Is That Legal?

Oh, I don't know... I've created an entire blog based on scab-picking, and I've found it's improved my life.

I guess Eric, this is where many of us Catholics differ from many Jews. Among practicing Catholics, a substantial aspect of our outlook is based on confessing error, then asking and receiving God's forgiveness. The crux of that is that once a sin is confessed within our sacrament of confession, and the pennance is performed, it's a done deal. For a Catholic mature in the faith, to believe less is to question Christ's sacrifice and the resulting forgiveness, which is in fact the very essence of our faith. The teaching point left over from the error should remain in one's mind, but not the guilt. This philosophy of leaving moral and spiritual guilt at the door of the confessional is not conducive to scab picking.

Perhaps the reason I feel somewhat strongly about Ratzinger's reticence, is that I have been through some moderately tough times. Nothing like the holocaust, to be sure, but I was in the military and in humanitarian relief organizations. I like to think I did what I could. Did I do some good? Yeah. Could I have done more? Sure. Would I have gotten a bullet in the skull for it, or arrested by military superiors or PNG'ed out of country for violating orders? Probably. Do I feel bad about friends I lost and innocent victims that perhaps could have been saved had I been not just good, but consciously heroic? Certainly. But I can't afford to dwell on that, because my job now is working as an attorney, for other people who are in need, and dwelling on the past would slow me up in the present, and shortchange the people who I have the ability to help in the here and now. The military term for that kind of navel-gazing is paralysis by analysis, and it is the enemy of people who would take the proper action in the present and future. What's more, I'm not wired that way. Hence I tend to give Ratzinger the benefit of a doubt on this point.

Moreover, I don't think it's the big issue Beth made it. If a failure to navel-gaze obliterates one's moral judgement, then there can be no such thing as a simple minded moral person - one would have to be tormented and brilliant to be truly moral. The Catholic notion of morals is that one should submit to the clear rules of right and wrong both because it is the right thing to do and to develop the conscience, and on the issues that are gray, follow the well-developed conscience for general principles, and seek moral guidance if necessary - and God will judge.

And for what it's worth, I'm reading a lot of Burke, Hayek and Orwell lately because they tend to open fresh wounds and let me draw my own conclusions about it, rather than picking at scabs. They look to me to come up with some answers, rather than looking inside themselves, and I don't have a problem with that. It seems you and I have a profoundly different outlook on life, together.

The fundamental problem with this sort of post is that it wrongly assumes that old Ratzinger has shoved his past into the closet and chalked it all up to "hey, I couldn't do anything about it, so to get along, go along." Quite the opposite. Ratzinger has not psychologized himself in his writings, but he has written about this past and has a penitent posture about it towards God, or so he reports. There is not a shred of evidence to doubt that he is privately harder on himself and in prayer.

There is just no evidence whatsoever, besides some idea that he has not engaged in some abstractly "sufficient" level of public excoriation of himself or someething, that he is anything but fully aligned with generally accepted moral principles regarding it, which include whatever shortcomings he had in his own life, about which no one on this blog, whether commenter or poster, knows much of anything.

Moreover, I don't think it's the big issue Beth made it. If a failure to navel-gaze obliterates one's moral judgement, then there can be no such thing as a simple minded moral person - one would have to be tormented and brilliant to be truly moral.

That's not really fair. I'm not suggesting that the pope should wake up every morning weeping over his failure to act more heroically as a youth. Far from it. If he had shown as much reflection and awareness of his tough times as you have for yours, I'd have little to criticize him for. I would like to see him acknowledge that he could have done more, but I wouldn't want him to remain wracked with guilt over it. Honesty should always be leavened with compassion, whether we're looking at other people or at ourselves.

I also don't think brilliance is a prerequisite for morality. Brilliant people construct brilliant defenses and so must be brilliant to break through them, but if someone's simple-minded, they'll create only simple-minded justifications and strategems which require only simple-minded reflection to overcome. If anything, I think it's easier for the simple-minded to be moral in this sense. Being less adept at constructing defenses, they tend to be more honest with themselves in the first place.

It may be that I'm a bit overzealous about "scab-picking," but if so, I come by it honestly. My grandmother was abusive and neglectful toward my mother when she was a child. My mother reflected on that enough to want to avoid doing the same to her own children, but not enough to consider what that really meant. As a result she made a conscious effort to avoid the specific acts of neglect and abuse that she'd suffered, but still managed to be just as neglectful and abusive in other ways. I certainly wouldn't have had her spend her whole life obssessed with her childhood, but I sincerely wish that she had at some point reflected more deeply on it. I believe that if she had, she could have saved her own children a lot of pain.

I've also found in my own life that while retrospection can be very difficult and painful, failing to do it is ultimately even worse. It may be that some people don't need to engage in it to the extent I do. Individual natures and the nature of the 'tough times' probably play a role. I think anyone will suffer if they don't do enough, but how much is 'enough' may vary significantly from person to person.