Notes: Thursday, September 2, 2010

The latest on the N.S.W. same-sex adoption Bill

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/keneally-to-support-samesex-adoption-20100901-14nnf.html?skin=text-only

Also, a story from the other day which I seem to have missed earlier (it came to my attention via yesterday's CathNews):

"Keneally denies Greens deal on adoption"
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/keneally-denies-greens-deal-on-adoption-20100831-14f4n.html

A 'female-to-male transsexual' on the differences between men and women

In an opinion piece in today's Herald: (warning: The article could be an occasion of sin for some readers)

[Dr. Bettina] Arndt told [the opinion piece's author, Mr. Paul Sheehan] her favourite person in [her latest] book is a transsexual, Anita Wolfe Valerio, who became Max Wolf Valerio, and wrote a memoir about the metamorphosis from woman to man. In The Testosterone Files, published in 2006, Valerio confronts, from first-hand experience, the divide caused by differing male and female testosterone levels: ''Now that I am Max, I see this rift, this fundamental chasm between men and women's perceptions and experience of sexuality, is one that may never be bridged. There certainly can be no hope for understanding as long as society pretends that men and women are really the same, that the culture of male sexuality is simply a conflation of misogyny and dysfunction. That the male libido is shaped and driven primarily by socialisation that can be legislated or 'psychobabbled' out of existence.''
[http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-secret-desires-of-men-and-why-they-go-unfulfilled-20100901-14nhj.html?skin=text-only]

'Historic' Labor-Greens pact

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/pm-julia-gillards-high-risk-greens-embrace/story-fn59niix-1225913033761

Mr. Muehlenberg on justice: "Biblical justice", retributive justice, and distributive justice

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2010/09/01/%e2%80%98social-justice%e2%80%99-versus-biblical-justice/

I don't have time to do a proper rebuttal, or at least critique, of Mr. Muehlenberg's post, so I'll just offer a few thoughts without weaving them into a properly-structured essay:

Mr. Muehlberg says that his intention in writing that post is to

concentrate on just two [kinds of justice]: retributive justice and distributive justice. The former goes back at least to Aristotle and means simply, “to each man his due”. It has to do with giving people what they deserve. Thus we speak about ‘just deserts’ and so on.

The latter term is a more recent concept, and has to do with equality of outcome, and redistributing certain goods, including wealth, to ostensibly help out the less fortunate. It is what is often meant when the left – both secular and religious – speak about social justice.

Now the first problem is that it is justice in the broadest sense of the word, not justice in the narrower sense of retributive justice, which is said simply to render to each his due. Retributive justice is concerned with rendering to the evil-doer what is his due, namely, a punishment proportionate in severity to the severity of his evil-doing. Before reading Mr. Muehlenberg's post I had never heard of the term 'retributive justice' being used to describe anything other than the justice applying to evildoers.

As for distributive justice: As regards the virtue of justice among humans (obviously neither Mr. Muehlenberg nor I are concerned with justice towards God, which is the virtue of religion), there are two 'sub-virtues', so to speak, under it: Commutative justice and social justice. Commuative justice is individual-to-individual justice, whereas social justice is individual-to-society or society-to-individual justice. Sometimes the term 'social justice' is (or perhaps I should say "before the term 'social justice' was appropriated for describing what would be at best really social charity, and at worst assorted politically-correct causes, the term 'social justice' was ...") used only for individual-to-society justice (otherwise the term 'legal justice' is commonly used, since the individual's duties as a member of society are prescribed for him by law), while distributive justice is society-to-individual justice. All distributive justice means is that the burdens and benefits of being part of a society are distributed to each member of society in proportion to each member's talents and abilities and capacities and so on. So there is nothing sinister or 'un-Biblical' about the term at all; the alternative to distributive justice would be the injustice of burdens and benefits being conferred on everyone without taking into account the burdens and benefits which they have already received from nature or other circumstances.

Mr. Muehlenberg goes on:

At the risk of oversimplifying matters, it seems that the notion of retributive justice is more closely aligned with biblical notions of justice, while distributive justice is further afield from Scriptural principles. But this can hardly be defended adequately in a brief article, even in a most superficial fashion.

But although Mr. Muehlenberg goes out of his way to stress that he does not intend to offer an exhaustive treatise, he is still signalling that it is his opinion that distributive justice is "further afield from Scriptural principles". That opinion is clearly fallacious given the outline which I have provided of the true meaning of distributive justice, but the basis for this opinion becomes clearer in his next paragraph:

We would need to closely examine biblical terms such as justice, righteousness and the like. We would need to look at contemporary economic options as well. And we would need to study the historical record to see whether wealth redistribution has in fact worked, and really helped the poor. But let me tease things out just a bit more here.
[my emphasis]

So Mr. Muehlenberg's focus is on wealth redistribution--by 'distributive justice' he seems to conceive of something involving redistribution of wealth/income in order to achieve "equality of outcome". But distributive justice does not mean taking some of the wealth and income of the rich and transferring it to the poor so that they have equal wealth and income. It just means that when the government seeks to impose a burden on its subjects it needs to take into account what burdens and benefits they already have, and likewise for distributing the benefits of living in society. So as regards wealth redistribution, there is not necessarily any sin against properly-understood distributive justice involved in allowing inequality of wealth and income to persist, but there would be a sin against distributive justice on the part of the government if the government were to treat poor people the same as rich people, e.g. by taxing them all at a flat rate of taxation. Mr. Muehlenberg should have no problem agreeing that such a thing would be unjust, given that he agrees that "treat[ing] unequals equally ... is neither fair nor just."

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Stephen, King, Confessor, A.D. 2010

On ‘social justice’

http://www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au/

The Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference 2008 Social Justice Statement A Rich Young Nation: The challenge of poverty and affluence in Australia is out now. I have read it and I’m afraid I was not impressed. It seems to me that the big problem with this, like much in post-Conciliar thought on ‘social justice’, is that the term ‘social justice’ appears to confuse the cardinal virtue of justice with the theological virtue of charity, or even to conflate the two. Now I know that there is a close, harmonious relationship between all the virtues and that, if I recall correctly, St. Thomas described charity as the mother, mover, form and root of all the virtues. But nonetheless, justice is, though not separate from charity, still distinct from it. To put it simply, justice is about giving to someone what he is owed, whereas charity is giving to someone of what is one’s own. This appears to have eluded my Lords the Bishops despite the fact that they quote H.H. The Pope saying, in the Chairman’s message, that “The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word.” The Bishops quote St. Basil the Great saying that “the acts of charity you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit” yet I wonder whether ‘injustices’ was the best translation; perhaps ‘wrongs’ would have been more apt.

Another problem in the document is the concepts of affluence and poverty that it uses. The document quotes Prof. Clive Hamilton on the problem of ‘affluenza’ saying that

When people see wants as needs, it is not surprisingthat two thirds (in a Newspoll survey) say they cannot afford everything they need. And their feelings of deprivation are real, since thwarted desire is transformed into a sense of deprivation.

Similarly, the characteristics that the Bishops assign to the condition of poverty are heavily based on ‘feelings’ and evade the distinction between absolute and relative poverty. Yet if poverty is sentimental and relative then those suffering from ‘affluenza’ can be considered legitimately ‘poor’!

I would be interested to hear readers’ opinions on the matter.

Reginaldvs Cantvar