Saturday, July 26, 2014
Michael, you raise a good question about whether Blaine Amendments might be a "blessing in disguise" because they--albeit "unintentionally"--"shield many primary and secondary schools" from the choice to "capitulate to the secular orthodoxy or ween yourself from the government teat."
These are hard questions for schools. In a paper for a conference in Rome a few years ago, I presented various considerations, including the possibility that "withholding state financing to religious schools can affect their integrity and vitality as much or more as providing funds with conditions and controls attached":
When religious schools are denied financing while state [and secular private] schools receive it, parents face powerful financial disincentives against choosing religious schools for their children. To overcome that disadvantage, religious schools may have to change their programs to attract more donations, more applications, or more full-tuition-paying students instead of low-income students—all of which may compromise the school’s mission to teach the faith or educate the poor. Or schools may have to close altogether. Early in 2009, American newspapers reported that four Catholic secondary schools in New York City had been forced by fiscal necessity to join the state system as so-called charter schools. The change would permit them to receive funds but would require them to eliminate their religious components entirely, not just in selected classes as Supreme Court decisions like Lemon had required.
So I have a few reactions to your question:
1. To preserve their ability to choose their mission, Catholics and other religious groups should certainly try to increase their schools' financial independence so they are less exposed to the difficult choice of taking aid with strings or losing equal aid.
2. Nevertheless, whether the schools' integrity and vitality will be more threatened by taking aid or losing it depends on the situation, and on the kind of strings. Therefore, parents and schools should have the choice, even if the state has structured it as less than ideal. Blaine Amendments wrongly take the choice away from them.
3. If the societal opposition to Catholic or other religious doctrines and policies is so strong, it may not stop at putting strings on funding. Catholic and evangelical schools that violate antidiscrimination norms may face damages awards and fines even if they don't receive funding. Catholic schools have to figure out how to respond to that problem, entirely apart from Blaine Amendments.
(This sets aside, of course, the argument that secular regulation, such as nondiscrimination law, may sometimes actually push a school toward a better position even under Catholic teaching properly understood--the discrimination may be "unjust." But obviously how to understand Catholic teaching is for the school and religious leaders to decide, not the state.)
Michael Sean Winters has an excellent post welcoming Paul Ryan's proposal as a potential return by Republicans to serious discussions about how to assist and empower the poor. Michael Sean closes
by recalling the talk delivered by Bishop Robert McElory at John Carr’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought in Public Life at Georgetown, in which +McElroy called for Catholics to become “insurgents” within their own parties. Ryan did that yesterday. I think he has further to go: I do not see how anyone committed to Catholic social teaching can fail to see the need to raise the minimum wage, for example. But, Ryan deserves great praise for taking on the issue and for putting forward ideas and for inviting criticism and continued debate. ... Shame on all of us if we do not seize this moment to remind the American Christian community that Matthew 25 says nothing about a rising middle class, and that we welcome anyone, but most especially Cong. Ryan, to the discussion our nation has for too long avoided: How do we continue the fight against poverty in ways that will actually help the poor?
Friday, July 25, 2014
It has been over 100 days - 102 days to be exact. 102 days since Boko Haram kidnapped over 200 girls and threatened to sell them into sexual slavery. I worry that in today’s 24-7 news cycle that fact has become “yesterday’s news.”
As a human trafficking scholar I think a great deal about the parallels between the slavery of today and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. I have considered the role of the bystander in both these systems, trying to imagine how it was possible for people - particularly the bystanders - to justify the ownership of human beings as property. It is difficult to wrap one’s mind around the concept that it was acceptable and not shocking to abduct, buy, and sell other people.
And then 100 days pass since these girls were abducted and threatened to be sold and it seems as though this terrible crime is no longer at the forefront of the American consciousness. It is perhaps no longer shocking.
Three months after the crime, Malala Yousafzai visited Nigeria and met with President Goodluck Jonathan who claimed he would bring back the girls “as soon as possible.” Well, apparently “as soon as possible” means right after he finishes spending $1.2 million, not on the rescue effort, but on hiring the American public relations firm, Levick, to improve his image. It seems to me that such an amount of money may have been better spent actually trying to rescue the girls…rather than paying Americans to explain why the government has not done so. If that is “as soon as possible” I would hate to see what “when I get around to acknowledging it happened” looks like.
Yet, the outrage is gone. The shock is gone. We in the West seem to have largely moved on to other issues. How can this be? It may be because on some level we accept the objectification of people…just like bystanders accepted slavery centuries ago.
Some reject the parallels drawn between human trafficking and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, asserting that there is an important distinction between legally sanctioned slavery and that which is not state supported. These events underscore that laws do not the society make. While it is indeed symbolically important to end laws that sanction slavery or other moral wrongs, it is necessary but not sufficient. A legal shift is interesting but a social shift is what is required. And we in the West seem not to have made that shift.
While I support Pope Francis’ bold call for human trafficking to explicitly be treated as a crime against humanity it will amount to nothing until we as a global society truly value the lives of such victims as though they were our own children…until the shock lasts longer than a week, a month, or 102 days. Until that day comes the parallel between the bystander in the 1800’s and the rest of us unavoidable.
