Why Support the GOP?
The Mark Shea Fallacy (Or, Why Catholics Should Still Support the GOP), by the author of Excessive Catholicism. Oct. 5, 2005
(Note: Mark Shea responds).
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Pennsylvania Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.'s lead over Sen. Rick Santorum has grown even larger in their U.S. Senate race, according to a poll released Thursday.Source: Democrats Urged to Abandon Election Myths Associated Press. Oct. 6, 2005The Quinnipiac University poll of 1,530 Pennsylvania voters showed Casey leading the two-term Republican incumbent by 18 points, 52 percent to 34 percent, in the 2006 race. That compares to a 50-to-39 percent lead in a July poll by Quinnipiac. Santorum, the No. 3 Senate Republican, spent part of the summer promoting his new book, "It Takes a Family," on television talk shows. The book compares abortion to slavery and accuses feminists of undermining motherhood.
Casey, a Democrat and the son of a popular late governor, has maintained a low profile and done a limited number of media interviews.
The telephone survey, conducted from Sept. 27 to Monday, had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Carl Olson reports from Ignatius Insight: "Both Casey and Santorum are Catholic, but they have differing views on a number of key topics. IgnatiusInsight.com interviewed both men this past summer. Read Casey's interview here (July 2005) and Santorum's interview here (June 2005)."
A Catholic-evangelical split?
From a Tim Chapman column:
Much has been made of Miers evangelical background and conversion to Christianity. Miers membership in a “fundamentalist” (indicating orthodoxy) evangelical church has been a White House selling point to influential evangelical groups whose support for the nomination is seen as crucial if Miers’ bid for a seat on the Court is to weather the initial storm...
...But this line of argument is troubling to many conservative Catholics. Miers was a Catholic before her conversion to evangelical Christianity. There is a concern that the consistent emphasis on “born again” Christianity may alienate conservative Catholics who are an essential part of the President’s pro-life conservative base.
Troubling? For me, at least, it is not so. I would be interested in our readers' and editors' take though.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Harriet Miers: Should we Trust Bush?
For ongoing coverage, I recommend National Review's Bench Memos; RedState.Org; ConfirmThem.com.
Note: This round-up will be updated over the course of today / tomorrow. Stay tuned.
I'm disappointed because I expected President Bush to nominate someone with a visible and distinguished constitutionalist track record--someone like Maura Corrigan, Alice Batchelder, Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, or Janice Rogers Brown--to say nothing of Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, or Samuel Alito. Harriet Miers has an impressive record as a corporate attorney and Bush administration official. She has no constitutionalist credentials that I know of.I'm depressed. Roberts for O'Connor was an unambiguous improvement. Roberts for Rehnquist was an appropriate replacement. But moving Roberts over to the Rehnquist seat meant everything rode on this nomination--and that the president had to be ready to fight on constitutional grounds for a strong nominee. Apparently, he wasn't. It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.
I'm demoralized. What does this say about the next three years of the Bush administration--leaving aside for a moment the future of the Court? Surely this is a pick from weakness. Is the administration more broadly so weak? What are the prospects for a strong Bush second term? What are the prospects for holding solid GOP majorities in Congress in 2006 if conservatives are demoralized? And what elected officials will step forward to begin to lay the groundwork for conservative leadership after Bush?
The Weekly Standard is the mouthpiece of the Straussian Neoconservative Cabal, if you believe the fevered conspiracy-theorizings of some on the left. As I remarked to one friend, look on the bright side: this is a sign of hope that Bush has liberated himself from the neoconservative spell. ;-)
Executive editor Fred Barnes is not so dour, cautioning:
The president and others at the White House have had long discussions with her about judges. She and Rove were involved in questioning at least five candidates for the court vacancy Roberts has filled. From those talks over the months, I'm told, it became clear to Bush that she had exactly the philosophy of judicial restraint he favors and that she wouldn't "grow" as a justice and turn into a swing vote or a liberal.Also, I'm told, the president is fully aware of the stakes in this nomination. Roberts's replacement of William Rehnquist as chief justice was simply a conservative replacing a conservative. But Miers would succeed a swing justice. With her, I'm told further, Bush believes he would be altering the ideological makeup of the court, moving it to the right. . . .
why did Bush choose Miers? For him, these nominations are quite personal. He wants to feel comfortable with his nominee, confident his pick will be a conservative now and conservative 20 years from now. Bush picked Roberts after being impressed while interviewing him. His doubts were erased (and there were initial doubts about Roberts). My guess is with Miers his doubts were washed away too.
Bush has managed to create an almost perfect storm of contempt for his base, coupled with ongoing contempt from people who will always loathe him. This is more than mere bungling. This is active stupidity. Stupidity that may come only once in a generation. Stupidity that works on so many levels. You almost have to admire the sheer elegance of the stupidity. It tempts you to believe in Stupid Design Theory. A magnificent, towering monument to the ability of a single man to do so much wrong with so little effort. . . .If Miers turns out to be Souter in a dress, I think this will go down in history as the moment when the pro-life movement finally sez "Go to hell" to Republicans who have played them like fiddles, kept them at arms length, made empty promises and lied them onto the reservation for 25 years. For my money, I'm done with the GOP unless, by some miracle, this unqualified crony turns out to be some sort of wonderful SCOTUS judge. But I doubt it.
That's in 1989, when the big shift was going on in Texas and after she had donated to Democrats. If you're looking for an issue that may have pushed Miers to the GOP, abortion seems to be it. Her donation record from 1992 forward is straight GOP. It was in 1993 that she argued that the ABA allow its members to vote on the group's abortion stance. And she's a member of an evangelical church in Dallas. Dallas area evangelical churches are overwhelmingly pro-life.Miers wouldn't be the first Democrat to switch sides, or to do so because she was specifically repelled by her former party's subservience to NARAL and a pro-abortion platform.
"what is known, through official and unofficial channels, paints a picture of a conservative Texas lawyer with rock-solid beliefs on life, strong religious convictions, and a modesty that should allay fears of a renegade Justice determined to remake society through the courts. John Roberts was the silver-tongued, inside-the-Beltway pick for the Court; Miers is the plain spoken red stater."
As the conservative backlash against the Miers nomination continues to grow the party faithful (company men) keep proclaiming that she is an evangelical Christian who subscribes to conservative positions on issues such as abortion and, therefore, we have nothing to worry about. That silly response to conservative criticism of the Miers nomination absolutely misses the point. We don’t simply want a nominee that broadly holds conservative political opinions or might vote in a particular way on a particular issue. We want someone committed to a METHODOLOGY of interpreting statutes and the Constitution consistent with the ORIGINAL INTENT of those who framed them. We are not simply looking for good results, i.e. cases with decisions we like, but rather judges who consistently use the originalist method of statutory and constitutional interpretation.There was a time in this country when jurists of all political persuasions adhered to the originalist methodology. It is an unfortunate sign of the times that such a position is now considered an exclusive position of the right. In reality, originalism is a politically neutral approach that seeks to stay true to the intent of duly enacted laws while keeping the personal preferences of the judge, who is not a legislator, out of the equation.
Dallas Morning News: Miers Opposed Abortion
The question of the hour is: how pro-life is Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers? One of my readers pointed to an ex-campaign manager's statement in the Dallas Morning News that Miers opposed abortion. Here is the link to the Dallas article. Indeed, the article documents the statement that Miers opposed abortion and also documents that she once donated money to a Texas pro-life group. Of even more significance in my mind is that she has been and is currently associated with a pro-life, apparently evangelical church.
Does that mean that she will vote to reverse Roe v. Wade? Now, that is a different question: is there a legal basis to reverse that decision? For any serious lawyer, the answer is easy. Roe v. Wade was a blatant exercise in judicial tyranny. It is extremely easy for any serious lawyer to justify reversing the decision and leaving the entire matter of abortion to state legislatures. There just is no amorphous right to privacy in the Constitution that can justify the courts taking the abortion issue out of the hands of the states. There are privacy protections in the Constitution, but they do not rise to the level of the blank check for judicial social engineering set forth in Roe. The Supreme Court disastrously overreached in 1973, and we are still in turmoil over it. An amorphous right to privacy as embraced in Roe means in effect that the Supreme Court is an appointed superlegislature that can alter American society at will and at whim. That is not the rule of law, but the rule of caprice.
The fact that Ms. Miers appears to hold pro-life views cannot but help in confirming for her the legal analysis that the Supreme Court had no business taking abortion out of legislative debate in the first place on the basis of privacy. My own view is that the Supreme Court should ultimately outlaw abortion based on the right to life of the unborn and partially born, but you need not go that far to overturn Roe v. Wade, which is the first step on a long journey. Let us hope the journey is beginning.
Fidelis statement on Miers Nomination
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — Following the nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to serve as Associate Justice for the United States Supreme Court, Fidelis President Joseph Cella released the following statement: We look forward to learning more about Harriet Miers' commitment to the Constitution and background in the days and weeks to come, and hope that the vetting process by all groups is dignified and respectful. It has been our expectation the President would ignore the call by some Republicans and the Left to maintain balance on the Supreme Court, and that he would select a nominee who is faithful to the Constitution and not legislate from the bench. We hope and pray Ms. Miers will be such a nominee-a qualified nominee in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas, as the President promised the American people. Given President Bush's long personal and working relationship with her, we trust the President knows whether she fits that profile. Ms. Miers is viewed by many as an unknown quantity, thus disappointment, confusion and natural fears about her commitment to the Constitution have emerged. Given the deeply disappointing records of Justices Kennedy and Souter, we hope these concerns are allayed. Knowing Ms. Miers' advocacy on behalf of excellent judicial nominees, and apparent devotion to her faith offers some reassurance to those concerned. Nevertheless, this process has just begun and more questions about her commitment to the Constitution need to be answered.
To learn more, log onto http://www.fidelis.org . Fidelis is a Catholic-based organization working with people of faith across the country to defend and promote the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and the right to religious liberty by electing pro-life, pro-family and pro-religious liberty candidates, supporting the confirmation of judges, and promoting and defending laws faithful to the Constitution of the United States.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Priests for Life on Miers Pick
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 -- Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and president of the National Pro-life Religious Council, thanked President Bush this morning for nominating a replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a timely manner, and called upon the Senate to do its work in an expeditious way as well.
"Our prayers are with Harriet Miers this morning as she begins this important process. We trust the President's judgment and his determination to fulfill his promises about the kind of Justices he wants to see on the Court.
"It is the judgment of certain liberal Senators, however, that gives us more concern. The demand that some make for preserving the current ideological balance on the Court, or for more "mainstream" nominees, is ridiculous. Do we have a more "mainstream" Constitution in some generations but not in others? Or do they think it is up to the Justices to re-write the Constitution? In short, there is no Constitutional requirement that Justice O'Connor's replacement should be a clone of Justice O'Connor.
"The place for arguments about ideology and mainstream positions is in political races. For the purposes of confirming nominees to the Court, the focus should be on qualifications to be a Justice, not on personal views on controversial issues."
Who is Harriet Miers?
Well, she is the president's nominee to replace Justice O'Connor.
Here is a WaPo profile.
Profile summary:
AGE-BIRTH DATE _ 60, born Aug. 10, 1945 in Dallas.
EDUCATION _ B.S., Southern Methodist University, 1967, mathmatics major; J.D., Southern Methodist University School of Law, 1970.
EXPERIENCE _ 2004-present, White House counsel; 2003-2004, White House deputy chief of staff for policy; 2001-2003, White House staff secretary; 1995-2001, chairwoman, Texas Lottery Commission; 1972-2000, private law practice; 1992, president, Dallas Bar Association; 1989- member, Dallas City Council; 1985, president, Dallas Bar Association.
FAMILY _ Single, no children.
The right ain't happy about this pick. See here and here.
UPDATE: From Ms. Miers statement this morning:
“It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders' vision of the proper role of the courts and our society. If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the constitution.”
UPDATE II: Her pastor's view via Marvin Olasky:
I talked yesterday with Miers' pastor, Ron Key, who for 33 years (until a few weeks ago) was pastor of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas. “She started coming to church in 1980. She helped out with kids, made coffee, furnished donuts, served on missions committee. She worked out her faith in practical, behind-the-scenes ways. She doesn't draw attention to herself, she's humble, self-effacing." Key has still seen her in recent years because "her mother is 93. Harriet tries to get home as much as she can." When Key and Miers met in 1980, "I don’t know how strong her faith was at that time. She came to a place where she totally committed her life to Jesus. She had gone to church before, but when she came to our church it became more serious to her.... Our church is strong for life, but Harriet and I have not had any conversations on that…. We believe in the biblical approach to marriage."
More from an elder at her church:
On abortion, choosing his words carefully for an on-the-record statement, he says "her personal views are consistent with that of evangelical Christians... You can tell a lot about her from her decade of service in a conservative church."
UPDATE III: I like this:
President Bush's choice to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice and moderate abortion rights supporter Sandra Day O'Connor was a leader in an unsuccessful fight to get the nation's largest lawyers' group to reconsider its pro-abortion rights stance.
As president of the Texas State Bar in 1993, Harriet Miers urged the national American Bar Association to put the abortion issue to a referendum of the group's full membership. She questioned at the time whether the ABA should "be trying to speak for the entire legal community" on an issue that she said "has brought on tremendous divisiveness" within the ABA.
...
Although Miers' personal view of abortion was not explicit in 1993, Leonard Leo, a White House adviser on Supreme Court nominations highlighted her efforts as part of the reason that "conservatives should be very happy with this selection."
But not this from a report she submitted to ABA's House of Delegates:
Supports the enactment of laws and public policy which provide that sexual orientation shall not be a bar to adoption when the adoption is determined to be in the best interest of the child.
UPDATE IV: Check out the cool heads on the Miers pick.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
President Kennedy on the Catholic Faith counseling Public Officials
Much has been written and said about Senator and presidential candidate John F. Kennedy's address of to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in Sep 1960. The key point he made was this:
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
Yet, there is another statement President Kennedy made concerning the Catholic Faith informing the views of public officials. Father Robert Araujo recently posted on the Mirror of Justice blog a part of the president's address at the Centennial Celebration at Boston College in April 1963. Fr Araujo writes:
[H]is remarks made as President at Boston College stand in contrast to his remarks to the Protestant ministers as candidate for President. In commenting on the recently released Papal Encyclical Pacem in Terris, the President said at Boston College: "As a Catholic, I am proud of it, and as an American I have learned from it." In his further remarks on the encyclical's "penetrating analysis," the President continued by saying "that document surely shows that on the basis of one great faith and its tradition there can be developed counsel on public affairs that is of value to all men and women of good will."
It is true that the encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) was the first encyclical to be addressed to both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. As well, the president was speaking to a much different audience then he was in Houston almost three years before. Still, it is interesting to read these words from the same man who is invoked by so many as the proper example of a public official separating his faith from his policy views. The next time a Gov Cuomo or Sen Kerry brings up the president's address in Houston they should be reminded of his words two and half years later as president in Boston.
(Note: I have been unable to find the complete text of President Kennedy's address in Boston. I would appreciate a note in the comments from anyone who may come across a copy.)
Monday, September 26, 2005
Liberation Theology 101
We have heard a lot about liberation theology in the past twenty years. Usually, the setting for applications of liberation theology--the correct jargon is "praxis"--is Latin America. One of the leading theologians in this area, Jon Sobrino, S.J., even shares the same Spanish last name I have. But now I want to apply a bit of liberation theology north of the border to Louisiana and especially New Orleans. This attempt is apt because one of the nicknames of New Orleans before Katrina was "northern Honduras" and not a few residents enjoyed referring to Louisiana as a "banana republic" even before the chaos of the hurricane. So let's start.
The issue is what to do about housing for the hurricane evacuees scattered throughout the rest of the country. The federal government has sensibly decided to start giving evacuees cash so that they can get out of shelters or the homes of friends and relatives and rent apartments. The goal is to provide "the maximum amount of flexibility and freedom to decide [by evacuees] where they want to relocate and what they want to do over the next few months" (see this news story).
But Governor Blanco of the Democratic Banana Republic of Louisiana is aghast. She wants no cash housing payments to displaced persons. Instead, she wants Louisiana evacuees put in hotels, motels, and--get this--trailer parks. She fears that many will decide to find apartments out of state and may end up saying good-bye permanently to the Banana Republic that utterly failed to evacuate them from New Orleans before the storm and so left many of them trapped in a flooded city that erupted in widespread looting. Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff replies that "not everybody can or necessarily wants to get into a trailer."
After bungling the pre-hurricane evacuation, why would the Madame Governor of the Banana Republic want to put people in trailers that are notorious for being easy targets for tornadoes? Will she evacuate them from trailers before a tornado hits? I doubt it given that you usually get less warning of tornadoes than you do for hurricanes. My opinion is that she wants to corral the evacuees so that she can eventually reconstitute the concentration of impoverished and dependably Democratic voters in the blighted and drug-infested neighborhoods of New Orleans. It reminds me of how Pharaoh's soldiers chased the Israelites as they fled through the waters in the Exodus. Pharaoh wants his wards back.
In contrast, the Bush administration is empowering individuals and families to make their own decisions--to rent wherever they want to rent or even to give up the rent subsidy and decide to live in a trailer park back in Louisiana. But the Banana Pharaoh wants no choice--she fears choice. Poor people who never dreamed of being able to relocate from a city that was already a failed community prior to the hurricane now get the same chance I and many other New Orleanians had to find better communities elsewhere in the United States. But, in an eery and exact parallel to liberal Democratic opposition to school vouchers, the Democratic governor does not want her constituents to have a choice. I guess the only choice liberal Democrats reliably favor is the choice to abort.
What can liberation theology bring to this issue? Let the people freely choose to take advantage of this new Exodus to act in the best interests of their families, to have the same choices the more affluent have, the same freedom of choice that I and many others had. Governor, stop trying to force people back and corral them into trailer parks. Governor, let the people who want to depart go.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
The Contribution of John Paul the Great to Catholic Social Teaching
In a recent talk in Michigan, theologian George Weigel, well-known as biographer of John Paul the Great, spoke about the social teaching of the Church. He specifically spoke about the contributions of John Paul the Great ("JPG"). Weigel gave an overview of JPG's contribution encyclical by encyclical. Here is the overview, with my comments interspersed.
1. Laborem Exercens (1981): Here JPG presented a view of work that contrasts to the view of work as merely punishment for sin. For JPG, work is the expression of human creativity which participates in God's sustaining creative power. Interestingly, in today's world, some analysts are focusing on the new economy in which work is more about human creativity than about making durable goods.
2. Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987): In this encyclical, JPG affirmed the right of economic initiative, a right linked to the theme of work as creativity.
3. Centesimus Annus (1991): This encyclical, written to mark the centenary of Leo XIII's landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum, is, in Weigel's words, a "big leap." Weigel notes six great themes in this document:
a. A free and virtuous society consists of three interlocking parts: a democratic political community; a free economy; and a vigorous public moral culture. The key component that directs the rest is a vigorous public moral culture.
b. The Church's vision of the person and of society is necessary to hold democracy and the market to account. Democracy and the market are not "machines" that can run on their own without moral guidance.
c. Freedom is not willfulness. Genuine freedom is not about doing whatever you choose to will.
d. Voluntary, non-governmental associations represent the "subjectivity of society" and are essential components of a free society and, in fact, serve as schools of freedom.
e. In an insight now common among many other thinkers, JPG points out that wealth is not just natural resources or land but is primarily tied to entrepreneurial ideas, skills, creativity, and imagination.
f. JPG proposes a new way of thinking of the poor, namely, as persons with potential to be unleashed by including them in the networks where ideas, skills, and entrepreneurial instincts are learned. Weigel views this theme as a strong critique of welfare dependency.
4. Evangelium Vitae (1995): Opposition to abortion is an elementary principle of justice and is not primarily a religious argument. Democracy risks destruction if persons are reduced to categories of utility (as has been done, for example, in American culture in the realm of sexual mores). The life arising from human conception is a human person with a unique genetic identity who is thus entitled to equality before the law. The Church's opposition to abortion and euthanasia will not change. By the way, in the talk, Weigel also noted that the U.S. bishops in 1998 abandoned the "Seamless Garment" metaphor which treated issues like capital punishment as equal in weight to the issue of abortion. The abortion and the euthanasia issues are more fundamental than other issues.
Weigel also added his own view in the talk that there are three big ideas with "global traction" in the world today: 1.) Pragmatic Materialism and Utilitarianism (what reigns supreme today in American culture); 2.) Radical Islam (proposing coercion as an instrument of religious expansionism); and 3.) the Catholic Proposal, which views freedom as the freedom to choose what is true and good and which rejects coercion as a social instrument. The civilized proposal is the Catholic Proposal. It is also the proposal that will lead to human flourishing.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Partisans on all sides in society and the Catholic Church "need to lower the level of our anger," said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., in a symposium on politics and faith held yesterday at Duquesne University.McCarrick is a champion of the poor who has been vilified by some activists on the Catholic right for refusing to deny communion to Catholic legislators who support abortion rights.
The other keynoter was the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and writer who is one of the leading intellectuals on the religious right. Neuhaus was recently attacked in the New York Review of Books by liberal cultural commentator Garry Wills, who accused him of undue influence at the White House and the Vatican.
Though McCarrick and Neuhaus are often depicted on opposing sides of the Catholic culture wars, they were in agreement about the need for civil discourse and for religious voices to share in shaping public policy.
Source: Solve religious-political differences without hate, Catholic speakers say, by Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Sept. 20, 200 5.
Thank You, President Bush.
Genevieve Kineke (Feminine Genius) reminds us to thank our President:
For those who wonder about the good effects of a pro-life president, see the good news about the US refusing to fund the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) which supports China's mandatory abortion and sterilisation program. This is the fourth year in a row that the administration has made the same decision . . .
Genevieve directs our attention to a current article in the current issue of Time magazine on China's involvement in a brutal campaign of forced abortions and sterilizations.
LifeSiteNews has more on the story:
The White House has once again denied the controversial United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) financial backing – for the fourth year running, despite assurances from the UNFPA that it is not involved in coercive abortion in China. The UNFPA would normally receive $34 million; instead, $25 million will be redirected to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).US law prohibits the country from contributing to any organization that participates in coercive abortion – a practice widely acknowledged in Communist-ruled China. Despite alleging that they have no participation in this practice – as a press release from the UN dated today claims – other groups continue to document evidence that the UNFPA is directly involved in funding and aiding China’s coerced abortion program.
The United States refuses to fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) based on its U.S. Department of State investigations. Last December Arthur Dewey, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for the bureau of population, refugees, and migration made a presentation to the House International Relations Committee, stating that “UNFPA support of, and participation in, China's population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion, thus triggering the Kemp-Kasten prohibition on support to any organization that supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The result has been that the United States has not funded UNFPA during the past three years. . . .
The move earned the praise of Catholic congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ).
Readers might recall that President Bush's principled refusal to fund abortions was a source of conflict in the 2004 presidential race, with Senator Kerry promising to restore full funding to the U.N. program.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Senator Kennedy kills aid plan for parochial-school Katrina victims
From Catholic World News:
One of America's most prominent Catholic politicians has killed a proposal by President Bush [that] would have given families displaced by Hurricane Katrina financial aid to send their children to private or parochial schools, the Culture of Life Foundation reports.
A bipartisan student relief package put forth by Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and Wyoming Senator Michael Enzi did not include a provision that would have given students up to $7,500, because Senator Kennedy opposed the provision, according to a high-level Congressional staffer who spoke with Culture & Cosmos, an online newsletter from the Culture of Life Foundation.
Culture & Cosmos also reports that a prominent Church prelate said he was furious that aid to private schools had been kept out of the package and he was especially angry that it is being blocked by "four Irish Catholic Senators."
Monday, September 19, 2005
Judicial Activism
For those who need reminded of the judicial activism of our "robed masters" the following two articles from CNA will help:
Missouri judge blocks new anti-abortion laws
Bishop hopeful appeal will make partial-birth abortions illegal
The Right to Privacy
Robert P. George in the New York Times on the right to privacy:
What Blackmun never told us, and couldn't tell us, is why the due process clause - which on its face is concerned with procedural matters - should be interpreted in this sweeping way. On what constitutional basis can we say that abortion is protected by "due process" but a right to assisted suicide - unanimously rejected by the court in 1997 - is not? Why is sodomy protected and prostitution unprotected? Why does the right to privacy not extend to polygamy or the use of recreational drugs?
Clearly, it is not the Constitution that accounts for the outcomes in the court's "privacy" cases; it is simply the moral and political opinions of the justices. The nation will be fortunate if Judge Roberts understands that the result of the court's invention of a generalized right to privacy has been 40 years of unprincipled - and unpredictable - constitutional law.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
The JFK Question
I have been meaning to post on this. Instead I point our readers to Manuel Miranda's excellent piece on Opinion Journal today. Some excerpts:
While questioning John Roberts on Tuesday, Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter asked: "Would you say that your views are the same as those expressed by John Kennedy when he was a candidate, and he spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of 1960: 'I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.' "
Hours later, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California made it worse: "In 1960, there was much debate about President John F. Kennedy's faith and what role Catholicism would play in his administration. At that time, he pledged to address the issues of conscience out of a focus on the national interests, not out of adherence to the dictates of one's religion. . . . My question is: Do you?"
How insulting. How offensive. How invidiously ignorant to question someone like Judge Roberts with such apparent presumption and disdain for the religion he practices. The JFK question is not just the camel's nose of religious intolerance; it is the whole smelly camel.
...
The JFK question has no place in a Senate confirmation process. The Constitution says so. As I noted in an earlier column new secularist bigotry has found a home in the Senate Judiciary Committee. I was not the first to say so. In July 2003, the Most Rev. Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, reacted to the growing evidence of a religious test in the Senate: "Many people already believe that a new kind of religious discrimination is very welcome at the Capitol, even among elected officials who claim to be Catholic. Some things change, and some things don't. The bias against 'papism' is alive and well in America. It just has a different address."
A Catholic archbishop's voice in politics is a rare enough thing, but it was not alone. Representing more than 1,000 synagogues, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations wrote this letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee a few days earlier: "As a community of religious believers committed to full engagement with modern American society, we are deeply troubled by those who have implied that a person of faith cannot serve in a high level government post that may raise issues at odds with his or her personal beliefs."
Now, two years later, the situation is worse. Anti-Semitism marred the confirmation battles of associate justices Abe Fortas, Louis Brandeis, and Benjamin Cardozo, but it was unpronounced and hidden. John Roberts will be only the 11th Catholic (out of 109 justices) to serve on the Supreme Court in its 215-year history. But his confirmation may be a historic first. It marks the introduction, on the record, of a constitutionally prohibited religious test for a Supreme Court nominee. We are going in the wrong direction.
Catholic Social Justice Primer
For too long, Catholic liberals have been the ones to focus on the social teaching of the Church. The problem is that Catholic liberals have distorted that teaching much as they gravely distorted the moral theology of the Church. Theologian and author George Weigel is trying to correct the distortion of Catholic social teaching by presenting an accurate and updated summary that takes into account the decisive contributions of the late John Paul the Great.
Weigel set forth in a recent talk the four principles of Catholic social teaching; in parentheses, I will note the particular Pope most involved in first setting forth each principle. Here they are for your benefit:
1.) The Principle of Personalism or Human Rights (Leo XIII):
This principle is the most basic of the four and articulates the inalienable dignity and value of the human person made in the image and likeness of God. The dignity and honor of the human person, not the agenda of the state or of a particular race, gender, or tribe, is the basis of our social teaching.
2.) The Communitarian Principle (Leo XIII):
This principle, also called the Principle of the Common Good, states that our social structures must contribute to the general welfare of society. Of course, St. Thomas Aquinas also articulated this principle.
3.) The Principle of Subsidiarity (Pius XI):
Also explainable as the "Free Association" or "Civil Society" Principle, this principle, based on a rigorous distinction between the state and society, asserts that the state exists to serve society and not vice-versa. In general, decisions are best made at the lowest possible level of society by those persons closest to the problem to be addressed. Weigel gives American federalism as an example of this principle and notes that this anti-statist principle leads us to prefer, where possible, private or mixed private/public sector solutions as opposed to exclusively public sector solutions to social problems. School vouchers which empower parents as the primary educators of their children are a good example of such a preferred solution. Another application of this principle would be for courts to let the several states determine their own stand on the abortion issue or on the so-called "gay marriage" issue through democratic debate and legislation, instead of imposing a national regime from Washington.
4.) The Principle of Solidarity (John Paul the Great):
Weigel, the biographer of the late Pope, also calls this the Principle of Civic Friendship. This principle declares that the relations among persons in a particular society must go beyond mere legal or contractual relationships. There must be a personal bond in a society that goes beyond contracts and markets. This principle is especially relevant to a country like the United States where our cultural diversity all too often leads us to look to the pursuit of the dollar and to litigation as the glue that is supposed to hold us together.
There is certainly much more to say about Catholic social teaching. But getting an analytic overview is a good first step.
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Following the 2004 Presidential election, we've expanded our discussion to cover the public policy decisions of Catholics in public service on both sides of the political divide.
