Stewardship, Santorum, and Phony Theology
Literary critic James Wood has an interesting post up on the New Yorker‘s website this morning. In it, he writes that Rick Santorum’s environmental stance is “coherent only within a theological eschatology” that is distinctively Protestant in nature; to Wood, Santorum sounds less like a 21st-century Catholic than “like an eighteenth-century American Puritan.” Here’s a taste:
So when Santorum says that we must be good stewards of the earth, there is religious zealotry behind the sweet words. He is proposing, in effect, that the earth is dispensable but that our souls are not; that we will all outlive the earth, whether in heaven or hell. The point is not that he is elevating man above the earth; it is that he is separating man and earth. If President Obama really does elevate earth over man (accepting Santorum’s absurd premise for a moment), then at least he believes in keeping man and earth together. Santorum’s brand of elevation involves severing man from man’s earthly existence, which is why it is coherent only within a theological eschatology (a theology of the last days). And he may well believe that man cannot actually destroy the earth through such violence as global warming, for the perfectly orthodox theological reason that the earth will come to an end (or be renewed) only when Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. In other words, global warming can’t exist because it is not in God’s providential plan: the Lord will decide when the earth expires. This is Santorum’s “theology,” phony or otherwise.
Sigh. The New Yorker‘s become such a partisan rag. What would Harold Ross think?
It’s not very “liberal” – not even “progressive”, come to think of it – to practice a religion an essential tenet of which seems to be that anyone who disagrees with you is beneath contempt.
I’m not sure who the second paragraph is addressed to, David. The New Yorker? Wood? Commonweal? Me?
Oh, sorry. To the New Yorker variety of “liberal”. I probably should have used “one”.
It seems to me that there’s no civilized reason for being contemptuous, at least to the degree Wood is being. There’s something essentially valid about anything anyone thinks or says. It’s intelligent and respectable and “liberal” I think, in disagreeing with someone, to at least concede that up front. Contempt is an unpleasant emotion to indulge. When a writer does that, he’s inviting the reader to join him in the unpleasantness.
I must say, I don’t see how Wood is treating Santorum or his comments as “beneath contempt.” As Wood writes, he’s giving Santorum’s ideas a real “examination” rather than just “attention”–he’s not merely dismissing them out of my hand as insidious and incoherent (though he surely does think they’re insidious and incoherent), but placing them in a historical/theological context and drawing out their implications. To vigorously, polemically disagree with someone is not the same as being contemptuous.
(For the record, I disagree with a lot of Wood’s claims, i.e., the sharp divide between the “other-worldly asceticism of Christianity and the life-filled practicality of Biblical Judaism.” But then again, I also disagree with your claim that anything anyone thinks is essentially valid; some positions are just wrong.)
We disagree. I don’t think any reasoning is wrong, so long as it’s sincere. But I don’t think you’re a “zealot” or what you say is “absurd” or that your “brand” of reasoning is “phony”.
It’s Wood’s tone of voice that’s offensive, not his opinions about the validity of Santorum’s beliefs. No human being should treat another that way.
Different esthetics, probably.
Fair enough. Though, of course, the tone was set by Santorum before Wood wrote his piece: Wood’s essay was a reaction to Santorum calling Obama’s environmental position “phony theology.” And I don’t think it’s intemperate to call some of Santorum’s positions absurd. Here is a quotation from an interview Santorum gave with Glenn Beck on Thursday: “I saw one poll that said 62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it… I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely.” I think it’s fully justified to call that claim absurd. If you don’t, then, as you say, we’ll have to just disagree.
Anthony ==
I hadn’t seen that statement of Santorum. One more reason to put him in the wishful-thinker box — what he wishes were so (for whatever reason) becomes what he thinks is actually so.
Doesn’t that kind of thinking explain the common use of the phrase “You wish!” Unfortunately it’s widely applicable.
Here’s an interesting, if not entirely coherent, article about Santorum and Catholic natural law’s relation to theology. It’s by Peter J. LEithart in First Things. Leithart presents natural law theory as a combination of both philosophy and theology, and thinks Finnis and Grisez — and Santorum — agree. Not your typical Thomists.
http://www.firstthings.com/
Thanks for that link, Ann. Last paragraph:
But of course we can talk politics without talking theological realities and concepts. And we’d better do so or the unchurched will pay no attention to us at all.
The “natural law” theory as Leithart presents it is not a typically Catholic one, which is not surprising because he is a Protestant minister. I hope that if the Protestants are going to start talking about Catholic natural law theory that they learn more about it — and Rick Santorum too. In the Catholic natural law tradition, natural law is based not on revelation but on common human experience and reason, and that is one reason it is so relevant in societies with freedom of religion.
Here is Stevens-Arroyo’s On Faith article on Santorum’s own “phony theology{.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/catholic-america/post/rick-santorums-phony-catholic-theology/2012/02/26/gIQABoWgcR_blog.html
Ann, thank you for the link to Stevens-Arroyo’s excellent article. It should be widely read.
Lauretta –
Stevens-Arroyo is one of the main contributors on the On Faith blog. If I’m not mistaken, he’s at Georgetown. Very balanced thinker. Here’s an article in which he distinguishes “Catholic liberals” and “Liberal Catholics”. Good distinction. We could also talk about “Catholic conservatives” and “Conservative Catholics”, I think.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/catholicamerica/2008/08/why_i_am_not_a_catholic_libera.html
Thanks for the links, Ann. Very interesting!
Ann, thanks for the link to the little essay deploring “Catholic liberals”.
I wonder whether we may not have seen in this most recent Church-State dust-up an example of that divide. Might it be that both Catholic liberals and liberal Catholics came out against Obama after the initial announcement of the government insurance mandate and that then, after the “accommodation”, the Catholic liberals split off and returned to the Obama fold?
Just a thought. But it might offer an explanation of why the post-accommodation split happened. The Catholic liberals, whose essential dedication (according to your columnist) is to the political community, rather than to the religious community, realized a little late that they’d crossed a line better left uncrossed, and so at the first appearance of an accommodation, returned to the liberal fold, even though it had been in fact no accommodation at all.
Not at all sure I believe that, but it makes logical sense.
David –
What you propose is a hypothesis to explain why some Catholics agreed with the bishops about the mandate but then some of those disagreed with them about the offered change.
There are many other possibile hypotheses. Until you have some evidence supporting your hypothesis, you don’t really have an explanation.
As a liberal and a Catholic who supported the bishops objection to the mandate, let me say that I have not changed my mind about that. I simply do not agree with them that the proposed change is not really a change. For me none of this is a matter of dedication to or loyalty to one institution over another. That might be hard for you to understand, but some of us do not automatically agree with the authorities in charge of our main institutions. To do so is tribalism.
But tribalism is what the columnist was talking about, no? He was saying the Catholic liberals were members of the liberal tribe first and Catholics second:
David –
Yes, I think he was talking about tribalism. But I wasn’t talking about him. I was talking about your considering only one possible explanation of the continuing brouhaha. For you *not* t o be tribal, you should consider more than one possible explanation.
Glad to see that you don’t think tribalism is a good thing. I think it’s currently the bane of our culture — it’s at the root of our government-by-interest-group, and that is making the nation fall apart. But I digress. Again. Sigh.
Oh, I wasn’t offering that hypothesis as an “only”, Ann. Just as a “possible”. I was puzzled by that group’s switching back and still don’t understand it. What do you think may account for it? It doesn’t seem likely that they bought into what looks to me like a completely hair-splitting, legalistic, unreal difference between Obama proposal I and Obama proposal II. It felt to me as though they were simply looking for an excuse to back off an uncharacteristic, probably embarrassing apostasy. But, of course, feelings are often off track – though they can lead to interesting possibilities :O)
“It felt to me as though they were simply looking for an excuse to back off an uncharacteristic, probably embarrassing apostasy.”
Or, one might just as easily say Catholic conservatives refuse to accept the compromise because as conservatives first they cannot acknowledge the Obama Administration did the right thing.
But maybe we’re all better served assuming fellow Catholics are speaking and acting in good faith on this issue, even if they don’t happen to agree with our own personal opinion of the mandate.
Like the song says, what you see depends on where you stand.
David S. –
I can only speak for myself. The bishops feelings and authority had nothing, nothing, nothing to do ith my first judgmnt, I thought that the mandate was a violation of the Constitution affecting not just Catholics but all religious people. Since I generally admire Obama vry much I was not inclined to view his subsequent offeer suspiciously. And I didn’t. It appeared to me to meet C. Dolan’s objections.
That’s all there is to it. You are complicating things unnecessarily — the ole “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. Loyalty to bishop and the Church is simply irrelevant. You are again confusing *feelings* (loyalty) with judgments (this meets Dolan’s objections).
I loved the “wrong/sincere” distinction way up there at the beginning of this thread. I saw this a lot in highschool students and again in college students when I was a campus minister. There is this enormous reluctance to call somebody “wrong.” But if I sincerely water my rose bush with gasoline, I am wrong. Period. Sincere or not.
I think the real issue with those young people was a refusal to pronounce someone morally guilty. As in, Only God can decide such a thing. And there might be a point to that. But I stand on the right to thoughtfully, respectfully say someone is wrong. And maybe I could go further in some cases and say that, sometimes, someone is simply stupid.
William Taylor –
One can judge that an action is wrong or not. But judging the choices and intentions of others is a different matter. What Eichmann did was horrendously wrong, to put it mildly. But he claimed, in his insane way, that Jews were vermin. There is no way to know with certainty whether he was telling the truth about his intention or not.
If you set out rat traps in your attic, you are not a murderer.
Ann, I’m curious why you think the proposed accommodation is does not force the Church to sponsor contraception?
To me, the church is still supplying the underlying health insurance policy to which contraception is attached. If that policy is discontinued, so are the ‘reproductive services’. Thats no different than the original proposal.
Bruce –
The key phrase is “to which is attached”. It doesn’t signify any real connection between the employers and the contraceptives. Yes, there will be riders — because the ins. co and ONLY the insu. co is offering them. The employer is not offering the rider. The employers are simply not part of the contraceptives deals,
Santorum claims to be a Christian yet he has promised if elected one of his first acts as President would be an attack on Iran. Potentially this could lead to a nuclear disaster affecting a large area of the Middle East with devastating effects leading to cancer for thousands of innocents including yet to be born children.
Wonder if listens to papal teaching on just war or is he just another politician taking his marching orders from AIPAC?
Santorum has claimed that Palestinians do not exist in the West Bank. Does that mean as he implies they can be thrown off the land where they have lived for generations effectively giving the “Settlers” from New Jersey and elsewhere the right to ethnic cleansing? What sort of Christian would even entertain such a criminal thought?