You can find my contribution to the great Hitchens debate in the latest Claremont Review of Books.
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God is Not Great Is Not Great
26 Jun 2007 09:23 am
Comments (61)
from the review: Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain...
Here's the bit I've neve understood about the relationship between religion and morality. As an athiest, I have to develop a morality based on reason (not "Science", please, whatever that word means in the context of morality). Those who are religious apparently rely on the direction from one or more gods.
But since as a society we believe that those who claim to receive divine revelation on a daily basis are insane, religous-based morality largely means reading old books that we know now were poorly translated.
what makes these books any more reliable as a source of morality than one's own conscience, and how among the various messages in the books does one select?
it has always seemed to me that people will live by whatever moral code they choose, and find language within their religious codes to support their positions. As an ex post facto crutch, then, the Bible is even more useless toward developing a moral code than comparative studies of chimpanzees. there, at least, we can see whether certain moral codes actually have utility in extending the success of the tribe.
Francis,
You seem to be defining morality in terms of "extending the success of the tribe," whereas a religious person tends to define it as "doing what God asks of me." Christianity was originally intended (by Paul) to transcend notions of tribe and bring individual souls into more direct contact with God. All morality for the Christian is supposed to derive from that, so that good works and such are vehicles for becoming more godlike, not for creating an earthly utopia. At least that's how I interpret it.
Re: what makes these books any more reliable as a source of morality than one's own conscience, and how among the various messages in the books does one select?
I think you have a false picture of the relationship between religion and morality. Fundamentalists of course do mine sacred books for moral precepts and often leave it at that (or claim that they do). However more generally, religious morality begins with one or more general spiritual precepts, whether the Golden Rule, or the Four Noble Truths, or whatever, and tries to reason (yes, reason) its way as to how these precepts ought apply in specfic circumstances. And yes, sometimes religious thinkers get it wrong and even end up betraying their first principles (see: the Inquisition). But that's a human fault, and do you suppose that you will never get your morality wrong?
[A]s a society we believe that those who claim to receive divine revelation on a daily basis are insane.
You might believe this, but I don't think "society" does. As a Catholic, I believe that God gave my Church the ability to determine whether claims of divine inspiration are valid or not. The early Church determined that four Gospel accounts of Jesus' teachings were valid, and that several other accounts were not. More recently, the Church has determined that three children in Portugal were divinely inspired, but that six children in Bosnia probably were not.
[I]t has always seemed to me that people will live by whatever moral code they choose, and find language within their religious codes to support their positions.
Here again, the Catholic Church has an answer for you: she calls out those who seek to use Biblical language to support positions contrary to her own.
You are welcome to dispute either or both of these truth claims. But you ought to recognize them as claims worthy of investigation and (if you disagree) careful refutation, instead of dismissing them as an "ex post facto crutch."
but Bill, how do you know what god wants? whom do you believe, and why?
frex, on NPR this morning there was a story about a gay man leaving the Mormon church.
Why does the Mormon church hold homosexuality to be such a serious sin? If the answer involves a cite to Leviticus, why does the church focus on the ban on homosexuality to the exclusion of other conduct discussed in Leviticus which, if followed, would get people arrested?
the statement in Leviticus is about a person's relation to god, not to government. And Christ's core message, as best I learned in Sunday school, was (a) render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and (b) love each other as onesself.
which would, in my view, lead to the conclusion that good Christians should support state recognition of gay marriage as an expression of their love for others and an approval of equal treatment by the state.
'...there is the fantasy of a sexual utopia, since "the divorce between the sexual life and fear, the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse." '
Well at least he's honest about his ultimate motivations. That's what they all want, no? To release that chaos which was reined in by Judaic law?
I don't see how the fact that HIV infection is even worse in Protestant areas gets Catholics off the hook for advocating against condoms, for a couple of reasons:
1. It may be that evangelical Protestant teachings about sex are even worse or are even less effective at controlling the spread of HIV. That wouldn't establish that the Catholic teachings are good.
To see this, all you have to do is make an analogous argument that Ross would never accept-- that in countries where comprehensive sex education is tought and religious adherence is very low, such as in Northern Europe, HIV infection rates are extremely low compared to in either Catholic or Protestant areas in Africa.
Of course, that doesn't prove anything at all. But neither does Ross' statement about Catholic areas.
2. Ross is eliding the point that the Catholic teaching against condoms is bad-- indeed, highly immoral-- theory. You don't have to be a strict utilitarian to understand that sexual morality, even if one thinks that is an important and useful concept, is simply less important than human life.
Indeed, Catholics don't believe this, really. I don't think that Pope Benedict would defend a brutal dictator who had killed millions of people but was faithful to his wife, never used birth control, and enacted laws against abortion. Neither would Ross or any other rational Catholic.
But that, essentially, is what the condom policy is. The teaching of sexual morality is so important that IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER OR NOT THE CONDOMS WILL SAVE MANY LIVES. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But that DOESN'T MATTER. All that matters is preserving the "purpose" of sexual activity that God supposedly ordained.
just a great review - thanks
Thanks for linking to this fine review.
Hitchens will never prove or establish anything, in all his ire- and anecdote-ridden prose.
That said, he can sometimes entertain. And his take on the Ten Commandments is worth engaging.
There's much in Ross's review I could quibble with, but I don't blame him for lapsing into argument by insinuation. I can see how reading a whole book of Hitchens would do that to you. And on the big points, Ross is right.
Francis, just as reading Christopher Hitchens makes me want to drop everything and go to church, hearing the weak, question-begging argument that morality is impossible without God makes me want to join Hitchens' jihad. Thankfully, that's not what Ross does-- he just asserts that Hitchens doesn't establish where his principles come from.
'putting the godly in the dock'
nice
Dilan,
The Catholic church says people shouldn't use condoms (or other forms of birth control). It also says that people shouldn't have sex outside of marriage. Why do you think it is logical to assume that someone would listen to and follow the first teaching while ignoring the second?
Elvis: fair comment.
since I haven't read Hitchens' book, I can't comment on the accuracy of the review. But at a basic level, the review misses the point.
As Douthat accurately points out, there is little new to be said about the problems with religion. What is new, however, is the willingness of major literary figures from vastly different fields (Dawkins and Hitchens) to write about those problems in a way that is apparently tremendously appealing to the general public.
Religion plays no role in my life, except when I wonder about the claims that faith, even when opposed by reason, should guide public policy. I didn't particularly feel that I was alone in this view. But Americans United for the Separation of Church and State doesn't exactly get a lot of air time.
So when PZ Myers started blogging about his frustration with people who use claims of faith to chill public debate, and then became one of the most popular bloggers out there, I was pleasantly surprised. And when Dawkins and Hitchens' book rose up the bestseller list, I was very surprised. Apparently the most recent new awakening is drawing a backlash.
so, the relevant point is not what Hitchens wrote. It's that he wrote it at all, and in a way that is selling.
My only question is: Ross, is it really quite fair to hash Ehrman in with Pagels? I haven't read Ehrman, but I get the feeling that even though his route to apostasy doesn't say much for his brains, he's not quite the same degree of popularizing-axe-grinder, and has some element of scholar.
Francis,
Alternatively, one could look at things and say "geez, atheism has become as popularized, muddy-headed, and star-obsessed as the more lowbrow strains of religion. I mean, we've gone from Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell to these guys."
Ross,
Your review is elegantly written and makes many valid points. I have a problem, however, with this parenthetical remark:
(This last bit is the kind of nonsense that only an intellectual could believe—that religion, rather than biology and human nature, is responsible for making sex physically and emotionally perilous, or linking promiscuity with disease, or intertwining the personal and the political.)
If any social arrangement manages utterly to remove the perilous from our experience of the sexual domain, I too will be much surprised. But you make an opposite error here in denying the relevance to people's sexual experience of emphatic, morally charged religious ideologies purporting to offer intricate commandments, prohibitions, and guidance about these intimate matters, ideologies taught and absorbed since childhood. It ought to be uncontroversial to observe that of course religion shapes people's emotional and intellectual experience of sexuality. Whether its influence tends to be benign is a complex question, and I ought not to undertake to persuade you of my view here. But surely upon reflection you can agree that people's experience of sexuality is mediated through cultural institutions, including religious ones.
I agree 100% with the marquis of carabas-- it's much easier for an opponent of Ehrman to caricature his personal history than to refute his scholarship.
Elvis,
Well, I haven't read Ehrman, and people who know more than I do tell me he has (possibly due to his personal history) some serious tendency to assume the worst of orthodox transmission, not perhaps in a scholarly-neutral way. But he's no Pagels.
Given the "Q" bit, I can't imagine Hitchens read Ehrman very well, which I guess is the real point.
Mike S.:
Obviously, people don't listen to the Catholic Church on either point, but even if I take your premises, the answer is fairly simple. Has it ever occurred to you that a lot of HIV infections in Africa occur among women who are faithful to their husbands? And Pope Benedict's instructions to those women, apparently, are to lie back and take it. (No divorce, no condoms.)
I'm no bishop but I think a spouse may, under Catholic teaching, withhold intercourse if there's good reason to think it may put the spouse's life at risk. I doubt Benedict disagrees with that.
Re: And Pope Benedict's instructions to those women, apparently, are to lie back and take it.
Um, condoms are not for female use, and so women have no choice in the matter no matter what their religious beliefs.
Um, condoms are not for female use, and so women have no choice in the matter no matter what their religious beliefs.
You must be joking.
marquis:
The advice to women, in poor, patriarchal societies, to withhold sex, is no advice at all. Even if we assume that the woman has the power to withhold sex, and that she won't be raped anyway, and that she wants to withhold sex and be celibate for life or waiting for her husband to die (remember, under Catholic doctrine, she can't divorce!), how the heck is she supposed to know if her husband is HIV-positive? The whole point is, they don't always tell their wives about the prostitutes that they are seeing.
Look, this is all so divorced from the real world that it just makes its advocates look bad. In the real world, it would benefit these women immensely if they could point to religious authorities and say that it was important to use condoms. It would give them some bargaining power. Instead, you have a church that feels it is more important that they don't use condoms than whether they live or die. That's just wrong-- I have a lot of respect for the Catholic Church and many of its traditions, but some aspects of Catholicism are just indefensible and totally immoral.
Dilan: Your last post is based (unintentionally, no doubt) on two strange premises.
1. The husband will not tell the wife about his affairs and visits to prostitutes(quite likely true), but he would be willing to wear a condom if she so requested, even though this would be an tacit admission of guilt.
2. The husband is so evil that he might even go so far as to rape the wife, but he would meekly accommodate her desire for a condom if asked.
I will go out on a limb and say that I would be surprised to learn that the Church's teaching on condoms has caused one case of HIV or AIDS anywhere in the world at any time.
P.S. for Ross: So Hitchens hates circumcision! I suspect he, not Sullivan, was the real reason you came to the practice's defense so strongly.
Mike S,
The Catholic church says people shouldn't use condoms (or other forms of birth control). It also says that people shouldn't have sex outside of marriage. Why do you think it is logical to assume that someone would listen to and follow the first teaching while ignoring the second?
Because even people who assent to the teachings may have difficulty obeying them. It only takes one act of unprotected sex with an infected partner to transmit the HIV virus. In Africa, women frequently become infected with HIV from sex with their husbands. The husbands become infected through sex with another partner, often a prostitute. The Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms not only by people who are simply at high risk of infection, but even for sex between married couples when one partner is known to be infected. And the harm of the Church's teaching is not limited to Catholics who become infected through obedience to its no-condom teaching, but to anyone who has greater difficulty obtaining condoms or obtaining safe-sex information as a result of the Church's efforts to discourage or prevent condom use by anyone. The Church's teaching is obscenely, criminally irresponsible.
The Church's teaching is obscenely, criminally irresponsible.
Well, unless the reasoning and moral conclusion is actually correct.
There may be some interesting debate inside the Church, between those who think the reasoning is flawed (not all of them being general heretics who have no interest in Christian sexual teaching, period, though some -- the Andrew Sullivans and Garry Wills of the "Catholic" world, certainly are) and those who think this is correct and binding moral teaching. But why the Church should change anything based on the criticisms of Hitchens, Dilan, or anyone else who _rejects completely the possibility that Catholic moral teaching is Truth, grounded in revelation by the Holy Spirit_, I cannot imagine.
The moral teaching to love your enemies is, if not true, probably criminally irresponsible -- certainly the advocations to sell all you have and give your life to Christ are irresponsible. If not true, they're mad. But it does matter if they are true, which isn't an aspect of the debate that these critics can take into account.
"But why the Church should change anything based on the criticisms of Hitchens, Dilan, or anyone else who _rejects completely the possibility that Catholic moral teaching is Truth, grounded in revelation by the Holy Spirit_, I cannot imagine."
I don't know, maybe because every religion has changed all sorts of unpopular things because of criticism coming from outside the Church, INCLUDING Catholicism? (The reforms passed in the wake of the sex abuse scandal being the most recent example.)
Look, you can pull out your mysticism about "Truth", "Holy Spirits", and all that other mumbo-jumbo, but the fact is, the Church, just like every other human institution, is quite aware of outside criticism.
Further, if you really believe that God would prefer that a woman be infected with HIV by her dishonest husband than that the couple use a condom and remain uninfected, you worship something profoundly evil, not a benevolent God.
Well, unless the reasoning and moral conclusion is actually correct.
True. Of course, you could say the same thing about the teachings of, say, the Taliban.
The moral teaching to love your enemies is, if not true, probably criminally irresponsible -- certainly the advocations to sell all you have and give your life to Christ are irresponsible.
The latter teaching is definitely irresponsible. Fortunately, all but a very few Christians ignore it. Cherry-picking from their sacred scriptures (and calling it "interpretation") is standard Christian practise.
if you really believe that God would prefer that a woman be infected with HIV by her dishonest husband than that the couple use a condom and remain uninfected
What a loaded statement! A better way to think about the issue might be phrased this way: on balance, and considering the alternatives, does promoting contraception encourage or discourage responsible sexual behavior? Reasonable minds can come to different conclusions, ever after accounting for sad hypotheticals like the woman Dilan Esper describes.
Dilan,
But this is the problem -- of course the Church has changed temporal, mutable policies on the basis of outside criticism (though if you think the post-scandal changes were rooted only in the animosity of the Boston Globe and not in the scandal among the faithful, you think even less of the bishops than I do). But, for Actual Catholics, the Church IS NOT MERELY A HUMAN INSTITUTION. The doctrines of virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ are not popular with non-Christians, and even offend many Episcopalians these days. For the Church to change them in line with outside opinion would be to reject the very foundation of what we believe the Church to be, as you can surely see. Contraception isn't in that category, but true moral teaching is pretty much the kind of thing the Church, if it is God's Church (which I know you don't think it could possibly be, which is why I'm saying the Church shouldn't really give a flip what you say), might not have any business changing because you don't like it, or because on your reasoning (which excludes God completely), it is false.
That's all.
"But that, essentially, is what the condom policy is. The teaching of sexual morality is so important that IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER OR NOT THE CONDOMS WILL SAVE MANY LIVES. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But that DOESN'T MATTER. All that matters is preserving the "purpose" of sexual activity that God supposedly ordained."
You misunderstand the Churches policy. The Church is responsible for promoting a environment of restraint & monogamy. Often it is the case that while (certainly) the use of a prophylactic in an individual circumstance will prevent disease, the full blown promotion of birth control will undermined a society’s culture of monogamy & restraint causing more instances of disease as well as other undesirable effects like family breakdown and promiscuity.
“If we truly want to be “realistic” and objective, we should look to Uganda, the only African nation that has substantially curbed the rate of AIDS infection. Through an intense abstinence-based campaign, Uganda managed to reduce the infection rate from 29 percent to 4 percent in just ten years. Compare Uganda’s success with the dismal failure of the two most condom-flooded African nations, Botswana and South Africa. South Africa has been inundated with condoms and its rate of AIDS infection continues to soar at 22 percent of the entire population. Botswana’s situation is even worse, with 37 percent of the adult population infected by AIDS. Professor Norman Hearst, of the University of California at San Francisco, notes that in Botswana condom sales rose from one million in 1993 to 3 million in 2001, while HIV infection among urban pregnant women rose from 27 percent to 45 percent. In Cameroon, as well, condom sales rose from 6 million to 15 million, while HIV prevalence rose from 3 percent to 9 percent. Moreover, despite critics’ accusations that Catholic moral teaching is the cause of Africa’s woes, the facts demonstrate the contrary. The World Health Organization puts the figure for HIV infection in Swaziland at 42.6 percent of the population, where only 5 percent of the population is Catholic. Similarly, in Botswana, where 37 percent of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4 percent of the population is Catholic. Compare this to Uganda, where 43 percent of the population is Catholic, and the number of HIV-infected adults has dropped to only 4 percent.”Its seems to me that the cultural imperialism is a sexual revolutionized west that cannot philosophically promote restraint between consenting adults to any degree. While countries like Uganda enjoy success with condom usage being one part of a multi faceted approach that understands human sexuality within their larger culture.
"The Church's teaching is obscenely, criminally irresponsible."
You are ignorant of that teaching.
If one is engaging in fornication or adultery or homosexuality, no further sin is incurred with the use of a condom. This is Church teaching. For the Church to not encourage the use of condoms is not the same as it failing to recognize the doctrine of mitigating harm. Uganda’s ABC program is an excellent example. It is a program in witch the Church participates. In those areas were condoms are promoted, rather than discourage such programs the Church instead supplements them with discouraging prostitution and directly helping women escape a life of prostitution.
Fitz,
You are ignorant of that teaching.
No I'm not. The church prohibits the use of a condom not only where one of the partners is at high risk of being infected with HIV, but even in cases where one partner is known to be infected and the other uninfected. It's obscene.
If one is engaging in fornication or adultery or homosexuality, no further sin is incurred with the use of a condom. This is Church teaching.
I didn't say it isn't. But just out of interest, where is this church teaching documented?
A better way to think about the issue might be phrased this way: on balance, and considering the alternatives, does promoting contraception encourage or discourage responsible sexual behavior? Reasonable minds can come to different conclusions
Then I think an even better way to think about it would be this: On balance, does prohibiting contraception promote human welfare or harm it? I don't think reasonable minds can come to different conclusions about that.
Mixner,
Then I don't see how you and I can discuss things. I think that prohibiting (in the sense of moral teaching -- legal prohibition is a somewhat different matter) artificial contraception promotes human welfare -- the ends for which sex and humanity were created. But you think that makes me not wrong but prima facie unreasonable. So why listen to you at all?
For what it's worth, Ehrman says that Biblical scholarship just made him a more liberal Christian. He lost his faith because of theodicy problems. (He said this in a recent issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review, although the online version seems to be dead.)
carabas,
Yes, I think your position on artificial contraception is not just wrong, but unreasonable. Ridiculous, actually. I think most people probably agree with me on that, including most Catholics. If you don't want to listen to us, then don't.
Mixner -
I was one of the Catholics who thought my Church's teaching on contraception was both unreasonable and ridiculous. But when I met a college professor who felt otherwise, I had the courtesy not to say so, and as a result learned a great deal from him. Enough, even, to become convinced (slowly, and after much kicking and screaming) that prohibiting contraception would indeed promote human welfare.
My little tale may or may not encourage you to listen to those of us who feel that fertility is not a disease to be cured by drugs. But it may suggest that if you want to discuss something with someone, calling him "unreasonable" right out of the gate is not a great way to go about it.
Joe,
I was responding to an assertion about what "reasonable minds" could believe. I'm sorry if you don't like hearing that I consider your beliefs about contraception to be unreasonable, but I'm not sure what you would have me say instead.
I've read many defenses of the church's contraception teaching, but none I find remotely persuasive. Mostly, they seem ridiculous. I often get the impression that the people defending the teaching don't really believe their own arguments, or at least that they have very serious doubts about them, but feel obliged to offer some kind of defense, however weakly. I notice too that support for the church's position is essentially non-existent among non-Catholics, and extremely low even among Catholics.
“I've read many defenses of the church's contraception teaching, but none I find remotely persuasive. Mostly, they seem ridiculous. I often get the impression that the people defending the teaching don't really believe their own arguments, or at least that they have very serious doubts about them, but feel obliged to offer some kind of defense, however weakly. I notice too that support for the church's position is essentially non-existent among non-Catholics, and extremely low even among Catholics.”
That is undoubtedly because you misunderstand Church teaching. The magisterial and Catholic social thought are not a series of “No’s” – but rather an affirmation of restraint & marriage mindedness. Not only is it possible theoretically to undermine this superior ethos, its already happened in many nations.
If one is truly interested, the works of scholars like Robert Michael at the University of Chicago, or most prominently, Nobel-prize-winning economist George Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley – use an economic model to show how the introduction of the pill dramatically restructures our concept of human sexuality and its value.
George Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen, and Michael L. Katz, “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics CXI (1996); George Akerlof, “Men Without Children,” The Economic Journal 108 (1998).
To be curt, one can accurately say that sexual intercourse is seen in contemporary society as essentially recreational rather than procreational. Indeed, this is a dramatic departure in terms of human understanding of sexuality. People may disagree on if or how it could be reversed. Or you may find it to have been a panacea. Buts its difficult to suggest its had no impact at all.
Example: “[t]he U.S witness a dramatic rise in illegitimacy from 1965 to 1990 – from 24 percent to 64 percent among African-Americans, and from 3 percent to 18 percent among whites. He notes that ”public health advocates” had predicted that the widespread availability of contraception and abortion would reduce illegitimacy, not increase it”
Now posters have already ignored in masse the empirical evidence from Uganda’s program that teaching abstinence and faithfulness has dramatically reduced the spread of venereal disease. The work of the authors quoted above show how birth control itself has upset the balance that previously existed. A balance that discouraged out-of-wedlock sex and childbearing, encouraged monogamy and marriage and dramatically ameliorated some of societies most pressing social problems.
Fitz,
I think you're being possibly unfair to Mixner. I know people who understand precisely what you say about the Pill's general effect, and contraception's social impact -- but who also find the teaching, as applied between otherwise faithful and loving spouses who would have valid reason to make use of sympto-thermal methods, bizarre. There's a real slippery slope argument here, but equation of the condom-sex-for-fun culture with some methods for spouses to avoid children, in proper circumstances, is not quite fair. Now, it's probable that Mixner rejects Christian sexual morality in general, at least with respect to pre-marital intercourse and homosexual activity (and probably, as I've noticed, if he rejects those he doesn't really have any deep interest in faithfulness between spouses, without which the whole of love is destroyed), but there are certainly those who do not who find the distinction, given the legitimacy in some circumstances of natural methods, between natural and un-natural methods reasonable, but who are not otherwise unfaithful to Christian sexual teaching.
I think the ban on artifical contraception of certain kinds is a hard case to make compelling even to many genuinely faithful (though sinful -- aren't we all?) Catholics now -- which is strange, given how _obvious_ it seemed to most Christians for most of history, even to Protestants until this century. The reasoning, I believe, is correct but it is hard for many to find it compelling. Mixner's right there. But that we find true reason uncompelling in some emotional/cultural/intellectual climates is not surprising -- it is part of the fall of man.
Part of the problem is that because he was a great and holy Pope, many pretend that John Paul II's writings on this matter are vastly more convincing than Humanae Vitae. They aren't, though the general nuptial theology is good stuff -- Benedict hasn't gone into depth on the matter, but he's a more compelling (and amusing) writer, and offers reasoning that has less of emotional climate and more of intellectual force.
I hope and pray that the many who don't see this or who half-see it, or who do the wrong thing at the insistence of a good but unseeing spouse will find mercy and that the bad effects (and I know they are real) of the failure here are limited.
Re: which is strange, given how _obvious_ it seemed to most Christians for most of history, even to Protestants until this century.
The reason it seemed obvious is because people did not understand the process of conception until late in the 19th century. For a very long time it was thought that contraception (and masturbation, sodomy etc.) was the equiavlent of an abortion, that it killed a pre-human being (that is, a human without a human soul yet). We know better now: Sperm is not a "seed"; it just a haploid cell of its generator and has no individual identity that compels us to grant it moral respect. Unfortunately, whiel the Protestant and Orthodox churches (along with Jews, Muslims etc.) have aknowledged trhis and dropped ytheir categorical ban on contarception, the Catholic Church chose to invent a very new and tortured justification for the old teaching. Hence the airborne reasoning of humanae vitae.
Compare this to the Church's one-time ban on interest, something that was obvious to everyone too (including ancient pagan philosophers and Muslims) until some basic facts about economics were understood in the late Renaissance, at which point the Church more or less backed off what it had taught on the matter, while Protestants never bothered to adopt that particular ancient moral taeching.
John F
Nothing about your post above is remotely true.
Masturbation, contraception, sodomy was never akin to abortion or infanticide. A look at the first century Didache will confirm this. – They were sins against chastity and sex outside of marriage.
As far as usury, all such prohibitions still apply. Interest leading loans were and still are ripe for exploitation. Government regulation of interest rates and guarding against predatory lending has allowed for legitimate use of interest without usury. As far back as the crusades, the night’s templar charged interest for credit extended to pilgrims traveling to the holy lands.
Your understanding of Church history and teaching is not simply thin, but obviously and directly misleading and slanderous.
marquis:
I actually don't think we are that far apart on the issue of outside criticism. Of course I don't think that Catholics should stop believing in the virgin birth because of outside criticism. And of course I understand that to Catholics, the church is not just a human institution-- though it is also that!
But it seems to me that on this issue of condoms, the outside critics are clearly right, at least when it comes to AIDS and Africa. A general rule was imposed, and whatever its merit elsewhere, it doesn't leave any good options for Catholic women in Africa with HIV positive husbands.
"To be curt, one can accurately say that sexual intercourse is seen in contemporary society as essentially recreational rather than procreational. Indeed, this is a dramatic departure in terms of human understanding of sexuality."
That, to me, is an astounding claim. It ignores centuries of Hindu teaching-- the creators of the Kama Sutra certainly did not believe that sex was not recreational! It ignores the precolumbian socieities in the Americas such as the Moche, who recorded their sexual practices in pottery. It ignores the graffiti in Pompeii. It ignores the Greek tradition, which included not only recreational sex but SAME-SEX recrational sex.
I notice a tendency for conservative Catholics to assume that because there is a Catholic tradition of natural law (which I might add, is a claim I am not as unsympathetic to as most liberals; I think Aquinas is quite powerful on that issue), that everything they believe about sexuality flows from that natural law tradition. No way. You and me, baby, we're nothin' but mammals. We evolved to have lots of sex, because it assists us in reproduction and thus gives us an evolutionary advantage.
Whatever one wants to say about Catholic sexual morality, it is, in fact, a clearly unnatural, human (or, if you want, divinely-inspired) force to RESTRAIN the laws of nature. It is a levee built against a Category 5 hurricane. And there is plenty of evidence that far from being universally accepted by humans and throughout history, this is a very peculiar and recent phenomenon.
Fitz is right -- I don't know what JonF has been reading (or smoking) but this has no relationship to the history of the ideas as far as I can tell.
Indeed, one of the stronger arguments to be made against some kinds of artificial contraception is a claim that 1) it is difficult, in an objective, physical sense, what precisely diffrentiates sodomy from ejaculation into a condom and 2) most Christian/Catholic critics who are remotely, plausibly even moderately orthodox do accept that sodomy remains wrong even for married couples with grave reasons etc. etc.
The problem is that this argument does not apply to the Pill -- though the Pill has lots of other health and possible maybe could be abortifacent etc. effects that in some sense do secondary duty against it.
Dilan: I think the point is that technology has enabled us to pretend sex is _only_ primarily about recreation. Ancient cultures (and some Christians, if not usually theologians, a dour lot) certainly see sex as recreational, and it's obviously a super-potent "Dionysian" force difficult to constrain. So is vengeance (another tricky Christian prohibition of great significance, with roots both in natural law and in an absurd supernatural demand man on his own is clearly not up to meeting) -- but it was darn hard for them to deny that it was about procreation and such, because the physical force of reality made it so for most people who weren't exclusive homosexuals or asexual.
Actually, let me modify that a bit -- I don't think serious Christians properly saw sex as _recreational_ ever -- and they still shouldn't. It can be fun, but that's not quite the same. Chaucer was a Christian, if you ask me, and did see the "recreational" side, but saw other things too, and to some extent the _recreational_ is hostile to better views, in itself, unless recreation is seen as part of the play and joy of the _unitive_ aspect.
"It ignores centuries of Hindu teaching-- the creators of the Kama Sutra certainly did not believe that sex was not recreational! It ignores the precolumbian socieities in the Americas such as the Moche, who recorded their sexual practices in pottery. It ignores the graffiti in Pompeii. It ignores the Greek tradition, which included not only recreational sex but SAME-SEX recrational sex."
"It ignores centuries of Hindu teaching-- the creators of the Kama Sutra certainly did not believe that sex was not recreational! It ignores the precolumbian socieities in the Americas such as the Moche, who recorded their sexual practices in pottery. It ignores the graffiti in Pompeii. It ignores the Greek tradition, which included not only recreational sex but SAME-SEX recrational sex."
The Hindu tradition posits sex exclusively within marriage. Also with ancient Greece & Rome. These norms were established and understood as preventing childbearing outside of an established family.
Certainly everything from adultery to prostitution to homosexuality existed, (as they do today) but it is not to say they did not recognize the intrinsic link between sex & procreation and honor it accordingly.
I think you misunderstand what I mean by “recreational” – I don’t mean “not considered fun or pleasurable” I mean – Purely for self gratification, easily engaged in without further social purpose.
The Catholic social teaching on sex is within marriage. It posits that it must be open to life (no artificial contraception) but not that it must result in pregnancy. The other main aspect (prong) is inseparable from the first. That is it is a bonding agent, pleasure that brings a married couple closer together for the good of the couple and marital unity. This clause is as central and important as the first.
Catholic sexual teaching is not Puritanical (that was a heresy) nor are we Cotton Mathers on the subject. Think of the influence of erotic art and fresco in the Italian, Venetian, and Mediterranean traditions.
Just to highlight the moral complexity of this debate visa-vie the African AIDS problem.
"When people for whatever reason choose not to follow the values we promote as Church - within and outside of our community - then the bottom line is the real possibility that a person could transmit a death-dealing virus to another through a sexual encounter.""Such people, who are living with the virus, must be invited and challenged to take responsibility for their actions and their effect on others. They should use a condom in order to prevent the transmission of potential death to another," says Bishop Kevin Dowling, of Rustenberg, in South Africa's North-West Province. He also is a co-ordinator of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC) AIDS Office.
The Catholic Church sees the use of a condom not as a means to prevent the "transmission of life" but rather as a means to prevent the "transmission of death" or potential death to another, Dowling points out. He affirmed his belief in the Catholic Church's position that the only complete safeguard against infection by the HIV and AIDS is abstinence from sex before marriage, and faithfulness to one's partner in marriage.
http://www.aegis.com/news/ips/2001/IP010704.html
ALSO
GANDHI: WHAT HE BELIEVED ABOUT SEX, MARRIAGE AND BIRTH CONTROL
Mahatma Gandhi’s views on human sexuality aren’t what you would expect from a hero of the Left.
http://www.godspy.com/life/Gandhi-on-Sex-Marriage-and-Birth-Control-by-Daniel-Vitz.cfm
Re: Nothing about your post above is remotely true. Masturbation, contraception, sodomy was never akin to abortion or infanticide.
Oh, good grief, I suggest reading the Church Fathers (I mean the real Fathers, as in the 4th and 5th century guys, not 19th and 20th century wanna-bes). They condemned contraception because they believed that semen contained a "pre-formed" human being. In the Platonic terms "pre-formed" means a lot more than it does to us: it basically means a human being without a soul. So contraception (along with other "seed wasting" activities) wasn't quite murder-- no soul was involved-- but it was the taking of a human life.
That's it. The whole "uniative vs procreative" neo-Scholastic fandango was unheard of (because no one back then bought into Aristotle's teleology anyway). The latter BS was invented out of whole cloth so Rome wouldn't have to say (yet again) "Oops, we were wrong! Never mind". Why do you think Eastern Christendom (which is far more conservative than Rome) has no ban on contraception? The East never suscribed to Aristotle in the fisrt place, and made no pretense at being infallible in minor matters like this.
Re: Interest leading loans were and still are ripe for exploitation.
Of course they are! Nevertheless Rome once had an absolute, ironclad ban on the charging of any interest whatsoever. Interestingly enough, Aquinas regarded interest charging as the equivalent of sodomy. The Council of Lyons remanded Christian usurers to the judgment of the Inquisition for heresy. All Christendom shared this sort of moral teaching. So did (does?) Islam. Even Judaism banned interest on loans between Jews. Aristotle and Plato for once even agreed.
Guess what. Rome dropped that teaching. Yep, it changed its moral doctrine when it realized it was wrong. So Rome can be wrong. Get over it!
Re: I don't know what JonF has been reading (or smoking) but this has no relationship to the history of the ideas as far as I can tell.
I happen to be asthmatic so I don't smoke anything and I would like an apology for that uncalled-for snark.
And I have read farther back in history than most folks defending Rome seem seem to have attempted. I actually know something about the thinking of the ancients, including the ancient Christians (and that other other half of Christendom, called the East, which gets such short shift in most considerations of Christianity). Theology and Christian philosophy did not begin with Humanae Vitae, or even Thomas Aquinas.
Educate yourselves, K?
carabas,
Indeed, one of the stronger arguments to be made against some kinds of artificial contraception is a claim that 1) it is difficult, in an objective, physical sense, what precisely diffrentiates sodomy from ejaculation into a condom and 2) most Christian/Catholic critics who are remotely, plausibly even moderately orthodox do accept that sodomy remains wrong even for married couples with grave reasons etc. etc.
This is "one of the stronger arguments," is it? I dread to think what the weaker ones must look like. It's not even a clear argument at all. There's no clearly stated premises, reasoning or conclusion. I don't understand why you think there's no difference in an "objective, physical sense" between a condom-covered penis ejaculating inside a vagina and a penis ejaculating inside a mouth or anus. The physical location of the penis is obviously different, and the physical characteristics of vaginas, mouths and anuses are also different. And I don't understand how you think an appeal to the authority of "most Christian/Catholic critics who are remotely, plausibly even moderately orthodox" would justify a moral claim anyway. An assertion of authority is not an argument at all, let alone a "strong" one.
Er, Mixner -- authority and the "general teaching of the faithful" (with emphasis on _the faithful_) are pretty important guides to moral claims in the context of Catholicism. Outside that world, they may not be, but within they certainly are. My point is that to some extent, in a limited way, I don't care about outside that world.
Also, I may be mistaken, JonF, but I think it's less than clear that the Orthodox never had a (or don't still have, depending on who you ask) a teaching about contraception. They just don't seem to go on about it as much, which is not completely unreasonable. I may be misinformed there, and JonF's elaboration is a bit more sensible and reasonable interpretation than what I originally read him to be saying -- yes, the original reasonings behind the teachings (other than the force of tradition, explicit revelation, etc. which are pretty good on most of these points in my opinion) were based on bad philosophy and biology. So was Aquinas' weak position on abortion, for that matter. But yeah, I was hasty -- still, I don't think this makes the "like abortion" case you want.
"Guess what. Rome dropped that teaching. Yep, it changed its moral doctrine when it realized it was wrong. So Rome can be wrong. Get over it!"
This seems to be the gist of your attack. It is in fact incorrect. Usury is the sin, interest charging is the means. Once interest charging became disassociated with usury (once it was fair in practice) the Church changed its specific rule about interest. The usury still applies.
That’s not a change in “moral doctrine” but a change in application. A change in doctrine would be to say that loan sharking or predatory lending is now acceptable.
I will move on to your misunderstanding of sexual teachings later. For now its important you make the distinction between substance and particularity.
It’s not a silly game of Gotcha! Catholicism is a religion mot of the Book; but of the Word. It is a living tradition that continually reconciles itself with its tradition.
To expand on what Fitz said -- my complaint about this "having nothing to do with the history of the ideas" is not that there are not arguments that lean in this direction in the Fathers. There are -- I'll admit I haven't read everything the Fathers had to say on these topics, but that's partly because _in this case, the reasoning to justify common moral practice of Christians by the Fathers was less compelling than the actual practice and general inclination of the faithful_. And I don't think the faithful (and perhaps even Paul, who I am pretty sure includes these things in his condemnations of sexual immorality, without feeling the need to call them out explicitly) were not moved primarily by arguments at all, but by natural inclinations.
Call me a modernist, but I'm inclined towards Newman's notions of development of doctrine, which do not indicate that all reasoning and understanding ended with the Fathers, and if THEY don't have a good argument or understanding of something, it must be false.
My family has lived in Southern Africa for years. Some have worked in healthcare for the poor and have seen up close the damage the Church's policy has wrought. It is completely divorced from the African experience. Rape, infidelity and prostitution are real problems exacerbated by the social stigma surrounding condoms. If laws against marijuana don't stop people from smoking, how would creating a social stigma in patriarchal, polygamous societies (many undergoing civil wars or dependent on mining, both of which involve the periodic movement of men around medium-sized areas away from their families but near prostitutes) prevent risky sexual behavior. In the real world, the end result of the social stigma is that risky sexual behavior becomes riskier. Confucius believe that if all families were happy, there be would no conflict in the world. This is true in theory, but it is not helpful when applying policies to the real world. Nobody saved lives by arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
For those who actually read Ross’s review of Hitches work. The two most salient paragraphs that center in on what was talked about here are…
#1. Above I flesh out the statistics and actual Church teaching he references.
“I'm unpersuaded that the Catholic Church's stance on birth control has been a major factor in the spread of AIDS around the world, though again I'm merely relying on statistics—African infection rates, for instance, are highest in heavily Protestant countries; most studies suggest that serious religious practice correlates with lower rates of risky sexual behavior, even among people already infected with HIV—while Hitchens has the irrefutable power of anecdote on his side, specifically a few dumb statements about condoms from Third World churchmen.”
#2. This bit exemplifies perfectly the mindset on the left concerning sexual morality.
“And inevitably, there is the fantasy of a sexual utopia, since "the divorce between the sexual life and fear, the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse." (This last bit is the kind of nonsense that only an intellectual could believe—that religion, rather than biology and human nature, is responsible for making sex physically and emotionally perilous, or linking promiscuity with disease, or intertwining the personal and the political.)”
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/03/30/uganda10380.htm
The Ugandan program is ABC--C for condoms. It may well be both that a program that aims at confining sex to marriage works better than one that doesn't, and that encouragement of condom use is an indispensable element of any successful program.
But do consequences matter to the Church? Doesn't the gravamen of the Church's case against contraception go to the supposed nature and purpose of coitus, or really, of ejaculation, and insist that it is exclusively procreational? That's God's law. The consequences of adherence to this principle, good, bad, indifferent, are irrelevant; the prohibition is binding no matter what results ensue.
As to those results, doesn't the evidence come down strongly on the side of concluding that condom use reduces the incidence of disease and improves the situations of women and children? Is a Good Thing that determining whether to have a child is a power denied to men and women and left instead to the workings of nature and providence? Doesn't systematic evidence bear out Reality Man's contention that grief and misery follow from denial of access to or discouragement of the use of contraceptive devices? If so, then the Church does have a lot to answer for, then to a significant extent religion is doing harm.
I don't see that any article of a Christian creed implies that a pernicious practice is required of the faithful. The hierarchy has, however, decreed behavioral requirements that are pernicious. Even so, the laity in their wisdom, at least in some parts of the world, have contrived to ignore these requirements even as they continue to adhere to the creed. So Douthat is mistaken to suppose that the church's teaching never has harmful effects, and Hitchens to suppose that anyone who believes in the efficacy of the Mass and the creed must subscribe to those wrongful requirements.
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Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream
Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class
This atheist finds Hitchens to be absolutely insufferable.
Posted by pedro | June 26, 2007 11:00 AM