Articles by Russell Shaw
The crisis of community
Jul 27, 2012 / 00:00 amIn recent years social critics like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and Charles Murray (Coming Apart) have documented and deplored a decline of community among Americans. It’s a development that affects churches along with other institutions of civil society.But “decline of community” is an abstraction and hardly self-explanatory. A story told by a man I know offers a concrete illustration:“My wife and I have lived for many years in a nice, quiet neighborhood inhabited by nice, quiet people. In many ways, we’re very happy. But as time passes, I become increasingly aware that everything isn’t as it should be.“Let me tell you about the Smiths – not their real name, of course. They lived here almost as long as we have, and they’re nice, quiet people too. A few weeks ago, my wife phoned their house hoping to chat with Mrs. Smith. Mr. Smith answered.“'Betty is out,' he told my wife, ‘and I can’t talk now. I’m packing.’“'You’re taking a trip?’“’We sold the house to our daughter and her husband. We’re moving.’ It turned out that they were going to a gated townhouse section several blocks away. The movers would be coming in two days.“I was flabbergasted when my wife told me. As I mentioned, the Smiths had lived near us for many years. We weren’t particularly close friends, but our daughters had babysat their kids, and they were the only churchgoing Catholics in the vicinity besides ourselves. Yet here they were, all set to move, and they’d have gone without a word if my wife hadn’t happened to call.“Now that, frankly, is what I call weird. Yet as I think about it, it’s also typical of life in our neighborhood. People here are strangers who happen to live near one another. In all the years we’ve been here, only one person – one! – has been truly friendly, really behaved as you might expect a neighbor to do. That was a woman who lived across the street from us, and she, I’m sorry to say, moved into a retirement home several years ago. Now it’s entirely a neighborhood of nice, quiet strangers.”And that, I suspect, is the “decline of community” in one isolated but perhaps not atypical case.To some extent, it may be a regional phenomenon. I suspect there are other parts of the country – perhaps even other parts of the city where the man who shared this story lives – where neighborliness and community can still be found. But if the Putnams and the Murrays are right, there are other places where they can’t.Is that really so bad? Writing in “The Weekly Standard,” author Gertrude Himmelfarb maintains that it is. “Individuals are increasingly removed from the traditional networks of ‘civic engagement’ – family, friends, professional organizations, and other associations. This erosion of civil society results in a decline of ‘social capital,’ which bodes ill for democracy at home and for democratization abroad.”And also for religion. Himmelfarb notes the problem this poses for “traditional denominational, neighborhood, family-centered churches.” The churches currently doing well in America, she observes, are megachurches where thousands gather to hear charismatic preachers and small, non-denominational “spiritual” churches “unstable in doctrine as in membership.”In theory, a Catholic parish, understood as the locus of a eucharistic community, holds the key to a solution. But in practice? There are lively, vibrant parishes that are true communities. There are others that are not. We need to know a lot more than we do about what makes the difference.
The Vatican's real communication problem
Jul 13, 2012 / 00:00 am“Smart move.” That’s how many loyal Catholics reacted to the announcement that the Vatican had hired a veteran American newsman as a consultant to grapple with its communication problems. In many respects, the reaction was correct. As an experienced professional with Fox News and Time, and a serious Catholic, Greg Burke is an excellent choice for a tough assignment. (Disclosure: he’s also an old friend.) But the question remains: Will he be permitted to do the job? Neither Burke nor anyone else can be of much help to the Roman Curia unless it’s open to being helped.Goodness knows the Vatican needs PR assistance. Recent disasters have included an embarrassing series of leaked documents, seemingly evidence of serious conflict within the Curia (the Pope’s butler is said to have purloined the documents but few believe that he’s the only one involved); the unceremonious sacking of the Vatican bank head amid a jarring torrent of personal abuse; and fumbled communication about apparently snarled negotiations with the Lebebvrist Society of St. Pius X.But this is just the tip of the iceberg. As anyone even casually familiar with the situation realizes, the underlying problems in Rome go deeper and have existed for years.Burke is eminently well qualified to tell his new employers what the problems are and what should be done. What isn’t so clear is whether they’ll listen and act.During three decades spent directing public relations at the national and international levels for several Catholic organizations including the American bishops’ conference, I found that people at the top not infrequently imagine that good public relations is a matter of technique. Push a couple of buttons, do a little tweaking here and there, and behold—your previously tarnished image will glow.Good technique is certainly important in communication, but seldom are problems like the Vatican’s only or mainly failures of technique. Instead they’re problems of attitude and philosophy. In the case of the Vatican, the difficulties tend to be the bitter fruit of an entrenched clericalist culture linked to a similarly entrenched reliance on secrecy as a routine management tool. The result is a counterproductive approach to communication and media that lies far beyond correction simply by tweaking and technique.Often, too, communication problems get blamed on the media: “The journalists are out to get us.” In fact, some reporters really are hostile to the Church, as are some news organizations. But most professional journalists, including many personally at odds with Catholic views, want only to do a good job according to the standards of their profession, which means getting facts straight and correctly explaining what they mean. Where these men and woman are concerned, the explanation that “They’re out to get us” is neither fair nor helpful. It’s a non-explanation that impedes solutions instead of encouraging them.All that said, it must be added that there are many good, dedicated people in the Vatican. One can only imagine how badly they—to say nothing of Pope Benedict himself—have been hurt by the recent shenanigans. A serious effort to understand the underlying causes of what’s happened as well as the more immediate ones would be a service to them as well as to the rest of the Church.Greg Burke has what it takes to give the Curia good advice. But the problems run deep, and for Burke’s expertise to matter, he needs total, unflinching support from the top—from the Pope himself. Unless it’s forthcoming (and here’s hoping it is) don’t look for much improvement.
The 'Catholic sensibility' of George W. Bush
Jun 29, 2012 / 00:00 amDoes George W. Bush have a “Catholic sensibility?” Tim Goeglein thinks so, and he’s better situated than most people to know. For seven-and-a-half years Goeglein was deputy director of the public liaison office of the Bush White House, with frequent opportunities to observe the president up close.The results can be seen in his memoir “The Man in the Middle” (B&H Books) – a volume that might be called “Bush and I.” When revisionist historians come to the Bush presidency, Goeglein’s admiring portrait will need to be taken into account.Bush left office in January 2009 on the crest of a tsunami of unpopularity. Two grinding wars, a botched response to Hurricane Katrina, an ill-timed tax cut, soaring deficits, and a deep recession were viewed as his legacy.In his new book “Bad Religion,” (Free Press) Ross Douthat, a conservative Catholic columnist for The New York Times, maintains that Bush administration mis-steps combined with the president’s own very visible religiousness damaged the Evangelical cause through a kind of guilt by association.But in Goeglein’s eyes Bush could do no wrong. “Despite [the critics’] venal attacks on his integrity,” he writes, “George W. Bush is in fact a man with a great soul whose internal moral compass made him a gifted leader.”Leaving aside policy issues, Bush really does emerge in these pages as a decent man of strong religious faith. Goeglein, deeply religious himself, was at home in a White House where – in striking contrast with today – the boss often prayed in public and wore his Evangelical faith on his sleeve.What Goeglein calls Bush’s “Catholic sensibility” may have to do with his relationship with Pope John Paul II. Pope and president met three times, and the experience seems to have made a deep impression on Bush. Says Goeglein: “His personal regard for John Paul II was probably higher than for any other world leader of the Bush presidency, their worldviews rooted deeply in the ancient faith that was the lifeblood of each.”The author sees John Paul’s persuasive powers at work in Bush’s policy on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Bush limited it to already existing cell lines rather than allowing for new ones created by destroying human embryos. That cautious approach was discarded by President Obama.Goeglein acknowledges “serious concerns and differences” between the White House and the Vatican over Iraq. But he doesn’t mention that on the eve of the U.S. invasion John Paul took the unusual step of sending Cardinal Pio Laghi, former papal nuncio, to America, to Washington to try to talk President Bush out of war.The episode that opens “Man in the Middle” may also shed light on Bush’s Catholic sensibility since it concerns his capacity for extending forgiveness – in this case, to Goeglein. Well into his White House years, it came to light that Goeglein had plagiarized material for columns he wrote for his hometown paper back in Indiana. As Washington scandals go, this was small potatoes, but Goeglein bit the bullet and resigned.Summoned to the Oval Office for what he supposed would be a terminal chewing-out, he got a “miracle” instead. “Tim,” said the president, who years before had kicked a drinking habit, “I have known mercy and grace in my own life, and I am offering it to you now. You are forgiven.”This was George Bush at his best. It’s easy to see why Goeglein admires him. How those revisionist historians will view him in the future will be for them to decide.
Political partisanship
Jun 15, 2012 / 00:00 amA prominent Republican congressman, a Catholic, says his economic proposals reflect the social doctrine of the Church. Statements from the bishops’ conference dispute that, and some faculty at Georgetown University tell the congressman he isn’t welcome there. (They aren’t known to have objected when, several weeks later, Kathleen Sebelius of ‘HHS mandate’ fame spoke at a Georgetown commencement event.)The Bishop of Peoria, Ill. likens policies of the Obama administration to the anti-religious stance of the Hitler and Stalin regimes. Some faculty at Notre Dame urge the Bishop to resign as a university trustee for having said so dreadful a thing. (They aren’t known to have objected three years ago when Notre Dame gave Barack Obama an honorary degree despite his pro-abortion views.)Disturbing? Disconcerting? Symptoms of division in the nation and the Church? As a matter of fact, yes. But let’s not exaggerate. This is how Catholics, like other Americans, typically carry on in an election year. Nearly two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville captured the messy reality of an American election in these words: “The election becomes the greatest and, as it were, the only matter which occupies people’s minds. Then political factions redouble their enthusiasm, every possible phony passion that the imagination can conceive … comes out into the light of day.”If you think things have been bad lately, count on it – they’ll get worse before November. Count also on Catholics to do their share of bashing one another along the way.Against this background, exhortations to civility have become a pious cliché of political discourse. Civility is good, but for people who profess to be members of the Catholic Church, fairness and even – heaven help us! – charity would be better. To that end, here are a couple of suggestions.For one thing, it would be helpful if Catholics with partisan political commitments stopped accusing the bishops of partisanship whenever they speak up strongly against some Obama policy. It isn’t the bishops’ doing that the Democratic party officially supports legalized abortion and the Republican party officially opposes it. No Catholic prelate twisted President Obama’s arm to get him to support gay marriage. To put it bluntly, allegations of episcopal partisanship are a red herring in this context. Among other things, the charge ignores the fact that bishops have an obligation to do their jobs as moral teachers, with the political chips falling where they may. Declaring the wrongness of abortion and upholding traditional marriage are unavoidably large parts of what that entails. But anyone who claims these are the only things bishops talk about obviously hasn’t been paying attention and doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.Nor is it reasonable to accuse bishops of picking on the Obama administration by putting up a fight against its plan to force Catholic institutions to cover contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients under Obamacare. This, remember, was the administration’s idea, not the bishops’. Did Catholic critics expect the Church to roll over and play dead? It would be well, too, if people professionally engaged in applying principles of Catholic social doctrine to complex issues weren’t too quick about judging others. In the case of the Catholic congressman mentioned above, Paul Ryan, his approach may or may not be right – and those who think he’s wrong are free to say so. But a Catholic legislator attempting to be faithful to the Church in an area where the correct application of principles isn’t so clear deserves some slack. Too much to hope for in an election year? Tocqueville would probably say yes.
Court nominations
Jun 4, 2012 / 00:00 amWith the exception of Bush v. Gore, which in effect confirmed George W. Bush’s victory in the 2000 presidential election, it would be hard to think of another recent Supreme Court case that’s been the occasion of as much advance tugging and pulling from outside sources as the court’s anticipated ruling on Obamacare. The decision is expected before the justices quit for the summer late in June.Even Barack Obama lost his presidential cool and indulged in a burst of preemptive huffing and puffing aimed at activist judges who might be so bold as to undo his ambitious scheme for overhauling the nation’s health care system. In April the president said overturning a law enacted by “a democratically elected Congress” would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step.”As critics were quick to point out, the court has taken precisely that unprecedented step many times since 1803, when Marbury v. Madison affirmed its constitutional right to review and, if necessary, strike down laws passed by democratically elected congresses. Obama wisely moderated his rhetoric next day.Others didn’t. The New York Times, for one. Looking ahead, as Obama had, to a hypothetical overturning of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the newspaper claimed that “the court will mark itself as driven by politics” if Obamacare is overturned by “five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors.” The Times was hardly alone in milking this line.I make no prediction about what the Supreme Court will do or why it will do it or what the vote will be. Similarly unpredictable is the decision’s impact on the “HHS mandate” requiring health coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations and on the suits brought against it in May by 43 Catholic institutions including 13 dioceses, Notre Dame, and the Catholic University of America. At present I’m merely raising an obvious here-and-now question: To what end this torrent of before-the-fact indignation and anxiety? Aren’t Supreme Court justices supposed to be immune to external attempts to coax them or coerce them? Well, yes. But justices are human, and hardly anyone imagines that they possess a superhuman capacity for ignoring outside pressure. Individuals and interest groups who want the court to rule one way or another—on Obamacare or anything else—may very well reason that at least there’s no harm trying. This episode also underlines an easily overlooked matter with considerable bearing on the presidential campaign, whether Barack Obama and Mitt Romney say so or not. Presidents nominate new justices to the Supreme Court when vacancies occur. And it’s entirely possible that whoever occupies the Oval Office in the next four years will get to do that one or more times.President Obama already has succeeded in placing two reliably liberal votes on the court in the persons of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. There is not the shadow of a doubt that, presented with the opportunity, he will add a couple more. Given the current lineup of the court (roughly, 4-4-1, with Anthony Kennedy the crucial swing vote), and supposing it’s Kennedy or one of the conservatives who leaves, that would put the outcome of those 5-4 decisions in the hands of the liberal bloc.Mitt Romney is something of a question mark, but it’s reasonable to think his selections would be well to the right of Obama’s. With cases on the federal Defense of Marriage Act and same-sex marriage heading to the court and tests of state laws restricting abortion probably close behind, the difference could be huge.
Truth, not words, will win the marriage debate
May 18, 2012 / 00:00 amPresident Obama’s announcement that he supports same-sex marriage underlines the urgent need for the Church to launch a massive new program to educate Catholics on the nature of sacramental marriage and on the vast difference between a marriage like that and civil marriage.The Church should also continue to participate in the debate about same-sex marriage—a voice of reason patiently explaining why a union between two persons of the same sex shouldn’t be recognized as a civil marriage. But face it—the Church is only one voice in this discussion, and it can’t decide the outcome unilaterally.It’s different with sacramental marriage. The Church is custodian and steward of the sacraments, including the sacrament of matrimony. As such, it has a right and duty to defend and explain them. Today, defense and explanation are both urgently needed in the case of matrimony.Without realizing it, Obama showed why that’s so in declaring his switch on gay marriage. Apparently meaning to signal empathy with people who uphold a traditional view, he noted that the word marriage matters a great deal to those who resist its use for anything other than a relationship between a man and woman.And there is the problem in a nutshell. For the president, the same-sex marriage debate comes down to an argument about words. But words are malleable—their meanings can and do change—and a wordsmith like Obama is good at manipulating them to serve his purposes. So what’s the difference if “marriage” up to now has always meant a man-woman relationship? Starting tomorrow, we’ll also use the term for man-man and woman-woman relationships. It’s all just words.But the debate about same-sex marriage is not an argument about words. It is a debate about the fundamental core meaning of marriage—a meaning that isn’t even touched, much less changed, by playing games with words.If that is true of civil marriage, though (and it is), it’s infinitely more true in the case of sacramental marriage. St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (chapter 5, verses 21-33) likens the relationship of husband and wife in matrimony to the relationship of Christ to the Church (“This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church”). For centuries, the Christian tradition has seen here the foundation of its belief in the sacramentality of Christian marriage. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, reflecting that, speaks of “an efficacious sign, the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church” (CCC 1617).From this perspective, the very notion of a same-sex union somehow being a “sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church” borders on blasphemy.But for whatever reason or combination of reasons, the deeply moving reality of sacramental marriage isn’t getting through to large numbers of Catholics today. That is painfully apparent from the fact that fewer and fewer of them are bothering to marry “in the Church”—that’s to say, by entering into the sacrament of matrimony. There were 334,000 Catholic marriages in America in 1990, compared with only 179,000 in 2010. The confusion and ignorance those numbers reflect only worsen when the president of the United States suggests the meaning of marriage is just a matter of words.I have no idea where the gay marriage debate is headed or what role it will play in the November elections. But independently of all that, the Church needs to get cracking on the indispensable task of telling today’s Catholics what a sacramental marriage is.
Diversity or assimilation?
May 3, 2012 / 00:00 amI was nearing the close of Pat Buchanan’s new book, “Suicide of a Superpower” (St. Martin’s Press) when I read that MSNBC had fired him as a political commentator for expressing views offensive to political correctness as practiced at that left-leaning network. (“Left-leaning” as applied to MSNBC comes from the Los Angeles Times, which is well situated to know a left-leaning news operation when it sees one.)The conservative Buchanan cited “Suicide of a Superpower” as the occasion for his heave-ho by MSNBC. If this book is actually did do him in, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. It’s hard to imagine anybody agreeing with everything it says, and many will come away from it hopping mad. But matter for firing? Only in a setting where thinking unpopular thoughts is not allowed.Buchanan is blunt on topics where others tread lightly or not at all. But bluntness is the only honest approach to his central theme: America’s ideologically-driven craze for diversity has gotten out of hand and is well on its way to doing us in. (In a book I haven’t read, “Coming Apart,” Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute makes a similar argument but, unlike Buchanan, deliberately omits race and immigration from his analysis.)“Racially, culturally, ethnically, politically, America is disintegrating,” Buchanan writes. Ever since the cultural revolution of the 1960s, Americans have been losing their shared sense of identity as a nation.“Out of one we have become many,” he says. In tackling tough issues like race, immigration, and the wisdom of continuing international commitments left over from cold war days, “Suicide of a Superpower” says plenty to raise heckles. Even more annoying, the author bolsters what he says with facts and coherent arguments. That includes making the case that unchecked immigration presents a grave national problem whose ducking by Congress and the White House reflects the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of political Washington. But has he got the story straight about Hispanics? Recently-arrived Latinos may be at the same early stage of assimilation that groups like the Irish, the Jews, and the Italians occupied a long time ago. Entry into an alien culture is bound to be a bumpy road—for the Spanish-speakers as it was for them. Give the Latinos time. The results could turn out more happily than Buchanan imagines.The author, a Catholic, devotes a chapter to the Church, saying no institution in America has been more “ravaged” than it by cultural changes of the last half-century. Now, he says, Catholicism in the United States must “necessarily (be) an adversary culture” in order to survive. The assimilation of American Catholics has already gone disastrously far. Much farther, and American Catholicism will be finished as a viable cultural force.That, however, underlines another problem—in the real world and also in this book. Buchanan seeks a solution to disruptive diversity in the seamless assimilation of diverse groups into a unitary American culture. In other words: bring back the melting pot. Yet, as he’s well aware, American secular culture in its contemporary manifestation is far from being the basically healthy thing that it was back in melting pot days. On the contrary, it’s degraded and destructive, as a few hours spent watching television or reading The New York Times should persuade any sensible person.What to do? Diversity or assimilation? Or some yet-to-be discovered third way that combines elements of counter-culturalism and new evangelization? That’s worth another book. Maybe, without MSNBC on his hands, Buchanan will have time to write it.
The Pope at 85
Apr 20, 2012 / 00:00 amNearing his 85th birthday April 16 and, three days later, the seventh anniversary of his election to the throne of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI—even after so many years—apparently remained something of an enigma for many people. A small but telling incident before Easter may hold a key to understanding this unusual man.In case you missed it, here’s what happened:Preaching at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday, Benedict spoke with regret of “a group of priests from a European country” who’d issued “a summons to disobedience” even to “definitive” Church teaching. That was a reference to a group of several hundred Austrian priests who’ve given their dissent the provocative name “Call To Disobedience.”Benedict said he wishes to believe these men desire Church renewal. But, he asked, is this how to get it “or do we merely sense a desperate push to do something to change the Church in accordance with one’s own preferences and ideas?”Contacted for reaction by the Associated Press, a leader of the group greeted the papal remarks dismissively. Although “listening with interest,” said Monsignor Helmut Schuller, he took the words only as questions, not an invitation to halt and desist.From the start, it’s often been that way for Benedict XVI. Almost his first act after becoming pope was to meet with Father Hans Kung, the Church’s most prominent dissenter and a bitter personal critic of the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Benedict was his usual gentle, cordial self. Father Kung apparently was friendly, but he hasn’t budged an inch since then.A Catholic woman I know sums up what others feel about this pope: “Back when he was in charge of Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, all we heard was what an ogre he was. Then he’s elected pope, and he turns out to be a kindly, loving man. Instead of an ogre, he’s a universal grandfather.”That has several explanations. The difference between the job descriptions of pope and Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith prefect accounts for part of the perceived transformation, from the Ratzinger that was to the Benedict that is. Part of it also lies in his enemies’ campaign to discredit the Ratzinger name during his Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith years. But something else also is operative. As pope, Benedict is highly sensitive to the pastoral dimensions of his ministry. Crackdowns are few and far between. Like the professor he is at heart, he speaks the truth of the gospel as he sees it--clearly, persuasively, with entire sincerity—hoping listeners will respond in like manner.Attractive, yes, but how practical is another matter. So far, the results aren’t highly encouraging, whether it’s dissident priests in Austria or an ultra-traditionalist group like the Lefebvrist Society of St. Pius X, which Benedict has sought for years, without much success, to coax back into full communion with the Church. (As this is written, there are reports that Rome and the SSPX may be close to agreement. If so, it’s a tribute to Benedict’s forbearance.)For a man of lesser faith, the disappointments and rebuffs would be discouraging. But Pope Benedict at 85 plainly has his eye on the future. The projects he’s pushing these days—the New Evangelization, the Year of Faith—are aimed at the long term renewal of the Church, and it’s hardly likely he’ll be around to see it happen. But so what? In God’s providence, all will be well in the end. Do you doubt it? Universal grandfathers don’t.
Converting the culture
Apr 11, 2012 / 00:00 am“Social issues.” It’s a squishy, equivocal term suited to a mentality ill at ease with the hard-edged implications of “moral issues” and “morality.” What implications? That there are definite moral truths that show some things to be always and everywhere wrong and deserving of condemnation. Not what the “social issues” mindset cares to hear.There’s some helpful thinking on this subject in a new book by an archbishop that I want to recommend. But before getting to that, let me do a little scene-setting.Much of the debate about social issues, moral truth, and the like has focused so far in this election year on Rick Santorum and his run for the Republican presidential nomination. Think what you will about Santorum’s candidacy, he stirred up a hornets’ nest. A typical reaction from the secular left comes from a Washington Post columnist named Lisa Miller, who, in a state of extreme exasperation, delivered this wisdom:"'You can’t go home again,' Thomas Wolfe said. Modernity is here, with all its progress and imperfections, and no matter how hard they pray, Santorum and his flock will never be able to turn back time."Leaving aside the appositeness of using the title of a novel published 72 years ago to argue that there’s no looking back, Ms. Miller has a point. It’s the point typically made by liberal pundits who wish to tell us their particular take on modernity is the only correct one—and if you don’t like it, lump it.But there’s a different way of thinking. Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, gave it an ironic twist when he said, “Truth is like a threshing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the way.” Note that bothersome word: truth.The quote is the lead-in to A Heart on Fire: Catholic Witness and the Next America, a new e-book by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. (Published by Image Books, it’s available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.) This is a feisty manifesto by an admired leader of the Church.One of its surprises is the recovery of largely forgotten essay by Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Construction of a Christian Culture,” based on lectures delivered in 1940. Father Murray is usually recalled a kind of precursor of progressive Catholicism for his advocacy of religious liberty against Church conservatives. Here, though, he’s saying something very different: “American culture … is actually the quintessence of all that is decadent in the culture of the Western Christian world.”“It’s most striking characteristic,” he writes, “is its profound materialism … It has gained a continent and lost its own soul.”And this, Archbishop Chaput pointedly remarks, is the “American mainstream” of which all too many American Catholics have rushed to become part in the decades since John Courtney Murray wrote. During this time, the dominant American culture has turned from secular to secularist, while efficiently secularizing its adherents, Catholics included. “Instead of Catholics converting the culture,” the archbishop laments, “the culture too often bleached out the apostolic zeal in Catholics while leaving the brand label intact.” Here’s the triumph of Ms. Miller’s “modernity …with all its progress and imperfections” that writers like her tell us to accept, no questions allowed. Archbishop Chaput doesn’t buy it. And if American Catholics do buy it, he warns—as very many have—then Catholicism is finished as a significant cultural factor in the debate on moral values and much else.Catholics have important choices to make about the future of the Church. A Heart on Fire can help us make them.
Contraception or religious freedom?
Mar 12, 2012 / 00:00 amIn determining to fight President Obama’s famous—or should I say infamous?—contraception mandate, the American bishops, I suspect, were devoutly hoping two things would not happen. The first undesired outcome was that the issue would become politicized. The second was that it would be seen as an argument over contraception itself. Predictably perhaps, both have occurred, at least to some degree. Politicization has taken place, as almost certainly was bound to happen, with the division breaking down along familiar liberal-conservative lines within both the Church and the political world. And contraception as an issue of women’s rights has come to the fore in numerous ideologically skewed claims regarding what this fight is all about. These unfortunate developments hugely complicate the task of remedying the situation created by the administration’s decision to co-opt religious institutions as part of a federal system for distributing contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs via Obamacare. A remedy is still possible, but something that was never easy has been made difficult in the extreme. President Obama’s much ballyhooed “accommodation” of the bishops’ objections—an approach that doesn’t even exist as a detailed and discussable plan up to now—leaves untouched the essence of the system that’s envisaged as well as the ethical problem. Its genius lies in bringing back those liberals—including Catholics—who’d been disposed to concede that the bishops had a point. The president tossed stardust in their eyes and they’ve fallen obediently in line. But—to repeat—the accommodation would change nothing of importance. Church-run schools, charities, and hospitals would remain locked in place as components of a delivery system to which the Church has profound moral objections. The violation of First Amendment religious liberty rights is palpable and real. And it’s religious liberty, not contraception, that’s been the focus of the bishops’ pleas for relief from the start.Hence the genius of the second shift, apparently engineered by the White House with the connivance of the media and the abortion-birth control industry—to transfer the focus of the argument from religious liberty (they lose) to contraception (the bishops lose). The faithful toeing of this line by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), former Speaker of the House, reached absurd new heights when she accused the hierarchy of “want(ing) the federal government and private insurance to enforce” a contraception ban. In fact, the bishops deserve congratulations for their handling of this crisis up to now. With few exceptions, their published comments, while reflecting understandable aggravation at duplicitous maneuvers by the president and his team in promising one thing and delivering something else, have been temperate and reasoned. That stands in healthy contrast to the longtime partisans who’ve taken up this fight as one more opportunity for indulging themselves in Obama-bashing during an election year.Enormously helpful, too, has been the support of prominent non-Catholics for the Church’s position. They have no stake in backing Catholic teaching on birth control, but they realize that if government can get away with trampling Catholics’ constitutionally protected conscience rights today, it will do the same thing to non-Catholics tomorrow if that happens to suit its purposes. Would that Catholics who’ve lost their stomach for standing with the Church could get the point! The issue isn’t contraception or women’s rights or Barack Obama’s re-election or defeat—it’s religious liberty, the right of religious bodies, consistent with the common good, to live as conscience tells them they ought.
The larger issue behind the contraception mandate
Feb 28, 2012 / 00:00 amAs the controversy over the Obama administration’s January directive to religious institutions to pay for employees’ contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs was heating up, Michael Gerson—a conservative columnist frequently friendly to the Church’s views—speculated on the reasoning behind this provocative move.“The Obama administration seems to have calculated that, since contraceptives are popular and the Catholic Church is not, the outcry would be isolated,” Gerson wrote.Leaving aside whether the administration actually thought that, as well as the element of exaggeration in the formulation, there’s a core element of truth here that serious Catholics need to face. In some quarters at least, the Church really is unpopular. The question isn’t whether, but why.A comprehensive answer would far exceed the space available. Countless individuals and groups have countless quarrels with the Church over countless grievances, real or imaginary. Let me speak of just one group—America’s secular establishment—which is of particular relevance in the present context.By “secular establishment,” I mean the cluster of people who dominate America’s secular culture and its institutions—the great universities, the national media, the big foundations and think tanks, and now of course the White House. It’s fair to say these people for the most part subscribe to a world view in which traditional religion does not play a large role. They are not just “secular” but secularists—secular ideologues—for whom a certain coolness (I use as neutral a word as possible) toward the Catholic Church comes naturally.They also share a particular approach to resolving ethical questions. Pope Benedict famously spoke of the “dictatorship of relativism,” and that is one way to express it. Another way, highlighting the sources of antipathy to the Church, is along the following lines.The Catholic Church adheres to an ethic of substantive human purposes—things like life, truth, and justice—that establish the parameters of ethically acceptable choices and behavior. To do the right thing is to act within these boundaries; to do what is wrong is to act outside them. The secularist mindset, by contrast, favors a libertarian ethic of process and procedure—values like democracy, equal opportunity, and that epitome of the process ethic, the “right to choose.” To be sure, most people rightly live by a mix of values of both kinds—partly substantive, partly procedural—but the differences in emphasis are real and often extremely important.According to the process ethic, there is in principle no such thing as absolute right and wrong—no substantive good that can’t be violated in a pinch if violating it furthers the exercise of choice by a sufficient number of persons. So what if making religious institutions part of a system for providing contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients (this is what Obama’s February “accommodation” would do) violates the consciences of people with traditional views on matters of substantive right and wrong? The overriding procedural imperative of the secular culture requires permitting, even subsidizing, the choices of those who want these things.A Washington Post columnist called President Obama’s purported concession to of the bishops’ objections to the contraception-sterilization-abortifacient mandate (a proposal hailed even by some Catholic individuals and groups) “a dodge—a quite clever and positive one.” So it was—a skillful procedural sleight-of-hand aimed not at upholding some strongly held standard of right and wrong but doing a deal.Meanwhile the Catholic Church stands as the principal obstacle to realization of the secularists’ procedural paradise of all-but unconditional choice. However the current controversy ends, this larger conflict will continue.
The future of the Church in America
Feb 13, 2012 / 00:00 amA quiet, closed-door meeting in Washington next month will be of crucial importance in shaping the Church’s response to the nation’s biggest church-state crisis in decades. When some 40 bishops of the administrative committee of the national bishops’ conference gather March 14-15 at conference headquarters, they’ll be looking at the Obama administration’s January mandate to Catholic institutions to violate Catholic teaching as well as the problematical “accommodation” of religious concerns unveiled by the president February 10. A series of ugly events sets the stage for the bishops’ deliberations.Flash back to early November. Obama and Archbishop (now cardinal-designate) Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, met to discuss topics including tensions in the religious liberty area. “I left the meeting somewhat at peace,” Archbishop Dolan later said.That meant he believed Obama was likely to give church-sponsored institutions a comprehensive exemption from a Department of Health and Human Services rule requiring virtually all private health care plans to cover sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception under the new national health plan known as Obamacare.It was not to be. On January 20 HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, acting for the administration, released the rule’s presumably final version. Its only concession to the Church was a year to comply—“a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” Archbishop Dolan said angrily.Many people saw in the administration’s move a payoff to Obama’s supporters in the birth control-abortion industry. Administration sensitivity to potential criticism was visible in the release of Sebelius’ announcement late in the day on a Friday, a familiar Washington tactic for minimizing news coverage. In the same vein, the one-year delay in compliance (“more time and flexibility to adapt,” Sebelius said) appeared aimed at keeping the issue out of the presidential campaign.Furious reactions from bishops and other Church sources greeted the move. The administration’s message to Catholics, one bishop said, was, “To hell with you.” Even the liberal Washington Post editorialized against, while columnist E.J. Dionne, an Obama apologist, said Obama “botched” the issue and “threw his progressive Catholic allies”—like Mr. Dionne—“under the bus.” Hence the February 10 accommodation—if it really is that. Among other things, the difficulty it raises from the point of view of the Church is that, like a key that opens a lock, it makes the health plan a Catholic institution provides to its employees the key needed for them to unlock coverage for contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization directly from the insurance carrier. There also are reasonable grounds for fearing that, no matter how the accountants structure it, costs of this coverage would be passed on to the Church. If the bishops reject this deal, they don’t have a lot of options. Closing down thousands of Catholic institutions and programs isn’t likely. Remedial legislation pending in Congress has little chance of becoming law with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House. As for simply refusing to obey the HHS rule, it’s a last resort.That leaves litigation. Three religiously sponsored lawsuits against the new mandate, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, Colorado Christian University, and the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) are underway. The bishops could decide to back these challenges or others.Religion in America scored a smashing 9-0 victory over the Obama. administration in the Supreme Court a few weeks ago when the justices unanimously upheld the constitutional right of churches to decide ministerial personnel matters without government interference. Now the HHS mandate could also be headed for the court.
The crisis in American marriage
Feb 6, 2012 / 00:00 amI was chatting with a priest who is a judge with the marriage tribunal of his large Eastern diocese when he shared an interesting tidbit of information. In his diocese and the other dioceses of his state, the number of requests for marriage annulments has lately fallen by 10 percent.Good news? Fewer marriages on the rocks? Not really, he explained. “People are getting married later, some don’t bother to marry at all, others marry outside the Church, and others don’t come to the tribunal when their marriages break down.”“Then,” I hazarded, “this 10 percent drop is just a new phase in the same old set of problems?” The tribunal judge nodded—that was the size of it.All of which is confirmation that the Catholic sector of the crisis of American marriage is going strong. The most telling statistic may be the sharp drop-off in the sheer number of Catholic marriages. Back in 1990, with the Catholic population at 55 million, there were 334,000 of them; in 2010, when Catholics numbered 68.5 million, marriages had fallen by nearly half to around 179,000.If it’s any consolation, what has been happening to Catholic marriage reflects developments in American marriage. Marriages in this country dropped from 2.44 million in 1990 to 2.08 million in 2009, even as the population of the United States was rising 60 million. A Pew Research Center study says that just 51 percent of American adults are married now. (The figure in 2000 was 57 percent.)Many factors combine to account for the decline of marriage—from economic pressures to the campaign to recognize homosexual relationships as marriages, which undermines the unique status of traditional marriage understood to be a relationship between a man and a woman—and only that. Among Catholics, poor religious formation—or none—very often has a central role. Undoubtedly, too, divorce plays a key part, especially no-fault divorce, which Michael McManus says should be called “unilateral divorce.” There have been more than a million divorces yearly in the United States since 1975, and very many of these were of the no-fault variety. Significant in this context is the huge increase in cohabitation—523,000 cohabiting couples in the U.S. in 1970 and 7.5 million in 2010. McManus, a non-Catholic journalist who is founder of a group called Marriage Savers, says the rise is driven partly by “understandable fear of divorce” among couples who anticipate fewer hassles ahead if they don’t bother marrying at all.The social costs of divorce are well established, and to a great extent it’s the children of divorced couples who are paying them. Kids from non-intact families are three times as likely as other kids to be expelled from school or become teenage out-of-wedlock parents, six times as likely to live in poverty, twelve times as likely to land in jail. Various solutions have been proposed to the no-fault plague, among them legislation called the Second Chances Act. It provides a one-year waiting period before divorce along with education in reconciliation as an option. Sponsors William J. Doherty, a University of Minnesota scholar, and Leah Ward Sears, former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, cite studies showing that among 40 percent of divorcing couples, at least one spouse is open to reconciliation.McManus scoffs at the cliché “you can’t legislate morality.” He writes: “Nonsense. For forty years public policy has been legislating immorality by favoring divorce and cohabitation over marriage, and the consequences have been devastating….The timeless institution of marriage can be revived.” It’s sure worth a try.
The crisis of marriage
Jan 18, 2012 / 00:00 amIs it possible that secular liberals, some of them anyway, are starting to realize that knocking the supports out from under traditional marriage may not be such a great idea? If so, and if their next step is to think seriously about how to halt this destructive process, it will be the dawning of a new day.The latest indication of such stirrings on the left that I’ve come across is an op-ed piece by Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. “If current trends hold,” Marcus writes, “within a few years, less than half the U.S. adult population will be married.” And that, she adds solemnly, is bad news.Bad news indeed, but not exactly new. The numbers have been piling up for a long time. The U.S. marriage rate (marriages per 1,000 population) was 8.4 in 1958, 10.9 in 1972, and 10.6 in 1981. But by 2009, the rate had fallen to 7.1 and in 2010 it declined still further, to 6.8. The birth rate has followed a similar trajectory, falling from 23.7 in 1960 to 13.5 in 2009.One obvious reason for what’s happening is that people are marrying later. The median age of first marriage in 1960 was 22.8 for men and 20.3 for women, but by 2003 it had risen to 27.1 and 25.3 respectively. Another large part of the explanation, however, is that more people aren’t getting married at all. Put the late-marriers and the non-marriers together and then add people who are in-between marriages, and you find that while nearly three-fourths of Americans 18 and older were married in 1960, the figure was a measly 51% in 2010, with the trend still headed down. (Among the college-educated, 27% say marriage is obsolete, while the percentage is 45% among those without college educations.) Drawing her numbers from a new Pew Rearch Center study that Marcus calls “startling and disturbing,” the Post columnist informs us that the falling marriage rate “isn’t just a social problem. It’s also an economic problem.”Well, yes. There’s a very visible correlation between marriage and education (nearly two-thirds with college degrees are married but fewer than half of those with high school diplomas or less) and between education and income. (The more education, the higher the income.) As marriages decline, the gap between rich and poor grows wider.But even though the cluster of problems here has very real economic dimensions, reducing it all to economics while ignoring the links to cultural pathologies and destructive personal values is a mistake. Marcus touches on this other dimension when she speaks of “generational impact” – the impact on children of being raised by cohabiting parents or a single parent. Less education and lower income are part of it – but so are psychological and behavioral difficulties expressed in dropping out of school, law-breaking and incarceration and other life-destroying behaviors including those that militate against stable marriage.Unfortunately, Marcus weakens her argument by knee-jerk sneering at conservatives “rhapsodizing about the benefits of marriage.” (Maybe good secular liberals don’t rhapsodize.) Remember: “promoting marriage among welfare recipients was a big deal during the George W. Bush administration.” Which makes it wrong? Ideological blinders like that are obstacles to seeking and finding solutions.Catholics both share in and contribute to the multiple problems of marriage in America. But that subject requires another column, where there may also be an opportunity to suggest a modest solution or two. For now, it’s enough to face up to the fact that we’ve got a marriage crisis on our hands.
Why is LGBT 'rights' now a US foreign policy priority?
Jan 5, 2012 / 00:00 amAn address by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on gay rights as a priority of U.S. policy deserves far more attention than it’s gotten up to now. As a statement of the views of the Obama administration, Clinton’s remarks were a remarkably candid — and remarkably chilling — exposition of official determination to make the world safe for LGBT at home as well as abroad.Speaking last month at United Nations offices in Geneva, Clinton first sought to spin a muddled synthesis linking gay rights and religious faith. In part, this was how it came out:Our commitments to protect the freedom of religion and to defend the dignity of LGBT people emanate from a common source. For many of us, religious belief and practice is a vital source of meaning and identity, and fundamental to who we are as people. And likewise, for most of us, the bonds of love and family that we forge are also vital sources of meaning and identity. And caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human. It is because the human experience is universal that human rights are universal and cut across all religions and cultures.With all due respect — what on earth does that mean? The strikingly confused venture into reasoning in this passage would provide rich material for a logician’s intellectual scalpel. And just what is this common source from which the protection of religious freedom and the defense of LGBT people are said to proceed? One can favor both things, as I do, without succumbing to the sentimental fallacy of an unnamed “common source.”But set that aside for now. What’s really troubling about Clinton’s text is what comes next: “While we are each free to believe whatever we choose, we cannot do whatever we choose, not in a world where we protect the human rights of all.” On the surface, that’s true to the point of banality. But what lies below the surface? The answer is: coercion on behalf of LGBT interests. “Progress comes from changes in laws,” Clinton explains. “In many places, including my own country, legal protections have preceded, not followed, broader recognition of rights. Laws have a teaching effect . . . It is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate.” Take that out of the realm of abstraction, and the classic case to illustrate the point is abortion, where the U.S. Supreme Court rammed legalization down the nation’s throat by an act of what one dissenting justice called raw judicial power. And now it’s LGBT’s turn? Acting under the aegis of anti-discrimination laws, government agencies move to enforce the newly discovered right of same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, the right of gay partners to rent the local K of C hall for their wedding reception, the right to have pro-homosexual indoctrination inserted into public school textbooks, and on and on, as 'rights' sprout like mushrooms in the fertile soil supplied by the state.“The Obama administration defends the human rights of LGBT people as part of our comprehensive human rights policy,” Secretary Clinton affirms. And to those who object, remember: “laws have a teaching effect.”Clinton and the administration she serves aren’t bad people. But they’re secularists at heart (though sometimes with a superficial religiosity) and committed to enactment and enforcement of an expansive program for the bestowal of rights upon causes they favor — abortion rights, LGBT rights, whatever. Woe betide those foolish enough to object in the face of the coercive power of the state.
Maybe we are expecting too little for Christmas
Dec 20, 2011 / 00:00 amThe problem many of us have with Christmas isn’t that we expect too much of it but that we expect much too little. My Christmas wish for all of us, myself included, is that we raise our sights and ask for all that God really wants to give us. If we can open ourselves to receive that, we may be astonished at what we get. There’s a hint of it in something written by Father Alfred Delp, S.J., a German priest executed by the Nazis near the end of World War II. Speaking of Christ’s coming, he said: “All these are not merely one-time historical events upon which our salvation rests. They are simultaneously the model figures and events that announce to us the new order of things, of life, of our existence…. “The world is more than its burden, and life more than the sum of its gray days. The golden threads of the genuine reality are already shining through everywhere…Hope grows through the one who is himself a person of the hope and the promise.”Jesus commonly is said to save us from our sins. That’s surely the heart of it. But besides simply saving from sin, redemption is empowerment. In the Son of Man, the world, including ourselves, is restored, renewed (cf. Eph 1,9-10). In Jesus, we are co-redeemers, participants in building the kingdom of God. The Second Vatican Council expands on that in an extraordinary passage in “Gaudium et Spes” (the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). Speaking of God’s entry into history as a man, and recalling the scriptural promise of a “new earth” to come, the council teaches: “Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth, the expectancy of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows, foreshadowing in some way the age which is to come….When we have spread on earth the fruits of our nature and our enterprise—human dignity, brotherly communion, and freedom—according to the command of the Lord and in his Spirit, we will find them once again, cleansed this time from the stain of sin, illuminated and transfigured, when Christ presents to his Father an eternal and universal kingdom….“Here on earth the kingdom is mysteriously present” (Gaudium et Spes, 38-39) Co-redeemers with Christ, Jesus’ collaborators in building God’s kingdom—the kingdom that will last forever—these are the roles Christ’s coming opens up to us. If that sounds grandiose, so be it. In fact, it’s very grand. But for most of us, it’s realized in quite ordinary ways, much as Jesus’ coming took place in the ordinariness of a stable. St. Josemaria Escriva underlined that in a Christmas homily in 1963: “Can it be said also of you who have been called to be another Christ, that you have come to do and to teach, to do things as a son of God would? Are you attentive to the Father’s will, so as to be able to encourage everyone else to share the good, noble, divine and human values of the redemption? Are you living the life of Christ in your everyday life in the middle of the world? “That is the triumph of Jesus Christ. He has raised us to his level, the level of children of God, by coming down to our level, the level of children of men.” And that is why we ought to put aside the mistake of expecting too little of Christmas.
Iraq and its aftermath — what happens when the troops go home?
Dec 8, 2011 / 00:00 amAs active U.S. military involvement in Iraq draws to a close, what does the moral scorecard on this adventure look like from an American point of view? Granted that a comprehensive weighing of results will only be possible some years from now, at the moment the picture is something like this. In a perverse way, American policy in Iraq has been a model of consistency from start to finish. The original decision to invade back in 2003, based as it was on faulty intelligence and mistaken expectations about Iraqi receptivity to democracy, can now be seen to have been grossly in error. As for the here and now, it’s less obviously, but very likely, a parallel error for America to pull out prematurely, as in fact we now seem to be doing. Yes, the Iraqi government refused to give the Obama administration what it wanted by way of a status of forces agreement that would allow American troops to remain. But it’s difficult to believe the administration truly pushed all that hard for a deal or was all that disappointed at not getting one. So who won this war? For the moment at least, the answer to that also seems clear: the big winner was the deeply anti-American regime in Iran whose influence in Iraq appears likely to increase enormously after the Americans are gone. And who lost? That also is an easy one. The losers were Saddam Hussein, the United States, and the Iraqi Christian community. And, oh yes — probably Iraq itself. Naturally there are people who dispute all this, especially apologists for the Obama administration. There also are people, I suppose, who still believe Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction are out there somewhere in a cave in the Iraqi desert, just waiting to be discovered. As far as I can see, neither group makes an especially persuasive case. Thus the paradox stands. Someone trying to form a moral judgment of U.S. actions in Iraq can reasonably hold (as I do) that it was wrong for America to go to war in the first place and it’s wrong to quit now. The first conclusion is based on the fact that Saddam was not attacking or threatening to attack any American vital interests when we attacked him. As for the second, having barged into Iraq and, with much bloodshed, turned it into a shambles of doubtful governability, America should have the decency to stick around and help clean up the mess. But it’s probably too late to do much for the Christian community of Iraq. Face to face with hostile Islamic fundamentalism after the fall of Saddam Hussein, most Iraqi Christians have fled the country. The need now is to help them find new homes and new lives. A similar process of analysis should now be applied to Afghanistan as well as to other places in the Arab world where the United States has one or more fingers in the pie. Increasingly it appears that the merry talk of the self-deluded American media, suggesting that democracy was on the verge of breaking out on the heels of the Arab Spring, was so much wishful thinking. It’s good to see the tyrants go, but what happens next in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria is anybody’s guess. American security interests will be in play in the Arab world for years to come. If the U.S. has a long range policy there that’s both realistic and morally sound, I haven’t noticed it. How long can we afford to wait?
The meaning of silence in a media age
Nov 22, 2011 / 00:00 amI have to admit that it really didn’t impress me very favorably the first time I read it: “Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization”—that will be the theme of next May’s World Day for Social Communications, the Vatican announcement said. That’s really strange, I thought. After all, even as it stands World Communications Day isn’t exactly a red-letter event in most people’s calendars, and giving it an obscure theme like that one is hardly calculated to help. For those who may not know—and that’s probably quite a few people—World Communications Day is one of several annual “world days” sponsored by the Vatican to focus attention on particular issues and the apostolates of the Church: World Day of Peace, Mission Sunday, World Day of the Sick, and so on. They generally don’t get a great deal of attention from the media or the public, but they do provide a measure of recognition from the Church for important causes. The World Communications Day has been on the list ever since Vatican Council II called for it almost a half-century ago.But the theme chosen for 2012, with its emphasis on silence, struck me at first as passing strange. As I thought about it, though, it began to grow on me.Spiritual writers have always stressed the importance of silence as a necessary setting for contemplative prayer. It’s virtually impossible after all to speak deeply to God and hear his reply in the midst of a constant racket. And that message may be more needed than ever today, when, as Pope Benedict remarked recently on a visit to a Carthusian monastery in Calabria, “some people are no longer able to bear silence and solitude for very long.”This is true, but it’s also a familiar thought. Where the Communications Day theme adds a new twist is precisely in linking silence and communication. At first that may seem like an uncomfortable fit. But is it really? The brief Vatican statement announcing the theme puts it like this: “In the thought of Benedict XVI, silence is not simply an antidote to the constant an unstoppable flow of information that characterizes society today, but rather a factor that is necessary for its integration. Silence, precisely because it favors discernment and reflection, can in fact be seen primarily as a means of welcoming the word.”Now here is an interesting and important insight. In today’s media-saturated world, where all of us are at constant risk of inundation by the sheer quantity of communication, making sense of media requires regular cultivation of reflective silence to sort out all those incoming messages.Which of the multitude of factoids constantly demanding my attention on the grounds of being “news” do I really need to notice? Which of the pundits night and day clamoring for my ear deserve to be taken seriously—and which do not? And—most important perhaps—have I taken trouble to weigh conflicting points of view or gone the easy route of hearing only those messages that reinforce my prejudices?To judge from blog postings and letters to the editor, some people have mastered the art of being discerning, informed media consumers. But many haven’t, instead preferring slogans lifted from ideological sources to the hard work of silent study and analysis.“Silence and the Word”—that theme for World Communications Day is onto something important. Put the media aside at some point during the day, settle down a bit, and just think. You might even find that you enjoy it.
We need to talk (not “hyperventilate”) about the Vatican finance document
Nov 8, 2011 / 00:00 amThere’s a widespread impression that the international financial system which the United States and its friends put in place after World War II is breaking down. The old system may of course be patched up and limp along for some time to come, but sooner or later something else will take its place. What that will be no one now knows. Against this background, it’s a pity that friends and foes of the Vatican’s new statement on international financial reform hastened to all but torpedo the document’s reception right at the start. Issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace with an eye on an economic summit of world leaders, the Holy See’s proposals deserve a lot better than that. For my money, the best one-paragraph explanation of the Vatican’s initiative was provided by The New York Times: “The document grows out of the Roman Catholic Church’s concerns about economic instability and widening inequality of income and wealth around the world, issues that transcend the power of national governments to address on their own.” With the possible exception of people nostalgic for the protectionism of the 1930s Smoot-Hawley Act, it would be difficult to find any sane person who takes exception to that. The friends and foes of the document nevertheless seemed to go out of their way to undermine it by likening it in some way to the Occupy Wall Street movement. On the face of it, this was more than slightly absurd. Occupy Wall Street is after all an amorphous, left-wing gaggle whose most notable feature up to now has been its lack of any clear program. By contrast, the Catholic Church has been developing a body of social teaching since the days of Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century and continuing through Benedict XVI. The result by now is a well articulated and sophisticated set of principles addressing social and economic issues. Still, what really produced “hyperventilation” (Bill Donohue’s word) among critics of the Vatican statement was undoubtedly its advocacy of a “global public authority” as a key component of a new international system committed to the common good. It is not a new idea. Popes including Benedict XVI have been suggesting the same thing for several decades. And although it appears to conjure up images of the proverbial black helicopters among some, it should be borne in mind that the statement says the supranational authority it has in mind should be “set up gradually,” should be friendly to “free and stable markets,” “cannot be imposed by force,” and must arise from a “maturation of consciences” after extensive consultation. There is no suggestion in the document that the Pontifical Council imagines this will happen either soon or easily. Perhaps the strongest argument for something of the sort is the process of globalization that is already such a marked feature of the contemporary world. Years ago, globalization fans like Thomas Friedman were touting its advent as something very like a panacea. In a day and age when the threat of a possible Greek default can rattle markets around the globe, however, it should be abundantly clear that globalization has minuses as well pluses. Here is a truism sufficient in itself to underline the need for some kind of global monitor—a “supranational public authority” in fact—with scope and outreach comparable to globalization itself. The Holy See’s document is an invitation to a conversation, not a final word. The foes and friends have done their worst. Now let the conversation begin.
Persecution in America
Oct 26, 2011 / 00:00 am“What the Catholic Church in the United States really needs to stiffen its backbone is a good persecution.” How often, I wonder, have I heard somebody say something like that? How often have I said something like it myself? Be careful what you ask for—you may get it. The persecution of religion in America has begun, with the Catholic Church a prime target. Don’t think I’m making the wild-eyed claim that this new persecution either is or ever is likely to become a bloody one resembling the purges of the French and Mexican Revolutions or the Communist war on religion—eruptions of violence in which thousands of clergy, religious, and lay faithful were killed. It won’t be a repetition of the Spanish civil war, just 75 years ago, when death squads of the anticlerical left executed the incredible total of 12 bishops, 283 religious women, 4,184 priests, 2,365 religious men, and an unknown number of laity whose only crime was to be faithful Catholics.No, the persecution of religion in the United States won’t be like that. It will be a tight-lipped campaign of secularist inspiration in which the coercive power of the state is brought to bear on church-related institutions to act against conscience or go out of business.As a case in point, consider what’s been happening lately in Illinois. Catholic Charities in the Dioceses of Rockford and Peoria has abandoned the foster care field rather than fall in line with a new state law requiring placements with unmarried couples living in civil unions. (Three other dioceses are continuing to fight the law in court.)Currently, too, the Supreme Court, having heard oral arguments, is mulling a case involving a teacher in a Missouri Synod Lutheran school who claims her rights were violated because she lost her job after getting sick. At the heart of the dispute is whether the government or the church gets to decide who is and isn’t a “minister” of religion.During oral argument, the attorney representing the Obama administration said in effect that government could compel the Catholic Church to ordain women priests if it reached the point of wanting to do that in the name of enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Never mind the First Amendment.These and other such controversies revolve around efforts to invoke government power against religious bodies on behalf of rights claimed by groups that range from homosexuals seeking same-sex marriage to federal bureaucrats pushing coverage for contraception and sterilization in religious employers’ health plans. Church-related schools, hospitals, and social services are targets now, but who can say tell where it might end? Yes, there’s a silver lining. Pope Benedict pointed it out during his September pastoral visit to Germany (as secularized a Western country as now exists). The lesson of history, he said, is that secularization aimed at reducing the worldly power of the Church often has the unintended consequence (unintended by the secularists anyway) of purifying the Church for its spiritual mission.That’s a comforting thought. But even so religion has a duty to fight back against the secularist impulse—not least, in the United States, in defense of a church-state arrangement that’s served the nation well but now is at risk of falling victim to power-hungry secularism. In a letter to President Obama protesting administration moves against the Church, Archbishop Timothy M.Dolan of New York, president of the Catholic bishops’ conference, warned of a confrontation threatening “a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions.” The persecution has started.