Placet, magister?

While forgetting that she isn't in the smoking room of her club, Emily Stimpson points out that, as a rule, our crosses do not please us.

And since beauty is that which, being seen, pleases (id quod visum placet), I may say (with some understatement) that I don't find the crosses in my life to be beautiful.

And yet...

When I pray the Rosary, I usually reserve several Aves per decade to meditate on the aspects of goodness, truth, and beauty each mystery manifests. Broadly speaking, beauty is easier for me to find in the joyful mysteries, truth in the sorrowful mysteries, and goodness in the glorious mysteries. I doubt I will shock many people by admitting it's hard for me to find anything beautiful in the scourging at the pillar.

But what does the Father think of the Son's sacrifice? There are those who, rejecting the Catholic dogma of the impassibility of God as non-Biblical, insist that the Father suffered in Himself through His Son's Crucifixion. This is not a happy conclusion, if only because it means that God is no more perfectly happy than we are.

Moreover, this doesn't seem to be what the Bible says about how God viewed Jesus' passion. According to Scripture, the Father is pleased by the Son, always but especially by His sacrifice which reconciles all things to God.

How can God be pleased by something as terrible as a crucifixion -- much less the crucifixion of His only Son? One way of responding to this mystery is this: Our sin-mauled world reacts to the presence of the perfect love of God with crucifixion. The blood and death we see is the raging of sin against the hidden love the Father sees and finds pleasing, the love that is beautiful.

Our sin-mauled world lashes out against many things far less beautiful than the perfect love of God; these are our own crosses. It's by accepting God's invitation to unite our lesser crosses to Jesus' perfect cross that we can be united to His perfect love, and so become beautiful ourselves in the sight of the Father.

Yes, I know that it sounds odd
To speak of the beauty of the Cross,
Of the dying Son of God.
Yes, I know that it sounds odd
To embrace the lash and rod.
To gain lasting life by this great loss,
Yes, I know that it sounds odd.
Go, speak of the beauty of the Cross.

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No thanks to Singer

Mark Shea quotes a reader who is grateful for the bad example given by Peter Singer:

He has taken one of the Zeitgeist's main axioms, i.e., "No sexual pleasure is illicit" and has taken it to its rational, if repugnant, ends. In so doing, he has exposed a number of deep flaws in contemporary moral philosophy....

Unfortunately, most people who accept the Zeitgeist aren't rational philosophers. They are entirely capable of embracing a principle while rejecting the principle's consequences. They may even celebrate their irrationality with a disparaging reference to the hobgoblin of little minds, or perhaps to Walt Whitman's aptly-named "Song of Myself." (I suppose it's just Biblical illiteracy that would allow any sort of Christian to think it's a good thing to contain multitudes.)

I have a theory that, when a generation embraces a false principle but rejects its corollary, the following generation will accept the corollary. What our parents found monstrous we find discomforting and our children will find normal. People I've told this theory to assure me that there comes a time when the enormity becomes so great that the whole tower of falsehood collapses, but I'm not going to hold my breath until Singer's disciples are laughed out of Western civilization.

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The word of the day is triolet, an eight-line poetic form that dates back at least to the Thirteenth Century. The rules for construction are given, artlessly, in this triolet:

Both lines seven and four are the same as one.
And line eight is the same as line two.
Rhyme line three with line four, and you’re halfway done,
Both lines seven and four are the same as one.
Now line five rhymes with four, adding to the fun.
Rhyme line six with line eight and you’re through:
Both lines seven and four are the same as one,
And line eight is the same as line two.

The meter doesn't seem to matter; it's the rhyme and repetition that make a triolet.

If indeed beauty and goodness are fundamentally the same, it would be good to lace this site with beauty. Instead, I'll offer this trioletic impression of my Monday morning blogcrawl:

The bloggers every fault bemoan,
Grave and slight, remote and local.
The bishops’ follies set the tone;
The bloggers every fault bemoan.
I don't have far to cast my stone,
All Church politics is vocal.
The bloggers every fault bemoan,
Grave and slight, remote and local.

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Common sensus

In commenting on the consequences of Humanae Vitae, Anthony Marquis writes:

I do not think that the fathers of the [Second Vatican] Council would ever have imagined a time when the faithful would display a full-throated rejection of Church teaching. The Church is at a chicken-egg impasse: Institutional authority versus sensus fidelium. Church teaching is a teaching only insofar as it has been received by the faithful. We are in a new phase in the history of Church when official pronouncements are soundly rejected by the Catholic faithful.

This is a paragraph in which the errors so reinforce each other that a casual reading might miss them all.

I think Anthony's fundamental mistake is suggested by the words, "Institutional authority versus sensus fidelium." This implies, in context, that the sensus fidelium is the opinion of the majority of lay Catholics. In fact, though, as the words of Lumen Gentium 12 that he quoted immediately before this paragraph teach, the sensus fidelium is to be understood as "the entire people’s supernatural sense of the faith,...'from the bishops to the last of the faithful.'" Thus is is impossible for institutional authority to oppose the sensus fidelium, since the one is a part of the other.

This mistake leads directly into the equivocation of his final sentence. The term "the Catholic faithful" has two meanings that I think Anthony is confusing. One is simply "lay Catholics," the other is more like "Catholics authentically exercising their faith." It seems to beg the question to insist that the Catholics who reject Humanae Vitae are the ones authentically exercising their faith, while the ones who accept it are not.

I think the strongest point that the facts support here is that the sensus fidelium is not manifested clearly enough today to be invoked in arguments on the morality of contraception.

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Transcendentals meditation

In replying to Steve Mattson's "Marquis misses the mark" blog entry, a reader comments, "Contraception is not only intrinsically evil, it is aesthetically repulsive."

This is true, for the very simple reason that goodness and beauty are fundamentally the same: goodness is being considered as something desired; and beauty is being considered as something that pleases.

This identity plays out in interesting ways in our fallen world. If a thing is good, but the Church is somehow failing to convince the world that it is good, then the Church is overlooking some presentation of this thing that manifests its beauty. If a thing is bad, then we know it is ugly however well gilded it be by the world.

There are people who are better guided by their aesthetic judgment than by their conscience. This may be because they have trained their conscience in error, or perhaps they are rebelling against training attempts from their youth, but have never thought to apply a false philosophy to their sense of beauty.

Another wrinkle is that some people believe everything that pleases them is good and everything that displeases them is evil. This may be true of the angels, but our aesthetics have been marred by sin, just like our will to do good. Our judgment, of both beauty and goodness, needs to inform itself according to something external to us.

A related problem is that some people think other people mean nothing more than, "This displeases me," when they say, "This is evil." If morality is merely aesthetics, and if there's no arguing over aesthetic taste, then there's no point in arguing with someone who tells you something is evil. This is a tough position to argue against, since there is so much truth to it. In fact, it would be the truth, if we were unfallen. And, despite the fact that original sin "is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved," as Chesterton put it in Orthodoxy, there are plenty of people who don't believe in it.

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Putting vice to good use

Recently the "What deadly sin are you?" quiz made the rounds, and at least one person said they were Sloth. This leads me to ask: If they were truly slothful, would they really have gone to the trouble to take the quiz?

Perhaps they would, if they did so to escape the weariness of fulfilling their religious duty; following St. Gregory, St. Thomas defines the capital sin of sloth (acedia), not as simple laziness, but as "sorrow for spiritual good." [ST II-II, 35, 1] What brings you sorrow you want to avoid, so a slothful person (in the "seven deadly sins" sense) avoids those acts that bring him closer to God, because he finds them burdensome and wearying.

The daughters of sloth are, according to St. Gregory, "malice, spite, faint-heartedness, despair, sluggishness in regard to the commandments, [and] wandering of the mind after unlawful things." [Moralia xxxi, 45, quoted in ST II-II, 35, 4] If you'll grant me a confessional moment, I will admit to faint-heartedness and sluggishness in regard to the commandments, which St. Thomas interprets as avoidance of spiritual goods that lead to salvation in matters of difficulty (faint-heartedness) and in matters of common righteousness (sluggishness).

Significantly, St. Thomas treats sloth in his treatise on charity. (Specifically, sloth is a vice directed against charity's joy in the Divine good. [ST II-II, 35, 2]) Meanwhile, one of the acts of charity he identifies is fraternal correction.

Now, fraternal correction has always been a very popular aspect of Christianity, even when it does not, strictly speaking, arise from charity. And fraternal correction of the American episcopacy is the break-out fad of 2002 among Catholic laity (and others).

As a slothful man, though, I am sluggish to join in (a fact that has not gone unnoticed). I am, in fact, so sluggish that I prefer to think up imaginative alternatives to explain what others explain by the bishops' sinfulness. For example:

One matter on which numerous American Catholics have expressed the desire to fraternally correct the American bishops is the voice-vote defeat of Bishop Bruskewitz's amendment to investigate the roles homosexuality and dissent played in fomenting the molestation and cover-up crisis. That the amendment was defeated is taken as a sign of the bishops' pusillanimity; that it was done on a voice vote is taken as a sign that the bishops who voted against it didn't want it known that they voted against it.

Maybe the bishops are cowards; maybe they don't want people to know they are cowards. Or maybe (and here is where I channel my sluggishness into my imagination) a majority of the bishops saw the purpose of last week's meeting as crafting a charter and norms for dealing with accusations of abuse of minors by Church personnel. Maybe they thought that such a charter getting 95% of the bishops' votes was more important, that day, than fighting over the meaning and import of Bishop Bruskewitz's amendment and providing more material for reactive commentators of all stripes to root through in their rush to excoriate should the final charter fail to meet all of their demands. Maybe some of the bishops -- who's to say what fraction of the 252 with a vote -- were acting not out of cowardice but out of prudence.

It's an improbable idea, I realize, that a significant fraction of American bishops are able, at a specific moment in specific circumstances, to act virtuously rather than viciously, but it is by just such improbable ideas that I sustain my sluggishness.

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Hand in hand

There's been some talk recently about the various reactions to the "Christ in Majesty" mosaic in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

There is a spot in the pews of the Great Upper Church where, looking up toward the mosaic (which is on the ceiling behind the main altar), the statue of Mary on top of the baldacchino is aligned such that the left hand of Mary appears to rest in the left hand of Christ. (Christ's hand is, of course, enormously bigger. If you've never been in the Basilica: the mosaic is the dominant feature of the Great Upper Church.)

This is an interesting perspective. We might imagine Mary leading the toddler Jesus around by the hand; or firmly gripping His wrist on a certain trip home from Jerusalem; or clasping the dead and bloodied hand after they took down His body; or looking in wonder at that same hand, now glorified, some days later.

And, too, it is Jesus' hand -- pierced forevermore by a nail, as the mosaic clearly shows -- that raised her body and soul from her tomb, and placed her on her throne in Heaven. And the same spirit that informs that hand formed her immaculate, blessed her with the singularly greatest joy of creation, sustained her in her sorrows, and guided her sinless to her eternal home.

As with all true aspects of Jesus, perhaps the awe-full expression He assumes in the "Christ in Majesty" mosaic is more richly understood when contemplated, at least in part, in the context of His relationship with His mother Mary, the Immaculate Conception, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

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Rumor watch

I can't verify this, but I've heard that the reform group Voice of Catholics for Canon Law (VOCCaL) has disbanded, having discovered that its name is prohibited by canon law.

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Buy Tim Drake's book

Saints of the Jubilee is now available as an electronic book from 1stBooks. Buy it now for $3.95, and buy it again later when it comes out as a paperback.

Saints of the Jubilee is a collection of biographical essays on people who were canonized or beatified during the Great Jubilee of 2000. Conceived, edited, and brought forth by Tim Drake, its subjects include:

• the Martyrs of Nowogrodek (by Kathryn Lively)
• Andrew the Catechist (by Kathryn Mulderink)
• Blessed Cristobal Magallanes and Companions (by Ann Ball)
• Blessed Pedro Calungsod (by Kathryn Lively)
• Sts. Jacinta and Francisco Marto (by Kathryn Mulderink)
• St. Maria Josefa of the Heart of Jesus (by Patti Dansereau)
• St. Katharine Drexel (by Tom Kreitzberg)
• St. Augustine Tchao and the Chinese Martyrs (by Christine Haapala with Fr. Matthew Carr)
• St. Faustina Kowalska (by Mark Kwasny)

Sts. Katharine Drexel and Faustina Kowalska are yet two more of my patron saints; canonizationwise, 2000 was a good year for me.

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The paradoxes of Mr. Beste

Louder Fenn, Lane Core, and Minute Particulars have taken up USS Clueless's challenge that a variant of Russell's Paradox proves that God is not omnipotent. Roughly speaking, their answer is, "Well of course; you're using the wrong definition of 'omnipotent.'"

They're right, of course, but I don't think we need to appeal to St. Thomas to answer the charge. (Not that lack of need should ever stop us from appealing to St. Thomas.)

Den Beste's argument reads in part:

Define the universe set V to be all actions. Within that we define two subsets G representing all the actions God is capable of, and G' representing all actions God is not capable of....

Let us define act A to be identify a member of G'. A is an action and therefore a member of V....

We can stop right there. That A is an action is an assertion that needs to be proved. Notionally it is an action, when we think about it we think of it as an action, but that's an artifact of grammar. "Tie a rainbow to my thought" is another such notional action, but "Tie a rainbow to my thought" is not a member of the set V of all actions. For a thing to actually be an action, it needs to be actable.

What has been demonstrated (if not strictly proven) on USS Clueless is that the set of all actions can be mapped onto the set of all grammatical actions (i.e., constructs of the form "verb object"), but that such a mapping is not one-to-one. This is, in effect, the mathematical way of saying what other Catholic bloggers have said: "To make a rock too heavy for God to lift is not a real thing, it's a non-thing, and as Frank Sheed says, with God no-thing is impossible."

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A new reform group

Steve Schultz is pulling together a list of newly created Church reform groups. Since I don't know of any, I thought I'd found one myself, called

Reform the Hell out of The Church

Mission Statement: The mission of Reform the Hell out of The Church (ReHTCh) is, literally, to reform the hell (i.e., all demonic influences) out of the Church. Signs of demonic influence include, but are not limited to: good-for-nothing bishops; priests who do not humbly accept criticism; poor congregational singing; noisy children and the parents who spoil them; parking lot traffic snarls between the 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Masses on Palm Sunday; anything to do with Massachusetts politics; and youth ministers.

Recognizing that it wasn't the Second Vatican Council that let the Church go to hell, but rather attempts to implement the directives of the Council, ReHTCh is determined to reform the hell out of the Church by

• setting up an Internet discussion group for people who believe exactly as we do to exchange the same anecdotes; and
• writing blistering letters and articles condemning demonic influences in the Church for publication in the ReHTCh newsletter, Ad Remum Dareris.

Addendum: I've been informed that I ought to point out that ReHTCh should not be confused with the non-profit organization Reform Hell Out Of The Church (RHOOTCh), whose mission is to get the Vatican to open a discussion with the laity on whether damnation is a man-made tradition that should be set aside.

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What Christians do

Once a bunch of Lay Dominican inquirers were talking about when to say the various offices of the Liturgy of the Hours. You know, like if you sleep in till 10 a.m., do you go with Morning Prayer or Mid-Morning Prayer, or if you're out till 9 p.m. do you do Evening Prayer or Night Prayer.

The friar who for his sins had agreed to be the spiritual advisor of this newly-founded chapter, when asked for his opinion on these matters, shifted in his seat and answered, "Christians pray."

This may be the best two-word sermon I've ever heard.

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Poles apart

Greg Popcak of Heart, Mind & Strength has an interesting diagnosis of two irrational behaviors exhibited by American Catholics. One is interventionism, according to which fixing the problems with the Church is entirely up to personal action of the interventionist. The other is inspirationism, a passive acceptance that the Holy Spirit will make everything better. People who find themselves bouncing between these two poles exhibit "Catholic Bipolar Disorder."

I, too, have noticed some irrational behaviors among American Catholics lately. The most common of these might be called inlocoparentism. An inlocoparentist professes absolute moral certainty of precisely what the Holy Father must do, today, to whom, and with what implement, if the Church in the U.S. is not to be wiped out tomorrow.

Another is indolentism, whose exhibitors insist that responding to the crisis is entirely up to some person or persons other than themselves, who after all have never molested a child nor covered up for a molester.

Some American Catholics also show signs of inextremisism, the belief that every bishop in the United States needs to be banished to a monastery to do penance for the rest of his life.

The most dire irrational behavior, however -- the one with the least hope of recovery -- may be influentialism, the sense that what the individual says should or does affect what happens in the Church.

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Our duty too

Rod Dreher quotes Bishop Bruskewitz of Lincoln at last Friday's Catholics United for the Faith bishop's conference "postmortem report":

The avuncular bishop, who is considered a right-wing fringe figure by most of his colleagues, cited the 14th-century St. Catherine of Siena, "an illiterate nun who is now a doctor of the Church," as a model.

"She was brave enough to tell the pope off when he needed telling off," said Bruskewitz. "She did her duty. We must too."

I wonder what the CUF crowd would have thought had they been told that St. Catherine (who was neither illiterate nor a nun) explicitly taught that neither the laity nor secular authorities are to attack any priest or bishop, however evil he may be (which, in the 14th Century, may have been very evil indeed). Instead, they are to resort to prayer in perfect charity.

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A holy fool's folly?

Emily Stimpson is disquieted by the spectacle of modern American bishops:

I’m tired of the bishops being politic, and I’m tired of ecclesiastics who remind me of all the congressman, senators, and bureaucrats I left behind in Washington....
I don’t want politic bishops. I want holy bishops. I want bishops who stand up for Christ and His Church, who loudly proclaim the truth of God’s teachings, and who do the right thing, publicity be damned.
I know that’s unrealistic and probably not even wise. The demands of a modern day diocese, current divisions within the Church, and the omnipresent press all seem to call for a bishop skilled in the art of prudential diplomacy.

I think it's probably a good thing, for the sake of the faith of many Catholics now living (myself included), that we don't have any videotapes of the vast majority of Church councils and synods. What might we think of the sight of St. Peter declaring that mistakes were made, or St. Paul upbraiding him while looking out of the corner of his eye for the cameras?

Emily writes, "There are few things I would love to see more right now than a holy fool in a mitre, a Saint Francis in episcopal garb."

I think that would be entertaining, and it would certainly give me something to talk about other than my own actions, but I suspect that St. Francis would have been a disaster from start to finish as a bishop, his successes as a teacher and sanctifier overshadowed by his failures as a governor.

Maybe not; God's strength is made perfect in human weakness.

Still, while we don't seem to have a Saint Francis in episcopal garb, we do have an Emily Stimpson in lay garb. I'm in lay garb, too, as are most American Catholics waiting for God to raise up a saint to lead the Church out of the current mess.

So why isn't God doing what we're telling Him to do?

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He ain't heavy, he's my brother priest

Amy Welborn didn't like some of the things she heard last week:

The hesitancy to enact "zero tolerance" we saw in Dallas on the part of some bishops was explicitly stated as a reluctance to "rat on" priests (the Rockford guy) and a sense that it would be difficult to go back to the diocese and "face my brother priests" with this kind of policy.

Why is the existence of this self-protective ethos, that sees loyalty to the brotherhood as the highest value, so difficult for lay people to admit?

I think another important question is this: Why is the sense that it will be difficult for bishops to face their brother priests with this kind of policy interpreted as a self-protective ethos that sees loyalty to the brotherhood as the highest value?

Priests are not bishops' employees, nor are they merely their assistants. According to the Vatican II decree Christus Dominus, the bishop together with diocesan clergy

form one presbytery and one family whose father is the bishop... The relationships between the bishop and the diocesan priests should rest most especially upon the bonds of supernatural charity so that the harmony of the will of the priests with that of their bishop will render their pastoral activity more fruitful. [CD 28]

It isn't hard for me to imagine that a bishop telling his spiritual sons he may disown them if they hug the wrong child could injure the harmony of wills necessary for their pastoral activity to be more fruitful. It isn't hard for me to imagine a father expressing concern about exposing his sons to a risk of grave injustice.

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I was thinking more along the lines of, "Happy 25th Anniversary!"

Mark Shea mentions his friend Greg Krehbiel's letter, and instructs us, "Go thou and do likewise."

You can read Greg Krehbiel's letter and make your own decision. As for me, my next letter to my bishop -- Cardinal McCarrick, the same as Mr. Krehbiel -- will look substantially different.

In particular, I will not be listing conditions that the Pope must meet -- such as laicizing bishops who do not live up to my standards -- in order for me to support my local church at more than a token amount. This, to me, would be too much like me telling my father I won't help take care of my sister until my grandfather makes my uncle stop drinking.

In fact, if someone sent me this letter anonymously, I would probably think that it betrayed a very confused ecclesiology, one according to which a parish in one diocese can reasonably be penalized for the behavior of the bishop of another diocese and the same extra-diocesan authority that allocates administrative duties within a diocese also allocates preaching and teaching duties to the bishop of that diocese.

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He's gone mad

The heavy weather across the region in recent days has caused Steve Schultz to lose his mind.

He has announced a contest for the worst original free verse poem.

Speaking as a former high school literary magazine editor, I can say that there is no such thing as "the worst free-verse poetry." If you can't find your copy of the 1982 edition of The Gryphon, then you can verify this by reading the poems published by the International Library of Poetry. (N.B.: The ILP is not, in my judgment, a company that makes a fetish of corporate integrity.)

In short, there is no lower bound to the bad poetry humans are capable of. Any poem can be made worse; most poems are.

(The same absence of a lower bound holds for human fatuity as well. I used to think, each time I learned of a new low, "That's it. That's as big of an ass any human being can make of himself." Then I found out that there are English-speaking people who, in all sincerity, refer to the Supreme Being as "Godde." This in itself is merely silly, but the reason they do this is to split the difference between "God" and "Goddess." Any species capable of that is capable of anything, and worse.)

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Fun with numbers

Emily Stimpson says this story "says the loopy, lefty, blatantly hereretical group, Call to Action, is the largest lay movement in the country." A reader counterclaims that the Knights of Columbus holds this distinction.

What the story says, though, is that Call to Action is "the nation's largest Catholic Church reform organization." I don't think the KoC will challenge CtA on that.

This brings to mind various claims about how the only vocations crisis the more traditional religious congregations and the more "conservative" dioceses have is where to put all the novices and seminarians. (Why do such claims always include the expression "bursting at the seams"? Do they all share a common source, perhaps a Wanderer article from 1993?) The conclusion, of course, is that tradition leads to vocations, while non-tradition doesn't.

I am sympathetic to the conclusion, but I think we need to be careful about arguing from statistics.

Say there are ten religious congregations; one is "traditional" (habits, silence, however you want to define it), the other nine are not. Now suppose there are ten postulants; three are "traditionally"-inclined, the other seven are not. Evenly distribute the postulants among the congregations, according to inclination. Then the "traditional" congregation gets three postulants, seven "non-traditional" get one each, and two "non-traditional" get none.

One way to interpret this is that the "traditional" approach (again, defined however you like) draws on average more than three times the number of postulants that the "non-traditional" approach does, and therefore there are more people interested in "traditional" vocations. I'd argue, though, that the correct way to interpret this is that the supply of "traditional" congregations does not meet the demand. If four of the "non-traditional" congregations fold, and four new "traditional" congregations spring up (encouraged, perhaps, by the phenomenal growth of the existing "traditional" one), but the ratio of "traditional"-to-non among postulants stays the same, then we'd see "non-traditional" congregations geting more than twice as many vocations, on average.

These are made-up ratios, of course, although in the claims I've heard there usually are fewer than six "orthodox" dioceses; if there really were only six "orthodox" dioceses, then they'd have about three times the number of vocations as the others even if only 10% of the seminarians were "orthodox." But my point is that the Holy Spirit isn't necessarily speaking to us through quoted statistics.

Another obvious consideration is that quality, not quantity, is what is needed. St. Thomas More once complained that there were too many priests in England, meaning too many men who entered the priesthood as a comfortable profession rather than a holy vocation. He was correct.

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What the scandal is really about

Fr. Jim Tucker provides another reason for keeping the Roman Catholic priesthood [mostly] celibate: It leaves priests free to receive big shipments of books from Amazon.com without having to sneak them onto the bookshelves and hope no one notices. Celibate priests have the time to make sick calls that might otherwise be spent trying to explain how, since Jungmann's Mass of the Roman Rite is really more of a reference book, when you think about it, it shouldn't count against the "one book in, one book out" rule.

Let's call this what it is: bibliophilia. Attraction to books, books, books, books, and books.

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Whisky and cigars? Talk about a throwback.

Fr. Robert Johansen likes Laphroiag and dislikes sauerkraut.

I am with him on the whisky (as my wife asks, "Is that the one that tastes like dirt?"), but can it be that the reverend father disdains that noblest of human sandwiches, the Reuben? (The cheesesteak is, of course, a gift of the angels.)

As for his dislike of suffering fools, while I myself don't often react to foolishness with the gladness demanded by charity, I am extremely grateful toward those who do.

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Grounded

Greg Popcak calls me a "coy, but groundless, commentator" for calling his posts about bishops committing mortal sin an invitation to play Spot the Mortal Sin!.

He is mistaken.

I am not coy. I have not been coy since I don't know when. Coyness irritates me almost as much as spunkiness. If you think I am being coy, I am probably merely failing to be subtle.

Am I groundless? That depends on where I am standing.

I have no reason to believe that I am capable of judging whether another person's particular act was a mortal sin, specifically whether performing that act cut off that person from God's sanctifying grace. I do have reason to doubt that news reports contain sufficient information to judge whether Cardinal Law committed mortal sin in 1993. Therefore, for me to speculate in public on the matter would be nothing more than play, and perhaps calumnous play at that.

Greg says he is "exercising the proper lay office to be a prophet." As I told him by email, I have no reply to that; that is his discernment to make. I have no more received prophetic insight to condemn him than I have Cardinal Law.

In an email message, though, Greg seems to go further and insist that my refusal to come to judgment about Cardinal Law's 1993 act is a cop out. I do not agree, since for the reasons I've just given it might well be sinful for me to do this. Furthermore, as I am neither a resident of the Boston Archdiocese nor in a position of authority or influence in the Church, I do not believe that I have any positive duty to study the matter and come to even a tentative judgment on this.

Finally, I find Greg's entire argument about whether Cardinal Law committed mortal sin, and his reasons why it matters, unconvincing:

1. He writes, "In other words, these priests would probably not have continued to abuse others, and certainly would not have been able to abuse others as priests without at least the "implicit formal cooperation" of their bishops." But according to the definition he quotes, formal cooperation is participation in an act "either for its own sake or as a means to some other goal." Since it cannot be credibly said that Cardinal Law's decisions enabling pederasty were made for the sake of pederasty, or to use acts of pederasty as a means to some other goal, his decisions cannot credibly be called formal cooperation of any kind.

2. Of course, this leaves the possibility of material cooperation of one kind or another, but since I am not a moral theologian my doubts concerning further aspects of Greg's analysis are more tentative. The website Greg references defines immediate material cooperation, which is morally illicit, this way:

Immediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are essential to the commission of an act, such that the act could not occur without this participation.

I don't think this applies to assigning a pederast to parish ministry; my guess is the word "circumstances" has a more restricted technical meaning here (i.e., "who, what, where, by what aids, why, how, and when;" see ST I-II, 7, 3). Otherwise, we could say that, in giving birth, a woman immediately materially cooperates in every act her child performs during their lifetime. If, then, we are driven all the way back to mediate material cooperation, we are in very murky waters indeed if we try to judge an act in which all circumstances aren't known.

3. He writes, "I am not so sure that it is as obvious to the bishops, and it is certainly not obvious to them that this sin could be mortal." If it is not obvious to someone that their act could be a mortal sin, then their act is not a mortal sin. Thus we can set aside Greg's concerns about the effect of mortal sin upon the bishops' souls in this case.

4. He writes that any mortal sins committed by a bishop in this matter should be forgiven, but "certainly not before being required to do real and public penance for their very real and public sin." But mortal sin is forgiven when the penitent is absovled. We could demand more than God does, probably we often do, but I don't think we should be setting policy based on our own hard-heartedness.

5. He writes, of the man who fails "to heal the damage to the Body of Christ which his actions have caused":

...the Church tells us that upon his death, he will wait in Purgatory for the wound he has inflicted on the Body of Christ to heal itself, desperately and painfully longing for the fullness of the Beatific Vision, which could take generations upon generations upon generations if his children and/or his children's children repeat his mistakes or continue to suffer the consequences of them.

I don't say that the Church doesn't tell us that this is what happens; I only say that the Church has never told me this, and that it is quite different from the things the Church has told me about purgatory, and even from some of the more mystical teachings that have been approved without being confirmed.

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What kind of ex-seminarian are you?

A. Well-adjusted husband and father; only lingering effect is occasional cuss in Latin.
B. Embittered Feeneyite crank; booted out for cussing at the modernist rector in Latin.
C. Mild neurotic; sometimes wonders why no one ever hit on him.
D. Loyal son of the Revolution; those 2 1/2 years confer full authority to proclaim that the Church is Wrong about Everything!
E. Nostalgic; leaving was the right decision, but misses the showers.

More questions: Is it possible that, even counting the women, more Catholic bloggers are or were seminarians than not? Do men who attended U.S. Catholic seminaries blog at a rate higher than the general population? Should we be concerned?

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VATCENTCOM

Rod Dreher has a piece on National Review Online today that I expect will be widely lauded -- although, considered as journalism, it's not much more than a rehash of what has been written about this for months, right down to the opinion that "the pope is too enfeebled to give the matter the close attention it deserves." (Imagine him wasting his time kissing up to some foreigner named Bartholomew when something important is happening in the United States!)

But one sentence in the article stands out for me:

The uncomprehending stares Deal Hudson received from Vatican insiders when he tried to explain to them what's happening to the Church here are more unsettling, at least to me, because it shows how cut off the leaders at Catholicism's central command are from the reality on the ground in America.

Is this true? Is Catholicism's central command really Vatican City? I always understood it to be in heaven, with by the love of God an equally real presence in tabernacles throughout the world.

If Catholicism's central command is truly the Vatican, then the bishops should cancel their meeting and go fishing.

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I have to be careful

John Betts vamps further on St. Thomas More, concluding with a paragraph on his friend St. John Cardinal Fisher. (It is on the anniversary of St. John's dies natali that their joint feast is observed.)

I've read St. John's Exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms (the mind boggles at the thought of an American bishop nowadays giving a series of sermons like this) but haven't had a chance to read an extended biography on him. I'm not even sure I should, because I already have eighteen patron saints, and I have the impression that he could easily become another.

This does remind me that I need to come up with a recipe for St. John Fish to serve for dinner next Saturday. For some reason, what's coming to mind is baking a whole monkfish in aluminum foil, with herbs and butter, topped with halved Roma tomatoes (with one tomato half placed firmly on the head).

Dessert will, of course, be St. Thoma S'more Pie (graham cracker crust, chocolate pudding, marshmallow fluff, chilled).

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Memento mori

I've been on a St. Thomas More kick lately, as a lead up to his feast day next Saturday. I just finished Peter Ackroyd's biography, saw A Man for All Seasons over the weekend, and am now reading The Last Letters of Thomas More, edited by Alvaro de Silva. (I'm pleased to learn, courtesy of a Zenit link from John Betts, that the Prince of Wales is getting into the More is Better spirit, too.)

Ackroyd's book was excellent, as all the reviewers said, but I couldn't help but think that he joins most of the other commentators in using too simple a key to unlock St. Thomas. Specifically, I think his explanations of More's actions as being driven simply from devotion to tradition are in places overly superficial. Ackroyd certainly gives us a three-dimensional picture of St. Thomas, in contrast to the more common one- or two-dimensional caricatures, but I have a feeling that it takes more than three dimensions to fully capture him. (I think I prefer the R. W. Chambers biography; I haven't yet read Richard Marius. John Farrow's pious biography is available online, as is the life by William Roper, More's son-in-law.)

Although I'd read and enjoyed the script of the original play, I was a little disappointed by the multi-Oscar winning movie of A Man for All Seasons. Robert Bolt, the playwright and screenwriter, somehow manages to show More's wit without his humor, and there's a certain, er, disjointed linearity to the way the story is told -- the king is nuts, Cromwell grinds More in the mills of the king's justice, Rich sells his soul ("But for Wales!" A great line.), More loses his head -- that robs the story of much of its intelligibility. Bolt (a non-Catholic, like Ackroyd and Chambers) intended his story to be about the triumph of the self, and at this I admit he succeeded, but the Thomas More he popularized is too flat to have ever conceived Utopia.

You can't think about St. Thomas for long without thinking about conscience. Of the acts available to fallen man, acts of conscience are among the most peculiar. It's sometimes thought of as the little voice in your head that tells you what you should do, but often people seem to be more interested with what the little voices in others' heads are saying.

To say that your conscience does not permit you to do something is to invite the inference that everyone's conscience ought not permit them to do it, too. But this inference misses an important distinction. Conscience tells me, "It is wrong for me to do this," not "It is wrong to do this (and hence, it is wrong for you)."

It can be difficult to recognize the difference. You might say, "I'm not claiming it's wrong for you. That's for you to decide," but to some that sounds a lot like, "Since it's wrong for me, it's wrong for you. If your moral compass is too screwey to see that, don't blame me." If we had a good theory of how conscience works, we might be able to avoid such misunderstandings.

On the other hand, Tudor England had a perfectly good theory of conscience and it didn't save St. Thomas More. At least, it didn't save his life.

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Putting granny out of my misery

Louder Fenn is doing yeoman's work challenging USS Clueless on euthanasia, but I think he makes a small mistake when he writes of USS Clueless captain Den Beste, "He is relying on an emotion, namely love."

I'd say the emotion is not love (but then I would, wouldn't I, since I don't think of love as primarily an emotion), but compassion.

Com-passion. Shared suffering. This, I think, is the emotion we feel when someone we love (that's supposed to be everybody, right?) is in pain. And while it is a noble emotion, before we let it rule our will we should recognize that, if we are feeling compassion, then ending the other's suffering ends our own suffering as well.

For someone who sees suffering as the greatest evil, this might seem like a benefit. For someone who sees suffering as potentially redeeming, or as a potential source of meaning in one's life, this might make the good of euthanasia more doubtful.

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Turning the cheek

Greg Popcak of HMS Blog, having read that I'm not joining the Spot the Mortal Sin! game he's proposed, asks by email, "What exactly is wrong with calling sin a sin?"

To which I can only answer, simply and precisely, I think there is nothing wrong with calling a sin a sin.

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You there! Admire me!

I've received an unsolicited testimonial from Bene Diction, Martin Roth's Canuck sidekick, to the effect that something I wrote in answer to the question "Do Catholics worship Mary?" was "a clear and intelligent response" that "gets high praise for answering in a way young evangelical Protestants can identify with."

I mention this not just to impress upon you my wit, prudence, tact, and broad marketability against the day I show up on your doorstep with a book proposal, but also for whatever benefit what I wrote might offer should you ever be asked questions by a young evangelical Protestant.

Even if (as seems likely, judging by the caliber of people who read Disputations) you're already familiar with Chapter 8 of Lumen Gentium, young Diction's reaction suggests that an artless response quoting the words of the Church can be all that's needed to answer honest questions from non-Catholics of good will.

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Play along at home!

Over on Heart, Mind, and Strength, Gregory Popcak invites us to play Spot the Mortal Sin! Episcopal Edition.

I'd love to join in, but in our house we have a rule that you can't play Spot the Mortal Sin! unless your homework is done, your bed is made, you are free of all attachment to even venial sin, and you receive a prophetic revelation from the Holy Spirit. And I haven't made my bed today.

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Scaling

The Washington Post has a front-page article today, reporting the results of its survey of the number of priests involved in sexual abuse of minors. (Praying the Post has more on this article.)

Just to set the scale, 573 priests have been removed from their ministry for these acts. Of these, 218 (38%) were removed since January 2002, which shows a certain responsiveness to the signs of the times by the bishops. The Post reports that 34 priests guilty of sexual abuse of minors remain in ministry, which is 5.6% of the total (i.e., 573 removed + 34 not removed). A total of 866 priests have been accused since the 1960s (about 1.5% of the 60,000 priests).

I have no strong opinions about what to do with the priests who are guilty, but I think it's worth noting that, judging by the Post's figures, the number of priests currently active in ministry who are believed to be guilty of these isn't huge, considered absolutely (34), as a percentage of those believed guilty (5.6%), or as a percentage of active priests (<0.1%).

No, this isn't a "What's the big deal?" argument. I think the effectiveness of the scandal in pulling 38% of the offenders from active ministry in the past six months speaks for itself.

What this is is an argument that, while issues of what to do about sexual abuse of minors is important for the U.S. bishops to resolve beginning Thursday in Dallas, they do not (pace Michael Kelly) constitute the Church's "greatest existential crisis since the Reformation."

The risk I see is that the bishops will be satisfied by settling these issues, one way or another, without embracing the opportunity for purification and reformation that this crisis offers. That the opportunity, which seems to be widely recognized by bloggers, will not be lost -- by bishops, priests, or laity -- will be the focus of my own prayers this week.

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By the way

Cardinal McCarrick of Washington has this to say about the draft charter:

My initial reaction to the draft charter is favorable. It is a strong document that includes core principles I feel are important, including care for victims, removal from ministry during an investigation, reporting to civil authorities and having a primarily lay-staffed review board in all dioceses.

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You can't even quit the game

Domenico Bettinelli is among the bloggers who have criticized the U.S. bishops for releasing the draft charter "in order to allow bishops to gauge the response from Catholics in their dioceses":

Does this bother anyone else? To gauge response? Do they believe in the policy or not? They should be the spiritual Fathers they have been called to be and do the job. If my dad sat me down as a teen and floated a proposal for groundings by me to gauge my reaction, I would have thought he was daft. He's the dad. He's supposed to make the tough decisions and I should be able to trust him to do it. This smacks of Clintonian focus groups, wet fingers in the wind, and so on. Has the bishops' conference hired James Carville and Dick Morris when I wasn't looking?

I don't understand this criticism. What is the alternative? To ignore the response from Catholics in their dioceses? To slavishly follow the response from Catholics in their dioceses?

Yes, it is the bishop's job to make the tough decisions, and yes, we should be able to trust him to do it. But that trust has been lost, among a large and vocal portion of the laity; and even if it had not been lost, consulting the laity on this matter is a simple act of prudence.

If the objection is that the specific expression "to gauge the response" calls to mind unsavory politics, I'll note that those are the words of the New York Times reporter, not necessarily of Archbishop Myers, and that what a phrase calls to mind says at least as much about the listener as the speaker.

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Christ's prayer to the Father!

John McGuinness of Man Bites Blog writes:

Orthodox Catholic liturgical police are fond of reminding us that the Mass is "Chirst's prayer to the Father." Therefore, any "innovations" such as modern music or inclusive language reveal stunning arrogance on the part of the innovator, since the innovator must think he or she can improve on what Jesus has given us. Putting oursleves ahead of Jesus is blasphemy, so all liturgical innovations must be stridently opposed.

Looking at the liturgy, it occurred to me that this is somewhat bogus. Lots of what we do at even the most orthodox liturgy was not done by Christ.

I'm not really sure which orthodox Catholic liturgical police he has been listening to, but I know I've said that the Mass is Christ's prayer to the Father, and when I did I didn't mean that the Mass is a verbatim recital of prayers Jesus offered before His ascension.

According to the Catechism:

The word "liturgy" originally meant a "public work" or a "service in the name of/on behalf of the people." In Christian tradition it means the participation of the People of God in "the work of God." Through the liturgy Christ, our redeemer and high priest, continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church. [CCC 1069]

The previous paragraph quotes Sacrosanctum concilium, which refers to "the liturgy, 'through which the work of our redemption is accomplished.'" (This, in turn, contains a quotation from the secret of the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost.)

The point of all this is that, if it is the liturgy -- "most of all...the divine sacrifice of the eucharist" [SC 2] -- that accomplishes the work of our redemption, then the liturgy must belong to Christ. It must be Christ's work, or it is nothing but the empty words of empty souls.

This does not mean that every word and every gesture is somehow made in persona Christi. What it does mean is that participation in the Mass is participation in Jesus' sacrifice on Calvary, offered to the Father in our behalf, and in the eternal priesthood by which He makes constant intercession for us, until the day He returns in glory.

The conclusion, then, is not that "any 'innovations' ... reveal stunning arrogance," but that, since the Mass is the work of Jesus and His mystical body the Church, no priest, liturgist, lector, cantor, or congregant possesses any authority to change anything that is not granted by the Church.

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Not just action

The Cardinal Virtue Tour continues at Kairos, today's virtue being Justice.

At my parish festival last weekend, I saw a flier from the social issues group that contrasted justice with charity. Charity, according to the flier, was about good works for people in need, while justice was about "changing the system."

And I thought -- well, no, I said out loud, "That's not right." Justice is not about changing the system, it's about giving to others what is their due. A letter writing campaign for public care for the insane may be an act of justice, but it isn't justice itself. To quote from Kairos, "We mistake the rules for applying justice for the thing itself."

The reason this matters is that, if all we have are rules, without any grounding for these rules, then we have no rational way of knowing whether the rules are just. What is the point of changing the system if we don't know whether the changed system is any more just than the existing system?

What has been lost, to large numbers of good-hearted Catholics, is the need for contemplation prior to activity. By "contemplation," I mean what St. Thomas meant when he wrote, "theirs is said to be the contemplative who are chiefly intent on the contemplation of truth." [ST II-II, 180, 1] By "prior to," I mean both chronological and logical priority. You should start the day in Christian prayer if you want to spend the day in Christian service, and if your service is not based on, understood according to, and sustained by contact with Christ, then it cannot be Christian service.

Our social and cultural systems are far too complex to be addressed by a rule-based approach to justice. If we don't know what justice is, how can we know whether we have the virtue of justice -- that is, the habit of acting justly? And if we don't know whether we have the habit of acting justly, how can we know that our acts are just?

Labels: Breaking the Rules

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It's very...nice

MaryLinks.org, the website of Marian links that's burning through the blogs, is an organized and comprehensive index. It shows evidence of a lot of time and a lot of love from its creator, Dave Kopel.

But shouldn't a website that "helps you consider, create, or strengthen your own spiritual or intellectual links with Mary" be a little less, um, ugly?

It's said that devotion to Mama Mary gives Catholicism an element of the feminine that is missing in many Protestant denominations. I agree, but lately I've been gripped by the theory that what Mary really gives us is an element of the beautiful, specifically beauty mediated through human nature.

Yes, yes, Jesus is fully human and so mediates beauty through His humanity even more perfectly than Mary does. But His humanity is united with His divinity, and it's not always easy (and perhaps sometimes impossible) to separate His human beauty, so to speak, from His divine beauty.

With Mary, though, you can gaze on 100% human beauty without the risk of being blinded by divine beauty. Beauty is that which, being seen, pleases, and in Mary we can see the virtues and be pleased by them, in a much fuller way than when we just think about, say, the nature of the virtue of temperance abstractly.

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You can't spell "policy" without "police," almost

I'm a bit puzzled by some of the criticism directed at the bishops' draft charter. (I was also unpersuaded by Michael Kelly's opinion piece in the Washington Post.)

Are the fundamental difficulties the Church in the United States is facing administrative or spiritual? If they are spiritual, then the best-crafted and most prudent charter the USCCB could ever produce will not resolve them. What are we asking of our bishops? "Give us Christ!" or "Give us national policies with provisions for lay review boards authorized to investigate and punish instances of non-compliance!"

What will make bishops follow these guidelines if they haven't followed others like them in the past? God, or nothing.

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That about wraps it up

I think there is a fundamental disagreement on how I and others -- specifically, Mark Sullivan and John Betts -- think the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are to be understood as moral acts.

From my perspective, the act under consideration is the incineration of approximately 3 square miles within a densely built-up city.

From their perspective, if I'm projecting correctly, the act under consideration is the use of an atomic bomb to end a war sooner and with less net death and destruction.

Now, I happen to believe that using an atomic bomb to end a war sooner and with less net death and destruction is not immoral per se. On the other hand, I also happen to believe that incinerating approximately 3 square miles within a densely built-up city is immoral per se. Given our different perspectives, then, our disagreement seems not only expected but proper.

But that's given the different perspectives. Is one perspective better than the other?

I think so, and I think the better perspective is mine, but I don't operate with a very robust moral theology, so I'm not as confident about this as I am about some things.

The reason that I think the "specific act" perspective is better than the "broad objective" perspective is that it allows for a more refined moral analysis. By that I mean that the morality of a specific act can be resolved to a much greater degree than the morality of a general intent. Specific acts may change from good to neutral to evil with changing circumstances; broad objectives, by their nature, remain broadly good, broadly neutral, or broadly evil even as circumstances vary. I think a "high resolution" just war theory is better, if only because it makes it less likely that justice in engaging in war will be taken for justice in conducting war.

And, as what I hope to be my final words specifically on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think the critical lesson to be learned from them is that it is entirely possible that we will face other situations in which a) certain military objectives must be obtained to avoid horrific physical evils; but b) these military objectives cannot be obtained by morally licit means; so c) the objectives must not be obtained by morally illicit means, despite the horrific physical evils that will occur.

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A frailty not thought of again

Another good line from St. Dorotheus (via Annunciations), following his description of a brother who blames another for his sin, is, "This kind of thinking is surely ridiculous and has no rational basis."

This prefigures something Ven. John Henry Newman wrote in his appendix on lying in Apologia Pro Vita Sua, about:

...the unscientific way of dealing with lies, viz. that on a great or cruel occasion a man cannot help telling a lie, and he would not be a man, did he not tell it, but still it is wrong and he ought not to do it, and he must trust that the sin will be forgiven him, though he goes about to commit it.... This view cannot for a moment be defended, but, I suppose, it is very common.

I agree with Cardinal Newman that this is a very common view, but empirical evidence suggests a lot of people are prepared to defend the view until death.

I don't mean the defense claiming a sin ceases to be a sin under certain great or cruel occasions; that, at least, is a case that needs to be answered. I mean the specific position mentioned by Cardinal Newman. There are plenty of people who believe that something can be both morally wrong and prudentially necessary. This betrays a misunderstanding of either sin or prudence, or both. An act cannot be both virtuous and sinful, because virtue and sin are both determined relative to the same objective truth.

It's understandable to want to ignore the illogic of saying there are times when we ought to do what we ought not do. It makes this lousy fallen world seem a little less lousy. But it's an abdication of our responsibility as moral agents to know the truth and follow it. It's a passive way of claiming the right to detemine good and evil on our own authority. It is surely ridiculous, it is indefensible, it is very common.

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Thanks, neighbor. Thanks a lot.

Michael Dubruiel quotes some wisdom of St. Dorotheus:

Someone else asks why he should accuse himself when he was sitting peacefully and quietly when a brother came upon him with an unkind or insulting word. He cannot tolerate it, and so he thinks that his anger is justified. If that brother had not approached him and said those words and upset him, he never would have sinned.

This brings to mind the story of a friar who liked to tell his confreres over breakfast, "If I didn't have to live with you, I'd be a saint by now."

It also reminds me of Peter Nixon's story at Sursum Corda about yelling at his wife after his kid acted up. (That's a story so familiar to me it reads like a retelling of the Bedtime Myth.)

There's something very appealing about being able to blame my faults on others. As both St. Dorotheus and Peter Nixon recognize, though, my faults are my own, and I am the cause of my own sin.

Moreover, the opportunities others constantly offer me to practice vice are also opportunities to practice virtue. We can tell God we love Him all day long -- in fact, we should -- but we can only prove it, to Him and to ourselves, in our interactions with each other. A practicing Catholic does most of his practicing among his family, friends, and neighbors.

If it weren't for everyone else, I'd have an excuse for not being a saint.

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An easy question, a difficult answer

Mark Sullivan continues to argue in favor of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Along the way, he asks a very easy question:

In an immoral business, in which no choice is palatable, might it not be argued that the evil of the a-bomb is preferable to the greater evil of extended warfare, in that the bomb hastens the end of warfare and the imposition of justice?

The answer is, "Yes."

There is a related question, though, that has a much harder answer: "Can I do the lesser of two evils?"

This time, the answer is, "No."

That's pretty much it. I don't need to know how brutal my enemy is. I don't need to know how many good guys would die if I don't commit an evil act. Appeals like these mix two incommensurables: physical evil and moral evil. You can no more say that this physical evil is greater than that moral evil than you can say that capturing a rook in chess is worth more than capturing a castle in France.

What I need to know is whether the act I am considering is a sin. If it is a sin, I cannot commit it.

Why not? Because, as the Catechism puts it:

Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. [CCC 1849]

Note the term "certain goods." Ending the war and imposing justice are very definite goods. The belief that justice can be imposed by injustice, though, is an offense against reason and truth.

The Catechism continues:

Sin sets itself against God's love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become "like gods," knowing and determining good and evil. [CCC 1850]

That is what sin is. That is what sin does to us. And that is why we must never sin.

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Don't get technical

John Betts, just your average Catholic guy, engages in the old rhetorical trick of using facts to defend his position, in this case that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was morally justified.

John writes:

I see no difference between the use of an atom bomb and the general destruction caused by conventional weapons -- at that time. More civilian casualties were caused from the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Dresden than either Nagasaki or Hiroshima.

I agree with him here, but the moral objection to using atomic bombs is based on the general destruction, not the technology that causes it. You might argue that, if Dresden was justified, then so was Hiroshima, but this isn't an argument that Hiroshima was justified.

I've often heard the claim that using the atomic bombs saved millions of lives, but John offers a claim that is new to me:

It seems clear that conventional bombing of both cities, targeting legitimate military targets would have caused as much damage and loss of life, if not more initially, than the use of the atomic bomb.

I'm sure he didn't intend it this way, but to me this sounds a lot like, "We were going to kill them sooner or later anyway."

I think what I object to lies in the idea that "conventional bombing ... targeting legitimate military targets" is moral per se. Bombing is conventionally done to satisfy military objectives, not moral objectives, and just war theory identifies several non-military criteria that must be met for an act of war to be just.

The first criterion for jus in bello given by the United States Catholic Conference is, "Noncombatant Immunity: civilians may not be the object of direct attack, and military personnel must take due care to avoid and minimize indirect harm to civilians." Yet according to The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (thanks, John, for the link), among the target criteria was that "the selected targets should contain a densely built-up area of at least" 1 mile in radius. Poring over maps of Japan looking for large, densely built-up areas is not, to my mind, a mark of due care to avoid and minimize indirect harm to civilians.

Moreover, the second jus in bello principle is, "Proportionality: in the conduct of hostilities, efforts must be made to attain military objectives with no more force than is militarily necessary and to avoid disproportionate collateral damage to civilian life and property." Yet, "In Nagasaki, nearly everything within 1/2 mile of the explosion was destroyed, including heavy structures. All Japanese homes were destroyed within 1 1/2 miles from X." (More details here.) This is simply not proportional force.

Despite all my blogging, I think the specific question of the morality of using atomic weapons to end World War II is not of itself too important. An immoral act causes physical evil to the people acted against and moral evil to the actors themselves. I think everyone agrees that much greater physical evils would have resulted had the war lasted much longer, and no one in this discussion has any interest in measuring the culpability of those involved in the bombing.

More important, to my mind, is that we realize being right is not easy, and being on the right side makes it very difficult to be sure that what we do is the right thing.

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Speaking of American solutions

Amy Welborn tells us that the New York Times reports that the American bishops have invited "an unusually large number of laypeople to speak at their meeting in Dallas[, including] Margaret Steinfels, editor of Commonweal... R. Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame; and Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst...."

Intending no disrespect toward these laypeople, allow me to ask whether it is just perhaps worth considering the possibility that it might be in some sense possible to entertain the thought that listening to magazine editors, academics, and clinical psychologists is what has been sapping the Church in the United States of Christ-centered leadership for decades.

Have any lay saints been invited to speak to the bishops?

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Questions, not problems

Maureen McHugh draws a valuable distinction between "American solutions" and "Catholic answers." She asks, "What can we, as lay Catholics, do to diminish the current dysfunction and to minimize the possibility of its reappearance?"

I have a friend who specializes in asking very difficult questions about life in a society where any single action can have so many different consequences. My initial answer to all of his questions about what should be done is, "Prayer and fasting."

Often enough, I never come up with a better answer. Probably, often enough, there is no better answer.

In any case, since I haven't done nearly enough of either prayer or fasting, I don't have an answer for Maureen. All I can do is agree that an American-but-not-Catholic solution is not what the Church in the United States needs out of the bishops' meeting this month.

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The ends do not justify the means.

Chris Burgwald of Veritas wrote: "I don't see how anyone who values innocent human life could endorse dropping The Bomb on Japan."

Mark Sullivan of Ad Orientem replied:

You could if it meant saving many, many more innocent lives while bringing a close to a conflict that had brought – and would continue to bring – untold suffering. The end, in these circumstances, would, in my view, justify the means.

No.

The ends do not justify the means.

This means that the ends do not justify the means. It doesn't mean that most ends don't justify most means. It means no end justifies any means.

Let me give an example: The end of proclaiming the Gospel to the whole world does not justify the means of studying the Gospel.

The end may explain the prudential choice of the means, but it does not -- can not -- determine the moral licitness of the means.

And what of the means of nuclear attack to meet the end of saving many, many innocent lives? Gaudium et spes states, "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. [80]"

Mark seems to think that stopping the bad guys is a good enough reason to bomb their noncombattants. But just because we're fighting bad guys doesn't make us good guys. What makes us good guys is not doing things like bombing noncombattants.

The title he gave his comments is, "Were it not for the atomic bomb, I might not be here today." This is essentially the argument people are using in favor of harvesting stem cells from abortions, and they are both false and dangerous arguments for essentially the same reason.

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