What is that way?  The CDF document Mysterium Ecclesiae spells out the philosophy of language underlying the doctrine of papal infallibility.  In its insistence that the church’s infallibility not be falsified, the document distinguishes between the dogmatic formulas, whose meaning is determinate and unalterable, and the changeable conceptions of a given epoch, which may be but needn’t be used by the church to enunciate the truths expressed by the dogmatic formulas.  In making this distinction, the church indicates that there are two types of language: the determinate and unalterable on the one hand, and the approximate and changeable on the other.

Dogmatic formulations may bear traces of the latter kind of language, but these traces do not fundamentally change the meaning of the formulation, even though “the meaning of the pronouncements of faith depends partly upon the expressive power of the language used at a certain point in time and in particular circumstances.”  However imperfectly it may express some dogmatic truth, the dogmatic formula remains forever suitable for communication.  The CDF insists that the faithful shun the opinion that dogmatic formulas cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can do so only by means of approximations.

Infallibility only makes sense if the infallible authority is capable of signifying truth and meaning in a determinate, unalterable way.  Approximations leave room for fallibility, skepticism, suspicion, and for distance from the truth.  We need to ask, however, if the understanding of language sketched in Mysterium Ecclesiae is tenable.

I’m not sure it is, at least not exactly as expressed.  I’ve long held the positions that meaning is both produced and disclosed by language and that the boundaries of meaning (definitions) are the result of choice.  I’ve shunned the view that truth can be possessed, arguing instead that it can only be pursued.  It would seem that I’m decidedly in the camp that says truth can be signified only by approximations.  And I am.  And yet I do not deny magisterial infallibility.

Where Mysterium Ecclesiae separates determinate language and approximate language, I see them as potentially the same.  Specifically, language can be determinate in terms of reference—that outside of language to which language points—but at best approximate in terms of sense—that which is contained in the linguistic expression.  Therefore, the church’s dogmatic formulas are both determinate and approximate: determinate because there is a disclosure of a reality beyond the formula, and approximate because the formula, however clear and concise, involves the subjective creation of meaning.  The Catechism buttresses this notion when it says that we don’t believe in formulas, but in the realities they express, which faith allows us to touch.

A question lingers: is the difference between my philosophy of language and the one implied in Mysterium Ecclesiae sufficient enough that I should be led to a different conception of infallibility?  I’m inclined to say yes, but I hasten to add that my doing so is in keeping with the route proposed by the CDF: a dogmatic truth may be expressed at first incompletely, but receive a fuller and more perfect expression in light of a broader context of faith and human knowledge.

Alternatively, my philosophy of language may be bogus.

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Hat tip: The Girardian Lectionary, 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

With this in mind, I read a rather disturbing report in the New York Times yesterday about the condition of workers in Apple suppliers in China. Reseachers have documented a litany of abuse including poor safety conditions sometimes leading to injury and death, excessive overtime, workers being forced to stand all day and crammed into crowded dorms at night, improper disposal of toxic waste, the use of underage workers, the use of poisonous chemicals, workers being forced to work multiple shifts in a row, workers treated harshly by managers and docked pay for minor infractions..the list goes on.

Let us remember how seriously the Church regards this form of injustice – Gaudium Et Spes lists “disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons” as among the most grave infamies. And it was precisely the treatment of workers in the 19th century that gave rise to modern Catholic social teaching, in the passionate demands for justice coming from Pope Leo XIII.

Of course, Apple likes to talk about how highly it takes its social responsibility. But the evidence shows otherwise. At a time when Apple pulls in $13 billion in quarterly earnings, it deliberately tries to twist the screws of its suppliers. As the article notes:

Apple typically asks suppliers to specify how much every part costs, how many workers are needed and the size of their salaries. Executives want to know every financial detail. Afterward, Apple calculates how much it will pay for a part. Most suppliers are allowed only the slimmest of profits. So suppliers often try to cut corners, replace expensive chemicals with less costly alternatives, or push their employees to work faster and longer, according to people at those companies.

With these conditions, is it any surprise that abuses occur? The relationship is symbiotic. The supplier needs the enormous amount of business that Apple will provide, and goes to great lengths to deliver. And Apple, despite the rhetoric, knows that few suppliers have the expertise it needs to deliver high-quality goods very quickly, so is not in a hurry to end a profitable relationship.

Let us remember the rights of workers in Catholic social teaching. The right to decent wages. The right to a safe and healthy working environment. The right to adequate rest. The right to social benefits. The right to form and join unions. The right to profit-sharing and joint ownership of the company.

In China, many of these benefits are denied by the state. But that is no reason for Apple to play along. In fact, it puts a greater onus on Apple to treat its workers with the dignity they deserve.

In order for us to learn how to love God, we must learn patience. Most of us don’t have to learn how to be patient for the good. Well, I know there is the impatience of waiting for a birth or a wedding, or a special event, but usually joy doesn’t require endurance. I am learning from my trials and from the trials I see others suffering right now, that patience can be the fruit of suffering. When I speak about trials, I have in mind a childhood friend, 28 years of age, a teacher in Nevada, diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. I have in mind my friend–a mother of six children–who has an inoperable non-malignant brain tumor that is not responding to treatment. I have in mind a beloved child, raped by her own father. I have in mind my own trials over the last few years and repeated frustrations, and health challenges. These are hard core, life altering, shake one to one’s core, life events that make a person seek out answers.

And the more I pray, the more I meditate, the more that very first line of 1st Corinthians repeats in my head, and I cannot help but think that God is trying to make me understand that Purgatory occurs. It will occur now or it will occur later and I believe that the length of purgation is determined by our ability to cooperate with it. The pain is patience. Patience, my friends, can be excruciating. My friend, just finished her first round of chemo for her breast cancer. She now must wait to discover if the tumors in her liver have responded to the chemo. As I waited to find out if I had TB or just plain pneumonia, I had to wear a blue mask in public. As I walked the aisles of my grocery store, people looked upon me as “other” and fled in terror of whatever disease I harbored.

Do not get me wrong. I do not believe God causes evil. But what God requests from us is complete and total trust in Him. The Pain is caused when we want to avoid the suffering and when we become angry that we even “have” to suffer. It has become so clear to me why Jesus said it is so difficult for rich people to get to heaven. I don’t think it is necessarily our attachments to our materials goods, as it is our attitudes that will keep us from God. Rich people are not used to being humbled or child like. Suffering is the only thing that I know that makes bendable . . . or not. And if we choose to avoid it, we ultimately choose to reject the first definition of Love. We reject Patience or Love . . . or God.

Please discuss.

Before responding, you may want to read the interview with Phyllis Zagano at U.S. Catholic and her response to what she felt were the many factually incorrect comments posted to that article.

Also, since it will probably be referred to by someone, here is a link to Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II’s letter on the ordination of women to the priesthood.  (For what its worth, I searched the document and “deacon” and “diaconate” do not appear in the text:  it is solely concerned with priestly ordination.)

But let’s be clear about why it is wrong. I have little interest in American constitutionalism, but I have a major interest in Catholic social teaching. And in this domain, the decision was wrong because it was a violation of subsidiarity. Specifically, instead of simply furnishing help, the federal government stepped over the line and usurped the power of a lower level authority in the social order. By providing too much “subsidium”, the government suffocated the legitimate autonomy of religious institutions offering health care coverage. As Pius XI put it, the role of the state is to “furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them”.

Part of the problem is the way that left-wing liberalism has developed in the United States, insofar as it seeks to curb the autonomy of religious entities once they step onto the public square. The closest comparison to the Obama decision would be the French government decision to ban certain religious garb in public schools, notably the headscarf frequently worn by Muslim women. In both cases, it is a violation of the autonomy of the religious entity, which does not lose this autonomy when it enters the public square. And this principle is far bigger than any fights over the merits of providing contraceptives (or wearing scarves in France). It would apply equally if the federal or state government attempted to interfere in the way Catholic schools, hospitals, or charitable institutions deal with undocumented workers and their families – a live issue in the United States today.

Another example would be the provision of social welfare in countries with a strong Christian Democratic tradition, such as Germany and the Netherlands. Here, the welfare system is funded by the state, but managed by subsidiary mediating institutions – including religious bodies – in a fully autonomous manner. This model of a publicly financed and privately governed welfare arrangement stems directly from the principle of subsidiarity. But such a model seems inconceivable in the United States.

But let’s be clear about something else too. From this same perspective of Catholic social teaching, positions like those of Robert George also don’t hold any water. George is almost gloating over Obama’s betrayal of the Catholics who supported him. But George and those like him tend to misapply the principle of subsidiarity themselves. Rather than too much help, they would have the government provide too little. Sticking to the health care arena, these people opposed the Affordable Care Act based on what Pope Paul VI referred to an unbridled liberalism that “exalts individual freedom by withdrawing from it every limitation” and which is based on “an erroneous affirmation of the autonomy of the individual in his activity, his motivation and the exercise of his liberty”. This is the basic right-wing liberalism in the United States that is mis-named “conservatism”. Specifically, these anti-Obama Catholics on the right opposed attempts to provide near-universal healthcare by means of strict regulation of insurance companies, an individual mandate, and subsidies for the poor. The individual mandate, as an “attack on autonomy”, continues to draw the most ire.

But this approach is fully in line with Catholic social teaching. It gels with our collective obligation as a society to provide healthcare to everybody through solidarity. It is also warranted through subsidiarity. As Pius XI put it, “the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces” and needs a directing force. John XXIII stated clearly that “intervention of public authorities that encourages, stimulates, regulates, supplements and complements is based on the principle of subsidiarity”.

If the market cannot provide, the state must step in to fix the problems (directly through solidarity, indirectly through subsidiarity). And indeed, John Paul II noted that “there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied, and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish.” It is hard to think of a better example than health care. John Paul also notes that the free market must be “controlled by the forces of society and by the State, so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole of society are satisfied”. Health care is such a basic need. The fact that the United States, alone among the wealthy countries, does not provide it to all is a major source of scandal.

One way to look at subsidiarity is that it seeks to balance the scales between different groups, by providing just the right amount of help from above (neither too much nor too little) to achieve a harmonious social order. This is certainly what Pius XI had in mind. Paul VI put well when he said that “when two parties are in very unequal positions, their mutual consent alone does not guarantee a fair contract; the rule of free consent remains subservient to the demands of the natural law”. In such a case, the state must step in to correct any imbalances. In the United States, there is a huge imbalance between people and insurance companies, especially those on the individual market. The Affordable Care Act seeks to correct this unbalanced relationship by forbidding insurance companies from denying coverage at whim, calling for state-level exchanges to help level the playing field between insurers and insurees, and making sure the poor are not excluded from health care because they cannot afford it.

In other words, through the Affordable Care Act, societies of a superior order are adopting “attitudes of help (“subsidium”) — therefore of support, promotion, development — with respect to lower-order societies” (as the Compendium puts it). And while the Obama administration’s decision on conscience protections goes too far, critics of Obama from the Catholic right would not go far enough. Both are unbalanced under Catholic social teaching.

Michael Stafford agrees with me. He’s a lawyer and columnist whose latest piece, “A Christian Alternative to America’s Broken Political Duopoly,” is well worth a read, regardless of whether you are a partisan or, like me, a wanderer.

Stafford’s money quote: “British theologian and political philosopher Phillip Blond correctly notes that, ‘the current political consensus’ in the United States is ‘left-liberal in culture and right-liberal in economics. And this is precisely the wrong place to be.’ It’s also the fundamental reason why Christians cannot be at home in either political party – the Christian vision of the social and economic order is almost exactly the opposite of the current consensus.”

(Hat tip: John Medaille via Facebook)

Contrast Kirk’s definition of “conservative” with the claim of contemporary “conservative” Michael Ledeen, who trumpets the revolutionary “menace” of democratic capitalism, American-style: “Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. Of all the myths that cloud our understanding, and therefore paralyze our will and action, the most pernicious is that only the Left has a legitimate claim to the revolutionary tradition.” (From War Against the Terror Masters)

What Catholic “conservatives” (I mean political conservatism, not theological orthodoxy) seem not to understand is that the revolutionary spirit Ledeen describes doesn’t spare religion or traditional morality.  It is capitalism – or at least the Anglo-American variant of the thing – that has bequeathed to us a mass consumer society in which everything from toothpaste and automobiles to marriage and the unborn are rendered mere objects of “choice.” The dictatorship of relativism that Benedict XVI has warned us about is fueled by the revolutionary logic of the creative destruction at the heart of capitalism. If not checked, this logic would scour history of any slower, deeper, more meaningful, less materially efficient force, including the Church. It is this logic that the developing world – including the deeply religious societies of the Middle East – is desperately trying to resist, with varying degrees of success. And it is this logic that Catholics are called to resist, as well. Not by becoming socialists, but by embracing the whole teaching of the Church.

Consider this interesting quote by columnist George Will. Writing about the 1980 presidential race, Will suggested a fundamental schizophrenia in the marriage of convenience between cultural and economic conservatives:  ”The Republican platform of 1980 stresses two themes that are not as harmonious as Republicans suppose. One is cultural conservatism. The other is capitalist dynamism. The latter dissolves the former. Capitalism undermines traditional social structures and values. Republicans see no connection between the cultural phenomena they deplore and the capitalist culture they promise to intensify.”

They still don’t.

“The Industrial Revolution seems to have been a response of mankind to the challenge of a swelling population: ‘Capitalism gave the world what it needed,’ Ludwig von Mises writes sturdily in his Human Action, ‘a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.’ But it turned the world inside out. Personal loyalties gave way to financial relationships. The wealthy man ceased to be magistrate and patron; he ceased to be neighbour to the poor man; he became a mass-man, very often, with no purpose in life by aggrandizement. He ceased to be conservative because because he did not understand conservative norms, which cannot be instilled by mere logic – a man must be steeped in them. The poor man ceased to feel that he had a decent place in the community; he became a social atom, starved for most emotions except envy and ennui, severed from true family-life and reduced to mere household-life, his old landmarks buried, his old faiths dissipated. Industrialism was a harder knock to conservativism than the books of the French egalitarians. To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservativism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatvism, the forces of tradition in the United States have never fully escaped.”

Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

“We live, as we must sooner or later recognize, in an era of sentimental economics and, consequently, of sentimental politics. Sentimental communism holds in effect that everybody and everything should suffer for the good of “the many” who, though miserable in the present, will be happy in the future for exactly the same reasons that they are miserable in the present. Sentimental capitalism is not so different from sentimental communism as the corporate and political powers claim. Sentimental capitalism holds in effect that everything small, local, private, personal, natural, good and beautiful must be sacrificed in the interest of the “free market” and the great corporations, which will bring unprecedented security and happiness to “the many” — in, of course, the future.

These forms of political economy may be described as sentimental because they depend absolutely upon a political faith for which there is no justification, and because they issue a cold check on the virtue of political and/or economic rulers. They seek, that is, to preserve the gullibility of the people by appealing to a fund of political virtue that does not exist.

Communism and ‘free-market’ capitalism both are modern versions of oligarchy. In their propaganda, both justify violent means by good ends, which always are put beyond reach by the violence of the means. The trick is to define the end vaguely “the greatest good of the greatest number” or “the benefit of the many” — and keep it at a distance.

The fraudulence of these oligarchic forms of economy is in their principle of displacing whatever good they recognize (as well as their debts) from the present to the future. Their success depends upon persuading people, first, that whatever they have now is no good, and, second, that the promised good is certain to be achieved in the future. This obviously contradicts the principle — common, I believe, to all the religious traditions — that if ever we are going to do good to one another, then the time to do it is now; we are to receive no reward for promising to do it in the future. And both communism and capitalism have found such principles to be a great embarrassment. If you are presently occupied in destroying every good thing in sight in order to do good in the future, it is inconvenient to have people saying things like ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ or ‘Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them.’ Communists and capitalists alike, ‘liberal” capitalists and ‘conservative’ capitalists alike, have needed to replace religion with some form of determinism, so that they can say to their victims, “I’m doing this because I can’t do otherwise. It is not my fault. It is inevitable.’”

Wendell Berry

“If by capitalism is meant, not diffused ownership of property, but monopolistic capitalism in which capital bids for labor on a market, and concentrates wealth in the hands of the few, then from an economic point of view alone, the Church is just as much opposed to capitalism as it is to communism. Communism emphasizes social use to the exclusion of personal rights, and capitalism emphasizes personal rights to the exclusion of social use. The Church says both are wrong. It therefore refuses to maintain capitalism as an alternative to the economic side of communism…. Capitalistic economy is godless; communism makes economics God….”

Bishop Fulton Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West

“There is something wrong with a society that is governed entirely by the imperatives of business, which recognises no restraint on trade apart from the market, and which makes business and enterprise into its primary values. When Marx and Engels composed the Communist manifesto they did not condemn capitalism for its economic power. They condemned it for its human cost. ‘It has left no other nexus between man and man,’ they wrote, ‘than callous cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour … in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade.’ Exaggerated, of course. But not without truth. Even if we dismiss Marx’s alternative as naive in its ends and wicked in its means, we should not dismiss the moral insight from which it derives – namely, that the free market left to itself is both a creative and a destructive force …”

Roger Scruton

The true conservative is the person who recognizes that his life is derived from and dependent on society. As members of society we only become the people we are through society’s power over us. No citizen is possessed of a natural right that transcends his obligation to be ruled.

Roger Scruton

Phillip Blond, leader of the British “Red Tory” movement

And here’s the sad thing – our fellow Catholics New Gingrich and Rick Santorum seem to be in on the game, despite the clear Church teaching on the innate dignity of every human person (regardless of race) and the core unity of the human race (regardless of race). The Church teaches quite clearly that racism is an intrinsically evil act.

Our friends at Faith in Public Life have published an open letter to Gingrich and Santorum by 40 prominent Catholics leaders and theologians. Here is the letter:

“As Catholic leaders who recognize that the moral scandals of racism and poverty remain a blemish on the American soul, we challenge our fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail. Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Labeling our nation’s first African-American president with a title that evokes the past myth of “welfare queens” and inflaming other racist caricatures is irresponsible, immoral and unworthy of political leaders.

Some presidential candidates now courting “values voters” seem to have forgotten that defending human life and dignity does not stop with protecting the unborn. We remind Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum that Catholic bishops describe racism as an “intrinsic evil” and consistently defend vital government programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits that help struggling Americans. At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting.

As the South Carolina primary approaches, we urge Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and all presidential candidates to reject the politics of racial division, refrain from offensive rhetoric and unite behind an agenda that promotes racial and economic justice.”

Well said.

I have followed Cohen’s career since the mid 1970′s. I “discovered” him through my musical and lyrical infatuation with Bob Dylan (an infatuation which has not abated despite 37 years, 28 live performances and some big disappointments).  But it wasn’t until I saw Cohen live in Boston in 2009 that I became deeply invested in his oeuvre, including his poetry. I’ve been to scores and scores of concerts over the years, but nothing had prepared me for the generous, humble, self-donating spirit of the man or the luminous virtuosity of the musicians around him. Combined with the God-haunted lyrics of the songs, the evening was a transformed into a genuine religious experience.

That said, Cohen doesn’t fit neatly into any religious – or musical – categories, so I won’t even attempt to fix him in some lame triangulation scheme. What he does is announce deep truths about sex,  mortality, sin, God; and he does so in the language of a man whose first love was poetry. A good example is the following quote, which is taken from an online chat in which someone asked Cohen for his assessment of the state of Christianity today. He answered: “As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort. Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.”

I can’t be sure Cohen wrote that, but it sounds like something he’d say. I am certain that he wrote the following lines, which are from a song titled “Show Me The Place,” from the new album, Old Ideas, available for purchase a week from tomorrow:

Show me the place where you want your slave to go
Show me the place, I’ve forgotten, I don’t know
Show me the place, for my head is bending low
Show me the place where you want your slave to go

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone
Show me the place where the Word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began

I understand why he went ahead with the ruling as is. He thought it was the right thing to do. Contra the statements of celibate religious authorities, most people value the widespread availability of contraceptives as a much-needed social good. Obama met opposition from a vocal minority that, let’s face it, doesn’t represent the majority of Catholics, who use contraceptives without a second thought. My guess is that Obama, if he considered the reaction from Catholics at all, figured only a tiny minority would be bothered by the mandate. If the majority of Catholics don’t follow their faith’s teachings to the letter, why should Obama be expected to take those teachings seriously?

When making decisions about social policy, especially policies that will have major ramifications for voters, any skilled politician will make a cost-benefit analysis. In this case, Obama had very little to lose and much to gain by making contraceptives more readily available. The official teachings of the church wouldn’t interest him so much as the actual opinions of voting Catholics, who for the most part either don’t care or probably think expanded access to contraceptives is a good thing.

Nevertheless, President Obama should have expanded the conscious exemptions. First, while the state shares responsibility for the healthcare of the people within it, the state has the primary responsibility of protecting the rights and freedoms of its people. Helping people bear the burden of healthcare costs, noble as it is, is no excuse to violate religious freedoms. Second, by not expanding the exemptions, Obama betrayed his promises to Catholic supporters of his policies, notably the Affordable Care Act. Obama earned their support in part by promising to uphold conscience protections. They took the move as a slap in the face. Third, the ruling may prove counter-productive. Catholic institutions—some of them anyway— participate in healthcare on the condition that they are free to follow Catholic ethical norms. Forcing these institutions to materially cooperate with what they deem contrary to their faith incentivizes them to cease such participation.

Catholics have every right to fight this ruling tooth and nail.

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Let me get this out of the way: I don’t for a minute think that the U.S. is a terrorist state, run by a regime enthused by malicious and hateful intent.  I wouldn’t equate it morally with worst abusers of human rights around the globe.  Having said this, however, it pains me to say that the U.S. and those supportive of its aggressions are gravely negligent and careless about the real human costs of those aggressions.  As a result of negligence and carelessness–and, for the record, murders–the U.S. has spilt a lot of blood and piled up a lot of bodies.  The truth is this: the U.S. is at least as great a mortal threat as most dictatorial and terrorist regimes are.

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