Liberty, Authority, and the Good of Religion

By Christopher Tollefsen
February 27, 2009

Religious liberty and religious authority are frequently seen in tension, but they need not conflict. In fact, a proper understanding of both shows that they are equally necessary for full human flourishing.

Contemporary culture is often hostile to the idea of authority in general and to religious authority in particular. Religious liberty, on the other hand, is readily grasped as a core value of the West. How the two can be harmonized strikes many as an insurmountable difficulty. But properly understood, religious authority need be in no conflict with religious liberty. That proper understanding, however, requires a prior appreciation of the distinctive value of religion.

One foundational judgment of practical reason is that religion is a basic good to be pursued. That is to say, any human being thinking clearly about the range of possibilities that could make him well-off will recognize that being right with—i.e., conforming one’s will to—whatever greater than human source of meaning there might be is an intelligibly attractive possibility.

Most people, recognizing the good at stake, seek to discover whether there is such a source. But not every agent who makes this judgment and acts upon it believes that there is such a more than human source of meaning. Concluding that no such source exists, some people seek to realize the good of religion by making their peace with the absence of this source of meaning. But for the many who consider it more reasonable to believe that such a being exists, it is then necessary to ask who and what such a being might be, and to ask how one is to be “made right” with that being in one’s life and action.

These deliberations involve a mix of speculative and moral considerations. While the existence of a creator can, plausibly, be known through the use of natural reason, this creator is not entirely and unmistakably present to us as the God of some particular revelation or religious tradition. How then have some people arrived at such robust conceptions of God? After arriving at the reasonable conclusion that God exists, many people further judge that God has offered mankind signs and opportunities by which we may come to know and love Him. He has, in other words, extended to us the possibility of a personal relationship. Such a relationship is itself a human good, and its desirability—and the desirability and even necessity of accepting that offer—is recognized by practical reason in a concrete judgment: That I should, for example, accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and henceforth strive to act as he would have me act. Or that I should submit to Allah and follow the teachings of the Prophet. Similar practical judgments, albeit to different conclusions, are made by others who have accepted different possible revelations as true, and have acted accordingly.

Conscience and its acts are thus at the root of our pursuit of the good of religion and of our acceptance of—our faith in—some particular religious tradition (and surely, that faith’s perfection will be found where the revelation accepted is true, and human flourishing will be compromised to some extent insofar as the revelation accepted is false). Considerations of this sort are at the root of sound thinking about freedom of religion: There is an obligation to seek religious truth and choose in accordance with what one acknowledges as religious truth. But the seeking, the judging, and, especially, the conforming, all require freedom. Such freedom is both existential (the freedom of being a person) and social/legal (the freedom of political liberty in a non-threatening, non-coercive context).

The results of one’s deliberations and acts of faith when considering one’s possible relationship to a supreme being can play a unique role in the rest of one’s practical deliberations. Consider the illusion that, in being self-constituting, we are self-sufficient, reliant only upon ourselves for successfully actualizing our possibilities. Such a thought is truly illusory: we are not responsible for our own existence; nor are we responsible for existing as the kinds of beings we are, with the particular set of goods that are beneficial for us.

Further, our success in pursuing those goods through judgment, choice, and action, is not of our own making. By my own power, I do not have the capacity to ensure the continued existence of the world through to the completion of any act I perform, much less the particular set of conditions necessary for success, rather than failure, in my actions. Indeed, I can no more ensure even the existence of my acts of judgment and will while exercising those powers. Literally everything that I am, everything that I do, and every measure of my success must be seen as accomplished in overwhelming reliance upon something, or someone, else.

It is natural, from the standpoint of one who has answered questions about the existence of a transcendent source of meaning affirmatively, to identify this source as the cooperating agent and to see thereby every endeavor as part of a potentially cooperative relationship with this being. It is likewise natural to see that being’s revelation as an invitation to us to accept His guidance in that cooperative relationship. One’s every action, from this standpoint, will be suffused with both gratitude, for the gift that has been given, attentiveness, to what God is asking of us as regards our participation in the relationship, and profound significance, insofar as everything that we do will either contribute positively or negatively to the building up of that relationship. We may call that relationship to which we are called our vocation.

What, then, justifies religious authority? There are two justifying reasons: one primary, the other secondary.

The primary reason for religious authority must be that some set of persons are believed to be in a special epistemic position as regards what God wishes of human beings in order that the human-divine relationship be protected and promoted. Call this magisterial authority. The secondary reason is that some form of quasi-political authority—call it ecclesial authority—is necessary in order to coordinate the actions of those persons who together take themselves to be oriented towards God and his purposes by way of some magisterial authority or other.

When some set of persons are believed to possess, and believe themselves to possess, a special awareness of, or access to, the divine plan for human-divine relationships, and it is believed, including believed by those persons themselves, that part of the divine plan involves their promulgation of that plan, then those persons’ assertions and other acts related to the divine plan will be taken to be authoritative in a strictly religious and magisterial sense. What those persons proscribe and prescribe, as regards actions and beliefs, will be taken to give believers good, and indeed overriding reasons for action and belief, even in cases in which the believers might otherwise have thought some other belief or action justified.

Absent magisterial authority, there might be the authority common to other voluntary associations, all of which also need some locus for authoritative decision making in order that a common way of proceeding be initiated and maintained by the members of the association. But, while a religious club might indeed need and have such an authority, there seems no particular point in calling this “religious authority.” Moreover, a political authority might have religious functions without being taken to have the special epistemic position characteristic of religious authority. Again, I see no need to think of this as religious authority in the primary sense.

Now it appears that, under these conditions, it is not the case that a non-coercive religious authority—that is, an authority which cannot punish with the sword—is ever in a position to violate the conscience or religious liberty of its members or its alleged members. For those members are either believers, in which case they look to the magisterial authority for guidance and, receiving it, take it to be authoritative for the formation of their conscience, or, they are not believers, perhaps because, having consulted their consciences and exercised their reasoning capacities, they no longer believe in the privileged epistemic position of the magisterial authorities. These agents, whom the magisterial authority is unable to coerce, are free to leave the set of believers, or accept what non-coercive—because avoidable at will—punishments, such as excommunication or lighter discipline the ecclesial authority may mete out, just as agents in any other voluntary association are free to leave, or accept that association’s non-coercive punishments.

At the same time, it is also clear, based on what has been said, that a mingling of religious authority and political, or coercive authority, is inappropriate, given the nature and importance of conscience and the good of religion. Yet it is important to see this as the locus of abuse, not the exercise of magisterial authority as such. Religious authority that is exercised with genuinely coercive power—the sort of power characteristic of the political state—is a perversion of both religious and political authority, and is inadequate to the tasks of either. Magisterial authority need pose no threat to religious liberty; and if the claims of some magisterial authority are true, then such authority must be considered essential for the fullest participation in the good of religion.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher O. Tollefsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and a fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. His latest book, co-authored with Robert P. George, is Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (Doubleday, 2008). Tollefsen sits on the editorial board of Public Discourse.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.



Read more...

Politics and Science

By James Stoner
March 20, 2009

The “rightful place” of science is not as obvious as the President thinks.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to know that when a politician talks about taking the politics out of a scientific issue, there is apt to be—dare one repeat the word yet again—something political going on. Commentators such as Charles Krauthammer and Yuval Levin have been quick to notice this in the remarks President Obama delivered last week when he lifted by executive order the funding restrictions put in place by President Bush on research involving human embryos and embryonic stem cells. The new president had promised in his inaugural address to “restore science to its rightful place,” and he reiterated that theme in his remarks, calling his new order “an important step in advancing the cause of science in America”:
It is about letting scientists . . . do their jobs, free from manipulation and coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda—and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

There is nothing terribly wrong with this formulation of the principle of “scientific integrity”—the term used in an accompanying memorandum—but it raises rather than answers the question of what is the scientist’s job, what are scientific data and decisions, and what is the proper place of politics.

Let’s start by clarifying what we mean by politics, for like most words it is not free from ambiguity. First, we sometimes talk about politics as the struggle over who gets offices and honors and benefits: politics in this sense is likened to a game in which there are players and teams, rules and game-plans, winners and losers, triumphs and defeats. Second, we see politics in deliberation about public policy, in making decisions about the best means to achieve agreed-upon ends; today we generally agree, for example, that we need an economic policy that will ensure the return of prosperity, but our political parties show characteristic differences in the sorts of policy they are inclined to endorse toward that end. Finally, political dispute sometimes reaches beyond issues involving the means to agreed-upon ends to include debate about the ends themselves: Should public policy favor excellence or equity? Should the law encourage justice or protect freedom?

All can agree, I think, that scientific integrity requires that the determination of the truth of facts and causality in matters properly within the domain of scientific inquiry ought to be free from political interference. There might be “politics” in every lab or every agency, but it is the duty of scientists to set considerations of gain and celebrity aside when determining whether a scientific paper ought to be published or whether a scientific theory is true. The standard is evidence and argument, not power and influence, and the evidence and argument ought to be such that it is publicly available and contestable, for in that way error can be discovered and corrected. In deciding whose evidence is best and whose arguments are sound, it should not matter what powerful forces in society wish the truth to be: whether the icecaps are melting; whether if so the cause is human activity (such as burning fossil fuels) or natural events (such as storms on the sun); whether intelligence can be measured and, if so, whether it varies by ethnic group; whether animal embryos are living organisms that develop on their own given favorable conditions or are clumps of cells that behave like cultured tissue. If truth is suppressed because one or the other political team finds it “inconvenient,” to use the President’s language, something has gone wrong.

Things get complicated when we have to deliberate about which means to choose in the formulation of public policy. Here science often has a useful role to play. Sometimes it takes the form of scientific studies that document otherwise uncertain dangers to the public, for example the health risks of tobacco use. Sometimes scientific instruments and technology provide the government with essential tools for important services, for example weather forecasting or space exploration or a thousand military purposes. Sometimes social science evidence informs policy-making, for example economic analysis or the assessment of student achievement. In all these matters it can never be said that science dictates rational policy on its own without additional human judgment.

Whether tobacco harms human health is a scientific question, but whether government should ban its use, ban its advertisement in certain venues, or merely warn the public of its dangers is not a question that can be answered scientifically, only politically. The risks of air or water pollution might be scientifically calculated, but how much risk is acceptable and who should have to bear it are political issues. It is not a political question whether a scientific instrument measures what it is supposed to or executes the operation for which it is designed, but the use to which it should be put and whether its cost is worth its benefit can only be answered by politics. Here the temptations to compromise scientific integrity may be great, but they can in principle be resisted by scientifically literate administrators and an informed public, able to distinguish judgments of fact from judgments of value. When the question involves the social sciences, fact and value are inevitably tangled, requiring even more vigilance to distinguish empirical findings from political interpretations; perhaps the best that can be expected is that scientific results be kept in perspective and not be asserted by political figures to prove more than the researchers who discover them can scientifically claim.

What makes science inadequate to settle debates over means is the fact that human goods are plural and incommensurable. Usually for any individual, and always for complex communities, there are many competing goods and no simple or universal formula by which they can be weighed against one another. Disputes over ends need not be irresolvable in principle, however. There is a long tradition in philosophy that aims to do precisely that, and religion and other forms of culture have often claimed and sometimes succeeded in fostering a widespread consensus on fundamental things that limits political disagreement. The reason that these disputes become political in our society is because by embracing religious freedom and free speech, we have accepted heterodoxy on first principles and thus have left to political ingenuity the forging of public opinion even on matters of fundamental concern. Much more can be said on this score—pointing, for example, to the role of constitutionalism in holding society together, or, as Tocqueville pointed out, to the unofficial but nevertheless tyrannical pressure of democratic majorities over thought. For our purposes here what is essential is to note that modern science has nothing, or almost nothing, to say about the human good.

This bears underlining. Whereas classical science asked about the essences of things and about their ends, modern science is empiriological, classifying and measuring phenomena in their observed relations. Its form is logical rather than ontological; rather than asking what things really are or what they are for, modern science typically aims to describe reality mathematically. Modern science answers how events happen, not what is the substance of things. Its spectacular achievements come as a result of its narrowed scope. But even that is only part of the story, for practicing scientists are usually convinced that they have made discoveries about the way things really are, not just that they have described mathematically the relations of appearances; except for the sake of maintaining an argument, no practical physicist believes that “physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world,” as Nietzsche said. Scientists confidently acquire real knowledge by limited but effective means, and sometimes claim that what they know is all that can be known about the things they study. To them—and, frankly, to our culture at large—all claims to knowledge are either ‘scientific’ or ‘unscientific,’ the latter including everything from ethics to prejudice. Perhaps for peace in the university scientists concede some dignity to nonscientific disciplines, but it is hard not to think that, except for those who draw on resources of personal faith, they consider it all to be nonsense and treat it with silent contempt.

On the other hand, humanists and other non-scientists lazily rely on Nietzsche’s adage or on Nietzschean philosophers of science, thinking they can treat scientific knowledge as optional in itself and not essential to their own concerns. They rarely understand science or what drives it and so are surprised when scientists ignore their concerns. To the humanist, science should pause before ethical imperatives, or at least human experience, which includes, as Levin and Krauthammer remember, harrowing tales from the twentieth century of science going horribly astray. But to the scientist, the humanist himself treats ethics or religion as interpretation, not knowledge, so proposed restrictions on scientific research seem arbitrarily imposed. As a physicist friend has pointed out to me, to a modern biologist the embryo is today what the atom was to physicists a few generations ago: the central, most powerful thing within their field of study, and just beginning to be truly understood for the first time. This is why, as scientists, they consider it irrelevant that pluripotent stem cells can be produced by other means: they want to know what makes the embryo work and resent anything that stands in their way, confident that the knowledge gained will in the long run yield the greatest benefits to well-being.

Hence our current predicament: scientists who want to really know, but are only half aware of the limits of their empiriological method; humanists (not to mention religious believers) who have abandoned claims to comprehensive knowledge even of their appointed spheres; and politicians eager as ever to exploit the opportunities that ambiguity creates. Though laws remain in place that still restrict the grasp of science—for example, regulating the composition of federally mandated boards to review research on human subjects—the problem is more fundamental and not to be resolved without serious intellectual work. It is not enough, for either liberals or conservatives, to rest democracy on “values voters” as able to resist the authoritarian claims of modern science. Not unexplained values, but genuine knowledge, is needed to establish that the “rightful place” of science in its modern form is not above the people and their faith and their Constitution, but in their service, for the questions of substances and ends retain authority over instrumental questions concerning processes and systems. In other words, the inconvenient political fact is that law must restrain scientists within ethical boundaries so long as their method itself is amoral, but the better way in the long run is toward recovery of a serious science of human being.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Stoner is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Louisiana State University. He sits on the editorial board of Public Discourse. He gratefully acknowledges his reliance on the writings and conversation of Anthony Rizzi of the Institute for Advanced Physics in developing this essay.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.



Read more...

Uskup Terpilih Prioritaskan Pembinaan Iman di Wilayah Agama Asli

JAKARTA (UCAN) -- Pastor Edmund Woga CSsR, yang diangkat menjadi Uskup Weetebula di Pulau Sumba, mengatakan ia akan memprioritaskan pembinaan iman umat Katolik di keuskupan itu, dimana agama asli masih berpengaruh.
Pada 4 April Paus Benediktus XVI mengangkat administrator keuskupan Weetebula itu sebagai uskup untuk keuskupan yang sama di tenggara Indonesia. Uskup Agung Leopoldo Girelli, Duta Vatikan untuk Indonesia, memberitahukannya tentang penggangkatan itu pada hari yang sama.

”Saya terkejut saat Uskup Agung Girelli menelepon saya apakah saya bersedia menjadi Uskup Weetabula," kenang Uskup-terpilih Woga, 58. Ia memberikan saya kesempatan sehari untuk berpikir tentang pengangkatan itu, namun saya meminta dua hari." Tanggal penahbisan dan pelantikannya belum diputuskan, katanya dalam wawancara melalui telepon selulernya.

Berbicara tentang prioritasnya sebagai kepala keuskupan itu, ia mengatakan: ”Saya akan menekankan secara khusus pada persoalan iman umat karena pengetahuan iman mereka sangat minim, pendidikan masih rendah, sehingga perlu ada kegiatan pastoral khusus. Dengan itu mereka tidak hanya mengetahui doa-doa Bapa Kami, Salam Maria, atau Aku Percaya.”

Ia mengakui pentingnya Merapu, agama asli warga Sumba, dalam kehidupan umat di sini. ”Pertemuan khusus dengan agama asli bisa cepat membantu mendalami pengetahuan mereka tentang iman Katolik” karena Merapu memiliki nilai-nilai yang sama dengan nilai-nilai Kristen, kata uskup-terpilih itu.

Menurut data Gereja 2003, dari 603.305 penduduk pulau itu sekitar 260.000 adalah Protestan, 200.000 adalah penganut Merapu, 120.000 adalah Katolik dan 20.000 adalah Muslim.

Uskup-terpilih Woga juga berjanji ia akan melanjutkan program-program untuk membangun Komunitas Basis Gereja (KBG) yang telah dilakukan penggantinya, Uskup Gerulfus Kherubim Pareira SVD, yang kini melayani sebagai uskup Maumere di Pulau Flores. Uskup-terpilih mengatakan ia berharap semua imam dan religius yang melayani keuskupan itu bekerjasama untuk memperdalam iman umat Katolik lokal.

Seorang imam lokal, Pastor Kristianus Bernardus Breda, kepala Paroki St. Petrus dan Paulus di Waikabubak, ibukota Kabupaten Sumba Barat, mengatakan ia telah mengumumkan pengangkatan itu kepada para umat paroki pada Misa-Misa 4 dan 5 April. "Umat sangat senang mendengar berita pengangkatan itu" karena mereka tidak memiliki uskup selama hampir setahun, kata imam itu melalui telepon.

Ia menambahkan bahwa ia mendukung rencana uskup-terpilih itu untuk memprioritaskan pembinaan iman umat Katolik lokal.

Uskup-terpilih Woga lahir pada 17 November 1950 di Hewokloang, Flores. Ia belajar di Seminari Tinggi St. Paulus di Kentungan, Yogyakarta, dari 1971 dan ditahbiskan menjadi imam tahun 1977. Ia kemudian melayani selama sekitar setahun sebagai direktur Lembaga Pelatihan Guru Agama di Waingapu, Kabupaten Sumba Timur, dan tahun lain sebagai pastor Paroki St. Clemens di Katikuloku, Kabupaten Sumba Barat.
Tahun 1979-1982, ia menjadi direktur Asrama Pada Dita di Waingapu, Sumba Timur. Ia bergabung dengan Redemptoris tahun 1980.

Dari tahun 1982, ia belajar di Sankt Augustin di Jerman, dimana ia meraih licentia dalam bidang misiologi dua tahun kemudian. Tahun 1986-1992, ia belajar teologi fundamental di Monaco.

Dari tahun 1993, ia melayani sebagai dosen misiologi di Fakultas Teologi Wedhabakti di Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Tahun 2002, ia menjadi provinsial CSsR Indonesia, berbasis di pusat kongregasinya di Sumba, hingga ia menjadi administrator keuskupan Weetebula tahun 2008.

2009-4-7 | IJ07010.637b | 480 kata
Read more...

Palestinian Christians Look Toward the Papal Visit

By Deal W. Hudson

Palestinian Christians are wondering aloud whether the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the Holy Land will bring greater media attention to their dwindling numbers. They fear that, at the top, the pope's agenda will be dominated by his continuing effort to smooth the ruffled feathers of Muslims (after his2006 Regensburg speech) and Jews (following the recent trouble over the anti-Semitism of Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of St. Pius X).

Building better relations with Israel, the international Jewish community, and Muslims is the "story line already written by the media for the papal visit," one Vatican observer told me.But the real motive behind the visit, according to the same observer with close ties to the Vatican, is the pope's desire to make a "personal pilgrimage" to the holy sites. His message will be a message to the Church, he continued, and should not be expected to target "specific problems" on the ground.

It's impossible, however, for a papal visit to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan not to be scrutinized from every possible angle. Everyone in the region, and many around the world, will be listening for any possible comment on the ongoing occupation by Israel of the West Bank and its impact on the historic Christian communities of places like Bethlehem, Nazareth, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour.

Opinions differ on the primary cause for the departure of Christians out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Some point to the rigors of the occupation, especially restrictions on the freedom of movement imposed by checkpoints and security walls. Others talk about the mounting tensions between Christians and Muslims in towns like Bethlehem, where their families once lived side by side without rancor as far back as anyone can remember. Indeed, on this, my fourth trip to the Holy Land in six years, I have heard more about Muslim hostility to Christians than ever before.

My own observation is that, when people are locked in a prison with little hope of ever getting out, they turn their gaze inward. Divisions that once didn't matter become very relevant. Similarly, when two peoples live together under an occupation without the freedom of movement, they start finding more fault with each other.

Bernard Sabella, a professor at Bethlehem University and a Christian member of the Palestinian legislature, offers another explanation for the exodus. "The main reason is unemployment. If the young people can't find work, they leave, it's that simple."

Sabella's research has found that in good economic years, about 200 to 300 Palestinian Christians between the ages of 25 and 30 leave the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In bad economic times, the numbers shoot up to between 900 and 1,000 a year. With only 50,000 Christians in those areas, the net result is a steadily shrinking community whose recovery is dependent on the return of a robust economy. Sabella adds, "How can you have a strong economy with plenty of jobs for young people out of college when they cannot, for example, even leave the city of Bethlehem but only rarely?"

Without freedom of movement, Sabella argues, the economy cannot grow, more and more Palestinians will depend on foreign aid for subsistence, and young Christians will choose to leave in search of better lives. Sabella's analysis, although beginning with the problem of unemployment, points back to the impact of the Israeli occupations and, particularly, the more stringent measures taken since theintifada that began in 2000.

If Benedict addresses the root causes for the declining Christian presence in the Holy Land, he will very likely offend both Israelis and Muslims, the very parties with whom he might have hoped to strengthen ties. Yet this is the moment when Christians living under the occupation need a word of support from the leader of the Church. After the Gaza campaign and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, they have little hope that Israel will pursue a two-state solution. They also put little faith in the promises of the Obama administration -- not because of Obama himself, but because of their disappointments in previous U.S. presidents.

One frustrated Christian put it to me bluntly: "The pope must do something for his Christians here in the Holy Land, or there will be none of us here in 20 years." This father of two young children, living in Bethlehem and struggling to keep his family on the West Bank, is considering the option of immigrating for the first time in his life. His attitude, I am told, is becoming widespread among educated Palestinian Christians.

Benedict has already shown himself capable of rising to the occasion to overcome controversy, as on his trip to the United States a year ago when he defused the criticism awaiting him about the priest sex scandal. His proactive comments to the media on the flight to Washington, D.C., let the air out of the balloon of invective that was ready to burst upon his arrival.

The Holy Father may well find a way to navigate through the more rocky shores of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Palestinian Christians caught in the middle.

________________________________________
Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster).

4/09/09
Read more...

The Pope Should Go to Gaza

By Deal W. Hudson

Display Full Article/Printer Friendly | Send to a Friend
"The Holy Father should not be coming to the Holy Land without visiting Gaza." The bitterness in his voice was obvious as the professor at Bethlehem University talked to me about Pope Benedict XVI's visit next month. I found that his attitude is the rule, rather than the exception, among Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land.
In interviews conducted with over twenty Palestinian Christian leaders last week, I was surprised to discover no enthusiasm whatsoever for the upcoming papal visit. "The pope's visit here will only legitimize the recent Israeli operation in Gaza and the intentions of the right-wing government elected in February," the professor explained.

Palestinian Christians have expressed their concerns directly to Benedict. In a little-noticed letter of February 20, 40 members of the Christian community in the Holy Land told the pope his visit would only serve to endorse Israeli government policies, "leading to more cooperation from the United States and Europe."
Nidal Abu Zuluf is associate director of the YMCA in Bethlehem and coordinates a network of Christian organizations. As he gave me a copy of the letter, he asked, "Why now? It's a bad time for the pope to come, and there is no clear message, unless he goes to Gaza."

From what I saw and heard there, adding Gaza to the papal visit to the Holy Land would indeed send a message to all concerned, including Hamas, which some Christians fear was strengthened by the three-week Israeli offensive. Benedict could visit Holy Family Parish in Gaza City, where Msgr. Manuel Musallam and his parishioners lived through the bombing that began on December 28 and the ground invasion a week later on January 3, 2009. Monsignor Musallam and his parish minister to the 200 Catholics remaining in Gaza (there are approximately another 3,000 Christians, most of whom are Greek Orthodox).

Unfortunately, the itinerary of the trip, set for May 8-13, does not include Gaza -- it basically repeats the schedule of Pope John Paul II from March 2000. Benedict arrives in Amman, Jordan, before visiting Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. The problem, according to Abu Zuluf, is that the Holy Land is a "very different place" than it was in 2000. Ever since the uprising (Second Intifada) that followed the visit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in September 2000, the West Bank has been in a state of lock-down enforced by hundreds of miles of security walls, checkpoints, settlements, settler roads, and harsh restrictions on freedom of movement.

Palestinian Christians have virtually no access to the holy sites in East Jerusalem, Galilee, and Nazareth. Abu Zuluf, a native of Bethlehem, has not been able to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem since 1993, even though it is just a few miles away. Sadly, his situation is typical for Christians in Bethlehem and the adjacent, largely Christian cities of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour.

According to Br. Jack Curran, vice president for development of Bethlehem University, students in religion classes are routinely denied permits to travel out of the city. Even worse, he told me, "We can't get permission from Israel for any students to attend the university from Gaza." In spite of the government obstacles, Bethlehem University has mounted a new effort to engage students from Gaza. Brother Curran told me, "The university needs help from American Catholics both politically, to get Israeli permission for these young people to come to Bethlehem, and financially, to support their living and educational costs."

The Christians living in the Holy Land will view Benedict's visit through the lens of the recent Israeli offensive, which left 1,417 dead in Gaza, including 313 children. With the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, Christians in Bethlehem expressed fear that their city could become another Gaza. "We already live surrounded by walls and checkpoints. Why shouldn't we think that what happened in Gaza could happen to us?" said a young woman in her mid-20s, who comes from one of the oldest and most prominent Christian families in Bethlehem.

Palestinian Christians will be deeply disappointed and demoralized if Benedict simply repeats the itinerary of John Paul II. Imagine the power of the Holy Father speaking from a Catholic parish in the midst of the devastation of Gaza. Benedict could not only speak to the issue of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but could also issue an invitation to Catholics around the world to follow his example and visit the Holy Land.

A significant and lasting increase in Catholic pilgrims would provide financial help for both Israel and Palestine, moral support for Palestinian Christians, and an opportunity for Catholics to see the situation on the ground for themselves. The Palestinian Christian community is on life support, and the pope cannot ignore it.

________________________________________
Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster).

4/13/09
Read more...

Benedict XVI and the State of Israel

By David P. Goldman
Monday, March 30, 2009, 12:01 AM

May 14 is Israel’s Independence Day (celebrated according to the Jewish rather than the Gregorian calendar), recalling the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. For Palestinian Arabs the following day, May 15, is a day of mourning, “Disaster (Naqba) Day.” It has gone unmentioned that Pope Benedict’s Holy Land pilgrimage falls on just these days. On May 15, the final day of his visit, the pope will share a podium in Israel’s capital Jerusalem with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

The pope’s appearance in Jerusalem with Israel’s head of state on Naqba Day underscores his commitment to the State of Israel. From the founding of the State of Israel to 1993, when the Vatican at length established diplomatic relations with the Jewish State, the Holy See has had to balance its commitment to Middle Eastern Christians with its efforts to improve relations with the Jewish people. Christians endured in the birthplace of their religion under Muslim rule as a dhimmi, or subject people, anxious to avoid giving offense to the far more powerful majority.

With the advent of the State of Israel and the hostile Muslim response, dhimmitude became less viable. It is estimated that thirty-five percent of the Christians in the West Bank and Gaza have emigrated since the 1967 war, mostly in response to harassment by radical Islamists. Although Arab Christians have suffered at the hands of Muslim militants who oppose the existence of the Jewish State, many of them blame the Jews for rousing the Muslim militants in the first place.

Well before the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel in 1993, then Cardinal Ratzinger repeatedly explained to Jewish representatives that the delay in diplomatic recognition solely reflected the concern of the Holy See for the vulnerable Arab Christian communities. His pilgrimage this May devotes considerable time to pastoral meetings with the Arab Christian community. Nonetheless, Benedict has made clear that his concern for Arab Christians is embedded within an unwavering commitment to the Jewish community in the Holy Land.

It is hard not to see an evolution in Vatican policy towards Israel, from a pragmatic approach to the problems of religious constituencies, to explicit theological sympathy for the Jewish State. Benedict XVI is first of all a theologian, and he views the Jewish presence in the Holy Land as a theological matter.

In 2008, on the fiftieth anniversary of Israel’s independence, Benedict XVI told Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, “The Holy See is united with you and thanks God for the full realization of the Jewish people’s aspirations to live in its homeland, the land of its forefathers.” Meeting with the Israeli rabbinate on March 12, the Pope affirmed the election of the Jewish people “to communicate to the whole human family knowledge of and fidelity to the one, true and unique God.” Theologically it is difficult to separate the election of the people from the promise of the land, and Benedict’s commitment to Israel seems strongly grounded in theology.

The Magisterium of the Church does not take an explicit position on the question of Jewish statehood. Officially, the Catholic Church instructs, “The existence of the State of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law,” in the formula given in “Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church” (1985.

But the Church also knows that Israel is more than just another small country like Finland or Ecuador, for the very next sentence of the 1985 document cites John Paul II’s recognition of the theological significance of Jewish survival: “The permanence of Israel (while so many ancient peoples have disappeared without trace) is a historic fact and a sign to be interpreted within God’s design. . . . It remains a chosen people, ‘the pure olive on which were grafted the branches of the wild olive which are the gentiles.’”

Middle Eastern Christians remain an important constituency opposing Vatican support for the Jewish State. Their position is difficult. On March 25, the Holy See expressed “profound concern” about Middle Eastern Christians in the Middle East in the wake of the Israeli incursion into Gaza. Cardinal Leonardo Sandri and Archbishop Antonio Maria emphasized the pastoral function of the pope’s visit, nothing that he “constantly comforts Christians, and all the inhabitants of the Holy Land, with special words and gestures, coupled with his desire to make a pilgrimage in the historical footsteps of Jesus . . . The wounds opened by violence make the problem of emigration more acute, inexorably depriving the Christian minority of its best resources for the future . . . The land that was the cradle of Christianity risks ending up without Christians.”

That is not quite true, for although Arab Christians are indeed leaving areas controlled by Muslims, Christians are immigrating to Israel itself, whose Christian community has doubled in size in the past fifteen years. Nearly 300,000 Eastern European immigrants are Christians, as well as many Filipinos and others who came as guest workers and have settled in Israel. Hebrew-speaking Israeli Christians are becoming a more numerous constituency than Arab-speaking Palestinian Christians. The retirement in 2008 of Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, a vocal critic of the Jewish State, was symbolic of the generational change that shifted the balance of Christian life to Hebrew-speaking Israelis. Patriarch Sabbah belonged to an older generation that blamed Israel for the disruption of Christian life in the Holy Land.

The most important issues outstanding between the State of Israel and the Holy See involve the practical life of Church institutions ministering to Catholic citizens of the Jewish State, including taxation, the status of Church property, and so forth. It is possible to look forward to a happy day in which the most important source of antagonism between Catholics and Jews will be tax treatment of Church property—provided, of course, that the Holy Father’s theological sympathy for the existence of the Israeli state prevails in the Church. His predecessor John Paul II transformed Catholic–Jewish relations during his pilgrimage nine years ago, and the image of the pope praying at the Western Wall did more to persuade Jews of Christian goodwill than all the conference resolutions in history. Benedict’s presentation of the theology of election adds an inestimably important dimension to the story. But nothing strengthens the bond between the Church and the Jews as plainly as the pope’s appearance in Israel on the anniversary of its independence.

David P. Goldman is a writer in New York.

Read more...

Abortion and the Consumer Society

By Joe Hargrave

Pro-life Catholics fall into two camps on the issue of abortion: those who see it first and foremost as an individual moral failing, and those who consider it primarily a social moral failing.

There is nothing mutually exclusive about the two positions, of course, but that isn't the problem. The real issue here is emphasis; that in turn determines how we prioritize our resources and efforts, where we believe the pressure points are, and how to strike them.

Since I myself lean toward the social explanation for abortion, I want to clarify it for those who disagree. At times we are accused of -- and are indeed guilty of -- materialist reductionism. There are some within the Church (and on the pro-life side of the spectrum in general) who focus almost exclusively on social concerns. Similarly, there were many Catholics who thought supporting Barack Obama's candidacy during the 2008 election was a morally acceptable choice, because they believed his economic policies would strike at the root causes of abortion.

Unfortunately, the facts do not entirely support the argument. While it is true that some abortions -- perhaps a significant number -- might be reduced through economic policies that address the problems facing young, single mothers, the majority of abortions are sought by people living comfortably above the poverty line.

Of course, this argument was premised on another -- that Obama would necessarily pursue policies that would serve the interests of women likely to get abortions. Even assuming that his intentions are sincere, he is still limited by the economy, especially in the midst of a recession. If the "reduce abortion through social spending" argument was plausible before the financial crisis, it has become less so now. There is therefore no good reason to expect a quick solution to the problem of abortion, whether or not one believes the economy is at the root of it.

On the other hand, those who believe deliverance lies in the mere reversal of Roe v. Wade should consider how much the culture and political landscape have changed in the last 40 years. Even if it were true that abortion fell into our laps because of what a cabal of judges decided in 1973, we have nevertheless had nearly four decades of what Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae described as a vast, orchestrated conspiracy against the sanctity of life (12, 17).

The culture of death is here, and it is both powerful and growing. Consider, for instance, that as voters flocked to the polls in November to reject gay marriage in the state of California, they also rejected by a solid margin a simple parental notification law for minors seeking abortions. Pro-life ballot measures failed in other states as well -- red states. If one's hope is entirely placed in politics, it's a bad sign.


Abortion will go away when the majority of Americans wants it to go away. According to one study, "At least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45 and, at current rates, about one-third will have had an abortion." This of course does not include the millions of men who will push their girlfriends or wives into getting abortions, or the parents who do the same with their daughters.

Having moved past both the quick-fix economic and political solutions, we see that the fundamental issue is chiefly an economic one, though not in the way the typical left-liberal Catholic conceives of it. The problem is not too little wealth and income, but rather too much.

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the United States adopted some of the economic theories of the British economist John Keynes, who argued that the key to avoiding another depression was increased consumption by the masses. The war-time industry was converted into production of consumer goods, and a semi-official theory of consumerism became a part of American life. The importance of this development is highlighted by John Paul II as he explained the phenomenon of consumerism in Centesimus Annus:

A given culture reveals its overall understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption. It is here that the phenomenon of consumerism arises. In singling out new needs and new means to meet them, one must be guided by a comprehensive picture of man (36, bold emphasis added).

What comprehensive picture of man was Western society guided by as it turned to consumerism?

Since the 1950s we have been "The Affluent Society," and we considered it our patriotic duty to build a consumer paradise to one-up Soviet communism. During this time a generation was born that would hardly know material want and would take for granted the sort of freedom from toil that was formerly reserved to the wealthy. It was a reality for which no one was prepared, a case where sweeping economic change had a profound cultural effect. As conservative commentator Robert Bork explained in the opening paragraph of his classic work, Slouching towards Gomorrah:

What did they want, these students? What conceivable goals led them to this and to the general havoc they were wreaking on the university? Living in the Sixties, my faculty colleagues and I had no understanding of what it was about, where it came from, or how long the misery would last. It was only much later that a degree of understanding came.

Bork is right to identify both rampant egalitarianism and individualism as both chief symptoms and further causes of many problems in our society, up to and including abortion. But he lacks a coherent explanation for the origin of these currents. I would argue they emerged out of the relative material independence made possible by the conversion of vast swaths of the economy to the production of consumer goods, as well as the application of science and technology to the needs facing the everyday person and household. In other words, Americans have grown accustomed to freedom from physical necessity, wherein, to quote John Paul II once more, "needs were few and were determined, to a degree, by the objective structures of [man's] physical make-up." This is true with respect to children and family life as well.

The fact is, the bearing and raising of children has lost a certain objective necessity that it once had; historically, children were not only objects of familial love but also economic resources. Boys became workers, and girls were married off to create advantageous social connections between families. Today, by contrast, we live in a culture where many of the children lucky enough to be born at all are idealized, coddled, and pampered to a degree hitherto unknown in history. As a result, their adulthood is often unnaturally delayed by a thousand laws and social conventions that premise "growing up too fast" as the worst of all possible fates (see Hara Estroff Marano's A Nation of Wimps for an excellent overview of this phenomenon).

Abortion and delayed adulthood are two sides of the same coin, the displacement of children from their earlier position in society and their replacement into a role that accommodates the consumerist mentality. Failing to recognize the historically shaped economic underpinnings of the family unit leaves us flabbergasted when those same underpinnings dissolve, and human behaviors and desires change as a result. This is not to say that human beings should ever be regarded merely as objects of economic utility, but simply that they do (or did) possess that utility, in addition to their inherent dignity and value as children of God.


I have no objection to a greater degree of social equality, a wider sphere for individual creativity and initiative, or the application of science for the betterment of our lives. Nevertheless, historically, these things arrived after the entire social structure of the Middle Ages had disintegrated. Progress came violently and with overt hostility toward the Church and its "comprehensive picture of man." Yet Pope Pius XI, in Quadragesimo Anno, argued that there is no logical connection between social and technological progress on the one hand, and the destruction of the essential principles of the old social order on the other:

For there was a social order once which, although indeed not perfect or in all respects ideal, nevertheless, met in a certain measure the requirements of right reason, considering the conditions and needs of the time. If that order has long since perished, that surely did not happen because the order could not have accommodated itself to changed conditions and needs by development and by a certain expansion, but rather because men, hardened by too much love of self, refused to open the order to the increasing masses as they should have done, or because, deceived by allurements of a false freedom and other errors, they became impatient of every authority and sought to reject every form of control.

Who today can fail to see the seeds of the "pro-choice" mentality in what the pope describes: men and women "hardened by too much love of self," "deceived by the allurements of a false freedom," "impatient of every authority," and who "reject every form of control"? It should not be shocking, then, that a progress founded upon these flaws should culminate in a total rejection of parental responsibilities (which is what abortion boils down to).

Can the trend be reversed? Yes. Since there is no logical link between progress and evil, there is no reason we cannot envision a society where science and technology are put at the service of life. But many of us still need to come to terms with the extent to which even we are infected by those same errors and deceptions (if we fail to see the link between consumerism and abortion in America, we might look at what is taking place in China). The creation of a culture of life requires more than political activism: It demands a transformation of lifestyle.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Hargrave writes from Phoenix. He blogs at A New Catholic Paradigm, Vox Nova, and American Catholic.

4/13/09
Read more...