Alan Jacobs

In my recent post I asked, “So why the hostility from so many conservative Catholics? I am not certain, but from what I have heard over the years, I don’t think many conservative Catholics have much trust in the average parish priest, especially here in America. But then, they don’t seem to have much trust in bishops, taken as a class, either. And from these responses to Amoris Laetitia they clearly don’t trust the Pope. So I find myself wondering in whom, or in what, they do place their trust.”

Well, here’s something of an answer from Rusty Reno: canon law. “On the matter of the divorced and remarried, Francis turns the pastor into the arbiter of who can and cannot receive communion—a decision based on a priest’s judgment of the interior spiritual condition of an individual Catholic. Francis sets aside the objective clarity of canon law, something that gives the lay Catholic a place to stand and leverage against limitless clerical discretion.”

That’s helpful, and it certainly confirms my sense that for many conservative Catholics priests are simply not to be trusted. However, I also think it raises questions about whether canon law, or any law, can be so specific and detailed as to eliminate the need for judgment — whether the legislative branch of any law-governed organization, so to speak, can supplant the judicial branch. Won’t judgment always be needed? And in these matters isn’t such judgment always and necessarily, at least to some degree, meant to discern “the interior spiritual condition of an individual Catholic”? (Think of the confessional and the sacrament of Penance, in which priests don’t just read off a card but are expected to make discerning evaluations.) And even if canon law could replace prudential judgment, would that be any less “clerical” a mode of discipline, given that canon law is written and implemented by clerics?

Well, I guess my friend Michael Brendan Dougherty did not get my memo counseling charity towards Pope Francis, since his column is titled “The Cowardice and Hubris of Pope Francis." Here’s a representative passage:

Chapter 8 of this heralded document begins by describing the kind of person in an "irregular union" who might be considered for pastoral counseling back toward communion. It describes that person as someone possessed of "humility, discretion, and love for the Church." The question of whether this person has sincere sorrow for sin and a firm purpose to amend their life is side-stepped. Repentance and conversion? How old fashioned.

Now, there's the problem: this account of what Francis wrote is simply, flatly, incontestably false. Here's is the relevant passage from Amoris Laetitia (p. 231), which is a quotation from Relatis Finalio:

"Conversation with the priest, in the internal forum, contributes to the formation of a correct judgment on what hinders the possibility of a fuller participation in the life of the Church and on what steps can foster it and make it grow. Given that gradualness is not in the law itself (cf. Familiaris Consortio, 34), this discernment can never prescind from the Gospel demands of truth and charity, as proposed by the Church. For this discernment to happen, the following conditions must necessarily be present: humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it”. These attitudes are essential for avoiding the grave danger of misunderstandings, such as the notion that any priest can quickly grant “exceptions”, or that some people can obtain sacramental privileges in exchange for favours.

As is quite evident, this presents pretty much the opposite of the view that Michael attributes to Francis. It does not describe a person in an "irregular union" as simply having "humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching"; rather, it says that only if the priest discerns the presence of such commitment can there be even the possibility of reconciliation. The person concerned must know that his or her response to the call of the Church is imperfect, and must want to perfect it; otherwise the whole business of reconciliation is a non-starter.

I think the deeper question here is: Are there such people? — that is, people who have genuine love of the Church, and a genuine desire to live in grace, but are living in habitual sin? I would like to think so, because I believe that I am such a person. For instance, — I’ll keep short what could be a long list —I know, and have long known, that I have too many possessions, that I am too fond of my possessions, and that I should live more simply and give more to the poor. You could say that I am in an irregular union with American capitalism — indeed that is what you should say. I believe that my way of life, taken as a whole, is implicated in serious patterns of sinfulness, including patterns that Jesus singled out for frequent and harsh denunciation. And yet I also believe that I love God and wish to know Him, and love the Church and wish to serve it.

It is possible that I am mistaken about all this, and that when I go to Judgment the Lord will say to me, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” But if I do have what the Book of Common Prayer calls “a right understanding of myself,” then it would be inaccurate to describe me as a rebel against God’s grace, but rather a vessel of clay, breakable, porous, fragile — a poor thing, but God’s own.

And if this can be true of me, who has received much good instruction, much good training in God’s ways, then surely it can also be true of people who have been catechized quite thoroughly by a hyper-sexualized late capitalism that teaches (every day and in every possible way) the gospel of self-fulfillment, but who nevertheless vaguely discern that there may be more to this world than advertisers tell us, and that the Church holds the keys to a greater Kingdom. Those who, in this world, catch even a glimpse of a possibility that the narrow and difficult path is better than the broad welcoming highway need all the encouragement the Church can muster. For this is the nature of our God: “A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.”

I just came up with a new rule for writing today, one that I plan to adhere to for the rest of my life: If it infuriates you, don’t write about it.

In a passage that’s already getting a lot of attention, Pope Francis writes,

Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.

And then in a footnote to that passage:

In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (ibid., 47: 1039).

This is a point on which, as I have suggested before, here and here, I tend to disagree with my theologically conservative friends. A couple of years ago, in an email exchange with some priestly friends, I wrote:

My understanding of the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, which I take to be a standard (if not the only standard) Anglican understanding, is that they are not just signs but means of grace: “spiritual food and drink,” as is said in the prayer book. It is by and through the sacraments that we are enlightened and empowered to be the body of Christ in and for the world. And of course it is only through the sacrament of Baptism, in which we die along with Christ, paying the due penalty for our sin, and are raised to new life in Him, that we are so reconciled with Him that we may participate in the sacrament of Holy Communion. And as John Wesley wrote, “The chief of these means [of God’s grace to us] are prayer, whether in secret or with the great congregation; searching the Scriptures; (which implies reading, hearing, and meditating thereon;) and receiving the Lord's Supper, eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Him: And these we believe to be ordained of God, as the ordinary channels of conveying his grace to the souls of men.”

Therefore to deny people the sacraments is to deny them one of the primary means by which they can receive the enlightening and empowering grace by which they can come to know God and follow Him. For the Anglican with a high sacramental theology, it is to deprive them of the “spiritual food and drink” that should be our regular diet. This strikes me as a massively dangerous thing to do. How can we expect people to think as they should and act as they should if we are denying them access to this empowering grace? And if we could think and act as mature Christians without regular access to the sacraments, then what need do we have for those sacraments?

Pope Francis’s argument seems to rely on a very similar logic. He declines to think of the Eucharist as either a potential carrot (admission to it as a reward for virtuousness) or a potential stick (exclusion from it as a punishment for sin) but as “a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak,” which sinful Christians need in order to grow in grace.

Yesterday as I was driving home from work my local NPR station informed me that I was about to hear an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, and I thought: Hmmm. I used to read everything Coates wrote and wanted more, but over the last couple of years I came to think that he was too certain about everything, too quick to dismiss everyone who didn’t see things precisely as he sees them, too ready to caricature people he doesn’t know anything about.

And then I listened to the interview, and thought: What an awesome guy. How incredibly honest, and humble, and gracious, and smart, and fascinating. I wish I could buy him drinks and listen to him as long as he is willing to talk.

So I am now officially all over his take on T’Challa.

As I was drafting this morning’s post on the issues surrounding transgenderism, a good many related ideas were floating around in my head. For instance, I was also thinking about the genderfluid child that Rod Dreher wrote about yesterday. I wondered what all this is like for the classmates of Abby/Adam Scott. What happens to them if they say “Abby” at a point when “Adam” is the preferred nomenclature? Do they get a timeout? Are they scheduled for a counseling session?

And it occurred to me that kids will probably deal with this simply by calling her by her last name, Scott. I mean, who has the time to keep up with someone whose gender identification changes several times a day? The essential human demand for simplification will kick in, and Abby/Adam will be given a name that stays put.

Now, it may be that her Abby/Adam’s teachers won’t like this, and it’ll be interesting to see how they handle it. Most of us went through some period of childhood being called something we didn’t want to be called, so I wonder if there will be an attempt to prevent that — at least for one child in America….

Notice, by the way, that above I have used “Abby/Adam” in a couple of places where one might have expected me to use a pronoun. The problem is, I don’t know what Abby/Adam’s preferred pronoun is. Should I have used “ze” and “zir”? Maybe Abby/Adam doesn’t like those options, or has never heard of them. And since Abby/Adam’s gender identification changes regularly, if I choose one of the existing pronouns I have a 50% chance of being wrong. So I just avoid them in this case.

This is of course what happened when people started getting nervous about using the masculine pronoun for God. “God is at work reconciling the world to Godself in Christ.”  “For God so loved the world, that God gave God’s only begotten offspring…” But this was sufficiently awkward that people just ended up constructing sentences that didn’t require the use of pronominal forms.

So this is the world we appear to be headed for: no first names, no pronouns, and unisex restrooms. Great.

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Not darkness but twilight in which even the best of minds must make its way now. And slowly the questions occur, vague but formidable for all that. We pass our hands over their surface like blind men, feeling for the mechanism that will swing them aside. They yield, but only to re-form as new problems; and one does not even do that but towers immovable before us.

Is there no way other than thought of answering its challenge? There is an anticipation of it to the point of dying. There have been times when, after long on my knees in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled from my mind, and I have looked in and seen the old questions lie folded and in a place by themselves, like the piled graveclothes of love’s risen body.

Ashe Schow argues that university administrators shouldn’t give in to protesters who want to rename campus buildings because that will just encourage the protestors to demand more, and more extreme, concessions. And maybe that’s true, and maybe that’s a good reason to turn aside such demands; but I think the genuinely substantive questions at stake here are actually pretty difficult.

When we see that a building — or any other public edifice, for instance a park or garden — has been named for a person whom we find in some way immoral, an appropriate first response is simple curiosity. Did the people who honored this guy by plastering his name on something public know of his evil actions and offensive beliefs? Did they share those beliefs? Did they approve of those actions? Did they, perhaps, not really approve but also not really care all that much?

Also: What positive reasons were there for choosing that name? Sometimes it’s obvious, as when donors want their own names plastered on the buildings they paid for. Sometimes we don’t have ready access to records that would let us know. Why, when Edward Harkness gave Yale a pile of money to build residential colleges, did they decide to name one of them after John C. Calhoun, a passionate defender of slavery? Possibly the thinking went no further than this: that Calhoun was a Yale graduate who went on to become a famously powerful and influential Senator and a Vice-President of the United States. There could have been few better-known graduates of the university.

And Calhoun, when Calhoun College opened in 1933 and for decades afterwards, was widely believed to be a great American. Indeed, in 1957 a committee overseen by a young senator named John F. Kennedy named Calhoun one of the five greatest Senators. So even after Brown vs. Board of Education and at the outset of the Civil Rights era, few people of influence in American government thought Calhoun’s pro-slavery commitments were sufficiently troublesome to prevent him from being honored as one of the greatest of Senators. Perhaps they thought, Ah well, people didn’t really know better in those days.

But here I think we need to make a vital distinction: between those who held what we now believe to be a profoundly mistaken view, or tolerated such a view, simply because it was common in their time, and those who were the architects of and advocates for such a view. The general forgiveness of society has been extended to millions of members of the Soviet Communist Party, and the Nazi Party, but the places once named for Adolf Hitler have had their names changed, as have Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Similarly, I have argued against those who would excuse Margaret Sanger as merely a creature of her time: “Sanger did not just ‘hold eugenicist ideas’; she was one of our nation’s most passionate and widely-respected advocates for those ideas…. It was this ceaseless, tireless, and very successful advocacy for some very nasty beliefs and practices that sets Sanger apart from others who happened to ‘hold eugenicist ideas.’”

If I were to apply this same logic to John C. Calhoun, I don’t think he would come off very well. Calhoun did not merely accept slavery, he was the single most passionate and influential advocate for slavery in his era. He believed that slavery is a “positive good”, railed against “the fell spirit of abolition,” and called those who believe that slavery is sinful “this fanatical portion of society” who wish to perform their insidious “operations” on “the ignorant, the weak, the young, and the thoughtless.”

I would be appalled at the naming of a college for Margaret Sanger. I don’t see how I can hold that view and accept the naming of one after John C. Calhoun. And if I were to agree that it’s just fine to have a college named after Calhoun, I’m not sure what I would say to a Russian who once more wanted a city named for Lenin. How bad does a social system have to be before its chief celebrants are deemed unworthy to have buildings named for them?