Catholic Violence

On Monday nights I take an oil painting class, which is hosted at a local Catholic elementary school. I really like the space: it's an old-fashioned building, but it has character, and its walls are full of the trappings of a vibrant community. This poster hangs in the hallway:

Every time I use the bathroom or stop at the drinking fountain, I see it. It is an expansive definition of violence, but probably more accurate because it is so. It makes me think each time I see it.

The Catholic Church, reeling for years under the weight of scandal, has stormed back into the public sphere to reclaim its moral authority with its stances on public health issues and same-sex marriage. But using this poster as a lens, the Church's strident, unyielding positions on these complicated issues strikes me as a kind of violence: an assault on the dignity and security of a certain class of people. I wonder whether the Church's hierarchy can re-learn this profound message that it is trying to instill into its youth.

The Measure of a Man

A common thread in conservative and right-wing thought is how unfair it is that non-productive members of society - the uninsured, the unemployed, the poor, the immigrants, etc - are taking advantage of the rest of us; that these "freeloaders" are bleeding "good" Americans dry. Setting aside the question of whether these groups are truly unproductive, my response to this thread is a simple question:

Are we best judged by how we treat the strong, the beautiful, and the wealthy? Or is our character better measured by how we treat the weak, the infirm, the vulnerable, and the helpless?

The Death of Wonder

Quick, what do the Panama Canal, the Space Program, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Human Genome Project, the Internet, and the Hoover Dam all have in common? Marvels of science, engineering, and technology? Yes. Testaments to human ingenuity? Absolutely. But more basically, they were, first and foremost, government projects. Know what else? The American Society of Civil Engineers lists seven wonders of the modern world. Six of them were government-sponsored.

Why point all of this out? Well, it has become fashionable to say that our government is too big, that government is the problem, that taxes are too high, that regulations stifle business and innovation, blah, blah, blah. Nowadays, it is a rite of passage and a requirement of office for our candidates to complain about the scope of government and to run against it. But look at that list of achievements and reflect that government can and has worked well, even on immense and seemingly impossible projects, and it has done so with spectacular results.

No private enterprise can assume the risks that a government can, especially risks that have no immediate and obvious application or reward. We assign a very different role to our government (the well-being of its people, land, and resources) than to private enterprise (profit for its stakeholders). This is a good thing. So we should not expect that our government's returns on investment would compare favorably to a corporation's quarterly balance sheet. And as someone who works in corporate America, I would like to disabuse everyone of the notion that private enterprise is always "better" than a public institution. I can say without reservation or hesitation that every large organization, be it public or private, has waste and inefficiencies.

Perhaps even more important than the litany of our nation's technological wonders are its social achievements. In its 235+ year history, it established itself as one of the first modern democratic republics, becoming a template for the world. It ended the practice of legal slavery, granted universal suffrage, created a system of public education, insured worker safety, promoted public health and food safety, and guaranteed assistance for the poor and elderly. It won the greatest conflict of the last century and rewarded its citizen-soldiers with homes and with higher education, which in turn fueled the economic success of the nation for decades.

More abstractly speaking, the freedoms and liberties that we consider to be guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were actually long in the making; it took more than two centuries of legal battles and legislative reform for the rights we take for granted to be as fully realized as they are today. One could call that an ongoing achievement of our government - its ability to adapt, reexamine, and learn. Wondrous indeed.

Recently, I've heard a lot of noise about the Constitutional overstep of the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare." Other people have written more informed and eloquent essays as to why this is a spurious legal argument. I'm no great defender of ACA (for the record, I favor a single-payer plan, modeled after Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany), but I think ACA is better than nothing, and a pretty substantial legislative achievement in our era of partisan gridlock, so I'll simply add this: we are already paying for the uninsured. So how much is my freedom actually curtailed if we collectively provide a more formal mechanism for funding something that is already taking place? On a more personal level, the ACA allows me to insure my adult children, who cannot afford health insurance on their own. So to those who say that the ACA restricts personal liberty, I ask this: how much "freedom" and "liberty" do my kids have without the insurance that I am fortunate enough to be able to provide? And what should be done about the kids who don't have a parent who can provide health insurance?

The mantra of some anti-government ideologues is to "make government small enough to drown." Now, our government isn't perfect. It certainly does a lot of things I'd rather it not do. So shrinking government may eradicate some of the problems that it has created. But the underlying implication of the race to dismantle government is that the sole measure of our worth as citizens and as human beings is merely our naked economic productivity and our ability to compete in the marketplace. I reject that notion utterly. Sacrificing ACA, public education, Medicare, and Social Security upon the altar of "small government" buys us... what? Freedom? Liberty? Economic security? It certainly does not provide any of those things to the impoverished and growing underclass.

Some of our nation's greatest technical and social accomplishments do not look so wonderful from narrowly defined cost/benefit analyses. But they ultimately proved to be invaluable contributions to human knowledge, commerce, security, and collective well-being. From this perspective, shrinking government as an end unto itself is not just problematic. It is antithetical to nurturing wonders of the world.

Get Over Yourself

Hey, Mitt - no one is asking you to "apologize for being successful." What I think people are saying is that a person's worth is not measured by who he knows or what kind of car he drives. Your tin-eared comments and casual name-dropping make it sound as if your riches are what define you and your life. Criticizing you by pointing this out is not a demand for an apology. It's an expression of pity.

The Shame of The Truth

The horrific tale of Bradley Manning's incarceration reminds me of this scene from the 2002 film version of The Count of Monte Cristo:

Dantes: Monsieur, I know you must hear this a great deal. But I assure you: I am innocent. Everyone must say that, I know, but I truly am.
Armand: Innocent? 
Dantes: Yes.
Armand: I know. I really do know.
Dantes: You mock me?
Armand: No, my dear Dantes. I know perfectly well that you are innocent. Why else would you be here? If you were truly guilty, there are a hundred prisons in France where they would lock you away. But Chateau d'If is where they put the ones they're ashamed of.

Why are we so ashamed of truth?

Legalize Gay Marriage In Minnesota

Live and let live. Are these just words? A tired cliché that ought to be removed from our lexicon? Or does this sentiment express a deeply held value among Minnesotans? I believe it is the latter, and I am staking my holiday season plea on that belief.

Next year, in 2012, I am asking you to vote "no" on Minnesota's proposed amendment to ban gay marriage. Marriage should accessible to everyone; the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of marriage should not be exclusive to opposite sex partners.

One might ask me: Why? Why do you care? I am a married heterosexual man. I got mine. What difference does it make to me? Why do I feel so passionately about it? Why do I need marriage equality?

I could say, I have family members who would be hurt by this ban. I could say, I have friends who would be hurt by this ban. These are both powerful and true reasons, and it is likely that if you explored your family tree and your list of friends and acquaintances, those reasons would almost certainly apply to you as well. But for me, the answer is deeper and more primal than that.

Does my happiness and well-being hinge upon my exclusive access to it? Is my joy enriched by another's hardship and misery? Of course not. In fact, quite the opposite: it is tarnished by the suffering of others. Let us be honest: the world can be a hard and lonely place. Our happiness and well-being are intimately connected to the people around us. My redemption as a person cries out for everyone to share equally in the mere possibility of human fulfillment. And marriage is an important avenue to achieving true happiness on this earth, because a deep and abiding human connection can bring such fulfillment. How could I deny someone this precious thing? How can anyone?

You can dislike gays and vote against this amendment. Disliking someone has never been a reason to promote iniquity. You can adhere to your faith's notions about human coupling and sexuality and vote against this amendment. Though the state recognizes your faith-based marriage, no marriage performed by the state is necessarily sanctioned by your church. That would not change, whether this amendment passes or not. In short, you can oppose gay marriage and still vote to legalize it.

You can do these things because to legalize gay marriage is an act of civic faith and of basic humanity that would not impugn your personal views or religious practices. Rather, to vote against this amendment is to say, "I may not agree with gay marriage, but I trust that a civil marriage between same-sex partners will not affect me negatively, and it may well improve the well-being of society."

But what you absolutely cannot do is say, "I believe in personal freedom" and vote to ban gay marriage. You cannot say, "the government should not tell people who they may love or what that love must be" and support this amendment. You simply cannot say, "I am a tolerant person with a 'live and let live' attitude" and oppose gay marriage.

Please, vote against this amendment. Find the humanity in your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Believe in their right to seek lasting companionship and fulfillment. Legalize gay marriage. Live. And let live.

Update: I probably should not have titled this post the way I did, because after all, defeating the marriage amendment will not legalize gay marriage - it will still be illegal. But I'm not simply advocating the defeat of the amendment, I'm advocating full marriage equality for gays and lesbians. And defeating the amendment is a step in the right direction, and one that Minnesota should take.

Now I'm a Believer

A couple of years back, a friend recommended a book to me - James Carse's The Religious Case Against Belief. I recently got around to reading it, and found it to be an engaging, worthwhile experience.

God said it - I believe it - that settles it.
        - bumper sticker

So begins the book. Carse sets out to disentangle "religion" from "belief", which are not the synonyms I (and most people) take them to be. For him, this is no mere academic exercise: it can be argued that conflicting religious beliefs are responsible for much of what is shocking and violent in our world today, and he wants to draw a sharp distinction between the two.

Carse argues that belief marks a boundary beyond which thinking and questioning and exploration cease. For a believer, there is nothing beyond his own beliefs. Religion, on the other hand, is surprisingly difficult to define; he writes that it is an ethereal and mysterious and enduring phenomenon, in which its practitioners strive for knowledge without ever reaching it.

The author posits that the great religions of the world have thrived not because of their legions of believers, but because of vital conversations within themselves about their own meaning. Using his expansive knowledge of history, he illustrates that the result of these religious dialectics is what he labels the "poetry of religion." In striving for the infinite, there can be no boundaries, no ultimate truth; only horizons and contexts.

Carse spends a great deal of energy developing his definition of belief in order to distinguish it from religion. He starts by enumerating three types of ignorance: ordinary, willful, and "higher". Ordinary and willful ignorance are self-explanatory, but this last form was unfamiliar to me. He states that "higher" ignorance is a form of mental discipline in which a person has come to practice intellectual humility and honesty in the presence of a vast and unchartable universe. The money quote: "knowledge is corrigible, belief is not."

He goes on to say that willful ignorance is the cornerstone of belief systems. For Carse, belief has a limit imposed by some authority (a text, a person, an idea), and its effectiveness as a system is in securing its intellectual borders and defining its limits:

Once believers have selected their authority, genuine dialogue is abandoned. Discourse does not take its own spontaneous path but is aimed always at correcting and strengthening the existing thinking of those who already believe. Indeed, an attempt at genuine dialogue within a belief system can be taken itself as an act of unbelief.

Belief needs and thrives on opposition, because only walls that are being attacked need defending. He further states that because of this rigidity, belief systems actually contain the seeds of their own demise.

Believers and warriors tend to merge into one another: the military sees itself in religious terms, while believers take on the images of warfare.

[Belief systems] have an absolute commitment to their own orthodoxy, something missing in all the great religions... For all of their apparent worldly power, they are surprisingly fragile.

In striving to distinguish these two related yet (for him) oppositional words, he actually lights upon a compact and almost elegant definition of evil: "evil find its perfect home in our own belief system and the moral certainty that goes with it."

As his distinction between belief and religion become clear, the book develops the idea of the human institutions that make a body of believers vs religious adherents. He uses the terms civitas and communitas to speak about these groups. He begins to examine just how difficult it is to define "religion" and what it encompasses. He uses some iconic historical figures: Galileo, Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln, and even Jesus to help illustrate his message about the gulf between religion and belief.

My greatest critique of Carse's work is that while his distinction between religion and belief may be meaningful and fairly well-established among scholars of religion, my experience with these phenomena in the wider world is that the two are almost hopelessly entangled. And while his definition of belief is compelling, he goes a bit too far when he tries to categorize scientific pursuits with it.

All that said, Carse's work is a good reminder that religious tradition and experience has a richness and depth and eloquence that resonates with people.