MOJ-friend, Notre Dame undergrad, and Georgetown philosopher Karen Stohr published an op-ed today in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Many MOJ-readers will be engaged--some will be provoked--by what Karen has to say. So, let me convert the op-ed into a post (my idea, not Karen's):
What graduation speeches should do for students
By Karen Stohr
Commencement exercises are a rite of spring and so, alas, are controversies
over commencement speakers. At secular and religious schools alike, these
disputes reveal deep moral and political divisions among students, faculty,
alumni and parents.
What, if anything, does an institution's choice of a speaker indicate about its
moral priorities and commitments? My alma mater, St. Joseph's Academy in St.
Louis County, has found itself addressing this question in the public spotlight
with its recent decision to rescind a speaking invitation to U.S. Sen. Claire
McCaskill, D-Mo.
The invitation apparently was withdrawn in response to complaints from parents
who think that McCaskill ought to be prohibited from speaking at a Catholic
school commencement on the grounds that her publicly expressed views about
abortion and stem cell research conflict with Catholic moral teaching.
These angry parents have company. The Virginia-based Cardinal Newman Society,
for example, makes a point of scrutinizing commencement speakers booked for
Catholic colleges and universities and protesting those whom it regards as
objectionable.
The moral principle at work here is the concept of "scandal," a word that has a
technical meaning in Catholic moral thought. Roughly, "giving scandal" means
leading others into moral wrongdoing through words, deeds or omissions. It is
one way of corrupting others.
Now, it is the rare commencement speaker who can manage to lead her listeners
into anything, especially grave moral wrongdoing. If it would give scandal for
McCaskill to give a commencement speech at St. Joe, it surely couldn't be on
the grounds that she would be exhorting students to engage in immoral practices
or confusing them about Catholic teaching on abortion and stem cell research,
which is widely known.
No, the real moral concern must be that having McCaskill as a commencement
speaker somehow would constitute an endorsement of her views by a Catholic
institution. But is that the case?
By their nature, educational institutions are places where controversial ideas
find a platform. I am a faculty member in the philosophy department at a
Catholic university. Every semester, I assign my students readings that
conflict with Church teaching, alongside traditional Catholic sources; indeed,
I cannot teach philosophy any other way.
At its core, education consists of the common pursuit of truth. Catholic
educational institutions, like their secular counterparts, have faith in the
power of human reason to discern what is true and what is not. The job of an
educator is to help students expand and develop their intellectual capacities,
and that requires confronting new ideas and grappling with opposing points of
view.
The path to knowledge is a difficult and murky one, and making our way forward
is a joint effort. Commencement exercises are a celebration of education as a
communal project. In asking someone to speak, an institution honors that
person's ability to contribute to that project, but the invitation cannot
possibly imply endorsement of each and every idea she contributes. If that were
the standard, commencement speakers quickly would become extinct.
Rescinding McCaskill's invitation to participate in this celebration does more
than demonstrate disagreement with her views on abortion and stem cell
research; it also expresses the attitude that she is not worth listening to on
any subject at all and denies her any rightful role in this communal pursuit of
truth.
That is hard to reconcile with Christian love and respect for human dignity.
What message will St. Joe students carry away from this incident? That the
Church holds fast to its moral positions with integrity, grace and charity?
Probably not.
More likely, they will come away thinking that the appropriate moral response
to someone who hold views one regards as mistaken is to slam the door in her
face, on the grounds that she is unworthy of a place at the table.
And that would be a scandalous form of Catholic education.
[Karen Stohr is a graduate of St. Joseph's Academy, Class of 1988. She is an
assistant professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, holds an
undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame and Master's and
Doctorate degrees in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.]
If Catholic social thinkers continue to see the road toward a just society as paved with massive transfers of wealth and power to centralized government, with ever-more layers of regulations upon the private sector, and with ever-growing mandates to employers about benefits and arrangements that must be afforded employees, we may look up some day and find that we’ve arrived in . . . France.
This past weekend’s presidential election in France offers a good occasion for rethinking the nature of a healthy and just society and for challenging the too-easy ascription by many to Catholic Social Thought of government-centric political agendas. The nation of France exhibits exactly that kind of expansive social welfare system and all-encompassing set of employee-friendly mandates on business that many Catholics on the left—those who call themselves Social Justice Catholics—appear to envision as the ideal that should be sought in this country. Yet all is not so well in the Parisian Paradise. Even the French electorate has recognized that an adjustment is necessary. The new conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, won election by arguing that the French need to work harder, that business needs greater freedom and less regulation to be successful, and that social welfare benefits need to be reduced. To be sure, Sarkozy has promised and commentators anticipate a modest correction that leaves the French social welfare system largely intact (which I predict means that little will change and French decline will not be arrested).
My friend and St. Thomas colleague Rob Vischer may see this as another example of what he recently termed a “periodic stick in the eye of those who want to use the government to help the poor” by conservative Catholics. But I think it vitally important to regularly remind all of us that faithful recognition of our responsibility for the common good, a sincere and sacrificial endorsement of the preferential option for the poor, and a firm commitment to the central role of the family in society should not shade into uncritical support for the secular welfare state nor be confused with a political platform for new government programs, economic controls, and regulations or unfunded mandates to be imposed on employers. France serves well as that reminder.
In France, by government edict, employees certainly do receive comfortable wages, possess generous benefits, and enjoy liberal leave policies. Or at least this is true for those fortunate to find employment. Consider what has accompanied the French welfare state and government mandates:
* A stagnant economy (the American economy grows at three times the rate of France);
* High unemployment (about twice as high as in the United States and persisting at those high levels for more than a decade);
* An entitlement mindset so ingrained in an entire generation that university students riot over the prospect that they might have to undergo a one-year probationary period before receiving government-imposed life tenure in private employment;
* a precipitous decline in entrepreneurship (in the very country in which the word originated);
* a failure to contribute much of anything in the way of creative increases in wealth to the world economy; and
* a troubling tendency to keep the economy afloat by importing and exploiting foreign and immigrant workers (in whose segregated communities within France unemployment reaches 40 percent).
Nor we would want to hold up France as the case model for a just society under precepts of Catholic thought. Healthy and happy attitudes do not flourish across the sea. In its 2002 Global Attitudes Survey, the Pew Research Center found that the French were more unhappy than Americans and much less optimistic about the future. So much for the argument that Americans are more anxious and stressed, lacking the security and comfort of the European social welfare system.
And we could devote a week’s worth of posts and still not say all that can and should be said about the decline of faith and the pervasive spiritual emptiness in France (except perhaps for Muslims in the immigrant communities). A leading French religious publication says that France is no longer a Catholic country and, indeed, only half of those who still call themselves Catholics even believe in God.
I’m sure that my faithful interlocutors on the left side of political spectrum here on the Mirror of Justice would respond that we need not follow this road all the way to France. But I seldom hear words of caution about the growth of government and the decline of freedom being raised from that perspective. And I worry that the farther one travels down the golden-paved road of government benefits and employer mandates , the more difficult it becomes to step off. Indeed, I worry that the train has already left the station on a non-stop trip to France, unless someone pulls the emergency brake switch.
Even in the United States, government programs tend to become entrenched, benefit recipients of all kinds (including corporate welfare beneficiaries) become addicted to the flow of public money and develop an enervating sense of entitlement, and government employee unions grow exponentially with the attendant growth in bureaucracies, thus creating a special interest group that lobbies for still more government. Meanwhile, the poorest of the poor remain at the bottom; quality education—the greatest engine for economic opportunity for the poor—remains elusive as the teacher’s unions control the government-run schools; and social services become increasingly bureaucratic and coldly functional in nature.
Should not the Mirror of Justice devote more attention toward creative alternatives to developing a just society and enhancing opportunities for all, without careening toward the social and spiritual disaster that is modern France?
When Catholic Social Thought is introduced into a debate, too many demonstrate a tendency to leap quickly to the conclusion that the option for the poor and other forms of social justice are best achieved through governmental benefit programs, government regulations, government mandates for business, government taxation, etc. But Catholic Social Thought is bigger than and hardly reducible to any political agenda. As Professor David Hollenbach (who would never be accused of being conservative) has well written, social justice is not chiefly an exercise of distributing things or utilities, but rather of expanding participation in inherently valuable social activities.
A primary value of our exchanges on Mirror of Justice is that we have an opportunity to expand the parameters of analysis within the framework of Catholic Social Thought.
Greg Sisk
I share Rob's admiration for Kahan's "Cognitively Liberal State" paper and agree with him that "a persistent call to sacrifice in order to alleviate some of the suffering of the poor is not . . . the same as a periodic stick in the eye of those who want to use the government to help the poor" and also that we all "let ourselves off much too easily in terms of what the Gospel calls us to do." And, as he would probably guess, I tend to agree with more -- but not that much more -- of what I read in First Things than what I read in Commonweal (which I admire and to which I have been honored to contribute).
Rob also writes: "CST is broad enough that it can provide cover for directions in which we were already headed, and our magazines reflect that." This seems at least kind of true, and yet troubling. What do others think? I hope that there is something more going on, i.e., that the "conservative" themes and implications of CST shape the paths and challenge the plans of those headed in one political direction while the "liberal" themes do the same for those headed in the other direction. It's not just that First Things and Commonweal -- and their readers -- are exactly where and what they would have been, absent the challenge of CST . . . is it?
