One of the things I value about my institutional location is that I get to engage conversations from the full spectrum of American Catholicism. I think in many places there can be a temptation to a “party line” on disputed questions, which unintentionally inhibits real engagement and dialogue across our differences. A recent experience higjlighted some of the dynamics of effective conversation; I am attending the upcoming conference at Notre Dame on overcoming polarization in the American church, and I hope to bring these insights to that gathering. (The opening session of the conference will be available for livestreaming and should be very worthwhile!)
Last Monday at Mount St. Mary’s, Bill Mattison of CUA and myself led a forum on Pope Francis and the synod on the family. For me, the success of the forum was indicated by the Q&A and subsequent personal conversations in the auditorium afterwards, where we were able to engage questions both from some Mount seminarians and from some gay and lesbian Catholic undergrads. The very fact that both groups were present and were interested in engaging us further in real conversation is a good sign. But their different questions also indicated to me something about where these difficult conversations might go.
I had two insights in reflecting on the experience. The first was about the general presentation. Bill & I tag-teamed through our presentation, first putting into context the whole idea of a synod and of the Catholic conversation on marriage and family since Vatican II, and then turning to the events of the synod itself and possible things to look for this fall. While we presented the details of some of the concrete questions, we did so in a larger context. Rather than develop a “good guys-bad guys” narrative, both of us sought to explain the event in terms of the church trying to combine the lofty vision of the universal call to holiness that has driven Catholic teaching on the good of marriage with the need to “meet people where they are,” dealing with concrete challenges in a way that facilitated a real encounter with God’s love and mercy. This seems to me the sincere aim of at least most of the synod participants. That is to say, the success of the synod relies on a belief that, even if people bring different conclusions about pastoral practice, there is an underlying shared vision – a common good – on which all agree. A narrative of complete incommensurability, and a subsequent win-at-all-costs mentality, is probably what creates breakdown in our legislative system, and it is no different for the Church. Overcoming polarization requires that we try to understand and appreciate disagreements within a frame that identifies clearly the shared goods we have.
The particular questions seemed to indicate that audience members with different views came to appreciate this common ground for conversation. Their questions illustrate this first point, but also provide a second insight. One seminary student posed a question about “the law written in our hearts” – he was apparently appreciative of some of things we had said about Francis’s criticism of “law for it’s own sake” types, and was trying to understand law in a different way, not as an external imposition. This is good; it is definitely a considerable move beyond “the Church says so” reasoning. On the other hand, a couple gay and lesbian students wanted to know more about the Church’s teaching on adoption. They had picked up on a comment in the presentation about adoption being an emergency measure, and thus requiring prudence about different realistic options that would best serve the child. They wanted to know if this meant the Church can be OK with adoption by single parents or even same-sex couples. The way I read the question, at least, was a desire to find a way within the Church’s teaching to accommodate some paths forward, without necessitating a wholesale challenge of the entire vision.
I liked both these questions because they showed thought – they showed a recognition that if there is simply a battle between law and conscience, or law and change, there cannot be movement. But, as a moral theologian, I was also aware of the challenges opened up by these lines of inquiry. In the comments from the seminarian, it became clear that what he wanted to believe was that people would eventually feel bad if they were violating Church teaching. The “law written in our hearts” morphed into an appeal to a kind of moral instinct. At one point, he even said, “The Church doesn’t even need to teach the law” – obviously a problem. On the other side, while I was appreciative of the creativity of the question about adoption, I did worry about a kind of letter-of-the-law legalism, where careful distinction and actual prudence gave way to the search for a loophole that would be taken as permission.
Thus, the second insight: the Catholic tradition is filled with many riches, but is subject to the same kind of fragmentation that Alasdair MacIntyre describes at the beginning of After Virtue. Words like conscience and the “law in our hearts” are used, but they become isolated fragments used without regard to their context. MacIntyre’s text suggests that such decontextualized moral language is ripe for use (by politicians) as a tool for manipulation. Thus, the fragmentation can produce creativity, but it can also produce further, sharp polarization, in which decontextualized concepts (whether “law” or “mercy”) become mere tools in a political battle.
Both the form and the content of our discourse can exacerbate polarization or overcome it. The more the form of the discourse is a battle, with our words and ideas as the weapons, the more likely is polarization. The more the form is an attempt to deal with complex difficulties that cut in multiple directions, with our words and ideas as ways of better coming to grips with the full complexity of the matter, the more likely we will keep talking. Seems simple. But we humans do like battle…
“The more the form of the discourse is a battle, with our words and ideas as the weapons, the more likely is polarization.” Yes. People do like battle, and they also like to be right. I wonder, though, since this is the case, can we have some guiding principles that make even polarized argumentative “battles” more constructive? Is the problem the battles themselves or that the battles are carried on without attention to a few basic rules: don’t twist your opponent’s words in order to assign him or her views he or she does not actually hold. Don’t create strawmen. Attack your opponents argument not your opponent. Attend to facts. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks for the post.
David-
Thanks for this insightful post. Andrew suggests some helpful approaches, such as not creating strawmen. I’d like to offer some thoughts from my vantage as a social psychologist.
One challenge is subjecting evidence supporting “our views” (whatever those are) to the same scrutiny as evidence that runs contrary to them. A classic demonstration of this challenge was done by Charlie Lord and his colleagues. Subjects included some who believed the death penalty to be a deterrent and some who thought it was not. They were presented with flawed studies, one supporting the deterrent effect the other contradicting it. Subjects pocketed the study supporting their views (“See–here’s evidence I’m right!”) without questioning much. But they looked for and found the weakness in the study contradicting them and thus rejected it. As a result, presenting mixed evidence (which we might expect to moderate views!) served to polarize the groups. It is tempting to attribute this to be due to motivation. “I want to be right, so I will doggedly attack the opposition.” And likely that is part of the picture. But part is likely just how we process information. I get lots of information supporting the idea that I am who I say I am. I don’t question it when my students act like I am who I am and when people call me by my name. I *know* who I am and so this evidence of my identity draws no special attention on my part. It’s just true. But if someone called me by a different name, well that would draw my attention. To what degree is polarization in the Church about well-intentioned people accepting weak evidence in support of their own positions but finding the flaws in the weak evidence that runs contrary to their own points of view? And to what extent is that polarization heightened by then inferring that the other must hold their beliefs due to bad motivation (“they want to be right rather than reach truth”) rather than a belief around which they will rather naturally structure evidence in a supportive manner?
This work on polarization is one branch of confirmation bias work. One of the interesting techniques for combatting it is to argue for why the opposite of one’s belief might be true. Can we challenge evidence we like to the same degree we challenge evidence that we do not like? It is not an easy discipline, but the alternative seems to be holding beliefs based on weak evidence, while holding that others basing their beliefs on equally weak evidence are arguing in bad faith.
A second fun social psych story about polarization is called, well, group polarization. The original research (by Stoner. Really.) found that groups that favored risk before a group discussion favored more risk after the discussion. Subsequent work found that when groups favored caution before discussion they favored even more caution after discussion. What I find most interesting about this work is the pattern of information sharing. If group members favor risk and have, say, 5 arguments in their minds for risk but also one for caution they do not share all of what they know. They are disproportionately likely to talk about the five arguments for risk. Their reason for caution stays between their ears. Thus people in a risk-favoring group are likely to run into new arguments for risk but not new arguments for caution. Not surprisingly, and pretty reasonably given the new arguments, people then favor more risk. How could a reasonable person act otherwise? (I have particularly liked work by Stasser and Titus on this.)
And so this is a large portion of how polarization happens. Reasonable people hang out with the like-minded. They then hear more evidence that supports their views. And when they do hear evidence that contradicts their views they are quite understandably surprised and then quite reasonably look closely, finding the weakness in, and then rejecting, the challenging evidence, because most evidence has some flaws.
Michael Sean Winters at NCR yesterday also described the possibility that there is particular polarization in the commentariat. I would not be surprised if that were true for any number of reasons, one part of which is the extra motivation to be right rather than to humbly seek truth. Changing one’s mind after arguing for something publicly for a long, long while would likely bring about a great deal of cognitive dissonance. We (especially Westerners) find that dissonance uncomfortable and want to get rid of it.
I could go on. I do not have a lot of solutions that have an empirical basis. (Contact is an intuitive solution that turns out often to polarize. Having a goal that supersedes group membership, perhaps like ending the death penalty, sometimes helps. But good luck finding those goals!) I like to believe that my understanding of how people reason helps. I like to think I am more likely to attribute someone else’s disagreement with me to (a) possibly my missing something or(b) the other’s processing of information rather than (c) malice than I was before I started to study social psychology. And I think this sort of attributional pattern makes conversation with those who disagree a bit easier. As I have grown in my faith I also hold this from Isaiah dear.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
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“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
I’m just a human. What do I know? With grace I can come closer to God’s thoughts, but that strikes me as the best I can hope for. From that I like to believe that I can learn from most anyone.
I know I fall far short of these ideals with great frequency. But perhaps I am getting better.
Regarding dissonance, I had a brief conversation with Elliot Aronson (my only conversation with him) about how to avoid falling prey to post-dissonance rationalization. His thought (offered without empirical evidence) was that self-compassion would help. How important was it that in his first published interview Francis identified himself as a sinner? That identity necessarily binds our contractions (I do that which I would not do) into a single whole. There is, in some way, no contradiction. My nature is to be flawed.
Perhaps reminding folks about (a) psychology work on polarization (b) Isaiah, and (c) our inherent sinfulness (but also grace!) will help? Dunno. I hope this was helpful.