of detail on some of the other 'issues' around the O'Brien affair.

So, here's the question: is my desire to find out a bit more about the events and to achieve some certainty both on what happened and what will happen anything more than a vicious delight in human failure and sexual mishaps, or is it the perfectly reasonable desire of someone who needs to come to a judgment on these issues and wants to be fully informed before doing so?

Frankly, I'm still not sure. But I suspect that it's not unreasonable to want to get a sense of the state of the Church in Scotland. Is it simply just a bit complacent and unimaginative, but otherwise, apart from the occasional transgressor, going about its business in a reasonably competent way? Or is it actually dominated by a range of homosexual cliques, drunks and the feeble minded?

The next Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh in a relaxed pose

If I had to guess now, I'd probably go for the former. But apart from the gossip on blogs, my biggest reason for thinking there is rather more to all this than one errant Cardinal is John Haldane's article for The Tablet on 2 March 2013 (behind paywall):

How, today, in scandal-scarred Scotland, might it pursue that vocation? By four measures: first, abandon the vanity of the current dioceses which were intended to recover the form of the medieval, pre-Reformation Church, and settle for two or at most four apostolic territories. Secondly, engage directly with the clergy, proposing a clear option: remain in holy orders subject to signing a private but strict renewed solemn vow of celibacy; or failing willingness to do that, be restored to the lay state (the debate about married clergy is not over, but one for another time). Thirdly, appoint two new bishops from the small but large enough body of serious and committed priests who are neither liberal malcontents nor liturgical fetishists; and fourthly, appoint a body of lay advisers, four to six at most, to assist in this radical transformation.

Now, I trust Professor Haldane. I don't think he's always been right in his suggestions but he is orthodox and sensible in a way that some of the other commentators in this area are not. Moreover, unlike those who simply assert their insider knowledge, as a Papal Consultor, he's likely to have a true sense of the reality of the broader Scottish Church. So if he proposes some quite drastic and far reaching action in the Church, my worry is that it's needed, whatever the merits of his precise suggestions.

My interim conclusion? I think it reasonable for a lay Catholic to want to know precisely what's happened in the Cardinal O'Brien case. We don't need salacious details. We do need simple acknowledgments of facts and some sense of the implications for the wider Church. Justice needs to be done publicly both to the Cardinal and his accusers. Stephen McGinty in his STV interview pretty much asserted that he expected nothing more would be done. If that happens, I guess we'll have to live with it. But it'd be a pity and a lost opportunity for the Church.

Cardinal O'Brien and married priests

It doesn't particularly surprise me that Cardinal O'Brien has suggested the possibility of married priests in a BBC interview. He's quite clear about the differences between matters of doctrine which are unchangeable and matters of discipline which might be changed, among them married priests. His remarks about married priests fall short of a ringing endorsement, and are more of an acknowledgment of a possibility, and the expression of a personal preference for that possibility of marriage in response to the interviewer's persistent questions on the subject. (The relevant portion is about 17mins into the interview.)

I'd be very happy if others had the opportunity of considering whether or not they could or should be married. It's a free world and I realise many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood, and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family (Here from The Guardian.)

When John Haldane called for this last year, I suspected that he would only have done so if he was sure that this view had a measure of support, particularly within the Scottish hierarchy. Unlike Haldane's intervention, Cardinal O'Brien focuses less on the direct benefits to the Church and more on the benefits to priests. Moreover, the issue seems of much more interest to the interviewer than to the Cardinal.

It is worth stressing again that such a change would be perfectly possible: married priests already exist within the Catholic Church and the extension of this would be a matter of a change in discipline rather than a change in doctrine. However, as I concluded after my previous rather lengthier discussion of Haldane's suggestion, I remain unconvinced:

Maybe married priests should be allowed: it's clearly possible in a way that allowing women to be priests isn't. But my own view is that the advantages are so unclear that it's an unwise step.

Happy New Year

                                             Our Lady of Holyrood, pray for us!

There are, of course, all sorts of rather troubling things to be faced in 2013. In Scotland, and elsewhere in the UK, the bandwagons of euthanasia and same sex 'marriage' will trundle on. The independence referendum campaigns will continue and doubtless increase in heat as 2014 approaches. And all this besides what will no doubt be a deteriorating economic situation.

And yet...

Although Catholics in Scotland had better get used to being seen as the only bigots in the village, we also live in a time when Scotland's foremost composer, James MacMillan and Scotland's foremost philosopher, John Haldane, are both well-known here for their faithful Catholicism. Over the pond in the diaspora, Alasdair MacIntyre continues to demonstrate both his Catholicism and his position as one of the foremost thinkers of the modern age. Given the historical marginalization of Catholicism within Scotland and modern secularization, the continuing strength of orthodox Catholic intellectual and artistic life, both in the well-kent figures I've mentioned and in other artists and intellectuals throughout the nation is remarkable. Their very existence is a reminder that Catholicism is a life lived in the fullness of the good, the beautiful and the true.

So, as my New Year's present to you all, a suggestion for a thoroughly Scottish and Papist welcoming in of the New Year. Sit down, read John Haldane's interview 'Aquinas among the analytics' (extract below), listen to MacMillan's 'Tu es Petrus'

and toast the New Year in with that traditional Benedictine treat, a bottle of Buckie (preferably drunk al fresco, of course):

There is also a general tendency to think that human failings can be righted by introducing structures and regulations, but while these have a role they cannot of themselves produce understanding, and often they are the enemy of it. Secularists, in the modern sense, tend to depict religious believers as dumb and angry; while believers incline to the view that atheists are shallow and bullying. This kind of opposition feeds on itself and leads to deeper animosity. One way of halting the process is to engage in discussion, recognising that there may be reasonable disagreements, I mean possibly intractable differences expressing reasonable outlooks. This is not to endorse relativism but to recognize that our takes on things tend to be partial and it is very difficult to get to a comprehensive understanding. That is not impossible but it takes the full resources of philosophy, and goodness of heart and will besides. John Haldane (full interview here).

Happy 2013!

Are Catholic philosophers more orthodox than Catholic theologians?

Reading Joseph Shaw's typically firm take on Tina Beattie reminded me of a thought that has often crossed my mind over the years. Whilst almost every modern British theologian I've come across seems to hold (shall we say) 'interesting' views on core Catholic beliefs, almost every Catholic British philosopher I've encountered seems robustly orthodox.

Now I make little claim for the statistical validity of this observation: it's just an impression. Although there are a good number of practising Catholics among academic philosophers in the UK, there aren't so many (and I know the precise views of even fewer) that they form a reliable sample. Moreover, there are certainly blamelessly orthodox theologians at work who attract less publicity simply because 'Catholic theologian agrees with Church' is going to be less interesting as a headline than 'Catholic theologian thinks Pope is wrong on everything'. But here in Scotland, it's been the philosopher John Haldane who's done much of the heavy lifting in defending the Church on (eg) same sex 'marriage'. Last week's Catholic Herald carried a letter from a former University of Edinburgh philosopher suggesting the return of the Penny Catechism (moreover in its 18th century edition!) to Catholic schools. And then you have Joseph Shaw and Thomas Pink regularly arguing for traditional, Catholic doctrine. Beyond the UK, you have Ed Feser manfully fighting for scholasticism (and Steely Dan -but, hey, nobody's perfect!), and, beyond the living, you have Elizabeth Anscombe and Ralph McInerny.

OK. Assuming that my impression is true, it's rather an odd reversal of traditional, scholastic Catholic understanding of the relationship between, in particular, moral philosophy and moral theology. In essence, philosophers think about the natural end of human beings by using natural reason, and moral theologians add the truths and sources of revelation to add certainty to moral philosophy as well as the awareness of the reality of a life after death with God. You'd expect therefore moral philosophers to be jumping around all over the place like headless chickens, and regularly needing the firm guidance of theologians to remain on track. But if anything, the position seems to be the reverse. Why?

I'll offer two suggestions -although I do so without  much confidence in their truth. Firstly, certainly as far as most UK philosophers are concerned, their background will be in non-Continental philosophy. Their academic training will be in analytic philosophy (which encourages a certain scepticism about the possibility of knowledge and an awareness of the multiplicity of possible solutions) and in Classical philosophy (which gives an awareness of the fertility of old ideas and an appreciation of the specific methodologies behind Catholic scholasticism). From the scepticism of the former, there is an appreciation of the need for Magisterial authority. From the latter, there is an appreciation of the strengths of scholasticism and, in particular, Thomism. Most modern Anglophone theologians on the other hand will either have been trained in non-Catholic theological methodologies in the UK (and so will have imbibed either the implicit anti-theism of the social sciences, or whatever liberal Protestantism is the theological plat du jour) or, outside the UK, will have imbibed Continental philosophy and thus (whatever merits it may possess) have become acclimatized to the idea that there is something wrong with the metaphysics and methodologies of scholasticism. (I suspect the key here is the indebtedness of most non-Anglophone philosophers to Heidegger: whatever else may be said about him, I find it very hard to read him (and thus his successors) as doing anything else except engage in a 'polemic with Scholasticism'. Even if that doesn't imply a rejection of theism, it does imply a rejection of traditional Catholic ways of doing theology.)

Haldane, celibacy and crisis

Spotting a link (H/T Catholic Herald)  to John Haldane's article in the Tablet  which, among other things, called for the admission of married men to the priesthood, prompted me to go out and buy the wretched paper.

The shortened online version (which I've linked to above) perhaps gives a misleading impression of the whole article: the suggestion about celibacy takes up only a couple of paragraphs, the bulk of the article being a reflection on 'A Church in dire need'. On the other hand, those paragraphs form the conclusion to the article, and it's hard not to see them being offered as the single most important solution to the crisis in the Church.

This is not a case of simply increasing the number of clergy, nor is it a easy way to solve the decline in vocations. Rather, a married contingent can better resemble and reassemble the faithful and speak to people of what they know about their needs and difficulties. Married priests could also speak to celibates from within the brotherhood of the ordained. Even if it were only for the sake of providing a compelling argument against this proposal, the matter should be addressed as the Synod of Bishops, currently gathered in Rome, reflects on the challenge of the New Evangelization.

The crisis deepens and still we are waiting. Let it not be said of the synod, 'We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet, Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street."

The diagnosis of the crisis is that the Church is under two forms of attack: an elite, post Enlightenment attack on Catholicism as the most conspicuous opposition to secular values; and a popular attack on the institution as a result of priestly abuse. Implicit in the article is also a third element in the crisis: a weakness within the Church in part characterized by

...a rise in materialism marked at one level by an implicit adoption of a general consumerist culture, and at another by the politicization of religious thought and behaviour. The latter comes in two forms: 'conservative' and 'progressive', and although each opposes the other, they are united in seeking recognition and influence. The 'conservative' version is nostalgic and slavish; the 'progressive' variant is faithless and craven in its desire for secular acceptance.

Now although the article isn't entirely explicit about this, I take it that it's the second and third elements of the crisis (the popular disgust with the Church, and the weakness within the Church) that removal of compulsory celibacy is supposed particularly to remedy: it's hard to see how such a change would affect an elite attack that has been going on since the 18th century.

My problem with this is that, coming from an Episcopalian background, I've seen married priests in action. I've also seen the admission of candidates to priesthood on a '(shortened) formation' (Non Stipendary Ministers). (Come to that, I've even seen women priests.) Now my conclusion from this experience is that at best, such a change will make very little difference, and, at worst, it might even exacerbate the crisis. Let me concede one point immediately: it's quite likely that, by allowing shortened formation periods for married men, you would increase numbers of priests. And to the extent that there is a problem with numbers of priests -and there clearly is some problem here- you might have a remedy in Haldane's suggestion. However, I'm not convinced that the shortage of priests is, historically, quite as serious as is being made out: there have been periods (think recusancy) when access to the sacraments has been far more difficult than it is now; there are areas where the shortage is far worse than in Western Europe:

(Source: here.)

Certainly, the existing parish structure of the Church will not survive a further reduction in numbers of priests, but it's by no means clear that's a bad thing. The Episcopal Church in Scotland is dogged by the continuation of small parishes of exclusively elderly congregants, made financially viable by the free labour of non-stipendary ministers. I'm not at all clear that such an immunization to the pressures of changed demographics is a good thing: paradoxically, a measure intended as a 'bold initiative' may simply compound resistance to needful change in how a church engages with modern society.

But let's grant that ordination of married men would carry the advantage of increased numbers of priests. What of the other claimed advantages of being better able to 'resemble and reassemble the faithful and speak to people of what they know about their needs and difficulties'? I'm frankly not convinced by this. There are two aspects to this: a) one of the major problems within the Church is a lay complacency -a contentment with (indeed pride in) the conclusions of their own secularized education and inadequate theological understanding. We need priests who are not like us, but who can remind us of our deficiencies, particularly in catechesis. A priesthood which transcends us is at least as important as a priesthood which resembles us. b) To the extent that 'resemblance' is a desideratum, it's easy to overemphasize the difference that celibacy (or marriage) makes. Educational and class background as well as personality are as much issues here as marital status All in all, I have found rather more in common with some celibate priests than I have with some married priests: married priests in my experience lead to an embourgeoisement of the clergy which can be far, far more off putting than celibacy.

This is perhaps missing the main thrust of the article which, I suspect, at least implicitly, is the line that people within and without the Church will trust it more in the area of child abuse if it has married priests. But to state this is immediately to see that it's flawed reasoning. Everyone really knows that married men are just as likely to abuse as pretend celibates. The statistics show it. Commonsense and anecdote show it. At best, by introducing married men, you may get some people to acknowledge the beginnings of a (putatively positive) change in the Church. But no one coming from this line of thought will regard it as sufficient.

The Catholic Church is widely seen by non-Catholics as having a hang up about sex, and simply bringing in married priests won't cure that. When acquaintances tell me that I'm a member of the world's largest paedophile ring (and they do quite regularly), they know I am married and have children. I don't think they (usually) consider that I am actually abusing my own children, but they do think that I am part of a system which does. I see no reason to assume that having married priests will alter that: they too will be seen as collaborators. Of course, it will be said, if this is the first step, to be followed by allowing contraception, women priests, celebration of gay relationships... Then we'll know that everything is all right. But all that clearly isn't a real possibility for orthodox Catholicism.

In sum, married priests might solve the numbers issue, but even that isn't a clear gain. In regard to the 'softer' advantages such as resemblance to the laity and plausibility in the issue of child abuse, such advantages, even if they exist are small and doubtful; and there are clear disadvantages. (Ask divorced clergy.) Maybe married priests should be allowed: it's clearly possible in a way that allowing women to be priests isn't. But my own view is that the advantages are so unclear that it's an unwise step.

After all, it's not that the married ministry of the Protestant churches is so obviously successful...


But today the Church of Scotland, founded with such lofty ideals, looks to be a kirk in crisis.

Membership has fallen by more than two-thirds in the past 40 years. The number of baptisms, which could indicate future members, has plunged from almost 17,000 in 1991 to just over 6,000 in 2009.


(Full article here.)


[The rather nice photo of a married Greek Catholic Priest above is from the OrthCath blog which also has an interesting article on married priests in the Byzantine Rite.]

Catholic philosopher warns of threat to Catholic schools from same sex 'marriage'

The Scottish Catholic philosopher John Haldane recently warned of the risks to Catholic schools if same sex 'marriage' goes ahead:

Once the immediate issue of gay ‘marriage’ is resolved and especially if it is done in a way that is seem to represent a defeat for the Church it will not be long before the issue of schooling is returned to,” he warned. “Now with the additional complaint that given Catholic teachings on sex and marriage, Catholic schools are at best an obstacle and at worst a real and present threat to the establishment and civility. (Scottish Catholic Observer)

There seems little doubt that what can be said and not said about homosexuality and same sex 'marriage' within schools will be one of the key issues that would emerge in the aftermath the introduction of nu-marriage.

Meanwhile, we wait with bated breath for the results of the consultation on same sex 'marriage' in Scotland. The Herald tells us it's all been sewn up and despite an overwhelming response against its introduction to the consultation process, the Scottish Cabinet meeting on 17 July will go ahead and introduce it anyway. Anyway, the ever excellent Cardinal O'Brien, has 'been accused of declaring war' on nu-marriage:

The bishops of Scotland are so concerned by threats to marriage that 26 August has been set aside as Support Marriage Sunday.

Quite why the normally astute SNP leadership would want to stir up this particular hornets' nest is beyond me. As noted by Eddie Barnes:

Pressing ahead with the plans would leave Mr Salmond’s careful wooing of the Catholic Church over the last two decades in tatters, and motivate thousands of opponents in the run-up to the referendum.

But there we have it. The prospect of a long and bitter struggle against this piece of cultural vandalism confusing and colouring the debate over independence. 

Happy New Year!

Our Lady of Haddington, pray for us!

John Haldane –the leading Scottish Catholic philosopher- was recently reappointed Consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture. His reaction embodies all that I struggle to say much less clearly on this blog:

Reacting to his reappointment, Professor Haldane said;
"One of Pope Benedict's priorities is the re-evangelisation of Western civilisation and bringing Europe back into Christendom. The way to re-evangelise Western civilisation is through cultural dialogue; that is through re-interpreting the arts and philosophy through a Christian perspective. There is a larger issue than declining numbers in churches and that is about convincing at a cultural and intellectual level. As a Catholic intellectual, I am very happy to be associated with this."

The many issues on which Catholics find themselves at odds with ‘modernity’ are in large part cultural ones: previous generations accepted Christian culture but failed to live up to it; our generation no longer even accepts large parts of the Christian world view.

In the end, all the debates about same sex ‘marriage’, euthanasia, the role of religion in the public square and so on boil down to profound cultural challenges to the Catholic world view. The answer to those challenges of course involves the sort of vigorous public and political defence that the Scottish bishops have put up against the proposed same sex ‘marriage’ legislation. But beyond that, it must involve a daily struggle to demonstrate the truth, beauty and goodness of Christianity and, in particular, Catholicism as a culture.

A happy New Year to all my readers!

How to reason with a hypnotized culture

Having thought carefully about all the issues involved, you are clearly just another Catholic bigot…

In my posting on 18 October 2011, I left open the question as to how Catholics should open a discussion with a culture that only gives two minutes for a debate on issues such as same sex ‘marriage’.

One way is illustrated by John Haldane’s article in this week’s Sunday Herald (16 October 2011) (which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be online). There he contrasts modern liberalism, with its ‘talk of equality and rights’ with three other views:

1)      ‘traditional conservatives who favour social duties over social claims’

2)      ‘traditional socialists who see links between the culture of rights and that of consumerism’; and

3)      ‘the morality and politics of the common good’ which ‘shaped the founding cultures of Greece and Rome’.

It is this latter view which lies at the heart of Catholic thinking on ethics. Specifically on same sex ‘marriage’:

            …[M]arriage exists for the sake of making and maintaining family life, the roots of which lie in natural complementarities: in male and female of the species joining together one-to-one, with the intention of creating another. That other, or others borne of the fusion of their parents’ diverse identities, thereby extend a union of two to a community of several.

            Marriage recognises, celebrates and protects this basic source of human society.   It is not an entitlement to be claimed, and its meaning and value were understood long before the idea of rights were ever conceived of.

Two things are going on here: firstly, the reader is being encouraged to think that there is a deeper argument to be had here, one which is scarcely even acknowledged by the proponents of same sex ‘marriage’. Even if you can’t articulate that argument in two minutes –and it’s hard to imagine anyone from the other side being convinced by the brief explanation given by Haldane- you can alert people to its existence. Secondly, the roots of that argument in pre-Christian philosophical culture –and not just the fevered, imaginings of the religious- is being stressed.

Both good things and needing to be said. However, the taster of the argument with its talk of complementarities and procreation is unlikely to draw anyone into further research who isn’t already sympathetic to a Catholic ethics. Moreover –from previous combox discussions of my own- the appeal to Graeco-Roman culture is likely to confirm proponents of same sex ‘marriage’ in their view that opposition to ‘fairness and equality’ is rooted in ancient prejudice rather than modern reason.

None of this should be read as a criticism of Haldane who is one of those rare things in modern Scotland: a national intellectual figure with a deserved international standing. He is right about the existence of a deeper argument, right about its broad outlines and right about the importance of Graeco-Roman philosophical culture. But to acknowledge this shouldn’t blind us to the unlikelihood of his analysis getting a successful hearing.

Well, all that’s something I’ll doubtless be returning to again and again. But what about the other categories above –the traditional conservatives and socialists?  Why is there no non-religious voice being raised in favour of a Burkean conservatism, one suspicious of innovation, sceptical of the claimed powers of reason:

            By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars (Reflections on the Revolution in France).

Why are there no voices on the secular feminist left raised in suspicion of a form of social organization that encourages the view that gender doesn’t really matter? Why no socialists worried about the reduction of human life to monads unable to resist the capitalist machine?

Don’t misunderstand me here. I do not believe that it is clear that any traditional conservative or any traditional socialist who thought about same sex ‘marriage’ would automatically be opposed to it, any more than I think that any neo-Aristotelian who thought about it would automatically be opposed either. But a moment’s thought ought to show that any of these three views contain resources which should make them at least aware of the complexities of the issues involved. And yet –outwith orthodox religions- any sign of the complexity involved here is steamrollered under the sort of mesmerized support for same sex ‘marriage’ that regards any sort of opposition as obvious bigotry. The only exception I'm aware of here is Frank Furedi's article in Spiked (here) where Furedi (humanist and founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party) castigates precisely the same smug, thoughtless dismissal of other views that I'm objecting to here:

The preoccupation of professional victimologists is reflected in popular culture. Cinema and television transmit stereotypical stories about unhappy, failed and dysfunctional heterosexual marriages. In contrast, same-sex unions are treated with reverence and often depicted as a mature relationship between two equals.

Of course heterosexual couples continue to get married, but there has been no time in history when this institution enjoyed such feeble affirmation. Indeed, these days they are often likely to hear the refrains: “Why get married?” or “Why wait for marriage before having children?”

Paradoxically, in some quarters the idea that marriage for heterosexuals is no big deal coincides with the cultural sacralising of a same-sex union.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that behind the gay marriage discussion lurk profound questions about how to endow intimate relations with meaning.

In such circumstances elite-sanctioned snobbish intolerance is no more acceptable than anti-gay prejudice.