Eaten the Burger? How About Meeting the Cow?

The Author had in the previous week returned from a conference organised by the Australian Catholic Students Association, running under the theme "Towards 2028", indicating some consideration on what to do in the 20 years that follow World Youth Day 2008. Whilst there was some projection into the future, courtesy of the highly eloquent and humourous Bishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, the conference focussed very much on what to do in the present. This included important topics facing the Church including the Liturgy, life issues, and giving the faith a political face. The only mar to this otherwise wonderful congress was a disgraceful performance by the current Industrial Relations Minister, Tony Abbott, who was invited to speak on his experiences as Health Minister and the defence of life issues in the public square, but ended up giving an opportunistic sales pitch to the Government's WorkChoices legislation, and even questioning the right of clerics to frame economic issues in moral terms.

For now, the Author would like to draw one's attention to the recently aired movie, The Island, starring Eran MacGregor and Scarlett Johannson. The film, depicting the adventures of MacGregor and Johannson who act as clones who find out that they are artificially manufactured for the purposes of extraction of their organs, captures in the space of a few hours, the stakes of the current cloning "debate" that has gone on for the last month or so. The film graphically depicts the subjects of this debate in flesh and blood, and the fact that the producers of the film seek to frame such procedures in a negative light, including the instrumentalising of MacGregor, Johannson, and other clones by labelling them as "products", would indicate that the market consists of folk who would be horrified by this spectre.

Also, interestingly, the arguments that are put forward to nullify moral outrage (for instance, the head of the project, Dr. Merrick, denies the clones humanity by their inability to feel emotion, or express desire) or justify the project that produces said outrage (this Dr. Merrick at one point asks another character for the number of people who can cure Leukemia like him), bear a striking resemblance to arguments of supporters of voluntary euthanasia (Peter Singer adopts a schema that resembles the first set of arguments in the film), and therapeutic cloning (with respect to the second set of arguments). Again, such arguments are framed in a negative light by the producers of the film, indicating a similar resonance amongst the target market.

This raises an interesting question, why would the same target audience that would express horror at this atrocity in a film, not express the same outrage at the same atrocity occurring, or about to occur, in the real world? Indeed, one may not be surprised to find an Island fan actually using the same justifications used by Merrick to assuage any guilt that this real life Island scenario would generate. What can explain this discrepancy?

Two possible explanations exist. The first is that that they are not made cognisant of the humanity of the subjects of these procedures. The Second is that the culture of postmodernity (not to be confused with the academic paradigm of postmodernism), has produced a fluidity of moral planes that allow one to switch allegiances from one moral framework to another depending on what suits the situation (which in reality makes postmodernity a hyperextension of Modern strategic rationalism).

How should the Christian respond. Dealing with the first would necessitate a persistence in the activity of the pro-life campaigns, with a concerted effort in bringing to light the humanity of these "products", with a particular emphasis on graphic demonstrations that would make the audience meet the cow that produces the burgers. The reason that this graphic strategem may win out over resort to argument is the changing frames of reference that plague this debate currently. Dealing with this issue would require a firming of the cognitive planes, an outcome that can only come about through a process of Foucauldian discipline.

James K A Smith has observed in Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? that for the Church, such a discipline can be found in Her liturgy. If we recognise, as William Cavanaugh does, that more than remembering and hoping, the liturgy also rearranges bodies to fit a distinctly Christian social order, the training the bodies that liturgy brings should, in true Foucouldian form, firm up the cognitive order in such a way so that Christians at least would not fall victim to the quicksand foundations that arguments justifying the murder of embryos, foetuses and patients.

With this in mind, the recent release of Sacramentum Caritatis, and the Motu Propio by Pope Benedict XVI on the normalisation of the liturgy are indeed welcome developments. But more on that in future wonderposts.