Ferguson and the Media

Here's my final thought on Ferguson for the time being. (The rest are on Facebook, incidentally, if you're accessing this through the blog and wondering,  "Last of what series?")

I've watched/listened to probably something like six hours of coverage in the last 36 hours.  One of the developing tropes, coming out of yesterday's press conference, is the role of the news media in all of this. I want to say something about that.

Let me admit up front that I have a natural affinity for, and probably even bias in favor of, journalism and journalists. This might, however, shock some readers who see me often decrying "the media" and especially "the mainstream media" as complicit in terrible things. But that's because I make a distinction when I speak of "the media" - and there's the rub. It wants elucidation.

I have in mind here especially the 24 hour news channels, but also the major wall-to-wall coverage engines that can now be managed online by everybody from the likes of HuffPo down to the local ABC affiliate that knows how to do on the Twittface.

I will repeat. I've tuned into about 6 hours of the last 36 hours of coverage. That's one sixth of the total coverage (#Maths). But during that time, I've seen a whole lot of the same things repeated over and over again.

When CNN and MSNBC and FOX get frustrated about being accused of shallow coverage, I can understand the frustrations of the journalists. They are often doing their jobs fairly decently. It is the editors and producers and consultants for marketing and all the rest of the managerial sort involved in making 24 hour news that are failing miserably. 

Repition is the mother of study. We learn through repetition - especially in this meme-filled, RT'ing, Buzzfed world. And if you take note of what the major 24 hour networks repeat, versus what is unique, it is fascinating. The repeated things are always the sensational things, the outrageous or scandalous things. Heading into every commercial break and coming back from it, we are hit with footage of burning cars and protestors shouting, tear gas being fired, and banners evincing a sense of urgency and crisis and Armageddon brought to you by Sears.

In between, you sometimes get treated to insightful commentary, but often these segments are framed around the same boilerplate. Each expert guest or leading figure is asked to comment on the clip we've seen a thousand times, of the political hack blathering at the podium or the angry step-father screaming amidst the crowd. And while the expert or leading figure might have something interesting to say, it only barely "informs" us because it's the sixth different opinion we've heard on a controversial matter. The image or soundbite itself, however, is firmly seared into our minds at least, and it keeps us hooked like a drug. We want to see what the next special person is going to say about it.

The whole style of presentation of all this is, overall, patronizing in the cheapest of ways. The anchor switches between every segment to greet the viewers who may have just tuned in with a "Breaking News Alert," which is actually an alert about news that broke five or six hours ago. The viewer who has been tuned in somehow falls for the trick each time, like a child when grandpa pulls the quartwr out from behind our eye - exactly like that, in fact, because we know it isn't magic, but grandpa is fun. So we fool ourselves into expecting that maybe they'll finally say something new, when - lo! - it seems to be just that the on-location reporter has moved to a different part of the street with a different car on fire of which we need so urgently to be informed, and said reporter goes on to tell us the same shit he told us twenty minutes past. The upshot for those who are, in fact, just tuning in is that they're too stupid to know why they're turning on a 24-hour news station at 8:42 PM and might really be shocked to find something happening somewhere, or at any rate too stupid to catch up in media res, because it isn't like they have words flashing all over the screen and a scrolling banner at the bottom telling you exactly what the hell is going on.

Now, some will say that it has to be this way or that's the market or whatever - and I say, "Bullshit."

Here's what should've been repeated during the 6 hours I spent watching Ferguson on the news lately:

- statistics about how many young black men that encounter cops are shot by cops, annually; compared to whites; and cross-referenced to relevant demographic data; (in fact, they'd find this data nearly impossible to gather, because somehow it is a big mystery how many cops even shoot people each year nationwide - so, yeah, media, about that job you're supposed to do...?)

- facts about how grand juries work, and how they are statutorily managed in the state of Missouri;

- facts about what civil disobedience means, citing relevant laws and court cases;

- handy tips on what are a person's rights regarding detention by police;

- facts about how protests work, and how they're governed under law - hell, you might even find cause to actually quote the First Amendment verbatim!

... but what, some may ask, would any of this accomplish? What would quoting the First Amendment verbatim do to inform us about what's happening in Ferguson?

Nothing. But neither does the shit it would replace. It would, on the other hand, educate us - which cannot be said for what it would replace.

If the First Amendment had been quoted *half the times* I saw the same pictures of tear gas and burning cars over those six hours; and if the number of black men aged 18-34 pulled over by cops last year in a given representative area were presented the other half of the time - then I'd go to bed tonight with those things solidly memorized, seared into my mind and forming germs for constructive thought. And I have a shrewd bet that, besides teaching me those two actually useful things (and maybe some more besides) they could've still found time to show me the same damn soundbite of Obama twenty or thirty times as well as twenty or thirty camera shots of the same damn car burning. I don't think I'd miss the other 150 helpings of each.

In short, media - please be journalists. Please, for the love of God, inform the public and educate the public and give them tools for productive democracy.

And repeat. Repeat for the sake of news, and leave repetition-as-entertainment to Hollywood and the creators of the Umpteenth rendition of SpiderMan. Repeat the useful stuff, and ease up on the things that add shock value (and distraction). Repeat even facts that have finer points that are debatable: be discerning, be partial, pick a fact and repeat it. Repeat at the expense of debate even: because the "dialogue" you present us in debating controversy is often nothing other than a trading back and forth of useless talking points constrained to the smallest point and the end result is just as liable to be stilted in partiality anyway by the anchors.

Repeat what is useful, I say again. (See what I did there?) And maybe, better informed and less distracted by infotainment static, our country will find a way not to repeat the tragic mistakes and failings that seem continuously to fill our 24-hour news cycles.

Monday is D-Day at SCOTUS - What I'm Watching For

I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a legal expert.

I'm a blogger and a sometime court watcher. And I'm someone who has followed with interest and engaged in activism regarding the Department of Health & Human Services' so-called "contraceptive mandate," a regulation enacted as part of the implementation of "Obamacare."

Surely my reader will be aware by now of the case pressed by Hobby Lobby stores and the owning family, the Greens, against this law. The case was heard, along with another similar case of a for-profit private industry, in March of this year. Now, everyone expects that this coming Monday - June 30th - will be "d-day" - decision day.

Those who follow my Facebook page, Standing with Hobby Lobby, will notice that I have gone more or less silent about this matter since the hearings in March. It is time that I explain myself on that score, which will deal with some of my expectations and apprehensions as Monday approaches and as we anticipate the decision of the Court.

"The dragon wishes to devour 'the child brought forth'"

Today has been an interesting day watching social media, as dueling opinions met both inside the chambers of the Supreme Court and outside on its steps to discuss whether people of faith in America should be forced by the government to compensate for morally objectionable services through the health care provided to their employees.

First, on social media, the ACLU and others declared their stripes by way of allusion to the 'Occupy' movement - because the politics of class war and race war and #waronwomen are all out of the same rule book:

RT if you stand w the 99% of women who have used #birthcontrol at some point in their lives. #NotMyBossBusiness pic.twitter.com/tu67LMdFD9
— ACLU National (@ACLU) March 24, 2014

The folks at Alliance Defending Freedom - the firm representing the Hahn family's Conestoga Woods Specialties, one of the two companies in court today against the mandate - came back with this clever riposte:

Paying for someone else’s abortion pills is 100% not healthcare. #ReligiousFreedomForAll #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/YDEnorDiau
— AllianceDefends (@AllianceDefends) March 25, 2014

The sloganeering of the day was an interesting facet, with the trending tag #NotMyBossBusiness carrying most of the pro-abortion and pro-contraception messaging... which kind of annoyed me on a couple points: because, well, #NotMyBossBusiness is #NotGrammaticalCorrect; and...

Despite bad weather outside of the Supreme Court, both sides were out in force. Perhaps the Instagrammish filter over this image from the Center for Reproductive Rights (don't get me started) was meant to lure people out because, wow look it's like sunny:

Awesome shot by @ReproRights' Federal Policy Counsel, Kristine Kippins! #NotMyBossBusiness pic.twitter.com/67DDeyMXqY
— Ctr for Repro Rights (@ReproRights) March 25, 2014

The prerequisite crass signs were on display, too (and happily spread around the internet by Planned Parenthood):

It may be cold out but this crowd is bringing it! #NotMyBossBusiness! pic.twitter.com/b4NSYCWJYC
— Planned Parenthood (@Latinos4PP) March 25, 2014

And the hand-in-glove relationship between the gay rights community and the pro-abortion lobby - a phenomenon which demands greater discussion and reflection - was also evident:

#NotMyBossBusiness at the Supreme Court! pic.twitter.com/P89W1d5B8J
— Planned Parenthood (@Latinos4PP) March 25, 2014

And there was this gal, very proud of her sign evidently. ["Psst: You forgot to add, between 'crafts' and 'cabinets,' a checked box for 'employing your ass at a decent wage in the first place when neither you nor they have been forced into that arrangement.'"]

Couldn't have said it better ourselves. #notmybossbusiness pic.twitter.com/Paij6rf7vs
— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) March 25, 2014

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But there were, as I said, plenty of folks were out from both sides.

I created and posted this image on Facebook earlier today because what it says seems to me strikes to the heart of the issue: This is an issue that impacts us all! We're all the Defendants now.

And I wasn't the only one reasoning thus... (and kudos to the #ReligiousFreedomForAll organizers or whoever made these signs which very nicely counter the "not my boss's business" meme):

Not partisan, just human. #NotMyBossBusiness #ReligiousFreedomForAll pic.twitter.com/JqZdZO5Tlc
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) March 25, 2014

But above all, it was good to me to see - on this Feast of the Annunciation - that prayer was a part of the demonstrations, because prayer is very much needed in this fight.

Prayer is needed because, as Blessed John Paul II reminded us in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae - first published exactly 18 years ago today - the fight is not just between flesh and blood, but involve higher (and lower) realities:

Mary thus helps the Church to realize that life is always at the centre of a great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness. The dragon wishes to devour "the child brought forth" (cf. Rev 12:4), a figure of Christ, whom Mary brought forth "in the fullness of time" (Gal 4:4) and whom the Church must unceasingly offer to people in every age. But in a way that child is also a figure of every person, every child, especially every helpless baby whose life is threatened, because - as the Council reminds us - "by his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every person". It is precisely in the "flesh" of every person that Christ continues to reveal himself and to enter into fellowship with us, so that rejection of human life, in whatever form that rejection takes, is really a rejection of Christ. This is the fascinating but also demanding truth which Christ reveals to us and which his Church continues untiringly to proclaim: "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me" (Mt 18:5); "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25:40).

While what was ostensibly being discussed - at least in the courtroom - today was a question of constitutional rights and authority, the real matter cuts much deeper:  Quid est homo? What is man? What is he for? What does our nature, our sexuality, the special union of man and woman that creates new life really mean for us? And what does it mean when we misuse that nature?

These are questions which we all need to ponder more deeply - some of us very direly.

We are the 99% of Catholic women who have used #birthcontrol. #NotMyBossBusiness pic.twitter.com/dLI2Gk7Y1E
— Catholics for Choice (@Catholic4Choice) March 25, 2014

It is sad to see the Gospel of Life rejected by so many, especially by those invited to fullest communion with Christ's Mystical Body through membership in His Holy Church. Christ Himself is that Gospel, is that Word of Life - something we are reminded of so profoundly as we reflect on the very beginning of it all, the Angel's visit to Mary. But the forces of the Evil One are seeking to destroy that Truth, to silence or distort the Word of Life. With God's grace, it is for us, His disciples, His messengers, to snatch that precious word from the clutches of the dragon.

So may we all strive to do better in proclaiming that Gospel, and doing the Works of Mercy - such as instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, and admonishing the sinner. But let us, most of all, lift up to prayer those who have wandered astray or who are lost, that they may be converted to the Truth and so come into eternal life.

O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life. Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy. 

Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time. 

Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives, and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life. -- Bl. J.P. II

Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, Who is Life itself: Pray for us. 

Poisoning the Water Cooler (Conversation)

In the headlines, in the articles, and in the comboxes, the indignation was palpable when the news took over the internet this week that a "homophobic" mother had taken the occasion of a 7-year-old's birthday party invitation to express her disapproval of the lifestyle of the two men raising the child.

From the K-98.3 Facebook post that started it all.

The headline in the Huffington Post article by James Nichols screamed, "Mom Writes Horrifying Response To Birthday Party Invite From Kid With Gay Dads."

The article explained the above image thus:

Originally posted on the K-98.3 Facebook page, the heartbreaking note allegedly written by a disapproving mother on an invite to a birthday party for a 7-year-old is certainly a testament to the work that still has to be done to overcome homophobia in our society.

Today, then, the news breaks that the entire thing was made up.

From the "message" on the radio station's webpage, posted by the hosts of the show that broke [i.e., fabricated] the story:

On Wednesday, we told you the story of Sophia's birthday party, and one parent's objection to the same-sex household of Sophia's parents.  We also posted the invitation on our Facebook page, and invited comments from our followers.

This story was, in fact, totally fictitious, and created by the two of us.  This was done without the knowledge of K-98.3 management or ownership.

We were attempting to spur a healthy discourse on a highly passionate topic.

"Attempting to spur a healthy discourse..."  I cannot imagine a more complete image of utter failure in that respect.

And I want to be clear before getting into this any further: this makes me absolutely furious.

Now, of course, HuffPo has updated its original story:

It now "appears" that way?

And how do you like that for a retraction?

Some might say a retraction isn't needed. But remember Nichols' original story? Let me quote a line once more.

While Nichols wrote that the note was " allegedly written by a disapproving mother," he then, in the very same sentence, went on to say that it was "certainly a testament to the work that still has to be done to overcome homophobia in our society" [emphases added].

Allegedly... certainly. And therein, my friends, lies the problem.

Everyone who uses Facebook has had it happen to him at one time or another that he clicked that"share" button and re-posted something, perhaps with a bit of emphatic, outraged commentary, only to find out later that it was untrue. I've had it happen myself, personally. And each time it's a reminder I need to be more diligent... to mind my sources... to double-check things... to verify and look for a source of better repute when a claim seems outrageous. And, all else failing, to issue a retraction when, despite all my efforts, I am duped.

But Nichols? From all I can tell, there was no due diligence whatsoever in the reporting of this story. Did he bother even calling the radio station to confirm? Did he try calling the phone number of the mother which was written right there, plain to see, on the invitation? If he did, he might have said so in his article: think about it, how often have you read, "A call placed to such-and-such was not returned as of press time" or something of the sort.

But we've grown lazy in our news consumption, and we don't look for statements like that anymore and prize them the way we should. We skim, comment, and share, and we fail to be as outraged as we should when these sorts of scams are perpetrated.

Let me be clear: I've written before about journalists being lazy and stupid and slanderous and I've deliberately distanced myself from the knee-jerk reactions of calling for people to be sacked. I don't want anyone to mistake me as wavering from that stance. In most cases, that will still be the way that I feel. In fact, I'm even willing to cut Nichols a break for his HuffPo piece here, shoddy and sloppy and stupid as was his work in the matter.

But I will be positively outraged if these radio hosts are not IMMEDIATELY fired. There's a difference between being stupid and offensive and sloppy and just making shit up. If our media culture is going to preserve any ideal of integrity, these two need to be thrown to the curb - NOW.

True story.

And to revisit Nichols: I said above that I thought a fuller retraction and an apology were in order. Let me elaborate on that a bit.

A casual observer might think that it isn't needed in this case. The story was fictitious, so there's really been no harm: no one was hurt, because no one involved really existed.

But that misses the wider issue.

The public discourse in this country is already in a disgraceful state, especially as regards LGBT issues. Anyone who dares take a stance against issues like same-sex 'marriage,' or who announces that the gay lifestyle is incompatible with their religious beliefs, is quick to be shamed, ridiculed, and condemned.

This fake story was, in effect, the LGBT equivalent of race-baiting. It generated a heated context for a debate right off the bat, loaded with pathos that already was stilted and favoring to one side of the discussions that would ensue.

I remember reading a very early comment on the story, a person expressing that he felt sorry for the woman's little boy being raised in such a way. And thus the thing very quickly became not about what the mom had said or how she had said it, but that she said it at all - nay, that she even dared think it.

Most of those who took to comboxes to voice their outrage made it very clear that the real issue was beyond the hurtfulness of the note and its rhetorical daftness: the real issue was that this woman was fundamentally wrong-headed for her beliefs in the first place, and her choice to raise her child according to those beliefs was very early - and subsequently as the discussions proceeded very often - likened to child abuse.

And so that was the environment into which Christians and others were lured by this prank.

Some waded in to say that they thought it would have been better for the mother simply to demur and to keep her child home: a simple "Regretfully, no," would have sufficed.

But they were told that wouldn't have sufficed. 

No, nothing would suffice but that she let her little boy go to the party and get over her bigoted and hateful prejudices.

So, you see, that is why I think Mr. Nichols owes us all an apology. Because there's already poison enough in the water cooler conversations around this country any time the topic touches upon this issue; and it's only getting worse; and we deserve better from journalists than for them to carelessly parrot nonsense that increases the already lethal levels of toxicity.

"Even When Kids Grow Up" (You Mean, When They Have the Chance?)

... That is what I think when I see creepy tweets like this one from Planned Parenthood:

We love Moms, and they always know best—even when kids grow up. Talk to them about how to #getcovered: http://t.co/89p4Li7Oak #momknowsbest

— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) January 9, 2014

... especially when their primary motive in shilling for Obamacare is tied up in their lobbying interest for promoting their booming business interests in abortion and abortifacients.

Nationally Syndicated Columnist: "Those @#$% Catholics Even Worse Than The @#$% Jews!" [UPDATED]

[NB: I'm appending to this piece a caveat, for what it's worth. Evidently, The Catholic League is calling for Stiehm's dismissal from Creators Syndicate as a result of her worthless and stupid column. I want to distance myself from that in a public way. I think she should be engaged, disproven, shamed, and pilloried for her bigotry and unreasonableness. But I am a bit off the trend of getting people fired for failing public discourse because I think that such actions themselves represent an equally egregious failure of the same.] 

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Yep, you read the headline right.

That is, effectively, the upshot of this wild screed by Jamie Stiehm in U.S. News and World Report.

F'realz. Don't believe me? Writing about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's recent grant of an injunction protecting the Colorado-based Little Sisters of the Poor (L.S.P.) from enforcement of the H.H.S. Mandate through the imposition of penalizing fines while they pursue a case in federal court alleging the Government's "accommodation" still requires them to violate their conscience, Stiehm laments:

She cray-cray, as the kids say.

Sotomayor's blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if "you" are female. [...]

Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I've noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can't know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women's rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.

Truer Words Were Never Spoken: "But Now We're Hurting Them"

Proving once again that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) should consider renaming itself People Ethically Tantamount to Animals (PETA), a couple gals called "Lettuce Ladies" took to the streets in Minneapolis yesterday to risk frostbite for the furtherance of some bullshit point about why we shouldn't eat animals even though eating animals is awesome.

When I first heard the female news-anchor's "ugh" upon the first footage of the "ladies" I wondered whether it was ethical abhorrence or just empathetic horror about the cold temperatures. I'm not sure she has thoroughly reasoned through her sentiment in the final assessment. Nonetheless, I was struck by this quote: "I understand wanting to be ethically accountable with animals, but we're now hurting them." Them being the ladies.

This is nothing new for PETA, of course, if you're familiar with their method of calling attention to abuses in the fur trade. (I'm not posting the link because, well, the lettuce video is salacious enough and I'm not about leading people into the near occasion of sin.)

Yet another example of the questionable ethical cogency of modern progressives.

Between a Woman and Her Doctor

An historian's artistic rendering of the 4th Lateran Council. 

G.K. Chesterton famously observed in Orthodoxy that when he came finally to look critically at Christianity in light of so many charges leveled against it by so many of its critics, he realized that "[i]t looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with."

This insight comes back to me frequently nowadays in internet debates (especially on social media), where it seems that for every authentic representation of a particular Church figure or a particular Church teaching there abound besides legion straw-men and bogies, such that in the end finding the Truth becomes like an ideological "Where's Waldo."

Among the more annoying convenient cudgels exploited by moderns who would denigrate or challenge the Church specifically in the matter of Her teaching on birth control (and I give benefit of the doubt that ignorance prevails in many of these cases rather than malice) is the canard about the Church "coming between a woman and her doctor."

Revisiting the Duck Dynasty Kerfuffle: The Real Point for Me in All This...

I posted earlier in the week my first reactions to the dust-up over Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson's remarks and the subsequent reaction by A&E executives, the media, and supporters of the Robertson family.

I'm not backing down from those statements, but I want to make a few observations about how things have proceeded since then.

"What the Duck?" Indeed

Let's cut right to the chase. You've read the news. You've seen the reactions. But what are you to make of the dust-up over Phil Robertson's comments to GQ in a profile piece entitled "What the Duck?"

First things first, let's see his words in their complete originally reported form and context.

Explaining that the Robertsons are "Bible-thumpers who just happened to end up on television," Phil urged his interviewer:

You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.

Repentance matters to Phil, the article explains, because he is worried about the direction of our nation - which he believes to be have been founded in Christian principles -  and hopes that the reality show is "a small corrective to all that we have lost."

"Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong.... Sin becomes fine," is the reported analysis of our current milieu given by Phil.

But then, when the interviewer asked Phil what's sinful, he gave the reply that has caused such a furor:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

But Phil quickly cautions after these words: "We never, ever judge someone on who's going to heaven, hell. That's the Almighty's job. We just love 'em, give 'em the good news about Jesus—whether they're homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort 'em out later, you see what I'm saying?" [emphasis added].

---

The reaction was swift and furious, with GLAAD and others calling for A&E to sanction the show as a result of these remarks.

Phil rose to his own defense in a statement to a FOX affiliate. But he didn't back down:

My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.

However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other.

 On balance, these do not sound like words of hatred. Nonetheless, A&E has suspended him, saying in its statement:

We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson's comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.

 Evidently for the producers of this "reality" show, shit just got a bit too real.

---

So what do we make of it?

Here's the bottom line as I see it.

You don't need to agree with Phil Robertson's presentation of the teachings of Christianity here. Personally, I find them sloppily rendered from Corinthians in a de-contextualized and then mashed-up way in his quotations, a way that is unhelpful precisely in the manner the Holy Father has warned us that speaking of certain moral teachings out of context can be unhelpful.

But you don't even need to agree with the teaching of Corinthians. You don't need to agree with the teachings of any religion. You can be out and proud and as anti-Christian or militant atheist as they come.

I say you don't "need" to hold these views. Need how? For what? You don't need to think any particular thing about what Phil said to think that he should have a right to say it and that we shouldn't immediate turn to the network to "sanction" him as if we need some kind of overseer's protection from unpalatable ideas.

This is the same spirit that motivates the Freedom from Religion folks and others who just can't abide seeing X, Y, Z religious symbols set up... well, anywhere they might happen to go. They want those things behind Church doors, and that's their only place in those folks' views. But then are religious folks free from the religiously-held anti-theistic, anti-deistic value system of the other?

You see it's absurd. In a free society, with free discourse of ideas, even someone who hates Phil and everything he stands for should see his saying it as a victory for the rights we all cherish, and then use their own rights to organize boycotts and the like and use genuine consumer power (and not a high-powered behind-the-scenes lobby like GLAAD) to get a message across. Or, ya know, simply change the channel.

I worry that America is becoming a real "Duck Dynasty" -no, not like the show. A duck dynasty in the sense that everyone walks around needing to duck all the time. We no longer scrape our knees in the schoolyard scuffle, or have to suffer to hear words that offend. We get our Big Government and Big Business bought-and-paid-for cultural overlords to protect us from anything that might challenge us to think, or feel, or in any way come out of the bubbles we would live in. We keep lowering the ceiling of free speech, and consenting to duck, until soon our knuckles must drag and we become mere primates that don't exchange ideas but just babble at one another and occasionally throw poo. And then we will keep ducking, and ducking, and ducking - ducking all the rights and responsibilities of man: to have a mind and to judge and discern and (yes) discriminate: until finally we writhe on the floor like the worms we've made ourselves.

But even that dystopian vision isn't the worst nightmare to come from this. No, because those who control the signs, those who surreptitiously lower the ceilings and bid us duck, will forever stay aloof. And one day they'll walk all over us in literal fact.

I'm not ducking. I'm standing up. Standing up for Phil Robertson. Not for what he said or how he said it necessarily: that's beside the point for me. But for his right to determine for himself when he should duck.

Not the Post I Wanted to Write

Last night, the name of Edward Snowden dominated my Facebook news feed.

If you haven't heard of him, you will soon: he is the alleged 'whistleblower' who leaked information about the National Security Administration's unlawful, unjust, tyrannical and draconian PRISM program - the direct access by federal agents to data stored by Google, Facebook, and a host of other internet giants.

It has been a timely revelation as the Obama administration is under fire for various other scandals, from potential knowledge or even involvement in the IRS's politicization of tax laws for targeting and intimidation of certain groups, to wiretapping of members of the "free" press... the list goes on and on. In the wake of these most recent details focusing on the NSA in particular, for example, we're learning that the same agency "has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism," as NBC News reports.

But my joy over these details coming to light is tempered by ambivalence... because heroic as Edward Snowden's risk to his own security and livelihood has been, his overall course of action has perhaps not been wholly praiseworthy.

De Mendacio Non Est Disputandum?

I promised myself (as well as several people dear to me to whom I was becoming a bore) that I was done with the whole Lying and Live Action controversy - you know, after this, that, and the other thing.

But, lo, from the American Chesterton Society come lately three rejoinders, in the form of contrary editorials in the hot-off-the-presses issue of Gilbert Magazine: from David Beresford, Sean Dailey, and Dale Ahlquist. Sean Dailey explains that the Gilbert editorial board arrived at an impasse on this particular issue. Unable to reach their customary unanimity in doling out the task of the editorial on the subject, they decided to present the competing views to the readership. It's provocation! A gauntlet cast! Just begging me to get back into it, even! (I rationalize to myself and the aforementioned bored loved ones, anyway.) So, it's back into the fog, go I.

I must add a couple more prefatory notes before jumping in: First, I want this to be a discussion, really and truly, so please don't be shy! Second, there'll be multiple posts on this, so be courteous in replies and give me the benefit of the doubt that I might not be completely overlooking something, but maybe only waiting. Third, the last having been said, if it seems obvious that I'm "through" a point and you note errors in my logic, I welcome - indeed I desire! - your correctives and counterpoints, because I intend to try to shape something of an official reply for the magazine out of this discussion. Or, you know, my scrapbook.

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I want to begin with David Beresford's piece because his is the one which most obviously stands opposed to the position on the Live Action debate which I took the last go-'round.

And in beginning with Beresford's piece, I'm going to prescind momentarily from discussing the beginning half of his article, for reasons which I hope will become apparent further down. Instead, I'll begin in the middle of his article, where he proposes to "strip away the emotion" that often belabors this matter in debate, and offers an example which will make the issue "clear." Allow me to quote at length:

Suppose, for example a four-year-old girl comes to her father and shows him a crayon drawing of a cow. “Look at my cow, Daddy! Isn’t it a good picture?”

What is the right response?

For literalist, truth-at-all-costs-and damn-the-consequences types, the situation is stripped of the heroic sacrifices associated with telling the strict truth, and reveals this position as that of a heel. “No, it is not good,” they must answer. And shame on them.

The equivocators among us may want to craft a clever response with a mental reservation: “It is a wonderful picture and the colors are so bright!” Congratulations, this verbal dexterity will allow one to maintain self-respect and fool the small child in the process by dodging the question. But, this is no better than the previous answer.

There is only one morally right answer, one answer that does not sin against charity, against duty, and against innocence: “That is the best picture of a cow I have ever seen!”

This is the only answer that is not encumbered by “self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.” We do not know if it is lying or not, by definition.

We do know that in this case equivocating is a disgusting pose almost as despicable as answering that the picture is no good. [SOURCE; emphasis mine]From this situation, Beresford argues, we can appreciate "the common sense of ordinary people: the natural law written on men's hearts."

Now, there's something very wonderful about this argument, and I mean that truly. It's a refreshing appeal, just as was Dr. Kreeft's appeal so many month's ago to the power of synderesis. And both these good men are right: there is a common sense element here. But as I argued back then, I will argue now: common sense leads in the opposite way than what is suggested here.

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Let's look at Mr. Beresford's analogy more closely. What is it about the four-year old girl that informs this common sense judgment that she deserves to be affirmed in her cow drawing? I do not deny that she should be so affirmed! But I ask, again - isn't it that she should be affirmed that is the crucial thing here?

Suppose it's not a four-year old, but my fourteen year old daughter. She brings me a painting she made up in her room, whence she rarely comes because the world is so tragic, and only she and the wailing voices in her music really "get it." And she expresses this tragedy that she just gets so well, because she's suffered and lost love (even though she never actually talked to the boy one has in mind), she expresses all this pain and ennui in her edgy, stick-figure and glitter art.

Suppose that's the situation. She brings me this painting and says, "Daddy, isn't this just the best? Ohmahgawd, I'm totally dropping out of school and becoming an artist!"

Now, how would anyone with common sense respond? All good parents will tell my daughter that she should stay in school and make sure about her choice of career path. But what about commenting on the quality of her art? If it really is awful (which, let's presume it is), there's suddenly something different about saying it's not, because she's fourteen and not four.

Okay, now press pause. We're going to a third scenario.

Press play.

I'm with my thirty-four-year-old yuppie daughter and my four-year old granddaughter (by another child) in the local art museum. We come across a sculpture involving legs pointing upward from a urinal that has teeth painted around its rim. Both my daughter and granddaughter exclaim, "That's great! I love it!!!... Grandpa [Daddy] - what do you think?"

Pause.

Now it's time to turn the disc over...

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There seem to be different demands upon our common-sense notion of truth-telling in these situations, even though the questions and the quality of art are constant. What's changing is the person. And if you want to write that down as one of my central theses throughout this whole debate - that the other person matters fundamentally to the demands of truth-telling - you can go ahead and do that now.

Mr. Beresford, while suggesting that he is going to eschew all of the emotional attachments which belabor this argument, doesn't make a very good show of it by conjuring the heart-string-tugging image of a four-year old tyke holding up a crappy picture for doting dad to drool over! But why do we drool? Because four-year old art is all good, to all of us, because it's done by four-year olds. None of us has to lie to say it's great. Nor is this a lie to the other.

Truth-telling is about communication. What does a four-year old want to know when she asks, "Isn't this a good picture?" What does a four year old mean by "good"? Child psychology has shown that children of that age operate by a very pure inductive method of reasoning, and that they cannot apply abstract axiologies to form evaluative judgments. In the four-year old vocabulary (which is what we'll be responding in), "good" means "good for me" and also probably means something very much like "morally good." Contrariwise, to a four-year old, "that's a bad picture" means "you're a bad artist" and, in all likelihood, "you're a bad person." We know this by common sense reasoning - there, Mr. Beresford is right. And so we say what we say in order to communicate truth to the four-year old: to validate her worth, even with a hyperbolic statement like, "That's the best picture of a cow I've ever seen!" Because it's the "best"-loved by us, for the artist's sake.

Some might object though that we have also communicated falsehood about the objective nature of art. But that's precisely what we have not done because we cannot have done. A child of four couldn't intuit that because they can't understand those kinds of evaluative systems. They can't conceptualize "best amongst all cow pictures" in any way such that we could be accused of genuinely communicating it to them as a falsehood. How many times have we heard kids say, "Blue is my favorite color, and so is pink!" They don't understand the axiological weight of "favorite" and "best," so we can't really have communicated much falsehood to them by our use of the phrase in our line about the cow drawing. Instead, "best" here meant what it ought to mean for that child.

Similarly, in the museum with my granddaughter, my granddaughter is "right" when she says that the urinal sculpture is "great." Because, as far as my granddaughter as a four-year old is concerned (barring any gross and perverse anomalies or aberrations), it is "great" - if it makes her giggle, if it makes her happy, if it gives her imagination fuel.

What about my thirty-four-year-old daughter, though, who also said the sculpture is "great"? Well, no, she's wrong. Because really it's not great, it's a piece of shit. And a thirty-four year-old ought to know that; and I'll tell her when I get the chance. Why ought she to know? Because it bears consequences for her that it doesn't for my granddaughter. And so with my fourteen-year-old and her emo nonsense. She might cry if I tell her the truth; and in charity I'm bound to try to help her learn the truth gently. But I'm a bad parent and a perverse sycophant if I tell her it's good art. I have obligations towards these two that I didn't have formerly, and it's all conditioned by how the other is able to get the truth from what I say, and what the truth that benefits the other is considered to be.

To put it simply, one might say that for children under the age of reason alone does the adage really hold true: de gustibus non est disputandum.

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So, we must wonder at this point, how does any of this relate to Live Action? Well, according to Mr. Beresford's logic:

If mothers and fathers cannot rear children without daily having to choose between crushing a child’s heart or telling what some call lies, then lying has become a meaningless term. In the same way, if men of good will cannot save the lives of children without being accused of lying, then again, lying has become a meaningless term.

But here is where we're talking about apples and oranges. As I have tried to demonstrate, these two sentences largely refer to separate moral universes; it is for that reason that I am leaving the earlier half of Beresford's piece to discuss in a future post. The first sentence is too sweeping in its scope, encompassing as the analogy of the four-year-old's drawing is not. Parents don't have to - and shouldn't have to - worry in such a way about the daily struggle to be honest and communicate truth. When the troubled teens come along, though, and the topics are pot and sex and God-knows-what, don't mom and dad choose their words a little more carefully? But I digress...

I will add one final comment on the analogy here.

If one were to apply the logic of this analogy to the Live Action stings, I think common sense derives a very different conclusion than what has been urged in Beresford's article. We have seen that common sense tells us to speak to our daughters - of whatever age - in love. And we have also seen how this always involves the hearer knowing a kind of truth from our statement. We want to love our daughters through what we tell them, and so we tell them the truth - as they are able to understand it. We speak the truth to those we love.

If the analogy has any connection, the only one I can see is this: If my daughter gets the truth because I love her, why not somebody else's daughter behind the desk at the abortion clinic? If I correct my daughter when she's in error and teach her right from wrong without lying and prevarication and "stings" - why do I deal any differently with God's beloved daughter working for the terrible organization? Doesn't she, after all, need the truth all the more? Maybe she's only there because she didn't have a Daddy who loved her enough to tell her so, in all the ways that that truth can be told.

A Rhetorical Response to Dr. Kreeft

In my previous post, I outlined some distinctions about how moral intuition is only one step of the moral reasoning process.

Dr. Kreeft, I believe, does recognize this; but his essay leads to confusion by dismissing reasoned discourse over situations - which is what discernment in conscience is all about - as less important than the intuitive "sense" about right and wrong. But what about our "growing inability to discern right from wrong"?

A red flag in Kreeft's essay - and one that attests to the problem of using intuitive reasoning in this way - is in the argument he makes about the "ticking time bomb" scenario with regard to lying. To quote:

If lying is always wrong, then it is wrong to lie to a nuclear terrorist... to elicit from him where he hid the nuclear bomb that in one hour will kill millions if it is not found and defused. The most reasonable response to the "no lying" legalist here is "You gotta be kidding"—or something less kind than that. Thomas Aquinas said that even torture is sometimes justified; in emergency situations like that; if torture, then a fortiori lying.

Now, most of us will remember a while back the debate about this ticking time bomb scenario on the exact subject of torture. Back then, there were those who argued from Aquinas's allowance of it. There were also those who argued that it just seems obvious that, if the only way to "elicit from him where he hid the nuclear bomb that in one hour will kill millions if it is not found and defused" is to torture him, then of course this must be allowed. They continued to argue that "the most reasonable response to the 'no torture' legalist here is "You gotta be kidding'." We just know that torture isn't always wrong. It's moral intuition. And Aquinas said so too.

How did we respond in that debate? We responded that John Paul II and the Catechism had included torture under the list of sins which were "intrinsically evil" - evil "by their very nature." These sins, sua natura, are wrong and can never be justified.

Such a sin is lying. But here, proponents of Dr. Kreeft try to waffle on the point and say it's apples and oranges. That the moral intuition of those who thought torture was right was in error. But that with lying, it's different, because now we feel that way. And besides, okay, we're not saying that this means lying isn't always wrong, because, yeah, the Catechism says it is; and that's just a singular moment of imprecision in Dr. Kreeft - after all, he says above that "if lying is always wrong, then this isn't lying." So it's not lying. It's something else, because this is right and not wrong - we just know it is. And, as to torture, well, that's a whole other matter, because yeah, Aquinas was wrong there, torture is intrinsically evil.

But I repeat: lying is intrinsically evil too. That is not to say all lies are culpable sins, much less all mortal sins. But lying is, according to the Catechism, "by it's vary nature" an evil.

Call this something else other than lying? Fine, then I'll call waterboarding "enhanced interrogation." In fact, as a good friend of mine has pointed out, in this scenario lying must be "enhanced interrogation", too. And this is no red herring of argument: by relating torture and lying, Dr. Kreeft has invited my objection. For if you're going to make this argument of association between two sins that are "sua natura" wrong, then you mustn't put much stake in the distinction that lying is "always" wrong. The avenue of reasoning, remember, is a fortiori: something which is "always" evil can sometimes be allowed, like Aquinas said torture is, and therefore this - even if it is lying - isn't wrong, because torture isn't and torture is worse. So if torture can be sometimes allowed, then how much more should lying be sometimes allowed!

So, allow that a lie is sometimes okay despite being intrinsically evil, and you must allow that torture is, too. Reconcile matters with the Catechism from there - but don't try to get out of the relation. Otherwise, admit that if what seems to be lying is allowed, then it is not really lying - but recognize that you are making the same rhetorical move that the proponents of torture made which so frustrated us who argued against it: to demand that we enumerate all the things that torture could ever possibly be, to show why waterboarding counts.

And if you don't see how this all constitutes the same line of reasoning; if you answer me by falling back on moral intuition and the fact that you just know this is different: then I can offer only one reply.

I just know it's the same. Try to argue with that...

A Philosophical Response to Dr. Kreeft

[I have tried, in this treatment, to take a philosophical and investigative approach and not dig too deeply into the argument's exact tenets; for this latter approach, see my follow up. - JLG]

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Dr. Kreeft's essay at Catholic Vote, "Why Live Action did right and why we all should know that", has provoked a lot of discussion around the internet.

Dr. Kreeft bases his argument on the idea of moral intuition. He says that this moral intuition is what Aquinas speaks of as "synderesis." He says that human moral reasoning begins "with moral experience and imagination and the innate power and habit of moral understanding and judgment, moral 'common sense,' which makes instinctive judgments about moral experiences."

Based on this process, says Doctor Kreeft, when we encounter situations like the problem of Lila Rose and Live Action (which he says is analogous to hiding Jews from Nazis), normal people (i.e., in his words, those who are not "morally stupid") reason thus: "They do not know whether this is an example of lying or not. But they know that if it is, than [sic] lying is not always wrong, and if lying is always wrong, then this is not lying." Dr. Kreeft says that such intuitive reasoning is not infallible, but that when we start reasoning in ways that is contradictory to this intuitive common sense, we are most often going to turn out wrong.

Now, I want to look at some typical renderings of synderesis and see how Dr. Kreeft's aligns with them.

Servais Pinckaers, in "Conscience, Truth, and Prudence," explains that, for Aquinas, synderesis is a habitus, the function of which is "to condemn evil and tend toward the good."

Moral theologian Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P. - presently theologian to the Papal household - explains the process of practical moral reason as follows:

[P]ractical reason is endowed with the first principle of action, known as synderesis, which, in an innate and infallible judgment, assesses that good is to be done and that evil is to be avoided.... Practical reason begins with the spark of synderesis, and, using the light it receives from the instinctively known moral law and from its own experience and education, and taking into account the unique circumstances with which it is affronted, it issues a judgment concerning the act to be executed or passes a judgment on the act that took place.

- from "Conscience and the Liberum Arbitrium"

Here we find that "it" - the practical reason - has "instinctive" knowledge of moral law as well, which aligns with Dr. Kreeft's analysis. We also have a distinction, though, that synderesis itself is the very limited idea that good is to be done and evil avoided, and not a matter of judgment about situations, per se. These steps of practical reason are distinct.

While distinct, though, the conscience and the synderesis operations are ontologically related according to modern moral theologians. Cardinal Ratzinger, commenting on the "anthropology of conscience", likens synderesis to the Platonic "memory" of the formal good and true (anamnesis): this is "instilled in our being [but] needs, one might say, assistance from without so that it can become aware of itself." Thus, even though it is an infallible first instinct, synderesis is not to be separated from the elements which "form" the larger conscience. Specifically, Card. Ratzinger mentions the Papacy [and all kinds of Magisterial authority], which are not coming from "without" in regard to synderesis, but function to "bring to fruition... its interior openness to the truth" (see Ratzinger, "Conscience and Truth").

Turning to Veritatis Splendor 59, John Paul II explains that the judgement of conscience "applies to a concrete situation the rational conviction that one must love and do good and avoid evil." Here the entire process of practical reasoning is included. Synderesis is that "rational conviction" about good and evil which then becomes part of the process of analyzing the moral values in given situations.

So, synderesis is, indeed, a moral "intuition" of a sort, which forms the basis of judgments of conscience. It is the essential insight about good and evil which forms the basis for the discernment of conscience. And there are other aspects of "intuitive reasoning" involved in the process of conscience even after synderesis, as Giertych points out, calling these facets the "instinctively known moral law." And, indeed, conscience and synderesis are part of one whole ontological structure of relation to truth in man, as Cardinal Ratzinger points out; thus, there are intuitive aspects to both processes and there are also aspects of both which are open to some kind of formation, which does not deny the "infallible" judgment of synderesis nor the immediate quality of intuition.

How, then, do we evaluate Dr. Kreeft's arguments? Well, I think he is right in noting that intuitions and experience have a value in moral reasoning. The problem with using synderesis in the way Dr. Kreeft has done, though - or even more generally using moral intuition as a closing of debate over issues based on the premise that those whose intuition does not seem to grasp the same things yours does are "morally stupid" - is that the Church does define certain things as "intrinsically evil", and lying is one of them.

John Paul II explains that the purpose of these kinds of definitions is "to serve man's true freedom...; there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth" (VS, 96). This impact by authority on reason is even on the level of synderesis, as Ratzinger has shown, as the Church's distinctions guide the operation of synderesis toward venues where it applies and where its infallible judgment can be free to work. In this case, the definitive statement that lying is always wrong is directed to freeing synderesis to make this moral sensibility part of our relation to the truth of natural law and a fundamental premise for our moral reasoning. In a sense, it makes our process of practical moral reasoning shorter and easier in cases having to do with lying, where the Church has directed us to use our innate moral sense.

However, the intuition that operates when we encounter a situation of hiding Jews from Nazis, or a situation of Lila Rose spying on Planned Parenthood, is not the infallible intuition of synderesis. Rather, it is an aspect of the intuitive moral process which is involved in the reasoning part of discernment in conscience. Synderesis applies to the situation only in telling us that "lying is bad," from which we can then reason toward conclusions that this, if it is lying, is also bad, which may not seem evident. On the other hand, we might reason that this is not lying, and therefore not necessarily bad - although it might relate to a different intuition of synderesis about what is bad and then be judged to be bad based on that other relation. But the point is that we still require a process of reasoning.

The reason we cannot stop at intuition - as even Dr. Kreeft admits - is evidenced in the title of the work that I took the above theological essays from: Crisis of Conscience: Philosophers and Theologians Analyze Our Growing Inability to Discern Right from Wrong (New York: Crossroads, 1996). This title and the concern of these authors - particularly the direction of Ratzinger's essay which seeks to put even the "infallible" intuition of synderesis in relation to moral authority such as is embodied in the Magisterium - makes plain that intuitions are harder to rely upon in this day and age. We need to form ourselves in virtue and in knowledge of the truth and in conformity to authority in order to use conscience properly and not too-subjectively.

A Treatment of the Live Action Debate

I've been working on an attempt at an academic treatment of the debate surrounding Live Action's undercover video work. This is still a work in project and the document will update as I revise and revisit it. Still, I wanted to share it sooner rather than later so that it can - hopefully - benefit the dialogue somewhat.

An Approach to the Debate Surrounding Live Action

Control Freaks (Not Normal People)

As the news cycles continue to spin absurd tangents off of the tragedy in Arizona, I'm venturing another opinion about an issue which I really think unrelated to the current events but which is the center of much discussion in the wake of them. The issue: gun control.

I'll keep this short.

I am not a member of the NRA. I do not own a gun. I have no inordinate love of guns.

Furthermore, I think that many of the defenders of gun rights give an absurd reading of the second amendment and present a figment of a constitutional right.

There is, however, a common sense approach to this matter which, if overlooked by gun advocates, is even more frequently missed by their opponents.

I have fired weapons in my lifetime. I've shot paper targets and tin cans. Perhaps, in my youth, I once or twice made sport of small birds and mammals with a carefully aimed bee-bee. [I do not doubt that this admission could itself form an inroad to a whole other controversy. Bring it on!] All in all, my experience with firing guns has been entertaining, a sporting affair - even when it was in the context of military training. In the back of my mind, I always prayed I would never have to use a weapon in earnest. I enjoyed the skill of marksmanship, learning my way around the weapons' intricacies, the thrill of the trigger pull after a controlled exhalation. And I've never shot anyone. Never even thought of it.

Now, sure, there's an argument to be made about defense of home and property that a person ought to be allowed a gun in the home. Most moderates (I consider myself, all in all, to be among that political class) will admit this. Ordinarily, the gun control argument gets hairy when someone drops this ballistic bombshell: "There's no reason that somebody needs a whole collection of guns or semi-automatic weapons in the home." And, as far as it goes, this argument is sound: there is, in the pragmatic way of looking at things, no reason. And, according to the same system of evaluation, there are many reasons indeed that such arsenals ought to be "controlled".

But - here's the rub - it all depends on what we regard as most reasonable. It all depends on what we consider to be the reasons - that is, the philosophical causes - that inform our day to day existence in the most profound ways. For me, those reasons are not ultimately the practical and the pragmatic. They are more holistic. In my ideal view of things, man's pleasure is often found in the things that don't have the immediate reason the rationalist looks for: stamp collections, idle walks, improvised whistling, falling in love, joining a political party, shooting a gun at inanimate objects.

Why does a man need a machine gun? I don't know that any man does. But I can think of why a man may want one. If a man likes shooting cans or paper targets, he might like shooting them in a variety of ways. With each weapon comes a different skill, a different pleasure, a different art - art, the quintessential pleasure of man, and what Dante calls the grandson of God. Indeed, there is much in our divinely imprinted nature that shines through in our ability to manipulate machinery to such precise ends, to aim and to cause reactions faster than our physical natures could ever cause without our artifaction.

There are some who will find this a weak argument for non-restriction of weaponry by device class, and I respect their concerns. The truth is that the effect of certain weapons can be very much more terrible when aimed at a living being than other weapons'. However, the aim is the most terrible part. And it is more causally, more philosophically, related to the effect which we all (of course) desire to avoid. The question is whether we want to cede control of a thing which may be used harmlessly and for pleasure because of the perverted individuals who use that thing for pernicion.

This relates, of course, to what I said in my last post about our propensity as a people to respond categorically to aberrations and to try to "control" every aspect of our lives; I've tagged this post with many labels, including subsidiarity, and there is the reason why. We are always and everywhere giving up ordinary freedoms and passing laws to restrict the liberties of normal individuals in order to control against those abnormal few who abuse the gifts of freedom and will. It is a strategy which perhaps is justified in a Kindergarten, but it has no place amongst the affairs of civilized men and women. I need not make any of the slippery slope arguments (which only may be fallacious) about how a restrictive society will continue in its rut; for, if you, dear reader, have not yet felt sympathy for my philosophical appeal, I don't know whether we'll ever come to agree on this.

For my part, I doubt I'll ever start a gun collection: it's cost prohibitive. But I'd like to know that I may do so if I choose - if I win the lottery or get my wits about me and get out of academia so that I can earn money. My aim in doing so, however, would not be to take life, but to give it: to live more vitally, more freely, more artfully, more pleasurably. To shoot with friends at things which there is no harm and all fun in shooting, to feel the rush that it gives, to respect the awful power it represents, to deplore the terrible violence that is its perversion. In short, to revel in controlling what is my right as a normal man to control, and what needs no other to control on my behalf.

Ordo Amoris

I'm going to be brief, for the sake of tact as well as for having little to say.

When a tragedy such as the recent shooting in Arizona occurs, we tend to figure things out as a culture. Often we respond to these sorts of things in a way which I call "programmatic." We have, in my opinion, a habit of overcorrection in our society. We've been convinced by the theorists and social scientists that everything can be planned and managed. When aberrant people do aberrant things, we go to a system and try to somehow correct for the aberration. (Meanwhile, we normalize countless other aberrations - it all depends what we can convince the majority is an aberration. When a mother murders her prenatal child, this is no longer considered even problematic.)

I say all this firmly with no intention to offend those who have suffered, either directly or empathetically, from the recent events. I am sympathetic to all involved and commend each person affected to God in my prayers - the victims and their families, and, yes, even the shooter. But having been asked by several people several times already for my thoughts on the matter, I must honestly say that these reflections are the ones dominating in my mind. I fear our society's tendency to over-correct, to respond to extraordinary breaches of conduct on the part of strange individuals by disrupting the ordinary freedoms of normal folks.

The example that comes most readily to mind is in the way that the media is reporting what this tragedy "means" for politics. We're already hearing a lot about how politics has become too angry and too emotional, and how we need to calm down and become more rational. Now, I see several problems with this - for one, the fact that this idea can't eve really be managed; we could pass laws about the rhetoric of political speeches and ads, probably, but we can't really overtly reshape public sentiment, not while remaining at all free anyway. But the bigger problem is in the premise: that is, I do not think "calming down" is always tied with being more rational. The village idiot in his sedentary reserve is less risible than the blokes at the public house or the ones at the Houses of Parliament. But it is not necessarily because he has his wits more about him. Conversely, the fellows in Parliament may be very cooly intellectual indeed and go about their poking and prodding of the human condition with all the disinterest of a scientist with his rats, and I do not think politics better for it. The gents in the public house, now, they seem to have found a balance. They get angry at the things which ought to make a sane man angry, but they argue without spite and keep their reason and their emotions in check to one another, based on the mutual conviviality and a view of the common brotherhood of man. They love each other; it's love that makes them so angry when they see error in one another's ways.

Augustine said of virtue that it is the ordo amoris - the directing to each object the kind and degree of love (passion) which it deserves, no more and no less. I do not think we will gain a better political discourse by getting folks simply to be less angry - nor even to be less angry and more intelligent. Because, frankly, as I've said often enough on this site, there are plenty of causes in our world today to which the only properly ordered response is anger. But anger is not blind rage - it is a passion, governed under the reason in man and exercised in accord with virtuous will. Or, it should be. Such is what we need, and such is what we need to learn from this state of affairs that has transpired. Anger without reason will become rage; but reason without passion (more importantly, compassion) can lead to crimes even more terrible. No, we need a political discourse that holds emotion and reason in tension and orders them together according to the demand of the matter being discussed, rather than based on some arbitrary sense of propriety or political correctness.

Emphatically, I think this response the only one both feasible and just. We cannot ask people not to care about things that deserve to be cared about; we cannot expect them not to be angered by what merits anger. Nor can we expect them to know what to do with that anger, unless we endeavor to augment it with good philosophy, rationale, and discernment.

Perhaps this course is difficult; perhaps we can't even imagine what it would look like. But try either extreme and we'll end back where we started, looking at the man we've rebuilt lopsided and wondering why he cannot walk a straight line.

How to Swallow a Camel

The sideshow in the Press goes on unabated as the usual suspects (the "Catholic experts" whom the liberal media keeps on speed dial and who are conversant in Newspeak) get trotted on to the scene to clear things up for us. Thus, Fr. James Martin, SJ - a "prominent Jesuit," mind you! - proclaims Benedict's declaration on condoms to be a "game changer." (What exactly does "prominent Jesuit" mean? Prominent within the Jesuits? Within the Church? Or, having a few book deals and a familiar face with a collar beneath it?) FoxNews, at least, in an odd instance of really being fair and balanced acknowledges that not all theologians see it that way: Fr. Fessio - not called here a "prominent Jesuit" but I for one would like to see him and Martin arm-wrestle - says "nothing new has happened." John Haas and Germain Grisez (whose prominence is actually substantive and pertinent to the matter we're discussing, which is moral doctrine), both lament the confusion engendered by this unfolding of events.

And then there's I, who am neither prominent (alas!) nor a Jesuit (hooray!), but presume to try to add to this discussion within the small sphere of influence that I do (inscrutably) inhabit.

I wanted to urge a couple more points of consideration which - regardless of what the Pope actually intended to say - must shape our perception of this entire debate.

So, first, I want to make a point about language. Our impoverished capacity for nuance is contributing in an important way to this entire discussion. For one thing, there is the conflation of the notion of contraception with the tools which are often used to that end, but which are not bound inextricably to it. What I mean to say is that contraception is a moral object and not a (or several) material object(s). Thus, condoms are sometimes put to contraceptive use, and when this is the case, they may be spoken of as "contraceptives". However, they are not always "contraceptives", as in a situation when used between two men in an act of sodomy, an act to which the contraceptive end does not - and cannot ever - attain to the act. As such, I would propose another term which encompasses a broader meaning, namely prophylactic. If a condom is used in a situation to which the contraceptive end does not attain, for purposes of sanitation, then the condom is not a contraceptive at that point - it is, however, still a prophylactic. When, on the other hand, the contraceptive end attains - regardless of the intention of the individual - then, the prophylactic functions as a "contraceptive", whether a condom or an IUD or what have you. We need to be clear on this point, and I think it needlessly confusing to use the term "contraceptive" to describe the use of an object in an act to which the contraceptive purpose is irrelevant. This is regardless of whether the Pope's remarks actually do extent to cases when that end is relevant (as some have suggested they do, such as Father Lombardi, although I am skeptical whether the Pope meant to include such circumstances).

Once that bit of language is understand, we can begin to articulate meaningful distinctions on this issue. One could say that when a condom is used as a prophylactic but not as a contraceptive, it may be allowable per se.

Let's move on, then, to consider hypothetically whether the Pope's remarks can be taken in a broader way, to include scenarios of dual use for the prophylactic.

Now, as I mentioned in my early post on this matter, if the Pope is making such an argument, this is not "same old" theology and does represent a new turn in the discussion - at least, for the Pope, considering that this very issue was the subject of a commission at the Vatican a few years back which (significantly) never issued a concluding report. Nevertheless, there is a theological strain of argument that could make sense of the Pope's remarks even if they were taken to extend to heterosexual acts outside of marriage where a condom would be used to prevent the spread of HIV but also result in the prevention of conception.

Now, let us first note that this isn't a "double effect" argument per se, since contraceptive activity is inherently evil and certainly flows directly from the act with as much immediacy as the prophylactic function (it should also be always kept in mind that condoms are inefficient in achieving either end). But the argument would be that Humanae Vitae condemnation of contraception applies only to the bond of marriage; that is, since sex belongs in marriage, along with its two functions - the unitive and the procreative - then, outside of marriage we're already dealing with a disordered situation and the only effect that contracepting would have would be to perhaps increase the gravity of the situation.

An analogy could be drawn to the Church's Just War Doctrine, and its component of "proportional means." An aggressor in battle is bound to observe the rule of proportionality in order to maintain justice in its cause. Now, this only applies properly to situations in which the agent is capable of just action in the first place: only a legitimate State has the authority to wage war. Suppose an instance where an illegitimate agent undertakes to wage war. Here, the action undertaken already is illegitimate and disordered; in this case, whether the agent chooses to demonstrate proportional restraint is less consequential and somewhat a moot point. In such a case, demonstration of proportional use of force would be similar to what the Pope said about a male prostitute using a prophylactic to protect his partner: a step in the right direction, but a step taking place in a process which is already problematized by a higher level moral concern.

The gist of this would be in line with Fr. Lombardi's approach to this discussion: that the Pope is objecting the trivialization of sex that this whole line of discernment implies: that, in the context of sex being abused outside of its naturally ordered context (within a loving marriage that is open to new life), the use of condoms - and perhaps even the contraceptive use - is a matter of straining gnats while swallowing a camel. And if there's anything the media is good at doing for the sheeple of America, it's getting them to swallow a camel.

Again, I'm not entirely sure of the cogency of this approach. For example, I would argue that in the context outside of marriage, the rejection of contraception - remaining open to life, and abhoring the contraceptive function of prophylactics - would represent the same positive sort of step in the right direction as the use of a condom by a male prostitute infected with HIV. Note that the Pope said that part of this moral value was in the "acceptance of responsibility", which moral value is lost when the contraceptive end attains.

I won't go further on about this matter in this post, but I offer these considerations as another means of understanding what's at stake in this media circus. Let's bear these kinds of things in mind as the matter unfolds.