Articles by Russell Shaw
We Need Truth
Sep 6, 2018 / 00:00 amStatements by Pope Francis and American bishops reacting to the Church’s sex abuse scandal suggest they are serious about getting to the roots of what happened and doing something meaningful about it. That includes the case of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick as well as 1,000 old but for the most part previously unreported abuse cases in six Pennsylvania dioceses. The expressions of concern by Church leaders are welcome. But talk is one thing, action another. And action is what this spiraling crisis now requires. A lot attention focuses on the possibility of an “apostolic visitation”—a form of Church investigation—as proposed by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference. But whether it takes that form or some other, an in-depth investigation is needed, now more than ever, in light of the claim by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, that top people in the Vatican knew of the complaints about ex-Cardinal McCarrick as early as 2000 and he personally told Pope Francis five years ago. Yet McCarrick continued as an influential advisor of the Pope until last June, when the New York archdiocese said it had found credible a complaint that he groped an altar boy nearly half a century ago. These charges are part of a lengthy document by Archbishop Vigano containing enough derogatory allegations about top-level Church figures in the United States and Rome to keep investigators busy a long time. And leaving the Vigano allegations aside, any serious investigation must examine the charge by Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wis. that a “homosexual subculture within the hierarchy” is the source of many of the problems now vexing the Church. In tackling these sensitive matters, the investigation must refrain from scapegoating or profiling gays. But it also needs to steer clear of the head-in-the-sand political correctness, already emanating from some sources, that would deny the very possibility of a serious gay problem. Several specific conditions must be met in structuring the investigation. One is that laity be involved at every stage and in all aspects of its planning and execution. When Cardinal DiNardo speaks of the “expertise” of lay people in “investigation, law enforcement, psychology, and other relevant disciplines” his point is well taken. If, however, this means involving lay people only as expert consultants and no more, that won’t wash. Lay people should be full members of the investigating body itself. This shouldn’t be a project of, by, and for bishops. The whole Church has been hurt by what has happened in recent weeks, and the whole Church should have a say in what is done to set things right. That requires a fundamental reorientation of the bishops’ customary way of thinking—a shift from seeing the laity as “our people” to accepting them as “our partners.” If bishops are hesitant to partner with the laity in an undertaking of utmost importance to the welfare of the Church, they need to put aside their hesitation and make the great leap. It hardly needs saying that transparency and accountability should be integral elements of this exercise in truth-telling. Old habits of self-serving secrecy in the conduct of Church affairs are part of the explanation of how we got into the present mess, and more secrecy now would simply not be acceptable. Self-serving secrecy is always an obstacle to the truthfulness and accountability essential to building and sustaining community in the Church. And above all in this time of scandal and crisis, we need the truth.
The ‘reception’ of Humanae Vitae
Jul 23, 2018 / 00:00 amIn the half-century since Pope Paul VI published his encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirming that contraception is always wrong, opponents of the teaching have frequently focused on “reception” and “sensus fidelium” – the sense of the faithful. The argument from “sensus fidelium” takes public opinion as an indicator of whether a teaching is true. “Reception” is shorthand for saying a teaching must be validated by having a majority “receive” – that is, accept – it. There are differences between the two, but where Pope Paul’s encyclical is concerned, both boil down saying most Catholics don’t agree with it, so it must be wrong. People arguing this line against Humanae Vitae cite polls showing Catholic approval of contraception. For instance: two years ago a Pew Research study found that even among those who attend Mass every Sunday, only 13% thought artificial birth control was wrong. That settles it, no? Sorry, but it doesn’t. The reception-sensus fidelium argument assumes that the acceptance or rejection of a teaching by the mass of Catholics reflects the action of the Holy Spirit. But not so long ago an overwhelming majority of American Catholics agreed that contraception was wrong. Looking at the numbers in 1963, sociologist and novelist Father Andrew Greeley, later a bitter critic, said Catholics “accept the Church’s teaching with a vengeance.” Now, if “reception” and “sensus fidelium” were correct, we’d have to conclude either that contraception was wrong before the encyclical but acceptable after it or else that the Holy Spirit changed his mind. But both explanations are absurd. We need a better reason for the shift. And in fact there is one – at least, in the United States. Starting after World War II, efforts began to bring about radical change in American attitudes on sex. This campaign included not only Planned Parenthood but foundations like Ford and Rockefeller and wealthy individuals like John D. Rockefeller 3rd, academic institutions, and elements of the media. Some of the efforts were aimed at the federal government – successfully, with the Johnson and Nixon administrations pushing government promotion of birth control as a population limiting anti-poverty measure at home and abroad. And some was targeted at the Catholic Church, with collaboration from within by Catholic individuals and groups. By the mid-1960s this campaign had converged with the development and marketing of “the Pill,” an oral contraceptive that made birth control simpler than ever before, and with a raging cultural revolution – largely a sexual revolution – by then sweeping the United States and countries like it. And so the stage was set for Humanae Vitae. After long delay and in the face of mounting pressure for change, Pope Paul issued his encyclical, only to be greeted by an immediate chorus of dissent. The encyclical didn’t stand a chance. All this is documented in book-length studies that include Donald T. Critchlow’s Intended Consequences (Oxford, 1999) and, on the Catholic side, Msgr. George Kelly’s still-indispensable The Battle for the American Church (Doubleday, 1981). They spell out how it was that, as Critchlow says, by the 1980s “a liberal sexual culture had been created” in America. “Reception” and “sensus fidelium” have roles to play in the process by which the Church articulates its faith, but not as polemical weapons against the Magisterium. After 50 years of attacking Humanae Vitae, the opponents need to address this question: In view of the cheapening and coarsening of sex in this time, the rise of the hookup culture, the vulgarization of popular entertainment, and much else, is it possible Humanae Vitae got it right?
The Trump-Kim summit and human rights
Jul 12, 2018 / 00:00 amOn the eve of the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, Pope Francis led a crowd of 20,000 in St. Peter’s Square in prayer for a successful outcome of the talks. Many other people throughout the world also undoubtedly prayed for that result. But whether all those prayers will be answered is something we may not know for months, possibly years. That is no less true of prayers that included the intention of bettering the horrendous situation of human rights and religious liberty in North Korea. Shortly before the meeting of President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un, the Washington-based Religious Freedom Institute sent the White House a letter signed by foreign policy specialists, human rights activists and religious leaders urging Trump to raise those issues with Kim. “For decades, North Korea has been in effect a national torture chamber. There is nowhere on earth more dangerous for dissenters of conscience, especially those who believe in God,” said the letter. Among the signers were Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, former chairman of the U.S. bishops’ committee on religious liberty, Professors Robert George of Princeton and Steve Schneck of the Catholic University of America, and Miguel Diaz, former American ambassador to the Holy See. In a post-summit news conference the president said he had done as requested and raised the rights question with Kim. But there was no mention of these matters in the brief, general joint statement bearing the two leaders’ names that was released after the meeting. The statement spoke instead of promises of “security guarantees” made by Trump to Kim and “complete denuclearization” made by Kim to Trump. As always, of course, the devil is in the details. The statement said the details here would be worked out in “follow-on negotiations” by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a North Korean counterpart. Let us hope – and pray – that the agenda of those talks includes an important place for human rights and religious freedom. That the situation in North Korea is terrible almost beyond imagining seems tragically clear. A 2014 report by a United Nations commission of inquiry gave a thumbnail picture of abuses that included “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.” Some 80,000-120,000 persons are said to be held in four major North Korean political prisons, among them Catholics and other church members whose so-called crime was to have engaged in religious practice. That number does not include those in ordinary prisons. In the best of circumstances the release and peaceful reintegration of the unhappy souls in the prison camps into North Korean society seems to me improbable. Perhaps that is why the Religious Freedom Institute letter included among its recommendations not only the release of the prisoners but the setting of quotas for voluntary emigration by them and their families, to be administered by the UN high commissioner for refugees. The long-range hope for North Korea is that it become a place where rights like the right to practice one’s religion freely will be recognized and respected. We are a long way from that happening. The Singapore summit was – perhaps – a first step. Many more steps remain to be taken. On the eve of the summit Pope Francis spoke of “a positive path that assures a future of peace for the Korean peninsula and the whole world.” Keep on praying.
The Kennedy succession
Jul 10, 2018 / 00:00 amFor Americans on both sides of social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court has created a crucial moment. As the court’s swing vote, Kennedy was a powerful supporter of both things, and his departure brings with it the expectation of change. But what sort of change will it be? President Trump has promised to nominate conservative, prolife justices, and with the naming of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the court last year he delivered. Now Senate Democrats will fight to defeat anyone else he names. Look for a battle royal ahead. Three decades ago Kennedy was confirmed by a vote of 97-0, but things are vastly different – in the Senate and in the country – today. The polarization afflicting the nation and our politics is reflected in the polarization now routinely accompanying the selection of a justice. Conflict over social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage lies at its heart. As attention shifts to the succession fight, it’s important not to lose sight of the role Kennedy played for the light it can shed on issues that the Supreme Court will face down the road. Although he had a key part in decisions that legalized same-sex marriage and protected legalized abortion, his libertarian leanings moved him to back those who dissented from these things on grounds of conscience. Two cases near the end of the court’s recently concluded term illustrate the point. In one (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission), Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in a 7-2 decision which found that the state commission showed anti-religious bias against a baker whose evangelical faith led him to say no to a same-sex couple who wanted him to bake their wedding cake. But Kennedy also strongly suggested that, except for the boorishness of some commission members, the baker would have lost. As if to test that, the Supreme Court sent back to the Washington state supreme court the case of a florist who, like the Colorado baker, refused on religious grounds to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. The state court ruled against her, but the Supreme Court told it to take another look in light of the Cakeshop ruling. Chances are good the case will be back in the Supreme Court in a couple of years. In the second case (National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra), Kennedy was part of five-member majority that ruled in favor of prolife pregnancy counseling centers in California. The five found the California legislature guilty of overreaching in requiring licensed centers to post notices telling clients how to obtain free abortions and unlicensed ones to advertise the fact that they aren’t medical facilities. Besides making up part of the majority, Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion that could be taken as his swan song. Noting that the California legislature, in its official history, had congratulated itself on “forward thinking” in requiring prolife centers to promote abortion, he said governments “must not be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions. Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and belief.” Hard to disagree with that. But it’s also hard to see how abortion and same-sex marriage – both imposed on the nation by judicial fiat – are consistent with those lofty sentiments. As the White House and the Senate gear up for a titanic struggle, here’s hoping Kennedy’s successor doesn’t follow him in confusing liberty with the moral values of secular liberalism imposed by the court.
Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One at 70
Jun 18, 2018 / 00:00 amJust 70 years ago this month a slender novel bearing the innocuous title The Loved One made its appearance in the United States. My copy, a first edition, records four reprintings between June and August. Today the book is still in print and apparently still selling briskly. That is not a bad showing for a book that has something in it to offend just about everyone – a story that lacks any truly attractive characters, features two suicides and a genuinely horrific ending, and carries a profoundly serious message that many readers over the years haven’t gotten. The Loved One is the work of the British novelist Evelyn Waugh, a convert to Catholicism who is widely – and correctly – considered to have been one of the finest writers in English of the 20th century. The book came shortly after his hugely successful novel Brideshead Revisited and not long before his World War II trilogy, Sword of Honor, which some people (I among them) regard as his finest work. Written not long after a U.S. visit that seems to have confirmed Waugh in his anti-Americanism, The Loved One is generally described as a satire aimed at multiple targets. These include the funeral industry, expatriate Englishmen in Hollywood, and the popular culture of the 1940s. In particular, there is a devastating portrait of a huge cemetery called Whispering Glades – a kind of funerary theme park where death is sentimentalized and cosmeticized beyond recognition – together with its ghastly counterpart, a nearby pet cemetery called the Happier Hunting Ground. But that isn’t all. The tipoff to the book’s deeper, darker meaning comes early, when an elderly Englishman whose Hollywood career is in a terminal nosedive makes passing reference to a magazine piece about Soviet scientists who are said to be keeping a severed dog’s head alive: “It dribbles at the tongue when it smells a cat. That’s what all of us are, you know, out here.” The aging Englishman means “out here in Hollywood.” But Waugh means “out here in the world where materialism reigns.” The point of what seems to be a casual aside becomes devastatingly clear late in the story, when the body of a Whispering Glades cosmetician who has taken her life at her workplace (to the huge embarrassment of the head mortician, her suitor) is surreptitiously disposed of in the crematorium of the Happier Hunting Ground. Waugh could be riotously funny when he set his mind to it and there are amusing stretches in The Loved One, but the book as a whole is satire in the tradition of the Roman poet Juvenal and Jonathan Swift, a satirist whose “A Modest Proposal” skewered British attitudes toward the Irish by suggesting cannibalism as the solution to Irish poverty. Waugh for his part is taking deadly aim at philosophical materialism and its implications for human self-understanding. If the materialists are right about human beings, he’s slyly saying, there is no special reason to make a distinction between the two cemeteries of his tale or to turn up our noses at those Soviet scientists and their dog’s head. Evelyn Waugh had a reputation for being a disagreeable man. One of his friends once asked him how he could be so unpleasant and still claim to be a Catholic. To which he replied: “You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid, I would hardly be a human being.” In its own brilliant way The Loved One makes the same point.
Justice Kennedy and the Supreme Court
May 26, 2018 / 00:00 amRumors have been flying around Washington that Justice Anthony Kennedy will announce his retirement from the Supreme Court shortly after the court’s current term ends late in June. Whether he will or won’t remains to be seen. But it would be no great surprise if he does. For one thing, Justice Kennedy will turn 82 in July, making him the second oldest member of the court after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who’s 85. Kennedy has served on the court since 1988, and in recent years has had the satisfaction of being its swing voter, exercising the power to determine the outcome in numerous closely divided cases. If Kennedy does retire, there’s sure to be a protracted, unusually ugly struggle in the Senate over confirming a successor. President Trump is committed to naming a prolife justice, as he did last year with Justice Neil Gorsuch. Then it will be up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) to do all he can to get the successor confirmed before the November elections – that is, while Senate Republicans are still sure of a slim Senate majority. By the same token, it will be up to Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and his Democrats to work to prevent a confirmation vote before the election. And then – who knows? If the Democrats are in charge in the post-election Senate, it will be payback time for the Merrick Garland episode, which saw the confirmation of Barack Obama’s last Supreme Court pick blocked by McConnell and the Republicans by the simple device of refusing to consider it. Getting back to Kennedy, he is commonly described in the media as a “conservative.” No doubt that is accurate enough on some matters, but where the social issues are concerned, Kennedy, a Catholic, has been anything but conservative, instead playing a key role in defending legalized abortion and conferring constitutional status on same-sex marriage. In 1992, in a case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, delivered a plurality opinion that settled the question in favor of abortion. It contains a passage in Kennedy’s easily recognized philosopher-king style situating “at the heart of liberty…the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” – words which earned Kennedy’s text recognition in some quarters as the “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life” opinion. In 2015, with authorial juices flowing again, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for a sharply divided court in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case which discovered a previously unknown constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Until then the fight over this issue had gone on largely in state legislatures. Kennedy and the court’s four liberals removed the question from the hands of elected representatives of the people and imposed their answer on the nation as a whole. Writing in dissent, Justice Samuel Alito said Obergefell would foster the “marginalization” of people with traditional views on marriage. “Recalling the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past,” Alito wrote, “some may think that turn-about is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails, the nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds.” Recent moves to penalize those who oppose same-sex marriage on conscience grounds illustrate the truth of that. Anthony Kennedy’s opinions in Planned Parenthood and Obergefell were expressions of radical libertarianism grounded in an individualistic philosophy of life and law. Whether he steps down now or later, social conservatives will pray for a successor in a very different mold.
The speaker and the chaplain
May 19, 2018 / 00:00 amBarring further developments (and let’s hope that there aren’t any), the kerfuffle over the Catholic chaplain of the House of Representatives seems to be over. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan asked for the resignation of Father Patrick Conroy, S.J., Father Conroy resigned, then withdrew his resignation, and Ryan withdrew his request. May everyone involved in this flap now live happily ever after. Personally, I’m glad to leave it at that. But the incident did serve one useful purpose by inviting attention to the constitutional footing of legislative chaplaincies, considered in light of the First Amendment’s ban on an “establishment” of religion. And that’s something well worth looking at for what it can tell us about the disputes over church-state relations that continue to plague the nation. Go back, then, to 1983 and a Supreme Court decision in a case called Marsh v. Chambers. The case arose when a Nebraska state senator named Ernie Chambers brought suit in federal court against the practice of opening sessions of the state legislature with a prayer by a chaplain paid by the state. Chambers found this a violation of the First Amendment’s no-establishment clause. The district court upheld the prayer but not the payment to the chaplain. The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against both things. The case then went to the Supreme Court. At that time the Supreme Court labored to shape its thinking in church-state matters according to a 1971 ruling in a case called Lemon v. Kurtzman. The Lemon decision identified three criteria that church-state interactions were required to meet: secular legislative purpose, primary effect that neither promoted nor inhibited religion, and no “excessive entanglement” by government with religion. Not surprisingly, attempts to apply this complex test threatened to produce the entanglement the test was supposed to rule out. In weighing Ernie Marsh’s complaint, the Supreme Court by a vote of 6-3 overturned the lower court and gave the Nebraska arrangement – and by implication similar arrangements involving state-paid chaplaincies elsewhere – a clean bill of health. This didn’t please Justice William Brennan, who wrote in dissent that the majority made “no pretense of subjecting Nebraska’s practice” of legislative prayer to the three-part Lemon test. But, he added tartly, “if the court were to judge legislative prayer through the unsentimental eye of our settled doctrine, it would have to strike it down as a clear violation of the Establishment Clause.” The majority opinion in Marsh was written by Chief Justice Warren Burger, who, strange to say, also wrote the opinion in Lemon. Noting that legislative chaplaincies had been common since the nation’s earliest days, he said: “In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice…has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not…an ‘establishment’ of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.” Note that in framing their opposition to legislative chaplaincies, the liberal dissenters in Marsh were playing the role usually played by conservatives and taking a narrowly literalist view of the First Amendment. The conservatives for their part argued for a practical approach to the question that relied on history and custom instead of rigid textualism as their standard of evaluation. Always assuming a decent respect for the limits imposed by constitutional principle and good sense, that still seems about right.
Evangelicals and the first amendment
May 4, 2018 / 00:00 amAccording to reports, evangelical leaders are planning a gathering that will bring a thousand pastors to Washington later this spring to make plans for rallying their base on behalf of candidates supported by President Trump in the November elections. If so, it goes without saying that this will touch off another fierce round of criticism in the Trump-averse media claiming political activism by evangelicals violates an American tradition of religion and politics separate. It likewise hardly needs saying that many of those assailing evangelicals for supporting Trump – 75% of white evangelicals in one recent poll – would be praising them if, by some miracle, they’d backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and were now preparing to back Clinton-friendly candidates in the midterms. Leaving here-and-now specifics aside, however, certain fundamental questions merit consideration in seeking sensible parameters for religious involvement in politics. A bit of history first. In the High Middle Ages popes claimed authority to depose secular rulers; centuries later, troops of the French Revolution hauled Pope Pius VI out of Rome to stand trial (old and ill, he died en route in a provincial French town). The golden mean surely lies somewhere between these extremes. And just here, in the U.S. at least, the two Religion Clauses of the First Amendment come into play. The first says the government may not create an “establishment” of religion – the designation, that is, of a government-approved state church and, by extension, the direct support of religion precisely as religion. But the second, no less important than the first, says government may not inhibit free exercise of religion by individuals and groups. Note that the first Religion Clause prohibits government from showing special favor to a particular church or even to religion in general. It does not forbid a friendly attitude by government toward religion or to religious groups that share the same vision of the common good that it holds. And – the key to the current debate about the evangelicals – it raises no objection to political activism by religious bodies exercising free exercise on behalf of their religious convictions. But does a religious group have a right to get actively and directly involved in politics? And is that a good idea? The answer to first question is: Almost certainly yes – religious groups have the same right to support and oppose policies and even politicians that non-religious groups have. That is implicit in the free exercise guarantee of the First Amendment. And Vatican Council II, speaking of the Catholic Church but using language that presumably would apply to any legitimate religious body, said religion should be free to “proclaim its teaching about society” and “pass moral judgment even in matters relating to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man or the salvation of souls requires it” (Gaudium et Spes, 76). But is direct religious involvement in politics a good idea? Here contingent factors and prudential judgments come into play, especially if it’s a matter of supporting or opposing particular candidates. Churches do well to approach that minefield with extreme caution. Usually a hands-off approach is best. Even so, exceptions are possible. Opposing candidates whose policy positions are inimical to the values of a church or churches and supporting candidates committed to all they hold dear can make good sense. But if they do decide to enter the political fray, churches should have a clear-eyed recognition of the risks they run and the buffeting that comes with political activism. That goes for the evangelicals as much as anybody else.
Viri probati
Apr 19, 2018 / 00:00 amThe news that Pope Francis has set in motion the planning for a synod of bishops of the Amazon region next year may not strike most U.S. Catholics as a matter of great interest. But hold on – there’s a lot more at stake here than may appear at first glance. For if the bishops of the vast (2.1 million square miles), priest-short Amazon region ask for married priests and the Pope approves – and both of those things seem likely to happen – the synod will have taken a large step toward married priests in many areas besides the Amazon. If so, it won’t mark the end of priestly celibacy. But it will have set the Church on a path of radical change in ways that lie far beyond anybody’s ability to predict now. The idea of ordaining viri probati (mature, trustworthy men) to celebrate Mass and provide other sacramental services in places where celibate priests are in short supply goes back at least to the time of the Second Vatican Council but only lately has come to life again. If the experiment in the Amazon – supposing it’s approved – succeeds in meeting the need there, it is likely to be repeated by bishops in other places with the same problem. That includes not only remote regions like the Amazon but areas such as parts of Western Europe where ordinations of new priests have slowed to a trickle. Quebec’s bishops are said to be looking at the idea, and there could be interest elsewhere. The regional synod for the Amazon will take place at the Vatican in October next year. The planning group established by Pope Francis includes prominent advocates of ordaining married men such as Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a Brazilian who formerly headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy and who spoke well of the viri probati proposal before coming to Rome. Married priests already are present in the Eastern churches, and married clergy from some other Christian churches – notably, former Anglicans – have for some time been allowed to receive ordination and serve as priests in the Western Church. But priestly celibacy has a long and honored place in the Church dating back centuries –indeed, to apostolic times. Vatican Council II, in its Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, finds its basis in Jesus’ words in Matthew 19.12, where he praises those who forgo marriage “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” In a cultural context like ours, in which many people take it for granted that celibacy is impossible, Vatican II urges priests to pray for “the grace of fidelity, which is never denied to those who ask” (Presyterorum Ordinis, 16). The priest shortage is a serious problem wherever it exists, and there are places in the U.S. where the crunch is felt. But how realistic is it to imagine that a radical solution like ordaining married men could be limited to just the areas of acute need? The impact this would have on the acceptance and practice of priestly celibacy everywhere requires serious consideration before moving ahead anywhere. The Church already has some married priests, but a move toward universal institutionalization of what would be a de facto two-tier structure for priesthood, with some celibate priests and some married, should be weighed carefully for its likely consequences before taking any irreversible action. And it’s fair to ask if a handful of bishops from a remote region, engaged in a laudable effort to solve their special problems, are best situated to do that.
Free speech, conscience, and the court
Apr 3, 2018 / 00:00 amIn his much discussed indictment of secularized liberal democracy, Polish philosopher and sometime government minister Ryszard Legutko writes bitingly of the powerful and coercive “demon” he so abhors. Toward the end of The Demon in Democracy (Encounter Books) he describes the problem like this: “The law has become a sword against the unresponsiveness and sometimes resistance of society to the policy of aggressive social restructuring that is euphemistically called modernization.” Legutko writes as a conservative intellectual who, having lived under communism, has had it up to here with social engineering as practiced by that super-nanny called the European Union. And in America? Two cases which the Supreme Court will decide sometime between now and the start of summer reflect the same dynamic at work here. The cases come from two different states, California and Colorado, involve two different social issues – abortion and same-sex marriage – and have two very different sets of facts. But both raise the same free speech question: How far can the state legitimately go in forcing individuals and groups to communicate messages that support things they reject in conscience? In the Colorado case (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Civil Rights Commission) the state supreme court upheld the civil rights panel’s finding that a Lakewood, Colorado baker named Jack Phillips, an evangelical Christian who opposes same-sex marriage on conscience grounds, violated anti-discrimination law by declining to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Phillips says baking cakes is a form of self-expression for him, and compelling him to provide a wedding cake in these circumstances would be compelling him to lend support to something his conscience tells him is wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this case last December, and its decision could come at any time. It will be interesting to see whether the court chooses to link it to the California case (National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra), which was argued March 20. The dispute here concerns a California law requiring licensed prolife pregnancy counseling centers to post notices advising clients of the availability of free abortion elsewhere, and unlicensed centers to give prominence to the fact that they aren’t medical facilities. Other courts have overturned laws like this, but a panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld California’s version. Thus the pregnancy counseling centers, most of them religiously sponsored, face having to communicate messages intended (by the state legislature, that is) to lend support to abortion providers. This is what Legutko describes in his book: “The state representatives, armed with the rhetoric of antidiscrimination, felt it was their duty to regulate matters that for too long had remained unregulated, which often meant giving privileges to certain groups and taking them away from others.” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of many groups that filed amicus curiae briefs in both of these cases. The USCCB brief in the California case underlines the fact that religious groups – and, one might add, individuals – are not infrequently called by conscience to embrace positions of a “countercultural” nature when measured against prevailing secular values. The First Amendment requires that the government respect this right, not seek to undermine it. Legutko speaks of a “crusade against Christianity” in Europe, where aggressive secularists “continue to make new conquests and to colonize more and more areas of human life.” What the Supreme Court says about these cases from California and Colorado will do much to determine the future of similar efforts on this side of the Atlantic.
Pro-life and the U.S. Supreme Court
Mar 10, 2018 / 00:00 amDefeat on a Senate procedural vote last January of legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy was a great disappointment – genuinely “appalling,” as the U.S. bishops’ pro-life chairman, Cardinal Dolan of New York, called it. But other developments with major potential for the pro-life cause are coming in the weeks and months that lie just ahead. The Supreme Court has set March 20 as the date for oral arguments in a case testing whether a state – in this case, California – can require religiously-sponsored pregnancy counseling centers to remind women of the availability of abortion elsewhere. The case is a classic challenge to aggressive government overreach seeking to impose secularist values on religious groups whose rights and interests are imperiled in this way. A friend of the court brief filed by the bishops’ conference and other groups says the central issue at stake in this dispute is “the First Amendment right of all religious organizations to choose for themselves not only what to say but what not to say.” The bishops are joined in the brief by the California Catholic Conference, the Catholic Health Association, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Christian Legal Society, and the Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel. The case (National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra) is on appeal to the Supreme Court from a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision upholding a California law compelling the pro-life pregnancy centers to post notices advertising pregnant women of the availability of free or low-cost services including abortion and giving the number of the local social services office for further information. The Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision before its term ends in late June. Already awaiting decision by the Supreme Court is another religious liberty case, similar in some ways to this one but involving same-sex marriage rather than abortion. In that case, a Colorado baker was found guilty of violating state anti-discrimination law for declining to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in violation of his religious convictions. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission) last December 5 and its ruling could come at any time. As these cases work their way through the judicial process, observers are conscious of an even larger question about the Supreme Court, with a strong bearing on issues like religious liberty and abortion. It’s whether President Donald Trump will get another opportunity to name someone to the court – and will happen if he does. Religious liberty advocates and pro-life groups were delighted by the confirmation last year of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first and so far only Supreme Court pick. For Trump to have a second shot at the court, one of present members must step down. And although in the nature of things there’s no certainty that will happen or who it will be, the most likely candidates based on age are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who turns 85 in March, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, now 81. Ginsburg is the most prominent member of the court’s present four-member liberal bloc, while Kennedy, a swing vote, generally votes pro-choice on abortion and supports same-sex marriage. If Trump should nominate a conservative to replace either of these two, a long, bitter confirmation fight will follow in the Senate, with the outcome uncertain. This argues for Ginsburg and Kennedy to hang on at least through November and thereafter act according to the lay of the post-election political landscape.
Grisez’s influence on Catholic moral thinking
Feb 17, 2018 / 00:00 am“We are all students of Grisez now.” The man who said that several years ago was a Catholic theologian not generally seen as being a disciple of Germain Grisez. He was simply acknowledging the influence Grisez had already had on serious students of moral thought – an influence that, one might add following Grisez’s death, seems likely to continue growing for a long time to come. Grisez, a cherished friend with whom I was privileged to collaborate in writing several books, once gave me a striking indication of that. Interviewing him for a profile I was writing, I asked whether he could point to any impact he’d had on the thinking of the pope of that day, John Paul II. Yes, he said. He then cited the landmark 1993 encyclical on moral principles, Veritatis Splendor, where John Paul discusses human goods as fundamental principles of morality (something new in a document of the papal magisterium), and the encyclical’s treatment of the Beatitudes as embodying a vision of the moral life meant for all Christians without exception. Both things are major elements in Grisez’s moral theory. He was born in Cleveland and studied there at John Carroll University, at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in philosophy, and at the Dominican house of studies in River Forest, Ill., where he pursued his interest in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. He taught at Georgetown University, Campion College in Regina, Saskatchewan, and, for 30 years before retiring in 2009, at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. He died February 1 at the age of 88. In the preceding half-century he’d produced a stream of notable articles and books. Among the latter is a work that constitutes a virtual Summa of moral theology – The Way of the Lord Jesus, whose three volumes, published between 1983 and 1997, and totaling nearly 3,000 pages, contain the definitive statement of his thought. He also was co-founder, with John Finnis of Oxford University and Notre Dame, of a new school of moral thinking generally referred to as the New Natural Law Theory. Grisez was intensely loyal to the teaching of the Church. But that very loyalty, he believed, obliged him to critique arguments he considered inadequate sometimes put forward in defense of the teaching, and then to provide other, better arguments of his own. This he conscientiously attempted to do, starting with his first book, Contraception and the Natural Law. Published in late 1964, over three years before Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae with its condemnation of contraception, the volume defends Church teaching against artificial birth control while expounding a new approach to moral reasoning that centers on respect for human goods. Much of Grisez’s contribution can be found in his books and articles on subjects like abortion, euthanasia, nuclear deterrence, and personal vocation. But his influence also was exerted quietly. That included preparing, at the request of a cardinal, a detailed critique of a draft of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The cardinal submitted Grisez’s voluminous comments to the CCC’s drafters. The result was a catechism significantly stronger and clearer than it otherwise might have been. He was buried in a hillside cemetery in Emmitsburg, close to his wife, Jeannette, to whom he was intensely devoted, and to one of their four sons, Joseph, who died young. The cemetery is not far from the seminary where, along with teaching seminarians, he wrote the works that, as my theologian friend remarked, make all of us “students of Grisez now.”
Religious freedom and U.S. foreign policy
Feb 9, 2018 / 00:00 amPromoting international religious liberty is one of those things that America ought to be doing for its own sake, but doing it would also serve U.S. national security interests as an anti-terrorism tool. Yet indifference to religion at the upper reaches of the U.S. political culture has been a serious obstacle to that for years and remains so today. Instead, says a veteran American foreign policy practitioner and observer, recent decades have brought a “global crisis” which has reached the point where religion-related terrorism by groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda now threatens much of the world, including the U.S., while the American foreign policy establishment overlooks promoting religious liberty as an appropriate response. “It is hard to sell a product in which you do not believe, let alone one you hold in contempt,” adds Thomas Farr. Farr, a former Foreign Service officer who was first director of the State Department’s office of international religious freedom, teaches at Georgetown University’s foreign service school and heads the Washington-based Religious Freedom Institute and the religious freedom research project at Georgetown’s Berkley Center. He shared his views recently with a House foreign affairs subcommittee. Meanwhile, on January 24, the Senate confirmed former Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas as U.S. ambassador at large for religious freedom on a party line 49-49 vote, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking 50th vote. Brownback was first nominated by President Trump last July, but he was opposed by gay rights groups for what the Washington Post called “his record on LGBT rights.” Farr in his House testimony called Brownback’s confirmation “vitally important” to the religious liberty cause. Legislation formally establishing international religious freedom as U.S. policy has been on the books since 1998, but the government has implemented it, according to Farr, mainly by “verbal advocacy” and occasional punitive measures, without its being either understood or applied strategically as a means of opposing terrorism. Instead, he says, the U.S. has fought terrorism mainly by military force, law enforcement, and intelligence. “While each is necessary,” he adds, “none is sufficient to defeat Islamist terrorism.” The latter, he points out, is “not simply a military force but an ideology – a set of lethal ideas derived from Islam that have proven their capacity to motivate men and women to kill, torture, and destroy.” Farr argues that religious freedom contributes to stability in nations that embrace it, and “stability grounded in religious freedom can strengthen resistance to religious extremism of all kinds.” “A religious freedom diplomacy that employs evidence-based self-interest arguments can reduce religious persecution more effectively than do our current diplomatic methods, which are highly rhetorical, reactive, and ad hoc,” he adds. As if to illustrate his point, the State Department around the same time released its yearly list of countries guilty of “egregious” religious freedom offenses – Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Pakistan was placed on a “special watch list.” This may be gratifying, but it is fair to ask how much good it really does. Singling out Iraq, which most non-Muslim minorities have fled in the face of violence directed at them, Farr says that unless those minorities, “especially the Christians,” return, the country is likely to become a “perpetual breeding ground” for the ideology of Islamist terror – something that would have “terrible consequences” for the region and the rest of the world. “Of all the counterweights to this development, none is more important that advancing religious freedom in Iraq,” he says.
The morality of nuclear deterrence
Jan 25, 2018 / 00:00 am“We are at the limit of what is licit.” In early December Pope Francis offered that assessment of nuclear deterrence during a question and answer session with reporters on the plane back to Rome from Bangladesh. A month before, the Pope had strongly suggested that the “limit” had already been exceeded. “The threat of their [nuclear weapons’] use, as well as their very possession, is firmly to be condemned,” he said in a message to a Vatican-sponsored conference on nuclear disarmament. This wasn’t the first time a pope has challenged the morality of nuclear deterrence. In a message to the United Nations General Assembly in 1982 Pope John Paul II granted only a grudging interim toleration to deterrence (“may still be judged morally acceptable”) as a stage on the way to the total elimination of nuclear weapons. The American bishops relied on that judgment of conditional, temporary toleration of deterrence in their 1983 collective pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace. But it’s now 35 years since St. John Paul delivered his judgment and the bishops repeated it, and Pope Francis has just raised the moral bar a lot higher. As well he might. Nuclear disarmament hasn’t happened in these 35 years, and now North Korea has joined the nuclear club, President Trump speaks of using these weapons, and the U.S. and other nuclear powers are busy modernizing their stockpiles. The countries that now have nuclear arms are the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Several others are in a position to acquire them fairly quickly if they so desire. The so-called logic of deterrence is clear: It is necessary to have nuclear weapons and be willing to use them, precisely so that they will not be used. But is that morally acceptable? Deterrence has worked so far, but that’s no guarantee it will go on working forever. A number of documented close calls have already occurred. The recent false alarm concerning a supposedly imminent missile attack on Hawaii, although not in precisely the same category, was the latest reminder that it’s rolling the dice to assume we will always squeak through. There is also the powerful moral argument that nuclear deterrence is wrong in and of itself inasmuch as it is founded on a conditional but real intention to do something hugely evil – namely, launch a retaliatory (or perhaps even preemptive) nuclear attack in which millions would die. “But,” defenders of deterrence reply indignantly, “that isn’t what we have in mind. On the contrary, our hope in maintaining a nuclear deterrent is to keep it from happening.” Certainly no sane person wants to see nuclear weapons used. But the argument in defense of deterrence doesn’t work as long as willingness actually to use the deterrent in some circumstances exists. Conditional willingness to do something one would prefer not to do if the circumstances for doing it arise is real willingness – and willingness like that is the existential keystone of deterrence. Pope Francis got to the heart of the matter in his airborne news conference. Today’s nuclear arsenals, he said, “are so sophisticated that you risk the destruction of humanity or a great part of humanity.” And when President Trump and North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un exchanged New Year taunts about the “nuclear button” that each man said was sitting on his desk, it should have been obvious to everyone that the acceptable time for serious efforts at nuclear disarmament isn’t some vaguely defined point in the future but right now.
The spiritual journey of Robert Hugh Benson
Jan 8, 2018 / 00:00 amIt’s said that Robert Hugh Benson’s conversion to Roman Catholicism was an act of rebellion against his father, Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883 until his death in 1896. Whether it was or wasn’t, the younger Benson’s spiritual autobiography at least offers grounds for seeing his conversion in that light. But if so, what difference does it make? God can use inclinations and fears we may prefer not to recognize in ourselves as portals for grace to enter our lives. If latent conflict with a formidable father played a part in this son’s decision to become a Catholic, it doesn’t follow that the conversion was any less sincere. Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) was a prolific author of fiction, apologetics and devotional works, best remembered for the apocalyptic novel Lord of the World, which Pope Francis calls one of his favorite books. His spiritual autobiography, Confessions of a Convert, first published in 1912 and republished by Ave Maria Press, ranks among his best. It’s no exaggeration to call it a minor classic. At its heart stands the imposing figure of Archbishop Benson. The relationship of father and son is summed up in a boyhood incident whose excruciating pain apparently stayed with Benson for the rest of his life. At Eton the boy was accused of some form of misbehavior, unspecified in the book but evidently serious. Although he was eventually shown to be innocent, his stern father supposed him to be guilty at first. When the elder Benson confronted him, the son was so “paralyzed in mind” that he could offer no defense except “tears and silent despair.” Face-to-face disagreement with the father was simply unthinkable. Benson doesn’t make the point, but readers will draw their own conclusion: that things weren’t as they should be in this father-son relationship. Of his father Benson writes: “I do not…think that he made it easy to love God; but he did, undoubtedly, establish in my mind an ineradicable sense of a kind of a Moral Government in my universe, of a tremendous Power behind phenomena, of an austere and orderly dignity with which this Moral Power presented itself. “He himself was wonderfully tender-hearted and loving, intensely desirous of my good and, if I had but known it, touchingly covetous of my love and confidence. Yet his very anxiety on my behalf to some degree obscured the fire of his love, or, rather, caused it to affect me as heat rather than as light. He dominated me completely by his own forcefulness.” Benson became an Anglican priest, but he had already begun to suspect that in the quarrel between Anglicanism and Rome, Rome was right. The next several years were spent navigating among High Church groups and their diverse rationales for not converting. In the end – after his father’s death – Benson finally gave up on these doctrinal waverings and acted upon his growing conviction that the true Church had to be one that could rightly be said to “know her own mind” concerning the essentials of salvation. He became a Catholic in 1903 and was ordained the following year. He died in 1914. Confessions of a Convert concludes with a stretch of lyrical prose recording the author’s ecstatic response to the incarnational Catholicism he encountered in the Holy City. “A sojourn in Rome means an expansion of view that is beyond words,” he writes. Maybe so, but Benson found words that, after all these years, still come close. Readers who cherish the faith he cherished can be glad.
A post-truth culture
Dec 9, 2017 / 00:00 amHas America become home to a post-truth culture? I ran into that phrase – “post-truth culture” – casually applied to the United States, in something I was reading, and it brought me up short. Have things really gotten that bad, I asked myself, or was the writer only saying something attention-grabbing for effect? Assuming a bit of both, I nevertheless knew immediately what he meant, and that in itself tends to suggest that there’s a real problem here. A post-truth culture is first cousin to fake news, and everyone has heard of that thanks to President Trump, whose critics say he’s no mean practitioner in this line himself. The Vatican presumably was not trying to grab attention recently but only alluding to a widely recognized problem in setting the theme for next year’s World Communications Day: “The Truth Will Set You Free – Fake News and Journalism for Peace.” A statement by Pope Francis is expected in January, with the “day” itself to be observed many places next May. In a brief explanation accompanying the announcement, the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communication said the aim was to promote reflection on what it called “the causes, logic, and consequences of misinformation in the media.” Herewith a few unsolicited thoughts about that from an American perspective. First of all, here’s hoping the Pope doesn’t fall into the trap of lambasting mainstream media. Having spent many years working in and around the news business, I know that serious journalists aren’t really the problem. Yes, news people do make mistakes, but knowingly passing off fiction as fact isn’t one of them. Honorable journalists (there are plenty) work hard to get facts straight, and when they do get something wrong, it’s usually due to human error or the difficulty of covering complex stories under the twin pressures of competition and time. That said, though, the unconscious ideological bias of journalists is a real problem, visible in much of the coverage, both pro and con, of President Trump. The best defense against it for readers and viewers and listeners lies in constant self-examination and self-criticism – of media by media – although the voluntary creation of independent evaluation boards to review and critique journalists’ performance might also help. But it’s essential to realize that the heart of the problem of fake news (and the post-truth culture, if there really is one) doesn’t reside in the traditional media but in the proliferation of ideologically polarized websites and social media in recent years. If you want to view something with alarm, start here. And here, one might add, is where “peace” in the Communications Day theme becomes relevant. The polarization in this sector of the media world – the sector inhabited by countless blogs and Twitter and the like – is now visible in the demonizing of persons and the distorting of issues, the projection of a black-and-white world where it’s forever “us” (good guys) vs. “them” (bad guys constantly trying to catch us with our guard down), and the routine practice of rumor-mongering and defamation. To dignify this by calling it fake “news” would be to give it more credence than it deserves. Short of state censorship, which would be a pseudo-remedy worse than the disease itself, the solution evidently resides in the wisdom of “Caveat emptor” – let the buyer beware. News consumers must be judicious in their selection of information sources and should make a habit of consulting multiple ones of varied ideological hues. Hard work, yes, but this is what getting to the truth requires in a post-truth world.
The Supreme Court’s new abortion case
Dec 2, 2017 / 00:00 amImagine the government ordered Ford dealers to post signs telling prospective auto buyers to check out Chevrolet or required vegan restaurants to give diners menus listing the offerings at neighborhood steakhouses as well as vegan fare – what would you say to that? More often than not, I suspect, you’d say the government had overstepped the line and ought to butt out. Fantastic? The Supreme Court will soon be hearing arguments in a case involving a not dissimilar situation in California, where the state obliges pregnancy counseling centers seeking to encourage women not to have abortions to post the following notice: “California has public programs that provide immediate free or low–cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved method of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women. To determine whether you qualify, contact the county social services office at [phone number of the local office].” The law tasking as many as 200 pregnancy counseling centers with this burden – it’s called the Reproductive FACT Act – leaves no doubt about what it wants: a fully visible notice on paper no less than 8.5 inches by 11 inches printed in no less than 22-point type. “Information is power,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who will defend the act before the Supreme Court early next year. Representing the National Institute of Family and Life Institutes, which supports 110 crisis pregnancy centers in the state, are lawyers from a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom. The case (National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra) will come before the court near the 45th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 in which the Supreme Court abruptly legalized abortion nationwide. The Alliance Defending Freedom also represents the plaintiff in another case about religious free speech rights that the Supreme Court will hear December 5 (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission). The dispute involves a baker in suburban Denver named Jack Phillips, found guilty of violating Colorado’s anti-discrimination law for declining to bake a wedding cake for two men because he opposes same-sex marriage on moral grounds and couldn’t in good conscience contribute to its celebration. In both cases, the plaintiffs argue that their First Amendment free speech rights are violated by state actions that require them to take actions that lend support to something – same-sex marriage in the Colorado baker’s case, abortion in the case of the California crisis pregnancy centers – contrary to their moral convictions. Lower courts have ruled in favor of the state in both. In October, though, a California Superior Court judge in a separate case granted an injunction against enforcement of the FACT Act. In a ruling saying “compelled speech” is tolerable only within “reasonable limitation,” Judge Gloria Trask said the law “compels the clinic to speak words with which it profoundly disagrees when the state has numerous alternative methods of publishing its message.” In conflicts like these, people looking for larger trends see the coercive dynamic of contemporary secular liberalism according to which state power is rightly used as an instrument for imposing and enforcing its ideological dictates – especially, as is the case here, when these concern idols of liberal ideology like abortion and same-sex marriage. Now the coercion is increasingly occurring at the expense of religious believers who have chosen to live as their consciences tell them they should. It is by no means clear where the Supreme Court, which over the years has done so much to advance this profoundly illiberal cause, will come down in this argument.
Marriage and social class
Oct 28, 2017 / 00:00 amAmong the benign myths that lie close to the hearts of many Americans is the belief that, in the end, social class differences don’t count for all that much. It’s the Horatio Alger story: hard work and perseverance will pay off for anyone who wants to get his or her slice of the American Dream. Would that it were so, but the evidence says it isn’t. Consider marriage and the family. When it comes to sharing in the advantages associated with marriage and two-parent family life, Americans are increasingly divided along the lines of social class. Consider this from a new study: “College-educated and more affluent Americans enjoy relatively strong and stable marriages and the economic and social benefits that flow from such marriages. By contrast, not just poor but also working-class Americans face rising rates of family instability, single parenthood, and life-long singleness.” The study, titled “The Marriage Divide,” is the work of sociologists W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies, and was jointly published as a “research brief” by several Washington think tanks. Its thrust is summed up in its subtitle: “How and Why Working-Class Families are More Fragile Today.” Note that word “more.” The point is that things have been getting worse. Half a century ago, Wilcox and Wang say, there was no significant difference in marriage and family matters between affluent and working-class Americans. The “vast majority” in both groups “got and stayed married, and most children lived in stable, two-parent families.” But since the 1960s, the authors report, the United States has witnessed “an emerging substantial marriage divide by class.” The present situation is reflected in numbers showing that the percentage of now-married adults ages 18-55 is 56% among middle- and upper-class Americans, 39% among the working class, and 26% among the poor. The figures for cohabitation are 5% among the middle and upper classes, 10 % among the working class, and 13% among the poor. To a great extent, the process that produced these numbers over the last 50 years was spurred by economic factors linked to the changeover from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, which made it harder for many poor and working-class men to find “stable, decent-paying” jobs. As one might expect, the problem was exacerbated by the Great Recession. But Wilcox and Wang insist that economic factors aren’t the whole explanation. On the contrary, what has happened has a lot to do with changes in social attitudes that favor sexual permissiveness, individualism, a decline of family values, and a general fraying of what they call the “civic fabric” including a decline in membership in churches and other community groups. “Americans who regularly attend religious service are more likely to marry, have children in wedlock, avoid divorce, and enjoy higher-quality relationships.” Against this background, the authors conclude that the nation’s leaders should act energetically to promote family values – still relatively strong among the middle and upper classes – among working class and poor Americans. Unfortunately, they don’t say what those steps might be, although simply refraining from further encroachments on religious liberty to enforce secularist views comes readily to mind. The alternative, they write, is “a world where middle- and upper-class Americans benefit from strong, stable families while everyone else faces increasingly fragile families, and where high rates of economic inequality and child poverty are locked in by a marriage divide that puts working-class and poor Americans – and their children – at a stark disadvantage.”
Atheists and believers: Talking past each other
Oct 12, 2017 / 00:00 amThe challenge of finding language in which believers and non-believers can communicate is unintentionally illustrated in a bestselling new book which predicts that human beings will soon reinvent themselves as gods. The book, Homo Deus (Man God), is the work of Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian who achieved fame several years ago with another bestseller, Sapiens (as in Homo sapiens, that is). The earlier volume presented an overview of human history and pre-history up to now. Homo Deus, published by HarperCollins, is, in the words of its subtitle, “a brief history of tomorrow.” Along with providing a guided tour to current developments in science and technology, Harari argues a thesis: The great project of humankind in this century, he says, will be “to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus….we may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with many branches): attaining divinity.” I leave to others the credibility of this from the technological and scientific perspectives. The book is an interesting read and worth pondering. But its vision of human deification rests on a misunderstanding. As an atheist, Harari doesn’t mean “god” in the sense in which believers speak of God—a being eternal, all-powerful, omniscient and omnipresent, creator and father of all. He means beings with life spans greatly extended by science and intelligence enhanced by technology to the point of being super-smart. What he doesn’t mean, because his atheist creed doesn’t allow it, is beings of whom it could rightly be said that they are transcendent. Nor, obviously, does he believe in the transcendent God of theism. (But neither, perhaps, do believers whose appreciation of “transcendence” as applied to God is scant.) The problem this presents was underlined a few years ago by historian Brad S. Gregory in his similarly provocative book The Unintended Reformation (Harvard University Press). In much of the literature that takes God’s non-existence more or less for granted, Gregory wrote, “the God being imagined and whose reality is denied or doubted is not the God of traditional Christianity” – a transcendent God. But if there be such a God as that, he tellingly adds, “a transcendent God is by definition not subject to empirical discovery or disproof.” Atheists generally fail to grasp that. Here, then, is the communication gap between them and believers. Since they do not reckon with what transcendence might mean, atheists like Yuval Harari fail to comprehend what belief in the transcendent God of faith might be like. And unless and until they have at least some faint apprehension of what a transcendent being might be like, there is no arguing with them about whether such a being exists. Harari’s own faith in what science and technology have in store may be excessive. But even if he’s spot on, his vision doesn’t shatter any pillars of faith for those who grasp that “eternal” doesn’t mean unlimited existence in time but a manner of existing – literally beyond imagining now because outside our time-bound experience – entirely beyond the limitations of living in time. For some hint of what that means, we have to turn to a mystic like St. Teresa of Avila, who says repeatedly that her experience of God can’t be described in words because there are no words to describe it. That transcendent God bears no resemblance to the transformed human beings of Homo deus. On the subject of God, it seems, atheists and believers are talking past one another.
The dangers of U.S. “groupthink”
Sep 14, 2017 / 00:00 amAs a kind of back-to-school gift to students, professors at three of the nation’s prestige schools offered them a piece of good advice: “Think for yourself.” “The danger any student – or faculty member – faces today is falling into the vice of conformism, yielding to groupthink,” warned these 26 scholars Princeton, Harvard and Yale. Among the document’s signers were prominent Catholics Robert P. George of Princeton and Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard. The professor’s statement came at the same time as – and could be read as a complement to – a statement by 180 evangelical leaders, including heads of seminaries, theologians, pastors, and journalists. The Nashville Statement, so named for the city in which it was issued, is a forthright and fundamentally pastoral reiteration of traditional Christian teaching on sex in the context of our increasingly “post-Christian” culture. Among other things, it rejects same-sex marriage and insists it is “sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism.” Predictably, these views and those who hold them have been pilloried by progressive critics. A writer in the New York Times, identified as founder of a group called Faithfully LGBT, no doubt spoke for many others in decrying the statement as supposedly representing “a renewed commitment to open bigotry.” The Mayor of Nashville, who one suspects may perhaps not have read the professors’ warning against groupthink, hastened to tell the world that, despite the Nashville Statement’s name, it didn’t represent her city’s right-thinking views on the subject of sex. This uproar is disturbingly typical of what’s likely to happen these days whenever serious Christians speak up on behalf of Christian ideas about sexual morality in the face of contemporary groupthink. Now, it seems, the Supreme Court itself will be weighing these issues during its new term that begins October 2. The case – Masterpiece Cakeshop v.Colorado Civil Rights Commission – involves a Lakewood, Colorado, baker named Jack Phillips whose religious beliefs moved him to refuse to bake a cake celebrating the marriage of two men. Phillips was hauled before the state civil rights commission, which found him guilty of sexual orientation discrimination. State courts ruled against him, and now he has taken his case to the Supreme Court (where it may be joined by another, similar case involving a florist in Washington state). The baker’s lawyers make a novel argument. Phillips, they say, is a “cake artist” for whom baking cakes is a form of expression. Compelling him to create a cake for a gay marriage would mean in effect forcing him to say something he doesn’t believe—a form of “compulsion of speech” ruled out by other Supreme Court rulings. Phillips’ argument may be novel, but his situation isn’t. Since the Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling discovered a constitutional right to same-sex marriage two years ago, others have been forced to lend their support over their conscientious objections. It will be a surprise if the Supreme Court doesn’t join the lower courts in pummeling the baker for resisting this imposition of groupthink. Things like this don’t happen by accident. They reflect careful planning and generous funding by people pushing a new morality and the groupthink to go with it. In their statement urging students to think for themselves, the 26 professors warn of a “tyranny of public opinion” which seeks to create the impression that the views currently “dominant” on many campuses are “so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them.” To which I would only add: Not just students, and not just on campuses.