Canticum Spei

“AND NOW ALSO THE AXE IS LAID unto the root of the trees." (Matt. 3:10) So preached St. John the Baptist, the precursor to the Christ whose sandal he was unworthy to untie. For the West, the former lands of Christendom or those lands of the New World informed by it, it is, perhaps, a Johannine moment, a time for conversio, for metanoia. The window of opportunity does not seem to be of long duration: the axe is laid at the root of the trees. It is a matter of time before the axe is used, the bole and roots have lost all sap. There does not seem to be much more time before wholesale moral collapse in the West.

Without such a turn, may not, as part of natural consequence, and as part of God's terrible Providence, another doctrine arise and come in to fill the vacuum left by our moral irresponsibility?

For behold, I will raise up the Chaldeans, a bitter and swift nation, marching upon the breadth of the earth, to possess the dwelling places that are not their own. They are dreadful, and terrible: from themselves shall their judgment, and their burden proceed. Their horses are lighter than leopards, and swifter than evening wolves; and their horsemen shall be spread abroad: for their horsemen shall come from afar, they shall fly as an eagle that maketh haste to eat. They shall all come to the prey, their face is like a burning wind: and they shall gather together captives as the sand. And their prince shall triumph over kings, and princes shall be his laughingstock: and he shall laugh at every strong hold, and shall cast up a mount, and shall take it.

Habakkuk 1:6-10. Are we facing another terrible Habkkukian moment with the swell of a confident Islam breathing down the dissipated West's neck, perhaps not with axe in hand, but with an equally dangerous scimitar?

It is no longer a matter of conservative and liberal: we have moved way beyond those categories. Neither these political movements avail us much. Even if--per impossibile--we were able to conserve and hold the moral line where it is, we still confront guilt for horrible violations of the moral law, and the Furies of conscience pursue and pressure us to continue down our horrible path, that slippery slope of moral demise. Europe and America are not exceptions to the laws of morality. God and his nature are not mocked for long. We have to confront the terrible reality: "Without a turning back, there can be only a going forward," which really means a going down. Budziszewski (2003), 213.

We are not condemned to go forward or down into a moral demise, for the future is ours as an exercise of freedom. But we are not free to remove ourselves from the effects or consequences of our free choices, if they are wrong. America is not exceptional in that way.

To predict human future is to deny human nature, for men and women are endowed with the perilous gift of free will. We can turn back the other way. Even so, free will does not mean that anything is possible. I cannot will that I do wrong, yet not be guilty. I cannot will that I shall be guilty, yet not suffer the impulsion to do further wrong. And I cannot will that I shall be unrepentant, yet stay the same.

Budziszewski (2003), 216. That is to say, we are under the natural law willy nilly: whether we will to obey it, or will not to obey it.

It is true. The return will not be easy. It will required consummate courage:

It is a fearsome thing to recover sanity, almost as fearsome as not recovering it. For there are no half-measures in conscience; when the Furies loom behind you, there is no running in place. And so, to avoid traveling in the next dark stretch of the road, there is no alternative but to make peace with the Furies, and travel back on the stretch we have lately come.

Budziszewski (2003), 216.*

Here is the necessary recipe, the unavoidable reality. It is time to reverse recent history, return to our natural law roots where we have erred, and begin history down another, better path.

To set our faces against [imminent] infanticide, we must repent abortion. To desist from viewing pregnancy as an illness, we must abjure viewing fertility as an ailment. To reprove perversion, we must repent lasciviousness. To turn from infidelity, we must forswear divorce and impurity. To withdraw from killing "in the interests of all concerned, " we must rue the vain dream that our interests lie elsewhere than in innocence. To mourn treating the image of God as tissue to be harvested in hope of cures, we must sorry over our sick fancy that there is nothing worse than physical disease. To turn back from the boundary of animal nature, we must repent that we defiled the sanctuary of human nature. To honor the inbuilt purposes of our design, we must honor the Designer who inbuilt them. And to honor the Designer, we must weep that we ever thought to take His place.

Budziszewski (2003), 216.

That seems impossible! How do we turn back the course? The Four Witnesses--deep conscience, the design (ratio ordinis of the cosmos), the design of human nature, the principle of natural consequences--do not inform us of how this may be done.

The strand of the Natural Law and the
strand of the Gospel make one rope

Yet there are two answers, not independent, but dependent. The answers are distinguishable: yet they run intertwined sort of like a the strands of a rope which are blended together into one lay. One strand is based upon reason, the other upon faith.

[A] kind of help, a lesser help has been implanted in the very manner of our making. This too is part of the created order. If once the Turn is made, then just as there is a momentum to evil, so there is a momentum, not to virtue, but to repentance. As there is something in our design like Furies to drive us down, so there is something in our design like Angels to help us up. If it were not so, we could not even be told about it. Yet we can. The indestructibility of our longing for lightness, for purity, for music is like a small star of hope in a darkened sky, and inkling of the Star that rules the day.

Budziszewski (2003), 216. That help is the natural moral law, which, at its most basic, speaks to us from our heart about what is right and what is wrong. We have to be open to the fact that such an objective moral realm exists, and that it may be found through right reason.

The witnesses of the man, the ox, the lion, and the eagle:
Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John

There is, we must not forget, another strand to the rope that shall haul us out of our current trend downward. The "Four Witnesses" of our nature do not speak of it. There are, however, four other witnesses that testify to this other strand, witnesses in the form of a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle:

It is said [through these four witnesses and through thousands, indeed millions of others] that the Designer Himself took the form of His designs, that He came into our night, that he wrought with the powers of darkness; it is said that joy comes in the morning.

Budziszewski (2003), 217. The other help is therefore the Gospel which is proclaimed in Scriptures and through the Church. The words quoted above are J. Budziszewski's words. Another witness many years ago wrote it in words that used to be said at the end of the old Latin Mass:

In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum. Omnia per ipsum facta sunt: et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum: et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt. . . . Erat lux vera, quae illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum. In mundo erat, et mundus per ipsum factus est, et mundus eum non cognovit. In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt. Quotquot autem receperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri, his qui credunt in nomine ejus: qui non ex sanguinibus, neque ex voluntate carnis, neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo nati sunt.

Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis: et vidimus gloriam ejus, quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis. . . . Et de plenitudine ejus nos omnes accepimus, et gratiam pro gratia: quia lex per Moysen data est, gratia et veritas per Jesum Christum facta est.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. . . . That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name. Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . For the law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

The natural moral law and Christ, the law of the Gospel. These are the strands of the rope that, if we so will, must needs return us to the proper path of our calling.
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*We boldly faced it once when as a nation we willed to end slavery or the civil rights gains for African-Americans.

Predicatio Veritatis

“TO THE WEAK I BECAME weak," says St. Paul, "that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all." (1 Cor. 9:22) This approach, superficially similar to accomodationism (mentioned in the prior post), is more subtle. It engages the immoralist (i.e., the one ignorant or adverse to the natural law theory and its objectively-based morality) selectively. It does not grant him those assumptions, desires, views that are incompatible with an understanding of the moral realm as objectively grounded in the nature of things. Rather, it selectively identifies those aspects of the opponent's belief system which allow him some purchase or grasp from which he can begin to draw, to persuade, to change his opponent's mind through argument. These things people know or intuit necessarily. They are those things that, in Budziszewski's words, humans cannot not know. These are what Budziszewski has identified as the "Four Witnesses" that usually provide the points of agreement that will allow us an approach to almost anyone. These are: deep conscience, design in general, human design in particular, and natural causes.* The tactic behind the grand strategy is this: "One begins with what people know or intuit already and one builds on it." Budziszewski (2003), 204. In a sense, this is what real education is: to educe from someone (Latin: educare) the consequences of what he already knows.

It is, of course, a difficult task. If the opponent has a vested interest in a position--if he is blinded by passion, if he is emotionally or financially vested in a position, if he cannot confront the guilt that would come from the admission of wrong, if he is proud and unwilling to admit error, and so forth--no amount of reasonable persuasion may change his course. But there is, short of a miracle of supernatural grace (and the Spirit blows where it will), no other approach to such a man. There is, however, the possibility of natural grace. And reason may, on occasion, bear fruit.

In approaching this area, Budziszewski makes some interesting comments. First, he addresses the classical view that one can show how any morality outside of a natural law theory can be shown either to be based upon false presuppositions or self-evident principles or false conclusions from those presuppositions or self-evident propositions. If the opponent relies on false presuppositions or denies self-evident principles (say he denies the principle of excluded middle or non-contradiction), then the falsehood, incoherency, or ultimate absurdity of that position can be shown. If the presuppositions the opponent holds are true, then presumably the inconsistency or fallacies of logic between those presuppositions and his final conclusions can be shown. The assumption behind this position is, of course, that any moral world view or moral Weltanschaung that is built on something other than the nature of things (i.e., reality) is inconsistent or absurd, and hence readily capable of being shown false.

Reality is like a tub full of floating corks

There are those that believe that such an approach is unavailable to fallen man, that his reason is so darkened that--though the natural law be true--one cannot persuade him, given his darkened reason, his total depravity which affects even most fundamental thought, making practical reason, reason in the area of the fundamental of morals a vain, worthless undertaking. When it comes to presuppositions, reason is simply unavailable as "fallen man is constitutionally incapable of admitting the obvious." Reason only goes so far, these persons believe, and no farther. Reason is unavailable to "challenge these deepest assumptions," the deepest assumptions of man are ultimately unchallengeable by reason.

Budziszewski rejects such a approach. He acknowledges that moral reality presents an endemic, chronic problem for fallen man, but he insists that, deep down, people are bothered by any incoherency (latent or patent) if they have adopted a false understanding of morality.

But Budziszewski also rejects the opposite extreme, what he calls the presuppositional approach. The presuppositional approach (which is an extreme version of the classical approach) perceives the problem of approach as follows:

The idea is that the moment [the immoralist] realizes the conflict among his assumptions, he is in crisis; he must either try to hold onto his worldview, knowing that it is incoherent, or embrace another one which will inevitably have the same problem. When every intellectual refuge has been destroyed, one by one, then finally he may be able to embrace a sane view of morality reality."

Budziszewski (2003), 206. The approach is one where we progressively peel the opponents' false and inconsistent views, like one may peel the layers of an onion, and, at the end of all the peeling, the opponent will have no refuge but to admit moral reality.

But this extreme presuppositional approach is incoherent also in Budziszewski's view, since it presupposes something in man that is not true: that he is a rational being without any impediment whatsoever. Though reason may not be totally corrupt as a result of the fall, it did not come out totally unscathed. It may be, Budziszewski suggests, that a false world view may not necessarily be inconsistent. "[N]othing," he states, "prevents a set of assumptions from being false and yet mutually compatible." Budziszewski (2003), 206. In other words, the puzzle may be wrong, but the pieces may fit together. More insidious may be the further observation by Budziszewski that the fact that one may show absurdity in the fundamental presuppositions of an opponent may have no meaning to the opponent if the opponent believes that reality is absurd. In fact, among moderns, that may be the majority view: "Nothing is more common among postmodern folk than to deny it [the coherency of the world]." There are those among us, along with the flat earthers, who deny--alas--the principle of non-contradiction and the principle that good ought to be done and evil avoided. How do we approach these people, as it seems they are foreclosed to us under the presuppositionalist approach since they reject its presuppositions?**

Budziszewski suggests that even these can be reached through the classical approach. He acknowledges the difficulty using an interesting image:

[R]eality poses a constant problem for fallen man. He wants to acknowledge some of the truth which presses in on him, but taken together it points too strongly to other truth which he resists with all his might. In the end, he must deny so many obvious things that the work is just too much. He is like a man in a bathtub surrounded by dozens of corks, trying to hold them down at once.

Budziszewski (2003), 206-07. The corks cannot be kept all down, and, invariably the corks of reality, held down by some false or incoherent theory will pop up. And all men are--deep down, even if they don't acknowledge it--bothered by such incoherency. Most frequently, the cork that bobs up is the principle of non-contradiction: something cannot both be and not be in the same manner and sense. A cannot be both true, and not true. A and not-A cannot both be true. That's the cork that most frequently bobs up.

In terms of practical tactics, Budziszewski addresses the problem of the "public relations of wrong," namely the immoralists' habitual tactics of "doubling the script," "seducing paraconscience," and "cannibalizing conscience."*** He addresses some countermeasures to such tactics:

1. Doubling the script is essentially the problem of speaking with a forked tounge: saying one thing in public, another in private. The simple solution here is to "out" the advocate. The abortion advocate may, in public, talk of "rights," but in private speak of the fetus as an unjust aggressor, which, of course is a foolish position. The advocate of homosexual marriage may publicly deny the connection between homosexuality and pedophilia, but this public relations cover may be blown by citing to less-circulated literature where the opposite is maintained. When someone with CAIR insists that Islam means peace, it can be countered by statements that Islam does not mean peace, but submission, and that the Qur'an and ahadith proclaim war against non-Muslims as normative.
   


2. Seduction of paraconscience is the taking advantage of those remnants of socially-inculcated virtue and twisting it to the advantage of the immoralist. So, for example, the sense of fairness and equality with which Americans are inculcated or the appreciation of the gains made in the civil rights movements of the 1960s can be seized as an emotional basis for false positions (say, homosexual "marriage" rights). The countermeasure to this tactic is to "woo it [the paraconscience] back." To the notion of false compassion, show true compassion. To the notion of false equality, show what real equality is about.
   
   
3. Cannibalizing the conscience is the tendency for false moralities to seize on one moral truth, at the expense of another, or it may be the seizing of one truth and insidiously falsifying or distorting it: it is a heresy of conscience. The countermeasure for cannibalization of conscience depends upon whether we are dealing with one who is honestly confused or one who is not so honestly confused. "The first desideratum is to recognize when the other player is bluffing, when he [is] not really confused but only playing at confusion." Budziszewski (2003), 212.
   

1. If one is dealing with a person who is honestly confused, then generally focusing on the neglected moral principles is sufficient to counter the tactic of cannibalizing the conscience. The sincerely, innocently confused person simply needs "a solution to his problems."
   
   
2. If one is dealing with a person who is not honestly confused, in other words with "one who is deceived [and] does not wish to be undeceived," the tactic must be different. Budziszewski (2003), 211. What the willfully confused person needs is for "someone to call his bluff."

   One needs to see through him, and do it in such a way that even if only briefly, he sees through himself. Just for a moment his smokescreen has been blown away; caught by surprise, he has seen his reflection in the mirror. If he sees it once, there is always a chance that he will see it again. he will not forget the fleeting image. It will get under his skin. Perhaps some day when he is at the lowest ebb, there will be a breakthrough. Yet even if he does not see through himself, the audience may see through him, so even in this case his bluff should be called.

   Budziszewski (2003), 212. When, and in what manner, to call someone's bluff is "an art," one without "fixed procedure," something gained not from books, but from experience.
   

Under such guidance, we ought to get to work, busy among our fellows to woo them from the immoralist positions which draw men back into the darkness of a moral cave, and bring them out to where there is light. Once in the light, grace may build upon nature, and justice and mercy may then kiss.

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*These have been addressed in prior postings. See De Testimonio Quatuor Testibus: Conscientia Profunda (deep conscience), De Testimonio Quatuor Testibus: Consilium Divino (design in general), De Testimonio Quatuor Testibus: Terribiliter Magnificasti Me (human design), and De Testimonio Quatuor Testibus: Consequentia Naturalis (natural consequences).
**Budziszewski observes that it may be that presuppositionalist arguments do work, but that it works accidentally, as it were, on the "flotsam of natural law," on corks other than the principle of non-contradiction that the opponent recognizes as true. There is a role, therefore, for a "moderate pressupositionalism" that works for those who have retained sufficient amount of traditional morality to be approached this way. Budziszewski (2003), 207. "Pursued to the exclusion of other variations, it would be most unwise; but it is sometimes useful in talking with people who are deep behind the brickwork of denial."
***See: Relatio Publici de Nefas Moralis: Descensus Profundus (doubling the script), Relatio Publici de Nefas Moralis: Haeresis et Quasiconscientia (seduction of paraconscience and cannibalizing conscience)

Quod non oportet disputare

ADVOCACY OF THE NATURAL MORAL LAW in the field of cultural war must be done with wise strategy and tactics. Budziszewski identifies four common errors that the advocate of natural law frequently steps into in the area of public discourse. He denominates them as follows:

1. Exclusivism;
2. Pearl casting;
3. Conversionism; and
4. Accomodationism.
   

Exclusivism is the error of supposing that one's audience is friendly when it is actually hostile, not open, or entirely ignorant of the fundamentals of natural moral law. Exclusivism violates what is frequently held to be the first rule of rhetoric which is to know your audience. It alienates its audience with its resounding nos, and thou shalt nots, and don'ts. Though such approach may work when preaching to the choir, charging up the troops, or building enthusiasm, it is not the sort of tactic that works well for rebuilding. It will not serve to change the culture. More, it has the negative effect of raising the suspicion, the ire, and the motivation of the immoralists. While it rallies the troops, it rallies the opposition, and the battle ends up in stalemate.

Pearl casting is similar to exclusivism, except that there is no intent on the part of those who throw their pearls among swine to reach friendly audiences. It is the use of exclusive language knowing that one's audience is hostile, unfriendly, and unreceptive. The nos, thou shalt nots, and don'ts (as well as the yeses, thou shalts, and dos) are thrown as so many pearls among the swine of the immoralists, and it does them as much good. Usually, the arguments are based upon the authority: say of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope John Paul II, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Bible, the Talmud, the Qur'an, or whatever. It is, in fact, a fallacious argument--an argumentum ad verecundiam--where the audience is disdainful of that authority. Though there is nothing wrong with the authority, until the audience accepts that authority it is in vain to resort to it. The error includes within its auspices even resort to the "natural law tradition," as that tradition is generally neither known nor accepted by our audience. Accordingly, resort must be had to the most basic, to those things which Budziszewski identifies as that which we can't not know. We might here invoke the image of St. Paul who, when he spoke to a group of Greeks at the Areopagus, referenced their poets and the pagan altar with the inscription: ἀγνώστῳ θεῷ, To an Unknown God.* Acts 17:22-31. St. Paul started with something the Greeks knew.

St. Paul at the Areopagus by Kennedy A. Paizs
(from http://artscapesofthailand.blogspot.com/)

Conversionism recognizes that the audience is hostile, but tries to convert, to proselytize. There is certainly a place for evangelization, for the preaching of the Gospel, and it ought to be done in the manner St. Paul advocated to Timothy: "Preach the word," and do it "in season and out of season." 1 Tim. 4:2. That is one grand strategy. But we must not forget the other grand strategy, for the cultural war requires a pincer strategy, a strategy of double envelopment. One handle is supernatural: the Gospel; but the other handle is natural: Reason. The Gospel itself builds upon nature, and nature must be made more amenable to receipt, and to preservation of the Gospel. The Gospel is seed, and it falls on ground, but the ground must be prepared beforehand. The error of conversionism is that it forgets to prepare the ground. And if the ground is not adequately prepared--if it is rocky, or if the soil is shallow--well . . . the Gospel itself records what its chances to take root and flourish will be. See Mark 4:1-20; Matt. 13:1-23; Luke 8:1-15.

Accomodationism is, in a way, the opposite error. It seeks to address behaviors, without change of the mind. Instead of tailoring the message to the audience, it is a capitulation to the audience in the area of erroneous assumptions, desires, opinions, or theories. By accomodationism we end up in the situation of the visitor to Ireland who asked the Irishman seated on the fence for directions to Dublin, and received the response, "I wouldn't start from here." There are some assumptions, desires, opinions, or theories that cannot be conceded, for if, as a tactic, they are conceded, then we will never get to Dublin.

Insofar as not everything which other people seek or think is bad, there is a grain of merit in this approach, but it fails to distinguish between what can be affirmed and what cannot be affirmed. Just as there are some groups with which it can never be right to ally, there are some interests to which it can never be right to appeal, like malice, revenge, or racism.

Budziszewski (2003), 204.

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*Paul was referring to the Cretan philosopher Epimenides ("For in him we live and move and have our being") and the Cilician Stoic philospher Aratus ("We are his offspring") Acts 17:28.

Restauratio Legis Naturale

NATURE'S UNRAVELING IS WHAT the modern immoralists seek to attain. Whether it be the use of artificial contraception which severs the natural tie between sex and procreation, or whether it be the normalization of homosexual sex, which itself is sterile, and an ultimately vain, meaningless act. Whether it is the unnatural murder of a child in his or her mother's womb through some invasive procedure, or the unnatural, forced death of the elderly through drugs or through withholding of nutrition and hydration. Whether it be simple cloning to the more grotesque creation of hybrids between animal and man such as "admixed" embryos which force upon us new words such as "cybrids," or "chimeras."** These acts are acts against nature. They seek to declare an independence from, and a control over, nature.

Budziszewski makes an interesting comparison between man's efforts to obtain mastery over nature through technology without regard to any boundaries as a resurgence of black magic. The relationship between technology and magic has, of course, been noted before by, for example, Bernanos. In his Profiles of the Future (1961), Arthur C. Clarke stated what is commonly known as Clarke's "Third Law": "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Human-Dog Hybrid by Patricia Piccinini
The result of goeteia

Their [the immmoralists, those who reject the natural moral law] methods do not require the eye of newt, but they may as well. In essence, they are forms of goeteia,* of the ancient practice whose goal was to acquire power by "breaking" nature, unpatterning its patterns, uncreating creation. . . . There you have the essence of goeteia. There is no nature; there are not givens; reality is what we decide. Black magic. . . . The immoralist movements are not isolated phenomena, but branches of the goetic arts; they are united in their hatred of human design, and, by extension, of its Designer.

Budziszewski (2003), 198-99, 200.

To try to recovery the field will require confrontation with the enemy. We will have to become "cultural activists." In confronting the advocates of immorality as cultural activists, two things ought to be kept in mind. First, it is an imperative that the advocates of traditional morality, that is, the advocates of natural law, recognize the conflict that they face. "Right reason" is still achievable, though it does not come easily to fallen nature.
--J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not KnowOne must know the enemy, and what he is about. As Polybius stated in his Histories (III.81): "For it is mere blind ignorance to believe that there can be anything of more vital importance to a general than the knowledge of his opponent's character and disposition." The immoralists seek to overthrow human nature, its design, and its Designer. Since the immoralists seek to sever the relationship between the way things are, they also are free with matching or paring concepts and words with realities. There is therefore a second requirement: "The second necessity is to abstain from the polluted languages of goetic incantation." Budziszewski (2003), 200. Abortion is not "choice." Sodomy is not "gay." Motherhood is not advanced by "feminism." Cloning or fetal stem cell research is not about "healing," but about playing God. Euthanasia is not "mercy killing," but simple intentional, premeditated murder.

In confronting the advocates of immorality, it is not unlikely that we will give offense, and we should not offend unnecessarily. But in confronting the modern purveyors of black magic, there will be unavoidable offense.

There is no virtue in giving offense, but there is a difference between avoidable and unavoidable offense. To fail to avoid the avoidable kind is the vice of scandal. To try to avoid the unavoidable kind is the vice of complicity in evil.

Budziszewski (2003), 200.

In appraising our enemy, we need also to appraise ourselves. We are not playing on a level playing field. Our enemy has some permanent advantages, and we have ours. Following Budziszewski's analysis, then, we can identify certain advantages (and weaknesses) of the immoralists, and certain advantages (and weaknesses) of the natural law advocate.

Evil's advantages	Evil's disadvantages	Good's advantages	Good's dis- advantages
Evil can rationalize	The evil are open to the possibility of redemption	Their argument is based upon "ultimately inescapable human moral design," i.e., moral reality	Their recognition of the moral evil may drive them to despair
The good can succumb to temptation to do evil		The "deep conscience" in all men, though it may be squelched, witnesses in their favor
		Divine aid, His providence, and recourse to His aid through prayer
		The theological virtue of hope

There we have it: our advantages, our disadvantages, our enemies' advantages and disadvantages.
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*Goeteia (or goetia) comes from the from Greek word γοητεία (goēteia) which means "sorcery."
**These terms are specialized: "admixed" embryos is a generic term, a neologism, used to describe any early-stage embryo combining human and nonhuman genes or tissue. It includes both cybrids and chimeras. A cybrid (a combination of cytoplasmic and hybrid) is an artificial hybrid cell produced by introducing nuclear material from one organism into a cell (of the same or different species) from which the nucleus has been removed. A chimera, on the other hand, is an organism which is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells originating in different zygotes.

Relatio Publici de Nefas Moralis: Descensus Profundus

ERIC VOEGELIN in his various books identified a new gnosticism in politics. For Voeglin, political gnosis (the Greek word for knowledge) could be defined as a direct, immediate vision of truth that was gained without sufficient critical reflection; it was the possession of a political elite, the adepts. Political gnosticism was the product of that gnosis. The modern political gnostics sought to implement and design policies based upon their privileged thinking, to "immanentize the eschaton," and thereby to solve the political problems confronting society through the ushering of some new utopian design where there would be heaven on earth, so to speak.

Now such activity is not necessarily well-taken by the population, particularly if this supposed esoteric knowledge is a corruption of the good, that is a promotion of evil under the guise of an apparent good. In such a case, there will invariably be one truth for the adepts and one truth for the rabble, the public. Budziszewski calls this phenomenon "doubling the script." There is one script for the adepts, the "shock troops," and one script for the people outside the movement.

Some such doubling of the script takes place in every movement for moral wrong, not just in totalitarian regimes but in stained republics like our own. . . . The reasons for the difference between the insider script and the public script are fairly plain. The first is that, driven by the Furies,* the shock troops of a movement for moral evil have different psychological needs. After they have plundered the palace of moral knowledge for material wherewith to build allurements to the evil they promote, they must go back into the palace and ransack it all over again--this time for sacrifices to appease an avenging conscience. The second reason is that it would be imprudent to discuss such dread sacrifices in front of outsiders. The details would shock and repel them, not draw them in. Immoralist movements require converts, or at least fellow travellers.

Budziszewski (2003), 192.

Nude Descending Down a Staircase
Marcel Duchamp

One of the most commonly used techniques in communicating to the public is the ignoring or silencing of certain truths. Myriad examples of doubling of the script through silence in the public script can be given. For example, the public is fed the line that homosexual "marriage" is a great good, and that fairness and equal rights demand that homosexuals ought to have the right to enter into monogamous(?), stable relationships just like a man and a woman. What you don't hear is the real truth, which is that homosexuality is intrinsically promiscuous, and that the "cheating ratio" of gay males, over time, approaches 100%. This is in marked contradistinction to male/female unions, where according to a 2010 University of Chicago study only 14 percent of wives and 20 percent of husbands(which is bad enough, but not near the promiscuity of the homosexual men) admitted to extramarital affairs.** Something other than the need for "marriage" for homosexuals is in place here. In other words, we are promoting a guise of stability where there is no stability. The evil that is promoted is the demise of traditional marriage, a bastion of Christian faith, and it is attacked under the guise of freedom, fairness, and tolerance. So there is one script for the public (which includes silence of the intrinsic promiscuity of gay men) and another within the adepts (who, of course, know about the promiscuous nature of gays).

Another way to double the script is to use euphemisms when addressing the public. The classic case may be abortion advocates who dare not use the word "baby" to describe what is in the mother's womb during the 9-month gestation period. At first, the medical term "fetus" was used, but that Latin term simply meant "baby in the womb," and that was too close for comfort. So that term was changed into "product of conception," "POC," or even inhumanly "blob of tissue." The term "abortion" is negative, and so the debate is defined in terms of "choice" without any clarity of what the "choice" really entails.

Sometimes, terms are redefined when the adepts communicate to the public. The definition of "person" is conveniently changed from a function of being, to a function of doing or having. By this sleight of hand, the child in the womb (who lacks certain functions such self-consciousness) is de-classified as a person.

Sometimes the meaning of terms are not changed, but the terms themselves are replaced with innocuous ones or with neologisms. By changing and softening terms, the public is persuaded of moral enormities not aware of the entirety of the truth. Sometimes the more literal terms are banned in public discourse: you are not allowed to call gay men "sodomites," because of the value-laden import of the term "sodomite," which, of course, brings down (for those who remember) the entire tradition of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all that fire and brimstone stuff. Fornication is replaced by the more clinical premarital sex. Spouse becomes "significant other." The list goes on and on.

Doubling the script is an effort at evasion, a first effort at avoiding the inconveniences at telling the whole truth. But it never is sufficient.

Inevitably, the public relations of moral wrong require lies, and a lot of them. . . . Professional advocates for the so-called new moralities are specialists in such mendacity . . . . [They are at] the advantage, because the average falsehood takes only five seconds to utter but a hundred and fifty to explode. A sound bite lasts only ten.

Budziszewski (2003), 195.

Under the modern means of communication, and the bad faith of the advocates of the new morality, the cards are stacked against the advocate of natural law and traditional morality. For the peddler of falsehood under the guise of good, there is therefore a tremendous temptation to be mendacious. Budziszewski identifies "seven degrees of descent on the downward case of honesty."

1. Sin: to cover up our own sin, we lie.
2. Self-protection: one lie requires others, and so "soon the liar is smothered in layers of mendacity, as numerous as onion shells, as thick as flannel blankets."
3. Habituation: lying slowly becomes habitual, a "second nature," and we lose respect for truth. From lying we become liars.
4. Self-deception: immersed in habitual lying, we begin to believe in our lies, and lose any desire or grasp on truth.
5. Rationalization: to suppress our self-deception and the ennui that arises from living a lie,we begin to rationalize the truth itself, usually falling into some sort of nihilism or relativism.
6. Technique: We get better and better at lying, polishing it into a fine art.
7. Duty turns upside down: this is the nadir and final conclusion of lying: lying is required, a duty, and truth is the evil to be damned, excoriated, lampooned, ridiculed.
   

The West has reached the nadir in many particulars, and now it is our bounden duty to promote artificial contraception, support easy divorce, support abortion rights, and support homosexual marriage. All of these just two generations ago would have been perceived as abhorrent evils, as evidences of a dissipated, unvirtuous people. Modernly, these are the enlightened positions, "human" rights, and to advocate the contrary is positively evil: an imposing of one's backward notions upon progress and enlightenment, a suppression of the the legitimate aspirations of people, an effort of the rule of clerics. The world has become topsy turvy. White has become black. Light has become dark, and dark has become light.

This is where we are, and this is who we are becoming. The problem is not just in our politicians, for they came from us and we elected them. It is not just in the shock troop of evil, for we have made room in the big tent for them.

Budziszewski (2003), 197.

We turned away, and when we returned our glance, we learned that we all have become gnostics. The world groaned, and we all became gnostic. And we have bought a "truth" which is falsehood, which is no longer Truth. And we in fact despair at knowing the Truth: about God and about man.

Do we dare at last yield ourselves to Truth, to be scraped, scoured, and made honest until we can give back His Light?

Budziszewski (2003), 197.

That is a very good question, Dr. Budziszewski.
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*The Budziszewskian notion of the five "Furies" has been addressed in prior postings. Search the blog under the term "Furiae" to access these prior postings.
**See Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Ball (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 304-320, and Colson, "Gay 'Marriage' and Fidelity," http://www.christianpost.com/news/gay-marriage-and-fidelity-52196/

Relatio Publici de Nefas Moralis: Haeresis et Quasiconscientia

IN A WAY, MAN LIES TO HIMSELF if he thinks that he is completely autonomous, and can create new moralities. Man cannot "create" the moral law. At best, he can corrupt it by ignoring certain of its precepts, by misconstruing them, by overemphasizing them. In short, every kind of morality is derived from the authentic morality. Every morality that is not the natural moral law is a heresy of the natural law.*

There is no vast array of possible moralities. Natural law is not the one true star in a galaxy of false ones; it is the only star. There is only one possible source of value judgments, one possible well from which moral duties can be drawn, one tree from which they can be plucked. The so-called new moralities do not pluck from different trees. They pluck from the same tree, but selectively. . . . The foundational principles of right and wrong can neither be created nor destroyed by man; therefore, the only way to defeat the natural law is to make it cannibalize itself. Put another way, there are no new moralities, but only new perversions of the old one. This insight is crucial for understanding how the so-called new moralities are able to make us believe them. Moral error is a parasite on morality, and sucks all its plausibility from its host.

Budziszewski (2003), 186-87. Whatever public or private morality or system of morality is advance--Communism, Nazism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Relativism, etc.--the strategy is always "to select one moral precept, exaggerate its scope and importance, and use it as a club to beat down others." In short, it is a heresy, a blend of truth and error mixed. In the past, we suffered Christological and Trinitarian heresies. Currently, we suffer from Moral heresies.

In Budziszewski's analysis, moral heretics undertake their "black magic" or "spells" against the moral law by two means: imposture and unraveling.

St. Augustine Refuting a Heretic
From 13th Century Manuscript

Imposture takes a moral principle, perverts it, and then replaces the original principle with the perverted (or impostor) principle. For example, the advocates of homosexual "marriage" take the notion of fidelity between a man and a woman (an essential principle of marriage), extricate it from the fact that its context is precisely between a man and a woman, and then pervert it to apply to fidelity between a man and a man or a woman and a woman, and that therefore the latter are marriages also. The fidelity advocated here is an impostor.

The other method is unraveling. This is defined by Budziszewski as "the perversion of one moral principle against another." Homosexual "marriage" also gives us an example of this. In this instance, the principle of "fairness" is perverted and used to attack the principle of marital purity, chastity, and conjugal relations. "Fairness" is perverted to mean the principle of treating people differently, but this is a perversion of "fairness." Fairness is in fact the principle of not treating people differently arbitrarily. There is nothing wrong, in fact there is everything right, in treating people in different circumstances differently. Thus a man who has worked 40 hours is entitled to pay from his employer, whereas the man who has refused to work is entitled to no pay from his employer. This is fair because there is a reasonable, non-arbitrary reason for treating the employees dissimilarly. In fact, it would be unfair to treat them the same. It is not unfair to treat the sterile relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman differently from the relationship between a man and a woman in permanent marriage. There is no arbitrarily-imposed distinction, but a clear, apparent, and natural reason for treating the relationships differently.

Obviously, in confronting the advocates of false morality, we have to be sensitive in perceiving the legitimate principle they are taking and perverting and how they are using the perverted principle illegitimately.

In addition to the heretical methodologies used by opponents to the natural law, we might also consider the seduction of what Budziszewski calls "paraconscience,"** which as far as I can tell is a neologism, but a very valuable one. Paraconscience should be distinguished from (deep) conscience proper and the "belt of conscience."*** Paraconscience is the handmaid of conscience proper, and consists of "desires and emotions," and includes such emotions such as the desire for the good, outrage, indignation, the feelings of a desire for justice or disdain for injustice, pity, compassion, the desire to render aid, modesty, shame, avoidance of the unseemly or indecent. Paraconscience is, to a certain degree, a second nature. It is one that is subject to training, to education, to formation (unlike deep conscience, which is unalterable). Virtue is what binds the paraconscience to the conscience, so that if one is virtuous, the paraconscience (those desires, emotions, etc.) support the conscience. Vice is what opposes the paraconscience to the conscience. Enemies of the natural law have wreaked havoc in the area of virtue or paraconscience, and what counted once as vice is hailed as virtue, so that the desires and emotions we are often inculcated with now act against conscience.

In our day, the seduction and redirection of the emotions and desires has achieved its greatest success with the feeling of compassion. In compassion we feel with the sufferer, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. One way relieves his suffering, the other relieves what I suffer for him; one gives him what he needs, the other merely gives him what he wants--or just puts him out of sight. . . . False compassion is a great deal less work than true. . . . False compassion has other advantages too. It sits easier with unrepented sins . . . [i]t certainly requires less moral reflection . . . . [and is] especially useful for corrupting the minds of the very young.

Budziszewski (2003),189-90.

Though compassion seems to be that part of the paraconscience that is the choice of modern liberalism and relativism, this does not mean that the other desires and emotions cannot be seduced. "It makes no difference how noble a particular desire or passion may seem to be; the noble it is in itself, the baser it will be if corrupted." The advocate of abortion--who has clear emotions that there is an injustice to the woman if such a "right" is restricted--has had her paraconscience as it relates to justice seduced. The homosexual who feels himself aggrieved by the fact that marriage laws allow marriage only between a man and a woman has had his paraconscience seduced. The manager of a Planned Parenthood or a High School nurse, who believes that children ought to be given contraceptives as a matter of public health and policy, has had his or her paraconscience seduced. One could go on and on, as in the modern world, virtue and vice have, to a large degree flipped places, and the paraconscience, for a whole host of reasons to complex to go into here, is all askew.

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*The word heresy comes to us from the Greek word hairesis (αἵρεσις). Its roots suggest the notion of faction or choice, and suggest that followers have chosen one truth over another, or emphasized one truth over another, or chosen not to believe one truth so as to believe a falsehood.
**Since the word conscience is Latin in origin, it may be more appropriate to call this notion quasiconscience, or perhaps pseudosynderesis or parasynderesis. Or perhaps that's just being pendantic.
***See the prior posting on this in De Testimonio Quatuor Testibus: Conscientia Profunda.

Laborem Solis Sive Eclipsis Moralis: Affectiones, Nihil Plus Quam Affectiones

“FEELINGS,NOTHING MORE than feelings," goes the song by Morris Albert, and similarly does modern society sing. It is modern society's cult of feelings--feelings over reason--what Budziszewski calls the "bondage to the emotions," that is the "last great reason for the eclipse of the natural law." (The others identified by Budziszewski in his fine book What We Can't Not Know, the reader may recall were treated in prior postings: the atrophy of tradition, the cult of the expert, the return of the sophist, the infantile regression of public reflection, the disabling of shock and shame, the prolongation of adolescence). As examples of the modern cult of feelings, Budziszewski invokes such characters as the poet John Keats and the fictional Ben (Obi-Wan Kenobi) of Star Wars Fame :

O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

"Luke! Trust your feelings!"*

Modernity finds itself in thrall to feelings, and this enslavement to emotion comes to us from every direction, and from a variety of different sources. It is as if feelings is trying to vanquish reason and battles it from what Budziszewski sees as seven fronts: (1) Romanticism, (2) Transgressivism, (3) Determinism, (4) the Cult of Pleasant Feelings, (5) Aestheticism, (6) Spiritualism, and (7) Moralism. Each of these varieties has one consistent dogma: the adoration of emotion over and against reason.

The Moral Life is More Than Feelings
The Aristotelian "Happiness" is more than a "Happy Face"

The first varietal of feelings cult is Romanticism. Romanticism, of course, was a broad reaction against the over-emphasis of reason of the Enlightenment and the rationalization of the world in the Industrial Revolution. It is a movement with which one can emphasize. The cold, calculating, steely reason of the Enlightenment thinkers--Kant's Blossen Vernunft ("Reason alone") and Reinen Vernunft ("Pure Reason")--leaves one rather wanting. But like most things, the evil lies in the extremes, and not in the means. We ought to find that golden mean so that we live within the boundaries of Reason and Emotions, not Emotions alone or Reason alone. The error of the Romanticists was to overemphasize Emotion at the expense of Reason. The error of the Enlightenment thinkers was to overemphasize Reason at the expense of Emotion. Indeed, so extreme was the Romantic reaction, that one of its more extreme advocates Percy Bysshe Shelley would lionize madness as a virtue, would make poets legislators of the world, so that law would be based upon the sheer arbitrariness of emotional whim. In his famous essay, "A Defence of Poetry," Shelley distinguishes between Reason and emotional Imagination:

Reason is the enumeration of qualities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those qualities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance. Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of the imagination”: and poetry is connate with the origin of man.

But to place Reason and Emotion in separate, discrete compartments, and to overemphasize one at the expense of the other is quite poisonous to the moral quest which is a combination of human reasonable inclinations and the inclinations of reason.

It is a quality of feelings that their cult forebodes dissipation. Feelings are jealous gods, and, if they are worshipped, like all idolatry, they lead us invariably the futile thinking and the darkened and foolish hearts which St. Paul referred to in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. So from simple Romanticism, man steps off into the "cult of forbidden feelings" or Transgressivism. There will be an "inversion of values," and it is "where all romantics will arrive if they follow the romantic path to the end." Budziszewski (2003), 177. Transgressivism is Romanticism on steroids, and it entraps one not unlike hashish traps the smokers in their dark, dreary opium dens, prisons of their own making. So weird, unnatural preoccupation with death, with darkness, with sexual perversions of all sorts. Black lipstick, black leather, chains, piercings, witchcraft and seances, where foul is fair and fair foul.

Another variety of the feelings cult comes from Determinism. Here, feeling are not only the source of decision-making, but feelings are irresistible. It is the view that we are "merely catspaws of genes, or hormones, or neural circuitry, and declare in an unintended parody of Martin Luther, 'So I feel; I can do no other.'" Budziszewski (2003), 178. We hear this determinism all the time implied in the words we hear ad nauseum: "I can't help how I feel," and "I feel I have no choice." In Sixwire's song, "I Can't Help How I Feel," we have the perfect popular example of the determinism of feelings:

I can't help how I feel
It's out of my hands
This time it's for real
. . .
I can't help how I feel
Just like you can't help how you don't.

It is apparent that if feelings are the basis for moral discussion, then there will never be any discussion, because feelings are entirely subjective, and do not provide any common, much less transcendent norm which would provide common ground for reason's purchase.

Not all feelings are dark, such as those sought by Transgressivism or those justified by Determinism. Some seem innocuous, even benign. But this is just apparent. Budziszewski identifies this variety as the "cult of pleasant feelings." It is a modern atavism of hedonism. In some ways, this cult is perhaps the most insidious. One would think that emphasizing "good feelings" is an unquestionable good. But as Budziszewski warns, the "morality of pleasant feelings" is not a safe moral code. There are many goods that are obtained only by going through the valley of bad feelings: that is what is at the heart of the entirety of virtue that relates to the irascible: fortitude or courage. The "morality of pleasant feelings" ignores that virtue relating to the concupiscible appetite: temperance. After all, temperance is a limitation on "good feelings." The "cult of good feelings" results in us being cowardly and dissipated.

To overcome the errors apparent in the hedonistic "cult of good feelings," some would try to refine the dross. We have those like the utilitarian J. S. Mill, who distinguishes between the pleasure of a pig wallowing in the mud versus the pleasure of Socrates's pursuit of the truth. "It is," Mill famously said, "better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." "And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion," J. S. Mill continues, "it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides." And it is these latter words that bear the ominous implication: who is the "other party . . . who knows both sides"? What happens if that person is Peter Singer (who justifies infanticide on the grounds that the "feelings" of the infant is not to be given much, if any, value: the infant's feelings are those of a pig) or a Hannibal Lecter (who justifies his moral enormities on the ground that his feelings are refined relative to those of his victims)? It does not take a rocket science to answer those questions.

Feelings are ubiquitous, and we find them leaving the world of sense and aspiring to metaphysical, even spiritual status. But here the error is grosser than the other varieties. To equate spiritual truths with emotional states is a disaster to both reason and faith. It is a short haul from emphasizing religious feelings to the altar of worshiping the feelings themselves which is nothing less that a worship of self.

One form is the naive exaltation of religious feelings as the voice of God--but [from] exalting religious feelings, to exalting feelings a religious, is a shorter step than we realize. . . . [to] [w]hatever you feel, that is holy, because you are God, and God lives in what He feels."

Budzidzwewski (2003), 179-80. It is, of course, hard to argue morality with a man who thinks he or his feelings is God.

Another variety of feelings that is equally insidious is what Budziszewski calls the "cult of moral feelings, or moralism." Budziszewski (2003), 180. "Head and shoulders," this cult is "above the other feeling cults, yet it too is fatally flawed." It uses feelings are a cover for reason (as Budziszewski suggests James Q. Wilson does) in which case it is nothing less than confusing. Or, worse, it seeks to build an entire construct of ethics on the most fickle foundation imaginable. As George Allen Pegram puts it well enough:

[M]oral feelings are fluctuating, as well as are other kinds of feelings. One day it would be one thing, and the next day it would be something else. Emotions are moved, and moved more or less by environment. Then if moral action were based upon feelings only, that would put the moving and molding influence and the springs of moral action over and around us, instead of within us. And so in that case, we would be entirely at the mercy of our environment. Furthermore, under the influence of the world and the devil, the major portion of our impulses would be very liable to be on the wrong side of moral questions. It takes something more than fitful fickle feelings to direct and sustain the moral conduct of mankind.**

Morality, it would seem, ought to be based on something more than emoticons.

Budziszewski concludes:

Our emotions give charm and energy to our lives, andeven the inconvenient ones give information. The problem is that their char is not self-evaluating, and their information is not self-interpreting. Virtue certainly includes feeling the right desires and emotions, but at the right times, toward the right people, and for the right reasons. . . . We should not be like the Stoics, sad men who took counsel with each other to rid their souls of feelings. But neither should we bow to our feelings as masters.

Budziszewski (2003), 181.

In short: neither Reason alone or Emotion alone, but Emotion within the bounds of Reason and Reason buttressed by Emotion. We don't want to be thinking, unfeeling moral cads. Nor do we want to be unthinking, feeling moral cads. Nor, lastly, do we want to be unthinking, unfeeling moral cads. We want to be thinking and feeling, and feeling and thinking, which means we don't want to be moral cads at all.

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*The quotation of John Keats comes from a letter to Benjamin Bailey dated November 22, 1817. "I am more zealous in this affair because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning - and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections? However it may be, O for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts!"
**George Allen Pegram, The Moral Adjustments of a Christian Life (Mount Morris: Kable Brothers, 1915), 110.

Laborem Solis Sive Eclipsis Moralis: Adolescentia in Perpetuum

IT IS NOT GOOD FOR MAN TO BE ALONE says the Book of Genesis (2:18), and yet it seems that there is a tendency modernly to increase the time between the biological readiness to begin a family (post-puberty) and the readiness to want to assume those responsibilities (marriage). Budziszewski calls this the "prolongation of adolescence," which seems to be the most common term given to this phenomenon. Professor Jeffrey Jensen Arnett (Clark University) has called it "emerging adulthood." Some time ago, Arthur Goldberg even fashioned a neologism for the study of this phenomenon: Juvenatrics (although the neologism never caught on). Equally infelicitous is the phrase "adultescence." Darrin Patrick called the male between the "boy" and the "man" a "ban," and following that reasoning we might come call the female between a "girl" and a "woman" a "goman" or "giman." It is a phenomenon that was lampooned in the movie Failure to Launch.

In traditional societies, adolescence is relatively short, whereas in contemporary civilized that time seems to be expanding. It appears to be the result of two interacting phenomena: the earlier onset of puberty and the later onset of marriage and the shouldering of its responsibilities, including the procreation of children. More boys live in their parents' basement, playing video games and engaging in other less fruitful endeavors.

The problem is measurable, and the statistics do not lie. In 2010, using data from the U. S. Current Population Survey, Vanessa Wight of Columbia University showed that in 1970, the median age for a first marriage was 20.8 for women and 23.2 for men, but that it has increased to 25.9 for women and 28.1 for men.* All told, in just forty years there has been an approximate 5-year prolongation of adolescence.

One would not think that this prolongation of adolescence would raise moral issues, but, according to Budziszewski it does:

The unnatural prolongation of adolescence poses a variety of moral problems. Normal erotic desire is transmuted from a spur to marriage to an incentive for promiscuity. Promiscuity thwarts the attainment of moral wisdom, and makes conjugal love itself seem unattractive. Furthermore, prolonged irresponsibility is itself a sort of training, and a bad one. Before long the entire culture is caught up in a Peter Pan syndrome, terrified of leaving childhood. At this point even the responsibilities of marriage and family lose their transformative character.

Budziszewski (2003), 176. It is this problem that was humorously handled in the movie Knocked Up.

But while we can identify the problem and make movies about the phenomenon, we cannot seem to fix the problem. We seem to be raising children who avoid marriage, avoid responsibility, delay effective contribution to society, and contribute to moral decay be continuing to insist on sex outside of marriage without any ties to the conjugal life and without any connection to the procreation of children.

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*Cited in Pundit and Pundette, "Adulthood Undermined," http://www.punditandpundette.com/2011/07/adulthood-undermined.html.

Laborem Solis Sive Eclipsis Moralis: Vae Qui Dicitis Malum Bonum et Bonum Malum

MORAL DESENSITIZATION is a real phenomenon, and it is prevalent in Western societies. Things that would have shocked those before us, would have been the source of shame, or at least have had some sort of negative moral stigma attached to them--cohabitation, single mothers, divorce, birth control, homosexuality, pornography--are taken to be simply part of the normal features of modern life. It is a natural part of adaptation to one's moral environment. (The adaptation, of course, goes either way. In Muslim societies where the strictures of Shari'a have been imposed, the population adapts, at least in great measure, to its burdens.) Budziszewski compares the normal adaptation response in the physical world, and finds that it has its counterpart in the moral world, in the intellectual world where mental deliberation takes place. We develop moral callouses, as it were, when we repeatedly handle immoral things and adapt our ways of living to repeated insults:

You see what has happened. We were touched by abomination, and we flinched. But nothing happened. We were touched again. Again nothing happened. By the five-hundredth touch, we stopped flinching.

But something did happen. We became the sort of people who endure the abominable touch.

Budziszewski (2003), 173. Moral enormities that would not have been tolerated are tolerated. Then, they are not only tolerated, but promoted. It is inconceivable that books such as Heather has Two Mommies, Jennifer has Two Daddies, or Daddy's Roommate would have been tolerated, placed in libraries, or read to children. Songs such as Eminem's "Kim" which, in the most vulgar lyrics, glorifies the murder of one's wife and putting her in the trunk of a car, or the German thrash-band Sodom "Incest" would have not have been tolerated, much less marketed, promoted, and merchandised. It cannot be argued that these sorts of things do not affect us as a people.

What's Happened?

No, Budziszewski is right: Something's happened. "We became the sort of people who endure the abominable touch." We have become reprobates. People who endure the abominable touch are going to be desensitized to the natural moral law which witnesses against such abominations. Their rough calloused heart will suppress the law of God in their hearts.

St. Paul spoke of this phenomenon long ago to a pagan world that, similarly to hours, had "endured the abominable touch," and thus inured their inner ear against the voice the law of God in the hearts.

For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.

(Rom. 1:23 ff.)

The reprobates and their bombast rule, and they issue morals founded on a false coin, a coin of reprobate silver, and we trade in a moral specie stamped from lead. (cf. Jer. 6:30). And what seems true in economics has its analogy in the moral realm. For Gresham's law appears operative in both worlds: bad money drives out good money, and so does reprobate morality drive out the good. That this is the case was perceived as early as in Aristophanes (ca. 446 – ca. 386 B.C.), who in his play, "The Frogs" observed:

You know what I often think:
We treat our best men
The way we treat our mint
The silver and the golden
We were proud to invent
These unalloyed
Genuine coins, no less,
Ringing true and tested
Both abroad and [in] Greece
And now they're not employed
As if we were disgusted
And want to use instead
These shoddy coppers minted
Only yesterday
Or the day before
(as if that matters).

Aristophanes: The Complete Plays, trans. Paul Roche, (New American Library: 2005), 573.

Laborem Solis sive Eclipsis Moralis: Stultificationis

AMERICA, ALAS, HAS BEEN DUMBED DOWN. It is certainly not that our people lack the natural capacity, but as a result of certain factors--educational, social, familial, cultural--there has been a dissipation of intellectual capital. Some of it is the effect of technology. Like anything in this world, there are advantages and disadvantages to technology. The television is a marvel: but it has lead to commercialization, to soundbites, to "montages of half-second images, too short for reflective intelligence." Electronic games have gotten extremely sophisticated--the development from "Pong" to the latest electronic Nintendo game is mind boggling. But every hour spent on these shallow entertainment media is an hour away from learning a musical instrument, reading Shakespeare, the Bible, learning another language (perhaps Hebrew, Greek, or Latin?). Our means of communication have blossomed, but has the quality of our communication increased? Email, texting, twittering tend to dumb down expression into bytes, not sentences and paragraphs. Political discussions become soundbytes, 30-second commercials ending with "I approve this message," and are not well-thought out, well-crafted arguments such as those found in the Federalist Papers or the Anti-Federalist Papers. How many of our students know (negatively) even two of the common logical fallacies, or (positively) the Aristotelian rules of syllogism?

We, of course, could go on and on with our plaint against the state of modern culture and education. But however long we complain about the situation, it remains the reality of the times that we live in a "post-literate" society. This presents a problem in regard to educating people on the natural moral law because the natural moral law--being based upon reason--relies on reason's tools. While much of the natural moral law is sort of built in, and so we find it in primitive man, it is in primitive form when in primitive man. The natural moral law thrives in cultures of civilization much more readily that cultures that are primitive. And our culture, despite its technological sophistication, is, from the standpoint of depth, quite poor, nearing barbarism.

Post-literate societies like ours are the ones that present the problem. One must do either a lot of reading or a lot of listening to participate in traditions of reflection, and in either case, a lot of remembering. The people of our time do none of these things. Instead we look at sparkling pictures that appear for a moment, then vanish.

Budziszewski (2003), 170.

The dumbing down occurs not only in our words, and in our speech, but in our pictures, and even in our religious imagery. Budziszewski refers to this as "visual illiteracy." Compare the depth of the intricate symbolism and message behind St. Benedict's Medal with the banal, shallow WWJD.*

[I]t is as though a great fire had consumed all our books and memories, except that it is more like a great smoke which fills our houses and dulls our minds and makes it difficult to complete any thoughts. . . . [B]ut [w]e are put together in such a way that although we can be pushed and pulled and drowsied by flickering images, we cannot be satisfied by them; we know too much even in oblivion. Fallow knowledge troubles our sleep. We lie under the prickling enchantment of the image carved into our hearts, which is stronger than the counterspell and can never be quite scratched out.

Budziszewski (2003), 171-72.

The dumbing down of America presents a significant hurdle in educating people about the natural moral law, especially in its more remote determinations.

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*The medal of St. Benedict has two sides. The face shows an image of St. Benedict holding a cross in his right hand, a book (Benedict's "Rule for Monasteries," whose first words exhort the monk to "walk in God's ways, with the Gospel as our guide"). In the background, to the right of the Saint is a broken chalice, a reference to the story of the poisoned cup that shattered when St. Benedict made the sign of the cross over it. To his left is a depiction of a raven which is in the process of taking away some bread, a reference to the story of a raven who saved Benedict from an enemy that had sent him poisoned bread. What are these meant to convey, but that we ought to be wary of things that seem holy, inasmuch as they may have hidden poison behind them. Above these images one finds the words, "Crux s. patris Benedicti (Cross of our Father, St. Benedict) a reference to the cross on the back of the medal. The Latin words encircling the image of the Saint read: Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur (May we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death). On the reverse of medal is a cross. It has the letters CSSML on the vertical arm, which mean Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux (Holy Cross Be My Light). On the horizontal arm are the letters NDSMD, which stand for Nunquam Draco Sit Mihi Dux (May the Dragon [the Devil] Never be my Guide). In the background in circles are the letters CSPB which stand for Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti (The Cross of our Holy Father Benedict). Encircling the cross are the words PAX (Peace), and the letters VRSNSMVSMQLIVB, which stand for Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas! (Begone Satan! Never tempt me with your vanities! What you offer me is evil. Drink the poison yourself).

The example of how such symbolism dumbs us down is how Representative Rangel thought it a valuable addition to the budget discussions to ask the question, "What would Jesus do?" Obviously, adding such an intractable question, "What would Jesus do?" to the already intractable question "How do we resolve the budget crisis?" is unhelpful, to say the least, and false piety, absurdity, and hypocrisy, to say the most. Budziszewski calls this the "infantile regression of public reflection." Budziszewski (2003), 169.

Laborem Solis sive Eclipsis Moralis: Reditum Sophista

THE SOPHIST DELIGHTED IN MAKING black white and white black, in making the better cause the worse or the worse cause the better. In fine, the sophist was indifferent to truth, and exhibited all the flexibility of a man without a standard. His words were for hire; they had become verbal prostitutes, to be used and then dispensed with after they were soiled. And if his words were prostitutes, his brain was a brothel. There was no tie, no marriage, between words and truth. Indeed, for the sophist all morality, all law, all truth was a matter of convention (just like words were), and as flexible and as malleable as soft clay on a potter's wheel. Using the supple rhetorical art of the sophist, words and hence truth could be molded to mean anything that they were wanted to be. "Language is not an instrument for finding truth," in the sophist toolkit, "but for changing it." Budziszewski (2003), 167.

Modernly, sophistry is alive and well, though it is found using different (more sophisticated!) monikers: "postmodernism," "epistemological relativism," "antifoundationalism" and the like.* But sophistry's name is Legion, and it blossoms, like fields of poppies, in multiple colors other than classic red. Whatever their shade, all sophistries tend to lull the mind to sleep not unlike Dorothy was lulled to sleep in Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz. "Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever." Under the spell of this soporific, we operate in an irrational torpor, on our way to intellectual sleep.

The infection is endemic: it is found among the populace, informed largely by advertising jingles, talking media heads, and pop music and rap songs. But it is also found in the marble halls of the Supreme Court, bouncing within the heads of some of the wizened or wizening--though not for all that wise or wisening--black robed justices. The infamous "sweet-mystery-of-life" language of Justice Kennedy is classic sophistry, and apparently there are some justices who view the Constitution as an instrument of a sophisticated stripe:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and the mystery of human life.

What? That squishy language is found in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, written by Justice Kennedy. So the sweet liberty to define the "mystery of human life" allows us to define that mystery to exclude those in the human womb, or (later when the language was cited to in Lawrence v. State of Texas) to engage in intrinsically sterile homosexual sex? This is pure sophistry. To be sure, it is shallow, banal, clownish, sophomoric sophistry, but it is sophistry just the same. Did it ever occur to Justice Kennedy that liberty is given us not to define one's truth and one's good, but to discover the truth and good, and live in the truth and to do that good? Apparently not. Too much sophist lint; not enough philosophical brains; and certainly no Gospel salt there to keep the little Justice's brain there is from spoiling, regardless of its raw talent.

"Abuse of words," John Adams observed, "has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society." The abuse of words comes back to haunt their abuser. They are like a fickle woman, a woman who spurns the man who once caressed her, for she enjoys the caressing, but not fidelity, not love. She leaves his mouth a lover, and returns a termagant. Sophistry, the poet tells us, is "nature's lay idiot."

Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, oh, thou dost prove
Too subtle: Fool, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air
Of sighs, and say, this lies, this sounds despair . . . .

John Donne, "Elegy VII"

Liberty, like love, is not the realm of sophistry; and it is a tragedy of liberty as it is of love not to understand the "mystic language of the eye nor hand." There is a huge and yawning difference between the hand of the law that--in the name of liberty--protects innocent life, and the hand of a law that--in the name of liberty--wields the murderous instruments of dilation and curetage. One protects innocent blood, the other allows it to be shed. These liberties are opposites: strangers, not kinsmen. Only one of them is loyal.

"I would define liberty," John Adams further said (are you listening Mr. Justice Kennedy?), "to be a power to do as we would be done by."** In John Adams's unsophisticated view, liberty is the ability to live the Golden Rule, which, of course would usually be interpreted to mean the power to live in accordance with the natural moral law. This further means that we should not slaughter innocents since we (being innocent) would not want to be slaughtered.

The problem of sophistry is, by and large, fueled by the academic world. Academia is the stronghold of the sophist. "[I]f the modern university is not theoretically Sophist, it is operationally Sophist, and the extremists hold the high ground." Budziszewski (2003), 169. Certainly, the philosophy of natural law has been replaced wholesale, and the academic world seems to teem with relativists, nihilists, consequentialists, utilitarians, feminists, and "ists" of every kin, kith, and kind. Budziszewski should know. He rubs shoulders with the Sophists, but, to his credit (and God's grace), he is also head and shoulders above them. He left the cave of sophistry into the light of day of the natural law. Let us make sure we follow.

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*Budziszewski defines these terms: "Postmodernism is 'suspicion of metanarratives . . . A metanarrative is a Big Story that tries to make sense of how it really is. Suspicion of metanarratives, then, means thinking no one ever gets the Big Story right." "Epistemological relativism is the view that truth is relative to one's point of view. In other words, there is no Truth with a capital T, but only your truth . . . and my truth." "Antifoundationalism is the view that there are no first principles. Everything goes around in circles." Budziszewski (2003), 167. These all share the aspect of sophism that all is conventional or relative, and there is no absolute right and wrong or absolute truth falsehood.
**Letter to J. H.Tiffany (March31,1819), The Works of John Adams (Boston: Little & Brown,1856), Vol. 10, p. 377.