Things I seriously do not understand

Mitt Romney is telling lies.  First he said Obama said "You didn't build that."  He clearly took Obama's statement out of context.

Then he said the Obama Administration wanted to block military personnel from early voting in Ohio, the very opposite of the position taken by the Justice Department in a voter's rights lawsuit there.

He doesn't do this in ads.  He does it in his speeches.  He does it in his own words.

But when a Super PAC which supports Obama releases an ad about a man who lost his job due to Bain Capital, and with his job lost his health insurance, and because he had no insurance his wife hid her illness until it was stage four cancer and she couldn't hide it any longer, CNN says the ad is misleading and the Obama campaign is responsible.

For which there can be only one logical response:  Obama must start including in his speech the allegation that Mitt Romney murdered Joe Soptic's wife.

Then there won't be anything for the "fact checkers" to comment on.

"Everyone looks at the United States as uncivilized."

The latest mass shooting prompts another round of discussion about "gun rights" and "2nd Amendment rights" and other such blather. And there are good arguments against the individual right to keep and bear arms which Antonin Scalia thinks includes rocket launchers .  But all those arguments devolve into discussions with semi-legally-literate people about the "plain language" of the Constitution (which isn't plain at all) and how the "right" to "bear arms" is more absolute than any right in the 1st Amendment (you can't, as Justice Holmes properly said, shout "Fire" in a crowded theater; and you can't eat peyote buttons and call it a religious observance; and you can't assemble peaceably without a permit, and you aren't entitled to a permit just because....), and so on and so forth, and it's all bollocks.  You are talking to people who don't' want to listen and who don't want to understand and who truly believe Obama hasn't taken their guns yet because he's still fixin' to get around to it.  And he's gettin' a huge shipment of round-to-its in January, 2013.

Keep it simple, keep it clear, cede nothing, but take the argument on their grounds.

The Constitution gives every individual a right to keep and bear arms.  Okay, fine.  Obviously "individual" doesn't mean convicted felons, people of diminished capacity, or infants.  By neddie dingo, there are restrictions to this "right"!  Ignore that and move on, you'll make them nervous.

The Constitution does not give every individual a right to use those arms, however.  Criminals are not criminals before they pull the trigger, mass murderers are not mass murderers before they open fire in a crowded room.  They may have a right to own a small arsenal of guns, they don't have a right to discharge them as they please.  Neither do the rest of us.  This is why states now have "castle doctrines," and why even then the police will investigate you and maybe question your right to discharge a weapon you have a "right" to carry.

Right, George Zimmerman?

Watch carefully, now, because my hands will never leave my sleeves, and the pea will not end up under the shell you think it is under now.  But this isn't a game, either.

You have a right to "bear" arms.  Fine.  You have no right to fire those weapons, though.  Maybe in self-defense, if you can establish that; but that's a statutory provision, not a Constitutional right.  So you have no right to fire your weapon, not a right equal to the one you claim allows you to carry it or "bear" it, which is Justice Scalia's justification for owning a hand-held rocket launcher.  If you don't have a right to fire a gun, you equally have no right to ammunition for your gun.

The Constitution says you have a "right" to "keep and bear arms."  Doesn't say you have a right to ammunition for that gun.  (They want a plain reading of the Amendment, make 'em stick to a plain reading of the amendment.)  Doesn't say we can't tax ammunition almost out of existence.  Doesn't say we can't curb gun violence by making bullets so expensive even the Mexican drug cartels will resort to knives and broadswords.

You have a right to own and even, under limited circumstances, carry a gun.  You don't have a Constitutional right to use it.  Taxing ammunition will soon make it too expensive for anyone to use except for hunting purposes.  Ammunition could even be controlled and dispensed at shooting ranges or for sporting events like skeet shooting; or the size of shot allowed for reloading shotguns could be severely limited, and the bullets available for hunting purposes likewise severely curtailed.  The guy who told the New York Times that when he got below 10,000 rounds he felt like he was running out, would just have to learn to run out.

I am mindful that the Supreme Court has made self-defense the central justification for an individual right to keep and bear arms.  That doesn't mean one can only defend oneself with free access to as many rounds of ammunition as one can afford.  There are prevailing societal interests in reducing gun violence that would weigh against any individual being able to purchase or hoard massive amounts of ammunition, and laws could be written to still allow access to enough ammunition to defend oneself.  A box, literally, would do.  Any more than that, and you are either preparing for civil insurrection, or for a crime yourself.  Shooters who want to practice at a shooting range could purchase their ammunition at the range under very controlled circumstances and, like military trainees, account for every shell taken out and returned.  Access to ammunition can never be eliminated; but it can be greatly curtailed, to the benefit of both individuals and society at large.  Individuals may have a right to bear arms, but individuals have a greater right not be shot at.

I know you are, but what am I?

I would comment at Crooked Timber, but I'm long-winded and pedantic; so I need to post there instead (!).  But while I can appreciate arguments in this form (mostly because over the years I've learned to understand them in their native tongue, so to speak), this is as fine an example of academic philosophy going off the rails as I've seen in a while.  To whit:

ADDENDUM: it would be an interesting psychological experiment (which, for all I know someone has done) to test whether people who are exposed to conditional arguments in the total absence of evidence for the truth of the antecedent become more inclined to believe the consequent, perhaps especially for cases where the antecedent is some morally dubious policy. So, for example, are people exposed to the conditional “IF increased inequality ends up making the poorest better off THEN increased inequality is justified” more likely to believe that increased inequality is justified, even when no evidence that increased inequality benefits the poorest is presented?

The joy of this experiment is that it would only subject the test subjects to ideas, not to actual, you know, poverty, or even worse, "poor people."  "The poorest" is a lovely abstraction, as are "civilians" who may be subject to "drone strikes."  "Poor people" are as foreign to the experience of people who write in the language of this post as Afghanis and Iraqis are.  My favorite way of summing this up is Marlowe's line from "The Jew of Malta:"  "Thou has committed fornication.  But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead."  This is not, in other words, a moral blind spot peculiar to Americans; nor is it new by virtue of modern technology.

Evidence about the effects of inequality on the poorest is what, in that argument, needs to be presented.  The idea of inequality, in other words, and its affect on the idea of poverty.  Do the poorest need to be presented?  Do they need to be represented?  Do they even need to assert their existence, or is it sufficient to claim them as a term in a syllogism? (The entire argument is basically a simple one about drawing valid conclusions from offered premises.)  Dorothy Day insisted she and her fellow workers were visitors in the land of the poor, not some deus ex machina swooping in to rescue the poor from themselves.  Even when working with actual persons who are actually poor, in other words, the temptation (anfechtung, Kierkegaard would call it, and would that I could bring all the nuance of that word from S.K.'s works into this discussion more accurately) is to treat them as abstractions rather than as actual humans.

There is a curious philosophical issue being overlooked here, one existentialists and phenomenologists struggle to name:  the issue of existence.  Kierkegaard's argument about arguments about the existence of God turns on the issue of existence itself.  "The poor" is a label, an identifier, just as "Napoleon", in S.K.'s example, identifies a particular historical personage.  Napoleon is further identified by historical actions connected to that name, and to the individual connected to that name. But do those actions establish the existence of the individual?  Or do they simply identify some one person, against all the persons who ever lived?  It's a very close question, and it's related to this issue of identifying the poor.  Is Napoleon more of a person to us because we know of all his deeds?  Does extensive knowledge establish his existence, or merely identify a particular person and set of circumstances?  Do we establish Napoleon's existence by what he did?  And if we do, do other people lack existence because we cannot identify their deeds?  Surely not.  But what do we mean, then, by "existence"?  Is it one thing for Napoleon, another for his hostler, or a foot soldier in his army who died in Russia?  Identity is a rather simple matter:  I identify you as someone I know, or as the person I saw commit the crime, and then the state identifies you as a criminal.  Does any of that prove your existence?  If so, how?  What is it proving?  If no one can identify you, do you fail to exist?

Do "the poor" exist because they are poor?  Is their identity being in poverty?  Does that establish the existence of any individual on earth?  No.  It establishes an identity, and from it you claim to know what you need to know, but what you know is a construct of your own making.  "Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  What?  Did anybody have to sin for this man to be born blind?  Does his identify as a blind beggar eclipse his existence as a human being?

Too easily, it does.  Too easily, we overlook existence and stick with the easier abstraction of identity.  You are poor, and we who are not poor will come up with a solution for that.  But first we must settle on how we can accurately talk about the solution for that; what we can say, and how accurately we can say it.  We must be moved by our own rhetoric and logic and come to a reasoned conclusion which cannot be gainsayed.

We must fiddle, while Rome burns.

Why are people swayed by false conditional antecedents?  Because it is in their own interest to be.  It is easy when the poor are an abstraction, are the people on the street corners making $30,000 a year panhandling (as one good church member assured me was the case, once.  And he clearly thought that was a princely su, enough to secure quite a comfortable middle-class existence, and all without "working."  As if pandhandling at the intersections of the I-10 service road wasn't in any sense work.).  But as Dorothy Day's experience shows, even when we are working beside the poor, trying to help them as directly as we can, they remain an abstraction.  They are poor; we who choose poverty in order to help them, don't know what it means to be poor.

Is that a conditional antecedent?  Is that a necessary condition?

If you cannot imagine the conditions of poverty except as an abstraction, as something you can escape (and even Orwell knew he wasn't meant to stay poor), how can you empathize with civilians in foreign countries?  And if your concern for them is not based on empathy, what good is it?  When people stop being human beings, stop, in other words, having existence, they start becoming abstractions:  counters in a game, pawns on a chessboard, numbers in a body count.  Dalton Trumbo wrote of the body counts from the Vietnam War, how they represented so many arms and legs and torsos and heads, all shattered and broken by then-modern weaponry.  Trumbo noted that we read such lists in the morning paper, and instead of throwing up in revulsion at the picture they should have conjured, we reached for the coffee cup.  Abstractions and identities such as "enemy" make the whole process work; conditional antecedents are just a layer on top of layers, a nice way of talking about what we are talking about by not talking about reality.  Is the real problem of drone strikes and civilian deaths that we rely on conditional antecedents in our arguments?  Or is the real problem that we just don't care, because those "civilians" aren't even people, they don't even, as far as we are concerned, have existence?

The issue is never "How do we talk about it?"  The issue is always:  "What are we talking about?"  And to the extent that is a fit question for philosophers (all questions are, but some are more fit than others), it is a question of how we understand and face and define and discuss the nature and reality of existence.

And I'm not sure we're even touching on that, yet.

Ideas don't matter. Things don't matter. People matter.

Things I did not know

In writing the post below, I came across this on Wikipedia:

"Wealth",more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth" is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. The central thesis of Carnegie's essay was the peril of allowing large sums of money to be passed into the hands of persons or organizations ill-equipped mentally or emotionally to cope with them.

And apparently Mr. Carnegie hated America, too:

In Wealth, Carnegie examines the modes of distributing accumulated wealth and capital to the communities it originates from. He preached that ostentatious living and amassing private treasures was wrong. He praised the high British taxes on the estates of dead millionaires, remarking that "By taxing estates heavily at death the State marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life. It is desirable that nations should go much further in this direction." His "gospel of wealth" earned much praise, but did not win many converts.

That he didn't win converts doesn't surprise me.  But I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the old robber baron, because of his libraries:

Carnegie put his philosophy into practice through a program of gifts to endow public libraries, known as 'Carnegie libraries' in cities and towns throughout the United States and the English-speaking world, with the idea that he was thus providing people with the tools to better themselves.  In order to ensure that his gifts would not be wasted, he stipulated that the municipality must pass an ordinance establishing a tax to support the library's ongoing operating costs after the initial grant provided the costs for building and equipping the library.

After several communities squandered their grants on extravagant buildings, Carnegie established a system of architectural guidelines that mandated simplicity and functionality.

The library in my home town was a "Carnegie library."  For years, I just figured that was the name, like "First State Bank" or "Joe's Cleaners."  I spent many hours in that building, winter and summer, and read my way through as much of it as I could.  It provided me with the tools to better myself, so it fulfilled Mr. Carnegie's plan.

Note that Mr. Carnegie's argument was a moral one: the selfish millionaire deserved to have his money distributed to society upon his death, since he hoarded his wealth in life.  There are faint echoes of Dickens and Scrooge there. Today, of course, it is a mark of your morality that you are rich.  It is the poor who endanger our financial stability.

Same as it ever was.

Interesting, but not surprising, that his "Gospel of Wealth" took on a meaning completely opposite to the one he intended.

Everything old is new again....

Charlie Pierce gives us the definitive word on the "Gospel of Wealth," and it's over 100 years old.

 "What d'ye think iv th' man down in Pinnsylvanya who says th' Lord an' him is partners in a coal mine?" asked Mr. Hennessy, who wanted to change the subject.

"Has he divided th' profits?" asked Mr. Dooley. 

To God be the glory.  I'll keep the money.

Same as it ever was.

The Audacity of Definition

All of this discussion has made me think again about marriage issues and the Church(es).  It isn't easy to find information on the intertubes, but what I found is interesting.

Start with what Dan Cathy said to the Baptist Press:

 "We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

However, he also, in a different forum, said this:

"I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about,"

And that's what got my attention; the "audacity to define what marriage is about."

What is marriage about?

In Texas, at one extreme, marriage is clearly only about the community property estate.  The Texas Family Code is primarily concerned with two things:  who owns the property, and who is responsible for the children.  To that end, a couple doesn't even need a marriage license or anyone authorized by the State of solemnize the rites of marriage, in order to be married.  Texas allows for "Common law" marriage, which means simply if you represent yourself as married, you are.  End of discussion.  In my time as a family lawyer, I never had to show the judge a marriage license in order to obtain a divorce for a married couple.  There would have been slightly different language in the petition for a common law marriage (I think we even had one in the office when I was practicing), but no higher standard of proof for one than the other.  Texas law was only concerned with one thing:  who gets what property, and who is gonna be responsible for the kids.

End of discussion.

Is that "Biblical marriage"?  Is that "the audacity to define what marriage is about"?  Seriously; I"m asking.  I'm guessing Cardinal Roger Mahony wouldn't like it:

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy has consistently backed "the biblical definition of a family," and his foundation has contributed to groups working to maintain the traditional definition of a marriage--one man and one woman.  He later added, "I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage'."

Neither, probably, would Francis Cardinal George:

Both Church and state do, however, have an interest in regulating marriage.  It is not that religious marriage is private and civil marriage public; rather, marriage is a public institution in both Church and state.  The state regulates marriage to assure stability in society and for the proper protection and raising of the next generation of citizens.  The state has a vested interest in knowing who is married and who is not and in fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society.

Because common law marriage in Texas doesn't involve any church at all, nor even any public ceremony.   I'm sure the condemnation of this state of affairs, which goes back well over 100 years in Texas, will bring down the public condemnation of Chick-Fil-A and the Roman Catholic church as soon as somebody bothers to be outraged by it.  Or maybe not.

I am left wondering, though, what a "Biblical definition of a family" is.  Or of marriage, for that matter. We could, at this point, disappear into a discussion of marriage under the law of Moses, or point out the multiple wives of the Biblical patriarchs, or even the custom of having a child by the wife's handmaid, which gave us Ishmael and Moby Dick.  Lots of definitions of "family" there, especially with Abraham deciding to send Hagar and Ishmael packing.  And don't get me started on Jacob and Esau, or even Cain and Abel.  And who married Adam and Eve?

Okay, descending into the silly, now.  But seriously, what consistent thread is there for marriage in the Bible?  There is the example of the one bride for seven brothers in Mark 12:8-27, Matthew 22:23-33, and Luke 20: 27-40.  There was a very good reason for that law at that time:  it protected women from being without a husband.  And if you don't think that was a live issue in many cultures, read "The Wife's Lament" and get back to me.  Often it was better to have some husband than no husband.  But is that the "Biblical marriage" we should adhere to?

And what about divorce?  Jesus wasn't too big on the allowance of divorce available in Mosaic law according to Matthew 19:3-15, and that passage was often cited as a reason not to be to free with divorce under civil law.  Of course, today, at least again in Texas (where I know the most about the law), divorce is no longer a matter of establishing grounds and showing, essentially, a breach of contract.  Tell the judge in the paperwork that your marriage is unsustainable (and it's boilerplate language; nobody wants to know the details of your broken marriage), and the only question is:  who gets what property, and who's responsible for the kids?  Have we broken with "Biblical marriage" by making divorce so easy?  Is God angry with us as a nation because of no-fault divorce proceedings?  Am I going to hell for helping that system function efficiently?

I really don't think so.

But what is this "Biblical definition of a family" that we are supposed to adhering to?  What is the "definition" of marriage we shouldn't have the audacity to change in any way?

I'm glad you asked that.  Because the answer, the real reason for the despair of Dan Cathy and the difficulty facing Cardinal Mahony and Cardinal George, is one that goes back at least 500 years.

This is where it gets interesting:

Botham frames her book with discussions of Perez and of Loving, but the core of her discussion is an exploration of the very different views of the institution of marriage held by Catholic and Protestant denominations. She traces that divergence to the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, where in an attempt to limit the power of Rome, Protestant communities reconceptualized the idea of marriage. On the one hand, “the Roman Catholic Church alone affirmed the doctrine of the sacramental nature of marriage--the rite of matrimony as an instrument that conferred grace upon the couple” (p. 6). Protestants, on the other hand, “insisted that marriage was sacred, but not a sacrament. Therefore, since marriage was an earthly rather than heavenly institution, civil rather than ecclesiastical authorities should oversee marriage law” (p. 7). Even a civil ceremony conducted before a magistrate in a city hall without benefit of clergy could be considered valid.

This non-sacramental view of marriage became firmly established in America through the proliferation of English common law and as a result of the Protestant hegemony in the colonies and in the Early Republic. Moreover, issues surrounding the conditions of or the impediments to marriage were considered unambiguously to fall under the purview of the state, not the federal government. With the rise of race-based laws, the ability to assign an individual to a particular race category became of paramount importance, and miscegenation laws--designed to discourage racial mingling--were adopted throughout the country on a state-by-state basis. Botham’s handling of the intricate interweaving of biblical beliefs and legal assumptions is particularly strong.

That's from a book review, so it's necessarily third hand information, but it's a useful capsule summary of the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics on the question of marriage, and on why there were so many miscegenation statutes (with criminal penalties, no less!) in America before 1967.  It's also an important point, so let's linger on it a minute, because the argument I grew up with was that sex outside of marriage was a sin, while marriage itself was...well, it was something you did in church.

Not because anybody told me so, but because that's where everybody went.  Only much, much later did I learn to distinguish a Protestant marriage from a Roman Catholic one, on the basis of theology (!).  And you see, what happened was, the Protestants took over and ceded the definition of marriage to the state (except for that sex part, which became such an issue in the Sixties, thanks to the Pill.  Or maybe just to Trojans.  Hard to be sure, really.).  Basically to Protestants marriage was sacred, which meant no serious stuff before the pastor made you say "I do."  It kind of held marriages together against divorce, too, until it didn't.  But the point is the Protestants "reconceptualized the idea of marriage."*  And then civil society, the non-religious part of it, or at least the part not that constrained by theological concerns, reconceptualized it again.  And as long as that mean "common law marriage," even Baptist/Methodist/fundamentalist Texas didn't really mind.  But the moment it meant "same sex marriage," well...all hell broke loose.

And the question remains:  why?

I don't know of any church that openly sanctions common law marriage.  It clearly wouldn't accord with Roman Catholic ideas of a sacrament, but it's not exactly sacred under any Protestant doctrines I'm aware of.  Still, nobody considers it the end of marriage as we know it, or an infringement on our religious liberties, or a harbinger of the end of days.  Why not?  Mostly because nobody is making any of those arguments about it.  Texas is now the second most populous state in the country; you might think this issue would matter, as it applies to more people in the U.S. than any other state except California (which, also being a community property state, may have essentially the same laws.  The idea is to protect the members of the community property estate and the children; and nothing more.  Aside from not marrying your first cousin, Texas doesn't really care what your marriage is about.)


Now let's stop a moment and go back to something said earlier:

The state regulates marriage to assure stability in society and for the proper protection and raising of the next generation of citizens.  The state has a vested interest in knowing who is married and who is not and in fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society.

Now, from a lawyer's point of view, that's about half-right.  The state may profess an interest in strong families and good marriages, but it isn't really interested in doing anything about either one.  The state is concerned with who will care for the children until they reach the age of majority (not unlike anti-abortion activists who seem to care about the "child" until birth, and after that?  Good luck, kid!), and in general is largely interested in making divorce as simple as possible (and it's not simple, even in Texas.  I've seen divorce proceedings drag on so long the wife got pregnant by her boyfriend and was going to deliver while the divorce was pending.  Texas law presumes a child born during a marriage is the child of the husband, and everybody agreed that wasn't the case here, especially the husband.  How to handle that was a particularly interesting legal challenge.  The complication that dragged the case out so long was, as usual:  how to divide the property.).  None of which is really about "fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society."  It is, however, about taking care of people (children) and maintaining some stability in the possession of property, particularly real property.   At this point I suppose I should mention that marriage in Europe was once all about real property:  the public ceremony took place on the church steps, where all the landowners could watch titles be transferred between the bride and groom.  Once that was done, the happy couple went inside for the sacrament of marriage, and the guests went to the party.  Marriage was about procreation, but it was really about property.  Procreation meant the property would pass, in an orderly fashion, to another generation, and thus would society remain stable.  Again, I'm not sure how "Biblical" that was, but there you are.

And, once more with feeling, the logic behind Texas common law marriage is that what is important is the creation of a community property estate, mostly for the protection of women (a more necessary protection 60 years ago than it is today, but still not a bad idea) and of the children of any such union.  The interest in the children is as old as medieval Europe:  the state is not only concerned with their welfare (at a minimum), but also with inheritance rights.  The State, as ever, has a vested interest in who owns what property, especially real property; and, as ever, abhors a vacuum in ownership, especially in property owned through title records.  At some point that becomes a matter of "fostering good marriages" (what's the difference between two people "living together" for 30 years, and a formally married couple celebrating a 30th anniversary, from the state's point of view?) and "strong families for the sake of society;" but only through regulation of child support and property ownership.

Which doesn't strike me as a clearly "Biblical" concept at all; certainly not if you limit "Biblical" to the teachings of the gospels.

Interestingly, though, the argument there is a familiar one:  marriage is, at least in part, for the sake of the children.  Don Browning made that argument in making "The Liberal Case Against Same-Sex Marriage."   Browning argues against same-sex marriage because:  "It changes the definition of marriage."   How?  "It reduces marriage primarily to a committed affectionate sexual relation."  That, as we will see, is not so far from the defense of traditional marriage made by Francis Cardinal George.  But why is this central to the idea of marriage?  "The legalization of same-sex marriage may give public codification to modernity's march toward breaking apart these goods sex from love, sex from procreation, and parenting from procreation. It finally changes the logic of marriage."  Marriage, you see, is about controlling sex and so stabilizing society (an idea that goes back to Ovid, at least), and it's about procreation.

Same-sex marriages can't procreate, you see.

Leave aside the question of adoption a moment, and face the real issue being expressed by Browning, and by many critics of same-sex marriage:  "Won't anybody think of the children?"  Which is an interesting issue, because while the bulk of the Texas Family Code is about child care and child support, there is nothing in the Texas Family Code that says a marriage must be ended because the couple is childless.  Indeed, who would wish such a thing?

Does the Catholic church pressure childless couples to divorce?  Of course not.  But procreation, or at least the possibility of procreation, is clearly foundational in Catholic conceptions of marriage:

Marriage exists because human nature comes in two complementary sexes: male and female.  The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women.  Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital.  Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and “gender-free marriage” is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle.

Why is gender bound up with marriage, if not because it takes a man and a woman to produce a child?  That is not an illegitimate argument, but neither is it really the touchstone of marriage, because otherwise all childless marriages are not true marriages.  So it isn't that married couples must produce children; it isn't even that they must be capable of producing children (infertile couples are not required to move heaven and earth to have children, and Catholic couples aren't even allowed to pursue in vitro fertilization; at least, not officially).   Now, of course, there is a dodge here.  Elderly couples can, presumably, marry in the church.  They are still capable of making "one flesh," as the Cardinal argues, but that's because the cardinal approves of how their genitalia fits together.  So you don't have to be able to create a child, but it has to be possible; except when it isn't.  But that "isn't" is less important when it involves a male and a female, and more important when it involves two males or two females.  You see?

Good; because I don't.  There is an odd thing in this argument, actually, and it's this presumption:   Is marriage really just about sex?  Is that truly the touchstone by which marriage should be measured?

Personally and theologically, I find that an indefensible position.  But no matter, let us pass on to the issue, which is what children have to do with marriage.

Do we consider the marriages of childless couples less legitimate than those of couples with children?  We shouldn't (and, at least publicly and generally, we don't).  But the most common argument made about changing the definition of marriage, is that the change will adversely affect the children.

It is clear from the most recent available evidence on the psycho-sociological aspect of this question that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems then those of the intermarried and that the state's prohibition of interracial marriage for this reason stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent.

....

Now if the state has an interest in marriage, if it has an interest in maximizing the number of stable marriages and in protecting the progeny of interracial marriages from these problems, then clearly. there is scientific evidence available that is so. It is not infrequent that the children of intermarried parents are referred to not merely as the children of intermarried parents but as the 'victims' of intermarried parents and as the 'martyrs' of intermarried parents.

That is the argument of the assistant attorney general of Virginia, defending Virginia's miscegenation statute before the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.  Sounds very curiously like the argument being made by Don Browning and by Cardinal George.   It's worth noting such children were "victims" and "martyrs" because they were generally regarded as illegitimate and thus, like Edmund in "King Lear," were barred from inheriting their parents' property. That they were illegitimate was a matter of law, of course, not of societal disapproval; so it was rather a self-made Catch 22.  But no matter; having declared the children of miscegenation illegitimate, the state had a duty to protect future children from that sad, state-mandated, fate.

We have to realize that the argument being made on behalf of Virginia was still, in 1967, as credible as it had been in the 19th century.  The only difference is that the state of Virginia in 1967 uses the language of science ("the psycho-sociological aspect of this question"), while the Supreme Court of Georgia used the  language of religion in 1869 to defend its miscegenation statute:

"...moral or social equality between the different races...does not in fact exist, and never can. The God of nature made it otherwise, and no human law can produce it, and no human tribunal can enforce it. There are gradations and classes throughout the universe. From the tallest archangel in Heaven, down to the meanest reptile on earth, moral and social inequalities exist, and must continue to exist throughout all eternity."

While Alexander Pope would certainly approve of such reasoning, I wouldn't call the court's, or Pope's, language theological. It is at best religious.  And we could all say "That was then, this is now."  Except "then" is not 143 years ago, but only 45 years ago:

 “Almighty God created the races,” Bazile wrote, “white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.”

That's from the lower court opinion that went to the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.  It's only dicta, and its remarkably racist, but it's also in line with legal reasoning on that issue that went back almost 100 years at the time.  No one would expect either that kind of racist language from the courts, nor that kind of religious language, either.  Our thinking about race and marriage has, thankfully, changed.  Which means we've been busy deciding what constitutes a marriage for some years now, and I doubt there are many people who would disagree with the results so far.  Some might object that divorce is too easily obtained; some might even object to mixed race marriages, and both objections could be based on religious arguments.  It's doubtful those arguments would get very far, though.  Of course, many would still argue it is "interference" with God's "arrangement" to allow for same-sex marriages.

And perhaps it is, from a church's point of view.  That is as should be, and one reason we have so many denominations and religions.  We have, however, only one state (well, per geographic designation), and so can have only one law on marriage per state.  What should that law be, taking into account the state includes so may different opinions?

The irony here is that the Protestants decided, by and large, to leave the issue of marriage to the state; which worked fine when Protestants could control the state.  Luther had his German princes; Calvin had Geneva; Elizabeth I had England, but when the Puritans found that too distasteful, and the people of England found the Puritan reign too distasteful, they had to decamp to Plymouth Rock to run things their way.  And their idea of church/state being conjoined led, among other things, to the founding of the colony of Rhode Island, where no church could be in charge.  In general, though, at least until the Supreme Court discovered the idea of a "wall of separation," Protestants were pretty much able to run society in line with their preferences (I emphasize Protestants because Roman Catholics weren't allowed to get much of a national foothold in American politics, as witness the concerns that JFK would take orders from Rome).  But with the "wall of separation" cases, that control began to break down (and historically speaking it had already broken down; the Supreme Court, like the Congress, follows the lead of the people; it never creates it).

I grew up with the change from prayer in schools to no prayer in schools, and honestly, I don't remember the transition as a difficult one, even though I lived in Southern Baptist East Texas.  Maybe it was because my hometown had a Jewish synagogue (about the only one in East Texas, AFAIK), and a Roman Catholic church and high school, despite the dominance of Baptists.  Maybe; but the Baptists predominated,so that seems unlikely.  I don't really remember praying in schools, though my friends do.  All I remember is reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.  This was, however, still a hot button issue just a few years ago, and every once in a while someone tries to tie all the problems of the nation to the exclusion of prayer from public schools, so perhaps it's fair to say there all our troubles began.

It was certainly the line of demarcation between church and society, although at the ground level church was only ever a force in society in the most general and amorphous terms, and a great deal of what people I grew up with took as "Biblical" was actually just ethical in the Aristotelian sense, i.e., it was the accepted conduct of the community, with no more basis in the Scriptures than the Nichomachean Ethics has.  Still, when it became perceptible that the church was no longer in complete harmony with the state, the problems began.  Divorce; prayer in schools; mixed race marriages; these things may not have had official church sanction or been rooted in official church doctrines, but they were defended in religious terms, and the changes in them were taken, by the laity if not the church hierarchies, as a falling away from the Bible, if not directly from God.  And you still hear that language today, as witness the statements by Dan Cathy that prompted so much controversy.

This is not a problem limited to evangelicals and fundamentalists:  "The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile 'civil union' as citizens."  That's Cardinal George, again.  Is our "civil union" increasingly fragile because of same-sex marriages?  If so, then this business about Chick-Fil-A isn't a tempest in a teapot, after all.  But equally if so, then our "civil union" is fragile, indeed.  Obviously, I don't think it's that fragile.  One might as well agree with Dan Cathy that God's judgment is about to be visited upon us:

... because we have not acknowledged God and because we have not thanked God, that we have been left victim to the foolishness of our own thoughts, and as result, we are suffering the consequences of a society and culture who has not acknowledged God or not thanked God—he’s left us to a deprived mind. It’s tragic and we live in a culture of that today.

As I say, given the presence of common law marriage in Texas for over 100 years, that could be a fair description both of Texas, and maybe an explanation of our problems this whole time.  Funny nobody's made that argument yet.

It's all a matter of how you aim it, in other words.  Is it a "deprived mind" that decides "marriage" includes people living together without either the blessing of any church, or the public action of the state?  If not, why not?  Seems to me that redefines marriage as certainly as any acknowledgement of same-sex marriage.  But some definitions arouse our ire, while others go unremarked.  Why?  Largely because someone is outraged enough by the situation to arouse our ire.  If the outrage is new, we too are shocked, shocked!  to learn that we have entered this brave new world that can have such creatures in it!  If it isn't new, we wonder what there is to be outraged about.  Is anybody in the general public really moved anymore about the issue of prayer in schools, or of mixed race marriages, or even of easily obtained divorces?  Somebody somewhere is, but do we join in their outrage, or consider them foolish and behind the times?

None of which gets to the question:  what is marriage about?  Is it about procreation?  If so, are childless couples truly married?  Is it about property?  If so, "let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together."  Is it about sex?  Or is it about creating a family?  And can family only mean Mom, Dad, and 2.5 kids?  If so, what interest does the state have in enforcing these things?  Is there more inherent social stability in Mom and Dad than in Dad and Dad?  Is society improved by couples procreating?  If so, should the state enforce reproduction, enforce fertility treatments, even break up childless couples and encourage them to re-marry and re-produce?

In the end, which sounds sillier:  to oppose same-sex marriage, or to make the state take seriously all the reasons for "traditional" marriage by making them more often come true?  Both involve changing current circumstances based on definitions of "marriage," but one seems a bit more tenable than the other.  The major challenge to our social order is our willingness to adapt to changing circumstances.  Protestants ceded the authority over marriage to the state some 500 years ago; that some of them may now regret that decision doesn't mean it's not too late to close the barn door.  People like Dan Cathy are welcome to try, but they are clearly swimming against the tide.  It may be surprising that Mr. Cathy's remarks provoked such a brouhaha, but that simply indicates how much times have changed, and how slowly, again, our institutions are catching up with the people.

Same as it ever was.








*And before them, Chaucer's Wife of Bath reconceptualized marriage.  No, seriously. You could look it up!

Of opinions and chicken sandwiches and God's mercy

The local news today is full of stories of lines of cars circling blocks around local Chick-Fil-A's, yesterday, and packed restaurants with supporters quoted as standing up for the right to have an opinion.

Even Glenn Greenwald thinks Chick-Fil-A is entitled to its opinion, especially when governmental power is going to be used to quash that opinion.  And I suppose, in that sense, this is Skokie, Illinois all over again, and whether or not the Nazis have a right to a parade permit.

But I do wonder how many people would think Chick-Fil-A had a right to their opinion if that opinion was against mixed race marriages, or what in 1967 we called "miscegenation."  I don't have the statistics in front of me, but I do know "Star Trek" featured the first "interracial kiss" on television, between Uhura and Kirk (a forced kiss, but nonetheless).  At least, it's widely touted as the first interracial kiss on American TeeVee, and it would be decades before black and white couples would be shown at all (and then mostly in movies.  I can't think of a TV show that regularly features a mixed race (i.e., black and white; Asian or Hispanic seems to be okay, but not black and white) couple.  Maybe it's out there and I'm not familiar with it.

So what if Chick-Fil-A ownership was against miscegenation?  What if they were against women voting, or equal rights for women?  What if they based their opposition to the Voting Rights Act on Biblical principles?  Or if they objected to child labor laws, based on their religious beliefs?  Mother Jones became the name of  a magazine because she led a Children's Crusade to Teddy Roosevelt's summer retreat, demanding the then-President back laws restricting child labor.  TR told them to go pound sand.  Not as recent as Loving v. Virginia, but still within the 20th century.  Would support for Newt Gingrich's insane ideas on child labor be just an opinion?  Would a Biblically based opposition to Loving v. Virginia just be an "opinion"?  Would open racial hatred and support for white supremacy (based, again, on the Bible; there are plenty of people who can do that) be an "opinion," and nothing more?

Maybe it's a free speech issue when city mayors try to throw their weight around and decide who is acceptable, and who isn't, in their business communities.  But would anyone be as upset if Rahm Emmanuel had objected to a white supremacist trying to open a fast food franchise in Chicago?  Or would we be screaming at the ACLU for defending the rights of white supremacist to sell bad food at cheap prices?

White Man's Burden

If you recall, Mitt Romney's original remarks about "Culture" and "Palestine" included comparisons between the U.S. and Mexico.

 I was thinking this morning as I prepared to come into this room of a discussion I had across the country in the United States about my perceptions about differences between countries. And as you come here and you see the GDP per capita for instance in Israel which is about 21,000 dollars and you compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority which is more like 10,000 dollars per capita you notice a dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.

He tried to deny he'd said it, but now he's decided he likes the idea of superior cultures.

“During my recent trip to Israel, I had suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it,” Romney wrote in the National Review. “In some quarters, that comment became the subject of controversy. But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture?”

Or the white man's burden?

But since Romney is only associated with a church which, until 1978, regarded African Americans as bearing the mark of Cain, and not openly racists groups like the KKK, this isn't racism.  Or rather, it is:

The statement, a suggestion that Israel had thrived while Palestinians struggled because of the innate superiority of the Israelis, was also something more. It was racist. There are two possibilities here. One is that Romney was given bad advice about what to say by his staff. The other is that he either ignored the advice he got or misunderstood it and was personally responsible for saying the stupid thing he said. (The likelihood of this latter possibility goes up, by the way, when it is noted that the language he used is similar to elements of his memoir in which he muses about the reason nations decline. In other words, he may actually believe the awful, damaging statement he made.) 

But who is going to say it is, or ask if Romney believes what he says (it might well be of a piece with his Mormonism, which would be even more awkward)?  How much analysis is going to be devoted to that issue, rather than to when Mitt Romney is going to release his tax returns, or what his next ad says about President Obama?  Three guesses, first two don't count.

Even David Kurtz at TPM, who recommended that link, elided the explosive topic of racism that is so blatant it really can't be ignored.  Racism is just so unseemly we can't talk about it unless the subject is clearly of a social and economic underclass.

I mean, it's not like Romney's a skinhead or a Southerner....

"When they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

“Don’t worry if a rule makes sense - the important thing is that it’s a rule. Arbitrary rules teach kids discipline. If every rule made sense, they wouldn’t be learning respect for authority, they’d be learning logic.” --- Stephen Colbert

In the valley of the dry bones....

I got this from Wounded Bird, who got it from nakedpastor.  And let me just say, yeah, we should be humble in our theology, but let me also say so few of us truly understand or properly employ theology that any attempt to encapsulate it in an image, is inevitably going to go wrong.

And this goes pretty wrong.

I used to have this argument with a friend in seminary, who had come to Christianity literally by conversion (I was born and reared; a very different course) through the fundies.  She dumped the fundamentalism but kept the resistance to "theology" as something too intellectual or too abstract for truly reaching God.  To each her own, of course, and we discussed the subject, we never violently argued about it.  But it's a curious argument to me, seeing as how much Christian doctrine and teaching and understanding over 2 millenia is built on theology, and how it's impossible to read the letters or the gospels of the New Testament and not be fully engaged in matters theological.  But somehow, especially now, theology is something wholly other that we'd be better off without, if we could just figure a way to slip this sinful state and state pure in the presence of the God of Creation (if not of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Which is to say just to identify God is to make a theological statement.  God tells Moses "I am that I am" is how he is to tell the children of Israel who has sent Moses to liberate them.  If that's not a theological statement, I don't know what is.  How do I set that aside in order to reach the presence of God?)

Well, now I'm seeming churlish and perhaps a bit resentful; and I don't mean that at all.  Nakedpastor isn't wrong in this cartoon; it's just the simplification of theology until it can be something we can stand apart from, that is wrong.  Aquinas reportedly had a mystical vision at the end of his theological career which, he said, made all he had written appear as straw; and he never wrote again after that.  But this raises several interesting issues:  was that vision a result of, or in spite of, his theological efforts?  And either answer you give, is a theological answer.  You may prefer a very simple reply; you may deplore the complexity of theology, especially of systematic theology (which is only one branch of theology, not the whole of the subject), and take the very Protestant stance that too many words get between the soul and God, rather than make God clear to the soul.  You could cite centuries of mystics, many of the Roman Catholics (ironically) in support of your claim.  But if God is the simplest of all, as Leonard Bernstein's Celebrant sings in "Mass," what happens when the simplicity encounters reality (as it does in "Mass")?

That's one way to go.  The other side of the issue is exemplified by Chris Hedges. I've never attended Harvard Divinity School, I don't know what it emphasizes in its degree programs, but I assume from the works of Chris Hedges where he details his life as a divinity student and a pastor, that there is no small emphasis on the abstruse and abstract subject of theology.  One could use Hedges, unfairly, as an example of how a Harvard education does not prepare one for ministry (I sometimes think Hedges is still living out, and with, that disappointment).  But that's the usual response of fundamentalists and "evangelicals," that seminaries and divinity schools teach one how not to believe in God, and the usual culprit is theology, which somehow keeps you from appreciating, or even approaching, God.  Not that most fundamentalists or evangelicals put much more emphasis on the knowledge of God, emphasizing as they do knowledge of what it takes to earn the salvation of God ("Let Jesus into your heart!") and to keep that salvation.

But that, too, is a theology.

Which would bring us back to the cartoon, wouldn't it?  Because surely that's an example of our theology holding us back from truly apprehending God; or of theology reshaping God in our preferred image (as a non-fundy/non-evangelical believer, I'm very comfortable in saying I don't recognize the God "they" worship).  But the critique of that position, comes from theology; the correction to that position, comes from theology.  Any apprehension of God at all, any understanding that what we have experienced is not delusion nor demonic, comes through theology.

Miserable creatures that we are, who is there to set us free?

Be careful; your answer will involve theology.

By now you are convinced that I am just playing Socrates, employing what Walt Kelly once described as the "buckshot use of the curved question."  You are convinced of that if you are trying to challenge my argument; if not, you're just going along with me, which is not fair to you.  But consider the idea that theology is merely a ball and chain which we must remove in order to "rise" to the Good (oops!  Sorry.  God.  Got too Platonic there), much as we must shed our mortal sight in order to leave the cave and see the true things (so there was a reason for that Platonic knee jerk reaction).

So the upshot of the image is that either I need an faith hacksaw to cut away my chains, or I need a belief incantation to transmute the base metal of the ball into a balloon.  Either way, I've got to stop letting it hold me down.

Okay.  But how do I know what is holding me down is not valid, if I don't have the structure of theology to enlighten me?  Do you see this woman?

That was Jesus' question to Simon, the Pharisee.  Jesus used the prostitute who wept over his feet to make a theological point to Simon, a student of Jewish teachings (not properly theology, since theology is a Greek concept, and Simon was in the Hebraic, soon to be Jewish, tradition).  Any challenge to one's idea of what God demands or desires, is a theological challenge (at least in Christian circles).  Luke uses the story of the anointing to make a very valid theological point:  that a blessing from God is bestowed, not earned; and that just as God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust alike, God is free to bestow blessings as God sees fit.  Any statement about the nature of God is necessarily a theological one (unless it's a matter of philosophy of religion).  But does my theology hold me back from seeing that?  It can; Simon's does.  It is also, however, theology that allows me to see the woman has not earned her blessing, she has simply been given it.  Merely by asking the question "Do you see this woman?", Jesus is violating all manner of religious and social taboos.  He is a holy man, and he is making himself unclean by allowing her to touch him, even just with her hair and tears.  He is a holy man, and he not only acknowledges the woman among the men, but speaks directly to her, and blesses her.  Merely by asking that question Jesus is raising all manner of theological challenges.  There are almost too many theological statements being made there to count.  How are we to interpret this correctly, if not theologically?

And how much of that theology holds me back?  And how much of it helps me to see?

"My theology" is even a bit of a misnomer.  If I have "a theology," it is necessarily part of a larger discourse, or it isn't theology at all, it's merely a set of personal preferences.  My personal preferences as to the nature of God and of my relationship to God is certainly a ball and chain if I don't submit them to challenge, if I don't place them before the community of believers and allow them to be critiqued.  For one thing, we are back to the distinction between the demonic and the divine, and we needn't believe in demons to understand the distinction.  The person who is guided by the "voices" in his head may not be demon possessed, but he is certainly cut off from the community of others.  Any claim to an experience of God is invalid until the community of believers validates it, and yes that can mean the validity of snake handlers as much as it means the validity of the occupant of the Papacy.  No man or woman is an island, especially in these matters.  Theology is a construct and a conversation, participated in by many voices over 2 millenia and the 7 continents of the world.  "My theology" may be the theology of Protestantism or Orthodox Christianity or the Coptic Church, but it is never mine alone, or it is not "theology" at all.  Indeed, the cure for "my theology" is not "No theology," but theology itself.  If you think theology is only what you believe, U R DOING IT WRONG!

As example, I humbly submit George Zimmerman, who says the shooting of Trayvon Martin was God's plan  That is a theological statement; and it is "a theology."  But it isn't really theology at all; and it isn't theology that is keeping George Zimmerman from truly reaching God; if anything, it is lack of theology.

Which puts us back to the nature of theology.  Theology is complicated, and yet God is the simplest of all.  Well, maybe.  God is simple when I get to define the terms of the discussion.  God is simple right down to having a plan for the life of Trayvon Martin that suits my life story and maybe even lets me off the hook, morally if not legally, for murder.  But if that simple story doesn't suit the family of Trayvon Martin, whose story gets to prevail?  Immediately we are involved in a tangle of competing interests and perspectives, and suddenly even "my theology" can't be as simply represented as a ball and chain that holds me down from reaching God.  Maybe nothing is so simple, and what I consider essential or important, is really only essential or important from my point of view.  And how valid is "God" if "God" is merely a construct of my solipsism, as so many critics of religion claim?  How do I escape that trap without consulting a community of believers, and by what system or construct do I classify and assess their responses, their perspectives, their competing theological claims?  If I don't do it with theology, how do I do it at all?

You see, what you do is theology; what I do is faith.  Mine, being simpler, wins.  And if you agree with me, you have faith, too.  If you don't, you're being held down by your theology.  My theology is no theology at all; which makes it better.

Nothing always trumps something.  Except, as Lear says to Cordelia, "Nothing will come of nothing, speak again."  Beware of that, though, because immediately you respond, immediately you speak again, you will be involved in theology.

And there's the problem:  if I subject your beliefs to critique, I'm "doing theology" and it's unfair or unkind or harsh or even unGodly.  And it can be; but so can ignorance and blind faith.  But without critique, without evaluation by a community of believers, what do you have, except nonsense?  Science always has adherents who claim science is superior because it is tested by peers, but there's nothing unique in that.  The only difference between the work of Aristotle and modern science is the lack of reverence for the observations of Aristotle.  There are precious few assertions in theology which have been accorded the reverence that was given to Aristotle for so many centuries; indeed, we haven't yet reached the break even point between the years of fealty and the years of criticism where Aristotle is concerned.

But theology will not allow me to reach God.  It simply won't.  Theology will, however, allow me to know when I have reached God.  Call it Hamlet's dilemma.  Visited by a ghost who resembles his dead father, Hamlet is charged with avenging his father's murder.  But the murderer is Hamlet's uncle, now King of Denmark.  How does Hamlet justify this murder to the people of Denmark?  They might accept the burden of the son to avenge the father, but on what evidence does he justify regicide?  The word of a ghost who has only spoken to Hamlet?  What if the ghost is a demon, trying to destroy Hamlet?  How can he be sure?

Hamlet doesn't dither because he is weak in character; he delays because he's put in an impossible situation, literally damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.  To whom can he turn to evaluate his situation, to determine if what he has been told is true, or is mere delusion?  Few of us are Abraham who, being simply told to go, will follow.  We may not be as skeptical as Thomas, but we need some reason to believe.  We need to have something to say, some argument to make, some explanation for our faith.  We need some kind of theology, or the experience of God can simply be a devastating one.

Mother Teresa famously suffered the absence of God throughout her life in India.   Theology did not offer her the comforts the absence of God's presence removed, but it gave her a vocabulary and a structure for her thoughts and feelings on the matter.  Doris Grumbach wrote a small, spiritual memoir about an experience she had as a young woman, an experience she was, and is, convinced was an experience of the presence of God:

What happened was this:  sitting there, almost squatting on those wooden steps, listening to the quiet,  I was filled with a unique feeling of peace, an impression so intense that it seem to expand into ineffable joy, a huge delight.  (Even then I realized the hyperbole of these words, but I could not escape them.)  It went on, second after second, so pervasive it seemed to fill my entire body.  I relaxed into it, luxuriated in it.  Then with no warning, and surely without preparation or expectation, I knew what it was: f or the seconds it lasted I felt, with a certainty I cannot account for, a sense of the presence of God.

 The rest of her book, rather like Julian of Norwich's experience, or that of Simone Weil (to whom Grumbach feels a kinship), is spent trying to understand that experience, and put it in the context of her life.  Is that a theological pursuit?

If it isn't, what is?

Theology can be a dry pursuit.  Kathleen Norris despises it; she metaphorically spits on the ground whenever she mentions the word in her books.  Yet I find her books theological, in the best sense of the word.  Theology can become the pursuit of distinctions no one else cares about, but even from those distinctions, wisdom can break through. That theology comes after the call of God to Abraham, or the burning bush speaks to Moses, or an itinerant rabbi speaks to Peter, is of no matter.  Peter has to decide, later, what it is he has been left to do.  He has to decide whether food can be clean or unclean, and who can be invited to the table:  children of Abraham alone, or Gentiles as well.  That decision, is decided in the realm of theology.  It is still debated:  who is welcome to the Eucharist?  Who, indeed, as undergone a Christian baptism?  These are not minor matters, because whatever peace the presence of God may bring, it's absence does not leave behind peace.  I have noted in my copy of Grumbach's book:  "...Luther is supposed to have said that not once in his life had her prayed entirely undisturbed by any distracting thoughts."  The author of those words is Søren Kierkegaard.  

Theology is those distracting thoughts; but it is also the way we try to find release from those distracting thoughts; even as that, too, can become a way of distracting ourselves.  For some, theology is the thicket of thorns we need to escape; for others, the only route of escape is to push through.  When the pursuit becomes an end in itself, it is helpful to remember the experience of Aquinas.  But it is also useful to wonder whether that experience came in spite of Aquinas' life long efforts; or because of them.

One answer is as valid as the other.

.

Romney is Q?

Is it too early to say "I told you so"?

Or is it just too churlish?

ROMNEY: Well this person shouldn’t have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won’t. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential, to improve the lots of the American people.

Because lorry nose, there's nothing the law can do!  Our only hope is to change human nature!  Or the gravitational constant of the universe.  Whichever is easier.

But changing the laws so crazy people can't get guns so easily?  Why, that's just crazy talk!

Responsibility and its Discontents

Why does these apologies make me think of squids disappearing in a cloud of ink?

Louie Gohmert:

Some of my comments in an interview with Ernie Istook on his Heritage Foundation radio show have been grossly taken out of context. Ernie is a good friend and former Congressman who asked for the interview long before the horror in Colorado. I had promised him a 10 minute interview and the topic scheduled for discussion was to be the economy and the President’s comments about it. When I learned of the tragedy I was heartbroken. Such devastation fills our hearts with sympathy making us want to hug our family and that should have been the extent of my comments. Prayers immediately went out for the victims and their families and their community.

Instead of the prearranged interview, Ernie asked me about the shooting in Colorado mentioning a Washington Post column that already brought up the issue of gun control, as well as, asking about my own personal experience as a judge with years on the bench. Tragedies immediately become personal, and I thought about our shooting in Tyler and what a hero Mark Wilson was along with another prior shooting in Texas. As a father, my heart goes out to those who lost loved ones in this heartless attack. The killings were a senseless, outrageous act. Our thoughts and prayers continue for all those so tragically affected, and I am very sorry if my comments caused heartache to anyone in Colorado.

I left the links in there so you can judge for yourselves how Rep. Gohmert's remarks were "taken out of context."  It's a nice dodge, especially just before slipping in the requisite passive voice apology:  "if my comments caused heartache to anyone in Colorado."  Or embarrassment to anyone in Texas; but that doesn't matter.   Nice work, too, separating himself from what he said, because, you know, words just come through us, they don't come from us.

Now is not the time to remind Rep. Gohmert, who was moved to quote Jesus into the Congressional Record over the shooting he mentions in his apology, that Jesus also said it's not what goes into you that matters, but what comes out of you.  I'm sure Jesus didn't mean words, though.  That would be harsh.

All the requisite elements, then, including the word "sorry" somewhere in the verbiage.  It's almost a standard text. 

Russell Pearce:

 "There comes a time when explaining stops making sense and you are better off simply apologizing. So for those who were offended by my post regarding the shootings in Aurora, please accept my apologies. When I wrote it my heart was heavy and we were concerned about the fate of one particular young lady who we knew was at that theater that night. The points I tried to make were not presented well ... and have since been lost in the furor that resulted.

The most important thing, now as then, is that our thoughts and prayers remain with the victims, their families and all of those effected. There were great acts of courage in that theatre and our hearts have been moved to hear about them, like the stories of three young men who had taken their dates to the movies and ended up sacrificing their lives by shielding their girlfriends’ bodies with their own; what love, sacrifice and courage. My wish was simply for a miracle that might have saved lives in this horrific senseless attack.

I will never understand policies that disarm honest citizens and leave them vulnerable to the premeditated attacks of madmen, but it is still far too early for any sort of discussion over how to prevent the next such attack. When that time comes, we need to involve not just those involved in the debate over guns and public safety, but over mental health as well. We need to find out if there are better ways to be able to spot and help someone whose mental state is deteriorating as badly as this young man’s did.

For now, I remain very sorry for my remarks and any possible pain they may have caused."

 Again, the careful distinction between the speaker and his words ("my remarks") and an even more careful refusal to take responsibility for them ("any possibly pain they may have caused").  Careful use of the passive voice is critical to the modern public apology.  He also rather neatly continues to blame the victims for not being armed (the same thing Gohmert originally did; maybe that was the part "taken out of context"?) without appearing to do so.  And, again, the cloud of ink:  "The most important thing, now as then, is that our thoughts and prayers," and so on, and so forth.  Why you lookin' at me?  Now is not the time.  And by the time it is the time, you'll have forgotten this, and my deleted Facebook posts will be history, and we can all forget I was an asshole in public, mkay?

A cloud of ink, and away!

I suppose we should be grateful Messrs. Pearce and Gohmert at least feel the need to apologize for their comments.  That's some kind of progress.

Sucks to be you, pilgrim

Wholly consonant with the theme of responsibility in the Batman trilogy, comes, as a result of the Batman film, yet another national non-discussion about gun control.  Whenever a heinous crime fixes the national attention, responsibility is always the first cry.  The criminal is responsible.  The state is responsible for not containing the criminal, especially if the criminal has a record.  Politicians are responsible for not passing severe enough laws, police are responsible for not catching criminals soon enough, courts are responsible for letting criminals get away on "technicalities."  The criminal's family is responsible for not recognizing the warning signs of the heinous crime.  Even the victims may be responsible.

The air is thick with responsibility.  But what is never responsible is the weapon; if that weapon is a gun.

Guns don't kill people.  People kill people. Evil kills people.  But guns never kill people.

Part of the corollary of Reinhold Niebuhr's thesis in Moral Man and Immoral Society is that societies, large groups, nation-states, ultimately cannot be held responsible for their actions (set aside the troubled application of "war crimes," noting that such crimes are only applied to the vanquished, never the conquerors).  They cannot be held responsible, under Niebuhr's theory, because they cannot be moral.  Societies, Niebuhr argues, cannot choose the self-sacrifice of morality.  They can only act to preserve the members of their order (perhaps at the sacrifice of some, but never at a risk to all).  A society which does act to sacrifice all its members is no longer a society; and so its act is never moral, even if the sacrifice is the "right thing to do."  Bruce Wayne/Batman flies away with the nuclear bomb at the end of "The Dark Knight Rises," because it is a moral act.   But he is an individual.  There is nothing moral in leaving the bomb in the city.  One act is moral; the other is simply evil.  But the society can even expect the individual to sacrifice on its behalf, could demand it, if necessary.  Societies cannot be moral; only individuals can.

Neither, then, can they societies be morally responsible.  Societies can be responsible for justice, especially to the members of the society.  But societies cannot be held responsible for being immoral; people can be immoral, individuals can be immoral; societies cannot.  They can, however, be just.  They can do justice to their members, and it is justice a society must uphold.  Justice is not morality, but it is as close as a society can come, and it is where any society must go:  towards justice.  American society is a just society, with one glaring exception.  For one reason or another, American society feels it would be held responsible if it ever acted to control access to guns, if it ever enacted truly meaningful gun control.  It feels as if gun control were a moral issue, rather than a justice issue.  Unable as a society to accept the burdens of morality, unwilling on this issue to pursue the proper ends of justice, unable to recognize that gun control is not an issue of societal morality but rather of societal justice, we put the blame on abstractions; and our first choice for blame is "evil," because only evil is powerful enough to undo justice and so release us from any societal obligation to protect our citizens that we might have.

When do you ever hear "evil" used as an excuse to learn to accommodate crime in America?   A serial killer is evil.  A pedophile is evil.  A rapist, an arsonist, especially if they strike again and again, is evil.  The Unabomber was evil.  But no one ever says because the pedophile is evil, there is nothing we can do about them.  No one ever says that because the rapist is evil, we are helpless to prevent them raping again.  No one says we must accept arson as the cost of being a free society, because we cannot stop the arsonist, that arson is evil and nothing can be done about it.  And we can't, in one sense.  One more arrest for rape doesn't dissuade the next rapist.  One more sex offender put on the public lists, doesn't stop another one from lurking near school yards or following children down sidewalks.

But when the crime is a mass shooting, evil renders us powerless.  Evil has struck again, and who can stop it, any more than they can stop the rain, a flood, a tornado?  Worse, we can prepare for natural disasters, but the only preparation for another shooter is to become shooters ourselves.  But to prevent it, to limit it, to control it by controlling access to the weapons, to the ammunition, to the ability to commit the crime?  No, we can't do that.  We can do it for floods, for hurricanes, even for tornados.  But not for guns; because we can't prevent evil.

We can't prevent arson or rape or child sexual abuse, either.  We can't lock up all combustible materials, all matches, all sources of flame.  We can't prevent rape by castrating all suspicious males.   That doesn't mean we can't try to control it.  And if we can try to control that, we can try to control gun crimes.  Does anyone seriously believe a mass murderer would walk into a theater and begin stabbing people, or throwing knives?  If we can't take away the guns, we can take away ammunition, rendering guns expensive paperweights.  There may be some limited right to bear arms; there is no right to fire them.  We can tax ammunition as a means of controlling guns.  We can do that much.

But, apparently, we can't; because mass shooters are evil.  And there is nothing you can do to stop evil.

[Bill] O'Reilly mocked [Bill] Moyers for his criticism, saying the PBS host "has no clue, no clue at all."

"He apparently believes that federal and state governments can actually control gun crimes," O'Reilly said with disbelief. "That's so dumb it hurts."

O'Reilly listed off gun violence statistics in various cities, highlighting that Chicago has seen 1136 shootings this year, even with a ban on hand guns in public.

"How about your state, Bill, New York?" O'Reilly taunted. "It has the fourth toughest gun law in the country. Sounds good, doesn't it? Ready? 2011 - nearly 4000 guns confiscated by New York City cops."

Unfortunately for O'Reilly, I was listening to Diane Rehm's show.  The guns that enter New York state come from Virginia, and other states nearby with virtually no gun control laws.  The laws in New York state work very well at controlling guns. What they can't do, is control guns in Virginia.  What the New York state laws can't do, is prevent guns from crossing the state border.  Most of those 4000 guns O'Reilly mentioned can be traced to out of state purchases.

O'Reilly might just as reasonably mock US drug laws.  Drugs are illegal here, but they cross our borders anyway.  Are drug control laws, then, worthless?  (I might say "yes," but for reasons different from why guns should be controlled).  O'Reilly, of course, would reject the comparison out of hand.  And as for the question of any attempt at control at all:  we deal with river banks better than this.

So pay attention to the arguments, because they all come back to the same thing:  we can't do anything about guns, because we don't want to.  Gun crimes is a special kind of crime:  it's the kind we put up with, because we choose to.  All the victims in Aurora, or in the next shooting, or in any shooting before last Friday morning, are sacrifices this society makes to the principal of freedom to have access to guns.  We paper over it with talk of "evil" or of everyone else being armed or with any distraction we can come up with.  But that's really what it comes down to.

No matter who you are, your life is not nearly as important to us, as our idea of freedom to possess and use guns is.

That is immoral.  That is unjust.  But in America, right now; that is the way it is.  Whether we can face that honestly or not, is another matter.

ADDENDUM:  lest you think I exaggerate, take a walk on the truly weird side, where a discussion of the shooter in Aurora and the possibility he was possessed by demons ends with this:
 

This is why evil feels so bad. We wouldn't mind so much if bad people got gunned down by a vengeful killer. But Evil doesn't work that way. Evil seeks innocent victims. That's why it's evil. We wouldn't feel so bad if vile, genocidal dictators get their just reward and hang, but evil seeks out the helpless old person, the vulnerable woman, the child yet unborn.

All we can do when faced with mindless evil is recognize that it is mindless. The only answer is that there is no answer. The murders in Aurora and the crazed face of James Holmes remind us that real evil is random and meaningless. It is deadly and ruthless and cruel simply to be deadly, ruthless and cruel. All we can do is gaze on in fascinated horror at the senseless suffering.

I don't even want to touch the topic of feeling good when "bad people" get gunned down by a "vengeful killer."  But as a lawyer and a pastor, I cannot countenance the idea that we are helpless in the face of "mindless evil."  It is "deadly and ruthless and cruel simply to be deadly, ruthless and cruel."  But we can certainly do more than "gaze on in fascinated horror at the senseless suffering."  As a society, and as moral individuals, we can do so much more.

And honestly, I would expect a Roman Catholic priest to understand that.