Hitting Bottum

By now you may have heard that Joseph Bottum, reputedly conservative Catholic and former editor of First Things, has assimilated to the hive mind.  People have been asking me for a while now to write more on “same-sex marriage,” though I’ve been waiting for the publication of the full-length version of my new article on natural law and sexual morality -- of which the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly recently published an excerpt -- before doing so.  The reason is that I don’t think there’s much point in discussing the marriage issue without situating it within the context of the traditional natural law approach to sexual morality in general.  And all the usual, stupid objections to that approach are dealt with in the forthcoming piece.  Best to have it to refer to, then, when commenting on current events, so that time need not be wasted endlessly repeating myself answering the same tired canards. 

But I can’t help commenting briefly on the subject anyway, because Bottum’s article is just too much.  And it’s too much because there’s nothing there.  Or rather, while the article is verbose in the extreme, what’s there is almost entirely stuff that completely undermines Bottum’s conclusion.  Yet he draws it anyway.  Matthew Franck at First Things nails it:

At one point in this bloated, interminable essay, meandering hither and yon, Bottum allows as how the authors of the Manhattan Declaration were chiefly thinkers and not writers.  Never was it more obvious that the reverse is true of Bottum.

Though Bottum’s conclusion is entirely un-Catholic, un-conservative, and contrary to natural law, what is most remarkable is just how very thoroughly he still accepts the substance of the Catholic, conservative, and natural law positions on this issue.  To be sure, when you see that he starts the article with some personal remarks about his bluegrass-playin’ gay friend Jim, your eyes cannot help but swivel back in their sockets.  You expect at first that it’s going to be yet another of those ghastly conversion stories, long on celebration and short on cerebration, that have become a staple of the “strange new respect” literature.  “Yes, fellow right-wingers, I too once opposed gay marriage -- until a long heart-to-heart over lattes with my central-casting gay [son, dentist, fellow bluegrass aficionado] convinced me that deep down we’re all just folks.”  The conservative as the dad in Heathers.

Yet that isn’t quite how it goes.  For one thing, by the end of the piece, Jim comes across not as a patient dispenser of homespun, tolerant wisdom, but as a thoroughly repulsive ideologue -- humorless, paranoid, intellectually dishonest, seething with hatred, and even totalitarian in his desire juridically to force the Catholic Church to take on board his pseudo-moral prejudices.  For another, Bottum never quite affirms “same-sex marriage” as per se a good thing -- though he does make a half-hearted attempt to see the empty glass as half-full -- but mainly as a fait accompli he thinks it is counterproductive to oppose anymore.

Hence Bottum acknowledges that there is an argument from principle for opposing “same-sex marriage” however dismal are the prospects for success and the political repercussions of such opposition.   He agrees that opposition to “same-sex marriage” does not necessarily reflect hatred of homosexuals, and that the accusations of bigotry flung against those who oppose it are often politically calculated.  He affirms that advocates of “same-sex marriage” can be “insipid,” “self-righteous,” “uncritical,” and ignorant of the law and of the relevant arguments.  He also allows that some of these advocates of are driven by hatred of Christianity, and of Catholicism in particular.  Indeed, he admits that “one Catholic fear about same-sex marriage with force [is] the fear that the movement is essentially disingenuous,” less about allowing homosexuals to “marry” than it is an excuse to curtail the free practice of traditional religion.

And that’s just for starters.  Bottum laments “the turn against any deep, metaphysical meaning for sex in the West,” sees the push for “same-sex marriage” as part of the general collapse of sexual morality and of the sanctity of marriage, and regards its juridical victories as the “logical conclusion [of] the great modern project of disenchantment” that also led to legalized abortion.  While he criticizes the “new natural law” arguments of Grisez, Finnis, and George, he does so because he regards them (quite correctly, in my view) as metaphysically desiccated, too deferential to modern assumptions, and unconvincing.  Instead he affirms “the thicker natural law of the medievals,” characterizing Aquinas’s natural law theory in particular as “a grand, beautiful, and extremely delicate structure of rationality.”

On the theological side, Bottum acknowledges that Catholic teaching, including that of Pope Francis, “grants the faithful Catholic little room to maneuver on same-sex marriage.”  He agrees that “we should not accept without a fight an essentially un-Catholic retreat from the public square to a lifeboat theology and the small communities of the saved.”  He tells us -- exactly on the money as far as I am concerned -- that “the goal of the church today must primarily be the re-enchantment of reality” (i.e. a defense of the traditional metaphysics underlying natural law) and that it must thereby “start rebuilding the thick natural law.”  And he respects the conservative worry about the unforeseen consequences of radical social experiments like “same-sex marriage.”  Though it’s obviously not what he has chosen to emphasize in this piece, it seems pretty clear that Bottum has for the most part not given up the conservative, Catholic, and natural law moral and metaphysical objections to “same-sex marriage.” 

Yet for all that he recommends that Catholics drop their opposition to “same-sex marriage” as a civil institution.  Why?  As far as I can tell he has four reasons.  They’re all bad.

First, Bottum seems to think there is no common, non-theological intellectual ground on which the opponents of “same-sex marriage” can conduct their arguments with its proponents.   For despite his praise for the natural law tradition represented by Aquinas, he says that its “premises may not be provable, but they are visible to faith.”  That is precisely the reverse of what Aquinas and other traditional natural law theorists maintain, the reverse of what the Catholic Church teaches, the reverse of what scripture teaches, and the reverse of the truth.  A natural law that rests on “faith” is not the natural law.  Natural law arguments rest essentially on what can be known from a purely philosophical analysis of reality in general and human nature in particular -- not a popular philosophical analysis these days, to be sure, but certainly one that need make no reference to divine revelation or ecclesiastical authority.  What Plato and Aristotle knew without revelation, desiccated modern liberals can also come to know without revelation, albeit with a lot more work.  

And as I have shown at length in The Last Superstition, Aquinas, and elsewhere, the most basic metaphysical ingredients of the classical, “enchanted” metaphysical picture of the world, and even some of the moral ones, are in fact already being rediscovered by contemporary secular philosophers.  Anyone who thinks that the moderns cannot be brought around by rational argument to reconsider essentialism, teleology, the notion of the good as what fulfills our nature, and other elements of traditional metaphysics simply hasn’t been paying attention.

Like David Bentley Hart, Bottum seems to be conflating philosophy with theology, and the natural with the supernatural.  That is not a position consistent with Catholicism, given the Church’s condemnation of fideism.  Nor is it consistent with scripture, given St. Paul’s teaching in Romans 1 that those without divine revelation are “without excuse” -- not only for their idolatry, but also for what Paul specifically refers to as their departure from what is “natural” vis-à-vis sexual relations.

I am well aware, of course, that the liberal proponent of “same-sex marriage” does not accept natural law, Catholic teaching, or scripture in the first place.  The point, though, is that Bottum still accepts them -- and that since he does, he hasn’t a philosophical or theological leg to stand on in abandoning the fight against “same-sex marriage” on grounds of fideism.

Bottum’s second reason for recommending acquiescence to “same-sex marriage” is juridical.  He writes:

[U]nder any principle of governmental fairness available today, the equities are all on the side of same-sex marriage.  There is no coherent jurisprudential argument against it—no principled legal view that can resist it.

If what Bottum means here is that the jurisprudential arguments that have won the day in recent decisions are obviously compelling ones, then as Matthew Franck says, this is simply a “howler.”  But perhaps what Bottum means -- given the qualifier “available today” -- is that the despotic legislating-from-the-bench that has become the trump card of even “conservative” justices like Roberts and Kennedy essentially makes a victory for opponents of “same-sex marriage” impossible.  Maybe so, and maybe not.  But such an argument would in any case prove too much.  It would “justify” caving in not only on “same-sex marriage,” but also on abortion, health care policy, and pretty much everything else.  It amounts to a recommendation that judicial despotism not be resisted if the despots are sufficiently ruthless.  What is conservative, Catholic, or even remotely sane about that? 

Bottum’s third reason also involves capitulation, this time to secular culture.  He opines that:

Campaigns against same-sex marriage are hurting the church, offering the opportunity to make Catholicism a byword for repression in a generation that, even among young Catholics, just doesn’t think that same-sex activity is worth fighting about.

He adds that the clergy sex scandals have undermined the Church’s moral authority on matters of sex anyway.  Perhaps Bottum would also have advised the early Christians to just lighten up and offer a little incense to Caesar -- the young people, after all, couldn’t see what the big deal was, and anyway all that martyrdom stuff was just making Christians look like fanatics.  Perhaps he would have told Athanasius to knock it off already with the Trinitarianism, since it was just alienating the smart set.  Besides, most of the bishops had caved in to Arianism, so that the Church lacked any moral authority on the subject.  And maybe Bottum would have advised the Christian warriors at Spain, Vienna, and Lepanto to get real and learn to accept a Muslim Europe.  After all, these various desperate Catholic efforts were, as history shows, a waste of time -- the Roman persecutors, Arians, and invading Muslims all won out in the end, right? 

But to be fair, those analogies aren’t quite right.  A better analogy would be Bottum suggesting that a little emperor worship might actually serve the cause of monotheism; or that giving Arianism free reign might advance recognition of the divinity of Christ; or that submitting to dhimmitude might be a good way of restoring Christendom.  For here is what Joseph Bottum, prophet of a re-enchanted reality and rebuilder of Aquinas’s natural law, sees, if only murkily, in his crystal ball:

In fact, same-sex marriage might prove a small advance in chastity in a culture that has lost much sense of chastity. Same-sex marriage might prove a small advance in love in a civilization that no longer seems to know what love is for. Same-sex marriage might prove a small advance in the coherence of family life in a society in which the family is dissolving.

I don’t know that it will, of course…

No, of course the level-headed Bottum wouldn’t claim to know that it will.  Just like we couldn’t, you know, have been absolutely sure at the time that offering incense to the emperor might somehow undermine idolatry, or that denying Christ’s divinity would lead people to embrace His divinity, or that ceding lands to the Jihad would lead to new church construction therein.  Hey, it’s all a crap shoot, but we can hope!

If this sounds like good old-fashioned American optimism ad absurdum, that’s only natural given the fourth, and apparently main, reason for Bottum’s surrender:

 We are now at the point where, I believe, American Catholics should accept state recognition of same-sex marriage simply because they are Americans.

It’s all about “old-timey Americana, the stuff we all still share.”   Good sportsmanship.  Consensus.  Compromise.  Tolerance.  Affability.  The things that can bring a Catholic Republican together with his gay buddy Jim for a burger and some bluegrass in Gramercy Park.  You know, the stuff that really matters at the end of the day. 

Uptight teachers of the faithful are always setting father against son and mother against daughter, but that’s no way to win over the youth demographic.  The modern Catholic will find a surer guide in Modern Family.  If the kids aren’t down with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, let’s try William James’s Gospel of Relaxation.  So take it easy, fellow Catholics.  Go with the flow.  Chill out.  It’s all good.  Not exactly the Beatitudes, but mind you it is all so very American.  I would say that Bottum isn’t being true to his religion, except that I suspect that he is. 

Anyway, as a famous non-American once said, no man can serve two masters.  And by Bottum’s own admission, people like his pal Jim aren’t likely to be satisfied with back-slapping bonhomie, or with the Church being a good loser.  They don’t want Catholics merely to quit the field.  They want them to obey -- to pay for contraceptives, to photograph same-sex “weddings,” to keep their opinions about sexual morality to themselves if they know what’s good for them.  If you’ll forgive more pop culture references -- perhaps the only “stuff we all still share” any more in this One Nation Under Compulsory Genial Tolerance -- Bottum starts by channeling Sally Field, but will end up on the floor alongside Kevin Bacon.