Religion as Contract

I was sitting yesterday morning in a review session for one of my law school exams. We were analyzing a hypothetical problem (based on a real-life case) in which a Catholic priest delivers a fire-and-brimstone sermon at the funeral of a young homosexual man who died in a tragic accident. The priest seems to have restated the Catholic Church’s position on the sinfulness of homosexual acts, albeit in rather stark and indelicate terms. The parents then sue the priest for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

I don’t want to discuss the legal issues, because I simply don’t know enough about the 1st Amendment (freedom of speech and free exercise of religion) at this point to give an adequate answer. I also don’t want to discuss the priest’s behavior. Rather, I want to discuss the reactions of some of my classmates for what it reveals about their attitude toward religion. Some of them, in order to find the priest liable, analyzed the case not from the perspective of tort law, but of contract law. Their basic argument was that the family had hired the Catholic Church to hold a funeral Mass for their son and that the priest, the Church’s agent, had breached the contract by delivering a sermon critical of their son’s conduct. My classmates, however, failed to make clear what the essential terms of such a contract are. The contract would look something like the following:

“We, the bereaved parents, pay the Church/priest valuable consideration of X in exchange for the service of saying nice things about our son in front of our friends and family at his funeral Mass. Furthermore, the views of the Church with regard to our son’s conduct are irrelevant and therefore not to be mentioned.”

I find such a contract, and the underlying view of religion, disturbing for two reasons. First, this contract reduces religion to a matter of mere personal choice. Joining the Church (or any other religion, for that matter) has no ontological effect on the individual which would make leaving problematic. Baptism, in this scheme, means just getting wet, and Confirmation is just getting some nasty oil rubbed on one’s forehead.

Second, according to this contract, the Church has absolutely no right to speak on important moral issues. If a member of the Church says he disagrees with certain teachings, no priest could present the Church’s teaching in a forceful manner for fear of a lawsuit. At the same time, the Church would be required to be at the beck and call of all her members. The Church bears all the obligations of the contract, and the individual member bears none.

I think the root problem of this “contractual” view of religion is that it doesn’t even rise to the level of a real contract. Any other contract this one-sided would be voided by a court for unconscionability. The individual demands complete autonomy and freedom, and the Church is told to recognize that. The Church cannot demand anything of the individual, but the individual can demand everything of the church.

Even a real contract, however, between man and Church/God would not be enough. The ancient Romans were said to regard religion as a matter of do ut des: I give so that you give. This at least is a contract; both sides are required to do something for the other party. Such an attitude, though, should strike any Catholic as somehow vulgar, at the very least. Who am I to demand anything from God, if He made me? Can I take Him to court if He doesn’t perform as I expect?

Such a contractual view of religion appears even in the Old Testament, in some misguided understandings of covenant, and still crops up today. It is for some reason extremely hard to avoid. I am referring to the so-called Deuteronomic theory of history, which views all evil as a direct punishment from God for failing to live up to the terms of the covenant. This theory was refuted first in the Book of Job, and later in the death of Jesus. Jesus taught that the sun rises for the just as well as the unjust man. Loving God in this life must be something more than a mere contractual duty, because God makes no guarantee that life will go as we wish, if we love Him.

Some may raise the objection that belief in the afterlife is merely a postponed performance. Yes, it is true that we believe that evil cannot conquer forever. However, the proper response is that we are to love God for His own sake, and not for our sake.

Anyway, I’ve gone on longer than I meant to. Just a few thoughts on contractual views of religion.

It Was Not Enough

- or -
Why I love the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

This morning I happened to be thinking about the concept of "priceless" on my way to school. It is a term the economists would generally avoid. Even a "priceless" work of art like the Mona Lisa can have a price placed upon it. If dollar values seem problematic, think of this: would an art museum trade a Michelangelo for the Mona Lisa? Five Michelangelos? What about ten? Sooner or later we could set a price.

But there are a handful of circumstances where something can truly be called "priceless", where someone is literally willing to pay any price. One of the most notable examples are the martyrs, who gave everything for their Christian faith. Even the most cynical economists would have to admit that, for the martyrs, the faith was priceless.

For various reasons my afternoon was frustrating and by the time I got to mass this evening I was in a rather foul mood. So as I was trying to pray before mass, I was not exactly thinking about what we are celebrating (in spite of the fact that today is the patronal feast for the United States). But as soon as mass began, I was reminded that today is a solemnity. We had three priests, in their finest vestments, clouds of incense, a choir, the gloria... Clearly, no ordinary feast.

As the liturgy unfolded, I began to remember what it is that we celebrate. God, in His goodness, created the world and created us in His own image. But it was not enough: when we fell, He chose to redeem us. But it was not enough: He chose to conquer death and raise us on the last day. But it was not enough: He chose to come among us as a man, sharing in our very nature. But even that was not enough: in His superabundant generosity He decided to preserve the mother of His Son from the stain of original sin. Not because He had to, but because He wanted to. That is how much He loves us.

It is very appropriate that this solemnity falls during Advent, since the Immaculate Conception is such a harbinger of things to come, like a course of appetizers so incredible you almost forget that an even better meal is coming. If this is what God has done for the woman who gave birth to His Son, what mighty deeds will this Child work? What things are yet to come?

Today we remember a lowly woman - a girl, really - who came from a tiny people on the fringe of the Roman Empire. She said "yes" to sharing in the plan of a God for Whom nothing seems to be quite enough when it comes to loving us. And she chose to share in His salvific work, irrespective of what it might cost her. (She knew full well it might cost her life; she probably did not know about the seven sorrows awaiting her, though in time she embraced these too.) For Mary, doing God's will was priceless.

This evening four religious sisters from Italy (belonging to a very young community called the Apostles of the Interior Life) renewed their vows at mass. And as they did so I realized that they too were giving everything to share in that same superabundant life of grace.

I am unashamed to say that I wept at the thought of it all. It was a wholly insufficient response to such a mystery, but then how can we ever adequately respond to the Almighty? Today we celebrate a God Who gives and gives and continues to give, because that is Who He is.

Some Thoughts on Reconstruction

I was recently doing some reading on Reconstruction and I happened upon a book review by Jean Edward Smith of Eric Foner's Forever Free in the CRB. The review had some real zingers, which I thought I would share:

The Civil War was not a war between the states and certainly not a war between sovereign nations. It was a treasonous rebellion mounted by the governments in eleven Southern states for the primary purpose of protecting slavery. It was suppressed by the United States Army after four years of bloody conflict. The bravery of those Confederate soldiers who fought to perpetuate the cause of slavery should not be disparaged. But it is for good reason that the rebel dead are not interred in cemeteries maintained by the United States.

Ouch! But I'm inclined to agree. Works like Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech demonstrate rather unambiguously that the war was about slavery from day one. Indeed, Smith notes that "today, to reject slavery as the Civil War's root cause is akin to denying the Holocaust." He's right; no serious historian would do either.

In an eloquent epilogue titled "the Unfinished Revolution," Foner charts the progress made during the civil rights era, which he calls the Second Reconstruction, and in the half-century since. He pays just tribute to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and alludes to John Kennedy's use of federal power to enforce integration at Ole Miss in 1962. He neglects President Eisenhower's more decisive action five years earlier when he ordered the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock, Arkansas, to compel compliance with a court order desegregating Central High. Although Eisenhower believed that the Supreme Court's original decision in Brown v. Board of Education was wrong, he took his Article II responsibility to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" at face value. No focus groups were convened and no opinion polls were taken even though it was a presidential election year. Eisenhower responded instantly with overwhelming force to prevent mob rule. Had he not done so, desegregation in the South would have been set back at least a decade.

Eisenhower is one of the more underrated presidents and one I am increasingly coming to admire.

Among other things, [Foner's] ideological preconceptions keep him from recognizing the role of athletics and the large national chains in breaking down segregationist attitudes in the South. Wal-Mart is a favorite whipping boy for liberal activists, but it is also an equal-opportunity employer in which African-American shoppers no longer are required to step aside for a white customer. Sam Walton put thousands of small merchants out of business in county seats throughout the rural South and he advanced the cause of racial justice in the process, just as McDonald's, another equal-opportunity employer, drove hundreds of segregated Mom and Pop greasy spoons to the wall.

But it has been athletics that has changed the face of the South. When Bear Bryant desegregated the Crimson Tide in 1971, every team in the Southeastern Conference followed suit. When the colleges and universities integrated their squads, the high schools did the same. It is sometimes difficult for ivory-towered academics like myself to appreciate the role of high school athletics in shaping the South's community values. But Friday night football and basketball are major social events. And it is almost impossible to retain the racial hostility that once came instinctively while cheering on the local team with young black men and women playing prominent roles.

The Diplomacy of Brahms

I’ve enjoyed the recent reports of Condoleezza Rice playing the piano for the Queen of England in a chamber performance. It’s nice to see an American as important, influential, and busy as Rice, also be so “accomplished,” in Austen terms, with such an appreciation of music – and using it in the service of diplomacy, we might guess.

But the reports, intriguingly, also suggest that she favors Brahms as a composer, and certainly she played a Brahms quintet in this recital. Perhaps Brahms is the choice of pianists. As a non-pianist, I am rather at a loss. His sonatas and other chamber music for strings have never quite made sense to me. Only the second movement of his first sextet ever seemed to have a clear, unified meaning, possibly because, it being a theme and variations, he never goes far from the melody. (Here’s an impossible version of the piece – from Star Trek!) Ordinarily, in his symphonies and so forth, it seems Brahms presents, brilliantly, a wonderful, memorable melody but then begins layering harmonies, countermelodies, modulations, until all one experiences is a wash of saccharine sound that leaves you with no footing. There’s no substance, just sugar! Certainly his music always has a structure, but often, unless the listener studies theory, he won’t see it, he won’t experience it.

Perhaps that’s what he wants. Brahms is, after all, a romantic of the most quintessential sort, always exploring and revelling in emotions. George Bernard Shaw, in his usual way, put his disapproval of this method of expression rather bombastically: “The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary… He is the most wanton of composers… Only his wantonness is not vicious; it is that of a great baby… rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.” And “Brahms is just like Tennyson, an extraordinary musician, with the brains of a third rate village policeman.”

I don’t know if the criticism of Tennyson was just – I leave that to the experts – but Shaw was hardly Brahms’ only critic. Tchaikovsky, his contemporary and fellow romantic, also denounced him as a “scoundrel” and “giftless.” Tchaikovsky’s music is also full of emotion, but it doesn’t have the same sweeping abandonment, near chaos, I associate with Brahms.

And yet something in his music must have put Brahms on the pedestal he held when he lived, and on which he still apparently exists, even in a most unromantic, skeptical society. Does that come through most clearly in his piano music? If Ms. Rice, and those who love him, would care to comment…

Passion by Rote

In response to Aaron's post, I feel obliged to pass on this delectable analysis that I just cyber-stumpled upon:

Ever since the French Revolution, men have been taught to wear their passions like cockades — as visible political statements. Yet naturally one does not dress oneself by passion; one does so by habit and convention, or by deliberation; and so it is that these displays of passion are often somewhat inauthentic in their putative spontaneity.

(You can find the rest here, at The Joy of Curmudgeonry)

In sum, inauthentic (self-conscious) passion is a self-contradictory phenomenon. Just as Japanese soccer fans have to fake their enthusiasm, many people have to fake their political passions because our current politics sets great store on spontaneous passion.

The post about the French Revolution also raises the intriguing question of the role history plays in inspiring this fake passion. But, that's another post for another day.

Some Boring Numbers...

Just thought I'd mention that since this blog began in August we've had 838 visits (1,344 pageviews) from 300 unique visitors from twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia and sixteen foreign countries (well, if you count China and Taiwan separately) on four continents. And that's not even counting the folks who read The Guild Review through Google Reader or other feed services. So thanks to all our readers!

On Japanese Soccer Culture

The Financial Times recently had a very interesting article on soccer in Japan, which has one of the best teams in Asia, if not the best. Some of the article related the ups and downs of particular players and matches, but the part I found most interesting was about the fans:

The odd thing was that Philippe Troussier, their French coach, seemed oddly gloomy throughout the tournament. On a windswept terrace at their Beirut hotel, he gave the sort of despairing, dyspeptic interview that usually indicates a manager is coming to the end of his tether.

Japan had no football culture, he moaned. There was none of the ruthless desire to win he had experienced during his years coaching in Africa....

Football existed in Japan before 1993 but not in a meaningful way. Before the J League was inaugurated, Saburo Kawabuchi, the head of the Japanese football federation, sent researchers round the globe to report back on issues such as fan behaviour, tactics and marketing.

In the short term, it worked – the J League boomed and the national team was set on its way to Asian supremacy.

The problem, though, is that what began as mimicry has remained just that – it has not taken root and become organic. Kawabuchi has spoken of fans losing their inhibitions when they enter a stadium, taking on different national characteristics in the style of their support. “They are Japanese living in their own country,” he said, “who have abandoned a little of their Japaneseness.”

But that is the issue: fans put on great shows of colour and noise that are impressive until the game starts, at which it becomes apparent that their spectacle is divorced from what is happening on the pitch: a goal is scored against a team, and their fans carry on their song without missing a beat.

Shunsuke Nakamura (pictured), Celtic’s Japanese winger, made the point indirectly in speaking of his love for the fans in Glasgow. “They let the players raise their level,” he said. “They’re amazing. Their cheers change in response to the play.” Which, implicitly, is not the case in Japan.

It is fandom learnt by rote.