Responding quickly to Rob's latest: I agree (and long have agreed) with Sr. Prejean that Texas's clemency-and-commutation procedures are a farce. Certainly, then-Gov. Bush could have worked to reform (but just as certainly had no interest in reforming) these procedures. Still, if we are asking for "nuance", context, etc., it seems to me that we should -- and Fr. McBrien did not -- take into account the role and actual power of the person in question. The Governor of Texas, it seems to me, is not responsible for an execution in Texas in the same way that, say, President Obama is reponsible for the recent policy changes on embryo-destructive research. (Again, just so there is no misunderstanding: I oppose capital punishment, and think that a Catholic university that takes its Catholic character seriously would want to take a politician's views and record on that issue into account when deciding whether or not to honor that politician.)
I cannot speak for others, but I am pretty sure that in none of my various interventions on the matter have I said that a Catholic university could never honor a politician with pro-abortion-rights views (or, for that matter, pro-death-penalty views, which is not to say that these two issues are indistinguishable). For me, what makes the Notre Dame invitation, on balance, regrettable is the timing, context, and social meaning of the honor (and also the extremely sad fact that Notre Dame is finding itself at odds with so many bishops), not the mere fact that President Obama is, in an abstract or theoretical sense, "pro-choice." (I can't resist noting that, for me, his anti-choice stance on education reform would -- wholly and apart from the "life issues" -- make it hard for me to cheer, but that's another matter.)
Rob writes, "[t]here's a big difference between my decision in the voting booth and a university's decision on commencement, of course. The university's decision carries the risk of causing scandal and confusion as to the Church's moral teaching. But while that might change the particulars of the inquiry, it need not change the overall nature of the inquiry." I'm not sure how exactly, or to what extent, it changes the nature of the inquiry, but I do think it does, and for the reasons Rob says. The university "speaks", publicly, when it honors someone, and it is important to say the right thing (or, at least, not a wrong thing). Given the timing of the President's acceptance, and the salience of abortion and stem-cell research, I think the university should not have taken the risks it did that by honoring the President, it would be seen as minimizing the seriousness of these issues.
Anyway . . . moving forward, it seems to me that Notre Dame -- to which I am perhaps excessively committed -- has, with this invitation, taken on the burden of making clear, with real actions, to the world that it is, in fact -- as Fr. Jenkins has several times said -- unwaveringly committed to the sanctity of life. (Imagine what it would say if, at halftime during a football game, once of those "What would you fight for?" ads featured the work of one of the many Notre Dame students, faculty, or graduates working in the pro-life arena?)
[I post this response with permission.]
Dear Professor Perry,
Re your post of Fr. Richard McBrien's "Intrinsic
Evil" column to Mirror of Justice yesterday:
--
I'm one of the people whom McBrien would likely dismiss as a "certain type of
Catholic," and while I do not doubt that the tribe he rails against does exist,
he spends too much of his current NCR column torching straw men of his own
making.
McBrien caricatures argument by asserting without evidence that
some of us think "only an intrinsic evil is to be held against a public
figure."
His choice of adjectives is likewise dishonest-- had he called
the war in Iraq "preemptive" in court, he would rightly have been challenged by
opposing counsel for "leading the witness."
The nub of McBrien's
argument is that "certain types of Catholics" think "capital punishment isn't
intrinsically evil," and "therefore, then-Governor Bush deserved a pass" (on
executions he permitted while the chief political executive of
Texas).
This is half right, in that capital punishment, while morally
hazardous, is not intrinsically evil. But that does not mean that Texas under
George W. Bush used it appropriately.
I do understand why McBrien
refuses to give the judicial system in Texas any benefit of doubt, but he glides
right past the questions of guilt and innocence near the root of any comparisons
between abortion the death penalty, and then has the temerity to cite a pope
whose various initiatives he often did his best to oppose in a transparent
attempt to lend an impramatur to his own spleen.
My own essay (from
American Spectator Online yesterday) makes (I think) an instructive
contrast:
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/05/04/defending-mary-ann-glendon
The
bottom line is this: No amount of righteous sophistry will make President
Obama's record on life issues better than it is, or Fr. McBrien's prescription
reasonable. Supposing GWB had been given a pass-- is it then okay to give
President Obama another pass for policy positions that are even
more objectionable? Have we stooped so low that Notre Dame's ill-advised choice
of honorary degree recipients is excused not on merit, but on the smoking ruin
of mutually-cancelling hyprocrisies? Professor Mary Ann Glendon and more than
twenty percent of American Catholic bishops seem to think otherwise, and they
can hardly be dismissed as having been in thrall to the Bush
administration.
Apart from the current contretemps, were we to take Fr.
McBrien's advice and "put the intrinsic-evil argument to rest," we'd lose the
requisite vocabulary for talking about abominations like abortion, and tiptoe
further into the moral relativism that already undercuts a healthy appreciation
for the magisterium and the "deposit of faith" handed down to us from the
apostles.
Sincerely,
Patrick O'Hannigan
http://paragraphfarmer.blogspot.com/
I am no expert on the death penalty in general, much less on the death penalty procedures in Texas, but not everyone agrees that the existence and statutory role of the pardons board minimizes George W. Bush's culpability for his own role in the Texas death penalty regime. In an essay, "Death in Texas," Sr. Helen Prejean writes:
To distance himself from his legal and moral responsibility for executions, Bush often cited a Texas statute that says a governor may do nothing more than grant a thirty-day reprieve to an inmate unless the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has recommended a broader grant of clemency. But any time he wanted to, Bush could have commuted a sentence or stopped an execution. By the end of his governorship Bush had appointed all eighteen members of the board of pardons. He could easily have ordered a thirty-day reprieve and gotten word to the board that he had doubts about the fairness of a case and wanted an investigation and hearings. But the Texas pardons board has been a farce. In my home state the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Paroles meets and holds hearings. True, they routinely deny clemency, but they at least give the appearance of being a real, working board. The full Texas pardons board never meets to consider a death sentence. A few of them talk to one another on the phone. Sometimes. No one knows whether the clemency appeals are even read. As governor, Bush did nothing to reform the board's procedures.
Now does that mean I think that President Bush should have been denied an invitation to speak at commencement? Not necessarily. I wonder whether there should be a similar approach to a Catholic university honoring a public official as there is for a Catholic citizen voting for a public official. As a Catholic, my vote for a pro-choice candidate is morally permissible, as I understand it, if I can reasonably conclude that there are proportionate reasons that justify the vote despite the candidate's pro-choice position. Shouldn't a Catholic university be permitted to honor a public official if there are proportionate reasons that justify the honor despite the official's pro-choice (or pro-death penalty) position? In fact, isn't that how folks justify honoring President Bush despite his record on the death penalty? As Rick asserted, Bush's "signature issues" in 2001 were education reform and the faith-based initiative.
In this regard, is the Bishops' statement too sweeping? "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." On its face, there does not seem to be much space for proportionate reasons.
There's a big difference between my decision in the voting booth and a university's decision on commencement, of course. The university's decision carries the risk of causing scandal and confusion as to the Church's moral teaching. But while that might change the particulars of the inquiry, it need not change the overall nature of the inquiry. Given the areas in which President Bush's policies and Church teaching were consistent, I do not think that a reasonable observer was likely to conclude that his role at the 2001 commencement signalled a softening of the Church's teaching on the death penalty. And given the areas in which President Obama's policies are consistent with Church teaching, is it likely that his commencement role will confuse people on the Church's abortion teaching? Honoring President Obama is not like honoring Frances Kissling. There are good reasons to honor him. I readily admit that reasonable folks can disagree about whether there are proportionate reasons sufficient to overcome President Obama's policies on abortion, but disagreeing about proportionate reasons is different than disagreeing about whether a pro-choice (or pro-death penalty) public official can ever be honored by a Catholic university. The conversation, I think, would be more nuanced and less prone to the (unjustified) caricature that Catholics care about abortion and not much else.
Geof Stone, Martha Nussbaum, Doug Laycock, and others (including me) are having an online discussion about Stone's recent op-ed regarding civil-unions and religious liberty. Check it out.
With respect to Fr. McBrien's piece -- to which Michael P. linked -- on the "double standard" he sees at work in some people's opposition to Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama: Is it relevant that, in Texas (at the time George W. Bush was governor, anway), the Governor only has the power to commute a death sentence upon the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles? (I ask this, obviously, not because I believe that Gov. Bush would have been generous in commuting death sentences.)
I am, of course, entirely open to the argument that Notre Dame's Catholic character should require it to withhold special honors from politicians for many reasons, not only their unjust positions and records on abortion. But, is it really the case that a governor who "presides" over executions (that he lacks the power to stop) is similarly situated, for purposes of deciding whether a not a Catholic university should, consistent with its character, bestow an honor, to a legislator who votes to expand abortion rights, to limit regulation of abortion, and to increase funding for abortions, or to an executive who makes it the case, by executive order, that public funds may be used to destroy-through-research human embryos?
