I have an op-ed in today's USA Today about the Pope's visit, JFK's speech, religion-and-politics, etc. Here's a bit:
Now, perhaps it reflects poorly on the state of political oratory that one of the most discussed, and most interesting, candidate speeches in the 2008 presidential campaign was delivered nearly 50 years ago. (At least until Mitt Romney's speech about his Mormon faith last month in College Station, Texas.) Nonetheless, we should not be too surprised by the Speech's staying power. After all, we Americans have long worried about, and wrestled with, the relationship between faith and politics.
At the same time, however, our public policies and aspirations have always been shaped by religious commitments and ideals. It is then appropriate, and healthy, that the religion-and-public-life themes elaborated in Kennedy's Houston speech remain part of our national conversation. Indeed, it would be strange, and almost un-American, if they were excluded or ignored.
With respect to the dust-up about Rick Majerus's comments, about which Michael blogged here, a few thoughts:
Like (I gather) Michael, I don't think, at the end of the day, it's reasonable to expect the President of Saint Louis University to admonish Majerus for expressing views contrary to the (clear) teaching of the Catholic Church. That said, I think it's important to be more clear than many -- at least, the many I've heard discussing the matter on ESPN -- have been about the reasons why, and why not, this is true.
For starters . . . note to Michael Wilbon (of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption"): This is not a matter of Majerus's "freedom of speech." Even if we put aside the fact that neither Archbishop Burke nor S.L.U. is the government, there is nothing about the "freedom of speech" that means you cannot be criticized in return. Let's move on. . .
Second, perhaps more noteworthy than Majerus's statements about his "pro-choice" views -- what a shocker! some Catholics are wrong about abortion! -- is his later statement, commenting on Archbishop Burke, "He's entitled to his opinion, but I should be entitled to mine." Well, d'uh. The issue is not about who's "entitled" to their opinions. The question -- and it is a tricky one -- is whether it is appopriate for someone in his position -- a professing Catholic, at a Catholic university -- to publicly endorse a position that is contrary to Catholic teaching, thereby effectively using that university as a platform, or as a credibility enhancing credential, in a way that could cause scandal. Majerus is getting a lot of praise for his said-to-be courageous insistence on taking stands for things he believes in. Fair enough. One would hope that some might question the appropriateness of his using his S.L.U. position to convert his views on a controversial position from "a private person's views" to "the views of the Saint Louis University basketball coach."
To be clear, I don't think a university, Catholic or not, can or should expect that none of its faculty or staff, even one as visible as the basketball coach, is ever going to say misguided things. I do not think that a Catholic university -- even one that is serious about its Catholic mission -- should criticize or admonish faculty for saying such things. (One wonders, though, what S.L.U.'s, or ESPN's, reaction would have been had Majerus appeared at a Tom Tancredo rally and complained about immigration, or at a League of the South rally and complained about Emancipation.)
Third, one can think that, at the end of the day, S.L.U. should not directly criticize Majerus for his comments, and also -- see, for example, this comment by my colleague Cathy Kaveny -- that this was a missed opportunity for a different, and perhaps more constructive, response by the Archbishop, without embracing the (silly, I think) view that Majerus's comments are somehow none of the Archbishop's business. Majerus, after all, is a Catholic. It's entirely appropriate, it seems to me, wholly and apart from the question what the University should do, for the Archbishop to use the statements of one of the area's most visible Catholic laypersons as an occasion to remind the Catholics he has been charged -- he believes, by God -- with teaching and pastoring of an important moral truth about the dignity of human life.
Finally, and contrary to what I've seen suggested in some of the sports-blogsphere, the fact that S.L.U. should not directly admonish Majerus for his misguided views does not mean that Catholic universities should not, as a general matter, care about the connection between their mission and identity, on the one hand, and the intellectual life of their faculty and students on the other. It would be unfortunate if the upshot of l'affaire Majerus were that the mistaken view that a Catholic university can only be a "university" if it cordons off the faith from its intellectual life became more accepted.
"With regard to the war and this issue, it's very much the same thing," Liz Hourican, a Code Pink activist told Cybercast News Service. "This is about basic human rights - standing here and being able to take care of women. Take care of women first. This is my body. I should have the decision over my body." . . .
Hourican further said that the war in Iraq needed to end before the issue of abortion should be tackled. "So if we are really thinking about 'thou shall not kill,' let's close down the war machine first," she said.
When asked if she would join the pro-life cause once the Iraq war was over, Hourican, however, said no. She told Cybercast News Service she would be willing to educate people and work with family planning groups that want to help women.
Code Pink was formed in 2001, during the days leading up to the war in Iraq. A statement on the group's Web site says its goals include ending the war in Iraq, stopping new wars, and promoting "life-affirming activities." The Code Pink women outside the Supreme Court were dressed in bright pink clothing and carried large signs bearing pro-abortion messages.
(Yes, I know that a great many people who oppose abortion strongly do not oppose killings in war and that, in some cases, such people do not even seem to mind killings that all of us here at MOJ would think are immoral.)
My friend Dan Philpott (Political Science, Notre Dame) has this review, over at The Immanent Frame (a really good blog), of Mark Lilla's, The Stillborn God. Here's a bit:
The idea of modern liberalism depends decisively on a jettisoning of theology as a source for arguing about politics: If there is one claim to which Lilla returns again and again from different angles, this is it. So if there is one phenomenon that most decisively calls Lilla’s argument into question, it would be a positive relationship between traditional, orthodox political theology and key features of liberal politics, especially separation of religious and political authority and religious freedom. To the degree that such a relationship is found, it weakens the case that liberalism – particularly, its separation between religious and political authority, freedom of religion, etc. – depends crucially on a divorce from political theology. But in fact, ample evidence exists that traditional political theology has contributed vitally to incubating, sustaining, and expanding liberal democracy, in thought and in practice, before, during, and after the early modern religious wars. Unquestionably, political theology has also begotten the bizarre, the violent, and the illiberal. But its positive contribution is large enough to raise serious doubts about Lilla’s thesis. . . .
My point here is only to demonstrate historically a strong symbiosis between traditional Christian political theology and the idea of modern liberal democracy. If such a symbiosis indeed exists, then does it not sharply call into question Lilla’s contention that the rise of modern liberalism depends precisely on a great separation between traditional political theology and political thought? . . .
The story of Catholicism corroborates the finding. Lilla ignores this story, which he justifies in a footnote (see page 12) saying that the Church was hostile to modern society until the twentieth century. Of course, there is much truth to that. But even in the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church by and large prospered in America (despite outbreaks of anti-Catholic prejudice) and came to accommodate the American church-state relationship on a provisional if not deeply principled level. . . . [P]ope Benedict XVI himself has credited the Enlightenment with promoting the dialogue that brought the Church to embrace human rights and democracy. But when it did embrace them, it did so on the basis of its own theology and tradition of thought – a possibility that Lilla does not adequately recognize. . . .
This striking graphic conveys, powerfully, what (or rather, who) has been lost since Roe v. Wade.(Be sure to scroll down to the end, and to click on the last blue dot.)
The legal problem with Roe v. Wade is simple: The Supreme Court's decision to invalidate state laws prohibiting or restricting abortion lacks any basis in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution of the United States. The late John Hart Ely, a famous legal scholar who himself supported legal abortion as a matter of public policy, said that Roe v. Wade "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." The justices who manufactured a right to abortion in Roe violated and dishonored the very Constitution they purported to interpret by substituting their own moral and political judgments for those of the elected representatives of the people. Their ruling was a gross usurpation by the judiciary of the authority vested by the Constitution in the people themselves, acting through the constitutionally prescribed institutions of republican democracy. As dissenting Justice Byron White put it, Roe was nothing more than an exercise of "raw judicial power." It was not merely an incorrect decision, but an anti-constitutional one.
Jack Balkin reports that the new Great Wall of China -- i.e., its Internet-filtering systems -- is not blocking Mirror of Justice. Why the heck not, I wonder? Are we doing something wrong? Note to the PRC: We are subversive! Maybe this will get us blocked: Freedom! Jesus! Three-kid familes! Yao Ming is not that good!
In his anti-Thompson op-ed, to which Michael linked here, Michael Gerson asked:
Should we increase the amount of money devoted to our generous cancer research efforts at the expense of African lives that can be saved for about $90 a year?
An interesting question, I think.
Now, I agree with Gerson that the United States should, for strategic and moral reasons, generously fund (effective, efficient, not-corrupt) development and health-care initiatives in Africa. And, although I support Thompson's candidacy, I'm happy to agree that it was a mistake to answer the (inappropriate?) "as a Christian, as a conservative" question about President Bush's the global AIDS initiative (for which, it seems to me, he gets little credit) the way he did (i.e., by appearing to invoke Jesus as the authority for a particular application of Thompson's limited-government philosophy).
Still, what about Gerson's question? How do and should we allocate scarce resources among competing, worthy goals? (It is not an answer, in my view, to say, "increase government's role and revenues" because, even if we do that, resources will still be scarce). Can we justify, say, our space program, or the National Gallery, or expensive carbon-output-reducing regulations, given that, for relatively little money, we could provide clean drinking water to tens of millions of children, saving them from death and disease? What criteria should we use?
And, given that we do have to have some criteria, is it as obvious as Gerson seems to think that among the criteria a Christian may employ is not a (rebuttable) presumption in favor of responding first to domestic challenges? Maybe so. (Again, I strongly support -- for both policy and moral reasons -- generous-but-careful support for poverty-relief and development efforts in poor countries.) But, if Gerson's right, then I suppose all those who support, say, labor and trade policies that put the needs of American industrial workers above the needs of workers in the developing world can expect a in-print spanking from Gerson, and a failing grade on his Christianity-test, too?
Here is a "top ten list"-style collection of the various reasons Sen. Barack Obama -- who describes here, in his "Call to Renewal" address, the importance to him of his Christian faith -- has given for his vote against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
