Morality, Religion & Philosophy: May 2004 Archives

Is the Catholic Church a purely political entity these days? If not, then why are its chief concerns about Catholics marrying Muslims apparently completely unrelated to theology?

The Vatican warned Catholic women on Friday to think hard before marrying a Muslim and urged Muslims to show more respect for human rights, gender equality and democracy.

Calling women "the least protected member of the Muslim family," it spoke of the "bitter experience" western Catholics had with Muslim husbands, especially if they married outside the Islamic world and later moved to his country of origin.

The comments in a document about migrants around the world were preceded by remarks about points of agreement between Christians and Muslims but they seemed likely to fuel mistrust between the world's two largest religions.

The document said the Church discouraged marriages between believers in traditionally Catholic countries and non-Christian migrants.

It hoped Muslims would show "a growing awareness that fundamental liberties, the inviolable rights of the person, the equal dignity of man and woman, the democratic principle of government and the healthy lay character of the state are principles that cannot be surrendered."

When a Catholic woman and Muslim man wanted to marry, it said, "bitter experience teaches us that a particularly careful and in-depth preparation is called for."

Wouldn't it be much more correct for the Vatican to completely repudate the practice, based on the fact that Muslims and Christians worship entirely different gods?

I'm not Catholic (but I know many of my readers are), and I haven't read the full paper. Am I wrong about what the Vatican appears to be saying?

Update:
Then again, here's the flip-side: I think it's perfectly appropriate for religious people to allow their religion to shape politics. So yes, it should be a one-way street. Humans make political decisions, and God makes theological decisions. It looks pretty clear to me.

The Roman Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs has said Catholics should not receive Communion if they vote for politicians who support abortion rights (search), stem-cell research, euthanasia and gay marriage. ...

"I think it is an outrageous intrusion into what is supposed to be the separation of church and state. It is frightening," said Michael Merrifield, a Democratic state lawmaker who is not Catholic but represents part of the heavily religious Colorado Springs area. "It goes against everything that we believe is important to democracy since we founded this country."

Well gee, I don't see any conflict-of-interests in Mr. Merrifield's positioning, do you?

And then there's Texas mayoral candidate Pastor Jim Norwood, who's taking pictures of pornography consumers and sending them post-cards.

Pastor Jim Norwood (search) started the practice of driving around with his camera taking photos outside of sexually-oriented businesses (SOBs) about five months ago. The reverend, who is running in Saturday's mayoral election, was able to access public vehicle registrations record, allowing him to get the addresses of the vehicle owners and send them postcards of his photos.

One side of the postcard shows the patron's vehicle parked outside the adult store. On the other side is written a note from Norwood: "Observed you in the neighborhood. Didn't know if you were aware there is a church in the area."

He says some postcard recipients have even come to attend his church. Interesting. Naturally, an attorney for the Sexually Oriented Businesses misses the entire point and tries to change the subject to one of taxes.

"You've got SOBs in Fort Worth. You've got SOBs in Dallas, in Houston, just about every metropolitan area. I represent some up in Utah. It doesn't seem to affect those towns," said Attorney John Gamboa. "What people don't understand is that it is a regular business that pays its regular real estate taxes, employment taxes, sales taxes, liquor taxes."

I'm not taking a position on the effectiveness of Pastor Norwood's approach, but it's certainly legal, and a good example of putting religious beliefs into political action. He isn't trying to pass a law against pornography, organize a boycott, or even publicly shame the customers (from what I can determine, anyway).

It's hard to be critical of a man who just had his son murdered, but Michael Berg is disgracing and dehumanizing his son when he blames President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld for Nicholas Berg's murder.

Nicholas Berg went to Iraq to find work, entirely of his own volition and not at the request of the American government. He went to try to take advantage of an opportunity created by the invasion; he went to make money, and to help out the people of Iraq. His intentions were good and honorable, and he made his own decisions. He saw the rebuilding of Iraq as a chance to do business, and to help his fellow-man, despite the obvious danger.

When Michael Berg strips his son of the dignity of free will, he turns his son back into a child. Nicholas Berg was a victim, but the guilty parties are the cowards hiding behind black scarves in the video, not any American officials. Michael Berg said this:

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.

In the interview from outside his home in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a seething Michael Berg also said his 26-year-old son, a civilian contractor, probably would have felt positive, even about his executioners, until the last minute.

"I am sure that he only saw the good in his captors until the last second of his life," Berg said. "They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend."

That's absurd. Nicholas Berg was no Rachel Corrie. From other articles, it's clear that he supported the invasion of Iraq, and I highly doubt he would have been best friends with the inhuman monsters who murdered him.

Donald Sensing refers to "the new erotic-worship genre" (not his term) and links to some Christians who feel that many modern worship songs are focused on the supposed-worshipper instead of on God. Rather than quote his quotes of other people quoting various articles, just follow the first link; I'll wait.

One of the posts he links to cites the song "Breathe" by Marie Barnett as archetypal of the "new genre".

This is the air I breathe, this is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me
This is my daily bread, this is my daily bread
Your every word spoken to me

And I--------, I'm desperate for You
And I--------, I'm lost without You

I happen to like the song, and I don't think it's particularly "erotic" (perhaps the writers were projecting their own emotions?). Both metaphors -- God's word as bread the Holy Spirit as the breath of life -- are directly from the Bible. As for emotion, compare it with the longing expressed in the Book of Psalms.

Psalm 5

1 Give ear to my words, O LORD,
consider my sighing.
2 Listen to my cry for help,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.
3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait in expectation.

And so on. I could go through the entire book and find dozens more.

As for eroticism, just go read Song of Solomon, which describes the relationship between God/Christ and his chosen people (Israel, and arguably, to some extent, modern Christians as well) using the metaphor of marriage.

Anyway, I agree that worship music is about God, not about us. In reality, singing is only one way to worship God, and not even the most important way. Perhaps one of the biggest failings of modern Christianity is mistaking mere singing for worship, of which it is only a part. More importantly, we should worship and honor God in everything we do, and in every aspect of lives. (Including the erotic.)

You know, for whatever it's worth, the terrorists' plan is starting to work on me.

"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Susan," the man said on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia."

After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" — "God is great." They then held the head out before the camera. ...

"For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused."

"So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."

If they're trying to make me hate them, it's working. I doubt I'm not the only American feeling this way, and if they expect us to pull out of Iraq when we get pissed off, they're mistaken.

Do they really want coffin after coffin of dead? How about if we just turn them all directly into greasy vapor? We can do it. And we will, if we have to.

I wish our government would focus more on making them afraid of us, rather than on trying to make us all buddies.

Two bloggers I much respect may both be misunderstanding a rabbi's denunciation of gun rights as idolatry. Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, the President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations said,

Is the need for sensible gun-control a religious issue? You bet it is.

The indiscriminate distribution of guns is an offense against God and humanity.

Controlling guns is not only a political matter, it is a solemn religious obligation. Our gun-flooded society has turned weapons into idols, and the worship of idols must be recognized for what it is-blasphemy. And the only appropriate religious response to blasphemy is sustained moral outrage.

Eugene Volokh thinks his point is a metaphor run amok, and Clayton Cramer thinks the rabbi's position springs from a lack of comprehension of the gun culture. Either or both may be right, and as Mr. Volokh says, it's hard to speculate on the motivations of a speaker, but I have a different take.

My first thought when I read the quote was that the rabbi was calling an affinity for guns "idolatry" because the gun owner is depending on the weapon for protection, rather than on God. If Rabbi Yoffie is a pacifist, for example, he may believe that all forms of defensive violence betray an underlying lack of trust in God, and from such a perspective a gun could, in fact, be a literal idol: usurping God's role as our protector.

Another revealing position, via Charles Coleson (Brad's favorite author):

"I think abortion is killing a life. [But] the person who is pregnant should decide whether to do it or not." ...

Ms. Flores’s attitude is deeply troubling, especially when you realize how widespread it is. Over and over again, people at the march made similar comments—the kind of comments that make your hair stand on end. The political debate is changing among activists on the ground. They’re now willing to admit that abortion is killing. But they’re arguing that their right to do what they want, without restraint, justifies that killing.

What we are seeing, of course, is the logical consequences of the desire for personal autonomy in an era of moral relativism. People can say with a perfectly straight face and without a twinge of conscience, "Yeah, it is wrong. It is murder. But nobody is going to tell me I can’t do it."

As Donald Sensing notes: chilling.

As I've said many times before, as science and technology advance it will become impossible to deny that abortion ends a human life. For pro-abortionists, however, the power to abort is axiomatic; if the facts don't end up supporting their position then, the facts must be changed.

Not even yourself.

Authorities in the state of Washington say an Oklahoma man may have infected up to 170 people with HIV.

Anthony Whitfield is charged with 12 counts of sexual assault in addition to charges of witness tampering and violating no-contact orders. He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. ...

A woman who had a relationship with Whitfield when he lived in Washington said he often talked his way into the lives of women who would give him sex, money and affection.

"There was just something about him ... that he had the ability to make you feel that you were really special and beautiful, and you were the only woman in the world to him," she said.

There are a ton of reasons why it's wise to be celibate outside the bounds of marriage, and this story illustrates two: there are plenty of people out there who will intentionally try to hurt you, and you can't tell who they are.

SDB has a great post about the three-way war between Empiricists, Idealists, and Islamists, and the only slight objection I have is his decision not to put quotes around the Idealists' use of the word "elegant". The URL of his post shows that he would probably agree with me in saying that the Idealists' worldview isn't, in fact, elegant at all, because it doesn't work.

To an engineer, an elegant solutions meets two criteria: it works, and it works as simply as possible. The socialism espoused by SDB's "Philisophical Idealists" isn't at all simple; every experiment with socialism has shown that the system eventually collapses under the weight of its own regulations (read: totalitarianism). People don't want to behave socialistically, so more and more laws are continually required to cluge the system and push total failure slightly farther into the future. That's the opposite of simplicity.

And, of course, every socialistic system eventually does fail.

Capitalism is both simple and effective, and thus far more elegant than socialism. Capitalism's effectiveness requires only a single: each person does whatever they want. Some regulation can be beneficial to prevent egregious violations of natural rights (however those rights are defined within the system, and assuming that the participants in the system agree that the preservation of rights is more important than efficiency), but in general few are needed. Each person will naturally attempt to maximize his ecoomic utility, and the emergent result will be a prosperous and efficient system. America's competitive capitalistic system isn't perfect, but most of its weaknesses are the results of flirtation with socialism.

Most engineers would agree with P-Idealists that elegant solutions do work, but that's because "it works" is part of our definition and only evaluated after the fact. It works, therefore it is (at least partly) elegant. To a P-Idealist, elegance is determined beforehand, and if it doesn't work then failure is most likely due to some conspiracy.

Commenter Phelps raises an interesting point in a comment to the recent post about politics and theology:

Perhaps I'm wrong (and someone will correct me) but hasn't the Catholic church always held thought as well as action to be within its domain? Haven't they always held the position that to think about something is the same as doing it?

I can't speak for the Catholic Church, but I can speak more generally to standard Christian theology.

To understand the question it's important to differentiate between two different actions that often both fall under the umbrella of "thought". Simply put, the main factor to consider is that some thoughts are voluntary and some are not. Voluntary thoughts that dwell on a particular evil are, themselves, evil; involuntary thoughts that speed through our minds before being rejected are not evil alone, but are temptations that may lead us to evil.

Consider the classic passage on the topic; Jesus raises the bar and teaches that keeping the letter of the law isn't sufficient for godliness:

Matthew 5:27-28

"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

(Set aside the question of whether an unmarried person can commit "adultery" with another unmarried person.) The point Jesus is making is that it's not only our actions that are important, but also our thoughts and intentions. Good intentions cannot make up for evil acts (although they may, arguably, mitigate them), but bad intentions can certainly corrupt good actions.

Every man has inescapable moments of attraction to beautiful women he sees, but those moments on their own don't constitute "lust". Lust isn't the first glance; lust is when you turn your head to follow your eyes and imagine what it would be like to have sex with the woman you're watching. (This explanation will fit analogously to other sins, as well.)

One common misapplication of this principle is the thought that: "If lust is as bad as adultery, I may as well go all the way!" However, it should be clear that actual adultery will almost always have much more severe temporal consequences than will lust. Adultery destroys families and lives more easily and quickly than "mere" lust does. Both are equally wrong, but past commission of one does not excuse the other.

I agree with Mark Kleiman on the question of burning witches. Of course, there is one very good way to determine if someone is a witch: witches burn, and so does wood; wood floats on water, just as ducks do; so if she weighs as much as a duck, then she floats on water, and is made of wood, and thus certainly a witch.

One good indication that you're intellectually honest is when people who disagree with your philosophies agree with your analyses of others' philosophies. "Intellectual honesty" is, if you will, a meta-philosophy that attempts to prescribe how disagreements between belief systems should be evaluated and understood.

For example, I expect that phelps and I would disagree about a great many things, but he echos my analysis of Nancy Pelosi and her decision to continue taking Communion in spite of her church's objections. I can only quote a bit, since I try to keep swear words off my site as much as possible.

Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat who was raised in a devout Italian Catholic home, told reporters, "I believe that my position on choice is one that is consistent with my Catholic upbringing, which said that every person has a free will and has the responsibility to live their lives in a way that they would have to account for in the end."

Right. The people who use the free will in a way that the church doesn't agree with are called SINNERS. People who publicly continue to sin are denied Communion. That is how it works. ...

"I want to keep supporting what my church considers to be a mortal sin, but I still want to be in good standing in my church. I'm a Very Important Politician, so gimme what I want, or I'll... uh... keep sinning like I was going to anyway."