Patria

At Mass yesterday Monsignor made the observation (based on his welcome upon his first visit to Italy) that home is not so much where one is born and raised as where one feels most at home; the paradigmatic case of this truth, he added, is that earth is less our home than the heaven that we have never seen.

Thomas Aquinas, of course, calls heaven “patria,” the homeland or, more literally, the fatherland.  For the Jews there was the promised land of Israel, for the Romans the patria—that is, Rome and its Empire.  Christianity, adopting the eschatological significance of Jerusalem and the Roman term patria considered its true home to be heaven.

But the pull of earth is strong, and the desire for patria remains even amongst those who have left Christianity behind.  Thus, of course, the Nazi conception of Vaterland took on a salvific edge that the Romans, to whom the Nazis preferred to liken themselves, surely never included in their thoughts.  Thus the mild error of many nations, of crediting their earthly polities with more longevity and significance than belongs to any institution of human nature, was taken to a deadly extreme.

There is, of course, an equal and opposite error (as Aristotle and C.S. Lewis would surely remind us), perhaps more common in the West today, of insisting that there be no human patria.  Mostly people label this as a liberal or progressive or leftist or globalist error, even as people consider too excessive devotion to the human patria to be a vice of the right.  What people tend to forget is that—as the former U.S.S.R. showed—the “liberal” error can be just as deadly.

I suspect it is not a coincidence that Stalinists and Nazis produced more horrific versions of their respective errors than, say, the Whigs and the Tories, or than anything we have see yet in America today.  The Whigs and the Tories were still Christian, by culture at least, and the idea of the heavenly patria hovered in the air they breathed like a friendly miasma, an inoculation of sorts against too great an excitement at secular political solutions.  America today, in contrast, is post-Christian, and while the heavenly patria is a legend for most and a fact for only a few, it is not a real rival to secular ideals; American secularists on either side of the aisle have no great religious concept of patria on which to model their acceptance or rejection of nationhood.  It was only the age that actively rejected Christianity that saw both the exaltation and the negation of political patria take on a demonic shade.  Whether the rejection and the demonization (demonification?) were effect and cause, and which was which, or whether both were caused by some third thing, I cannot guess; but surely the coincidence was no accident.

In any case, history would seem to suggest that the rejection of Christianity, far from being a purely liberalizing phenomenon, comes with its own problems.  And anyone concerned over the return of an unhealthy nationalism would be wise to make Christianity their friend rather than their enemy; for in a right understanding, nothing could be more salutary in adjusting notions of the human patria than a firm belief in and a rightly ordered love of the patria that is the Christian heaven.

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.

The Purity of the Turf

There’s an old P.G. Wodehouse story titled “The Purity of the Turf,” which features respectable British gentlemen fooling around by placing substantial bets on the (pseudo-)athletic events at a local “school treat.”  A good part of the hilarity arises from the gravity with which protagonist Bertie Wooster and antagonist Steggles treat the situation: with all the seriousness of habitual horse race gamblers.  At one point, outraged by Steggles’ dishonesty, Bertie (also the narrator) uses the racetrack expression which gives the story its name: “‘And they talk about the Purity of the Turf!’ I said. And I meant it to sting, by Jove!”

Of course, when Bertie’s valet Jeeves snatches victory by similarly “impure” means (falsely confessing to having bribed participants of the egg-and-spoon race, thereby ensuring their disqualification) all is right and just.  Steggles, after all, cheated first; and anyway, the raison d’être of a Jeeves and Wooster story is that when J&W win all is right with the world.

It is also a natural human reaction, no doubt traceable to some scientific mechanism like the survival of the fittest, to feel that My tribe must win, no matter what the cost.  Interestingly, few My Tribe Firsters are willing to say aloud “The Purity of the Turf be hanged!”  They’re far more likely to pretend it’s still pure—or, when they no longer can bear ignoring its impurities, to leave for (hopefully) greener and purer pastures.

Of course, when the turf defiled is merely the grounds for a schoolsgirls’ egg-and-spoon race,  My Tribe First does little harm.  Problems arise in weighter affairs, when not only the manner but the matter of the contest is grave.  Whether your tribe is a particular family, a workplace, a school, a political party, or a segment within the Church, the temptation to overlook the sins and failings of the tribe, personal and institutional, can be nearly overpowering.  Sometimes, if the sins involve paperclips, it is well to overlook them.  Sometimes, when the sins involve poor men’s pensions, it becomes morally compulsory to speak out.

Unfortunately, there’s a large space between paperclips and pensions, and discerning when it’s time to “betray” one’s tribe or even abandon it is not easy.  And because deciding to speak out against a group for which one has or had some sympathy requires so much personal torment, it is particularly hard for this kind of whistle-blower to take accusations from those who remain staunchly My Tribe First that they are “virtue signaling” or “were never really one of us” or “don’t care about the goals of the movement,” etc., etc.  Hence the bitterness of many internecine quarrels: for My Tribe Firsters, it is hard to perceive the good will of the Purgers involved in preserving the movement(s) from itself, while for the Purgers who have left, it is hard not to feel that the My Tribe Firsters are willfully blind to the impurities of their turf.

Two late examples of this phenomenon are (1) the ongoing ire in a few quarters against those in the pro-life movement who have allied themselves with Trump and (2) the recent debates regarding Christendom College’s handling of some harassment cases.  Watching both cases unfold, one of the sadder elements has been the inability of both some Purgers and some My Tribe Firsters to recognize that their former compatriots may, despite differing opinions in a grave case, retain some faint degree of moral fiber.  That is a great pity, especially as problems like these are hard to judge because institutions designed to do good but made up of human beings are intrinsically complex.  Prudence is key; but even wise men make prudential mistakes on occasion.  When does your Tribe turn too piratical?  When and how do you jump ship?  When is the turf hopelessly defiled?  When is it time for a purge?  And what sort of purge is desirable?  Obviously, sometimes it is right to be silent about the sins of one’s Tribe.  Equally obviously, sometimes it is right to expose them, as much for the good of the Tribe as for the good of those who have been injured.  And it’s hard to conceive of a hard-and-fast rule that would cover a variety of complex moral situations and tell you how to act rightly in each and every one of them.  In other words: again: prudence.

But when prudence fails to emolliate such cases, as it seems to have failed in the two cases mentioned above, there is always the greater virtue of charity.  No matter how imprudent one my consider one’s opposing My Tribe Firsters or Purgers to be, it is foolish and wrong to behave as if they are lost.

Let us say (for the sake of argument) that some prolife leaders sinned grievously in supporting Donald Trump.  Let us say (for the sake of argument) that some Christendom faculty sinned grievously in their handling of harassment cases.  While concern for the victims (those injured by Trump or prolife leaders or Christendom faculty or students) should be paramount, that does not, that cannot exclude a simultaneously concern for the very people who are committing the sin.

Christ threw the moneychangers out of the Temple.  He was righteously indignant concerning their predatory and impious behavior.  But I don’t recall Him saying anything about how they had committed unforgiveable sins.  Indeed, he took action but as usual his words were remarkably short and pithy—certainly nothing that would amount to a “rant”.  He was merely and straightforwardly descriptive: “You have made [this house] a den of thieves.”

Contrast that to some of the opprobrium spewed in internet debates over the previous two issues over the last few weeks.

Now.  So what?

Nothing really, except a personal resolution on my part about what actions to take the next time one of my Tribes sins.  When it comes to leaving the Tribe, accusing the Tribe, or what have you—when it is my turn to make that move, be it through a well-researched article in some respectable and remunerative venue, or a passive-aggressive blog post here, or merely through a single comment on Facebook—whenever the time comes to take a stand against the Tribe, there’s a simple check to perform first.   Do I really want the good for the villains in this case?  Do I really desire their eternal happiness?  Or am I so involved in the plight of the victims that I see the villains as hopelessly irredeemable?

I’m not suggesting that this check ought to change anyone’s mind about what to do.  I’m not saying that more people need to ignore tribal victims for the sake of Tribes, to preserve some spurious illusion of the Purity of the Turf.  Much better to actually work to make it pure, which sometimes involves opening a vein—yours, or the Tribe’s.

But it is important that the surgeon, the Purger, not enjoy opening the vein.

There is more than one way to idolize the Purity of the Turf.  The common way, certainly, is put on the green glasses and loudly announce its greenness to all and sundry.  That is one kind of idolatry, the idolatry of My Tribe Firsters.  The other kind is when a Purger becomes so bent on seeing that the Turf Stays Pure that he constantly seeks infractions in order to boycott the race.  That too can be idolatry, of another kind.

Wait, There's More

Apologies to any readers who come here for the scintillating verbiage, the art, the music, the humor, or the (new and perhaps fortunately as yet rare) quasi-mommy-blogger posts.  But I cannot resist politics plus religion, and especially not politics plus my religion.

I wrote a long post about Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment, and about why it worried me as a conservative religious person; I wrote a short post yesterday about the Wikileaks revelation that Clinton advisor John Podesta really doesn’t care for conservative Catholics.

Actually, since I only linked to that before and didn’t quote it here, behold the text itself.

From:jhalpin@americanprogress.org To: JPalmieri@americanprogress.org, john.podesta@gmail.com  

Date: 2011-04-11 21:10 

Subject: Re: Conservative Catholicism

Excellent point. They can throw around “Thomistic” thought and “subsidiarity” and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about. 

Jennifer Palmieri <JPalmieri@americanprogress.org> wrote: 

I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals. 

——- Original Message ——-  

From: John Halpin 

To: John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com>; Jennifer Palmieri 

Sent: Mon Apr 11 18:55:59 2011 

Subject: Conservative Catholicism  

Ken Auletta’s latest piece on Murdoch in the New Yorker starts off with the aside that both Murdoch and Robert Thompson, managing editor of the WSJ, are raising their kids Catholic. Friggin’ Murdoch baptized his kids in Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the SC and think tanks to the media and social groups. It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.

Alas, alas, it is true: no one knows what the heck we’re talking about.  (Maybe this blog would have more readers if I simplified the language?  A grade level somewhere between a Donald Trump speech and a John Kasich soothe should do the trick.)  Yes, having the ability to actually reason and make important moral and ethical distinctions is tough.  I’m not even joking, though there are thick layers of irony coating my (mental) voice.  But my irony is as Pollyanna’s in comparison to the tone used here: “Friggin’ Murdoch.”  Pardonne-moi, mon frère?  And then there’s this: “It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”

Er, um, well, actually no, yes, not in the way you think, and definitely not, in that order.  More clearly:

(1) To be conservative and Catholic is no more a “bastardization” of the Faith than to be liberal and Catholic.  At the very least, the email’s claim is an ad hominem that requires serious argument to prove.

(2) Conservative Catholic are attracted to systematic thought.  So are neurologists and NASA researchers.  This is a problem, John?

(3) Our “severely backwards gender relations,” as far as I can make out, have to do with (a) the notion that children should be cared for by a parent and not a stranger; (b) the idea that contraceptives aren’t hot (while we’re on this topic, check out the secular world’s new embrace of something less distant from NFP); and (c) the notion that male-female romantic relationships are somehow normative (with LOTS of debate—and I do mean that LOTS; I would use bigger caps if I had them—about HOW they are normative).  In other words, our “severely backwards gender relations” have been the norm for human society for the past ... um, well, for most of history.  And we share them with Muslims, which you would think might be a selling point (especially since we also let our women work and wear pantsuits, like me), except that it’s somehow not.

I said I was allowed to wear pantsuits, not that I did wear them.

I do have some native good taste, despite my background in philosophy.

And anyway, the only comfortable pants at month eight-and-one-half

are running shorts, not a suit of armor.  But I digress.

(4) I’m sorry, but we are aware of Christian democracy.  We like to think we live in one, or at any rate that we lived in one, or might be able to live in one in the future.  I know there Catholics interested in a Christian Socialist State (whispered: Tradinistas) and people who would love to see some sort of confessional monarchy; but please believe me when I say that Ross Douthat, Robbie George, Hadley Arkes, and the late great Antonin Scalia definitely had neither of those extremes in mind.  A Christian democracy sounds swell to me, though perhaps the word “Republic” would be more apropos, given our Founding Fathers’ intentions, and all that rot.

Thus much for the first installment of Clinton Campagin vs. Conservative Catholicism.

There’s more.

For anyone too busy to follow the link, here’s the gold from this pair of emails:

“This whole controversy with the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage even though 98% of Catholic women (and their conjugal partners) have used contraception has me thinking . . . There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church. Is contraceptive coverage an issue around which that could happen. The Bishops will undoubtedly continue the fight. Does the Catholic Hospital Association support of the Administration's new policy, together with ‘the 98%’ create an opportunity?  Of course, this idea may just reveal my total lack of understanding of the Catholic church, the economic power it can bring to bear against nuns and priests who count on it for their maintenance, etc. Even if the idea isn't crazy, I don't qualify to be involved and I have not thought at all about how one would ‘plant the seeds of the revolution,’ or who would plant them. Just wondering . . .”

Oh, just go read the reply too.  It’s not long.

So, what we have here is an expressed interest in engineering dissent within the Catholic Church—which is rich, because we’re pretty good at doing that on our lonesome, without help from rogue political operators.  In any case, this would be sort of like the Arab Spring, with Chicago organizers behind it, except different, because Catholic women will be FREE AT LAST …

Born free!

… to do whatever they want, anytime they want, anyway they want it.

I would say two things to this.  First and most simply, there has already been a revolution in the Church.  We called it the 1960s.  Large parts of it did not go well.  I have no time in this already overlong post to review the history of American Catholicism from the past sixty years; suffice it to say that (a) the “conservatism” in the Church which we are seeing today is largely a reaction to a failed revolution, and (b) the vast majority of Catholics actually DO do whatever they want in these regards (as the email notes).  So really, this isn’t about freeing Catholic women—who rarely even have to hear a homily on the topic, much less receive personal censure.  No, this is about trying to change the Church’s teaching and stance in opposition to the HHS mandate.  Ironically, this notion of fomenting dissent within the Church is actually based upon a desire to silence the Church’s inconvenient dissent from the government.  If you doubt me, go read the emails again.  Chew on that for a while.  If these operatives sound Stalinesque, or Putinesque, that’s because they are.

The second point I would make about their idea of freeing Catholic women is a more psychological one, and addresses concerns of those who are genuinely and understandably concerned that, sans contraception, women cannot enjoy life as fully and freely as men.  For discussions from women who actually don’t feel imprisoned by the Church’s stance on this issue, I would point towards the tremendous zone of the Catholic Mommy Blogosphere (Mama Needs Coffee and Catholic All Year Round are two personal favorites, that will link you up to lots more).  If you want a grittier take from women who’ve had a REALLY hard time of it, but still believe in living by the Church’s teachings, try Simcha Fischer or Callah Alexander.

And to all that cloud of witnesses, I would add my own humble thoughts on the matter.  I’ve never found the Church’s position on contraception inhibiting.  Would it be nice to be able to do what you want whenever you want to (i.e., to be able to rely on contraception, and not have to wait with NFP)?  No, actually, I don’t think it would be.  Look, spaghetti and meat sauce with ice cream cones for dessert is probably my favorite meal.

Grrrrr, pregnant lady, why you talk about food?

But it would not be my favorite meal if I had it every day.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I’d be sick and tired of it in short order, not to mention ten pounds heavier.  It’s normal to have to regulate eating, exercise, and other less mentionable biological functions.  It’s normal, and it’s actually pleasant, to have seasons of “cleansing” and “fasting.”  It’s weird to think that you wouldn’t have such seasons.  And to this (admittedly personal and perhaps superficially idiosyncratic) opinion I will add the testimony of the villain Syndrome from The Incredibles (paraphrased slightly for relevance):

When every evening is super, no evening is.

Chew on that one for a while, and consider whether pornography, Fifty Shades of Grey, and certain comments by an unhappy political candidate may have to do, as much as anything else, with boredom and addiction as with pleasure.  In the words quoted in a fiery speech by one excellent rhetorician (another antihero, who also incidentally provides an excellent example of the sort of community organizing the Clinton camp appears to have in mind):

The idle brain is the devil’s playground!

But at this point, in the words of Lord Peter Wimsey,

I’m blithering.

(Sorry, you’ll have to watch the whole thing.  You can thank me later.  Now, for some pickles and ice cream.)

Honi soit qui mal pense.

When There Is a There There

Sometimes, I don’t like being right:

The Podesta Emails

On the other hand, it’s also good to know that one’s instincts are to be trusted.  As a student of Aristotle and Thomas, a politically conservative newly SAHM who plans on homeschooling her quite possible ginormous brood, and who happens to be married to a professional card-carrying Thomist philosopher …

It’s OK; we make so little that his other hero’s 

master probably isn’t spinning in his grave.

… I am, apparently, not liked by some influential portion of the Clinton camp.  And knowing that, rather than just suspecting it, is oddly a relief.  It’s like discovering that your teacher or boss really doesn’t like you, or finding that there was an actual cause for those strange sounds in the middle of the night.  You’re not paranoid—or at least not just paranoid—there is a there there.  There really are people who dislike you, possibly fear you, and wish you weren’t around.  Good grief, I’m part of a despised religious and ideological minority!

I don’t know that this will change anyone’s vote in a few weeks.  But I do know that in almost any other election year this could be—should be—a big deal.  In fact, it is a big deal whether it gets acknowledged as one or not.

I used to think predictions (or even diagnoses) of white martyrdom were exaggerated (first link for the modern interpretation of the phrase, second for the original notion).  Over the last few years, I’ve thought that less and less often.  Now—I still don’t know if I can say I’m a believer in the concept.  But as a believer, I may be saying it soon.