Mirror of Justice

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

More from Cathleen Kaveny on Catholics, Abortion, and the Presidential Election

[Cathleen Kaveny asked me to post the message below, which I am delighted to do. This message is in response to some of the comments she has received--comments on her earlier piece, which I posted here on October 16. --mp]

Ecclesiastical Bullies

M. Cathleen Kaveny

My op-ed, Rambo Catholics and Kerry, has prompted some questions. Some
people wondered why I didn't directly respond to Gerry Bradley and Robby
George's piece, Not in Good Conscience, which was itself a response to Mark
Roche's essay, Voting Our Conscience, not Our Religion.. The answer is that I
was trying to change the subject, leaving it to Dean Roche to respond to the
substance of their criticisms. My topic was not the particular arguments in
the Bradley/George piece, but rather a broader rhetorical trend in some
conservative Catholic circles in discussing the obligations of Catholic
citizens with respect to their votes in the upcoming presidential election. In
my view, their piece constitutes but one example of that trend.

Who are "Rambo Catholics"? That is my name for those Catholics who are
trying to bully their fellow brothers and sisters in faith into voting for a
second Bush term. Why "Rambo Catholics"? Well, if I remember the movie
correctly, Rambo was a warrior whose motives were good, but whose means were at
times quite excessive, causing far more damage than necessary. Moreover , he
didn't hesitate to threaten harm to those who stood in the way of his
achievement of a just cause, even if their reasons for doing so were a
difference in judgment, not in goal. So I thought that was an apt--if
colorful--metaphor for the strategy of pro-life Catholics who make it clear
that they brook no political disagreement about how to achieve a world that
protects the most vulnerable, including the unborn. Rambo Catholics are those
who tell their co-religionists, that no pro-life Catholic can vote in good
conscience for Kerry--i.e., without committing a serious sin.

In my view, the moral problem with this strategy of Rambo Catholics in
the context of this election is that it amounts to bullying. What's bullying? In
general terms, a bully is someone who unjustly threatens harm to another party
if that party will not comply with the will of the first party. So, a
schoolyard bully threatens physical harm--to beat up other children if they
don't hand over their lunch money. We grown-ups are far more "civilized" in
our bullying--but no less effective. The type of harm grown-ups trade upon is
more frequently psychological than physical. It generally involves threatening
the loss of a key part of one's personal identity, which is often mediated by
social structures and relationships, some of which may be controlled or
influenced by the bully.

Now for devout Catholics, nothing is more essential to one's identity
than membership in the Church: the body of Christ. So if another Catholic
says to me, "You can't cast a vote for Kerry, no matter what your reasons,
without committing a serious sin, I take that as a threat. What that person
is telling me is that from their perspective, a vote for Kerry puts me outside
the fellowship of the body of Christ. Consequently, they intend to treat me as
if I am no longer a member of the body of Christ. From my perspective, and in
Augustinian terms, this will deprive me of the great good of their fellowship
as aspiring members of the Heavenly City as we sojourn together through the
City of Man. That is not a negligible harm. That is a horror.

One might respond that the threat is justified. But the trouble is, it
is not justified, on any fair reading of the tradition as a whole or recent
pronouncements of the magisterium. Cardinal Ratzinger is not a man known to
mince words. He simply didn't say that no American Catholic can vote for Kerry
in good conscience. He could have, but he didn't. He said that a Catholic can
morally vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights with, and only withm
proportionate reason. Even with full knowledge of the debate ranging in the
U.S., he did not impose a single assessment of proportionate reason on all
Catholics; in the end, he left it up to individual American Catholic voters to
evaluate the issues for themselves--and to evaluate the men running for
president themselves. And so, having formed their consciences, the members of
the body of Christ in America are each going to consider the reasons, and make
their minds--and disagree with one another.

Like Mark Roche, the rest of us pro-life Catholics who are going to hold
our noses and vote for Kerry believe we have proportionate reason for doing so.
Rambo Catholics can disagree with us--even vociferously--that's not bullying.
It's only bullying when they threaten to treat as if we are no longer members
of the body of Christ in good standing if we don't assess the proportionate
reasons in the same way they do--when they tell us, in other words, that we
are committing a serious sin by voting for Kerry, or that we are associating
with moral monsters like racists and Nazis. Notice that the threat isn't
parallel: no pro-life Catholic holding her nose and voting for Kerry is
suggesting that a Catholic who holds her nose and votes for Bush is
committing a serious sin.

So why is this type of bullying so troublesome? Well, bullying is
morally troubling because it demeans both the bullying and the bullied parties.
By bullying, a bully communicates to the bullied party, "I don't care what you
think. I just care that you do what I say--or at least that you shut up
about your disagreement with me and don't make trouble." Bullies aren't
interested in engaging in communication with another person as a person; they
are interested in using him or her to achieve a political objective. Any
interaction between two people in which one attempts to instrumentalize the
other is bad for them both, although in different ways.

Bullying is also morally troubling because it impedes a full discussion of the
issues at hand. Pro-lifers experience this phenomenon all the time. Consider
what happens if you are attending a work function where there are people of all
political and religious viewpoints, and someone says to you, "Any person who
opposes the creation of a right for terminally ill patients to determine the
time and manner of their death with the aid of medication prescribed by a
physician to is utterly insensitive to human suffering--a moral monster."

What are you going to do? On the one hand, you might decide not to speak up--
to preserve the peace, to protect your reputation. If your interlocutor is
nasty, or prone to personal attacks, this may well be a wise strategic
decision. Who wants to be abused or insulted? On the other hand, suppose you
muster the courage to challenge your interlocutor. In that case, your attention
will probably be divided. You will want to deal with the substance of his or
her position on euthanasia. At the same time, you will be unable to dedicate
yourself completely to this task because you will feel an equally strong need
to defend your identity as a merciful human being and not a moral monster,
which your interlocutor has directly challenged. You will want to prove to him
or her that your are a compassionate person, so you begin thinking of indicia of
your own compassion to bring to the fore. Inevitably, the discussion becomes as
much a trial of your character as a consideration of the issues at hand,
siphoning off energy that could have been better spent on the subject matter
itself.

Mark Roche and other pro-life Catholics have attempted to articulate why
they believe there is proportionate reason to vote for Kerry instead of Bush, all
things considered. These reasons might be misguided. Conversely, there might
be other reasons weighing in favor of Kerry that haven't been sufficiently
aired by Catholics (such as our views of their relative intelligence or
judgment of the two men or our relative confidence in their political judgment
to make thousands of important decisions, any one of which could be globally
disastrous). But we can't have a discussion about this in a context where
we're repeatedly told by our interlocutors that any vote for Kerry is a sin, or
even akin to a vote for Nazis or the slaveholders. Why not? Well, go back to
my example of the discussion of the pro-lifer caught in a discussion of
euthanasia at a work function. If I'm in a discussion where a fellow Catholic
who tells me that by holding the position I hold, I'm lumping myself in with
Nazis and slaveholders, well that's telling me I'm a moral monster. It
disrupts my ability to engage in a clear-headed treatment of the issues at hand
in precisely the same way that I described above. You just can't have a good
discussion of important issues with someone who's trying to bully you.

Finally, in the end, bullying is not a politically effective tactic. Most
people instinctively recoil from bullies. Even if we happen to agree with a
bully regarding ultimate ends, and even regarding the strategy they are
pursuing today, we recognize that we might not agree with them on strategy
tomorrow or the next day. And so we know that the tactics they are using
against other people today might soon be turned against us. Who wants to risk
that? Concretely, what this means is further division of the pro-life
movement, with a consequent weakening of its effectiveness. Think about it.
Mark Roche, the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the highest-ranked
Catholic university in the country, self-identified as pro-life in the
editorial pages of the New York Times. He also told us why he just can't bring
himself to vote for George Bush. Gerry Bradley and Robby George did not merely
address his arguments, they also questioned his integrity, portraying him as a
tool of the pro-abortion Times. In human terms, how likely is it that Roche,
Bradley, and George will be able to collaborate effectively on pro-life work at
Notre Dame or on the national stage in the future?

So, let's stop the bullying. It's not an appropriate way to treat anyone, let
alone one's fellow members of the body of Christ.

Monday, October 18, 2004

The Bush Administration and the Estate Tax

By Michael Perry

Thought readers of this blog would be interested in what Martin Marty has to say about the effort to repeal the estate tax:

Sightings 10/18/04

Estate Tax: Repelling the Repeal
-- Martin E. Marty

November is approaching, which, in the Protestant/Evangelical half of America, is often "Stewardship Month." For those whose charities' fiscal year begins in January, it is also the month for budget-setting. As a former pastor of a congregation, I remain mindful of stewardship. As a former board member of a church-related college and employee of a faith-based, non-profit health care system, I am also mindful of the role of estate-planning, "planned giving," and the value of long-term gifts to colleges, hospitals, and social service agencies. So Sightings has me scanning the secular press for relevant material to pass on, with little need for comment in some cases.

For example, an October 7 column ("A Costly Free Lunch") by my favorite Wall Street Journal columnist -- yes, I have one! -- Albert R. Hunt, with whom I regularly disagree, spells out his viewpoint. "In 2000, individuals made $212 billion in charitable contributions. Much flowed out of generosity and genuine commitment. Some, however, was facilitated by tax planning, particularly the estate tax, where donors could provide for themselves in their lifetimes and their alma mater or charity after their death."

Now the administration wants the estate tax to be repealed, claiming that such a move would help farmers save their farms. "This may be good politics, but it's a fraud." An Iowa State University economist several years ago could not find a single true Iowa family farmer who had to sell the farm to pay estate taxes. (In fact, few Iowa farmers pay the tax at all.) Hunt cites economists who say the repeal will not affect 99 percent of the people. He disagrees; the "death tax," as would-be repealers have it, "is more than simply affirmative action for heirs of rich people." A repeal would mean the loss of $60 billion a year in revenues and it would also hurt state revenues, which piggy-back on them.

The "huge problem," however, is that "it would drain colleges, universities, hospitals, museum, and even churches [repeat: 'even churches'] of much needed funds." How much drop off is expected? The Congressional Budget Office (not "some soak-the-rich band of wealthy-hating lefties," notes Hunt) estimates that overall charitable giving would decline between 6 and 12 percent, from $13 to $25 billion a year. "Charitable bequeaths would suffer even more."

The administration's goal is to eliminate the whole estate tax program by 2010. Why didn't more colleges and hospitals fight against the tax votes of recent years? "There is a ... sinister explanation. Many of these institutions have wealthy trustees who would personally benefit from a measure that would hurt the institution they're supposed to be serving."

Forget "small businessmen and farmers" and entrepreneurs, who, it is alleged, suffer because of the estate tax. In Hunt's eyes, that claim is a "fraud" and a "sham." Join Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who have given economic reasons not to have the tax repealed. A repeal would put "$60 billion a year back in the hands of mostly wealthy Americans while further squeezing middle-class Americans and some of the institutions that bring the greatest value to our lives." Like colleges, universities, hospitals, cultural institutions, and, yes, "even churches."

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Catholics, the Presidential Election, and the Bradley/George Jeremiad

By Michael Perry

In a posting on October 12, Rick Garnett provided a link to a piece that Gerry Bradley (Notre Dame) and Robby George (Princeton) published in National Review Online earlier this week. (If you haven't read the Bradley/George piece, please do so.) Cathy Kaveny has written a Op-Ed piece in response. I asked Cathy for permission to share her piece with the readers of this blog, and she agreed. For those of you who aren't familiar with Cathy, who holds a joint appointment at Notre Dame--law and theology--here are some relevant facts:

Professor M. Cathleen Kaveny, a scholar who focuses on the relationship of law and morality, was named the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law in 2001. She earned her A.B. summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1984, and holds four graduate degrees from Yale University including her M.A. (1986), M.Phil (1990), J.D. (1990) and Ph.D. (1991). A member of the Massachusetts Bar since 1993, Professor Kaveny clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Professor Kaveny has published over forty articles and essays, in journals and books specializing in law, ethics, and medical ethics. She has served on a number of editorial boards including The American Journal of Jurisprudence, The Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of Law and Religion, and The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. She has been a Senior Fellow at the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago (2002-2003) and the Royden B. Davis Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Georgetown University (1998). Professor Kaveny is a member of the Steering Committee of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, which was founded by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin to help overcome polarization within the Catholic Church. She also serves on the advisory board of the University’s Erasmus Institute, created in 1997 to focus on reinvigorating the role of religiously-based intellectual traditions in contemporary scholarship.

Now, here is Cathy Kaveny's Op-Ed:

Rambo Catholics and John Kerry

A few members of the American hierarchy and a number of influential and aggressive conservative lay Catholics are trying to bully their fellow American Catholics into voting for George Bush. See, e.g., Robert P. George and Gerard Bradley, "Not in Good Conscience," http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/george_bradley200410120849. From the perspective of these "Rambo" Catholics, it's not enough to be convinced that abortion is intrinsically wrong: One has to believe that the only acceptable remedy for the social evil of legalized abortion is a second Bush term no matter what its cost in other matters of the common good, and no matter what its likely effectiveness in reducing the incidence of abortion. No Catholic, according to this group, could possibly cast a vote in good conscience for Kerry; it's akin to a vote for slaveholders or Nazis.

The inflammatory rhetoric demonstrates that this is a high stakes poker game: everything is on the line here for the political fortunes of the Rambo Catholics, that is. To see why, ask yourself what their rhetoric commits them to doing if Kerry wins.

Will Rambo Catholics turn against the American government? In a notorious article in First Things (1996), Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University (and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics), argued that the very legitimacy of the American government is hanging by a thread because of Roe v. Wade. While we can buy some time by arguing that Roe is bad constitutional law, he tells us that ultimately we have to face the fact that it is the province of the judiciary to interpret the Constitution. It seems to me that George would have to consider the election of Kerry, who could appoint as many as four Supreme Court Justices, to be the last straw: He writes, "If the Constitution really did abandon the vulnerable to private acts of lethal violence, and, indeed, positively disempowered citizens from working through the democratic process to correct these injustices, then it would utterly lack the capacity to bind the consciences of citizens. Our duty would not be to accept a common mandate, but to resist."

What form would that "resistance" take? Surely not just normal political protest. Would Rambo Catholics pressure the US Bishops to bless an armed revolution against the American government? Would their call now be for faithful Catholics to secede from the United States, to form another Holy Roman Empire? Are they really ready to lead us into another Civil War? Or if they are not ready, would the only reason be the prudential consideration that they are not likely to win? If they don't advocate full scale revolution, what forms of guerilla tactics will they allow to disrupt the workings of the government? Taken at face value, it is hard to see where else this logic and their rhetoric could lead.

As long as Bush remains president, the full force of their position is blunted: no need to engage in resistance, because the hope of overturning Roe by changing the composition of the Supreme Court remains alive. If Kerry is elected however, the radical--and potentially violent--implications of their rhetoric will be unmasked for what it is: an outrageous verbal bluff. They ought to be reduced to silence, because they have given themselves no verbal space for working within the system for incremental change, and because the revolutionary alternative they have left for themselves is preposterous. Silence does seem to be a fitting consequence for making an outrageous verbal bluff, and a fitting penalty for ecclesiastical bullies (particularly, in my view, if combined with withdrawal to a life of monastic prayer).

Will Rambo Catholics pressure the Vatican to cut off diplomatic relationships with the United States if Kerry wins? Will they demand that the Pope refuse to accept the credentials of a Kerry ambassador to the Holy See? What will they say if the Vatican decides to cultivate, as best it can, a candid and open relationship with the only remaining superpower in the world, led by a practicing Catholic? If challenged, the Vatican would likely say that it is maintaining diplomatic relations with Kerry, not because it supports his position on abortion, but because it believes that doing so is necessary for the common good, to advance the interests of the weakest and most vulnerable around the world (including the unborn). In technical terms, any appearance of legitimacy they unintentionally lend to Kerry's abortion policies is called permissible material cooperation with evil. But the Vatican's reasons for maintaining diplomatic relations with Kerry wouldn't be different in kind from the reasons that faithful Catholics might vote for him instead of Bush. Indeed, Cardinal Ratzinger has recently clarified that it is not always wrong for a Catholic to vote for a politician who supports legalized abortion, provided that she does so not in order to support abortion, but in order to achieve other essential aspects of the common good.

So will the Rambo Catholics apply the same bullying tactics to the Vatican that they have applied to their fellow Catholics in the United States? Will they accuse Rome of giving scandal by cooperating with a leader they have lumped in with the Nazis? Will they set themselves firmly against Vatican policy, bemoaning the Church's lack of fidelity to the purity of divine moral teaching? Will they go into schism, like Archbishop Marcel Lefevre, who rejected the Second Vatican Council as inconsistent with the true Catholic faith? Not very likely in my view. But how, then, can they escape the charge of a cynical and abrupt about-face in their position?

Never bet against the "house"--especially in a high stakes poker game. And in the Catholic Church, the "house" does not belong to the Rambo party. It belongs to the party of the "poor banished children of Eve." I have taken the name from a prayer addressed to Mary, the mother of Jesus (said after Mass in the old days for the conversion of Russia): "Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and out hope! To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears." The "poor banished children of Eve" are trying to make their way the best they can in the shadows of a world still marred by sin.

What are the "house rules" of the Church belonging to the "poor banished children of Eve"? One was set long ago by St. Augustine. The faithful, the members of the City of God, cannot expect to set up a political government on this earth that is free from injustice, even gross injustice. Augustine argues that political life East of Eden will inevitably entail an admixture of good and evil, by divine design. God suffers the wheat and tares to grow alongside one another in the City of Man until the end of time; to attempt to uproot the tares, particularly by violence, may well inflict untold harm upon the wheat. If Kerry is elected, it will become abundantly clear that the articulated strategy of the Rambo Catholics involves burning down the entire field. Such blatant violators of house rules should turn in their chips.

What happens if Bush wins? As they consider how to vote, Catholics counting themselves among the "poor banished children of Eve" should ask themselves this question. Would the most vulnerable members of our society really be better off if the world's only superpower were governed by Bush and his allies, or by John Kerry and his? In my view, the answer to that question is becoming clearer with every inflammatory thing the Rambo Catholics say and write.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Response to Richard Myers

By Michael Perry

Richard, I disagree. What you describe as "Archbishop Burke's fine pastoral letter" is, in my judgment, so one-dimensional as to be little more, alas, than a polemic. Mark Roche's Op-Ed, by contrast, is appropriately sensitive to the complexity of the issue Catholic voters face. I need not develop the point myself, because Jesuit theologian John Langan, of Georgetown University, has already developed it, in a talk he gave a few weeks back to a gathering sponsored by your own law school, Ave Maria. Let me quote a brief passage from John Langan's presentation, the full text of which is available on the Ave Maria web site:

"[S]ingle issue voting may well be an admirable expression of conscientious conviction about an important matter; but it should not be imposed on voters as a requirement of conscience. Both voters and politicians have to make up their own minds about what issues are opportune, what fights can be won, what results can be achieved. . . . If a person, whether a political candidate or a citizen, judges that an objective such as the prohibition of abortion is simply not attainable in the present state of American public and legal opinion, then he or she cannot be required to make the prohibition of abortion the decisive consideration in voting or to demand it as an essential plank in the political platform. If I vote for a candidate who professes to be strongly pro-life but is unable or unwilling to reduce or eliminate abortions, then I have not succeeded in achieiving my pro-life objective. . . . Politics is not merely the expression of values; it is social action shaped by many discordant forces over time. Moral principles are profoundly important in political life, but they are developed within a larger and less well ordered and unprincipled reality."

At another point in his presentation, Langan says something that is relevant to Archbishop's Burke's letter: "The function of bishops and more generally of the churches is to bear witness to the moral truth which is at stake, not to determine what is the best legal and political resolution of the problem. . . . It would be a brave bishop who would claim to know on theological grounds just when such compromises are acceptable or justifiable, and it would be a naive voter who would follow his opinion on such a question."

Michael P.

Thursday, October 7, 2004

Kerry, Bush, and the Catholic Vote

By Michael Perry

Kerry, Bush Have Trouble Wooing Catholics
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 7, 2004

Filed at 11:07 a.m. ET

PARMA, Ohio (AP) -- Sen. John Kerry is having trouble wooing fellow Roman Catholics in Iowa and Wisconsin. President Bush is short of his expected Catholic count in Michigan and Minnesota. Once reliably Democratic, Catholics have become one of the most complicated and coveted swing voting blocs.

Catholics make up one-quarter of the electorate nationwide -- with larger percentages in a dozen battleground states, including New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Maine, Nevada, Florida, Missouri and Ohio.

Four years ago, Democrat Al Gore edged Bush among Catholics, 50-47, according to exit polls. So far this year, the Republican incumbent is splitting the vote with Kerry, the first Catholic to run for president since Democrat John Kennedy got 83 percent of the Catholic vote against Republican Richard Nixon in 1960.

Catholics kept voting Democratic until 1972, when they gave 61 percent of their support to Richard Nixon. They have been independent-minded ever since -- narrowly backing Republican Ronald Reagan twice and giving 20 percent of their support to Ross Perot in 1992 while handing Bill Clinton about half their votes.

The Catholic vote has shifted as lifelong Democrats -- many of them from blue-collar, ethnic suburbs like Parma, Ohio -- began to wonder whether their party had become too liberal on social issues, if not economic policy. They were ``Reagan Democrats,'' charter members of Nixon's ``Silent Majority.''

They are Catholics like Irene Sandor, 75, who stood on her tiny cement porch Tuesday in Parma while watching Kerry running mate John Edwards arrive at a community center across the street. ``The last Democrat I voted for was John Kennedy,'' she said. ``Kerry, I know he's Catholic. But I also know he's a liberal.''

An AP-Ipsos poll suggests that a majority of Catholics who are likely voters attend mass at least once a week, and Bush gets a majority of the churchgoers' votes. The Republican campaign is appealing to them through the mail, telephone calls and presidential events by emphasizing Bush's conservative views, particularly on abortion, that line up with the Vatican's teachings.

The Republican National Committee says it has 45,000 ``team leaders'' reaching out to fellow Catholics and collecting parish directories to identify new voters. An RNC Web site for Catholics plays up Kerry's differences with the Vatican on abortion and gay rights.

Catholics who don't worship regularly tend to back Kerry, according to the AP-Ipsos poll. Many of them are already targeted by Kerry's campaign because they are part of his base -- union members, minorities and low-income earners.

That leaves swing-voting Catholics like Missy Kocab, 18. A product of Ohio's Catholic schools, she opposes gay marriage and abortion but is cool toward the president. ``I just don't think the president has been honest about Iraq,'' she says.

Becky Martin, 35, of Parma, says, ``I hate the war and I hate Kerry. What do I do?''

Catholic swing voters tend not to mix their religion with their politics. Thus, Bush and Kerry are appealing to them the same was they do other swing voters -- pushing poll-tested issues like education and health care while trying to undercut each other's character.

When Kerry says it's time for change because Bush misled Americans about Iraq and can't be trusted on other issues, he's speaking to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The same for Bush when he says Kerry would vacillate dangerously as commander in chief.

Gore narrowly won Wisconsin while carrying the state's Catholic vote by 3 percentage points. Private and public polls suggest Bush is currently tied or winning among Catholics there.

Though the small sample sizes prohibit definitive conclusions, surveys conducted for the campaigns suggest Kerry also is lagging behind Gore's Catholic totals in Iowa and perhaps Ohio. Bush is not doing as well as he did four years ago in Minnesota, New Hampshire and Michigan

Analysts say those numbers reflect the state races overall. If a candidate is underperforming among Catholics, chances are he is down among all swing voters.

Kerry offers himself as a practicing and believing Catholic who nonetheless holds positions contrary to the church's on abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

Some Democrats have urged him to highlight those differences, forging a bond with equally conflicted swing voting Catholics.

In some states, Democrats simply want him to keep attending Sunday services before Nov. 2.

``If Kerry has a problem with Catholics, it's that too few Catholics know he's one of them,'' said Jim Jordan, his former campaign manager.

Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Reply to Mark

By Michael Perry

Two comments--and a question.

1. I'm very drawn to the SGP, as Mark sketches it. But I doubt many--or, indeed, any--Catholics who (like Rick?) are Reps would be drawn to it: The socio-economic agenda is in the same neighborhood as the socio-economic agenda of left-Dems (not to be confused with the centrist-Dems who presently control the Dem Party).

2. Mark's critical comments about rights-talk are misguided. There is nothing wrong with rights-talk per se--though there is often something wrong with particular rights-claims. I have spelled this out in chapter 2 of my book, The Idea of Human Rights (1998), in commenting on Mary Ann Glendon's critique of rights-talk. See pp. 48-56. A couple of years from now, I hope to have a new book out called Human Rights as Morality, Human Rights as Law, in which I return, at some length, to the matter of rights-talk. For the moment, listen to Jurgen Habermas: "Notwithstanding their European origins, . . . [i]n Asia, Africa, and South America, [human rights now] constitute the only language in which opponents and victims of murderous regimes and civil wars can raise their voices against violence, repression, and persecution, against injuries to their human dignity." Come to think of it, JPII is a fan of rights-talk (i.e., human-rights-talk), isn't he?

Now, the question for Mark: What does the Platform of the SGP say about discrimination against gays and lesbians? In particular, what does it say, if anything, about civil unions, same-sex marriage, etc.? Not that a party platform need take a position on every major issue of the day.

Michael

Friday, October 1, 2004

Amen, Mark!

By Michael Perry

Passionately and, in my judgment, rightly stated. Thank you.

Michael

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Greg Kalscheur, SJ

By Michael Perry

The October 4th issue of AMERICA was in my mail today--and, hey, there's a nice picture of Greg Kalscheur on the back of the issue, in an ad for Jesuit vocations. Take a look.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Mirror of Justice

More from Cathleen Kaveny on Catholics, Abortion, and the Presidential Election

The Bush Administration and the Estate Tax

Catholics, the Presidential Election, and the Bradley/George Jeremiad

Response to Richard Myers

Kerry, Bush, and the Catholic Vote

Recommended Reading

Reply to Mark

Amen, Mark!

Greg Kalscheur, SJ

Recommended Reading

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