Is that all there is?

This, by the way, is very interesting.  The story is about the Roman Catholic church recruiting priests from among Spain's unemployed.  If that sounds a bit mercenary to American ears, perhaps it's because we are still in what one professor in the article calls the "materialist phase:"

Gayle Allard is a professor at Madrid's IE Business School.

"They pass from a materialist to a post-materialist phase, where they start thinking more about quality of life and meaning of life," Allard says.

"The good thing about crisis is that maybe it awakens this other side of us, and helps us to step off the treadmill a bit, and think about why we're here — besides just paying a mortgage," she says.

Stepping off the treadmill would not be a widely accepted solution in America, where we are told the solution for our economy is consumer spending:  presumably on new houses, as well as iPods, iPads, TeeVee's, game boxes, and all the other paraphernalia that is supposed to constitute the successful life.  There's nothing un-American about the sentiment in the quote, by the way (hard as it is to imagine any American saying it for publication).  Over 150 years ago Thoreau wrote:

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

The townspeople thought him irresponsible then.  But are we alive only to be able to pay the mortgage?  Or to engage in the right political thinking?  Or to have the acceptable ideas among our group?  Is that all there is?

And now, as if to prove nothing has changed since Thoreau's time, comes this:

 Conard, who occasionally flashed a mean streak during our talks, started calling the group “art-history majors,” his derisive term for pretty much anyone who was lucky enough to be born with the talent and opportunity to join the risk-taking, innovation-hunting mechanism but who chose instead a less competitive life. In Conard’s mind, this includes, surprisingly, people like lawyers, who opt for stable professions that don’t maximize their wealth-creating potential. He said the only way to persuade these “art-history majors” to join the fiercely competitive economic mechanism is to tempt them with extraordinary payoffs. 

Conard is Edward Conard, who still works at Bain Capital, and gives Mitt Romney lots of money to run for President.  His thesis is that America needs more rich people:

 Unlike his former colleagues, Conard wants to have an open conversation about wealth. He has spent the last four years writing a book that he hopes will forever change the way we view the superrich’s role in our society. “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” to be published in hardcover next month by Portfolio, aggressively argues that the enormous and growing income inequality in the United States is not a sign that the system is rigged. On the contrary, Conard writes, it is a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off.

Which is only significant to me here because the only value Conard recognizes is the value of money.  For example:

He looks, in particular, at agriculture, where, since the 1940s, the cost of food has steadily fallen because of a constant stream of innovations. While the businesses that profit from that innovation — like seed companies and fast-food restaurants — have made their owners rich, the average U.S. consumer has benefited far more. 

Notice how that analysis doesn't take into account any of the other benefits of dining together, or the growing problem of obesity in America, a problem linked directly to fast-food consumption.  Or take this example:

Conard picked up a soda can and pointed to the way the can’s side bent inward at the top. “I worked with the company that makes the machine that tapers that can,” he told me. That little taper allows manufacturers to make the same size can with a tiny bit less aluminum. “It saves a fraction of a penny on every can,” he said. “There are a lot of soda cans in the world. That means the economy can produce more cans with the same amount of resources. It makes every American who buys a soda can a little bit richer because their paycheck buys more.” 

Money is the only value that is valuable.  But then, it's no surprise Conrad says this:

“God didn’t create the universe so that talented people would be happy,” he said. “It’s not beautiful. It’s hard work. It’s responsibility and deadlines, working till 11 o’clock at night when you want to watch your baby and be with your wife. It’s not serenity and beauty.”

Which runs so contrary to Genesis 1, you have to wonder which "God" Conrad is referring to.  But then, what Conrad espouses is basically Plato's Republic, with people of great wealth replacing the philosopher kings:

 At base, having a small elite with vast wealth is good for the poor and middle class. “From my perspective,” he wrote, “it’s not a close call.”

The closest the article comes to considering that we might be here for more than paying the mortgage is these two sentences:

This constant calculation — even of the incalculable — can be both fascinating and absurd. The world Conard describes too often feels grim and soulless, one in which art and romance and the nonrenumerative satisfactions of a simpler life are invisible.

And the first one sets the tone:  Conrad's weltanschaaung is not absurd or myopic; it is "fascinating."  Well, maybe a little absurd; but mostly fascinating.  Even the dissection of it is done in terms of economic theory, not in terms of the true value of human existence.   Nothing post-materialist here; not really.

How thoroughly American.....

Lone Star Chutzpah

Meanwhile, deep in the heart of Texas, this happened yesterday:

A federal judge in Austin ruled Monday that Texas officials cannot exclude Planned Parenthood from a health care and contraception program for low-income women.

 That ruling was based on constitutional issues and:

 "The court is particularly influenced by the potential for immediate loss of access to necessary medical services by several thousand Texas women," Yeakel wrote in his ruling. "The record before the court at this juncture reflects uncertainty as to the continued viability of the Texas Women's Health Program."

 That is not an insignificant point:

The Women’s Health Program, which receives 90 percent of its funding from the federal government, provides about 130,000 women a year with contraceptive care and potentially life-saving screenings for a wide range of conditions, including sexually transmitted infections, high blood pressure, cancer and diabetes.

But the state's response was that:

 “Texas — and the women of Texas who depend on the Women’s Health Program — will be irreparably harmed because state law prohibits Texas from continuing to operate the (program) if taxpayer money must be provided to entities that affiliate with abortion-promoting entities.”

“Consequently, the district court’s preliminary injunction effectively forces Texas to choose between contravening state law and shutting down the program,” Abbott told the appeals court.

Which was enough for Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who issued an order staying the preliminary injunction.  And yes, that Jerry Smith:  the one who demanded the Justice Department explain the President's comments about a case pending before the Supreme Court.  He has a history with this kind of thing:

Smith was also on the three-judge panel that upheld the Texas pre-abortion sonogram law in January, overruling constitutional objections raised by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks. That panel made the unusual move of retaining control of the sonogram case so it could ensure that Sparks followed its guidance.

Planned Parenthood points out:

 "For many women, we are the only doctor’s visit they will have this year," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

So the Attorney General's concern for the ability of the state to provide healthcare to women is all so much eyewash.  As Judge Yeakel pointed out, this new law demolishes funding for women's healthcare in Texas.

Not that I would expect Jerry Smith to let things like fact and reason get in his way.

An update:

ThinkProgress has an excellent analysis of the legal issues here, and points me to the relevant rule, which reads (as the lawyers say) in pertinent part:

  

(2) Motion in the Court of Appeals; Conditions on Relief. A motion for the relief mentioned in Rule 8(a)(1) may be made to the court of appeals or to one of its judges.

(A) The motion must:

(i) show that moving first in the district court would be impracticable; or

(ii) state that, a motion having been made, the district court denied the motion or failed to afford the relief requested and state any reasons given by the district court for its action.

Judge Smith's action comes less than 24 hours after the original order and, as ThinkProgress points out, Judge Yeakel is due some consideration simply as a fellow judge.  Obviously the State of Texas didn't have time to move for reconsideration and have that motion denied, so they made a showing that such a motion would be impracticable.  On what grounds, is the first question.

The second is:  why does Judge Smith think he alone needs to decide this case?  What is extraordinary here, and what time requirements make this kind of extraordinary action necessary?  As TP points out, Judge Smith's order is silent on these very important points.

Burnt Orange Report tells me Planned Parenthood has until 5 p.m. to make an argument for the injunction to Judge Smith.  I'm not an expert on Federal appellate procedure, but I don't see anything in Rule 8 that blocks them from demanding a rehearing by at least a three judge panel after Judge Smith issues his ruling (which I feel safe to say is a foregone conclusion), and after that, a hearing en banc by the entire 9 judge panel.

Unless the entire 5th Circuit wants to disgrace the judiciary in ways we haven't seen since Bush v. Gore.  And sadly, they may well be happy to do that. 

Further update:  This is what the Attorney General said to get Judge Smith's undivided attention:

"Planned Parenthood does not provide any assurance that the tax subsidies it receives from the Women’s Health Program have not been used directly or indirectly to subsidize its advocacy of elective abortion," Abbott wrote in his motion to stay the injunction. "Nor is it possible for Planned Parenthood to provide this assurance."

"Money is fungible, and taxpayer subsidies -- even if 'earmarked' for nonabortion activities -- free up other resources for Planned Parenthood to spend on its mission to promote elective abortions ... (because '[m]oney is fungible,' First Amendment does not prohibit application of federal material-support statute to individuals who give money to 'humanitarian' activities performed by terrorist organizations)."

And within two hours of the District Court's opinion, which ran to 24 pages, Judge Smith vacates it (effectively) with one sentence and no explanation for using the extraordinary remedy allowed for by Rule 8.

Too bad it takes impeachment to get a Federal judge off the bench.

Believin' what you know ain't so....

So here we go again, except this time we're going here:

Teresa MacBain has a secret, one she's terrified to reveal.

"I'm currently an active pastor and I'm also an atheist," she says. "I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday — when Sunday's right around the corner — I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up and say things that I no longer believe in and portray myself in a way that's totally false."

The way the story tells it, this event is the equivalent of admitting you are gay, and that you are an alcoholic.  No, really; there's whooping and hollering on the audio as she announces her atheism at a convention of non-believers (which is a rather odd reason to gather together, but then again, it's Florida, so....)  And except, of course, in this case public confession is a good thing, not the first step to recovery.  But there's also the public shame:

"So what the hell am I supposed to do?" she asks in one recording, her voice sounding desperate. "Really, the options are work at something like Starbucks or McDonald's — and even there they're going to ask those questions. I could even clean houses and not make a great amount of money — but at least nobody would be asking me questions."

Having grown up in East Texas, I'm sympathetic to an area of the country like Tallahassee, Florida, where  stating you are an atheist rather than a pastor is rather like saying you are a Roman Catholic instead of a Baptist.  The latter might be harder to do, actually; and no, I'm not kidding.  And, of course, there's the problem of finding a job when all you've ever trained for is the ministry.

But I do wonder what seminary Ms MacBain attended, and how she got out of that with her rather simplistic notions of theology and Christology intact.  Because what she says she's given up on is what many thoughtful Christians gave up on a century ago; or much earlier in life, if they aren't that old.  And, to be perfectly accurate, a great deal of what she professes to now not believe would not have been recognizable to Martin Luther or John Calvin or Huldrych Zwingli.  Nor to her more recent spiritual ancestors like John Wesley, or the Puritans, or even the Baptists who pushed so hard for a separation of church and state in the late 18th century.

Which is to say not that I resent her story, or begrudge her the decision she had to make, or even to argue that it wasn't hard for her (who am I to say?).  No, my question is the framing of this.  It fits too neatly into the criticism William James noted about belief:

The freedom to ' believe what we will ' you apply to the case of some patent superstition; and the faith you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy when he said, " Faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true." I can only repeat that this is misapprehension. In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider.

The framing of this story (and probably the series) is that "Faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true," and so excludes the reality that "the freedom to believe can only cover living options," although I would not, with James, set those options up as unalterably in conflict with the intellect, or with Wittgenstein as those things "whereof one cannot speak" and which "thereof one must be silent."  My sympathies with Ms. MacBain are that she has access only to the either/or of modern American Christianity:  either you are a Bible-thumping fundamentalist (among the Methodists?  I mean, I went to school with Methodists!  Ah, well....) who believes Jesus is the only hope of salvation and that while "God loves all his children, by gum, that don't mean He won't incinerate some", or you are a godless atheist.  Which is not the fault of the frame of this story, but it is the fault of the reporter to portray this as if the only viable options for anyone are between those two extremes.  Not because Ms. MacBain's story is somehow misrepresented here; but because the story itself is not exactly a representation of much of anything beyond being Ms. MacBain's story.

For the record, I early in my life rejected all of the tenets of Christian doctrine Ms. MacBain finds so offensive it now destroys her belief system; and yet I am still a Christian and, in my heart at least, a pastor.  Like I say, I feel sympathy for her, but at the same time:  Good grief!  Can't we teach people to think?  Especially about something as important as this?

And do we have to frame every narrative of faith as a choice between simplistic soteriology and absolute denial of religion?  It seems to me Teresa MacBain has gone from one simplistic extreme to the other, with no idea there is a vast and historical middle that might well satisfy her needs and answer her questions.  Or, maybe not.

When it's pointed out that she hasn't said whether or not she misses God, MacBain pauses.

"No, no," she says. "I can't say that I do."

 On the other hand, again I'm fairly familiar with the God she left behind; and I wouldn't miss that God much, either.

One of these things is not like the other....

So I read Charles Pierce and learn this:

"We made some al Qaeda with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days, but we did the right thing for the right reason. The right reason to protect the homeland and to protect American lives."

Or this, while practically giggling about knocking suspects around and the effectiveness of nudity as a psychological weapon:

"The objective is to let him know there's a new sheriff in town and he better pay attention."

Or this, about waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times:

"I don't know what kind of man it takes to cut the throat of someone in front of a camera like that, but I can tell you this is probably someone who didn't give a rat's ass about having water poured on his face."

Rodriguez also compared sleep deprivation to "jet lag," which is probably why both the KGB and the South African security services were so fond of using it.
Of the use of "stress positions," he said this:

"Forever and ever? I was thinkin' about this the other day. The objective was to induce muscle fatigue, and most people who work out do a lot more fatiguing of the muscles."

Then I click the link at Pierce's blogroll to Crooked Timber, where I find a link to this:

Most people today are spontaneously moral: the idea of torturing or killing another human being is deeply traumatic for them. So, in order to make them do it, a larger "sacred" Cause is needed, something that makes petty individual concerns about killing seem trivial. Religion or ethnic belonging fit this role perfectly. There are, of course, cases of pathological atheists who are able to commit mass murder just for pleasure, just for the sake of it, but they are rare exceptions. The majority needs to be anaesthetized against their elementary sensitivity to another's suffering. For this, a sacred Cause is needed: without this Cause, we would have to feel all the burden of what we did, with no Absolute on whom to put the ultimate responsibility.

I'm highly dubious of that "spontaneously moral" claim.  The idea of torture is not so deeply traumatic that, as Pierce points out, people like Rodriquez can't make a quick buck off of it.  George Zimmerman seems less traumatized over shooting another human being while sitting atop them, than at not being universally approved in his action.  I suppose national security qualifies as a "sacred cause," but I don't see that as uniquely post-Enlightenment or peculiarly 21st century.  Is Jose Rodriguez an atheist?  Does it matter?  He could be a devout Catholic for all I know; or a Bible-thumping fundamentalist.  He certainly seems to be more motivated by a spirit of vengeance than a spirit of sanctification:  "I don't know what kind of man it takes to cut the throat of someone in front of a camera like that, but I can tell you this is probably someone who didn't give a rat's ass about having water poured on his face."  There's not much more behind that sentiment than an atrocity for an atrocity, which has nothing to do with either religion nor any particular schema except the ability to torture someone else.  And since when has religion ever kept people from committing atrocities?  Where does this "elementary sensitivity to another's suffering" come from?  I feel compassion for people I know, but strangers?  And worse, abstractions?  Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out.  That seems as human a position as preferring to live in groups rather than alone.  You might think I'm making too much of nothing, but the argument goes on:

Religious ideologists usually claim that, true or not, religion makes some otherwise bad people to do some good things. From today's experience, however, one should rather stick to Steven Weinberg's claim: while, without religion, good people would have been doing good things and bad people bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things.

 Which is just pure nonsense.  What religious motivation does Mr. Rodriguez display?  What religious motivation lies behind the torture regime sanctioned by George W. Bush, and continued and expanded (indiscriminate bombing of civilians is no less horrific than individual torture, and Pierce notes:

 A suspected U.S. drone strike killed three people Sunday at a high school in northern Pakistan where militants were hiding, intelligence officials said. The drone fired two missiles at the school in the city of Miranshah, killing three suspected militants, the Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Did Obama approve that strike because he is a Christian?  Or in spite of it?  No, religion isn't to blame; the "Big Idea" is.  And perhaps Zizek sees that:

But what about the Stalinist Communist mass killings? What about the extra-legal liquidations of the nameless millions? It is easy to see how these crimes were always justified by their own ersatz-god, a "god that failed" as Ignazio Silone, one of the great disappointed ex-Communists, called it: they had their own god, which is why everything was permitted to them.

 An idea can be as much a "god" as a religious belief can be; indeed, the two are usually indistinguishable in practice, if not in theory.

I started this, as I say, at Crooked Timber, where the general tenor seems to be that Zizek is full of blue mud (as my grandmother used to say).  I was inclined to agree, but by the end, I'm not so sure.  Zizek's argument begins with Sartre misattributing an idea to Dostoevsky (at least, according to Zizek; I remain mildly unconvinced) and in the process, I had thought, misunderstanding Sartre's point.  By the end, though, he's back to Sartre; or might as well be:

Is this not Dostoyevsky's version of "If there is no God, then everything is prohibited"? If the gift of Christ is to make us radically free, then this freedom also brings the heavy burden of total responsibility.

 Or, as another Frenchman put it:  "Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all."  I'm still not quite sure how Zizek gets there from what he starts with, but his end is certainly better than his beginning.  Which makes me think he may not be saying what Crooked Timber thinks he is saying.  But, admittedly, it's kind of hard to tell.*

A footnote, as it were, to this discussion.  Zizek's argument is based, in part, on the assumption that the purpose of God is to provide a moral standard which cannot be refused.  It's not an argument Aristotle would have recognized as valid, nor even Plato; but it has become the sine qua non of atheistic arguments about ethics (mostly by people who don't know what they are talking about, or who don't understand Sartre; or just both).  Zizek mentions the argument of "God=love," in passing.  I won't make the mistake of assuming he approves of it, or accepts it as the final statement of Christian theology; but Stanley Hauerwas absolutely demolishes it; in a good way.

Truth is Subjective

I've just finished watching (on DVD) "The Iron Lady," and much of the history of Thatcherism it presents there oddly enough explains the predicament we are in today; especially Thatcher's determination to make her conservative principles work despite all evidence to the contrary.  When the '80's boom in Britain finally happens, one has very little reason to believe, from the film anyway, that Thatcher's policies had anything to do with it.  But one can also see how the resolutely anti-Keynsian Thatcher has set the standard for the Western world in response to a much more serious crisis today.  She could not, Meryl Streep declares, allow Britain to go bankrupt.  Well, until it was time to go to war over the Falkland Islands (interesting aside, that).  But helping the people of Britain, who were losing their houses?  She knew the price of milk and butter (the grocer's daughter), but what did that matter when they couldn't pay for their homes?

Still she insisted on her principles, not because they were right for the situation, but because they were right:  period.  The Big Idea must prevail.  And when the economy responded, she was vindicated.

Or was she?

Which brings me 'round (more or less) to this comment from Windhorse:

Paul Ryan undercuts his own appeal to Catholic social doctrine as a justification for his budget a number of different ways. Firstly, his stated concern has always been about balancing the budget as a routine matter of "fiscal responsibility." He never appealed to the concerns of the poor prior to his (conveniently timed) rebuke by the bishops and it's pretty clear that his attempt to portray his budget as some kind of passive social activism is just as cynical a move as theirs.

Secondly, if his Catholicism is really that primary in his life then I would think his faith would require him to withdraw or at least radically rework his budget in favor of the poor out of obedience to his spiritual leaders. Crickets on that front. While I understand his mocking retort about "some people" thinking that they've owned Catholic social doctrine in this country was directed at the liberal nuns, it may as well have been directed at the bishops whom he is disinclined to obey.

And finally, his budget actually takes what is an historically low tax burden for wealthy and LOWERS it even more, cutting out all sorts of revenue streams the government has collected for years while balancing that by cuts to programs the poor rely on. How the hell can he pretend with a straight face that he is working on behalf of the poor when he is actually giving a preferential option to the rich? Why not maintain social programs, cut defense, and raise taxes if you have such solidarity with the poor?

So I guess this is just my long-winded way of saying that I don't take his words at face value and that I believe that Paul Ryan is a lying sack of shit who could not care less about the struggling and impoverished, at least not if their continued existence is going to sustain that irritating bugaboo of big government.

 It's that "routine matter of 'fiscal responsibility' which is the lingering stench of Thatcherism, because Meryl Streep's Thatcher is no more concerned with "the struggling and impoverished" than Paul Ryan is, especially "if their continued existence is going to sustain that irritating bugaboo of big government."  People must fall in favor of the Big Idea.

Which, to bring it back around, is where I part ways with the Bishops, or anyone who insists abstract notions must, in any case, in even one case, trump the needs of any given individual.  And yes, I know how radically unethical that statement sounds.  But I say it as a pastor, and defy anyone to tell any individual in ethically complicated straits the dogmatic doctrinaire line to that person's face in the very moment of crisis.

If you do so, and don't feel you did something wrong, you are the one who is ethically compromised.  Which is not to say the proper response is whatever you think that person wants to hear.  But if you do not, in that moment, understand that you are now in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, that you are, in fact, wholly in another person's life which is not your own and when the crisis has passed they have to live with their decision, but you do not, not ever, not for one moment.....if, as I say, you don't understand that simple existential fact; then your ethics are worthless.  They are a clanging gong and a rattling cymbal, and nothing more.

To deal in abstractions is to insist the world conform to you.  To find the world will no more conform to you than it will stop turning, is the beginning of wisdom.  To insist on pain for others that doesn't fall on you and yours at all, is the root of sinfulness.

There is no other honest way to put it.  Margaret Thatcher, like Paul Ryan, was shielded by her position, and her ideology.  We who have tried to help the living keep from dying in the trenches, do not salute them.

Time, time, time, see what's become of us....

Look at the worldly and at the whole world that exalts itself above the people of God; are the image of God and his truth not distorted in it?  They have science, and in science only that which is subject to the senses.  But the spiritual world, the higher half of man's being, is altogether rejected, banished with a sort of triumph, even with hatred.  The world has proclaimed freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs; only slavery and suicide!  For the world says:  "You have needs, therefore satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men.  Do not be afraid to satisfy them, even increase them"--this is the current teaching of the world.  And in this they see freedom.  But what comes of this right to increase one's needs?  For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide, for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but have not yet been shown the say of satisfying their needs.  We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, is being transformed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air.  Alas, do not believe in such a union of people.  Taking freedom to mean the increase and prompt satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they generate many meaningless and foolish desires, habits, and the most absurd fancies in themselves.  They live only for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self-display.  To have dinners, horses, carriages, rank, and slaves to serve them is now considered such a necessity that for the sake of it, to satisfy it, they will sacrifice life, honor, the love of mankind, and even will kill themselves if they are unable to satisfy it.  We see the same thing in those who are not rich, while the poor, so far, simply drown their unsatisfied needs and envy in drink.  But soon they will get drunk on blood instead of wine, they are being led to that.  I ask you:  is such a man free?  I knew one "fighter for an idea" who told me himself that when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so tormented by the deprivation that he almost went and betrayed his "idea," just so that they would give him some tobacco.  And such a man says, "I am going to fight for mankind."  Well, how far will such a man get, and what is he good for?  Perhaps some quick action, but he will not endure long.  And no wonder that instead of freedom they have fallen into slavery, and instead of serving brotherly love and human unity, they have fallen, on the contrary, into disunity and isolation....  And therefore the idea of serving manking, of the brotherhood and oneness of people, is fading more and more in the world, and indeed the idea now even meets with mockery, for how can one drop one's habits, where will this slave go now that he is so accustomed to satisfying the innumerable needs he himself has invented?  He is isolated, and what does he care about the whole?  They have succeeded in amassing more and more things, but have less and less joy.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Vokohonksy.  New York:  Vintage, 1991, pp. 313-314.

The words of the Elder Zosima, a Russian monk.  Aside from a few archaisms (carriages, slaves), the words could apply to the present, especially the assurance of unity and "brotherly [sic] communion" brought about "by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air."  Or the internet; or text messaging.

The Enemy of My Enemy

Paul Ryan defends the nuns!

“I suppose there are some Catholics who for a long time have thought they had a monopoly of sorts,” Ryan said. “Not exactly on heaven, but on the social teaching of our church. Of course there can be differences among faithful Catholics on this.”

Or, you know, not.

Last week, following an assessment by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican stripped the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing most American nuns, of its powers of self-government, maintaining that its members have made statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle has taken control of the Conference, writing new laws for it, supplanting its leadership, and banning “political” activity (which is what Rome calls social work).

Gary Wills defends the nuns:

Nuns were quick to respond to the AIDS crisis, and to the spiritual needs of gay people—which earned them an earlier rebuke from Rome. They were active in the civil rights movement. They ran soup kitchens.

But I don't think Ryan would find that argument persuasive:

“Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government,” he said. “Those unwilling to lift the debt are complicit in our acceleration toward a debt crisis, in which the poor would be hurt the first and the worst.”

In fact, I'd have to say Ryan and the Bishops are more alike than different.  They're just arguing over who gets to own the pin the angels are dancing on.

The nuns are concerned with people.

Adding, just because I can, and just because Ryan (as Charles Pierce points out) brought Aquinas into this, something from the esteemed theologian:

Things which are of human right cannot derogate from natural right or Divine right. Now according to the natural order established by Divine Providence, inferior things are ordained for the purpose of succoring man's needs by their means. Wherefore the division and appropriation of things which are based on human law, do not preclude the fact that man's needs have to be remedied by means of these very things. Hence whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor. For this reason Ambrose [Loc. cit., 2, Objection 3] says, and his words are embodied in the Decretals(Dist. xlvii, can. Sicut ii): "It is the hungry man's bread that you withhold, the naked man's cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man's ransom and freedom."  (Question 66, Article 7.)

Pierce is right; this could start to be fun.

Language Games

Jacob’s heart bent with fear,
Like a bow with death for its arrow;
In Vain he searched for the final truth
To set his soul free of doubt.

Over the mountains he walked,
With his head bent searching for reasons;
Then he called out to God
For help and climbed to the top of a hill.

Wind swept the sunlight through the wheat fields,
In the orchard the nightingale sang,
While the plums that she broke with her brown beak,
Tomorrow would turn in to songs.

Then she flew up through the rain
With the sun silver bright on her feathers,
Jacob put back his frowns and sighed and walked
Back down the hill.

God doesn’t answer me
and He never will.

--Judy Collins

Shut up, shut up, shut up!!!!!

I don't like to comment on the public positions of the Roman Catholic Church in part because such positions by any religious institution lose any valuable nuance just in the proclamation. That said, it's more of a reason for religious institutions not to make such proclamations. That isn't going to happen soon, however. Institutions are run by human beings, and human beings love to tell other human being what they should do. The US Catholic Bishops, however, have gone 'round the bend, starting here:

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate. . . .

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Bishop Daniel Jenky.

I want to respect the Catholic Church. I really do. But this is flat nuts. Worse, it's obscene. As ThinkProgress points out:

For the record, Hitler tried to systematically exterminate the members of faiths that he did not approve of. Obama, by contrast, wants all working women to have access to contraception, regardless of whether they work for a religious employer. The very suggestion that Obama or his actions even vaguely resemble those of the Third Reich is deeply offensive and calls into question whether Bishop Jenky possesses the most basic understanding of the history of Nazi Germany.

Bishop Jenky is not Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He's not even Karl Barth.

And let me just add that all education, social services, and health care are subject to government regulation in almost any country on the planet. Catholic hospitals are not, for example, required to perform abortions nor even to permit in-vitro fertilization, but they are required to apply the laws of the land equally to all who come to them for services. Does Bishop Jenky really think government regulation of employers is equivalent to eliminating competition?

But, of course, it doesn't stop there:

The Vatican orthodoxy watchdog announced Wednesday a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group for nuns in the United States, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

An American archbishop was appointed to oversee reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs -- including approving speakers -- and ensuring the organization properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual.

I'm walking a fine line here, because I want to respect the internal controls of any religious hierarchy (especially since my own, the UCC, doesn't have any to speak of, and suffers for the lack of them; but that's another story). And you have to recognize this is a news story; things get misunderstood in the communication from source to publication. So I accept the reasoning here:

The report from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the organization faced a "grave" doctrinal crisis, in which issues of "crucial importance" to the church, such as abortion and euthanasia, have been ignored. Vatican officials also castigated the group for making some public statements that "disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops," who are the church's authentic teachers of faith and morals."

But the nun's real offense is that they supporting the wrong political brand:

Church officials did not cite a specific example of those public statements, but said the reform would include a review of ties between the Leadership Conference and NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby. NETWORK played a key role in supporting the Obama administration's health care overhaul despite the bishops' objections that the bill would provide government funding for abortion. The Leadership Conference disagreed with the bishops' analysis of the law and also supported President Barack Obama's plan.

Then again, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

The sisters’ leaders said they reaffirmed their opposition to abortion but also claimed the right to speak out on a “moral imperative” like health care, just as the bishops had.

The Bishop involved in this decision is determined to inject his entire church into matter strictly political, in ways that, in my humble opinion, violate IRS regulations* regarding what pastors and priests can say from the pulpit, or do in church:

The two bishops of the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, in a letter to the faithful, say they will deploy parishes to collect signatures for Referendum 74, a measure for the November ballot designed to roll back same-sex marriage in Washington.

While asking that signatures not be collected on Easter Sunday, the bishops described the issue as “critically important” and said information on the signature drive is being sent to pastors throughout the Western Washington diocese.

The letter is signed by Archbishop J. Peter Sartain and Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo. Sartain testified against marriage equality at a Washington State Senate hearing earlier this year.

But the reaction of two priests under Bishop Sartain actually brings me to my point:

Reverend Michael Ryan of Seattle's St. James Cathedral noted on the church website that "after discussing the matter with the members of the cathedral's pastoral ministry team, I have decided that we will not participate in the collecting of signatures in our parish," he wrote. "Doing so would, I believe, prove hurtful and seriously divisive in our community. In saying this, I do realize that there are some who will be disappointed with this decision."

Ryan went on to express gratitude to Archbishop Sartain "for giving pastors discretion in this matter. He knows that we are in the best position to make this judgment."

There is a vast difference between the world as you imagine it to be in seminary, and as it actually is in parish ministry. People no longer in parish ministry, or who will never be in parish ministry, lose sight of that rapidly. Dorothy Day spoke of being among the poor, but never of being poor. She reminded all those who worked with her that their presence there was voluntary, that poverty was not a choice the poor they tried to help, had made. She insisted her helpers were visitors in the country of the poor, and that the poor therefor were to be respected. We too easily forget to do that with people not situated just as we are.

I know within my own UCC of "officials" (we don't have bishops, or anything remotely like them) coming to local churches to pronounce the position of the UCC on some public issue, virtually demanding the local pastors fall in line with Cleveland (UCC headquarters) in spite of the local concerns about that grand issue. Everything looks easier and neater and less complex from a distance; everything is tangled and snarled and intricately interlocked on the ground. I am as anti-death penalty as a person can be, and yet in my church there was a family who was waiting for the killer of their son to get off Death Row and into the execution chamber. When they found out the UCC agreed with me, they left the church. They didn't leave me, and they made that clear to others in the church, because they didn't know I agreed with the UCC. It wasn't, for me, a matter of my ministry. My ministry was to them first, to my ideals second. You may find this hypocritical, but if you do, I would bid you get out of your adolescence and join the adult world. I maintained a vital connection with them in their grief, rather than spurned them over the, to me, abstract ideal of abolishing the death penalty. They had a concern in that arena I did not share, and would only belittle by my insistence on placing the policy issue above the personal trauma.

To put it another way: the Roman Catholic church famously opposes abortion and contraception. Yet the control of the latter leads inevitably to the necessity of the former. Many abortions are performed on women with children, not on promiscuous teenagers. They are women who cannot afford contraception, because they don't have health insurance either, or the insurance won't cover it (yes, I'm glaring at the US Bishops when I note that). So they get pregnant, probably even within marriage (not that it really matters). Then what? A child they cannot afford, a pregnancy they cannot pay for, an adoption they don't want to go through? If they are poor enough, pregnancy means lost work and lost wages, too. All for the want of a prescription some in the middle class find no more costly than monthly trips to Starbucks. And so they have abortions, because they have no other family planning options. What manner of moral madness is this?

Morality is inevitably judged as much on outcomes as it is on abstract ideals. The first thing you learn as a pastor or priest is that abstract ideals always lose in the face of reality. When you walk into an ER after a phone call from a church member only to have the doctor walk in 5 minutes later and explain the only reasonable choice is to remove life support, that there is no hope of recovery or survival, and the spouse turns to you and asks: "What do I do?"....

Grand moral ideals are completely useless at that point. You have to answer, and a disquisition worthy of Aquinas is not what is called for. Nor is a dogmatic statement the answer either. At that point, as they say where I grew up, you fish or cut bait. Principles underlie your response, but you have to address the person right in front of you, not your idea of what the situation is supposed to be.

The Bishops, clearly, have forgotten that.


*It at least strikes me as a matter as worthy of investigation as the investigation into All Saint's Church. I'm not holding my breath, however.

Update:  Speaking the IRS and investigations, not exactly from my keyboard to God's ear, but I don't have a problem with this:

 A prominent advocate for the separation of church and state filed a formal complaint with the Internal Revenue Service Thursday, accusing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria of violating federal law by intervening in a political campaign.


The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, alleges that a fiery homily by Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky last Sunday effectively urged Catholics to vote against Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

Mostly because this is what the Bishop said:

“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries -- only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down,” Jenky said.

If that doesn't cross the line, I don't know what does.