The Underground Thomist
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Heroic VirtueSunday, 01-11-2015
Once, monasteries preserved civilization through chaos. Today, intact families fill that role. Fathers and mothers, especially you who are young and struggling, hail and greetings! What were once the most mundane of virtues have in our time become rare and heroic. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn their children to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.
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"Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?"Saturday, 01-10-2015
It’s strange how the notion that men and women are identical works against the very equality that it tries to uphold. The same, are they? The same as what? Though with some dissimulation, identicalists almost always answer, "The same as men." Men who despise women are not the only ones who take this line. It is also taken by those so-called feminists who detest everything feminine, regard womanly women as traitors to the cause, and insist on an ideal which is supposedly indifferent to sex, but is actually masculine. This is the same root from which spring those strange male fantasies about worlds of the future in which women lead armies, command starships, gun down enemies, and are ready for sexual intercourse at any moment. The underlying wish is that both sexes would be men, but that some of these men would look like women and wear tight clothes. Considering how things have been going lately, I wonder why no one imagines a different future, in which the institution of marriage has disintegrated. Women of that time raise children in matriarchal clans, like elephants. Now and then, a man who is hardly a man drifts in to mate, after a short time drifting out to roam with others who are just like himself. Thanks to our social policies, it is already happening among the poor.
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Some of the Nicest PeopleFriday, 01-09-2015
People used to be taught to associate with persons who are good. Since the cardinal sin is now viewed as having opinions about the matter, we don’t consider whether people are good any more. Now we ask whether they are “nice.” It is still a moral judgment, but it doesn’t look so much like one. This way of thinking always reminds me of a man I used to know who was sentenced to the penitentiary for a felony. After his release, we were chatting one day. “You know,” he remarked, “you meet some of the nicest people in prison.”
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The End of Ideology?Thursday, 01-08-2015In certain times – ours is one of them -- war among different understandings of the world produces a fear of ideology. In the name of getting along, the cry then goes up that we must all become non-ideological. People who admit that they believe in something are called fanatics. This does not really do away with ideology, because it is impossible for a rational being to live in the world without trying to understand it. Nor does it do away with the differences among ideologies, because every understanding of the world is some understanding of the world and not another. It doesn’t even do away with fanaticism, because people who hold ideologies they are unaware of holding are unable to be humble about them. What the call for an end to ideology does produce is world-views which deny that they are world-views -- for example, the John Rawls sort of liberalism which pretends to be “political, not metaphysical.” So in the name of peace, world-views which deny that they are world-views make war, which denies that it is war, against the world-views which admit that they are world-views. This is a particularly dishonest kind of war, which spawns a particularly dishonest mode of speech. We say we’re not for abortion, just for “choice,” not against marriage, just against “discrimination,” not against good character, just against “being judgmental.” Is there a solution? Of sorts. Give up the pretense to neutrality and nonjudgment. Admit to understanding the world this way, not that way. Go ahead and argue about how the world really is, what is really true, what is really good. But use the weapons of reason, not deception. This solution is effective only among those whose world-views recognize that truth is accessible to reason, and that it is more than the word of the winner.
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Just Like MeWednesday, 01-07-2015And then there was the young man caught interviewed on video camera by a roving reporter after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke during year five of the Clinton administration. Yes, I know that seems like the bronze age to at least half of you, faithful readers, but I’m still thinking about yesterday’s “bad man, good statesman” question. Reporter (I'm quoting from memory): “Does the scandal affect your view of the president?” Man: “Yeah, it makes me like him more! ‘Cause it shows he’s just like me.” This fellow was an extreme case. The preservation of a republic does not depend on moral perfection, because up to a point, even a morally deficient person can recognize good character and prefer to be ruled by persons who are wiser and more virtuous than he is. But as he illustrates, there is a threshold beyond which this is no longer true. The system of selecting rulers by popular vote works just so long as the average level of virtue is above it; it fails if it sinks beneath it.
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Bad Man, Good StatesmanTuesday, 01-06-2015
“Even a bad man can be a good statesman.” It’s not true, but I’ve noticed that people who say this sort of thing tend to be unimpressed by explanations of the unity of the virtues. I think I have figured it out. We have in mind different definitions of “good statesman.” I mean someone who possesses the moral qualities of statecraft, and my point is that private and public vices are connected. What they mean is someone who possesses the skills of statecraft, and their point is that virtue and skill are not connected. Of course a bad man may have skill, and so he may accomplish something that happens to be good – he may enact a good law, or win a war that has to be fought. There are many such cases in history. But in the first place, the bad man’s motive is flawed, so if it suits his purposes, he is just as likely to do something evil. You cannot be confident that he will do the right thing. In the second place, just because his motive is flawed, even when he does intend a good act, he is likely to do it in an evil way. In the third place, there are some good things he cannot do even if they do chance to coincide with his motives. For example, he cannot successfully promote good character in others, and will probably injure it by example. Besides: No matter what he does, he will lie to you about it.
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Thanks, But No ThanksMonday, 01-05-2015Readers: Mondays I now reserve for student letters. These two were responses to an article in which I counseled a young man and his girlfriend to remain chaste. Please keep in mind my audience. The article appeared in a Christian magazine, and both readers belonged to my own faith. One should only do sums with people who believe in arithmetic; the same with quotations from Scripture. Reader One: Thanks. I must say that I’m extremely grateful for your columns. A couple of things you’ve written really caught my eye and shook me inside. They’ve given me a lot of clarity in thinking about my romantic friendships. I especially appreciate how hard-hitting and to the point you are about issues that so many in my generation are going through with eyes closed. It’s terrifying just how little some of our parents have taught us and how big our spiritual blind spots can be. Reader Two: No Thanks. Your article irked me. Instead of making us feel guilty about wanting what’s natural, instead of telling us that we’re too young, instead of making us separate until we’re done with college, how about encouraging us to develop together, even if we are young, with God’s plan for marriage always in mind, always as the goal? Those who want to use sex in an unmarried commitment, like this boy and his girlfriend, shouldn’t be told that their commitment isn’t good enough. I didn’t sleep with my former fiancé. But who knows, maybe that physical connection would have given us the little bit more motivation we needed to carry on together, even though other people and outside circumstances were making it difficult. Anyway, I do not believe that sleeping with him and still breaking up would have had some horrible, incredibly more heart-breaking, godless effect on my life. Young adulthood is confusing enough without guilt trips from other people. God promises us ultimately good lives, and they can’t be anything but good lives, even if we make some imperfect decisions now. Stop telling us we’re completely wrong, when we are so obviously trying to do it God’s way. Reply Reader One, many thanks for your gracious words of appreciation. They hearten me to answer Reader Two. Reader Two, where shall I start with you? First of all, I didn’t say anything about being too young or not being finished with college; I wrote about not being married. But never mind that. Let me ask you some questions — nine of them, to be exact. Ready, set, go. 1. What makes you think that casual sex is natural? 2. What makes you think that God’s instructions are goals and not commandments? 3. What makes you think that violating the commandments is a step toward fulfilling them? 4. What makes you think that sex is something to be “used”? 5. What makes you think that having no commitment is a kind of commitment? 6. What makes you think that sex without commitment produces commitment? 7. What makes you think that breaking up with someone with whom you have had casual sex wouldn’t be painful? 8. What makes you think that if you have done something wrong, awareness of guilt is something bad? 9. What makes you think that God promises all of us good lives? I’m sure these questions have irked you. In the same order, here are the answers. They’ll irk you even more, but I can’t help that. 1. Of course sexual desire is natural, but it doesn’t follow that all ways of satisfying it are natural. Put your touchiness aside and think. Hunger is natural, but eating too much will kill you; thirst is natural, but drinking polluted water will make you sick. The natural way to satisfy our natural desires is in ways that fulfill their inbuilt purposes, and we weren’t designed for hooking up. 2. Even if we didn’t know a thing about how God has made us (though we do), we know what He has told us. He didn’t tell us to keep in mind purity as a goal while in the meantime indulging impurity; He commanded us to be pure. St. Paul tells us that the very impulse to impurity must be “put to death.” I think that’s pretty clear. Don’t you? 3. Besides, it’s not even possible to pursue purity as a goal through acts of impurity. Proposing that is like saying “Let’s work toward courage by being cowardly,” or “With moderation always in mind as a goal, let’s be gluttons.” The way to become virtuous, with the help of His grace, is to practice acts of virtue. 4. Sex is not something to be “used.” When a husband and wife have intercourse, they aren’t “using” something external to themselves, like a hammer or screwdriver (or they shouldn’t be). They are expressing the mutual and total gift of their very selves. 5. “Unmarried commitment” is a contradiction in terms; the correct name of the committed sexual relationship is “marriage.” Without it, what would you be committed to? Committed to sex? You’ve made no promises. To have a commitment that ends when you say it ends is to have no commitment at all. 6. Sex between you and your former fiancé might have produced feelings of commitment, but it wouldn’t have produced the reality. That wouldn’t have been a recipe for closer union, but for self-deception. Men and women who have sex before marriage are significantly more likely to divorce. One sociologist reports that “Cohabiting couples are less satisfied than married spouses with their partnerships, are not as close to their parents, are less committed to each other, and, if they eventually marry, have higher chances of divorce.” 7. The very fact that sex does produce feelings of union makes breakup painful — or were you perhaps thinking of sex among Martians? Serial sex with a long string of partners may eventually make breakups hurt less, but only by dulling the capacity for the bond itself — and then you have another kind of pain to deal with. 8. Once when I was small, I laid my palm on a hot burner. If it hadn’t hurt, so that I jerked away, I would have lost my hand. Thank God for the pain, and thank God that my mother, hearing my shrieks, came running and treated the injury. But we need the moral kind of pain for much the same reason as the physical kind: To alert us to spiritual injury that would otherwise pass unnoticed. By the way, after tending to my hand my mother told me off for playing with a hot stove. Would you have scolded her by saying “Childhood is confusing enough without ‘pain trips’ from other people”? I hope not. 9. I’m sorry, my dear, but God doesn’t promise that we will all have good lives no matter how we behave. What He promises is the help of His grace if we try to be good. The New Testament declares “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him,” but it also states “And this is love, that we follow his commandments.” Since you dislike guilt trips so much, I’ll leave the last question for you. Here it is: What is so “obviously” godly about your “way”?
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