Author: D. G. Hart

How to Achieve Unity

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

I detect something of a breakthrough among Roman Catholics in reaction to Pope Francis’ comments about contraception and the Zika. Christopher Kaczor does his best to help out the pope (even if it is way above his pay grade):

During Pope Francis’ flight from Mexico to Rome, a Spanish reporter posed this question: “Holy Father, for several weeks there’s been a lot of concern in many Latin American countries but also in Europe regarding the Zika virus. The greatest risk would be for pregnant women. There is anguish. Some authorities have proposed abortion, or else to avoiding pregnancy. As regards avoiding pregnancy, on this issue, can the Church take into consideration the concept of ‘the lesser of two evils?’”

In his answer, Pope Francis unequivocally condemned abortion, saying, “Paul VI, a great man, in a difficult situation in Africa, permitted nuns to use contraceptives in cases of rape. [The nuns were in constant danger of getting raped and therefore of pregnancy.] Don’t confuse the evil of avoiding pregnancy by itself with abortion. … [A]s with every human evil, each killing is condemned. On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one, such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI , it was clear.”

The first part of the pope’s answer does not raise many questions, as it is a straightforward and unequivocal application of Catholic teaching that intentional killing of innocent human beings is seriously wrong. But what about the Bishop of Rome’s statements on contraception? Do his remarks indicate that using contraception is ethically permissible if the circumstances are dire? . . .

In his interview, Pope Francis could be understood as endorsing the view that the use of contraceptives such as a condom could be permissible in order to prevent the transmission of the Zika virus, which may be transmitted through sexual activity. On the other hand, his remarks are also open to the interpretation that forms of contraception, such as the pill, would be permissible in order to render sexual acts nonprocreative with the motivation that a child not be born with microcephaly. Given that Pope Francis is, in the very same interview, at pains to praise and show his agreement with Paul VI, the first interpretation is the more plausible one.

But other Roman Catholics from the left and right are not buying this and so are showing remarkable unity. Edward Peters finds the Pope’s construction of church teaching dubious:

No longer are we musing about a point of Church history (as interesting as that might be), now we are dealing with Church moral teaching. The stakes become dramatically higher.

So here’s my point: not only does the Congo nuns permission seem NOT to exist, but, even if it does exist in some form, it could NOT, I suggest, by its own terms, be used by Francis (or anyone else committed to thinking with the Church) to call into question the Church’s settled teaching that “each and every marital act [quilibet matrimonii usus] must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (Humanae vitae 11) and that therefore “excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after conjugal intercourse [coniugale commercium], is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means” (Humanae vitae 14).

Obviously the Congo nuns case (or the Balkan nuns story in the 1990s, to take another variation of the myth) was not about marital acts, it was about religious women facing criminal acts of violent sexual intercourse; the Congo question was not about possible birth defects, it was about stopping rapists’ sperm from reaching ova that perchance had been ovulated. Between women facing rape and wives worried about birth defects there simply is no parallel relevant to the moral question of contraception. One can like that fact or hate it, but one cannot change it or ignore it. Moreover, Church teaching on the immorality of contracepted marital acts is, I believe, taught infallibly; but, even if I were wrong about that technical claim, there is no question about what that teaching is, namely, that contracepting acts of marital intercourse, whether doing so as an end in itself or as means to some other end, is objectively immoral.

So does Peter Steinfels:

The precedents cited to render Francis’s statement consistent with standing teaching strike me as a stretch. Despite the pope’s own fleeting allusion to what is in fact a historically obscure episode involving nuns threatened by sexual assault in the Congo in the early Sixties, Francis was not talking about an apparently proactive prevention of forced conception from rapes that may or may not occur. He was not talking about prevention of transmitting a virus, parallel to HIV, from one marital partner to another. He was talking about the prevention of pregnancy.

And Humanae Vitae condemns any use whatsoever of contraception to prevent pregnancy—even as a “lesser evil … even for the gravest of reasons … even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general.” Nor, according to the encyclical, can “a whole married life of otherwise normal relations” justify such a single or temporary use.

My wager is that Pope Francis just doesn’t believe that. He respects it. He admires its author. He looks for the truth in it. But he doesn’t buy it.

But that’s pure guess on my part. The inability of church leaders, including the Holy Father, to speak straightforwardly about contraception has been a great disappointment.

This is unity, but it’s not the kind we’re supposed to notice.

In the Larger Scheme of Things

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

Should the church engage in politics? John Allen answers, that’s a no-brainer:

And that ministry inevitably has a political edge. Yes, Jesus Christ said “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and God what is God’s,” which is a charter for church/state separation. However, Christ also said we will be judged for how we treat the least among us, which is a standard with a clearly political dimension.

Popes represent a tradition rooted in prophetic denunciations of injustice and abuses of power, and a Lord who chose to be born into a poor family in an occupied corner of the world’s leading empire of its day.

To insist, therefore, that popes remain apolitical would be to demand that they betray their office.

As if politics were all about finger-wagging. Lobbyists make lousy politicians.

J. Peter Nixon worries what happens when the church’s ministry becomes too oriented to this world:

Last week Pope Francis presided over a Mass to mark the end of the Year for Consecrated Life. Robert Mickens reported here that the Holy Father also gave a short talk to men and women religious at an audience prior to the Mass. “Why has the womb of religious life become so sterile?” he asked.

The answers to that question are complex and manifold. . . . I know enough men and women religious to realize the dangers of sentimentalizing their lives. Those without property can often become proprietary about their roles and responsibilities and unhealthy power dynamics can afflict any community of human beings. The spiritual risks of celibacy are well known, even if they are sometimes exaggerated.

The lives of ordinary believers and the lives of those called to practice the counsels should complement one another, embodying the tension between a Kingdom that is already present and yet still to come. In the past, the balance may have tipped too far in the direction of the latter, leading to the suggestion that the married state was somehow inferior to religious life. Over the last half century, however, we have tipped far in the other direction. Somehow, we must find balance.

The balance may not involve the monastic life, but it could include something like recognizing that this world, and even its attempts to right social wrongs, is not all there is:

So while politics is important business, there are strict limits to what we can achieve by political means. There are no limits at all, on the other hand, to what we can achieve by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; for that we have the Lord’s promise! We can revive our own faith, awaken the strength of our neighbors, and thereby accomplish what not even a presidential candidate dares to suggest.

“America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” So wrote the most acute of all observers of our political scene, Alexis de Tocqueville. Perhaps the most appropriate “political” task for Lent would be to embark on our own private campaigns to make America good again, beginning with ourselves.

Of course, Protestants don’t believe we make ourselves good. But confessional Protestants do understand, in ways that challenge followers of the papacy, an institution fraught with power and political intrigue, that ministering the gospel does more good in the long run than making policy or running for office.

Those Who Want History Straight Deserve to Get It Good and Hard

Published on by D. G. Hart61 Comments

History does not conform to apologetics.

So says the American Jesuit, Robert Taft:

“It’s not true that at the beginning we had one Church centered in Rome, and then for various historical reasons certain groups broke off,” he said. “It’s just the opposite. At the beginning we had various churches, as Christianity developed here and there and someplace else, and gradually different units began to be formed.”

“That’s the reality,” Taft said, “and we have to accept it.”

So confirms the Capuchin order:

The Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican’s statistical yearbook, lists about 800 men’s orders in the Church, all of which have a story to tell. Precisely because Capuchins don’t call attention to themselves, however, several interesting elements of their tale are often lost.

The order was born in 1525 when a friar named Matteo da Bascio decided the Franciscans of his day had abandoned the initial vision of St. Francis of Assisi, and he wanted to get back to a strict observance of penance, prayer, and poverty.

That implied criticism didn’t sit well with other Franciscans, and with the support of influential Church authorities, they hounded Bascio and his initial companions, who were forced to take shelter from Camaldolese monks.

In 1528, the “Capuchins” (so named for the hood they wear with their habit) got papal permission to organize, but their problems were hardly over.

Within 20 years, Bascio had left his new order to return to the Observant Franciscans, while another early Capuchin leader, Bernardino Ochino, spurned the Catholic faith altogether to join forces with John Calvin in Geneva. Eventually Ochino’s support for polygamy and his rejection of the Trinity was too much even for the Calvinists, and he went into exile first in Poland and then in Slovakia.

The new order came under suspicion of heresy and narrowly avoided being suppressed, while for a time Capuchins were forbidden to preach. (This makes it a rich irony that since 1743, the Capuchins have had the privilege of supplying the official Preacher of the Papal Household; since 1980, that role has been held by the Rev. Rainero Cantalamessa.)

Is Universal Suffrage One of the Benefits that Accompany or Flow from Justification, Adoption, and Sanctification?

Published on by D. G. Hart41 Comments

Matt Tuininga is back to remind us of how far short the contemporary advocates of the spirituality of the church (SpofCh) fall. In this case, the proponents of 2k and SpofCh are in solidarity with the southern Presbyterian opponents of integration who formed the PCA. That’s sort of like the students at Princeton who liken the university’s faculty to the KKK on the spectrum of institutional racism. Here’s the key Tuininga challeng:

Until advocates of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church (not to mention advocates of two kingdoms theology) come to grips with the social implications of the spiritual gospel they will not be able to make the necessary distinction between inappropriate meddling in civil and political affairs (which they rightly criticize) and the church’s responsibility to proclaim the full scope of the gospel, with all of its social implications (which duty they avoid). Until we understand how the spirituality doctrine not only permits the use of church discipline and the diaconate to promote the justice and righteousness of the kingdom, but requires it, we have not grasped just what it is that spirituality means. To politicize the church is surely a horribly misguided attempt to manipulate the Spirit for our own purposes, but to muzzle the Spirit or partition the social dimension of human life from the gospel is hardly less a display of rebellion.

So the question for Tuininga is whether social advances like the civil rights movement or integration are parts of the coming of the kingdom of Christ. For instance, one of the great achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights advocates was the Voters Rights Act which prohibited local and state policies that prevented African-Americans from exercising their right to vote.

That was not the only time that suffrage included more Americans. The Puritans restricted suffrage to members of congregations, and only when Massachusetts Bay became more secular (less controlled by Christian norms) did the franchise extend to residents who were not church members. Even then, property holdings were necessary to qualify for the vote.

More recently, the nineteenth Amendment prohibited restrictions on voting based on sex.

The question for Tuininga is whether the churches should have endorsed these enlargements of the franchise? If so, why does he not complain about the Puritans who were comfortable with restricting suffrage, or the mainline churches who for so long said nary a word about women not having the right to vote?

Or could it be that most policies and laws are not benefits of the gospel the way that assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace and perseverance of the saints accompany and flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification? Is it also the case that if you can tell the difference between voting in a democracy and peace of conscience, you actually know what the spirituality of the church is?

So I throw the challenge back to Tuininga: until he can show that certain social reforms are evidence of the gospel, he needs to come down from his high horse about the deficiencies of the spirituality of the church and its proponents. I, for one, would love to believe that prison reform and abandonment of the War on Drugs as federal policy are part of “the transforming impact of the gospel.” But I have a hard time understanding how policies reformed and prisoners freed are signs of the coming of the kingdom when the people reforming the policies and the ex-cons don’t confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

Can Someone Explain Why A Nation Losing Population is Good?

Published on by D. G. Hart32 Comments

Donald Trump may be wrong about building a wall between Mexico and the U.S., but doesn’t Mexico want to keep its residents and citizens? Would the U.S. like to see lots of its people migrate to Canada? Is California happy when its residents move to Colorado (I know the residents of Colorado aren’t)? I don’t understand the economics — GDP, taxes and so on. But it sure does seem that having more people is better than having fewer. If we had more people in Hillsdale, Trader Joe’s might set up a store here.

What got me thinking about this was Pope Francis’ remarks yesterday to Mexico’s youth:

You are the wealth of Mexico, you are the wealth of the Church. I understand that often it is difficult to feel your value when you are continually exposed to the loss of friends or relatives at the hands of the drug trade, of drugs themselves, of criminal organizations that sow terror. It is hard to feel the wealth of a nation when there are no opportunities for dignified work, no possibilities for study or advancement, when you feel your rights are being trampled on, which then leads you to extreme situations. It is difficult to appreciate the value of a place when, because of your youth, you are used for selfish purposes, seduced by promises that end up being untrue.

I know the magisterium is clearer than the Bible, but wouldn’t this suggest that the youth of Mexico are the wealth of that country, not the U.S.?

So how does that message to young Mexicans cohere with the pope’s pro-immigration speech to Congress?

In recent centuries, millions of people came to this land to pursue their dream of building a future in freedom. We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants. Tragically, the rights of those who were here long before us were not always respected. For those peoples and their nations, from the heart of American democracy, I wish to reaffirm my highest esteem and appreciation. Those first contacts were often turbulent and violent, but it is difficult to judge the past by the criteria of the present. Nonetheless, when the stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our “neighbors” and everything around us. Building a nation calls us to recognize that we must constantly relate to others, rejecting a mindset of hostility in order to adopt one of reciprocal subsidiarity, in a constant effort to do our best. I am confident that we can do this.

Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War. This presents us with great challenges and many hard decisions. On this continent, too, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities. Is this not what we want for our own children? We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal. We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Mt 7:12).

If we applied the golden rule to Mexico, wouldn’t it mean encouraging Mexicans, the wealth of the nation, to stay there and not migrate to the U.S., just as we want residents of the U.S. not to leave?

Then again, I’m not convinced that pastors should speak about economics and immigration policy. Below their pay grade.

The Next President?

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

What he or she should do:

It’s not enough that we elect someone who will defend the religious liberties of Christians. The next president needs to be sensitive to the interests and concerns of many groups who find themselves increasingly in tension with one another and the State: Muslims, atheists, Christians, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, black people, poor white people, and law enforcement. There will be laws, court rulings, and policies established in the next presidency that will help define how these groups live together in the near future. We can expect decisions concerning anti-discrimination laws, illegal immigration and refugees, gender and sexuality in public education, religion and gender in the military, and criminal justice reform. One of the most prized qualities in presidential candidates should be a desire to pursue principled pluralism, not merely protecting the interest of one group.

Sounds like the Bishop of Springfield should be the one:

Still there are others who have distanced themselves because they feel unwelcomed. The reasons here can vary, but key among them are race and cultural differences, a sense of gender inequality as well as sexual orientation.

Others have been treated unkindly, impatiently, or rudely by clergy, religious, ministers, and staff of parishes — all which is unacceptable. I ask your forgiveness. I make my own the words of Pope Francis, and say to you, “Believe me, in spite of its slowness, the infidelity, the mistakes, and the sins that may have and may still be committed by those who compose the Church, it has no other sense and aim if not to live and witness to Jesus: He has been sent by (the Father) ‘to bring good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” (“An open dialogue with non-believers” La Repubblica, 9/11/13).

This Jubilee Year of Mercy allows us an opportunity to acknowledge our need as a diocese for forgiveness and healing from past sins and hurts, as well as to look forward to the future in hope.

That is what evangelization is all about, looking forward to the future with hope, sharing our hope which is the Good News of Jesus Christ with others, regardless the path of life they walk.

“Evangelizing,” as Blessed Pope Paul VI once said, “means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity … both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieu which are theirs” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 18).

The Holy Father went on to explain, that “evangelization loses much of its force and effectiveness if it does not take into consideration the actual people to whom it addresses, if it does not use their language, their signs and symbols, if it does not answer the questions they ask, and if it does not have an impact on their concrete life”(EN, 63).

This fact came across clearly in our diocesan survey. As one person commented, “I believe there is a huge gap between what the priests are doing and what the people need.” Others noted the need for “priests of the diocese to get out among the people … where they are at” because “people are not just going to walk into the churches and rectories.”

There is much truth to these honest reflections; our communities must be inviting and energetic environments, founded both in our traditions but also the reality of everyday life. Such efforts are not just the responsibility of some of us but rather all of us: clergy, women and men religious, lay faithful … we are all in this together; evangelization is, for each and every one of us, our call and responsibility as the baptized. We need to evangelize those who are with us each week for Mass, that they, in turn, may be empowered to become evangelizers themselves.

We need to evangelize those who were once, but are no longer with us: We need you, we need your presence, your gifts and your talents. We need you to complete our community, to enrich it, to
make it better and more effective. I would ask you to join with us as a diocese in rediscovering your spiritual roots. While acknowledging disagreements or negative experiences, perhaps we can also reflect on what it was about the Catholic faith you may have loved, what may have brought you comfort and peace, and what you are missing through your absence.

Would You Let Your Wife Be a Physician?

Published on by D. G. Hart615 Comments

We’ve seen this one before. Tim Challies applies the skin test to movies to argue against watching a performance that involves bare breasts:

What would it take for you to be okay with your wife participating in that scene? Would you send her off to work tomorrow knowing that she would be topless for hours at a time, that she would be rolling around on a bed with another man as a crew looked on, as they adjusted the lighting, as they practiced different angles, as the director instructed her, “No, put your hands there. Move in that way…” She would not be having sex with him, but she would be doing her best to act like it, to make others believe it. She would be taking all she knows of the movements, the motion, the pleasure of sex with you and imitating it with this other man. Wife, what would it take for you to be okay with your husband stripping her and kissing her and carrying her to bed? My guess is that you cannot imagine any scenario in which that would be tolerable, in which that would be moral and right. Now hold onto that conviction for a moment.

Why exactly is this a slam dunk?

Consider women who serve as physicians and examine men’s private parts (among others) for a living. Why doesn’t the skin test apply to careers in medicine? Heck, what about nurses who bathe men in hospital beds?

And it’s not just a question of exposed flesh. If we made comfort with-what-the-missus does a standard for engaging with the world, what do we do with a woman who is a defense attorney and represents people she knows to be guilty before the law? Or for those complimentarians out there, what do you do when your wife serves in the military? Leave the OPC?

The point is that we all have different standards for different levels of engaging the world. When my wife comes before session, either I recuse myself because I am going to have to relate to her as an elder rather than as her husband, or I put on a different vocational hat. Same goes for when I enter the voting booth. I don’t use the same standard for a political candidate that I do either for a wife or for a minister.

Life comes with different standards. For pietists that concession is the road to hypocrisy. For Old Lifers, it’s just life on planet earth between Christ’s advents.

Those Were Really the Days

Published on by D. G. HartLeave a comment

Christendom, Schristendom:

I recently described the tumultuous years 1675-1685, and how they shaped the future of Europe and North America. Here, I want to explore the implications for the politics of religion in this era, and for some of the stereotypes we might have. Everyone knows that religion played a vital role in the Early Modern era: according to customary stereotypes, Protestants fought Catholics, Catholics fought Protestants, and Christians struggled against Muslims. All those statements are correct as far as they go, but they stand in need of some nuance. (Orthodox Christians also had their conflicts, but I will leave those out here).

As they say in Hail Caesar: Would that it were so simple …. [mirthless chuckle].

To recap briefly, I described the Protestant-led Hungarian/Magyar revolt against the (Catholic) Holy Roman Empire in the late 1670s. That in turn led to the Muslim Ottomans intervening on the side of the Hungarian rebels. The resulting war led to the siege of Vienna in 1683, and the ensuing battle, which really marked the end of Islamic expansion into Europe. Most historians would agree that this really marked a turning point in European (and world) history.

Looking at the battle of Vienna, several thoughts come to mind. For one thing, it is odd to realize just how late that happened, and how in fact it coincides so closely with an event like the settlement of Pennsylvania or (almost) the Salem witch trials – or indeed, the height of the Royal Society in London. It’s also sobering to think through the “might have been” of an Ottoman victory in that war, which might theoretically have extended Islamic power deep into southern Germany, and who knows how much further? If that had occurred, then the immediate cause would have been tensions and persecutions between Protestants and Catholics within the Holy Roman Empire.

Further afield, an Ottoman victory would, oddly, have been good news for France’s Most Christian King, Louis XIV (1643-1715). Both Louis and the Emperor Leopold were zealous Catholics, who (as we have seen) actively persecuted Protestants within their own realms, and both wished to uproot those Protestant minorities completely. Even so, dating back to the sixteenth century, the Catholic French had a long-standing entente cordiale with the Ottomans, on the basis that both had a common enemy in the Habsburgs. In the 1540s, the French allowed the Ottoman fleet to winter at their port of Toulon, and built mosques to make the Turkish forces feel welcome.

Recall that the Empire included what we would today call Germany and Belgium as well as Austria (and several other countries). When Louis tried to push the French border eastward to the Rhine, he was encroaching on Imperial territory. He was the Empire’s aggressive neighbor on the West, as the Ottomans were on the East. Cooperation made great sense, regardless of faith.

Hence, the revival of the alliance in the 1670s. The (Catholic) French originally supported the (Protestant) Hungarian/Magyar revolt, and later:
In 1679 and 1680, Louis XIV through his envoy Guilleragues encouraged the Ottoman Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa to intervene in the Magyar Rebellion against the Habsburg, but without success. Louis XIV communicated to the Turks that he would never fight on the side of the Austrian Emperor Leopold I, and he instead massed troops at the eastern frontier of France.

That is what gave the Ottomans the confidence to launch the assault on Vienna, although at the last minute in this campaign, Louis shifted his support to the Habsburgs. So much for any sense of Christian political unity, or indeed of Christendom as such.

A few years afterwards, Ireland witnessed the pivotal Battle of the Boyne (1690). The Protestant William III defeated the Catholic James II in a victory that established Protestant supremacy in the island for two centuries afterwards. Not surprisingly, the battle lives on as a potent myth for both sides in Irish religious divisions. William was “of Orange,” and still today, Protestant Orangemen proclaim King Billy’s triumph each year when they march on the anniversary of the Boyne, on July 12. Patriotic Irish Catholics see the Boyne as a national calamity.

Yet neither Catholics nor Protestants ever like to confront the full context of the battle. When Calvinist William triumphed in 1690, his victory was celebrated joyously by his international Catholic allies, including the Emperor Leopold, and the Pope, Alexander VIII. Austrian (Catholic) cathedrals sang a Te Deum to hymn the victory. Why? Because James II was allied to Louis XIV, and any defeat of Louis must be excellent news, not to mention long-overdue payback. My enemy’s enemy is my friend, and arguably a great Christian warrior.

Religious politics in this era were distinctly messy.

Would a Christian emperor like Constantine have prevented this? An infallible pope certainly did not.

What about a Christian lord like Jesus who sits at the Father’s right hand? In which case, Christ’s rule may have a lot less to do with Europe, America, South Africa, or Scotland and a lot more to do with NAPARC.

Disloyalty

Published on by D. G. HartLeave a comment

Rod Dreher admits to feeling unpatriotic during his visit to Monticello:

I had a very disconcerting moment, an unusual feeling, I think, for an American to have in a place like Mr. Jefferson’s house. We stood with the guide in the parlor, admiring the oil portraits Jefferson hung along the wall — most of them of historical figures he admired. On the southern wall were three portraits in a row: Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke — described by Jefferson as “my trinity of the three greatest men the world has ever produced.” That, plus the marble bust of Voltaire flanking one side of the door in the entrance hall, really brought home to me how much a man of the Enlightenment Jefferson was. All the Founding Fathers were, but ignorant as I am about colonial history, I had not realized how deeply Jefferson identified with the Enlightenment.

As someone who has been doing a lot of reading lately in European intellectual history, and who has very mixed feelings about the Enlightenment, I was startled by the feeling that Jefferson was, well, wrong about some important matters. Obviously this is contestable, and I expect that most Americans would disagree. The only reason I bring it up was because I felt a bit profane, even unpatriotic, having those thoughts there…. I had a faintly similar sense of alienation. I wondered: Had I been alive during the Revolution, would I have been a Loyalist to the Crown, for the same reasons that being in Jefferson’s house and being confronted in his art by his Enlightened sensibilities made me feel so surprisingly alien.

Protestants don’t experience such a conflict in the presence of the Bible.

If Roman Catholics disagree with the pope, do they feel un-Christian? Can anything other than loyalty to the Bishop of Rome be acceptable in Roman Catholicism?

Grammatico-Historical Interpretation of the Constitution

Published on by D. G. Hart94 Comments

Lots of posts out there about Antonin Scalia as the faithful Roman Catholic. But the man sure sounded like he learned how to read the Constitution from Protestants:

Nonetheless, there is no escaping a verdict on his influence on American jurisprudence, and that verdict is not affected by the fact that he was a good buddy to prominent liberals. He was an advocate of two judicial ideologies, neither of which is intellectually tenable and which conflict with each other. Originalism was Scalia’s core ideological commitment, the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted as it was understood at the time of its ratification. He employed Originalism to question the idea that the Constitution is a “living document,” as liberal jurists held.

To be sure, there was a need for a conservative corrective after the high court starting snooping around the “penumbras” of the Constitution. As Justice Elena Kagan said in mourning Scalia’s death, “His views on interpreting texts have changed the way all of us think and talk about the law.” But, whether the Constitution is alive or not, the people whose government it intends to frame are most certainly alive and their circumstances change. Laws that cannot change with the lived circumstances of a people soon become disconnected from reality, and that disconnect will lead to the law being held in derision or ignored. . . .

Scalia’s other ideological commitment was to Textualism, the idea that the actual words must be interpreted in a kind of fundamentalist manner. This could conflict with Originalism. For example, an originalist would, like an historian, search for explanations as to what was intended by the drafters of a given text, to confirm that original intent and guarantee against latter day misinterpretations. But, Scalia famously loathed citations to legislative history. Textualism rests on the supposition that the Constitution is a self-interpreting text and if that were true, why would we need a Supreme Court? In practice, Textualism resulted in the conclusion that any given text meant exactly what Antonin Scalia thought it meant.

Of course, it’s not clear that Scalia’s hermeneutic was all positive. But it hardly sounds like it’s a product of deferring to the magisterium or to the development of dogma.