Regular blog readers will know that I think Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism is quite helpful for our times, including, in certain important ways, for Catholic social thought. In The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier seeks to channel Niebuhr for today's war and terrorism challenges. He is "confident that Niebuhr would have opposed the war in Iraq," but wants to pinpoint the right ground for opposition and dismiss the wrong ones:
Niebuhr's opposition to the war would have been based, I think, on his principled distaste for Bush's style of nationalism, which he would have regarded as auto-idolatry, and on his insistence that the legitimacy of such an enterprise must be conferred by international institutions. It may be Niebuhr's teachings about the love of country that hold the most stinging rebuke to Bush's jingoism. "We are the most powerful nation on earth," he observed, in a typical passage, in Christianity and Society in 1950. "We are also sufficiently virtuous to be tempted to the assumption that our power is the fruit of our virtue." The president surrendered to that temptation long ago. He is contentedly blind to what Niebuhr, in another essay, called "the immoral elements in all historical success."
I'm pretty certain we could find numerous occasions (though I haven't gotten the cites, I confess) in which the President or other war supporters have effectively asserted that we as a nation are or will be successful because we're "fundamentally good." The relation between such sentiments and the huge missteps in Iraq is pretty direct: we knew better than other nations whether Saddam was an immediate danger, we knew better than others how to build a successful postwar Iraq, and anyway it would be relatively easy to rebuild because the Iraqis would react positively to our obvious commitment to democracy. (Peter Beinart's The Good Fight (see here) has a remarkable reference to American policymakers in 2003 worrying that they couldn't bring in the UN to work on reconstruction because Iraqis would fear the economic self-interested motives of nations like France as opposed to America's moral purposes.)
But Wieseltier also knows the other side of the Niebuhrian coin. There are two other, misguided, forms of opposition to rthe war. One is what Wieseltier calls "unethical realism": the idea that moral principles play no role in a nation's decisions, which amounts to pure cynicism and just as easily leads to terrible acts. The other misguided ground is the the position of some war critics that "we have no right to make Iraq a better place until we make America a better place." This is, Wieseltier says, both an un-Niebuhrian and
an erroneous view of the relation between domestic policy and foreign policy. The one does not, or should not, shape the other. A state that treats its citizens justly sometimes behaves abominably beyond its borders, and a state that treats its citizens unjustly sometimes is a force for good abroad. When we fought Hitler, we were a Jim Crow country. Colonialism was to a large extent the odious project of liberal states. If Bush's foreign policy is scandalous, it cannot be because his environmental policy is scandalous. . . . The new Niebuhrians should be wary of their own wholeness, and of the satisfaction that comes from the belief that everything is connected to everything else. . . . The exercise of American power, when it is right, cannot wait upon the attainment of American perfection. America will have to use force against its enemies even if many millions of Americans are without health care.
This seems right but needs a qualification. The "new Niebuhrians" reference appears to be a jab at Beinart, whose book makes the Niebuhrian critique of the war and unilateralism. Although Wieseltier is correct that in a sinful world a nation's imperfection does not deprive it of the right to act against a greater evil, I think that Beinart''s point is that prudence (if nothing else) dictates that America engage in some self-criticism and address its own problems if it wants to convince others of its moral standing. Although we had Jim Crow when we beat Hitler, Mary Dudziak's scholarship (e.g. here) has conversely shown the Cold War importance of Brown v. Board and desegregation in countering the Communist charges of American hypocrisy and winning the "battle for the minds" of disadvantaged nations. There needs to be a balance between confidence and self-criticism, but we've seen almost none of the latter from the Bush administration.
Tom
A reminder that this Friday, September 15, Villanova Law will host the first annual Scarpa Conference in Catholic Legal Studies. This year's topic is "From John Paul II to Benedict XVI: Continuing the Re-Evangelization of Law, Politics, and Culture," and the keynote address will be delivered by someone uniquely qualified to address this topic with the breadth and depth it deserves, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. The title of Cardinal Dulles's paper is "The Church's Indirect Mission to the Sociopolitical Order."
The three other papers will be uninterrupted MOJ: Professor Rick Garnett, "Salt and Springtime: Pope Benedict XVI and the Freedom of the Church;" Professor Amy Uelmen, "Reconciling Evangelization and Dialogue Through Love of Neighbor in Law, Politics, and Culture;" and Patrick McKinley Brennan, "The Decreasing Ontological Density of the State in Catholic Social Doctrine." Commenting on the papers will be Villanova Dean Mark Sargent, Villanova Law professors Michael Moreland and Robert Miller, and CUA law professor William Wagner.
For details about attending, see http://www.law.villanova.edu/calendars/showevents.asp?date=9/15/2006 Those of us doing Catholic legal theory here at Villanova look forward to welcoming lots of friends and to meeting new folks interested in our common questions.
The four principal papers will be published in the Villanova Law Review this spring.
Baylor's Religion Study has been released, providing a snapshot of Americans' religious beliefs. The researchers state:
Past survey research has tended to consistently depict Americans as a highly religious people, while some of these same surveys have shown that the percentage of Americans indicating no particular religious affiliation has doubled over the last two decades. Our survey reconciles any apparent contradiction. It turns out that Americans remain connected to congregations to an extent far greater than they associate with denominations or other religious labels. Also, a fair number of those who claimed 'no religion' in our sample were actually active, engaged affiliates of evangelical congregations who were 'screened out' by previous surveys that concentrated on denominational affiliation.
Rob
Here is a new publication of the USCCB, "We Were There: Catholic Priests and How They Responded, in Their Own Words." And here is a prayer from the Bishops' web site:
Five years have passed, O Lord,
five years of mourning and of tears,
of struggling to make sense and to go on.
Five years since crashing planes, collapsing building,
rivers of smoke and ash and fear brought death and fear.
Give us the courage to hope again, Father.
To pray even for our enemies, and for ourselves.
Give us the grace to be freed from hate
and unbound from the paralysis of fear.
Give us the freedom of the children of God:
Awaken in our hearts a firm resolve
“to reject the ways of violence,
to combat everything that sows hatred and division
within the human family,
and to work for the dawn of a new era
of solidarity, justice and peace.”i
We ask this through the Prince of Peace,
our Way, our Truth, and our Life,
Christ the Lord. Amen.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
A new study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion looks interesting:
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
Volume 43 Page 83 - March 2004
doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2004.00219.x
Volume 43 Issue 1
The Difference Catholic Makes: Catholic Faculty and Catholic Identity
D. Paul Sullins
This study examines, for the case of Catholics, the thesis that a "critical mass" of devoted faculty members50 percent or more, according to the papal document Ex Corde Ecclesiaserves to promote or preserve the religious character of religiously affiliated institutions of higher education. Factor analysis and structural equations are employed to analyze a random sample of faculty members (n= 1,290) and institutional profiles (n= 100) of American Catholic colleges and universities. Catholic faculty show higher support for Catholic identity in latent structures of aspiration for improved Catholic distinctiveness, a desire for more theology or philosophy courses, and longer institutional tenure. Institutions having a majority of Catholic faculty exhibit four properties consistent with stronger Catholic identity: a policy of preferential hiring for Catholics ("hiring for mission"), a higher proportion of Catholic students, higher faculty aspiration for Catholic identity, and longer faculty tenure in the institution. These latter two characteristics are not due simply to aggregation, but are stronger, on average, for Catholic faculty when they are in the majority. Preferential hiring marks Catholic identity, but is ineffective to increase the proportion of Catholic faculty. I conclude that the prediction of the critical mass thesis is correct.
Thanks to MOJ-alum Paolo Carozza for the tip.
The Secular Coalition for America has released its congressional scorecards for the 109th Congress. Particular for Senators, it seems to me that the scorecards are quite misleading, as they are based on 10 Senate votes, eight of which involved a few selected -- cherry-picked, perhaps -- judicial nominations on which the Democrats stayed together as a caucus. (So, the Alito vote counts for the "secular" score, but the Roberts vote does not). This means that some of the more moderate Democrats in the Senate wound up with inflated "secular" scores, while some fairly liberal Republicans would up with deflated ones. The votes that counted for members of the House are more varied and so, perhaps, more interesting.
