In a Jan. 11 post I noted that a bishop from Kazakhstan wrote an essay in the Osservatore Romano about the superiority of receiving communion on the tongue, while kneeling. As with most posts on liturgy, it occassioned a good deal of comment, and many informative historical references. In those comments there seemed to me to be a notable effort to keep the bishop’s piece in perspective, and avoid prophecies about the rollback of Vatican II.

And yet…CNS has a story saying the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments ”thinks it is time for the Catholic Church to reconsider its decision to allow the faithful to receive Communion in the hand.” Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don makes his comments in a preface to a book by that same Kazakh bishop who wrote in the OR.

Given the Archbishop’s role–he has used the bully pulpit recently to decry “obstructionist” bishops who he says are blocking implementation of the Latin Rite motu proprio that will correct “abuses”–this does seem like an undeniable sign of a back to the future push. On one level, I am not surprised, as it reflects the thinking of the current pontificate. But Benedict has also been careful about “disorienting” the faithful with yet more changes, even if he would like to implement them. Restoring a separate Latin rite, as the motu proprio did, for a small minority of Catholics attending their own Mass is one thing. Making everyone go back to kneeling and receiving on the tongue–or simply indicating that the current practice is less reverential–seems far more controversial.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey disappoints Sen. Charles Schumer–who voted to confirm Mukasey–by refusing to support a statute banning waterboarding, which is already illegal:

Read the transcript at TPM. Any chance one of the presidential candidates could give some attention to the torture issue? Or maybe executive authority? Much more worth reading at Balkinization.

A while back Joe Komanchak posted on Murray’s invovlement in JFK’s Houston Speech to Protestant ministers. The Fordham Center on Religion and Culture (disclosure: I am co-director) had a session on January 16 that looked at the speech. A great session.

Shaun Casey who has a book coming out on the 1960 election and has been at work in the Kennedy archives said the following (from the transcript):

“…The speech was vetted by three Catholic intellectuals to varying degrees.  These were Bishop John Wright of Pittsburgh; John Courtney Murray, the legendary theologian; and John Cogley, the former editor of Commonweal and director of the Fund for the Republic.  Each made specific contributions.  Cogley drilled JFK on possible questions he might face in the Q&A session. 

“Sorenson read the speech to Murray over the telephone.  Now, Murray apparently did give a paragraph’s worth of advice, which was not directly incorporated into the speech but does show up in the Q&A session afterwards.  This is where Kennedy makes a distinction between faith and morals, on the one hand, where he argued that any Catholic leaders — the Pope, cardinals, bishops — did have some influence over all Catholics; but in terms, on the other hand, of policy, he argued that they indeed had no status to coerce him into any position, nor did they have the authority really to coerce any Catholic politician into accepting particular public policy views.  So he used the distinction that Murray introduced.  Now, obviously, in the current ethos that’s a very difficult distinction to sustain on the part of Catholic politicians and Catholic church leadership.

“Wright was the one who suggested the resignation clause that you saw a moment ago.  His argument was that if Kennedy were to promise to resign in case of a conflict, it would show Catholics, on the one hand, the seriousness of his faith; on the other hand, it would show Protestants his commitment to the Constitution.  So, far from downplaying his faith, Wright argued by making that statement he was affirming the power of his faith, although Kennedy himself could envision no kind of dire conflict that he talked about.”

The full transcript will be posted next week.

Some of you will have read John Connelly’s superb piece (password necessary) on theologian Karl Adam in the Jan. 18 issue. Connelly emphasizes that Adam at once believed in an anti-Semitic racialism, and even spoke favorably of Hitler as a promoter of “blood unity,” while at the same time emerging as one of the leading “progressive” theologians in the period before Vatican II. (Interestingly, and by contrast, our own Joseph Komonchak has written  on how the “progressive” French theologians of the 1950s and 1960s tilted toward opposition to Vichy and early awareness of the poisonous effects of anti-Semitism.) For a taste of Connelly’s ongoing work on the origins of Nostra Aetate, admidst the maelstrom of Vienna in the 1930s, look at his “Catholic Racism and Its Opponents” in the current Journal of Modern History.  It’s a terrific article, with interesting analogies to the Catholic experience of racism and racialist thought in the United States.  One of the concluding paragraphs:  “What lessons can one draw from this story of Catholic racism? The first pertains to the Church itself.   Despite its social and institutional coherence, there was no such thing as ‘the Church’: bishops, clergy, and politically engaged Catholics spoke with many voices. Scholars who focus on Vatican pronouncements of universalism would conclude that if any question was settled in the 1930s, it was the race question. In fact, the institutional Church left huge spaces for debate about how to discern divine will in history, whether through nation, race or other categories. And Catholics speculated with passion, especially in Central Europe.”

Sadly, two prominent church leaders have passed away and within 48 hours of one another.  The two men, the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church are both praised in The New York Times for the work that they did in their respective churches.  Gordon B. Hinckley was 97 and Archbishop Christodoulos was 69. 

Apologies for today’s “trifecta,” but Tim Parks has a piece in the Wall Street Journal Online that is an acute reflection on the crisis in Italy. I found it a helpful “state of the question” and thought others might as well. Parks concludes:

Here then is an extraordinary situation. We have a country of unspeakable beauty, home of unparalleled art treasures and some of the world’s most beautiful cities (Verona where I live being amongst them), inhabited by a people who are on the whole handsome, industrious, well-educated, lively, talented and sharp. Yet their public life is poisoned by a collective dynamic that has been going on for centuries and centuries, whereby it seems impossible for anyone or any group to make the smallest sacrifice in favor of the general good. The fact that every intelligent Italian appreciates this doesn’t seem to help at all.

“So now Italy lies half-dead, waiting to see who will heal her wounds,” wrote Machiavelli at the end of “The Prince” in 1513. He was talking about foreign invasion, but the blame for that, he said, lay with the inability of the Italians to govern themselves well and work together. “You can see the country is praying God to send someone,” Machiavelli went on, “Word’s can’t express the loving welcome such a savior would get…What doors would be closed to such a man?…What Italian would not bow his knee?”

Indeed. Italy had to wait 350 years before Garibaldi’s Sicilian adventure united the country. And another sixty odd years before Mussolini presented himself as a messiah of unity and national strength. Now, thankfully, even dictatorial solutions are no longer feasible; the international community would not permit them. Utterly exhausted and disenchanted, Italy peers into the dark.

For those who missed 60 Minutes last night, check out the fascinating interview with FBI Agent George Piro, lead interrogator of Saddam Hussein.

“He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the ’90s. And those that hadn’t been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq,” Piro says. “So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?” [60 Minutes reporter Steve] Pelley asks.

“It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq,” Piro says.

Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most. “He believed that he couldn’t survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?” Pelley asks. “Absolutely,” Piro says.

“As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn’t he stop it then? And say, ‘Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.’ I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?” Pelley asks.

“He didn’t. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially,” Piro says.

Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could he survive that. “He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage,” he says.

“Saddam didn’t believe that the United States would invade,” Pelley remarks. “Not initially, no,” Piro says.

(…)

What was Saddam’s opinion of Osama Bin Laden? “He considered him to be a fanatic. And as such was very wary of him. He told me, ‘You can’t really trust fanatics,’” Piro says.

“Didn’t think of Bin Laden as an ally in his effort against the United States in this war against the United States?” Pelley asks.

“No. No. He didn’t wanna be seen with Bin Laden. And didn’t want to associate with Bin Laden,” Piro explains. Piro says Saddam thought that Bin Laden was a threat to him and his regime.

Check out the rest of the story, along with video, right here.

On this feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas a reflection  from Nicholas Healy’s fine book, Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life:

His theology is best approached from his concern with the Christian life…..Theology, as Thomas understands and practices it, attempts to clarify what has been revealed of divine wisdom through the incarnate Word and the operation of the Holy Spirit. Theological inquiry’s main function is to serve the preaching of the Gospel. And the preaching of the Gospel serves the Christian life, which is distinct from other ways of life, since it is an attempt to follow Jesus Christ obediently.

To all the members of the Order of Preachers, men and women, throughout the world: Buona Festa! 

In a story on the scandal engulfing France’s Société Générale a New York Times’ headline declares:

A bnak that earned the respect of rivals

                                                                               is now embarrassed

Joe Klein gets it just right:

It may well be true that any Democrat is going to have to handle that sort of sewage in the general election, but I’ve now–belatedly!–figured out that the real audacity in Barack Obama’s campaign–far more than his positions on the issues, which almost seem an afterthought–is his outrageous belief that the entire country, not just Democrats, wants to see a straight up election; that the entire country is tired of the pestilence of tactical tricks that the Clintons learned from their co-dynasts, the Bushes. (The latest example being their sudden, sociopathic emphasis on the importance of the Florida primary, a contest all three candidates had agreed to eschew at the behest of the Democatic National Committee.)

For all their differences, the Bushes and the Clintons share a fundamentally shameless, almost indecent, ruthlessness that I find very hard to stomach, even in people with whose politics I sympathize. Time to turn the page.

Everyone appears to have their NYTimes this morning, so I hope y’all read Katharine Q. Seelye on Bill Clinton, “Back in the Thick of Politics.”

She gets the controversial remarks and she gets the dynamic duo strategy, but she also gets why some Democratic voters love it.”While pundits debated the degree to which those comments were strategic and whether they helped or hurt Mrs. Clinton, those thrusts and parries made up only a fraction of his public appearances here, and voters were not that interested in them.

“Instead, they sat in rapt attention at Mr. Clinton’s town-hall-style events, which were essentially mini lectures on public affiars.”

She notes that Bill Clinton has attraced an unusual and outsized press contingent gobbling up every remark. “…He has become so enmeshed in the campaign that the candidate who is running is often called ‘the Clintons.’ And that seems just fine to many of the people at these event; they often say how happy they would be to have him back in the White House.”

Just a little reality check!

Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/us/politics/27bill.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Seelye&st=nyt&oref=slogin

How best to encapsulate the difference between early baby boomers and late boomers/Gen X? Well, in their formative years, the early boomers had Hendrix, Dylan, and Joplin. The late boomers/Gen Xers, and early Ys had music, well, like this:

(This is actually a spoof, from Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore’s movie, Music and Lyrics.

Living in Indiana, I know that my vote in a primary probably won’t make a difference. So I’ve tried to sit lightly in thinking about the candidates in the primaries.

But I have to say, I thought Barack’s speech last night was a tour de force. It was spellbinding, riffing on King and Kennedy while instantiating his own rhetorical style.

Here’s the key thing I noticed–more than the words: Barack Obama is a grownup. He’s not interested in being young or cool. He’s interested in being responsible. He sees himself as having a fiduciary responsibility, not an excuse for a never-ending party. In this era of delayed adolescence, he’s not pretending to be a rock star, or eternal teenager. He’s not playing the guitar on TV with the band (Clinton). He’s not trying to be a cutup and cute. (Huckabee/Norris ad). He’s not proclaiming a rigid inner certainty about what’s right, treating it as a compass in a relativistic ocean (GW Bush, about his own conversion). He’s advocating confidence, not certainty. Judgment, not relativism.

It is this feature, more than anything else that portends the end of the Boomer, forever young mentality. Barack Obama comes across as a grownup. And whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, he’s reminding you that if you’re old enough to vote, you’re a grownup too.

Gene Palumbo in a comment on another thread called attention to Frank Rich’s column in Sunday’s New York Times. I agree: it’s worth a look. Rich writes:

In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again. Mrs. Clinton’s spiel about being “tested” by her “35 years of experience” won’t fly either. The moment she attempts it, Mr. McCain will run an ad about how he was being tested when those 35 years began, in 1973. It was that spring when he emerged from five-plus years of incarceration at the Hanoi Hilton while Billary was still bivouacked at Yale Law School. And can Mrs. Clinton presume to sell herself as best equipped to be commander in chief “on Day One” when opposing an actual commander and war hero? I don’t think so.

Foreign policy issue No. 1, withdrawal from Iraq, should be a slam-dunk for any Democrat. Even the audience at Thursday’s G.O.P. debate in Boca Raton cheered Ron Paul’s antiwar sentiments. But Mrs. Clinton’s case is undermined by her record. She voted for the war, just as Mr. McCain did, in 2002 and was still defending it in February 2005, when she announced from the Green Zone that much of Iraq was “functioning quite well. ” Only in November 2005 did she express the serious misgivings long pervasive in her own party. When Mr. McCain accuses her of now advocating “surrender” out of political expediency, her flip-flopping will back him up.

I am not as riveted on the primaries as others, but I did watch last evening Obama’s speech … and, like Peggy and Grant, I was impressed. Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement in today’s New York Times now takes on added resonance.

Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

And Jeff Jacoby adds some spice in Sunday’s Boston Globe:

Hillary likes to claim she is “running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling,” but with Bill back in the White House, would it ever be clear just where the lines of authority really ran? What could possibly check and balance the extraconstitutional power of a presidential spouse who was also a former president? Anytime he wants it, Bill Clinton can have the spotlight. In a revived Clinton presidency, would he be content to remain in his wife’s shadow? Or would she continue – as she continues even now – to be in his?

With Rich and Jacoby toiling in the same kitchen, something is definitely cooking.

From the AP (via TPM):

“They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That’s why people tell me Hillary doesn’t have a chance of winning here,” the former president said at one stop as he campaigned for his wife, strongly suggesting that blacks would not support a white alternative to Obama.

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as “the black candidate,” a tag that could hurt him outside the South.

Not to pile on, but of all the commentary on the Clintons’ attacks on Barack Obama, E. J. Dionne’s is the best I’ve seen so far.

Let’s grant the Clintons their claims: The press is tougher on Hillary Clinton than it is on Barack Obama; the old, irrational Clinton hatred is alive and well in certain parts of the media; Hillary Clinton gets hit harder when she criticizes Obama than Obama does when he goes after her.

Let’s further stipulate that Obama’s formulation–he said Reagan “changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not”–was guaranteed to enrage the former president. In Democratic circles, associating someone with Nixon is akin to a Roman comparing an emperor with Caligula.

None of it justifies the counterproductive behavior. Does anyone doubt that if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, she will need the votes of the young people and African-Americans who have rallied to Obama–and that what she’s doing now will make it harder to energize them? Doesn’t calling in Bill Clinton as the lead attacker merely underscore Obama’s central theme, that it’s time to “turn the page” on our Bush-Clinton-Bush political past?

And with both Clintons on record saying kind things about Reagan, why go after Obama on the point? Honestly: If Obama is a Reaganite, then I am a salamander. 

 Read the rest right here. 

Hard on the heels of the New York Times’ endorsement yesterday of Hillary’s nomination, two op-ed contributors express their reservations from both a historical and a contemporary political perspective.

First, Garry Wills:

We have seen in this campaign how former President Clinton rushes to the defense of presidential candidate Clinton. Will that pattern of protection be continued into the new presidency, with not only his defending her but also her defending whatever he might do in his energetic way while she’s in office? It seems likely. And at a time when we should be trying to return to the single-executive system the Constitution prescribes, it does not seem to be a good idea to put another co-president in the White House.

Then Bob Herbert:

[I]t’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.

It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.

What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?

These are questions that need to be answered. Stay tuned.

College on February 7 and say hello, if you have time.

Former Commonweal columnist, Liz McCloskey, now a doctoral candidate at Catholic University, and her husband contributed a column on politics and abortion to the op-ed page of Tuesday’s Washington Post. How much impact it will have on either party is an open question, but to judge from the comments submitted to the Post’s website, one can doubt that it has succeeded in elevating the quality and tone of the conversation.

Political Orphans In 2008

Is There Space for Our Pro-Life Ethic?

By Liz McCloskey and Peter Leibold

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

In this political season, with all the talk about the role of faith in public life, we as a Catholic couple feel very much at home in the conversation and yet still homeless with respect to a perfectly compatible political party or candidate.

When we were born in the early 1960s, it was possible to be both a Democrat and a Catholic without any agonizing pangs of conscience. John F. Kennedy was president; John Courtney Murray was a public theologian; Pope John XXIII was opening a window to the world at the Second Vatican Council. But as we came of age politically, we felt orphaned by the Democratic Party, whose pro-life positions on war, poverty and the environment did not extend to the life of the most weak and vulnerable, those not yet born.

While the moderate wing of the Republican Party provided us a foster home when we worked on the Senate staff of John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), with the likes of former senator Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) and others, the Grand Old Party’s move to the right, including its hardening, dominant positions on the Iraq war, access to guns and the death penalty, among other issues, have made it an inhospitable place for us to dwell permanently.

Read the rest here.

Just a week ago I entered a post, “Malaise or Meltdown?” on the situation in Italy. I thought things were moving from the former to the latter. The latest sign is that the government of Romano Prodi has just lost a vote of confidence in the Italian Senate and has resigned.

As La Repubblica headlines it: Il Senato nega la fiducia al governo con 161 no, 156 sì e un astenuto.

And its editorial concludes: “Povera Italia. Meritava di più.”

Update:

Friday’s New York Times gives further details. As too often in Italy pathos and bathos co-exist cheek by jowl:

Italy’s government finally fell Thursday, after Prime Minister Romano Prodi lost a confidence vote that made it clear that Italy’s leaders know they face a deep political and economic crisis but are venomously divided over how to solve it.

Emblematic of those divisions, during the debate one senator rushed in fury to the desk of a colleague, Stefano Cusumano, and taunted and apparently tried to attack him. Mr. Cusumano, 60, reportedly cried, then collapsed.

“If I had the chance, I would have spit in his face,” said the attacker, Senator Tommaso Barbato, who had to be held back by his colleagues. His action came after Mr. Cusumano changed his vote to support Mr. Prodi.

According to Italian papers (and video clips), Senator Barbato had the chance … and took advantage of it, causing Senator Cusumano to faint, as the curtain fell.

Perhaps future historians will call the unseemly episode “Lo sputo di Barbato” and find some distant parallel with the infamous “Schiaffo di Anagni,” when Boniface VIII (founder of La Sapienza University) was roughed up by the henchmen of the King of France. Even Dante, no friend of Boniface, found this excessive.

An editorial in today’s Corriere della Sera contrasts the serious economic preoccupations of the rest of the world with what it ruefully calls “nostro Carnevale politico.”

And Silvio Berlusconi waits breathlessly in the wings!

In case you missed the flap over Rick Majerus’ statements about abortion and stem cell research and Archbishop Burke’s response, you can find coverage of this on the ESPN website.  That’s right, ESPN.    For those of you who don’t waste countless hours watching college sports, Majerus is basketball coach at St. Louis University.  At a rally for Hillary Clinton last weekend, Majerus stated his personal view about abortion and stem cell research.  Archbishop Burke was not happy and called on SLU to take appropriate disciplinary action.

You can read the ESPN story here.

William Blazek, a Jesuit scholastic,  medical doctor, and ethicist, wrote a piece for the Washington Post, on the occasion of the March for Life. I think it a fine integration of commitment and critical discernment.

Here is how it begins:

“Thou shalt not kill,’ not kill yourself, not kill time (because it belongs to God), not kill trust, not kill death itself by trivializing it, not kill the country, the other person, or the Church.”

These words, spoken by Trappist martyr Dom Christian De Cherge, seem especially apropos as a tool for reflection on this 35th anniversary of the Roe v Wade abortion decision. Jesuit spirituality suggests that it is good to reflect frequently upon the times we might turn away from God. In our individual participation in the struggle over abortion, this turning can manifest itself in concrete emotional, spiritual or physical behaviors. The obverse is true of our reflections as well; it is good to consider daily the ways in which we turn towards God. After identifying the personal failings and strengths of our own conduct in the abortion debate, we can ask the Lord to assist us in avoiding the sin that destroys, and to send us the grace which lifts us nearer Him.

Dom Christian listed several categories of killing we might ponder today: killing of time, death, trust, and the country. While each of us defies these precepts in various ways, it is my intention today to focus on the mechanisms whereby we kill ourselves, other people, and the Church. We kill ourselves in turning away from the God-given purpose of our existence. We kill others in our destructive ruminations, violent words and physical attacks. We kill the Church in dismissing her officials and publicly dissenting from her teachings without carefully examining her arguments.

And it concludes:

In conversations about abortion we can turn away from the purpose of our being when we entertain malicious thoughts. We kill when we speak unholy words, or physically attack the other person. We kill our children when we abort, terminate, or “get rid of” them. We can kill the Church if we dissent in ignorance from the teachings of its experts and legitimate authorities. Following a reflection such as this upon our failings, it is good to look at the way in which we turn towards God. In this case it shall be to consider how we appropriately love ourselves, the other person and the Church. I leave it to the readers’ good discretion to identify examples of their healthy spiritual habits, generosity to their fellows, and active participation in communities of worship. Concluding those considerations, all that remains for persons of prayer is to ask that the Lord help us to turn away from sin and to further embrace the Good News of love. May God help this broken soul to do so.

In between Dr. Blazek offers much to ponder.

Is it possible that the Gazans who walked into Egypt through the breaks in the wall constructed by Israel have created facts on the ground? Hard to say. And who can see the consequences? But there is something bracing about their willingness to walk through the wall for “fresh air” as one woman said. They are imprisoned in their own land by both Hamas and Israel; it would be a breakthrough if they could lift the yoke of both from their shoulders.

Here’s the NYTimes  account: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/world/middleeast/24gaza.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Jon Stewart interviews Jim Wallis on life in a post-religious right America.

BTW, I think both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are doing really well without writers.  These guys are very smart–and very funny.

No, not latest Hollywood adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. Rather, the results of a study released by the Center for Public Integrity.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

According to the AP breakdown, President Bush came out on top, with “259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida…. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.” Still waiting to see how many appeared in Judith Miller’s work.

Two of the best known, not to say notorious, statements about obedience come from the authoritative texts of the Society of Jesus. The thirteenth rule for thinking with the Church reads: “To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls. Because by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed.”

(I sometimes wonder whether this statement did not in its own way contribute to what Yves Congar called “the incredible inflation” of the magisterium especially that of the Pope, in the modern era.)

In his letter to the present General Congregation, Pope Benedict, speaking of Jesuit obedience, evoked the phrase”perinde ac si cadaver essent“. Here is the paragraph of the Jesuit Constitutions in which the phrase appears: “Let holy obedience, in execution, in the will, and in the intellect, be always utterly perfect in us; let us obey with great promptness, spiritual joy, and perseverance whatever may be commanded of us, persuading ourselves that all things are just, and by a blind obedience giving up our own contrary opinion or judgment; this applies to whatever things are commanded by the Superior, unless it can be shown that some kind of sin is involved. Let everyone persuade himself that those who live under obedience must let themselves be led and ruled by divine providence through their superiors, as if they were a corpse which allows itself to be carried here and there and treated in any way, or like an old man’s cane which permits itself to be used anywhere and in any way that the man who holds it wishes.”

(The image of the corpse is found in the writings of St. Francis of Assisi and may go back as far as Pachomius.)

The evocation of these texts reminded me of a book I read some years ago. In Quand Rome condamne, his massive volume on the French Dominicans and the worker-priest crisis of the early 1950s, François Leprieur has a whole section on the discussion of obedience that accompanied the Roman actions that put an end to the worker-priest experiment and that forced prominent French Dominicans, among them Frs. Congar and Chenu, from their posts and into exile. All the Dominicans obeyed promptly and fully what their provincial and Roman superiors required of them. In the course of the discussion of obedience, differences between Dominicans and Jesuits over the spirituality of obedience seemed to emerge.

Congar said that obedience meant following the command of a superior because it comes from a legitimate authority in an area in which he has competence. But to submit one’s freedom to a superior’s command does not absolutely require one to think that the authority is correct. He wanted to write an article on obedience, “a balanced article, which avoids the error (unthinkable for a Thomist) of the so-called ‘obedience of judgment,’ that is, being obliged to think and to say that what one sees as white is black because the authority says that it is black.”

Another one of the censured Dominicans, Féret, argued that according to St. Thomas the relationship between superior and subject exists for the sake of the common good of the community in question, and it is this common good that is to regulate the decisions of the superior and to motivate the obedience of the subject. The theory of blind obedience, explicable in terms of the discipline thought necessary in the Counter-Reformation, departs from this earlier and sounder view. Like Congar, Féret also criticized what he took to be the Jesuit idea of “blind obedience.”

Two Jesuits also published pieces on obedience. A. de Soras found Féret’s criticisms excessive. He argued that religious obedience required something more than obedience in other contexts. It involves supernatural mystery before which what reason regards as folly is God’s wisdom; in addition, it represents an imitation of the obedience unto death of Christ. There is, them, a “mystique of obedience.” Being faced with what one might think is absurd is an invitation to join with Christ in his obedience. The situations in which one might judge that a command goes against the common good of the Church are thought to be extremely rare; and Christians in making this judgment have to be aware how much of the “old man” remains in them and how much they be blinded to what ought to be done.

H. Holstein’s article was entitled “The Mystery of Obedience.” In it he criticized Féret’s view as ‘naturalizing,” this is, ignoring the dimension of mystery..

Fr. Chenu is supposed to have been asked whether he found obedience difficult. “Oh no,” he replied; “obedience is easy. What’s hard is charity.”

I realize I’m a bit tardy with this comment, but the pace of the blogosphere remains intimidating for those of us still marveling over the immediacy of e-mail. A post last week on Christopher Hitchens by Robert Imbelli provoked a lively exchange about the value of what Imbelli called Hitchens’s “devilish knack for pricking the pieties of both left and right.”

Devilish is right. Imbelli regretted Hitchens’s notorious demolition job on Mother Teresa, but was more forgiving of his denunciations of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In assessing the reliability of Hitchens’s judgments, I thought dotCommonweal readers might be interested in the scurrilous things Hitchens has written about Evelyn Waugh. I’ve read quite a bit of Waugh, and was dubious about the claims Hitchens makes in God Is Not Great that Waugh supported “fascist movements in Spain and Croatia, and Mussolini’s foul invasion of Abyssinia, because they enjoyed the support of the Vatican.” With his characteristic hyperbole, Hitchens asserts that “these deformities in one of my most beloved authors arose not in spite of his faith, but because of it.”

Waugh was a bigot and a reactionary, but did that necessarily mean he was a fascist fellow traveler? According to Douglas Lane Patey, one of his better biographers, the idea that Waugh was sympathetic to fascism because he was a Catholic–or sympathetic to fascism at all–is a canard. That Waugh was a mouthpiece advancing the foreign policy of the Vatican is equally fatuous. Patey notes in his The Life of Evelyn Waugh that Italy was Britain’s ally against Germany until 1936. Waugh’s enthusiasm for the 1935 Italian attempt to “civilize” Abyssinia at gunpoint deserves condemnation, but as Patey demonstrates, Waugh’s principal concern was not in following orders from the Vatican but “to persuade British readers not to sacrifice an ally against both Nazism and Communism merely over the war in Africa.”

Waugh was a thinker as contrarian as Hitchens pretends to be, but a good deal more knowing about the actual pieties of both the Left and Right. Asked in 1937 which side he supported in the Spanish Civil War, Waugh wrote, “As an Englishman I am not in the predicament of choosing between two evils. I am not a fascist nor shall I become one unless it were the only alternative to Marxism. It is mischievous to suggest that such a choice is imminent” (Patey, p. 146).

Whether you regard him as mischievous or devilish, Christopher Hitchens is quite often wrong.

Creighton University’s web site on the 35th General Convention of the Society of Jesus has posted the homily (click the first link under “Latest News”) preached by newly elected Father General Adolfo Nicolas, S.J.  Here is an excerpt:

The prophet Isaiah says that serving pleases the Lord. To serve is what counts: to serve the Church, the world, our fellow men and women, and the Gospel. Saint Ignatius also has written in summary form about our life: in all things to love and to serve. And our pope, Holy Father Benedict XVI, has reminded us that God is love; he has reminded us of the Gospel’s essence.

Later on the prophet Isaiah describes the servant’s strength. God is the servant’s only strength. We do not have any other source of strength: not the external strength found in politics, in business, in the media, in studies, in titles, nor the internal fortitude found in research. Only God. Exactly like the poor. Not too long ago I spoke to one of you regarding something that happened to me while working with immigrants. It was an experience that deeply affected me. A Filipino woman who had experienced many difficulties adapting to the Japanese society, a woman who had suffered a great deal, was asked by another Filipino woman for advice. The second woman said, “I have many problems with my husband and I do not know if I should get divorced or try to save my marriage…” In other words, she wanted advice concerning a rather common problem.

The first woman replied, “I do not know what advice to give you right now. However, come with me to Church so that the two of us can pray because only God really helps the poor.” This statement deeply touched me because it is so true. The poor only have God in whom to find their strength. For us only God is our strength. Unconditional, disinterested service finds its source of strength only in God.

There is also a beautiful slideshow of photographs from the Thanksgiving Mass, including photos of a prayer service held shortly before the Mass in the camarette, the room where Ignatius wrote the constitutions of the Society of Jesus.  I found the latter photographs particularly powerful.

An interesting item via Amy Welborn, regarding a debate on abortion–to mark the Roe v. Wade anniversary–between Peter Kreeft of Boston College, for the pro-life side, and philosopher David Boonin of the University of Colorado, for the pro-choice side. The debate took place at the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus and was sponsored by the school’s Thomas Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought.

Some 300 people packed the room, and 300 others listened outside, according to the Catholic News Agency report. Father Kevin Augustyn, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, (yes, those are their real names) said: “The Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought is basically our arm for outreach to both Catholic students that come to us, and the university at large.  We’re trying to engage an important secular university with the Catholic faith.  How do you do that?  You begin with dialogue, and what we have in common, and we believe reason is on our side.”

Question: Could–and should–a similar event be held at a Catholic university?

Yesterday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer began a series on the foreclosure crisis in Northeast Ohio.  The numbers in Cleveland and its surrounding communities are staggering.  I live in an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland and decided to check how many foreclosures are completed or in process in my neighborhood.  In my zip code alone, there were 386 foreclosures in 2007—three on my street.  There were nearly a 1,000 in my zip code over the past two years.

To give a sense of the scope of the crisis in the city of Cleveland, the lead article in the series compares the local devastation to that done by Katrina in New Orleans.  Here is a brief excerpt:

“Regis Le Sommier, a Paris Match magazine reporter, covered the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina struck the nation’s Gulf Coast in 2005. Then, this fall, he came to Cleveland, where he spent a morning touring abandoned and trash-filled houses in Slavic Village.
“This is really like New Orleans,” he said.
Nearly 24,000 people have lost their homes to Cleveland’s Katrina. Nearly 10,000 of the city’s houses have been abandoned . . .

In St. Bernard Parish, a working-class suburb of New Orleans, the real Katrina destroyed about 13,700 houses . . .”

You can read the extraordinarily depressing story, and view and listen to the accompanying materials, here.