From David Brooks’s column in today’s New York Times:

[T]here is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. It is contained in its rampant hyperindividualism. Speaker after speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.

Today’s Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their own fates. In a Pew Research Center poll, for example, 57 percent of Republicans believe people are poor because they don’t work hard. Only 28 percent believe people are poor because of circumstances beyond their control. These Republicans believe that if only government gets out of the way, then people’s innate qualities will enable them to flourish.

But there’s a problem. I see what the G.O.P. is offering the engineering major from Purdue or the business major from Arizona State. The party is offering skilled people the freedom to run their race. I don’t see what the party is offering the waitress with two kids, or the warehouse worker whose wages have stagnated for a decade, or the factory worker whose skills are now obsolete.

The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than the current G.O.P. is willing to admit. The skills that enable people to flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.

I don’t often agree with Brooks, but here I think he’s almost exactly right. Only “almost” because what he takes to be “a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa” is actually the vision itself. The GOP’s hyperindividualism is the premise from which most its conclusions are drawn. When Republican politicians use the word “community,” it’s almost always qualified with the words “small” or “local.” Their point is that the nation itself is to be understood not as a community, whose members depend on one another for material support, but rather as a collection of autonomous heroes making their own way, their government no more than a backdrop for the triumphs of commerce. At the RNC in Tampa, there was no problem in the world, not even a widow’s grief, that couldn’t be cured by owning a small business, a category elastic enough to cover everything from a hair salon to Bain Capital. Good citizenship just meant self-sufficiency. Good government just meant less government. But if government is such a low enterprise — a necessary evil at best — why would a man like Paul Ryan devote his whole adult life to it? This is one of the great paradoxes of modern conservatism: the hunger for control of institutions one pretends to despise, the obsession with politics on the part of people whose rhetoric is essentially antipolitical.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, delivered his highly-anticipated benediction Thursday night to close out the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Dolan will do the same for the Democrats next week in Charlotte, so this blessing seemed less like an imprimatur for the GOP than it would have had President Obama not taken the cardinal up on his offer to give the closing prayer after he accepts his party’s nomination.

Moreover, Cardinal Dolan’s four-minute prayer clearly had something for everyone – or, rather, something to cheer and challenge everyone in the hall (if they were listening — confetti and balloons and cheers for Mitt Romney filled the hall, and most TV coverage seemed to cut away for instant analysis before Dolan appeared.)

The text of the blessing is after the jump.

The most problematic moment for Cardinal Dolan, I think, came thanks to the introduction by House Speaker John Boehner, himself a Catholic, who said of his eminence: “He’s a man who knows that the preferential option for the poor doesn’t translate into a preferential option for big government.”

Actually, that’s not what Catholic teaching says at all — that’s what the Republican platform says. Well, actually the Republican platform doesn’t have a preferential option for the poor of any kind. Boehner’s words seem to me one of the more egregious insertions and distortions of Catholic teaching to partisan politics, up there with Nancy Pelosi on Augustine and abortion back in 2008.

But as Amy Sullivan notes at TNR, Dolan was in a pickle. Her analysis of the bishops’ differing approaches to Ryan’s Catholicism and Biden’s, e.g., and the GOP divergence from Catholic social teaching, is pretty magisterial.

On balance, Dolan seemed to be a congenial guest for the Republicans; the audience could interpret the cardinal’s words liberally, so to speak, and go away pleased.

So in case you missed it, here is the text of Cardinal Dolan’s blessing to conclude the 2012 Republican National Convention: Read the rest of this entry »

In the 25 August issue of the London Tablet, Clifford Longley’s column discusses the candidature of Paul Ryan and wonders about episcopal reactions to his endorsement of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Longley believes, as did Rand herself, that “it really is not possible simultaneously to be both a supporter of Rand and a faithful member of the Catholic Church.” There follows this paragraph:

The US Catholic bishops have a reputation for doctrinal watchfulness where politicians are concerned, some of them even announcing that they would exclude the 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry from Holy Communion because of his (qualified) support for abortion. Ryan’s attachment to Rand’s economic theories is more questionable, and indeed in terms of Catholic Social Teaching must be regarded as heretical. Although one would never like to see church discipline invoked to impose Catholic Social Teaching on anyone against their [sic] will, there is as clear a need for episcopal leadership in this case as in that one. Can American Catholics vote for Paul Ryan? One would think not, and the bishops should say so.

His sentence about the 2004 presidential race should have noted that it was a minority of US bishops who threatened to withhold Communion from John Kerry. And what dogmas in Catholic Social Teaching would make opposing views “heretical”?

Longley returns to hyperbole in his last sentences:

The official Catholic analysis of the presidential election appears to be that President Obama is now such an enemy of Catholicism because of his positions on contraception, abortion and gay marriage, that he has to be defeated at all costs. The candidature of Romney and Ryan are the means for doing so. And nothing else counts.

Do we really want bishops declaring openly that Catholics cannot vote for Obama or cannot vote for Romney? And what effect would either declaration have on Catholics? My sense is that most Catholics don’t look to bishops for specific guidance in their electoral choices, and I believe that most US bishops do not think that is part of their mandate.

The New Republic‘s Leon Wieseltier on “Paul Ryan’s nasty ideal of self-reliance“:

Ryan is animated as much by a theory of government as by a theory of life; but his theory of government is erected in part on his theory of life. For government, limits; for the individual, no limits. A terrible fear of dependence has led him to a terrible exaggeration of independence. The self in Ryan’s self-reliance is a monster. I would not raise a child, let alone design a budget, on this stunted ideal. In a new book on child-rearing, I recently read this: “We tend to encourage self-reliance (a good trait), but resourcefulness is even better. Why? Because resourcefulness is the ability to both independently and optimally solve daily problems and to seek help from others when we can’t problem-solve independently.” It does not exactly sing, but it is exactly wise. We are not only a self-reliant nation, we are also a resourceful nation. But Paul Ryan’s plan for America would undo its magnificent inclination toward community, and leave us not only economically insolvent but also morally insolvent.

Historian Timothy Snyder on why Romney chose Ryan as his running mate:

Romney’s choice of an ideologist as his running mate made a kind of sense. Romney the financier made hundreds of millions of dollars in an apparent single-minded pursuit of returns on investment; but as a politician he has been less noted for deep principles than for expediently changing his positions. Romney’s biography was in need of a plot and his worldview was in need of a moral. Insofar as he is a man of principle, the principle seems to be is that rich people should not pay taxes. His fidelity to this principle is beyond reproach, which raises certain moral questions. Paying taxes, after all, is one of our very few civic obligations. By refusing to release his tax returns, Romney is likely trying to keep embarrassing tax dodges out of public view; he is certainly communicating to like-minded wealthy people that he shares their commitment to doing nothing that could possibly help the United States government. The rationale that Ryan’s ideology provides for this unpatriotic behavior is that taxing rich people hinders the market. Rather than engaging in activist politics, such as bailing out General Motors or public schools, our primary responsibility as American citizens is to give way to the magic of the marketplace, and applaud any associated injustices as necessary and therefore good.

Paul Krugman on Ryan’s undeserved reputation as an “Honest, Serious Conservative”:

What Mr. Ryan actually offers…are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.If this sounds like a joke, that’s because it is. Yet Mr. Ryan’s “plan” has been treated with great respect in Washington. He even received an award for fiscal responsibility from three of the leading deficit-scold pressure groups. What’s going on? The answer, basically, is a triumph of style over substance.

Earlier this week the National Catholic Register posted an interview with Fr. Benedict Groeschel, in which he reflected on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Franciscan Friars of Renewal. The interview attracted a good deal of attention for comments Groeschel made alleging that many abusive priests were seduced by their minor victims — and calling Jerry Sandusky a “poor guy.” That interview has vanished from the Register‘s website. I’ve contacted the paper’s managing editor to find out why. If I hear back, I’ll let you know. [The editor's statement is reproduced below.] In the meantime, let us harness the power of the Google to retrieve the interview from the memory hole. Should that link go bad, you can read the controversial part after the jump.

Update: Archdiocese of New York spokesman Joseph Zwilling has denounced Groeschel’s remarks.

Update 2: The paper’s editor offered the following clarification, which now stands in place of the interview online:

Child sexual abuse is never excusable. The editors of the National Catholic Register apologize for publishing without clarification or challenge Father Benedict Groeschel’s comments that seem to suggest that the child is somehow responsible for abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our publication of that comment was an editorial mistake, for which we sincerely apologize. Given Father Benedict’s stellar history over many years, we released his interview without our usual screening and oversight. We have removed the story. We have sought clarification from Father Benedict. Jeanette R. De Melo Editor in Chief

Update 3: And now the Franciscan Friars of Renewal disavow Groeschel’s remarks:

The Community of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal sincerely apologizes for the comments made by Fr. Benedict Groeschel in an interview released yesterday by the National Catholic Register, online addition. In that interview, Fr. Benedict made comments that were inappropriate and untrue. A child is never responsible for abuse. Any abuser of a child is always responsible, especially a priest. Sexual abuse of a minor is a terrible crime and should always be treated as such. We are sorry for any pain his comments may have caused. Fr. Benedict has dedicated his life to helping others and these comments were completely out of character. He never intended to excuse abuse or implicate the victims. We hope that these unfortunate statements will not overshadow the great good Fr. Benedict has done in housing countless homeless people, feeding innumerable poor families, and bringing healing, peace and encouragement to so many.

Fr Benedict helped found our community 25 years ago with the hope of bringing the healing peace of Jesus Christ to our wounded world. Our desire has always been to lift-up humanity and never to hurt. About seven years ago, Fr. Benedict was struck by a car and was in a coma for over a month. In recent months his health, memory and cognitive ability have been failing. He has been in and out of the hospital. Due to his declining health and inability to care for himself, Fr. Benedict had moved to a location where he could rest and be relieved of his responsibilities. Although these factors do not excuse his comments, they help us understand how such a compassionate man could have said something so wrong, so insensitive, and so out of character. Our prayers are with all those who have been hurt by his comments, especially victims of sexual abuse.

And Groeschel apologizes:

I apologize for my comments. I did not intend to blame the victim. A priest (or anyone else) who abuses a minor is always wrong and is always responsible. My mind and my way of expressing myself are not as clear as they used to be. I have spent my life trying to help others the best that I could. I deeply regret any harm I have caused to anyone.

Read the rest of this entry »

The weblog Democratic Strategist has posted a document entitled “A Letter to a ‘Middle of the Road Moderate’ non-Latino Friend about the Moral Difference Between Democrats and Republicans.” The letter, written by James Vega, is a response to a comment from a friend that “I don’t believe the people who dominate the Republican Party are really any less emphatic toward minorities, the poor, and the disadvantaged than are the people who dominate the Democratic Party.”

To say that Vega disagrees would be an understatement.  His letter is an explosion of rage against the Republican Party’s embrace of policies that, he argues, are explicitly aimed at “making the lives of illegal immigrants so miserable that they leave” (or, as Governor Romney has put it, that they “self-deport”).  Vega notes that the impact of these policies has been felt by Latino immigrants here legally as well as Latinos who have lived in the U.S. all their lives.

This Republican-created strategy of consciously and intentionally “making their lives so miserable they leave”—of deliberately inflicting suffering as a social policy against men, women and children whose only crime is having migrated to America to seek work—is not simply “wrong” or “bad.” It is in every profound sense of the word—evil. It is evil in the same way that racial prejudice is evil. It is evil in the same way that anti-Semitism is evil. It presents the starkest possible moral choice between right and wrong.

As a result I believe your facile equation of Republicans and Democrats is not simply wrong. I believe it is deeply and profoundly immoral and I believe that it is ultimately an act of cowardice. You have clear moral issue of right and wrong staring you directly in the face and, because it is ideologically inconvenient for your “reasonable, middle of the road” self-image, you are acting like a frightened child and covering your eyes to make it go away.

You remember as well as I do the countless times we stood together and watched our two sons play together as they grew up—as toddlers, as kids, as teen-agers and young men. On the walls of our homes and in our photo albums we have dozens of pictures of the two of them side by side. When the time comes to choose who to vote for, ask yourself how you can possibly support a political party that has made it their explicit goal to “make the lives miserable” of children whose only crime is that they look exactly like your own son’s childhood best friend.

The letter, perhaps unavoidably, made me think of how the Catholic bishops have employed this kind of rhetoric.  I’ve certainly read my share of episcopal columns in diocesan newspaper calling for reform of the nation’s immigration policies.  In most cases, their tone is measured and moderate, acknowledging the difficult dilemmas and granting goodwill on both sides.  When it comes to issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and this year’s favored issue of “religious liberty,”however,  the rhetoric becomes more pointed, more likely to speak of “good” versus “evil” and “death” versus “life.”  The tone sounds very much like Vega’s does here.

I wonder if the tone struck by the bishops would change if more of them had the kind of direct, personal experience with this kind of bigotry that Vega clearly has had.  More than partisan or ideological preferences, I think the bishops’ public voice reflects their roots in a predominantly white Catholic culture.  In that culture, the plight of Latinos subject to racial animus can be acknowledged as a concern, but it’s easier to discount it when compared to issues like abortion. Latino Catholics may not have that luxury.

I think this has implications for how the bishops engage both the public square and their own flock.  I suspect that many of them are going to be disappointed that so many Catholics–particularly Latino Catholics–will have voted to re-elect a man they have painted as the enemy of life, marriage and religious liberty.  Reading Vega’s letter may help them understand why.

For many musicians, New Orleans is as close to sacred ground as you can get in these United States.

New Orleans holds Congo Square, the only place in the antebellum South where slaves could and did regularly gather to drum and to dance.

New Orleans produced Louis Armstong, whose use of the backbeat revolutionized popular music worldwide and is the basis for his claim to the title of “Most Influential Musician Of The 20th Century”.

Jazz was born in New Orleans.  (The word “jazz” itself is likely derived from Gaelic.)  As was “The Queen of Gospel”, Mahalia Jackson.

Read the rest of this entry »

This question was brought to the front of my attention by a recent essay in The American Prospect. Monica Potts responds to Paul Ryan’s philosophy of government:

The conservative approach to government stems from a basic tenet of free-market economics: that people always act rationally to maximize their own benefits, and that from this rises a general state of well-being for society as a whole. But this isn’t always true. One of the hottest academic disciplines to arise in the last few decades is behavioral economics, which explores the ways in which people behave irrationally. In addition, easy-predictable problems with certain markets prevent us from achieving the best outcomes. These two facts have consequences for how we should think about government in certain instances. There are many ways in which the government can make better decisions with our money than we can, and there are many ways that the Ryan budget would make society worse off by getting rid of government programs.

She goes on to explain her top-five list, which you’ll have to go there to read. But I would add one more thing big government is good for. And to my mind, it is the clearest and most pressing one of all. But first, back to college for a minute.

It is a testament to my undergraduate professor of Political Theory, John Roos (now emeritus) that I remember the contents of the final exam I wrote for him. Of course, the main reason I remember it is that I had overslept and missed the exam I was supposed to take. So the professor had to improvise with my exam. He sat me in his office, clearly flustered that I had overslept, but pondering what would be merciful and fair in my situation.

He handed me a blue book and said, “OK, there’s been a coup and another of the Yugoslavian states has successfully seceded. You’re a famous professor of political theory and they bring you in to help them construct their new government. What do you tell them? You have three hours. My grad student will sit here while you write.” (The grad student was not pleased with this decision.)

I wrote that the primary principle of government is to preserve as much individual liberty as possible, while still actively promoting a common set of public goods. In theory, everyone wants minimal government. The debates are about what counts as minimal.

With Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan, we have a faint chance for this debate to happen over the next two months. Most of us have grown skeptical of our electorate’s ability to have such a debate, but the opportunity is here in a way it hasn’t been for several elections. Many of the speeches at the Republican National Convention, such as Gov. Chris Christie’s last night, will focus on individual liberty vs. big government (or “coddling” government, as he termed it last night).

When I think back on my exam answer, I know most of it was boilerplate stuff — not A material. The government should provide some military, roads, sanitation, police, fire departments, primary and secondary education, and so on, I wrote. My government for hypothetical Slavinostia looked a lot like a center-right American administration. I was tired, not remembering the finer points of Rousseau, and fell back on the political theory that I knew from just living in America. Not even B material.

But there was one breakthrough moment, one which I carried forward in life and has affected all of my voting since. I ended up writing a large portion of the exam about the necessity of environmental protection at the federal level. Many environmental problems can and ought to be addressed locally, but some of them simply cannot be. I also argued then off the cuff, and now would do so with much more data and (I hope) sophistication, that individual human beings are almost universally unable to imagine or prevent our large-scale effects on the global ecosystem. We don’t comprehend the scale of our effects; and we don’t muster the will power to change our behavior.  We have entered the “anthropocene” era of planet “Eaarth,” as Bill McKibben has renamed our beleaguered planet.

Environmental regulation is uniquely positioned, then, to both promote the public good and preserve individual liberty in the long term. My center-right government, geared towards liberty, demanded a massive federal regulatory agency. In other words, to maximize liberty in the current era, even a minimal government needs a fierce EPA. In my world, Slavinostia’s EPA was going to be its most important federal agency. Its bizarre government looked, in the end, like it was designed by the team of Ronald Reagan and John Muir. (Or maybe something like what David Frum espouses.)

I still agree with my undergraduate self. If I had to pick one thing that big government is good for — and one which I wish were a larger part of the current debates — it is environmental protection.

Today’s New York Times has a front-page article headlined “Romney Seen Pulled 2 Ways Over Economy.” Most readers are already familiar with one of those two ways, the one Paul Ryan represents: small government, less regulation, and above all lower taxes, especially for the rich. It’s the other way that is supposed to make this story front-page stuff. Before he had to satisfy the demands of the hardline conservatives who now dominate the GOP, Mitt Romney “propounded the benefits of expanding and enforcing regulations, including minimum wage and environmental laws. He has argued that government spending, including public investments in private companies, can stimulate the economy and create jobs. And he has advocated tax penalties to shape public behavior, as in his successful campaign to penalize Massachusetts residents who do not obtain health insurance.”

In other words, Romney once supported a lot of things he now opposes. Most Times readers probably knew that already. But the Times‘s Binyamin Appelbaum would have us believe that Romney’s moderate tendencies are dormant, not extinct. To support this suggestion (it’s not quite an argument), Appelbaum claims that “some people who have known [Romney] in both of his careers say that he still sees government through the pragmatic eyes of a businessman” (emphasis mine). In the next paragraph Appelbaum quotes one of these people, Thomas G. Stemberg, who’s been close to Romney since the 1980s. “I think his basic philosophy is, whether you’re running a for-profit business, a nonprofit or a government agency, at the end of the day one should evaluate how one is doing, and continually evaluate success, and the right criteria is the level of customer satisfaction.” How that bit of business-school palaver is supposed to amount to a governing philosophy I’m not sure. It’s certainly a slender reed on which to rest the claim that part of Romney is still a pragmatic moderate. But, hey, there’s always more than one way to read a quote, and maybe Stemberg really was trying to say what Appelbaum thinks he was saying.

More troubling is the preceding paragraph, where Appelbaum concedes that, in order to “court” Republican voters, “in recent years [Romney] has modified and abandoned some” of the positions he took as governor of Massachusetts. “But,” adds Appelbaum, “the minimum wage is an example of an issue on which he has held constant.” There are two problems with this sentence. The first is that it strongly suggests there are other examples of an economic issue on which Romney has remained less conservative than his party. If there are, Appelbaum does not mention them. The second problem is that Appelbaum himself goes on to explain that Romney has not really held constant to his original position on the minimum wage. He used to think it should be indexed for inflation, an idea abhorrent to most free-market conservatives. “But under fire from conservatives,” writes Appelbaum, “he modified his position, saying that automatic increases in the minimum wage should be suspended in some circumstances, like periods of high unemployment” — like the one we’re in now, for example.

So, on the basis of one vague quote and a policy position that has been qualified into irrelevance, Appelbaum wants us to believe that Romney is “pulled two ways over the economy”. Sure, part of Romney agrees with what he’s been saying during his entire campaign, but another part still believes in the very different policies he once endorsed as governor, the ones you would expect a savvy businessman to favor (because, evidently, businessmen are never ideologues). This strikes me as an example of a reporter obscuring the obvious truth by focusing on the orphaned record of a politician who has publicly renounced nearly everything he once supported. Just one of many examples — take my word for it.

I know that this item has already been bouncing around the blogosphere, but somehow I feel that I should be the one to take note here of New York Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane’s final column, with the following rather bald judgment on Timesgeist: 

When Brisbane took up his invitation to be public editor two years ago, he declared in advance that, unlike many Times critics,  he did not imagine some Wizard of Oz dictating a standard Times party line throughout the paper’s “vast and complex” output. 

“I still believe that,” he writes now, “but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.

“When The Times covers a national presidential campaign,” he continues, “I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so.  Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural  progressivism — for lack of a better word — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

“As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.” 

That’s a pretty strong judgment, and because the Times, in my opinion and experience,  is an irreplaceable national resource I would like to think that its editors and publisher would be worried by it. 

When I started at the paper in 1988 it was in the midst of a very conscious and sometimes painful effort to diversify its newsroom personnel with reporters and editors from racial and ethnic minorities.  It was consciously and increasingly moving women, who had always been there, into decision making positions — and not just the few stars.   The paper was immeasurably better for this.  

How could the paper similarly break the stifling hold of that “political and cultural progressivism”?  How could it go about enriching itself ideologically and culturally (and culturally, I think, is the stickler) without just recreating Beltway-style standoff or new versions of the culture wars?  I hope the new public editor, Margaret Sullivan, gives this some thoughtful attention.

Engaging discussion on Moyers, centering mostly on the Ryan budget plan. An interesting moment, shown as a clip at about the 12:25 mark, is Ryan’s equating of subsidiarity with federalism, which Robert Royal is compelled to dispute, if fleetingly. (Royal also helpfully reminds Sr. Simone and viewers that “at the end of the day, there’s no free lunch.”) Catch it before Sr. Simone addresses the Democratic convention next week.

Surprise.

Here’s the full statement from spokesman Joseph Zwilling (not yet available on the archdiocese’s website):

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, has accepted an invitation to deliver the closing prayer at next week’s Democratic National Convention. As was previously announced, he will also be offering the closing prayer at the Republican Convention on Thursday of this week.

It was made clear to the Democratic Convention organizers, as it was to the Republicans, that the Cardinal was coming solely as a pastor, only to pray, not to endorse any party, platform, or candidate. The Cardinal consulted Bishop Peter Jugis of the Diocese of Charlotte, who gave the Cardinal his consent to take part in the convention that will be taking place in his diocese.

UPDATE: Sr. Simone Campbell, executive director of the social-justice group NETWORK, will address the convention on the evening of Wednesday, September 5 (she won’t be offering a public prayer). “We’re thrilled that Cardinal Dolan will be there too,” NETWORK Communications Coordinator Stephanie Niedringhaus said.

Dolan, not Romney, that is.  This piece by Thomas Edsall is well worth a read. He argues:

Most importantly, the Pew surveys show that 89% of voters who identify themselves as Republican are white. Faced with few if any possibilities of making gains among blacks and Hispanics — whose support for Obama has remained strong — the Romney campaign has no other choice if the goal is to win but to adopt a strategy to drive up white turnout.

The Romney campaign is willing to disregard criticism concerning accuracy and veracity in favor of “blowing the dog whistle of racism” – resorting to a campaign appealing to racial symbols, images and issues in its bid to break the frustratingly persistent Obama lead in the polls, which has lasted for the past 10 months.

The Republican party’s reliance on racial dog whistles is nothing new in our politics, obviously. But the position of Latinos within the Republican racial imagination is still more of a work in progress. Since 2010, Republicans seem to have moved decisively against George W. Bush’s admirable efforts to reach out to Latino voters. With Latinos set to deny their votes to the “go deport yourself” Republicans in historic numbers, Bush’s 40% support among Latinos seems like a distant memory. I wonder whether the leader of the American bishops has considered the possibility that cozying up so tightly to an increasingly anti-Latino Republican party is unwise (church) politics.

Although the social conservatism of Latinos is a little overstated, the diversity of the Latino communities would normally make it a little surprising to see them rejecting Romney in such overwhelming numbers. But the “Arizonafication” of the GOP, as Jeff Biggers dubbed it on the Huffington Post, is a dealbreaker even for otherwise conservative Latinos. It is hard to exaggerate the significance for Latinos of the hateful nativist rhetoric (and the hateful kinds of people) associated with the self-deportation movement that the Republican party has chosen to embrace. And when Mitt Romney jokes about no one asking to see his birth certificate, the irony is not lost on Latinos in Alabama and Arizona and elsewhere who have had to produce birth certificates to send their kids to school or who have had to worry about venturing to the grocery store without their “papers.”

Latinos have been very faithful Catholics, but I suspect that — unless the GOP radically revises its approach to racial politics — the integration of the Catholic hierarchy with the national GOP will cause no small number of Latino Catholics to wonder about their place in the U.S. Catholic Church. [To be perfectly clear, I'm not suggesting Latinos will run for the exits immediately. But an increasingly tight association between the Catholic hierarchy and the GOP will, absent some shift in the GOP's current stance toward Latinos, have a tendency over time to alienate Latino Catholics from the church. If the native-born Catholic hierarchy had made common cause with nativists in the late 19th century, what would the impact have been on Irish and Italian Catholics' relationship to the American church? Of course, 19th century nativism was linked with anti-Catholicism, so the analogy does not really work, but you get the point.]

Monday’s Times carries a report of Iranian preparations for the meeting of non-aligned nations taking place in Teheran. 118 of 120 member nations are expected, including Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi (who is floating a peace plan for Syria to include China, Russia, and Iran, but not us!). Ban Ki Moon, the head of the UN, will be there over the strenuous objections of PM Netanyahu and the somewhat milder objections of the U.S.

One fascinating detail in the news story is the description of the exhibit featuring three cars destroyed in explosions that also killed the three Iranian nuclear scientists (they are pictured along with their children); the explosions are said to have been the work of Israeli agents. There are also details of the security arrangements for the conference, including efforts to keep those pesky Iranian citizens away from the delegates.

On the whole, I thought it was a story that told of Iranian grievances against the U.S. and Israel in an unusually straightforward way. Since I am also reading The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran by David Crist, the Times story served as a reminder that the U.S. is not innocent (and has not been very smart) vis a vis Iran, which of course is not innocent or very smart either. Is there a “Dummy’s Guide to Good Governance”?

It’s far from conclusive, but there’s growing evidence that the Affordable Care Act could lead to a significant reduction in the number of abortions performed in the United States.  (If true, it also follows that repealing the Affordable Care Act would result in more, not fewer, abortions than leaving the law in place.)

Writing for The Atlantic, Brian Fung reports, “As the number of insured has gone up in Massachusetts, new state data show a corresponding decline in the number of abortions performed there since 2006.” Since passage of “Romneycare”, Massachusetts’ abortion rate has dropped 17%.

Fung hastens to add, “it’s possible that the decline in the abortion rate had nothing to do with Romneycare”, noting that Massachusetts’ abortion rate has declined steadily since 1991.

Nonetheless, researchers think there’s a link.  Fung quotes Dr. Patrick Whelan, who first identified the trend as saying, “When women have more stable access to medical care, they’re more likely to see doctors, they’re more likely to have somebody inquiring about their sexual health. The fact that you have somebody who cares about you results in people being healthier, and that includes not getting pregnant if they don’t want to be.”

M.J. Rosenberg has this assessment on his blog of the cost to the Israeli economy if Netanyahu chooses to go to war with Iran:

“According to a report issued by BDI, the largest business information consulting group in Israel, the cost to the Israeli economy would be $41.75 billion, a fifth of the country’s total GDP. BDI extrapolates that estimate from the cost of the 2006 Lebanon war, which cost Israel 1.8 % of GDP.”

Rosenberg’s conclusion: “Simply put, the idea of Israel bombing Iran, rather than permitting (given political constraints, Israel’s permission is necessary) the United States to initiate unconditional and comprehensive negotiations with Iran is insane. What kind of leadership would risk one-fifth of its GDP (not to mention its people) rather than negotiate? That is especially true when there is absolutely no consensus in Israel favoring war.”

No doubt the deficit hawks in the U.S. Congress will be happy to supply the missing $41.75 billion!

On August 16, after a two-year struggle with cancer, the theologian Margaret O’Gara died at the age of sixty-five. You can read a brief obituary in the Catholic Register of Canada here. From that piece:

The characteristic aim of Margaret’s 37 years of work as a theologian was to foster dialogue among Christians for the sake of overcoming divisions between the churches. Besides her teaching, research, writing, and extensive public lecturing, she was a member of official ecumenical dialogues in Canada, the United States, and at the international level. She also served as president of the North American Academy of Ecumenists and the Catholic Theological Society of America. Her effectiveness in all these arenas came from a combination of her scholarly rigor, her ability to listen sympathetically, her uncommon energy, and her contagious delight at the growth of mutual understanding and friendship.

Margaret was a long-time contributor to Commonweal — a genetic predisposition inherited from her father Jim, who edited the magazine for thirty-two years. (Read Margaret and her sister Monica’s piece, “Growing Up Commonweal,” here.) In addition to her considerable intellectual gifts, she had an apparently bottomless store of kindness. We mourn her passing. Requiescat in pace.

I’ve seen some bad church art in my day, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this “restored” Ecce Homo fresco in Spain. Sometimes the line between devotion and vandalism is surprisingly thin.

Much has been made of Senator Scott Brown’s truck, much of it by the Massachusetts Republican himself. In fact, when he’s not being photographed in it or mentioning it on the stump, he’s working it into intimate nighttime conversation with his wife, even when the nominal topic is Todd Akin (senate contests another regular subject once the lights are low, as married couples can attest). As quoted in the New York Times:

“Gail and I were laying in bed last night and talking a little bit, as we do every night,” he said, “and I said: ‘Honey, can you imagine? Here I am, Scott Brown from Wrentham, and I’ve got a truck that’s got 238,000 miles on it and, you know, something like this comes up and I’m the first guy in the country to even bring it up and tell the guy to step down.”

Can you imagine, honey? 238,000 miles. Oh, yeah, Todd Akin—what a nut, am I right? But, wow, 238,000 miles!

Brown is running strong against democrat Elizabeth Warren, but truck-talk might not be the only reason. From E.J. Dionne’s latest column, now on our website:

Elizabeth Warren is the kind of person Massachusetts has always liked to send to the U.S. Senate. She would instantly become a national leader, which appeals in a state that has sent to Washington Democrats such as John and Edward Kennedy and Republicans such as Henry Cabot Lodge and Edward Brooke. …

So why hasn’t one of this year’s most exciting Senate candidates put the election away? The obstacle is a Republican incumbent who is making voters forget that he’s a Republican.

In Massachusetts, making voters forget you’re a Republican can be a good strategy, one for which there is significant precedent. But Brown has already traded on his truck to win one election. Maybe he’ll  get some more mileage out of it by putting some more miles on. What do you say, honey – how about I go for 300,000?

The latest in non-endorsements, via The AP:

NEW YORK — Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan will give the benediction at the Republican National Convention on the night Mitt Romney accepts the presidential nomination. The cardinal’s spokesman said the appearance was not an endorsement.

Dolan is the New York archbishop and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Romney announced Dolan’s appearance in an interview with Raymond Arroyo’s “The World Over Live” on EWTN Catholic network.

From the NYT version:

Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, said Cardinal Dolan’s agreement to participate, which occurred “within the last two weeks,” should not be seen as partisan.

“Cardinal Dolan is going to pray, not to engage in partisan politics,” Mr. Zwilling said. “He made it clear when he accepted the invitation that he would also accept an invitation from the Democratic National Committee to offer a prayer at their convention, should they ask.

“He is going simply to pray, which is part of what a priest should do.”

Before accepting the invitation, Cardinal Dolan told the convention organizers that it was standard church practice for the local bishop of the area to give the blessing. But, Mr. Zwilling said, “they said we would really like you to do it,” so he checked with Robert Nugent Lynch, the bishop of St. Petersburg, Fla., and he had no objection.

I wonder how much sway the hierarchy really brings here. Folks tend to recoil at perceived political action by their church leaders, even if they might agree with those leaders on the issues. And of course, what if Obama wins? Is putting all your eggs in one basket good politics?

As Bruce Springsteen begins the 2nd North American leg of his “Wrecking Ball” tour, it’s hard to think of an analog for the artistic, cultural and political project in which he’s engaged.  This isn’t a group of musicians touring on behalf of a cause (e.g., the Amnesty International tours of the 1980s) or a campaign (e.g., the 2004 Vote For Change tour).  It’s not an artist hitching his star to a candidate and appearing at rallies (as Springsteen did with Barack Obama in 2008).

Instead, he’s taking his entire song catalog (as well as the hundreds of other songs his band can cover), every bit of stagecraft he’s learned from 45 years of performing, and as much of the past 150 years of American popular music as he can gather, and bringing it all to bear on the central social, cultural, economic and political challenge of our day:  how to survive (and overcome?) our current depression, now nearing the end of its 5th year.

Take, for example, the 3 shows in Boston last week that kicked off Springsteen’s return to the U.S. after touring Europe for the previous three months.  He sang over 60 different songs.  The shows were all at least three and a half hours long.  Unlike most performers his age, at least a third of the songs—including most of the ones at the heart of any given show—were written in this century.

Here are some of the key elements that—in one observer’s view—Springsteen uses to create this unprecedented series of shows.  More (much more) after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Philip Weiss is the editor and a major author of “Mondoweiss: The War of Ideas in the Middle East.” Along with several co-authors the site covers events, discussions, arguments, etc. both in Israel and Palestine as well as in the United States.

As you might imagine Weiss is accused of anti-Semitism albeit Jewish anti-Semitism, whereas yours truly is asked if she is a  Catholic anti-Semite. So it goes. Since everyone gets so frothy about this, I don’t usually link to his site but I recommend it. Today he has a post that should interest dotCommonweal readers and it is a question that I ask myself from time to time: Does the Obama campaign care about the Catholic vote?

In today’s provocation, Weiss’s compares the Obama campaign’s Catholic messaging and Jewish messaging. “If Catholic voters can swing by the millions, why all this attention to Jews, who represent only a couple hundred thousand votes of swing? Well, for one thing, Obama surely figures that his general message will be appealing to the Catholics who care about the economy– he doesn’t have to tailor his message. That’s true of most Jewish voters too. They’ll be moved, or not, by Obama’s overall message. Most of them are liberal Dems”

Read on for Weiss’s view. I am not sure Weiss has identified the big difference but we can talk about that later.

Don’t get lost in her eyes.

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed defending Rep. Paul Ryan against critics of his budget plan — including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The authors — Antony Davies, identified as an economist, and his wife Kristina Antolin, identified as a theologian — lead with their chins.

Someone is twisting the Catholic Church’s teachings on caring for the poor, but it isn’t Paul Ryan. His controversial budgetary ideas demonstrate that he has a better grasp of Catholic social thought than do many of the American Catholic bishops.

The culmination of centuries of theological and philosophical thought, the church’s teachings cannot simply be satisfied by a government edict to “feed the poor.” Commanding “Let there be light!” works fine for God, but for mortal beings, edicts don’t carry the same punch.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has long supported government interference in the economy as a means to help the poor. But we suspect the bishops haven’t fully thought this through: If God really did favor a top-down approach to poverty reduction, why wouldn’t He establish a government with the power to wipe away poverty on demand instead of leaving things to chance and the possibility that someone like Mr. Ryan would come along and mess up His plans?

If only someone could come up with a way to reduce the poverty of thought on display in this op-ed, I’d subject myself to any form of government coercion. Where to begin? Read the rest of this entry »

Juan Cole offers this pie chart on current ad spending. Two of the organizations, Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, do not have to report their donors, “dark money.”  100 percent of their ads are negative (against you know whom).

The Economist has posted an interesting story, reporting the results of its detailed investigation of Church finances in the U.S..  (HT Daily Intel) It does not paint a pretty picture.  Here’s a taste, but go read the whole thing:

The documents that have been disclosed reveal that some bishops in the bankrupt dioceses presented the diocesan funds of parishes, schools, hospitals and retirement accounts as separate when they were really simply book-keeping entries in the same pooled investment account. The diocese of San Diego, for instance, reported to the bankruptcy court that it had over 500 accounts. But these were merely entries in a “Parish, School Diocese Loan Trust Account”, maintained in a single bank account at Union Bank of California.

Such pooling saves on administrative costs and allows dioceses to use a surplus in one area to cover shortfalls in another, often a legitimate course of action. But it has presented problems when it comes to working out which assets belong to whom in bankruptcy proceedings.

The vast majority of parishes that commingled their funds with those dioceses now in bankruptcy lost all their investments. In some cases they were misled into believing that the money would be kept separate from the main diocesan funds, and thus safe in the event of bankruptcy. The judge in the Wilmington bankruptcy, Christopher Sontchi, said parishes that had suffered this fate had grounds to sue the diocese for breach of fiduciary duty. None has—but that is hardly surprising, given that the bishop and the chancellor of the diocese sit on the five-member board of trustees of each parish.

I had not really paid any attention to this particular brouhaha in Russia until the words “Pussy Riot” tumbled from the pursed lips of Judy Woodruff, doyenne of the Newshour. On the TV screen were three attractive young women, members of a punk rock group, smiling and rolling their eyes in a Moscow courtroom. They had just been sentenced to two years in a penal colony for “hooliganism.” Their offense: dancing and singing in front of the iconostasis of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior protesting the return of Vladimir Putin and his endorsement by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

To the rest of the world the real offense is the suppression of free speech by the Russian government. Okay, they’re baddies, let’s agree on that. But wait! If we switched continents, and the three sweet things had danced and sung on the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey or the bimah  of Temple Emanuel, they would have been arrested for trespassing, sentenced to a week in jail, but hardly lauded by the likes of the Newshour. And wouldn’t the commentary have been more skeptical that this was an effective way to rally the mass of Russians against their authoritarian government?

Scarcely a week after comments from Archbishop Lori that suggested he had forgotten the distinction between formal and material cooperation with evil, we now have another bishop who appears to need some remedial education in moral theology.

In a column published this week (HT: In All Things), Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin attempts to provide some guidance to Catholics trying to form political judgments:

However, the formation of conscience regarding particular policy issues is different depending on how fundamental to the ecology of human nature or the Catholic faith a particular issue is. Some of the most fundamental issues for the formation of a Catholic conscience are as follows: sacredness of human life from conception to natural death, marriage, religious freedom and freedom of conscience, and a right to private property.

Violations of the above involve intrinsic evil — that is, an evil which cannot be justified by any circumstances whatsoever. These evils are examples of direct pollution of the ecology of human nature and can be discerned as such by human reason alone. Thus, all people of good will who wish to follow human reason should deplore any and all violations in the above areas, without exception. The violations would be: abortion, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, government-coerced secularism, and socialism.

Unfortunately, the bishop conflates things that are, in fact, intrinsic evils with things that are clearly not.  An “intrinsic” evil is something that is evil by the nature of its object, regardless of the intent or circumstances.  The taking of innocent human life is evil because of what the act does, regardless of the intent of the actor or the circumstances (although these may mitigate subjective moral culpability).

“Government coerced secularism” and “socialism,” by contrast (assuming they are not merely epithets) are evaluative terms applied to a complex cluster of social and political institutions.  One would have to know a great deal about the intent of the actors and the circumstances to make a judgment about whether a particular law or set of laws was evil.

It is true that the U.S. bishops have employed the language of “intrinsic evil” in the context of the debate over the HHS mandate, but they have used it to condemn a law that requires Catholic institutions to facilitate (through the medium of insurance) acts of contraception, which are considered intrinsically evil.  One may ultimately conclude that the law is evil, but it is not evil by nature of its object.

Similarly, a law offering legal recognition of same-sex relationships is not intrinsically evil.  Because the Church holds that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil (because they are closed to procreation), Church leaders have condemned such laws because they appear to endorse or facilitate evil acts.  But if the bishops in a particular state were to conclude, for example, that the only way to prevent the greater evil of same-sex marriage would be to support a civil unions bill, it would not necessarily be sinful for them to support it.  It would depend on the circumstances and their intent in supporting the legislation.

It seems clear that Bishop Morlino—along with a number of other U.S. bishops—is confusing the concept of “intrinsic” with the concept of “grave.”  Many of the things the bishop enumerates are grave evils, but they are not intrinsic evils.

What worries me about this is that bishops are, in the Catholic tradition, authoritative teachers of the faith.  It is true that bishops, when speaking as individuals, do not possess the charism of infallibility.  Nevertheless, they have an obligation to get their facts straight when acting as teachers of the faith.  At a time when the credibility of the episcopacy is at a historic low, they need to take this responsibility more seriously than ever.

I post for your amusement a typo that could only happen at the library of a Catholic institution. You can see that whoever authored this page of the library handbook was an especially pious speller:

Did you catch it?  A number of questions come to mind:

Who is doing the interceding during these hours? If it’s the saints, then why do they need such long breaks every night? If it’s the library employees, then why do they have longer hours at the Lincoln Center campus? Do those students need more intercession than the rest? And why is no one interceding on Saturdays or Sundays?

But seriously, it’s kind of an inspiring typo. For whoever wrote this and proofread it, intercession is so much a part of life that the typo remained, even though it’s written in the context of “regular session” and “summer session.” It’s even a nice way of liturgizing the academic year: we have the regular academic year and the summer session, but we need intercession all year long.

(HT: C. Peppard)