I’m not advocating pacifism and I’m not espousing Hauerwas…I’m simply trying to remind folks that if you think God has indeed revealed Himself to us, if you believe the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us, the character of that revelation is likely not going to be on our terms, terms with which we’re comfortable, terms we can handle easily. In fact, the Word of God will grate against or even contradict our naked human expectations just about every time we are touched by it: "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted" (Luke 2:34). This does NOT mean that our every opinion will be stood on its head when we hear the Liturgy of the Word, read the bible privately, or experience a sacrament. Rather, it means that meditating on what God has revealed to us will, if we let it sink in and take hold, affect us in very unexpected ways.
DEATH OF A THOUSAND CUTS: Slate's Will Saletan suggests that death penalty opponents (of which Sursum Corda is one), are being less than completely forthcoming when they make various prudential arguments against the executions of various types of people (e.g. the mentally retarded, juveniles, etc.). Why, Saletan asks, don't we just come clean and admit that we don't want to see anybody executed? Here are some excerpts:
This tactic of arguing every question both ways goes on and on. The American system is held to be cruel because it tells inmates when they'll die, leaving them to agonize for months over a certain fate. The Japanese system is held to be cruel because it doesn't tell inmates when they'll die, leaving them to agonize for years over an uncertain fate. When appellate courts certify errors in capital murder cases, activists say the trial courts are flawed. When appellate courts don't certify errors in capital murder cases, activists say the appellate courts are flawed. Two months ago, when Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening declared a moratorium on executions, effectively overruling every jury that had authorized a death sentence in that state, the Washington Post praised him and argued that he should have ended the practice permanently. But this week, the Post chided Ashcroft on its front page for "aggressively pursuing the federal death penalty and frequently overruling his own prosecutors in the process...
Ballot Box is one of those mushy-middle Americans who favor capital punishment in principle but are deeply uneasy about it. We're open to persuasion by those who seek its abolition. But we'd regard them with less suspicion if they'd just come out and say that's what they're after, instead of cloaking their agenda in a patchwork of pretexts that add up to the same thing.
In many ways, I agree with Saletan and I often feel the same way he does when defense attorneys for death row inmates try to make their clients look sympathetic. Why, I wonder, can't they just come out and say "look, my client is a pretty nasty, vicious character who killed another human being. The question is whether we want to become the kind of people who kill human beings."
On the other hand, the strategy of death penalty opponents reflects a truth about how we think about the death penalty. As long as "murderers" remain abstract individuals, we're all gung ho for firing up Old Sparky and sending them into the Great Beyond. But the more we learn about them as individuals, the less comfortable we tend to be pulling the switch. In the same way that defense attorneys try to 'humanize' their clients, death penalty opponents working in the political realm are trying to humanize a population. To some extent, this is the same motivation that has led abortion opponents to focus on 'partial birth' abortion and the gun-control lobby to focus on waiting periods. If people aren't convinced by a broad moral argument, but may be convinced by a narrow prudential argument, I don't think that making the latter is necessarily disingenuous. But I think Saletan is right that we owe it to people to let them know where we ultimately stand.
The road back to a lively faith is not a question of finding the right answers, but of living in a certain way, contemplatively. The existence of God, like the air we breathe, need not be proven. It is more a question of developing our lungs to meet it correctly. God does not enter our world, or our lives, as the conclusion of a mathematical equation or a philosophical syllogism. God enters the world as the conclusion of a gestation process. We must live in such a way that we give birth to God in our lives.
CHARLIE'S GHOST: Wherever you stand on the contentious issue of abortion, you owe it to yourself to read Bill Keller's thoughtful reflection on the issue that ran in Saturday's New York Times. Two years ago, Keller's wife was pregnant with their third child when something went disastrously wrong with the pregnancy. The child (whom they named "Charlie") had stopped growing. After several weeks of consulting specialists and with the increasing likelihood that the child would be born dead or in a vegetative state, they decided to have an abortion. One might think that this action would have confirmed Keller in his (hitherto) pro-choice views, but instead it deepened his doubts:
If you'd asked me before that summer, I'd have told you reflexively that I was pro-choice. As a matter of law and politics, that is still my position, for this is not a decision I would entrust to courts and legislatures, even given that some parents will make choices I would find repugnant. But like a lot of parents who have lived through it, I have come to see "choice" as a mixed blessing.
I've often wondered what we'd have done if the decision had been less stark — if the doctor had said 50-50, or if the gamble had been on something known, on Down syndrome or one of the severe crippling diseases. Would we have had the strength to ride it out? The fact that I think of this as something to aspire to is itself a change of heart.
Keller also raises some hard questions about where pre-natal genetic testing is taking us:
There is astonishingly little good research on what parents do with this proliferating prenatal information (the subject of abortion is too much of a political minefield to get the research funded), but it is fair to say that the reproductive industrial complex grinds in favor of "perfection." For some parents, the abortion threshold is multiple sclerosis. For some, it's a cleft palate. Counselors who specialize in this say there are prospective parents who end pregnancies because they had their hearts set on the other gender.
"You get questionable news and you make the abortion decision," said Adrienne Asch, a Wellesley bioethicist who argues that prenatal screening and selective abortion have become too routine. "Anything else you do is viewed as stupid by your educated friends, by your doctors, by your genetic counselors."
As I said, this is worth reading wherever you think you might be on this issue.
