Religion & Law

Michael re-posted, here, Eduardo's comments on Hendrik Hertzberg's New Yorker piece, "Indulgence".  According to Hertzberg,

The iniquities now roiling the Catholic Church are more shocking than the ones that so outraged Martin Luther. But the broader society in which the Church is embedded has grown incomparably freer. To the extent that the Church manages to purge itself of its shame?its sins, its crimes?it will owe a debt of gratitude to the lawyers, the journalists, and, above all, the victims and families who have had the courage to persevere, against formidable resistance, in holding it to account. Without their efforts, the suffering of tens of thousands of children would still be a secret. Our largely democratic, secularist, liberal, pluralist modern world, against which the Church has so often set its face, turns out to be its best teacher?and the savior, you might say, of its most vulnerable, most trusting communicants.

More on this quote, below.  And, let's put aside doubts we might have about the care with which Hertzberg describes the theology that informs the (still very much alive) use, now or in Luther's day, of indulgences.  He notes that "like nearly every one of the controversies that preoccupy and bedevil the Church?abortion, stem-cell research, contraception, celibacy, marriage and divorce and affectional orientation?it?s about sex."  Hmmm.   From the Church's perspective, anyway, "abortion" and "stem-cell research" are not "about sex"; these issues are about the inviolability and dignity of human persons.  Hertzberg seems not to know (or care) what he is talking about.  But, let's continue -- and return back to the indented paragraph above.

What does Hertzberg mean (Eduardo, what do you take him to mean) by "pluralist", and what is it about our modern world that is "pluralist"?  Is it a descriptive term -- "lots of people these days disagree about lots of things, and have lots of different ideas of the good"?  For me, though, true pluralism -- far from being something against which the Church has "set its face" -- is something that the Church has long (with not much help from "liberal", "secular" modernity) defended and instantiated.  The Church *provides* -- by refusing to be part of, or under, or in service to, the secular state -- the pluralism that Hertzberg purports to celebrate.  He might well worry, then, about the possibility -- surely, it is a possibility? -- that some relish the taking down of the Church *precisely* in order to remove the state's troubling competitor (you know, the one what won't just be quiet about abortion)?  Who (as John Courtney Murray asked), in the absence of the "authoritarian" Church, would provide the protection for authentic pluralism that it needs?