Religion & Law

This Independence Day post is, in a way, a continuation of my conversation with Michael P. on "relativism" and "relativisms."

What are we celebrating today?  Authentic freedom or illusory freedom?  Freedom for or freedom from?  Freedom to do what we ought or freedom to do what we want no matter how base? If rights are not "inalienable," but can be alienated at the whim of a majority, whether it be a majority of the whole or a majority of the Committee of Nine (SCOTUS), aren't we really celebrating a false liberty?  In Centesimus Annus, 44, Pope John Paul II said:

If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class, group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others. People are then respected only to the extent that they can be exploited for selfish ends. Thus, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the subject of rights which no one may violate ? no individual, group, class, nation or State. Not even the majority of a social body may violate these rights, by going against the minority, by isolating, oppressing, or exploiting it, or by attempting to annihilate it.

I ain't as learnt as Michael P., and I don't got Leslie Green's academic credentials (but if it's a credential war, I suspect that Ratzinger wins), but this good  'ole boy from flyover country can spot confusion a mile away, and it ain't coming from Ratzinger but from Michael P. and L. Green. 

Michael P. and Leslie G. want to teach the world that in technical philosophical language there are different relativisms and that discussions about relativism "outside of technical philosophical literature [read me, Ratzinger, and others] are deeply confused, and, therefore, confusing."  Michael P. goes on to dismiss Ratzinger by suggesting that he is merely engaging in "attractive polemical posturing" rather than engaging in serious thought.

Ratzinger argued in the week before he became Pope that "[w]e are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires."  Green and Perry  dismiss Ratzinger because he isn't engaged in technical philosophic speak.  But, Green inadvertently affirms the future Pope's thesis when he argues that we do have minimum moral standards and that they are determined by the ever changing  whims the majority.  To this country bumpkin, that sure sounds like relativism. But, what do I know? 

And, neither Perry nor Green address the substance of Ratzinger's argument.  Who is attempting to confuse?  I don't think it is the Pope!