Jesus Dies on the Cross

Bl. Teresa of Calcutta was called a fraud and hypocrite by some because instead of using donations to establish big hospitals or fund general health care, she clung to her mission to care for the dying, to bring health to souls, not bodies. She understood the crucial importance of the decisive moments at the end of life, that the transition from life to death is the pivotal point of our existence.

The last mystery of the rosary skips past the nails and the words and gets right to the heart of Christ's life on earth: his death. Unlike us, he chose the precise moment of his death. "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again" (John 10:18). First he said, "It is finished," and then, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." He could commend his spirit to the Father in utter confidence because he had so perfectly understood and lived the will of the Father that he could allow himself to die as soon as he had finished completing it.

For the rest of us, the Father's will for our death is a mystery sometimes unfathomable in its delay or its swiftness, which is why we strive to care for our souls, and, like Bl. Teresa, the souls of others, so that at the moment of death, each person can say with Jesus, "It is finished."

Jesus Carries His Cross

Not only was Jesus forced to carry his own cross, but he had no choice about where to carry it. Every step of his way was determined by guards prodding him and the crowd bounding him. He had no chance to make a break for it. The only place he could go with the cross was Calvary.

Sometimes our path in life has been determined for us, whether through our own choices or the choices of others. Sometimes earlier sins set us on a course from which we can't deviate later, even long after the sin has been repented. Sometimes the sins of other people force our lives into a different mold than we would have chosen. When we bear our heavy cross down a road not of our choosing, Jesus is with us every step of the way, carrying our burden and his own to the inevitable ending of the Cruxifixion -- and the Resurrection.

The Crowning With Thorns

A number of years ago, I said something to someone. I thought I was telling a few home truths, drawing on my great wisdom to set someone straight (thus proving that a little education can be a dangerous thing). Not long ago, this memory bobbed to the surface, and sharp slivers of shame and remorse bit at me. How could I have behaved so cruelly? How could I have been so wantonly unkind? I was so disgusted with myself that I had to confess this ancient sin, but the recollection still pricks.

Jesus never sinned, so he never felt the shame of remembered sin, the bitter bite of stale vice. But with the crown of thorns, he takes on the stabbing pain of our guilt. He knows, physically, the way sin gets into our minds and wounds us even long after the fact. He buries our worst memories in his own head. The soldiers wove his crown of thorns; we weave our own. But Jesus gladly removes our piercing crowns and wears them for our sake.

The Scourging at the Pillar

The Scourging at the Pillar is the hardest of all the mysteries to contemplate directly because it's so viscerally brutal. The sheer cruel bloodiness of it, the immensity of suffering, is almost incomprehensible. I find that I can best meditate on it in its Marian aspect -- standing outside the praetorium with Mary, hearing the sounds of the flogging, unable to do anything but suffer with her as she suffers with Jesus. Everyone has experienced the helplessness of watching a loved one suffer without being able to alleviate any of the pain. The feeling of impotence, of being entirely other and unable to take away or at least share some of the pain, can be almost worse than the original suffering.

Bl. Elisabeth Leseur speaks of the value, and the usefulness of suffering, either physical or spiritual, directly or on account of others:

The stoics used to say, 'Suffering is nothing,' and they were not telling the truth. But, more enlightened, we Christians say, 'Suffering is everything.' Suffering asks for and gets everything; because of suffering God consents to accomplishing all things; suffering helps the gentle Jesus to save the world. At times, when I feel overwhelmed by the immensity of my desires for those I love, by the importance of what I want to obtain for them, I turn toward suffering. I ask suffering to serve as the intermediary between God and them. Suffering is the complete form of prayer, the only infallible form of action.

The pain we feel on contemplating the Scourging is our offering of love to Christ, our way of participating in this mystery with Mary.

The Agony in the Garden

The first sorrowful mystery is the one in which Jesus most clearly manifests his humanity. He know what's coming, and he's just plain scared. There are plenty of times in the Gospels when Jesus prays, but he's always been confident before. This time he does what we do -- he begs God to take this horrible choice away from him. This is waiting, yes, but not passive, dull waiting. He's waiting to be confronted with a moral choice, one in which the right answer is clear. The cup is not just the Passion as we usually think of it -- the grotesque physical suffering, the loneliness of desertion, the mockery and humiliation. The cup is also making the choice that will set the entire Passion in motion, the choice to "allow it for now" (Matt. 3:15).

But Jesus isn't just thinking of himself. The cup is also Judas's betrayal, and Jesus begs the Father to spare him that -- not because of the consequences, but because of the pain of seeing a friend betray him, and because of the effect it will have on Judas himself. Jesus has accepted the necessity of the Passion, but he pleads that it might come about some other way than having one of his trusted friends hand him over. The false kiss stings more than the whips.

Jesus, in the garden, is just like us. He is scared like us. His heart breaks over betrayal and lost friendships, just like ours do. He became like us in all things but sin, and that means being scared to death and sick with grief like us. Jesus isn't remote from our sufferings. He knows. And that makes him the perfect model of fortitude, of strength in weakness. "Power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). That isn't just comforting drivel for us failures. That's Jesus, in the garden, sweating blood from sheer terror, and choosing the cup anyway.

Reading Tale of Two Cities

I'm sorry to be largely absent from these pages of late. Many of the Darwin clan have been sick (and I sit upon the knife's edge, waiting to see if I'll fall into full illness or just keep feeling like I might the next day) and things have been busy at work too.

However, my trips to and from work have been enlivened with a new audiobook: I finally gave up on Ken Follet's Fall of Giants half way through and did what I've never done with an audiobook before -- quit half way through. I'd wanted a good sweeping historical novel, so the replacement I picked up was Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, which I'd never read before. Dickens is such a quintessentially English writer that it had never occurred to me to read his book dealing with France.

I'm a bit more than half way through right now, but one of the things that has been interesting to me (coming at it knowing nothing about the story except for the couple of lines which everyone has heard quoted) is that the novel has such a very English take on the French Revolution. Dickens is, on the one hand, writing about England of eighty years before his own time (it's drinking, its penal system, it's society) with a highly critical eye and at the same time is very clear that he finds English society far better and more balanced than that of France. He goes to great lengths to show what he sees as the wrongs committed both by the aristocrats and by the common people, and how the one feeds the other. Indeed, thus far I'd say that here you get more a sense of how the different levels of society corrupt each other in this novel than in his more contemporary novels in which the social criticism is often more one-sided.

And yet, for all that Dickens arguably has a bigger ideological ax to grind than Follet, he also writes far more interesting characters than Follet does. One wouldn't call Dickens' characterization deep, but it is far, far preferable to anything in Fall of Giants. (Did I mention I didn't like that one?)

Caplan on the Value of College

I've written a bit in the past on the question of whether college is "worth it" in the economic sense -- given the rapidly increasing cost of college balanced against the earnings gap between those with and without college degrees. Bearing also had an interesting series of posts on this topic a while back, which the above post was a response to.

Those interested in the topic may find this recent EconTalk episode interesting (the transcript is pretty good if you'd rather read than listen) in which Russ Roberts interviews fellow economist Bryan Caplan about the value of a college education. Caplan is a proponent of the signaling model of the value of a college degree. According to this model, the economic value assigned to a college degree (the extent to which employers require it or pay more to people who have one) is not primarily a matter of what you learn in college (the skills acquisition model) but rather a matter of signaling that you are the sort of person who can get into college and then stick with it and earn a degree. One of the things that Caplan points out in support of this view is that virtually no value is assigned to having completed most of college (say if you stop one course short of getting your degree) -- which in a skills acquisition model is not necessarily what you'd expect.

Here's a bit of the transcript where Caplan lays out how the signaling theory and the wage gap interact according to his thinking:

Bryan: So, in 2011, college graduates made 83% more than high school graduates. And high school graduates, mainly people who have gone to college not at all.

Russ: How has that amount changed over time?

Bryan: It's gone up quite a bit. So, maybe around 1970 it would have been only about 35 or 40%, so it's something like doubled over the last 40 years, during my lifetime.

Russ: And what are some of the standard explanations for why that's happened? So, why is college more productive for people who attend and have graduated?

Bryan: The usual story is that there has been a lot of psychological change in the economy, globalization as well, and that this has somehow made it more important to be a college graduate. And among most economists, they do tend to focus on the skills that you supposedly receive in school. And so they think of it as: it's more important to have general thinking ability and reasoning skills, as well as different technical skills you might learn in school; and that when the economy is more technologically complex, and also when you are competing in a global market where one person could mess up a big firm, it's more important to have these skills. I'd say that's probably the usual view.

Russ: And what do you think of that view?

Bryan: I think that there is some truth in it, but it's greatly exaggerated and there's a lot of other things that are going on that most people who study education would rather not talk about.

Russ: What are a few of those?

Bryan: Well, one of the main ones, strangely, for economists to ignore is--even though they do--is that people who go to college are not the same even when they start. So, the kind of person who goes to college is different at the beginning. And there are a lot of reasons to think that people who are different in the beginning would have made more money even if they hadn't gone to college. The most obvious one is that people who go to college are generally smarter. It's not popular to say it, but all of the evidence confirms it. And they were smarter before they started. Now, there's also a lot of evidence that--

Russ: We'll get into that later. But why would that have changed over time? This is the reason--this is an incredible change, right? I don't think there is any parallel development in the area of education over any other time period, 30, 40-year time period, a doubling of the returns to education. You are suggesting that--you started by saying that the standard answer, which is, well, the world is more complex, there's all this technology, and so college students are more valuable--you are not convinced of that. I'm not either, by the way. I used to be more sympathetic to that until I started reading you. So, I'm interested: Why would think that would change over time?

Bryan: Right. Well, again, there's an important distinction to make. You need to distinguish between college graduates being more valuable and college itself being more valuable. Those are two different things. So the main problem that I have with the usual view is that I take a look at what people actually study in school, and I see very little evidence that most students are acquiring any technical skills. And also, surprisingly, when I read educational psychology, there is a lot of question about whether college students are actually learning much in the way of thinking skills, either. So, a more reasonable story is not so much that the skills that college teaches are more valuable than they used to be, but rather the kind of people who go to college are more valuable than they used to be. Which is quite different.

EconTalk is a consistently very high quality interview show, and this one in particular is worth listening to if it's a topic that interests you.

Living Under Cover

One of the things that struck me about Brendan Eich being forced out as CEO of Mozilla is precisely that this is not a guy who is known as some kind of a political activist. Indeed, some of his long time fellow executives (who once they heard of the donation joined in the sentiment that he did not belong at Mozilla) expressed shock that Eich even held such views.

Baker said that she had not known about Eich’s views on gay marriage throughout most of their working relationship, until the donation came to light last year.

“That was shocking to me, because I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” she said, noting that there was a long and public community process about what to do about it in which Eich, then CTO, participated. “But I overestimated that experience.”

Baker — who became emotional at one point during the interview — noted that she was “doing a fair amount of self-reflection and I am wondering how did I miss it that this would matter more when he was the CEO.” [source]

I don't know if I'd claim to be that far under cover. I have a pretty strict personal policy of not talking about politics or religion at work unless directly asked, but the pictures of six kids at work are probably a give-away that there's something not-quite-savory about me from a modern secular perspective. Still, I figure that at work my job is to do pricing analytics, and so I tend to stick to business and lead a fairly under-cover life. This is enabled by the fact that in the companies I've worked for, there seems to be a general consensus that this is how it's done. The cultural hot topics generally don't get discussed, and so getting along isn't a matter of cravenly denying one's beliefs as everyone simply agreeing to leave contentious topics outside the door. If I'm asked to do something that violates my beliefs, I'm prepared to take a stand at that point, but I'm willing to not discuss things (including my beliefs) that make people uncomfortable so long as I'm not asked to actively violate those quietly held beliefs.

A while back, at another company, I had a boss who was gay and lived with a long term partner. He knew that I had a lot of kids and that I was Catholic, so he may have guessed that I had moral objections to his lifestyle -- or he may have assumed that I was some more enlightened form of Catholic who didn't agree with the Church. He didn't ask, and I didn't tell.

Living under cover can be a bit wearing at times, and I find myself applying it (without any real reason) to other areas of my life as well that have nothing to do with culture war controversy. I have a policy of never connecting with anyone from work on Facebook or mentioning that I have a blog, which seems like a straightforward, common sense sort of precaution. But other things I usually don't mention I don't even have a good reason for: hobbies, books I'm reading, working on a novel. Anything that seems a trifle too distinctive my first reaction is to not bother mentioning unless it comes up. (When I do run into a co-worker who I realize shares my religious and cultural worldview, that immediately creates a much closer bond in that he or she becomes one of the few people I can talk unguardedly with.)

All this can be a little wearing, but I'd always assumed it was simply the natural cost of being a cultural and religious minority (which although most Americans profess some form of Christianity it what being an orthodox Catholic nonetheless makes one in modern society.)

As such, the Eich affair has been particularly chilling, since the message that it sends is: "How you behave at work is not enough. If you dare to have beliefs as a person which you act on (no matter how far away from work you are when you do so) we will hunt you down and drive you out."

That doesn't particularly make me feel like living more "out and proud" at work in relation to my beliefs. My reticence is habitual at this point. And some of it is simply personality. But it is a good reminder of what we're up against. No matter how willing I am to keep myself to myself while in the office, the feeling will not necessarily always be mutual. It's a realization the breeds detachment -- at any time all that you have may be taken from you -- but also a certain feeling of spoiling for a fight.

Friday Oddness: Tom Lehrer

Here's something for your Friday, a in depth article about the work and legacy of Tom Lehrer (surprisingly in depth and interesting for a buzzfeed article.)

When Lehrer entered graduate school in 1946 — at 18 — he found himself at the center of a group of friends who called themselves the “Graduate Gang.” They amused themselves with the quizzes, crossword puzzles, and math games they brought to their dinners in the Harvard dining hall. It was, in retrospect, a gilded circle: One member, Philip Warren Anderson, went on to win a Nobel Prize in physics; Lewis Branscomb served as the chief scientist of IBM; and Robinson was an executive director of the Carnegie Corporation.

“Tom was the intellectual leader in the sense that he was the funniest and he would come up with cuter problems,” Robinson said, adding that when Anderson wrote his 50th Anniversary Report for the Harvard class of ‘94, he’d recall: “When I was a student with Tom Lehrer…”
...
Within the year, though, his graduate group of friends had begun to trickle out of Cambridge, first the chemist, then the physicists, then the historians who took much longer to get a Ph.D. As a souvenir for them, Lehrer decided in 1953 to make a record of the songs he had written at Harvard. He recorded Songs by Tom Lehrer in one session at Trans Radio studios in Boston on a 10-inch LP. He wrote the liner notes himself, called upon the wife of Robinson’s boss to do the illustrations, and had the covers printed at Shea Brothers printers near Harvard Square, just up the street from where he and Robinson shared a room on the third floor of a house.
...
By 1954 — when he was trying to avoid the draft by working for a defense contractor — he had sold 10,000 records. He had also quickly dissolved Lehrer Music, of which he was president, in December for “various reasons,” among them: “Certain stockholders objected to the president’s face.” He gave up and shipped off to Fort Meade in 1955, an early officer in the National Security Agency. (He is believed, during that time, to have invented vodka Jell-O shots.) By the end of the decade, he had sold 370,000 records.
...
Yet despite his enormous success, global popularity, and the release of his second album, More Songs by Tom Lehrer that year, it was exactly at this time that Lehrer first told Robinson he wanted to stop performing. Lehrer has told friends and various interviewers that he didn’t enjoy “anonymous affection.” And while his work was widely enjoyed at the time, it was also something of a scandal — the clever songs about math and language were for everyone, but Lehrer’s clear-eyed contemplation of nuclear apocalypse was straightforwardly disturbing....

People would always ask him: “What do you want to do as a career?” Robinson said.
“What’s wrong with graduate school as a career?!” Lehrer would respond. He spent some 15 years working on and off on his dissertation, until he finally gave it up in 1965.
The space for one of the animating forces in Lehrer’s music, his liberal politics, was shrinking too. Lehrer was a hero of the anti-nuclear, civil rights left; he occupied the bleeding edge of the elite liberalism of the day. “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie” minces no words in its scorn for the industry of American nostalgia, and particularly for the American South: “I wanna talk with Southern gentlemen / And put my white sheet on again / I ain’t seen one good lynchin’ in years … The land of the boll weevil / Where the laws are medieval / Is callin’ me to come and nevermore roam.”
But his left was the square, suit-wearing, high-culture left. His circle at Harvard included Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the renowned historian, JFK biographer, and then-nominal chairman of the Cambridge chapter of Americans for Democratic Action. His political hero was Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, the man whom Richard Nixon damagingly dismissed as an “egghead.”
Stevenson’s losing battle marked the end of a political tradition, and also the beginning of the end of a kind of Ivy League liberal intellectualism’s place atop the Democratic Party. What was coming was the New Left and the counterculture, something whose aesthetics Lehrer couldn’t stand, even if their politics weren’t necessarily at odds.
“It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffeehouse or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on,” he deadpans in his introduction to the whiny “Folk Song Army” on That Was the Year That Was. “We are the folk song army / Everyone of us cares / We all hate poverty, war, and injustice / Unlike the rest of you squares.”
The New Left agreed with Lehrer on Vietnam. His last public performance, in fact, was on a fundraising tour for George McGovern in 1972. But the singer — who saw himself as “a liberal, one of the last” — felt less at home in the new Democratic Party. In the end, Stevenson’s party, and Lehrer’s, lost — and with it, at least to Lehrer’s mind, a prevailing sense of humor. “Things I once thought were funny are scary now,” he told People magazine in 1982. “I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.”
”The liberal consensus, which was the audience for this in my day, has splintered and fragmented in such a way that it’s hard to find an issue that would be comparable to, say, lynching,” he also told the New York Times in Purdum’s 2000 article, which was part of his last round of interviews to promote an anthology of his work. ”Everybody knows that lynching is bad. But affirmative action vs. quotas, feminism vs. pornography, Israel vs. the Arabs? I don’t know which side I’m on anymore. And you can’t write a funny song that uses, ‘On the other hand.”’

When I was young, my family had a copy of "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer", and I used to listen to it often, belting out Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and The Masochism Tango in childish tones. I'd never particularly noticed Lehrer's politics, though as a kid and listening forty years after his heyday, that's hardly surprising.

Testing in Daily Life: The Efficient Traffic Hypothesis

Josiah Neeley has an utterly charming article at The Federalist on his attempt to test his "efficient traffic hypothesis":

Probably the most frustrating part of my commute is when traffic in my lane is at a stand-still, and I’m forced to watch cars in the next lane zip by on their way to freedom. When you’re in that situation, the obvious thing to do is to switch to the lane that’s moving faster. But somehow it seems like as soon as you do, traffic in that lane grinds to a halt, while the lane you were just in starts moving again.

After brooding on this topic for longer than I care to admit, I developed a theory I like to call the Efficient Traffic Hypothesis (ETH). ... [which] says that you can’t beat the traffic. If you see a lane that’s moving faster than the one you’re in, chances are lots of other people have noticed the same thing, so it won’t be long before that lane slows to accommodate all the lane switchers. If it seems like whatever lane you’re in is always the slowest, that’s probably just a statistical illusion.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis is controversial, and there have been numerous studies trying to test whether it is actually true. The Efficient Traffic Hypothesis is less controversial, mainly because I just made it up. But being a seeker after truth, I decided to try to test it myself.

Using the website RandomizeMe, I created my own Randomized Controlled Trial (the same sort of test used to determine the efficacy of new pharmaceuticals). Every morning before leaving for work I flip a coin to determine whether that morning’s group will be in the “control group” (where I trying to reduce my commute time by switching lanes when it seems advantageous) or the “left group” (where I stay in the leftmost lane for as much of my commute as possible). I then record the time at the beginning and end of the commute, along with any unusual features of the day (e.g. was it raining?)

The hardest part of the experiment is just sticking to it. When it’s a left hand lane only day, it’s often quite difficult to keep to the plan when my lane is going forward at a crawl. But then I remind myself that this is for Science, and I soldier on. Perhaps more importantly, I’ve noticed that my subjective sense of how bad the traffic is on a particular day doesn’t necessarily line up with the objective data. On many a day I feel like my drive has gone on forever, only to find that it wasn’t any longer than on previous days where it felt like I was flying down the highway.

After six weeks of observations, I am still months away from having a large enough sample to really test the theory. But I got curious, and so ran some preliminary numbers. It turns out that, excluding Fridays (which tend to have much lighter traffic), my average commute time when I stick to a single lane is 58 minutes and 36 seconds. By contrast, when I try to beat the traffic by switching lanes, my commute is reduced to an average of 58 minutes and 30 seconds.

I'm actually surprised that it's so even, though given the way Josiah frames it, I find it believable. During the year or so I had a 70 mile commute across the Los Angeles basin (which took an hour and a half in and a two hours back) I became convinced that it was actually the opposite: that by the time you notice that another lane is going fast and manage to switch into it, you've probably caught the point right before the peak of the "market" for speed in that lane and it's about to slow down from too many people switching in, so if you switch lanes all the time it will actually take you longer. However, I never tested my theory as Josiah is doing, and I find his results quite believable.

Sick Day Poetry by Annonimus

We're laid up nicely here, with various cold symptoms. The kids all have the cough and the sniffles, and I have the sinus headache and the full-body ache. But illness can't keep a good wordsmith down. Here is some poetry that Eleanor is attributing to the great poet Annonimus.

Mother

Mom your the best.
Oh mother I love you.
The mom is good.
How can the mom be good.
End of the mom is near.
Rise up mom and start the car! It's the end of the world.

Father

Father we love you.
Always we seek you.
The cat eats father.
How will you meet a moose?
End of the dad is nearing.
Rotate your body to see your doom! The cat is hungery!?!

Brother

Boring boy how can you live?
Reading e-mail is faitil!
On end you fiddle with the mouse!
The keyboard is the spiders web!
His web traps you with games and music.
Eternaly you stare at lighted screen and vidio!
Regularly your eyes square up! The hours tick by your days are numberd! Get away from the screen!

Sister

Sinester girl you are a threat!
In silence you plot evil!
Sneakely your mind builds plans.
The gears in your head turn twords candy.
En route exactly to crime.
Rumor says you are plotting D-day. All figures tremble before you. Go brush your teeth!

I don't know what to call this sweet new style, but Annonimus certainly shares the zaniness of the Darwin children.

Hobby Lobby, Hypocrisy, Ethical Investing

Grant Gallicho of Commonweal believes that he's caught Hobby Lobby being inconsistent in their commitment to not supporting abortion. Citing a Mother Jones expose he notes that Hobby Lobby has a 401(k) retirement plan for its employees and that it provides matching contributions to that 401(k) (meaning that when employees contribute up to a certain percent of their incomes to the 401(k) savings plan, the company will provide additional contributions to the retirement plan, beyond that employee's normal earnings, to "match" the employee contribution.) This is actually pretty impressive for a retailer, and I would think that people who care about living wages and such would applaud such a step, but instead it has turned into a "gotcha". You see, Hobby Lobby's 401(k), like most others including the one I have at my employer, offers a short list of basic mutual funds between which employees can allocate their retirement funds. Research with the managers of these funds has revealed that some of these funds in turn invest in pharmaceutical companies which produce abortion drugs and implements.

These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other stock holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell. [source]

Gallicho seems to think this is some sort of damning proof that Hobby Lobby isn't being true to their claimed principles:

The problem for Hobby Lobby's argument is that investing in companies that manufacture drugs and devices that enable contraception and abortion is quite different from paying for insurance that enables an employee's choice to use services the Greens object to. Hobby Lobby selects the funds it invests in. As Redden points out, if the Greens wanted to, they could have chosen funds that screen out so-called sin stocks (they tend to perform as well as other funds). But they didn't. (Hobby Lobby's legal counsel, the Becket Fund, did not immediately reply to my request for comment.)

Hobby Lobby's employee health insurance used to include the contraception services the Greens don't want to cover anymore. Obamacare did the Greens the favor of waking them up to the realities of the health-insurance market, so before filing suit they canceled coverage of the services they consider morally objectionable. They seem not to have been so scrupulous with their investments--and investments are a different animal. The cooperation is more direct. Basically Hobby Lobby is saying to these funds: Here's our money. Make more of it for us doing what you do. From a moral-theological perspective, that brings Hobby Lobby significantly closer to the evil in question than would any premium payments that could allow employees to use contraceptive services. First, in the United States, benefits are considered part of an employee's compensation. Second, employees might not avail themselves of such services. Third, if the Greens decided to stop offering health coverage, employees would most likely end up buying plans that included contraception on the health-care exchanges. Obamacare doesn't require any employers to cover drugs designed to induce abortion.

What might last week's oral arguments have sounded like had this been reported earlier? Hard to say. But I wouldn't want to defend a plaintiff claiming that any role facilitating the use of potentially abortifacient drugs is inimical to its religious beliefs but can't be bothered to figure out whether the millions it invests annually directly supports the production of drugs that always cause abortions. One or two justices might start to wonder how sincerely Hobby Lobby holds those beliefs it says ought to exempt them from complying with the law.

I find this argument against Hobby Lobby unconvincing at two levels.

First, I think it's a reach to hold that someone is making a moral statement with their selection of a mutual fund. Mutual funds typically invest in a large number of companies, they change their portfolio relatively frequently, and the selection criteria, especially in the sort of funds offered in a typical 401(k), are often fairly rote: all stocks that are on a given index, for instance: all 500 stocks which are on the S&P 500 index. I do not think that you are any more morally endorsing the companies invested in by a mutual fund by investing in it via a 401(k) than you are endorsing every person and company which your bank makes loans to when you put money into a savings account and earn interest based on the success of the bank's loans. I can imagine some edge cases where this would not apply. For instance, if the selection criteria of a fund were specifically around some type of business activity that you object to morally (e.g. a fund specifically designed to invest in pornography, abortion providers and sweat shops) I think you would be considered to be violating your morals by investing in that fund. However, if the "Small Cap Index" fund turns out to include investments in a few companies you object to (simply because they fall within the market capitalization range the fund is designed to invest in) I don't think you're necessarily morally involving yourself in those companies activities. There are funds (such as Ave Maria Mutual Funds) which specifically seek to duplicate the criteria of other investment funds while leaving out companies involved in certain morally objectionable practices, and it might represent a conscientious choice for a company such as Hobby Lobby to choose a fund provider such as that instead, but I think Gallicho significantly over-estimates the moral involvement in a companies mission which an investor in a mutual fund has.

Second, and far more importantly, I think it's important to hold that if we believe in religious freedom at all, that religious freedom is not predicated on the consistency of the person seeking to assert his religious freedom. Let's think for a moment about what the idea of religious freedom is. I'd argue that it means that as a political society we believe that there is a value to not forcing people to violate their claimed religious/moral convictions, even if that means the rest of society having to incur some degree of inconvenience or inconsistency. (So, for example, the Amish requested and received an exemption to the Social Security system when it was instituted, because they believed that relying on a state run retirement plan violated the solidarity required of their communities.) As such, it seems to me that the granting of the leeway for religious freedom is very much dependent on what the believer claims is required by his beliefs -- not what outside observers think may be reasonable. Thus, the issue of whether Gallicho thinks it is consistent of the owners of Hobby Lobby to want to purchase health coverage that does not cover emergency contraception, while having standard mutual funds available in their company matched 401(k), really doesn't come into play. The key point is that the owners themselves assert that it would be a violation of their religious principles to purchase the health coverage in question.

One can imagine some interesting reverse examples of this. For instance, suppose that at some point in the future an "Ownership Society Retirement Act" is put in place, which requires all companies to offer a 401(k) with a minimum amount of matching, and specified certain index funds such as the S&P 500 which should be available in all such plans. Commonweal announces that they object to being forced to offer a retirement program which includes investments in petroleum companies and arms manufacturers. Should people who don't like the folks at Commonweal get to veto their claim by digging up some way in which Commonweal relies for its existence on the military and the conventional energy sector?

I would argue: No. Frankly, moral scruples can often look a bit odd to those who do not share them. I don't pretend to understand why the Amish are okay with some uses of modern technology and not okay with others, but I do think that it's important to not force them to violate the moral scruples which they say they have. Similarly, regardless of whether one thinks that Hobby Lobby ought to also change the investments available in their 401(k), I think that their religious objections to offering coverage for the morning after pill on their company health plan should be respected.

Gilded Ashes: a giveaway!

Fresh off the e-presses: Gilded Ashes, a new novella from Darwin's sister Rosamund Hodge!

A romantic reimagining of the classic Cinderella fairy tale, Gilded Ashes is a novella by Rosamund Hodge set in the same world as her debut novel, Cruel Beauty. 

Maia doesn't see the point of love when it only brings people pain: her dead mother haunts anyone who hurts Maia, and her stepsisters are desperate for their mother's approval, even though she despises them. Meanwhile, Anax, heir to the Duke of Sardis, doesn't believe in love either—not since he discovered that his childhood sweetheart was only using him for his noble title. But when Maia's and Anax's paths cross before the royal ball, they discover that love might not be the curse they once thought. And it might even be the one thing that can save them both.

This is short and gripping enough to be read in one sitting, as I can attest. Rose doesn't allow any of her characters to be one-dimensional, and her take on Cinderella gives the elements of the original story a jolt. Why is it that Cinderella never lashes out at her step-family for their cruel treatment of her? Because, in Gilded Ashes, Cinderella has to pretend to be happy all the time lest her mother's ghost do evil things to anyone who makes her little girl cry.

Two lucky commenters will get free copies when we pull names from the tasseled hat at 9 pm tonight. Don't want to wait that long? It's only $1.99, less than a cup of Starbucks and far more memorable.

UPDATE: Alrighty, to the commenters go the spoils! Kharking and Melanie, send us an email at darwincatholic (at) gmail.com to start your evening's enjoyment.

Intolerance

The techie world has been rocked by a witch hunt in the name of tolerance over the last week, as gay rights activists have demanded that Mozilla (the non-profit organization which produces the FireFox web browser) fire its newly named CEO Brendan Eich, because six years ago he made a $1,000 personal donation to the political campaign for Proposition 8, the successful California ballot initiative to amend the California constitution to define marriage as only possible between one man and one woman. There have been previous cases of activists digging through the rolls of who provided donations to the Prop 8 campaign, and targeting people for their support of traditional marriage. Eich's donation apparently became known within the company and caused some controversy among employees about a year ago, and this then escalated to a wider campaign last week when he was named the new CEO. This campaign claimed its scalp yesterday as Eich resigned from both the CEO position and Mozilla's board.

Mozilla put up a blog post announcing the resignation and stating that employing Eich (who was a founder of the company and one of the original developers of JavaScript) was not in keeping with their values:

Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.

We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.

Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.

The wording of the last paragraph in particular, since Eich was forced out precisely for holding different views than the majority of Mozilla's employees and other vocal advocates in the tech community.

It seems to me that this serves as a key example of a new and increasingly strident intolerance, a deep illiberality, on the part of the "liberal" end of the political spectrum. One online commentator I read had this to say in justification of forcing Eich out of the company he helped found:

The only way to defend recently won liberties is to ensure that activists attempting to deprive people of said liberties are regarded (justly, in this and similar cases) as politically untouchable and deplorable. Gays had to spend millennia hiding in shadows, living secret lives in fear of blacklisting or, more likely, outright murder; making modern opponents of gay equality politically unpalatable in high-profile leadership positions doesn't even begin to compare.

Solidifying gains by destroying the political power of those who advocate retrogression is always necessary.

This attitude strikes me as destructive to any kind of democracy or pluralistic society. Democracy does not simply mean that the side with the most votes wins. Maintaining a democratic culture requires that the winning majority not immediately turn around and use their political and economic power to destroy the lives and livelihoods of those they have successfully defeated (this time.) That approach to democracy naturally leads to one party dictatorship or civil war. It is unstable. It is mob rule.

Fortunately, not even all gay advocates are on board with this scorched earth approach. Andrew Sullivan writes:

Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

But I can't help thinking that on his side, Sullivan is in the minority.

It's tempting in this kind of situation to turn to bluster: What? They want to take it to the streets? Well, bring it! We'll see who wins that!

But while it's emotionally satisfying to revel in how bad the other side is (and don't get me wrong, I think that behavior of the people demanding that Eich be kicked out of his job is darkly totalitarian and says very bad things about where the "progressive" side of our culture is heading) what I want is not some kind of a tit-for-tat battle in which each side seeks to purge and destroy each other. I actually support a liberal society in which you do not fire someone because you disagree with his political and religious beliefs. But with each outrage like this, that moderation becomes harder to maintain.

I'm not among those who thinks we're heading for an actual civil war -- our country is far too prosperous and lazy for that -- but I do think this kind of thing represents a degradation of the political world similar to that which (in countries with far more people who believe they have nothing to lose and thus are willing to resort to civil violence) we see in countries getting ready to destroy their democratic cultures and resort to fighting over who gets to punish their opponents using the machinery of the economy and the state.

In this case, of course, what we see is people using cultural and economic power, not state power to hound their opponents. However, I'm not convinced there's necessarily a bright line of difference in terms of destroying the culture of democracy. Even those within Mozilla who profess themselves very glad of Eich's ouster admit that there is no evidence of his ever discriminating in the workplace -- indeed some express having been surprised when they first heard that the supported Prop 8 -- but merely working with someone who holds different political and moral views has become repugnant to them. That is not a good sign.

Celebrity Selfies, Bad Fashion, and Bulbs

I'm in a transitional period right now, so a lot of clothes don't look good on me (and I don't even have a lot of clothes), but I have this sweater that I've just realized is particularly unflattering. I am what could be described euphemistically as "buxom", and this characteristic is accentuated by the fact of actually nursing a baby. There is a cultural idea of filling out one's top as being "sexy", but I'm here to tell you that what it actually looks like is being fat, and wearing a certain kind of cardigan makes one look really fat, and until I saw myself in a photo last night I didn't recognize exactly how fat that was.

Which is all a long way of explaining why, in spite of the factor of awesomeness involved, I'm not posting my selfie with John Allen.

John Allen gave a talk last night at the Josephinium in Columbus on the topic of Pope Francis and Ecumenism, and I went with friend of Darwins and commenter Kelly. (The young nursling stayed at home, which was a good call as the crowd was, on average, about sixty times older than him.) Allen is a fantastically dynamic speaker and full of colorful anecdotes about popes past and present (my favorite was the one about the venerable cardinal who explained why he was wearing plain black clericals instead of his usual scarlet-and-lace: "With this pope, simple is the new chic"), and he laid out what he saw as the three pillars of Francis's year-old papacy:

1. Service as the hallmark of leadership.
2. The brilliant, crafty mind of the Jesuit that understands the effectiveness of his genuine modeling of simplicity and service.
3. Mercy, as exemplified in one of his most often repeated statements: "The Lord never tires of forgiving", and in his motto, "Choosing through the eyes of mercy."

In talking about ecumenism, Allen made several points about Francis's experience and ambitions:

1. In Argentina, which has traditionally been a Roman Catholic stronghold, the Pentecostals and Evangelicals are making extravagant inroads, poaching Catholics at the rate of 8000 a day. As archbishop, Jorge Bergoglio made a point of establishing good ecumenical relations with with the local Pentecostal and Evangelical leaders instead of being hostile. You don't stem a bleeding wound by constantly picking at the scab.

2. Under Francis, Judaism has regained pride of place as the paradigmatic relationship for Catholic/non-Christian interfaith dialogue, not Islam. Allen made the point that European cardinals must of necessity carry the heavy burdens of the past, distant and recent, in their interactions with Judaism, but Bergoglio, coming from the New World, is free to focus on what can be achieved in the present.

He also emphasized the commonality of Benedict and Francis, their warm friendship, and firmly contradicted the prevailing media narrative of "Francis good/Benedict bad".

***

Driving home I reveled in the positive luxury of driving Darwin's 17-year-old beat-up Toyota. My new ride is a van, a mammoth van, a brand-new Nissan twelve-seater which is just a bit smaller and easier to handle than a Mack truck. I cut my teeth driving a twelve-seater, but I must have lost the knack over the years, because this van terrifies me. I'm relearning how to park and calculate my blind spot and compensate for not being able to see out the rear-view mirror.

So I was pleasantly tooling up my street, eyeing someone's strange blue lantern light, when it struck me that the blue lantern was in front of my house. I rolled slowly into the driveway and stared at it. Had we always had a blue light bulb in that lantern? Why had it suddenly appeared now? What did it mean? And come to that, Darwin hadn't answered the phone the few times I'd tried to call him on my ride home. Was the blue light a signal? Was it a warning to me not to enter the house because God knows what I'd find?

But I did enter the house and found Darwin walking the baby, who drooled sullenly at me, and heard the obvious explanation of the blue light: the neighbor, who has a daughter with Autism, had brought us a blue bulb and asked if we'd put it in as an awareness-raiser for Autism Speaks, and Darwin, who didn't have the heart to deny anyone as sweet as the neighbor, put it in.

Unexpected blue bulbs and unflattering sweaters -- that's one of my six-word memoirs.

Rights Talk

Kyle has in interesting piece up over at Ordinary Gentlemen dealing with the question of what one can have a right to. He's responding to a Matt Walsh piece, and I'm not remotely a fan of Walsh, but I have the feeling that Walsh is hinting inarticulately at a fairly standard conservative idea about rights which Kyle is perhaps not encountering all that clearly. Walsh's original assertion is that, "You don’t have a right to a product that must be provided to you through governmental coercion of a third party." Kyle responds:

If Walsh meant that you don’t have a right to force other people to buy products for you, or that governmental coercion is a poor means of providing you with products, he phrased this sentence quite oddly. If, as he wrote, he meant to deny a right pertaining to a product, then he’s implying a questionable theory of rights.

What if a product can be provided to you without governmental coercion? Do you then have a right to the product? If so, what is the basis of that right? It can’t be your need for it or the possibility of satisfying it, because those conditions can be present where there’s governmental coercion.

With or without governmental coercion, you need water, food, clothing, shelter, and other life necessities, but according to Walsh, you don’t have a right to these goods if the government has to coerce someone into providing them to you. Your need for them and their availability to you do not establish your right to them. Or if either or both of these conditions do establish a right, the right vanishes under the condition that it must be provided to you through governmental coercion. Is your right to basic human needs so relative?

In general conservatives and libertarians hold what I'll call a negative view of rights rather than a positive view of rights.

Thus, the right to free exercise of religion is a right to be able to practice your religion just as you would have were there no other party to show up and order you around. The right to free speech is the right to say what you think to the same extent that you could were there no one to show up and order you not to. The right to free association is the right to form communities and groups in the same way you could were there not some bigger and badder group to show up and order you not to. The right to private property is the right to hold on to that which you make yourself or gain through free exchange with others -- just as if there were not someone else to show up and take it from you.

In other words, this view of rights holds that the state should not force itself into all aspects of your life. It should restrain itself from interfering in certain areas. In this sense, it applies to the state in a special way that it doesn't apply to others. So, for instance, the right to free speech means that you can express yourself in your own venue without being forcibly shut up, but it doesn't mean that some other private third party (say, a newspaper) is required to print your opinions. It just means that the state can't arrest you for speaking your mind, or show up and confiscate your printing press because they don't like what you printed.

Now, given that, it doesn't make much sense to talk about a "right to food" or a "right to water" or a "right to shelter" -- except to the extent that it is wrong for the state to show up and take away your food, your water, or your shelter. Someone holding to this negative vision of rights might hold that you have a right to pursue food, water and shelter (or separately that you have a moral duty to provide food, water and shelter to those around you who are in need of it but don't have the ability to provide it to themselves) but they wouldn't argue it's a right because it's not something you naturally have. If there's a famine and there is no food to be had, saying "I have a right to food!" won't make your plate fill. However, even if there's a famine and you're in the midst of dying, you can still say what's on your mind unless some other person shows up and tries to stop you.

The view of rights which produces a "right to food" or a "right to shelter" isn't based on the idea of "what dignities does a person naturally have unless someone shows up to take them away" but rather on "what things should the state commit to providing to its citizens." It is, I'd argue, a somewhat later vision of rights: a mid 19th century one rather than a late 18th century one. Which is perhaps why this positive view of rights (the right to something) is far more common in Europe, in which the major democracies date to the late 19th or the 20th century, while the earlier negative view of rights is more common among US conservatives who date their formative influence to the American Revolution.

Pope Resigns Due To Blogger Pressure

Spring is shaping up to be the big news season for the Vatican, as yet another surprise resignation rocks the Catholic world:

In a shock April 1, 2014 announcement the Vatican has stated that Pope Francis is resigning today and Pope Benedict will resume his duties as Pope.

Pope Francis is quoted as naming two factors in his decision for resigning: 1. The rich Italian cooking that could get him up to 400 pounds if he stayed in Rome; and 2. Criticisms from Catholic blogs, especially in America. Noting that his predecessor had warned him about reading the blogs, Pope Francis was disturbed by the divisions his election had caused. “I do not want to be the cause of acrimony among Catholic bloggers. If I stay as Pope it could be another 'torture debate', and I doubt if Western civilization could survive that.”

As for Pope Benedict, he is described as rested, fit and rearing to resume his duties as Pope. Father Lombardi, Vatican press spokesman, said that Pope Benedict feels 75 after months of sleeping all night and eating hearty monastery food. As for blogs, Pope Benedict stopped reading them after the condom flap, according to Father Lombardi, although he conceded that the Pope did sneak a peak at Eye of the Tiber for a laugh now and then.

Read the rest...

Reaction to the surprise move was mixed, with arch traditionalists saying this was yet another shocking move to undermine doctrine and that now they've thought about it they don't like Benedict XVI much either.

The Promise and Failure of Aronofsky's Noah

By an unusual set of circumstances, MrsDarwin and I ended up being able to go see the Noah movie this weekend. Knowing virtually nothing about it other than the trailer going in, I was expecting a sometimes over-the-top biblical epic. This was something more interesting, though in the end I think the movie fails. MrsDarwin and I spent a good three hours discussing it afterwards, which is not something you can do with your garden variety movie spectacle.

I'm going to write a more general review first, then put in a spoiler warning, and after that get into the details, because this is a movie that it's impossible to resist discussing and picking apart in detail.

The key thing to understand about Aronofsky's treatment of the Noah story is that he seems quite purposefully to have decided at the get go that this would not be a straight biblical retelling. His Noah is the story of a man who suffers and experiences evil, becomes convinced that he is meant to participate in a plan to wipe out those evils, and becomes so relentless in his pursuit of that goal that he to a great extent becomes what he most hates and destroys what he arguably ought to be saving. It is a dark tale in which a "Creator" sends warnings and supernatural helpers to execute a plan to wipe out the evils to which humanity has sunk, but where that creator does not speak clearly as to what the actual purpose of the plan is. This means that Noah is left to improvise his own sense of meaning, and he does so driven by a sense of justice and hurt which gradually becomes an unbalanced obsession which risks destroying his family and his plan.

The movie has a number of big, CGI-driven spectacle scenes, and it has the seemingly inevitable Big Battle of Ravening Hordes. It has stone creatures called Watchers who, while their mythological explanation works and is evocative, to be honest look kind of silly. The spectacle in the movie is hit or miss. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. And there's enough of it that it's easy to get the impression from a preview that this is primarily a movie about spectacle in the tradition of some of the big bible adaptations of the past. However, the core drama here is intensely personal as we watch, desperately on edge, to see how far Noah will go with his increasingly violent and dark crusade to help rid the world of a humanity of which he increasingly despairs.

One of the key problems with the movie, in the end, is that it builds up Noah as such a dangerous fanatic that I personally was rooting for him to die in order to protect humanity from him, yet although Noah does at the last relent in a key way -- due to a moment of humanity which he nonetheless sees as a failure of nerve -- the movie fails to either mete out justice to him or show a sufficient conversion of character to seem dramatically satisfying. The story of Noah has been changed from one in which God deals out justice to humanity through clear (if dark) instructions, to one in which humanity, in the person of one ultimately powerful and relentless man, must decide for itself what is right and what is wrong. And never even quite does that clearly.

Another key weakness is that the movie is a bit confused as to what kind of evil has to be exterminated. On the one hand, the movie paints a heavy-handed contrast between the "sons of Cain" who have developed an industrial civilization which has all the environmental problems of Mordor and none of its garden spot charms, and the descendants of Seth (Noah and his family) who are vegetarian gatherers, though given where they live they must get by on about 10 calories a day. At times it's suggested that the Creator's reason for wanting to wipe out the Sons of Cain while saving Noah and his family is that Cain's descendants do not respect creation. However, there's also a sharp moral contrast drawn, with the Cain-ites living in seemingly constant murder, rape, cannibalism, etc. At one point, as he starts to sour on all of humanity, Noah tells his wife that even his own family is a blot on the earth, just like the Sons of Cain, but his argument in this case is moral: "We like they would kill, if we had to."

The movie never really settles on which of these is the reason that the Creator wants to wipe out men -- though either way Noah's people become more like what he is seeking to destroy: Just as he uses escalating amounts of violence to support his project, his arc building also wreaks environmental destruction on a literally Eden-like landscape in a way that seems consciously to mirror the destruction left by the Cain-ites, but this tension is never dealt with by the movie.

In the end, the movie is, I think, a failure. Too many things don't make sense, the key personal and moral conflict is never satisfactorily resolved. However, it is certainly interesting and discussable. I naturally find myself comparing it to Gladiator, in which Crowe also plays a costumed relentless killer bent on justice. Gladiator is a successful movie in a way that Noah is simply not. Its spectacle is more sure; its plot works; it resolves. But there are human situations and dilemmas in Noah which are stronger than anything in Gladiator. It's a noble failure in that it tries hard to think about hard issues. Perhaps part of why it fails is that it's based on a biblical story, yet determined to remove biblical morality and the relationship between God and man. Having removed that, it never really comes up with a workable substitute. I wish that someone would do a movie based on pagan mythology that took its issues this seriously, rather than churning out the abysmal sword-and-sandal epics that seem to have come back into vogue. Perhaps then the unwillingness to settle on a coherent message would go down a little better than it does in this pseudo-monotheistic cosmos.

I think Steven Greydanus's view of the movie is far too positive, but Barb Nicolosi's bizarre rant misses the virtues that the movie does have.

Spoilers follow the image.

So for those willing to read spoilers but who haven't seen the movie, here's the key outline of the movie:

We first meet Noah as a child, as he sees his father killed in cold blood by Tubal-cain, one of the descendants of Cain. Fast forward to Noah as an adult, and with three sons of his own, and almost the first thing we see him do is kill three Cain-ites who have just shot a dog-like animal. At least one of these killings is in cold blood: Noah has beaten the group, he stands over the man who lies on the ground. Noah meets his eyes for a moment, then plunges a spear into him. Then he buries the dog and leaves the men to rot.

It that seems like a dark opening for a biblical patriarch, I can only say it's going to get a lot darker before it's over. Noah is worried that the Cain-ites are closing in. That night he has a dream about the mountain where his grandfather Methuselah lives and the world being destroyed by water while the animals seemingly are lifted up to safety out of the waters. He takes his family on a trek to see if Methuselah still lives. On the way, he rescues a young girl from a group of Cain-ites who have been slaughtered by others of their own. She is badly injured with a cut to her stomach, but Noah's wife Naameh predicts that she will heal if the fever doesn't kill her, though she will never be able to have children. She does heal, and over the following years of story time she grows up to be Emma Watson (though in the film they call her Ila) who is like a daughter to Noah though to his older son Shem she is something much more interesting than a sister.

Noah has a discussion with with Methuselah and a couple more dreams, and realizes that he is called to build an arc which will save him and "the innocent" (animals) from a flood that will wipe out sinful humanity. This seems tricky when they live in a barren wasteland destroyed by the Cain-ites, but Methuselah gives Noah as "seed from the garden of Eden" which Noah plants and miraculously produces rivers of water and vast forests of trees. He also has supernatural help from the Watchers, semi-fallen angels who disobeyed God to come help fallen humanity, and as a punishment were imperfectly made corporeal with giant bodies of misshapen rock.

The Watchers build the massive, rectangular Ark, and providence brings streams of animals to the ark, two of each kind, whom Noah's family then puts to sleep with the smoke of herbs that will make them sleep until the end of the flood. The family is, meanwhile, getting restive. It isn't lost on them that they'll be the only humans left after the flood, and with Shem in love with the barren Ila (who is refusing to marry him because she thinks he needs a wife who can have children) and the other two boys single (and Jennifer Connelly looking good but too old to have more children as Noah's wife Naameh), there's a real problem with the future of humanity. Noah promises that the Creator will provide wives, and shortly after a large, ravening camp of humanity shows up under the leadership of Tubal-cain, who wants to take over the Ark for himself and his people. Noah goes into the Cain-ite camp to find wives for his sons, but he's so horrified by what he sees there (fighting, raping and meat-eating) that he decides that the Creator want humanity wiped out, even his family once they've done their job, and he goes back and tells his sons so.

Time is running out. Ham runs off to find his own wife and meets Na'el, an innocent and wronged girls in the Cain-ite camp. He starts to bring her back as his chosen wife. Shem and Ila both set off (separately) to find Ham. Ila runs into Methuselah, who gives her his blessing -- a blessing which immediately cures her infertility. She can tell and immediately runs into Shem and consummates a marriage with him. (This sounds dumb, but as done in the movie the blessing and natural marriage is actually one of the better and more movingly human parts of the marriage. Emma Watson and Jennifer Connelly are two of the stronger actors in the movie and do very good work.)

Now the rain starts and everyone (including Tubal-cain's ravening army) rushes for the ark. Ham and Na'el are almost there when she puts her foot in a bear trap which the Cain-ites have set. She's trapped and rolling on the ground in pain while Ham seeks to free her and the army rushing on when Noah appears. For a moment they think they're saved, but Noah, rather than helping, grabs Ham drags him away, leaving her to be trampled and killed by the army. Noah shuts is family in the Ark, and he and the Watchers set about slaughtering the army of Tubal-cain which is trying to break in. Hundreds if not thousands are slaughtered, including all the Watchers, who return to the Creator, apparently forgiven. Then geysers of water end it all. The only two survivors are Noah (who is such a bad mofo that he's killed his way through and makes it back into the Ark) and Tubal-cain, who is an equally bad mofo and cuts his way into the ark in an unseen corner. He is wounded, but protected by Ham who had a grudge against his father over Na'el's death.

The Ark rides the rough seas and what at first sounds like the wailing of the wind proves to be the sounds of thousands of people crying out in despair as they are struggling to stay afloat, and at last drowning. Against this background, and the survivors sit cringing in pain for those outsides (Ila wants to try to rescue people, but Noah fiercely refuses) Noah provides a re-telling of the creation and fall. This is a fascinatingly done set of imagery, and worth seeing the movie right there, ending with a stylized silhouette of Cain killing Abel which turns into a stylized representation of war and violence all through history.

Everyone is dead now except the occupants of the Ark, and the results of Methuselah's blessing now become apparent: Ila is pregnant. She and Naameh are worried about what will happen. Shem and Ila go to Noah for their blessing, but he is furious. He doesn't see this as a sign from God, he sees it as ruining his plan. He says that if it's a boy, he will let the child live, and he will be the last human being. If the child is a girl, Noah will kill her. Needless to say this puts a damper on family closeness.

Time passes. Ila is near her time. She and Shem have built a raft on which they plan to leave the Ark, even though the birds sent out have not yet found land. Noah, however, gloweringly shows up and sets their raft on fire as they've about to leave. Ila goes into labor. Shem sets guard and says he will kill Noah if he tries to take their child. Ham, who has nursed Tubal-cain back to health, now makes his play and the two of them try to kill Noah. There's a big fight between Noah and Tubal-cain while Ila is giving birth. Ham stands by with a knife, ready to kill Noah if necessary, then intervenes on the other side (killing Tubal-cain) when Tubal-cain brags that after killing Noah the women will be his and he will found a new race in his image. At this moment the Ark runs aground. Ila has given birth to twin girls. Naamah tries to convince Noah that this is a sign, but he is relentless in his determination to kill both. However, at the last moment, standing with his knife above the babies, he loses his nerve and walks away.

The water falls, plants grow, the animals wake up, and Noah's descendants start a settlement. Noah is meanwhile growing grapes and getting drunk on wine because he is disgusted with himself for failing to kills the girls. He tells a surprisingly empathetic Ila that he feels it was all for nothing because he failed to assure the extinction of humanity, but that when he looked on the girls he felt nothing but love and could not kill them. She tells him that perhaps the Creator wanted to give him the choice whether to let humanity survive, because the Creator trusted him. After this semi-reconciliation, Noah simply goes back and rejoins his family, while Ham goes off, unwilling to be part of it all. (I'm kind of with him on that.)

So, having laid all that out, here's the problem: I think Noah clearly does take on basically all the evils that he's trying to get rid of. The first thing we see him do is gratuitously kill people, and his violence only escalates throughout the movie, until he is on the point of killing his own newborn grandchildren in cold blood. He stops short of that, but there's no clear conversion of heart. He just stops short.

The way that I most wanted to see it end, was I wanted his sons to kill him, or see him washed over the side of the Ark. It's clear by this point in the movie that Noah have become everything that he's seeking to rid the world of, and the best way to assure that the Creator's plan is completed is to get rid of Noah. The rest of those on the ship are innocent. Noah is not. In the unforgiving logic of the movie, he should die.

An alternative would be a true conversion of heart. This would mean going Christian places that the movie seems hesitant to go, but there would have been an easy way to do it. There's a long moment, one of the most fraught and terrifying I've seen on film in a long time where Noah stand poised over Emma Watson (who holds her babies in her arms) reading to murder them. She won't look away, and the look for grief and horror and pleading on her face is one of the most powerful things I've seen on film in a while. If in that moment Noah had truly realized that he was wrong (not just that he wasn't strong enough to do what he wanted, but that he was wrong) this could have allowed the movie to resolve satisfyingly without killing him. The dove comes back with its olive branch only shortly after. If it had handed on his hand as he was poised to strike and he had finally, in his hardened heart, accepted this as a sign in a way that he was not willing to take the barren Ila conceiving as a sign, or the twin girls as a sign -- if he had dropped to his knees and wept and seen how wrong he had been -- that too could have saved the movie.

Yet another option would have been the sacrifice of an innocent. Noah's youngest son is still young enough to function in this role. If the young Japheth had somehow thrown himself in the way of his father's blow and been killed, and if this had somehow broken the hardness of Noah's heart, this would also have provided a strong enough change to make the turn work.

What does not work, what fatally does not work, to my mind, is the ambiguous non-ending to the key human drama that we see: Ham leaving rather than live with his father, Noah returning to his family but never really acknowledging that he was wrong to seek the life of the innocent. In the end, the movie as it stands grapples with tough moral and dramatic issues, but it never resolves them.

Yes, Catholic Marriage Can Lead To Happiness

Darwin:

A couple weeks ago, Emma Smith, a young Catholic woman who is engaged to be married, wrote a piece at Catholic Exchange entitled "Marriage is Work". She frames the piece by recounting a conversation between co-workers about marriage. They talk about people they know who have cheated on their spouses or been cheated on, and conclude that marriage is pretty much a roll of the dice and perhaps a bad idea. The author remains quiet:

I didn’t think they’d understand that if I said, “my fiancé and I are never going to have that issue” that my statement would be one of fact and confidence, not one of blind love and young bravado.

I didn’t think they’d understand what I mean if I said “marriage isn’t just a luck of the draw. It doesn’t work like a lottery.” Because, to them, it does, while for me, I know that it doesn’t. Marriage isn’t a drawing of the straws, where if your spouse cheats on you, well, “sorry, you just drew the short straw. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent it!” It’s not an institution where if you are a strong, happy, and healthy couple you’re just “the lucky ones.” It’s not an institution where the fates decide who “wins” and who “loses.” It’s not a promise you enter into like buying a lottery ticket – someone will win the jackpot while most people just buy empty tickets.
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It is a foreign concept that one would be able to say with complete confidence “my spouse will never cheat on me.” And yet, I can say that. I can say that because I have a faith and a God who stand behind me in that statement. And I can say that because the love my fiancé and I share is not human, it is divine. We love each other because we love God and we have discovered that in loving one another, we get to love God more fully. Moreover, the love that we have for one another is divine in origin. God gave it to us at our baptism and it had a full 15-20ish years to grow and mature so that when we met, it blossomed.
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We have a faith that can make these promises. Promises of faithfulness, love, commitment. Our faith allows us to make these promises because He who gave us love was faithful in His love until the end. He who originated love in our hearts died for us out of that same love. We as Catholics are granted the same strength of faithfulness to the end when we return our love to the one who is love. When we participate in making our love a sacrament, when we make a way for God’s grace to enter the world every day, when we demonstrate outwardly our inner devotion, we can say with full knowledge and confidence that we are not in a game of luck. We are in an institution of work and prayer, and we can rest assured that our success rests squarely on the shoulders of our prayerful work and the support of a God who made the universe.

Blessed Pope John Paul II is famous for his line: “man finds himself only in true gift of self.” If we only receive what we give away, then we must strive every day to give our hearts and our love back to Christ.

Giving a gift back doesn’t take luck. It takes work.

I think there's a mix of truth and starry-eyed youthful naivete in the piece, and it's drawn some criticism, notably from Simcha Fisher who wrote a response entitled "God is faithful, but we’re not marrying God."

[T]he confident if untried Emma Smith is right in sighing over the fatalistic modern view of marriage — right in condemning the idea that some people just get lucky, and there’s no way of improving your odds. But she is disastrously, innocently, offensively wrong when she thinks that we can somehow guarantee that things will turn out well, just because we intend to work hard.

Ever heard of Hosea’s wife? Ever heard of Israel? Ever heard of the entire human race? God knows that this is what happens when you enter into a marriage with another human being: one way or another, sooner or later, your love will be rewarded with pain. And I know this because I love my husband — my faithful, loving husband — and I’ve hurt him. I pray to God, and I hurt my husband. I understand marriage, I believe in marriage, I have spent years upon years working on my marriage, and I hurt my husband. And He forgives me, just as I forgive him.

I am glad that Smith understands so well that the grace of marriage is something that must be actively pursued, consciously acted upon. And I hope that her confidence in her husband is rewarded with unbroken faithfulness and love, and that she will not be shattered when she discovers that he does have flaws. I hope that people read her piece and realize that it makes sense to look hard for a spouse who is trustworthy.

But I hope to God she is never involved in any kind of marriage ministry — not with the childish understanding of marriage that she has now. What will she say to the woman whose husband is cheating? Or to the man whose wife won’t stay sober, or won’t stop gambling, or won’t stop browbeating him in public? What will she say to the spouses who do work hard, and have found themselves sinned against? Maybe “Let’s put our heads together and figure out how you could have worked harder to prevent this. Good marriages aren’t just a matter of luck, you know.”

And what will she say to herself when she finds herself sinning against her husband? Maybe she will not cheat, but oh, she will hurt him. She will. This isn’t a warning about your husband-to-be, dear confident, untried brides. It’s a warning about you.

Leticia Adams writing at The Catholic Stand is similarly unimpressed in a piece entitled "Marriage is not a Fairy Tale":

The common thing that I see among believers and unbelievers is the need to avoid pain. It’s what motivates people. “Happiness” is the carrot that is hung in front of us and the way to get “happiness” is to avoid pain. That is the trick of the devil. The only way to happiness is through pain, it is through resurrection, after the worst pain that life really begins. That belief is the center of our faith. That includes our life, our conversions, our marriages, our bodies, our relationship with Jesus, our friendships and everything else. Nothing can become holy without pain, death and resurrection. The more we avoid that fact the more we reject a Christ who was crucified, died, was buried and rose from the dead. That is our Christian faith.

It goes for marriage too. Catholics cannot go into a marriage thinking that there will be no pain. We are human, we sin, it’s how we roll. Then we have to reconcile ourselves to God through confession and mercy, and in marriage there has to be those same elements.

I am thirty-seven years old. I was thirty-four years old, divorced, been around the block and had four children on my wedding day and I thought that God would protect me from being hurt by my husband because of the grace of the Sacrament. I was wrong. I have hurt my husband deeply and he has hurt me. In fact, this marriage has caused me (and my husband) more pain that any other relationship ever has.

However, there is a grace in the Sacrament of Marriage that you can do nothing to earn. Sometimes that grace is the only thing you have when you are sitting in front of the tabernacle telling Jesus how much you wish you had never heard of Him because this whole Christian thing sucks and marriage is the worst part of it all.

It is grace that helps you get past the pain and get to marriage counseling. It is grace that helps you see the human being in your spouse and realize that his wounds are why he has let you down and not because you are not worthy of love. It is grace that helps you realize that God is faithful and His Love is where you go for the safety, security and the promise of not being let down. Your spouse isn’t God. Your spouse can not carry the weight that is intended to be carried by God. It’s that simple. Anytime you put that kind of expectation on a finite human being, you will be disappointed.

As I said, I find the original piece somewhat naive, but the pile-on against it is starting to bug me as well, because while I suppose people could accuse us of not knowing that much about marriage either (thirteen years and six kids isn't a lifetime) the "you and your spouse will constantly hurt each other" account of marriage does not resonate with me. We've experienced pain and frustration during our marriage: miscarriage, the breakup of my family through death and hers through divorce, the many difficulties and frustrations which can surround issues ranging from finances to child rearing to sex. But if there have been times when we have hurt each other purposely, they have been so small and so infrequent I can't think of them. And while we may occasionally hurt each other unintentionally, the fact that we know it is not intentional takes much of the sting from such occasions.

Now, don't get me wrong: I do not think that there is any guarantee that spouses will not intentionally (or unintentionally) hurt each other. Being Catholic, understanding some theological concept of marriage, loving each other: none of these impart impeccability. Anyone can sin. But you can also choose not to sin. That's the thing about sin, it doesn't just "happen"; you do it. Which means you also have the choice to not do it.

And while "being Catholic" -- whether by that one means simply being a baptized member of the Church, or being a sanctuary rat, or spending one's hobby time arguing about theological and liturgical fine points on blogs -- is certainly no guarantee that people will not sin, or will not sin in some particular way, even aside from the graces of the sacrament of marriage itself, one of the ways in which sharing a Catholic understanding of marriage is helpful to a married couple in being happy together is that it provides an shared understanding of what marriage is and what it is for. MrsDarwin and I are naturally well suited to one another, but another thing that aids us in a happy marriage is that we shared a deeply and clearly held understanding of what we were getting into by getting married. Not in the sense that we knew what would happen to us. There are lots of things about what it's like to share a house and a bed and a crowd of children that we didn't know when we got engaged. But we did understand the nature and purpose of marriage, and that understanding we share was one of mutual sacrifice and self gift.

We shared an understanding that love is an act of the will, not only something you feel in your heart (or your loins.) We shared an understanding that the purpose of marriage is to form a family together, not necessarily to experience ever increasing satisfaction and fulfillment. We shared an understanding that our actions matter, and thus that it mattered how we treated each other, even in seemingly insignificant ways.

Because we knew we shared a commitment to the same idea of marriage, I would have said then, and would still say now that I know MrsDarwin will never cheat on me. That's not a probabilistic assessment of the future or a claim to some magical foreknowledge. It is a statement of faith. Knowing MrsDarwin as a person, and knowing the ideals that we share, I have faith that she will never cheat on me.

In saying that, I know full well that MrsDarwin is a person with free will that allows her to betray that faith of mine. I'm not claiming that because I'm Catholic and hold certain beliefs that I deserve to have a happy marriage. But I do make this claim: to the extent that spouses act virtuously (and as a Catholic, I believe that the Church reveals to us what virtue is -- both through nature and through revelation) they will be happier than if they did not. To the extent that people share and strive after a correct understanding of virtue, they will be happier than if they did not.

It's worth distinguishing between two kinds of hurt in marriage. One kind of hurt is what I'll call external hurt: things that happen to us which cause us pain. A lost job. A lost child. An injury. The inability to conceive. Conceiving when it seems utterly overwhelming to have another child. There are any number of things which can happen to people sharing a life which are incredibly difficult. And most certainly, being a Catholic and trying to live according to a Catholic view of marriage will do nothing to prevent these things.

Another kind of hurt is what I'll call inflicted hurt: things that we do to each other that cause pain. Nagging. Browbeating. Cheating. Selfishness. Insulting. All the ways, great and small, that one person may hurt another by intentional act or omission. Now, if we think that the Catholic Church has an accurate understanding of marriage and of virtue, then I think that we have to say that if people are living according to that Catholic understanding of marriage and virtue, they will not do these things to each other. That doesn't mean that people who are Catholic won't do these things. But it means that doing these things is acting contrary to the Church's understanding of virtue. In other words: sinning.

If both spouses actually act according to the Church's understanding of virtue, they will be protected from inflicted hurt. The times when they inflict hurt on each other are those times when they do not live according to the Church's teachings. So when I say that I know that MrsDarwin will not cheat on me, I am saying that I have faith that she will live according to her belief that cheating on me would be wrong.

Indeed, I would say that the reason why a major act of inflicted hurt such as adultery is so damaging to a marriage is that it is important to maintaining a relationship to have faith that your spouse will not hurt you. It would be very, very hard to maintain a relationship with MrsDarwin if I could not say that I knew she would not cheat on me. If a couple can't say that before marriage, they better not get married until or unless they can resolve that issue. And if a married couple has reached the point where one of them can no longer know that the other won't cheat -- rebuilding faith in that relationship until that can be said again is going to be a key aspect of saving the marriage.

Holding the Church's beliefs about marriage (or any other topic) is not a magic talisman. It doesn't ward off catastrophes that may befall us, nor does it assure that people will live according to their stated beliefs. But our faith is also not irrelevant to our happiness in marriage. Our faith teaches us what marriage is and what it is for. It is a guide, and to the extent that we follow that guide, we will indeed be happier because we will be living more in keeping with the purpose for which we were created. I was struck the other day by a quote from a book on (what else) World War One that I was reading, and I think it's relevant to marriage as it is to other aspects of life:

"If God binds our wounds, he does not prevent them from burning. On the contrary, they are supposed to burn, but in feeling them burn we understand the meaning of our suffering." Marc Boasson, "Au soir d'un monde", 1916

MrsDarwin

 Not reading this whole marriage tempest-in-a-combox has been the best thing that's happened to me since going off Facebook for Lent.

I think that we can speak with confidence about the possibility of fidelity in a marriage, because, although we have no guarantee of the future, we have the witness of the past and present. We draw on the examples of the saints as models of heroic virtue, and we look to them as proof that what seems impossible can be realized, and not just realized by the skin of our teeth, but in full, glorious richness. There have been saints in hard marriages -- St. Rita of Cascia comes to mind, or St. Monica. They were not defined or destroyed by their traumatic marriages. Examples of bad marriages abound, but good, faithful, virtuous marriages abound too, in all walks of life. Bob and Harriet. Frank and Dee. Jon and Mary Ann. Liz and Eric. Charlie and Charlotte. Barb and Mark. Jake and Christina. These are the merest fraction of the good marriages I've known, true examples of what it means to be faithful to one another in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, as long as they both shall live. If any member of these couples had predicted before marriage, as very likely happened, that the other would never cheat on them, they would have been right. They would have been right! So there is some measure in which it isn't presumptuous to state that your spouse, or fiance, will never cheat on you. In fact, as Darwin said above, if you can't say that with confidence about your fiance, it's time to reexamine the relationship before you make it permanent.

If I have to be honest here, though, let me say that I grow weary of reading articles and advice on marriage from kids who aren't married yet or have been married for two or three years (two whole years!). Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and the Church's teaching is right there for anyone to explicate, but the challenges you expect to face as a youngster or a newlywed are generally not the actual challenges of living out a marriage. Cheating is very dramatic, but takes a lot of effort that most people aren't going to expend. Much harder is the lifetime task of remaining faithful and charitable to your spouse in every word and every thought, in every conversation with friends and in every situation. Everyone knows, and rightly so, that the self-giving of sex can lead to heights of ecstasy, and that abstinence can be bitterly difficult. It's harder to foresee that in certain seasons, abstinence is the easier path, the cop-out, and that expressing love through sex, the making a free gift of one's body, without reservation, without the luxury of detachment, can be a crucifixion.

Crucifixion? Yes. Marriage is a crucifixion. It's total self-giving, which sounds romantic until you're actually having to to die to self. It's the death of selfish, and selfishness has a long, hard, painful death agony. It's wringing every last drop of mine out of yourself. Crucifixion is groaning, stretching, dying -- but it's not hell. And marriage doesn't have to be hell either.

That's because crucifixion is the opposite of hell. The crucifixion is a total act of love, love made so physically real that it can die to rise again. Hell is the absence of love. Crucifixion is the emptying of self. Hell is full of self, a suffocating overabundance of self feeding on itself. Hell is bitterness and recrimination, the nursing of deep wounds and petty scratches. Hell on earth has the potential to be Hell in eternity. Crucifixion on earth ends. It ends, and the end is joy. Julian of Norwich said that the pain of Christ in the crucifixion was the worst pain that could ever be suffered, but that the pain was completely overshadowed by the joy of Christ, because his pain was finite and his joy is infinite.

I will go so far as to say that in as far as a marriage on earth can be perfect, I have a perfect marriage. So far as men can be perfect, I think Darwin is perfect. I don't believe he's ever knowingly hurt me, and the few times when I have felt hurt have been not because he caused my pain, but because no person on earth, no matter how good, can stand in God's place and give total happiness. Part of the sorrow of this vale of tears is the realization of the limitations of this life, of how imperfectly even the most perfect are at doing good. The crucifixion of marriage is not caused by being nailed to the cross by your spouse (or by nailing your spouse to the cross either). The contradiction of crucifixion is that I nail myself to the cross. Jesus said that no one took his life from him; he laid it down willingly. And I will go so far as to say that there is no growth in marriage without crucifixion. The good times can be a deep source of joy, no doubt. Love comes in many forms, and many of them are pleasant. But unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains nothing more than a grain of wheat, and until spouses bury themselves in the deep trenches required to uproot selfishness, the marriage remains nothing more than shallow soil that can be blown away by the slightest disturbance.

And hey, I prefer the crucifixion of marriage to the crucifixion of the single life, no question. I'm going to die anyway. I'd rather do it with my own dearest one than alone. They say that the coward dies a thousand deaths, but that's not true: it's the brave that die a thousand deaths every day, and the coward who holds so tightly to his own life that he's only willing to die once. For myself, I need all the dying practice I can get.