Connections

Worshippers of the machine

Sam Kriss has a delightful takedown of Neil deGrasse Tyson and I F—–g Love Science*. He makes this point:

A decent name for this tendency, for stars and spaceships recast as the instruments of a joyless and pedantic class spite, would be I F—-g Love Science. ‘Science’ here has very little to do with the scientific method itself; it means ontological physicalism, not believing in our Lord Jesus Christ, hating the spectrally stupid, and, more than anything, pretty pictures of nebulae and tree frogs. ‘Science’ comes to metonymically refer to the natural world, the object of science; it’s like describing a crime as ‘the police,’ or the ocean as ‘drinking.’ What ‘I F—–g Love Science’ actually means is ‘I F—–g Love Existing Conditions.’ But because the word ‘science’ still pings about between the limits of a discourse that depends on the exclusion of alternate modes of knowledge, the natural world of I F—–g Love Science is presented as being essentially a series of factual statements. There are no things, there are only truths. The fact that the earth is a sphere is vast and ponderous: you stand on its grinding surface, as that fact carries you on its heavy plod around our nearest star. The fact that the forms of organic life emerge through Darwinian evolution is fractal and distributed, so that little fragments of that fact will bark at you in the street or dart chirping overhead. The fact that there is no God, being a negative statement, is invisible, but you know for certain that it’s out there.

(Emphasis supplied and profanity redacted.) Read the whole thing, of course.

Kriss makes several incisive points in the paragraph we quoted above. First, he is one-hundred-percent correct in identifying a strongly classist element to pop-scientism (perhaps there’s a better phrase for the phenomenon, but for our purposes here, this is the phrase we will use). We admit that this connection had not necessarily occurred to us (perhaps this is a function of some bias on our part), but once Kriss says it, its obvious. Of course there’s a classist element to pop-scientism. We’ll come back to that in a minute or two. Second, he is also correct in noting that the understanding of science in pop-scientism is hugely reductive. For pop-scientism, science is not a way of investigating the world—which is all the scientific method can credibly, though not always coherently, offer—science is a way of being in the world. As Kriss notes, the adherent to pop-scientism, reduces the world to a collection of facts, which process already asks too much of the scientific method, and then declares that the world consists only of those facts.

In reading Kriss’s critique, the Holy Father’s recent social encyclical, Laudato si’, came to mind (as it often does in this context). It seems to us that Laudato si’ contains an extended discussion and critique of the basic assumptions of pop-scientism. Or, to put it another way, pop-scientism seems to be an expression of the mentality that the Holy Father critiques in Laudato si’. Indeed, it seems as though the Holy Father had this phenomenon clearly in mind when he discussed the technocratic, anthropocentric mentality that worships technology—and science, for that matter—as a mode of existing in and in relation to the world. And his critique absolutely knocks the stuffing out of it.  Recall one of our favorite passages from Laudato si’:

The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed”.

It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build.

(Emphasis supplied and footnotes and formatting omitted.)  Pop-scientism is just another expression of this process of mastery over objects; indeed, it is the purest expression of this process. For the person enamored of pop-scientism, nothing could be simpler than to approach an external object and gain mastery over it through the scientific method. Why? Because it is presumed that the scientific method is the only way of approaching something. Better still is when someone else has approached an object through the scientific method. Because of the irrefutable presumption in favor of “science,” pop-scientism simply uses the scientific work of others to reduce external objects to facts, as Kriss noted.

The Holy Father also quite perceptively notes that this anthropocentric, technocratic outlook becomes hermetic and ultimately self-contained:

The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant. This very fact makes it hard to find adequate ways of solving the more complex problems of today’s world, particularly those regarding the environment and the poor; these problems cannot be dealt with from a single perspective or from a single set of interests. A science which would offer solutions to the great issues would necessarily have to take into account the data generated by other fields of knowledge, including philosophy and social ethics; but this is a difficult habit to acquire today. Nor are there genuine ethical horizons to which one can appeal. Life gradually becomes a surrender to situations conditioned by technology, itself viewed as the principal key to the meaning of existence. In the concrete situation confronting us, there are a number of symptoms which point to what is wrong, such as environmental degradation, anxiety, a loss of the purpose of life and of community living. Once more we see that “realities are more important than ideas”.

(Emphasis supplied.) Kriss, it seems, hints toward this myopic specialization in the snippet we quoted above. The pictures of nebulae and tree frogs to which he refers—if humorously—represent in a real sense the fragmentation of knowledge. For pop-scientism, there is to delve into the mysteries of creation, either here on earth or in the universe at large. The broader horizon is, as the Holy Father says, irrelevant. The picture, the back-of-the-envelope summary of this experiment or that project is enough. More than enough, really. It does not matter whether there are connections between tree frogs and nebulae. Still less does it matter whether or not other fields of study could draw connections between the tree frog and the nebula. (We are reminded of a profoundly silly cartoon from the “humor” website The Oatmeal likening various fields of study to searching for a black cat in a dark room.)

And what of class spite? Consider this bit from Laudato si’:

The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable. The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic. It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same. Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology “know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race”, that “in the most radical sense of the term power is its motive – a lordship over all”. As a result, “man seizes hold of the naked elements of both nature and human nature”. Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one’s alternative creativity are diminished.

(Emphasis supplied.) In a real sense, pop-scientism draws a line in the sand and calls it science. On the right side of the line are people who accept fundamentally the claim that science works endlessly for the progress of humanity. Every capsule summary of research represents a major advancement. Every new gadget, brought about by science, is another step toward some better future. And people who refuse to accept all of the consequences of pop-scientism, even if they ultimately accept most of the claims of mainstream scientists today, are put squarely on the other side of the line. Pop-scientism therefore creates a twofold path to power. On one hand, it offers a cheap and easy way to achieve dominance over external objects and reduce them to mere facts. On the other hand, it offers a cheap and easy way for its adherents to achieve dominance over the countercultural reactionaries who are not as taken with it. This is Kriss’s class spite, we think: wealthy, educated Americans can look down on poorer, less-educated Americans because they have not accepted the basic truths of pop-science. And the condescension is merited, because, as every child knows, science brings progress.

Thus, we see in Laudato si’, three clear aspects of pop-scientism explained in clear, critical terms. If a Catholic wants to push back against the tide of Facebook memes and other notes in the social-media chorus of pop-scientism, as, indeed, a Catholic may well want to do, Laudato si’ is a good place to start.

* NOTE: Given the general purpose of Semiduplex, it never occurred to us that we’d need a profanity policy. However, the issue has come up a bit in recent days. While we see the need for occasional earthy language, it is our view that we ought not to use it or reprint it here unredacted, given the potential for causing scandal or serving as a near occasion of sin for you, dear reader.  

Fr. Montgomery Wright

Fr. Ray Blake—whose blog we ought to read more—posts an interesting video (two interesting videos, in fact) about Fr. Quintin Montgomery Wright, a Scottish priest in Normandy.  Fr. Montgomery Wright started out as an Anglican minister, but, at some point, converted to the Church and was ordained. He then went to France where, according to some comments we have read, he said the Tridentine Mass in French and versus populum. Then, at some point after the Council, he began to take a more traditionalist line. In both videos, the SSPX appears in the background. In the first, Fr. Montgomery Wright acknowledges being friendly with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and in the second we see Bishop Tissier, now living (shelved?) in Chicago, performing some confirmations. However, we do not see where Fr. Montgomery Wright was ever formally associated with the Society.

At any rate, Fr. Montgomery Wright’s traditionalism, at least from what we see from the videos, was not “prissy,” to borrow Fr. Blake’s point. It was simply a continuation of what had always been done by and for people living in rural France. In other words, it was a hearty, frank insistence that there was no reason to throw out what had worked for a long time, least of all to please some Roman liturgical experts. (Those of us who are farmers or close to farmers understand this attitude implicitly.) Of course, Fr. Montgomery Wright’s enormous personal charm, we suspect, could have sold traditionalism even to a hostile parish.

At any rate, take a little time and watch the videos.

Sirens that broke the evening gloom

The Trump phenomenon has, for the moment, captured the attention of the political class (and the politically aware) of the United States. In a few short months, Donald Trump has gone from a real-estate developer, reality-television show, and self-promoter extraordinaire to the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. More than that, Trump threatens to upend the traditional Republican coalition and toss out the window certain traditional Republican doctrines. And the Republican establishment has panicked. National Review has already devoted an entire issue to the case against Donald Trump, Mitt Romney has condemned Trump in the strongest language he uses, and the fever dream of a brokered convention denying Trump the nomination has reared its head. It was only a matter of time before we’d hear that we have a religious duty to oppose Trump.

And that time has come. At National Review, Robert George and George Weigel, luminaries of the Catholic neocon right, urge Catholics not to vote for Trump for religious reasons. Their quote-unquote appeal is signed by other, similarly minded Catholics. (We do not see a single traditionalist Catholic, however, which is always a bad sign.) George and Weigel begin,

In recent decades, the Republican party has been a vehicle — imperfect, like all human institutions, but serviceable — for promoting causes at the center of Catholic social concern in the United States: (1) providing legal protection for unborn children, the physically disabled and cognitively handicapped, the frail elderly, and other victims of what Saint John Paul II branded “the culture of death”; (2) defending religious freedom in the face of unprecedented assaults by officials at every level of government who have made themselves the enemies of conscience; (3) rebuilding our marriage culture, based on a sound understanding of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife; and (4) re-establishing constitutional and limited government, according to the core Catholic social-ethical principle of subsidiarity. There have been frustrations along the way, to be sure; no political party perfectly embodies Catholic social doctrine. But there have also been successes, and at the beginning of the current presidential electoral cycle, it seemed possible that further progress in defending and advancing these noble causes was possible through the instrument of the Republican party.

(Emphasis supplied.) They go on to detail the numerous ways in which Trump’s bombastic policies are out of step with Catholic and Republican values as they see them. While the concerns that led to Trump’s meteoric rise are valid enough, they say, Catholics should recognize that there are other candidates in the race who can answer those concerns. (Who could they have in mind?)

We pause to note that it would be interesting to know why George and Weigel think that the Republican Party was a “serviceable” vehicle for advancing fundamentally Catholic causes. Because, for our part, we cannot think of a single issue—not even one—upon which the Republicans have been able to prevent the world and the lord of the world from continuing their age-old campaign against Christ and Christ’s Church. The Republicans haven’t rolled back the tide of abortion and euthanasia. They haven’t prevented attempts to redefine radically marriage (in an opinion written by a judge appointed by Ronald Reagan). And they don’t pretend to even want to establish true subsidiarity. (Weigel and George should know better when they throw that term around: subsidiarity means the smallest competent governmental unit handles an issue, not “limited government.”) And we will pass over in silence the suggestion that “religious freedom” is an issue at “the center of Catholic social concern in the United States.” Grenier demonstrates tersely and precisely that the state is bound to profess and defend the true religion, not “religious freedom.” (3 Thomistic Philosophy nos. 1163–1164, pp. 468–70.) Religious freedom is an inadmissible error. (We note that we have previously argued that Rod Dreher’s suggestion that Christians vote for Trump because of his apparent commitment to religious freedom may well be inadmissible for similar reasons.)

However, it seems to us—as has been pointed out to us by some very sharp acquaintances of ours—that George and Weigel are really enlisting Catholics to save the Republican Party from Donald Trump. While it is true that Trump espouses doctrines contrary to those taught by the Church of Rome, so too does, for example, the Republican establishment’s preferred candidate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. (Gaudium et Spes, for example, is pretty clear in its condemnation of carpet bombing civilian populations, believe it or not.) And in various other respects, the Republican Party as a whole is as opposed to the Church’s teaching as the Democratic Party is in its way. However, George and Weigel have made the political judgment—flawed, in our view—that a Catholic ought to support the Republican Party. (Despite the mountain of evidence that the Republicans have not and likely will not further Catholic teaching in a meaningful way.) And it must be admitted that the Republican Party is facing a grave threat from Trump. Thus, George and Weigel reason, Catholics must come to rescue the Republican Party from Trump. To be blunt, it seems to us that there was really no reason to drag the Church into the fight, except that George and Weigel have a vision of the Church marching hand in hand with the Republican Party.

But at First Things, R.R. Reno suggests—in the course of a very sensitive analysis of the Trump phenomenon—that some Republican policies may well be the cause of the threat:

The same goes for globalization and ever-freer markets, something I’ve long thought is our best option as a nation. I half-recognized the real costs to ordinary people, but I affirmed the homeopathic dogma that still more economic freedom is the best remedy. About political correctness I’ve always had less sympathy. But there too I’ve thought a certain care and gentleness in public discourse necessary in our increasingly pluralistic society. I’m not sure I fully realized how political correctness humiliates and silences ordinary people.

Trump’s successes at the polls have forced me to acknowledge a degree of blindness. A great number of people in America no longer feel at home, a greater number than I imagined. They’ve been pushed aside by our global economy. A liberalized immigration regime has changed their hometowns. When they express their sense of loss, liberals denounce them as racists, which is equivalent to saying that they have no moral standing in our society. Increasingly, conservative leaders let those charges go unanswered or even agree. Then, when they cheer the idea of making America great again, they’re written off as crude nationalists rather than recognized as fellow citizens who want to do something.

The Republican establishment is in trouble. Its lack of connection to the political reality of its own voters created the possibility of someone like Donald Trump. Now, to defeat him, Republican leaders risk provoking even more profound alienation by insisting still more strongly on their catechism of ever-greater economic freedom.

(Emphasis supplied.) In essence, Reno recognizes that Republican orthodoxy—free trade, free markets, and so forth—have left some people, particularly working-class and middle-class Americans, holding the bag. And Donald Trump has come along with a message aimed specifically at those people. (A very sharp priest of our acquaintance identifies the Trump phenomenon with Pat Buchanan’s paleo-conservative run twenty-some years ago, and asks where all the Buchanan voters have been in the interim.) It is supremely unlikely that preaching that same Republican orthodoxy, but louder and nastier, is going to win those voters back.

On economic matters, it must be said, by way of a brief digression, that the Republican orthodoxy that Reno laments (?) is fairly far removed from Catholic orthodoxy. (But, as Cardinal Ratzinger told us, not every moral issue is of equivalent weight.)  We return, once more, to Papa Ratti’s towering achievement, Quadragesimo anno. Consider this teaching, for example:

It follows from what We have termed the individual and at the same time social character of ownership, that men must consider in this matter not only their own advantage but also the common good. To define these duties in detail when necessity requires and the natural law has not done so, is the function of those in charge of the State. Therefore, public authority, under the guiding light always of the natural and divine law, can determine more accurately upon consideration of the true requirements of the common good, what is permitted and what is not permitted to owners in the use of their property. Moreover, Leo XIII wisely taught “that God has left the limits of private possessions to be fixed by the industry of men and institutions of peoples.” That history proves ownership, like other elements of social life, to be not absolutely unchanging, We once declared as follows: “What divers forms has property had, from that primitive form among rude and savage peoples, which may be observed in some places even in our time, to the form of possession in the patriarchal age; and so further to the various forms under tyranny (We are using the word tyranny in its classical sense); and then through the feudal and monarchial forms down to the various types which are to be found in more recent times.” That the State is not permitted to discharge its duty arbitrarily is, however, clear. The natural right itself both of owning goods privately and of passing them on by inheritance ought always to remain intact and inviolate, since this indeed is a right that the State cannot take away: “For man is older than the State,” and also “domestic living together is prior both in thought and in fact to uniting into a polity.” Wherefore the wise Pontiff declared that it is grossly unjust for a State to exhaust private wealth through the weight of imposts and taxes. “For since the right of possessing goods privately has been conferred not by man’s law, but by nature, public authority cannot abolish it, but can only control its exercise and bring it into conformity with the common weal.” Yet when the State brings private ownership into harmony with the needs of the common good, it does not commit a hostile act against private owners but rather does them a friendly service; for it thereby effectively prevents the private possession of goods, which the Author of nature in His most wise providence ordained for the support of human life, from causing intolerable evils and thus rushing to its own destruction; it does not destroy private possessions, but safeguards them; and it does not weaken private property rights, but strengthens them. 

(Emphasis supplied and footnotes omitted.) This is one example, but an important one. Modern Republican orthodoxy resists strongly the idea that the state should “control [the] exercise” of private property to “bring it into conformity with the needs of the common good,” as both Leo and Pius teach, and that such control of private ownership is “a friendly service” to property owners. Indeed, current Republican orthodoxy holds, as far as we can tell, that any regulation of private property is to be submitted to only under great duress and with great protest. Moreover, such regulation is, so far from a friendly service in pursuit of the common good, a tyrannical overreach by an aloof and wicked government. One could go on with Quadragesimo anno, Mater et Magistra, and Populorum progressio, but at a certain point it becomes unsportsmanlike to punch down like that.

We note that Reno is not the only person who has reached a similar critical insight into the Trump phenomenon. At Bloomberg View, Clive Crook has observed:

Yet, contrary to reports, the Trump supporters I’m talking about aren’t fools. They aren’t racists either. They don’t think much would change one way or the other if Trump were elected. The political system has failed them so badly that they think it can’t be repaired and little’s at stake. The election therefore reduces to an opportunity to express disgust. And that’s where Trump’s defects come in: They’re what make him such an effective messenger.

The fact that he’s outrageous is essential. (Ask yourself, what would he be without his outrageousness? Take that away and nothing remains.) Trump delights mainly in offending the people who think they’re superior — the people who radiate contempt for his supporters. The more he offends the superior people, the more his supporters like it. Trump wages war on political correctness. Political correctness requires more than ordinary courtesy: It’s a ritual, like knowing which fork to use, by which superior people recognize each other.

(Emphasis supplied.) Crook understands that, for many Trump supporters, the question is not whether Trump will transform the American political order into something that, if it doesn’t stack the deck in their favor once again, at least makes the game a little fairer. No, that ship has sailed. But Trump is the only viable way “to express disgust” at the system—Republicans included. This is perhaps only a slightly more cynical point than Reno’s. For Reno, the Trump phenomenon is the last attempt of the victims of capitalism to regain lost status. For Crook, it is their last attempt to express their dislike of the establishment elite. Either way, the Trump phenomenon represents a last-ditch effort of common folks to throw a wrench in their betters’ plans. Or at least at their betters.

The thing is, George and Weigel fail to understand the problem. It is precisely because the Republican Party has ignored the Church’s teaching (to say nothing of its failure to deliver any meaningful results to the millions of Catholics who have supported the Republican Party) that the Trump phenomenon has been able to take root. We do not doubt that Donald Trump is aesthetically a bad candidate. We do not know the man, but we would not be surprised to learn that he’s personally unpleasant. (His principles seem determined by polls, but that’s any politician.) And we do not doubt that some very nasty characters have latched on to Trump’s campaign. We’ve seen the videos ourselves! But that does not have much to do with why the Trump campaign has done so well. And it has even less to do with whether repeating, but loudly, Republican orthodoxy will address the problems that have created the environment in which Trump’s campaign has done so well.

And if the Republican Party has created the problem by ignoring the teachings of so many good and holy popes, it seems to us that it can solve the problem only by adopting those teachings at long last.

Pauline pseudonymy and the liturgy

Gregory DiPippo comments at New Liturgical Movement on Fr. John Hunwicke’s three-part series about Pauline pseudonymy. He makes an important point, closely connected with the scholarship that Fr. Hunwicke presents:

Fr Hunwicke gives more details in his articles, judiciously presenting Kenny’s research and conclusions without giving a lot of the technical jargon behind it. Again, I would encourage you to read all three articles. It remains to note here, however, how this applies to the field of liturgical studies; I will offer only one example. One of the continual sources of complaint about the Novus Ordo is the widespread displacement of the ancient Roman Canon by the blink-and-miss-it Second Eucharistic Prayer. At the time of the reform, this latter was considered one of its great triumphs, since it supposedly restored to use the even more ancient Eucharistic Prayer of Hippolytus. Laying aside the fact that very little of Hippolytus’ prayer found its way into EP II, no one would any longer seriously defend the idea that the original was ever used by the Church of Rome in her liturgy. The question therefore arises: how many of the other certitudes of modern liturgical scholarship will also eventually be proved false?

(Emphasis supplied and hyperlinks omitted.)

The pro-life movement and the sickness of modernity

In reading Roberto Riviera’s thought-provoking piece at Ethika Politika about “Pro Life 2.0,” we were reminded of one of the Holy Father’s most incisive points in Laudato si’:

The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed”.

(Emphasis supplied.) In the Holy Father’s view, this technocratic paradigm sets up a misguided anthropocentrism, about which the Holy Father goes on to say:

A misguided anthropocentrism leads to a misguided lifestyle. In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I noted that the practical relativism typical of our age is “even more dangerous than doctrinal relativism”. When human beings place themselves at the centre, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative. Hence we should not be surprised to find, in conjunction with the omnipresent technocratic paradigm and the cult of unlimited human power, the rise of a relativism which sees everything as irrelevant unless it serves one’s own immediate interests. There is a logic in all this whereby different attitudes can feed on one another, leading to environmental degradation and social decay.

The culture of relativism is the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects, imposing forced labour on them or enslaving them to pay their debts. The same kind of thinking leads to the sexual exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests. It is also the mindset of those who say: Let us allow the invisible forces of the market to regulate the economy, and consider their impact on society and nature as collateral damage. In the absence of objective truths or sound principles other than the satisfaction of our own desires and immediate needs, what limits can be placed on human trafficking, organized crime, the drug trade, commerce in blood diamonds and the fur of endangered species? Is it not the same relativistic logic which justifies buying the organs of the poor for resale or use in experimentation, or eliminating children because they are not what their parents wanted? This same “use and throw away” logic generates so much waste, because of the disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary. We should not think that political efforts or the force of law will be sufficient to prevent actions which affect the environment because, when the culture itself is corrupt and objective truth and universally valid principles are no longer upheld, then laws can only be seen as arbitrary impositions or obstacles to be avoided.

(Emphasis supplied.) It seems to us that combating the sickness at the heart of modernity, which the Holy Father diagnoses so brilliantly, is an important step in combating the various assaults on life and the dignity of life mounted by the world and the lord of the world.

The Joint Declaration

The Holy Father and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow have, in the wake of their historic meeting in Cuba, released a joint declaration, which is, to a great extent, in the words of Fr. John Hunwicke, is “better than good.” We confess, however, that we are simply not sufficiently versed in matters touching upon the eastern churches in communion with Rome to judge these paragraphs:

24. Orthodox and Catholics are united not only by the shared Tradition of the Church of the first millennium, but also by the mission to preach the Gospel of Christ in the world today. This mission entails mutual respect for members of the Christian communities and excludes any form of proselytism.

We are not competitors but brothers, and this concept must guide all our mutual actions as well as those directed to the outside world. We urge Catholics and Orthodox in all countries to learn to live together in peace and love, and to be “in harmony with one another” (Rm 15:5). Consequently, it cannot be accepted that disloyal means be used to incite believers to pass from one Church to another, denying them their religious freedom and their traditions. We are called upon to put into practice the precept of the apostle Paul: “Thus I aspire to proclaim the gospel not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on another’s foundation” (Rm 15:20).

25. It is our hope that our meeting may also contribute to reconciliation wherever tensions exist between Greek Catholics and Orthodox. It is today clear that the past method of “uniatism”, understood as the union of one community to the other, separating it from its Church, is not the way to re–establish unity. Nonetheless, the ecclesial communities which emerged in these historical circumstances have the right to exist and to undertake all that is necessary to meet the spiritual needs of their faithful, while seeking to live in peace with their neighbours. Orthodox and Greek Catholics are in need of reconciliation and of mutually acceptable forms of co–existence.

26. We deplore the hostility in Ukraine that has already caused many victims, inflicted innumerable wounds on peaceful inhabitants and thrown society into a deep economic and humanitarian crisis. We invite all the parts involved in the conflict to prudence, to social solidarity and to action aimed at constructing peace. We invite our Churches in Ukraine to work towards social harmony, to refrain from taking part in the confrontation, and to not support any further development of the conflict.

27. It is our hope that the schism between the Orthodox faithful in Ukraine may be overcome through existing canonical norms, that all the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine may live in peace and harmony, and that the Catholic communities in the country may contribute to this, in such a way that our Christian brotherhood may become increasingly evident.

(Emphasis supplied.)

Our background is, as you may have guessed, Latin rite all the way down. Thus, we lack the framework to weigh this declaration appropriately. However, we imagine that some of these formulations will be puzzling to a Latin-rite Catholic, since it sure looks like the Pope of Rome has essentially said “hands off” as far as Orthodox Christians are concerned. We are sure that there are good and important reasons for such statements, but given the Roman Church’s historic articulation of its primacy (and 1870 isn’t all that long ago, really), it seems strange to a Latin-rite Catholic to see statements like this subscribed to by the Supreme Pontiff.

And, for all we know, it may be strange to an Eastern-rite Catholic to read these statements. For example, Gabriel Sanchez, of Opus Publicum, who knows quite a bit more about eastern matters than we do, posted at his blog a translation of a statement by Sviatoslav, patriarch of Kyiv-Halych and All Rus. (Sviatoslav is the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.) Because it appears that Sanchez obtained special permission to reproduce the translation, we will not quote it here, but we will urge you to read the whole thing there. While nice, ecumenical statements are pleasant business in Rome and Moscow and elsewhere, we dare say that this is deadly business for Patriarch Sviatoslav, and his words ought to be weighed carefully.

Henry VIII and Hampton Court Vespers

Prof. Jack Scarisbrick, an expert on Henry VIII, has a piece at the Catholic Herald that begins,

How would King Henry VIII react to the news that Cardinal Vincent Nichols will preside at Catholic Vespers in the Chapel Royal of Hampton Court Palace on February 9? Not just by turning in his grave (which anyway might be difficult since it is possible, if not probable, that his daughter Mary, when she became queen, had his tomb opened and his embalmed body burnt). No, there would be seething, bewildered anger and ruthless revenge immediately planned.

He was hard on English cardinals anyway. Cardinal Wolsey, who built magnificent Hampton Court (too magnificent for Henry’s comfort), would probably have lost his head had he not died a natural death a few days before facing a rigged trial for high treason. When John Fisher was given a red hat on the eve of martyrdom, Henry famously vowed that the bishop would never have a head to put it on – and carried out his threat.

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there. We won’t spoil it for you, except to say that Professor Scarisbrick demolishes the idea that Henry VIII was some sort of Catholic.

 

Some remarks on Kaveny and Neuhaus

A sharp young Catholic of our acquaintance has pointed us to an interesting exchange over the past couple of weeks. At Commonweal, Cathleen Kaveny argued that the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus sowed division in the Church by articulating a vision of conservative Catholics collaborating with evangelicals and Jews on points of agreement for political reasons. In Kaveny’s opinion, Neuhaus led conservative Catholics away from progressive Catholics for political reasons, and this fundamental rift has become more obvious since the Holy Father marked out a course in his reign not wholly consonant with the political views of these conservative Catholics. In other words, political expediency drew Neuhaus and his circle away from Catholics and toward protestants and Jews, laying the groundwork for the debates we see in the Church today.

This argument was, well, received as well as one would expect. At First Things, R.R. Reno responded with a thorough rebuttal, making the essential point that, in some respects, conservative Catholics do, in fact, have more in common with conservative protestants and Jews than they do with their progressive Catholic brethren. Robert George responded, a little haughtily, and suggested that Caveny was running at Neuhaus only because she could do so without fear of hearing back from Neuhaus. And, at the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters has responded a couple of times, first by sort of coming to the point that there’s division in the Church because the conservatives are no longer in good odor in Rome, and later by suggesting that progressive Catholics also made political deals that weren’t good for the unity of the Church. (Although how Neuhaus could have sown dissent is unclear, since the conservative faction of the Church was itself in good odor in Rome from October 1978 to March 2013. But we’ll pass over the anachronism.)

Read through the posts when you get a free minute. It’s practically a who’s-who of Catholic thought leaders.

For our part, it is really unclear what Kaveny thinks her argument is, since it seems to us that she has argued, more or less, that Neuhaus agreed with people he didn’t really agree with because they took similar political positions, and he turned his back on people he really agreed with because they took different political positions. But—and this is the problem—she compares apples and oranges to get there. As for her points of commonality between conservative and progressive Catholics, she looks toward the broadest possible points of agreement:

Does honoring Jesus as the Son of God count as a commonality? Like their conservative counterparts, progressive Roman Catholics acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ, and find the interpretive key to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament. Orthodox Jews do not—indeed, must not—treat Jesus as the Messiah foretold in the Book of Isaiah. It would be blasphemous for them to do so.

Does living in the grace imparted by the sacraments count as a commonality? Both progressive and conservative Roman Catholics believe that God’s grace is channeled through the seven sacraments. Many Evangelical Protestants do not have the same view of grace or the sacraments; they often view the Eucharist as a memorial of a past event, not a way of being present with Christ here and now.

(Some of these things are exceptionally weird ways of expressing these commonalities, but we will pass over that quickly and assume that she means essentially what an orthodox Catholic would mean by these expressions.) But as for the points of agreement between conservative Catholics and conservative protestants and Jews, she looks to some very specific issues to find hidden disagreements.

Neuhaus’s defenders might say that he was concerned with commonalities among conservative Christians and Jews on hot-button issues: the ordination of women, contraception, same-sex marriage, and abortion.  But how deep are those commonalities? Many Evangelical Protestants, for example, believe that women should never exercise authority over men, especially but not exclusively in an ecclesiastical context. But the Catholic Church officially and vehemently denies that its exclusion of women from the priesthood is based on their inferiority to men—and points to the centuries old tradition of powerful, independent women religious as evidence. Orthodox Jews may oppose abortion—but not because they believe the fetus is an equally protectable human being. Under Jewish law, full protection for a new human person is triggered at birth. But in Catholic circles debates about abortion are usually about when a human life comes into being biologically.

In other words, Kaveny’s argument is that conservative and progressive Catholics agree on the broadest possible issues about Christ and his Church, but conservative Catholics reach the same conclusions as conservative protestants and Jews for different reasons. (So what?) She does not contend—and could not contend—that all progressive Catholics are on the same page as conservative Catholics about women’s ordination, contraception, marriage, and abortion. They are manifestly not in many instances. That they might agree about broad issues does not change those disagreements. (However, those disagreements cast real doubt on whether the broad areas of consensus are as they appear, even though we said we’d pass over that issue briefly.) So, Neuhaus collaborated, according to Kaveny, with people he agreed with on specific issues instead of people he agreed with on the broadest issues.

Apples and oranges. (Like we said.) And, accordingly, R.R. Reno has the better argument when he notes that a doctrinally conservative Catholic may, in fact, have more in common, especially in terms of outlook and approach, with a doctrinally conservative protestant or Jew, notwithstanding some serious differences, than he does with a progressive Catholic, who, often as not, holds Modernist and indifferentist views.

But the reason why Kaveny has to compare apples and oranges is because she won’t make the (easier) argument that the traditional social teaching of the Church is actually more consistent with some things that progressives are fond of. For example, both Leo XIII in Rerum novarum and Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno express real reservations about economic liberalism and unrestrained capitalism. And Pius XII affirmed in the strongest language—particularly in La solennità della Pentecoste, his 1941 radio address commemorating Rerum novarum, and Exsul Familia Nazarethana, his lengthy apostolic constitution on migrants—the right of individuals to migrate between countries and the positive effects of such migration. Certainly economic justice and immigration have consistently been traditional concerns of the Church and progressives in the Church tend to be more in tune with the Church’s traditional teaching on these points.

In fact, this point has come up a few times in the context of the Holy Father’s contemporary social teaching. Rorate Caeli ran a piece, almost two years ago, noting that the Holy Father was not far from the traditional social teaching of the Church. (Whether “New Catholic” would make the same argument after Laudato si’ is not clear to us.) And Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., has argued that Laudato si’ contains echoes of Pius IX’s monumental Quanta cura and its annexed Syllabus errorum in the Holy Father’s devastating critique of the individualist-technocratic rot at the heart of modernity. (He later pointed out that other authors made the same connection between Laudato si’ and Syllabus, though they didn’t understand what praise they were heaping on the encyclical and may even have thought that comparisons to Syllabus were negative.) But we digress.

In other words, Kaveny could have argued that Neuhaus ought to have cooperated with socially progressive Catholics because their views (generally) are actually fairly close to what the Church has traditionally taught about income inequality, poorly restrained markets, and the social obligations of capital. (But even this argument is essentially the seamless-garment argument articulated by John Cardinal Dearden, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, and other progressive Catholics, which has not met with uniform success. Or any success.) But she didn’t. Instead, she argued that, because conservative and progressive Catholics have some broad things in common, Neuhaus and the First Things set shouldn’t have cooperated with protestants and Jews on specific points that they have common with conservative Catholics (even if they have different reasons for having them in common).

And that sounds political.

Further dialogue with the Anglicans in the shadow of schism?

Edward Pentin also has a very interesting piece about the Anglican conference in Canterbury. He begins,

The Anglican Communion stands on the verge of formal schism this week, as its leaders began meeting today to discuss the issue of homosexuality and other matters in Canterbury, England.

The five-day meeting, called by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, is seen as a last-ditch attempt to keep the ecclesial community together following a long-running dispute over homosexuality and deeper differences over how Anglicans should interact with today’s largely secular, post-Christian society.

(Emphasis supplied.) We, of course, are interested in this as the Anglican church is an interesting topic. Not being Anglican or a member of one of the Ordinariates, we would not however say we have a rooting interest one way or the other. Except with respect to this point:

The Vatican, meanwhile, is watching events in Canterbury closely. It argues that, for dialogue between Rome and Canterbury to effectively continue, the Anglican Communion must stay as one, but it recognizes that its dispersed authority model makes that an almost impossible task. It is perplexed at Anglicans’ wish to allow local and regional bishops to decide on doctrinal matters without seemingly having a sense of what is owed to the communion as a whole, but recognizes that Welby is not, as he has said himself, an “Anglican pope.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Wait, what?

We were under the impression that the Anglicans drew a bold line through, not under, further dialogue with Rome when they went forward with making some women bishops. One can get into Apostolicae curae and whether Anglican orders were ever valid—the good and holy Pope Leo XIII reached his own conclusion, notwithstanding contrary views—but it’s not really necessary now. Whatever you’d have to do about women presbyters (and Rome’s answer is simple but perhaps hard to sell to the female ministers), you’d have to do about women bishops and the presbyters they ordained, man or woman.

Which is, of course, to say that whether there is one Anglican communion or a Canterbury Group and a GAFCON, the question is not whether Rome can conduct dialogue with all Anglicans. It can’t. The question is whether Rome can conduct fruitful dialogue with some Anglican jurisdictions. And that’s a harder question to answer, as it seems that the GAFCON jurisdictions take the protestant and reformed bits of the Anglican identity somewhat more seriously than the Canterbury side of the line of scrimmage. On the other hand, it is good to see that Rome is taking the Anglican crisis seriously, since the Anglican crisis could expose some of the potential fault lines within the Church. But one doubts that that is the message that they’re taking away from all this.

Obviously, it would be good if the Anglicans returned to full communion with Peter, but dialogue is a two-way street.