Odds & Ends
June 27, 2011, 6:05 pm
Posted by Matthew Boudway
The New Yorker‘s George Packer on the biggest insider-trading case in history.
Michael Lewis on The Autobiography of Mark Twain in the New Republic (subscription required).
Ross Douthat’s column about abortion and sex selection in today’s Times.
An old piece on same-sex marriage and the church by Commonweal contributor Paul J. Griffiths.
Griffiths’ conclusion, which I do find somewhat persuasive: “the Church should not, at the moment, oppose legal recognition of same-sex unions. Those who have undergone a profoundly pagan catechesis on these questions will believe and behave as pagans do; it would be good for them and for the Church if the Church were not to attempt to constrain them by advocating positions in public policy based upon the view that what she teaches resonates in all human hearts—because it doesn’t, true though it is.
“What the pagans need on this matter is conversion, not argument; and what the Church ought do to encourage that is to burnish the practice of marriage by Catholics until its radiance dazzles the pagan eye.”
Is this the same Griffiths who used to write so intelligently, albeit rationalistically, about Buddhist philosophy? I hope not.
Once again Commonweal chooses to address an issue of burning concern to Catholics with a snotty methodological piece at a tangent to the issue, by someone who is imbued with question-begging prejudice. Supporters of gay civil unions and gay marriage are written off with ineffable condescension as the products of paganistic catechesis. This shows a total failure to hear the testimony of gay parents, many of them devout Christians, who have learned from their children.
In the background of the push for gay marriage is the experience of parents or wives whose sons or husbands came home to die of Aids. The regime of clandestinity and silence that people like Griffiths are implicitly enacting was indeed = death.
The Church refused to gays the possibility of living a human life. It used to get governments to execute gay men, it never lifted a finger to stop their criminalization, and now it is the same old inquisitorial zeal that is being invested in the campaign against gay civil unions and gay marriage.
Profound inhumanity underlies this, and many people are saying that Commonweal is playing footsie with it.
Commonweal thinks it is playing a coy middle-of-the-road position. In fact it is losing its audience.
I note that O’Brien Steinfels in her reply to Griffiths agrees with him totally that the push for gay marriage is directed against the understanding of marriage shared by many religions. But in reality the American parents who are demanding marriage equality for their children are calling for an extension of the blessings of marriage, not their abolition. When I celebrate weddings with gay couples (in civil partnerships) among the guests, I am always aware of the latter as strengthening the institution of marriage, not insidiously undermining it.
I wish a first-rate linguistic analyst would analyze the uses of sex-related words in American culture. It would show, I’m sure, a history of denial from the women and girls who “find themselves pregnant to the the “missing” (read “dead”) women of the Douthat article.
Young Ireland speaks up: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/0625/1224299576549.html
Thanks for the Michael Lewis piece on Twain. Sad. Saves trying to read the book.
I, too, find Griffith’s final point persuasive, at least at first glance. But other points of view are also persuasive :o) The whole issue is one of culture and belief and personal preference, not of right and wrong, I think. Except, of course, theologically, where I’m not smart enough to follow it. The Church tried, for better or worse, to put its point across. Few seemed to be listening. Too bad.
This shows a total failure to hear the testimony of gay parents, many of them devout Christians, who have learned from their children.
My children are not gay, but they are also trying to teach me.
Recently my daughter rented a movie “I love you Phillip Morris”, and when after watching it I complained that it felt weird to see a romantic drama whose main protagonists were a gay couple, that I couldn’t as easily sympathize with them, and that I’d rather watch a regular romantic drama with a regular heterosexual romance, she answered: “Maybe it’s good for you. It will help broaden your mind. And maybe it’ll help you understand how gay people must feel having to watch all those romantic heterosexual comedies!” The nerve!!!
As to my son, every year in school he wears a T-shirt “gay-straight alliance day of silence” and refuses to say a word all day.
Even in the privacy of my own home, they won’t let me express my anti-homosexual prejudices freely. I try to tell them that I am not really anti-homosexual, but they accept nothing short of a complete recognition of homosexual relationships with perfect equality, at exact par with heterosexual relationships. It is not enough that I tolerate gay couples, that I am in favor of some of their rights, etc. According to their view of the world I have to accept them just in the same way as if they were straight couples, and anything short of that is a dreadful prejudice.
Claire, I suspect that the sort of arrogance your children display isn’t that uncommon these days. Too young to understand how little they’ve experienced, how little they know, and how much they have yet to learn, contemporary kids seem to have an overweening confidence about opinions they’ve simply picked up from school, media, and peers. Even intelligent adults are seemingly unaware of the skewed and, it seems to me, not particularly subtle messages they’re constantly receiving from the media and the general environment intended to shape their attitudes on socially sensitive matters. With Orwell and Huxley in mind, it’s unpleasant and disturbing to watch.
Thanks for the Michael Lewis piece on Twain.
Well, I don’t have to deal with kids, and I’m sure they can be annoying, but youth will be youth; I would think it is rather kidophobic to cite Orwell and Huxley here.
This was not the kind of learning I had in mind; rather the reflections of parents as they see their gay children’s life unfold, something deeper than ideology or political correctness.
Joseph (06/27 11:59 pm) :
“I would think it is rather kidophobic to cite Orwell and Huxley here.”
You may be right. But I don’t think the sort of thing Claire describes is rare. And it is chilling – not a little reminiscent of German and Chinese kids being turned against their families. Better, maybe, to risk a little overreaction than to miss it.
Claire, your kids sound great – good on them! :)
Crystal, thanks, but that’s a back-handed compliment if I ever saw one!!
I mean they sound interested in fairness. Imagine if the refernces to gays/lesbians in your comment were replaced by references ti some racial or ethnic minority – wouldn’t you be proud of your kids’ attitude?
I am sorry to say that I find Commonweal exhibits pervasively a certain Catholic paralysis about understanding gayness and the profound issues affecting human welfare that are connected therewith. It is really time to move on, folks.
Which one of you would not take his child out of danger on the sabbath? Consider the welfare of the people you are playing insider-baseball about.
Joseph (3:35 am), please consider that you may be a little more heavily invested in this thing on one end of the spectrum than some not unreasonable people here. Every issue has many definitions and can be thought of by people of good will in many different ways.
You may be right. But I don’t think the sort of thing Claire describes is rare. And it is chilling . . .
David Smith,
What if the kids are right, like Huckleberry Finn, or the little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
Really, there is no logical connection between “my child died of AIDS” and “same sex marriage should be legal”. At least, I can’t think of one.
I can easily conceive a sort of emotional and guilt-freighted connection between these two things: “when I learned my child was gay, I cut off all ties with him because homosexuality is icky and I didn’t want to have anything to do to it”, and “when he contracted AIDS and died, I realized, too late, that I loved him despite his homosexuality, and so now, as a testament to his memory and as a way to allay my feelings of guilt toward my execrable behavior, I will support same sex marriage.”
Lesson learned: personal experience and strong emotions are primary. Reason, morality and wisdom are subservient to strong feelings.
According to this now-ascendant public morality, going to war in Iraq was incontestably the right thing to do, because, as a people, we were very, very angry at the time.
David (9:25 am), hot-button issues often become over-simplified and distorted. People become intensely involved on one side or another and feel that it’s betraying the cause to give even a millimeter. that’s natural, but when one sees it happening, it’s good, I think, to pull back a bit, if only in private, and try to take a detached look at what’s happening. Both Huck Finn and New Clothes are morality tales. Real life is far more complex.
On the “moral superiority” of youth: “Insanity is hereditary – - you get it from your children.”
Sam Levenson
This Andrew Sullivan essay changed my thinking. The Church usually fights against instrumentalization of the individual (i.e., seeing the individual primarily as “worker” or “unit of production” or whatever), except when it comes to things sexual. Women are instrumentalized as reproducers (e.g., our “special status”) and gays as “disordered,” both of which trump the primary characterization of an individual as an individual.
Snip from the essay. Context is the California gay marriage ruling, still being contested.
“What’s notable here is the starting point of the discussion: an “individual.” The individual citizen posited by the court is defined as prior to his or her sexual orientation. He or she exists as a person before he or she exists as straight or gay. And the right under discussion is defined as “the opportunity of an individual” to choose another “person” to “establish a family” in which reproduction and children are not necessary. And so the distinction between gay and straight is essentially abolished. For all the debate about the law in this decision, the debate about the terms under discussion has been close to nonexistent. And yet in many ways, these terms are at the core of the decision, and are the reason why it is such a watershed. The ruling, and the language it uses, represents the removal of the premise of the last generation in favor of a premise accepted as a given by the next.”
“The premise used to be that homosexuality was an activity, that gays were people who chose to behave badly; or, if they weren’t choosing to behave badly, were nonetheless suffering from a form of sickness or, in the words of the Vatican, an “objective disorder.” And so the question of whether to permit the acts and activities of such disordered individuals was a legitimate area of legislation and regulation.”
“But when gays are seen as the same as straights—as individuals; as normal, well-adjusted, human individuals—the argument changes altogether. The question becomes a matter of how we treat a minority with an involuntary, defining characteristic along the lines of gender or race. And when a generation came of age that did not merely grasp this intellectually, but knew it from their own lives and friends and family members, then the logic for full equality became irresistible.”
Full article at
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/09/my-big-fat-straight-wedding/6931/
Lesson learned: personal experience and strong emotions are primary. Reason, morality and wisdom are subservient to strong feelings.
Jim,
Someone quoted Chesterton here not long ago saying, “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” Strong feelings may get in the way of reason, but reason without feelings is not human. And don’t try to tell me that the opponents of same-sex marriage are not reacting largely on the basis of strong feelings.
I think the people who support same-sex marriage have feelings of compassion and particularly empathy. I think these feelings are frequently lacking in opponents of same-sex marriage. (I am not saying that if you oppose same-sex marriage, you necessarily lack compassion and empathy.)
It seems to me it is not the case that if you have gay family members whom you love, and gay friends that you respect and care for, that you can’t be “objective” about same-sex marriage. You’re just as likely to lack objectivity (if not more so) if you don’t know any gay people.
On the “moral superiority” of youth . .
Patrick Malloy:
Who is talking about the moral superiority of youth. My point was rather young people can be right when they disagree with older people. I hope you would not maintain that young and idealistic people are always wrong because they are young.
Jim Pauwels sees no logical connection between a generation of young men who died of Aids and the acceptance of gay marriage…
Aids spread in the USA in an environment of extreme promiscuity. The gay liberation of that time did not put a premium on stable relationships, and gay marriage was not on the agenda at all. Had the gay movement and the churches and educators said them what Bishops Jefferts-Schori says now, that gaynree is a vocation to love, then a culture of stable relationships might have been formed. This would have greatly lessened the devastating impact of Aids.
Jim Pauwels has written reams and reams about gay issues here, often in a very obscurantist vein. That he has not reached the point of reflection of noting the connection between the Aids epidemic and the push for gay marriage speaks volumes.
Jesus also talks about the moral superiority of youth — out of the lips of babes and children.
Our young people are not dragooned into hypocrisy as we were (yes, we were taught to respect the taboo about honesty on gayness and much else in the schoolyard). They do not trim their statements on gay matters to what they think conservative peers or elders will approve. In this they stand as a reproach to catholic centrists trimming their views to the current catholic norms, perhaps for career reasons.
“Strong feelings may get in the way of reason, but reason without feelings is not human. And don’t try to tell me that the opponents of same-sex marriage are not reacting largely on the basis of strong feelings. I think the people who support same-sex marriage have feelings of compassion and particularly empathy. I think these feelings are frequently lacking in opponents of same-sex marriage. (I am not saying that if you oppose same-sex marriage, you necessarily lack compassion and empathy.)”
David N – Yes, I agree. (And thank you for being so consistently empathetic to me.)
I would note that the church, to its credit, mostly declines to oppose same sex marriage by playing on and manipulating the emotion – abhorrence – that comes all too naturally to many heterosexual people. In essence, the church has properly defanged itself of its most potent political weapon. Reason, wisdom and morality is all it has left with which to defend its notion of marriage.
I’d like to think most Catholics are empathetic to gay people who want to live a normal and stable life. I am.
Joseph S. O’Leary,
While you’re on the subject of speaking volumes: Please don’t. If for some reason you find yourself unable to say everything on your mind without posting two or three consecutive comments, say less. Go bigfoot someone else’s thread.
“Aids spread in the USA in an environment of extreme promiscuity. The gay liberation of that time did not put a premium on stable relationships, and gay marriage was not on the agenda at all. Had the gay movement and the churches and educators said them what Bishops Jefferts-Schori says now, that gaynree is a vocation to love, then a culture of stable relationships might have been formed. This would have greatly lessened the devastating impact of Aids.”
Fr. O’Leary – yes, I understand the line of thought. I just don’t think it makes sense. Many gay couples modeled stable relationships before the advent of same sex marriage and civil unions; and infidelity and promiscuous behavior presumably is as possible for a person in a gay marriage as for someone in a straight one. Blaming the AIDS epidemic on the unavailability of gay marriage seems to me not much better than attributing it to divine wrath. It’s not society’s fault that so many homosexuals were promiscuous in the ’70′s and ’80′s. Society at that time, by and large, like the Catholic Church, would have preferred that they weren’t.
It’s not society’s fault that so many homosexuals were promiscuous in the ’70’s and ’80’s. Society at that time, by and large, like the Catholic Church, would have preferred that they weren’t.
Jim,
I disagree. There were no societal rules for gay people (and certainly no Catholic rules for gay people) other than “don’t be gay.” When the society and the Church expect behavior that is impossible, why would gay people say, “Well, what they’re asking is impossible, so let’s be monogamous, like they tell straight people to be”? When no rules apply to you, why would you pick some from those who don’t want you to exist to follow? The Church won’t even endorse safer sex practice for those who will not, or feel they cannot, refrain from sex. Even for husbands and wives! Look at the furor over the Pope’s statement about a hypothetical case of a male prostitute using condoms. It is similar, in my mind, to refusing to caution people that if they drink, they shouldn’t drive, because people shouldn’t get drunk. It’s like parents who say to their teenage kids, “Don’t drink, but if you do drink, don’t call me to come and pick you up. Just drive home. You must live with the consequences of your actions.”
Even St. Paul said, “It’s better to marry than to burn.” The message of the Church to gay people is, “Anything you do is wrong.”
Considering the fact that according to the best estimates I have seen, 50% of people who voluntarily embrace celibacy (priests) are, at any given time, not practicing it, what in the world do you expect of people who are told they must be celibate whether they want to be or not?
Society did not encourage realistic, responsible behavior on the part of gay people. It did not even respect it. Now with same-sex marriage, that is changing. But the Church is not changing. It still says, “It is better to burn than not to marry.” The Church’s demands on “homosexual persons” are too harsh for most of them to live under. It is no surprise, then, that most of them do not look to the Church for guidance on how to live.
“I would note that the church, to its credit, mostly declines to oppose same sex marriage by playing on and manipulating the emotion – abhorrence – that comes all too naturally to many heterosexual people.”
Jim P. ==
I know that you are well aware that language is ambiguous. You also probably know the language of classic Church ethics which long ago assigned technical philosophical meaning to “objectively disordered”, a phrase which I grant you in the context of classic Catholic ethics is not emotion-laden nor disparaging of any individual’s character.
However, that phrase in our culture has come to mean something abominable. And the sense of “abomination” (deriving from Scripture no doubt) is the sense given it in contemporary Catholic culture. I say we need a new phrase so that dialogue between the gays and the moral theologians and anyone else who speaks for the official Church can happen without a lot of emotional baggage and insult.
“”I think there would be changes in the church. But I don’t think they’re the ones you have in mind. I don’t wanna see changes in the church when it comes to celibacy or women priests or our clear teaching about the sanctity of human life and the unity of marriage between one man and one woman forever.”
Oh, dear. I do like Apb. Dolan, and I do think there is some hope that he will ultimately change some of his ways.
But wouldn’t you think that the great theologian, Pope Benedict, would demand a bit more theology in the head of the archdiocese of New York– I mean somebody who would at least know that marriage lasts “till death do us part”, not “forever’?
Apologies in advance if this is off-topic (I’m not trying to hijack the thread).
Reflecting on this post and thread, and then several related ones in recent days, it seems to me that for the past, say, two generations, we’ve had two (at least!) revolutionary changes that the Church (i.e., all of us) are struggling to comprehend and deal with.
The first is technological. The Pill, in vitro fertilization, complex surgeries that can prolong life, improve fetal viability, or reassign gender—these are just some examples that relate to sex and sexuality.
The second is the great upwelling of the demand for human freedom—anticolonialism, feminism, human and civil rights, including in the present instance, the civil right to marry recently won by same sex couples in New York.
In both cases, these are simultaneously massive, complex and global changes, as well as being changes that can touch our most intimate selves and relationships.
Given all that, it’s probably not surprising that we find ourselves groping and stumbling towards some greater understanding of what’s happening, what it means, and how to respond as Catholic Christians. In that circumstance, I greatly appreciate Fr. Martin’s reminder that we strive to place love and compassion front and center in our dealings with these issues, with each other, and with others we encounter.
Luke Hill, thanks fro reminding us of Fr. Martin’s crucial comment.
Once again badgering of gay friendly posters, in line with Commonweal’s pretty transparent, illiberal editorial policy.
Why does Commonweal promote articles that border on hate speech? If I said that those who stand up for Jews or blacks are mere pagans, would that stand as reasoned argument in a liberal Catholic journal? But it’s OK to smear all those who want the right of marriage for their sons or daughters or for any human being as “indoctrinated by paganism” — and this without a shred of argument, just as a bland, uncaring assertion?
Joseph O’Leary,
Please,
please,
go away.
Luke (3:21 pm), thanks for reminding us of the bigger picture, and for reducing that to sex and freedom. It’s the Church’s misfortune to have to deal with two such powerful revolts at once.
One characteristic of revolts is that they’re both primitive – no nuanced arguments allowed – and impatient – we want it all and we want it now. It’s both the Church’s great advantage and its great disadvantage that it always takes the long view and that it’s extremely patient. The first is an advantage because it insures against hasty decisions made by just a few people; bringing the wisdom of multiple generations to bear on an issue greatly increases the chances of getting it right. And the latter is an advantage because decisions made in haste and anxiety are much more likely than those made patiently over generations to be free from the poisons of ill-considered passion.
But, of course, insisting on patiently waiting until the wisdom of generations has been collected and weighed is what rebels cannot abide, so the Church’s great strengths are also its great weaknesses.
Oops – much less likely (2nd paragraph, last sentence).
There are hundreds of movies of tearful testimony from gays, their parents, and politicos who have had a change of heart. Griffiths’ coldly “logical” presupposition that all of these people are the products of a pagan mentality suggests that he had not listened to their testimony at all, or has brought to it a cynical attitude.
And no, Matthew, I am not going away any more than your gay sisters and brothers are. I think it would be a good idea to work out a penetrating analysis of the Commonweal treatment of gay issues over the years. I see that the Bilgrimage site has already begun work on this and I know another academic who is thinking along the same lines.
Joseph O’Leary:
You will notice you are the only “gay friendly” commenter I am badgering here. There is a reason for that. Your method of argument is to vilify, shame, and misrepresent those with whom you disagree; to beg every important question with windy rhetoric and tedious displays of learning (you must be right about Griffiths—after all, you’ve read his scholarly articles on Buddhism and found them overly rationalistic); and to repeat yourself ad nauseam. You know better. You just can’t be bothered to extend the slightest intellectual charity toward anyone you deem less progressive than yourself. It is very odd for someone who rarely comments at dotCommonweal without expressing enmity to complain of hate speech. And very odd for someone of such rigorous and unforgiving intellectual standards to remind us that there “are hundreds of movies of tearful testimony” in support of your position. It would indeed be a good idea to work out a penetrating analysis of the Commonweal treatment of gay issues over the years. So why don’t you go and do that instead of afflicting us with your pompous denunciations.
I know that’s insufferably preachy, but this exchange irresistibly brings to mind last week’s reading. There are so few venues where I can quote Scripture without being ridiculed that I can’t resist!
Brothers and sisters, rejoice.
Mend your ways, encourage one another,
agree with one another, live in peace,
and the God of love and peace will be with you.
“Live in peace” by all means — but not peace at the cost of exclusion. Gays who are told that their most natural feelings are a disorder and that their noble desire to marry is a pagan rebellion against God’s Word are not at peace — many have been driven to suicide by this evil teaching — even though those who dispense the teaching are very much at peace.
Joseph O’Leary is being unfairly harassed. There is no rule against expressing oneself unboringly, his comments are well within the range of civil discourse and others use the comboxes to talk semi-political talking points too. Anybody who finds him insufferable can simply not read his comments.
Moreover, it is true that he has been unbearably windy for years and nobody ever objected until he got on this particular theme. If the subject is too controversial for dotCommonweal to accommodate, the staff should not introduce it.
Joseph O’Leary is being unfairly harassed.
I agree with this, although not with some of the rest of what Felapton said, since I have always read Joseph O Leary’s comments with interest. The three-message “Please . . . please . . . go away” is unlike anything I have seen from a dotCommonweal contributor, and it was a particular surprise coming from Matthew Boudway, who has otherwise always been more than fair and whom I hold in high regard.
I believe it is not true O’Leary’s comments are more per unit time than other people’s comments. I think it is only that they condense more in screen space, because he is on the opposite side of the planet, so he is awake while everybody else is asleep.
I almost always value the comments of The O’Leary. FWIW, it’s a matter of utmost indifference to me (and I suspect many others) whether he makes ten one paragraph comments or one ten paragraph comment. The apparently deep metaphysical horror that others entertain re his formatting practices must have some basis but what that might be is a mystery to me.
However in this case, as in many others, I fear he has rushed in a little too quickly. The article linked to was not a Commonweal article. It was merely an entry at Griffiths’ website, unpublished anywhere as far as I can tell. The identification of Griffiths as a Commonweal contributor hardly amounts to an endorsement on the part of this website or the magazine, so how it represents the official view of Commonweal is unclear. On the contrary, one would think that Commonweal would hesitate to endorse the view of anyone who is also a contributor to First Things, as Griffiths is.
In this instance Griffiths concludes “that the Church should not, at the moment, oppose legal recognition of same-sex unions.” O’Leary objects, not to the recommended policy, but to the premise of the argument, that the pro-gay marriage movement is a pagan one.
But what’s the matter with pagans? I imagine that some of O’Leary’s best friends are pagan. He should not forget to defend paganism before denouncing Commonweal.
My personal belief is that O’Leary is so brilliant he will eventually become a neo-conservative. And then he really will be banned from polite company.
it is true that he has been unbearably windy for years and nobody ever objected until he got on this particular theme
Actually, this is untrue, Felapton. In fact, Joseph S. O’Leary has been asked several times in the past to show some basic courtesy and refrain from blitzing posts here with three, four, five comments in a row — to follow the rules everybody else follows, in other words. And he managed to remember for a while, and then he lapsed, so he’s being reminded again. If he, or anyone else, would like to pretend it has something to do with his courageous views, fine. But it’s really just basic manners. And I’m afraid it’s not up for debate. Let’s stick to comments on the post, please.
Hey, thanks for your comments; I am pleasantly surprised.
Yes, some of my friends could perhaps be called pagan; with my Japanese friends the category is hard to apply — I think they are often very good people.
But very many of those who promote gay civil unions and gay marriage, among my acquaintance, are really Christians, it seems to me. Calling them pagan is a way of saying their arguments have no place in the Church — and people who say that are usually arch-conservatives or recent converts, who have not tried to read the signs of the times.
Molly,
No one who reads Matthew Boudway’s personal attack (06/28/2011 – 11:21 pm) on Fr. O Leary can pretend that this is just a case of someone being warned not to write too many posts in a row.
There’s a lot of bullying here by editors and contributors. Those who dare to differ get sarcastic and sometimes weird comments from editors and contributors. (And some weird e-mails, too.)
Sorry, David, but I think Matthew’s response makes it crystal clear that too many posts in a row is precisely — or at least chiefly — what this is about. (It’s also about not being a jerk.) And you of all people ought to have a lot more trouble buying the idea that “gay-friendly” comments and viewpoints are uniquely unwelcome here.
The discussion of the discussion is over. Send a private email if you’re seriously concerned.
I remark that Matthew Boudway could have done much worse: summarily erase Fr O’Leary’s comments, and then none of us would be the wiser for it. It is much better that he show his frustration in words, exposing himself to criticism but giving other people a chance to see what’s going on.
As to Fr O’Leary’s contributions, in the recent past I have not seen anything that, as Felapton said, was outside the usual range of civil discourse around these parts of the world.
Correction: I don’t think I would call any of my friends pagan, though many are agnostics. Checking my acquaintances I find that most who favor civil unions and/or gay marriage are practicing Christians. Some who are in civil partnerships are Catholcs, though their partner may not be. The only same-sex married couple I know are two Catholic theologians, female. The push for gay marriage is very largely a Christian and Catholic movement, as Cuomo shows, which makes Griffiths’ presuppositions about its paganism counterfactual.
” If he, or anyone else, would like to pretend it has something to do with his courageous views, fine”
I would hardly call all of Fr. O’Leary’s views “courageous”. I remember too well his defense of some of the sexual predators as being not too bad. This is not courage. This is nonsense. destructive nonsense. .
May my character and comments never be subjected to what Fr. O’Leary’s are subjected to here!
“Checking my acquaintances I find that most who favor civil unions and/or gay marriage are practicing Christians. Some who are in civil partnerships are Catholcs, though their partner may not be”
Fr. O’Leary, your comment reminds me of something that seems to be pertinent to this discussion of same sex marriage and the church: Christianity is far from univocal, not only on same-sex marriage, but on marriage in general. In another thread, I had noted that the Catholic view of marriage (at least its ideal) is that marriage is sacramental; but there is certainly no agreement on this point between the Catholic church and the many Protestant denominations that don’t consider marriage a sacrament. When the Catholic church in the US insists on the sacramental character of marriage, or at least its possibility, she is already standing apart from most Americans.
I expect that support for same-sex marriage is strong among members of the ‘mainline’ Protestant denominations in the US, some of which permit their clergy to be in same-sex relationships (I believe the ELCA recently approved this). Those Christians are, by their own lights, giving authentic Christian witness by approving and supporting same-sex marriage.
If Griffiths’ use of the word “pagan” implies that same sex marriage drives a wedge between the religious and the secular, that may be too simplistic; it seems to drive a wedge between religious who have a stricter and more all-encompassing view of the moral obligations of religious affiliation (cf some of the examples besides Catholicism that Archbishop Dolan named: Muslims, Orthodox Jews, the black churches) and those folks, religious and not, who privilege personal freedom.
It is precisely because Catholicism uniquely values marriage that Catholics are anxious to share the blessings of marriage as widely as possible. The recent NY legislation is primarily the work of Catholics. The battle is not between Catholics and a pagan secular world, but between lay Catholics and their episcopal leaders (some of them, and even those are somewhat half-hearted).
At least this is the message of the following two posts: http://queeringthechurch.com/2011/06/29/the-catholic-role-in-ny-gay-marriage/
http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/catholic-hierarchs-lose-marriage-battle-catholic-laity
Did anyone feel it worthwhile to read and comment on the Ross Douthat column? Is his topic of no interest?
I was also hoping that there would have been discussion about the Ross Douthat article. I’ve just started reading Ms. Hvistendahl’s book, but at the America blog, a contributor linked a Weekly Standard review of the book.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576361691165631366.html
The reviewer notes that the skewing of gender ratios has the potential to unleash a number of adverse societal effects (e.g., rising crime rates as men become increasingly frustrated and turn to violence because of the dwindling pool of women available to marry) and financial implications (e.g., some data indicate that increased savings rates in China are in part the result of parents hoarding money that their sons can use for buying wives). Equally interesting, at least to me, has been the author’s use of euphemisms, such as that the 160 million women are “missing” rather than dead (Douthat’s main point), in her efforts to keep her pro-choice mindset intact.