Greetings readers,
An issue which is near and dear to my heart has come forth in the past weeks with the recent run of sex scandal revelations in Europe. The pope himself has been implicated as one who helped keep the abuses a secret from secular authorities by authorizing the movement of pedophile priests while he was in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. There have been two main responses to this crisis, one which is to defend the pope at all costs. The other is to attack the Pope without understanding how Church bureaucracy works. This opinion is neither and seeks to approach the manner from a different angle not looking so much at the actions themselves, but looking at the issue of how the Catholic Church is viewed in society. This is an important distinction to make because this affects the people's response to this crisis and does not look particularly at the victims, or give a victims perspective.
The best way to approach this justification is to examine how people who are defending the pope are doing so. People who seek to defend the pope are blaming the media for being on a witchhunt. The media is seen as a force who is trying to show mistakes which the pope made in his handling of the abuse crisis. The mentality exhibited by this group of people is that the pope cannot make a mistake because he is infallible in his decision making. (Note: there are problems with how infallibility is defined by this group as well, as infallibility has an extremely limited definition in Catholic theology, namely the teaching must be about faith and morals, and the teaching must be given ex cathedra (from the chair) explicitly.) If the pope is infallible in this more extreme category, then any perceived mistake is a threat to stability in the Catholic Church.
However, the definition of the Catholic Church in this way focuses on a specific model of ecclesiology (of the Church as Institution) (see Avery Dulles' book Models of the Church). This model of Church is focused on by the media because people in the Catholic Church focus on the pope more now than at any other time in history. The world of Catholicism is moved by the words of the pope, and everyone knows who the pope is. The words of the pope are move available for people to read than ever. This creates some sense of unity because people have the opportunity to read the pope's thoughts on any given topic, and the pope is able to make his opinion known on a grand scale.
In the current age of the Church, however, this creates a culture where dissent is not tolerated as well because everyone can see the pope's opinion. Vocal dissent from any bishop is not encouraged, and is heavily noticed. This occurs because of the perceived threats which many people in the Catholic Church feel toward the Church as a whole. Also, the increased exposure of the pope is an extremely important factor. When people entreat into a defensive stance, people turn toward the perceived center of the Church, in this case the pope and the magisterial teaching (e.g. the central teaching authority, the Vatican). When this happens any perceived attack against the center of the Church, rightly or wrongly, garners a strong reaction to demonize anyone who would say such things against the Church.
The reason the media attacks in this recent sex abuse crisis against the pope are justified for this reason. Because the Church as a whole, in the mainstream opinion, has centered on the pope and many people are willing to front this image of Church to the whole. Because the pope is placed as the center of the Church when anything goes wrong in the Church, the pope is the first person everyone blames. This is justified because people have built up this image of the pope and church and have accepted it as a part of faith. In essence, this crisis of authority is the fault of every person of faith (particularly, but not limited to the Catholic Church.) (Noting also there are dissenters from this view, but however, the people as a whole must take responsibility, because in some way all people are responsible for this crisis because of an unwillingness to point to Church teaching which shows a different direction.) People are at fault because people do not realize that they are the Church and not just the institutions (see Lumen Gentium chapter 2).
What is a possible solution to this crisis of authority? Avery Dulles in his book Models of the Church presents other models with which the Church can identify. Particularly he mentions the Church as communio, sacrament, herald, servant, and community of persons. (from Models of the Church). Each of these models presents a different solution to this problem because each model offers different focal points of the Church. For example, the Church as herald focuses on the proclaimed word of God as the uniting source of the community, while the Church as servant finds its strength in being willing to serve the needs of the world and "embrace the hopes, joys, and fears of real people (Gadium et Spes 1)." With any model, there are weaknesses as Dulles does well in his book, so a good solution to the crisis of authority in the Church is to have a balanced model of Church which takes into accounts the many models of the Church. However, in order to do this, one must take a reading of Vatican II and understand the discontinuity in discourse between what Vatican II imagines and what is lived in Church discourse today.
There is a warning, if more models of the Church are not embraced by the general public, attacks on the pope will continue because he will continue to be the perceived center, and people will be seen as lock-step with the pope. (In this light, bishops must also have their own authority to act in collegiality, to be able to have discussions about matters of discipline to see what is best for the Church.) (e.g. Richard Gaillardetz in his article Can I Disagree with Catholic Teaching highlights the different levels of teaching in the Catholic faith. There are four levels "definitive dogma, definitive (irreformable) doctrine, non-definitive doctrine," (the fourth is the lowest level and this highlights things which are done out of practicality or opinion though I forget the name of the particular level as I write this post.) Collegiality requires that bishops can discuss how certain disciplines affect their people to the universal Church. In the current model of Church which is heavily advocated, there is little collegiality because there can be no open disagreement. To solve this problem, one must realize that the world does not hate the Church as a whole, but in this case, people hate what has happened in the Church, and how it has not lived up to its image as Sacrament, in teaching which is proposed (e.g. teachings on sexuality.) (Side note: Rene Girard and his theory on sacrifice and scapegoating has to be balanced with this, because I do agree the work of Jesus as one which exposes the scapegoating mechanism in all societies, which is a threat to everyone, but this is the subject for another post.
In conclusion, as one examines the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, one must look at what the people as a community have to do with this crisis. Most people have nothing to do with the actual actions of the crisis, however, everyone has a responsibility to forgive, and also can examine how the Church has grown in centralized power recently. People have the ability to use power for the good of love, but also for the power of use, manipulation, and evil. Power in itself is not bad, but in this case, power was used and is still being used to hurt others. However, it is not just the people involved in the crimes who are to blame. By looking at ecclesiology (e.g. the Study of the Church), one can see how the model of Church which is heavily favored has an effect on how people respond to crisis. By favoring an institutional model of Church, people lean toward the center, the pope, for strength. However, in times of crisis, the pope is also the first one to get the blame when something happens, because people see the pope as the Church. Until the dominant model of ecclesiology changes, or better yet, people utilize an image of Church which balances many different models, then this problem will continue to happen in the Catholic Church.
However, this solution gives hope, because when the institution starts to lack credibility, people begin to explore new models, and examine the depth of what the Catholic Church is. This time of trouble can be one of great hope because it will spark creativity and love has the potential to permeate whatever structure exists (which of course in saying all of this, what is also affirmed from this methodology is the need for some form of leadership, because the Church as Institution is still a model, and thus a necessary one for ecclesiology.) And there can be no scapegoats in this model either, because everyone has a role in healing the wounds which are present, and everyone has the potential to be blamed as well. People have unlimited potential, and this potential is what allows humans to love. In love, will people match the example of the founder of the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
What's Wrong with the Automobile Pt. 1
I'm going to start by proclaiming my sincerity that I do not hate cars. I love taking road trips and being on the open road. Cars have some amazing advantages to offer as a tool for us to use and to desire to get rid of them completely is rather silly. That being said, cars are not an absolute good they have negative qualities about them as well. In particular I want to focus on the incompatibility of cars in developed urban areas.
When I talk about urban areas I do not merely mean large cities like New York and L.A. Mid-size cities like Omaha or even small cities like Sioux Falls are included even if the effects are not as noticeable. Density is the measurement that truly matters (although population is not completely irrelevant).
Initially, it may seem that the problem with automobiles is emissions and exhaust and at the present that is a serious problem, but it is not what makes automobiles incompatible with urban areas. It is good to remember that in the last 40 years or so cars have become much more efficient and the emissions per car have been reduced (the number of cars has drastically multiplied which offsets the increase in efficiency). It seems likely therefore that as time goes by we will be able to continue to reduce car emissions and eventually move to a non-fossil fuel base and remove the emissions problem altogether, so emissions isn't the problem with cars.
The problem with cars is not a problem of emissions but a problem of space. Cities and urban areas work on principles of density and function best both economically and socially (not that these two aspects are completely distinct from each other) when the densities are high (It should be noted that "high" is not a particular number but is a relative value dependent upon the particularities of individual cities, and neighborhoods and districts within cities.). For discussions on why this is so look at Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities. High densities require a conservation of space and cars, by their nature, work against such a principle. Cars require space in two different senses. Cars are themselves large and tack up a certain amount of physical, but when cars are moving they require an additional amount of space to operate in safety like a personal bubble.
Lets deal with the moving space first. Cars are useful because they allow us to quickly get from one place to another very quickly. In a car I can get from Omaha to Denver in about 7 hours (okay 8 if you drive the speed limit, but come on). That is about 7 hours to cover a distance of 540 miles. Now quickly do the math, to cover 540 miles in 7 hours you have to go on average about 77 mph. Now to have a large metal and plastic object travel at 77 mph creates some obvious safety concerns. One needs to be able to keep the car in control while going at that speed and in order to do that, the road has to be designed in certain ways. Invariably all of these design attributes require space. Want to get rid of all the stops on the road, well build a freeway, but you need to take extra space along each road to construct ramps and bridges in order to remove traffic conflicts. Need to be able to make a 90 degree curve without slowing down, then you are going to need to increase the radius of the curve by a few hundred or thousand feet. Want to keep other cars from brushing up against you, well you might have to increase your lane width from 10 feet to 12 feet.
In the end all those extra feet and yards add up, and these extra feet are needed just to keep cars going safely at 40 or 45 mph. Look in your own city, any road that has a speed limit of 45 probably is either two lanes, has a median and a little bit of boulevard grass (between 10 and 20 feet) before the sidewalk. Or it is a two lane road with ditches, or other wide grass shoulder separating it from buildings and people. These adaptations are necessary to ensure the cars will be able to maintain the speeds it needs, get rid of all or even just a few of the aspects and the car has to slow down to 30 or 25 mph (think downtown areas). Now look at how far away some of those suburbs are and you realize that traveling at 25 mph would result in trips of an hour or more to get to the center of town assuming no congestion or extra stops.
It should be easy to see that for automobile travel to be useful (over long distances at least) you need to be moving at high speeds (4o and above), but to be able to travel at these high speeds you need to create roads with design features that take up lots of space. As urban areas require density and the conservation of space these two are at fundamental odds with each other. When I return to this topic I will look at the other space issue of cars, the far more problematic issue in regards to proper city development.
When I talk about urban areas I do not merely mean large cities like New York and L.A. Mid-size cities like Omaha or even small cities like Sioux Falls are included even if the effects are not as noticeable. Density is the measurement that truly matters (although population is not completely irrelevant).
Initially, it may seem that the problem with automobiles is emissions and exhaust and at the present that is a serious problem, but it is not what makes automobiles incompatible with urban areas. It is good to remember that in the last 40 years or so cars have become much more efficient and the emissions per car have been reduced (the number of cars has drastically multiplied which offsets the increase in efficiency). It seems likely therefore that as time goes by we will be able to continue to reduce car emissions and eventually move to a non-fossil fuel base and remove the emissions problem altogether, so emissions isn't the problem with cars.
The problem with cars is not a problem of emissions but a problem of space. Cities and urban areas work on principles of density and function best both economically and socially (not that these two aspects are completely distinct from each other) when the densities are high (It should be noted that "high" is not a particular number but is a relative value dependent upon the particularities of individual cities, and neighborhoods and districts within cities.). For discussions on why this is so look at Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities. High densities require a conservation of space and cars, by their nature, work against such a principle. Cars require space in two different senses. Cars are themselves large and tack up a certain amount of physical, but when cars are moving they require an additional amount of space to operate in safety like a personal bubble.
Lets deal with the moving space first. Cars are useful because they allow us to quickly get from one place to another very quickly. In a car I can get from Omaha to Denver in about 7 hours (okay 8 if you drive the speed limit, but come on). That is about 7 hours to cover a distance of 540 miles. Now quickly do the math, to cover 540 miles in 7 hours you have to go on average about 77 mph. Now to have a large metal and plastic object travel at 77 mph creates some obvious safety concerns. One needs to be able to keep the car in control while going at that speed and in order to do that, the road has to be designed in certain ways. Invariably all of these design attributes require space. Want to get rid of all the stops on the road, well build a freeway, but you need to take extra space along each road to construct ramps and bridges in order to remove traffic conflicts. Need to be able to make a 90 degree curve without slowing down, then you are going to need to increase the radius of the curve by a few hundred or thousand feet. Want to keep other cars from brushing up against you, well you might have to increase your lane width from 10 feet to 12 feet.
In the end all those extra feet and yards add up, and these extra feet are needed just to keep cars going safely at 40 or 45 mph. Look in your own city, any road that has a speed limit of 45 probably is either two lanes, has a median and a little bit of boulevard grass (between 10 and 20 feet) before the sidewalk. Or it is a two lane road with ditches, or other wide grass shoulder separating it from buildings and people. These adaptations are necessary to ensure the cars will be able to maintain the speeds it needs, get rid of all or even just a few of the aspects and the car has to slow down to 30 or 25 mph (think downtown areas). Now look at how far away some of those suburbs are and you realize that traveling at 25 mph would result in trips of an hour or more to get to the center of town assuming no congestion or extra stops.
It should be easy to see that for automobile travel to be useful (over long distances at least) you need to be moving at high speeds (4o and above), but to be able to travel at these high speeds you need to create roads with design features that take up lots of space. As urban areas require density and the conservation of space these two are at fundamental odds with each other. When I return to this topic I will look at the other space issue of cars, the far more problematic issue in regards to proper city development.
Monday, April 19, 2010
This is why we do it!
Perhaps Aristocrates will disagree, but surely he will recognize that I am being facetious and anyway I hope chicks do dig smarts or I might be in serious trouble!
[Edit: just click on the image to see the whole thing, apparently our layout does not support average sized comics]
[Edit: just click on the image to see the whole thing, apparently our layout does not support average sized comics]
Monday, April 12, 2010
Fake Love, Love, and Really Real Love, Is there a difference?
Hello Readers, Friends and Followers of our Blog,
Greetings to everyone. Again, life kind of ate me for a while and my ideas weren't flowing as I would like so blog entries were few and far between. (I did for the record enjoy epic amounts of Final Fantasy XIII and Borderlands (registered trademarks for respective companies, SquareEnix and Gearbox Software). My idea for today is a trial idea which I'm working through so if the blog entry is a little less clear than normal it means I'm thinking through this idea as I'm typing it.
Today I want to talk about one of my favorite topics, love. I also want to discuss how love is implemented in relationships and explore some phenomenon which caught my fancy and I hope it arouses some sort of discussion because it's a topic I care about a lot.
Love is a funny thing because it appears to manifest itself in many different ways in many different relationships, and all claim that love is present. To parse through what love is there must be some criteria. The best criteria I have read for love is that it does not use people. This includes use for physical things and emotional use. (taken from Love and Responsibility.) These two forms of use negate love because they degrade the gift of a person as a gift in themselves and make a person an object for something else. (An example of this would be using a person to get help from homework and then showing no interest or care for that person in response.) This is what I like to call fake love because you love what a person does for you but do not love the person.
Next, I want to discuss love. Love is a funny thing because there are loves which can look like love but it is not really real. But at the same time, there is some semblance of love so for purposes of this blog entry I'll call it simply love. There are two examples of this which I have found in my own experience. First, is when people love others and are supportive of them, but inside they want the other person to think like them. Even if one is to say that people want conversion because people will be most happy (which is a debatable but unarguable point because what one person finds as most happy will not necessarily be true for another person.) This is common in faith circles where friends are supportive of others, but inside people secretly want conversion to their particular version of faith because there is the altruistic ideal of happiness for the other person (so it cannot be fake love) but it's not really real because it's all based on one person's image of God in this situation. (Though fake support and friendship can happen in many other ways but these tend to fall into the category of fake love.)
Another example of this kind of love is in friendships where one party values another person as a means of valuing God and the other person is seen to have value only as much as that person brings them closer to God. Now this seems weird, but let's follow this idea for a second. It's an odd idea because God is seen as infinite love (infinite everything by definition). If God is infinite love, then love for God should extend to people. However, the difficulty comes when love is impersonal in this kind of relationship. When God is seen as everything, the beautiful qualities of the person (given by God) can become skewed in an amorphous vision. Now this leads to complications because this looks like love, matter of fact it can appear to function like love, but it is not the fullness of love. Love must value people as they are, and people can be a means to an end, even in finding God. But again, the intent of love is there, it is about valuing someone for seeing God-like qualities in people. However, it is not personal because it is about the qualities of a person which remind a person of God, and is not about the person.
So this brings me to really real love. Really real love is something which occurs when one sees the beauty of another person, for being another person. Real love can have as one of its components bringing people closer to God, but it is about valuing the other person. Valuing another person is recognizing their own unique gifts and loving people in spite of their failings. However, the love of another person is something which must go deeper than the gifts one has. Really real love penetrates being itself because it is something which changes both people just by existing. It is really personal, it has feelings, and it seeks the best for both persons. Feelings are not something to be ignored because they are an impediment to truth, rather feelings are something which must be examined, even if they go overboard for a while (because meeting and growing with love is an exciting reality and causes excitement which can be too extreme.) but one cannot know that without having the feeling of exuberance. People can still make decisions even with crazy feelings, and that is part of discerning love.
Love is important because it is what empowers all our lives, and a lack of love is destructive for all being because the sufferings of one person affect the many. To heal being we need this love, we need to grow in really real love for others so we can value the person for being a person and help people grow in life. Though there are many apparitions to really real love, which can have fruit and can have some parts of love, the fullness of love is only possible when people can participate in relationships of really real love.
Greetings to everyone. Again, life kind of ate me for a while and my ideas weren't flowing as I would like so blog entries were few and far between. (I did for the record enjoy epic amounts of Final Fantasy XIII and Borderlands (registered trademarks for respective companies, SquareEnix and Gearbox Software). My idea for today is a trial idea which I'm working through so if the blog entry is a little less clear than normal it means I'm thinking through this idea as I'm typing it.
Today I want to talk about one of my favorite topics, love. I also want to discuss how love is implemented in relationships and explore some phenomenon which caught my fancy and I hope it arouses some sort of discussion because it's a topic I care about a lot.
Love is a funny thing because it appears to manifest itself in many different ways in many different relationships, and all claim that love is present. To parse through what love is there must be some criteria. The best criteria I have read for love is that it does not use people. This includes use for physical things and emotional use. (taken from Love and Responsibility.) These two forms of use negate love because they degrade the gift of a person as a gift in themselves and make a person an object for something else. (An example of this would be using a person to get help from homework and then showing no interest or care for that person in response.) This is what I like to call fake love because you love what a person does for you but do not love the person.
Next, I want to discuss love. Love is a funny thing because there are loves which can look like love but it is not really real. But at the same time, there is some semblance of love so for purposes of this blog entry I'll call it simply love. There are two examples of this which I have found in my own experience. First, is when people love others and are supportive of them, but inside they want the other person to think like them. Even if one is to say that people want conversion because people will be most happy (which is a debatable but unarguable point because what one person finds as most happy will not necessarily be true for another person.) This is common in faith circles where friends are supportive of others, but inside people secretly want conversion to their particular version of faith because there is the altruistic ideal of happiness for the other person (so it cannot be fake love) but it's not really real because it's all based on one person's image of God in this situation. (Though fake support and friendship can happen in many other ways but these tend to fall into the category of fake love.)
Another example of this kind of love is in friendships where one party values another person as a means of valuing God and the other person is seen to have value only as much as that person brings them closer to God. Now this seems weird, but let's follow this idea for a second. It's an odd idea because God is seen as infinite love (infinite everything by definition). If God is infinite love, then love for God should extend to people. However, the difficulty comes when love is impersonal in this kind of relationship. When God is seen as everything, the beautiful qualities of the person (given by God) can become skewed in an amorphous vision. Now this leads to complications because this looks like love, matter of fact it can appear to function like love, but it is not the fullness of love. Love must value people as they are, and people can be a means to an end, even in finding God. But again, the intent of love is there, it is about valuing someone for seeing God-like qualities in people. However, it is not personal because it is about the qualities of a person which remind a person of God, and is not about the person.
So this brings me to really real love. Really real love is something which occurs when one sees the beauty of another person, for being another person. Real love can have as one of its components bringing people closer to God, but it is about valuing the other person. Valuing another person is recognizing their own unique gifts and loving people in spite of their failings. However, the love of another person is something which must go deeper than the gifts one has. Really real love penetrates being itself because it is something which changes both people just by existing. It is really personal, it has feelings, and it seeks the best for both persons. Feelings are not something to be ignored because they are an impediment to truth, rather feelings are something which must be examined, even if they go overboard for a while (because meeting and growing with love is an exciting reality and causes excitement which can be too extreme.) but one cannot know that without having the feeling of exuberance. People can still make decisions even with crazy feelings, and that is part of discerning love.
Love is important because it is what empowers all our lives, and a lack of love is destructive for all being because the sufferings of one person affect the many. To heal being we need this love, we need to grow in really real love for others so we can value the person for being a person and help people grow in life. Though there are many apparitions to really real love, which can have fruit and can have some parts of love, the fullness of love is only possible when people can participate in relationships of really real love.
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