Cahiers Péguy

We've Moved

2010-09-13T21:06:00.000-05:00

2010-09-13T10:49:00.000-05:00

Teens and Achievement: let's look again

2010-09-11T08:30:00.002-05:00

...But maybe it just takes a wider, freer eye to recognize something new to express instead of just rolling into our own small circles.

While pondering the above challenge, which appeared here on Wednesday, I noticed that a few of my friends had posted an article on Facebook that had been published on Psychology Today, titled A Nation of Wimps, by By Hara Estroff Marano, who claims that:

But taking all the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about 180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth. Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps.

It is interesting to note that the article begins with the word "Maybe" but as the author gathers rhetorical speed, all caution is abandoned for the tone of grave and important certainty with which the above-quoted judgment is delivered. The article asserts that surveys of college counseling centers (conducted since 1988) are where the effects of over-protective parenting are first seen. We will have to accept that even though there is no study or survey cited (only isolated, anecdotal evidence is offered) to support the author's claim that the increase of psychological problems among students is linked to a shift in the way American citizens parent (and no scientific proof offered that such a shift has occurred), that there was some kind of sound scientific method used in this survey to determine that college students' mental problems are both more frequent and more severe (as described in the article):

By all accounts, psychological distress is rampant on college campuses. It takes a variety of forms, including anxiety and depression—which are increasingly regarded as two faces of the same coin—binge drinking and substance abuse, self-mutilation and other forms of disconnection. The mental state of students is now so precarious for so many that, says Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, "it is interfering with the core mission of the university."

The author of the article suspects that parenting styles have changed since the early 1980's; this suspicion is driven less by empirical evidence and more by the nature of the author's professional training in psychology, which posits that all psychological disturbances are caused by some combination of poor "nature" and/or poor "nurture," where parenting has a greater role in determining outcomes. The greatest problem with the claims made in the article, though, is that it offers no proof that parents are behaving any differently in the 21st Century than they did in the middle of the 20th Century. The assumption that an increase in psychological disturbances (or conversely, an increase in psychological wellness) is always caused by changes in parenting styles has such cultural currency today that an article such as this one can be published and reviewed without the reviewer or editors finding anything amiss.

The other assumption that the author makes in the article is that the purported increase in college student psychopathology has something to do with a higher emphasis placed on achievement. But how was this claim tested? What standards of measurement were used? Again, we don't know. In fact, there have always been stressors that put human beings at risk for psychological disorders; why would the drive to achieve be any more severe or damaging that the exigency to survive?

If we can make the claim that more college students are struggling with psychological issues and stress (again, it's important to remain cautious, since this article is already an unreliable source for its central thesis), then perhaps applying a "wider, freer eye" to this problem could yield a different judgment. First, we might ask what has actually changed since 1988? Across the board, the percentage of U.S. citizens who report that they belong to any form of of religion has dropped significantly since the 1990 census. While other trends and shifts in demographics have been measured by various studies, as well as by the census, the particular shift among adults who consider themselves Christians (which dropped from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2008) is indeed a factor that would impact students' mental health (the combined change for all other religions practiced in the United States was only 0.5%, which would not make any significant impression on the overall state of college student psychological coping).

That a change in religious practices effects psychosocial competence has been studied scientifically and documented in numerous studies. In just one of those studies, researchers found that "Intrinsic religiously motivated members, in general, manifested more favorable competence attributes than less intrinsically motivated members" ("Religious Participation, Religious Motivation and Individual Psychosocial Competence," Kenneth E. Pargament, et al, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion).

If a significant shift in parenting styles has occurred in the United States since the early 1980's, then this shift has yet to be studied and documented. If there has indeed been an increased emphasis on achievement in our culture, this incidence would need somehow to be quantified and measured before it could be accepted as fact.

Yet what has been scientifically observed and measured already offers an avenue whereby a more interesting and complete judgment might be made about any increase in college student psychosocial disorders. Why is this important and evident fact ignored?

Parents, and their attempts to raise their children in a world fraught with the particular dangers the 21st Century offers, will continue to bear the brunt of the blame for any undesirable behaviors that appear in their children, as long as we, as a culture, continue to ignore the impact of a worldview that shuts out all possibility of an answer to any of the most basic questions that people ask (particularly when they reach the developmental stage of the college student): Why are we here? What use are we? Why are we given this life and not some other life? etc. This worldview has become increasingly dominant as U.S. citizens abandon religious practice.

Islamophobia and Mother Teresa - Communion and Liberation

2010-09-10T18:07:00.000-05:00

Islamophobia and Mother Teresa

The proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque at Ground Zero has resulted in the outrage of many Americans and the recent public discussion about "Islamophobia" in America. These events provoke us to affirm the following:

1. We notice a growing tendency to manipulate circumstances to serve as a pretext to create a public furor that demands people make a choice between one of two pre -packaged, ideological positions. We refuse to engage in a debate about whether or not to build a mosque at Ground Zero. The reality of Islam in America brings up questions that go much deeper than that of the construction of one mosque. Indeed, one critical and open question is how contemporary American culture comes to grips with the human person's religious sense.

2. Many of those among the cultural elite, as well as many who hold the levers of power in our nation, have abandoned the religious tradition that informed the lives of the vast majority of their ancestors: Christianity. They have reduced it to a moral code or a vague myth, linked to a man dead for more than 2,000 years. Instead, they have embraced a "scientific" outlook on human life. But science provides no answer to those questions that continuously gnaw at the human heart, such as the problem of justice, the meaning of human life, or the problems of suffering and evil. In fact, science tends to stifle them. Hence, contemporary American culture finds itself weak and tremendously uncertain about any response to universal human inquiries and longings.

3. Just over two weeks ago, we marked the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa of Calcutta's birth. One who looks at her sees a resplendent human person, overflowing with love for everyone, especially strangers of different religions. Her humanity touched all: religious and atheist; Muslim and Hindu; rich and poor. Mother Teresa's life invites anyone who seeks truth to open his or her heart and mind and take a fresh look at Christianity.

4. For serious Christians, the challenge of Islam, the large-scale abandonment of Christianity, the emptiness of the dominant culture, and the witness of Mother Teresa signal the urgent need for conversion. Pope Benedict XVI recently said that "conversion...is not a mere moral decision that rectifies our conduct in life, but rather a choice of faith that wholly involves us in close communion with Jesus as a real and living Person." The Pope brings us face to face with the defining difference between Christianity and Islam: one religion bases its response to the human person's religious sense upon a message delivered 1,400 years ago, while the other offers the experience of a Man who died but is alive and present with us today. As Fr. Juliàn Carròn, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, recently affirmed: Jesus' message and even all the miracles He performed were not enough to overcome the sadness of His disciples on the road to Emmaus --only His risen presence could ignite their hearts once again.

5. We are not Islamophobic, nor do we fear our post-modern world. On the contrary, we invite all to look at Mother Teresa and at the Man to whom she gave her life. In His Person, present with us today, all can find the Truth that alone will deliver the freedom America promises.

Communion and Liberation

September 11, 2010

Notes

Benedict XVI, General Audience, Paul VI Audience Hall, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100217_en.html)

cfr. Luke 24: 13-35

What's the Topic Today?

2010-09-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

Recently, we had some friends over for dinner and as we are like-minded and obsessed with the same topics, we readily got onto those. Later, I heard from one person who was not pleased with the usual Catholic conservative cant. He found it was not an environment that would have made sense to a person who was not part of the in-crowd.

Now I'm not interested in dictating what is discussed at a party (in fact, it reminds me of the contrast between the political wrangling at the dinner table in Joyce's "The Dead" and the real issue for Gabriel), and while I felt defensive about our issues, I recall a similar experience during the time of the uproar over Obama being invited to speak at the Notre Dame commencement. I was out to dinner with a crowd that was not Catholic and who could not comprehend the rancor. In fact, a year later, no one knew or cared who the next year's commencement speaker at Notre Dame was.

I was involved with Catholic electronic communications from before the time the internet was open, when we exchanged files and discussion over a BBS network via phone lines (1987-). We typed and shared encyclicals and papal addresses before there was a vatican.va. It was exciting, and I love the fact that everyone now waits for that next encyclical to get posted. Before, people rarely talked about encyclicals. If you wandered into a Catholic bookstore, you might pick one up, as one selection among hundreds of choices. There is much to be said about all this instant and important information. And I respect causes and those who dedicate their lives to them. Those of us who want to judge events can't avoid writing about health care reform, stem-cell research, a mega-mosque at Grand Zero. If anything, we need more nuance, not less. Still, it can seem truncated, these viral Catholic threads that spiral through cyberspace, which are incomprehensible to most people because they lack the context that would allow them to be heard.

A few weeks ago, I read about a bishop of Lyons, France who went to the site of the destruction of gypsy camps, to advocate for his people. It was a great story and of course some told it. I think of Suzanne's striking piece about the sports events at the Meeting, which included the rigor of "a bicycle race that begins in Rimini and includes a pass through the Republic of San Marino, a triathlon (as well as a mini triathlon for kids), basketball and fencing (and even rugby) tournaments, and a 6 Km race", which shows a passion for life that anyone can appreciate.

I hope not to discourage anyone, or myself, from engaging in the public square. But maybe it just takes a wider, freer eye to recognize something new to express instead of just rolling into our own small circles.

A Popular Last Supper

2010-09-06T09:05:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I visited the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, "The Last Decade". One of the pieces that intrigued me most was "The Last Supper" (the Big "C"). Warhol's irony always leaves space for a dialogue, and his late obsession with religious images invites a longer horizon than his glitzy commercial pop images. The themes in this picture are so familiar, those bad boys, former Hell's Angels, now converted, clinging to the emblems of their former lives. Salvation is not out of reach: $6.99! I was struck by a section of the painting which seems to underlie the kitschy presentation of Christ, a second image of the Savior, with the details of the eye crossed in death as for a cartoon figure but sketched as a dagger, and the circle at the gather of his cloak recalls a simplified sacred heart with emanating rays. There is a dignity to this sketch resurrected from crude depictions of popular piety.

Glenn Beck to revive American Christianity?

2010-09-06T08:51:00.003-05:00

HERE is a blog post a from a few days ago by a Baptist minister, Dr. Russell Moore. Dr. Moore articulates well the problem that surrounds Glenn Beck. Much of the following of Beck has me uncomfortable, not because Beck is a Mormon, but because the way the following manifests itself reflects poorly on American Christianity. Dr. Moore says this as well. As someone who, just a few years ago, might have been swept up by Beck's movement, I encourage you to read Dr. Moore's whole post. Here are a few excerpts:

"It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement."

"There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah."

"The answer to this scandal isn’t a retreat, as some would have it, to an allegedly apolitical isolation. Such attempts lead us right back here, in spades, to a hyper-political wasteland. If the churches are not forming consciences, consciences will be formed by the status quo, including whatever demagogues can yell the loudest or cry the hardest. The answer isn’t a narrowing sectarianism, retreating further and further into our enclaves. The answer includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim."

(Image: http://silentmajority09.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Glenn-Becks-Restoring-Honor-Attendance.jpg)

The Mystery of Stephen Hawking

2010-09-05T10:33:00.008-05:00

My daughter’s boyfriend sent me a link to the Stephen Hawking piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why God Did Not Create the Universe.” Typical of me, I did not know about the article until it had gone viral.

What strikes me about the piece is not the title, which was probably written by a subaltern at the Journal’s copy desk. (In fact, the piece is an excerpt from a forthcoming book with the intriguingly ambiguous title The Grand Design.) Nor does the chilling message of the excerpt strike me particularly, as it seems to hinge on a single sentence: “As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing.” This sentence raises a few questions—including how dead certain or merely suggestive these “advances” are, and where you can get laws without a Legislator like the One we encounter in Psalm 119.

Still, what strikes me, after several readings, is none of the above. What strikes me is Stephen Hawking’s face.

For as long as I have been an adult, or nearly 40 years, Stephen Hawking has been a cultural icon: a latter-day Einstein tragically confined to a wheelchair and a battery of electronic support systems because of a progressive neuromuscular disorder similar to ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. Because he combines intellectual gymnastics with physical paralysis, and not because I have any wish to mock him, Hawking has always struck me as a disembodied brain in a chair. It takes only a short imaginative jump from this image to that of the Wizard of Oz, the disembodied head that terrorized Dorothy and company, until Toto pulled aside the curtain. Like the Great and Powerful Oz, Hawking has loomed over our culture, and when he speaks with a certain amount of electronic assistance, we feel obliged to listen. (Listen, tremble, but perhaps not judge carefully: I have never read a book by Hawking.)

Now comes this article with that face. It is the face of a man nine years older than I, a man who, since his birth in London under a V-2 barrage, has faced some terrifying challenges. But whatever his differences from me (does he have a daughter? does she have a boyfriend?), his face is a human one and that of a man who has made a career of confronting the Mystery.

The brief Journal piece begins with a snippet of Viking mythology, about two wolves who catch the sun and moon, thereby causing eclipses. The paragraph ends with amusement, to remind us that those silly old Norsemen did not have the benefit of our modern science: “After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.”

But no matter how old or silly, they were just like you and me and Stephen Hawking—clutching our slippery cosmology while contemplating the Mystery with a human face.

James Madison and Religious Liberty in America

2010-09-03T15:07:00.010-05:00

Relative to men like Jefferson, Hamilton and Washington, our fourth president gets relatively little attention in schools and beyond. This was evinced when, just yesterday, a college student expressed to me that he had never heard of James Madison. I am currently wrapping up my summer research work, which centered on the persuasive method and thought of Madison. Having had Madison at the forefront of my thoughts for the past four months, I was more than shocked that someone anywhere in the United States had never heard of the Father of the Constitution. It’s understandable, though. Madison was short, sickly and incredibly soft-spoken. Those who admired him did so for his immense knowledge, practicality and ability to identify subtle nuances in complex issues facing republican government, which would be the topic of another (much longer) post. Sadly, the ability to identify nuance doesn't earn monuments.

One area of Madison’s life that should win him a particular amount of attention from Americans, especially men and women of faith, is the role he played in protecting religious liberty. Although the bulk of my work this summer did not focus directly on this aspect of Madison’s thought and work, I thought that the Cahiers Péguy readership might be particularly interested in seeing a bit about how Madison ingrained freedom of conscience in our culture and Constitution:

-Madison attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) which was known for its liberalism (in the more traditional sense) at the time. There, under the direction of John Witherspoon, Madison studied enlightenment thinkers who had an affection for, at least, tolerance of various religious positions.

-Though the details of exactly what he did are unclear, we know that Madison rose to the defense of what he called “persecuted Baptists” early in his career. Historians suspect that he was writing about a group of Baptist preachers in Virginia who were arrested for preaching without licenses. He did this although he was not particularly religious or influenced by revivalism. This experience, he wrote after age 80, gave him “very early and strong impressions in favor of liberty both Civil and Religious...”

-After the Virginia Declaration of Rights was drafted, Madison objected to the word “toleration” for the exercise of religion. He suggested that the word be struck from the draft, penned by George Mason. Ralph Ketcham writes: “The change was crucial, however, because it made liberty of conscience a substantive right, the inalienable privilege of all men equally, rather than a dispensation conferred as privilege by established authorities.” Many regard this to be Madison’s first important public act.

-Patrick Henry sponsored a bill in Virginia that would have required citizens to pay assessments in support of churches. Madison wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. This 15-point document argued for religious freedom from the state and made arguments focused on the nature of mankind, the nature of government, the nature of religion and the best interest of religion. He was successful and not only defeated the bill, but also set the stage for the passage of the Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia.

-Virginia, in large part due to Madison’s influence, ratified the Constitution and made recommendations for a bill or rights. Virginia’s recommendations included provisions for religious liberty.

-In drafting the Bill of Rights, Madison fought for clear and unequivocal protections of conscience. Here is a quote from the article linked to below: "Madison's original draft was among the most ambitious: ‘the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship...nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed....’ Though somewhat less expansive in its protections, the final version--’Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ --clearly bears the Madison stamp.”

Here is a LINK to an article that expounds upon most of what I said above... an article I wish I found a few months earlier than this morning because it pulls everything together very well. By posting this, I’m not necessarily endorsing the author’s conclusion at the end.

This Week in Ilsussidiario.net

2010-09-01T09:22:00.000-05:00

English Spoken Here

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/News/English-Spoken-Here/

Arts, Entertainment & Media

Sharon Mollerus HITCHENS/ Hitch-22: The Last Revolution
Jonah Lynch FACEBOOK/ 1. Is technology really a neutral instrument?

Culture & Religion
Lorenzo Albacete   WHY ME?/ This is the real question put by Hitchins
Jean Louis Tauran (Int.)   CARD. TAURAN/ Interfaith dialogue presupposes a clear religious identity
Miguel Diaz (Int.)   COEXISTENCE/ Diaz, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See: we all need bridges between diverse communities
Fiammetta Cappellini   HAITI/ Fiammetta: is the world still remembering our tragedy?
Giovanna Parravicini   ECUMENISM / Sharing a passion for Christ
Gerhard Ludwig Müller (Int.) RIMINI MEETING/ One cannot know without the heart: the words of Benedict XVI

Politics & Society
Mary McAleese RIMINI MEETING/ The Forces that Change History Are the Same That Change Man’s Heart

Science & Technology

Kimerer Lamothe (Int.) HEALTH/ What the Body Can Teach the Mind About Wellness

Hitch-22: The Last Revolution

2010-08-31T09:22:00.005-05:00

Christopher Hitchens, the famous author and journalist, lays out his life story in his recent bestseller Hitch-22. In many ways, he embodies the generation which came of age during the 1968 revolution, throwing over political and sexual conventions, and, over time, shedding their illusions about socialism and pacifism. His memoir leaves nothing for anyone else to embellish on, from his early sexual escapades, to his high profile fights with prominent thinkers, artists, and politicians of the day, to his political reversals. It offers a fascinating history and perspective on the last forty years of world events and the people who made them, recalling for baby-boomers the ride they have taken through the decades, through for most from an armchair.

Hitchens' father was a career military man and World War II veteran who had found his war years to be the best and most meaningful. His mother was free-spirited and pushed his education forward. Her tragic suicide while he was a young man was a bitter experience, particularly knowing he had missed phone calls that he might have intervened. Later he discovered the Jewish roots she had concealed and found more places from his past.

His years at Oxford's Balliol College he described as follows: “a training in logic chopping and Talmudic-style microexegesis [that] can come in handy in later life, as can a training in speaking with a bullhorn from an upturned milk crate outside a factory, and then later scrambling into a dinner jacket and addressing the Oxford Union debating society under the rules of parliamentary order.”

Hitchens traveled from place to place as a young revolutionary supporting the cause, from Greece to Cuba, Portugal to Poland, and his observations during these engagements would test his socialist leanings. On a field trip to Cuba for young revolutionaries, in answer to his question about whether free speech was allowed, he was told: of course, except in the case of the “Leader of the Revolution” himself. Hitchens replied to the effect that “if the most salient figure in the state and society was immune from critical comment, then all the rest was detail” and was amused to find himself labeled a “counter-revolutionary.”

He soon discovered that journalism was best-suited to his tendency to straddle both sides of the fence and his relish for argument. Hitchens realized he could not support the curbs on freedom that a socialist regime imposes for the supposed good of all. “Whatever I might argue, I was more profoundly attached to liberal concepts of freedom—freedom of speech and of the press, academic freedom, independent judgment and independent judges.” A leading figure in the Solidarity movement in Poland, Adam Michnik, told Hitchens: “The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.”

9/11 was another turning point. “In truth, a whole new terrain of struggle had just opened up in front of me.” And this time it was personal. As the Pentagon burned, his wife couldn't get across town to pick up their daughter from school. While the multicultural left was enabling radical Islam, Hitchens recognized that “to repudiate war in [a] morally neutral way was to allow fascism a clear run.” As Hitchens challenged a Georgetown audience, would Mandela or Allende have recruited supporters to slaughter innocent bystanders to move their cause forward?

In Iraq, he saw allied forces greeted as “liberators”, and in a harrowing description he recalled the brutal chemical slaughter of the Kurds as a reminder of the unpredictable brutality of Saddam Hussein, even while deploring the war's excesses. Hitchens dubbed himself a “pro-government dissident” from the Left. After living through the revolutionary years of 1968, 1989 and 2001, he recalls Hannah Arendt’s observation of “the lost treasure of revolution” with their “convolutions and contradictions". He considers Islam the worst enemy and America the best hope.

As is well known, Hitchens bitterly opposes religious strictures and hypocrisy. Recently, he called Pope Benedict XVI that “elderly criminal” and said that he was sorry he wouldn’t see his death before his own. His sloppy accusation, from a cursory and not disinterested reading of the sexual abuse scandal, is only the latest of his regular invectives against the Church. He is currently one of the four best-known British atheists and has written an entire volume on Mother Teresa and her “fraudulent” work, along with another bestseller God Is Not Good, the title of which his friend Salman Rushdie critiqued as having one word too many. Hitchens was hired by the Vatican to critique Mother Teresa’s canonization proceedings, and he boasts he is "the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono".

Hitchens became an American citizen in 2007. He has an unabashed admiration for the American ideals, after so many disillusions. He described a deep admiration at his first sight of the skyline of New York: “I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man” and he asks himself: “How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?”

His idealism has been tempered by his philosophy. He writes: "I suspect that the hardest thing for the idealist to surrender is the teleological" and recalls Oscar Wilde's quip that "A map of the world that did not show Utopia would not be worth consulting." He states that: "It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties". He is not unaware of the contradiction between his asserting rights and wrongs and his denial that religion should give anyone such an assurance of truth, nor does that hinder him. He adds that he sees "the unbounded areas and fields of one's ignorance are now expanding in such a way, and at such a velocity, as to make the contemplation of them almost fantastically beautiful".

He shares with fellow atheist Richard Dawkins the acknowledgement of an incredible coincidence, the "sense of wonder at the sheer unlikelihood of having briefly `made it' on a planet where crude extinction has held such sway, and where the chance of being conceived, let alone safely delivered, is so infinitesimal." Again, it is personal, because he lived, while his mother had aborted twice, just before and just after him.

The coincidence of his memoir’s publication and his cancer diagnosis is especially poignant with the volume's reflections on death. The first page of his book quotes Leopold Bloom in Ulysses: “Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.” Hitchens proactively discounts any potential deathbed conversion as untrustworthy and "pathetic" because he would be "half-demented". He is only at his best and truest, according to himself, when being in full possession of his powers.

Hitchens doesn’t squirm to confront his own logical conclusion: “The fact is that all attempts to imagine one’s own extinction are futile by definition.” For a man who has always been ready to brawl over the latest injustice, he adds: “I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence.” Even after such so many and varied experiences, he complains: "How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities." He refuses any answer to this, a priori.

Reprinted from ilsussidiario.net

Where do you start?

2010-08-27T06:38:00.001-05:00

There is a very moving article by Fiammetta Cappellini from the Meeting at Rimini, "Is the world still remembering our tragedy?", who works for the AVSI aid organization in Haiti. I have been following her story at ilsussidiario.net since the earthquake hit. In each of her letters she gives insight into how to keep starting again in the face of every imaginable obstacle. What I learn from her is not to imagine that we can solve problems in any comprehensive way, because it doesn't belong to us to do this but to Another, and that presumption only paralyzes us. Instead, it's about taking steps and following the provocation. In this case, a teacher and some schoolchildren took a step which gave Haitian children living in tents a chance to continue their studies.

It is difficult to land here from Haiti to a world without cracks, to Western life, and to succeed in building a speech with iron logic and meticulous explanations that people expect. I got a bit troubled, I didn't feel up to it. I still have the impression of not being able to make people understand the most important thing: that Haitians have found hope, and trust again, and that the desire for great things that is hope in tomorrow, has taken force, and has returned to life. I thought I did not find the words to tell about the long road made of small steps which has carried us from the tragedy to a window on the future.

John Waters Reports on The Meeting

2010-08-26T19:05:00.000-05:00

The Irish Times: "Time to Revel in a Little Mystery"

"It is easy to be deceived by the content of the meeting, which on the whole appears to be a bumper accumulation of the things we deal with in our everyday culture. There are politics and science and art and music and literature and sport.

But the approach is different to conventional cultural approaches in that it opens everything out in the direction of what is unknowable. Everything that is touched upon is immediately seen to lead somewhere else, to become detached from the schemas our culture creates to accommodate knowledge that is reluctantly conceded as contingent or provisional or partial, but nonetheless claimed as a down-payment on omniscience."

- More -

This Week in Ilsussidiario.net

2010-08-25T07:50:00.000-05:00

English Spoken Here

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/News/English-Spoken-Here/

Culture & Religion
Lorenzo Albacete   U.S./ Religio-phobia in the country of religious freedom
David Kretzmer (Int.)   HUMAN RIGHTS/ Today there is a trend to over-legalize values
Giorgio Vittadini   At the Heart of Subsidiarity: Men Who Still Desire Great Things
Editorial Staff   RIMINI MEETING/ The Pope's Message: The "Big Things" to Which the Heart Longs Are in God
Roberto Fontolan   RIMINI MEETING/ Religious Freedom: An Irrepressible Need of the Human Heart
Editorial Staff RIMINI MEETING/ The Company of Don Giussani
Alberto Savorana RIMINI MEETING/ "That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart."

From the World

Wael Farouq EGYPT/ Meeting in Cairo

Politics & Society
John Waters IRELAND/ Mary McAleese: a true President for a true Ireland
Steven Meyer U.S. Nuclear Strategy: Old Wine, New Bottles?

The Church Defends the Gypsies

2010-08-22T08:09:00.000-05:00

France is having its own immigration crackdown, and for the past month President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for "security measures" in regard to the Roma people, or gypsies. Some fifty illegal camps have been dismantled.

Archbishop of Aix Christophe Dufour was present during one of the police raids. He gave this statement:

The caravans have been destroyed. I do not question the police who obey orders. But I ask for respect for persons and their dignity, under French law. Security discourses which may suggest that there are inferior populations are unacceptable. These people are Europeans and living here peacefully for the most part, some of them for many years.

The archbishop offered to meet with the authorities in an attempt to arbitrate (via @lepetitchose).

Today, in his weekly Angelus address, the Holy Father addressed this issue with the French-speaking pilgrims:

The liturgical texts of today repeat to us that all men are called to salvation. They contain a call to learn to accept legitimate human diversity, following Jesus who came to unite people of all nations and all languages. Dear parents, educate your children in universal brotherhood.

The Origin of a Cultural Initiative

2010-08-22T07:25:00.000-05:00

Fr. Giussani wrote a brief statement describing the origin of the Meeting, just months after the very first session, in 1980. What it is today was there from the beginning. An excerpt:

This is the ideal that unites: it is a response to the need to live that unites people, that creates society. Friendship: a company guided toward destiny, as I always defined it with the youngsters. The perception of a situation as the absence of the ideal, and therefore a commitment, so that it would exist, so that the presence of the ideal happens.

Therefore the event of a new initiative, the generation of an adult begins, the adult starts generating. They have created a place where one encounters a subject. The presence is this: a place. The generation of an adult, which makes present one's own life beyond oneself, it is a place where one encounters a subject. A subject, a person, a humanity, who has something to say; a humanity with a message.

Meeting: An Expansion of the Heart

2010-08-21T05:46:00.004-05:00

The theme of the 2010 Meeting, ""That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart", quoted from Camus' Caligula, started from a characteristically contemporary expression of doubt:

This sentence is part of the response of Don Giussani to a young woman who had confessed her doubt that it was all an illusion to wish for great things. His response continued like this: "Then follow it. What does it mean to follow? It means to compare all the encounters you have with what your heart tells you and when they correspond, to follow them. So, going forward you will have no fear that it is an illusion, but understand that in fact this is not an illusion. What seems an illusion, is in fact, a bias, a suspicion."

The Meeting explores a humanity which is not reduced to biological and psychological boundaries. The participants are not in lockstep, politically, socially or otherwise. They are open and ready for something new and great.

What was evident at one time is not obvious today: does there really exist a universality of the human? Is there something objective in the subjectivity of each of us? Can we speak of an "elementary experience" common to all men, whatever their race, history and culture?

On this an unprecedented cultural battle is being waged. It is enough to make a careful and honest observation about ourselves to realize that we have an infinite desire. This is the stature of the human heart.

Even more than a discussion about ideas, the Meeting introduces individuals who demonstrate this expansion of the heart.

The Meeting intends to document that the original nature of the heart exists and is the only resource to resist any attack against the humanity of each one. It will do so primarily through the intervention of Don Stefano Alberto, a professor of introductory theology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, which will be dedicated to the title of the Meeting; by the conference by Cardinal Scola and by an exceptional dialogue between the Metropolitan Filaret and Cardinal Erdo. Further, it will try to bring forth people for whom the "I" is not reduced and who are a testimony to a new subject who lives the reality of everything with a positive and constructive gaze.

(Rimini Meeting: "That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart", Alberto Savorana)

Does the anti-mosque fury mirror past anti-Catholicism?

2010-08-20T16:21:00.004-05:00

Patricia Zapor reports HERE on the similarities between the anti-Islam of today and the anti-Catholicism of yesterday. At first read, I was moved by the comparison. It made me sympathetic toward those Muslims who are not enemies of freedom, the United States, Christianity or whatever else; and it made me frustrated with those behind the sentiments.

Georgetown professor, Chester Gillis: "At its core, the mosque furor is not unlike what Catholics experienced in the United States for more than 100 years, according to Georgetown University theology professor Chester Gillis.... While there are a wide range of political, philosophical and even zoning arguments about the Islamic center plans, Gillis sees anti-Muslim sentiment -- based in misconceptions and xenophobia -- at the core of the debate."

At the end of the article, Gillis is quoted as saying, "it may sound simplistic, but you really need to know Muslims as people."

As I said, my initial reaction was sympathy for Gillis's position. However, I can't overlook the "simplistic" action he takes by saying that the anti-Muslim sentiment at the core of the debate is based on misconceptions and xenophobia, just as it was when Catholics were the center of xenophobic ire.

While I don't purport to be an expert of Catholic history in the United States, I am unaware of any massive attacks carried out against United States citizens in the name of the Catholic Church. I am also unaware of many cases where Protestant fears about papists actively working to subvert American democracy and culture were substantiated. I am also unaware of Catholics actively seeking to set up parallel laws and systems of justice for themselves as some Muslims hope to do with Sharia law here and in Europe... of course, I am open to correction! Sadly for those Muslims forced to qualify themselves "moderate Muslims," there is reason for mistrust and wariness that needs to be acknowledged and dealt with, not glossed over as "misconception" or "xenophobia."

To create a dichotomy between ignorant xenophobes and the enlightened open-minded in this debate (which goes much deeper than the Ground Zero Mosque) is stifling. Those favoring the mosque and an improved position of Muslims in the United States need to "call a spade a spade," there are violent radicals among them. Those in opposition do not need to abandon their memories, but need to be open to a reality that is different from their preconceptions or previous experiences. Each side need to be cognizant of the difficult position they are asking the other to adopt.

As always, comments of disagreement and discussion are welcome and desired!

Meeting: Irish President Mary McAleese

2010-08-20T09:18:00.000-05:00

Irish President Mary McAleese will address the Rimini Meeting on Sunday, August 22nd. Journalist John Waters, who will join the panel, offers background on her political role in an article for Il Sussidiario.

She was marginalized and repudiated by her fellow workers (some of whom have since recanted and apologized to her as President). When, later on, she acted as spokeswoman for the Catholic Bishops, she was the subject of venomous attacks which resulted in her life being threatened by unionist extremists.

Nevertheless, by sheer force of personality, McAleese emerged as a thoughtful and courageous voice, unafraid to speak up about her origins, her faith or her sense of an Ireland ungoverned by ideological prescriptions. A keen student of philosophy, history and politics, her public interventions were characterized most of all by her engagingly conversational style, by which she succeeded in saying quite complex, and sometimes quite rigorous things without conveying any sense of intellectual detachment.

In addition to all this, she was a clear-minded and unapologetic Catholic who took her faith seriously and saw no reason to compartmentalize it outside or alongside her public persona. Her work with the Catholic bishops had mainly been in the context of a forum established to address the matter of the continuing conflict that had blighted her home place for many years. She was, naturally, dismissed by opponents as “conservative” and “traditionalist”, but when the arguments started she left them all for dead.

Meeting: Flannery O'Connor Exhibit

2010-08-20T07:59:00.002-05:00

Flannery O’ Connor

The infinite measure of the limit

22 August 2010 - 28 August 2010

Meeting: Michael Fitzgerald on the Courage of Flannery O'Connor

2010-08-20T06:11:00.001-05:00

This coming week at the Meeting at Rimini, there will be an Anglo-American exhibit on the American fiction writer Flannery O'Connor (see also Traces 12:7). Screenwriter Michael Fitzgerald accepted an invitation to give a presentation on O'Connor. Fitzgerald, the son of O'Connor's close friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, persuaded director John Huston to produce the 1979 film Wise Blood, based on O'Connor's novel. He wrote the screenplay together with his brother and raised the funding for the low-budget production.

Fitzgerald is presenting on O'Connor's courage in living with lupus, the inherited illness which crippled her and took her life at age 39. In an interview with Martino Cervo, he described her ironic outlook with the story that when she was six years old she taught a chicken to walk backwards. Referring to the film, he said, "I was there with the chicken. I was just there to help, but it was the highlight of my life. Everything that has happened since then has been an anti-climax." He said:

The illness was the central event of her life. At twenty years old, right after returning home after a stay with us, she had her first attack. After that, it always accompanied her. But the limitation on her talent was a springboard for her freedom. There is one episode that explains better than anything else what I mean. In the last moments of her life, at 39 years old, she sent a letter to my parents describing the food at the hospital: she wrote of a terrible "stew that smelled like Kleenex". She was dying...

She would have deflected or laughed at the idea of being considered a great writer, which in fact happened. She would have been horrified at the idea of promoting a particular artistic conception. She was a great Catholic writer, her Catholicism and her sense of the absolute were completely at the center of everything she wrote. And this is exactly what shocked the literary world, without them knowing it. For example, there is no doubt about her influence on a giant like Cormac McCarthy.

This Week in Ilsussidiario.net

2010-08-19T06:28:00.000-05:00

English Spoken Here

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/News/English-Spoken-Here/

Arts,Entertainment & Media

Edith Bogue UNIVERSITY/ Tough research question on web site use

Culture & Religion
Lorenzo Albacete U.S. / Freedom detached from truth

Christopher Tollefsen WARFARE/ The Abiding Significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Scott Dodge The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Economics & Finance

Robert Sirico FINANCIAL CRISIS/ Robert Sirico: The Cultural and Moral Failures that Precipitated the Crash

Science & Technology
Helen Williams (Int.) CLUSTER HEADACHE/ When a headache can lead to suicide

NYC Mosque: Exercise rights or do the right thing?

2010-08-18T17:39:00.004-05:00

There is little question in my (albeit inexperienced) mind about whether or not the Muslims seeking to build a mosque, cultural center, or whatever you want to call it, have a right to do so. Bill McGurn asks if it is the right thing to do and refers to how John Paul II counseled a group of carmelites facing a similar dilema in Poland.

The full article on WSJ is HERE.

"So what did Pope John Paul II do? He waited, and he counseled. And when he saw that the nuns were not budging—and that their presence was doing more harm than good—he asked the Carmelites to move. He acknowledged that his letter would probably be a trial to each of the sisters, but asked them to accept it while continuing to pursue their mission in that same city at another convent that had been built for them... By asking the nuns to withdraw, he didn't concede them either. What he did was recognize that having the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do."

A real question for those wanting to build: As a matter of prudence, is moving forward with your plans best? Of course, it is hard to look in the face of what may be unjust objections and appear to concede. But those unjust objections, being a reality, may make the mosque a bad idea and unnecessarily fuel the anger being directed toward Islam in general. Reality does not always direct us to do what we can do just because we can do it, other factors are at play.

As for me, I don't have a concrete view one way or the other.

The Dimensions of the Human Heart

2010-08-18T05:39:00.000-05:00

The 31st session of the Meeting for Friendship Amongst Peoples in Rimini, which drew 800,000 visitors last year, begins on Sunday. The subject is the human heart. In an introduction to the topic the challenge is set forth, to break out of the prescribed mold.

We are immersed in a culture that tends to erase “man’s humanity,” the “want and emptiness … the chief sign of the grandeur and nobility of human nature” expressed by Leopardi in his Thoughts, and risk affirming a purely materialistic conception of life. The provocation in this year’s title, instead, affirms the opposite. The human being’s nature is first of all the heart, which expresses itself as desire for great things. The driving force of all human action is this aspiration to something great, the need for something infinite. The human being is relationship with the infinite. This striving is the unmistakeable feature of the human, the spark of every action, from work to family, from scientific research to politics, from art to provision for daily needs.

Journalist John Waters has a wry piece in Traces (12:7) exploring the problem of the heart in anticipation of the Meeting. We think of the heart as the nemesis of the thinking person, or a "scapegoat", as it gets carried away and messes up the plan. In fact: "The mind has effected a coup in which the heart is retained for operational and symbolic purposes, but stripped of all authority concerning decision-making." There is no way out without acknowledging that the autonomous model does not account for that "something [that] remains unexplained". There is this "irrationality. The heart, the font of the desire that follows me from the beyond whence I came, speaks to me every moment of what this `I' really seeks, really wants, really is."

Rimini Meeting August 22-28

2010-08-16T11:43:00.003-05:00

Rimini Meeting 2010

"That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart."

The Meeting Program 2010

The Program 2010 has just come out: you can find all the Meetings, Focus, Texts & Contexts, Shows and Sport.

From 22nd to the 28th August 2010 - in Rimini Fiera

Click here to read the program

Culture

2010-08-16T06:47:00.002-05:00

(@_parham) La culture ne s'hérite pas, elle se conquiert. Culture is not inherited, it is conquered. --André Malraux

When surrounded by beauty, something happens.

2010-08-15T09:42:00.004-05:00

Earlier this month, I visited my home-state of Colorado and was given the chance to hike a fourteener (a mountain at or above 14,000 ft). It was barely unsuccessful because a closed road added 3 miles to the beginning of the journey, which was more than enough to keep us from summiting until after lightning started to roll in. We then camped near the Great Sand Dunes National Park and spent the next morning marveling, climbing, and (admittedly) playing in the hot sand surprisingly found in the middle of the Rockies.

At times, my friends and I could not help but to announce our amazement at the sights in front of us. How could such delicate plants and animals be placed with and survive within such unforgiving conditions as the tundra and the Dunes? What could possibly conceive of such original beauty as that had by a mountain? How is it that we have the opportunity to see some of these sights that very few people ever have or ever will? The circumstances left us in the position of being unreasonable were we not to recognize and acknowledge Someone behind this. Someone all loving and all creative. This acknowledgement was evident among us even if it was not always explicit... What a true leap of faith it would require to look at all we saw and affirm nothing!

Interesting fact: The Great Sand Dunes in Colorado are home to at least six species of insects found no where else on Earth. (I found this interesting enough to share, I hope it was interesting enough to read!)

Here are a few pictures taken by Paul:

Too Orthodox for a Catholic College?

2010-08-13T13:38:00.004-05:00

Seton Hall University has been searching for a new president. Shortly after the list of two candidates was narrowed to one (viz. Msgr StuartSwetland), members of the faculty protested Msgr Swetland's candidacy, citing his orthodox Catholic beliefs. The faculty senate passed a resolution declaring the search for a president unfinished and asking for an openness to a non-Catholic priest candidate.

From The Catholic World Report:

When Msgr. Swetland withdrew his candidacy, Thomas White, the Seton Hall spokesman, told the Star-Ledger, “This is probably best for both parties…it’s important we get it right…Msgr. Swetland is tremendously talented and will go on to great things, I am sure.” Unfortunately, the Star-Ledger also reported that (unnamed) Seton Hall “officials” said that Swetland was “seeking a long list of perks, including a three-year severance package.” In an interview with a Star-Ledger reporter, Msgr. Swetland denied making any of those demands and said he was disappointed that details of the talks had been openly discussed. This sort of backlash is common when well-qualified orthodox Catholics apply for faculty and leadership positions on Catholic campuses. The reasons for not hiring them are never attributed to their faithfulness or to their orthodox beliefs. Rather, they are portrayed as unable to collaborate, too rigid or intolerant, inexperienced, or as in this case, wanting “too much money.” FULL ARTICLE

Obviously, the timing and circumstances only lead to speculation that Msgr Swetland's orthodoxy was behind the way things played out... Either way, elevating those with non-Catholic sentiments/beliefs/missions to administrative po

sitions in Catholic academic settings is one thing (as Marquette almost did), but making orthodoxy handicap is another. The latter almost seems more egregious because it reveals an outright disdain for Christ as the Church proposes Him rather than a possibly innocent intellectual curiosity in other traditions.

For Marquette to give a position to Jodi O'Brien would have been irresponsible. For Seton Hall to reject Msgr Swetland for his orthodoxy (I recognize that this is not exactly what happened) would have been far more forgetful of Christ.

Msgr Swetland speaking at Benedictine College's (my alma mater) 2010 Commencement Exercises

The Ideal of Marriage

2010-08-12T17:09:00.001-05:00

Every society has its ideals and ideologies, about marriage as much as about any other institution. And the fact that wedlock was once somewhat more about property and somewhat less about love than it is today doesn’t mean that our ancestors didn’t have their own theories of marriage, and their own arguments about what the institution meant and ought to mean.
Read the Greeks and Romans; read the New Testament; read Shakespeare and The Book of Common Prayer. There was never a time when human beings weren’t building ideologies of marriage, and there was never a culture where those ideologies didn’t have an impact on how people wed and parented and loved.
This means that if the ideology that justifies defining marriage as lifelong heterosexual monogamy gets swept into history’s dustbin, we won’t suddenly be flung into a landscape where the only real things are people and the people they love. We’ll just get a different ideology of marriage in its place, one that makes a different set of assumptions and generalizations and invests the institution with a different kind of purpose.

Ross Douthat punctures the ideal in the new ideology with "We're All Marriage Ideologues". A sense of failure seems to have swept over many of those who hold a Christian view of marriage since this Proposition 8 hearing, though this ideal has been betrayed not only in the last forty years, but continuously in the history of our race. Whatever the legal outcome, the vision we have and the faith we keep is the necessary witness to the origin of this union as recorded in Genesis (and immediately broken): equal and complementary, fruitful and self-giving, and dependent on God's mercy. Even those who have endured the awful rupture of divorce or raised children separate from biological parents or struggled with same-sex attraction can offer a testimony to the ideal, a sign that refers to the final and complete faithfulness that only Christ can offer to each one.

A Euthanasia Fight in Canada

2010-08-11T06:19:00.001-05:00

Friends of ours have involved themselves in a fight to protect the vulnerable in Canada with a manifesto issued from McGill University.

“It is critical for our society to conclude this debate with an unequivocal renunciation of euthanasia,” said Dr. Gerald Batist, chair of the department of oncology in McGill’s faculty of medicine. “As a cancer doctor who works with chronically ill and terminal patients frequently, my goal is to find the best way to help them live their lives. The solution is enhancing resources, not giving up on people,” he added.

Also, Dr. Marc Beauchamp publicly denounced the lie that was being circulated in Quebec that 75% of physicians supported assisted suicide, when in fact only 23% had returned the survey.

I am impressed by this effort among friends as a beautiful example of the "charity in truth" that the Pope keeps insisting on, which seeks the good of the person in view of the truth of their destiny.

Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace.

Benedict XVI on Julian the Apostate

2010-08-10T08:59:00.000-05:00

"24. A mention of the emperor Julian the Apostate († 363) can also show how essential the early Church considered the organized practice of charity. As a child of six years, Julian witnessed the assassination of his father, brother and other family members by the guards of the imperial palace; rightly or wrongly, he blamed this brutal act on the Emperor Constantius, who passed himself off as an outstanding Christian. The Christian faith was thus definitively discredited in his eyes. Upon becoming emperor, Julian decided to restore paganism, the ancient Roman religion, while reforming it in the hope of making it the driving force behind the empire. In this project he was amply inspired by Christianity. He established a hierarchy of metropolitans and priests who were to foster love of God and neighbour. In one of his letters,[16] he wrote that the sole aspect of Christianity which had impressed him was the Church's charitable activity. He thus considered it essential for his new pagan religion that, alongside the system of the Church's charity, an equivalent activity of its own be established. According to him, this was the reason for the popularity of the 'Galileans'. They needed now to be imitated and outdone. In this way, then, the Emperor confirmed that charity was a decisive feature of the Christian community, the Church."
Deus Caritas Est

Apostate Christianity or Renewal of Culture?

2010-08-09T20:46:00.000-05:00

In a provocative post at On the Square, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart makes an analogy between Christian activists and Julian the Apostate. Hart's post recalls Charles Péguy's lament: "For the first time after Jesus, we have seen, beneath our eyes… a new world arise… a society taking shape… after Jesus, without Jesus. And what is most terrible, my friend, it cannot be denied, is that they have succeeded… You are the first of the moderns" (Véronique qtd in Traces).

Hart tells us that Julian's "hatred of Christianity rose out of an always deeper reserve of genuine, guileless affection for the beauty and nobility of the pre-Christian order, and a profound faith in its invincible vitality." But in fact, Julian had the idea that the pagan tradition would offer a motive for charitable works comparable to those of Christianity, even though this paganism had never born such fruits before. Christianity had already changed what Julian knew of his paganism. At any rate, Hart is right about one thing, Julian's attempt to reproduce Christian virtue without Christ has much in common with contemporary attempts to preserve all kinds of customs, morals, and institutions apart from the encounter with Christ which caused them to sprout in the first place.

What's at issue is the nature of culture. Is culture a template, a schema, "a blank form to be filled in" or is it that which begins with "something that has happened to us and that we can’t tear our eyes away from, a singular living reality" (to bring back the quote Sharon posted on August 3: "The Beginning of Culture")? Does Christ bring with Himself a renewed affection for human life? The test of life would then be this: "everything can be encountered and compared taking as a criterion the clarity about man brought by the Christian revelation, and using this criterion, we can retain and give value to what is true and good in everything (Communion and Liberation: A Movement in the Church, p 80). At root, culture begins in a realization that God who has drawn near to us in Christ has not abandoned us.

St. Edith Stein and her Companions

2010-08-09T04:37:00.002-05:00

Father Hamans, has undertaken the onerous task of compiling biographies, often accompanied by photographs, of many of the religious and laity who were rounded up from their various convents and monasteries and homes on the same day as Saint Edith Stein, August 2, 1942; most of them were taken to the Amersfoort concentration camp and from there put on trains to Auschwitz, where the majority, soon after their arrival at the camp, were gassed and buried in a common grave between August 9 and September 30, 1942. They were all Catholic Jews, and their arrest was in retaliation for the letter of the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands that was read from the pulpits of all churches on July 26, 1942. (Foreword by Dr. Ralph McInerny to Auschwitz and Catholic Jews)

Today is the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin, Martyr. She was a German philosopher-convert who entered the Cologne Carmel at the time of Nazi persecutions. After her profession, she moved to the Carmel of Echt in Holland in 1938 because of the danger to her community of her presence. Documents produced for Edith Stein's canonization describe the circumstances of the Jewish Holocaust in Holland.

In 1942, the Nazis invaded neutral Holland and began to round up the Jews for deportation. While the Dutch government hesitated to confront the Nazis, the Christian churches formulated a strong response which included a day of prayer and a statement from the pulpit. The Nazis offered ostensibly to protect those Jews who belonged to the various congregations, if the churches did not go ahead with their protest. The Catholic bishops proceeded with reading their declaration on July 26, 1942, which included Jesus' prophecy about the fate of Jerusalem which was understood to refer to the Nazi regime: "Truly, the days will come upon you, when your enemy will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on all sides. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children and will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you have not recognized the time of your visitation from God."

The response from the Reich Commissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart was unequivocal: "Since the Catholic bishops interfered in this matter which was not their concern, the entire population of Catholic Jews are to be deported this week. No interventions are to be considered. Commissar General Schmidt will deliver the official reply to the bishops during a party function on Sunday, August 2, 1942." In all, 4,000 Christian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, 200 of them Catholic, including St. Edith Stein and her sister Rosa.

Learn from St. Thérèse to depend on God alone and serve Him with a wholly pure and detached heart. Then, like her, you will be able to say ‘I do not regret that I have given myself up to Love’. (St. Edith Stein)

Humanity and the Church

2010-08-08T21:51:00.000-05:00

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-paper-raphael-masterpiece-is-meant-for-the-liturgy-not-the-museum/

"Vatican City, Aug 7, 2010 / 05:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The place of Raphael's “Transfiguration” in an art museum and not in a place of worship means the “most beautiful painting in the world” has lost most of its ability to speak, an article in L'Osservatore Romano has claimed. The Vatican newspaper says that the venue rendered the artwork into little more than an object.

Raphael's final work, the "Transfiguration" was painted on a wooden surface over a period of four years up until his death in 1620. Centuries ago it hung in a church. Since then, it has been on display in the Vatican Museums' Pinacoteca, or picture gallery, for the last 200 years."

Sharon recently tweeted this intriguing report. Here, you have a painting whose original purpose for for the liturgy but which the Church has moved to a museum. It reminds me of T.S. Eliot's question, "Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?" Fr. Giussani reminds us that both share the blame. As a result, I attend Mass in a yellow brick building with abstract unearnest stained glass and the usual paintings and statues: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Mother of Perpetual Help, Divine Mercy (above the confessionals), full relief stations of the cross, Peter & Paul, the Holy Family, the Crucifix. The art is nominal: it's there, it has a place, and yet there's barely room for a human breath, a human question.

A few years back, after a friend asked me about Kansas City's Caravaggio, I visited St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness. A sketch by the nameplate on the wall showed what the paining would have looked like in the context of a chapel. I had some time, so I stayed a while and contemplated St. John and his profound solitude. I wondered what point in John's mission Caravaggio was illustrating: either the moment of beginning to wait for the Messiah in the desert, or that moment after Peter and Andrew left him to follow Jesus. Since I was in front of the painting for a while, a woman asked me what I saw in the painting, and I said it was John's solitude: the weariness, grime, and aloneness after having sent his disciples to follow Jesus instead. So, this woman said to me that it was the story that attracted me. If I go back and somebody asks me this question again, I'll say that it's the same reason I look at a photo of my grandfather: because I miss him and want to be close to him.

So, this split between mankind and the Church persists. But it's not complete. One can still sit in front of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and feel the human question. The parish where I was married has an icon of Jesus's baptism, handpainted stations of the cross, and a painted crucifix from Italy (this replaced a dingy bronze risen Christ). And one can still contemplate a painting or statue in a museum: Caravaggio, Rothko...

Can Man Create Himself?

2010-08-08T06:09:00.001-05:00

From an interview in Traces with philosopher Pietro Barcellona, "Can Man Create Himself?"

Man’s freedom requires the mystery, it requires indetermination. Freedom is associated with pain, with loss; this is why men are afraid of freedom. It intimidates the one who commands and the one who is commanded. Ours is a world that wants to be commanded; the majority of men are undergoing an assault that produces a herd mentality, where what dominates is the consumerism that controls desire and exhausts everything in the instant.

He goes on to argue the absurdity of imagining our life as it is without a Creator. Can we picture a van Gogh painting as random? And that while intelligence is an attribute of the species for survival, love is something other.

The Best Thing About Being a Bishop ... Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez, OFM

2010-08-06T15:29:00.001-05:00

In an interview with Michael Sean Winters at NCR, Archbishop Gonzalez of San Juan, Puerto Rico, shares what is the best thing for him about being a bishop: the "new evangelization". It can't be easy to be a bishop, especially this year, so this bishop's affirmation is a real sign that all is well.

I am noticing a new enthusiasm in the Church for what are often small communities of people sharing an intense Christian life. In my parish, our pastor recently went out of his way to meet with and invite our little CL group to start having School of Community at the parish again and to welcome the parishioners to join us. Instead of being just accommodated, there seems to be a new push to seek out the life of the Church and bring it forward where it can be seen. The archbishop's emphasis below on the word "organism" as life, as opposed to a program, underlines this phenomenon. This excitement is something that pushes me to want to live the charism more fully, because someone else sees something new that I don't want to take for granted.

The best thing about being a bishop in 2010 is to see the call for a “new evangelization” begin to come to fruition....
One of the areas where we see this new evangelization at work is in the new ecclesial movements such as Communion & Liberation, the Neo-Catechumenal Way, and Focolare. These groups are finding new ways to invite believers to deepen their relationship with the Lord, new ways to express their experience of faith, new ways to proclaim the Gospel to our modern culture which often seems awash in a sea of relativism and despair.
In announcing the new pontifical Council for the New Evangelization in June, Pope Benedict XVI used an interesting word. He said, “I have decided to create a new organism, in the form of a pontifical council, with the principal task of promoting a renewed evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of faith has already resounded and where there are churches of ancient foundation present, but which are living through a progressive secularization of society and a kind of ‘eclipse of the sense of God,’” The word “organism” indicates to me that the bishops of our day, with their clergy and lay faithful, must see this new evangelization not in programmatic or bureaucratic terms, but as a way of life, rooted in the event of Jesus Christ, growing in new and creative ways. It is exciting to be a bishop at a time when our apostolic calling to spread the Good News once again is the focus of new and exciting ways, spreading the Gospel to a culture that is as hungry for God as was the Mediterranean culture to which Sts. Peter and Paul preached.

Q & A: Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez, OFM

A Problem of Attention

2010-08-04T17:30:00.001-05:00

If we are attentive to how the things we learn happen, life is easy. What Giussani says is always striking to me: “The problem of life is not a problem of intelligence; it is a problem of attention.” Attention is openness to reality that is so complete that it becomes true intelligence: the capacity to become aware of reality according to all its factors, excluding nothing, always discovering new things and still more things happening. And so you see that we can be ransomed from our form, thrown wide open to totality. And if we grasp this, then the activity of the cultural center forms a part of the great educational purpose which is the reality of the movement, because we collaborate with this openness to totality. We have nothing else more interesting, more important to do.

Fr. Juliàn Carrón

This Week at Il Sussidiario - English Spoken Here

2010-08-04T10:19:00.001-05:00

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/News/English-Spoken-Here/

Culture & Religion

Lorenzo Albacete U.S./ Ground Zero and the Mosque: a Cultural or a Religious Issue?

Scott Dodge ANNE RICE/ Was she out to be converted, or to convert?

Anna Alemani FAMILY/ Why parents hate parenting

Austen Ivereigh CHURCH/ Anglican Traditions Reach a Crossroads

From the World

Mariangela Sullivan U.S./ Group Calls on Obama to Give Safe Passage to Illegal Immigrants Returning to Mexico

Politics & Society

Christopher Tollefsen U.S./ Healthcare, Abortion, and the Call of Conscience

Adrian Pabst UK/ The 'big society' needs religion

Gianfranco Amato U.K./ Radical Islam Spreads in British Prisons Through Unequal Treatment and Coercion

The Beginning of Culture

2010-08-03T07:38:00.001-05:00

Culture is not a blank form to be filled in, when its beginning is something that has happened to us and that we can’t tear our eyes away from, a singular living reality.

Luigi Giussani

Education without Teachers

2010-08-02T09:44:00.002-05:00

I can tell you one simple truth from my experience out there: The values of the executives who steered that ship of disaster look very similar to the values of those among us who think that the way to sustain the great tradition of public higher education is to trim expenses by outsourcing the teaching—the core of the undergraduate experience—to grad students and adjuncts. (An Academic Rip Van Winkle - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education)

After documenting the misery of work as an adjunct without prospects of a steady, affordable living, David Hiscoe asks what's in it for the students. Not much. Just more debt as the institution builds itself while losing its focus. Adjunct teachers aren't always there, not continuously from semester to semester, and not between classes as they hold down other jobs or travel between campuses. Often, an adjunct doesn't even have a desk of their own. Education with only ad hoc teaching isn't sustainable.

Weakness of Faith and the Irish Church Scandal

2010-02-20T06:38:00.000-06:00

The Pope's meeting with the Irish bishops over the pedophilia scandal did not bring closure to the crisis. Nor could it. This is the long task for the Irish church as it is for the U.S. From reports, the Pope pointed to a "weakening of faith" as the cause of this crisis. This seemed abstract to many, even "shocking" to one victim advocate, as most are looking for more resignations and rules. On the contrary, it is the incisive key not only to the past but to the future where the temptation to power lurks in so many forms.

Faith in Christ engenders the community where trust flowers as in the best of families. Conversion as a life process is fostered in fellowship and with the sacraments. Formalistic roles and rituals without the heart of faith resist the change that every human heart requires for healthy relationships. John Waters, who has been following this crisis at ilsussidiario.net, describes this loss of the practice of faith in recent decades:

Irish Catholicism had long since ceased to offer a coherent version of Christianity to the generations it had itself educated out of poverty and ignorance. Despite the fervent shows of devotion at the time of Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979, the writing was already on the wall. Although now speaking to one of the best-educated populations in the world, the Irish Catholic Church was still pushing the same limited and simplistic moralism it had promoted in the dark days of post-Famine Ireland, an essentially fear- and rule- based religiosity that achieved no productive engagement with the freedoms that had become available to the generations born after the middle of the 20th century. The scandals of the 1990s and after, therefore, provided the perfect alibi for those generations to reject the Church and all it stood for, exposing Irish Catholicism to charges of rank hypocrisy and enabling many of the formerly faithful to dismiss certain inconvenient elements of the Church’s teaching.

The victim's work is a challenging one. There is the human need for acknowledgment and for some form of justice, something admittedly in short supply in the real world and even where it should first be found, among believers. This is owed to those the Church is responsible for in her ministries. Then there is the need to practice forgiveness, for the good of oneself as well as another, which particularly given the seriousness of the offense can hardly be done without the help of the innocent One who offered himself for every last one of our sins. This can be a very long process which demands our patience and prayers.

But as Waters points out further on, a scandal is always most convenient for all those who would project all evil outside themselves.

There are, of course, elements of disingenuousness about these responses. Reports of sexual abuse by priests have been deeply shocking for many people, but few can say that they were unaware of the picture outlined in last year’s Ryan Report, concerning physical abuse and maltreatment of children in church-run institutions over many decades. But, far from relieving the Church’s situation, this has made things worse, because the society now seeks to find ready scapegoats for a cultural phenomenon in which many more people – judges, policemen, social workers, child protection officers – are implicated than are now willing to admit to their roles. For as long as the church remains the centre of attention, the other guilty parties will be able to avoid the wrath of a culture seeking to purge its guilt and shame by expressing as much outrage as is humanly feasible.

The forms of violence that we practice today are not so easily recognized and reviled, but we will be called to account for them later and may not be found innocent. Speaking of children alone, with abortion as the obvious and catastrophic pinnacle: we also accept the severing of families as normal; we hand our young people over to "safe sex" practices, short-cutting the maturing process they need for lifelong bonds; we push and stress out and over-medicate kids to produce an image of ourselves that we could never be. Without faith, which admits that not we but Christ is the answer to our wobbling hearts, we will do all this and more.

Photo: Crucifix, La Mercè Basilica, Barcelona

The Catholic Hospital

2010-02-17T05:03:00.001-06:00

Msgr. Albacete's column this week at ilsussidiario.net is on the difference of the Catholic hospital: "What Defines a Catholic Hospital?" It comes down to presence and hospitality. This difference risks to be lost as Catholic hospitals are bought up by mega-health systems.

I visited my doctor at one such hospital in the Bronx. It used to be called “Our Lady of Victory” Hospital. It was a small, community-oriented hospital, open to the amazing diversity of people in its neighborhood. I remember the statue of Our Lady outside the main entrance as if welcoming the varied sons and daughters into their common home to share, even in the midst of their sickness and pain, the victory of Her Son. The statue is, of course, gone, and the chapel with the Blessed Sacrament is now a meditation room. I asked my doctor’s secretary, a “New York Puerto Rican” whether she has worked there before “Our Lady of Victory” Hospital became part of the Montefiori health care empire, and she said she had. Then I asked whether she noticed any difference now from the way it was then, and she said: “Things are more efficient now, but something is missing, a warmth, a human warmth associated with Our Lady” (I don’t think she had read Dante’s reference to the “caldo…” in his Hymn to the Virgin!).

The threat to identity is not only due to financial strains. Speaking of another Catholic hospital, Albacete points out that we ignore history and miracles and in particular the Eucharist, which is neglected just where He should be most prominent.

First of all this hospital is the place of the miracle, accepted by the Holy See, that led to the canonization of the first American born saint: St. Elizabeth Seton. On the hallway that leads from the lobby to the elevators there is a big portrait of Mother Seton, at the entrance of the chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is kept. Still I have not been able to find a single person in the hospital who knows this particular and important event in the history of the U.S. The Eucharist is not celebrated in the chapel of the hospital. Instead is celebrated in a nursing home connected to the hospital and at a regular parish down the street, in the same block of the hospital complex.

When I asked one of the sisters who used to run the hospital why no Mass was celebrated at the hospital, she answered: “Because not too many people would be able to attend the Mass, and those who wanted to go could go to the nursing home or to the parish.” I tried to explain to her that the celebration of the Eucharist has nothing to do with number of people that attend. If only one person, one patient could go it’s worthwhile; in fact, if no one goes, Mass is still a miracle at the source of all miracles, including the one that led to Mother Seton’s canonization. Our relation with the Eucharist is the first stage of what makes us human and therefore of the warmth that defines a true Catholic hospital.

What is true for the Catholic hospital is true for the Catholic school is true for the Catholic social agency. In the large network of state-funded Irish orphanages of decades ago, evidently the Catholic presence was lost, and institutions became horrors.

I was struck by what Fr. Carron said some time ago about missionary efforts by AVSI, that even when more funds are available, they would never set up a mission without the presence of those believers who carry this awareness with them.

Charity in La Veuve de Saint-Pierre

2010-02-16T04:43:00.000-06:00

La Veuve de Saint-Pierre ("The Widow of Saint-Pierre"), a 2000 French film directed by Patrice Leconte, is a fine exploration of the problem of charity and a beautiful period piece. The setting is 1849 in a French colony of islands off Newfoundland. Two assailants brutally murder a man and one, Nell, is condemned to die by guillotine ("veuve" is also the slang term for guillotine and offers a double-entendre for the title). His accomplice is killed by a mob on the way to prison. The colony must wait for the apparatus and find an executioner, a matter of months.

Captain Jean has custody of the prisoner. Meanwhile, his wife, called Madame La, takes on the prisoner as her protégé. She is determined in her plans to rehabilitate him, which includes gardening, helping with community projects, and learning to read. Her husband is wholly devoted to her to the neglect of his duties. The townspeople befriend the condemned, and all but the island's intransigent governors are content. By the time the ship arrives with the guillotine after a long winter and a hapless refugee recruited as executioner, the city is up in arms.

Two men in the story will see a larger picture in the conflict, which is a charity that is connected to destiny and not simply a willful project. Such charity is ultimately impossible without sacrifice.

Homo Viator

2010-02-15T08:27:00.000-06:00

It was strange, just days before the Christmas bombing attempt, to watch George Clooney's smooth concourse through airports as Ryan Bingham, the traveling man with exceptional flying credentials and scant human connections.

The metaphor may be too cute, but the script and acting painted a vivid picture of the times. The upper Midwestern wedding scene is a classic. The Canadian director and scriptwriter Jason Reitman also produced Juno in 2007 and the film had that feel to it.

The social cues are confused, and the cultural props for relationships have been removed. Even for the well-intentioned, platitudes don't hold up. The generational clash between Bingham and a tech-savvy young colleague implies an accusation of selfishness, for having left young people without the signposts for communal life.

Even Ryan's cynical answer to the question "How much does your life weigh?"can't protect him from the journey.

Harry Wu: Laogai, the Chinese Labor Camps

2009-08-23T17:23:00.000-05:00

Rimini TV: Harry Wu with John Waters

Laogai Museum in Washington, DC.

Harry Wu at Wikipedia

“Perez… that’s a very hot topic in our country right now” and ...

2009-04-20T17:42:00.000-05:00

I have not watched a beauty pageant since I was around 7 years-old, when the Miss America Pageant was 1970s “must see T.V.” I certainly do not plan to start watching pageants now. Since it was all over the news this morning, I can’t help but laud Miss U.S.A. contestant, Carrie Prejean, a.k.a. Miss California, who, when asked by pageant judge Perez Hilton, whether she thought every state should follow Vermont and the three other states that have given legal recognition to same-sex marriage, responded: "Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what, in my country, in my family, I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offence to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you."

It was not enough to ask a baiting question and accept the answer given, Mr. Perez, who is a well-known and very vocal advocate for same-sex marriage, lambasted Prejean after the contest, saying that her answer was "the worst answer in pageant history." Why? One can only surmise that it is because she neither came out in favour of same-sex marriage, nor did she choose to be "diplomatic" and avoid answering the question directly. Isn’t this a bit like seating a V.P. of Citibank as a pageant judge and her asking contestants what they thought about Hank Paulson’s TARP legislation? In fact, it was a question about bank bailouts that Prejean’s competitor, Kristin Dalton, Miss North Carolina, who went on to be named Miss U.S.A., was asked, but not by a bank vice-president.

Being a generous man, Mr. Hilton went so far, after the pageant, to suggest an answer he would not have found offensive: "Perez, that’s a great question and that’s a very hot topic in our country right now. I think it’s a question that each state should answer for themselves because that’s our forefathers designed our government. The states rule themselves and then there are certain laws that are federal." Looking back at Carrie Prejean’s answer, I think she did state what Hilton suggested as regards what it means to live in a constitutional democracy, like the U.S. Her apparent misstep was answering his question in its entirety, a question that asked what she thought about the matter.

It is also important to note that her opinion is the opinion of a majority of Californians who went to the polls last November and democratically rejected giving legal status to same sex marriage, thus popularly overturning an edict by the California Supreme Court. It may bear reminding Mr. Hilton that the only state that recognizes same-sex marriage that has done so by anything like a democratic process (i.e., not by judicial fiat) is Vermont. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa it is something imposed by state supreme courts. Further, wherever same-sex marriage has appeared as a ballot initiative to amend the state’s constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman, including California (and Utah), it has passed, the California vote being far and away the closest, though Colorado and Arizona passed marriage amendments with majorities of 55% and 56% respectively. I will concede that while Massachusetts began recognizing same-sex marriage as the result of a state Supreme Court ruling, subsequent attempts to amend the state constitution have been defeated in the legislature. New Jersey and New Hampshire both have civil partnership laws, like Vermont did prior to the recent vote to override the governor’s veto of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

Sadly, Hilton was not able to limit himself to dismissing her answer with prejudice. Posting a video blog he went on to call her " dumb bitch." I would expect to see feminists take issue with a gay man calling a woman a dumb bitch, just as people did when Isiah Thomas, defending himself in a sexual harassment lawsuit, claimed that it was alright for an African American man to call an African American woman a bitch, but it was not alright for a white man. Just to be clear, it is not okay for a man of any colour or sexual orientation to conduct himself in such a reprehensible manner, especially under these circumstances, in which she was merely giving an honest answer to a question he asked!

It is true that her answer likely cost her title Miss U.S.A., but that is a small price to pay for maintaining her integrity. Perhaps Perez Hilton should just stick to asking himself questions, that way he’ll always get the answer for which is looking.

I think this event is very instructive regarding the current cultural circumstance in which we find ourselves. The question for us, attending to the totality of its factors, how do we live this reality, how do we give witness to Christ in this reality? Part of the answer lies in giving honest answers to questions, questions that are ultimately about meaning and purpose, our meaning and purpose, even in the face derision and hostility.

While I am at it, note to Janeane Garofalo: just as it was not inherently un-patriotic to criticize Pres. Bush, it is not inherently racist to criticize Pres. Obama.

Being always aware of the One whose witnesses we are

2009-04-17T18:56:00.000-05:00

It is not a question as to whether we should be reduced to practicing our faith in private or giving public witness. Without a doubt, we are to give public witness to the truth, whether it be about the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, or about the nature of marriage. So, it becomes about the nature of our public witness. This gets back to something I posted not long ago, namely an observation by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "that for conservatives it is axiomatic 'that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.' As one might suspect, it is an atomic truth of liberalism that politics is more fundamental and important to society than culture."

The reaction of many to the two recent dust-ups involving President Obama and Catholic institutions do nothing but prove the thesis I set forth in my earlier post, namely that in the U.S. almost everyone is liberal because we look to politics and/or political solutions, that is, power plays and assertions of will, to solve every problem. By doing this, we expend resources, effort, and energy that are better spent building up culture through education and other means. Reacting to circumstnaces in this way leads to a reduction of faith, which is a reduction of ourselves and others.

Let's take another controversy as instructive of what it means to start from a positive hypothesis: the Holy Father's assertion that the way to prevent the further spread of HIV in Africa is not by distributing condoms, but by rehumanizing sexuality. This is not a political assertion, though it is one in conformity with the epidemiological facts. Hence, it is not an ideology, an assertion of what the church teaches against a reality that contradicts it. Rather, he begins by recognizing the humanity of the people of Africa, the fact that the human person is a direct relationship with the mystery, and by recognizing sexuality as an authentic part of being human. You become ideological when your abstractions and theories discount and reduce the humanity of others because you are asserting yourself against the fact that constitutes reality.

As Rose wisely observed: "Let us start from the fact that we need to be educated, even in living sexuality. But education primarily concerns the discovery of self: the person who is conscious of himself. He knows that he has a value that is greater than everything. Without the discovery of this value - for themselves and others - there is nothing to hold." Hence, to begin, as those who think the distribution of condoms is either the only way, or merely the primary way, of combating the spread of this deadly virus, from a negative hypothesis- that people in Africa, or anywhere, like teenagers in high school, will inevitably behave in a sexually irresponsible manner is dehumanizing. As the Holy Father said, the rehumanization of sexuality consists of "bringing a new way of behaving towards one another." As Carlo put it in a title to his post on Paper Clippings, it is a matter of putting education over mechanics.

This is the kind of witness we are called to give. Somehow I do not think shouting, marching, carrying banners, condemning to hell, etc. are ways to witness to Christ or to give witness to the sanctity of human life because they do not start from a positive hypothesis, but a negative one and are ideological expressions. It is a way to further polarize, a polarization that not only pits the church against the world, but members of the church against each other.

Is there nothing we can do? I remember Fr. Trento's declining to be made a Knight of the Order of the Star of Solidarity of the Republic of Italy, due to the government's refusal to intercede on behalf of Eluana Englaro. Why? Because it contradicted his solidarity with those whom he serves. After receiving it, he quietly returned it on his own to the Italian embassy in Paraguay, the country in which he lives and ministers. He did not call a press conference, or organize a demonstration, he did not angrily denounce or condemn anyone, he merely pointed out the contradiction of honoring someone who has devoted his life to serving many people in the same situation as Eluana. He then went back to his ministry, where he remains giving witness to the One whose presence "is the only fact that can give meaning to pain and to injustice."

A Catholic University?

2009-04-06T08:20:00.000-05:00

I have been following the events at Notre Dame with great curiosity, and when I read what Sharon blogged (she has links to everyone else, so just read what she wrote and follow her links) on the subject, I sensed an invitation in her post. So, here I am!

Every time I began to think about the president's invitation to speak at (and to receive an honorary degree from) Notre Dame, a conversation I once overheard would run through my mind. A Catholic philosopher who was teaching at the University of Chicago was speaking to the dean of one of the colleges that is considered more orthodox and serious about its Catholic identity. The philosopher observed that he could always tell which of his students were either Catholic or Jewish from the rest of the students. The dean asked him how he could tell, and the philosopher replied, "The Catholic and Jewish students all have a sense that there are other countries in the world, that people speak other languages, that in the past there were people, people who came from cultures very different from our own, who thought great things and whose works are worthy of examination." The dean seemed bemused and then said, "Well, we know our students are Catholic because daily Mass on campus is packed with students, because they often gather together to pray the rosary, and because a majority of them major in theology, and because they engage in a multitude of pro-life activities." And that was the end of the conversation.

I think that Stephen (not my husband, but a good friend) is right that the people who now decry Notre Dame's invitation to President Obame are (more or less) the same people who have been suspicious of Notre Dame's claim to being a truly Catholic institution. It seems that this controversy provides them with a litmus test -- to judge just how "Catholic" Notre Dame is. Will Notre Dame waver under the barage of email, phone messages and letters of protest, or will she remain "Catholic in name only"?

The question about what makes a University Catholic and what makes its students Catholic seems to be the unspoken heart of the whole brouhaha. There is enormous pressure on the students to "prove" their Catholicism by protesting or even boycotting their graduation ceremony.

What troubles me is that this drive to reject a man (who is after all, our president) seems neither human nor Christian. Many of the children in my atrium pray for President Obama that he may be a good president and make good decisions. A few pray that he will stop killing babies. Both prayers indicate a commitment toward his person, toward his humanity, I think. These prayers imply a relationsionship with the man. If we want these things for him, for his ultimate good, then we must spend time with the man. Jesus spent more time with Pharisees than he did even with the poor and the lame -- at least, his conversations with the Pharisees use much more ink in the Bible. Why? Why did he spend time with them? Why did he pray with them, witness to them? Why did he forgive them from the Cross?

As Catholics, we should think hard about how we approach those who come from other worlds, who speak another language. God has placed this president in our lives for a reason. He exists and leads us for our good, to lead us to Christian maturity (as Sharon so beautifully points out). We should spend some time thinking about what is best for him, how we might help him "to be a good president and make good decisions."

Cross posted at Come to See.

Catholic Senators Vote Against Freedom of Conscience for Health Care Workers

2009-04-04T08:32:00.000-05:00

Troubling news comes from CNA about a majority of Catholic senators voting against a conscience protection amendment yesterday that keeps health care workers from being forced to participate in abortion-related and other morally objectionable services.

Senator Tom Colburn’s amendment states, "To protect the freedom of conscience for patients and the right of health care providers to serve patients without violating their moral and religious convictions."

The amendment was voted down by a margin of 41-56, in which a majority of Catholic Senators voted against the amendment 9-16. The failure to pass this legislation now leaves the door open for the Obama Administration to rescind the law by executive order and force health workers to compromise their moral convictions.

A good number of senators voted in favor of this amendment suggesting it was a reasonable amendment. It wasn't a matter of restricting abortion but of protecting freedom of conscience, not for some obscure cultish scruple, but in a hotly contested moral arena. This is after Cardinal George's very public appeal to Catholics to advocate for these conscience protection rules.

It is becoming more evident that the Church is the main defenders not only of life, but of freedom.

Culture and Identity in the Current Crisis

2009-04-02T01:15:00.000-05:00

Now I'll be almost the last to weigh in on the Notre Dame controversy, except for perhaps Suzanne (unless I've forgotten). Here's Stephen, Fred, and Deacon Scott as well as a more general observation which I thought pertinent from Conjectures, a quote from Bishop Blase Cupich of South Dakota who warned his fellow bishops that “prophecy of denunciation quickly wears thin.” I'll post here in case we take it up together since for some reason it just won't die.

I'm also (like Stephen) not shocked or particularly surprised by Notre Dame's decision. I've both attended and taught at mainstream Catholic colleges. I'm mildly curious about why Bill Clinton isn't on the list of presidents who received this honor (was he asked? did he refuse?). It would be more useful, in my opinion, to put resources to fighting the erosion of conscience protections for health care workers than to fight this battle.

Some years ago at the national diakonia in Chicago, we heard Cardinal George speak about the original immigrant culture of Catholics which really never took root in the American culture. It has been a while, so I may be overstating this observation, or not. Instead Catholics after some generations assimilated to the culture. You can find some of this thought of his in an interview with John Allen, where he said:

[W]e created alternatives to the mainstream institutions. They were never, I think, ghetto institutions, because they prepared people to take their place in mainstream society. They didn’t try to cut them off from it, but to prepare people to take their place in the mainstream precisely as Catholics. Once they succeeded, then the value of those very institutions seemed to be lessened, and the institutions themselves said it’s important for us to be mainstream, and to no longer be so identifiably Catholic. So they’re porous in ways that they weren’t before....

Notre Dame, perhaps the most prestigious Catholic institution in the country, is an example of this ambiguity, at least in respect to the current controversy. It's certainly not true of the entire institution, as witnessed by various friends of mine. Note that the response to such ambiguity often has been to again set up alternate institutions, separate and culturally apart. This counter-culture is robust, though we may wonder how significantly it leavens the common culture.

What bothers me most about the current debate is the painful public lack of unity which is probably not helped by the Catholic blogosphere. Tangentially, there was the set-up with Archbishop Burke which was part of a lay campaign to remove bishops who were not aggressive enough in denying communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians. That most saddens me, some of our finest pastors, denounced for their own pastoral approach.

The entire situation we find ourselves in today, since the November election, reminds me of the 1968 crisis Fr. Giussani spoke about in 1972 in his talk "The Long March to Maturity". Perhaps the crisis itself was quite different, but the challenge of our response is really the same.

Perhaps it is useful to remember that in the life of those He calls, God never lets anything happen unless it serves for the growth and maturation of those He has called.

This is so above all for the life of the individual, but in the final analysis, and more profoundly, for the life of His Church, and therefore, analogously, for the life of every community, be it a family or an ecclesiastical community in the broadest sense. God never permits anything to happen unless it is for our maturity, our maturation...

This, we can say, is the indicator of our faith’s truth, its authenticity or lack thereof: if the faith is truly in the foreground, or if in the foreground there is another kind of concern; if we truly expect everything from the fact of Christ, or if we expect from the fact of Christ what we decide to expect, ultimately making Him a starting point and a support for our projects and programs.

Now look at Fr. Giussani's judgment of the "Reduction of the Christian Fact", which could not sum up better the risk we take right now in our political *reactions*. A campaign even for a good cause becomes an ideology. As if solving the political problem would conquer the evil.

What were the consequences identifiable in the attitude assumed by this large sector of the Movement in the era we are commenting on?

a) First, as it says on the sheet: “An efficientistic conception of Christian commitment, with accentuations of moralism.” Not accentuations–with wholesale reduction to moralism! Why should anyone remain Christian? Because Christianity pushes you to action, presses you to commitment, no other reason! It’s like a father and mother who tell you, “Come on, you have to do this!” and then they leave you alone to do it yourself, as if they weren’t there. (Instead, Jesus says, “I will be with you to the end of time.”) This is a concept of incarnation in which the Christian is truly cut in half, cloven in two. And from the contingent, historic point of view, Christians still have the right to remain in the world only to the degree in which they throw themselves into worldly action: it’s ethical Christianity, that is, Christian ethics, Christian behavior, which means being Christian in the world identified with worldly commitment....

b) Second consequence (and this is the gravest thing): the incapacity to “culturalize” the discourse, to bring one’s Christian experience to the level in which it becomes systematic and critical judgment, and thus a prompt for a modality of action. It’s the Christian experience blocked in its potential for impact on the world, because an experience impacts the world only to the degree to which it reaches a cultural expression (which doesn’t mean only to the degree to which it reaches the university–this has nothing to do with it!). Cultural expression means judgment, capacity for systematic and critical judgment of the world, of worldliness, of the historic circumstance, and thus it becomes a suggestion for a modality of program and of action.

Experience that doesn’t reach this point has no face, lacks a face in history; it has no face and therefore can subsist for a long time in “pre-historic” eras, but to the degree to which the relationships in society, in human life become denser, press against that experience, it disappears, because it’s alienated in the pressures of the environment. ...

Our experience disappears. How tragic.

So how do we respond? What kind of campaign should we raise?

I remember being so struck by this text by Fr. Giussani when I first read it as another way to proceed: this method, which is following, obedience, something far more solid than my own presumption.

In any case, the methodology is faithfulness to experience. I don’t know whether anyone here has remembered in this moment what it says in the premise: that Christianity spreads in the world not because of our work, but by the grace of God. So then, leaving behind our immaturity, becoming mature, is a grace of the Spirit within us. Let’s keep reminding each other! The Holy Spirit descended where they were gathered together in the Cenacle, where they were all gathered together. The Holy Spirit descends upon our communion. Therefore, for example, a “settlement” is an outcome of cultural expression, but before being an outcome of cultural expression, at least as a tendency, it’s the premise for cultural expression. In fact, our maturity is expressed in our passionate desire that the Church of God live visibly here where we are, in our striving that it be lived here, and therefore that Christian communion be built here and wherever we are, so that this “new person,” this “one body” as Saint Paul says–“in which there is neither man nor woman, neither Greek nor barbarian, neither left nor right” (“All of you are one, one person in Jesus Christ”)–may bring good to the neighborhood, university, work, parish… bring good to the world, as an incarnate presence, incarnate!

But the logic of the incarnation, that is, the logic of mission, happens entirely in us, because the incarnation in the world, in the sense of interest in and help for the world’s problems, of real collaboration in the world’s struggle for authenticity, is only a ray of light, only an inevitable consequence of those problems, of the world’s needs, of flesh and blood, of the world, of life lived as Christian community, converted, translated in terms of faith. Incarnation doesn’t mean getting involved in the labor union, the factory, or university. Incarnation, that is, mission, is living the university, the factory, etc., as communion. It doesn’t mean getting involved in this or that cultural or practical or socio-political problem, but living our whole humanity as communion.

I remember once, in a time of great trial, when we were living hard things faithfully and enduring the lack of understanding of others, thinking that "living well is the best revenge". We were certain that all would be well if we held onto the One we trust. How many psalms state just this in every situation of threat, injustice and untruth.

The only way, it seems, is to live this communion in the place where Christ is present, this living experience. However awkward, rough, we hold to this communion which is home to this life-giving experience, a house with a necessary human structure. It isn't for us to save the world, but to witness by our unity to One who is saving all.

A bit of a rant

2009-03-31T18:26:00.000-05:00

Is there some course offered at exclusive country clubs about how, if you are wealthy, you don't have to pay all of your taxes? I mean Geithner, Daschle, Sebelius! So, you want to tackle the details that will lead to the long overdue and total transformation of our financial regulatory system, or even the more difficult and detailed analysis required to reform health care, but you either cannot master the IRS tax code as it pertains to personal income tax or even find an accountant who can? I realize that a post like this is a little out of skew and dramatically over-simplifies things, but come on!

How 'bout that Obama vetting team? I guess finding people who are are not tax cheats is pretty hard, which explains why all but one (the secretary) of the 23 Treasury positions that require Senate confirmation are filled. The president has only nominated two (besides the Secretary) to fill these positions. Among the many priorities we should have, perhaps simplifying the tax code should be added in somewhere.

Culture, politics, and society

2009-03-30T19:52:00.000-05:00

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed that for conservatives it is axiomatic "that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society." As one might suspect, it is an atomic truth of liberalism that politics is more fundamental and important to society than culture. The worst outcome, that which began in the late 1960s, is the politicization of culture; culture co-opted in the service of politics. I think this distinction helps because it shows how deeply-rooted liberalism is in the U.S. and why there is a persistent attempt to banish religion from the public square. Questions about what such a conservative view would mean for our initial decision to invade Iraq in the first place aside, how many times have we heard that in Iraq what we need is a political, not a military, solution? Have you ever heard that what we need is cultural solution? No! Why? Because religion, which is the foundation of culture, is seen as the obstacle to unifying and sustaining society. Nonetheless, we must ask, despite being the only predominantly Arab country with a Shi'a majority, how many Iraqis, especially leaders, actually listen to the Grand Ayatollah Sistani? Let me answer that one too- Not many!

Too often the trouble with religion is that religious leaders and people become liberal in the sense that they begin to seek salvation through politics. The Holy Father understands the priority of culture and how human culture, especially high culture, is not really possible without religion. He also sees the necessary link between Christianity and the advancement of western culture. Stated simply, the loss of faith leads to the coarsening and ultimate demise of culture. Msgr. Giussani also understood this very deeply and sought to communicate this in everything he taught. It is important that those of us who share Giussani's charism listen and learn, both from Giussani and the Holy Father, as well to and from Fr. Carrón.

Factoring in Bill O'Reilly

2009-03-30T09:30:00.001-05:00

I am not a big fan of the cable news shout fests, like The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, or Keith Olbermann's program. Once in a while, via the constant news feed at work, when I am there in the early evening, I'll catch a few minutes of one of these programs. However, I do think that these folks perform a service, the kind of service Jon Stewart was urging Jim Cramer to perform in his now famous Daily Show interview. This service consists of asking the tough questions that we all want to ask and pressing interviewees hard for answers, not letting them off the hook in the easy manner in which they are let off on, say, ABC's This Week, and other more convivial shows.

I have to admit that at least Bill O'Reilly has a sense of humor about himself and appears on The Colbert Report, on which he is known as Papa Bear, and has also appeared on the Daily Show. Even though he and Jon Stewart could not have a more different political frame of reference, I think Stewart respects O'Reilly, at least as much as he respects anyone, though not to the point of not criticizing him, as when he lambasted O'Reilly's two-faced take on women running for high political office, depending on whether he was talking about Hilary Clinton or Sarah Palin.

For some odd reason, I linked to an interview with O'Reilly off the Yahoo home page this morning because I really had to find out who the actor was that O'Reilly would not even go see his movies- Sean Penn. I actually found the interview interesting and O'Reilly's answers to be refreshingly straightforward and candid. He has a lot of very complimentary things to say about a lot people. It was nice to read about this side of a guy whose on-air persona is gruff and often angry. On his Hollywood A-List? Clint Eastwood. His favorite Eastwood film? Unforgiven. I can't fault him for taste on that!

The part of the interview I liked the most and to which I found myself saying Yeah! to was this:

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WHY ARE ACTORS SUCH FREQUENT TARGETS OF "THE FACTOR"?

O'Reilly: My job is to watch the powerful. A performer has a forum that other people do not, and all we ask is that they be fair. If they believe something and use their TV show, movie or concert to spout off about it, that's fine. But if we have some questions about their beliefs, I think they should answer them -- and not be drive-by people.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WHO ARE THESE DRIVE-BY PEOPLE YOU SPEAK OF?

O'Reilly: I take it case by case. We took on George Clooney over the 9/11 charities, and we were absolutely right, but Clooney does a good job with Darfur. We took on Bruce Springsteen for things he has done at concerts because we want to know what his frame of reference is. These are powerful people, and we're not going to give them a free ride. If there was somebody screaming right-wing stuff, we'd do the same thing. But there is no one like that because if they do that in Hollywood, they're not going to work, which is an interesting story in and of itself.

After all, how many drive-by attacks has the Holy Father endured both with regard to his largely misunderstand and misinterpreted lifting of the SSPX excommunications and his all too accurate statement that condoms are not the answer to HIV/AIDs in Africa?

The one year anniversary of the YFZ raid

2009-03-27T12:04:00.000-05:00

Looking back at yesterday's post on my blog, today marks the one year anniversary of the raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas. You know what is really weird? I have twice spent the better part of a year in San Angelo, Texas!

"In sermons and school lessons," writes Brooke Adams in today's SL Trib, "the FLDS have kept alive eight decades of efforts to wipe out their polygamous lifestyle -- most notably, the 1953 raid on Short Creek, their traditional home base at the Utah-Arizona border. Authorities kept 263 women and children in state custody for two years. The raid led the sect to close ranks -- a decision that contributed to what happened in Texas 55 years later." She then goes on to quote Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, whose statement is as notable for what he does not say as for what he does: "One good thing is it sent a message to [sect leader] Warren Jeffs, or anyone of his ilk, that they can't go somewhere else to perform underage marriages, even though they went to extraordinary lengths to have it be private on the ranch." Note that he is not so concerned about polygamy per se, which is forbidden by the Utah State Constitution, but only with underage shenanigans. Now, if one has to prioritize, sparing young girls the tribulation of being forced to be a plural wife at an age younger than the law permits anyone to enter into a marriage is a higher priority. Do not for one minute think that he has no sympathy for polygamists. After all, it is Shurtleff who said,

FLDS Temple at the YFZ Ranch
"Polygamy is illegal in Utah and forbidden by the Arizona constitution. However, law enforcement agencies in both states have decided to focus on crimes within polygamous communities that involve child abuse, domestic violence and fraud. The Utah Attorney General's Office and the Arizona Attorney General's Office also worked together [with polygamy advocates] to produce 'The Primer -- Helping Victims of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Polygamous Communities.' This manual provides basic information about various communities that will assist human services professionals, law enforcement officers and others in helping victims from these communities. The Primer will be updated regularly to reflect modifications in the law and changes in each organization's beliefs and practices . . ."
I am not entirely unsympathetic with such an approach to law enforcement, but the idea that these communities can in any wise be trusted to police themselves and cooperate honestly with authorities, given their histories, strikes me as being more than a tad too optimistic.

Mike Leavitt, who served in the Bush Administration as EPA Administrator and then as Secretary of Health and Human Services, while serving as governor of Utah, once called for the repeal of state laws against polygamy and for an end to laws against polygamy being enforced, not only in Utah, but other states, too, because he thought the practice fell under the protection of the first amendment, despite the fact that the constitution of his state, which he took an oath defend, has to say on the matter. The Utah constitution makes polygamy a third-degree felony, although enforcement of laws banning it have not been high on the law enforcement or legal agenda since the 1953 raid. Of course, he corrected himself a few days later by saying that it is difficult to impossible to enforce laws against it because of the manner in which it is practiced. This last statement is no doubt true, but do not be fooled into thinking that he, Shurtleff, and others state leaders have problems in principle with the practice of polygamy. Why? Doctrine & Covenants Section 132, which states:

"And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else. And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified. But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified. "

The LDS believe that these are words of the Lord spoken directly to the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. Hence, for the LDS faithful, these words remain divine revelation, an unambiguous expression of God's will.

And on it goes...

2009-03-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

IN the interests of fairness, I offer Jake DeSantis' letter of resignation to AIG, which the NY Times published as an Op-ed piece. Dear A.I.G., I Quit!, which reads in part:

"After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

"I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down"

The on-going immorality

2009-03-15T19:11:00.000-05:00

You've presided over the biggest corporate failure in history and help oversee a company that is a financial blackhole so large that $170 billion of tax payer money has not yet been able to fill it. Yet, unlike Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns, but like Hank Paulson's own beloved Goldman Sachs and Citibank, you have been deemed to be too big to fail. So, what do you deserve? Your super-sized welfare payment, of course! That is why A.I.G., despite being on federally funded life-support, is doling out $165 million to their clueless, slack-jawed executives who did their part to guarantee the demise of our financial system.

I think it only fair that you are rewarded for your monumental effort that led to losing $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter of last year. A loss like that, which is the biggest in corporate history, certainly deserves a reward. It could've been worse, the fourth quarter loss could've been $61.8 billion, or $61.865 billion, thus recouping the amount their bonuses. Hey, I am a coffer's-not-as-empty-as-it-could- be kinda guy!

While there is much that is very fundamental about which I disagree with Jon Stewart, he was spot-on in his interview with Jim Cramer. Here is the three part, unedited, interview:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 counts, but he and his wife are still worth over $800 million. What really infuriates me is that he is under no obligation to talk or disclose anything. Stewart's take away quote is worth taking to heart: "When are we going to realize in this country that our wealth is work?"

A shrewd observation

2009-03-05T13:57:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I was reading an address by philosopher Peter Van Inwagen entitled Quam Dilecta. It is a very good and accessible description of faith and reason and how they work together in the life of this prominent philosopher. In the course of the biographical portion of his address, he discusses his belonging to the Episcopal Church and how his belonging illustrates "Robert Conquest's Second Law: Every organization appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents."

Of course, my purpose for citing this is that it is a universal law, not limited to Episcopalians.

Abortion as International Aid

2009-01-25T05:08:00.000-06:00

As expected, President Obama, in the first three days of office, reversed the Mexico City Policy which banned funding for NGOs that provide for and advocate abortion. Although he signed the executive order late Friday, and not on the day of the March for Life, this is no reason for reassurance, as Deacon Scott Dodge points out.

Well, it looked a lot like politics as usual today with President Obama's signing of an Executive Order that reversed what is known as the Mexico City Policy. It is called this because President Reagan announced it in a speech he gave in 1984 at the U.N. International Conference on Population held in Mexico City. The Mexico City policy stipulates that no monies given by the U.S. government to foreign NGOs can be used to fund abortions or abortion-related services. The rule also prevents foreign NGOs that receive U.S. money from presenting abortion as a possibility to the women they seek to serve. Hence, the policy is known by proponents of abortion-on-demand as "the global gag rule".

It is important to point out that the policy does not extend to NGOs based in the United States because such a denial has been determined to be unconstitutional. The Mexico City policy was in force from 1984 until the first few days of the first Clinton Administration, when then-President Clinton overturned it by another Executive Order issued on 22 January 1993, the twentieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unfortunate Roe vs. Wade decision. The Mexico City policy was once again put into effect with yet another Executive Order signed by Pres. Bush on 22 January 2001.

I gave a hearty guffaw to the idea put forward by a reporter for NPR, which she no doubt received from the White House Press Office, that by not reversing the Mexico City policy on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, Pres. Obama sought to de-politicize the issue. Wow! That is spin at its worst and least creative and most disingenuous. I agree with Ashley Horne from Focus on the Family that it is not possible to "reduce abortions by channelling more money to the abortion industry". What do we offer the world? Abortion on demand! Who does this offend? All traditional cultures. The gap widens. Besides, the right to life is not a political issue, it is not an ethical issue, it is a fundamental moral issue.

What it means is that the NGOs which promote the dignity of the person will be replaced by those advocating for (e.g. asserting political pressure) and providing abortion services as a means of relieving poverty in the world. Obama stated: "For the past eight years, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries... For these reasons, it is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development.”

Additionally, the President apparently intends to fund the U.N. Population Fund. Jack Smith at the Catholic Key blog explains:

Appended to the president's action was a notice in which he said:
In addition, I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S financial support for the U.N. Population Fund. By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries.
This action could be even more monstrous than the reversal of the Mexico City Policy. The U.S. government ceased funding the UNFPA after independent investigations found the agency complicit in China's coercive one-child policy - coercion that includes forced abortions.

Following the State Department's own 2002 investigation, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote a letter to Congress saying, "UNFPA's support of, and involvement in, China's population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion."

Cardinal George had previously urged President Obama to keep the policy intact out of respect for life and for other cultures:

The Mexico City Policy, first established in 1984, has wrongly been attacked as a restriction on foreign aid for family planning. In fact, it has not reduced such aid at all, but has ensured that family planning funds are not diverted to organizations dedicated to performing and promoting abortions instead of reducing them. Once the clear line between family planning and abortion is erased, the idea of using family planning to reduce abortions becomes meaningless, and abortion tends to replace contraception as the means for reducing family size. A shift toward promoting abortion in developing nations would also increase distrust of the United States in these nations, whose values and culture often reject abortion, at a time when we need their trust and respect.

Mortgaging our future

2009-01-24T11:55:00.001-06:00

In an article written for the Wall Street Journal entitled The World Won't Buy Unlimited U.S. Debt: We're asking others to sacrifice for our 'stimulus', Peter Schiff ponders our immediate and intermediate economic future. In the process of doing so he gives a very straightforward and realistic analysis of the proposals on offer from the Obama Administration. The sad thing is that there is no change here and without change there can be little hope that we will fix what is fundamentally wrong with our economy, which flows from what is wrong with us. The economy is not something apart from us.

I tackled one aspect of Schiff's analysis in a post on my blog, Καθολικός διάκονος, entitled What sacrifice? I tackled another issue in a previous post here on Cahiers back in November, Debt. This is a point that is rarely addressed, it was not even addressed by either economist who participated in the panel discussion that comprised part of the New York Encounter that was, in turn, part of our National Diakonia last weekend, Finance and the Economy at a New Crossroads: Different Models or a Different Vision. This discussion, with the exception of Prof. Freeman's refreshing presentation, was exclusively about new models and who is to blame, but there was no new vision on offer, just as there is no new vision on offer in Washington, despite the change of administrations. What the economists almost completely ignored is the fundamental fact that the economy exists for the human person and not the human person for the economy. Due to the inevitable human factor involved, economies do not follow laws as in physics.

The discussion was also disappointing because not one panelist addressed the crisis wrought by the irresponsibility of financial institutions in light of what we should have learned from the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s, which demonstrated both the need for an updated regulatory regime and that de-regulation was a bad idea. In other words, we spent a few hours pretending that nobody could've seen this coming. Well, the truth of the matter is that plenty of people saw this train wreck coming, it's just that their opinions did not matter because they were not part of the revolving door, Ivy League elite. The same elite whose education, as was observed months ago on Paper Clippings, consists almost exclusively of "empirically-oriented knowledge directed at problem solving," to the neglect of "philosophy," which entails "grappling in a systematic fashion with questions of truth and meaning".

Anyway, this quote from Schiff gets to the heart of the matter, which our economic and political elites continue to evade for reasons of personal gain and political expediency:

"The root problem is not that America may have difficulty borrowing enough from abroad to maintain our GDP, but that our economy was too large in the first place. America's GDP is composed of more than 70% consumer spending. For many years, much of that spending has been a function of voracious consumer borrowing through home equity extractions (averaging more than $850 billion annually in 2005 and 2006, according to the Federal Reserve) and rapid expansion of credit card and other consumer debt. Now that credit is scarce, it is inevitable that GDP will fall."

It should be shocking to us all that 70% of our Gross Domestic Product is consumer spending and not only consumer spending, but spending that depends almost wholly on consumer borrowing, to include draining the equity out of our homes. To use an old observation, the chickens have come home to roost. This state-of-affairs has proven to be unsustainable. Hence, we cannot seek to replicate it moving forward. This seems like a common sense observation, but that is exactly what is on offer, more of the same. At least it will continue to be a bi-partisan effort. I read a book quite a few years ago, the thesis of which strikes me as more relevant now than when it was published, Pete Peterson's Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.

Schiff observes that we will no longer be able, as less than 5% of the world's population, to account for 25%of global GDP. You know what? This contraction, while somewhat painful, is a necessary correction not only for economy, but for our humanity. This is the truth of the matter. Stated simply, hope for a better economic future cannot be realized if we fail to address this truth, this fact, verified by the reality we are experiencing. There is no hope in falsehood. President Obama was correct in his inaugural address, we must put away childish things.

Medaille on Republicans and the Economy

2008-12-27T07:08:00.001-06:00

John Médaille at The Distributist Review has a thoughtful piece on the question of what the Republican party stands for and where the conservatives are.

So what is wrong with the Republican Party? Let me suggest that the problem is that they have no idea of what they ought to conserve; they have no idea of what constitutes liberty. Indeed, the only common theme among the factions is economic, and in that what they are trying to conserve is economic liberalism, the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism. They have forgotten that this was the very doctrine that destroyed conservatism in the 19th century, and while it is now over 200 years old, it will never be conservative.

What conservatism ought to conserve is the proper scale of things; government at its lowest possible level, strong families as the foundation of society, small manufacturing, small farms, strong communities. Low taxes, to be sure, but taxes commensurate with the tasks we ask government to perform. We know that the key to lowering taxes is to localize government as much as possible and reduce its scale. But you cannot have localized governments in the face of commercial institutions that are bigger than most states—indeed, bigger than most nations. These institutions declare themselves “too big to fail,” when in truth they are too big to succeed without massive government support. Republicans since Reagan have tried to grow government, shrink taxes, and deregulate everything. Alas, they have been all too successful.

Distributists know that the key to shrinking government and ending oppressive taxation is to shrink the need for government. Great and global institutions require big government and large military and regulatory apparatuses. And these require big taxes. And while they create great wealth, for some, they create great dependency for the mass of men, a dependency that expresses itself as the welfare state. The small farm is better for food, but it is also better for community; the small manufacturer, tied by bonds of economy and affection to his locality is the basis of a sane economy

Conservatives are out there; they're just not represented by a political party at the present time.

But because America has no conservative party does not mean she has no conservatives. Indeed, The left wing is scratching its head over the fact that the Black Obama voters in California voted solidly for a ban on gay marriage. At heart, America is a conservative country, not only in the South and Midwest, but in the Northeast, Northwest, and even in the great cities that are regarded as the strongholds of liberalism. Indeed, much of the new liberalism today involves a certain nostalgia for the land, for the community, and for a more human scale to the economy and to politics. It is a natural conservatism that spans race and age and gender. Indeed, the newcomers are more authentically conservative than many of the older population. But American conservatism lacks any real institutional support, and any real ideology. It picks up what older liberals have discarded and calls it conservative, and then is very surprised when it turns out liberal.

The economic crisis may be the opportunity for recovering a more healthy social and economic model, if the recovery plan assists local economies rather than enabling the failures of supersized institutions. And the Republican party's defeat can be the occasion for a new direction, if it doesn't continue to favor large corporate interests and discredited economic theories.

The Meaning of Christmas in a Post-Christian World

2008-12-26T10:45:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Ross Douthat decided to respond to Christopher Hitchens' bah-humbug Christmas taunt. First a slice of Hitchens:

... Suppose we put the question like this: Imagine that conclusive archaeological and textual evidence emerged to prove that the whole story of the birth, life, and death of Jesus of Nazareth was either a delusion or a fabrication? Suppose the mother had admitted shyly that, in fact, she had fallen pregnant for predictable reasons? Suppose we found the post-Calvary body?
Serious Christians, of the sort I have been debating lately, would have no choice but to consider such news as absolutely calamitous. The light of the world would have gone out; the hope of humanity would have been extinguished.... If all the official stories of monotheism, from Moses to Mormonism, were to be utterly and finally discredited, we would be exactly where we are now. All the agonizing questions that we face, from the idea of the good life and our duties to each other to the concept of justice and the enigma of existence itself, would be just as difficult and also just as fascinating.

Douthat disputes that claim by first deconstructing the ethical reduction of the Christian Gospel.

The Christian story is not, for instance, a theological or philosophical treatise. It's not a set of commands or insights about our moral duties. Nor is it a road map to the good life. It has implications for all of those questions, obviously; certainly, Jesus of Nazareth wasn't exactly silent on "the concept of justice" during his lifetime, and Christians have been deriving theologies, philosophies and codes of conduct from his example ever since. But fundamentally, the Christian story is evidence for a particular idea about the universe: It recounts a series of events that, if real, tells us something profound about the nature of God, and His relationship to His creatures, that we couldn't have been expected to understand or accept in precisely the same way without the Gospel narratives.

Douthat argues convincingly that atheists couldn't pose the question in quite the same way before the claim of the Incarnation. What kind of demand could we make on such a distant God?

Consider, for instance, the way in which the dominance of the Christian story has actually sharpened one of the best arrows in the anti-theist's quiver. In Western society, especially, the oft-heard claim that the world is too cruel a place for a good omnipotence to have created derives a great deal of its power, whether implicitly or explicitly, from the person of Christ himself. The God of the New Testament seems more immediate, more personal, and more invested in his creation than He had heretofore revealed Himself to be. But this arguably makes Him seem more culpable for the world's suffering as well. Paradoxically, the God who addresses Job out of the whirlwind is far less vulnerable to complaints about the world's injustice than the God who suffers on the Cross - or the human God who cries in the manger. For many Christians, Christ's suffering provides a partial answer to the problem of theodicy. But for many atheists and agnostics, it only sharpens the question: How can a God who loves mankind enough to die for us allow us to suffer as much as we do?

Whether or not this argument would convince Hitchens, it is a common fallacy to discount the social and historical influences on our thinking. Once in grad school, a fellow student absurdly claimed that if she had lived in the 16th century, she would have been a harlot, because she would not have been able to accept the constraints on women then.

For a glimpse of pre-Christian life, the miniseries Rome is enlightening, if we can't glean it from certain societies in our world today. We can fall back that far again, but it can never be as hopeless as before.

Christmas Message from Bethlehem

2008-12-25T06:07:00.000-06:00

From the Christmas Message 2008 By H.B. Fouad Twal
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

Dear brothers and sisters,

With joy we would like to announce to you the desire of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, to visit the Holy Land, as a Pilgrim next May. The Supreme Pontiff, wishes to pray with us and for us, and to acquire a first hand knowledge, of the hard conditions of our region. We are confident in the Lord, that this pontifical pilgrimage and pastoral visit, will be a blessing for us all, as well as a substantial contribution, to a better understanding among the various nations of the region, lifting the barriers and helping solve the problems, removing distress and consolidating good relations among peoples, religions and denominations, in security and peace.

From Bethlehem, I call upon my Brothers the Bishops and other world religious Leaders, the religious Orders and Congregations, the Consecrated persons and all other people of good will, the Pilgrims and all those who love the Holy Land: please, remember Bethlehem and Jerusalem in your prayers! The Holy Land appeals to your conscience and entreats your support. Do not leave it alone in its distress. Assist it so that it might become and remain a land of love, peace, reconciliation and equality among all its children.

O Infant of Bethlehem, you who wanted to be born in silence and stillness, plant in our hearts a love for peace, justice and serenity! You, who have experienced poverty, wandering and fear, have pity on our poor, our wanderers, our prisoners and refugee camp dwellers!

O unlimited God who, in your incarnation, accepted to experience the limits of time and place: you knew the limits of place, by being born in a grotto and being compelled to escape and wander; you knew the limits of time, when you dwelt in the holy womb of the Virgin. You, who with your mother Mary and guardian Joseph were, in the Grotto, the model of refugees and rejected people, sanctify your- Country, so that your name be hallowed everywhere, and that we draw closer to You and to each other, under the hard circumstances ,in which we live.

O Infant of the Grotto, who rejected violence, homicide and hatred, you, whose Birth, divided History into two – the old and the new, before Christ and after Christ, expel war from your homeland, and bring an end to the destruction of its homes. Sow the seeds of brotherhood! Grant to the afflicted and the poor, hope and comfort! O You, the Poor, the Fugitive and the Persecuted One, look upon those who emigrated from Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and other suffering countries. May your Homeland ,be the Land of blessings and prosperity, where the followers of all religions meet in harmony, so that "no nation raises the sword against another." (Isaiah 2:4) May our faithful celebration of your Birth, be the birth of a new era of peace, stability and security, Amen!

+ Fouad Twal, Patriarch

Christmas and Hope, Julian Carron

2008-12-24T19:29:00.000-06:00

Christmas and Hope
Letter to the editor of the Italian Daily La Repubblica,
published December 23, 2008

Dear Sir,

I was struck by the readings that the Ambrosian Liturgy proposes for Monday if the third week of Advent. How must the members of the ancient people of Israel been disconcerted at the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “It will devour your harvests and your bread; it will devour your sons and daughters; it will devour your flocks and herds; it will devour the fortified cities in which you placed your trust” (Jer 5:17). He was telling them that another nation was going to conquer the kingdom in which they had put their trust. “Then, if they say: ‘Why has the Lord our God done these things?’, you will answer: ‘Just as you have abandoned the Lord and served foreign gods in your country, so will you serve foreigners in a country that is not yours’” (Jer 5:19).

It is as if this were said for us; today we see signs that make everyone afraid, it seems that what has supported our history is unable to withstand the test of our times: one day the economy, finance and work, the next day politics and the judiciary, then the family, the beginning of life and its natural end. So, like ancient Israel before a frightening situation, we, too, ask ourselves: “Why is all this happening?” It is because we, too, have been so presumptuous as to think that we can still get along after cutting the roots that supported the foundations of our civilization. In recent centuries, our culture has believed it could build a future for itself while abandoning God. Now we see where this presumption is leading us.

Now, what does the Lord do in the face of all we have brought upon ourselves? The prophet Zechariah tells us, speaking to his people Israel: “Look, I am going to send you my servant Branch” (Zc 3:8.). Notice the name. It is as if before the crisis of a world, our world – the prophets would describe it with an image dear to them, that of a dried-up trunk – a sign of hope were springing up. The enormity of a dried up trunk cannot prevent the sprouting of a humble, fragile branch in which lies the hope for the future.

But there is one drawback: we, too, when we see this branch appearing –like those before that child in Nazareth—can be scandalized and say: “How can something so ephemeral be the answer to our need for liberation?” Can salvation come from something so small as faith in Jesus? It seems impossible that all our hope can rest on belonging to this frail sign. The promise that only from this can everything be rebuilt seems scandalous. Yet men like St. Benedict and St. Francis started from that. They began to live while belonging to that branch that had grown through time and space—the Church, and in this way became protagonists of a people and of history.

Benedict did not face the end of the Roman Empire with anger, pointing the finger at the immorality of his contemporaries, but rather witnessed to the people of his time a fullness of life, a satisfaction and a fullness that became an attraction for many. This became the dawn of a new world, small as it was (almost a nonentity compared with the whole, a whole that was in total collapse), but a real world. That new beginning was so concrete that the work of Benedict and Francis has lasted through the centuries, has transformed Europe, and humanized it.

“He has revealed himself. He personally,” said Benedict XVI, speaking of the God-with-us. Fr. Giussani told us, “That man of two thousand years ago is hidden under the tent, under the appearance of a new humanity,” in a real sign that arouses the inkling of that life that we are all waiting for so as not to succumb to the evil in us and to the signs of the nothingness which is advancing. This is the hope that Christmas announces to us, and that makes us cry out: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Julián Carrón

Defending love

2008-12-24T11:49:00.001-06:00

I think this particular portion of the Holy Father's Christmas address to the Roman Curia is deserving of some attention, especially in light of my last post. Let His Holiness' words serve as the positive hypothesis that undergirds my critical comments about the California Attorney General's effort to negate a democratically enacted constitutional amendment. That we have a lot to do with regard to witnessing to the truth can be seen by an exchange that happened as the result of something I posted on Καθολικός διάκονος yesterday:

"Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term 'gender', results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind. This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation."

A deep diaconal bow to Rocco over at Whispers for the English translation of the Holy Father's remarks and for the photograph.

Petitio Principii in California

2008-12-24T08:43:00.000-06:00

While I am on the subject of would be oligarchs, California Attorney General, Jerry Brown, who is the former and, if current reports are accurate, maybe the future governor of that state (reminds me of a friend who used to work for Louisiana State investigative division who told me that when out of office, the now prisoner, Edwin Edwards, was introduced as "the former, future governor of Louisiana"- I guess recycling extends to politics these days, too) and whose Dad was governor, is asking the state Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, a referendum passed on 4 November that amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. His reasoning? "Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification."

I guess explicitly defining the family in the way it was understood when the state constitution was written and ratified is not compelling justification. In other words, not only is the justification compelling, but to assert that there is a "fundamental constitutional" right at stake is to beg the question. The only basis for such a claim is the State Supreme Court's ruling back in May claiming such a right. The citizens of California rejected this claim and amended the constitution in a legal and fair manner. Hence, there is no reasonable basis for Attorney General Brown's argument. Alas, law these days has less and less to do with reason properly employed because legal arguments and judicial decisions are no longer grounded on any objective premises. As Alasdair MacIntyre describes us, we are an emotivist society with no way of arriving at a consensus that is not seen as an arbitrary imposition, a power play, of one side against another. Such attempts at ushering in rule by the judiciary do not bode well for the future of our constitutional system of government, which is grounded on objective premises. In addition to After Virtue, I am also reminded of the highly controversial 1996 First Things symposium, The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics.

So, here’s the question, why is an elected official seeking to overturn a legally enacted constitutional amendment? The lesson here is that, as voters, we need to stop playing both sides of the street. We must vote in a clear-headed manner. How can we continue support candidates who do not value what we hold dear and expect anything different?

An Ideal for the World Economy

2008-12-23T06:13:00.001-06:00

Pope Benedict XVI issued his World Day of Peace message for this year on the theme "Fighting Poverty to Build Peace". The text takes up issues of globalization, development, finance, population and more. Above all, it emphasizes a guiding perspective on the world economy that recognizes the human race as a family:

[T]he reference to globalization should also alert us to the spiritual and moral implications of the question, urging us, in our dealings with the poor, to set out from the clear recognition that we all share in a single divine plan: we are called to form one family in which all – individuals, peoples and nations – model their behaviour according to the principles of fraternity and responsibility.

If there is a temptation to minimize abortion as the primary unjustice, the message here is clear. These are the poorest of the poor. "The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings."

The Pope notes that population, rather than being a deterrent to well-being, has helped development, as the poverty rate of the world which was 40% in 1981 has been halved since then. He emphasized the vulnerability of children and the need to combat AIDS with a holistic approach that factors in the dignity of the person in sexual matters. The problem of the diversion of resources into armament is addressed, another in a long series of papal pleas.

The Holy Father spoke positively of financial markets as a necessary means to achieve economic stability for the future, but urged an "ethical approach to economics".

Objectively, the most important function of finance is to sustain the possibility of long-term investment and hence of development. Today this appears extremely fragile: it is experiencing the negative repercussions of a system of financial dealings – both national and global – based upon very short-term thinking, which aims at increasing the value of financial operations and concentrates on the technical management of various forms of risk. The recent crisis demonstrates how financial activity can at times be completely turned in on itself, lacking any long-term consideration of the common good. This lowering of the objectives of global finance to the very short term reduces its capacity to function as a bridge between the present and the future, and as a stimulus to the creation of new opportunities for production and for work in the long term. Finance limited in this way to the short and very short term becomes dangerous for everyone, even for those who benefit when the markets perform well....

While it has been rightly emphasized that increasing per capita income cannot be the ultimate goal of political and economic activity, it is still an important means of attaining the objective of the fight against hunger and absolute poverty. Hence, the illusion that a policy of mere redistribution of existing wealth can definitively resolve the problem must be set aside. In a modern economy, the value of assets is utterly dependent on the capacity to generate revenue in the present and the future. Wealth creation therefore becomes an inescapable duty, which must be kept in mind if the fight against material poverty is to be effective in the long term.

The preference for the poor was emphasized, and the Pope noted that the gap between rich and poor has also widened in developed countries. Practical solutions are not sufficient in front of the whole need of the person.

As my venerable Predecessor Pope John Paul II had occasion to remark, globalization “is notably ambivalent”[14] and therefore needs to be managed with great prudence. This will include giving priority to the needs of the world's poor, and overcoming the scandal of the imbalance between the problems of poverty and the measures which have been adopted in order to address them. The imbalance lies both in the cultural and political order and in the spiritual and moral order. In fact we often consider only the superficial and instrumental causes of poverty without attending to those harboured within the human heart, like greed and narrow vision. The problems of development, aid and international cooperation are sometimes addressed without any real attention to the human element, but as merely technical questions – limited, that is, to establishing structures, setting up trade agreements, and allocating funding impersonally. What the fight against poverty really needs are men and women who live in a profoundly fraternal way and are able to accompany individuals, families and communities on journeys of authentic human development.

We are not off the hook of our responsibility by simply offering charitable aid. A more comprehensive change is proposed to us.

Faithful to this summons from the Lord, the Christian community will never fail, then, to assure the entire human family of her support through gestures of creative solidarity, not only by “giving from one's surplus”, but above all by “a change of life-styles, of models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies”.

Christmas Hope for Peace

2008-12-22T16:59:00.000-06:00

In India, authorities in Orissa have met with Hindu leaders to get agreements to ban anti-Christian demonstrations during Christmas. (AsiaNews.it) Archbishop Raphael Cheenath asked his parishes in Kandhamal not to have Midnight Mass because of the danger to Christians on their return home.

In Vietnam, political leaders offered Christmas greetings to Christian clergy (Vietnam News), while tensions between church and state remain high. From Fr. Joseph Nguyen: "Please pray for the Church in Vietnam. As Christmas draws near, we are still at the Golgotha on the Good Friday."

In Iraq, Christmas is being celebrated, despite all the trials of Christians there, with a new openness this year:

"The interior ministry organized a celebration," says Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, "the aim of which was to reward those who have struggled for interreligious dialogue and have carried forward initiatives of peace. It is a gesture of solidarity toward Christians, and an invitation to return to Iraq." The celebration, held on Saturday in the capital, the first public event connected to Christmas, saw the participation of a great number of children (in the photo) accompanied by their families. The celebration was enriched by a tree decorated with Christmas themes, a Santa Claus mingling among the crowd, images of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary, and the flag of Iraq to unite all of the citizens. "Today, all Iraqis are Christians," said Major Abdul Karim Khalaf, spokesman of the interior ministry. "The celebration was a gesture of friendship for Christians," continues Archbishop Sako, "and a symbolic condemnation of the violence that our community has had to endure over the past five years."

In Palestine, thousands of pilgrims are expected to visit the Lord's birthplace, and the area has seen a revival in tourism as hostilities have lessened. The small ancient Christian community there, squeezed between Israelis and Muslim Palestinians, has diminished over the years, but the increase in visitors is helping the local economy.

"The fact that this year so many pilgrims will join us for the Christmas liturgies is a sign that makes us even more sure that we are not the only ones seeking Jesus." Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Custodian of the Holy Land, comments on the boom of pilgrimages for the Christmas holidays....

"Sustaining hope ... is the biggest task in the situation in which we find ourselves. For this reason as well, the message for Christmas ends with the affirmation: 'There is still hope for everyone!'" The Custodian explains that "this is an appeal above all for the Christians of the Holy Land. In Bethlehem, their numbers continue to drop, and they suffer the frustration and difficulty of the conditions in which they live. With the wishes for Christmas, I want to recall that the miracle that is taking place is an invitation, in spite of everything, to renew ourselves and our zeal. The fact that this year so many pilgrims will join us for the Christmas liturgies is a sign that makes us even more sure that we are not the only ones seeking Jesus."

Banking on an Oligarchy

2008-12-21T06:27:00.000-06:00

Deacon Scott Dodge cites two recent editorials during the interregnum between Bush and Obama, one from Thomas Friedman, "The Great Unravelling", and the other a poignant reflection from The New Republic, "Important People" (clipped at Paper Clippings). Unravelling is the word for it because the dynasties have been in place and on the take for a long time.

Friedman compares Madoff's actions with Wall Street generally:

I have no sympathy for Madoff. But the fact is, his alleged Ponzi scheme was only slightly more outrageous than the 'legal' scheme that Wall Street was running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and high greed. What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a nothing-down and nothing-to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a $750,000 home, and then bundling that mortgage with 100 others into bonds — which Moody’s or Standard & Poors rate AAA — and then selling them to banks and pension funds the world over? That is what our financial industry was doing. If that isn’t a pyramid scheme, what is?

And Leon Wieseltier is by turns angry and philosophical:

In a society as wounded as our own, there is something repellent about the assertions of elitism. Its most awful expression, of course, is the acquiescence of almost everybody in the dynastic ambitions of the Kennedys. I can almost not imagine a more obvious mutilation of the meritocratic ideal than the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the United State Senate. A Senate seat is a fucking valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing. But of course it will not be given away for nothing: the princess and her family will be delighted to pay for it. Ever since this democratic indignity was broached, the really smart talking point has been that she has the money for her eventual campaigns....

A society may be measured by whom it admires. No class of Americans has done more to damage America than the financial class. A generalization is an ugly thing, but every day's newspaper refreshes my impression that the titans, the insiders, the big players, the boldfacers, the movers and the shakers-the hoshover menschen, as we say where I come from-have been, many of them, fools or thieves....

In these days of dread I prefer to linger over all the people who have never been able to facilitate a favor. The media that used to be fascinated by the pleasures of the rich is now fascinated by the pains of the rich, but the fascination is the same, and it contributed to the bubble that burst in all our faces, and it interferes now with what we really need to know. When I read the papers I skip guiltlessly over the desperate sales of jewels and summer homes and go straight to the accounts of unglamorous desperation, of ordinary people helping each other because otherwise they would be even more powerless than they are.

I add the Deacon's comments as a judgment because the economy is a human endeavor and must be managed as such; the consumeristic credit-heavy model is unreasonable, unjust, unstable and ultimately unsatisfying.

Who besides Bernard Madoff, who turned himself in, has even been indicted? Did nothing untoward or illegal occur in the respective collapses of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns? What about that hole in A.I.G. that $125 billion of taxpayer money has not been able to fill? Given that, why not chuck $14 billion, a mere 11.2% of what's been flushed down the A.I.G. toilet, Detroit's way? For that matter, what about Mr. Paulson and his oh so urgent bailout, which appears to be nothing but another brazen executive power-grab by the Bush Administration? Dear Hank, what has your scheme to keep those whom you personally deem to be important people afloat corrected, fixed, or gotten headed in the right direction, how many foreclosures has it forestalled? Why is the only fix I ever hear mentioned more consumer spending? Isn't this ridiculous, given that more and more people do not even have jobs? Besides, isn't out-of-control spending, lending, and borrowing what got us into this mess in the first place? If I understand this idiotic reasoning correctly, we do not need regulatory reform and sounder national economic policies, consumer education, better personal financial discipline, and higher overall savings rate. No, our broken and shattered economy will be fixed by everyone buying new microwaves and iPods on our credit cards; that's like saying our greenhouse gas emission problem will be solved by everyone returning to the use of coal furnances and barbecuing with charcoal brickettes every night, while idling our cars in our driveways. Hey, it's almost Christmas and, as Ricky Bobby might say, "Baby Jesus needs a new pair of shoes!" Let's go for broke! Wait! We're already broke! Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Golgotha in Vietnam

2008-12-20T07:18:00.000-06:00

A pitched battle is on in Vietnam between the Catholic church and the government. Several Catholics were recently tried and given sentences of house arrest and probation for the government's appropriation of church property. The government has demanded the expulsion of the Redemptorists from Hanoi. And a monastery is about to be torn down and the land converted into a public park.

Vietnamese authorities appear to have adopted a policy of turning Church property into green spaces, AsiaNews says. "Or perhaps it is a vendetta against local Catholics whose protests prevented them from selling the land to private interests."

Sandro Magistra recently reported on the Vietnamese bishops' reports of their church's struggle during the recent Synod.

At the synod taking place at the Vatican, there are two bishops from Vietnam: the bishop of Nha Trang, Joseph Vo Duc Minh, and of Thanh Hóa, Joseph Nguyên Chi Linh.

The latter of these, speaking on the morning of October 13, called the Church of Vietnam "one of the Churches most harshly tested by bloody and uninterrupted persecution."

But immediately after this, he encouraged those present with this passage from the conciliar constitution "Gaudium et Spes":

"The Church admits that she has greatly profited and still profits from the antagonism of those who oppose or who persecute her."

Proof of this "profit" – he said – is found in the flourishing of conversions in Vietnam, and the growing respect shown to Catholics for their extensive work in defense of motherhood, in a country with an extremely high abortion rate.

Yesterday, Hanoi priest Joseph Nguyen warned that the persecution will be ongoing.

“The Church needs to prepare for more persecutions,” Hanoi priest Fr. Joseph Nguyen warned, suggesting that a careful reading of Chairman Thao’s letter shows that he did not actually expect the Redemptorists to be transferred. “He expected and truly wanted the Church leaders to say no,” Fr. Joseph Nguyen claimed.

“The tone of the letter was so hostile, and so demanding. It also upset readers with the word ‘god’ in small case. It was not in tune with the claimed intention.

“What Thao really wants now is a good excuse for administratively coercive measures. Please pray for the Church in Vietnam. As Christmas draws near, we are still at the Golgotha on the Good Friday,” he concluded. (Catholic News Agency)

Threats to Freedom of Conscience

2008-12-19T05:08:00.000-06:00

As Paper Clippings notes today: "Right of conscience regulations are going to be a major political battleground in the next few years." In a last minute move, the Bush administration wrote rules to protect health providers from being required by their employment to participate in providing medical assistance and advice which violates their consciences. Preparations to persuade the new administration to reverse it are underway. Also, the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which Barack Obama had pledged to sign during his campaign, would remove any conscience exceptions for health professionals, threatening the continuation of Catholic health facilities (see "Losing the Catholic Vote"). But conscience issues are not only a problem for health care providers.

The recent fight over Proposition 8 in California, a measure which outlawed same-sex marriage, was a conscious effort to protect religious rights. Most of the practical measures that a homosexual couple require, such as the ability to make health decisions for their partner, are already provided for in a civil union (see "Civil Unions Provide 90% of the Loaf. Take It"). As soon as homosexual marriage is recognized as a human "right", then any discrimination based on lifestyle would be a civil rights violation.

Take Boston, for example. There Catholic Charities was forced to begin providing adoptions to same-sex couples; under Cardinal O'Malley's direction the facility closed. It was not even an issue of taking federal money: the agency could no longer make a judgment on the suitability of the parents according to historical Christian and natural law criteria. Other cases show the same trend: Methodists in New Jersey were refused a tax exemption because they wouldn't perform civil unions, and in Iowa the YMCA was forced not only to recognize same-sex couples for purposes of membership but to change their charter to redefine families (Severino).

As quoted in "Banned in Boston", Maggie Gallagher posed the question of a trend toward infringement on conscience to a prominent religious rights attorney:

I PUT THE QUESTION to Anthony Picarello, president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The Becket Fund is widely recognized as one of the best religious liberty law firms and the only one that defends the religious liberty of all faith groups, "from Anglicans to Zoroastrians," as its founder Kevin J.
Hasson likes to say (referring to actual clients the Becket Fund has defended).
Just how serious are the coming conflicts over religious liberty stemming from gay marriage?

"The impact will be severe and pervasive," Picarello says flatly. "This is going to affect every aspect of church-state relations." Recent years, he predicts, will be looked back on as a time of relative peace between church and state, one where people had the luxury of litigating cases about things like the Ten Commandments in courthouses. In times of relative peace, says Picarello, people don't even notice that "the church is surrounded on all sides by the state; that church and state butt up against each other. The boundaries are usually peaceful, so it's easy sometimes to forget they are there. But because marriage affects just about every area of the law, gay marriage is going to create a point of conflict at every point around the perimeter."

The Fight for Eluana

2008-12-17T09:43:00.000-06:00

The case of Eluana Englaro, a 38-year-old comatose woman whose father received a court ruling allowing him to remove hydration and feeding care, is not over. The nuns who have been caring for her refused to participate in the euthanasia order, as did the entire region of Lombardy which would not allow its health facilities to be involved in the case. Instead, a Udine clinic is now "ready" to complete the killing.

However, a new development has stopped the process, an intervention by Minister of Health Maurizio Sacconi who stated that the suspension of treatment to the disabled is illegal. (Ansa.it)

Positive Economic Models

2008-12-16T11:19:00.001-06:00

A new (CL, I assume) blog, Letters to a Post-Christian Nation, takes up the subject of an alternative economic model, G.K. Chesterton's distributism, which is now getting some respect. As a concept, it takes on other names, such as sustainability. Whereas strict economic liberalism assumes a materialistic view of social motivations and a polyannish optimism in market "freedom", a local economic model matches economics with relationships in the real (non-virtual) world.

Here is the CL UK press release about the Crunch. Reading it, I am struck by the fact it acknowledges that financial models have become disconnected from the real economy (the ideas of distributism aim to make this reconnection, in Belloc's particular ideas, this involves punitive taxes on big companies to limit their size!!!) and the link to trust reminds me of the other point the lecturer made the other day; he talked about a crisis of "confidence" in the financial system. I pointed out that to call it confidence when we apparently build a system on making impossible mortgage offers to people who presumably aren't able to decide better is a bit of a strange definition.

So we are back to education; how to know reality. I think I am pretty lucky, because all the disillusionment I have in my strange socialist family roots is soothed by news like this from Brazil, where they are building new social infrastructures without lapsing into socialism.

Stratford Caldecott takes up this communitarian theme in "After the Disaster: Back to the Family and Localism", showing a root cause in the distortion of individualism. His observations are well-documented in sociological studies on marriage and family, and the application to the economy makes sense.

The dominant social philosophy tells us that the basic unit of society is the individual, making choices that simply reflect the desires that are uppermost in him at the time. If this is true, two things happen. First, everything tends to be determined by individual desire and its manipulation. We end up with pure consumerism. Second, centralization (or corporatism) becomes inevitable, because a multitude of individuals can be too easily harnessed together. The result is a small group of successful individuals controlling the rest. That can as easily take the form of socialism as capitalism.

In the real world, the basic unit of society is not the individual but the family, meaning the set of relationships out of which the individual is born or into which he marries. It is from within this set of relationships that the individual exercises what freedom he has, whether it be moral, economic or political.

A shift in philosophical view away from individualism would change everything. If the basic unit of society is understood to be the family instead of the individual, people cannot so easily be detached from the relationships in which they are embedded, including the natural environment on which they are dependent. In other words, if we adopt this person- and family-centered view, truth would come before choice, reality before desire, responsibility before rights. That would make us less easy to manipulate, herd and enslave.

“Embedded” individuals are not morally any better than the free-floating individuals in a consumerist society, but their interests are different. One way they differ is by being likely to take a long-term view, because while an individual lives only briefly, a family or group lives potentially for ever. Consequently, to the extent that our affections and identity are bound up with such a group, we will seek sustainability (environmental as well as economic) rather than immediate advantage and self-indulgence.

I am reading Supercapitalism by Robert Reich, an interesting book recommended in Rimini by one of the speakers on a panel discussing the economic situation (just pre-crisis). The acceleration of the consumer-goods global economy has removed many of our key former economic and social safeguards. The sale of consumer items drives two-thirds of the economy today, so the question is what happens when we as individuals run out of credit or decide to get off the merry-go-round: how will we move the economy forward? Reich recommends on his blog that we return to building structures that benefit the community in place of an excess of consumer trinkets.

The current recession is a nightmare for people who have lost their jobs, homes, and savings; and it’s part of a continuing nightmare for the poor. That’s why we have to do all we can to get the economy back on track. But most other Americans are now discovering they can exist surprisingly well buying fewer of the things they never really needed to begin with.

What we most lack, or are in danger of losing, are the things we use in common – clean air, clean water, public parks, good schools, and public transportation, as well as social safety nets to catch those of us who fall. Common goods like these don’t necessarily use up scarce resources; often, they conserve and protect them.

Yet they have been declining for many years. Some have been broken up and sold as more expensive private goods, especially for the well-to do – bottled water, private schools, security guards, and health clubs, for example. Others, like clean air, have fallen prey to deregulation. Others have been wacked by budget axes; the current recession is forcing states and locales to axe even more. Still others, such as universal health care and pre-schools, never fully emerged to begin with.

Where does this logic lead? Given the implausibility of consumers being able to return to the same level of personal spending as before, along with the undesirability of our doing so even if we could, and the growing scarcity of common goods, there would seem only one sensible way to restore and maintain aggregate demand. That would be through government expenditure on the commons. Rather than a temporary stimulus, government would permanently fill the gap left by consumers who cannot and should not be expected to resume their old spending ways. This wouldn’t require permanent deficits as long as, once economic growth returns, revenues from a progressive income tax refill the coffers.

Obviously, there are better and worse ways of achieving this goal, and subsidiarity is the Chestertonian and Catholic preference which supports the local initiative over imposed bureaucracies. Still, the time is right to propose more reasonable economic models which promote the common good over maximum profits.

Cultural Renewal

2008-12-15T18:49:00.000-06:00

I'm about 20 pages into Cormac McCarthy's narrative, The Road. I figure that I'll read a little bit each day, several days a week. Here's the passage for today:

"It's snowing, the boy said. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire like the last host of christendom."

I also read Chapter 3 of Christopher Dawson's book, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture. To understand Dawson, I have had to live a certain reality with friends, looking to verify the Christian claim. According to Dawson, we live in the sixth age of the Church. This is not a schema imposed on history according to apocalyptic theorizing, but a historian's synthesis of the various epochs of renewal, accomplishment, and decay. Here are the six ages as Dawson presents them:

Apostolic Age: "the main achievement of the first age of the Church was the successful penetration of the dominant urban Roman-Hellenistic culture" (49).
Age of the Fathers: from the Peace of the Church (Constantine: 313AD) to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem (638), Antioch, and Alexandria.
Third Age: Seventh-Tenth Centuries. "The Church was the sole representative of higher culture and possessed a monopoly of all forms of literary education, so that the relation between religion and culture was closer than in any other period." Christianity "ceased to be a predominately urban religion; the old link between bishop and city was broken, and the monastery became the real center of life and Christian culture" (52). "[...] Saint Boniface, who was the chief agent in bringing about the alliance of the Frankish monarchy, the Papacy, and the Benedictine order [...] its educational and liturgical work, which laid the foundations of that common Latin ecclesiastical culture, which underlay the subsequent development of medieval civilization" (53).
Fourth Age: "began as a movement of monastic reform in Lorraine and Burgandy and gradually extended its influence throughout Western Christendom" (53). This monastic reform culminated in the poverty of St. Francis — "This marks the climax of the reforming movement, and the greatness of the medieval Papacy is nowhere more evident than in the way in which it accepted this drastic breach with the traditional order and made the new institution an organ for the evangelization of the masses and an instrument of its international mission" (55). The decay at the end of this age was the breakdown between the papacy and the reform movements.
Baroque Age: Italian Renaissance and the Reformation, Turkish expansion in Europe, discovery of America — ending in the French Revolution (1799). Artistic revival, St. Francis Xavier goes to Asia.
The latest age of the Church. 1850-???? (several hundred years at least). "This revival began in France during the Revolution, under the shadow of the guillotine, and the exiled French clergy contributed to the creation or restoration of Catholicism in England and America. Indeed the whole history of Catholicism in the United States belongs to this sixth age and is in many aspects typical of the new conditions of the period. ¶ American Catholicism differs from that of the old world in that it is essentially urban, whereas in Europe it was still rooted in the peasant population. Moreover from the beginning it has been entirely independent of the state and has not been restricted by the complex regime of concordats which was the dominant pattern of European Catholicism in the nineteenth century" (57). Dawson makes just a couple of suggestive remarks about the present age, leaving that work to the retrospective work of unborn historians.

1845, however, is the year that John Henry Cardinal Newman became Catholic. The first half of the Twentieth Century saw a cultural renewal in Europe, which could be termed Resourcement: Péguy, Bernanos, Claudel, Henri de Lubac, Jean Hans Urs von Balthasar, Daniélou. A revival of the common life among the laity with Dorothy Day and Madeleine Delbrêl. The Second Vatican Council. The rise of lay movements. Notably, the 1950s had Fr. Giussani starting Communion and Liberation in Italy. Around the same time, Francis Schaeffer rediscovered Christian hospitality at L'Abri in Switzerland, which incubated his ideas on worldview and political engagement. Stanley Hauerwas and the Protestant New Monastic movement.

Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit,
either rotten or ripe.
And the Church must be forever building, and always
decaying, and always being restored.
For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:
For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of
God,
For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.
And of all that was done that was good, you have the
inheritance.
For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he
stands alone on the other side of death,
But here upon the earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you.
And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;
And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as devoted as those of our fathers who fought to gain it.
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever
decaying within and attacked from without;
For this is the law of life; and you must remember that
while there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of
adversity they will decry it.

T.S. Eliot, Choruses from ‘‘The Rock’,
Collected Poems, 1909-1962
(New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1963), 153-154.

We live in remarkable times, times of hope and struggle.

Black Friday and Consumer Denial

2008-12-07T04:44:00.000-06:00

Black Friday, the traditional post-Thanksgiving kickoff to the Christmas shopping season, drew more scrutiny this year due to the economic downturn. Although the name originally came from Philadelphia because of the traffic snarl, the term was changed to refer to the time of year when retail stores would move from red to black on their accounting sheets. The stores open early in the morning, and some shoppers spend the night in line, sometimes foregoing their Thanksgiving dinner to be first to buy some hot items limited in quantity.

This year the holiday shopping spree was supposed to be subdued given rising unemployment rates and strained credit card limits. The National Retail Federation had predicted an 11% drop for the weekend. Half the people surveyed said they would spend less this year. Mothers planned to forego clothes for themselves so that they could buy toys for their children. It happened otherwise, at least for now. Store shoppers spent 3% more this year than last over the weekend, taking advantage of deep discounts. Including online buyers, 192 million customers spent an average of $372 over the four days, up 7.2% from last year. The frenzy turned deadly when one New York Wal-Mart employee died as a crowd rushed the doors at 5:00 am.

The weekend was perhaps an indicator of deep denial. Trillions of dollars are being pumped into the tottering markets. The worst unemployment in three decades is expected. Local charities cannot keep up with all the new clients needing food, shelter and help paying heating and electric bills. It remains to be seen if people will continue to spend throughout the season, but for all the hand-wringing about the need to save and pay off debt, frugality was not in evidence.

Americans have been encouraged to spend for decades. After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush exhorted the nation to continue to shop and even to go to Disney World. "Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." As Professor Andrew Bacevich points out, we were not called to make sacrifices as is normal during a time of war. The drive for more cheap things is not just a personal or cultural addiction, but fully two-thirds of the economy is driven by such purchases. Consumerism, which is practically identified with American freedoms, has no robust opponent as it did briefly in the counter-culture sixties. Even the rebellious symbols of black leather and silver spikes have been absorbed into the market through specialty stores like Hot Topic. Still, the mentality has its critics.

David Schindler, editor of the quarterly Communio, points out the hidden dangers of consumption: "Western (economic) liberalism is pernicious in a way that Communism is not, because liberalism fills culture with its vision so imperceptibly and invisibly. Cultures embrace Western freedom, only to discover--too late?--that they've been made unfree by Western consumerism. People know they've lost their freedom when they've been run over by a tank. They are not so quick to notice the loss of freedom that comes from enervation of the soul and slavery to appetite."

Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1985 described the vulnerability of economic systems which leave aside a moral framework: "It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse."

From all indicators, our consumption habits are on a collision course with reality; we can only hope for a softer landing. Ironically, October 29, 1929, the day the stock market crashed signaling the Great Depression, was named Black Tuesday.

Published at Il Sussidiario.Net in translation.

Politics with Conscience

2008-12-04T18:59:00.001-06:00

In recent days, two world leaders have taken a strong stand for life against the majority; they are exceptional in resisting the gathering momentum in legislation liberalizing abortion and euthanasia. For these men, conscience is applied to matters of state and not left home in the top dresser drawer.

When the Grand Duke of Luxembourg opposed a new euthanasia bill in his country, the parliament moved to negate his traditional prerogative to veto the bill. Stefan McDaniel notes:

Thus the last non-ceremonial political act by the last Grand Duke of Europe was in defense of human life. You don’t have to be a sentimentalist about Christendom to think that a splendid way to make your exit. (First Things)

Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez, a leftist and a physician, vetoed an abortion bill last month. He subsequently left the socialist party over the issue.

In November, the Uruguayan Senate voted by 17 votes to 13 to make abortion legal if there was a health risk to the mother or foetus.

The bill would also have allowed a woman to end her pregnancy in the first 12 weeks under other circumstances, such as extreme poverty.

But centre-left Mr Vazquez, who is also a doctor, vetoed the bill, saying it was more important to provide support for women with unwanted pregnancies than to enable them to have abortions.

Financial Advice for Low-Income Mothers

2008-12-03T06:05:00.000-06:00

Lately I'm sure it's dawned on those of us who have retirement accounts that these are products that have been sold to us. In fact, they're not for everybody. An economist, offering volunteer financial advice at a women's shelter, has a counterintuitive perspective on spending priorities. Some of these principles would make sense for middle-class families as well.

First, though, I was impressed by the fact that she did not presume to make the choices for her clients or even to volunteer for the purpose of "helping".

I said I volunteered because I thought that learning about how these women respond to their extreme financial constraints would be interesting. Everyone else said they thought their experiences would be helpful (most were lawyers or in human resources). I realised I was the only one who did not say I was there to help homeless women. I wondered if that made me a bad person. But (and I may be rationalising here) I found something presumptuous about the idea I could swoop in from my comfortable life and sort out these women’s financial woes. I might know about economics and finance, but I know nothing of what it’s like to be a homeless single mother. I genuinely hope to help these women, but expecting that I can feels naive.

While the lead volunteer stated that cell phones were a luxury, the mothers disagreed for reasons of safety and the need for contact with day care. Instead, the economist suggested using pre-paid plans which are much cheaper than the standard contract plans. There was a lot to unravel with these clients. A young pregnant woman she was helping was maxing out credit cards instead of going on welfare, a recipe for ruin.

IRAs and education funds for college have been marketed to the poor as well which only exacerbate their financial burdens. Her advice to parents on schooling is particularly interesting, which is to put their resources into education while the children are young and to rely on state aid later.

The poor have different saving needs from the rest of us. They do not need to save much (if at all) for retirement because the state provides them with a generous pension relative to their lifetime income. They also have less incentive to save for their children’s education. American universities practice nearly perfect price discrimination: having few assets entitles poor students to more financial aid. Resources are better spent on education while a child is young, ensuring he’s well prepared for university in the future. The women at the shelter have low or no income and children to support. Saving might be a better idea in the future, when they have some income and are less dependent on state benefits.

A New Commitment to Stopping Genocide

2008-12-02T05:52:00.000-06:00

President-elect Barack Obama recently announced his choice of Susan E. Rice for Ambassador to the United Nations. She supports U.N. intervention in the worse cases of civil rights violations, such as in the ongoing genocidal war in Sudan.

Rice's personal experience of the Rwanda genocide led her to believe that the international community has the duty to act to protect endangered populations.

[T]he posting will offer Rice a platform from which to decry long-standing global concerns. For instance, she has voiced a commitment to use American muscle to protect human rights in Africa, particularly in Darfur, where she has raised the prospect of a naval blockade and a bombing campaign to compel the Sudanese government to halt mass violence.

Rice has spoken movingly about how she was shaken by the genocide in Rwanda, where as many as 800,000 were killed. Describing a 1994 visit to the country, Rice told Stanford University's alumni magazine that she saw "hundreds if not thousands of decomposing corpses outside and inside a church. Corpses that had been hacked up. It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen. It makes you mad. It makes you determined."

Since then, Rice has said she has been haunted by the United States' failure to intervene or to reinforce a beleaguered U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda on the eve of the genocide.

"Rice has learned a lesson from what happened in Rwanda, and, together with the incoming secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, she cannot turn a blind eye on anything happening in Africa," said James Kimonyo, Rwanda's ambassador to the United States. "We are very optimistic she is going to be effective" in her new post, he said.

Pope Benedict XVI in his address to the United Nations this year affirmed this principle of the international body's responsibility to protect.

Recognition of the unity of the human family, and attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman, today find renewed emphasis in the principle of the responsibility to protect. This has only recently been defined, but it was already present implicitly at the origins of the United Nations, and is now increasingly characteristic of its activity. Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made. If States are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations Charter and in other international instruments. The action of the international community and its institutions, provided that it respects the principles undergirding the international order, should never be interpreted as an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty. On the contrary, it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage. What is needed is a deeper search for ways of pre-empting and managing conflicts by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation.

Review: What the World Should Be by Malcolm D. Magee

2008-11-29T11:34:00.000-06:00

What the World Should Be: Woodrow Wilson and the Crafting of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy
by Malcolm D. Magee
Baylor University Press, 2008.

What is the impact of an individual's faith on public policy and the governance of a nation? Our modernist prejudices can cause us to underestimate the role of religion in our leaders. We tend to think that religion is at best an extra, a private motivation for pursuing or eschewing policies rooted in commonly held values; or, at worst a cynical move directed at selling these same values to a superstitious populace.

In his book, What the World Should Be, Malcolm Magee examines the religious beliefs of President Woodrow Wilson and demonstrates the pervasive affect that these beliefs had on Wilson's view of the world as it is and should be, how Wilson faced challenges in the political realm, and how these beliefs played out in history. John Maynard Keynes, the English economist and contemporary of Wilson wrote that:

"The President was like a nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian. His thought and his temperament were essentially theological not intellectual, with all the strength and the weakness of that manner of thought, feeling, and expression" (The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920).

Taking this claim of Keynes seriously, Magee examines in detail the distinct Princeton Presbyterian tradition that Wilson inherited and Wilson's own substantial theological writings.

Magee's approach limits itself to Wilson's foreign policy, from the US's intervention in Veracruz, Mexico, through World War I, and culminating in the negotiations for the League of Nations. Wilson's policies led time and again to disappointment: like a Greek tragedy in which the protagonist never recognizes his tragic flaw. For Magee, this flaw is lack of personal humility, but to me it seems that Wilson's theology isolated him even from co-religionists and made it difficult to learn from experience and from others. Magee describes the key ideas of the theology in a clear and concise way for a non-specialist reader. He demonstrates lucidly how this theology pervades Wilson's policies. With this information, the reader is in a good place to evaluate the intersection of the political, the theological, and the personal.

The ancillary materials include "Christ's Army": A Religious Essay by Woodrow Wilson from 1876, Wilson's "Fourteen Points" Address to Congress, The Covenant of the League of Nations. and the 1876 Inaugural Address of Wilson's father, the Rev. Joseph R. Wilson, DD Delivered before the Board of Directors of the Southwestern Presbyterian University. These documents display a consistent theological point of view, well supporting Magee's thesis of the influence of Wilson's theology on his foreign policy.

Building on Hope

2008-11-28T09:45:00.000-06:00

Earlier this week in preparation for the holidays, Slate.Com offered an amusing little piece on what to say during those inevitable political arguments which come up during family gatherings. I'm always reminded of James Joyce's story "The Dead" and how little the disputes connect with what is really important, something that becomes clear by the climax of the story. Anyway, the article, "Ammunition for Settling--or Starting--Holiday Political Spats" offered a tongue-in-cheek debunking of cherished ideologies by showing how both sides are simultaneously right and wrong. Whether intentional or not, it was quite the post-election, mid-economic crisis piece to display the absurdity of the usual polarities.

The issue of Traces (Vol. 10 No. 9 2008) which just arrived is the perfect antidote to our necessary disillusionment with ideologies and offers a direction for our irrepressible desire for justice and the common good.

Economist Giorgio Vittadini in "Crisis Underscores the Reduction of the Human" writes about the need to build an economy which is for the whole person and not just profits.

The point is to admit that this is not just an economic crisis. It is an anthropological crisis that calls into question a human idea of reduced rationality, tending as it does to the maximization of short-term profits, but inattentive to the principles essential to create a real and lasting affluence. Hence, it is doomed to be cut off from reality and has built a virtual world that will fatally collapse. To look ahead, we need a rationality that reveals how even now Homo oeconomicus has other much greater motives than just quarterly profits unrelated to society. We need a healthy realism that will anchor finance firmly to the real economy, of which it is and must be only an instrument. From this point of view, after having demonized many aspects of the economic system, it is perhaps necessary to reappraise some, such as its close ties to the territory and its concern for the real economy, which is one of its riches that is not yet extinct.

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete reflects on how the problem of hope makes more clear our need for God and introduces the next book by Fr. Luigi Giussani which we will be working on for School of Community titled Is It Possible to Live This Way?: Hope.

The “knowledge” sustaining modern hope has come from one or another ideology of progress: a political ideology, a scientific one (including so-called scientifically conceived politics that recognize the true structure of history and society), a philosophical system, etc. Yet, again and again, these ideologies show their inability to fulfill our hopes, and hope is increasingly being replaced by a stoic resignation approaching total hopelessness. This was precisely the situation in the culture encountered by the first Christians when they left Palestine and arrived in the great cities of the Roman Empire. Today, we must respond to it as they did. For this to happen, Pope Benedict says, it is necessary to undertake a “self-critique of modern Christianity” by returning to its “roots.”

Then the editorial of the issue asks the direct question: "Got Hope?"

At such an important time in our history, we cannot shy away from proclaiming the only true hope: the encounter with Jesus Christ. And this proclamation does not entail a flight from the world of politics, economics, culture, or justice–in other words, this proclamation does not entail a flight from the world. On the contrary, the hope afforded by the encounter with Christ is that which has most radically transformed life on this earth. As Pope Benedict recently reminded great figures from the world of culture in France, Christian monasticism gave rise to our civilization, without any pretense of a cultural project. We know that hospitals, orphanages, the concept of human rights, science, and polyphonic music all have their roots in that life built on the hope given by the encounter with Jesus Christ.

It would be easy at the point of disillusionment to retreat from active engagement into pietism. Instead, we are called to a great fraternal work born from a reasonable hope based on the person of Christ Incarnate living among us.

Thanks and Giving

2008-11-27T06:22:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The Credo blog documents earlier Thanksgiving events in our nation's history.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the first American Thanksgiving was actually celebrated on September 8, 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida. The Native Americans and Spanish settlers held a feast and the Holy Mass was offered.

A second similar "Thanksgiving" celebration occurred on American soil on April 30, 1598 in Texas when Don Juan de Oñate declared a day of Thanksgiving to be commemorated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Catholic origins of Thanksgiving don’t stop there. Squanto, the beloved hero of Thanksgiving, was the Native American man who mediated between the Puritan Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Squanto had been enslaved by the English but he was freed by Spanish Franciscans. Squanto thus received baptism and became a Catholic. So it was a baptized Catholic Native American who orchestrated what became known as Thanksgiving.

Today we're preoccupied with preparing food and feasting. And food is a big story this season, as grocery prices continue to rise and with the economic crisis more people are going to food pantries. Some Los Angeles charities are finding that former donors are now themselves in need of assistance.

In a new survey of 44 charities that provide food, shelter and financial assistance, Catholic Charities USA found that 52% reported an increase in middle-class clients, up from 43% in June.

"I receive a call or two every week from people who have been contributors for years who find themselves unemployed," said Paul Martodam, chief executive of Catholic Charities Community Services in Phoenix. "They feel terrible. They never pictured themselves as being on the receiving side of charity."

These new recipients have added to the Phoenix agency's mounting troubles. In October, its emergency shelter turned away 161 families and its food pantry had to send away 198 families. Meanwhile, 526 families couldn't get help with utility bills, Martodam said.

It's a reminder to stop and put something in the Salvation Army kettle or to pick up some extra cereal and canned goods for the food shelf.

Party Soul-Searching

2008-11-26T10:55:00.000-06:00

Deacon Scott pointed to a couple of articles on his blog on the election post-mortem from the point of view of Christian interests. I pass on a few of his quotes.

Ross Douthat's The Moral Obligation To Study Election Returns, in which he correctly chastises George Wiegel's take on the election...
I agree very much with a comment made by one Traductor, on a post over on Paper Clippings: "Catholics need to start proposing Christ and the possibility of a new humanity that is born out of the encounter with him. Some fights may be necessary, like protecting the freedom of Catholic works like hospitals, but history has shown that we will always be on the losing side of a war over 'values.' As Obama himself said, 'Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.' The bishops need to focus on educating their flocks, or else when and if they stand up, there may be no one behind them."

This puts me in mind, once again, of something Msgr Albacete said:
"We do not have the problem, or the mission, to construct a bridge between faith and politics. We do not have this problem. To have this problem and to attempt to solve it, already violates our humanity. Every single attempt to build this bridge has been a weakening of faith, or a betrayal of the Incarnation. And historically, there have been many attempts."

Let me add one from British philosophy professor John Haldane of The Witherspoon Institute, "Letter to America on the Future of Social Conservatism". It may be helpful to compare European Christian political experience when charting our own attempts to bring Christian values to bear in the public square. The article is worth a close read because of Britain's experience, where conservatives are abandoning pro-family platforms to pursue their pet economic and foreign policy agendas, a real risk now within our country's Republican party under reconstruction.

It has been a mistake for moral conservatives to associate their concerns with opposition to one candidate and one party. Not only has the previous administration proved itself unworthy, but the state of the Republican party continues to be divided over values such that, had it won the White House and Congressional elections, it would not have delivered a range of policies that would have addressed moral concerns about the conduct of war, the management of markets, the securing of marriage, or the protection of the unborn.

While it would be wrong to abandon the political parties, it would be equally mistaken to side with one of them. The fact is that elections will always be fought and decided on a range of issues and the balance will sometimes favour one side, then another. Social conservatives who look to politics should be seeking to work within both parties, and in the case of the Democrats, seeking to return them to a historical position that was once more in line with Christian moral values and Catholic social teaching than was that of the Republicans.

There is also a further reason to be wary of confusing moral concerns with the fortunes of a political party. Those within a chosen party whose primary interest is pursuing electoral victory may prove fiercer enemies of one’s moral position than political opponents in other parties....

Haldane predicts this will continue to be an uphill battle, but our work is to educate and persuade with a positive message more than via attacks. Ultimately, our task is to witness, even if we don't win.

What are you, and we, to do? The answer can only be to go on as we have learned to do already, arguing the case, fighting the battles, seeking to influence policy, but not investing our hopes in political parties that are more like one another than they are like us. Perhaps American social conservatives might reflect on that experience and prepare themselves for what are likely to be very difficult times ahead.

A Rule to Protect Freedom of Conscience

2008-11-18T04:55:00.000-06:00

A last-minute skirmish is on at the White House, where President Bush is about to issue a rule that will protect the employment of health providers who refuse abortion or contraceptive services on moral grounds.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Health Association representing Catholic hospitals support the new rule. The latter's president Sister Carol Keehan explained: "[W]e have seen a variety of efforts to force Catholic and other health care providers to perform or refer for abortions and sterilizations."

The opposition to the rule is substantial, including: "the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, 28 senators, more than 110 representatives and the attorneys general of 13 states", not to mention president-elect Barack Obama. (IHT)

A Rare Partnership

2008-11-15T07:43:00.000-06:00

In September, Sen. Ted Kennedy (R) and Sen. Sam Brownback (D) came together to sponsor a bill to assist women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of disability with information and resources in their decision. The bill was passed unanimously in late September after languishing for two years, helped in part by the candidacy of Sarah Palin, mother of a Downs Syndrome baby. Sen. Kennedy, although pro-choice, has been a long-time advocate of people with disabilities. Sam Brownback, pro-life, found a way to help women have and care for their afflicted children. A data registry will be established to point to disability resources and adoption options.

The bill was the result of a study by one Harvard Medical Student Brian Skotko who showed that doctors negatively influenced the mothers' decisions:

In two papers published in 2005, he showed that most doctors gave a very negative impression when informing parents that their child might have a disability. Studies show that about 90% of women pregnant with a Down syndrome child choose to abort it.

"The majority of the parents said that the information they got from their physicians was inaccurate, incomplete and sometimes insensitive," Skotko said. "It was in no way consistent with the advancements and possibilities and support that we've seen." (Bioedge)

I heard Sam Brownback speak on NPR the day after the presidential election, and he denied any discouragement, but instead saw opportunity ahead. This bill is a fine example of creative cooperation in the interest of children and their families.

(See also my Brownback Runs for President.)

The Inhumanity of the Megachurch Sex Marathon

2008-11-14T19:35:00.000-06:00

Associated Press has a story on a pastor who challenged the married couples in his flock to a 7-day sex challenge (hat tip to the Ironic Catholic). While this phenomenon is not limited to megachurches, it has been a theme among some megachurches. Ralph Gardner Jr, writing for the New York Times, had an unforgettable quip. Commenting on a married couples who saw marathons as a way to improve their marriage, he writes: "That they thought a sex marathon would reinvigorate their marriages might say as much about the American penchant for exercise and goal-setting as it does about the state of romance."

To begin with, it is good that sex is affirmed as one of the goods of marriage. What's missing in these accounts, however, is the totality of the human experience. The most human way to affirm something is with awareness, consciousness. And if the affirmation is merely physical and quantitative, then it's not enough for the human person. For example, food is a good. Which way affirms the value of food more completely, more fully according the all the needs of human desire:

to eat as much as possible and as often as possible OR
to eat a good meal with friends?

Human beings need not merely sensory gratification and the satiation of instinct, but also need to understand the meaning, the value, the reason for their desire.

In the case of sex, intercourse is the form of the expression of love in which the husband and wife freely seek the happiness of the other, that is the whole happiness of the other, the destiny and total satisfaction of the other. And this happiness never remains alone but is oriented toward fecundity: including children, but also desiring a mutual fruitfulness in life.

If couples are seeking more satisfying sex, what they need is not necessarily more practice, but instead to begin to ask for more meaning, for a greater understanding of the significance of being instinctual creatures who enjoy each other sensorily and yet at the same time have an awareness of themselves and each other. Why is this given? Why are we made this way? If these questions are never asked, then frequent sex may lead to despair and a fear that desire is given in order to frustrate us.

Debt

2008-11-14T17:42:00.001-06:00

In my post yesterday, which was what I like to call comprehensive (i.e., long), I wrote the following:

"Over eight disastrous years it has become all too clear that [the current Administration and many members of Congress] could care less about workers and average homeowners. In their view we are but consumers, programmed to mistake what we want for what we need, the result of which confusion only serves to put more and more money into the pockets of the wealthiest of the wealthy, thus increasing the gap between those who have and those who have not. No longer does anyone worry about savings rates, about putting and keeping our economy on a solid footing, an endeavor in which we all share responsibility. Of course, we bear no small of amount responsibility for this state of affairs. No one can take away our freedom. Hence, we bear responsibility."

Today, I received a Loose Change calendar at work. The quote for December 2009 is by a man named Earl Wilson, who I had never heard of before looking at this calendar. Mr. Wilson writes,
"Today, there are three kinds of people: the have's, the have not's, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they- have's." While I may never have heard of him before today, Mr. Wilson is correct. Too many of us being the last kind of people is what got us into our current economic mess. So, it is a judgment of reason that more of the same kind of consumerism is not going to get us out of it, let alone put us on solid footing either individually or collectively.

Losing the Catholic Vote

2008-11-14T05:35:00.000-06:00

The Catholic vote this election went to Obama by 54-45%, a huge shift from the 2004 Bush-Kerry contest where Bush won the Catholic vote by 52-46%, despite the president's unpopular war. This came after a very vocal effort on the part of the hierarchy and the local churches to put the life of the unborn first among moral issues.

The reason for Catholics abandoning the pro-life ticket is generally attributed to the economic crisis, and polls that distinguish between church-going vs. cultural Catholics show more voting on the advice of their bishops. However, there may have been a perceptual and educational gap which didn't translate the urgency of this election to many Catholic voters.

Even if voters don't know the term "proportionality", they are well aware that Republican administrations have barely stanched the wound of abortion. Some certainly feel that the party has used their vote in the past and betrayed the culture of life ideal, particularly in the present administration in regard to war, torture, and the immigration crackdown. The Hispanic Catholic vote was handed to the Democrats when, for example, roadblocks were put up in their neighborhoods to catch illegal residents on their way to Sunday Mass. The issue of a candidate's support of or opposition to abortion became an abstract and uncompelling argument. If the election actually had hinged on abortion continuing or not, one would hope the tide would have turned the other direction.

In fact, the real risk to the Catholic ideals in this election is something larger than abortion, as impossible as that might seem given the enormity of death in the womb. This risk was not understood and perceived generally by Catholic voters, although the U.S. Bishops themselves are well aware of it. This threat ultimately looms over every charitable and educational Catholic institution in the country. Every Catholic hospital, school, and social agency could be shut down, voluntarily or otherwise, if certain legislation under an ideologically liberal administration were to be enacted.

The most immediate threat is that of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which president-elect Barack Obama has promised to sign into law. The Act makes it a crime for anyone to deny a woman an abortion and would remove conscience clauses for physicians and hospitals. This is huge, both for medical professionals individually and for the Catholic health facilities across the country. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago, a canon and civil lawyer, explained:

[FOCA] could mean discontinuing obstetrics in our hospitals, and we may need to consider taking the drastic step of closing our catholic hospitals entirely. It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions. That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil. I do not think I'm being alarmist in suggesting the need to take such drastic steps. (Whispers).

It isn't hard to see that every other Catholic institution is threatened by the imposition of certain "rights". We have the example of the Boston Archdiocese closing its adoption agency in 2006 when mandated to adopt children to same-sex couples. If schools could not select their teachers with religious criteria, and were forced to "not discriminate", these would also be unable to continue their mission of educating in the faith.

The political education of Catholics must be refined beyond the usual ideological categories, especially when voters perceive no practical difference between one incumbent party and the other on life issues. What is at stake is even more than a grim tally of casualties. The fight is for the continuing presence of the Church in the realms of social life where Christians have served so many so well. Freedom has a higher value than even life, as we learn from our martyrs, who offered everything for the right to proclaim the destiny of human life in Christ.

Political ambivalence unleashed

2008-11-13T19:34:00.000-06:00

I am going to take one last hack at the election and try to look forward a bit. Like many, I am in equal parts elated and deeply worried about an Obama Administration, especially given that the Democrats have significant majorities in both the House and the Senate. Regardless of which party it is, I am deeply skeptical of one-party domination. I live in a state that is overwhelmingly controlled by the Republican Party. We pay a high price for such unquestioning party loyalty. More specifically, my worries about the Democrats being in charge are the possibility of the liberalization of abortion with the enactment of the ghastly Freedom of Choice Act and the possibility of the repeal of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which passed into law into 1996. The Defense of Marriage Act is what allows states that do not legally permit same-sex "marriage" not to have to legally recognize same-sex unions that occur in states that do allow them. In an increasing number of cases, many states constitutionally define marriage as being only between one man and one woman. In addition to the obvious moral issues that are at stake, the enactment of FOCA and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act would be very un-democratic. In the first instance, FOCA would wipe out all state restrictions on abortion (i.e., parental notification, etc.). These restrictions have all passed judicial and constitutional review. The second would effectively seek to federally impose something on many states that is against the expressed will of citizens of those states, who, in the vast majority of cases, passed amendments to their state constitutions defining marriage by large majorities. So, in addition to going against what is in the interest of the state, such moves would also be a violation of states rights as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.

It is necessary here to touch on the “civil rights” argument. There are times when genuine human and civil rights are at stake that the federal government has an interest in overriding states, as with the unjust situation in many states with regard to African-Americans during the civil rights era. At street-level, the demand for same sex "marriage" is not seen as equivalent to racist policies. This is demonstrated by the fact that minority voters voted significantly in favor of California's Proposition 8. Suffice it for now to state that marriage is not a right of that kind. One does not have the human or civil right to marry whomever one wants, or even to get married at all. Nothing is more deleterious to our present civil order than the employment of confusing language about rights and freedom.

This brings us to the question, where do the Republicans go from here? Well, this week at the Republican Governor’s Association meeting Miami, this is the question of the day. Perhaps more specifically, the question of the day is two-fold: where does the GOP go and who will lead it in that direction? Of course, the spotlight very much remains on Governor Palin, who, yet again, failed to distinguish herself this morning during a joint press conference with thirteen other governors. She was the focal point and was asked four questions by reporters. While her answers were an improvement over the ones she gave to Katie Couric, she still lacks substance. The lack of substance is due to what can only be described as her demonstrated shallow understanding of the issues of the day. Her apparent lack of discipline and curiosity stands in stark contrast to the focus and depth exhibited at every turn by President-elect Obama.

That Gov. Palin continues to be seen as a future national leader, if it does not defy reason, certainly defies good polling. Brian Goldsmith, formerly a political producer for CBS News with Katie Couric, writing for Politico, accurately points out that McCain chose Palin for two reasons: to energize the Republican base and to "attract key swing voters, including women, independents, suburbanites, and younger parents."

On the first count, "Republican turnout declined by 1.3%" nationwide from 2004. To highlight the McCain campaign’s failure to energize the base, despite picking Gov. Palin, Goldsmith looks at Ohio "where Obama won despite earning almost the same number of votes as John F. Kerry." Joe the Unlicensed Plumber aside, "300,000 people [in Ohio] who showed up for Bush/Cheney decided to stay home for McCain/Palin." Nationwide, Obama won the female vote by 13% and independent voters by 8%. What is significant about these numbers is that he won both of these constituencies by larger margins than the 6.7% by which he won the popular vote nationwide, making 2008 the worst performance among all these groups by any Republican presidential ticket in the history of the GOP since such polling data has been available.

None of this can be laid solely at the feet of Gov. Palin. Who knows how much worse a McCain/Romney ticket would have fared, especially given that the religion issue would have hurt them in places like Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, the latter of which Obama/Biden made competitive, but which the McCain/Palin ticket ultimately managed to win? Also, let’s not forget that Romney made his fortune by being a venture capitalist. On the other hand, who knows how much better a McCain/Huckabee ticket would have done given Gov. Huckabee’s personal charm and charisma, his solid social conservatism and his economic common sense, which was a better message than supply-side, trickle down, big government, ownership society even-you-can’t-afford-it, consumeristic Bush-o’-nomics. Huckabee, for my money, represents a good alternative for Republicans in these bleak times.

In addition to pointing out that Gov. Palin was unable to accomplish what she was brought on board to do, which was no small task, given Sen. McCain’s fading appeal, even among the GOP faithful, Goldsmith cites CBS News polls showing that she "never earned a majority favorable rating." From the time of her surprise selection until 4 November, "Palin’s favorable number dropped seven points, her unfavorable rating almost doubled, and her positive number finished no higher than her negative number." Contrast this with her VP-nominee counterpart, who is known to take a misstep or two himself from time-to-time, VP-elect Biden, whose "positive-to-negative gap exceeded 20 points". As Sharon pointed out in her post The Savaging of Sarah Palin, in no wise can the loss be blamed on Sarah Palin. After all, choosing her was Sen. McCain’s judgment, which proved to be poor and even reckless, causing many leading conservative intellectuals, even some who initially supported him, to jump ship.

All of the above has now passed. So, we turn to her insistence on putting herself forward as a/the future leader of the Republican Party and of social conservatives. This represents yet another poor judgment. I mean, if the best answer the Republicans can come up with in the wake of getting their asses handed to them electorally, is either Gov. Palin or Gov. Romney, my concern spills over from the Democrats to the Republicans. Never have we needed more intelligent, educated, disciplined, consistent, articulate, and inspiring people of character to champion in the public square what we hold most dear: the inviolable dignity and sanctity of every human being, the importance of the family, letting parents, not the state, decide how best to educate our children, etc.

I do think Huckabee has a winning formula by standing for what we hold most dear and by challenging GOP economic orthodoxy. To succeed nationally, he also needs to take on the immigration hard-liners and healthcare special interests, both for humanitarian and economic reasons. Apart from being a human right, healthcare costs are a drag on our economy, hindering the competitiveness of U.S. workers. The bottom line is that if a Republican candidate has to sell her/his soul to “the base” on economic issues, immigration, and health care (i.e., pretending it is not a crisis), and adhere to the outdated idea of U.S. exceptionalism and unilateralism abroad, they will continue to lose. I also doubt that Republican opposition to helping the U.S. automakers, thus saving jobs that directly and indirectly make up 10% of all jobs in the U.S., is going to help them win again in Michigan and Ohio, or help them continue to win in Indiana.

For too many lawmakers, as well as the current administration, the only jobs and assets worth saving are those of Wall Street executives, like Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, former chairman of Goldman-Sachs. Over eight disastrous years it has become all too clear that they could care less about workers and average homeowners. In their view we are but consumers, programmed to mistake what we want for what we need, the result of which confusion only serves to put more and more money into the pockets of the wealthiest of the wealthy, thus increasing the gap between those who have and those who have not. No longer does anyone worry about savings rates, about putting and keeping our economy on a solid footing, an endeavor in which we all share responsibility. Of course, we bear no small of amount responsibility for this state of affairs. No one can take away our freedom. Hence, we bear responsibility. As Pres. Carter once pointed out, the American people will have no better government that what we deserve. In nothing is this lack of concern and discipline made more apparent than in the unprecedented ballooning of government spending, even once the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan are subtracted. How about encouraging people to pay off debts and begin, again, to save money and stop telling people to spend their money as quickly as they earn it, as if an orgy of consumption is what our economy, the world, and the environment need?

We can only hope that now the Democrats control the levers of power that the so-called Blue Dogs will finally assert themselves and make common cause with Republicans against their party, including their president, on abortion, the family, and embryonic stem cell research, and education. Looking on the positive side of my ambivalence towards the rapidly approaching situation, I am encouraged by what I think will be better and fairer economics, good environmental stewardship, as well as a more engaged and engaging foreign policy by the Obama Administration.

The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need

2008-11-12T06:46:00.001-06:00

The Savaging of Sarah Palin

2008-11-11T06:57:00.000-06:00

A major post-election story has been drawn from a packet of gossip fed to the media by John McCain advisors about the supposedly colossal ignorance of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Republican aides claimed that her geographical and political knowledge was no better than a second-grader's. Certainly, she has stumbled badly in interviews, and as the young governor of Alaska was not well-versed on international affairs, but is the allegation that she didn't know Africa is a continent at all credible? As some analysis have pointed out, her vetting and selection was the responsibility of these same aides, a strong indication of McCain's judgment and no doubt a factor in his defeat.

Throughout the campaign, the media has been more than willing to indulge such derision, particularly against a favorite target: the evangelical Christian. One of the few major media figures to cry foul was Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal: "By not bothering to look very deeply at the details beneath either candidate's governing proposals, the media have created a lot of downtime to take free kicks at Gov. Palin. My former colleague, Tunku Varadarajan, has compiled a glossary of Palin invective, and I've added a few: `Republican blow-up doll,' `idiot,' `Christian Stepford wife,' `Jesus freak,' `Caribou Barbie,' `a dope,' `a fatal cancer to the Republican Party,' `liar,' `a national disgrace' and `her pretense that she is a woman.' If American politics is at low ebb, it is because so many of its observers enjoy working in its fetid backwash."

In contrast to the rumor mill at the McCain camp, Barack Obama's campaign was disciplined and vigorously controlled leaks. Even as the president-elect dissociated from liabilities such as his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Professor Samantha Power, he kept the smears out. When the news story about Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy broke, he publicly declared the subject "off limits", including with it any negative references to a candidate's family. Since Tuesday, the sore losers have dubbed the Palin family "the Wasila hillbillies".

The rift between McCain and Palin is said to have been caused partly because of her future ambitions. One wonders why an older statesman would grudge a political future to a younger colleague, particularly after the tenacity she showed in campaigning for the less popular ticket. McCain advisors controlled the media access and the message for Palin to deliver. At one point, Todd Palin was reported to have called McCain aides to ask why she was being isolated from her own advisors. Now Sarah Palin is taking the high ground, downplaying any disunity and not responding to the disparaging charges. For example, regarding the "spending spree" allegations, reports instead show that campaign aides selected clothing for her, some of which she chose not to wear, and much of which was being returned to the stores.

Whether or not she was ready to be vice-president of the United States, she was employed for a particular purpose: to galvanize the religious right which was at best tepid about McCain. She delivered on that strategy. If the plan was flawed because it steered the party to the right and lost the center on a message of fear, those who wrote the script should take the blame. One wonders about the wisdom of party pundits in sacrificing a green but promising star. Fred Barnes, of the Weekly Standard, opined: "Palin, as best I can describe it, exudes a kind of middle-class magnetism. It's subdued but nonetheless very powerful. Whether they know it or not, Republicans have a huge stake in Palin. If, after the election, they let her slip into political obscurity, they'll be making a tragic mistake."

The strain in the Republican party was evident before the primaries, between those committed to cultural issues and others vested in conservative economic and foreign policy agendas. Whereas Obama and Clinton's battle was about experience more than platforms, the Republican contest highlighted strong ideological rifts. Is the scapegoating of Sarah Palin an attempt to dissociate from the social conservative branch? If so, the Republican party has not begun to assess the Reaganite synthesis necessary for its future viability. CNN analyst Gloria Borger called it when she said: "A civil war that is simmering will break out into the open if McCain loses, and the party will have to decide what they want to be in the post-Reagan world."

Published at Il Sussidiario.Net.

QOTD: Putting Truth to a Vote

2008-11-06T14:53:00.000-06:00

“We can say, in particular in terms of politics, that you can never put truth to a vote, because if you lose, it’s still of value, and if you win, the truth needs freedom in order to be lived, and can’t be imposed." Giancarlo Cesana

"An Adventure for Oneself", Traces 9/08

A Victory of Confidence

2008-11-06T08:26:00.000-06:00

Since the late September Wall Street meltdown, a spiraling contagion of financial fear, John McCain's candidacy began to founder. The Arizona senator briefly suspended his campaign and stated that he would not attend the first presidential debate in order to focus on the crisis, although he did show up in the end. That move was not perceived to be serious but rather evasive. After the bailout measure was passed with the support of both candidates, McCain and running-mate Sarah Palin focused a negative campaign against Senator Barack Obama to associate him with the far-left and to stoke the fear of radicalism. While this energized the conservative base, who had been suspicious of McCain, it repelled independents and more moderate Republicans who began to publicly endorse Obama. "No Drama" Obama, as he has been called by his advisors, only needed to stay positive and confident to support the nation's shaky nerves. Even the Wall Street bankers started to endorse Obama, who came to symbolize stability rather than the tax-gouging socialist portrayed by the Republicans. The securities and investment industry ponied up 43% more cash to Obama's campaign than to that of his rival. The fact that both candidates' plans according to economists were infeasible was secondary to the perception of calm that has been the hallmark of Obama's campaign since his difficult win over Hillary Clinton.

Even without the roiling financial markets, McCain had an uphill battle against Obama thanks to the unpopular reign of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who has an approval rating of under 30%. Obama only had to remind his audiences that McCain had voted with the president 90% of the time. Although McCain repeatedly referred to himself as the maverick who would shake hands with opponents across the aisle, he was still identified with discredited Republican agendas, both foreign and domestic. Barack Obama, despite his well-publicized liberal voting record, managed to seize the center, more so as McCain and Palin became entrenched with the right-wing of the party in the last desperate month of the contest. A record 130 million citizens showed up at their polling places, with the highest percentage of registered voters in decades at 64%. Obama won over women, minorities, and young voters who came out in force. In addition to his commited base, McCain still won a majority of the white vote. Republicans also lost at least eleven House seats, five Senate seats and one governorship.

For Catholics, this was the election where the Church's pastors were most vocal on the voting criterion. In addition to the "Faithful Citizenship" letter issued by the bishops' conference about the moral factors in the election, at least fifty bishops issued pastoral letters on the primacy of the protection of innocent human life over any other consideration. Despite the public wrangling over priorities, Catholics voted for Obama by 54-45%, a shift from the 2004 Bush-Kerry contest where Bush won the Catholic vote by 52-46%.

A look at some of the ballot measures on life and marriage issues across the country are revealing as to how voters view these social questions. In Florida, Arizona and (probably) California, constitutional bans were passed on same-sex marriage, and in Arkansas adoption to same-sex couples was barred. Life issues took a big hit across the country, as voters in Washington state approved doctor-assisted suicide, and in Colorado and South Dakota bills limiting abortion were defeated. Also, Michigan approved a bill allowing stem-cell research. While the constituency responds to the claims of the gay lobby with reserve, the life issues have become more abstract, clouded by ideologies of the right and left. For the span of three and a half decades since the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, the pro-life cause has been tied to the fortunes of conservative Republican economic and foreign policy creeds, both of which were roundly repudiated this election cycle. Meanwhile, the rhetoric of choice has obscured the real human toll. Clearly more educational groundwork is needed before a political impact can be registered.

As for conservative concerns, it remains to be seen how far Obama will push the country toward social engineering or how his party might hamper the educational and charitable work of religious organizations. On the other hand, his administration may be so mired in the immediate economic crisis and wars they have inherited as to render any dramatic shift impractical. The young and inexperienced Barack Obama by many accounts is on over his head, which may open an opportunity before a second term. Today the Republicans begin to prepare for the next election. As was heard often during this campaign, they still look to their star Ronald Reagan as their model, a president who, if anything, exuded confidence.

[Published in translation at ilsussidiario.net]

The Catholic Vote in the United States

2008-11-04T06:15:00.000-06:00

[This article was written for the Italian website IlSussidiario.Net site and published in translation yesterday.]

For the last century, Catholics have formed a solid voting bloc of the Democratic party, even electing one of their own, John F. Kennedy, in 1960. The original party claims Jefferson and Madison as founders, though the Democratic party as we now know it dates to the 1828 election with Andrew Jackson carrying the populist and expansionist movement of the time. The Democrats were the party of the South before the the Civil War, and the split of two Democratic tickets (one southern pro-slavery and the other northern states rights) in 1860 allowed Abraham Lincoln to capture the election. Democrats then languished until the Great Depression.

In 1932, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected with the help of Catholic ethnic groups, and Democrats ruled with a philosophy of centralized government and the expansion of social programs for the next decades until the turbulent sixties. Subsequently, cultural issues pushed working-class and southern voters including Catholics toward the Republicans, and the tipping point came with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 with his cadre of Reagan Democrats. Although Bill Clinton presented himself as a moderate, the Democratic party has recently offered left-leaning candidates, including John Kerry in 2004, who normally lose when perceived as too liberal for the country's sensibilities. In the current election, Barack Obama is running as an ideological liberal with long-time Catholic senator Joe Biden as a running mate who is also pro-choice. Obama has the political advantage of following the very unpopular administration of George W. Bush, with two wars and a harrowing economic crisis in process.

Since the 1972 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, abortion has remained a hot topic in every presidential election. Evangelical Christians and Catholics formed a conservative alliance to keep the pro-life issue up front. Catholics have fluctuated between their Democratic Party of origin which is unequivocally pro-choice but favorable to the social justice concerns Catholics learned in Catholic institutions, and the pro-life Republican party with harsher economic policies, an anti-immigrant contingent and now the war in Iraq which was opposed by the Church. The Catholic vote, which makes up one-quarter of the electorate, is crucial for an election. Bill Clinton won a 9% lead among Catholics over George H.W. Bush in 1992; Al Gore had only a 2% advantage over George W. Bush in 2000; but John Kerry, who ran as a pro-choice Catholic, lost the election in 2004 against George W. Bush by 5% among Catholic voters after a public correction by the country's Catholic pastors for giving scandal with his pro-abortion voting record.

Although George W. Bush courted Hispanics for his 2004 reelection campaign, a clamp-down on immigration policy, including workplace raids and deportations which split families, followed the last election. Hispanic Catholics, more than a third of the faithful, were particularly alienated during this primary season as the Republican candidates vied to show the strongest anti-immigration policies, even if McCain was the moderate of the group on that issue.

Also during this presidential election cycle, a vocal group of Catholic law professors led by Doug Kmiec, former legal counsel for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, have asserted that Barack Obama is the true "pro-life" candidate over John McCain, because the Democratic candidate favors social programs that would prevent unwanted pregnances and offer more help to mothers. It is not a new argument, as the pro-life and social-justice division, exploited by the political parties, has become more unpalatable to "seamless garment" Catholics, as the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's described the holistic approach to life issues. Although John Kerry was backed by pro-choice Catholics, Kmiec, who considers himself anti-abortion, has become the spokesman for the theory that the pro-life cause can be promoted via a pro-choice candidate with better social welfare programs. Kmiec asserts that the legal battle cannot be won anyway, since a Supreme Court reversal would only move the fight to the state level, so he argues that Catholics should vote for Obama who claims he will "reduce the... circumstances" of abortion. Pro-life advocates have rebutted this argument with the fact that Barack Obama has the most pro-choice record of any candidate yet: he voted against banning partial-birth abortions and has promised to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act which would override any state restrictions on abortion and remove a conscience clause for health practitioners.

Throughout the current campaign, the Catholic bishops have reiterated the criteria they put forth in their letter "Faithful Citizenship", that among political issues abortion takes precedence because it is an intrinsically evil act and therefore a "non-negotiable". And just as Doug Kmiec published a book with his theory on why pro-life Catholics should vote for Obama, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput put out a book Render Under Caesar discussing Catholic participation in political life. Archbishop Chaput recently fired back at Kmiec's political reasoning in a speech to a Catholic women's group: "I think his activism for Senator Barack Obama, and the work of Democratic-friendly groups like Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, have done a disservice to the church, confused the natural priorities of Catholic social teaching, undermined the progress pro-lifers have made, and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue instead of fighting within their parties and at the ballot box to protect the unborn."

The One Solution to the Political Problem

2008-11-04T05:00:00.000-06:00

This election morning I am rereading a great article by Msgr. Albacete written for the 2004 election titled "Faith, Politics and the Scandal of Christ". In this piece he dissects our Christian problem of faith and politics and shows a way out. The whole piece is well worth some study today, especially if you feel at all queasy about your vote. Here I will highlight some sections, but better to skip this and read the whole thing.

First, the religious sense is what gives rise to politics.

The religious sense is our conviction—our experience—of whatever it is that ties this moment in our lives with the whole show, with existence, with our final destiny. It's the mystery of how and why we are here. It's what to do with the world that surrounds us. It's how to obtain satisfaction of the needs that we all experience, and for which there seems to be a world out there to satisfy those needs. How to deal with all of that is the religious sense.

The religious sense is what leads to politics. Politics, in that sense, is a manifestation of the religious sense. It's an attempt to make sense of life and to satisfy our needs. You cannot separate politics from the religious sense. And, in that way, there'll be many religious senses around. The religions of the world are all different ways of carrying out this search, of expressing this need, and politics is the art of making sure that all of them make a contribution, and don't wipe each other out.

What would you expect from a politics that is a response to the religious perspective? You would expect a politics that doesn't crush, a politics that will not provoke, or bring about, the silencing of the religious search. In that sense, all that religious people would need from the world of politics is, at the very least, religious liberty. That's so there can be this openness to the search, and then the ability to make a contribution to the society based on this opening to infinity.

In that sense, the most important requirement to be made of politics or any government is religious freedom. Without this, we cannot proceed. At the level of religion that is all one needs to ask. Already that presents a problem in many areas of the world. It might even present a problem in our own society, one that is dedicated to religious freedom. At an elementary level, you want to see how that is being lived in our society today. And you would obviously favor those political proposals that respect and promote this religious freedom. Those that do not already show an inhumanity.

Albacete goes on to explain the problem of the competing interests of time and eternity, or of religion and politics. Secularism focuses on the present to the exclusion of a higher purpose; theocracy denies the worldly situation in favor of eternal interests. There is no solution to this problem, thus we have to compromise:

Now, perhaps we don't want to use the word compromise. But sometimes there will be a relation between the two that will be the best that can be expected. It will be something that will be redefined every time, every election time, every time that the question arises. At those times we have to sit around and figure it out, and that's that.

Now usually this is the point where we get dropped. Compromise and deal with it. The lesser of two evils. Albacete doesn't leave us there with our desire mangled. He acknowledges the impossibility of this dilemma:

The problem with compromise is that it's impossible. The religious sense always wants to move towards infinity, and the desire to do that makes it dangerous to the political world. And the political world also wants to move in the same direction, to want to embrace everything, and so you have this conflict, and the question is: Are we resigned to this conflict? Must we say that religion and politics will always be in conflict? How do we design a situation that is not in conflict?
My answer to that is that it's not possible. Two sides, with one exception, are in conflict. And at the end, a compromise is the best that we can do. I am prepared to say that between the religious sense, and earthly politics, there is a conflict, and the experience of that conflict will not go away, except for one case. The efforts to solve the problem of religion and politics—not to mention that the problem is worsened when you move from religion to faith, which I will get to in a moment—are useless. We can't solve them.

The answer, as Christians, to the problem is in front of us:

The only solution to the problem of time and eternity, limited and unlimited, finite and infinite, the only "solution" to that problem is Jesus Christ. That is the statement that we must be prepared to make. Only the knowledge, the experience, the encounter with Christ, can resolve the problem between time and eternity, and therefore between religion and politics, which is a manifestation of this original problem.

Are we prepared to make that statement? This is the first problem. This is where all our claims begin to fall to the ground. We hesitate to say that only Christ is the solution of this conflict. In our own hearts we hesitate to say this. What are we afraid of? We are afraid—of what? Why would I hesitate to say that this is only solution to the human problem?

The pretense of solving this problem of faith and politics leads to a betrayal of the ideal.

Let me make this point: We do not have the problem, or the mission, to construct a bridge between faith and politics. We do not have this problem. To have this problem and to attempt to solve it, already violates our humanity. Every single attempt to build this bridge has been a weakening of faith, or a betrayal of the Incarnation. And historically, there have been many attempts.

Faith and politics, Albacete maintains, is a branch of Christology. That is because it was in understanding the person of Christ as divine and human that the Church discovered the human person.

...the very existence of personhood as a unique and unreplaceable individual—a "who" which is not exhausted by a "what"—that insight is the result of the Christological debate that led to the Council of Chalcedon. It was there that the Church was finally able to find a way of expressing this conviction about who Christ is. Until then it could not be understood because the concept of person that existed was insufficient. The Church had to invent the concept of personhood, perhaps its greatest contribution. But it did not invent it developing a political philosophy. It invented it through trying to understand who Christ is.

Albacete reviews the three possible ways of encountering Christ as Fr. Giussani outlined them in Why the Church? The first is rationalism, the second individual inspiriation, and the third, the Catholic way, by encounter with the living Body of Christ.

We even use the word society, a people. Peoplehood is at the origin, for it is a peoplehood expressed as a society, and structured as an institution. It is a recognizable reality, just as Jesus was recognizable as a particular human being. If the particularity of the Church offends us, given its universal claims, then why aren't we offended by the particularity of Jesus? It was even worse. He was just one guy. The Church at least can put on an impressive show. Jesus was one man who was killed.

Christ, who is the answer to the problem of time and eternity, is encountered today in the Church. "[T]he presence of Christ today, of his victory, is a form of coming together. This is what the Church is. An assembly is a bringing together." Therefore what we ask from politics is the following is freedom and unity for the Church.

Two fundamental values immediately become absolutely clear. We will favor that which promotes the liberty of the Church to carry on its work. And we oppose, no matter what—no matter what—anything that threatens the unity of the Church. Anything from any politician, any party, in domestic politics, or foreign policy, or whatever it is, anything that tries to create division within the Church, we must oppose, because unity and its compatibility with our freedom, this is the victory of Christ! Because if that is gone then Christ is not victorious, and we have no solution to the problem of faith and politics, and the only solution to religion and politics is just an unsatisfactory compromise. Those two are fundamental values.

The statement talks about the reality that will help the Church live out its freedom. Freedom is the experience of the fact that I am, in that moment, and in that location, walking towards the satisfaction—the real satisfaction—of all the desires of my life. It is what makes me free. This is the freedom we propose.

Lazarus, Come Forth!

2008-11-03T06:07:00.000-06:00

Bosnian-American Aleksandar Hemon, in his latest novel The Lazarus Project, offers a double story structure to suit his theme of dual citizenship. The narrator, Brik, is a a Bosnian expatriate and unemployed writer married to an American brain surgeon. To salvage his dignity, he has to publish a book. The pursuit of his subject, the 1908 killing of a Russian immigrant, Lazarus, by a policeman in Chicago, sets him on a journey across Eastern Europe. Brik (like Hemon) missed the Bosnian war, since he was in the U.S. when the shooting began and only heard the "steadily unreal rumors". He packs a load of survivor's guilt which gives rise to incessant questions.

The story lines are woven through alternating chapters. Lazarus was gunned down as a suspected anarchist, while his sister Olga was left to fend for herself against the hysteria and city interests, offering a parallel to the War on Terror. Brik is accompanied on his journey by his childhood friend Rora, a gambler, photographer veteran of the Bosnian war and an epic Old World figure. Rora is a storyteller in need of a scribe; he's also the opportunist, connected with warlords, who once sold "replica" chunks of the Berlin Wall and replaced prayers with native nursery rhymes as he led religious tours through Medjugorje collecting big tips. Rora offers a continual entertaining stream of stories but repels all questions. He has replaced questions with tales, as Brik will come to understand. Rora tells Brik he will never know anything.

Let me tell you what the problem is, Brik. Even if you knew what you want to know, you would still know nothing. You ask questions, you want to know more, but no matter how much more I tell you, you will never know anything. That's the problem.

Brik's wife Mary also resists questions. About death, when Brik asks if she ever gets angry, she answers: "When a patient dies ... I feel that he is dead." Mary won't acknowledge the mistakes America is making in the current war, which causes friction between them. He notes that her "hands are bloodied by love."

For Brik, religious observance has blocked the quest for truth. Mary and her family are Catholic, whereas Brik, when asked about his faith, answers ironically: "I am nothing... God knows God is no friend of mine.. I envy people who believe in that crap. They don't worry about the meaning of life and things, whereas I do."

As for ethics, he knows his own "moral waddling", sleeping late instead of working and with porn residing on his computer. He is "forever stuck in moral mediocrity" between Mary's high ground and Rora's nihilism. A journalist named Miller figures in both stories; as writers they cannot hold onto neutrality; in both cases they become implicated in the crimes.

Brik, seeing himself as a man who escaped with his life from a place of death, wonders why Lazarus would be resurrected only to continue wandering the earth. He wants to know: "Did the biblical Lazarus dream, locked in the clayey cave? Did he remember his life in death--all of it, every moment? ... Did he have to disremember his previous life and start from scratch, like an immigrant?" As he wanders through the graveyard of his grandfather's birthplace in the Ukraine, he chants: "Hoydee-ho, haydee-hi, all I want is not to die."

Brik confirms his unstated suspicion that all are implicated in the violence which recruits supposedly good people. After hiring a driver on their journey, he and Rora are used as an alibi for human trafficking. They rescue the girl involved, and in doing so Brik finds his own good intentions tested. By the end of the story, Brik will have a chance to sort through the events and stories, from his own and Rora's experience. He ends with the beginning, which is the intention to write, and what he will carry forward are these same questions.

Charles Morris on Student Lending

2008-11-02T04:48:00.000-06:00

Charles Morris in The Trillion Dollar Meltdown (the 2nd edition paperback at the printer's now reads "Two Trillion") covers the gambit of financial woes generated by the free hands of financial wizards. Don't read this book at bedtime: it is one long nightmare. Beyond the discussion of spurious new financial instruments, national debt and foreign investors and the unraveling of the markets, Morris asks some questions about human values that don't fit so neatly into the all-encompassing free-market ideology, including such social benefits as health and education.

Morris titles the section on college lending "Class Warfare" because of the correlation between education and economic opportunity. Sallie Mae, originally a government entity for offering student loans, became SLM Corp. and was privatized in 2004, a year in which it made a 37% profit.

Why are its profits so high? Because it is the beneficiary of extraordinary privileges. For one thing, 90 percent of the loans it makes are guaranteed by the taxpayer... Student lenders are exempted from all state usury laws; if a student defaults, fees, penalty interest, and collection charges skyrocket. Loan servicing by the student lenders is reputed to be very poor, and there are widespread reports of defaults occurring because student lenders make little or no effort to contact debtors when repayment periods start. Collection of student loans and credit card and other debts is now a separate SLM business line, and it racked up about $800 million in debt management fees in 2005.

Morris goes on to argue that there are smarter ways to finance higher education which offer more social benefit by taking it away from the profit-taking private sector. The direct federal loan program offers the same service for half the price, but the program has been contracted in recent years. He argues: "If all loans were financed through the direct loan program, the savings could finance full tuition grants for another million students." He also cites the historical precedents which show our traditional commitment to higher education, including Lincoln's land-grant college system and the GI Bill after World War II.