Comment that I made in "getreligion.org"

If only every individual in the United States received a healthy dose of post-modernism in their secondary school education. That way, maybe, nobody would any longer think of the word “news” in terms of information in any way divorced from a particular ideology. How less distressing bad religion reporting would be, if everyone on the street already understood that newspapers are only this: a collection of all of the things one group of people writes about other groups of people.

I’m not saying that there is no such thing as the objectivity of the press, and obviously, getreligion.org doesn’t believe that either (such would negate the need for this blog’s existence).

But if only the average reader *started with* the presumption that every news story was a covert, heavy-handed ideological tract, and *then* sought the genuine nuggets of truth hiding within (rather than the reverse order of operations). Ah, then wouldn’t religious people have that much less to worry about?

On Being Catholic

Peter Laurie wrote a little piece that I appreciated in something called "The Nation Newspaper" (I don't know what its pedigree is, but it's the news media, so who really cares when it comes to religion writing).

I liked Laurie's piece because it forms a nice example of apologetics of liberal Catholicism. I liked it in particular because such apologetics usually have two main features: a heartfelt, honest expression of self, and a bitter screed against the evils of the 'premodern' elements of Catholic tradition. And Laurie's piece is content to focus on the former.

The wonderful paradox of Catholicism is the eternal tension between orthodoxy and dissent. I live that paradox, filled as I am with certainty constantly beset by doubt.

Laurie is not really an innovator when it comes to seeking a public answer to the question: "If you dissent from the Catholic Church, why not just join a church that agrees with you?" I admit there is a certain temptation to wish that liberal Catholics would all do just that, clergy and laity alike; but that temptation really doesn't stem from charity and is probably at least a venial sin.

But there are, in fact, two questions that conservative Catholics have for liberals: the more common "why not join another another church?" and the rarer, "why not embrace the Spirit-inspired teachings of the Catholic Church?" The implicit modernity that lurks inside the souls of even us conservatives makes the first question is easier to ask than the second. We don't really believe that a liberal Catholic would--or even could--change his beliefs any more than we would change ours. If there is a cognitive dissonance that bothers us about liberal Catholics, we take the more prudential path toward resolution: inviting them to part company with us.

Perhaps that sometimes happens; liberals get fed up and leave, perhaps more often than they stay anonymously, or worse, become agents to "change the Church from the inside." But I really doubt that the invitation to leave is necessarily more effective than the invitation to convert would be if more Pope-believing Catholics had the cojones to ask it. And the reason I say that because the option to convert has an entirely different foundation than the option to stay, or leave the Church. The latter can be justified or argued based on comparing a series of pros and cons; authors like Peter Laurie and Gary Willis (Why I am a Catholic) and Fr. Andrew Greeley (The Catholic Imagination) can explain their continued loyalty by giving you a list of things they like. But the former, the option to convert, has one and only one foundation.

My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true. -M. Buber, quoted by Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 46.

Perhaps I am taking this quote out of context; after all, Buber and Ratzinger are both addressing atheism, and I am only addressing the matter of Catholics who disagree on points they themselves consider small, even niggling. But I don't believe so. Liberalism is a kind of atheism; it is an atheism of the Church, it is the belief that God is absent from doctrine and that the Magisterium is not really the sacramental Head of the Body of Christ. And so to move from being a dissenting Catholic to an orthodox one I believe truly is a conversion; one more ultimate and radical, even, than Laurie's own conversion from atheism to liberal Catholicism. To be orthodox; to give up, finally, one's cherished right to disagree, and to see the formation of opinions to be itself within the realm moral culpability, is something that hangs on Faith, more than argument.

The only argument that some people would need, but perhaps are not receiving is: "Maybe it is true." Time, perhaps, to stop asking liberal Catholics to leave the Church.

Now I've already revealed a little bit of an extreme opinion. Yes I do believe that dissenting Catholics and orthodox Catholics are doing two essentially different things, different in kind and not just in degree.

Catholicmatch.com - a Catholic online dating service I confess to making use of since leaving the seminary - asks its new members to answer whether they believe seven 'controversial' doctrines. This allows members to find people of like values, if indeed this is important for them. A search criterion allows members to find matches that agree with "all", "most", or "some" doctrines.

What goes under the radar of most people is that there is potentially a world of difference between someone who follows "all" the teachings vs. someone who disagrees with even one. And that difference likely lies in the answer to the $64,000 inquiry, "why are you a Catholic?"

It is perfectly understandable that, given the cultural atmosphere, certain dissenting Catholics would feel the need to defend their association with the Catholic faith; a sort of apologia pro vita mea, albeit one whose most basic principles are different than Newman's classic. One shouldn't expect the answer to speak of salvation, for example. But we might expect a lovely litany of the natural goods of the Church.

Many things attracted me to Catholicism: its long history of intellectual and spiritual achievement; its spirited defence of the dignity and sanctity of life; its preferential option for the poor and vulnerable; and its rich liturgical culture.

I also liked that it's a church of sinners for sinners. It's not a church of the "elect" or of the "saved". Every day your relationship to God through Jesus begins anew.

It's also a church in the world and for the world, especially since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Catholics tend to be "worldly" in the best sense.

This Catholic outlook was beautifully summed up by Pope John XXIII in his opening address to Vatican II when, dismissing the Curial voices of gloom and doom who saw nothing but evil in the world, he urged the church to engage with the modern world, not in a spirit of condemnation, but in a spirit of compassion and joy.

Hope is an exemplary Catholic virtue; hope that human beings can rise above all intrinsic weakness and external shackles to build a society conducive to human flourishing.

I've also experienced in my travels the marvellous diversity within unity of Catholicism: the wonder of a Creole Mass in Haiti; the beauty of indigenous Masses and unique devotions to Mary in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

I'm choosing to live in the apartment I've selected because of its lush, forested scenery, the kindness of its managers, the reasonable rent, and the ideal location. But given these criteria, and the ones listed by Laurie (and Willis, and Greeley), I could as scarcely expect everybody to live in the same apartment as they could expect everybody to become Catholic. A mountain of natural goods does not a reason to convert make. This is what von Balthasar would call "Aestheticism" - the attempt to, or belief that one has succeeded in "reaching" God by means of an accumulation of natural beauties. At best a naive romanticism; at worst a presumptuous idolatry.

And thus my radical thesis: one who belongs to a religion because of a series of reasons has not, in the main, converted. (Incidentally, I include here those who incidentally agree with the magisterium on all things, and yet see these agreements as the substance of their Catholic identity).

I sound like I'm channeling Kierkegaard here. I'm really not, but I would like to move on to the main reason I started writing.

For me, as for most Catholics, the church is not a club you join. Catholicism is as much a way of life as a religion, even for someone, like me, not born into it.

Hence, despite the numerous scandals and crises that have beset the church, most Catholics steadfastly remain.

Hence, going to church for most of us is rarely an expression of piety. It's just something that Catholics do. The casual dress of churchgoers shows that it's not something apart from our everyday life. The Eucharist is the core of our faith.

People who know me know I love to dissect, and this here is one juicy slab of beef. As always, the first question one must ask is, "What, precisely, do you mean when you utter these words, 'way of life', 'club', 'expression of piety', 'not something apart from our everyday life', and 'core of our faith'.'?

Perhaps Laurie is making the Reform Jewish distinction between "orthodoxy" and "orthopraxy"; Catholicism is the business of going to church in your shorts and sandals, not an indicator of your opinions. Or maybe he is distinguishing between a pietistic, compartmentalized, hypocritical, aloof, "churchy" atmosphere, and a Catholicism which is, I'm sure he would agree, "integrated" into daily life.

Far be it from me to disparage the exalting of the ordinary. Daily life is the rich soil of sanctification - just ask any Opus Dei member. Moreover, I've witnessed my share of self-righteous "churchiness" to know that this is, in fact, a legitimate concern and one that should be shared by orthodox Catholics as much as liberals.

But somewhere in all the above "I-like-being-Catholicness" is an off-key note. What exactly does Laurie mean when he says that Catholicism is not a club?

Of course, those are words I can get behind. Catholicism isn't a club; it is not a "free association of like-minded individuals" gathered for a common purpose, nor is it exclusive in any a priori sense. As Francis Cardinal George once told an ecumenical meeting of Christian leaders, "To be perfectly honest, I want you all to be Catholic;" the same words could be legitimately said by any Catholic to the whole world. The only thing the Catholic faith excludes is sin, while embracing sinners. (there is a very catchy T-shirt slogan floating about, "Fear Only God; Hate Only Sin"; gotta get me one of those).

Yet somehow I gather that Laurie means something other than all of this. The "club" that he is repudiating is not the club of the "free association of like-minded individuals"; indeed, what he describes as his reasons for being Catholic sounds keen on precisely such a religiosity. No, the aspect of "club" that Laurie here rejects is the fact that clubs logically imply a distinction between members and non-members.

And here we see what "being Catholic" for Laurie really means. It means doing Catholic things. Just as building things makes one a carpenter, and stealing things makes one a thief, being a Catholics means going to church; "just something people do." Here Laurie follows the canon of liberal Catholicism par excellence: what makes one a Catholic is experience.

Blagh. This thing has devolved into a mess as the night winds down. Sorry.

God the Heretic, Part Deux

Well, this thing is long, repetitive, boring, and still unfinished. Enjoy!

It seems as though the "choice" complicit in determining our beliefs is not so much a positive as a negative choice.

We do not actually choose what we believe; our beliefs are only the most consistent available terminations to the foreground of our thinking at a given time. We do not have direct, volitional access to change the content of our beliefs (they are, to use a computer-term, "read-only"). Of course, by "beliefs" I mean earnest beliefs, not statements (which can be lies) or self-deceit.

On self-deceit: Self-deceit seems to be the closest that one comes to changing one's belief by sheer act of the will. However it is still not direct. Recall that I defined beliefs as the most consistent available terminations to the *foreground* of our thinking. What people know and what they believe are not always consistent. Often, knowledges are present, but have either never been made explicit (perhaps they are very subtle, like the truths that Socrates would bring to birth in his interlocutors), or have been "forgotten" - which is not to say that they have disappeared, but they have receded from the foreground of thought. It is possible for us to wilfully forget things, whether they are subtle points or unpleasant facts. These can be pushed into the background of thought where they have no appreciable effect on conscious beliefs. This is done either by neglect of mental attention to those points, or exaggerated mental attention on a peripheral point that, isolated from its ugly cousin, yields a pleasant outcome. But note that self-deception appears always to be a filter. We do not add an untrue thought to our thinking; we let the knowledge of its falshood slide into obscurity.

But back to beliefs. Beliefs are the most consistent available terminations to the foreground of our thinking. They do not rest high above, aloof from throught, but rather make up a substantial portion *of* that thought (though thought is not simply a sequence of beliefs). Beliefs make up the soft boundaries of the thinkable; thus thought itself is not entirely accessible to the will. What part of it is?

To the extent that we have any control over our daily experiences and inputs, it seems that choice enters here. Like the food we eat, the influences that we imbibe can arrive on our doorstep according to circumstance, impulse or strict planning. Of course the extent to which individuals can do this is wildly variable, and socio-economic class is a strong factor--whether one has cable, Internet access, transportation, a public library, liesure, and the education to know what kinds of influences are where, is strictly beyond anyone's control; those who have these things didn't normally earn them or earn the tools necessary to earn them. Don't tell a destitute Guatemalan villager he can be anything he wants to be. Yet even among the wealthy the breadth of this choice is tightly constricted: there is a grave disparity between the conveniently available, little province of viewpoints that satisfies most in a given 1st world country, and an authentic breaking open of the intellect. Of course I don't mean to draw a line and put myself comfortably on the favorable side of it (though that may be a necessary consequence of merely writing about it). But there is a spectrum, and unfortunately it is precisely a part of the "lower end" of the spectrum that those who belong to it imagine themselves to be at the "upper end". The market couldn't function if it couldn't persuade the masses that they are Inspired Independent Intellectual Individuals (and persuade each that he or she is moreso than most).

Yet perhaps this is looking at it the wrong way. Certainly people have unequal access to the breadth of data generated by the human species in its recorded lifetime. But individually each life can be said to be confronted with every possible choice, irrespective of complex or simple circumstances. No civilization is without its quarrels, its traditions, its wisdoms and its foolishnesses. In one shape or another the entire range of meaningful associations is accessible to every person. Acadamia is elitist; but human meaning is absolutely egalitarian. So we must personalize the question: not what are one's influences, but who.

Our chosen associations affect our thought and thus our beliefs. But how, exactly? It is not necessarily true that one's friends are also one's teachers; as mentioned, Pascal may have played dice with the godless, but not with his belief in God. Shared beliefs are but one of the possible bonds of friendship. Yet still nobody is impermeable to undesired influences; we are "porous", and Scripture frequently warns of associating with non-believers.

I mentioned before that self-deception occurs through the neglect of true thoughts (and these not need be religious thoughts; we deceive ourselves about the simplest and most mundane things). The mind is a bit like quicksand; left alone, objects will sink beneath the surface and disappear. Of course they are still there, but you wouldn't know it simply by looking.

How long can a person sustain the presence of true thoughts in the foreground of the mind? Alone, it would depend on his or her discipline and fervor for truth; yet even religious hermits depend on periodic gatherings and reminders of the brilliant yet subtle nature of their call. How much more necessary, then, would good associations be for those who also maintained associations indifferent to truth?

Again, I make a clear distinction: the danger is not that truth-indifferent associations would put dangerous or untrue thoughts in one's mind (it is scarcely possible today to avoid exposure to untrue thoughts; intellectual provincialism I do not believe is the friend of Christian communities anymore, if it in fact ever was). It is rather that, analagous to the self-deceiver who exaggerates a peripheral thought to forget the deeper thought, truth-indifferent associations exaggerate the presence of peripheral and ephemeral ideas, of zeitgeists, and true thoughts can recede into the background of the mind if they are not brought forward again by good associations.

In short (too late!), it is not the associations that one has, but the associations that one lacks, that have the most profound effect on one's ability to have a breadth of views and truths always in the foreground of thought. The "choice" which is most relevant is not the choice for this or that association but the choice against.

OK, the next installation of this thing should finish it off. I know this essay is kind of weak; but I hope profound insights are forthcoming!

God the Heretic

Whenever I have come across the word "heresy" in my studies, whether in lectures or books, authors of all theological strains are usually at pains to remind us that the word comes from the Greek αἵρεσις, hairesis, meaning "to choose" (yes, I did CTRL+C those words, italics and all, from Wikipedia). The word "choice" has an almost magical effect on some wistful moderns, inspiring them to become serious and far-gazing, receiving in to their trembling hands the golden tongs of the salad bar of eternity, as they solemnly utter, "Gone is the sweet fable of the past, when Truth was given; now there are many truths, and I must choose." A single tear rolls down the modern face. Cue Oleander's "I Walk Alone".

Indeed, Peter Berger's "The Heretical Imperative" argued precisely this, that whatever one's religion--from traditional Christianity to Mahayana Buddhism, it is a chosen religion and cannot be otherwise. He then proceeds to go on about plausibility structures as if this could be cheerful news for Christianity. Viva la heresy.

A point of analytic philosophy, a mere whisper among the enthusiasm for choice, is: can anyone be said to choose their beliefs at all? That was one of the first criticisms I read when studying William James' famous essay, "The Will to Believe". The very notion of a "chosen belief" seems self-contradictory. Presumably if someone believes something, it is believed for some reason--whether good or bad, or whether well-articulated or not. If I were conscious of having a belief because I have chosen to have it; i.e., that it is born out of sheer will, then I cannot actually be said to believe it, can I? I cannot choose to believe something which I know, or think, is false. And if I don't know, I might have a hypothesis--but the very word implies that it is less (hypo) than a real belief (thesis). One can have entertain contradicting hypotheses; one cannot hold opposite beliefs. Choice alone does not a belief make.

In fact, I recall reading that William James himself acknowledged that this was the case, and suggested that his essay would have been better titled, "The Right to Believe". But that does not change James' point that, even if we do not directly choose our beliefs in the manner I described above, still, desires and beliefs are mixed up somehow. A hint as to how is the bit of text from the Pensees that follows the so-called "Pascal's Wager":

Go, then, and take holy water, and have masses said; belief will come and stupefy your scruples – Cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira.

Whereas some have accused Pascal of committing the error of "doxastic voluntarism", this single line actually vindicates him. Pascal never suggested that we choose our beliefs; we do not come to believe, rather, "belief will come." What we do choose is not our beliefs, but our surroundings, our influences--what we listen to, and what we do not listen to. In addition, it is notable, Pascal does not tell the reader what not to listen to, but suggests rather that one add to one's tributaries of influence one thing which might be lacking--exposure to worship. Pascal himself did not shy away from the company of his secularist peers; indeed, it was they, not he, who had constricted their scope of vision.

Blah, I've hit a block. I don't want to let this essaylet die; I do have a point. Need to take a break.

Descartes' mistake...

It seems to me that there is a pretty obvious mistake in Descartes' method; it is not so much that he followed a process of radical doubt but that he didn't follow it consistently enough. Descartes made indubitability the starting point of thought. He made the perfectly valid observation that in every "Ego" there is a necessary "Ego sum;" this is not so much a logical deduction as a tautology (thus Descartes supposedly does not need to appeal to logic, which he has already doubted--but more on this later). But by elevating this "necessity" to a foundation of knowledge, Descartes commits an equivocation. Because while it necessarily follows from the "Ego" that "Ego sum", the "Ego" itself has no necessity. There is, in Descartes, a forgetfulness of the contingency of the self. An incidental "Ego" is confounded with a necessary "Ego," simply because from the "Ego" itself, certain necessary deductions are possible.

There may also be a wrench on the Cartesian gears buried in the fact that Descartes' "radical doubt" has structure; an odd feature for a method striving for univocity. He doesn't simply doubt everything at once; there is an order to doubt, and for some reason unexplained, the self is the last, i.e., the ultimate step in that order. Hierarchy is not exactly modernity's favorite heuristic scheme... yet one of the most profound foundations of modern thought seems built on a basically hierarchical conception of being and thought, with the intellectual soul standing on top as it ever was.

At the root of the inflation of "Ego Sum" is something common enough. Sometimes a method or an instrument of investigation obscures something but is mistakenly believed to reveal something. For example, a photo of the alleged Loch Ness Monster, with a dark something-or-other popping out of the water, is in all likelihood a smudge; an obscurity mistaken for a revelation. The tautology of "Ego" and "Ego sum" has pretensions of eternity and thus indubitable necessity, because allegedly, time itself has been "doubted". If only Kant's discovery, that time and space are not so easily discarded from thought, was retroactively applied to Descartes' discovery, the essentially time-rootedness of the "Sum" would have been discovered, and the "Ego" once again found to be contingent and hardly worthy as a foundation of knowledge.

The truth beneath the "Ego sum" is that even its status as a tautology has not liberated it from the structures of reason and logic as Descartes as hoped. If he had been consistent in his method, Descartes would have stopped writing after establishing the "Cartesian demon" and would have gone outside and started hitting people and screaming bloody murder. That is because it is impossible to isolate even something as simple as "Ego Sum" from the machinations of a deceiving demon or the vast perceptible, time-rooted world in which we find ourselves.

In short, it might be true that there is a tautology of "Ego" and "Ego Sum". But there is equally as much a tautology between "Ego Sum" and "Ego Sum Nunc." This wrenches the pretentious statement away from eternity and necessity and directs the radically doubting method away from the self and toward that upon which the self is contingent.

Homosexuality and bigotry

Right. General Pace says homosexual acts are immoral. Now everybody and their dog hates him.

It happened overnight, when everybody was asleep. Nobody announced it; there was never a constitutional amendment; it simply happened. There once was a time when one may have been able to believe that homosexual acts are immoral without being a bigot. Now, this is no longer true.

"Bigotry" as a vague and sentimentally super-charged notion, is one of the only things that western society can agree is inherently evil, though it knows not really why. Even the barest intimation of bigotry sets off a an involuntary reaction on a national scale, a bit like how I collapse choking after the smallest sip of spoiled coffee. In fact, in a society long enamored yet still afraid of her captor--modernity--it is not difficult to see how bigotry has come to be not only a sub-category of evil but its very essence. Let me lay it out.

When good and evil are judged only by the scientifically measurable scale of sociology, they are aligned no longer with the analogues of "order" and "chaos" as in antiquity, but rather with "less harm" and "more harm"--a happily quantifiable standard. Science knows nothing of violating a "nature"; it only knows of violating an "other".

Yet in spite of brute quantifiability of this new standard, the modern sense of violation is not primarily any physical violence (for after all, the willingness of Armin Meiwes' victim initially turned "murder" into "manslaughter", nevermind the calculated willingness of Meiwes nor the measurable deadness of the victim). More heinous than contradicting another's vital organs is contradicting their conscious will (while they are conscious, anyway).

How to reconcile the modern need for a scientifically measurable standard of good vs. evil and the quintessential modern value of self-determination, which itself cannot really be seen or measured?