The Last Jot or Tittle

It's striking that after the revolutionary beatitudes, Our Lord sums up with some reactionary-sounding language, almost as if he wants to be sure no one gets the wrong idea.  He is not coming to abolish the law, but to fulfill it; indeed, Amen quippe dico vobis, donec transeat caelum et terra, jota unum aut unus apex non praeteribit a lege, donec omnia fiant.

A jot, or to use the Greek equivalent, an iota is the lowercase letter i.  A tittle (in the Vulgate, apex) is the dot on top of the i, or an equivalent diacritical mark.

It's easy to see why, given the alphabetic metaphor, interpretations of the statement tend to revolve around the written law of the Old Testament.  Catholic priests giving homilies will frequently assure their congregations that Jesus's words don't mean we need to (say) rid our fridges of bacon, perform the ritual purifications that Hassidic Jews still use before meals, observe Shabbat, etc., etc.  What Jesus means is that the sensible parts of the law, the real parts of Old Testament law, like the ten commandments, are not going to pass away.

One can forgive both Jews and atheists for finding such convenient and seemingly ad hoc divisions between "real" and "unreal" parts of Old Testament practice unconvincing!

After all, while the ten commandments have a unique role in Judeo-Christian tradition, Jesus never actually refers to them--though he does refer to the two great commandments to love God and neighbor.  Why not assume that those two are the "real" law, the law that doesn't pass away?  Or, on the other hand, if the ten commandments are critical, why should we not assume that the penalties for violating them (such as the death penalty for blasphemy--a penalty which, unlike the one for adultery, Jesus's actions never seem to abrogate) are still parts of the real law, the law that matters from a Divine perspective?

One can of course sort these things out.  But a sorting out of which parts of the Old Testament are key and which are not, from a Christian perspective, inevitably ends in appeals to what pre-modern and early-modern English thinkers called "the law of reason," or "the natural law."

And since that is the case, I wonder whether one might not cut to the chase and assume that Our Lord, when we speaks of the law which alters not one jot or tittle, is indeed speaking of the law of nature in its broad sense, the one that includes human nature and the moral codes that can be deduced from it.

This coheres of his otherwise arbitrary and seemingly hyperbolic statement that "until heaven and earth pass away" the smallest parts of the law will remain.  Nature's law remains as long as nature remains; when earth passes away, and earthly natures are changed or ended, then indeed the natural law will pass away.  The natural law will not pass away until, as is suggested in those even more puzzling words, omnia fiant, until "all be fulfilled," or, perhaps more literally, until "all is done."  Until--to steal language from another part of the New Testament--it is finished.

If the Salt Loses Its Flavor

Part of my Lent entails going back to the New Testament, and since Matthew practically leads with the Sermon on the Mount, I’m already reading about how to be blessed and how not to be.

Vos estis sal terrae. Quod si sal evanuerit, in quo salietur? ad nihilum valet ultra, nisi ut mittatur foras, et conculcetur ab hominibus.

I’ve always thought the bit about throwing the salt out was oddly harsh.  Not oddly harsh for the New Testament—there is fire and brimstone in there too—but harsh in the context.  After all, Jesus says nothing about, oh, pouring unused lamp oil into the gutter, or breaking a lamp hidden under a bushel  into potshards.  Then it hit me today: he doesn’t really say the salt is useless.  He says it is tasteless (evanuerit); but that doesn’t as far as I know imply (at least not to a premodern mind) that it loses its other chemical properties.

Salt in the ancient (and not so ancient) world was scattered over the land of one’s enemies or of condemned traitors; it was more difficult to farm the salted area, and thus symbolized the complete rejection of the persons who had inhabited it.  Given that background, it’s not hard to imagine the fate of the tasteless salt as being to serve in precisely this purificatory way: to be cast on the ground, and trodden on (mittatur foras, et conculcetur), that is, to be worked into the soil by those who pass over it, until both the bad salt and the bad soil have worked themselves out (as it were).

If this is the right way to understand the lines, then it has interesting implications for the salt-and-light metaphor.  When a Christian loses their “flavor,” it’s not as if God just says, “Oh, well, there goes Molly.  Time to try another one.”  God is nothing if not a recycler.  When a Molly the Christian becomes tasteless, he puts her to another use: she becomes, in some sense, a fertilizer for in hospitable soils.  Nor does this need to be a mutually punitive exercise: both Tasteless Molly and the people she rubs up against can still find their redemption in the unpleasant process.

But it is so much more pleasant to cooperate in an artistic project than to be used for one unwittingly!

Tribes, Traitors, and “A Bargain for Francis” (III)

One of the highlights of the Platonic dialogues is the Socratic distinction (in the Meno) between right opinion and knowledge.  It’s easy to hold a true opinion about something; it’s less easy to know why what you hold is true, and to be able to defend it.  But it is crucial, because only the habit of wanting to know why a thing is true enables you to actually guard against false but attractive opinions masquerading as “right.”

(The irony is that Socrates, who claims to give himself wholly to truth and good arguments, can be remarkably shifty in the actual logical structure of his argumentation.  But that is another topic for another day.)

If we all approached our potential “friends” in the world of internet content as if our primary identity were “truth seeker,” rather than this or that other value that we hold, I suspect we’d all be a lot happier.  We might even discover a renewed tolerance for our real life friends who, being human, will occasionally disagree with us, and still deserve our trust for all that.

I am, of course, proposing—seemingly against the moral of “A Bargain for Francis”—that it is sometimes better to be careful than to be friends.  But since the proposal concerns not real human beings, but what passes for them on the internet, I am not sure that the author of this urtext of human wisdom would actually disapprove.

Linkup here: https://rosie-ablogformymom.blogspot.com/2021/02/just-because-volume-6.html

Tribes, Traitors, and “A Bargain for Francis” (II)

But the choice to be friends is not the antidote to tribalism; it can, of course, be implicated in tribalism as well.  When we become friends with someone in real life—a spouse, a family member, a kindred spirit—that friendship means trusting them.  But such friendships inevitably go through a period of vetting.  Adults know that every potential friend is also a potential Thelma (a lesson Francis learns to her grief), and so it rightly takes a while to figure out how reliable another person is.  In romance, this is called courtship; but of course there are equivalents in platonic friendships and work situations as well.

But for whatever reason, this slow process rarely takes place in extrapersonal contexts.  If, for instance, I encounter an opinion maker, or a website, or a news outlet, or a social media page—in other words, a thing which is primarily spewing content, however much it may be dominated by a given personality—I am liable to latch in and trust rather quickly.  It starts when the content agrees with me; and as the content agrees and thereby flatters me, I am apt to spend more and more time with it.  And since content providers make their money and/or get their good feels from getting more clicks, they continue to turn out content that flatters me more and more.  They become, in essence, my best friend.

Except, of course, they haven’t really proven themselves trustworthy.  When a person you know shows signs of being false, it’s rarely a one-off.  There are repeated signals and, eventually, even if you ignored some of the signals (usually because they also involved flattering, i.e., agreeing with you) you will eventually pick up the scent of falsity, and the incipient friendship will wear thin.  But when a content provider shows signs of being false, we rarely recognize it, because, well, they are in agreement with us all the time, unlike a real human being.  They are permanently comforting.  They are better than our best friend.

It’s almost unavoidable that this should happen, to all of us.  We’re all drawn to agreement with ourselves; a source that provides constantly agreeable content will therefore be constantly agreeable.  The only way I know to deal with this is to be very careful about what we hold and value, such that what we find agreeable is limited.

For instance: I hold a good many things to be true, but I have varied degrees of certainty about them.  I hold my religious beliefs, for instance, more firmly than my political ones.  But this by itself only means that I am less likely to be seduced by political friendtraps than by religious friendtraps.  Real resistance to being freindtrapped comes with being deeply committed to the pursuit of truth.

Tribes, Traitors, and “A Bargain for Francis” (I)

My kids love the books “Bread and Jam for Francis” and “A Bargain for Francis”—part of a series about a young female badger and her humanoid life.  Lately the latter book has been on request multiple times a day, allowing yours truly ample opportunity to perfect my Oscar-nominated voice performance as the scurrilous friend/villain Thelma.

After Thelma tricks Francis into a one-sided “bargain,” Francis cleverly pulls the wool over Thelma’s eyes in turn, winning her own back, leading Thelma to remark that she will “have to be careful” when she plays with Francis from now on.  (The author is fully cognizant of the irony and hypocrisy involved, even if not all child readers fully grasp them.)  Francis replies to the effect that it is not as fun being careful as being friends, and poses the book’s central question: “Would you rather be careful, or would you rather be friends?”

Of course, we’d all rather be friends.  To be able to trust those we meet and whose posts and blogs and editorials we read, whose radio shows and podcasts we hear—is pleasant.  And that, I think, is one of the reasons why human beings end up behaving in tribal ways.  Explanations for tribalism usually are negative, running the gamut from religious remarks about original sin to Machiavellian realpolitik observations regarding safety in ideological sameness to scientific accounts about the evolutionary origins of mistrust for the Other.  Most accounts explain tribalism as bad; and tribalism, as usually defined, is certainly pernicious, if also (again, as usually defined) ineradicable.

But there is something bigger than tribalism—I won’t call it the light side of tribalism; that gives tribalism too much credit—which is simply the desire for human connection, the desire to be able to trust and be at ease with others—the desire that the other be not Other but rather (to steal a page from Martin Buber) Thou.

So we make the choice to be friends.

To Ash or Not to Ash

It's entertaining, in ordinary times (not to be confused with "Ordinary Time") to listen to the Ash Wednesday Gospel, where Our Lord talks about not letting your fasting appear before men, and then get a big ole' prominent cross smeared on one's forehead.

Then again, the first and second readings are about public professions of faith.  The first reading, Joel 2:12-18, talks about repentance and a fast, but one that is to be proclaimed to "the multitude" by trumpets; the second reading (from 2 Corinthians) is about Christians being "ambassadors for Christ."

So which is it?  Are we to be public about our religious practices, as the readings suggest, or private, as Jesus's words might seem to imply?

The obvious answer is that it depends.  What Jesus warns against is making one's religious practices a point of pride, a way of suggesting to those who witness them that one is, in fact, better than they.  If you're getting your ashes to look good to your coworkers, Catholic or otherwise, you run afoul of his admonition.  The same goes for any religious version of virtue signaling (and indeed, for virtue signaling itself!).

In fact, to use a religious practice as a way of showing off one's virtue is precisely not the right way to be an ambassador for Christ.  Fasting, almsgiving, and praying so everyone can see how observant you are is ... not Christlike.

Yet neither is it Christlike to act as if Christ has no part in our lives.  If his relationship with us really is the most important part of our lives, we'd expect it to show to others: both in terms of our being a kind person, and in terms of our having about us from time to time the physical paraphernalia of religion.  One would expect a Christian to, for instance, sometimes read from a Bible or other religious book; expect them to take some time off around Easter and Christmas to worship; one would expect a Catholic to make it to daily Mass sometimes, or have a rosary or crucifix in their pockets or at their place of work, or, well, have ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday.  Not because these things prove our holiness, but because part of being an ambassador for Christ means not hiding the fact that you belong to him.

Blog linkup: https://rosie-ablogformymom.blogspot.com/2021/02/just-because-volume-5.html#more

This Is Another Bad Argument, or, Uninformed and Unfiltered Thoughts about Child Tax Credits

The Romney plan has been critiqued by (if memory serves) AEI, and Romney's fellow senator Mike Lee, but praised by Lyman Stone.  The reasons are complicated, and the internet will no doubt yield up its details to you (translation: I am too time-pressed to look for good links right now, and too scrupulous to tack in subpar ones).  But to prepare you for your own research, and your duty of forming a personal opinion on the matter--and I do think, unlike many things, it is worth your time to consider this sort of issue, so as to better decide what sort of candidates to support--let me point out one really bad argument.

AEI (and others) have raised skeptical brows at the plan for its potential to reduce employment, via subsidizing parents with young children.  Translation: if you give people who have children more money, they are likely to work less, and spend more time with said children.

Now I quite understand that we don't want a world in which having children is so lucrative that people have more children--children they may even proceed to neglect--just so that they can sit back and live the good life on government checks.  I am quite aware of the potential pitfalls of welfare--as I am of the necessity for some sort of welfare system.  (Hello, Catholic Church and others ...)

But criminitly, folks, is it really so terrible if our GDP goes down because parents are spending more time with their kids?  Really???  If, I dunno, dad and mom are both making 20K each, and neither can afford to stop working, so their three wee tots end up in cheap after-school activities year-round ... is it really so bad if an extra 10K from the government enables one of them to quit work, cancel those activities, and spend the after-school time going on long walks as a family?

"Reduce employment," forsooth!

That, my friends, is a Bad Argument.

Unless, of course, you have another argument prepared for why, exactly, Employment As High As Possible is the best thing since sliced bread.  You'd still be wrong, of course; but your argument would be a darn sight better.

The Halloween Option

 N.B. The title of this post is the one I originally gave the piece, and not the one the editor chose for it (see link).  As all writers know, editors have this privilege!  Usually I would simply go with what an editor gives me, even on my personal blog; but in this case, since the title chosen made (unintentionally) nearly the opposite point to what I was trying to make ... well, here you are.  You can decide for yourself whose title was better.

Over the last few years there has been an acceleration of a trend dating back at least to the late 1700s: a liberal concern with a perceived illiberal tendency in religion. From Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (first published 1776–1789) to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the idea that religion is peculiarly likely to promote oppression has remained a regular contributor to debates about the nature of a good society.

Certainly religion has colored many a military conflict; there are also myriad conflicts involving people fervently devoted to the same religion. Which of these two facts is the more scandalous to religion itself is a fair question. Yet even without religion, the world has consistently managed to upset itself, as the 20th century proved.

Nevertheless, the specter of fundamentalist government haunts some opinion makers. Recently Katherine Stewart explored Josh Hawley’s religiosity in a New York Times article, “The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage.” Stewart, who has made an extensive study of the religious right, worries that “Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right.” She draws this conclusion from Hawley’s critique of Pelagius, who held (in her characterization of Hawley’s analysis) “that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.” This Pelagianism redux is found (Stewart reports Hawley as arguing) in Anthony Kennedy’s suggestion that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992).

According to Hawley, the idea that human beings have complete power of choice over their own lives is dangerous; according to Stewart, Hawley’s is the truly dangerous idea.

Both ideas are dangerous, of course. But of the two, it is Hawley’s which (whatever its latent link to fundamentalist tyranny) has more purchase in reality.

Every society restricts how people can live their lives. Asserting a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is one such restriction — when the Declaration of Independence claims these rights for my neighbor, they deny me the right to define my own concept of ideal existence as piratical. Now of course, laws against murder, slavery and theft do seem at first blush to be reasonable exceptions to the absolute freedom desired by Pelagius, Kennedy and Stewart — after all, it is only fair that my freedom to choose how to live my life should not infringe upon my neighbor’s equivalent freedom.

But we hardly stop at this libertarian ideal. Depending on where in America you live, you may find yourself in a neighborhood that bans smoking, littering, public drunkenness, public indecency, threatening language, driving on the wrong side of the road, jaywalking, making too much noise, having a house of the wrong colors, certain types of yard displays (political, seasonal or religious) and failing to wear a mask. In fact, as a society we are constantly infringing upon each other’s liberties.

Read the rest at the Register: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/good-neighbors-make-good-fences

"A Pirate, Horror!"

These days my children have become fascinated by Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance.  This follows a previous fascination with The Mikado, only suspended temporarily because their parents had a severe case of earworm.  But I can only recommend: nothing is more hilarious than hearing one's small children trot around humming "Defer to the Lord High Executioner" or rollicking like a band of, well, pirates.

Which brings me to my point.  The version of The Mikado that we use is the excellent Stratford production referred to on these pages before.  I have yet to find a version of Pirates (including Stratford's) that quite does the same trick.  The Papp version, while hilarious in its way, is far too screechy (particularly the women's choruses) to be the sort of soundtrack that I want on a daily basis; as much to the point, perhaps, is the fact that the kids found the mugging and singing a bit much.  (Good for them, I say!  The time for gross parody will come soon enough.)

So we've tried out a number of Pirates, and settled on one by a minor company that's good "in the usual way, if you know what I mean, Pooh," but not great.  And so it struck me the other day, hearing those "Rough men" declare that they lead a "Rough, rough" life--I've been exposed to a number of productions of the operetta now, and seen a whole range of talents, from the exceedingly amateurish to the highly polished.  I've seen good and bad Mabels, Fredericks, Major Generals, Policemen, and choristers.  What I have never seen, however, is a bad pirate.  The pirates are always excellent.  There's just something about playing a pirate that makes even a college freshman, not really interested in choir, but urged on by heaven knows what incipient girlfriend, mother, or sainted aunt, to--put on his best effort?

Or is it be himself?

Men: the by-nature-piratical sex.