A moment of silence as the torch is passed.

But I do feel you have missed my point, Daniel. You are reading Obama’s speech in such a way as to make it not only false at the critical point, but also self-contradictory. A more charitable reading — one that does not presume the President to be a theological nitwit — would be to read the single sentence you quote in light of the remainder of the piece — rather than reading it in the least charitable sense, and insisting that its contradictions with the rest of the piece indicate only how stupid our President is.

The key sentence, again, appears to be:

“It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us.”

You think it is incorrect to say that we cannot know with certainty what God asks of us. You come to this conclusion by construing “what God asks of us” in a very broad sense. In a very broad sense, of course we know some things that God requires of us — you point some out. But Obama points some out as well! What a moron our president must be, to make such a strong claim that is so obviously false — and then to contradict it within a few paragraphs!

But let us suppose for a minute that Obama is not stupid. Then we must read the claim that we cannot know with certainty what God asks of us in a sense that is not contradicted by Obama himself, several times in the same speech. My suggestion is that we read it in a very specific sense, as follows: “I (like you, like all of us) cannot know with certainty the details of what God requires of me with respect to the specific situations I am facing right now.”

Should I get married to my current partner or not? When my friend makes a racist joke, should I respond, and if so, how? If I believe that my boss is sexually harassing a coworker, but I can’t prove it, how should I respond? On a political level: which party should I vote for? Should I send money to the ACLU, Concerned Women for America, the NRA, the American Cancer Society, NARAL, or all or none of the above? Should I volunteer my time at a homeless shelter or tutor children in math? Should I join the anti-abortion rally or the pro-choice rally? Obama’s point would then be, I do not know which of these options, or others not considered, may be God’s will for me. None of us has this knowledge.

I think this is Obama’s point, because it’s a perfectly reasonable interpretation that fits with the rest of what he said in that speech. Your interpretation, by contrast, makes Obama a moron. To date, you have not struck me as one of the conservatives who is convinced that Obama is in fact a moron, so I submit that my interpretation makes more sense of your own beliefs about the man.

In other words, you’re right in a sense –and Obama agrees with you: we can know some very basic, general things about God’s will for us. But what we can know is not enough to resolve our political disagreements. Because Obama is a politician, not a theologian, his concern is for this more difficult question.

This is even more irrelevant. The location of Obama’s speech does not make him a Catholic, does not limit him to statements in conformity with the Catholic catechism nor require him to study the niceties of Catholic doctrine. He’s the freaking president, not the nation’s theologian in chief. He’s speaking of practical political problems and of his own beliefs; and you’re categorically stating that he’s wrong, because your beliefs are different and your beliefs are True. All of which is fine with me, because the increasing intolerance and demand for ideological purity among the conservative splinter groups should keep them and the GOP out of brad based power for the foreseeable future.

Not expecting to change your views, but just sayin’.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2088:

“The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith:

Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections concerning the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.”

Obama recommends the path to spiritual blindness, and his defenders all declare that he has spoken the truth. Pardon me if I don’t go along with this.

Again, Obama said, “It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us.”

As I said in the original post, the second part of this is false. Kent has essentially agreed that the second part of this is false, because he quotes Obama to the effect that we can and do certainly know that we are called to love our fellow men as ourselves. That tells me that when I say, “He chose to say that there was nothing that could be known about God with certainty,” I don’t think I am off base at all, because he says that not only is God’s providence beyond our capacity to know with certainty, which is correct, but for all intents and purposes so is God’s revelation, which includes all of His statements about Himself. That is not just shoddy theology–it is practically anti-theology.

One could try to argue that Obama is appealing to a mystical theology that transcends mere rational, intellectual certainty, but I think that would be wishful thinking. Instead, people keep trying to tell me that he did not say what he plainly did say. I don’t know why ayone would persist in arguing this line. If this is what being pwned is like, please, keep it up.

You just completely pwned Daniel in that last post. He may not even be able to respond. Knockout blow.

Great and thorough analysis. Keep it up.

Everyone has doubts from time to time, even if they won’t admit it to themselves – even Catholics who are above reproach like Mother Teresa and the Pope.

The conviction that one knows the Absolute Truth strikes me as an exceedingly arrogant theology that leads to things like Jihadism and The Crusades.

Even if your personal Truth on abortion is absolute, like it is for extremists on both sides of the issue, the problem lies in imposing your Truth on others.

Obama was pleading for a middle path. It wasn’t a dissertation on Theology.

Larison swings and misses on this one.

Hubris, or simply arrogance? I can never tell whether this position is based in disdain for god’s creations, since the overwhelming majority of those creations throughout history haven’t understood it (at least, not in the One True Way that Daniel apparently does), or disdain for god, apparently unable or unwilling to reconcile the differences between myriad beliefs, all held with the same certainty. Now, it’s certainly possible that you and your co-religionists are the only possessors of the One Truth; but it’s certainly not simple or obvious. There have been and are untold numbers of people just as bright, just as devout, just as educated, just as articulate, just as concerned with faith, who have come to differing truths, or even sincere doubts. It is unlike what I have read of you to so forthrightly dismiss the sincerity or intellectual honesty of someone, because they don’t see your “simple” truth.

And no, I don’t really think that’s what Obama said, either.

The classic quotation on point is Cromwell’s “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

That kind of “civil doubt,” as it were, is essential to a non-theocratic republic. Certainty brought us the Thirty Years’ War, the Inquisition, and their ilk.

But it would be nice.

Jake