Manhattan for Beads, Mankind for Condoms

Tradition generally holds that in 1626, Peter Minuit, leader of the Dutch colony in the New World,  purchased the Island of Manhattan for about 24 dollars worth of trinkets.  Today, this is often presented as a classic example of American Indian ill-use at the hands of European colonists.  I do not dwell here on potential errors in this view (1), but am here content to let it stand as an example for purposes of illustration.  Similarly, moderns regret how European colonists would sometimes attempt to cause Indians to become drunk and dependant on alcohol in order to cheat them in trade.  In essence, colonists knew that by causing Indians to become dependent on alcohol, they would abandon their freedom.  Drunk men are easily cheated. 

Modern man is just as drunk as the Indians of Colonial America.  Where the Indians were drunk on alcohol, man today is drunk on something else.  The modern world is drunk on sex.  A man can scarce think otherwise when condoms are widely handed out on college campuses and in high schools, or given the popularity of Playboy (magazine and digital content) and cheap romances.  One might likewise point to the widespread use of sex in advertising, on TV, and in movies, to sell all manner of nonsense to a drunk public.  For a drunk man is a man with little sales resistance. 

Just like colonists wanted the American Indian drunk and dependant on alcohol, so too do modern “colonists” want man drunk on sex.  Advertisers want man drunk in order to sell him trash.  Sex sells cars, tools, soap, perfume, and alcohol (the better to get one doubly drunk).  The reason is simple enough.  As the American Indians gave something up for the alcohol on which they became dependant, so man gives something up by his drunkenness on sex.  He gives up some degree of his freedom and some degree of his humanity.

Advertisers are not the only ones who want man drunk on sex.  The federal government does as well.  The US government has commanded that all employers, even those with religious objections, must provide free contraceptive coverage to their employees.  Desperate for the free contraception, and drunk on the need to gratify his sex instinct, man, like American Indians dependant on alcohol, gives something up.  Among other things, he gives up his conscience.  By declaring that religious entities must provide contraception though it violates their religious beliefs and consciences, the government has claimed authority over man’s conscience.  It has claimed the power to tell man when he may follow his religious beliefs and when he may not.  In exchange, it offers free contraception, the ability to further gratify one’s sex instinct.  Alcohol for trinkets and land, contraception for one’s conscience, both for man’s freedom. 

Man often sells himself too cheaply; the flaw runs deep in human nature.  But when he sells his conscience away for free contraception, when he prizes the gratification of the instinct over his conscience, he gives up himself for too mean a price.  As Fulton Sheen said, "Our hopes and our liberties are sold too cheap when they are bartered away to him who feeds the body and leaves the soul naked." Judas sold God for 30 pieces of silver; when man gives himself to the government for free contraception, he is little better.  Judas thought he sold God, Who really gave himself for man.  When he sells his conscience for 30 shekals, though, man gives himself for nothing. 

(1). This would consist of about $1000 dollars today, that the event is only badly attested in one source, that the claim the Island was sold for beads and trinkets is not in that early source, and that the concept of sale for the Dutch was probably different from modern concepts of sale. 

The Adventure of Monogamy

The great English essayist and possibly best prose writer of the twentieth century, G. K. Chesterton once remarked to a man who claimed that Christianity had been tried and found wanting that, on the contrary, “it had been found difficult and left untried.”  He might have been speaking of any number of aspects of Christianity, whether belief in the Incarnation and crucifixion, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles or idea that the humble and poor are blessed rather than the rich and proud.  To some significant extent, I rather suspect that he was speaking in large part about Christian beliefs on human sexuality.  

In no age have Christian sexual teachings been popular.  It is sometimes claimed today that Jesus gave commands that kept with the spirit of his time, but do not fit with ours.  This is nonsense.  Jesus’ concept of human sexuality was no more popular in his age then than today.  He rejected divorce in an age that demanded it with the same vehemence with which modern society does.  He and apostles always assumed that marriage was between  a man and a women, even Paul writing to a pagan Roman society that was no more sympathetic to Christian sexual teaching than pagan modern society (Rom 1:26-27).

The strange thing about modern distaste for Church teaching on monogamy is that in demanding monogamy without divorce, the Church, as C.S. Lewis, remarked in Mere Christianity, does not demand people do something utterly foreign to them.  The Church did not force Romeo to promise Juliet eternal constancy and love, he did that one his own.  Songs, poems, love stories, both modern and ancient, are full of promises of eternal love and fidelity.  Songs promise that “I will love you forever;” they never promise, “I will love you until next Tuesday.”  For all the commonness of modern divorce and promiscuity, man cannot easily escape at least the ideal of fidelity.  The Church does not impose this ideal, it simply demands that man keep it.  

At the lowest level, keeping this promise of fidelity is a matter of integrity.  When a man does what his conscience tells him that he ought do, promise his love forever, he makes an oath that it is a simple matter of honesty and integrity to keep.  Robert Bolt’s Thomas More, in A Man for All Seasons, on being asked why he would not take an oath to save his life, replied that he would not take an oath that he could not keep.  He explained that “when a man takes an oath, he takes his own self into his hands, like water, and if he opens his fingers, he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

Keeping to one woman (or man), though, is not simply a matter of honesty or integrity, but adventure.   As Chesterton remarked, there is simply no fun in taking an oath that I cannot be kept to.  There is no adventure in keeping an promise only when it is easy to do so, or following a road only until the trail darkens.  What adventure would it have been in Lord of the Rings had Fordo turned back at the first sound of a black rider’s footsteps or if Hector fled when the first Greek ships approached Troy?  What if St. Francis gave up at his first hunger pangs?   What if Christ turned back to Galilee at the first shrieking devil?

This comes to the final point.  Frodo did not turn back at the first sounds of a black rider’s steps.  He saw his quest through fire and foes, through darkness and thunder, through fear and doubt and back home.  And he did not come back the same.  His enemy, Saruman, on his return said to him in awe, “you have grown... you are wise and cruel, you have robbed my revenge of its sweetness and I must go hence, indebted to your mercy...”  No one comes through trials the same.  Fulton Sheen liked to remark on the spiritual law running though the universe that “no one shall be crowned unless first he has struggled.”  The adventure leaves no man (or woman) who sees it through the same, if only he have the courage to undertake it.   

The Three Divorces II: Love and Responsibility

In the previous post, I observed that what is true of a married couple—what God has joined, man must not put asunder—is true of other things as well.  Just as the divorce between a husband and his wife divides what ought not be divided, so too those today who divide faith and reason either insisting on faith alone or reason alone, wrongly try to rend and tear a seamless garment—to the detriment of both.  In the  same way that modern man has often wrongly parted faith from reason, he has also sought to divide the indivisible in other spheres.  He has sought to divide love from responsibility.

Not long ago, I was engaged in my dissertation research in Rome where I was staying in an apartment in Centocelle with an Italian and two Americans.  When one of those Americans, a Californian, and I were walking to the subway to Rome, he was telling me of his various love interests.  When I suggested in reply that it was only possible to love one women, he objected.  He suggested that it was only possible to love one woman responsibly, but that one might still love other women.   The conversation moved onto other subjects, but I could not help reflecting that my then-roommate had fallen into an error common in the modern world in trying to divorce love from responsibility.  In reality, however, such a “love” is scare worthy of the name.  

Love without responsibility is no more love than a story without plot is a story.  In reality, responsibility is at the center of the story.  It suggests duty, an obligation not to self, but to others.  It means not only something a man might want to do, but something that he ought to do, whether he will or no.  This responsibility causes love to look not to self, but outward.  It is what leads a soldier to fall on a grenade for his friends, a wife to care for a sick or alcoholic husband, a parent to suffer for a child.   

Where real love, complete with duty and responsibility, would have a man look outward modern man often prefers to look inward.  He would make himself happy for it is his life to live, he must look out for number one, do what makes him happy, and be true to himself.  An man who looks too much to himself, however, cannot look to anything outside of him.  Such a man can rise to no responsibility nor answer a call to duty.  Those things would require him to look outward, but our modern individualist looks only inward.   Rejecting any real obligation or responsibility, real love becomes impossible and all that remains is a poor shadow where one loves not others, but as Fulton Sheen says, but only one’s own self in others.  One loves another not for their sake, but for one’s own.  

This poor shadow of love has fallen across much of modernity and modern relationships, which only suffer for it.  The divorce between love and responsibility may be seen in the use of contraception where a couple accepts the pleasure associated with sex, but none of the responsibility.  The man rejects both the potential obligation of having to support a woman whose own career may be injured by having a child and the responsibility to raise that child.  Indeed, the tremendous responsibility of having a child and the rejection of responsibility may explain the decreasing birthrate in an individualistic western society.  It may explain the high rate of abortion, for little other explanation of the 4,000 children aborted each day is possible, than that their parents reject their own responsibility towards them.  The burden of a child seems too great only when love is too small.    

Other examples might be multiplied.  There is the high divorce rate, the tendency for couples to live together without marriage, or even the promise of it.  All these show what happens when a modern  world rejects the responsibility associated with love.  A traditional captain might go down with the ship, but a modern captain would be first in the lifeboat.  Such a love scarce deserves the name, but is rather a pale shadow of what it ought to be.   In yet another case, what God has joined, man has put asunder. 

                                                                                                                                  

Four Bad Arguments in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage

Ours is an age that often thrives more on emotion than by reason, more on cliché than rational argument, and more on hot insult than cool logic.  On the question of same-sex marriage, which should especially demand careful thought, proponents are apt to assault opponents with cliché, emotion, and insult.   Here are four popularly used bad arguments and some brief answers.  

A. Those who oppose same sex-marriage are just as bigoted as those who opposed inter-racial marriage.

Answer: This argument is flawed on several grounds.

First,  it compares a person who does not want a black man to marry a white woman to a person to does not want a man to marry another man.  In the latter case, the difference is far greater than in the previous case.  For instance,  the opponent of inter-racial marriage accepts that a white man may marry a white women, but objects to a black man doing to.  Hence, the difference between the acceptable partner and the unacceptable one is on the difference between a black man and a white man, which is not very  substantial. 

On the other hand, the opponent of same-same marriage allows that a man may marry a woman, but objects to a man marrying another man.  In this case, the acceptable partner for a woman is not the difference between a black man and a white man, but the difference between a man and a woman, which is clearly a more substantial difference.  Hence, the comparison fails.  

Second, Francis Beckwith has pointed out a more serious failure with this argument.  Bans on inter-racial marriage were a novelty, having no basis in common law and requiring new laws to defend those bans.  Those who opposed inter-racial  marriage did so because they recognized that the purpose of marriage, inherited from common law, included the procreation of children and development of a family unit. Opponents of inter-racial marriage, with the goal of enforcing racial purity, sought to introduce a new condition to marriage that had no basis in prior common law or custom.   They recognized that men and women of different races naturally had the ability and right to marry each other and wished to introduce a new conditional (same-race) to prevent this.  Opponents of same-sex marriage, however, recognize precisely the opposite, that two men do not naturally have the right or ability (from nature, common law, or custom) to marry (1).

B. Homosexuals were born with their desires, so we should consider them morally acceptable.

Answer: This argument confuses explanation with justification.  C.S. Lewis said that “explanation by cause is not justification by reason.”  That a person was born with same-sex sexual desires may (or may not) explain why a person is attracted to a member of the same sex, but it does not therefore justify action based on that attraction.  Some scientists think that there is a gene that predisposes some people to alcoholism, but while this may help explain why some people become alcoholics, it does not for that reason justify their alcoholic behavior (2).

C. Practicing homosexuals do not hurt or affect anyone else, so they should be left alone.

Answer: This argument seems to run like this:

1. We should not care about what anyone else does unless its affects us.

2. Same-sex practice does not affect us.

3. Therefore, we should not care about same-sex practice.

The problem here is that both assumptions in the argument are patently false.  If my friend becomes an alcoholic and even claims that over-imbibing of drink makes him happy, should I simply shrug my shoulders and conclude “well, his drinking is not affecting me, so I should not care”?  I would be a very poor friend in this case.   But if there is good reason to think that same-sex marriage is harmful, either because it consists of disobedience to God’s plan for human sexuality or because it entails harmful behaviors and consequences, then we should oppose the practice of homosexuality (3).

Second, it is far from obvious that the normalization of same-sex relationships will not affect the rest of society.  As same sex relationships are normalized, those opposed to such relationships on grounds of religion or conscience will be compelled to violate their beliefs and support such relationships.  This has already happened in some cases (4).

D. If two people love each other, they should be able to be together.

Such a claim seems to reduce love to sexual attraction and ask, “if two people are sexually attracted, then they should be able to be together.”  But this is far from obvious and seems clearly wrong.  That a married man feels sexual attraction for a woman other than his wife and even professes himself in love with this woman does not justify his acting on claim that he is acting “for love.”   Real love will seek the best for the other person.  An man with AIDS may “love” an uninfected woman, but if he really loves her, he would never be with her since he would care too much for her well-being.  Since there is good reason to think that homosexual practice is harmful (3), it is an attraction that one should not act on.

(1) Francis Beckwith addresses this in greater detail here:

 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/05/1324

(2) http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20040526/researchers-identify-alcoholism-gene

(3) http://thesparkandtheflame.blogspot.com/2012/05/harm-of-homosexual-practice-medical-and.html

(4) http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/photographers-guilty-of-discrimination-for-refusing-to-shoot-same-sex-weddi/

(5)  For an interesting series of responses to a few other objections to same sex relationships, see the philosopher JP Moreland, here:
http://www.jpmoreland.com/2012/08/05/royal-confusions-about-the-support-of-chick-fil-a/

On Modesty and Bikinis

This was a guest post for Elizabeth Hillgrove's "Bikini, Biki-no" series on Startling the Day. Thank you for hosting!

Coming from a (beginner's level) Theology of the Body perspective, I seek to point out the general reason and purpose of modesty, and how it fits into deciding on a swimsuit.

 

At times, when the topic of modesty comes up in discussion, it quickly becomes a debate over which gender bears the most responsibility. Should the most modest women walk around completely covered? Or, should the most honorable men walk around blind-folded? What about modesty for men? Should they be covered too? I think that this “responsibility debate” both dodges and underplays the real issue at hand, which is the intrinsic value of our bodies.

Our bodies are intrinsically valuable because we are human persons. The value of our bodies does not come from ourselves or from others. The value of our bodies comes from our creator, in whose own image we are made. To deny the dignity of our body is to deny God. Our dignity is directly derived from God, and without God, there is no source for human dignity.

It is appropriate to consider the proper treatment of our bodies in light of this very fact. Because our bodies have such value, Karol Wojtyla tells us, “the role of ... the means to an end determined by a different subject is contrary to the nature of a person.”(1) This means that the use of one person’s body by another for the purpose of pleasure or gain is contrary to the dignity of the person. We are told in Theology of the Body that the opposite of love is, in fact, not hate, but use. It is our responsibility not to encourage the use of our own body or that of another as a mere object. To do so is a profanation of the human body. Lust is the common name of that act of using the human body as an object.

What does it mean to use the body as an object? “Objectification” is defined (dictionary.com) as “to present as an object, especially of sight, touch, or other physical sense.” In this definition, the first emphasized sense is that of sight. I think one of the easiest and most clear means of presenting one's body as an object occurs in situations in which that body is scantily clad. Scant clothing automatically sexualizes the body, and invites others, people you don't even know, to use your body for pleasure. It makes the body into a tool for a purpose, a means to an end. Use is still use, even if it is visual rather than physical. Our bodies are too inherently dignified to be subjected to such a purpose.

Modesty is not about shame. It is not about being ashamed of our bodies, as if they should not be admirable. Modesty is about dignity and reverence. We are created in the image and likeness of God. Our bodies are so very admirable, that they cannot and should not be reduced to common usage as objects. When we clothe our bodies, we need to take this fact into consideration. Are we presenting our bodies in a way that conveys as well as engenders respect, or are we presenting our bodies as objects for use?

Modesty is not about whose responsibility it is to cover up or not to look. Modesty is a recognition and a declaration of one's own dignity; the sanctity of one's own body.  The holiest part of the Jewish temple was always veiled, not because of shame, but because of reverence.  Likewise with our bodies, which we cover, not by reason of shame, but by reason of reverence.  Fulton Sheen called it "reverence for the mystery" and lamented its loss in the modern world.  To present the body in a bikini may risk unveiling what should be hidden and inviting for use and profanation that which should be reverenced. 

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(1) Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 28.