Safe Haven

My most concrete application of this biblical command is in the Confession line. Jesus, through the Church, tells us that grace comes to us through the sacrament, even if sanctifying grace hasn't left the soul through mortal sin. I can't imagine that these others are in need as much as I am. I have always thought this. I guess I have been lucky enough not to run into an enemy in line. So far, it's been an easy assumption. Maybe the bigger challenge is not to hate ourselves as much as we could hate others, at least for some of us.

It is a contradiction to oppose abortion but otherwise to endorse the radical individualism of classical liberalism. There may be in many cases economic and social factors that make the tragic decision more likely. Indeed, these are some of the things that lessen culpability (et al.) in individual cases. However, there is often a hidden premise in such arguments: Abortion is regrettable, but sometimes acceptable.  As Catholics, we can travel a long way down the road of systemic explanations, as long as we correctly maintain that the choice to commit an intrinsic evil is never acceptable, (excepting a double effect scenario where a grave evil is unavoidable). Many arguments acknowledge the morally dubious nature of abortion, but substitute one evil for another, such as advocating for increased use, and funding for, contraception. (In that case, a person often merely trades one method of abortion for another.) Let's try to be aware of all the premises of the arguments, either o...

If you're somewhat conversant with pop culture, you might recognize this title as a catchphrase, uttered by Matthew McConaughey's character in the comedy film, "Dazed And Confused". (I've actually never seen it.) As with a lot of things, people get ahold of a phrase, and it takes on a life of its own. Personally, I say it every time I see McConaughey on TV. I think if you asked most people who know who he is what they think, they'd have a positive opinion of him. That may or may not be deserved; who knows? He projects a laid-back bro coolness, pretty much all the time. Not only in roles. He has starred in a number of romantic comedies, and in a buddy film called Sahara (2005) that I really enjoyed. I deeply appreciate his work, especially in two roles: As "Jake Brigance," in A Time To Kill, (1996) as a Mississippi lawyer defending a black man (Samuel L. Jackson as "Carl Lee Haley") who sought revenge against two men who raped his daughter...

Dr. Deneen asks, "What is conservatism?" in this essay of the same name. He asserts that what we know as an ascendant conservatism in the US since 1980 isn't conservatism at all, in fact, but another form of liberalism. Noting that the program we can identify in politics is achievable but incoherent, he cites Edmund Burke's opinion that the very notion that the goods to be achieved ought to be sought primarily in politics is fundamentally anti-conservative. Indeed, Deneen appeals to four thinkers that define and promote the type of conservatism he commends: Aristotle, Vico, Burke, and Tocqueville. In the main, they concur with one another (and with Deneen) that to separate people from their families and communities in favor of a new political arrangement, centered around the alleged autonomous individual, is to ultimately frustrate his happiness in the fullest sense. In the case of Tocqueville, we have already seen through his eyes how democratic government plays ...

The essay "Progress and Memory" posits that liberalism and related philosophies introduce temporal discontinuities into the lived experience of people; that is, giving an absolute primacy to either the past, the present, or the future, as opposed to respecting each. Liberalism, says Deneen, prioritizes the present. It seeks the satisfaction of the currently living signatories, as it were, of the social contract. As we have noted from previous essays, liberalism sees the individual as free and autonomous, unhindered by any obligations to ancestors or descendants. Its economics is market capitalism. Anything that posits such an obligation is discarded. Progressivism shares many of the same assumptions as liberalism, but it idealizes the future. As a result, any contentment in the present is attributed to a false consciousness which must be corrected. Progressivism is the most amenable to despotism, because it harbors an equal hostility to the past as it does to the present....

I was realizing this morning that I am a witness to a miracle nearly every day. Most days of most weeks, I hear and see a man bring forth bread and wine, and by the Holy Spirit, change it into the Body and Blood of Christ. Oh, there isn't much to see, in human terms. It's a miracle, nonetheless. I'm particularly thankful for the prayers during the liturgy of the Eucharist. In a sense, we are told why Jesus has chosen to come. God has made promises, all throughout recorded history, and the Eucharist is the ultimate promise: "And surely I will be with you, even to the end of the age." I guess I worry about declining numbers in the pews. But if you don't believe, acting on that unbelief in the form of not showing up is more honest. There is no good reason to be a "church" person, unless it is true. People must have fond memories of fish-frys and youth group, because all these people--who don't appear to be contemplating the niceties of epistemol...

One of the reasons you would teach manners, Deneen reminds us, is to habituate those good behaviors that you want. He describes how young children start out in no way habituated to eating with good manners. It can be a frustrating period of time, as parents correct and model the better way. They must refuse to give up, because if they do, the proper ways of eating and interacting will become second nature to them. You no doubt have noticed a few breaks in between posts regarding Conserving America?... Yet I find that those posts somewhat unwittingly are grounded in Dr. Deneen's observations. One of the great benefits of Dr. Cross' comments with respect to my infelicitous phrase "what comes naturally to a person" is that it gives us a chance to clarify what we mean when we talk about "human nature," as the professor noted. [You want to link to the Michael Jackson song so bad, don't you?--ed.] Yes. And here is a provocative thought: Aristotelian virtue ...

Dr. Deneen begins his essay "Manners And Morals" with a reflection on eating. Actually, the picture of eating a meal serves as a metaphor for most of what he says here. He says that manners--and specifically table manners--developed as both an acknowledgment of our animal nature, and an attempt to transcend it. We need to eat, but we eat in a manner reflecting a desire not to be enslaved by our passions. Eating together both symbolizes and actualizes a new solidarity born from the recognition that we ought not eat each other. Our propensity to eat flesh meat, and Deneen's reflection on that fact, may be disconcerting to the reader, but it gives us the opportunity to reflect on our limitations, as well as our dignity. One intriguing aspect of these reflections--which Deneen does not make explicit, or at least to the extent that he could--is the connection between meal time solidarity, and politics as such. A healthy politics, he does say, delicately balances the recognit...

Professor Bryan Cross comments in regard to the previous post: "The phrase "what comes naturally to a person" is perhaps an unfortunate phrase, because it is ambiguous between (a) human nature, (b) acquired second nature, either virtues or vices, and (c) particular congenital temperaments/dispositions (e.g. disposition to alcoholism, anger). What is 'natural' in those second two senses is not always good or right. But what is in accord with nature in the first sense is good and right; that's just what defines the natural law." Points taken. I should have been more careful. [Philosophers! Oy!--ed.] Now, now. If we didn't have philosophers, we'd not only be arguing about the color of a dress on the internet, but we'd think it was important. [IT IS.--ed.] Oh, dear.

The assumption that what comes naturally to a person is good is a dangerous one. Let's be real: it's usually in the area of sex that people make this assumption. We don't accept it for anything else, but when sexuality is involved, all bets are off. I do believe that people will destroy anyone who won't tell them what they want to hear. If I were a psychologist, and someone came to me with unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction, I'd try to help them change those feelings. It may not work, but it may. It doesn't matter in that instance what "society" says about it. Even so, which is more likely: that society prior to the last few years disdained same-sex activity because nearly everyone is very selectively bigoted (in the traditional meaning of the word: holding an opinion based upon no reason whatsoever) or, because most people know in conscience that same-sex activity is wrong, and that even feelings toward that end are disordered? My money...

Dr. Deneen begins his essay, "Awaking From The American Dream..." by referring again to the "restlessness" of American man, and the wonderment of observers at the time, at the conceit that family and ethnic ties could and should be uprooted in order to forge a new identity. We recall Deneen's contention that the individual in the liberal conception is completely fabricated, at least in terms of the individual being the foundational starting point of society. Deneen intends to trace the implications of liberal individualism through 3 films, dating from the 1940s through 1990s. The three films are It's A Wonderful Life, Avalon, and American Beauty. It's A Wonderful Life is perhaps the most beloved movie in American history. There is no need to recount it here. Deneen, however, wants us to re-examine a few things. George Bailey himself displays a marked disdain for his hometown of Bedford Falls. Deneen well documents Bailey's restlessness. His chara...

The winning formula of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign was encapsulated in an offhand strategy comment, by now legendary: "It's the economy, stupid." Well, I interrupt this regularly scheduled programming to say a different thing. The size and scope of the federal government is of far less concern at the moment than the fraying of natural social bonds that function as support systems for people in great difficulty. These social support systems also transmit morals and mores, and a sense of purpose. The number of children born out of wedlock and/or raised by a single parent is somewhere north of 40 percent. Drug addiction is exploding, even among the wealthy, and comfortably middle class. Surviving in this economy without an education is questionable. In my view, some citizens have mistaken a natural solidarity or communitarianism for communism, or other coercive ideologies. Inspired leadership will mean committing money to help people re-connect with e...

Dr. Deneen continues the discussion of democracy and its underpinnings by citing Santayana to the effect that virtue and virtuous citizens are necessary for the preservation of democracy. But as we have seen, if the division of labor and autonomous "liberty" have severed people from their sources of knowledge and morality, the "virtues" actually inculcated are personal desires, and self-preservation. Indeed, Deneen argues that self-preservation is the motivating force in the liberal political order, if its assumptions about humans in the state of nature are correct. A contradiction is introduced, then, between fidelity to professed virtues such as self-sacrifice, and that which liberalism actually rewards. The occasion of the commemoration of noted Union general Robert Gould Shaw provided William James the opportunity to reflect on the difference between more conspicuous virtue, such as dying in battle, and less conspicuous virtue, in this case, a willingness to b...

The third essay in Dr. Deneen's collection is called, "Citizenship As A Vocation." (There appears to be some confusion between the essay titles, and the table of contents.) Deneen picks up Tocqueville's contention that democratic man is "restless" or "restive" (depending on translation) and uses that as a starting point, and more like a central hub, to which he returns multiple times from various angles. Tocqueville elaborates that democratic man is flighty, for lack of a better term, inconstant, owing to his fear of death, which even wins out over a desire for contentment. The problem, says the French theorist, is the openness of democratic societies, and democratic man's materialism in a double sense: a belief that most things have a natural explanation--as opposed to a supernatural one--and in the accumulation of things, ostensibly to distract from the fear of death. Before we go on with Dr. Deneen's application of Tocqueville, and...

Here's the Catechism, specifically on immigration. These are a challenging couple of paragraphs. But I understand that by the use of the words "natural right" in the first paragraph that it is ordinarily not morally licit to deny entry to a foreigner, absent evidence of a concrete threat to the common good. That is, the mere fact of being a foreigner does not make one a threat to the common good. Moreover, if all people possess the natural right to emigrate from one place to another, then it cannot be morally licit for a government to forcibly remove an immigrant from its territory, for no other reason than he or she is in a country "illegally." It is morally acceptable or licit to treat citizens and non-citizens unalike, provided that the natural right to move to a new country and make a life is not unduly impeded. I do not make any bold claims that any Catholic who happens to be wrong about this does not love Christ or the Church. But I can say for certai...

Dr. Deneen's second essay is called, "Patriotic Vision: At Home In A World Made Strange." It's significant that this was a talk given shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. After a brief reflection on the excesses of patriotism, and the elite suspicion of it, Dr. Deneen takes us back to the origin of the word "theory". He says that the idea comes from the Greek meaning, "to see," and it noted a specific office within the city-state, occupied by a person charged with traveling to other places to report on how they lived. Such a person was well-versed on the idioms and customs of his own culture, and indeed reported on the other in that language, as it were. Insofar as he offered critique to his own culture, it was carefully tempered by his appreciation and love for his native place. The critics of patriotism do naturally ask whether the love of one's own in patriotism is in irreconcilable conflict with universal values like tr...

Can America be conserved? Dr. Deneen begins his collection of essays with that question. There is a logic in posing the question so starkly, because the problems Deneen identifies warrant the question. He notes that 70 percent of Americans believe America is moving in the wrong direction, and half of us believe our best days as a nation are behind us. Analysis of the situation is colored by two related tendencies, he says. Firstly, we tend to believe that our problems and solutions are to be found in the sphere of politics; and secondly, we find value in a strict binary American "liberal/conservative" axis. Deneen says that such a binary doesn't only note disagreement, but an irreconcilable conflict of worldviews. As such, the stakes could not be higher, and total or near-total control of the branches of the national government is viewed by all as imperative. And yet, Deneen argues, the deep philosophical and ideological divide is "fundamentally illusory," b...

I've started to read, "Conserving America? Thoughts On Present Discontents" by Dr. Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame. I'm not very far in, but I'm going to tell you that you should read it. Setting aside the explosive thesis which I won't share here yet, I still actually believe we can do better in political engagement than we have. I don't think we're too far gone, and that's because little things make a huge difference. One person who takes the time to make an opponent's argument better than they have, or toxic words not spoken improves the climate just a little. Usually, when a candidate for office says they want to add to the national conversation, that means he or she has no chance of winning that office. And maybe that's still true. But what if candidates saw themselves as caretakers of the civic space? We cannot simply mean a desire to serve the public in some general way; I am aiming for an idea that candidates for office safeguard and...

I have always liked Barack Obama. I have spent most of my adult life in academia; I like the life, I like the people. I don't sneer at credentials; I covet them. The former president is an academic, from his ears, to the tips of his toes. He is familiar to me, and he speaks the language of which I am familiar. I get why people don't like him; after all, the sexual libertinism and murder that are now the defining characteristics of the Democratic Party were underlined under Obama, as opposed to muted. Moreover, the former president was not content to simply advocate those things, but to use the government to conscript participation in them. Most of the other stuff is made up. But I don't carry around a similar affection for the sitting president. I just don't. And I might even admit that a person who is known for thinking and speaking well will get a break from me, even if he is terrible. I'm an academic, if not in profession, then in manner of life. I don't ...

My thoughts turned to my father the other day, because some friends on the internet had asked what songs make us cry. We had a pretty good list, and this  was my choice. The context of the song doesn't fit me exactly, because it tells the story of an adult father and son struggling to understand one another. But the verse which begins about 4 minutes in really hits me: I wasn't there that morning When my father passed away I didn't get to tell him All the things I had to say I think I caught his spirit Later that same year I'm sure I heard his echo In my baby's newborn tears I just wish I could have told him In the living years [Me talking] I think one of the truly great benefits of being in full communion with the Catholic Church is being able to take these deep hurts of life, unite them to the cross of Christ, and give them back to the Father. When this becomes real to you, then you understand a little of what it means to live in anticipation of the ...