This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
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These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of April 3, 2023
Recognition Diplomacy
Contributions for the week of April 10, 2023
Transitive Reasoning
Contributions for the week of April 17, 2023
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of April 24, 2023
- "What is going in Sudan is a practical demonstration that being a global power does not mean that everything going on in the world is secretly about you."
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Notes -
Concerning the @Esperanza post:
I've been seeing the question lately in a few places, most recently when Bryan Caplan did a podcast with Richard Hanania: how much "power" do people "in power" actually have? In the podcast, they talked about university presidents, but I've heard it discussed for all sorts of positions. The idea is that, to become a university president, you have to do so many things to please certain people, who have certain interests. To what extent do you need to continue pleasing them to remain university president? Even if you can't be formally kicked out of your role for a particular action, to what extent does your role require cooperation/acquiescence from a variety of stakeholders? If you spend all of your political capital accomplishing one thing that is incredibly controversial among your stakeholders, they may proceed to do everything they can to neuter every last shred of remaining power that you have until they can actually kick you out.
I imagine these constraints vary significantly across different positions of power, but as a non-Catholic, I would argue that the pope does not have the power to "decide to make homosexual actions not a sin", even within the Catholic church. The bulk of the power centers within the Catholic church are committed enough to the position that the bible means something, that one of the somethings that they can easily interpret the bible as meaning is that homosexual actions are sinful, and that this is supported by so great a weight of history and tradition that it would be near inconceivable for a mere pope to, on his own, without a long careful process of arguing for and convincing many stakeholders of his position, suddenly reverse course. They would feel as though a "foreigner" has somehow invaded their group, a spy, a saboteur, an enemy operative. They would view it as illegitimate, do all that they can to remove the invader or at least neutralize his further power until he can be removed. Then, they would go about reversing the decision to whatever extent their history and tradition allows them to. They will declare that it was not "conformable with Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Traditions" (to just copy the words from wikipedia).
In a different time, maybe the pope will gain such power. If the cultural memeplex continues propagating among enough of the rest of the leadership of the Catholic church, perhaps enough will get on board with whatever new argument arises to shift around their traditional position. Different levels of support (or even just apathy) across the leadership will require different expenditures of political capital by a hypothetical future pope, but I think that right now, it's not reasonably "within his power".
I am a Catholic and the moment the Pope claims to have the ability to make something the Church has taught was inherently immoral "not a sin" is the moment I stop being Catholic. Because at that point it's all made up. (Please no zingers here about how it's all made up anyway, I am not going to try to prove Catholicism on TheMotte.) The Pope is one of the last absolute monarchs in the world, but he is absolutely beholden to the dogma of his predecessors. He maintains power to the extent he convinces Catholics that he is genuine.
Now, the Pope has the ability to make something not inherently immoral a sin. For example he could say all Catholics must abstain from wearing pink. But it wouldn't become inherently immoral to wear pink. He would be saying, as a matter of obedience to the Church, he's asking us to abstain from the color pink. (To increase our self-discipline or as reparation for our sins or whatever.)
If he commanded someone to do something inherently immoral under this framework they would be obligated to disobey and no sin would be incurred. We are only obligated to obey just laws.
It sounds complicated when I write it out but I hope the underlying principle makes sense. The Pope is subject to the divine law, but can impose an additional ecclesiastical law on adherents.
Is there a clear, unambiguous definition of "inherently immoral" in an authoritative source – such as the Bible, or maybe something written by one of the great Catholic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas – or is this just begging the question?
The Catholic Church has already had U-turns of a similar magnitude. For the vast majority of its existence, the Church was in favour of capital punishment. Then, in the late 20th century, their stance suddenly flipped and now they're strongly opposed to it.
Their previous stance on capital punishment suggests that they can be flexible about Biblical interpretation if they really feel it is necessary. If they can interpret "do not kill" to mean "actually, you can kill sometimes", then why wouldn't they be able to interpret the much more ambiguous condemnations of homosexuality in the New Testament to mean that homosexuality is not prohibited in general, but only in certain circumstances? (The condemnations of homosexuality in the Old Testament don't matter because the old laws have been "fulfilled" – whatever that means – and Christians are no longer required to follow them and are permitted to eat pork, not get circumcised, wear mixed fabrics, etc.)
Capital punishment is pretty clearly justifiable—it's arguably instituted with Noah in Genesis 9, which is not specific to the people of Israel nor is ecclesiastical, it's instituted by God himself in the law, and it's spoken of approvingly as the sword in the new testament (see Romans 13). I wouldn't think that it's absolutely necessary that it be instituted, but I do think that it's a legitimate ordering of things.
I don't think that the condemnations of homosexuality are terribly ambiguous. Because it's a political issue, people will use every attempt to find ambiguity or alternative interpretations that they can find.
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