Pell and Caesar
December 16th 2007 02:54
Those who found David Marr’s book, The High Price of Heaven, a convincing explanation of the way in which politics and religion interact within the Australian polity will no doubt be feeling more than a frisson of revolutionary joy at the demise of the Howard Government. The defeat of the very incarnation of those “enemies of freedom and pleasure” will have cheered them. It remains to be seen whether or not such optimism (or pessimism depending on your point of view) is really justified. Even though in the absence of Kevin we see the manifestation of to blegma tes eremeseos, it should not console (or frighten) us too much. I find it of more than passing interest that none of the real eminences gris of the Australian right appear in Marr’s book. Nor do the actual mechanisms of political control. Did he simply not know about them or is he part of the conspiracy, too? Spooky thought!
Cardinal Pell’s God and Caesar book seems to have slipped beneath the waves without a trace. No doubt it will appear in neo-con Christmas stockings all over Christendom, but that’s it, I suspect. We shall all be able to find it in second hand bookshops soon. Note the publisher, too: Connor Court not Freedom Press. Ah! The narcissism of small differences! Ironic that one of Dr Freud’s memorable phrases is Catholicism’s universal operating principle, especially on the Right. To understand that is to understand everything.
It has long been understood that the Cardinal’s views on conscience, while not being unorthodox, are well outside the mainstream. It is important to realize that this is no Clochemerle debate with little relevance outside clerical cloisters – although I’ve gotta say that the attempt to delate Pell to the Holy Office on a charge of heresy was comical in the extreme. It gave me a whole week of good, honest belly laughs. Pell’s gruff, shoot-from-the-hip style has not endeared him to some, even his natural allies. It has not done the reception of his opinions any favours, either. The Medium is the Message. It’s helpful to have his measured explanation of his own views, in his own words (or at least words he has taken responsibility for). Pell espouses a low theology of conscience. It is important because it is of critical importance in understanding his ideas about how the Church and Civil society ought to interact – and while he is Cardinal, whatever the studied fatuities of the Episcopal conference, how they actually will.
The most accessible explanation of the traditional view of conscience is written by John Henry Cardinal Newman. His Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (see the post below, or look up the letter on the web) was designed to allay the suspicions of secular, protestant Great Britain that the declaration of Vatican I on papal infallibility would bind Catholic consciences on political matters. Newman was at pains to underline the primacy of even an erring conscience in these matters, even against the authority of the Church. I think Pell is wrong in trying to claim Newman for his camp. Try as I might, I can’t square the two. He is right in pointing out that Newman’s letter has become a mine for “proof texts” and that Pell’s opponents have little claim on the great Victorian theologian.
The strength of Pell’s view lies in his thorough critique of what passes for ethical discourse in Australia at the moment. The plea for the primacy of conscience often translates into a rhetoric of personal authority to do, believe and say whatever you happen to want to at the moment regardless of tradition or consequences, regardless of its implications for Church membership – the deification of individual whim. Pell is right to say that Newman did not believe that and that no Christian ever has ever thought that this was what conscience meant.
The problem with the Pell line on conscience is that it goes soft on natural law – and these are closely interwoven concepts. He thinks that prelates ought to be free to use the argument from authority in the public forum without having to use a natural law argument. He quotes Professor Tracey Rowland's thought on culture to this end. Rowland closely follows the Cambridge school of post-modern, radical orthodoxy. Its best representative is Catherine Pickstock, whose book, After Writing, has to be considered a seminal, if deeply inaccessible, work. A more accessible representative of that general tendency is the prolific Fr Aidan Nichols OP, the title of whose work on culture, Christendom Awake!, perhaps says it all.
The Church has lost many political campaigns because of a failure to understand that dialogue with the political world must be one of education. This has been best shown in recent times by the slick, not to say effective, Euthanasia No campaign. Rather than theological fulminations or old-fashioned backroom toe cutting (not much anyway), reasoned argument and a belief in the reality of native conscience was able to stir even in the most hardened heart, the belief that the State may never give consent to the taking of an innocent human life. Giving away conscience and natural law argumentation is to give away the Church’s own ground and to lose the battle without ever having fought it.
The greatest temptation for the Church is to withdraw behind the battlements and to hold military maneuvers with the blare of trumpets and the waving of banners, without ever having to engage its external enemies - finding more and more internal enemies to expel from a Church growing day by day, less and less.
Cardinal Pell’s God and Caesar book seems to have slipped beneath the waves without a trace. No doubt it will appear in neo-con Christmas stockings all over Christendom, but that’s it, I suspect. We shall all be able to find it in second hand bookshops soon. Note the publisher, too: Connor Court not Freedom Press. Ah! The narcissism of small differences! Ironic that one of Dr Freud’s memorable phrases is Catholicism’s universal operating principle, especially on the Right. To understand that is to understand everything.
It has long been understood that the Cardinal’s views on conscience, while not being unorthodox, are well outside the mainstream. It is important to realize that this is no Clochemerle debate with little relevance outside clerical cloisters – although I’ve gotta say that the attempt to delate Pell to the Holy Office on a charge of heresy was comical in the extreme. It gave me a whole week of good, honest belly laughs. Pell’s gruff, shoot-from-the-hip style has not endeared him to some, even his natural allies. It has not done the reception of his opinions any favours, either. The Medium is the Message. It’s helpful to have his measured explanation of his own views, in his own words (or at least words he has taken responsibility for). Pell espouses a low theology of conscience. It is important because it is of critical importance in understanding his ideas about how the Church and Civil society ought to interact – and while he is Cardinal, whatever the studied fatuities of the Episcopal conference, how they actually will.
The most accessible explanation of the traditional view of conscience is written by John Henry Cardinal Newman. His Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (see the post below, or look up the letter on the web) was designed to allay the suspicions of secular, protestant Great Britain that the declaration of Vatican I on papal infallibility would bind Catholic consciences on political matters. Newman was at pains to underline the primacy of even an erring conscience in these matters, even against the authority of the Church. I think Pell is wrong in trying to claim Newman for his camp. Try as I might, I can’t square the two. He is right in pointing out that Newman’s letter has become a mine for “proof texts” and that Pell’s opponents have little claim on the great Victorian theologian.
The strength of Pell’s view lies in his thorough critique of what passes for ethical discourse in Australia at the moment. The plea for the primacy of conscience often translates into a rhetoric of personal authority to do, believe and say whatever you happen to want to at the moment regardless of tradition or consequences, regardless of its implications for Church membership – the deification of individual whim. Pell is right to say that Newman did not believe that and that no Christian ever has ever thought that this was what conscience meant.
The problem with the Pell line on conscience is that it goes soft on natural law – and these are closely interwoven concepts. He thinks that prelates ought to be free to use the argument from authority in the public forum without having to use a natural law argument. He quotes Professor Tracey Rowland's thought on culture to this end. Rowland closely follows the Cambridge school of post-modern, radical orthodoxy. Its best representative is Catherine Pickstock, whose book, After Writing, has to be considered a seminal, if deeply inaccessible, work. A more accessible representative of that general tendency is the prolific Fr Aidan Nichols OP, the title of whose work on culture, Christendom Awake!, perhaps says it all.
The Church has lost many political campaigns because of a failure to understand that dialogue with the political world must be one of education. This has been best shown in recent times by the slick, not to say effective, Euthanasia No campaign. Rather than theological fulminations or old-fashioned backroom toe cutting (not much anyway), reasoned argument and a belief in the reality of native conscience was able to stir even in the most hardened heart, the belief that the State may never give consent to the taking of an innocent human life. Giving away conscience and natural law argumentation is to give away the Church’s own ground and to lose the battle without ever having fought it.
The greatest temptation for the Church is to withdraw behind the battlements and to hold military maneuvers with the blare of trumpets and the waving of banners, without ever having to engage its external enemies - finding more and more internal enemies to expel from a Church growing day by day, less and less.
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Comment by Frank Brennan
Frank Brennan SJ
Published in the Australian, 11 January 2008
IN the lead-up to last November's federal election, we reached the stage that John Howard was able to declare: "There's no such thing as a Catholic or Anglican view on anything; it depends on individuals." If the prime minister was wrong, when is it appropriate to speak of a Catholic or Anglican view on a moral or political issue?
A majority of Howard's senior cabinet ministers were Anglicans or Catholics. They wore religious affiliation on their sleeves more readily than did the senior ministers of previous Labor governments. And yet they pursued policies on asylum-seekers and the Iraq war contrary to the position adopted by most of their church leaders.
One of the key moral issues during our recent national election campaign that led to the dismissal of Howard was industrial relations.
When Howard committed Australian troops to the coalition of the willing in Iraq, most church leaders were very critical of his decision.
However, he said that he found the views of archbishops Peter Jensen and George Pell, together with the detailed public explanation of the Anglican military bishop Tom Frame, more helpful. Since then, Frame has formally and publicly retracted his support for the Coalition government's position. Neither archbishop has issued a formal retraction, but in interviews they did clarify that they had not unequivocally supported Australia's involvement in the Iraq conflict. Their even-handed statements provided support for Howard, who was attempting to deflect the more unambiguous church criticisms in Australia and from the US, Britain and the Vatican.
Pell and Jensen became the preferred Catholic and Anglican church spokesmen for the Howard government and its supporters. The cherry-picking of bishops became easier for politicians and their supporters given the frequent public disagreements between Jensen and archbishop Peter Carnley when he was primate of the Anglican Church.
Pell and Jensen's standing with government members skyrocketed during the 2004 federal election, when they took the initiative and singled out Labor's education policy for adverse public moral assessment.
Pell and Jensen were joined by their Melbourne colleagues. Others, including Archbishop John Bathersby of Brisbane, were left out of the loop. The government was very happy to run with this timely moral assessment by senior church leaders.
Some in the Howard government may even have thought that Pell and Jensen were sympathetic supporters of the Coalition. Thus the surprise when both these men, and not just the likes of Carnley, publicly expressed some reservations about the government's industrial relations changes.
It was easy for the government to dispatch the new primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, to the sidelines, dismissing him because he was not an expert in industrial relations.
But such a cheap trick could not be played on Pell and Jensen, whose expertise on war and education funding was not an issue for the government when the Coalition was in a corner. When told that Pell and Jensen were "worried about the impact (of the industrial relations changes) on family life", Howard said this was an exaggeration. It was not.
Jensen had said, "This nation and its political leaders must be committed to ensuring optimum working conditions for the nation's workers; a living wage that will mean everyone has the ability to provide for themselves and their families the necessities of life; strong unions that will represent workers; and the preservation of leisure time for families to be together for rest and recreation, and to maintain their relationships."
Pell told The Sydney Morning Herald that he was awaiting the details of the reforms, but expressed the point of principle that "civilised" conditions such as lunch breaks, annual leave, long service leave, superannuation, union access and family time should be preserved.
He was "not sure we should encourage foolish people to barter these things away too quickly".
Jensen and Pell rightly confined themselves to statements of principle, statements consistent with their church traditions and teaching on economic matters. Jensen is a strong evangelical Anglican rightly reputed for basing his public utterances on the scriptures and the tradition of his church. Pell has been a strong supporter of the Catholic social teaching enunciated by pope John Paul II, whose encyclical Laborem Exercens dealt with human labour and the rights of workers.
Howard eventually became so frustrated by church interventions on his new industrial laws that he told parliament, "If we are to have a sensible debate on the merits of this legislation, my advice to every person on this side of the house is: let's leave out of the debate indications by the clergy to either side of the argument."
The government's most publicly Catholic minister, Tony Abbott, became frustrated during the election campaign that largely focused on these new industrial laws.
He observed that "a political argument is not transformed into a moral argument simply because it's delivered with an enormous dollop of sanctimony. I do think that if churchmen spent more time encouraging virtue in people and less time demanding virtue from governments we would have ultimately a better society".
Of course, it is not an either-or proposition. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can always be encouraging virtue in the citizens while also, from time to time, demanding virtue from governments. The combination of virtuous citizens and virtuous government could make for an even more virtuous society.
Though there is always room for disagreement about how the principles are to be applied in practice, it is far too cavalier for governments or their supporters to dismiss church leaders who have restricted themselves to statements of principle.
There may be room to debate how families are best protected in a more globalised economy. But it is not good enough for governments simply to cherry-pick their church leaders and then, when they find even their preferred church leaders expressing concerns based on the religious tradition, to dismiss their remarks on the basis that each individual will decide.
Sure, each individual will make a decision in good conscience about how best to apply the relevant moral principles in the particular situation. But a Catholic or Anglican should receive some guidance from church authorities who confine themselves to expressions of principle true to the religious tradition.
Maybe Howard was concerned about the effect that the archbishops' remarks could have on some senators and members of the public not quite so convinced about the need to take the industrial reform package on trust.
Howard was wrong on two counts.
It was not an exaggeration to claim that the archbishops were worried about the impact on family life. They were and they still are. There is such a thing as a Catholic or Anglican view on the morality of war, the morality of government funding for education, or the morality of industrial relations changes affecting families. While the bishops confine themselves to statements of principle true to their faith traditions, they do express an Anglican or Catholic view.
As for the application of the principles and the assessment of the detail of proposed laws or policy, there is much room for individual judgment made in good conscience.
This is an edited extract from a paper Father Frank Brennan co-delivered at the 49th annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics in Atlanta, Georgia.
Comment by Anonymous
As I am not on speaking terms with Connor Court, I am sure they are sitting with a smile on their faces believing in Santa Claus.
I went to DIRT CHEAP BOOKS and yes, you name it - every politically-correct book was for sale - DIRT CHEAP. Didn't see Pell's book there. I guess it is because it is actually selling.
Finally, I also read a more enlightened piece on the topic GOD AND CAESAR written by Frank Devine in the latest Quadrant. I encourage your readers (if you have any, that is) to read this piece.