A Sound of Sheer Silence

In the previous post , we looked at two basic ideas.  First, there is a moral intuition that many of us have with regard to the beginning of life--a child who is born is fully human, zygote is not fully human, and the stages in between are something of a disputed grey area.  Second, drawing on Girard, there is the notion of defining humanity in terms of its participation in human society, the "Social Other" as James Alison puts it, that forms us and is formed by our presence and action. Let's, then, try to put these ideas together.  By defining humanity in terms of the interaction with and participation in the "Social Other," the most critical event in the life of any human being is the moment of birth.  At the moment of birth, a human being is "installed" in human society in a way that is categorically different from what comes before, in at least two ways.  First, at the moment of birth a baby is able to interact with and be influenced by the entir...

I really do like Melinda Selmys's writing.  I think she probably the most thoughtful and the most honest advocate from the traditional Catholic position on sexuality, even when I vehemently disagree with her conclusions .  Her stuff on LGBT issues does a good job of calling out the truly destructive elements of the Catholic Right , including folks like Austin Ruse.  She is an interesting and important voice in a space that is often bereft of original and nuanced thinking. Her recent piece similarly thought-provoking, though perhaps not in the way she intended.  The middle of the piece, arguing that the CDC's recent guidance that women of fertile age that are not on birth control should abstain completely from alcohol is overly cautious to the point of absurdity, seems completely correct (FWIW, my doctor sister echoed many of the same points in a Facebook post).  So, I think we can agree that telling women to avoid alcohol completely if they may become pregnan...

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away... When I came home last night at three, The man was waiting there for me But when I looked around the hall, I couldn't see him there at all! Go away, go away, don't you come back any more! Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... Last night I saw upon the stair, A little man who wasn't there, He wasn't there again today Oh, how I wish he'd go away... --  "Antigonish" by Hughes Mearns (1899). 1.   There is a bit of conventional wisdom that says that the legacy of a leader lasts twice as long as the time the leader was in power.  In other words, George W. Bush was President of the United States for eight years, but the effects of his presidency will last for sixteen years after he left office in 2008, through to 2024.  And that seems about right--we are certainly in the middle of working through all ...

The last post ended with a discussion of language and the importance of having the right language.  Alison picks up with a point that I have never seen anyone else make: As you all know, the clerical culture within the Catholic Church is an all male affair. Until fifty years ago, it was, and had been for over a millennium, an all male affair whose members were socialised into thinking in a language other than the maternal language of any of them, and who learned to debate and to discuss things in that language. Elaborate rules regarding the agonistic structure of discourse were observed. Debates were syllogistic fencing matches and so on. I don’t think we have any clear idea of our current difficulties in the Catholic Church if we don’t have some sense of the consequences of the astoundingly speedy collapse of Latinity in the west. "So what?" you might ask.  "Why does it matter that Latin is no longer the language of instruction for priests?" Languages are not...

I thought I would simply wait out the whole Planned Parenthood controversy, but it appears that it continues to grow and grow without any obvious endpoint.  So, here are some thoughts. 1.  The Messenger is Not the Message .  There are those who cannot fathom why people are not more upset about the Planned Parenthood videos.  There is a simple and direct answer to their question--there is a significant segment of the population that loathes the pro-life movement and pro-life messengers, and as such simply ignores everything they say.  Many think that insofar as these videos are the product of hardcore wing of the pro-life movement, and they are, then they are to be ignored. I say that to be descriptive, not prescriptive.  No matter how much you dislike the pro-life movement and its mouthpieces, I think these videos are disturbing and problematic for the pro-choice movement.  In fact, I think it would have been far more effective for the pro-life fol...

We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all That you can't trust freedom When it's not in your hands When everybody's fightin' For their promised land -- Civil War , Guns N' Roses It always starts with something small.  On July 30, 1419, a rock thrown from a window by some person unknown to history led to the Hussite wars, a terribly bloody conflict in central Europe that set the stage for the Protestant Reformation.  The seeds of the American Revolution began when the British government decided, not to raise taxes on the American colonies (that came later), but to actually collect  taxes on sugar and molasses that had been on the books for a long time but had never been enforced. The reason, I think, that it always starts with something small is tied up in the power of marginal changes.  The mind-bogglingly complex system that is human culture works because of a nested series of equilibria.  These equilibria can be stable for a long time, but ...

1.  Two weeks ago, the Episcopal Church voted to give general authorization for same sex weddings to be conducted in Episcopal Churches.  Having followed this story as an outsider, the outcome was not a surprise--all of the commentary I had read suggested it was going to pass.  What was surprising, at least for me, was the margin of victory.  Out of 160 Episcopal bishops, only 26 voted no, with five abstentions; it other words it passed with an 64 percent margin of victory, which is an enormous number.  But it is actually even bigger than that--if you take out the retired bishops, the assisting and auxiliary bishops, and the the bishops from places outside the United States that are part of the Episcopal Church (all of whom are included in the vote), you end up with only eight  dicocesan bishops voting no out of 99 dioceses in the 50 States.  That's a land slide in by any measure. I also found the reactions from the other elements of the Anglican ...