I would make a couple of points concerning Robert George’s claims
about Ted Kennedy. It is true that Ted Kennedy does not give as detailed an
account of his moral failures in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne as does Robert
George. He does take full responsibility; he agrees that his actions on that
night, particularly in failing to promptly report the accident, were flawed,
wrongheaded, terrible, and inexcusable.
I am not a criminal lawyer, but I suspect that Kennedy might
have been guilty of manslaughter in this incident. I do not know how much he had been drinking when he left the party. Putting that aside, I do not
know how much the fact that he suffered a concussion upon impact would
complicate a prosecution for his actions after he emerged from the water. I am not at all sure that she was alive when
Kennedy passed the first house. But I do not think it matters in generally assessing
his conduct. He does admit to a number of self-serving motives that went
through his head after he emerged from the water. And, however, clouded his
mind might have been, his actions were reprehensible.
Nonetheless, to telescope a man’s life into a sinful episode
40 years ago, and to portray it as the way Kennedy lived his life as a Catholic
is indefensible.
Similarly to catapult one’s disagreements with Kennedy over
abortion and stem cell research (my views by the way on these subjects are more
complicated than George assumes) into a claim that Kennedy did not impose
religion on himself is cheap exaggeration.
I disagree with Steve Shiffrin's claim that Hadley Arkes's remark amounts to "cheap humor." On the contrary, it is humor that makes a telling and important point. Joseph P. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy (until public revelations of his conduct made it no longer possible) each depicted himself, or permitted his political machinery to depict him, as a man who was loyal in belief and practice to Catholic teaching. They used their professed Catholicism to paint a false picture of themselves for political purposes. They sought to deceive the voting public, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, about the kind of men they were, and they exploited the image they created of themselves as dedicated Catholics who lived by the teachings of the Church. I certainly join Steve in suggesting that readers have a look at Ted Kennedy's autobiography True Compass, but they should read it with the history of manipulation of this sort by the Kennedy family and its public relations machinery very much in mind. Even in that book, in which he purports to accept responsibility for his widely known failings, Ted Kennedy does not come clean on his culpability for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. For the facts, please see my article with the historian Demot Quinn here: http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YzMyNTgxMmExNzBiOTMzZWY2YjZmZTQ1MjZkZmQ2MDY= I would be happy to hear from anyone who would like to contest on even a single point the accuracy of our account. If readers agree that what we report is true, I would ask them to bear those facts in mind when they find Ted Kennedy in True Compass saying, "I have fallen short in my life, but my faith has always brought me home."
Steve and I have some important differences, I suspect, on what constitutes social justice, though I'm sure we have a good deal of agreement, too. On the points of difference, his beliefs no doubt are generally in line with those that Ted Kennedy stood for. Since I'm on the other side, I do not share what I take to be Steve's view that Kennedy was a champion of social justice, though I can see why he does. Kennedy's determined efforts to keep abortion legal and largely unrestricted, to pay for it with public funds, and to make it more widely available and easily accessible were, in my view, grave violations of justice and human rights. Ditto for his work to promote and publicly fund biomedical research in which nascent human beings are deliberately destroyed and dissected in the embryonic stage of development to produce pluripotent stem cells. There were, to be sure, some human rights issues, especially in the international field, on which Kennedy got it right in my view, and I would not withhold praise for him for those. I cannot, however, join Steve (if I've understood him correctly) in characterizing Kennedy as someone whose overall record is to be praised from a social justice perspective.
On Joseph P. Kennedy's profound contempt in practice for teachings of the faith he purported to hold dear, see Ronald Kessler, The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded. Readers who do not know much about the elder Kennedy will likely be shocked not only by his unremitting philandering, but also by his cruelty, dishonesty, personal viciousness, and anti-semitism. On JFK's conduct, one need not turn to authors who are especially critical of him. All one needs to know to assess the validity of Arkes's pointed remark can be found in material contained in An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, by Kennedy supporter Robert Dallek. (If you are interested in reading what more critical biographers have to say, see A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy by the historian Thomas Reeves and The Dark Side of Camelot by journalist Seymour Hersh.) Like his father, JFK was not merely a man who occasionally gave in to temptation but then repented, sought forgiveness, and tried to live uprightly. He really did, as Arkes puts it, refuse to impose his religion on himself---or even to try. (In fairness, there is nothing in JFK's record to match the cruelty or anti-semitism of his father.)
There were those, including some Catholics, and almost certainly some ecclesiastical leaders, who knew perfectly well that Joseph Kennedy and John Kennedy were publicly misrepresenting themselves as men who led lives in conformity with Catholic teaching. Some of these people, thinking that John F. Kennedy's political success would redound to the benefit of Catholics and the Catholic faith in America, abetted the misrepresentations. Most Catholics and others in those days did not know the truth, and many were very happy to believe that the charming, attractive, witty, and very publicly Catholic JFK was a devout member of the faith who, though a sinner like the rest of us, tried hard to live up to its teachings. Some time back, I found in my father's study, a kind of relic of those days. It is a pamphlet written by a Boston priest shortly after Kennedy's election as President providing details of Kennedy's intense piety, and lavishly praising his moral rectitude. It presents JFK as a model husband, father, and Catholic whose exemplary spiritual and moral life should be emulated by Catholic men. I hope that the author was simply ignorant. Perhaps he, like so many Catholics of his time, was merely misled by the propaganda machinery. I hope he was not the sort who believed that saying things that are patently untrue can be justified when done for the sake of promoting the Catholic faith. That is always a devil's bargain.
Robert George in his post yesterday observes that,
“As Hadley Arkes has remarked, Kennedy evidently regarded his religion as so
private a matter that he refused to impose it even on himself.” George comments
that this remark applies not only to John Kennedy, but also to Kennedy’s
brother Ted and his father Joseph.
I do not believe that cheap humor about the role of religion
in people’s lives is amusing or charitable. But it does lead me to recommend
two works that discuss the role of religion in the Kennedy family.
The first (which I have recommended before on this site) is a moving essay by Kerry Kennedy (the daughter
of Robert and Ethel Kennedy) in Being
Catholic Now (itself, a wonderful collection of essays by Catholics and
ex-Catholics).
The second is Ted Kennedy’s heartfelt biography True Compass. The book lays out in
fascinating detail Kennedy’s commitment to family (with great stories and
insights about the family’s members as seen by the youngest of nine children), his
perseverance in the face of one tragedy after another, and his interactions
with a variety of political figures in pursuing his commitment to social
justice.
And Kennedy makes clear throughout that his commitments were
rooted in his faith. He observes that both of his parents were deeply religious
and that the family prayed together daily.The center of his belief was Matthew,
Chapter 25, particularly that calling to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the imprisoned. He says
that, “To me, this perspective on my faith has almost literally been a
lifesaver. It has given me strength and purpose during the greatest challenges
I have faced, the roughest roads I have traveled.” And, he says, “My faith, and the love of following its
rituals, has always been my foundation and my inspiration. Those foundations
have been shaken by tragedy and misfortune, but faith remains fixed in my heart
as it has since my childhood days. It is the most positive force in my life and
the cause of eternal optimism. I have fallen short in my life, but my faith has
always brought me home.”
Thanks to Rob for posting this important question that emerges from The Washington Post article about the former executive director of the Washington Archdiocese’s Catholic Charities sending a letter to the Archdiocese asking that it revoke its new policy regarding spousal benefits. The Archdiocese has indeed altered its benefits to spouses, but the Post article does not specify what the Archdiocese actually did. As the Archdiocese stated:
Catholic Charities will continue to honor the health coverage current employees have as of March 1, 2010. After that, all new employees, and any existing employees who want to change their health coverage, will be covered under a new benefits package. The new plan will provide the same level coverage for employees and their dependents, with one exception: spouses cannot be covered. This change is the direct result of not receiving an adequate exemption for religious organizations in the same-sex marriage legislation.
Mr. (formerly Fr.) Sawina, the former executive director of Catholic Charities, was quoted in the Post article, and Rob has captured some of what Mr. Sawina said in his complaint about the Archdiocese’s policy quoted above. Although I have tried to track down all of what Sawina stated in his letter to the Archdiocese, I have not been successful to date. But here is the entire statement that the Post published and attributed to him:
“Some, including the archbishop, have argued that by providing health care to a gay or lesbian spouse we are somehow legitimizing gay marriage,” said Sawina, a former priest. “Providing health care to a gay or lesbian partner—a basic human right, according to Church teaching—is an end in itself and no more legitimizes that marriage than giving communion to a divorced person legitimizes divorce, or giving food or shelter to an alcoholic legitimizes alcoholism.”
Rob has asked what should the Archdiocese have said in its letter. Well, before tackling that issue, which I shall not do in this posting, a few questions must be raised about the Post’s quotation of Mr. Sawina. I shall do my best to provide answers to the issues that I raise.
The first point concerns his claim that “providing health care benefits to a gay or lesbian partner—a basic right, according to Church teaching—is an end in itself...” I disagree. First of all, while the Church has a strong stand on ensuring basic health care to all persons, it is quite another thing to insist that this noble teaching mandates the Church to provide health care benefits to the gay or lesbian partners of any of its employees. This claim cannot pass the muster of the Church’s definition of a family that “is based on marriage, that intimate union of life in complementarity between a man and a woman which is constituted in the freely contracted and publicly expressed indissoluble bond of matrimony and is open to the transmission of life.” To do what Mr. Sawina asserts the Church should do would be to coerce her into supporting a relationship that defies her teachings. To borrow from Margaret More Roper’s words, we know what it would mean if the Church were to do what Mr. Sawina asks—it would mean that Catholic Charities has conceded that it is paying benefits to a homosexual partner in contradiction of the Church’s teachings, and this would be an endorsement, perhaps indirect, but an endorsement nonetheless, of “same-sex marriage.”
Mr. Sawina then goes on to argue that payment of the benefits themselves is itself independent of this recognition of same-sex marriage. He argues that it is like other ends which “no more legitimizes that [same-sex] marriage than giving communion to a divorced person legitimizes divorce...” Here Mr. Sawina fails to take stock of what the Church teaches. Assuming that the communion minister is aware of the existence of a particular divorce, the minister can still give communion to the “innocent” party, that is, not the person who sought the divorce or whose actions precipitated the divorce. Surely giving the innocent victim of divorce communion does not legitimize a divorce for which that person is not responsible. But Mr. Sawina’s quotation does not take stock of this important point.
Mr. Sawina then goes on to construct another flawed analogy. He further contends that it is like other ends which “no more legitimizes that [same-sex] marriage [than] giving food or shelter to an alcoholic legitimizes alcoholism.” Well, first of all the Church acknowledges that alcoholism can be a disease if it is not caused by conscious and intentional abuse of alcohol that can be stopped and restarted by the person consciously and voluntarily abusing alcohol. But Mr. Sawina is not talking about this; rather, he is arguing that giving food or shelter to an alcoholic legitimizes alcoholism. It does not. The Church is feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. It is not supporting alcoholism. Having worked in the Church’s homeless shelters in the past, I am also aware of the efforts made to assist with treatment alcoholics who come into shelters administered by the Church. And, treatment does not include giving alcohol to alcoholics. But if the Church were to give alcohol to alcoholics, then its actions could be construed as legitimizing alcoholism—but this is not what the Church does.
Although John F. Kennedy declared that he believed in an America where the separation of church and state is "absolute," I doubt that he (or Ted Sorenson, for that matter) had any very firm views on the most significant issues about the proper role of religion in civic life. The point of the Houston speech was to reassure Protestants---especially those whose views had been shaped by Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power, and the mentality that produced that unfortunate polemic---that he would govern in accordance with American principles, not Catholic dogma. He wanted Protestants and others to rest easy in the confident belief that the Pope would not be dictating U.S. policy in a Kennedy administration. From our perspective today, it's amusing to think of people worrying that John F. Kennedy (or his father Joe or his brother Ted) would be taking orders from the Pope . . . about anything. As Hadley Arkes has remarked, Kennedy evidently regarded his religion as so private a matter that he refused to impose it even on himself.
To the tune of "Eddie the Eagle" and the Jamaican bobsled team comes this story of Don Valerio Piro, representing the Vatican in the upcoming European chess championship.
MOJ-friend Aidan O'Neill manages deftly to use a comment on a case involving traffic laws in Scotland as an occasion to reflect interestingly on More, Aquinas, Plato, and Aristotle. Nice!
A fascinating piece by the Becket Fund's Luke Goodrich in the Wall Street Journal:
. . . Last week, Mexico's lower house of Congress began the process of amending the Mexican Constitution to formally declare the country to be "laica"—meaning "lay" or "secular." Supporters say the amendment merely codifies Mexico's commitment to the separation of church and state. But the term "laica," like the term "separation of church and state," means different things to different people. In fact, Mexico has been fighting over the meaning of church–state separation for over a century, with pro-church factions seeking greater political control for the Catholic Church, anti-clerical factions seeking to suppress the church, and few factions willing to agree on government neutrality towards religion. The key question is: What version of the separation of church and state will this amendment embody?
Unfortunately, the context surrounding the amendment suggests that it might be a step backwards for religious liberty and true separation of church and state. . . .
(P.S.: If you care about dignity-grounded religious liberty for all -- and you should -- then you should be giving money to the Becket Fund. Here's the link.)
In response to Rob's recent post, I would echo what one of the commenters observed, namely, that the health-insurance-funding measure(s) currently under consideration fund abortion not only through the subsidization of insurance policies that "happen to cover abortion", but also through direct funding of "community health centers" (e.g., Planned Parenthood clinics) that provide abortions. This funding comes with no anti-abortion restrictions. In addition, the last I heard the current proposals include direct funding for abortions in Indian Country. (If this is no longer on the table, I'd welcome correction).
The president's latest proposal mirrors legislation that has passed the Senate, which doesn't include a Hyde Amendment, and would inevitably establish abortion as a fundamental health-care service for the following reasons:
• It would change existing law by allowing federally subsidized health-care plans to pay for abortions and could require private health-insurance plans to cover abortion.
• It would impose a first-ever abortion tax—a separate premium payment that will be used to pay for elective abortions—on enrollees in insurance plans that covers abortions through newly created government health-care exchanges.
• And it would fail to protect the rights of health-care providers to refuse to participate in abortions.
The president's plan goes further than the Senate bill on abortion by calling for spending $11 billion over five years on "community health centers," which include Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions.
It seems to me that the President's pro-life supporters -- who also support some kind of overall of the health-insurance-funding system -- should be asking themselves, and him: "Why is he so insistent on abortion-funding when, if he were willing to just go along with Stupak and the Bishops, he could -- his party enjoys a huge majority, after all -- sweeping health-insurance reform?" Is it so important to deny those pesky pro-lifers a "victory"?
Check out Nate Oman's very interesting post (and paper), at Concurring Opinions, on the Court's landmark Reynolds opinion. Here's the paper abstract:
In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the Free Exercise Clause for the first time, holding in Reynolds v. United States that Congress could punish Mormon polygamy. Historians have interpreted Reynolds and the massive wave of anti-polygamy legislation and litigation that it midwifed as an extension of Reconstruction into the American West. This Article offers a new historical interpretation, one that places the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds within an international context of Great Power imperialism and American international expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. It does this by recovering the lost theory of religious freedom that the Mormons offered in Reynolds, a theory grounded in the natural law tradition. It then shows how the Court rejected this theory by using British imperial law to interpret the scope of the first amendment. Unraveling the work done by these international analogies reveals how the legal debates in Reynolds reached back to natural law theorists of the seventeenth-century such as Hugo Grotius and forward to fin de siècle imperialists such as Theodore Roosevelt. By analogizing the federal government to the British Raj, Reynolds provided a framework for national politicians in the 1880s to employ the supposedly discredited tactics of Reconstruction against the Mormons. Embedded in imperialist analogies, Reynolds and its progeny thus formed a prelude to the constitutional battles over American imperialism in the wake of the Spanish-American War. These constitutional debates reached their dénouement in The Insular Cases, where Reynolds and its progeny appeared not as Free Exercise cases but as precedents on the scope of American imperial power. This Article thus remaps key events in late nineteenth-century constitutional history, showing how the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds must be understood as part of America’s engagement with Great Power imperialism and the ideologies that sustained it.
