It took several years after our conversion and baptism to recognize and fully appreciate how much they differed from conservative Catholics (within whose camp we've found our home) and while it really isn't a matter of progressive vs conservative, but being congruent with traditional Church teaching rather than not and conservatives tend to be the former, progressives the latter.
Once realizing the difference and understanding their perspective, the attempt to ally Peter with Occupy Wall Street isn’t a surprise.
George Weigel, one of the Church’s most important theologians—his books are at Amazon’s author page—writes about them on the Ethics & Public Policy Center.
An excerpt.
“It's been a bad three and a half decades for self-styled "progressive" Catholics.
“First, there was John Paul II, whom many in that camp habitually labeled a charismatic reactionary. Yet the Polish pope was a hero all over the world during an epic pontificate that bent history's arc in a more humane direction, and did so without the aid of liberation theology. John Paul's funeral Mass on April 8, 2005, became, in the apt phrase of NBC anchor Brian Williams, "the human event of a generation," a moniker unlikely to be attached to the obsequies of, say, Hans Küng, John Paul's most embittered progressive critic.
“Then came the election of the progressives' bête noire, Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI: a horror that a prominent progressive, Notre Dame's Fr. Richard McBrien, declared electorally impossible a mere 24 hours before it happened. Catholic progressives hunkered down for what they hoped would be a brief Ratzingerian interregnum. But Benedict XVI has proven an energetic pope whose pontificate has been in dynamic continuity with that of his predecessor, an astute analyst of the cultural crisis of the West, and a man determined to strengthen Catholic identity as the sine qua non of Catholic reform.
“Thus the Wojtyla-Ratzinger years have put paid to the notion, beloved of Catholic progressives, that Catholicism began anew -ex nihilo, as it were - at the Second Vatican Council. Committed to the hoary "liberal/conservative" hermeneutic of the Council's history, Catholic progressives hold that Vatican II represented a dramatic rupture with the past. The great teaching pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, however, have proposed a far more plausible interpretation of the Council as one in dynamic continuity with the great tradition of Christian orthodoxy. That interpretation, in turn, is shaping an entire new generation of Catholic intellectuals who are far more interested in exploring the complex riches of that tradition than in deconstructing it. Unlike the aging progressives, who have shown themselves rather infertile intellectually and who survive in large part because of that most conservative of institutions, the tenure system, many younger Catholic scholars are fully committed to putting theology at the service of the "New Evangelization" for which John Paul II and Benedict XVI have insistently called.
“In the United States, the progressives have also been steadily losing their grip at the national, diocesan, and local-parish levels. Various lay-renewal movements have become vital and self-consciously orthodox factors in Catholic life, and a new generation of priests and bishops, many of whom look explicitly to John Paul II as their model of ecclesiastical leadership, have come to the fore. For the past half-decade or more, the Catholic bishops of the United States, following the pope's lead, have increasingly stressed the importance of Catholic identity, by which they understand fidelity to Catholic teaching, in confronting an increasingly hostile cultural and legal/political environment. That problem has been considerably exacerbated by the Obama administration, which many Catholic progressives welcomed with loud hosannas, and for whose regulatory assault on Catholic health-care and social-service agencies progressives have provided cover, often by implausible appeals to Catholic social doctrine.
“Throughout this fairly rapid decline, progressive Catholicism's distinctive cultural marker has been its skepticism about the teaching authority of the Church: whether that teaching authority was formally and authoritatively addressing the ethics of human love, the suitability of women for Holy Orders, the uniqueness of Christ as universal savior, or the intrinsic evils of abortion and euthanasia. Thus it was another sign of the increasing incoherence of progressive Catholicism when several of its American paladins mounted a raucous defense of a "Note" - a kind of Vatican white paper - on international financial reform issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) on October 24. It was an extraordinary exercise: The progressives depicted Benedict XVI as a senior chaplain to Occupy Wall Street, described the Note in such overwrought terms that the gullible might have thought this white paper shared in the charism of papal infallibility, and darkly suggested that those who disagreed with the Note's prescriptions were cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing their doctrines to fit preexisting political tastes.
“The irony of men such as the former editor of America, Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr., and National Catholic Reporter blogger Michael Sean Winters promoting a notion of papal teaching authority more expansive than any imagined by the most wild-eyed traditionalist will not be lost on cognoscenti of ecclesiastical intrigue. This new notion of PCJP infallibility does, however, raise interesting questions - about the nature and modalities of Catholic teaching authority, about the organization of the Holy See, and about the state of Catholic progressivism in America.
“Given the continuing confusion caused by Father Reese's assertion that the Note positioned Benedict XVI "to the left of Nancy Pelosi" (which reverberated throughout the media echo chamber), it's important to pin down just what the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is, and what authority its statements bear.
“The Pontifical Council (with whose president, Cardinal Peter Turkson, I had an entirely cordial 90-minute conversation last year) was established after Vatican II as part of the "New Curia," a set of agencies intended to give organizational expression to some of Vatican II's pastoral concerns: the promotion of social doctrine, the family, the lay mission in the world, and so forth. Unlike the older Congregations of the Roman Curia, which exercise an authority of jurisdiction (over bishops, clergy, religious life, Catholic worship, etc.), and unlike the Tribunals of the Curia, which make binding legal decisions, the "Pontifical Councils" of the New Curia were intended to be in-house think-tanks. Bureaucracy being what it is, however, they quickly morphed into something else: paper factories issuing all sorts of statements on all sorts of issues. As I wrote in God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, there was concern during the 2005 conclave over the large amount of paper being generated by the New Curia: paper that was inevitably, if inaccurately, interpreted publicly as being the settled understanding of the Catholic Church and its highest teaching authority on X, Y, and Z.”
Showing posts with label Social Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Teaching. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Catholic Social Teaching
The marvelous book, Church State and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine, gets a wonderful review from Ignatius Insight, and while it is a book I have only begun to delve into, I have learned enough that it has joined the social teaching canon of my apostolate The Lampstand Foundation.
An excerpt from the Ignatius review.
"The concept of justice as order in the soul of the individual needs to be rediscovered today." — Benestad, 144.
"Nowadays, service to others is often presented as the distinguishing characteristic of a Catholic university; but without linking that service to the prior task of seeking truth and achieving some order in one's soul through prayer, a sacramental life, acceptance of the Catholic creeds, and the practice of Christian morality. It seems naïve to me, and even Pelagian, to think that Christ-like service can be informed and embrace without a foundation in Christian doctrine and a basis in learning." — Benestad, 284.
“I.
“We have been waiting for this remarkable book for a long time, one that knows not just episcopal and papal thought but the whole history of theology, political philosophy, and philosophy at large. This book has roots not only in the Greeks and Romans, but also in Scripture and the great theologians of the Church. And it is aware of the pitfalls of language and ideas that often steer Christian thinkers into the heady, dangerous realms of ideology. Dr. Brian Benestad knows his Locke and Hobbes, his Marx, and the more modern liberal relativist theories associated with Rawls and other American writers.
“Benestad, at the University of Scranton, is the best qualified and able of American scholars to write an overall understanding of Catholic Social Thought, which has tended to become a rather narrow and isolated body of knowledge. Benestad's mentor, whom he often cites and whose collected essays he edited, was the late Father Ernest Fortin, A.A. Fortin, along with Heinrich Rommen, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, John Courtney Murray, and Charles N. R. McCoy, was certainly the most critical and acute mind in the intellectual circles of his time. Fortin covered the whole gamut of thought from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, to the Fathers of the Church, Aquinas, Aquinas, Dante, and into the modern world. Fortin was familiar with Strauss and Bloom and their critiques of modernity.
“This book is more than the "introduction" of its sub-title. It is nothing less than a critical, philosophical reflection on the whole tradition of what is loosely called "social thought or doctrine." It knows its way through the relation of reason and revelation. Its range includes economics, environmentalism, universities, political institutions, war, life and family questions, subsidiarity, and culture. Metaphysics is always just below the surface.
“Benestad, to be sure, unlike Plato, Aristotle, and the current pope, does not have much to say about music. But he makes remarkable use of classic literature and novels to illustrate virtues and vices. He is obviously a broadly learned man in the tradition of liberal education. This overlook of social thought is doubly necessary as many of the basic words and notions that are found in modern thought and in political usage are anything but neutral or friendly to what Catholicism is and what it holds.
“II.
“Thus, a major effort of Benestad is to clarify what is meant by "justice," "rights," "social justice," "values," and "dignity," the language that even the popes and bishops have, sometimes incautiously, chosen to use to explain Catholic positions in the public order. Each of these words has an ancient or recent history that is anything but self-evident. Different philosophies make each concept in effect equivocal, not meaning at all what other users mean.
“Each concept or word needs to be carefully distinguished. We need to see that what Hobbes meant by "rights" was not what Aristotle meant by justice. Among these words and phrases, perhaps none is more necessary to rethink than that of "social justice," a very modern phrase from the late nineteenth century that cannot, in spite of heroic efforts to do so, easily be reconciled with classic political thought or Christian terms. The phrase is inspired largely by modern liberal thought that presupposes human autonomy with no relation to natural or divine law.
“Benestad does a remarkably fine job in tracing the roots and implications of this phrase and how it might be properly used so that it does not bear its ideological baggage from Locke or Rousseau. A major reason that Catholic thought has not had the impact that it should is because words like justice, values, rights, and dignity come from Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, Weber, and Kant. They do not mean what it looks like they mean from a tradition of Aquinas or Aristotle. Benestad, to his credit, is well aware both that these words are the meat of modern discourse and the source of considerable confusion. The book is a constant effort to relate rights to duty, dignity to being, values to objective norms, and justice to virtue.
"Indeed, it might well be said that the major effort of Benestad is to show how no concept of justice as some sort of rearrangement of society can stand by itself apart from the classical emphasis on the need of individual virtue. We cannot have a "just" society if we do not have "just" people who know that justice is not a subjective "right" or "want" but something that is objectively "due."
“Aristotle's political philosophy had been well aware that regimes reflect the virtue of the people that composed it. He knew we cannot have a good regime and un-virtuous citizens. Modern thought has largely rejected this to claim that vice and disorder can be cured simply by change of regime. It doesn't and cannot happen that way, even though some regimes are better than others.
“Benestad is completely familiar with what is known as modern Catholic social thought from the work of Leo XIII on. He knows of Pius XI and Pius XIII, John XXIII, and Paul VI. He is aware that in John Paul II and Benedict we have something in the Church that has perhaps never existed before: two popes, one following the other, both working together, who are themselves first class scholars and (particularly in the case of John Paul II) charismatic leaders of world historic significance. The world has done its best to refuse to acknowledge their genius and the truth of their lives and teachings. In this sense, our intellectual problems are initially moral ones.
“Benestad is well aware of the extra-ordinary genius of the present pope. His appendix is devoted to Caritas in veritate, the pope's third "social" encyclical. At one level, it is amusing to realize that the Catholic Church has been headed since Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century by men of superior intellect, but more recently by men the equals of any minds or their own or any other time. How little this intellectual foundation of the Church is appreciated within the Church and culture is a judgment on the quality of the lived faith and ongoing intelligence of our time.
“The book contains four parts with twelve chapters. The first part concerns "the human person, the political community, and the common good." Part two covers "civil society and the common good, three mediating societies (family, Church, and universities). Part three brings us to private property and the universal destination of goods. Finally, part four is on the international community and justice. It is in this latter section that Benestad deals sanely with war and international institutions.
“One thing that particularly struck me about this book is that Benestad always makes his own judgment on the issues that he presents. The reader always knows where he stands on the issues, and why. He is quite critical of many of the politicized American episcopal initiatives in the social order, none more so than that of Cardinal Bernadin's confused "seamless garment" doctrine. Often such documents bear ideological traits that never should be there.”
An excerpt from the Ignatius review.
"The concept of justice as order in the soul of the individual needs to be rediscovered today." — Benestad, 144.
"Nowadays, service to others is often presented as the distinguishing characteristic of a Catholic university; but without linking that service to the prior task of seeking truth and achieving some order in one's soul through prayer, a sacramental life, acceptance of the Catholic creeds, and the practice of Christian morality. It seems naïve to me, and even Pelagian, to think that Christ-like service can be informed and embrace without a foundation in Christian doctrine and a basis in learning." — Benestad, 284.
“I.
“We have been waiting for this remarkable book for a long time, one that knows not just episcopal and papal thought but the whole history of theology, political philosophy, and philosophy at large. This book has roots not only in the Greeks and Romans, but also in Scripture and the great theologians of the Church. And it is aware of the pitfalls of language and ideas that often steer Christian thinkers into the heady, dangerous realms of ideology. Dr. Brian Benestad knows his Locke and Hobbes, his Marx, and the more modern liberal relativist theories associated with Rawls and other American writers.
“Benestad, at the University of Scranton, is the best qualified and able of American scholars to write an overall understanding of Catholic Social Thought, which has tended to become a rather narrow and isolated body of knowledge. Benestad's mentor, whom he often cites and whose collected essays he edited, was the late Father Ernest Fortin, A.A. Fortin, along with Heinrich Rommen, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, John Courtney Murray, and Charles N. R. McCoy, was certainly the most critical and acute mind in the intellectual circles of his time. Fortin covered the whole gamut of thought from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, to the Fathers of the Church, Aquinas, Aquinas, Dante, and into the modern world. Fortin was familiar with Strauss and Bloom and their critiques of modernity.
“This book is more than the "introduction" of its sub-title. It is nothing less than a critical, philosophical reflection on the whole tradition of what is loosely called "social thought or doctrine." It knows its way through the relation of reason and revelation. Its range includes economics, environmentalism, universities, political institutions, war, life and family questions, subsidiarity, and culture. Metaphysics is always just below the surface.
“Benestad, to be sure, unlike Plato, Aristotle, and the current pope, does not have much to say about music. But he makes remarkable use of classic literature and novels to illustrate virtues and vices. He is obviously a broadly learned man in the tradition of liberal education. This overlook of social thought is doubly necessary as many of the basic words and notions that are found in modern thought and in political usage are anything but neutral or friendly to what Catholicism is and what it holds.
“II.
“Thus, a major effort of Benestad is to clarify what is meant by "justice," "rights," "social justice," "values," and "dignity," the language that even the popes and bishops have, sometimes incautiously, chosen to use to explain Catholic positions in the public order. Each of these words has an ancient or recent history that is anything but self-evident. Different philosophies make each concept in effect equivocal, not meaning at all what other users mean.
“Each concept or word needs to be carefully distinguished. We need to see that what Hobbes meant by "rights" was not what Aristotle meant by justice. Among these words and phrases, perhaps none is more necessary to rethink than that of "social justice," a very modern phrase from the late nineteenth century that cannot, in spite of heroic efforts to do so, easily be reconciled with classic political thought or Christian terms. The phrase is inspired largely by modern liberal thought that presupposes human autonomy with no relation to natural or divine law.
“Benestad does a remarkably fine job in tracing the roots and implications of this phrase and how it might be properly used so that it does not bear its ideological baggage from Locke or Rousseau. A major reason that Catholic thought has not had the impact that it should is because words like justice, values, rights, and dignity come from Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, Weber, and Kant. They do not mean what it looks like they mean from a tradition of Aquinas or Aristotle. Benestad, to his credit, is well aware both that these words are the meat of modern discourse and the source of considerable confusion. The book is a constant effort to relate rights to duty, dignity to being, values to objective norms, and justice to virtue.
"Indeed, it might well be said that the major effort of Benestad is to show how no concept of justice as some sort of rearrangement of society can stand by itself apart from the classical emphasis on the need of individual virtue. We cannot have a "just" society if we do not have "just" people who know that justice is not a subjective "right" or "want" but something that is objectively "due."
“Aristotle's political philosophy had been well aware that regimes reflect the virtue of the people that composed it. He knew we cannot have a good regime and un-virtuous citizens. Modern thought has largely rejected this to claim that vice and disorder can be cured simply by change of regime. It doesn't and cannot happen that way, even though some regimes are better than others.
“Benestad is completely familiar with what is known as modern Catholic social thought from the work of Leo XIII on. He knows of Pius XI and Pius XIII, John XXIII, and Paul VI. He is aware that in John Paul II and Benedict we have something in the Church that has perhaps never existed before: two popes, one following the other, both working together, who are themselves first class scholars and (particularly in the case of John Paul II) charismatic leaders of world historic significance. The world has done its best to refuse to acknowledge their genius and the truth of their lives and teachings. In this sense, our intellectual problems are initially moral ones.
“Benestad is well aware of the extra-ordinary genius of the present pope. His appendix is devoted to Caritas in veritate, the pope's third "social" encyclical. At one level, it is amusing to realize that the Catholic Church has been headed since Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century by men of superior intellect, but more recently by men the equals of any minds or their own or any other time. How little this intellectual foundation of the Church is appreciated within the Church and culture is a judgment on the quality of the lived faith and ongoing intelligence of our time.
“The book contains four parts with twelve chapters. The first part concerns "the human person, the political community, and the common good." Part two covers "civil society and the common good, three mediating societies (family, Church, and universities). Part three brings us to private property and the universal destination of goods. Finally, part four is on the international community and justice. It is in this latter section that Benestad deals sanely with war and international institutions.
“One thing that particularly struck me about this book is that Benestad always makes his own judgment on the issues that he presents. The reader always knows where he stands on the issues, and why. He is quite critical of many of the politicized American episcopal initiatives in the social order, none more so than that of Cardinal Bernadin's confused "seamless garment" doctrine. Often such documents bear ideological traits that never should be there.”
Monday, October 3, 2011
Holy Mother of Life
The Holy Mother of God is a powerful protector, and this wonderful story from The Catholic Thing reveals some of her work in Brooklyn.
An excerpt.
“The Chiaroscuro Foundation recently released New York City abortion data by zip code in the form of a map. Since it took us a while to have the map developed, we have actually had the data for some time. As we thought about it and discussed it, it occurred to us that the zip codes with particularly low abortion rates were perhaps even more interesting than the zip codes with particularly high rates. We wondered why some zip codes, such as 11219 in Brooklyn, came in substantially lower than many other parts of the city. We decided to see if we could find anything interesting in some of these places.
“So I searched for a Catholic church in 11219 and found Regina Pacis. I contacted the pastor, Msgr. Marino, and asked to meet. When I arrived the following Monday morning, I drove around the neighborhood a bit before going to the church. It isn’t a terrible neighborhood, but it isn’t a well-to-do neighborhood either. With such a low abortion rate, I had expected it to be somewhat more upscale. As I arrived at the church, I was even more curious than before about what Msgr. Marino might think of the low rate of abortion in his neighborhood.
“And then I saw it: the Chapel of Mary Mother of the Unborn.
“It all started in 1989, when Msgr. Marino was parochial vicar at Regina Pacis. He went to have dinner with a cousin upstate who had married a Jewish woman. The conversation turned to abortion, and things got so heated between Fr. Marino and his cousin’s wife that she asked him to leave. On his way home, he was heartbroken to think that he, a Catholic priest, was unable to defend the Church’s teaching on abortion adequately, even among family. He thought and prayed about it for days, and eventually came up with the idea of developing a response that would not be anti-abortion, but pro-life: a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of the Unborn.
“After being treated a bit dismissively by his pastor and his bishop, Msgr. Marino got official recognition for the title of Mary Mother of the Unborn from Rome. He wrote a prayer and had it approved by his bishop, found a statue, and converted the old baptistery at Regina Pacis into the chapel of Mary Mother of the Unborn. And so it began.
“Next to the statue, which is perched atop the baptismal font, is the Book of Life: prayers written for women who are expecting; couples who are having a hard time conceiving; couples mourning the loss of an unborn child through miscarriage; women mourning their abortions; parents wrestling with the anguish of an adverse prenatal diagnosis; mothers, fathers, grandmothers giving thanks for safe delivery. Nearly seventy large books have been filled with handwritten prayers since 1989. The walls are adorned with pictures of babies born in answer to prayer to Mary Mother of the Unborn. Every year, on the Feast of the Annunciation, Msgr. Marino brings the statue up to the church and blesses all the pregnant women of the parish, all the newborns, and all those mourning the loss of a child.”
An excerpt.
“The Chiaroscuro Foundation recently released New York City abortion data by zip code in the form of a map. Since it took us a while to have the map developed, we have actually had the data for some time. As we thought about it and discussed it, it occurred to us that the zip codes with particularly low abortion rates were perhaps even more interesting than the zip codes with particularly high rates. We wondered why some zip codes, such as 11219 in Brooklyn, came in substantially lower than many other parts of the city. We decided to see if we could find anything interesting in some of these places.
“So I searched for a Catholic church in 11219 and found Regina Pacis. I contacted the pastor, Msgr. Marino, and asked to meet. When I arrived the following Monday morning, I drove around the neighborhood a bit before going to the church. It isn’t a terrible neighborhood, but it isn’t a well-to-do neighborhood either. With such a low abortion rate, I had expected it to be somewhat more upscale. As I arrived at the church, I was even more curious than before about what Msgr. Marino might think of the low rate of abortion in his neighborhood.
“And then I saw it: the Chapel of Mary Mother of the Unborn.
“It all started in 1989, when Msgr. Marino was parochial vicar at Regina Pacis. He went to have dinner with a cousin upstate who had married a Jewish woman. The conversation turned to abortion, and things got so heated between Fr. Marino and his cousin’s wife that she asked him to leave. On his way home, he was heartbroken to think that he, a Catholic priest, was unable to defend the Church’s teaching on abortion adequately, even among family. He thought and prayed about it for days, and eventually came up with the idea of developing a response that would not be anti-abortion, but pro-life: a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of the Unborn.
“After being treated a bit dismissively by his pastor and his bishop, Msgr. Marino got official recognition for the title of Mary Mother of the Unborn from Rome. He wrote a prayer and had it approved by his bishop, found a statue, and converted the old baptistery at Regina Pacis into the chapel of Mary Mother of the Unborn. And so it began.
“Next to the statue, which is perched atop the baptismal font, is the Book of Life: prayers written for women who are expecting; couples who are having a hard time conceiving; couples mourning the loss of an unborn child through miscarriage; women mourning their abortions; parents wrestling with the anguish of an adverse prenatal diagnosis; mothers, fathers, grandmothers giving thanks for safe delivery. Nearly seventy large books have been filled with handwritten prayers since 1989. The walls are adorned with pictures of babies born in answer to prayer to Mary Mother of the Unborn. Every year, on the Feast of the Annunciation, Msgr. Marino brings the statue up to the church and blesses all the pregnant women of the parish, all the newborns, and all those mourning the loss of a child.”
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Peter in Germany
In a timely follow-up to yesterday’s post, this article by George Weigel about the Pope’s visit to Germany—reminding Germans of their religious heritage—is superb.
An excerpt.
“Americans exhausted by adolescent chants of "Pass this bill!" and the rest of the rhetorical detritus of the 2012 pre-campaign might go to the Vatican web site, click on Pope Benedict XVI, and spend a half-hour reading through the texts of the Holy Father's recent visit to his German homeland. It's amazing how refreshing it can be to listen to an intelligent and compassionate adult after weeks slogging through the slough of sound-bites crafted from focus-group hissy fits.
“For, despite the fact that a lot of the mainstream media long ago decided that Benedict XVI was a non-story (save for when he was being accused, ludicrously, of responsibility for the sexual abuse of the young), the 84-year-old pope has, in six years, established himself as perhaps the world's premier adult, at least among major international figures. He tells the truth to the roiled worlds of Islam about the imperative of finding Islamic warrants for religious freedom and the separation of religious and political power in a just state. He tells the truth to the United Nations about the irreducible moral core of world politics and economics. He tells the truth to Great Britain about the necessity of nurturing the human ecology that makes democracy possible (and does so in the place where Thomas More was condemned).
“And he does all of this without hectoring and without scolding. Rather, this elderly Bavarian, who is indisputably one of the most learned men on the planet, draws upon a deep and broad knowledge of the taproots of Western civilization, which he deploys rhetorically through the skills of a master-teacher in order to invite others into a deeper apprehension of the truth.
“It's not snap, crackle, and pop; it's something far more nourishing. And it draws. Benedict XVI drew somewhere between 1.5 million young people to Madrid in August for World Youth Day, a massive event that got precious little media attention, especially when compared to the slavish coverage of a few thousand young hellions trashing the streets of Britain earlier in the month. And he drew large and receptive crowds in his native Germany this past week, despite the carping of such disgruntled former colleagues as Prof. Hans Küng, who told Der Spiegel that Benedict was responsible for the "Putinization of the Catholic Church", which was rather thick, coming as it did from the Aaron Burr of the Catholic revolution that never was.
“But I digress.
“IN THE BUNDESTAG
“In his September 22 address to the Bundestag, Benedict spoke some home truths to his countrymen who, like many of their European Union compatriots, have forgotten a great deal about the cultural foundations of the West - foundations that are essential in supporting the political edifice of human rights and the rule of law. Contemporary Europe imagines that it can sustain its democratic politics with resources drawn from the continental Enlightenment and its intellectual heirs; Benedict XVI takes a longer and deeper view. And in a setting that inevitably conjures up memories of the vile anti-Semitism that led to the Shoah of European Jewry, Joseph Ratzinger boldly reached back into the Hebrew Bible to teach a lesson to politicians about their vocation: “In the First Books of Kings, it is recounted that God invited the young King Solomon, on his accession to the throne, to make a request. What will the young ruler ask for at this important moment? Success - wealth - long life - destruction of his enemies? He chooses none of these things. Instead he asks for a listening heart so that he may...discern between good and evil. (cf. 1 Kings 3.9). Through this story, the Bible wants to tell us what should ultimately matter for a politician. His fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work...must not be success, and certainly not material gain. Politics must be a striving for justice....Naturally a politician will seek success, without which he would have no opportunity for effective political action at all. Yet success [must be] subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right...‘Without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers?,' as Saint Augustine once said...”
“And from that patristic vantage point in 5th-century North Africa, Benedict did not hesitate to connect the dots to the bloody 20th-century drama in which he and so many of his audience were caught up: "We Germans know from our own experience that these words are no empty specter. We have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right and crushed it, so that the State became an instrument for destroying right - a highly organized band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world and driving it to the edge of the abyss."
An excerpt.
“Americans exhausted by adolescent chants of "Pass this bill!" and the rest of the rhetorical detritus of the 2012 pre-campaign might go to the Vatican web site, click on Pope Benedict XVI, and spend a half-hour reading through the texts of the Holy Father's recent visit to his German homeland. It's amazing how refreshing it can be to listen to an intelligent and compassionate adult after weeks slogging through the slough of sound-bites crafted from focus-group hissy fits.
“For, despite the fact that a lot of the mainstream media long ago decided that Benedict XVI was a non-story (save for when he was being accused, ludicrously, of responsibility for the sexual abuse of the young), the 84-year-old pope has, in six years, established himself as perhaps the world's premier adult, at least among major international figures. He tells the truth to the roiled worlds of Islam about the imperative of finding Islamic warrants for religious freedom and the separation of religious and political power in a just state. He tells the truth to the United Nations about the irreducible moral core of world politics and economics. He tells the truth to Great Britain about the necessity of nurturing the human ecology that makes democracy possible (and does so in the place where Thomas More was condemned).
“And he does all of this without hectoring and without scolding. Rather, this elderly Bavarian, who is indisputably one of the most learned men on the planet, draws upon a deep and broad knowledge of the taproots of Western civilization, which he deploys rhetorically through the skills of a master-teacher in order to invite others into a deeper apprehension of the truth.
“It's not snap, crackle, and pop; it's something far more nourishing. And it draws. Benedict XVI drew somewhere between 1.5 million young people to Madrid in August for World Youth Day, a massive event that got precious little media attention, especially when compared to the slavish coverage of a few thousand young hellions trashing the streets of Britain earlier in the month. And he drew large and receptive crowds in his native Germany this past week, despite the carping of such disgruntled former colleagues as Prof. Hans Küng, who told Der Spiegel that Benedict was responsible for the "Putinization of the Catholic Church", which was rather thick, coming as it did from the Aaron Burr of the Catholic revolution that never was.
“But I digress.
“IN THE BUNDESTAG
“In his September 22 address to the Bundestag, Benedict spoke some home truths to his countrymen who, like many of their European Union compatriots, have forgotten a great deal about the cultural foundations of the West - foundations that are essential in supporting the political edifice of human rights and the rule of law. Contemporary Europe imagines that it can sustain its democratic politics with resources drawn from the continental Enlightenment and its intellectual heirs; Benedict XVI takes a longer and deeper view. And in a setting that inevitably conjures up memories of the vile anti-Semitism that led to the Shoah of European Jewry, Joseph Ratzinger boldly reached back into the Hebrew Bible to teach a lesson to politicians about their vocation: “In the First Books of Kings, it is recounted that God invited the young King Solomon, on his accession to the throne, to make a request. What will the young ruler ask for at this important moment? Success - wealth - long life - destruction of his enemies? He chooses none of these things. Instead he asks for a listening heart so that he may...discern between good and evil. (cf. 1 Kings 3.9). Through this story, the Bible wants to tell us what should ultimately matter for a politician. His fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work...must not be success, and certainly not material gain. Politics must be a striving for justice....Naturally a politician will seek success, without which he would have no opportunity for effective political action at all. Yet success [must be] subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right...‘Without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers?,' as Saint Augustine once said...”
“And from that patristic vantage point in 5th-century North Africa, Benedict did not hesitate to connect the dots to the bloody 20th-century drama in which he and so many of his audience were caught up: "We Germans know from our own experience that these words are no empty specter. We have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right and crushed it, so that the State became an instrument for destroying right - a highly organized band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world and driving it to the edge of the abyss."
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
We Hold These Truths
It is one of the most remarkable books from an American Catholic theologian—We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition, by John Courtney Murray, S. J. (1960)—ever written, and I was reminded of that in the new issue of The Catholic Social Science Review, the journal of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, where, in introducing a symposium on Murray’s book, Kenneth L. Grasso (2011) wrote:
“…I would suggest that the task of understanding and critically engaging its far ranging, complex, and subtle argument remains among the most important pieces of unfinished business facing American Catholic thought.” (Getting Murray Right, in The Catholic Social Science Review: Volume XVI, (p. 85)
And, in rereading Murray, I came across this:
“Perhaps one day the noble many-storied mansion of democracy will be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged. Perhaps there will one day be wide dissent even from the political principles which emerge from natural law, as well as dissent from the constellation of ideas that have historically undergirded these principles—the idea that government has a moral basis; that the universal moral law is the foundation of society; that the legal order of society—that is, the state—is subject to judgment by a law that is not statistical but inherent in the nature of man; that the eternal reason of God is the ultimate origin of all law; that this nation in all its aspects—as a society, a state, an ordered and free relationship between governors and governed—is under God. The possibility that widespread dissent from these principles should develop is not foreclosed. If that evil day should come, the results would introduce one more paradox into history. The Catholic community would still be speaking in the ethical and political idiom familiar to them as it was familiar to their fathers, both the Fathers of the Church and the Fathers of the American Republic. The guardianship of the original American consensus, based on the Western heritage, would have passed to the Catholic community, within which the heritage was elaborated long before America was. And it would be for others, not Catholics, to ask themselves whether they still shared the consensus which first fashioned the American people into a body politic and determined the structure of its fundamental law." (1960) Sheed and Ward, New York. (pp. 42-43)
This hearkens back to the first post of this blog in 2007 commenting on a book written 47 years after Murrays’.
“…I would suggest that the task of understanding and critically engaging its far ranging, complex, and subtle argument remains among the most important pieces of unfinished business facing American Catholic thought.” (Getting Murray Right, in The Catholic Social Science Review: Volume XVI, (p. 85)
And, in rereading Murray, I came across this:
“Perhaps one day the noble many-storied mansion of democracy will be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged. Perhaps there will one day be wide dissent even from the political principles which emerge from natural law, as well as dissent from the constellation of ideas that have historically undergirded these principles—the idea that government has a moral basis; that the universal moral law is the foundation of society; that the legal order of society—that is, the state—is subject to judgment by a law that is not statistical but inherent in the nature of man; that the eternal reason of God is the ultimate origin of all law; that this nation in all its aspects—as a society, a state, an ordered and free relationship between governors and governed—is under God. The possibility that widespread dissent from these principles should develop is not foreclosed. If that evil day should come, the results would introduce one more paradox into history. The Catholic community would still be speaking in the ethical and political idiom familiar to them as it was familiar to their fathers, both the Fathers of the Church and the Fathers of the American Republic. The guardianship of the original American consensus, based on the Western heritage, would have passed to the Catholic community, within which the heritage was elaborated long before America was. And it would be for others, not Catholics, to ask themselves whether they still shared the consensus which first fashioned the American people into a body politic and determined the structure of its fundamental law." (1960) Sheed and Ward, New York. (pp. 42-43)
This hearkens back to the first post of this blog in 2007 commenting on a book written 47 years after Murrays’.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Capital Punishment Abolition Movement
Its latest manifestation comes from a group of American Catholic academics, who support the abolition statement posted by Catholic Moral Theology.
And regarding the specifics of the Davis case leading off the abolitionist’s plea, an article in the UK Telegraph has some devastating comments, which should have been more covered by the American press.
An excerpt.
“There are few subjects that provoke as much smug condescension and shallow anti-Americanism as the death penalty in the United States. And the “debate” over the execution in Georgia last Wednesday of Troy Davis, 42, convicted of the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, marked a new low.
“The sheer emotionalism and partisanship of much of the coverage of the case in Britain was an embarrassment. On virtually no other subject could you find facts presented so selectively, conclusions so sweeping and reasoning so simplistic.
“American campaigners against the death penalty know the buttons to press. Thus, we have statements like that from Thomas Ruffin, a lawyer for Davis, who said that Georgia had “legally lynched a brave, a good and indeed, an innocent man”.
“We saw “I am Troy Davis” T-shirts being worn as far afield as London, the message being that Davis was somehow plucked randomly from the streets and arbitrarily condemned, perhaps because he was black.
“Unfortunately, little about the Davis case fits this naïve picture. A jury of seven blacks and five whites found that Davis, who had a street name of “Rah”, standing for “Rough As Hell”, had been pistol-whipping a homeless man in a Burger King car park and had shot MacPhail dead when he intervened.
“Again and again, courts confirmed the Davis conviction as being on legally solid ground. Lynchings were carried out by racist mobs rushing to judgement, dragging their quarry out to string them up from a tree. To describe a two-decade legal process that twice went to the highest court in the land as a “lynching” is to try to strip the word of all meaning.
“Last year, the Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of directing that a District Judge...hold fresh hearings because seven out of nine eyewitnesses had supposedly recanted their testimony.
“Davis’s lawyers declined to put two of those witnesses on the stand, making their affidavits of almost no value. Judge William Moore, a President Bill Clinton appointee, found that of the five others, two did not in fact alter their original evidence and two lacked any credibility. He found that one, a jailhouse snitch, had genuinely recanted – but that it had been clear in the original trial he was a liar.”
The perspective we keep hearing about capital punishment from the American media, may cause us to wonder: "How can they get it so wrong?" but Catholics who expect the media to be on the side of the angels, does not understand Catholic teaching erected on the gospel proclamation: “and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted.” (Luke 2:34)
Pope John Paul II wrote a wonderful book on this: Sign of Contradiction.
Our organization supports capital punishment and we have published a book about it, Capital Punishment and Catholic Social Teaching: A Tradition of Support, excerpts of which are on our website.
Catholics have always understood the need to confront evil, and the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church, expressed through the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2266-#2267) and our Church’s greatest theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote concerning capital punishment:
“When, however, they fall into very great wickedness, and become incurable, we ought no longer to show them friendliness. It is for this reason that both Divine and human laws command such like sinners to be put to death, because there is greater likelihood of their harming others than of their mending their ways. Nevertheless the judge puts this into effect, not out of hatred for the sinners, but out of the love of charity, by reason of which he prefers the public good to the life of the individual. Moreover the death inflicted by the judge profits the sinner, if he be converted, unto the expiation of his crime; and, if he be not converted, it profits so as to put an end to the sin, because the sinner is thus deprived of the power to sin any more.”
Summa Theologica. (1948). Second Part of the Second Part: Question 25, Article 6, Reply to Objection 2.
And regarding the specifics of the Davis case leading off the abolitionist’s plea, an article in the UK Telegraph has some devastating comments, which should have been more covered by the American press.
An excerpt.
“There are few subjects that provoke as much smug condescension and shallow anti-Americanism as the death penalty in the United States. And the “debate” over the execution in Georgia last Wednesday of Troy Davis, 42, convicted of the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, marked a new low.
“The sheer emotionalism and partisanship of much of the coverage of the case in Britain was an embarrassment. On virtually no other subject could you find facts presented so selectively, conclusions so sweeping and reasoning so simplistic.
“American campaigners against the death penalty know the buttons to press. Thus, we have statements like that from Thomas Ruffin, a lawyer for Davis, who said that Georgia had “legally lynched a brave, a good and indeed, an innocent man”.
“We saw “I am Troy Davis” T-shirts being worn as far afield as London, the message being that Davis was somehow plucked randomly from the streets and arbitrarily condemned, perhaps because he was black.
“Unfortunately, little about the Davis case fits this naïve picture. A jury of seven blacks and five whites found that Davis, who had a street name of “Rah”, standing for “Rough As Hell”, had been pistol-whipping a homeless man in a Burger King car park and had shot MacPhail dead when he intervened.
“Again and again, courts confirmed the Davis conviction as being on legally solid ground. Lynchings were carried out by racist mobs rushing to judgement, dragging their quarry out to string them up from a tree. To describe a two-decade legal process that twice went to the highest court in the land as a “lynching” is to try to strip the word of all meaning.
“Last year, the Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of directing that a District Judge...hold fresh hearings because seven out of nine eyewitnesses had supposedly recanted their testimony.
“Davis’s lawyers declined to put two of those witnesses on the stand, making their affidavits of almost no value. Judge William Moore, a President Bill Clinton appointee, found that of the five others, two did not in fact alter their original evidence and two lacked any credibility. He found that one, a jailhouse snitch, had genuinely recanted – but that it had been clear in the original trial he was a liar.”
The perspective we keep hearing about capital punishment from the American media, may cause us to wonder: "How can they get it so wrong?" but Catholics who expect the media to be on the side of the angels, does not understand Catholic teaching erected on the gospel proclamation: “and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted.” (Luke 2:34)
Pope John Paul II wrote a wonderful book on this: Sign of Contradiction.
Our organization supports capital punishment and we have published a book about it, Capital Punishment and Catholic Social Teaching: A Tradition of Support, excerpts of which are on our website.
Catholics have always understood the need to confront evil, and the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church, expressed through the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2266-#2267) and our Church’s greatest theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote concerning capital punishment:
“When, however, they fall into very great wickedness, and become incurable, we ought no longer to show them friendliness. It is for this reason that both Divine and human laws command such like sinners to be put to death, because there is greater likelihood of their harming others than of their mending their ways. Nevertheless the judge puts this into effect, not out of hatred for the sinners, but out of the love of charity, by reason of which he prefers the public good to the life of the individual. Moreover the death inflicted by the judge profits the sinner, if he be converted, unto the expiation of his crime; and, if he be not converted, it profits so as to put an end to the sin, because the sinner is thus deprived of the power to sin any more.”
Summa Theologica. (1948). Second Part of the Second Part: Question 25, Article 6, Reply to Objection 2.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Converts & Cradle Catholics
As a convert, I have found the point of this article from the Wall Street Journal—that converts are more evangelical than cradles—to be true, somewhat.
For a convert, the discovery of the teachings of Catholicism is a profound revelation of truth found at last, after years of the wandering search through the mundane and often ridiculous varieties of religious experience in the world; while the cradle Catholic often takes it for granted, especially true for those cradle Catholics who no longer study the teachings of the Church.
An excerpt.
“Do converts to the faith make better evangelists than "cradle Catholics"? Pope Benedict XVI seems to think so. Christians since childhood should "ask forgiveness," the pope told a group of his former theological students recently, "because we bring so little of the light of [Christ's] face to others, and emanate so feebly the certainty that he is, he is present and he is the great and complete reality that we are all awaiting."
“But are Catholics "by birth"—or any believers raised in a religious tradition—indeed less-convincing witnesses, or less motivated, than are converts? Do they have a greater responsibility to live up to the tenets of the faith since they have known Christ from their earliest years? And are they a bigger disappointment to the Mother Church—and the world—when they come up short?
“Benedict himself would certainly qualify as a "cradle Catholic." Joseph Ratzinger was born at home, early on the morning of Holy Saturday in April 1927, into the all-encompassing Catholic culture of small-town Bavaria. Within a few hours of his birth, the infant's mother bundled him up and trudged through an early spring snow to have him baptized at the village parish—the first step on a long but in some ways commonplace life of faith, at least in that day and age.
"I am a perfectly ordinary Christian," he once said of himself, with characteristic modesty. Yet it's hard to argue that Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, has been anything less than enthusiastic in preaching the gospel. He entered the seminary while still an adolescent and rose from priest to cardinal to pope.
“But is that enough? Over the past 2,000 years, two narratives have competed in the Christian imagination: the ideal of the child raised in a Christian home, growing steadily in faith and virtue, and that of the repentant soul whose clamorous conversion leads heaven to rejoice more than over 99 of the righteous.”
For a convert, the discovery of the teachings of Catholicism is a profound revelation of truth found at last, after years of the wandering search through the mundane and often ridiculous varieties of religious experience in the world; while the cradle Catholic often takes it for granted, especially true for those cradle Catholics who no longer study the teachings of the Church.
An excerpt.
“Do converts to the faith make better evangelists than "cradle Catholics"? Pope Benedict XVI seems to think so. Christians since childhood should "ask forgiveness," the pope told a group of his former theological students recently, "because we bring so little of the light of [Christ's] face to others, and emanate so feebly the certainty that he is, he is present and he is the great and complete reality that we are all awaiting."
“But are Catholics "by birth"—or any believers raised in a religious tradition—indeed less-convincing witnesses, or less motivated, than are converts? Do they have a greater responsibility to live up to the tenets of the faith since they have known Christ from their earliest years? And are they a bigger disappointment to the Mother Church—and the world—when they come up short?
“Benedict himself would certainly qualify as a "cradle Catholic." Joseph Ratzinger was born at home, early on the morning of Holy Saturday in April 1927, into the all-encompassing Catholic culture of small-town Bavaria. Within a few hours of his birth, the infant's mother bundled him up and trudged through an early spring snow to have him baptized at the village parish—the first step on a long but in some ways commonplace life of faith, at least in that day and age.
"I am a perfectly ordinary Christian," he once said of himself, with characteristic modesty. Yet it's hard to argue that Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, has been anything less than enthusiastic in preaching the gospel. He entered the seminary while still an adolescent and rose from priest to cardinal to pope.
“But is that enough? Over the past 2,000 years, two narratives have competed in the Christian imagination: the ideal of the child raised in a Christian home, growing steadily in faith and virtue, and that of the repentant soul whose clamorous conversion leads heaven to rejoice more than over 99 of the righteous.”
Thursday, September 8, 2011
American Bishops & American Catholicism
A bracing call from Catholic Culture to U.S. Bishops to remember their failure in protecting the Church from dissident theologians within the Church in the past, and not allow the failure to continue into the future.
An excerpt.
“Fr. Thomas Weinandy caught my eye last week when he complained of a “crisis” in Catholic theology characterized by a rejection of Catholic faith and morals. Fr. Weinandy is the chief staff aide to the US bishops’ committee on doctrine. What are we to say about this crisis?
“The first and most important thing to say is that the crisis is of the bishops’ own making. I do not claim that the profound secularization of culture which has eroded Catholic theology on every side is primarily the fault of the bishops, but it is certainly their fault—including the fault of Rome herself—that a pitched battle was not waged in the 1960’s to keep Catholic universities and colleges from succumbing to this secular spirit. For the institutions of Catholic higher education are in fact the collective seat of theological studies, and what Fr. Weinandy rightly calls “a radical divide over the central tenets of the Catholic faith and the Church’s fundamental moral tradition” would far better have been nipped in the bud than allowed, for now nearly fifty years, to grow from strength to strength.
“Given the long percolation of Modernism in Catholic theological circles from the late 19th century and the rapid secularization of Western culture in the 1960’s, this battle would have been long and hard. But it is difficult to imagine that it would not now be over, instead of just beginning on far less favorable terrain. The key to victory would have been to make sure that heretics were clearly and forcefully declared to be where they belonged—that is, outside rather than within the Church, so that they could attack Catholic faith and morals only from secular institutions. You may recall that this was finally done with one premier dissenter, Hans Küng, who is no longer permitted to teach theology at any Catholic institution, with the result that nobody any longer cares what he thinks.”
An excerpt.
“Fr. Thomas Weinandy caught my eye last week when he complained of a “crisis” in Catholic theology characterized by a rejection of Catholic faith and morals. Fr. Weinandy is the chief staff aide to the US bishops’ committee on doctrine. What are we to say about this crisis?
“The first and most important thing to say is that the crisis is of the bishops’ own making. I do not claim that the profound secularization of culture which has eroded Catholic theology on every side is primarily the fault of the bishops, but it is certainly their fault—including the fault of Rome herself—that a pitched battle was not waged in the 1960’s to keep Catholic universities and colleges from succumbing to this secular spirit. For the institutions of Catholic higher education are in fact the collective seat of theological studies, and what Fr. Weinandy rightly calls “a radical divide over the central tenets of the Catholic faith and the Church’s fundamental moral tradition” would far better have been nipped in the bud than allowed, for now nearly fifty years, to grow from strength to strength.
“Given the long percolation of Modernism in Catholic theological circles from the late 19th century and the rapid secularization of Western culture in the 1960’s, this battle would have been long and hard. But it is difficult to imagine that it would not now be over, instead of just beginning on far less favorable terrain. The key to victory would have been to make sure that heretics were clearly and forcefully declared to be where they belonged—that is, outside rather than within the Church, so that they could attack Catholic faith and morals only from secular institutions. You may recall that this was finally done with one premier dissenter, Hans Küng, who is no longer permitted to teach theology at any Catholic institution, with the result that nobody any longer cares what he thinks.”
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Labor, Unions, & Work
In 1776, King Louis XVI of France revealed that he understood the natural right of the individual to work, which had little to do with labor unions, as reported in this article from The Catholic Thing.
An excerpt.
“Winston Churchill was brought back resoundingly to power in the General Election of 1950, and he remarked on the conceit of the opposing party in appropriating the name “Labour”: For “they are not the only ones who work in this country.”
“As we approach Labor Day, it seems curious that the day has come to celebrate the place and strength of labor unions. In recent years, unions have been disappearing from manufacturing and private industry; they have held on and grown mainly with jobs in the government, sustained by their political clout. By 2010, the union membership in government had come to exceed the membership in private industry (7.6 million, as against 7.1 million employees). But what is more curious is the way in which the “rights of workers” have been identified with the rights of unions –and radically detached, then, from the understanding of the “natural right” to work.
“That understanding was put forth with a rare clarity and force by political authority with – of all things – a proclamation by Louis XVI in 1776. The king’s edict was drafted by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, the estimable minister of finance and a prime defender of a liberal order in the economy and the polity. The purpose of the edict was to break the special privileges of guilds, trading companies, and other monopolies, including the government itself, in controlling access to employment.
“The edict would explicitly reject the premise that the means of making a living are the property, presumptively, of the state. These schemes of regulation brought their advantages for the privileged, but this “illusion” of benefits, said the monarch, concealed “the infraction of natural right.” He rejected the notion that “the right to work was a royal privilege which the king might sell, and that his subjects were bound to purchase from him”: “God in giving to man wants and desires rendering labor necessary for their satisfaction, conferred the right to labor upon all men, and this property is the first, most sacred, and imprescriptible of all.
“A little more than a century later, Leo XIII would fill out the moral grounding of that understanding in Rerum Novarum (1891). The Holy Father warned against socialist schemes that would do away with private property, so that “individual possessions should become the property of all, to be administered by the state.” The working man himself, he said, would be among “the first to suffer.”
An excerpt.
“Winston Churchill was brought back resoundingly to power in the General Election of 1950, and he remarked on the conceit of the opposing party in appropriating the name “Labour”: For “they are not the only ones who work in this country.”
“As we approach Labor Day, it seems curious that the day has come to celebrate the place and strength of labor unions. In recent years, unions have been disappearing from manufacturing and private industry; they have held on and grown mainly with jobs in the government, sustained by their political clout. By 2010, the union membership in government had come to exceed the membership in private industry (7.6 million, as against 7.1 million employees). But what is more curious is the way in which the “rights of workers” have been identified with the rights of unions –and radically detached, then, from the understanding of the “natural right” to work.
“That understanding was put forth with a rare clarity and force by political authority with – of all things – a proclamation by Louis XVI in 1776. The king’s edict was drafted by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, the estimable minister of finance and a prime defender of a liberal order in the economy and the polity. The purpose of the edict was to break the special privileges of guilds, trading companies, and other monopolies, including the government itself, in controlling access to employment.
“The edict would explicitly reject the premise that the means of making a living are the property, presumptively, of the state. These schemes of regulation brought their advantages for the privileged, but this “illusion” of benefits, said the monarch, concealed “the infraction of natural right.” He rejected the notion that “the right to work was a royal privilege which the king might sell, and that his subjects were bound to purchase from him”: “God in giving to man wants and desires rendering labor necessary for their satisfaction, conferred the right to labor upon all men, and this property is the first, most sacred, and imprescriptible of all.
“A little more than a century later, Leo XIII would fill out the moral grounding of that understanding in Rerum Novarum (1891). The Holy Father warned against socialist schemes that would do away with private property, so that “individual possessions should become the property of all, to be administered by the state.” The working man himself, he said, would be among “the first to suffer.”
Friday, August 26, 2011
Poverty Solution
The quote from the final paragraph in the excerpt: "The best anti-poverty program for children is a stable, intact family," just about says it all, in this article from the Ethics & Public Policy Center.
The excerpt.
“In thinking through the best way to help truly disadvantaged Americans regain access to the American Dream, it's helpful to disaggregate the issue and identify its shifting nature.
“There is, as there has always been, an economic component to poverty and opportunity in America, including growth, access to capital, and mobility. And those things remain crucial. But I want to submit for consideration a proposition which has significant empirical backing: the main driver of poverty in America today has to do with culture, mores, and lifestyle choices, not with economics.
“My former White House colleague Ron Haskins points out that "Census data show that if all Americans finished high school, worked full time at whatever job they then qualified for with their education, and married at the same rate as Americans had married in 1970, the poverty rate would be cut by around 70 percent." The best way to keep open the pathway to the American Dream, then, is through a "success sequence"; graduate from high school, get a job, get married, and then have babies.
“So what can we do to encourage more people to embrace this "success sequence"? By providing children with stable, orderly environments in which to grow up and to strengthen the institutions that shape the character and habits of the young.
“In practical terms, what am I talking about? First and foremost, it means we need more stable, intact families. The theologian Michael Novak once called the family the original and best department of health, education, and welfare. If families fail, other adults can help fill the breach. But it is very nearly impossible for other people and institutions to fully pick up the pieces.
“Children who are raised in broken families are far more likely to drop out of high school, use drugs, commit violent crimes, have children outside of marriage, develop mental health problems, become homeless, drop out of the labor force, go on welfare, and experience poverty. Indeed, the poverty rate for single-parent families is almost six-times the rate for married-couple families. "The best anti-poverty program for children is a stable, intact family," according to former Clinton administration officials William Galston and Elaine Kamarck.”
The excerpt.
“In thinking through the best way to help truly disadvantaged Americans regain access to the American Dream, it's helpful to disaggregate the issue and identify its shifting nature.
“There is, as there has always been, an economic component to poverty and opportunity in America, including growth, access to capital, and mobility. And those things remain crucial. But I want to submit for consideration a proposition which has significant empirical backing: the main driver of poverty in America today has to do with culture, mores, and lifestyle choices, not with economics.
“My former White House colleague Ron Haskins points out that "Census data show that if all Americans finished high school, worked full time at whatever job they then qualified for with their education, and married at the same rate as Americans had married in 1970, the poverty rate would be cut by around 70 percent." The best way to keep open the pathway to the American Dream, then, is through a "success sequence"; graduate from high school, get a job, get married, and then have babies.
“So what can we do to encourage more people to embrace this "success sequence"? By providing children with stable, orderly environments in which to grow up and to strengthen the institutions that shape the character and habits of the young.
“In practical terms, what am I talking about? First and foremost, it means we need more stable, intact families. The theologian Michael Novak once called the family the original and best department of health, education, and welfare. If families fail, other adults can help fill the breach. But it is very nearly impossible for other people and institutions to fully pick up the pieces.
“Children who are raised in broken families are far more likely to drop out of high school, use drugs, commit violent crimes, have children outside of marriage, develop mental health problems, become homeless, drop out of the labor force, go on welfare, and experience poverty. Indeed, the poverty rate for single-parent families is almost six-times the rate for married-couple families. "The best anti-poverty program for children is a stable, intact family," according to former Clinton administration officials William Galston and Elaine Kamarck.”
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Just War
It is—in relation to the work of the Lampstand Foundation—one of the most important systems of Catholic doctrine, because it forms the foundation of the Catholic teaching that evil must be confronted, and this article from The Catholic Thing is a reflection on that.
An excerpt.
“In describing my 2004 book about chivalry, a reviewer wrote that I am “one of those unassuming personalities who is quietly ready for all emergencies. A liberal who became a conservative, a secularized Protestant who became a Catholic, an intellectual who has plunged into the business world, a gentle man . . .” – and then he made mention of my martial-arts training. I blushed when I read it, but not because I’m humble.
“I was embarrassed by what I knew to be true about me, and he did not: I’m an angry man. I have a secret enemies list, and the martial-arts training – which I’m still doing (in modified form and in moderation) – is a way of expiating a certain amount of existential rage: indeed, the heavy bag I pummel in the gym represents one or another of my antagonists. Gentle man? Not by a truly Christian measure. (I will note that “gentle,” back when it got melded with “man,” had the original meaning of “polished,” as a sword might be. A sharp-edged man who fought his way to lands and titles was said to have been “gentled.”)
“I haven’t been terribly hard on myself about the anger, because in my experience, neither guilt nor shame is a particularly effective means of breaking free of either spiritual or psychological restraints. At one point in my life, I read much of the wonderfully peculiar work of the Dutch philosopher Spinoza (d. 1677), who at one point in his Ethics writes (and I paraphrase from memory): Once we have had a clear and distinct idea about a passion, it ceases to be a passion. By “passion” he meant a sin or an illusion. And it is ever more clear to me that to love Jesus Christ – to have clear and distinct knowledge of the incarnate God – is finally to be free of anger. No doubt I could write the same about the other deadly sins, but my concern here is with ira: rage, fury, wrath.
“Not all anger is wrong, of course. Aristotle thought lack of anger or insufficient anger was at times a fault. Detachment is a great virtue, but it’s hard to imagine being so disinterested that we feel no anger about abortion or child abuse or any other grave injustice. And as W. H. Auden wrote: “Anger, even when it is sinful, has one virtue: it overcomes sloth.” Anger is a tool, like a one iron in your golf bag. You may not use it often, but it’s there when you need a long, straight shot. Then you put it back in the bag.
“In this regard, the example of Jesus cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem is often cited – appositely, I believe. Our Lord certainly did not feel rage, which is anger exploded into destructive sinfulness, but neither did He speak sweet reason to the buyers and sellers who had turned His Father’s house into a den of thieves. He drove them out. He whipped them. He loved them too. But to do the driving and the whipping, as I have tended to, without the loving is to give back to a reckless and violent world its mirror image.
“As a rule, and over the course of my life (all of it as a nominal Christian, most of it as a Catholic), I have not loved my enemies. I have sometimes hit them square on the chin. When my sons were old enough to hear or watch adventure stories, there was almost always a scene in which the hero has the drop on the villain, has him in his sights, then has a moment of doubt and lets the bad man live. I’d close the book, hit the mute or the pause button. The boys would look over at me, and after a while they didn’t have to wait for me to say it, they would recite: “Always take the shot.”
“But that’s a literary/cinematic reaction, empirically based on the fact that ten times out of ten the bad guy ends up shooting the good guy or his lady friend or in some way comes back near the end to create havoc – all because our hero hadn’t earlier been more pragmatic. Maybe there’s a Scripture passage to be cited in support. If so, I don’t know it, but I will quote the great Scot philosopher Adam Smith (d. 1790): Kindness toward the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. This is why Catholics have just-war theory.”
An excerpt.
“In describing my 2004 book about chivalry, a reviewer wrote that I am “one of those unassuming personalities who is quietly ready for all emergencies. A liberal who became a conservative, a secularized Protestant who became a Catholic, an intellectual who has plunged into the business world, a gentle man . . .” – and then he made mention of my martial-arts training. I blushed when I read it, but not because I’m humble.
“I was embarrassed by what I knew to be true about me, and he did not: I’m an angry man. I have a secret enemies list, and the martial-arts training – which I’m still doing (in modified form and in moderation) – is a way of expiating a certain amount of existential rage: indeed, the heavy bag I pummel in the gym represents one or another of my antagonists. Gentle man? Not by a truly Christian measure. (I will note that “gentle,” back when it got melded with “man,” had the original meaning of “polished,” as a sword might be. A sharp-edged man who fought his way to lands and titles was said to have been “gentled.”)
“I haven’t been terribly hard on myself about the anger, because in my experience, neither guilt nor shame is a particularly effective means of breaking free of either spiritual or psychological restraints. At one point in my life, I read much of the wonderfully peculiar work of the Dutch philosopher Spinoza (d. 1677), who at one point in his Ethics writes (and I paraphrase from memory): Once we have had a clear and distinct idea about a passion, it ceases to be a passion. By “passion” he meant a sin or an illusion. And it is ever more clear to me that to love Jesus Christ – to have clear and distinct knowledge of the incarnate God – is finally to be free of anger. No doubt I could write the same about the other deadly sins, but my concern here is with ira: rage, fury, wrath.
“Not all anger is wrong, of course. Aristotle thought lack of anger or insufficient anger was at times a fault. Detachment is a great virtue, but it’s hard to imagine being so disinterested that we feel no anger about abortion or child abuse or any other grave injustice. And as W. H. Auden wrote: “Anger, even when it is sinful, has one virtue: it overcomes sloth.” Anger is a tool, like a one iron in your golf bag. You may not use it often, but it’s there when you need a long, straight shot. Then you put it back in the bag.
“In this regard, the example of Jesus cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem is often cited – appositely, I believe. Our Lord certainly did not feel rage, which is anger exploded into destructive sinfulness, but neither did He speak sweet reason to the buyers and sellers who had turned His Father’s house into a den of thieves. He drove them out. He whipped them. He loved them too. But to do the driving and the whipping, as I have tended to, without the loving is to give back to a reckless and violent world its mirror image.
“As a rule, and over the course of my life (all of it as a nominal Christian, most of it as a Catholic), I have not loved my enemies. I have sometimes hit them square on the chin. When my sons were old enough to hear or watch adventure stories, there was almost always a scene in which the hero has the drop on the villain, has him in his sights, then has a moment of doubt and lets the bad man live. I’d close the book, hit the mute or the pause button. The boys would look over at me, and after a while they didn’t have to wait for me to say it, they would recite: “Always take the shot.”
“But that’s a literary/cinematic reaction, empirically based on the fact that ten times out of ten the bad guy ends up shooting the good guy or his lady friend or in some way comes back near the end to create havoc – all because our hero hadn’t earlier been more pragmatic. Maybe there’s a Scripture passage to be cited in support. If so, I don’t know it, but I will quote the great Scot philosopher Adam Smith (d. 1790): Kindness toward the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. This is why Catholics have just-war theory.”
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Spirit of Catholicism
This is the title of a remarkable book by Karl Adam, published in 1935, a book that played a major role in the education of Pope Benedict XVI.
I would highly recommend it being added to your library for its clarity.
One excerpt.
“The Church’s doctrine of justification is based upon the presupposition that man is not only called to a natural end, to the fulfillment of his natural being, to the development of his natural powers and aptitudes, but also beyond that, to a supernatural elevation of his being which entirely surpasses all created aptitudes and powers, to sonship with God, to participation in the divine life itself. Such is the central fact of the glad tidings of Christianity: “To as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12)”
Adam, K. (1935). The Spirit of Catholicism, New York: MacMillan Company. (pp.204-205)
I would highly recommend it being added to your library for its clarity.
One excerpt.
“The Church’s doctrine of justification is based upon the presupposition that man is not only called to a natural end, to the fulfillment of his natural being, to the development of his natural powers and aptitudes, but also beyond that, to a supernatural elevation of his being which entirely surpasses all created aptitudes and powers, to sonship with God, to participation in the divine life itself. Such is the central fact of the glad tidings of Christianity: “To as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12)”
Adam, K. (1935). The Spirit of Catholicism, New York: MacMillan Company. (pp.204-205)
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Social Teaching of the Church
Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have made significant contributions to the teaching, and helped dramatically in the interpretation of Vatican II, as outlined by George Weigel in this article.
An excerpt.
“A year ago, my subject would probably have struck some as counter-intuitive, implausible, even absurd: why would an octogenarian German theologian with little practical experience of political and economic life have anything interesting or important to say about "the future of the West"? Pope Benedict XVI's Westminster Hall address last September ought to have put paid to at least some of that cynicism. For as many Britons conceded after last September's papal visit, the elderly German theologian had indeed given the United Kingdom, and the rest of the West, a lot to think about in his reflections on the relationship between the health of a culture, and the health of the democratic institutions that culture must sustain.
“And that, in turn, should focus our attention on the font of wisdom from which Pope Benedict drew in analysing the current cultural situation of the Western democracies: the social doctrine of the Catholic Church as it has developed from Leo XIII—the last pope of the 19th century and the first pope of the 20th—through John Paul II, the last pope of the 20th century and the first pope of the 21st. Benedict has, of course, made his own distinctive contributions to this evolving body of thought; but before exploring those themes, a brief sketch of the Catholicism that has emerged during the period following Leo XIII, and that is struggling to come to full maturity today, will help orient the distinctively Benedictine reflections on society, culture, politics, and economics that follow.
“Blessed John Paul II and Benedict XVI represent the full flowering of a renaissance in Catholic thought that began with Pope Leo XIII, who, after his election to the papacy in 1878, sought an engagement with modern intellectual and cultural life through distinctively Catholic methods. The Leonine Catholic renaissance flourished in the mid-20th century in philosophical, theological, liturgical, historical and biblical studies. Those studies in turn paved the intellectual way to the Second Vatican Council, and shaped its deliberations between 1962 and 1965. The Second Vatican Council was unique, however, in that it did not provide keys for its proper interpretation: it wrote no creeds, legislated no canons, defined no doctrines, condemned no heresies—all the things other ecumenical councils had done in order to provide keys for their interpretation. Absent such keys, the nature and terms of Vatican II's achievement were sharply, even bitterly, contested in the years immediately following the Council's conclusion. As a result, the evangelical energy that Blessed John XXIII had intended his council to ignite—the determination to bring the Gospel of God's passionate love for the world to the world through a two-way dialogue with the world—was dissipated.”
An excerpt.
“A year ago, my subject would probably have struck some as counter-intuitive, implausible, even absurd: why would an octogenarian German theologian with little practical experience of political and economic life have anything interesting or important to say about "the future of the West"? Pope Benedict XVI's Westminster Hall address last September ought to have put paid to at least some of that cynicism. For as many Britons conceded after last September's papal visit, the elderly German theologian had indeed given the United Kingdom, and the rest of the West, a lot to think about in his reflections on the relationship between the health of a culture, and the health of the democratic institutions that culture must sustain.
“And that, in turn, should focus our attention on the font of wisdom from which Pope Benedict drew in analysing the current cultural situation of the Western democracies: the social doctrine of the Catholic Church as it has developed from Leo XIII—the last pope of the 19th century and the first pope of the 20th—through John Paul II, the last pope of the 20th century and the first pope of the 21st. Benedict has, of course, made his own distinctive contributions to this evolving body of thought; but before exploring those themes, a brief sketch of the Catholicism that has emerged during the period following Leo XIII, and that is struggling to come to full maturity today, will help orient the distinctively Benedictine reflections on society, culture, politics, and economics that follow.
“Blessed John Paul II and Benedict XVI represent the full flowering of a renaissance in Catholic thought that began with Pope Leo XIII, who, after his election to the papacy in 1878, sought an engagement with modern intellectual and cultural life through distinctively Catholic methods. The Leonine Catholic renaissance flourished in the mid-20th century in philosophical, theological, liturgical, historical and biblical studies. Those studies in turn paved the intellectual way to the Second Vatican Council, and shaped its deliberations between 1962 and 1965. The Second Vatican Council was unique, however, in that it did not provide keys for its proper interpretation: it wrote no creeds, legislated no canons, defined no doctrines, condemned no heresies—all the things other ecumenical councils had done in order to provide keys for their interpretation. Absent such keys, the nature and terms of Vatican II's achievement were sharply, even bitterly, contested in the years immediately following the Council's conclusion. As a result, the evangelical energy that Blessed John XXIII had intended his council to ignite—the determination to bring the Gospel of God's passionate love for the world to the world through a two-way dialogue with the world—was dissipated.”
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Cop With a Heart Using his Head
The historical traditional essence of public safety work, beyond the immediately obvious one of protecting the public, is doing all you can to ensure a public safety problem you encounter creates a solution you can offer.
This story from the Tampa Bay News notes one cop’s work in that regard.
An excerpt.
“Deputy Steven Donaldson wants the homeless to be uncomfortable on the street.
“He doesn't pass out blankets, doesn't get them food.
“Maybe that will motivate them, he says.
“Still, this Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy may be one of their greatest advocates.
“Over the course of the past year, the 44-year-old Town 'N Country native, the middle child of three boys, has turned his patrol job into one that focuses solely on helping the homeless get shelter.
“He's an unlikely source of help. He calls himself conservative, says he's no social worker, no bleeding heart. He hates bureaucracy and prefers a business plan.
“Yet this deputy spends all of his working hours driving down West Hillsborough streets doing anything he can to get the homeless off the streets.
"I'm not trying to be philanthropic," he explains. "I'm solving a problem."
“For 15 years as a patrol deputy, he dealt with homeless calls: disturbances, trespassing, public consumption of alcohol. Every arrest required paperwork and a trip to the jail.
“But within days, the offender would often be back on the street, doing the same thing — a classic "revolving door," Donaldson says.
"I don't have a particular affection for homeless people," he says. "I have a particular grievance toward wasting my time."
“Now, he knows most of the homeless people in the Town 'N Country area by name. He visits them regularly and asks them what they need to get off the street.
“He mediates quarrels, pushes them to apply for jobs and fills out Social Security applications for the disabled.
“He calls it simply the "homeless initiative."
“So far, he says, he's gotten 52 off the street.”
This story from the Tampa Bay News notes one cop’s work in that regard.
An excerpt.
“Deputy Steven Donaldson wants the homeless to be uncomfortable on the street.
“He doesn't pass out blankets, doesn't get them food.
“Maybe that will motivate them, he says.
“Still, this Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy may be one of their greatest advocates.
“Over the course of the past year, the 44-year-old Town 'N Country native, the middle child of three boys, has turned his patrol job into one that focuses solely on helping the homeless get shelter.
“He's an unlikely source of help. He calls himself conservative, says he's no social worker, no bleeding heart. He hates bureaucracy and prefers a business plan.
“Yet this deputy spends all of his working hours driving down West Hillsborough streets doing anything he can to get the homeless off the streets.
"I'm not trying to be philanthropic," he explains. "I'm solving a problem."
“For 15 years as a patrol deputy, he dealt with homeless calls: disturbances, trespassing, public consumption of alcohol. Every arrest required paperwork and a trip to the jail.
“But within days, the offender would often be back on the street, doing the same thing — a classic "revolving door," Donaldson says.
"I don't have a particular affection for homeless people," he says. "I have a particular grievance toward wasting my time."
“Now, he knows most of the homeless people in the Town 'N Country area by name. He visits them regularly and asks them what they need to get off the street.
“He mediates quarrels, pushes them to apply for jobs and fills out Social Security applications for the disabled.
“He calls it simply the "homeless initiative."
“So far, he says, he's gotten 52 off the street.”
Friday, July 8, 2011
Goose for Dinner
Anytime the wasting of good food can be stopped by directing it to aid the poor—or, as in this case, the homeless—it is a great strategy, reflective of the social teaching of the Catholic Church
This article, as reported from the Washington Post, tells of such a case.
An excerpt.
“An overburden of the fowl is causing quite a foul problem at New York City airports.
“Sully would be pleased. After all, it was a flock of geese that forced him to skillfully land his US Airways jet in the Hudson River in 2009. Just after takeoff from LaGuardia, the plane he was piloting struck a flock of Canada geese, leading to a loss of engine power. With this testament to the danger of geese taking shelter near airports, New York City officials have hatched a unique plan to both get rid of the geese and solve hunger.
“They're helping the hungry, one pesky goose at a time. The city will pay for a company to round up geese that they deem to be dangerously close to jetways. After the birds are captured, they'll be shipped off to Pennsylvania food banks to feed the hungry. New York chose Pennsylvania as the recipient of its slaughtered geese, according to the New York Times, because they already have a system in place for processing and distributing the meat.
"Rather than disposing of them in landfills, we wanted to make sure they do not go to waste," New York's Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said. The city garnered criticism last year for gassing geese and letting the carcasses rot in landfills, wasting tons of meat.”
This article, as reported from the Washington Post, tells of such a case.
An excerpt.
“An overburden of the fowl is causing quite a foul problem at New York City airports.
“Sully would be pleased. After all, it was a flock of geese that forced him to skillfully land his US Airways jet in the Hudson River in 2009. Just after takeoff from LaGuardia, the plane he was piloting struck a flock of Canada geese, leading to a loss of engine power. With this testament to the danger of geese taking shelter near airports, New York City officials have hatched a unique plan to both get rid of the geese and solve hunger.
“They're helping the hungry, one pesky goose at a time. The city will pay for a company to round up geese that they deem to be dangerously close to jetways. After the birds are captured, they'll be shipped off to Pennsylvania food banks to feed the hungry. New York chose Pennsylvania as the recipient of its slaughtered geese, according to the New York Times, because they already have a system in place for processing and distributing the meat.
"Rather than disposing of them in landfills, we wanted to make sure they do not go to waste," New York's Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said. The city garnered criticism last year for gassing geese and letting the carcasses rot in landfills, wasting tons of meat.”
Monday, June 27, 2011
Catholic Social Teaching
A wonderful article from Crisis Magazine.
An excerpt.
“What is the magisterial authority of Catholic Social Teaching (CST), and how is it applied to real world situations? Catholic Social Doctrine is simply the voice of the Church, starting with the Sacred Scripture and the Church Fathers, that lays out the principles of how justice and charity are to be lived out in the world.
“The contemporary era of CST began with Pope Leo’s XII’ Rerum Novarum in 1891, and continues up to Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate. Through the social documents, one can see a gradual development that reflects the Church’s study of the times. That is to say, the Church is always looking to update and clarify the basic principles of Social teaching, given new economic situations and technologies, without ever contradicting authoritative past teaching.
“Confusion enters in when Catholic lay faithful (and in some cases clergy) mistakenly claim for their opinions the absolute magisterial authority of the Church and correspondingly denounce as un-Catholic the conflicting positions of others, whether their political criticism comes from the left, right, or center. The basic error is the failure to see that the foundational teachings and principles of CST can be applied in practice in a wide variety of ways — and working out the application of such principles in any given case rightly falls mainly to the laity, not the hierarchy. The magisterial Church’s role, normally exercised through the local ordinary (the bishop), is to point out when these applications appear to diverge from the principles and teachings themselves.
“Conflicting opinions on CST fall into three basic camps:
1. Those (including both some on the Catholic Left and Traditionalists) who seem to believe that all CST is Catholic doctrine, from basic principles of social justice down to their specific applications in the documents. They would argue, for example, that Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical Populorum Progressio requires Catholics to support government-to-government aid to developing nations (regardless of conflicting opinions about whether such aid actually harms the recipients). This group makes little distinction between the principles and their application.
2. Those who hold that the principles of CST constitute definitive Church teaching and require assent, but that the applications found in Church documents are strictly prudential.
3. Those who hold that CST constitutes the combined institutional wisdom of a Church that has existed since the Roman Empire. This group would argue that, while Catholics should follow CST, the principles are of relatively recent origin and therefore do not constitute definitive doctrine.
“Before delving deeper into these questions, we should also consider another modern development: the post-Vatican II emergence of national conferences of bishops (known as episcopal conferences), and the extent to which, especially in the United States, such conferences speak and teach authoritatively on issues of Catholic social teaching. There has been much confusion in this area, going back to the American bishops’ conference’s endorsement of controversial documents largely written by bureaucrats. The most noteworthy of these statements, emerging during the Reagan years in the context of the Cold War, dealt with nuclear weapons and was titled “The Challenge of Peace.”
“The reaction from the Catholic right was great. One of the founders of this magazine, Michael Novak, spearheaded a group of lay Catholic writers who issued a “pastoral” letter disagreeing with some of the conclusions of the conference’s document, as well as with the bishops’ authority on the subject and the extent to which their teaching was normative for their flock. The Novak piece, which took up an entire issue of National Review, was later published as Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age (Nashville: Thomas Nelson).
“Happily, the collapse of the Evil Empire and the end of the Cold War made “The Challenge of Peace” largely a dead letter. However, in 1997, the Committee on Marriage and Family of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued an even more controversial document titled “Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children.”
“On the bright side, this document led the Vatican (or, more precisely, Pope John Paul II) to issue a clarifying motu proprio (a document issued by the pope on his own initiative and personally signed by him), Apostolos Suos, on May 21, 1998. Apostolos Suos confirmed the limited authority of national bishops’ conferences, along with their associated committees, commissions, advisors, and experts. Since Vatican II, these had tended to usurp the fundamental canonical responsibility of an individual bishop as chief teacher of the faith in his diocese.
“In a statement apparently directed principally toward the USCCB, the Holy Father wrote, “Commissions and offices exist to be of help to bishops and not to substitute for them.”
An excerpt.
“What is the magisterial authority of Catholic Social Teaching (CST), and how is it applied to real world situations? Catholic Social Doctrine is simply the voice of the Church, starting with the Sacred Scripture and the Church Fathers, that lays out the principles of how justice and charity are to be lived out in the world.
“The contemporary era of CST began with Pope Leo’s XII’ Rerum Novarum in 1891, and continues up to Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate. Through the social documents, one can see a gradual development that reflects the Church’s study of the times. That is to say, the Church is always looking to update and clarify the basic principles of Social teaching, given new economic situations and technologies, without ever contradicting authoritative past teaching.
“Confusion enters in when Catholic lay faithful (and in some cases clergy) mistakenly claim for their opinions the absolute magisterial authority of the Church and correspondingly denounce as un-Catholic the conflicting positions of others, whether their political criticism comes from the left, right, or center. The basic error is the failure to see that the foundational teachings and principles of CST can be applied in practice in a wide variety of ways — and working out the application of such principles in any given case rightly falls mainly to the laity, not the hierarchy. The magisterial Church’s role, normally exercised through the local ordinary (the bishop), is to point out when these applications appear to diverge from the principles and teachings themselves.
“Conflicting opinions on CST fall into three basic camps:
1. Those (including both some on the Catholic Left and Traditionalists) who seem to believe that all CST is Catholic doctrine, from basic principles of social justice down to their specific applications in the documents. They would argue, for example, that Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical Populorum Progressio requires Catholics to support government-to-government aid to developing nations (regardless of conflicting opinions about whether such aid actually harms the recipients). This group makes little distinction between the principles and their application.
2. Those who hold that the principles of CST constitute definitive Church teaching and require assent, but that the applications found in Church documents are strictly prudential.
3. Those who hold that CST constitutes the combined institutional wisdom of a Church that has existed since the Roman Empire. This group would argue that, while Catholics should follow CST, the principles are of relatively recent origin and therefore do not constitute definitive doctrine.
“Before delving deeper into these questions, we should also consider another modern development: the post-Vatican II emergence of national conferences of bishops (known as episcopal conferences), and the extent to which, especially in the United States, such conferences speak and teach authoritatively on issues of Catholic social teaching. There has been much confusion in this area, going back to the American bishops’ conference’s endorsement of controversial documents largely written by bureaucrats. The most noteworthy of these statements, emerging during the Reagan years in the context of the Cold War, dealt with nuclear weapons and was titled “The Challenge of Peace.”
“The reaction from the Catholic right was great. One of the founders of this magazine, Michael Novak, spearheaded a group of lay Catholic writers who issued a “pastoral” letter disagreeing with some of the conclusions of the conference’s document, as well as with the bishops’ authority on the subject and the extent to which their teaching was normative for their flock. The Novak piece, which took up an entire issue of National Review, was later published as Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age (Nashville: Thomas Nelson).
“Happily, the collapse of the Evil Empire and the end of the Cold War made “The Challenge of Peace” largely a dead letter. However, in 1997, the Committee on Marriage and Family of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued an even more controversial document titled “Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children.”
“On the bright side, this document led the Vatican (or, more precisely, Pope John Paul II) to issue a clarifying motu proprio (a document issued by the pope on his own initiative and personally signed by him), Apostolos Suos, on May 21, 1998. Apostolos Suos confirmed the limited authority of national bishops’ conferences, along with their associated committees, commissions, advisors, and experts. Since Vatican II, these had tended to usurp the fundamental canonical responsibility of an individual bishop as chief teacher of the faith in his diocese.
“In a statement apparently directed principally toward the USCCB, the Holy Father wrote, “Commissions and offices exist to be of help to bishops and not to substitute for them.”
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Capital Punishment & Cost Benefit
This article from the Los Angles Times examines the cost of capital punishment in California and suggests remedies—the capital punishment abolitionist viewpoint is obvious—which do not include legislation to reduce unnecessary and frivolous lawsuits extending the death penalty cases way beyond common sense.
The Crime and Consequences Blog also examines the article.
An excerpt from the Los Angeles Times article.
“Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty's costs.
“The examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year.
“The study's authors, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, also forecast that the tab for maintaining the death penalty will climb to $9 billion by 2030, when San Quentin's death row will have swollen to well over 1,000.
“In their research for "Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature's Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle," Alarcon and Mitchell obtained California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records that were unavailable to others who have sought to calculate a cost-benefit analysis of capital punishment.
“Their report traces the legislative and initiative history of the death penalty in California, identifying costs imposed by the expansion of the types of crimes that can lead to a death sentence and the exhaustive appeals guaranteed condemned prisoners.
“The authors outline three options for voters to end the current reality of spiraling costs and infrequent executions: fully preserve capital punishment with about $85 million more in funding for courts and lawyers each year; reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes for an annual savings of $55 million; or abolish capital punishment and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.
“Alarcon, who prosecuted capital cases as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the 1950s and served as clemency secretary to Gov. Pat Brown, said in an interview that he believes the majority of California voters will want to retain some option for punishing the worst criminals with death. He isn't opposed to capital punishment, while Mitchell, his longtime law clerk, said she favors abolition. Both said they approached the analysis from an impartial academic perspective, aiming solely to educate voters about what they are spending on death row.
“Alarcon four years ago issued an urgent appeal for overhaul of capital punishment in the state, noting that the average lag between conviction and execution was more than 17 years, twice the national figure. Now it is more than 25 years, with no executions since 2006 and none likely in the near future because of legal challenges to the state's lethal injection procedures.
“The long wait for execution "reflects a wholesale failure to fund the efficient, effective capital punishment system that California voters were told they were choosing" in the battery of voter initiatives over the last three decades that have expanded the penalty to 39 special circumstances in murder, the report says.”
The Crime and Consequences Blog also examines the article.
An excerpt from the Los Angeles Times article.
“Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty's costs.
“The examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year.
“The study's authors, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, also forecast that the tab for maintaining the death penalty will climb to $9 billion by 2030, when San Quentin's death row will have swollen to well over 1,000.
“In their research for "Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature's Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle," Alarcon and Mitchell obtained California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records that were unavailable to others who have sought to calculate a cost-benefit analysis of capital punishment.
“Their report traces the legislative and initiative history of the death penalty in California, identifying costs imposed by the expansion of the types of crimes that can lead to a death sentence and the exhaustive appeals guaranteed condemned prisoners.
“The authors outline three options for voters to end the current reality of spiraling costs and infrequent executions: fully preserve capital punishment with about $85 million more in funding for courts and lawyers each year; reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes for an annual savings of $55 million; or abolish capital punishment and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.
“Alarcon, who prosecuted capital cases as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the 1950s and served as clemency secretary to Gov. Pat Brown, said in an interview that he believes the majority of California voters will want to retain some option for punishing the worst criminals with death. He isn't opposed to capital punishment, while Mitchell, his longtime law clerk, said she favors abolition. Both said they approached the analysis from an impartial academic perspective, aiming solely to educate voters about what they are spending on death row.
“Alarcon four years ago issued an urgent appeal for overhaul of capital punishment in the state, noting that the average lag between conviction and execution was more than 17 years, twice the national figure. Now it is more than 25 years, with no executions since 2006 and none likely in the near future because of legal challenges to the state's lethal injection procedures.
“The long wait for execution "reflects a wholesale failure to fund the efficient, effective capital punishment system that California voters were told they were choosing" in the battery of voter initiatives over the last three decades that have expanded the penalty to 39 special circumstances in murder, the report says.”
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Magic Genetic Bullet
Physiological causes of crime have been an object of search for a long time, and every criminal justice student will remember the Lombroso approach.
The belief of this apostolate, based on the teachings of the Catholic Church, is that criminals largely choose to become criminal and though certain social and psychological situations can play a role—though many others in the same situation will choose not to become criminals—it is largely a matter of individual choice as the Catechism teaches:
"Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:
-by partcipating directly and voluntarily in them;
-by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;
-by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;
-by protecting evil-doers.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1868).
But the search continues for the magic bullet, as this article from the New York Times remarks.
An excerpt.
“It was less than 20 years ago that the National Institutes of Health abruptly withdrew funds for a conference on genetics and crime after outraged complaints that the idea smacked of eugenics. The president of the Association of Black Psychologists at the time declared that such research was in itself “a blatant form of stereotyping and racism.”
“The tainted history of using biology to explain criminal behavior has pushed criminologists to reject or ignore genetics and concentrate on social causes: miserable poverty, corrosive addictions, guns. Now that the human genome has been sequenced, and scientists are studying the genetics of areas as varied as alcoholism and party affiliation, criminologists are cautiously returning to the subject. A small cadre of experts is exploring how genes might heighten the risk of committing a crime and whether such a trait can be inherited.
“The turnabout will be evident on Monday at the annual National Institute of Justice conference in Arlington, Va. On the opening day criminologists from around the country can attend a panel on creating databases for information about DNA and “new genetic markers” that forensic scientists are discovering.
“Throughout the past 30 or 40 years most criminologists couldn’t say the word ‘genetics’ without spitting,” Terrie E. Moffitt, a behavioral scientist at Duke University, said. “Today the most compelling modern theories of crime and violence weave social and biological themes together.”
“Researchers estimate that at least 100 studies have shown that genes play a role in crimes. “Very good methodological advances have meant that a wide range of genetic work is being done,” said John H. Laub, the director of the justice institute, who won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology last week. He and others take pains to emphasize, however, that genes are ruled by the environment, which can either mute or aggravate violent impulses. Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals.
“The subject still raises thorny ethical and policy questions. Should a genetic predisposition influence sentencing? Could genetic tests be used to tailor rehabilitation programs to individual criminals? Should adults or children with a biological marker for violence be identified?
“Everyone in the field agrees there is no “crime gene.” What most researchers are looking for are inherited traits that are linked to aggression and antisocial behaviors, which may in turn lead to violent crime. Don’t expect anyone to discover how someone’s DNA might identify the next Bernard L. Madoff.”
The belief of this apostolate, based on the teachings of the Catholic Church, is that criminals largely choose to become criminal and though certain social and psychological situations can play a role—though many others in the same situation will choose not to become criminals—it is largely a matter of individual choice as the Catechism teaches:
"Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:
-by partcipating directly and voluntarily in them;
-by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;
-by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;
-by protecting evil-doers.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1868).
But the search continues for the magic bullet, as this article from the New York Times remarks.
An excerpt.
“It was less than 20 years ago that the National Institutes of Health abruptly withdrew funds for a conference on genetics and crime after outraged complaints that the idea smacked of eugenics. The president of the Association of Black Psychologists at the time declared that such research was in itself “a blatant form of stereotyping and racism.”
“The tainted history of using biology to explain criminal behavior has pushed criminologists to reject or ignore genetics and concentrate on social causes: miserable poverty, corrosive addictions, guns. Now that the human genome has been sequenced, and scientists are studying the genetics of areas as varied as alcoholism and party affiliation, criminologists are cautiously returning to the subject. A small cadre of experts is exploring how genes might heighten the risk of committing a crime and whether such a trait can be inherited.
“The turnabout will be evident on Monday at the annual National Institute of Justice conference in Arlington, Va. On the opening day criminologists from around the country can attend a panel on creating databases for information about DNA and “new genetic markers” that forensic scientists are discovering.
“Throughout the past 30 or 40 years most criminologists couldn’t say the word ‘genetics’ without spitting,” Terrie E. Moffitt, a behavioral scientist at Duke University, said. “Today the most compelling modern theories of crime and violence weave social and biological themes together.”
“Researchers estimate that at least 100 studies have shown that genes play a role in crimes. “Very good methodological advances have meant that a wide range of genetic work is being done,” said John H. Laub, the director of the justice institute, who won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology last week. He and others take pains to emphasize, however, that genes are ruled by the environment, which can either mute or aggravate violent impulses. Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals.
“The subject still raises thorny ethical and policy questions. Should a genetic predisposition influence sentencing? Could genetic tests be used to tailor rehabilitation programs to individual criminals? Should adults or children with a biological marker for violence be identified?
“Everyone in the field agrees there is no “crime gene.” What most researchers are looking for are inherited traits that are linked to aggression and antisocial behaviors, which may in turn lead to violent crime. Don’t expect anyone to discover how someone’s DNA might identify the next Bernard L. Madoff.”
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Supreme Conservative
As Thomist Catholics know, being strongly conservative in relation to crime and criminals is being strongly compassionate, and accepting the eternal nature of sin and the sinner’s life.
Fortunately, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a Catholic, also realizes this, and a profile in USA Today—about which the Crime & Consequences Blog comments—takes note.
An excerpt from the USA Today article.
“WASHINGTON — Twenty years ago, when a senator asked then-appellate Judge Clarence Thomas why he wanted to be on the Supreme Court, Thomas said he often looked out his courthouse window at arriving prisoners and said to himself, "But for the grace of God, there go I."
“During his confirmation hearing, Thomas explained that he would identify with defendants: "So I can walk in their shoes and I could bring something different to the court."
“It is now clear that to Thomas, those remarks did not mean he necessarily would empathize with defendants. During two decades as the court's most consistent conservative, he has taken a tough approach to criminal defendants' cases, showing a disdain for hard-luck tales of bad childhoods and a conviction that defendants accept responsibility.
“As several cases this term have shown, criminal law is one area in which Thomas — who almost never speaks during public court sessions — is making his mark. He often writes alone, yet with strong rhetoric that gets attention — particularly in light of his difficult background and professed concern for men who took the wrong path.”
Fortunately, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a Catholic, also realizes this, and a profile in USA Today—about which the Crime & Consequences Blog comments—takes note.
An excerpt from the USA Today article.
“WASHINGTON — Twenty years ago, when a senator asked then-appellate Judge Clarence Thomas why he wanted to be on the Supreme Court, Thomas said he often looked out his courthouse window at arriving prisoners and said to himself, "But for the grace of God, there go I."
“During his confirmation hearing, Thomas explained that he would identify with defendants: "So I can walk in their shoes and I could bring something different to the court."
“It is now clear that to Thomas, those remarks did not mean he necessarily would empathize with defendants. During two decades as the court's most consistent conservative, he has taken a tough approach to criminal defendants' cases, showing a disdain for hard-luck tales of bad childhoods and a conviction that defendants accept responsibility.
“As several cases this term have shown, criminal law is one area in which Thomas — who almost never speaks during public court sessions — is making his mark. He often writes alone, yet with strong rhetoric that gets attention — particularly in light of his difficult background and professed concern for men who took the wrong path.”
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Capital Punishment & Public Policy
An excellent post at the Catholic Advocate concerning capital punishment, an issue that Catholics have struggled with, though the teaching of the Church consistently supports its use as appropriate under certain conditions.
An excerpt.
“The Death Penalty (Chapter VIII)
“Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor” (CCC 2267).
“Capital punishment is probably the most misunderstood moral issue in the Catholic Church. This confusion stems from the change made in the Catechism in 1997 to bring the teaching into conformity with the encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995).
“The change was widely reported in the media and by some Catholic commentators as the Church declaring total opposition to the use of the death penalty. This view is not supported by the words of the revised Catechism or Evangelium Vitae itself.
“The Church’s position can be summarized in this way: The Church is not opposed to the death penalty in principle but in practice. To oppose the death penalty in principle would be to remove one of the most basic responsibilities of the common good—to provide defense and security against aggression.”
An excerpt.
“The Death Penalty (Chapter VIII)
“Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor” (CCC 2267).
“Capital punishment is probably the most misunderstood moral issue in the Catholic Church. This confusion stems from the change made in the Catechism in 1997 to bring the teaching into conformity with the encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995).
“The change was widely reported in the media and by some Catholic commentators as the Church declaring total opposition to the use of the death penalty. This view is not supported by the words of the revised Catechism or Evangelium Vitae itself.
“The Church’s position can be summarized in this way: The Church is not opposed to the death penalty in principle but in practice. To oppose the death penalty in principle would be to remove one of the most basic responsibilities of the common good—to provide defense and security against aggression.”
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