A few more Desiderata

Yes, You are the man.

7. Weed your own garden.

Once I took some coursework in feminist philosophy. I like philosophy as a discipline, but the seminar rooms can get a bit rancorous. On this particular day we were discussing, again, ad nauseam, what constituted a “feminist”. It is true that the inability of the discipline to define this term has been both generative and destructive to the discipline. But on this day, our emotional professor threw up her hands and nearly-shouted “but who will police the boundaries???” and I slowly raised my hand, to offer my services. It wasn’t my best moment, but my heirs will identify it as “something she would do”.

I’d had about enough of the righteous preening in those seminar rooms, and I have a knee-jerk tendency to want to poke people when they are being too pious about their intellectual commitments. But nevertheless, this concern to fence off appropriate behavior is both a concern for intellectual consistency and a means of control. What should we do about the masses clamoring at the gate??

In the comments on my last post, the instinct to concern ourselves with the behavior of unruly others cropped up. This is a common instinct, but I think we might do without it.

Here it is nicely and clearly summed up:

1. How do you (and I mean both the royal you and you specifically) avoid the trap of having the "irreducible tragic and particular" become merely a theological blank check to do whatever you want?

2. "The point of discernment is that no one can tell you how this maps onto your own life. You must live it for yourself. Discernment is sisters to accountability- it is your life that you are taking account of, and not someone else’s"

I was under the impression that the point of discernment was to attempt to love God's will for your life. And more to the point, is it your life's, or God.

In summation, I see very little difference between your position and a mere liberal-individualistic framework within some Christian trappings.

In regard to a “theological blank check”, it seems to me both that this is a common concern (St. Paul had it) and an unavoidable one. Yes, there will be those who avoid responsibility, act with ill intent and disobey the commandments. Limiting their number seems to be not my responsibility.
What my responsibility is is to point the way to Christ, in whom sins are reconciled. The life of the Christian concerns itself, I think, with weeding our own gardens and welcoming others to enjoy their shade and their fruit. They might, then, want to join us in the messy, sweaty, dirty work that is gardening. But I bear no concern, as a theologian, to insist that everyone do this. I can’t make you weed your own garden. My job is only to speak of the God who makes things grow, and to return thanks when they do.

Does my emphasis on discernment put the onus of responsibility on the individual, and not the community? Well, yes, I believe it does. This is because this is how discernment works.

I’m not saying that it is “every man for himself” when it comes to discernment, but I am saying that “being discerning” is the work that an individual must do for himself. This seems to be to be the full thrust of Proverbs and the Psalms that tell us that “blessed is the man” who loves the law. The point, of course, is not that the man has “chosen for himself” which law to love, or written the law for himself, but it is indeed this man who loves it. Be that man.

8. Be Wise. Yes, you.

Here’s another question, the second part of the one quoted above:

Which brings me to Protestants not having a Magisterium - that's true. But we have our churches (and, depending on denomination, other courts), which, ideally, would be bastions not only of worship but critical reflection, conversation, and formation. I suspect some churches do this better than others in medium-size venues (i.e., not the whole congregation usually, but not relegating it to individuals or individual families, but somewhere in between). The Church needs to be the Church, but it can't be if we're going to elevate the individual to the arbiter of wisdom. Which I'm not sure is what you're saying, but is my concern.

I’m not sure we are “elevating the individual to the arbiter of wisdom”. As far as I can tell, the individual is the arbiter of wisdom, in the sense in which I am talking about “wisdom”.

At base, the concern of the writer is to help others avoid sin. I get these kinds of questions a lot, and they are puzzling to me. Do I think that other people might sin? Well, yes of course I do-that’s why I’m a Christian. I think sin is perennial and built in to the world as we know it. This is not license (St. Paul covered this pretty well, I think), it is just how I understand what creatures do. But behaving as if my job was to limit the quantity of sin among my community seems both poorly considered and bound to fail. Christianity, after all, is not a sin-management program.

I suspect that some of what attracts Protestants to Catholicism is a deep fear of doing the wrong thing. This is because they have internalized the belief that “being Christian” is doing the right things- living morally or according to Scripture. But without a Magisterium, if it is not clear what to do, you can be left feeling rootless and without guidance. Protestants who feel deeply that they must do the “right thing” can find a safe harbor in Catholicism.¹

But what if “being Christian” is not about doing the right things, at all? Wisdom tells a different story, not of license, but of grace. As my friend Matt likes to say, Christ came for sinners only. The rest can fend for themselves, but I know which boat I am on. My job is just to hand out the life jackets.

9. Don’t divinize nature.

   I do not intend to get into the weeds of Humanae Vitae, or the weeds of “nature” versus “grace”, but I do think there is an interesting question regarding the function of “nature” as it regards contraception, especially for Protestants. Seeing as one of my eagle-eyed readers quoted exactly the section that includes this question, I’ll give it a shot.

II. From Humane Vitae, 16.

Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the later they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love.

If the aim of sex is conception, than nature might function such that all sex might lead to conception. But this is true only for men, not for women. It seems to me that if sex is primarily intended for reproduction, than it’s a design error that this is not how nature works. Insofar as bodies are created such that there is such a thing as a “non-fertile window”, it seems to me that non-contraceptive sex is… created. People who oppose contraception might instead seek to only have sex when it includes the possibility of pregnancy, but they don’t. The recognition that non-fertile sex is a good seems written in to even anti-contraceptive takes.

HV indeed agrees and says that sex has other purposes, such as mutual love and fidelity, and non-fertile sex is allowed by such means as tracking fertility and the like, so that Catholics can (prudently) space their families by having sex only when not-fertile.

But I see no difference between the intentional non-contraceptive sex of the non-fertile window and the use of means of contraception. Can we be prudent about which means? Sure. But I think we risk elevating “nature” to be the arbiter of fertility in a way that seems to divinize nature, considering it as without sin and its effects. But what is “nature”, but created, and so subject to sin?² I do not think we need to deny all forms of natural theology to call this a potential overreach. ³

The ethicist rejoinder is that no!, nature has ends of which artificial means cannot mimic- what of artificial wombs? what of surrogacy and the like? Ethicists have the benefit of end-runs around what seem to me more common sense instincts. There, I’ve said it. If your only rejoinder to this concern is “but what about artificial wombs!”, you are being lazy. Extending the potential overreaches of a point of logic can be a way of avoiding the question.

10. Theology is not ethics.

"I try to speak of sex in accordance with Scripture, which is to say not very often and with little clarity."

Wondering if you say this as a theologian specifically or a Christian.

Because I wonder how much our Christian ethics (bio-ethics or otherwise) stem from this "not in the Bible" approach. If we need a whole list of things in Scripture in order to say something is moral or immoral, well, that's part of our whole debacle!

Curious how you distinguish helpful vs. unhelpful strict Biblicism here.

This is a line I usually use when I talk about hell, and I think its a better fit for that doctrine than it is for discussions of sex. There are a lot of theological conversations that we can have that are not “read off of the Bible”. What I am concerned about here is the way we prioritize our concerns. Why have we decided that contraception is the matter we ought to concern ourselves with?

It is usually, I think, because we have other fish to fry.

For some Protestants, it is because they have other concerns about sexuality and they suspect that securing the foundations might allow them to hedge off other behaviors- and usually other people’s behaviors. But if this is the case, they ought to address the behaviors of concern to them- is it about someone else’s sexual practices? Is it pornography?- and not look for preemptive fencing in contraception.

The reasons for this are two fold, I think.

First, it makes us think that theology is a means of control. If I get this one, foundational teaching right, I can prevent malpractice later down the road. But theology is not a system of levers and pulleys, not at all. The questions that arise, though they are overlapping, should not be used as a lever for the other questions that we are really worried about.

and second, proceeding this way theologically usually doesn’t work! If you are worried about domestic violence in your church, you should talk to your people about not being violent, instead of trying to create a theological scaffolding by using “She” for God instead of “He”. If your people are not valuing women’s contributions, you should have a conversation about your systems and policy instead of starting a sermon series about Mary. Don’t do a series on the Trinity as a dancing community to get people to join a Bible study. Theology is not for social change- not primarily.⁴

I may take a few more later, as time allows. Thanks.

1. This is not what Catholicism has taught about itself. But for this concern this does not matter.

2. There’s more that could be said here about natural theology and my use of “nature”. You can probably figure out where I stand on the first (nein!), if you know this conversation.

3. I’m moving pretty quickly here through some weedy categories. This deserves more thought from someone who is not me- but you can see the contours of my concern.

4. thanks to my friend

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories

for prodding me on this matter!