Category: Intrigued

Tipping Point

Does the continuation of civility and moral community require that we maintain the American imperium? Via Rod Dreher:

Father Patrick Reardon, pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, has just released the following statement:

Because the State of Illinois, through its legislature and governor’s office, have now re-defined marriage, marriage licenses issued by agencies of the State of Illinois will no longer be required (or signed) for weddings here at All Saints in Chicago.

Those seeking marriage in this parish will be counseled on the point.

Father Pat

No longer be required or signed. No recognition of the state’s authority over marriage. One is reminded of Alasdair Macintyre’s famous remark about the decline of the Western Roman Empire:

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like the pastor of All Saints parish has concluded that the continuation of civility and moral community no longer has anything to do with shoring up the American civil order, and in fact depends on repudiating it in the matter of marriage.

A Benedict Option has been embraced by an Orthodox parish in Chicago. Who’s next?

Father Pat has never been bashful about playfully expressing provocative opinions. He’s quite involved in the conservative ecumenical journal, Touchstone, as Senior Editor. He is widely respected and influential beyond Orthodox circles. Though I had not stopped to guess who would be the first fairly-high-profile pastor or denomination to announce such a policy, he probably would not have been in my top ten list. There are much hotter heads and more strident, quick tongues than his. His precedent has gravitas.

The comments to Dreher’s blog add to my conviction that we’ve reached a tipping point. First, the story proved a sort of Rorschach test. Perceptions of Father Pat’s intentions were all over the spectrum, as initially were perceptions of Rod’s approval or disapproval. There were many who thought this was some sort of protest, intended to influence Illinois to reverse its course, which is the same idiotic treatment mainstream media give every move of the Catholic hierarchy: it’s all about power and politics.

We just don’t even understand each other any more. I see little hope of regaining that in the short run. Some power has come down and confused our tongues.

But there were those who saw and endorsed more or less what I saw (my 100% endorsement of any of the following is uncertain):

Brian: My oldest daughter goes to a Christian school, and one of the things they do is recite the pledge of allegiance regularly. As someone who served in the military and grew up disposed to see God’s providence involved in the creation and sustaining of this country, I was surprised the negative reaction that the pledge elicited in me. Why should my kids pledge allegiance to a state that holds them in contempt? Why should we pledge allegiance to anything other than the Kingdom?

VikingLS: The point isn’t to prevent the acceptance of gay marriage, it’s to opt out out of the system.

Cascadia: This is the best news I’ve heard in weeks. Drawing a bright line between civil and religious marriage should have been done long ago. It would have saved much spilled ink.

Hans: I think that’s long overdue.

Until the last 50 years or so, US marriage laws (or at least NY laws,where I live) were more or less consistent with the Christian understanding of marriage. But the laws have been changes to something that in no way resembles Christian marriage. All civil marriages are now “gay marriages.” There is no recognition at all of reproduction obligations, and what is left is a series af tax benefits, inheritance and other rights, and access to various subsidized social benefits, like employer sponsored family health insurance ….

ck: The point is that the pastors of the church are no longer complicit in state licensure. By not signing the state license, this protects the church from civil rights claims made against them. And seeing that religious liberty will no longer be a defense, the best the Church may be able to do is stop being complicit in granting state marriage licenses.

Michael K: The US might become like Europe and Latin American countries with a Napoleonic Law Code. There are two marriage ceremonies. The first is the legal signing of the marriage license at the gov’t office and the second is the religious ceremony. A religious minister in these countries do not sign the state marriage license as is the practice in the US and I would guess most of the Anglosphere. This Orthodox church is de facto adopting the Continental practice. If you want to get married at this church and have the marriage legally recognized you need the two ceremonies.

rr: This is a great move! Kudos to Fr. Reardon. My brother is a Protestant pastor and is considering the same thing. From what I can tell, many other clergy are as well.

Civic marriage has been a farce since the advent of no-fault divorce. Same-sex marriage will only make it more of a joke. The time is overdue for the church to distance itself from the state’s nonsense on marriage.

For what it’s worth, here’s my take. This isn’t a political protest. It isn’t grandstanding (Father Pat’s too good a writer to let it go with a terse announcement to an e-mail list if he wanted to grandstand).

It’s a sorrowful recognition that what the state calls “marriage” has lost a critical mass of commonality with what the Church knows marriage to be, so that Father Pat as a clergyman wants no part of the civil counterfeit (kinda like a conscientious baker, but you can’t lay a glove on the Padre, neener, neener!). It’s a statement that it is a matter of indifference to Father Pat whether a couple is civilly married as long as they’re sacramentally religiously married (I venture a guess that any future convert couples from Evangelical churches that forewent the state license for similar reasons will be received as married though their religious marriages were not sacramental). I very much doubt that Father Pat will discourage couples from getting civilly “married,” aware of the place at the government trough that status assures them.

More deeply, I think Rod nails it with his Macintyre quote: Father Pat has “ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of [the American] imperium.”

But I would hope that the counseling Fr. Pat provides or arranges for others to provide would include:

  1. Recognition that being “married” civilly (essentially, a domestic partnership or civil union with the state arrogating the name “marriage” because of it’s cachet) confers a lot of financial and other governmental benefits.
  2. That two high-wage spouses might benefit on income tax by not being married, filing as single.
  3. That no civil marriage means no civil divorce. I know of a crack-pot (or was he a visionary?) who forewent civil marriage in favor of an oddly-named Christian Reconstructionist ceremony – but went to court years later to get out (the court not learning for a very long time that these idiots were seeking relief to which they weren’t entitled; theirs was no better legally than a Marvin v Marvin palimony case).

There are others suggestions I considered in lawyerly fashion but have omitted. Antenuptial agreements if you’re not going to marry civilly, for instance. In Catholic Canon Law, it’s my understanding, such an agreement on how to divide property in the event of separation is just about conclusive proof that you don’t even really intend to be married as the Church knows marriage.

Longer-term, this may signal the turning of the popular tide against government benefits for the mere status of “married” in the government’s debased sense. This should have come up when “child-free” marriage became the oxymoronic rage. Now perhaps we’ll tie some of those benefits to the presence of dependent children in the home rather than to “marriage” per se.

But if I’m right, Father Pat’s a bellewether, however this plays out.

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Middleweight SSM Opponents duke it out

When it comes to florists, photographers and bakers who decline to service same-sex weddings, I thought the arguments for the two (or more) sides were getting a bit stale.

I don’t exclude my own arguments (although I was pretty pleased with my insight that the law’s burden of persuasion has tellingly if tacitly shifted from (a) the customer seeking to impress artisans into involuntary servitude to (b) the artisans who resist slavishly valorizing some of the most bizarre conceits of the Zeitgeist).

But to my surprise, there’s something interesting (maybe even new and fresh) going on at the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse: a couple of middleweights fairly cordially duking it out, both starting with the premise that same-sex marriage is bad:

Russell Nieli and Jeffery J. Ventrella have been arguing here at Public Discourse about how shopkeepers, such as bakers or photographers, should respond to antidiscrimination laws that require them to provide services at same-sex weddings when they object, on religious or moral grounds, to same-sex unions. Nieli and Ventrella agree that it would be morally permissible and even commendable for such shopkeepers to avoid violating the law by ceasing to serve all weddings, whether traditional or same-sex, or even by ceasing operations completely and finding another line of work. They disagree, however, about a third option proposed by Nieli.

Nieli suggests that it would be morally permissible for such shopkeepers to comply with the law and provide services to same-sex couples if they also announced publicly, perhaps through signs prominently displayed in their businesses, that they believe that marriage is a union of one man and one woman, that the relevant antidiscrimination laws infringe their freedom of conscience, and that they are complying with these laws only under protest and out of respect for the rule of law and the democratic process.

That’s the launching pad for Professor Robert T. Miller’s own foray into moral theology, full of concepts like formal cooperation, material cooperation, just law, unjust law, double effect, and proportionality to “make some distinctions that both Nieli and Ventrella overlook.”

Prof. Miller is keen to emphasize the moral licitness of “material cooperation” with evil (what the reluctant baker, florist or photographer are doing if they go along) when, shall we call them, the plusses and minuses tilt. A watchman unlocking a door for robbers because a gun is at his head, not because he’s in cahoots, is a classic example of the distinction between material and formal cooperation.

The proportionality analysis in cooperation cases has generally concerned such factors as the magnitude of the good the cooperator intends in performing the action constituting cooperation, the closeness of the causal connection between the cooperator’s action and the primary wrongdoer’s action, the degree to which the primary wrongdoer’s action depends on cooperation from the cooperator, and the degree of wrongness of the primary wrongdoer’s action.

Now, the good that the shopkeeper intends is undoubtedly very great: complying with a properly-enacted law, avoiding the stigma and penalties that would come from breaking the law, protecting the goodwill of his business, and earning a just profit by selling his services would each, taken singly, be accounted great goods. Taken together, they comprise a very great good indeed. This implies that cooperation in order to attain these goods will be justified unless the other factors, taken collectively, are extremely powerful.

As to both proximity and dispensability, the shopkeeper’s cooperation with the primary wrongdoer is very slight. There’s no question but that the causal connection between selling a wedding cake to a marrying same-sex couple and any same-sex sexual conduct in which they may engage is very remote. The causal connection with the couple’s action of exchanging vows and getting married is closer, but still remote. It’s not as if the shopkeeper is performing or witnessing the ceremony; at most, he is making the party afterward more enjoyable and memorable. Moreover, the shopkeeper’s cooperating action is dispensable two times over: for not only will some other baker supply the wedding cake if this baker declines to do so, but the same-sex couple would undoubtedly get married even if every shopkeeper refused to sell them a wedding cake. Cakes, flowers, and photographs are very nice accoutrements to a wedding, but they are not essential, and a great many people get married every day without any of these things.

That leaves us with the issue of the gravity of the wrong that the cooperating agent helps or facilitates ….

As for “complying with a properly-enacted law, avoiding the stigma and penalties that would come from breaking the law,” I wonder if he has overlooked the possibility that “a properly-enacted law” is unconstitutional, and thus not “properly-enacted,” if it contains no exception allowing artisans to discern what they’re willing to express for a commission. No comment box allowed me to pose the question to the good Professor, though. (That is a little frustrating, but I’ve seen comments turn into cesspools without attentive moderation, so I understand the choice.)

Professor Millr has even got a link to the Kindle version of Moral Theology A Complete Course Based on St. Thomas Aquinas and the Best Modern Authorities, which is on offer – all 1395 pages(!) – for the very reasonable price of “free.” I suspect this means that the “best modern authorities” are at least one copyright cycle old, but unless the examples are impenetrable to the modern reader, it’s hard to think that the book isn’t worth that price.

As for the underlying Nieli/Ventrella debate, I think Ventrella comes across as the religious freedom litigator he is (Alliance Defending Freedom, a/k/a ADF), unwilling to allow that his clients might have mistaken a moral option for a moral duty, and I think Miller if not Nieli refutes his hyperbole pretty well.

I’m old enough to recall when Christians were called “hypocrites” if they only practiced their faith at Church on Sunday, and didn’t take it into the marketplace with them the rest of the week. Now we’re called “bigots” if we do – unless our Christianity is anodyne Religion of Nice.

But it behooves us at least to try to understand with utmost clarity what faith and conscience do require of us in the marketplace, so I’m looking forward to reading my new free Kindle book (one of these years, real soon now).

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Craftsmanship, Worldview & Coercion

One upon a time, yours truly thought he might want to become a professional photographer. It didn’t hurt that I was in some demand on campus by comely co-eds who wanted to send glamorous photos to their current boyfriends (soon to be replaced by me, I fancied) in Vietnam.

“Glamorous,” by the way, isn’t a euphemism for nude. Sexting hadn’t been invented yet, and in any event, these campuses were pretty conservative.

Still, if some guy had wanted me to do glamorous photos for his girlfriend, the W.A.C. Nurse in ‘Nam, I’d have been at a bit of a loss for a photographic vocabulary. I probably could have learned in time how to photograph a guy so as to fill women with at least vague admiration or longing, but I never decided actually to go pro. I’d be a poor photographer of football, or NASCAR racing, too, as I have no enthusiasm of them and don’t feel obliged to learn how to fake it.

Coincidentally, but in a similar vein, I turned down this week a professional engagement by a desperately needy human being with a real problem – several of them. Our initial failure to mesh expectations warned me that an attorney/client relationship would end up disappointing both of us.

So I sympathize particularly with the photographer who declines engagement for an event that he cannot imagine portraying in a way that would both meet his artistic standards and please the event organizer. I’ve watched the Food Channel just enough to recognize the expressive element in custom cakes, too. And I’ve heard a florist vehemently assert that there is a real artistic element in floral arranging, though on my own, I can’t fathom it.

For a number of craftsmen, though, the first thing that pops out of their mouth (and so, presumably, the first thing that came to mind) when asked to contribute to a same-sex “marriage,” is something like “I can’t do that. It would violate God’s commandments.”

The legalism of that baffles me (though it just occurred to me that “legalism” in this context is really Nominalism, in contrast to the Realism of what follow).

How better, it seems to me, if they said (and if this truthfully were in their hearts) something more like this:

I’ve thought about what to do when this day came. You’ve been my customer for years, and I value you as a human being as well as a customer.

But, like you and everyone else, I have a worldview. It’s not something I superimpose on reality, but is simply how I perceive reality, how I see things interrelating. That I see things differently than others would, in most situations, be celebrated as “diversity.”

But in my worldview, two people of the same sex can’t marry each other. Not “must not,” but “cannot.” It’s not in the nature of “marriage” as a natural institution, however much that institution may have varied over the millennia. I know that “diversity” today seems to have little room for the consequences of my view.

My worldview is certainly shaped, though not dictated, by my religious tradition. It’s not dictate partly because the Scriptures I revere say nothing about same-sex “marriage,” as such a thing was not even imaginable. And it’s not dictated because, believe it or not, when my clergy preach about sin, as they sometimes do (though they preach of grace more), they tend to focus on sins that affect all of us, like pride, rather than maybe 2% of us.

But back to my being shaped by the Christian scriptures. There are no “child-free” couples in those pages – only (1) parents and (2) barren couples who were grieved by their barrenness – grieved sometimes to tears. Our wedding rite is chock-full of blessings for fertility, even for marriages between aging folks, as it is unequivocally assumed as one end of marriage. And we haven’t forgotten Abram and Sarai.

Even in my former tradition, it was a given that married couples made babies if possible. They might delay a few years for various reasons (I wasn’t Roman Catholic), but sooner or later they threw caution to the wind, expecting the blessing of baby burbles in due course.

These “religious” things inform my worldview along with – let me be frank – an incoherent jumble of enlightenment rationalism, “Right Liberalism,” Natural Law thinking, philosophical Realism (versus Nominalism), years of public school homogenization, mass media transgressivism for titillation and heightened viewership, a bit of libertarianism that’s suspicious of government dictating to us or handing out goodies for the sake of votes rather than for any enduring public good, and the kind of secularism that James K.A. Smith writes about, whereby I see my tradition as but one option.

The tradition of the Church in which you’re holding your ceremony apparently is otherwise. Civility is one of my secular sacraments. So is tolerance for a religious tradition that baffles me. But there are limits to what I can do.

My profession involves expression, and I’ve had no epiphany that enables me to express joy and delight in the “marriage” you’re entering, which will never produce baby burbles and looks nothing like one that ever could have. You’d be better served by someone who’s had such an epiphany or is willing to give it a shot anyway.

I’m flattered you asked, and I’d like to think you asked because you admire my work. But I’m going to have to decline this commission. I don’t think I’d be happy with the result if I tried, and I doubt that you would be, either.

Yes, that’s too long and preachy. It could use some distilling. But the distiller should be the religious (probably Christian) photographer, baker or florist to whom I’m primarily writing:

  • If you couldn’t say something like what I wrote without being disingenuous;
  • if you’d feel as if you were just positioning yourself more sympathetically for a Court or Human Relations Commission hearing;
  • if the real, bedrock basis of your refusal is that you think it would violate God’s commandments to photograph a same-sex wedding (or to bake a cake for the reception or to make floral arrangements for the affair) but it would not interfere with your artistry in celebrating a SSM to believe that;
  • if you’re really and truly thinking “I could do a wonderful job of this, and you’d be thrilled at the result, but I’m scared of hellfire if I do;”

then I’m still rooting for you in the Court or Human Relations Commission, but I do not understand you, and I support you mostly to avoid bad precedent.

And if you’re really and truly thinking

  • “I won’t sell you that cake from my ready-made bakery case;” or
  • “I won’t sell you this bouquet in the refrigerator;” or
  • “I won’t sell you this picture frame on display;

because you’re going to misuse it,” then you’ll have to muddle through without my support at all.

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

These remarks are an expression of decades of reflection, and more than a bit of legal and religious knowledge, about religious freedom, free speech, expressive speech, protected class status, and the distinction between discrimination simpliciter (i.e., discernment) and invidious discrimination. I may be wrong – I was wrong once before – but not because I’m shooting from the hip..

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.