Miller (Fisking) Time

Lisa Miller, aka, "Male-Bashing, Pope-Trashing Religion Editor/Hackette for Newsweak," has produced yet another pathetic piece of shoddy "journalism," a cover story titled, "A Woman’s Place Is In The Church" (Apr. 3, 2010). To her marginal credit, she doesn't play the "Celibacy creates perverts!" card that is so popular among many critics of the Church, instead laying down the "If Only the Church Would Ordain Women, Modernize, and Become Episcopalian" hand:

The problem is not, as so many progressives claim, the fact of their celibacy. Nor is it their costumes—the miters and capes—though these vanities do serve as reminders of the great distance between the men with power and the people without. The problem—bluntly put—is that the bishops and cardinals who manage the institutional church live behind guarded walls in a pre-Enlightenment world. Within their enclave, they remain largely untouched by the democratic revolutions in France and America. On questions of morality, they hold the group—in this case, the church—above the individual and regard modernity as a threat. We in the democratic West who criticize the hierarchy for its shocking inaction take the supremacy of the individual for granted. They in the Vatican who blast the media for bias against the pope value ecclesiastical cohesion over all. The gap is real. We don't get them. And they don't get us.

As Marcel at Aggie Catholics notes:

She got two things correct:
1 - she doesn't "get" the Catholic Church.
2 - she is part of modern culture.

Outside of these facts, she makes a mess of the rest of the article. She, as most in the media do, casts the Catholic Church as nothing more than a political or business reality and cannot think outside of these models and structures. In this kind of understanding of the Church, the hierarchy is sexist, they don't understand modernity and progress, the Church needs to open up the doors to the sexual revolution and an enlightened understanding of humanity.

Back to Miller's next paragraph:

By keeping modernity at bay, though, the men who run the Catholic Church have willfully ignored one of the great achievements of the modern age: the integration of women in the workforce and public life. In America, 50 million women work full time; in the European Union that number is 68 million. Within most mainline Protestant denominations, these battles over the professionalization of women were fought—and lost—half a century ago. In Denmark, Lutheran women were granted ordination rights in 1948; in the U.S., the first female Episcopalian priest was ordained in 1976.

But in the Roman Catholic corporation, the senior executives live and work, as they have for a thousand years, eschewing not just marriage, but intimacy with women and professional relationships with women—not to mention any chance to familiarize themselves with the earthy, primal messiness of families and children. Indeed, it seems the further a priest moves beyond the parish, the more likely he is to value conformity and order above the chaos of real life.

And to think that one of the supposed positive features of modernity and liberal democratic societies is the ability of people to "do their own thing" and "be themselves" and "go against the grain" (to use just a few silly clichés). But, no, Miller insists, the Catholic corporation Church needs to get into line, abandon features that distinguish it from other "corporations" and join the bland and increasingly depraved homogeneity of the great modernist experiment! (And then we can all dance around a carbon-free campfire, chew soy-bean gum, and sing odes of joy to Mother Gaia and the Glorious, All-Pervasive State! Yeaaaahhh!) Of course, this is somewhat confusing since anyone with half a brain has noticed that modernity, on the whole, has not been too kind to "the earthy, primal messiness of families and children," and that is has been the backwards, pre-modern, neanderthal Catholic Church that has done the most to protect and defend marriage, family life, and traditional moral values during the "sexual revolution" and its aftermath.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, RSM, Director of Media Relations for the USCCB, writes of Miller's ignorant remarks:

Lisa Miller’s accompanying cover essay about women in the church doesn’t go in this direction, however. In fact, it is somewhat off-base, like facile cocktail party conversation. Observations get tossed about without scrutiny. For example, she states, wrongly, that “few women retain high-profile management jobs, such as chancellor, within dioceses.” Fact-checking proves that wrong. If you take the requirement for ordination off the table, data shows that the number of women in leadership positions in Catholic dioceses is comparable to that of the women in the U.S. workforce as a whole. One quarter of diocesan positions at the highest level, such as chancellor or chief financial officer, are held by women. You don’t find similar numbers among U.S. corporations.

Influence in the church does not depend upon ordination, though there is no doubt that it helps. The greatest impact of the Catholic Church in the United States arguably has been through its education and hospital systems, where women have taken the lead from the start. Church women also have had an impact beyond the church. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, for example, touched hearts everywhere and educated us to the extent of abject global poverty. Historically, some women even have overshadowed popes. Most educated people have heard of Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena. Does anyone, even the highly educated, know who the popes were when these women lived?

Lisa Miller’s article sinks into male-bashing, church-style.

And one reason it does sink and stink so is because Miller, instead of relying on facts, reason, and sound philosophical and theological principles (as many pre-modern societies did), writes as typical modernist pseudo-intellectuals so often do: glibly, emotionally, ideologically, irrationally, and arrogantly. Chesterton put it well, over a hundred years ago:

The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly "in the know."  To flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer at a creed's antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady's age.  It is caddish because it is irrelevant.  The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion. (All Things Considered, 1908)

The rest of Miller's piece appears to have been lifted wholesale from a pamphlet produced by Women Priests or Call to Action. An especially rotten and outlandish statement comes near the conclusion:

No explanation better illuminates today's great disconnect between all the pope's men and the progressive faithful. In a world where the whole really matters more than individual parts, a rigid—sometimes brilliant, sometimes mean-spirited—morality reins. This elevation of the church above all things explains how an institution dedicated to serving the sick and the poor might also refuse condoms to those at risk for AIDS. It explains how an organization committed to families could deny birth-control pills to mothers. And it explains, sadly, how a bishop faced with a pedophile in a parish might decide not to call the cops.

Get it? The reason some bishops covered up for pedophiles and homosexual parasites was because of the Church's moral doctrine and ecclesiology. As if the Church hasn't always condemned molestation, homosexual acts, fornication, and such. As usual, Miller has it backwards: those priests and bishops who committed such evil and damnable sins had given in to their passions, chosen their desires over moral purity, and viewed fellow humans as objects of gratification. In other words, they simply took up some of the essential beliefs and attitudes of modernism and modernity—hyper-individualism, exaltation of experience, amoral attitudes toward sex and sexual experimentation, emotional gratification, self-indulgence, abuse of authority—and took them to their sordid ends.

Strangely enough, Newsweak recently published an article, "Priests Commit No More Abuse Than Other Males," by Pat Wingert, that states:

Experts disagree on the rate of sexual abuse among the general American male population, but Allen says a conservative estimate is one in 10. Margaret Leland Smith, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says her review of the numbers indicates it's closer to one in 5. But in either case, the rate of abuse by Catholic priests is not higher than these national estimates. The public also doesn't realize how "profoundly prevalent" child sexual abuse is, adds Smith. Even those numbers may be low; research suggests that only a third of abuse cases are ever reported (making it the most underreported crime). "However you slice it, it's a very common experience," Smith says.

Hmmm. So, the sexual abuse of children is "a very common experience" in modern America. In case you were wondering, women make up about 51% of the total population in the U.S. (144 million women to 138 million men in 2002). And consider this fact: prior to the mid-1800s, there were no instances of sexual abuse in public schools in the United States. Why? Because there weren't any compulsory public schools (Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school attendance laws in 1852). But a 2004 study found that nearly 9.6 percent of students in public schools are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career. And get this: the ratio of female to male teachers in grades K-8 is about 85% to 15% (!), while in high schools it is 66.1% to 33.9% (!!).

Not to worry: Lisa Miller is undoubtedly working on a piece explaining how all we need is more modernity to fix those problems...

UPDATE: The Anchoress weighs in with a post about Miller's article: "The Myth of Held-back Catholic Women".

• If the Pope is responsible, what about the Secretary of Education? (March 17, 2010)

Comments

[Brian]

Are you mocking anything and everything remotely liberal? After all, liberalism allows people of color to mix with whites. Liberalism allows women a place in public life. Liberalism shows concern for the environment. Are you issuing a wholesale condemnation of liberalism and thus everything associated with liberalism?

Aren't cultural traditionalists capable of being snobbish? Aren't they capable of arrogantly clinging to traditions so much that they shut down development or any slight change? Haven't they forced people to march in lock-step?

[joe]

"one of the great achievements of the modern age: the integration of women in the workforce and public life. In America, 50 million women work full time; in the European Union that number is 68 million. Within most mainline Protestant denominations, these battles over the professionalization of women were fought—and lost—half a century ago. In Denmark, Lutheran women were granted ordination rights in 1948; in the U.S., the first female Episcopalian priest was ordained in 1976."

Call me sexist, but THIS is a great achievement, taking both parents out of the home? So our level of affluence can escalate to the point that our taxes can subsidize everything, and we can all find our way to Disney World?

Also, many mainline denominations have only had female clergy since 1976? Rate of change is amazing.

[Carl E. Olson]

Brian: My short answer is, "No, I'm not mocking anything and everything remotely 'liberal'." There are many different things meant by "liberal" or "liberalism," and I am critical of a particular sort--a sort that is, alas, rather dominate today. (I am, in my post above, mocking and criticizing blatant stupidity and chronological snobbery, which I would hope is obvious.) I recommend you read my interview with James Kalb, author of The Tyranny of Liberalism. Here is one of the pertinent sections of that interview:

Ignatius Insight: You spend quite a bit of time, understandably, in the book defining liberalism and variations thereof. For the sake of clarity, what is a relatively concise definition of the liberalism you critique? What are its core principles and beliefs?

James Kalb: By liberalism I mean the view that equal freedom is the highest political, social, and moral principle. The big goal is to be able to do and get what we want, as much and as equally as possible.

That view comes from the view that transcendent standards don't exist--or what amounts to the same thing, that they aren't publicly knowable. That leaves desire as the standard for action, along with logic and knowledge of how to get what we want.

Desires are all equally desires, so they all equally deserve satisfaction. Nothing is exempt from the system, so everything becomes a resource to be used for our purposes. The end result is an overall project of reconstructing social life to make it a rational system for maximum equal preference satisfaction.

That's what liberalism is now, and everything else has to give way to it. For example, traditional ties like family and inherited culture aren't egalitarian or hedonistic or technologically rational. They have their own concerns. So they have to be done away with or turned into private hobbies that people can take or leave as they like. Anything else would violate freedom and equality.

Entire interview here.

[David Werling]

Brian wrote: "Aren't cultural traditionalists capable of being snobbish?"

Not as snobbish or elitist as the run of the mill liberal. Have you ever had the displeasure of dining with University professors? Such an encounter is as perfectly snobbish as it is perfectly tedious, and there isn't a traditionalist comment brooked.

Brian wrote: "Aren't they capable of arrogantly clinging to traditions so much that they shut down development or any slight change?"

Traditionalists are more capable of adapting to change, even being a catalyst for change, because they work from a stable framework, are grounded, and can make far better objective distinctions. Liberals, who basically posit that everything is essentially equal, are incapable of choosing one thing or course of action as better than another. It is the liberal that forces the world into a static mold by an ideology that denies degrees of perfection in reality. Think of the lunacy of the Marxist dialectic that ends not with dynamism, but with a static Utopian society incapable of development or creativity. Marxism is a liberal notion that fails because its goal is unnatural and inhuman.

Brian wrote: "Haven't they forced people to march in lock-step?"

Perhaps you are forgetting, or didn't realize, or were never taught, that those who walked in goosestep in the 20th century, be they German or Russian, were liberals, not traditionalists. It was the liberals, the German National Socialists (NAZI) and the Russian Bolsheviks who were responsible for the greatest atrocities of the 20th century, NOT the traditionalists. In fact, the liberals of NAZI Germany targeted distinctively traditionalist religions, cultures and ethnicities (Jews, Catholics, and Slavs).

Brain you are way off the mark. Your comment reveals a profound ignorance of liberalism and traditionalism.

[Brian]

The Nazis promoted social conservatism. They promoted themselves as enemies of liberalism. Hitler boasted of turning back the tide of liberalism. Fascism is distinctly anti-liberal.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/01/liberal-fascism-response.html

The Taliban forces people to march in lock-step. Iran's government forces people to march in lock-step. The Ku Klux Klan undoubtedly intends to force people to march in lock-step and already tried to do so in the 1920s.

I appreciate the dialog.

[David Werling]

I never mentioned "social conservativism". I'm using the term "traditionalism", which is very different.

The NAZIs where by no stretch of the imagination traditionalists. They were socialists, leftists, and liberals. In what universe is killing off the disabled traditionalism (or for that matter, social conservatism)? It would seem that it is the self-avowed liberals of our day who are in favor of exterminating unwanted unborn children, and those unborn children who suffer from Down's Syndrome. Find me a traditionalists who favors that kind of filth? Find me the traditionalists who are in favor of work camps, gulags or concentration camps?

No matter how much liberal bloggers want it to be otherwise, no matter how many posts they throw up on their blogs, they can not change history or reality. Socialism is a product of liberalism, and NAZIs and Bolsheviks are both, without question, socialists. Socialism is as opposed to traditionalism as Satan is to God.

Fascism is something different, but it too is a product of liberalism. It arose in the 20th century because Giuseppe Garibaldi violently threw off tradition. It's history, and it's hard to re-write history when people are starting to pay attention to the liberal propaganda peddlers.

[David Werling]

Neither the Taliban or the current regime in Iran are traditionalists. Both are a form of despotism steeped in the errors of Islam, which denies the rationality of reality, nature and divine volition. As such they have more in common with liberals than traditionalists. I would have thought that someone posting at Ignatius Insight would realize that readers here would be approaching topics as Christians.