Those Swingin’ Catholics!

Back a little piece I blogged about the fact that Catholics are now a swing vote.

Not everybody buys this. Some pundits have argued that there simply "is no" Catholic vote (prescinding from the fact that some Catholics obviously do vote).

Ramesh Ponnuru provides some analysis supporting my contention: There is indeed a Catholic vote, and it swings.

In fact, Ponnuru provides data to suggest, it tends to determine the winner of the presidential election and leads rather than follows social trends.

Now we just gotta get it trained even better on the five non-negotiables.

GET THE STORY.

Thursday Photo Caption

Angel_ukraine

[SOURCE.]

Starting captions:

1) "Archangel Gabriel Returns To Settle Disputed Ukraine Election . . . And Is He Ticked!!!"

2) "To Chagrin of Democrats, Gabriel Appears at Rally for Faith-Friendly Party"

3) "Damned by Hollywood: Last Generation Complains Apocalypse Can’t Compete with Summer Blockbuster Eye-Candy"

4) "Pyrotechnics Manufacturers Cash-In With Angel’s Appearance."

Red + Blue = Purple?

HERE’S AN ARTICLE BY HARVARD LAW PROFESSION WILLIAM J. STUNTZ.

He’s an Evangelical. And a professor at a way left school.

Favorite quotes from Stuntz:

A lot of my church friends think universities represent the
forces of darkness. Law schools — my corner of the academic world —
are particularly suspect. A fellow singer in a church choir once asked
me what I did for a living. When I told her, she said, "A Christian
lawyer? Isn’t that sort of like being a Christian prostitute? I mean,
you can’t really do that, right?" She wasn’t kidding. And if I had said
no, you don’t understand; I’m a law professor, not a lawyer, I’m pretty
sure that would not have helped matters. ("Oh, so you train people to
be prostitutes…")

You hear the same kinds of comments running in the other direction.
Some years ago a faculty colleague and I were talking about religion
and politics, and this colleague said "You know, I think you’re the
first Christian I’ve ever met who isn’t stupid." My professor friend
wasn’t kidding either. I’ve had other conversations like these —
albeit usually a little more tactful — on both sides, a dozen times
over the years. Maybe two dozen. People in each of these two worlds
find the other frightening, and appalling.

I’m an academic-type and a committed Christian as well, and I have some
of the same perceptions about how the two world talk past each other,
often in counter-productive ways. But some of what Stuntz suggests
strikes me as simply naive, particularly when it comes to the political
arena.

He suggests that redstaters and bluestaters can find common cause on a variety of issues, including principally helping the poor, which is a concern for both.

True.

But I find his "purple state" advocacy a little premature. For the foreseeable future, results will be very limited in making common cause between secular liberals and committed Christians for a whole host of reasons. Among them are these:

  1. However pressing the need for relieving poverty may be, committed Christians cannot ignore the blood of countless babies being shed in our land each day. The abortion issue superdominates the political map. Until that is settled on the pro-life side (such a settlement being a long, long way off), Christians cannot allow themselves to be distracted by lesser issues.
  2. There is frequently a fundamental disagreement about the best way to address the problem of poverty. Stuntz alludes to this, but I don’t think he’s got a practical solution. Just as you can’t wean committed Christians off abortion any time soon, I don’t think you can wean bluestaters off the idea of ending poverty via government handouts any time soon.
  3. The bluestaters have a worldview that is fundamentally hostile to Christianity. Until militant secularists stop trying to push religion out of public life and stop insulting the intelligence of Christians, not much reconciliation is possible.

This isn’t to say that Stuntz’s ideas aren’t worth considering (they are) or that there ain’t any common cause to be made (there is), I just think the amount for the foreseeable future is quite limited.

I understand that someone who works at such a bluestate institution as Harvard University and who attends such a redstate institution as an Evangelical church might want to get the two groups working together, but until points (1) and (3) above are addressed, it isn’t going to be possible to make much common cause on point (2).

Some Bad Ideas

SDG here with a couple of Bad Ideas from some clueless corporate types who Don’t Get It.

First up is this story about network executives trying to think outside the box regarding new sitcoms. Hands-down worst idea, courtesy of Fox:

Jesus… The Teenage Years.

Fox brass are said to be particularly high on a project that one could dub "That ’70s B.C. Show": It imagines Jesus as a slacker teen under pressure from his parents — God and Mary — to enter the family carpentry business.

I can just imagine the pitch:

"Let’s cast someone like Tom Wopat as Joseph. Some ethnic-looking chick as a teenaged Mary Magdalene, and a comic-relief sidekick named Simon. Oh, and throw in a young Judas Iscariot whose dark future is foreshadowed by his troubled relationship with his father. And every week there can be a different crisis in Nazareth, a different miracle, that sort of thing.

"Two rules though: Jesus doesn’t walk on water, and he doesn’t put on the robe.

"Otherwise, love it."

Then there’s this story about a greeting card company called MixedBlessing promoting a new line of syncretistic holiday greeting cards:

Every December, Zack Rudman and his wife used to send out nonsectarian cards with winter scenes and generic holiday greetings.
Now, however, the Kansas City lawyer has found a variety that seems to better suit a Jewish man and an Episcopal woman with two young children as familiar with the menorah as with a manger scene.

These cards proclaim: “Merry Chrismukkah!”

In related news, the company has also announced plans to introduce a new line of religious cards for its Narnian outlets, celebrating the birth of Tashlan.

Get the first story. Get the second story.

Yeowtch!

PARENTAL WARNING: This post is going to involve a discussion of marital relations in their moral aspect. I intend to keep the discussion delicate, but parents should be aware of the particular nature of this post.

I figured that I’d need to do a follow-up post or two after yesterday’s NFP vs. contraception post, but I had no idea that so many ideas would be surfaced in the comments box. Let’s see what we can do to clarify matters:

1) Repentance following an act of sterilization.

There is no sin in having marital congress when one is infertile. Infertility is not the issue.

Period.

This is a settled point of Catholic moral theology. It does not matter what the source of the infertility is, whether it is due to age, accident, disease, surgery, or chemicals. Neither does it matter whether it is temporary or permanent.

If somebody sneaks up on you (e.g., when you are sick in a hospital) and sterilizes you against your will, the fact that you are now infertile does not mean that you can never again engage in marital congress.

The act of sterilizing you was a sin, and if you consented to the act then that was a sin, but having marital relations in a condition of sterility is not a sin. Therefore, once one repents of having solicited a sterilization one is morally in the same condition as one who is infertile through some other means. One has corrected the misuse of will that was sinful. The remaining infertility is a biological defect but not a moral one. Its historical origin is rooted in a moral defect, but the infertility itself is not a continuing sin. Neither is having marital congress in this state.

To suppose that there is continuing sin in having marital relations after being sterilized and then repenting involves committing the genetic fallacy (no pun intended).

Under no circumstances is it permissible to tell couples that are infertile due to sterilization that they cannot have marital relations. The Church has never made this requirement of them, and it would be regarded as gravely pastorally damaging.

2) Non-obligation to reverse sterilization.

The Church has not required couples that have been sterilized to have the procedure reversed. Reversal often is not possible, it entails risks, it frequently (especially in the case of men) can cause permanent side-effects (e.g., pain), and it involves expense that may exceed what a couple can prudentially afford.

That being said, it can be praiseworthy to reverse sterilization if it is possible and responsible for a couple to do so, but the Church has not required this of those who are penitent any more than it has required reparatory surgeries of those who have culpably mutiliated their bodies in other ways. At the present state of medical knowledge, it the risks and expenses involved in reparatory surgery often exceed what is reasonable for a person or a couple to undertake.

Suggestions, such as Kippley’s, that couples employ NFP or otherwise refrain from having intercourse for a certain period each month might be voluntarily undertaken by couples by mutual consent but also are non-obligatory.

Further, I could not recommend that such penances are undertaken without the continuing counsel of a competent spiritual director, as it is not pastorally prudent for individuals to engage in any long-term or weighty penances without such direction. The risk of a penitent being spiritually harmed by keeping his own counsel on such matters is too great. Everybody needs a spiritually mature outsider to keep tabs on their situation and make sure that such penances are helping rather than harming one.

3) "Non-coital" relations.

This one is particularly difficult to answer in a delicate manner, but I want to keep the blog (particularly its main page entries) discreet. I will therefore have to rely on the reader to understand what I am talking about here.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as marital relations that are completely independent of coitus. While other, related activities may be associated with coitus, they cannot be pursued independently of it and without reference to it. If a couple is engaging in relations that in no way involve coitus then they are doing something immoral. One can do things to prepare for,  assist, and augment coitus, but one cannot replace it with something else. To do so involves replacing God’s design for marital relations with a fundamentally alien construction. Every genuine exercise of marital relations must, therefore, involve coitus (barring, for example, cases where the marital relations are interrupted apart from the couple’s will).

If you need more specificity on this, e-mail me privately.

4) When NFP is illicit.

The Church has not given a detailed treatment of this topic and a range of opinion is permitted. However, those who convey the impression that NFP can be used only in the most extreme circumstances are putting a greater burden on couples than the Church does. The Catechism speaks of NFP being licit for "just reasons" (CCC 2368) rather than the "grave reasons" some have urged as necessary. "Just reasons" and "grave reasons" are two different orders of magnitude in ecclesiastical language, and as a matter of professional ethics I seek to ensure that the language I use matches the language the Church uses in its current documents on the subject. In the future the Church may clarify this subject further, but for now it speaks of a "just reasons" test for the use of NFP, and thus so do I.

5) Condoms.

Contrary to what one commenter was told by a priests, condoms are not okay "if one is open to life at all times." Condoms represent a deliberate closing of the sexual act to life and thus are not okay. What the priest told the commenter was clearly erroneous and would be regarded as such by every faithful Catholic moral theologian.

6) Homosexuality & Infertility.

The reason that homosexuality is wrong is not that it involves infertile relations. The fact that infertile relations are not intrinsicaly sinful is something I have been trying to drive home in this discussion. A married but infertile couple is not sinning by having relations.

God designed human sexuality (and, indeed, all sexuality) to be oriented to procreation. In the case of humans (as opposed to sea angels) this means a man and a woman having coitus. Any time you have a man and a woman having coitus and not doing anything to impede the act, you have an act oriented to procreation. For a variety of causes, the act may not produce offspring. Indeed, it may be impossible in a given case for the act to produce offspring (e.g., because the man and the woman are too old), but the act nevertheless retains the orientation that God gave it.

It therefore thwarts God’s design for human sexuality if you have (a) two men or (b) two women or (c) a man and a woman doing something other than coitus or (d) a man and a woman having coitus but in some manner seeking to block its procreative potential. Cases (a)-(d) destroy the orientation to procreation that the act has and that even an infertile act has. The fact that cases (a)-(d) are all infertile (or intended to be infertile) is not the issue. God designed us so that many acts of coitus are by nature infertile. His design includes room for infertile acts; it is the deliberate rejection of his design (one man, one woman, having coitus, without deliberately blocking its procreative potential) that is what is wrong.

7) Intent.

A point that is often the source of confusion in this discussion and that came up in the comments box was the question of a couple’s intent. Consider the following two intents:

a) "I intend to have marital relations and yet not have a baby."

b) "I intend to have marital relations and do something to myself or to the act itself in order to destroy its procreative potential."

The first intention is not sinful. Couples have this intention all the time. Indeed, sooner or later, every married couple (that stays together and keeps having marital relations) eventually reaches a point in life where the partners have intention (a). This intention is compatible with God’s design for human sexuality since it is not God’s will that we have a baby each time we have marital relations. A person who merely has intention (a) is not doing anything to thwart God’s plan.

Intention (b) is sinful. Unlike intention (a), intention (b) deliberately intereferes with God’s design for human sexuality and so is sinful.

The intent of having marital relations yet not having a baby thus is not intrinsically sinful. The intent of interfering with a marital act so that it won’t produce a baby is.

8) "Artificial Contraception."

Everybody, please avoid using the term "artificial contraception." This term is intrinsically misleading as it suggests that there is such a thing as "natural contraception." There ain’t. No such critter. All contraception is artificial. It is thus dangerously misleading to tell people that the Church opposes "artificial contraception" as it suggests to them that there may be forms of "natural contraception" that are okay (e.g., coitus interruptus). This is not the case. The Church opposes contraception. Please use this language.

(Incidentally, I should have caught that the initial questioner used this language and clarified at that point, but I didn’t. My bad.)

Hoooooooooo-kay! Y’all got all that now?

Good. Now run along and play outside. I gots work ta do.

Our Roe To Hoe

Feddie over at Southern Appeal offers some analysis of this recent poll.

I think Feddie’s analysis is dead on: Americans’ support for Roe vs. Wade is part of a more general, narcissistic "culture of me," in his words, as well as a false (that is to say, one-sided) culture of sympathy and sentimentality that focuses on the visible (the ostensible harm to a mother’s interests) over the invisible (the actual harm done by killing an infant).

Feddie writes that:

Assuming that this poll accurately reflects the opinion of the American people, this finding disappoints me on two levels.

The assumption that any poll reported by the press accurately reflects the opinion of the American people is, of course, a whopping huge assumption that is not rashly to be made (as illustrated by the exit polls last Election Day). The chance of misleading wording and biased sampling are just too great (especially when, as in this case, the wording of the questions and the internals of the poll are not given).

But even making this assumption, I don’t know how disappointed I am. Of course, I am disappointed to see the lack of appreciation of constitutional law that the public displays, but then the media and the educational system have been systematically inculcating a totally irresponsible philosophy of judicial activism in the populace for the last fifty years at least. One can’t be surprised, therefore, that there is a shocking ignorance on this subject among the American populace.

But setting that issue aside, I think that what support may be found for Roe among the populace is likely to be overestimated. The support for the Evil Decision may be broad, but it isn’t deep in many quarters. While there are many die-hard abortion supporters (pun intended), there are many, many more who are soft supporters that don’t really understand what Roe says.

Indeed, many still think that Roe only allows for abortion in limited circumstances, as opposed to virtual abortion on demand from conception until birth.

Others are willing to voice a vague support for abortion–until you confront them with the reality of what abortion involves, at which point their support dries up and even reverses.

I’m not surprised, therefore, that we have a lot of public education to do on this subject or that we have a long fight ahead of us.

But it is a fight we are destined to win.

Pro-lifers inherently out populate anti-lifers, and therein lies longterm victory.

The present poll, to the extent it shows us anything about present opinion (an extent already noted to be extremely questionable), merely reveals for us the Roe we have to hoe.