In October 1972, a plane carrying 49 passengers, many of them members of a young men’s rugby team, ran into a snowstorm on its way from Uruguay to Chile and crashed in the Andes mountains. You know what happened next.

Except, of course, you probably don’t know much about what happened next. I certainly didn’t know how many died and how many survived. I didn’t know how long they were lost or what became of them afterward. And although I could have guessed, I didn’t realize the people involved were Catholics. For most of us, this tragedy, this miracle, has been reduced to a grisly horror story: the men who became cannibals in the mountains.

Now, thirty-six years later, a new documentary, clumsy titled Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, tells the whole remarkable story—not by rehashing exploitative media accounts, but by compiling the memories of the men who lived through it. Interviews with the survivors (in Spanish, with English subtitles) make up the narration. Their ordeal is reenacted, tastefully, in haunting footage modeled on the few ghostly photos taken after the crash and before the rescue. And the whole story is framed by a reunion of the men, now about fifty years old, who travel back to the site of the crash with their children. The structure can be confusing at first—explanatory signposts are few—but the result is a thoughtful, reflective film that doesn’t work too hard to shape your reaction to the story.

The film (directed by Gonzalo Arijon, a childhood friend of the survivors) takes its narrative cue from the survivors themselves, all disarmingly calm as they walk us through their memories. They are past thinking they have anything to prove; by now they have told their stories many times, and they’ve long since made peace with the details. The weekend trip was organized by the Catholic school where many of the passengers were students. The men recall how they felt as they set off for Chile—one was excited to see the political turmoil under President Allende firsthand. Another was happy to escape the university strikes in Uruguay. Some were giddy about their first time on an airplane, and one young man was looking forward to his first encounter with snow.
Read the rest of this entry »

Seriously. His entire track record is hearsay. The four accounts we have of his life contradict often each other and they’re probably not historically reliable. Besides, he was born in Palestine, for crying out loud. We have to ask these hard questions. The MSM won’t. Maybe this ad is a good start: Who IS the real Jesus?

It’s available here.

Very good posts below, both Peter Nixon’s parsing and Cathleen Kaveny’s essay. Couple of additional reads to suggest–one a very welcome (IMO) piece by Bishop Blase Cupich of Rapid City, S.D in the latest America, titled “Racism and the Election.” It is one of the only pieces I’ve seen from a religious leader addressing the ugliness emerging over the Obama candidacy. Money quote:

Last November the bishops issued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the most recent of the documents we issue every four years during the teachable moment of our most important national elections to acquaint Catholics with their responsibilities in the forum of public policy. In that document we spoke of the things we must never do as individuals or a society because they are always incompatible with the love of God and neighbor. We cite the taking of innocent human life as one example of such intrinsically evil actions. Racism is another.

In any election people have many reasons to support one candidate or to oppose another.  Some of these reasons may be wise and good, some not so good, and others simply wrong. The promotion neither of abortion nor racism can ever be a motivation for one’s vote. Voting for a candidate solely because of that candidate’s support for abortion or against him or her solely on the basis of his or her race is to promote an intrinsic evil. To do so consciously is indeed sinful. That is behavior incompatible with being a Christian. To allow racism to reign in our hearts and to determine our choice in this solemn moment for our nation is to cooperate with one of the great evils that has afflicted our society.

The other item is Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput’s latest take on why a Catholic cannot vote for Obama (which seems to be the bottom line of his argument). He stresses that he is speaking only as a private citizen and author, but his voice obviously carries a weight beyond that. (“Chuck the Archbishop?!”) Archbishop Chaput has been a strong proponent of the intrinsic evil of abortion governing all political choices, but he seems to be tougher than ever here, or perhaps it is the tone, and the fact that he is directly challenging Douglas Kmiec. Money quotes (via ZENIT, which has the text of the Oct. 17 address titled “Little Murders”):

Prof. Kmiec argues that there are defensible motives to support Senator Obama. Speaking for myself, I do not know any proportionate reason that could outweigh more than 40 million unborn children killed by abortion and the many millions of women deeply wounded by the loss and regret abortion creates.

To suggest — as some Catholics do — that Senator Obama is this year’s “real” pro-life candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse. To portray the 2008 Democratic Party presidential ticket as the preferred “pro-life” option is to subvert what the word “pro-life” means. Anyone interested in Senator Obama’s record on abortion and related issues should simply read Prof. Robert George’s essay of earlier this week, “Obama’s Abortion Extremism,” at thepublicdiscourse.com. It says everything that needs to be said.

Of course, these are simply my personal views as an author and private citizen. But I’m grateful to Prof. Kmiec for quoting me in his book and giving me the reason to speak so clearly about our differences. I think his activism for Senator Obama, and the work of Democratic-friendly groups like Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, have done a disservice to the Church, confused the natural priorities of Catholic social teaching, undermined the progress pro-lifers have made, and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue instead of fighting within their parties and at the ballot box to protect the unborn.

Go read this right away.  Ignore my post below.

Sorry, Cathy.  I had no idea this was coming.

One of the things that has frustrated me this election season is the way that two concepts from Catholic moral theology have been thrown around in ways that distort the way they actually operate in the tradition.  I checked my perceptions with a couple of theologians whose judgment I trust, but I will leave them nameless so they are not held responsible for my errors in interpretation.

The first is the concept of “intrinsic evil.”  In their Faithful Citizenship statement, the USCCB defined “intrinsic evils” as actions that are “so deeply flawed that they are always opposed to the authentic good of persons.”  Strictly speaking, the statement is correct.  However, I am finding that the statement is sometimes being read to imply that “intrinsic” evils are of greater moral weight than those that are not. This is not always the case.

There is a strong tradition in Catholic moral theology that evaluates the morality of acts according to a threefold test that looks at 1) the act itself, 2) the intent of the actor; and 3) the circumstances surrounding the act.  All three of these things must be good (or at least neutral) for the act to be morally licit.

Traditionally, to say that something is “intrinsically” evil is to say that it is evil at the level of the act.  It is “objectively” wrong, regardless of the intent of the actor or the circumstances.  Such acts can never be morally licit.  This does not mean, however, that such acts are always greater evils than acts that are evil by dint of intent or circumstance.

Consider an example from sexual ethics.  The act of masturbation has traditionally been considered “intrinsically” evil.  It is a sexual act that can never be ordered toward the goods that human sexuality is ordered to support, i.e. marriage and children.  Adultery, by contrast, is-at the level of the act-an act of coitus between a man and a woman.  The act itself is good or at least neutral.  It is the intent of the parties and the circumstance of their being married to other people that renders the act morally wrong.  While there is a strand of the Catholic tradition that holds that “sins against nature” are of special moral gravity, I would be hard pressed to find a theologian–or a confessor–these days who would hold that masturbation is a worse sin than adultery.  I certainly don’t plan to try the argument out with my wife.

The second concept that is getting a lot of use lately is the concept of “prudential judgment.”  In their recent pastoral letter, Bishops Kevin Farrell of Dallas and Kevin Vann of Ft. Worth write that “issues of prudential judgment are not morally equivalent to issues involving intrinsic evils.”  Similarly, George Weigel argues in the most recent issue of Newsweek that “pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics are thus putting the full weigh of their moral argument on contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear that weight.”   

I believe that these distinguished gentlemen are mistaken in their understanding of the concept of prudential judgment.  They seem to imply that if one uses prudential judgment to discern that a given action (or inaction) is evil, that action should be given less moral weight than an act where such judgment is not required.

This is incorrect for two reasons.  The first reason is-as we saw above-that the fact that an action is “intrinsically” evil does not mean that it is a worse evil than one that is not.

Secondly, once an individual moral agent–through the use of prudential judgment–comes to the conclusion that a given act is evil, then the agent must treat it as evil and act accordingly.  If I conclude that the War in Iraq was an unjust war, then I need to treat it as such when I am making my moral decision-making.  I do not get to say “Well, I believe that the War in Iraq is unjust, but its injustice is mitigated because I had to employ prudential judgment to determine this.”  The fact that I needed to use prudential judgment may make me less sure about my conclusion, but if I am sure, then that conclusion is binding on my conscience.

None of this is to say that the evils outlined by the bishops-abortion, euthanasia, torture, etc.-are not very grave evils.  But their gravity is more a function of their violation of justice than of the fact that they are intrinsic evils and therefore allegedly don’t require the use of prudential judgment.  To be honest, I’m not sure the latter would ever be true because I almost always need to employ that judgment to determine whether my act is, in fact, an act of euthanasia or torture.

In retrospect, I think it would have been better had the U.S. bishops simply asserted that, with respect to our political choices, some evils are particularly grave because (pick one or all): 1) they attack fundamental principles of justice; 2) they are practiced or tolerated on a very wide scale; 3) they are practiced or protected by the state, and thus the question of who controls the apparatus of the state becomes particularly important.

That’s probably enough for now.  For obvious reason, I’d be particularly interested in Cathy’s feedback, but everyone is of course welcome to comment.

Now this would be a serious change of tone–and the smartest move yet in the heretofore hapless McCain-Palin campaign. The LATimes reports (via Sarah Pulliam at Christianity Today) on McCain’s make-up appearance on Letterman last night and McCain’s revelation that Palin would be going on Saturday Night Live soon.

“Probably get more of an audience than our debate did,” McCain quipped, as he tried to make up for jilting Dave–and he did a good job, by all accounts.

First joshing with Obama at the Al Smith Dinner, now this! His standup is better than his sit-downs…And Sarah going on with Tina could be more of a game-changer than anything else the campaign has left. I just wonder how they’ll play her campaign for laughs. Oh, and when is she going to meet with real media?

I haven’t had enough coffee yet to process the photo on the front page of NYTimes.com — you can see it here, accompanying their story about last night’s Al Smith Dinner. Cardinal Egan in the middle, with Obama on one side and McCain on the other, and they’re all laughing. What country, friends, is this? (The formalwear just adds to the weirdness: white ties and tuxes for the candidates, and a bright red cape for His Eminence. Not a flag pin in sight.)

The NYT story has some highlights from their speeches, including a few cracks that would have made me laugh, too. My favorites:

Mr. Obama, noting his age, said he did not have the pleasure of knowing Al Smith, but added: “From everything Senator McCain has told me, he was a great man.”

Then, he gave a shout out to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “The mayor recently announced some news that he would be rewriting the rules and have a third term, which prompted Bill Clinton to say: You can do that?”

From TPM:

The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee are pumping a robocall into multiple states that directly alleges that Obama has “worked closely” with “domestic terrorist Bill Ayers,” whose organization has “killed Americans,” according to multiple reader reports and an audio recording we listened to.

The caller begins by announcing that he’s calling on behalf of McCain and the RNC. the call continues:

“You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country.”

The call concludes by saying it was “paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee.”

…And as predicted, he may want to give it back. Read the rather funny Times’ “Caucus” piece about “Joe the Plumber,” star of last night’s debate…Or, rather, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. And he’s actually not a plumber. But he is an angry Republican who owes back taxes and may not actually pay any extra taxes if he buys the plumbing business he has his eye on.

Oh, and he has a way with words:

Mr. Wurzelbacher told Ms. Couric that his encounter with Mr. Obama was a matter of impulse. “Neighbors were outside asking him questions, and I didn’t think they were asking him tough enough questions,” he said.

He went on, “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question,” he said, “for once instead of tap dancing around it. And unfortunately I asked the question, but I still got a tap dance.”

He added, “Almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr.”

Nice. I wonder how McCain would do under Joe’s questioning. Maybe Walter Brennan?

I just returned from giving a Commonweal Lecture at the University of Wyoming to discover that George Weigel reads dotCommonweal. Good for him!

So . . . the Newsweek column. Doug Kmiec, Nick Cafardi and I will be responding in Newsweek in a more substantive fashion. Here, a few quick comments just for the dotCommonweal crowd.

1. “Obamapologetics”? George, George. You can do better than that. It’s awkward. And obvious. No one likes a good neologism better than I do. But this is simply beyond the Palin.

2. Political Dedication Is No Excuse for Bad Proofreading. In paragraph five, Weigel writes:

“Her argument, in sum: the constitutional and legal arguments that have raged since Roe vs. Wade are over, and Catholics have lost; there are many other “intrinsic evils” that Catholics are morally bound to oppose, and Republicans tend to ignore those evils; liberalized social-welfare policies will drive down the absolute numbers of abortions and Senator Obama is an unabashed liberal on these matters. Therefore, a vote for Obama is the ‘real’ pro-life vote.”

The argument he’s just summarized is Nick Cafardi’s argument, not my argument (although it’s a powerful one). Weigel must have meant “His argument,” not “Her argument. ” In fact, he doesn’t actually mention any of my arguments at all. Maybe he meant to suggest that my spirit was somehow poured out over all the arguments –but I would guess that this pneumatology would be a little too close to feminist theology for his taste.

It must have been a typo.

3. But Seriously Folks . . .

And abortion is a serious issue. As a lawyer and a moralist, I’ve been thinking about it, both in political season and out of it, for twenty years now. If you want to know what I think, as opposed to what others say I think, here is an article I published in Origins a few years ago.

It’s M. Cathleen Kaveny, “How Views of Law Influence the Pro-Life Movement,” Origins 34:35 at 560ff (February 17, 2005).

That might be heresy to some in the Catholic universe, but the argument has much to be said for it–though don’t expect Cardinal Edward M. Egan to be making that claim at tonight’s Al Smith Dinner. The quadrennial white-tie gala fundraiser at New York’s Waldorf Astoria is a glitzy affair and a rare combat-free zone on the eve of the presidential vote. That will be especially welcome given the tenor of the current campaign (and one must put the onus on the McCain-Palin camp–there is no “pox on both houses” equivalency here). It will also be tough for the candidates’ speechwriters to come up with the usual jokey banter given the state of affairs in the nation and abroad. If I were Obama, I’d stick with conclave jokes about white smoke coming from McCain’s ears…And maybe David Letterman can give McCain some Top Ten pointers tonight when McCain has his make-up visit to the show after his earlier bailout over the bailout…

But there are at least a couple of ironies here. One is that the political bloodletting in the Catholic Church has reached such a point that a dinner honoring the first Catholic presidential candidate–and a man reviled for his faith–is virtually off-limits to Catholic candidates. For the last Al Smith dinner, in 2004, Cardinal Egan refused to host John Kerry because he is a pro-choice Catholic. Instead he invited former Republican President George H.W. Bush and former New York Gov. Hugh Carey, a Democrat, as this CNS story explains.

Problem is, according to much of the “pro-life” rhetoric, Obama is the most “pro-abortion” candidate EVER, to the point that he supports “infanticide.” (Yes, “scare quotes” are necessary given the nature of allegations.) So how is it that Obama gets to appear and Kerry doesn’t? Putting up a “No Catholics Need Apply” sign at the Al Smith event may be the ultimate paradox.

It wasn’t always so…Time was when churchmen and candidates worked together for the Catholic good and the common good, such as when Smith was attacked in The Atlantic Monthly in a open letter by Charles C. Marshall. A reluctant Protestant apologist (he was drafted for the task by the magazine’s editor), Marshall still recycled various dubious claims about Catholicism’s incompatibility with democracy, and Catholics’ standing as loyal Americans, as demonstrated (he said) by various papal encyclicals. Smith’s first response–possibly apocryphal, but certainly true in a larger sense–was the memorable line, “What the hell is an encyclical?” Rather than castigating Smith (as would happen today), he received help drafting a response from the World War I hero Father Francis Duffy. (Cardinal Patrick Hayes also reviewed Smith’s response and pronounced it “good Catholicism and good Americanism.”) Smith’s actual response re the encyclicals was: “So little are these matters of the essence of my faith that I, a devout Catholic since childhood, never heard of them until I read your letter.”

The second irony is that Obama’s views may certainly be closer to Catholic social justice teachings than McCain’s. (And hey, why didn’t Obama point out in last night’s debate that the Catholic bishops have closer ties to ACORN–to the tune of $1 million in grants–than he does?) His community-based activism and his views on justice and peace are far more consonant with Catholic social teaching than McCain’s. Michael Sean Winters made that argument in The New Republic, and it occasioned a lively debate at this blog.

Moreover, Obama is the first presidential candidate of a prominent minority community and he has faced ugly abuse not only for his race but also for his faith–much as Smith did. Will 2008 be a replay of 1928?

Or, put this way, is Obama the “real” Catholic candidate? Perhaps a useful thought experiment would be this: Imagine that Al Smith had been elected in 1928. Instead, we got Herbert Hoover. And I think you know what came next…

BTW: The photo of Al Smith (second from the left, with the “Sachems of Tammany Hall, 1929, including Mayor James J. Walker”) is courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York, where an excellent exhibit, “New York Catholics: 1808-1946,” organized for the bicentennial of the diocese, continues through the end of this year. It’s worth checking out if you’re in the city.  

So, impressions and opinions on last night’s debate? Okay, I’ll go first. It’s clear by now that these candidates need to swap meds: Obama should be taking McCain’s juiced Geritol and McCain should channel the Human Valium across the desk from him. I didn’t think either man was particularly on his game, but Obama is ahead, and was playing four-corners to some degree. Big difference is that Obama’s cucumber cool has been working, and he stuck with it. McCain’s splatter-shot attacks have not been working, and he stuck with it. Why? Weird. Maybe there are no other arrows in the quiver.

And speaking of weird, I think Joe the Plumber needs to get a TRO on McCain. I’d never heard of Joe Wurzelbacher until last night, but the WaPo has the video that made him famous here. Joe is set to buy a company with more than $250,000 in income, but he has no idea what’s coming down the pike now, as the media tries to figure out who Joe is. Has Joe the Plumber joined Joe Sixpack and Joltin’ Joe and Marlboro Joe and Joe Komonchak as an American icon?

Enough of that. Anything of substance? An oddly inchoate Roe v. Wade exchange, but probably smart politics. Oh, and Bob Shieffer wins the moderator award, in my book! He sounded as fed up with the yammering as I was, and he kept it moving. Good for him.

The Washington Post has in interesting and important story today about the Bush White House’s support for torture.  Here’s a taste:

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects — documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency’s interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

The memos were the first — and, for years, the only — tangible expressions of the administration’s consent for the CIA’s use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for “policy approval.”

With an Obama win looking increasingly likely, Catholic Republicans are pulling out all the stops to press the argument that Catholics cannot in good faith vote for a pro-choice candidate, or at least a candidate whose positions on abortion are as stark as Obama’s.  George Weigel takes a crack at this in a column in Newsweek.  Lots of interesting stuff in there, but this paragraph struck me as particularly important and wrong:

The pro-Obama, pro-life Catholics would doubtless reply that that standard has been met in this instance. But that claim still leaves them with a problem. As Cardinal George’s letter indicated, the Catholic Church’s teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion involves a first principle of justice that can be known by reason, that’s one of the building blocks of a just society, and that ought never be compromised—which is why, for example, Catholic legislators were morally obliged to oppose legal segregation (another practice once upheld by a Supreme Court decision that denied human beings the full protection of the laws). Questions of war and peace, social-welfare policy, environmental policy and economic policy, on the other hand, are matters of prudential judgment on which people who affirm the same principles of Catholic social doctrine can reasonably differ. The pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics are thus putting the full weigh of their moral argument on contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear that weight.

Two things about this argument.  First, he is attempting to press the point that it is impossible, as a matter of self-evident principles, to be morally opposed to abortion but at the same time oppose codifying that opposition in law.  I’ve already posted on numerous occasions about the distinction between morality and law in Catholic legal theory.  The letter by Cardinal George to which Weigel refers blurs that line, asserting that it intrinsically evil not to have laws prohibiting abortion.  (John Paul II makes the same move in Evangelium Vitae at 73.)  The confusion that results from this failure to give adequate attention to the distinction between law and morality is wide and deep.

Consider, for example, Weigel’s reference to legal segregation.  This is inapt, since in that case it is the law itself that is doing the intrinsic evil (i.e., racial subordination), whereas in the context of abortion, it is private parties doing the evil, with the law merely failing to stop them.  A better analogy from the civil rights context would therefore be to laws (such as Title II or Title VII) that prohibit discrimination by private actors.  Were such laws necessary in the United States, given its traditions of private racial subordination?  You bet.  Would  it be intrinsically evil for a society not to have such laws?  I don’t think so.  A society that had no history of private discrimination might legitimately decide not to qualify private exclusion rights in the way that Title II does.  And even a state that does have a history of private discrimination might (as Title II does) exempt certain very private activities from the law’s reach (as with the private clubs exception from Title II’s prohbition of racial discrimination).  So, to recap, racial subordination is intrinsically evil.  The state must never do it.  But the state may sometimes choose (for any number of valid reasons) not to interfere with private conduct, even though that means that some private parties might thereby be permitted to engage in racial subordination.   I find Weigel’s (and others’) equation of the law and morality of abortion to be in tension with traditional Catholic thinking about how much morality to mandate by law, but let’s leave that to one side.  (None of the foregoing, by the way, has any bearing on the question whether we, here and now, ought to legally prohibit abortion.  I’m just questioning the use of the language of intrinsic evil to describe the absence of such a law.  I understand that I’m swimming against the recent authoritative current here, but, as I explain in the rest of this post, Weigel’s argument in the quoted paragraph fails, even if we  accept the notion that laws prohibiting abortion are required always and everywhere.)

The more problematic claim in this paragraph is his assertion that “[q]uestions of war and peace, social-welfare policy, environmental policy and economic policy, on the other hand, are matters of prudential judgment on which people who affirm the same principles of Catholic social doctrine can reasonably differ. The pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics are thus putting the full weigh of their moral argument on contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear that weight.”  This argument fails badly.  It would only work if pro-life Democrats were trying to do what Weigel (and Robby George and others) are trying to do — which is to argue that a Catholic cannot in good conscience vote for the other party’s candidate.  If that were the argument we were trying to make, Weigel’s point would be well taken.  Since people of good will can disagree about these prudential judgments, we cannot establish that it is contrary to Catholic teaching to vote for McCain even though he suports continuing our involvement in an unjust war.  But that is decidedly not the argument pro-life Democrats are trying to press.  Instead, we are merely arguing that it is permissible for a Catholic in good faith to vote for Obama, and on that score, these prudential judgments about the morality of war or the need for prompt action on climate change absolutely can bear the weight we want to place on them.  For Weigel to be able to make the case that this is impermissible, he needs to focus,  not on the prudential nature of the questions, but on the relative importance of the issues about which voters are reaching prudential conclusions.  And that weighing of the relative importance of the issues remains in the prudential column, even if, internally, the determination of the “Catholic” position on the issue is not itself prudential.  It is important to note that the evils on both sides don’t have to be intrinsic to rebut Weigel’s argument.  To say an evil is intrinsic is only to say that it is evil at all times and places.  Something that is only evil sometimes (e.g., war) is still evil (and gravely so) when determined (prudentially) to be evil.  The fact that a conclusion that some position or policy is evil is based on prudential reasoning does not somehow reduce the gravity of its evil.  Put another way, Weigel seems to be confusing intrinsic evil and grave evil.  Something can be intrinsically evil and not gravely evil or evil only at certain times and places, and yet, nonetheless, gravely evil.

Take just the example of the Iraq war.  Once one makes the prudential determination that a war is unjust, then killings that occur as part of that war are, morally speaking, the same as state-sponsored murder of the innocent, a grave evil.  Accordingly, from the point of view of a pro-life person who (based on his own prudential reasoning) views the war  as unjust, voting for someone who, although he favors abortion rights, promises to end the war as soon as possible can be a reasonable position to take, even if that pro-life voter accepts everything Weigel says about the impermissibility (at all times and all places) of laws permitting abortion.  Such a person is choosing between a candidate who, among other things, will not take decisive action to stop such state-sponsored murder and a candidate who will not take decisive action to erect new legal barriers to private killing and who, in fact, has promised to remove existing barriers.  Even accepting Weigel’s assertion that it is categorically impermissible to do what Obama is proposing to do with respect to abortion laws, those who have made the (admittedly prudential) determination that the war as unjust are confronted with grave evil on both sides of the political equation.   Now, Weigel will reply that the deaths in Iraq pale in comparison to the deaths from abortion, but then we have shifted away from questions about intrinsic evil versus prudential judgments and into the domain of how to weigh the likelihood of progress on abortion against the likelihood of progress on Iraq.  And that seems to be clearly a prudential question properly left to the conscientious reflection of individual voters.

Tonight I attended a parish educational event on “Faithful Citizenship.”  We had three speakers, one who spoke about the USCCB’s document “Faithful Citizenship,” one who spoke about the activities of the state Catholic Conference, and one who spoke about a ballot initiative on gay marriage.

There were about 40 people in attendance, admittedly a sparse turnout in a parish of almost 3,000 families.  After hearing the presenters, we wrote down our questions on 3×5 cards, which were read one at a time.  I thought folks might be interested in some of the questions that were asked.  Since I’m pressed for time, I’m omitting the answers, but I can say that in general they hewed very closely to the ideas presented in Faithful Citizenship.

“What is the bishops’ position on immigration? I’m concerned about people who come to this country illegally.”

“Are the bishops’ concerned that the Campaign for Human Development has made donations to ACORN?”

“If both candidates in an election seem morally unacceptable, can you in good conscience abstain from voting?”

“Why do the bishops talk so much about abortion and gay rights and rarely talk about the war in Iraq or poverty.”

“Since only Congress can make laws and the President only enforces them, can’t we discount Roe v. Wade when voting for the office of President?”

“Section 38 of Faithful Citizenship states that the choices of individual voters can affect their salvation.  Can the panel please comment?”

“Since the Democratic Party is a pro-choice party and abortion is an intrinsic evil, how can a Catholic support Democrats?”

I guess those 12,000 emails found him:

Christopher Buckley, the author and son of the late conservative mainstay William F. Buckley, said in a telephone interview that he has resigned from the National Review, the political journal his father founded in 1955.

Mr. Buckley said he had “been effectively fatwahed by the conservative movement” after endorsing Barack Obama in a blog posting on TheDailyBeast.com; since then, he said he has been blanketed with hate mail at the blog and at the National Review, where he has written a column.

As a result, he wrote to Richard Lowry, the editor of the National Review, and
its publisher, Jack Fowler, offering to resign, and “this offer was rather
briskly accepted,” Mr. Buckley said.

Mr. Buckley said he did not understand the sense of betrayal that some of his conservative colleagues felt, but said that the fury and ugly comments his endorsement generated is “part of
the calcification of modern discourse. It’s so angry.” Quoting Ronald Reagan, he added, “I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.”

Mr. Buckley has joined a growing list of conservatives who have either endorsed Mr. Obama or questioned whether McCain now stands any chance of being elected. On Monday, the writer Christopher Hitchens also endorsed the Democratic ticket.

It would be interesting to see Supreme Knight Carl Anderson (see Paul Moses’ post below) face off with Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, who told NCR’s John Allen that he would “obviously” vote for Barack Obama if he could. That seems consistent with what I’ve heard from and about prelates outside the American ecclesial echo chamber. But Onaiyekan is particularly thoughtful in his remarks:

Known as a strong advocate for social justice, Onaiyekan said Obama’s pro-choice record wouldn’t stop him from voting for the Democrat.

“The fact that you oppose abortion doesn’t necessarily mean that you are pro-life,” Onaiyekan said in an interview with NCR. “You can be anti-abortion and still be killing people by the millions through war, through poverty, and so on.”

A past president of the African bishops’ conference, Onaiyekan is widely seen as a spokesperson for Catholicism in Africa. During the synod, he was tapped to deliver a continental report on behalf of the African bishops.

Onaiyekan said the election of an African-American president would have positive repercussions for America’s image in the developing world.

“It would mean that for the first time, we would begin to think that the Americans are really serious in the things they say, about freedom, equality, and all that,” he said. “For a long time, we’ve been feeling that you don’t really mean it, that they’re just words.”

Onaiyekan said he’s aware that many American Catholics have reservations about Obama because of his stand on abortion, but he looks at it differently.

“Of course I believe that abortion is wrong, that it’s killing innocent life,” he said. “I also believe, however, that those who are against abortion should be consistent.

“If my choice is between a person who makes room for abortion, but who is really pro-life in terms of justice in the world, peace in the world, I will prefer him to somebody who doesn’t support abortion but who is driving millions of people in the world to death,” Onaiyekan said.

“It’s a whole package, and you never get a politician who will please you in everything,” he said. “You always have to pick and choose.”

John (who is in Rome covering the Synod on the Bible, along with Onaiyekan and a cast of hundreds) also posts the full transcript of the interview here.

UPDATE! Via CNS, this story about a 106-year-old nun who is going to vote for the first time since 1952…and she’s going to vote for Obama! Maybe she and the Archbishop can talk shop while waiting in the non-communion line. It’s a very nice piece, actually.

ROME (CNS) — U.S. Sister Cecilia Gaudette, a 106-year-old member of the Religious Sisters of Jesus and Mary, will vote for the first time in 56 years and will cast her ballot for president for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. The nun, a retired music and art teacher, has lived in Rome for 50 years and only recently found out that she could register for an absentee ballot without returning to the United States.

…Sister Cecilia said she was sure Obama would win, just like the last U.S. presidential candidate she voted for — Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. “I always said, ‘I voted once and I won the election,’” she told CBS News.

The leader of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, seems to be facing some dissent within the ranks over his politicking in the presidential race. A group calling itself “Knights for Obama” has set up a Web page “responding to those who have tarnished the great reputation of the Knights of Columbus by dragging its 1.3 million members into tacit endorsement of the Republican candidate in this crucial Presidential election.” The quotes from a few members of the K of C are worth noting.

Anderson jumped into the presidential campaign with his letter to Joseph Biden in September. It chastised the VP candidate for comments he made concerning church teaching on abortion and invited him in for a chat.

The letter and the invite were all well and good, and I think Biden’s statements show he might profit from some theology instruction. But Anderson’s political intention was obvious, given that he advertised his letter in some shrewdly targeted campaign “battleground” locales – in newspapers in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., among others.

Anderson is certainly familiar with presidential politics. During the 1980s, he served as an aide to Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and then as a special assistant to President Reagan and acting director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. Anderson’s spokesman at the K of C, Patrick Korten, was a spokesman for Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese III.

The Knights took a strong anti-abortion position long before Anderson came to head the organization – but Anderson’s decision to advertise his rebuke of the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in the heavily Catholic battleground counties of a battleground state crossed the line into partisan political activity. It’s no wonder that some members are speaking out.

Only kidding. But she does love Latin.

Here you go. I thought I’d open the thread for you all.

Although I have to finish a Commonweal lecture I have to give this week, so don’t have time to post.

I was very moved by a post on America‘s “In All Things” blog this morning. Valerie Schultz wrote about a homily she heard on California’s Prop 8, in which the priest jokingly compared gay people seeking marriage to monkeys dressed up in wedding clothes for a gag photo.

I suppose I should be happy this priest at least made an effort to relate his politicking to the day’s Scripture readings. But it shocks me that there are still priests and preachers who don’t know the pain they cause with remarks like that. I know so many families with stories just like Valerie’s. How is it possible that this priest doesn’t? Worse, I know there are people who praise this kind of preaching, who would call this priest a fearless truthteller, a brave defender of the faith. But there is nothing brave about denying the dignity of any person. There is nothing pastoral about mocking people’s pain. No matter how committed you are to this particular “truth,” it ought to be possible to defend it without resorting to ugly jokes and insults, or ignoring the struggles of your neighbors — and if that’s not possible, I have to wonder whether truth and charity is really your motivation.

I am reminded again of Bishop Martino’s suggestion that Catholics whose votes are determined by abortion politics alone are walking with Christ, faithfully carrying the cross, while those who dissent are denying their Lord and refusing to shoulder his burden. As Valerie attests, coming to a position of dissent on an article (or a political application) of Church teaching is hardly an easy decision for most Catholics. People who struggle with Church teachings on sexuality may not be carrying the cross you would have them take up, but it is a mistake to assume they don’t have burdens of their own — burdens they come by honestly and carry faithfully. The very least a pastor can do is not go out of his way to make that burden heavier. I know a number of people who could have written this. I’m so glad Valerie Schultz did:

As uncomfortable as we are in this position – alienating old friends and voting against pastoral guidelines – we believe that the Church needs its dissenters, as unlikely as they may be. We are not by nature confrontational people: we rarely even argue with each other. It is another divine irony that we are dissenters at all: we who have long been a couple who practiced Natural Family Planning because it was Church teaching, who supported every Church ministry and encyclical and fundraiser, who went to Mass faithfully every Sunday and brought up our daughters in the arms of Mother Church. People used to think we were really good Catholics. And we liked it that way. We liked being pillars of the community much more than we like being crazy voices in the wilderness. But here we are, protesting, questioning, being accused of blasphemy and of malformed consciences. Here we are, defending the marriages of those considered monkeys. Here we are, timid and miserable, but witnessing in one small way to a God who is love.

On balance, I’d have to count myself a fan of Eugenio Pacelli, better known to the world as Pius XII.  Pope Benedict celebrated a mass this week on the 50^th anniversary of Pius’s death, an event that led to some controversy due to the ongoing debate about Pius’ actions during World War II.

My interest in Pius stems from three very important encyclicals he wrote during the course of his pontificate. The first, Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), was a breakthrough moment for the modern biblical movement within the Catholic Church.  In the early part of the 20^th century, the attitude of the Church toward modern biblical criticism was strongly negative.  While there were certainly reasons to be concerned about some of the more skeptical trends in modern exegesis, I think is generally accepted that the Church overreacted.  Pius’ encyclical gave Catholic biblical scholars more freedom to pursue their work and laid the groundwork for Vatican II’s document Dei Verbum.

The second, Mystici Corporis (1943), articulated a vision of the Church as the “mystical body of Christ.”  This was an understanding of the Church that, while rooted in Scripture, had been gradually recovered by theologians, clergy and the laity since the 19^th century.  It was popularized in this country by individuals like Archbishop Fulton Sheen among others.  This ecclesiology laid the groundwork for progress in the ecumenical sphere and a new appreciation of the role of the laity.  Many of the ideas contained in Mystici Corporis reappear in Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.   

The third, Mediator Dei (1948), was a cautious endorsement of the goals of the Liturgical Movement, which had been gaining support among clergy and laity in northern Europe and to a lesser extent North America.  The encyclical endorsed the goal of encouraging the active participation of the faithful in the celebration of the liturgy and allowed for the use of the vernacular in the celebration of the sacraments.  Mediator Dei validated the efforts of those involved in liturgical movement and paved the way for the liturgical reforms of Vatican II.

When we think of the popes of the Second Vatican Council, we usually think of John XXIII and Paul VI.  I would argue, though, that without Pius XII, there would probably not have been a Council, not least because it was Pius who made Angelo Roncalli the Patriarch of Venice and a Cardinal!  More fundamentally, though, it was Pius who first endorsed a cautious opening of the Church to many of the most important theological, liturgical, and biblical trends of the modern period.

It seems that no reflection on Pius can be complete without an assessment of his actions during World War II.  But I don’t think I can adequately address that issue here.  I think it is fair to say that no one during that period did enough to save Jews from the Holocaust.  If I had to make a list of prominent individuals in those years whose failure to act was morally culpable, I’m not sure that Pius would be in the top ten.  But I will leave that debate for another time.

These days, it takes more courage than usual for conservatives to say the obvious.  So Kudos to Christopher Buckley (son of William F.).  Somehow, I think the 12,000 emails will still manage to find him:

My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

I don’t know if it makes the Republicans’ point, but Deal Hudson notes that ACORN got more than $1 million in aid from the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Campaign for Human Development last year. Hudson’s attack on ACORN comes as the Republican Party is tarring the community activist organization as part of its campaign to link Barack Obama to radicals. I don’t think Hudson helps the GOP’s case by noting the bishops’ financial support for ACORN projects. But he is taking advantage of the opportunity to urge the bishops to cut off funding for ACORN on grounds that it is too political for a non-profit.

There are some rough edges around ACORN, going back to the days when its members seized abandoned buildings as squatters. Its voter-registration drives are the particular target of Republican ire and are under investigation in various places. But from my own observations, I can also see why ACORN’s community-organizing projects merit funding from the money we throw into the collection basket for the Campaign for Human Development. It organizes the poor the to help themselves.

I observed this as a newspaper reporter in the late 1990s. When workfare was first required for welfare recipients in New York City, I spoke to some of the participants. They were treated horribly – working outdoors in city parks in the winter without coats, appropriate work clothes or boots (they often wore their own sneakers in extremely cold weather). They had no rights whatsoever – they were “fired” – cut off from benefits – if they missed a day of work for whatever reason. Untrained supervisors treated them with contempt; I visited one sanitation garage where the workfare workers’ tools were segregated from the regular city workers’ tools. The bathroom was off-limits to the workfare workers.

Few were paying attention to this at the time. But ACORN stepped in to organize the workers. Their plight improved considerably. The workfare program improved because of it, I think – the whole point was to convey the dignity of work, but instead the Giuliani administration’s approach had been punitive. ACORN recognized the welfare recipients’ human dignity. Detractors like Hudsdon can call this a radical agenda, but to me it sounds quite Catholic.

Whatever comes of the political allegations being made against ACORN in the heat of a nasty campaign, I hope that its legitimate grassroots organizing goes forward.

Then enroll at your nearest institution of higher learning. We’re offering free subscriptions to undergraduates and grad students. All you have to do is e-mail your name, address, school, and expected year of graduation to Marketing Coordinator Nicole Benevenia: nicole-at-commonwealmagazine.org. And professors: if you know any students who might enjoy a free subscription to Commonweal, send them our way. Or at least direct them to our spiffy new Facebook page.

Today is the Day of Atonement, which concludes the High Holy Days. The 1901-06 Jewish Encyclopedia (which might be comparable in tone and content to the 1914 Catholic Encyclopedia, but still fascinating if outdated in some respects) is online. Here is part of the entry on Yom Kippur:

In rabbinic Judaism the Day of Atonement completes the penitential period of ten days ( ) that begins with New-Year’s Day, the season of repentance and prayer; for though prayerful humiliation be acceptable at all times, it is peculiarly potent at that time (R. H. 18a; Maimonides, “Yad,” Teshubah, ii. 6). It is customary to rise early (commencing a few days before New-Year); the morning service is preceded by litanies and petitions of forgiveness (, “seliḥot”) which, on the Day of Atonement, are woven into the liturgy (Shulḥan ‘Aruk, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, 581; Zunz, “S. P.” 76 et seq.). New-Year’s and Atonement days are days of serious meditation (, “awful days,” Zunz, “S. P.” 82, note). The former is the annual day of judgment (), when all creatures pass in review before the searching eye of Omniscience (R. H. i. 2). According to the Targum, the day of the heavenly session in Job i. 6 et seq. was no other than the first of the year (, resh shatta; see also Zohar Ex. 32b, ed. Wilna, 1882). Accordingly, the Divine Judge receives on that day the report of Satan, arch-fiend and accuser in heaven; the other angels, it is presumed, are friendly to the accused, and plead their cause before the august tribunal. The sounds of the “shofar” are intended to confuse Satan (R. H. 16b). There is, indeed, in heaven a book wherein the deeds of every human being are minutely entered (Abot ii. 1, iii. 16; a book of record, “book of remembrance,” is alluded to, Mal. iii. 16). Three books are opened on the first day of the year, says the Talmud (R. H. 16b); one for the thoroughly wicked, another for the thoroughly pious, and the third for the large intermediate class. The fate of the thoroughly wicked and the thoroughly pious is determined on the spot; the destiny of the intermediate class is suspended until the Day of Atonement, when the fate of every man is sealed (R. H. 16a).

Here is the Wikipedia entry.

Speaking of English saints (or would-be saints, as in the case of Newman, below)…In today’s NYtimes, reviewer Ben Brantley broaches the unspeakable:

Is it heresy to whisper that the sainted Thomas More is a bit of a bore? Even Frank Langella, an actor who can be counted on to put the pepper in mashed-potato parts, doesn’t find much variety in the monolithic goodness of the title character of “A Man for All Seasons,” Robert Bolt’s 1960 biodrama about More’s road to martyrdom during the reign of Henry VIII.

I haven’t read the play since high school, and catch the Scofield film in bits and pieces here and there on cable. But my sense is that Brantley may be right–about the play, not More. (Or Langella, a reason to see the play whatever its merits.) Certainly, the play’s timing is pretty good, coming in the midst of a campaign. Does anyone with a better memory or judgment than mine have a better take on the play, or the martyr Thomas?

Was Cardinal Newman gay? Or (as the joke has it) simply divine? That was the controversy that dominated the dust-up over exhuming John Henry Newman, the great nineteenth-century English convert to Rome, in order to move his body to a more suitable location for veneration–that in anticipation of his beatification (the penultimate step to canonization) by Pope Benedict XVI next year.

Newman, you see, had requested–indeed insisted, with his final breath–that he be buried in a grave at Rednal Hill cemetery outside Birmingham with Ambrose St. John, a fellow Oratorian who Newman described as the great love of his life. “I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Fr Ambrose St John’s grave–and I give this as my last, my imperative will,” he wrote, “This I confirm and insist on.”

Many today thus insisted that removing Newman’s body from the grave would violate his last wishes as well as what they saw as a relationship that was more than Platonic–hence Newman was, improbably, becoming a gay icon of the twenty-first century. Andrew Sullivan–a gay English Catholic–”dished” on this argument here.

Not surprisingly, that argument sparked more than a bit of debate, and strong counterreactions. Those reactions may say more about a 21st-century American culture that is hinky about male friendships than it does about Newman. Still, theirs was an especially intense bond. Here is the English Catholic journalist Austen Ivereigh at “In All Things” on the relationship between Newman and St. John:

The two men loved each other deeply, had a life-long friendship, and lived together. And since Newman’s death in 1890 they have remained in the same grave in Rednal, about eight miles from Cardinal Newman’s house in Edgbaston, outside Birmingham.

In 1854 Newman wrote: “We have bought (I trust) a burying place — under the Lickey Hills, just about eight miles off — it is a most beautiful spot. . . . We are going to build a cottage there and ultimately a mortuary chapel.” They share a tombstone with the inscription “out of shadows and phantasms into the truth” etched across it.

Newman wrote after the death of St John in 1875: “I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or anyone’s sorrow greater, than mine.”

The Cardinal -a hyper-sensitive, even delicate man — had intense friendships of the sort common in that age, especially in all-male bastions such as the clergy and Oxford.

But Ivereigh’s judgment that it is a bit much to consider the two men as a “couple” or “partners” in the modern, homosexual sense, seems about right, even if one must also consider the possibility that they were homosexually-inclined men who shared an intense if chaste relationship.

Is there anything wrong with that? A Newman biographer, Father Ian Ker, seemed to think so, penning a piece in the Vatican newspaper (CNS story here) in which he blamed the “homosexual lobby” for stirring up controversy (actually the first hurdle was a British law barring exhumation; that was eventually waived) and echoing a favorite line that celibacy can only be a sacrifice for a heterosexual not a homosexual because only a straight man is giving up marriage with a woman. “The only reason for which celibacy could be a sacrifice was that Newman, as every normal man, wanted to get married,” Ker said. Ker seemed on firmer ground with this point:

Nowadays there is no concept of friendship. In those days they had a concept of a loving friendship we have lost today,” he said.

“You no longer can say you love your friend,” he said. “But in those days people spoke quite openly of their love for their friends. Is this going to get to the point when fathers no longer can say they love their daughters? It is quite horrendous the implications of this nonsense.”

Alas, last week in a Geraldo moment (remember the safe opening from the wreck of the Titanic?) the gravediggers opened the tomb and…nothing! According to a church statement:

“Brass, wooden and cloth artefacts from Cardinal Newman’s coffin were found. However there were no remains of the body of John Henry Newman. An expectation that Cardinal Newman had been buried in a lead-lined coffin proved to be unfounded. In the view of the medical and health professionals in attendance, burial in a wooden coffin in a very damp site makes this kind of total decomposition of the body unsurprising. The absence of physical remains in the grave does not affect the progress of Cardinal Newman’s cause in Rome.”

It does quash the prospect of relics, at least of the first class. And what of the gay controversy? Austen Ivereigh again has the best epitaph to the whole affair:

There is something very Newmanesque about the end to this story. A shy, delicate, bookish man, he was never at ease with some of the aesthetic and ritual habits of the Church to which he spectacularly converted in 1844. The fact that there will be no lying-in-state, no marble sarcophagus to venerate, and no relics to distribute (beyond the few locks of hair that exist), seems hugely appropriate.

And how apt, in retrospect, seem the words of the epitaph which Newman and St John chose for their tomb: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem — “Out of shadows and phantasms into Truth.”