A Thinking Reed

Month: March 2007

  • God, animals, and rights

    Brandon has a very good post in response to the post below on animal rights. He argues for a view of rights that is grounded in justice and explicitly connected with our status as creatures of God (all of us, that is). He notes that this can be done in a quasi-Lockean manner, seeing all rights as ultimately derived from God, or in terms of natural piety based on relationship and benefits received:

    It is along these two lines, I think, that we can establish the claim that animals have at least a weak form of right. They have rights in virtue of being good creatures of God, and in virtue of being our benefactors, in however weak a sense. The problem with basing animal rights on interests is that the only interests that can establish rights are just rights, so an interest-based account, if it is to work at all, simply reduces to a justice-based one.

    I agree with pretty much all of this. In fact, it’s similar in significant ways to the case that Andrew Linzey has made for animal rights in his Animal Theology and Animal Gospel. Linzey taks about “theos-rights” – that is, the rights of God with respect to his creatures. “When we speak of animal rights we conceptualise what is objectively owed to animals as a matter of justice by virtue of their Creator’s right.”

    I think Brandon may be right that an interst-based account, as an account of why some creatures are in the “moral club” so to speak, reduces to a justice based one as he’s laid it out. Interests by themselves don’t show that they must be respected. You need some principles of justice such as equality and desert. Still, having interests – that is, having the capacity for one’s experiential welfare to be affected – seems like a sufficient indication that a creature deserves to be given some moral consideration (I agree with Brandon that it may not be necessary, and that it’s possible, and indeed likely, that inanimate creation has moral claims). It’s often, if not primarily, with respect to experiential welfare that we apply our principles of justice. I think this is why some kind of interest-based account can play a role in filling out the contents of rights. Given that animals are good creations of God, wouldn’t some description of their vital interests be necessary in order to give content to what it means to respect them as creatures of God? An animal has a vital interest in, say, not being confined or killed in virtue of the kind of creature that it is and what it means for that creature’s life to go better or worse for it. And respecting that creature’s nature strikes me as an essential component of what it means to treat it as a good creature of God.

  • No rights without duties?

    A surprisingly common argument against animal rights goes like this: only beings capable of exercising moral choice and reasoning have rights. Animals don’t exercise moral choice and reasoning (i.e. they aren’t “moral agents”). Therefore animals don’t have rights.

    I say that the frequency with which this argument is made is surprising because it implicitly denies something that most of us, I think, believe, namely that there are certain human beings who have moral rights who aren’t necessarily moral agents. Infants, children, the severely mentally handicapped, the brain damaged and comatose, and people with severe Alzheimer’s are, almost certainly in some cases and quite probably in others, incapable of moral reasoning and choice, and yet no one (or hardly anyone) is willing to bite the bullet and say that these classes of human beings have no moral rights. In fact, I suspect that most of us would find the denial of moral rights to any or all of these classes of people to be morally monstrous.

    So, it’s hard to see why being a moral agent should be taken to be a necessary condition for being a moral patient, or an object of moral concern. No one proposes that we can treat, say, an infant any way we wish simply because he or she isn’t capable of moral reasoning and choice. It may be that being a moral agent is a sufficient condition for being a moral patient, but I’m hard pressed to see any reason why it should be necessary.

    I wonder if the roots of this argument lie in a kind of “contractualist” way of thinking about morality. That is, morality is seen as a kind of contract or bargain into which people enter in order to establish mutually beneficial rules of conduct. If that’s what morality was, then you could see the plausibility of holding that only moral agents had moral rights, since they’d be the only ones capable of entering into such a contract.

    But it’s pretty clear that’s not what morality is like, at least if we don’t want to abandon deeply held beliefs about the duties owed to infants, children, the mentally handicapped, etc. Contractualism has a very hard time making sense of moral duties that go beyond what self-interested rational agents have, or would agree to.

    A better criterion of who counts morally, far more plausible than the capacity for moral agency, is the capacity for experience. That is, the possibility that one’s life can go better or worse for oneself. Rocks don’t count morally because things can’t go better or worse for a rock. But things can certainly go better or worse for a chimpanzee, a pig, a chicken, a trout, and quite possibly a grasshopper. There’s no particular reason why the pain of an adult human being considered simply in itself should count for more than the the pain of an infant, or an animal, other things being equal. And there’s certainly no good reason why the fact that a being lacks the capacity for moral reasoning should entail that we can treat it in any way whatsoever, that anything goes.

    It doesn’t follow from this that animals would have all the same rights as human beings (a right to education, say, or health care, or subsidized museums). This is because, as philosopher Mark Rowlands has pointed out, they have no interests in such things. But they do have interests in things like not suffering, not being killed, and so on, and it’s not at all clear why those interests should be utterly disregarded for the mere convenience of human beings, as they often are.

  • From the road…

    I mentioned in my last post that I had lost an earlier draft. The reason for that was a squirrely internet connection in my hotel room here in Minneapolis, where I’ve been attending the Organization of American Historians conference. Part of my job is to represent the publisher I work for by at academic conferences, which largely entails chatting with professors and browsing the books of our competitors. Also we typically go out for dinners at very nice restaurants on the company dime. Not a bad way to spend a couple of days really.

    So, I blog to you, dear readers, from a hotel in downtown Minneapolis, sipping an Iron Range Amber Lager, which they tell me is brewed by James Page Brewing Co. in Stevens Point, WI, apparently close enough to here to count as a “local” beer according to the room service menu. Happily I fly back to Boston tomorrow and will be able to spend at least part of the weekend with my wife.

    I’ve never been to Minneapolis before, but what I’ve seen of it seems pretty nice. I feel like I should’ve made some kind of pilgrimage while I was here since this is a a veritable Mecca of Lutheranism. Of course, I haven’t set foot in a Lutheran church in almost a year, so my credentials may be in danger of expiring. I did stop into a lovely Presbyterian Church near the convention center, though.

    I really am fond of the Midwest, at least those parts of it I’ve spent time in. I lived in Indiana for a couple of years and, even though we’ve lived for the past six years on the West and East coasts, we still talk about moving back to the Midwest “someday.” I grew up in Western Pennsylvania among farmers and factory workers and fill more cultural kinship in a lot of ways with the Midwest, even though I may not technically be from the Midwest in the geographic sense. On the other hand, one gets a little spoiled living in cultural hubs where there’s a lot going on. I do sometimes fear that I’ve become some sort of horrible East Coast yuppie snob and that I would actually find living anywhere else intolerable, though I hope that’s not true! (Of course, if I was really a yuppie you’d think I’d make a little more money…) For what it’s worth, Minneapolis – at least what I’ve seen of it – seems pretty cosmopolitan with lots of nice restaurants, shops, and all the other amenities of modern globalized cities. Whether that’s a good or bad things depends on your point of view, of course.

    Oh, and on the corner of the street my hotel’s on there’s a statue of Mary Tyler Moore. How cool is that?

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 6 (the brief version)

    I just lost a long post on the next couple of chapters of Cur Deus Homo, so this is the abridged version…

    The concept of God’s honor is central to Anselm’s scheme, but it has also been severely criticized and (I would argue) often misunderstood. Anselm himself may be partly responsible for some of the confusion in that he seems to say both that sin robs God of his honor and that God’s honor can’t in any way be diminished.

    In Book One, Chapter XV he addresses this directly:

    Nothing can be added to or taken from the honor of God. For this honor which belongs to him is in no way subject to injury or change. But as the individual creature preserves, naturally or by reason, the condition belonging, and, as it were, allotted to him, he is said to obey and honor God; and to this, rational nature, which possesses intelligence, is especially bound. And when the being chooses what he ought, he honors God; not by bestowing anything upon him, but because he brings himself freely under God’s will and disposal, and maintains his own condition in the universe, and the beauty of the universe itself, as far as in him lies. But when he does not choose what he ought, he dishonors God, as far as the being himself is concerned, because he does not submit himself freely to God’s disposal. And he disturbs the order and beauty of the universe, as relates to himself, although he cannot injure nor tarnish the power and majesty of God. … And so, though man or evil angel refuse to submit to the Divine will and appointment, yet he cannot escape it; for if he wishes to fly from a will that commands, he falls into the power of a will that punishes. And if you ask whither he goes, it is only under the permission of that will; and even this wayward choice or action of his becomes subservient, under infinite wisdom, to the order and beauty of the universe before spoken of. For when it is understood that God brings good out of many forms of evil, then the satisfaction for sin freely given, or if this be not given, the exaction of punishment, hold their own place and orderly beauty in the same universe. For if Divine wisdom were not to insist upon things, when wickedness tries to disturb the right appointment, there would be, in the very universe which God ought to control, an unseemliness springing from the violation of the beauty of arrangement, and God would appear to be deficient in his management. And these two things are not only unfitting, but consequently impossible; so that satisfaction or punishment must needs follow every sin.

    God’s honor is intergrally related to his creation and ordering of the universe. Considered in himself, God can’t be harmed or benefited by anything we do. This is the much-disputed doctrine of divine impassibility. Nothing can add to or take away from God’s perfection and blessedness.

    But – sin can and does deface creation. Sin is ugly in that it disrupts the order and beauty of the universe. The beauty of creation consists of each being fulfilling its purpose and contributing to the harmony of the whole. To reject that purpose is to disrupt that harmony. We might also say that sin is a lie – it speaks untruth about creation. If I sin against a fellow creature I am saying something untrue about its worth.

    So, if God were to let sin go unpunished or without satisfaction being made, he would be letting his intentions for creation be frustrated. He would be letting sin have the last word. But God can’t do this because of his goodness. Like what a feudal lord is supposed to do, God upholds the order and beauty of his realm. If he were to let his intentions for creation be frustrated by sin he would be less than fully good or less than fully powerful. To counteract sin God must do something so beautiful that it blots out the ugliness of sin. He must speak the truth about sin and about creation that contradicts the lie.

    Anselm points out that one way or another God’s will prevails. Either creatures render their due obedience to God, or make satisfaction for their sin, or are punished for their sin. But under no circumstances does sin get the last word. However, given that there is sin, Anselm thinks that there are good reasons for God to prefer satisfaction to punishment. This sets Anselm’s account of atonement apart from later views which understand Jesus as having taken our punishment on himself. In fact, he’ll go on to argue that God must make satisfaction rather than extract punishment if his purposes for creation are to be fulfilled, which, I think, has interesting implications.

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 5

    In Book One, chapter XII the question is posed “whether it were proper for God to put away sins by compassion alone, without any payment of the honor taken from him.” On the face of it, this seems quite a reasonable question. After all, the Heavenly Father portrayed in, say, the teachings and parables of Jesus seems willing to forgive sins without any satisfaction being made for them. Think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son: the father not only forgives his son’s disloyalty and squandering of his inheritance, he runs out to greet him after spying him from afar, not even making penitence and contrition a condition of forgiveness. If this is, as most Christians believe, intended to be a picture of the way God deals with us, doesn’t it fly in the face of Jesus’ teaching to say that God demands satisfaction for sin before we can be forgiven? Moreover, Jesus himself freely forgives people’s sins throughout his ministry without suggesting that it’s conditional upon his sacrificial life and death, much less that they must believe that those events have saving significance in order for their sins to be forgiven. Is the idea of a God who demands satisfaction as a condition for grace not a distortion of the God revealed by Jesus?

    Anselm says that to “remit sin in this manner is nothing else than not to punish; and since it is not right to cancel sin without compensation or punishment; if it be not punished, then is it passed by undischarged” and it “is not fitting for God to pass over anything in his kingdom undischarged,” therefore it is “not proper for God thus to pass over sin unpunished.”

    What does he mean by saying that it’s not fitting for anything in God’s kingdom to be undischarged? Here we’re starting to get into the notion of God’s honor a little more deeply. Following this argument, Anselm goes on to say that “if sin be passed by unpunished, viz., that with God there will be no difference between the guilty and the not guilty; and this is unbecoming to God” and “Injustice, therefore, if it is cancelled by compassion alone, is more free than justice, which seems very inconsistent. And to these is also added a further incongruity, viz., that it makes injustice like God. For as God is subject to no law, so neither is injustice.”

    I think that Anselm is pointing to two important ideas that will help us make better sense of his argument (I hope!). The first is a proper understanding of freedom and goodness as they pertain to God, the second is the order and beauty of creation. I’ll discuss the first here and the second in the next post.

    Boso asks why God isn’t free simply to put away the apparent demands of justice that would require that sin be punished. After all,

    God is so free as to be subject to no law, and to the judgment of no one, and is so merciful as that nothing more merciful can be conceived; and nothing is right or fit save as he wills; it seems a strange thing for us to say that be is wholly unwilling or unable to put away an injury done to himself, when we are wont to apply to him for indulgence with regard to those offences which we commit against others.

    Anselm replies:

    What you say of God’s liberty and choice and compassion is true; but we ought so to interpret these things as that they may not seem to interfere with His dignity. For there is no liberty except as regards what is best or fitting; nor should that be called mercy which does anything improper for the Divine character. Moreover, when it is said that what God wishes is just, and that what He does not wish is unjust, we must not understand that if God wished anything improper it would be just, simply because he wished it. For if God wishes to lie, we must not conclude that it is right to lie, but rather that he is not God. For no will can ever wish to lie, unless truth in it is impaired, nay, unless the will itself be impaired by forsaking truth. When, then, it is said: “If God wishes to lie,” the meaning is simply this: “If the nature of God is such as that he wishes to lie;” and, therefore, it does not follow that falsehood is right, except it be understood in the same manner as when we speak of two impossible things: “If this be true, then that follows; because neither this nor that is true;” as if a man should say: “Supposing water to be dry, and fire to be moist;” for neither is the case. Therefore, with regard to these things, to speak the whole truth: If God desires a thing, it is right that he should desire that which involves no unfitness. For if God chooses that it should rain, it is right that it should rain; and if he desires that any man should die, then is it right that he should die. Wherefore, if it be not fitting for God to do anything unjustly, or out of course, it does not belong to his liberty or compassion or will to let the sinner go unpunished who makes no return to God of what the sinner has defrauded him.

    Anselm is taking one side of the debate going back at least to Plato’s Euthyphro, namely, whether God (or the gods) will things because they’re good, or are they good because God wills them? In the terminology of a later debate this is the question of voluntarism vs. non-voluntarism. Anselm is clearly a non-voluntarist: God is not free to will what is evil or unjust. Not because God is constrained by something “external” to himself, but becuase the divine nature is such that it is identical with goodness, and that nature, being necessary, can’t be otherwise than it is. This is the classic Christian solution to Plato’s dilemma. So, for God to ignore the dictates of justice would be contrary to the divine nature itself and therefore not just wrong but impossible in the strongest sense.

  • Sovereignty, intervention, and self-interest

    Russell Arben Fox points us to a debate between scholar Michael Berube and what he calls “the Z Magazine/Counterpunch Left.” In a nutshell, the Z/CP crowd, notably iconclastic leftist crank Alexander Cockburn (and I say that affectionately as someone who enjoys Cockburn’s writing), accuses Berube and other left-liberals of being insufficiently pure in their devotion to anti-interventionism, while Berube charges the Z/CPers with making a fetish out of national soveriegnty (e.g. in their opposition to the wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan in addition to the Iraq war; Berube opposed the Iraq war but supported the other two) and dubs them “the Sovereignty Left.” The point being, I take it, that it’s odd for leftists, who are supposed to be internationalists, to elevate the principle of national sovereignty to some kind of absolute, especially considering that most actually existing nation-states are controlled by the kinds of pernicious elites that leftism purportedly stands against. Meanwhile, the Z/CP-style response is that they’re not “pro-sovereignty” so much as they’re anti-imperialist. It has all the classic features of a intra-sectarian left-wing ideological battle. Russell also adds his own thoughts on the whole kerfuffle.

    Now, interesting as this all is, I have to say there is a certain surreal quality to this debate. What you have is various species of left-winger arguing about how best the U.S. government can serve the interests of foreigners in faraway lands. Should we leave them alone or selectively intervene to protect human rights? In the whole debate there is little or no discussion of the interests of Americans.

    I speculate that this is part of the reason that a lot of leftish ideas never gain any traction with most Americans. Polls consistently show that many Americans favor left-of-center policies, especially on economic issues, but if left-wing intellectuals frame their policies in terms of benefitting humanity at large rather than their fellow citizens, it’s only natural that most people, who, after all, think most about the well-being of themselves and their families, their communities, and their own country and certainly put it ahead of the interests of the citizens of other countries, will tune them out. Right or wrong, most people seem to exist within concentric circles of concern that diminish in intensity the farther they get from kith and kin.

    There was, to my mind, a perfectly good case agains the Iraq war that took American self-interest as the primary, if not sole, criterion: there was no demostrable or imminent threat from Iraq; the consequences of going to war were unpredictable; we had our hands full with the pursuit of al-Qaeda, etc. A variation on the same could be said about most of the USA’s other military interventions over the years. The bar for spending one’s own blood treasure ought, logically, to be high. This doesn’t mean that moral concerns aren’t also important, but if you don’t even reach the bar of self-interest then there’s no need to worry about the moral veto on your proposed action.

    And I personally think there are good reasons, at least at the national level, to take this kind of broadly self-interested view combined with what I would call moral side constraints on how we can treat others. To put it another way, what philosophers call “positive duties” are largely concerned with obligations to kith and kin, while “negative duties” (e.g. do no harm) extend to everybody. So, it’s entirely proper that a nation’s foreign policy be conducted primarily with the aim of protecting its own citizens, as long as in so doing it doesn’t inflict injustice on others. Some liberals and leftists have a hard time making peace with this idea, since it flies in the face of universalist and cosmopolitan tendencies that are deeply rooted in those outlooks (though more among intellectuals than actual politicians, most of whom tend to be unabashedly nationalist). But whether or not it’s a morally correct position, it’s important to recognize that it’s one that many, perhaps most, Americans hold. (It’s worth pointing out that there’s a species of internationalist universalism among some neoconservatives on the right that seems just as out of touch with sound patriotic concern for the well-being of one’s own country.)

    My point is simply this: whatever your idea of a saner American foreign policy is, it should first and foremost be a pro-American policy. I think this both because it’s the first duty of a government to look after its own citizens, but also because it’s the only policy that’s likely to actually sell.

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 4

    In chapter XI Anselm turns to the question of sin, since one needs to get clear on that before determining what it means to make satisfaction for sin.

    Simply put, sin is to fail to render to God what is due him. But what is it that we owe? “Every wish of a rational creature should be subject to the will of God.” Therefore, when a rational creatrue fails to subject herself to the will of God she is guilty of sin:

    This is the debt which man and angel owe to God, and no one who pays this debt commits sin; but every one who does not pay it sins. This is justice, or uprightness of will, which makes a being just or upright in heart, that is, in will; and this is the sole and complete debt of honor which we owe to God, and which God requires of us. For it is such a will only, when it can be exercised, that does works pleasing to God; and when this will cannot be exercised, it is pleasing of itself alone, since without it no work is acceptable. (Book One, Chapter XI)

    It’s not clear from this chapter alone how Anselm understands the relationship between obeying the will of God and human happiness. Is it rational to obey the will of God simply because it’s God’s will, or is God’s will for us integrally connected to our own happiness and flourishing? Anselm says elsewhere that God creates rational beings so that they can attain to eternal happiness and blessedness, so it seems likely that he will say that God’s will for us is geared toward our attainment of that goal. In other words, in failing to subject ourselves to God’s will, we aren’t simply dishonoring God, but we’re frustrating our own created purpose. I think this is important to keep in mind in order to better understand Anselm’s view on God’s honor and satisfaction which have been subject to much criticism.

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 3

    One of the most vexing questions about the death of Christ theologically speaking is whether and in what sense we can say it was willed by God the Father. Was it specifically the death of Jesus that was required to reconcile God and sinners? Looming here is the modern critique of traditional Atonement theory as exhibiting “cosmic child abuse” and encouraging an abusive mentality in Christians.

    Contrary to some accounts of his views, though, Anselm specifically denies that God willed the death of Jesus in any direct sense. Boso asks:

    [H]ow will it ever be made out a just or reasonable thing that God should treat or suffer to be treated in such a manner, that man whom the Father called his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased, and whom the Son made himself? For what justice is there in his suffering death for the sinner, who was the most just of all men? What man, if he condemned the innocent to free the guilty, would not himself be judged worthy of condemnation? And so the matter seems to return to the same incongruity which is mentioned above. For if he could not save sinners in any other way than by condemning the just, where is his omnipotence? If, however, he could, but did not wish to, how shall we sustain his wisdom and justice? (Book One, Ch. VIII)

    First of all, Anselm denies that the Son went to his death against his will, since “the Father did not compel him to suffer death, or even allow him to be slain, against his will, but of his own accord he endured death for the salvation of men.” But Boso replies that the Son nevertheless fulfilled his Father’s will in going to his death, so mustn’t we say that the Father willed the death of the Son?

    Anselm goes on to distinguish the Son’s obedience from the consequences of that obedience. His mission, as it were, was “that, in word and in life, he invariably maintained truth and justice,” viz. what every human being owes to God. And it was on account of this that he was put to death. God doesn’t directly will the death of the Son; he wills that the Son should come into the world and lead a perfect human life. But, of course, God knew that this would lead to his death. His death, as it were, was a foreseeable but inintended outcome of his life of perfect obedience.

    God did not, therefore, compel Christ to die; but he suffered death of his own will, not yielding up his life as an act of obedience, but on account of his obedience in maintaining holiness; for he held out so firmly in this obedience that he met death on account of it. It may, indeed be said, that the Father commanded him to die, when he enjoined that upon him on account of which he met death. It was in this sense, then, that “as the Father gave him the commandment, so he did, and the cup which He gave to him, he drank; and he was made obedient to the Father, even unto death;” and thus “he learned obedience from the things which he suffered,” that is, how far obedience should be maintained. (Book One, Ch. IX)

    The gift that the Son gives isn’t his death per se, but his life of perfect obedience, the life that no other human being can offer. Still, it can be said that God wills the death of the Son in an indirect sense, as a necessary outcome of his mission:

    So the Father desired the death of the Son, because he was not willing that the world should be saved in any other way, except by man’s doing so great a thing as that which I have mentioned. And this, since none other could accomplish it, availed as much with the Son, who so earnestly desired the salvation of man, as if the Father had commanded him to die; and, therefore, “as the Father gave him commandment, so he did, and the cup which the Father gave to him he drank, being obedient even unto death.” (Book One, Ch. IX)

    Of course, even if we concede that the death of the Son wasn’t directly willed by God in the sense that he was appeased by it or required it, it still seems unjust to send an innocent man (much less the Son of God!) to his ceratin death if the same good could be obtained in any other way. This seems to be why Anselm needs a strong sense of the necessity of the Incarnation; if there was any other way for God to save us, then the price of the death of the Son, whether directly intended or not, would seem too high.

  • A Marian witness

    As today is the (transferred) Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord, I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the talk given by Bishop Steven Charleston on Marian devotion at our parish adult education forum yesterday.

    First of all, Bp. Charleston seemed like a really interesting person. He’s a Choctaw Indian who was born in rural Oklahoma and raised a Southern Baptist. In his teens he joined the Episcopal Church, later becoming a priest and then Bishop of Alaska. He’s been very involved in Native American ministry among other things, and currently serves as dean and president of the Episcopal Divinity School in nearby Cambridge, MA. He came across as a very down-to-earth guy who wore his position lightly, and had a rather quiet but direct demeanor. (He was also yesterday’s guest preacher and preached a very straightforward – and short! – sermon).

    Anyway, I guess I had originally been expecting a kind of theological disquisition on Marian devotion, but Bp. Charleston’s talk was much more along the lines of an evangelical-style testimony or witness! He spoke of his own very vivid experience of the comforting presence and intercession of Mary and how he’s become something of an “evangelist” for devotion to the BVM in the Episcopal Church. I guess that’s what happens when you mix a Southern Baptist upbringing with Anglo-Catholic theology and piety!

    He also spoke movingly of Mary as a kind of salt-of-the-earth working woman, not as the rather frail figure we see in some representations, of seeing her in the faces of Mexican women working in market stalls, or of careworn mothers on the subway. He talked about his efforts to introduce Marian devotion into the very low-church ethos of his Alaskan diocese, and said that, by the time he left several parishes had installed statues of Mary.

    I actually liked this talk better than I probably would’ve if it’d been the kind of theological discussion I was expecting. Like I wrote a while ago, as important as the theology is, there’s something uniquely compelling aobut lived experience (again, assuming that it’s consistent with sound theology). So I found Bp. Charleston’s witness to be very powerful. Proudly brandishing his Rosary, he encouraged us all to mediate on how we might make room for Mary in our own spiritual lives and to share that with others.

    During the brief Q&A period I asked him what he says to people who contend that devotion to Mary risks overshadowing devotion to the Trinity. He said that, first and foremost, Mary only finds her proper place in the story of Christ; she’s not some sort of goddess figure who stands on her own. She prays with us and for us, but this is always oriented toward God. Secondly, he said that God allows us to approach him in a variety of ways, depending on our particular needs at the time. He mentioned asking for St. Francis’s prayers in his work on environmental issues as an example.

    I can see how one might interpret this as setting up “mediators” between us and God in addition to Christ, and it seems clear that, in practice, devotion to the saints has sometimes taken that form. But maybe a better way of thinking about it is that each saint, in his or her uniqueness, shows forth a part or aspect of God in a unique way, like a prisim which refracts white light into a rainbow of colors. Maybe, in asking a particular saint to pray for us, we’re trying to “plug in” to that aspect of God that they refract particuarly clearly.

  • Random weekend culture notes

    On Friday we went with some friends to see The Decemberists at the Avalon, a club near Fenway park. Fantastic! The theatricality of their music comes out even more on stage. I’m not generally a fan of “indie rock” as a genre (not sure the Decemberists even fit into that category), but these guys are really good and fun.

    Also saw Casino Royale this weekend. Meh. I guess, despite my best efforts, I’ve never been able to become a real fan of the Bond series. The character has always struck me as fundamentally uninteresting. CR was certainly far better than most of the recent Bond movies, but still not as good, qua spy thriller, as something like, say, The Bourne Identity. Took itself a bit too seriously too.

    Oh, and speaking of indie rockers – Arcade Fire, what’s up with these guys? I’ve only listened to a few songs, but what I get is fairly well-crafted Springsteen-esque pop. OK, but nothing to justify the preposterous amount of hype surrounding this band. Can anyone ‘splain this to me?