In a recent op-ed (to which Michael P. linked recently), Fr. Richard McBrien suggests, Michael says, that President Obama is a "Vatican II President." (Actually, McBrien quotes church historian John O'Malley, S.J., who used that phrase.) I'm not sure what this characterization means, though, so it's hard for me to know whether it fits. According to McBrien, it is primarily a matter of "style", the style that "Vatican II called for when it changed the way that the Catholic Church does business in its relationships with its own members, with other Christians, with other religions, and with the world community at large." So, is the claim that President Obama deals with the Church and others in the way that, at Vatican II, the Church proposed to "do[] business"? Maybe. Some might wonder, though, whether this style is more accurately characterized as "Chicago-style" than "Vatican II-style". We'll see.
McBrien also writes:
that the Pope's new encyclical shows that President Obama is in accord with most of Catholic social teaching.
Indeed, Barack Obama is more in accord with that teaching and with the substantial message of Caritas in Veritate than the many politically conservative Catholics who berated the University of Notre Dame and its president, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, for inviting Obama to deliver this year's graduation address and receive an honorary degree.
It is obvious to me that "many politically conservative Catholics" hold views and support policies that do not cohere well with the heart and fullness of Catholic social teaching. It is also obvious to me, though, that it is not a particularly useful way to decide whether or not a politicians is "in accord with . . . Catholic social teaching" merely to ask whether some, or many, of his or her policies match up with those that (in the view of the person speaking) seem to follow most naturally from that teaching. Catholic social teaching is not a litany of policy proposals, or even an unconnected grab-bag of principles. At the heart of Caritas (as I wrote in more detail here) is a vision of the human person, and the person's nature, destiny, and worth:
The document is not about the recent American elections or the stimulus package. It's about authentic, integral human development and flourishing and, therefore, it is a call to take seriously what the truth is -- there is a truth -- about the human person, namely, that he is made in the image of God and loved by Him. It is certainly not a document with which someone who thinks such questions are "above [his] pay grade" (or, indeed, any of us, including me) should feel too comfortable.
Finally, I am not sure what Michael means by "evangelical" and "Vatican II" bloggers, but I'm all ears!
The cover of the new issue of America magazine says "Notre Dame revisited." The issue includes essays by my own bishop -- and the bishop in whose diocese the University of Notre Dame is located -- John D'arcy, and also the archbishop emeritus of San Francisco, John R. Quinn.
It would be unfortunate if readers of America took these pieces as "pro" and "con", or "point" and "counter-point." It seems to me that they are, in fact, addressing different questions. Archbishop Quinn seemed to treat as closely related what, in my view, are two very different sets of questions: (1) Questions about the nature of a Catholic university and the relationship of such a university to the Church, specifically, the teaching office of the local bishop; and (2) questions about the actions that a bishop should take, in order to bear faithful witness to the Church's teachings, especially on the sanctity of life, with respect to political leaders and candidates who advance unjust policies. He wrote:
The dilemma that confronts us today is whether the church’s vision is best realized on the issue of abortion by focusing our witness on the clear moral teaching about abortion and public law, or whether it is preferable or obligatory to add to that teaching role the additional role of directly sanctioning public officials through sustained, personally focused criticism, the denial of honors or even excommunication.
This dilemma has troubled us for many years now, but it has been crystallized in the controversy over the decision of the University of Notre Dame to award an honorary degree in May of this year to the president of the United States. This is the first time in the history of this conference that a large number of bishops of the United States have publicly condemned honoring a sitting president, and this condemnation has further ramifications due to the fact that this president is the first African-American to hold that high office.
I worry, again, that Archbishop Quinn is slipping too easily from the "should bishops condemn political leaders directly, deny communion to Catholic politicians, etc.?" debate to the "what does it mean to be a Catholic university?" debate. Bishop D'arcy's essay is not about the importance of condemning pro-abortion-rights politicians (I am confident that he would agree with much of what Archbishop Quinn writes about, e.g., the need for bishops to avoid the appearance of partisanship, etc.). Instead, he asks:
What is the relationship of the Catholic university to the local bishop? No relationship? Someone who occasionally offers Mass on campus? Someone who sits on the platform at graduation? Or is the bishop the teacher in the diocese, responsible for souls, including the souls of students—in this case, the students at Notre Dame? Does the responsibility of the bishop to teach, to govern and to sanctify end at the gate of the university? In the spirit of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which places the primary responsibility on the institution, I am proposing these questions for the university. . . .
As bishops, we must be teachers and pastors. In that spirit, I would respectfully put these questions to the Catholic universities in the diocese I serve and to other Catholic universities.
Do you consider it a responsibility in your public statements, in your life as a university and in your actions, including your public awards, to give witness to the Catholic faith in all its fullness?
What is your relationship to the church and, specifically, to the local bishop and his pastoral authority as defined by the Second Vatican Council?
Finally, a more fundamental question: Where will the great Catholic universities search for a guiding light in the years ahead? Will it be the Land O’Lakes Statement or Ex Corde Ecclesiae? The first comes from a frantic time, with finances as the driving force. Its understanding of freedom is defensive, absolutist and narrow. It never mentions Christ and barely mentions the truth. The second text, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, speaks constantly of truth and the pursuit of truth. It speaks of freedom in the broader, Catholic philosophical and theological tradition, as linked to the common good, to the rights of others and always subject to truth. Unlike Land O’Lakes, it is communal, reflective of the developments since Vatican II, and it speaks with a language enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
On these three questions, I respectfully submit, rests the future of Catholic higher education in this country and so much else.
Like I said, I am confident that Bishop D'arcy agrees with Archbishop Quinn regarding the importance of "cordiality." (It would be very unfortunate if the juxtaposition of the two essays led any America readers to imagine that Bishop D'arcy has been anything but cordial.) I wonder, though, what Archbishop Quinn thinks are the answers to Bishop D'arcy's questions?
Metallica's "Black Album" was very cool. So, I am confident, is my friend Gary Anderson's (Theology, Notre Dame) new (and very black) book, "Sin."
What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God’s eyes.
Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus and eventually led to the development of various penitential disciplines, deeds of charity, and even papal indulgences. In so doing it reveals how these changing notions of sin provided a spur for the Protestant Reformation.
Broad in scope while still exceptionally attentive to detail, this ambitious and profound book unveils one of the most seismic shifts that occurred in religious belief and practice, deepening our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience.
As Nigel Tufnel might have put it, "[i]t's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black."
It is strange to hear Prof. Dershowitz scolding Justice Scalia for not being more aggressive about incorporating the moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church into the constitutional doctrines of the United States Supreme Court. Weren't we supposed to be afraid of Catholic justices precisely because of their supposed irresistible tendency to engage in such incorporation?
Putting aside this transparent double-standarding, I am almost surprised that Prof. Dershowitz allowed his name to be attached in print to this:
[W]hatever the view of the church is on executing the guilty, surely it is among the worst sins, under Catholic teaching, to kill an innocent human being intentionally. Yet that is precisely what Scalia would authorize under his skewed view of the United States Constitution. How could he possibly consider that not immoral under Catholic teachings? If it is immoral to kill an innocent fetus, how could it not be immoral to execute an innocent person?
Yawn. Of course, Prof. Dershowitz, it is an immoral exercise of public authority to "kill an innocent human being intentionally." And, of course, Justice Scalia would consider such a killing immoral. (He might ask you, though, why you think it's fine to kill an "innocent fetus.") But (see Ed Whelen's response): "[T]here is nothing in Scalia’s position as to what the Constitution permits on this issue that speaks to what he regards as moral or immoral."
To be clear: to cringe at Prof. Dershowitz's silly piece is not to endorse the view that Justice Scalia expressed in Herrera about the power of a federal court to enjoin a state's execution. But, it seems to me that even we Catholics who oppose capital punishment should object to such an opportunistic and simplistic deployment of the "Catholic morality" card.
Kathleen Parker (certainly no "conservative") points out, here, that a press whose "separation!" flags were flying high when President Bush proposed his "Faith-Based Initiative" has been blase and unbothered by Pres. Obama's similar program:
A comparison of how the media have treated the two presidents and their faith-based programs during the first six months of their administrations (2001 and 2009) is the subject of a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The findings suggest a very different standard applied to each president. . . .
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (and director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program) . . . insists that the disparate levels of scrutiny can't be attributed only to timing and busy schedules.
"Sure, there's always a lot going on in Washington with any new administration. But can you imagine the outcry if Bush had hired a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher to run the faith-based office and surrounded him with a 25-member advisory board made up of people largely sympathetic to his policy agenda?"
In fact, Bush appointed University of Pennsylvania political science professor John DiIulio, a Democrat, to run his program. Cromartie maintains that the greater attention to Bush was because the media were suspicious that his faith-based initiative was an attempt to install a theocracy. . . .
Prof. Bryan McGraw (political theory / Wheaton) has this contribution to our conversation:
I've been reading (and skimming) the various posts on whether there is a "right" to health care and a few things suggest themselves to me. One of the things that comes out very clearly in Wolterstorff's "Justice" was the way in which "rights" are always already embedded in certain contexts and especially in social relationships. They are norms of social relationships, he says, and that seems quite right to me. So in thinking about any kinds of rights, we are actually thinking about the proper shape (or the range of proper shapes) of our social and political relationships. I have a "right" to free speech in the sense that others have an obligation in their relation to me to allow me to express myself. (Note that such rights extend only insofar as we have relationships with others - some provincial governor in Siberia has no obligation vis-a-vis me unless we come into contact). The limits to that right - libel, fighting words, physical safety, national security, etc. - are themselves articulated in the context of our relations to one another and what sorts of mutual obligations overlap with speech - an obligation not to libel others, an obligation not to provoke violence, etc.
The problem with employing "rights" language is not that we do not have any rights when it comes to health care. Given certain resources, I'm happy to say that such obligations exist. The problem is that rights rhetoric tends to obliterate the contexts of those rights and the mutual obligations that undergird and limit them. So in the case of health care, the rhetoric of rights all too often (as is often the case when we talk about welfare rights) erases the distinctions between public and private obligations and public and private resources. It would make a great deal of sense to me to say that, given the collective wealth of our country, there is a "right" to basic health care (which is today, of course, vindicated in the health care that people receive gratis in ERs and medical clinics) but it gets a great deal more dicey when things go beyond that precisely because to say, as some will suggest (perhaps merely to make a rhetorical point), that we all the right to the same health care as, say, members of Congress suggests that the very substantial resources necessary to make that happen are, in fact, collective resources subject to collective determination. To say that one has a "right" to health-care just means that one has a right to the resources necessary to exercise that health care. It seems quite right to say that we have a right, given the resources we have as a country, to basic health care, but beyond that, I think the argument comes to depend on a very strong egalitarianism that is itself underwritten by the sense that the community has at its disposal all the resources in the community. And that seems to me a mistake, though others, of course, will differ in that judgment.
On Aug. 11, 1921, Fr. James Edwin Coyle was murdered in Birmingham, Alabama. (His killer would later be represented by Hugo Black, and acquitted after a Klan-infected trial.) More here.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 88, a member of a political dynasty who devoted her life to improving the welfare of the mentally disabled by founding the Special Olympics, died Tuesday morning at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass., after a series of strokes. . . .
In a statement, her family said, "She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more. She founded the movement that became Special Olympics, the largest movement for acceptance and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in the history of the world. Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, and they in turn are her living legacy." . . .
I'm a big fan of (which is not to say I always agree with the writers at) the blog "Front Porch Republic" ("Places. Limits. Liberty." Catchy.) Check out this recent post there, "Benedict on Business: What's Love Got to Do with It." Provocative stuff.
Michael's invitation is a tempting one: I love San Diego, running along the beach with Michael sounds fun, and -- of course -- I am always eager to have things "explained" to me.
Like Michael, I am a fan of the work of our friend Nicholas Wolterstorff (I reviewed his recent book, "Justice", here) and, like Michael, I am perfectly happy to agree with Nick that the idea of "rights" (not just "the right") has an important role in our thinking about justice. "The modern language of rights," John Finnis wrote, "provides . . . a supple and potentially precise instrument or sorting out and expressing the demands of justice." If it were in fact the case that, generally speaking, "an argument in support of a human-rights-claim against government just *is* an argument in support of a claimed 'moral obligation [of a certain sort] of a political community to its members'", then, I suppose, my reservations about rights-talk in this context would (conveniently) dissipate, or at least lessen. But, it does not seem to me that, generally speaking, this is the case. Rights talk is complicated; people employ it in different ways, meaning different things. It is, Finnis observed, "often . . . , though not inevitably or irremediably, a hindrance to clear thought when the question is: What are the demands of justice?"
The health-care debate is about the distribution of scare resources, about trade-offs, about second-bests, etc. My reservations about rights-talk in this context are not theoretical, they are, I think, more practical. It distorts the debate, it seems to me, to suggest, or imagine, that what is going on in the current debate is that some people are invoking a right against the government; what they are doing, instead, is asking the government to raise money, in a variety of ways and from a variety of people, and allocate it in a different way, a way that (proponents claim) will better secure for many people access to health care. I have a human right to religious freedom -- because I am a human person, no government ought to coerce me to practice a faith I do not profess. The better way to think about the current health-care debate, though, is to say that "given all the givens -- e.g., because we are a prosperous nation -- our government ought to modify its policies in the following ways, and thereby better secure access to basic health care for many who currently lack it." I worry that "rights talk", in this context, can be used to obscure the necessarily pragmatic balancing -- the trade-offs, etc. -- that goes on in the crafting of policy.
