ReligiousLeftLaw.com

A Tale of Two Roll Outs

A national television audience tuned in eagerly anticipating the moment. The air crackled with excitement. The countdown solemnly proceeded. And then it happened. It blew up on the launch pad. It exploded. In an expanding, billowing fireball, the Vanguard rocket intended to carry the American response to Sputnik sprayed burning fuel and debris across the south Florida landscape. December 6, 1957, was not a good day for the American space program.

The Affordable Care Act's roll out has not gone smoothly. No one should sugar coat its debut. The Healthcare.gov website could not sustain the volume that swamped it in the days after it opened for business on October 1, 2013. Some eight million people attempted to log onto either the federal healthcare.gov website or state-sponsored health-care websites in the first two weeks of operation and nearly all of them emerged from the process frustrated and defeated. It seems that even though the Congressional Budget Office had predicted large numbers of visitors -- estimating that some seven million people might try to enroll in the first three months -- the website was not equipped to handle this level of traffic.

Knowing that not only his presidency but the health and well-being of millions of Americans were at stake, President Obama prioritized the need to fix the website and it seems that the repairs are now working. News about the Affordable Care Act now accentuates its successes. On Monday, December 2, it was reported that perhaps as many as a million people visited the new and improved website. In a three-day span in early December, nearly 60,000 of these visitors actually logged off after obtaining insurance coverage.

Consumer Reports, which very publicly refused to endorse the healthcare.gov website when it opened for business in October, now extended its blessing. Nancy Metcalf, "Consumer Reports health care expert," strongly recommended the website: "It's terrific. I've tried it, it was working yesterday [December 3], through the busiest times."

Obstacles remain to be overcome, chief among them the continuing efforts to subvert and discredit the new system by right-wing politicians (more on that below). But for now, the Affordable Care Act is achieving at least its most important preliminary goal -- enrolling America's uninsured.

In comparison, the early space program did not go nearly so smoothly. The year 1958 was bumpy and uncertain. On January 31, the United States succeeded in launching Explorer One into earth orbit. But by this time, the Soviets had already launched Sputnik 2, placing a living creature -- the dog Laika -- into space. And on February 5, 1958, a second Vanguard rocket exploded, this time 57 seconds into the mission. In its eagerness to outdo the Soviets, the American space program then overreached. In August and again in October, the United States attempted to launch lunar probes. Neither launch succeeded in escaping earth's gravity, let alone come close to the moon. Pioneer 0, launched in August, exploded after only 73 seconds of flight.

What was the political reaction to these evident disasters? Dwight Eisenhower, the incumbent President, was a Republican. In late 1957, he had suffered a minor stroke. Both Houses of Congress were in the hands of the opposition Democratic Party. Clearly, if ever an administration was vulnerable, if ever a presidency stood at the mercy of its opponents, this was it.

Remarkably, after some initial public skepticism and doubt ("Adverse Publicity Harmful Abroad, Democrats Say", Robert C. Albright, The Washington Post and Times Herald Dec 7, 1957), focused principally on the decision to televise the Vanguard launch ("Butler Raps Satellite Publicity", Daily Defender Dec 9, 1957), the Democratic leadership resolved to be supportive. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson -- who could be fiercely partisan -- was responsible for rallying his Party to the President's side.

Johnson understood that national security was at stake. "By dissension and narrow partisanship," Johnson warned ominously, the Congress could create an "insurmountable barrier" to success ("Johnson's Talk to Democratic Senators", The Washington Post and Times Herald Jan 8, 1958). If Congress did not adopt a stance of "non-partisan" cooperation on outer space, Johnson continued, it could set the nation up for a replay of Pearl Harbor ("Johnson's Now a Democrat Second", Robert C. Albright, The Washington Post and Times Herald Dec 22, 1957).

Success in space exploration was deemed to be above politics, a cause vital to American well-being. It was the Cold War, after all, and fear of the Soviets lurked always in the background.

But the United States today is confronted with a crisis that endangers perhaps even more immediately the welfare of the American polity. And that is the lamentable state of health care in the United States. How healthy you will be, how soon you will die, is determined chiefly by how affluent or how poor you are.

Consider: In a moving story in the Washington Post, reporter Michael Fletcher documents life in two adjacent Florida counties. In affluent St. John County, men live to 78 and women live to 83. In nearby Putnam County, men live to 71 and women live to 78. The difference-maker? Income and the access to the good health care that goes with it. Consider also: Nationwide, poorly-educated white men have seen their life expectancy decline -- yes, decline -- by three years, while their female counterparts have their life expectancy collapse by five years.

Demographic collapses like this just should not happen, certainly not in affluent nations. It happened in Russia in the 1990s, when the social breakdown that followed the collapse of the Soviet led to the massive demoralization of the people and the disappearance of basic social services. But life expectancy just should not collapse among broad segments of the population in a nation like ours.

The right wing has had nothing to offer on this crisis beyond some blame-the-victim rhetoric. Indeed, they have demonstrated that they are the principal obstacles to improvement and reform. To say this is not to be partisan or inflammatory. It is truth, as reported by no less an authority than Bill Moyers, on his website, billmoyers.com. There we encounter the story of a cancer patient who was refused cancer screenings because of his uninsured status and inability to pay. Finally, when his cancer fatally metastasized, he was able to seek the treatment of acute symptoms through an emergency room.

The right wing refuses even to acknowledge the class-based nature of health care and life expectancy. Instead, their message is a disconnected one about repeal. To log onto a right-wing news aggregator like Realclearpolitics.com proves the point. There we find Charles Hugh Smith gloating: "Obamacare is a Catastrophe That Cannot Be Fixed." We find Jack Kelly engaging in some alternate reality messaging when he writes: "Messaging Isn't the Problem, Obamacare Is. Carl Cannon boasts about how united the Republican Party has become on the issue of repeal. Philip Klein crows: "Obama Has Shown How a Future GOP President Can Gut ObamaCare." And, as Brian Beutler has shown, opportunities for mayhem and mischief abound in early 2014, when people begin to make use of their new health-insurance coverage.

Not one of this merry band of nihilists grasps the enormity of the health-care crisis confronting America. The life expectancy of the poor is plummeting -- for the simple reason that they are poor. Unlike Lyndon Johnson, unlike the Democrats of the 1950s, today's right wing is incapable of putting aside a narrow, self-interested partisanship in order to serve the nation's common needs. And that is to their lasting shame.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/a-tale-of-two-roll-outs_b_4420371.html

Appoint Jennifer Haselberger

          Michael Sean Winters said it first:  Pope Francis should appoint Jennifer Haselberger to the new commission he is organizing to address the on-going crisis of priestly pedophilia.

          The formation of a Commission to address sex abuse was announced on Thursday, December 5, 2013.  It remains unclear what the Commission's powers will be or its precise jurisdiction.  It even remains uncertain where precisely in the Vatican bureaucracy the Commission will be placed.

          Still, we know some of the details of what Pope Francis has planned, thanks to Sean Cardinal O'Malley's announcement.  He indicated that the Commission will address the pastoral dimension of the child-abuse crisis.  Presumably, he means that the Commission might help facilitate the healing process which the entire Church, lay and clerical alike, must undergo to put this crisis of confidence behind it.

          Cardinal O'Malley indicated that the Commission will also look to reforming the ways in which the Church safeguards children.  Finally, the Cardinal stated that the Commission will consist of a cross-section of the Church that will "include priests, men and women religious, and laypeople."

          Critics have already expressed fears that the Commission will lack sufficient independence to be credible.  To that end, the Commission's members must not only enjoy complete liberty of action, but must have every appearance of freedom to inquire and to make recommendations.

          And this is where Jennifer Haselberger comes in.  She is the St. Paul-Minneapolis canon lawyer whose advice to Archdiocesan authorities to practice openness and transparency in their handling of pedophilia cases went unheeded and who has now become a prominent whistle-blower.

          She is highly trained.  She is a graduate of St. Catherine University in St. Paul and has a degree in canon law from the University of Leuven in Belgium.  She took decisive action, she has said, because of the need to protect children from harm.  Her actions were selfless -- she felt an imperative need to respond to perceived continuing threats to the welfare of the vulnerable to exposing wrong-doing to public scrutiny.

          The Commission's members must be independent.  They must be fearless.  And they must be credible.  A good place to achieve these goals is to nominate Jennifer Haselberger to the new papal commission on child abuse.

A Thank You Note to Pope Francis

Your Holiness --

As we approach American Thanksgiving, it is time to express gratitude for a very important development in the life of the Catholic Church, which I very much love.  And that is the grace of your pontificate.

It began in those exciting early days.  Recall the foot-washing ceremony on Holy Thursday?  What did the foot-washing represent?  Did it symbolize Jesus commissioning an all-male priesthood? Or did it stand for something else?  Perhaps Jesus' awareness that those who lead must first of all serve.  When you washed the feet of those youthful prisoners, boys and girls, Christians and non-Christians, you made it clear that Jesus' message of ultimate self-sacrifice in the service of others is that it must have universal appeal.

And you have been living up to that ideal in your own public ministry.  Your wreath-laying at Lampedusa was heart-warming even while it was heart-wrenching.  You reminded us that desperate immigrants, who have done nothing wrong aside from searching for a better life, are routinely blotted from our view. Their lives are led and lost on the invisible margins, and you made that visible to us.  And the visit you paid to the Brazilian slum, where you showed and shared your love, that reminded us of what your namesake, St. Francis, would have done.  And we know that St. Francis acted in imitation of Jesus.

You know and feel in your bones that the great crisis confronting the world today is the worship of Mammon.  Money has become the new global deity, commanding universal tribute, universal obeisance.  It is, you said, the "idol" before which the world bows down.  But as we know from the Gospel, we cannot serve both God and Mammon.  I pray that you draw the Church into effective action on behalf of the poor.  This would be in keeping with the priority Jesus set in the Gospels.

I am grateful for that meeting you had with the Latin American nuns in early June.  The good nuns you hosted harbored a great fear that they might be investigated by a hostile Church bureaucracy, the way their sisters in North America had been.  You put their minds at ease, reminding them not to worry about making mistakes: "Perhaps even a letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine [of the Faith] will arrive for you, telling you that you said such or such thing. Explain whatever you have to explain, but move forward." "It is necessary to shake things up," you told those sisters.  And you have not shied away from doing that yourself, your Holiness.

Remember how you said "gay" on your return flight to Rome after World Youth Day in Brazil?  "If a person is gay, and follows the Lord, and has good will, then who am I to judge?" This was a truly remarkable statement.  Efforts have been made to minimize it.  Commentators persistently try to misinterpret it as applying exclusively to priests and candidates for the priesthood.  For sure, the question you were asked dealt explicitly with a priest you had appointed to high office, but your answer was not confined to that situation.  It was general, meant to apply to clergy and laity alike.

At the same time, you have always -- conspicuously, consistently -- avoided the harsh condemnatory language of the Catechism where gays are concerned.  Changing doctrine is hard, but changing tone, shifting emphasis, these are welcome first steps.  The Church, after all, practiced de facto religious tolerance long before Vatican II recognized religious liberty as a human right.

I am grateful for your openness to culture.  You do not see the world in dualistic terms.  It is not "us against them."  You appreciate that human beings are admixtures of flawed sinfulness and genuine greatness.  You understand that culture, which is merely human experience writ large, comprises the same admixture.  Even a great sinner is capable of good deeds.  And even a great sinner can be forgiven.  This does not mean that evil is overlooked or excused.  Rather, it means that the wholeness of persons and societies are taken into account.  And I think that this means the end of the "culture war."

The Church should not, of course, surrender on essential principles.  But Church leaders should come to know that it is one thing to cooperate with the political process to achieve worthy ends and another thing altogether to take political stands, finding one party's platform praiseworthy while denouncing the other side as representing "intrinsic evil."

You set a good example of how a prelate must approach politics when you took your valiant stand on Syrian intervention.  You realized that violence begets violence and your call for peace, which was not driven by partisan motives but by a desire to spare innocent lives, transcended narrow political boundaries.  Your prayers were heartfelt and I think they achieved tangible results.  Thank you.

I look forward to next year.  I pray that you are not captured by your handlers, that you keep your spontaneity, and that the Gospel always remains foremost.  You've certainly helped to renew my faith.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/a-thank-you-note-to-pope_b_4326988.html 

Why Love Prevails: What Is Marriage?

Does love make a marriage?  Or does sex?  And if sex makes a marriage, then what kind of sex?  These were central themes of a debate I participated in at the University of Notre Dame on Nov. 9th, where I discussed these questions with two proponents of a highly traditional understanding of the marriage relationship, Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis.

Anderson and Girgis are among the co-authors (with Robert P. George) of the new book, "What Is Marriage?  Man and Woman, A Defense."  To summarize their argument:  Marriage can only be brought about by engaging in a particular type of sex act, heterosexual coitus.  Nothing else can substitute for this constitutive element.  Nothing else can take its place.

Marriage, on their account, is a "comprehensive relationship."  Indeed, it is the primordial comprehensive relationship.  What makes it so?  To Anderson and Girgis, the case for marriage begins with the human body. The body is made for unity with another human being.  And that unity is uniquely achieved through heterosexual coitus.

Marriage, they maintain, is a kind of friendship, but it is also more than friendship.  For friendship is a mere "union of hearts and minds," while marriage is a unity of "mind and body" (p. 33).  And this unity of mind and body is achieved, can only be achieved, through heterosexual coital coupling.  Such coupling, they continue, confers something more than intimacy, something more than emotional closeness, because it is ordained to bring into being the next generation.  And for that reason, marriage is also permanent and exclusive.

Other forms of friendship, other forms of sexual coupling (in our debate they dwelt especially on anal intercourse), by the logic of their argument, are incomplete and should not qualify as marital acts (p. 30).  This, Anderson and Girgis insist, is why the State must continue to retain traditional marriage and why it must reject all other forms of union as unworthy of a similar level of legal protection.  Emotion, for Anderson and Girgis, is an inadequate foundation for marriage, affection a weak and unsteady cornerstone.  Only the singular unity of heterosexual coitus can ever truly create a marriage.

How do we unpack these contentions?  We should begin with the idea of permanence because this is where their argument first begins to crumble.  Marriage is permanent, Anderson and Girgis assert, because two bodies come together and perform acts that may lead to procreation.  As they put it: "In coitus, and there alone, a man and a woman's bodies participate by virtue of their sexual complementarity in a coordination that has the biological purpose of reproduction" (p. 26).  Even where reproduction does not occur, the "coordination toward a single end" is present, and that coordination is enough to create a permanent union.

This is an erroneous understanding of the nature of intimate human relationships.  Heterosexual coitus simply does not incline itself, without more, to the formation of permanent relationships.  Every day, people engage in the most transitory of heterosexual couplings.  There is no intention in these fleeting acts of casual sex to create something permanent.  The intention is nothing more than momentary pleasure.  Permanence is the object that is most devoutly to be feared.

Anderson and Girgis must therefore explain why and how such sexual unions achieve permanence since the people who are having sex do not automatically equate the sex act with permanent commitment.  They try to rescue their case by introducing the idea of the marital vow (p. 34).  The couple swear a solemn promise before God and the State that they will remain together forever regardless of life's vicissitudes.  And then society simultaneously assists them in the fulfillment of that promise and holds them to it, by making exit from marriage deliberately difficult.

But Anderson and Girgis never inquire into why people make marriage vows in the first place.  What causes someone to want to spend forever with another person?  To ask this question requires us to leave the question of bodily design aside and focus more deeply on what really leads people to make permanent commitments.  After all, do people really to one another:  "Well, my bodily design matches yours, so let's stay together forever?"  Really?!

In truth, bodily design has little to do with marriage, understood as a permanent and enduring relationship.  It is, in fact, the very emotion, the human affection, the capacity for friendship, which Anderson and Girgis try to dismiss as insufficient, that makes a marriage.  After all, sex without love is transient pleasure.

The human heart's longing for permanence is not magically conjured into being by the injection of semen into vagina, but arises instead from the deepest wellsprings of human emotion.  It is love which seeks to bring the next generation into being, which clothes and cares for children, which sees them safely into adulthood.  And it is love which explains why childless couples remain together, not, as Anderson and Girgis contend, some sort of "team" solidarity with those couples capable of child-bearing (p. 30).  In that paradigm of marriage for Catholics, the union of Mary and Joseph, it could only have been love that held the Holy Family together, not sex, since Catholics believe that Mary was "ever virgin."

And if marriage arises from love, then who is capable of love?  That is the question posed by advocates of same-sex marriage.  And there we must consult the latest empirical studies, which demonstrate that same-sex couples have at least as good a chance to form loving, enduring relationships as heterosexual couples.

Sexual orientation, it is now well-established, is part of naturally-occurring human variability.  While scientists have not identified precise physiological or psychological reasons why some people are gay and others are not, it is clear that sexual orientation is not a choice.  And it is equally clear that sexual orientation is not something like alcoholism, or a susceptibility to addictive behaviors.  People who are attracted to members of the same sex are as capable as heterosexuals of building emotionally healthy, permanent, intimate relationships with the ones they love.

Indeed, in those parts of Europe that have a long history of same-sex marriage, the divorce rates for same-sex couples are sometimes significantly lower than for heterosexual partners.  Thus in Denmark, where same-sex marriage has been allowed since 1989, "the divorce rate among Danish homosexuals is only 17 percent, compared to 46 percent for heterosexuals."

And if we consider the procreative dimension of marriage, it seems that same-sex couples are faring well by the usual measures of success.  Let us consider an important report which appeared in the Spring, 2013 issue of the journal, "Pediatrics," the "Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics."  Writing on behalf of the Academy, the study called for "support for marriage equality" and the repeal of laws restrictive of the rights of gay couples.  The report concluded that many factors might impair the healthy development of children, "but the sexual orientation of their parents is not among them."

In the end, it is love that makes a marriage, not body parts.  It is love that keeps couples together, that sustains them through hardships and heartaches.  It is love which motivates them to provide well for the next generation.  And it is a love that is not limited to heterosexuals, but that belongs to all human beings capable of warm and tender and feeling for others.

Cross-Posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/why-love-prevails-what-is_b_4276518.html 

All Is Lost and the Human Condition

We are born alone, we die alone, and we are swept unremembered into a meaningless eternity.  This is the message a viewer might take away from Robert Redford's performance in his All Is Lost.

The film is a stunning tale of loneliness.  It is set on a sailboat adrift on the Indian Ocean.  Robert Redford -- we are never given his screen name -- is sailing far outside shipping lanes in a part of the world where humans rarely venture.  The opening scene is one of desolation.  His ship has been wrecked and he is writing a note which he intends someone to read.  We are never told, however, who his intended recipient might be.  A wife perhaps?  An estranged lover?  A son or a daughter?  An old college friend?  Or, perhaps just a futile effort at being remembered by someone, somewhere, after time runs out for our protagonist.

After this opening scene, the film fills in a bit of back story.  We learn that Redford is in this predicament because his sailing sloop has been rammed by a random shipping container that had broken loose from one of the large freighters traversing these forgotten waters.  Roused from slumber, Redford must engage in a continuous struggle to save his life.

Like life itself, the movie seems to say, it is a contest Redford is destined and doomed to lose.  Valiantly, he patches the leak with spare fiberglass and epoxy, attaching some wooden planks for added strength.  Having lost electrical power, Redford improvises, creating a manual control for the sloop's bilge pumps, so he might slowly, laboriously drain the water that had poured in from the leak.

But Redford cannot breathe easy.  Briefly, he managed to restore electricity in the hope of communicating with the outside world, but the ship's radio sputtered into silence after a few minutes' fitful service.  Now, Redford is truly alone.

A storm blows up, which wrecks the boat.  In the teeth of the gale, Redford is forced to deploy an inflatable life raft, which he kept tethered to the main vessel.  When calm is restored, he succeeds in transferring some supplies from the sloop to the lifeboat before his fatally damaged sailboat sinks beneath the waves.

Redford's only hope now is the little orange and red oval which has become his world.  In one poignant scene, shot from above, we see Redford curled up, asleep in his tiny bobbing dot, surrounded by a grim and unyielding universe of blue.  Is it a microcosm of the earth in the void of space?  Certainly, I thought so.

Like we do when we encounter the headwinds of life, Redford continued to improvise, in his case brilliantly.  He is a modern sailor accustomed to GPS and the many convenient ways of keeping track of our place in the world.  But thrown into unfamiliar circumstances, he opened a box containing an ancient mariner's sextant.  Reading a how-to manual as he assembled the pieces and gazed at the heavens, Redford charted a course for his little vessel, day-by-day working his way into the Indian Ocean shipping lanes, in the hope that he might be seen and rescued.

But his dream of rescue was dashed.  First one and then another large container vessel loom into view.  Redford shoots off his flares, shouts, tries to draw the attention of the two ships.  But the ships trudge onward, their propellers audibly churning, giving the appearance not of ghost-ships, but of robot-ships, fully automated, dehumanized pieces of machinery carrying their large cargoes of just-in-time inventory in that ceaseless crushing progress we call efficiency.  These lifeless, unresponsive vessels -- are they nothing more than the god of myth and magic, indifferent to the pleas of a humanity born to die?

Redford slowly drifts back out of the shipping lanes.  Venturing into them had been a fool's errand to begin with.  And then another storm brews on the horizon.  Redford is tossed and turned, driven mad by the enclosing reality of personal extinction.  The scene has all the force of the ancient Greek myths, Sisyphus condemned to roll the rock up the hill only to be crushed again at nightfall.

Once again, however, calm is restored.  Redford sees a light at close distance.  He lights a fire to call attention to his plight.  The fire gets out of hand, his little lifeboat is burned, and Redford is thrown into the sea.

The movie is one of the most powerful existentialist statements I have seen brought to film in years.  We are forced to ask:  Is the whole struggle for life pointless?  Meaningless?  The void, the chasm that is deep space, the infinity that envelops us, does anything finally matter?  Why resist the closing of the light?

All Is Lost reminded me, on a surface level anyway, of the Jon Krakauer book (and movie) Into the Wild.  In that story, we see Chris McCandless, a recent Emory University graduate, embark on a solitary (and deadly) quest to find himself in the Alaska back-country.  But that story, finally, is about self-discovery.  It is a more extreme version of Henry David Thoreau on Walden Pond, a search to find human authenticity in the midst of society's vain pomps and hollow glory.

All Is Lost, on the other hand, means to ask a very different question:  Is the human condition futile?  There is no redemption here.  No grace.  No pardon received, though Redford's note in the movie's opening scene tepidly beseeches forgiveness.

As a Christian, I might venture a response to the unremitting bleakness of this canvas.  "God is love," the first Epistle of John proclaims (1 John 4: 16).  The human condition is not one of loneliness but of warm relationship.  We are connected to countless others -- those who lived generations and centuries before us, those who are friends and neighbors and family today, and those generations who are as yet unborn to whom we have the responsibility of good and faithful stewards.

This is what the Redford character is missing and the essential flaw in the existentialist message.  The human community, in Redford's world, has been stripped away and the person stands in solitary oneness against the cosmos.  Redford's character is the Nietzschean Superman, the Ayn Randian striver, but there is no triumph in his life, no final victory, for he dies defeated and alone, cursing his fate.

Our salvation comes from the many sacrifices, large and small, we make for one another, the goodness and kindness we show and share with each other.  We may be adrift in a large and hostile ocean, surrounded by the impenetrable vastness of infinity, and yet if we have each other we are not lost or without hope. All Is Lost -- all, indeed, is lost if we have not love for one another.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/all-is-lost-and-the-human-condition_b_4209972.html 

Let's Banish Talk About 'Intrinsic Disorder'

Paras. 2357 and 2358 of the Catholic Catechism describe same-sex attraction as "objectively disordered" and same-sex relations as "intrinsically disordered."  These are passages, it seems, that Pope Francis refuses to speak.  Even though as supreme pontiff he has addressed same-sex attraction several times in highly public ways, so far as I can determine he has made no reference to these passages.  The Pope knows that this language is in the Catechism.  After all, he has quoted and discussed those portions of the Catechism which recognize that gays can be subject to terrible discrimination and must be made to feel respected and welcomed.

The time has come, I believe, to remove the offending language from the Catechism.  Catechisms can be changed after all.  Bear in mind, the Catholic Catechism to which these paragraphs belong has only been in effect since 1997 and that the Catholic Church has issued other, very different, catechisms in her long history.

To appreciate just how dramatically catechisms can change, just compare the 16-century Catechism of the Council of Trent with the 1997 version issued by John Paul II.  Take the matter of religious liberty.  Issued only decades after the Protestant Reformation, the Tridentine Catechism brimmed with denunciations of Protestants.  They were "schismatics."  They were "deserters" from the Church Militant, and should be regarded as enemies of the faith.  They were "wicked" and "flagitious" and remained subject to the Church's criminal code.

The 1997 Catechism could not be more different.  In the new Catechism, other Christian denominations are described as "brothers in the Lord."  Catholics are encouraged to cooperate with them, knowing that Protestants, like Catholics, work with good will to advance the mission of Jesus Christ as they understand it.  (paras. 816-819). The Catechism reiterates that Protestants do not have the fullness of faith possessed by Catholics and it appreciates the transcendent significance of Church unity.  Both Catechisms, in fact, retain the ideal of Church unity as a goal to be striven for, but the insight of history has taught Catholics that voluntariness, not compulsion, is the only fit and proper way of seeking it.

What does this have to do with removing the offensive language about "intrinsically disordered?"  Quite a bit.  To be sure, philosophers will defend the "intrinsically disordered" language by reference to the procreative purpose of the sex act.  All sexual expression, they will claim, must at least theoretically be open to procreation and express the symbolism of male/female complementarity.  And since same-sex relations cannot be accomplish these things, they are "intrinsically disordered."

These are hidden nuances which 99 percent of the Catechism's readers cannot be expected to fathom.  The average reader of the Catechism will see in this language the whole, sorry history of efforts to medicalize and "treat" those deemed "afflicted" with same-sex attractions.

Indeed, it was not that many years ago when psychologists and psychiatrists used aggressive forms of treatment, including electrical shock therapy, as a means of "curing" people of their attractions for members of the same sex.  A 1973 study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology thus asserted confidently that "[e]lectric shock as an aversive technique for treatment of sexual deviation has been reported to be effective in numerous case reports and in various larger studies."  Today, we quite properly condemn such medical interventions as barbaric and cruel.

The 1997 Catechism is not that far removed in time from this mode of thought.  This becomes especially clear when we consider that the principal source for the "intrinsically disordered" language was the Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, published in 1986 under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's signature.  This Letter taught that while "the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil."  (para. 3).  Gay people, the text added, can only avoid this evil through sexual chastity.  (para. 12).  These conclusions, the Letter declares, "find support in the more secure findings of the natural sciences."

Doubtlessly, such a conclusion would have had the backing of some portions of the scientific community in 1973.  But by 1986, when Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, science had already moved well beyond this sort of linkage.  Indeed, it was in that very year that the American Psychiatric Association removed all mention of same-sex attraction from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, its basic handbook of psychiatric disorders.

And science today recognizes that same-sex attraction is simply a naturally-occurring variant of what it means to be human.  Scientists cannot identify a single cause of same-sex attraction but they know that it is not a choice and that it is not something that can or should be "treated."

Same-sex attraction, therefore, is not something that is "evil."  It is a tendency that may arise in pre-natal development.  Subtle differences in brain morphology can be detected between those with heterosexual as opposed to same-sex tendencies.  Birth order may make a difference in the likelihood of someone being born straight or gay.  Gender-non-conforming behavior is likely to emerge early in life, well before puberty or sexual awareness.

These findings constitute a very small sampling of the large and evolving body of scholarship that should be reorienting the way moralists think about same-sex attraction.  Being gay is not a choice but something innate and natural.  Are those who are born gay really required to lead lives devoid of physical intimacy?  Even Cardinal Ratzinger, who insisted upon this, based his opinion on what he believed to be "the more secure findings of the natural sciences."

The "natural sciences" teach us something very different today.  Truly, the time has come to remove the "intrinsically disordered" language from the Catechism.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/lets-banish-talk-about-intrinsic-disorder_b_4174863.html

Bigger and Badder Than Before: The Second Coming of Ted Cruz

He will rise again.  Make no mistake.  Ted Cruz is already on the comeback trail.  Indeed, he was never really defeated in the first place.  A freshman senator, in office for less than a year, he scheduled a news conference Wednesday evening to compete directly with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's announcement of an end to the government-shutdown/debt-ceiling debacle.

Cruz, whose bloody fingerprints are all over the crime scene, has not only escaped scot-free, he has been strengthened by his failed congressional putsch.  Consider:

Cruz and his allies on the extremist right have already begun making the claim that their cause was not defeated but betrayed. Whimpering, simpering moderates lost their nerve. The Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh has moaned, sold out its principles in a deluded quest to appeal to "the moderate independents."  Erick Erickson, too, feels the pain of a stab in the back:  "Men like Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and others have preached a great sermon against Obamacare, but now conservatives who supported them see that these men have refused to actually practice what they've been preaching."

They tell themselves that they would have succeeded had the government been allowed to default.  The world would then have understood that national default was not the disaster its scare-mongering opponents claimed for it, that America stood ready and able to pay its bills, and that Tea Party intransigence on the debt ceiling was truly the only patriotic thing to do.  This is why Limbaugh and his ilk now claim that the Republican Party is an empty shell, the "most irrelevant' political party in American history.

Ted Cruz is on hand to embrace all those brave right-wingers who have been thus stabbed in the back.  The extremist right will see the debt-ceiling struggle not as a loss, but as a battle they have only begun to fight.  It will take its place next to The 300 Spartans, Braveheart, and every other noble-defeat-turned-to-victory meme the mind of man can imagine.

And Cruz has well-springs of support that should not be underestimated. His polling numbers among self-identified conservatives have never been higher.  And he has a ready-made network to disseminate his views. Right-wing talk media -- radio and television -- have been spewing hatred for many years now. Rush Limbaugh was rightly exposed as a bully for his attacks on Sandra Fluke, but ten and twenty years ago, he was denouncing the poor as "human debris." Neil Boortz, a popular southern talk-show demagogue, mocks homeless people who freeze to death as "bumsicles" ("human icicles" for those not in the know). These shows speak to an alienated, resentful America that will look on Cruz not with disdain but with fondness.

Large and dense networks of groups capable of organized political action are also at hand.  The Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol has identified some 900 local Tea Party groups capable of "federated action."  Their most immediate target, quite clearly, is the purification of the Republican Party.  Given money and direction at the top by freelancing billionaires and organizations like Heritage Action, Skocpol sees the Tea Party as having "destroyed the institutional integrity of the Republican Party" in many parts of the country.

Cruz, furthermore, is able to draw from a right-wing ideology that has very deep roots in some of the most enduringly destructive features of American history.  Frank Rich has shown its strong connections to John C. Calhoun's doctrine of nullification, the belief that states and localities have the power to annul federal law. Cruz can draw as well from the ancient hatreds of the Know-Nothings, the white Protestant bullies who waged mayhem against Catholic immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s. You might have believed that these thought-worlds were banished to the back pages of old history books, but Rich makes the case that Cruz is summoning these harpies back to life.

In its modern manifestations, the ideology of the radical right is firmly rooted in a whole series of conspiracy theories. There are the Second Amendment absolutists who stockpile ammunition for Armageddon all the while preaching fear and loathing of the government. There are the anti-tax zealots who are convinced that American tax law is rooted in an unconstitutional seizure of power.  There are the enemies of science, such as those who assert that climatologists simply doing their research are engaged in a grand conspiracy to bring about one-world government.

Then there are the gold bugs who view the Federal Reserve as a conspiracy to debase and destroy the good old American dollar.  And let's not forget Agenda 21 -- that favorite nervous tick of nativists.  A set of voluntary objectives adopted by the United Nations and directed towards such laudatory goals as the relief of poverty and the promotion of conservation, this plan has been denounced as a mortal threat to American sovereignty by the American right-wing.  Nor are these denunciations any longer part of the fringe.  The 2012 Republican platform included a plank opposing this benign attempt at coordinated action to address global problems.

Thanks to the right-wing echo chamber that panders to these bizarre beliefs if only to make money off of them, these ideas are deeply-ingrained in large swaths of the American public.  And subscribers to alternative world-views are fertile ground for a demagogue like Ted Cruz.

Cruz' persona is archetypal.  One wonders how deliberately he has crafted it.  He is the Huey Long, the Joe McCarthy of our age, willing to create chaos in the system in order to profit from it.  He will rise again. "Real Americans," we are already being told, regard him as a "hero." There is little doubt in my mind that Cruz expected, even courted, this temporary set-back just to exploit it for all it's worth.  He knows that betrayal sells.  He gets to play Jim Bowie at the Alamo, William Wallace against the evil King Edward.  Americans would make a terrible mistake if they did not prepare for his second act.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/bigger-and-badder-than-before_b_4123648.html 

Constitution is Not a Suicide Pact

The Constitution is not a "suicide pact."  So wrote Robert Jackson in 1949.  Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Chief-War Crimes Prosecutor at Nuremberg, Jackson may well have been among the wisest men or women to ever sit on America's highest tribunal.

His warning resonates today.  For we are faced with a constitutional crisis the gravity of which is now coming clear.  A group of Republicans, the tea party caucus, are this generation's Fire-Eaters.  Like those Fire-Eaters who drove the momentum for Civil War in the 1850s, they would rather bring down the house than acknowledge that they cannot get their way.  The Speaker of the House quails before these Fire-Eaters, too timorous for confrontation, content merely to whimper.

The Republican tea party caucus say they wish to negotiate.  They propose to defund the Affordable Care Act as their price.  But the democratic process has spoken.  The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land.  And as a federal entitlement program, like Social Security or Medicare, its costs are built into federal statutory law.

Nicholas Kristof has illustrated the absurdity of the tea party claims.  Suppose, he wrote, President Obama informed Congress that if it failed to go along with him and enact single-payer health care, he would sink our aircraft carrier fleet, one-by-one, in the depths of the Mariana Trench.

The threat would be absurd and people would rightly conclude that the president had lost his moorings.  But that is precisely what the tea partiers are threatening.  In their own way, they seek to harm the interests of the American public just as grievously as the president would in Kristof's hypothetical.

Wise and responsible voices have suggested that it is the sheerest folly to threaten default on the nation's debt.  The venerable sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, has compared default to the use of nuclear weapons -- the consequences are too dreadful to contemplate.  Mohamed el-Erian, the bond wizard from PIMCO, has described the effects of a default as amounting to "cascading failures" leading to "multiple defaults."  It would dwarf the effects of the Lehman Brothers' default.  And unlike the Lehman's default, there would be no American government to backstop or cushion the collapse.

The global effects would be far-reaching and would destroy America's standing in the world, perhaps irreversibly. The Chinese government has already issued an official warning, urging American policy-makers to realize that "the clock is ticking" and that China is concerned about the safety of its investments. The Japanese government, too, has acknowledged that it must begin to consider the risk of American default in its global financial investment strategies.  Indeed, "nervous ripples" are spreading around the world, "from London to Bali."

When Justice Jackson penned that admonitory precept, he did so in the context of trying to resolve the consequences of a riot in the City of Chicago, provoked by a band of Fascist dead-enders in the days just after World War II.  Taking nothing away from the gravity of that case, we are faced with an immeasurably worse crisis should we default.

It is possible that the crisis resolves itself in the next few days.  We certainly hope that responsible Republicans -- and there are many -- step forward and confront their radical fringe.  But barring that, President Obama needs to prepare to take action.

Professor Garrett Epps has pointed to the most efficient constitutional solution to the crisis.  Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned."  The context surrounding the drafting of this clause clearly contemplated a foreseeable threat to good order:  the danger that Southern insurrectionists, defeated in Civil War, might seek to frustrate the payment of America's national debt if and when they should be returned to Congress.

The language of the Clause, however, is broader than its immediate context.  It recognizes the legitimate interest all Americans have in the soundness of their monetary order.  Carefully attentive to its language and its history, Professor Epps asserts that this Clause "makes clear that both the monies our nation owes to bondholders and the sums promised in legislation to those receiving pensions set by law from the federal government, must be paid regardless of the whims of the current congressional majority."

I would add two further points.  The first is that the constitutionally-imposed oath in which the president swears to "protect, preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States" imposes upon him the duties of a constitutional interpreter.  It is the president's responsibility to understand and to apply the Constitution in times of ambiguity and crisis, such as these.  And I would assert, secondly, that Justice Jackson is right:  The Constitution is not a suicide pact.  It is a document whose clauses should always be understood to favor sound government and the preservation of the American democratic experiment.  It must never be interpreted to permit a handful of congressional representatives, defeated legislatively, to hijack the process and wreak willful havoc.

I believe that the president can and should make the case that the debt ceiling which Congress sees fit to vote upon periodically is itself unconstitutional for being inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.  He should then direct the United States Department of Treasury to continue to honor all of our on-going obligations.

The political consequences should not be dire.  The latest AP survey indicates that congressional approval is at 5 percent.  In other words, support for Congress' behavior in this crisis is confined, with only slight exaggeration, to the friends and family of congressional members.

Furthermore, President Obama would not be treating the Constitution with disregard should he act in this manner.  Article 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment is plain in its terms.  The validity of the public debt is not to be questioned.  It was drafted in circumstances similar to those confronting us today:  namely, the fear that recalcitrant members of Congress might repudiate our obligations in order to get their way.  The Fourteenth Amendment shows a clear pathway forward, and the President, as a last resort not only has the right, but the duty to invoke it.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/constitution-is-not-a-sui_b_4073379.html 

The Silent Violence of the Republican Shutdown

The Republican shutdown of the federal government has many high-profile, sympathetic, and symbolic victims -- the panda cam at the National Zoo, visitors to the national parks, aging World War II veterans deprived of the opportunity to visit the monument erected to honor their valor.

But the Republican shutdown is a far greater offense against decency than any of this.  At bottom, it is an on-going act of silent violence against the most vulnerable members of the American people.  Let us begin with the victims of childhood cancer. You have seen the pictures, the brave, bald-headed girls and boys who must cope with chemotherapy at an age where their playmates are chasing butterflies or playing ball.

The National Institutes of Health has a children's cancer program.  It boasts a world-class research facility, meaning that children have access to the latest forms of treatment.  Children go there precisely because they do not have access to these services elsewhere.  Thanks to the Republican shutdown, NIH has had to discontinue or delay several clinical trials.  In other words, there are children who may die because a group of self-indulgent, so-called patriots have seen fit to hijack Congress on a fool's errand.

Now, what about other medical services the federal government provides?  We are entering fall and winter -- the seasons that typically see a spike in upper respiratory illnesses.  And some of these illnesses are a great deal more serious than a runny nose or a few days' congestion.

Consider one of the leading potential threats that medical science has identified and is attempting to monitor:  This is Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).  This is an illness that was first detected on the Arabian Peninsula about a year ago and it has a remarkable lethality.  It is spread by a corona virus and causes "severe, acute respiratory illness."  Those who contract MERS suffer extreme fever and cough and about one-half die.  Yes, 50 percent.

So far, this outbreak seems confined to the Middle East and it does not appear to spread easily.  But since it is so new, we really don't know much about its epidemiology.  And now, thanks to those flag-waving professional Obama-haters on America's right wing, we might not learn much about it.  Why?  Because "surveillance for emerging infectious diseases such as MERS" has been "weakened" thanks to the furlough of the government workers who track it.

And, by the way, we have also furloughed the staffs that monitor seasonal flu outbreaks and those who monitor and warn about the periodic disease outbreaks that cross state lines, such as hepatitis and salmonella.  Better be careful about those green, leafy vegetables.

What about workplace hazards?  Thanks to that war-whooping pack of close-the-government fanatics, America's workplace safety regime has also been greatly compromised.  Administrators at OSHA and other worker-safety agencies have been forced to perform a grotesque form of triage.  They have suspended routine inspections and other services, except where there is "imminent danger."

Why did the fanatics do this?  Why this crazed revolt against government by men and women who supposedly took a solemn oath to discharge the duties of governance?  It seems at least some of them did it for the hell of it.  One   sputtering Georgia Congressman, Lynn Westmoreland, promised back in 2010, during his election campaign, that he would shut the government if he ever came to Congress. Why?  He never offered a reasoned explanation.  It just seemed like the thing to do.

But to the extent that Republican hijackers have a coherent message, it is this:  Kill Obamacare and we will drop the gun we have pointed at the nation's head.  Senator Angus King, the plain spoken Independent from the State of Maine, has perhaps the best response to this fit of irresponsibility.

It is "murder," Senator King gruffly observed.  Every day, he noted, men and women in this country die for want of health insurance.  The senator reflected on an acquaintance of his, a woman named Connie Gould, who died of untreated asthma because she lacked the insurance to obtain needed treatment.

Senator King denounced the congressional hostage-takers for their willful attempt to kill health insurance for the millions of Americans just like Connie Gould.  Speaking of the GOP fanatics, he declared:  "For people who do that to other people in the name of some obscure political ideology is one of the grossest violations of our humanity I can think of."

God bless Senator King.

If the Speaker of the House fails to take swift and sure action to bring to heel the radicals who have seized his party and are attempting to bring this country down, his name will live in infamy.  Mr. Boehner, your supine abdication of leadership, your gimmicky attempts at shifting responsibility, are a moral outrage and a disgrace.

Andrew Sullivan is certainly right to see this act of misrule as an attack on America's constitutional order.  Professor Geoffrey stone is surely correct to see it as an an assault on democracy and the rule of law.  It is all of that.

But beyond these obvious facts, the takeover of a branch of government by a pack of anti-nomian radicals is a continuing act of silent violence that is claiming lives and that will claim lives.  Cancer treatments are being halted.  We have ceased the monitoring of disease outbreaks.  Our nation's health security is being put at risk.  And, in the end, innocent women and men like Connie Gould, whose only crime is the inability to obtain health insurance, will suffer and die.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/the-silent-violence-of-th_b_4032971.html

P.T. Barnum, Joe McCarthy, and the Rise of Ted Cruz

If we can speak at all of an American collective memory, there are two archetypes which loom large in those shady mists -- the huckster, and the paranoid demagogue. Ted Cruz, the junior senator from the State of Texas, who has been a member of that august deliberative body for a little less than ten months, captures and distills down to its essence the features of both.

The huckster has deep American roots.  An old folk tune, "The Dodger" celebrated this rapscallion.  ("Dodger," in the slang of the day, meant something like "scam artist").  "The candidate's a dodger, yes a well-known dodger," is how the song began, as it cataloged all the walks of life that depend on scamming.

American literature is replete with hucksters.  Mark Twain gave us those two fun-loving scamps, "the King" and "the Duke," who scammed their way down the Mississippi River. Pulp novels were filled with patent-medicine entrepreneurs and snake oil salesmen. And then there is the figure of Elmer Gantry, the religious scammer, preaching righteousness by day, sinning by night.

But the ultimate archetype was probably the real-life P.T. Barnum. Born in obscurity in Connecticut in 1810, he tried his hand at lottery promotions until they were outlawed.  He then traveled the country with an elderly slave woman who pretended to have been George Washington's nursemaid when he was a small boy. He built a mermaid from the body parts of various animals and sold tickets to see the exotic specimen. When a distant cousin was born with dwarfism, Barnum transformed him into "General Tom Thumb," the shortest man on earth. He used hot air balloons and street shows to attract crowds to his exhibits. Always be self-promoting.

And Ted Cruz has successfully tapped into the P.T. Barnum that lies buried deep within the American psyche. His rise has been a single continuous act of self-promotion. In less than a year, he has made it plain that he did not win election to the Senate just to play the role of genial back-bencher, sweetly biding his time, doing deals, and living by the genteel rules of the old Senate. No siree, Ted Cruz does not "do collegial." He is a man on the move.

Consider his campaign for Senate in 2012.  It may be hard to remember, but he was the underdog in the Republican primary. His opponent, David Dewhurst, the sitting Lieutenant Governor, was the consummate insider. A plutocrat's plutocrat, Dewhurst had practically unlimited campaign funds and the backing of Governor Rick Perry.

Dewhurst thought he'd win the primary the old-fashioned way, by spending a lot of money shouting "liberal! liberal! liberal!" so as to define the then-unknown Cruz. He did not reckon on Cruz' power to mount an insurgency.  In May, 2012, in the first round of voting, Dewhurst narrowly missed outright victory, finishing just shy of 50 percent of the vote.

But Cruz was relentless.  He worked the right-wing blogs. He brought in Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum to campaign with him.  He looked to the very rich Club for Growth Super PAC for financial support.  And in the end he drove the plodding, old-school Dewhurst into the ground and won the July run-off in a romp.

Cruz proudly advertises his membership in and support of the Tea Party movement.  And a good half of the Tea Party is pure, old-fashioned American hokum.  There are the conspiracy theorists selling their tales of devious plots by the Federal Reserve. And the gold dealers who spin elaborate yarns of out-of-control inflation which the government keeps secret.  And there are the Second Amendment fanatics warning ominously about plots to disarm law-abiding American constitutionalists.  There are even the patent-medicine folks.  Newsmax, a principal Tea Party news organ, is filled daily with claims about cures for everything from diabetes to Alzheimer's.

This is Ted Cruz' natural habitat.  These are his people.  A Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law School graduate, former Supreme Court clerk and international lawyer, Cruz tries his level best to let none of that show when he launches into his old-time stem winders.  There is no doubt that Cruz is an effective orator and with his cowboy boots he sure looks and acts like the Texan he is.  And when he gets worked up, his speeches draw their lifeblood from the Tea Party's own scamming heart.

If this is one side of Ted Cruz, the other half hails direct from the fever swamp Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics."  This mode of thinking is darkly conspiratorial.  The world is sharply divided -- "us" against "them."  And those who stand against the heroic defenders of justice and the American way are always secretly scheming to run not just the country but the entire world.  In the early days of the Republic, it was the Free Masons.  A little later, in the 1840s and 1850s, it was the Jesuits.  In the years around 1900 it was the "Money Power."

Periodically in American history there arose demagogues who exploited these delusions of persecution.  There was Huey Long in the 1930s with his slogan, "Every Man a King!"  There was George Wallace in the 1960s, cynically exploiting racism in a presidential campaign that was nothing but pure mayhem.

And, of course, looming over both men, was Joe McCarthy, the junior Republican senator from Wisconsin in the 1950s.  In a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1950, McCarthy claimed to be in possession of a list of 57 known Communists who worked in the State Department.  Depending on his audience and the needs of the moment, McCarthy would repeat similar accusations many times, always varying the number of Communists.  He accused fellow Senators of being closet Reds.  He questioned the integrity of President Truman and claimed the Democratic Party was in league with treason.

Hofstadter published his essay on paranoid politics in 1964, inspired to his theme by that year's Barry Goldwater campaign for president. And while Hofstadter considered the whole panorama of American history, he clearly had one eye on Goldwater.

Goldwater surely attracted his share of paranoids.  There were the John Birchers who feared the Communists under the bed; the neo-Confederate segregationists; and the libertarians who denounced the New Deal as illegitimate and viewed it as a long, slow, dismal march down the road to serfdom.

In Goldwater's day, however, the Republican Party's center of gravity was moderate.  It even had a lively liberal wing, represented by the likes of Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton.

But to enter today's GOP base is to cross the border from reality into Glenn-Beckistan.  There are the young-earth creationists who see the whole of empirical science as a diabolical plot to conceal divine creation.  There are the global warming skeptics, found even in the pages of the formerly great Wall Street Journal.

And then there are the folks who come out of the woodwork at conservative workshops and rallies:  The ones who want to abolish the IRS.  Those who wish to dismantle whole government agencies.  Those who believe Social Security is irretrievably insolvent, an accusation first made by Alf Landon in 1936.  Even the next generation of segregationists who once thrilled to Wallace and Goldwater.

And Ted Cruz is their new heartthrob.  He has already been credibly accused of McCarthyism -- by Senator Barbara Boxer, after Cruz launched an attack on a member of his own party -- former Senator Chuck Hagel.  When Hagel was nominated to be Secretary of Defense, Cruz hit and hit hard.  Had he been the recipient of mysterious funds from North Korea?  Hagel did an interview with Al-Jazeera.  Maybe he's an apologist for terror?

Cruz has all the hallmarks of the demagogic conspiracist.  He has played around with Benghazi, that tragic attack on the American consulate which resulted in the deaths of our diplomats there.  To the right wing, however, it is a conspiracy so vast it is beyond description to anyone not already in on it.

And now he has turned to the Affordable Care Act. His latest 21-hour marathon speech on the Senate floor, where he displayed astonishing bladder control, was a noisome combination of the huckster and paranoid styles. The ACA, he hissed, raises taxes, destroys jobs, and will even cripple American health care. He accused those Republicans who failed to unite behind him of the same appeasement Neville Chamberlain showed when he bowed and scraped before Hitler.

Half flim-flam man, half demagogue, this man means to be president. And America had better be alarmed about that.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/pt-barnum-joe-mccarthy-an_b_3998712.html 

The Culture War Is Over

The culture war is over.  That may be the most important message contained in Pope Francis' remarkable interview with the Jesuit press last week.  Yes, there will still be some skirmishing and some bumps and jostles along the way.  But Pope Francis effectively challenged the central premise of the culture war -- that modern secular culture is at war with Christianity.

The Pope makes clear, in thoughtful, creative ways, that he does not see essential antagonism between Church and culture.  Let's look first at his favorite artists.  He has a fondness for the very secular Federico Fellini, especially his film La Strada, which depicts a young teen-age girl sold by her mother into servitude to an itinerant circus strong man.  His favorite painter is Caravaggio, the intense and brooding Renaissance figure, a street brawler who wounded a police officer in a drunken rage and killed a man under mysterious circumstances.  Despite -- or perhaps because of -- his deep sinfulness, Caravaggio knew the full range of human emotions, both the depths and the glories, and expressed them better on canvas better than any member of his generation.  Thus, the pope suggests, we can find valuable lessons from the secular world.  We can even find such lessons in the works of great sinners.

The Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis emphasizes, was open to culture in this way.  The Council did not see contemporary culture as the enemy nor did it seek to oppose it.  Rather, the Council sought "a re-reading of the Gospel in the light of contemporary culture."  This was the meaning of Pope John XXIII's proclamation of "aggiornamento."  Echoing the sainted Pope John, Francis insists that today's Catholics must remain in dialogue with the larger society.

The "culture war" model of the Church, in which Christian defenders of Fortress Ecclesia pull up the draw-bridges and prepare for a long, dark night of besiegement, has no place in Francis' thoughts.  Partnership, friendship, or at least honest, self-reflective conversation -- these must be the essential features of the Church's relationship with secular culture.

And if the Church can learn from culture, Francis says, it can also learn from history.  Indeed, through its study of history, Francis makes clear, the Church has already changed its teaching on some issues, sometimes quite dramatically.

Consider usury:  There was a time, especially in the first millenium, when the Gospel precept, "Lend freely, taking nothing in return," was understood literally as a strict prohibition on the taking of interest.  Thanks to centuries of experience, Catholic theologians and canonists, in dialogue with Christian merchants, eventually crafted a body of doctrine that accommodated the taking of moderate interest, while condemning sharp and extortionate practices.

The pope is fully aware of this process and, indeed, revealed himself to be remarkably open and flexible to doctrinal development of this sort.  "God," the Pope asserted, "manifests himself in historical revelation, in history."  "Time," Francis continued, "initiates processes...  God is in history, in the processes."

This is true also of Jesus' teaching.  His parables, after all, are meant to be read in history.  What are they, after all, but open-ended narratives that force every generation to reflect, adapt, and reinterpret the Gospel message for its own day?

Francis' insights into the historicity of God and revelation lead him to his deep sensitivity about the historical process.  The Church is not an unchanging monolith, a block of granite standing strong against the winds and tides of hostile forces.

On the contrary, the Church is always engaged with the world around it in an open-ended and unceasing quest for greater understanding.  This feature, after all, is common to every sentient and growing entity.  Francis illustrates this point when he discusses his own youthful faults and how he learned from them.  To describe this growth in awareness, he uses the image of someone traveling along a highway:  "Ours ... is a 'journey' faith, a historical faith."  It is, in other words, a progressive faith, moving forward in time as it continually sharpens and strengthens its understanding of the human condition.

And if individuals enrich their faith experience over time, so does the Church.  Taking note of the Church's essential historicity, Pope Francis called attention to a passage by the fifth-century St. Vincent of Lerins: "Even the dogma of the Christian religion must follow these laws [of historical development], consolidating over the years, developing over time, deepening with age."

Thus, Francis says, a historically-grounded Church must learn from what has gone before.  Francis acknowledges that there were concrete norms which the Church once condoned and even practiced and which it now finds reprehensible:  "Let us think of when slavery was accepted or the death penalty was allowed without any problem.  Exegetes and theologians help the Church to mature in her judgment...  The view of the Church's teachings as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong."

His discussion of history might be the single most revolutionary feature of Francis' interview.  Let's see how it might play out with respect to same-sex attraction.  In other parts of his interview, he reiterates his non-judgmental stance towards gays.  The Church must not contribute to their "social wounding."  The Church should realize not to "spiritually interfere" in the lives of gays.  Francis acknowledges once again the welcoming parts of the Catechism and omits any mention of the condemnatory parts.

What comes next?  Undoubtedly, on the subject of same-sex attraction, the pope is inviting dialogue.  His statements, read in their completeness, must be seen as opening the door to "exegetes and theologians" to re-consider the Church's historic stance.  Let's take science into account, let's come to a better awareness of human psychology, let's take a fresh look at revelation and tradition.  And then us see where these inquiries lead us.  Will we see substantive change in Church teaching?  We could see the offensive parts of the Catechism removed fairly quickly.  Deeper change may take a while longer.  Ten years?  Maybe 15?  I certainly believe the door is open now in a way it has never been opened before.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine a fundamental alteration in the Church's position on abortion, although it is clear the pope wishes to change the way that teaching is presented.  In his interview, he avoided all mention of the political dimension of abortion while focusing on pastoral needs.

Thus he discussed an all-too-typical situation in which a pastor confronts this human tragedy.  A young woman went through a failed first marriage during which she had an abortion.  Years go by.  She is now married, with children.  She is remorseful over her past and wishes to return to the Church.  However the Church presents its doctrine on abortion, the Pope is saying, we must welcome this woman back and not drive her away with "small-mindedness."

To frame the question narrowly and to focus specially on the American context, I expect we might see at least some parts of the Church attempt to craft a bi-partisan or non-partisan approach to life issues.  God, after all, can be found in both political parties.  As Pope Francis says, God can be found "everywhere."  But what cannot be found, in the Church of Pope Francis' dreams, is any room for the culture war.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/the-culture-war-is-over_b_3976085.html

'Make A Mess!' Pope Francis at Six Months

John Allen has described Pope Francis at six months as a "force of nature."  He is certainly that.  But what is it exactly that this force of nature wishes to accomplish?

The lens through which to view these past six months just might be a statement the Pope made to Latin American youth during his trip to Brazil in July, when he encouraged them "to make a mess."  The mess he was calling for, however, was not some kind of chaotic nihilism, but the active, joyous living out of the Gospel.  And so he went on:  "I want to see the church get closer to the people.  I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves."

And if we look at what Pope Francis has accomplished these last six months, it has all been a practical living out of the advice he gave his enthusiastic, youthful audience.

It began on the evening of his election.  The story that he informed the master of ceremonies who tried to vest him in elegant robes that the "carnival is over," is probably too good to be true.  But without doubt, from the moment he stepped onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square, he was sending a message that his pontificate would be very different:  The name Francis, the simple white cassock, a request that the crowd bless him, a reference to himself not as pope but as bishop of Rome.

And this unpredictable overturning of expectations remained a constant feature of Francis's early days.  On Holy Thursday, just a few days after his election, he washed the feet of youthful prisoners in a Roman jail, including -- to the great dismay of traditionalists -- teenage Muslim women.  Holy Thursday, Pope Francis signaled by his actions, was not about clericalism, it was not an austere re-enactment of the creation of the priesthood, but the precursor to God's great act of love -- the drama of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

Like his medieval namesake St. Francis, the Pope has a deep yearning for solidarity with the poor.  He denounced late stage capitalism as creating a "throw-away" culture, in which we freely waste food and vital necessities even as a gulf widens between the opulent few and the struggling many.

He has shown a welcoming warmth toward immigrants.  He traveled to Lampedusa, in the south of Italy, and a place of many tragedies, to commemorate those desperate souls who have died trying to make the passage between North Africa and Europe.  He cast a garland of flowers into the sea as an act of mourning, and, just a few days ago, proposed that unused church buildings -- abandoned convents or monasteries -- be used as housing for immigrants.

His outreach to progressive Catholics has also been most welcome.  The canonization process of Pope John XXIII had languished during the final days of John Paul II and Pope Benedict's pontificate.  But Francis accelerated Good Pope John's cause with one grand gesture, declaring that this holy man, this symbol of reform and social justice, should be a saint even in the absence of the required second miracle.

He has also shown the warm ecumenical touch of John XXIII in his dealings with those of different faiths or none at all.  He showed respect for non-believers in the earliest days of his pontificate when he met with the press for the first time.  He prayed the apostolic blessing in silence, out of respect for the consciences of non-Catholics and atheists.  In May, he declared that God's redemptive love embraced not just Catholics, or even all Christians, but also skeptics, agnostics, seekers, and atheists.

Just a few days ago, His Holiness followed up on these comments with a more formal letter to Eugenio Scalfari, the still-vigorous 89-year-old editor of the secular newspaper La Repubblica.  He acknowledged that previous efforts at dialogue between Christians and atheists had failed, but he expressed hope that these conversations would soon be renewed.  And the dialogue he wished for, he made clear, is one which "is open and free of preconceptions, and which reopens the doors to a responsible and fruitful encounter."  Francis harbored the hope that both he and Scalfari may "seek the paths along which we may walk together."

And there are the provocative comments about gays and celibacy.  Who can forget his airplane interview, returning from World Youth Day, where he informed his stunned audience that "if a person is gay, and follows the Lord, and has good will, then who am I to judge?"  In making this statement, Pope Francis cited to that part of the Catholic Catechism which calls on Christians to welcome gays.  He omitted all mention of the hostile sections.

Even though many on the right have tried to impute to Pope Francis the language of para. 2357 of the Catechism, which denounces same-sex attraction as a "grave depravity," I can find no instance where Pope Francis has used this language or referred to this part of the Catechism during his time as Pope.    He has never gone back to say, "oops, I left out the part about condemning gays."  It seems that he wants an open door on this matter, and he is inviting Christians of good will to drive the development of doctrine.

And now we have his new Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, raising the subject of mandatory priestly celibacy and musing out loud about the possibility of change.  Yes, the distinction between discipline and dogma is standard Catholic fare, and yes, the rule concerning celibacy is a matter of discipline, which can change with the times.  No the Secretary did not precisely break new ground.  But as with gays, so with celibacy -- the question has been asked.  Let's see where it goes.

Pope Francis has thus far lived up to the radicalism of his namesake.  Granted, he will not move aggressively to make deep changes in the Church.  The Pope, after all, must keep the Church unified.  But he is putting back on the table, after a hiatus of nearly 40 years, some of the truly vital questions that must confront a living Church.  He is making an exuberant "mess" for sure, but it is a good mess, a wondrous Christian mess.  He has brought life to a Church and a faith that was in real danger of irrelevance and self-referentialism, a Church that was sliding into the grim ice age of a demographic winter.  He has thrilled young people and has summoned them to the faith.  Jon Stewart "loves this guy."

And this is as it should be.  Christians, after all, are called to live out the Gospel in the world, not hunker down behind a wall of incense and lace.  And Pope Francis is making sure of that.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/pope-francis-six-months_b_3949477.html 

The Thril Is Gone

It is fair to say that the on-going story of Syria has brought to the forefront a new truth about the United States in the early twenty-first century: We have lost our thrill for war.

Let's begin by reviewing events in Syria: Beginning in late December 2012, there were repeated reports of small-scale use of chemical weapons. The evidence overwhelmingly implicated the government of Bashar al Assad. These small-scale attacks culminated on August 21, 2013, in the much larger attack on the Ghouta neighborhood outside Damascus, which resulted in close to 1,500 deaths.  The agent of death was sarin gas, a potent nerve agent which, upon exposure, inexorably degrades the central nervous system, leaving its victims choking to death in their own bodily fluids.

Chemical weapons were routinely used in World War I.  Their use caused such widespread revulsion that their utilization has thereafter been shunned in most global conflicts.  Permitting their return now has serious consequences.  While as a Catholic, I was among those who sided with Pope Francis, praying and fasting for peace, that does not mean that I fail to recognize the horror of these weapons.  It is possible that a peaceful diplomatic solution may now be at hand, but it is not that which I wish to comment upon, but the real and palpable anti-war climate of opinion that has taken hold here in the United States.  For it seems that we have crossed some kind of threshold in the last few weeks and it is good to know why.

The threshold I am referring to is our willingness as a nation to opt for war.  From 1980 to, well, the last five or so years, as a nation we have favored a belligerent posture as our first response to crises overseas.  Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980 because he promised a more aggressive response toward Iran, which was holding Americans hostage, and toward the Soviet Union, which had invaded Afghanistan.  After George H.W. Bush expelled the Iraqi Army from Kuwait, his approval rating approached 90 %, a record for American presidents (he would lose reelection in 1992 not because of the Persian Gulf War but because of a persistent recession).

And after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the American public vigorously affirmed the decision to go to war, first in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq, even though the latter country had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Americans have repeatedly cheered on its armed forces, from Reagan's bombing of Libya and his invasion of Grenada, to George H.W. Bush's splendid little conflict in Panama.

But something has how shifted fundamentally. And no, it is not, as the right-wing alleges, the result of President Obama's decision to adopt a lower international profile. Remember, he was elected President in 2008 because he promised to withdraw us from wars, not foment new ones.  His presidency is the result, not the cause, of America's rising tide of opposition to war.

No, it seems that something fundamental has changed in the American psychology about war.  We no longer find war very appealing. Back in the Vietnam War, those old enough to remember might recall watching the ugliness of that war play out on the nightly news. Villages were destroyed for no good reason. Killing was conducted on an industrial scale. We measured our victories by the most macabre of metrics -- body counts. We out-killed them 10 to 1, and we still lost the bloody war. All that loss of life was for naught. The lasting image of the war, formed by popular entertainment, was of a morally ambiguous if not morally loathsome conflict.  Just think of the Deer Hunter, or Apocalypse Now, or Full Metal Jacket.

And if the Vietnam War is remembered now for its wasteful destruction of human life, the Iraq War may be recalled for its blind squandering of American treasure. Bush and Cheney and their fellow apologists for war assured the American public that the incursion would be brief and might even succeed in being self-financing. The Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators. We would establish a free and democratic republic, get the oil flowing, and we would all live happily ever after.

We know how that turned out. And the price of failure?  Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates at three trillion dollars.  And while some economists argue that that figure is too high, others maintain that it is too low.  Imagine the many more productive ways we could use three trillion dollars!

Common to both Vietnam and Iraq, finally, is a sense of the whole futility of war.  And our sense of futility has been building, in the English speaking world, since World War I.  The World War I poets were deeply familiar with that.  Siegfried Sassoon was a highly decorated combat officer known for his daring and courage in battle.  Yet all he could see was the absurdity of it all.  Artillery had become mechanized killing, big guns "volleying doom for doom."  The sheer randomness of life was too much for Sassoon.  Wilfred Owen, another World War I poet, wrote an entire poem entitled "Futility," recalling the dying breaths of a falling comrade.

The defeat in Vietnam, the pitiless pointlessness of Iraq, these and other events, have helped democratize a brewing anti-war sentiment.  No longer can an aversion to war be seen as an affectation of a few, or the domain of "out-of-touch liberals."  The pessimism of Sassoon and Owen, of Francis Ford Coppola (director of Apocalypse Now), and the recent critics of Iraq, has taken new form as a mass movement.  It is significant that the sternest opponents of war on Syria are right-wing Republicans, not progressive Congresspersons.  While much of this is surely opportunistic -- many in the GOP will never miss a chance to destroy Obama -- some it is surely heartfelt.

Have we reached the end of western imperialism?  Andreas Whittam Smith asks this provocative question in The Independent.  While it might be premature to pronounce the death of the imperialistic urge, it may be the case that the West has lost the appetite for war.  War's romance has vanished.  No longer do we say, with Horace, "how sweet and proper it is to die for one's country" (dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori).  As the Syrian debate progressed, support for war continuously dropped.  The final Reuters survey indicated only 16 % in favor of military strikes.

While it is too early to concur with Smith, it is certainly the case that the American public has acquired a new sobriety about blood-letting.  It is a sobriety born of exhaustion.  We have now seen too many young women and men returning home limbless and shell-shocked.  We have learned that war is not a cheap thrill.  We are tired of war.  But the hidden benefit is that this exhaustion now requires the finding of peaceful solutions to conflicts.  We cannot withdraw from the world.

Let us always remember that chemical weapons are a wicked genie let loose upon the world.  We now know, however, that we must result to the subtle arts of diplomacy to contain their spread and use.  I hope we have the wisdom and maturity to see that process through successfully.

Cross-Posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/the-thrill-is-gone_b_3909489.html

'War Begets War, Violence Begets Violence'

"War begets war, violence begets violence."  With these words, Pope Francis called upon Catholics the world over to follow his lead and devote Saturday, September 7 to prayer and fasting for peace in Syria. What can we do to bring about peace in the world, the Pope fervently asked. We must touch peoples' hearts. And we do that through prayer.

The medieval Catholic Church developed the just-war doctrine as a means of resolving the relative justice or injustice of participation in war. In its most refined form, the just-war theory embraces a number of criteria governing entry into conflict and the means employed to fight a war. And it is worth reflecting upon these criteria in light of the Pope's heartfelt summons.

War, the medieval philosophers acknowledged, was one of the greatest evils human beings can inflict upon one another. Still, they asserted, where it has a reasonable chance of preventing a still greater evil, a state may go to war.

There is no doubt that the use of sarin gas against a civilian population is a very grave evil. For a moment, we should consider how people die from sarin gas. A particularly gruesome account of sarin's lethality has recently emerged from the archives of the Royal Air Force.  Back in the early 1950s, the RAF engaged in a series of hideous experiments on human subjects to discover the concentration of sarin needed to kill young soldiers -- men of the age and physical condition they might confront should they ever come to blows with Russia.

The tests were not supposed to actually kill anyone.  But one unfortunate airman, 20-year-old Ronald Maddison, received a fatal dose.  An eyewitness described what he saw: "It was like being electrocuted, his whole body was convulsing.  I have seen somebody suffer an epileptic fit, but you have never seen anything like what happened to that lad.  The skin was vibrating and there was all this terrible stuff coming out of his mouth.  It looked like . . . tapioca."

Bashar al Assad has rained exactly this sort of torturous death upon his people.  Women, children, the old, the infirm -- all alike they have died agonizing deaths as sarin gas relentlessly degraded their nervous systems and caused them to choke in their own bodily fluids.

Let's not lose sight of the grotesque reality of chemical weapons.  But what about military intervention?  Can we make things better?  War is evil.  Assad is evil.  But what is the likelihood of some targeted cruise missile strikes actually improving things?  In the words of the philosophers, what is the reasonable likelihood of success?

First, it should be borne in mind that President Obama is not speaking of regime change.  He has not even suggested undertaking an air campaign sufficient to eliminate Assad's large stockpiles of chemical weapons.  And, indeed, such a campaign could quite possibly cause horrific casualties should nerve gas and other chemical agents be released in large quantities.  The strategy, rather, seems to be to engage in a limited retaliatory strike, a calibrated response sufficient to signal Assad that he has crossed a line he must not cross over again.

It is at this point that two other features of just-war thought must enter the equation.  Because war is a very grave evil, we must be vigilant not to cause collateral damage.  And also, because of war's deeply wicked essence, it must truly be the last resort.  All other options must be exhausted.

Let's talk first of collateral damage. Personally, I despise the expression "collateral damage."  It is among the most Orwellian of terms.  It masks the horror of war.  War, after all, is not neat.  Even just wars kill innocents.  Just ponder the hundreds of thousands of Japanese non-combatants incinerated in the last days of World War II by our nightly fire-bombings of Japanese cities and then by two nuclear weapons.  Our invasion of Iraq, its exponents promised us, would be brief and bloodless.  And we know how that turned out.

What would be the collateral damage of a so-called surgical strike on Syria?  Many would suffer, but let us consider one group in particular -- the Christian population of Syria.  Christians are under siege throughout the Middle East.  In Egypt, this summer, Islamic radicals targeted Coptic Christians across the country in bloody, fiery pogroms after Mohammed Morsi was removed from power.  Christian institutions -- shrines, convents, hospitals, orphanages, places of worship -- were burnt and a number of Christians murdered in a rampage of violence some commentators have properly likened to Kristallnacht.

Indeed, the Egyptian mob attacks are part of a rising tide of violence against Christians throughout the Middle East.  Dale Gavlak has recently documented an on-going "religicide" in Iraq.  Our invasion of that nation succeeded in removing from power the bloody-minded Saddam Hussein but the costs of that operation continue to mount.  Christian churches have been bombed, worshipers murdered, and leading Church officials murdered.

As in Egypt and Iraq, Christians make up a significant minority presence in Syria, perhaps ten percent of the population.  The Christian presence in Syria goes back to the beginning.  St. Peter is reputed to be not only the Bishop of Rome but, before that, the first Bishop of Antioch.  Without a natural protector, Christians have depended on Syria's separation of religion and state for their defense.  And with that barrier damaged or destroyed, Christians could be swept from the country.  And it is foreseeable, perhaps even likely, that airstrikes on the Assad regime might hasten precisely that outcome.

War, the just-war theory finally counsels, must be the last resort.  The religicide now haunting the Middle East teaches us why that should be so.  I have not even mentioned the possibility that by striking at the Assad regime we could be emboldening the radical, al-Quaeda wing of the Syrian resistance.  A Syrian rebel commander recently posted a video depicting how he killed an Assad supporter, cut open his chest, and sectioned and ate the poor man's heart.  Who knows what atrocities a limited, clinical, retaliatory intervention might unleash? Credible commentators have suggested the breakdown and dissolution of the Syrian state itself.

I have not personally witnessed the horrors of war.  But I know many who have.  And I believe I would not be alone in saying that Pope Francis has struck exactly the right note -- "War begets war, violence begets violence."  He acknowledges the hideousness of chemical weapons but fears for the consequences of retaliation.  And he is not alone.  I for one shall be fasting and praying for peace on Saturday, September 7.  And I hope and pray that all like-minded Christians and other men and women of good will, might join in this summons.  Who knows what good a motivated, non-violent Christianity might accomplish?

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/war-begets-war-violence-b_b_3860641.html

Back-to-School Resolution: Let's Stop Firing Gays and Gay-Rights Supporters

It seems as if Pope Francis has opened the door, ever so slightly, to a more open policy towards gays in the Catholic Church.  When asked about gays in his airplane interview following his trip to Brazil, he famously responded:  "If a person is gay and follows the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge?"  While the interpretation of this statement has become a kind of theological Rorschach test -- people see in it what they want to see in it -- the pope himself has issued no clarifications.  He seems to relish the ambiguity.

But if we see this statement as an olive branch, as an effort to accommodate to the Church people with same-sex attractions, then we are entitled to ask Catholic institutions to take the next step:  Catholic entities, especially Catholic schools, should stop firing gays and gay-rights supporters.  After all, the immediate context of Pope Francis' "who am to judge?" came amidst calls to fire Monsignor Battista Ricca from his position at the Vatican Bank after he was revealed to be gay.

Such a resolution, furthermore, would fit our back-to-school season.  Just like New Year's celebrations, the back-to-school season is the start of a new academic year and the right time for fresh beginnings and new directions.  And last year was a truly atrocious one for firings.  Just consider:

In February, 2013, Mike Moroski was fired from his position as Assistant Principal at Purcell Marian High School in Cincinnati.  By all accounts, he was well-regarded by students and colleagues alike.  He kept a zero tolerance policy where school bullying was concerned and won respect for that.  Furthermore, he did not shun students who got in trouble, but met with them, talked with them, and encouraged them to improve their conduct.  He taught students leadership skills and helped encode in them the value of integrity -- being consistent in words and deeds.

But none of this mattered.  Moroski harbored a forbidden political view -- a political view, not a theological one.  He believed that the State should recognize same-sex unions and he said so on his blog.  And for this thought-crime, he had to go.  The Archdiocese of Cincinnati acted to discharge him from his position.

His students immediately noticed the flaw in the Archdiocese's reasoning:  "They point out that his blog post supported gay civil unions but didn't ask the Catholic Church to sanction them."  He had signed a promise not to contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church and his blog was careful not to cross that line.  His stance was that the State -- but not the Church -- had the right and even the obligation to make marriage available to same-sex couples.  This distinction, however, was lost on the Archdiocese.

Nor was this the only bleak news to come out of Ohio.  In April, 2013, Carla Hale was fired from her position at Bishop Watterson High School in Clintonville, near Columbus.  She had taught at the school for nearly 20 years when her mother passed away.  Her mother's obituary made mention of Hale's long-time partner.  Some parent, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, sent the obituary to officials in the Diocese of Columbus.  And the Diocese, acting apparently on a morals clause in Hale's contract, terminated her.

So much for the grief she must have been feeling from the loss of her mother.  In mid-August, we learned that she settled a lawsuit against the Diocese but the settlement did not include the possibility of reinstatement.

And then this summer came word of the case of Ken Bencomo.  Bencomo was a "star educator," a teacher at St. Lucy's Priory High School in Glendora, California.  He had taught at the school for 17 years and for 10 of those years his superiors were aware that he was gay.  Back in those happier years, he had even introduced his partner to school officials with no adverse consequences.

But in early July, following the Supreme Court's decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, striking down Proposition Eight, Bencomo took the apparently forbidden step of regularizing his relationship. He married his long-time partner Christopher Persky in a union that is fully valid under California law.  Yes, St. Lucy's Priory High School probably has the constitutional right to terminate Bencomo for taking this step.  But why do it?

Let us remember, once again, that Pope Francis made his statement about not judging gays in circumstances similar to the facts of these cases:  Monsignor Ricca, in the pope's judgment, was just the man to help clean up the mess at the Vatican Bank.  And he is gay.  And 15 or so years ago, he had taken a lover, or two, or three.  And the pope was willing to look past this history, and focus on Ricca's many fine qualities.

It is time, well past time, for Catholic schools to make this back-to-school resolution:  No more firings of gays or gay-rights supporters in the new school year.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/backtoschool-resolution-l_b_3830744.html

Stepping Back From the Apocalypse

    Francis Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago, has sounded a rather grim note in recent years. He fears the steady secularization of American society and believes that it poses a grave danger for institutional Catholic life. Reflecting on these fears to a group of priests in 2010, he despaired: "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square." By then, he predicted, we shall be dealing with a "ruined society," but in the end some future Archbishop will help rebuild "civilization."
    This is a lament that would have fit well in fifth-century Rome, as Huns, and Goths, and Vandals threatened the gates of the Eternal City. And it might genuinely describe the state of the Church in some corners of the world (think of the Christians persecuted in today's Middle East). But is western Christianity really under such extreme threat? Is it really fair to believe that within ten or so years we shall see the next Archbishop of Chicago jailed and ten years after that his successor murdered in the streets?
    I tend to think not. There is no doubt that American culture is becoming increasingly secular. But American secularism is not marked by hostility to the faith, but by indifference to it. "The Church of the Sunday Morning Brunch Buffet" is not an enemy of religion. It has simply excluded faith from the orbit of its concerns.
    Where we have seen the Church come into conflict with secular culture is on the matter of support for what is perceived to be an overly partisan political agenda. Republicans have routinely denounced Democrats as being the opponents of God. This trend accelerated in last year's election cycle. We were treated to the spectacle of the Republican Party's Vice-Presidential nominee -- Paul Ryan -- denouncing the Democrats as being "against God" all the while publicly proclaiming his Catholicism. We witnessed Mitt Romney run a television commercial denouncing Barack Obama's "war on religion." Lamentably, but unsurprisingly, 14 % of New Jersey Republicans told a pollster they believed Obama to be the "anti-Christ" (another 15 % were merely undecided). (New Jersey?!)
    When God becomes weaponized, when God becomes the tip of the spear one political party uses to thrust its way to electoral victory, is it any wonder how the other party (which is already more secular) will react? The truth is, neither party has a monopoly on God, morality, virtue, or any other good thing. When Democrats react to being described in the political arena as "anti-God" or the "anti-Christ," it is not a display of hostility to religious faith, as such, but the give-and-take of electoral politics.
    This brings me back to Cardinal George and his fear of impending doom. I think the public mood regarding Christianity, and more specifically, Catholicism, has improved significantly in the last six months or so. Why? Because Pope Francis seems to sense the need to return the faith to the fundamentals. And by fundamentals, I don't mean Bible-thumping and a fiery furnace for scoffing unbelievers or the celebration of quaintly baroque liturgies.
    Pope Francis has reminded us, rather, that the faith is not about the formation of political action committees. Through actions, not words, he tells us that Christianity begins with the premise that we share a common humanity, all of us alike made in the image and likeness of God. We are called to follow the Good Shepherd, who sought his lost sheep. We celebrate the return of the Prodigal Son. We welcome the lepers and the tax collectors into our homes.
    Yes, Catholics live in a secular society but it is not an inherently hostile one. You don't pull people away from the Church of the Sunday Morning Brunch Buffet by calling them the anti-Christ. You win them over by doing what you are called to do above all -- be friends with humankind. As Saint Francis de Sales remarked famously, "You can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a barrelful of vinegar."

RIGHT-WING FUNK

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia put into words the anxiety many right-wing Catholics must be feeling at the extraordinary popularity Pope Francis has been enjoying.  Speaking on behalf of his conservative followers, Archbishop Chaput acknowledged that "members of the right wing of the Catholic Church 'generally have not been really happy' with some aspects of Francis's early months."  The Pope, Archbishop Chaput stated, "will have to find a way 'to care for them too.'"  (John L. Allen, "Right Wing 'Generally Not Happy' With Francis, Chaput Says," National Catholic Reporter, July 23, 2013).

What worries Chaput in particular is the sudden interest in the new Pope from unfamiliar quarters.  Practicing Catholics love the Pope, of course, "but they're not the ones who really talk to to me about the new Pope.  The ones who do are non-practicing Catholics or not even Christian."  Id.  And why should this be so?  Chaput has his suspicions:  Yes, these outsiders are thrilled by the new Pope's friendliness and his warmth, but "I think they would prefer a Church that wouldn't have strict norms and ideas about the moral life and about doctrine."  Id.

Wow.  Where do we start?  We could talk about the parable of the Prodigal Son since Archbishop Chaput truly sounds a great deal like the adventuresome young man's older brother, the one who stayed home and toiled with his father and grew resentful when the old man slew the fatted calf upon his brother's return.  Or we could talk about the shepherd who rejoiced over finding his lost sheep.

But let's focus instead on what it means to be an evangelical Church.  For some time now, decades really, the Church has been turning in upon itself.  This is most especially noticeable in conservative circles.  The culture is seen as hostile.  The ambient culture is "pagan," to use Archbishop Chaput's description.  Indeed, he has even called some Catholics pagan in their approach to the faith.  ("Many Christians Are 'Pagan' Claims Philadelphia Archbishop," nbcphiladelphia.com, June 28, 2013).

But shouting "pagan, pagan," is no way to win souls.  And this is evidenced by even the briefest consideration of Catholic membership statistics.  Catholic membership has grown in Africa, but it has lost members in Latin America to more enthusiastic forms of evangelical Protestantism.  And in the United States, Catholic membership would be decline were it not buoyed by immigration.

The right wing's favored response to these dismal trends is to blame the left.  But the right wing needs to know that it has controlled the Church hierarchy for some three decades now.  It is the right wing that must look in the mirror.  A stricter form of boundary police will not attract outsiders, it will repel them.  Indeed, it has.

Pope Francis has gotten the message and the tone just right. Jesus, after all, came not for the saved but for the sinners.  He dined with tax collectors.  He routinely and frequently forgave prostitutes.  He was followed in his evangelizing by women who did not come from respectable homes.  He promised the water of eternal life to a woman who was even then living out of wedlock.

The new evangelization about which so many on the Catholic right speak is not about new and better forms of border security.  It is about the imitatio Christi -- the imitation of Christ.  Like Christ, Pope Francis means to be evangelical, and that means finding people where Christ found them -- in desperate shape, in need of forgiveness and love -- and offering them hope.

John XXIII: A Saint for Social Justice

So good Pope John is being declared a saint.  He is the first Pope that I remember.  I was nine years old when he died and I still recall the day.  It was a warm June afternoon on Milwaukee's South Side.  I had gone with a neighbor kid to the large church parking lot that doubled as our playground.  Carrying our bats and gloves and a ratty excuse of a baseball, we were deep into shagging flies and playing catch when a nun interrupted us.  (The nuns at our Catholic parish were devoted and kindly women, not the stuff of urban legend at all).  Maybe we'd like to say a prayer for the Holy Father who had just passed away.  We did so, as reverently as possible for two nine-year-old boys, and went back to our ballgame.

John XXIII meant many things to me over the years.  In my boyhood, he was the joyous public face of Catholicism, a rotund holy man, optimistic and welcoming.  In my adolescence and young adulthood, as I first immersed myself in the study of the Catholic Church, he became the sturdy voice of reform, wisely shepherding the Church into the modern world through his convocation of the Second Vatican Council.  As I trained later as a canon lawyer, I appreciated the impact the ideas and principles associated with the Council had on the reform of Church law.

John XXIII was a much more complicated man than he is commonly portrayed.  He was one of fourteen children, born to peasant farmers in Lombardy in 1881.  Their home, the "Palazzo," was spacious by village standards, but its ground floor served as a barn for the family's six cows.  (Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Century, p. 1).  By the time he was a teenager, young Angelo Roncalli -- his given name -- realized he had a calling to the priesthood and pursued his vocation seriously, being ordained at the age of twenty-three.

The young Roncalli, however, did not live isolated from the world.  He did two tours of duty in the Italian Army.  Drafted at the age of nineteen, Roncalli performed well enough to reach the rank of sergeant.  In 1915, in his middle thirties, he was drafted again, this time as a chaplain and  a stretcher-bearer in World War I.

His gifts and talents must have been immediately obvious to his religious superiors.  He leapfrogged over men of more distinguished birth to become the secretary to his bishop a year after ordination.  At the close of World War I, he moved first into the Vatican's bureaucracy and then into the diplomatic corps, serving in what seemed like backwater assignments -- Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey.  But when World War II broke out, he was positioned to do real humanitarian service, saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis.  These efforts were rewarded with another difficult assignment -- nuncio to France in 1944, as Eisenhower's armies rolled East from their Normandy beachhead.

Despite his gentle, genial demeanor, this was a man who knew the world, had seen the carnage of war, and appreciated the grand stakes of international politics.  When he spoke, when he wrote, he did so with the authenticity of one who had experienced the extremes of evil but still harbored hope for the world.

His hope shone through in all he did.  He showed respect to believers and non-believers alike.  He thought the Church might make peace with modernity.  All of this has been much commented on.  I'd like, however, to focus on his unwavering commitment to social justice.

His 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra ("the Church as Mother and Teacher") was issued to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's famous encyclical Rerum Novarum ("On Revolution").  Leo had recognized the tinderbox character of the 1890s.  He knew well that the market had failed, that workers were being oppressed and were turning to revolutionary ideologies like Marxism.  And Leo meant to forestall class revolt by giving voice to transcendent principles of social justice.

John XXIII wanted to reflect on the lessons the Church and the world had learned in the seventy years between 1891 and 1961.  Laissez-faire economics had been proven a failure.  In Leo's time, "the main operative principle was that of free and unrestricted competition" (para. 11).  Leo's world was one in which "the might of the strongest" enjoyed "the force of law" (para. 12).  Child labor, starvation wages, the economic crushing of the family unit, the reduction of human beings to the single commodity of their labor, the yawning disparities of wealth and poverty -- these were the great evils Leo meant to address (para. 13).

John endorsed Leo's condemnation of this social darwinist world as intolerably wrong.  And John intended to build on Leo's foundation.  Given that "unrestricted competition in the [laissez-faire] sense, and the Marxist creed of class warfare," were both proven defective, John proposed that the principles of solidarity and brotherhood should take their place (para. 23).

John was a believer in subsidiarity (para. 53), but he also appreciated that there was a necessary and affirmative role for the State to play in "promoting the common good" (para. 37).  This was especially true where workers were concerned:  The State, John insisted, has an "obligation" to "work actively for the betterment of the condition of the workingman" (para. 20).  Workers had a right to organize and the State must foster and develop "that new branch of jurisprudence called labor law" (para. 21).  The State must never "becom[e] the tool of plutocracy" (para. 36).

The lesson to be learnt from the Great Depression, John taught, was "that unregulated competition had  succumbed to its own inherent tendencies to the point of practically destroying itself" (para. 35).  But he was pleased with the ways in which Western governments had met these challenges in the years after World War II.  States had built systems of "social security" for the vulnerable, and now offered greater opportunities for education and economic advancement to the poor (para. 48).  Much, however, remained to be done, especially in the many nations emerging from the grip of the western colonial powers (paras. 157, 161-162).

It would be easy, far too easy, to hold these solemn teachings up as a corrective to contemporary right-wing Catholic economic thought.  Suffice it to say, Ayn Rand Catholics should examine their consciences.  (Charles J. Reid, Jr., "Paul Ryan's Libertarianism and Catholic Social Thought," Huffington Post, August 15, 2012).

I'd like to suggest, however, in closing, that John's commitment to social justice might become a main interpretive key for understanding Pope Francis' pontificate.  With the selection of Francis as his papal name, this Pope has dedicated himself in a special way to the cause of social justice.

And the world is certainly in need of prophetic witness.  There is a simmering unrest circling the globe this summer, as protesters demand economic fairness and honesty in government.  From Brazil, the Egypt, and -- mirabile dictu -- Sweden! -- demonstrators have taken to the streets to demand a better life.  Economic refugees cross oceans and deserts in search of something more than subsistence.  And the rich lead their lives in splendid isolation.  Perhaps this is the reason Pope Francis fast-tracked John XXIII's canonization.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/john-xxiii-sainthood_b_3562015.html

The Married Apostles and What They Mean Today

Think of the Apostles and what images come to mind? Chances are it is of some gray-bearded men, advanced in years -- in their fifties perhaps, or even substantially older. If it is St. Paul you are conjuring up, he probably looks intense, thin, wide-eyed. And if it is St. Peter you have in mind, no doubt his hair has gone all silver, as has his beard, older in appearance but not frail.  And the other Apostles? What images come to mind? Again, older men, single, unattached from family and loved ones, men who have renounced all earthly pleasure in service to an other-worldly ideal.

Now, try to picture the wives of the Apostles. Can you bring any images to mind?  I wager that task is more difficult. In all those old sword-and-sandal films from the 1950s and 1960s, I do not recall a single depiction of an Apostle's wife. So it comes as a shock to realize that these men were not single celibates, traversing the Mediterranean in lonely solitude, but married men who for the most part likely traveled in retinues that included their wives.

What evidence do we have that allows, even demands, that we rethink our old understanding, the sanctified, sanitized version passed down to us by Hollywood and a thousand holy cards?  None other than the testimony of St. Paul, the witness of the Gospel writers, the Acts of the Apostles, and the traditions of the early Church.

The oldest evidence we have for the way life was led in the early Church are the letters of St. Paul, which predate the Gospels, at least in the form they come down to us today.  The Church at Corinth, which Paul founded and shepherded from a distance through his correspondence, was an unruly and demanding one, as befits, perhaps a raucous and thriving port city that was a crossroads of East and West.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul laid claim to the title Apostle, and informed his readers of the apostolic rights he chose not to exert:  "Do we not have the right to our food and drink?  Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as the other Apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?  Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?"  (I. Cor. 9: 4-6).

The words "believing wife" leap out.  The Greek words Paul uses are "adelphen gunaika" -- literally "sister wife," but more conventionally translated "believing wife."  Think about what Paul is saying.  The other Apostles traveled with their wives.  So did Peter (Cephas).  So did the brothers of the Lord.  Did they travel with their children also?  Perhaps.  And it is likely that they had other traveling companions, just as Paul had Barnabas, John Mark, Silas, and others.

Other biblical texts lend deeper, richer perspective on the phenomenon of the married Apostles.  There is, of course, the famous Gospel passage in which Jesus cures Peter's mother-in-law (Matthew 8: 14-15).  We are not told how Peter's wife reacted, but she surely must have been pleased.  After all, contrary to much later legend, we know that Peter was not a widower or otherwise separated from her since both he and his wife traversed the Mediterranean together (I Corinthians 9: 5).

And then there is the mysterious passage in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 21: 8), which speaks of Philip the Evangelist and his four daughters. Was this Philip the Apostle? The text is ambiguous.  It describes Philip both as an "evangelist" and as one of the seven called to service.  What is certain, however, is that the early Church numbered him among the Apostles.  So the great fourth-century Church historian Eusebius understood him. And the early-second-century Christian writer Papias, born possibly as early as the year 70, reported that he was converted to the faith after being instructed by Philip's daughters.

The early Church was prepared, furthermore, to elaborate on these Scriptural accounts.  And few early writers were more eager to do so than Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215).  This Clement was likely born in Athens, into a pagan family, although he abandoned paganism as a young man for the life of a Christian. Steeped in Greek mythology and philosophy, Clement nevertheless mounted a robust defense of Christianity against its critics.

One group he was particularly concerned to refute were the Encratites, a sect that insisted that all true followers of Christ must renounce sexual expression. Clement responded by holding up the married Apostles as examples of authentic Christianity. Consider, Clement said, the marriage of St. Peter.  Like Philip, St. Peter experienced the joys of child-rearing in his marriage.  Reporting a legend found nowhere else in the Christian sources, Clement told the story of the martyrdom of Peter's wife. She was arrested and led away with Peter helplessly looking on.  This sturdy old couple did not weep, however, or bewail their fate, but encouraged one another, knowing the end was near.

To be sure, Clement was not free of the sexual asceticism that came to shape and color Christianity. But his vision of marriage remained a positive one and it was grounded on the pattern he understood the Apostles themselves to have laid down.

Christians even assigned a feminine traveling companion to St. Paul. This was St. Thecla, holy Thecla, a chaste young virgin from a wealthy family in Iconium, in modern-day Turkey, who heard Paul preach on his sojourn there. Smitten with Paul's message, she converted to Christianity over her parents' objections and became his disciple.  She traveled with Paul for a while, but also branched off on her own, encountering in her life of missionary zeal a whole variety of threats and challenges.  She tamed wild beasts in the arena, she staved off the advances of men who threatened her virginity, and she even converted the pagan Queen of Thrace.

The Acts of Paul and Thecla, which contain these fabulous tales, do not depict her as married to Paul in any conventional sense of that word, but she surely can be seen as the feminine side of that peripatetic Apostle to the Gentiles.

And she was venerated by the Church as such.  Indeed, quite possibly no early Christian woman enjoyed wider veneration.  She was reverently depicted in early Christian art, invoked as a guardian on Christian tombstones, and celebrated for her virtues by Christian orators like St. John Chrysostom.  That paragon of austere Latin orthodoxy, St. Ambrose, preached about St. Thecla and governed Milan from the Cathedral of Holy Thecla.  The Catholic Church still commemorates her feast day as September 23.

So what does this paradigm-shifting change of perspective mean for today's Catholic Church?  Consider the plight of the priesthood.  Among the issues that must keep Pope Francis awake at night is the precipitous decline in priestly vocations.  Worldwide, in 1970, Catholics numbered 653 million and were served by 419,728 priests.  The Catholic population has now nearly doubled, to 1.2 billion, but the number of priests has shrunk in numerical terms to 412,236.  Statistics for the United States are even grimmer -- the number of priests has declined from 58,632 in 1965 to 38,964 in 2012, even while the Catholic population has increased from 48 million to 78 million.

The Catholic Church is a religion that looks to tradition for guidance.  History, the past words and deeds of generations of holy men and women, holds strong instructive, sometimes even obligatory force, for Catholics.  And the Apostolic Age, that time when the disciples of the Lord lived and worked and preached, must count foremost as a source of inspiration.

Is it time to change the rules on priestly celibacy?  To return to the practices of the earliest Christian Church, that time in the life of the Church when the Apostles enjoyed the company of their wives as evangelized the world?

Claudio Hummes, a Brazilian Cardinal and close confidante of the new Pope, has made this point: "'Celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma of the Church,' Hummes was quoted as saying by the Folha de. S. Paolo newspaper. 'Certainly, the majority of the Apostles were married.  In this modern age, the Church must observe these things.  It has to advance with history.'"  Indeed, while Archbishop of Buenos Aires, the future Pope Francis acknowledged that "the celibacy rule is simply one of tradition and is flexible."

Will we see the rules on celibacy changed?  If Pope Francis makes this choice, he would merely be returning the Church to one of its oldest, deepest practices.

Cross-posted at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/the-married-apostles-and-_b_3474168.html

An Anchor, Not a Bubble: Student Loans and the New American Serfdom

The economic world, some would have it, has been awash in a sea of frothy bubbles for a couple of decades now.  And there is some truth to this claim.  The NASDAQ stock surge of the late 1990s was a bubble.  The underlying valuations never justified the NASDAQ at 5,000 and despite all the relentless hype by the big brokerage firms, the bubble inevitably deflated.  A few years later, residential real estate went through its own bust.  "Homes never lose value," went the mantra.  But the slicers and dicers of the securitization market exploited this false assurance, driving prices beyond the ability of home-owners to pay and the great crash followed.

In the last few years, talk of bubbles has migrated to all corners of the business world.  But one place where such talk is certainly out of place is the student loan market.  For sure, there are many who describe student loans as a bubble.  Right-wing blogs have been fairly screaming this from the rooftops.  Patrick Hedger, a policy analyst for FreedomWorks, thus writes that "Student Loans are the New Housing Bubble."  Ben Gersten documents "The Scary Reality of the Student Loan Bubble in 5 Charts," But the bubble talk has also begun appearing in mainstream sources as well.  See "Bankers Warn Fed of Farm, Student Loan Bubbles Echoing Subprime," here.

The claim that student loans are a bubble is mainly based on the exponential rise in borrowing in recent years, coupled with rising default rates.  But this combination does not a bubble make.  The NASDAQ deflated for the simple reason that stock markets are liquid.  A stampede for the exits was inevitable and easy once the selling began.  Real estate similarly deflated when prices reached unsustainable levels because in many jurisdictions it is easy for home owners to walk away from mortgage loans.  When home owners could no longer refinance, when the balloon payments became unmanageable, when purchasers who might take the property off the distressed home owner's hands could no longer be found, prices came down like a leaden souffle.

Student loans, however, are not like this, for the simple reason that they are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.  They are not a bubble and cannot become one.  What they can become -- and show increasing signs of actually becoming -- is an anchor that is sinking the fortunes of an entire generation.

Consider a recent story in U.S. News -- "Are Student Loans Ruining the Economy?" the author asks.  The answer is a resounding "yes."  There was a time, not too many years ago, when young people with student-loan debt were more likely to buy homes.  Their incomes were high, their futures bright, and the debt load manageable.  But that reality has now reversed.  Those without student loans are now more likely to buy homes.

What this means now, in practice, is that homeownership among the young is shrinking and is increasingly class-based -- young people from wealthy, well-connected families who don't have to borrow heavily if at all to attend school can still buy homes, but the less affluent are squeezed to the sidelines.  There is little wonder that record numbers of young people are living with their parents into their twenties and thirties, unable to marry, to have children, or start households of their own.  Many young people today are unable even to purchase that traditional ticket to freedom and the open road, the automobile.

Congress has considered reform of the system, but most proposals are little better than tinkering at the edges.  In 2012, Congressman Hansen Clarke, (D.-Mich), proposed a loan forgiveness program, but its ambitions were modest and its stimulative effects would have been negligible since its main provisions were to be implemented only ten years down the road.  Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposal to cap interest rates at 0.75 % -- the rate that banks can borrow from the Federal Reserve -- is an interesting and important proposal.  But this bill does not address the mountain of debt already accumulated.

The student loan crisis is rooted in a fundamental change in the way American higher education has been perceived in the United States.  Historically, from the very creation of the Republic, higher education was seen as something beneficial to the nation as a whole.  Thus George Washington called on Congress in 1796 to create a national university, sufficiently well-funded to attract "the ablest professors," and intended to promote "the different departments of liberal knowledge." 

Two generations later, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln called on Congress to pass the Morrill Act, creating America's first land-grant colleges.  Justin Smith Morrill, the Act's principal sponsor, defended a robust role for government in promoting knowledge.  "[W]e shall have done something to enable the farmer to raise two blades of grass instead of one; something for every owner of land; something for all who desire to own land; something for cheap scientific education; something for every man who loves intelligence and not ignorance ... something to remove the last vestiges of pauperism from our land."

For much of the 20th century, Americans preserved this connection between higher education and the public good.  Dwight Eisenhower praised Lincolns' commitment to higher education, and called upon America to do more because education "is vital to free government."  In signing the Higher Education Act of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson invoked this long tradition and committed the federal government "to nourish human potential today, so that our Nation can realize its rich promise tomorrow."

In the last two decades or so, however, this long-standing American ideal, this commitment to higher education as a public value, this belief that an educated citizenry served not merely private interests but the good of the entire community, has been corroded by the individualist rhetoric of right-wing economists.

One can take the work of Richard Vedder as an example.  Vedder argues that public support for higher education results in a host of evils -- price insensitivity on the part of consumers (i.e., students might attend a better college than they could otherwise afford); higher taxes (because we all know that the government which taxes least governs best); and the private enrichment of students who attend colleges and professional schools to increase their income potential (washed down the memory hole is any remembrance of the American commitment to the public values of a productive and informed citizenry).

Really, isn't it time to break free of these tired, threadbare neoconservative bromides?  This iron triangle of political resentment -- and the claim that someone, somewhere is reaping a benefit at public expense is always a summons to resentment -- must be broken.

Nearly a year ago, in my first blog in The Huffington Post, I called for a year of jubilee for student loans.  We need large-scale student-loan forgiveness even more today.  Aggregate student-loan debt has broken the trillion dollar barrier.  For too long, governments in thrall to the siren song that education is a purely private pursuit have had their way, making student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, permitting interest to accrue even while students are in school, hiking interest rates to levels not justified by market forces.

It is time to recapture the vision of Washington and Lincoln, Eisenhower and LBJ.  To those who say to heavily-indebted student borrowers, they should pay for what they bought, I answer back, at how steep a price?  Is it worth it to extract every penny of compound interest from the young while sacrificing economic recovery?  To crush the hopes and aspirations of a generation who cannot afford to form families of their own?  To injure generations as yet unborn by frustrating the formation of new households?  We have tried the neoconservative vision to our great detriment and it is time to pronounce it a failure.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/an-anchor-not-a-bubble-st_b_3405250.html

Christians Must Confront Scientific Illiteracy

Where science is concerned, responsible Christians are caught in the vice grip of two extremes.  On the one hand, there is the defiant and willful ignorance of persons like Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.), who famously declared during last fall's election cycle that "evolution and the big bang theory are lies straight from the pit of hell." And on the other hand, there is the cool atheism of someone like Richard Dawkins, contentedly dismissing the whole of religious experience as the magical thinking of the great superstitious mass of humankind.

Christians must provide effective witness against both extremes.  But before Christianity can engage atheism it must first address the scientific illiteracy in its own house.  For the greatest danger Christianity confronts at the present moment is not incipient persecution, but increasing marginalization and irrelevance.  If Christians cannot engage reasonably and responsibly with science, there will be no place for them in the public life of advanced societies.

I recently had my attention called to the work of Ken Ham. I must confess that I had not heard of him, but I soon learned that he is a figure of some influence in fundamentalist circles.  He was born in Australia, where he took an undergraduate degree in environmental biology.  He has since immigrated to the United States, settling in Cincinnati.

He expounds a doctrine known as "young earth creationism," which promotes the view that the first chapters of Genesis must be seen as scientifically valid.  The Earth was created just 6,000 years ago.  Dinosaurs and human beings walked together in those early days.

"The Bible,' Ham declares, "clearly teaches that God created [Earth] in six literal, 24-hour days a few thousand years ago" (Ken Ham, "The New Answers Book, No. 1," p. 26).  He then twists and turns all of the tools and findings of modern science to support this thesis.  Radiocarbon dating is unreliable, Ham asserts.  When "a scientist's interpretation of data does not match the clear meaning of the text in the Bible, we should never reinterpret the Bible" (p. 78).  What about the "ice ages"?  We need to be vigilant against those "secular/uniformitarian scientists" who understand glacial periods in terms of hundreds of thousands or millions of years (pp. 212-213).

Creation scientists, however, know better.  At best, there was only one ice age, directly after Noah's Flood, and it lasted for only a few hundred years (p. 214).  There never was a big bang (p. 245), and the speed of light is variable, meaning that accurate dating of the universe is impossible (p. 247).

It is easy to dismiss this stuff, but there is real danger in treating it lightly.  In the secular imagination, this fantasy view of the world is fast becoming the public face of Christianity.  Certainly, Ken Ham is a respected figure in his own community. He recently received an honorary degree from Liberty University.  His website promotes a mix of pseudo-science and survivalism.  (Check out the blog entry, "Noah the Super Prepper," May 16, 2013, AnswersinGenesis.org, for a cheerful mix of both strains of thought.)  In 2007, he opened the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, just outside of Cincinnati.  In its first three years of operation, the Museum received more than 1 million visitors.  Even though attendance has recently declined, more than a quarter-million annually still visit it.

Christians have not always been such enemies of science.  Aside from the occasional embarrassment, such as the persecution of Galileo, science often thrived in explicitly Christian settings.  In early Christianity, there was the Bishop Synesius (373- ca. 414).  In his student days, Synesius, with his pagan instructor, the woman philosopher Hypatia, he explored the deep mathematical structure of the universe.

Then there is Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543).  A brilliant man and a Catholic monk, Copernicus held important positions in both secular and ecclesiastical government, all the while writing voluminously.  A sophisticated economic thinker, Copernicus was the first to propose that increases in the money supply have a tendency to drive price inflation.  But what he is remembered for today is his heliocentric theory of the solar system.  Through patient observation and calculation, Copernicus displaced the earth from the center of things, reorienting the way we view everything and thereby ushering in the modern world.

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was an Augustinian monk and professor of natural philosophy and eventually became the abbot of his monastery.  And today he is recalled for his path-breaking studies of pea plants which showed the existence of recessive and dominant genes, an essential cornerstone of modern genetics.

But of them all, my own favorite is the unjustly obscure Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), the "father of the big bang."  A Belgian priest, Fr. Lemaitre did his graduate work in theoretical physics at Cambridge University and Harvard. In 1927, while still a junior lecturer at the Catholic University of Louvain, he proposed an expansionary theory of the universe at odds with the then-prevailing belief that the universe had always existed in a steady state.  Four years later, in 1931, he asserted that the entire universe began with what he called a "cosmic egg" or "primeval atom" -- a theory that Sir Fred Hoyle derisively dismissed as "the big bang."  Later that same year, Fr. Lemaitre argued that not only was the universe expanding, its expansion was accelerating in speed.  While it has taken decades, Lemaitre's theories have been confirmed in every major particular.

This is the heritage that Christians must reclaim and reassert.  Science and religion are not opposites.  Faith and reason can be reconciled in truth.  And Christians, furthermore, must police their ranks.  When someone like Congressman Broun -- who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology -- denounces scientific knowledge in the name of misguided fundamentalism, Christians should be the first to call him out.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/christians-must-confront-scientific-illiteracy_b_3307516.html

MARRIAGE EQUALITY: How I Changed My Mind

From 2003 to early 2009, I wrote a series of historically-grounded papers that reached the common conclusion that marriage equality represented a radical departure from the western tradition of marriage and so, for that reason, should be rejected as a matter of public policy.  I have now changed my mind regarding this conclusion.  While there is no question that marriage equality represents a dramatic departure from what has gone before, I can now find support within our western tradition for expanding the definition of marriage to embrace loving, committed same-sex unions.

Let me begin with my professional background:  I am a lawyer and an historian.  These two sides of my brain co-exist in what I like to think is, for the most part anyways, a creative tension.  The lawyer side of my brain considers public policy issues in the urgency of the present.  The historian's training, however, summons me always to look at the deep picture, to appreciate what has come before, and it was this innate conservativism that long governed my instincts on marriage equality.  In my historical writings on the subject, I made essentially three arguments:  (1)  In the few instances in which same-sex marriage was debated on the historical record, it was rejected; (2)  a principal reason for this rejection, furthermore, was because marriage was about procreation, and only procreative relationships should therefore be recognized as marriage; and (3)  public policy should remain within these tightly-drawn boundaries, because any departure would be likely to result in arbitrary line-drawing.

The historical record on same-sex marriage is a surprisingly deep one.  So far as I can tell, it was discussed for the first time in the first and second centuries of the common era when the Emperor Nero engaged in a same-sex marriage with a galley slave during a lavish festival stage-managed by his praetorian prefect, Tigellinus.  The ancient authors were unremittingly harsh on Nero for this action.  Tacitus turned his ferocious irony on Nero, blaming him for the Great Fire at Rome, while Juvenal simply mocked him and those who later tried to emulate him.

Twelve centuries later, the canon lawyer Hostiensis raised the subject of same-sex marriage once again.  Hostiensis is one of those figures, well known to specialists but who has simply vanished from the popular historical understanding.  A scholar with a virtuoso's talent at raising and answering challenging questions, Hostiensis asked whether it was ever possible for a man to marry a man.  He answered in the negative and did so in order to read into his legal definition of marriage the developing theology of unnatural acts found in the scholastic writers.

His analysis would be repeated and expanded by other writers, also well-known to specialists but forgotten by nearly everyone else.  Antoninus of Florence mooted this question in the fifteenth century and Johannes Brunellus in the sixteenth.  Echoes of this mode of thought can still be found in the magisterial documents of the Catholic Church.

And if this line of thought represented one element of my own perspective, the procreative dimension of marriage represented the other.  Secular and religious sources, it seemed, converged on this point of agreement.  The Emperor Augustus decreed that marriage had to have a procreative dimension and where procreative intent was excluded from marriage, the Roman state itself might impose penalties.

The theologian St. Augustine, four centuries later, had much more to say on this point.  Marriage, he insisted, had to be procreative.  Where two parties took steps affirmatively to frustrate the natural fruitfulness of marriage their union could not be called marriage.  It was invalid and amounted to a sham.

Early American lawyers and judges were inheritors of this tradition.  Indeed, nineteenth-century marriage law had a profound Augustinian structure to it.  St. Augustine, after all, had argued that not only did marriage exist essentially for procreative purposes, but also that it was necessarily exclusive and permanent.  That is, those who strayed from their marital obligations should be punished for adultery or for fornication, while simultaneously divorce should be granted, if at all, only for a few narrowly defined causes.

These three essential marital properties had been bedrock teaching from the time of St. Augustine, through the medieval canonists, up to the eccesiastical courts of early modern England.  Early American jurists borrowed many of their matrimonial categories directly from the English ecclesiastics and almost without conscious reflection made this framework the superstructure around which they constructed their own marital theories.

American marriage law was dominated by this vision of marriage until the 1950s and 1960s, when the law began to shift fundamentally.  Adultery and fornication, while still seen as moral wrongs, ceased to be prosecuted as crimes.  No-fault divorce meanwhile eroded the law's commitment to marital permanency by greatly expanding opportunities to depart from marital commitment.  Finally, the Supreme Court's right of privacy cases, beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut, severed the connection between marriage and procreation.

This is a story I repeated in several iterations in my writing between 2003 and 2009.  The record seemed compelling.  It seemed self-evident that the conservative side of this debate had the mandate of history if not of heaven.

But I now recognize that I had merely told the story of how we got where we are and contented myself with the conclusion that that story, standing alone, provided sufficient guidance for future decision-making.  But I appreciate now something that I did not appreciate seven and eight years ago, when I commenced my writing on this topic.  I needed a more expansive historical vision in order to speak normatively.  The story I told was a static account.  I needed to identify the dynamic element within the history of marriage.

And that dynamic element is love -- enduring commitment to the personhood and welfare of another human being.  Love has been a central feature of the marital ideal for nearly as long as people have written about marriage.  Babylonian poetry recites the story of Dumuzi and Inanna, two adolescents, highly anthromorphized deities, who flirtatiously courted and wed.  Teasingly, joyously, with all the warmth and playfulness of youth, they ease themselves into a loving marriage.

In the Hebrew Scripture, we find the Song of Songs.  I have always doubted the imputation of this book to King Solomon.  It is an erotic celebration of love, told from the woman's perspective.  Christians have always felt the need to spiritualize this book, to make its explicit sexuality an allegory, but this I think is a mistake.  It is a book about love, passionate marital love, and it is found in the Bible.  And then there is St. Paul who in his letter to the Ephesians advises Christian spouses to love each other sacrificially, as Christ so loved the Church.

St. Augustine belongs to this tradition also.  When he wrote his treatise On the Good Of Marriage, he commenced with the words:  "Every individual belongs to the human race, and by virtue of his humanity, is made a social being.  In addition, the person possesses a strong aptitude for friendship."  Yes, procreation was a defining element of marriage for St. Augustine, but so also was companionship.  In the end, it is because we are social beings who know how to love that marriage becomes an appropriate means of procreation.  Love comes first, for St. Augustine, then procreation.

Great modern secular writers, too, have explored the importance of love and marriage.  One of the earliest, and among the most profound, was Mary Wollstonecraft, in her many works of fiction.  She could mourn the misery that comes when marriage is severed from the longings of the heart.  But she celebrated warm-hearted love, too, in whatever strange corner of human experience it might be found.  The women writers of the nineteenth century knew this too.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued for consensual divorce not to provide an easy escape valve from marriage but as a way of ensuring that love and marriage might always and everywhere remain perfectly matched.

And it is safe to say that since 1960s, American society has witnessed a sea change in the area of marital theory.  Where once marital theory rested securely on Augustinian premises, the rise of artificial birth control and the right of privacy cases have shifted the foundations.  Marriage today, as a matter of public understanding, can only be grounded on love and commitment, not procreation.  As a Catholic, I still understand marriage, in my faith tradition, to unite the procreative and affective ideals.  As an American citizen, however, I also know that I belong to a diverse and creative world where a new set of public norms is even now coming into being.

And these new norms are love-based.  I feared for a long time the confusion that might result from marriage grounded solely on affection.  How do we determine what to honor with the term "marriage" and what human relationships should be characterized merely as "friendship?"  The former, esteemed by the State, carries with it legal rights and duties.  The latter, privately respected, confers no public recognition.  But how do we demarcate one from the other?

I can see now that that boundary line must be in the strength of commitment shared by two loving hearts.  I have personally witnessed successful same-sex relationships.  The response of the gay community to the AIDs crisis, particularly in the 1980s, stands as further vivid testimony to the strength and power of sacrificial, self-giving love.  For AIDs brought forth truly heroic demonstrations of love and new conceptions of family.  Susan Sontag captures these related phenomena brilliantly in her short story, The Way We Live Now.  We find there the many faces of love, as a concentric circle of friends gathers, hovers, retreats, and congregates once again, all of them trying to comfort their dying friend.

Marriage equality is a new departure in history, but that does not mean we lack all guidance from the past.  History, in the form of the story of love itself and the vast treasure-house of human experience that relates to it, can serve as our steady guide.

May Catholic Supporters of Marriage Equality Receive Communion?

Can a Catholic who upholds marriage equality receive Holy Communion?  This was the question put to Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, who answered in the negative, declaring that Catholic supporters of marriage equality should refrain from the Eucharist.  They "deny the revelation of Christ entrusted to the Church," the Archbishop said, and added:  "This sort of behavior amounts to publicly rejecting one's integrity and logically bring[ing] shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury."

On April 12, however, retired Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton contradicted Vigneron and reassured Catholics: "Don't stop going to Communion. You're okay."

So, in this Motor City clash, who is right?  To resolve this question in absolute terms, we need to know more about what Archbishop Vigneron was thinking.  It is possible that he meant only to address Catholics who believe that marriage equality is a settled matter of ecclesiastical law and doctrine.  That is, he may have been speaking to Catholics who wish to have local parishes perform same-sex marriages as a matter of internal Church practice.

But it is more than likely he had something else in mind.  And that was to speak to Catholics who believe that secular society should adopt an expansive understanding of marriage, embracing both heterosexual and homosexual unions so as to accommodate the needs of a rich and diverse nation.  Clearly, one of the Archbishop's principal sources for his statement, the Detroit canonist Ed Peters, had this in mind when he wrote that "[t]he Catholic Church has the right and duty 'always and everywhere to announce moral principles, even about the social order, and to render judgment concerning any human affairs insofar as the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls requires it.'"

Well, OK, then, where to start? American marriage law has never conformed precisely with the Catholic understanding of marriage.  Never. To be sure, early American marriage law possessed a religious character, derived variously from Anglican canon law and the cultural Calvinism that defined sexual mores for much of American history.  But even when American marriage law was distinctly Christian, it was never distinctively Catholic.

And that is certainly true today, as marriage has grown increasingly secular in the post-World War II era.  What about divorce?  The Catholic Code of Canon Law teaches that an essential property of marriage is its "indissolubility" (c. 1056).  From the very beginning of American history, however, secular courts have been in the business of decreeing divorces and permitting persons to move freely to new spouses, a process that greatly accelerated with the enactment of no-fault divorce in the 1960s and 1970s.

Surely, we would expect to see bishops and archbishops vigorously defend this essential property of marriage by reminding Catholics that they should not support a legal regime that permits divorce.  Perhaps Catholic lawyers who have a family-law practice should never take a divorce case?  Perhaps Catholic judges should resign from the bench?  Perhaps Catholics in the pews should be called upon to ask their legislators to repeal American divorce law?  Ireland, until the 1990s, did not have secular divorce courts, relying instead upon ecclesiastical tribunals.  Perhaps our own secular law of divorce needs to be rolled back.  That, at least, is where Ed Peters' logic would lead.

And what about contraception?  In 1965, in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, the United States Supreme Court recognized access to artificial means of contraception as a constitutional right.  This constitutional doctrine stands squarely athwart the Church's teaching on contraception as it is expressed in Humanae Vitae.  Perhaps Catholic jurists should demand Griswold's reversal.  Rick Santorum, at least, seems to think that should be done.  And when Griswold is reversed, the old laws against contraception should be once again be enforced.  Again, the same logic that would ban supporters of marriage equality from Communion could be extended to cover all those who refuse to support the reinstatement of the old contraception prohibition.

What of in vitro fertilization?  Once again, must Catholics rally to outlaw most forms of in vitro fertilization?  And must Communion be used to police this political cause?  What of pre-nuptial agreements made in contemplation of divorce?  Should these also be outlawed?  The list could be extended.

The point in saying all of this, of course, is to stress that on matters of divorce, contraception, and even in vitro fertilization, Catholics have reached a modus vivendi with the larger secular society.  Catholics truly believe in the indissolubility of marriage.  That, for Catholics, is what makes marriage sacred.  And even while most Catholics practice contraception at some point in their lives, they also, most of them anyway, acknowledge that opposition to contraception is part of their Church's teaching.  Same goes for in vitro fertilization.  Most Catholics appreciate the moral dilemmas posed by this practice.  But Catholics by and large do not try to outlaw these practices as a matter of secular law,  nor do bishops try to use Communion as a means of enforcing this sort of political agenda.

If the Catholic Church and secular society can achieve co-existence on these points, why not on marriage equality?  If a Catholic can believe that a secular divorce law is allowable, even though it is opposed to an essential property of marriage, how is that different from a Catholic who believes that secular law should adopt marriage equality, even if it does not conform to the Catholic understanding of marriage?

What this line of questioning is really calling for is a searching re-examination by Catholic thinkers of Church/State and Church/Society relations.  What does it mean for the Catholic Church to exist in a world that is authentically pluralistic?  These are questions, however, that should be considered in another post, on another day.

Cross-Posted at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/may-catholic-supporters-of-marriage-equality-receive-communion_b_3094338.html

Pope Francis and Museum-Piece Catholicism

Jaroslav Pelikan once called tradition the living faith of the dead and traditionalism the dead faith of the living. I am reminded of this pithy observation as I watch right-wing Catholics react to Pope Francis' warm-spirited evangelization. The comments on Rorate Caeli (in Latin, "let the heavens fall like the dew"), were frightening in their intensity. Speaking of the pope's decision to wash the feet of women convicts on Holy Thursday, one commentator wrote: "Wonder why he didn't wait until tomorrow [Good Friday] to stick a spear in the side of the Bride of Christ?" Another commentator added, using bold print: "Francis is being OPENLY DEFIANT to Tradition in the Church." (See Comments section to "The Official End of the Reform of the Reform -- By Example," Rorate Caeli, March 28, 2013).

It is this idea of tradition that is worth considering. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the "living transmission" of the message of salvation is "called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it" (paragraph 77).

The right-wing furor over the pope's foot-washing puts into stark relief two ways of viewing Tradition. The first approach is that of the commentators on Rorate Caeli. Tradition is fixed and unchanging. What was done yesterday must be done today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, world without end, Amen. The role of priests and the hierarchy on this model is not unlike museum curators. They preserve the past, seal it in glass cases, reverence it, bring it out on special occasions, surrounded by pomp and glory. And it is the duty of the laity to gaze on with due admiration at the delicacy and the intensity of these wonderful old masterworks.

Nowhere is this reverence for a fixed and unchanging past on better display than among ecclesial conservatives in today's Catholic Church. Mass must be exactly as it always was. The priest must chant. Communion must be on the tongue. Women must wear headscarves. And only men may have their feet washed at the Holy Thursday because, well, Pope Pius XII decreed it. But this idea of the fixed and unchanging Church goes far beyond the details of liturgical celebration. Just look at the debates over moral teaching.

The language of the Catechism, however, cautions against static conceptions of Tradition. After all, it refers to the "living transmission" of practice and doctrine. The adjective "living" insists upon a dynamic application of Tradition. It is tradition that is adaptive and forward-looking, not enclosed and self-referential.

And indeed, if we look at Church history we do not find static, changeless, timeless truths but a dynamic response to changing conditions. Consider just one fundamental issue: the composition of the Christian New Testament. The Bible was not automatically known to the first Christians. It was developed incrementally, in stages, through reflection, discussion, disagreement and debate over the first four hundred years of Church history.

Important theologians, still respected and revered by the Church, relied on books that are not considered canonical today. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 - c. 215) made use of the Gospel of Thomas and the Traditions of Matthias. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, the legendary account of Paul's travels with his feminine companion Thecla, was invoked by a number of orthodox writers. St. Ambrose, that paragon of proper belief and practice, presided over his diocese from the Cathedral Church of St. Thecla and recommended to the nuns of his diocese the life of St. Thecla as a model of virginal dedication. Other orthodox writers meanwhile, rejected books now considered canonical. Thus the sainted fourth-century bishop Gregory Nazianzus maintained that the Book of Revelations was not biblical and should therefore be excluded from the Scriptures.

The point of this historical exercise is to demonstrate that even on big issues -- and no question is larger than defining what counts as Scripture -- tradition played the leading role in determining what got in and what was omitted. It was a messy, dynamic process. Tradition was not handed down in a single moment of radiant light on Calvary, but was developed by Christian communities trying to learn the authentic Word of God for themselves and to shape their lives accordingly. Tradition is not static, but dynamic.

The same phenomenon repeats itself in the area of moral teaching. John Noonan has shown how Church doctrine developed in areas like usury (see his book, "The Scholastic Analysis of Usury"). In the early middle ages, the Gospel verse instructing us "to lend freely, asking nothing in return" was taken literally as forbidding all interest on loans. In the high middle ages, canonists and theologians invented legal fictions that allowed for the taking of moderate interest where it could be shown that the money lent otherwise had productive value. And by the time we reach the 18th and 19th centuries, even the fictions disappeared as moral theologians, learning from the experience of Christian merchants, concluded that the taking of interest was not sinful but a necessary part of commercial life. It was not a crime, but an engine of prosperity for many people.

Pope Francis grasps this. He understands that tradition is a continually unfolding process and that individuals are not passive observers but must play a role in the constant renewal and re-creation of what it means to be Church. Nothing can ever be handed on exactly, because historical context is constantly shifting, altering our vantage point and making all things fresh. It is this deep self-awareness that makes him so very appealing to such a large audience of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

And it is this openness to revision that so deeply threatens what the conservatives take to be the eternal verities. When he declined the elaborate vestments at his first appearance on the balcony of St. Peter's, when he asked for the crowd's blessing, when he referred to himself modestly as the "Bishop of Rome," he was symbolically altering the way people look at the papal office. And if we view how the papacy can change, conservatives fret, then there is nothing that can't be accommodated to fit the temper of the times. Hence the alarm at washing the feet of women -- and Muslims -- on Holy Thursday.

The Church cannot be all change, all flux, lacking all core or conviction. But at the same time, the Church has been most alive when it has been swept by change -- whether that be the ascertainment of the Books of Scripture, the founding of the great religious orders, like the Franciscans and the Jesuits, or the shifts in Church teaching brought about by the Second Vatican Council. Who knows, perhaps we are once again about to experience an exciting time of change?

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/pope-francis-and-museum-piece-catholicism_b_3010868.html 

St. Francis, Radical for Love

In today's world, there is perhaps no more familiar or more comforting saint than the medieval mendicant St. Francis of Assisi.  Catholics and non-Catholics alike hold him in reverence and awe.  What is it about the actual, historical St. Francis that drives such an enthusiastic response eight centuries after his death?  For surely there is not another saint in Christendom who commands such devotion.

In truth, few more radical individuals have ever walked the earth.  St. Francis, like no one before or since, captured the essence of what it meant to follow the example of Jesus Christ.  Jesus, of course, commanded the impossible.  He ordered his followers to love one another without limit or precondition.  Whatever stands in the way of our love must be removed.  If there is a boundary or barrier to be overcome, we must overcome it.  Sacrifice, always and everywhere, for the good of others.  Sacrifice, offered in full rejoicing at the opportunity to expend ourselves totally for our neighbor's well-being.  Jesus commanded and St. Francis, more than any other human being, attempted to fulfill this simple yet unachievable demand.

When St. Francis broke with his father, who had hoped he would enter the world of business and commerce, he stripped naked in the town square of Assisi, handing back his clothes to the befuddled older man.  When Brother Ruffino, of noble descent and one of Francis's first followers, hesitated to preach, Francis commanded him to preach naked.  Side-by-side before the assembled congregants, these two naked men denounced pride and pretense in the name of utter humility.  When you stand naked before God and man, after all, you kill the old self, the self-important vainglorious self, and become totally transparent to the world.

St. Francis preached to the birds, informing them of their beauty, reminding them that God had endowed them with wings and feathers, and the wondrous gift of flight.  In this small, strange gesture, St. Francis recalled for his audience the miracles of everyday life.  Even birds are not commonplace.  They are gifted with abilities no human can ever hope to share.  On other occasions, he preached to fish, to rabbits and even tamed a wolf threatening the town of Gubbio.

In all of this, Francis taught that no part of God's creation is ordinary.  Everything, from the tiniest microbe to the largest galactic structure, is unique and special.  God is not some distant judge, thundering "thou-shalt-nots" from on high, but is woven into the very fabric of the world around us.  People are quite right to see St. Francis as a nature mystic, as a defender of the natural world, as a patron saint of the environment.  He is all of that.  But he is so much more besides.  Everything in God's creation is to be respected because everything is worthy of our love.  God, after all, is love without limits and God created this world and ordered us to shepherd it safely home.

St. Francis demanded of his followers an absolute and unconditional renunciation of all property.  Christ was poor.  He relied on the kindness of others to carry on his mission.  Like the lillies of the field, he did not concern himself with what he was to eat, or drink, or where he was to sleep for the night.  And neither would Francis' disciples.

This teaching was radically destabilizing in its application.  Francis' followers would spend the next two centuries threatening papal power and authority with their unyielding insistence on apostolic poverty.  Umberto Eco set that improbable medieval murder mystery, "The Name of the Rose," in the midst of these controversies.  But the implications for our time are clear:  Material prosperity represents, in some measure, a compromise with the things of this world.  All preoccupation with material wealth is by definition something we hold back, something we keep in reserve.  We are not full or complete in our love, in our trust, if we withhold anything from God or the love we must show others.

St. Francis kissed lepers. He embraced them. He recognized their humanity beneath their scabbing skin and benumbed limbs.  Lepers were the most marginal members of medieval life.  Feared and despised, they were forced to inhabit encampments on the edge of civilization, or were confined in leprosaria, or even killed for sport or pleasure.

In reaching out to the marginal, St. Francis imitated Jesus.  Jesus did not come to reassure the high and mighty of their rightful place in society.  He came to comfort the afflicted.  He brought hope to lepers.  He numbered tax collectors among his followers.  He ministered to prostitutes.  In a society dominated by male hierarchy, he spoke directly to women.  There was Mary Magdalen, of course, and Martha and Mary, and all the many women he healed.  He conversed with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well.  She had been married five times and now lived with a man not her husband.  Jesus promised her the sweet, sweet water of eternal life.

I will confess I never thought it possible a pope would take the name Francis.  The pope, after all, represents the institutional church, the church of structure, of hierarchy and discipline, the church of respectability and good order.  St. Francis' whole life was led in tension with all of these aspects of what it means to be church.  He subverted hierarchy, he broke down barriers, he insisted by deed and word to demonstrate the limitless law of love.  He was Jesus, after all, to Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor.

What can we expect from a pope who has chosen to be known by this most challenging of all Christian saints?  I share Joseph Amodeo's hope that Pope Francis might reach out to those most marginalized and mistreated Christians, gay Catholics (see "Could Pope Francis Be the Gay Community's Greatest Hope?").  I think that Frank Kirkpatrick is right to expect Pope Francis to challenge the vast economic injustices of our age (see "What's Behind the Pope's Name").  For my part, I was a guest on several radio call-in shows where I was struck by the number of callers who identified themselves as lapsed Catholics willing to give the Church a second look based on little more than the choice of papal name.

But papal names also become standards by which we judge the success or failure of pontificates.  Can Pope Francis practice the humility and transparency of St. Francis?  Can he reduce the trappings of a papal monarchy grown stiff with rigor mortis?  Can he confront and transform an economic order as unequal and unjust as any since the industrial revolution?  Can he reconcile the marginalized?  Can he, in short, practice the love without limits that Jesus asked of his followers and that St. Francis sought to emulate in all things?

Cross-posted at The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/st-francis-radical-for-love_b_2887699.html

Fat Pope? Thin Pope? Conservative Pope? Progressive?

    There is an old saying, a fat pope follows a thin pope.  What is meant by this saying is that papal styles of governance change.  A pope dedicated to enforcing doctrinal orthodoxy is succeeded by a pope concerned about speaking to the world.  A pope preoccupied with the great affairs of state is succeeded by a pope focused on tending the garden of the Church.

    We saw this phenomenon play out in the contrasts between Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  John Paul II was the man of great and bold gestures.  A theatrical pope, a pope who knew how to capture and hold the public imagination.  And he was followed by a cerebral pope, an intellectual, a pope more at home writing learned books about Jesus and adorning his weekly homilies with wonderful lessons in Church history.

    How will this phenomenon play out in this week's conclave?  I am willing to surmise that we will see a pope elected who will look toward more progressive models of church governance.  Both John Paul II and Benedict relied heavily on the curia -- the Church's top-heavy, secretive bureaucracy for much of the day-to-day running of the Church.  I think we may see a pope willing to alter this governing model.  I think as well we may see a pope less concerned with rooting out perceived doctrinal aberrations in the name of orthodoxy and tradition.  We might instead find ourselves with a pope open to experimentation.  We could see a change of tone toward homosexuals.  We could see a pope encourage rather than dampen theological speculation on all sorts of interesting questions.  We might, in other words, see a very different pope from what we have experienced in recent
decades.

Anxiety in the College of Cardinals?

    When Keith Cardinal O'Brien was forced to resign at the end of February because of sexual misconduct involving the Cardinal's unwanted advances towards the priests of his Archdiocese, the anxiety level among the cardinals must have risen a notch or two. Cardinal O'Brien was not an obscure back-bencher.  He had in fact gained some prominence on the world stage.  He made progressives happy by suggesting that clerical celibacy needed a second look.  And he delighted social conservatives with his vigorous attacks on homosexuality. All the while, it seems, he kept effectively concealed his own indiscretions -- which, the New York Times has pointed out, may involve members of his clergy but, given the sweeping nature of his admission, could involve instances of misconduct involving others as well.  See John F. Burns, "Following Resignation, Top British Cardinal Acknowledges Sexual Misconduct," New York Times, March 3, 2013.

          As the cardinals size up one another as papabile -- "papal material" -- they must now ask themselves, "are there any skeletons in the closet?"  Have any of the cardinals concealed pedophilia on the part of their priests?  Are there other shoes yet to drop?  Or, have any of the cardinals behaved in indiscreet ways themselves?  These questions would have been nearly unthinkable before l'affaire O'Brien.  But every cardinal of voting age must now be asking themselves precisely these questions. And this must lead to very anxious moments.

Can Any Good Come of It?

We are not moving gently or confidently toward the next conclave.  We are staggering toward it.  The worldwide Catholic Church, in just the last few weeks, has had to confront some truly ugly scandals.

Consider: In late January, the new Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, had to order his predecessor, Roger Cardinal Mahony, to cease public ministry following the release of thousands of pages of personnel files detailing the Cardinal's role in the cover-up of priestly molestation cases going back to the 1980s. Over the vigorous objections of Los Angeles' Catholics, Mahony insists on voting in the forthcoming conclave.  Then, on Feb. 22, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and the only British cardinal of voting age, resigned from office and indicated that he had no plans to vote in the conclave.  His decision followed complaints made by several priests that the Cardinal had made unwanted sexual advances towards them.  Earlier in February, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, published the story that Pope Benedict's resignation was finally forced by a report made by three trusted cardinals detailing acts of sexual misconduct by Vatican priests.  The report, whose contents remain unknown even though its existence has been more or less confirmed, will be delivered to the new pope for, it is hoped, swift action.

Can any good come of this?  It is too much to expect sweeping reforms.  Women priests, for instance, are simply not in the cards.  Still, the situation facing the Church is sufficiently grave that we are entitled to hope for some dramatic actions.  The Church -- by which I mean not Catholics alone but all Christians -- can only pray that at least some of the following steps are taken:

1. The Church's government must become less monarchical.

Such a move would be in keeping with the progress of Church history since the latter 19th century.  Prior to 1870, the pope was both the spiritual head of the worldwide Catholic Church and the temporal ruler of a large swatch of central Italy (the papal states). With the reunification of Italy in 1870, the papacy's temporal rule was reduced to Vatican City.

Although the loss of the papal states was seen at the time as a transcendent defeat for the Church, it actually proved an incalculable blessing.  Stripped of the exigencies of running a small nation-state, a series of far-sighted popes -- Leo XIII, Pius XI, John XXIII, John Paul II and others -- refashioned the papacy into a conscience for the world.  The social teaching that these great moral voices articulated helped form the bedrock of the Christian Democracy movement in Europe and Latin America and still furnishes a powerful tool for analyzing the justice or injustice of public policy across the globe.

Recent popes have been less inclined to use the outward symbols of monarchy: No pope since Paul VI has worn the triple tiara and no pope since John Paul I has used the sedia gestatoria, the portable papal throne.

But these are mere outward trappings.  We can hope that a new pope reforms the inward sense of entitlement that comes from monarchy.  A new pontiff must act in imitation of that very humble, very human, very fallible rock upon whom the Church was built, St. Peter.  Yes, the Church has its own legal order and, yes, the Church must enjoy a proper independence from the State.  But crimes against children, the sexual violation of the innocents, must be reported to secular authorities.  Where such wrong-doing is concerned, there is no room for a monarchical sense of privilege.

2. The Church must become more transparent.

The pedophilia crisis has become a metastasizing cancer precisely because from the outset the Church has not been transparent.  Rather than confronting pedophile priests, rather than reporting their transgressions to police, church leaders equivocated and covered-up.  It is certainly true that canon law hugely prizes the reputational interests of individuals.  But the right to a good name should not be an excuse for blocking cooperation with civil authorities where crimes have been committed.

It is the failure to act transparently that has led ordinary Catholics to ask, "Will we ever get this crisis behind us?"  Ordinary Catholics are the ones paying the settlement costs and the attorneys' fees.  Ordinary Catholics have a right to expect church leaders to behave appropriately and obey reporting statutes.  While it surely must be a sensitive document, the new pontiff would set a good example if he released the report on the misconduct of Vatican priests that has been presented to Pope Benedict.  Yes, the seal of confession must be respected.  But with that exception acknowledged, not only must the new pontiff clean house, he must be seen to be cleaning house.

3. The new pontiff must creatively address the changes that are reshaping the world.

Perhaps a new ecumenical council is warranted.  It would not be too soon.  In that great creative period of Church history, the high middle ages, seven ecumenical councils occurred within a span of 190 years (a frequency greater than one every 30 years).  Vatican I took place in 1870.  Vatican II ran from 1962 to 1965.  We are now half a century removed from the Second Vatican Council.

A new council could be a tremendous tool for re-energizing Catholicism.  Whatever else it does, it must address the transforming events occurring in the West.  On the one hand, atheism has made a comfortable home in the West.  It is an atheism, furthermore, with a respectable, honorable intellectual pedigree.  Modern atheists look at the material world surrounding them, they grasp the vastness of the cosmos and the inevitability of natural forces, they comprehend quantum mechanics and the general and special theories of relativity, and they see no room for God in their picture of the universe.  They view the Bible quaintly, a collection of myths, not unlike the Norse sagas or the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  A new Church council needs to establish a dialogue with the scientists and reconcile anew faith and reason.

And on the other hand, we see the rise of the "nones."  It is a mistake to criticize or condemn the spiritual richness of these seekers after understanding.  The Church must rather look at the nones as an eclectic, creative force, an expression of the native, inborn impulse of women and men everywhere to explore the spiritual dimension of human existence.

Perhaps a new council will enrich Catholic culture.  A half-century ago, Flannery O'Connor could employ the tools of modern fiction, telling stories of human transformation that were Catholic without being clumsy about it.  And Thomas Merton could speak to the solitude and contemplation of the human soul in ways that crossed confessional boundaries.  Perhaps, too, a new council could reopen questions about sexual ethics in the light of modern science and human experience.  How long should Aristotle and St. Augustine continue to rule us from the grave?

4. Finally, a new pope might consider the crisis confronting the ministry.

Has the time come to relax the discipline of clerical celibacy?  Certainly, if we take seriously the right of Catholics to have regular access to the Eucharist and the other sacraments, we need more priests.

Yes, I understand the arguments for retaining celibacy.  The priest signifies the totality of Christ's commitment to the Church by imitating Christ in his lack of worldly attachments.  The priest is freed by celibacy to devote himself entirely to the service of the Church and the people entrusted to him.

These are beautiful ideals.  But so also is the regular reception of the Eucharist.  Many Catholics must wait weeks, or longer, for visits by a priest.  There are Catholics plagued by guilty consciences with no one to tell their sins to or grant absolution.  There are Catholics dying every day, deprived of the final solace of the last rites.  Ordinary Catholics deserve better.

We stand at a momentous time in the Church.  Let us pray the cardinals who gather in conclave choose wisely and well.

Cross-posted at Huffington Post: Can Any Good Come of It?