Poor Margaret is weeping.

It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

So ends Hopkins’ poem on the inevitability of life’s sorrows. And it is what struck me while reading Professor Kmiec’s book, namely a deep sorrow for someone whose clearly expansive mind stretches and twists and aches to justify a position he must know is so fundamentally fallen.

I came to Kmiec’s Can A Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barak Obama with a sincere hope that this would be some seminal effort at creating a salve for the deep wounds that exist in our mother church, the Roman Catholic Church. I had the audacity to hope that some splinter of truth would shine forth from it and explain away all my nascent tendencies to dismiss and distrust those who would support the most actively pro-abortion candidate this nation has seen since the Roe decision of 1973. Against my baser inclinations I ferreted out a copy at the local library and poured over it in hope.

That hope, however, was dashed against the adamantine facts of reality and reason. I could barely read five paragraphs of Kmiec’s text without finding a glaring error, a straw man, a verbal bait and switch, a train wreck of argument and obfuscation and agenda.

Chapter One provides several examples, for in his attempt to discredit those he refers to as Republican Faith Partisans (RFPs), a ridiculous moniker that reeks of puerile name-calling, Kmiec lays out the RFP misleading and erroneous logic by writing,

“Correct Major Premise: Abortion is an intrinsic evil (in Catholic terms a'grave sin') to be discouraged.”

From the starting gate, Kmiec stumbles. He makes abortion something “to be discouraged,” as though it were poor manners akin to slurping your tea. No Mr. Kmiec. Abortion is to be outlawed. This is the point which the “RFPs” and the Vatican and the U.S. Bishops and your colleagues have been making for years now, for as Faithful Citizenship makes clear, any legal system that sanctions the killing of millions of human lives is “fundamentally flawed.” Such flaws, Professor, ought to be more than just “discouraged.” They must be firmly corrected by good law.

Next, Kmiec writes,

“Misleading Minor Premise: Obama doesn’t support reversing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that leaves this decision to the potential mother. (Correct, but misleading and incomplete. Obama believes there is a better way to reduce the incidence of abortion than reversing a court decision that will do nothing other than toss the issue back to the states – namely, to improve the prenatal, maternity, and, if needed, adoption resources of expectant mothers and to better educate un-marrieds about the serious side of sexual intimacy and the importance of responsible parenting.)”

Laying aside for the moment the fantastical claim that first, Obama believes this and that second, what he believes is true, one ought to be struck by the astounding phrase “potential mother.” Perhaps Professor Kmiec is too strict in his definition of motherhood to see that there is nothing “potential” about the fact that every pregnant woman has a human life inside of her at the moment of conception, a life for which she is responsible the moment she becomes aware of it. Furthermore, the objection against Obama is not just that he does not support overturning Roe but rather the whole host of policy positions in favor of extending access to, funding for, and legal defense of abortion on demand. More on that later.

Lastly, Kmiec writes,

“Faulty Conclusion: Obama is ‘participating in or cooperating with’ evil and anyone voting for him is, too. (No, as the discussion in this book will reveal, this is not the teaching of the Catholic Church).”

Excuse me Professor but it is certainly the teaching of the Church that civic leaders who, like Obama, willfully extend access to, funding for, and legal defense of abortion on demand are participating and cooperating with evil. Anyone who votes for this leader, knowing full well of their position, is cooperating with evil, even if it is remote material cooperation.

In the end, Kmiec’s opening salvo falls well short of the standards of honest reason. The tragedy does not end there though. Speaking again about these RFPs, a dastardly collection of rabble-rousers no doubt, Kmiec writes that the performance of abortion is wrong and participating in it is never justifiable no matter what good may come of it. He continues,

“However, that does not mean that public officials cannot work to restructure, for example, tax or economic conditions that make abortion less likely. It would be absurd to call that ‘participating in or cooperating with’ abortion just because the public official thinks it unwise to overturn Roe for the purpose of then convincing the individual states to enact laws that would send the mother or doctor, and the father or clergy person if they were consulted by the mother, as co-conspirators to jail. It certainly does not mean that Catholic voters cannot make candidate choices that can reasonably be thought to establish social justice policies that advance the culture of life.”

Did you, dear reader, catch that? Of course you did. Kmiec states that it is absurd to claim cooperation with evil just because a public official wishes to care for the poor instead of throwing teenagers and their priests into jail, which is what would happen if Roe were reversed of course.

Does the good Professor really think us so dull witted? Does he really mean to say that those who wish to overturn Roe seek that Supreme Court decision “for the purpose” of throwing women and their priests into jail? There are straw men…and then there are straw men. And this straw man smothers a large swath of land when he falls in the next sentence, for Kmiec says that the choice is between those who would imprison wayward girls, impoverished mothers and well-meaning pastors and those who wish to “establish social justice policies that advance the culture of life,” indeed those who advance the cause of sugar and spice and everything nice.

Forgive me for the sarcasm. It is my effort at lightening the mood, for we have here a well respected and nationally recognized Constitutional lawyer who is falling faster than the leaves in Hopkins’ poem, falling far too quickly, for we are only on the third page of Kmiec’s argument. Poor Margaret is grieving.

A House Divided

After having read Doug Kmiec's book the third of fourth time, you know after having gone over the horrifically bad argumentation, the tricks of debate that include straw men the size of William Shatner's ego (I just had to with the new movie coming out, sorry), the basic errors in doctrinal understanding that he passes off as Gospel truth, and the out-and-out deception, after all of that there were a number of things that I came away with. One of them is that Professor Kmiec shouldn't have had communion denied him. It was against Canon Law, and anyway, he mentions it every time he speaks in public as something to hide behind instead of having to answer tough questions. But another thing I got from the book was just how close we are in this country to seeing a real break in the Church.

Now, I am not talking about the American Catholic Church, or the Catholic Church of America that threatened to emerge while I was growing up in the 70's and 80's. I don't mean any real schism by women in roman collars and men in leotards who want their own cosmic liturgies. That's not what I mean, and I want to make it clear that I don't think this is what Kmiec was striving for in his book.

What he accomplishes, however, and as Martin Sheen intimates in his little blurb on the back cover, is that this is the first great mainstream attempt by a well known and respected pro-life believer to justify a theology, a reasoning, a model of Church which is simply not supportable by the Magisterium, or to quote Sheen directly, this book "may very well become the most important comprehensive document written to date on American Catholics, abortion, and candidates for public office." Kmiec's book, even if unintentionally, is the manifesto for a progressivist, American Catholicism that sees virtue, actual virtue in the conversation between good and evil instead of in the effort by good to stand up to evil with force.

Now, while everyone and their brother has blogged on the issue of Obama's trip to Notre Dame, I would only want to add my two cents by positing that there will be a real and true exposition of the break that already exists within Catholicism. In one single event, in the kind of event that history professors require their students to remember for exams, American Catholicism will be on the national stage as a broken body that will force the country's Catholics and non-Catholics to actually ask the question: "What does it mean to be a Catholic?"

When the Pew Research Center, which has recently given us so many statistical insights into our religious experience here in the United States, tells us that self-identified Catholics are split down the middle on whether Obama should be honored by Notre Dame while it simultaneously tells us that the position on Obama's visit is directly proportional to weekly attendance at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, when the Pew survey tells us this, then we don't have to guess anymore at a break. It already exists. Will Catholics follow Kmiec's terrible reasoning? Or will they stay true to the opposition to abortion? Will they heed what John Paul II says in Christifidelis laici that all the other justice issues (health care, just wage, religious freedom) are "false and illusory" if the right to life is not defended with "maximum determination"?

The real question, though, the question the answer to which provides the answer to where Catholics will go, is what are the bishops going to do about it. At last count (the last figure I saw was from May 3rd) the number of U.S. Bishops who have spoken out against Notre Dame's decision is up to 68. That amounts to about 35% of the U.S. Bishops. Never in my adult life as a Catholic have I ever seen the Bishops of the U.S. so unified around a single issue like this where it was not in their monetary interest be so. And of course this is just the number of Bishops who have spoken out about it. How many agree with their brother bishops but simply can't speak out about it for fear of pissing off the presbyterate or the donors that help keep their schools open.

What is clear to me is that Kmiec's book exemplifies the good and bad of the liberal Catholic position. There is heart in it. There is a lived reality which is informing their theology, and however poor that theology is, charity demands we take account of that lived reality. But there is also deception, mostly self-deception, and there is obfuscation, and there is relativization. These things ought to be address honestly and forthrightly.

Perhaps we can do so here on this blog.

Ostrov

If you haven't see the Russian film "Ostrov," or "The Island," you must. You simply must. This not to be confused, mind you, with the 2005 film by the same name with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson.

Ostrov is about...well...I won't say anything now. I'll wait a bit before posting on the movie, but it is a must see.

You can get it through Netflix. If you don't have Netflix, buy, beg, and/or steal to see this film. Find a friend who has Netflix and convince them to put it in their queue. Then convince them to put it at the top of their queue. And if they refuse, threaten to harm their pet. And if they don't have a pet, well you should feel free to call them "fatty" or something.

You must see this flick! See it!

The heresies I've known and loved to hate

Part of my job is to try to read some of the stuff that goes across the transom of the average lay person's field of knowing. Among these is the book The Challenge and Spirituality of Catholic Social Teaching by a fellow named Mich. I've read the entirety of the book and I think Mr. Mich a genuine individual, with a good head on his shoulders, and a great big heart. But I cannot deny my having nearly wanting to go bat shit angry when I read about a Sr. Elizabeth Johnson C.S.J. who argues, get this, that we need some humility as a species.


That's right, brother, there is no need for us to feel special about being human just because we can calculate the velocity and force of a large volume of Shakespeare released upon Sr. Johnson's head from a height of two stories. No, no. We're just another species on this great mother goddess earth of ours with nothing but death and destruction to add the great mix of things.


What was that? Oh, that was the sound of Sr. Johnson's cursing in a manner consistent with the highly developed language skills of a homo sapiens after having been struck by the weight of a single volume of one of mankind's greatest achievements. Oh, but I said "mankind." Sorry, sorry, I meant to say "humankind's."


Never mind the fact, of course, that the good Sister finds herself at a point in history where she, an educated woman, gets paid to spit out drivel at Fordham University. Last I checked there were no dolphins teaching courses on great porpoise literature. But I do believe there are several jackasses in the current administration in Washington, and some monkeys as well. But then again, progressive politics is supposed to be one step ahead of us all.

God's Grandeur

You can try to ignore it if you want, but Spring is about us, and even if you do suffer the allergies that I suffer, you can still take some time to try to appreciate the fierce-wonderful glory that surrounds us during this time of year.

I get to walk to work and the past couple of days have been a joy...particularly while listening to Magnificent on U2's new album.

Anyway, in honor of the new Spring I provide the reader with this, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
.....It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
.....It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
.....And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
.....And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
.....There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
.....Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
.....World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

One man's myth is another man's handgun

While I was over at Vox Nova recently I noticed a provocative title for a post suggesting that the use of a handgun in self-defense is intrinsically evil. The post, as I noted in the comments, was less than stellar. But in the other comments there was a mention of the "myth of redemptive violence." I have only just recently discovered what it is that the phrase refers to, and I find it as annoying as another commentator X-Cathedra, who offers a long - and I think good - reflection on the idea.

First let me just try to sketch what this myth is. The phrase was coined by Walter Wink, a theologian of questionable status. I say this because he denies that Christ's death was redemptive at all. There is nothing unique about the death of Jesus is what he literally says in his book The Powers That Be. The myth is the notion that good can be drawn from violence. Redemption - not from sins mind you, because of course there is no such thing as personal sin - redemption from the effects of the domination systems of the world is truly possible only through non-violent means.

Now, I will admit that Wink's argument is compelling in parts. He gives the example of a man who broke into a woman's house, presumably to violate her, and who was stopped because of the non-violent, personally engaging, and empathetic tactics used by the woman. She managed to convince him to not bother her but to sleep downstairs. In the morning - she didn't sleep a wink - they sat over a cup of coffee and he left peaceably. She was terribly shaken by the whole incident. This is a wonderful story, and I do not doubt that it is 100% true. Of course, what we don't hear is that the man went on to rape a woman who did not have the non-violence training this woman had. Well, maybe that didn't happen, but maybe it did.

Here's the point. I get the idea that non-violence is the greater ideal towards which we ought to strive as Christians. I totally agree that the vast majority of instances of violence are done for ingenuous, sinful reasons. I also get that part of the non-violent argument regarding self-defense is that we ought to have the power as Christians to lay down our lives for our brother, even if that brother is the one killing us, to witness to the Gospel teaching about non-violence. Indeed, that is what Jesus did and asks us to do. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for their friend...and of course our friend is everyone.

What Christ never said was that it is any kind of loving act to stand aside righteously hanging onto our purity-from-violence and allow someone else to lay down their life for my witness to the Gospel.

We believe in a God of mercy and not of justice (praise be to Jesus now and forever). And the myth of redemptive violence folks want to focus in on that mercy. Fine, but I cannot collude by omission in allowing an objective injustice to happen to someone else who positively does not want to lay down their life for the Gospel. That is an injustice... and when did we get so disturbingly twisted as to believe that we are morally obliged to engage in injustices for the sake of proving a point of our faith.

When faced with the prospect of someone in danger...whether they are drowning or being beaten to a pulp by a gang of thugs...you act and you act in the most effective way possible. Violence, not always deadly mind you, but violence is what is called for when our neighbor's life is in danger. In this way I lay down my own purity-from-violence for the sake of my neighbor.

Sin is a many splendored thing

As we toil away, trying to understand the vicissitudes of human existence, we have as a race come up with some pretty spectacular ideas to explain away some rather disturbing tendencies. What makes men be so cruel to one another?

Well for some it is society's fault. I'm not quoting some early '80s psychologist, I'm quoting Rousseau, who lived to the middle end of the 18th century and who believed that what made men bad were the poor societal structures that they lived in. Without civilization to corrupt us we would be noble savages. Rousseau, mind you, fathered several bastard children and gave them up to certain deaths in the orphan homes.

For some, we are bad because we've been bred badly. That's right, we've got the wrong genes. Luckily Planned Parenthood and the eugenicists are here to help us. They've figured out that if we can just have fewer children from the unfit, well then all society will fall into one harmonious groove. Indeed Margaret Sanger said just that very thing, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit---that is the chief issue of birth control." Ahhh...she had such a way to stir the soul. Never mind who gets to decide who is fit and unfit. Margaret and her white, bourgeois, atheistic pals will figure that out for you.

For some, the explanation for why men do bad things is economic inequality. Oh, if only we could simply get rid of the economic differences between men, well then all will fall into place. Marx argued that in fact this is what needed to happen and if it required a violent revolution...well then so be it. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, now can you? Never mind the tens of millions of needless deaths.

For some, the explanation for evil is our physical world. We need to let go of our physical selves, you see. It is our bodies that cause all the harm. Why if only we could just cut loose of them, then all would fall into place. There are very few people who hold this view as most of them have committed suicide and or refuse to reproduce.

Finally, at least for the purposes of this posting, there are those who want to say that there is actually something wrong with us...yes, us. There is something disturbed about us. We are fallen. Whether you want to call it original sin or what-have-you, it does not matter to me very much at this point. The idea is really quite simple. It is not society, or our bodies, or economics, or bad genes. It is us. We are sinners.

Here, then, to relate all of this to my last post, is the point. If we cannot make the person in the pew come to the conclusion that this world is flawed somehow and that this flaw is in us, if we cannot connect with the average Joe in the pew and their own personal sense of sin and unworthiness and self loathing which is almost certainly there and almost always acknowledged to some degree, well then...we cannot preach to them Christ. And if we cannot do that, then we cannot evangelize them. And if we cannot evangelize them, well then Pew Research will be busy counting up all the ex-Catholics.

Fr. Neuhaus said many times in the pages of First Things that if we are not sinners then there is no need for a savior and Christ Jesus becomes the quirky, ancient fellow who accidentally started a revolution.

John Paul the Great said that at the center of our world's many problems with regard to social structures (he wrote this in Centesimus annus), at the center of so many of the misguided steps taken over the century since Leo XIII wrote Rerum novarum is bad anthropology. You see, so many have this sense this vision that if we just find the right formula or put the right guy in charge...well then everything will work out alright. Like Plato we think if we can just find, elect, formulate, enforce, coerce, demand, insist that everyone follow the philosopher king then all will be well.

The problem of us still remains however, and the process of convincing everyone else to follow the great philosopher king can get ugly, ugly and deadly.

A friend told me of a conversation he had with a security guard at a university in the U.S. The undergraduate student body at the school is usually very wealthy and they are all very, very bright young people. But there is great sin there. My friend asked the security guard, who is a Christian, what he does with these white, middle-class, comfortable young who are caught doing the unspeakable. The guards response went something like this:

"You let 'em know they done something wrong." Exactly. Then maybe they might come around to hearing about the Gospel.