Friday, October 26, 2012
Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas
Catholic, Pro-Life and Voting for Barack Obama
Huffington Posted: 10/26/2012 2:37 pm
Life matters. From conception to natural death, it matters.
This is a principle Catholics must carry with them into the voting
booth.
But it is not a simple binary equation. It is not an either/or
proposition. In the end, determining which candidate better serves the
interests of life is a prudential judgment. A simple promise to overturn
Roe v. Wade does not automatically make one the pro-life candidate.
In my estimation, Barack Obama is the more seriously pro-life
candidate in this year's presidential contest. Voters should not forget
his early connections to the Catholic Church. He attended St. Francis
of Assisi Catholic School in Jakarta for three years. His mother, Ann
Dunham, assisted Fr. A.M. Kaderman, S.J., in managing an
English-language training school during this time. When Barack Obama
worked as a community organizer in the middle 1980s, he did so out of
the rectory of Holy Rosary Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago,
where he helped to coordinate the efforts of eight Catholic parishes
and numerous other religious organizations to improve the lives of
unemployed steel workers and others whom the financialized economy was
leaving in the dust. He still considers the late Joseph Cardinal
Bernardin of Chicago an inspiration. (On this background, see the
wonderful new book by the Catholic legal scholars Douglas Kmiec and Ed
Gaffney, and the Harvard Medical School Professor of Pediatrics, Dr.
Patrick Whelan, "America Undecided: Catholic, Independent, and Social
Justice Perspectives on Election 2012.")
Kmiec, Gaffney and Whelan stress that there is no more powerful
abortifacient in this country than poverty. It may be difficult for the
comfortable, upper-middle class conservative Catholics who support Mitt
Romney for "pro-life" reasons to associate with this reality. But
imagine for a moment a young woman, 18 or 20, 25 or even 30 years old.
She comes from a broken, impoverished family and has little real
economic future. She's gone through a bad relationship or two, and
faces a soul-crushing existence being nickel-and-dimed through a series
of dead-end jobs in America's service economy. She is poor, desperate,
alone and maybe even threatened by her boyfriend. The jobs are so
haphazard, the poverty so shattering, that family formation is
impossible. A powerful description of the plight of women who lead
these lives of invisible suffering can be found in Barbara Ehrenreich's
"Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (2001). Conditions
have only grown more acute in the decade since Ehrenreich wrote her
book.
In fear, in humiliation, in aching isolation, she seeks an abortion.
This bleak portrait depicts the tragic dimensions of the abortion
crisis in America. It is a crisis born not of the selfish pursuit of
the glittering baubles of American materialism, but of the
panic-stricken sense of having nowhere to turn. And it is fed at the
top by politicians who prize Randian individualism and the unfettered
quest for riches above every human value.
The Netherlands and Germany have abortion rates less than one-third
of the United States. Why? Because those nations address the cause of
abortion at its root -- poverty. They provide pre-natal and post-natal
care, and a social system that genuinely assists the new mother who
chooses life.
President Obama's Affordable Care Act represents a small, measured
step in the direction of maternal assistance for women in crisis. It
does not go nearly far enough, in my judgment, but in our present
political environment it is probably the best that can be achieved. It
is grounded on the basic premise of Catholic social thought, reiterated
time and again by the popes, from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, that health
care is a fundamental right. It is the indispensable starting point of a
seamless ethic of life.
The Affordable Care Act legislatively recognizes this fundamental
moral right. Among its provisions, the ACA creates a Pregnancy
Assistance Fund. Specifically on the issue of crisis pregnancy, this
fund assists in several ways. It can cover the salary of counselors who
point young women in the direction of social services. It supports
parenting classes and aids with day-care costs at colleges and
universities. It teaches and supports and, in sum, helps equip
panicked, pregnant young women to become responsible, future-directed
young mothers.
The Affordable Care Act helps save unborn lives in other ways as
well. It increases tax credits for adoptions, making this loving
alternative more affordable and more readily available. It recognizes
that Medicaid currently pays for one-third of all live births in America
and promises to maintain adequate funding for this vital service.
Abortion is a serious wrong, but it is better, as the proverbial saying
goes, to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
And what do the Republicans, that ostensible pro-life party, offer in
return? They deny that health care is a basic right, describing it
instead as a matter of "personal responsibility," thereby repudiating a
foundational principle of Catholic social thought. They promise the
repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including presumably the Pregnancy
Assistance Fund and the adoption credits. They solemnly pledge to slash
budgetary allocations to Medicaid, thus fueling the ever-deepening
desperation of the pregnant poor. And in life's final years, the
Republicans will voucherize Medicare, putting at risk the health and
well-being of millions of senior citizens.
Well, one might retort, perhaps the Republicans will at last reverse Roe v. Wade. The reversal of Roe v. Wade
has been a part of every Republican platform since 1980. Hasn't
happened yet. Catholics who cling to this thin reed should prepare for
disappointment. The Supreme Court will perpetually be one vote short of
reversal.
A recent poll shows that Catholics prefer candidates who give
attention to the poor than abortion (see Chicago Tribune, "Catholics
Want More Focus on Poverty Than Abortion, Survey Finds," October 24,
2012). In reality, it is not one or the other. Fight poverty, and you
fight abortion. So, I am voting for life -- Obama-Biden 2012.
[Charles J. Reid, Jr., has degrees in canon law and civil law from the
Catholic University of America; and a Ph.D. in medieval history from
Cornell University. He was raised in a union household in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Milwaukee with degrees in
classical languages and history.]
This year, the Murphy Institute's Hot Topic: Cool Talk is joining the bandwagon in focusing on religious liberty. Speakers at our first two programs this year shared what I thought was a very telling message -- getting "back to the basics" of the religious traditions they represented.
Just last week, Rob Vischer from UST Law and Abdulwahid Qalinle, an adjunct law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and director of its Islamic Law and Human Rights Program, engaged the topic: The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws: Muslim and Catholic Perspectives. (We co-sponsored this with UST's Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center.) As you can see from the video of the event here, one of the points made a number of times by Professor Qalinle (most directly in response to an audience question about Pakistan's blasphemy laws) was that the Koran says: "do not insult the religous beliefs of others", and allows people to disbelieve the Koran itself, if they are not convinced of its truth.
In September we opened the program with a dialogue on "Vatican II on Religious Freedom: European and American Perspectives", featuring UST Law's Reggie Whitt and the Most Reverend Charles Morerod, OP, of the diocese
of Fribourg, Lausanne, and Geneva, Switzerland. Bishop Morerod is the
former rector of the Angelicum in Rome,the former Secretary General
of the International Theological Commission and Consultor for the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and currently a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education. One of Bishop Morerod's basic points in describing the evolution of Church thought that led to the promulgation of Dignitas Humanae was the Church asking itself (if I may paraphrase, since Bishop Morerod used much sophisticated and elegant language, as you can see by watching this video of the event) "What Would (did) Jesus Do?" As Bishop Morerod put it, Jesus never forced any of his disciples to follow him, and, indeed, most of the people he encountered did not choose to follow him.
When I get lost in the thickets of some of the more sophisticated religious libery debates, I sometimes find it helpful to be reminded of the basics.
"Cultural Critic Saw the Sun Setting on the West."
More here. And, you can buy his (amazing)
Dawn to Decadence here.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Read a wonderful piece about Notre Dame's outstanding, game-changing Alliance for Catholic Education (A.C.E.) program, in The New York Times (!!), here:
Devoting themselves to society’s overlooked and left-behind, voluntarily accepting a wage of $1,000 a month that is roughly at the federal poverty line, living in intentional Christian households, the 1,600 teachers produced by ACE in its 19-year history have formed the 21st-century equivalent of the sisters and brothers from Catholic religious orders whose sacrifices for decades sustained the American parochial school system.
“Perhaps the ACErs were an anticipation of what the religious life would look like in the next generation,” the priest and author Andrew M. Greeley wrote in his novel “The Bishop at the Lake.”
The Rev. Nathan Wills, a former ACE teacher who recently visited with the Tucson cohort, looked backward for an analogy. “It’s a reflection of the disciples,” he said. “This is what the apostles did when Jesus sent them to teach. They set up communities in the midst of difficult circumstances.” . . .
I'm very happy to report the following news about St. Thomas Law and our UST and MOJ colleague and friend Rob. Full story here.
Tom
Robert Vischer, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, will become the new dean of the school, it was announced Thursday.
He begins his term on Jan. 1, said Dr. Susan Huber, executive vice president and chief academic officer. He was selected from among a strong group of finalist candidates.
Vischer is one of the nation’s leading scholars relating lawyers’ moral formation, including faith-based formation, to their professional development and excellence – a central part of the school’s Catholic mission. Huber said Vischer’s experience on the St. Thomas faculty (since 2005) and as associate dean (since 2011) prepare him well to serve as the school’s third dean since it opened in 2001.
Among his scholarly publications are numerous articles and two Cambridge University Press books – Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal Practice: Lessons in Love and Justice, scheduled for release next month, and Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space Between Person and State (2010). Vischer’s honors at the School of Law include Professor of the Year (elected by students) in 2008 and 2011, and Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Scholarship in 2009 and Outstanding Teacher in 2007. At St. John’s University School of Law, where he taught before coming to UST, he was named Professor of the Year in 2005 and received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003.
“I am confident that Rob will lead the school to a new educational destination during this critical period of time for legal education,” Huber said. “His belief in keeping the mission of the school authentic and vibrant balances well with his concern for openly addressing the challenges facing all law schools today.”
Those challenges include a soft hiring market for new attorneys and a decrease in applications to law schools, but Vischer believes St. Thomas is well positioned to deal with critical issues.
“We have built an innovative program of legal education on our distinctive mission, which is a big draw for students,” he said. “We take professional formation seriously, equipping our graduates to excel in teamwork and building relationships, and impressing upon them the importance of developing a foundational moral commitment to serve others.” These attributes, he added, are important to employers and clients.
UST Law is pleased to announce "Habemus Deanam...." -- and it's none other than prolific MOJ'er and scholar, Rob Visher. See the full announcement
here, and join me in congratulating Rob!
