Author: Lee M.

What would I give to hear an American president make a Monty Python reference in a major speech! This is from Tony Blair’s speech to the Labour Party conference:

And the daftest thing said about New Labour is not the usual “What have the Romans ever done for us?” Like someone I met at the TUC, who said: “What have you ever done for trade unionists?” I said: “What about the right to union recognition?”

“Yeah, but apart from that?”

“The first ever minimum wage.”

“Yeah, alright, but ….”

“Or the Social Chapter, paid holidays, restoration of union rights at GCHQ, an end to blacklisting, information and consultation rights”.

Full text here.

It’s only natural that we humans would seek to evade moral obligations in a variety of ways. After all, they’re irksome, they interfere with our plans and projects, and they may even require a large measure of personal sacrifice. So we rationalize, we make excuses and look for ways to get out of them. This is probably a universal human trait. And one of the easiest ways to avoid the guilt of unmet obligations is to simply deny that they are obligations at all.

So we trim our sails, we make hairsplitting distinctions and redefine our terms so as to make the impositions of morality seem less onerous. When faced with a demand to change our behavior in some way, we look for loopholes.

Examples abound. We are always looking for ways to shrink the circle of our moral concern, to exclude those who, for whatever reason, we deem not to have any claim on us. Critics of redistribution point out (rightly, I think) that many welfare programs have effects that are the opposite of what was intended. But then we are tempted to conclude that we therefore have no obligations to the poor. Much recent moral philosophy has been concerned with making distinctions between “persons” and “human beings” so that we have obligations to the former but none (or fewer) to the latter. This seems to justify withdrawing our moral concern from entire classes of human beings who fail to measure up to a certain standard of rationality or articulateness (standards devised by the rational and articulate). We question whether animal suffering “matters.” If they are unlike us in certain ways, maybe it’s okay to inflict pain on them for the sake of pleasure or convenience.

This is a fundamentally self-protective posture, and an understandable one. If my circle of concern opens indefinitely, where might the claims on my time and energy end? What if I have nothing left to keep for myself? How much will I have to sacrifice?

However understandable, though, I think this posture is a self-defeating one. We seek to reduce our moral obligations to a bare minimum, because we see it as an infringement on our freedom. But the need to protect the self and maintain its autonomy will always tempt us to constrict our circle of concern more and more. The love of other people and things might call for sacrifice at any time and restrict our freedom. So, to avoid this prospect, we have to qualify our attachment to what we love. And what we end up with is a self that is, to use Luther’s expression, “curved in on itself.”

Here’s how C.S. Lewis described the plight of such a self:

The taste for the other, that is, the very capacity for enjoying good, is quenched in him except in so far as his body still draws him into some rudimentary contact with an outer world. Death removes this last contact. He has his wish—to live wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there. And what he finds there is Hell. (The Problem of Pain, p. 123)

The alternative is that “he who would save his life must lose it,” the paradoxical wisdom that we find our truest fulfillment in self-giving. This is not an idea confined to Christianity by any means, but it finds its clearest expression in the teachings and example of Christ. Resurrection and new life come only after the ordeal of Good Friday.

The idea is that, rather than the crouch of self-protection, our proper posture in the world is one of openness, arms outstretched (as on a cross). An ethic of generosity would gladly seek to expand our circle of concern. Rather than look for loopholes, it would give the other the benefit of the doubt. Not sure if animals suffer in the same way we do? Show compassion for them anyway! Can’t tell if a fetus is really a “person”? Why not protect it anyway? This view denies that life is, at bottom, a zero-sum game. Our flourishing is bound up with the flourishing of others, even if it may at times take the form of self-sacrifice. We don’t have to draw boundaries and limit our concern for others in order to protect ourselves.

I won’t pretend that such an ethic resolves all dilemmas. In a fallen world there will still be hard choices to be made, and painful sacrifices, ones that most of us would be extremely hesitant to make. For instance, what do we do when two genuine goods conflict? But it does help us to catch sight of our trajectory, to find the path, what Dorothy Day called “the way of Love” and the promise that our true fulfillment lies in following it.

Christopher Buckley (son of William F.) contemplates a second Bush term:

W2 is not a terribly encouraging prospect. I say this as a loyal but dispirited Republican who will probably hold his nose on election day and pull the Republican lever. Every time I contemplate voting for Kerry–and I have–I consider the consequences, chiefly among them an even more insufferable Michael Moore, thumping his kettle drum chest and claiming credit for having changed the course of history. This is too dreary to contemplate.



More…

A resurgence of the Latin Mass appears to be underway in suburban Chicago according to this story.



The Catholic rite dating from the 5th century had almost faded into oblivion after Vatican reforms in the 1960s, which included an official ban on its use. But since Pope John Paul lifted the ban in 1984, it’s thriving in Volo [a suburb of Chicago] and being revived across the country, with young families leading the way.

Apparently those crazy youngsters just love the Tridentine Mass!

At a time when churches are competing to attract the Gen-X crowd, what’s the draw of this more traditional practice?

“The Mass has an intensity you don’t normally see,” [Father] Garcia said. “The art, the music, the chanting connects the people to God in a deep and mysterious way.”

Garcia says he believes young people “crave a closeness to the Lord” and need a sense of permanence in a chaotic society.

I think there’s something to this. A lot of evangelical Protestant churches have adopted the strategy of making church as “un-church”-like as possible in order to attract younger people and “seekers.” Thus, you have sanctuaries (or “worship spaces”) without stained glass, altars or any but the most minimal religious iconography, pastors in jeans and t-shirts, and parishioners sitting in cushioned seats with a cup of coffee from the snack bar in the narthex (sorry – lobby).

Whatever the merits of this approach, it doesn’t seem to leave much room for the transcendent to enter into people’s experience. If your church feels like a shopping mall or has the décor of a dentist’s office, it’s hard to get a sense of stepping out of the ordinary into the presence of the Holy. It may be that you have to be made a bit uncomfortable to be taken out of yourself. The traditional Mass does a superb job of directing the worshippers attention toward God where it should be.

Now, I hold no particular brief for Latin – the only Tridentine Mass I’ve ever been to was an Anglican one in English. But I am definitely on the “high-church” end of my denomination. In addition to maintaining a certain air of reverence, the formal liturgy in basic outline goes back to the earliest period of the church. This keeps us connected with the Saints who’ve gone before us, and keeps us from veering off in questionable (or heretical) directions in our worship.

(link via Dappled Things)

[M]an was made to be the priest and even, in one sense, the Christ, of the animals–the mediator through whom they apprehend so much of the Divine splendour as their irrational nature allows. — C.S. Lewis

Via John Ray at Dissecting Leftism comes this surprising op-ed by former U.S. senator from Oregon Mark O. Hatfield, endorsing President Bush for re-election:

I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power.



Having seen atrocious loss in World War II, I understand the devastation of armed conflict. We have paid dearly with American and Iraqi lives for our commitment, but we cannot afford the alternative. Nor can we afford a president who puts a wet finger in the air and turns over his decisions to pollsters.

Surprising because Hatfield was a well-known progressive Republican who consistently favored policies well to the left of the majority of his party, especially on national defense. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam war and was involved in the nuclear freeze movement in the 80s. (Though Hatfield, an evangelical Christian, has also been staunchly pro-life.)

Here’s an excerpt from an interview he did with the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners back in 1996:

Wallis: You were one of the earliest and strongest critics in either party against the war in Vietnam. The nuclear arms race, for you, was a deep matter of conscience, as were issues of hunger. How did you come to those convictions, which are not predictable for white, evangelical church people?

Hatfield: It wasn’t that I sat down and weighed all the arguments for and all the arguments against and then said, This is my position. They really were outgrowths of specific experiences that made indelible impressions.

I was in some of the bloodiest operations of World War II, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In 1945, we were sent up the coast of China, where we saw the bloated bodies of little kids along the roadways, not killed by bullets but by starvation. After that, we were sent in to occupy Japan. One month after the bomb, I walked through the streets of Hiroshima and I saw the utter devastation in every direction from nuclear power. All of those experiences were really the fundamental beginnings of my thinking about those specific issues, of Vietnam, war in general, nuclear power, and hunger.

Wallis: You became a pacifist or…

Hatfield: Not quite.

Wallis: …committed to nonviolence?

Hatfield: Nonviolence, yes. I can’t be a pacifist because I bore arms and wore a uniform. When people say, Are you a pacifist? I say, “No, I haven’t reached that level of thinking yet, but I’m very close.”

Agree with him or disagree with him, Christopher Hitchens is always interesting. Here is an interview with him on his evolving politicial views:

He explains that he believes the moment the left’s bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. “The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women’s rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists.” He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali’s books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. “It’s explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody – any movement – that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings.” …



Some people on the left tried to understand the origins of al-Quadea as really being about inequalities in wealth, or Israel’s brutality towards the Palestinians, or other legitimate grievances. “Look: inequalities in wealth had nothing to do with Beslan or Bali or Madrid,” Hitchens says. “The case for redistributing wealth is either good or it isn’t – I think it is – but it’s a different argument. If you care about wealth distribution, please understand, the Taliban and the al Quaeda murderers have less to say on this than even the most cold-hearted person on Wall Street. These jihadists actually prefer people to live in utter, dire poverty because they say it is purifying. Nor is it anti-imperialist: they explictly want to recreate the lost Caliphate, which was an Empire itself.”…



He believes neoconservatism is a distinctively new strain of thought, preached by ex-leftists, who believed in using US power to spread democracy. “It’s explicitly anti-Kissingerian. Kissinger hates this stuff. He opposed intervening in the Balkans. Kissinger Associates were dead against [the war in] Iraq. He can’t understand the idea of backing democracy – it’s totally alien to him.”

“So that interest in the neocons re-emerged after September 11th. They were saying – we can’t carry on with the approach to the Middle East we have had for the past fifty years. We cannot go on with this proxy rule racket, where we back tyranny in the region for the sake of stability. So we have to take the risk of uncorking it and hoping the more progressive side wins.” He has replaced a belief in Marxist revolution with a belief in spreading the American revolution. Thomas Jefferson has displaced Karl Marx.

Noah Millman at Gideon’s Blog:

…I was finally convinced that Bush has no idea how his agenda fits together, and that he doesn’t care. Which was very depressing for me. I know Bush is capable of tying his preferred policy mix together into a coherent bundle, because he did it in 2000. He did not do it this year. So far as I can tell, what Bush *really believes* is: (a) he stands for freedom and low taxes and against big government spending; (b) whenever and wherever someone is hurting, it’s government’s job to move, and deficits don’t matter. No one can honestly and coherently believe both these things at once, but after his speech, I’m convinced Bush does. It’s not just a matter of necessary political compromise. This is what he believes. Very depressing.



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This is from A Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C.S. Lewis by Gilbert Meilaender, and concerns the idea that Lewis emphasizes union with God rather than faith as the key to his theology:

Faith as trust is not for Lewis the foundation stone on which to build an exposition of Christian theology. Hence, the Christian life is not conceived largely as a turn from consciousness of sin to the proclamation of grace. Instead, it is conceived as a journey, a process of sanctification. The Christian is one who has found in Christ what he yearned for: the way to community with the Father. And he is one who has now entered upon an imitation of Christ. From start to finish his journey is the work of grace, but it remains true that grace is conceived not as the announcement of a right relationship with God but as the means by which one may travel the path which leads to such a relationship. …



…It should be obvious, however, taht we here touch upon an aspect of Lewis’ theology which might properly be termed “Anglo-Catholic.” It is the vision of God, not justification by grace through faith, which is the cornerstone of his theological system. (pp. 37-38, 1st edition)

An Episcopal priest once said something very similar to me – that I was already a Christian in virtue of my baptism, and that the rest of life was the journey toward sanctification (I’ve got a long way to go, by the way). Protestants often emphasize a particular “moment” of conversion where one is “saved.” And they tend to understand salvation in forensic terms, as an act whereby God decrees that we are right with him. Anglicans, Catholics and Orthodox, it seems to me, are more likely to see the life of faith as a journey on the path to union with Christ in the manner Lewis (at least as interpreted here by Meilaender) seems to be getting at.

Protestantism has always had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the Law – understood both as the natural and revealed moral law. With its emphasis on justification by grace through faith alone, Protestantism has frequently been accused by critics of lapsing into antinomianism. That is, if we are saved by grace, independently of whether we keep the law, what motive do we have to be good people?

The Reformers were aware of this charge, of course (just as Paul was, cf. Romans 6), and early on they developed an approach to the Law that we may with some fairness call the “classical Protestant” position. For both Luther and Calvin, the Law has multiple uses:

The Political Use: The Law serves as a check on human sin, protecting the vulnerable and preserving society. Since we can’t assume that people will spontaneously, e.g. respect the lives and property of others, the political authorities are charged with enforcing external adherence to the law.

The Spiritual Use: This is arguably the most important use of the Law for the Reformers. When we see how far short we fall of meeting our moral obligations, we become receptive to the message of grace. The Law “convicts” us by showing us where we have failed. We then realize that we can’t save ourselves by seeking to meet the requirements of the Law. The teachings of Jesus only intensify this dilemma by turning our attention to our inner states and motivations (“lusting in the heart,” “hating one’s brother,” etc.). The Law reveals our sin and we are forced to rely on Christ alone for our salvation.

The Pedagogical Use: The so-called third use of the Law has been the most controversial, and there is debate about whether Luther ever endorsed it. But it’s clear that Calvin thought it was important, and it has been an important part of much Protestant thought ever since. In this capacity, the Law provides guidance for the Christian life. Though we are saved by Christ alone, the Law shows us the proper shape the Christian life should take as a response to God’s grace. According to Calvin, the Law helps Christians “to learn more thoroughly each day the nature of the Lord’s will to which they aspire, and to confirm them in the understanding of it.”

Many Protestants (especially Lutherans) object to the “third use” of the Law, because they think it threatens to become a backdoor to legalism and works-righteousness. And that it risks making us content with a moral minimalism rather than spurring us on to daring acts of love. Calvinists respond that the Law (understood broadly to include the Decalogue and the precepts and example of Christ) provides a needed concreteness to the Christian life. If we rely on vague norms like “love,” “justice” or “peace” without giving them a definite shape, they can become justifications for pretty much any position, and the Christian life becomes hostage to our pet political nostrums (That this has in fact happened in many a Protestant church, liberal and conservative, scarcely needs pointing out!).

Put another way, Lutherans and Calvinists agree that grace provides the motive for doing good works. As Luther said, good works are the “fruit” of faith. But they appear to disagree on how we determine the content of what count as good actions. To those who emphasize the third use of the Law, there will be norms for Christian living that are always binding. Those who say we should rely on creative responses to new situations informed by the Spirit will tend to be more consequentialist in their moral reasoning.

While I agree that there is a genuine problem of “legalism” when we emphasize the Law as a guide to Christian living, I think the greater danger lies in thinking that we can do without it. The result seems to me to be a loss of a distinctively Christian pattern of life. As theologian Reinhard Hütter says, “God’s commandment is nothing else than the concrete guidance, the concrete social practice that allows us to embody our communion with God in concrete creaturely ways.” Living in communion with God has a definite shape, one taught to us by the Law, by the example of Jesus (who came to fulfill rather than abolish the Law), and by the Apostles and Saints of the church catholic throughout the ages. It is precisely this concrete practice, as embodied in the church’s life, which shows us what life in community with God is supposed to look like. The point is not that the Law saves us, but that God saves us for a particular kind of life, and we see that life reflected in the Law.