Bruce Charles Johnson's Blog

Trying to Measure the Significance of Our Actions...Our Lives...

What a mystery life is, how we never know what the signficance of all our actions is. C.S. Lewis, in his understated English way, has a great thought in "Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer," about how we will never know if, long after we are gone, someone we have influenced (or perhaps even one of our descendants) will influence the world as powerfully as Plato or Mozart. And my favorite modern saint, the young French nun Therese of Lisieux, who died of TB at about 23 but left behind an incredible unpublished journal that started a whole movement toward simplicity in prayer, wrote that we may never see the fruits of our good acts in our own life, but if not, "we will infallibly see them at the moment of death." It's that sort of thought that sometimes gives me encouragement when days are long & the sun is hidden by clouds.

Unfortunate Change in Intellectual Atmosphere of Political Discourse

I heard a fascinating comment by a country musician, I think on a music show rather than a news one, that puts the finger right on what I think is wrong with political discourse today - and also why I don't enjoy engaging in it as much as I used to. He said (no, I can't recall who "he" is) he can't remember the last discussion he was in where people exchanged viewpoints with the genuine desire to discover whether they might be wrong & it might be appropriate to change their mind about something. He said nobody seems to be interested in having their views challenged any more - it's all become like talk radio, where people never listen to a spokesperson for an opposing view, but always listen to somebody they already agree with, wanting only to be confirmed in their pre-existing viewpoint. He contrasted that to England, where you never know what you're going to get on the BBC, and whether you want to or not, you're going to be confronted by viewpoints - and even styles of music - you may not particularly care for.

Political Direction to Scientific Activity

Disturbingly, a totally irrational and dangerous proposition seems to be on the point of being quietly accepted as a truism, after unchallenged repetition.  The idea is that scientific activity should be judged solely on a scientific basis, free of political considerations. 

Prominently, President Obama (in authorizing use of embryos in stem cell research) and a federal judge (in vacating FDA restrictions on birth control for minors) have used this line.  Superficially, it may sound not only correct but self-evident, but actually, the notion is dead wrong and very dangerous.

The problem is that, as scientists have said for years, science does not make normative ethical judgments about what should or shouldn't be done; it only provides descriptive information about what is done and what can be done.  Normative judgments, hopefully resting on an ethical basis, have to be made by others.  In a democracy, those "others" make the judgments through politics.  The only alternative to allowing political considerations to govern scientific research is for society to surrender control over the morally correct use of science.

The two issues in which this line has been trumpeted are good illustrations of why science cannot answer the question of what should be done.  As far as stem cell research goes, science supplies the information that research can be done that may lead to the cure of some diseases if cells are taken from living embryos, and that this can only be done if the embryos are killed.  This begs the question of whether it is right or wrong to kill the embryos (which, science also tells us, will not live to be born in any event) in order to find cures for diseases.  People can and do argue both sides of this question as a moral matter.  Science cannot answer the moral question of who is right.  If we think that morality matters, society has to answer the question of what is right and what is wrong here, and to say that it is wrong for this to be done through the political process seems to be saying that it is wrong to have a democracy as opposed to an enlightened despotism.

Similarly, one can argue both sides of the question of whether a teenage girl and her doctors should be able to decide, without involvement of the girl's parents, whether she should take a "morning after" pill after she has had sexual intercourse without using birth control.  Again, there are moral questions involved.  Should minor children make important life decisions on their own, or should their parents, until children reach adulthood, have a voice in these decisions?  Is it right to destroy a fertilized egg, which some people regard as a live human being, in order to avoid going to term with pregnancy?  These questions can be argued, but they can't be brushed aside, and science can't tell us what the rights answers are.  So for a judge to say that the FDA should not have considered the questions from a "political" point of view - i.e., what society, expressing its view through its elected officials, thinks is the right answer to these questions - but only from a purely "scientific" one - is to say that moral judgments should be vacated, and that simply because something can be done, it is all right to do it.

The same reasoning could be applied to any number of political issues which have a scientific context - or scientific issues with political repercussions.  At the risk of offending some who would debate the scientific issue of global warming, I will submit for the sake of argument that science supports the idea that the planet is getting warmer, that human burning of fossil fuels is contributing to rising temperatures, and that if temperatures continue to rise, there will be consequences, including extinction of some species, greater agricultural productivity in northern latitudes, and a more comfortable climate in some places and a less comfortable one in others.  But science cannot tell us what the right or wrong thing to do about climate change is.  If global warming is taking place, is it right to allow extinction of tropical rain forest species in order to increase farm production in Canada and Russia?  Or does saving these species from extinction justify preventing people in Maine from enjoying a Florida-like climate without having to move from their homes?  These are ethical value questions, not questions of scientific knowledge, and in our society, the answers are political.

If one were to take the issue to its logical extreme, there are many other moral questions that involve scientific issues but can be answered only by moral and political judgments.  Some of these questions may concern people untroubled by the questions raised above. 

For example, should we clone human beings?  All science can tell us is, we can.  Whether we should, is a moral and a political question.  If scientific questions should be decided purely on the basis of science and not politics or moral opinions, as some argue, I guess that means we can't restrict cloning, but I doubt many people would be willing to forego political restraint in this area.  How about euthanasia?  All science can tell us is that it can be done, not whether it should.  Is there no place in poltical discussion for debate on this issue?  How about involuntary euthanasia for the incurably ill?  At this point, in all 50 states of the United States, this is punishable as murder, and an overwhelming majority of citizens would probably say, rightly so.  Should this "political" judgment be surrendered, too, and hospitals be allowed to kill patients instead of cure them in the interest of unrestricted science?

Some interplay between science and politics is inevitable.  Science can tell us only what we can do, not what we should do.  What we should do is a political judgment.  Some of the current critics of the politicization of science may really mean that they dislike the political judgments the Bush Administration made on scientific issues.  One can certainly engage in political debate about whether those judgments were right or wrong.  But to say that the Bush Administration was wrong to decide what scientific courses of action were appropriate on the basis of political judgments, period, is tantamount to saying that society has to surrender control of the ethical governance given to scientific experimentation. 

It has not been too many decades since scientists, not only in Nazi Germany but even in some American states, engaged in conscious "eugenic" experimentation that people today universally condemn as wrong.  One is not an intolerant bigot to believe that those societies were wrong not to impose proper ethical restraints on what could be done in the name of science, or to think that society today should not surrender ethical and political control of what is allowed to be done in the name of science.   

Tim Russert and Catholicism

It's people like Tim Russert who keep me a Catholic. I have trouble with some of the Pope & Bishop stuff sometimes (tho' they seem basically okay, mostly) but the fact that people like Russert can handle them is encouraging.

I think my favorite memory of "Timmy" (as his friends called him, apparently, & he does seem like a friend) was on that momentous & dramatic election night in 2000 when one of his colleagues kidded him, "Sister Lucille isn't going to be happy with your handwriting." Catholic schools, as you may know, are famous for being strict about good penmanship. Apparently Sister Lucille was, apart from his family, the most important influence in his life.

 

I feel with Tim Russert as I did with Jerry Ford & Pope John Paul II & actually with my father LESS a sense of loss than of gratitude for a wonderful life & inspiration to try, as best i possibly can, to the extent that such gifts lie in some measure in me too, to live them to the full. As you may recall Pastor Pete saying at my father's funeral, Eternity means something only if it begins now, & I believe that.

 

I am struck not only by his Catholicism but by his Celticness . . . A couple of Celtic traits he showed, I think, are that incredibly "small d democrat" (as David Brooks called him) way of valuing EACH person whatever their rank - "a man's a man, for a' that," as Bobby Burns put it - & that gift the Celts have, despite their bent toward melancholy, to have an incredible zest & passion for life in all its goodness.

 

"For the great Gaels of Ireland

Are the men whom God made mad,

For all their wars are merry

And all their songs are sad."

-G. K. Chesterton, "The Ballad of the White Horse" (which, incidentally, has another of my favorite lines of poetry ever which, incredibly, Christian, not yet 4, asked me to repeat more than once when I first recited it for him - They are the words that the Virgin Mary speaks to King Alfred the Great when she asks him, on Christ's behalf, not to give up trying to save England from the Viking raiders -

 

"I tell you naught for your comfort,

Yea, not for your desire,

Save that the sky grows darker yet

And the sea rises higher.

Night shall be twice night over you

And Heaven an iron cope.

Can you have joy without a cause -

Yea, faith without a hope?"

At bottom, it's that very simple faith, something that has nothing to do with dogma or hierarchy, that there are people up there in Heaven pulling for us, and God is with us, & if we do our best, it'll all be good in the end.

 

Joe Gallagher, my beloved priest who died in November, was like Tim Russert was an Irish Catholic lawyer from New York State with a somewhat salty tongue but kind heart. He had a wonderful way of putting all that: "God is good, life is difficult, the rest's a mystery."

Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith

On the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Richard Rodriguez had a powerful essay about Mother Teresa's anguish over what she considered the weakness of her faith, which has led some militant atheists to crow that they were right all along, and that she was a hypocrite. Rodriguez said that the contrary is true - that not only did many great Christian saints wrestle with doubt, "the dark night of the soul," but Jesus Himself, on the Cross, cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Although Mother Teresa did not want these private letters and journals published, the Mother Teresa Foundation decided to print them, believing that they could help others who struggle with doubt. Mother Teresa believed, Rodriguez said, that if she were ever a saint, she would be a saint for people in darkness.

This resonates with me. To me, a faith that faces doubt and goes on believing, having faced doubt full in the face, is far more vibrant than faith which never knows doubt. Dostoievski said, "My faith is not that of a child, for it was forged in a furnace of doubt." And the experience of these great believers resonates with mine as an obscure one. I have had blessings which made me feel, at the time, that it was literally impossible for me ever to doubt again - and though I once was puzzled why I received such blessings, I now realize that God's mercy gives blessings to those who need them, which may be the opposite of those who would merit them. But despite these blessings, they did not prevent, at later times, darkness closing in, and the terror of wondering if I might be deceiving myself surrounding me.

Saint Therese of Lisieux, considered by some the greatest modern saint, was tormented by horrible doubts almost until shortly before her death. And Julian of Norwich, in her book of mystic revelations, tells of how just after each of the moments of amazing ecstasy she received from God, diabolical temptations to despair and surrendeing to emptiness swept over her.

To me, the fact that Mother Teresa is like modern humanity as a whole in not having been able to escape the darkness, but persisting in believing in the Light despite that - and, far, far, far more importantly than believing, acting to share the Light with others, even if she doubted it herself, for their sakes - does not make her a hypocrite, but a heroine whose heroism is an exemplar of the heroism of so many modern people who also have outstared the darkness.

Dear "Myanmar" - or BURMA,

I find your government dreadfully difficult to understand. Can you answer a few questions for me?

Why did the government have your own people's monks killed? Why does your Army support your Dictator instead of joining the people in establishing freedom, the way we won freedom in our country, years ago? Why do your Dictators not want you to have freedom? Why, of all things, did they insult the heritage of your people by changing the name of your own country? And why did they change the name of the capital - and then change the capital itself?

I suppose your Dictators will not allow you to answer these questions. That's how Dictators are - Stalin, Hitler, and that silly Dictator of yours who was on TV inspecting an umbrella factory, of all the silly things, while monks were seeking freedom.

"No lie can live forever," Martin Luther King said. Freedom WILL come to your country, as it has to other oppressed peoples, and your Dictators will join the likes of Mobutu and Conescu in the dustbin of history. I hope and pray you will not have to wait too long. In the meantime, be assured that throughout the world, all right-thinking people are on your side, as you seek to rid yourselves of these evil Dictators who keep you in bondage.

Sincerely yours,

Bruce C. Johnson

Ken Burns' 'The War'

Ken Burns "The War," about World War II, is pretty intense, with no punches pulled - about the Bataan death march, concentration camps, Japanese POW camps, all the horrors - men speaking of horrors they experienced.

My favorite person they kept interviewing was a lady from Mobile, Alabama, who was a college coed during the War. She had a quiet but uncannily precise way of putting into words what everybody felt but nobody could have said quite as well, whether it was the feeling about Pearl Harbor, or hearing FDR on the radio, or FDR's death. Of course, she loved FDR.

(Another great moment on the show was hearing one vet say, "You know, my parents were Republicans, and they HATED FDR, but we young people all loved him, because he spoke of what America's possibilities were, and he gave us hope.")

The series was uneven. I didn't watch all of it. Sometimes, I found it boring or uninspiring; other times, I found it way too intense - there is only so much human suffering I can be a first-hand spectator to. I understand better now why my father (whose most intense experience, the amphibian landings at Anzio, where he was recognized for heroism as an ambulance driver who kept going after 2 of his ambulances were hit by shells as he drove them, not only was highlighted, but they actually had interviews with a fellow-medic in his platoon) was so shaken by his war experiences. Being strong, he didn't suffer the post-traumatic stress disorder others did. Rather, it affected him at a deeper level of his soul - for a time, it caused him to lose his faith, but ultimately, like Dostoievski, the experience of losing it caused him to find it, and commit himself to it, on a deeper level.

Particularly intense and horrific were the scenes of the Nazi death camps, and the interviews with GI's who helped liberate them. I wish Holocaust deniers could be made to watch those scenes; I was particularly struck by the white Alabaman with a thick Southern accent, who addressed himself directly to "people who say it didn't happen" and told them, "Well, it happened."