First Things Bottums Out
In a new low, Joseph Bottum spreads a rumor that Doug Kmiec will be appointed ambassador to Malta. Bottum’s response? “For Malta? It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Malta?”. Think about this for a couple of seconds. He is of course referring to Kmiec’s support for Obama last year. Bottum is suggesting that he has sacrificed his very soul. And why exactly? For endorsing a political candidate that Bottum did not like. For coming to the prudential conclusion that the pro-life strategy endorsed by Bottum and Co. is not working. There is no accusation that Kmiec did anything evil, or dissented from any core Catholic teaching.
But because Kmiec dares to disagree on political tactics, he is damned. He loses his soul because he will not support the party that brought you the Iraq war, torture, undistilled laissez-faire liberalism, and mockery of environmental issues. And in the meantime, Bottum’s First Things colleagues are busy adopting these very neocon positions relating to war and peace, telling us that the global financial crisis was caused by the poor and minorities, and that promoting climate change as a vast conspiracy against every American’s right to consume as much as he wishes. It’s not like the Church hasn’t condemned war, declared torture a non-negotiable, denounced the greed at the root of the financial crisis, embraced a pro-poor economic policy, and called for mechanisms to mitigate climate change, right? I would desist from judging souls if I were you, Mr. Bottum.
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It’s Bottum, not Bottom. Unless, you know …
No. Kmiec is getting shelled b/c he misrepresented Obama’s positions, especially those on abortion, to advance the Obama agenda among Catholics and, apparently, for his own political gain and prestige, not b/c he made the wrong decision.
Bottom’s versatility in navigating core teaching tops all.
Hell yes I get a gold star.
So much to say here lol
But first off it is not a rumor. It is on the White House Web site
Once again MM is mischaracterizing those he disagrees with. Let’s review, Kmiec asserted that Obama was the real pro-life candidate this past election, which was about as plausible as asserting McCain was the real liberal. The normally irenic Ross Douthat said Kmiec acted like an “an embarrassing shill” and “a useful idiot”. Archbishop Chaput said that Kmiec’s claims “require a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse.” Multiple sources in the the Vatican were reported to have rejected his appointment as Ambassador to the Vatican. Fellow legal professors have expressed bafflement at Kmiec’s dramatic reversal on positions he’s advocated his entire career….and MM somehow believes it is completely inappropriate for Bottum to suggest Kmiec has sold out?
I think perhaps there should be an embargo on the term neo con for a while. It is used so much that it is annoying as some conservatives when they use the term liberal to describe everything that is not in their world view.
As noted above the porblem many people have with Kmiec is that he misrepresented many positions. He was rightly called out on that
But the bigger problem is the 180 he did on so many positions. For all his talk of Catholic Social Justice it seems Kmiec was very silent on all this when he was supporting Romney. HOw one goes from Romney to Obama is to say the least problematic. Romneys explanations on this have not been very well satifying. Also huge jumps in postions from Senate Testimony he has given and other matters.
The problem was not he supported Obama. But the change of postions on many matters over just a period of months that is truly baffling. What has people upset is lot more than just his endorsement of Obama
Sorry, the spelling was a genuine mistake…I’m serious!!
Um, MM, could you release my comment from moderation?
Obama supports the legalized killing of unborn babies (in all forms without any restriction whatsoever – nonnegotiable!).
Kmiec not only supported Obama potentially putting his soul in jeopardy, but persuaded other Catholics to support Obama, putting their souls in jeopardy as well.
Thus, my guess is Bottum is closer to the reality of things than you are.
The issue is not differing political positions, but a fundamental question of morality and common decency.
Substitute the word genocide for abortion and would you still hold the same position – these are just just differing political positions?
The killing of 50+ million innocent babies in 30 years in the US alone seems to be on the level of genocide, if you ask me.
But because Kmiec dares to disagree on political tactics, he is damned. He loses his soul because he will not support the party that brought you the Iraq war, torture, undistilled laissez-faire liberalism, and mockery of environmental issues.
Actually, he is criticized for making every excuse in the book for Obama’s clear and obvious pro-abortion rhetoric and policy.
You really should just go ahead and change the handle to Obama’s Minion and make it official, dude.
I should also add that the Magisterium has made it quite clear that it is morally impermissible for Catholics to vote for pro-abortion candidates.
(With perhaps an exception if only pro-abortion choices are available – it then may be necessary to vote for the least pro-abortion candidate – there is some debate over this point, I think)
The reality is when high profile Catholics like Kmiec or say Nancy Pelosi undermine and distort the teaching of the Magisterium, they endanger not only their own souls, but those of countless others as well.
I would argue (and I do not say this lightly) that excommunication would not be excessive in these cases.
The stakes are that significant.
John,
You must have hit a buzz word to get put in moderation.
First off, there is no truth to those ugly Vatican rumors, and I recall seeing a denial. There are simply no grounds for rejecting Kmiec as a nominee.
Second, I think it is a good sign that one can change one’s mind. Quite frankly, after the Bush-Cheney years, there were excellent grounds for changing one’s mind.
This is yet again an example of my real prolem with the “movement politics” — not so much the positions as the tactics, the take-no-prisoners, with-us-or-against-us-mentality. Kmiec’s real sin was was he was a “traitor” to the movement. As I’ve said before, there are shades of Leninism here.
I should also add that the Magisterium has made it quite clear that it is morally impermissible for Catholics to vote for pro-abortion candidates.
Sigh. No, it does not. Please stop listening to the distortions of the American Catholic right.
Actually, he is criticized for making every excuse in the book for Obama’s clear and obvious pro-abortion rhetoric and policy.
OK, then, Mark, I’m waiting for Mr. Bottum’s post about how George Weigel lost his soul for making every excuse for the Iraq war (even today). Or how about how all those prominant Catholic commentators who have made every excuse for Bush-Cheney torture – and you certainly know who they are. I won’t be holding my breath.
“the tactics, the take-no-prisoners, with-us-or-against-us-mentality. Kmiec’s real sin was was he was a “traitor” to the movement. As I’ve said before, there are shades of Leninism here.”
Much of Kmiec writings this election year had a slash and burn quality to them .That should not be forgotten. Kmiec actually had some people in the conservative area defending him ( I can recall Lopez doing that over the much publicized Communion issue at NRO). Kmoec main problem seemed to be people that disagreed with Kmiec. When COnservtives of good faith like Prof Garnett of Notre Dame get fed up with him it shows these goes beyond movement conservative squabbles.
As for changing one Minds we are not talking about one issue or two but several. An mseveral over what appears to be a period of months. I must admit I would have loved if Kmiec had spoken out when his guy Romeny was attacking McCain left and right over immigration reform espcially in those nasty ads in his home state of California. Not a peep. But then he comes out and starts decrying all these bad partisan Catholics that disagree with him.
I am frankly relieved he is going to Malta. I was becoming more concerend with the man’s emotional state and temperment after the elction. His bizaree lashing out seemd to me to be poor quality in a potential America Envoy. At least in Malta he can do little damage to American Interest.
MM
Who exactly is this so-called “Catholic Right?”
I read the writings of the popes and their loyal bishops, the Catechism, and council documents. Are these the Right?
For example, Gaudium et Spes says the following about abortion (Part II, Chapter 1):
“God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to women and men the noble mission of safeguarding life and they must carry it out in a manner that is worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”
I ask: How can it be morally permissible to support someone who who supports the legalization of an “abominable crime?”
More recently, Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith), in a 2004 letter to the U.S. Bishops notes the gravity of abortion and explains that abortion is never licit and, unlike other controversial practices, such as capital punishment and war, is not subject to debate.
The Quote:
The Church teaches that abortion or euthanasia is a grave sin. The Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, with reference to judicial decisions or civil laws that authorize or promote abortion or euthanasia, states that there is a “grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. [...] In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law or vote for it’” (no. 73). Christians have a “grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. [...] This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it” (no. 74).
Not all moral issues have the same weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
End Quote
I go back to my original question. Substitute genocide for abortion, and does Kmiec’s premise hold up?
Mr. H, you’re about 20 steps behind in this debate. It’s been hashed and re-hashed. I have neither the energy nor the inclination to do it again.
Suffice it to say that no pope, council, or magisterial document has told you that you can never support somebody who supports an evil act. What they say is that you cannot support the person because you support the evil act. Then you need to look to outcomes. One can quite reasonably arrive at the opinion that the pro-life candidate (in name) will have have no different effect on abortion than the so-called pro-choice candidate, and might indeed support the cause of life and justice in other areas (war, for example). For example, I could point to a milion or so Iraqi deaths that would not have occurred under the so-called pro-life candidate, while I am sure than the number of abortions would not have changed much.
As for dealing with leaders who support evil, or who are highly imperfect– my good man, take a lesson in Church history!! There is nothing magical about voting.
Kmiec deserves all the criticism he gets. He’s a big boy after all.
I’ve read his book… several times, and there are so many straw men you’d think you were at a Wizard of Oz Scarecrow Convention. At one point he uses “Voting for the Common Good” put out by Catholics in Alliance as an example of the U.S. Bishop’s definitive teaching that the Church can’t tell you who to vote for. That’s on page 41 for those of you who are counting.
But aside from the junk that he pulled in that book, if you’ve watched him in his debate with Arkes and in his “discussion” with George, he doesn’t exactly answer straight questions. He falls back on his “I was denied communion” schtick. I agree it was wrong that that happened, but answer the friggin’ question. He whined that the blogosphere was so vitriolic, while totally ignoring the legitimate questions regarding his “prudential” decision.
Lastly, when will you people get that arguing against Obama does not equal intentional advocacy for the Republican Candidate? Pragmatically it is beneficial for Obama’s opponent. But let’s follow the rules of logic and reason and just agree that it is simply NOT TRUE that saying Kmiec was wrong to support Obama or that Catholics ought not vote for someone who believes that it is a fundamental right at the core of women’s civil rights to make abortion available and legal is the same as saying you have to vote Republican. It just isn’t true. Got it?
Oh, sorry this is really the last thing, this is what Cardinal Bernadin had to say about these issues back in 1988:
“Isenhart: But a practical question must be dealt with. People see candidates running who think that a woman’s right to abortion should never be repealed; who do not support a human life amendment. Can Catholics disqualify such candidates because they violate the consistent ethic of life?
“Bernardin: Well, certainly. That’s what the consistent ethic is all about. I feel very, very strongly about the right to life of the unborn, the weakest and most vulnerable of human beings. I don’t see how you can subscribe to the consistent ethic and then vote for someone who feels that abortion is a “basic right” of the individual. The consequence of that position would be an absence of legal protection for the unborn.”
Kmiec is even in violation of Bernadin’s understanding of the seamless garment. He deserves all the criticism he gets.
First off, there is no truth to those ugly Vatican rumors, and I recall seeing a denial.
There was a denial of an official rejection, but multiple sources reporting to multiple outlets confirmed that he had unofficially been rejected.
This is yet again an example of my real prolem with the “movement politics” — not so much the positions as the tactics, the take-no-prisoners, with-us-or-against-us-mentality. Kmiec’s real sin was was he was a “traitor” to the movement. As I’ve said before, there are shades of Leninism here.
This is silly posturing. I’d be hard-pressed to name someone more committed to movement politics and the with-us-or-against-us-mentality than you. If you want to call Prof. Kmiec’s colleagues, and Douthat, and Chaput, and senior Vatican officials movement hacks feel free, but recognize you’re impugning more people than Bottum is, and with far less justification.
MM
“One can quite reasonably arrive at the opinion that the pro-life candidate (in name) will have have no different effect on abortion than the so-called pro-choice candidate…”
Not true. Obama has overturned the ban on funding abortion groups overseas and his administration as we speak is aggressively pushing the UN to make abortion a universal right world wide. See here: http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1270/pub_detail.asp
How many 100′s of millions of babies will be killed over the next couple decades, if he is successful? Those killed in Iraq will be a drop in the bucket bu comparison.
Here is a compilation of Obama’s pro-abortion record to date. It is a mile long.
Presidents do make a difference.
By the way, I did not say “never;” my second post does note exceptions, although interpreted diffently than yours.
Also, I do not mean to tire you. I respect your views. But, I do disagree.
Sorry. I forgot the Obama abortion record link.
Here it is: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09050808.html
I’m with Bottum. Kmiec’s position is logically untenable, and thus intolerable to those who have respect for the truth.
One is forced therefore to categorize Kmiec either as one of those persons to whom God has not given the gift of thinking clearly — one of those persons who emotes his way into a position and then retains it so long as it remains comfortable — or else as one of those persons who attaches himself to a rising political star because ambition is concrete, and “complicity in evil” a mere abstraction for logic-choppers.
The latter, though, only works out well for those whose ambition is rewarded in proportion to their moral compromise. Malta, however pleasant it may be in other ways, is underwhelming as price for, among other things, scandalizing the faithful Christian world.
To put it another way: We now not only know what Kmiec is, but we know the outcome of his dickering with Obama over the price.
Mr. H, do you and others like you in America pay ANY attention to the way the Magisterium’s dictum on not supporting “pro-abortion” politicians is actualized here in Europe, in countries that have a much longer and more traditional relationship with the Apostolic See?
Have you not noticed Pope Benedict receiving European heads of state like Sarkoczy, who are definitely–on the American scale of things–”pro-abortion”?
Don’t you notice that the pope will receive Obama himself next Friday?
I think that the curial officials and their pope fully understand the constant necessity, in modern politics, of choosing “the lesser of two evils,” and that, in the minds of most Catholic European hierarchs, social and economic justice in the Church’s principal parish–the Third World–as well as the importance of “just war” teachings weigh equally as heavily as priorities as abortion does.
This galls you right-wing American Catholics, I know, but I’m sorry, Roman Catholicism is still, primarily, a Western European religion, this pope is a Western European, and the moral and ethical concerns of Western Europeans are going to CONTINUE to count for more in the Vatican than will those of the Calvinist-tinged American Catholic Church.
…and yet another post by digby that Americans are stoooopid, Europeans are so much more cultured, and if only we would stop being so Calvinist (cue scary organ music) we would all finally agree with him and join MM in saying “Neocons suck!” Yeah, that about sums it up.
So what about Obama claiming a fundamental right to kill innocents? “Pishaw!,” they say “The Pope meets with him, so why can’t we vote for someone for whom the dismemberment of children on a scale far worse than war is a basic civil female right!”
Enough with the neocon bashing and the we’re just too evangelical to be taken seriously
I don’t much mind with the “neocon bashing,” from digbydolben or whomever. Being neither an psychopathic imperialist warmonger, nor recently-minted in my affection for keeping intact traditional societal structures which haven’t proven immoral, nor a Jew, I’m unconcerned with being called a “neocon” since none of the three usual definitions of the term apply. (And only the first definition would be anything to be ashamed of, if they did.)
What does bother me, though, is digby’s notion that the Catholic faith is normatively European in mindset: That is, that Europeanism, and not merely Europeanism but recent-era Europeanism, is and should be intrinsic to Christianity.
He doesn’t say that directly, though he comes close. But only if that’s what he thinks could his statement make sense, so I’m doing him the courtesy of assuming he isn’t making an entirely nonsensical assertion.
For of course if a European mindset isn’t necessarily and universally proper to the Body of Christ, then there’s no reason he should treat as absurd the complaints of some in the U.S. against that mindset.
If in fact this European view is a form of provincialism or naïvité — a not implausible view! — and thereby weakens the Church’s witness, then the complaints from the U.S. (and elsewhere, if we would but take notice) are perfectly justified. The observation that the Pope and those around him are from Europe is either irrelevant or, at worst, inclines us to show them a little grace, whenever they happen to evince such provincialism or naïvité.
Among the spectacular differences between Europe and the U.S., of course, is that in Europe it’s generally a choice between this pro-abortion candidate, or that one; or else, between a pro-abortion candidate who’ll have no power to make anything worse and a pro-life candidate who have no power to make anything better. In the U.S., Supreme Court nominations and foreign-policy purview issues like the Mexico City Policy make the issue far more “in play.” The culture is also more “in play” than in Europe; less secular, more welcoming of moral crusades in the groundswell of public opinion sense of the word. And in the U.S. there remain Catholics who’re persuadable on the basis of Church teaching, and who represent a large enough bloc of the electorate to swing elections.
In short, the niceties one shows to a European politician because doing otherwise won’t matter a damn, just aren’t applicable to an American politician with Obama’s record. Using the European approach on The One only gives disobedient and dissenting Catholics the cover of moral ambiguity, while dashing cold water in the faces of those who, after standing up for the Church, had hoped the Church might stand up for them.
Granted, the faithful are few. But perhaps Mother Church, in all her charity, could find some grace in her heart to encourage the faithful few?
In the meantime digbydolben’s view (without which his previous post makes no sense) that God is a European is on a level with those who think God is a Republican — a crowd he’d no doubt despise. Every country or continent has its native myopia; if some Europeans are demonstrating theirs with respect to American politics and the needs of the American church, who better than some Americans to call their attention to the fact?
“Have you not noticed Pope Benedict receiving European heads of state like Sarkoczy, who are definitely–on the American scale of things–”pro-abortion”?”
What does this have to do with anything. It is no shock that the Pope recieves head of States
“Don’t you notice that the pope will receive Obama himself next Friday? ”
So? The Pope has recieved in my liofetime Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II. Nothing shocking here. Again what is the point. American Catholics even the Conservatives are not up in arms because the Pope is having an ausinece with our President . It is to be expected
“I think that the curial officials and their pope fully understand the constant necessity, in modern politics, of choosing “the lesser of two evils,” and that, in the minds of most Catholic European hierarchs, social and economic justice in the Church’s principal parish–the Third World–as well as the importance of “just war” teachings weigh equally as heavily as priorities as abortion does.”
Actually I think Catholic Officals think there can be varied views on what is a Just War. We have seen this many times. On abortion there can be no spirited discussion there is no Just Abortion
“This galls you right-wing American Catholics, I know, but I’m sorry, Roman Catholicism is still, primarily, a Western European religion, this pope is a Western European, and the moral and ethical concerns of Western Europeans are going to CONTINUE to count for more in the Vatican than will those of the Calvinist-tinged American Catholic Church.”
Oh God it woul dbe not be VOX NOVA without Calvin coming up. Big hint here. THe Church is not primary a Western European Faith or outlook. You need to look farther South to see where it is heading
Digby
Given the widespread secularization of Western Europe, anemic mass attendance among Western European Catholics,and the below-replacement birthrate in Western Europe, I am surprised by your comments. The Church in Western Europe, it seems to me, is dying.
Any influence the Europeans have in the Church is a legacy of the past. The American Church (provided we can fend off secularization, and I think we will) and the Global South is where the future of the Church rests.
Do not get me wrong, I love Western Europe, the birthplace of Western Civilization, and I pray the the Church there rebounds and revitalizes. But, I am not optimistic.
Is it fair to say that digbydolben’s narrow vision of Catholicism is hopelessly “Europeanist?”
I am glad I found Vox Nova. I have been a subscriber to First Things for awhile and have drifted further and further away from their mindset the more I have been exposed to it. (I have also gotten older and wiser!) As far as political strategies go, I simply don’t vote. Never have voted for anything at the local, state or national level. I am proud I haven’t. I watch America slowly crumble drinkin’ some whiskey.
It’s not that I don’t like America. The government is an invention that has blessed the world. But only if I could say the same for the culture.
The future of America lies not with anyone with the last name of Smith. More like Garcia.
People over at First Things gloat at a lot of things especially Spengler. His thesis is demographics. I am always dumbfounded by the fact he touts American’s higher birth rate. The birth rate does not come from the white, anglo-america either rich or poor.
It comes from the hispanic underclass. There is the future of the Church…possibly. Hispanics are currently losing their language, religion and are not graduating from high school.
The people over at First Things (especially Catholics) need to wake up. The Global South maybe be the future for the Church, but not for long. The Christian sects are making in roads into Catholic territory.
*For those of you who think I cannot have an opinion because I don’t vote I used the Vatican argument. I will arugue about things that fall within Catholic teaching, which is broad and almost all encompassing! By comments on politics stop when words like realpolitik, brinkmanship, the political machine, lobbyists, etc. get thrown around.*
Vox Nova: Get a small online magazine together. I would read it.
It seems you right-wing Catholics need the narrative to be: The Democrats, due to the abortion issue, are the Party of Darkness and can’t be licitly voted for for any reason if you’re a Catholic; the Republicans, due to the abortion issue, are the party of light, and must be voted for if you are a Catholic.
…which is utter and complete nonsense, of course. The Republicans are opposed to economic justice, advocate a foreign policy that is part jingoist, part imperialist, and all belligerence. The Republican governing philosophy has become more and more explicitly authoritarian (the “unitary executive”, a consequentialist attitude towards torture, “We’re an empire now…”) and a scorched-earth, ideology-trumps-evidence approach to political engagement that seriously frayed the remaining social fabric of the United States while they were in power.
This is why you guys suffered a crushing, humiliating defeat in 2006, another in 2008, and will suffer yet another one in 2010. I actually pity whomever the Republicans nominate to run against Obama in 2012.
You guys and your sick, authoritarian, elitist, imperialist ideology have been comprehensively and justly rejected by the American voters. Enjoy your coming decades in the wilderness.
MM wrote:
“I would desist from judging souls if I were you, Mr. Bottum”.
Would that he would apply the same measure to himself.
It would be interesting to have some references from Mr. Talbot for the views he attributes to others.
I suggest that all refrain from attacking digbydolben. He is like the fellow who has tied his shoelaces together. It is unkind.
And another thing: if the Republicans care so deeply about abortion, why did they not do much, MUCH more about it? You guys had the White House and Congress for much of the last 8 years; if abortion was such an all-important issue, why did you not subordinate everything else to the goal of outlawing it?
Why did you “pro-life” Republicans not advocate for something like the following: “We’ll work with you Democrats to get your Employee Free Choice Act passed [or national health care, or whatever...] and to override president Bush’s veto, if you’ll kill the Freedom of Choice Act and agree to throw NARAL and Emily’s List under the bus. Agreed?”
But no: That would weaken the tactic of right-wing Catholics to cynically use abortion to tell Catholic Democrats that, no matter the Church’s teachings guiding them toward Democratic positions on other matters, they “have to” vote for Republicans due solely to the abortion issue, on pain of mortal sin.
Something bizarre happened to me today while I walked into Walmart. I shop at Walmart not frequently, but after this experience I will never go again:
I was walking through the doors. Suddenly, I hear someone shout, “Hey, Buddy!” I turn around curious like anyone hearing a shout. The next sentence I hear is “You’re gay!” I am not gay.
I was…incensed, irate, etc.
Now, let’s go through the list of potential responses to this scenario:
Some teenager was trying to get the best of me.
You are, in fact, gay. You just don’t want to admit to yourself.
You are an effeminate, metrosexual male that could pass as gay.
This was your first symptom of schizophrenia. (I’m 24).
The devil made the teenager shout at you.
Here is my response and my comment concerning this incident and America’s culture:
I hold to the first and last sentences. This young teenager is a symptom of America’s culture, which is not Christian. America is a spiritually diseased, decadent, and uncharitable culture.
Are these comments America “bashing”? No. A sign of a cultures/civilization’s impending destruction is its inability to accept healthy criticism, change or to think about the future. America can do none of the above.
What does this have to do about the teenager (or young man)?
Even if I was a flaming, Liberace loving bundle of sticks, this outburst at Walmart is unacceptable. For one, the Catechism of the Catholic Church abhors this behavior (and homosexual acts). Both are sinful.
Sodom is frequently scene as a terrible city in history. It’s main cause for its destruction was not homosexuality rather the inability to love like the God of Abraham. Homosexuality was a factor of Sodom’s destruction, but promiscuity (by both heterosexual and homosexual), murder, rape, theft, and incest also were factors.
For all those Catholics that vote for the right or left. Get over yourselves. Get over America.
This is not the civil, law abiding society that Fox News or CNN want you to think. What do I mean by law? The Ten Commandments. Natural Law. The Beatitudes. Corporal and Spiritual works of mercy (How many of you thought about those recently? I actually just did. It took be back to second grade.)
I have another personal anecdote. I am an ESL Teacher. I work in South Korea. The differences between the two countries are vast. Vast enough that after teaching in South Korea I know I will never teach in America.
America children do not want to learn, excel or compete. Everything must be given to them freely. And, then, if you give them something free, they are ungrateful.
I am not a theologian. I am an educated, practicing Catholic. If I get my theology correctly (or it might be wrong after I went through four years of LCMS high school education) grace is a free gift (and you also must work for it!). Grace was available to humanity before Christ’s redemption. Grace was also available to the Jewish people. God dwelt with them.
God does not dwell with America if it does it is only found inside the tabernacle of your local Catholic (or Orthodox) church. America does receive some grace because it embraces Protestantism (if you want to call it that. IMHO, America is no longer Christian). As of right now, though, America is taking that grace, material prosperity, and sinning in thought and deed in countless ways.
Sodom was not destroyed because of homosexuality. It was destroyed because the hearts of the men (and women) in Sodom grew cold. Love no longer warmed their hearts. Pride turned their hearts into hunks of ice floating in the darkness of their souls.
All sin is a result of pride. Pride is the opposite of Trinitarian love. Pride is perverted. Trinatarian love is communal and giving.
I have read over Vox Nova, and I am glad I am not alone on the critique of America’s culture. I could continue my comments about America: capitalistic ethics are against Catholicism, nihilism, hypocrisy, the role of man and woman, etc.
In my Christian life, I want to be merciful like God in thought and deed. Perhaps this young man, is not only a symptom of our culture, but also suffering from it. Maybe he is confused about his sexuality and the conflicting gender expectations of society. He too wants the best for America. Maybe his father or mother are influencing him and he is yet to develop his own way of approaching the world in a more fully Christian manner.
Maybes don’t cut it in authentic Christian life. Maybe Christ died, maybe not. Maybe he said that, maybe he didn’t.
Repentance does cut it though. Repent: America and then…
It’s time to think of something different.
Let’s pray for a new St. Augustine to write something comparable to the City of God for our times.
“The hearts of most men grow cold.”
To judge a person damned, it takes more than a probable or likely error, for the appearance of a wrong, even a failing of logic. It requires certain proof that the person in question knowingly did evil. It is a very high bar.
But it is not a point worth discussing. The Catholic Right has given ample evidence that they lack morality or decency when this question is raised. But more important (or at least calming to the rest of us) they have now slid in to political impotentcy.
About the term “gay.” I understand that “gay” is a relatively, new and modern term to describe men and women with the homosexual attractions or inclinations.
People are not “gay” if they have these attractions. They suffer from a disorder as the Catechism says they do. This disorder (in the psychological sense) in some literature is called SSA.
I did not use the term “gay” to imply that I hold people with SSA to the “gay” standard held by some many Americans. I was simply using it because the teenager/young man used that word.
but recent-era Europeanism, is and should be intrinsic to Christianity.
As you certainly suspected, but were too dishonest to openly admit, Excelsior, this is PRECISELY where you were incorrect about me, so I won’t bother “dialogueing” with you.
anemic mass attendance among Western European Catholics
Mr. H, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You obviously believe every bit of pablum that right-wing press feeds you there in America. The masses I attend here in Germany are PACKED on Sundays, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was PACKED when the Pope came to Paris last fall. The problem with you and your attitude to European Catholicism is NOT “low mass attendance”; it’s with the STYLE of European Catholicism, which often includes open and public dissent–sometimes by Cardinal Archbishops, as with the one in Vienna, regarding Benedict’s relationship with the Jews–with Vatican pronouncements and positions. You want a monolithic and totalitarian Church there in America, and we simply won’t stand for it here in Europe.
You need to look farther South to see where it is heading
JH, I said the “Third World,” and I certainly meant Latin America and Africa. It’s just that I believe that Latin America and Africa are far more in tune with the vibrant, intellectually assertive remnant of Catholicism that is to be found in Europe, than they are with socially and economically unjust American Catholicism.
“You right-wing Catholics.”
“You guys and your sick, authoritarian, elitist, imperialist ideology have been comprehensively and justly rejected by the American voters. Enjoy your coming decades in the wilderness.”
You you you you. The first sign an interlocutor doesn’t have much to say is when he makes a lot of “you” statements instead of talking about what he believes. And don’t make a mistake and think we couldn’t hear the same disgusting demagoguery from a Republican describing a “left-wing Catholic” except that there the adjectives would be “baby killing” and “pro-sodomy.” Such arguments have nothing to do with authentic Christianity and everything to do with becoming enslaved to party concerns or ideology. Reminds me of a Browns fan berating a Steelers fan. Petty and ugly.
Politics is cyclical and it wasn’t long ago when people were discussing whether the Democratic party should be disbanded as they seemed completely helpless against the GOP (this was after the election in which Tom Daschle and other Dems received the voters’ boot).
The conservatives were full of the same condescending smugness then, and you see where it led them… don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Here in Ohio where I live the people I know who voted for Obama are becoming a little disillusioned because the rate of job loss is speeding up, not slowing as we were promised. The still admire him personally, but they are starting to lose faith in his policy skills.
Most of these people are my co-workers and we just found out a couple days ago that in FY 2010 there are going to be mass layoffs at our company. Hopefully some of this stimulus stuff will somehow kick into gear, but it’s too late for us and thousands of other working people in OH that the former Senator from Illinois said he was going to help.
Two horrible words: “Jobless recovery.”
OK, then, Mark, I’m waiting for Mr. Bottum’s post about how George Weigel lost his soul for making every excuse for the Iraq war (even today). Or how about how all those prominant Catholic commentators who have made every excuse for Bush-Cheney torture – and you certainly know who they are. I won’t be holding my breath.
Nor I. I hold no brief for FT’s fealty to Bush war policy. But here’s the thing: that’s beside the point. You made the stupid claim that Kmiec was being criticized for his failure to support the GOP. That’s crap. He was criticized (rightly) for his excuse-making for Obama’s pro-abort policies and rhetoric. Instead of simply acknowledging that fact, you (as is your custom) change the subject and attempt (as is your custom) yet another tedious tu quoque, apparently the only rhetorical trick you know. You would impress me as an honest person and not simply as a one-trick-pony-for-Obama if, just once, you could admit something like “Yeah, Kmiec’s arguments in defense of Obama have been pretty specious” without attempting the “NO! YOU!” kneejerk. But, so far as I can recall, you’ve never done this. It’s why you impress so many people, not as arguing for a Catholic position, but as arguing to get Catholics on board with cheering for and excusing whatever Obama might want to do. It smell as bad to me as Weigel’s cheerleading for the Iraq war.
Magdelena, the reason I’m saying “you” so much is that I’m describing people who’ve made a big damned mess of things, and I’m still understandably sore about it.
I would add that it has been my experience that when someone tells me I’m being “too critical”, it is often because the criticisms are hitting home.
On the prospects of a jobless recovery: it is worrisome, but is also only 6 months into Obama’s presidency. Yeesh – give the guy a chance!
The company I work for has had several rounds of layoffs (I’ve been spared so far) and may have one more round, but there is something in the air; a whiff of hope that things may be reaching bottom. I know virtually no one who blames Obama for the crisis; most people I know (co-workers, people I go to Mass with) understand that Obama was handed a country that had been subject to mis-management on a truly heroic scale, and are taking a patient, “wait and see” attitude, and are doing what they can to prepare for austerity.
Digby,
I am happy for Germany if your masses are packed.
That was not my experience when I traveled through France a few years back. Masses were generally sparsely attended, mostly by the elderly and foreign tourists.
I have read more than a handful of news accounts (and not just “right-wing” American Catholic publications) citing anemic church attendance in Western Europe (except of course where there are large numbers of Eastern European immigrants, like the Polish in England).
While I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these news reports, I have no reason to disbelieve them. Indeed, it is odd that I never see any accounts of vibrant mass attendance in Western Europe. That, of course, does not mean such attendance does not exist. If I am wrong, I do apologize.
And, STYLE is a concern that can lead to low mass attendance and a myriad of other problems. I am not sure why you are proud of dissent. Dissent undermines the unity of the Church and creates confusion in the laity.
Pope Pius XII received Eva Peron and gave her a rosary (she wanted an award). He later excommunicated her husband.
I certainly hope the President is successful with his initiatives to improve the economy. And I expect if he is not, the public may turn to the sensible element of the Republican Party. As for the marginal and socially impotent cadre that thinks people are damned for voting Democratic, there are no foreseeable circumstances that put them in the realm of serious consideration.
P.S. The Church in Europe lost much of the working class due to errors in the 19th century, as well as much of the Middle class in certain countries. We are simply seeing today the results of the mistakes made then.
Matt I get what you are saying. But in Ohio the unemployment rate has now reached 10.4 percent. It was 6.9 percent when Obama was elected. That is about all that we can see here in my little town in the Western Reserve.
To give you an idea of how this is affecting local politics, our Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, was quite popular – I would say as popular as the legendary George Voinovich (R) back in the day – and a big reason that Ohio “flipped blue” in the last election. But he is taking a big hit on our economic woes, resulting in his 2010 Republican challenger being neck-and-neck with him in the polls. He is helped because he is a conservative Democrat, a former Methodist minister with a 100 percent rating from the NRA.
I understand that it is only six months into his presidency, but frankly the American people did not hire Obama to fix things “in six months” or “in a year” or “two years” or whenever. When does the current escalation of pain become his screw up? At the 12 month mark? The 24 month mark? Leadership means accepting a certain amount of responsibility for the way things are.
If the economy has not rebounded significantly by 2012 he is not going to be able to claim that it’s “Bush’s fault” as the administration does for many of its current policy problems. A jobless recovery took down Bush 41 in ’92 and history has a habit of repeating.
I understand that it is only six months into his presidency, but frankly the American people did not hire Obama to fix things “in six months” or “in a year” or “two years” or whenever. When does the current escalation of pain become his screw up? At the 12 month mark? The 24 month mark? Leadership means accepting a certain amount of responsibility for the way things are.
If the economy has not rebounded significantly by 2012 he is not going to be able to claim that it’s “Bush’s fault” as the administration does for many of its current policy problems. A jobless recovery took down Bush 41 in ‘92 and history has a habit of repeating.
Magdalena, Obama’s first six months of dealing with the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression have actually gone pretty well, all things considered. It will take awhile longer before true recovery is in the air, and the American people seem to understand that: his poll numbers are high and steady.
There isn’t going to be a “recovery” there.
Part of the reason I left the United States was the advice of my father—the best and most successful investor I’ve ever known—who says that there is now NOTHING in that country to safely invest in. I counseled art, but he doesn’t know enough about it to stash his savings in it.
I believe, like eltempoviajador above, that the country is literally IMPLODING, due to the moral rot and corruption that are visible EVERYWHERE, but most importantly, for me, in the lives of the impressionable young adults that I was given to teach and mentor there.
I agree that abortion is a manifestation of this decadence, but I think that callous indifference to the wrong and unjust uses of American power abroad and the active PERSECUTION of that small element of “gay” society who wish to be responsible and caring members of whatever kinds of community are left in a society that is so perverted and flawed by CENTURIES of, among other things, bad and heretical theology, as well as radically individualist social theory, are equally as much manifestations of the rapid decline there.
Also, I believe that it’s about time that American Catholics took stock of the endemic HATRED of and DISGUST for Roman Catholicism that has always characterised the masses of the American republic. I’d draw you attention to a single paragraph in a quite timely New York Times article this morning:
And the founders believed the Spanish were even more despotic than the hated British. Jefferson believed that the monarchy and priesthood left Spanish subjects “immersed in the darkest ignorance, and brutalized by bigotry and superstition.” He ignored the many black slaves and impoverished white settlers who voted with their feet, moving to Spanish territory for freedom and land.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/opinion/03duval.html?pagewanted=2
The notion that Catholics can “make a difference” in anything but “abortion politics” (and that generally only by combining with Evangelicals and Christian Fundamentalists who despise almost every other aspect of their faith) is absolutely risible. Growing up in the American South, I can remember Protestants who openly and publicly mocked the Eucharist, who told me that Catholic priests needed to “shut up” about the “plight of the Negro,” and who told me that priests and nuns who “agitated” over the “rights of the poor” in Third World countries were “secret Marxists.” Just last month a woman from North Carolina who works in my school in Europe told me that “of course the priests use the nuns as their concubines.”
It seems to me that you people who want to make alliances with these Anglo-Saxon imperialists of perverted theology just in order to enforce legally ONE SINGLE patch in the “whole cloth” theology of life’s sacredness are absolutely out of your minds, and completely ignorant of the history that makes these two vast religious cultures and theological systems absolutely irreconcilable.
I and my whole family supported Obama with large donations and with the votes that some of us are legally entitled to cast there principally for ONE reason: most of us believe that he will generally manage America’s decline responsibly and in a less bellicose manner than a Bush or a Palin would.
However, it would not surprise any member of my large, extended formerly recusant Anglo-American family to see an unsuccessful Obama Presidency followed by a “neo-conservative” Republican fascist who would label “old, ‘secularist’ Europe,” Catholic “social justice” and “just war” doctrines, and “liberation theology” as “greater threats” than China or Muslim charities or Iranian bombs–or you name whatever bogeyman they can use to stir up the rubes.
If any of you politics and pope-obsessed right-wing American Catholics would like to get a glimpse of what I mean by a more “intellectually-vibrant” traditionally European form of Catholicism, I suggest that you look at this, and at all the fascinating conversations carried on in the guy’s com-boxes:
http://arturovasquez.wordpress.com/
And, yes, I KNOW he’s a “traditional Catholic,” and, yes, I KNOW he’s an American Hispanic. However, if you read him carefully, you’ll see that his faith is oriented in ways that are diametrically opposed to mainstream American Catholicism, whether of the “nationalist” (read: apologetic for cultural and political imperialism, as well as apologetic for “single-issue” coercive politics) variety or of the “liberal” flavour (read: propounding the reconciliation of Englightenment intellectual libertinism and individualism with “natural law”).
The stuff there is both a delight to read, as well as more of a bolster to genuine Catholic spirituality than the “culture wars” conducted here (which I seem to inadvertently participate in sometimes, by being unable to clarify my own personal distinction between what I consider to be my loyalty to the “teaching Magisterium” and my occasional abhorrence of the cruelty of a lot of aged celibate religious politicians who frequently fall far short of the command to “love their [queer, brown, Hispanic, Muslim et. al.] neighbours”).
Mr. H,
If abortion is a actually “killing babies”–I mean really and truly, not metaphorically or in terms of rhetoric–then perhaps you should be denied communion for not taking up the gun and going after abortion doctors–and mothers who abort as well! Examine your conscience.
And about politicians who do not favor making abortion illegal, and those who vote for them: How is it that not advocating a law against something makes one for it (i.e., “pro-abortion”)–or even virtually as guilty as one committing the act itself?–for that seems to be the stance of many on the “pro-life” side.
As for those First Thingers, we might note that the Ku Klux Klan also proclaims itself Christian. And no, I am not equating Republicans with Klansmen–because it is a lot easier to convince yourself that Republicanism equals Catholicism than to believe that Jesus is a fan of racism (though the mental process is just the same).
Dissent undermines the unity of the Church and creates confusion in the laity.
No, sir, Mr. H, “dissent,” so long as it’s not about fundamental dogmas of faith, and is, instead, about how to live out the message of the Gospels, or how to govern the Church, only makes the “Body of Christ” stronger.
Haven’t you noticed that the “dissent” of the theologically “liberal” or of those who’d wish to see changes in the roles and ways of participating in the life of the Church of women, sexual minorities, lay people, celibate people in orders, etc.–savage and vociferous, and, sadly, personal as it sometimes gets–almost NEVER involves actually inviting folks to LEAVE the Church, whereas the “traditionalists,” the “single-issue” American Catholics, the “American exceptionalists” over there in your country are CONSTANTLY inviting people of my ilk actually to LEAVE. I don’t think I’ve ever invited or advised another person to leave what I consider to be the “Body of Christ,” no matter how reprehensible I consider his or her views to be.
Well, I think some of you “single-issue” American Catholics are truly going to CHOKE on this:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/former-papal-theologian-praises-obamas-realism-even-abortion
It is very clear the Catholic Right has overplayed a weak hand and has now lost the game they were playing.
It is an open question if the example of President Obama — a dedicated family man, loving husband and father and model of an intact family and his faithfulness to one wife — is as much a positive impact on reducing abortion than the legislative strategies of the Party of McCain, Vitter, Craig, Sanford, Ensign, Drier, Cantor, Gingrich, Crist, Gibbons, and Guiliani.
digby, it is hard to read your posts, because like Matt’s they seem to use a lot of you you YOU statements, with increasing volume, with rage spilling over like a pot brought to boil. When you have hate in your heart for the people you are arguing with it can be hard to avoid ranting – and believe me I am speaking from personal experience. Only God can take that anger away from you and give you peace, He is still working on me.
I think you have an interesting view of America vs. Western Europe, which I can’t say matches up with what I see as the reality. Post-war American and European history have become locked together, and as America declines so will Europe. This process began long ago, and while the United States’ retreat may seem the greater because they are falling from a higher perch, they will share the same fate. Some kind of infection got into our cultural bloodstream and will eventually kill us off, but I don’t think it was caused by Catholic-hating evangelicals(or by evangelical-hating Catholics).
You are also badly mistaken if you think African or Latin American societies are more just than America’s… how can one quantify injustice anyway. Our abortion laws probably allow the U.S. to take the cake. But ask a woman in sub-Saharan Africa about the justice of her society, or a young Muslim man in economically “just,” “enlightened” France. As the South grows in economic importance, Americans and Europeans may be surprised by just how conservative and similar to the poor benighted American evangelicals the Southerners are…
Kurt I realize you were compiling a list of Immoral Republicans (somewhere some partisan Republican has a pointless list of similar Democrats) who have a pro-life legislative strategy, but you make a mistake including Giuliani, who has never been pro-life. The Republican Party has a big tent, unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately. I would be interested in a list of prominent Democrats, adulterous or not, who are NOT committed to maintaining de jure acceptance of gross and horrific human rights violations in our country. In other words, that rare and beautiful creature, a “pro-life Democrat.” Too bad they’re extinct at the national level and almost gone at the state level…
And for Mr. Raber I would point out that First Things is not and has never considered itself a Christian magazine. It is aggressively anti-secular but also strictly non-confessional and does not posit one set of theological ideas as true over another. Please note I am not a reader or subscriber.
Magdelana,
The litany of names was not meant to be a list of immoral Republicans and if it was, yes, such a list of Democrats could be constructed. As could a list of Catholics, bishops, popes, soccer moms, tc.
But the point remains that the leading face of the Democratic Party is a committed family man, loyal to his one wife and his children. Many speculate that such a positive example of male responsibility can do more to reduce abortion than the GOP’s strategies and its subcomponent, the RTL political movement. It is a speculation that can neither be proven or disproven.
Of course there are no pro-life Democrats. The RTL Establishment has made it quite clear that whatever a person’s voting record or views or public statements in opposition to abortion, if you are a Democrat, you are not pro-life. I have long ago conceeded to their ownership of the trademark.
Digby,
Just to keep you a tad honest in your anti US rants, if your dad and you are correct that there are no safe investments in the US and it is imploding(the latter being your view..not your dad’s), you both could triple short the US market with Direxion short etf’s which are bought just like stocks any time of the day and can do astoundingly. Shorting means that you make money as the US market in this case descends. You’d be choking on money which you could give to charity if you will. Ticker MWN triple shorts the US midcaps. If you are right that the US is imploding, buy it and watch it rise three times the speed that the midcaps descend. But if you are incorrect and the US market rises 6 months before a real rise in the economy, you will then be losing money three times faster than the US is rising. But you sound certain so why fear that latter situation.
Folks in general with IRA’s can temporarily use MWN with side money if your IRA starts crashing again.
As your IRA goes down, your MWN will rise…(read the risks at Direxion’s site). Thus you will have hedged your IRA. You will become your own hedge fund. The horror.
ps…Digby…. your Cardinal (theologians seem to have little history training) misrepresented the relationship of the Church to slavery by saying it realistically tolerated Roman laws regarding it. Aquinas showed that the Church’s decretals imported several of those Roman laws into church canon law (see Supplement to ST on Marriage of a slave)and allowed for the slavery of a child born to a slave mother which was why several Renaissance Popes only seemed to have been against all slavery but on closer examination were against the baptized being enslaved (Canary Island incident) or primarily new natives (Paul III who 11 years later praised domestic slavery within Italy as Noonan showed with cites). the Knights of Malta gave several Popes muslim warrior slaves to be used in the papal navy as rowers. Lateran III gave the perpetual slavery of pirates to whoever would capture them.
And your Cardinal seems not to have watched Obama’s speech on line to a pro-choice group and seems only to have assessed the Notre Dame speech as the “whole” Obama.
Digby,
The article you cited does not worry me. With all due respect to the Cardinal, passing judgment on Obama based on two speeches is a bit silly.
Obama often says one thing, and then he does another. With Obama, his speeches are irrevelant; his actions are what matter. He had arguably the most pro-abortion voting record of any legislator in the United States. And now, as President, he is aggresively pressuring the UN to expand abortion access around the world as a universal right.
Once again, I say check his record. It is shocking!
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09050808.html
Also, David, why would someone advocate a law allowing something, if they were not in support of it. To do so would make no sense. If a lawmaker in South Africa voted for Apartheid laws and then claimed he or she did not support or believe in Apartheid, wouldn’t such an argument be ridiculous? To say, well I am personally against Apartheid, but I do not want to impose my values on others. Would you be o.k. with that? I would hope not.
By the way, Obama has never said he is personally against abortion. Quite the opposite, he is on the record saying he wants abortion available, so individuals do not have to endure the negative consequences of bad decisions. He said explicitly that if his daughter made a mistake, he would not want her to be “punished with a baby.” That’s a quote.
And, Kurt, what a wonderful family man Obama is! He would not want his daughter “punished” by his own grandchild. Not what I call a good family man. A good family man helps his daughter to do the right thing even when it is difficult.
He said explicitly that if his daughter made a mistake, he would not want her to be “punished with a baby.” That’s a quote.
And, Kurt, what a wonderful family man Obama is! He would not want his daughter “punished” by his own grandchild. Not what I call a good family man.
Mr. H.,
How many times to we have to hear Obama’s words twisted? Yes, it was an unfortunate remark, but it was clearly about contraception, not abortion. The quote in context is as follows:
We keep getting certain false statement over and over again. Since there is no way to write comments on Mirrorofjustice.org, let me point out this recent false assertion by John Breen:
This has been said over and over again by people who should know better, including George Weigel:
The Mexico City Policy did not prohibit the use of US funds to pay for abortions overseas. That was illegal before the Mexico City Policy and remains illegal now that the Mexico City Policy has been, once again, repealed. The Mexico City Policy prohibited the giving of US funds for purposes other than abortions to foreign NGOs who used funds from other sources to provide abortions. There is a big difference. If people want to argue that repealing The Mexico City Policy provides money indirectly for overseas abortions, then they should make that argument. But as I have pointed out repeatedly, repealing The Mexico City Policy puts the International Planned Parenthood Federation on exactly the same footing as Planned Parenthood in the United States, which receives hundreds of millions of federal dollars with the requirement that they not be used for abortion services. If it can be argued that Bush was refusing to fund abortions overseas because he reinstated the Mexico City Policy, it can also be argued that during his two terms in office, he signed legislation making the federal government the largest single funding source for abortions domestically, since he did not institute a domestic version of the Mexico City Policy to apply to organizations like Planned Parenthood of America.
mr H
here in Italy it is well known that Benedict XVI was favourably struck by Obama and he is looking forward to meet him.
When you have hate in your heart for the people you are arguing with it can be hard to avoid ranting
It’s no “hate,” Magdalena; rather, it’s pity–mixed with consternation that such a decadent republic should still be pushing its economic and political dictates down others’ throats.
And, also, Magdalena, I actually LIVE in Western Europe, and you don’t.
Bill Bannon, I shall pass your financial tip onto the members of my family who understand finance better than I. Thank you. However, when I (as opposed to my dad) speak of “implosion,” I’m talking about cultural and social rot, as well as lack of political will to rally around actual solutions to more than one looming crisis.
Also, even if the Cardinal has no “history training,” I have plenty, and I know fully well that Justinian modified the Roman slave code to make it compatible with Christianity. It was from that modification of what was, essentially, Aristotle’s notion of what a slave was, anthropologically, that there sprung the Church’s historically critical mandates to the Iberian monarchs that they not operate the kind of slave system that the Anglo-Saxon Protestants would run in America. Albeit honoured in the breach by disobedient subjects, that distinctly different slave code, coloured by the values of Roman Catholicism, influenced the creation of the mestizo race (since Spaniards and Portugese could never consider miscegenation a thing akin to bestiality, as English Protestants would), because the colonizers from Iberia always knew, through their guilty consciences, that the “oracle in the Vatican” had condemned the enslavements they were practising, and had deemed the enslaved to possess the status of an “equal Christian soul.” This made a difference–a profound difference–so profound, as the revisionist American historians of the early 20th century would put it–that the Hispanic slave system could never become like the “vast concentration camp, stretching from the Atlantic to the Mississippi,” in which slaves could be forcibly mated, bred for the market, and deprived of Protestantism’s only valid religious instruction, “Bible-literacy.”
Mr. H,
Now that David has straighten you out, I look forward to a re-write of your post.
Digby
You are right about a good oracle in Rome (wrong about how consistent Popes were in this). Pope Paul III (Italian) was good and wrote a bull in 1537 AD against what 6 other Popes had caused from 1454 onward and you can actually see that in Paul III’s phrasing; ironically he was the brother of Giulia Farnese who was one of the mistresses of a previous deficient Pope as to Spanish slavery, the Borgia Spanish Pope Alexander VI (“Inter Caetera” 1494).
But your good Pope. Paul III, who tried to undo the damage of the other six Popes while not going into detail which you will see below from one of them, nevertheless in a rare papal moment refers subtly to how he is overruling them in “Sublimis Deus” 1537 here:
” notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property”.
Next you will see a Pope prior to your good one and prior to the above good words of him, deprive the native Americans of both liberty and goods and 5 Popes after him but prior to your good Pope supported that. That is why your good Pope stressed “liberty or the possession of their property” because the other Popes had given license to take both.
Let me give you the papal mandate that gave Portugal the right to enslave and rob in the New World and which 3 (Spanish) Popes reaffirmed in writing after (Portuguese) Nicholas V and whose priviliges Alexander VI repeated for Spain prior to Paul III….in the 4th paragraph middle of Romanus Pontifex 1454:
” We [therefore] weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso — to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, “”and other enemies of Christ”" (emphasis mine) wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit….(then near the end, a codicil that could be used by Portugal against the future good Pope )….And if anyone, by whatever authority, shall, wittingly or unwittingly, attempt anything inconsistent with these orders we decree that his act shall be null and void.”
Portugal after that was to be major in slavery (60% of deliveries) while the US was only involved with about 6% of the total slaves of the trade and Portugal was to be last out of the trade in the 19th century and only because British naval vessels coerced that end to her career.
Niall Ferguson of Harvard wrote the new economics book, The Ascent of Money, and has detail on slave minors being maimed constantly at Pitosi as the Spanish stole the gold of natives and he cites Spanish witnesses to the carnage.
Mestizos? Try finding them on telemundo tv which is filled with pure Spanish descendants.
correction….Pitosi rather was silver not gold.
Digby, it’s true I don’t live in Western Europe (though I would like to) but surely few of the residents could deny that their community is in a decline and has been in a decline for some time? Europe faces the exact same crises as the United States, namely cultural decline, inadequate economic systems, etc. Perhaps the European systems are more humane than the American versions but that won’t stop the rot in the end. It’s an academic question whether Europe caught the virus from us or we caught it from them.
I understand why Europeans cling to the idea of their way as the progressive “way of the future,” because since the Renaissance they have been at the forefront of everything. But ultimately it is a culturally-conditioned daydream. The current European system of values is not timeless and is not going to last, any more than in the rest of the West.
In fact in the most recent conversation I had on this topic, Germany was held up as the exemplar of a “future failed society,” with a plummeting birth rate, huge infrastructure that will become impossible to maintain as the population shrinks, etc (although didn’t the birth rate in Germany actually turn around last year?). The person I was arguing with tied Germany’s problems to the 30s and basically said the war destroyed Germans’ “will to exist” as a state and the distant future would look a lot less centralized for them, like pre-Bismark.
Especially in terms of infrastructure the U.S. is the exact same way… although that’s not because of our birthrate but because our politicians would rather spend money on sexier things like bigger and bigger bombs to more effectively blow up tan people.
And Kurt, I actually agree with you that President Obama’s example is a positive one… as was President Bush’s. Both of these men, regardless of other personal and political failures, have succeeded in their ultimate vocations as husbands and fathers and that is not acknowledged enough by their detractors on the right and left. In their most important tasks they have hit the ball out of the park – especially an accomplishment for President Obama coming from a broken home and not having the good example of his own father.
However I doubt his good example is going to lower the abortion rate. Nor will Republican legislative efforts lower the abortion rate. History shows that the abortion rate has steadily declined through recessions, booms, war, peace, Democratic administrations, Republican administrations. To put it bluntly, it doesn’t matter whom we elect to office – WHEN IT COMES TO LOWERING THE ABORTION RATE. The abortion rate is tied to cultural forces, not political or legal ones. Cultural distaste for termination and cultural tolerance of unwed pregnancy has a lot to do with the falling rate. Not whether the president has an R or a D after his name.
However party does usually matter when it comes to just or unjust laws on this issue. The Republicans are slightly (nominally) more open to over-turning anti-human laws. At the national level the Democrats are 100 percent committed to allowing structural injustice to calcify in our legal system. If you think the term “pro-life” has been taken over by the GOP then please invent a new descriptor we can use… I know a few “pro-life” (or whatever) Dems locally but there is nobody, nobody at the national level who is not committed to profound injustice.
Kurt,
I accept David’s correction of the example I used. I will work to be more careful and accurate in the future.
But, even with that sentence removed my post still stands as valid. And the substance of the quote has not been refuted.
And, I still believe that a man who labels his hypothetical grandchild as a “punishment” and not blessing (irregardless of the circumstances of his/her conception) is not a good family man.
Mr. H,
I am someone who agrees with Barack Obama’s statement and God bless him for having the guts to say it.
Magdalena,
1. I’m sure I am counted among George W. Bush’s detractors from the left but have never questioned his committment to his family.
2.You are free to doubt the value of good example. You are not free to call others sinners for believing in it.
3. I am not interested in nor obligated to develop a new term given the pro-life movement’s status as a subsidary of the GOP. It is what it is.
Mestizos? Try finding them on telemundo tv which is filled with pure Spanish descendants.
I realise that you are correct regarding conflicting papal bulls. However, it is obvious to anybody who has studied the colonial policy of the Catholic Kings of the House of Austria that those monarchs took seriously ONLY the more recent pronouncements of the Holy See, and consistently tried, with decrees, and by (admittedly) inefficient, bumbling police action, to pull their subjects away from the enslavement of both Indians and Africans. However, it is also true that, when the House of Austria became Portugese sovereigns, from about 1580 to 1640, they allowed the Portugese to continue their shameful slave trade trade–mostly because they did not want to infringe on Portugese “liberties.”
I think that perhaps you are not a Southerner, and therefore have no very clear idea of how much religion has historically supported racism in the Protestant American South.
However, this was once brought home to me in the clearest fashion when I taught–briefly–in a South Carolina school district that was very, very different from the rather posh, “horsey” town in that state where I grew up and would later teach high school for about a decade.
Right after earning my master’s degree, I was given an assignment by the State Department of Education to go to work for a certain rural district wherein a group of 10th graders had been identified by the State as being “gifted and talented” but substandard in writing abilities, and to raise those kids skills in analysing texts and composition-writing in one year. It was an extremely onerous task for me, and one in which I ran into numerous conflicts with parents over the amount of work I was assigning their children. Also, there was extraordinary “culture-clash” for me in working there because it was the most deeply racist working environment I had ever encountered. (Later I’d encounter another, equally racist one, in the American Southwest–but racist regarding Native Americans.) I only lasted there a year and a half, because, among other violations of unwritten codes of conduct, I came closer than any other sponsor of the rising junior class to persuading them to vote to hold an integrated junior-senior prom in the high school. (This was 1981, and a “mixed” dance had NEVER been held in this high school, even after it had been forcibly desegregated in the 1970s.)
One day a group of white girls came up to me on the playground, while I was doing my “lunch duty.” They had a tattered Bible in their hands, and they said they wanted to “explain” something to me. They mentioned that their “preacher” had led a discussion during their most recent “Sunday school” about me and my “views,” and they said that he had told them that I, being “some kind of Catholic,” probably “didn’t understand” their “Bible-based position” on “race-mixing.” Then they proceeded to expound to me their Baptist church’s take on this subject, which was that “although ‘those people’ may be better than us–even better Christians than we,” it was their “bounden duty” to “serve us all their days.”
“Oh, and how is that,” said I.
“Well, sir, if you look in this here Holy Book, you will see it plainly writ that these people are the descendants of Ham, and that they are accursed for what they did.”
This rubbish was taught to children in churches for more than a century in the Bible-beating American South. Please explain to me how ANY medieval papal pronouncement, modified and clearly rejected by a later papal pronouncement–which later papal pronouncement was adhered to, at least formally, in terms of statutes and preachings from pulpits–could EVER have had the same effect on impressionable minds as the kind of “Sunday School education” that I’ve just recounted to you.
By up-bringing and cultural formation if not by origin, family allegiances and religous training, I am a white Southerner. I understand, as non-Southerners probably never can hope to, why even William Faulkner associates moral depravity with miscegenated blood. This is something that it would take GENERATIONS of re-education to erase from the cultural memories of a people, and it is something that was largely the product of RELIGIOUS TRAINING.
Magdalena, my recent experience with Germans indicates that your friend is precisely correct in his/her analyis that Germany is a “failed state,” most of whose people have a severe identity problem on account of their 20th century history–which is forcing them to dangerously repress their still-fierce nationalism.
However, all you have to do here is go across the border, to Belgium, Holland or France–or across the channel, to Britain, to discover a people who are far more optimistic, urbane, proud of their culture and history and more assured of their role in the world (and, hence, much less xenophobic regarding foreigners living in their midst). I don’t intend to stay in Germany for my next teaching post, but I do intend to try to remain in Western Europe (unless some South Asian international school makes me an offer I can’t resist).
Another thing that I should mention is that I think my experience in Germany, thus far, is NOT broad enough–I have great difficulty with the language, as I don’t with French or Spanish–to make any conclusive judgments. My German students (over-privileged, rude, “Americanized”) and colleagues are, I suspect, not even representative of the society as a whole, and I live in a very provincial, almost incestuous little society whose moods and attitudes are palpably different from those of the people of a more cosmopolitan locale, such as Berlin or Munich, or even Cologne. I really don’t enjoy myself here in Europe until I go to Paris, Amsterdam, London or Brussels, or Berlin.
Digby
That was an interesting perspective and no, I’ve never stayed in the South overnight even. I’ve flown over it to get to the Caribbean at times but I know nothing intimate about the area.
While the Baptists may have had absurd fundy explanations as you point out, many was the Catholic Pope how had a too quick Biblical parsing on rulership issues that made them feel they had the right to give Portugal one half of the world (Pope Nicholas V..1454) and Spain the other half (Pope Alexander VI…1494) and they could point to “Unam Sanctam” Pope Boniface VIII that preceded them (1302 AD) and said that the two swords of the gospel that the disciples alluded to when Christ used “swords” metaphorically…were Church power over both the spiritual realm and over the secular princes:
Unam Sanctam:
” We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords’ [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard’ [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered _for_ the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest…..Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
The humorous thing here is in that gospel, Christ was saying “enough already with the fundamentalism from you guys”..when He literally said “enough” in regard to the disciples pointing to their literal swords. Boniface should have looked at the context. Christ had been using the word “sword” metaphorically and the two disciples took Him literally and pointed to their two literal swords and then Christ, once again faced with their limited understanding…resignedly…said “enough” as we would say “enough already”. Pope Boniface took the passage as meaning that Christ said ‘sufficient” and meant that the two literal swords equal power and two powers are enough. That led to the awful passage wherein Nicholas saw himself as having the right therefore to give the new world to a Catholic potentate and for him to take their possessions and their freedom if they resisted the gospel. Pope Paul III saw that this whole line of reasoning was bizarre.
What boggles my mind secondly in regard to the 87 year old theologian you cited is that he bought “the Church was pure on slavery” line that two Popes in the 19th century started in encyclicals both of which encyclicals left out the 6 Popes who turbocharged slavery at the critical point in the late 15th century and everyone else after those two Popes imitated those two erroneous Popes in the apologetics world and those two Popes therefore won really…. if an 87 year old papal theologian is clueless on the church and slavery…. while on any given day, he could read “Romanus Pontifex” mid 4th paragraph but he and a million other educated Catholics don’t. We are amazing in our ability to deny sin in our past. And that culminated in the sex abuse cover up syndrome and is still with us in most of our apologetics. Go to the Catholic League site and read about the Inquisition…you’d think it was part of Disney land or should be served with Brie and Muscat…so “not so bad” it was in the eyes of the apologist. Then read a much more honest version in the Catholic encyclopedia at new advent as to Popes actually forcing secular rulers to burn heretics at the stake or be excommunicated themselves (post 1252 “Ad Extirpandum”) and you will see the two different worlds wherein one is history and one is BS and coverup. The 19th century kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, the Jewish boy covertly baptized by a Catholic maid then kidnapped by the Office of the Inquisition and by Pius IX is admitted in one of our writers and then he immediately states that Protestants kidnapped Irish Catholic boys in the same period. Ring a bell? Our sex abuse was ameliorated by saying that the outside world also rapes boys. The Inquisition was similar…Protestans did it too. We are the true Church and we have bizarre cover up syndromes of a defensive nature that are embarassing and reach to the very top…if you remember the then Ratzinger slapping a reporters hand and later saying that only 1% of priests offended in the sex abuse case (incorrect) but the bigger point was not even touched by him: that the whole system of Monseignors and auxiliary Bishops and Bishops covered up and then placed such men near new unsuspecting children. The pervs were a low percentage; the covering up and shunting of pervs by hierachical leaders was not a low percentage. Catholicism is the true Church and it is neurotic at the level of its humans and their defensiveness: Inquistion not so bad/ never wrong on usury…really?…Calvin had our answer in 1545 not in 1830/ never involved in slavery…really?…our religious orders had slaves til the 19th century and Bishop England defended it in “Catholic Miscelany” the diocesan paper in the 19th century/ only one or two percent were pervs…what percent of leaders covered up and shunted?…way above 1%.
We who ask the world to go to confession are singularly incapable of going to confession about our history. And we do have the fullness of the means to salvation…no doubt. If we did in the confessional what our apologetics does, it would sound like this:
“Father I have sinned but you have to see it in the context of this time in history and besides everyone else on my block is also doing the same thing.”
Morning’s Minion Says July 2, 2009 at 9:02 pm
“Actually, [Kmiec] is criticized for making every excuse in the book for Obama’s clear and obvious pro-abortion rhetoric and policy”.
“OK, then, Mark, I’m waiting for Mr. Bottum’s post about how George Weigel lost his soul for making every excuse for the Iraq war (even today)…”
It is an old rhetorical device, like saying your ma wears combat boots in bed. What has Mr. Weigel’s position on the Iraq adventure got to do with Mr. Kmiec on abortion?
Morning’s Minion Says July 2, 2009 at 9:00 pm
“I should also add that the Magisterium has made it quite clear that it is morally impermissible for Catholics to vote for pro-abortion candidates”.
“Sigh. No, it does not. Please stop listening to the distortions of the American Catholic right”.
Evangelium vitae seems to cover the point. [Any chance of avoiding what are meant to be insults, but only misfire e.g., "the American Catholic right"]?
digbydolben Says July 3, 2009 at 5:50 pm
“anemic mass attendance among Western European Catholics”
“Mr. H, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You obviously believe every bit of pablum that right-wing press feeds you there in America. The masses I attend here in Germany are PACKED on Sundays, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was PACKED when the Pope came to Paris last fall…”
Digbyd seems to have his own sources of information. Far be it from me to rely on the left wing Boston Globe but it did report:
“In some of Catholic Europe’s largest dioceses in Germany, France, Italy, and Ireland, the percentage of Catholics who attend Mass regularly has slipped to as low as 20 percent, and in a few cities, like Paris, has reached as low as the single digits, according to figures compiled by the church”.
David Nickol again attempts to cover for Mr. Obama on abortion:
“Mr. H.,
How many times to we have to hear Obama’s words twisted? Yes, it was an unfortunate remark, but it was clearly about contraception, not abortion…”
Is contraception different from abortion? Using a condom, or an IUD, indeed is. But it is the one method that prevents conception, i.e., contraception.
[For ages, it has been the method of prostitutes].
The pill prevents the conceptus from attaching itself to the uterus, i.e., aborts the development of the conceptus.
I wish not to be unkind, but Digbyd does undercut his own positions.
He allows as how his experience of the U.S. seems to have been in a small Southern town.
He now lives and works in Germany, whose language he does not understand; but he understands enough to tell us that German kids are rude and americanized.
He wishes to live in civilized Belgium [north or south?] or Britain [Liverpool or Manchester, perhaps] or France [possibly in one of the car and tire burning Muslim neighborhoods].
It seems to boil down to his possession of enough money that he may choose a swell neighborhood in which to live on his own terms.
bill bannon Says July 5, 2009 at 12:16 pm
various old propaganda issues as a new discovery; and mixes them in an olla podrida of complaints about the Church. They are too many to untangle in one posting. But suffice to say that the Church is made of human beings, all afflicted with original sin. Pace Fr. Teilhard, there is no automatic progression up the evolutionary escalator to heaven.
Ah, yes, Mr. Gabriel Austin, back to the ad hominems again. Sure you’re not a sock puppet for for one of my other nemeses here?
I went to mass this morning in St. Quirinus, in the little town across the Rhine from Dusseldorf. I couldn’t get a seat because I arrived two or three minutes late.
But, of course, you and your “sources” know better!
Oh, and, of course, I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the opportunity to call me a liar, but I teach in an INTERNATIONAL school, whose medium of instruction is English and most of whose children are German.
Is contraception different from abortion? Using a condom, or an IUD, indeed is. But it is the one method that prevents conception, i.e., contraception.
[For ages, it has been the method of prostitutes].
Gabriel,
Sorry, but Obama was referring to contraception in his remarks, and his critics have taken bits of the remarks out of context to accuse him of wanting his daughters to have abortions. It is a distortion of the truth. People may disapprove of certain methods of contraception, believing them to sometimes have an aborifacient component, but to try to twist Obama’s remarks into an endorsement of aborting his own grandchildren is still dishonest.
Also, please be aware that the use of an IUD does indeed sometimes work as a contraceptive by preventing implantation.
As for your constant mention of prostitutes and “whore houses” in regard to contraception, the things that prostitutes do are wrong because they are wrong, not because prostitutes do them. If contraception is morally impermissible, the fact that prostitutes use it doesn’t make it any more wrong than if prostitutes didn’t use it. I think we may assume that prostitutes brush their teeth and comb their hair. That does not make it wrong for the rest of us to do likewise.
Gabriel Austin,
About a half dozen priests (three I know from the newspapers and three I know of from conversations) stated from the pulpit your theory that it was a sin to vote for Barack Obama. In each and every case they were disciplined by their bishop and retracted their statement.
–It’s not like the Church hasn’t condemned war, declared torture a non-negotiable, denounced the greed at the root of the financial crisis, embraced a pro-poor economic policy, and called for mechanisms to mitigate climate change, right?–
O’Bama is not in accord with these declarations and he is way,way off in many other issues. It’s sad that he was the only alternative to Dick’s party.
Well for me at least it is rather amusing to see how political realities rapidly sideline quite a few of our Republican Catholic friends.
Time to move on guys- come up with something novel and exciting – your single issue centered storyline is getting rather stale – not even the Vatican is falling for it.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/the-holy-father.html
Kurt Says July 5, 2009 at 7:26 pm
“Gabriel Austin,
“About a half dozen priests (three I know from the newspapers and three I know of from conversations) stated from the pulpit your theory that it was a sin to vote for Barack Obama. In each and every case they were disciplined by their bishop and retracted their statement”.
1o. I am bemused to hear that it is my theory that it was sin to vote for Mr. Obama. Do you have a reference for this?
2o. Being disciplined by a bishop does not have much of a draw these days. But in any case, who were the bishops? [I did read of a case in South Carolina. Turns out, however, that it was a chancery bureaucrat who did the disciplining].
GA,
I am sorry I misread you. I’m quite pleased to learn you are not asserting the Church teaches it was morally impermissible to vote for Barack Obama.
I’d be really more impressed with the “pro-life” anti-abortion argumentors if they had the same passion for those already born, ( namely, advocating for universal health care, shelter, education, clothing).
I’ve yet to see a proper response to the following questions;
According to many, there has been 40-50 million abortions siince Roe v Wade.
Suppose all of those abortions had not occured? The population of the U.S. would now be not just 50 million more but probably 100 million more.
Consider how many of those abortions were for women in poverty. Consider how many were for disabled, from slight to severe. Consider how many were the result of incest, sex abuse, rape.
The U.S., right now, has the highest child poverty rate among “advanced” countries. How much higher would it be?Would the response of the society be the same as with legalized abortion. If, not, why not and why hasn’t there been the same passion for it?
I’m asking these questions because I’m rather tired of reading moral posturings. I’d like to see some discussion about these questions.
evagrius,
abortion is a great injustice and it is commendable when individuals use whatever wherewithal they have to oppose it. The problem comes when those who have some other set of expertize (say health policy or economics), or interests, or situation, that cause them to persue other socially beneficial objectives have their faith and sacramental eligibility questioned.
We need not have all the answers. We just need to have the humility that we don’t have all of the answers and respect for those who have some answers we don’t have and some questions we don’t have.