Trying to Fly with One Wing, Part 9: Boston Legal and Henry VIII

The victim of the "crime" was an innocent-looking enough, 15 year-old blonde Caucasian girl. Sitting next to her in court were her attorneys. She was suing her high-school, represented by a distinguished looking African American gentleman, for what her attorney declared, in his closing summation before the judge, should have been a criminal trial for attempted murder. The school's crime? It teaches sexual abstinence over sexual education. The girl had broken her school-sponsored pledge of abstinence and wound up HIV positive. She claimed that had the school taught her about condoms, she would have avoided her fate of probably dying prematurely and painfully from AIDS.

Pity and Genetic

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth and Roman Catholicism. In the process it also attempts to chronicle my intellectual journey into the Church. As human beings, we arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us solely through faith, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one, to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

We are in the process of examining two of those fallacies that rightly fall under the category of irrelevant appeals. The Genetic Fallacy is an irrelevant objective appeal; and the Appeal to Pity fallacy is an irrelevant emotional appeal.

Boston Legal

The anecdote that begins this chapter comes from the television series Boston Legal, which is about a group of emotionally-challenged litigators starring Emmy Award winning actors James Spader (who plays Alan Shore) and William Shatner (who plays Denny Crane). The particular storyline comes from the October 9, 2007 episode titled: "The Chicken and the Leg."

In the episode, Alan Shore is approached by a 15-year-old girl, named Abby, who wants to sue her high school for not teaching her about condoms and birth control since she now has contracted HIV.

In the school's closing argument, the defense attorney argues that abstinence is 100% effective in stopping sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), that condoms are not perfect in combating the disease, and how it is the parent's prerogative to teach sex education to their children, not the school's.

But, in his extended and livid closing rebuttal, Alan informs the court (and us) that the school has ignored the facts of human history, that it cannot stop kids from having sex, and that the condom is probably the most important invention of western civilization; and because the disease will, in all likelihood, take Abby on a long, painful, and debilitating journey as AIDS destroys her life and finally kills her, the case should actually be tried as a criminal case, against the school, for murder.

Alan's logic was filled with over generalizations and hyperbole; and understanding his obsession with the opposite sex and his ignorance of history, we can "almost" understand why he considered the condom more important than the printing press. But there are two other fallacies in his presentation that deserve examination.

The Genetic Fallacy

The Genetic Fallacy claims that something is the way it is or is bound to happen because it is the pattern of the past, while ignoring what might be different about the situation at hand. In common terms we say: "He's just like his father," "Everybody is doing it," "She won't change," "The condom is as old as civilization," or "What do you expect, it was the 60s!"

What's irrational about the genetic fallacy is that specific situations are always, in multiple ways, different from the former situations that supposedly spawned them. The genetic fallacy believes that people cannot change, things won't change, and nothing reasonable can intervene. In short, the genetic fallacy assumes that fate is stronger than free will or God's will.

In Abby's case the writers (don't totally blame James Spader) argue that genetics totally determines human behavior and the school should know that. The writers argue (through Spader's masterful acting) that human history, and Abby's behavior are fateful and predictable. Therefore the school's lack of teaching about condoms is criminal.

What the closing arguments did not cover, however, is that Abby has free will, that the parents are perhaps more culpable that the school (why didn't she sue her parents?), and that the possible consequences of breaking her vow of abstinence were explained to her (can Abby sue herself?).

The Appeal to Pity Fallacy

The Appeal to Pity attempts to persuade others of a position by appealing to their sympathy. For example, a fallacious appeal for pity occurs when a friend tells us they are sad, and that they deserve to be happy, without ever examining the reason for the sadness. Looking to others for pity, when there is no moral culpability, is fallacious and selfish. But appealing to pity when there is clear moral culpability is sinister and gravely evil.

In Abby's case, there is clear moral culpability: first off, there is Abby's active decision, and secondly, her parents passive omission. To a much smaller degree, perhaps the school could be held to account for Abby's condition if it misled the teen about the dangers of sex outside of marriage. Fiction is convenient for writers who can conveniently leave out or include dramatic elements to support a political agenda, and in the process commit all sorts of fallacies. But, clearly, the closing arguments played heavily on having pity for Abby, as if she was the target of a malicious plot to infect her with HIV against her will and thus ruin her life.

Henry VIII and Clement VII

Variations of the Appeal to Pity and the Genetic Fallacy have been used throughout history to justify all sorts of activities, laws, and the rule of monarchs. The Boston Legal episode above reminded me of Henry VIII's moral culpability in the petition to Clement VII for an annulment of his marriage to his wife Catherine of Aragon so he could legitimize the yet to be born child growing in his mistress, Anne Boleyn's, womb.

Indeed, epic events were involved: Who would be Henry's heir? That's no small matter for an era struggling to cast off the feudal wars of the previous centuries. The history and personalities of Europe during the 1500s was raucous and inbred as any modern television soap opera; and the political and social dynamics of the Renaissance that helped to spawn the Protestant Reformation can never be explained in the simple terms of Henry's lust and Anne Boleyn's thirst for power. But I'll do it anyway, since these articles are short, and Catholic Exchange has rejected my appeal to pity for a 50,000-word footnote.

It is possible to argue that Henry's repeated petition, from 1527 on, to Pope Clement VII for an annulment, or to live in bigamy until the annulment was granted, was an Appeal to Pity. There was no male heir to Henry's throne, and without such, he believed the kingdom would be thrown into chaos upon his death. Not that such a problem justified bigamy or the annulment of a valid marriage, for which Henry and Catherine had received a dispensation from the former Pope, Julius II. Fresh in Henry's mind were the stories of the War of the Roses (1455-1487) that pitted potential heirs to the throne against each other and created great social and political strife. There was also some question about the legitimacy of his marriage to Catherine (his brother's widow). If the marriage was invalid (even with Pope Julius II's dispensation) then any royal lineage from Catherine would be thrown to the wind — at least until Parliament could be bribed to change the law. With Henry's father (Henry VII) came a hopeful end to the political and social chaos of the previous centuries and now, on the cusp of the Renaissance, Henry needed a clear heir to keep the country together.

In spite of stillbirths, miscarriages, and infant deaths, Catherine had given to Henry an heir, his daughter, Mary. Henry was well aware that a woman could easily fill the robes and authority of a monarch — Catherine's mother was none other than Isabella I, who, at the time, with her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, commanded a strong sea power, sent Columbus off to discover the New World, and laid the foundation for the unification of the feudal states that later would be known as Spain.

If Henry had looked a bit more critically, too, he would have discovered that the object of his lust, Anne Boleyn, was perhaps even more adept than he at manipulating men of power. Not only did she manipulate Henry to give her a crown, but she made good on a promise years earlier to depose Cardinal Wolsey for undoing one of her earlier romances. Wolsey, while distressed over his own future due to Boleyn's influence with the King, saw a greater threat, and told the Pope as much if the annulment was not approved: "He [Henry] will of two evils choose the least, and the disregard of the Papacy must grow daily, especially in these dangerous times." The dangerous times included, at that very moment, the sack of Rome and the Vatican by the mutinous army of Charles V, Catherine's nephew and Isabella's grandson. Wolsey found getting to Clement VII, who was in hiding, difficult. But when he did present himself, his argument for the annulment was cloaked in pity for Henry and England if there was no clear heir after Henry's death.

The Genetic Fallacy also held Henry captive, for he blamed Catherine for a genetic defect which prevented her from giving birth to a healthy son; and in such a case, he believed that the past would be repeated, having no reasonable regard that men and kings can learn a few things as time marches on.

But nothing is ever so simple; and it should never be said that the Protestant Reformation in England was brought about by these two simple fallacies. There was, rather, a series of overlapping and interrelated misunderstandings, confusions, fear, and sin — including Henry VIII's lust, Anne Boleyn's thirst for power and revenge, the Papacy's corruption, and the spirit of independence that pitted all men against the authorities over them.

There was a remedy, at least for the Genetic Fallacy. When Cardinal Wolsey could not convince Clement VII to grant an annulment and thus became useless to Henry, there was Wolsey's undersecretary, Thomas Cromwell, who had been reading an early manuscript of a book yet to be published (in 1532) by Niccolo Machiavelli entitled The Prince. Cromwell got the idea that what had always been, did not need to be anymore. Machiavelli, an Italian political intellectual, suggested that, for the sake of political stability, traditional moral principles could be put aside and made to benefit the prince and the kingdom. Machiavelli made totalitarianism acceptable. Cromwell suggests to Henry something revolutionary: "If the Pope won't annul your marriage, start your own church, put yourself in charge, name an Archbishop who will do your bidding, and save the kingdom."

It took years to "persuade" Parliament, but little by little it became treason (punishable by death) to be Catholic in England — and Henry the Eighth was made the new pope of the new Church of England, thanks to the Machiavellian Cromwell, and a new Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, who was a prodigy of the soon to be new, but short lived, queen Anne Boleyn. Indeed, for Machiavelli and now Henry, the Genetic Fallacy was to be ignored.

Defender of What Faith?

Watching Alan Shore argue before the judge in the Boston Legal episode, gave me an historical deja vu. It was as if Shore was defending, not Abby's rights to sexual freedom and a condom, but Henry VIII's right to bigamy and an annulment. Both Abbey and Henry sought the hearing of a judge to nullify their God-given vocational call to chastity. In Henry's case the pope said no. In Abby's case the judge bought into Shores' Appeal to Pity and the Genetic Fallacy, awarding Abby $750,000 in damages.

We may groan at the television writer's moral presumption and relativism. But we have Machiavelli, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, and Henry VIII to thank. To this day, the label for such moral relativism is inscribed on all British coins. Years before the Anne Boleyn affair, Henry had written a defense of the Church's sacraments, countering Luther's heresy against them. For his effort, the pope bestowed on Henry the title Defender of the Faith. To this day, every British and Canadian coin in inscribed with FID DEF or F D. Never mind that the faith the inscription now represents is no longer the Catholic Faith from which the title came, but faith in the right of a monarch to make up the rules of morality as he or she goes along. To a great extent, the individuals of Western Civilization have followed Henry's example. Such is the handiwork of fallacy.