That’s Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan on the cover of the latest Commonweal. Peter Quinn reviews three recent biographies — one of Sullivan and two of Emily Dickinson — and finds common threads, particularly the importance of Irish “help” in the lives and achievements of Dickinson and Keller.

Also free for all to read:

* Lawyer Joseph D. Becker weighs in on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and its likely effects: “Corporate Mischief”

* The Editors respond to the USCCB’s recent statement on the health-care-reform debate: “Catholic Unity”

There’s lots more in this issue:

* The Editors on Israel’s self-destructive policies: “What Are Friends For?”

* Michael W. Higgins on Canadian writer David Adams Richards: “Rebel with a Cause”

* Jo McGowan on how opposition to sex-selective abortions might foster a broader prolife perspective: “The Unwanted”

* Recommendations for Summer Reading from Valerie Sayers, Santiago Ramos, Colin McEnroe, and Lauretta O’Connor

* A “Last Word” essay by Anthony Andreassi on life as a teacher and a priest: “In Transit”

And more. Non-subscribers, take note: Commonweal makes a great traveling companion and fits very nicely into a beach tote. Subscribe now and read it in print as well as on the Web.

Stephen Colbert talks with Stephen Prothero about his new book:

Whassup?

“Alaska Man Attacked by Bear While Biking to Work” http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/15/us/AP-US-Grizzly-Attack.html?hp

“Mother Falcon Attacks Dog, People in Buffalo, NY” http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/15/us/AP-US-ODD-Aggressive-Falcon.html?scp=1&sq=Falcon&st=nyt

Uh!Oh! UPDATE: “Man Dies After Being Attacked by Bees in Calif” http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/16/us/AP-US-Deadly-Bee-Attack.html?hp

“The Deepwater Horizon disaster will probably be remembered as the most severe environmental disaster of the early twenty-first century—a man-made disaster that would have been as easy to prevent as it is now difficult to clean up.”

That’s the verdict of Tom Speight, an environmental scientist and hazardous materials manager, in a web-exclusive article for Commonweal. He explains how BP cut corners and why cleaning up the resulting mess is so complicated. Read his take: “Shoddy Work, Shabby Excuses.”

It’s probably not what you think it is.

There’s no mention of soccer.

It’s legislation enacted by King James I  of England in 1617, in opposition to the Puritan insistence on keeping holy the Sabbath in a manner following Old Testament norms.

“The declaration listed archery, dancing, “leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation” as permissible sports, together with “May-games,Whitsun-ales and Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles”. Also allowed: “women shall have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decorating of it, according to their old custom.”

King James had no patience for Puritans.  He viewed them as really annoying and potentially dangerous. So he passed a law proclaiming that recreation on Sunday was lawful.  But (and this was directed against recusant Catholics) you had to attend Anglican services first.  You couldn’t just go straight to the festivities.  (I guess there were a lot of fun-loving recusant Catholics.)

“Mideast forecast: One long, tense summer” (Ha’aretz headline)
“In the stormy aftermath of last week’s marine debacle, the whole region seems to be losing what remains of its sanity.” (And its subtitle)
Story here: http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/week-s-end/mess-report-mideast-forecast-one-long-tense-summer-1.295450

An opinion summing up in Ha’aretz of the flotilla, Israel, Turkey, and investigation efforts indicates that we will come to know everything there is to know not from any official investigation but from leaks, counter-leaks, and counter-counter…etc., taking place between political and military leaders in Israel.

We can forego comments on this one!

“How did the Roman Catholic Church maintain its grip on European hearts and minds for so long?  Judging by this exhibition, the answer seems to be by artfully managing the fear,  ignorance and superstition of the faithful.  The rise of humanism from the Renaissance on came as an exhilarating release for the Western world’s cramped imagination.”

Richard Dawkins?  Christopher Hitchens?

No, Ken Johnson, a New York Times art critic, writing a review of 59 works in a Yale exhibit, “Italian Paintings from the Richard Feigen Collection.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/arts/design/11feigen.html?scp=1&sq=Ken%20Johnson&st=cse

One of oddities of being a religion reporter and columnist for over twenty years at The Times was that book and movie reviewers, art critics, even science and health writers, to say nothing of editorial writers and Op-Ed page columnists, seemed to have much more leeway to hold forth with judgments about religion than I did.

There is nothing very new or particularly insightful about Johnson’s Whiggish view that “secular humanism, inspired by the pagan cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, was bound to triumph over the authoritarian, other-worldly, sado-masochistic mysticism of medieval Christianity.”   That has been a staple of cultural right thinking for two centuries.

Not without some reason.  The modern mind recoils from a good many aspects of medieval religiosity–as it does from many aspects of  the pagan cultures of ancient Greece and Rome when these are not prettied up.  Fortunately, the modern mind knows that understanding another culture doesn’t end with those reactions.

“How did the Roman Catholic Church maintain its grip on European hearts and minds for so long?”  It’s a perfectly fair question.  But Johnson’s simple answer surely does not emerge from an exhibition of 59 paintings, the dates and subjects of which, by his own review’s testimony, do not neatly substantiate his sweeping indictment.  It’s a pre-judgment.  Maybe even a prejudice?

Joe Nocera is back in Saturday’s Times and dissects one of American’s Sacred Cows: home ownership.

He begins by citing Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC: “’Sustainable homeownership is a worthy national goal. But it should not be pursued to excess when there are other, equally worthy solutions that help meet the needs of people for whom homeownership may not be the right answer.’ Like, you know, renting.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/business/12nocera.html?ref=business

Aside from all of the subventions home owners get from the government, there is a strong prejudice in the U.S. against renting. Not sure Nocera probes that deeply enough. What have we got against renting?

The folks at Upright Citizens Brigade imagine a catastrophic coffee spill at BP.

The coverage from The Onion on this subject has also been top-notch.

It is almost amusing to read that Catholic League prez Bill Donohue doesn’t care that the speaker of New York’s City Council, Christine Quinn, is a lesbian who vigorously supports same-sex marriage. He announced on the steps of City Hall that she is “a very good Catholic,” The Daily News’s Frank Lombardi reports.  So what if the city government’s most powerful Democratic elected official  boycotts the St. Patrick’s Day Parade because the organizers won’t permit a gay and lesbian group  to march under its own banner? So what if she is allied with the city’s major abortion-rights organizations?

All that Quinn had to do to get Donohue’s approval  was to support his crusade for the owner of the Empire State Building to light up the spire in honor of Mother Teresa when her centenary arrives on Aug. 26. But it didn’t work. The AP reported that the owner refused and finally explained his reasoning after weeks of silence:

“The Empire State Building celebrates many cultures and causes in the world community with iconic lightings, and has a tradition of lightings for the religious holidays of Easter, Eid al Fitr (marking the end of Ramadan), Hanukkah, and Christmas,” owner Anthony E. Malkin said in a statement Wednesday.

But the real estate mogul said the privately owned building “has a specific policy against any other lighting for religious figures or requests by religions and religious organizations.”

Donohue retorts that the Empire State Building has honored Cardinal John O’Connor and Pope John Paul II. (And it also lights up to honor the parade that Council Speaker Quinn boycotts.)

Call the decision not to honor Mother Teresa inconsistent and foolish. But does it make the skyscraper’s owner a “bigot,” as Donohue charges?

The controversy might  be a little funny if it weren’t for the threatening tone of the Catholic League’s statement, which concludes that Malkin’s  decision “is something he will regret for the rest of his life.”

Mother Teresa, pray for us.

James Davison Hunter, the University of Virginia social theorist known for his books on the culture wars, has written a new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford).   It questions, to put it mildly, the ways that many Christians think about changing the culture.  I haven’t read the book, but this brief summary and interview with Hunter from the May issue of Christianity Today are certainly thought provoking: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/may/16.33.html

In Hunter’s intellectual landscape, evangelical Protestant Christianity has always loomed larger than Catholic Christianity, so Catholics reading this have to make some adjustments.  His views also seem to reflect the common assumptions of (a) those of us burdened with a good bit of academic social theory, and (b) those of us situated in universities or other outposts of elite culture.  Finally, I’m uncertain, as were a number of his Christianity Today readers, about what concretely he means by some terms.  For all that, this is a stimulating interview, both altogether and in its parts.

The New York Review of Books has its distinguished Latin American correspondent, Alma Guillermoprieto, analyzing the extraordinary Maciel story. Ignore Guillermoprieto’s dimestore psychological analysis of the priesthood. But what she convincingly suggests is the importance of the Maciel story for Mexican Catholicism, where Maciel was a major figure with deep roots in the country’s elite and among those Mexicans descended from early twentieth century  Cristero Catholic activists.

When I was working in book publishing, preparing manuscripts to be typeset, I got pretty handy with the find-and-replace function in Microsoft Word. I eventually created a list of time-saving searches to do as soon as I started working on a document: replace all the double spaces with single spaces; replace “colour” with “color”; stuff like that. As with any shortcut, though, it’s very easy to put a foot wrong — thereby creating more work for yourself. For example, if I wanted to change all occurrences of “one” to “1,” a sloppy find-and-replace could result in puzzling references to the “teleph1.” Without specifying character sensitivity or “whole words only,” Changing “Tom” to “Thomas” could leave you with monstrosities like “botthomas” or “sthomasach.” Making a mistake like that, and having to clean up after yourself, is a good education in the importance of thinking about all the potential consequences of a given action and applying the appropriate restrictions.

The Vatican, of all places, provides us with an object lesson in the perils of overreliance on technology, as noted at PrayTell today. From the English version of Pius XII’s 1954 encyclical Sacra virginitas on the Vatican Web site:

3. Indeed, right from Apostolic Times New Roman this virtue has been thriving and flourishing in the garden of the Church.
…
51. …We recall to those also whose will has been weakened by upset nerves and whom some doctors, someTimes New Roman even Catholic doctors, are too quick to persuade that they should be freed from such an obligation….

A simple mistake? Perhaps. But if it results in a redesign of www.vatican.va, I for one will consider it the work of the Holy Spirit.

I wrote here a while back about how much I was enjoying the flurry of reviews and essays occasioned by the publication of two biographies of Ayn Rand. The Nation‘s June 7 issue has a late entry to this category, “Garbage and Gravitas,” by political science professor Corey Robin. I thought perhaps I’d had my fill of Rand by now, but Robin’s first few sentences sucked me in:

St. Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.

Robin’s take focuses on Rand’s philosophizing (or what passed for it), and the virtue ethicists among us may be interested in his discussion of Aristotle, whom Rand apparently claimed as a forebear. Read the rest of this entry »

Physicians for Human Rights has just released a White Paper entitled, “Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program.”  Here is a passage from the Executive Summary:

“Investigation and analysis of US government documents by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) provides evidence indicating that the Bush administration, in the period after Sept. 11, conducted human research and experimentation on prisoners in US custody as part of this monitoring role. Health professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA monitored the interrogations of detainees, collected and analyzed the results of those interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations. Such acts may be seen as the conduct of research and experimentation by health professionals on prisoners, which could violate accepted standards of medical ethics, as well as domestic and international law. These practices could, in some cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The whole report can be found here.

Because many of the documents that would be necessary fully to make the case are classified, the evidence for the indictment is somewhat circumstantial.  Nevertheless, there is enough here to warrant outrage.  Particularly troubling is the way that the lawyers used the doctors to justify particular methods of interrogation, while the doctors justified their participation by virtue of the fact that the lawyers said it was legal.

is the title of a piece in the Austin American-Statesman on the scheduled June 15 execution of David Lee Powell for the 1978 murder of police officer Ralph Ablanedo.

The case is clear: Powell shot Ablanedo after a traffic stop. Powell ran, and only a dud grenade prevented him from killing several more officers at a standoff when the meth dealer was finally cornered.

Powell’s life in prison has been a model of rehabilitation: he’s not only behaved himself, but he’s helped other inmates along the way. Within the strictures of life “inside,” he’s lived up to the promise he once showed as an honor student. And of course Ablanedo’s family still mourns their terrible loss.

What the essay brings home is how the intended purpose(s) of capital punishment changes as time elapses after conviction. If there WERE a deterrent effect of the death penalty, certainly its punch is lost when 32 years elapses between crime and punishment. Societal self-defense seems not to require death in this case, at least not any more. Killing a clearly reformed 59 year-old man seems merely retributive at this point.

HT: Campaign to End the Death Penalty

No doubt he has a traditional prenup too.  Check out the photo.  Ewwww….  (HT Glenn Greenwald)

For a little break from our super-seriousness about nearly everything, here’s a photo of the first two of the puppies that are in process of being given birth by my brother’s female English Setter who around the first of April had an encounter or two with my Black Lab.  A third has since been born, and there probably are others on the way.

It’s wonderful how nature provides. This was Belle’s first litter, but she knew enough to lick them clean, to cut the umbilical cord,  to eat the afterbirth, and to lie down in such a way that her teats were available to the newborn puppies who knew enough to crawl their way toward them and to start nursing.

As of 8:00 this evening, Belle has given us seven puppies, six jet black and one golden. We think she’s finished–Let us pray to the Lord:  Do I hear an Amen?

Brother and sister

It’s all been written down. We all have our hands in the soup and make the music play just so. But we can only make it play just so much. You can’t play the chord God ain’t wrote. He wrote the beginning and the end. He let you play around in the middle but he got it all written down. It’s his creation and he got more right in it than anybody else. He say, “Let him who have wisdom understand.”… The story’s been written. All that’s left now is the playing out.

(August Wilson, King Hedley II)

In the new issue of Commonweal, I reviewed the current Broadway revival of August Wilson’s play Fences. I encourage you to see it if you can before it closes July 11 (although the tickets are scarce). I can be as disdainful as anyone of the movie-stars-on-holiday approach to Broadway casting, but this is one occasion when the fans who turn out primarily for an up-close look at Denzel Washington get a terrific performance, and an excellent play, for their money. Here, for the interested, a few more thoughts on August Wilson — who, I regret to say, is no relation. Read the rest of this entry »

For those following the flotilla story, there are increasing amounts of info and disinfo. Hard to say which is which. The Times‘s blog, the LEDE has a variety of reports and comments from the people on the boat who have now been released and most of them deported by the Israelis. Here: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/

Glenn Greenwald has a rundown of the back and forth of claims by the IDF and the protestors, including his stern criticism of the U.S. media coverage (especially it seems TV coverage), which seems to have so far bought the IDF version of events.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/04/israel/index.html

Finally, it appears that our Vice-President came out on “Charlie Rose” in a full-blown defense of the IDF’s actions. Seems he has his own foreign policy on this still-developing story.   Hmmm! Read the rest of this entry »

I know I’m a little late to the party on this one.  On May 19, the USCCB wrote a letter setting out its reasons for opposing the proposed Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination against homosexuals in employment.  The crux of its position appears to be that it is opposed to the law because (1) it might be applied to the Church in ways that interfere with its religious autonomy and (2) it might be used by litigants and courts to promote successful constitutional challenges to prohibitions on same-sex marriage.

I don’t know enough about the proposed legislation to comment on the Bishops’ specific claim that the religious exemptions built into the law are insufficient to protect the Church’s autonomy, but there were a number of troubling features of the letter that may shed some light on the hierarchy’s views on homosexuality and the law.   Read the rest of this entry »

The Missionaries of Charity have created a Web page devoted to the upcoming centenary of Mother Teresa’s birth, which will be celebrated on August 26. It’s an island of calm that features, among other things, a recording of Mother Teresa reciting the Prayer of St. Francis.

The prayer, though written in the 20th century, is a fitting way to remember the example of both Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Calcutta for their humility, compassion for all, and willingness to forgive all wrongs.

Not fitting, though, is to make Mother Teresa’s centenary an occasion for manufactured outrage, resentment and religiously based anger. In case you haven’t noticed, the Catholic League is up to “Day 17 of the protest campaign for Mother Teresa.” The latest from the Catholic League’s president, Bill Donohue:

Today I am writing to every Catholic college and university in the state of New York informing them of our protest demonstration on August 26 outside the Empire State Building on 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

The rally is being held to protest the decision of Anthony Malkin, the owner of the storied building, not to overrule those who have chosen to deny a tribute to Mother Teresa: our request to have the towers shine blue and white, the colors of her congregation, on August 26th, the 100th anniversary of her birthday, was denied without explanation. Yet the same persons who chose to stiff Mother Teresa decided to honor the Chinese Communist revolution last year, even though 77 million innocent men, women and children were murdered under Mao Zedong.

It is true that roughly 130 times a year, management of the Empire State Building sends a team of five workers to change the colors of the 180 lights that illuminate the skyscraper’s spire. It takes them six hours to snap on a two-foot colored disc over each light, according to an article earlier this year in The Record, a New Jersey newspaper.

Easter, Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day are celebrated in light, and other recent events included  Caribbean Week, university graduations, the March of Dimes and, yes, the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

I don’t know why the Empire State Building refuses to change its lights to honor Mother Teresa; the Malkin company’s public relations firm, Edelman, wouldn’t say when I called.  I don’t know why the Chinese government was honored, although it is safe to say that  real estate tycoons  such as the Malkins are not Maoists. (They would seem very unlikely targets of red-baiting.)

Mr. Donohue, meanwhile, is playing this for all it is worth in media exposure. He says he has been writing letters to every Catholic high school in the New York region, to all the bishops of the U.S. and India, to government officials at many levels, all urging what he evidently hopes will be a mass demonstration of Catholic influence and outrage outside the Empire State Building on the anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth. He is determined to bend the building’s owners to his will.

But the way to honor Mother Teresa is to emulate her. To turn her centenary into an occasion for exaggerating wrongs rather than forgiving them, for fanning discord and resentment rather than creating harmony, would be to misuse Mother Teresa’s legacy as an instrument for something other than  peace.

A new survey by the Institute for American Values showing that children conceived by Artificial Insemination-Donor have questions about their paternity .  Some seem to wish they’d been born into an intact family.

The trouble, of course, is that in most cases there is no intact family for them to be born into.  The only alternative was non-existence.

I never know what to make about surveys like this–when the alternative is non-existence.  And I also wonder what the difference is between a survey of AID- kids, who express regret about coming into existence in this manner, and, say,  a (hypothetical) survey of children born with significant disabilities, or in poverty, who express regret about being born in that physical or social condition.

Would the Institute for American Values sponsor a survey of my hypothetical kind?  And what kind of conclusions do they think should follow from the survey they actually did, as distinct from other possible surveys of this sort–when the alternative is non-existence?

And if the response is, “well . . . it’s different. . . AID is an immoral means, whereas having a child with a disability isn’t or in poverty isn’t,” then it seems to me that the real argument doesn’t actually turn on the self-assessment of the children about their well-being, but upon something else–namely, a conviction that the means involved in AID are illicit.

And why not just be upfront about that?

UPDATE:  One of the authors of the study, has responded to this post.  I think she’s missed my point.  So I’ll try to put it in an nutshell. I’m not endorsing or opposing AID here–I’m looking at argument structures.

These children may complain about their genetic heritage, but what does that complaint actually mean, since:  1) without AID they would not be themselves; ad 2) without AID they wouldn’t exist.  The alternative for them isn’t an intact family, it’s non-existence.

Nicholas Kristof has this right; even Nicholas Kristof! “Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems locked in a self- defeating dynamic in which it feels misunderstood and gives up on international opinion. It lashes out with force in ways that undermine its own interests. It is on a path that could eventually be catastrophic.”

….for the United States as well as Israel.  Will Obama’s support of Netanyahu be his single largest step in the wrong direction? Or will he pull a peace agreement from this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/opinion/03kristof.html?scp=4&sq=Nicholas%20Kristoff&st=cse

The Vatican Secretariat of State reviews every edition of the Jesuit journal, La Civilta Cattolica, before it goes to print. Somehow this slipped by, via CNS (updated link to full story on CNS homepage):

ROME (CNS) — The health care reform law passed in the United States marked “a needed and long awaited beginning” of bringing greater justice to all citizens, especially the most vulnerable, said an influential Jesuit journal.

“Limited access to health care compromised in many ways the health of citizens and the country,” said the journal, La Civilta Cattolica.

It also said the different positions within the U.S. Catholic community over whether the measure should have been passed reflected a “clash” of differing opinions over how to implement church social teaching.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama March 23, is a continuation of efforts by U.S. presidents to introduce “measures that aim for greater justice for all citizens and, in particular, for the most vulnerable,” the journal said.

The Rome-based biweekly magazine is reviewed by the Vatican Secretariat of State before publication.

The June 5 article, released to journalists June 3, was written by Italian Jesuit Father Andrea Vicini, a professor at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of Southern Italy in Naples and visiting professor at the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College.

The article praised the substance of the law, especially its aim of making the health care system less expensive, more efficient and more dedicated to the needs of the people, especially the estimated 15 percent of the population with no current heath care coverage.

However, the Jesuit magazine lamented the extreme divisiveness that built up during the debate on the measure, saying that “the monolithic opposition of the Republican Party was surprising,” especially given that some innovative projects for providing universal health care coverage had been promoted by some notable Republican leaders in the recent past.

“The degree of division and political and partisan opposition that crystallized during the months of debate before the reform was a source of concern for whomever takes to heart the common good of the neediest citizens and for the whole of the nation, and for whomever is convinced that the promotion and safeguarding of heath are precious assets for nations and all of humanity,” it said.

The article discussed the role of Catholics in the debate by noting the divisions among Catholics themselves.

It explained the position of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was against the measure because its provisions on abortion funding and conscience protections were morally unacceptable.

However, some pro-life members of Congress eventually supported the bill, the journal said, when they felt ambiguities in the proposed law concerning abortion would be resolved, specifically with a presidential executive order promising to ensure no federal funds would be spent on abortion.

The article detailed the three major religious associations that came out publicly in favor of the final version of the proposed law: the Catholic Health Association, led by its president and CEO Daughter of Charity Sister Carol Keehan; the national Catholic social justice lobby, Network, led by its director, Sister Simone Campbell, a Sister of Social Service; and a group of religious women representing numerous women’s congregations.

“Beyond the novelty of a female voice with a social and ecclesial commitment, the discussion that accompanied the reform’s passage the past months showed how it is possible to find at different levels in today’s ecclesial reality the common and shared determination that the Catholic church’s social doctrine be at the forefront of asking for a consistent and long-term dedication to justice and a clear preferential option for the poor,” it said.

However, when such a strong commitment to Gospel-based values is translated into action, the usual result is that “the diverse ways of actualizing that prophetic commitment clash,” it said.

I don’t have access to the Civilta original in Italian, but if anyone wants to buy it the link is here.

Seems like a very smart and wise take on it all. And I imagine Father Vicini knows the situation here well, as he has been at BC, our neighbor, so to speak.

Although an “evangelical environmentalism” has been emerging in recent years — not without a struggle — conservative Christians have by and large not embraced “creation care” with the same enthusiasm as other denominations.

The Gulf oil catastrophe could change that, if this powerful self-indictment by Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is any indication.

In his blog post this week, “Ecological Catastrophe and the Uneasy Evangelical Conscience,” Moore, a Biloxi native who recently returned from a trip to his hometown, compares the Gulf oil spill to the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion:

After Roe, what seemed to be a “Catholic issue” now pierced through the consciences of evangelical Protestants who realized they’d not only been naive; they’d also missed a key aspect of Christian thought and mission.

For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.

We’ve had an inadequate view of human sin.

Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he “believes in young people.”

He continues in a powerful vein, and I think it admirable and courageous that he takes aim at himself and his own community, but I think his words can be taken to heart by everyone.

In a related vein, Mark Galli, managing editor at Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical monthly, takes the jeremiad more literally in “Judgment in the Gulf.” He points the finger at everyone — as prophets do, no? — but also takes the lash to his growth-at-all-costs co-religionists:

Woe to you, O churches of the land, who tithe and fast, who preach and pray, who grow megachurches in the twinkling of an eye, who care about souls but not the land on which they live, which I too have made and called good. Woe to you who trust me not for their daily bread, but look anxiously to smoke billowing diesel to deliver them from their hunger. Woe to all who lift up their eyes to call upon my name, but who do not look down at that which they destroy by sucking up energy in their spacious megabuildings and at international gatherings to glorify my name.

I tend to doubt much will change — remember the Gallup poll on Republican attitudes from the other day. But there has been a shift on green issues, especially among younger evangelicals. Thoughts?

That’s pretty much the idea behind this AP story, which nicely sums up where conservatives find themselves these days — trying to explain why up is down and down is up, and it’s okay:

Conservatives seek gov’t solutions after oil spill

Ben Brooks, a lawyer and Republican state senator from coastal Alabama, says he’s no fan of big government but he expects an aggressive federal response as a gunky oil spill threatens the Gulf of Mexico.

“There’s nothing inherently contradictory in saying we believe in smaller government and demanding that the government protect public safety,” Brooks said.

All along the Gulf Coast, where the tea party thrives and “socialism” is a common description for any government program, conservatives who usually denounce federal activism suddenly are clamoring for it.

But federal intervention to avoid the problem in the first place? God forbid…

Free for all to read:

* “A Pattern of Missteps” — The Editors on the tactical errors of the U.S. bishops in their prolife advocacy.

* “Episcopal Oversight” — Timothy Jost on what the USCCB is (still) getting wrong about health-care-reform legislation.

* “Coalition of the Willing” — Bernard Bergonzi reports from Great Britain on the recent election and the ensuing turmoil.

* “Degreed & Unemployable” — Columnist Charles R. Morris on the not-so-great economic forecast for college grads.

Subscribers can log in to read our cover story, “Ratzinger at Vatican II,” in which former Tablet editor John Wilkins compares Pope Benedict XVI’s contemporary reports on the Council (published as Theological Highlights of Vatican II) with his present positions on church reform and governance.

An online-only subscription is just $29, and will get you access to all the other highlights in this issue — including Eduardo Peñalver’s recollection of his time clerking for outgoing Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Denis Donoghue’s review of Terry Eagleton’s new book On Evil, and J. Peter Nixon’s review of Fr. Jim Martin’s The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.

Know someone graduating this season? Ease the transition with a gift subscription to Commonweal, in print or on the Web.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University has a new study out on the diaconate, which I always consider one of the most remarkable developments of the Second Vatican Council. The explosion in vocations, the virtual resurrection of a permanent diaconate, are amazing when viewed in the context of history. The diaconate is still too little appreciate, most likely, and understood, most certainly, by many Catholics, and I am guilty as charged.

For example, this finding in the CARA survey struck me, as summarized at the USCCB site:

Compensation and formation: Fewer than one in five (18 percent) permanent deacons are financially compensated for ministry. Eighty-four percent of responding dioceses require post-ordination formation. One in six dioceses provides post-ordination formation in a language other than English —such as Spanish and American Sign Language— and more than eight in ten dioceses provide formation opportunities for the wives of deacons.

I know deacons have other jobs, or are very often older, retired, and/or have working spouses, or other forms of support. But that level of compensation still seems quite low given the amount of work they they do, at least in my limited experience. Sort of like the religious orders of years past? Is this fair or not fair? Or just the way it is?

Hat tip: CWNews