... of a devoutly Christian lawyer--a graduate of Regent Law School--who in her misguided religious/political zeal broke the law, and of an Attorney General who nurtured a departmental culture that encouraged such lawbreaking.
New York Times, July 29, 2008
Gonzales Aides Broke Laws in Hiring, Report Concludes, by Eric Lichtblau
Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
broke the law by using politics to guide their hiring decisions for a
wide range of important department positions, slowing the hiring
process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility and
independence, an internal report concluded Monday.
The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general
and its internal ethics office, singles out for particular criticism Monica Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly through the ranks of the department to become a top aide to Mr. Gonzales.
Ms. Goodling, who testified before Congress in May 2007 at the height of the scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys, introduced politics into the hiring process in a systematic way that constituted illegal misconduct, the report found.
Last month, the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine,
released a separate report that found a similar pattern of politicized
hiring at the Justice Department in reviewing applications from young
lawyers for the honors and intern programs. The new report released
Monday goes much further, however, in documenting pervasive evidence of
political hiring for some of the department’s most senior career,
apolitical positions, including immigration judges and assistant United States attorneys.
The inspector general’s investigation found that Ms. Goodling and a
handful of other senior aides to Mr. Gonzales developed a system of
using in-person interviews and Internet searches to screen out
candidates who might be too liberal and to identify candidates seen as
pro-Republican and supportive of President Bush.
When interviewed by the inspector general, Mr. Gonzales said he was
not aware that Ms. Goodling and other aides were using political
criteria in their decisions for career positions. Mr. Gonzales resigned
last summer in the face of mounting accusations from congressional
Democrats that politics had corrupted the department.
His successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey,
said in a statement Monday after the report’s release that he was
disturbed by their findings that improper political considerations were
used in hiring decisions relating to some career employees. . . .
In forwarding a résumé in 2006 from a lawyer
who was working for the Federalist Society, Ms. Goodling sent an e-mail
message to the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven Bradbury,
saying: “Am attaching a résumé for a young, conservative female
lawyer.”
Ms. Goodling interviewed the woman herself for possible positions
and wrote in her notes such phrases as “pro-God in public life,” and
“pro-marriage, anti-civil union.” She was eventually hired as a career
prosecutor.
Ms. Goodling also conducted extensive searches on the Internet to
glean the political or ideological leanings of candidates for career
positions, the report found. She and other Justice Department
supervisors would look for key phrases like “abortion,” “homosexual,”
“guns,” or “Florida re-count” to get information on a candidate’s
political leanings.
[Read the rest, and download the report, here.]
Sightings
7/28/08
On Women's Ordination
-- Martin E. Marty
Robert J.
Egan, S. J., of Gonzaga University, started it all (this round) with an article
in the April 11 Commonweal, in which he asked whether official Roman
Catholics ought to consider reconsidering the Vatican declarations against the
ordination of women to the priesthood. In best "fair and balanced" style the
editors later gave space (July 18) to Sr. Sara Butler, MSBT, of St. Joseph's
Seminary in Yonkers. She draws on her book The Catholic Priesthood and
Women (2007), which had helped prompt Egan's response. And, also in the
July 18 issue, Father Egan was given another chance. So today's Sightings
is a response to a response to a response to a response – almost ad
infinitum?
Whether Catholics should change and begin ordination of women
is their business, not mine, at least not here and today, though outcomes of
Catholic debates do have huge "public religion" consequences. I can only
testify to the manifest blessings so many churches, like my own (ELCA), have
received during the past half-century from the ministry of women-ordained. My
business instead picks up on Egan's closing paragraph, where he argues against
Sr. Butler's reversion to and repetition of the claim that Rome does not
change. He orthodoxly celebrates the constancy of teachings from Rome. But:
"New questions arise, and new horizons open, cultures themselves are
transformed, and the fund of human knowledge changes." His article has no room
to provide chapter and verse when he lists understandings and teachings in which
Rome "has changed dramatically, in ways that could not have been
foreseen."
He offers a short list. You could look 'em up: "on
slavery, women's inferiority, the divine right of kings, the uses of torture,
the status and dignity of the Jewish people, the execution of heretics, the idea
of religious liberty, the moral legitimacy of democratic governments, the
indispensability of Thomism, the structure of the universe itself." In all
these cases, after Catholic change has been virtually total and quickly taken
for granted, one is hard put to think back to when it supported slavery, women's
inferiority, torture, et cetera, or opposed the items just listed which it now
affirms.
Several years ago Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabbin,
editors, corralled eighteen scholars who tracked papal statements which suggest
significant revisions and reversals in "understanding and teaching," in Rome
Has Spoken. Their authors, for example, tell of "Usury: Once a Sin, Now
Good Stewardship." Evolution. Positive views of sexual expression within
marriage, changes in scriptural interpretation, ecumenism, and more.
Admittedly, the nature and extent of changes on some of these subjects are open
to debate and should be debated. But change there certainly has been.
"Religious Freedom" is the change most recognized and experienced by modern
publics. Rome Has Spoken quotes a dozen papal prohibitions against
religious freedom from 1184 to 1906. Change came suddenly, beginning with Pius
XII in 1946, more explicitly with John XXIII in 1963 and then, conciliarly, at
the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Just 102 years ago, Pius X was still
teaching the following in a papal encyclical: "that the state must be separated
from the church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error…an obvious
negation of the supernatural order." "Rome" changed, and admitted it did so –
and survived. Globally, it flourishes now most where it had persecuted
least.
References:
Maureen Fielder and Linda Rabbin, eds.
Rome Has Spoken…: A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements, and How They Have
Changed Through the Centuries. NY: Crossroad Publishing, 1998.
Sr.
Butler's Cardinal Cooke Lecture on the subject of women's priesthood is
available at http://www.archny.org/seminary/st-josephs-seminary-dunwoodie/administration/sister-sara-butler/
Sightings
comes from the Martin Marty Center
at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
