Yesterday I received hundreds of emails and some phone calls. I’m working through them, but it will take a few days, since the normal duties of classes and meetings still go on. I also see that several Catholic publications and websites have responded to my op-ed, and I’ll be sure to respond as soon as I can and as appropriate to each venue.

For today, I have time only for some quick notes, and then I’ll work on longer responses for later.

The Headline: As those involved in print journalism know, contributors don’t write the headlines. That only happens in blogs, as far as I’m aware.

“Wafer Watch”: This is not a phrase I invented, which was called “crude” and “frivolous” by my critic from Mirror of Justice, Michael Moreland. As someone who follows religion and politics carefully in the media, and has taught courses and convened conferences on it, I had mistakenly presumed that this was a well-known phrase. It began in 2004 as a shorthand for the now normal election-year tradition of some bishops declaring certain Catholic politicians in the Democratic party as unwelcome at the altar rail — and the subsequent tradition of journalists watching them at Mass to see if they present themselves for Holy Communion. The phrase was shorthand meant not to denigrate the Eucharist but, quite the contrary, to mock the politicization of the Eucharist.

Condescension: The condescension directed my way was colorful. From First Things and Mirror of Justice, two blogs which I enjoy reading, I received the following: “ruse”; “so darn clever”; “an embarrassment”; “the argument refutes itself”; “a sad failure”; not “coherent”; “folk political observations along the way”; “crude, frivolous”; “profoundly misstates Catholic doctrine.” Whew!

Evangelium Vitae 73: This is related to the condescension category. I was chastised for not “hav[ing] bothered to take account” of EV 73. Now we all know that a block quote from an encyclical was not going to become part of the small word count for an op-ed. I am happy to discuss my take on this text, along with Faithful Citizenship, in a longer post later. In short, I’m not persuaded that the Romney-Ryan “policy” qualifies as a “proposal[s] aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.” I stand by my judgment that the so-called policy is “expedient political rhetoric.” The “policy” is not realistic. It’s not actually a policy at all. It’s not going to happen. It won’t work. Read the rest of this entry »

Over at the website, three new posts tied to the news.

The day after the second presidential debate, E.J. Dionne tallies Romney’s sketchiness:

Under pressure this time, the former Massachusetts governor displayed his least attractive sides. He engaged in pointless on-stage litigation of the debate rules. He repeatedly demonstrated his disrespect for both the president and Candy Crowley, the moderator. And Romney was just plain querulous when anyone dared question him about the gaping holes in his tax and budget plans.

Any high school debate coach would tell a student that declaring “believe me because I said so” is not an argument. Yet Romney confused biography with specificity and boasting with answering a straightforward inquiry. “Well of course they add up,” Romney insisted of his budget numbers. “I — I was — I was someone who ran businesses for 25 years, and balanced the budget. I ran the Olympics and balanced the budget.” Romney was saying: Trust me because I’m an important guy who has done important stuff. He gave his listeners no basis on which to verify the trust he demanded.

Read the whole thing here.

As a suit challenging the New York City Board of Health’s consent rule regarding circumcision ritual is filed, Joseph D. Becker considers whether the regulation imposes any constraints on the free exercise of religion. Read “A Covenant, with Consent” here.

And Hilary Mantel, whose writing has appeared in Commonweal, has become only the third writer, and first woman, to win the Man Booker Prize twice, this time for Bring up the Bodies (she also won for Wolf Hall). Read her Summer Books piece from 2001 here.

In its entirety [links added by me]:

Oh my. I’m in big trouble. My friend George Weigel tells me that Michael Winters at the National Catholic Reporter has declared (ex cathedra, I assume) that Grant Gallicho at Commonweal has “exposed” me for . . . sanctimony! (It was in my post criticizing the statement by Catholic liberals branding Paul Ryan as a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought.) Well, there it is. I have been exposed. The magisterium of liberal Catholicism has spoken. I am condemned. Woe is me. How does one stand up under an assault by such formidable personages? I mean, Michael Winters. And Grant Gallicho. Perhaps I should recant and throw myself on the mercy of the tribunal:

Paul Ryan is a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought! Paul Ryan is a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought! Paul Ryan is a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought! He really does want to dump old ladies in wheelchairs off cliffs. He really does want to dump old ladies in wheel chairs off cliffs! He really, really, really, really, does.

As the Cowardly Lion said: “I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks.”

Res ipsa loquitur.

Contraception coverage came up at the debate last night as part of President Barack Obama’s answer to the question about pay equity for women. (There were a lot of surprising turns in response to that question.) Mitt Romney seemed unprepared to talk contraception — Or maybe this was another planned (and unexplained) pivot to the middle? Regardless, here’s what he said:

“I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.”

To put it in context, here’s how Obama characterized his own position in contrast to Romney’s:

Now, there are some other issues that have a bearing on how women succeed in the workplace: for example, their health care. (Inaudible) — a major difference in this campaign is that Governor Romney feels comfortable having politicians in Washington decide the health care choices that women are making. I think that’s a mistake. In my health care bill, I said insurance companies need to provide contraceptive coverage to everybody who is insured, because this is not just a — a health issue; it’s an economic issue for women. It makes a difference. This is money out of that family’s pocket.

Governor Romney not only opposed it; he suggested that, in fact, employers should be able to make the decision as to whether or not a woman gets contraception through her insurance coverage.

What Obama is referring to there is Romney’s stated opposition to the HHS mandate and support for the Blunt-Rubio amendment that would allow any employer to refuse to provide contraception coverage. Here’s how Romney responded — and note that he took time out of his answer to the next question, the one about how he’s different from George W. Bush, to get this on the record:

I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not, and I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives. And — and the — and the president’s statement of my policy is completely and totally wrong.

As Sarah Posner has explained over at Religion Dispatches, Romney is defending himself against claims that no one has ever made. And this isn’t the first time he’s sent mixed messages on the subject of insurance coverage of contraception vs. conscience claims of employers. But he is now on the record in opposition to the bishops and others who protest the HHS contraception mandate on religious-freedom grounds. Will we hear from any bishops about this?

By the way, LifeNews quotes that same paragraph of Romney’s response in an article with the headline “Obama promotes HHS mandate during debate, Romney opposes it.” I think they better check that transcript again.

UPDATE 10/18: As David Gibson writes at Religion News Service, Romney’s supporters in the prolife movement have been showing unusual flexibility in giving him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not persuaded, as I note in comments below. But in evaluating the significance of what Romney said or didn’t say on Tuesday, it seems valuable to consider how his own campaign is handling the question: they’re changing the subject. Here’s Kerry Healey (Romney’s lieutenant governor) on MSNBC yesterday, resisting Andrea Mitchell’s attempts to pin down the candidate’s position:

The question of whether or not we should force someone to give up their religious freedom to provide insurance coverage in some hypothetical situation, is not really the point most, and women out there — there are 5.5 million unemployed women in the country…. [Romney] made it clear that he believes in enforcing religious freedom in this regard but he also strongly supports women’s access to contraception and any effort to say he doesn’t –… The problem here is that we are talking about these peripheral issues. We need to really be talking about employment, jobs, that’s what women care about.

It may even be true that most women don’t care about the ins and outs of the contraceptive-coverage mandate. But what I take away from all of this is that Romney doesn’t care much about those details either.

Have at it. Don’t forget to keep refreshing the page to update the thread.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The other day, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput was interviewed by the National Catholic Register regarding the U.S. bishops ongoing struggle with the Obama Administration over the definition of a religious employer.  He was asked about the statements of the U.S. bishops in favor of a right to health care.  This was his response:

The bishops really do believe it. Health is a basic human right; we have a right to be healthy. There’s no declaration on the part of the Church that that has to be accomplished through government intervention.  There are many ways of approaching health care, and I think it’s very important for Catholics to understand the fact that the Church, seeing health care as a basic human right, does not mean [to say] there’s a particular method of obtaining that [right that’s] better than another.

With all due respect to the Archbishop and his teaching office, I would argue that this statement seriously distorts Catholic teaching on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »

Check it out, via The Forward: “a Jewish drinker’s guide to tonight’s presidential debate.”

Take a SIP if you hear:

“The only democracy in the Middle East…”
“Red lines”
An anecdote about a Jewish lady in Florida/Ohio/Nevada or some other random swing state
Anyone over-pronouncing Hamas as “Kkkkkhamas”
“My friend Benjamin Netanyahu…”
A properly employed Yiddishism

Pound a SHOT for”

“My Friend Bibi…”
“Choo-tzpah,” or any other butchered Yiddishism
“Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital”
A questioner with an unmistakable Long Island Jewish accent
“The insatiable crocodile of militant Islam”

And CHUG the entire bottle of whatever you got:

If anyone pulls out a marker and a bomb cartoon

“Ba da boom!”

A good op-ed in today’s NY Times by Fordham theology professor Michael Peppard (I hope he has tenure!).  It’s nice to see that others have noticed (as I did in a post a few weeks back) the inconsistency between Ryan’s insistence that questions about abortion be turned over to the democratic process and the Catholic hierarchy’s official teaching on that question.   Peppard also makes another very nice point about Ryan’s support for exceptions in the case of rape, incest and life of the mother and the inconsistency of the “wafer watchers”:

The church’s staunch position on fetal personhood was on display two years ago in Phoenix, when Margaret McBride, a nun on the ethics board of St. Joseph’s Hospital, authorized an emergency abortion to save the life of a dying woman. Sister McBride was automatically excommunicated by her bishop (though later reinstated quietly). Mr. Ryan’s new position unites him with Sister McBride in defending the threatened life of a pregnant woman.

Most Catholics, myself included, think the denial of Communion to Sister McBride or Vice President Biden is an inappropriate use of pastoral power. But at the very least, such judgments should be consistent. Sadly, that would mean the “wafer watch” starts for Paul Ryan.

As I understand it, those who insist on obedience to the hierarchy’s teachings on abortion do not think these things should be graded on a curve.  Ryan (in their view) should not get bonus points for being closer to the official position than Biden, any more than Sister McBride did.  But for many who like to play this communion game, the issue is not an assessment of whether the Catholic politician is advocating the official position on when abortion should be legal, it is rather a not-so-covert way of signaling to the faithful who is worthy of Catholic votes.  So I won’t be holding my breath for one of them to suggest that Ryan should abstain from receiving the sacrament.

Most of the debate in Catholic circles about Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan has taken place in the arenas of philosophy (e.g., can Ryan claim both Ayn Rand and Catholic social teaching as major influences on his thinking?) and policy (e.g., are Ryan’s plans to “end Medicare as we know it” by turning it into a voucher program, and his plans to slash Medicaid funding proper exercises of his “prudential judgment” in applying the Church’s teachings to public policy?).

Last Saturday the debate shifted to a practical incarnation of Catholic social teaching—the Front Street soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio where the Mahoning County St. Vincent de Paul Society serves nearly 100,000 meals a year to the poor of their community.

“The president of Mahoning County’s St. Vincent de Paul Society is “shocked” and “angry” that Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan used the soup kitchen for a “publicity stunt.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The new issue is now available at our website. Highlights:

Daniel K. Finn on “prudence” in the bishops’ teaching of economic and life issues; Robert K. Landers on JFK’s keen awareness of the power of appearances, and how it helped him manage the Cuban missile crisis; and Paul J. Griffiths on atheists who don’t hate religion. Also, fall books, including Paul Elie’s Reinventing Bach and Robert Wilken’s The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. 

And, two web exclusives: Margaret O’Brien Steinfels on whether race has a role in the current campaign, and E.J. Dionne on Mitt Romney as “product.”

We’ve spoken on and off about evangelization on this blog–often in theoretical terms. One of the best theologically informed and (mirable dictu) practical accounts I’ve read on the subject is in this week’s America:  Betty Ann Donnelly and Philip Pulaski reflect about about how the grounded their three daughters in the faith. I think more stories like this ought to be told.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

“In the last week of August, we loaded up the big rig (a k a our minivan) and drove the youngest of our three daughters to Baltimore to begin her freshman year at Loyola University Maryland. Mission accomplished? We now have three lovely young women enrolled at Jesuit universities and discerning their paths forward. At times all three have been frustrated with and uninspired by the institutional church, but they remain engaged in exploring and wrestling with their Catholic Christian faith, which—we would like to hope—has grounded them and helped to form them into the thoughtful young women they are today.”

Well, that was quick. Forty-eight hours after the release of “On All of Our Shoulders” — a critique of Paul Ryan’s libertarian tendencies signed by about one hundred fifty Catholic scholars and ministers — Robert P. George took to the First Things website to denounce it as a partisan “attack” on the congressman from Wisconsin, whose running mate, you may recall, George has endorsed and is advising. So he knows from partisanship. George also knows from courageously defending one’s political opponents when they’re unfairly criticized. Just ask him:

When my fellow conservatives and Republicans were beating up on President Obama for his “you didn’t build that” remark, representing him as having claimed that business owners didn’t build their own businesses, the government did it, I spoke out in defense of the President…. It is both wrong in itself and damaging to the spirit of democracy to misrepresent one’s political opponents or interpret their words tendentiously to depict them in the most unfavorable possible light.

Do read his defense of Obama. Keep reading. Did you get to the third paragraph yet? You’re looking for the sentence that follows the one with “Obama has a dangerously inflated view of the proper role of government.” Find it yet? If you hit “this comment of mine is not intended as a defense of what Obama said, much less of his economic and regulatory policies generally,” you’ve gone too far. Here’s what it looks like: “I don’t think it is correct to interpret the ‘that’ in ‘you didn’t build that’ as referring to businesses.” Thank goodness George managed to emerge from the avalanche of criticism he doubtless received for that stirring defense, so we could be reminded that the spirit of democracy is besmirched when we misrepresent our political opponent’s views or interpret them tendentiously in order to cast them in the worst light. We would all do well to heed that advice. Too bad George doesn’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik is worried about Paul Ryan’s apparent rejection of the separation between Church and State:

[S]omething genuinely disturbing and scary got said last night by Paul Ryan that is, I think, easily missed and still worth brooding over. It came in response to a solemn and, it seemed to some of us, inappropriately phrased question about the influence of the Catholic Church on both men’s positions on abortion. Inappropriately phrased because legislation is made for everyone, not specially for those of “faith.” (And one would have thought that, at this moment in its history, the Catholic Church would not have much standing when it comes to defining the relationship between sexual behavior and doctrinal morality. However few in number the sinners might be, the failure to deal with them openly casts doubt on the integrity of the institution.)

Paul Ryan did not say, as John Kennedy had said before him, that faith was faith and public service, public service, each to be honored and kept separate from the other. No, he said instead “I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do.” That’s a shocking answer—a mullah’s answer, what those scary Iranian “Ayatollahs” he kept referring to when talking about Iran would say as well. Ryan was rejecting secularism itself, casually insisting, as the Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan put it, that “the usual necessary distinction between politics and religion, between state and church, cannot and should not exist.” And he went on to make it quietly plain that his principles are uncompromising on this, even if his boss’s policy may not seem so:

“All I’m saying is, if you believe that life begins at conception, that, therefore, doesn’t change the definition of life. That’s a principle. The policy of a Romney administration is to oppose abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”

Our system, unlike the Iranians’, is not meant to be so total: it depends on making many distinctions between private life, where we follow our conscience into our chapel, and our public life, where we seek to merge many different kinds of conscience in a common space. Our faith should not inform us in everything we do, or there would be no end to the religious warfare that our tolerant founders feared.

Something to think about…

…you were an Israeli and found out that 53 percent of the campaign contributions to your political leaders came from foreigners. Such contributions are illegal in the United States, but not in Israel. Still, wouldn’t you wonder how much influence outsiders have on the policies of your country, or whether foreigners favor politicians who align with their views but not yours?

Haaretz reports the breakdown of these contributions among Israeli politicians: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised 96.8 percent of his NIS 1.2 million in campaign contributions from foreign donors….” Netanyahu came in second beaten out by the minister for strategic affairs who raised 100 percent of his campaign contributions from abroad. The 550 foreign donors, largely Americans, contribute five-and-a-half times more than Israelis themselves.

Could an Israeli write this off as a form of foreign investment? Or would she be deeply troubled by the implications for Israeli domestic and foreign policies.  Mondoweiss points out that one of Netanyhu’s biggest American donors also supports settler projects in the West Bank.

UPDATE: Here is a short youtube video on Foreign Monday and U.S. Elections pointing out how Citizens United has made way for foreign money in U.S. elections.

Gerald Kicanas of Tucson is one of the U.S. bishops at the Synod on the New Evangelization, and he spoke with Vatican Radio’s Philippa Hitchen (who also had a nice chat with Rowan Williams) about the so-called “new evangelization.” Kicanas’ words are characteristic of him, but especially well put, and much-needed, I thought:

What I’m talking about at the Synod is the importance of works of charity and justice as fundamental to the new evangelisation. When people see the good the Church is doing, experience the love the Church is presenting, this is the most people way that people encounter the Lord…

There are some who begin to challenge the Church’s social teaching and doctrine, yet it’s endemic to all that the Church says about human life that flows from our faith and belief in God….it was quite inspiring for me to hear our Holy Father choosing to reflect on these two words, confession and charity … the two go hand in hand, we have to profess our faith but we have to live our faith with courage and commitment to those who are struggling…

Sadly I think for some people there is this tension between pro-life and pro-justice but for a true believer in the Lord there is no such distinction…so a pro-immigration Catholic has to be concerned about the unborn and a person who is concerned for the unborn has to concerned about people on the margins who are living less than decent lives….our Catholic social teaching is a tremendously rich heritage that we have that I hope will continue to live and maybe this Synod will be an inspiration to stir the embers of our social teaching and live it more completely..”

Let us hope.

Yesterday afternoon I was at a meeting when one of the participants flatly declared s/he wouldn’t watch the debate because s/he knew for whom s/he was voting. No need to go through the trauma of watching! I was dismayed. But thinking about it today, I did wonder if the debates are anything more than a punching bag for the media (including dotCommonweal). Moderator Martha Raddatz has been declared the real winner of last night’s debate and she certainly kept her cool and herded the VP candidates with poise and calm.

Last evening’s dotCommonweal commentfest was fun, but in the light of day, it looks surreal. Canada? the Navy? John Kennedy? What was it all about?

So did you watch the debate? Will you watch the next two? Are they worth it? If so, what did you learn? intuit? decide?

You can watch a livestream of the debate below. If you want to follow along with the comment thread, I suggest opening this page in another tab, and reloading it regularly to keep up with the conversation.

Or maybe during, depending on how boring it is. Yesterday, more than one hundred Catholic theologians, scholars, and ministers released a statement called “On All of Our Shoulders: A Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” (Kind of a mouthful, right? I’m calling it “Don’t Need No Shrugs” for short. Feel free to use that.) The list of signatories — Commonweal contributors like Sidney Callahan, Cathleen Kaveny, Peter Steinfels – is impressive and, as Michael Sean Winters notes at the end of his comment on the text, impressively diverse. What’s their point?

We write to hold up aspects of the Church’s social doctrine that are profoundly relevant to the challenges our nation faces at this moment in history, yet are in danger of being ignored. At a moment when the ideas of Atlas Shrugged influence public debate and policy, we write to proclaim the Catholic truth that the stewardship of common good rests upon all of our shoulders together.

(…)

Congressman Paul Ryan’s candidacy for Vice President brings the threat of this social philosophy home to the Church. We do not question Paul Ryan’s faith. We are concerned however, that defenders of Ryan have gone beyond highlighting the aspects of Catholic moral teaching with which his political positions are laudably consistent, to argue that his Ayn Rand “inspired” individualist and anti-government vision and the policies they inform are themselves legitimately Catholic. They are not.

Be sure to read the rest of the statement. It’s firmly grounded in Catholic tradition (Aquinas makes an appearance), Scripture (see “the least of these”), and papal teaching (both John Paul II and Benedict XVI feature in the argument). The authors wield Catholic teaching to critique the libertarian notion that society can be reduced “to a collection of individuals,” which shrinks “the common good to fit the outcomes achievable by private, for-profit firms.”

Over at Mirror of Justice, Rick Garnett claims the authors have exaggerated the extent to which Paul Ryan is influenced by Rand-style libertarianism. (We’ll pass over for now his suggestion that the statement is partisan.) Yet, as the authors note, Ryan has spoken at length about Rand’s influence on his policies, going so far as to say that he checks his “premises” against her novel Atlas Shrugged, ”so that I know that what I’m believing and doing and advancing are square with the key principles of individualism.” Individualism, of course, is something popes have been teaching against for quite some time. The statement cites, for example, John Paul II: “Blessed John Paul II described ‘individualism’ as a dimension of the ‘Culture of Death’ arising from an ‘eclipse of the sense of God.’… Again, in the words of John Paul II, ‘We are all really responsible for all.’” So, yes, when Ryan trumpets his devotion to Rand’s social philosophy (but, not, it must be said, her well-known militant atheism), he is flirting with a way of viewing the person that is dramatically at odds with the Catholic tradition.

But don’t take my word for it. Read the whole thing. And then come back at 9 p.m. for our debate-watching party/open thread.

As you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been keeping up with your Commonweals, this year — and specifically, this day — marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. John W. O’Malley, SJ, has an excellent overview of the council on the op-ed page of the New York Times today: “Opening the Church to the World.” I’m impressed by how much information and analysis O’Malley managed to pack into such a short piece. And he has room to pay particular attention to the principle of collegiality:

The bishops at Vatican II felt that more than a century of centralization needed to be tempered. But in their euphoria, they failed to reckon sufficiently with the resistance of entrenched bureaucracies — jealous of their authority and fearful of disorder — to change. A more participatory mode of church life took hold for 15 years or so after the council, but from on high it began to be more and more restricted, to the point that central control is now tighter than ever.

John Wilkins’s feature article in our current issue — “Bishops or Branch Managers?” — takes up the same theme, discussing collegiality as one of the council’s brightest and most unfulfilled hopes. His verdict is very much like O’Malley’s, and his article is full of details about how it all went down. (By the way, you’ll need to subscribe to read Wilkins’s article. What better way to celebrate the spirit of Vatican II?)

Be sure to also read “Turning Point,” Bernard P. Prusak’s recollections of being present at the council. (Read it in print if you can, because he took some terrific pictures.) And of course our editorial, “Vatican II Continued.” And there’s lots and lots of other material to keep you busy here.

I’ve been reading O’Malley’s book What Happened at Vatican II? — reviewed by Prusak in Commonweal — and I highly recommend it to anyone hungry for more information after reading that op-ed. It’s especially fascinating for someone like me who grew up in a thoroughly postconciliar church environment — it’s hard for me to imagine a time when, say, Nostra aetate was deeply controversial. And yet in O’Malley’s telling it’s a page-turner — I’m reading along thinking, I hope it passes!

Fifty years ago today the Second Vatican Council began with a solemn ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica. It had rained through most of the night before, threatening to wash out the procession through the Square. But the skies cleared into the brilliant Roman blue and things could proceed as planned.

Students at the North American College had begun the week on retreat, given by Bishop John Wright. But the retreat was interrupted so that we could attend the opening of the Council. St. Peter’s Square was cordoned off, and despite our best efforts we were unable to get to good sites from which to watch the procession. Then we noticed that bishops, when they approached a guard, were granted immediate entrance: “Avanti, Monsignore!” And we also noticed that when bishops were accompanied by priest-chaplains, all of them got in. So we waited until we saw a bishop come who had no chaplains with him, and two of us placed ourselves right behind him, and we were all admitted: “Avanti, Monsignore!” So it was from the steps of St. Peter’s that I watched the opening procession of 2,400 bishops across the piazza and into the basilica, a most impressive sight!

The most important moment occurred inside, of course, when after the Solemn High Mass, Pope John XXIII delivered his opening speech in which he set out his vision of the Council. Some of the highlights: Read the rest of this entry »

Rocco Palmo has posted Archbishop Rowan William’s wonderful address to the Synod on the New Evangelization.  Early on, Williams highlights how Henri de Lubac’s theology influenced the Christian anthropology of the Second Vatican Council:

But one of the most important aspects of the theology of the second Vaticanum was a renewal of Christian anthropology. In place of an often strained and artificial neo-scholastic account of how grace and nature were related in the constitution of human beings, the Council built on the greatest insights of a theology that had returned to earlier and richer sources – the theology of spiritual geniuses like Henri de Lubac, who reminded us of what it meant for early and mediaeval Christianity to speak of humanity as made in God’s image and of grace as perfecting and transfiguring that image so long overlaid by our habitual ‘inhumanity’. In such a light, to proclaim the Gospel is to proclaim that it is at last possible to be properly human: the Catholic and Christian faith is a ‘true humanism’, to borrow a phrase from another genius of the last century, Jacques Maritain.

Yet de Lubac is clear what this does not mean. We do not replace the evangelistic task by a campaign of ‘humanization’. ‘Humanize before Christianizing?’ he asks – ‘If the enterprise succeeds, Christianity will come too late: its place will be taken. And who thinks that Christianity has no humanizing value?’ So de Lubac writes in his wonderful collection of aphorisms, Paradoxes of Faith. It is the faith itself that shapes the work of humanizing and the humanizing enterprise will be empty without the definition of humanity given in the Second Adam. Evangelization, old or new, must be rooted in a profound confidence that we have a distinctive human destiny to show and share with the world.

Later on, Williams reflects on the kind of witness that will be necessary for the work of evangelization.  Read the rest of this entry »

Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs spoke with Daniel Cole of his local paper and added to the list of positions that will get your barred from communion, at least in his diocese. He started out by reiterating that support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage are automatic disqualifiers for Catholic pols, maybe even voters:

Bishop Sheridan: It’s clear to me that the Code of Canon Law, Canon 915, says that a Catholic politician who publicly espouses positions that are contrary, not just to any teachings of the Church, but to serious moral teachings, should not receive Holy Communion until they recant those positions publicly. Voters needs a little bit more nuance, because there the question is, are we voting for those politicians precisely because of their positions on those non-negotiable issues? Here is what I would say: It would be very difficult for me to understand how, if there are two candidates quite far apart in their positions on these matters, I could vote for the one who consistently opposes these Church teachings, simply because he might be in favor of a few good things.

DC: Would support for the contraceptives mandate also disqualify Catholic politicians from receiving Communion? Is that a new non-negotiable?

Sheridan: I think we do need to add to that list (of non-negotiables) religious liberty. Absolutely, yes. I think a Catholic politician who publicly and consistently defends the mandate, which causes people to violate their conscience — yes, I think that’s right up there with the rest of them.

DC: If Vice President Joe Biden, who is Catholic, were to swing through Colorado Springs on a campaign tour and attend your Mass, would you deny him Communion?

Sheridan: He should know, and I would do everything I could do to make sure that he knows, he ought not to be receiving Communion.

Everything else — care of the poor, immigration, the death penalty, etc — is a matter of prudential judgment, he says.

You know it’s election season when you start losing track of Catholic conservative organizations. Thanks to the National Review Online, I’ve learned of another one — the Catholic Association, whose senior fellow, Ashley McGuire, just enjoyed a relaxing game of slow-pitch with NRO‘s editor-at-large, Kathryn Jean Lopez. This exhibition match focused on the issue of religious freedom, which works out for McGuire, because her group just put out a “religious-freedom scorecard.” A scorecard? That sounds a lot easier to digest than another Catholic voting guide. But it also sounds a little like play-at-home Jeopardy. Turns out it’s even simpler. According to McGuire:

The purpose of the scorecard is to provide voters with the facts about President Obama and Governor Romney with regards to religious freedom…. Our system of government only works with an informed citizenry, and this country was founded on the notion that religious freedom is our first freedom. Anything we can do to help voters see how these two men fare on this most crucial of issues, we at the Catholic Association will do.

A benevolent aim, to be sure. Who doesn’t like facts? And, according to McGuire, the Catholic Association is willing to do anything to help further its goal. Apparently that includes redefining the word “fact.”

Lopez lobs McGuire a pitch designed to allow her to repeat one of the scorecard’s tall tales: that the Obama administration wants to protect freedom of worship, but not freedom of religion. McGuire:

Beginning a few years ago, the president and important members of his administration such as Secretary Hillary Clinton have been replacing the phrase “freedom of religion” with “freedom of worship.” The space between these two phrases is enormous. Freedom of worship implies that religion is something that belongs within the four walls of a church, mosque, synagogue, etc., or around the dinner table in one’s home. The phrase “freedom of worship” treats religion as if it were something unsavory to be kept indoors.

That claim was debunked months ago, yet McGuire peddles it as though it just fell off the meme truck. Paul Moses was on this in February. After a quick search of the White House website, he turned up a dozen examples of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton using the approved term “religious freedom” (there are many more). And in April Mollie Wilson O’Reilly corrected the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which included the meme in its statement on religious freedom, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.” She also noted the apparent source of this claim: a 2010 post on a First Things blog. Care to guess who wrote it? That’s right, Ashley McGuire (then Ashley Samelson).  Read the rest of this entry »

The new Pew Forum study is getting a lot of publicity for its finding that one American in five now responds “none” when asked about their religious affiliation.  This is up from around 15 percent in 2007.  The future of organized religion in the United States may look even bleaker because almost a third of individuals under 30 can be classified as “nones.”

Numerous press reports have covered the study so I’m not going to describe it in detail.  I encourage you to read the summary or—if you are an unreconstructed data geek like me—download the entire report.

There were a couple of interesting findings buried in the demographic data.  The first was that the growth in “nones” was heavily concentrated among the white population.  The share of Hispanics who are “nones” did not change at all between 2007 and 2012.

A second finding that was interesting was the difference between unmarried and married individuals.  The share of married individuals who were “nones” did not change at all between 2007 and 2012, while the share of unmarried individuals who did increased by 4 percentage points.  This means that unmarried individuals accounted for virtually all the increase in the “nones” over the last five years.

If marriage has a “protective” effect on religious practice, then one of the things that may be driving decline in religious practice is the decline in marriage.  Of course, the reverse may also be true in the sense that the religiously unaffiliated may be less likely to take the step of getting married.  If you read the full report, you’ll find that the “nones” cohabit at a slightly higher rate than those affiliated with a religious tradition.

Since we’ve been talking about the New Evangelization this week, this data seems to confirm that the window between leaving home and getting married is the space where the churches lose many of their adherents.   I’ll be interested to see of any of the interventions at the Synod discuss this particular challenge.

Many news agencies have reported that Pope Benedict XVI, fresh off his visit to Arabic-speaking Christians in Lebanon, has added Arabic to the list of languages in which he offers papal blessings.

After the [weekly] address, which dealt with the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the pope said in Arabic: “The pope prays for all people who speak Arabic. May God bless you all.”

The Vatican said the addition was made to show the pontiff’s concern for Christians in the Middle East and to remind both Muslims and Christians to work for peace in the region. (REUTERS)

Good for him!  Our brothers and sisters are suffering, especially in Syria. To hear a papal blessing in Arabic must bring a moment of spiritual respite amid turmoil.

UPDATED:

At the time I wrote this yesterday, I was relying on the news reports that translated the Pope’s Arabic blessing as “May God bless you all,” and for which I assumed that the Arabic blessing used the generic word for God in Arabic, Allah. That was a reasonable but, as it turned out, false assumption.

After the text of the audience was posted to the Vatican website, it is clear that the blessing uses al-Rab, which would normally be translated into the English as “the Lord.”

So, no, the word “Allah” did not ring out in St. Peter’s square.

One peril of blogging is that, with the speed of information flow and analysis, we can get the news wrong based on limited information. But one great feature of blogging is that corrections can be made in a place where people will actually see the corrections!

My points about translations of divine names in journalism are still relevant, though. The translations can certainly strive for more accuracy. My guess is that the reporters translated not from the Arabic but from the official Italian translation of the Arabic, which I now see was “Dio,” the normal word for God. Although Dio is an acceptable translation of Al-Rab, it would seem that Signore would be more accurate and better reflect Christian Arabic usage. On the other hand, the choice of Al-Rab can signify God for both Muslim and Christian speakers of Arabic, and so the message seems to have been intended for all.

Here’s a look at our two presidential candidates that suggests why neither of them should get elected.

Update: Here’s the PBS Frontline show that started the discussion.

Update 2: And here is Gail Collins on the state of many Democrats: “When Democrats run into each other in elevators, they exchange glances and sigh. Or make little whimpering sounds.”

Rocco Palmo has posted the full text of Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s opening address to the Synod on the New Evangelization.  Like much of what Cardinal Wuerl writes, it is thoughtful, well-organized. and covers the terrain well.  Any summary is unlikely to do it justice.  But let me just highlight a few points.

I was particularly interested in Wuerl’s discussion of the theological foundations of the New Evangelization, where he highlights four important elements. The first is the need for a reassertion of a Christian anthropology, an understanding that human beings are oriented to the transcendent and it is in Jesus Christ that this orientation is fulfilled.  The second is a stronger insistence that the Jesus the Church proclaims is the Jesus rooted in the tradition of the Church, not in sociological or historical reconstruction.  The third is the need for a reassertion of the necessity of the Church for salvation.  Wuerl understands the difficulty of this in light of recent developments in doctrine and argues that “the New Evangelization must speak about God’s universal salvific will and at the same time recognize that Jesus has provided a clear and unique path to redemption and salvation.”  Finally, the fourth element Wuerl highlights is Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

A second–and related–theme in Wuerl’s address is the qualities of the “new evangelists.”  He identifies four: “boldness” in their proclamation of the Gospel; connectedness to the Church; a sense of urgency, and joy.  “Whatever our circumstances,” Wuerl writes, our witness should radiate the fruits of the Holy Spirit including love, peace and joy.”

If I had to summarize this in a sentence, I would say that Wuerl is calling for both clarity and boldness in our preaching of the Gospel.  Be clear about what we believe let that clarity be reflected in both our confidence and our joy.

There is much in Wuerl’s address that I agree with.  There are a couple of things, however, that I wish he had addressed in a deeper way.  I found his discussion of the reasons for the decline in religious practice superficial.  Wuerl repeats a widely held view among the bishops that the catechetical crisis of the 60s and 70s played a major role here.  I would argue that the decline has much deeper roots in the increasing affluence and mobility of individuals in the West and the decline in the kind of stable, inter-generational communities that played a critical role in passing on the faith.

While I agree that a baseline degree of confidence in Church teaching is a prerequisite to effective evangelization, I think we have to be careful that confidence does not slide over into arrogance.  Many of the people that the New Evangelization targets tend to be skeptical of institutions.  Particularly in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal, the credibility of the bishops and the institutional structures they command is arguably at its lowest level since the 16th century.   While the bishops remain the successors to the Apostles, their ability to be effective evangelizers has been seriously compromised for the foreseeable future.

If clarity and boldness are part of the answer, they need to be expressed first and foremost in the lives of ordinary Catholics.  If I were a bishop, I would do everything possible to get myself off the front pages of both my local and diocesan papers and instead hold up the examples of the everyday saints whose lives are the best argument for the truths of our faith.

I’ve been waiting to read that the newly-installed Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, has offered a warm and sincere apology to the Episcopal Bishop of San Francisco, Marc Andrus. But as of today, I’m still waiting.

Here’s what happened, as far as published sources have revealed it. Andrus issued a letter
to his own people, dated the first of October, stating that he looks forward to working with Cordileone on issues of common concern. He cited global development and immigration as especially pressing subjects on which they would join in making common cause. He acknowledges their differences over Proposition 8 (gay marriage) and promises that his own stand will remain firm. In light of the obvious disquiet among some over Cordileone’s appointment, he reminds his people in closing to “welcome as brothers and sisters” any who might turn up on the doorstep of the Episcopal Church. I found his message charitable, sober, and honest.

Bishop Andrus had been invited to the installation, which was held on October 4 at 2:00. He was told that he must arrive by 1:45 in order to be seated. He arrived, by his own account, at 1:40, and waited, chatting with some Orthodox bishops. The Orthodox were led away, and he was told to remain waiting. Two o’clock arrived and he was still waiting. It became evident to him that he was not going to be seated. He left. A spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese claimed that Andrus arrived late, and was not seated so as to not disturb the ceremony. Andrus’s own account clearly denies this.

The incident has been reported in the Huffington Post, CNN, the website of the Episcopal Church of San Francisco, US Catholic, NCR, and a number of news sources and blogs since that time. Conspicuous by its absence is any statement from Cordileone, clarifying the matter.

Now, admittedly there were a lot of people at this event, and big events always include opportunities for underlings to flub things up. If the failure to seat Bishop Andrus was actually a snafu that happened at the installation, with no offense intended, what would you expect to happen next? I would expect Cordileone to call up Andrus the very next day and say I’m sorry; I regret this happened; please forgive this lapse of etiquette; it was all due to some confusion and truly it was not an intentional slight. I would then let the press know that we had made amends, and invite him to another public event soon, so that it could be seen that the Catholic leader of the Archdiocese of San Francisco respects leaders of other, long-established religious bodies. They are our dialogue partners and local collaborators in building the Kingdom, after all.

But no. As of this writing there has been no word, no explanation from Cordileone. Nothing in the press or on anyone’s blog that adds substantially to the story. In terms of the news cycle, that’s a long time.

Reluctantly, I am coming to believe that the slight must have been intentional.

This is shameful, if so. Some have suggested that the letter Andrus wrote to the members of the Episcopal Church of his diocese caused offense to Cordileone and therefore it was right not to admit him. A more puerile argument can hardly be imagined. Andrus was an invited guest. He did not crash the party. If his letter was so egregious, he ought to have been asked not to come, rather than left standing at the door when he arrived.

What sort of a leader has been appointed to the Catholic see of San Francisco? What sort of bishop cares so little for ecumenism and public relations that he would sit quiet while all this unfolds? On August 25, Cordileone was arrested in San Diego for driving under the influence of alcohol. He joked about it at his installation, in fact.

A “regrettable mistake” he called it, and of course that is true. The incident with Bishop Andrus at the installation may go down in history as another instance of bad judgment.

But there are also worse consequences imaginable here. It may be the beginning of the end of ecumenism in San Francisco. And that is more than regrettable.

Mitt Romney gave a foreign policy speech Monday at the Virginia Military Institute. Sounded grand and grandiose, but careful reading shows a hodge-podge of nit-picking criticisms–a squeak rather than the roar that must have been intended.

Candidate Romney opens with and returns several times to the Libya attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and three others. He lays this tragedy at the feet of the Administration for initially attributing the attack to an anti-Muslim video rather than the militia-terrorists that are now said to be responsible. Security negligence? A PR mistake? Uncertainty in midst of attack? Romney will have none of that.

By Romney’s lights, Obama has failed in too many ways to count: Fails to support our ally Turkey, to rescue the Syrian people, to have a trade policy for the Middle East, etc. Oh yes, we need a larger Navy and should have left troops in Iraq. Then there’s Russia and China, etc. All failing policies that Romney attributes to Obama as if George W. Bush never existed. In a Romney Administration there will be no space between the U.S. and Israel (not of the kind Obama has created by not going to war against Iran). And oh yes, Romney will work to bring about the two-state solution and peace for Israelis and Palestinians (that’s a pretty big space when it comes to the Netanyahu government).

Does Romney know what he’s talking about? Or was this simply a cut and paste operation. Speech here.

VMI, The Virginia Military Institute, is probably terra incognita to must of us, but Pat Lang is a graduate. There is an interesting discussion on his blog about the setting, the cadets, their dress, etc., i.e., the atmospheric of Romney’s speech. Many of those commenting are not Obama fans, apparently they are not Romney fans either. Here.

 UPDATE: Here is David Ignatius on the Romney speech; judicious but critical.

From “Politicopsycholpathology: Neurotocrats vs. the Grand Old Psychosis,” available here at n+1:

In math class they ask you to show your work, so that if you get the wrong answer you can later see where you went astray. In American political life today, you never show your work. So the answer to any question we take to be code for a hidden dream-work, to use Freud’s term for the impacted logic of dreams. In this way, for instance, even Mitt Romney’s pledge to relieve mass unemployment by cutting taxes for “job-creators,” in the question-begging term, seems to refer not to any underlying economic theory, which he would never in any case elaborate, but to a concealed preference for the rich to get richer. Such a motive is not even, however, comprehensibly economic, since Romney himself is so rich already; it could only emerge out of some obscure compound of class-loyalty, self-admiration, cultural nostalgia, power hunger, or other elements altogether. Romney would anyway deny the motive we impute to him, and his denial might be sincere. The point is only that if we listen to his words—or to almost any contemporary political speech—we find ourselves not in the position of a rational interlocutor, but in that of a shrink faced with a patient: here is a someone who either doesn’t believe what he says or says it for other reasons than he gives, and yet whose real reasons and motives are inaccessible to us, and may be to him, too.