In support of banning further nuclear tests

I was very privileged to be asked by our recently retired Diocesan Legislative Liaison to read the following statement by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in favor of banning further nuclear tests. I read this statement today in the plaza of our Cathedral to a group of concerned fellow citizens who marched from church to church on this Spring day. Live nuclear tests, while undeniably safer now that they are carried out deep underground, have wreaked havoc on many people from various small communities in southwestern Utah, those known as Downwinders. Probably the best known Utahn to succumb to cancer likely caused by radioactive nuclear tests was our much beloved former governor, Scott Matheson, who is the father of Rep. Jim Matheson. Rep. Matheson, along with former Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., has diligently looked out for our state with regards to nuclear testing and efforts to store and transport radioactive waste from other parts of the country and around the world in Utah.

Below is the statement I read:

"The Catholic Church opposes the use of nuclear weapons, especially against non-nuclear threats, and it opposes the development of new nuclear weapons. While possession of a minimal nuclear capability may deter the use of nuclear weapons by others, the Church urges that nuclear deterrence be replaced with concrete measures of disarmament based on dialogue and multilateral negotiations. In its nuclear policy the U.S. should commit to never use nuclear weapons first and to reject use of nuclear weapons to deter non-nuclear threats.

"The United States and other nuclear powers must move away from reliance on nuclear weapons for their security. A global ban is more than a moral ideal: it should be a policy goal. In a major victory, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops successfully advocated for ratification of the New START Treaty in 2010.

"The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has urged the Administration and Congress to view arms control treaties not as ends in themselves but as steps along the way to achieving the goal of a mutual, verifiable global ban on nuclear weapons. Much deeper, more irreversible cuts, in both strategic and tactical weapons, are both possible and necessary.

"Pope Benedict XVI stated on January 1, 2008: 'It is truly necessary for all persons of good will to come together to reach concrete agreements aimed at an effective demilitarization, especially in the area of nuclear arms.'"

Christos Anesti

Goldstone tells the truth about his untrutful report

Back in October 2009 in an article I wrote for Il Sussidiario, I did my level best to point out in a short space the primary problems I had with the so-called Goldstone Report, which is popularly named after the its lead investigator Richard Goldstone, who is a distinguished South African judge who also happens to be Jewish. In a 1 April 2011 editorial piece for the Washington Post, Goldstone himself effectively renounced the report that bears his name.

As one might expect, given what was/is at stake in this volatile part of the world, reaction to Goldstone's coming clean has been passionate on both sides. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the retraction "a poor attempt by Goldstone to cleanse his conscience. There can be no forgiveness for Goldstone for the vicious damage he has done to the State of Israel. Goldstone strengthened terrorist groups, weakened moderates and thereby exacerbated the suffering of civilians on both sides." While I would hope forgiveness would be in the offing for someone who has so publicly admitted his mistakes, I agree with Olmert on the effect of the report. This seems an appropriate real-world take for what (judging by what I have come across today) we all too trivially call Spy Wednesday, albeit one with a repentant Judas.

Of course, Goldstone is also now pilloried on the so-called Arab Street in the anti-Jewish manner that is common in that part of the world, but no less disgusting for its frequency. What Tom Gross, who edits Mideast Dispatch, documents here makes Olmert's forthright statement look very mild.

I continue to wish my Jewish friends, especially those in Israel, a peaceful and pleasant passover. During this Holy Week, may we all pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Prepare ye the way for the kingdom

Making political judgments: where truth confronts ideology

Without a doubt the U.S. is currently experiencing a time of great political tension caused by the clashing, not of political philosophies (we abandoned those along ago), but of competing ideologies. It is all too easy for Christians to get sucked in on one side or the other. Nothing is more indicative of an ideology, which at the practical and personal level means approaching things in a preconceived manner, than sloganeering or repeating memes that have the effect of reinforcing preconceptions borne of a given ideology.

Today on Facebook I saw this meme posted by a quite a few people. Because I was bothered by this, I let it serve as a provocation:

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither

The point, assuming I understand it correctly, is that by seeking to de-fund Planned Parenthood, NPR, and PBS, while continuing to allow oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and rewarding bad behavior on the part of major financial institutions, members of a certain party in Congress are perceived as intentionally refusing to do the morally correct thing across-the-board. What could be more outrageous than that?!

Such a dense compilation of issues doesn’t bear up under examination. The best way to describe it is as an incoherent rant, which, if we’re honest, most of us go off on from time-to-time. On my view, what makes it worthy of an extended commentary is that I believe that many who posted it think that it makes some over-arching point and provides us with moral guidance on how to resolve our current political stand-off.

The first indication that this is ideology at work is that it lumps things together that need to be considered separately. It also seeks to establish moral equivalence between matters that have no moral equivalency whatsoever. This is also a sign of ideology, the kind that is engaged under the guise of righteous indignation. I mean, are defunding public broadcasting and PP morally equivalent?

I look at everything mentioned in the meme and think: I oppose the attempt in Wisconsin to deprive state employees of their ability to collectively bargain, which, as a Catholic, I take to be a right, which is not to say I think unions always act in the best interests of their members, or the common good. I am against de-funding public broadcasting. I favor de-funding PP. Despite its success, I remain opposed to TARP, precisely because it rewarded bad behavior and also provided cover for many people who are guilty of serious crimes that impacted the lives of millions, not only insuring they will never be brought to justice for their misdeeds, but that they will walk away with more money than ever! I have registered my discontent about this on a regular basis in posts going back more than two years. Nonetheless, I must begrudgingly admit that the TARP money has been repaid and that taxpayers actually made some money off these funds. There still remain deep, systemic problems with our financial system, such as it is.

Another prevalent argument against de-funding public broadcasting and PP is that they amount to a small drop in an inkwell full of red ink. Indeed, they do. There are two reasonable answers to this argument. The first and perhaps the most obvious is that every bit of cost-cutting adds up. Still, the argument that those proposing to eliminate government funding for these organizations are thereby making a claim to balance the budget misses their point, namely that these entities have no value, are of negative value, or, pertaining especially to public broadcasting, they go beyond the scope of what government should do. It bears noting (skipping back to the issue of moral equivalence) that the issue of whether or not to de-fund public broadcasting is very much an issue of prudential judgment, as is whether one supports or laments TARP.

To demonstrate that ideological moves are not the sole property of one viewpoint, I’ll use Sen. Kyle, a Republican from Arizona, as an example. Over the past few days the senator has rightly been taken to task for saying on the Senate floor, while arguing for the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, that 90% of what they do is perform abortions. Not only was Kyle’s statement incorrect, it turned out to be a woeful exaggeration. Apparently performing abortions amounts to only about 3% of the services provided by this nationwide non-profit group that receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year from our federal government via grants and contracts. In a similar vein, Rep. Michelle Bachmann called Planned Parenthood "the LensCrafters of Big Abortion."

Let’s approach the question from a different angle, without exaggeration or making analogies, which are always problematic, or, as in Bachmann’s case, intentionally incendiary: without a doubt PP is not only the largest abortion provider in the U.S., but throughout the world. Thanks to an executive order signed by Pres. Obama on 22 January 2009, just days after taking office and on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade no less, reversing the so-called Mexico City policy, implemented by Pres. Reagan and reinstated by the last Pres. Bush, Planned Parenthood and other NGOs now use your tax dollars to provide abortions overseas. According to its most recent annual report, in 2008-2009 Planned Parenthood received some $363 million in federal funding. During this period the organization performed 324,008 abortions in U.S. alone, setting a new record for the number of abortions it performed in a year. In fairness, they provided 9,433 adoption referrals, which is not quite 3% of the number babies it aborted. According to one commentator, there seems to be a correlation between the steady rise in federal funding for PP and the number of abortions they perform.

I think it always bears noting that if we put our faith in Christ into political action, which are encouraged to do if in no other way than when we vote, we look pretty incoherent to those whose views are shaped by secular forces. According to the prevailing political labels, when it comes to marriage, family, and life issues we are seen as very "conservative", with the exception of opposing the death penalty. When it comes to labor matters, immigration, and many issues of social welfare we come across as considerably more "liberal". In a very broad statement about the on-going budget debate, which presents the occasion for all these issues to come to the fore, thus tempting us to lump everything together, Bishop Hubbard of Albany, NY and Bishop Blair of Stockton, CA, who chair the International Justice and Peace and Domestic Justice and Human Development committees respectively, gave a threefold criteria for judging budgetary decisions in a way that challenges us to move beyond ideology:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity. 2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects 'the least of these' (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first. 3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times

Let's keep in mind that Jesus was no more a liberal democrat than He was a conservative Republican.

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis

"A regard for every person starts the dialogue"

I am working very hard to avoid politics, apologetics, confrontations over the course of this holy season. Nonetheless, the world marches on and, alas, I am still me. So, with a deep diaconal bow to my dear friend Sharon, I want to draw attention to something written by Giorgio Vittadini, whom I admire very much. In addition to bringing Vittadini's remarks to my attention on Cahiers Péguy, Sharon also translated them into English from Italian. Her translation of Giorgio's piece appears in its entirety on the English page of the on-line publication Il Sussidiario, which is a site I urge you look at every day. In the interest of full disclosure and by way of a "plug", from time-to-time the editors of Il Sussidiario pick-up items from this blog and occasionally I write exclusive pieces. My most recent piece was on Egypt.

Getting to the point, here's an excerpt of what Vittadini wrote about the incoherence of the politics of armed intervention over the past two decades. With Vittadini, I ask, is this the best response?

"The excuse is always a humanitarian intervention or the defense of peace in jeopardy. It began with Serbia in the 90s. With the justification of humanitarian intervention, Belgrade and Serbia were indiscriminately bombed, leading to the overthrow of Milosevic.

"Arrested and tried for crimes against humanity at The Hague, he put attorney Carla del Ponte in a corner by demonstrating, in the light of international principles, that the reasons given for the action against his government had no legal basis. At that point, he died mysteriously in prison. Milosevic's was not an exemplary government with regard to the rights of his people, but he was democratically elected and his was not worse than other regimes (such as China) to which countries like France have bowed. Then it came to Saddam Hussein and the two Bush wars: the first for the invasion of Kuwait, the second for alleged possession of nuclear weapons. It turned out that Saddam did not possess any weapons of mass destruction. Only John Paul II and a few others, in fact, were against the war."

Pres. Obama seems to positively embrace incoherence, looking straight into the cameras yesterday in Santiago, Chilé and saying with a straight face that while it is his administration's determination that Col. Qaddafi must relinquish power, getting him to let go of power is not an objective of our military intervention. So, again, what are the implications of our involvement and our determination to get rid Qaddafi, do these decisions, as seemingly incogruent as they are with each other, take into consideration, as Vittadini insists they must, "all the factors at play"?

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis

Democratic perils in Egypt

This morning it is necessary to follow-up with some observations concerning yesterday's post. I cannot restate too strongly the need to approach what is happening in Egypt with cautious optimism. To that end, despite calls from the both the left and the right to speak more clearly, that is, more simply about what is an irreducibly complex situation developing in the land of the Nile, the Obama Administration deserves credit for maintaining its cautious optimism while continuing to call for a for a methodical and well-planned transition to democratic rule in accord with the legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people.

A Pew Forum on Religion survey conducted last April and May in seven countries with Muslim majorities: Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Nigeria, reveals that a sizable majority of Egyptians want democracy. In fact 59% of Egyptians agreed "that democracy was preferable to any other kind of government." However, 22% of Egyptians felt "that in some circumstances, a non-democratic government could be preferable" and some 16% "said it did not matter what kind of government is in place for a person in their situation."

More to the point I was trying to articulate earlier, another survey for the PewResearchCenter's Global Attitudes Project showed that 82% of Muslims in Egypt are in favor of stoning "people who commit adultery." 77% of Egyptians support "whippings and cutting off of [the] hands" of thieves and robbers. Most saliently, 84% of Muslims surveyed in Egypt supported "the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion." These views stand in contrast to the more moderate view of Muslims in Turkey, Indonesia, and Lebanon, who "largely reject the notion that harsh punishments should be the law in their countries."

The plight of two Egyptian women, Camelia Shehata, who is the wife of a Coptic priest, and Wafa Constantine serve as an examples of the lack of religious freedom in Egypt even now. As their stories have it, both women were Coptic Christians who converted to Islam. However, rather than being able to register with the government as Muslims, they were returned to their Christian families and not allowed to convert. Now, the stories of both women are hotly disputed and, as a result, are too complicated to hash out here, but the point is that religious freedom in Egypt is already non-existent and, judging from the Pew data, likely to get much worse.

In Dignatatis Humanae, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council pointed out that in the first instance "[r]eligious freedom... has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society" (par. 1). This landmark declaration goes on to assert that "[t]he human person has a right to religious freedom" and that all people "should have such immunity from coercion by individuals, or by groups, or by any human power, that no one should be forced to act against his conscience in religious matters" (par. 2). According to the magisterium of Pope John Paul II, the only human right more fundamental, that is, necessary than the right to worship God according to one's own conscience, is the right to life.

It bears noting that the Pew Forum data does not bode well for the twenty-two point Islamic reform set forth by leading Egyptian intellectuals late in January, which I posted in full yesterday.

A deep diaconal bow to Sandro Magister for bringing the Pew Center research to my attention.

Egypt: perils and possibilities

I think enthusiasm over what is happening in Egypt needs to be tempered by who is likely to gain and who is likely to lose, especially if the regime of President Hosni Mubarak is toppled prior to elections scheduled for this September. As a result of the popular uprising against his 30-year rule, Mubarak announced that he will not run in the upcoming elections, which, with the assistance of the international community, will be much more free and fair than any elections in the history of the modern state of Egypt. It is in the best interests of everyone to have a smooth transition of power in Egypt and not the collapse of a stable government that plays a very strategic role in the world's most volatile region.

Without a doubt the Muslim Brotherhood is waiting in the wings with a plan to make a power grab, especially should the government topple prior to elections. This would mean an even more difficult plight for Egypt's Christians, most of whom belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church. Coptic Christians comprise approximately 10% of Egypt's more than 80 million people. Even now, Coptic Christians are severely under-represented at all levels of government in Egypt, even in places, like Alexandria, where they are concentrated. So, as euphoric as we tend to get when we see popular, democratic uprisings, our euphoria must be tempered by reality, which is what keeps it from turning into the opposite of what we'd all like to see. Another crucial factor to consider when thinking about political change in Egypt, not to mention Jordan, where King Abdullah seems to be panicking, is Israel.

Nonetheless, even on the religious front there is, to quote the title of Sandro Magister's most recent Chiesa article, A Glimmer of Light in an Egypt in Revolt. Specifically, on 24 January there appeared on the website of an Egyptian magazine- Yawm al-Sâbi (i.e., The Seventh Day), something called Document for the renewal of religious discourse. Accordng to Magister, by the night of 24 January this document appeared "on more than 12,000 other Arab websites."

This document bears the signatures of 23 important Egyptian Islamic intellectuals, including Nasr Farid Wasel, former grand mufti of Egypt and Gamal al-Banna, brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. The document is concise, consisting of 22 bullet points that lay out an ambitious plan for reforming Islam, seeking to counter those who have turned it into a religion of "superficial and external practice." The goal of the signatories is not to accomdate Islam to modernity, but make it truer to itself, that is, more authentic.

Magister provides a translation made by the Egyptian-born Jesuit Islamic scholar, Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, for the Vatican-operated Asia News:

1. Reexamine the collections of the Hadith [the sayings traditionally attributed to Muhammad] and the commentaries of the Qur'an, to purify them.

2. Subject to analysis the political-religious vocabulary of Islam, for example the gizah [the special tax required from the dhimmi, the non-Muslim minorities subjected to limitations].

3. Find a new practice of the concept of interaction between the sexes.

4. Clarify the Islamic view on women and find convenient forms for marriage rights.

5. Islam is a religion of creativity.

6. Explain the Islamic concept of jihâd [inner and outer holy war], and specify norms and obligations that regulate it.

7. Stop the invasion of external religiosity and the extraneous practices that come to us from nearby countries.

8. Separate religion from the state.

9. Purify the heritage of the first centuries of Islam (Salafism), eliminating the myths and aggressions against religion.

10. Give adequate preparation to the missionary preachers, and in this field, open the doors to those who have not studied at the university of Al Azhar, according to very clear criteria.

11. Formulate the virtues common to the three revealed religions.

12. Give guidelines on Western customs, and eliminate incorrect behaviors.

13. Clarify the relationship that must exist among members of the different religions through schools, mosques, and churches.

14. Modify the presentation of the biography of the Prophet in a way adapted for the West.

15. Not keep people away from economic systems with the interdiction of dealing with banks.

16. Recognize the right of women to become president of the republic.

17. Combat sectarian claims, [emphasizing] that the flag of Islam [must be] one.

18. Invite the people to go to God through gratitude and wisdom, and not with threats.

19. Make the teaching of al-Azhar evolve.

20. Recognize the right of Christians to occupy important positions [including] the presidency of the republic.

21. Separate religious discourse from power, and re-establish its connection with the needs of society.

22. Improve the connection between the da'wah [the call to conversion to Islam] and modern technology, the satellite channels and the market for Islamic recordings.

Each of these points are discussed in detail by the signatories of the document, which makes Fr. Samir's analysis for Asia News a must read for anyone who is interested in what is happening. None of these reforms is a given, especially in a chaotic overthrow of Mubarak's government, which would find the Muslim Brotherhood well-positioned to seize control. This would be an utter disaster on many fronts.

Stated simply, we need to be careful before draping the mantle of righteousness over a movement that might yet spell disaster, especially for Egypt's Christians.

Ideological moralizing, an inadequate response to evil

The level of moralizing self-righteousness in the wake of the tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona last Saturday, which critically wounded Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords and left six others, including U.S. District Court Judge John Roll, dead has reached sickening levels. The others killed by Jared Lee Loughner, in no particular order, were Dorwan Stoddard, nine year-old Christina Green, Phyllis Schneck, Gabriel Zimmerman, and Dorothy Morris. That the names of the dead, except for Judge Roll and, less frequently, Giffords’ staffer Zimmerman, are not heard in reports on Loughner’s evil and cowardly actions is a good indication that ideology is at work. Let me cut to the chase, Sarah Palin is not responsible for Jared Loughner’s evil actions, neither is Rush Limbaugh, or Speaker Boehner. I’ll go one step further, given his murderous intent, as with the Columbine killers and others bent on carrying out evil, no gun law can be held to account either. The most telling sign that ideology is at work is when the conclusions being arrived at and rapidly disseminated by the media are simply not supported by the evidence, but turn into an exercise in imposing one’s preconceptions onto reality.

First, let’s to turn some facts about the murderer, Jared Loughner, starting with his personal animosity towards Rep. Giffords, which apparently dates back to a 2007 encounter he had with her at event like the one he shot up last Saturday. It bears noting that this event pre-dates both the rise of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin’s selection by John McCain to be his running mate in 2008, prior to which she was relatively unknown outside Alaska. According to a Wall Street Journal article, "[a] safe at Mr. Loughner's home contained a form letter from Ms. Giffords' office thanking him for attending a 2007 'Congress on your Corner' event in Tucson." According to the Journal piece, Loughner’s "safe also held an envelope with handwritten notes, including the name of Ms. Giffords, as well as 'I planned ahead,' 'My assassination,' and what appeared to be Mr. Loughner's signature, according to an FBI affidavit." One high school friend’s only recollection of Loughner’s political opinions was him expressing some "frustration with the Bush Administration."

Even more enlightening is an interview conducted by Nick Baumann of Mother Jones, which can hardly be accused of being a conservative rag, with a friend of Loughner’s, Bryce Tierney, whom the killer called just 8 hours prior to going on his rampage. "Tierney," Baumann writes, "recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended" back in 2007. Tierney is "unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges" (i.e., the one for which he received the form letter found in his home safe). Tierney went on to say that Loughner "might have gone to some other [Giffords] rallies," but, Baumann continues, the 2007 Q and A event "was a significant moment for Loughner." Tierney recalls Loughner telling him about the 2007 event during which Rep. Giffords "opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, 'What is government if words have no meaning?' Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and [Tierney] told him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that.'" From the time on, recalls Tierney "he thought she was fake, he had something against her."

Phyllis Schneck, one of six people murdered by Jared Loughner

From that time forward, Tierney told Baumann, "Loughner would occasionally mention Giffords," but "[i]t wasn't a day-in, day-out thing, but maybe once in a while…the thing I remember most is just that question. I don't remember him stalking her or anything." According to Baumann, Tierney went on to state "that Loughner did not display any specific political or ideological bent: 'It wasn't like he was in a certain party or went to rallies...It's not like he'd go on political rants.'" According to Tierney, Loughner believed "that government is 'fucking us over.'" Now, if we’re going to start filling our courtrooms with people who, whether on the political left or right, state such a forthright view of the government, then our constitutional rights are, indeed, imperiled!

I cannot agree more with David Weigel, who writes in Slate urging Pennsylvania representative Bob Brady not go forward with legislation "making it a crime to use words or images that looked violent or threatening to public officials." Opines Brady, "You can't put bull's eyes or cross-hairs on a United States congressman or a federal official," which, by the way Sarah Palin’s website does not do, it has images of crosshairs over maps of congressional districts, which are targeted for political action, not nuclear obliteration, or random shooting sprees. Citing no evidence whatsoever, Brady goes on to parrot the prevalent ideological view that "[t]he rhetoric is just ramped up so negatively, so high, that we have got to shut this down." Weigel goes on to ask whether it "[w]ould it be rude to point out" that there is "no evidence—none—that violent pictures or words inspired the violence in Arizona."

I for one think that urging others to act in accordance with reality is necessary for civil discourse precisely because what we say matters a great deal. When it comes to responding to heartbreaking tragedies, it seems that for every action there is an unequal and slightly askew legislative overreaction of the kind Rep. Brady is proposing. I remember the call for "tighter gun laws" in the wake of the Columbine massacre, despite the fact that one could enumerate many, many federal, state, and local gun laws and ordinances that were broken in the commission of those horrific crimes, going all the way back to the illegalities involved in the way the murderers procured the firearms they used to mow down students, staff, and faculty of Columbine High School. Such overreactions might make you feel better, but they don’t make you safer, just less free.

If the net result of Jared Lee Loughner’s hideous crime is placing restrictions on speech, then we are at the whim of unhinged people like him and become a less rational society, which by definition means a less civil society. It is utterly unconscionable to pin Loughner’s evil deeds on one’s political opponents. Using a tragedy like this to settle political scores not only strikes me as uncivil, but utterly dishonest and lacking in integrity. As one who frequently reminds myself and others that how we make our point is as important as the point we seek to make, I can hardly be accused of not being concerned about civility and even charity in public discourse, which is why I proposed the Ephesians 4:29 Rule.

Notes from Eurabia

My post yesterday was about conversion to Islam and the individual convert who, recent studies in the U.K. suggest, convert from a sense of emptiness and longing they experience in the milieu of late modern life in Western society. Of course, this has long been the stuff of conversion and reversion of which there are many more examples in the West of people with similar experiences converting, or reverting, to various forms Christianity in recent decades: evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism, or even Orthodoxy. In broad strokes, my own experience of conversion, like that of hundreds of thousands of others, certainly bears resemblance to this general description. I also wrote yesterday that it appears that most of these new Western converts to Islam, at least in the U.K. are not radicalized, that is, they do not convert for ideological reasons.

It remains for me to try and define radicalization a bit more precisely. To convert or even to revert to religious faith and practice is a radical act on the part of a person that very often results from a crisis (I am using "crisis" here in a very precise sense). A crisis is a turning point for better or for worse, initially used with regard to a fever or an acute disease. It also means a decisive point or simply an emotionally significant event that is either the cause or catalyst for a person to radically change her life. Calling to mind my own conversion, which is on-going, but that began more than twenty years ago, I maintain that a religious conversion includes all of the above. Similarly, "radical" means "root", referring to what is fundamental; an extreme shift in one’s basic views, which does not necessarily (though it certainly can) refer to one holding politically extreme views. By definition an adult who undergoes religious conversion or dramatic reversion, at least in some attenuated sense, is radicalized. This is certainly true of any Western person converting to Islam.

Another consideration is that, like Christianity, Islam is not, contrary to popular belief, monolithic. Even within the two parts of the main division within Islam, Sunni and Shi’a, there are different schools of thought and practice, all this without so much as mentioning Sufi Islam, which holds sway among many Muslims, but does not get as much attention precisely because Sufis are largely very peaceful. One of the great advocates for peace is the Shi’ite Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who also condemns violence against Christians and who, despite appearances to the contrary, is highly revered among Shi’ites.

The effect of the rise of Islam on Western society, especially in Europe, is becoming noticeable and measureable and in no place more than in The Netherlands. Just before Christmas 2009, Maria Corradi, writing in Avvenire, an Italian daily newspaper published by the Italian Catholic Bishops Conference, profiled Christmas in Amsterdam. The English translation of her article was made available on Sandro Magister’s indispensible Chiesa website. In her article she asked, "what is left of Christmas in one of the most secularized countries in Europe, where 58 percent of the population, according to one survey, does not know exactly what happened that day? In a country with 900,000 Arab immigrants out of 16 million inhabitants, and twenty mosques in Amsterdam alone?"

Another article, Islam in Europe: In the Casbah of Rotterdam, published in May 2009, by Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, who also wrote the recent and very important book, A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism, which is reviewed in the current issue of Commentary, provides some answers to Corradi’s questions. Meotti visited the Dutch city of Rotterdam, which he shows to be a good candidate for the general headquarters of what Bat Ye’or first dubbed Eurabia. During his visit he spent time with the journalist Sylvain Ephimenco, formerly the correspondent for the French left-leaning newspaper Libération, who offers an insider view of being ever more an outsider in a European city that is increasingly at odds with Western civilization.

Dutch journalist Bart Jan Spruyt, who now writes the newspaper column formerly authored by murdered politician Pim Fortuyn, who was one of the first internationally recognized voices to decry the use of Western democracy to bring about its demise, articulated all of this succinctly for Meotti’s piece: "The Muslims are in the majority in many neighborhoods, and are asking for sharia. This isn't Holland anymore. Our use of freedom has turned back against us, it is a process of self-Islamization." Remember, it was only back in early 2008 that Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, spoke about the inevitability of the Muslims in the United Kingdom adopting certain aspects shar’ia law. Such a concession ought to be utterly inconceivable.

So, the question remains as to whether Islam is inherently inimical to Western society, which undeniably has its roots in Christianity, or whether it is adaptable. I suppose only time will tell and, given the spread of Islam in the West, even among Westerners, these converts will prove catalysts in the European crisis, it remains to be seen whether the turning point will be for better or for worse.

For her article, Corradi walked through the streets of Amsterdam one Christmas ago, accompanied by Prof. Wim Peeters, who teaches at the seminary of the Amsterdam diocese, she noticed that anticipation for Christmas was palpable, even on the faces of the prostitutes, the homeless and the elderly they passed while they walked. She writes about some young women in an Italian pizzeria singing We wish you a Merry Christmas, to which Prof. Peeters responds by saying "In spite of everything the desire for happiness, and therefore for God, is always there, in the heart of man." As Don Giussani so forcefully pointed out over and again, this desire is at the heart of what it means to be human, which description leaves the matter far too abstract- this desire constitutes our humanity!

Peeters' observation is as true of Western converts to Islam as it is among those who constitute the secularized portion of the 58% of the Dutch population who do not know the reason we celebrate Christmas. It is this desire, this need that only truth, goodness, and above all beauty can satisfy that constitutes the basis of the new evangelization to which Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI have almost entirely dedicated their papacies to beginning. Above all, as the Holy Father demonstrates every time he preaches and speaks, this requires fidelity to what we Catholics call the depositum fidei, the truth that is Jesus Christ, handed down from the apostles via the Church, which is nothing other than the community of disciples through time and space, who make Him continuously present for the world, a Presence that began with the first Pentecost. A faith that is authentic, which means it resists the temptation to water it down, render it inoffensive, non-scandalous, or make it politically correct.

Prof. Peeters hit the nail-on-the-head when said to Corradi- "we would have nothing to fear from Islam, if we were Christians. And it often seems that today the Dutch are afraid of everything: of having children, as they are of immigrants. But fear is the exact opposite of faith." I believe it is exactly this kind of thought that resulted in John Paul II making the words of our Lord, “Be not afraid,” the motto of his papacy.

In a post on his Telegraph blog just today Damian Thompson draws positive attention to a book by one Nick Chatrath: Reaching Muslims: A One-stop Guide for Christians.

Veni adoramus

A thought or two on the proposed federal pay freeze

As a federal civil servant I generally support the pay freeze President Obama intends to seek and that he will undoubtedly get from the Republican Congress. Assuming that we won't have a budget until the new Congress begins after the first of the year, the pay freeze, which basically results in federal employees not getting cost-of-living adjustments for the next two years, the likely result is that the proposed 1.4% COA proposed for this year will not go into effect. Of course, the proposed 2% reduction in Social Security withholding set forth today by President Obama will off-set this loss and even result in a net .6% gain. On the one hand, this relief is good because it applies to all workers, not just federal employees. Nonetheless, it seems bizarre to me to reduce the amount of money going into Social Security given its rapidly approaching insolvency.

My only trouble with the proposed freeze on federal wages is that it is a political reaction to the apparent fact that, compared to the average worker, federal employees make significantly more money. No doubt, in many cases this is true. I am on the end of federal employment that should have no difficulty dealing with the proposed freeze. So, I am perfectly willing to forgo COAs for the next few years, even until the economy turns around. However, averages are deceptive. For example if one worker makes $100,000 and another worker makes $30,000 the average salary of the two workers is $65,000. Now, say using the $65,000 average as your baseline, you propose a 2% across-the-board decrease in pay. This means $600 for the person making $30,000 and $2,000 for the person making $100,000, which is a significant bump for both, but who does it hurt more? Stated positively, who is in a better position to help, or what best serves the common good? This simply highlights my problem with the Republicans' insistence that everyone be treated "equally" when making these kinds of difficult decisions.

My point is that not all federal workers are highly paid, many make quite modest wages. So, it seems that there should be a cut-off. I would suggest that the cut-off be the computed average salary of a non-federal worker. Any federal employee making that or less should be exempt from the proposed cut. Let's also remember that federal employees will also absorb a 7.2% increase in health care premiums as a result of the ill-advised health care reform. Fighting for equity seems a golden opportunity for congressional Democrats to stand up for lower paid federal employees. As is appropriate, none of this affects members of the U.S. military. On the whole, there are 2.1 million federal workers, which is a large work force, no doubt. When you stop to consider 2.1 million civil servants, serving a country of some 360 million people, you are talking about less than 1% of total population. Of course, 2.1 million constitutes a higher percentage of the work force.

Such a move is like cutting government spending by implementing, say, a 10% across-the-board cut, which is ham-fisted, short-sighted, and inequitable. For instance, in Utah public education is already underfunded. Hence, you do not want to cut 10% from the education budget! By the same token, programs that benefit the disabled, children, and those who have serious material needs must be considered in a different light than cuts in some other areas.

Maranatha

A good sign, I think

I am impressed with today’s proposed compromise announced by President Obama. The president was wise in understanding that he needed to show everyone that he has the ability to compromise because his unwillingness to do so over the previous two years is a major reason why his party lost so badly last month. He also needed to demonstrate to the American people that the next two years are not just going to consist of gridlock and partisan haggling while the economy either stagnates or gets even worse, while life inside the Beltway goes on as normal.

Today’s proposal is that in exchange for extending the so-called Bush tax cuts, which were set expire after the first of the year, across-the-board with no cut-off at any income level, for two more years, the Republicans agree to extending unemployment for another year in a tough economy. The fact that people on both sides are complaining- the conservatives for the agreement to extend unemployment and the agreement to not push for making all of these cuts permanent, and the liberals whining that there was no cut-off, even at one million dollars, as proposed by some Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Schumer- indicates that it is a good deal and goes a great distance towards moving politics beyond net loss/net gain calculations, or, stated simply, it is a good bi-partisan move. President Obama was right to criticize those in his own party who wanted a protracted political fight on this issue. Conversely, we’ll see if the Republican Tea Party denizens that now make up a vocal portion of the new Republican congressional majority, such as Utah’s Senator-elect Mike Lee, show as much common sense, not to mention statesmanship as Pres. Obama did today.

In his press conference this afternoon, the president first clearly laid out his position when he said that he agreed to “a temporary extension of the high-income tax breaks,” an issue on which he is correct to describe the Republicans as “are unwilling to budge,” in order to preserve “ additional tax cuts for the middle class that I fought for and that Republicans opposed two years ago.” Exhibiting wisdom that can only come from experience, he said “I’m as opposed to the high-end tax cuts today as I’ve been for years. In the long run, we simply can’t afford them. And when they expire in two years, I will fight to end them, just as I suspect the Republican Party may fight to end the middle-class tax cuts that I’ve championed and that they’ve opposed.”

So, by agreeing to extend the cuts for two years President Obama and the Republicans, both of whom think they have the people of their side regarding the issue of the tax cuts, make this a major issue for the 2012 elections. I am inclined to believe that the president will win this one, especially when it can be demonstrated that above a certain income level there is little or no stimulus effect and that the tax revenue is needed to help reduce our deficits, which we began to incur even during the Bush Administration. As voters and citizens I think we have to be aware that the massive deficits we are racking up come to us courtesy of six years during which the Republicans held the White House and both Houses of Congress and two years of the Democrats holding all the purse strings.

It also looks like passage of the Dream Act with at least some bi-partisan support is also in the offing. I am cautiously optimistic moving forward and perhaps crowing a little about my centrist claim that the interests of the U.S. people are best served by not having one party in total control.

Maranatha

What matters? The way we manage our lives together, part 2

While I am on the subject of what I think should matter in politics, I also oppose extending the Bush tax cuts. I agree with Pres. Obama on this and so favor extending the tax cuts for middle income people, but not for the very rich. Like many who favor such an extension, I think extending the cuts all the way up to those making $200,000 is too high. Dropping it down to somewhere around $100,000 seems more reasonable to me. It seems to me, especially given the Republican insistence on extending all the Bush-era cuts, that this is an issue the Democrats can seize upon and return, at least on one issue for one fleeting moment, to their proud roots of looking out for regular people- the kind of Democratic leaders revered in my house when I was growing up.

My reason for opposing the extension is two-fold. My first reason is the politico-philosophical reason of favoring less regressive taxation, which serves the common good and rejects such rationales as those employed today by Sen. McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, who insists, that “[w]e ought to treat all taxpayers the same.” Don’t get me wrong, I am not in favor of punishing people for being successful, but this is not what a fair tax policy does. Rather, it seeks the common good, which is not a mass redistribution of income, but a way of living together in a society that recognizes, at least to some extent, that I am my brother’s keeper, a society that, while recognizing the need for a social safety-net, must always safeguard against the tendency to foster dependence.

My second reason for opposing the extension of all the cuts, which the Democrats are only considering because they think doing so will do what their massive non-stimulating stimulus failed to do, namely stimulate the economy, is that giving tax cuts to the uber-rich does not have a stimulus effect, like giving cuts to middle income people does. Extending the cuts up to $200,000 a year, or $250,000 a year, would also result in the loss of $700 billion in revenue. I agree with Pres. Obama when he says it would “be unwise and unfair, particularly at a time when we're contemplating deep budget cuts that require broad sacrifice” to extend the cuts up that far. George H.W. Bush was quite correct to describe supply-side economic theory as “Voo-doo economics” while running against Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination way back in 1980, which is not to say that a strong vibrant economy doesn’t produce more revenue at lower tax rates, it obviously does, but Arthur Laffer’s prognostications ultimately proved illusory. Besides, extending the tax cuts across-the-board, even to those making more than $200,000 per year, as the Republicans, who remain, even after the Tea Party uprising, the party of the very rich, will deprive us of revenue we’ll need to dig out of the hole we’re in, even with massive spending cuts, which are also needed.

It is in mentioning tax increases and spending cuts that complexity comes into play again. It is not either/or but both/and. The question becomes arriving at a mutually agreeable solution, which means compromise on both sides, something that implies nobody gets everything they want. Holding your breath until get everything you want, in addition to being infantile, is precisely what reduces our politics to net loss/net gain. In this era marked not only by ideology, but overly-simplistic ideology, we should all lament the collapse of the political center, those leaders capable of brokering compromise. Here in Utah the best example of this kind of leader, Sen. Bennett, was denied re-election for being, not a liberal, not even for failing to be a conservative, but for refusing to buy into the very narrow vision of politics now sweeping the country.

Maranatha

What Matters? The way we manage our lives together

There are many things we get politically worked up about. Some of these things matter, but many do not. When we can be bothered to get worked up about issues that bear on our common life together we very often eschew any level of complexity and insist on over-simplifying matters, which opens the door to rank demagoguery. As the great American cynic and realist, H.L. Mencken, once observed: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” This seems to me an apt, if very generalized, description of much of the Tea Party agenda.

It has become a political cliché this past year, given our serious fiscal woes, to insist that as a country we need comprehensive entitlement reform. I certainly number myself among those who agree with this assertion. Too often the discussion stops there, or progresses to some inane call for cancelling or dramatically curtailing all entitlements. I want to look at two programs that must be reformed if our country is to become fiscally sound: Social Security and Medicare. Regaining fiscal soundness will, of course, require more reforms than these, but Social Security and Medicare together make up the bulk of what needs to be reformed.

Dallas accountant, John Karrick, in a recent letter-to-the-editor of the New York Times, addressed both of these programs. He points out that Social Security is managed like a Ponzi scheme, the only difference being that it is considerably less sophisticated than a successful Ponzi scheme. He begins by pointing out the obviously regressive nature of both F.I.C.A. and Medicare payroll withholding. Indeed, everyone who is legally employed in the United States, no matter how little they make, pays 6.2% of their salary into Social Security. However, no F.I.C.A. is paid on salary over $106,800. He notes that all workers pay 1.45% into Medicare. Unlike Social Security, Medicare has no upper limit.

Simple arithmetic shows that U.S. workers pay 7.65%, up to $106,800, of their salary for Social Security and Medicare, which means the vast majority of workers in the U.S. pay this on their entire salaries. Nonetheless, despite the regressive nature of these mandated withholdings, there is a certain sense of fairness: you pay into Social Security and later receive Social Security (F.I.C.A. is not technically speaking a tax, but paying into an account) and the same is true of Medicare. Beyond that, your employer matches your 7.65% for a whopping total of 15.3% of what you make! Karrick is correct to point out that “[t]his amounts to a tax on employing people in the United States.”

I disagree with Karrick that we can find a better way to fund our Social Security and Medicare obligations. I am against privatizing Social Security, as are an overwhelming majority of people in the U.S., regardless of political affiliation. What is truly problematic, what we should all be much more worked up about, are these government-run Ponzi schemes. In the case of Social Security, Karrick is correct when he writes that “[t]oday’s contributions are used to pay beneficiaries who contributed yesterday, and the surplus of current contributions is ‘lent’ to the federal government and used for general spending.” It is this disastrous reality that has resulted in Social Security’s rapidly approaching insolvency. If everything that U.S. workers and employers had paid into Social Security remained in the trust fund from its establishment, Social Security would be solvent with a surplus (i.e., we could look at reducing contributions instead of ways to increase them- like upping the amount of salary one has to pay F.I.C.A. from the current $106,800). This is what Al Gore was talking about back in 2000 when he discussed his “lock box.”

Arising from my disagreement with Karrick over whether we can find better ways to fund these huge obligations is my opposition to his idea of formally melding Social Security and Medicare into general revenues, taking funds out of other taxes, most particularly the personal income tax. My reason for disagreeing is that rather than “reducing the tax burden of lower-income Americans,” as he asserts, I believe it will raise taxes on them. However, I readily concede that it would remove a disincentive to hire employees.

As Rich Rickman, writing over on Commentary’s Contentions blog (from whence I was pointed to Karrick's letter), points out, “[t]he Ponzi scheme underlying the Medicare system is even more blatant.” He points to the change made to your Medicare contribution in the truly horrible health care reform known as Obamacare: “[t]he legislation dispensed with the interim step of sending the money to the Medicare Trust Fund, to then be ‘lent’ to the general fund and spent on non-Medicare programs. Instead, the money from the new ‘contribution’ will go straight to the general fund; Medicare will not even get a government IOU to hold in ‘trust’.” Unlike Rickman, I am not bothered that the investment earnings of those making more than $200,000 per annum is now subject to the Medicare tax. It is a way of making the tax less regressive and, I believe, serves the common good by helping to shore up Medicare.

Not until we get worked enough to pay attention to details like these will we come anywhere close to making progress on these important matters that affect us all. In the meantime, we will continue to see-saw back-and-forth between the unabashed and ultimately disastrous statism of so-called progressives and the equally deleterious hyper-individualism of so-called conservatives. This is true of many issues, including immigration. In terms of Catholic social teaching it balancing solidarity with subsidiarity that fosters the common good.

Politics in the U.S. has become a net gain/net loss proposition. As it has been said of diplomacy, which is nothing except politics on an international scale- politics is the art of compromise. There are several ways to accomplish the end of reforming Social Security and Medicare, but reform them we must!

Maranatha

"Fear is not the natural state of man" Aung San Suu Kyi

The release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest in Burma today cannot go without remark. Back when it actually meant something, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She has been under some form of detention in Burma for 15 of the past 21 years. She is the daughter of the Burmese independence hero, General Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947, just six months prior to Burma attaining its independence from Great Britain. She went on to study at St. Hugh's College in Oxford, focusing on philosophy, politics, and economics, only returning to Burma in 1988, when her mother was terminally ill.

While she was in Burma attending to her mother, Aung San Suu Kyi felt compelled to take up the torch of democracy against the highly repressive regime, saying in a famous speech she delivered in Rangoon on 26 August 1988, "I could not, as my father's daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on." From that point she led the opposition to dictator General Ne Win. Her opposition to the brutal military government, led by Win, is the reason she was placed under house arrest for the first time in 1989. Political pressure brought by her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), finally forced the military regime into holding elections in 1990, which the NLD won handily. The results of the election were negated and martial law remained in force. She remained under house arrest until 1995.

Aung San Suu Kyi's politics are inspired by examples of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. While she was free in Burma in the late 1980s, her activities consisted of traveling the country, organizing mass rallies and publicly advocating for peaceful political reform and, above all, for free elections. She is what Francis Sejested, chairman of the Nobel committee that awarded her the prize, said she was: "an outstanding example of the power of the powerless."

The importance of this day for the people of Burma cannot be exaggerated, assuming Aung San Suu Kyi's freedom lasts this time, which, given the track record of Burma's brutally repressive military junta, is a huge assumption. Given her track record of fearlessness, she will undoubtedly pick up where she left off. In a rare interview she was given permission to grant in 2007 to British journalist John Pilger, she said- "No matter the regime's physical power, in the end they can't stop the people; they can't stop freedom. We shall have our time."

"It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it," Aung San Suu Kyi once wrote. Nonetheless, she continued, even under the "most crushing state machinery, courage rises up again and again. For fear is not the natural state of man."

All holy men and women, pray for us

Elections 2010: What Do We Desire?

A statement by Communion & Liberation on the elections

On the eve of the midterm elections, our nation faces grave issues that touch the lives of all Americans: a deep and extended recession, stubbornly high unemployment, a crisis in health care, and a ten-year war in Afghanistan. We are pained because the possibility for dialogue in our political culture seems to be evaporating. With this flyer, we hope to offer a contribution to all men and women of good will before the November vote.

We discern the origins of the polarization and hostility in our political culture and the origins of the most pressing problems our nation faces as the forgetfulness or, perhaps, the undervaluing of our common human desire.

We know no other reason for tirelessly making the effort to dialogue with others, if not to gain a better understanding of truth. Without a dogged dedication to discovering what is real, communication ends, leaving only the will to power in order to impose one's own ideology. Ideologies, in turn, become evermore rigid and restrictive. We also recognize that the struggle to realize justice can frustrate and tempt us to disillusionment. Yet, if we do not take up that struggle, what is left but surrender to the powerful? We understand that there can be no better relationship among people than love. And clearly love costs sacrifice for the other’s true good. But, if we surrender to the fear of sacrifice, we become trapped in ourselves, alone, numb to the needs, desires, and sufferings of others. Moreover, the social structures we build tend to alienate and manipulate others. Above all, we recognize the risk in constantly betting on human freedom and its ability to seek what is good, beautiful, and true. Yet, without betting on human freedom, we entrust ourselves to policies, procedures, rules, and regulations, pretending that—in the words of T. S. Eliot—we can dream up a "system so perfect, no one will have to be good."

We recognize these primal human yearnings as the voice of the mystery of God in each of us, ever calling us forward, beyond ourselves toward a richer human existence, capable of love for the truth and others. Yet, even without such certainty, we are sure that there is no more attractive adventure than a life and a society that seek the answer to these yearnings.

To live such an adventure is the goal of any truly human education, and particularly a Catholic one. For this reason, the first criterion that guides our assessment of any political party, candidate, or system is support for freedom of education, the most critical element of religious freedom.

People who have the courage to live with human authenticity build enterprises, communities, and institutions animated by justice, truth, beauty, and love. For this reason, our second criterion is subsidiarity. Government should defend the common good, supporting and deferring to those human structures that dedicate themselves to the good of persons and communities. The recent disappearance of Catholic hospitals (such as St. Vincent's in lower Manhattan, the first hospital to welcome AIDS victims en masse), orphanages, adoption agencies, and other charitable organizations impoverishes our communities.

We offer such a statement because we want to affirm what Pope Benedict XVI recently said in Scotland: "Society today needs clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection in the face of their weakness and fragility."

Communion & Liberation, October 2010

Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam

A personal reflection about faith and politics, or the politics of faith

Currently there is so much going on that when I think about it I am almost overwhelmed. I have to admit that with the off-year elections happening  in a little more than two weeks I am very glad that I have not written anything about politics. This is largely due to the fact that from 2006 to 2008 I finally got over my life-long fascination with politics. All of this has been on my mind this week in light of the televised religious roundtable I participated in for our local PBS station, KUED, Channel 7, last Wednesday.

There was a time when I thought politics, a career in politics, was the path I would pursue, but then many things happened in my life, not least among which was becoming Catholic. This had a two-fold effect on this ambition. First, it changed my politics fairly dramatically. Second, where I live moving from the dominant religion to embrace and become a member of a different religion was, if not outright disqualifying, then something probably too big to overcome. I also have to say that being involved with Communion and Liberation, especially having formal ties to the Movement for the past 4 or 5 years, has changed the way I approach politics even more dramatically than when I became Catholic more than 20 years ago.

As a member of the clergy actively engaged in pastoral ministry, I tend to look at issues without concerning myself too much about how I might fit them into some over-arching and preconceived political schema, otherwise known as an ideology. As a result, after many years as a registered Democrat (my affiliation with the Democratic Party preceding my becoming Catholic), I am now a political independent. All of this is very liberating, indeed, because my sole point of reference for political issues is my faith, which not only doesn't preclude the use of reason, but positively requires it.

I approach politics in a reasonable and faithful way, which does not mean slavishly applying church teaching to political issues of the day, which would be tantamount to relinquishing my freedom, which is anti-thetical to my Catholic faith, but looking at what fosters a greater humanity- which is the whole point of the Gospel that is Jesus Christ. Besides, according to Catholic teaching, how we apply the tenets of our faith to political matters boils down to individuals making well-informed prudential judgments about various issues. We're not monolithic, nor can we be in dealing the very complex matters we are faced with today. For example, here in Utah, the Democrat running for governor is a Catholic. He cannot count on my vote just because I am Catholic, too. To vote that way is highly irresponsible, whether the identification with any candidate is religion, gender, or race. I loathe identity politics, which is inherently divisive and arguably undemocratic.

Besides, as a member of the clergy, which inherently includes being something of a public figure, it is not appropriate or ethical for me engage in partisan politicking, which is different from not engaging political issues at all. As both of my readers know, I am not shy about weighing in on issues that matter to me- immigration, labor matters, international affairs (a concern that naturally arises from my secular occupation), and on economic matters, too. I generally don't tell people who I vote for, though I do lay out my criteria for judging candidates- don't be uncomfortable about the verb to judge in all its variants because we have to make judgments everyday, we certainly render a judgment when we go into the voting booth. I am not the least bit relativistic when it comes to my faith, especially when it comes to matters of politics.

I firmly believe that it is highly important, a matter of conscience rightly formed, to bring my faith to bear in the public square. I do not do this from the standpoint that all religiously held points-of-view are equally valid. Just as truth by its very nature is not relativistic, all view points, even when derived from religious principles, are not equally valid. So, part of my task is to have a well-informed conscience and another part, as a religious educator, is to collaborate with others in the task of conscience formation. What makes Catholic morality so controversial is that it is objective, as opposed to subjective or relativistic, which is not to say that to reason according to the principles of Catholic morality renders one incapable of accounting for the complexity of many moral issues, though it does a good job of reducing and even eliminating so many false complexities.

So, this week when I vote early once again, I will vote a split ticket that will include casting a vote for a few third party candidates. Politics are not merely a necessary evil, politics is nothing but a single word, and a generic one at that, we use to describe how we manage our common life. To denigrate politics in a democracy is to denigrate democracy, especially a representative one like we have in the United States. This one of the most tiresome complaints of the Obama Administration, who seem to think that in a democracy you can separate governing from politics. You cannot. It is not only impossible, but wholly undesirable. None of this is to say that there aren't ways of engaging in politics that are beneath our dignity, that coarsen public discourse, and that are to be eschewed by decent people, not just Christians.

In the current cycle, looking at the nation as a whole, two examples stand out. The first is the unconscionable way Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell has been treated in her race by the media and even by her own party. Regardless as to how you might feel about her as a candidate, she is surely a victim of the politics of personal destruction. To her good credit, she has handled it all gracefully, even with a little humor. The second is how the Republican candidate for New York governor, Carl Paladino, has conducted himself, which I can only describe as shocking.

I will bookend this week by ending with the same quote by Luigi Giussani with which I ended last Friday's post; a quote that also gave rise to last Saturday's post:

Bernini's Martyrdom of St. Lawrence

"Christians may not win. This is exactly the point: that we always win, even if we were to be always defeated, where ‘winning’ is realizing a greater humanity, and ‘being defeated’ means not having power. As one of you said once in a discussion: ‘We aim for a victory without power!’ This was what he meant. It’s the victory of the human. By facing life according to faith, we achieve a victory of the human, our gesture is more human. This does not mean that our position prevails politically, economically, and so on, that we attain power."

This general idea was also put forth by the Holy Father in his extemporaneous remarks to the bishops gathered in Rome to participate in the Synod on the Church in the Middle East. Pope Benedict was correct to begin his wide-ranging remarks by citing God-made-man-for-us in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, who we rightly revere as Theotókos, as the pole around which everything else revolves, before going on to say,

"We think of the great powers of today's history, we think of the anonymous capitals that enslave man, that are no longer something belonging to man, but are an anonymous power that men serve, and by which men are tormented and even slaughtered. They are a destructive power that threatens the world. And then the power of the terrorist ideologies. Violence is done apparently in the name of God, but this is not God: these are false divinities that must be unmasked, that are not God. And then drugs, this power that, like a ravenous beast, stretches its hands over all parts of the earth and destroys: it is a divinity, but a false divinity, which must fall. Or even the way of life promoted by public opinion: today it's done this way, marriage doesn't matter anymore, chastity is no longer a virtue, and so on.

"These ideologies that are so dominant that they impose themselves by force are divinities. And in the suffering of the saints, in the suffering of believers, of the Mother Church of which we are part, these divinities must fall..."

I wholly concur that it is witness, martyria, even to the shedding of blood, that constitutes the ultimate victory of power without power- "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13- ESV).

Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam

Changing our political culture, part deux

Following up on yesterday's post about the Delaware Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, Christine O'Donnell, particularly the part about her being a chastity advocate as a young woman, I came across a few things today that do not surprise me in the least. Nether does it surprise Chris Horner, who blogs over on the ultra-conservative AMSPEC blog. Horner hits the nail on the head while opining about the likes of Rachel Maddow and their response to O'Donnell unabashedly standing up for what she believes in, for her Christian beliefs, which also constitute the same sexual morality as that espoused by Muslims, as well as orthodox and conservative Jews:

"Part of the media’s O’Donnell heckling is due to the urban bubble journalists and broadcasters live in. They can’t fathom how an intelligent human being could take the conservative line on human life and sexuality — let alone the deficit — because none of their friends or colleagues do. Their mistake is presupposing that the New York City crowd is an authority on everything — or anything."

So, now we turn to the always entertaining James Carville, who does not seem to be able to make the distinction between O'Donnell's activities prior to entering politics, which did not include advocacy for making masturbation illegal, and the issues and platform on which she is running for office. In fact, Carville gets so worked up on Good Morning America he doesn't even make sense. I am pretty confident in stating that until Maddow aired the MTV interview from 1996 no mention of self-stimulation was made in whole of the campaign.

"In terms of getting into the bedroom, this woman has run against masturbation. That seems to me to be a lot of government intrusion to be honest with you. She is a very fiscal conservative, she doesn’t believe in paying the bills, and she equated masturbation to adultery. If that is the case the Iranians would be stoning a lot of people in this country, I’ll tell you that."

See for yourself:

So, let me get this straight, even though O'Donnell has never, ever advocated for a city or county ordinance, or a state or federal law outlawing masturbation, but merely stated that she believes it is immoral and, hence, personally and societally destructive and encouraged young people not to engage in it, using the same moral arguments made by the Catholic Church, if she is elected we have to worry about about Iranians stoning people who engage in self-gratification in this country? Like Glen Davis' quip about O'Donnell somehow implying that no married people are infected with HIV, I have to say, Huh?

This is a mistake the liberal media, most of whom do inhabit the urban bubble described by Horner, makes over and over again. Therefore, it is significant that Sarah Palin is not only endorsing O'Donnell, but her SARAHPAC is helping finance the Republican nominee's Delaware Senate run. What Palin did was to say, in effect, "You're right. I do stand for those things." She recognized that so do a lot of people in the U.S., perhaps even a majority and certainly a strong plurality. She refuses to nuance or compromise, or soft-peddle what she stands for, which certainly works to her detriment at times. I think O'Donnell will do much the same thing. If she's smart, she'll learn when to walk away and when to stand and fight.

My reason for bringing this up arises from nothing other than my utter amazement at the response of people like Maddow and Carville to a candidate like Christine O'Donnell.

Changing our political culture

If you follow politics, or even if you don't but watch the news, you know that Christine O'Donnell won the Republican nomination to fill the Delaware Senate seat vacated by Vice President Biden in 2008. You also know that O'Donnell was not the establishment favorite, far from it, and was backed by Sen. Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party. O'Donnell was largely abandoned both prior to and after her win last night. Only the political common sense of Sen. Cornyn of Texas, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who had to over-rule his staffers at the committee after their tepid response to O'Donnell's primary victory over liberal Republican Mike Castle, saved the day for the GOP.

Christine O'Donnell

I like anyone who rocks the political establishment and knocks them back on their heels. I like them even more when they also do it to the news media. O'Donnell performed a twofer! What is O'Donnell guilty of, apart from being a true, blue conservative in a that isn't supposed to have any? Well, you see, she's an average person. It took her almost twenty years to pay her student debt to her alma mater Farleigh Dickinson University so she could formally be awarded the degree she earned back in 1993. She has also had other financial difficulties, despite some professional success.

O'Donnell is also guilty of being an unabashed Christian and has been since she was in college. It seems she started out in college doing so many of the things too many college students do: partying a lot and being, by her own admission, at least for a time, a bit promiscuous. Being a Catholic who returned to the practice of her faith while still a young women and having absorbed the lessons of her college experience, she founded an organization called S.A.L.T. (Savior's Alliance For Lifting the Truth) shortly after finishing college. The acronym for her organization is likely a reference to Jesus' words in Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet" (ESV- parallel passages are also found in Mark9:50 and Luke 14:34). I readily admit that the full name is a bit over blown, but that is not really an issue at all.

It didn't take long for Rachel Maddow to rake O'Donnell over the coals for an anti-masturbation campaign she undertook in the 1990s on behalf of S.A.L.T. Glen Davis, writing for Mediaite describes Maddow "gleefully" showing an interview O'Donnell did on MTV in 1996. In the interview O'Donnell and her friends have audacity to assert that our sexual desires, while God-given, should be expressed "in God’s appropriate context," meaning in marriage. Another young woman says that "masturbation is a selfish act, and it’s a lustful one, and we are to walk with pure hearts, not adulterous, lusting hearts." The fact that a group of young people standing for Christian values. Davis' article is poorly written, he takes aim at O'Donnell's assertion that urging young people to masturbate as a way of sex outside of marriage and STDs is wrong-headed by inserting (parenthetically) a red herring of stunning proportion: "the apparent fact that no married people have AIDS is news to us." Huh?

The video is below:

In the wake of all the liberal hand-wringing over an obscure pastor's threat to burn a few copies of the Qu'ran and allegations that somehow opposing the building of the Ground Zero Islamic Center, complete with mosque, is symptomatic of a mental illness known as Islamophobia, it strikes me as utterly incoherent that a member of this chorus can get away with engaging in a genuine act of religious intolerance by asserting that because someone practices her faith and publicly encourages others to do the same she is unfit to hold office. It just goes to show that many who support the Ground Zero mosque do so, not from a concern about religious faith and practice, which always has content and an existential component (i.e., shapes how adherents live their lives), but from a radical secularizing relativism.

If it's a matter of being fair and balanced, how about some mention of her general election opponent, Democrat Chris Coons' youthful communism, which he described in a newspaper article he wrote for Amherst College student newspaper entitled The Making of a Bearded Marxist. In the article Coons describes his journey from a clean-cut, fairly conservative young person to being a college Marxist. I assert that the difference is, while Coons certainly repudiates his youthful Marxism, O'Donnell still stands for the truth she espoused as a young woman, which makes her odd and the object of scorn.

Let's see how what O'Donnell advocated stacks up with what the Church teaches by looking at some paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2351: Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.

2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate [self-]stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved." To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpability.

2353 Fornication is carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children. Moreover, it is a grave scandal when there is corruption of the young.

Hmmmm....