Defending love

I think this particular portion of the Holy Father's Christmas address to the Roman Curia is deserving of some attention, especially in light of my last post. Let His Holiness' words serve as the positive hypothesis that undergirds my critical comments about the California Attorney General's effort to negate a democratically enacted constitutional amendment. That we have a lot to do with regard to witnessing to the truth can be seen by an exchange that happened as the result of something I posted on Καθολικός διάκονος yesterday:

"Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term 'gender', results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind. This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation."

A deep diaconal bow to Rocco over at Whispers for the English translation of the Holy Father's remarks and for the photograph.

Petitio Principii in California

While I am on the subject of would be oligarchs, California Attorney General, Jerry Brown, who is the former and, if current reports are accurate, maybe the future governor of that state (reminds me of a friend who used to work for Louisiana State investigative division who told me that when out of office, the now prisoner, Edwin Edwards, was introduced as "the former, future governor of Louisiana"- I guess recycling extends to politics these days, too) and whose Dad was governor, is asking the state Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, a referendum passed on 4 November that amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. His reasoning? "Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification."

I guess explicitly defining the family in the way it was understood when the state constitution was written and ratified is not compelling justification. In other words, not only is the justification compelling, but to assert that there is a "fundamental constitutional" right at stake is to beg the question. The only basis for such a claim is the State Supreme Court's ruling back in May claiming such a right. The citizens of California rejected this claim and amended the constitution in a legal and fair manner. Hence, there is no reasonable basis for Attorney General Brown's argument. Alas, law these days has less and less to do with reason properly employed because legal arguments and judicial decisions are no longer grounded on any objective premises. As Alasdair MacIntyre describes us, we are an emotivist society with no way of arriving at a consensus that is not seen as an arbitrary imposition, a power play, of one side against another. Such attempts at ushering in rule by the judiciary do not bode well for the future of our constitutional system of government, which is grounded on objective premises. In addition to After Virtue, I am also reminded of the highly controversial 1996 First Things symposium, The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics.

So, here’s the question, why is an elected official seeking to overturn a legally enacted constitutional amendment? The lesson here is that, as voters, we need to stop playing both sides of the street. We must vote in a clear-headed manner. How can we continue support candidates who do not value what we hold dear and expect anything different?

Banking on an Oligarchy

Deacon Scott Dodge cites two recent editorials during the interregnum between Bush and Obama, one from Thomas Friedman, "The Great Unravelling", and the other a poignant reflection from The New Republic, "Important People" (clipped at Paper Clippings). Unravelling is the word for it because the dynasties have been in place and on the take for a long time.

Friedman compares Madoff's actions with Wall Street generally:

I have no sympathy for Madoff. But the fact is, his alleged Ponzi scheme was only slightly more outrageous than the 'legal' scheme that Wall Street was running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and high greed. What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a nothing-down and nothing-to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a $750,000 home, and then bundling that mortgage with 100 others into bonds — which Moody’s or Standard & Poors rate AAA — and then selling them to banks and pension funds the world over? That is what our financial industry was doing. If that isn’t a pyramid scheme, what is?

And Leon Wieseltier is by turns angry and philosophical:

In a society as wounded as our own, there is something repellent about the assertions of elitism. Its most awful expression, of course, is the acquiescence of almost everybody in the dynastic ambitions of the Kennedys. I can almost not imagine a more obvious mutilation of the meritocratic ideal than the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the United State Senate. A Senate seat is a fucking valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing. But of course it will not be given away for nothing: the princess and her family will be delighted to pay for it. Ever since this democratic indignity was broached, the really smart talking point has been that she has the money for her eventual campaigns....

A society may be measured by whom it admires. No class of Americans has done more to damage America than the financial class. A generalization is an ugly thing, but every day's newspaper refreshes my impression that the titans, the insiders, the big players, the boldfacers, the movers and the shakers-the hoshover menschen, as we say where I come from-have been, many of them, fools or thieves....

In these days of dread I prefer to linger over all the people who have never been able to facilitate a favor. The media that used to be fascinated by the pleasures of the rich is now fascinated by the pains of the rich, but the fascination is the same, and it contributed to the bubble that burst in all our faces, and it interferes now with what we really need to know. When I read the papers I skip guiltlessly over the desperate sales of jewels and summer homes and go straight to the accounts of unglamorous desperation, of ordinary people helping each other because otherwise they would be even more powerless than they are.

I add the Deacon's comments as a judgment because the economy is a human endeavor and must be managed as such; the consumeristic credit-heavy model is unreasonable, unjust, unstable and ultimately unsatisfying.

Who besides Bernard Madoff, who turned himself in, has even been indicted? Did nothing untoward or illegal occur in the respective collapses of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns? What about that hole in A.I.G. that $125 billion of taxpayer money has not been able to fill? Given that, why not chuck $14 billion, a mere 11.2% of what's been flushed down the A.I.G. toilet, Detroit's way? For that matter, what about Mr. Paulson and his oh so urgent bailout, which appears to be nothing but another brazen executive power-grab by the Bush Administration? Dear Hank, what has your scheme to keep those whom you personally deem to be important people afloat corrected, fixed, or gotten headed in the right direction, how many foreclosures has it forestalled? Why is the only fix I ever hear mentioned more consumer spending? Isn't this ridiculous, given that more and more people do not even have jobs? Besides, isn't out-of-control spending, lending, and borrowing what got us into this mess in the first place? If I understand this idiotic reasoning correctly, we do not need regulatory reform and sounder national economic policies, consumer education, better personal financial discipline, and higher overall savings rate. No, our broken and shattered economy will be fixed by everyone buying new microwaves and iPods on our credit cards; that's like saying our greenhouse gas emission problem will be solved by everyone returning to the use of coal furnances and barbecuing with charcoal brickettes every night, while idling our cars in our driveways. Hey, it's almost Christmas and, as Ricky Bobby might say, "Baby Jesus needs a new pair of shoes!" Let's go for broke! Wait! We're already broke! Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Values Need Reason

David Brooks is an astute observer of the Republican party, and his latest editorial offers insight into the disintegration of some of the recent McCain-Pain political rallies. What he says is crucial to the reconstitution of the party after this awful election.

Brooks recalls the conservative intellectual tradition, which included such greats as Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley. In Ronald Reagan's time, there was still an intellectual following with a preference for traditional values. Brooks observes that this has all changed recently.

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

Republicans developed their own leadership style. If Democratic leaders prized deliberation and self-examination, then Republicans would govern from the gut.

The Republican party, according to Brooks, has deliberately fostered this divide: "The G.O.P. had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Rudy Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking “eastern elites.” (Mitt Romney!) John McCain picked Sarah Palin." Brooks goes on to show how in every category, educated people have been alienated out of the Republican party.

Brooks gives credit to Sarah Palin for being smart, but she also plays up this "class-warfare" card, as was painfully obvious even in her diction at the vice-presidential debate.

This inability to engage on the level of reason is a fundamental problem for the political party which espouses critical values for social survival. When Mike Huckabee stated we should change the Constitution to make it conform with the Bible, he wasn't extending the natural law argument for marriage which could convince Jews, Muslims and thoughtful non-believers.

This abandonment of reason happens because people of faith concede that faith is a personal preference, lived separately from the rest of life. Believers become a club of people who get it, as opposed to the majority who just don't. Faith is ghettoized, and it becomes easier to sneer than to do the hard work of thinking, arguing and reasoning with others toward an understanding of crucial human problems which ultimately we need to solve together.

Magdi Cristiano Allam at Meeting 2008, Rimini

[The most dramatic talk for me so far was given this morning by journalist Magdi Cristiano Allam. You may recall he is the former Muslim who was baptized by the Pope this past Easter. He travels with bodyguards as he remains under a death threat as an apostate to Islam. As I was listening to his courageous speech, I was reminded of my visit to the Solzhenitsyn exhibit yesterday, and found Allam a fine successor to the Russian writer in his unflinching commitment to truth. The journalist John Waters (notes to follow) shared the panel with Allam. The following are my notes from Allam's portion of the panel titled, "Christianity is not a doctrine but an encounter: two journalists tell their stories". Pictures to follow.]

Allam told the crowd that they are the protagonists with their certainty of truth in Christ, strong in a solidarity of values and determination to act. He expressed gratitude for CL which he called "my house of values". Within this house, I have met authentic witnesses of faith."

From the time Allam was first invited to the Meeting in 2003 until what he called the most wonderful joy of his life, his baptism on March 22nd by Pope Benedict XVI, in what seemed at first a chance encounter, providence gave this opportunity to him to take or leave.

When he was four years old, his mother was very poor and was a babysitter for a rich Italian family in Cairo. The family sent him to a Catholic school, which was the beginning of Allam's journey. He had the chance to learn of Christianity and to share life experiences with real witnesses of the faith, people devoted to Christ who lived their faith with good deeds, in a totalizing way that envelops our humanity. All this created in him the ethical awareness of life values as the center of existence with the person as the starting point. This ethical basis included the non-negotiable values of Pope Benedict XVI, universal legitimate values such as the sacredness of life and the dignity of the human being as the foundation of civil coexistence, respect for freedom, especially freedom of religion as the core. Along this journey, he was comforted and supported by many witnesses. Christianity is a matter of encounters and the witness of faith through good deeds.

On this journey, at one moment, he said, his spirituality corresponded perfectly with faith in Jesus. Pope Benedict XVI confirmed this in insisting faith and reason cannot be separated. He gave the challenge that everything at the level of reason corresponds to humanity and is perfectly valued even in the Christian religion, the religion of truth, freedom and life.

This is why he became convinced to side with the Pope on many issues, particularly after the Pope's address at Regensburg in 2006 on faith and reason, denouncing violence perpetrated in the name of God. That Islam was spread thorugh the sword is an historical fact supported by Islamic texts. This was traumatic for Allam. After the Pope said this, a brutal and general condemnation ensued with some requesting apologies, others removing ambassadors, and with extremists calling for a death sentence. The Pope was isolated by many critics in the Western media and even from Christian churches and Catholic prelates who found this speech undesirable. This made him ponder, and he recognized that today the West fears looking at the truth. It does not recognize one truth, and it is convinced the truth must stay hidden within ourselves. We are afraid to criticize others so think it is better not to express the truth. The root of this cowardly attitude is the ideological disease of relativism which deprives us of the use of reason. We want to put all religions, cultures, values and knowledge at the same level.

The West is victim of another ideology which is political correctness. In our approach with Islam, we cannot say or do anything to hurt sensibilities. Western culture has another ideological disease, goodism. As long as we give everybody rights and freedoms, everybody is happy. Goodism is the opposite of the common good which is based on rights and duties. Only then will it become good for all.

This led him to reflect on his 56 years of experience as a lay, moderate, liberal Muslim committed to faith and reason. He had worked with great passion and results he was proud of on recognizing fundamental rights, non-negotiables among Muslims. In 2004, he was involved in assembling a delegation of moderate Muslims to make a statement against terrorism. He was involved in affirming faith and reason and democracy. He was condemned to death by extreme Islamists.

This led him to reflect, and he was obliged to study and understand better the theological roots of Islam. Christianity is a religion of God become man incarnated in Jesus. Islam was a religion of text; the Koran was created by and with God and could not be subjected to reason and analysis. There are many verses in the Koran which legitimize the ideology of hatred and of death. Mohammed, by historical documents which are accepted also by Muslims, was a warrior who fought and killed. Some passages testify that he personally participated in crimes, including in the year 627 the decapitation of 700 male adult Jews at the gates of Medina. Muslims do not deny these facts. But he could not be indifferent to facts. His conclusion was of the incompatibility of values he believed and had fought for.

This led him to abandon Islam once and for all. He is condemning Islam as a religion, but he wants to distinguish between the religion and those people who follow it. Individual Muslims must be valued, respected, loved per se. And he finds affinity especially with those who respect human rights and common values. One must work together to build a common civilization. We must do this in the certainty of truth, disenfranchising ourselves from relativism. We should assert the dignity of Christianity and not jeopardize the solidity of our faith. The ability to share values is linked to our ability to be fully ourselves, protagonists of our life, recognizing the truth, that the certainty of the truth is one of the root values in us. Then we can become protagonists in personal and collective action for humanity.

Mary Ann Glendon at Meeting 2008, Rimini

Mary Ann Glendon, US Ambassador to the Holy See, addressed us on the Pope’s talk to the United Nations earlier this year. She said she witnessed the standing ovation for the Pope at the UN, but the message was complex and needs to be unpacked.

The Pope’s approach was to offer friendly encouragement to the UN. In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in Paris. Cardinal Roncalli, later John XXIII, praised this work, as did John Paul II later; the latter called it the highest expression of human conscience of our times. The potential for peaceful change was seen in Eastern Europe and South Africa.

In 1998 John Paul II saw two shadows over this Declaration, at Beijing and Cairo. Human rights is the common language of international relations. But the more human rights gains power, the more intense the effort to capture this power toward other ends.

In 1948, people scoffed at the idea that words could change the world. In 1989, words of truth changed the world. [The Berlin wall came down.] Good and evil was called by name. Vaclav Havel was a man of words, an artist, but he also worried about the power of words to be used as lethal arrows. A noble enterprise can take the wrong turn. The Human Rights project is so powerful it could be turned against the person.

Pope Benedict XVI praised the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for putting the person at the heart of the institution. But he pointed out fully nine warnings at the heart of the institution, nine dilemmas more acute as human rights advances.

1. Cultural relativism
2. Positivism
3. Problem of Foundations
4. Utilitarianism
5. Selective approach to rights
6. Escalating new rights
7. Hyper-individualism
8. Relationship of rights and responsibilities
9. Threat to religious freedom by dogmatic secularism

1. Cultural specificity can be used to hide behind vs. legitimate cultural pluralism. The inculturation of the Catholic church in various cultures has shown an accumulated experience which is not in opposition to rights and cultural underpinnings. On the other hand, the rise of cultural imperialism characterizes the professional international institutions which can be insensitive to local particularities.

2. The critique of positivism. Justice is denied when legality is divorced from its ethical foundation. The American founds of the Declaration of Independence acknowledged that rights are not erected by government, but are pre-political. Hamilton stated that the sacred rights of man are not found in old parchments but are written in human nature by the divinity.

Human rights come from laws discovered by reason and experience. To remove them from their context risks them. These laws are extremely important, as found in the Declaration of Human Rights. They are hard-won cultural achievements which are fragile in the postmodern world.

3. Foundations: Philosophical relativism is in the popular culture. Values are just preferences. There are no common truths. How can we uphold universal rights. Czeslaw Milosz said the fate of the old repertoire of the rights of man is beside an abyss, without religion how will they last?

Benedict XVI emphasizes reason and experience. But who decides? Liberal democracies depend on separation of powers, checks and balances, an 18th century European invention designed to govern large groups of people in freedom.

4. Another problem of foundations is utilitarianism, which seeks the greatest good for the greatest number. But this puts at risk the weakest members of society and can become just the will of the stronger.

5. Fundamental human rights can be treated with selectivity, with a menu of favorites while others are flaunted. For 60 years, the Holy See has been the biggest supporters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, providing for marriage, family, parental rights, religious freedom.

6. There is the pressure to expand the category of universal rights. The category can’t be closed as new situations arise, but there are more goods and desires which some demand to become universal rights. This trivializes core needs. They are agenda items. The Pope called for great discernment for legitimate vs. illegitimate new rights. The way to discern is to see what is healthy vs. harmful, and to see that these rights don’t privilege some groups.

7. The individualist approach denies the social dimension. Rights and duties come from human interaction, from solidarity in society. What are the assumptions about persons and their relationship to society? De Tocqueville predicted a new form of the despotism of the individual withdrawn into themselves and their banal pleasures.

8. Does a right recognize responsibility? A correlation between rights and duties is necessary.

9. The threat to religious freedom by dogmatic secularism, which insists on keeping religion from public life. This ignores the Biblical roots of modernity.

The positive answer from the Pope comes elsewhere in his writings, particularly in the address for La Sapienza to the legal faculty on juridical norms for dignity and human rights. The argument from the majority means that sensitivity to truth can be overruled by self-interest.

What is truth? That was the dilemma of Pontius Pilate. The Pope did not answer for them, but offered an invitation to search for the truth, to join the journey with the great ones with a restlessness for truth which beckons beyond an individual answer.

An 18 year old on another occasion asked the Pope this question. There are only two options. To recognize the priority of Reason at the beginning of all things, or to recognize the priority of the irrational where everything in life is accidental. The great option of Christianity is recognizing rationality and giving priority to reason.

The applications to the Human Rights Project show that self-serving tendencies to freedom are not the whole story. We have the same freedom to be protagonists, not nobodies. This should inspire us to decisive action so that we can help shift probabilities in favor of human dignity. In Spe Salvi, the Pope said that every new generation as the task to find the right way to order human affairs. The stakes are high, but can we embrace the task and accept the challenges.

Thunderbolt and lightning- very very frightening me! Galileo

Galileo. At La Sapienza, some professors (including one who wrote a secular hagiography of Galileo) objected to the University's invitation of Pope Benedict XVI. The main rationale given was that about 15 years before, the man- who- would- be- pope had quoted a statement on Galileo that fell short of adulation. Now, a statue of Galileo will be coming to the Vatican (hat tip: Catholic Sensibility).

By the way, Issue 2, 2008 Traces has a series of articles on the La Sapienza issues.