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."

Good reading, and good guidance for an economic culture that is changing before our eyes.

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.

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"?

That is the bracing message from Miami Archbishop John C. Favalora in a Sept. 12 column that is the best rendering I've yet seen of how the church--and the bishops--can approach the elections. The statement is titled "Why we don't take sides on candidates," and it is aimed at a conservative Christian group, the Alliance Defense Fund, which is promoting a "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" this weekend (CNS has a good story) to get clergy to buck IRS tex-exemption rules and opposing candidates who "do not align themselves and their positions with the scriptural truth."

Favalora points out the obvious problem with wilfully forgoing tax-exempt status, but he also makes an argument that is particularly apropos ahead of next month's Synod of Bishops on the Bible:

..."scriptural truth" is not that easy to attain. Which is more "true" in terms of scripture: The Old Testament passage that says "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" or Jesus' admonition to "turn the other cheek"?

The problem is that people often quote selectively from Scripture in order to back their own opinions. The other problem is that rarely, if ever, does an individual candidate or political party embody the gamut of "scriptural truth."

The Catholic Church values Scripture, but we also value 2,000 years of oral and written tradition handed down from the apostles and their disciples, and another 2,000 years of ongoing theological reflection by some of the greatest thinkers and saints.

When we teach on a particular moral issue, we rely on the whole of that tradition rather than on any individual's opinion or interpretation of Scripture.

That is not to say that we are not involved in politics. Catholics do not give up their right to vote or take political sides when they are baptized.

But the role of the church is not to be like the "party boss" who goes around telling people how to vote. Our responsibility is to remind people to vote wisely; to reveal to them the wisdom of Scripture, the wisdom of the church's moral tradition, so that they can base their votes on solid moral ground.

Too often, people vote based on their feelings, or on the partial sound-bites of candidates pushing a particular point of view. More often than not, decisions based on feelings or partial information turn out to be wrong.

That is why it is especially important for voters to study all sides of an issue -- or candidate -- and examine that information in light of their own beliefs and values.

When church leaders speak on issues such as immigration, poverty, health care, abortion, war or embryonic stem cell research, we are not telling people how to vote. We are reminding them of the moral teachings that should inform their lives, and as a result, their votes.

Actually, these are words Catholics themselves could read profit from (tax-free). Check the entire text...

The Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof had a piece on Sunday, "The Push to 'Otherize' Obama," that perfectly sums up the efforts to key in on fears of Obama's race and persistent (unfounded) doubts about his faith, and how that plays out in ways overt--see the Scranton Catholic guy's crack about "the Black House" in last week's piece ostensibly on Catholics and abortion--and under the guise of religious worries:

What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it's not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate's skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.

The result is this campaign to "otherize" Mr. Obama. Nobody needs to point out that he is black, but there's a persistent effort to exaggerate other differences, to de-Americanize him.

Raising doubts about a candidate based on the religion of his grandfather is toxic and profoundly un-American, cracking the melting pot we emerged from. Someday people will look back at the innuendoes about Mr. Obama with the same disgust with which we regard the smears of Al Smith as a Catholic candidate in 1928.

As Kristof writes, "Just imagine for a moment if it were the black candidate in this election, rather than the white candidate, who was born in Central America, was an indifferent churchgoer, had graduated near the bottom of his university class, had dumped his first wife, had regularly displayed an explosive and profane temper, and had referred to the Pakistani-Iraqi border ..." It's a powerful piece.

But I also wonder if the financial crisis will so sharpen the worries of middle- and working-class Americans in particular that it will help to pierce subtly ugly propaganda like the "Obama Waffles" episode.

I was struck by a story inside today's Times revealing that after spreading apparently false rumors that Obama was receiving advice from the former head of the failed mortgage giant, Fannie Mae, McCain's own campaign chief and source of those reports turns out to have received some $2 million in fees from both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over five years--$35,000 a month to lobby McCain on behalf of the two mortage behemoths whose woes McCain and Davis are trying to link to Obama.

Even in traditional Latin, we Catholics would call that chutzpah. What will everyone else call it as we sink deeper into debt and bailouts?