Ruminations

More Hope, Less Stress: Better Living

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

Today was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. I’ve been fittingly pensive and reflective lately, almost to the point of feeling haunted. This is a time of year that used to fill me with energy, but these days seems more likely to leave me thinking about lost opportunities. I became starkly aware last night, while driving downtown to teach my CCD class, of how short a fuse I was on, and how much stress I was feeling. That’s not a good thing for me, and I quickly had to coax myself back off the ledge.

Thinking about how to go about lowering my stress level, I considered how helpful it might be to tune out the political environment, and focus on matters of a less agitated character. As tempting as that may be, it hardly seems the responsible thing to do, and would be easier said than done anyhow. At the end of the day, I have to live in the middle of it all, as does everyone I care about. I may be powerless to effect any real change in the world, but within my tiny little circle of influence, I am not free of the obligation to shed whatever light I may be able to on the greater or lesser questions of the day.

And so I’m left to confront the daily anxiety of backwards-looking regrets and forward-looking resignations. It dawns on me that I’ve never quite come to peace with myself following the crisis of my second coronary stent procedure, almost two years ago to the day. The first one, in May, had almost killed me, but I walked away from it with a sense of relief, feeling I had dodged a bullet, and ready to work my way back to health. But the prospect of the second one, several months later, felt like the bullet I’d dodged had, like a heat-seeking missile, turned around to come back for me. It was a humbling experience: half-expecting to die, unwilling to let anyone know how pessimistic I was, and dumbstruck at the profound chasm between what my life had been, and what it should have been.

And yet the ensuing two years have found me, in many ways, digging the same grave I was working on before: burning the candle at both ends, and allowing busy-ness to trump my need for quiet reflection and reconciliation. But that is hardly the whole story.

I_Testify Five years ago, on Yom Kippur in 2004, I was spending some time in preparation for my first assignment, the following morning, as a reader in the Sunday Liturgy. As I sat in the basement, browsing my reading assignment for the nth time, and listening to some music, the seriousness of what I was about to embark upon hit me with full force. I realized, with full conviction, that justice demanded that, if I were going to proclaim the Word of God to His congregation in the sacred liturgy, my life needed to likewise proclaim the Word, outside of the liturgy. This was a sobering recognition that I needed to give up the shortcuts and compromises I had become accustomed to, and it was a little unnerving. The song that was playing at the time was a perky and heartfelt piece by Margaret Becker called “I Testify.”

Now, I am a quiet and reserved man, not much given to things like testimony, and I had to smile at the irony of the moment. True to my character, I started wondering what difference it would really make what I did with my life, and how it could possibly be important. At that point, the song changed, and as I looked down at my MP3 program to see what was next, I saw it was Joanne Hogg’s rendition of “My Song is Love Unknown.” I had to smile again at the irony, and said to myself something like: ‘Yes, indeed, and that is a glorious truth hidden from so many souls, so much in need of being told. I admit it.” Driven then by what felt like a silly curiosity, my eyes glanced down at the playlist to see what was next: a song called “One More Reason,” followed by “The Lord Reigns.” Sometimes, the Lord just won’t let us miss the point – either of His purpose, or of His lordship. After having a good laugh, I snapped a screenshot of the MP3 player, and said: “You win, Lord, but the ball’s in Your court.”

Despite my continuing foibles, I can hardly deny that the Lord has truly worked a gradual but profound personal transformation in me over these past five years. It’s not that I wasn’t serious about my vocation before that, and hadn’t in many ways been even more profoundly transformed a decade and a half prior, but I learned to let go just a bit more that night. I certainly can’t claim to have realized that imperative to give up all my shortcuts and compromises, but at least I am constantly aware of its imperativeness, and I can truly point to identifiable areas in my life where I have been able to be both more sensitive to Gospel demands, and more responsive, as well. My personality has both hardened and softened in different ways as my tolerance for moral and spiritual compromise has diminished. And while I’m grateful for the growth in wisdom and piety, I’m even more grateful for the grounding such spiritual life gives to the hope I must cling to so tightly on these autumn days, when I survey that terrible, battle-scarred landscape of my life, which won’t let me forget how very much I need the redemption of that Song of Unknown Love. More hope, less stress: better living.

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Bible Study Tools

Pradis Bites the Dust

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Pradis in action

Not exactly a big surprise coming out of Zondervan today, as they have announced plans to drop their Pradis Bible Study software. Not a big loss to the industry either, I dare say, as Pradis was pretty narrowly focused on Zondervan resources (most of which were exclusively available in Pradis format), and always struck me as more geared toward promoting the interests of Zondervan than that of the Christian community. That’s OK – no law against that – but don’t look for any tears to be shed in this poor corner of the world. Frankly, Pradis wasn’t a very good program, either, though it did have its virtues.

Zondervan has some decent titles that might now be made available to people on different platforms, though it will be interesting to see whether they choose instead to market through another exclusive channel.  Based on this press release, that company will apparently be Logos if they do indeed go that way – and a corresponding release from Logos makes clear that Zondervan will be the party pulling the strings in terms of packaging, pricing, etc.

Of more interest to me is some of the language used in the press release, and how it highlights some of the inherent problems in the eBook industry, and the Bible Study Software market in particular. Zondervan is clearly playing down the fact that its customers are losing the investment they’ve made in Pradis, and in the books they’ve purchased to use with the program.

In the title of the release, Zondervan says it is “Retiring Pradis Software Search Engine.” Search engine? This was a software platform, built around a proprietary book format, that certainly included a search engine as a core component, but can hardly be reduced to it.

The release goes on to say Zondervan is “moving away from the Pradis software it created and will license other search engines.” You could be excused for thinking they are going to let other companies write software that will work with their proprietary book format – potentially giving customers who have purchased licenses for those books a new and improved means to work with them – but it seems certain that what they are actually doing is obsoleting those licensed books, and working out a licensing deal with Logos (and perhaps others) to get them re-published in a new proprietary format.

The next paragraph really gets to the heart of the matter:

“We are going to make sure we, first and foremost, work with the many thousands of Pradis customers for a smooth transition to the new search engines,” said Zondervan’s Paul Engle, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Church, Academic and Reference Resources. ”Many of these people have been customers for a dozen years and we will make sure they are eligible for a discount to these new titles upon release.”

Of course, these are not “new titles” at all that we are primarily talking about (Zondervan will apparently be licensing some new titles to Logos, which clouds the issue). For the most part, these are titles that customers have paid for in good faith, and are now going to have to pay for again in order the use with the “new search engines.” Eligible for a discount, indeed! Especially since the Logos engine is free! Zondervan is apparently planning on re-selling (at a discount!) these books to customers who have already bought them, so that the customers can use them with a free reader!

Other than BibleWorks – who actually warn customers about this exact potentiality and discourage them from buying large electronic libraries, all the Bible Software publishers encourage customers to purchase large libraries of resources, claiming they are more cost-effective to buy that way. That’s a true claim – unless your Bible Software publisher goes out of business, and you’re stuck with an expensive library of books that are doomed to obsoletion as the overall computer industry marches forward in its incessant cycle of progress. When you buy a hardback book, you can put it on your shelf, and it can serve a couple generations, regardless of what happens to the publisher.

There are other benefits to buying works electronically – as I’ve attested to here on this site in the past – and I remain an advocate for Bible Study Software, but the industry needs a standard for book formatting that will allow customers to retain their investment in books as they move among software providers. A standard rich enough to provide publishers plenty of elbow room to differentiate their own eBook products from competitors publishing the same work is certainly possible, and there is more than ample space for software publishers to differentiate their offerings.

And perhaps even more important to the publishers than the legitimate rights of library investors to viable licenses is the 800 pound gorilla standing in the doorway. If this matter can’t be resolved satisfactorily between the Christian software industry and the intellectuals with a stake in the outcome, then it will be settled de facto between Google and Amazon, and the Bible Study Software industry will be worse off for that.

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Politics & Economics

Slander as Political Fashion

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Boy, am I growing weary of the political environment. What George W Bush did for for international relations with his “with us or against us” rhetoric, Barack Obama is doing to the political climate within the country with his treatment of political dissent. Of course, nations actually do operate in an environment of mutual belligerence, which is forever flaring up as actual warfare in some corner or another, whereas nations are supposed to operate, internally, with a civility stemming from civitas, but why split hairs?

Perhaps it’s unfair to blame Obama for the whole mess, but then again, it’s not. He’s the unquestioned leader of the ruling left wing in this country, with the power and ability to set the tone, and he sits back and watches the fissure. Whether that’s because of incompetence, or because he senses political advantage in it, I’ll let the reader judge – we’ll assume he doesn’t enjoy it for its own sake. He may pose as someone seeking unity (show me a politician that doesn’t!), but in the real world, he uses and approves actions and tactics that reveal a very different kind of leader.

So, we have Rep. Joe Wilson being censured by the House for blurting out “You lie!” during an Obama campaign speech before the joint Houses. Can we call it that? Maybe an infomercial? No, he didn’t pay for it. I think “policy address” is the official term – I’m not sure – but whatever it’s called, it was nothing but a powerful man using the bully pulpit available to him to advance his agenda. Nothing wrong with that, but why is it being treated as if it were some kind of sacred religious service?

It’s kind of creepy, really, the way the setting is being portrayed in the public propaganda narrative. I will admit that, for a few seconds, I felt like I was watching British Parliament instead of the U.S. Congress, but the “sacred” halls of American power were built for the rough and tumble of modern liberal politics, not for the circumspect adulation of Divinely appointed royalty that the whole liberal enterprise set out to overthrow. And, like many, I don’t remember a previous occupant of the Pennsylvania Avenue throne whom the public propaganda narrative depicted as deserving of such circumspect adulation. Creepy, I tell you…

But I think what bothers me the most about the whole affair is that Wilson is being accused of introducing incivility into the proceedings. What a load of crap. Undoubtedly, Wilson was absolutely fuming over just having been called a liar in front of both Houses of Congress, on national TV, by the President. Obama set the tone from his pulpit, and Wilson fired back in defiance from the cheap seats. It had been only perhaps 15 seconds before Wilson’s outburst that Obama had accused opponents of his, who included “prominent politicians” (and while speaking to the joint Congress, it’s pretty tough to misconstrue that reference), of lying about the implications of his proposed end-of-life panels of experts: “It is a lie, plain and simple” he stated baldly. Even I was dumbfounded at the time that he would say such a thing, and I’m not even a radio or cable talk show host, nor a prominent politician.

So we see yet again that we reap what we sow. But who is even talking about Obama’s incivility, his tactics of divisiveness and marginalization, or his responsibility for setting the tone of discourse at the level of personal insult? Incredibly, Teflon Barak just accepts Wilson’s apology, and sits back while Wilson gets savaged by Obama’s supporters, even to the point of being slandered as a racist for his outburst. Incredible.

At least there’s people like Scott Harrington over at the Wall Street Journal uncovering the dishonesty of Obama’s characterization of the examples he uses in his demonization of the insurance carriers. All that really seems to matter here to the President is that people’s contempt for, and distrust of, the insurance companies is fed and enforced. President “Hope, Not Fear” is willing to fudge the facts in order to scare people into thinking they need to buy his socialist snake oil to protect them from the ogres of the business world. Disgusting. Disgraceful. And depressing.

Meanwhile, the left wing picks up this theme of the “racist” calumny, which has been, at a minimum, simmering in the pot since the election cycle, and which has ever since been pulled out, time and again, to smear Obama’s opponents, and they bring it to an absolute boil. It’s not just effete TV celebrities and fatuous journalists slinging the slander now, but high-level political leadership among the left wing, including former president Carter, Rep. Steve Cohen, Rep. Hank Johnson, and undoubtedly many more I could find if I wanted to waste my time Googling for the info.

Suddenly, the air is ablaze with insinuations that opposition to Obama’s policies involves “elements of racism.” The verbal trick here is to morph the idea that racists are opposed to Obama into the idea that people who are opposed to Obama are racists. The trick is made all the more clever by feigning subtlety by referring to “elements.” If racists are opposed to Obama, them some of the opposition to Obama is racially motivated, therefore opposition to Obama is at least partially racially motivated. Hence, the implication is clear: If you are opposed to Obama, you are part of the partially racist opposition, and therefore you are (at least) partially racist. Not that opposition to his agenda has anything to do with his person anyway, but there I go splitting hairs again, and getting off-narrative.

This is shameful, of course – and sinful – to be slandering people with the “racist” label as a means of trying to advance a political agenda. This is so regardless of how corrupt the political agenda is: even a noble cause is irreparably defiled by ignoble tactics. But aren’t such tactics the very warp and woof of progressive political argumentation? It angers me – as it is angering an increasing number of people – to be called a racist for being a political dissenter (as I snicker at the thought of what these same snide and cynical folks would have had to say about my support for Alan Keyes’ presidential bid in 2000), but in a sense, it’s just the typical fare that is served up for dissenters from the orthodoxy of progressivism. There’s just an assumption at work that if you reject the progressive orthodoxy, you have bad motives.

It’s not because you think the programs are bad, it’s not because you think you have a better idea, it’s not even because you’re mistaken, it’s because of your bad motives. Hence, if you oppose so-called liberal (socialist, really) policies concerning the welfare of the poor, it’s obviously because you hate the poor. It’s not possible that you think those policies will actually be bad for the poor, you just hate the poor. Case closed. “Hate” is a very important word in the lexicon of the left – it explains just about all dissent. How clever.

But this “racism” game is going to run aground before long. There are too many people seeing through the facile “solutions” of the left – and especially of the salesman-in-chief. That means there are increasing numbers of people who are going to be uneasy – if not outright offended – by the mean-spiritedness of the chimerical “racism” slander, and they’re going to push back.

Suddenly, Nancy Pelosi is fretting about the right wing stirring up a frenzy of violent opposition (shades of “right wing terror threats” in the form of returning Iraq veterans!), but she couldn’t be more wrong. People get violent when they’re angry, and the Rush Limbaughs of the world don’t get people angry (except liberals, that is). What gets people angry – angry enough to fight – is being insulted, having their character and integrity questioned.

Whatever anger is out there on the right is not there because of political activism or talk-radio manipulation, it’s there because these are good people, who are good neighbors, who love their country, and who are fed up with being told they are “haters” of one stripe or another simply because they retain some semblance of conservative moral and/or fiscal values. Nancy Pelosi is too much the stooge of her ideology to see that, but I think Barack Obama is politically astute enough to recognize it. When the violence comes, it won’t come from the right, from those folks “clinging to their guns and religion” who place so much importance on law and right public order, and I think Obama knows that too. What I don’t know is whether or not he thinks he can survive politically without ratcheting down the “hate” speech. I suspect that will depend on what happens over the next few months with his health insurance takeover plan. We shall see.

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Church

The Kennedy Funeral & the Faces of Scandal

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

There’s sure been a lot of chatter over the past week or so about the Ted Kennedy funeral, and Cardinal O’Malley’s participation in it. This is hardly surprising, given how divisive a character Kennedy was. Cardinal O’Malley, in what strikes me as a surprising move in several respects, has gone public with an explanation of his decision, in response to extensive criticism that undoubtedly ranged in impetus from befuddlement to anger. I appreciate his attempt at explaining himself – as I appreciate the difficulty of this whole problematic affair – but there are some elements of this episode I find deeply troubling.

I was among the many who were dismayed at certain aspects of the handling of the affair, though I didn’t feel it was appropriate to comment on at the time. Then there were  a couple thoughts in the Cardinal’s comments that struck me as diverting focus away from the real issue at hand, and my trouble with the whole matter was compounded when I read this article by Madison (Wisconsin) Bishop Robert C. Morlino. At that point, I’d had enough.

Both men went out of their way to praise Senator Kennedy for the good work that he had done in various areas over the years. Now, whether or not the state-centric, “give a hungry man someone else’s fish” social problem solving approach, endemic to contemporary progressive liberalism which Kennedy exemplified, is truly good work, Kennedy clearly believed it was (as do so many others, including, apparently, both of these bishops). I’ve been to enough funerals to know that it seems to serve a legitimate pastoral purpose toward the bereaved to lionize even the most insignificant of contributions of the deceased, so I can certainly understand the approach in that respect (even if it obscures the real point of the funeral Mass), but not without simultaneously realizing that this was an exceedingly public situation, with a scope of pastoral impact that was not only far broader than the vast majority of funerals, but also decidedly more complex.

One of the more eyebrow-raising comments in Bishop Morlino’s piece was his assertion that the funeral Mass was a source of scandal in that it led people into sinful expressions of un-charitableness toward Kennedy. Archbishop O’Malley also seemed to use the opportunity to take umbrage at the angry, though without his brother bishop’s sharp dramatic flair. These accusations may be true, but they are made at the expense of the recognition of the profound betrayal felt by many good people within the Church – including not only those who fell into vindictiveness, but also many more who held their tongues and prayed for humility – at the sight of Church leaders seeming to shrug their shoulders at the most important spiritual crisis facing our culture. Bishop Morlino’s assertion, in particular, seemed designed to undercut, by anticipation of argument, any valid expressions of criticism stemming from the more obvious interpretation of the scandal attached to this Mass, namely: the projection of the heretical idea that the culture of abortion is – or can be made – compatible with the sacramental life of the Church. It’s not as if the Church is not deeply embroiled in this very heresy on an on-going basis!

I’m not suggesting that the matter of whether or not Senator Kennedy should have been afforded a Catholic funeral is one for you or I to consider, for it is not only not our decision to make, but is dependent in large part upon that which we cannot possibly know – namely his relation to Christ and His Church at his death, a matter ultimately hidden in the interior forum of conscience. Besides, it hardly seems charitable to even consider denying a Catholic funeral to anyone who desired one. But there is an exterior forum as well, which the Church – the episcopacy in particular – has a duty to attend to, and if a latae sententiae excommunication is incurred by a woman procuring an abortion, her abortionist, and any others formally collaborating in the crime, it is awfully hard to see how a legislator who was an open and unapologetic  promoter of abortion “choice” would not also be guilty of formal cooperation when said “choice” was inevitably made. Senator Kennedy’s views and actions in defiance of the moral order – and the Church’s clear teaching – were so well-known as to be notorious. He was the poster child for pro-abortion Catholics.

So while it’s all well and fine for a bishop to presume reconciliation, it seems to me a great disservice to the many looking on, who see only the public record, to make no attempt to publically acknowledge that the crimes committed by Kennedy required repentance and forgiveness. That might be a delicate thing to try to do under the circumstances, but I’m hardly suggesting I think the funeral was a good idea to begin with. And frankly, it would seem to be a pastoral imperative to make it very clear that this rampant heresy of rationalized murder is a clear and present danger to the immortal souls of everyone in the Western world (and beyond). Charity may demand that we assume Ted Kennedy died in a state of grace, but whether he did or not, there is nothing anyone can do to change it now. In other words, the real pastoral issue (e.g. the saving of souls) has little to do with Ted, and much to do with those who have yet to face their own, certain, judgment. If participation in this abortion holocaust is a mortal sin, it is by no means “compassionate” to make it appear that it doesn’t really matter in the end. Who benefits from that, except the devil?

Bishop Morlino complained about a perceived lack of mercifulness coming from the critics within the Church, but the truth is that the notion of mercy was largely missing from the proceedings themselves. I think most of the critics would have been satisfied if the proceedings had reflected a communal plea for God’s mercy upon the soul of a brother sinner; indeed, it could have been a great teaching moment. Instead, we were treated to a polite evasion of the most crucial matters, a liturgical rite lamely disconnected from the spirit of the proceedings, and the public lionization of a notorious sinner within the context of the Mass (some have referred to it as a canonization, and with good reason – it was embarrassing listening to people speak of Kennedy as if he were already in heaven, expressions that were not only vacuous, but, coming during a funeral, violations of canon law).

But what bothers me the most, both in the subtler words of Cardinal O’Malley, and in the harsher words of Bishop Morlino, is the insinuation that those who hold and proclaim the sure and ancient teaching of the Church are responsible for a state of division within the Church – or at least of perpetuating it. It reminds me of the way people blame Pope Paul VI for dividing the Church at the end of the 1960s by publishing Humanae Vitae – as if the dissenters weren’t the ones responsible for the division!

I imagine the bishops are frustrated by the exposure of the rift, but let’s be very clear: there is visible division in the Church stemming from the liberal abortion license because some people support abortion rights in dissent from Church teaching, yet claim to be in Communion with the Church nonetheless. (Actually, the fact that any of the baptized assert abortion rights creates division in the Church, but that takes the matter to another level, beyond the scope of our consideration.) If people get angry at such injustice being done to the Church they love, perhaps it is with good reason, and perhaps they deserve to be treated with a bit more kindness than their shepherds have managed to muster here. God help us if we begin appeasing the demands for unfaithfulness to the truth, for the sake of avoiding uncomfortable conflict.

At the end of the day, though, the real issue seems to me to be the ability of the Church to fulfill her mission to proclaim the Gospel, where the question of her credibility is of paramount importance. The Church may be widely admired for her good works, but she is otherwise seen by many (including more than a few Christians) as just another political player on the world stage – and a clumsy one at that. Nothing in the handling of this matter provided evidence to the contrary, as far as I can see. By disregarding the great moral crisis that hung over the event like a storm cloud, the Church gave the impression that abortion is just another political issue, subject to the ebb and flow of circumstance and expediency. And that plays right into the hands of her enemies, eager to paint the Church’s outrageous claims to moral authority as fraudulent. That might be the most tragic scandal to emerge from this mess.

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Signs of the Times

It’s for the Sake of the Children, of Course…

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Chalk up another victory for the asininity department…

buckleup Someone much smarter than all the rest of us, as we all know, determined some time back that it was possible for babies to be injured in car accidents. This, of course, was simply unacceptable, and called for a solution. As fate would have it, someone much smarter than the rest of us was actually selling just such a solution – the baby car seat.

After many hours of posturing, prevarication, and, quite possibly, plunder, “important safety laws” were passed – which have increasingly constricted people’s ability to operate motor vehicles containing children not ensnared in one of these devices. The result? As this story makes clear, parents (and others) now find themselves overwhelmed by a maze of complexity, requiring the service of ever-multiplying yet increasingly hard to find installation & certification “experts,” just to put some kids in the car. Parental car-pooling is now a logistical nightmare if anyone has kids under 9.

And the seats themselves? They are so dangerous, you can’t give them away. Seriously. Apparently, it’s so difficult to keep track of all the product safety recalls that it is impossible to give away used ones. We tried to give away two last spring, and nobody would touch them. And to think: I didn’t even know I was supposed to have experts install them, or at least inspect them, before I used them!

All this rubbish, and yet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that car crashes are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S.? A report from the U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tells us one study found that 72% of nearly 3,500 observed car and booster seats were misused in a way that could be expected to increase a child’s risk of injury during a crash? 72%!!!

These moronic safety regulations are precisely the type of crap that passes for morality and responsible citizenship these days… Does that make anybody else angry?

And then there’s these ding-dongs, who rated a bunch of car seats on the basis of a “concern” level over (drum roll, please) potentially harmful chemicals used in their manufacture! Is there no end to the tomfoolery?

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Ruminations

Technology In the Shadow of Nuclear Fission

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Just prior to the arrival of our two young guests from the Chernobyl area in June, I was reading Pedro Arrupe’s memoir of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl has certain obvious things in common with the devastation of Hiroshima, even if the purpose of the human endeavor manifested in each case remain radically different. Both the accidental explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and the intentional exploding of the first atomic bomb in the skies over Hiroshima were products of the modern technological innovation of nuclear fission, which produced not only immediate damage due to explosion and fire, but also various health problems due to the resulting radiation.

At just about the same time, my sister was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and was – at that point – awaiting radiation therapy to battle the tumor. This proposed to my mind a juxtaposition of three very different manifestations of the human condition, flowing out from the development of the inherently destructive technology of nuclear fission: the willful leveraging of its destructive power for violent and malicious ends; the failure of human effort and management to contain its destructive force in well-intentioned applications; and the potential for its destructiveness to be harnessed and directed toward achieving human good, when its power can be willfully contained.

It was hard not to be struck by the irony:  the very technology which was deployed to such brutal ends in 1945, and the mismanagement of which in 1986 had caused so much human suffering, could be a key contributor in potentially saving the life of my sister, among so many others, today.

It’s a commonplace that technological advancements tend to be developed for military application, and only later leveraged for constructive purposes, but there’s also quite a bit of work that goes on to develop technologies, or at least technological applications, for commercial purposes. Today is a good day to reflect on the too little-noticed fact that we have very little control over how technologies we develop today will be applied and advanced tomorrow. If the devastating handicraft of 1945 can manage to be repurposed for beneficent ends, so too can our best and brightest work today be turned against us by an adequately powerful malfeasant will.

As such, I must ask: Why are we so disinclined to concern ourselves about genies being let out of bottles?

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Critical Issues

Body/Soul Dualism, the Commodification of Man, and the Contradiction of Death

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

As a rule, I like Jeff Jacoby’s columns, and even agree with him as often as not, but every now and then he comes out with something I find downright unconscionable. His July 5th Boston Globe op-ed promoting the marketing of human organs is an unfortunate example of the latter. With the recent liver transplant of celebrity tech guru Steve Jobs having again roiled the waters of the debate over the “fairness” of our current organ donation system, Jacoby has added his voice to the rising tide of liberal, utilitarian opinion promising free market “solutions” to the “problem” of death.

I’ve read a number of these proposals over the years, and they all seem to succumb to the same three basic errors. As can be surmised from the title of this piece, I see these errors as involving misunderstandings of the man’s nature as a being both physical and spiritual, in ontological unity; the fundamental and unique character of human subjectivity in differentiation from other material objects (or ‘what are people for?’ – to steal a phrase from Wendell Berry); and the inability of mankind to cheat death (or “what is not given to man” – to steal a phrase from Leo Tolstoy).

The premise of these proposals is that there are currently many people dying from organ failure who could be spared death if more organs were available for transplant, and that the economy of transplant organs would produce at least part of the requisite supply if it were freed from legal constraint, to function more or less unimpeded in the liberal model of supply and demand, therein saving lives. The thinking is that everything else is for sale, after all, including all the other products and services involved in actually transplanting an organ – the organ donor is the only non-compensated person in the entire chain, and that not only introduces market inefficiencies, but may even be unjust.

The most fundamental moral or ethical dilemma that arises from these proposals stems from the fuzzy — and yet now widely appealed-to — notion of human dignity, which itself has its origins in the recognition of the sacredness of human life. Meanwhile, sacrality is a concept that is all but alien to modernity (my spell-checker didn’t even recognize it as an English word when I typed it!). Jacoby, like most any writer promoting blasphemy, marginalizes the matter of sacrality, conflating the transmission of human organs with the broad vista of “medical care” ( a concept which does not share with organ transmission the very characteristic at issue), and substituting utilitarian arguments about “needless” deaths.

Ethical concerns also arise around the prospect of the rich and powerful exploiting the poor under such a system. Jacoby, ironically, writes these off as resulting from misguided altruism (but see, for example, this column from University of Minnesota Bioethicist Jeffrey P. Kahn, discussing a JAMA article on organ sales in India, where it is legal). Though I am convinced that Jacoby is actually the one suffering here from a misguided altruism (and am not in the least surprised by the realities come to light in India, as per the linked article), I am not particularly interested in this angle of the argument, as it is clearly a secondary issue: the unjust character of any specific policy implementation is wholly subordinate to (and inevitably predicated upon) the immoral nature of the proposal in and of itself (in other words, it is secondary because there is simply no right way to do a wrong thing, so there’s not a lot of point in harping on method, or even consequences).

Both of these areas of ethical concern refer directly to the second area of error I am pointing out: the commodification of man; the failure to adequately distinguish between the human being himself, and those things which are produced by man. When the term “human dignity” is used properly, it refers precisely to the ontological distinction between the human person (a subject) and an objective reality that lacks subjectivity, or personhood, or a spiritual soul. The dignity that humans distinctly possess within the material world derives from our unique spiritual character, which is the capacity to love rationally – or to choose love. The violation of humanity consists in asserting that that subject can be objectified, and treated as a thing.

The idea of the wrongness of treating people as things is widely acknowledged, even among people who don’t put a lot of thought into moral issues. That does not mean that it can’t be (and isn’t often) trumped by utilitarian arguments, but at least the notion is readily available to most people. So when folks like Jacoby argue that the human being (or human parts) should be a commodity, because everything else is for sale, the argument runs against the grain of an intuitive sense that it is wrong to treat people as things. Or, to be more concise: even if were to allow that everything should be for sale (a dubious proposition in and of itself), people are not things.

This is the moral or ethical problem with the human parts market proposal, but it is not the root of the problem, because the moral error is itself grounded upon an inadequate understanding of human nature, or what it means to be a human being. It is furthermore, in this case, driven by a culturally pervasive but irrational view of death, but that is a point to be taken up later. It can be clearly demonstrated by example how the “commodification of man” proposal fails the moral test by noticing how the “everything else is for sale” argument not only meets intuitive resistance to treating people as things, it also runs smack into the fact that, no, not everything is for sale – or at least it shouldn’t be.

peopleforsale1 For examples, we have only to look at slavery and prostitution to see that society does not accept as morally licit the notion that anything can be bought and sold: people cannot morally be bought and sold. Sure, there are those who will argue that prostitution should be legal, just as there have been many who never flinched at legal slavery, and we have our chorus today calling for the buying and selling of human body parts, but civilization has come to see that people cannot morally be themselves reduced to commodities, and this insight is the genius behind the modern ideas of human dignity and human rights, being long anticipated in the ancient idea of tsedaqah (righteousness), or what we owe one another as fellow beings created in the image of God.

If someone who despises slavery promotes the marketing of body parts (whether for medical purposes or sexual purposes), he most likely has fallen into one of the two popular errors concerning the nature of man: naturalism, or (much more commonly) dualism. In a follow-up post, I will explore how slavery, prostitution, and organ sales share a common mode of unrighteousness in the degradation of the self, properly understood. This is no trivial matter, as it is the unrighteousness itself, not this it that particular expression of it, that is a growing menace to a human civilization that has largely succeeded in forgetting that righteousness comes from God, and is rooted in right relationship with Him. We must not allow our “misguided altruism ” to feed the beast of unrighteousness.

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Books

The Ordering of Knowledge

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

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One of the benefits of my recent living space changes has been the opportunity to revisit my library cataloguing scheme.

For years, I used Dewey Decimal Classification coding to organize my books. The Dewey system has the advantage of having had the majority of books already catalogued within the system – and most of the newer volumes include a Dewey number assignment within the Library of Congress cataloguing information after the title page, meaning that not only would I not need to go through the process of categorizing and assigning lookup numbers to the books, but I would often have the cataloguing information readily at hand, without even having to look them up in another library’s holdings. It’s a ready-made system that can be implemented with very little effort – and, furthermore, knowing the system makes it very easy to find works in many other libraries.

However, I decided a few years ago to move to a simpler system – and lacking ready access to a suitable alternative, I resorted to making up my own. The problem I had with the Dewey system was that it made too fine a distinction,for a library as small as mine, among subjects. I find it very useful in larger libraries that the Dewey system co-locates books based on fairly precise subject matter (all within a simple framework of basic disciplines), but it tends to scatter multiple books by the same author, which is pretty non-intuitive. Moreover, in a small library, there won’t be a lot of exact duplication of call numbers among the various volumes, unless the collection is quite topically focused. The end result is a library that seems inadequately grouped.

A library ordering scheme needs to implement two organizing functions: grouping and sequencing. For a personal library like mine, I think a broader categorization at the subject level is appropriate, facilitating the co-location of most or all of a writer’s body of work. For example, Thomas Oden wrote a three-volume systematic theology, where one volume focused on God the Father, a second on the Word of God, and a third on the Spirit of God. One could argue that these belong together as a set regardless, but apart from that, in a large theological library, one could justifiably locate the second volume among Christological works, the third volume among Pneumatology, etc. But this would hardly make any sense in a library with few if any other pneumatological works.

Sequencing the collection is equally important, as good sequencing not only makes a logical path through a collection to facilitate finding things, but should also serve the grouping principle so as to keep somewhat more loosely related works near each other. But sequencing, done well, should also reflect the order of knowledge. One of my beefs with the Dewey system is that it fails to reflect any concept of the hierarchical ordering of knowledge in its sequencing – even though it does a pretty decent job of reflecting such a hierarchy in it grouping. To wit, the Dewey system basically places miscellany at the head of the order of knowledge, very much reflecting the modern era’s loss of any sensibility of teleology. Ironically, this “General” section has of late largely been taken over by Computer Science – a perhaps ominous development.

My system, in contrast, reverts to the pre-Enlightenment recognition of theology as the queen of the sciences (and their necessary unifying principle), and goes even further, recognizing Revelation as the source of all knowledge (including, of course, theology). The following table reflects the differences between my ordering and the Dewey system, at the highest level:

Dewey “Disciplines” My High-level Categories
000 Computers, information & general reference (1000s) Revelation
100 Philosophy & psychology (2000s) Theology
200 Religion (3000s) Spirituality & Religion
300 Social sciences (4000s) Philosophy & Human Culture
400 Language (5000s) The Word (Language, Art, Music)
500 Science (6000s) History
600 Technology (7000s) Mathematics & Modernity (Natural & Social Sciences, Technology, Business)
700 Arts & recreation
800 Literature
900 History & geography
B. Biography
D. Drama
F. Fiction
P. Poetry
S. Short Stories

If I had more books in the higher numerical ranges, I would break up the 7000s into hard and soft science (making soft science and technology an 8000 range), but there’s no point in doing that given the content of my collection – especially since I’ve thrown out the vast majority of my IT books, which have no lasting value.

The system is still far from perfect. For starters, there are many works that could fit into more than one classification – even at the highest level (e.g. should Aquinas be classified under theology or philosophy? I chose theology, but that’s certainly debatable). An electronic “tagging” system would be an ideal means of classifying (so that works could easily fall into multiple categories), but there’s no way that’s going to help me arrange the shelves.

However, having all the books in the same room is helping me see how I could improve some of the inner sequencing. I’ve already made minor revisions to the scheme at least twice since moving everything in here in late May. But I still have refinements to make, and I’d like to complete them by my birthday. I’ll post the detailed schedule when I’m done. Perhaps I’ll break up the empirical and pseudo-empirical sciences after all – I’d really like to find a way to sequence psychology to flow into fiction, it would be just.

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Church

Catholic Education & Sotomayor

Posted on by John W Gillis / 2 Comments

sotomayor&obama I don’t agree very often with what Michael Paulson says over at the Articles of Faith blog at Boston.com – he doesn’t even ask the right questions, as a rule – but I had to concur with something he said the other day about President Obama’s address introducing Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for Justice Souter’s Supreme Court seat: he said he was struck by “the language he used to describe the role of Catholic schools in offering children a path out of poverty.” Here is the quote from the President’s remarks:

“But Sonia’s mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood, sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman out of the belief that with a good education here in America all things are possible.”

You won’t get any argument out of me by suggesting that the way to get your children a good education here in America is to send them to Catholic schools, but I have to wonder what the President’s good friends and supporters in the public school teachers’ unions (never mind management) thought about that remark.

Meanwhile, at about the same time this remark was made, the papers reported that the last Catholic parochial school in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston would be closing next year, due primarily to declining enrollment. And as true as it is that the academic performance is superior, and as important as a sound academic foundation is to the life of the intellect, you can believe me when I say that academics is about the least of the good reasons I send my children to Catholic schools.

It wasn’t very long ago that Catholic families were strongly encouraged by the faith community to utilize the parochial schools as an important element of providing their children a good Catholic upbringing. As the parochial school systems sags and slowly collapses under the weight of indifference, it strikes me that such encouragement is almost wholly lacking these days in parish life. Local sponsorship of the responsibility for Catholic education seems limited to bulletin notices of area open houses, and an occasional fair to provide schools tables from which to hand out marketing literature normally reserved in magazine racks in the back of the church.

This seems to be part of a trend among much of the laity of abandoning anything distinctively Catholic. People just want to fit in – and I don’t understand why the priests seem so disinterested in resisting the trend. Maybe they try harder than I give them credit for, but there is simply insufficient depth to the soil of parish life in the form of supportive and receptive laity – I don’t know. It just seems to me that if so many Catholics want to blend in seamlessly to the larger, secular, culture – without being willing at the same time to abandon their Catholic name, then they can’t possibly discern a necessary difference between Catholicism and the spirit of the age.

Regarding the schools, it is as if people view the parochial schools as nothing more than public schools with incrementally better academics, and unwanted tuition bills. Actually, the parochial schools offer an environment relatively free of the fashionable academic conceit of godlessness, as well as a moral seriousness that not only doesn’t nurture the narcissistic insolence prevalent among too many youth today, but refuses to tolerate it very far. I won’t even mention the sexual mores.

You can’t put a price tag on that, and if Catholics, on the whole, could get their act together around this, there is no good reason why the tuition bill for parochial education couldn’t be at least cut to a nominal stipend, if not avoided altogether. It is widely said that the parochial schools do their superior work while spending less per child than the public schools do. Whether it be through vouchers or some other method, it would only take political will to allow Catholics (or anyone: non-Catholics are at least a significant minority in most parochial schools) to choose to send their children to Church-operated schools instead of government-operated schools, without paying twice.

The easy answer to the acculturation puzzle is to make a distinction between “real” Catholics and nominal Catholics, and to expect the nominal Catholics to find the exits, but I think that attitude does a disservice to those we might call spiritually poor. From the bishops on down, we try too hard to get along, and, in consequence, we fail to make the case to the many that Catholicism has something radical to offer; that being a Catholic is different than anything else. The loss of interest in the schools is just an obvious example of the loss of Catholic meaning through the withering of Catholic culture – although, for all it’s worth, I have little confidence that Justice Sotomayor, if she is confirmed, will demonstrate how a Catholic education can help shape the moral character with Catholic meaning… I hope I’m wrong.

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Critical Issues

Tiller and the Reaper, Part 2

Posted on by John W Gillis / 2 Comments

Still thinking tonight about the assassination of George Tiller; a few things have surprised me. I lead a busy life, and don’t spend a lot of time perusing news sources and other media outlets, so my sample size is rather small, but it seems from my limited perspective that the press coverage has been strangely muted. There is no serious debating that the journalistic class almost purely represents the cultural elite that embraces abortion, and I really thought they would be harping all over this.

I suppose it’s early yet, and it could still become a cause célèbre over the next few days, but it seems odd to see it low on the ratings totem pole of major liberal news outlets. Of course, that could very well be explained by the likelihood that the web site layouts, unlike the newsprint of old, are driven much more by visitor interest – by clicks – rather than by pure editorial agenda. That would suggest that the readers of these sites have more interest in plane crashes, and in Susan what’s-her-name who sings on British television. Strange, that, and it doesn’t fill me with a new optimism for my country or my countrymen.

The biggest surprise, though, was reading yesterday that Tiller had been killed while serving as an usher at church. In what kind of church could such a man possibly be a member in good standing, one might reasonably be tempted to ask? A community of devil worshippers? We’re not talking here about some clueless, complicit politician without moral spine, or something like that, we’re talking about a man who actually killed the babies with his own hands – thousands of them – and who was proud of what he’d done. But no, this was a Lutheran church. That is just staggering. Was the money he made from abortions put into the collection basket as the Lord’s portion? Did this guy have it in his head that he was a disciple of Jesus Christ? How could the condition of the Church ever have been brought to such scandalous woe?

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