Earlier this week (here and here), I posted my personal impressions about the unscripted, fascinating, and sometimes personally revealing observations of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about religion and faith and public life, during their participation in the Compassion Forum hosted by Messiah College in Pennsylvania on Sunday evening.
At the time of my first post on Monday, I noted my surprise and disappointment that this remarkable exchange had received so little public attention. As the days of the week have passed, this unprecedented dialogue about religious values in American politics has continued to be neglected by most of the media. Sigh. Unlike most commentators, Daniel Henniger of the Wall Street Journal did give it considerable play in a column today, concluding: “Some bloodless analysts have said for several years that Democrats had to say this [speak to the values of religious citizens] to win because, you know, a lot of people ‘go to church.’ And yes, what candidates seeking votes say may be false, faked or fantastic. What remains is the fact that these two, in competition for votes, have conferred political legitimacy and respect on this swath of America.” I agree that the forum was a step forward in conferring political legitimacy on people of faith as full-fledged members of our polity.
In this which will be my last post on the Compassion Forum, I move from the candidates’ general observations about religious faith in their lives and in the public square to the most prominent and controversial issue of public importance that implicates moral values—the sanctity of human life and protection for the unborn. To be sure, these Democratic candidates would resist the Catholic understanding of this subject as the foremost human rights issue of our day. But the Catholic witness for the sanctity of human life is clear and resolute, however politically inconvenient it may be for one of our two great political parties.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver has aptly said that “abortion is the central social issue of this moment in our national history—not the only issue, but the foundational issue; the pivotal issue.” And Catholic teaching on responsibility in political life is consistent and continuing. The American bishops’ statement on “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (Nov. 2007), has been misleadingly cited by some as subordinating abortion in moral importance as a political issue, by selectively quoting the bishops’ phrase that “[a]s Catholics we are not single-issue voters.” In so saying, the bishops explained that “[a] candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support.” In other words, being right on a central issue does not necessarily mandate support. By contrast, however, the bishops emphasized that being wrong on a central issue could well preclude support: “[A] candidate’s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.”
The singular importance of protecting human life as an obligation for those in public life has been a clear teaching of the Church in America for many years. As the American bishops had previously stated, in words the parallel the most recent statement:
Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing and health care. . . . But being “right” in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the “rightness” of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community.
So, on that preeminent question of human rights and the legitimately disqualifying intrinsic evil of supporting legal abortion, how far have the national Democratic candidates come toward respecting the sanctity of human life? Sadly, the Compassion Forum in Pennsylvania last Sunday shows the two who remain in the race have not come very far at all. While one of the candidates now acknowledges that the pro-life movement is composed of people of good faith and vaguely suggests a moral dimension to the issue, without amplification or any apparent consequence, nothing of substance appears to have changed.
During their separate appearances at the Compassion Forum, each candidate was asked directly whether he or she “believe[s] personally that life begins at conception?” And each candidate struck out on this soft-ball pitch. In 2004, despite a long history of enthusiastically defending legal abortion, presidential candidate John Kerry did allow as how he personally believed that life began at conception. Now given that he was in political trouble at the time and on the path toward losing the Catholic vote, Kerry’s belated confession of faith in unborn human life was regarded skeptically by many observers. But, on Sunday evening, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama could even hint at any personal opposition to abortion.
Senator Clinton responded by echoing the wooden and evasive phrase from Roe v. Wade itself, saying “I believe that the potential for life begins at conception.” If any element of the abortion debate can be reduced to a simple and objective scientific query, it is whether life begins at conception. The answer is indisputably “yes.” As anyone with even a little scientific understanding must admit, from the moment of conception, a distinct and unique genetic organism comes into being. And that individual life is plainly human (as opposed to some other species). The pro-choice movement instead must shoulder the heavy burden of persuading us that this human life is not worthy of protection, but it cannot rationally deny that it is human life.
Clinton then proceeded to inform us that her pro-choice views were based on her “personal experience” from visiting “countries that have taken very different views about this profoundly challenging question.” The contrasting examples she adduced were China, with its practice of “forced abortions and forced sterilization” to prosecute its one-child policy, and Romania, where women “were essentially forced to bear as many children as possible for the good of the state,” which included criminalizing abortion. Senator Clinton did not elucidate how these peculiar and extreme examples were supposed to inform the abortion debate in the United States. One may readily agree that the government should not force women to “bear as many children as possible,” and use secret police to aggressively enforce that mandate, without endorsing the radical abortion-on-demand regime that prevails in the United States but which is followed almost no where else in the western world.
Senator Obama’s answer to the question of when life begins was not much better, and indeed seemed feckless to me given the gravity of the matter. Affecting humility on the moral dilemma, he began by saying “[t]his is something that I have not, I think, come to a firm resolution on. I think it’s very hard to know what that means, when life begins. Is it when a cell separates? Is it when the soul stirs? So I don’t presume to know the answer to that question.” Thus he wobbled from the question of “when life begins,” for which a simple biological answer exists, to the question of when that life is worthy of value, which apparently he suggested might be “when the soul stirs.” And when does the “soul stir” for Senator Obama, so that we may confidently give legal protection to that life? In the third-trimester? At birth? When the baby is able to smile? When the child’s first word is spoken?
Most importantly, if Obama truly does not know the answer to the question of when life begins, then shouldn’t he come down on the side of protecting that putative life until its absence is clearly established? Because the choice is literally life or death for an entity that may be a member of our human family, and given that Obama says he harbors uncertainty about the answer, why would he then favor allowing termination of what he admits could be a human person?
In any event, Obama immediately thereafter fumbled back to the same posture as Senator Clinton, when he too referred to the unborn as having “potential life.” Despite his professed irresolution, he apparently has answered the question of when life begins, and not in a way that values unborn life.
Senator Obama did offer words of forbearance for those of us who disagree with his position on abortion, which was more than Senator Clinton provided. Obama said that we should “recognize that people of good will can exist on both sides. That nobody wishes to be placed in a circumstance where they are even confronted with the choice of abortion. How we determine what’s right at that moment, I think, people of good will can differ.” Candidly acknowledging that efforts to find common ground could only go so far and that at some point there is an “irreconcilable difference” between the opposing sides on the abortion debate, Obama also said “those who are opposed to abortion, I think, should continue to be able to lawfully object and try to change the laws.” Of course, we pro-life citizens do not exercise our constitutional rights of expression and democratic governance by the benevolent grace of politicians, but it’s still nice to be accredited by Senator Obama as legitimate voices in the public square.
In addition, Senator Obama adverted to “a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down.” But given Obama’s unwillingness to affirm that human life may be at stake, the nature of this “moral dimension” was less than clear. Or that it makes any difference. Beyond words, what exactly does this recognition of a moral element mean to someone like Obama who is asking to lead our nation? Is there any evidence that this “moral dimension” to abortion or the “moral weight” to “potential life” that he acknowledges has any consequence for Obama’s approach to public policy on the question?
An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans and their representatives in Congress oppose partial-birth abortion, a horrifying practice that a majority of the Supreme Court later characterized as the equivalent of infanticide. But Senator Obama (and Senator Clinton) have been indifferent to this atrocity. During this campaign, both Clinton and Obama have castigated the Supreme Court for not intervening to overturn the democratic actions of their fellow members of Congress who had provided some minimal protection to late-term unborn children. In fact, both of these candidates have emphasized that they would appoint justices and judges who would allow no such constraints on abortion, leaving the license unrestricted at any stage of pregnancy or for any reason. When serving in the Illinois legislature, Obama even blocked legislation that would have required health care providers to give medical care to aborted babies who somehow survived the procedure. Both candidates would also devote taxpayer funds to paying for abortion. How exactly do any of these positions give credence to Obama’s ascription of “a moral weight to [to “potential life”] that we take into consideration”?
To be sure, both Senators Clinton and Obama said that they hoped to reduce abortions, each specifying efforts to encourage adoption and reduce teenage pregnancy as the means to that end. But neither of these candidates for the highest office could bring him or herself to say, even as a matter of personal moral trepidation, that abortion takes a life. Thus, we may be sure that neither will be motivated in political office to pursue action on this subject for the purpose of enhancing the value of human life and resisting the culture of death. Accordingly, with respect to the sanctity of human life, the gulf that separates the national Democratic Party and its presidential candidates from those of us who raise our voices on behalf of the unborn remains very wide indeed.
Greg Sisk
Pope Benedict XVI's visit has been generating more good stuff and goodness than many of us can keep up with. The Holy Father's talk to Catholic educators this afternoon will be studied and parsed, and -- one hopes -- absorbed, for a long time to come. Here, for now, is the nugget on "academic freedom:"
"In regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges universities, I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church's munus docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent of it."
The Pope understands and expresses this work of Catholic colleges and universities within the following context, which he expresses with characteristic beauty and acuity:
"The Church's primary mission of evangelization, in which educational institutions play a crucial role, is consonant with a nation's fundamental aspiration to develop a society truly worthy of the human person's dignity. At times, however, the value of the Church's contribution to the public forum is questioned. It is important therefore to recall that the truths of faith and of reason never contradict one another (cf. First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius, IV: DS 3017; St. Augustine, Contra Academicos, III, 20, 43). The Church's mission, in fact, involves her in humanity's struggle to arrive at truth. In articulating revealed truth she serves all members of society by purifying reason, ensuring that it remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths. Drawing upon divine wisdom, she sheds light on the foundation of human morality and ethics, and reminds all groups in society that it is not praxis that creates truth but truth that should serve as the basis of praxis. Far from undermining the tolerance of legitimate diversity, such a contribution illuminates the very truth which makes consensus attainable, and helps to keep public debate rational, honest and accountable. Similarly the Church never tires of upholding the essential moral categories of right and wrong, without which hope could only wither, giving way to cold pragmatic calculations of utility which render the person little more than a pawn on some ideological chess-board."
As I see it, at least on one early reading, the primary message the Pope spoke to those who care -- or should care -- about the work of Catholic colleges and universities, in the US today, is that the work of these institutions is ecclesial: The Church's educational institutions serve -- indeed, participate in -- the Chuch's foundational mission to all peoples. The Church's educational institutions do this by inviting people to come together in -- and for -- the common pursuit of, and sharing of, the truth.
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| Breaking News: Pope meets with sex abuse victims
National Catholic Reporter April
17, 2008 |
| | |
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Pope Benedict has met with a group of people who were abused by clergy.
Read the story here.
Or you may cut and paste the following link into your browser. http://ncrcafe.org/node/1746
Listen to John Allen discuss this
event with Tom Fox this evening in a podcast that will be posted to NCRonline.org. | | |
[The author of the following piece, Seth Perry, is not related to me.]
Sightings 4/17/08
Look
at this Tangle of Thorns
--
Seth Perry
Almost
two weeks ago, Texas
authorities raided the sprawling ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Acting on a
call from a sixteen-year-old girl inside the compound who said she was being
abused by her fifty-year-old husband, law enforcement swept onto the site,
seizing property as evidence of widespread sexual abuse, breaking down the door
of the group's monumental temple, and removing over four hundred children into
state custody.
Child
abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is generally an easy thing to condemn. Here, however, the alleged criminal acts are
knotted with issues of personal choice and religious freedom that we as a public
culture are conditioned to respect. To
be sure, few people outside of the sect have come to its unqualified
defense. Comments from historian and
legal scholar Sarah Barringer Gordon sum up the common response: "Allowing
differences, creativity and individuality is vitally important," she said, but
child abuse "is the end of religious liberty every time." At the same time, a patina of guilt clings to
the image of children separated from their mothers, of Texas Rangers using the
jaws of life to try to pry open a consecrated temple
of God. The guilt has gotten to a doctor working with
the children in state custody and their mothers, quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune: "Even though I don't agree with their
lifestyle, I got the impression that in their own little world it made
sense."
The
guilt comes not just from an American sensibility that people ought to be left
alone "in their own little world," but also from the details of this particular
case that make a certain type of educated reader reluctant to judge. First and foremost is the obvious sexual
element. Most modern men would deny
fascination with polygamy's promise of sanctioned access to a variety of willing
women, but the same fascination surfaces, in designer clothes rather than
homespun, in breathless reporting on the exploits of "billionaire playboys,"
professional athletes, and rock stars. The homespun itself is another problem. "The girls wear long, pioneer-style dresses and keep their long hair
pinned up in braids," the Washington
Post dutifully reports. Scholars and
others wary of the media's thirst for spectacle and sensitive to the human
inclination to equate "different" with "wrong" know abject voyeurism when they
see it, and our aversion to it makes us want to look away out of respect for the
subject.
But
we have to keep looking. Courts in
Texas
will decide what laws have been violated, if any, according to the age and
relative complicity of girls involved. But raising a girl to believe that the greatest potential for her life
lies under the bulk of a man three or four times her age is something beyond a
mere crime. Legal categories of abuse
aren't deep enough to capture what has been done to a child who refers to the
entire planet beyond the fences of a 1,700-acre plot in Texas
as the "outsiders' world."
There
are certainly reflective, educated women who choose polygamy and can articulate
the reasons why; I've met some of them, and they are as appalled by child abuse
as anyone else. There may even be such
women, married to equally sincere and thoughtful men, in the FLDS Church. Moreover, the FLDS Church
has no monopoly on the frustration of the dreams that children deserve to have –
inner cities and poor stretches of Appalachia
and war zones worldwide do the same, all the time. The combination of systematic social
isolation, plural marriage, and a group of men apparently open to marrying girls
at menarche, though, localized on a spot in Texas
and subject to explicit laws, offers a rare tangible object for the scorn of
those who believe that children should be raised with hopes and options.
The
most likely scenario going forward is that the state of Texas
will lack the resources and ultimately the will to place so many women and
children in different lives. The
currently dispersed members of the group will follow familiar channels back to
where they were a couple of weeks ago, reconstituting the church with a brand
new story to tell about themselves and about the threat of the outside world
and, saddest of all, a terrifying new lesson to young women about what happens
when you call for help. But if the
hearings that take place in the meantime create a public discourse that
overcomes outsiders' guilt, something worthwhile and lasting may still be
accomplished.
Seth
Perry is a Ph.D. student in the History of Christianity at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.
This just in, from Yale:
Art major Aliza Shvarts 08 wants to make a statement.
Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself as often as possible while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock, saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion. . .
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
I had the chance this morning to go to the welcome ceremony (just me and 12,000 or so of my closest friends!) for Pope Benedict XVI at the South Lawn of the White House. What a beautiful day in D.C.! Kathleen Battle was amazing. My favorite moment was -- during a brief lull, right after the Pope came out and met the President -- when a bunch of people (I think it was a cluster of Dominican sisters) started singing "Happy Birthday", and the whole (huge) crowd joined in. (Later, there was an "official" rendition.) The President's remarks were, I thought, appropriate. A bit:
Here in America you'll find a nation of compassion. Americans believe that the measure of a free society is how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us. So each day citizens across America answer the universal call to feed the hungry and comfort the sick and care for the infirm. Each day across the world the United States is working to eradicate disease, alleviate poverty, promote peace and bring the light of hope to places still mired in the darkness of tyranny and despair.
Here in America you'll find a nation that welcomes the role of faith in the public square. When our Founders declared our nation's independence, they rested their case on an appeal to the "laws of nature, and of nature's God." We believe in religious liberty. We also believe that a love for freedom and a common moral law are written into every human heart, and that these constitute the firm foundation on which any successful free society must be built.
The biggest applause line was this one:
In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred, and that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved" -- (applause) -- and your message that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary."
The Pope's talk (scroll down) was brief, but bursting with great content, about freedom, truth, and solidarity. I particularly liked this:
As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find in their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more human and free society.
Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience -- almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate.
In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in Eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows time and again that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation," and a democracy without values can lose its very soul. Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the Pope's talk at CUA, about Catholic education.
