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SDG here (still not Jimmy) with more on materialism and the moral argument (continued from Part 2).

Back again to "like a louse" feelings. In my comments so far I’ve taken for granted that you, Archie, find bullying to be an activity that not only correlates with "like a louse" feelings, but also holds no positive appeal or attraction for you, as it does hold for some (who may or may not also experience conflicting "like a louse" feelings in connection with it).

On that assumption, for you there is no conflict, and we may say no particular virtue (if you want to call it that), in avoiding this particular form of lousy behavior. (Similarly, it’s no credit to me that I’ve never stoned anyone to death; I’ve never wanted to, though I hope that even if I did want to I would avoid doing so, in part for reasons that I bet you could exegete from the scriptures if you felt like it.)

However, it’s entirely possible, indeed virtually certain, that in some context or other you have experienced or anticipated "like a louse" feelings in connection with other behaviors that do hold some appeal for you — in other words, that you have considered possible courses of action that for you would correlate with "like a louse" feelings, but which on some level you would want to do or enjoy doing anyway.

Now, it goes without saying that few people will choose to incur "like a louse" feelings over something they didn’t want to do anyway. It’s also to be expected, as noted above, that the aversive effect of "like a louse" feelings may even discourage people from doing things they might otherwise want to do. This is only natural.

But also as noted above, aversive responses to unpleasant bio-electrical-chemical reactions are not always enough to put us off a given course of action, and this too can be reasonable and healthy (going to the dentist, sacrificing for the sake of some goal, etc.).

What happens if/when the appeal of the potential rewards of an activity correlating with "like a louse" feelings seems to outweigh the disincentive of those feelings (and any other negative incentives that may correlate with the behavior)? When one begins to feel, "Yes, this may make me feel like a louse, but I’m going to do it anyway"?

Is there any meaningful sense in which such actions can be judged "right" or "wrong"? Do such judgments matter? Or is it just a matter of one set of positive/negative incentives versus another set? If so, it is hard to see that anything more is at stake than which course of action ultimately carries the most attractive cost/benefit ratio.

For example, consider the situation of a man who might or might not choose to pursue the possibility of an affair with a married coworker. He realizes, let us say, that if he does pursue the possible affair, and if he is successful, this course of action may eventually cause pain to the coworker’s spouse (and possibly eventually the coworker), if the affair were to be discovered — which might never happen.

Even so, these considerations (along with various attendant socio-psychological pressures) may well make the man in question feel like a louse even for considering the affair (apart from any actual discovery or actual pain). And he doesn’t like feeling like a louse. For many people, that may be powerful disincentive.

On the other hand, the potential incentives and benefits are greatly appealing. The pleasure of intimacy with an attractive partner; the emotional pleasure of feeling good about his own attractiveness and his ability to score with such an attractive person (even one who is in principle "taken"); the coworker’s pleasure in feeling good about her own attractiveness to others (in spite of being herself "taken"); his pleasure in giving her that pleasure; etc.

Shall he forgo all these incentives solely to avoid the "louse" feelings that will follow, and console himself with the reassurances of the "good person" feelings for respecting the other person’s marital commitments? Or shall he take the pleasure that is offered and accept the consequences when they come, regrettable though they may be?

Let’s suppose that the man makes a principled decision: He will not pursue the affair. He is tempted, but he will not be a louse. He will do the right thing.

Well. From a materialist perspective, we may say that he has privileged his aversive response to the unpleasant bio-electrical-chemical "like a louse" feelings over the attractions and incentives of the action in question. Evidently, if the aversive response has won out, then it was a very strong disincentive indeed, and only he can judge the rewards and consequences for him of either choice.

At the same time, his position might be felt to be not entirely unlike that of the young man raised in Fundamentalism who chooses not to play cards even though he enjoys playing cards, because it makes him feel bad afterward. Viewed in strictly empirical terms, such strong principles could be thought to bespeak an overly sensitive aversive response to "like a louse" feelings. Is the aversive response really proportionate to the measurable and quantifiable downsides?

Granted, the feelings of pain that might result for the "wronged" spouse might be severe. However, even granting that our man should put the other man’s happiness ahead of his own — a principle for which there is admittedly a sound evolutionary basis, though there are also sound principles going the other way, but let’s bracket all that for now — suppose we ask to what extent would such feelings really be our man’s fault, and to what extent would they be rooted in a superstitious, illusory, delusional worldview in which categories of fidelity, commitment, love, jealousy and betrayal are believed to have a dimension, reality or significance exceeding or transcending bio-electrical-chemical phenomena in our brains?

I’m far from debunking pleasure and pain as empirical phenomena. Bio-electrical-chemical responses, however irrational, can be very painful or very pleasurable. However, in our experience it seems that some pleasures and pains result from a particular way of looking at things, and if the way you look at things happens to be wrong, and if it causes you pain, that’s your business, not mine. (There are important counterpoints here, but one thing at a time.)

For example, for a materialist, there are surely few more useless and unnecessary pains than that caused by fear for one’s immortal soul, fear of punishment after death. Supernaturalists who suffer such fear (not all do) could perhaps largely (perhaps not necessarily entirely) avoid them by abandoning a superstitious worldview. (I say "not necessarily entirely" because I doubt whether human beings can always, if ever, commit so entirely to a worldview as to exclude all possible remainder of doubt or suspicion about the opposite being true. Many if not all supernaturalists struggle with nihilistic doubt at one time or another; many if not all materialists at one time or another feel the pull of the unseen and transcendent.)

In the same way, on a materialistic worldview, it would seem that the pained feelings of betrayal that the coworker’s spouse feels may quite possibly be largely avoidable and rooted in superstitious beliefs. This is not to deny that a sound evolutionary rationale exists for the feelings we call love and jealousy and betrayal. On the other hand, a similar justification may certainly be mounted for infidelity. If it is only natural and understandable for a wronged spouse to feel pain, that doesn’t mean it isn’t equally natural and understandable to cheat.

Feelings of betrayal and outrage may reflect real danger to one’s real and practical interests. A woman who has paired with a man and borne him children has real and practical interests, above and beyond the emotional attachment between them, in the man’s commitment to staying with her and the children. Indeed, from an naturalist perspective it might be maintained that the real and practical interest of all parties concerned in a successful and stable domestic environment for the rearing of the children is the evolutionary basis for the feelings of emotional attachment between the spouses.

A man who has an affair with a home-wrecker that results in his leaving his wife and family is obviously acting in a way contrary to the real and practical interests of his wife, the children and society at large. On the other hand, a man who has a fling with a stranger on a business trip, say, as long as he is reasonably careful not to bring home any diseases or engender a child that could become a financial liability to the family, may still maintain his basic commitment to the real and practical interests of his wife, the children and society at large.

In the latter case, exactly how, if at all, his wife or anyone else has been truly harmed may not be as easy to say. Emotionally, she may well hold beliefs about fidelity and commitment that could cause her to suffer pain if she were to learn of his betrayal. From a materialist perspective, though, to the extent that these beliefs are rooted in a superstitious worldview, this is a pain she could largely spare herself. Feelings of jealousy have an evolutionary basis and are unavoidable, but where it is perceived that there is no real threat to one’s actual interests, jealousy need not be a debilitating or extremely painful condition.

For instance, a man who knows that his wife harbors an idle attraction for the water man (as in the current film Things We Lost in the Fire) may experience some jealousy even if he is confident that she would never actually act on such feelings. If he is secure enough in her fidelity, however, he may well not be greatly troubled by this; they may even joke about it.

In the same way, it could be argued from a materialist perspective that a woman who recognizes that her real and practical interests are not threatened by her husband’s business-trip fling need not be greatly concerned about it, even if she finds out.

Someone might contend that she has been "harmed" inasmuch as her husband has brought home memories of being with another woman that she will have to compete with in bed; on the other hand it might be countered that the experience of being with other women could conceivably improve his skill as a lover, and his wife could be the beneficiary of his improved technique. Anyway, it doesn’t need to be all about him. As long as he’s away on that business trip, there’s always the water man (or whomever).

The point is, if the deterrent effect of "like a louse" feelings has an evident evolutionary rationale, so does our willingness sometimes to ignore louse-feelings deterrence and do the thing that we want to anyway. Thus far natural selection has weeded out from human behavior neither monogamous commitment nor infidelity; and "like a louse" feelings, while they may be too strong to ignore entirely, are not necessarily strong enough to restrain us all the time, or even to make us wish they would.

The cad is simply following certain biological directives; the community that ostracizes and punishes him (if and when this happens) is following another. It all goes round and round, with no obvious basis for saying that acting in a way that correlates with "like a louse" feelings is never worth it.

Once again, as with bullying, I am far from suggesting that adultery is not a very great evil (though unlike in the case of bullying I have no experience of any kind to refer to here). But, again, I don’t think the evil of adultery can be fully understood only with reference to objectively measurable harm to the practical interests of any party or of the community, or to the aversive effects of lousy feelings. It is fully understood only in the light of a trans-material understanding of love, commitment and the dignity of the human person.

Continued in Part 4

This is why people should not get over-excited about this kind of thing.
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SDG AGAIN! STILL NOT JIMMY!

From my review of Elizabeth: The Golden Years (opening this weekend):

How is it possible that this orgy of anti-Catholicism has been all but ignored by most critics? As with The Da Vinci Code, early reviews of The Golden Age seem to be roundly dismissive, while sticking to safe, noncommittal charges of general lameness.

That said, I do note the MSM critical community is not uniformly blind to anti-Catholicism:

Note: One of the few reviews in a major outlet that doesn’t ignore the film’s anti-Catholicism ran in my local New York area paper, the Newark Star-Ledger. Critic Stephen Whitty writes that the film "equates Catholicism with some sort of horror-movie cult, with scary close-ups of chanting monks and glinting crucifixes. There’s even a murderous Jesuit, played by Rhys Ifans like a Hammer-movie bad guy, or a second cousin to poor pale Silas from The Da Vinci Code."

GET THE STORY.

P.S. Tune in to Catholic Answers Live today at 6:00pm EST to hear my radio reviews of Elizabeth, Bella, Lars and the Real Girl, and more!

Bonus! For those of you wondering about Jimmy’s whereabouts or even if he and I are one and the same, he’ll be hosting the show!

SDG here (not Jimmy) with some musings on the trend of falling church attendance, especially among Catholics..

In a combox discussion below about post-Vatican II liturgical changes, a reader suggested that post-Vatican II liturgical changes were responsible for a massive decline in Catholic church attendance. Of course church attendance has fallen everywhere, not just among Catholics — but another reader argued that Catholics have fallen away at much greater rates than their non-Catholic neighbors, implying that the fault must lie with changes in the Church:

The Church was in ascendancy until all of these shenanigans started up around Vatican II. Now? Decline in many fronts…

So what is the cause? Protestant church attendance went down by about 5-10% in the last 40 years, Catholics are down by over 60%.

Now, I’m not a sociologist. I suspect the second reader’s statistical factoid is misleading, for reasons that I may or may not touch on in a follow-up post or in the combox. Granted the statistic, though, or at least the general point behind it, I can think of a few possible factors that could contribute to such a disparity, though I don’t pretend to know what "the cause" is.

What I can say is this: Granted that the decline in church attendance has hit the Catholic Church harder than Protestant churches, it doesn’t follow that the basis for this disparity must be rooted solely in harmful changes within the Catholic Church. On the contrary, I think it is very likely that two very important factors involve ways in which the Catholic Church has not changed while the culture — including Protestant culture — has drifted further into error.

Let’s review a little history. Other than Vatican II and the 1969 missal, what other cultural changes have taken place from the 1960s onward?

Here are a few: The sexual revolution. The Pill. No-fault divorce. The Playboy Philosophy. The Me Generation. The evolution of serial monogamy. The DINK culture. The rise of what is only half facetiously called the "starter marriage."

Now, what are the most widely criticized and resisted teachings of the Catholic Church today? Here are two:

1. Divorce and remarriage.

2. Contraception.

To these two we could also add an obvious third, abortion, although there the Protestant culture is more divided, with strong areas of ongoing resistance to abortion within the Evangelical community. On the subjects of divorce and remarriage and contraception, on the other hand, the Catholic Church stands essentially alone against the culture.

Say what you like about the liberality of American marriage tribunals. The fact remains that in the Catholic Church it is still a whole heck of a lot harder to get divorced and remarried and keep on receiving communion as a Catholic in good standing than it is in any other church or ecclesial community. On this subject, what has changed over the last four decades is not the Church’s essential teaching, but the culture at large.

In an age in which skyrocketing divorce rates and multiple marriages are increasingly the norm, the Church’s ongoing fidelity to her essential teaching seems increasingly onerous and unrealistic. No other church or ecclesial community imposes the array of time-consuming, bureaucratic and potentially costly obstacles upon divorced members seeking to enter or having already entered into new unions. The Church does this out of fidelity to Jesus Christ, who declared that he who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, but the world grows ever deafer to this declaration.

As for contraception, if anything it is probably an even bigger issue. As prevalent as divorce and remarriage have become, contraception is ubiquitous, literally taken for granted. The question in our contraceptive culture is not whether to contracept, but only which type(s) of contraception to use. (The mere fact that one particular type of oral pharmaceutical has an undisputed and unambiguous claim to the definite term "The Pill" itself speaks volumes.)

Although surveys suggest that many Catholics are willing to keep coming to Mass in spite of dissenting from the Church’s teaching in both theory and practice, it remains a major impediment to fully appropriating and embracing one’s Catholic identity. It is a wedge driving untold Catholics to qualify their acceptance of the Church’s teaching and pastoral authority, making it easier to dissent and distance themselves on other issues and finally to abandon the Church altogether.

On a fundamental level, whatever mistakes and questionable decisions may have been made within the Church in the 1960s and beyond, on these two issues it is what the Church has done right that has pushed away some who might not have been pushed away in Protestant churches.

This isn’t to say that mistakes and questionable decisions haven’t made both issues a bigger stumbling-block when they need to be. For instance, I know a couple seeking full membership in the Church who have been trying to get an anullment hearing in another country for several years. Not just the Church’s teaching, but the imperfections of the Church’s leadership obstruct their way.

Nor am I claiming that liturgical changes in the 1960s and beyond — both authorized and otherwise — haven’t been factors at all.

I’m simply noting that the factors are complex, the social changes over the last few decades are complex, the issues are complex. We can’t simply conclude that if more people are falling away from the Church, the only possible explanation is limited to what the Church is doing wrong. At least in some cases, it may be what the Church is doing right.

Many disciples stopped following Jesus after his "hard sayings" in John 6, saying, "Who can accept this?" The same dynamic is at work today.

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with a follow-up thought on fasting (one that could have gone at the end of my "Short Primer on Fasting," but I didn’t want it to get lost).

It is this: Current Church discipline calls for Latin Catholics to fast on exactly two days out of the year, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday — and even on those two days, we are allowed to eat three times a day: one meal and two servings of "some food." Which, really, is not all that much of a fast at all. Those two days are also, of course days of abstinence from meat, along with the Fridays in Lent.

Actually, the law of abstention on all the Fridays of the year still holds for Latin Catholics around the world — but not in the US, where any Friday penance is voluntary. Outside of Lent and Triduum, Latin Catholics are not called to fast, or even, so far as I can tell, particularly encouraged to do so, even on their own. Oh, wait, there’s also the one-hour fast before receiving communion.

It would be one thing if this program of fasting and abstinence were regarded as a bare minimum beyond which Catholics were strongly encouraged to go with voluntary fasting and other regular forms of penance. Unfortunately, such encouragement is sporadic at best if not nonexistent.

This strikes me as — how shall I say it? — lame. Take the rigor of the fasting we actually do: one meal a day, plus two smaller servings of some food, two days out of the year. And a measly hour before receiving communion — even at a fifty-minute Mass, with communion distributed around the 40-minute mark, it would almost be hard to break that fast without actually eating in church.

I don’t think it’s too much to say that for most healthy adults below, say, retirement age, the current law on fasting amounts to a very mild hardship, if that — I would say almost a token act of ascesis rather than any kind of real sacrifice.

This is not to deny that for many people health considerations would reasonably prevent them from attempting even this much self-denial. Those with such conditions should be (and are) excused from any mortification at all. Others whose occupation entails physically demanding labor could find it excessively burdensome to do without regular doses of calories around the clock. Other cases would include pregnant or nursing mothers, Type 1 diabetics and of course children.

Even so, for countless hosts of ordinary, healthy adults, there is no reason why many of us shouldn’t be at least encouraged or even expected to try, say, abstaining from all food on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday — and on other days as well. I don’t necessarily mind putting the bar low for the sake of those unable to try more, but those who can try more should be urged to do so. Concupiscence is real — and tenacious. Our ascesis must also be real, not just a token diminution of four meals a year.

I think it would be wholly salutary if US Catholics were strongly and frequently encouraged to embrace year-round Friday abstinence — if not true fasting — as a voluntary practice. If fasting every Friday is too rigorous, perhaps we might consider a first Friday fast.

For many, fasting can and should mean abstaining from all food and drink except water only, or possibly water and other liquids. A partial fast — eating breakfast but skipping lunch and dinner, or perhaps skipping breakfast and lunch but eating dinner — might be another approach. (Most of us won’t curl up and die if we don’t get our two snacks.) Skipping breakfast entirely on Sunday morning, like Catholics did a few decades ago, seems like a very worthwhile proposal.

There is also the extraordinary discipline of extended fasting, of doing without food for a number of days at a stretch, ideally drinking only water. This is obviously an extraordinary undertaking that it could not be programmatically prescribed to people at large and is not something that nearly anyone would want to do with any frequency — but it’s not out of the reach of many ordinary healthy adults to try it at some point in their lives, or perhaps even to make a regular part of their Lenten practice. (You would want to talk to your doctor before trying this, as well as a good priest or spiritual director.)

Don’t think you could do a total fast for a day, let alone regularly? Don’t think you could do without breakfast on Sunday morning? Give it a try. Risk a little sustained suffering. Think about how Jesus suffered for you. Find out something about yourself — perhaps how weak you are (and therefore how in need of training); perhaps how strong you are (and therefore capable of doing more than the minimum).

Afraid it might give you a headache? Take some ibuprofin or aspirin (the emptiness and boredom of doing without food is enough). Afraid it might make you grumpy? Ah, there’s your chance for spiritual battle. Wash your face and wear a smile when you fast, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Give it a try. Do some penance — extra penance that your confessor didn’t give you and the Church doesn’t require of you. The soul you benefit may be your own — or it may even be someone else’s, to the greater glory of God and your greater heavenly reward.

SDG here (not Jimmy) with some brief thoughts on fasting.

In recent decades, many American Evangelicals have rediscovered the practice of fasting long practiced in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. In 1978 Richard J. Foster, a Protestant writer in the Quaker tradition, published Celebration of Discipline, a book on spiritual practices that introduced many Protestants to the ascetical and devotional heritage of the early monastic tradition, the mystical writings of John of the Cross, and other writers ranging from Brother Lawrence to Dostoyevski to Thomas Merton.

It was reading Foster as a young Evangelical that I first encountered the claim that fasting is a normative part of the Christian life: After all, Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount said to his followers "When you fast," not "if"; and in Mark 2 Jesus declared that while His disciples could not fast while He, the Bridegroom, was among them, in the days when the Bridegroom would be taken away, "then they will fast."

Later, as I learned more about the early Fathers, I discovered the Didache, one of the earliest extrabiblical Christian texts (possibly as early as 70 AD), which records that Christians in the apostolic Church fasted twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays (in contradistinction to the practice of the "hypocrites," which was to fast Mondays and Thursdays).

Even so, for many Christians, fasting continues to be a somewhat exotic or unfamiliar practice, perhaps carrying a suspicious whiff of works-righteousness or something of the sort. Why do we fast? How can we explain it to others?

What follows below the fold is my attempt, originally written for and posted in a non-Catholic Christian forum, to brief sum up what I understand to be the basics regarding the place of fasting in Christian spirituality as a form of penance and asceticism. Additional thoughts, insights, corrections and comments are welcome.

Continue reading “A Short Primer on Fasting”

SDG here (not Jimmy!), making an almost unheard-of foray from guest-blogging retirement limbo with a quasi-mystery photo.

Where am I and the rest of the Greydanus clan in this picture? (See bigger picture.)

I say it’s a quasi-mystery photo because some of Jimmy’s faithful readers (Esau, I’m talking to you!) may remember my mentioning the occasion of this photo awhile back.

If you know where we are because you remember my mentioning the occasion, don’t spoil it for other guessers right away.

If you know where we are because you recognize the location, post away.

This week I really mean to post on this occasion, and a related episode that’s actually a better story. Stay tuned.

Sandro Magister has a piece on one of the unexpected developments of B16’s pontificate–the fact that he hasn’t substantially reformed the Roman Curia.

Before being elected, Cardinal Ratzinger was openly critical of the way the curia operates. As an outsider who had spent years working in the curia and learning how it operates–and fails to operate–he was widely expected to initiate a thorough reform.

Early moves in his reign seemed to indicate that that was happening, only he was doing it in a piece-by-piece fashion.

Yet we’re now in the third year of his pontificate, and there is a notable absence of signs that a big reform is coming.

GET THE STORY.

Here’s a hopeful sign though:

Much more than curia appointments, Benedict XVI has at heart the appointment of bishops.

He dedicates much greater attention to these than John Paul II did. Before giving his permission, the pope keeps the dossiers of the designates on his desk for up to two or three weeks. And sometimes he rejects them, without giving an explanation to the competent curia dicastery presided over by cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.

Pope Ratzinger is very demanding; he wants bishops of quality, and doesn’t always find them. The pace of episcopal appointments has fallen by a quarter with him, in comparison with the previous pontificate.

Note that that’s by a quarter, not to a quarter.

In his book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury imagined a tyrannical, all controlling government with absolute power over the media and a deep animosity toward the written word… toward books. In this future society, people get all their information through state run radio and television, and books are prohibited. Those who secretly keep books are arrested, and all books are burned.

Let’s say that this actually comes about. Imagine that some future world government is completely successful in eliminating all books – including all copies of the Bible. Let’s add to Bradbury’s vision the proposition that this government also completely destroys all personal computers and, of course, the Internet.

Now the Bible exists only in the minds of those who know and remember it (this is actually an element of Bradbury’s story, too. The main character meets a kind of secret society, where people keep entire books alive in their heads, having memorized them verbatim). The Church goes underground, once again, her sacraments performed only  in secret.

Imagine further that this oppressive regime is toppled, and that the Bible can once more be printed with freedom. The Underground Church comes out of hiding and coordinates an effort to begin printing and distributing the Bible again. The text (in several translations) is re-assembled from the memories of many people, and checked against the memories of many other people. It wouldn’t even take that long… a surprising number of people have committed whole books to memory in real life. Huge numbers of people can recite from memory individual chapters and passages.

The thought experiment is this; what authority – if any – would this new Bible have? Where would this authority come from, as far as future generations are concerned? It would be based, not on a constant, uninterrupted written tradition, but on oral tradition. Later readers, in asking how they could be sure this was the authentic text, would have to be content with the answer of the current generation…"Trust us".

From a Catholic perspective, of course, the answer would be that this Bible would have precisely the same authority it always had, that is, the testimony of the Church (that’s all of us) that this is the Real Thing. In the long run, this is the only assurance we have to begin with. In order for there to be Holy Books, there must be a group, a society – a Church – that testifies "these are the Holy Books, and they are authentic". When the original autographs of the Bible texts were first preserved, copied and passed on, the only assurance people had that these books were indeed authoritative and correct was the word of the Church – those who had been taught the Apostles doctrine. Letters that made the rounds during the early Church were not all assumed to be authentic and trustworthy, unless they were verified by the testimony of the Church and compared against what was already known to be the sound doctrine of the faith… in other words, they had to be in line with the Tradition handed on through the Apostles.

This is reflected in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, where that church is warned, " not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come.". Later in that same chapter, they are reminded "… brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.". Paul later writes to Timothy, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it". So, the authority of the teaching is based on Who it comes from, and not whether it is written or oral.

SDG here (not Jimmy) with a DUH-O-GRAM for Republican White House hopeful Rudy Giuliani, whose increasingly blunt dissing of pro-lifers is making it harder and harder for morally sane voters to contemplate holding their nose and focusing on the promise of originalist Supreme Court nominees over Rudy’s actual rhetoric on baby-killing.

From the Des Moines Register:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani warned GOP activists in Des Moines on Saturday that if they insist on a nominee who always agrees with them, it will spell defeat in 2008.

“Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we’re for, not if we’re a party that’s known for what we’re against,” the former New York mayor said at a midday campaign stop.

Republicans can win, he said, if they nominate a candidate committed to the fight against terrorism and high taxes, rather than a pure social conservative.

“Our party has to get beyond issues like that,” Giuliani said, a reference to abortion rights, which he supports.

Oh, the irony.

First Rudy spouts this line about being “a party characterized by what we’re for” rather than “a party that’s known for what we’re against.”

DUH-O-GRAM to Rudy: Being PRO-life is being for something, not just against something. It’s called the right to life — you know, one of those “inalienable rights” mentioned at the top of the Declaration of Independence. It has implications well beyond abortion (euthanasia, clone and kill, and embryonic harvesting to name a few).

But that’s not all! What’s Rudy’s grand vision for a positive party agenda? What does he want his party to be known as the party for, rather than against? Let’s hear it again:

“Republicans can win, he said, if they nominate a candidate committed to the fight against terrorism and high taxes, rather than a pure social conservative.”

Why, Rudy, do you really want your party to be known as the party against terrorism and high taxes? Isn’t that kind of, you know, negative? What has that got to do with what you’re for?

At least you’ve got to appreciate a politician who isn’t afraid to come right out and say what he really thinks, regardless what anyone thinks. It certainly does clarify matters. Rudy’s supporters have always admired his penchant for blunt talk, and he certainly isn’t losing his edge as he moves onto the national stage.

Caveat: In fairness, it must be noted that the last sentence quoted above is not a direct quotation from Giuliani but the reporter’s paraphrase. Whether Rudy actually advanced “the fight against terrorism and high taxes” as the real agenda over “issues like” abortion depends on the accuracy of the paraphrase.

Either way, though, it seems clear that for Rudy the defense of the unborn isn’t just a side issue — it’s a veritable thorn in the side of the Republican party. He doesn’t just want to focus on other issues, he wants to push this plank off the platform.

This raises one of the most salient points from a recent editorial called “NO DEAL, RUDY” that ran in my newspaper, the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER:

If pro-lifers went along [with Rudy], we’d soon find out that a pro-abortion Republican president would no longer preside over a pro-life party. The power a president exerts over his party’s character is nearly absolute. The party is changed in his image. He picks those who run it and, both directly and indirectly, those who enter it.

Thus, the Republicans in the 1980s became Reaganites. The Democrats in the 1990s took on the pragmatic Clintonite mold. Bush’s GOP is no different, as Ross Douthat points out in “It’s His Party” in the March Atlantic Monthly.

A Republican Party led by a pro-abortion politician would become a pro-abortion party.

READ MORE.