This is not a parody.  I wish it were.

An outpost of the Satanic Temple has established its own abortion clinic, which offers a “protective rite” to ward off unwanted feelings about abortion.  As the website declares, “The Satanic Abortion Ritual is a destruction ritual that serves as a protective rite.  Its purpose is to cast off notions of guilt, shame, and mental discomfort that a patient may be experiencing due to choosing to have a legal and medically safe abortion.”

Since one of the purposes of the rite is to “cast off notions of guilt,” it looks like the main thing which is to be “destroyed,” and from which one is to be “protected,” is conscience.

The ritual involves the recitation of several charms.  Before the abortion, the woman is to intone Satanic Tenet III, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” and Satanic Tenet V, “Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world.  One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.”  After the abortion, she is to pronounce the Satanic Personal Affirmation, “By my body, my blood.  By my will, it is done.”

Of course the baby’s body is not part of “one’s body” but only inside it.  So much for Tenet III.  And of course the denial of this biological fact does distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.  So much for Tenet V.  But the Personal Affirmation nails it.  Although repentance is possible after a woman has killed her child, the baby cannot be brought back.  By her will, “it is done.”

The late Richard John Neuhaus remarked, “If you set out to justify the attack on something so primordial, so given, so foundational to human community as a mother's love and responsibility for her child, you have to come up with a new explanation of fundamental reality, a new worldview, and finally a new religion.”  The new religion has been in the works for quite a while.  As the feminist Ginette Paris wrote in the nineties, “Our culture needs new rituals as well as laws to restore abortion to its sacred dimension, which is both terrible and necessary.”  She called it “a sacrament” and “a sacrifice to Artemis,” but we now know who to whom the sacrifice was really offered.

Pro-abortion demonstrators who chant “Hail, Satan,” have been defended on grounds that they aren’t really hailing Satan, but are merely lampooning Christians.  So much for that naïve idea.

Query:  I am an 11th grader and a Protestant Christian, and have been learning about philosophy of religion on my own.  The deeper I delve into it, the more tension I feel between faith and reason.  You’ve written that they are compatible, quoting John Paul II that they are like two wings – a bird needs both to fly.  But doesn’t Jesus call us to have a child-like faith?

Reply:  Thanks for your letter!  Jesus does teach us to be like children in one respect.  We should be like them in trusting God completely, just as they trust their parents.  But He doesn’t teach us to be like children in every way, because He wants us to strive for maturity, including the full use of the mind.  Christ commands us to love the Lord our God will all our soul, all our strength, and with all our mind.  St. Paul urges us, “do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature.”  The book of Proverbs protests,

Wisdom cries aloud in the street; in the markets she raises her voice; on the top of the walls she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:  “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?  How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?  Give heed to my reproof; behold, I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.”

So you see, a childlike faith does not mean having a juvenile mind devoid of wisdom!

But in John 20, when Thomas only believes after demanding more evidence, doesn’t Jesus say “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”?

As St. Paul warns in 1 Thessalonians 5, “test everything.”  Otherwise we would believe all sorts of foolish nonsense that isn’t really from God.  It seems, then, that Thomas wasn’t foolish because he wanted evidence, but because he wouldn’t accept the evidence he had already been given -- he wanted “more, more, more!”

Hadn’t Jesus authenticated who He was with many miracles in the sight of the disciples?  Shouldn’t Thomas have believed Him, when He told the disciplines that He would be put to death and rise again after three days?  Hadn’t the other disciples, including several of the women, told Thomas that they had already seen the resurrected Christ?  After spending years with them, shouldn’t Thomas have known that they weren’t the sort of people who lied, hallucinated, or imagined things?  So why wasn’t that evidence enough for him?

Those who have not seen and yet have believed are us.  We haven’t seen with our eyes what the disciples saw, but we don’t believe without evidence either.  Our evidence is the testimony of many trustworthy witnesses, the correspondence of what they witnessed with what was prophesied, and the experience of grace in our lives.  Part of our evidence is the story of Thomas itself.

Couldn’t someone argue it better to embrace a “blind” faith rather than one built from reason?

Argument is the presentation of reasons.  If you suggest that someone can “argue it better” to embrace one kind of faith than another, then aren’t you assuming reason after all? 

But you are right about one thing, for there is no such thing as a faith “built from” reason.  Yes, we need good reasons to distinguish true faith from false -- as Jesus warns, “Take heed that no one leads you astray” -- but this doesn’t make faith and reason the same thing.  We can’t prove faith like a theorem in calculus.

The fact that we can’t prove faith like a theorem in calculus doesn’t make it unreasonable.  Suppose I am in on the fourth floor of a burning building.  I hear the firemen calling from below, “Jump!  Jump!  We have a net to catch you!”  Is it reasonable to believe that they are really firemen and that they really have a net for catching me?  Of course it is.  But does that mean I have no need to trust them?  No, it doesn’t mean that at all.  I am blind in the sense that I cannot see the firemen; that’s why I need faith that they are telling me the truth.  But I am not blind in the sense that I have no reason to think that they are.

If believing without good reason were a virtue, then I ought to believe everything that anyone ever tells me.  “The weatherman says the sky is falling!”  “The color green is really red on Wednesdays and Fridays!”  “Nothing matters, because we don’t exist!”  That would be absurd.

I’ve studied some of the arguments for God’s existence, but I am wondering.  Is it better to treat them as secondary to faith, or even something not to study it at all, since faith without evidence seems to be praised?  Or is your view that faith without reason is, well, unreasonable?

Although true faith goes beyond sound reason, it can’t contradict sound reason, because these are both gifts of the same all-wise God.  Suppose someone told you “As Christians we must accept that what is, isn’t, and what isn’t, is.”  The question of whether to accept his claim on faith wouldn’t even arise, because it doesn’t even make sense.  As the Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians, God is not the author of confusion.  

Not only does reason come to the aid of faith, but faith comes to the aid of reason.  Because I believe, and because what I believe is true, certain possibilities of experience are opened up to me that would otherwise be closed -- and these possibilities give my intellect new data to work with.

This is true even in everyday life.  I trust my wife for good reason:  I have found her worthy of trust.  But just because we do trust each other, we can now know each other even better.  Moreover, we can practice married life with confidence – always trusting in God, too, who makes us able to keep our vows.

But how does one reconcile harmony of faith and reason with Scripture and religious tradition?

There is no need to reconcile them unless there is a conflict, but I don’t see any.

As to Scripture, are you familiar with the first chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans?  You might think that he would complain that the pagans refuse to believe in God just because there is no evidence for His reality.  Actually, though, he says there is evidence:  God’s reality and power have been “known from the beginning” because of “what has been made.”  They aren’t really ignorant, but in denial.  Therefore, they are “without excuse.”

As to Tradition, the partnership of faith and reason actually is the classical Christian view.  A naïve sort of Christian might say, “Faith alone!  I reject all reasoning!”  But doesn’t he need to reason even to understand the content of his faith?  A naïve sort of anti-Christian might say, “Reason alone!  I reject all faith!”  But doesn’t he need to have some kind of faith even to be confident that reasoning works?  Harmony of faith and reason may be new to those two kinds of people -- but it isn’t new.

At your website, I find your story of apostasy and reconversion particularly fascinating.  Do you find you have more insight having gone through that faith journey than those who haven’t? 

Well, sin itself certainly isn’t a path to wisdom, and lots of people who never sinned in the particular ways that I did have much greater wisdom than I do.  But nothing can defeat God.  If we are too stubborn to learn in any other way, then He can even use our experience of having fallen flat on our faces to teach us – provided that we finally submit to His grace and get up!

He has certainly used my experience of being forgiven and healed to teach me something of just how deep His grace is.  He has also used my healed memories of my former self-deception to give me some insight into the power of a sinful soul to deceive itself, and how this works.

Especially, do you think your conversion to Catholicism was at all shaped by your period of apostasy?

I will always be grateful to the Protestant teachers of my childhood, from whom I first heard the Gospel.  As a Protestant, though, I wasn’t taught much about the deep intellectual traditions of the Faith, which the Catholic Church has carefully preserved.  There were a lot of other reasons for becoming Catholic too -- but yes, my recovery from apostasy led me to cherish those traditions long before I was actually converted.  I first read Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante Alighieri while I was still a rebel against God, and despite my rebellion, I couldn’t help but think “This is good stuff.”

Whatever merit there may have been in some of Martin Luther’s other teachings, I am afraid that he did the Protestant movement a disservice in this respect.  His intention may have been to uphold the use of reason in service to God, while condemning its use in sinful defiance of Him.  However, he was notoriously careless about the distinction.  It wasn’t helpful when he called reason a “whore” and said we should throw dirt in her face.

Don’t get me wrong!  Martin Luther didn’t have the last word, and I am glad to say that in many parts of the Protestant world, believers have labored to recover the resources of faithful intellect which Luther himself seemed to mock.  I hope you will be one of them.

Query from a reader in Asia:

There has been so much vandalism and disorder in our universities and cities – spray-painting and pulling down statues and so forth.  Perhaps you have seen some of this in your own country, at your own university.  Many worried commentators have considered possible solutions, and so have I.  However, I am concerned by the approval which some smart people express for corporal punishment of the kind handed out to Michael Fay in Singapore, who was caned on his bare buttocks.

I am impressed by the remark of the famous Catholic moralist, Fr Brian Harrison, who once wrote of this kind of punishment, "that role or function will tend to attract in practice, as the only persons in society willing to carry out such a function, those sorry types of individuals who already have at least latent sadistic tendencies, and so will actually enjoy their grisly task.  But precisely in that situation, another type of grave sin (or at least the near occasion thereof) will be involved: that of cruelly delighting in the infliction of intense pain, often accompanied by perverse sexual satisfaction."

It also occurs to me that in our digital age, if we allowed flogging the bare bottom, perverted persons would try to make videos of the punishments, or bribe the guards to do so, and such videos would probably go viral.

Even apart from other considerations, this seems to me a compelling argument against the use of such punishments.  What do you think?

Reply:

As always, my friend Edward Feser, to whose fine blog you link, makes excellent points:  Among them, that not all forms of corporal punishment are intrinsically evil (as torture would be), and that although caning is humiliating, punishments ought to be humiliating.  So far, I agree with him.  I also agree that many people in our society have become averse to the infliction of any punishment at all (except, of course, upon those who disagree with them).  It has become difficult even to convince people that rioting and setting fire to buildings isn’t “mostly peaceful,” that seizing public places isn’t a suitable means of “expressing one’s feelings,” or that defacing monuments isn’t an appropriate mode of “self-expression.”

But I agree with you too.  The temptation to follow Singapore’s example is strong, because nothing much happens to louts and delinquents in my country.  But I would strongly oppose such punishments as caning the bare buttocks, not because they are disproportionate to the wrongs these louts commit (they aren’t), but because they would produce greater evil than they would quench.

Not only would they encourage cruelty and sadistic voyeurism, as you suggest, but in a society like ours they would be less likely to humiliate the offenders than to arouse waves of sympathy for them.  That poor, poor vandal!  (Say, can you get the camera in closer?  I can’t see!)

Moreover, I think we could expect the mobs of those who do sympathize to retaliate by taking up the caning of hapless citizens who aren’t on their side.  This would be called protest.

For the immediate future, the question of caning is moot because I cannot imagine the courts in my country approving it.  But we don’t need such punishments anyway.  As I see it, the problem is not that we need new institutional and statutory punishments, but that we need to use the ones we already have, which include expulsion, fines, imprisonment, compulsory labor, and yes, humiliation (though not every means of humiliation!)

What would I consider suitable punishments for the sorts of hooliganism you mention?  It would depend on the offense.  Consider just the various forms of disruption in universities, bearing in mind that they sully the very idea of a community of people sharing in the rational pursuit of knowledge.

For refusing blocking classrooms, disrupting ceremonies, and preventing speakers from speaking:  Expulsion from school and revocation of any scholastic honors which might previously have been conferred.  Not just suspension or probation, which mean nothing.  For foreign students, of course, instant revocation of guest privileges.

For occupying buildings:  All that, plus referral to the civil authorities for breaking and entering.

For toppling statues, painting on buildings, and other forms of vandalism:  All that, plus referral to the civil authorities for defacement of property.

Shouldn’t that be enough?  Yes, if only we would follow through and do it.

Some years ago, Senator Vance expressed harsh opinions of former President Trump.  Now he has been named as his running mate.  The senator himself says that over time, he honestly changed his mind about Mr. Trump -- and that in the same way, perhaps other skeptical voters might also reconsider their views.  His critics say that he cynically flipped for personal advantage.

Never let it be said that cynicism is in short supply among politicians.  But I believe him.  Why?  Because I changed my mind too.

Anyone who keeps up with this blog knows that although I write quite a bit on what might be called cultural politics, I write much less often on partisan matters.  But there have been a few big exceptions.  When Mr. Trump ran the first time, I wrote of him,

The nominee of one party has never believed in anything but self-promotion.  He is characterologically incapable of holding any principle, save that one.  He is a narcissist; he is a sociopath; and as a consequence of having so little interest in external reality, he is not of sound mind.

At the same time I said of Mrs. Clinton,

Long ago, the other nominee seems to have believed in principles, but they were profoundly wrong ones.  Besides, she has promoted herself as a means to her ends for so long that at last her means have displaced her ends; the principles to which she once devoted herself have at last become a mere means to herself.  Her ideology persists, but only as a sort of reflex, or mental tick.  So although she has reached it by a different path, her destination is much like the other nominee’s.

For the first time in my life, I refused to vote for either presidential candidate.  By the time Mr. Trump ran for reelection, I had changed my view, voting for him reluctantly.  I then wrote,

It seems to me that in the present campaign, as in 2016, both presidential candidates are sneerers, mockers, and boasters, though one displays his bad character in ways that the political classes don’t mind, while the other displays his in a way that they do.  I now think that in that previous election year, I did not take this fact seriously enough, and I regret it.

As to what the respective candidates want to do, things seem to me pretty clear.  Mr. Biden enthusiastically supports several intrinsic evils, abortion being but one of them.  His support for this atrocity is even more horrifying because he claims that it is compatible with being a faithful Christian.  Thus, not only is he committing deadly sin, but he is dragging legions of others into it with him.  Despite Mr. Trump’s offensive style, so far as I am aware he has not given political support to anything like the deliberate taking of innocent lives; in fact he has opposed it.  In 2016, I thought there was good reason not to believe him about that, and I abstained.  Since then, though, he has consistently demonstrated that he meant it after all.

When there is an alternative, it is gravely difficult to find some “proportionate reason” justifying the remote material cooperation with evil involved in voting for a proponent of the liberty to kill babies.  What is worse than willfully facilitating millions of infant deaths?  The genocidal murder of the entire population of Canada would be, but no one has proposed anything like that.  Yet.

When Mr. Trump ran the first time, I was deeply concerned that as president he would rule by executive order, bypassing the Congress and ignoring the Constitution.  As it happened, he didn’t.  The president who has actually tried doing so, in the meantime subverting our institutions of justice to persecute his political opponent and many others besides, is Mr. Biden.  We have now seen how far this can be taken, and it is terrifying.  When juries are asked to render judgment without even being told what precise crime the former president is accused of committing, when the Justice Department targets parents who speak up at school board meetings, when peaceful citizens who hold traditional Catholic views are put on watchlists as dangerous and potentially violent, there is the existential threat to democracy which Mr. Biden’s party claims to oppose.

Just listen to what he and his allies warn about.  That is what their program.  That is what they intend.

During his first campaign, I shared the disgust Mr. Trump expressed for the direction in which our current cultural and political elites are taking the country.  But I didn’t think someone capable of some of the disgusting remarks and behavior reported of him was likely to mean it.  By now, although it is pretty clear that he is capable of great crudity, his critics lie so shamelessly that one must be careful before believing anything said about him.  Besides, it isn’t Mr. Trump who wants to transfer convicted male serial rapists to women’s prisons, or force girls in high school to be exposed to men showing signs of sexual arousal in their locker rooms.

During that first campaign, I was profoundly troubled by some of the people who had somehow become linked with Mr. Trump.  By now, it is pretty clear that as he has gained more experience in political life and more knowledge of the personalities involved in it, he has shed his unsavory associations and chosen wiser advisors.

During that first campaign, I thought there was plenty in the country to be angry about, not least the way so many of our elected representatives exploit and betray their constituents.  However, I worried that Mr. Trump was going too far, courting votes by stoking a dangerous furnace of rage.   By now, it is pretty clear which candidate is stoking the furnace, and it isn’t Mr. Trump.

Mr. Biden defends his latest fanning of the flames by saying that he didn’t say that Mr. Trump should be placed in the “crosshairs,” but only said he should be placed in the “bullseye” – such a big difference -- and anyway, that was merely a metaphor.  I don’t oppose strong metaphors, but this is uncomfortably close to Henry II’s cry about Thomas Becket, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”  Perhaps Henry was also speaking metaphorically.  But Becket was assassinated.  Henry was excommunicated and required to make penance.  If only.

The merely-metaphor line might have been believable in a  day before Progressives had routinely adopted the tactic of “doxxing” those who disagree with them – publicizing their home addresses and information about their children, and encouraging their followers to go after them.  It isn’t now.

It might have been believable in a day before congressional leaders egged on mobs to threaten the homes of Supreme Court Justices, saying to them “You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.  You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”  It isn’t now.

It might have been believable in a day before the FBI took to making dawn raids on the homes of people like Mark Houck, who, while quietly praying in front of an abortion clinic, committed the terrible crime of defending his child against someone who threatened the child and shoved him.  It isn’t now.

So yes, I can believe Mr. Vance when he says he changed his mind.  Because I did.

The times have changed.  The candidate has changed.  But also some of the many hoaxes have been exposed.

When you consider the vitriol which has already been directed at Mr. Vance – and much more is in readiness -- bear in mind that in the view of our cultural elites, this Yale Law School graduate is a hick.  His story of growing up in Appalachia, Hillbilly Elegy, won widespread praise before he began to think about politics.  My wife and I found his story personally engaging because she comes of hillbilly stock.  We live among hillbillies every summer, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.  What Mr. Vance says about how the devastation of the coal industry, about fentanyl addiction, about generational dependency, and about family breakdown, we see with our own eyes.

But now the culture lords say that Mr. Vance’s personal story is just a string of cliches about welfare queens.  You see, they have caught on that he’s not their sort of person.  And neither is Mr. Trump.

I have written on several occasions that a certain kind of crudity and oafishness is considered lovable by the political classes, and not even recognized as oafish because it is their sort of oafishness.  Another kind is considered lovable by those whom they disdain.  Obama was a smooth rich fellow who flattered the elites.  Biden is a coarse rich fellow who sneers at the common people in the same breath as he boasts of his humble origins.  The elites think this kind of talk is merely telling it like it is.

Trump, though, is a coarse rich fellow who flatters the common people.  Since he sneers at the elites and adopts a popular tone in doing so, it enrages them.  Though all of these rulers claim to look out for the “little guy,” the difference is that Obama and Biden styled themselves as their patrons, and viewed the “little guys” as their clients.  Trump styles himself as their benefactor, and views them as his constituents.

The selection of Mr. Vance as Mr. Trump’s running mate has been criticized on grounds that he doesn’t help Mr. Trump expand his base.  What this overlooks is that Mr. Vance helps his party expand its base to all those who used to think his party didn’t care about them – the ones Mr. Biden’s party take for granted -- and to all those who, like Mr. Vance himself, have been coming to view Mr. Trump differently.

I think of the people I talk with.  A few months ago, my wife and I were chatting about politics with another couple.  The woman, who is no extremist or patroness of violence, expressed distaste for Mr. Trump -- and then said, “but I might have to vote for him again, because the alternative is Satanic.”  Just so.  Given a choice between the distasteful and the Satanic, take the distasteful every time.

What we see today are not ordinary political divisions.  I don’t think the older leadership of Mr. Trump’s party grasps why anyone should perceive what Mr. Biden represents in the way our mild-mannered friend did.  But a lot of other people do.

During Mr. Trump’s first campaign, I had no patience with those who considered him a sort of messiah -- as the Left had paraded Mr. Obama -- and who said that God could use even a wicked man.  I still don’t have patience with that view.  But God can convert a wicked man.  It happened to me.  We can hope.

So do I believe that Mr. Vance could change his mind?  Of course I do.

And I earnestly hope for more changes of mind -- on the part of both members of the Trump/Vance team.

I had been more than half-expecting at least one attempt on Mr. Trump’s life, but I would have greatly preferred to be wrong.  My first reaction to the shooting has been sorrow.  My second has been prayer.

Former Attorney General William Barr intelligently remarked, “The Democrats have to stop their grossly irresponsible talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy.  He is not.”

If you are expecting political discussion to become more civil, though, it isn’t going to happen any time soon.  As soon as the shock of the assassination attempt wears off, Mr. Trump’s detractors will start working to turn it against him.

Attempts to search Google about the shooting turn up an astonishing number of old screeds blaming various acts of violence on various persons who allegedly liked Trump.  Of course this list of hits – no pun intended – is just the working of a slanted algorithm, but you can expect the human narrative doctors to work along the same slanted lines.

For as soon as it becomes safe to say so, the haters of Mr. Trump will begin insinuating that that it is because he is an existential threat to democracy that the shooting occurred.  You see, because of his “incendiary rhetoric,” he has only himself to blame.

Some will express hopes that he will "learn something" from the event.  You can also expect a rise in the number of those who smugly ask whether perhaps his attitude toward gun control will also become more favorable.

Updates, one and two days later:

How naïve I was to have thought the haters wouldn’t pile on until after the shock of the assassination attempt had worn off.  They have already begun.

CBS anchor Margaret Brennan blamed Trump for his statement after the shooting:  “I did notice there was no call for lowering the temperature.”

She spoke with commentator Samantha Vinograd, who doubled down, saying that the biggest threat of violence was from Trump's supporters.

CNN, The Washington Post, the Indy Star, and others initially tried to spin the event as something other than an assassination attempt:  He fell at the rally, he was removed from the rally after loud noises, the loud noises startled him.

Politico and Newsweek tried to change the subject:   “Photo of bloodied Trump fist bumping immediately spotlighted by his allies,” “MAGA responds with outrage after Donald Trump injured at Pennsylvania rally.”

Various figures including Dmitri Mehlhorn, an advisor to Reid Hoffman, have encouraged the media to investigate whether the shooting was staged by Mr. Trump himself.  False flag operations do happen, but what kind of staged shooting would direct a real bullet a quarter of an inch from the supposed beneficiary’s skull?

Jacqueline Marsaw, field director for U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, posted on Facebook, “I don't condone violence but please get you some shooting lessons so you don't miss next time ooops [sic] that wasn't me talking.”  She posted later, “That's what your hate speech got you!!”

Rep. Thompson fired her, but bear in mind that this is the guy who introduced HR 8081, the “Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated Toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable Former Protectees Act,” to deny Mr. Trump any Secret Service protection at all.