I don't want to go into detail about his whole vision of a Tucker Carlson presidency (and Russ Douthat archbishopric?), and not even into abortion per se. We just talked about abortion and the Democrats' id. I just want to call him on a fact, and I want to do it here because Margaret knows much more about this than Young Douthat (or I) ever will.
Douthat finds it deplorable that abortion has become a tribal party identifier. As do we all. He thinks Cardinal Dolan can fix the problem (which some of us might doubt) by excommunicating Andrew Cuomo and by putting forth a new vision. Quoth he:
That vision isn’t the “seamless garment of life” beloved of certain liberal Catholics, which effectively makes every issue a “life” issue, downgrading abortion to salve uneasy consciences. Rather, it’s a more tailored seamless garment, one that would put the goal of outlawing abortion at the center of a web of pro-family policies — adoption support, child allowances, wage subsidies for breadwinners. The goal would be to make the end of abortion seem less utopian by making the burdens of motherhood less daunting, and to link the pro-life cause to a larger revolt against sterility.
Well, Number One -- correct me if I am wrong, Margaret, but I know I am not -- the seamless garment only made, um, life issues into "life issues." It didn't cover, for example, any issue of intervening in Venezuela but not the Philippines because ... because it didn't. It did upgrade other life issues to a level of the one "beloved by certain conservatives."
So there is that.
Then there is the matter of putting outlawing abortion "at the center" of a web of pro-family policies. This, although Young Douthat boldly goes there, is not something new but a reprise of the same old same old. Making abortion the core of a family policy does what the Rs have spent years doing -- ignore most families when they talk about family policy. It both makes abortion the main family issue and provides the web for whatever else they hang on it.
It's the same old refusal to bake cakes for gay weddings treated as a family issue, the same old keep-contraception-out-of-insurance can be a family issue. It's an excuse not to do the other things he tenderly mentions, which we have but under constant attack from conservatives, until we get the center of the web straightened out. Been there. Heard that.
Tangential observation: The apotheosis of "the family" strikes me as a largely Protestant thing. Catholics have a long tradition of individuals in the single state serving Jesus.
ReplyDeleteCatholicism see marriage as a calling to a holy estate. It's not a fallback position for those who decide that the priesthood or holy orders aren't their thing.
I'm all for supporting families and seeing family-making as a holy calling. But our larger culture perhaps encourages too many people to go that route who aren't cut out for it.
Curious if Catholic marriage prep helps with this discernment.
Good points, Jean.
DeleteI think Catholic marriage prep does help with discernment if the couples don't go into it with the mind set that it's just another mickey-mouse hoop to jump through on the way to the Biggest Day of their Life. At least it hopefully gets them to talk about things like children and finances.
The only thing we remember from our marriage prep was the lay person who told us: "Drive a stake into the in-laws' front yard. And then move as far away from the stake as you can." Truly.
DeleteWhen we got married you didn't have to do marriage prep unless it was a mixed marriage, which ours was at the time. You could get married after they published the banns for three Sundays in a row if you wanted to. Now it's 8 months lead time in this diocese.
DeleteOur marriage prep consisted of meeting with the priest for instructions for 6 sessions. Instructions consisted of a very brief version of the Baltimore Catechism.
RCIA and marriage prep are six to nine months. Confirmation in our parish is two years. I think a shorter, more intense process would encourage more people to avail themselves of these pre-sacramental programs. I always give the diocese the benefit of these insights in letter form, but my correspondence seems to go directly into the circular file. I have never received acknowledgment of my missives from Lansing in 20 years of being Catholic.
DeleteRe: abortion and "fallback" family creation. When I was being initiated into the wonders of the birds and bees, my father (who more often than not … much to my dismay …. was wise) told me this: "Any damned fool can breed … and way too many do. I didn't remember (or choose to) much of what he taught me, but that one has stuck with me into my 78th year.
DeleteI'm not seeing that Douthat's slimmed down and form-fitting seamless garment has any mention of children forcibly separated from parents. Or people in starvation because of a war enabled by arms sales to the oppressing nation. Those seem like legitimate life issues to me.
ReplyDeleteYes Tom!
ReplyDeleteDouthat has his Richard Neuhaus moments and today is one of them: let's rejigger Catholicism as Protestantism with nuclear weapons!
As it happens a letter from Cardinal Dolan was read at the end of Mass today, (sorry I don't have a copy before me). But, it doesn't make the pronouncements Douthat urges. It was short and effective; it did not nuke anyone.
The seamless garment as spoken by the late Joseph Bernardin was a genuine effort to remind Catholics and everyone else that the "right to life," included protecting the life of the fetus from the moment of conception to the natural death of all fortunate enough to be born and live a long life (that's us folks). Let us remember that, given the tactics of some in the "pro-life" movement back then, the "right to life" included an end to murdering doctors who performed abortions along with the physical harassment and shaming of women who walked into abortion clinics. The idea was also invoked, for example, to build coalitions that included Catholics and pro-choice advocates around efforts (in New Jersey, I recall) to prevent state welfare officials from cutting benefits to women who gave birth to a second, third, etc. child.
Douthat also wrote the following: "Suppose that tomorrow Cardinal Dolan made two conjoined announcements. First, that Andrew Cuomo is excommunicated. Second, that a specific collection would henceforth be taken up at every Catholic Mass, every day, all year, to fund an annual family allowance administered by the Sisters of Life, available to any parent in the state who asked the church for help bearing and raising their child."
I'll grant you that Andrew Cuomo is a jerk and certainly he is "no Mario Cuomo," when it comes to brains or political skills. But I suspect that Catholic tradition considers that Cuomo has already excommunicated himself. As for supporting the unborn, the lame, the halt, the homeless, Catholic Charities in New York supports/helps/assists thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of people.
Send them a check Ross! Catholic Charities, 1011 First Avenue, N.Y., N.Y. 10022
I have a bad habit: reading the paper first thing in the morning. So I read Douthat just as I was drinking my first cup of coffee. His half-assed argument gave me a headache. I asked everyone within shouting distance who let him in?
DeleteI've met him he's actually a nice person...Whoever let him in should have sent him to Catholic school, First Grade thru college. Then he could have become as the complicated as the rest of us Catholics.
Life is a messy and chaotic affair, and humans can be deeply stupid.
ReplyDeleteChurch teaching strives to give people a whole-life philosophy that makes it less so by teaching responsibility to others, which include sexual continence. One tries, one fails, one picks up the mess and tries again, one accepts one's. limitations, one hopes for the best.
I find it utterly laughable that Douthat thinks that he has any business advising the bishop to excommunicate people, and that a voluntary collection is more than a feel-good response to the hash people make of their lives.
The guy seems always and everywhere trying to prove his Catholic creds. I know what it's like, as a convert, to feel like a bastard step-child of Holy Mother Church, but my response has not been to kiss up to its most conservative, fundamentalist adherents.
Sorry, my message crossed with Margaret's. What she said.
ReplyDeleteCan't say it too often!
DeleteAmen. Thanks, Margaret and Jean.
DeleteWhen I was an undergraduate years at Saint John’s University in Minnesota during the Vatican Council, I discovered a number of things.
ReplyDeleteFirst there was a group of people, many of whom were my friends, who were strongly opposed to Nuclear War and the Vietnam War.
Second, there was a group of people who were very strongly opposed to abortion, even before Roe. I didn’t know them very well.
I agreed with both groups, but I did not have the strong feelings that both groups had. It seemed to me that I did not want to build my life around a negative, being against war or being against abortion. And I could not understand how other people wanted to build their lives around combating a negative. All that seemed to me not to be from God, but rather a great temptation to center oneself upon evil, especially some else's evil.
If Douthat really wanted to be pro-life, he would not need to excommunicate anybody, or pass laws against abortion etc. There are some pro-life people who do spend their time and money providing places where unwed mothers can have their children, etc. There are now colleges that encourage women with children to stay in colleges in special dormitories while raising their children. I am all for these pro-life activities, and for laws that encourage these positive activities. Our local orthodox Church always prays for the unborn children when someone becomes pregnant. What a beautiful prolife witness to have people including the unborn in the Christian community so early.
If we really concentrated on the positive, then we could see helping the poor, immigrants, and caring for the environment all as a pro-life seamless garment without having to excommunicate politicians, the rich and the racists. But a lot of people seem to get great satisfaction about their superiority over all those other sinners. I try to remain concentrated on a more positive life, and not get upset about all the people who are upset about evil.
Good advice about concentrating on a positive life, Jack.
DeleteThe Orthodox custom is lovely! And I think you make a great point. For every negative feeling there is a positive response. This is a lesson I sadly learned quite late in life. I think it comes from the fact that I was given a kid who was always pretty sunny and wanted to know how to help instead of gripe.
DeleteI am certainly with Jack. I believe the church should preach a positive vision of family life. It strikes me as a little strange to put, as Douthat does, "don't abort" as the centerpiece of a vision of family life. I guess that admonition belongs somewhere in the web, but not in the center.
ReplyDeleteCardinal Bernardin did his initial thinking and writing on a Consistent Ethic of Life before I was "woke" to the church's take on life issues, so my remarks here are what I've gleaned from reading history, rather than observing those days as they unfolded, as I know was the case for some of you here.
So a couple of observations: I don't think Cardinal Bernardin particularly positioned his Consistent Ethic of Life as a family-centered set of ideas. Rather, he reached across a pretty broad spectrum of social issues and wove them together into his seamless garment. In this speech from 1984, he names four such issues: abortion, nuclear war, the death penalty, and euthanasia. He also mentions public policy for housing, nutrition and health care. Certainly, most or all of those issues can have some sort of family impact, but what ties that list together is not that they're *family* issues; it's that they're *life* issues. (I guess I am just remaking a point here that Tom made in his post.)
http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bernardinwade.html
It's notable that Bernardin's thinking of a Consistent Ethic of Life was stimulated by the bishops' peace pastoral from that same period. That pastoral document dealt with questions of war and peace, and made an important impact on public opinion regarding the nuclear arms race (a topic which mostly has swum beneath the surface during my children's lifetimes but which broke above the waves this past weekend).
My personal opinion is that Cardinal Bernardin would have warmly welcomed an addition to his list of life issues: environmental issues. My amateur historical view is that promoting a theology of environmental responsibility is Pope Francis's most important contribution to Catholic thought.
Here is my second observation - and this is pertinent to Douthat's column: politically, the "seamless garment" cuts both ways. By that I mean: each side in the current political divide tends to distort, for political purposes, the holistic vision of a consistent ethic of life. One way, which Douthat is calling out here, are liberal Catholics, and especially liberal Catholic politicians, who try to claim seamless garment cred by having views aligned on seamless-garment issues *except for* abortion. The other way, to which conservative politicians are susceptible, is sort of the inverse: being aligned with the seamless garment on abortion, but not on nuclear war, or health care, or the environment.
Btw, does Andrew Cuomo claim to be Catholic? I thought I read somewhere in the last few days that he doesn't go to mass anymore. Does he still position himself publicly as a Catholic?
Well I am skeptical of equating consistent ethic of life with family values or vice versa.
ReplyDeleteThe Gospels are skeptical of family values as they were traditionally held. In ancient societies, the family was the most powerful social institution. It included the family business and the family social net. Ethnicity was also involved since extended families spoke the same language and worshiped the same gods.
In Mark we see Jesus summoning two sets of brothers to leave their families and family businesses (fishing) to follow him. And immediately after the scene of the synagogue we see Jesus and the four brothers together in Peter’s house which has become the house of Jesus at whose doorstep the marginal are beginning to gather. One of the most frequent words which Christian’s used in the beginning (e.g. Paul and Acts) was that they were the “brethren” no matter that they were Gentile or Jew, slave or free.
In modern times families are relatively powerless in comparison to the State and to Businesses. We don’t want people’s primary allegiance to be to either the State or their jobs. However the alternative is not simply the biological family. It is the human family as exemplified by Christians who reach out to everyone especially those who are at the margins, the poor, immigrants, the sick and disabled.
Christianity is not a closed-in family that supports only those with blood and marriage ties and views the rest of the world as hostile, or even an extended family of people with similar views (and skin color and ethnicity) that go the church together. These are pseudo forms of “family” Christianity that can be very comfortable with Business, Money, and Nationalism that are antithetical to the Kingdom of God.
Jack - you make many good points here. But it's also important to note that the church still views the biological family as the basic social unit, and the place where, for most of us, life as a disciple of Jesus is taught and made concrete.
DeleteMost of us can do better than we do in realizing the "church of the home". We could have done a better job of incorporating prayer into our family life. I also note that there are relatively few children - or even parents of young children - at our Sunday masses, and almost none at masses for holy days of obligation that fall on weekdays.
Catholics, in comparison to mainstream Protestants ( who espouse broader social issues such as the environment, poverty, and racism) and evangelical Protestants (who espouse family social issues such as divorce, premarital sex, and pornography) have tended to espouse BOTH broader social issues and family social issues. This is true not just of the clergy but also of the laity. It has made Catholics the deciding votes between the political parties as they too have lined up with either broader social issues or family social issues.
ReplyDeleteThe consistent ethic of life failed to create a strong Catholic center based on all our values because Cardinal Law and other conservative bishops rejected it. Cupich has tried to create a new center with a consistent ethic of solidarity. So far it has not been that successful.
It seems to me that "...a strong Catholic center based on all our values.." is always going to be a work in progress. We have trouble seeing the forest for the trees.
DeleteSince Jim Pauwels appealed to history in his understanding of the Consistent Ethic of Life, let me add this review of a book that looks at post-Roe v. Wade developments, titled "After Roe," by Mary Ziegler. It's an account of how complex this issue was politically and demographically following the 1973 decision. Maybe we should send Ross Douthat a copy and make him a little smarter about the issue.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/after-roe
Thanks for that link, Margaret. I was around in 1973 and agree with what you said. It is good to look at the history and remember some things we tend to forget. One of them is how much more diverse the pro-life movement was originally than it is now. Another thing is the missing-in-action consideration that was absent in Roe vs Wade and is still missing in the pro-choice movement today. That would be the rights of the fetus.
DeleteI saw/heard Mary Ziegler on the PBS Newshour a few days ago. My wife remarked how calm and sensible she came across. Undoubtedly the segment is out there somewhere.
DeleteHere is Mary Ziegler on PBS from Jan 31st, if anyone is interested. She's answering questions about the New York law and the Virginia bill and what it all means. She states that she expects the Supreme Court will do something to undermine Roe.
Deletehttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/state-battles-over-abortion-policy-anticipate-a-post-roe-world
I listened to the Mary Ziegler segment, I agree with your wife.
DeleteI would expect that the Supreme Court won't outrightly do away with Roe v Wade. There would be too much political blowback. What they might do is add very late term restrictions only allowing life or serious health of the mother exceptions. Which isn't going to satisfy the radical "no restrictions, anytime, anywhere, anyhow" activists. I have said before that they remind me of the most extreme 2nd amendment advocates.
Sponsors of the NY law and the proposed Virginia one hasten to try to assure people that late term abortions only would happen in rare circumstances. But they're not putting it in writing. And when they speak of non-viability of the fetus or severe deformities they're not saying if that includes conditions such as Down's Syndrome.