Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: On February eighteenth, two thousand and eight, on the first
Speaker 2: day of spring training, a Major League Baseball player named
Speaker 2: Andy Pettitt held a press conference. He was a pitcher who,
Speaker 2: over the course of a long and brilliant career, played
Speaker 2: for the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros. A
Speaker 2: straight arrow, a beloved teammate, one of the good guys.
Speaker 2: But now an investigation by Major League Baseball had found
Speaker 2: that Pettit had, on several occasions used performance enhancing drugs.
Speaker 3: I want to apologize to the New York Yankees and
Speaker 3: to the Houston Astros organizations, and to their fans, and
Speaker 3: to all my teammates and to all of baseball fans
Speaker 3: for the embarrassment I have called them.
Speaker 2: He reads from notes, his head bowed and shame.
Speaker 3: I also want to tell anyone that is an anti
Speaker 3: Pettitt fan, I am sorry.
Speaker 2: Pettit wanted to come clean, sort of. I'm not that
Speaker 2: much of a baseball fan, but I have to say
Speaker 2: I've always been obsessed with his case. Obsessed to the
Speaker 2: point where if you sat next to me on an airplane,
Speaker 2: I would bring it up without warning and bend your
Speaker 2: ear for a good half hour. First off, what sort
Speaker 2: of bizarre apology is this? I want to apologize for
Speaker 2: the embarrassment I caused others others I thought this was
Speaker 2: about Andy Pettit and what Andy Pettit did wrong.
Speaker 3: I never took this to get an edge on anyone.
Speaker 3: I did this to try to get off the DL
Speaker 3: and to do my job, and again for that, I
Speaker 3: am sorry for the mistakes I've made.
Speaker 2: Pettit says I was injured. I took performance enhancing drugs
Speaker 2: to get healthy, not to get ahead. Does that distinction matter?
Speaker 2: Then he segues into this long thing about his dad,
Speaker 2: who he somehow dragged into the whole mess and now
Speaker 2: wished to drag out of it. He goes on and
Speaker 2: on about his dad's heart problems. It's all very emotional,
Speaker 2: But what does his dad's heart condition have to do
Speaker 2: with the fact he cheated? At the time, everyone waited
Speaker 2: on Anti Pettitt's public statement, including my favorite, a professor
Speaker 2: named Holly Weeks, who in the pages of the Harvard
Speaker 2: Business Review called it a self protective string of explaining
Speaker 2: back padding and minimizing with a small whan apology tucked
Speaker 2: in ouch. My name is Malcolm Gladwell, you're listening to
Speaker 2: Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This
Speaker 2: episode is the first of a three part series about
Speaker 2: how to make sense of novel problems. Because what happened
Speaker 2: to Andy Pettitt was a novel problem. And if a
Speaker 2: problem is novel, if we've never seen that kind of
Speaker 2: problem before, how do we know how to think about it.
Speaker 2: I think we're really bad at figuring out novel problems.
Speaker 2: I think we need some help. I have a suggestion,
Speaker 2: So sta you go to Rome to the Church of
Speaker 2: the Jesus.
Speaker 4: In or a seniority.
Speaker 2: The Church of the Jesu, built in fifteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: the spiritual home of perhaps the most storied of the
Speaker 2: many separate divisions of the Roman Catholic Church, the Jesuits.
Speaker 1: Ferenti.
Speaker 2: It is impossible to describe the interior. It's breathtaking color ornamentation.
Speaker 2: Take one of those standard issue Renaissance cathedrals that you
Speaker 2: can find all over the world, caffeinated heavily. That's the
Speaker 2: Church of the Jesuit.
Speaker 5: And you can see on one side you can see
Speaker 5: Saint Ignacians being presented to God by Saint Peter Saint
Speaker 5: Peter was the first pop and Ignatius was the first
Speaker 5: Superior General of the Jesuits. Saint Ignacious is buried there,
Speaker 5: while Savior, oh his only his right arm as you
Speaker 5: can see on the aldar. This his right arm. You
Speaker 5: shoes to baptize so.
Speaker 2: Many people, so that only his right armies are where
Speaker 2: he's arrested. In India, the Jesuit order was founded in
Speaker 2: the sixteenth century by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish nobleman.
Speaker 2: They're famous as the educators of the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: There may well be a Loyola High School or university
Speaker 2: in your town, or a school named after Saint Francis
Speaker 2: of Xavier. Another legendary Jesuit, Georgetown University, is a Jesuit school,
Speaker 2: so as Boston College. The Jesuits are intellectual, austere, and
Speaker 2: five hundred years ago, the Jesuits pioneered a specific approach
Speaker 2: to solving problems that were new to the world. It's
Speaker 2: called casuistry. I have to admit that I've fallen in
Speaker 2: love with casuistry. In this episode and the two that follow,
Speaker 2: I want to explain the beauty and the power of
Speaker 2: the casuistic method. It can help with life and death issues,
Speaker 2: help us resolve some of our most divisive controversies, but
Speaker 2: also smaller things as well. From the Church of the Jesuit,
Speaker 2: my guide took me next door to the rooms where
Speaker 2: ind Ignacious lived. His shoes are still in the bedroom
Speaker 2: from five hundred years ago, all battered and worn. And
Speaker 2: then I walked a few minutes north to Via del Seminario,
Speaker 2: to the graduate school of the Jesuit Order, a magnificent
Speaker 2: building with an enormous sunlit courtyard and a staircase so
Speaker 2: wide a carriage could drive up it, but not ornate,
Speaker 2: spare simple. I sat in a small room off the
Speaker 2: main entrance, where I imagine Jesuit theologians had been receiving
Speaker 2: visiting journalists since the late sixteenth century. I would like
Speaker 2: my listeners to learn how to think like a Jesuit.
Speaker 6: So here I am, so here I am now.
Speaker 4: Casure Street comes from the word cases in Latin something happened.
Speaker 4: So you give a case, which is a narrative, you
Speaker 4: say something happened.
Speaker 2: That's the theologian I went to see in Rome James Keenan.
Speaker 2: Father Keenan is in his sixties short, reddish hair, a
Speaker 2: gracious manner. He was wearing a pair of old sneakers,
Speaker 2: which for some reason struck me as odd. But then
Speaker 2: I remembered Saint Ignatius's battered shoes, and I thought, that's
Speaker 2: very Jesuit. Keenan says the Jesuit way of approaching problems
Speaker 2: is a function of what they were asked to do
Speaker 2: for the church. The sixteenth century, when the Jesuits get
Speaker 2: their start, is the age of colonial expansion. The West
Speaker 2: is being explored, the East is opening up Columbus, Magellan, Cortes,
Speaker 2: and it's the Jesuits to go out with these expeditions.
Speaker 2: The Pope asked them to be his emissaries to the world, diplomats, businessmen.
Speaker 2: And if you're out on the road thousands of miles
Speaker 2: from Rome, encountering new people and new things, you start
Speaker 2: to think differently. How could you not You're not sitting
Speaker 2: behind the walls of a monastery in splendid isolation. You
Speaker 2: have to be practical, pragmatic and Augustine, one of the
Speaker 2: greatest of early Christian thinkers, thought that the biblical commandment
Speaker 2: thou shalt not lie was absolute. You should never lie, ever,
Speaker 2: but that's not very helpful to a Jesuit in the
Speaker 2: sixteenth century in a place like say England.
Speaker 4: Now, say you're in England and Queen Elizabeth is the queen,
Speaker 4: and she's not recognized as the sovereign by the Catholics,
Speaker 4: and you've just arisseed as a priest. And if you
Speaker 4: tell the soldier that you're a priest, you're going to
Speaker 4: be dead.
Speaker 2: So is it moral to lie if you're being asked
Speaker 2: if you're a Catholic When answering truthfully means that you're dead.
Speaker 2: That kind of question is just a beginning.
Speaker 4: There's never been international law because everybody had their own countries.
Speaker 4: Now they're finding out that there are not only new
Speaker 4: lands that have never been explored, but there are people
Speaker 4: in those lands. What jurisdictions are they, What questions of sovereignty,
Speaker 4: what questions of prerogatives are there? And a whole host
Speaker 4: of questions arise that are political and governmental, and that's
Speaker 4: going to raise well, how do you make a decision
Speaker 4: about this?
Speaker 2: In response, the Jesuits reach a really important conclusion, which
Speaker 2: is that when it comes to new problems, you can't
Speaker 2: start by appealing to a principle. Principles don't help because
Speaker 2: principles are the product of past experience, and they're only
Speaker 2: helpful so long as you're still living in the world.
Speaker 2: Those past experiences help create When you're confronted with a
Speaker 2: situation you haven't encountered before, then you in uncharted territory.
Speaker 2: In those situations, the Jesuits argue, you have to proceed
Speaker 2: on a case by case basis. Now what does that mean? Well,
Speaker 2: to give just one example, there was a huge controversy
Speaker 2: over maritime shipping in the sixteenth century. Keenan has studied
Speaker 2: it extensively. The Catholic Church in those days had an
Speaker 2: absolute prohibition against usury. It was immoral to charge any
Speaker 2: interest on a When that prohibition was enacted centuries before
Speaker 2: it made sense. Many loans were from wealthy people lending
Speaker 2: to desperately poor farmers, and the farmers were being exploited.
Speaker 2: But in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, as the world
Speaker 2: opened up, merchants started shipping valuable cargoes overseas tea, furs
Speaker 2: from the New World, sugar rum and they wanted to
Speaker 2: buy insurance on their cargo. But was the premium that
Speaker 2: someone might pay an insurance carrier usury it was a
Speaker 2: huge issue than the Church at the time. Many said
Speaker 2: it was usury, but the Jesuits replied, no, insurance is
Speaker 2: a novel problem, and you can't solve novel problems with
Speaker 2: old principles.
Speaker 4: Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century wrote that a general
Speaker 4: rule applies generally, and the more you descend into the particulars,
Speaker 4: the more it's no longer a general rule.
Speaker 2: Descend into the particulars, understand what is distinctive about the
Speaker 2: case under consideration. That's what the Jesuits started to do.
Speaker 2: How First they would find a standard case. That is
Speaker 2: a case that's in the same general territory where we've
Speaker 2: already reached agreement. So usury looks like an insurance premium,
Speaker 2: and everyone agrees that usury is wrong. That's a standard case.
Speaker 2: The Jesuit say, though, there's another relevant standard case. Think
Speaker 2: of the captain of the ship. He's also a kind
Speaker 2: of insurance. People pay him something like a premium to
Speaker 2: make sure the ship travels safely from point A to
Speaker 2: point B, and everyone agrees the captain is a good idea. Next,
Speaker 2: the Jesuits create what they call a taxonomy. They ask
Speaker 2: how close does the case in question come to the
Speaker 2: standard cases. So is the premium paid for maritime insurance
Speaker 2: more like something you would pay a loan shark, or
Speaker 2: more like the money you would pay for a good captain.
Speaker 4: So they keep looking for all sorts of similarities, and
Speaker 4: then they look for where's the breaking point, where is
Speaker 4: it no longer legitimate?
Speaker 2: And in the case of maritime insurance, the Jesuits say,
Speaker 2: insurance doesn't look that much like usury. It looks like
Speaker 2: the captain. The captain is there to make sure the
Speaker 2: ship gets from A to B safely. Insurance is there
Speaker 2: to make sure the value of the cargo gets from
Speaker 2: A to B safely. Do you see how brilliant that is?
Speaker 2: Everyone was going in circles around this question, and principles
Speaker 2: weren't helping. One side shouting Pope Gregory the Ninth ruled
Speaker 2: on this in twelve eighty seven, the other side accusing
Speaker 2: the Church of being stuck in the past. There are
Speaker 2: pirates out there, round and round and round. Jesuits just
Speaker 2: say stop, let's break it down step by step. Maritime
Speaker 2: insurance is just another kind of captain, and we're all
Speaker 2: in favor of captains, right. I was not raised as
Speaker 2: a Catholic. This was all new to me. Love, So next,
Speaker 2: let's go jesuit on the case of Andy Pattit.
Speaker 7: For more than a decade, there has been widespread illegal
Speaker 7: use of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances by
Speaker 7: players in Major League baseball.
Speaker 2: In January of two thousand and seven, George Mitchell, former
Speaker 2: Senate Majority leader, former key negotiator in the Northern Ireland
Speaker 2: Peace Process, testified before Congress on the results of his
Speaker 2: twenty month investigation into the use of performance enhancing drugs
Speaker 2: in baseball.
Speaker 7: The evidence we uncovered indicates that this has not been
Speaker 7: an isolated problem involving just a few players or a
Speaker 7: few clubs.
Speaker 2: The Mitchell report was four hundred and nine pages long.
Speaker 2: It named countless baseball players as illegal drug users, including
Speaker 2: on page two hundred and twenty four, Andy Pettit. The
Speaker 2: allegation came from one of Pett's closest friends, his trainer,
Speaker 2: Brian McNamee. Quote from April twenty first to June fourteenth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, Pettitt was on the disabled list
Speaker 2: with elbow tendinitis. Macname traveled to Tampa at Pettit's request
Speaker 2: and spent about ten days assisting Pettit with his rehabilitation.
Speaker 2: Macname recalled that he injected Pettit with human growth hormone
Speaker 2: on two to four occasions. The year before, the same
Speaker 2: allegation about Pettitt had surfaced in a news report. Pettitt
Speaker 2: had denied everything, but now baseball was in turmoil over
Speaker 2: performance enhancing drugs. Names were being named. Pettit was forced
Speaker 2: to come clean.
Speaker 3: I want to apologize to the New York Yankees and
Speaker 3: to the as Houston Astros organizations and to their fans,
Speaker 3: and to all my teammates and to all of baseball
Speaker 3: fans for the embarrassment I have called them.
Speaker 2: But then the apology isn't good enough. People get upset
Speaker 2: at him. He gets defensive, round and round. You deny,
Speaker 2: you get caught, you apologize. The apology doesn't work, the
Speaker 2: same circus that happens with all these cases. Okay, but
Speaker 2: what would the Jesuit say? They would say, Wait, this
Speaker 2: is a novel problem. Baseball players using genetically engineered hormones
Speaker 2: to heal injuries isn't something that's happened before. Our set
Speaker 2: of existing principles do not help us. This is a
Speaker 2: time for casuistry. So are there standard cases out there,
Speaker 2: something reasonably analogous that we all agree on to help
Speaker 2: us make sense of this novel problem. It turns out
Speaker 2: there are standard case number one, a pitcher named Tommy John.
Speaker 2: Perhaps you've heard of him. Tommy John was very good,
Speaker 2: as good as Pettit. He played for the Los Angeles
Speaker 2: Dodgers and the Yankees. A big, friendly guy from the Midwest,
Speaker 2: also raised Catholic, as was Andy Pettitt. Not that it matters,
Speaker 2: but if you're going to go jesuit on matters of baseball,
Speaker 2: maybe it's more appropriate to stay in the family.
Speaker 8: July seventeenth, nineteen seventy four. I'm pitching against the Montreal
Speaker 8: expos I get right to the point where you're going
Speaker 8: to throw, and I felt this pain in my elbow
Speaker 8: like I've never had in my life.
Speaker 2: That's Tommy John in an ESPN documentary looking back on
Speaker 2: the injury that made him famous.
Speaker 8: And I shake my arm, get the ball back, and
Speaker 8: I throw again in the same pain. Ah, and the
Speaker 8: ball goes home.
Speaker 1: Played.
Speaker 2: He's clearly told the story a million times before. He
Speaker 2: has it down the grimace, the aborted throwing motion.
Speaker 8: I go time, I walk off the mound. Wald Austin's
Speaker 8: coming this way, and I said, Walter, I've hurt my arm.
Speaker 8: Get somebody in.
Speaker 2: Tommy John tore the ulner collateral ligament in his elbow,
Speaker 2: which is a tendon that basically holds your arm together.
Speaker 2: Baseball pitchers are always tearing their ulnar collateral ligament because
Speaker 2: throwing a baseball at ninety five miles per hour is
Speaker 2: an extraordinarily unnatural act. And in that era, the early
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, if you did that to your elbow, your
Speaker 2: career was over. You'd never pitch again. But John had
Speaker 2: a very resourceful orthopedic surgeon named Frank Job, and Job
Speaker 2: had a brilliant idea. He'd take a very similarly sized
Speaker 2: tendont from the forearm, a tendon that isn't much used,
Speaker 2: and grafted onto John's damaged ligament. John got his brand
Speaker 2: new elbow at the age of thirty one, and he
Speaker 2: ended up pitching in the major leagues until he was
Speaker 2: forty six years old, which is bananas. Other players look
Speaker 2: at how John saved his career and they start asking
Speaker 2: for the same surgery. It becomes epidemic. Close to five
Speaker 2: hundred major league pitchers have thus far had what's now
Speaker 2: called Tommy John surgery. Not to mention thousands of teenagers
Speaker 2: and minor league pitchers. Baseball players get Tommy John surgery
Speaker 2: the way the rest of us floss our teeth. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's look at another standard case.
Speaker 8: The pit players along one the right field.
Speaker 9: Forget about it. This one has hitded for New Jersey.
Speaker 10: Hi.
Speaker 2: How about the baseball player Barry Bonds, who's widely believed
Speaker 2: to have used performance enhancing drugs at the end of
Speaker 2: his career.
Speaker 4: Harry ms with a spectacular playing run.
Speaker 10: Homer.
Speaker 2: Bonds used to be slender and fast. He became huge
Speaker 2: when Bonds was thirty seven, at an age when most
Speaker 2: baseball players are retired. To Arizona, he had one of
Speaker 2: the greatest seasons for a baseball player ever. Largely because
Speaker 2: of Bonds and a dozen or so other stars from
Speaker 2: baseball so called steroid era, the league banned all use
Speaker 2: of pedes. Barry Bonds is the case that most of
Speaker 2: us agree is unethical. So in one corner we have
Speaker 2: Tommy John, and in the other corner we have Barry Bonds.
Speaker 2: In our taxonomy, who is Andy Pettick closest to Tommy
Speaker 2: John or Barry Bonds to help me figure things out.
Speaker 2: I called up two of the most learned baseball experts
Speaker 2: I could think of.
Speaker 11: Hi, my name is Jonah Carey. I am a writer
Speaker 11: for the Athletic and for Sports Net.
Speaker 2: Jonah Carey, who was one of those people I suspect
Speaker 2: tried rocket science as a kid, found it too easy
Speaker 2: and took up baseball analytics instead.
Speaker 11: I interviewed doctor Frank job back in two thousand and two,
Speaker 11: I believe, and he said that the big risk of
Speaker 11: this surgery was that if you did it, the person's
Speaker 11: hand would become a claw, which is terrifying. That you
Speaker 11: put a new tendon in and essentially it messes with
Speaker 11: the arm so much that you don't even have any
Speaker 11: tactile ability whatsoever. That was the risk. That was the
Speaker 11: risk that Tommy John took.
Speaker 2: Carrie points out that creating a new ulnar collateral tendon
Speaker 2: doesn't make you a better pitcher. It just means that
Speaker 2: you can pitch the way you pitched before. It's restorative.
Speaker 9: The tendon is there as a stabilizer. It essentially allows
Speaker 9: you to use the force that you have and the
Speaker 9: mechanics that you have in the physical strength that you
Speaker 9: have to throw as hard as possible without risk of
Speaker 9: anything happening. It keeps the arm in place.
Speaker 2: There's not a huge amount of difference between Tommy John's
Speaker 2: stats before his surgery and Tommy John's stats after his surgery.
Speaker 2: The surgery turned him back into the Tommy John we
Speaker 2: have always known. That's not the same as Bonds. Bonds
Speaker 2: used drugs that turned him into something new. A man
Speaker 2: who typically hit between thirty and four home runs a
Speaker 2: year suddenly and unexpectedly hit seventy three. Seventy three were
Speaker 2: round all the all time home runs. Next, I called up.
Speaker 2: This is George Will, political commentator, baseball fanatic, and, most
Speaker 2: crucially for our purposes, the son of Professor Frederick Will,
Speaker 2: philosopher and epistemologist.
Speaker 1: Are we now recording? Should I proceed?
Speaker 11: Yes, yes, we're recorded.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, it's good fun. I'll always take time to
Speaker 1: talk baseball.
Speaker 11: Okay.
Speaker 2: If you think it sounds like I was calling George
Speaker 2: Will from my car, you are entirely correct. He's a
Speaker 2: busy man. I had to take whatever time with him
Speaker 2: I could get.
Speaker 6: Let's look at the.
Speaker 2: Universe of cases that we've had over the last thirty
Speaker 2: years or so, and sort of can we draw a
Speaker 2: line between the ones? Can we sort of put them
Speaker 2: on a continuum from I have a real problem. I
Speaker 2: have less of a problem. So is Bonds at the
Speaker 2: far end?
Speaker 1: Sure? Sure? When Barry Bonds goes to spring training one
Speaker 1: year and he used to wear a size forty two
Speaker 1: jersey and now he wears a size fifty two jersey
Speaker 1: and his hat size has gone from seven and an
Speaker 1: eighth to seven on a quarter, that is fundamental structure
Speaker 1: of his body has changed. Then you have to say,
Speaker 1: to compete with Barry Bonds, other people have to be
Speaker 1: willing to put their bodies through this strange transformation. And
Speaker 1: that's not fair somehow.
Speaker 2: So our casuistry tells us that we're fine with restorative interventions,
Speaker 2: but we're dubious of transformative interventions. So who is Andy
Speaker 2: Pettitt closest to Barry Bonds or Tommy john So Pettit,
Speaker 2: we understand you know the story fire better than me.
Speaker 2: We understand that Andy Pettitt, who is a superb pitcher right, Yes,
Speaker 2: at one point he admits that he took human growth
Speaker 2: hormone in order to help recovery from an injury so
Speaker 2: that he could pitch longer. Is that in any way
Speaker 2: different from what Tommy John did? Carrie said he couldn't
Speaker 2: see a difference between the two. Pettitt had an elbow injury,
Speaker 2: just like Tommy John. Pettitt used cutting edge medical science
Speaker 2: to recover from an elbow injury, just like Tommy John.
Speaker 2: Tommy John didn't have multiple surgeries to replace each of
Speaker 2: his body parts with a bionic upgrade. He did it
Speaker 2: once to recover from injury. Pettitt didn't use human growth
Speaker 2: hormone on multiple occasions. He used it to treat a
Speaker 2: specific elbow injury two to four shots over a single
Speaker 2: seven week period when he was on the disabled list.
Speaker 2: And if you look at Andy Pettitt's performance after he
Speaker 2: got himself injected with human growth hormone, it looks almost
Speaker 2: identical to his performance before he injected himself with human
Speaker 2: growth hormone. He briefly used performance enhancing drugs to become
Speaker 2: himself again. Andy Pettitt is Tommy John same case. Did
Speaker 2: you have an opinion on Anti Pettitt.
Speaker 1: Only again, as you say, taking him at his word,
Speaker 1: that a it was only for recovery from exertion, and
Speaker 1: b that if anyone else wanted to match them, they
Speaker 1: would not be putting their health in jeopardy. That seemed
Speaker 1: to me to be benign.
Speaker 2: So why are we so mad at Andy Pettitt for
Speaker 2: doing the same thing as Tommy John? Why are we
Speaker 2: scrutinizing his apology for being insincere? His apology was insincere
Speaker 2: because he had nothing to apologize for, and that little
Speaker 2: bit of hair splitting that got him in so much trouble.
Speaker 3: I never took this to get an edge on anyone.
Speaker 3: I did this to try to get off the DL
Speaker 3: and to do my job.
Speaker 2: That's not hair splitting. That's exactly the point. He didn't
Speaker 2: do it to get an edge, and that's why it's okay.
Speaker 2: Why is it okay if someone operates on my elbow,
Speaker 2: but not okay if someone injects my elbow with a syringe.
Speaker 2: Is there a philosophical distinction between a scalpel and a
Speaker 2: syringe that I somehow missed?
Speaker 8: I'm going to turn now of that.
Speaker 10: Barry Bond's verdict the Baseball Star's trial over steroid used
Speaker 10: Andy yesterday and he's been found guilty of at least and.
Speaker 2: What about Barry Bonds. This little bit of casuistry tells
Speaker 2: us that our problem with Bonds isn't one of principle.
Speaker 2: Bonds isn't wrong because he used performance enhancing drugs, and
Speaker 2: using performance enhancing drugs is always wrong. No, the issue
Speaker 2: is how he used drugs. Barry Bonds would have been
Speaker 2: okay if he had just dialed it back done what
Speaker 2: Tommy John and Andy Pettitt did, which is to use
Speaker 2: medical science to smooth out the bumps at the end
Speaker 2: of their careers. Barry, next time, don't hit seventy three homers.
Speaker 9: If there were a way to ramp this up gradually,
Speaker 9: where okay, hit twenty seven home runs and then at
Speaker 9: thirty thirty five whatever, if there was some general progression
Speaker 9: going on, I could kind.
Speaker 11: Of see it.
Speaker 2: Jonah Carey was clear on this.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 2: If at thirty seven he turns himself into a bulkier
Speaker 2: power player without the speed you know, who walks a
Speaker 2: lot and is hitting thirty homers a year, He's not
Speaker 2: only just in the hall in an instant, he's one
Speaker 2: of the greatest prayers of all time. Right, without any
Speaker 2: we're all celebrating Barry Bonds. If that happens. Before my
Speaker 2: conversation with Jonah Carey, I'd never thought about bonds that way.
Speaker 2: That's what casuistry does. It reframes the problem, and it
Speaker 2: says that there is a way to make sense of
Speaker 2: difficult problems without retreating into the trenches of principle. Will
Speaker 2: and carry reminded me of a story the philosopher Stephen
Speaker 2: Tullman once told. Tulman was a casualist. He was a
Speaker 2: National Ethics Commission one of those Blue ribbon all star
Speaker 2: groups that consider witty topics like euthanasia. The group was
Speaker 2: drawn from every walk of life, but he convinced them
Speaker 2: to work case by case the Jesuit way, and lo
Speaker 2: and behold, they all agreed. It was only at the
Speaker 2: end of their deliberations when everyone was asked to explain
Speaker 2: the principles that underlay their decisions, when they all disagreed.
Speaker 2: Suddenly they were all shouting at each other, which made
Speaker 2: Toulmann wonder, if all principles do is divide us, why
Speaker 2: do we bother talking about them at all? Oh and
Speaker 2: while we're on the subject of Stephen Toulman, let me
Speaker 2: share with you this little bit from an interview he
Speaker 2: did years ago that I stumbled across on YouTube.
Speaker 12: I mean, quite often when I'm teaching, I take my
Speaker 12: dogs into class and they sit quietly while I lecture.
Speaker 12: But I don't like to take them in when I'm
Speaker 12: lecturing on Dick Copt because I'm compelled to say that
Speaker 12: Descartes thought the dogs were nearly machines, and this is
Speaker 12: an insult I'm not prepared to expose them to in
Speaker 12: my presence. I mean, I think it's And the one
Speaker 12: thing I'm quite sure is that Descartes never owned a dog.
Speaker 2: Descartes was a man of abstract principles. I think therefore,
Speaker 2: I am Toulman was a casuist who brought his dogs
Speaker 2: to his philosophy lectures and assumed they were following along.
Speaker 2: I mean, whose side do you want? This is a
Speaker 2: sat question. The Jesuits art of the Catholic Church as
Speaker 2: X is to why is it like the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: is to the military. What it?
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, they calls the Pope's Marines.
Speaker 2: James Martin, Jesuit priest, writer, editor at large of the
Speaker 2: Jesuit magazine America.
Speaker 10: But the other, the other line is you probably heard
Speaker 10: this if you've met one jesuit. You've met one jesuit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Martin is very twenty first century jesuit. He looks
Speaker 2: like he runs marathons, very energetic. He's two hundred and
Speaker 2: forty six thousand Twitter followers. I asked him to talk
Speaker 2: to me about casuistry because it's obviously been applied to
Speaker 2: much more troubling situations than ethics in professional baseball. And
Speaker 2: he told me a story. It was about the aftermath
Speaker 2: of that terrible shooting a few years ago at the
Speaker 2: Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Across America tonight an emotional
Speaker 2: response and here in Orlando, hundreds of people lining up
Speaker 2: all day long to donate their own blood after so
Speaker 2: much bloodshed. Martin heard about it like all of us did,
Speaker 2: and was devastated.
Speaker 10: And I didn't quite get at the beginning that it
Speaker 10: was a gay nightclub, and you know, it was at
Speaker 10: the time the largest mass shooting in US history, forty
Speaker 10: nine people. And so I was, you know, Paul, as
Speaker 10: everybody else was. And truly I waited for responses from
Speaker 10: the USCCB, the US Bishop's Conference, because I knew that
Speaker 10: in every other instance before that and since that the
Speaker 10: bishop's conference and the local bishops come out immediately with
Speaker 10: this statement, you know, we stand with our brothers and
Speaker 10: sisters wherever in Texas, and this Methodist church and this
Speaker 10: stopping mall wherever, we are with you. Nothing radio silence.
Speaker 10: I really couldn't believe it, and I thought they can't
Speaker 10: even rouse themselves to say they're sorry.
Speaker 2: Do you think it was deliberate like that or was it?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 10: You know one of my professors of more or theology
Speaker 10: at Boston College who I think you'd really like in
Speaker 10: terms of his writing, Jim Keenan.
Speaker 11: I met with him.
Speaker 10: Keenan in roll perfect person to talk to. He points
Speaker 10: out that for Jesus and the Gospels, sin is usually
Speaker 10: not where people are weak but trying, you know, people
Speaker 10: are really struggling, but where people are strong and not bothering. So,
Speaker 10: for example, the Good Samaritan, the priest, and the Levite
Speaker 10: simply they don't bother. They just don't bother. They could
Speaker 10: help the guy, but they don't bother. And so Jim
Speaker 10: Keenan said, for Jesus, sin is a failure to bother
Speaker 10: to love. And so after Orlando, the bishops just didn't bother.
Speaker 10: They didn't bother and I thought that was sinful, and
Speaker 10: I was really angry about it.
Speaker 2: Now James Martin is angry. He thinks that some of
Speaker 2: his religious superiors have acted sinfully. So what does he do?
Speaker 2: He descends into the particulars. The specific case in front
Speaker 2: of us is about the Catholic Church's moral response to
Speaker 2: gay people. Are there gay people within the Catholic Church? Yes,
Speaker 2: there are, Who are they exactly? Well, there are people
Speaker 2: with a certain sexual orientation, but they're more than that.
Speaker 10: I mean, the thing that most people misunderstand about LGBT
Speaker 10: Catholics and LGBT Christians is that for them, it's not
Speaker 10: often about their sexual welly, it's about Jesus. It's about prayer.
Speaker 10: It's about God and the relationship to the church and
Speaker 10: the sacs and helping the poor and their friends, and
Speaker 10: so their sexual lives are just a part of it.
Speaker 10: So would be like saying, a straight person came to me,
Speaker 10: what would you say about sex? Well, that might be
Speaker 10: one thing we talk about, but that's not the whole
Speaker 10: thing we talk about.
Speaker 2: What's the most important particular about gay people within the
Speaker 2: Catholic Church that they're Catholics.
Speaker 10: I always like to say to people, you know, it's
Speaker 10: not a question of making them Catholic. They're already Catholic,
Speaker 10: they're baptized. It's their church just as much as the
Speaker 10: pope or the bishop or me.
Speaker 2: Now Martin does some taxonomy. We have a group within
Speaker 2: our church who, in one respect behave in a way
Speaker 2: that's contrary to church teaching. What other cases are like that? Well,
Speaker 2: he says, there are actually lots of people, quite happily
Speaker 2: welcomed within the Catholic Church who in some part of
Speaker 2: their life also violate church teaching.
Speaker 10: You see with LGBT people being fired. You know, even
Speaker 10: these days, you're not following this rule. What about the
Speaker 10: other rules? Always say to people. Are you firing people
Speaker 10: who practice birth control or in vitro fertilization? No, we're not.
Speaker 10: Do you fire people who aren't generous to the poor? Oh,
Speaker 10: we would never do that. Well, why not, that's a
Speaker 10: pretty important rule from Jesus. Oh, well that's different.
Speaker 2: The casuist asks, why is that different? How is the
Speaker 2: Biblical directive to give to the poor, a teaching that
Speaker 2: has been at the center of Christian practice for two
Speaker 2: thousand years, somehow less essential than being straight? If you
Speaker 2: fire people for one sort of rule violation, why aren't
Speaker 2: you firing them for another. After his initial response to
Speaker 2: the Pulse shooting, Martin wrote an article on the church
Speaker 2: in the gay community and then a book. And what's
Speaker 2: strange about reading both is you keep waiting for the
Speaker 2: other shoot a drop. So here's my question, though from
Speaker 2: an outsider. So one responsive answer might be, if you're
Speaker 2: that disappointed in your church, why don't you leave the church?
Speaker 10: Because this is on the first of all, it's only
Speaker 10: one part of what the church is doing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right.
Speaker 10: Second of all, you could just say that about your country,
Speaker 10: your family. I mean, you know, like the current presidential administration,
Speaker 10: why aren't you leaving? People say, well, I'm an American. Well,
Speaker 10: I'm a Catholic too, And truly, you know, given that
Speaker 10: I'm not challenging any church teaching and really talking more
Speaker 10: about the Gospels, there's no reason to leave. I've also,
Speaker 10: you know, to be clear, I've also made several promises.
Speaker 10: I took a vows at Jeshua that i'd stay. I
Speaker 10: made a promise as a priest at my ordination that
Speaker 10: i'd stay. So I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, that to
Speaker 10: me is not even a question.
Speaker 2: Now again, consider what he says here. I'm not challenging
Speaker 2: any church teaching. He's not tackling this issue at the
Speaker 2: level of theological doctrine. I have to admit that this
Speaker 2: puzzled me at first. Martin is an intellectual, a scholar,
Speaker 2: a serious person like most of us. I assume that
Speaker 2: to be an intellectual and a serious person is to
Speaker 2: engage first and foremost with principles. But Martin isn't interested
Speaker 2: in bouncing on some point of church doctrine. He's a
Speaker 2: Jesuit thousands of miles from the Vatican, trying to live
Speaker 2: his faith in the real world. Saint Ignatius famously told
Speaker 2: his followers that their first obligation on their travels was
Speaker 2: to console those who were suffering or marginalized. That's why
Speaker 2: you descend into the particulars, because if you do not
Speaker 2: immerse yourself in the specifics of someone's life and circumstance,
Speaker 2: then all you can offer is platitudes or outrage. You
Speaker 2: cannot truly offer consolation.
Speaker 10: And so I'm trying to sort of encourage my brother
Speaker 10: and sister Catholics to do with their LGBT brothers and sisters.
Speaker 10: You encounter the person as they are and you accompany them,
Speaker 10: which is what Jesus does. So you know that's jesuitical.
Speaker 2: So be it, Yeah, so be it. Revisionist History is
Speaker 2: produced by Meil Label and Jacob Smith with Camille Baptista.
Speaker 2: Our editor is Julia Barton. Flawan Williams is our engineer.
Speaker 2: Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Gierra.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Carl mcgliori, Heather Fein, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 2: and Jacob Weisberg. Revisionist History is brought to you by
Speaker 2: Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Gladow