Monday, October 19, 2009
Or, at least, that's how I choose to interpret Prof. Caron's latest rankings. Only two blogs out of the "top 35" saw a larger percentage-change in hits and page-views over the past year than we did. No doubt, it is the new blue banner.
Tell your friends! Spread the word!
Prof. Mary Ann Glendon's lecture, given on the occasion of her recent receipt of a well deserved reward, is available here, at the First Things blog. A bit:
One of the main reasons for our slow but steady progress, I believe, is the success of the pro-life movement in demonstrating by word and deed that our position on protection of the unborn is inseparable from our dedication to compassion and assistance for women who are so often the second victims of abortion.
Unlike the movement that calls itself pro-choice, the prolife movement has thought deeply about choice. We know that choices last: We know that individual choices make us into a certain of person; and we know that collective choices make us into a certain kind of society.
Indeed. Congratulations, and thank you, to Prof. Glendon.
Our own Patrick Brennan has the honor of presenting the Yves Simon Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, November 4th at 4:30 pm in the Swift 3rd Floor Lecture Hall at the University of Chicago. Professor Brennan's lecture is entitled "Are Catholics Unreliable from a Democratic Point of View? Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power."
Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power was originally published in 1949, and grew out of a series of articles which Blanshard had published several years earlier in The Nation. In those articles and the book developed from them, Paul Blanshard argued that American Catholic citizens had to choose "between a church hostile to fundamentals of democracy and a state where contrary views are implicit under our Constitution." Blanshard went on to clam that "the American Catholic hierarchy has entered the political arena, and that it is becoming more and more aggressive in extending the frontiers of Catholic authority into the fields of medicine, education and foreign policy. As we shall see in this book, the Catholic hierarchy in this country has great power as a pressure group, and no editor, politician, publisher, merchant or motion-picture producer can express defiance openly - or publicize documented facts - without risking his future." Selling over 300,000 copies, Blanshard's book set off a firestorm of controversy. And the shadow of the book and its author loomed far into the next decade: John F. Kennedy's famous speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960 was in many respects a direct result of Blanshard's power and influence.
On the sixtieth-year anniversary of American Freedom and Catholic Power, it seems fitting that we return to consider Blanshard's thesis in light of the past several decades. We are therefore pleased and honored to have Patrick Brennan pose Blanshard's question once again: "Are Catholics Unreliable from a Democratic Point of View?"
More here.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Catholic Charities “hires to mission.” It does not and need not require that employees or volunteers be Catholics to further its mission. If it did so require, it would be discriminating on the basis of religion. When it requires that its directors be Catholics, it discriminates on the basis of religion, but that discrimination is necessary to further its mission. Faith-based social service organizations that do not proselytize, generally, can hire without regard to religion in furthering their mission.
I disagree. Catholic Charities would not be "discriminating on the basis of religion" -- it would not, that is, be engaged in unjustified exclusion of would-be associates -- if it required that "employees or volunteers be Catholics". "Discrimination" is no longer used to mean, in a non-pejorative way, "selection on the basis of some criteria or another". "Discrimination", for us, carries with it a presumption of wrong-ness; when it is tolerated, that toleration needs to be justified and limited, we now think. "Hiring for mission" is not like that.
Steve says that faith-based social-service organizations "that do not proselytize, generally, can hire without regard to religion in furthering their mission." Maybe. It is hard to know, given the overlay of rules that have not required them to proselytize, or that have interfered with their ability to hire-for-mission. But, in any event, from the fact that Steve, or I, or even the directors of the association conclude that the mission of the association does not require hiring co-religionists it does not follow that a decent political community should require, or can justify requiring, that the association adopt a "religion does not matter for mission" hiring practice as a condition of participating in a publicly funded social-welfare program.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Steve writes, here, that it is "possible to exaggerate the need for faith-based organizations to discriminate in the provision of social services." I suppose that's right. That said, I will go into broken-record mode and say that, in my view, it is a mistake to refer to or think about hiring-for-mission as "discrimination." Hiring-for-mission is not bad. It is not something shameful that religious groups are asking the government to tolerate or overlook. It is entirely appropriate for faith-based programs to hire-for-mission, and the fact that they do should not, in my view, cause us any concern when we think about funding their social-welfare operations.
Steve says "the real issue is not about discrimination, but about proselytizing." Again, I do not think we are talking about "discrimination," properly understood, at all. As for proselytizing, we want to be careful about defining the term, but I think Steve's right, and that it is reasonable for the public authority to say "use our public funds for the public purpose that justifies our giving you these funds, and not for something else" (whatever that "something else" might be).
Here, the principle matters. And, as I see it, the principle is that there is nothing that should bother a decent political community about religious social-welfare organizations hiring for mission. (The hiring question, by the way, is different from the client-service question. I think it is clear that the government can say, "if you want the money, serve all comers.")
Monday, October 12, 2009
Over at First Things, Steve Dillard reminds us of the words of a relatively recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize:
[T]he greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child – a direct killing of the innocent child – murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
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