Here are two views: This, by my colleague, Don Kommers, at Huffington Post, and this, by R.R. Reno, at First Things.
According to Kommers, "Catholics who take the social teachings of their church seriously will reject any candidate who would wish to dismantle social security, oppose universal health care, get rid of the income tax, weaken trade unions, disparage the need for environmental protection, or disdain the creative role of government in the face of acute poverty and rampant unemployment." Later, he contends that "state intervention in the economy is as essential today as yesterday when, for example, federal laws were necessary to abolish child labor, to eliminate industrial sweatshops, to prohibit unsafe places of work, to outlaw union busting, to force employers to pay a living wage, to ensure the safety of food and drug products, to prevent companies from discriminating on the basis of race or sex, and to clean our air and water. To cut back on any of these features of the regulatory state or to oppose the great social achievements of the New Deal and Great Society, as some politicians are advocating today, flies in the face of all that Catholic social thinking calls for."
Well, maybe. Prof. Kommers is an excellent scholar, and a friend, but . . . it is not the case -- at all -- that one who takes Catholic Social Thought seriously (as Don does, and as I do) is thereby estopped from thinking that, for example, today's public-employee unions undermine, rather than contribute to, the common good; that the health-insurance policies recently enacted into law will do more harm, at great cost, than good; that some measures that purport to be environmental-protection or social-welfare measures are actually, well, not; that government programs like Social Security and Medicare are in need of dramatic reform, etc. It is a mistake -- a common one, but a mistake nonetheless -- to (a) identify certain principles that matter in the Catholic Social Tradition; (b) describe those principles in a way that ties them too closely to particular attempts to translate those principles into policy; and then (c) say that those who think the attempts fail thereby demonstrate their lack of devotion to the principles.
It is just as easy (and at least as accurate) to say that "Catholics who take the social teachings of their church seriously will reject any candidate who" opposes school choice, wishes to impose intrusive regulations on the hiring of religious institutions, social-service agencies, and schools, supports public funding for abortion and the selection of judges who will invalidate reasonable regulations on abortion, and enmesh the government in embryo-destructive research as it is to say what Prof. Kommers said. I'm inclined to think we should not be over-confident about saying either. Such Catholics will probably want to vote for someone, and they should not be *too* comfortable with their choice. I think it's important, though, to not suggest or imagine that those who vote differently than we would like thereby demonstrate their lack of "seriousness" about the tradition.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Both sides do this, obviously. While those of us who work and aspire to think and vote in accord with the ideals of Faithful Citizenship might wish that the lines dividing our two major parties were in a different place, and while we might be inclined to cheer those (few) who depart from the party-line in a way suggested by Catholic teaching (e.g., a pro-life Democrat or an anti-death-penalty Republican), at the end of the day (sigh), politicians in tough spots tend to return to the well. See, e.g., this report about the Senate race in Washington:
You knew it was coming.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray has launched a new TV ad hitting Republican Dino Rossi for his conservative positions on abortion rights and related women's health issues.
The ad, called "Trust," dusts off some old votes Rossi took as a state legislator, such as his vote against requiring insurance companies to cover female contraceptives.
In an accompanying news release, Democrats also cited anti-abortion comments Rossi made early in his political career, when he talked more about he subject.
During his two runs for governor in 2004 and 2008, Democrats frequently accused Rossi of hiding the extent of his conservatism on such social issues.
They're resurrecting that argument now with ballots due to be mailed out shortly for the Nov. 2 election. . . .
Monday, October 11, 2010
Our friends at Villanova are hosting (yet) another great conference, on Oct. 22, 2010. The Annual Joseph T. McCullen Symposium on Catholic Social Thought and the Law will explore issues and questions raised in and by Jean Porter's new book, "Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority." In addition to our own Patrick Brennan, Nick Wolterstorff, Bradley Lewis, Michael Moreland, and many others will be presenting. More information is available here.
Monday, October 4, 2010
I loved the novel, "Never Let Me Go", by Kazuo Ishiguro. (More
here and
here.) And I am, I admit, completely (to use a technical term) stoked to learn that the book has been made into a movie. (Of course, if the movie is lousy, I will be crushed.)
This review, from the Headline Bistro blog ("News Catholics Need to Know"), suggests that the movie does credit to the book. (HT:
First Things). I'd welcome reports from any one who sees the film.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Anne Applebaum writes, at Slate, that the "fuss over Pope Benedict's visit to Britain was a blessing for Catholicism." I might characterize the orgy of ignorance, bile, and hate in which many revelled as a bit more than a "fuss", but I see her point. She observes:
All in all, [the Pope's visit] was a huge success. But had he been treated politely from the start, I suspect the pope would have come and gone and left no trace. The vast majority of Britons are not Catholic, and they would have tuned out deferential accounts of his sermons. The press would have relegated the whole thing to the religion section. Perhaps the faithful would still have come to Mass, though maybe not so many. In the end, around 500,000 people probably saw him during his visit, which is quite a lot in a country composed largely of pagans and Protestants.
And thus did Benedict's visit to Britain turn into an advertisement for religious freedom—both the freedom to abhor religion and the freedom to practice it. Much to everyone's surprise, including the Vatican's, raucous discussion of Catholicism turned out to be good for Catholicism—and interesting for atheists, too. The true aging theocrats—in Saudi Arabia, in Iran—should take note.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Archbishop Chaput has a worth-reading essay over at First Things, which provides a useful complement to the sometimes-too-quickly-accepted "Catholics finally made it in America after the election of Kennedy and Vatican II" narrative:
. . . In the years since Kennedy’s election, Vatican II and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, two generations of citizens have grown to maturity. The world is a different place. America is a different place—and in some ways, a far more troubling one. We can’t change history, though we need to remember and understand it. But we can only blame outside factors for our present realities up to a point. As Catholics, like so many other American Christians, we have too often made our country what it is through our appetite for success, our self-delusion, our eagerness to fit in, our vanity, our compromises, our self-absorption and our tepid faith. . . .
Read the whole thing.
David House has this essay, "Catholic Colleges 20 Years After 'Ex Corde'", in the Chronicle of Higher Education. He writes:
Twenty years ago, Pope John Paul II issued Ex corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), an Apostolic Constitution that defined Roman Catholic colleges and created guidelines to assist them in fulfilling their missions.
Catholic higher education has never been quite the same since. . . .
Clearly, in 20 years of such disputes, Catholic colleges have changed. But how? . . .
First, Ex corde significantly increased awareness of Catholic higher education as a unique segment of postsecondary education in the United States. . . .
Second, a new generation of leaders is emerging in American Catholic higher education. . . .
Third, the landscape of Catholic higher education has changed appreciably in the past 20 years, with the renewal of a vibrant Catholic identity at several colleges, as well as the creation of new Catholic institutions rigorously faithful to church teachings. . . .
We are blessed with a highly diverse system of higher education in the United States. But we lose some of that diversity when Catholic institutions become Catholic in name only. . . .
I think that House is too hard on Notre Dame in the piece (as is, unfortunately, the Cardinal Newman Society, with which House is affiliated), and that he is too quick to buy into the "bad sell-out Notre Dame v. good, orthodox Christendom" dichotomy. That said, I think the essay is worth a read. Ex Corde deserves, in my view, more serious attention by Catholic universities and their faculty and administrators than it has received.
