Serving two masters

In the ongoing debate over whether or not pro-abortion Catholic politicians should present themselves for communion, a question of considerable importance to both sides is that of the problem of serving two masters – in this case, the Church and the State.

There are a number of perspectives on this matter brought into play by those who support abortion, or at any rate who do not oppose it sufficiently to make that opposition manifest:

• If the state’s laws and/or constitution enact something for the public good which is found to be in conflict with the doctrine of the Church, it is the politician’s duty as a public servant to act in the best interests of his or her constituents – who may not share that politician’s beliefs – by supporting what is publically legal over what is privately opined.
• Similarly, the concerns of the state, a secular institution geared as above towards the public good regardless of merely sectarian issues, simply have primacy over the concerns of the Church.
• Pursuant even to this, the presumed separation between Church and State that exists in a representative western democracy insists that the Church has no right whatever to interfere in political matters involving public servants who are, again as above, as much the representatives of non-Catholic citizens as they are of anyone else.

There are three ways in which these interpretations falter. The first is in the implicit assumption of all three statements that the State simply is superior. While this may certainly be contended, the proper way to do it is by first demonstrating through argument that this is so. This has not been done. The second is that all three interpretations are entirely materialist. They depend for their legitimacy upon the assumption that the Church’s theological claims are meritless, and that it is in effect a fussy sort of club. While this may again certainly be contended, the State is neither entitled nor qualified to do so. The third and more subtle flaw is that they approach the issue from the wrong direction, and about this something more must be said.

A great deal of how a situation is understood depends upon the direction you take in understanding it. E.F. Schumacher, in his essential A Guide for the Perplexed, provides this illustration:

There is a story of two monks who were passionate smokers and who tried to settle between themeslves the question of whether it was permissable to smoke while praying. As they came to no conclusion, they decided to ask their respective superiors. One of them got into deep trouble with his abbot; the other received a pat of encouragement. When they met again, the first one, slightly suspicious, inquired of the second: “What did you actually ask?” and received the answer “I asked whether it was permissable to pray while smoking.” While our inner senses infallibly see the profound difference between “praying while smoking” and “smoking while praying,” to our outer senses there is no difference at all.

In the matter at hand, the error, in accordance with the three described above, comes in axiomatically assuming that the State comes first. That is to say, that the person in question is a public servant first and a Catholic second. That it is the religious body unacceptably interfering with affairs of state.

But suppose we look at the matter from the other direction. Suppose the Church were to come first. What would we then see? If the person in question is a Catholic first and a politician second, his or her oath of fidelity to the Church and to the Lord looms larger than any oath of fidelity to the state. Both are voluntary associations, certainly, but the one is a creed and the other is a job. In this case, contra the conclusion of the first interpretation, it is the State which is making unconscionable demands of a member of the Church. The Catholic can no more accede to them than he or she can forswear Christ.

So where does that leave the Catholic politician? There is a sort of tension between this reality and the words of St. Paul in Romans 13:1-2:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement.

But Paul doesn’t stop there…

Pay to all what is due to them–taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect for whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due. (Romans 13:7; emphasis mine)

And the clincher from the defiant Apostles in Acts 5:29:

We must obey God rather than any human authority.

Honour, respect and obedience are due to the State only so far as the State governs according to the Law, but when once it deviates from the righteous path such honour, respect and obedience must end.

If the Catholic public servant is enjoined by the State to support “a moral evil” which is “gravely contrary to the moral law” (CCC 2271), he or she cannot in good conscience cooperate. Indeed, no virtuous person could. In cases where the laws and/or constitution demanding such support are tentative or unsettled, it is the duty of the Catholic public servant to oppose them in word and deed, making every effort to bring about their just dissolution. In cases where the laws and/or constitution are settled, established and enacted, whereby the public servant may not oppose them without forswearing his or her oath to uphold the statutes of the State, that oath must be forsworn.

So, when “A.L.” asks in the comments on this Ignatius Insight article whether it is really to be desired that Catholic public servants who find themselves unable to serve both the Church and the State at the same time should resign their political office immediately, I can only answer “yes.”

It’s hard out here for a pope

Alas:

German actress Johanna Wokalek (“Barefoot”) will replace Franke Potente as the 9th-century female pontiff in “Pope Joan.”

The change is the latest in a long litany of delays, talent changes and lawsuits that have plagued Constantin Film’s adaptation of Donna Cross’ international bestseller.

The only movie about a fictional pope I can remember enjoying was The Shoes of the Fisherman, and that fiction was partially vindicated by reality in any event.  But this “Pope Joan” bullshit… there’s no excuse for this.

Two notes of interest.  First: the article simply refers to “Pope Joan” as “the 9th-century female pontiff,” as though this ever actually happened.  Thanks, Reuters.

Second: John Goodman was slated to play a “Pope Sergius,” though he has since pulled out.  This likely refers to Sergius II, who reigned from 844 to 847 (just prior to when “Pope Joan” is falsely said to have taken the throne).  Would this mean that the filmmakers would include some mention of the Saracens who sacked Rome during Sergius’ pontificate, in the autumn of 846?  Or would that fly unacceptably in the face of the conventional wisdom of the Crusades being a wholly unprovoked assault on a people and culture that never did the west any harm?

Founder, grim project.  Founder.

“You are not the hot love-object you deserve to be”

It is a human tendency to imbue inanimate objects with a sort of personality, the better to integrate ‘em into our world. Ships become ladies (as do guns, sometimes, however counterintuitively); machines are given agency and cursed for their willful disobedience when malfunctioning. All of this is perfectly tolerable, and even good, when it is considered in the proper light and to the proper extent.

But there are extremes which should not even be contemplated, much less approached, much less actually embraced. The world has seen fit to belch forth two people who seem determined to stand for all that is most sordid and vile in the modern conception of human sexuality, and it is down such object-oriented paths that these individuals have chosen to tread.

Case 1: Mr. Edward Smith. He has sex with cars. Or, that is, he thinks he does. What he really does is masturbate in or around cars. And the helicopter from Airwolf (his “most intense sexual experience”). And any other vehicles that get his motor running, as it were.

Case 2: Mrs. Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, as she would falsely have herself called. She thinks she’s “married” to the Berlin Wall. The happy couple tied the knot in 1979, though their relationship suffered something of a setback when the groom was murdered by a bloodthirsty mob a decade later.

What is to be done with such people? Both are defiant in their lewd obsessions, and entirely resistant to the suggestion that there is even the slightest thing wrong with them. The lady in the second case carries out her infamy under the protection of having been diagnosed with “Objectum-Sexuality,” the great paradox of our modernity being that a medical diagnosis of something being terribly wrong is the first line of defense against people suggesting there’s something wrong with you. The gentleman in the first case, by contrast, has not been diagnosed with anything, and defends his actions – many of which have been rapine, in effect, having been carried out in secret on cars owned by strangers – in the two most typical manners of the age.

First, we must note his constant appeals to harmlessness:

“I’m not sick and I don’t want to hurt anyone, cars are just my preference.”

[...]

“I didn’t fully understand it myself except that I know I’m not hurting anyone and I do not intend to.”

Now, St. Paul similarly lamented that he could not understand himself and why he did the things he did (Rom. 7:15 and onward), but from this he became more and more certain that his own inclinations were to be resisted. Not knowing why he did certain things, he could not also be certain of the full extent of their consequences. In the case of Mr. Smith, it is very much the case that somebody is being hurt: Mr. Smith himself.  The self is still a person, even if not another person; suicide, for example, is murder. Chesterton took this even further, of course, declaring in Orthodoxy that suicide was nothing less than complete treason, in its betrayal of all beauty, hope and goodness, and complete murder, in its functional effort to blot out all of creation from the perspective of the man committing the deed.

As far as Mr. Smith goes, he may certainly think he’s enjoying himself, and he may not be harming any other human beings with his actions (though fans of Airwolf may be suffering from a sort of trauma just now), but in reality he is both gravely disordered and entirely deluded, and the damage he is doing to his body, soul and mind is severe. What is more, though, is that the Law of No Harm is damned nonsense. It is neither virtuous nor sufficient to begin discerning the moral licitness of an action by asking, “does it harm?” It should rather first be asked, “does it help?” That is, start not by hoping it is not bad, but rather by ensuring that it is good. There is a world of difference between the two outlooks that is improperly appreciated in this era.

The larger trouble with this comes in the second standard trope employed by eccentrics and perverts: the protection of a “community.” In Smith’s case we may blame that great connector of shut-ins:

Mr Smith is now part of a global community of more than 500 “car lovers” brought together by internet forums.

You’re on the same internet right now, people. We all are. The artificial crowd of witnesses created by an internet forum – by the internet in general – confers a sense of legitimacy and numerousness upon any ridiculous cause that would otherwise be unthinkable. Similarly, if one were to collect all of the mechaphiliacs in the world and assemble them in a sort of parade, no doubt it would be very impressive – for a parade down a city street. In a global sense, though, not so much.

I asked earlier what should be done with such people. The answer is not easy. Though “offer them love and generally leave them alone” does not seem morally satisfying, it would probably be prudentially best on a case-by-case basis. As the Catechism declares (355-57), and the Compendium to same summarizes:

All human beings, in as much as they are created in the image of God, have the dignity of a person. A person is not something but someone, capable of self-knowledge and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with God and with other persons.

This dignity and this freedom must be respected, even when the dignity is not apparent and even when the freedom is abused. But there is an important corollary to this. An object is not someone but something, incapable of self-knowledge or that freedom of giving and communion, and as such is a wholly unworthy recipient of that romantic love of which the sexual act is the highest physical expression.

[*]

Now, Mayor Miller was a dread king

He’s also a complete dingus, apparently.

Mayor David Miller wants to close recreational shooting ranges in Toronto, along with giving the city power to block gun manufacturers and wholesalers from opening new plants or warehouses.

“Nobody can deny that hobby directly results in people being shot and killed on the streets of our city,” Miller said of sport shooting yesterday, amid debate on a possible gun bylaw.

Thinking you can end or even seriously curtail gun violence by making new laws against it is bad enough, but such naked disdain for the safety-conscious and wholly law-abiding sector of the gun-owning population, and in such unambiguous words, is just one more plodding step on the road to a soft tyranny. His language is appalling:

“It’s a hobby that creates danger to others. Guns are stolen routinely from so-called legal owners. It’s time that we got those guns out of Toronto,” he said.

“So-called legal owners,” as though the laws themselves were just smokescreens for murderers-in-hiding. You can keep tightening the noose, and people will likely keep going along with it – for we are a tired and beaten country – but the further you go, the more apparent it will become to candid observers that your actions and rhetoric are motivated by a sort of madness rather than any genuine concern for your fellow man.

Especially distressed by such plans are those for whom sport shooting is a profession.

Canadian Olympic pistol shooter and downtown resident Avianna Chao begs to differ. She says that if Miller gets his way, it could mean an end to her sport – and it won’t make the streets one bit safer.

[...]

Steven Spinney, firearms safety officer for the Scarborough Rifle Club, was also stunned by the news.

“It doesn’t make any sense to be zeroing in on a gun club,” he said. “We’re an Olympic sport … I’m not sure how shutting us down would help to cut the gun crime.”

Participants are required to take a safety course and the club uses only single-shot rifles.

So much for them, I guess.

All of this is bad enough, anyway, but Miller’s reasoning in calling for such action is disastrous both practically and philosophically:

“Do we as a society value safety, or do we value a hobby that creates danger?” he asked. “Nobody can deny that hobby directly results in people being shot and killed on the streets of our city. Those are the facts. And they’re provable again and again and again.”

Apart from the fact that he is exaggerating the link substantially, that first sentence should set off certain alarms for any reader. Perhaps Toronto (or even Canada) values safety, “as a society,” but he seems convinced that the Canadian people don’t value responsibility, or maturity, or liberty. I should also point out that, in a city as full of cars and personal watercraft as Toronto is, coming down on “hobb[ies] that create danger” could go in several more effective directions than suppressing the unspeakable scourge of single-shot-rifle-wielding gangsters skiing down Bloor or Spadina while gracefully plugging one another.

Mayor Miller does not actually care about activities that are dangerous, and he certainly does not seem to care about working towards a just and reasonable society. What he cares about is the fact that criminals – you know, the ones who will just ignore any laws he drafts, because that’s sort of what criminals do – keep shooting each other, and innocent people to boot, and while there’s not a damn thing he can do about it the electorate nevertheless expects him to do something anyway.

But banning firearms in Toronto (no doubt his eventual goal) is not the answer, and banning shooting ranges even less so. If we look back historically for precedents when it comes to disarming your citizenry through legislative and punitive force, it is difficult – impossible, even – to find any that have turned out well, or that have been undertaken by virtuous people with virtuous ends in mind. An armed citizenry is the first line of defense against top-down tyranny, and those like Miller, who have far-reaching schemes they’d like to see implemented, certainly can’t tolerate that.

You don’t mess with the higher criticism

Vernunft does the sort of elaborate thing I used to do but for which I now have neither the energy nor the patience.

The lady at the refund desk said, there is a 15% restock fee, for items returned.

The commas really break this up into something that sounds a lot more epic than it is. “There is a 15% restock fee,” whispered Gandalf, “for items returned.” Aragorn looked to the east at the gathering clouds of returned items.

A good way to spend a few minutes.

He also seems to be on the verge of waging a one-man war against popular urban-legend-debunking site Snopes.com. The strategy there, I think, would simply be to propagate many, many falsehoods, but with the added advantage of having bolstered their credibility though forged supporting documents created by sympathizers.

Some spiders are not smart

There are three things that I try to remember when dealing with animals in general, and with insects in particular:

• The dignity of a creature is not relative to its size, shape or station.
• This is especially true of those creatures whose shapes might be considered “grotesque” or “weird.”
• However different their souls and rational faculties may be, non-human creatures are neither insensate nor stupid.

This third conviction took a big hit today, and I’m not sure just what to make of it. In watching a pair of spiders stolidly marching around my ceiling and walls, I noticed that there were certain routes they tended to follow. They were moving in such a way that they were more or less always on opposite sides of the room, and yet followed the same paths to move around. This at first suggested to me that they were working in tandem, which would have been neat, but I began to suspect that it was rather a matter of them following the same chemical trail and being simply unable to distinguish one they had made themselves from one left by another spider.

In any event, this journey of theirs went on for a few hours, with each spider completing a circuit of the room’s upper reaches every ten minutes or so, though there were periods where they would simply stop moving altogether for several minutes at a time. I gradually lost interest.

But then, something changed: one of them started covering the track in the opposite direction after having stood still for a lengthy period. He (or she, for all I know) made his way back along the path towards the opposite wall, moving with great haste. His counterpart on the other side was still facing in the proper direction, but not moving. I began to wonder about what would happen when the one approached the other. Would the two simply pass each other by with a cordial nod? Would the vagaries of the trail take the one so far afield that it skirted around the other entirely? Or would things take a less friendly turn, leading to an epic battle high upon that windswept plain?

As it turned out, none of the above. They moved along their appointed path, the distance between them rapidly closing, and I’m not ashamed to say that my heart beat a little faster as they drew nearer and nearer. Then a few feet separated them; then a few inches; and then…

They ran into each other like idiots and just about jumped out of their skin in shock. Their mutual approach had been marked by not even the slightest sign that they were even aware of each other’s existence, and when they collided it was with evident surprise. They both remained very still for a few minutes, not even facing each other. Then the one who had turned around so long ago returned to the proper direction and started his route again. The other followed suit shortly.

All of which furrowed my brow greatly.

Across the Universe (2007)

A dazzling symphony of image and sound undercut by excessive artifice, limping morals and an insubstantial plot. 7/10

Maybe it’s not nice to laugh at them…

…but it’s almost impossible not to.

So word on the street (literally) is that a large number of people are queuing in line outside of Apple’s flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City (see above) — keep in mind the Cube is open 24 hours a day. Our intrepid girl-on-the-scene reports that the group is more than 60-deep, though most people seem confused about what they’re waiting for, while some believe they’re actually camping out for a 3G iPhone.

One of the fun things about a postmodern century is that all of the last century’s jokes start coming true.

The blowing of the horn

My own horn, that is.

Toronto Chamber Opera Productions will be staging three short operas on May 30th and 31st at the Walmer Centre Theatre in Toronto. “Three Operas in One Hour” is the name of the event, and the three being staged are as follows:

• A Hand of Bridge by Samuel Barber (music) and Gian Carlo Menotti (libretto)
• O D’Amarti o Morire (music and libretto by Peter Fischer)
• Dieppe by Matt Tozer (music) and Nick Milne (libretto)

Why yes, you did read that last one right.

Readers of my old blog may remember several posts about the opera in question, which was first staged in early 2007 at the Von Kuster Hall at the University of Western Ontario. It as written as a sort of final project in Matt Tozer’s attempt to earn his Masters in Musicology (he was successful). I had thought that would be the end of it, but apparently the thing has legs and there are those who would wish it performed again. Let’s hope these wishes do not prove imprudent.

Tickets are available for reserve at the event’s website. Additional coverage at Torontoist.

Speaking engagement

Tomorrow I am to give a talk at my old high school as part of my involvement with their 2008 Ideology Conference.  The conference will see numerous local luminaries descend upon the school to speak about various writerly and cultural issues, and several larger names – including novelists Joy Kagawa and Eric Walters and CBC literary personality/college professor Bruce Meyer – will be on hand to perform readings and generally make things classy.

My own contribution will see me speak about the post-secondary writing experience, such as it is, with an eye, I would imagine, towards such aspects of it as might prove interesting or important to high schoolers.  It will be good to tread those ignoble halls again, after all these years, and to shoot the breeze with those teachers who were so important to my formation.

I should probably think about writing the speech, maybe.