The Holy See Signals "Stop"

Until this week, there was a widespread expectation that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at their forthcoming June meeting might make some sort of pronouncement regarding our second Catholic President's right receive Holy Communion. Any such pronouncement would potentially have been problematic on several counts - not least because, according to Pope Saint John Paul II's 1998 Motu Propio "On the Theological and Juridical Authority of Episcopal Conferences" (Apostolos Suos, 24), a Bishops' Conference may not normally interfere in any individual Bishop's authority in his own diocese. And, however much support any such statement might have garnered within the USCCB, it would most certainly never have not been unanimous, which it would have had to be to be issued by the Conference with the kind of doctrinal authority, to which "the faithful are obliged to adhere with a sense of religious respect to that authentic magisterium of their own Bishops" (Apostolos Suos, 22). 

One would think that those limitations would have been sufficient to discourage what must seem to many to be a strange, manifestly partisan, dangerously divisive, and pointlessly quixotic effort, which would accomplish nothing in terms of eliminating the evil of abortion, while reinforcing the perception that this whole issue has increasingly become less about life and more about partisan political advocacy.

Now, however, a direct intervention from the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has seemingly signaled a further bright red light, signaling "Stop." The "red light" came in the form of a letter from Cardinal Luis Ladaria, Prefect of the CDF, to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, current President of the USCCB. The text of the letter does not seem to be accessible as yet, but several sources (Crux, America, NCR) have reported on it.

As reported by the above sources, Ladaria's letter reiterates earlier guidance requiring two stages of dialogue - first, among the bishops themselves, then, between bishops and Catholic politicians in their jurisdictions - and warns that the "possible contentious nature" of a national policy might "become a source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate and the larger church in the United states." The letter also advises the U.S. Bishops "to dialogue with other episcopal conferences as this policy is formulated in order to learn from one another and to preserve unity in the universal church." Given that no other national episcopal conference is comparably preoccupied with this issue, it may seem fairly obvious what lessons might likely be learned from dialogue with others outside the U.S.

Ladaria's letter also advised that any statement on this subject "would best be framed within the broad context of worthiness for the reception of Holy Communion on the part of all the faithful, rather than only one category of Catholics [politicians], regarding their obligation to conform their lives to the entire Gospel fo Jesus Christ as they prepare to receive the sacrament." And it pointedly states "it would be misleading if such a statement were to give the impression that abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest accountability on the part of Catholics."

Obviously, the debate is not about the Church's definitive teaching about abortion and euthanasia, about which there can be no legitimate dissent. Rather, the debate is about what practical political and legal approaches ("prudential judgments" in Church speak) may be most appropriate and effective in this particular pluralistic, non-confessional, secular society, in regard to which an authentic dialogue between religious and political leaders as recommended by the CDF letter would be most desirable. Indeed, a return to real dialogue about these moral, political, and legal issues among citizens in our society would be most desirable, in place of the current "culture war," tribal shouting match.

Meanwhile, within the Church, it remains the laity who are primarily responsible for political life and whatever degree of relative justice political life may at its best aspire to achieve. President Biden is not another Saint Louis IX. Nor, as president of a modern secular state, does he enjoy Louis IX's less saintly successors' authority within the Church. One of the features of the last century and more of Church history has been the progressive exclusion of lay public officials from roles of leadership and authority within the Church, thereby diminishing an entire dimension of lay representation and practical wisdom, which had been until relatively recently a taken-for-granted aspect of Catholic life. That said, Biden is certainly the most publicly prominent Catholic in this country - and (after the Pope) perhaps the most publicly prominent Catholic in the entire world. That prominence poses challenges, but it remains more an opportunity to be valued than a problem to be dismissed.

The first comparably prominent layman to exercise leadership and authority in the Church was, of course, Constantine. According to one wonderful legend, Constantine challenged the Novatian Acesius, asking why he separated himself from communion with the rest of the Church. Acesius said he objected to the Church's leniency in allowing certain Christians whom he considered sinners to participate in the sacraments. Constantine responded: Place a ladder, Acesius, and climb alone to heaven.

Unlocking the Cage

As more and more Americans get vaccinated, it is now clearly time - or at least very close to time - for most of us to start trying to live somewhat normally again (whatever "normal" might actually mean in a post-pandemic world). As someone who has not entered a restaurant since March 7, 2020, nor been to a movie theater, I need to hear that message as much as anyone. About 14 months ago, as the covid-19 pandemic spread uncontrollably and seemed poised either to kill us or totally take over the lives of those it didn't kill, we did the only thing we could. We responded by locking ourselves in a cage, guarded by distance, masks, and an abundant, obsessive-compulsive, overuse of hand sanitizer. That all made perfect sense at the time.

But that was then, and now is now. Thanks to the scientific miracle of highly effective vaccines developed with unprecedented speed, it is possible to stop the transmission of the virus - assuming, of course, people all get vaccinated. Sadly, many people around the world do not yet have that opportunity, and until they do the virus will to some extent remain a a real and permanent threat to all of humanity.  Sadly, too, there are many who now have the opportunity to get vaccinated but have not done so for political reasons. The only morally response to that is to require proof of vaccination - for schools, for example, much as has long been the case with regard to other vaccinations.

But, back to my problem. After 14 months, it has become easy to stay inside and not go anywhere. Too easy. And, all too often, the impression has sometimes been given that getting vaccinated makes little difference and that one should still maintain distance, wear a mask, etc. Of course, as long as there are unvaccinated people among us, some of those precautions may still make sense in certain settings. As long as I can't be confident that absolutely everyone on the bus has been fully vaccinated, I want the bus to require everyone to wear a mask. That makes sense.

But it also makes sense to start unlocking one's personal cage. Once you have been vaccinated and your family and friends as well, what then should you be doing? For sure, still wear a mask on the bus - for society's sake. But, as importantly, take that bus and go somewhere!

Living Lies

“If a prerequisite for leading our conference is continuing to lie to our voters, then Liz [Cheney] is not the best fit,” according to Ohio Representative Anthony Gonzalez, one of the nine other Republican House members who, with Cheney, chose to acknowledge their Emperor's lack of clothes and accordingly voted to impeach President Trump in January. Clearly, lying is indeed now a prerequisite for whatever passes for "leadership" among the Trump personality-cult that is the contemporary opposition party. When Utah Republicans booed their Senator and 2012 presidential standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, who as senator twice voted to convict Trump, they called him (of all absurd things) a "communist." Romney responded “aren’t you embarrassed?” Obviously, most Republicans are not.

Indeed, whatever one thinks of the "severely conservative" (as he called himself in 2012) Romney (of whom I am no more a fan than I am of Liz Cheney, neither of whom could I ever imagine voting for), he is obviously no "communist." Calling rival American politicians "communist" was always a bizarre and unprincipled tactic even in the worst years of the Cold War. Its evident absurdity three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union just exemplifies even further the  fantasy world which the Trump cult increasingly inhabits and its commitment to lies and more lies. One of the many ironies of our current crisis is that that Trump cult's organizational expression in the contemporary Republican party, in its sectarian character and its indifference to truth, increasingly rather resembles the only actual "communist" entity of any remaining significance still in existence, the Chinese Communist Party. And both seem to be devoted to Lenin's infamous call to employ "a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”

The overused (and at times tiresome) terminological distinction between being both/and as opposed to either/or nonetheless has some real meaning and value in politics. A healthy, well balanced society needs both its left and right wings, both progressive advocacy and cautious conservatism. If the Left's political purpose is to push society forward towards a more just and equitable future, the Right's role is to steer society prudently according to the truth of human nature and the lessons of human history. Even if the United States somehow survives the Republican party's Trumpist abandonment of constitutional democratic norms of governance (a survival which is by no means a certainty at this stage), the absence of anything resembling a serious conservative opposition party has already decisively damaged American politics for a long time to come.

(Photo: The Emperor's New Clothes, Illustration by Vilhelm Pedersen, Hans Christian Andersen's first illustrator.)

Making Sense of Mother's Day

A friend of mine once characterized Mother's Day as "a conspiracy of florists and greeting card companies." It is hard to disagree completely with that characterization; but, as with most such witticisms, it gets the story only partly right.

A more pointed critique would be that Mother's Day (and Father's Day and, for that matter, the way we obsessively "honor" our veterans) are all examples of our very American tendency to "honor" people in symbolic, virtue-signaling ways, which are completely contradicted by prevailing public policies. Somehow a society that falls all over itself to "honor" mothers every May manages to have the least pro-family, pro-mother, pro-child policies of any other comparably advanced society.

This disconnect may matter more than ever right now, when the Great Recession followed by a global Pandemic have highlighted the hopeless dysfunction and inequality in our society and the damage done in particular to children and families. And, speaking of children and families, have we not noticed that marriages are fewer, family-formation is down and our national birthrate is shockingly low (the lowest since 1979)?

So maybe Mother's Day might be reimagined as an occasion for actually thinking about (and eventually doing something about) this disastrous state of affairs. In which case, all the money spent to enrich those florists and greeting card companies might turn out to be well spent!

What Would Karl Say?

When I was in college and grad school in the late 1960s and early-mid1970s, Karl Marx, who would be 203 years old today, was all the rage - in particular, the writings and ideas of the so-called "Young" Marx - the Feuerbachian transformer of Hegeliansm and theorist of Entfremdung ("alienation"), popularized by "Frankfurt School" critical theorists like Theodore Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas. Simultaneously critical of both capitalism and of Leninist communism, and turned on by existentialism and Freudianism and whatever else seemed to fill in the gaps, my generation of students absorbed the vocabulary and some of the substance of the "Young" Marx's critique of society, starting with Ludwig Feuerbach's critique of religion.

Even then, however, the real-world prospects for any transformation of the world in any way that even remotely resembled Marxist categories appeared increasingly unlikely - and, if any thing, even less so after the collapse of the pseudo-Marxist Soviet regime two decades later.

As my one-time mentor Sheldon Wolin wrote in 2004, Marx's "predictions of the inevitable collapse/overthrow of advanced capitalism by a successful working-class revolution seem a relic of nineteenth-century romanticism. Instead of a steady growth in proletarian power, let alone in revolutionary ardor, organized labor underwent a dramatic, seemingly irreversible decline during the latter half of the twentieth century, suggesting that it is the workers who have been defeated - but by a different revolution" [Politics and Vision, Princeton U. Pr., 2004, p. 407].

Back in my day, "old left" ideas about proletarian revolution were giving way to "new left" alternative "revolutionary" identities, much as traditional liberal and social democratic commitments to the working classes have since been replaced by the vagaries and superficialities of "woke" progressivism.

Yet Marxist language and categories continue to enjoy a remarkable shelf life. For me, what remains interesting and viable from the historical wreckage of Marxism is what was perhaps Marx's main observation and insight - his recognition and appreciation of capitalism as the ultimate global agent of modernity's destruction of all that preceded it. 

As Ferris Jabr wrote in last Sunday's NY Times Magazine, "significantly elongating life without sustaining well-being is pointless" ["How Long Can We Live?"] Analogously, that is what global capitalism has done, it has radically improved human productive capacity, while radically altering and undermining the spiritual and moral dimensions of human life and the political character of society, thus preventing the political order from remedying the damage inflicted by capitalism on its citizens and (as we have more recently come to appreciate) upon our common home, the natural world. Thus, to quote Wolin again, Marx "set out to probe the question of why the state failed to promote that generality of shared advantages and burdens for its members which, according to Hegel, was the true mark of the political [p.412].

That probe remains the preeminent challenge for any post-capitalist political theory, as, analogously, the post-capitalist practical political challenge must be to rebuild a constituency to maximize rational political action and to minimize capitalist market mystification that disempowers citizens, as the governing political orthodoxies have been doing in American politics since 1980.