Toward Attention

Sexual Identity and Genital Behavior

I was in Ikea several months ago with several other families, some of whom were very familiar with the modern debates about what is commonly called "Gender and Sexuality." I made the mistake of referring to the two Genders, and one of them said that people are not Gendered, they are Sexed, that words (not people) are gendered as masculine and feminine, and that the use of "gender" to refer to a person's sex is really part of a rhetorical strategy to make masculinity and femininity a fluid and arbitrary thing.

I don't really know the history of this topic very well. Perhaps I should. I certainly have my own thoughts on this that I've developed over years of experience (and reflection on that experience) both of myself and others who are close to me.

So I got to reading an article in the March 2011 issue of First Things, which I don't often read anymore because I find myself less and less resonating with it affectively, and I found an article on this.

Douglass Farrow, who teaches at McGill in Canada together with Charles Taylor and some others, wrote a 3-page piece titled "Blurring Sexual Boundaries." His argument has several elements to it:

1) "Gender Identity" and "Gender Expression" are not like the other protected terms (race, religion, sex, nationality, disability, etc.). They do not represent objective conditions (whether biological or institutional), but subjectively determined ones, attitudes toward oneself.

2) To allow the law to venture into the realm of the subjective is dangerous. We do not want the law to absorb us altogether. Neither is it good for it to be meaningless, which it may become if such protected categories of the subjective begin to proliferate. The subjective realm is very important, but questions about it are extra-legal questions, to be dealt with in civil society.

3) He argues that to add sexual behaviors and orientations to the list of protected statuses is dangerous legally: he claims that it does not add another category, but instead attacks and melts down the older protected category of sex, which is really there to protect women, and so is dangerous to them, denying that there is any notion of woman that is anything other than a social construct and a personal preference.

4) He argues that the newer legislation is not really about protecting anyone, but really about enshrining in public policy a notion of sex that makes it "essentially a social construct, based not in the natural order but in more or less arbitrary acts of human self-interpretation."

These are, I think, the highlights. He notes that the psychiatric team at Johns Hopkins stopped sex-reassignment therapy for transgendering individuals after coming to the conclusion that it did more damage than healing, and, in the words of the psychiatric team, "collaborate[d] with a mental disorder rathan than [treating] it."

In the end, he argues that it ultimately proffers a neo-Gnostic Hegelian understanding of nature as something to be overcome. In the end, this entry is simply my attempt to summarize his argument.

Outposts of Memory

"We don't live in the Byzantine Empire anymore," some people I once associated with would occasionally say derisively about others. At face value, it is clearly true. We do not live in the Byzantine Empire.

Looking at various Greek parishes, the Church building would not always reflect this. Often it is drawn from a definite tradition of Church architecture that is distinctly Byzantine. The same could be said, perhaps, about some canons that (so I'm told) presuppose the Empire is in place, though I know less about that. Most likely we could extend this to other features of modern Orthodox Church life, both within the geographical area formerly belonging to Byzantium, or at least falling in or near its heart, and well beyond, in places such as the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and Africa.

We should not be so strict with the Greeks on this, though. Byzantium may have fallen, but it is also true that Byzantium has fallen. People remember this. They remember. Cultures have memories and traditions -- it is how they persist as a singular culture through time, and part (only part) of how they enjoy communion with those who have gone before, and how they allow those who have gone before to enrich them even at the level of their secular life. This tradition, this chain, bears one into the present, and in many ways establishes one's identity. To break this chain is akin to mutilating one's own body. The Greeks should not forget -- particularly in Greece and those other ethnoi in traditionally Byzantine areas. They should, of course, remember intelligently, and not select only certain moments for poorly-remembered and drably-rehearsed tawdry festivals of memory to connect climactically with this heritage while kitsch overruns the bulk of their lives in so many other ways, leading to kitschy expressions of kitschified memory.

However, we American converts are only rarely Greek, and so are not in any way Byzantine, and we have our own cultural memory/memories. Often we connect to Orthodoxy because we see that it is closer to certain features of our cultural memory -- which is also not a dead thing. What I have an objection to is the forced assimilation to a foreign memory via structures that displace our own heritage and memory, which memory is often the basis of our appreciating Orthodoxy to begin with, whether it serves as a basis via negativity (i.e., because we see how this heritage fails) or via positivity (because we find that Orthodoxy is the best place to preserve this memory). Unfortunately, Orthodoxy will not be the best place to preserve this memory, this Western heritage, if it insists, either explicitly or simply de facto, on every jot and tittle of the Byzantine patrimony.

A more profound unity is needed than what we have, or else we are simply assimilating to the outposts of a foreign memory.

We must start and end with Jesus, of course.

Phrase

When people say that this or that person or institution (usually institution) needs "healthy criticism" it usually sounds to me like they mean it/he/she needs "life-giving dissection," "strengthening violence," or "[gently] aggressive re-engineering."

Language is the first casualty, isn't it?

Four Things (On Clerical Formation)

Four things will never mix well: the Academy, the Mechanic's Shop, the Administrative Office, and the Monastery. In any hybrid, one will be dominant. In examining our curriculum, should examine what kind of outcome we wish for our students. In forming clergy, we should ask ourselves what is primary before setting up a curriculum -- if a curriculum is the primary thing needed.

Secularization seems to make greater inroads when the bishop is separated from the charismatic office and implements canons as an aloof administrator with subsidiary mechanic-priests, likewise aloof. This is a perversion of Catholicism when it happens there (less so today with Catholic priests in America than it was 50 years ago), and when it happens to Orthodox bishops it is a perversion of Orthodoxy likewise. In all communities where this occurs (at least in the US), Nominalism seems to be more widespread.

Thinking about the situation last year in a Roman Catholic hospital, and the kind of response that the bishop gave, it seems clear that he was formed as an Administrator with secondary training in the Mechanic's Shop and tertiary training in the Academy (perhaps I have the 2nd and 3rd swapped). Traditionally, the Academy has had a very strong place in clerical formation amongst Roman Catholics. Unfortunately, it has for too long been separated from those, like the Carthusians, who are serious about their ascetical life. (According to Roman Catholic Canon Law, of course, such a bifurcation is abberrant, for all priests are expected to say a Mass daily, and to keep the hours -- clear indications of the mystical function that is at the heart of the priestly office.) Administrative concerns can always peripheralize the other three of the four things. Roman Catholics are not alone in being vulnerable to this.

Protestants have traditionally seen the Academy as the center of clerical training (if I am not mistaken, the original Reformers would not wear clerical vestments during the services, but only their academic robes), and only recently have some of the Revivalist schools of thought been sliding more towards a more Mechanic's Shop/Administrative Office hybrid (i.e., "Purpose Driven Life" and other marketed programs and megachurch setups) or else to Mechanic's Shop/Monastery setups (a rarer breed have been focusing on spiritual disciplines and retreats, etc.).

I wonder: what is the vision of clerical formation operative within Orthodoxy? Traditionally it has been all over the map, with strong emphasis on Monastery as the primary with Academy as secondary -- though this prioritizing seems artificial when applied to many historical figures, who were both/and as well as brilliant Administrators with a Mechanic's genius.

Still, I don't doubt the helpfulness of this heuristic, even with its failings.  What do we want?

The Situation Last Year at St. Joseph's Hospital in Pheonix, AZ

I was disappointed to read about this today. I know I'm a year behind, but that's the price you pay for either WoW-ing, tending to a young child, or doing substantial reading -- and not being distracted by the endless stream of current-event chatter that can't help but tend towards superficiality on account of its perpetuality, it's inability to truly linger and reflect or draw out a discussion for hours and hours or even days or weeks.

The issue seems straightforward if you read articles on it like this from Ms. Magazine, which is the first one I read. Sadly, the Ms. article doesn't ever address the principle that seems to be at the root of the Catholic policy involved, which was cited on the Wikipedia entry I linked to above: "The unborn child can never be thought of as a pathology or an illness," Fr. John Ehrich is reported to have said on the Wikipedia page, whose source is here. “That is, the child is not that which threatens the life of the mother, rather it is the pathology or illness (cancer, premature rupture of membranes, hypertension, preeclampsia, etc.) which threatens the mother’s life.” Why didn't Ms. even cite this principle, much less attempt to either refute it or to show how the Catholic Bishops' policy does not necessarily or reasonably flow from it? I don't understand.

There are at least two features of the Catholic Bishops' position that worry me, however, and these not specifically to this case, but generally as trends.

The first has to do with the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services," the document issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops concerning medical policy. Directive 45 got my attention, which reads:

"Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion, which, in its moral context, includes the interval between conception and implantation of the embryo. Catholic health care institutions are not to provide abortion services, even based upon the principle of material cooperation."

This seemed to me, when I read it before reading Fr. John Ehrich's statement (above), like a good principle gone ideologically too far. Surely we aren't affirming abortions just because we say that there are situations where they are the best possible option?

The second has to do with matters of controlling outcomes, and when this is appropriate.

Adding that "no physician can predict what will happen with 100 percent accuracy," Father Ehrich said, "What we should not do ... is lower risks associated with pregnancy by aborting children. ... When we try to control every possible situation in life, we end up playing the role of God."

This last line seems to deflate his entire case. The principle of not seeing the unborn child as a pathology or an illness seems sound: surely everyone can agree on that, no? --However, we have the power to control outcomes, and we will continue to do so. Surely controlling outcomes is not evil in and of itself, and manipulating as many outcomes as we can for the best effects also can't be unethical: aren't we called upon to do this in our own ascetical life? --but if it is claimed that mastery of the world means usurping God's power, I must ask whether either God is unworthy of our attention (since He would then be weak and evil) or if the claimant is fundamentally misinformed about the nature of God's power. There must be things that happen which God does not will. The slaughter of the Holy Innocents comes to mind.

The situation does not present itself as one in which men ought to relinquish power to God: it looks like one in which there are several possible outcomes that can reasonably be secured through technological interventions. Chance and necessity (and freedom that can elect this-or-that necessity), not Providence vs. human liberty, is the model here. Modernity is all about controlling outcomes to secure human flourishing. If the Catholic model cannot address Modernity's concerns, it will write itself into irrelevancy.

Regardless, perhaps the abortion didn't need to be performed. Perhaps both mother and daughter could have survived -- I don't know. But if they couldn't, surely the loss of the mother's life would be more traumatic for the family and all involved than the loss of the child -- and doubtless the mother did not want an abortion. (Who gets pregnant multiple times, aiming at an abortion?)

I dunno. I've only read about this for 10 minutes. It made me think that perhaps the Bishops should simply be Bishops, tending to their flocks concerning ethical and spiritual matters, rather than corporate administrators of institutions.

Vietnamese Jesus Statue

I am conflicted about this.

At first I thought "the man can't imaginably need a 40-foot statue on a bluff for devotional purposes. If his statue was 10 feet tall -- even 15 -- I can't imagine this kind of opposition and resistance." But then James kindly corrected my hasty skim-read of this article, and noted that the statue is 7 feet tall. Which makes all opposition to his statue look much, much more pathological than the worst conceivable pathology-born motivation for erecting it in the first place -- and that's only positing a pathological origin for the Jesus statue for rhetorical purposes, to show how absurd the whole thing is, and not because I'm convinced that the statue's presence has its origins in a pathology.

It's not OK to destroy someone's personal property just because you object to it or its "content." This must be stopped. Especially when it's barely taller than the average human being.

In the same vein, it's definitely not OK to impose zoning laws on someone just because they want to put up a statue of Jesus. It's not a flaming penis or anything. If it's actually unsafe, however (i.e., if it's liable to fall on a road underneath), that's another story. It's not. It's on the water.

The public square does not need to be stripped of every expression of religion, either. That's absurd, and very un-liberal.

However, using the public square as a billboard for one's religion seems like an abuse of the public square and of the Lord's Name and Image. There are legitimate ways to express one's devotion in the public square. This statue, however, only being 7 feet tall, can't reasonably be claimed to be a billboard.

Christians Legislated Against in Britain

I don't really know what to make of this.

The judges may be right: the post-Enlightenment Western tradition is built on different foundations, mediated through the Christian Tradition, but not itself Christian.

Armies and Poachers

I've been following the discussions on a friend's Facebook page for several months now, and have recently been chiming into the discussions. Often the issue of fear-driven theologies comes up, and the regular suspects brought out and flogged. One of the regular portraits is that of the fearful, tradition-loving, backwards Orthodox who cling to an outdated cosmology and anthropology.

The subtext for much of this is, of course, pro-women's ordination and pro-homosexual agendas. I have no interest in hunting that duck, or defending it: the two will simply never go down among the majority of Orthodox, except in odd pockets here or there, mostly under the radar. One cannot rally to change the feeling of the faithful on this issue.

What I find saddening, and frightening, is that this duck is just a distraction: there is a much greater threat, and it is already crouching at the tent-flap. Many busy themselves with this duck simply in order to make themselves feel in control, feel competent: character assasinate the perversely-traditionalist herald, and one does not need to deal with the issues he represents. He lies dead. But the army he was warning about still makes its advance, all the while these men and women go about preoccupied with their fowl.

"Nihilism is at the door: whence comes this most uncanny of guests?" --Nietzsche

Elaine Pagels and a Jesuit Walk Into a Bar...

Thanks to John Burnett, I found this excellent article by a Jesuit at the PBI regarding Elaine Pagels. Read it. It's an interesting commentary on much of what passes these days.

Catholic College Fires Gay Part-Time Professor

I read about it here (posted to FB via an ex-Catholic gay friend of mine).

It is clearly unjust to allow for negligence with one's own moral conduct while heavily discriminating against the immoralities of others. I don't really wish to focus on that, because it's plain to all. I don't need to cathart about it, and am not interested in providing cathartic material for others regarding the situation in the Catholic College in PA. I would like to focus elsewhere. This scenario raises two different and interesting secondary ethical questions for me.

(1) The first is about consistency. I am now a parent of a child who can argue with me and who clearly registers frustration with the inconsistencies in my discipline. If I make a gross moral error, and then I risk losing her trust and love if I hold to a principle that I feel so strongly about I would lose my identity, should I hold to it? (This presumes that it is simply a principle internal to my self-identity and self-governance. If we make it a public moral principle, I might say: if, after I make a gross moral error, my daughter engages in a moral error, have I absolved myself of the moral authority necessary to speak to her on the matter?)

(2) The second is about institutions and responsibility. In the Roman Catholic Church, many priests acted wickedly with regard to minors (though the percentage of offending priests is very small), and many bishops did not hold them properly accountable. It is the latter part that is most disturbing -- that priests should go bad is no surprise, but that is an individual matter, and perhaps a cultural one; that their wickedness should be oft concealed and otherwise dealt with as it was is what seems to be the substance of the condemnation of the institution. It went from an individual and perhaps cultural to an institutional problem. So the question is, what is this institution which is saddled with the actions of both the wicked priests and bishops as well as the actions of the College and its officials? Can it be the Roman Catholic Church? Can the RCC be seen as an agent acting in all these different situations the way that I might act in this hypothetical situation with my daughter? Or are we scapegoating?

I'm sorry to say that I don't have any answers. Only questions. I might multiply them.