As we ponder Robert Araujo's question about the reponsibility to protect, I have another question. I just read a blog post of a friend of mine recounting a comment from a coworker to the effect that the cyclone that hit Myanmar was God "cleaning things out over there." What is it that prompts people to regard disaster or disease as God's punishment for being bad? We heard some people say it about the tsunami. We heard some people say it about 9/11. And, if you remember back to the early days of the AIDs epedemic, there was no shortage of people proclaiming that AIDS was God's way of punishing homosexuals. It all seems so inconsistent with my understanding of the God who loved us first and unconditionally (the subject of a blog post I coincidentally made earlier today) that I just don't get it.
Friday, May 9, 2008
God and Myanmar
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Improving the Return of Inmates to Society
I commented a couple of weeks ago, in response to a post by Michael P. about a NYT report regarding the prison population in the US, on the failure to provide sufficient assistance to released inmate to facilite their reintegration into society.
Two new Urban Institute reports discuss how more can be done to "improve the odds of inmates' successful return to society," through partnership between local jails and community organizations. Life after Lockup: Improving Reenty from Jail to Community examines concrete reenty steps and profiles a number of reetnry programs around the United States. The Jail Administrator's Toolkit for Reentry "is a handbook on such issues as assessment of inmates' needs, identifying community resources, educating the public, and measuring success." The news release accompanying the reports observes that in an average 3-week period, local jails have contact with as many people as state and federal prisons do in an entire year, creating great potential for their assistance in the transition from incarceration to society.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
On Teresa Collett's Response to Doug Kmiec
Michael posted the response of my friend and colleague, Teresa Collett, to Doug Kmiec's discussion of his endorsement of Senator Obama. Although I do not necessarily share Teresa's views on the extent of power a President can exercise over abortion, I concede that there is a large range of possible views on that issue. But that is not what I want to focus on.
What prompts my response is the last several lines of Teresa's post. She quotes the statement of the United States Bishops that a vote by a Catholic for a candidate taking a position in favor of abortion, if the voter's intent is to support that position, would make a Catholic guilty of cooperation in grave evil. She then concludes, "I fail to see adequate counterveiling moral considerations that would suggest that a vote for Senator Obama is anything other than a vote for continued judicial protection of abortion."
If Teresa is merely conveying her own consideration of the candidates, a consideration that leads her to conclude that she can not find sufficient counterveiling considerations that would allow her to cast a vote for Obama notwithstanding his position on abortion, I have no quarrel with her. If, however, she intends to express by her comment that anyone voting for Obama must be doing so with the intent of supporting continued judicial protection of abortion, I take great exception to that conclusion.
The statement of the Bishop's cited by Teresa also makes clear that "a voter should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity." As various discussion lines on this blog have suggested, there are a number of other issues involving human life and dignity that are important to consider as we reflect who we should elect as President. I accept that people will come to different conclusions about whether those issues are sufficiently "morally grave" to allow "a Catholic who rejects a candidates's unacceptable position [to] decide to vote for that candidate" (again quoting the Bishop's statement). I, however, do not accept any suggestion that a good Catholic cannot come to the conclusion that he or she can vote for Obama in good conscience and I do not read the Bishop's statement as conveying that conclusion. Rather, I believe there are sufficient counterveiling considerations tht would allow someone to decide to vote for Obama despite (and without intending to support) Obama's position on abortion.
Monday, May 5, 2008
What Does it Mean to be Poor?
It is hard for those of us with sufficient funds to meet our basic (and not so basic) needs to appreciate what it is like to live in poverty. "Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house." "Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent reman because that's two extra packages for every dollar." "Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually lazy." "Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so."
These are quotes taken from the flyer for the 2007 Poverty Challenge currently underway in Buffalo, NY, sponsored by the Homeless Alliance of Greater Buffalo. The challenge is to live for several days on a poverty line budget. For as single person, that means $9.25/day after factoring in housing (based on the cost of housing in Buffalo) and the cost of clothing, before reductions for costs such as transportation. Even without such deductions, living on $9.25/day is no easy task. The challenge also invites people to think about the perceptions they have heard about those who are poor and to reconsider those perceptions based on their experience.
This is not an exercise in "playing poor," but rather is an effort to help people understand "how poverty affects the day-to-day life” of so many people. The hope is that if people "learn what it means [they will] demand that it ends."
The website for the Homeless Alliance contains both the flyer and the guide to the challenge. A news article talking about the challenge can be found here.
UPDATE: Prompted by the Homeless Alliance challenge literature, this morning I posted some further reflections on how we see the poor here.
Rights in Catholic Social Thought
Vox Nova has a post today discussing of the difference between the concept of rights in Catholic thought and the concept of rights in American political discourse. The difference largly is a function of the extent to which Catholic thougth views the common good as limiting and defining rights, something "incomprehensible" from the secular perspective, which wonders what is the purpose of a right if it is limited by the common good.
"The answer, I think, lies in the differnt role that rights play in Catholic Social Thought. Rights, in Catholic Social teaching, serve as a means of orienting our thinking about questions of social policy. To say, in Catholic Social Thought, that something is a right is to say that it is a constitutive element of the Common Good." So, for example, when the Church declares that there is a right to basic health care, what She is saying is that access to basic health care is one of the conditions of social life which allows access to human flourishing and fulfillment, and that achieving that right should be a central goal of social policy. At the same time, however, this right is not seen as absolute, and may have to give way to other, equally pressing elements of the Common Good."
I think this accurately describes how the common good may limit rights from a Catholic perspective (although it is hard for me to imaging what pressing element of the common good would force us to abandon the right to basic health care), but I'm less sure whether I think this adequately explains the difference between rights from a Catholic perspecitve and rights from a secular perspective (which, are not absolute either).
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Strain of Health Care Costs
I've expressed concern about access to health care both here and elsewhere in my writing. As an article in today's New York Times discusses, the problem is not simply that the number of those completely with health insurance is growing. Even those with insurance are finding that they cannot afford the increasing amounts they are being asked to pay for coverage. The combination of higher premiums and larger deductibles and co-payments are forcing increasing numbers to go without necessary care. And when they do receive care, many are finding that all of their expenses are not being covered by plans that have less coverage than they used to. "Experts say that too often for the underinsured, coverage can seem like health insurance in name only - adequate only as long as they have no medical problems."
It is hard to fault employers for demanding that employees pick up more of the costs of their care, especially small employers whose "insurance premiums tend to be proportionately higher than ones paid by large employers, becuase small companies have little bargaining clout with insurers." But all employers are feeling the strain of increased competitive pressures and a weak economy.
In his encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII identified health care as among the basic rights that flow from the dignity of the human person. In his address to the 34th General Assembly of the United Nations, Pope John Paul II included as among the human rights endorsed by the Catholic Church "the right to food, clothing, housing [and] sufficient health care."
We need to be giving much more serious consideration than we are to the question of how to provide this basic need to all persons. Among other things, that requires coming up with some viable means of cutting health care costs. I've seen far too little discussion of how this can be accomplished in the sound bites we are getting on the health care plans offered by the Presidential candidates.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Ascension Thursday
Although some ecclesiastical provinces have moved the celebration of Ascension to Sunday, today is the day on which we traditionally celebrate the Ascention of the Lord. As I reflect at greater length here, the day is not simply the remembrance of the historical event of Jesus' ascension. Rather, it is a reminder for us of our commissioning by Jesus to proclaim the Gospel to all nations, to be the Body of Christ to the world.
Monday, April 28, 2008
More on China and Human Rights
My colleague Elizabeth Brown sent me the following comment regarding Rick and my posts (here and here) on human rights issues in China:
"When I was in Bhutan in 2002 and in China in 2006, I was told that China's solution to its minorities was to flood them with Han Chinese. I was told that Tibet cannot escape China's grasp because too many Han Chinese have been given incentives to move into Tibet. Tibet is no longer Tibet, any more than South Dakota is Lakota. This was certainly true in western China where the native Uighurs have been inundated with Han Chinese who are given the best jobs and substantial incentives to relocate.
"China has been creating a Potemkin Village in Beijing to put on a good face for the 2008 Olympics. One problem that they can't hide is their horrendous environmental pollution. You can almost eat the air in Beijing. I would not want to be a track and field athlete at the 2008 games.
"Engagement must mean something more than letting China get away with murder (or significant human rights violations) just because American companies are entranced with the possibility with selling to 1 billion plus Chinese. Most of what American companies produce in China is sold outside the country, not in it. Global trade is more of a mixed blessing than most free market conservatives are willing to admit."
China and Human Rights Violations
I'm with Rick in applauding H. Res. 821. However, at the end of his post, Rick suggests that engagement may be a better course than condemnation.
The problem with that is we have had years of engagement with little positive effect. China pledged when it was bidding to host the 2008 Olympics was that it would improve human rights. It clearly has not made good on that promise. Indeed, as the House findings suggest, things have gotten worse there. China's big achievement (although this was prior to its most recent crackdown on Tibetan dissidents) was that is was dropped from the list of the 10 most egregious human rights violators, which simply says it is not quite as bad as places like Myanmar and the Sudan. That's not much to brag about.
I'm not sure I think boycotting the Olympics is that best course of action, although I think the decision to allow China to host the Olympics was a bad one. I admit to being less than unbiased on this subject; the time I spent living in Tibetan communities has made me somwhat sensitive to China's treatment of the Tibetans in particular. But, from any standpoint, I think it hard to come to a conclusion other than that the engagement strategy has been a failure.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Addressing Poverty
John MCCain is assuredly right that Government Isn't Poverty's Sole Solution. Although I don't know if this is quite what he had in mind, a video titled, What is Poverty, contains some important insights about how we think about the problem of poverty and therefore how to think about addressing it. The video can be viewed here and is also available for purchase through Work of the People.
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