Last evening, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic Presidential candidates, appeared at the Compassion Forum at Messiah College in Pennsylvania to address matters of faith, values, and public policy. Today, the news media has focused on the latest name-calling between these two candidates — one being called an "Annie Oakley" wannabe and the other a San Francisco "elitist "(and as a Republican I am tempted to think that both may be right). Even when acknowledging the event, the New York Times felt obliged to begin its account by reporting that the candidates “exchang[ed] frosty glances Sunday night as their paths briefly crossed on stage.” As a consequence, very little attention has been given to the fascinating, and sometimes deeply substantive, discussion about faith and life and politics that unfolded in Pennsylvania last night. Given that this blog is devoted to religion in public life, I have presumed to attempt to fill in some of the gap with my personal impressions of this exceptional episode in American political life.
Now some might cynically dismiss last night’s forum as nothing more than another political event, and one that was carefully staged to arrest the Democratic Party’s declining support among people of faith in recent years. Of course, the forum was a political event, constructed around the ongoing race for the presidential nomination and featuring the two surviving candidates in one party. Nonetheless, I think a fair observer should acknowledge that this forum, both as it was planned and as it developed last night, was something more than a grimy campaign operation engineered to score political points.
Instead, persons of all faiths and political backgrounds should be encouraged that this great political party has begun to recognize the electoral folly of aggressive secularism and is taking considered steps to display greater respect for persons who take religious faith seriously. Through the largely balanced questions posed by the moderators and religious leaders in the audience, and the good faith (pun intended) cooperation of the two candidates who appeared, the forum well-served the purpose of exploring the religious sensibilities of the candidates and their views on the role of religious faith in public life. And for those of us who study religion and public life, it certainly was compelling television.
After watching the forum last night, and reviewing the transcript today, I offer below some observations from the perspective of an outsider. Because both of these candidates have long since disqualified themselves from receiving my own vote this November (on the sanctity of human life, genuine educational reform as the greatest engine for social progress, the necessity of free trade to world economic health, etc.), I have no dog in the ongoing and increasingly rough and tumble fight for the Democratic Party nomination. And while the conventional wisdom until a month ago had been that Senator Obama would be the more formidable opponent to Senator McCain this fall, prognostications have become considerably muddier in recent weeks and neither appears better positioned today against the Republican candidate. The thoughts that follow are openly impressionistic, which may be appropriate for a forum that was somewhat touchy-feely in nature (and I mean that in a good way).
In a departure from prior candidate meetings, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama appeared separately last night, offering their thoughts at greater length, without interruption, and with less of a need to play one-upmanship on the other candidate. They responded to questions in a conversational manner, moving more easily from one subject to the next and following up with additional pertinent thoughts that later occurred to them. They each spoke about how faith has been present in their lives, sustained them in times of difficulty, affects the manner in which they make decisions, and influences their public policy positions. While face-to-face debates between political candidates serve an essential purpose in identifying the central issues, sharpening the differences, and testing the candidate’s ability to perform under pressure, last evening's more tranquil and dignified venue was a refreshing change and was especially well-tailored to the nature and content of this forum.
As someone who has not generally held a positive view of Senator Clinton’s personality over the years, I was surprised to find myself captivated by, drawn into, and even moved by passages of her narrative. She left that positive impression on me, not only through her words, which were well chosen but do not read as especially eloquent in the transcript printed today. Rather, I was taken with her calm and open demeanor, friendly and yet dignified exchange with moderators and questioners, and earnestness when speaking. Between the two, Clinton appeared more comfortable in addressing the personal dimension of faith, even as she attempted (admirably in my view) to shift the discussion away from a focus on herself to relate how she had been moved by the faith of others. Indeed, her stories about other people of powerful faith were most attractive and revealed a comfort in sharing the spiritual limelight with others. Telling the story of a woman whose son and grandson were murdered on the streets of Philadelphia, Clinton said that this person knows “God is with her,” even while not understanding why these tragedies have happened. “Determined to be the person that she believes God meant her to be,” this woman rises each day with “a smile on her face to go to her daycare business,” which Clinton aptly describes as a “moment of grace.”
By contrast, while certainly not visibly nervous, Senator Obama struck me as awkward of speech and manner at several points during the evening, appearing to struggle to find the right words. He also tended more often than Clinton to fall back on sound bites or pre-packaged themes from his campaign (although neither candidate went too far astray from the subject at hand). Perhaps this measure of uneasiness reflected his self-consciousness about these sensitive questions given the criticism he has received in recent days about some of his less than sensitive statements about people of faith. Fearing that he would step on another land-mine, Obama may have been unduly cautious, thus leaving an impression of less than complete comfort. While I found Senator Clinton to be personally inviting and thoughtful, Senator Obama came across to me as sometimes leaden in his expression, gamely trying hard but not quite succeeding in finding the right voice for the occasion. Please understand I do not mean to say that he made any serious mistakes or faltered badly, or that he failed to make significant contributions to the discourse. Rather, I found that he was simply unremarkable, not manifesting the confidence and eloquence that has regularly been on display when he speaks before an approving crowd at a campaign rally.
On substance, both candidates spoke to the importance and support of personal faith and to how their faith influences their political views. Neither faith nor works were neglected by either. That being said, their faith narrative varied markedly in emphasis. Senator Clinton spoke more directly to the importance of personal faith for the individual within a community of believers, that is, to faith for its own sake. Senator Obama focused more on the “social Gospel” of church-connected social service and political activities. Thus, Clinton began by saying how she had “felt the presence of God in my life” since her childhood and saying that “I don’t think I could have made my life’s journey without being anchored in God’s grace and without having that, you know, sense of forgiveness and unconditional love.” By contrast, Obama moved immediately to speaking about political organizing and political topics, saying “I am a devout Christian, that I started my work working with churches in the shadow of steel plants that had closed on the south side of Chicago, that nobody in a presidential campaign on the Democratic side in recent memory has done more to reach out to the church and talk about, what are our obligations religiously, in terms of doing good works, and how does that inform our politics?” Indeed, Obama explained that he had been drawn to church through “the social gospel, the need to act and not just sit in the pews.”
Immediately following the forum, the instant pundits also identified this difference in focus, which they saw as to the advantage of Obama. They opined that Obama had succeeded by speaking more directly about how his church involvement and political activities were intertwined. In my view, these commentators miss the point yet again and fail to apprehend how these contrasting approaches to discussion of faith are likely to be received by most people of faith. For most people of faith, the transcendent reality lies in the faith itself, bringing about a transformative relationship with God. For Catholics, faith is centered on salvation through Christ, renewed through the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To think of faith as a primarily a tool for social services and political platform positions is to mistake the effect for the cause. While the Democratic Party has lost ground with people of faith in part because of its political positions on social issues that are antithetical to orthodox or traditional values, its principal error has been a tone-deafness about the central role of a vibrant faith in the lives, the very identity, of many people. Certain core political issues certainly matter to people of faith and may be central to electoral choices. But one must begin by understanding the person as a person of faith before moving directly to the political. In my view, Clinton better connected with the traditional sense of religious faith during the forum. While by no means ignoring that personal faith dimension, Obama devoted his primary attention to the political implications. I think that's a meaningful difference, and one that may resonate.
As it appeared to me as someone not present but watching carefully on television, the atmosphere in the auditorium also changed between the two appearances, in a manner somewhat parallel to the different emphases on dimensions of religious faith. During Senator Clinton’s session, the audience appeared very attentive, was respectful and quiet, as they carefully and sympathetically considered her words. Applause was restrained, from the moment of Clinton’s entrance and throughout her dialogue with her interlocutors. The room was quiet, almost reverential at points. I had the feeling, or at least that was the disposition I was surprised to find in myself, that people were captivated with Clinton’s narrative about her own faith and about the faith she has found in others. They wanted to listen and were reluctant to intrude.
By contrast, when Obama entered the room, his supporters not only loudly applauded but boisterously cheered his entry, while he glad-handed down the aisle. The more demonstrative nature of Obama’s supporters in the crowd, occasionally breaking into the conversation with applause, was sometimes jarring to me. Moreover, I had the impression that Obama sensed it as well, as he appeared on more than one occasion to frown when the dialogue was interrupted by applause, perhaps appreciating that this animated political style was out of place in this dignified and thoughtful setting for careful reflection on faith and values. Rather than drawing energy from the applause, Obama sometimes appears unsettled by it and became more halting in his answer immediately afterward. Or so it seemed to me. The very fact that the candidates appeared separately and were able to develop their answers at greater length, without the need for a snappy and aggressive back-and-forth with an opponent, presumably was designed to break the political rhythm and allow for thoughtful engagement. Obama's supporters in the crowd appeared unable to depart from a rally style and adapt to this alternative venue.
Interestingly, my substantative reaction to the candidates’ views on the propriety of even having such a forum was nearly the mirror-opposite of my impressions of their religious faith narratives. Moreover, I was greatly disappointed and even alarmed by the clumsy and evasive remarks by each on the most important human rights issue of our time, the sanctity of unborn human life. But closing this over-length posting for now, I’ll save commentary on these other points for separate posts in the next couple of days.
From the perspective of a person of faith, and a citizen of this country, I have been deeply distressed by the decline in recent years of prosecutorial discretion as the wise exercise of power in the pursuit of justice. Too often, and especially at the federal level at least from Washington, D.C., the policy has sometimes appeared to be that every case referred by law enforcement should be prosecuted and every conviction should be emphasized by seeking the maximum sentence. Politicians, of both parties, have made the situation worse by enacting mandatory minimum sentences to prove to constituents that they are tough on crime, resulting in the incarceration of millions of Americans, some for relatively minor and first-time offenses. Seeking the just result in a particular case in terms of the human factors involved has become more difficult and less valued.
Under the traditional understanding of prosecutorial discretion, a prosecutor was encouraged to consider whether seeking a criminal conviction, even when the evidence supported it, was the best course of action or instead whether alternatives measures, including forgoing prosecution, were mandated by justice. And the prosecutor had the original burden of ensuring that innocence was protected, taking the affirmative steps to investigate whether a prosecution was supported by more than the bare minimum requirement of probable cause. The ABA Standards of Criminal Justice Relating to the Prosecution Function (Standard 3-3.9(b)) advise that a prosecutor is not obliged to pursue all charges that the evidence might support and may exercise discretion to decline to prosecute based on such factors, inter alia, as “the prosecutor’s reasonable doubt that the accused is in fact guilty,” “the extent of the harm caused by the offense,” and “the disproportion of the authorized punishment in relation to the particular offense or the offender.” How often do we hear about the exercise of such discretion today?
A contemporary practitioner of the traditional form of prosecutorial justice may be found in Craig Watson, the new district attorney in Dallas, Texas, whose election as a reformer demonstrates that the public is receptive to the idea.
In the on-line reason magazine, Rodney Balko writes:
In 2006, Craig Watkins became the first African-American elected district attorney of any county in Texas history. More interestingly, the 40-year-old Watkins was elected in Dallas County, where the DA’s office has long been known for its aggressive prosecution tactics. A former defense attorney, Watkins says the Dallas DA’s office has for too long adopted a damaging “convict at all costs” philosophy, an argument bolstered by a string of wrongful convictions uncovered by the Texas Innocence Project in the months before he was elected. Watkins ran on a reform platform, and pulled out a surprising victory against a more experienced Republican opponent.
Hat-tip to David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy (here), who concludes that "Watkins certainly seems like a fair-minded breath of fresh air, who takes the biblical injunction "tzedek, tzedek tirdof" (justice, justice thou shalt pursue) seriously." And here's one Catholic who can only say "Amen!"
I appreciate Eduardo Peñalver’s posting on a version of black liberation theology, which I agree provides about as good of a defense of Dr. James Cone’s rhetorical choices as could be made (while thoughtfully acknowledging that he may be needlessly inflammatory). As with others who have expressed concern here on the Mirror of Justice about recent racially-charged statements in the public square, I have been aware that some advocates of black liberation theology liberally invoke terms of violence and hatred against white people, which they then insist should be understand to refer not to human beings of a particular ethnic background but instead as proxies for opposition to oppression. But I don’t think we can give people a pass when they deliberately choose words of hate, especially in the context of race, even if they try to distance themselves from the force of those words by qualifying and explaining. Humpty-Dumpty’s claim that words may be redefined to mean whatever the speaker wishes is always a doubtful proposition, because words belong to an entire community. But the claim of facile redefinition is especially dubious when the words are used in an incendiary manner, not to be more precise in categorization, but to be provocative and confrontational.
If a person regularly speaks about the evils of “white people” and the need to work for “the destruction of the white enemy,” he or she cannot legitimately plead innocence when the words are taken in their plain meaning. In fact, I’m not convinced that every one of these speakers are really all that surprised or upset when their words are taken so plainly. In any event, a person who uses such hateful rhetoric, even if he or she begins the journey by redefining terms in a particular way, may find that resort to such language is corrupting of attitude. Let’s look again at the words by Dr. Cone that I quoted: “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. . . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.” Dr. Cone did not speak here about “whiteness” as some generic representation of an oppressive system, although the presentation as a whole spoke of oppressors (without suggesting a more narrow definition than "white people"). He spoke of opposing “white people” and then followed up by characterizing them as the “white enemy.” Whatever may have been originally intended when the theological terms were being defined in the quiet of an academic office, such rhetoric cannot be contained, especially when introduced to the public.
Moreover, am I being unfair if I worry that the explanation of precise redefinition offered to justify shocking words of hate toward “white people” may be, at least on occasion, something of a sly wink by people who are well aware of how their words are being received by the audience? Despite having said on a number of occasions that his critics have no standing because they haven’t carefully read the black liberation theology of Dr. Cone and others with the diligence he has devoted, Rev. Jeremiah Wright appears to have understood the message quite plainly, quite crudely in fact, without any clever qualifications. Pronouncing himself a serious discipline of black liberation theology, Rev. Wright then chose to rant about AIDS being created by government scientists to kill black people and white supremacist government conspiring to sell drugs in black neighborhoods to oppress minorities. If the linguistic manipulations of this version of black liberation theology lend themselves so readily to this extremist nonsense, even by a supposedly sophisticated and well-educated church leader, doesn’t that suggest this approach is dangerously irresponsible?
For Catholics, and especially for those of us who are lawyers, we always remember the words of St. Thomas More as he was led to his execution: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.” A Catholic certainly may and indeed should be a patriot, but he or she may never elevate nation above God or blind his or her eyes to national sin.
Thus, it is right and proper to express shame when it is warranted. We all are ashamed of our national history of racism. We all are ashamed that the most dangerous place for a baby in this country is in his or her mother’s womb. I think we all should be ashamed that our nation abandoned the people of southeast Asia in the spring of 1975, condemning millions to death, hundreds of thousands to exile, and millions more to tyranny. I think we all should be ashamed that when genocide stalked through Rwanda in 1994, our nation (and the rest of the world as well) did nothing. I’m sure we all could add further to this Hall of Shame. To love our country and to be proud of America does not mean that we deny or forget the occasions on which we were ashamed of our country.
In this same way, and on these same subjects, we as people of faith are called to speak the truth, including saying hard things about the path our nation has taken, statements that may not always be well-received by our listeners. In so doing, we of course have to be careful not to assume that our opinion is always consonant with the Truth. We must maintain some humility. And we must always resist any temptation toward deception or manipulation. If for tactical political reasons we tell lies designed to generate malice against our political opponents, we sin greatly. Whether the lie is that all liberals are traitors to their country or that a white supremacist government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill blacks, we cannot tolerate the lie and must speak forcefully against it.
Even the righteous anger of the prophet has its place, to serve as a catalyst, to make it impossible to hide from the truth or remain silent. But anger, like fire, is a dangerous tool, that must be used sparingly and always with careful control. For anger so easily may descend into hatred. The person whose constant companion is anger will likely fall into one or the other sins of despair or hate.
And hatred is something very, very different from any other form of expression. Hate is so destructive and so contrary to our Faith that it cannot be justified and should not be presented as tolerable or understandable.
In that respect, consider the following statement by Dr. James Cone of New York’s Union Theological Seminary:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. (Quoted in William R Jones, "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology (Cornel West & Eddie Glaube, eds., 2004)
How should we read these words, if not as words of anger that have devolved into hatred? Rev. Jeremiah Wright credits Cone as the one who “systematized” the black liberation theology that Wright has espoused (here and here). Given that context, and having heard Rev. Wright’s words broadcast around the nation and remembering the earlier episode of his embracing of Minister Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam as “truly epitomizing greatness,” should this not merely be denounced but also disowned?
In powerful contrast with the disappointing and dispiriting remarks to which we recently have been exposed, we have the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:
I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. I’ve seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South—I’ve seen hate. In the faces and even the walk of too many Klansmen of the South, I’ve seen hate. Hate distorts the personality. Hate does something to the soul that causes one to lose his objectivity. The man who hates can’t think straight; the man who hates can’t reason right; the man who hates can’t see right; the man who hates can’t walk right. And I know now that Jesus is right, that love is the way. And this is why John said, “God is love,” so that he who hates does not know God, but he who loves at that moment has the key that opens the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.
Last evening, Prof. Douglas Kmiec, friend and colleague to all of us here at Mirror of Justice, spoke at the University of St. Thomas School of Law on “The Call to Faith-ful Citizenship & the 2008 Primary.” (The program was sponsored by The Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy, the co-director of which is MoJ’s own Tom Berg.) Doug Kmiec offered his thinking on the 2008 presidential race and explained how he came to the place where, as he said in his now-famous Slate essay, he believes Barack Obama is “a natural for the Catholic vote.”
In his presentation last night, Professor Kmiec described with eloquence and feeling his personal journey in American presidential politics as a Catholic who takes his faith seriously, beginning with the John F. Kennedy campaign while he was in junior high school, from involvement in the Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern campaigns, to his inspiration by Ronald Reagan and later participation in his administration, and culminating (for now) with his recent service with the Mitt Romney campaign. By the end of the evening, I certainly had a better understanding of how Doug Kmiec came to his current place of disaffection for other candidates and intrigue with Obama. But I remain less than convinced that he had outlined a path that is natural for other Catholic voters.
To begin with, the empirical evidence as I have reviewed it concerning the Catholic part of the electorate appears to offer anything but encouraging news to the Obama candidacy. In his Slate essay, Doug Kmiec suggested that, in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination against Senator Hillary Clinton, “Obama has been narrowing the gap, using the Catholic vote to vault to victory.” This commentary was written a month ago, and a month is long time in any primary season, and a very long time in this roller-coaster year. So very much has changed since February. But doesn't the longitudinal evidence since January confirm a powerful trend away from Obama by Catholic voters?
From the beginning of the primary season, Senator Clinton has out-polled Senator Obama among Catholics by wide margins in most states and overall. (The CNN web site has a complete set of the exit polls from each primary state, a must-see web site for the political junkie.) In a heavily Catholic state like Massachusetts, for example, Senator Clinton won the Catholic vote by almost 2-1, notwithstanding that Senator Kennedy had enthusiastically endorsed and campaigned for Senator Obama. In California, as another example, the Catholic vote broke 2-1 for Clinton over Obama, rising to nearly 3-1 among Catholics who attend weekly Mass. Poignantly, even while winning his home state of Illinois by a 2-1 margin, the favorite son Obama still lost the Catholic vote in to Clinton (although it was close there).
The Obama campaign initially tried to downplay the electoral gap, arguing that the Obama deficit in Catholic votes was merely a manifestation of the campaign’s weakness among Hispanic voters (thus acknowledging one manifest weakness to try to ward off another). (See here and here.) And the news media appeared to cooperate in accepting this explanation—for a while.
But then came Ohio and Rhode Island last week, the most recent big states on the primary calendar, each of which has small numbers of Hispanics. The Catholic margin for Clinton over Obama not only persisted, but remained overwhelming. (See here.) In Ohio, the Catholic margin was somewhat under 2-1 for Clinton over Obama, while in Rhode Island, one of the most Catholic states in the nation and where Catholics made up a majority of the primary electorate, the margin for Clinton over Obama exceeded 2-1.
Demographics may well play a role in explaining why Obama has failed to attract Catholic voters in the primary campaign, but it may go much deeper than strong Hispanic support for Clinton. Obama’s centers of support have been African-Americans, who are more Protestant than other ethnic groups, and affluent white liberals, who as a demographic group are mostly secular but are seasoned with liberal Mainline Protestantism. By contrast, Clinton’s vote has been anchored not only in Hispanics, who indeed are heavily Catholic, but also in the traditional lunch-bucket Democrats of the working class, who in states like Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are disproportionately Catholic. Given that the last state mentioned here is the next big one on the primary calendar, what happens in Pennsylvania will be the next important data-point on this subject.
Others have argued that Obama’s softness among Catholics is a matter of style, with one commentator saying that Obama “speaks in the cadences of the black church, with a real Protestant approach.” Given that anyone of any political viewpoint who listens to Obama will find appeal in his inspirational style, dismissing Catholic disaffection from Obama as due to speaking style alone is unpersuasive. But perhaps the style of campaign itself, and the self-reverential tone of the content of that speaking, may account for some of the Catholic disaffection.
Might it be that the sometimes messianic quality of the Obama campaign has made many people of faith, Catholic and otherwise, uncomfortable? While the “Cult of Obama” certainly has been fanned by the media, the Obama campaign has exploited and promoted that approach when it serves their purposes. Recall those reports (here and here ) about how “[v]olunteer trainees at Camp Obama are told not to talk issues with voters, but to offer personal testimony about how they ‘came’ to Obama”? Notice how the other leading candidates, Senators Clinton and McCain, regularly hold town meetings and take questions from voters, while Senator Obama apparently prefers large rallies where he speaks to adoring crowds (see here). And, for heaven’s sake (pun intended), remember the Washington Post’s report on Barack Obama’s speech at Dartmouth College before the New Hampshire Primary in which he said: “My job this morning is to be so persuasive . . . that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack.” Sure, I know Obama was just offering a little campaign humor (I do hope!), but the revival tent approach certainly has been staged by the Obama campaign. Isn’t it just possible that the self-revering focus of the Obama campaign has been off-putting to people of faith?
And then, of course, there is substance. We here on MoJ have long debated, and God willing will long continue to debate, the range of issues of public significance that should be of concern to any Catholic, indeed any person interested in the common good. But, of course, a candidate’s attitude toward the sanctity of human life will and should be remain the top of any hierarchy of Catholic public values. While there are Catholics who find themselves voting Democratic despite that party’s general exclusion of pro-life views, my friends here on MoJ and elsewhere tell me that they feel awkward doing so. My guess is that most voting Catholics on the Democratic side share that feeling and thus, quite naturally, if they have to vote for another pro-choice Democrat (for other reasons), would prefer that he or she at least be somewhat less objectionable, somewhat less "in your face" about it. (We'll leave for another day our ongoing friendly debate about whether, when, and how wise is that justification for supporting any pro-choice candidate.)
In this respect, Senator Clinton’s position on abortion of course is unacceptable, but she has at least made some noises on occasion deprecating abortion and she has managed to avoid being associated with some of the most extreme positions on the subject. A long way to go, in my estimation, but the question of the moment is comparative. By contrast, Senator Obama’s actions as an Illinois state senator to kill (pun intended) the Born Alive Infant Protection Act has drawn considerable attention in recent weeks (see here). Even NARAL did not oppose this bill and it passed the United States Senate by a unanimous voice vote (before Senator Obama’s election to that body). Thus, Obama has come across to knowledgeable voters as “More Pro-Choice Than NARAL.”
Now we learn of Senator Obama’s July, 2007 speech to a Planned Parenthood political action fundraiser, which is now public (see here). He pledged that he would “not yield” in his commitment to the pro-choice movement. He then promised: “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.” And so I have to ask, for a candidate who says that “culture wars” are “so 90s” and tells us that it is time to move past wedge issues in campaigns, is this promise to make national codification of unlimited abortion rights the centerpiece of his opening act as president the kind of thing that will make him a natural for the Catholic vote? I guess we'll see as election year coverage continues.
As has often been displayed in discussions on the Mirror of Justice, many of us believe that the most powerful engine for social justice and economic advancement for every class of Americans is high quality education. And many of us believe in turn that, especially for the disadvantaged, opportunities to attend private school through vouchers may be the only way out of a cycle of poverty (as well as allowing people to choose the kind of education that best supports their own values, including faith-based education).
Nor has it passed notice that the political elite — including every Democratic nominee for President in the past two decades (Clinton, Gore, and Kerry), as well as both current contenders for that nomination (Clinton and Obama) — have chosen to send their children to private schools, even as they close those doors to the poor.
Thus, although he was far from enthusiastic about vouchers, it was encouraging to hear Senator Obama say this recently while campaigning in Wisconsin (rest of article here):
“If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Alright, let's see if this experiment works,’ and if it does, then whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids,” the senator said. “I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn. We’re losing several generations of kids and something has to be done.”
Well, this breath of fresh air in the increasingly stale education reform debate was nice while it lasted — which wasn't long. As soon as news attention was drawn to his departure from Democratic Party orthodoxy, the Obama campaign issued a statement titled “Response to Misleading Reports Concerning Senator Obama's Position on Vouchers” (Feb. 20, 2008):
There have been misleading reports that Senator Obama voiced support for voucher programs in an interview with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers, and expressed his longstanding skepticism in that interview. Throughout his career, he has voted against voucher proposals and voiced concern for siphoning off resources from our public schools. . . . These misleading reports are particularly disturbing given that Senator Obama has laid out the most comprehensive education agenda of any candidate in this race — an agenda that does not include vouchers, in any shape or form.
The New York Sun offers wry comment, in a riff on the Obama campaign's theme:
The initial statement was change you can believe in. The follow-up message was the same old interest-group Democratic Party politics as usual. It was plainly designed to assuage the teachers’ unions, who are the enemies of change.
As we remember the life and prophetic witness for racial equality of Dr. Martin Luther King, and as we listen to the recent arguments in the presidential campaign about the role of Dr. King, it may be serendipitous that the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade comes only a day later.
Alveda King, the niece of Dr. King and a former member of the Georgia Legislature, is now a leading pro-life advocate. As she put in a talk to student at Valparaiso law school last September (more on her presentation here):
If her uncle were alive, he could not condone abortion, King said.
"He absolutely couldn't," she said. "How can the dream survive if we murder the children?"
Given the vital human importance of most of the subjects addressed on the Mirror of Justice — human flourishing in communities, war and treatment of captured combatants, the sanctity of life of the unborn, etc. — a posting about the fate of a family pet seems, well, trivial. As another poignant example of the inestimable worth of human thriving, we at the University of St. Thomas law school have been joining together in prayerful intercession, including a prayer service in the chapel when the new semester begins this coming Monday, on behalf of third-year law student Alisa Huttes, a beloved and valued member of our community, who is struggling (with hopeful signs of progress) to overcome grievous injuries inflicted in a New Year’s Eve car accident (her story and regular updates may be found at her Caring Bridge website). In light of all this, my family’s sadness about the serious illness of our cat must be placed in perspective and understood as having much diminished magnitude and moral significance.
But that doesn’t mean Simba’s situation is completely insignificant and entirely lacking in moral dimension or that the practical problem facing we Sisks as a family in making a decision about his future welfare can be avoided. Reading the recent posting here that cross-referenced a story about Pope Benedict’s heart for and personal care of stray and sometimes injured cats that wander into the Vatican, together with discussions in the past couple of days with colleagues about whether Catholic moral reasoning as applied to such a situation (which of course must be faced again and again by every family with a pet) emboldens me to post some musings about this subject.
Every pet-lover can bend your ear with stories about just how remarkable is their animal companion, going on and on, heedless of the state of boredom into which the kind listener is placed. Now, dear readers, it is your turn to be so afflicted. Simba is an orange (not really “yellow”, but “orange”) tabby cat, with seven toes on each foot, giving him nearly opposable thumbs on his forepaws. He was the neighborhood wanderer in our former home near Des Moines, Iowa, regularly being spotted miles away, running across many a busy street, and even strolling through the aisles of the local grocery store. The combined traits of being prone to roam and being unusually affectionate to every stranger should have used up his “seven lives” in short order. But Simba also had a wiliness about him that somehow kept him from serious harm. Around six years ago, Simba decided he wanted a new home at our house down the street from his original dwelling. I resisted with progressively less vigor, as I am allergic to cats. But Simba seemed to know which of us needed to be persuaded and thus he persistently bypassed the other members of our family with an unerring focus to jump up on my lap. He won me over in a big way, his original owners down the block were happy he had found a new home (as he had become restless at their house, not being overly enamored with their little dogs), and he became a member of our family.
Beginning around Christmas, Simba started to lose his feisty character, still appreciating love and attention but less likely to seek it out and preferring to find a hidey-hole somewhere. Then he started to lose weight dramatically, dropping from 12 to less than 9 pounds very quickly. Two trips to the veterinarian confirmed what I had feared. Simba has cancer, specifically lymphoma of the intestinal area to be precise (which is a very common end-stage condition for cats).
What then to do? Giving Simba a steroid tablet twice a day is inexpensive and simple (other than the adventure of having to force a cat’s mouth open to take a pill), but the improvement in health will be very temporary, likely affording him only a few weeks. Cats do respond well to chemotherapy and do not suffer the debilitating effects that accompany such a treatment for humans (see here). But even chemotherapy is relatively temporary in effect, generally extending a good quality of life for a cat by a few months. And it is rather expensive (thousands of dollars). Which then raises the moral, as well as practical, question: what to do?
The Catholic Church calls upon the faithful to treat animals with “kindness” (see Catechism ¶¶ 2416, 2457). The Catechism reminds us of “the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals” (Catechism ¶ 2416, a practice we see continued today in the Pope’s kindness toward stray cats at the Vatican. But we certainly may not regard animals as having anything approaching the same moral standing as human beings.
I do love Simba very much, and I sincerely believe he loves me as well. But my love for him is based not only on what I see as his unique personality for a cat, but also undoubtedly reflects a certain projection of my human nature toward him. By contrast, his love is limited by his nature as a cat, a nature he obviously cannot escape. I (and every other human being) was created in the image of God. A cat was not. (See Genesis 2:19-20; Catechism ¶ 2417.) Thus, while I of course would not hesitate to expend many, many thousands of dollars for medical treatment of a human family member, even if the prognosis was only fair and life expectancy was measured in months, I am troubled by the moral justification for doing the same for an animal.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church appears to speak rather directly to this situation and to the feelings I have expressed above:
It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or due needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons (Catechism ¶ 2418).
To be sure, I could justify this expenditure on chemotherapy as based not only on kindness for Simba but as not detracting from my charitable contributions for the benefit of humanity, through the mechanism of posing to the family that the choice is one between going on a summer vacation or providing chemotherapy to the cat. But is that not merely an exercise in sophistry? Would the net result still not be, at some level, a shifting of substantial resources from something directed to humanity to that of non-eternal creation? So why, then, do I feel as though I am betraying a member of the family by leaning against further treatment for Simba? Is this another example of how dangerous is the modern trend of making moral decisions based upon inherently flawed personal experiences and passionate emotions rather than on the deposit of faith to be found in the body of teachings of the Church? (And to prey upon your emotions, I post here a photo of Simba.)
Having segued from what began as a dialogue among Eduardo Peñalver (here and here), Rick Garnett (here and here), and I (here and here) about the virtues or vices of suburban growth through the poignant queries by Michael Scaperlanda (here and here) about whether the New Urbanism will be available primarily to the affluent into a very interesting (at least to me) discussion about whether a walkable human settlement should be understood as a moral imperative outlined by Professor Philip Bess (as kindly posted here by Rick Garnett), the various messages already posted below and linked above offer readers of the Mirror of Justice diverse perspectives on these questions. I will not directly continue those parts of the thread. I appreciate Professor Bess’s generosity of time and spirit in responding (here) to my last post (here), on which he as a well-spoken expert in the field deserves the last word.
In this post, I want to turn the discussion toward our actual experiences and what they may say about whether we truly do appreciate the Urban Transect or the walkable settlement as an ideal, much less a rule. Have the members of the virtual community on the Mirror of Justice been drawn toward communities that allow walking to work? Or instead have we accepted, or perhaps even preferred, the demographic pattern of post-World War II America which has seen a geographic separation between home and workplace?
While no one leaves the private practice of law for the legal academy to become wealthy, law professors certainly enjoy a higher level of income than the substantial majority of our fellow citizens. If there are economic obstacles to urban versus suburban living, we generally ought to be able to overcome those financial hurdles if we so choose (including choosing to make it a priority in our spending decisions). In any event, the question of the moment is not urban versus suburban (as urban dwelling does not necessarily, or even usually, bring people within a ten minute walk to the office), but rather walkable proximity to place of employment.
So I wonder what proportion (I know there are some) of our fellow bloggers live within a five- to ten-minute walk of their law school offices? And, among the law professoriate in general, what percentage do you suppose would be able to walk from home to law school within ten minutes? Of those who are able to make the commute on foot within ten minutes, how many have children who are still in the home (or, better-stated, not yet adults)? As a follow-up question, that may cut even closer to the quick, even among those who are able to walk to work in ten minutes, how many do so on a regular, rather than occasional, basis (defining regular as, say, at least two times a week in all seasons)? And, if not, why not?
Although I’ve lived in more or less urban settings throughout my adult life, I’ve never lived within a ten minute walk (or even a ten minute bus or subway ride) of any of my urban places of employment. However, I did grow up in small towns or cities, so I do have some personal experience with the walkable human settlement (at least in theory). For example, I graduated from high school in Dillon, Montana, where it was indeed possible to walk from one side of town to another in about fifteen, if not ten, minutes. Like most other kids, I did walk to school. But, while physically possible for most, few people walked to work. The elderly were least likely to be walking the streets and sidwalks. And none of us were trudging through the Montana snows to the grocery store in the winter, or lugging home bags of groceries along the sidewalks even during milder weather. Was it a “walkable settlement”? Yes. As a practical matter did people actually walk to most of the daily amenities of life? That's is not my recollection. Was human flourishing truly dependent on walking everywhere for everything, even when possible?
The old “Field of Dreams” line went that "if you build they will come." If we build the walkable human settlement, will most people come? And if they do, will they really walk? And does it really matter, on a moral level?
(I acknowledge that walkability may matter on the level of human health, as only the kindness of my co-bloggers has caused them thus far to resist remarking on how the roundness of my body shape suggests that I could do with more walking in my life. In that sense, the use of the term "exercise" in my title to this post may be more than a pun. I take some comfort in the fact that our Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, whose approach to natural law has been central to our prior discussions and whose particular views on cities were quoted by Rick earlier, was not known in his time to be svelte. While human health is part of flourishing and thus has a moral dimension, I think that factor alone cannot justify elevating living within walking proximity of one's place of work to a moral imperative.)
As part of our ongoing conversation about urban and suburban neighborhoods and land use development, Rick Garnett (post here) asked me for my evaluation of Notre Dame architecture Professor Philip Bess’s mongraph, titled “The Polis and Natural Law: The Moral Authority of the Urban Transect.” Professor Bess’s proposition is that the "Urban Transect" — which he defines as focused upon “mixed-use walkable settlements” — constitutes a fundamental natural law precept that is “valid for all human beings in all times and places” and thus the fostering of which is binding upon all as a matter of conscience.
I very much enjoyed Professor Bess’s engaging manuscript, finding much to praise (and learn from) in his explication of natural law in the Aristotelian and Thomist (Catholic) intellectual traditions, as well as admiring his clear and cogent descriptions of various patterns of housing developments. His engaging style and frequent use of illustrations (both visual and in words) convinced me that taking a course in architecture from Professor Bess would be a wonderful educational experience.
But, as Rick anticipated, I was not convinced by Professor Bess’s central thesis, or at least not so convinced as to accept that all persons of a well-formed Catholic conscience are required to bow before the "Urban Transect" as an infallible moral proposition.
So where, Rick asks me, has Professor Bess “gone wrong”? In my view, he goes astray in at least three ways:
First, Professor Bess overstates the virtues of high demographic density, while neglecting the potential underside of the union of all dimensions of human life in a single geographic setting. If “social isolation” is the danger of the modern suburb, then I submit that “social suffocation” is the risk of the cohesive urban core. Professor Bess touts the New Urbanism vision of being able “to work, shop, play, learn and worship in the same neighborhood.” I too see the appeal of that vision — most of the time.
But what some might see as a dream community, others might experience as a living nightmare. Not everyone may wish to see the boss and co-workers all day at the office, then again in the grocery aisle when picking up the fixings for dinner on the way home, still again at the school softball game that evening, and yet again over the back-yard fence that weekend. Not everyone may wish to encounter the same set of people, over and over again in every dimension of human life and every activity during the week, a never changing human tableau with the same faces and in the same places, day after day.
Most of us are enriched by living within a multiplicity of communities throughout the week. During the work day, we engage with our colleagues at our place of employment, working together as a team to achieve the goals of our collective labor. In the evening and on the weekends, we play and relax with our neighbors and other friends, simultaneously relating stories about what we separately experienced elsewhere in the larger metropolitan setting during the work week and being drawn together by our common interests in our families and neighborhood community. For parents of school-age children, we come together with other parents at the local or parish school, encouraging each other's children and celebrating their school achievements. On Sunday, we worship with our fellow parishioners, yet another community and one of deeply-shared meaning. The fact that, for most of us, these communities do not fold completely in on each other is not a curse, but a blessing.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Especially in my lonely moments (of which there seem to be more as I grow older), I do earnestly wish for that place where, in the words of the theme to Cheers, “everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” But does that yearning for community really demand a planned residential community in which every aspect of daily life is located within a few hundred yards, as Professor Bess suggests as an absolute moral command? I just don’t think so. Instead, the “mixed-use walkable settlement” strikes me as one viable option out of many, one that I find more appealing on some days than on others (or more attractive at some stages of my life than at others).
Second, Professor Bess’s vision, by insisting upon a pedestrian-centric approach to community development, is too narrow to be realistic and is largely incompatible with the modern world. Professor Bess defines the Urban Transect more narrowly than do some others in the New Urbanism movement, saying that it requires not only the ready availability of public transit but should be a fixed site in which all or most of daily life activities are located within a five- to ten-minute walk. In so doing, Professor Bess takes a historically-contingent demographic pattern dating to ancient times and anachronistically drops it into the modern world of dynamic economic and social arrangements.
The "walkable settlement" emerged in primitive times, in which by necessity the average person was born, lived, married, worked, reproduced, and died within a few square miles. The social cohesiveness contributed to an unavoidable insularity, in which people’s experiences were narrowly focused on their discrete set of neighbors and their understanding of the larger world was sadly limited. The high density “mixed-use walkable settlement” of the primitive and medieval worlds was one of social and economic stagnation.
By contrast, those places where human progress flourished and where economic advancement was ignited were the more cosmopolitan urban settings, in which the movement of people (and thus of ideas) was fluid and ever-changing, not tied down to a single geographic point or residential arrangement. Human progress has not been measured by how small is the span within which one can walk from hearth to workplace.
The primary reason that most Americans do not live within a five- to ten-minute walk from where they work is not the limited availability of affordable housing or the preferences of suburban zoning for single family dwellings (although such circumstances of course play a part). Rather, our residential developments reflect the positive economic reality of a dynamic and post-agrarian economy, in which specialization of products and services separates the work-place and the market from the residential neighborhood. In contrast with the “mixed-use walkable settlement” of the pre-modern agrarian society, in which the limited choice of goods and services available to the average person were produced in a small geographic area and sold in the village marketplace, the modern American economy offers a wealth of goods and services responsive to a national marketplace. The economic opportunities created by this market specialization, with its diversification of production and geographic locations, are manifold and multifold — including allowing more people than in prior generations to be devoted to such academic pursuits as writing about natural law and land-use planning.
Third, Professor Bess mistakenly translates a contested preference for a certain approach to community development into an absolute moral precept. In general, I am skeptical of any argument that presents a position on a political or social issue, not merely as an attempt to persuade others that the author’s vision is attractive or at least preferable to others, but as an absolute moral principle to which fealty is demanded by all persons of good conscience. I simply do not accept that the Sierra Club’s political platform for land use planning is grounded upon an infallible moral principle to which I as a Catholic must pledge allegiance, akin to my faithful acceptance of the the Immaculate Conception.
To be sure, Professor Bess does acknowledge that his pedestrian-centric Urban Transect proposition should be acted upon within the constraints of prudential judgment. But he leaves little to no room for such prudential judgment. Indeed, later in the monograph, he withdraws what he had earlier allowed, saying that “while there are surely occasions when prudential judgment warrants ambiguity rather than precision, this appears to me not to be one of them.” The complexities of modern life cannot, in my view, be so simplified into such a one-size-fits-all conception of community building as the equivalent of a moral command, excluding all other perspectives.
I acknowledge with appreciation and gratitude that thoughtful persons, frequently persons of faith, are taking steps to bring about a social revival of the central city. I imagine that Eduardo and Professor Bess, in different ways, are among those making a positive effort to arrest the social, educational, and governmental declines that have tarnished our cities, while working to improve the cultural climate in the cities that often is inhospitable to families.
As I said in my earlier posts (here and here), at the right stage in my life, I may again move to an urban setting that includes the advantages of community that the New Urbanism advocates. But I make no pledge to do so. Instead, I cherish the freedom the make the choice that is right for us when the time comes — and defend that same freedom for others. On this subject, as on others, I strongly believe that a conception of Catholic Social Thought that does not leave ample room for liberty is hollow, fails to connect with the inherent dignity of the human person, and will not resonate with the faithful.
