CSVF Blog

Our Sunday’s first lesson reminds us of man’s inexorable (and fallen) tendency to cast certain people outside of a society’s normal privileges. The Book of Leviticus states that lepers were to be deemed “unclean”–a fact they were themselves bound to declare–and that they were to “dwell apart,” “outside the camp.”

But this levitical instruction is not to be accounted in the mere terms of social history or cultural anthropology. That God became man is the principle by which we recognize God enters human history and culture in order to transform it. Therefore, we ought never interpret the laws and histories of God’s People merely in social or anthropological terms. Divine Revelation demands a theological account that looks for God’s providential design, not merely man’s typical tendencies.

Thus it appear that the lepers have been given a divine role. That they are to be held “unclean” is not to say that they are to be held as sinners, or morally depraved. “Clean” and “unclean” are religious categories that mark up reality in such a way as to orient people toward the overarching sense that reality is radically dependent upon divine wisdom. The role of the lepers, who are themselves taboo, is to manifest the hidden, mysterious, and even terrible presence of the all-transcendent God. They become sacrosanct, in both senses of the word. Thus, they are visible reminders of the way in which reality is utterly beholden to the divine actions of God. As they cry out “unclean,” they are reminders of God’s mysterious claim upon man’s reality.

God alone is able to unify man; God alone is able to heal man in his utter depths, such that the Original Sin by which we tend to cast people out of our social privileges becomes forgiven… even as we still struggle with the proclivity to do so. But God wants to lead us out of this divisive, inimical spirit. This exodus, which Jesus Christ perfectly accomplishes, is anticipated in Moses’ liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. Interestingly, when Moses needed encouragement that he would be an effective emissary, God manifested His aegis in the following way:

The LORD said to Moses, “Put your hand in your bosom.” He put it in his bosom, and when he withdrew it, to his surprise his hand was leprous like snow. The LORD then said, “Now put your hand back in your bosom.” Moses put his hand back in his bosom and when he withdrew it, to his surprise it was again like the rest of his body.” (Ex 4.6-7)

In other words, the proof of Moses’ divine delegation lies in his ability to stretch out his hand in such a way that it bridges the categories of clean and unclean.

Our discussion of Leviticus is especially important for us today. Our Archbishop, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan delivered a message to all the Catholic faithful of NY–his letter was to be read aloud at all Sunday Masses. It is about the contraception coverage required by the US Dept. of Health and Human services. The pretense of such free coverage for, say, abortion-inducing drugs that would be available free to minors and without parental consent is that it amounts to preventive medical care. That children in the womb, conceived under whatever circumstances, are to be considered as maladies to be prevented in the same way as cancer is abominable. Additionally, that Catholic employers (e.g., schools) would be forced to buy health care plans that would provide this coverage is a direct attack on religious liberty–that is, that very religious liberty that was at the heart of the founding of our nation.

In effect, in the ostensible desire to provide every opportunity for healing, our President’s administration is declaring the Catholic faith “unclean.”

Now, Christ came to heal all divisions, he came to draw all men to himself. And as we hear in the Gospel today, he “does will” that we be made clean, and accomplishes this act of healing restoration. He stretches forth his hand and he both heals and unifies.

But notice the consequences. Christ’s work is such that he is driven outside of the city. Christ himself becomes taboo for the world in order to save it. To use this week’s Pauline language, in giving glory to God through his human existence, Jesus sought “the benefit of the many” on the Cross, as he died outside the city walls. This means that, if we are truly to receive the healing ministry of Christ, we must be willing to follow him… even if it means becoming society’s lepers; for this will be an act of the greatest witness to God’s unavoidable presence.

[Read more from the USCCB here.]

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Friends, in the interest to remain informed:

Today the Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services. Once a religiously-affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.

This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.

It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not “paying” for this aspect of the insurance coverage. For one thing, it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers. More importantly, abortion-drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the religious institution or believing individual. They will only be made available to those who are insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.

It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the insurance contract purchased by the religious employer. It does not matter who explains the terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer. What matters is what services the policy covers.

The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand. It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept as assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.

Finally, it bears noting that by sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches, auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy (like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty. The administration still fails to understand that institutions that employ and serve others of different or no faith are still engaged in a religious mission and, as such, enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.

Signed:
John Garvey
President, The Catholic University of America

Mary Ann Glendon
Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University

Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University

O. Carter Snead
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

Yuval Levin
Hertog Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

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A number of people have been interested to hear more about the mandate excluding a conscience clause for health care provided by religious institutions.

Last week’s Sunday lessons presented Jesus in the synagogue healing a possessed man. To be possessed is to have one’s freedom utterly constricted; it is to be bound by an oppressive force. Despite Our Lord’s miraculous exorcism, the people are astonished more so by the authority with which such a one teaches — no mere scribe, he is the Word of God. He is the one about whom Moses prophesied: God will raise up (read: resurrect) one from amongst our kinsmen, one like Moses, to whom the people would listen. The way in which we hear the authoritative voice of the Good Shepherd — who has been resurrected — is by hearing those to whom he has imparted his authority in a particular way. “Authority” literally (in Greek) means out of one’s being; God alone is the perfect, self-subsistent authority. But by virtue of His Son’s incarnate mission, he is able to impart a particular, ministerial share in his authority to continue audibly and visibly after his resurrection and until he comes again. This he does through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, most particularly according to the rank of bishop. When bishops speak in unison, there is an especially charismatic resonance of the Good Shepherd’s teaching voice — not simply an opinion or commentary, but the Word of Life Himself.

Here is a link to a site where the author, Thomas Peters, collects all the bishops who have formally spoken about the HHS mandate. He has 126 letters. Many of them were required to be read at all Sunday Masses. That is really astounding.

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And if you’re unfortunately tempted to think this is just the opinion of a new guard conservative, consider these words by Cardinal Mahoney and think again:

In probably the most expansive decision on the part of the US Federal government ever, the Department of Health and Human Services has issued an “interim final rule” to require virtually all private health plans to include coverage for all FDA-approved prescription contraceptives, female sterilization procedures, and related “patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”

These are listed among “preventive services for women” that all health plans will have to include without co-pays or other cost sharing–even if the insurer, the employer or other plan sponsor, or the woman herself object to such coverage….

And I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience than this ruling today. This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic Community can muster….

As Bishops we do not recommend candidates for any elected office. My vote on November 6 will be for the candidate for President of the United States and members of Congress who intend to recognize the full spectrum of rights under the many conscience clauses of morality and public policy. If any candidate refuses to acknowledge and to promote those rights, then that candidate will not receive my vote.

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Think about watching the first of these two great films with us tonight, 6:30 pm!

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In effect, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled in such wise as to protect religious bodies in the practical exercise of their doctrines regarding official/authoritative representatives. Judge Alito wrote this impressive concurring and further specifying opinion, with Justice Kagan adjoined, and with some highlighting added by me. (To read Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion on SCOTUS’s 9-0 ruling, go here.)

I join the Court’s opinion, but I write separately to clarify my understanding of the significance of formal ordination and designation as a “minister” in determining whether an “employee”1 of a religious group falls within the so-called “ministerial” exception. The term “minister” is commonly used by many Protestant denominations to refer to members of their clergy, but the term is rarely if ever used in this way by Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists. In addition, the concept of ordination as understood by most Christian churches and by Judaism has no clear counterpart in some Christian denominations and some other religions. Because virtually every religion in the world is represented in the population of the United States, it would be a mistake if the term “minister” or the concept of ordination were viewed as central to the important issue of religious autonomy that is presented in cases like this one. Instead, courts should focus on the function performed by persons who work for religious bodies.

The First Amendment protects the freedom of religious groups to engage in certain key religious activities, including the conducting of worship services and other religious ceremonies and rituals, as well as the critical process of communicating the faith. Accordingly, religious groups must be free to choose the personnel who are essential to the performance of these functions.

The “ministerial” exception should be tailored to this purpose. It should apply to any “employee” who leads a religious organization, conducts worship services or important religious ceremonies or rituals, or serves as a messenger or teacher of its faith. If a religious group believes that the ability of such an employee to perform these key functions has been compromised, then the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom protects the group’s right to remove the employee from his or her position.

I

Throughout our Nation’s history, religious bodies have been the preeminent example of private associations that have “act[ed] as critical buffers between the individual and the power of the State.” Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 619 (1984). In a case like the one now before us—where the goal of the civil law in question, the elimination of discrimination against persons with disabilities, is so worthy—it is easy to forget that the autonomy abroad, has often served as a shield against oppressive civil laws. To safeguard this crucial autonomy, we havelong recognized that the Religion Clauses protect a private sphere within which religious bodies are free to governthemselves in accordance with their own beliefs. The Constitution guarantees religious bodies “independence from secular control or manipulation—in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, mat¬ters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.” Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in North America, 344 U. S. 94, 116 (1952).

Religious autonomy means that religious authorities must be free to determine who is qualified to serve in positions of substantial religious importance. Different religions will have different views on exactly what qualifies as an important religious position, but it is none the less possible to identify a general category of “employees”whose functions are essential to the independence of practically all religious groups. These include those who serve in positions of leadership, those who perform important functions in worship services and in the performance ofreligious ceremonies and rituals, and those who are entrusted with teaching and conveying the tenets of the faithto the next generation.

Applying the protection of the First Amendment to roles of religious leadership, worship, ritual, and expression focuses on the objective functions that are important forthe autonomy of any religious group, regardless of its beliefs. As we have recognized in a similar context,“[f]orcing a group to accept certain members may impair [its ability] to express those views, and only those views, that it intends to express.” Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640, 648 (2000). That principle applies withspecial force with respect to religious groups, whose very andpropagation of shared religious ideals. See Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872, 882 (1990) (noting that the constitutional interest in freedom of association may be “reinforced by Free Exercise Clause concerns”). As the Court notes, the First Amend¬ment “gives special solicitude to the rights of religiousorganizations,” ante, at 14, but our expressive-associationcases are nevertheless useful in pointing out what thoseessential rights are. Religious groups are the archetypeof associations formed for expressive purposes, and their fundamental rights surely include the freedom to choose who is qualified to serve as a voice for their faith.
When it comes to the expression and inculcation of religious doctrine, there can be no doubt that the messen¬ger matters. Religious teachings cover the gamut frommoral conduct to metaphysical truth, and both the contentand credibility of a religion’s message depend vitally on the character and conduct of its teachers. A religion can¬not depend on someone to be an effective advocate for its religious vision if that person’s conduct fails to live up tothe religious precepts that he or she espouses. For this reason, a religious body’s right to self-governance must include the ability to select, and to be selective about,those who will serve as the very “embodiment of its message” and “its voice to the faithful.” Petruska v. Gannon Univ., 462 F. 3d 294, 306 (CA3 2006). A religious body’scontrol over such “employees” is an essential component ofits freedom to speak in its own voice, both to its own members and to the outside world.
The connection between church governance and the freedissemination of religious doctrine has deep roots in our legal tradition:

“The right to organize voluntary religious associations to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the deci¬sion of controverted questions of faith within the asso¬ciation, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers with¬in the general association, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submitto it. But it would be a vain consent and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if anyone aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal tothe secular courts and have them reversed.” Watson
v. Jones, 13 Wall. 679, 728–729 (1872).

The “ministerial” exception gives concrete protection to the free “expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine.” The Constitution leaves it to the collective conscience of each religious group to determine for itself who is qualified to serve as a teacher or messenger of its faith.

II

A. The Court’s opinion today holds that the “ministerial” exception applies to Cheryl Perich (hereinafter respond¬ent), who is regarded by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod as a commissioned minister. But while a ministerial title is undoubtedly relevant in applying the First Amendment rule at issue, such a title is neither necessary nor sufficient. As previously noted, most faiths do not employ the term “minister,” and some eschew the conceptof formal ordination.3 And at the opposite end of the speca very large percentage of their members. Perhaps thisexplains why, although every circuit to consider the issue has recognized the “ministerial” exception, no circuit has made ordination status or formal title determinative of the exception’s applicability.

The Fourth Circuit was the first to use the term “ministerial exception,” but in doing so it took pains to clarify that the label was a mere shorthand. See Rayburn v. General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 772 F. 2d 1164, 1168 (1985) (noting that the exception’s applicability “does not depend upon ordination but upon the function of the position”). The Fourth Circuit traced the exception back to McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F. 2d 553 (CA51972), which invoked the Religion Clauses to bar a TitleVII sex-discrimination suit brought by a woman who was described by the court as a Salvation Army “minister,” id., at 554, although her actual title was “officer.” See McClure v. Salvation Army, 323 F. Supp. 1100, 1101 (ND Ga. 1971). A decade after McClure, the Fifth Circuit made clear that formal ordination was not necessary for the “ministerial” exception to apply. The court held that the members of the faculty at a Baptist seminary were covered by the exception because of their religious function in conveying church doctrine, even though some of them were not ordained ministers. See EEOC v. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 651 F. 2d 277 (1981).

The functional consensus has held up over time, withthe D. C. Circuit recognizing that “[t]he ministerial exception has not been limited to members of the clergy.” EEOC v. Catholic Univ., 83 F. 3d 455, 461 (1996). The court in that case rejected a Title VII suit brought by a Catholic nun who claimed that the Catholic University ofAmerica had denied her tenure for a canon-law teaching position because of her gender. The court noted that “members of the Canon Law Faculty perform the vital function of instructing those who will in turn interpret, implement, and teach the law governing the Roman Catholic Church and the administration of its sacraments. Although Sister McDonough is not a priest, she is a member of a religious order who sought a tenured professorship in a field that is of fundamental importance to the spiritual mission of her Church.” Id., at 464. See also Natal v. Christian and Missionary Alliance, 878 F. 2d 1575, 1578 (CA1 1989) (stating that “a religious organization’s fate isinextricably bound up with those whom it entrusts withthe responsibilities of preaching its word and ministering to its adherents,” and noting “the difficulties inherent in separating the message from the messenger”).

The Ninth Circuit too has taken a functional approach, just recently reaffirming that “the ministerial exception encompasses more than a church’s ordained ministers.” Alcazar v. Corp. of Catholic Archbishop of Seattle, 627
F. 3d 1288, 1291 (2010) (en banc); see also Elvig v. Calvin Presbyterian Church, 375 F. 3d 951, 958 (2004). The Court’s opinion today should not be read to upset this consensus.

B. The ministerial exception applies to respondent because,as the Court notes, she played a substantial role in “conveying the Church’s message and carrying out its mis¬sion.” Ante, at 17. She taught religion to her students four days a week and took them to chapel on the fifth day. She led them in daily devotional exercises, and led them in prayer three times a day. She also alternated with the other teachers in planning and leading worship services at the school chapel, choosing liturgies, hymns, and read¬ings, and composing and delivering a message based onScripture.

It makes no difference that respondent also taught secular subjects. While a purely secular teacher would not qualify for the “ministerial” exception, the constitutional protection of religious teachers is not somehow diminished when they take on secular functions in addition to their religious ones. What matters is that respondent played animportant role as an instrument of her church’s religious message and as a leader of its worship activities. Because of these important religious functions, Hosanna-Tabor had the right to decide for itself whether respondent was reli-giously qualified to remain in her office.

Hosanna-Tabor discharged respondent because she threatened to file suit against the church in a civil court.This threat contravened the Lutheran doctrine that dis¬putes among Christians should be resolved internally without resort to the civil court system and all the legalwrangling it entails.5 In Hosanna-Tabor’s view, respondent’s disregard for this doctrine compromised her religious function, disqualifying her from serving effectively as a voice for the church’s faith. Respondent does not disputethat the Lutheran Church subscribes to a doctrine of internal dispute resolution, but she argues that this was a mere pretext for her firing, which was really done for nonreligious reasons.

For civil courts to engage in the pretext inquiry that respondent and the Solicitor General urge us to sanction would dangerously undermine the religious autonomy thatlower court case law has now protected for nearly fourdecades. In order to probe the real reason for respondent’sfiring, a civil court—and perhaps a jury—would be required to make a judgment about church doctrine. The credibility of Hosanna-Tabor’s asserted reason for terminating respondent’s employment could not be assessed without taking into account both the importance that theLutheran Church attaches to the doctrine of internal dispute resolution and the degree to which that tenetcompromised respondent’s religious function. If it could be shown that this belief is an obscure and minor part of Lutheran doctrine, it would be much more plausible forrespondent to argue that this doctrine was not the real reason for her firing. If, on the other hand, the doctrine is a central and universally known tenet of Lutheranism,then the church’s asserted reason for her discharge wouldseem much more likely to be non pretextual. But whatever the truth of the matter might be, the mere adjudication of such questions would pose grave problems for religious autonomy: It would require calling witnesses to testify about the importance and priority of the religious doctrinein question, with a civil factfinder sitting in ultimate judgment of what the accused church really believes, and how important that belief is to the church’s overall mission.

At oral argument, both respondent and the United States acknowledged that a pretext inquiry would sometimes be prohibited by principles of religious autonomy, and both conceded that a Roman Catholic priest who is dismissed for getting married could not sue the church and claim that his dismissal was actually based on a ground forbidden by the federal antidiscrimination laws. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 38–39, 50. But there is no principled basis for proscribing a pretext inquiry in such a case while permitting it in a case like the one now before us. The Roman Catholic Church’s insistence on clerical celibacy may be much better known than the Lutheran Church’s doctrine of internal dispute resolution, but popular familiarity with a religious doctrine cannot be the determinative factor.

What matters in the present case is that Hosanna-Tabor believes that the religious function that respondent performed made it essential that she abide by the doctrine of internal dispute resolution; and the civil courts are in noposition to second-guess that assessment. This conclusion rests not on respondent’s ordination status or her formal title, but rather on her functional status as the type of employee that a church must be free to appoint or dismissin order to exercise the religious liberty that the First Amendment guarantees.

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This Festival began last Friday at the Film Forum, and is going on until the 19th. Writing for the WSJ, Kristin Jones says, “How can the invisible be portrayed onscreen? Through a mysterious alchemy of sound and image, the rigorous and elliptical films of the French director Robert Bresson (1901–1999), which often address sin and redemption in a fallen world, manage to do just that.” Some of us may know Bresson only from his Diary of a Country Priest, an amazing film adaptation of Bernanos’s modern masterpiece of trial and faith, hope, and love.

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Today, Google is celebrating the 374th birthday of the founder of modern geology, Nicolas Steno with a special logo.

As you can see, the logo looks like exploration of the ocean to the earth and it’s inhabitants. It is a great symbolism of Nicolas Steno work. Nicolas Steno was born on January 11, 1638 in Denmark and died on December 5, 1686 in Schwerin, Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

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A piece by Marilynne Robinson recently appeared in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. A Calvinist, her books are as gentle as they are somber; (I haven’t read Home, but Gilead and Housekeeping are worth the time it would take to read them). She certainly isn’t the only prominent writer to note the literary significance of the Bible (as if it needed noting) (cf. Robert Alter, Northrop Frye, and George Steiner). But it is agreeable to see it in print. (And it’s something of an enticing advance for next Monday’s lecture on Biblical Poetics). Anyway, here’s a snippet of the full article:

In our strange cultural moment it is necessary to make a distinction between religious propaganda and religious thought, the second of these being an attempt to do some sort of justice to the rich difficulties present in the tradition. The great problem for Christianity is always the humility of the figure in whom God is said to have been incarnate, and the insistence of the tradition that God is present in the persons of the despised and rejected.

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Jon D. Levenson teaches at Harvard Divinity School, and is the author of the very widely appreciated book by scholars and laity, by Jews and Christians, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible. He wrote a piece for the WSJ on the significance of the feast and its Christian influence.

(SHALOM)

The eight-day festival of Hanukkah, which Jews world-wide will [began] celebrating Tuesday night [20 December], is one of the better known of the Jewish holidays but also one of the less important. [Keep Reading...]

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And here is the text of his address, and here is a link to accessing other reports/documents. Enjoy!
Following in the footsteps of my blessed predecessor Pope John Paul II, it is a great joy for me to visit for the second time this dear continent of Africa, coming among you, in Benin, to address to you a message of hope and of peace. I would like first of all to express my cordial gratitude to Archbishop Antoine Ganyé Cotonou, for his words of welcome and to greet the Bishops of Benin, as well as the Cardinals and Bishops from various African countries and from other continents. To all of you, dear brothers and sisters, who have come to this Mass celebrated by the Successor of Peter, I offer my warm greetings. I am thinking certainly of the faithful of Benin, but also of those from other French-speaking countries, such as Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger and others. Our Eucharistic celebration on the Solemnity of Christ the King is an occasion to give thank to God for the one hundred and fifty years that have passed since the beginnings of the evangelization of Benin; it is also an occasion to express our gratitude to him for the Second Special Assembly of the Synod of African Bishops which was held in Rome a few months ago.

The Gospel which we have just heard tells us that Jesus, the Son of Man, the ultimate judge of our lives, wished to appear as one who hungers and thirsts, as a stranger, as one of those who are naked, sick or imprisoned, ultimately, of those who suffer or are outcast; how we treat them will be taken as the way we treat Jesus himself. We do not see here a simple literary device, or a simple metaphor. Jesus’s entire existence is an example of it. He, the Son of God, became man, he shared our existence, even down to the smallest details, he became the servant of the least of his brothers and sisters. He who had nowhere to lay his head, was condemned to death on a cross. This is the King we celebrate!

Without a doubt this can appear a little disconcerting to us. Today, like two thousand years ago, accustomed to seeing the signs of royalty in success, power, money and ability, we find it hard to accept such a king, a king who makes himself the servant of the little ones, of the most humble, a king whose throne is a cross. And yet, the Scriptures tell us, in this is the glory of Christ revealed; it is in the humility of his earthly existence that he finds his power to judge the world. For him, to reign is to serve! And what he asks of us is to follow him along the way, to serve, to be attentive to the cry of the poor, the weak, the outcast. The baptized know that the decision to follow Christ can entail great sacrifices, at times even the sacrifice of one’s life. However, as Saint Paul reminds us, Christ has overcome death and he brings us with him in his resurrection. He introduces us to a new world, a world of freedom and joy. Today, so much still binds us to the world of the past, so many fears hold us prisoners and prevent us from living in freedom and happiness. Let us allow Christ to free us from the world of the past! Our faith in him, which frees us from all our fears and miseries, gives us access to a new world, a world where justice and truth are not a byword, a world of interior freedom and of peace with ourselves, with our neighbours and with God. This is the gift God gave us at our baptism!

“Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34). Let us receive this word of blessing which the Son of Man will, on the Day of Judgement, address to those who have recognized his presence in the lowliest of their brethren, with a heart free and full of the love of the Lord! Brothers and sisters, the words of the Gospel are truly words of hope, because the King of the universe has drawn near to us, the servant of the least and lowliest. Here I would like to greet with affection all those persons who are suffering, those who are sick, those affected by AIDS or by other illnesses, to all those forgotten by society. Have courage! The Pope is close to you in his thoughts and prayers. Have courage! Jesus wanted to identify himself with the poor, with the sick; he wanted to share your suffering and to see you as his brothers and sisters, to free you from every affliction, from all suffering. Every sick person, every poor person deserves our respect and our love because, through them, God shows us the way to heaven.

This morning, I invite you once again to rejoice with me. One hundred and fifty years ago the cross of Christ was raised in your country, and the Gospel was proclaimed for the first time. Today, we give thanks to God for the work accomplished by the missionaries, by the “apostolic workers” who first came from among you or from distant lands, bishops, priests, men and women religious, catechists, all those who, both yesterday and today, enabled the growth of the faith in Jesus Christ on the African continent. I honour here the memory of the venerable Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, an example of faith and of wisdom for Benin and for the entire African continent.
Dear brothers and sisters, everyone who has received this marvellous gift of faith, this gift of an encounter with the risen Lord, feels in turn the need to proclaim it to others. The Church exists to proclaim this Good News! And this duty is always urgent! After 150 years, many are those who have not heard the message of salvation in Christ! Many, too, are those who are hesitant to open their hearts to the word of God! Many are those whose faith is weak, whose way of thinking, habits and lifestyle do not know the reality of the Gospel, and who think that seeking selfish satisfaction, easy gain or power is the ultimate goal of human life. With enthusiasm, be ardent witnesses of the faith which you have received! Make the loving face of the Saviour shine in every place, in particular before the young, who search for reasons to live and hope in a difficult world!

The Church in Benin has received much from her missionaries: she must in turn carry this message of hope to people who do not know or who no longer know the Lord Jesus. Dear brothers and sisters, I ask you to be concerned for evangelization in your country, and among the peoples of your continent and the whole world. The recent Synod of Bishops for Africa stated this in no uncertain terms: the man of hope, the Christian, cannot be uninterested in his brothers and sisters. This would be completely opposed to the example of Jesus. The Christian is a tireless builder of communion, peace and solidarity – gifts which Jesus himself has given us. By being faithful to him, we will cooperate in the realization of God’s plan of salvation for humanity.
Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you, therefore, to strengthen your faith in Jesus Christ, to be authentically converted to him. He alone gives us the true life and can liberate us for all our fears and sluggishness, from all our anguish. Rediscover the roots of your existence in the baptism which you received and which makes you children of God! May Jesus Christ give you strength to live as Christians and to find ways to transmit generously to new generations what you have received from your fathers in faith!

On this feast day, we rejoice together in the reign of Christ the King over the whole world. He is the one who removes all that hinders reconciliation, justice and peace. We are reminded that true royalty does not consist in a show of power, but in the humility of service; not in the oppression of the weak, but in the ability to protect them and to lead them to life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). Christ reigns from the Cross and, with his arms open wide, he embraces all the peoples of the world and draws them into unity. Through the Cross, he breaks down the walls of division, he reconciles us with each other and with the Father. We pray today for the people of Africa, that all may be able to live in justice, peace and the joy of the Kingdom of God (cf. Rom 14:17). With these sentiments I affectionately greet all the English-speaking faithful who have come from Ghana and Nigeria and neighbouring countries. May God bless all of you!

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You definitely want to check this out!

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From our local shepherd’s column, regarding Susan Sarandon’s remarks about the pope:

I am grateful to the New York Daily News for their editorial in today’s paper that chastises Susan Sarandon, because she “defamed” our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, with her “grotesque characterization” that he is a Nazi.  The Daily News also correctly notes that she did this because, “it is clear, she despises the church’s moral teachings.”

[continue reading here...]

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Frederick Crews has reviewed two books on the lives and works of doctors William Halsted and Sigmund Freud. The essay was published in two parts in the New York Review of Books. Both doctors experimented personally and professionally with cocaine, albeit with different motivations and different ends–but the typical effects of repeated cocaine use are comparably present in the two influential men. Apparently, Halsted is to praise for contributing much to modern surgery’s awareness of the need for sterile equipment and environment. Freud, of course, is known for psychoanalysis, and modernity’s radical and arbitrary flight into the sexualized self to find the reasons for all that ails us. What’s amazing is how this modern science and its genesis is to be found in Freud’s own self-medicated neuroses. On this Columbus day, citation of Crews’ conclusion might provoke a read of Parts I (29 September 2011) and II (13 October 2011) of the essay:

From miracle drug to a near-miraculous ‘science’: that was Freud’s progress as an exponent of purported therapeutic marvels. At no point in either campaign did he place the safety and welfare of patients ahead of ambition. When cocaine was found to be tragically addictive for physicians and patients who had followed his thoughtless advice, he fought back desperately in 1887, bending the truth in order to exculpate himself. And when, after decades of claiming that psychoanalysis is the sovereign remedy for psychoneuroses, he allowed that he had ‘never been a therapeutic enthusiast,’ he didn’t apologize; by then his fame as the Columbus of the unconscious was secure.

Freud’s triumph in reaching that pinnacle without the aid of any confirmed discoveries or cures may be the most amazing chapter in the entire history of self-promotion. Neither Rousseau nor Nietzche enjoyed such success in reconstituting the intellectual world to match his idiosyncrasies. But Freud’s own transformation was remarkable as well. Without cocaine, the polite and unhappy doctor of April 1884 might never have become so reckless, so adamant, so sex preoccupied, and so convinced of his own importance that the contagion was caught by millions. Cocaine, along with nicotine, was Freud’s drug of choice–but in the century to come, the opiate of the educated classes would be psychoanalysis.

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From time to time, I’m in the happy position of directing post-Mass commentary on parishioner attire toward our pastor. At any rate, lest you think this is a local issue, think again. Here’s a couple of commentaries–read them, … they’re a hoot.

(Don’t forget, you’re able to post comments here by clicking on “Comments.”)

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[From Thomas Peters, the connection between image and history]

World Youth Day and Religious Freedom

Once upon a time, a student at one of the world’s oldest universities took a break from her studies to visit the Catholic chapel on campus. As she sat there in silence—praying for a sick relative or trying to settle her nerves before a test—the chapel suddenly filled with noise. A mob of about seventy fellow students charged in chanting anti-Christian slogans. They shouted obscenities against the Church and insults about the Pope.

Two females in the mob climbed on top of the altar. Then, according to the student who was trying to pray, the women stripped off their shirts and boasted about their homosexual tendencies. The young Catholic student, and several others, left the chapel in fear. [Read the rest of Archbishop Chaput's reflections here on the significance of Spain and the challenge of dogmatic ignorance.]

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From the New York Times, “On Economy, Raw Data Gets a Grain of Salt” (17 Aug 2011)
“When the government announced in April that the economy had grown at a moderate annual pace of 1.8 percent in the first quarter, politicians and investors saw evidence that the nation was continuing its recovery ….

“Three months later, the government announced a small change. The economy, it said, actually had expanded at a pace of only 0.4 percent in the first quarter.

“Politicians and investors are placing a great deal of weight on a crude and rough estimate that has never been particularly reliable…. The basic problem is easy to understand: More than half of the ingredients in the [initial quarterly] estimate are based in whole or in part on projections from past months. The government doesn’t actually know how much people spend on their cellphone bills or how much companies spend on construction. It simply makes an educated guess based on past spending. Even in the third estimate, 22 percent of the data still comes from projections.

“If basic assumptions start changing rapidly — business failures during a recession, start-ups during a recovery — the estimates can quickly lose touch with economic reality.

““These are really not much more than educated guesses and yet the marketplace puts enormous weight on them because financial markets are high-frequency trading places based on immediate data,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of macroeconomic research at TrimTabs Investment Research.

“… A growing number of economists say that the government should shift its approach to measuring growth. The current system emphasizes data on spending, but the bureau also collects data on income. In theory the two should match perfectly — a penny spent is a penny earned by someone else. But estimates of the two measures can diverge widely…”

From Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil, or the Lucidity Pact (2004)
“This absolute [productive and technological control of] reality is also that of money when it passes from the relative abstraction of exchange-value to the purely speculative stage of the virtual economy. Marx in his day argued that the movement of exchange-value was more real than mere use-value, but, in our situation, where capital flows are unrelated to commodity exchange, money becomes an even stranger hyperreality: it becomes absolute money; it attains the Integral Reality of calculus. Being no longer the equivalent of anything, it becomes the object of a universal passion. The hieroglyph of the commodity has become the integral fetishism of money.”

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You are invited to join the Chiaroscuro Foundation and the World Youth Alliance TODAY!, Tuesday, August 16^th at 12 noon on the steps of City Hall as they host a press conference requesting the Department of Education allow at least one option, such as an abstinence based curriculum, for those who do not want their child to be taught the recommended curricula, HealthSmart and Reducing the Risk. Also, to further educate the public about the content of this curricula, we will be releasing a detailed analysis by Dr. Miriam Grossman, explaining how these curricula fall short in offering a comprehensive, evidence-based, age-appropriate and medically accurate education for our children.

Invite anyone whom you feel would be of support and would like to join! Also, please let us know if you will be attending if you have not already.

It is recommended to arrive at City Hall by 11:45 am.

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If you didn’t see the recent “New Yorker” review by James Wood of The Joy of Secularism, it’s worth the quick read. “Is That All There Is? Secularism and Its Discontents” has some blind spots as well as some worthy insights.

The book, edited by George Levine, contains 11 essays written by thinkers of varying casts. The object of the book is to promote considerations of “secularism” that are not primarily in terms of lament and loss—namely, of God and His order.

First, what I find Wood misses (in his review of a book that I have not and probably will not read):

Presenting the strange case of his philosopher friend who is nevertheless beset by angst, he rightly notes that, as a “convinced atheist,” she is posing “theological questions without theological answers.” (One could extrapolate at great length about this contrived problematic, which is in some ways the quandary of secularism.) But he goes on to mention that, if “the atheist is not supposed to entertain” questions about God and meaning, “then, for slightly different reasons, neither is the religious believer. Religion assumes that they are not valid questions because it has already answered them.” Not only is this statement an absurd generalization about “religion,” it has nothing to do with that horrid apotheosis of organized religion—the Catholic Church.

Without researching the validity of his presumption, Wood believes that the mere acceptance of doctrine and dogma precludes questioning. This premise reveals more about what Wood believes is the nature and purpose of questioning than anything else! It reveals a perspective that sees questioning itself as revisionary and threatening. But to question is fundamentally to seek the depths of reality, not to challenge our constructions of it.

Take the example of St. Thomas, who is, if anyone is, the Church’s official and perennial thinker. His classic treatment of God and reality is a beautiful if sober course through the mysteries of the Revealing God, who has entrusted the handing-on of His Truth to the Church. And the basic instrument of this Summa Theologiae is the question! Precisely through formulating a diversity of answers to questions, whether or not they presumably have answers, Thomas’s advertence to philosophical and theological doctrine and dogma is actually an entrée into the freedom of wisdom.

In fact, theology results from the proper invitation that faith elicits from reason to question it for reasons and intelligibility! As classically described by St. Anselm, theology is faith seeking understanding. And note well that it is “the faith’ that is the subject of the seeking enterprise! Faith has a properly theological dynamic, which is to say, a seeking and questioning verve.

Or take the example of the Church’s moral teaching. To say that one must obey (to take but one example) the Church’s position on contraception is to say that one must endeavor as a work of divine faith and love to conform one’s mind and will to this teaching. To contravene it is sinful. But this is not to say that one may not question it, that one may not ask why and how? Indeed, to some extent, there is a predetermined answer. But the question (in our example) to be posed about contraception is not merely “Can or can’t I do it?” There are deeper questions about what it is, how it has arisen in history, what are its effects, and so on. And this kind of questioning the Church doesn’t merely allow—she actually promotes!

Also missing from the questions of secularism are terms of conversation that extend beyond philosophical discourse. Wood should have adverted more to the cultural richness of human existence, which, if secularism be the fabric of our contemporary existence, would show forth its multiplicity of colors and folds.

Hence, he misses the import of “Terrence Malick’s oddly beautiful film, ‘The Tree of Life’ [which] reminds us, the answers are still hidden even if we believe in God.” Forgetting that this insight unsettles his dogmatic position on dogma, Wood does not sense that he is at the threshold of mystery. Indeed, Mallick’s film does not give and answer, the way questions of mathematical equation and moral obligation have clear either-or responses. But in some ways, Mallick’s film itself wants to be the answer, such that the cinematic experience takes the aesthetic place of the void that is left by the absence of a rational answer. Wood himself, after all, calls it “beautiful”; and the beauty of the film is the response to man’s intellectual poverty.

Finally, Wood could have recognized a little more matter of factly that secularism is the cause of its own malaise—and this, in a rather analytic way. He regrets, “One problem is that it’s not always clear what Levine and his contributors mean by secularism…” But the very existence of “isms” is a secuarlist innovation. Humanism, classicism, romanticism… even Catholicism (!) are all modern terms coined after the onset of the assault against reality and metaphysics, wrought by nominalism in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. When one is no longer disposed to trust the revelatory nature of nature, that the semblance of things is related to the truth of things, then reality dissolves and either becomes the play of words or the imposition of power—postmodernism is itself this dialectic between rhetoric and politics.

Hence, insofar as our observable world no longer contains a rich treasury of identifiably discrete substances that bear the imprint of causes beyond themselves, and insofar as this loss leaves us with the death of God, there is no such thing as things… since it is all left up to us. Hence, the terms of conversations become vague historico-cultural dynamics that are loosely suggested in ways that are not specific but always adjectival—such as secularism.

There are a few other things the Christian could quibble with Wood about: no mention of the Pope’s rather well-known considerations of secularism, an unfortunate characterization of Christianity “harshly challenging the self with an insistence on submission, sacrifice, and kenosis,” for example. But let us turn to some of his thoughtful cues.

He rightly notes that “one is continually running up against a crass evolutionary neuroscientific pragmatism that is loved by popular evolutionary psychologists and newspaper columnists.” In commenting upon one of the (illustrious) Catholic essayists of the collection, Wood helpfully suggests that, whatever our response to the existentiality of secularism, our responses must be thick.

I had a young couple in my office not too long ago. Always seeking to show the wisdom and intelligence of Revelation, I discussed St. Paul’s notorious passage on wifely submission, found in Ephesians 5. When I asked the bride whether or not she found my presentation of the text convincing, she sighed: “Yeah, it makes sense… the only problem is that it took you twenty minutes to explain it.”

In our day, modern scientific reason is conniving with entertainment scintillation. In other words, we want theories and explanations that are backed up by “hard science.” But we want them in a few seconds. And when we do, these very positions cannot but be simplistic and weak, like “when evolutionary biology tries to reduce the strong evaluation we make about [the good of] altruism by claiming that, like all animal behavior, it is just a contrivance that benefits our selfish genes.”

The recognition of its anthropic limits is another benefit of secularism, and in this way, there is a good kind of reduction. For example, a primatologist’s acknowledgment of behaviors that can be categorized as altruistic shows the behavior’s natural depth, that it could be, “older than humanity itself” (quoting Frans BM de Waal). In this recognition, secularism could be spurred beyond itself to ask precisely what is older than humanity itself… and what could answer this question in a way that would be intellectually and existentially significant? (Re-enter Terrence Mallick – the mysterious, transcendent, God of Creation!)

Again, think about sex. “Once a tendency has been put in place by nature [again quoting the Duth-American primatologist], ‘it is not essential that each and every expression of it serve [only] survival and reproduction. It is a bit as with the sex drive: it evolved to serve reproduction, but that does not mean that humans and animals have sex only in order to reproduce’.” Indeed not! Before God gave man the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, he deemed it necessary that the man have a friend and helpmate in the woman. This revelation proceeds from two distinct creation accounts in the book of Genesis—two accounts being given, among other reasons, so that we might precisely see the way in which friendship and procreation are ordered toward one another, however distinctly we might adjudge them!

Moreover, with such a perspective, we can challenge the view that the only real reason for sex is an individual’s perceived benefit. For, just as much as we may have evolved to see in our sexual drives the potential of our good feelings, we must recognize that this cannot be the only reason we have sex.

But secularism is largely unwilling to see things apart from the terms of itself and its projections. Whereas Milton’s Satan bore his own heaven and hell in his own mind, we’ve done away with both by the sheer projection of our will—which is what Satan’s non serviam is actually all about. John Lennon’s “Imagine” doesn’t ring so much as a particular conception of a perfect society, but the pretense that it could exist simply by willing to act as if it did. As Michael Gillespie has developed, Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, which can be seen as the spawning premise of secularim, is actually a premise of the will. It doesn’t logically follow from one’s thinking that one is; but one’s irreducible thought is the valence from which all projections proceed: I think, therefore I will to be; I am what I shall think that I am.

Despite its bedazzlingly despondent ruminations, secularism doesn’t not so much lie in what it thinks, but in the fact that its thoughts are reducible to what it wills. All of this owes to a deleterious, proto-protestant formulation of God’s sovereignty in terms of His absolute will, with no regard for His naturally discernible and supernaturally revealed wisdom. May the preaching of the Gospel of truth and freedom, which in all wisdom and insight has been made known to us in the mystery of Christ’s love (Eph 1.9), be proclaimed as the prospect of joy for all… in secula seculorum.

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[From a USCCB press release]

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sharply criticized a new HHS “preventive services” mandate requiring private health plans to cover female surgical sterilization and all drugs and devices approved by the FDA as contraceptives, including drugs which can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb.

“Although this new rule gives the agency the discretion to authorize a ‘religious’ exemption, it is so narrow as to exclude most Catholic social service agencies and healthcare providers,” said Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

“For example, under the new rule our institutions would be free to act in accord with Catholic teaching on life and procreation only if they were to stop hiring and serving non-Catholics,” Cardinal DiNardo continued [bold added, Fr BMS].  “Could the federal government possibly intend to pressure Catholic institutions to cease providing health care, education and charitable services to the general public?  Health care reform should expand access to basic health care for all, not undermine that goal.”

“The Administration’s failure to create a meaningful conscience exemption to the preventive services mandate underscores the need for Congress to approve the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” the Cardinal said.   That bill (H.R. 1179), introduced by Reps. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Dan Boren (D-OK), would prevent mandates under the new health reform law from undermining rights of conscience.

Cardinal DiNardo added: “Catholics are not alone in conscientiously objecting to this mandate.  The drugs that Americans would be forced to subsidize under the new rule include Ella, which was approved by the FDA as an ‘emergency contraceptive’ but can act like the abortion drug RU-486.  It can abort an established pregnancy weeks after conception.  The pro-life majority of Americans – Catholics and others – would be outraged to learn that their premiums must be used for this purpose.”

“HHS says the intent of its ‘preventive services’ mandate is to help ‘stop health problems before they start,’ said Cardinal DiNardo. “But pregnancy is not a disease, and children are not a ‘health problem’ – they are the next generation of Americans.”

“It’s now more vital than ever that Congress pass the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act to close the gaps in conscience protection in the new health care reform act, so employers and employees alike will have the freedom to choose health plans in accordance with their deeply held moral and religious beliefs.”

In a July 22 letter supporting the bill, Cardinal DiNardo wrote: “Those who sponsor, purchase and issue health plans should not be forced to violate their deeply held moral and religious convictions in order to take part in the health care system or provide for the needs of their families or their employees.  To force such an unacceptable choice would be as much a threat to universal access to health care as it is to freedom of conscience.”

The full text of Cardinal DiNardo’s letter is available online at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/religious-liberty/upload/respect-for-rights-of-conscience-act-cardinal-dinardo-letter-to-congress-hr1179-07-22-11.pdf. Cardinal DiNardo also addressed the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations on preventive services for women in a July 19 statement:www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2011/11-143.shtml.

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Just yesterday, there was a major public conversation on the nature of marriage. Robert George was one of the three, and you can consider some of the learned professor’s arguments here, previously published.

Not surprisingly, Sesame Street also has something to say. Consider:

Obviously, the point of the skit is to show how an innocent young child is easily and happily able to discern the basic essence of marriage, an essence that fanatical adults are hatefully trying to obscure with their agenda. Whether or not that’s the case, it’s nevertheless clear what the kid and Grover’s first principle is, made clear by the kid’s first response: “Marriage is when two people get married.” This is the same first principle that governs those who deny that marriage is a lifelong partnership, established by one man and one woman, for the procreation and raising of children and for the couple’s growth in the security of friendship. Those who deny such an understanding believe that marriage is whatever it is defined to be.

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The circumstances and consequences of an action are not what specifically make it good or evil. And yet still, it’s important to look at the surrounding phenomena of moral action, particularly when it is structurally engendered, such as in the industry of artificially planned/manipulated parenting. Looking at these circumstances and consequences as they arise in a society or societies different from ours helps us to gain greater perspective on the evil ramifications of a particular object — in this case, abortion. Although the sociological and ethical concerns surrounding the abortion industry (and its allied technologies and activities) in our country are of a somewhat different cast than those of East Asia, both are radically startling.

Consider this recent article from Foreign Policy (27 June 2011), where Mara Hvistendahl details some of the circumstantial and consequential horrors of sex selection — possible because of legal abortion… even as she is unable to identify the evil of the object of abortion, remaining committed to the project of reproductive rights.

Where Have All the Girls Gone?
How did more than 160 million women go missing from Asia? The simple answer is sex selection — typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female — but beyond that… [continue reading]

Also check out Dominican Brother, Gabriel Torretta’s commentary on this at First Things (5 July 2011).

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Please join the World Youth Alliance for a lecture by

Dr. Bob Scanlon introducing our new reproductive health program

F E M M !

(Fertility Education + Medical Management)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

2:30 pm -5:00 pm

World Youth Alliance Headquarters

228 East 71st Street

New York, NY 10021

Please contact Caroline Van Horn at caroline@wya.net 

if you or anyone you know is interested. 

The World Youth Alliance is pleased to introduce Fertility Education + Medical Management (FEMM), a knowledge-based reproductive health program, to New York City. FEMM teaches women of all social, economic, cultural and religious backgrounds how to monitor their reproductive health and manage their fertility by understanding the natural signs of the body. Where health problems are indicated, women are referred to   FEMM-trained medical practitioners for evaluation and treatment where they are informed participants in their own reproductive healthcare.

Dr. Scanlon, a OBGYN working in collaboration with the WYA, will give two lectures introducing FEMM as well as discussing WYA’s approach to maternal health. There will be time to ask questions following both lectures.

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This is a must!

A wonderful way to celebrate the feast and the weekend. Click on the images to learn what the GIGLIO is all about!

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One of the suppositions of the so-called new atheist crew is that reason — most especially scientific reason — positively disabuses humanity of its religious pretensions. I think these guys (and yes, oddly, they’re all guys) are not worth much time in themselves. However, they are lingeringly popular; and their reasoning (or attempt at such) is emblematic of the way many believe themselves to be intelligent, i.e., by a hodge-podge of unjustified principles arbitrarily applied alongside basic commitments that spring from the Christian West as such. So, if somewhat tritely, they’re worth considering.

Sam Harris is known for his ill informed and meandering screed against Christianity in America and for his more recent attempt to speak about being moral from a scientifically hopeful point of view. A recent article of his provides an opportunity to diagnose what’s wrong with his thinking.

Radical Subjectivity
For Harris, everything we do is for the sake of “altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts. Every waking moment—and even in our dreams—we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.” In other words, the reason we do everything that we do, the closest thing that could come to our raison d’etre, is (1) to change (2) our consciousness.

The point of view that Harris placidly espouses is inherently radical: The purpose of life is “to alter” whatever it is we experience. In other words, the root of what it means to be human is to change reality–he’s radically radical, to use two senses of the world. According to this view, the life of the mind, of esprit, is constituted by the exertion of the will. We live in order to project our freedom upon reality in such a way as to change it.

To be sure, the wise man has classically recognized the changing nature of the world. Everything changes. Philosophy, in large part, is an attempt to discern the order to this picture of reality as inherently changing.

The modern era changes all this, and introjects reality into the the self, or, the mind and its will. Hence, as Marx famously declares (in a way that is not particular to Marx and Marxism), the purpose of philosophy is not to understand the world but to change it.

So what is reality for Harris? It is what is perceived. “Reality” is simply another word for what the consciousness of the individual’s living processes in terms of physio-chemical categories such as “sensation, emotion, and cognition.”

Harris is both a radical and a subjectivist; and he’s necessarily one because he’s the other. He’s a radical because, as a subjectivist, the only way for man to exercise his freedom is through projecting his will upon “reality” to change it; and he’s a subjectivist, because, as a radical, he has no principle for determining what is worthy of being changed or toward what one should aim his change other than oneself.

Desire for Transcendence
Interestingly, Harris advocates for something that is noble: transcendent experience. How does he get here? By considering the longstanding practice of taking drugs.

He thinks that the taking of psychedelic drugs is not necessarily a bad thing, and can actually be seen as a natural element of the adult’s desire to acquire new experiences. “I have a daughter who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that she chooses her drugs wisely, but a life without drugs is neither foreseeable, nor, I think, desirable. Someday, I hope she enjoys a morning cup of tea or coffee as much as I do. If my daughter drinks alcohol as an adult, as she probably will, I will encourage her to do it safely. If she chooses to smoke marijuana, I will urge moderation. Tobacco should be shunned, of course, and I will do everything within the bounds of decent parenting to steer her away from it. Needless to say, if I knew my daughter would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if she does not try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.”

Let’s forget about the blithe manner in which Harris underplays the occult damage of psychotropic drugs. Instead, consider that the seeking of these psychedelic experiences has an analog in seeking transcendence in meditation and suchlike. Then realize that the only difference is that the drugging method of altering the consciousness is, according to our guru, chemical, guaranteed, uncontrolled, and more or less taboo. “There is nothing that one can experience on a drug that is not, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential.” In other words, both varieties of religious experience (alluding quite intentionally here, as Harris himself does in citation, to William James’s modern masterpiece) are functions of the subject’s awareness, which are materially constituted and therefore materially reducible.

(Indeed, Harris does not discount the possibility of a “world” that exists independent of the individual’s mind, or that there isn’t some cosmic Mind … but only that we’re unable to confirm this… since, after all, all judgments of the mind are reducible to the experiences of an individual mind anyway. And even so, this possible “dualism” would not, for Harris, be comprised of any immateriality.)

What’s peculiar about Harris is that he affirms the need for transcendence. The problem, however, is that it’s not clear how “transcendence” could genuinely be transcendent according to his perspective. For Harris, “transcendence” is itself a value that is simply such for the subjective consciousness. It has no objectivity to it. Transcendence is itself radically subjective! It’s not a transcending of the self, but a “ceasing to cling to the contents of consciousness” … but not a ceasing to cling to consciousness as constitutive of reality!

Therefore, even though transcendence is a way to get beyond our own “egoity” for the sake of moral rectitude, given Harris’s principles, it’s not clear how the basis for being moral could be something other than a function of the individual consciousness. Hence, after giving historical anecdotes about the usage of psychedelics from primitive religion and America’s sixties to personal experience, Harris’s discussion of the moral desirability of transcendence is a complete non sequitur.

Harris has a twofold principle that steers the course (radical subjectivity) until certain intuitions pop in, such as the intuited need for transcendence as well as the intuited good of being good. He’s unable to account for the latter as long as “everything is for the purpose of altering consciousness.” In all likelihood, though, the desires for spiritual transcendence and moral goodness are not the result of mere intuitions … but of the passing language of Christendom that has an unalterable resonance with the mystery of being human, even for those who try so hard to eliminate both.

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The well known last words of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book, After Virtue, written some twenty years before the election of our presently reigning pontiff:

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead . . . was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. . . . This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless quite different — St. Benedict.

And from our Holy Father’s concluding words of an Audience dedicated to St. Benedict (9 April 2008):

By proclaiming St Benedict Patron of Europe on 24 October 1964, Paul VI intended to recognize the marvellous work the Saint achieved with his Rule for the formation of the civilization and culture of Europe. Having recently emerged from a century that was deeply wounded by two World Wars and the collapse of the great ideologies, now revealed as tragic utopias, Europe today is in search of its own identity. Of course, in order to create new and lasting unity, political, economic and juridical instruments are important, but it is also necessary to awaken an ethical and spiritual renewal which draws on the Christian roots of the Continent, otherwise a new Europe cannot be built. Without this vital sap, man is exposed to the danger of succumbing to the ancient temptation of seeking to redeem himself by himself – a utopia which in different ways, in 20th-century Europe, as Pope John Paul II pointed out, has caused “a regression without precedent in the tormented history of humanity” (Address to the Pontifical Council for Culture, 12 January 1990). Today, in seeking true progress, let us also listen to the Rule of St Benedict as a guiding light on our journey. The great monk is still a true master at whose school we can learn to become proficient in true humanism.

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The EAST VILLAGE ARTS PARTY, brought to you by Arts NYC, is looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow, Sat. July 9th for their highly anticipated event!

Come see dozens of bands, musicians, films, fine artists, and more, and mingle with hundreds of friends, old and new, for THE party of the summer!

Doors Open: 7:00 PM
Admission: $10 and drinks/food to share (21 + unless accompanied by an adult)
Proceeds to benefit: The Meatloaf Kitchen: http://meatloafkitchen.org/
Venue: Courtyard of the Immaculate Conception Church, 414 E 14th St @ 1st Ave.

Performing Artists such as:
Walking for Pennies, Mike Lahey, Paul Tabachneck, Cecilia Schwartz, and more…

Visual Art displays by:
Mary Acosta, Sean Scanlin, Alexander Ponomarenko, Daniel Somarriba, plus several others…

Classical Music performances indoors by:
Kara Vertucci, Scott Tran, Donna Nathan, Joanne Togati, Linda Garrity, Nhi Pham, Joe Shippee to name a few…

Short Film and Trailer screenings by:
Grassroots Films, Juan Reinoso, and Jennifer Cadena, and others…

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/eastvillageartsparty
Contact: eastvillageartsparty@gmail.com

And be sure to check out the website for details, schedules, and to meet the artists:

http://eastvillageartsparty.posterous.com/

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In this weekend’s cover article of the New York Times Magazine, there’s a clear example of what St. Paul means in Rom 8.12 by living indebted to the flesh (30 June 2011). I won’t expatiate on the doubly unfortunate title, “Married, with infidelities,” which appropriates the harrumph of family life (“married, with children”) in order to replace the gift of progeny with the rape of trust. But I do want to point out the underlying viewpoint of the article: that flesh is the measure of the spirit.

Mark Oppenheimer primarily focuses on the work of Dan Savage, long-known to college co-eds and the alternative anti-culture for his column, “Savage Love,” a candid (read: sordid and graphic) consideration of sex from a homosexualist’s point of view. Over the years, Savage’s column has begun to focus less on sex (at least as such) and more on love… still, of course, from the standpoint of gay relationships.

In other words, the habits of gay sex can be normative for the goals of heterosexual love.

Gently but definitely supporting this opinion, Oppenheimer discusses the possibility that the model of gay “committed” relationships, with their tendency toward “openness,” pornography, and fetishism, could benefit heterosexual marriages with the grace of stability.

(If you for a second thought that the “gay rights” interest in the marriage debate is for merely legal equanimity, think again!)

The critical premise for Savage’s argument, which obviously has experiential probity, is that monogamy is amazingly difficult, especially for (all) men. But the additional and more fundamental premise is that the flesh is the measure of human possibility. The body’s given inclinations, urges, and (according to our superego’s postmodern/postmortem pretense), the body’s indiscretions provide the scope of freedom’s forum.

It ought to be self-evident that moral possibility cannot be delimited by moral tendency, or that philosophical ideals cannot be measured by sociological data. For example, most people have lied at one point or another in their lives. And many people live lives accommodated to variants of lying, i.e., of intentionally deceiving another through the utterance of falsity. But it would be ridiculous to take this and argue that because most people lie, it therefore ought to be positively introduced into a working understanding of truth.

This test’s whiff of Kantian maxim-making is not without cause. For Immanuel Kant, we cannot judge the existence of a transcendent God or that, in light of his benignity, we are actually free. We are left with the imperative to act as if our principles could be made universal laws. But this maxim-making has nothing really to do with reality, but simply the logical testing of subjective postulates for action. Since it is unconnected to God, the world of morality has nothing really to do with the world of nature or of science. Moral responsibility nevertheless has to make sure that it acts in a logically consistent way, since all we have is the rational drive of the mind. Such a life is not only boring, but beset by internal antinomy.

Unwilling to accept this bifurcation between what the mind can tell us about “reality” and what the mind ought to propose for moral action, the late modern (or postmodern, or whatever you want to call our world’s relativism)–the contemporary approach to morality collapses the antimony between freedom and nature or morality and science by declaring the former a function of the latter. Moral intelligence is an endless project of control and experimentation: The mind is the will!

Indeed, is it not the case that in public debates today, political power and moral indeterminacy predominate above all today. Anything goes, as long as the one with the bullying pulpit is saying so.

But the human mind is able to judge the reality of transcendence through its own life… which is transcendent. Transcendence need not be postulated as an internal or mental superstructure in order to secure our good taste for decent behavior. Indeed, that project already failed.

Transcendence is objectively experienced through our body. And that is why, for the Christian, the body is so wonderfully good. Because the body’s experience and prospect is measured by the spirit!

When I find myself in love such that I desire to be what people call “married,” I desire to give my heart to the beloved 100 percent. To be sure, from a material standpoint, it’s a ridiculous investment; but that is what people want to do in being married. There’s something so ultimately good about my beloved that no single experience can exhaust. I can return and return to experience my beloved and the good of the relationship is not itself exhausted. Eventually, I judge that I want to give my heart entirely; that I want to be married.

In giving all of myself, I’ll receive all of myself through the love of the other. Although I am a complete individual, I shall somehow be less than I am if I cannot be with my beloved. And so, ironically, the greatest work of most people’s lives of freedom is the binding of themselves to another in marriage.

But because I am not simply some vague monad of interiority but an embodied soul, I can only give my 100 percent of my heart when I have given 100 percent of my body as well. This side of things, that means that, naturally speaking, I cannot be married unless my body is pledged for the remainder of its bodily existence–i.e., until death.

Furthermore, I cannot give my body and heart to another completely unless that other truly is “an other.” And this otherness must necessarily be physiological. If I am most definitely not only a heart but also a body, and the only way in which I experience the trials and joys of my heart is through my body, then I cannot give all of myself to another if I am giving it to someone who is only another heart. In this case, I would be giving less than myself to someone who is less than another.

Hence, the only kind of loving union that is able to reproduce individuality is that which is physiologically unitive: the heterosexual love-making between a man and a woman (which is properly within the context of a committed relationship for life).

Finally, because my heart or spirit is measuring the good and the use of my body, there is no room for any others. Marital friendship is necessarily exclusive. The one man is bound until death to one woman, and vice versa.

Infidelity, taken as an occasional good, clearly contradicts the intrinsic if generally unarticulated reasons for getting married. In other words, the very nature of what marriage is excludes infidelity as possibly good. Very clearly, what is proffered in the NYT Magazine article is an image of marriage that hates the goods of indissolubility, procreativity, and exclusivity, and therefore hates marriage.

And how is this hatred given voice? Because the individual body (whose icon is that of the gay male) is proposed as the measure of freedom. I want to be with my wife until I die, at least for the sake of our kids; but I have sexual urges that deviate from our relationship. So, according to this logic, the relationship ought to revise its culturally accidental constraints with the granting of licenses for my body’s desire.

But then there is no transcendence, either of myself with the other, or of ourselves and that which makes us both partners in a particular species–i.e., there is no transcendence of human nature.

Ever since the West threw off the shackles of man’s natural sense of transcendence, his activity has been turned in on and against itself. “Man” itself has become the ultimate object to twist into submission. And, because there is no limit to man’s endeavors, there is no limit to what man can make of himself.

He can become anything; and so, he is nothing.

“Organized religion,” and most prominent among those who are organized, the Catholic Church, speaks most loudly in defense of human nature–its specific integrity of nature and its individuated dignity in the person. The Church, therefore, is necessarily invested in the preservation of the natural law. That is, she is with human nature as usch, and with the natively systematic norms that reason adduces for human behavior as the basis for an intelligent society.

Predictably, then, Mr. Savage also happens to be a Catholic, and one in whom the rag-mag’s author sees a positive image of Catholic moralism.

Of course, the Church’s severely attenuated moral authority is hereby evoked. Precisely because of what certain clergy have done, (indeed, most abominable), the measure of the Church’s preaching significance has been established. And, since her men seem to be just as perverted as those who openly apotheosize perversion, one really ought to take direction and guidance from the latter.

The wise and learned of our age would have us believe that there is no such thing as nature or moral standards. Everything is open to anything and everything, such that there is no such thing as “man,” and we can twist “marriage” to mean anything we want. Indeed, in the words of Michel Foucault (who, living for a long time in a committed relationship with “a partner,” died of AIDS, debauched by the San Francisco bath-houses):

Ought we not rather to give up thinking of man, or, to be more strict, to think of this disappearance of man – and the ground of possibility of all the sciences of man – as closely as possible in correlation with our concern with language?

From within language experienced and traversed as language, in the play of its possibilities extended to their furthest point, what emerges is that man has ‘come to an end’, and that, by reaching the summit of all possible speech, he arrives not at the very heart of himself but at the brink of that which limits him; in that region where death prowls, where thought is extinguished, where the promise of the origin interminably recedes. (The Order of Things, 382, 385)

We ought not to give up thinking of man or fighting for “man,” which necessarily involves a way of speaking that is congruent with the way of being. Nevertheless, the purpose of our freedom is not to agitate ceaselessly for social revolution. In fact, the ultimate purpose of our freedom isn’t even to act … but to rest! We have been given freedom on earth to enter into the rest of heaven.

Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Christ speaks these words to all who experience their body as a yoke of the will and burden to the spirit. If we put to death the deeds of the body, if we refuse to vaunt the flesh as our ultimate value, we can be renewed in his Spirit.

God became man, He took on flesh in Christ. The body is not bad; flesh is not evil. But it must be measured by the Spirit. We who feed on Christ’s flesh are able to be renewed in his Spirit, that Spirit of God who raised our Lord from the dead.

Etymologically, “rest” is probably rooted in a word that means “great distance.” Hence, “rest” is what one does after having traversed a great distance. Christ has traveled the distance between God and fallen man by taking on our flesh and raising it anew. Let us not give up on the good fight or on completing the race. In Christ, we are called to be human.

Let us travel the full distance of human trial and joy — uniquely and wonderfully evident through marriage — and expect that the very distance of this journey, recognized and adhered to in the nobility of its natural ideals, promises the possibility of a final rest, where that same humanity will flourish in the finality of a freedom that has been wedded to the most faithful of lovers — God Himself.

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[Our Archbishop's recent plea (14 June 2011)... O God come to our aid.]

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