By DONALD DeMARCO
The late Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia, in his dissent from Obergefell v. Hodges, stated, “[We have] descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.” No doubt, in the back of his mind Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words in the Casey decision still were ringing in his mind: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and the mystery of human life.” Robert H. Bork, in his book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, found these words to be meaningless and nothing more than an appeal “to a free-floating spirit of radical autonomy.” Needless to say, nobody’s right to define his own concept of the mystery of human life has ever been abrogated.
At the same time, Scalia’s words have been taken more literally than the distinguished justice might have imagined. The plight of an infertile Catholic couple was carried in a mass-circulation magazine a few years ago. They had adopted two children but wanted to have a child that was biologically their own.
The pseudonymous George and Emily had read the Vatican document On Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation. They admitted that the instruction “gave them pause.” But what authority does a Vatican document have when pitted against a fortune cookie? After dining at a Chinese restaurant one evening, Emily cracked open the fortune cookie and read the message it contained: “You will find the link you desire in the next month.”
“It’s a sign,” Emily jubilantly exclaimed. And so, the confident couple went ahead with a procedure that required masturbation, hormone injections and laparoscopy, embryo freezing and thawing, and transference of the embryo to a gestational mother. It was a desperate gamble recommended neither morally nor technologically, though supported by a subjective interpretation of a fortune cookie.
I recall opening my own Chinese fortune cookie one evening and finding its message both amusing and reflective of our times: “To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.” The aphorism “the right to choose” fits nicely into this notion. Do whatever you want to do and then approve it by stating that it was a “choice.”
Let us not fuss with the more complicated notion that one should choose what is good. We have nothing at which to aim — no goals, ideals, or ends. Our actions, therefore, are self-justifying. Whatever we do is fine simply because we did it. Let us not live by the wisdom of good books, but by the aphorisms of fortune cookies. Another fortune cookie reads: “A foolish man listens to his heart. A wise man listens to cookies.”
“The right to choose,” “gain control of your body,” “be yourself,” “don’t impose values,” “death with dignity,” “life is short, have an affair” have become guidelines for life. They short-circuit the arduous task of actually thinking. “Just do it!” — as the Nike commercial advises. Here, philosophy is reduced to impulse, wisdom to convenience, and reflection to immediacy. We are too much in a hurry to stop and figure things out.
Recently, a distinguished Harvard scholar was disinvited from Canada’s Concordia Liberal Arts College because he did not have the ideologically approved attitude toward feminism. Professor Harvey Mansfield, who has been teaching at Harvard for 50 years, was initially invited to speak on “the study of great books.”
“This is insanity,” protested Princeton University Professor Robert George. “Harvey Mansfield is one of the most accomplished scholars and eminent teachers of political philosophy in the world.”
But several alumni together with a majority of the Liberal Arts College faculty members warned that Mansfield “heavily traffics in damaging and discredited philosophies of gender and culture.” To this claim, Mansfield stated in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (April 25, 2019) that “though I was to speak on great books, not gender, this ‘trafficking’ — as if in harmful drugs — disqualified me without any need to specify further.”
Mansfield is on record criticizing the narrow stereotypes that depict women as much better than they are and men as far worse than they are. As a scholar, he deplores simplistic thinking. And yet, this is why he is seen as a pariah.
His 50-year reputation at Harvard is upended by a truncated view that has the quality of a fortune cookie. One would think that a liberal educational institution would oppose stereotypes. But the word “liberal,” itself has been reduced to those, and only those, who subscribe to a certain view of things and are intolerant of anything that challenges this view.
In the meantime, at Mount St. Mary’s University — a Catholic school in Emmitsburg, Md. — Mark Shriver gave the commencement address on May 11. NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland has given him a 100 percent rating for his pro-abortion record. In an interview with The Washington Post, he declared that “I will continue to fight for a woman’s right to choose.”
The notion of commencement, of course, refers to a beginning. How inappropriate to invite a person who is resolutely opposed to the commencement of life in so many instances to speak to young Catholics who are looking for additional guidance as they commence their post-graduate lives.
The fortune cookie may convey the fashionable opinion, and we do not ask more of it than that. The ideas expressed in the Great Books, however, are perennial. While we cannot expect Chinese restaurants to offer us disquisitions from the Great Books, we can expect — even demand — that universities honor the wisdom contained in these works that represent the thought of many of the Western tradition’s greatest minds.
+ + +
(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest books, How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life, are posted on amazon.com.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress