Sen. Rick Santorum: "I Draw No Line Between My Faith and My Decisions" - Christianity Today Magazine
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/113/12.0.html
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Senator Rick Santorum on Religion in Politics
Monday, March 28, 2005
Schwarzenegger and CST
Kevin Starr is probably the best - and most balanced - commentator on California politics and culture. His LA Times column on Arnold Schwarzenegger is typically brilliant and easily justifies wading through the Times' incredibly intrusive registration process. A quick taste:
Sacramento's wastelands are littered with the bleached bones of legislators and pundits who, unable to move beyond a cliche-ridden dismissal of a bodybuilder-movie-star-turned-governor, have underestimated the raw intelligence and honed intellect of the Austrian immigrant at California's helm.
Starr goes on to develop a persuasive case that Schwarzenegger is motivated by four big ideas, which Starr believes resonate with most California voters:
- A commitment to self-instruction, linked to confidence in an individual's capacity to discern for himself and suspicion of received wisdom and business as usual.
- A preference for direct democracy (even if it takes celebrity status to energize that democracy).
- The idea of reform, as linked to history, destiny and the ideal of "the champion."
- A paradoxical blend of free-market economics with a residual Euro-Catholic respect for government as social democracy and safety net.
It's that last idea that makes the article relevant to readers of this blog. Can it be that Arnold is striving to integrate the teachings of Milton Friedman and John Paul II in a way that no other US politician has done? If so, he could put some real content into the phrase "compassionate conservatism." The interesting question is: What would such a blend look like?
Responding to Rob (sort of)
I think Rob raises a very good question, with which all of us must wrestle. In my own case, however, I must confess that wrestling has often turned into finessing. Here's what I said on the subject in my paper The Bishops and the Corporate Stakeholder Debate, for example (I especially direct you to footnote 2):
As with all of the Church’s ordinary teaching, the faithful “are to adhere to [the social teaching] with religious assent.”[1] Yet, the church encourages lay initiative “especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life.”[2] Moreover, an active and critical role for the laity seems especially important with respect to economic life. Michael Novak asserts that Christian theologians tend to be poorly trained in economics and inexperienced with the business world. They “are likely to inherit either a pre-capitalist or a frankly socialist set of ideals about political economy.”[3] Consequently, theologians “are more likely to err in this territory [i.e., economic justice] than in most others.”[4]
[1] United States Catholic Conference, Catechism of the Catholic Church ¶ 892 (2d ed. 1997).
[2] Id. at 899. Villanova law school dean Mark Sargent observes that “the Catholic university—and hence, the Catholic law school—is where the Church does its thinking.” Mark A. Sargent, An Alternative to the Sectarian Vision: The Role of the Dean in an Inclusive Catholic Law School, 33 Univ. Toledo L. Rev. 171, 181 (2001). In my view, one properly may generalize Sargent’s proposition to the believing laity as a whole. Hence, it is the task of Catholic intellectuals to exercise critical reflective judgment with respect to society, the Church, and the relationship between the two. On the other hand, I recognize that there is a fine line between the exercise of critical evaluative judgment and dissent. On the legitimacy of dissent from the magisterium of the Church, compare Christopher Wolfe, The Ideal of a (Catholic) Law School, 78 Marq. L. Rev. 487, 497-98 (1995) (arguing there is no “right to dissent” as that term is broadly understood) with Michael J. Perry, The Idea of a Catholic University, 78 Marq. L. Rev. 325, 346 (1995) (arguing that “Catholics can and do, without forfeiting our identity as Catholics, dissent from one or another theological proposition”). In the present context, however, there seems no need to resolve this debate. When it comes to issues such as the degree of state intervention in the economy, for example, the Church outlines basic principles but recognizes substantial latitude with respect to their translation into public policy. Nowhere, for example, does the Church state what percentage of the economy should by controlled by the state, thus leaving a great deal of room for prudential judgment by Catholics. In promulgating their pastoral letter, moreover, the Bishops expressly acknowledged that their “prudential judgments” about specific policy recommendations were not made “with the same kind of authority that marks our declarations of principle.” Bishops’ Letter, supra note 7, at xii.
[3] Michael Novak, Toward a Theology of the Corporation 59 (rev. ed.1990).
[4] Id. at 12.
Martin Marty on Terri Schiavo (and Countless, Unnamed Others)
Sightings
Peace for Terri Schiavo
-- Martin E. Marty
Today down the street at a hospice or in your
neighborhood hospital, one of many thousands of Americans is in a coma, or is
"brain dead," or in a "persistent vegetative state," or any of a score of
variations on the above. Unless the person is your patient, your relative,
your friend, or your fellow congregant who is regularly being prayed for, you've
never heard of this person, and never will.
In the language of the Christian majority, however,
"his name is written in the book of life," so no one needs to absolutize or
idolize utterly reduced "lives." More than half of them are under the care
of priests, ministers, rabbis, chaplains, trained and certified deacons, and lay
care-givers -- all of them pastors.
Who is a pastor, what does he or she do, and what does
it mean to be under pastoral care? The pastor is trained in medical
ethics, consults experts, and has thought through the theological implications
of what is going on, since such circumstances are constants in the pastoral
world. The pastor really, really cares about life, each life under
pastoral care, valuing the life to come and the life that is. The pastor
no doubt knew the "brain-dead" patient when he was hearty. She knows the
one who is now in a "persistent vegetative state" back in good days and
bad. Dealing with persons in comas is part of the regular rounds for
pastors.
Though not a parish pastor since 1963, I still get to
do pastoral acts, thanks to such conveniences as autos and jets, plus
snail-mail, e-mail, and telephones that make possible "virtual pastoral
calls." Even at the margins, I will get calls that say: "Marty, your
friend XX is slipping away. You agreed to phone a final prayer. We
are going to let her sleep tomorrow." That is not "physician-assisted
suicide." It is natural and godly. Or: "XX can't hear you anymore;
she's really gone, except for the tubes. You and she agreed you'd talk to
the family as we look ahead."
Oh, yes, the family. Pastoral care regards the
patient in context, and knows that the family will outlive the dying
member. Over a period of time a pastor, a chaplaincy-circuit, a
congregation will study the issues and make personal decisions with which
families have to live. The pastor will do all he or she can to help a
family find courage to make the right decision, the freedom from guilt that goes
with any choices -- all of them always bad -- and then to help them look ahead
to the life that is really life. The family can blend back into society
and know that they also will be cared for spiritually in tough
times.
It's too bad that because good pastoral activity is
personal and private, most citizens do not know about it, or for good enough
reasons of their own do not avail themselves of it. Really too bad is
when, whatever wonderful pastoral care may go on behind the curtains, the
patient becomes a "case," an "object," a "thing" to be fought over, exposed to
public view, used for a variety of political and religious and other
causes. Really, really too bad is when the family and their supporters are
tempted and expected to spend their subsequent years in frustration and fury,
wreaking vengeance (on whom?), nursing resentment, seeking more power, dividing
and distracting the citizenry.
With sympathy for her family, both sides of it, most of
us will turn when the time comes and say: Terri Schiavo, rest in peace and let
the people say, Amen.
----------
Rhetoric and Reality
One MOJ reader responded to my post earlier today with a fair criticism of my observation that "leaving aside the question whether Congress had any business at all getting involved in the Shiavo matter, it is difficult for people to take seriously the claims of support for the dignity of life made by Republican lawmakers who have at every turn undermined human dignity by their decisions about health care, tax policy and the like." Conor Dugan writes:
"I have to admit that I find it difficult to take seriously your claims when you paint such a caricature of Republican lawmakers. I don't doubt that Republican lawmakers have in some instances undermined human dignity by their policy choices in Congress. But I do doubt whether such a blanket assertion without more can really withstand serious criticism. Furthermore, the simple fact that so many Catholics of good will tend to support the Republicans and their initiatives -- not just because of the abortion issue -- but also because they believe Republican economic policy generally helps to further the common good and foster human dignity would at least counsel caution in making such broad assertions."
Quoting language from the Bush's acceptance speech in the last election, he continues:
"Those words, seem to me to stand for the fostering of the common good and the protection of human dignity (in more than its unborn form)."
I agree that "at every turn" was overbroad and unfair and I deserve to be taken to task for it. At the same time, I stand by my fundamental critique of the inconsistency of the present administration (as well as the concern that inconsistency undermines efforts to get others to take seriously an ethic of life).
I don't disagree that a lot of the rhetoric sounds good. However in too many ways the rhetoric has not matched the reality and, in my view, many of the steps taken by this admistration have undermined the human dignity of many groups of persons in our society.
Susan
Response to Rob Vischer ...
... and to other interested readers of this blog. For Rob's query about a faithful Catholic's proper relationship to the teaching authority of the magisterium, click here. Two excellent places to begin for those interested in pursuing this issue:
1. Judge John T. Noonan Jr.'s new book, A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching (2005). Click here.
2. Francis A. Sullivan, Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium (2003). Click here.
(Thanks to Cathy Kaveny for recommending these books.)
I touched upon the issue in chapter 5 of my book Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (2003). Chapter 5 is titled Catholics, the Magisterium, and Same-Sex Unions: An Argument for Independent Judgment. Click here.
Steve Smith on "Hollow Men"
Steve Smith's paper, "Hollow Men: Law and the Declension of Belief" is availabe at SSRN, here. The abstract states:
If believing is central to what makes us persons, then how do we react when our core beliefs come under serious challenge? The "purest" responses are probably to engage in responsible apologetics, defending our beliefs against the challenges, or else adjustment or relinquishment of our beliefs in accordance with what we come to understand the truth to be. Often, however, we resort to less "pure" responses. We "bend the truth" or "fudge the facts" to deflect challenges to our beliefs. Or, in a response that entails more implicit philosophical sophistication, we deflate our very conceptions of truth and belief: in this case, this essay suggests, we may continue to affirm propositions even though we no longer fully and in good faith believe them.
This essay, presented as part of a lecture series on "Christian Contributions to Contemporary Jurisprudence," argues that this last "declensionist" response produces a kind of hollowness in our personhood. The essay then explores manifestations of such declensionist strategies in modern thinking about the nature of law. It concludes by sketching some possible alternatives that Christian legal thinkers might take in response to such declension.
Rick
Descartes, Aristotle, and Schiavo
This essay, from Sunday's New York Times, makes for interesting reading. The essay, "Did Descartes Doom Terri Schiavo," opens with this:
In the parade of faces talking about Terri Schiavo last week, two notable authorities were missing: Aristotle and Descartes. Yet their legacy was there.
Beneath the political maneuvering and legal wrangling, the case re-enacted a clash of ideals that has run through the history of Western thought. And in a way, it's the essential question that has been asked by philosophers since the dawn of human civilization. Is every human life precious, no matter how disabled? Or do human beings have the right to self-determination and to decide when life has value?
Rick
Skeletons in the Closet
As someone new to the Catholic tradition, I am constantly discovering important truths in my journey. Occasionally, however, I stumble across a couple of skeletons rattling in the closet. Recently I read the 1832 encylical Mirari vos, in which Pope Gregory XVI lamented the "absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone," and the 1864 Syllabus of Errors, listing among "the principal errors of our times" the beliefs that "every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true," and that "it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship."
The Church's stance changed dramatically through the important work of folks like John Courtney Murray. Murray's role in bringing the Church around to recognize a fundamental implication of human dignity, however, raises important questions about our Catholic legal theory project. Should Catholic legal theorists be focused on defending the real-world implications of the moral anthropology as articulated by the Church, or should we also challenge the Church's teaching on issues where we, as individuals, believe it falls short of the truth claims embodied in the moral anthropology? If the Church was mistaken about religious liberty, is the Church mistaken about some other aspect of the social order today?
One topic that will immediately come to mind, of course, is same-sex marriage and civil unions. Charles Curran, for example, has written a new book on the moral theology of Pope John Paul II (HT: Open Book):
The methodological gap in Pope John Paul II's moral theology arises, Father Curran says, when his willingness to accept the capacity of the Church to learn truth in social-justice teaching is abandoned when the focus is personal and sexual morality. "In the social teaching," he says, "you have accepted much more a reality of historical development. Things develop and change over history and over time. You have also tended to emphasize much more the person as the center of things."
The pope "uses what I call a relationality model. It sees the human person in the multiple relationships with God, neighbor, world, and self," says Father Curran. "Now if you look at sexual ethics, the emphasis is on the eternal, the immutable, and the unchanging. What has always been true."
My concern here is not so much with the merits of the sexuality arguments, but with our disposition toward them. As Catholic legal theorists, do we approach them strictly on their substance, or is there a presumption that we accept and defend the Church's position? Is the presumption rebuttable? In other words, are we to function strictly as Apostles, spreading the Church's Good News to the world? Or are we to act as the Old Testament prophets, speaking hard truths to authority, including the Church itself? Or are we to do both, and if so, how?
Rob
Meaning of "Pro-Life"
Rick calls the criticism of the lack of consistency of pro-lifers contained in an E.J. Dionne op-ed column a cheap shot. I agree with Rick's response to the question "[w]hat is the point of standing up for life in an individual case but not confronting the cost of choosing life for all who are threatened within the health care system or by their lack of access to it?" Rick is clearly correct that it is neither pointless nor hypocritical “to oppose, and to try to stop, intentional homicides of disabled people, just because one is not also lobbying for medical-insurance reform.”
However, it is also the case that it is difficult to persuade others to buy into the ethic of sanctity of life if one is not consistent. And Dionne’s criticism is particularly aimed at lawmakers. Can one argue that there is a distinction between the imposing the death penalty on a guilty person and causing an innocent disabled person’s death? Of course. Can one distinguish between a ban on assault weapons and cessation of artificial nutrition and hydration? Assuredly. But, leaving aside the question whether Congress had any business at all getting involved in the Shiavo matter, it is difficult for people to take seriously the claims of support for the dignity of life made by Republican lawmakers who have at every turn undermined human dignity by their decisions about health care, tax policy and the like. Moreover, even where distinctions can be defended, the more distinctions one makes, the more difficult it is to persuade those who do not already buy into a consistent ethic of life to do so. Thus, while I disagree with the framing of Dionne's criticism, I think there is more there than a cheap shot.
Susan
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