Tea at Trianon: Of Good and Evil

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Of Good and Evil

From Charles Camosy at Angelus News:

While many things have changed about “Star Wars” over the decades, one clear shift has been a growing discomfort with the concept of a “light side” and a “dark side” of the Force. That discomfort reflects a need in our culture to see everything as gray or morally complex. Some of the most popular stories our culture tells succeed in making human beings who do despicable things likable. And we the audience are pushed to side with such people. From “Joker,” to “Breaking Bad,” to “The Wolf of Wall Street,” this trend has become predictable. It’s certainly no longer pushing boundaries or subverting expectations.

Our cultural discomfort with clear and unambiguous moral claims, calling something “good” and something else “evil’ is worrisome. We are especially uncomfortable with saying that something is always and everywhere wrong. Such simplistic views belong to an older time, people claim, a time in which submission to religious authority ran the show. Most shifts in this regard seem to be focused on sexual morality. Yet some moral actions like kidnapping, intentionally killing the innocent, and rape are still thought of by the vast majority of people as deeply evil and always and everywhere wrong.

This is still true of seniors and older adults. When respondents 65 and over were asked in a new Harvard-Harris poll if the killing and/or kidnapping of thousands of innocent civilians by Hamas “can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians,” only 9% answered yes. For those 45-64, similarly small minorities answered yes. But for those aged 25-34, the percentage who said yes rose to 44%; for those 18-24, the number jumped to 60%. Let that sink in: 6 in 10 young people think that kidnapping and killing the innocent can be justified for the right reason. This tracks with a similarly disturbing trend of young people looking the other way when it comes to the sexual violence Hamas perpetrated on Israeli women and girls.

One Twitter user sharing this information spoke for many, I think, in calling the 60% number a “wild statistic.” On the one hand, it certainly is. If the next generation coming up can’t condemn these actions as always and everywhere impermissible and evil, there is little hope that the culture they lead will be a good one. But on the other hand, such a development is predictable given that these are the moral views they have been taught playing out more consistently and authentically.

If exceptionless moral norms are from a time gone by — if claims about certain actions always being evil come only from an outdated religious authority — then it makes perfect sense that a generation raised as consequentialist utilitarians (who care only for getting the outcomes they want and not for moral concerns about how they get there) would become … consequentialist utilitarians.

Let me be absolutely clear: We should not downplay the ways in which Israel has overreached or acted disproportionately in ways that are morally grotesque in its history. Nor should we backtrack from authentic complexity and gray areas in moral discourse. Clearly we can and should do both. But neither of these goals require giving up on the concept of exceptionless moral norms or intrinsically evil acts.

On the contrary, our current moment calls for a profound and serious defense of these very concepts. Unfortunately, there is a disturbing movement afoot in the Catholic Church (even at very high levels), which critiques and dismisses these concepts as a simplistic “handbook for formulas” for a moral life that is much more complex. But the trends described above demonstrate that the Church’s clear teaching on exceptionless moral norms and intrinsically evil acts is needed more than ever. People need to know and recognize what, by its nature, is good and what is evil. People need clarity.

Indeed, when faithful Catholics speak into a culture which has normalized that which is wrong without exception — which tells predictable stories designed to make us root for the bad guy — our position becomes subversive. Ours becomes the one that pushes cultural boundaries. Ours the one that speaks truth to power from the margins. (Read more.)