While We’re At It

• Eccentricities, and downright craziness, in judicial rulings on church-state questions are nothing new. One is sometimes inclined to think they are the norm. But in the annals of judicial curiosities, Judge Robert Pratt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa is deserving of a special mention. The case is Americans United for the Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries. The case has to do with InnerChange Freedom (IFI), a program sponsored by Prison Fellowship to reduce recidivism. Under a contract with the state of Iowa, similar to contracts with several other state prison systems, IFI works with prisoners to get their lives together before being released. Nobody disputes that the program is entirely voluntary and remarkably effective. The complaint of Americans United for a Naked Public Square is that the program involves—yes, you guessed it—spiritual counseling, Bible study, and prayer. Not only, ruled Judge Pratt, is this an establishment of religion (40 percent of IFI funding came from the state), but it is an establishment of a particularly sinister religion called evangelicalism. He ordered the program disbanded and the money returned to the state. Of course, the case will be appealed, but what is noteworthy is the way Judge Pratt (representing the state!) inserted himself into religious disputes, resulting in a violation of the free exercise guaranteed by the First Amendment. I’m afraid the judge is somewhat deranged or culpably ignorant, or maybe both, which may be a mitigating factor in his staggering arrogance.

• Herewith a few items from Judge Pratt’s opinion. Evangelicalism, he says, is “quite distinct from other self-described Christian faiths, such as Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, and Greek Orthodoxy . . . and is also distinct from the beliefs held by self-described Protestant Christian denominations such as Lutheran, United Methodist, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian, again to name only a few.” (One notes the oddity that Mormonism is named as solidly in the historic tradition of Christian faith.) The fact, of course, is that evangelicalism—understood in terms of being born again, believing in the Bible, and wanting to share one’s faith with others—is widespread throughout Catholic and Protestant communities. Prison Fellowship’s statement of faith, opines Judge Pratt, “contains beliefs common to many types of Christian groups, but it is also significantly different in many respects.” Never mind that the statement of faith was cooperatively produced by Christians from a variety of denominations and in consultation with notables such as Avery Cardinal Dulles. “The evangelical Christian stance towards religious institutions is one of suspicion,” says Judge Pratt. Exactly. Those evangelicals would never think of getting involved with institutions such as the Southern Baptist Convention, Focus on the Family, or for that matter, Prison Fellowship. Evangelicals are anti-Catholic and “contemptuous of Roman Catholic reliance on papal authority, Marian devotion, and veneration of the saints.” You can be sure that an evangelical such as Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, would not be found dead cosponsoring anything like Evangelicals and Catholics Together. The judge continues: “The Prison Fellowship and InnerChange believe in the substitutionary and atoning death of Jesus, which reflects a legalistic understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus and is likewise not shared by many Christians.” As if that isn’t bad enough, they believe in the “literal, bodily resurrection of Christ,” which, the judge notes, is a belief not shared by many non-evangelical Christians. The judge adds the clincher: “A key concept in Chuck Colson’s writings is that people must be born again.” Well, that does it. In sum, thirty-five of the forty pages of Judge Pratt’s decision is given over to establishing that the evangelicalism to which Prison Fellowship and IFI are committed is a sinister, schismatic cult that is trying to entice prisoners into its clutches. Which is pretty much the caricature peddled by Americans United and uncritically repeated by Judge Robert Pratt. Never mind that prison authorities in Iowa, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Minnesota welcome the help of Prison Fellowship and IFI in dramatically reducing recidivism. The really interesting question here is why a federal judge thinks First Amendment law authorizes a court to make theological judgments about what kind of religion does, and what kind does not, pass muster for constitutional protection. The Supreme Court, it should be noted, has in recent years been moving toward greater clarity in church-state law. As that movement advances, it may yet be recognized that the First Amendment religion clause is just that, one clause, with a “no establishment” provision entirely in the service of the goal of “free exercise.” When that happens, “Prattism” may be a term of choice in describing the past half-century of eccentricity and downright craziness.

• Alas, poor Yale Divinity School, I knew it well. But let us not dwell on the greatness that was when our attention is invited to the squalor that is. The handsomely produced spring issue of Reflections, the divinity school’s journal of theology, so to speak, is devoted to “Sex and the Church.” I haven’t read all of it, but the message seems to be: Sex good, Church bad. The lead article is by a former Catholic priest turned psychologist, Daniel Helminiak, who is also the author of What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality. (Bible says homosexuality just fine.) He writes that “because our own spirit seems to operate from beyond ourselves, . . . people tend to attribute spiritual experiences to things outside of themselves, most commonly to ‘God.’ . . . I have attributed spirituality to an aspect of our own beings.” This, be assured, does not make theology irrelevant, since “fidelity to the human spirit could not but lead godward.” (Quite why he has to put “God” in quotation marks but not “godward” is unclear.) There are several other articles excoriating the churches for their blindness to the splendors of sodomy, and I haven’t gotten to the article titled “Are There Really Only Two Genders?” by Virginia Ramey Mollencott. Why do I think I know what her answer will be? The editor of Reflections, Jamie L. Manson, says it is hoped that the issue “will help religious communities undo the tragedy of Adam and Eve, by facing their our own [sic] sexuality, accepting it as a gift from God (and therefore very, very good), and re-integrating it into healthy and whole vision [sic] of themselves as body, mind, and spirit.” (Good diction is apparently not a requirement for editing the journal.) The Yale Divinity School of H. Richard Niebuhr, Hans Frei, Paul Holmer, and George Lindbeck taught that the Cross had something to do with the undoing of the tragedy of Adam and Eve, but that was back in the days when the school did not put “God” in quotes. Oh yes, there’s another article listed as “Black Church Homophogia: What to Do About It?” by Kelly Brown Douglas. I think she means homophobia and is strongly against it. I’m going to skip that one. Then there’s an article on “Homosexuality and Dr. Dobson” by Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, referring to Jim Dobson of Focus on the Family. It addresses the “hypermale” and the “hypo-male gay” and concludes with the observation that “folded into the production of an ever-instable [sic] normative masculinity is a potent discourse on nature and grace.” No doubt, but don’t tell Dr. Dobson.

• The last great liberal cause that now meets with almost universal approbation was the civil-rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. That began in 1956, now half a century ago. Since then, numerous causes have claimed the mantle of civil rights. Jesse Jackson extorts corporate payoffs in the name of Dr. King. Sundry feminists and gay activists claim to be the continuation of the movement, as do, with greater justice, pro-lifers. Now African-American Muslims, many of whom were converted to Islam in the American prison system, are joining with Muslims from South Asia and the Middle East to lay claim to the legacy of Selma, Bull Connor, and the great drama that was the civil rights movement. According to Religion Watch, African-American Muslims who once felt marginalized by other Muslims are now more prominent in the mosques because it is thought that they have experience with the discrimination now felt by Muslims in this country. The civil-rights movement of the 1950s and early 1960s was a singular moment in American history that successfully addressed the singular American wrong of the legal segregation of American blacks. In subsequent years, it became the catchall symbol seized on by everybody who wanted the benefits of being recognized as a victim. One can imagine few more wrongheaded, implausible, and self-defeating strategies than for the several million Muslims in America to join with alienated blacks in blaming their problems on the consequences of slavery and segregation. Presumably, Muslims did not come to this country in order to be permanently marginalized.

• It is common practice that cardinal archbishops who are in good health are allowed five or more years in office after the mandatory submission of a letter of resignation at age seventy-five. There is understandable speculation, therefore, about why the recent resignation of Theodore Cardinal McCarrick as archbishop of Washington was accepted so promptly. One claim is that Rome was displeased with his public statement that he had been extended for two more years. Another is that there was deep unhappiness with the curious way he represented to the American bishops the position of Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) on Catholics in public office during the controversies of 2004. In any event, his resignation was accepted. McCarrick was generally popular in Washington. There is no doubt that he enjoyed a good press. There have been many events marking his retirement, and in June he held a “going-away lunch” for reporters at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. He said to the assembled journalists, “You told them I was a good person, and they believed you.” Reporters are sometimes made uneasy by the suggestion that they have been used. When a cardinal is invested, he is reminded that his red robes represent the blood of the martyrs, and that he is to be prepared to bear witness to the truth, no matter how controversial, with apostolic zeal, even to the point of surrendering his life. One of the events surrounding McCarrick’s leaving office was an interview with National Public Radio in which, according to the transcript of the program, he was asked about his understanding of leadership in the Church. As a leader, he said, “I make sure that I’m teaching what the Church teaches.” That being said, he offered his guidelines for effective episcopal leadership. “You know, if the archbishop is a little on the left, he’s not going to be able to talk to the right. If he’s a little on the right, he’s not going to be able to talk to the left. They won’t trust him.” With specific reference to John Kerry and other pro-abortion Catholics, he said, “And I think before you react so strongly and say, ‘You’re a sinner, you can’t receive communion,’ I think you have to really see what’s in a person’s heart. There is nothing really black and white, you know, because we’re dealing with human beings and we’re all such complex people.” The interviewer observed that Pope Benedict has the reputation of being “quite a tough defender of the faith,” to which McCarrick responds that he is, in fact, “very moderate.” “I think the job of a priest always forces you to the middle,” said the cardinal. Against those who say that means mediocrity, he says, “It’s not. It’s really courage to be able to stay in the middle and to resist the extremes.” His style of middle-of—the-road leadership, he said, was inspired by the example of Pope John Paul II. He tells the story of John Paul visiting Newark, New Jersey, where McCarrick was then archbishop. At the entrance of the cathedral, John Paul “looks and he stops for a moment, and then he puts himself right in the middle and he walks down the aisle, right in the middle. And people on the left, people on the right, can grab his hand. For me, that is the symbol of where the Church has to be.” The depiction of the late pope as a leader who declined to take sides is, one must acknowledge, an original contribution to the understanding of the man and his pontificate. What is missing from Cardinal McCarrick’s view of leadership, one might respectfully suggest, is the distinction between placing oneself in the midst of the great questions of the time, which John Paul certainly did, and placing oneself in the middle of the great questions of the time, which he certainly did not. But there is no doubt that Cardinal McCarrick received a good press from those who were generally not on the Church’s side. A farewell lunch to thank reporters for depicting him as a good person seems only fitting. Philip Graham of the Washington Post once said that journalism is the first draft of history. As we all do well to remember, it is the final draft that counts.

• Christian Century, which regularly and rightly deplores the fierce polarization in our public discourse, takes favorable note of the statement of Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile who was jailed under the Pinochet regime: “Because I was the victim of hatred, I have dedicated my life to reverse that hatred and turn it into understanding, tolerance, and—why not say it—love.” In the same issue, on the same page in fact, the editors refer to President Bush’s approval of domestic wiretapping of terrorist suspects without requiring court warrants. This is compared to a 1934 speech by Adolf Hitler in which he said, “In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became supreme judge of the German people.” Understanding, tolerance, and—why not say it—hate. Or is it not hateful to compare the president of the United States with Adolf Hitler?

• Benedict XVI has received his report card from the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, Alan Wolfe director. A day-long conference with members of the Boston College theology department—Thomas Groome, James Weiss, Mary Ann Hinsdale, and Kenneth Himes—examined the pope’s first year and agreed that “Pope Benedict has so far shown great humility in his stewardship of the papal office, demonstrating a less autocratic, more self-effacing approach to his leadership of the Catholic Church in comparison to his predecessor.” Dr. Himes said the first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, had good things to say on love but shortchanged social justice. Dr. Hinsdale issued the overall grade for the first year: C+++. The report from the Boisi Center does not say whether a resolution was passed to keep Benedict on for another year—on a continuing trial basis, of course.

• Damon Linker’s book is scheduled for release in September and I have seen an advance copy. An expanded version of Mr. Linker’s long article in the New Republic of April 3, 2006, it is called The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. The message of the book is printed on the front of the dust jacket: “For the past three decades, a few determined men have worked to inject their radical religious ideas into the nation’s politics. This is the story of how they succeeded.” The “determined men” are those of us associated with First Things. Mr. Linker provides a relentlessly tendentious commentary on items appearing in these pages. A point-by-point correction of the book’s many misrepresentations would be exceedingly tedious. A word is in order, however, on the origins of the book. Mr. Linker worked for First Things from May 2001 through January 2005, first as associate editor and in his last year as editor. He was a speech writer for Rudolph Giuliani when he applied for the position as associate editor. At First Things he was a cooperative colleague and gave no indication that he was not completely supportive of the mission of the magazine. During his years with us, the only policy concern he ever expressed to me was that he thought the magazine should be more critical of U.S. actions in the Middle East. That is a question on which colleagues can and did disagree without personal rancor. In the fall of 2004, he indicated to me that he was weary of the long commute to Connecticut and would like at some point to get a large enough advance for a book so that he could become a full-time writer. I was entirely sympathetic. A few weeks later, he told me he was thinking of writing a book about First Things and its editor in chief. He explained that the book would be a critical appreciation of the achievements of the magazine. I said I would be happy to cooperate with such a project but I didn’t think there would be enough interest in the subject to elicit a large advance from a publisher. Moreover, this would be a first book by a relatively unknown writer. In early December, he told me that several publishers had indicated intense interest in the book he was proposing and that Doubleday had offered an advance of $160,000. He wanted to leave at the beginning of 2005 to start writing. Surprised but pleased by his good fortune, I congratulated him and renewed my offer to be of assistance with the book. I then said it might be helpful in that connection if I could see the proposal he had submitted to publishers. At this he blanched and, with obvious embarrassment, said that would not be possible. This was the first indication that he had agreed to write what in the publishing business is known as an “attack book,” which, unfortunately, is the genre to which The Theocons belongs.

Some studies say 30 to 35 percent, others say 40 percent, of Catholics in the United States are Hispanic. Father Thomas Rausch of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles buys the higher figure in an informative article on “Ecumenism for America’s Hispanic Christians.” Slightly more than 70 percent of Latinos in this country are Catholic, and 77 percent of the others are Protestant of one kind or another, mainly evangelical and Pentecostal. The Catholic percentage drops with second-and third-generation immigrants, as does the number affiliated with any Christian community. Nonetheless, because of high birth rates and continued immigration, the number of Latino Catholics continues to grow in absolute terms. Rausch writes, “Ecumenism begins with friendship,” and laments the fact that Catholic and non-Catholic religious leaders do not know one another and do not work together in pressing publicly the social and moral issues on which they are, for the most part, in agreement. Of course, as Rausch notes, there is a long history of mutual antagonism between Catholics and Protestants that is rooted in centuries of Latin American history. Important in this connection, however, is the fact that many evangelicals and Pentecostals do not identify themselves by reference to the sixteenth-century conflicts, which makes ecumenism in this context different from theological dialogues with, for instance, Lutheran or Reformed Christians. A major problem in these newer non-Catholic movements is a lack of education in theology and Christian history. Rausch writes, “Though Latinos presently account for about 13 percent of the U.S. population, only 2.5 percent of divinity students across the country are Hispanic/Latino.” Rausch observes, approvingly, that Catholic bishops have been in the forefront of advocating a more open immigration policy, while Latino ministries “are less accommodating to those here illegally, counseling them to obey U.S. immigration law.” This deserves further exploration. David Martin and other students of evangelical and Pentecostal growth among Hispanics underscore that these ministries have a powerful effect in helping people straighten out their personal and family problems with alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, and loafing rather than working. Part of this is the inculcation of the importance of being law-abiding citizens. In being supportive of illegal immigrants, Rausch says, “The American bishops have taken the lead, but it would be good to find ways to do this ecumenically.” It may be, on the other hand, that the U.S. bishops have something to learn from evangelical and Pentecostal leaders about the importance of observing the law. Fr. Rausch concludes: “The influx of Hispanics is changing the face of the American church. Despite the tensions that often exist between Hispanic Catholics and evangelical/Pentecostal Christians and their churches, the growing Hispanic presence might just lead to a revitalization of Christian life in the United States. Furthermore, they have many interests in common. It is important for them to find ways to work together not just for the unity of the disciples for which Christ prayed, but also for the life of faith in our secular American society.”

• In an interview with Zenit, Bishop Gerald Barnes, who heads the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Refugees and Migrants, observes that Catholic social teaching affirms the principle that “sovereign nations have the right, in fact the responsibility, to control their borders.” Also affirmed is the principle “that persons have a right to migrate to provide for themselves and their families.” “Where these two seemingly conflicting principles get reconciled is in the development and application of immigration laws that take into consideration a nation’s capacity to absorb newcomers, on the one hand, and the needs of migrants on the other. In other words, richer nations have a greater responsibility than do poorer nations in being open to immigrants.” Which very helpfully explains why Mexico is not having a big debate over admitting immigrants from the United States.

• I have elsewhere drawn attention to the important book by Ramesh Ponnuru, The Party of Death. It is a carefully reasoned brief for the pro-life position, including a thoughtful evaluation of probable political problems and opportunities if or when the notorious Roe v. Wade

decision is history. I also have great respect for Peter Berkowitz, but I am afraid that in his review of the book for the Wall Street Journal, he misses key aspects of Ponnuru’s argument. There is an apparently little matter of language when, for instance, Berkowitz writes, “From conception, [Ponnuru] says, the embryo is entitled to the full complement of human rights.” The idea that human beings are entitled to rights is odd. Human beings possess rights that we are obliged to respect. To Ponnuru’s claim that the present regime is one of abortion on demand because of the “health of the mother” exception decreed by the court, Berkowitz responds that only 1 percent of abortions are procured in the third trimester. The relevance of that datum is far from obvious. The Supreme Court has affirmed abortion on demand—or, if one prefers, an unlimited abortion license—that includes the killing of the child in the very process of its leaving the birth canal (partial birth abortion). But the gravamen of Berkowitz’s argument is this: “It doesn’t matter to Mr. Ponnuru that this argument flies in the face of a complex intuition that seems to underlie the American ambivalence. . . . The early embryo, though surely part of the human family, is distant and different enough from a flesh-and-blood newborn that when the early embryo’s life comes into conflict with other precious human goods or claims, the embryo’s life may need to give way.” Ponnuru offers principled moral, political, and philosophical arguments; Berkowitz responds with opinion polling dressed up as a “complex intuition” that it is sometimes permissible to kill an innocent member of the human family. Ponnuru’s error, says Berkowitz, is in “attempting to judge the complexities of morals and politics through the reductive lens of natural science, under the bright light of pure reason, from the cold heights of abstract theory.” Rather, he says, we must “acknowledge the ambiguities, mysteries, and tragic choices of lived experience.” In fact, the lived experience of abortion in America over the last three decades is the result of the muddled rationalism imposed by the Court in Roe and subsequent decisions. Before that, almost all Americans agreed, and still today most Americans agree, that it is a grave wrong to kill babies still in the womb. Like Sandra Day O’Connor in Casey, Berkowitz suggests that the defense of the abortion license of three decades, rather than of the moral consensus and law of centuries, is the conservative position. This is, to put it gently, unpersuasive. In the next few months, Evangelicals and Catholics Together will be issuing a statement, “That They May Have Life,” that addresses these and related questions in considerable detail. Meanwhile, I recommend a careful reading of Ramesh Ponnuru’s The Party of Death.

• What is it to be a priest? The catechism quotes the fourth-century St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who wrote this as a young priest: “We must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others; we must be instructed to be able to instruct, become light to illuminate, draw close to God to bring him close to others, be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently. I know whose ministers we are, where we find ourselves and to where we strive. I know God’s greatness and man’s weakness, but also his potential. [The priest] is the defender of truth, who stands with angels, gives glory with archangels, causes sacrifices to rise to the altar on high, shares Christ’s priesthood, refashions creation, restores it in God’s image, recreates it for the world on high and, even greater, is divinized and divinizes.” Great stuff, you might well say. Not according to “Creating Safe and Sacred Places,” a text published by St. Mary’s Press and being used in the “safe-environment programs” of some Catholic high schools. There we are told that St. Gregory’s understanding of priesthood had the unhappy result that “the priest functioned in an office and role that could not allow him to be anything but what that office and role dictated.” Little wonder that priests are a little odd and sometimes do bad things with boys in their charge. The Church’s teaching about ordination—”indelible mark” and all that—results in psychological and emotional crippling. Moreover, the text offers a skewed and thoroughly non-theological account of priestly celibacy, as though designed to discourage any young man discerning a vocation. That is not to mention its depiction of “normative” teen and adult sexual practices without reference to sin and forgiveness. The same experts who for years undermined Catholic teaching are now presented as the experts on remedying the consequences. Then and now, they would have us understand that the problem is excessive fidelity. Gregory’s view of priesthood, we are told, is not an aspiration toward holiness but an imposed restraint and confinement. But why, except to be something other than a priest, would a priest want to be something other than the office and role to which he is ordained? A wise old bishop once told me that he was not much impressed by all the talk about priestly “burnout.” “In my experience,” he said, “most of those who claim to be suffering from burnout were never on fire to begin with.”

• In the last issue of First Things, in the course of setting the record straight on “black legends” about the Inquisition, I wrote, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the Inquisition was a good thing.” Which prompted a reader to remind me of Boswell’s recounting of a stagecoach ride of Friday, August 5, 1763. Among the other passengers was “an elderly gentlewoman who talked violently against the Roman Catholicks, and of the horrours of the Inquisition. . . . To the utter astonishment of all the passengers but myself, who knew that he could talk upon any side of a question, [Dr. Johnson] defended the Inquisition, and maintained that ‘false doctrine should be checked on its first appearance; that the civil power should unite with the church in punishing those who dared to attack the established religion; and that such only were punished by the Inquisition.’” Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Dr. Johnson was right.

• I mentioned a while back that the South Korean government had issued a postage stamp honoring the Dr. Hwang whose research in human cloning and related perversities was later exposed as fraudulent. The stamp was promptly withdrawn, but a reader sent me a copy he had obtained. It depicts a man in a wheelchair who slowly rises, begins to run, and then leaps joyfully in the air. Perhaps the stamp’s designer had listened to John Edwards, the 2004 vice-presidential candidate, talking about the happy future of Christopher Reeves if only we got over our scruples about creating and killing embryos. The widespread hype about the alleged promise of cloning and embryonic stem cell research resists challenge by facts.

• One wishes it were not necessary to mention it again, but apparently some people are, as it is said, in deep denial about the connection between homosexuality and priestly sex abuse. The National Catholic Reporter takes the Catholic League to task for saying that, over the many years studied, 81 percent of the victims were male and 14 percent were under ten years old. That is not the claim of the Catholic League. It is on page 29 of the 2005 annual Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People mandated by the bishops. Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins and an original member of the National Review Board, says, “This behavior was homosexual predation on American Catholic youth, yet it’s not being discussed.” The National Catholic Reporter also criticizes the League for saying that “it is estimated that the rate of sexual abuse of public school students is more than 100 times the abuse by priests.” The editors say that “virtually no serious research on the topic has been carried out.” In fact, the U.S. Department of Education in 2004 issued a report, “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature.” The estimate cited is by the author of the report, Dr. Charol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University. In responding to the National Catholic Reporter editorial, Dr. William Donohue of the League notes the common claim that the reason unfaithful priests abuse boys is not homosexual orientation but the fact that they do not have access to girls. Girls became altar servers in 1994. According to the report on the more recent abuses, the same 81 percent of abuse cases involved boys. But this numbers-crunching is wearisome and the entire subject distinctly unedifying. What must not be obscured, however, is the homosexuality factor in the sex-abuse crisis, which helps explain Rome’s instruction of last November with respect to admitting to seminary or ordaining men with deep-seated homosexual desires.

• Here’s an incident that nicely compounds a number of issues. Free speech, for instance. Socialized medicine, for another. Above all, the truth that dare not speak its pain. According to the BBC, Edward Atkinson, a seventy-five-year-old man in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, was on a waiting list for a hip operation at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Mr. Atkinson is anti-abortion, and he started mailing the hospital pictures of aborted babies. Ruth May, chief executive of the hospital, said, “Our legal advisers were consulted and their opinion was that this man’s actions contravened NHS Zero Tolerance policy in cases of abuse or unacceptable behaviour towards our staff.” The hip operation is off. “We take such matters extremely seriously,” said May, “and because he continued to send extremely graphic material to us we exercised our right to decline treatment to him for anything other than life-threatening conditions.” In addition, the Swaffham Magistrates Court sentenced Atkinson to twenty-eight days in jail for “sending offensive literature” to the hospital staff. There once was an England

• Lest there be any misunderstanding, some of my best friends live and work in Washington. But Washington is, in the final analysis, a provincial company town. Of course, people come from all over the country and the world to be there, but it has only one business and one reason for being, namely, politics. Whereas New York, as my friends are tired of hearing me say, is worlds within worlds. This is brought to mind by a special issue of New York magazine devoted to “The Influentials”—the people who, according to the editors, lead the capital of the world through their “ideas, power, and sheer will.” The editors say they spent eight months sorting through possible candidates and vetting names in hundreds of conversations with movers and shakers. The fifty-seven-page feature has numerous categories: art, architecture, books, classical dance, movies, music, theater, television and radio, media, politics, law, Wall Street, real estate, advertising, technology, fashion, scenesters (the party circuit), sports, philanthropy, ideas, education, religion, and health. I’m listed as one of five in the “ideas” category. Testimony to New York being worlds within worlds is the fact that I’ve probably heard of a tenth of the “influentials” chosen, and I’m rather sure that fewer than a tenth have ever heard of me. But people do love lists.

• The person who eschews authorities, claiming to think for himself, is, more often than not, a fool. This thought is prompted by a splendid testimonial by Fouad Ajami on the occasion of Bernard Lewis’ ninetieth birthday. I first came to know Prof. Lewis in the early 1990s before he was as renowned (outside academic circles of Orientalism) as he is today. He is a gentleman who wears his erudition lightly, lacing it with a wit that does not disguise his fervent devotion to Western civilization and the imperative of understanding the worlds of Islam. Ajami, who teaches at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, writes: “We anoint sages when we need them; at times we let them say, on our behalf, the sorts of things we know and intuit but don’t say, the sorts of things we glimpse through the darkness but don’t fully see. It was thus in the time of the great illusion, in the lost decade of the 1990s, when history had presumably ‘ended,’ that Bernard Lewis had come forth to tell us, in a seminal essay, ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’ (September 1990), that our luck had run out, that an old struggle between ‘Christendom’ and Islam was gathering force. (Note the name given the Western world; it is vintage Lewis, this naming of worlds and drawing of borders—and differences.) It was the time of commerce and globalism; the ‘modernists’ had the run of the decade, and a historian’s dark premonitions about a thwarted civilization wishing to avenge the slights and wounds of centuries would not carry the day. Mr. Lewis was the voice of conservatives, a brooding pessimist, in the time of a sublime faith in things new and untried. It was he, in that 1990 article, who gave us the notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ that Samuel Huntington would popularize, with due attribution to Bernard Lewis.” Lewis helps us to understand the anguish of Islam and why it seems to lack the conceptual means for relieving that anguish, and thus the resulting anger. Ajami writes: “A pain afflicts modern Islam—the loss of power. And Mr. Lewis has a keen sense of the Muslim redeemers and would-be avengers who promise to alter Islam’s place in the world. This pain, the historians tell us, derives from Islam’s early success, from the very triumph of the prophet Muhammad. Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land; he had led his people through wilderness. Jesus had been crucified. But Muhammad had prevailed and had governed. The faith he would bequeath his followers would forever insist on the oneness of religion and politics. Where Christians are enjoined in their scripture to ‘render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things which are God’s,’ no such demarcation would be drawn in the theory and practice of Islam.” Lewis is harshly criticized in some circles for having encouraged the Bush administration to believe that it is possible to advance decent government in the Arab world. Ajami observes: “We have come to a great irony: the conservative Orientalist holding out democratic hope for Iraq and its Arab neighbors, while his liberal critics assert the built-in authoritarianism of the Arab political tradition.” Ajami concludes: “We travel by the light of his work. He weaves for us a web between past and present, and he can pick out, over distant horizons, storms sure to reach us before long.” We have paid careful attention to the work of Bernard Lewis in these pages. If you have not already done so, you would not go wrong in reading his What Went Wrong? and then moving on to The Crisis of Islam.

• Just how tired is the tired old Left of Catholic revolutionism? One answer is found in Robert Blair Kaiser’s new book, A Church in Search of Itself. According to a promotional email Kaiser recently sent, the book “is selling beyond the expectations of my editor at Knopf.” Which, meaning no unkindness, perhaps says a lot about his editor’s expectations. But Kaiser says the book is doing very well. “Not exactly sure why,” he writes. “Maybe it’s the writing.” Then he adds, “Maybe it’s the candid reporting.” Finally, “I choose to think many value the book most because it shows how the people of God can take back their Church.” By taking back the Church, he means that the American Church (“AmChurch”) should be autochthonous, which is to say, independent of external control. He has been speaking to friendly groups around the country, including Voice of the Faithful, and reports that the response is enthusiastic. “I can say they were all impressed with the notion that we can all be most thoroughly accountable to one another in an autochthonous American Church, one that could be launched at some future national synod where elected delegates could create a constitution for the Church modeled on the U.S. Constitution. Craggy-faced Bill Callahan, S.J., now 80, his eyes twinkling, said ‘This seems like something we should try. It will be fun.’” If he has dear old Father Callahan on board, you know the revolution is well underway. Studies show, writes Kaiser, “that the many are smarter than an elite few.” On the other hand, he’s counting on the elite few, noting that “some five percent” of the people of the Philippines overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and “only a half dozen English lords” forced the signing of the Magna Carta. Nobody knows, he says, “what critical mass it would take to force our own Magna Carta on the American bishops.” He allows that “we have to get a huge assist from the media and the Internet.” In that connection, he was disappointed with a Washington Post reporter whom he tried to recruit. The reporter “blanched, perhaps unwilling to think of himself as an adjutant in the cause of revolution.” Kaiser, who has written from Rome for Time and Newsweek, has a different view of the journalist’s task. “Objectivity? That’s the curse of a newspaperman’s job. Fortunately, as a correspondent for Time, with only mild objections from my chief of correspondents, my reporting at Vatican II gave aid and comfort to the forces of change.” He concludes: “For those who are interested in the whole plan, please go to our new website www.takebackourchurch.org. If you understand what we are trying to do, please sign up for the revolution.” I do understand what you’re trying to do, Bob, I really do. Yes, I know it was great fun back in the 1960s, but it really is time for a rest. Just close your eyes and keep repeating to yourself autochthonous, autochthonous, autochthonous . . . zzzzz. Forty years of revolution do take it out of a man.

• Religion Watch, as the name suggests, is a monthly potpourri of things notable and odd on the religion front. Here are instances from the current issue. Item: Only 12 percent of Americans say that evolution is “definitely true,” while 32 percent say it is “definitely not true.” Avoiding the trap of the Dover, Pennsylvania, case, school boards around the country are allowing teachers to discuss in science classes questions about and alternatives to evolution, so long as they don’t promote specific theories such as Intelligent Design. Item: Evangelical leaders are embracing internationalism in U.S. foreign policy, but activists are overwhelmingly focused on domestic questions. No surprise there. Item: A Dutch sociologist has found that immigrant men are more religiously engaged than immigrant women. It probably has something to do with most immigrants in the Netherlands being Muslim. Item: Even when they’re several generations removed and there have been ethnically mixed marriages, people with a few Irish genes make a point of saying they’re Irish. Protestants in the South do it to identify with Irish support for the American Revolution and nineteenth-century revivalism, while Catholics in the North apparently think being Irish makes them more Catholic. Item: Only 11 percent of American Jews are Orthodox, but of those under eighteen it may be 20 percent or more. And they’re the ones more likely to have babies, meaning Judaism in the future will be more Orthodox. Item: A mathematician has figured out that both Protestantism and Catholicism in the United Kingdom are at the “extinction tipping point,” and the more liberal forms of Protestantism will likely be extinct before mid-century. Item: The Church of England is adopting an approach called “Fresh Expressions,” which means offering different worship styles. “Among the new worship expressions are a skateboard park church, services which adapt the music of the club scene, cell groups, and a ‘Rolling Church,’ with no fixed starting and ending times.” That should do the trick Item: German Catholics are selling off churches but are reluctant to let them be turned into mosques “due to the symbolical impact such a change of owner would create.” That’s putting it delicately. From another source, not Religion Watch, I see that Muslims have become squatters in Catholic churches in Belgium, moving the altar and draping statues of Mary and other items that might be offensive to Islamic sensibilities. Cardinal Godfried Danneels is reported to have welcomed them. It seems the churches were not being used for much of anything else. He has also urged that Muslims should have their own Reformation and French Revolution in order to cultivate tolerance and a modern approach to religion’s role in society. These experiences have done wonders for Christianity in Europe.

• Former president Jimmy Carter has written another book on American values. He is deeply saddened by the way the “religious right” uses religion for partisan political purposes. In an interview with an Atlanta magazine, he explains his concern: “Carter fittingly used a parable to illustrate how he’d like to see the political/religious debate unfold. ‘I was teaching a Sunday school class two weeks ago,’ he recalls. ‘A girl, she was about 16 years old from Panama City [Fla.], asked me about the differences between Democrats and Republicans. ‘I asked her, “Are you for peace, or do you want more war?” Then I asked her, “Do you favor government helping the rich, or should it seek to help the poorest members of society? Do you want to preserve the environment, or do you want to destroy it? Do you believe this nation should engage in torture, or should we condemn it? Do you think each child today should start life responsible for $28

,000 in [federal government] debt, or do you think we should be fiscally responsible?” ‘I told her that if she answered all of those questions, that she believed in peace, aiding the poor and weak, saving the environment, opposing torture, . . . then I told her, ‘You should be a Democrat.’” Jimmy Carter is deeply saddened by the way religion is used for partisan political purposes.

• If, as the Society of Jesus has formally resolved, justice is the “priority of priorities” and understood as being constitutive of the gospel, the fourteen Jesuit law schools in this country have a grave problem. So says John M. Breen, who teaches law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He recalls a young woman in her final year of law school who tells him that his class was the first time she was engaged by a meaningful discussion of justice. Of course, Loyola and other Jesuit law schools make provisions for clinical experiences in which students work with poor people in dealing with housing, family, and other problems. But so does almost every other law school in the country. Education in justice requires more. Breen writes, “A Jesuit law school that does not require its students to engage in a rigorous examination of justice that includes a serious engagement with the Catholic intellectual tradition will offer a legal education that is ‘distinctive’ in only marginal ways, if at all. Triumphal claims to the contrary notwithstanding, such a school will no more ‘challenge the mainstream’ of American legal education than Disney challenges the mainstream of American culture or McDonald’s challenges the mainstream of the American diet. Such a school may treat its students more humanely, perhaps offering them more opportunities for service projects and campus liturgies. These sorts of activities cannot, however, compensate for such a fundamental omission.” His conclusion is unequivocal: “If Jesuit law schools continue to fail to engage the tradition which inspired their creation, then they should cease to go by the name ‘Jesuit’ or ‘Catholic.’ Truth in advertising would require as much. If, however, Jesuit law schools take up this tradition in earnest, then what are now mere slogans might in fact accurately describe the kind of education they seek to convey and the kind of graduates they hope to produce. If Jesuit law schools see it as their obligation to introduce students to the Catholic intellectual tradition—the tradition which Martin Luther King Jr. relied on in his struggle for civil rights, which refuted the evils of European fascism and Soviet totalitarianism, and which challenges the individualism and materialism of liberal democracies today—then they will offer law students something which secular schools do not. Then they can realistically hope to form ‘men and women for others.’ Then the life of these institutions, including Loyola, can again be Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.”

• Hugh Hefner of Playboy shame is eighty, and he is turning philosophical about his luminous legacy as a public benefactor. He is “the luckiest cat on the planet” for having so richly (and justly) benefited from having bestowed on humanity the gift of liberation from sexual repression. Matthew Scully, writing in the Wall Street Journal, is not persuaded: “Enough to say that police investigators, in the sex-crimes units that have expanded roughly in proportion to mass-market ‘adult material,’ rarely conclude that the rapist or child predator lacked for pornographic inspiration before committing the crime. As to those ‘major beneficiaries’ of porn, you won’t find too many women these days who think that the world is better because of Playboy or the smug, selfish ethic it has always purveyed. For good reason has the Playboy Foundation long been a benefactor to NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood: The Playboy Philosophy has always been for the ladies, too, all right—just as long as they remember what they’re good for, don’t get too sentimental and feel grateful when the playboy in their own life offers to pay for the abortion. One hesitates to speak harshly of an old man, who somewhere along the way must have done a few worthwhile things. But as to the public legacy of Hugh Hefner, he should have no illusions. All of us have our share of faults and sins to account for. But the lowest of vices and ‘strangest secret of hell,’ as G.K. Chesterton called it, is the desire to pervert others, to coax and corrupt them and drag them down with you. And any man who at the age of 80 has that to answer for is by no stretch the luckiest cat on the planet.” There are several fine lines there, but I’ve filed this for future use: The Playboy Philosophy is good for the ladies, too, “just so long as they remember what they’re good for.”

• “I’m so sorry for Tom Fox’s death and the Fox’s family’s grief, but it seems to me that the people in CPT should not see this as defeat but simply as the cost of being faithful to the mission of peacemaking the world desperately needs.” The speaker is Ronald Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action and professor of theology at Palmer Seminary in Pennsylvania. Fox was one of the hostages taken captive by jihadists in Iraq, and CPT means the “Christian Peacemaker Teams.” The other hostages captured with Fox were freed by the coalition forces, whose presence in Iraq they were protesting. In this Christianity Today interview, Sider is asked about the criticism that CPT is “speaking out only against American violence and ignoring the violence perpetrated by radical Muslims in the country.” Sider responds that “any group of people, finite as we are, is sometimes going to get things wrong,” but the CPT bias must be understood in light of the fact that “the vast majority of Christian insight on the war was that it was premature, it was wrong, it didn’t fit just-war criteria.” (In this connection, he gravely misrepresents the position of the Holy See, but let that pass.) Sider’s commitment is to the power of “nonviolent campaigns,” and he points to the victories of Gandhi in India, Martin Luther King in the United States, Solidarity in defeating the Soviet Union, and the Philippine overthrow of Marcos. Lumping together these radically different historical events as demonstrating the power of nonviolence does not bear close examination. Sider ends on the note that people should in the next year “put a thousand CPT kinds of people all through the West Bank to say to the Israelis and Palestinians, ‘You have to stop killing each other. There has to be two states here that are fair and just.’” The implied moral symmetry between Israelis and Palestinians is, to put it gently, deeply confused. There is a widespread tendency to excuse, usually in a condescending mode, people such as Sider and those involved in CPT as being excessively “idealistic.” But, however much one may criticize some Israeli reactions to Palestinian aggressions, Israel is formally committed to the goal of two states living together in fairness and justice. Palestinian leadership is formally committed to the elimination of Israel. Whether with respect to the Middle East or conflicts elsewhere, what appears to be culpable ignorance or deliberate mendacity should not be described as excessive idealism. The willingness to die for a cause, even a wrongheaded cause, is always impressive. But there is something unseemly about a theology professor, or any professor, taking it on himself to urge young people to risk getting killed in the service of his political views, even were his views much better informed than Ronald Sider’s.

• “Is it possible to think a man the anti-Christ and also thoughtful and courageous?” That is the question posed by the editors of the Nicotine Theological Journal. “This is the predicament that confronts many conservative Presbyterians and Reformed [Calvinist] Christians when they consider the work and legacy of John Paul II.” Such Christians profess the sixteenth-century creeds that say the pope is the Antichrist, but the pope declines to cooperate. The pope “no longer breathes fire, wears horns, or even anathematizes Protestants.” This, say the editors, poses a “conundrum,” as in an intricate and difficult problem. At the death of John Paul, they were offended by “the Protestant swooning over a Roman pontiff.” It was at least “excessive,” they say, suggesting that moderate swooning may have been permissible. Some of the contributors to the little symposium on this question are more stringent. On the great moral issues of our time, complains D.G. Hart, evangelical Protestants were wavering and divided and “seemed to be willing to rely on the extraordinary ability and connections of the bishop of Rome.” “The Bible seems to have run out of gas for Protestants as an authoritative guide to truth. Instead the imposing voice of one person in a high-profile office (which happens to be in Vatican City) appears to be more effective in countering the drift of secularism and relativism.” William Smith of the conservative Presbyterian Church in America asks, “Where’s the pope?” He answers: “If we regard as heaven-bound those whom we [Reformed Christians] receive into communicant membership and those whom other evangelical churches receive, then do we not regard the others to be, so far as we know, hell-bound? When we apply the liberal and charitable standards by which Presbyterian churches have judged who are Christians, the pope was not one. . . . He held no membership in an evangelical church on earth.” That is extra ecclesia nulla salus with a twist. “He was a good man,” Smith writes, “a courageous man, a pious man, an admirable man, a man who did much good in his lifetime.” A pity he wasn’t a Christian. A pope so manifestly good poses a threat to Calvinist orthodoxy. Protestants guilty of excessive swooning over John Paul need to be reminded that he is probably in hell. The writers do not say it, but one infers that they hope Pope Benedict will be more accommodating by breathing fire, wearing horns, or at least anathematizing them. It is intolerably confusing when popes refuse to follow the script written by sixteenth-century Protestants.

• It was not until 1974 that Chicago removed “the ugly law” from its municipal code. The law read: “No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under a penalty of not less than $1 nor more than $50 for each offense.” That intelligence is supplied by Cathleen Kaveny, professor of law at Notre Dame, in a paper describing how different views of law affect both the pro-life and pro-choice movements. Law, she notes, is not only to prevent and punish crimes but to teach morality. She contrasts the Chicago “ugly law” (similar laws were on the books in other cities) with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which aims at ensuring that everybody has access to public space and economic opportunity. So there is such a thing as moral progress, although its course is painfully uneven. Kaveny notes the many crisis-pregnancy centers operated by pro-lifers and urges that more attention be paid the pertinent social and economic factors: “Women with incomes below 200 percent of poverty made up 30 percent of all women of reproductive age but accounted for 57 percent of the abortions in 2000. Abortion rates decreased as women’s income increased, from 44 per 1,000 pregnancies among poor women to 10 per 1,000 among the highest-income women. Adjusting for different pregnancy rates, it is still the case that high-income women are the least likely to abort their pregnancies (15 percent) and poor and low-income women were the most likely to do so (33 percent). Furthermore, only one in six women who had an abortion was married. Nearly one in five women who had an abortion were teenagers; about half of them were younger than 25.” We need to attend, says Kaveny, to all the laws and other factors that affect abortion. “Does this mean that overturning Roe isn’t important? No. In my view, however, it is important as much for pedagogical reasons as practical reasons. Roe and most of the Supreme Court cases that followed it did not merely legalize abortion in ‘hard cases’; they did not present abortion as a drastic option to be considered only ‘in necessity and sorrow.’ Instead, they effectively denied it was morally problematic, for years striking down legislative effort after legislative effort to encourage women to choose childbirth over abortion. The apex of this deeply mistaken pedagogy can be found in Justice William Brennan’s claim that ‘[A]bortion and childbirth, when stripped of the sensitive moral arguments surrounding the abortion controversy, are simply two alternative medical methods of dealing with pregnancy.’ The fundamental task facing the pro-life movement now as it reaches maturity is to demonstrate how deeply mistaken Justice Brennan’s view is. The law can’t strip out ‘sensitive moral arguments’ for either the woman or the unborn child. And we can’t strip out consideration of moral virtues either. The fundamental challenge facing the pro-life movement is to help the American people expand beyond rights talk and move toward the virtue of solidarity—solidarity with the unborn, solidarity with others who are vulnerable, solidarity with those upon whom these most vulnerable persons depend.” In sum, and as some of us have been arguing for decades, the pro-life cause is the cause of liberalism rightly understood but tragically abandoned by almost all who now think of themselves as liberals.

• This is, I suppose, a Louisiana turn on Hilaire Belloc’s little rhyme: “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, / There’s laughter and dancing and good red wine. / At least I’ve always found it so. / Benedicamus Domino!” It happened some months ago, but the clipping has just come to my attention. Kraemer is a very small and very poor little town down in the bayou in which people make what living they can from selling alligator skins and skulls. The local paper, the Beauregard Daily, carried the following obituary: “Willie ‘One Eye’ Kraemer, 91, a native and resident of Kraemer, died Saturday, Dec. 24, 2005. Visitation will be from 5 to 10 p.m. today and from 8 a.m. to funeral time Thursday at St. Lawrence Church in Kraemer. Mass will be at 11 a.m. Thursday at the church, with burial in the church cemetery.” After listing numerous survivors and those who went before, the obituary concludes with this: “He hunted alligators and enjoyed drinking. He was Catholic.” Rest in peace, One Eye.

Sources:

African-American Muslims, Religion Watch, June. Cardinal McCarrick, National Catholic Reporter, May 19. Bush as Hitler, Christian Century, February 7. Report card for Benedict, The Boisi Center Report, May 2006. Hispanic Christians in America, origins, June 1. Bishop Barnes on migration, ZENIT, May 31. Abuse statistics, National Catholic Reporter, June 16. English medicine, BBC News, May 9. New York influentials, New York, May 15. Fouad Ajami on Bernard Lewis, Wall Street Journal, May 1. Religion Watch potpourri, Religion Watch, May. Belgium developments, DanielPipes.org, May 18. Carter parable, OpinionJournal, April 6. Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Human Life International Special Report, March. Jesuit law schools, Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, Winter 2005. Hugh Hefner, Wall Street Journal, March 31. Sonald Sider, Christianity Today online, March 28. Protestant swooning over JPII, Nicotine Theological Journal, October 2005. Law as pedagogy, origins, February 17, 2005.