Theologia Corporis 2 - Homo Solus

HOMO SOLUS AUT DEUS AUT DAEMON, "Man alone is either God or a demon," goes the Latin saying, quoted among others by Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, which is an obvious borrowing from Aristotle's Politics where the Greek philosopher says that a man who lives alone--that is outside the Greek city-state, the polis--is either a god or a beast. Politics, 1253a 28-29. Aristotle, with his notion of man as a political animal, clearly refers to man's social tendencies, an observation true enough as far as it goes.

But there is a deeper, more fundamental way in which man is alone and yet not meant to be alone. And for this we must go away from Athens and go to Jerusalem, away from the philosophers to the prophets. We must begin at the beginning, that is we must turn to Genesis.

These are God the Trinity's own words, to the Jew the words of Yahweh, words which the Jews to their everlasting merit have preserved and bequeathed to us: "Non est bonum esse hominem solum . . . ." (Gen. 2:18) It is not good that man (אָדָם, ’adam) be alone . . . . It is significant to John Paul II that the Hebrew distinctions between male and female, i.e., אִישׁ, ’ish=male and אִשָּׁה, ’isha= female, arise only after the woman is created by God. Therefore, in his discussion on the Theology of the Body, John Paul II notes that the "original solitude" referred to by God in Genesis 2:18 refers to "the solitude of 'man' as such and not only to that of the male." [5.2, 147] The solitude referred to here, which is found only in the second account of creation (i.e., the Yahwist account), therefore, is not only the solitude of man (male) without a man (female), but, but also the solitude of man fundamentally. Thus Pope John Paul II:

It seems, therefore, on the basis of the whole context, that this solitude has two meanings: one deriving from man's very nature, that is from his humanity . . . , and the other deriving from the relationship between male and female, and in some way, this is evident on the basis of the first meaning.

[5.2, 147]

The issue of "original solitude," which chronologically existed before man's created division into male and female, is therefore a fundamental anthropological issue, more basic than gender. It is an issue chronologically prior to the separation of man into male and female, but also prior in an "existential sense." [5.3, 148]

Pope John Paul II finds man's solitude linked to his consciousness of being superior to all other living creatures on earth, a consciousness that is brought home to him when God "tests" man, that is, leads him into self-knowledge, by having him name all other creatures. [5.4, 148] In identifying and naming all other living beings (animalia), man comes to grips with two truths. He learns what he is not, but he also learns what he is.

As all animals march before him, man finds no other creatures like him; he finds himself, despite sharing some features with animals (a "body among bodies," [6.3, 152] his proximate genus), a creature sui generis, a unique being, dissimilar from all other animals, and therefore, in a manner of speaking, alone. There is a quality, a specific differentia, an "invisible" quality that distinguishes the "visible" qualities [7.4, 155-56] that man has vis-à-vis the animals. This quality comes from man's ability, before God, to know the visible world and with it to know the distinctiveness of his own being, the invisible soul; that is, man is conscious of both knowledge and self-knowledge, that he is, and he is aware that he is. In Aristotle's words he is aware of himself as a zoon noetikon, the animal rationale, the rational animal (and not Desmond Morris's "naked ape"; man's uniqueness is not in his lack of hirsuteness). In distinguishing himself thus from the world of living beings, man in his subjectivity "at the same time affirms himself in the visible world as a 'person.'" [5.6, 150] "In fact, in relatively few sentences, the ancient text sketches man as a person with the subjectivity characterizing the person." [6.1, 151] Added to this unique mix is the "aspect of choice and self-determination" of which man is made aware upon God's commandment regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, the "concept of original solitude includes both self-consciousness and self-determination." [6.1, 151] This "deep meaning of man's original solitude" must be fathomed so that one can understand man's "primeval covenant with God," that which arises from his created situation, that is, from his condition as an image of God, the imago Dei. [6.1, 151] Thus, at the same time that man becomes aware of his original solitude, he also becomes aware of the way out of the solitude, he becomes aware that he is called to communion with God, to be a "partner of the Absolute." [6.2, 151]

Man is "alone": this is to say that through his own humanity, through what he is, he is at the same time set into a unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relationship with God himself.

[6, 2, 151]

The anthropological definition that man acquires for himself by comparing himself with the animals, approaches therefore the theological definition that is found within the very Trinitarian mystery of God ("let us make man in our own image and our likeness," Gen. 1:26). Man's uniqueness, which prevails upon him in distinguishing himself as more than a "body among bodies," also makes him aware that he is, for all that uniqueness, still a "body among bodies." And so man's solitude, his awareness of his uniqueness from all other visible beings, also allows him to discover something which modern man, infected by Cartesian dualism, has discarded. And that is the "meaning of his own bodiliness," a body through which he is to "cultivate the earth" and "subdue it. " (Gen. 2:5; 1:28). [6.4, 153] At the same time aware of its complex structure, man becomes aware of the "relation between soul and body." [7.1, 153] John Paul II summarizes:

Man is a subject not only by his self-consciousness and by self-determination, but also based on his own body. The structure of this body is such that it permits him to be the author of genuinely human activity. In this activity, the body expresses the person. It is thus, in all its materiality ("he formed man with dust of the ground"), penetrable and transparent, as it were, in such a way as to make it clear who man is (and what he ought to be) thanks to the structure of his consciousness and self-determination. On this rests the fundamental precept of the meaning of one's own body, which one cannot fail to discovery when analyzing man's original solitude.

[7.2, 154]

Theologia Corporis-1-Ab Initio

TO ENGAGE US INTO CONVERSATION WITH CHRIST is what John Paul II asks us to do in approaching matters of marriage and family life. In sort of an Ignatian mediation, we are asked to imagine ourselves among the crowd in Judea. We have seen this God-Man heal persons of various ills, and he fascinates us. A small group of Pharisees approach Christ with questions of marriage, and, more specifically, its dissolution--divorce, but in a spirit of challenge, rather than as disciples open to his teaching. "Is it lawful," they ask him, "for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?" Matt. 19:3.

In response, Christ refers them to fundamentals, from the beginning, ab initio. Christ refers them to Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures. He refers them to the creation of man. He refers them to the creation of woman. He refers them to the first marriage. Ab initio. Christ does not refer to the Law of Moses to answer a question about the Law of Moses, of which the Pharisees are the greatest representatives. He does not refer his questioners to any divinely promulgated law, but to the First Law, the Law of Nature, the Law that inheres in the created order and reflects in a primordial manner, the Eternal Law, the law in the mind of God. His teaching is thus to all men, for all times, and not only to the Jews in Judea in the 1st century A.D. Were we to ask the Lord, "the laws of the State allow for divorce . . . ," or "Science has given us birth control . . . ," or "Advocates of human rights claim that two persons of the same sex may marry . . . " In arriving at answers, Christ would say, "Turn ab initio." Go back to the beginning, to the Natural Law in created nature.

To John Paul II, Christ's invocation of the beginning, his focus on the ab initio, is fundamental; it is the operative and normative basis for the entirety of Christ's teaching, and so John Paul II seeks to "try to penetrate into the 'beginning'" to which Christ appealed. [1.5, 133]

There are two narratives regarding creation in Genesis (Gen. 1:1-2:4, the so-called Priestly or Elohist version because it uses the word Elohim to refer to God; and Gen. 2:5-25, the so-called Yahwist version, because it uses the word Yahweh to refer to God). In his answer, Christ refers to them both. [As an aside, Christ's reference to both versions of the creation story may be something that biblical scholars of the critical school may keep in mind when they try to pit one version of scripture to another, as if putting truth against truth, seeking to separate and divide, instead of accepting both as God's word and finding the truth in a fruitful synthesis or harmony of truths.]

What does Christ teach by referencing the Elohist creation story? It is a reference to the objective order. He wishes to teach us that Man is in the world, part of created nature; yet he is also above the world, made in the image of God. He shares in the brute creation (that which is "separated" "called" "put" from chaos), and in the living creation (that which is "created" or "blessed"). [2.3 & n.1, 135] Yet when it comes to man, there is, as it were, a divine pause. "[T]he Creator seems to halt before calling [man] to existence, as if he entered back into himself to make a decision, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.' (Gen. 1:27)." [2.3, 135] Christ's reference to the ab initio in Genesis is therefore a reference to the rich ensemble that is man, who, at the instruction of the Lord, must answer questions about his end and the good by reference to cosmology, but also to theology; he must refer both to the natural and to the supernatural; he must refer to the physical and the metaphysical; he must refer to body and the soul; to the contingent here, and to the absolute beyond. He must also recall that he is both man, and woman.

Christ's invocation of the Yahwist creation narrative, on the other hand, is more a reference to the subjective order, the areas of psychology, of conscience. "One could say that Genesis 2 presents the creation of man especially in the aspect of subjectivity." [3.1, 138-39] But it is not as if the objective order is opposed to the subjective order. "When we compare the two accounts [of creation], we reach the conviction that this subjectivity corresponds to the objective reality of man created in the 'image of God.'" [3.1, 139]

In referring back to the Yahwist creation narrative, Christ also places us within the context of man's own history, specifically, the creation of man and woman, and the narrative of the Fall. It is significant that the "beginning" to which Christ refers, the ab initio, is the reality of man before the fall. In answering the question the Pharisees posed to him regarding divorce, Christ refers to man in the state of paradise. There is sufficiently left of this order for us to be able to refer to it even now. Theologians distinguish the state of man before the fall, in his state of original innocence, his status naturae integrae, from his state after the fall, in his state of sinfulness, his status naturae lapsae. [3.3, 141] The following is key:

When Christ, appealing to the 'beginning,' directs the attention of his interlocutors to the words written in Genesis 2:24, he orders them in some sense to pass beyond the boundary that runs, in the Yahwist text of Genesis, between man's first and second situation. He . . . appeals to the words of the first divine order, expressly linked in this text with man's state of original innocence. This means that this order has not lost its force, although man has lost his primeval innocence. Christ's answer is decisive and clear. For this reason, we must draw the normative conclusions from it, which have an essential significance not only for ethics, but above all for the theology of man and the theology of the body . . . .

[3.4, 141-42]

One may note, that on this insight of John Paul II alone, the entirety of Calvin's (and to a slightly lesser extent Luther's) notion of man's "total depravity" is blown to smithereens and shown to be manifestly unscriptural. Similarly, the Lutheran theologian Karl Barth's vehement, even vituperative rejection of natural theology and natural law is found wanting. If you want better to follow Christ, throw away your copy of Christian Institutes Presbyterians, and your Church Dogmatics Lutherans! Instead, follow Christ's lead and

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchang'd, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744), An Essay on Criticism, Part 1.

This includes the art of being human, which is what morality and the theology of the body is all about.

Theologia Corporis--Introduction

The next series of blog entries will consist of reflections upon John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" (theologia corporis), as this was advanced in 129 reflections given by John Paul II in his Wednesday audiences at the Pope Paul VI Hall between September 1979 and November 1984. These reflections will rely upon the new translation of these talks by Dr. Michael Waldstein , Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline Books, 2006).

It is fitting, nay, it is mandatory, for a Theology of the Body to be the subject matter of a blog devoted to the Natural Law because a Theology of the Body is really nothing else other than a theological view of the Natural Law, and one with papal imprimatur. Pope John Paul II's theology of the body has a deep affinity with the Thomist doctrine of natural law, but one refined with modern psychological and philosophical insights. John Paul II's theology of the body avoids the Scylla of a mechanistic, materialistic view of the body and Charybdis of a Platonic idealismor Gnostic spiritualism. Based upon an incarnational view of the human, it seeks to learn of both man and God through a proper understanding of the body and the soul/body union.

Lex Aeterna: In Church, Scripture, and the Pagan

WHEN HE STATED in his compilation of the Saxon laws that "God is himself law" (see prior post), Eike von Repgow was referring to the notion of Eternal Law. The Eternal Law is the belief that God, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, has a master plan or ratio that is found in His Creation and is enforced in His Providence. The existence of the Eternal Law is part of that assurance that there is a Reason behind God's Creation and its continued sustaining through His Providence. This plan or ratio goes beyond the material world. It includes the rational creation, and in particular mankind, for whom God has great solicitude. This solicitude, this love that God has for mankind, extends itself, in what has been called the "scandal of particularity," to reach each man and every woman, even every sparrow's fall. It is the firm hope that human life, my and my loved ones' lives, my neighbor's life, even my enemy's life, by God's design, has a purpose or end. Life is not, as Macbeth would have it,

. . . but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon a stage,
And then is heard no more.

It is not, a

. . . tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

(Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, sc. v.)

Embracing the reality of the Eternal Law encompasses a rejection of metaphysical pessimism. The doctrine insists that there is a purpose, plan, archetype, or design under which Creation and Providence are governed. This is what is called the Eternal Law.

We must start with this notion of the Eternal Law to understand the classical and traditional doctrine of the Natural Law, in both its Graeco-Roman and Christian roots. The notion of an Eternal Law is a truth that modernly has been disbelieved, discarded, and forgotten, and it must be relearned. In his book Creative Fidelity, the Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel speaks of the duty of the believer to become aware of the non-believer that is within him. This is also true with respect to our life in common. We have a duty to try to recognize where our society disbelieves, and where it ambles without guidance in the sloughs of practical atheism. Both individually and as a civil society, we are to have the same attitude as the man in the Gospels: Credo, Domine; adjuva incredulitatem meam! "Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24). This should be our approach, our earnest prayer, in engaging with the doctrine of Eternal Law. For many--to accept it in its full implications--it will require a conversion of the mind and the heart.

In Article 1 to Question 91 of the first part of the second part (Prima Secundae Partis) of his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas asks whether there is an Eternal Law, a question he answers affirmatively. In answering the question he has posed, St. Thomas refers back to his definition of law as a "dictate of practical reason emanating from the ruler who governs a perfect community." ST IaIIae Q. 91, art.1, resp.; see also ST IaIIae Q. 90, art.4, resp. If God's existence and role as Creator and divine Provider are granted (and Thomas had treated those matters in a prior part of his Summa), St. Thomas observes that it follows, "the whole community of the universe is governed by Divine Reason." This governance by God "has the nature of a law," and since God's Reason is eternal, it is evident that this law must likewise be eternal. ST IaIIae Q. 91, art.1, resp. (As an aside, it may be observed that the Declaration of Independence, invokes a "firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," which implicitly invokes the notion of an Eternal Law. So it is we that ought to look incredulously at the professorate of our law schools mentioned in our earlier post.)

In trying to understand the Eternal Law, however, man suffers from an intrinsic limitation. We have no direct knowledge of the Eternal Law. It is not seen in written form like a human statute; it is not announced in the public square; it is not obviously enforced by a league of visible policemen and judges. There are no angels handing out tickets or pursuing indictments. But this is not a cause for despair, nor, as the skeptics would have it, a matter for ridicule (one thinks of Jeremy Bentham in this regard). For the believer, it is a truth revealed in Scripture and propounded by the Teaching Church that there is an Eternal Law. It is a truth that is graspable through reason, though through a glass darkly. Therefore, it is a belief that may be found among the best of the pagans. It is a belief which may be shared with men and women of good will.

In Dignitatis Humanae (No. 3), for example, the Second Vatican Council points out that the

supreme rule of life is the divine law itself, the eternal, objective and universal law by which God out of his wisdom and love arranges, directs and governs the whole world and the paths of the human community. God has enabled man to share in this divine law, and hence man is able under the gentle guidance of God's providence increasingly to recognize the unchanging truth.

The Church's teaching rests soundly upon Scripture and Tradition, in particular, St. Augustine's and St. Thomas's classic teaching of the Eternal Law.

In his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II quoted this specific part of Dignitatis Humanae, and then commented (Nos. 43-44):

The Council refers back to the classic teaching on God's eternal law. Saint Augustine defines this as "the reason or the will of God, who commands us to respect the natural order and forbids us to disturb it." Saint Thomas identifies it with "the type of the divine wisdom as moving all things to their due end." And God's wisdom is providence, a love which cares. God himself loves and cares, in the most literal and basic sense, for all creation (cf. Wis 7:22; 8:11). But God provides for man differently from the way in which he provides for beings which are not persons. He cares for man not "from without," through the laws of physical nature, but "from within," through reason, which, by its natural knowledge of God's eternal law, is consequently able to show man the right direction to take in his free actions. In this way God calls man to participate in his own providence, since he desires to guide the world--not only the world of nature but also the world of human persons--through man himself, through man's reasonable and responsible care. The natural law enters here as the human expression of God's eternal law. Saint Thomas writes: "Among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine providence in the most excellent way, insofar as it partakes of a share of providence, being provident both for itself and for others. Thus it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end. This participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called natural law."

The Church has often made reference to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law, including it in her own teaching on morality. Thus my Venerable Predecessor Leo XIII emphasized the essential subordination of reason and human law to the Wisdom of God and to his law. After stating that "the natural law is written and engraved in the heart of each and every man, since it is none other than human reason itself which commands us to do good and counsels us not to sin," Leo XIII appealed to the "higher reason" of the divine Lawgiver: "But this prescription of human reason could not have the force of law unless it were the voice and the interpreter of some higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be subject." Indeed, the force of law consists in its authority to impose duties, to confer rights and to sanction certain behaviour: "Now all of this, clearly, could not exist in man if, as his own supreme legislator, he gave himself the rule of his own actions." And he concluded: "It follows that the natural law is itself the eternal law, implanted in beings endowed with reason, and inclining them towards their right action and end, it is none other than the eternal reason of the Creator and Ruler of the universe."

(Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, Nos. 43-44 (citations omitted) (The encylical quoted by John Paul II is Leo XIII's Libertas Praestantissimum of June 20, 1888)).

The Scriptural references to the Eternal Law are legion. It is usually referred to under the personification of Divine Wisdom. Suffice us to point out Proverbs 8:15-16, and Proverbs 8:23-36.

By me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things,
By me princes rule, and the mighty decree justice
I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made.
The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived. neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out:
The mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth:
He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of
the world.
When he prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law
and compass he enclosed the depths:
When he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters:
When he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits:
When he balanced the foundations of the earth; I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times;
Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men.
Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise, and refuse it not.
Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my
gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors.
He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord:
But he that shall sin against me, shall hurt his own soul.
All that hate me love death.

The existence of an Eternal Law is not only a religious or revealed truth. There is a basis in reason for believing in the Eternal Law, and consequently one can find an understanding of the Eternal Law in the leading lights of Greece and Rome, such as the philosopher Plato or the Roman statesman Cicero. For example, in writing his book on the Natural Law, the English Protestant divine Nathanael Culverwell (1619-1651), generally associated with the Cambridge Platonists, relied on the Jesuit Francisco Suárez and the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. But he also accessed the writings of the pagans Plato and Cicero to show how even the pagans had a notion of a Law above all law, a law that governed the cosmos, and that was the archetype or model, of what human laws should be. Aggregating references to Plato's dialogues, including Cratylus and Laws, and Plotinus's Enneads , Culverwell summarizes:

This the Platonists would call ἰδέαντωννόμων [the ideal of laws], and would willingly heap such honourable titles as these upon it, ὁνόμοςἀρχηγὸς, πρωτουργὸς, αὐτοδίκαιος, αὐτόκαλος, αὐτοάγαθος, ὁὄντωςνόμος, ὁνόμοςσπερματικός [the archetypal law, primary, intrinsically just, beautiful and good, the essential law, the seminal law]. And the greatest happinesse the other Lawes can arrive unto, is this, that they be Νόμοιδουλεύοντες, καὶὑπηρετουντες, ministring and subservient Lawes; waiting upon this their Royal Law. Σκιαὶνόμων; Or as they would choose to stile them, Νομοειδεις, some shadows & appearances of this bright and glorious Law, or at the best, they would be esteemed by them but Νόμοιἔκγονοι, the noble off-spring and progeny of Lawes; blessing this womb that bare them, and this breast that gave them suck.

Culverwell also draws from Cicero's book De Legibus II.4.8 to show that this notion was carried over and adopted by the Romans. As he freely translated it:

Wise men did ever look upon a Law, not as on a spark struck from human intellectuals, not blown up or kindled with popular breath, but they thought it an eternal light shining from God himself irradiating, guiding, and ruling the whole Universe; most sweetly and powerfully discovering what wayes were to be chosen, and what to be refused. And the minde of God himself is the centre of Lawes, from which they were drawn, and into which they must return.

(NathanielCulverwell, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (Robert A. Greene and Hugh MacCallum, eds.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), 36-37.)

The notion of the Eternal Law is thus part of our cultural and religious heritage. In our next post, we will address in a little greater detail St. Thomas Aquinas's teachings about the Eternal Law, a teaching which the Church has adopted as her own.

Obama's Speech: "Repent and Deny the Gospel"

President Obama's speech at the University of Notre Dame was masterful and politically adept. There is much in the speech that simply is unimpeacheable, and what is impeachable is dressed, as it were, in velvet words of tolerance, pluralism, and peace and goodwill. When a popular politician's words float about as rich and luscious honey, mellifluous to the ear, and balmish to the soul, the critic is at a disadvantage. Anyone who complains at President Obama's grandiose eloquence seems but an extreme and crotchety misanthrope, a Debby downer, a grumpy pharisee. And the press was sure that it appeared that way.

Since the essential controversy surrounding Obama's invitation to Notre Dame involved his view on abortion and stem cell research, and the propriety of Notre Dame's honoring a President with such views with a doctorate of laws, I want to focus on that. It is interesting to see what, with respect to those issues, Obama's words really say.

On the life issues, Obama's approach is essentially to take, as given, a pluralistic society, with "soldiers" "lawyers," "gay activists," and "evangelical pastors" all going about doing good in their way incommensurably. In Obama's theory of political relativism, all values are relative and thus equally valid; thus, the activities of a "gay activist" cannot be measured unfavorably against the activites of a "pro-lifer." These folks play their role in a pluralistic society where there are no moral absolutes, and so serve equivalent and noble offices. They contribute, presumably, equally to the common good; perhaps some "invisible hand" results in the greatest freedom for the greatest number. In this sort of world, there must be no suggestion that the "gay activist," or for that matter a pro-choicer, is promoting vice, or that the pro-lifer or anti-gay marriage advocate is promoting virtue. To Obama, there is no such thing as "vice" and "virtue" in any classical or Christian sense. The only "vice" and "virtue" relate to whether a person is willing to abide by the rules of engagement in a secular political process that refuses to consider absolutes (unless they are liberal, secular absolutes). Rid yourself of your religious robes, strip yourself of the suit of a universal law, and don instead the freeing Bermuda shorts of relativism and secularism if you want to play in the rough-and-tumble of American political life. Shelve your moral absolutes; otherwise, you will be sidelined, ostracized. Absolutes are outside the rules of the game.

That is why Obama's apparent magnanimity and open mindedness is only just that: apparent. What is wrong with this magnanimity and open-mindedness? Why is this call, despite its humanitarian and civilized veneer, actually barbarian in substance? You have to wave past the smoke-screen to see what Obama is really proposing, and why his proposal is really just the silencing of the pro-lifers, or, for that matter, any other person who believes in moral absolutes. President Obama equates those "who speak out against stem cell research" with "the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved" and so press for that research. This is a false opposition. (One may put aside for the moment, the mischaracterization of the stem cell research debate.) In Obama's world, all politics, like all morality, is consequential, utilitarian, i.e., teleological. Good is measured by results, and, in a situation where there are goods in competition, some sort of social calculus has to be undertaken through the political process. Since all we are dealing with are the balancing of moral relatives, harsh language is unjustified and interferes with the process, and there is always room for compromise in political conflict because there is nothing that cannot be compromised. The end justifies the means.

President Obama invited the Notre Dame graduate to "open his mind" and "open his heart" to this siren call of the secular goddess, Moloch's bride. This is something intolerable to a person raised in the classical moral and Judaeo-Christian traditions. The disciple of Christ, like the virtuous Roman republican, or Socrates before the Boule, is called to have one mind and one heart, not listen to the voices that are legion. He must insist that the government whose authority over him comes from God must stay under God. And he is obliged to advance this cause, even at the cost of his life. To consent to the suggestion that civil society, and the rules of engagement of debate in the political process, should be based upon a relativistic ethic, one that fears no God nor knows no moral absolutes, is a call to commit spiritual suicide. It is, in fact, a call to the Christian to give up his faith and his God if he expects access to the annals of governmental power or legal debate. It is the exact opposite of what a Notre Dame graduate ought to be told. Instead of opening his heart and his mind to this relativistic sop, the Christian ought to be told to behave like Odysseus and his crew; he ought to tie himself to the mast, stuff his ears full of wax, batten down the hatches, hold steady the rudder, and steer past the call of the secular sirens towards the image of Christ, where, as Pope Benedict XVI recently reiterated: "[W]e must always remember that 'freedom itself needs to be set free. It is Christ who sets it free.'"

Moreover, Obama's opposition of those against stem cell research with parents of diabetic children is a false opposition. First, pro-lifers are not against helping, with whatever moral means are available, the concerns of anyone suffering from any medical malady. The implied suggestion that they are is offensive. Second, the Church is not opposed to stem cell research per se, but is opposed to how that stem cell research is conducted. It insists that the research must respect human life. Accordingly, the Church opposes embryonic stem cell research, as distinguished from stem cell research on stem cells properly obtained from adults or from umbilical cords. In these latter instances, there is no destruction of human life. (See "Bioethics and the Catholic Church" and "On Embryonic Stem-Cell Research: A Statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.") The reason for the Church's opposition to embryonic stem cell research is because it involves the direct destruction of a human embryo, an embryo who has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and whose life the State has the fundamental duty to defend and protect. Already, Obama has not used fair-minded words. He says we shouldn't "caricature" the opponents, but me thinks he speaks with a forked tongue.

There is no doubt that there is conflict, and there ever will be, between those who advocate a deontological ethic, and those who preach utilitarianism. There will always be conflict between Christ and Antichrist, between good and evil, between the politics of truth, and the politics of expediency. Now I agree that in areas where prudence carries the day, there ought to be no demonization of opponents, and there must be civility and room for compromise. But when your opponent expects you to hang up your well-founded moral absolutes (and is there any better founding that the ex cathedra pronouncement of the Church?), to "doubt" them, it may be time for demonization. Politically, should we embrace and be willing to compromise with "open hearts" and "open minds" an Aryan supremacist who advocates that non-Aryans should be enslaved? Politically, should we embrace and be willing to compromise with "open hearts" and "open mind" an anti-Semite who advocates the slaughter of Jews? There are some things simply beyond bargaining, beyond negotiation, beyond the political process, because the political process, like the State, and like each one of us, is under God. Abortion and embryonic stem cell research are just some of those moral absolutes. In light of the clear guidance of the Church, the natural law, and science, someone's sincere opinion that life does not begin at conception deserves as much respect as someone who opines that a Jew or an African-American is a non-person.



Listen well to Obama's recipe for working through the conflict:

The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?

"Nowhere" President Obama observes, "do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion." Obama continues:

As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called The Audacity of Hope. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an email from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that's not what was preventing him from voting for me.
What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website - an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."

Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn't change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that - when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do - that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.
That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.

Maybe I'm missing something, but is Obama saying that he'll quit calling pro-lifers right-wing ideologues if they surrender the battle, if they give up the ghost? What kind of trade off is that? If that's the opening offer, let me offer to President Obama that I'll quit calling him a left wing supporter of infanticide, if he'll appoint a strict constructionist on the Supreme Court, sponsor a federal law making abortion illegal in all 50 states, with prospective criminal penalties for any abortionist who violates the law, and earmarks in the billions of dollars to teach our youth about responsible, non-contraceptive sex and provide better social and medical services for those women facing unwanted pregnancy so they don't have to turn to illegal abortionists. What say you Mr. Obama?

Listen next to these honeyed words, which, to my chagrin, elicited hearty applause from the Notre Dame graduates there assembled.

So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.

Applause? Did no one recognize the code words? Obama was advocating that we "work together" to reduce "unintended pregnancies," "as well as respect for the equality of women." Of course, this means we must promote contraception (which frequently is abortion under another name) and continue to allow for abortion rights. And what's this? How can we even "make sure that all our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science," when the sine qua non of cooperation is that we yield on our anti-abortion stance, one which, by the way is (Obama's suggestion to the contrary notwithstanding) really based upon "clear ethics and sound science." But this is all part of what Obama--in his one slip of the tongue--wants to do. He admits that he wants to do all he can to "fudge" the terms of the debate. (Who else can he have in mind when he says "No matter how much we may want to fudge it [the debate surrounding abortion]"? Certainly, the pro-lifers aren't known for fudging things. In my experience, they call a spade a spade, and the liberal world always winces.)

Obama wants "fair-minded" words. Well here's some fair-minded words:

[B]y the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the Bishops--who on various occasions have condemned abortion and who in the aforementioned consultation, albeit dispersed throughout the world, have shown unanimous agreement concerning this doctrine--I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.

Evangelium Vitae, No. 62.

Obama should not have received an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. It was a disservice to him, to Notre Dame, to the Catholic faithful, and to the United States. What he should have received is a copy of Pope John Paul II's Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, perhaps one bound in Moroccan leather of Madonna blue and papal gold. That may have done him and Notre Dame and our country some good. That would have made Notre Dame both a "lighthouse" and a "crossroads." That would have been "shining in the Catholic tradition," amidst the "differences of culture and religion and conviction" co-existing. And if I may not be presumptuous, I think it may be fair to say, that that would have made God--Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius--well pleased.