Just because

Anglican-Roman doings

There’s been a lot of virtual ink spilled over the last week or so about the Vatican’s announcement that it will make it easier for Anglicans to convert, establishing, it appears, a more widespread use of the so-called Anglican Rite liturgy and allowing for some degree of self-governance for former Anglican communities. (Including continuing the practice of allowing married Anglican clergy to convert, be re-ordained, and lead these parishes.)

People have interpreted the announcement as everything from crass sheep-stealing, to creating a haven for Anglicans opposed to women’s ordination and/or gay clergy, to attempting to establish a united Christian front against Islam. But I think before we jump to conclusions about the significance of this move, it’s important to get at least some sense of who’s likely to actually make such a move.

A lot of the media reports have been focusing on “traditionalist Anglicans,” a vague and not terribly helpful term that could include everyone from a Nigerian charismatic-evangelical to the spikiest of high-church Anglo-Catholics. The former is, for obvious reasons, far less likely to swim the Tiber than the latter.

But even among Anglo-Catholics–a notoriously fissiparous lot–there are significant differences of opinion and practice. There are Anglo-Catholics who worship with the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (or its equivalent in other countries) and those who insist on using the 1928 BCP. There are Anglo-Catholic parishes that use the Catholic Tridentine Rite; there are others that use the reformed Roman rite (the so-called Novus Ordo). There are “Affirming” Anglo-Catholics who support the ordination of women and equality for LGBT Christians; there are others who take traditionalist positions on these matters (or, in some cases, a traditionalist position on one and a revisionist position on the other). There are Anglo-Papalists who identify very strongly with the Catholic Church and long for reunion with Rome, and there are even a few “Byzantine” Anglicans who identify with the spirituality and theology of the Eastern church. (Obviously not all these groupings are mutually exclusive.)

Needless to say, not all of these folks–even within the minority persuasion of Anglo-Catholicism–will be enticed to convert. It’s true that in addition to Anglo-Papalist types, there may be some people in the traditionalist wing of Anglo-Catholicism who will be tempted to convert not because they unhesitatingly accept all the claims of the Catholic Church but because they feel–rightly or wrongly–that Christian orthodoxy is a losing proposition within Anglicanism. Even still, it’s hard to imagine more than a small minority of Anglicans making the decision to go over to Rome. Whether the Pope showed ecumenical bad manners is debatable, but if Benedict’s goal was to absorb the Anglican Communion, Borg-like, into the Catholic Church, this is a peculiar way to go about it.

Friday Metal: Faith No More, “War Pigs” (live)

Cover of the immortal Sabbath classic:

Non sequitur of the day

Theologian Paul Griffiths has an interesting post about how Christians should think about Muslims, but then ends with this:

I hope, that is, that we Christians will increasingly choose to see Muslims as allies and affines against the deadening and bloody weight of late-capitalist democracy. It would be better, I think, for the Church to live under the constraints and difficulties of an Islamic state, violent and restrictive though these can be (as they are, for instance, in Saudi Arabia), than to return with ever more passion, as it is increasingly doing, the bodysnatching embrace of late-capitalist democracy.

Well, um, okay…are those our only choices?

Free theology

Via Per Crucem ad Lucem, the Scottish Journal of Theology has made a collection of “classic papers” available for free through the end of the year. See here. Pretty sweet for those of us who aren’t academics, but (strangely) have a taste for theology.

In and out

Christopher has a post on universalism that pretty closely approximates my own view. In short: we believe salvation is through Christ, but we don’t know how far that salvation extends. We can hope–but not know–that it extends to everyone.

One other point I’d add is that Christians usually presume we’re on the “inside,” and the question is whether non-Christians get “in” too. But an Augustinian account of grace would remind us that we don’t know, definitively, who’s “in” or “out” in this life. The line between the city of God and the city of man isn’t given to us to discern. In the Bible, it’s often the outsiders who demonstrate, in surprising ways, their closeness to God, and the insiders their blindness.

Friday Metal: Between the Buried and Me, “Mordecai” (live)

I saw these guys a few weeks ago with The Faceless and In Flames. Fantastic.

Vegetarianism without foundations

Freddie at the group blog the League of Ordinary Gentleman probes the philosophical underpinnings of vegetarians/vegans and contends that they are insufficiently developed.

I think he’s wrong in suggesting that vegetarians haven’t devled deeply into these issues: there’s quite a vast philosophical literature on the subject that has sprung up in the last 30 years, and there are accounts of why animals matter morally that are as good as any other philosophical theory in ethics. (Which doesn’t mean they’re problem free, of course.) But more to the point, I don’t think you need a fully developed philosophical view to find vegetarianism compelling.

Almost everyone admits, in practice if not theory, that animals can suffer. And nearly everyone admits that it’s a moral truism that you shouldn’t cause unnecessary suffering. From those two simple, commonsense premises, it follows pretty quickly that you shouldn’t cause animals unnecessary suffering.

Throw in a few basic factual premises about the conditions under which animals are raised for food, and I think you arrive in short order at the minimal conclusion that our current system for raising animals for food (and probably most other feasible systems) is morally objectionable to say the least.

None of this requires you to make any major conceptual shifts in your worldview, such as accepting a particular theory of value or animal “rights” or whatnot, merely to draw a conclusion from premises that you (probably) already accept. It’s true that there are some people who claim to believe that animals don’t suffer, or that their suffering doesn’t matter. But the widespread revulsion at, say, the antics of Michael Vick indicate that this is a minority position.

In this sense, vegetarianism is like a lot of other reform movements: it doesn’t offer new values so much as try to make explicit the implications of values that people already accept. Why would you treat a pig in ways you would never dream of treating your dog or cat? The obstacles to reform are probably more institutional, psychological, social, and practical impediments than logical ones.

I’m, of course, all for investigating the question of whether animals have a right to life (as opposed to a right not to be made to suffer), but as far as the practical question goes, this makes almost no difference. Assuming there are idyllic farms where animals are allowed to roam freely and express their particular natures, do not have their tails docked or beaks clipped, are not castrated without anesthesia, and are killed suddenly and painlessly, these farms represent a tiny (if not nonexistent) percentage of meat production in industrial nations. For all practical purposes, avoiding the products of factory farms means being a near or total vegetarian.

Smith: animal rights=idolatry

Wesley Smith is shocked and appalled (surprise!) by Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle’s recent column on Michael Vick’s efforts to rehabilitate himself.

First, Pacelle:

In a civil society, there must be accountability for grievous actions. But there also must be an embrace of people who are willing and ready to change – even in tough cases, like Michael Vick. We are all sinners when it comes to animals, and we can all do better.

Smith, weirdly, asserts that this reveals the “religious” nature of the animal rights movement:

We have all sinned against animals? Substitute God for animals in this piece, and you have a classic Christian message. Yup. animal rights is religion and Wayne Pacelle a high priest of the faith.

Um, does Smith realize that in Christian terms it makes perfect sense to talk about sinning against beings other than God? As in, “If your brother sins against you…” (Matt. 18:15)?

So how much of a stretch is it to talk about sinning against animals, especially when we’re talking about the kind of sadistic abuse Vick was guilty of? Sure, Kant and some other philosophers said that we have no direct duties to animals, but they were wrong! Pacelle is simply using religious language to point out that we all, to some degree or another, seriously wrong the animals who share our world.

It’s a staple of conservative anti-environmental and anti-animal rights rhetoric that those movements are ersatz religions. But actual religion already teaches us not to sin against our fellow creatures, including the most vulnerable ones.

Freedom’s just another word

In a Reason symposium on libertarianism and culture, Kerry Howley argues that libertarians should be concerned not just with minimizing government coercion, but with critiquing cultural barriers to human freedom. For instance, she points out that a woman trapped in a repressively patriarchal culture, or one that merely reinforces “traditional” gender roles, is hardly capable of fully exercising her freedom.

I agree with that. (Though I would demure at Ms. Howley’s insistence the the pill, porn, and 600 channels of TV are all on a par as examples of the “power of culture itself to liberate.”) But it’s no less true that someone who’s starving, or doesn’t have adequate access to health care, or doesn’t have clean air to breath or clean water to drink is incapable of fully exercising her freedom. Which is basically why, from J.S. Mill onward, most liberals have rejected laissez-faire in favor of some variety of state-action or welfare liberalism. In other words, valuing freedom is sometimes a good reason not to be a libertarian.