Ecumenical Insanity

Saturday, October 16th

What is death, after all, but another subjective experience?

Those of you interested in obtuse French philosophers may be aware that Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstructionism, died this week. Or did he?

Is Derrida dead? A conceptual foundation for the deconstruction of mortality

Can there be any certainty in the death of Jacques Derrida ? The obituarists' objective attempts to place his life in a finite context are, necessarily, subject to epistemic relativism, the idea that all such scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions. Surely, a postmodernist deconstruction of their import would inevitably question the foundational conceptual categories of prior scienceâ€“among them, Derrida's own existenceâ€“which become problematised and relativised. This conceptual revolution has profound implications for the content of future postmodern and liberatory science of mortality. Is God dead?

It was, perhaps, Alan D. Sokal who most heuristically challenged the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook in his brilliant exegesis of Derridian principles Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Dr Sokalâ€™s inclusive review of the literature (see especially Hamill, Graham. The epistemology of expurgation: Bacon and The Masculine Birth of Time. In Queering the Renaissance, pp. 236-252. And also Doyle, Richard. Dislocating knowledge, thinking out of joint: Rhizomatics and the importance of being multiple), and his eerily exact summary of the complementarity principle (Instead of a simple "either/or" structure, deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse that says neither "either/or" nor "both/and" nor even "neither/nor" while at the same time not abandoning these logics either) make his reading of Derrida irrefutable. We know only two things. We do not know. And M Derrida is in no position to enlighten us.

As Andy at Rest Across the River points out, this unsigned article has the tenor of a former graduate student getting revenge. Wonderful! (From the Times of London, and thanks to Andy for the link.)
Athanasius on 10.16.04 @ 05:40 PM EST [link]

Friday, October 15th

Kerry and Mary Cheney: what's the damage?

Blogger and radio host Hugh Hewitt asks the following blogger symposium question on his site: "How deep a hole have John Kerry, Mary Beth Cahill and the Edwards dug for themselves? How lasting the damage?" The hole to which Hugh refers is the one labeled "Mary Cheney," and has to do with Kerry's gratuitous mention of the vice-president's daughter in Wednesday's debate.

Asked whether sexual orientation is a choice, Kerry replied, ""We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as." It isn't the answer to the question ("no") that's caused Lynne Cheney, Mary's mother, to say that Kerry is "not a good man," it's the fact that Mary's name was brought up at all. Candidates' children are supposed to be off limits in political campaigns, but Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, compounded the error by calling Mary Cheney "fair game" in a post-debate spin session. Then John Edwards' wife Elizabeth further compounded the error by claiming that the Cheneys' disgust at having their daughter dragged into the campaign indicated that they were ashamed of her, when in fact they have repeatedly made plain that they are anything but. So what's going on with the Kerry campaign and homosexuality?

First, I think that those such as Slate political blogger Mickey Kaus who say this was an attempt to split the "homophobe" vote away from Bush are off-base. Kaus (an excellent commentator, by the way) contends, "There must be some Machiavellian strategy behind the Democratic urge to keep bringing this up–most likely it's a poll-tested attempt to cost Bush and Cheney the votes of demographic groups (like Reagan Dems, or fundamentalists) who are hostile to homosexuality or gay culture or who just don't want to have to think about it." While there may be some slight leakage from Bush, I doubt that it's enough to take the risk of alienating core Democratic constituencies.

What I think is more likely is that Kerry's reference to Mary Cheney was a "PFLAG moment." For those who don't recognize the acronym, it stands for Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (that should make it PFFLAG, but whatever). It's an organization dedicated to the argument that one can only have two attitudes toward gays: either you approve of their lifestyle, and thus can be said to love them, or you disapprove of their lifestyle, in which case you're a gay-basher who (if you have a gay child) can't really love them. Taking that as Kerry's grid, bringing up Mary Cheney would be calculated to send this message: "Because Bush is against gay rights (in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, etc.), that means he must think that homosexuality is not just as good as heterosexuality, which in turn means that he must be a gay-hating homophobe, and here's a concrete example right in his own White House family of someone he hates. What kind of man hates those close to him just because of their sexual orientation? One you wouldn't want to vote for." I think that message was aimed at moderate, undecided voters who don't like the idea of either intolerance or hypocrisy regarding homosexuality. The hope was to make dents in favorable opinions of Bush as a person as well as politician. If successfully done, it would have resulted in some inroads among centrists while also pleasing Kerry's base.

I think that's what the strategy was. I also think that Kerry carried it through incompetently not to mention offensively. I don't think he was expecting to get the question in the form that it came, and when it did he just went on autopilot so that a gambit meant to communicate one message wound up saying something completely different. (I just heard Mort Kondracke of Roll Call say basically the same thing as Kaus, and they aren't the only ones who heard it that way.)

So back to Hugh's question: how big a hole, how much impact? Depends on whether the blogosphere and media such as Fox News and talk radio keep it alive (I assume the mainstream media has already moved on). The longer the legs, the more opportunity for those same folks Kerry was trying to appeal to to decide that he's a mean-spirited politician who will do anything and hurt anyone to win. That's important because voting for president isn't simply about whose policy proposals you agree with, it's also about who you like as the public face of America and who you trust to be in charge of the national security of the country. As close as this election is supposed to be, anything that raises questions about the character of either candidate can potentially make a significant difference. This is one of those questions.
Athanasius on 10.15.04 @ 07:39 PM EST [link]

Thursday, October 14th

The NCC and the IRD, again

The IRD's report on human rights advocacy in the mainline churches is back in the news. This time, John Leo weighs in at US News & World Report. He jumps off from the Presbyterian Church (USA) threat of divestment from companies doing business in Israel:

How do the Presbyterians go about adopting stances like this? Apparently they cast a stern moral glance around the world, look for possible abuses in China, North Korea, and Iran, and seeing nothing disturbing there, decide to focus once again on Israel. The conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) released a measured and devastating report on the human-rights efforts of mainline churches and groups–the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), plus the reliably leftist National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches. The report, covering the years 2000 to 2003, found that of 197 human-rights criticisms by mainline churches and groups, 37 percent were aimed at Israel and 32 percent at the United States. Only 19 percent of these criticisms were directed at nations listed as "unfree" in Freedom House's respected annual listing of free, partly free, and unfree nations. So Israel was twice as likely to be hammered by the mainliners as all the unfree authoritarian nations put together. The fixation on Israel left little time and inclination for these churches to notice the most dangerous violations of human rights around the world. Not one nation bordering Israel was criticized by a single mainline church or group, the IRD report says. No criticisms at all were leveled at China, Libya, Syria, or North Korea.

That provoked the wrath of the Rev. Bob Edgar of the NCC. In a press release, he took Leo to task for not talking to anyone at the NCC first (may be a legitimate complaint, though opinion columnists don't operate by the same standards of balance that news reporters do), but also makes some really wild and inaccurate charges. The release says that Leo "suggested the Council's criticisms of the government of Israel were 'anti-Semitic.'" What Leo actually wrote was:

Many Jews see the divestment movement as an instrument of anti-Semitism. Maybe it is, but the efforts of the woeful mainline churches are better seen as classic knee-jerk leftism, an expression of hard-core loathing for the United States and the West, with Israel as a stand-in for America.

That may constitute a "suggestion," but in any case it relates to divestment, which the Council hasn't said anything about. Interestingly, Edgar doesn't respond to the charges of being anti-American or knee-jerk leftist. Instead he goes on to accuse Leo of employing "the smear tactics of McCarthy-era propaganda [a charge which has itself become a form of McCarthyite smear, in that no argument is made, just names called], and contributes to the abuse of religious belief as a tool of partisan politics," despite the fact that Leo never mentions any political party.

Here's the heart of the Bob's response:

The column had claimed that 37 per cent of the churches' human rights resolutions (and 80 percent of the NCC's) were aimed at Israel. Yet, Edgar noted, in the entire 54-year history of the National Council of Churches, only two policy statements have referred to Israel and Palestine. And out of 650 resolutions adopted during that time, fewer than 40 have dealt with the Middle East, many of those concerned such matters as Christians in Egypt, hostages in Iran and Lebanon, and war in Kuwait and Iraq. Only five NCC statements about Israel were issued during the period of the IRD's survey, and several of those also criticized Palestinian leaders.

I don't know how to parse the difference between "policy statements," "resolutions," and "NCC statements" (though the IRD report set up a very specific standard of what was considered), so I thought I'd simply check the NCC Web site and see what I could find. There's no index of the 650 resolutions to which Edgar refers, so I checked the results of the last four General Assemblies. Here are the results:

*One resolution (here) from the 2000 Assembly that explicitly condemns Israeli military action and "de facto imprisonment of the Palestinian population" while making no mention of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

*Nothing from 2001, when the focus was on 9/11 and its aftermath.

*One resolution (here) from the 2002 Assembly on post-9/11 US policy that called on the US government to "insist on Israeli compliance with all relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions" and referred to the "cycle of violence" between Israelis and Palestinians without ever mentioning Palestinian terrorism. Another resolution (here) condemned Israel for its treatment if the Gree Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem without mentioning the support for Palestinian terrorism on the part of one of the priests from the Patriarchate office.

*One resolution (here) from the 2003 Assembly that calls for dismantling the separation fence. This statement does mention Palestinians violence, but does so by equating Israeli military action against terrorists with Palestinian targeting of civilians: "We, as people of faith, are deeply troubled by the systematic violence against Palestinians, and equally troubled by bombing campaigns against Israelis." While it calls for the tearing down of the fence, it says absolutely nothing about what Palestinians need to do, and in particular doesn't call for an end to the suicide bombing campaign being carried out by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and elements of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The previous year's statement about the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was re-passed.

I don't know about years previous to 2000, but that's five resolutions in four years dealing with the MIddle East, and doing so in an almost entirely one-sided fashion. Were there really only 35 resolutions in the previous 50 years of the NCC that dealt with the Middle East? So Edgar says.

As for statements, I found things that looked like "statements about Israel" here, here, here, here, here, and here. Some of these are letters to government officials that I counted because they were sent in the name of the NCC. And I didn't include any news releases that included statements critical of Israel. Read these on your own and see if they bespeak a one-sided view of the conflict.

Finally, to go back to Edgar's response to Leo, I have to point out that at no point does he take issue with the central concern of both Leo and the IRD report: that the NCC and its fellow institutions have been one-sided in their drumbeat of criticism directed at Israel (and the US), while giving many of the world's most oppressive regimes a pass. At no point in any of his reaction to the IRD has Edgar bothered to cite a single criticism of the human rights records of China, North Korea, Syria, etc.

So, Bob: when are you going to stop whining about criticism and actually, substantively respond to it?

UPDATE: A little more NCC site research turned up exactly one reference to Hamas (here, and that in a non-terrorism context), and none to Islamic Jihad, Fatah, or the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. In other words, the NCC has never addressed Palestinian terrorism by name. Just as the IRD demonstrated.
Athanasius on 10.14.04 @ 11:00 PM EST [link]

Kerry's Catholic incoherence on abortion

Mark Brumley of the Catholic publishing house Ignatius Press nails to the wall John Kerry's "I can't legislate an article of my faith" excuse on abortion:

Then came the kicker: "I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith."

What article of faith was Kerry talking about? That abortion kills an innocent human being? That's not a peculiarly Catholic belief or "article of faith." Plenty of people who aren't Catholics think abortion entails taking an innocent human life. President Bush does, and he's a Methodist, not a Catholic. So too many Lutherans, Baptists, Nazarenes, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians agree with faithful Catholics and President Bush. Then there are non-Christians, including many Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, for whom abortion is the killing an innocent human being. Indeed, some people with no religion at all or who deny God's existence take the same position.

How, then, can opposition to abortion rights be "an article of faith"? Or if it is, why should that preclude opposing abortion on other grounds held in common with people who don't necessarily share one's faith?

Apparently, whatever scruples Senator Kerry has about his Catholicism informing his views of abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research don't affect his stances on many other political issues. He declared,

"My faith affects everything that I do, in truth. There's a great passage of the Bible that says, 'What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead.' And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people. That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith."

So it's okay for Senator Kerry's Catholicism to influence his efforts against poverty, or to clean up the environment, or to fight for justice and equality. As he said, "All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith." But for some reason his Catholicism mustn't influence him to support the right to life for unborn children.

It's as good a short-form rebuttal of this Cuomo-esque claptrap as I've ever seen. Read it all.
Athanasius on 10.14.04 @ 01:13 PM EST [link]

Wednesday, October 13th

Soil our hands? Never!

Another appalling moment brought to you courtesy of European ideologues:

A mass grave being excavated in a north Iraqi village has yielded evidence that Iraqi forces executed women and children under Saddam Hussein.

US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s.

The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said.

They are seeking evidence to try Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity.

"It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," Greg Kehoe, an American working with the IST, told reporters in Hatra, south of the city of Mosul.

Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.

Imagine a slight rewrite of this story: "The Europeans were staying away from Auschwitz as the evidence might be used eventually to put former Nazi Governor-General of Poland Hans Frank to death."

I'm against the death penalty (at least in its American form; I think you can make a decent case for it with regards to tyrants like Saddam, where there can be no conceivable doubt about their guilt), but the idea that you would turn your back on evidence of mass murder because you were too worried about what might happen to the perpetrator makes me ill.

(Thanks to LGF for the link.)
Athanasius on 10.13.04 @ 04:52 PM EST [link]

Bow that knee to Caesar!

Evidently some members of the European Parliament consider faithful Catholics to be persona non grata, given that they refuse to pay homage to the god of secularism:

Italy's nominee to become the European Union's Justice and Home Affairs commissioner failed on Monday to win the backing of the European Parliament's Justice Committee, days after testifying that he considers homosexuality a sin.

The panel narrowly failed to endorse Rocco Buttiglione, who is currently Italy's European Affairs minister, said Jean-Louis Bourlanges, chairman of the Justice Committee.

The committee voted 27-26 not to recommend Buttiglione, officials said.

During a confirmation hearing last week, Buttiglione, who is close to the Vatican, faced a barrage of hostile questions over his conservative views. He vowed to defend the rights of gays but told the Justice and Home Affairs Committee he considered homosexuality a sin....

Buttiglione is the only commissioner-designate to be rejected by an EU assembly panel so far.

In last week's hearing, legislators pushed him to reveal his conservative religious views, which many fear could influence his job in drafting anti-discrimination rules.

"I may think that homosexuality is a sin, and this has no effect on politics, unless I say that homosexuality is a crime," Buttiglione said.

So it's not enough for some EUers that a candidate for office pledges to enforce the law according to the requirements of the law. If there's a conflict between the law and his religious convictions, he must not only enforce the law, but reject his convictions. Thus does the "Swedenization" of Europe proceed apace.
Athanasius on 10.13.04 @ 04:02 PM EST [link]

Monday, October 11th

Professionalizing death for children

The Netherlands continues its fast trip down the slippery slope:

Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have pumped lethal doses of drugs into newborns they believe are terminally ill, setting off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it's acceptable to hasten death for the critically ill.

Few details of the four newborns' deaths have been made public. Official investigations have found that the doctors made appropriate and professional decisions under an experimental policy allowing child euthanasia that's known as the Groningen University Hospital protocol.

"Applying euthanasia to children is another step down the slope in this debate," said Henk Jochemsen, the director of Holland's Lindeboom Institute, which studies medical ethics. "Not everybody agrees, obviously, but when we broaden the application from those who actively and repeatedly seek to end their lives to those for whom someone else determines death is a better option, we are treading in dangerous territory."

Great Britain is considering legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill, amid reports that doctors already may be helping thousands of patients to die each year.

"Assisted dying is a fact," said Hazel Biggs, the director of medical law at the University of Kent, who's about to publish a report estimating the number of assisted deaths in Britain at 18,000 annually. "We have to regulate it, to ensure that vulnerable people are being protected."

The problem with regulation, of course, is that once you've admitted the legitimacy of the act, it's a small step to start expanding it. That precisely what has happened in the Netherlands, where what started out as a way for people to ask for help in dying when suffering from painful terminal illnesses quickly moved to killing the non-terminal elderly, then to doing so without their permission, and now on to children.

Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.

A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors.

Because parents can't be expected to do what's in the best interests of their children, professionals who can look at things dispassionately must step in and Do What Needs to Be Done. Doctors, after all, are trained to deal with this Life and Death stuff, whereas the rest of us are just amateurs who will let irrelevancies like love for one's children or right and wrong get in the way of Doing What Needs to Be Done. You can understand why the Dutch want parents to have no more than an advisory role (which will be eliminated as soon as possible, so as not to have them gum up the works and try to prevent the professionals from Doing What Needs to Be Done) in whether their children will be allowed to suck up the scarce medical resources of their society. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, as Mr. Spock might say.

So, who's next? The insane? Criminals? The depressed? (Oops, already taking care of them.)

Athanasius on 10.11.04 @ 07:28 PM EST [link]

Sunday, October 10th

Hail the (maybe) coming King

With regards to Israel, in case anyone is under the delusion that all the lunatics are found among American dispensationalists, consider this:

A group of right-wing Jewish activists reenacted a religious ritual from the First Temple period at the Shiloah Spring in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan Tuesday night, with the goal of removing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from power and instituting a Jewish monarchy.

With shofars blasting in the background, the group–led by Prof. Hillel Weiss, a well-known Temple Mount activist and a lecturer on literature at Bar-Ilan University, and Rabbi Yosef Dayan, who recently threatened to instigate a death curse against Sharon–conducted the nisuah hamayim ritual, which they said "will begin the process of removing the secular Israeli government."

"This ceremony will lay the foundations for instituting a Jewish king, a Jewish court, and the Third Temple," Weiss told the 40 participants sitting near the Shiloah Spring. "We will draw inspiration and strength from the ceremony as the holy priests did in Temple times, and we will ensure that the Jewish people will not be removed from their land."

Last month, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz decided not to launch a criminal investigation against Dayan, who had said that he would be prepared to instigate a death curse against Sharon. Mazuz arrived at his decision after an examination of the comments made by Dayan and the conclusion that they did not contain a basis for criminal charges of incitement to violence.

"I definitely want something bad to happen to Sharon so that he will cease doing whatever it is he does," Dayan said on the eve of Rosh Hashana. "Nobody has called on me. A person can pray to the heavens on any subject he wishes."

Perhaps they could ask Pat Robertson (see below) for some prayer assistance.
Athanasius on 10.10.04 @ 04:05 PM EST [link]

Skewering political preachers

Janet Albrechtson of The Australian newspaper nailed not only the outgoing Australian Anglican Primate, Archbishop Peter Carnley, but lots of politicized preachers in the United States when she wrote this week:

it's a stretch to take Carnley's moral guidance seriously, so engulfed is he by moral relativism. On Iraq, Carnley told his congregation that the coalition of the willing had, in liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, resorted to terrorist tactics. Which "terrorist tactic", Dr Carnley? Hijacking civilian planes and flying them into skyscrapers full of civilians? Sending suicide bombers into a Bali nightclub and blowing up more innocents with a car bomb outside? Wiring a Beslan school with explosives and slaughtering children who dared to cry?

Democracy is a fine thing and Carnley's political views are his to enjoy. But dressing up his political arguments in priestly robes and using "morality" as a Trojan horse for his preferred foreign policy does not give this churchman gravitas. On the contrary, many of us see it as an unholy sight and turn away.

Political priests such as Carnley use the morality card to hide the fact they are ignorant, at best, and downright dangerous, at worst, on issues that go to the heart of our national security. Like other leftist rabble rousers, Carnley can only bring himself to refer to the "so-called" war on terrorism....

Political preachers who evince such uncompromising moral certainty on the battlefields of Caesar and yet are so timid in defending orthodox Christian principles bring to mind what G.K. Chesterton said about a well-meaning cleric of his own times: "There is scarcely a shade of difference left between meaning well and meaning nothing."...

So where then do we set the bar for acceptable intervention by religious leaders in political campaigns? It is probably foolhardy to attempt a precise answer. But one can identify the extremities. At one end is considered commentary by informed churchmen on matters squarely within their areas of expertise. For example, praise from the head of Catholic Health Australia, Francis Sullivan, for Labor's health policy or the Pell/Jensen team's view on education add to debate. Carnley's self-indulgent political rodomontade does not.

It's more complicated that a daily newspaper column can convey, but I think Albrechtson is definitely on to something. And it goes for the Right as well as the Left. Preachers not only have a right but an obligation to express themselves on issues within their competence. When they wander outside, they make themselves foolish more often than not. (An excellent example is the incendiary, moronic stuff Pat Robertson had to say in Israel earlier this week: "I see the rise of Islam to destroy Israel and take the land from the Jews and give east Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat. I see that as Satan's plan to prevent the return of Jesus Christ the Lord." Count the ways that's stupid: 1) theologically [it's Manichaean to claim that Satan can "prevent" the Second Coming; 2) historically [east Jerusalem was in Arab hands until 1967 without, presumably, upsetting God's time-table]; 3) politically [Israel withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and West Bank, done properly, will do more to insure Israel's survival than all of Robertson's huffing and puffing]; 4) diplomatically [it's the kind of remark that makes Jews wonder whether evangelicals really care about Jews in anything other than a utilitarian manner. But other than these problems, ol' Pat knew just what he was talking about.)

Having and expressing opinions is fine (that's what blogs are about), but not when you do so in an official capacity, speaking specifically as a religious leader, on issues that are not of religious or moral import.
Athanasius on 10.10.04 @ 03:55 PM EST [link]