Governors without marriages. It is bi-coastal :)

So, a little over a month ago, I blogged about an irate letter in the local newspaper; the writer was upset that our governor, Kitzhaber, is living with his significant other, instead of being married to her. 

News that the governor has been living what I consider an adulterous life hurts, because voters hoped for a person who would lead Oregon to higher ethics.
History has long proved that nations with low ethics soon collapse, and is showing in our country.
Either the governor and his girlfriend get honorably married or people must recall him from office. Already people are noticing how nature is showing signs of distress by damaging storms. What is real?
God's laws still apply, even to top-level officials. They should look inside those Bibles they put their hands on and put those words into action again.

What I didn't know then, and I know now, was this: the governor of the Empire State, Andrew Cuomo, has been shacking up as well.

Over in New York, it is not the fear of earthquakes as a result of this arrangement that hit the news, but the fact that Cuomo is a practicing Catholic and, therefore, how dare he receive the holy communion!

The strange contrast though:  In Cuomo's case, it is not a letter in a local newspaper.
He has the Vatican upset.
Yes, the Pope apparently doesn't have better things to do.

Heather Mac Donald writes:

An advisor to the Vatican’s highest court had called for the denial of communion to Cuomo on the ground of his “public concubinage”—a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Catholic doctrine.  
The New York hierarchy, however, immediately closed ranks around Cuomo and brushed off this pesky Vatican busy-body.  The leader of the Albany diocese, Bishop Howard Hubbard, assured Cuomo and the world that the Church fathers would not dream of judging Cuomo’s domestic arrangements:

“There are norms for all Catholics about receiving communion and we have to be sensitive pastorally to every person in their [sic] own particular situation,” Bishop Hubbard said. 

"Public concubinage?" OMG! In what medieval century do these people live? A hysterically funny phrase!

Mac Donald adds:

I suppose I should thank Archbishop Dolan for indirectly buttressing the argument behind secular conservatism.  Not only is religious faith not required to justify traditional morality, religious leaders do not even have the backbone any more to stand up for traditional morality in the hard individual case, leavin’ jes’ us secular conservatives to stick our necks out.  If, after centuries of accumulating scientific triumph in understanding the causal mechanisms of our world, we still must have relics, amulets, magical potions, and incantations, the one indisputable benefit that religion could provide would be fearlessness in stigmatizing anti-social behavior.  Instead, we get an Archbishop who calls concern over a Catholic’s carnal sin a “tempest in a teapot” and who thanks God for cooling down said “tempest.” 

Yes, we can have morality without religions.
And that is precisely what Sam Harris argues in The Moral Landscape. 
(BTW, Harris looks like he could be Cuomo's brother!)

I, for one, point out to that rare student who engages me about my atheistic views that while the stereotype that people prefer is that those who are irreligious, or of the wrong religion, live immoral lives, hey, in my case I am an atheist who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, eats very little of animal products ... and no "public concubinage" either ....

The scientific question then is whether we can make moral, value, judgments in "scientific" ways.  I am not sure.  Most arguments I come across, and perhaps even Harris', tend to be variations of utilitarian thinking.  But, as much as I incorporate utilitarian analysis in the courses I teach, there is always something about utilitarianism that bothers me.  It could be a reflection of the religious and societal contexts in which I was raised.  In any case, to live the life that I now live, religion is unnecessary for moral judgments.

So, leave 'em governors alone!