It would be ironic–and tragic–if Barack Obama’s momentary lapse into frankness on the Henry Louis Gates-James Crowley episode ended up costing the nation meaningful reform of the health insurance/access system. But that looks more and more as if it could end up being the case.

Remember, Obama’s comment–that the Cambridge police behaved “stupidly” in arresting Gates–came at the very end of a press conference in which he had tried to counter the worst of the Republican distortions about the effort to legislate reform. Particularly effective, I thought, was his assertion that the status quo, if it were dressed up as a legislative proposal to be voted on by Congress and polled on by the public, would have prohibitive negatives.

But none of that effort counted after the president’s Gates-Crowley-racial profiling remarks. All the focus the next day was on the fact that the first black president had responded like…well, like a black man. I wonder if Obama’s reaction stemmed from a personal experience during his high school or college or law school years, or whether he became familiar with the black man-confronting-cops phenomenon during his time as a community organizer in Chicago or, perhaps, while he was practicing civil rights law.

Whatever the source, Obama’s inability to stifle his true feelings has been costly in terms of public support. The latest poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed wide disapproval of Obama’s remark and a sharp loss of support for the president among whites, specifically as a result of the Gates-Crowley controversy. The truth is, Obama has been “on probation” with a substantial number of whites, who were willing to take a chance on and tolerate him as long as he didn’t act black. When he violated that condition with his remarks on Gates-Crowley, those people yanked his probation. Everything’s going to be tougher from now on.

Nothing amazes me more than the ability of the GOP to continually sell the American people on the notion that anything run by the government is going to be a disaster. Millions of elderly Americans live in relative decency because of Social Security and don’t die on the streets because of Medicare. Every year, millions of Americans ride over the best-maintained public highways in the world to national parks operated by government employees and thank God for the privilege. And I could go on. Meanwhile, I am wrestling for the second time in two years with a giant private human resources outfit–call it All Thumbs, Inc.–to try to collect the pension they administer on behalf of a previous employer.

The fact is that Obama was going to need every ounce of public support he could muster to achieve even modest health care reform. The sad fact is that the Gates-Crowley distraction has deprived him of a measurable degree of support. I hope the nation doesn’t pay the price in the form of a lost opportunity at health care reform.

Today is the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus.   St. Ignatius is the author of a number of my favorite prayers, including this one:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

Loyola Press has a new web site dedicated to Ignatian Spirituality that I had not seen before.  Click here to see it.  It includes–of course–a blog, DotMagis.  Ad Majorem Dei Gloriem!

In his TRB column in the New Republic, Jonathan Chait discusses Will Wilkinson’s Cato Institute paper on income inequality. Wilkinson thinks it shouldn’t bother us so much. Chait disagrees.

Wilkinson’s most interesting argument holds that material inequality between the rich and the non-rich lags behind the wealth and income gaps. For one thing, he argues that the luxury goods rich people own offer only marginal improvement over the cheap stuff that poor people own. For instance, he compares the luxurious Sub-Zero PRO 48 refrigerator to a standard IKEA fridge. Despite the vast difference in cost ($11,000 vs. $350), he writes, “The lived difference … is rather smaller than that between having fresh meat and milk and having none.” He also notes that rich people have used some of their increased income merely bidding up the price of positional goods, like fancy real estate or elite college tuition, forcing them to buy the same stuff at higher prices. Wilkinson thinks this goes to show that there’s “an often narrowing range of experience” between being rich and being poor, so inequality isn’t that big a deal.

In fact, Wilkinson is inadvertently bolstering the strongest liberal argument against inequality: it’s inefficient. In case you’re unfamiliar with this argument–as Wilkinson seems to be; he doesn’t rebut or even mention it anywhere in his paper–it runs like this: Taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor helps the latter more than it hurts the former (at least until you create serious work-incentive effects, a point which most liberals think we’re not close to). Wilkinson is saying the rich are getting little (in the case of luxury goods like refrigerators) or zero (in the case of real estate and higher tuition) actual benefit from their rising incomes. So why not take some of that income away and use it to buy extremely useful but currently unaffordable things for the non-rich, like, oh, basic medical care?

Though I love teaching theology to college and graduate students (and learning much in the process), the theological high point of my week is the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist. For this reason I have a special fondness for the saint we honor today: the 5th century bishop of Ravenna, Peter Chrysologus.

Peter’s “golden speech” was his loving proclamation of God’s Word in straightforward and concrete homilies, of which more than 150 have survived.

Here is a portion of one of his best known:

Each of us is called to be both a sacrifice to God and his priest. Do not forfeit what divine authority confers upon you. Put on the garment of holiness, gird yourself with the belt of chastity. Let Christ be your helmet and the cross on your forehead your unfailing protection.

Your breastplate should be the knowledge of God which he himself has given you. Keep burning continually the sweet incense of prayer. Take up the sword of the spirit.

Let your heart be an altar. Then, with full confidence in God, present your body for sacrifice.

God desires not death, but faith. God thirsts not for blood, but for self-surrender. God is appeased not by slaughter, but by the free offering of yourself.

When I clicked on Grant’s post below, “The definitive interpretation of Palin,” the video opened with a public service announcement on fatherhood from President Obama. The transcript of the ad reads:

President Obama: “To be a great dad is the most important job in a man’s life, but it doesn’t have to be hard. All it takes is a few minutes of your time. Because the smallest moments can have the biggest impact on a child’s life. Take time to be a dad today.”

“It doesn’t have to be hard.” Really? “All it takes is a few minutes of your time?” Again, really? I won’t quibble with the claim that fatherhood is the most important job in a man’s life or that the smallest moments can have the biggest impact in a child’s life, but do we really want the government peddling fatherhood as a piece of cake?

Check out The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse for more of the government’s efforts.

Alypius was Saint Augustine’s student and friend who was later baptized with him by Saint Ambrose. But his conversion also entailed a turning away from his addiction to the gladiatorial games. Though he had forsworn them at one point, his resolve was undermined by (who else?) his young peers who one day dragged him along to the arena. Naive young man, he resolved to keep his eyes closed and to hold himself detached from the spectacle. But, as Augustine says in Book Six of his Confessions, would that he had plugged his ears as well:

For, upon the fall of one in the fight, a mighty roar from the whole audience stirred him strongly. He, overcome by curiosity, and prepared as it were to despise and rise superior to it, no matter what it were, opened his eyes, and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to see, was in his body. And thus he fell more miserably than the gladiator whose fall had caused the crowd to roar — a cry which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes, so that his soul was stricken and wounded. Alypius had been more audacious than courageous, and so much the weaker in that he presumed on himself, rather than on You.

For, as soon as he saw that blood, he immediately imbibed a sort of savageness; nor did he turn away, but fixed his eyes, drinking in the frenzy thoughtlessly, and reveled in the wicked contest. He became drunk with the lust for blood. He was no longer the man who came there, but one of the crowd he had joined, and a fit companion of those who had led him there. Need I say more? He continued to gaze, shouted, was excited, carrying away with him the frenzy which stimulated him to return, not only with those who first enticed him, but also before them, indeed, to draw in others.

Fast forward 1600 hundred years and open to an op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe on the spread and commercial success of “human dog-fighting.”

at the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, a Los Angeles Times writer observed: “The blood is gushing out. . . just a beautiful sight for the UFC 100 crowd, the folks here in Mandalay Bay screaming with hunger for even more.’’ Another reporter noted that the eventual winner “used at least 17 unanswered blows’’ while his opponent was flat on the canvas.

Las Vegas? At least Alypius had the real thing: Rome!

Some readers have e-mailed me to ask where I’ve been the last couple of months.  Everything is fine, thanks for asking.  I’ve had some writing and ministry projects going on, as well as a recently completed family vacation (Disneyland, if you must know!).

I recently finished a feature for U.S. Catholic on the movement calling for a “reform of the reform” of the Catholic liturgy (click here to see it).  My aim was to provide an evenhanded introduction to the debate for Catholics who are not liturgical experts yet want to know what all the shouting is about.  I hope that I have succeeded.

The title may give the impression that the focus of the article is primarily about the new ICEL translation of the Mass, but the article is actually broader in scope.  I suspect my editors chose the title for its “news” value, and I certainly don’t begrudge them that.

I hope my friends at Commonweal won’t mind if I put in a brief plug for U.S. Catholic, a fine magazine published out of Chicago by the Claretians (who founded my parish many years ago before handing it over to the diocese).  I suspect most readers of Commonweal would enjoy reading U.S. Catholic from time to time as well.  Click here to see their award winning web site.

Yesterday was my first day of physical therapy for my broken ankle.  I’ve never broken anything before, and never had physical therapy before. I’m a real newbie to this whole scene.

It requires trust.  And not simply trust beyond my instincts, but also trust AGAINST my instincts.

Presenting me with a walker, reading the doctor’s protocol, the physical therapist told me to put 25 percent of my weight on the ankle.  I pestered her with questions.  How do I know it’s 25 percent?  How will I know I’m not putting too much pressure on it?

Behind it all, of course, was the unthinkable question–what if the slightest amount of pressure breaks the ankle again?  How can I trust my ankle–my own bones to support me?  And how can I trust this person–this stranger-encouraging me to fight against all my own instincts to baby the ankle, to let it live indefinitely in security in fluffy socks encased in a protective boot?

But on some level, I know she knows what she’s doing.  So I do need to fight my own instincts–to stop over-protecting it, to put some weight on it, to begin  move.  It’s the only way back to “normal”  –to wholeness.

Bone grows, stronger, apparently, with some stress.

Okay.  But I still don’t like it.

According to a report in the Boston Globe today, the Archdiocese is raising the retirement age for its priests to 75. Despite closing 20% of its parishes and increasing the number of priests responsible for more than one parish, they still need to keep healthy septuagenarians on the job. Even so, they report:

A study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that, because of the rising average age of priests, only two-thirds of all priests are serving in active ministry and that half of all US priests are expected to retire over the next decade.

Wow. So much for the sacramental life of most parishes, I guess. Ministry will continue, of course, since qualified laypeople are stepping up to do everything except that which they’re forbidden to do. But unless something changes, it looks like we may well become, in practice if not in theory, a post-sacramental Church. How sad.

Paul Krugman’s incisive take on the problem.

Michael Lewis channels his inner Goldman Sachs i-banker.  Here’s a taste:

Rumor No. 2: “When the U.S. government bailed out AIG, and paid off its gambling debts, it saved not AIG but Goldman Sachs.”

The charge isn’t merely insulting but ignorant. Less responsible journalists continue to bring up the $12.9 billion we received from AIG, as if that was some kind of big deal to us. But as our CFO David Viniar explained back in March, we were hedged. Our profits from AIG “rounded to zero.”

People who don’t work at Goldman Sachs, of course, find this implausible: How could $12.9 billion round to zero? Easy, but you just need to understand the mathematics.

Let’s assume AIG transferred $12,880,560,250.34 of taxpayer money to Goldman Sachs. A Goldman outsider, asked to round this number, might call it $12,880,560,250.00. That’s not how we look at it; at Goldman we always round to the nearest $50 billion, so anything less than $25 billion rounds to zero.

Think of it that way and you can see that $12,880,560,250.34 isn’t even close to not rounding to zero.

Go read the whole thing.

I teach in a “religious studies” department not a “theology” department.  What we call ourselves is a contentious issue for some of my colleagues.  It’s unlikely to get any less contentious given the kind of piece published recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  You can read the piece here, but be forewarned, it is likely to raise your blood pressure.  Here’s a sample:

In sum, the religion researcher is related to the theologian as the biologist is related to the frog in her lab. Theologians try to invigorate their own religion, perpetuate it, expound it, defend it, or explain its relationship to other religions. Religion researchers select sample religions, slice them open, and poke around inside, which tends to “kill” the religion, or at least to kill the romantic or magical aspects of the religion and focus instead on how that religion actually works.

Little wonder that many academics—and Richard Dawkins is merely the most vocal among them—dismiss the discipline of theology as “talk about nothing.” A number of theologians have taken issue with Dawkins, but all of them seem to miss his central point, which is that talk about a god is, necessarily, talk that never advances knowledge. Regardless of one’s opinion of him, Dawkins has done academe a great service by providing a quick way to identify a theologian in our midst. If you are uncertain with whom you are speaking, just inject the name of Richard Dawkins into the conversation. The theologian will be dismissive of him; the religion researcher will not.

David Bentley Hart is, perhaps, the most stimulating (and, at times, disconcerting) Orthodox theologian writing in America today. His most recent book, Atheist Delusions, was appreciatively reviewed in Commonweal (May 8, 2009) by William Portier.

A recent post on the First Things blog has Hart passing seamlessly from Darwin to Saint-Exupéry to the Matrix trilogy.

Here is where he winds up:

My final observation, I suppose, would be this: Our longing for transcendence is inextinguishable in us, and the appeal of the transcendent to our deepest natures will always be audible and visible to us in some form—first and finally in the form of beauty—and will continue to waken in us both wonder and an often inexpressible unhappiness. But in an age such as ours, within the picture of the world that now prevails, that beauty must seem more ambiguous, more beleaguered, and the call of transcendence more elusive of interpretation, like a voice heard in a dream.

In the absence of that scale of shining mediations that once seemed seamlessly to unite the immanent and the transcendent, the earthly and the heavenly, nature and supernature, we are nevertheless still open to the same summons issued in every age to every soul; but it must for now come to us as something more mysterious, tragic, and terrible than it once was.

“Ambiguous, beleaguered, elusive?” Is this indeed the context in which we find ourselves? And is there non-gnostic recourse and remedy?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has issued a thoughtful and (to my reading) poignant response to the recent decisions by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Here is a crucial paragraph:

18. To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity. It would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent ‘community of Christian communities’.

The rest is here.

This just in–Fr. Tomislav Vlasic, a principal figure in publicizing the Medjugorje apparitions, has been defrocked. (HT: Thomas C. Fox at NCR.) A report from the London Telegraph is here.

Here’s the conclusion of the Telegraph’s item:

[Under investigation on various charges,] [i]t emerged on Sunday that he has chosen to leave the priesthood and his order, a move which has brought the investigation to an abrupt halt.
But the Pope has insisted that Father Vlasic observes a set of conditions on pain of excommunication which include a total ban on teaching Christian doctrine and giving spiritual direction.
There is also an “absolute prohibition of releasing declarations on religious matters, especially regarding the phenomenon of Medjugorje”.

But I wonder if we’ll be hearing more from Vlasic. On one hand, if the man’s merely a cynical exploiter, and the whole thing was a put-on, now he’s lost the insider status that made it profitable for him–now comes the tell-all book perhaps.

On the other hand, what if he isn’t a fraud, and truly believes in the apparitions he did so much to publicize? Well, would you listen to the Pope’s order not to speak about Medjugorje over what you believe was the Virgin Mary’s command (through 6 schoolchildren) to do so? After all, he told John Paul II in 1984 that he was the one: “who through divine providence guides the seers of Medjugorje.” Surely Mary’s authority supervenes that of the Pope, right?

Whatever the next act in this drama is, it should prove interesting.

Yesterday, the New York Times had a long, and complex, article on the ramifications of Tiller’s death for the American abortion debate. This passage caught my interest, in light of the post below on the “Rorschach” test. There may be division not only between legal prophets and pragmatists, but among the prophets themselves.

But in the weeks since the killing, supporters and opponents of Dr. Tiller have been measuring the larger ramifications. Implacably divided for so long, they now agree on a fundamental point: Dr. Tiller’s death represents an enormous loss for each side.

Abortion opponents are bracing for a drop in support, especially from those in the murky middle ground of the debate. Worse yet, after years of persuading supporters to work within the law, they say they have already lost credibility among the most ardent abortion opponents who cannot help pointing out that one gunman achieved what all their protests and prayers could not.

“The credit is going to go to him,” Mark S. Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, said of Mr. Roeder. “There are people who are agreeing with him.”

Over at Slate, William Saletan has posted an interesting essay on the reaction of pro-choice and pro-life groups to the Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion, and Supporting Parents Act.  Saletan’s piece mostly criticizes pro-life opponents of the legislation, but the act is a kind of Rorschach test for both sides.  Are you a militant or a pragmatist?  Read Saletan and decide for yourself.

I read this article in the New York Times about the death of Merce Cunningham, a celebrated dancer and choreographer, whose company has performed at Notre Dame . With the flourishing of Notre Dame’s wonderful, state-of-the art DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts in the past few years, I’ve been increasingly interested in integrating the arts in the teaching of the humanities and law. Anna Thompson, the Director of the Center, has been great about reaching out to the faculty to build bridges, to bring arts into the classroom.

I think most faculty have some idea of how to bring film into the classroom. Nonetheless, the course I took on bringing film into the classroom taught me to move beyond plot lines into camera angles, film theory, etc.

But integrating dance strikes me as important, but even more challenging, for those of us who live in our heads. Words are our stock in trade–dance asks us to pay attention to motion, movement, physicality, beauty, gracefulness.  How does one bridge the gap between words and motion?

Any ideas how to do this? Kathy, I think your expertise in liturgy might be helpful here, if you’re reading.

Today’s NY Times has an article on recent and anticipated advances in computer technology, which has some scientists nervous. A couple of interesting paragraphs:

The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the Singularity.

This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Other technologists, notably Raymond Kurzweil, have extolled the coming of ultrasmart machines, saying they will offer huge advances in life extension and wealth creation.

“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr. Horvitz said. “Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.” …

The meeting on artificial intelligence [held last February] could be pivotal to the future of the field. Paul Berg… said it was important for scientific communities to engage the public before alarm and opposition becomes unshakable.

“If you wait too long and the sides become entrenched like with G.M.O.,” he said, referring to genetically modified foods, “then it is very difficult. It’s too complex, and people talk right past each other.” …

Despite his concerns, Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”

A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.”

…provided it stays off TV.

For those who do not live in the Athens of America, a few insights from Sunday’s Boston Globe.

The editorial proposes a concluding (hope springs eternal) unscientific postscript to the Cambridge dust-up:

Each man [Gates, Crowley, Obama], in his own way, has spent considerable time contemplating the kind of tensions that arose that day on Ware Street. If they talk past one another, it’s hardly shocking that the rest of society struggles with the same issues. At our worst, we are all long on surprise, and short on insight.

Jeff Jacoby, the Globe’s token “conservative” columnist, uncovers rather odd bed fellows — and hears the “echo of eugenics” in the statements of some prominent advocates of abortion.

Finally, on a more up-lifting note, the wonderful Katherine Powers celebrates the power of irony in the stories of Nikolai Gogol:

Thanks to my broken ankle, I am spending the summer in a Lay-Z-Boy, with my right leg encased in a big black boot. No hikes. No travel. No swimming. No cute little summer skimmers.

It’s a matter of patience. These things take eight weeks to heal. EIGHT weeks? I couldn’t believe it when I first heard it. I have THINGS to do.

And then I remembered a poem I had memorized when I was in junior high school, and which for some reason stayed with me–John Milton’s Sonnet on His Blindness. That memory was further entrenched when I took a course on Milton in college, and probably came to the surface when I began more serious studies of the Puritans more recently. Needless to say, it puts things in perspective.

Sonnet on His Blindness.

‘When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.’

For the last few months, Katie, my wife, and I have included as part of our spiritual practice reading together (hopefully) edifying books that we take turns selecting.  This week, we just started reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, I am embarrassed to say, for the first time. I was already struck by these lines from his introduction:

[T]he Archbishop of Westminster read me a letter from the Holy Office condemning my novel because it was “paradoxical” and “dealt with extraordinary circumstances.” The price of liberty, even within a Church, is eternal vigilance, but I wonder whether any of the totalitarian states whether of the right or of the left, with which the Church of Rome is often compared, would have treated me as gently when I refused to revise the book on the casuistical ground that the copyright was in the hands of my publisher. There was no public condemnation, and the affair was allowed to drop into that peaceful oblivion which the Church wisely reserves for unimportant issues.

Though I have only read the first few chapters, it is quickly becoming clear that Greene’s sense of paradox is not only reserved for “extraordinary circumstances,” and it is perhaps not just the “unimportant issues” that the Church would be wise to consign to “that peaceful oblivion.”  The novel pits a morally and politically idealistic lieutenant against a conflicted and morally questionable priest.  In the end, I have a hunch that the lieutenant’s quest for moral and political perfection will prove more oppressive and inhumane than the priest’s very human sinfulness.  Regardless of the outcome though, the thoughts of another priest, Padre José, who is being called to bed by his mistress early in the book, made me think of those illustrious clerics who would choose to deny Eucharist to pro-choice politicians:

He shivered: he knew he was a buffoon.  An old man who married was grotesque enough, but an old priest…  He stood outside himself and wondered whether he was even fit for hell.  He was just an old fat impotent man mocked and taunted between the sheets.  But then he remembered the gift had been given which nobody could take away.  That was what made him worthy of damnation—the power he still had of turning the wafer into the flesh and blood of God.  He was a sacrilege.  Wherever he went, whatever he did, he defiled God.  Some mad renegade Catholic, puffed up with the Governor’s politics, had once broken into a church (in the days when there were still churches) and seized the Host.  He had spat on it, trampled it, and then the people had got him and hanged him as they did the stuffed Judas on Holy Thursday from the belfry.  He wasn’t so bad a man, Padre José thought—he would be forgiven, he was just a politician, but he himself, he was worse than that—he was like an obscene picture hung there every day to corrupt children with.

Of course, I don’t imagine that all, or even most, clerics have reason to think of themselves as “obscene pictures,” but before condemning politicians or parishioners for wrestling honestly with the ambiguous moral tragedies that confront us every day, among which abortion seems to be paramount these days, they may do well to consider the brazenly paradoxical nature of their own vocation as mere mortals imbued with the power bring forth the body and blood of Christ.  One would hope that this “power” would, as in the case of Padre José, be a source of humility and not superiority, and that faced with the impossible task of living into such a vocation, priests would be moved toward compassion for those of us, who in good faith are just trying to live into our own paradoxical callings.

Finally, if silence is one reverential response to the sanctity of a life that cannot be held by rigid moral maxims, perhaps the Church, in Her wisdom, might see fit to consign even (or, perhaps, especially) Her most important issues to peaceful oblivion.

News from China this week: Qi Zhou of the Institute of Zoology in Beijing and Fanyi Zeng of Shanghai Jiao Tong University used iPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells to grow entire healthy mice, proving definitively that cells from adult tissues can be “reprogrammed” to develop into any tissue in the body. (A news report can be found at: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090723/full/460560a.html.)
Thus stem cells without destruction of embryos is possible.

Or is it? An interesting philosophical puzzle arises when we try to figure out how to ascribe personhood (mousehood? Muritas?), which is a yes-or-no question, to the complex developmental processes of embryonic life. In current Catholic teaching, personhood is imputed to human embryos from conception, which is straightforward enough. Here an an iPS cell was inserted into a crippled embryo, whereupon it took over the cellular machinery, and then was brought to term. (Of course before studies like this could pass Catholic muster for humans, this would need to be done without the damaged embryo, maybe in eggs. That may well be a simple technological hurdle.) Perhaps, in time, scientists can figure out how to go partway back–so a cell “thinks” it is fetal liver, for example, and would produce only that tissue, not a whole person. But by definition, an iPS cell is capable of producing ANY tissue (except extra-fetal stuff like placenta,) therefore it is capable of producing EVERY tissue, as the Chinese study proves. So…a few questions concerning possible human application of this technology:

1. Should iPS cells be protected in Catholic teaching as persons (therefore subjects of rights, including the right to life,) because they are pluripotent, or are they fair game for research and therapy, like other tissues? Human iPS cells have been around since 2007.
2. Or do they “become” persons when placed in an environment in which they can manifest their complete potential? If so, why wouldn’t the same be true for ordinary embryos–that they’re persons only when in a conducive environment like someone’s uterus? But then what about personhood at conception?
3. If regular embryos are different because they are totipotent (they can grow everything themselves, including placenta,) then does our personhood inhere principally in our ability to grow our own placentas? But no adult can do that anymore–only embryos grow their own. Surely we don’t lose our personhood with our placentas!

These are indeed interesting times.

On Wednesday I was fortunate enough to conduct a phone interview with celebrated documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, the subject being his forthcoming series on America’s National Parks (the six-part series starts airing on PBS on Sept. 27. ) He’s hyper-articulate, and utterly impassioned about the history and symbolism of the parks and their impact on visitors, past and present. We spoke, among other things, about the spiritual impulses that were critical factors in the creation of the first parks–people who felt God’s presence, or at least some kind of transcendence, in spectacular natural scenery.

Wouldn’t you know that my house’s fire alarm went off for no reason (the first time it’s ever done this; last time it sounded, I’d burned an apple crisp) right in the middle of the interview, disconnecting the phone. Mr. Burns graciously called me back. And the fire department didn’t show up until the interview was concluded….

Look for an article about the series in a September issue of Commonweal.

I marked the memorial of St. Mary Magdalene by reading again the Gospel of Mary, a second-century manuscript rediscovered in the late 19th century, and published first only in 1955. (The text can be found at http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm.) I am struck by several passages that seem appropriate reminders to the contemporary Church, for example, the risen Christ commands the disciples to preach, but warns them: “Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.” And of course, this “apostle to the apostles,” the first witness to the resurrection who brought a word of hope to her frightened brothers, ticked off a resentful Peter, who said “Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her?” In the Gospel of Mary, Peter is shushed by Levi, who says: “Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered.” They listen to Mary, and head out to proclaim the Word. For more, including a discussion of women’s leaderrship in the early Church, see Karen L. King’s 2003 book: The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.

He wants to get a wrist-strong bracelet to the Pope. And he has enlisted Colbert Nation to do so.

My guess is that the Pope will get his wrist-strong bracelet–Colbert Nation got a bridge named after their fearless leader-in Hungary!.

An article in today’s New York Times, reporting increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, reminded me of a piece I wrote ten years ago but which the Times declined to publish as an op-ed piece. I entitled it: “A Modest Proposal for Ending the Culture Wars.”

Art and religion were once considered public matters, expressions not simply of personal experiences and beliefs but of sentiments and convictions that both united large communities of people and sought to convey how things are in the universe and how people ought to act, individually and communally, within a universe so defined. That is why for centuries states sought to sustain political unity by imposing religious unity and artists sought and some of them received the munificence of the state.

Religion, of course, has long since been privatized, at least in states that like to consider themselves advanced democracies. An early political expression of this narrowing was the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which forbade the Congress from making any law that respects an “establishment of religion,” this latter phrase referring to the singling out for state support and financing of any one of the then still public and communal religions, to the disadvantage of others. This constitutional disestablishment was extended into the realm of culture to the point that William James could define religion as “the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.” Religion has become what some people do when they are alone; it is now a matter of personal taste and decision, without public warrants, the sort of thing into which, on grounds of privacy, government should not intrude and over which it has no competence. People are free to adopt and express religious convictions, but they should not expect the state to support them or to decide among their great variety.

Art has not advanced as far along this path of progress. Here the cultural privatizing came first, aided by the romantic notion of the lonely tortured artist whose genius puts him in the avant-garde of the march of progress and sets him over and against his culture and who often suffers from the criticisms of unenlightened contemporaries. Later generations, however, enabled by cultural progress to recognize his precocity, appeal to his eventual triumph in order to keep alive the older notion of the public significance of art. On that basis museum directors solicit public funding and American art critics bemoan the poverty of our government’s aid to the arts, contrasting it with the practice of governments elsewhere, particularly in Europe, where ministries of culture survive long after establishments of religion have disappeared. So on the one hand, art is considered intensely private and not bound by common cultural norms, and on the other governmental support for it is sought. The result of this contradiction is our recurrent culture-wars.

Surely it is time for art to catch up with religion and accept its complete privatization. How better could this be done than by a constitutional amendment modeled on the First Amendment’s statements about religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of art or prohibiting the free expression thereof”? Many things would be clarified at once. It would be clear that, to adapt what Justice Black said of religion in the Supreme Court’s 1948 McCollum decision, all laws and actions are invalid that “aid one kind of art, aid all kinds of art, or prefer one kind of art over another.” It would be clear that it is no more the business of government to decide what is true art and what is not than it is for it to decide which religion is true and which is not. It would be clear that it is unconstitutional to have a National Endowment for the Arts that grants taxpayers’ money to some artists but refuses it to others. It would be clear that New York City has no more right to finance the Brooklyn Museum than it does to finance a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. It would be clear that the government may not favor an art-establishment that prefers one kind of art to another, that continues the discrimination evident in the preference of government-supported museums for old works by dead white European males and, among contemporaries, provides a home for a Mapplethorpe or an Ofili but not for the poor struggling artist whose works on velvet he is forced to exhibit and sell in the parking-lots of strip malls.

The problem with art today is that it suffers from a culture-lag. Defenders of continued or increased government-support for the arts are like the last-gasp defenders of a union of Church and State: they do not recognize that progress has passed them by. If art is the quintessence of the free expression of private meanings–what artists do with their solitude–, it should, of course, be free, not only from restrictions by government but also from what religion has long since known to be the suffocating embrace of its support. If art wishes to have public significance, let it earn it, as religions must. As it is not the business of government to choose among competing ultimate truths, it is not its business to choose among competing private meanings. A constitutional amendment would end a series of wars which resemble nothing so much as those that once pitted theology against theology. As those conflicts long ago led to the constitutional separation of Church and State, it is surely time for the separation of Art and State. Art should now be granted the honor long since bestowed on religion–special mention in the Constitution–so that, like religion, art too, by constitutional privilege, may learn and keep its proper, private, marginal place.

In the midst of all these important discussions, let the following encounters be noted:

I am in the great city of San Francisco and last evening having delivered myself of a very long talk on how to save the church, two members of the audience introduced themselves: Jimmy Mac and Ed Gleason! They are both very tall and very friendly. Among other items we agreed that we are all curmudgeons.

Good to meet you guys and thanks for admitting you were there!