Religous Freedom and Muslims
In their editorial, the Commonweal Editors chided the Bishops for not explicitly incorporating Muslims in their call to religious liberty. Was the omission deliberate?
I tended not to think so. But then I came across this website from the “Thomas More Center.” Without a hint of irony, it proclaims its purpose to defend the religious liberty of Christians, but NOT of Muslims–indeed, it is explicitly directed against Muslims.Religious freedom for me but DEFINITELY not for thee? Yikes.
I have no idea whether or to what degree the Bishops’ conference is coordinating in its work with this group. And having grown up in New England, I know politics makes strange coalitions. Still, I would be much more relieved if this statement had indicated that the Bishops weren’t going in this direction themselves.
A troubling possible use of the Smith plus RFRA combo. When it’s a “good religion” (like Catholicism?) people can emphasize “religious liberty,” when it’s a “bad religion” (like Islam?) people can push Smith’s support of laws of general applicability. From a strategic legal realist perspective, Smith plus RFRA, gives you the legal ammunition to do what you want.
But this isn’t right. Whatever the legal rule is–Smith, RFRA, etc., it has to be applied to everyone fairly. That’s the basic point of the rule of law.
Tags: contraception, HHS, religious freedom, USCCB
I keep mentioning this book of Huston Smith in conversation with Native Americans, and I think it is necessary reading if one wants to engage the question of religious liberty in the US:
http://www.amazon.com/Seat-Table-Conversation-Americans-Religious/dp/0520244397
“In this collection of illuminating conversations, renowned historian of world religions Huston Smith invites ten influential American Indian spiritual and political leaders to talk about their five-hundred-year struggle for religious freedom. Their intimate, impassioned dialogues yield profound insights into one of the most striking cases of tragic irony in history: the country that prides itself on religious freedom has resolutely denied those same rights to its own indigenous people. With remarkable erudition and curiosity–and respectfully framing his questions in light of the revelation that his discovery of Native American religion helped him round out his views of the world’s religions–Smith skillfully helps reveal the depth of the speakers’ knowledge and experience. American Indian leaders Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Winona LaDuke (Anishshinaabeg), Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), Frank Dayish, Jr. (Navajo), Charlotte Black Elk (Oglala Lakota), Douglas George-Kanentiio (Mohawk-Iroquois), Lenny Foster (Dine/Navajo), Tonya Gonnella Frichner (Onondaga), Anthony Guy Lopez (Lakota-Sioux), and Oren Lyons (Onondaga) provide an impressive overview of the critical issues facing the Native American community today. ”
The text really makes concrete the issues and concerns of religious liberty, something which I fear is being lost by the bishops. They claims are as if we are in a new, dire situation, when in fact religious liberty has not been so simple in the US, and those who are not complaining about _slights_ have been involved with more than a little anti-religious liberty for others (Native Americans, Mormons, JW’s, Muslims, et. al.). I think there is a big element of the social structure of sin we have helped create now is showing us the consequences of our actions. It’s time for prophetic metanoia.
Henry Karlson: On the strength of your recommendation, I have just ordered a copy of A SEAT AT THE TABLE. Thanks for calling our attention to it.
My favorite scholar is the late Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003) of Saint Louis University.
Ong’s article “World as View and World as Event” was published in the journal the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, volume 71, number 4 (August 1969): pages 634-647.
We reprinted Ong’s 1969 article in volume three of Ong’s FAITH AND CONTEXTS, edited by me and Paul A. Soukup (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995, pages 69-90).
David M. Smith in anthropology at the University of Minnesota Duluth (now retired) works with Ong’s approach to world-as-event in his essay about the Native Americans in Canada known as the Chipewyan people: “World as Event: Aspects of Chipewyan Ontology” in the book CIRCUMPOLAR ANIMISM AND SHAMANISM, edited by Takako Yamada and Takashi Irimoto (Sapporo, Japan: Hokkaido University Press, 1997, pages 67-91).
We reprinted Smith’s essay in the new Ong anthology titled OF ONG AND MEDIA ECOLOGY, edited by me and Paul A. Soukup (New York: Hampton Press, 2012, pages 117-141).
I would take Smith’s essay as my point of departure and say that Native American religious traditions in what is now the United States represent the world-as-event orientation toward life that Ong writes about.
By contrast, the different Protestant religious traditions in the United States represent the world-as-view sense of life that Ong writes about.
The American tradition of freedom of religion was arguably designed to accommodate the world-as-view sense of life that has dominated American culture from the time of the New England Puritans onward down to our times.
By way of further explanation, I hasten to add that the world-as-view sense of life represents a cultural juggernaut made up of several factors, just as the world-as-event orientation toward life does.
Cathleen, I have only an extremely thin knowledge of the literature on all this, but I am aware that it’s been reported that in many American mosques, the preaching often includes a fair dollop of hatred of America and all it’s assumed to stand for. If that’s true – and I don’t think it ought to be pooh-poohed just because it “sounds” ignorant and nativist – one properly ought to make a clear distinction between Islam in the abstract and Islam as it’s being commonly practiced in this country.
If priests in Irish-American parishes were encouraging killing English men and women and bombing English churches and businesses, I hope American progressives would concede that the Catholic Church in America ought not to be used as a front for the IRA.
“Was the omission deliberate?”
————
Yes, of course. The sophisticated editors of the venerable periodical know who’s running the Church and what their attitude to Islam is.
An article in Daily Kos last month gives a little background for anyone less aware. (Depressing, of course.)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/18/1075504/-Santorum-and-Opus-Dei-the-Real-Story
From that:
The New York Times ran an article titled “Bishops Were Prepared for Battle Over Birth Control” on February 9. “Seven months earlier, [the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops] had started laying the groundwork for a major new campaign to combat what they saw as the growing threat to religious liberty, including the legalization of same-sex marriage. But the birth control mandate, issued on Jan. 20, was their Pearl Harbor,” wrote the excellent religion correspondent, Laurie Goodstein. An accurate description of the battle, but the strategy for war, according to a New York Times Magazine article published in December 2009, had already been formulated the previous September when “about 60 prominent Christians assembled in the library of the Metropolitan Club on the east side of Central Park.” Attendees included “more than half a dozen of this country’s most influential Roman Catholic bishops….At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.” The professor is also closely associated with Opus Dei.
“Richard Thompson, former prosecutor of Oakland County, Michigan, and Thomas S. Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza Corporation, established the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) as a nonprofit corporation under the laws of the state of Michigan on December 29, 1998 … The Law Center’s mission is to restore and defend America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and moral values; and to preserve a strong national defense, and a free and sovereign United States of America in order to counter the destructive impact of organizations like the ACLU, which seek to subvert our nation’s religious heritage and national defense.
“As President and Chief Counsel, Thompson directs a team of staff lawyers and nearly 700 allied attorneys offering pro bono services in every state. Among those who have sat on TMLC’s Citizens Advisory Board are former Senator Rick Santorum and former Major League Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
[...]
“TMLC has established itself as one of the nation’s leading Christian public interest law firms. Attorneys with the Law Center have appeared regularly on national radio and television programs including: the FOX News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes,FOX & Friends; MSNBC’s Live with Dan Abrams; the Dr. Laura Show; the Radio Factor; The Savage Nation with Michael Savage; and hundreds of Christian radio networks.”
The text of my preceding comment is from this page at the organization’s website.
http://www.thomasmore.org/about/history-law-center
“I have no idea whether or to what degree the Bishops’ conference is coordinating in its work with this group. ”
Cathleen – if the answer turns out to be “none”, then why post this?
I don’t see any link from that website to the diocese or to parishes, I don’t see any sign of any clerical involvement with that organization, and I also don’t see any link from the diocesan website to that website. They might be a fringe independent lay group.
I am worried. Helen Alvare, a former official spokesperson for the bishops, and still one of their best-known surrogates, sent around a letter that she co-authored with a former legal counsel of this group, Kim Daniels, opposing the mandate from a woman’s point of view. That, coupled with the glaring omission of Islam from the statement itself, worries me.
I”m not sure this is a fringe group. And their opinions are precisely the opinions the views the bishops should be distancing themselves when they stake out their own opinion–just as they should distance themselves from anti-gay messages when they stake out the position on gay marriage.
” I have only an extremely thin knowledge of the literature on all this…”
David Smith,
You mean since you have little knowledge you will just go with your biases.
Jim P.
Tell me when your radical turn to the right become so marked?
A link at the Thomas More site “TMLC getting ‘flack’ for being ‘on target’ ” leads to an illuminating article quoting the Thomas More president on Islam. http://www.thomasmore.org/tmlc-in-the-news
The quote leaves absolutely no doubt of his view:
… “Islam has entered America disguised as a religion — its ultimate objective is political: destroy America and establish an Islamic nation under Shariah Law.”
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1546394
Linkage to this organization either formally or, perhaps more conveniently, via its independent volunteer pro bono lawyers would be worth knowing about.
ISTM that the Church has failed to teach us to distinguish wondering about and judging other people’s bad behavior. We’re supposed to be “nice”. But there are times when it is morally required to be suspicious of others’ behavior. If wondering about others’ morality were intrinsically evil we could not have police tracking down criminals.
Politics is often a dirty business. When bishops get involved in it =- as they are doing with a number of issues in the U. S. now — they can expect to be checked out just as carefully as any politician, and rightly so. Power attracts power-grabbers. There is great power in both the Church (spiritual) and in politics (all other kinds), so it should be expected hat power-grabbere are attracted to the upper echelons of the Catholic Church. And that’s why the Catholic political-players need to be checked out.
Further, the bishops have generally forfeited their right to expect the benefit of the doubt when it comes to subterfuge. (Check out Philadelphia most recently.) Sorry, bishops, but you brought this on yourselves, and you can expect more of the same — rightly.
Jack Barry –
The trouble with Islam is that the violent Islamists (a faction) is indeed trying to establish sharia everywhere, and they will even kill to reach their goals.
I don’t know what the solution to the Islamists is. What does seem sure is that experience shows that they bear close watching.
I asked this in another thread, and no one seemed to be able to answer: isn’t it a non sequitur to suggest that the Bishops should have said something about Islam? Who says they have to do that and what specific governmental actions would you have had them complain about?
“I have only an extremely thin knowledge of the literature on all this”
Normally, a statement like this should be followed by nothing, or–at most–the words, “so i better bone up, eh?”
That’s not what I said, Bill, but if you choose to believe it, enjoy.
No, Abe. What I was saying – though obviously you and Bill found it convenient to read it otherwise – was that I wish I knew more but I thought that under the circumstances, in the restricted context of this conversation and this comment, what I knew was enough. Of course, you disagree. Soit.
Oh–thanks for clearing that up, David. I had (obviously quite unjustly) assumed that you were just shooting off at the mouth again about something of which you’re admittedly ignorant because you just kind of have to say whatever pops into your head. But–as you’ve pointed out–that’s not how it was.
Abe, I appreciate your clarification of my clarification. It’s good of you to take the trouble to see through textual garbage.
The Thomas More Law Center appeared for the defense in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover case about the legality of teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. Several of their listed expert witnesses backed out without testifying, and the one who did testify, Michael Behe, was badly roughed up in cross-examination. They did not merely lose the case; they were demolished.
If this outfit is defending religious liberty, bet on repression.
Have our bishops forgotten the history of anti-Catholicism in America? The arguments there were much the same, since Catholics were viewed as owing allegiance to a suspect foreign power in the Vatican.
http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=May&Date=8
Studebaker: I will respond to you.
It is irrelevant that the Catholic bishops did not say anything about Islam in their editorial statement.
So it is a cheap shot at the Catholic bishops for the editors of COMMONWEAL to criticize them for NOT saying something about Islam.
As Henry Karlson has reminded us, the Catholic bishops also did NOT say anything about Native Americans.
But neither did the editors of COMMONWEAL.
So this way of proceeding to criticize somebody else’s editorial statement for NOT saying something about X (you name it) can be played out in a number of different directions.
The Catholic bishops have published their editorial statement to rally conservative Americans to their battle cry about freedom of religion.
The editors of COMMONWEAL have published their counter-statement to try to rally Catholics to examine and criticize what the bishops are up to.
But neither editorial statement is intended to be an exhaustive discussion of freedom of religion in the United States. As a result, it is irrelevant to criticize either editorial statement for NOT saying something about X (you name it).
I too think Muslims today are in much the same position as Catholics were a hundred and fifty years ago. And I’m not aware of organizations invoking the same patron saints that the bishops invoke organizing their whole program around attacking the rights of Native Americans.
So I think it’s something to be careful of.
I strongly repudiate the equation of Muslims with terrorists. Just as most pro-lifers are not bomb-throwers, most Muslims are not terrorists.
On the bishops, well, Jim, I think there’s good reason to distinguish between doctrine and political strategy. I still remember how they organized a campaign telling Obama not to sign FOCA- which was not and was never going to be on his desk to sign!
Studebaker,
I think you are on the right track. There is no reason to expect the Catholic bishops, nor the USCCB, to make statements about Islam when initiating a discussion about religious freedom. 6 of the specific infringement claims directly concern their Catholic organizations. The seventh, Christians at Hastings Law, is equally applicable to any religion, and would by implication, include Islam. I think the bishops are acting appropriately when they restrict themselves to discussions in their area of leadership and expertise: Roman Catholicism.
Sure, “there’s good reason to distinguish between doctrine and political strategy,” as you say Professor Kaveny.
However, the Catholic bishops are not going to win any honors as political strategists, as you intimate, because they are simply adding their noise to the conservative noise machine in the United States.
I think the bishops are acting appropriately when they restrict themselves to discussions in their area of leadership and expertise: Roman Catholicism.
Bruce,
“Religious freedom” as embodied in the First Amendment is not really religious freedom unless it applies to all religions. Some seem to see the country as a Christian nation, the founders as Christians, and the First Amendment as guaranteeing “religious freedom” primarily to Christians. But “religious freedom” only for some isn’t really religious freedom. It’s a kind of special accommodation.
When the bishops speak of religious freedom in the United States, how can they confine their “area of expertise” to Catholic freedom of religion? Is there something specifically identifiable as Catholic freedom of religion in the United States? Or Catholic freedom of speech? How is it possible to limit your view of the First Amendment to the way it can be applied to Catholicism? Employment Division v. Smith had nothing to do with Catholicism. RFRA was a reaction to Smith. How is it possible to determine how they pertain to Catholicism specifically? Hosanna-Tabor was not about Catholicism, either.
There is no such thing in the United States as “Catholic religious liberty.” There is only religious liberty.
I hope this is not off topic, but there’s another controversy discussed on various blogs lately, and that’s Vanderbilt University’s institution of an “all comers” policy for student organizations. You can read a hyperbolic article in the Public Discourse titled<a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/03/4930
"Vanderbilt’s Right to Despise Christianity" by Michael Stokes Paulsen, and you can read, a brief, rational response in a comment on Mirror of Justice Posted by: Marty Lederman | Apr 5, 2012 3:00:03 PM
A policy (probably not the one I would choose, by the way) that affects all 400 student groups at Vanderbilt is seen as an assault on Christianity, and so far, I am aware of no groups besides the Christian ones that are fighting it. There are Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish student groups, and if any of them feel threatened or feel the need to defy the policy, I am unaware of it. A group has formed (Vanderbilt Solidarity) to resist the policy, and it is made up of 11 Christian groups.
I would foolish to deny that there are real issues of religious liberty under discussion, but there is something strange that Catholics and other Christians in the United States see themselves specific targets of “persecution.”
David,
I think when the bishops talk about the religious freedom they have a particular and unique knowledge of how it impacts Catholicism. They are in a position to provide additive information to a discussion about religious freedom in this area. They can certainly lend moral support to other religions’ efforts to obtain religious freedom, but they lack the day-to-day knowledge necessary to provide the same kind of insight they can and should add when the questions directly impact Catholics.
Lay people can opine as authoritatively as bishops in others areas of religious freedom and i think the bishops would do well to refrain in those circumstances
I agree with you comment that there is only one religious freedom. My thoughts are more about tactics.
There’s a big semantic problem in all this: how shall we refer to the faction(s) within Islam which accept/favor and/or implement violent means to political power? The term “Islamist” is sometimes used in this sense (see Andrew Sullivan’s blog where he regularly uses the word with this sense). However, the dictionaries haven’t caught up to this meaning, apparently. Still, I think it would be good in these discussions to stipulate that “Islamist” will have the Sullivan meaning. Other wise we’ll confuse two different problems, first, the problem of Muslim terrorists, and second, the problem of prejudice against non-Islamist Muslims.
I too think Muslims today are in much the same position as Catholics were a hundred and fifty years ago.
———-
I see no parallels. The Civil War was raging 150 years ago. Out of the 750,000 Irish immigrants who came to this country during the famine years, nearly 200,000 were in the opposing armies: 150,000 fought for the Union and 40,000 for the Confederacy. (Every able-bodied man?)
By contrast, “Out of an American Muslim population of approximately 6 million, between 5,000 and 20,000 American Muslims currently serve in the American armed forces.”
http://muslimsforasafeamerica.org/?p=5
The Irish in the decades before the Civil War worked at the lowest and most dangerous jobs, digging canals, laying railroad tracks, scrubbing floors, etc., etc. In the decades after the Civil War, as they struggled to improve their position, the old prejudices still prevailed.
By contrast, 30% of Muslims are professionals. Are there companies who refuse to hire Muslims? Schools that refuse to admit Muslims?
The Thomas Nast cartoon Ann Y linked above is a VERY mild example of his attacks on the Irish, whom he usually portrayed as simian drunkards, etc.:
https://www.google.com/search?q=thomas+nast+irish+cartoons&hl=en&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Ai-LT6KbC4Gs2wW6oa3ICQ&sqi=2&ved=0CCMQsAQ&biw=1187&bih=512
Perhaps you will provide some examples to illustrate your point.
]David N. –
Not very long ago the Catholics, Protestants, and Jews were the only large religious groups in the U. S. The Jews, with their various organizations, have done a fine job of defending themselves against unfair criticisms, and prejudice against them is not nearly as strong as it used to be. (Did you know that not that long ago Jews were rarely if ever admitted to the Ivy League colleges? Leonard Bernstein, the fine musician, was lucky to get into Harvard, for instance.) In in many colleges is was difficult for Catholics to get in.
Somehow or another much of the prejudice against Catholics has been reduced, but some remains, and there is now a standard of “political correctness” in American colleges that finds it necessary to butt into the business of the religious organizations when so-called “diversity” is seen as threatened. Ironically, forcing the religious organizations to include others will only only serve to homgenize the various groups. So much for diversity.
So, yes, there is still a problem with prejudice against Catholics, and there is the political correctness problem in colleges. However, neither is a matter of a “war against Catholics”, and to use that rhetoric only serves to make the prejudice worse..
Gerelyn –
Like all immigrants, the Irish needed jobs, and in those days the military on both sides provided them.
Gerelyn, during the Civil War both the Union and the Confederacy used conscription. In both, prosperous men could escape the draft for a price, but otherwise exemptions were hard to come by, even for members of the peace churches. The Irish were not necessarily willing to go — there were, for example, draft riots in New York.
Now, on the question of parallels, some time ago two professors at Notre Dame published an article in the New York Review, and what they mention is “a strain of nativism”:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/27/catholics-muslims-mosque-controversy/
The Muslim immigrants I know best hold H-1B visas and are required to work in their professions; if they didn’t, they’d be deported.
Ann, this table shows 1.4 million Muslim refugees in the US (cumulative from 1988 to 2003):
http://www.cal.org/co/muslims/mappx.pdf
The largest groups are from the Balkans, Iraq, Somalia, and Senegal.
It seems likely that refugees have a lot harder time of it than the H-1B guys, but all are probably treated with suspicion by a great number of American citizens. But suspicion alone doesn’t constitute discrimination. It’s what you do with it. Are American Muslims suffering from illegal discrimination – forbidden to build mosques, attacked in the streets, denied employment and unemployment? Have there been court decisions denying them what they consider religious rights?
Hi, Ann Y:
Do the Muslims you know best object to working in their professions?
Article from 2009 about how prosperous, well-educated, etc., Muslim women and men are:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2009/0303/p02s02-ussc.html
Attempting to compare Muslims of today with Irish Catholics of 150 years ago doesn’t work. Embarrassing to observe the efforts.
The article you cite is particularly weak, imho.
“Historical comparisons are bound to be inexact; but American Muslims, like American Catholics, are now building their own religious and cultural institutions, and they are seeking guidance from a wide variety of religious sources—some few from jihadists, most from accommodationists.”
I like Appleby and McGreevy, but that article was beneath them, imho. I wonder if they’re embarrassed by it now. There was a lot of hot air about the mosque, and perhaps they felt the need to add to it. (They know too much history to make a case for the “strain of nativism”.)
The Irish Americans, by another Notre Dame professor, Jay P. Dolan, is an excellent source of information about the Irish in the Civil War. (Complicated and interesting with ramifications some may be unaware of.)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004G0947U/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
Cathleen, i your original post, you wrote what seemed to me a rather insinuating statement: “I have no idea whether or to what degree the Bishops’ conference is coordinating in its work with this group.”
I didn’t note any facts, either in your post or at the organization’s site, to suggest that there was any connection at all between them. That was why I responded, “if the answer turns out to be “none”, then why post this?”
(Subsequently, you did mention that Helen Alvare, whose current relationship to the USCCB I believe you’ve accurately described, cowrote a letter with someone with some sort of connection or prior connection to the organization in question. When I made my comment, I wasn’t aware of that connection, which at any rate does seem a bit slender.)
And your response to my comment was, ” I think there’s good reason to distinguish between doctrine and political strategy. I still remember how they organized a campaign telling Obama not to sign FOCA- which was not and was never going to be on his desk to sign!”
… And that’s fair enough, but I still don’t know why we should suppose that there is any connection between the bishops and the Thomas More Law Center. If there is any evidence that the Thomas More Law Center is advising the bishops, and that the bishops are taking their advice, I agree that would be noteworthy, and it’s something that might worry me. But at this point, is there any evidence of such a connection?
FWIW, I agree with your distinction between doctrine and political strategy. I don’t think the bishops are engaging in “political strategy” as it’s been understood by a number of commenters on dotCom, i.e. that the bishops are acting as surrogates for Republicans. The bishops’ political strategy, best as I can tell, is to encourage Catholics of whatever ideological stripe, and other people of good will, to work to fix the problems that concern them, whether that be via lobbying, or the courts, or, to be sure, the political process. I expect that if future Republican administrations perpetuate the problematic policies in question, the bishops’ concerns and their call to action would remain.
David Smith, certainly Muslim men and Sikhs mistaken for Muslims have been attacked and Muslim women have had their headscarves pulled off in public places. Mosques have been defaced with graffiti and there have been several instances of local authorities using zoning or permitting laws to stop the construction or expansion of a mosque.
Employment discrimination is usually covert these days, but if you are interested the DOJ sit mentions two cases. The characteristic headwear is again at issue.
http://www.justice.gov/crt/legalinfo/discrimupdate.php
Gerelyn, no, the H-1B guys didn’t object to working in their professions. What troubled them was the need to have an employer’s sponsorship. At least in my state, the law protected their salaries to some extent, but the prospect of unemployment was much more risky for them than for the rest of us.
Could it be that Muslims are not discussed in the document because it would draw attention to the fact that certain bishops failed to speak up in their defense when efforts were made to deny them places to worship?
The Thomas More website is appalling, and I hope the bishops’ conference keeps its distance. The more charitable assumption is that the statement traces American religious liberty to the Maryland toleration act, which allowed religious liberty only to Trinitarian Christians.
For a more extensive interpretation of religious freedom one would have to look to Providence Plantation and Rhode Island Colony. Roger Williams had no use for Quakers, but they were not persecuted in the colony he founded. He had even less use for the Catholic church, but no Catholics settled in the colony to test him.
Here is what is not clear to me about the ad hoc committee statement’s silence on American Muslims: how analogous is the situation with American Muslims to the religious-liberty issues that the bishops wrote about?
Perhaps I am not up on what is going on with Muslims in the US. Certainly, some ideologues managed to drum up *popular discontent* against American Muslims over the community center controversy in NY. That sort of ugliness is worrisome, to be sure. But it does not seem to be the same kind of thing as what the bishops are writing about: it wasn’t the result of federal or state government incursions against well-established religious liberty. Wasn’t the NY controversy, at heart, a local zoning dispute? My recollection is that the Muslim group in question was and is free to build their community center virtually anywhere else in the City of NY, and to practice their faith as fully as they wish. In that sense, there doesn’t really seem to be an infringement of that liberty. The group just wasn’t able to build their center in that particular spot. I’d suggest that, at the very least, that’s not the same kind of religious freedom case as the ones that concern the bishops; and perhaps it’s not really a religious liberty issue at all. (I say this because my impression is that all religions are equally subject to local zoning laws; I am not free to build a Catholic church on the parcel of land on which my house currently sits, because that would also be a zoning law violation).
The cases that concern the bishops infringe their liberty *everywhere within the jurisdiction* (which in the instances of the federal infringements means anywhere in the United States) – Catholics wouldn’t be free to practice their religion, anywhere or at any time, with respect to the practices in question.
In the wake of the NY community-center controversy, a handful of other instances came to light around the US in which local governments forbade Muslim building projects. Perhaps those are actually better parallels (or not – my recollection of the details is extremely vague). My impression is that those instances were quite exceptional, and the municipalities in question did not generate much sympathy among the American populace. Whether they were ever equitably resolved, I don’t know.
Based on the understanding I’ve described here, I don’t find the lack of mention of American Muslims to be a glaring oversight in the bishops’ document – and to be candid, I found the Commonweal editorial’s call-out of the alleged omission to be rather tendentious.
Jim, the bishops at various times have presented themselves as defending the religious liberty of all–not only of Catholics. Leaving out the Muslim-is inconsistent with this goal.. It is also inconsistent with Dignitatis Humanae-which frames religious liberty as a human right not a Catholic right.
I do not think we need to approach the bishops’ intervention on this with a tabula rasa–unshaped by the statements of Chaput, George, and Dolan toward the president and the democrats.
I would say the Thomas More Law Center is in the mix of things, but it is difficult to know all the connections.
According to Wikipedia (ok, I’m slumping this morning), one of their ongoing cases is:
Catholic League et al. v. City of San Francisco.
Now, we know of the weird connections the Catholic League have been shown to have, with Cardinal Dolan praising their work. So it would not be surprising if the Catholic League is at least one of the links.
In saying all of that, I am just trying to point out connections, not saying anything about the case itself. Even if the case is legitimate (I don’t know the particulars) it certainly would help establish ties and allow favorable press for the Thomas More Law Center by some who certainly have the Bishops ears.
Here is another connection:
http://www.themichigancatholic.com/2012/03/religious-freedom-rallies-to-take-place-at-noon-friday/
“Among the speakers at the rally were Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Michael Byrnes, popular WDEO/EWTN radio host Al Kresta, U.S. Senate hopeful Clark Durant and several Catholic and Protestant clergy. Dick Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center also addressed the boisterous gathering.”
So, they are front and center in at least one rally connected to the whole HHS debate.
Geeeez! It is no small challenge trying to keep up with you folks! So many well informed and useful details! I’m learning quite a bit and enjoy the effort. Thank you.
In my limiited experience I have not found it challenging much less impossible to find quite a few examples of useful paths to joy and to misery in either the Bible or the Koran. In either there is, of course, all those signficant and subtle challenges of language, dialect and intonation, to name a few.
On the important issue of religous freedom, as in so many others, it seems to me the realities of the question of choice play a significant role. Are those who have sought and obtained the incredible responsibilites involved in preserving what is rightly deemed most useful in the remarkable notions of Catholicism doing so based largely on their personal choices or God’s choices? Perhaps that important question can be helped along if one does not associate all the complexities of “choice” with a notion of God. Could a being that is in fact omniscience and omnipotence have need of a choice? From where would the indecision come?
We are free to change our language to meet our real needs. Perhaps if we simply greated a new group called “Not From My Immediate Family” (NFMIF) and accepted more readily what we already know. It takes a while and some effort to get to know the new neighbors. We might fail, of course. That often happens with choices.
1) The bishops did not omit Muslims (or Mormons) from their statement.
This is not a Catholic issue. This is not a Jewish issue. This is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue.
2) Not sure what the discussion of the Thomas More Law Center is about. Googling “Thomas Monaghan and the bishops” brings up over a million leads.
3) Ann Y said, “The Thomas More website is appalling, and I hope the bishops’ conference keeps its distance. The more charitable assumption is that the statement traces American religious liberty to the Maryland toleration act, which allowed religious liberty only to Trinitarian Christians.”
The bishops are not confused about Maryland. They explain in the statement how short-lived toleration was in that colony.
“Maryland’s experiment in religious toleration ended within a few decades. The colony was placed under royal control, and the Church of England became the established religion. Discriminatory laws, including the loss of political rights, were enacted against those who refused to conform. Catholic chapels were closed, and Catholics were restricted to practicing their faith in their homes. The Catholic community lived under these conditions until the American Revolution.”
(Catholics couldn’t vote, among other things.)
Gerelyn
On the other hand they did omit the Native Americans, the people who have been far more longer tied to this land, and a people who have routinely, since Columbus, found themselves often lacking the freedom to worship as they please. It does no good to discuss religious liberty in abstract when important history is right there before us, where a major religious tradition was made illegal for quite some time, all during the “good old days.”
How quickly we forget. From Cardinal Dolan’s blog speaking about Islam in NYC:
What is not acceptable is to prejudge any group, or to let fear and bias trump the towering American (and for us Catholics, the religious) virtues of hospitality, welcome, and religious freedom.
full text here
http://blog.archny.org/?p=725
and Commonweal
Might be a good time for the archbishop to reiterate that point more forcefully.
full text here
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=9280
Hi, Henry:
I agree. I’ve read your posts and am considering ordering the book you recommend.
It could be that the one group that really suffered and continues to suffer from the lack of religious liberty must not be mentioned for fear of unveiling the whole charade.
We’re being asked to pretend that the effort to dump Obama is really about something else. The sophisticated consultants advised their clients to use sleight of hand and clever patter to divert attention from the abuse of children by priests and the enabling of that abuse by bishops. Throw in the anti-contraception thing to add more confusion. It was planned in advance, and the lead actors are following the script.
Back to Native Americans. The history of the Church’s (and, in the case of Canada, the Churches’) treatment of Natives is so disgusting, that it’s hard for some/many people to even look at it.
The Indian boarding schools, for one horrible example, made the boys cut their hair and wear the clothes of the white man, made them slave in gardens to grow food for the other pupils/prisoners, etc. The girls had to sew and wear and launder the clothes of the white women. They were forbidden to speak their own language, etc., etc., etc. Some (many?) died (were murdered?), and were buried. Similar in many ways to the Irish industrial schools, laundries, etc., except that in North America, the schools were in locations so remote that there was no oversight, etc. The religious orders and the priests and bishops involved got away with it.
The continuing abuse of Native people will not be addressed by the powerful, imho. They have no incentive or inclination to do it.
Gerelyn
I’m hoping people can find it in their libraries. The work is interesting, for it is a collection of discussions from 1999, centering around the Parliament of World Religions meeting in South Africa, where the Native American representatives were invited to bring in discussions of the US situation. It can be seen a bit “dated” because of this, because more recent events are not included (and there are recent things going on, even within the last few weeks, causing many Native Americans grief, such as the attempt to ignore their sovereign rights while big oil wants to build the pipeline through their lands), but nonetheless, I think that also helps give us a historical examination of this which predates Obama or Bush (and give a better starting point for any discussion). The complaints often mentioned in the dialogues continue to this day (the Apaches are still concerned with the Mount Graham Observatory, for example). But, again, one of the strengths is that history — such as the suppression of Native American religious traditions — are brought in context to the modern struggles they face, giving us a better picture of the actual situation in the US. To me, this is far more an interesting discussion than even Islam in the US, though I admit, I find all religious liberty issues interesting (since I have a natural interest in comparative religions).
I fear you are right — people will ignore the Native Americans, even though their plight continues today. Though I do think one day it is possible the “powerful” will feel the need to deal with this issue. If they keep feeling the need to bring up things which connect to the Native American history, the more it is possible it will be brought up (which is why I keep bringing it up, with hope that people will begin to see a bigger picture and see how this bigger picture needs to be addressed).
The Ad Hoc Committee’s “Our First …” statement was approved in March by the Administrative Committee. It presumably first passed through a large number of people, some of whom had editing authority although, for practical reasons, not all. The now-noted neglect of Islam (and Native Americans) in a 2012 paper on American religious liberty may have been due to deliberate decision, sloppy composition, a compromise to settle some conflict of views, “too contentious”, or some combination of factors. Calling the issue the bishops are discussing American and not a Muslim (or Orthodox or Mormon) issue leads back to the basic question of what the bishops’ view specifically includes. A brief view of the situation in context is in “Religious liberty: How can we view Muslims as Americans”. Also in HuffPo.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/altmuslim/2010/07/how_can_we_view_muslims_as_americans/
One outspoken American view comes from the active Thomas More Law Center. It declares that its lawyers “fight for the religious freedom of Christians,…”. One of its 5 “Key Issues” is “Confronting the Threat of Islam”, seen as an internal threat to America. Public formal association would appear ill-advised for the USCCB. However, the TMLC has, in addition to staff lawyers, 700 allied lawyers offering services in every state; these can be expected to agree with its major goals and issues. Unravelling who talks with whom around DC is a fruitless task. As Cathy and I learned growing up in New England, strange bedfellows …
While it might be slightly embarrassing, a simple, extremely well-done paragraph issued by the appropriate USCCB committee might quiet questions by explaining with a few details how, of course, Islam is implied along with all the other religions in the country. Otherwise, the USCCB appears to have generated another persistent issue at a time when it can ill afford more.
It’s an issue only in some people’s minds. You can’t please all the people all the time.