Thickening the Context/Deepening the Dialogue
Stephen Carter of Yale Law School has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. The immediate issue is the recent talk by Attorney General Eric Holder about race. But the wider concern is the down-sizing of our discourse to sound-byte morsels. Carter writes:
When we talk about race we do tend to talk in simplistic categories, spending more energy on labeling each other than on reasoning together.
This difficulty, however, is not limited to race. There are few issues of any importance that are not reduced, in public dialogue, to sloganeering and applause lines. Whether we argue over war or the economy, marriage or religion, abortion or guns, we reduce our ideas to just the right size for the adolescent tantrum of the bumper sticker.
Carter’s words rang with a particular resonance as I read some of the coverage of the appointment of Archbishop Timothy Dolan to New York. He’s a “hail-fellow-well-met” type (cheers), who is by reputation “orthodox” (boo). And though the more thoughtful recognize the inadequacy of liberal/conservative labels in matters theological and religious, it too quickly (because easily) becomes the default mode of our discourse.
Carter continues:
Democracy, at its best, rests on a foundation of mutual respect among co-equal citizens willing to take the time for serious debate. After all, even on the momentous issues that divide us, there is usually the possibility that the other side has a good argument. Yet if we paint our opponents as monsters, we owe them no obligation to pay attention to what they have to say.
If this is true of democracy, how much more is demanded of life in the body of Christ?
Carter concludes:
If you read Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” — and everyone who loves democracy should read it, at least every two or three years — pay attention to the speech by the fire chief, Captain Beatty, explaining why they burned the books. The reason was not national security or political power. It was complexity. Books, says the fire chief, make ideas too difficult. The reader winds up lost, he says, “in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.” The people demanded the books be burned because they wanted no complicated ideas.
So along with Peter Nixon’s suggested reading of Guardini, perhaps Bradbury deserves some Lenten perusal as well.
This is my 2nd post this morning where I’m in danger of straying from the topic, but on the whole question of easy labels and sound bytes, I was struck by Janet Maslin’s review of Brad Gooch’s new life of Flannery O’Connor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/books/23masl.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=o%27connor%20maslin&st=cse
Not that Maslin is in any sense an unsophisticated observer looking for easy sound bytes, but the review is striking in that, apart from a reference to O’Connor’s “devoutly religious mind,” in trying to understand O’Connor, and why she’s so hard to grasp, it entirely avoids the question of Christianity — either O’Connor’s own Catholicism, or the Evangelical and often fundamentalist Christianity in which O’Connor’s southern protagonists were drenched. “There’s still a part of O’Connor we can’t really know,” Maslin concludes. Perhaps, however, casting a wider net might allow all of us, Maslin included, to get a bit closer to understanding.
Mr. Clifford,
Thank you for the reference. I had missed the review; but, as you suggest, not as much as she missed!
Bob, I don’t think it’s entirely the media’s fault. Catholic orthodoxy has, in the minds of many people, become associated with being a culture warrior.
Dolan has the opportunity to model, not so much a dynamic orthodoxy, but a charitable one –where charity is not exclusively or primarily interpreted in terms of correction of error.
Before I retired what I mainly did for a living was negotiate. I was a surplus lines insurance broker and that is what surplus lines brokers do. I am new to blogs. One thing that has surprised me is how intransigent some people are. I know from experience that when people apparently refuse to compromise, they are very close to losing their battle.
I belong to two minorities. I am Latino and I am gay. I have seen things change. I think I am finally learning that a charitable tone and strategy is needed if anything is going to get done that actually helps people.
Thanks for the link to the piece about Flannery O’Connor. Flannnery once wrote that children in the North didn’t know their crazy aunts because their families hid them. She also wrote that Southern children did know their crazy aunts because their families did not hide them. I laughed when I read this. I had a crazy aunt who was not hidden. I got to know her and to like her very much. She would have made great character for one of Flannery’s stories.
Stephen l. Carter’s “Civility” is one of my favorite books; written a while back, it encouraged the same theme of deep respectful dialogue.It clearly scored folks who only read or thought about ideas they already agreed with.
I guess instead of Bradbury, I’d urge folks to get hold of it and take a look.
Things have gotten worse, perhaps much worse, since Carter wrote the book.
Sound bytes fill the airwaves as “news.” Mantras of ideological positions are the run of mill, though now (as one saw in the Jindahl reply last night, soft words and smiles may sugar coat ideological hard views and not real dialogue.)
The issue of complexity strikes me as vital here as we reflect on the Church as so much of the division that exists revolves around folks who see their view as the Truth. As Carter notes, complexity is the enemy of fundamentalism. I think that’s worth a good lenten meditation today from which we can begin to hear the gospel.
One quick last final note -Gary Stern has a piece of background from various folk on the new New York Archbishop.
His genuinity comes through in the article, but I thougt it a jarring note that his referencing VOTF there as “The Voice of the Doubters” sounded like one of those mantra that doesn’t appreciate complexity or invite the serius engagement we all need.
“If [respectful dialogue] is true of democracy, how much more is demanded of life in the body of Christ?”
Apparently, a lot more — if Ratzinger’s time at the CDF is any indication.
“The church is not a democracy,” we are told by the self-styled, sanctimonious reactionary elements in the church.
Genuine dialogue is sorely missing in the church. Rome should practice what it preaches.
Late to the thread…again. Carter’s essay is excellent, but just as Holder’s words, capable of selective interpretation. I wonder if we’re all reading the same article.
Money quote: “Complexity is the enemy of such fundamentalism, and, as our political dialogue grows more fundamentalist, complexity fades.”
Just as Holder’s use of the term ‘coward’ drowned out his broader and subtler message, I wonder if Carter’s use of the term ‘fundamentalist’ does the same. I suspect he would reject any implication that fundamentalism is exclusively identifiable with the cultural, political and religious right.
Neither ideologues of political left nor Catholics of the progressive persuasion are immune to the virus we so readily attribute to the political right and conservative Catholics. An appreciation of complexity embracing divergent views isn’t often publicly shared in blogdom for example as often as exasperation and even contempt.
Flannery O’Connor was asked why Southern writers write about so many freaks. She replied, “Because we know one when we see one”.
“The reason that there are no more freak shows is because we have become a society that has no place for freaks.”
Christopher Lasch