The Shallow End of The Pool
To be honest, I had no intention of commenting upon this train wreck of a piece. When one comes into the game with the pretense that persuading the bishops is a fool’s errand, one has already removed oneself from the debate. What follows in such a piece is self aggrandizement. One particular section needs commentary though, if only to be an example to others of what not to argue.
Ms. Kennedy Townsend writes:
While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power). The hierarchy ignores women’s equality and gays’ cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong.
Women’s equality is defined in a two-pronged way. The first way it is defined is for women to be able to have sex and not have to worry about supporting a baby because of it, like men. Of course she doesn’t phrase it like that. She suggests among other things that birth control “should be a question for morality and for science.” Obviously her conception of morality is a personal conception and certainly not something to be confused with religion. Despite several reading of Humana Vitae, I’m not finding any debates about science within it. The scientific community was pretty comfortable at the time with the finding that babies are formed by combining a sperm and an egg, a myth scientists still find suitable for the masses today.
The second prong of the argument is the argument over women priests. Of course the only reason we don’t have women priests is because the Vatican suppresses dissent and then Cardinal Ratzinger never had the opportunity to hear the good arguments for women priests because he was holed up in the Vatican. Whatever one’s opinion of women priests, the absence of them in the Roman Catholic Church isn’t due to an absence of debate. That ordination for women did not prevail did not mean there was an absence of debate. There is condescension in declaring there hasn’t been a debate, because she is in essence declaring the Vatican’s stated position unworthy of debate.
In regards to the justice demands of gays, again the Vatican does not ignore them. It has addressed them in various forms several times. Of course what Ms. Kennedy Townsend is really arguing is that the Church hasn’t acceded to the demands of justice of homosexuals. Rather than rehash this debate, let’s address the reason she gives for the Vatican’s reluctance: the Vatican would have to “admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong.” I feel like I’m reading out of one of the books where I’m supposed to insert an adjective or a noun, and it will be funny in the end. As best I can tell, the edifice is the hierarchy’s power or authority, but I’m fairly certain that wasn’t constructed around sex or gender. Perhaps the edifice is patriarchy since it is generally opposed to the individualism often at the front of feminism (particularly American) and homosexuality. But the Catholic hierarchy is not patriarchal in nature and in fact rejects generation from within (bringing forth of children by the ordained.) How either edifice is self-serving again defies rational explanation. In form, the argument is the equivalent of a tantrum.
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When I read this piece together with Weigel’s I am reminded of Alasdair MacIntyre’s editorial which was sent to (and rejected by) the New York Times on why he was not voting in the 2004 election:
But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush’s conservatism and Kerry’s liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target.
“Those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target…” Pretty much sums up Kathy and George, don’t you think?
Oh my gosh… Kathleen Kennedy so out of touch
I don’t understand what is so deplorable about the article — I’ve read the same thing thousands of times elsewhere. I think you misread the phrase “constucted around sex and gender” — isn’t she just referring to the Vatican teaching on these topic rather than to the structure of the Church?
To some extent the Vatican has responded to appeals for justice from gays — as when Celestino Migliore said at the UN on Dec 19 that the Vatican supports decriminalization of sexual activities between consenting adults — the first time the Vatican has said this — and as in the clauses in some documents that forbid “unjust discrimination”. But as long as the Vatican professes to speak of gays in the tone of “they” rather than “us” and to brand homosexual orientation as objectively disordered there will not be much progress in open dialogue here.
According to Mark Shea, one of his readers sent him a note saying something along the lines of, “Since the majority of American Catholics support torture–another intrinsic evil condemned by Pope Benedict–doesn’t it stand to reason that Dick Cheney is a better representative of American Catholicism than the Holy Father”?
Pretty much perfectly expresses the absurdity of the Newsweek piece. The Catholic faith is not up for debate. The proper question is not, “Is the Church properly representing American Catholics?” but rather, “Are American Catholics properly representing the Church?” Judging by prevailing attitudes on issues ranging from abortion and contraception to torture and materialistic capitalism, the answer to the latter is, unfortunately, a resounding “No!”
Of course the argument is Christ represents Catholicism, and it is to him that we are to approximate our behavior rather than Obama or even the Holy Father. Kennedy Townsend’s egalitarian spirit seems to believe that the median is the ideal representation.
In regards to MacIntyre I have no issue with his premise. I however believe at this point that disengagement is not the answer. If you would have told me a decade ago I was going to vote for Obama, I would have called you crazy or worse. Things change over time. We’ve just been on the losing end of the stick for about 20 years now. It appears Catholic ideals influencing the public debate have passed their low point, hopefully.
SOVII,
Whatever is constructed around sex and gender, it certainly isn’t an edifice. And yes, when we get down to brass tax, it is a re-argument of the sexual revolution. I think you read too much into the Vatican’s statement at the UN. It seems a bit much to take a condemnation of treating homosexual action as approaching a capital offense as an endorsement of it.
This is indeed the first version of the Weigel I’ve seen on the left — by that I mean a clear rejection of part of Catholic social teaching because it doesn’t fit your ideology (rather than the much less serious selctive quotation).
What struck me most about her piece was how out of date it is. These people, this generation, are still fighting battles over Humanae Vitae. Forget world poverty, forget war, forget rising inequality, forget the global economic crisis, forget global warming — all that matters is that pope says I can’t use artificial contraception to satisfy my sexual desires. It’s narcissism, pure and simple.
Forget world poverty, forget war, forget rising inequality, forget the global economic crisis, forget global warming…
But all these ills are the result of overpopulation! :)
I’m heartily in agreement with MM about the “narcissism” of Kennedy Townsend’s piece (although I agree that she is, unfortunately, right about most AMERICAN Catholics).
Also, after watching SOME of Obama’s behaviour in office, I’m more and more in agreement with Alasdair MacIntyre about “disengagement”; I think that it’s the Catholic community in America that needs to be transformed before they can hope to transform much of American public policy.
Also, how about THIS, in MZ’s generally good piece:
Perhaps the edifice is patriarchy since it is generally opposed to the individualism often at the front of feminism (particularly American) and homosexuality.
Hasn’t MZ been paying attention to the increasing conservatism of the “gay community” in America–especially as regards their embrace of “family values”? It seems to me that homosexuals can’t hold a candle to American Catholic pundits like Wiegel and Novak, in their embrace of “individualism.”
MZ you read too much into my comment on Celestino Migliore’s UN statement — I said it is the first time the Vatican have clearly stated they opposed the criminalization of gays. Of course I did not state nor did I for a moment imagine that this means the Vatican now endorse gay sex. Surely you are aware of the distinction between legality and morality?
Traces of a Broken Kettle Argument here. People say that to complain about Humanae Vitae is old-fashioned, but in the next breath they talk about how up-do-date and relevant and prophetic HV is, and in the next breath they say relevance does not matter, infallible truth trumps relevance.
“Pope Paul VI, listening to the advice of Wojtyla, disagreed with the majority of these advisers, who had voted 69 to 10 for change, fretting that to change this position would weaken his authority.”
True, I think, but one should substitute “papal authority” for “his authority”.
Reducing protests against Humanae Vitae (which let us not forget is still the teaching of the Church, heavily pushed by African bishops who say “No to condoms!”) to people’s slavery to their sexual desires is absurd. Rather the protesters protest in the name of moral responsibility.
I don’t know of anyone who would claim that the issue of birth control shouldn’t be determined by ‘morality’, or who would balk at appropriate input from the natural sciences. That claim is just bizarre. It is hard to even imagine which magisterial claims she sees as proposing that debates about birth control be resolved by something other than ‘morality’.
On a broader note, I think what ties Kennedy and Weigel quite tightly together is that their open partisanship is unable to deal with Benedict XVI as anything more than a caricature. To me this is where they both lose their credibility. And to quite a serious extent.
And, pre-emptively, I might add that by ‘appropriate input from the natural sciences’ I mean to exclude the attitude that if something is technologically possible, then it is morally permissible. As obvious as such a flawed principle should be, it does succeed in creeping up here and there.