Nudge nudge, wink wink

Suppose you go out on a blind date and a friend asks you how it went.  You pause and then answer flatly, with a slight smirk: “Well, I liked the restaurant.”  There is nothing in the literal meaning of the sentence you’ve uttered, considered all by itself, that states or implies anything negative about the person you went out with, or indeed anything at all about the person.  Still, given the context, you’ve said something insulting.  You’ve “sent the message” that you liked the restaurant but not the person.  Or suppose you show someone a painting and when asked what he thinks, he responds: “I like the frame.”  The sentence by itself doesn’t imply that the painting is bad, but the overall speech act certainly conveys that message all the same.  Each of these is an example of what H. P. Grice famously called an implicature, and they illustrate how what a speaker says in a communicative act ought not to be confused with what his words mean.  Obviously there is a relationship between the two, but they are not always identical.

Implicatures can be used to mislead someone without lying to him (and as I have argued in previous posts, such mental reservations can sometimes be morally justifiable).  But as the example just given indicates, they can also be used to “say something without saying it.”  And sometimes they can do double duty.  Suppose a second friend is also present when the first one asks you how the date went, but that this second friend knows the person you went on the date with and you don’t want him to know what you really think.  Suppose also, though, that he is a bit naïve.  If you say “I liked the restaurant,” this time with a little enthusiasm and without the pause or smirk, the first friend might still “get the message” that you didn’t like the person, while the second friend might think you had a good time.

Implicature, sexual morality, and politics

In his 1984 essay “Why Homosexuality is Abnormal,” Michael Levin applies Grice’s notion of implicature to an analysis of the decriminalization of homosexual acts, and other liberal policies vis-à-vis homosexuality.  (The essay originally appeared in The Monist and has been reprinted in several anthologies, such as the third edition of Alan Soble’s The Philosophy of Sex.)  As you can guess from the title, Levin holds that such acts are bad (on sociobiological rather than theological or natural law grounds, as it happens).  But it is worth emphasizing that his application of Grice does not stand or fall with whether or not you agree with him about that.  Levin’s claim is that liberal policies cannot, given our cultural circumstances, be neutral concerning homosexuality.  They will inevitably “send a message” of approval rather than mere neutrality or indifference.  The essay is thirty years old, and it goes without saying that in the age of “same-sex marriage” things have gone considerably beyond mere decriminalization (which has been a dead issue legally since Lawrence v. Texas).  But his remarks are if anything only more plausible as an analysis of the effects of policies currently being pushed.  Here is what he says:

[L]egislation “legalizing homosexuality” cannot be neutral because passing it would have an inexpungeable speech-act dimension.  Society cannot grant unaccustomed rights and privileges to homosexuals while remaining neutral about the value of homosexuality.  Working from the assumption that society rests on the family and its consequences, the Judaeo-Christian tradition has deemed homosexuality a sin and withheld many privileges from homosexuals.  Whether or not such denial was right, for our society to grant these privileges to homosexuals now would amount to declaring that it has rethought the matter and decided that homosexuality is not as bad as it had previously supposed…  Someone who suddenly accepts a policy he has previously opposed is open to the… interpretation [that] he has come to think better of the policy.  And if he embraces the policy while knowing that this interpretation will be put on his behavior, and if he knows that others know that he knows they will so interpret it, he is acquiescing in this interpretation.  He can be held to have intended, meant, this interpretation.  A society that grants privileges to homosexuals while recognizing that, in the light of generally known history, this act can be interpreted as a positive re-evaluation of homosexuality, is signalling that it now thinks homosexuality is all right… What homosexual rights activists really want [from anti-discrimination laws] is not [merely] access to jobs but legitimation of their homosexuality.  Since this is known, giving them what they want will be seen as conceding their claim to legitimacy.  And since legislators know their actions will support this interpretation, and know that their constituencies know they know this, the Gricean effect or symbolic meaning of passing anti-discrimination ordinances is to declare homosexuality legitimate…

Legislation permitting frisbees in the park does not imply approval of frisbees for the simple reason that frisbees are new; there is no tradition of banning them from parks. The legislature's action in permitting frisbees is not interpretable, known to be interpretable, and so on, as the reversal of long-standing disapproval.  It is because these Gricean conditions are met in the case of abortion that legislation -- or rather judicial fiat-- permitting abortions and mandating their public funding are widely interpreted as tacit approval.  Up to now, society has deemed homosexuality so harmful that restricting it outweighs putative homosexual rights.  If society reverses itself, it will in effect be deciding that homosexuality is not as bad as it once thought.  (pp. 119-20 of Soble)

Whether or not this was a plausible bit of Gricean analysis in 1984, it is surely plausible now.  “Same-sex marriage” and antidiscrimination laws are now routinely defended, not on grounds of neutrality, but on the basis of the decidedly non-neutral judgment that moral (or any other) disapproval of homosexuality can only possibly stem from bigotry, ignorance, religious fanaticism, or plain mean-spiritedness.  As Justice Scalia famously complained, opponents of “same-sex marriage” are now treated as if they were the “enemies of the human race,” and their defeat is widely regarded both as a moral imperative and the inevitable next stage in the progress of civilization.  Meanwhile, whether out of fear, lack of conviction, or both, the most prominent conservatives don’t even bother to address the fundamental moral question anymore, but feebly retreat into considerations of secondary importance, such as federalism or judicial activism.  And even then, everything they say is hedged with panicky assurances of their tolerance and compassion.  The moralistic fervor is now all on the liberal side, and as any serious conservative should know, you cannot beat moralism with quibbles about procedure.

So, the “dominant narrative” on the pro-“same-sex marriage” side is: “We have the moral high ground, history is on our side, and conservatives’ retreat from the moral field, desperate resort to secondary issues, and semi-apologetic, defensive presentation show that deep down they know it’s true.”  Now, judges, lawmakers, and political candidates know that this is the “dominant narrative,” and they know that “same-sex marriage” advocates and society at large know that they know it.  They know also that endorsement of “same-sex marriage,” or even just surrender to it where it is imposed, will be widely interpreted as an acknowledgement that that narrative is correct.  So, under these circumstances, endorsement or surrender will inevitably “send the message” that that narrative is correct, and thus that disapproval of homosexuality has no rational basis, and thus that no one should disapprove of homosexuality.  Of course, a sentence like “’Same-sex marriage’ should be legalized,” considered in isolation, doesn’t entail all that, but that is irrelevant.  The point is that that is nevertheless the Gricean implicature of such an endorsement or surrender, given circumstances now and for the foreseeable future. 

Now as Grice points out, an implicature can be “cancelled.”  Suppose that after saying “I liked the restaurant” you added, with a smile: “And I really liked [her, him]!” Whereas the first utterance by itself gave the impression that you did not like the person you were out with, that message would be cancelled by this addition.  The implicature associated under current circumstances with an endorsement or surrender on “same-sex marriage” could also be cancelled -- for instance, if a public official who endorsed or surrendered to it explicitly repudiated the “dominant narrative.”  For example, suppose a candidate for political office in a state in which “same-sex marriage” was imposed by the judiciary declined to support a challenge to it either in the courts or the legislature, and explained his position by saying: “I don’t think there’s any way to reverse ‘same-sex marriage’ in this state given public opinion and the makeup of the appeals courts.  But I am utterly opposed to it and would reverse it in a second if I thought that was possible.”  Whatever the merits of this position, it would cancel the implicature that the surrender to “same-sex marriage” would otherwise have.  However, if a politician repeatedly declined to say or do anything that would cancel the implicature, the implicature would if anything only be reinforced.  It will also be reinforced if the only public remarks the politician ever makes about homosexuality and related matters are positive – calls for tolerance and compassion, condemnations of workplace discrimination, etc.

Note that such a politician would not actually have to believe the “dominant narrative” in order for the implicature to be reinforced.  He may decline to cancel the implicature out of naivete, cynical calculation, or cowardice rather than out of conviction.  But he will nevertheless have “sent the message” that the “dominant narrative“ is correct, even if he thinks it is not correct.  And it would be silly for him to claim otherwise by saying (in private): “All I’ve done is to decline trying to roll back ‘same-sex marriage’ and endorsed being civil to fellow citizens who happen to be homosexual.  There is nothing in that by itself that entails that I think homosexual acts are morally justifiable or that I agree that critics of ‘same-sex marriage’ really are bigots!”  That is true, but irrelevant.  The meaning of the sentences he’s uttered, considered in isolation, might not entail all that, but that is simply not the only thing that determines an implicature. 

Implicature, sexual morality, and Catholicism

Now, what goes for politicians goes for churchmen.  It is part of the “dominant narrative” that the opposition of the Catholic Church and other Christian bodies to homosexual acts is, like  such opposition more generally, rooted in ignorance and bigotry, without rational foundation, and ought to be given up.  Bishops and other churchmen know that this is the “dominant narrative,” and they know that homosexual rights activists and society at large know that they know it.  Hence when they make statements that accentuate the positive vis-à-vis homosexuality (emphasizing inclusiveness, condemning discrimination, etc.) and/or imply that the Church has historically been too harsh or put too much emphasis on the issue -- while at the same time saying little or nothing clearly to reaffirm the traditional condemnation of homosexual acts -- the implicature, the message that is sent, is that there is truth in the “dominant narrative.” 

Here as in other cases, it is irrelevant that the specific sentences that are uttered considered by themselves do not strictly entail any concession to the “dominant narrative.”  There needn’t be such an entailment for an implicature.  Nor does it matter that the churchmen in question do not actually agree with the “dominant narrative.”  If you say “I like the frame” or “I liked the restaurant” in the contexts described above, you have in fact said something insulting, whether or not that was your intention and despite the fact that the literal meaning of the words does not by itself strictly entail an insult.  And if a churchman comments on issues concerning homosexuality with nothing but happy talk, he has in fact “sent the message” that there is truth in the “dominant narrative,” even if that is not his intention and despite the fact that the literal meaning of his words might not by itself strictly entail that there is truth in it.  The implicature is only reinforced by the fact that the average listener entirely lacks any theological training and thus cannot be expected to draw fine distinctions, to assess the doctrinal weight of off-the-cuff remarks made in interviews, etc.  Since churchmen know (or should know) how their misleading words are bound to be taken by the average listener, and since the average listener knows that these churchmen know (or should know) this -- and yet the churchmen say these things anyway -- the implicature is further cemented.

Hence while it is true that secular news outlets routinely read too much into such statements and spin them to their own purposes, they are by no means entirely to blame.  They have been given ammunition.  Some conservative Catholic commentators have tied themselves in knots trying to put a positive face on these sorts of remarks, usually via a pedantic emphasis on what is strictly entailed by the literal meaning of a certain remark considered in isolation, while completely ignoring the glaring implicatures.  At best this reflects an astounding naiveté about how language works; at worst it is itself a kind of intellectually dishonest spin-doctoring.  And it does real damage by giving the false impression that to be a Catholic you have to become a shill and pretend not to see the obvious. 

Judging from the Extraordinary Synod on the Family which ended last week, the messages churchmen send via such implicatures may not always be unintentional.  A key topic of debate in the lead-up to the Synod and at the Synod itself was Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal that divorced and “remarried” Catholics could be admitted to Holy Communion.  Now, the teaching of the Church is that a validly married person cannot divorce and remarry someone else while his spouse is still living.  Such a “remarriage” is adulterous and thus mortally sinful.  The Church also teaches that to go to Communion while one is in a state of mortal sin is itself mortally sinful.  Hence, to suggest that such “remarried” Catholics might be able to go to Communion is to implicate or “send the message” that such “remarriages” are not mortally sinful after all and that the Church can and should change her teaching on that subject. 

Cardinal Kasper denies that he favors such a change, but again, an implicature can exist even when one does not intend it.  Furthermore, to “cancel” the implicature in this case would require far more than Cardinal Kasper issuing such a denial in a journal article, interview, or the like, because most Catholics have never heard of Cardinal Kasper and will know nothing about such denials.  To cancel the implicature would require that the Church loudly and clearly reaffirm that it is mortally sinful to divorce and “remarry” and that no one in a state of mortal sin should take Communion.  The trouble, though, is that loudly and clearly to say this would offend Catholics who have “remarried,” and the whole point of Kasper’s proposal is to make such people feel “welcome.”  Doing what is required to cancel the implicature would thus make Kasper’s proposed policy pointless.  So, there simply is no plausible way to implement such a policy without “sending the message” that the Church can and should change her teaching.

Whatever Cardinal Kasper intends, though, Cardinal George Pell has indicated that some of the churchmen who favor Kasper’s policy do intend the implicature.  As Cardinal Pell has said:

Communion for the divorced and remarried is for some -- very few, certainly not the majority of the synod fathers -- it's only the tip of the iceberg, it's a stalking horse. They want wider changes, recognition of civil unions, recognition of homosexual unions.  The church cannot go in that direction.  It would be a capitulation from the beauties and strengths of the Catholic tradition, where people sacrificed themselves for hundreds, and thousands of years to do this.

That this is the intention seems clear enough from a now-notorious set of passages from the first draft of the Synod report, which included the following lines:

Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? … Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?...

Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners.

End quote.  The tone and indeed the content of this passage (“accepting and valuing their sexual orientation,” “precious support in the life of the partners”) are so radically different from what the Church has said historically -- indeed, it would have been unthinkable as recently as two years ago that such words could ever appear in a Vatican document -- that the bland references elsewhere in the document to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality cannot cancel the implicature that there is some truth in the liberal “dominant narrative” vis-à-vis homosexuality.  And those who would use Cardinal Kasper’s proposal as a “stalking horse” (as Cardinal Pell put it) surely intend their implicatures to do double duty.  When, in the example I gave above, you say “I liked the restaurant,” your more sophisticated friend will know that you did not like the person you went on the blind date with, while your less sophisticated friend might think you did like the person.  Similarly, when liberal churchmen speak of “accepting and valuing [the homosexual] orientation without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony,” gullible listeners will be reassured that no substantive change is being proposed, while more sophisticated listeners will “get” the real message.

Now, Cardinal Pell, Cardinal Raymond Burke, the African bishops, and others vigorously opposed this passage, which was ultimately rejected by the Synod as a whole.  But the fact that it got as far as it did in the first place itself “sends the message” that the Church might, if not now then in future, be open to the possibility of dramatic change vis-à-vis matters of sexual morality.   Given how far things have gone, effectively cancelling this implicature would require a vigorous reaffirmation both of the content and the permanence of Catholic teaching on sexual morality from Pope Francis himself.  Cardinal Burke has expressed the view that such a papal reaffirmation is “long overdue,” and another bishop has been even more frank about the damage he thinks the Synod has caused.  But such a reaffirmation seems unlikely given that it would conflict with the Pope’s aim of putting less emphasis on these matters and trying to find ways to attract those who disagree with the Church’s teaching about them.

Nudge nudge, wink wink, or Yes Yes, No No?

How have things gotten to this point?  There are in my view two main factors.  The first is what I have identified elsewhere as the chief cause of the collapse of Catholic apologetics, dogmatic and moral theology, and catechesis: the abandonment of Scholasticism.  Thomists and other Scholastic theologians and philosophers, and the churchmen of earlier generations who were given a Scholastic intellectual formation, emphasized precision in thought, precision in language, precision in argumentation, precision in doctrinal and public statements, and extreme caution about novel theses and formulations which might undermine the credibility of the Church’s claim to preserve and apply doctrine, and not manufacture or mutate it.  Say what you will about the (purported) limitations of Scholastic theology and philosophy, there was, in the days when Scholasticism held sway, never any doubt about exactly what a statement from a bishop or from the Vatican meant and about exactly how it squared with Catholic tradition. 

The tendency among some churchmen toward imprecision, and the appearance of a rupture with past teaching, is by no means limited to matters of sexual morality.  On capital punishment, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and other issues, even conservative Catholic churchmen have been fudging things for decades, speaking in ambiguous terms or in platitudes that seem to imply that the traditional teaching of the Church is wrong, and giving woolly arguments or no arguments at all instead of explaining how the new statements can be reconciled with past teaching.

For example, for two millennia the Church very heavily emphasized the urgency of conversion to the Catholic Faith as necessary for salvation.  Yet even many conservative churchmen today emphasize “dialogue” over conversion, condemn proselytizing, etc.  How can these attitudes be reconciled?  The question is generally simply ignored.  Modern churchmen often speak as if capital punishment were incompatible with human dignity and as if any Catholic must oppose it.  Yet Pope Innocent III, when reconciling the pacifist Waldensian heretics with the Church, made acceptance of the legitimacy of capital punishment a matter of basic orthodoxy; the Fathers and Doctors of the Church unanimously affirmed its legitimacy even when they were inclined toward leniency, and such unanimity has always been regarded within Catholicism as a mark of infallible teaching; Genesis 9:6 sanctions capital punishment precisely in the name of human dignity; and so on.  How can these attitudes be reconciled?  Again, the problem is generally ignored.  And so on for other issues.  Typically the novel statements are phrased in such a way that they can be given an interpretation that is not strictly incompatible with past teaching.  However, the implicature -- again, even if unintentional -- is that past teaching was mistaken. 

What is common to these examples is that they all tend to implicate a concession to liberalism.  And that brings me to what I think is the second factor behind the tendency of modern churchmen to speak in ways that seem to imply a rupture with the past: the utter hegemony of liberalism in the modern Western world, indeed in much of the modern world full stop.  Now, when I say “liberalism” I don’t mean merely the sort of thing that characterizes the modern Democratic Party.  I mean that broad tradition that begins with thinkers like Hobbes and Locke and whose basic assumptions are taken for granted by moral and political thinkers of almost every stripe today.  What liberals of all varieties -- from Hobbes and Locke to Kant to Rawls and Nozick -- share in common, whatever their significant differences, is an emphasis on the sovereignty of the will of the individual.  For liberalism, no demand on any individual is legitimate to which he does not in some sense consent.  The tendency is therefore to regard any such imposition as an affront to his dignity.  The liberty that the liberal wants to further is freedom from fetters on the individual’s will, whether those fetters are political, social, moral, religious, or cultural.  The individual will is sovereign, its dignity supreme.

Liberalism in this broad sense is the dominant way of thinking and feeling in modern times.  It is, essentially, the compulsory ethos, indeed the religion, of modern times.  It absolutely permeates contemporary political, social, moral, religious, and cultural life.  This is why the arguments even of political conservatives and Christians reputed for orthodoxy are constantly couched in the language of freedom, rights, the dignity of the individual, etc.  The pressure to conform one’s thinking and sensibility to basic liberal assumptions is nearly overwhelming.  Hence any appeal to freedom is considered all by itself a powerful argument, and any objection to a policy or view on the grounds that it conflicts with freedom is considered a powerful objection which it is imperative to answer.  Scratch many a modern conservative or Christian and you’ll find a liberal, in this broad sense of the word “liberal,” underneath. 

Liberalism is the offspring of Ockham’s voluntarism, the prioritizing of the will over the intellect.  Press voluntarism as far as it will go and you are bound to conclude that what the will chooses is more important that what the intellect knows.  Objective truth itself is bound to come to seem an oppressive imposition on the will.  For Aquinas, of course, this has things precisely backwards.  The will is subordinate to the intellect, and has as its final cause the pursuit of the objective truth that the intellect grasps.  And if the objective truth of the matter is that you deserve a punishment of death, or ought to convert to Catholicism, or ought to restrain your sexual impulses, then it is just tough luck for the will if what it wants is something else.  (I speak loosely, of course.  It is not really “tough luck” for the will; such submission is what is truly good for the will.) 

Now as every Thomist knows, there is some truth to be found in more or less any erroneous system of thought.  Hence there is, naturally, some truth in liberalism.  The free exercise of the will really is a good thing.  But it is a good that is subordinate to the higher end for which it exists, namely the pursuit of what is really true and good.  Furthermore, given the hegemony of liberalism in modern times and the consequent pressure to conform oneself to it, even those who do not see themselves as liberals are going to exaggerate the significance of whatever truth there is to be found in it.  Hence the tendency of modern churchmen relentlessly to emphasize the dignity of the individual and to pretend that an appeal to this dignity is somehow the master key to settling every moral and political controversy (when in fact what counts as a respect for human dignity is itself precisely what is at issue in disputes over sexual morality, abortion, capital punishment, etc. -- so that the appeal to human dignity by itself merely begs the question).

The tremendous pressure to conform to liberalism generates an eagerness to seek any way possible, rhetorically and substantively, to find common ground with it.  Now, punishment in general and capital punishment in particular all involve an obvious and unpleasant imposition on the will of the individual.  Hence the tendency of liberalism is to regard punishment, and capital punishment in particular, as an affront to the dignity of the individual.  Making an individual’s salvation contingent upon whether he accepts a certain religion is an even graver imposition on his will.  Hence the tendency of the liberal, if he is religious, is toward universalism.  Sexual desire is extremely powerful and the demands of sexual morality an especially irksome imposition on the will.  Hence the tendency of liberalism is to try as far as possible to eliminate or at least soften and minimize the importance of such demands.  And so forth. 

So, when churchmen find in Catholic tradition, alongside the persistent insistence on the legitimacy of (and in some cases need for) capital punishment, an inclination of some saints and theologians strongly to prefer leniency over resort to the punishment, the temptation is to take the more lenient tendency and run with it, while ignoring the other, balancing element in the tradition.  When they find in the tradition, alongside the doctrine that extra ecclesiam nulla salus, the idea that “invincible ignorance” can save those who are outside the visible structure of the Church, the temptation is strong to emphasize the latter and not worry too much about evangelization.  When they note that the Church has always taught forgiveness of sins and mercy toward sinners, the temptation is strong to talk a lot about that and not say too much about the actual sins themselves, especially if the sins are sexual.  And so forth.  Because the over-emphasized elements really are there in the tradition and the ignored elements are not explicitly denied, actual rupture with the past is avoided.  But because the resulting presentation of Catholic teaching is so one-sided, and one-sided in the direction of flattering liberalism, there is an appearance of a rupture with the past, an unintended implicature to the effect that liberal criticism of traditional Catholic teaching is correct.

This is not unprecedented in Church history.  The Arian heresy exerted enormous pressure on the Church.  It had political power, won the support of many bishops, and was difficult to combat because of the ambiguous language in which it was often formulated.  Even Pope Liberius, though he did not bind the Church to error, temporized.  The heresy took centuries to die out completely.  No doubt there were churchmen at the time keen to emphasize the “gifts and qualities” of Arians, to “accept and value” the depth and sincerity of their devotion to the Arian cause, and to affirm the “precious support” Arians provided one another. 

In light of what has happened at the Synod, some orthodox Catholics are inclined to channel Kevin Bacon in Animal House, while others are inclined to freak out.  Both tendencies are mistaken.  The truth is that things are pretty bad, and also that they are not that bad.  This kind of thing sometimes happens in the Church.  Liberalism will suffer the same fate as Arianism, but it may take a very long time for the Church entirely to flush it out of its system, and things may get a lot worse before they get better.  For the moment and no doubt for some time to come, too many churchmen will continue to respond to the liberal spirit of the age with a nudge and a wink and glad-handing bonhomie.  But in the end the Church will, as she always does, heed the words of her Master: Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ (Matthew 5:37).