Counseling Kevin

A Civil Debate Over Uncivil Matters

Last October, a number of now-former readers of this blog became enraged because I agreed with Postmodern Papist's call to "hospitably engage" pro-choice advocates in debates over the basis of their belief that killing fetuses and embryos is justified. In comments to that post, Postmodern Papist and I were accused of being "coddlers" of "baby killers." In private e-mails, I was accused of worse.

It appears that those conservative Christian wing nuts over at First Things agree with Postmodern Papist. Writing in today's edition, Associate Editor Ryan T. Anderson discusses a panel at Princeton University that took on the task that Postmodern Papist promoted, a "star-studded symposium at Princeton titled 'Is It Wrong to End Early Human Life?'"

The participants included [Princeton philosophy professor Elizabeth] Harman and her Princeton colleagues Robert George and Peter Singer, along with Don Marquis (Kansas), Patrick Lee (Franciscan), Jeff McMahan (Rutgers), and John Haldane (St. Andrews). Moderating the discussion was Harold Shapiro, Princeton’s president emeritus and the chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission under President Clinton. On any measure, these are among the most prominent voices in contemporary philosophy and bioethics, and to have them together on one three-and-a-half-hour panel was an intellectual treat.

Speaking of professor Harman's view that "fetuses that die before they’re ever conscious really are a lot like plants: They’re living things, but there’s nothing about them that would make us think that they count morally in the way that people do." Anderson argues well, I think, why such views ought to be engaged with civility, albeit forcefully.

Many, no doubt, will find Harman’s comparison of human fetuses to plants—not to mention Singer’s moral defense of infanticide—deeply repugnant. I certainly do. But these are merely the conclusions of a chain of (gravely mistaken) moral reasoning, and such intellectually honest reflection is to be preferred, in fact welcomed, over the unprincipled rationalization that often takes its place. When people like Harman and Singer speak openly and follow their premises to their logical conclusions, the audience realizes what is at stake when a commitment to intrinsic human dignity and equality is rejected—and that realization is a very good thing.

Though ethical disagreement about such important matters as killing human beings, restricting women’s liberty, and forestalling scientific research often generate more heat than light, one of this panel’s many virtues was its consistent civility. The participants themselves stressed that intelligent and reflective people of goodwill can and do disagree. Eschewing ad hominem attacks, they opted to offer arguments and rebuttals, a mutual exchange whose currency is reason. This brought to mind Fr. John Courtney Murray’s famous remark that “disagreement is a rare achievement, and most of what is called disagreement is simply confusion.” So it is a credit to the panelists that the discussion was marked by a lack of confusion, albeit much disagreement.

Some would still question its worth. Toward the end of the Q&A, someone admitted to being impressed by the philosophers’ “ingenuity” but asked if it really mattered: Don’t people come to their ethical conclusions “viscerally” and then try to justify them?

I wouldn’t be so cynical. Such theorizing throughout the academy—and the Church—plays a crucial role in developing adequate responses to new ethical challenges. Objections are raised, theories are refined, misconceptions are cleared away, and arguments are developed—and truth can be discovered. It has been through exchanges such as this one, for example, that the pro-life side has refined its argument to the intellectually persuasive position that it is today. And championing this developed argument has its effects—on the young, who are consistently polled as being more pro-life than their parents’ generation, and even on older converts, like NARAL cofounder Bernard Nathanson.

That said, read the chilling intellectual theories propounded by proponents of abortion and euthanasia, and shudder.  You'll understand how right GK Chesterton was when he said that the problem with a man who doesn't believe in God is not that he believes in nothing, it is that he will believe in anything. You'll also understand how many intellectuals refuse to confront the world their ideas will create if followed logically to their conclusion. As Chesterton also lamented, one of the major problems with an atheist is that he never comes to his point. It takes another man, a Chesterton, an apostle of common sense and an unblinking observer of human nature, to show him what that world will be. In every case, it will be a horror.

Yet, as Anderson reminds us, engagements such as these reveal to the Church and other pro-lifers what they are up against and what issues they must confront in this endless engagement with, and battle against, foes of human life and human dignity.

As the panel was wrapping up and I was headed to dinner with the panelists, I realized how important these types of discussions are—not only in the public arena, where we are told to use "public reason," but also for the life of the Church. As Lee, George, and Haldane spoke, it became eminently clear that the public reasons they invoked were the real reasons behind their views. While revelation tells us that man is made "in the image and likeness of God" and therefore should be protected and not killed, the data of revelation doesn’t answer the question of what, precisely, is made in the image and likeness of God—a soul, a consciousness, an “embodied mind,” a body? Nor does it answer the question of when this entity comes into existence or when it becomes valuable—fertilization, quickening, formation of the brain, beginning of consciousness, beginning of self-consciousness? Beyond the abortion and embryo-destruction debates, many bioethical issues loom large for the Church. Besides issues of killing, the Church will need to address new biotechnologies that seek to create life and enhance life. It seems to me that the philosophical reflection on display at the killing panel will need to be applied anew.

Or, we can choose to scream "baby killer" and see where that gets us.

Barricades of Heaven

[UPDATED TO REMOVE AN INTRODUCTORY CLAUSE THAT WAS DIVERTING ATTENTION FROM THE MAJOR TOPIC OF ALL POSTS TO THIS BLOG: ME! IT'S ALL ABOUT ME! 24/7/365]

I was thinking recently (an always dangerous past time) about how we spin our own stories about ourselves and our pasts. For many, revisionist history is a full time occupation.

Jackson Browne is a master of it. That's not a criticism, by the way. We all do it. We all re-evaluate the incidents of our past through the faulty memories of the present and try to make sense of them through "a glass darkly." Only when we see "face to face" will we fully understand, and that's not an occurrence for the here and now, is it?

Browne's politics are on the opposite end of the spectrum from my own, although lately, I've been inexorably pulled toward a more moderate place by an irresistible force that gains traction when acts of my will move me out its way. Regardless of the distance between us on other issues, on the issue of artistic temperament, I've been an admirer of Browne's for decades, since the late 1960s, when I first saw his name as the songwriter of a tune that I thought was especially powerful on a Tom Rush album. While there was a time when politics influenced my musical tastes, I eventually decided that if I listened only to conservatives, I'd be drinking in a musical desert.

In his song Barricades of Heaven, Browne writes longingly of a vanished youth, when "life became the Paradox, the Bear, the Rouge et Noir, and the stretch of road running to L.A." As is the case with most of us, I'm sure his recollection is 90% bullshit. Yet, the 10% he gets right is likely more true, more insightful, than anything he realized at the time he lived the lyrics.

I'd like to tell Browne that neither he nor any other human being needs to bring his own redemption when he comes, and that the only barricades to heaven that exist are those each of us erects to bar his own path. I doubt that he'd listen to a lame lawyer from the Lone Star State.

Regardless, I love the song.

For Cheerleaders

Welcome to 21st century Texas, ya'll, where some girls make federal cases out of the most important question of their oh-so-vacuous lives: "to be, or not to be, a cheerleader."

Other girls are otherwise occupied.

Affirmative Othodoxy

Archbishop Chaput (rhymes with "a-choo," by the way) of Denver reminds me of G.K. Chesterton, in the sense that if you start to put post-its by passages of his speeches or essays that are particularly meaningful, you look back and realize that you've carpeted each page with post-its.

His piece in yesterday's First Things was a feast for priests who wish to engage the world within and without their parishes with the call to evangelize, the call of the Acts of the Apostles.

It’s important to remember that the title of the book is the Acts of the Apostles—not the Good Intentions, or the Excellent Plans, or the Plausible Alibis of the Apostles, but their Acts. Words are important. Actions are more important. Christ said he loved us. Then he died to prove it. He said he would rise from the dead and give us new life. Then he really did it. And when the first Apostles said they believed in Jesus Christ, they acted like they meant it, because they did—and then they proved it by turning the world upside down with the gospel.

Put up or shut up.

There's so much more there, for pastor and layman alike. Each paragraph is a treasure trove. Yet, what struck me as much as anything he said were his words about the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States, a visit by a man he acknowledges with the highest accolade: a pastor.

I want to conclude on this last point of leadership because I was in Washington last week and was struck by the strength, simplicity, and goodness of Benedict XVI as a pastor. I’ve admired Joseph Ratzinger as a thinker for many years, but I really didn’t expect to be so moved by his visit. He has a gift for what has been called affirmative orthodoxy. That sounds complicated—he’s a theologian, after all—but it really isn’t.

Benedict has the talent for being very frank about sin and calling people back to fidelity. And yet, at the same time, he illuminates that fidelity with warmth in a way that reveals its beauty and disarms the people who hear him. His warning about the “silent apostasy” of many Catholic laypeople and even some clergy has stayed with me because he said it in a spirit of love, not rebuke. Apostasy is an interesting word. It comes from the Greek verb apostanai—which means to revolt or desert, literally “to stand away from.” For Benedict, our people and priests don’t need to renounce publicly their Catholic faith to be apostates. They simply need to be silent when their baptism demands that they speak out, to be cowards when Jesus needs them and asks them to have courage.

Benedict beautifully described the American Catholic community as being large and influential—but, even more important, diverse in its origin, creative, generous, and full of religious fervor. He reminded us all that American Catholics need to use our numbers and influence and creativity and generosity and fervor to enter into the public square in an active, faithful, and life-giving way. He called us to bring Christian hope to the public debate, to be clear and united in our Catholic presence in society, and to be a leaven in our nation’s public life. That work needs to begin here, today, right now.

Especially those of us who blog need to be reminded of the old street maxim: don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk. I said yesterday, and I'll say it again, as much to admonish myself as any other person: talk is cheap. Entering the public square "in an active, faithful and life-giving way" is the true test and the true calling.

Doin' The Right Thing

Talk is cheap. What would you do?