David Gibson: September 2008 Archives

A strong statement from the head of the U.S. bishops domestic justice committee offers five conditions to guide any rescue/bailout package. In the Sept. 26 statement (it didn't get much press; I just found it now via ZENIT), Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre (Long Island) stressed "responsibility, accountability, awareness of advantages and limitations of the market, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good, in the search for just and effective responses to the economic turmoil, while considering its human impact and ethical dimensions."

Murphy's statement contains some powerful and welcome language (and should give pause to those who want to enlist the Catholic Church as an arm of the GOP). He spoke of "the scandalous search for excessive economic rewards even to the point of dangerous speculation that exacerbates the pain and losses of the more vulnerable are egregious examples of an economic ethic that places economic gain above all other values." He said "Those who directly contributed to this crisis or profited from it should not be rewarded or escape accountability for the harm they have done." And he invoked Catholic social teaching to argue for greater regulation and intervention when needed.

He concludes with a quote from John Paul II's encyclical, Centesimus Annus, written to mark the 100th anniversary of Leo XIII's great social encycical, Rerum Novarum:

Our Catholic tradition calls for a "society of work, enterprise and participation" which "is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state to assure that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied."

Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, recently promoted to the Vatican as head of the Apostolic Segnatura (a kind of church Supreme Court, only more complicated) wastes no time making waves on the other side of the pond. In an interview with Avvenire, the daily of the Italian bishops conference, Burke was asked if he knew that Sheryl Crow, whose support for abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research led the archbishop to bar her from a 2007 benefit at a Catholic children's hospital in St. Louis, also performed at the Democratic convention:

"That does not surprise me much," the archbishop said. "At this point the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitely into a 'party of death' because of its choices on bioethical questions as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book, 'The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.'"

Archbishop Burke said the Democratic Party once was "the party that helped our immigrant parents and grandparents better integrate and prosper in American society. But it is not the same anymore."

Meanwhile, Ramesh Ponnuru must be happy. No?

Rep. John LaBruzzo, a Republican from Metarie (David Duke's old haunts) wants to pay poor women $1,000 to get sterilized. Why? Because people receiving food and housing assistance "are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated residents." The New Orleans Times-Picayune has the story:

"What I'm really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare," he said.

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.

LaBruzzo, 38, is white, married to a lawyer, has a toddler daughter and holds a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University.

[snip--so to speak]

"It's easy to say, 'Oh, he's a racist,' " LaBruzzo said. "The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions."

LaBruzzo said he opposes abortion and paying people to have abortions. He described a sterilization program as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe.

He acknowledged his idea might be a difficult sell politically.

"I don't know if it's a viable option," LaBruzzo said. "Of course people are going to get excited about it. Maybe we'll start a debate on it."

Well, he's done that. New Orleans' Catholic archbishop, Alfred Hughes, was the first area clergyman to come out against LaBruzzo's proposal. According to RNS, Hughes based his opposition on two elements of Labruzzo's proposal: the technique of direct sterilization and the underlying purpose of manipulating the birth rate to reduce certain populations as a matter of public policy.  

More broadly, Hughes said, the plan "would also constitute a form of eugenics that the church and this country have always condemned."

Over at dotCommonweal, where I saw this news, Notre Dame's Cathleen Kaveny applauds Hughes but notes that the archbishop's historical analysis is flawed:

"He's wrong in saying we Americans have always condemned eugenics. That's the problem. We haven't. I do not believe in whitewashing history-the history of Christianity or the history of the United States. And I do believe in making contemporary citizens and believers confront the bad decisions of the past. The United States does not have a good history with eugenics -before the Second World War, and the revelations of the atrocities of Nazi Germany, it was attractive public policy."

Professor Kaveny goes on to cite the infamous Buck v. Bell case of 1927 in which Justioce Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the majority that upheld forced sterilization for the good of the rest of society, declared: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

In the comments thread to that post, some tried to tie this sin of eugenics to "liberal Christianity," an inflammatory charge aimed at progressive believers in America now, as then. But America's ugly dalliance with eugenics is replete with instances of progressives who were so enamored of social engineering or bringing about paradise on earth that they succumbed to the worst temptations to make it happen. (And of course, conservatives, perhaps like the GOP legislator in Louisiana, were no better; maybe Sarah Palin will have him to dinner if she's elected.)

This episode is a good reminder of our common failings, and how far we have come, but also how realistic we must be about our faults, the faults of others, and the grace of imperfection in everyone.

ThinkProgress.com has updates.

The Catholic Church may be the only institution doing well during the economic crisis. According to an exclusive from The Tablet's Rome correspondent Robert Mickens, the Vatican may finally have learned (after decades of deficits and fiscal mismanagment and even scandal) how to manage its affairs. Indeed, the Vatican seems to have developed a gift for prophecy that Wall Street could learn from.

The piece, "Church with a Midas Touch," is based on a confidential report sent to the world's bishops, who, together with donations from the faithful, support the Vatican. The Holy See actually has few resources of its own, unless one wants to sell of the Pieta. The report isn't that transparent, and much as to be taken on faith. The Tablet piece is only available to subscribers, but here are a few (gold) nuggets:

--The Holy See's total assets at the end of last year added up to nearly 1.4 billion euros or more than £1 billion. It reveals that the Vatican's financial advisers shrewdly spotted the risks of keeping the Church's money tied up in shares and switched to safer investments, including gold. The Holy See owns almost a ton of gold which in today's volatile market would be worth some £15 million. (The math? Maybe $30 million?) That's a decent sum, though hardly the endowment of a decent U.S. university.

--The Holy See's most costly ventures are Vatican Radio, which in 2007 ran at a 24.3 million euro (£19.2m) deficit, and its newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which lost about
4.8m euros (£3.8m). Another interesting detail is that salaries, taxes and other expenses for some two dozen cardinals who work in the Roman Curia run to more than 3m euros
(£2.37m) a year.

--The report is for the Holy See, not the Vatican City State--the church's 108-acre physical "plant" with a post office, fire department, museums and such--which actually makes a few million a year. Nor does it include any accounting for the somewhat infamous Istituto per le Opere Religiose (IOR)--the "Institute for religious Works, more commonly known as the Vatican Bank.

--The Holy See's biggest expenses go toward paying its personnel. There are salaries, pensions and health-care costs for some 2,748 employees and 466 pensioners. The workforce is made up mostly of lay people (1,212 men and 425 women), followed by diocesan clergy (778) and members of religious orders (243 men and
90 women). They cost the Holy See upwards of 77m euros (£61m) in salaries and more than 100m euros (£79.2m) in pensions and other benefits.

Looking for a Catholic--some would say traditionally Christian--point of view on the economic meltdown?

The  church has long-standing teachings and resources that I think could be useful--and an antidote to some of the idolatry and fatalism of unfettered free-marketeering. ("Hey, stuff happens. No pain, no gain. Caveat emptor, don't you know...")

We haven't heard much about those teachings, however, so I was glad to see this piece in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper (with an increasingly provocative voice, however), as written up by CNS. The article, "A costly illusion," was written by Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, an Italian economist and professor of financial ethics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy.

The U.S. financial meltdown has been blamed on "the greed of managers and lack of regulations. But curiously, no one ever refers to the indirect responsibility of the government's economic policy" which, he wrote, tried to cover the lack of any real economic development with a booming Wall Street.

He said the U.S. government's proposed bailout may stave off any worst-case scenario for its troubled financial markets, but it will not repair the root causes of the crisis.

"Despite various attempts, the Western world does not know how to map out a model of development that is capable of guaranteeing stable wealth," the article said.

The West has "not succeeded with its new economy project, it did not succeed with accelerating growth in Asia by transferring low-cost production (there), and it did not succeed after inventing a boom in the GNP through risky financial models that were poorly conceived and badly regulated," it said.

"In order to maintain this sham GNP, the banks financed things that were not guaranteed" and that should not have been financed, like the subprime loans, it said. Financial institutions created an "economic growth out of debt and, therefore, (created something) very risky," it added.

The article said the lesson to be learned is that nations cannot build a healthy economy or experience real development if it is not based on "balanced demographic growth."

It said the world economy also needs to be run responsibly and transparently with precise rules.

Can I get an "Amen"?