Judaism

Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.
 
Thus spoke Moses (Judaism's most important prophet) to semitic warrior nomads and former Egyptian slaves in the 13th century B.C., as he exhorted them to follow precepts that would give rise to Judaism — the world's first instance of ethical monotheism. Emphasing progress, individuality and freedom, Judaism became one of the chief the cornerstones of Western and now world civilization. Judaism is the progenitor of Christianity and Islam, both of which are enriched when they look to their roots in the more ancient faith.

The sacred literature of Judaism begins with the TaNaKh (the Hebrew Bible), which contains the Torah (Law), the Nevi'im (Prophets), and the Ketuvim (Writings), arranged in roughly historical order to take the reader from the beginning of the Universe to the end of the Age of Prophecy in ancient Israel. (The Old Testament contains the same material, but rearranged by Christian editors to convey a sense of prophecy leading up to the event of God's Incarnation in Jesus Christ.)

After the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and its priests in 71 A.D., a group called the Tannaim (rabbis who had been spared by the Romans in hope they could help pacify the Jews) produced the Mishna, a compilation of Biblical and Halakhic (legal) interpretation which would govern Jewish living and worship. After the Mishna, one could be a good Jew without having to make an annual pilgimmage to sacrifice animals at the Temple in Jerusalem. Over the next few centuries, rabbis in Palestine and Babylon wrote the Talmud, which contained extensive commentaries on the Mishna in the form of debates spanning both geography and time. To this are added various collections of Midrash, which are commentaries on the Torah concerning matters of Law. What emerged from this process was rabbinic Judaism, a made-for-diaspora religion in which only a teacher (rabbi) and a few books were needed to pass on the learning and tradition of the faith to the members of the community, all of whom could lead the community in worship. The Jewish legal/moral tradition is continued in many great works, the Mishneh Torah by Moses Maimonides and the Shulhan Arukh by Joseph Caro, among them. For more details see Talmud & Midrash. Central to the observance of Jewish Law is the observance of the Holidays of the Jewish Calendar.

There are strong spiritual and mystical traditions within Judaism, most particularly the tradition of teachings known as Kabbalah. The roots of present day Kabbalah are found in the Zohar.

Judaism has since split into three principal movements since the haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) of the 18th and 19th centuries: Reform Jews do not acknowledge the authority of the Talmud, while Conservative Jews consult it. Orthodox Jews (of whom there are several varieties) observe its precepts as literally as possible and seek to establish Halakha (Jewish Religious Law) in place of current secular law in Israel, just as Islamic Fundamentalists seek to establish Shariah (Islamic Religious Law) in Muslim countries.

Jewish worship consists of daily prayer and ritual in the home for both men and women, and communal worship at a synagogue on Shabbat (Sabbath, observed on Saturdays) and High Holidays. There are also special holiday prayers and rituals for the home. Jewish liturgy is written in several types of prayer-book: a Siddur for home prayer and Shabbat worship, a Mahzor for High Holidays (like Yom Kippur, the annual Day of Atonement), and a Haggadah for the seder (Passover — which commemorates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt) service held in the home. Various versions of prayer books have been written for these observances according to one's preferred style of Judaism. For a quick introduction to Jewish observance, holidays, literature, and the state of Israel, see Herman Wouk's, This is my God.

The central narrative of Judaism is the story of the Israelites, from God's promise to Abraham and Sarah that their descendants would inherit Canaan and be God's Chosen People, to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the beginning of the dissolution of the Southern Kingdom (Judah). The central story within that narrative is the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt: Moses challenges the Pharoah (Rameses II?) and leads his people out of Egypt to the border of the Promised Land. In a dramatic encounter with God at Mt. Sinai, witnessed by all the people, Moses receives the first Ten Commandments of the Law, which establishes both a code of behavior and a covenant between God and the nation of Israel. This is a story of liberation combined with one of responsibility: the Israelites are freed, but their freedom is not arbitrary. They are freed to become People of God.

Judaism Links:

 Shamash
About.com: Judaism
HADASSAH - because my grandmother said so.
Jewishnet - Global Jewish Information Network
Online Jewish Library
Maven - The Portal Directory to the Jewish World
Virtual Jerusalem - another Jewish Portal
National Museum of American Jewish History
Nizkor: A Holocaust Rememberance
Navigating the Bible II: Online Bat/Bar Mitzvah Tutor
Torah.org — online study of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament)
Where was God in the Holocaust? — A RealAudio Sermon by Rabbi Dr. N. Cardozo, hosted by 613.org
Chabad.org - Chabad Lubavitscher Hasidic Judaism for the Internet Age.
A Jewish Catechism

Statement of Belief

I believe that the members of the VCBC believe all kinds of different things.
I believe that what I believe is not nearly as important for you as what you believe.
I believe that what I believe is not ultimately important even for me, because I refuse to commit the idolatry of worshipping my own opinions (some of which must be wrong, because I am human).

I believe the following, common to most faith traditions:

Organized religion tames the idea of God (or Ultimate Reality) to support its existence and to affirm its cultural milieu. This is a leading cause of atheism.

God is one. Truth is one. We are one. We need love, honesty, and faith to get ourselves together. Since all truth is God's Truth, any honest method of inquiry, pursued faithfully, with loving regard for the subject, will point toward God. This includes science, which can serve to correct our idolatrous beliefs.

Being human means being on our own, free to become ourselves without reference to God. To enable this, God makes the universe work according to rational principles, which means that God does not fix things when they don't work out the way we want.

We think we are human beings who occasionally have spiritual experiences, but we are really spiritual beings who are here to have human experiences. When we think we are the only spiritual beings in our world we deceive ourselves.

The spirit of God creates, sustains, pervades, participates in, and transcends, everything.

I believe the following, specific to Christianity:

God, for love of us, became an ordinary person — Jesus — to be with us as one of us. People just like us — which means that we are just like them — killed him because he did not conform to their beliefs about God.

Belief is an act of embracing opinions, which becomes idolatry when our opinions about God become more important to us than our relationship with God (i.e., when we crucify Christ).

Jesus arose from death — an act by which God not only forgives us for being like his murderers, but promises to bring us into a new relationship with God beyond our present lives. This act is powerful enough to redeem the entire universe.

I further believe that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are different ways to worship the same God, see below.

I believe that because the moral teachings of the world's major religions are summarized in passages like these (from the Bible):

"And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

"Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thine heart, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

we need to quit fighting over the details of what we believe.

No Sympathy for Evil

I have a message to those of you, especially you Americans, who say of the attacks of September 11 that America "had it coming," because of America's insensitive foreign policy in regions that now harbor terrorists. That is called "blaming the victim," and it morally repugnant when you blame victims of rape. It is equally repugnant when you blame victims of terror, including the people of this nation. With your misguided words you give encouragement to those who need no encouragement. Your cowardice will not help you — the terrorists in their rage will not distinguish you from the rest of us.

Still, my assertion begs the question that all Americans ask. "Why do they hate us?" I have tried to answer that in a previous piece, "The Right to Be Ourselves." They hate us for being us. Fundamentalism is a recent reaction against modernism, and we are modern. The current crop of terrorists has simply taken that reaction far into the realm of that which is Evil.

Now, Bin Laden has managed to issue a televised statement calling for pan-Muslim jihad against the United States and its allies until "the Palestinians have peace, and the infidel is out of the land of Muhammad."

I have three responses to those ideas. The first is that this is clearly manipulative propaganda. Only now has Bin Laden put Palestine ahead of Saudi Arabia in his rhetoric. A man with no legitimate friends is changing his message in hope of wider support.

The second is that every particle in the Universe is sacred to the One who created it. Therefore all parts of the world are equally sacred, but we remember that sacredness more strongly at some places than at others. Taking offense that some of our troops are stationed at a remote base in Saudi Arabia has therefore nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with tribalism. We are on earth by God's design, just like everyone else.

The third response is that the Palestinian people, beginning with Yasser Arafat, need to re-think their support, no their reverence, of suicide bombing and other terrorist tactics. As Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald wrote of the then unknown terrorists, on the day of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause. [more...]

Any advance of the Palestinian cause should await the successful destruction of the world's international terror networks. Further, the creation of a Palestinian state should wait until the Palestinian leadership, propaganda, and people turn their backs on suicide bombing and all forms of terrorism. Otherwise, the world will have simply set up another terrorist state.

I leave you with these words from a recent speech to the United Nations by Rudolf Giuliani, the Mayor of New York:

The era of moral relativism between those who practice or condone terrorism and those who stand up against it must end. There's no moral way to sympathize with grossly immoral actions . . . Unfortunately by trying to do that, a fertile field for terrorism has grown.

The Shape of Peace to Come

Make no mistake, four US carrier battle groups are moving into position as America gets ready to strike back against the terrorist organizations who attacked us, and against the governments who provide them with safe haven. We are going to wage our part of the ugly war they have thrust upon us.

But after every war there comes peace. If we are to wage war sucessfully, we must contemplate the peace we are trying to shape before we strike our first blow. For we must hew that peace out of the war as a sculptor carves a beautiful statue out of a granite block.

Part of that peace must include the most powerful concentration of Islamic Fundamentalists in the world — the Islamic Republic of Iran. The news media protray Iran as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and as a sponsor of terrorism. Iran appears to have come a long way from the nation that declared chemical weapons to be "un-Islamic" and that did not kill a single American hostage taken during its founding revolution.

Iran took those hostages from the American Embassy in Tehran, because America had helped Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi stay in power far longer than the Iranian people wished, because we tolerated his use of a repressive secret police to maintain his power, and because the US provided him safe haven after he was finally overthrown by a popular revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. That the Shah was staying only temporarily in the US to receive treatment for cancer (which was ultimately unsuccessful) carried no weight with Khomeini — he saw the Shah as a criminal (the way we might view Slobodan Milosevic), and wanted to subject him to Islamic Law. For our part, we saw the Shah as an ally, and while we were not going to defend him against the revolution, we were equally unwilling to hand over an ally to his enemies. There had to be some small benefit for supporting the US.

I believe protecting the deposed Shah was unjust, but less so than giving him to his enemies, and therefore we cannot apologize for making what we considered to be best choice. But we did a great injustice, according to the philosophy behind our own Declaration of Independence and our Constitution by helping to maintain his regime in power against overwhelming popular will. We have an opportunity to begin making peace with the Iranian people by officially apologizing for that act.

We have a further opportunity to begin making peace with the Iranian people by apologizing for standing by while Iraq began using chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Iran was originally reluctant to employ such weapons, but eventually began using them to deter their unlimited use by the Iraqis. This was shortly after the hostages were finally returned to America by Iran upon the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Henry Kissinger spoke for most Americans when he said that it was a pity that both sides couldn't lose. But we would have changed the world's perception of us (and the balance of power in the Middle East) if we had told Iraq that we would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons even against our enemies, and that we would intervene on the side of Iran if they did not stop using them. Once again, we failed to do the right thing, and we have an opportunity to apologize for it now.

The world has much to gain if the dominant Islamic Fundamentalist power in the Middle East can bring itself to perceive the US as anything other than "the Great Satan." With the help of Iran we might be able to more quickly and effectively suppress international terrorism. With the help, or at least the non-hindrance, of Iran we might eventually be able to broker a peace with justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel. And, quite frankly, Iran is the only country that has come close to blending Islamic Fundamentalism with representative democracy — we might do well to consult Iran on how to set up a government to replace the Taliban in Afganistan, or even Saddam Hussein in Iraq (should that become necessary).

I think United States would do well to apologize to Iran for our past shortcomings in order to give Iran its moment of historical opportunity to help shape the coming peace, instead of helping to prolong the current war.

Note added in 2008: On the other hand, Iran has never apologized to the West for its fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which was in effect, a declaration of war against the West in general, and Freedom of Expression in particular.

Against Terrorism, not Islam

The war against terrorism is not a war against Islam, because the terrorists who attacked us are not necessarily Muslims. A Muslim is one who submits his or her will to the Will of God. Now the Qur'an says something so important about God that it is repeated 113 times — every chapter but one of the Qur'an begins with the words, In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. I believe that those who would fly jets into buildings, killing over 5,000 unsuspecting men, women, and children, none of whom posed a threat to the terrorists' societies or homelands, could not do so in submission to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. At best, they submit to no will other than their own. At worst, well, may God rebuke them.

Thus, war against these terrorists and their organizations is not a war against Islam, but rather against pretenders to that honored religion. Giving the terrorists into our hands is a rejection of those who defame Islam by actions done falsely in God's Name. Those who fail to do so may ally themselves to the terrorists' fate.

The Right to be Ourselves

I was just leaving for work this past Tuesday (11 September 2001), when my niece phoned to tell me to turn on my television. She didn't need to say which channel. I saw the World Trade Center collapse in flames. I had a sinking feeling in my gut. This, I felt, is the beginning of World War III.

We have already suffered 1/10 the casualties of the entire Vietnam War in the very first battle, which took place in New York and Washington. Those Americans who are hoping we will not "commit ground troops" please get your heads out of your asses. [Oops, that was my father's voice from WW II and Korea.] We now have to be prepared to invade and crush any government that refuses to cough up the perpetrators of this attack, and attacks like it. Otherwise, the only credible threat we have is nuclear weaponry, and I think we need to reserve that threat to reply to chemical or biological attacks.

In particular, it takes relatively little biological material to cause mass casualties, which is why bio-weapons have been called the "poor man's nuke." The name implies the only means we have to retaliate — nuclear weapons. We need to make it clear to ourselves and our adversaries, that if biological weapons are used against the US, our allies, or our troops, that we reserve the right to demand the evacuation of the entire country that harbors such terrorists, after which we will erase it from the earth, while sparing as much of its people as possible, who will then have to live in diaspora for the next couple of centuries.

Therefore I urge the US and our allies to act with due regard for speed to take out all the major terrorist players before they find a way to carry out a successful biological attack. An overly prolonged war against terrorism will be a nuclear war, possibly with many more of us dead before it gets that way.

But we must also prepare to be strict with ourselves. Are we ready to make it a federal crime, punishable as treason, for anyone knowingly to aid, monetarily or otherwise, a known terrorist organization? Forget Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the PLO — are you willing to see your neighbor jailed, or even executed, for donating to the IRA? To Chechnya? And, since our enemies are determined to bring some of the battles to the heart of America, are you willing to report suspicious activity, rather than hope someone else will magically find out about it before it's too late?

I am not engaging in all this bloodthirsty language for its own sake. I want you to know clearly what you're in for, if you are one of the 90% of Americans who want to go to war. Nor am I trying to scare you out of it. I just want you to steel your nerve for very ugly war, in which many of us may lose our lives as victims, and some of us our souls as perpetrators.

Let us not delude ourselves that our enemies are cowards. They are not. They are misguided, but courageous, self-sacrificing people, who are hitting us with all the heart, wealth, stealth, genius and force they can muster. Think of the Afgan freedom fighters (whom the US funded and eventually supplied with shoulder-fired Stinger surface-to-air missiles) who would throw themselves, with explosives hidden in their clothing, onto Soviet tanks. These enemies are more dangerous to us than another nation-state, because we know how to fight nation-states. We have to invent the ways to fight terrorists.

Finally, we need to understand the sympathies of those who have brought the war to us. They don't just hate us for supporting Israel (however luke-warmly). They hate us for being us. They hate our culture for glorifying its crime, drugs, and sexual immorality, and most of all its luxury. They hate culture's success at advertizing itself to the world, which they see as cultural imperialism. To them, we are filthy whores bent on seducing their children, bent on destroying their way of life by Americanizing the whole planet.

Which is really what this war is about. We have the right to be ourselves, and to be so openly. There are those in our midst who turn their backs to our way of life — like the Amish — but they tolerate us, and we tolerate them, because they accept our core values of individual liberty and responsibility in expression, lifestyle, politics, economics, and religion. We are even grateful to them for preserving an alternative to the way we live, because we know we have problems. Now we must destroy those who cannot bring themselves to do anything but destroy us. In Stephen Sondheim's musical, Into the Woods, a character mourns the loss of his family by violence with the words

Can't we just pursue our lives
With our children and our wives?

We can. We must. Even if we have to fight for our right to do so, yet again. Even if we have to open another century with war.

How Much Angrier?

Two days after the attack on America, a man carrying phony Delta Airlines pilot's ID was arrested at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, trying to board a plane using a ticket for Tuesday, September 11. Two other men carrying box-cutter knives were picked up at Dallas airport. The message to Americans is clear. The bastards are not finished yet. The attempts are still coming. We are at war with international terrorism, whether we like it or not. (Yes, war - and the sneak attack that started this war has just killed some 5,000 of us, not on a remote island, but in our financial and governmental hearts.) The only question is whether we have the moral will to fight and win. And the wisdom afterward to forge a just peace.

And now a message to the terror organizations that are continuing to attack us: There are still around 250 million of us left, and polls indicate that 90% of us want to flush your cremated remains down the sewers of New York and Washington. How much angrier do you want us to get? How much of your world do you want destroyed?

War and Peace

One day after the attack on America, evidence is accumulating that begins to point toward Extremist "Islamic" Organizations, such as the motley collection funded by Osama Bin Laden. I use the word "Islamic" in quotes because there is nothing truly Islamic about such organizations beyond the cultural affiliation of their members. This is a view supported by the three English translations of the Qur'an that I read in parallel some years ago, and by almost all Muslims, both within the US and abroad.

I will confess to you that part of the reason for VCBC's existence is to provide a tiny place to speak for a rapprochement between the West and Islam. The desire for this came to me in a dream, which I knew to be absurd even as I was dreaming it. Over twenty years ago, when I was a graduate student, I dreamed that I was in an antebellum mansion, shaking hands with Anwar Sadat, then President (well, dictator) of Egypt. "You idiot," I thought to myself. "You'll never really shake hands with Anwar Sadat." The next morning, I dismissed the dream as an infantile egoistic fantasy, and took a bus to work. It was only then that I began to feel creepy. On the bus someone's radio announced that Sadat had been assassinated during the night, martyred by his own people for making peace with Israel.

As a scientist, I can only say that the dream was a coincidence. That is, the dream and the assassination happened within hours, possibly within minutes, of each other. But the co-occurrence (coincidence) of two events does not imply that they are related to one another. But as a religious person, I must admit that I feel a bit like Native American seer Black Elk must have felt, when observed how little he had been able to make of the great visions he had experienced in his youth. I still have no idea what the dream might have meant, but I feel that it ought to have meant something.

And so, Jewish Christian that I am, I am sympathetic to the grievances of the people of Islam, and the people of Palestine in particular. Yet, I cannot forget the images of Palestinians in East Jerusalem celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Center. I would like to think that they were only a small group performing for the cameras. They discredit the cause for which they seek justice, and take the heart out of my sympathy for them. It is shameful and wicked that a group of people would so lightly take upon themselves a kind of spiritual guilt for the murders of tens of thousands. (I am thankful that Arafat spoke words of condolence, but he is capable of presenting one face to the Arabic speaking world, and another to the English.)

Similarly, we must present two faces to the world. We must use military force destroy the ability of the perpetrators to continue their terrorism, their "war by other means," because the perpetrators will only escalate, if we don't. But the only way to minimize the formation of new terrorist organizations after we deal with the current set of bad actors, is to make peace with populations from which they will otherwise draw their recruits.

War by other Means

Today, a coordinated terrorist attack was carried out against the People of the United States of America. Four commercial airliners were hijacked, of which two were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, and one was flown into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed in western Pennsylvania.

By coordinated, I mean that the four airliners took off within minutes of each other. The coordination, however, is only one indication that a sizeable organization carried out this attack. Another indication is that the airplanes struck the towers of the world trade center at a point low enough to destabilize the entire structures — which indicates that the perpetrators had been advised by engineers. Finally, assuming that a commercial airline pilot would crash a plane into a clear field or into water rather than crash into a building, it seems to me that the perpetrators had trained pilots among their number, who could navigate and fly a commercial jetliner. Coordination, engineering expertise, and piloting expertise all point toward a terrorist organization, rather than a small group of like-minded, evil crazies.

Now, with regard to America's future, there are two possibilities regarding the origin or the perpetrator organization. Either the perpetrators come from within, like Tim McVeigh, or from outside the United States. If the perpetrators are domestic, the challenge is whether we can root out and destroy them and their organization without giving up the individual liberties that are the reason for this country's existence and uniqueness. If the perpetrators are from a foreign terrorist organization, then the challenge is whether or not we have the will to wage war against international terrorism, and the self-restraint to prevent that war from becoming a civilization-destroying conflagration.

Why do I mention war? Because the World Trade Center, when fully occupied, held approximately 50,000 people. Some tens of thousand of them now lie dead or dying beneath the rubble of the collapsed buildings, along with some 200 police, paramedics, and firefighters who were trying to rescue them. If this was perpetrated by a foreign terrorist organization, then it goes far beyond an act that is addressable by law enforcement. It is an act of war, by other means. And if it is an act of state-sponsored terrorism, it is an act of war, period. And if we fail to respond decisively to an act of war, it will be open season on Americans.

So, to my fellow Americans, I counsel you to enjoy the next few weeks of uncertainty as the calm before the storm. Once we know who the perpetrator organization is, then we will be fighting to eliminate enemies from our midst while maintaining our individual liberties and our democracy, or we will be at war.

May God gather up the dead and dying, comfort their families, and help the wounded. May the perpetrators, living and dead, stand before the awful eye of God's Justice, as may any and all who rejoice in this despicable action. And may God have mercy on us all.

Note added in 2007: We recommend you also read We'll Go Forward from this Moment and Li'l Johnnie's Jihad/Hirabah Page.

Silent Sermons

Sometimes Beauty & Simplicity say it All

contributed by Kay Goodnow

I grew up a Sunday Episcopalian and a Roman Catholic the rest of the time. I attended Notre Dame de Sion, a private Catholic French finishing school for girls. But I would go to church on Sundays at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 40th and Main Streets in Kansas City.

I do not remember much about what I was taught. I do remember that St. Paul’s had the most magnificent stained glass window I had ever seen. It was a round window, and the colors in it were predominantly red. During the years when I attended a youth group there on Sunday evenings, as the sun was setting in the west, the window would literally explode with color. It spoke to my heart and somehow it remained there. With the single exception of a white lamb with one paw raised, I do not remember what it depicted.

Some fifty years later I had occasion to be in the vicinity of that church and I went in, just to see. Although the building has been enlarged to accommodate classrooms and administrative offices, the sanctuary remains nearly the same. The red carpeting, which led from the front door to the altar and which I believed to be miles long, is gone, and has been replaced with hardwood floors. St. Paul’s is today, and probably always has been, a beautiful church. It has an air of majestic dignity and commands respect; to me it seems to call for silence, for meditation.

There it was, ‘my’ magnificent round red window. As in my youth, it took my breath away. It is pure beauty, and even today, undefiled. I wanted to stand there and let it speak to me, to let it repeat over and over again "I am here" just as it had in my youth. Tears started, but it was time for the church to be locked. I went away, glad that I had gone there.

There are beautiful things in this life.

When I was in the 7th or 8th grade a friend invited me to go with her family to the Benedictine Abbey in Conception, Missouri. I went, because it was something to do, but mainly because it was a Catholic thing to do. I do not remember the nature of what transpired or the reason for the trip; just that it was in winter and it was snowing.

It seemed like a very long trip to me and I was excited when we finally arrived. I stepped out of the car. It was early in the evening, but dark. Unmarked snow covered the fields and the buildings. I felt no sense of cold, only awe at the pure beauty of the stark but regal landscape. I wanted to stay there forever, and just let my feelings be what they were.

When we entered the monastery (in my memory, the word ‘basilica’ replaces ‘monastery’) we were ushered into a chapel, which also was dark. Only the eternal tabernacle light and what seemed like millions of vigil lights, red, blue green and gold, kept it from total darkness. I was mesmerized. I could not move and I do not remember breathing. The round, red window from St. Paul’s placed itself squarely above that massive altar, high up, nearly to where the two sides joined in an arch. It was a perfect place, one of those perfect moments in time. The tears began, but this time no one hurried me away from the beauty and I was content.

When the chanting started I believed I was imagining something or that my ears were deceiving me. Here was more beauty and, as with the window and the snow, it was pure and unadulterated. I let it pour over me and I consumed it. It spoke to my heart. As it grew in volume and complexity, sometimes changing from full tone to half tone, and sometimes changing cadence, I knew that it would always remain with me.

At first I didn’t hear the words. I heard only the quality of the sound and the love that it conveyed. I could feel the peace that lived in the hearts of those monks who were singing. And then I heard the words of praise and knew them as Lauds, the Evening Prayer. The Latin came and went in my mind and in my heart and then I was hearing, over and over again, "I am here."
There are beautiful things in this life.

I believe that all of us experience what the camera industry refers to as a "Kodak moment." They are to be treasured, as time passes quickly and our lives become full of the demands that added responsibilities incur.

The beautiful moments come more frequently now, for me anyway, ‘mellowing’ with age and experience. I had one just this week that I feel is more than significant. I had just met a grandmother and we were exchanging glorious stories and enjoying the fact that grandchildren are well worth the effort of having lived through the agony of raising our children. She related that two of her granddaughters, ages two and four, are learning to pray. She was laughing.

"The two-year-old is just starting to form sentences," she said, "except for when she prays. We can’t get her to say anything other than ‘God is.’"

God is! Time, and my heart, stopped. Reality stopped. My heart filled with so much golden light that I had to give it away but it kept coming back, stronger each time. God is! Blessed is that child who knows that God, simply, is!

The tears, always there as my companion in a time of great joy, began. My mind wondered how and when all of life became so complicated, so frenzied, so duplicitous.

For me, the stained glass window, the snow, the vigil lights and the Gregorian chant are linked somehow to ‘silent sermons’. Their simple beauty, etched delicately in my memory, remains constant, long after the spoken words have faded. But then, so is a baby’s first smile, the crocus in spring, and the magnetic pull of the tides. Life is beautiful in it’s simplicity. God is!

Things I have learned from my dog, Pongo

I emailed this to my sister after a particularly outrageous afternoon with our dogs. She emailed it all over the world. So, if you're wondering where this came from, here it is. It is posted here to impress people that dog ownership is not for finiky people, neatness nuts, or those who are easily grossed out.

Dear Sis,

Things I have learned from my dog, Pongo:

1. Chewing open unripe walnuts turns your vomit bright yellow.
2. Eating turds makes your vomit really stink.
3. Eating turds and unripe walnuts turns your vomit brownish yellow, and makes it really stink, too.
4. Vomiting unripe walnuts and turds on the carpet makes your owners throw you out. They scream, throw open all the windows in 100 degree heat, and do something they call, "decontamination."
5. Once you vomit unripe walnuts and turds on the carpet, your owners never forget. Forever after, every time they hear you hork, they scream and give you the bum's rush out the back door.
6. Your owners appreciate unripe walnut turd vomit on the back deck only marginally more than unripe walnut turd vomit on the carpet in the house.

Pongo has no idea where we would really like him to vomit unripe walnuts and turds. We are working on this.

Gotta go. Time to pick up unripe walnuts and turds from the back yard. We are going out to dinner, and we don't want Pongo to be nauseous when we come back.

Love,

Me

Sometimes God Cries

contributed by Kay Goodnow

We are the ones we have been waiting for. — Oraibi, Arizona, Hopi Nation

All of the premises of Christianity are based on the teachings of one man. That man was a rebel. He dared to question. He dared to defy authority. He dared to lead with his heart.

He redefined God. He defined church. His words were passed along from one to another of us, and they were eventually recorded. His message was loud and clear, but it was gentle.

He spoke of forgiving. He said that we must forgive each other, just as God has forgiven us. And in that forgiving, we must first forgive ourselves.

He spoke of loving one another. He said that we must love one another, just as God has loved us. And in that loving, we must first love ourselves.

He spoke of justice and equality, and of the magnitude of the life force that surrounds and inspires each of us, calling to us from the heights, as well as from the depths, of infinity. He spoke of spirit and knowledge and truth. And he said that we must first find, and then nurture, our truth.

His words changed the world that he knew, and they are still changing this world, as we know it. And in that changing, we must first change ourselves.

He was a messenger, and he was a channel. He was the epitome of an example. He ordered no one. He made simple suggestions. He shared what he knew as truth with everyone. He did not discriminate and he did not condemn. Those who found his truth to be right for them followed him. Those who did not, he let be.

He knew that the human condition is what it is: reality; imperfect, weak and frail. He knew that God is in each of us. And he sent us out, into the world, to tell his story and to carry his message. He knew that it would be an imperfect journey.

He said simply "Follow me!" And he set the examples of truth, spirit and knowledge. He was, to a degree, introspective and contemplative. He listened for, and he heard God. That was all that he needed to do. He was a healer, instilling in others the courage to be themselves.

Two thousand years later he is still with us. He is still forgiving, still loving, and still changing. He gently reminds us to listen for God, and to hear Him. As he said then, "My Father is with you always!" He is and always has been all that we will ever need.

And we are still what we are, as our imperfect journey continues.

And his church? What charge did he give to his church?

Did he say, "Go now, in my name, and gather all the riches of the world?"
Did he say, "Build large edifices to my glory, and fill them with treasures?"
Did he say, "Exclude those who do not fit by definition?"
Did he say, "Become powerful, and rule in my name?"
Did he say, "Go and abuse those who trust in you and in my name?"
Did he say, "Wage war in my name, maim and kill those who do not comply?"
Did he say, "Avenge my death?"
Did he say, "Worship me?"

NO, he did not. Sometimes, God cries.

He knew it would be an imperfect journey. In that journey, I rest my case.

Make Peace with Iran?

There will be peace in the Middle East. The only question is how many people will be left there to enjoy it. In the current period of escalating violence, some 10 Palestinians are killed for every one Israeli. Given that there are approximately 2.9 million Palestinians and 5.8 million Israelis, one might expect that the Israelis would view the current situation as being more sustainable than would the Palestinians. But the Palestinians believe they are winning the propaganda war, despite the cruel logic of attrition. For their part, the Israelis worry that the Palestinians are right.

Americans cannot control Israeli or Palestinian foreign policy. But we can control our own, which may be the key to turning around not just the situation in the Middle East, but in the world at large. It is time for Americans to consider making overtures for a general lowering of tensions between Western Liberal Democracies and Islam. And I think the place to start is Iran.

In the late 1970's the late Ayatollah Khomeini led a revolution that overthrew the Iranian head of state, Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. For the Shah had been a modernizer, and had sought to drag his monarchy into the 20th century by repressing all opposition. Both his modernity and his repression made him into an enemy of the majority of his people.

Eventually the Shah sought refuge in the United States, where he received unsuccessful treatment for cancer. The Shah had maintained friendly relations with the US, which with other Western nations had helped him come to power in his youth, and had helped maintain him as head of state even when the will of his people had begun to turn against him, because they saw him as an ally in an otherwise hostile region.

However, while the Shah was in the US, a group of students, with the support of, if not instigated by, the new Iranian government, stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took its employees hostage. They were held hostage for about two years, if memory serves me correctly, until US President Carter was succeeded by President Reagan.

Subsequent to that, Iran and Iraq went to war with each other. Iraq, being the smaller country and fearing defeat, began manufacturing chemical weapons and using them against the Iranians. The Iranians first declared chemical weapons to be "un-Islamic," and sought to shame the Iraqis into ceasing to use them. However, the Iraqis were and still are led by Saddam Hussein, a man incapable of experiencing shame, as far as anyone now living knows. Eventually Iran retaliated in kind, with chemical weapons of its own.

If the US, despite its enmity with Iran over the recent hostage taking, and Iran's enmity with the US over sheltering a despot, had done the Christian thing, and intervened to prevent even its enemy from being the target of chemical weapons, the world might now be a better place. The Persian Gulf war would not have happened, weapons of mass destruction would not be in the arsenals of several Islamic nations, and relations between the US and the Islamic world would not be so chilly. More to the point, Iranian propaganda could not have been so successful at painting the United States as "the Great Satan."
That is the opportunity we missed, and perhaps it is time for the US to apologize for it. We might also apologize for having helped to maintain the Shah in power far longer than his people wished. And we should formally recognize Iran as what it claims to be: an Islamic Republic.

What we stand to gain is improved relations with a country that is considered to be a supporter of terrorism and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. As part of improved relations, we can expect both activities to be curtailed. We can also expect that improved relations with Iran would undermine the position of Iraq in the Islamic world, because it would help the US defuse the prevalent Islamic propaganda that the US is a bully. Moreover, the improved relations would enable the US to actually become less of a bully, because an Iraq supported even less by its Islamic brethren is less of a threat if the US begins loosening economic restrictions that Saddam Hussein uses to harm Iraq's population.

Improved relations with Iran and other Islamic countries could even facilitate the Middle East peace process between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel. If Islamic hatred and distrust of the West could be ameliorated, then perhaps hatred of Israel as the West's toehold in the Middle East could be ameliorated as well. Perhaps as the mantle of legitimacy is extended to Iran's Islamic Republic, we can make the case for the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish Republic.

Now understand that while I oppose Fundamentalism, I favor majority rule. Thus, if the majority of the people in a country are Fundamentalist and want to operate their government as a republic with an establishment of their Fundamentalist religion, I consider it necessary to support their choice, even though I think it is wrong. And Fundamentalists in the United States can take no comfort from that, because to make a religion the "State Religion" here would require a Constitutional Amendment, which would require approval of two-thirds of Congress, and the legislatures of two-thirds of the States.

In any event, improved global relations with Islamic nations will be good for the balance of power the United States needs to maintain with some of the other Great Powers, most notably Russia and China. Perhaps I'm overly idealistic here, but what do we have to lose by giving it a try?

One Woman's Reasons

A Personal Response to Professor George

by Mary Anne Mills

January 2001

(used with permission)

When I was eleven, my girlhood innocence was shattered by a television movie. In The Cardinal, Tom Tryon was a priest whose pregnant sister was near death. He was told by the doctor that he had to make a choice. Either his sister would live or the baby, not both. He agonized over the decision. I knew he would choose his sister, as I knew my parents (in my 11 year old mind) would choose me. Tryon chose the baby.

I can't express what a profound affect this decision had on me. I was appalled. As a girl, soon to be a woman with the potential of carrying a baby at some point in my life, I felt as if my total worth had been diminished by that decision he made. It made me feel as if, I, didn't exist as a girl/woman except to create babies whose worth was much greater than my own. It made me feel that even if I reached adulthood with potentially great ideas to offer and great things to accomplish, none of this would matter. Only the life of the child I might carry would matter. My existence would be peripheral to my capacity for motherhood.

In the battle between Pro Life (a misnomer because in my experience most prolifers believe in the death penalty — don't kill them in utero, but it's ok when they are adults and screw up — again the judgement by man) and Pro Choice, one thing is never given adequate consideration. A pregnant woman carries her embryo/fetus/child in her body, her most private self, her being. When discussing abortion, people treat the ordeal of pregnancy and childbirth as if it were as trivial as a tonsillectomy. This is not the case. That's why I have a real hard time with any man who says I don't have a right to have an abortion. What about my life as a woman? One could say, that is I'm not ready to have a child, I shouldn't get pregnant, but some Pro-Lifers (especially Catholics) oppose my right to birth control as well. So much for that argument.

I, personally, would never have an abortion and never have, but no human being on this earth has the right to tell me I can't. That decision is between me and my God. After all, He put me here for a reason — and God has told me that reason isn't just to procreate.

As I've gotten older, I've come to the conclusion that the abortion debate is really about power. Men have it a particular kind of power relative to women (men don't have to be pregnant for nine months and then put their careers on the "mommy track") and they want to keep it. They want to be able to "keep" women barefoot and pregnant, literally. This is why there is such hoopla over the RU-486 pill. The thought of giving women a right to control their bodies in private without exposing themselves to the pointing fingers of judgement at the abortion clinics is more than they can bear. Why, the puritan taunters (and worse) would be out of business.

So, there it is in a nutshell — one woman's reasons why she is Pro-Choice. My only hope is that reincarnation is real and that all Pro-Lifers come back as women, get pregnant and are faced with the decision to have the baby or not. As far as the women who are adamantly Pro-Life — Yes, Virginia, there is a Phyllis Schlafly.

Sharon's Intifada

On October 10, 680 A.D., as Christians reckon it, Imam Husayn, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and the spiritual leader of the people who would become the Shi'ite Muslims, was ambushed by a rival Islamic army larger than his own. At one point in the battle, Husayn went forward with his infant son, Hossein, and begged the opposing army to let him obtain some water for the child. Someone in the opposing army responded by shooting an arrow into the child's throat, which triggered the final slaughter. According to Shi'ite thought, the loss of this battle was not a disaster, but the deliberate sacrifice by Husayn of himself and most of his followers and family, in order to awaken Muslims to the low state into which the Muslim political leadership (the Caliphate) had fallen. The death of Husayn established Shi'ism, and left it with its continuing dedication to martyrdom.

Perhaps today, when a Palestinian youth is wounded or killed by Israeli gunfire while he is throwing a only stone, the image of Husayn's murdered child glimmers in the Islamic collective unconscious. Otherwise, why do Palestinians encourage their children to place themselves in harm's way?

A sympathetic interpretation might say that the children, understanding the plight of their families, and knowing that they will go straight to Heaven if they die fighting for them, can't resist jihad (the holy struggle) against their oppressors in any way they can. The distraught parents simply can't hold them back.

A cynical interpretation might say that the Palestinian Authority, or PA, orchestrates the stone-throwing incidents that get filmed and photographed by journalists. They control everything, from the timing of the incident to the photographers' camera angles. One sees only the valiant and rebellious youth, not the row of photojournalists lying prone before him, capturing only the image of the child, without the adult gunman behind him, who will provoke the enemy's fire. The PA seeks to win the war for world opinion, because it cannot obtain victory directly.

A Zionist interpretation might say that these Palestinians are the descendents of the Philistines written of in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), whom God commanded the Israelites to scourge from the land, because they were guilty of sacrificing their children to the false god Moloch (Lev 18:21). They have changed their religion, but the tradition of child sacrifice continues. Their claim to the land is nullified by their tactics, which should be offensive to any culture in which children are protected.

A left-wing political interpretation might say that the Palestinians have been played as pawns by the Israeli Right, who were opposed to the concessions made by Israel to the PA as the price of peace. After all, the Intifada started in protest over the appearance of the hawkish Ariel Sharon along with numerous bodyguards at a holy site claimed by both Jews and Muslims. Now, as a result of the Intifada's violence, the whole peace process has been called into question by Israel's electorate, and Sharon has defeated Ehud Barakh to become Israel's new Prime Minister. Sharon, who leads a minority party that would have been marginalized had peace actually occurred, touched off the violence and used it to bring himself and his party back to political prominence.

A right-wing political interpretation might say that the violence touched off by Sharon's appearance shows that when the Palestinians speak of an internationalized Jerusalem, they mean one in which large sections are off-limits to Jews. At least in an Israeli controlled Jerusalem, Muslims can have access to their places of worship, and in times of peace, to any place the average Israeli may go.

There is partial truth to these and still more interpretations, for such is the nature of acts. Acts always mean more than the actor intends, because action needs interpretation to be understood. Deeds need words, which explainers supply based on their points of view. Deeds thus have power beyond words to communicate different things to different people. A Palestinian boy is shot by an Israeli soldier while throwing a stone. An Israeli soldier, barely older than the boy, is ambushed by a Palestinian crowd, beaten to death, and his body is dragged through the streets. Each act is a thing in itself, but also a symbol of something larger than itself.

Each is also an act of war. An act of peace would require more courage, and would be a more fitting testament to the memory of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by Islamic extremists because he flew from Cairo to Jerusalem. Or to the memory of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish extremist because he negotiated a peace treaty with Jordan which ceded land to the Palestinians.

And while we are speaking of acts, let us note the grand non-act that stands behind all other acts in the current drama of Palestine. Most Palestianians have been living in refugee camps since they fled Israel at its founding in 1948. They have not assimilated into the Muslim parts of the societies ( in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, for example) which harbor them for the same reason the Jews did not assimilate into pre-WWII European societies. No one wants them.

God's Reasons

Remarks at the 1998 American Political Science Assoc. Convention
revised, expanded, and edited by William Saunders.

by R. P. George

Received 8 January 2001

(used with permission)

Appeals to religious authority have their place. That place is plainly not, however, in philosophical debates, including philosophical debates about public policy. Do such appeals have a legitimate place in political advocacy? I think they do, but, at the same time, I have some sympathy with Professor John Rawls's proposition that such appeals are legitimate only where they are offered to buttress and motivate people to act on positions that are defensible without such appeals. Like Rawls, I believe that public policy should be based on "public reasons." And while I believe that Rawls's own particular conception of what qualifies as a "public reason" is unreasonably narrow — its narrowness in effect stacking the deck in favor of legal abortion, "same-sex marriage," and other positions held by liberals in contemporary debates over morally charged issues of public policy — the idea that public policy ought to be based on public reasons strikes me as, well, reasonable.¹

It is not, however, unproblematic. Anyone who believes that God has revealed that the public policy of a certain polity must be settled in a certain way has, so far as he can tell, an absolute, indefeasible reason for supporting that way of settling public policy irrespective of whether there are any grounds apart from revelation for the policy. My scruples, or Rawls's, would — and should — simply cut no ice for a person in this position. And if I happen to be the person in that position, or if Rawls happens to be that person, then I, or he, would be irrational in declining to lay aside our scruples. I suppose that when push comes to shove, those of us who hold these scruples believe that it just isn't the case that God sometimes reveals that public policy ought to be settled in a certain way irrespective of whether there are any grounds apart from revelation for settling policy in this way. Such people either don't believe in God, or (and this is my view) don't believe that God operates this way (at least we don't believe that He operates this way anymore). It seems to me, then, that our differences with those who don't hold these scruples implicate in this way certain theological judgments.

People who do not hold these scruples may believe either that God (at least sometimes) has no reason for the public policies He commands or (at least sometimes) has no reason He chooses to make available to human understanding. As they see it, God's reasons, if He has any, are (at least sometimes) opaque to us. "Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die." But, of course, this understanding of how God operates is one possible theological understanding among others. Many, perhaps most, serious religious believers in our society have a different understanding. To be sure, they believe–we believe–that God is a God of justice, who cares what the public policy of our society is on morally significant questions–e.g., abortion, euthanasia, and marriage and sexuality, not to mention, capital punishment, civil and human rights, military policy, economic justice, etc. And a great many believers, though not all, believe, as I do, that God wills that the unborn, handicapped, and frail elderly be protected by law, and that the institution of marriage as a permanent and exclusive union of one man and one woman be preserved against what we believe are the corrupting influences of sexual immorality. But we also believe not only that there are reasons (apart from revelation) for these policy positions, but also that these reasons are (or, at least, are among) God's reasons for willing what He wills. Indeed, it is our view that often the identification of these reasons by philosophical inquiry and analysis, supplemented sometimes by knowledge derived from the natural and/or social sciences, is critical to an accurate understanding of the content of revelation in, say, the Bible or Jewish or Christian tradition.

Perhaps the best example is in the area of marriage and sexual morality. Philosophical inquiry is indispensable to the project of fully understanding the meaning and implications of the proposition revealed in chapter two of Genesis and in the Gospels that marriage is a "one-flesh union" of a man and a woman.²

Another example is that of abortion, where both philosophical analysis and knowledge obtainable only by scientific inquiry were essential to settling, and continue to be essential to understanding the precise content of, the authoritative teaching of the magisterium of the Catholic Church declaring direct abortion to be intrinsically immoral and a violation of human rights.³

In short, many religious people — most informed Catholics and many Protestants and observant Jews — understand reason not only as a truth-attaining power, but as a power by and through which God directs us as individuals and communities in the way of just and upright living. In his formal account of natural law as a participation in what he called the "eternal law," Aquinas says that although God directs brute animals to their proper ends by instinct, God directs man–made in God's image and likeness and thus possessing reason and freedom–to his proper ends by practical reason through which men grasp the intelligible point of certain possible actions for the sake of ends (goods, values, purposes) which, qua intelligible, provide reasons for choice and action.⁴ Where these reasons have their intelligibility not, or not merely, by virtue of their utility in enabling us to realize our other valuable or desirable ends, but also by virtue of their intrinsic value and choice-worthiness, they constitute the referents of the most fundamental principles of practical reason and precepts of natural law.⁵ Aquinas gives an expressly non-exhaustive list of examples: human life itself, marriage and the transmission of life to new human beings, and knowledge, particularly of religious truth.⁶ The integral directiveness of these principles, when specified, constitutes the body of moral norms available to guide human choosing reasonably, viz., in conformity with a good will — a will toward integral human fulfillment.⁷

In his contributions to the February 1996 issue of First Things magazine — contributions in which what he has to say (particularly in his critique of liberalism) is far more often right than wrong — Professor Stanley Fish of Duke University cites the dispute over abortion as an example of a case in which "incompatible first assumptions — articles of opposing faiths," make the resolution of the dispute (other than by sheer political power) impossible. Here is how Professor Fish presented the pro-life and pro-choice positions and the shape of the dispute between their respective defenders:

A pro-life advocate sees abortion as a sin against God who infuses life at the moment of conception; a pro-choice advocate sees abortion as a decision to be made in accordance with the best scientific opinion as to when the beginning of life, as we know it, occurs. No conversation between them can ever get started because each of them starts from a different place and they could never agree as to what they were conversing about. A pro-lifer starts from a belief in the direct agency of a personal God and this belief, this religious conviction, is not incidental to his position; it is his position, and determines its features in all their detail. The "content of a belief" is a function of its source, and the critiques of one will always be the critique of the other.

It is certainly true that the overwhelming majority of pro-life Americans are religious believers and that a great many pro-choice Americans are either unbelievers or less observant or less traditional in their beliefs and practice than their fellow citizens. Indeed, although most Americans believe in God, polling data consistently show that Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who do not regularly attend church or synagogue are less likely than their more observant co-religionists to oppose abortion.⁸ And religion is plainly salient politically when it comes to the issue of abortion. The more secularized a community, the more likely that community is to elect pro-choice politicians to legislative and executive offices.

Still, I don't think that Professor Fish's presentation of the pro-life and pro-choice positions, or of the shape of the dispute over abortion, is accurate. True, inasmuch as most pro-life advocates are traditional religious believers who, as such, see gravely unjust or otherwise immoral acts as sins–and understand sins precisely as offenses against God — "a pro-life advocate sees abortion as a sin against God." But most pro-life advocates see abortion as a sin against God precisely because it is the unjust taking of innocent human life. That is their reason for opposing abortion; and that is God's reason, as they see it, for opposing abortion and requiring that human communities protect their unborn members against it. And, they believe, as I do, that this reason can be identified and acted on even independently of God's revealing it. Indeed, they typically believe, as I do, that the precise content of what God reveals on the subject ("in thy mother's womb I formed thee") cannot be known without the application of human intelligence, by way of philosophical and scientific inquiry, to the question.

Professor Fish is mistaken, then, in contrasting the pro-life advocate with the pro-choice advocate by depicting (only) the latter as viewing abortion as "a decision to be made in accordance with the best scientific opinion as to when the beginning of life ... occurs." First of all, supporters of the pro-choice position are increasingly willing to sanction the practice of abortion even where they concede that it constitutes the taking of innocent human life. Pro-choice writers from Namoi Wolfe⁹ to Judith Jarvis Thomson¹⁰ have advanced theories of abortion as "justifiable homicide." But, more to the point, people on the pro-life side insist that the central issue in the debate is the question "as to when the beginning of life occurs." And they insist with equal vigor that this question is not a "religious" or even "metaphysical" one: it is rather, as Professor Fish says, "scientific." In response to this insistence, it is pro-choice advocates who typically want to transform the question into a "metaphysical" or "religious" one. It was Justice Harry Blackmun who claimed in his opinion for the Court legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) that "at this point in man's knowledge" the scientific evidence was inconclusive and therefore cold not determine the outcome of the case. And twenty years later, the influential pro-choice writer Ronald Dworkin went on record claiming that the question of abortion is inherently "religious."¹¹ It is pro-choice advocates, such as Dworkin, who want to distinguish between when a human being comes into existence "in the biological sense" and when a human being comes into existence "in the moral sense." It is they who want to distinguish a class of human beings "with rights" from pre- (or post-) conscious human beings who "don't have rights." And the reason for this, I submit, is that, short of defending abortion as "justifiable homicide," the pro-choice position collapses if the issue is to be settled purely on the basis of scientific inquiry into the question of when a new member of homo sapiens sapiens comes into existence as a self-integrating organism whose unity, distinctiveness, and identity remain intact as it develops without substantial change from the point of its beginning through the various stages of its development and into adulthood.¹²

All this was, I believe, made wonderfully clear at a debate at last year's meeting of the American Political Science Association between Jeffrey Reiman of American University, defending the pro-choice position, and John Finnis of Oxford and Notre Dame, defending the pro-life view. That debate was remarkable for the skill, intellectual honesty, and candor of the interlocutors. What is most relevant to our deliberations, however, is the fact that it truly was a debate. Reiman and Finnis did not talk past each other. They did not proceed from "incompatible first assumptions." They did manage to agree as to what they were talking about — and it was not about whether or when life was infused by God. It was precisely about the rational (i.e., scientific and philosophical) grounds, if any, available for distinguishing a class of human beings "in the moral sense" (with rights) from a class of human beings "in the (merely) biological sense" (without rights). Finnis did not claim any special revelation to the effect that no such grounds existed. Nor did Reiman claim that Finnis's arguments against his view appealed implicitly (and illicitly) to some such putative revelation. Although Finnis is a Christian and, as such, believes that the new human life that begins at conception is in each and every case created by God in His image and likeness, his argument never invoked, much less did it "start from a belief in the direct agency of a personal God." It proceeded, rather, by way of point-by-point philosophical challenge to Reiman's philosophical arguments. Finnis marshaled the scientific facts of embryogenesis and intrauterine human development and defied Reiman to identify grounds, compatible with those facts, for denying a right to life to human beings in the embryonic an fetal stages of development.¹³

Interestingly, Reiman began his remarks with a statement that would seem to support what Professor Fish said in First Things. While allowing that debates over abortion were useful in clarifying people's thinking about the issue, Reiman remarked that they "never actually cause people to change their minds." It is true, I suppose, that people who are deeply committed emotionally to one side or the other are unlikely to have a road-to-Damascus type conversion after listening to a formal philosophical debate. Still, any open-minded person who sincerely wishes to settle his mind on the question of abortion–and there continue to be many such people, I believe — would find debates such as the one between Reiman and Finnis to be extremely helpful toward that end. Anyone willing to consider the reasons for and against abortion and its legal prohibition or permission would benefit from reading or hearing the accounts of these reasons proposed by capable and honest thinkers on both sides. Of course, when it comes to an issue like abortion, people can have powerful motives for clinging to a particular position even if they are presented with conclusive reasons for changing their minds. But that doesn't mean that such reasons do not exist. And the reason the pro-life position is superior to the pro-choice position is precisely because the scientific evidence, considered honestly and dispassionately, supports that position.

A human being is conceived when a human sperm containing twenty-three chromosomes fuses with a human egg also containing twenty-three chromosomes (albeit of a different kind) producing a single-cell human zygote containing, in the normal case, forty-six chromosomes that are mixed differently from the forty-six chromosomes as found in the mother or father. Unlike the gametes (that is, the sperm and egg), the zygote is genetically unique and distinct from its parents. Biologically, it is a separate organism. It produces, as the gametes do not, specifically human enzymes and proteins. It possesses, as they do not, the active capacity or potency to develop itself into a human embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent, and adult.

Assuming that it is not conceived in vitro, the zygote is, of course, in a state of dependence on its mother. But independence should not be confused with distinctness. From the beginning, the newly conceived human being, not its mother, directs its integral organic functioning. It takes in nourishment and converts it to energy. Given an hospitable environment, it will, as Dianne Nutwell Irving says, "develop continuously without any biological interruptions, or gaps, throughout the embryonic, fetal, neo-natal, childhood and adulthood stages — until the death of the organism."

Some claim to find the logical implication of these facts — i.e., that life begins at conception — to be "virtually unintelligible." A leading exponent of that point of view in the legal academy is Jed Rubenfeld of Yale Law School, author of an influential article entitled "On the Legal Status of the Proposition that ‘Life Begins at Conception,’" 43 Stanford Law Review 599 (1991). Rubenfeld argues that, like the zygote, every cell in the human body is "genetically complete"; yet nobody supposes that every human cell is a distinct human being with a right to life. However, Rubenfeld misses the point that there comes into being at conception, not a mere clump of human cells, but a distinct, unified, self-integrating organism, which develops itself, truly himself or herself, in accord with its own genetic "blueprint." The significance of genetic completeness for the status of newly conceived human beings is that no outside genetic material is required to enable the zygote to mature into an embryo, the embryo into a fetus, the fetus into an infant, the infant into a child, the child into an adolescent, the adolescent into an adult. What the zygote needs to function as a distinct self-integrating human organism, a human being, it already possesses.

At no point in embryogenesis, therefore, does the distinct organism that came into being when it was conceived undergo what is technically called "substantial change" (or a change of natures). It is human and will remain human. This is the point of Justice Bryon White's remark in his dissenting opinion in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986), that "there is no non-arbitrary line separating a fetus from a child." Rubenfeld attacks White's point, which he calls "[t]he argument based on the gradualness of gestation," by pointing out that, "[n]o non-arbitrary line separates the hues of green and red. Shall we conclude that green is red?"

White's point, however, was not that fetal development is "gradual," but that it is continuous and is the (continuous) development of a single lasting (fully human) being. The human zygote that actively develops itself is, as I have pointed out, a genetically complete organism directing its own integral organic functioning. As it matures, in utero and ex utero, it does not "become" a human being, for it is a human being already, albeit an immature human being, just as a newborn infant is an immature human being who will undergo quite dramatic growth and development over time.

These considerations undermine the familiar argument, recited by Rubenfeld, that "the potential" of an unfertilized ovum to develop into a whole human being does not make it into "a person." The fact is, though, that an ovum is not a whole human being. It is, rather, a part of another human being (the woman whose ovum it is) with merely the potential to give rise to, in interaction with a part of yet another human being (a man's sperm cell), a new and whole human being. Unlike the zygote, it lacks both genetic distinctness and completeness, as well as the active capacity to develop itself into an adult member of the human species. It is living human cellular material, but, left to itself, it will never become a human being, however hospitable its environment may be. It will "die" as a human ovum, just as countless skin cells "die" daily as nothing more than skin cells. If successfully fertilized by a human sperm, which, like the ovum (but dramatically unlike the zygote), lacks the active potential to develop into an adult member of the human species, then substantial change (that is, a change of natures) will occur. There will no longer be merely an egg, which was part of the mother, sharing her genetic composition, and a sperm, which was part of the father, sharing his genetic composition; instead, there will be a genetically complete, distinct, unified, self-integrating human organism whose nature differs from that of the gametes — not mere human material, but a human being.

These considerations also make clear that it is incorrect to argue (as some pro-choice advocates have argued) that, just as "I" was never a week-old sperm or ovum, "I" was likewise never a week-old embryo. It truly makes no sense to say that "I" was once a sperm (or an unfertilized egg) that matured into an adult. Conception was the occasion of substantial change (that is, change from one complete individual entity to another) that brought into being a distinct self-integrating organism with a specifically human nature. By contrast, it makes every bit as much sense to say that I was once a week-old embryo as to say that I was once a week-old infant or a ten-year-old child. It was the new organism created at conception that, without itself undergoing any change of substance, matured into a week-old embryo, a fetus, an infant, a child, an adolescent, and, finally, an adult.

But Rubenfeld has another argument: "Cloning processes give to non-zygotic cells the potential for development into distinct, self-integrating human beings; thus to recognize the zygote as a human being is to recognize all human cells as human beings, which is absurd."

It is true that a distinct, self-integrating human organism which came into being by a process of cloning would be, like a human organism that comes into being as a mono-zygotic twin, a human being. That being, no less than human beings conceived by the union of sperm and egg, would possess a human nature and the active potential to mature as a human being. However, even assuming the possibility of cloning human beings from non-zygotic human cells, the non-zygotic cell must be activated by a process which effects substantial change and not mere development or maturation. Left to itself, apart from an activation process capable of effecting a change of substance or natures, the cell will mature and die as a human cell, not as a human being.

The scientific evidence establishes the fact that each of us was, from conception, a human being. Science, not religion, vindicates this crucial premise of the pro-life claim. From it, there is no avoiding the conclusion that deliberate feticide is a form of homicide. The only real questions remaining are moral and political, not scientific: Although I will not go into the matter here, I do not see how abortion can ever be considered a matter of "justified homicide." (The efforts of Judith Jarvis Thomson and other philosophers to defend abortion as "justified homicide" are very ably criticized by Patrick Lee in Abortion and Unborn Human Life.) It is important to recognize, however, as traditional moralists always have recognized, that not all procedures which foreseeably result in fetal death are, properly speaking, abortions. Although any procedure whose precise objective is the destruction of fetal life is certainly an abortion, and cannot be justified, some procedures result in fetal death as an unintended, albeit foreseen and accepted, side effect. Where procedures of the latter sort are done for very grave reasons, they may be justifiable.¹⁴ For example, traditional morality recognizes that a surgical operation to remove a life-threateningly cancerous uterus, even in a woman whose pregnancy is not far enough along to enable the child to be removed from her womb and sustained by a life support system, is ordinarily morally permissible.¹⁵ Of course, there are in this area of moral reflection, as in others, "borderline" cases that are difficult to classify and evaluate. Mercifully, modern medical technology has made such cases exceptionally rare in real life. Only in the most extraordinary circumstances today do women and their families and physicians find it necessary to consider a procedure which will result in fetal death as the only way of preserving maternal life. In any event, the political debate about abortion is not, in reality, about cases of this sort; it is about "elective" or "social indication" abortions, viz., the deliberate destruction of unborn human life for non-therapeutic reasons.

A final point: In my own experience, conversion from the pro-choice to the pro-life cause is often (though certainly not always) a partial cause of religious conversion rather than an effect. Frequently, people who are not religious, or who are only weakly so, begin to have doubts about the moral defensibility of deliberate feticide. Although most of their friends are pro-choice, they find that position increasingly difficult to defend or live with. They perceive practical inconsistencies in their, and their friends', attitudes toward the unborn depending on whether the child is "wanted" or not. Perhaps they find themselves arrested by sonographic (or other even more sophisticated) images of the child's life in the womb. So the doubts begin creeping in. For the first time, they are really prepared to listen to the pro-life argument (often despite their negative attitude toward people–or "the kind of people"–who are pro-life); and somehow, it sounds more compelling than it did before. Gradually, as they become firmly pro-life, they find themselves questioning the whole philosophy of life — in a word, the secularism — associated with their former view. They begin to understand the reasons that led them out of the pro-choice and into the pro-life camp as God's reasons, too.

Notes

1. For a fuller development of my critique of Rawls's position, see Robert P. George, "Public Reason and Political Conflict: Abortion and Homosexuality, " Yale Law Journal, Vol. 106 (1997), pp. 2475-2504. This article also develops much of the scientific material which I will discuss subsequently herein.
2. See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus: Volume Two: Living A Christian Life (Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1992), ch. 9.
3. See John Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1997).
4. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 91, a. 2.
5. For a fuller explanation, see Robert P. George, "Recent Criticism of Natural Law Theory," University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 55 (1988), pp. 1371-1429.
6. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 94., a. 2. For an effort by contemporary natural law thinkers to provide a more complete account, see Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., Germain Grisez, and John Finnis, "Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends," American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 32 (1987), pp. 99-151.
7. For a fuller explanation, see Robert P. George, "Natural Law Ethics" in Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, eds., A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 460-465.
8. See James Davison Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 104-105.
9. "Our Bodies, Our Souls," The New Republic (1995), reprinted with commentaries by pro-life writers in The Human Life Review (Winter, 1996)
10. "A Defense of Abortion," in Marshall Cohen (ed.), The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion (Princeton University Press, 1974)
11. See Ronald Dworkin, Life’s Dominion (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).
12. I explain this point more fully below. Also see Patrick Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995) and Dianne Nutwell Irving, "Scientific and Philosophical Expertise: An Evaluation of the Arguments on 'Personhood'," Linacre Quarterly, Vol. 60 (1993), pp. 18-46.
13. Finnis’s paper, "Abortion, Natural Law, and Public Reason," and Reiman’s paper, "Abortion, Natural Law, and Liberal Discourse," will be published in Robert P. George and Christopher Wolfe (eds.), Public Reason (Georgetown University Press, forthcoming, 1999).
14. See John Finnis, "Abortion and Health Care Ethics II," in Raanan Gillon and Ann Lloyd (eds.), Principles of Health Care Ethics, 1994, pp. 547-557.
15. See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus: Vol. II: Living a Christian Life, p. 502.

Ice Crystals

contributed by Kay Goodnow

30 December 2000

Winter has always been my least favorite time of year! I attribute my dislike for winter's darker days and cold weather to the simple fact that I was born in July.

People from more northern climates laugh at me, and say that winter in Kansas City is really mild. Well, it’s cold enough for me! I do not like to drive, or even walk, on ice. Snow is snow. Ice, on the other hand, is entirely something else. Ice can be treacherous. Life is precious, in my opinion, and should not be squandered while trying to teach an automobile how to figure skate. This last requires an incredible amount of energy, laced with adrenalin, and leaves me feeling very tired.

I detest and deplore winter. I do not like to wear a coat. I do not like coping with other people's germs, flu, colds and pneumonia. I am aware that good old hard freezes sometimes rid my world of germs, allergies, and other complications, and I justify the existence of winter that way. But I don't like it and I never have.

Years ago, when I was growing up in the Catholic-Episcopal tradition, those who were formulating my conscience instilled in it an anomaly they called "hell," and it was full of eternal fire and brimstone. If, they told me, I didn’t do things the way they wanted them done, I would burn forever. I never told them, but this didn’t frighten me nearly as much as it would have had they threatened me with a hell full of ice, snow and northwest winds.

I have seven excellent reasons why I cannot escape to a warmer climate, and they are called "grandchildren." But every year, in November, as the days get shorter, I grouse about moving south and every year I gear up for the reality of another wintry existence in Kansas City. As the days fade from the beauty of fall into the harsh and often dark days of winter I yearn for the sun. On the first day of winter I make a note in my memory unit that we have already reached the shortest day of the year and that from that day forward we are, at least, on the uphill side of spring. This makes me feel better.

On December 27, 2000, I was driving south to Spring Hill, on my way to work. It was a sunny day with no wind but it was very cold. Heading south on Metcalf I noticed that even though the sun was bright, there was fog. I thought that was unusual. I turned west on 199th Street and noted immediately that where the sun touched the snow the light was incredibly bright, sparkling like millions of diamonds. It was beautiful and I slowed the van to better revel in this glory. With the sun at my back and an intense feeling of well being, I caught myself breathing a ‘thank you’ for this wonderful serenity. I admitted to myself that even if it was winter, this was one of the most beautiful days I had ever seen.

I turned south again on 169 Highway and then realized that what I had believed to be fog was glistening, shimmering, tumbling, moving slowly as though in freefall. It wasn’t fog at all. It was ice crystals, millions of them, and although they were moving they were not falling, they were drifting. At that moment I wished that I had a camera with me. This was one picture that demanded to be shot in black and white to capture the stark, cold, brilliant reflection of the sun. I sighed. I breathed another thank you, and I said "Father, I see the beauty and I feel such peace and I admit that all of Your creations are beautiful!" For me, this was a major concession. (I hate winter!) Still, I was unprepared for what would follow.

I had to go west on 223rd Street for about one block and then turned south again, into the subdivision. I had to pull over to the (buried) curb and stop the van. Off at a distance, in the southeastern sky, there was the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen. Ice crystals shrouded its bases so that it had no real beginning and no end. Its colors were true to the more traditional rainbow, but it was more muted, quieter somehow, and starkly magnificent. It sparkled with energy and life force. It had a powerful effect on me and I felt my own tears as I wondered if I would even be brave enough to mention it to other people when I saw them. I wondered, too, if I had imagined it.

I remembered another scene from long ago. While flying to San Francisco, the plane approached the Grand Canyon and the pilot obligingly flew over the crater. It was sunset. The sky and the clouds were a golden rose tinged with fairy dust (those mite like particles that parachute from the sky) and the crater was reflecting those same colors and light. It took my breath away and I didn’t realize that tears had come until I felt them. I have never forgotten the awe, the reverence I felt at that moment. And until the other day, I had not felt them again.

On the outer perimeters of the subdivision, where commercial construction is in progress, the work areas are protected by weather fences. When I glanced at them I realized that I was looking at miles of crystal squares so brilliant that they were blinding. The ice on the trees and shrubs, everywhere I looked, shone with light and color.

I gave up. "This is a day that the Lord has made, " I intoned in my Church-of-Kay style, "I rejoice and am happy in it!" Then God, as always, had the last word. As I turned once again to watch the rainbow fade and then disappear completely into the mist, He said, "I am the Alpha and I am the Omega!"
I was 15 minutes late arriving at the model home. The general foreman was there and the first thing he asked me was if I was having problems with the van. He had seen me parked on the crest and was just about to come out to meet me when he saw me driving again. I smiled. "No," I answered, warmed that he even cared, "I was just admiring the scenery!"

We are still experiencing unusually cold weather. We still have gusting winds. We have snow showers and, if the overly dramatic weather forecasters are to be believed, there is no relief in sight. I tell myself that that’s just the way it is. I tell myself that it’s only a matter of time until spring arrives in all her glory. I tell myself that I can take it, and, secretly, I believe that if I am brave enough to face it, I might one day see this wonder again. After all, some people live a whole lifetime and never see or feel the beauty of this world. I am lucky, God has spoiled me again. I have seen and felt it twice.

Happy New Year! May this year of the millennium bring peace, joy, warmth, light, love and all the beauty of life! May you have thousands more!

Differences between Democrats and Republicans

Republicans	Democrats
are pro-choice with respect to schooling, health care, retirement savings, gun ownership, expression of religious faith — just about everything except abortion.	are anti-choice with respect to schooling, health care, retirement savings, gun ownership, expression of religious faith — just about everything except abortion.
are more conservative than they are religious.	are more liberal than they are religious.
believe in the Rule of Law.	believe in the Rule of Lawyers.

Under the Ban

Abortion before Roe v. Wade

I remember the way it was before Roe v. Wade.

One of my college classmates, call him Steve, had a girlfriend we'll call Lori, who went to another school. Despite their passion, they took their responsibility seriously, and used birth control every time. But she still got pregnant.

There was no question of having the baby. They were at critical junctures of their lives, in which continuing their educations was a make-or-break endeavor to escape poverty. They could not stay in college without help from their families, who would have insisted that they drop out and get married.
Instead, Steve managed to raise some money, and they flew secretly to a nearby state where Lori could get an abortion. They returned the same day, to make it look like a long, but ordinary date. The abortion was legal and safe, except for their rushing in, having the procedure, and rushing out to catch the plane. At the clinic, Lori was fine. On the plane, she hemorrhaged.

She bled for days. She felt weak, and hid her paleness with make-up. She knew she needed medical help, but she waited, hoping to keep her secret. By the Grace of God, the bleeding finally stopped.
Steve felt guilty for risking Lori's life, and for killing the life that would have been their child. He tried to believe in reincarnation — that somehow, the kid would get another chance. Not long after that, his relationship with Lori died, too. They haven't communicated in almost 30 years.

There is a lesson in this for both those pro-choice and pro-life. For the pro-choice it is this: According to the founding documents of our republic, we are endowed with rights by our Creator, including the right to life. To any thinking person of faith, it is blasphemy to assert that our Creator gives us the right to kill the lives that would otherwise become our children. Abortion is not a right — it's a wrong. It may be a need, given the state of human nature. As long as we guarantee access to abortion, it is a freedom. But it's still wrong. The pro-choice cause is hurt by pretending otherwise.

For the pro-life the lesson is this: Given the tragic state of human nature, good people — people more moral than most — are going to get abortions, with or without Roe v. Wade. It's just that without it, more middle-class girls will become injured or dead, more poor girls will become mothers, and more unwanted children will be neglected and abused. I know a conservative Christian who became pro-choice after working with abused children who had been made wards of the court.

Both sides need to admit that human nature is such that we knowingly do wrong, we deny that we know it, and we develop wrong-headed solutions to stop ourselves. Defending a woman's freedom to choose abortion will no more make you a good person than denying her that freedom. We cannot by our own efforts perfect ourselves — all attempts by societies to do so have ended horrendously, from gas chambers of National Socialism, to the Cambodian killing fields — and you know it.

I hope that bit of rhetoric pissed you off. You pro-choice and pro-life people out there might just drop your attacks on each other for a moment, and for the love of God, listen to each other. Give the other side its due when it tells the truth. Consider what reasonable limits we might place on the freedom to choose abortion — because all freedoms must have limits. Stop playing a single-issue politics that gives us is a corrupted judiciary and a demeaned public discourse. We ask our politicians, "Are you pro-choice or pro-life," when we should ask, "What is Justice?" and "How do you plan to lead us closer to achieving it?"

The freedom to choose abortion is the freedom to kill while you can still convince yourself that you're not killing your child. It's a freedom the majority of us grant to increase your odds (or your partner's odds) of surviving what some of you would probably do anyway. It is our way of helping our prodigal sons and daughters survive to return someday. But preserving the freedom to choose abortion is evil, and it is doubly evil to assert otherwise. It's just that letting girls like Lori die would be evil, too.

And for those who have had abortions, there is Forgiveness. It's free for anyone who knows they need it.