Homo Erectus

My long-running obsession with justice and judgment (fed by the current dissertation chapter) has made the words pop out everywhere; Scripture, of course, is full of the ideas.  And in mulling over the Hosea reading mentioned in my last post, it occurred to me that the obsession may appear a little grisly to anyone not writing an academic chapter focused on the topic.  “Justice” brings to mind such disturbing phrases as “the justice system” or “Justice Kavanaugh”; our ear catches at a word and surrounds it with the auras of other words with which we are used to hearing it matched.  Nor is it of any help if our mind interposes the more apropos phrase “a just God,” for it is generally uttered these days in doubt or mockery or, at best, when trying to lay doubt and mockery to rest.  Justice sounds like a sham; and if it dares enter our heads to think of real justice, most of us (we tell ourselves rightly) tremble.

I think it need not and ought not to be that way.  The Hosea reading suggests that there is a sort of incipient “justice” we human beings should cultivate in our lives on earth; if we do that, we need not fear when Divine Justice rains down.  But I think one can go farther than the cryptic metaphors of the Old testament prophet.  His image of our justice springing up to meet Another’s coming down, with its insistence on the perpendicularity of the arrangement, calls to mind another common translation of whatever biblical word is being rendered in English as “just”: upright.

Just, upright, erect.  The former two are synonyms, as are the latter two, although the first and the third do not share a common meaning.  But with good reason Hosea calls up the image of grain growing erect towards the sky: there is a coordination between standing erect and being just, an inherent symbolism that is not a merely human invention.  The etymology tells the story: the thing that we call just is also called being upright; to be just is our birthright as human beings, and what distinguishes us from other animals; it is no terrifying external imposition; it is as natural to us (in one sense) spiritually as walking erect is physically.  We stand erect because that is an image of how we ought to stand internally: upright.  To be upright, that is, pointing up at the sun, is natural for flowers that draw from its rays their strength.  In an upright human being who does the same, we say briefly and without comprehension that he is “just.”  What we really mean is that, like the sunflower, he stretches naturally towards the Sun of Justice from which all the rectitude of his nature comes.

Justice Up and Justice Down

I have been thinking a bit about the odd ending to the reading from Hosea earlier this week.

Sow for yourselves justice,

reap the fruit of piety;

break up for yourselves a new field,

for it is time to seek the LORD,

till he come and rain down justice upon you.

The first line, taken by itself, sounds semi-Pelagian: as if we can somehow make justice happen by ourselves.  The last line, taken in similar isolation, sounds quietist, as if God will do all the work making justice take place.  It is also, depending upon one’s spiritual temperament, a trifle terrifying; for the scrupulous, “justice” can be a frightening word.

The point, as with any quasi-paradoxical lines from Scripture, seems to be that there is an essential both-and going on.  We ought to plant justice in the same way that we plant seeds: not as if we can make corn grow, but knowing that (weather providing) corn will come of our planting.  What we do may not be just in any perfect sense—certainly we are not justified by our own efforts—but it is necessary for justice to come about, just as the kernel is not the ear of corn, but is (assuming a natural order of things into which God has not chosen to intervene with a miracle) a prerequisite.

And of course, the fact that justice rains down could be terrifying or splendid, depending upon what is there in the field to meet it.  If our little “justice” is poking its head up, the Justice that comes will be refreshing and life- and abundance-giving.  But if we haven’t planted any seeds at all, then we shall at best be like those ladies who forgot their oil.  In any case, the story told here is, like so many of the ones in Scripture, one of cooperation: justice up and Justice down.  One hopes to be congruent in the end.

Sanctity Has a Beauty that Will Save the World

The Tuesday, July 3 edition of NPR’s “All Things Considered” celebrated the anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae with the headline “50 Years Ago, The Pope Called Birth Control ‘Intrinsically Wrong.’”  The story focuses on how the Church’s stance on contraception has led Catholics to contravene Church authority.  Sources include a Jesuit at Boston College (whose Jesuitical charism enables him to twist the Thomistic insight that “‘bad law … breeds contempt for good law’”); a Georgetown researcher; a baby boomer puzzled by how contraception offends God; a millennial who equates NFP with “the ‘rhythm method’”; a divorced mother of seven; a divorced female lay minister; and a priest who finds the word “believe” problematic.

To believe NPR, pro-encyclical representatives have little to say for themselves: Mary Eberstadt is quoted in generalities, an archbishop talks about a desire to retain the Church’s “uniqueness,” and a lay Catholic is concerned about the dilution of an unspecified “‘message.’”  But such “revisionist” views are, according to NPR, in evidence only among “some Catholic conservatives” reacting to “the move toward a more tolerant approach under Pope Francis.”  The piece ends by noting that American Catholics mostly don’t accept the prohibition on contraception, and (according to the Georgetown researcher) “‘The American Catholic church is assimilating ever further into American culture.’”

It is hardly accidental that the piece ran a day before July 4: it reads like a veritable declaration of independence from Church teaching.  Superficially, the main teaching in question is contraception.  But disagreement about artificial birth control is not really the heart of the matter.  What is at stake is a fundamental disagreement about the nature of the family.

For the NPRs of the world, the family is defined by the individuals who make it up.  Every family, they argue, is like every person unique: “Let a thousand flowers bloom.”

On the other side, followers of Pope Paul VI share Leo Tolstoy’s belief that happy families are all alike.  This does not imply that happy families fit a certain rigid structure, that they all practice the same hobbies, or include a certain number of children.  Tolstoy’s axiom suggests rather that there are certain important factors upon which the happiness of a family depends.  According to this viewpoint, while families possess their own unique cultures, a “family” must meet certain baseline criteria in order to be happy—and, to extend the principle, a family must meet a certain baseline definition in order to be a family at all.  This view defines a family in the strict sense as a man and a woman who live together in a way such as is liable to produce children.

That is where the orthodox Catholic’s quarrel with NPR truly lies.  That definition of family is the root matter in dispute when arguments about contraception, IVF, donor babies, divorce, abortion, polygamy, transgenderism, or gay marriage surface.  Sister Lucia of Fatima wrote that “the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family."  If she was correct, then NPR’s latest sally is but one of many in this long-drawn-out war.

But why is there a war at all?

Read the rest at the Register.

Who's to Judge?

At Mass recently we heard a famous passage, recognizable even to many a non-Christian.  Pope Francis has riffed on it, and it is a familiar element in the arsenal of moralists of the ilk of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”  (Matt. 7:1-5)

The common interpretation of the passage assumes that recognizing that an action is bad is identical to “judging.”  According to this interpretation, it would be “judgmental” to inform the alcoholic that his addiction is compromising to himself and his family!  The absurdity of that reading—obvious in the case of such an example—makes for an easy target; and it is healthy to occasionally remind ourselves and our friends that fraternal correction is not per se wrong.

But that is only a negative interpretation; what the passage does not mean.  It does not mean that we should gloss over sin.  But on the other hand, it clearly refers to a real problem (why else would the Holy Spirit have seen to it that those particular words were recorded?).  And I suspect that, as with much of the Gospel’s advice, the words hit closer to home than most of us would like to acknowledge.  Arguing about what the words mean for our current politico-social debates is safer than considering how they apply to our day-to-day lives with family and friends.

Read the rest at the Register.

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/feingold/whos-to-judge