Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Church "as a company of serpents"

By Michael Perry

[This, from theatlantic.com.]

Friday, 04.18.08

The Pope and the Scandal

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Photo by Mandel Ngan for AFP/Getty Images

In a surprise move, Pope Benedict XVI met with a group of victims of sexual abuse behind closed doors in Washington D.C.

It was a small but important step. Pope John Paul II was famous for his public-relations savvy, his ability to turn the media's fascination with the papal office to his advantage, but in the sexual abuse scandal his successor has shown the defter touch. In his waning years, the previous Pope seemed to lack an appreciation for how deep the rot and outrage went, and the Vatican behaved as though the scandal had more to do with American media sensationalism than with the Catholic hierarchy's own sins. Whereas both as Cardinal and now as Pope, the soft-spoken German-born Joseph Ratzinger has been more forthright than his predecessor about the "filth" in the priesthood and more active in response -- and now, in his first trip to the United States since being elevated to the See of Peter, more willing to make the scandal a touchstone for his ministry, both in public and in private.

But a meeting like yesterday's should have happened much, much sooner, and that it did not speaks to a fundamental problem facing the Catholic Church today -- the extent to which the Vatican aspires to remain above the grubby, frenetic fray of modern life, even as its local representatives adopt the worst habits of modern business executives and politicians. At least part of Rome's unresponsive response to the sex-abuse scandal should be understood in the light of the Vatican's desire not to be perceived as a brand-conscious corporation, with a CEO-Pope overseeing regional managers -- or worse, an essentially political entity, obsessed with keeping the Papal approval ratings sky-high and the media narrative in its favor. But in this particular case, Rome's desire to preserve the Church's essentially mystical role in world affairs -- to avoid being sucked into the spin cycle of media sensationalism, and to maintain the Pope's image as shepherd and teacher, rather than chief executive -- left the Vatican blind to the reality that the men running the American Church weren't holding up their end of the bargain. They didn't need direction or wise counsel or even fraternal correction: They needed to be to be taken to the woodshed by an outraged, scandalized and engaged Papacy, and the discipline needed to happen swiftly and above all publicly. And because it didn't -- because in most cases bishops were allowed to get away with sacrificing the Body of Christ's most innocent members to protect, though of course only temporarily, their finances and prerogatives and reputation -- the Roman Catholic Church ended up looking like an institution prone to all of the evils of a modern government or corporation, but with none of the accountability.

Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and innocent as doves, Christ told his followers. But the Church during the sex scandals has often seemed like a company of serpents -- the American bishops, and the perverts they protected -- presided over by a company of otherworldly, out-of-touch doves. The Pope's words and actions this week are an important step toward changing that perception. But only a step.

— Ross Douthat

Obama and Catholics

By Steve Shiffrin

In his interesting and cogent analysis of the Democratic primaries and debates, Greg concludes that, "Obama now looks to be the weakest presidential candidate offered to Catholic voters by the Democratic Party since 1984." This may or may not be right, but I do not think it follows from the voting results in the Democratic primaries. What the Democratic primaries show is that Obama loses the Catholic vote to Clinton. That data shows little about how Obama would do with the Catholic vote against McCain. Indeed, it is theoretically possible (I would not say likely) that Obama could get a larger share of the Catholic vote against McCain than would Clinton. (Obama voters might not be willing to support Clinton; but Clinton voters might be willing to support Obama). It is unclear how much racial hostility figures into this picture. It is unclear how much hostility to strong women fits into this picture.
I do not even think current polls about how Clinton and Obama run against McCain are very good data. The race between the Democratic and Republican candidate is not in swing, let alone full swing. The Republican candidate is saddled with a bad war, a bad economy, and an 8 year Republican record that has little appeal to voters in the aggregate, Catholic or otherwise. Whatever the numbers are now, McCain will ultimately be on the defensive. In my view, it is way to early to suppose that either of the Democratic candidates offer less to Catholic voters (who themselves are not remotely monolithic) than prior Democratic candidates.

Addressing Poverty

By Susan Stabile

John MCCain is assuredly right that Government Isn't Poverty's Sole Solution.  Although I don't know if this is quite what he had in mind, a video titled, What is Poverty, contains some important insights about how we think about the problem of poverty and therefore how to think about addressing it.  The video can be viewed here and is also available for purchase through Work of the People.

Quote of the day

By Rob Vischer

In planning my own scholarly agenda, I often wonder about the role that my Christian faith should play in deciding what I should write about.  This might be more of an issue for someone who (like me) was raised as an evangelical, but I regularly experience a nagging sense that I should be writing explicitly about faith, in keeping with the Great Commission.  On that front, I just ran across this very helpful quote from one of the great Christian music producers, T-Bone Burnett.  He said, “If Jesus is the light of the world, there are two kinds of songs you can write. You can write songs about the light, or you can write songs about what you can see from the light.”

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Continuing to Chart the Catholic Vote in This Year’s Presidential Race

By Greg Sisk

After a six-week hiatus in voting (but not the slightest pause in campaigning), yesterday’s Pennsylvania primary provides confirmation of marked trends in the Catholic vote for president during this election cycle. Looking at the exit polling in Pennsylvania, patterns in Catholic responses to the Democratic candidates that had emerged earlier in the campaign became more pronounced. Depending on who survives to become the Democratic nominee, the growing body of voting data could presage the most lop-sided outcome among Catholic voters in a fall presidential election in a generation. Given that the Catholic vote has gone with the winner in seven of the last eight presidential elections (here), as goes the Catholic vote so may go the nation.

As outlined in my March 22 post here at the Mirror of Justice, throughout the Democratic presidential primary season, Senator Hillary Clinton has out-polled Senator Barack Obama among Catholics by increasingly wider margins. Setting aside the result in Illinois (where favorite son Obama lost the Catholic vote but by a closer margin) and a few states with small Catholic populations, Clinton has carried the Catholic vote by about two-to-one in such states as Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island, and Ohio. In these past contests, Clinton’s margin has risen to nearly 3-1 among observant Catholics who attend weekly Mass.

In my prior posting on the Catholic voting trends six weeks ago, I noted that the next important data-point on this subject would be Pennsylvania. So what happened in the Keystone State? Senator Clinton’s victory among Catholics in Pennsylvania was nothing less than a rout of Senator Obama. As shown by the exit polls, among Catholics generally (who constituted more than one-third of Democratic primary voters), Clinton prevailed over Obama by more than two-to-one and by a margin of 40 points (70-30). Among observant Catholics who attend weekly Mass, Clinton’s victory over Obama was nearly three-to-one and by a margin of almost 50 points (74-26).

In the election coverage last evening, CNN political analyst Bill Schneider highlighted the continuing and growing Catholic margin of victory for Clinton over Obama, while observing that he had yet to see a persuasive explanation for this phenomenon. The difficulty in pinning this down may be that no one thing by itself explains Obama’s worsening “Catholic problem.” Rather a mix of overlapping and interacting factors may be at work, some based on substantive concerns and others grounded in general impressions about Obama’s cultural attitudes, social position, and political conceit.

One attempt to explain away the Catholic vote data that was offered early on by the Obama camp can now be definitively rejected. After the California primary in early February, the Obama campaign suggested the Catholic margin was simply a proxy for Clinton’s overwhelming margin among Hispanics. But once the campaign shifted to states like Ohio and Rhode Island with small Hispanic populations, the significant Catholic preference for Clinton (or disinclination toward Obama) persisted. Now adding Pennsylvania to the mix (where Hispanics were only 3 percent of primary voters), the sharp break toward Clinton and away from Obama in the Catholic segment of the electorate appears to have solidified and plainly is independent of the leanings of the Hispanic Americans.

In the earlier posting, I suggested demographics may well play a role in explaining why Obama has failed to attract Catholic voters in the primary campaign, but going deeper than strong Hispanic support for Clinton. Obama’s mainstays of support have been African-Americans and affluent white liberals (especially in college towns), among whom relatively few Catholics are to be found. By contrast, Clinton’s vote has been anchored in the traditional lunch-bucket Democrats of the working class, who in states like Massachusetts, Ohio, and now Pennsylvania are disproportionately Catholic.

But those demographic observations simply describe the phenomenon and do not really explain it. Why is it that Catholics, of whatever class or geographic location, are either attracted to Clinton or repelled by Obama (or both)? And the answer cannot be found in such recent episodes as Obama’s controversial association with a black liberation theology pastor or his unscripted characterization of small town people as “clinging” to guns and religion. These episodes have likely further embedded voting tendencies among Catholics and have made it more difficult for Obama to overcome his negative standing in that segment of the electorate. But the pattern in Catholic voting had emerged before those controversies, so they at most strengthen but did not create the trends.

In my prior musings, I suggested that a partial explanation may lie in the uneasiness felt by many people of faith, including church-going Catholics, with the sometimes messianic style of the Obama campaign. The self-reverential feel of the typical Obama campaign event may be off-putting for many people who do not look to a politician to find a savior. With some exceptions during the Pennsylvania campaign, Obama continued his practice of holding huge rallies with adoring crowds, while Clinton more often went to smaller venues and engaged directly with more people. Did this make a difference? Perhaps.

In a similar way, Obama’s approach to religious faith and communities, welcoming as it has been, still may not have resonated as well with many Catholics and other persons of faith. Last week, I shared my impressions (here) of the Compassion Forum in which both Senators Clinton and Obama participated and offered interesting thoughts about religion, values, and public life. I noted that Obama tended to emphasize the instrumental role of religion, focusing on the use of religion and faith communities in community organizing and to achieve political ends. By contrast, Clinton addressed the value of religious faith for its own sake, as a part of daily life and as a source of inspiration and hope. Might it be that Catholics, for whom the relationship with the living Christ is embodied in the Eucharist, were left unmoved by Obama’s description of being drawn into a particular church for reasons of its political and social activism in a community? Seen in full context, Obama did not neglect the salvific and personally uplifting aspect of religious faith, but the primary political anchor of his remarks may not have connected with the distinctly transcendent and worshipful place of religious faith for most believers. While Catholics have a tradition of putting their faith to work for the common good, including political work, those political views and activities flow out of but do not define our faith. Politics is not the reason for what we believe nor are political activities central to our faith.

In any event, what do the Pennsylvania and earlier primary results portend for the future with respect to the important Catholic swing vote in this closely-fought presidential election? Given the remarkable stability of the trends in the Democratic primaries since January, I would expect that the Catholic margin toward Clinton and away from Obama will continue throughout the remaining contests. But what of the November election, once the Democratic nominee has been confirmed?

Senator Obama remains the most likely nominee, if somewhat less likely today than he was yesterday. Should that happen, Obama now looks to be the weakest presidential candidate offered to Catholic voters by the Democratic Party since 1984. Looking at recent elections, Bill Clinton carried the Catholic vote twice in 1992 and 1996, Al Gore barely won the Catholic vote (52-47) in 2000, and John Kerry lost it by a small margin (47-52) in 2004 despite being a professing Catholic. In comparison with Kerry and Gore, who still could barely attract half of the Catholic vote against George W. Bush, Barack Obama begins with a staggering disadvantage among Catholics. Barring a seismographic shift in the electorate in the next six months, Obama does not appear to be a plausible bet to win the Catholic vote. Based on current evidence, the real question could be whether Obama’s level of support among Catholics may dive down toward the one-third basement level that has been the best he could hope for during most of the primary season. If present trends continue, Obama might rival (or fall below) Walter Mondale’s dismal showing among Catholics (estimated at around 43 percent of the Catholic vote by many, although Gallup pegged it even lower at around 39 percent). In sum, Obama as the nominee could convert the old-style “Reagan Democrats” into “McCain Democrats.”

To be sure, many Catholic Democrats who voted for Clinton in the primaries will come home to the party if Obama is the nominee. But present indications are that many will be unwilling to do so and that the cultural alienation from Obama felt by most Catholics will not fade away easily. And, of course, a large segment of the Catholic population left the Democratic Party way back during the Reagan years, giving any Republican nominee a solid Catholic base from which to begin. While premature to do anything more than note the possibility, the strong Catholic tide away from candidate Obama that has become a flood during the primaries might not only affect the outcome of the presidential race but begin to sweep away Democratic candidates further down the ticket. The electability concern could go beyond the top of the ticket. Still, election prognostications are always risky, especially this far out, although the Catholic voting trends have been remarkably stable for several months now.

By contrast, if Senator Clinton should run the table in the remaining contests and convince the super-delegates to swing the nomination to her, where then will Catholic voters go in the general election? In that event, Republicans had better hope that Clinton’s overwhelming margin in the Catholic vote in the Democratic primaries is more of a movement away from Obama than an attraction toward Clinton. Given that these Catholic voters have already made an initial commitment in Clinton’s direction by casting primary votes for her, separating them away from her as the Democratic nominee for the November election will be a difficult task for the Republicans. Of course, Senator McCain might still win the overall Catholic vote without these Democratic primary voters by holding Catholic Republicans and taking Catholic independents. In particular, Clinton has not done well with independents, tending to succeed better in states in which only registered Democrats are permitted to vote in the primary. But McCain's pitch to Catholic voters may be more difficult if Clinton is the opponent.

If he hopes to win the Catholic vote against Clinton, McCain would have to convince Catholics that, despite her victories with Catholic voters during this spring, he really has more in common with them than does she. That’s not an impossible task, as who would have imagined a few months ago that Hillary Clinton would become the flag-bearer for culturally-conservative and working class Catholic Democrats. And, of course, the abortion question may emerge as important again in the fall, a subject that for obvious reasons has not been prominent in the Democratic contest where neither Clinton nor Obama have shown acceptable respect for the sanctity of human life and both take positions on the far left of even their own party (here). Nonetheless, Clinton has proven to be a powerful contender for the Catholic vote. Who’d a-thunk it!

Moreover, whether it is Obama or Clinton, the Catholic trends in the Democratic nomination race may fall away if Senator McCain fails to convince Catholic voters that he is a worthwhile alternative. He has to appeal not only to the Catholic Republicans that already are falling behind him, but also to the working class Catholic Democrats who could be attracted to him on cultural and national security issues, notwithstanding a weak economy. On the one hand, early indications are that McCain is well positioned to pick up those Catholics who have found Obama unappealing and who have been further estranged by his belittling comments about “bitter” people “clinging” to religious faith in small towns. On the other hand, Senator McCain chose not to participate in the Compassion Forum at Messiah College earlier this month, saying that he takes a more private approach to his religious faith. We will have to see whether McCain then is able to convince faithful Catholics that he respects their perspective, values their communities, and understands the centrality of religious faith and observance in their lives. McCain's ability to speak directly to working class and non-urban Catholics has not yet been tested.

Whatever happens, I think we can agree that this has become very interesting election year — much more so than anyone would have expected back on New Year’s Day.

Greg Sisk

Torture and Lawyers

By Michael Perry

[This is lifted from dotCommonweal--because it is soooo germane to us here at MOJ.]

Team torture.

April 23, 2008, 2:02 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho

The New Republic recently posted a Q&A with Philippe Sands, the author of an important new book on the role of lawyers in the Bush administration’s so-called coercive interrogation techniques. A snippet:

One of the lawyers you focus on is Doug Feith–though he makes clear in his interview with you that he was not functioning in the Pentagon as a lawyer. The exchange you record with Feith suggests he was distant from the decision process, and that he had a high opinion of and supported application of the Conventions. I remember speaking with military lawyers in 2003 repeatedly and hearing of their concern about Feith: his heavy hand, his pressure tactics, and his contempt for the Conventions and anyone who attempted to stand up for their application. What’s your assessment of Feith and his claims?

In our system of modern democratic societies, lawyers have a key role to play. They are the guardians–the gatekeepers–of legality. The rule of law requires lawyers to exercise independent judgment, and to give dispassionate, professional advice. That did not happen, at least in the upper echelons of the administration, in the Departments of Justice and Defense. Politically appointed lawyers–not the military, not the career civil servants–could be relied upon by the politicians to do what was needed, reflecting an unhappy convergence of ideology, incompetence, and weakness. Doug Feith is a lawyer, although he was not serving the administration in that capacity. He has a helpfully dodgy memory. During our conversation he spoke with pride of his role in ensuring that none of the Guantánamo detainees should be able to rely on Geneva. He also recalled only having become involved in the new interrogation techniques late on, when Haynes’ memo reached Rumsfeld. I pointed out to him that the memo itself said that its author had already consulted Feith. His reaction? Merely to point out that I had mispronounced his name. Following a lengthy conversation–which was recorded and makes remarkable listening because of his well-developed sense of self–my perception was clear: Doug Feith was deeply involved in the decision-making process, fully supported it, and failed to address the basic questions that one would have expected the Pentagon’s head of policy to be preoccupied with.

It’s well worth reading in full, no matter what your preoccupations.

U.S. Prison System

By Susan Stabile

I, too, was struck this morning when I read the NYT article Michael posted.  And it is not just that the U.S. imprisons so many more people than do other countries.  I think we should be very troubled from the standpoint of Catholic thought both that there appears to be little effort at attempting to rehabilitate people while in prison and that we do so little to assist the reentry into society of those who have served thier time in prison.  Approximately 650,000 state and federal prisoners reenter society each year.  When they do they face tremendous obstacles, including difficulty finding housing and employment and health and substance abuse problems.  In the words of one Urban Insittute report, "an increasing number of prisoners are returning home, having spent longer terms behind bars, less prepared for life on the outside, with less assistance in their reintegration and, at best, strained connections to their families and communities."

"I was...in prison and you visited me."  In so many ways, we fail to internalize the message of the judgment passage in Matthew 25  - the invitation to see Christ in the face of the marginalized of society.  (I blogged yesterday about this messag in the context of St. Vincent, who among other things ministered to galley slaves, here.)

What's Wrong With This Picture?

By Michael Perry

New York Times
April 23, 2008

Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’
By ADAM LIPTAK   

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. . . .

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is 88; and Japan’s is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

[Read the whole piece, here.]

Brooks on Lewis and the Enchanted World

By Rick Garnett

NYT columnist David Brooks has an op-ed, here, which is about one of my very favorite books, "The Discarded Image", by C.S. Lewis.  A taste:

. . . while we moderns see space as a black, cold, mostly empty vastness, with planets and stars propelled by gravitational and other forces, Europeans in the Middle Ages saw a more intimate and magical place. The heavens, to them, were a ceiling of moving spheres, rippling with signs and symbols, and moved by the love of God. The medieval universe, Lewis wrote, “was tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival not a machine.”

Lewis tried to recapture that medieval mind-set, Ward writes. He did it not because he wanted to renounce the Copernican revolution and modern science, but because he found something valuable in that different way of seeing our surroundings.

The modern view disenchants the universe, Lewis argued, and tends to make it “all fact and no meaning.” When we say that a star is a huge flaming ball of gas, he wrote, we are merely describing what it is made of. We are not describing what it is. Lewis also wanted to include the mythologies, symbols and stories that have been told about the heavenly actors, and which were so real to those who looked up into the sky hundreds of years ago. He wanted to strengthen the imaginative faculty that comes naturally to those who see the heavens as fundamentally spiritual and alive.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Academic Freedom II

By Steve Shiffrin

Academic freedom is not freedom to say what the censors want you to say; academic freedom includes the freedom to challenge orthodox thought. Is academic freedom consistent with the mission of a Catholic university? After Vatican II, it seems to me that a “Catholic university” that resorts to censorship steps away from the best understanding of Catholicism and the meaning of a university.

 
Richard McCormick points the way to a rich concept of a Catholic university: “A Catholic university needs to image itself as an ‘open circle’ -- sufficiently circumscribed to constitute a community of discourse but open enough to welcome others with different perspectives. . . there must be at the heart of the campus, an ‘open circle’, a community of scholars who are committed to the Catholic tradition, and others who are committed to engaging it, and the religious and moral issues raised by it and by modern society.”

 
The President of Seattle University, Stephen V. Sundberg, S.J., uses this quotation to great effect in his, “The Catholic Character of Seattle University’s Academic Mission: Convening a Conversation,” http://www.seattleu.edu/home/about_seattle_university/administration/speeches/2008_provost_convocation.pdf. The address is worth reading not only for its wise understanding of the community of discourse that should mark a Catholic university, but also for its beautiful (but frank) description of the multilayered Catholic tradition.

 
McCormick’s quotation also points the way to answering Susan’s question about academic freedom. Unlike secular universities, Catholic universities should be free to take religious views into account in their hiring decisions.  But they should not impose sanctions on those members of the community who question Catholic orthodoxy. Catholic universities need a critical mass of orthodox Catholics, but they need a diversity of non-orthodox Catholics, people from other faith traditions and non-believers to participate in the community of discourse that belongs at the heart of a Catholic university. Thus, President Sundberg calls for and is prepared to financially support a far-reaching “Catholic conversation” led by knowledgeable Catholics with the “voluntary engaged participation of faculty from all disciplines, faiths, and persuasions.”

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