Continuing the online debate over at the New Republic, and responding to Ross Douthat's opening post (about which I blogged here), Damon Linker writes:
. . . Is my opposition to theoconservative ideology not better understood as opposition to orthodox Catholicism? Can you [i.e., Douthat] and Neuhaus, as Catholics, be good citizens of a liberal polity like the United States?
My answer is simple: Of course you can--on one condition. Like every other citizen, you must be willing to accept what I call "the liberal bargain." In my book, I describe this bargain as the act of believers giving up their "ambition to political rule in the name of their faith" in exchange for the freedom to worship God however they wish, without state interference. What does this mean, in practical terms? It means that your belief in what the Roman Catholic Church believes and teaches is irrelevant, politically speaking. It simply shouldn't matter whether or not you think that justice has a divine underpinning, anymore than it should matter whether you prefer Jane Austen to Dostoevsky. In a word, liberal politics presumes that it's possible and desirable for political life to be decoupled from theological questions and disputes.
It seems to me that "liberal politics" presumes no such thing. Or, if it does, it is kidding itself. "Political life" is simply too big, and too many "questions" are, in the end, "theological," for the two to be entirely "decoupled." To be clear: Of course "church" and "state" should be separate, and state coercion should not be employed in order to coerce religious exercise or observance. But, in Linker's view, it appears the "liberal bargain" is far more comprehensive, and rules out, say, voting for a minimum-wage increase because one thinks such a vote is demanded by a meaningful commitment to the preferential option for the poor.
But there is a complication: What if a faith forbids its adherents to accept the liberal bargain? What if it explicitly refuses to permit believers to decouple their political and religious convictions? What if it demands unity--unity in the name of one set of non-negotiable theological truths? Such a religion may be incompatible with liberalism. Whether Islam is inherently illiberal in precisely this way is one of the most pressing questions confronting the Western world today.
And Catholicism? Since Vatican II--and especially since the start of Pope John Paul II's pontificate--the Catholic Church has staked out a novel position on these matters. Like most anti-liberal faiths, it has demanded a unity between politics and religion.
Huh? This is, well, wrong. See, e.g., Deus caritas est par. 28(a): "Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God (cf. Mt 22:21), in other words, the distinction between Church and State, or, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, the autonomy of the temporal sphere.[19] The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the followers of different religions. For her part, the Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are distinct, yet always interrelated.:
But it has also maintained that Catholic moral teaching is perfectly compatible with liberalism--indeed, that it is the only solid and sure foundation for liberalism. By contrast, liberalism without Catholicism is, in John Paul's arresting phrase, "thinly disguised totalitarianism."
Catholicism does not so much reject what liberalism affirms as it denies the validity of the distinctions liberalism typically assumes--distinctions between private and public, secular and sacred, reason and revelation. In place of these distinctions, the Church proposes a higher synthesis, all the while claiming that such a synthesis produces a purified liberal politics. This is pretty much what the theocons propose for the United States.
I tend to think that this way of thinking about political life obscures far more than it clarifies. It thus also leads certain Catholics to misunderstand the character of modern politics--in particular, the possibilities it opens up and those it forecloses. Does that make me anti-Catholic? I look forward to hearing your answer to this question.
Me, too.
I appreciate Rick's mixed feelings about the Amish's response to the horrible schoolhouse massacre, but I have a hard time seeing how their response is anything but Christ-like. Jeff Jacoby's failure to see "how the world is made a better place by assuring someone who would do terrible things to others that he will be readily forgiven afterward, even if he shows no remorse" misses the point, in my view. First, nothing I've seen in the news reports suggest that the Amish would have discouraged an effort to capture and imprison the killer if he had escaped the scene. The killer's role in this tragedy and prospects of danger to others ended with his suicide; what's left is our response to the horror of a completed act. Second, following Christ is not conditioned on its compatibility with our own societal cost-benefit analysis; Christianity is supposed to be a scandal to the world, as the Amish have proven. Third, the Amish were not, in my view, signaling a minimization of the horror of this slaughter. (And if they did, my opinion of their response would change.) As I see it, they were speaking of the person behind the horror. In the debate over gay rights, it is common to hear Christians recite the mantra, "love the sinner; hate the sin." What were the Amish doing other than loving the sinner?
Rob
On the topic of the ministerial exception and "discrimination" by religious organizations, here is a new article by a former student of mine, Tom Messner, "Can Parachurch Organizations Hire and Fire on the Basis of Religion Without Violating Title VII?"
Monday, October 9, 2006
The New Republic's web site is hosting an online debate between Damon Linker, of "Theocons" fame, and Ross Douthat, of Atlantic Monthly. (Douthat reviewed the current raft of anti-"theocon" books recently, in First Things.) Here is a blurb from Douthat's opening entry:
"The guarantee of religious liberty" in the Constitution, you write, "institutionalizes the perpetual political impotence of religion." Maybe in Lilliput or or Never-Never Land, but not in real-life America, where an endless variety of religiously inspired political movements have jostled and competed for influence under the umbrella of government neutrality. Hence abolitionism and the Social Gospel; hence the religious populism of William Jennings Bryan and the eschatological politics of Martin Luther King Jr.; hence ... well, just pick up a history book. A lot happened between the Federalist Papers and the publication of The Naked Public Square--some of it good, some of it bad, and nearly all of it affected by precisely the kind of religion-infused politics that you see as a mortal threat to the American experiment.
Because you don't discuss this history in any detail, it's somewhat difficult to tell whether you think that previous irruptions of faith into American politics were just as dangerous to the health of our secular republic as the "theocons" and their sinister agenda--or whether you think there's something particularly un-American about Neuhaus and company. At times, you seem to be arguing that, any time faith influences government or vice versa, the results are "pernicious" for politics and religion alike. (You even chide the distinctly unzealous Christianity of midcentury mainline Protestantism for having "endorsed New Deal liberalism" and thereby succumbed to Christianity's "incarnational temptation.") But, for the most part, I suspect that you believe that the attempt to link the American Founding to the Catholic natural-law tradition--which is at the heart of the "theoconservative project," insofar as there is one--marks a greater departure from America's supposed secular ideal than did the God-soaked politics of, say, Bryan or King. (This is how your friend Russell Arben Fox interprets your argument, at least, in an exegesis of your thesis that's somewhat more interesting than the thesis itself.)
If this is what you mean, I wish you had been gutsy enough to take your argument to its logical conclusion and to say outright what you repeatedly imply--namely that orthodox Catholicism is essentially incompatible with the American liberal order, and that Neuhaus (like John Courtney Murray before him) is wrong to tell his co-believers that there's no great tension between Rome and the United States. You spend a great deal of time talking about the "authoritarian" political inclinations of Neuhaus and company and how they threaten liberalism, but your evidence is nearly always that they believe in accepting the Catholic magisterium's religious authority on matters of faith and morals--with the implication being that, if you let the magisterium tell you what to think about birth control or the Virgin Birth, you aren't fit for the responsibilities of democratic self-governance.
This argument --that American Catholics need to choose between the Pope and the republic--has a long pedigree in our political life, and it's far from an absurd interpretation of the relationship, or lack thereof, between liberalism and Catholicism: It is held, for instance, by Neuhaus's critics on the Catholic right, who accuse him of choosing the republic over Rome. So I put it to you--is this your opinion on the matter? Is the dissenting, the-Pope-can't-tell-me-what-to-think Catholicism of Garry Wills the only form of Catholicism that's acceptable in the American context? You accuse Neuhaus of hinting that Jews and atheists can't be good citizens; do you think that Neuhaus, given what he believes, can be a good citizen himself?
Or put another way: As someone who believes in what the Roman Catholic Church believes and teaches--and as someone who thinks that our laws should be just and that the ultimate source of this justice is God--can I be a good American? Is there a place for me at the table of your idealized secular state?
Tune in tomorrow, for Linker's response . . .
I just returned last night from Rome, where I participated in a conference devoted to exploring "The Good Company: Catholic Social Thought and Corporate Social Responsibility in Dialogue." More than 250 scholars and professionals from around the world gathered for a conversation on CST's contribution to a deeper understanding of the corporation in society. For me, one highlight was Villanova law prof Robert Miller's presentation in which he criticized CST for unhelpfully dabbling in both deontological ethics and virtue ethics, leading (in his view) to a mish-mash of incommensurable normative principles. As a proponent of virtue ethics, he laid out his vision of the corporation as serving its end most effectively when it maximizes shareholder value. As you can imagine at a conference devoted to CST and CSR, it sparked a riveting discussion.
I presented a paper on "Moral Identity, Subsidiarity, and the Good Company," in which I suggested that, if our society values the free exercise of conscience, the frequently overlooked relational dimension of conscience compels us to maintain space for corporations to function as venues for conscience, even (especially) when they embody counter-cultural norms. (E.g., Wal-Mart refusing to sell the morning-after pill; Catholic Charities refusing to cover contraceptives for their employees and refusing to include same-sex couples as adoptive parents.) Hopefully, the paper will be suitable for posting in the near future.
Kudos to the conference organizers (including our own Mark Sargent).
Rob
[Interesting story, this. Of course, it's about much more than Vanderbilt.]
Sightings 10/9/06
Lawson's
Return
-- Martin E. Marty
Theo Emery revisited the theme of nonviolence in his
story on the return of James Lawson, expelled Vanderbilt student, to the
classroom -- this time as a Vanderbilt visiting professor (New York
Times, October 4; see References, below). It's an exceptional
story, but it has to compete for attention among the current, often religiously
relevant, headlined scandals and controversies. Here is some
attention:
Controversy marked Lawson's youth, and he has never ducked it
from 1960, when he came to prominence, down to the present. His problem:
He is and always has been an advocate and embodiment of nonviolence. His
mother taught him the nonviolent way. Lawson's ability to draw on the
Bible, Methodist theology, and Gandhi allowed him to fuse them into his own
developing theology, and action pushed him into central roles in the churchly
and academic sides of the civil rights movement. He traveled to India to
be closer to Gandhian teaching, and to Vanderbilt Divinity School to be closer
to Christian theology with a Methodist stamp.
Unfortunately for his
career, he there sat down to eat at the wrong cafeteria tables, sat in the wrong
sections of the symphony hall, and sat around in circles of dissenting
contemporaries and professors. All this at a not-then-atypically racist
university in a mid-southern city, where the violent had power in church and
state, press and university, including the divinity school. When the
chancellor at Vanderbilt expelled him, much of the divinity faculty
resigned. (We at Chicago profited because one among them, Langdon Gilkey,
then taught here for decades.)
That was then, now is now. In the
meantime, Vanderbilt desegregated and did some curricular atoning, beginning in
the divinity school. Even the chancellor who booted Lawson repented and
apologized as the university found ways to heal old breaches. Then came a
surprise: The current chancellor appointed him to teach on the theme of
nonviolence. He attracts eager students for whom the early civil rights
movement seems as remote as the Middle Ages, and at a time when nonviolence
rarely gets a hearing. Lawson bears no grudges, but he remains a lonely
voice on the nonviolent religious or, for that matter, any other
front.
Vanderbilt does not censor or fetter Lawson, or seem to worry
about what his continuing nonviolent stance might "cost" the school. Emery
reports, for instance, that after a talk on the Bible and Gandhi, Lawson
responded to a student's question about nonviolence in a violent age. You
will not understand Lawson and his movements unless I report that as he talked
about the "international arms trade and how difficult it was to disarm a society
armed to the teeth," he did some dangerous comparing. (Any of our readers
who are disturbed by any quotation that might suggest equivalences between "Us"
and "Them," please hold your fire. Nonviolence does provoke violent
reaction, still.)
Lawson's answer: "I don't happen to think that Islam is
the most violent religion. I think Christianity is. As a Christian,
I think we need to think about ourselves first, and clean up our own act."
There are obviously other things to be said on that subject, but this one
comment at least should be entered into the record as we debate arms policies
and both international and domestic affairs: "We need to think about ourselves
first," and take it from there.
References:
Theo Emery's article "Activist Ousted From Vanderbilt
Is Back, as a Teacher" appeared in the October 4 edition of the New York
Times and may be found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/education/04lawson.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin.
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
Here is an opinion piece, "What Would Lincoln Do?," from the current issue of The Weekly Standard, which is adapted from the amicus curiae brief that Mike Paulsen (Minnesota) and I filed in the upcoming partial-birth-abortion cases. Here is a bit:
For as long as Americans have known about the several thousand partial-birth abortions performed each year, they have--by comfortable and consistent margins--agreed with the late senator Daniel Patrick Moy nihan that "[the procedure] is infanticide, and one would be too many." Nevertheless, the Supreme Court declared six years ago in Stenberg v. Carhart that Nebraska's effort to ban this particular late-term abortion method violated the right to abortion that was manufactured in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.
Congress responded with a ban of its own, one that was designed to satisfy the standards set out in Carhart. But this effort, the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, has now been rejected by lower federal courts. The question before the Court now, in Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, is whether the justices will permit us to regulate this procedure, which revolts Red and Blue America alike. . . .
In fact, the justices could probably uphold the federal ban without reversing the Stenberg decision. But they shouldn't. The Court's time and constitutional powers would be better spent, and the rule of law better served, if Stenberg were simply abandoned.
What about stare decisis, though? Don't the editors at the Times have a point when they urge deference to precedent? Of course they do. It is eminently sensible for courts to stick with settled decisions, absent special and strong justification. But the doctrine of stare decisis, properly understood, is not an inexorable command of blind, unquestioning adherence to the most recently decided case. It is not, as Justice Frankfurter once put it, the "imprisonment of reason." It is, instead, a principle of judicial policy, a flexible, practical idea that leaves plenty of room for discretion as to how it should be applied in any given set of circumstances. . . .
Contrary to the ruling in Stenberg, nothing in our constitutional text, history, tradition, or structure supports, let alone compels, the conclusion that the American people may not affirm our commitment to decency and human dignity by rejecting partial-birth abortion. Nor does the judicial policy of stare decisis shackle the Court to such a horribly wrong precedent--be it Stenberg or Dred Scott.
The New York Times is running a four-part series "examin[ing] how American religious organizations benefit from an increasingly accommodating government." Sunday's installment, "As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation," is here; today's is called, "Where Faith Abides, Employees Have Few Rights." A quick, general observation: It strikes me that, in these first two pieces, there is inadequate attention paid to the distinction between accommodations and exemptions that are thought to be, or that could plausibly be said to be, required by the relevant constitutional text, structure, and history, on the one hand, and -- on the other -- those exemptions that are the permissible, but not required, result of legislative decisions to accommodate.
Today's story talks in some detail about the "ministerial exception":
The most sweeping of these judicial protections, and the one that confronted the novice nun in Toledo, is called the ministerial exception. Judges have been applying this exception, sometimes called the church autonomy doctrine, to religious employment disputes for more than 100 years.
As a rule, state and federal judges will handle any lawsuit that is filed in the right place in an appropriate, timely manner. But judges will almost never agree to hear a controversy that would require them to delve into the doctrines, governance, discipline or hiring preferences of any religious faith. Citing the protections of the First Amendment, they have ruled with great consistency that congregations cannot fully express their faith and exercise their religious freedom unless they are free to select their own spiritual leaders without any interference from government agencies or second-guessing by the courts.
To do otherwise would be an intolerable government intrusion into employment relationships that courts have called “the lifeblood” of religious life and the bedrock of religious liberty, explained Edward R. McNicholas, co-chairman of the national religious institutions practice in the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin, a law firm with some of the country’s largest religious organizations among its clients.
The piece then goes on to profile a number of cases, including the recent Petruska decision, which has been discussed on this blog before.
I'll have more to say, I think, when the series is through. The first two installments, though, leave me with a sense of "they just don't get it" unease. The storyline owes too much, so far, to the "religion is getting special treatment and is treating people unfairly" narrative, and not enough to the "religious organizations are not the state, and -- if we take religious liberty and limited government seriously -- must have the freedom to organize themselves, select ministers, etc., without being second-guessed by government" account. We'll see.
