That’s not, by the way, neccesarily a bad thing.  The Eucharist, for example, is essentially an argument from authority when you boil it all the way down.  There’s an attractive logic to it thanks to Aquinas, but we have to believe that logic works, and we have only the word of tradition’s authority that it does.  So saying homosexuality is wrong–well, it does seem to lack any real empirical referent, and I’ve yet to find anything indicating that gay marriage would actually destroy, well, anything, that is, except heterosexual definitions of marriage.  Again, I’m not sure it’s bad if we recognize that the Church opposes gay marriage based only on faith, but then it seems like an easier thing to change too.  After all, we are the Church of faith and reason.

A smart debate on this from Damon Linker and Rod Dreher.  Below is Linker’s side, but you should read Dreher too (he’s a great writer).  I think, by the way, that Dreher is totally right that much of the left accuses people who don’t like homosexuality of being sick, ironically in just the same way society used to accuse homosexuals:

In the end, I suppose our disagreement boils down to what Rod says in the last sentence of the paragraph I quoted above: The legitimization of homosexuality, for Rod, “would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human,” whereas for me nothing nearly so profound is at stake. All I know is that a few of my fellow citizens love, and feel sexual attraction to, members of the same sex. And as Jefferson might have put it, that neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Rod and those with similar convictions obviously take a very different position. I just don’t see how over the long term they can possibly make their case in our public life if their position boils down to nothing more than a profession of faith: “I believe being fully human requires that my fellow citizens consider it evil to do this and that to each other in bed.” Don’t get me wrong: Such professions might inspire a handful of conversions. But they are unlikely to persuade anyone, because there is no argument involved. If you believe that scripture and tradition are right to condemn homosexuality, then you’ll believe that it’s right to condemn homosexuality. And vice versa.

Austin Ruse asks Obama to keep his hands off Burke. It appears that our President is trying to defend Sebelius from Burke’s (and other’s) criticisms. It’s a good article, and it provides an important question about the theology (and politics) of the Eucharist.

I mean, I’m no canon lawyer, I’ll admit that, but I suppose my Eucharistic theology is quite different from Ruse’s (and there are obviously some bishops with different theology than Burke’s). When someone in my family told me he flat-out did not believe in the Eucharist, I asked him politely not to receive. But in those moments when I have seriously doubted, I still did receive, because I really wanted to believe, and I said the prayer: Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief.  I think it’s a question of good faith.

Similarly, in those times that I have been sinning, I have often refrained from receiving the Eucharist. Although the truth of the matter is–and a few priests have talked about this with me–I was not necessarily as evil as I thought I was at the time. We Catholics can be awfully hard on ourselves, and awfully hard on each other. I fully and completely recognize that there are sins that make reception of the Eucharist impossible, and there are ways of thinking and believing or operating that make it rude and inappropriate (not being Catholic, not believing at all in the real presence, etc.). But I also believe that Jesus is one tough cookie (forgive me), and that the Eucharist can generally do a lot of good. I think that those among us who are operating in good faith–but whose good intentions are paving the wrong roads–could have much more good done for them than bad by receiving.  If we really believe in the real presence, than the Eucharist is in a not-unsubstantial way (forgive me again.  the puns are too much), the person of Jesus himself, and we see from the Gospels how his touch radically changed sinners, provided those sinners came with at least some desire to be changed, with an awareness of their brokenness and a desire to be made whole, even if they were unaware of exactly how they were broken (see the woman at the well especially, but really a whole lot of the Gospels, especially Luke and Mark).  I think we ought to be less worried about the sinner and more worried about the complacent, the pharisees, those that don’t believe they sin at all.  It seems to me that that’s who Jesus was worried about.  I know that me at my worst and most worthy of Hell is when I’m in the latter category and not the former, because the latter actually invites the most insidious of the former.  It all comes back to another prayer from the Gospels: Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.  I would add to this, I think I’m doing my best in a broken world, but I’m not sure, and I need your grace to know, or at least, to see a bit more clearly than I do now.

So how do we know if certain elected officials–say, Sebelius–are operating in good faith, that they are really trying to know, that, in an imperfect world, they are doing their best? (And remeber, we Catholics aren’t pacifists–we do recognize we have to make compromises with evil to exist in the world, but always within certain parameters and for the greater good). The simple answer is that I’m not sure if we can know, barring particularly heinous disregard for life, that is, no efforts at all to reduce abortion, or any form of killing that is wholly gratuitous–ie, lots of wars, and death penalty in the US, and the allowance of killing in the form of starvation and death from diseases that could have been averted.

This is not to argue some sort of numbers game, as a lot of those on the Catholic left do: that is, I don’t think that we should claim that abortion is balanced out by all the other deaths in the world that other elected officials might turn a cold shoulder to. While I do believe that Obama’s maintenance of foreign policy might well eventually save a million lives a year more than McCain would have, and that McCain’s possible overturning of Roe would not end all abortions or even put a large dent in them, this is obviously speculative. My argument has much more to do with the politics of Eucharist, and this is related to my thoughts on Obama and Notre Dame: I simply believe that we should take on good faith that many of those who are pro-choice have considered their decisions and believe they are making the best of two difficult choices. And that we should welcome them into our community, share the Eucharist, and truth that within that community, the truth (which, I believe, is pro-life) will win.

Never let it be said the Jesuits always disagree with the Pope.  Read it here!

My take on this is basically the same as before: I’m wholly sympathetic to taking on the ideological commitment to condoms for condoms’ sake.  The trick, though, is that even in condoms only work in certain communities, then use they where they work.  There is a practical argument here against condom use in specific circumstances, but not much of an argument against them as such, except from authority, which is not especially helpful.

So, three great comments from my most recent post, which suggests to me I should clarify some things.  First,in response to Nancy, I must say that I’m not sure I agree with her about not illegalizing abortion. I did not intend anything in my post to reflect a desire to keep abortion legal; it was, instead, about the desire to have open dialouge in a Catholic context with those who would like to keep abortion legal.  These people hold a position I am ultimately against (though to varying degrees depending on the stage in the pregnancy) but it is, generally, not a position I am so against that I believe that we (and they) could not benefit from a conversation in, say, the form of a commencement speech.

This is because, in response to JJS, there are two groups involved who have traditionally been excluded from power and are often victims of neglect and inequality: women and the unborn.  While we are all humans, some of us humans have a harder time of it than others, and they deserve our special attention: wome and the unborn are both two such groups.  So, obviously if people believe they are taking a full human life to protect a woman, that is not  a “good faith argument” but if people believe that they are not taking a human life, and that they are also acting to defend and protect women in a society that still does not do a very good job of it, then I am sympathetic to their point and believe they are worth engaging (as opposed to, say, certain ganglords, like those in Mexico–honestly, when you know the teenage girls I do who have had abortions, the comparison goes from beyond insulting to just ridiculous).   I certainly, in this engagement, would tell them what I think about the need to protect the unborn, and why I think this is most logical thing to do (not to mention the most compassionate) but I also think that people like Obama or women who have had abortion ought not be shunned in the way that Catholics historically have shunned people like slaveowners: both groups might well be committing heinous acts, but the difference is that one group is committing acts they don’t see as heinous for what they think are good reasons that help people.  The other group is actually doing something heinous they to some degree recognize as such in a way that is benefitting only themselves.

You knew it was coming.  Of course you did.  Obama gets the nod to give a speech at America’s flaship Catholic university (for good or bad this is true folks.  I mean, yes, I am aware of Franciscan, but a whole-lot of non-Catholics aren’t.  Flagship doesn’t necessarily mean most orthodox or even best.  Even though I do think ND has a strong case for the latter, but that’s another post).  and then, poof, the anger begins.

See, for example, this article in Catholic Culture (with other links too), or this one in First Things, or this discussion of the tension at MSNBC.  And then a response to all of this from America’s Michael Sean Winters.

I understand the worries about Obama.  Frankly, I agree with the worries about Obama, at least in the context of abortion.  But I think comparisons to slavery or now Mexican drug-dealers  and the Church’s all-out refusal to deal with them aren’t entirely accurate here: abortion, unlike slavery, is an issue that pits two marginalized groups against each other.  Slavery and drug wars are flat-out wrong and there’s not really a compelling case to be made for why certain forms of the two are ever justifiable.  Hence, the church refuses to acknowledge some of their more heinous practitioners.  But for abortion, at least in its early stages, there is a good faith argument people make in which they whole-heartedly believe that (a) this is not a full person worthy of the same rights and (b) someone else’s rights and needs are being defended.  Now, of course, (a) could also be said of slavery, although clearly that was not true in the way that our society has come to define truth.  (Yes, I know truth is more that just definition, but as for politics, it’s not).  So my point is that at least some pro-choice people are operating in good faith and need to be engaged, not shunned.

So when I was 11, I wrote a paper called “Ozone: The Good, The Bad, the Truth.”  I was very proud of this paper, and  I considered myself a young muckracker.  That was in 1992.   So then the ozone crisis was, really, more or less solved, and now we have this global warming problem, which is just a ton more complicated, but actually a whole lot more serious.  I think this article is right though: the problem is there’s no skin cancer.  With ozone, you had this clear problem that WOULD HAPPEN SOON.  With global warming, it’s a gradual process that’s much harder to pin down.  All of this makes me nervous.

Anyway, this always strikes me as a good precedent for negotiating a greenhouse-gas treaty—here we had scientists telling us that the world was in real danger if we continued emitting certain substances, so the world’s governments got together and acted swiftly. The aerosol and halocarbon industries bitched and moaned, sure—even sending out paid flacks to cast doubt on the science (the CEO of Dupont, the inventor and largest manufacturer of CFCs at the time, scoffed at the ozone discoveries as “a load of rubbish”). But once the treaty passed, companies got to work finding substitutes for CFCs, and did so in remarkably short order. The economy didn’t skip a beat. So if it worked with CFCs, why can’t it work with carbon-dioxide and manmade global warming?

Alas, it’s not a perfect analogy. I asked Riley Dunlap, an environmental sociologist at Oklahoma State University, about the parallels, and he added some smart caveats. The first is that DuPont, for all its early stubbornness, actually led the way in phasing out CFCs when pressed by environmentalists and Congress. The company had been researching alternatives over the past decade as a way of preparing for the expiration of its patents, and had easy substitutes to CFCs close at hand. In the current situation, it will likely prove trickier to shift away from fossil fuels—and oil and coal companies are a lot more resistant to regulation than Dupont ever was in the 1980s. Plus, of course, phasing out CFCs didn’t force anyone to make any lifestyle changes, the way curbing carbon-dioxide emissions might.

The other point, Dunlap notes, is that ozone depletion was a fairly easy issue for scientists and environmentalists to convey in a concrete way to the public. “Although we technically couldn’t see the hole, it was easy to portray with computer mapping. And then there was the looming threat of skin cancer,” Dunlap says. “So you could easily pinpoint the problem and highlight the dramatic effects.” Global warming’s not quite as simple or dramatic as “hole in sky = horrible sunburn.” Manmade climate change is a gradual process that will unfold over many years; it’s hard to tie this or that hurricane or drought explicitly to rises in CO2 levels. Climate scientists talk in terms of probabilities and risks and percentages—they’re correct to do so, but it’s not nearly as eye-catching. So while the ozone layer tale is heartening, there’s no question that climate change is a much bigger—and more daunting—challenge.

Look, I think sometimes ex-presidents do need to publicly go against presidents, but I’m just not sure now is that right time, which I have to assume is incredibly rare.  I think this process can be much more effective in private, as is well demonstrated here.

This, from the Washington Post.  The head of bioethics at the Vatican responds:

In contrast with church authorities’ typically uncompromising statements on abortion, Fisichella stressed the degree of moral discretion that the doctors were forced to exercise.

“The conscience of the physician finds itself alone when forced to decide the best thing to do,” he wrote. “A choice like that of having to save a life, knowing that one puts a second at serious risk, never comes easily.”

The article did not explicitly mention the girl’s mother, who was excommunicated for authorizing the abortion. Church officials have said the girl is not under threat of excommunication.

Another extraordinary aspect of Fisichella’s article was its frank rebuke of José Cardoso Sobrinho, archbishop of Olinda and Recife, whom it accused of having “rushed” to declare the excommunications — “a judgment as heavy as a meat cleaver” — when his first task should have been the pastoral care of the victim.

Cardoso Sobrinho’s action harmed the “credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of so many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking in mercy,” Fisichella wrote.

Because church law requires the automatic excommunication of anyone who collaborates in an abortion, Fisichella wrote, “there was no need . . . for such urgency and publicity” in declaring the fact.

Fisichella’s article also implicitly contradicted Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, who had publicly defended Cardoso Sobrinho’s action earlier this month.

Vatican officials rarely air their differences in public, let alone on the front page of the pope’s newspaper.

According to respected Vatican journalist Sandro Magister, Fisichella’s article was probably approved in advance by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is considered the Vatican’s No. 2 official, after Pope Benedict XVI.

This is from an e-mail I just sent a friend of the site.  I really appreciate comments and e-mail folks!  If you think I’m too liberal or too conservative or too weird, just let me know!

For me, the truth is the Eucharist (and all the other sacraments too obviously) and the existence of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a community in which I am totally dedicated to engaging myself and having a conversation.  I’m a firm believer in truth and reason, and I believe that the Church can’t disagree with empirical evidence or good arguments (ultimately anyways) though I think it sometimes takes a long time…  My project, as I see it, is to talk to fellow Catholics while still being Catholic, not changing the rules or even calling for the rules to be changed but suggesting why they might be and how that could work.  And, obviously, keeping humble and open to correction.  This is how I would distinguish myself from the more heterodox in the Anglican communion, and we both see what’s going on there.

This is a great point:

If you’re going to fight about politics, fight about politics. Here’s a useful litmus test: As long as the media continue to cover women’s political differences in their “Health” sections, we are probably doing something wrong. Just as Michelle Obama has been reduced to a perpetual fashion story, the fight for the future of young women in the GOP has now become a body-image story. Well done, ladies! Way to get your thoughts and preferences taken seriously!

Michelle Cottle suggests that Ingraham’s mistake lay in the criticism by one leggy, blond sex kitten of a younger leggy, blond sex kitten. Perhaps. But I’m uncomfortable taking Anne Baxter’s* side over Bette Davis’ or vice versa where spectacularly pointless catfights are concerned. My view is generally that an eyelash for an eyelash leaves the whole world blind.

Were Ingraham’s comments about McCain’s weight thoughtless and stupid? Of course. Are McCain’s hands lily white in the catfight rules of engagement? No. Don’t believe me? Consider that her first column on Coulter attacked the Republican pundit for, among other things, her “voice.” It reminded me of nothing so much as Sarah Palin’s claim that she couldn’t stand Clinton’s “whining.” When women, or men, criticize women’s voices—whether we’re going after Michelle Obama’s allegedly angry one or (forgive me, Tina Fey!) Sarah Palin’s allegedly crazy one—it’s not all that different from going after their weight. It’s a way of reducing what they have to say to what they sound like. It’s a way of questioning their entitlement to speak at all. Which is why it’s not something men typically complain about in other men.