Wednesday night, went to a discussion group where the speaker was Tracey Rowland, a Catholic theologian who has written a book on the thought of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

I found the discussion enlightening and asked various questions. I raised the gay issue relatively gently, noting that the traditional Catholic (in Christian) position was that two men having sex was a graver sin than a man raping a woman, that the same-sex oriented were not going to go away and that the old structures of repression were not going to work in a free society.

In the short discussion that followed, a well-meaning Catholic responded that one had to show charity to all. I could not work out at the time why that made me angry, so I did not express any response. I have since worked out why it makes me angry. To make someone's existence and aspirations for love problematic when it simply should not be at all and then parade one's charity (meaning extremely partial acceptance) as an appropriate--indeed, generous and moral--response is to buy into the moral degradation of others and then pat oneself on the back for not going all the way with it. That is the opposite of the respect for others charity is supposed to be about: it is instead profoundly morally condescending.

Amy Berg’s documentary Deliver us from evil is extremely well done. Apart from occasional short statements up on the screen, there is no narration. Victims, their families, their helpers, a paedophile priest and excerpts from depositions by senior clergy speak for themselves.

So, watching it, one alternates between disbelief, horror, rage, sympathy and a certain numb awareness. Having read Betrayal, the Boston Globe book on the priest scandals, I was aware of the background but there is an immediacy to listening to the slow build up from families and victims, interspersed by comments with Oliver O’Grady (“Father Ollie”), which is very powerful.

The lack of narration and the slow build-up makes the recounted experiences more vivid. A psychologist who specialises in dealing with victims of clergy abuse pointed out the importance of the lack of sexual experience, and family ties, in the hierarchy in explaining the pattern of evasion and cover-up. A lawyer who has years on such cases tells us that, having spent 23 years listening to depositions, he has encountered evasion, deceit, lies and perjury from cardinals, archbishops, bishops and senior clergy.

The Catholic Church is not in a position to lecture anyone about morality, particularly sexual morality. [At least not until it does far more to confront its own moral failures.]

A priest and canon lawyer who is an advocate for the victims and their families points out that the monarchical structure of the Church—and the ambition of members in it—is central to understand the cover-ups. The scapegoating of homosexual priests is mentioned in passing: the psychologist points out that most paedophiles are heterosexual. [The point was also made that, as all sex was forbidden to priests, it was all just "bad sex": the nature of the victims did not differentiate in the eyes of the hierarchy.]

Father O’Grady was a priest in California, in the diocese of Stockton whose Bishop—Cardinal-Archbishop of Los Angeles—was clearly ambitious for higher office and continued the pattern (seen again and again by Catholic hierarchs in cases of paedophile priests) of simply transferring O’Grady to a new parish every time there was a “problem”.

Deliver us from evil is a very powerful film about an appalling problem and deeply entrenched institutional moral failure.

Louis Crompton is a pioneer of gay studies. He helped organise perhaps the first such course in 1970, which prompted a state legislator to propose a bill that would ban such courses except at the state medical school (the bill failed). But, as Crompton says, it was a reminder of sodomy as peccatum mutum, the silent sin (p.xi). (The persistence of this view can be seen here.)

His Homosexuality and Civilization cannot, of course, cover its declared subject matter. The author restricts himself to classical Antiquity, Christendom, medieval Islam, Imperial China and pre-Meiji Japan. But that is still an enormous range, which he covers magnificently, clearly the results of decades of research.

A fundamental problem in covering homosexuality across such a cultural and historical range is the problem of definition—is homosexuality just a social construction or is there a continuing human type? Crompton focuses on the enduring. In his words whatever the vocabulary, two elements are present—the sexual fact and the possibility of human love and devotion (p.xiv). Which is enough to be getting on with. ( love, freedom, hatred and brutality )

Louis Crompton’s book is a magisterial achievement, telling an often horrific history with clarity and in a style more effective for its measured tone.

I am rather keen on the notion of self-ownership. Both as a moral principle and because, as a matter of practical politics, it is usually disastrous for a free society to attempt to deny folk self-ownership because it is beyond its capacity to deny folk effective use rights in their own body, though it can cause much misery in attempting to do so.

It can regulate such rights somewhat, if it does not overdo it. Liquor licensing laws, for example, can be made to work. Stopping folk from drinking alcohol entirely, can't. The US kindly having conducted the definitive social experiment in that so the rest of us don't have to.*

Admittedly, ownership of one’s body is ownership in a very distinct sense, since you cannot live anywhere else. Nor do we allow sale of the body – slavery being an offence against any strong notion of universal ethics. Banning slavery is a form of personal entailment that protects personal autonomy. But that we do not allow anyone else to own your body does not mean you don’t. Nor that your use rights over your own body are less ownership than a slave-owner’s legal rights would be. Such concerns and constraints protect and support personal autonomy, rather than undermine it.

Given my views, I was interested to read this attempt to marry conservative (Catholic) morality to self-ownership. There is something inherently odd about doing this, since Humanae Vitae makes it quite clear the Catholic Church rejects self-ownership, particularly of our sexual organs.

Humanae Vitae is also, of course, the most rejected (by Catholics) of formal Papal pronouncements over the last forty years. (See previous comments about not having the capacity to deny folk effective use rights over their own body, or even, indeed, getting them to seriously believe -- taking their behaviour to be revealed belief -- that they don't.) ( about self-ownership )

None of these concerns seem to strike Feser at all. So one can make self-ownership work for (Catholic) conservative moral theory -- if one operates the appropriate discounts of the claims to self-ownership of (surprise!) women and the same-sex oriented. It them becomes very easy.

But, of course, the point of the notion of self-ownership is precisely not to assume such discounts, but to see moral issues as come from everyone's rights to self-ownership. Which is precisely where the Catholic Church is not coming from, and neither is Ed Feser. His assumptions permit his moral conclusions but his assumptions do not sustain his claim to have shown that conservative (Catholic) moral theory is compatible with self-ownership as a universal principle. Because they're not.

*Except we do: the “war on drugs” attempts to deny us full property rights over our own bodies. Resulting in all the social deformities that disastrously misjudged property rights regimes – indeed, in the case of drugs, completely absent legal property rights – create (such as violence to define and defend what the law does not and corruption from "selling" the official discretions that banning stuff inevitably creates). Just like Prohibition.

James Carroll, the author of Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews – A History is a former Catholic priest. This only one of innumerable personal details one learns from what is a very personal book.

Which helps makes it a long-winded book, as does the author’s writing style. It also provides a very immediate and personal way to wrestle with issues of faith, the nature of Christianity and the role of the Jews in Christian history that concern the author.

As with Kertzer’s book, Constantine’s Sword is very focused on the issue of the Holocaust, the Shoah and the questions (personal, theological, historical) it provokes. Indeed, the Part One, A Cross at Auschwitz, discusses the controversy over the erection of a giant Cross as a memorial at Auschwitz, a controversy which weaves in and out of the narrative throughout the book.

The rest of Part One is a discussion of his personal history and the shifts in his awareness that there are deep problems, even now, with the Catholic attitude to Jews and Judaism, resting on the proposition that Jesus was the Messiah and the Jews, as Jews, rejected Him: to the point of being God-killers. The latter clam rather lets the Romans off the hook: a theme of the book is dissecting the effects of the Roman Empire’s embrace of Christianity (and Christianity’s embrace of the Roman Empire) – blaming the Empire for Jesus’s death became even more problematic. If a defeat (crucifixion) can be become a victory, then a victory (adoption by the Empire) can become a defeat. ( a benighted history )

A gay man reading about Jew-hatred, particularly Catholic Jew-hatred, is likely to be struck by lots of ironies. ( parallels  )

Constantine’s Sword is a very informative and thoughtful study. The very high personal content I found less irritating than I expected, because it is used to personalise the themes of the narrative quite effectively.

David Kertzer’s The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism is a moving demolition of Catholic apologetics about the Church’s treatment of Jews.

One sometimes sees the claim that the Church “didn’t really” burn any heretics/witches/sodomites, as these were handed over to the civil powers to be executed. There are three things wrong with such apologetics. First, such actions were clearly motivated by Church doctrine. Second, they were caught, tried, sentenced and handed over in full knowledge of what would happen. Third, in many areas of medieval Europe—Rome, those parts of the Papal States it was able to assert civl rule over, German Prince-Bishoprics, Palatine-Bishoprics (such as Durham)—the Church was the civil authority.

In the case of the Papal States, the Church remained the civil authority through much of the C19th. So Kertzer starts his history (Part One Keeping Jews in Their Place) looking at the Church’s treatment of the Jews in the Papal States. Particularly after the restoration of Papal rule in 1814.

Napoleonic rule, in line with French Enlightenment principles, had freed the Jews from all inequalities in civil law. As soon as Papal rule was re-established, these were re-imposed. Pope after Pope laboured to ensure the Jews were put back in their ghettoes. Forced baptisms of Jewish children continued to be an issue.

Indeed, the Papacy was so reactionary, that Metternich comes across as a liberal, urging reform. The Habsburg monarchy was a private and public supporter of better treatment of Jews, particularly due to the Rothschild influence on Metternich. ( blood libel )

Kertzer’s book makes it clear that no institution was more responsible for the development of modern anti-Semitism in Western and Central Europe than the Catholic Church. Yes, the Tsarist regime and the Orthodox Church were enthusiastically anti-Semitic. Yes, the Lutheran Church—particularly in Germany—had it own shameful record, flowing directly from Luther’s Jew-hatred.

But no other institution matched the Catholic Church for organisational reach, for persistence and for pervasive support, from Popes on down. Every single key theme of anti-Semitism—included notions of tainted blood—were actively supported by the Church. It was simply no accident that the Nazi Party was led by an Austrian Catholic (never excommunicated), had its original stronghold in Catholic Bavaria, toned down its anti-Semitism to broaden its appeal to (particularly Protestant) voters and that Catholic Austrians were disproportionately organisers and implementers of the Final Solution.

And the notion that the world is purified by the extermination of the evil and tainted? That is an impeccably Catholic idea too.

Michael P. Foley’s Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Fridays: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything has some distinct similarities in tone and content to Thomas Woods’s How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilisation. It is the good news and (with the odd minor exception) only the good news about Catholicism and being Catholic. It is concerned with pointing out Catholic contributions to just about everything, particularly in the US (where Catholicism long laboured under the suspicion of not being compatible with the American Revolution and loyalty to the US: out of 43 US Presidents*, only one has been Catholic, though the current Chief Justice and a majority of the Supreme Court⎯Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito⎯are Catholic: two Jews, an Episcopalian and a generic Protestant make up the rest).

That being said, the book is full of delightful historical trivia, many of them delightful medieval historical trivia. It also has some Catholic apologetics, so it is quite a painless exposition to various Catholic doctrines (the author is a Doctor of Theology: there is even a “more Catholic than the Pope” moment [p.165] when he reports in somewhat disturbed tones that JPII adopted an adjusted Nietzschean construction—though he assures us in a footnote that he is not really criticising the Pope). ( fun trivia )

The “only the good news” gets a bit teeth-gritting at times. But overall, it is a fun book with lots of engaging snippets of historical trivia.

* Out of 43 US Presidents, 42 have been Protestant males of Northern European descent plus one Catholic male of Northern European descent. Since the frontrunners to be the next President are a woman (a Protestant of Northern European descent), a black man (a Protestant of East African descent—so no slavery) and a Catholic of Italian descent, the next President will likely either not be male, be of non-European descent or not be Protestant and not of Northern European descent. (Descent being counted in the patrilineal sense.)

I have previously posted about a discussion by Jim Franklin based on his latest book Catholic Values and Australian Realities. Finally got around to reading the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The last essay is the introduction to a collection of my old teacher David Stove’s essays in which Franklin discusses how Stove was very much a man of the Enlightenment yet was also very well aware of the shallowness and costs of the Enlightenment’s attack on faith. David was very out of step with how things were going, and felt himself to be so. The current situation, where the choice seems to be which form of barren opinion-tribalism you prefer—with many alleged “conservatives” having apparently completely lost touch with the traditions they are meant to be conserving and old arguments have to be fought over again while many “progressives” seem to be resolutely uninterested in hard questions or difficult truths, taking refuges in a consoling sense of superiority—makes me feel fairly alienated. It is why I find myself drawn to centre-left folk alienated from the contemporary Left such as Norman Geras, Michael J Totten, neo-neocon; folk alienated from the contemporary conservatism such as Andrew Sullivan or simply independent minded folk such as Oxblog and, in a different sense, Marginal Revolution.

In some ways, Franklin’s book is deeply parochial—it is about Catholic ideas and intellectualism in Oz. But Oz, like all the (Protestant) Anglosphere countries, has been becoming more Catholic in recent decades. And Franklin is very much about the application of the natural law tradition of Catholic thought to wider issues as well as tracing the ways Catholics have influenced each other and the wider society. Such as the influence of such thinking for the Mabo decision.

Franklin is a very clear writer and certainly helped my understanding of Catholic thought and the natural law tradition. The book also has the very great virtue of taking thinking seriously.