(Peg and Al are at the fancy-coffee shop on a Saturday evening.)
Al: So what brings you out for coffee?
Peg: C.J. and I were supposed to see a film, but there was something on C-SPAN he just couldn't miss. I thought I'd do some Christmas shopping and get a coffee.
Al: Did you find anything worth buying?
Peg: A couple of things for my folks, but there wasn't anything that really thrilled me. A lot of this year's gift-type things are recycled from last year, I think. How are you, Al?
Al: I'm irritated.
Peg: That's news? You're always cranky about something.
Al: Well, it's about---
Peg: Let me guess. I read the paper this morning. It's all the bickering back and forth in Congress about Iraq and how soon we should get out. The Senate scolded the President about not reporting to them regularly, and the House debated a bill to set a timetable for getting out.
Al: Yup, that's the newspaper version, for sure.
Peg: I shouldn't repeat what I read in the paper?
Al: No, of course not. You have to read between the lines. What they tell you is one-sided and incomplete. They have this compulsion to put everything in terms of a controversy.
Peg: The last time I looked at the Constitution, Al, the Congress did have the power to declare war and oversee spending on it.
Al: You're right. The part we overlook is that they do supervise the conduct of the war. The executive branch really can't hide anything, and reports continuously to a number of committees. Don Rumsfeld said last weekend that the Defense Department alone had filed 900 reports to Congress since the fighting began.
Peg: If that's true, then why does the Senate want more information?
Al: Rummy gave us a clue: "I hope someone's reading them," he said.
Peg: That would imply that he thinks their minds are made up, and that their vote wasn't about information and oversight.
Al: That's putting it nicely. It was about politics. The Senate wound up passing a bill that gave them information that they already had access to. They passed it for the sake of having regular opportunities to debate and second-guess. That way, the opponents can complain more often.
Peg: But the House debated a bill, too, didn't they?
Al: That's the problem--endless debate without any purpose. They debated a bill to set a quick timetable for removing the troops from Iraq. It never had any chance at passing and was defeated 403 to 3. The sponsors didn't even vote for it.
Peg: What you're saying is that it was not introduced for a sincere purpose--only to create a controversy.
Al: The majority figured out that the House's time was being wasted and called for a quick vote. They saw through it. Only three congresspersons thought it was prudent to vote for a quick, arbitrary end to the war.
Peg: But it sounded for a while, with the polls and all, like people are really turning against the war.
Al: Apparently not, according to those whose congressional careers depend on getting that sort of thing right. That's empirical.
Peg: So you don't really believe opinions about Iraq are changing?
Al: I really don't. That doesn't mean folks aren't having their doubts. War is ugly and uncertain, so doubts are natural. The anti-war senators and representatives are trying to turn those doubts into a movement. But, based on those two votes last week, it's pure politics.
Peg: So, even though the anti-war group knew their bills didn't change anything, they pursued them anyway--because they might get traction and cause more doubt with the voters?
Al: I think so. And the passage of that compromise bill in the Senate, for the sake of defeating a radical, end-the-war-now law, gave them a small victory and some credibility.
Peg: But I'm not sure how you can be so pro-war, Al. It just seems like the whole business isn't going well--assuming we should be in Iraq in the first place!
Al: Why do you think we shouldn't be there?
Peg: I knew you'd ask me that.
Al: But that's really the important part, isn't it?
Peg: It is. Anyone can quibble about tactics and such. I'm not clear about why we're there. I don't know that anyone else might be, either, considering all the stories that were put out at the time.
Al: "Stories" or "reasons"?
Peg: Doesn't that depend on your point of view?
Al: No I think it's important to know, and demonstrable, whether the nation went to war based on "reasons" or "stories".
Peg: What you're saying is that even you are open to the possibility that some false pretenses were put forward to make the case for war?
Al: Sure, but the less so, the more I read.
Peg: Huh?
Al: I think I gave the evidence a good going-over when the UN debates were going on. I still try to read what the anti-war folks are saying, too. The more I read, the less convinced I am, if I ever was, that they have a good argument on the facts. But, I'm always open to new information.
Peg: What about the WMDs? The government's own investigation said they didn't exist.
Al: Are you sure that's what it said?
Peg: Pretty sure. That's what the senators are saying, some of them.
Al: I didn't read the whole Kay report. I did read the fine print of the summaries that were published. That commission didn't say "didn't exist" and they didn't say "no evidence" in such absolute ways. Mr. Kay said that his investigators did not find caches of ready-to-use WMDs, and that, in spite of efforts by Saddam Hussein's government to lead its neighbors to think there were WMDs, Iraq had not successfully rebuilt their whole weapons program after the first Gulf War.
Peg: That's convincing to me.
Al: Convincing of what?--I just have to ask.
Peg: I'd say convincing that this is a "story" and not a "reason".
Al: Let's follow a line of reasoning here. Bear with me.
Peg: O.K.--
Al: Did Iraq ever have WMDs?
Peg: Sure--they used nerve gas against Iran's armies in the early 80's. They used them later against Kurdish and, I think, Shi'ite villages. They wanted to teach a lesson about dissent.
Al: That's why the UN sent in investigators and monitors after the Gulf War--to seal and destroy whatever chemical stocks they could find.
Peg: Right.
Al: And basically they tried to do the same thing to Iraq's nuclear program--right?
Peg: They wanted to, but didn't the Israelis help them out with that?
Al: Yeah, they blew up a big reactor that everyone thought was a weapons factory. That was actually earlier, in 1981, at a place called Osirak. But its existence would certainly testify to Iraq's intentions, even over a long period of time. After the Gulf War the UN did find an active nuclear weapons program, with hundreds of scientists working on it and a whole security corps dedicated to keeping it hidden. The UN kept inspection teams in Iraq until they were expelled in 1998. Until that time they documented a whole series of evasions and violations. The UN had already begun issuing its famous series of 17 resolutions demanding that Iraq comply with its international agreements on WMDs. That's all on the UN record.
Peg: Isn't that ancient history? The Iraq war was started in 2003.
Al: No; the UN inspectors were ordered back in 2000, then again in 2002.
Peg: And--?
Al: It was a cat-and-mouse game. The last inspectors said basically what the United States group reaffirmed in 2004: that Iraq had not manufactured a workable nuclear weapon, but that it had held on to the capability of producing one from existing materials and equipment, and an active interest in continuing such a program. The government of Saddam Hussein also had worked very hard to keep the UN inspectors away from their scientists.
Peg: So it wasn't exactly "no WMDs".
Al: Correct. The fact is that Iraq's "trajectory" or behavior pattern on this never changed--even going back twenty years. The UN said this, and so did the world's other security and intelligence services. This was what was reported to the UN during the Security Council debates and to Americans on the nightly news reports.
Peg: Let's see what might be plausible here. Saddam Hussein didn't have and didn't need and actual nuclear bomb, but he kept the equipment, parts and technology around in some way, complete or otherwise. Where is all this stuff now?
Al: Some items, we think, disappeared in the chaos of the war. A great deal is in Iraq under American military seizure. The forces have shipped the most dangerous materials to secure military weapons bases in the US for safekeeping. We know that technology, equipment and scientists disappeared in 2002 while the UN was still debating what to do and playing word games with Iraqi diplomats over inspections.
Peg: Are you saying that the Security Council debates served as a "cover" to delay actions by the community of nations that would confront Iraq with the real evidence? Deliberately?
Al: I don't think we know how deliberate, but everyone now knows that there was a level of real corruption and collaboration between Saddam Hussein and people in authority at the UN.
Peg: That's been all over the news. So, O.K., maybe I'll grant you the WMD argument by a nose, but I'll still go read some more. But look, isn't all this just about oil, money and power in that part of the world?
Al: I'd have to challenge that, because it's become one of those "blanket" statements that people fall back on when other things fail. As objective factors, oil, money and power are very important, but I don't think the facts would support any sort of conspiracy theory about this--it's also a distraction from the realities we should be considering.
Peg: I think a lot of people today do say that. They think more along the lines of a few shadowy individuals acting to enhance their own positions. That wouldn't be good for anyone.
Al: We probably do have a way to get to the bigger picture here, though, without that unprovable and improbable speculation. Let's assume for a minute that the situation in Iraq might be better after this current hostility subsides, at least to a degree, and that American military forces are able to withdraw to basic protection and peace-keeping duties in the Middle East. Do you think this scenario is plausible?
Peg: Iraq won't ever be utopia. I do think a relatively stable situation can be created there, even with what has gone on. Even if some nasty people from Al Qaeda are still there, if you could get some agreement with Iran and Syria to keep out, and encourage the factions in Iraq to restrain themselves, then it has to be better than under Saddam Hussein.
Al: Better for whom?
Peg: It would be safer for all the other countries in the region, if those conditions could be put in place.
Al: I think that's the American intention--to create that sort of a situation. I'd say it's probably safer already, in most areas of Iraq. There are big elections coming up under their new constitution. The news says people are looking forward to voting, and even the Sunnis have proposed candidates in their areas. They've given up the idea of boycotting elections. There are little noises in the Muslim world that are questioning whether this use of violent anarchy to accomplish social goals is a good thing.
Peg: There is also one less influential tyrant to start mischief.
Al: I don't think we can underestimate that, either. I also don't think we can underestimate the seizing of whatever volume of WMD materials we've managed to get hold of, but history will have to bear that out.
Peg: So, what's the progress, then, really?
Al: More stability. The greater isolation of Iran and Syria as long as they support terrorism. The general security of the flow of Mid-East oil, which helps the world's economy whatever you may think about the longer-term environmental issues. The Palestinians are having to settle their own leadership issues. This allows Israel to pull back from Gaza and work out a deal on the West Bank.
Peg: So you're an optimist.
Al: I think the risks of the forced regime change in Iraq were enormous. They may still be. It's more of a political situation now. I think security issues might begin to take a back seat.
Peg: But the troops aren't out.
Al: You're right. We know they'll be coming home in some numbers in the coming year. But some will remain in or near Iraq in secure, permanent installations to keep an eye on things.
Peg: They might never be out.
Al: I won't say "never". We're just now thinking about closing bases in Germany--something the Germans have mixed feelings about. But that situation has changed since the early 90's and the days of the Soviet Union. Geopolitically, did that presence make a difference?
Peg: Of course it did.
Al: I rest my case. I think the bigger picture is what we need to look at.
Peg: So we live in a world where the use of military force is still a reality. That's pretty cynical.
Al: I don't think so. That's a whole other level of thinking. But I think I need to get home and start getting ready for the end of the semester.
Peg: Sounds good--I'm tired from shopping, and thinking. See you later.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Saturday, November 12, 2005
First dialogue on education
(Peg and Al again. Recall that they are teachers at a private high school. Al teaches Math and Peg, Government. It's Monday afternoon, classes over for the day. Peg enters the lounge to find Al glaring at the coffee maker.)
Peg: Hello, Al. How was your day? --Uh, no coffee?
Al: No coffee in the pot; no coffee in the cabinet; no coffee in the storage closet. How can I work if there's no coffee? There's not even a decent coffee shop in the neighborhood--not even a bad coffee place around. Inhuman conditions; good grief!
Peg: Whoa, partner, don't lose your grip. I just saw Juliet and Roxie rolling the coffee supplies down to the cafeteria. I guess they’re setting up for that reception tonight. Let me just step over there and borrow some coffee back. I’d like a fresh cup, too.
Al: You don’t have to do that.
Peg: I’ll be right back, Al.
(A few minutes pass. Peg returns, makes fresh coffee.)
Al: That’s good coffee--thanks!
Peg: No problem.
Al: I’m just going to sit for a few minutes to let today’s case of nerves calm down.
Peg: I know. Monday’s a bear. The weekend resets your tempo to baseline, and Monday brings back the thrills, chills and frustration. That’s teaching.
Al: Between the students, the administration, the grading and our ever-cheery compatriots, we’re outnumbered.
Peg: But would you do anything different?
Al: I wouldn’t
Peg: I get a yen to try something else every so often. I took the law school exam about ten years ago, but didn’t follow through with any applications. I really didn’t want to make a career change, just a money change, and for me it would have taken too much time and energy to be worth it.
Al: I know you like issues and controversies. You would probably make an excellent plaintiff’s attorney or public interest advocate. But, you’re a great teacher, too.
Peg: Thanks! There are some good days. Every time I start thinking I haven’t found my vocation yet, something comes along to remind me that I should do what I’m doing now. Guess you’re it, this time.
Al: Well, I have my days, too. Not that I’d want to do something other than teach, but I do wonder what good I’m doing after thirty years.
Peg: We’re not setting the world on fire, that’s for sure. The students aren’t motivated.
Al: There are two questions I keep asking my students: Why do you get up in the morning? and Why do you--or your parents--think you should be showing up at our doors and in our classrooms every day?
Peg: How do they answer?
Al: Mainly they give me a confused look. I don’t think they have an answer.
Peg: Ouch.
Al: Once in a while a brave soul will look at me and say “It’s because I want something better than a boring, routine job.” Or, “I don’t want to spend my life on a hot roof like my cousins have to do.”
Peg: Sounds like as good a reason to go to school as any other.
Al: Well, it’s a start. And at least it proves there are some moral absolutes, even if they’re negatives. Most people do share those same sentiments. My question, though, is why it’s so hard to discover and then to commit yourself to some sort of a positive reason why you should be getting an education.
Peg: Maybe when you’re young you don’t have the readiness to find something to really pursue. Did you have some really definite ambitions when you were in high school?
Al: No, but I was sort of a contrarian. Whatever I thought most of my peers wanted to do, I would choose something radically opposite. But as to whether I really ever set my sights on a definite career and began to take real steps, no such thing. I was busy reading. What about you?
Peg: I was pretty typical. Mom and dad had their business; I think they tried to steer me in that direction. I had in mind that other things might be cooler: my sports, and whatever clubs I was in at the moment. I thought about a business career and gave law or politics a glance now and then.
Al: These things don’t really take a final shape until we actually do them. Even in college I changed majors officially once, and thought about it a couple of other times.
Peg: Me, too. My pre-law studies eventually became a degree in government and history with a teaching certificate attached, just in case. Now I can talk about public and political things all day, and have job security.
Al: That’s something that people in the political world don’t have, that’s for sure.
Peg: How did you wind up teaching Math? Don’t you have degrees in philosophy?
Al: It was an accident. When I graduated, I got hired as an emergency Math fill-in because I had taken enough courses in math and logic to satisfy somebody’s requirements. You know how hard it is to find Math people. They’re all in engineering, business, economics. I liked teaching, so I went back and finished the certification. But as you know I’ve taught other things, too. This and my night classes keep me fed and supplied with reading.
Peg: I’d rather keep up my garden than be a bookworm.
Al: Now you’re not going to tell me you never read. We’ve had too many good conversations for you to convince me you’re one of those brain-dead adults.
Peg: You’re right. I read the paper, a couple of good, serious magazines, lots of novels and some of the books on politics and history that show up as best-sellers. I guess nowadays I should read more from the Internet, too, since that’s where all the action seems to be. But I certainly don’t read all that philosophy stuff and literature that you read.
Al: I don’t know that many people do any more. I’m still the odd one in the crowd. I am up to speed on the Internet, though. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret: I have a blog.
Peg: Really? What do you put there--joke of the day?
Al: Once in a while the world gets a taste of my wry, ironic humor. Mainly there are a couple of things I use it for, when I have time. I store there some of the better thoughts that I happen across in my reading. Then I try to work out verbally some of the ideas I have about a couple of the topics I like to read about. Maybe eventually I’ll try to collect some of that randomness into something worth publishing. One thing leads to another, I hope.
Peg: Well I wish more adults would entertain an occasional literate thought--especially in and around our community..
Al: I’m a basic fatalist about that. For many of us, a literate thought is foreign territory. I know university professors who are as narrow in their learning as garage mechanics--in fact, the mechanics are more interesting to have a conversation. With my old car, I’m an expert on that. But I guess that’s the thing about educating human beings in society and for society. It’s a slow process that we can’t do alone. The whole culture has to be supportive. The media have to help, but today they only seem to make things stupider. The government’s schools have to improve. And parents have to do their jobs responsibly.
Peg: How do they do that? There are plenty of theories out there.
Al: One thing is for certain: parents have to model one critical value--a reverence for learning.
Peg: Are you sure “reverence” is the right word?
Al: I’m absolutely sure of that. I mean reverence in the exact sense, even with a religious connotation, as if learning is a kind of sacred object. We have to have the attitude that good learning possesses intrinsic value not only for what it provides in the utilitarian sense, but for what it is. Here’s an example: I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are certain of our foreign-born students, who live in traditional-culture families, who seem to have this attitude of a very special respect for learning--and for their teachers, too.
Peg: I sure have. It’s refreshing--makes me really feel like a teacher and not a lion-tamer or baby-sitter.
Al: Have you also noticed how these same students achieve an amazing learning curve in language skills, then quickly begin to surpass the competition in the rest of their acadmics?
Peg: Who wouldn’t notice?
Al: That’s exactly the point. Real learning, not surface knowledge, is about attitude and discipline.
Peg: Isn’t there a quote about character and fate--let’s see...
Al: That would be “A man’s character is his destiny.” Heraclitus said it in the pre-socratic era.
Peg: Thank you, doctor polymath.
Al: Any time--but you do see my point, don’t you?
Peg: I think you’re absolutely right, and I agree. The only thing I’d add would be that it’s not only those foreign students. We’ve got a fair number of other students who really strive to inquire, to learn, to discover.
Al: You’re right. These are the ones we have to support and to continue to push along. We’ve also got to be sure to tell them that we appreciate how they’ve got their heads on straight. And we’ve got to find ways to entice others to join this little community.
Peg: You’re right about that, too. We’ll have to continue this train of thought another time, though. I’ve got to pack my things and get on my way. I’m meeting my lawyer neighbor, C.J., for dinner.
Al: Say hi for me. Tell him not to be a stranger. I want to ask him about Judge Alito’s confirmation and all that.
Peg: Well, do you feel like joining us?
Al: It would be a nice start to the week. I’ll get my things and follow you. See you in a sec.
Peg: Hello, Al. How was your day? --Uh, no coffee?
Al: No coffee in the pot; no coffee in the cabinet; no coffee in the storage closet. How can I work if there's no coffee? There's not even a decent coffee shop in the neighborhood--not even a bad coffee place around. Inhuman conditions; good grief!
Peg: Whoa, partner, don't lose your grip. I just saw Juliet and Roxie rolling the coffee supplies down to the cafeteria. I guess they’re setting up for that reception tonight. Let me just step over there and borrow some coffee back. I’d like a fresh cup, too.
Al: You don’t have to do that.
Peg: I’ll be right back, Al.
(A few minutes pass. Peg returns, makes fresh coffee.)
Al: That’s good coffee--thanks!
Peg: No problem.
Al: I’m just going to sit for a few minutes to let today’s case of nerves calm down.
Peg: I know. Monday’s a bear. The weekend resets your tempo to baseline, and Monday brings back the thrills, chills and frustration. That’s teaching.
Al: Between the students, the administration, the grading and our ever-cheery compatriots, we’re outnumbered.
Peg: But would you do anything different?
Al: I wouldn’t
Peg: I get a yen to try something else every so often. I took the law school exam about ten years ago, but didn’t follow through with any applications. I really didn’t want to make a career change, just a money change, and for me it would have taken too much time and energy to be worth it.
Al: I know you like issues and controversies. You would probably make an excellent plaintiff’s attorney or public interest advocate. But, you’re a great teacher, too.
Peg: Thanks! There are some good days. Every time I start thinking I haven’t found my vocation yet, something comes along to remind me that I should do what I’m doing now. Guess you’re it, this time.
Al: Well, I have my days, too. Not that I’d want to do something other than teach, but I do wonder what good I’m doing after thirty years.
Peg: We’re not setting the world on fire, that’s for sure. The students aren’t motivated.
Al: There are two questions I keep asking my students: Why do you get up in the morning? and Why do you--or your parents--think you should be showing up at our doors and in our classrooms every day?
Peg: How do they answer?
Al: Mainly they give me a confused look. I don’t think they have an answer.
Peg: Ouch.
Al: Once in a while a brave soul will look at me and say “It’s because I want something better than a boring, routine job.” Or, “I don’t want to spend my life on a hot roof like my cousins have to do.”
Peg: Sounds like as good a reason to go to school as any other.
Al: Well, it’s a start. And at least it proves there are some moral absolutes, even if they’re negatives. Most people do share those same sentiments. My question, though, is why it’s so hard to discover and then to commit yourself to some sort of a positive reason why you should be getting an education.
Peg: Maybe when you’re young you don’t have the readiness to find something to really pursue. Did you have some really definite ambitions when you were in high school?
Al: No, but I was sort of a contrarian. Whatever I thought most of my peers wanted to do, I would choose something radically opposite. But as to whether I really ever set my sights on a definite career and began to take real steps, no such thing. I was busy reading. What about you?
Peg: I was pretty typical. Mom and dad had their business; I think they tried to steer me in that direction. I had in mind that other things might be cooler: my sports, and whatever clubs I was in at the moment. I thought about a business career and gave law or politics a glance now and then.
Al: These things don’t really take a final shape until we actually do them. Even in college I changed majors officially once, and thought about it a couple of other times.
Peg: Me, too. My pre-law studies eventually became a degree in government and history with a teaching certificate attached, just in case. Now I can talk about public and political things all day, and have job security.
Al: That’s something that people in the political world don’t have, that’s for sure.
Peg: How did you wind up teaching Math? Don’t you have degrees in philosophy?
Al: It was an accident. When I graduated, I got hired as an emergency Math fill-in because I had taken enough courses in math and logic to satisfy somebody’s requirements. You know how hard it is to find Math people. They’re all in engineering, business, economics. I liked teaching, so I went back and finished the certification. But as you know I’ve taught other things, too. This and my night classes keep me fed and supplied with reading.
Peg: I’d rather keep up my garden than be a bookworm.
Al: Now you’re not going to tell me you never read. We’ve had too many good conversations for you to convince me you’re one of those brain-dead adults.
Peg: You’re right. I read the paper, a couple of good, serious magazines, lots of novels and some of the books on politics and history that show up as best-sellers. I guess nowadays I should read more from the Internet, too, since that’s where all the action seems to be. But I certainly don’t read all that philosophy stuff and literature that you read.
Al: I don’t know that many people do any more. I’m still the odd one in the crowd. I am up to speed on the Internet, though. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret: I have a blog.
Peg: Really? What do you put there--joke of the day?
Al: Once in a while the world gets a taste of my wry, ironic humor. Mainly there are a couple of things I use it for, when I have time. I store there some of the better thoughts that I happen across in my reading. Then I try to work out verbally some of the ideas I have about a couple of the topics I like to read about. Maybe eventually I’ll try to collect some of that randomness into something worth publishing. One thing leads to another, I hope.
Peg: Well I wish more adults would entertain an occasional literate thought--especially in and around our community..
Al: I’m a basic fatalist about that. For many of us, a literate thought is foreign territory. I know university professors who are as narrow in their learning as garage mechanics--in fact, the mechanics are more interesting to have a conversation. With my old car, I’m an expert on that. But I guess that’s the thing about educating human beings in society and for society. It’s a slow process that we can’t do alone. The whole culture has to be supportive. The media have to help, but today they only seem to make things stupider. The government’s schools have to improve. And parents have to do their jobs responsibly.
Peg: How do they do that? There are plenty of theories out there.
Al: One thing is for certain: parents have to model one critical value--a reverence for learning.
Peg: Are you sure “reverence” is the right word?
Al: I’m absolutely sure of that. I mean reverence in the exact sense, even with a religious connotation, as if learning is a kind of sacred object. We have to have the attitude that good learning possesses intrinsic value not only for what it provides in the utilitarian sense, but for what it is. Here’s an example: I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are certain of our foreign-born students, who live in traditional-culture families, who seem to have this attitude of a very special respect for learning--and for their teachers, too.
Peg: I sure have. It’s refreshing--makes me really feel like a teacher and not a lion-tamer or baby-sitter.
Al: Have you also noticed how these same students achieve an amazing learning curve in language skills, then quickly begin to surpass the competition in the rest of their acadmics?
Peg: Who wouldn’t notice?
Al: That’s exactly the point. Real learning, not surface knowledge, is about attitude and discipline.
Peg: Isn’t there a quote about character and fate--let’s see...
Al: That would be “A man’s character is his destiny.” Heraclitus said it in the pre-socratic era.
Peg: Thank you, doctor polymath.
Al: Any time--but you do see my point, don’t you?
Peg: I think you’re absolutely right, and I agree. The only thing I’d add would be that it’s not only those foreign students. We’ve got a fair number of other students who really strive to inquire, to learn, to discover.
Al: You’re right. These are the ones we have to support and to continue to push along. We’ve also got to be sure to tell them that we appreciate how they’ve got their heads on straight. And we’ve got to find ways to entice others to join this little community.
Peg: You’re right about that, too. We’ll have to continue this train of thought another time, though. I’ve got to pack my things and get on my way. I’m meeting my lawyer neighbor, C.J., for dinner.
Al: Say hi for me. Tell him not to be a stranger. I want to ask him about Judge Alito’s confirmation and all that.
Peg: Well, do you feel like joining us?
Al: It would be a nice start to the week. I’ll get my things and follow you. See you in a sec.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Important book update for Tuesday night students
9/10/05 UPDATE: I still have the books and will sell them again in class Tuesday evening. Remember that you'll need to pay me by check for $36.10.
The Pojman books are in at the bookstore downtown. Your best bet is to get it there if it's not too inconvenient. I'm not too sure about getting some down to Sugar Land, but working on this. At best, it will be Monday or Tuesday before we get some on our campus, and we're not sure how that money will be handled.
The Pojman books are in at the bookstore downtown. Your best bet is to get it there if it's not too inconvenient. I'm not too sure about getting some down to Sugar Land, but working on this. At best, it will be Monday or Tuesday before we get some on our campus, and we're not sure how that money will be handled.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The (Communism of) the Reign of God
From Sigrid Undset, St Catherine of Siena: "This is the communism of the society of the blessed: just as the rewards of the blessed are collected in the treasure-houses of the Church, so that every poor and infirm soul may have a share of this treasure, so in a mysterious way the sins of the faithful impoverish the whole of Christendom. Our generation, which has seen how the horrors of war and the concentration camps have fallen alike on the guilty and on those who by human reckoning were the most guiltless, should find it easier than our forefathers, with their naive believe in personal success as a reward for personal service, to understand the dogma of the Church that we all have our share in the rewards of all the saints and the guilt of all sinners."
Sunday, July 24, 2005
John Howard's Comments
During his visit to London last week, Australian PM John Howard field the (tiresome) question about whether the Coalition's presence in Iraq is what has triggered the latest round of terror bombings. He responded with this very clear analysis:
"The first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it has given the game away, to use the venacular, and no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen. Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq? And can I remind you that the 11th of September occured before the operation in Iraq? Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor? Are people by implication suggesting that we shouldn't have done that? When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan? When Sergio DeMillo was murdered in Iraq, a brave man, a distinguished international diplmat, immensely respected for his work in the United Nations, when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that DeMillo had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations adminsitrator in East Timor. Now I don't know the minds of the terrorist. By definition you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts. And the objective facts are as I have cited. The objective fact is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq and indeed all the evidence as distinct from the suppositions suggest to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of the principles of a great world religion, that at its root preaches peace and cooperation, and I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder."
Could not have said it better.
From: http://www.hughhewitt.com
"The first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it has given the game away, to use the venacular, and no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen. Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq? And can I remind you that the 11th of September occured before the operation in Iraq? Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor? Are people by implication suggesting that we shouldn't have done that? When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan? When Sergio DeMillo was murdered in Iraq, a brave man, a distinguished international diplmat, immensely respected for his work in the United Nations, when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that DeMillo had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations adminsitrator in East Timor. Now I don't know the minds of the terrorist. By definition you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts. And the objective facts are as I have cited. The objective fact is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq and indeed all the evidence as distinct from the suppositions suggest to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of the principles of a great world religion, that at its root preaches peace and cooperation, and I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder."
Could not have said it better.
From: http://www.hughhewitt.com
Supreme Court Conversation
(As usual, Peg and Al, teachers.)
(Ubiquitous name-brand coffee shop; mid-summer, mid-week, mid-afternoon. Peg walks through with a friend, notices Al reading newspapers and sipping his usual.)
Peg: Hey, Al, don't you think it's warm enough without all that hot coffee?
Al: Coffee is the elixir of life, Peg, hot or not. Besides, I need it to keep me calm while I read this news. Why don't you sit a while. Can I treat?
Peg: That's O.K., we just stopped in for some water. I'll get it. By the way, this is C.J., my neighbor.
CJ: Hi, Al; Peg mentions you regularly.
Al: Really? I'd better behave, then.
Peg: (Returning with bottled water.) So what are you reading those papers for?
Al: I'm trying to get a scope on this Supreme Court nominee. This political stuff just makes me crazy.
Peg: Good grief, CJ's been ranting about it, too.
CJ: No kidding. And the papers have it all wrong, as usual.
Al: I'm glad you said that--I was beginning to think the problem was mine. They really don't understand, do they?
CJ: Nope, not a clue.
Peg: Wait a minute, what am I missing here? I know Justice O'Connor has retired and the President is nominating a judge named Roberts to replace her. The President is picking someone who thinks like he does, and the liberals are going to be upset. What's the problem? It sounds like business as usual.
Al: It's not.
CJ: Al's right. The nomination of a Supreme Court justice has never been the subject of this sort of ideological line-drawing--at least, not until a few years ago.
Al: CJ, you're a retired attorney--is that right? I think that's what Peg told me.
CJ: Well, I guess I'll admit that much.
Al: So why the problems with this nomination?
CJ: That works on a couple of levels. What everyone sees, of course, is the political battle. No one likes being in second place. There's a pretty radical element in the Congress that's unhappy because the voting public seems to be rejecting key points of their message at the polls.
Al: There has been a real shift--I think everyone admits that much.
Peg: But we don't vote for Supreme Court justices.
CJ: That's true, Peg, but over the last 30 years or more, as voters have chosen lots of conservative candidates on the national level, the Supreme Court has kept to a pretty consistent pattern of support for a doctrine of social engineering--I guess, since the early 1960's.
Al: That's a pretty stiff way to put it, but the pattern is there, isn't it?
CJ: You bet. There have been several landmark cases where you can trace the development of a very distinct judicial philosophy. Some of the attorneys I know say that the Court has made itself a sort of "super-legislature".
Peg: Don't justices do what they've always done? When an existing law is challenged on Constitutional grounds, doesn't the Supreme Court just look at the rights given in the Constitution and decide whether that law is consistent with those rights--or not?
CJ: Sorry to burst your balloon on this one, Peg. In the first place, the Constitution is not a document that spells out or anticipates every possible situation that can arise. The founders did create the institutions of a representative republic that served the interests of a government under which the citizens of the states had certain rights and duties. These rights and duties of citizenship were held equally by all citizens but the design was to be rather minimalist in terms of how intrusive that government was allowed to become.
Peg: But of course not every person had access to these rights--the black slaves and women were left out.
CJ: You're right. There's plenty of good historical evidence why they left the slave question out--the fact is that they would not have had a republic at all if they had pursued this question in the 1780's. The new nation would have collapsed over the differences regarding abolition. It nearly did 80 years later, but America was strong enough to survive the Civil War.
Peg: But the children and grandchildren of the slaves didn't get their rights in any general sense until a hundred years later.
CJ: That's a tragedy from which the country still suffers. The courts and the government stepped in several times from the 1940's to the 1960's--the Civil Rights era--to make sure that the political rights of minorities were protected as a matter of federal law.
Al: The women's questions was solved differently, wasn't it?
CJ: That was settled by amending the Constitution; in other words, by a popular vote in the states specifically extending the rights of citizenship to women. It took two generations, but happened in the most definitive way possible.
Al: I think I see what you're getting at. The Constitution allows for its own amendment--its own alteration and adjustment over the years, but this is to happen through the people.
CJ: That's right--and the people can change their minds, as they did with Prohibition.
Peg: Or they can get smarter, as they did with the suffrage question and with the civil rights process. But that doesn't solve our problems with the Supreme Court, does it?
CJ: No, it doesn't. In the Griswold case, around 1965, the Court concurred with Justice Douglas describing something called "a penumbra issuing from an emanation" of the rights in the Bill of Rights. In other words, it suggested setting up a whole new standard for describing the rights of citizens. A lot of people said "What?"
Peg: What does the Constitution say about the job of the Judicial Branch?
CJ: Not much.
Al: You're right--I've got a copy here in my pocket.
Peg: What kind of a nerd keeps the Constitution in his pocket?
Al: The kind who knows his rights--and limitations. Here, read Section Three.
Peg: Well, that's short: only about 10 sentences.
CJ: The Judiciary was created as a third branch of government, but apparently not intended to be the dominant branch--more of a limiter and correcter, whose jurisdiction could, and can still, be limited and specified by the Congress and so by the People.
Peg: Wow, I hadn't really considered it that way. I'm stunned.
Al: The founders may have been wise. The Supreme Court has made some great decisions in its history, but it has also been dreadfully wrong at times, necessitating the reversal of its own decisions. That shift of emphasis that CJ talked about is real. The Court's main direction was to rule on the rights related to citizenship itself. Now, it seems that the justices want to protect and expand all kinds of cultural and behavioral privileges. It seems to me that these sorts of things are better off left to votes of the people through their legislatures.
CJ: The more I study, the more I marvel at how wise the founders were. They certainly didn't avoid the basic questions of government itself, but their ideal was that the citizens should not be tyrannized by any branch of government that reaches for a level of social control beyond the necessary minimum, especially on the Federal level.
Peg: But just the other day, some senator was on the news talking about the Constitution being a living tradition, not just a document.
CJ: I know who you're talking about. She was right and she was wrong.
Peg: What do you mean?
CJ: She was right in two ways. First, the people can amend the Constitution at will, since the whole point of our government's existence is the ability and importance of voting. Even the great Court decisions of the Civil Rights era were centered around protecting the ability of citizens to vote and the direct supports for that right. America is all about voting, especially on major issues--which means political process, campaigns, rhetoric, and so on.
Al: Messy, but effective.
CJ: The second way the senator was right was that the whole judicial branch, federal and state, builds on a body of case law that goes back even before the country's founding. But, it's a very careful and subtle process of interpretation, not open to whims and fads--or "penumbras issuing from emanations".
Peg: So the senator was wrong about the role of the Supreme Court, because she implied that it had a kind of legislating job to do.
CJ: Right.
Peg: But it seems unnecessary to be so strict about the role of the Constitution. Why can't the government grow and evolve with the times?
Al: The government can grow, alright, and it has in order to serve the needs, complexities and emergencies of the world. It's up to the Congress and the Executive to do this part, though, and the Constitution provides plenty of freedom to allow that to happen. But it's that word "evolve" that scares me.
Peg: Now you really sound like a conservative.
Al: That's no insult. To me, "evolve" means that the ideals and principles change, and I'm not sure that's a good thing at all, even if I am occasionally inconvenienced by the limitations.
Peg: How do you mean that?
Al: CJ, you can correct me on this. America, as it was envisioned by the founders, meant a pretty specific set of ideals clustered around the basics of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Basic to these were political liberties and political equality--the rights of citizenship. To me, guaranteeing these goods is what is most important. Anything else may well be up to the people, but not necessarily for the courts to dictate.
Peg: But the people wouldn't necessarily vote for things like fewer restrictions on publishing and broadcasting obscene matter, the ability to choose abortion, and so on.
CJ: You're right, Peg, they wouldn't, without some case being made that would convince them these things were right. Realize also, that these are behavioral freedoms, not political rights as such. It's a stretch to include them in the area of political rights. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is where ideology takes over.
Al: Ideology is fine for the Congress--it's what they're about. It's not what the Supreme Court is about.
Peg: Well, we certainly haven't heard it put that way in the news.
Al: I'm hoping that as Judge Roberts is interviewed by the Judiciary Committee, he'll be able to remind the nation of that. It does look as if that seems to be his position: looking at the objective fact of the Constitution, rather than some 20th-century social ideal, as the source of legal interpretation.
CJ: I agree--but we'll have to listen to the ideologues during that process as well.
Peg: Hmm... I'm going to have to sit and think about all of this when I get home.
CJ: (Checking his watch.) Speaking of which, Peg, we ought to hike on out of here. Good talking with you, Al.
Al: Sure, guys. So long...
(Ubiquitous name-brand coffee shop; mid-summer, mid-week, mid-afternoon. Peg walks through with a friend, notices Al reading newspapers and sipping his usual.)
Peg: Hey, Al, don't you think it's warm enough without all that hot coffee?
Al: Coffee is the elixir of life, Peg, hot or not. Besides, I need it to keep me calm while I read this news. Why don't you sit a while. Can I treat?
Peg: That's O.K., we just stopped in for some water. I'll get it. By the way, this is C.J., my neighbor.
CJ: Hi, Al; Peg mentions you regularly.
Al: Really? I'd better behave, then.
Peg: (Returning with bottled water.) So what are you reading those papers for?
Al: I'm trying to get a scope on this Supreme Court nominee. This political stuff just makes me crazy.
Peg: Good grief, CJ's been ranting about it, too.
CJ: No kidding. And the papers have it all wrong, as usual.
Al: I'm glad you said that--I was beginning to think the problem was mine. They really don't understand, do they?
CJ: Nope, not a clue.
Peg: Wait a minute, what am I missing here? I know Justice O'Connor has retired and the President is nominating a judge named Roberts to replace her. The President is picking someone who thinks like he does, and the liberals are going to be upset. What's the problem? It sounds like business as usual.
Al: It's not.
CJ: Al's right. The nomination of a Supreme Court justice has never been the subject of this sort of ideological line-drawing--at least, not until a few years ago.
Al: CJ, you're a retired attorney--is that right? I think that's what Peg told me.
CJ: Well, I guess I'll admit that much.
Al: So why the problems with this nomination?
CJ: That works on a couple of levels. What everyone sees, of course, is the political battle. No one likes being in second place. There's a pretty radical element in the Congress that's unhappy because the voting public seems to be rejecting key points of their message at the polls.
Al: There has been a real shift--I think everyone admits that much.
Peg: But we don't vote for Supreme Court justices.
CJ: That's true, Peg, but over the last 30 years or more, as voters have chosen lots of conservative candidates on the national level, the Supreme Court has kept to a pretty consistent pattern of support for a doctrine of social engineering--I guess, since the early 1960's.
Al: That's a pretty stiff way to put it, but the pattern is there, isn't it?
CJ: You bet. There have been several landmark cases where you can trace the development of a very distinct judicial philosophy. Some of the attorneys I know say that the Court has made itself a sort of "super-legislature".
Peg: Don't justices do what they've always done? When an existing law is challenged on Constitutional grounds, doesn't the Supreme Court just look at the rights given in the Constitution and decide whether that law is consistent with those rights--or not?
CJ: Sorry to burst your balloon on this one, Peg. In the first place, the Constitution is not a document that spells out or anticipates every possible situation that can arise. The founders did create the institutions of a representative republic that served the interests of a government under which the citizens of the states had certain rights and duties. These rights and duties of citizenship were held equally by all citizens but the design was to be rather minimalist in terms of how intrusive that government was allowed to become.
Peg: But of course not every person had access to these rights--the black slaves and women were left out.
CJ: You're right. There's plenty of good historical evidence why they left the slave question out--the fact is that they would not have had a republic at all if they had pursued this question in the 1780's. The new nation would have collapsed over the differences regarding abolition. It nearly did 80 years later, but America was strong enough to survive the Civil War.
Peg: But the children and grandchildren of the slaves didn't get their rights in any general sense until a hundred years later.
CJ: That's a tragedy from which the country still suffers. The courts and the government stepped in several times from the 1940's to the 1960's--the Civil Rights era--to make sure that the political rights of minorities were protected as a matter of federal law.
Al: The women's questions was solved differently, wasn't it?
CJ: That was settled by amending the Constitution; in other words, by a popular vote in the states specifically extending the rights of citizenship to women. It took two generations, but happened in the most definitive way possible.
Al: I think I see what you're getting at. The Constitution allows for its own amendment--its own alteration and adjustment over the years, but this is to happen through the people.
CJ: That's right--and the people can change their minds, as they did with Prohibition.
Peg: Or they can get smarter, as they did with the suffrage question and with the civil rights process. But that doesn't solve our problems with the Supreme Court, does it?
CJ: No, it doesn't. In the Griswold case, around 1965, the Court concurred with Justice Douglas describing something called "a penumbra issuing from an emanation" of the rights in the Bill of Rights. In other words, it suggested setting up a whole new standard for describing the rights of citizens. A lot of people said "What?"
Peg: What does the Constitution say about the job of the Judicial Branch?
CJ: Not much.
Al: You're right--I've got a copy here in my pocket.
Peg: What kind of a nerd keeps the Constitution in his pocket?
Al: The kind who knows his rights--and limitations. Here, read Section Three.
Peg: Well, that's short: only about 10 sentences.
CJ: The Judiciary was created as a third branch of government, but apparently not intended to be the dominant branch--more of a limiter and correcter, whose jurisdiction could, and can still, be limited and specified by the Congress and so by the People.
Peg: Wow, I hadn't really considered it that way. I'm stunned.
Al: The founders may have been wise. The Supreme Court has made some great decisions in its history, but it has also been dreadfully wrong at times, necessitating the reversal of its own decisions. That shift of emphasis that CJ talked about is real. The Court's main direction was to rule on the rights related to citizenship itself. Now, it seems that the justices want to protect and expand all kinds of cultural and behavioral privileges. It seems to me that these sorts of things are better off left to votes of the people through their legislatures.
CJ: The more I study, the more I marvel at how wise the founders were. They certainly didn't avoid the basic questions of government itself, but their ideal was that the citizens should not be tyrannized by any branch of government that reaches for a level of social control beyond the necessary minimum, especially on the Federal level.
Peg: But just the other day, some senator was on the news talking about the Constitution being a living tradition, not just a document.
CJ: I know who you're talking about. She was right and she was wrong.
Peg: What do you mean?
CJ: She was right in two ways. First, the people can amend the Constitution at will, since the whole point of our government's existence is the ability and importance of voting. Even the great Court decisions of the Civil Rights era were centered around protecting the ability of citizens to vote and the direct supports for that right. America is all about voting, especially on major issues--which means political process, campaigns, rhetoric, and so on.
Al: Messy, but effective.
CJ: The second way the senator was right was that the whole judicial branch, federal and state, builds on a body of case law that goes back even before the country's founding. But, it's a very careful and subtle process of interpretation, not open to whims and fads--or "penumbras issuing from emanations".
Peg: So the senator was wrong about the role of the Supreme Court, because she implied that it had a kind of legislating job to do.
CJ: Right.
Peg: But it seems unnecessary to be so strict about the role of the Constitution. Why can't the government grow and evolve with the times?
Al: The government can grow, alright, and it has in order to serve the needs, complexities and emergencies of the world. It's up to the Congress and the Executive to do this part, though, and the Constitution provides plenty of freedom to allow that to happen. But it's that word "evolve" that scares me.
Peg: Now you really sound like a conservative.
Al: That's no insult. To me, "evolve" means that the ideals and principles change, and I'm not sure that's a good thing at all, even if I am occasionally inconvenienced by the limitations.
Peg: How do you mean that?
Al: CJ, you can correct me on this. America, as it was envisioned by the founders, meant a pretty specific set of ideals clustered around the basics of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Basic to these were political liberties and political equality--the rights of citizenship. To me, guaranteeing these goods is what is most important. Anything else may well be up to the people, but not necessarily for the courts to dictate.
Peg: But the people wouldn't necessarily vote for things like fewer restrictions on publishing and broadcasting obscene matter, the ability to choose abortion, and so on.
CJ: You're right, Peg, they wouldn't, without some case being made that would convince them these things were right. Realize also, that these are behavioral freedoms, not political rights as such. It's a stretch to include them in the area of political rights. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is where ideology takes over.
Al: Ideology is fine for the Congress--it's what they're about. It's not what the Supreme Court is about.
Peg: Well, we certainly haven't heard it put that way in the news.
Al: I'm hoping that as Judge Roberts is interviewed by the Judiciary Committee, he'll be able to remind the nation of that. It does look as if that seems to be his position: looking at the objective fact of the Constitution, rather than some 20th-century social ideal, as the source of legal interpretation.
CJ: I agree--but we'll have to listen to the ideologues during that process as well.
Peg: Hmm... I'm going to have to sit and think about all of this when I get home.
CJ: (Checking his watch.) Speaking of which, Peg, we ought to hike on out of here. Good talking with you, Al.
Al: Sure, guys. So long...
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Wisdom and Myth
Philosophy and its stepchildren, the sciences, are not "post-mythic" steps in human understanding pertaining to the metaphysical, except chronologically. Mythos, sacred story, and metaphysics are different, but share a critical object--the ability to say something meaningful about humanity's "ultimate concern."
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Vitamin B16
Aha!
Pope Benedict's last "Ratzinger" book (see title link) is now available: The Europe of Benedict, in the Crisis of Cultures. The rationale of the essay is the ongoing transformation of European culture--not a brand new thing, by the way--from an intrinsic if not always successful Christianity to a brittle and anomic secularity.
That's why he's "Benedict," as some observed upon his accession. He sees the confrontation with secular nihilism as the great campaign for the future of civilization, one that must be advanced in the place where the rebellion against an integral and spiritual worldview is rooted: continental Europe. Some quotes featured in the article:
**He speaks of the "cynicism of a secularized culture that negates its own roots."
**"It's not the mention of God that offends the followers of other religions, but rather the attempt to build a human community absolutely without God."
**Society is "becoming virtually insensitive to abortion. ... Maybe because in abortion you don't see the face of who will be condemned and never see the light. ... You become blind to the right of life of another, the youngest and weakest who doesn't have a voice."
AND BY THE WAY:
Again, this annoying mantra from the Chronicle's article: "ideological watchdog." This is now trite, folks. Get rid of it and describe the Pope's former position accurately. Facts are never trite; ideology is.
More irrelevance from the fishwrap: "His first weeks as new leader of the Roman Catholic Church have been closely watched for signs of potential doctrinal change." DUH....
Pope Benedict's last "Ratzinger" book (see title link) is now available: The Europe of Benedict, in the Crisis of Cultures. The rationale of the essay is the ongoing transformation of European culture--not a brand new thing, by the way--from an intrinsic if not always successful Christianity to a brittle and anomic secularity.
That's why he's "Benedict," as some observed upon his accession. He sees the confrontation with secular nihilism as the great campaign for the future of civilization, one that must be advanced in the place where the rebellion against an integral and spiritual worldview is rooted: continental Europe. Some quotes featured in the article:
**He speaks of the "cynicism of a secularized culture that negates its own roots."
**"It's not the mention of God that offends the followers of other religions, but rather the attempt to build a human community absolutely without God."
**Society is "becoming virtually insensitive to abortion. ... Maybe because in abortion you don't see the face of who will be condemned and never see the light. ... You become blind to the right of life of another, the youngest and weakest who doesn't have a voice."
AND BY THE WAY:
Again, this annoying mantra from the Chronicle's article: "ideological watchdog." This is now trite, folks. Get rid of it and describe the Pope's former position accurately. Facts are never trite; ideology is.
More irrelevance from the fishwrap: "His first weeks as new leader of the Roman Catholic Church have been closely watched for signs of potential doctrinal change." DUH....
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Two stories
From my recent reading. Scholar of religions Jacob Needleman's The Heart of Philosophy describes his attempt to be a teacher of philosophy in a more Socratic sense, by leaving the ivory tower and conducting experimental classes with high school students and with their parents. His reflections lead him to a much more "rooted" interpretation of the "heart" of philosophic activity. At any rate, here are two stories that he relates to his students during this trial.
The Tiger Cub--a story from Hinduism.
A female tiger, late in her pregnancy, spies a herd of goats and, charging after them in her awkward condition, she stumbles against a jagged rock. She strikes her head and is killed, but the cub is born.
With the danger passed, the goats return and, seeing the tiny cub, they raise him as their own. The cub begins to grow up, contentedly, as though he were a goat. He feeds on grass and even automatically imitates the bleating sound that the goats make. He is quite happy.
All is well until one day another tiger, a great and fierce male tiger, spies the herd. He, too, charges after the herd and the goats flee in panic. The cub, however, does not move. He sees this enormous, awesome being bearing down upon them and he sees all his brothers and sisters running past him, their eyes wild with terror. For some reason that the cub does not understand, he feels no fear whatever, not even when the great tiger passes right next to him.
Seeing the cub there amidst the goats, the tiger is startled and stops in his tracks. "What are you doing here!" he angrily roars. The cub blinks his eyes and gives out a pathetic, gravelly bleating sound. The tiger cannot believe what he sees and hears, and he roars again in utter disgust. Forgetting about his hunt, he snatches the cub by the scruff of his neck and carries him off into the jungle in his huge jaws. There, by the side of a reflecting pool, he dangles the cub over the water so that he can see his own relfection. "Look at yourself!" growls the tiger. "You see! You are one of our tribe!" In fact the cub is astonished to see that he has the same kind of face as this awesome creature who is holding him. But all he can do is give out another bleating, goatlike cry.
Infuriated beyond measure, the great tiger carries the cub to its lair where, in the corner of the cave, there lies an antelope, a fresh kill. The tiger sets the cub down next to the bloody meat and orders him: "Eat!" But the cub, who has never eaten anything but grasses and leaves, the fare of goats, is repelled and refuses with yet another bleating sound. The tiger insists, but the cub is nauseated by the very sight and smell of the raw meat in front of him. Finally, his patience exhausted, the great tiger snatches up the in one gigantic paw and forces the meat down the cub's throat. The poor little cub gags and chokes as he involuntarily swallows the new food. Then, suddenly, something remarkable happens. The cub begins to feel a strange and wondrous warmth surging through him, a sensation like nothing he has ever known before. Suffused with this warmth, he cries out in joy and the sound that comes from him is the same roar of the tiger, the sound which every other beast of the jungle trembles to hear.
The great tiger smiles with satisfaction. "Now," he says to the cub, "you know what you are! Come, let us go together to the hunt!"
Second story: An "eastern story" Needleman quotes from Tolstoy's My Confession.
Long ago has been told the Easter story about the traveller who in the steppe is overtaken by an infuriated beast. Trying to save himself from the animal, the traveller jumps into a waterless well, but at its bottom he sees a dragon who opens his jaws in order to swallow him. And the unfortunate man does not dare climb out, lest he perish from the infuriated beast, and does not dare jump down to the bottom of the well, lest he be devoured by the dragon, and so clutches the twig of a wild bush growing in a cleft of the well and holds on to it. His hands grow weak and he feels that soon he shall have to surrender to the peril which awaits him on either side; but he still holds on and sees two mice, one white, theother black, even in measure making a circle around the main trunk of the bush to which he is clinging, and nibbling at it on all sides. Now, at any moment, the bush will break and tear off, and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees that and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while he is still clinging, he sees some drops of honey hanging on the leaves of the bush, and so reaches out for them with his tongue and licks the leaves.
The Tiger Cub--a story from Hinduism.
A female tiger, late in her pregnancy, spies a herd of goats and, charging after them in her awkward condition, she stumbles against a jagged rock. She strikes her head and is killed, but the cub is born.
With the danger passed, the goats return and, seeing the tiny cub, they raise him as their own. The cub begins to grow up, contentedly, as though he were a goat. He feeds on grass and even automatically imitates the bleating sound that the goats make. He is quite happy.
All is well until one day another tiger, a great and fierce male tiger, spies the herd. He, too, charges after the herd and the goats flee in panic. The cub, however, does not move. He sees this enormous, awesome being bearing down upon them and he sees all his brothers and sisters running past him, their eyes wild with terror. For some reason that the cub does not understand, he feels no fear whatever, not even when the great tiger passes right next to him.
Seeing the cub there amidst the goats, the tiger is startled and stops in his tracks. "What are you doing here!" he angrily roars. The cub blinks his eyes and gives out a pathetic, gravelly bleating sound. The tiger cannot believe what he sees and hears, and he roars again in utter disgust. Forgetting about his hunt, he snatches the cub by the scruff of his neck and carries him off into the jungle in his huge jaws. There, by the side of a reflecting pool, he dangles the cub over the water so that he can see his own relfection. "Look at yourself!" growls the tiger. "You see! You are one of our tribe!" In fact the cub is astonished to see that he has the same kind of face as this awesome creature who is holding him. But all he can do is give out another bleating, goatlike cry.
Infuriated beyond measure, the great tiger carries the cub to its lair where, in the corner of the cave, there lies an antelope, a fresh kill. The tiger sets the cub down next to the bloody meat and orders him: "Eat!" But the cub, who has never eaten anything but grasses and leaves, the fare of goats, is repelled and refuses with yet another bleating sound. The tiger insists, but the cub is nauseated by the very sight and smell of the raw meat in front of him. Finally, his patience exhausted, the great tiger snatches up the in one gigantic paw and forces the meat down the cub's throat. The poor little cub gags and chokes as he involuntarily swallows the new food. Then, suddenly, something remarkable happens. The cub begins to feel a strange and wondrous warmth surging through him, a sensation like nothing he has ever known before. Suffused with this warmth, he cries out in joy and the sound that comes from him is the same roar of the tiger, the sound which every other beast of the jungle trembles to hear.
The great tiger smiles with satisfaction. "Now," he says to the cub, "you know what you are! Come, let us go together to the hunt!"
Second story: An "eastern story" Needleman quotes from Tolstoy's My Confession.
Long ago has been told the Easter story about the traveller who in the steppe is overtaken by an infuriated beast. Trying to save himself from the animal, the traveller jumps into a waterless well, but at its bottom he sees a dragon who opens his jaws in order to swallow him. And the unfortunate man does not dare climb out, lest he perish from the infuriated beast, and does not dare jump down to the bottom of the well, lest he be devoured by the dragon, and so clutches the twig of a wild bush growing in a cleft of the well and holds on to it. His hands grow weak and he feels that soon he shall have to surrender to the peril which awaits him on either side; but he still holds on and sees two mice, one white, theother black, even in measure making a circle around the main trunk of the bush to which he is clinging, and nibbling at it on all sides. Now, at any moment, the bush will break and tear off, and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees that and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while he is still clinging, he sees some drops of honey hanging on the leaves of the bush, and so reaches out for them with his tongue and licks the leaves.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Checking in
I haven't posted regularly due to a death in the family and the usual end-of-semester pressures. Back soon.
Meanwhile, click the title for some good links and reading.
Meanwhile, click the title for some good links and reading.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Thesis: Philosophy and Religion
Thesis: Philosophy was religion prior to "religion" the way we understand religion today, especially among the intentional, rational and justified sorts of religions that exist now. It's not natural in the sense of the primal religions, but reflected through a certain level (we might say more or less) of participation in intellectual construction and justification. No, I don't mean this in an elitist sense. It's manifest today that the philosophical schools of antiquity were philosophic ways taught by masters who handed on traditions of knowledge and praxis for many generations. The roots of such institutions, while at a certain point attributable to particular individuals, also depend upon the exposure of those individuals to certain experiences and travels that enabled them to become conscious of more ancient, if less intellectual (in the broad sense), ways of living. Hadot contends that philosophy in the Christian world was separated from these roots because the Christian way appropriated, co-opted, the existing philosophical disciplines because these supplied a ready-made channel for dialogue with the people of their world. Eventually, Christians on the popular level began to forget their philosophic way, in the explicit sense, while retaining its public forms, the creeds.. The case might also be made that after the Reformation, the rejection of philosophy was explicit in the reformed traditions. (That doesn't mean it the philosophic strand no longer existed. Rejection is subjective.) In the "Catholic" traditions, where did the philosophic disciplines go? To the monasteries, certainly; less consistently, to certain university traditions.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Personal note
Despite lots to say, I haven't posted in a week because we have been very busy attending to a serious illness in the family. Back to business soon, I hope.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Benedict XVI
Well, the Electors may not have surprised anyone else, but they surprised me. I had thought that one of the Europeans would be a compromise choice later on in the balloting--third or fourth day, and either Schoenborn or one of the Italians. The best shot seemed to me one of the very promising third-worlders. I wonder what they had in mind?
--They elected the smartest man in the room: a formidable theologian, who would have left his mark, no matter what.
--They elected the oldest man in the room, or pretty close. We saw with John XXIII that the man with little to lose is not necessarily the most cautious.
--They elected a peer of John Paul II. Benedict was one of two cardinals at the conclave who had been among the electors in 1978.
--They elected a consummate European, of a very sophisticated, even subtle, cast of mind. Benedict seems to be a very highly "cultured" person in the most formal sense of that word. I heard this evening that he is a musician, an accomplished classical pianist who loves Mozart.
--Continuing that thought, they probably could not have elected a Pope with a personality that contrasted more with that of his predecessor. Not shy, but very "academic," a grandfatherly type. He seems to be the type who may have "mentored" other members of the hierarchy with discretion and a certain warmth.
--In intellectual style, also very different. A neo-scholastic theologian as opposed to a phenomenological philosopher. Read anything by either man: the difference in approach is immediately apparent.
--Did they Electors choose St. Benedict or Benedict XV? The former was the bold founder of monasteries, the great medieval foundations that rescued not only the faith but also civilization itself from Europe's bearded invaders. The latter was, according to one historian, "a frail, reserved aristocrat" who inherited a Church inspired by a strong Pope Pius X but somewhat angered by the Modernist controversies. Yet Benedict XV also engaged his world by writing what would become the pioneering missionary charter of his century, and by suffering with the Church through World War I. He spent himself in charitable efforts to ease the plight of a huge refugee problem and to bring the nations to the negotiating table, unsuccessfully. He was a fascinating and complex character.
We can only wait, watch and learn what prompting of the Spirit moved the Cardinals in Cardinal Ratzinger's direction.
--They elected the smartest man in the room: a formidable theologian, who would have left his mark, no matter what.
--They elected the oldest man in the room, or pretty close. We saw with John XXIII that the man with little to lose is not necessarily the most cautious.
--They elected a peer of John Paul II. Benedict was one of two cardinals at the conclave who had been among the electors in 1978.
--They elected a consummate European, of a very sophisticated, even subtle, cast of mind. Benedict seems to be a very highly "cultured" person in the most formal sense of that word. I heard this evening that he is a musician, an accomplished classical pianist who loves Mozart.
--Continuing that thought, they probably could not have elected a Pope with a personality that contrasted more with that of his predecessor. Not shy, but very "academic," a grandfatherly type. He seems to be the type who may have "mentored" other members of the hierarchy with discretion and a certain warmth.
--In intellectual style, also very different. A neo-scholastic theologian as opposed to a phenomenological philosopher. Read anything by either man: the difference in approach is immediately apparent.
--Did they Electors choose St. Benedict or Benedict XV? The former was the bold founder of monasteries, the great medieval foundations that rescued not only the faith but also civilization itself from Europe's bearded invaders. The latter was, according to one historian, "a frail, reserved aristocrat" who inherited a Church inspired by a strong Pope Pius X but somewhat angered by the Modernist controversies. Yet Benedict XV also engaged his world by writing what would become the pioneering missionary charter of his century, and by suffering with the Church through World War I. He spent himself in charitable efforts to ease the plight of a huge refugee problem and to bring the nations to the negotiating table, unsuccessfully. He was a fascinating and complex character.
We can only wait, watch and learn what prompting of the Spirit moved the Cardinals in Cardinal Ratzinger's direction.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
#6
The Conclave: Why so much ritual? Why all the secrecy?
Secrecy first: Think back to last fall's presidential campaign and election. It got ugly at times. In a community of religion, one as broad and deep as the Catholic Church, there is danger that a process similar to the raucous American election season, where parties, interest groups, and the media apply all kinds of healthy and unhealthy pressures, would be chaotic and unintelligible. And the outcome, intended to reflect inspired, prayerful consideration, would be terrible uncertainty and partisanship. In its long adventure, the Catholic Church has learned lessons from its own story and from secular history. While the deliberations of the Cardinal-electors will be secret for now, and probably should be, everyone who wants to know the steps of the process and the specific procedures that will take place can do so. There is an abundance of information available about this "secret" ceremony. Eventually, more about the actual events of this conclave will be known, and the electors are certainly aware of that. Further, many facts about these electors and their personal roads to Rome are broadcast and printed daily.
The process now in place for the modern Church to choose its next worldly shepherd is one that respects its long tradition and the spirit of the ancient Church as well. The New Testament shows the apostles deliberating together over important questions and reaching consensus. This is what the electors will do. They need the time and space to do it well and to listen to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. It won't be long before the rest of the story is investigated. There is a "healthy confidentiality" that needs to be preserved.
This brings us to the general point of ritual. Ritual is two things: symbol and tradition. The rituals accompanying the papal transition remind us that Catholicism is sacramental and universal. Where human language creates differences, distinctions, ambiguities and misunderstanding, the incorporation of public ritual returns the Church to the signification of its fundamental truths. What we believe is made alive, acted out. Liturgy is drama.
At Pope John Paul's funeral, the Mass came to its conclusion and different voices were heard to offer a short series of blessings and committals. In this series was a blessing chanted by a delegation from the Eastern rites of the Church. It was chanted in Greek, echoing the most ancient of the Church's common languages. Hearing the prayers of these ancestral communities gave us a glimpse into the prayer and heart of the first generations of Christians. It was a reminder of the continuity of today's Church with the first-century apostolic community.
G. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, "Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death." Especially in the Church, our tradition has an enormous amount to teach us. Liturgy and ritual teach us through powerful symbols and actions. We believe, pray, and hand on the living Scriptures, the words and and acts of the apostles and the many services--in both the liturgical and moral senses--that mark the timeless character of the Christian vocation and identity. Ritual is not only important, but of the essence.
Secrecy first: Think back to last fall's presidential campaign and election. It got ugly at times. In a community of religion, one as broad and deep as the Catholic Church, there is danger that a process similar to the raucous American election season, where parties, interest groups, and the media apply all kinds of healthy and unhealthy pressures, would be chaotic and unintelligible. And the outcome, intended to reflect inspired, prayerful consideration, would be terrible uncertainty and partisanship. In its long adventure, the Catholic Church has learned lessons from its own story and from secular history. While the deliberations of the Cardinal-electors will be secret for now, and probably should be, everyone who wants to know the steps of the process and the specific procedures that will take place can do so. There is an abundance of information available about this "secret" ceremony. Eventually, more about the actual events of this conclave will be known, and the electors are certainly aware of that. Further, many facts about these electors and their personal roads to Rome are broadcast and printed daily.
The process now in place for the modern Church to choose its next worldly shepherd is one that respects its long tradition and the spirit of the ancient Church as well. The New Testament shows the apostles deliberating together over important questions and reaching consensus. This is what the electors will do. They need the time and space to do it well and to listen to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. It won't be long before the rest of the story is investigated. There is a "healthy confidentiality" that needs to be preserved.
This brings us to the general point of ritual. Ritual is two things: symbol and tradition. The rituals accompanying the papal transition remind us that Catholicism is sacramental and universal. Where human language creates differences, distinctions, ambiguities and misunderstanding, the incorporation of public ritual returns the Church to the signification of its fundamental truths. What we believe is made alive, acted out. Liturgy is drama.
At Pope John Paul's funeral, the Mass came to its conclusion and different voices were heard to offer a short series of blessings and committals. In this series was a blessing chanted by a delegation from the Eastern rites of the Church. It was chanted in Greek, echoing the most ancient of the Church's common languages. Hearing the prayers of these ancestral communities gave us a glimpse into the prayer and heart of the first generations of Christians. It was a reminder of the continuity of today's Church with the first-century apostolic community.
G. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, "Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death." Especially in the Church, our tradition has an enormous amount to teach us. Liturgy and ritual teach us through powerful symbols and actions. We believe, pray, and hand on the living Scriptures, the words and and acts of the apostles and the many services--in both the liturgical and moral senses--that mark the timeless character of the Christian vocation and identity. Ritual is not only important, but of the essence.
#5
Who will be the next Pope?
We don't know, do we? The 117 (actually 115, because two are ill and cannot come to the Conclave) Cardinal-electors are highly intelligent individuals, leaders responsible for major archdioceses around the world or major administrative departments of the Church. They all have duties of oversight that are extensive and weighty. They have a view that is at once "from the inside" and global, a view that the media don't and can't begin to share and report. This collective view is of the work of the whole Church, not just that in the United States or Europe, where secularizing decay is rife in society and in parts of the Christian community.
What happened 27 years ago, in October of 1978, may be our best precedent. The electors at that Conclave looked to Poland, a church under oppression, but a community that was well-managed, influential and growing. They chose the very brightest member of a heroic and determined national hierarchy. Are there regions, within Europe or outside of it, where such a resurgent church is replicated and ready to assume a place in history? This, I believe, is one of the questions the Cardinals will answer next week.
I think about 99 per cent of everything we hear about the Conclave is gossip.
We don't know, do we? The 117 (actually 115, because two are ill and cannot come to the Conclave) Cardinal-electors are highly intelligent individuals, leaders responsible for major archdioceses around the world or major administrative departments of the Church. They all have duties of oversight that are extensive and weighty. They have a view that is at once "from the inside" and global, a view that the media don't and can't begin to share and report. This collective view is of the work of the whole Church, not just that in the United States or Europe, where secularizing decay is rife in society and in parts of the Christian community.
What happened 27 years ago, in October of 1978, may be our best precedent. The electors at that Conclave looked to Poland, a church under oppression, but a community that was well-managed, influential and growing. They chose the very brightest member of a heroic and determined national hierarchy. Are there regions, within Europe or outside of it, where such a resurgent church is replicated and ready to assume a place in history? This, I believe, is one of the questions the Cardinals will answer next week.
I think about 99 per cent of everything we hear about the Conclave is gossip.
#4
How does infallibility work?
The teaching on infallibility is about the Pope's job of moral and spiritual guidance within the community of the Roman Catholic Church.
Here's a story: Suppose a business owner hires a contractor to handle certain specialized and important types of work done periodically in that business. When the owner hires this contractor, a couple of things are understood: first, the contractor will agree to perform the job and will have the necessary tools, vehicle, competence, etc., to accomplish that; in return, the contractor has a right to expect that the owner has the ability to provide for the risks and compensate for the expenses incurred by the contractor. In other words, both are on the hook: the owner won't hire this contractor for some work that the contractor is not suited for or where the owner can't be willing to "back up" or guarantee the quality of what's being done. In other words, the buck stops with the owner.
The figures of the owner and contractor are analogous to the principal figures involved in living out the command of Jesus (the owner) to the apostles, especially Peter (the contractor), to "teach all nations" with a "spirit of truth". The specific accountability for transmitting the truth of the faith is focused on Peter as an individual. But Jesus also promises that the Holy Spirit will keep the Church from error. Accountability and empowerment complement each other.
Infallibility is understood to be the asset that will allow the Church to carry out its essential mission without losing heart. The alternative, logically, is that the Church and its leadership have been placed in an impossible position: to proclaim the Gospel message as saving truth, but without a basic tool of teaching, the assurance that one's message is finally truthful. The Church and its earthly voice, the Pope, have the assurance that the Holy Spirit will not permit them to mislead the faithful on what is essential to the faith.
Note those last four words: "essential to the faith." Papal infallibility applies to the core of doctrine and the most significant matters of moral teaching, the propositions upon which all else must rest. These doctrines must be affirmed as truth for the whole of the Church. It applies to the Pope in his duty as successor of Peter to be the one finally accountable for the truth proclaimed in Christ's name. It does not apply to the individual, purely and simply, who happens to hold the office or the traits or preferences of that individual. The making explicit of a specific doctrine "from the chair of Peter" as a matter of objective truth takes place only rarely--truth is simple in its essence. Generally, the popes have spoken in this manner only on issues of serious and global significance, one that the Church in general has acclaimed for a long time.
By their nature, such issues do not happen along very often. The last time an explicitly infallible teaching was declared was in the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, in 1950. In the encyclical message Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II described the Church's basic teaching on issues such as abortion and euthanasia as well as the moral law that protects all innocent life as generally meeting the conditions of infallible truth, but he does not carry the matter to its full conclusion. Over the centuries the popes have been very cautious in any labeling of important affirmations with the term "infallible". They understand that the focus is on the matter of the teaching, not simply on the authority of the one proclaiming the teaching.
The teaching on infallibility is about the Pope's job of moral and spiritual guidance within the community of the Roman Catholic Church.
Here's a story: Suppose a business owner hires a contractor to handle certain specialized and important types of work done periodically in that business. When the owner hires this contractor, a couple of things are understood: first, the contractor will agree to perform the job and will have the necessary tools, vehicle, competence, etc., to accomplish that; in return, the contractor has a right to expect that the owner has the ability to provide for the risks and compensate for the expenses incurred by the contractor. In other words, both are on the hook: the owner won't hire this contractor for some work that the contractor is not suited for or where the owner can't be willing to "back up" or guarantee the quality of what's being done. In other words, the buck stops with the owner.
The figures of the owner and contractor are analogous to the principal figures involved in living out the command of Jesus (the owner) to the apostles, especially Peter (the contractor), to "teach all nations" with a "spirit of truth". The specific accountability for transmitting the truth of the faith is focused on Peter as an individual. But Jesus also promises that the Holy Spirit will keep the Church from error. Accountability and empowerment complement each other.
Infallibility is understood to be the asset that will allow the Church to carry out its essential mission without losing heart. The alternative, logically, is that the Church and its leadership have been placed in an impossible position: to proclaim the Gospel message as saving truth, but without a basic tool of teaching, the assurance that one's message is finally truthful. The Church and its earthly voice, the Pope, have the assurance that the Holy Spirit will not permit them to mislead the faithful on what is essential to the faith.
Note those last four words: "essential to the faith." Papal infallibility applies to the core of doctrine and the most significant matters of moral teaching, the propositions upon which all else must rest. These doctrines must be affirmed as truth for the whole of the Church. It applies to the Pope in his duty as successor of Peter to be the one finally accountable for the truth proclaimed in Christ's name. It does not apply to the individual, purely and simply, who happens to hold the office or the traits or preferences of that individual. The making explicit of a specific doctrine "from the chair of Peter" as a matter of objective truth takes place only rarely--truth is simple in its essence. Generally, the popes have spoken in this manner only on issues of serious and global significance, one that the Church in general has acclaimed for a long time.
By their nature, such issues do not happen along very often. The last time an explicitly infallible teaching was declared was in the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, in 1950. In the encyclical message Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II described the Church's basic teaching on issues such as abortion and euthanasia as well as the moral law that protects all innocent life as generally meeting the conditions of infallible truth, but he does not carry the matter to its full conclusion. Over the centuries the popes have been very cautious in any labeling of important affirmations with the term "infallible". They understand that the focus is on the matter of the teaching, not simply on the authority of the one proclaiming the teaching.
#3
Why do Catholics worship the Pope?
"Worship" is neither the correct word nor the appropriate concept to describe the relationship between the core Catholic community and its institutional head. The Church is not "the Pope's Church." It is always the church whose beginning and whose end is Jesus Christ. This is an absolute. Everything Catholics do sacramentally and everything they should do institutionally flows from the real headship of Christ.
As a real community, a large one, making its way in the world, Roman Catholicism abides by a principle of authority that is the product of a very long tradition. The history of the papacy is an amazing story, and one that gives a face, positively and negatively, to the history of the Catholic community over the centuries. The "lineage" of the popes provides a focus around which the eras of that history can be given unique characters. Sociologically, this may help to explain why Catholics find special attachment in their hearts for the popes of their era.
Theologically, Catholics understand that the papal sequence traces back historically to the apostolic period. The New Testament places the authority delegated by Jesus to the apostolic community on Peter, who became the apostle with the greatest share of the accountability within the ancestral Church. From the very next generation Peter's successors in Rome were viewed as the primary "overseers" or bishops, of the growing assembly, "Church," which always saw itself as one with the bishop of Rome. And in that same city during its pagan imperial period, the more important efforts to destroy the young Church were focused on the Christian community at Rome. In a perverse way, the world itself acknowledged the importance of the "See of Peter" from a very early time. This diocese suffered like no other at the hands of the first persecutors.
Finally, we should note that no one mistakes the papal authority for the duty of the human conscience to bind itself to God's will. But by virtue of the greatness of the office in history, the sanctity of its origins and the weight of its mandate of teaching and leadership, Catholics today find in the papacy a special kind of authority. It is not the only contact or (necessarily) the most important contact that Catholics have with their Church, but it is still real and defining.
"Worship" is neither the correct word nor the appropriate concept to describe the relationship between the core Catholic community and its institutional head. The Church is not "the Pope's Church." It is always the church whose beginning and whose end is Jesus Christ. This is an absolute. Everything Catholics do sacramentally and everything they should do institutionally flows from the real headship of Christ.
As a real community, a large one, making its way in the world, Roman Catholicism abides by a principle of authority that is the product of a very long tradition. The history of the papacy is an amazing story, and one that gives a face, positively and negatively, to the history of the Catholic community over the centuries. The "lineage" of the popes provides a focus around which the eras of that history can be given unique characters. Sociologically, this may help to explain why Catholics find special attachment in their hearts for the popes of their era.
Theologically, Catholics understand that the papal sequence traces back historically to the apostolic period. The New Testament places the authority delegated by Jesus to the apostolic community on Peter, who became the apostle with the greatest share of the accountability within the ancestral Church. From the very next generation Peter's successors in Rome were viewed as the primary "overseers" or bishops, of the growing assembly, "Church," which always saw itself as one with the bishop of Rome. And in that same city during its pagan imperial period, the more important efforts to destroy the young Church were focused on the Christian community at Rome. In a perverse way, the world itself acknowledged the importance of the "See of Peter" from a very early time. This diocese suffered like no other at the hands of the first persecutors.
Finally, we should note that no one mistakes the papal authority for the duty of the human conscience to bind itself to God's will. But by virtue of the greatness of the office in history, the sanctity of its origins and the weight of its mandate of teaching and leadership, Catholics today find in the papacy a special kind of authority. It is not the only contact or (necessarily) the most important contact that Catholics have with their Church, but it is still real and defining.
#2
Isn't the Pope just one religious leader among others?
Many leaders of faiths other than the Catholic acknowledge differently. The leadership of Roman Catholicism maintains dialogue with the heads and representatives of many of the world's major faiths, denominations and unique congregations. Under Pope John Paul II in particular, during his very long term of service, such dialogue flourished.
Even in this country, the figure of the Pope is for a significant segment of the Protestant community, as diverse as it is, an important focus of Christian activity, evangelization, scholarship and moral thinking. The Pope has a worldwide audience of 1.1 billion Catholics, and also is heard in a multicultural community of interest in human endeavor in areas from the scientific to the diplomatic.
Today it may not be true to say that "all roads lead to Rome." However, quite a few of the roads, and many of the side streets and detours, still do.
Many leaders of faiths other than the Catholic acknowledge differently. The leadership of Roman Catholicism maintains dialogue with the heads and representatives of many of the world's major faiths, denominations and unique congregations. Under Pope John Paul II in particular, during his very long term of service, such dialogue flourished.
Even in this country, the figure of the Pope is for a significant segment of the Protestant community, as diverse as it is, an important focus of Christian activity, evangelization, scholarship and moral thinking. The Pope has a worldwide audience of 1.1 billion Catholics, and also is heard in a multicultural community of interest in human endeavor in areas from the scientific to the diplomatic.
Today it may not be true to say that "all roads lead to Rome." However, quite a few of the roads, and many of the side streets and detours, still do.
Papal FAQ #1
Responses to some comments heard over the last several days:
Pope John Paul II was buried on Friday, April 8th. It seemed like all that week we were overrun with news on this. Why? Wasn't this overexposure?
I don't think this was a complicated call for the media, here or around the world. There are, give or take, 60 million American Catholics or people who at least call themselves that. There are also a significant number of interested parties who maintain interest in Roman Catholic events for a variety of reasons and many individuals who are simply curious. If the audience exists, it gets the courage.
The media pursue interests, noble or base, of great masses of people. The death and funeral of Pope John Paul sparked the interest of a vast number of people: by Friday's funeral, some 2 billion viewers were expected to look in on some part of the ceremony. So it's not that the coverage was "thrown at us;" the media just followed the crowd. And given the usual programming available, even on the news networks, it was interesting to see the "scandal of the day" steamrollered by Pope John Paul.
Pope John Paul II was buried on Friday, April 8th. It seemed like all that week we were overrun with news on this. Why? Wasn't this overexposure?
I don't think this was a complicated call for the media, here or around the world. There are, give or take, 60 million American Catholics or people who at least call themselves that. There are also a significant number of interested parties who maintain interest in Roman Catholic events for a variety of reasons and many individuals who are simply curious. If the audience exists, it gets the courage.
The media pursue interests, noble or base, of great masses of people. The death and funeral of Pope John Paul sparked the interest of a vast number of people: by Friday's funeral, some 2 billion viewers were expected to look in on some part of the ceremony. So it's not that the coverage was "thrown at us;" the media just followed the crowd. And given the usual programming available, even on the news networks, it was interesting to see the "scandal of the day" steamrollered by Pope John Paul.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Sad
What's very sad is that most of the media types trying to explain what's happening in Rome just don't get it. Certainly Hewitt's comments (www.hughhewitt.com) today say as much.
Portraying the "issues" facing the Church in terms of a political agenda (abortion, women priests, contraception, and the whole rest of the litany) just doesn't strike anywhere near what the Cardinal-electors are focused on. They're concerned about the meta-issues, not the controversies.
If I were in Rome as a Cardinal today, I'd be looking for conversations about the following: love of people and inner empathy with their condition, powerful intellect, adminstrative competence, ability to communicate and understand/use the media, visibly prayerful quality and excellence as a liturgical presence, ability to see the whole picture, ability to subordinate narrow loyalties to a universal view of the Church, "built-in" diversities (someone with more than one background, culturally and socially), deep knowledge of and faithfulness to the Scriptures as a whole, and faithfulness to the existing body of the Church's teachings. Add to these a charismatic presence and zeal for teaching and exemplifying the Gospel for the current age, and you've really got something.
What you don't have (Deo gratias!) is someone who will jump up one day and say to all those who want extensive doctrinal and pastoral reform that they've been right all along and their wishes are granted. Won't happen and shouldn't happen.
Portraying the "issues" facing the Church in terms of a political agenda (abortion, women priests, contraception, and the whole rest of the litany) just doesn't strike anywhere near what the Cardinal-electors are focused on. They're concerned about the meta-issues, not the controversies.
If I were in Rome as a Cardinal today, I'd be looking for conversations about the following: love of people and inner empathy with their condition, powerful intellect, adminstrative competence, ability to communicate and understand/use the media, visibly prayerful quality and excellence as a liturgical presence, ability to see the whole picture, ability to subordinate narrow loyalties to a universal view of the Church, "built-in" diversities (someone with more than one background, culturally and socially), deep knowledge of and faithfulness to the Scriptures as a whole, and faithfulness to the existing body of the Church's teachings. Add to these a charismatic presence and zeal for teaching and exemplifying the Gospel for the current age, and you've really got something.
What you don't have (Deo gratias!) is someone who will jump up one day and say to all those who want extensive doctrinal and pastoral reform that they've been right all along and their wishes are granted. Won't happen and shouldn't happen.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Owning the Pope
It's amazing how many of the folks who are interviewed in the media feel an entitlement to John Paul's "endorsement" of their views on nearly everything. The problem is, neither Catholic teaching, nor this pope's representations of same, lend themselves to easy endorsement of any secular/social/political doctrine whatsoever. Being rooted in revealed truth, they give and they take away. The politicians must be very careful about how much they ride John Paul's coattails. It wouldn't hurt if more of us were even superficially familiar with his approach to the central points of the Church's ancient doctrines.
On the other hand, I believe that those who have somehow cast themselves in opposition to what seems to be John Paul's loving insistence that there is a Catholic insight into truth about how we should live are also in error. They miss the point. The late pope truly understood that there were dangerous ideologies in today's world. One of them is Communism--philosophical materialism that reduces humans to matter in a great historical, progressive sweep that aims at a perfected, concrete, earthly paradise of economic regimentation and sociological conformity. None of us likes that.
The other ideology is moral relativism, the theoretical ability to pick my truth, and in so doing create moral validity. This doctrine the average Westerner accepts without question today. It assumes that moral statements have no more substance than the decision to have pepperoni or anchovies on my pizza tonight, so no one needs to presume to tell me they're right and I'm wrong. Of course, such an idea is a self-contradiction. What is true is by its nature inconvenient and resistant to my rationalizations. The truth is exactly that which I don't like.
On the other hand, I believe that those who have somehow cast themselves in opposition to what seems to be John Paul's loving insistence that there is a Catholic insight into truth about how we should live are also in error. They miss the point. The late pope truly understood that there were dangerous ideologies in today's world. One of them is Communism--philosophical materialism that reduces humans to matter in a great historical, progressive sweep that aims at a perfected, concrete, earthly paradise of economic regimentation and sociological conformity. None of us likes that.
The other ideology is moral relativism, the theoretical ability to pick my truth, and in so doing create moral validity. This doctrine the average Westerner accepts without question today. It assumes that moral statements have no more substance than the decision to have pepperoni or anchovies on my pizza tonight, so no one needs to presume to tell me they're right and I'm wrong. Of course, such an idea is a self-contradiction. What is true is by its nature inconvenient and resistant to my rationalizations. The truth is exactly that which I don't like.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Two papal facts
Will these be significant facts or not?
The most recent Spanish pope: Alexander VI, 1492-1503. A Borgia, Spanish-Moorish ethnicity.
The most recent African pope: Gelasius I, 492-496. A Roman of African descent.
Who knows what the Cardinals are thinking, and what their level of fellowship is? What will the length of the Conclave portend? Will they return to the Italians? Choose another European? Choose a semi-European--a prominent, Argentinian cardinal is a man with an Italian name, and he has been on some of the short lists. We can't rule out an African (Cardinal Arinze is a leading candidate), or someone from South Asia's strong Catholic community.
The Cardinals--the larger group of 135 and the voting group of 117 have a couple of weeks to hold at least general conversations about the general direction of the Church Universal. They are smart fellows and will do so artfully and purposefully before the curtain of silence falls on their deliberations.
If it's a deadlock, look for an older European--perhaps Schoenborn or Lustiger. Otherwise, all bets are off in these times. Are there other Cardinals of "mixed" background? Who, among the Cardinals, do they regard as "the smartest man in the room"--and a man with heroic quality?
The most recent Spanish pope: Alexander VI, 1492-1503. A Borgia, Spanish-Moorish ethnicity.
The most recent African pope: Gelasius I, 492-496. A Roman of African descent.
Who knows what the Cardinals are thinking, and what their level of fellowship is? What will the length of the Conclave portend? Will they return to the Italians? Choose another European? Choose a semi-European--a prominent, Argentinian cardinal is a man with an Italian name, and he has been on some of the short lists. We can't rule out an African (Cardinal Arinze is a leading candidate), or someone from South Asia's strong Catholic community.
The Cardinals--the larger group of 135 and the voting group of 117 have a couple of weeks to hold at least general conversations about the general direction of the Church Universal. They are smart fellows and will do so artfully and purposefully before the curtain of silence falls on their deliberations.
If it's a deadlock, look for an older European--perhaps Schoenborn or Lustiger. Otherwise, all bets are off in these times. Are there other Cardinals of "mixed" background? Who, among the Cardinals, do they regard as "the smartest man in the room"--and a man with heroic quality?
Friday, April 01, 2005
A Titan
Thousands keep vigil around the world, keep company with a hero of the century and of the Catholic Church. Just read the biographies, see the consensus that has emerged. A few of the gifts this great one leaves us:
The map of the world today is different today than it was in 1978.
Our moral language is different: "Be not afraid." "The culture of death...and the culture of life." The implications of recasting moral and political discussion in these and many more subtle terms raised, if it did not solve, the essential questions of our version of "modernity". The moral struggle will be fought on these Christian grounds, not on the muddy turf of modern secularism.
The Church is different:
--The runaway train of experimenters and dissidents has been slowed to allow mature reflection on the real legacy of Vatican II.
--The heart of the Church was inspired to a courageous renewal.
--Theological study and discourse found a new and fertile field and new rigor in Karol Wojtyla's philosophical contributions and in his profound writings as John Paul II.
--His mature example of leadership brought a certain peace to an uncertain and turbulent Church. A new generation of guides has been nurtured and brought to influence.
The map of the world today is different today than it was in 1978.
Our moral language is different: "Be not afraid." "The culture of death...and the culture of life." The implications of recasting moral and political discussion in these and many more subtle terms raised, if it did not solve, the essential questions of our version of "modernity". The moral struggle will be fought on these Christian grounds, not on the muddy turf of modern secularism.
The Church is different:
--The runaway train of experimenters and dissidents has been slowed to allow mature reflection on the real legacy of Vatican II.
--The heart of the Church was inspired to a courageous renewal.
--Theological study and discourse found a new and fertile field and new rigor in Karol Wojtyla's philosophical contributions and in his profound writings as John Paul II.
--His mature example of leadership brought a certain peace to an uncertain and turbulent Church. A new generation of guides has been nurtured and brought to influence.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Pejoratives?
This is irritating: using terminology like "religious right" and "politics" as rhetorical hammering for the apparent purposes of insult and dismissal. Words and their use are critically important in social discourse, and so are the attitudes with which we make our attempts to communicate and argue our positions.
In the case of the expression "religious right" the citations are too numerous to list. Who are the users of this expression talking about? Presumably they refer to those voters and social advocates who are of conservative orientation, who voted to re-elect President Bush, and whose social positions are influenced by values they consciously derive from their church, mosque, congregation or general religious tradition.
Those who characterize these citizens as the "religious right"--the "non-religious left"?--appear to have in mind that in our society it's not legitimate to allow oneself to hold opinions, beliefs, values or specific cultural affiliations that might be derived from religion. If this appearance is true, then it is wrong on two very serious counts.
In the first place, it's wrong because religion is at the root or core of all civilization and culture. This is true, of course, of our republic and its central values--all the more true because this is an intentional society, not of gradual and accidental origin, but made by a set of deliberate choices based on issues of philosophic and religious principle. It's not only understandable but also legitimate and within the spirit of the Founders to argue social issues and policies from such ground, provided one is respectful of others' commitments. That's how the system is designed to operate. The ever-perceptive Toqueville spoke about the nation "with the soul of a Church" precisely because the wounds of religious war were not present in the American consciousness, and citizens were free to act on such principles without consequence. So it's OK, for example, to debate about civic and legal duties toward human life either from secular perspective or on religious grounds.
The second reason that using this "religious right" characterization is improper is that it's simply an attack ad hominem. More than one of my college philosophy professors would have warned us about delivering opinions in such personal terms. "Religious right" is a meaningless expression unless it's used pejoratively. All those of any persuasion--liberal and conservative--who contribute to the public debate these days would be well-advised against using such terminology.
The other misused term is "politics," as in "Oh, that's just politics." The recent pejorative use that's bothersome is in yesterday's New York Times headline for John Danforth's commentary. (Click on header above.) Politics is a good thing, not a bad thing. It is the "medium" in which social organization, especially democracy, operates. We can't avoid it. As Aristotle notes, politics and political things are useful properly to humans, who have to negotiate life together in society. They are exactly as basic as the faculty of speech, without which we are "either beasts or gods". Senator Danforth may not like the particulars of the "religious agenda" but in all honesty he should respect the legitimacy of that set of issues as they appear in the thinking of "his" party rather than censoring their consideration.
By the way, exactly how was it that the Terry Schiavo matter became a "political" issue? It was political the moment the disagreement between the parties came before a court of law and were pursued in court unremittingly until "resolved" by her death this morning. It's completely legitimate to have discussed the issues her case has brought to light. Perhaps Ms. Schiavo's untimely and unnecessary suffering will continue to bother all of us for a long time.
In the case of the expression "religious right" the citations are too numerous to list. Who are the users of this expression talking about? Presumably they refer to those voters and social advocates who are of conservative orientation, who voted to re-elect President Bush, and whose social positions are influenced by values they consciously derive from their church, mosque, congregation or general religious tradition.
Those who characterize these citizens as the "religious right"--the "non-religious left"?--appear to have in mind that in our society it's not legitimate to allow oneself to hold opinions, beliefs, values or specific cultural affiliations that might be derived from religion. If this appearance is true, then it is wrong on two very serious counts.
In the first place, it's wrong because religion is at the root or core of all civilization and culture. This is true, of course, of our republic and its central values--all the more true because this is an intentional society, not of gradual and accidental origin, but made by a set of deliberate choices based on issues of philosophic and religious principle. It's not only understandable but also legitimate and within the spirit of the Founders to argue social issues and policies from such ground, provided one is respectful of others' commitments. That's how the system is designed to operate. The ever-perceptive Toqueville spoke about the nation "with the soul of a Church" precisely because the wounds of religious war were not present in the American consciousness, and citizens were free to act on such principles without consequence. So it's OK, for example, to debate about civic and legal duties toward human life either from secular perspective or on religious grounds.
The second reason that using this "religious right" characterization is improper is that it's simply an attack ad hominem. More than one of my college philosophy professors would have warned us about delivering opinions in such personal terms. "Religious right" is a meaningless expression unless it's used pejoratively. All those of any persuasion--liberal and conservative--who contribute to the public debate these days would be well-advised against using such terminology.
The other misused term is "politics," as in "Oh, that's just politics." The recent pejorative use that's bothersome is in yesterday's New York Times headline for John Danforth's commentary. (Click on header above.) Politics is a good thing, not a bad thing. It is the "medium" in which social organization, especially democracy, operates. We can't avoid it. As Aristotle notes, politics and political things are useful properly to humans, who have to negotiate life together in society. They are exactly as basic as the faculty of speech, without which we are "either beasts or gods". Senator Danforth may not like the particulars of the "religious agenda" but in all honesty he should respect the legitimacy of that set of issues as they appear in the thinking of "his" party rather than censoring their consideration.
By the way, exactly how was it that the Terry Schiavo matter became a "political" issue? It was political the moment the disagreement between the parties came before a court of law and were pursued in court unremittingly until "resolved" by her death this morning. It's completely legitimate to have discussed the issues her case has brought to light. Perhaps Ms. Schiavo's untimely and unnecessary suffering will continue to bother all of us for a long time.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Final Four
I still have two of my original picks alive: Illinois and North Carolina. Too bad I didn't put a few shekels in the office pool.
Schiavo
Points to consider, based on the weekend's events, or lack thereof:
***Just the fact that you're tired of a person's being alive doesn't mean it's time for that person to die. What's the hurry? Nowhere do the Schiavo death party even come close to saying that some unhappy turn in Ms. Schiavo's condition had taken place, or that she was "nearer death" at this point than at some earlier point. I think there are some logical problems here that bear looking into in addition to the ambiguity of the diagnosis. Convicted out of his own mouth....
***It's just disappointing that the courts, in spite of the genuinely debatable, if bold, attempts to goad them to act, couldn't find some way to (at least) place a fig leaf of further serious deliberation on their (now) seemingly cynical dismissals. They decide-and-run, much as a mugger does his victim. Granted, we have a separation of powers. But the importance of the name "republic" attached to our political being implies an ability and a vision of due and deliberate consideration to matters of fundamental right, which many believe this case to be. The courts have failed in their duty to provide helpful guidance on at least one front: the manner for resolving cases of this nature with apparently conflicting claims of fact. Or, do these judges think we're all just stupid and deserve no explanations.
***Jeb Bush is really caught in the middle. He has spoken and acted with great restraint--in a manner that used to be called 'politic'. He has refused to venture into areas of doubtful legality. I'm reminded of the behavior of a referee in an important game, who won't call the dubious or cheesy foul, preferring to let the players sort things out according to the spirit of the rules. By such an approach he affirms the validity of the legal system and keeps the focus on the judges and on Mr. Schiavo. The facts, perhaps sordid in ways we can only imagine, WILL come out.
***Final thought: If I'm the Florida Governor and/or Attorney General, I'm already looking at how some further inquiry can be brought to bear: perhaps a grand jury, or the county prosecutor?
***Just the fact that you're tired of a person's being alive doesn't mean it's time for that person to die. What's the hurry? Nowhere do the Schiavo death party even come close to saying that some unhappy turn in Ms. Schiavo's condition had taken place, or that she was "nearer death" at this point than at some earlier point. I think there are some logical problems here that bear looking into in addition to the ambiguity of the diagnosis. Convicted out of his own mouth....
***It's just disappointing that the courts, in spite of the genuinely debatable, if bold, attempts to goad them to act, couldn't find some way to (at least) place a fig leaf of further serious deliberation on their (now) seemingly cynical dismissals. They decide-and-run, much as a mugger does his victim. Granted, we have a separation of powers. But the importance of the name "republic" attached to our political being implies an ability and a vision of due and deliberate consideration to matters of fundamental right, which many believe this case to be. The courts have failed in their duty to provide helpful guidance on at least one front: the manner for resolving cases of this nature with apparently conflicting claims of fact. Or, do these judges think we're all just stupid and deserve no explanations.
***Jeb Bush is really caught in the middle. He has spoken and acted with great restraint--in a manner that used to be called 'politic'. He has refused to venture into areas of doubtful legality. I'm reminded of the behavior of a referee in an important game, who won't call the dubious or cheesy foul, preferring to let the players sort things out according to the spirit of the rules. By such an approach he affirms the validity of the legal system and keeps the focus on the judges and on Mr. Schiavo. The facts, perhaps sordid in ways we can only imagine, WILL come out.
***Final thought: If I'm the Florida Governor and/or Attorney General, I'm already looking at how some further inquiry can be brought to bear: perhaps a grand jury, or the county prosecutor?
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Some good news
Another popular uprising following a corrupt election. Kyrgyzstan? The remotest places are not immune to the contagion of democracy.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Politics and the Constitution
As a philosophical point about the supposed constitutional crisis the Schiavo case has provoked:
The republic was founded with the writing of a Constitution that inherently contained the seeds of polarity, contradiction and challenge. Mixed government forces opposition, compromise, and new understandings and practices. It insures growing complexity because the government itself is established as a complex system resistant to all attempts to simplify the exercise of power by judges, by bureaucrats or by the executive, by the legislature. Each of these parties, given the opportunity, would exercise a fatal simplification against this dynamic system.
In the Schiavo case, the branches simply have not arrived at the formula that will open the door to a solution that respects the prior and God-given rights of the human person and citizen. Why not? On the one hand, judicial hubris, and on the other, executive and legislative lack of will. The system is grossly out of balance here. I think that bothers us as much as the revelation that the people are so misinformed.
The republic was founded with the writing of a Constitution that inherently contained the seeds of polarity, contradiction and challenge. Mixed government forces opposition, compromise, and new understandings and practices. It insures growing complexity because the government itself is established as a complex system resistant to all attempts to simplify the exercise of power by judges, by bureaucrats or by the executive, by the legislature. Each of these parties, given the opportunity, would exercise a fatal simplification against this dynamic system.
In the Schiavo case, the branches simply have not arrived at the formula that will open the door to a solution that respects the prior and God-given rights of the human person and citizen. Why not? On the one hand, judicial hubris, and on the other, executive and legislative lack of will. The system is grossly out of balance here. I think that bothers us as much as the revelation that the people are so misinformed.
That Hideous Strength
Catching news updates and fragments today, I found lodged in my mind the recollection of reading C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, about the debasing of life's value in the scientific era. I know the story is dreadfully dated--about the eugenics movement, etc. But, the more clinical we become, the more we talk about the "quality of life," the more we talk about whose say-so it is to remove nutrition and hydration from this human person (who is NOT in the final throes of a fatal disease), the less it seems that the life itself, whose value is infinite and absolute, matters.
Of course, the novel is not about the evils of science entire, but about what happens when science (in our case, medecine) begins to serve the purposes of expediency and ideology. I think we should be very disillusioned about medical practice after this is over. Should I have to ask my doctor about her/his politics before I get really sick?
Of course, the novel is not about the evils of science entire, but about what happens when science (in our case, medecine) begins to serve the purposes of expediency and ideology. I think we should be very disillusioned about medical practice after this is over. Should I have to ask my doctor about her/his politics before I get really sick?
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Next Schiavo episode?
Mr. Bennett's program this morning was brilliant on the news from Florida.
What's so dismaying is not that there are differences of opinion. This has every appearance of being one of those difficult moral situations where there are no "winners". We could only wish that this were the case!
The reality is that this is about truth. The talking points, especially from Mr. Schiavo's side and from the promoters of her death, are pure propaganda. And it appears from the polls that "the American people"
What's so dismaying is not that there are differences of opinion. This has every appearance of being one of those difficult moral situations where there are no "winners". We could only wish that this were the case!
The reality is that this is about truth. The talking points, especially from Mr. Schiavo's side and from the promoters of her death, are pure propaganda. And it appears from the polls that "the American people"
--don't read past the surface;
--aren't very smart;
--aren't informed on these medical issues;
--don't care about life (especially inconvenient life) and its objective value ;
--are no longer influenced by core Judaeo-Christian morality.
Pick one.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Schiavo, Sunday evening
At this point, the Senate has passed the bill federalizing the Schiavo case by voice vote. Waiting for the House to diddle around, waiting for a quorum and late-night vote.
The networks seem to be fixated on the point that to them this appears a right-to-die case. It's not, for some good reasons:
--Nutrition is not considered "extraordinary means" for keeping someone alive beyond the point of natural death, nor should it be. You and I need nutrition, even when we aren't able to provide it for ourselves.
--Ms. Schiavo may or may not be in an irreversible, persistent vegetative state. The facts regarding her medical condition are very much in dispute.
--There are no instructions written by Ms. Schiavo regarding what is to be done, only Mr. Schiavo's claim that his wife did not want to go through prolonged suffering, etc. And even with such a document, Ms. Schiavo would not seem to meet the requirements for such instructions to be followed.
--The same small group presents every appearance of having hijacked this case: Mr. Schiavo, his attorney, and the judge, with the complicity of at least one doctor who seems to have an agenda.
--The Schindler family makes the claim to video evidence, doctors' testimonies, and other evidence that they possess, and that they say has never been heard.
--When the science (in this case, medicine) turns political, all the facts and claims to fact need to be brought to public view and properly adjudicated.
Where the right to basic liberties in many other sorts of situations has been the basis of federal intervention, it would seem appropriate to take this case by some mechanism to that level as well. I understand that this is what the leaders of the Congress are trying to do. They may not all have the perfect motives, but the essence of good political leadership is to find an appeal that is broad enough to move even the venal.
The networks seem to be fixated on the point that to them this appears a right-to-die case. It's not, for some good reasons:
--Nutrition is not considered "extraordinary means" for keeping someone alive beyond the point of natural death, nor should it be. You and I need nutrition, even when we aren't able to provide it for ourselves.
--Ms. Schiavo may or may not be in an irreversible, persistent vegetative state. The facts regarding her medical condition are very much in dispute.
--There are no instructions written by Ms. Schiavo regarding what is to be done, only Mr. Schiavo's claim that his wife did not want to go through prolonged suffering, etc. And even with such a document, Ms. Schiavo would not seem to meet the requirements for such instructions to be followed.
--The same small group presents every appearance of having hijacked this case: Mr. Schiavo, his attorney, and the judge, with the complicity of at least one doctor who seems to have an agenda.
--The Schindler family makes the claim to video evidence, doctors' testimonies, and other evidence that they possess, and that they say has never been heard.
--When the science (in this case, medicine) turns political, all the facts and claims to fact need to be brought to public view and properly adjudicated.
Where the right to basic liberties in many other sorts of situations has been the basis of federal intervention, it would seem appropriate to take this case by some mechanism to that level as well. I understand that this is what the leaders of the Congress are trying to do. They may not all have the perfect motives, but the essence of good political leadership is to find an appeal that is broad enough to move even the venal.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Philosophy, Discipleship and the Earliest Church
[Early Saturday morning, at Starbucks. Remember that Peg and Al are teachers. Peg is reading the sports page and enjoying her usual, a mocha latte. Enter Al.]
Peg: Well, fancy meeting you here, early riser.
Al: Don't be so cheery. I'm never up this early on a weekend--but I was up most of last night.
Peg: Problems? Can I help?
Al: Not really. Let me get a drink and a muffin and I'll tell you.
[Al slouches back with a gooey muffin and a grande Caramel Macchiatto, doppio.]
Peg: Well, if insomnia's the problem that won't fix it.
Al: I'm actually celebrating. I've been up writing.
Peg: Huh?
Al: Writing.
Peg: So, now you're Tolstoy? You're not busy enough? I know how many things you keep involved in.
Al: Oh, I'm busy enough, but still a bit restless. Every now and then there's a creativity bug that bites me, and I get to work on one of the little writing projects I keep in my file drawer.
Peg: So which project stole your beauty rest last night? Or are you one of those secretive writers that never tell what they're working on, in case the spell should be dissolved.
Al: No, I'm not shy about that. What I'm working on has a religious theme.
Peg: That makes perfect sense, coming from the Math teacher. You're more of a polymath than a mathematician.
Al: I can see that the caffeine does wonders for your vocabulary, too. Lots of things interest me. I'll tell you what: let me bounce a couple of ideas off you, while you're here. Start with this--what sort of person was Jesus Christ?
Peg: Good grief, I didn't expect that. I don't have the training to even begin to answer that question.
Al: That's OK. I don't want a trained answer. The trained answers are faithful to the creed and they are truthful, but I want something that's your honest answer. What sort of relationship do you think Jesus had with the people around him, especially those who gathered around him as his disciples?
Peg: Well, I think you just answered your own question. If Jesus had disciples, then he was a teacher. Does that help?
Al: Maybe. That is what I'd like to get to the bottom of--what sort of teacher? One like you and I are? A traveling preacher? A professor? Some sort of intellectual? A road show entertainer? A talk-show host? A cult leader? A gang leader with an extra dose of "nice"?
Peg: Goodness, stop. Isn't this the sort of question that gets answered when we hear the Gospel read at Church? Don't the dogmas and traditions of Christianity answer that?
Al: Well, see, here's what makes me curious. What the Church believes and teaches is important and I believe it. But it's the final answer.
Peg: Isn't that what we want--a final answer?
Al: Sure, but the final answer is the one that surfaces after all the struggle. It's already a given for believers who come later. That includes us.
Peg: So what's wrong with that? Why would I want to work for something that's already provided, just for the asking? Besides, isn't this like "revelation"? We really don't want to have some other final answer, do we? Then we'd be either nonbelievers or heretics.
Al: I don't really think I'm questioning or disapproving of what the Church teaches.
Peg: Then doesn't the question about Jesus get answered pretty clearly? I remember my RCIA training: Jesus is Lord and Redeemer, Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, God Incarnate, who became one of us, suffered and died to forgive our sins, rose from the dead and reigns eternally at the right hand of the Father.
Al: You're precisely right. Those questions were and are answered perfectly well within the traditions of the Church, in the Catechism, for example. And the Church is precisely right.
Peg: So, why give yourself agita over this.
Al: Oh, I hate that word, “agita”. It reminds me of an old boss.
Peg: Sorry, I’m sure that’s a shaggy-dog story for another day. Why are you stressing over this Jesus question?
Al: Because at this point I see a different question--actually two questions. First, what was the nature of the day-to-day relationship, in the teaching sense, that Jesus and his disciples shared? Secondly, was this something that had no precedent in the ancient world, was truly revolutionary, or something that could be expressed in terms of a type of teacher-student experience that those early followers might have observed or followed, as a familiar pattern, somewhere in their time? If the latter is the case, then what can we learn about the manner in which Jesus intended to train the disciples?
Peg: I get it. It’s not the final answer that’s the problem, but more like wanting to discover the path that got one to the answer. If we could read the diary of one of the disciples, how would it show the education process to have proceeded?
Al: Maybe it is a pilgrimage or journey kind of thing. Someone can be completely sure of one’s goal in a formal sense, but not so certain he or she wants to follow the road that takes one there. I’m not sure that’s what I’m trying to say.
Peg: You told me one time that if something is truly good, then it’s both good in the absolute sense and good in the subjective sense. It's about making your commitments personal, making them really belong to you, not just saying you have beliefs, but that they make your life different, give it a vector, sort of.
Al: That’s a good point. The question is what the earliest disciple community may have understood about Jesus, and not just intellectually but socially, affectively and so on.
Peg: Really that is a good question. We’re “spoiled” today because we take for granted the struggles that are involved in heartfelt faith. As a convert I think there is something that I’ve been able to gain--or been given--that the average “cradle Catholic” or the purely ritual Catholic hasn’t totally experienced.
Al: Well, thanks a lot.
Peg: No, no. I don’t mean you, because I see you worrying this stuff all the time. I think about many of our students and their families. If there were some way that we could count on to have them wrestle with the “why follow Jesus” question and to work through to the real answer, which is a learner’s or disciple’s answer, then I’d be really happy.
Al: So would I. See, I think we could try to envision with some consistency--beyond the “doubting Thomas” idea--the road the disciples took on their way to a state where they were ultimately as prepared as humans can be for truth to be revealed.
Peg: You’re not saying that revelation happens through our own efforts--
Al: No, of course not. Revelation is pure grace. What the disciples finally encountered in the Resurrection was pure grace. They could not have been prepared for the implication of that, and so that event became the lens through which the whole of the Jesus story became clear to them. I’m sure you had a Scripture teacher who said that even the Gospels are primarily Passion and Resurrection narratives with a “life of Jesus” attached to the front.
Peg: But Jesus did prepare the disciples for something. There was a process there. I have to believe they were different at the Last Supper than they were the day they were called to become the students of Jesus.
Al: How do you mean that?
Peg: What’s the last, ultimate thing that humans prepare for?
Al: Death, I suppose.
Peg: Wouldn’t the logic of the reality of death prepare us for whatever transcends death?
Al: That’s perfect, Peg. That’s where I gave up last night--or early this morning. You see, I was organizing some materials on how the ancients approached the whole concept of learning to be philosophers.
Peg: They weren’t like philosophers today--mainly writers and college professors?
Al: No, quite different in their presuppositions. The analytical-intellectual part of learning served something else--some approach to living and dying that was a practical, day-to-day activity.
Peg: So you’re not claiming that Jesus was like some professor or intellectual today--just another great teacher--or someone with a set of unique ideas.
Al: I heard someone on TV--I think it was O'Reilly--say that a while back, that Jesus was a “philosopher” like many other philosophers. The question really is what you mean by a “philosopher”. From what I’ve read, the old philosophic schools, even Plato’s academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, were not simply places to “get educated” in the modern sense of the word. Instead, they were associations in which one learned a way of life oriented to the service of a timeless good. When a student or disciple joined, he made a commitment to seek and practice a way or discipline of life that was different from that lived in society at large. They represented a real critique of society’s ways and were present as a sort of party in Hellenistic Greece and the Roman world in its heyday.
Peg: So questions of meaning and destiny would have been part of the student’s wrestling with life’s issues?
Al: That’s the way I read it. And, even more interesting, they committed themselves to living
well--in friendship with one another and in service to the larger society.
Peg: Why?
Al: They were all technically pre-Christian, so they didn’t have a personal Heaven or Risen Life, as we are taught. They did understand two things. The first was a sense of the eternity or eternal quality of certain goods whose power and purity could only be approximated in this life: truth, beauty, justice, goodness or virtue. The other thing was the importance of a certain principle of life: something to live by practically. Even these ancients were really civilized in this sense: that a person’s life was something that made a difference to that individual and to the quality of the community life of which the person was a part.
Peg: So you’re saying that there was some kind of ancient pattern of a community dedicated to good life and some sort of permanent happiness. So Jesus and his disciples might have formed a society that would have been recognizable according to this pattern. I guess historically speaking this would be more true in the Greek parts of the Mediterranean world than in Judea of Jesus’ day.
Al: My sense is that the parallels were even more extensive, and even more conscious. Now here’s where we come back to the beginning: if we understand this pattern more deeply, can we get a better sense of the way in which the disciples grew as individuals and became a community? And, can we get a better sense of how this group becomes, ultimately, the Church? And even further, might we even get a deeper understanding of our own searching and some consolation that what the disciples of Jesus went through was divinely inspired, but made use of a very human and natural sort of pedagogy?
Peg: You know what else? If you understand the students, you have a clue about the teacher. We might get a better idea about Jesus as the teacher of a way of life and as a pattern for teachers--and not just religion teachers or clergy.
Al: So, is the idea worth pursuing?
Peg: I hate to admit it to you, but I think so. But you have to make your intention clear.
Al: What's not clear?
Peg: Well, don't turn Jesus into some sort of intellectual. We have plenty of those. They just make a lot of noise and don't accomplish much.
Al: So there's teaching and there's--what?
Peg: If real teaching shows something about truth, even revealed truth as you described it, then that's a good thing. It's like leading by example, or good coaching, or being a guide for someone as they learn new responsibilities. The last teacher conference I went to called it mentoring. They said it was more about attitude than about qualifications.
Al: That's amazing.
Peg: What is?
Al: You've just described the same division the Greeks understood with regard to teaching, between the philosophers and the sophists. The philosophers, or friends of wisdom, were the heads or senior disciples in the communities of learners who really wanted to practice a more worthwhile and deeper kind of life than they found in society at large. Some wanted training so they could be wise leaders. These folks distanced themselves especially from professional instructors they called the "sophists".
Peg: I've heard of them. They played language games and taught people how to argue.
Al: Right. They charged fees for people to learn speaking skills, "rhetoric," so they could present even falsehoods skillfully. Rhetoric came to be called "the political art" because it was the skill of persuading the public to your point of view. It was about gaining influence, not about truth.
Peg: And politicians haven't changed a bit. So the point is that the way of living is just as important to the teacher as the subject matter. This sure aims us back to the example of Jesus, doesn't it? He was all about the preparation for truth. I'll bet you could re-read the Gospels and see the teacher-disciple relationship pretty fully in this light.
Al: I'll bet someone could do that.
Peg: Who might that be?
Al: I don't know, but it sounds like chapter four or five. I've got to hit the computer. See you later--and thanks, you've really helped!
Peg: Bye!
[Al exits.]
Peg: I'm not sure what all that was!
Peg: Well, fancy meeting you here, early riser.
Al: Don't be so cheery. I'm never up this early on a weekend--but I was up most of last night.
Peg: Problems? Can I help?
Al: Not really. Let me get a drink and a muffin and I'll tell you.
[Al slouches back with a gooey muffin and a grande Caramel Macchiatto, doppio.]
Peg: Well, if insomnia's the problem that won't fix it.
Al: I'm actually celebrating. I've been up writing.
Peg: Huh?
Al: Writing.
Peg: So, now you're Tolstoy? You're not busy enough? I know how many things you keep involved in.
Al: Oh, I'm busy enough, but still a bit restless. Every now and then there's a creativity bug that bites me, and I get to work on one of the little writing projects I keep in my file drawer.
Peg: So which project stole your beauty rest last night? Or are you one of those secretive writers that never tell what they're working on, in case the spell should be dissolved.
Al: No, I'm not shy about that. What I'm working on has a religious theme.
Peg: That makes perfect sense, coming from the Math teacher. You're more of a polymath than a mathematician.
Al: I can see that the caffeine does wonders for your vocabulary, too. Lots of things interest me. I'll tell you what: let me bounce a couple of ideas off you, while you're here. Start with this--what sort of person was Jesus Christ?
Peg: Good grief, I didn't expect that. I don't have the training to even begin to answer that question.
Al: That's OK. I don't want a trained answer. The trained answers are faithful to the creed and they are truthful, but I want something that's your honest answer. What sort of relationship do you think Jesus had with the people around him, especially those who gathered around him as his disciples?
Peg: Well, I think you just answered your own question. If Jesus had disciples, then he was a teacher. Does that help?
Al: Maybe. That is what I'd like to get to the bottom of--what sort of teacher? One like you and I are? A traveling preacher? A professor? Some sort of intellectual? A road show entertainer? A talk-show host? A cult leader? A gang leader with an extra dose of "nice"?
Peg: Goodness, stop. Isn't this the sort of question that gets answered when we hear the Gospel read at Church? Don't the dogmas and traditions of Christianity answer that?
Al: Well, see, here's what makes me curious. What the Church believes and teaches is important and I believe it. But it's the final answer.
Peg: Isn't that what we want--a final answer?
Al: Sure, but the final answer is the one that surfaces after all the struggle. It's already a given for believers who come later. That includes us.
Peg: So what's wrong with that? Why would I want to work for something that's already provided, just for the asking? Besides, isn't this like "revelation"? We really don't want to have some other final answer, do we? Then we'd be either nonbelievers or heretics.
Al: I don't really think I'm questioning or disapproving of what the Church teaches.
Peg: Then doesn't the question about Jesus get answered pretty clearly? I remember my RCIA training: Jesus is Lord and Redeemer, Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, God Incarnate, who became one of us, suffered and died to forgive our sins, rose from the dead and reigns eternally at the right hand of the Father.
Al: You're precisely right. Those questions were and are answered perfectly well within the traditions of the Church, in the Catechism, for example. And the Church is precisely right.
Peg: So, why give yourself agita over this.
Al: Oh, I hate that word, “agita”. It reminds me of an old boss.
Peg: Sorry, I’m sure that’s a shaggy-dog story for another day. Why are you stressing over this Jesus question?
Al: Because at this point I see a different question--actually two questions. First, what was the nature of the day-to-day relationship, in the teaching sense, that Jesus and his disciples shared? Secondly, was this something that had no precedent in the ancient world, was truly revolutionary, or something that could be expressed in terms of a type of teacher-student experience that those early followers might have observed or followed, as a familiar pattern, somewhere in their time? If the latter is the case, then what can we learn about the manner in which Jesus intended to train the disciples?
Peg: I get it. It’s not the final answer that’s the problem, but more like wanting to discover the path that got one to the answer. If we could read the diary of one of the disciples, how would it show the education process to have proceeded?
Al: Maybe it is a pilgrimage or journey kind of thing. Someone can be completely sure of one’s goal in a formal sense, but not so certain he or she wants to follow the road that takes one there. I’m not sure that’s what I’m trying to say.
Peg: You told me one time that if something is truly good, then it’s both good in the absolute sense and good in the subjective sense. It's about making your commitments personal, making them really belong to you, not just saying you have beliefs, but that they make your life different, give it a vector, sort of.
Al: That’s a good point. The question is what the earliest disciple community may have understood about Jesus, and not just intellectually but socially, affectively and so on.
Peg: Really that is a good question. We’re “spoiled” today because we take for granted the struggles that are involved in heartfelt faith. As a convert I think there is something that I’ve been able to gain--or been given--that the average “cradle Catholic” or the purely ritual Catholic hasn’t totally experienced.
Al: Well, thanks a lot.
Peg: No, no. I don’t mean you, because I see you worrying this stuff all the time. I think about many of our students and their families. If there were some way that we could count on to have them wrestle with the “why follow Jesus” question and to work through to the real answer, which is a learner’s or disciple’s answer, then I’d be really happy.
Al: So would I. See, I think we could try to envision with some consistency--beyond the “doubting Thomas” idea--the road the disciples took on their way to a state where they were ultimately as prepared as humans can be for truth to be revealed.
Peg: You’re not saying that revelation happens through our own efforts--
Al: No, of course not. Revelation is pure grace. What the disciples finally encountered in the Resurrection was pure grace. They could not have been prepared for the implication of that, and so that event became the lens through which the whole of the Jesus story became clear to them. I’m sure you had a Scripture teacher who said that even the Gospels are primarily Passion and Resurrection narratives with a “life of Jesus” attached to the front.
Peg: But Jesus did prepare the disciples for something. There was a process there. I have to believe they were different at the Last Supper than they were the day they were called to become the students of Jesus.
Al: How do you mean that?
Peg: What’s the last, ultimate thing that humans prepare for?
Al: Death, I suppose.
Peg: Wouldn’t the logic of the reality of death prepare us for whatever transcends death?
Al: That’s perfect, Peg. That’s where I gave up last night--or early this morning. You see, I was organizing some materials on how the ancients approached the whole concept of learning to be philosophers.
Peg: They weren’t like philosophers today--mainly writers and college professors?
Al: No, quite different in their presuppositions. The analytical-intellectual part of learning served something else--some approach to living and dying that was a practical, day-to-day activity.
Peg: So you’re not claiming that Jesus was like some professor or intellectual today--just another great teacher--or someone with a set of unique ideas.
Al: I heard someone on TV--I think it was O'Reilly--say that a while back, that Jesus was a “philosopher” like many other philosophers. The question really is what you mean by a “philosopher”. From what I’ve read, the old philosophic schools, even Plato’s academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, were not simply places to “get educated” in the modern sense of the word. Instead, they were associations in which one learned a way of life oriented to the service of a timeless good. When a student or disciple joined, he made a commitment to seek and practice a way or discipline of life that was different from that lived in society at large. They represented a real critique of society’s ways and were present as a sort of party in Hellenistic Greece and the Roman world in its heyday.
Peg: So questions of meaning and destiny would have been part of the student’s wrestling with life’s issues?
Al: That’s the way I read it. And, even more interesting, they committed themselves to living
well--in friendship with one another and in service to the larger society.
Peg: Why?
Al: They were all technically pre-Christian, so they didn’t have a personal Heaven or Risen Life, as we are taught. They did understand two things. The first was a sense of the eternity or eternal quality of certain goods whose power and purity could only be approximated in this life: truth, beauty, justice, goodness or virtue. The other thing was the importance of a certain principle of life: something to live by practically. Even these ancients were really civilized in this sense: that a person’s life was something that made a difference to that individual and to the quality of the community life of which the person was a part.
Peg: So you’re saying that there was some kind of ancient pattern of a community dedicated to good life and some sort of permanent happiness. So Jesus and his disciples might have formed a society that would have been recognizable according to this pattern. I guess historically speaking this would be more true in the Greek parts of the Mediterranean world than in Judea of Jesus’ day.
Al: My sense is that the parallels were even more extensive, and even more conscious. Now here’s where we come back to the beginning: if we understand this pattern more deeply, can we get a better sense of the way in which the disciples grew as individuals and became a community? And, can we get a better sense of how this group becomes, ultimately, the Church? And even further, might we even get a deeper understanding of our own searching and some consolation that what the disciples of Jesus went through was divinely inspired, but made use of a very human and natural sort of pedagogy?
Peg: You know what else? If you understand the students, you have a clue about the teacher. We might get a better idea about Jesus as the teacher of a way of life and as a pattern for teachers--and not just religion teachers or clergy.
Al: So, is the idea worth pursuing?
Peg: I hate to admit it to you, but I think so. But you have to make your intention clear.
Al: What's not clear?
Peg: Well, don't turn Jesus into some sort of intellectual. We have plenty of those. They just make a lot of noise and don't accomplish much.
Al: So there's teaching and there's--what?
Peg: If real teaching shows something about truth, even revealed truth as you described it, then that's a good thing. It's like leading by example, or good coaching, or being a guide for someone as they learn new responsibilities. The last teacher conference I went to called it mentoring. They said it was more about attitude than about qualifications.
Al: That's amazing.
Peg: What is?
Al: You've just described the same division the Greeks understood with regard to teaching, between the philosophers and the sophists. The philosophers, or friends of wisdom, were the heads or senior disciples in the communities of learners who really wanted to practice a more worthwhile and deeper kind of life than they found in society at large. Some wanted training so they could be wise leaders. These folks distanced themselves especially from professional instructors they called the "sophists".
Peg: I've heard of them. They played language games and taught people how to argue.
Al: Right. They charged fees for people to learn speaking skills, "rhetoric," so they could present even falsehoods skillfully. Rhetoric came to be called "the political art" because it was the skill of persuading the public to your point of view. It was about gaining influence, not about truth.
Peg: And politicians haven't changed a bit. So the point is that the way of living is just as important to the teacher as the subject matter. This sure aims us back to the example of Jesus, doesn't it? He was all about the preparation for truth. I'll bet you could re-read the Gospels and see the teacher-disciple relationship pretty fully in this light.
Al: I'll bet someone could do that.
Peg: Who might that be?
Al: I don't know, but it sounds like chapter four or five. I've got to hit the computer. See you later--and thanks, you've really helped!
Peg: Bye!
[Al exits.]
Peg: I'm not sure what all that was!
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Where Terry Schiavo stands today
The NRO link above is to an update of the whole legal situation. This is about the best I've read.
Hat tip: Bill.
A further thought: as opined here previously, this case is only controversial because of the persistent denial of fact by Ms. Schiavo's husband, such as he is, his attorney, the judge, and others who are NOT disinterested parties, yet present themselves as such. It's a web of deceit. The free admission of facts for the record would spell the demise of these people.
Hat tip: Bill.
A further thought: as opined here previously, this case is only controversial because of the persistent denial of fact by Ms. Schiavo's husband, such as he is, his attorney, the judge, and others who are NOT disinterested parties, yet present themselves as such. It's a web of deceit. The free admission of facts for the record would spell the demise of these people.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Government and the moral atmosphere
From the March 2005 issue of Columbia, the K of C's magazine. Carl Anderson cites Vaclav Havel's anthology of speeches, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice (New York: Fromm International, 1998):
“But all of this is still not the main problem. The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We felt morally ill because we got used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only for ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility and forgiveness lost their depth and dimensions. …
“The previous regime…reduced man to a force of production. … It reduced gifted and talented people to nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and stinking machine, whose real meaning is not clear to anyone.
“When I talk about contaminated moral atmosphere, I am not just talking about the [communist officials]. I am talking about all of us. We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unalterable fact of life, and thus we helped to perpetuate it. … None of us are just its victims: We are all also its co-creators.”
A nifty insight, worth taking note of even in the free world, if we are to remain free. Be warned.
“But all of this is still not the main problem. The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We felt morally ill because we got used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only for ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility and forgiveness lost their depth and dimensions. …
“The previous regime…reduced man to a force of production. … It reduced gifted and talented people to nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and stinking machine, whose real meaning is not clear to anyone.
“When I talk about contaminated moral atmosphere, I am not just talking about the [communist officials]. I am talking about all of us. We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unalterable fact of life, and thus we helped to perpetuate it. … None of us are just its victims: We are all also its co-creators.”
A nifty insight, worth taking note of even in the free world, if we are to remain free. Be warned.
New Democracies
All of us know that democracy is no guarantee of honest government. It is, however, better than the alternatives from this point of view, because it establishes conditions where leaders and common citizens do not HAVE to be entirely corrupt. Hence, "freedom" in a very radical sense indeed. On the tyrant's fears, see Xenophon's very interesting little dialogue called "Hiero".
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Life issues
On the Schiavo case: With the release last week of the public records and the continuing extensions of the case by the judge, it seem that the execution of Ms. Schiavo may not be inevitable. I hope this turns out to be true. The conflicting stories about her condition are not matters of interpreting differently the same facts. It appears that the facts truly differ. The judge, if he's got any sense at all, MUST let the facts come to light for the court's record in a way they have not been allowed to yet.
Abortion: I said years ago that medical technology will make it a moot point. I think we're heading in that direction. I can't imagine that the public mind will continue to hold to the fiction of the fetus as some undifferentiated life form wholly subordinated to the mother's--oops, woman's--interests when very, very tiny babies born ever earlier in term are able to thrive.
Thus endeth the lesson.
Abortion: I said years ago that medical technology will make it a moot point. I think we're heading in that direction. I can't imagine that the public mind will continue to hold to the fiction of the fetus as some undifferentiated life form wholly subordinated to the mother's--oops, woman's--interests when very, very tiny babies born ever earlier in term are able to thrive.
Thus endeth the lesson.
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