Today the Supreme Court denied cert in Catholic Charities v. California.
Rob
Monday, October 4, 2004
Cert Denied
Catholics and Politcal Parties
After a long slumber, I am back with a short note in response to the posts by Rob, Mark, Michael, and Rick regarding Catholics and Political Parties, including the SGP. Even if the thought experiment succeeded and the SGP party was birthed, I suspect that within a matter of a few years it would adopt some position antithetical to Catholic teaching.
The way I see it, our roots are in a relationship - a relationship with the Living Word made flesh - and not in any particular idea-ology. Political parties, on the other hand, are formed, more or less, around sets of ideas, which may be more or less friendly to the Truths proclaimed by the Church. In short, isn't it the necessary lot of Catholics to live uneasily within the secular world of politics?
Michael S.
Sunday, October 3, 2004
Reply to Mark
Two comments--and a question.
1. I'm very drawn to the SGP, as Mark sketches it. But I doubt many--or, indeed, any--Catholics who (like Rick?) are Reps would be drawn to it: The socio-economic agenda is in the same neighborhood as the socio-economic agenda of left-Dems (not to be confused with the centrist-Dems who presently control the Dem Party).
2. Mark's critical comments about rights-talk are misguided. There is nothing wrong with rights-talk per se--though there is often something wrong with particular rights-claims. I have spelled this out in chapter 2 of my book, The Idea of Human Rights (1998), in commenting on Mary Ann Glendon's critique of rights-talk. See pp. 48-56. A couple of years from now, I hope to have a new book out called Human Rights as Morality, Human Rights as Law, in which I return, at some length, to the matter of rights-talk. For the moment, listen to Jurgen Habermas: "Notwithstanding their European origins, . . . [i]n Asia, Africa, and South America, [human rights now] constitute the only language in which opponents and victims of murderous regimes and civil wars can raise their voices against violence, repression, and persecution, against injuries to their human dignity." Come to think of it, JPII is a fan of rights-talk (i.e., human-rights-talk), isn't he?
Now, the question for Mark: What does the Platform of the SGP say about discrimination against gays and lesbians? In particular, what does it say, if anything, about civil unions, same-sex marriage, etc.? Not that a party platform need take a position on every major issue of the day.
Michael
Definitely Not the Dems (or the Reps)
I was perhaps so enchanted by my own indignation and flights of rhetoric that I was more obscure than I should have been in my last post, which Rick and Rob replied to so cogently. Let me offer some clarifications and explanations -- and maybe a manifesto for the SGP will begin to emerge (at least as a thought experiment, if not a political reality.)
1. By way of clarification: I definitely did not want to suggest that all Catholics needed was the grafting of a pro-life plank onto the Democratic platform. While I am drawn more to them for obvious reasons, they do not offer a coherent political philosophy or series of positions from an SGP perspective. Philosophically, the party is amost reflexively secularist and antireligious. More specifically, their position on important issues as school choice are unacceptable to me. To that extent, I agree with Rick. I'm not sure, however, that he woulld agree with my other reservations about the Dems. What really bothers me about them is that the current party is almost as bad (tho definitely not as bad) as the Republicans on fundamental economic issues.
2. By way of explanation: I share a commitment to open, capitalist economies. I'm all for entrepreneurship. I even spent nine years running a law & entrepreneurship program representing technology entrepreneurs, and currently serve on the board of a mutual fund with $6 billion in assets. I'm definitely no socialist. I'm also a realist about capitalism as it is practiced in the US. That is why I react negatively to conservative phobia about "statism." Here are my concerns
First, to limit the discussion to politics for a moment. Republicans are often very statist. They love to use the resources of the state to solve their competitive problems by turning state resources to their own advantage (ie, Halliburton.) I love rock-ribbed Republican businessman waxing poetic about the free market while suckling on the public teat (what an image!). There are a variety of approaches to state intervention in the economy that need to be considered on their own merits, and without reflexive condemnation as statist.
Second, and more broadly, my position is that Catholics need an approach to economic policy that not only releases entrepreneurial energies, but which attempts (as a priority) to address the savage inequalities that our economic system has created in the US (not to mention the rest of the world). There is obviously a problem of distributive justice that cannot be addressed simply by asserting that a rising tide lifts all boats. I certainly believe that democratic capitalism is the best possible system we know, but also believe that it can have many forms, and some forms are more unjust (and non Catholic than others.) The indicia of inequality suggest that our system is becoming more unjust, rather than less. Catholic social teaching's preferential option for the poor cannot be addressed simply by assuming that the market will take care of these profound distributional problems. It obviously hasn't. The response will be that I can't assume anything else will do better, but American democratic capitalism has in fact done better in addressing inequality in the past.
Third, the fundamental sickness at the heart of democratic capitalism doesn't have anything to do with whether it is more or less statist. The sickness is its materialism, its idolatry of wealth and consumerism, and its obsession with rights rather than reciprocity and solidarity. Both the Republicans' obsession with economic liberty and the Dems obsession with rights talk compound rather than solve that problem. The SGP will be free (and obligated) to address the need for spritual renewal of the human person.
3. So what I am proposing for purposes of discussion is a genuine third party that is animated by Catholic social teaching (which includes the seamless garment image) , not a pro life Democratic party.
-Mark
Seamless Garment Party: Defining the Base
I agree with Rick (below) that the Seamless Garment Party (see Mark's post below) would have to do more than graft a pro-life plank onto the Democratic Party's platform. Certainly there will be some thorny issues, the resolution of which would invariably thin the SGP's ranks. That said, the potential voter base of such a venture appears significant, and it extends far beyond Catholic voters. Indeed, Ron Sider, the most prominent voice in the social justice wing of the evangelical movement, relies heavily on Catholic social teaching in reminding us that God is not a Republican or a Democrat. Besides pointing out the interesting fact that Pope John Paul II is now significantly more admired than Jerry Falwell among evangelicals, he makes the broader case that the ethic of life calls us to transcend the polarized, woefully deficient visions of the common good espoused by both parties:
What has happened to the "consistent ethic of life," suggested by Catholic social teaching, which speaks against abortion, capital punishment, poverty, war, and a range of human rights abuses too often selectively respected by pro-life advocates?The Religious Right’s grip on public debates about values has been driven in part by a media that continues to give airtime to the loudest religious voices, rather than the most representative, leaving millions of Christians and other people of faith without a say in the values debate. But this is starting to change as progressive faith voices are speaking out with a confidence and moral urgency not seen for 25 years. Mobilized initially by the Iraq war, the prophetic groups have hit a new stride in efforts to combat poverty, militarism, and human suffering in places like Sudan.
In politics, the best interest of the country is served when the prophetic voice of religion is heard—challenging both right and left from consistent moral ground. The evangelical Christians of the 19th century combined revivalism with social reform, and helped lead movements for abolition and women’ suffrage—not to mention the faith-based movement that directly preceded the rise of the Religious Right, namely the American civil rights movement led by the black churches.
The truth is that most of the important movements for social change in America have been fueled by religion—progressive religion. The stark moral challenges of our time have once again begun to awaken this prophetic tradition. As certain fundamentalists lose influence, nothing could be better for the health of both church and society than a return of the moral center that anchors our nation in a common humanity. If you listen, these voices can be heard rising again.
Rob
Saturday, October 2, 2004
Mark's Clarion Call
Like Michael Perry, I respect and am inspired by Mark's passion (below). And, as a matter of habit -- and perhaps even of principle -- I'm inclined to join Michael in saying "Amen" to Mark's call for a new "Seamless Garment Party."
Unfortunately (for me), I probably could not join or support this Party. With all due respect, it is simply not clear that an authentically Catholic, social-justice program -- one that is animated by a commitment to principles of solidarity and subsidiarity -- must include counter-productive, market-distorting, and statist social-welfare policies. (Of course, this is certainly not to say -- anticipating objections -- that such a program may be robotically efficiency-based or ruthlessly individualistic, or that it could neglect social-welfare obligations. It is simply to keep in view the fact that a growing, vibrant, entrepreneurial, and largely free economy is better for rich and poor alike).
What is more -- in response to a claim that seems implicit in Mark's and Rob's diagnoses -- it strikes me that the problems with today's Democratic Party go far deeper than "life issues." That Party's orthodoxy with respect to school choice, religious freedom, the nature and scope of state power, and the function and integrity of mediating associations are -- in my judgment -- quite at odds with the "human flourishing" that Mark hopes his new Party would promote.
To be clear -- I share, to an extent, Mark's frustration with the political options presented to Catholics. I have no doubt that many Republicans do, as Mark and Rob suggest, cynically exploit at election time -- without actually promoting -- Catholic values. (That said, I believe Mark inaccurately characterizes President Bush's Catholic outreach, and his Catholic-consonant positions, as "fraudulent" and "hypocritical.") I doubt also, though, that a authentic Seamless Garment Party could be achieved simply by grafting Catholic pro-life positions onto the Democratic Party's economic and foreign-policy platforms.
Pax,
Rick
Friday, October 1, 2004
Amen, Mark!
Passionately and, in my judgment, rightly stated. Thank you.
Michael
Time for a New Political Party
Rob's well-expressed dismay with both the fraudulence of Bush's "Catholic Team" pronouncements and Carroll's mixture of good sense about Bush and whitewashing of of Kerry's failure to contend with the implications of his faith for his public position on abortion almost makes me wish for a public square without faith-based discourse. But then I realized that today's faith based discourse is no more dishonest or degraded than what passes for public secular discourse. So, we shouldn't be singled out for exclusion!
Be that as it may, this election makes very visible the dilemma of many Catholics -- call us the Seamless Garment crowd -- who reject the Catholic Right's insistence that Cardinal Bernardin's linkage of abortion, war, poverty and capital punishment meant that we aren't really serious about ending abortion, and want to see candidates who reflect our encompassing conception of "life."I don't want to get into a theological argument here about the "intrinsic evil" concept of abortion. I want to call for a coalition of Catholics and others who believe that there is linkage among these issues, and who believe that the Democratic Party has impoverished itself and excluded us because of its slavish devotion to the most extreme pro-choice positions and its refusal to enter into any dialogue on the question of abortion. The Party thus has thrown many into the arms of a Republican Party that is fundamentally at odds with the principles of human dignity defined by Catholic social teaching. For all of Bush's "Catholic Team" bravado, he is wrong for Catholics, because Catholics care deeply about economic justice, a non-cynical application of just war principles, solidarity among rich and poor in both the US and around the world, and an end to a clearly unjust regime of capital punishment. We also don't believe that he genuinely cares about "family values"; otherwise he would not be constructing an economy that is destroying so many working families; his defense of marriage is little more than hypocritical homophobia. He defends traditional marriage abstractly while simultaneously undermining the material conditions that make marriage a locus for human flourishing.
There is a need for a religious voice in progressive politics. Such a voice inspired the abolition and civil rights movements, as well as the anti-war and anti poverty movements. That voice is gone now because the Democratic party has made no room for those of us who have even the slightest reservations about abortion and other fundamental Democratic positions relating to human sexuality, reproduction and life and death. So, if there is anyone out there who wants to join me in the new Seamless Garment Party let me know...maybe we can at least make some noise.
-Mark
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