Edward Feser's Blog, page 71

Goodbye SCP (Updated)

It has been two weeks or so since the controversy over Richard Swinburne and the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP) erupted.  I’ve got nothing to add to what I and many others have already said, except this: I will not be renewing my membership in the SCP.  I quit.  Goodbye.  Other SCP members will have to make up their own minds about how best to react to the situation, but I would encourage them to leave as well.  In my judgment, the SCP no longer deserves the financial and moral support of Christian philosophers.It seems clear to me both from the public debate on the controversy and from what I know from “behind the scenes” that neither the President of the SCP, Michael Rea, nor the Executive Director, Christina Van Dyke, has any intention of making any public statement either apologizing to Swinburne or in any other meaningful way addressing the concerns of Swinburne’s defenders.

Rea created this controversy when he issued his statement officially distancing the SCP from Swinburne’s talk defending traditional Christian sexual morality (a talk the organization had invited Swinburne to give and the content of which the conference organizers cannot have been surprised by).  As I argued in my original post on the controversy:
Given current cultural circumstances, Rea’s statement amounts to what philosophers call a Gricean implicature – it “sends a message,” as it were -- to the effect that the SCP agrees that views like Swinburne’s really are disreputable and deserving of special censure, something to be quarantined and set apart from the ideas and arguments that respectable philosophers, including Christian philosophers, should normally be discussing. 
The only thing that can cancel this implicature is an equally forceful and unambiguous statement from Rea apologizing for any disrespect shown to Swinburne and affirming that the SCP welcomes the contributions of philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality no less than the contributions of those who are critical of it.
Yet not only have Rea and Van Dyke failed to cancel the implicature, they have reinforced the implicature.
First, as Lydia McGrew has pointed out, Van Dyke reinforced it in the very act of denying that any such implicature was intended.  In a Facebook remark on the controversy, Van Dyke claimed that “no one is trying to take free speech or the open expression of ideas away from anyone” but then immediately went on to assert that views like Swinburne’s “have caused incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” and that “having someone in a position of power [like Swinburne] advocate that position furthers that harm.” 
Now, no one ever claimed in the first place that the SCP intends explicitly to forbid views like Swinburne’s from being expressed at its meetings.  That is a red herring.  What Swinburne’s defenders are concerned about is rather that the SCP leadership’s remarks provide aid and comfort to those who would like to shut down reasoned debate about traditional sexual morality via intimidation, by demonizing all those who uphold it as “bigots,” promoters of “hate,” etc.  (See my original post on the controversy for discussion of the nature and manifestations of this political tactic and its utter incompatibility with a genuinely philosophical approach to these matters.) 
When Van Dyke asserts matter-of-factly that the very expression of views like Swinburne’s “cause[s] incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” etc., this quite obviously reinforces, rather than cancels, the message that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, etc., and it thus discourages philosophers (especially young and untenured scholars) from even considering defending such views, lest they be lumped in with the “haters” and “bigots” and damage their careers.
Second, as I reported over a week ago, Van Dyke made a public show of support for Prof. Jason Stanley when he faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, obscene and offensive remarks he made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Stanley, the reader will recall, had responded to Swinburne and his defenders with the words “F**k those a***oles,” labeled them “proponents of evil,” and compared them to Nazis and other mass murderers.  Clearly, for an SCP official to express support for such remarks once again reinforcesthe implicature to the effect that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, not the sort of thing a respectable philosopher would defend, etc.
Third, Lydia McGrew has reported that Rea made a public show of support for Prof. Rebecca Kukla when she faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, offensive, and even more obscene remarks she made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Kukla, the reader will recall, had said of Swinburne and his defenders: “Those douche tankards can suck my giant queer c**k.”
But for Swinburne… not a peep from Rea and Van Dyke.  The petition to these SCP leaders from their fellow Christian philosophers, respectfully asking for an apology to Swinburne?  No public response at all.
Even Jason Stanley has now publicly apologized to Swinburne for his remarks.  But from Michael Rea, silence.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that either the leaders of the SCP sympathize with those who would like to marginalize philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality, or they do not sympathize with them, but nevertheless lack the courage to face the backlash they would get from these marginalizers if they publicly apologized to Swinburne. 
Either way, the message this sends to Christian philosophers who would defend traditional Christian sexual morality is this:  “We don’t have your back.  We prefer to acquiesce in the demonization you increasingly face from the wider culture.”
So, goodbye SCP.  You did much good at one time, but now it seems you are the latest confirmation of Neuhaus’s Law.

UPDATE: I have been an SCP member for years, and have assumed that I am currently a member since I am still receiving the society’s journal Faith and Philosophy.  (I had the latest issue here on my desk as I wrote the post.)  But Mike Rea informs me via email that according to his records I am in arrears with my dues.  So he does not consider me to be a member any longer anyway.  I have told Mike to feel free to correct things at his end and cancel my subscription.  It’s a good journal, but naturally I don’t expect them to keep sending it to me if I am no longer a dues-paying member.

Goodbye SCP

It has been two weeks or so since the controversy over Richard Swinburne and the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP) erupted.  I’ve got nothing to add to what I and many others have already said, except this: I will not be renewing my membership in the SCP.  I quit.  Goodbye.  Other SCP members will have to make up their own minds about how best to react to the situation, but I would encourage them to leave as well.  In my judgment, the SCP no longer deserves the financial and moral support of Christian philosophers.It seems clear to me both from the public debate on the controversy and from what I know from “behind the scenes” that neither the President of the SCP, Michael Rea, nor the Executive Director, Christina Van Dyke, has any intention of making any public statement either apologizing to Swinburne or in any other meaningful way addressing the concerns of Swinburne’s defenders.

Rea created this controversy when he issued his statement officially distancing the SCP from Swinburne’s talk defending traditional Christian sexual morality (a talk the organization had invited Swinburne to give and the content of which the conference organizers cannot have been surprised by).  As I argued in my original post on the controversy:
Given current cultural circumstances, Rea’s statement amounts to what philosophers call a Gricean implicature – it “sends a message,” as it were -- to the effect that the SCP agrees that views like Swinburne’s really are disreputable and deserving of special censure, something to be quarantined and set apart from the ideas and arguments that respectable philosophers, including Christian philosophers, should normally be discussing. 
The only thing that can cancel this implicature is an equally forceful and unambiguous statement from Rea apologizing for any disrespect shown to Swinburne and affirming that the SCP welcomes the contributions of philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality no less than the contributions of those who are critical of it.
Yet not only have Rea and Van Dyke failed to cancel the implicature, they have reinforced the implicature.
First, as Lydia McGrew has pointed out, Van Dyke reinforced it in the very act of denying that any such implicature was intended.  In a Facebook remark on the controversy, Van Dyke claimed that “no one is trying to take free speech or the open expression of ideas away from anyone” but then immediately went on to assert that views like Swinburne’s “have caused incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” and that “having someone in a position of power [like Swinburne] advocate that position furthers that harm.” 
Now, no one ever claimed in the first place that the SCP intends explicitly to forbid views like Swinburne’s from being expressed at its meetings.  That is a red herring.  What Swinburne’s defenders are concerned about is rather that the SCP leadership’s remarks provide aid and comfort to those who would like to shut down reasoned debate about traditional sexual morality via intimidation, by demonizing all those who uphold it as “bigots,” promoters of “hate,” etc.  (See my original post on the controversy for discussion of the nature and manifestations of this political tactic and its utter incompatibility with a genuinely philosophical approach to these matters.) 
When Van Dyke asserts matter-of-factly that the very expression of views like Swinburne’s “cause[s] incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” etc., this quite obviously reinforces, rather than cancels, the message that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, etc., and it thus discourages philosophers (especially young and untenured scholars) from even considering defending such views, lest they be lumped in with the “haters” and “bigots” and damage their careers.
Second, as I reported over a week ago, Van Dyke made a public show of support for Prof. Jason Stanley when he faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, obscene and offensive remarks he made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Stanley, the reader will recall, had responded to Swinburne and his defenders with the words “F**k those a***oles,” labeled them “proponents of evil,” and compared them to Nazis and other mass murderers.  Clearly, for an SCP official to express support for such remarks once again reinforcesthe implicature to the effect that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, not the sort of thing a respectable philosopher would defend, etc.
Third, Lydia McGrew has reported that Rea made a public show of support for Prof. Rebecca Kukla when she faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, offensive, and even more obscene remarks she made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Kukla, the reader will recall, had said of Swinburne and his defenders: “Those douche tankards can suck my giant queer c**k.”
But for Swinburne… not a peep from Rea and Van Dyke.  The petition to these SCP leaders from their fellow Christian philosophers, respectfully asking for an apology to Swinburne?  No public response at all.
Even Jason Stanley has now publicly apologized to Swinburne for his remarks.  But from Michael Rea, silence.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that either the leaders of the SCP sympathize with those who would like to marginalize philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality, or they do not sympathize with them, but nevertheless lack the courage to face the backlash they would get from these marginalizers if they publicly apologized to Swinburne. 
Either way, the message this sends to Christian philosophers who would defend traditional Christian sexual morality is this:  “We don’t have your back.  We prefer to acquiesce in the demonization you increasingly face from the wider culture.”
So, goodbye SCP.  You did much good at one time, but now it seems you are the latest confirmation of Neuhaus’s Law.

Secret crisis of infinite links

New Scientist magazine opines that metaphysics has much to contribute to the study of nature.  Part of a special issue on the theme.
On the other hand, at Nautilus, empiricist philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen tells scientists to steer clear of metaphysics.
As usual, Aristotle had the answer long before you thought of the question.  His little known treatise on internet trolling.
Slurpee cups.  Marvel Treasury Editions.  Gerber’s Howard the Duck.  Hostess fruit pie ads.  Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men.  Secret Wars.  Crisis on Infinite Earths…  If you’re of a certain age, you know what I’m talkin’ about.  At Forces of Geek, George Khoury discusses his new book Comic Book Fever: A Celebration of Comics 1976 to 1986 .At the Philosophy of Religion blog, atheist philosopher Keith Parsons offers his take on the question: What does philosophy of religion offer the modern university?

Conversations with Roger Scruton is reviewed by Richard Cocks at The University Bookman.
The Philosophy of Jazz.  It’s a thing.  But that’s old news at this blog.
At Crisis, philosopher Patrick Toner on Catholics, Chesterton, and concealed carry.
Raised to prominence by the Swinburne controversy, the new conservative philosophers’ group blog: Rightly Considered.
Hmm, he has posted a lot of crap at his blog over the years.  Daily Nous has the straight poop on this week’s controversy in academic philosophy.
Some scholars and writers plump for Trump, while contributors to the Claremont Review of Books debate the election.
Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard on Reagan and Eisenhower.
St. Pius V pray for us.  At Crisis, Fr. George Rutler on the Battle of Lepanto.
At Public Discourse, Dylan Pahman on David Bentley Hart on Christianity and wealth.
New books reviewed at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: Howard Robinson’s From the Knowledge Argument to Mental Substance: Resurrecting the Mind , William Jaworski’s Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How Hylomorphism Solves the Mind-Body Problem , and Stephen R.L. Clark’s Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice.
Catholic scholars defend Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae against the latest call to change unchangeable Church doctrine.  Interview about the controversy with theologian Janet Smith.
At the Claremont Review of Books, Mark Bauerlein on the current academic obsession with same-sex matters.
Paul Gottfried on the use and abuse of the term “fascism.”  His new book reviewed by David Gordon and Jerry Salyer.
Philosophers Dale Tuggy and Michael Rota discuss Christian apologetics.
At last it can be revealed.  The astounding mystery of the other forty-something college professor named Edward Feser.  (He’s my cousin.  Hi Ed!)
We’ve all wondered about it:  Why do Marvel movies have such lame music?  Polygon explains .  (On the other hand, Danny Elfman’s music for the first Spider-Man flicks was terrific.)
At The University Bookman, Daniel Mahoney reviews Ryszard Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy .
What’s the deal with Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia?  Commentary from Robert Royal, Edward Peters, E. Christian Brugger, Josef Seifert, Ross Douthat, John Lamont, Elliot Milco, Mary Jo Anderson, Maggie Gallagher, Jessica Murdoch, and Fr. Raymond de Souza.

Aquinas on consciousness

My article “Aquinas and the problem of consciousness” appears in the anthology Consciousness and the Great Philosophers , edited by Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia and just published by Routledge.  Lots of interesting stuff in this volume.  The table of contents and other information are available here.

Christina van Dyke owes Richard Swinburne her resignation

Christina van Dyke is the Executive Director of the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP), whose President, Michael Rea, recently issued a statement on Facebook disavowing a talk defending traditional Christian sexual morality given by Richard Swinburne at an SCP conference.  Rea’s critics argue that his action has politicized the SCP insofar as it has, in effect, officially distanced the Society from the traditionalist side of the dispute over sexual morality and given an SCP endorsement to the liberal side.  I have argued that Rea owes Swinburne an apology, and a group of philosophers is now petitioning the SCP for an apology.In a September 26 Facebook comment on Rea’s statement, Van Dyke tried to reassure the critics of the SCP’s neutrality:

Swinburne [gave] a talk titled, “Christian Moral Teaching on Sex, Family, and Life”, which -- as Michael Rea and I have both tried to make clear -- he was and remains entirely free to do.  The content of that talk was entirely of his choosing.  The reason for any sort of announcement following the talk was that Mike and I were being asked whether Swinburne's views were “the” views of the SCP.  They are not, because the SCP does not have an official view on this or any other matter…
To the best of my knowledge, no one in the SCP has the slightest intention of changing the current conference set-up.  Keynotes will be invited and submitted papers reviewed in exactly the same way they always have…  [O]rganizers will, I assume, continue to accept or reject submitted papers based entirely on their philosophical merits or flaws.
End quote.  There is, however, more to the story.  But first, some context.  The conservative philosophy blog Rightly Considered and Rod Dreher at The American Conservative (hereand here) have been tracking the Facebook responses of some prominent philosophers to the Swinburne controversy.  What follows is a sample.  Readers highly sensitive to obscenity are warned that they might want to stop reading at this point .
My friends, I give you North America’s finest philosophical minds:
The considered response to Swinburne and his defenders put forward by Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, went like this:
Fuck those assholes.  Seriously.
After this comment was publicized, Stanley posted a follow-up remark on Facebook:
I really wish now I hadn’t said that!! I PROFOUNDLY regret not using much harsher language and saying what I really think of anyone who uses their religion to promote homophobia, you know that sickness that has led people for thousands of years to kill my fellow human beings for their sexual preferences.  Like you know, pink triangles and the Holocaust.  I am really, truly, embarrassed by the fact that my mild comment “F*ck those assholes” is being spread. This wildly understates my actual sentiments towards homophobic religious proponents of evil like Richard Swinburne, who use their status as professional philosophers to oppress others with less power. I am SO SORRY for using such mild language.
Other philosophers soon joined in this Socratic discussion.  For example, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, averred:
Right on.  Also: Fuck those assholes.
Rebecca Kukla, Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, sagely added:
Those douche tankards can suck my giant queer cock. 
John Collins, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, offered the novel opinion:
Fuck those assholes.
And so on.  For further samples of the discussion going on in this elite salon, head on over to Rightly Considered or Dreher (or Facebook for that matter). 
The relevance to Van Dyke is this.  Rightly Considered now reports that, in a Facebook response to Stanley’s second comment:
Van Dyke reacted to Stanley’s post with a “Haha.” She laughed at the fact that he “profoundly regretted not using harsher language” toward conservative Christians. She said “haha” to the fact that he “apologized” for “wildly understating” his true contempt for conservative Christians.
Rightly Considered offers a screenshot in evidence.  The blog also notes, however, that Van Dyke has since removed this initial approving response, apparently realizing its politically damaging character in the context of the current controversy.
So, Van Dyke apparently agrees that “Fuck those assholes” is an appropriate response to Swinburne and his defenders, and agrees with Stanley that they are “proponents of evil” and abettors of mass murder.  Yet we are supposed to believe that she nevertheless wants the SCP to be neutral between the traditionalist and liberal sides in the debate over sexual morality.
If there were any remaining doubt that some are attempting to politicize the SCP, Van Dyke’s slip of the mask should eliminate it.  Van Dyke ought to resign.  And Rea now needs to apologize both for the disavowal of Swinburne, and for this appalling behavior on the part of the SCP’s Executive Director.  If he is willing to do neither, then he ought to resign himself. 

Robert P. George on capital punishment (Updated)

Mark Shea and I have been debating Catholicism and capital punishment.  (See this post and this one for my side of the exchange and for links to Shea’s side of it.)  Shea has been talking to “new natural law” theorist Prof. Robert P. George about the subject.  He quotes Robbie saying the following:
In fact, the Church can and has changed its teaching on the death penalty, and it can and does (now) teach that it is intrinsically wrong (not merely prudentially inadvisable). Both John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism reject killing AS A PENALTY, i.e., as a punishment, i.e., for retributive reasons. Rightly or wrongly (I think rightly, but the teaching is not infallibly proposed—Professor Feser is right about that—nor was the teaching it replaces infallibly proposed) the Church now teaches that the only reason for which you can kill someone who has committed a heinous crime is for self-defense and the defense of innocent third parties. You can’t kill him AS A PUNISHMENT, even if he’s Hitler or Osama bin Laden, once you’ve got him effectively and permanently disabled from committing further heinous crimes. There is no other way to read Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism. The interesting debate, I think, is about the status of the earlier teaching and what kind of assent, if any, it demanded of faithful Catholics…End quote.  This is a common interpretation of John Paul II’s teaching among those committed to the “new natural law” theory invented by Germain Grisez in the 1960s.  Joseph Bessette and I critique this and other aspects of the “new natural law” approach to capital punishment at length in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty, forthcoming from Ignatius Press.  For now let me briefly summarize some of the very serious problems with the view Robbie expresses.

First, it is at best extremely misleading (indeed, I would say simply false) to assert flatly that the Church “has changed its teaching” in the way described.  The very most that can be said is that some moral theologians claim that this is the right way to interpret John Paul II (mainly those moral theologians influenced by Grisez’s “new natural law” theory, which was independently heavily invested in the idea that capital punishment is intrinsically immoral long before Evangelium Vitae appeared).  There are many other prominent Catholic moral theologians who reject this interpretation, such as the late Cardinal Avery Dulles and Prof. Steven A. Long.
Second, a major difficulty for Robbie’s assertion is that then-Cardinal Ratzinger, speaking as head of the CDF and the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, explicitly denied that John Paul II had made any change to the Church’s teaching on capital punishment at the level of doctrinal principle (as opposed to prudential application of principle).  In a letter responding to an inquiry from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus about whether the teaching of Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism represented a doctrinal change, published in First Things in October of 1995, Ratzinger said:
Clearly, the Holy Father has not altered the doctrinal principles which pertain to this issue as they are presented in the Catechism, but has simply deepened the application of such principles in the context of present-day historical circumstances… In my statements during the presentation of the encyclical to the press, I sought to elucidate these elements, and noted the importance of taking such circumstantial considerations into account.  It is in this sense that the Catechism may be rewritten, naturally without any modification of the relevant doctrinal principles. (emphasis added)
That’s about as clear a rejection as there could be of the thesis that the teaching of Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism represents a change in doctrine rather than merely a change in prudential application of doctrine. 
Third, the thesis that Robbie (wrongly) attributes to John Paul II – that the execution of a criminal cannot be regarded any longer as a matter of penalty, punishment, or retributive justice, but instead only as a kind of defense – is extremely morally problematic.  If the pope really were saying that it is legitimate to execute someone merely because he poses a danger and that retributive justice has nothing to do with it, then this would in principle allow the killing even of the innocent.  For example, suppose someone is dangerous to others, not because he freely chooses to harm them, but because he has a severe mental illness and can’t control his violent impulses.  According to the thesis Robbie attributes to the pope, such a person could in principle be sentenced to death merely for the sake of keeping others safe.  But this is surely not what the pope intended to teach, and indeed it contradicts his explicit teaching that the innocent may never in principle be intentionally killed. 
(Those who oppose the very idea of retributive justice – the principle that an offender deserves a punishment proportionate to his crime – often fail to realize that this principle protects the innocent and much as it threatens the guilty.  The traditional case for capital punishment holds that onlythose who deserve death can be executed, not those who are innocent, including the mentally ill.  To reject the principle of retribution is implicitly to accept the principle that it is not what people deserve that should determine how we treat them, but rather some other criterion, such as consequentialism, that should do so.  It is thus the defenders of the retributivist view, and not its critics, who truly uphold human dignity.)
Now, the “new natural lawyers” also think the innocent may never intentionally be killed.  Indeed, they think that no one, not even the guilty, may ever intentionally be killed.  So, it might seem strange for them to attribute the thesis in question to the pope.  But there is a larger motivation here, because what the “new natural lawyers” want to be able to do is to argue that the teaching they attribute to the pope is really just a stepping stone on the way to the further conclusion that all execution, even as defense, is always and intrinsically wrong.  But the thesis that all intentional killing, even of those guilty of the worst crimes, is always and intrinsically wrong, was not John Paul II’s teaching and it is not the Church’s teaching.  It is merely Germain Grisez’s teaching, which his followers would like the Church to find a way to take on board. 
Fourth, the thesis that the execution of criminals is legitimate even in principle only as a matter of defense and never as a matter of punishment or retributive justice would not (contrary to what some Catholics falsely suppose) be a mere “development” of previous doctrine.  It would (as Cardinal Dulles pointed out) in fact be an outright reversal of previous doctrine, a contradiction of previous doctrine.  For scripture, the Church Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, and various popes throughout history not only teach that capital punishment is legitimate in principle.  They teach that it is legitimate in principle even when carried out merely for purposes of retributive justice. 
Fifth, contrary to what Robbie asserts, this previous teaching is in fact infallible.  Every Catholic must assent to it.  The First Vatican Council solemnly teaches that:
[T]hat meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture.
In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers.
The Council of Trent taught the same thing.  Now, many scriptural passages teach not only that capital punishment is legitimate, but also that it is legitimate even just for purposes of securing retributive justice.  (Cf. the examples Joe Bessette and I cited in our recent Catholic World Report article.)  And the Church, from the Fathers onward, has always understood these passages this way.  The various contemporary attempts creatively to re-interpret such passages simply cannot be squared with the principle that scripture must be understood to mean what the Church has always “held” it to mean.
Even Christian Brugger, the “new natural law” theory’s point man on the biblical and theological side of the capital punishment debate, admits that certain key biblical passages (such as Genesis 9:6) are very difficult plausibly to interpret except as a sanction of the death penalty.  He also admits that the Fathers, even those who opposed the use of capital punishment in practice, are unanimous in their view that capital punishment is sanctioned by scripture and thus legitimate in principle.  But interestingly, execution for the sake of “defense” is the one purpose of capital punishment that we do not find much if at all discussed in scripture or the Fathers.  The purposes they almost always emphasize are retribution and deterrence.
Now, if scripture is infallible on faith and morals, and scripture teaches that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate even just for the purpose of retribution, then it is a straightforward logical deduction that it is infallible teaching that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate even just for the purpose of retribution.  This is one reason why there is simply no other way to interpret recent popes’ tendency toward abolitionism except as a prudential judgment (and specifically what I have elsewhere called a category 5 magisterial statement, with which Catholics are at liberty to disagree).  There is no “wiggle room” here whatsoever.  (Brugger’s tortuous attempt to get around this problem is given a detailed and thorough refutation in the forthcoming By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, in which all the other points summarized here are also developed at length.)
This is why Cardinal Ratzinger, despite his personal opposition to capital punishment, made the statements he did about the subject during his time as head of the CDF, i.e. to the effect that John Paul II’s teaching was prudential rather than doctrinal and to the effect that a good Catholic could disagree with it.  This is what Ratzinger’s famous “hermeneutic of continuity” with past teaching – and thus the very credibility of the magisterium of the Church – strictly requires.
Those of us who make this point are, accordingly, not “battling the Church” (to use a phrase Shea keeps repeating like a mantra).  On the contrary, we are, like then-Cardinal Ratzinger, defending the Church’s claim to have preserved the Deposit of Faith whole and undefiled.
[For further discussion of capital punishment, including criticism of other aspects of the “new natural law” position, see the posts and articles collected here.]

UPDATE 10/1: I've noted in earlier posts that views like the "new natural law" position on capital punishment give aid and comfort to Protestant critics of Catholicism, who falsely accuse the Church of manufacturing novel doctrines and contradicting scripture.  The Calvinist blog Triablogue cites Prof. George's remarks as confirming evidence for this accusation.

Robert P. George on capital punishment

Mark Shea and I have been debating Catholicism and capital punishment.  (See this post and this one for my side of the exchange and for links to Shea’s side of it.)  Shea has been talking to “new natural law” theorist Prof. Robert P. George about the subject.  He quotes Robbie saying the following:
In fact, the Church can and has changed its teaching on the death penalty, and it can and does (now) teach that it is intrinsically wrong (not merely prudentially inadvisable). Both John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism reject killing AS A PENALTY, i.e., as a punishment, i.e., for retributive reasons. Rightly or wrongly (I think rightly, but the teaching is not infallibly proposed—Professor Feser is right about that—nor was the teaching it replaces infallibly proposed) the Church now teaches that the only reason for which you can kill someone who has committed a heinous crime is for self-defense and the defense of innocent third parties. You can’t kill him AS A PUNISHMENT, even if he’s Hitler or Osama bin Laden, once you’ve got him effectively and permanently disabled from committing further heinous crimes. There is no other way to read Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism. The interesting debate, I think, is about the status of the earlier teaching and what kind of assent, if any, it demanded of faithful Catholics…End quote.  This is a common interpretation of John Paul II’s teaching among those committed to the “new natural law” theory invented by Germain Grisez in the 1960s.  Joseph Bessette and I critique this and other aspects of the “new natural law” approach to capital punishment at length in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty, forthcoming from Ignatius Press.  For now let me briefly summarize some of the very serious problems with the view Robbie expresses.

First, it is at best extremely misleading (indeed, I would say simply false) to assert flatly that the Church “has changed its teaching” in the way described.  The very most that can be said is that some moral theologians claim that this is the right way to interpret John Paul II (mainly those moral theologians influenced by Grisez’s “new natural law” theory, which was independently heavily invested in the idea that capital punishment is intrinsically immoral long before Evangelium Vitae appeared).  There are many other prominent Catholic moral theologians who reject this interpretation, such as the late Cardinal Avery Dulles and Prof. Steven A. Long.
Second, a major difficulty for Robbie’s assertion is that then-Cardinal Ratzinger, speaking as head of the CDF and the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, explicitly denied that John Paul II had made any change to the Church’s teaching on capital punishment at the level of doctrinal principle (as opposed to prudential application of principle).  In a letter responding to an inquiry from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus about whether the teaching of Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism represented a doctrinal change, published in First Things in October of 1995, Ratzinger said:
Clearly, the Holy Father has not altered the doctrinal principles which pertain to this issue as they are presented in the Catechism, but has simply deepened the application of such principles in the context of present-day historical circumstances… In my statements during the presentation of the encyclical to the press, I sought to elucidate these elements, and noted the importance of taking such circumstantial considerations into account.  It is in this sense that the Catechism may be rewritten, naturally without any modification of the relevant doctrinal principles. (emphasis added)
That’s about as clear a rejection as there could be of the thesis that the teaching of Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism represents a change in doctrine rather than merely a change in prudential application of doctrine. 
Third, the thesis that Robbie (wrongly) attributes to John Paul II – that the execution of a criminal cannot be regarded any longer as a matter of penalty, punishment, or retributive justice, but instead only as a kind of defense – is extremely morally problematic.  If the pope really were saying that it is legitimate to execute someone merely because he poses a danger and that retributive justice has nothing to do with it, then this would in principle allow the killing even of the innocent.  For example, suppose someone is dangerous to others, not because he freely chooses to harm them, but because he has a severe mental illness and can’t control his violent impulses.  According to the thesis Robbie attributes to the pope, such a person could in principle be sentenced to death merely for the sake of keeping others safe.  But this is surely not what the pope intended to teach, and indeed it contradicts his explicit teaching that the innocent may never in principle be intentionally killed. 
(Those who oppose the very idea of retributive justice – the principle that an offender deserves a punishment proportionate to his crime – often fail to realize that this principle protects the innocent and much as it threatens the guilty.  The traditional case for capital punishment holds that onlythose who deserve death can be executed, not those who are innocent, including the mentally ill.  To reject the principle of retribution is implicitly to accept the principle that it is not what people deserve that should determine how we treat them, but rather some other criterion, such as consequentialism, that should do so.  It is thus the defenders of the retributivist view, and not its critics, who truly uphold human dignity.)
Now, the “new natural lawyers” also think the innocent may never intentionally be killed.  Indeed, they think that no one, not even the guilty, may ever intentionally be killed.  So, it might seem strange for them to attribute the thesis in question to the pope.  But there is a larger motivation here, because what the “new natural lawyers” want to be able to do is to argue that the teaching they attribute to the pope is really just a stepping stone on the way to the further conclusion that all execution, even as defense, is always and intrinsically wrong.  But the thesis that all intentional killing, even of those guilty of the worst crimes, is always and intrinsically wrong, was not John Paul II’s teaching and it is not the Church’s teaching.  It is merely Germain Grisez’s teaching, which his followers would like the Church to find a way to take on board. 
Fourth, the thesis that the execution of criminals is legitimate even in principle only as a matter of defense and never as a matter of punishment or retributive justice would not (contrary to what some Catholics falsely suppose) be a mere “development” of previous doctrine.  It would (as Cardinal Dulles pointed out) in fact be an outright reversal of previous doctrine, a contradiction of previous doctrine.  For scripture, the Church Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, and various popes throughout history not only teach that capital punishment is legitimate in principle.  They teach that it is legitimate in principle even when carried out merely for purposes of retributive justice. 
Fifth, contrary to what Robbie asserts, this previous teaching is in fact infallible.  Every Catholic must assent to it.  The First Vatican Council solemnly teaches that:
[T]hat meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture.
In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers.
The Council of Trent taught the same thing.  Now, many scriptural passages teach not only that capital punishment is legitimate, but also that it is legitimate even just for purposes of securing retributive justice.  (Cf. the examples Joe Bessette and I cited in our recent Catholic World Report article.)  And the Church, from the Fathers onward, has always understood these passages this way.  The various contemporary attempts creatively to re-interpret such passages simply cannot be squared with the principle that scripture must be understood to mean what the Church has always “held” it to mean.
Even Christian Brugger, the “new natural law” theory’s point man on the biblical and theological side of the capital punishment debate, admits that certain key biblical passages (such as Genesis 9:6) are very difficult plausibly to interpret except as a sanction of the death penalty.  He also admits that the Fathers, even those who opposed the use of capital punishment in practice, are unanimous in their view that capital punishment is sanctioned by scripture and thus legitimate in principle.  But interestingly, execution for the sake of “defense” is the one purpose of capital punishment that we do not find much if at all discussed in scripture or the Fathers.  The purposes they almost always emphasize are retribution and deterrence.
Now, if scripture is infallible on faith and morals, and scripture teaches that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate even just for the purpose of retribution, then it is a straightforward logical deduction that it is infallible teaching that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate even just for the purpose of retribution.  This is one reason why there is simply no other way to interpret recent popes’ tendency toward abolitionism except as a prudential judgment (and specifically what I have elsewhere called a category 5 magisterial statement, with which Catholics are at liberty to disagree).  There is no “wiggle room” here whatsoever.  (Brugger’s tortuous attempt to get around this problem is given a detailed and thorough refutation in the forthcoming By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, in which all the other points summarized here are also developed at length.)
This is why Cardinal Ratzinger, despite his personal opposition to capital punishment, made the statements he did about the subject during his time as head of the CDF, i.e. to the effect that John Paul II’s teaching was prudential rather than doctrinal and to the effect that a good Catholic could disagree with it.  This is what Ratzinger’s famous “hermeneutic of continuity” with past teaching – and thus the very credibility of the magisterium of the Church – strictly requires.
Those of us who make this point are, accordingly, not “battling the Church” (to use a phrase Shea keeps repeating like a mantra).  On the contrary, we are, like then-Cardinal Ratzinger, defending the Church’s claim to have preserved the Deposit of Faith whole and undefiled.
[For further discussion of capital punishment, including criticism of other aspects of the “new natural law” position, see the posts and articles collected here.]

Michael Rea owes Richard Swinburne an apology

Richard Swinburne, emeritus professor of philosophy at Oxford University, author of many highly influential books, and among the most eminent of contemporary Christian thinkers, recently gave the keynote address at a meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP).  In his talk, which was on the theme of sexual morality, he defended the view that homosexual acts are disordered – a view that has historically been commonly held within Christianity and the other major world religions, has been defended by philosophers like Plato, Aquinas, and Kant, and is defended to this day by various natural law theorists.  So, it would seem a perfectly suitable topic of discussion and debate for a meeting of Christian philosophers of religion.  Of course, that view is highly controversial today.  Even some contemporary Christian philosophers disagree with Swinburne.  I wasn’t there, but apparently his talk generated some criticism.   Fair enough.  That’s what meetings of philosophers are about – the free and vigorous exchange of ideas and arguments.Yet for some reason, Michael Rea, president of the SCP, posted the following statement on his Facebook page over the weekend:

I want to express my regret regarding the hurt caused by the recent Midwest meeting of the Society for Christian Philosophers. The views expressed in Professor Swinburne's keynote are not those of the SCP itself. Though our membership is broadly united by way of religious faith, the views of our members are otherwise diverse. As President of the SCP, I am committed to promoting the intellectual life of our philosophical community. Consequently (among other reasons), I am committed to the values of diversity and inclusion. As an organization, we have fallen short of those ideals before, and surely we will again. Nonetheless, I will strive for them going forward. If you have thoughts or feedback you would like to share with me, I would welcome hearing from you via email or private message.
End quote.  Rea’s statement has received a lot of feedback on Facebook – both positive and negative – and has gotten attention elsewhere online as well (such as at Rod Dreher’s column at The American Conservative).
There are several odd things about Rea’s statement.  First, Swinburne was invitedto present the keynote address, and SCP members, including the society’s leaders, know his work well.  But no one who knows that work could possibly be surprised that Swinburne holds traditional views about homosexuality.  Indeed, he defended the position he expressed in his keynote talk in the second edition of his book Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy .  If Swinburne had given a talk defending a dualist view of human nature, or the resurrection of Christ, or the possibility of eternal damnation -- views also all standard in Christian theology historically even if highly controversial today – no one would have been surprised, and Rea would not have seen fit to issue any statement. 
So why issue a statement in this case?  If you invite someone well-known for his traditional views to give a talk, don’t be surprised if he expresses traditional views during the talk.  If you don’t like the views he’s likely to express, don’t invite him in the first place.  But it is rude and unfair to invite him, let him give the talk, and then disavow him after the fact.
Second, why the frantic assurance that Swinburne’s views “are not those of the SCP”?  Who would have supposed that they are the views of the SCP?  The SCP is an organization of academic philosophers, and everyone knows that academic philosophers disagree about all sorts of things.  If Swinburne had defended Cartesian dualism in his talk, or Kantian ethics, or scientific realism, no one would think “Hmm, the SCP must be officially endorsing Cartesian dualism [or Kantian ethics, or scientific realism].”  Nor would Rea have issued any disclaimer.  Everyone would know that Swinburne was speaking only for himself, just as any philosopher does when he gives a talk.  How are things any different in this case?
Third, what is this business about the “hurt” Swinburne’s views allegedly caused?  Philosophers discuss and defend all sorts of ideas that some people are bound to find offensive.  So what?  If, to take just one example, a philosopher defends the moral legitimacy of abortion, he may well offend those who regard abortion as a species of murder; whereas if he argues instead that abortion is a species of murder, he may well offend those who have had abortions.  Still, philosophers discuss and debate abortion all the time, and no one regards this as noteworthy or in need of some disclaimer.  So why are things different in the case of Swinburne’s chosen topic?
Perhaps Rea is worried that some will be offended by Swinburne’s specific way of arguing.  Swinburne holds that a homosexual orientation is a kind of “disability” (a view he put forward in the Revelation book).  No doubt some will be offended by such language.  But again, people are bound to be offended by all sorts of things philosophers say.  Again, an argument for either side of the abortion debate is bound to be offensive to some people who come down on the other side.  So what?  If the arguments for the side you disagree with in the abortion debate are not goodarguments, then that is what you should be trying to show.  Going on about hurt feelings doesn’t add anything at all to the philosophical critique.  On the other hand, if the arguments for the side you disagree with are good arguments, then you should stop disagreeing with them and stop being offended by them.  In either case, hurt feelings are neither here nor there.  And every philosopher knows this where other topics are concerned.  Why are things any different in Swinburne’s case?
Fourth, Rea says that because he is “committed to promoting the intellectual life of our philosophical community,” he is “consequently… committed to the values of diversity and inclusion.”  Well, fine.  So what’s the problem, exactly?  “Diversity and inclusion” in the context of “the intellectual life of [a] philosophical community” surely entails that a “diversity” of opinions and arguments be “included” in the discussion.  Now, Swinburne’s view is unpopular these days.  It is often not “included” in philosophical discussions of sexual morality, discussions which tend not to be “diverse” but instead are dominated by liberal views.  Hence having Swinburne present the views he did is precisely a way of advancingthe cause of “diversity and inclusion.”  Yet Rea treats it as if it were the opposite.  Why? 
Fifth, Rea speaks about the SCP having “fallen short” of the ideals of diversity and inclusion and of his resolve to “strive for them going forward.”  Well, what does that entail exactly?  Evidently he thinks that letting Swinburne say what he did amounts to having “fallen short.”  So is Rea saying that, “going forward,” he will work to make sure that views like Swinburne’s are no longer expressed at SCP meetings, or at least in SCP keynote addresses?  How would preventing views from being expressed amount to the furthering of “diversity and inclusion”?  And how would that square with the free and open debate that philosophy is supposed to be all about? 
So, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for Rea to have made the statement he did.  There are, moreover, very good reasons why someone in his position should nothave made such a statement.  One of them I have already mentioned.  If you don’t like what someone is going to say, don’t invite him to present the keynote address at your meeting.  It is unfair to invite him and then sandbag him after the fact.
But it’s worse than just being unfair to Swinburne.  Civil and reasonable discussion about questions of sexual morality is increasingly difficult today, and it is precisely those who are most prone loudly to express their “hurt” feelings who make it so.  Even the most polite, reasoned, and carefully qualified objections to homosexual acts, transgenderism, etc. are routinely dismissed a priori as “bigotry,” fit only to be ridiculed and shouted down rather than rationally engaged.  In extreme cases those who express such views face cyberbullying, loss of employment, and the like.  As Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion in United States v. Windsor, such views are now widely treated as “beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement” and their proponents shunned as if they were “enemies of the human race.” 
To pretend (as some Christian philosophers I know do) that this sort of thing is essentially just a regrettable but understandable overreaction on the part of wounded souls who have had some bad experiences with obnoxious religious people is naiveté.  It is often rather a calculated political tactic aimed at making public dissent from liberal conventional wisdom on sexuality practically difficult or impossible.  Some activists admit this.  For example, in their 1989 book After the Ball , Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen called for a long-term propaganda campaign to change attitudes about homosexuality by shaming, social ostracization, and other tactics deliberately aimed at manipulating emotions rather than appealing to reason.  They write:
The trick is to get the bigot into the position of feeling a conflicting twinge of shame… This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, all making use of repeated exposure to pictorial images or verbal statements that are incompatible with his self-image as a well-liked person, one who fits in with the rest of the crowd. Thus, propagandistic advertisement can depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths and assholes… who are 'not Christian.'  It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned… It can, in short, link homohating bigotry with all sorts of attributes the bigot would be ashamed to possess, and with social consequences he would find unpleasant and scary…
When [the bigot] sees someone like himself being disapproved of and disliked by ordinary Joes… he will feel just what they feel -- and transfer it to himself. This wrinkle effectively elicits shame and doubt…
Note that the bigot need not actually be made to believe that he is such a heinous creature, that others will now despise him... Rather, our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof…  [but] through repeated infralogical emotional conditioning… (pp. 151-53)
[P]ropaganda relies more upon emotional manipulation than upon logic, since its goal is, in fact, to bring about a change in the public’s feelings. (p. 162)
The objective is to make homohating beliefs and actions look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from them… We also intend, by this tactic, to make the very expression of homohatred so discreditable that even Intransigents will eventually be silenced in public… (p. 189)
End quote.  In an earlier 1987 Guide magazine article “The Overhauling of Straight America,” these same authors described their strategy this way:
At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights… it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents.  To be blunt, they must be vilified... [W]e intend to make the antigays look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.
End quote.  Now, “homohatred” is indeed wrong, because hatred is wrong.  But of course, disapproval of homosexual acts simply does not entail hatred of homosexuals themselves, any more than a vegetarian’s or vegan’s disapproval of eating meat entails hatred of meat-eaters.  But Marshall and Kirk and like-minded activists believe that this follows (or pretendto believe it, anyway), so that what they intend is that those who merely disapprove of the acts in question, and not just those who literally hate others, be vilified, hated, shunned, silenced, etc.  The situation Scalia described in his dissent is thus exactly what such activists have tried to engineer. 
So pervasive have tactics of this sort become in recent years that one sometimes finds even professional philosophers resorting to them, at least in online contexts (blog posts, comboxes, Facebook posts, etc.).  Common examples are:
• preemptively dismissing any argument in defense of conservative views vis-à-vis homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. as a “cloak for bigotry” – a blatant example of an ad hominem fallacy of poisoning the well, or rejecting an argument based on a purportedly disreputable motive on the part of the person giving it, rather than fairly addressing the merits of the argument itself
• matter-of-factly characterizing such arguments as comparable to a defense of racism -- a blatant fallacy of begging the question, since whether the views in question really are comparable to racism is, of course, precisely part of what is at issue in the dispute between defenders of traditional sexual morality and their critics
• mocking such arguments as “obviously” terrible, too stupid for words, not worth anyone’s attention, etc. – a blatant appeal to ridicule fallacy
• matter-of-factly dismissing all such arguments as something which few in “the profession” of academic philosophy take seriously anymore, etc. – a manifest appeal to majority fallacy
• casually insinuating that anyone who presents such arguments really isn’t a serious philosopher, is therefore bound to lose standing in “the profession,” may have difficulty getting a tenured positon, etc. – an argumentum ad baculum
• objecting even to the civil and dispassionate discussion of such arguments on the grounds that some will find them “hurtful,” “offensive,” etc. – a fallacy of appeal to emotion, since what ultimately matters are the logical and evidential merits of a claim or an argument, not how we “feel” about it
Now, as every philosopher knows, tactics like these are textbook examples of sophistry and thus entirely antithetical to genuine philosophy.  They are exactly the sorts of rhetorical tricks that every philosopher teaches students in logic and critical thinking classes not to employ.  For a philosopher deliberately to employ or approve of such tactics is gross malpractice, comparable to a physician violating the Hippocratic oath.  For a philosopher not to condemn such tactics when employed by others is comparable to a physician refusing to treat his patients or to warn them away from dangers to their health.  For a philosopher not to condemn them especially when they are employed by other philosophers is comparable to a physician who turns a blind eye to the malpractice of other physicians.
What does all this have to do with Rea and Swinburne?  Just this.  Sophistries and ruthless political pressure tactics of the sort just described succeed only when people let them succeed – when they let themselves be intimidated, when they acquiesce in the shaming and shunning of those who express unpopular views, when they enable the delegitimization of such views by treating them as something embarrassing, something to apologize for, something “hurtful,” etc. 
This, it seems to me, is what Rea has done in the case of Swinburne.  Given current cultural circumstances, Rea’s statement amounts to what philosophers call a Gricean implicature – it “sends a message,” as it were -- to the effect that the SCP agrees that views like Swinburne’s really are disreputable and deserving of special censure, something to be quarantined and set apart from the ideas and arguments that respectable philosophers, including Christian philosophers, should normally be discussing. 
That is unjust and damaging to philosophy itself, not merely to Swinburne.  It is especially unjust and damaging to younger academic philosophers – grad students, untenured professors, and so forth – who are bound to be deterred from the free and scholarly investigation of unpopular ideas and arguments.  If even the Society of Christian Philosophersis willing to participate in the public humiliation even of someone of the eminence, scholarly achievement, and gentlemanly temperament of Richard Swinburne, then why should any young and vulnerable scholar trust his fellow academic philosophers to “have his back” when questions of academic freedom arise?  Why should he believe they are sincere in their purported commitment to reason over sophistry?
Rea is an excellent philosopher from whose work I, like many others, have profited.  But in this recent statement he has in my opinion done a disservice to his fellow philosophers and an injustice to Swinburne.  He owes Swinburne an apology. 

A further reply to Mark Shea

At Catholic World Report, Mark Brumley comments on my exchange with Mark Shea concerning Catholicism and capital punishment.  Brumley hopes that “charity and clarity” will prevail in the contemporary debate on this subject.  I couldn’t agree more.  Unfortunately, you’ll find only a little charity, and no clarity, in Shea’s latest contribution to the discussion.  Shea labels his post a “reply” to what I recently wrote about him but in fact he completely ignores the points I made and instead persists in attacking straw men, begging the question, and raising issues that are completely irrelevant to the dispute between us.Before addressing these problems, though, it is only fair to acknowledge Shea’s very kind remarks about me and my work.  He writes:

Dr. Feser has now written a reply in which he gives his perception that I think him some kind of monster for arguing for the death penalty.  I think nothing of the kind.  He is a brother in Christ. He has done very good work arguing for theism against atheism.  He has written in the past against the excuses for the nuclear slaughter of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and I have written him to thank him for doing so).  And of course, he has taught Thomas to a world in desperate need of Thomas.  Bravo and may his tribe increase.
End quote.  I am happy to return the compliment and acknowledge that I have long admired and recommended Shea’s work in Catholic apologetics, such as his book By What Authority? , which is a fine exposition and defense of the Catholic position on the authority of tradition.
Regrettably, the standard of charity and clarity he exhibits in that book is not to be found in his treatment of the subject of capital punishment.  Let’s consider the problems with his latest remarks:
1. Shea misrepresents Catholic teaching
Noting that Joe Bessette and I argued in a recent Crisis article that the legitimacy in principleof capital punishment is irreversible Catholic teaching, Shea emphasizes that recent popes and bishops have nevertheless urged that in practice it ought to be abandoned.  Characterizing Catholic pro-capital punishment views like the one Joe and I defend, Shea says:
“Yes,” goes the argument. “But that is not dogmatic teaching.”
To which the right and proper reply is, “So what?” It is not the case that the Church functions by the rule, “If it’s not dogma, feel free to blow it off” particularly when we are talking about a matter of life and death.
End quote.  Shea seems to think that my position is that as long as some teaching is not put forward as infallible dogma, then a Catholic is free to reject it.  However, not only is that notmy view, I have several times explicitly criticized the tendency of some Catholics to suppose that they are obliged to accept only infallible teachings.
The trouble is that Shea ignores the fact that, in addition to (i) infallible and binding magisterial statements and (ii) non-infallible but still binding statements, there are also (iii) non-infallible and non-binding statements.  (In fact, as I have explained elsewhere, Catholic theology recognizes five categories of magisterial statement.)  And the currently dominant view among Catholic churchmen that capital punishment ought to be abolished is among these non-binding statements.
How do we know this?  There are several considerations that show this to be the case, which Joe Bessette and I discuss at length in our forthcoming book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty.  But one of them is that the Church herself has explicitly told us so.  Both the Crisisarticle and my first post responding to Shea quoted the 2004 statement by Cardinal Ratzinger, then head of the CDF and the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, to the effect that “not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia,” and in particular that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about … applying the death penalty,” so that even a good Catholic could be “at odds with the Holy Father” on that particular subject.
Virtually identical language is used in the 2004 USCCB document “Theological Reflections on Catholics in Political Life and the Reception of Holy Communion,” written by Archbishop William Levada, later to become Ratzinger’s successor at CDF.  Levada wrote:
Catholic social teaching covers a broad range of important issues.  But among these the teaching on abortion holds a unique place.  Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to disagree with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment… he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion... While the Church exhorts civil authorities… to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible… to have recourse to capital punishment.  There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about… applying the death penalty, but not with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
End quote.  So, we have recent statements from both the CDF and the USCCB explicitly repudiating the notion that a good Catholic is obliged to oppose capital punishment, and explicitly repudiatingthe claim that capital punishment is comparable to abortion.  Yet Shea claims that a good Catholic and a consistent opponent of abortion must oppose capital punishment.  Who should Catholics listen to, Shea, or the CDF and USCCB?
Bizarrely, though the Ratzinger passage has been quoted in both of the articles Shea has responded to, he has completely ignored it, offering no explanation at all of how his position is consistent with it.  Why?  Shea solemnly cites other magisterial documents, presenting himself as humbly willing to submit to what they teach.  So how can he consistently ignore these particular documents?
In his comments on my debate with Shea, Mark Brumley quotes the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, which at section 43 states:
[I]t happens rather frequently, and legitimately so, that with equal sincerity some of the faithful will disagree with others on a given matter.  Even against the intentions of their proponents, however, solutions proposed on one side or another may be easily confused by many people with the Gospel message.  Hence it is necessary for people to remember that no one is allowed in the aforementioned situations to appropriate the Church's authority for his opinion.
Unfortunately it seems to me that what Shea has done on the issue of capital punishment is precisely to try to “appropriate the Church's authority for his opinion” that any faithful Catholic must oppose capital punishment – an opinion which, again, the CDF and USCCB documents explicitly reject.
2. Shea ignores the excesses of some Catholic abolitionists
In our Crisis article, Joe Bessette and I argued that the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment is irreversible teaching.  In his latest remarks, Shea says of the article: “Given that the Church has, effectively, reversed its teaching [on capital punishment] – calling for its abolition where it once permitted it – the article was misleading at best.”  This might seem to imply that Shea thinks the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment is not irreversible teaching.  However, that is clearly not what Shea means.  For one thing, in his initial reply to the Crisis article he acknowledged the truth of its central thesis.  For another, in his latest post he repeats the point, writing: “Yes, it is true that the Church cannot say that the death penalty is intrinsically immoral as, say, abortion is.”
Now, demonstrating that very thesis is the only thing the Crisis article was concerned with.  So how exactly was the article “misleading at best”?  We did not deny in the article that recent popes have nevertheless been opposed to capital punishment in practice.  Indeed, we explicitly acknowledged that, and quoted some recent papal statements to that effect. 
What is truly misleading is the extreme rhetoric of Shea and too many other Catholic opponents, which lumps capital punishment in with abortion, euthanasia, and the like as equally representative of a “culture of death.”  No faithful Catholic can possibly take such a view, since scripture, tradition, and two millennia of papal teaching insist that the guilty do not have the same rights as the innocent, and that capital punishment, unlike abortion and euthanasia, therefore can be just.  That is why Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Levada insisted in their statements that capital punishment must not be lumped in with these intrinsic evils.
To his credit, and as I have already noted, Shea is sometimes careful to acknowledge that capital punishment can be legitimate in some cases and therefore cannot not be lumped in with abortion, etc.  Unfortunately, many of his fellow abolitionists are not so careful.  As I noted in my previous response to Shea, there are many Catholics who hold that capital punishment is immoral always and in principle, and that the Church can and should reverse past teaching on this point.  This includes not only theologically liberal Catholic opponents of capital punishment, but also “new natural law” theorists like Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Robert P. George, Christian Brugger, and Chris Tollefsen, who have a reputation for theological conservatism.  (Joe and I provide a thorough refutation of their arguments in the forthcoming book.)  Extreme statements are also often made by Catholic bishops, and as we noted in the Crisisarticle, even Pope Francis has made statements that seem to imply that capital punishment is intrinsically immoral – something which, as Shea himself admits, “the Church cannot say.”
Now, the eminent Catholic theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles – though he was himself personally opposed to resorting to capital punishment in practice – argued, in comments that Joe and I quoted in our Crisisarticle, that an outright reversal of traditional teaching on the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment would undermine the credibility of the magisterium in general.  Accordingly, there are grave dangers in the extreme rhetoric some Catholic abolitionists resort to.  It gives the false impression that the Church’s teaching conflicts with scripture, tradition, and previous papal teaching.  This gives aid and comfort to Protestant critics of Catholicism, and also to extreme Catholic traditionalists who claim that the post-Vatican II Church has fallen into heresy.  It also gives aid and comfort to those who think that the Church can and should change her teaching on abortion, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, and other doctrines unpopular in contemporary secular society. 
So, the problem Joe and I were addressing in the Crisisarticle is a very real one.  And as I said in my previous response to Shea, upholding the credibility of the magisterium was our primary motivationin writing our forthcoming book.
Here too Shea completely ignores what I wrote.  But if he is serious about wanting to uphold Catholic teaching on capital punishment, then he should not ignore it, because the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment is itself part of that teaching, and a part of it that is currently under attack.  Shea thinks that some advocates of capital punishment go too far in their defense of it, to the point of bloodthirstiness.  Fair enough; no doubt some of them do (though not, I think, nearly as many as Shea supposes).  But it is also possible to go too far in one’s opposition to capital punishment, and those who denounce it as intrinsically immoral do so.  Shea ought therefore to be willing to criticize those among his fellow abolitionists who do this.  They damage the credibility of the Church, and they thereby damage the credibility of the Catholic abolitionist position itself.
3. Shea repeatedly commits the fallacy of diversion
A fallacy of diversion is committed when someone changes the subject by addressing some question that superficially appears to be the one that is at issue, but in fact is not.  It has two main forms.  The red herring version of the fallacy involves the attempt to defend some claim by arguing for some other, seemingly related but in fact distinct claim.  The straw man version of the fallacy involves the attempt to refute some opponent’s claim by attacking some other, seemingly related but in fact distinct claim.  Shea commits both versions of the fallacy, and in a pretty crude manner.
The bulk of Shea’s post is devoted to a long rant about the state of American conservatism, foreign despotisms, recent police shootings of unarmed black men, the for-profit prison system, Donald Trump Jr.’s recent remarks about terrorism, and so on.  What does any of this have to do with what Joe and I wrote in our Crisis article, or what I wrote in my initial response to Shea?  The answer, of course, is “nothing whatsoever.” 
One could consistently favor capital punishment under some circumstances even if one were to agree with Shea about the state of American conservatism, even if one opposes the specific manner in which capital punishment is implemented in the despotisms Shea has in mind, even if one agrees with Shea about the police shootings, even if one agrees with Shea’s objections to the for-profit prison system and Trump Jr.’s remarks about terrorism, etc.  Shea’s remarks thus amount to a long string of red herrings. 
Shea also attacks a straw man, and unfortunately, it is the very same straw man he attacked in his previous post and to which I called attention in my previous reply to him.  He writes:
[T]he whole point of arguments for the death penalty is that some lives don’t matter at all…
At this point, the custom is typically to argue that such lives do matter and the way of honoring them is to threaten them with death since hanging concentrates the mind of the sinner and direct him to attend to eternal things.  But, of course, that’s just as true for any sinner.  Yet nobody calls for death for car thieves.  No.  The real reason for the death penalty is that there are just classes of people we want to kill.  People whose lives don’t matter a bit…  
The death penalty… appeals to our darkest side…
It is contrary to the spirit of the Church to search for excuses for it.  
End quote.  So, once again Shea trots out this cartoon fantasy villain upon which he seems positively fixated -- the capital punishment advocate as someone who is simply desperate to kill someone and frantically looks around for a way to justify doing so.  Unsurprisingly, Shea never tells us just who it is, specifically, who fits this description.  Certainly Joe Bessette and I do not.
The reason Joe and I favor preserving capital punishment for the very worst offenses is that we believe that a dispassionate evaluation of the relevant philosophical and theological arguments and the empirical evidence shows that this is the best way to realize the four main purposes of punishment recognized by the Church, viz. retributive justice, deterrence, the reform of the offender, and the protection of society.
First, according to Catholic teaching, all just punishment rests on the principle that an offender deserves a punishment that is proportional to the crime.  When capital punishment is absolutely kept off the table even in the case of the most heinousoffenses, this fundamental principle is undermined.  Society loses sight, first of the idea of proportionality, then of the idea of desert, and finally of the idea of punishment itself.  And when the idea of punishment goes, the very idea of justicegoes with it.  The idea of securing justice is replaced by a therapeutic or technocratic model that treats human beings as cases to be managed and socially engineered, rather than as morally responsible persons.  (The understanding of punishment that we endorse was not only traditionally defended by Catholic natural law theorists and moral theologians, but was also given a very detailed and eloquent expression in some neglected discourses by Pope Pius XII, which we discuss extensively in the book.)
Secondly, we argue that there is very good reason to believe that capital punishment does indeed have a significant deterrent effect, and thus saves many innocent lives.  Third, we also argue that capital punishment is indeed necessary for the protection of society.  And fourth, we argue that capital punishment promotes the reform of the offender by prompting repentance.  Again, all of these claims are defended at length in the forthcoming book. 
Now, Shea mocks the suggestion that capital punishment promotes repentance, writing that “nobody calls for death for car thieves,” so that “the real reason for the death penalty is that there are just classes of people we want to kill.”  But as should be obvious to any fair-minded person, the reason “nobody calls for death for car thieves” is that this would not be a proportional punishment, whereas “the real reason” people do call for death for murderers is that that would be a proportional punishment. 
Furthermore, no one claims that a concern for motivating repentance should ever be the only consideration where any punishment is concerned, not just capital punishment.  For example, it would be wrong to inflict ten years of jail time on someone who merely stole a candy bar, even if this would motivate his repentance, because the punishment is simply out of proportion to the offense.  But it obviously doesn’t follow that we should therefore completely ignore the question of what might motivate repentance when deciding how to punish a candy bar thief.  Rather, what follows is that we should first make sure a punishment for that offense is proportionate before considering whether the punishment might also motivate repentance.  Similarly, the defender of capital punishment argues that since we already know on independent grounds that a penalty of death is deserved for some crimes (such as murder, but not for car theft), we have reason in those cases to consider also the question whether it might motivate repentance. 
Now, Shea would no doubt disagree with our claim that the death penalty best realizes these four traditional aims of punishment.  Fine; that is his right as a Catholic.  I invite him to read our book when it comes out and I welcome any reasoned objections he might raise against our arguments.  The point, though, is that it is our reasoned conviction that it really does best realize them – rather than there “just [being] classes of people we want to kill” so that we are “search[ing] for excuses” for doing so – that motivates our position.  As I noted in my previous post – in yet another point that Shea simply ignores – these are also the sorts of considerations that motivated defenders of capital punishment like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Peter Canisius, St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Robert Bellarmine, Pope St. Pius V, Pope Pius IX, Pope Pius XII and many other saints, popes, and eminent moral theologians of the past.  If Shea were consistent, then he would have to hold that these thinkers were also motivated by a mere desire to find excuses to kill people.   If he does not hold that – and no faithful Catholic possibly couldhold that – then he has to admit that contemporary Catholics who defend capital punishment might do so for the same, honorable (even if in Shea’s view mistaken) reasons these Catholics of the past did.
In response to a comment made by one of his readers, Shea appears to suggest that objections to his characterization of his opponents has to do with concern for “the tender feelings of people who want to put other people to death without mercy.”  But this is another fallacy of diversion.  The problem has nothing to do with “tender feelings.”  The problem has to do with calumny – with gravely unjust and uncharitable misrepresentations of the views and motivations of his opponents.
4. Shea repeatedly begs the question
Another fallacy Shea repeatedly commits is that of begging the question, or assuming, without argument, precisely the claim that is at issue with one’s opponent.  For example, he writes:
I cannot, for the life of me understand taking away one drop of time or energy from the fight against abortion to author books and articles bent on fighting the common sense of the Church when she calls for an end to the death penalty.  It is an immense squandering of time, money, and manpower…
End quote.  One problem with this, of course, is that it is quite silly to pretend that given time constraints, one simply has to choose between defending capital punishment and fighting abortion.  Some of us are quite capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.  
The deeper problem, though, is that defending capital punishment would be “an immense squandering of time, money, and manpower” only IF there were no significant good to be gained by upholding capital punishment or no significant harm that might follow upon abolishing it.  And of course, that is exactly what Joe and I and other defenders of capital punishment deny.  Again, we maintain that the extreme Catholic abolitionist position has done harm to the credibility of the Church’s magisterium and that abolishing capital punishment would seriously impede the realization of the main purposes of punishment.  Hence defending capital punishment is by no means “an immense squandering of time, money, and manpower.” 
Naturally, Shea would disagree with that claim, but the point is that his remarks about how best to use time and other resources simply assume, without argument, precisely what his opponent denies, viz. that there are no good reasons to devote resources to defending capital punishment.
Shea also repeats his assertion that being “more prolife, not less” requires opposition to capital punishment – completely ignoring, rather than answering, the objections I raised in my previous post to his appeal to the “pro-life” slogan.
Finally, as in his original reply to Joe and me, so too in his latest post, Shea also asserts that “studies indicate about 4% of those on death row are… innocent” and that “4 in 100… of them are killed despite their complete innocence.”  Now, I explicitly addressed this very claim in my previous post, quoting my co-author Joe Bessette’s explanation of how Shea had misrepresented the study he cited as the basis of his 4% claim.  Yet bafflingly, Shea once again completely ignores what I wrote and simply re-asserts the original claim, as if Joe hadn’t already refuted it!
I have noted how certain New Atheists exhibit a “Walter Mitty”-like tendency relentlessly to attack fantasy adversaries rather than engaging with what their real-world opponents actually say.  Even the most patient and thorough explanations of how their criticisms are aimed at straw men are completely ignored, and never distract them from endlessly repeating favorite talking points long after they have been refuted.  I am sorry to say that Shea seems to have a similar tendency, even if his targets are of course different from those of the New Atheists. 
It needn’t be this way.  Again, Shea has produced some excellent work.  I am sure that a treatment by him of the anti-capital punishment position that was executed with the kind of patience, care, and fair-mindedness that his best apologetics work exhibits would be well worth engaging with.

Mind-body interaction: What’s the problem?

Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) philosophers often argue that an advantage of their view of human nature over that of the Cartesian dualist is that they don’t face an interaction problem.  Soul and body are on the A-T view related as formal and material cause of the human being.  Hence they don’t “interact” because they aren’t two substances in the first place, but rather two principles of the same one substance, viz. the human being.  Talk of them “interacting” is a kind of category mistake, like talk about the form of a triangle and the matter that makes up the triangle “interacting.”  So there is no problem of explaining howthey interact.The Cartesian dualist, though, chucks out the hylemorphic metaphysics of form and matter and characterizes soul and body, not as the formal and material principles of a single substance, but rather as two distinct substances, each complete and self-contained and in principle capable of existing even if the other never had.  The way they relate, then, is to be understood in terms of efficientcausation rather than formal or material causation.  Hence they “interact” the way any other two substances do, and the problem (as it is usually characterized) is that of explaining how this is possible given how different they are in kind.

I’ve elaborated on all that many times and in many places and I’m not interested in rehashing it all here.  What I want to address is an aspect of the situation that might seem problematic for the A-T theorist.  A-T philosophers generally admit the possibility and indeed the reality of completely incorporeal persons, viz. angelic intellects.  They also hold (as Aquinas does) that angels can assume bodies, and that they can cause physical objects to move.  Obviously, then, they don’t think that there is some insurmountable “interaction problem” where the relationship between angelic intellects and the physical world is concerned.  So why should there be such a problem where a Cartesian res cogitansand res extensa are concerned?
The answer is that it is not efficient-causal interaction between the incorporeal and the corporeal as such that is the problem (though in fact Descartes’ account of matter as pure extension makes causal interaction even between corporeal substances themselves problematic, but that is another issue).  What is problematic for Cartesianism is explaining how there could be a relationship of the sort that would result in the kind of intimate union that exists between the human soul and the human body.  And angelic interaction with corporeal things is definitely not a good model for that.
In the second article just linked to, Aquinas compares the way an angel moves a physical object to the way the moon causes tides in the sea.  He also notes thatthe human-seeming bodies that angels sometimes assume are not really alive, and that it follows (since perception is the act of a living thing) that the angels don’t really perceive anything through these bodies.  The relationship between an angelic intellect and any body it might move, then, is somewhat like the relationship between a puppeteer and the puppet it moves (only without strings, of course).  As something higher up the hierarchy of being, an angel can affect what is lower down in the hierarchy.  But as something of its nature entirely incorporeal, it does so in a way that does not result in the kind of intimate union the human soul has with the human body – where the soul qua form of the body makes the latter alive, where the soul does thereby perceive through the body, and so forth.
In other words, modeling the interaction between soul and body on that between angelic intellects and corporeal things would essentially leave us with what Gilbert Ryle famously called the “ghost in the machine” picture of human nature.  Ryle’s point was that Cartesianism reduces the human mind to a kind of poltergeist that pushes an inanimate object around the way it does in the movies.  Imagine that you die but that your ghost immediately begins controlling your fresh and fully intact corpse and that the latter is somehow prevented ever from rotting, so that no one ever notices any difference.  Your body would essentially be a haunted zombie, and you would be the spirit that haunts it.  That’s more or less what a human being ends up being on Cartesianism.  That is the only kind of interaction that the soul and body would be capable of if the only way they can relate is by efficient causation rather than formal causation.
Phenomenologically, we know that this is not in fact how soul and body are related.  If it were, bodily movements would have the feel of a kind of telekinetic puppet show.  Perception would have the feel of reading off information from the brain like you’d read it off a dial.  The intimacy we have with our bodies – our immersion in flesh, as it were -- is just what you’d expect if soul and body make up a single substance, but not what you’d expect if they were two substances that “interact.”  The interaction problem, you might say, is not the problem of explaining howsoul and body interact, but rather the problem of putting yourself in a position (as Descartes does) of having to think of the relation between them as a kind of interaction in the first place.