What is happening at Sojourners?

August 15, 2020 / johnfea

Aysha Khan at Religion News Service is reporting that the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners has replaced Jim Wallis as editor in chief and “announced a new policy of editorial independence from the organization’s advocacy work.” Wallis founded Sojourners and is President of the Sojourners organization. The announcement stems from Wallis’s decision to remove (and then restore) a controversial essay published at the Sojourners website. The essay was critical of the Catholic Church.

Here is a taste of Kahn’s piece:

The decision came after weeks of turmoil over Wallis’ removal of an essay criticizing white supremacists within the Catholic Church, which led two staffers of color to resign from the magazine.

Wallis, a prominent progressive theologian and activist who has also written for RNS, will continue to serve as president of the Sojourners organization, the magazine announced Friday afternoon (Aug. 14). He had served as a leader at the magazine since its founding in 1971 as the Post-American.

Sandi Villarreal, who had been the executive editor at Sojourners, has accepted the role of editor in chief. According to the statement, she has been promised editorial independence in overseeing Sojourner’s web and print publications.

The controversial essay, written by University of California Los Angeles lecturer Eric Martin, was published in the magazine’s August print issue under the title “Harboring a Culture of Hate” and online as “The Catholic Church has a Visible White-Power Faction.”

On July 28, following backlash from Catholic leaders, Wallis removed the article from the site, saying it “made unwarranted insinuations and allegations against many Catholics.”

In three lengthy subsequent editor’s notes, he criticized Martin’s claim that U.S. bishops voted to reject language condemning swastikas, Confederate flags and nooses in their 2018 pastoral letter against racism. In fact, he wrote, the bishops’ letter does name nooses and swastikas as a “tragic indicator of rising racial and ethnic animus.”

The article has now been restored to the site with a correction about the bishop’s letter appended above it. The publication has also committed not to remove published articles from its site.

As the controversy played out online and within the organization, two associate web editors, Dhanya Addanki and Daniel José Camacho, publicly resigned from the publication.

Read the entire piece here.

Here is the official statement from Sojourners.

Here is the statement from Jim Wallis. He says that this whole controversy is related to the “natural and ongoing tension between our identity as a publication and as an advocacy organization in and supportive of broader movements.” I would like to know more about this. Martin’s essay seemed pretty convincing to me. I thought it was also fair. He acknowledged that he was not writing about all Catholics. I can also understand why some Catholics who partner with Sojourner’s advocacy efforts might be upset about the piece. In the end, Wallis should not have removed it from the website.

But as I read Khan’s piece at Religion News Service, it appears that abortion and LGBTQ issues are also part of this story. (Although not directly related to the controversy over Martin’s essay). Wallis is pro-life on abortion, but not in the same way that many conservatives are pro-life. He supports same-sex marriage. But he also works with religious groups–such as the Catholic Church–that do not share some of his views on sexual ethics, but do have common concerns about addressing the plight of the poor. I appreciate Wallis’s efforts at finding common ground here and though I don’t agree with his decision to pull Martin’s piece, I can understand why he did it.

Catholic Archbishop of Washington D.C. Condemns Trump’s Visit to John Paul II Memorial Today

June 2, 2020June 2, 2020 / johnfea

Today, in an attempt to shore-up his support among Roman Catholics, Donald Trump visited the John Paul II National Shrine in Washington D.C. America magazine has it covered here.

Here is Washington D.C. Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory:

I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree. Saint Pope John Paul II was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings. His legacy bears vivid witness to that truth. He certainly would not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace.

Read the entire press release here.

Is Trump Pro-Life?

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020 / johnfea

John Gehring is Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life Action and the author of The Francis Effect: A Radical Pope’s Challenge to the American Catholic Church. Here is a taste of his Religion News Service piece “Trump Woos Catholics on Abortion but May Lose Them on Life“:

Trump’s Catholic campaign may tout his record of appointing anti-abortion judges — the president has installed more than 100 judges to the federal bench in addition to appointing Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, both reliable votes to overturn or chip away at abortion rights. But many Catholic bishops and leaders of Catholic agencies play an outsized humanitarian role in aiding immigrants and have strongly denounced the administration’s extreme immigration policies and cruel treatment of migrant families.

For these Catholics, the president’s xenophobia clashes with their own immigrant history. As late as John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, an Irish-American Catholic running for president was viewed with deep suspicion.

This history and resonant cultural memory could, in part, explain why even some white Catholics who voted for Trump in 2016 seem unsettled by the president’s obsession with demonizing migrants. In 2018 focus groups conducted in Macomb County, Michigan, with Republicans and GOP-leaning independent Catholic conservative men who voted for Trump, the Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg described what he called “Trump conflicted Catholics” as particularly anguished over separated immigrant families.

“Everybody’s concerned with the families being torn apart,” one focus group participant said. “You know, to take a child away from a mother or father and put them somewhere where they’re isolated away from their parents.” One voter described family separation as a form of “kidnapping.”

The Trump administration’s profile on immigration won’t be helped by new visa regulations issued this week, making it more difficult for pregnant immigrant women to travel to the United States.

Pope Francis is unequivocal that the “lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute” are as “equally sacred” as the unborn in the womb. The administration’s gutting of environmental protections, reinstatement of federal executions and shameful treatment of children in migrant shelters demonstrate a callous indifference to the sanctity of life that Catholic voters who oppose abortion should not ignore.

For Catholics, neither political party nor any candidate perfectly reflects our church’s teachings about human dignity and respect for all life. But it’s hard to see how a president who chronically lies, targets communities of color and brazenly ignores the Gospel’s clear command to welcome immigrants has earned the right to be considered the best choice for values voters.

Read the entire piece here.

Romano Guardini’s Response to Our Tech-Saturated World

November 11, 2019November 10, 2019 / johnfea

Romano Guardini

Thanks to Robert Dean Lurie‘s recent piece at America, I am now aware of 20th-century Catholic theologian Romano Guardini and his book Letters From Lake Como. Here is a taste of Lurie’s piece:

It is hard to deny that we live in an exhilarating age. New technologies have facilitated an explosion of entrepreneurship and creativity that could scarcely have been imagined a generation ago. The opportunities now available to each of us at the click of a button are practically limitless. Yet it is becoming clear that we are also in the midst of a crisis, much of it playing out in our internal lives. We have never been so connected, yet we have never felt so separated. Consider the recent reports that have linked new tech to upticks in attention deficit disorder, depression and anxiety disorders, sleep disruption, traffic fatalities, pornography addiction, identity theft, bullying, political polarization and even suicide. We have freedom, yes. We have power. But we don’t always know what to do with our freedom and power.

Unique among writers of a tech-wary bent, Guardini urged his readers to embrace the present fully and without reservation. But he also stressed that they do so with intention. And here we arrive at the aspect of his work that cries out most loudly for a modern audience: Guardini’s advocacy for a new attitude of technology mindfulness, to be exercised at the individual level.

As with his critique, the recommendation has three major components.

First, we must reclaim the interior lives that technology has wrested from us. “Man’s depths must be reawakened,” Guardini writes in Power and Responsibility…

A direct result of this recommitment to contemplation should be a greater sense of self-control. Guardini uses the somewhat loaded term asceticism but defines it in a manner that ought to have broad appeal. “Man must fight for inner health and freedom,” he writes, “against the machinations of advertising, the flood of loud sensationalism, against noise in all its forms…. Asceticism is the refusal to capitulate, the determination to fight them, there at the key bastion—namely, in ourselves.” If I may adapt this for the here and now: We must create space between ourselves and our devices.

Guardini’s final point is the most difficult to grasp and enact: We must reclaim our common, eternal values and make these the impetus for all our decisions—the big decisions like how we raise our children and care for our ailing parents as well as the “small” decisions like how we interact with our devices. “By this I do not mean to follow a program of any kind,” Guardini writes, “but to make the simple responses that always were and always will be right.”

Read the entire piece here.

“Throwaway Culture”

May 16, 2019May 17, 2019 / johnfea

I am looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Charles Camosy‘s new book Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can United a Fractured People. Camosy offers us a small glimpse of his argument in a recent piece at Religion News Service. Here is a taste:

A revitalized Consistent Life Ethic [CLE] — especially as understood and articulated in the Roman Catholic tradition by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and (especially) Pope Francis — could provide a path to unifying a fractured culture around a vision of the good.

Through the church’s CLE, rightly understood, a new generation can not only challenge our impoverished and incoherent political imagination but also can begin the hard work of laying out the foundational goods and principles upon which whatever comes next can be built.

To many, the CLE is equated simply with a pro-life or anti-abortion stance. But in the encyclical “Caritas in veritate,” Benedict said that it is false to distinguish between “pro-life” issues (where the church is thought to have more conservative views) and “social justice” issues (where the church is thought to have more liberal views).

Abortion, euthanasia and embryo-destructive research are to be understood as social justice issues — just as global consumerism, ecological concern and care for the poor are to be understood as life issues.

What the CLE really opposes is what Pope Francis calls “throwaway culture” — a mentality in which everything has a price, everything can be bought, everything is negotiable. This way of thinking has room only for a select few, while it discards all those who are unproductive.

Such a culture reduces everything — including people — into mere things, whose worth consists in being bought, sold, or used, and which are then discarded when their market value has been exhausted. Francis insists that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applies clearly to our culture’s “economy of exclusion.” In the pope’s view, “Such an economy kills.”

In a throwaway culture, a primary value is maintaining a consumerist lifestyle. To cease caring about who is being discarded, most of us must find a way to no longer acknowledge their inherent dignity. Instead of language that affirms and highlights the value of every human being, throwaway culture requires language that deadens our capacity for moral concern toward those who most need it.

The values of the CLE, in other words, are the irreducible dignity of the person, nonviolence, hospitality, encounter, mercy, conservation of the ecological world and giving priority to the most vulnerable.

Read the entire piece here.

Wearing a MAGA Hat is Not Pro-Life

January 24, 2019January 24, 2019 / johnfea / 27 Comments

Rev. John Stowe is bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky. Covington Catholic School, the school at the center of last weekend’s incident at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., is not in the Lexington Diocese, but Stowe’s recent op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader is revealing nonetheless.

Here is a taste:

A perennial complaint from participants in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., is that the secular news media largely ignore this massive protest of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. In light of the viral news story of last weekend, of a group of Catholic high school students from Kentucky in a confrontation with a Native American elder after this year’s march, that claim no longer holds.

As the leader of the Catholic Church in the 50 counties of Central and Eastern Kentucky, I join the Diocese of Covington and other Catholic leaders in apologizing in the wake of this incident.

I am ashamed that the actions of Kentucky Catholic high school students have become a contradiction of the very reverence for human life that the march is supposed to manifest. As such, I believe that U.S. Catholics must take a look at how our support of the fundamental right to life has become separated from the even more basic truth of the dignity of each human person.

Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.

We cannot uncritically ally ourselves with someone with whom we share the policy goal of ending abortion.

Read the entire piece here. My conservative evangelical brothers and sisters can learn valuable lessons from our Catholic brothers and sisters, especially as it relates to what it means to be “pro-life.”

Should We Rethink Our Response to the Covington Catholic Boys?

January 21, 2019January 21, 2019 / johnfea / 51 Comments

I posted about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial between a Native American veteran and the MAGA-hat-wearing boys from Covington Catholic High School here. I wrote:

Ironically, these boys were in Washington D.C. for the “Right to Life” march.
Catholics believe that all human beings have dignity. This is a “life” issue for Catholics. These kids have missed that connection.
These boys have apparently not learned this lesson as part of their Catholic education. Covington Catholic High School has failed them.
The fact that these boys are wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and Trump shirts and sweatshirts speaks volumes about them, their parents, and their school.
These students seem empowered by their MAGA clothing. So yes, Donald Trump is partly to blame for this.
Trump’s adult supporters are also to blame for this. These kids see adults acting this way all the time. They are basically imitating behavior that they see at every Trump rally.
These kids represent our future.

Reporters from The New York Times have complicated the narrative of what happened. The National Review has slammed the media for their coverage. Social media is on fire.

I would recommend reading Lisa Sharon Harper’s thread:

Thread https://t.co/DUUxWSmpH3

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 21, 2019

And here are some tweets from commentator Kirsten Powers:

Hey @nytimes did you even watch the video? In your effort to do a “both sides” story you failed to report the facts. Read @lisasharper timeline b/c you missed A LOT. Really problematic coverage. https://t.co/jjB8XRUqVw

— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) January 21, 2019

1) I second this AND a) I call BS on the idea that they just burst into cheers randomly. If they were at pro-life March and someone was speaking would they break into cheers to counter it? No. B/c it’s disrespectful. https://t.co/EIsVjxW2rn

— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) January 20, 2019

Here is Jesuit intellectual James Martin’s thread:

Re #CovingtonHighSchool: I will be happy to apologize for condemning the actions of the students if it turns out that they were somehow acting as good and moral Christians. The last thing I want is to see Catholic schools and Catholic students held in any disrepute. 1/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

And I’ve certainly been wrong before. 2/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

Because it seems like that there are now three narratives. First, students jeer at a Native American elder (and Vietnam Vet) after the March for Life. This is what horrified many people. And, frankly, a group of taunting high school students seemed to speak for itself. But… 3/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

A second narrative is that students themselves were being jeered at by another group. That counter-narrative prompted some apologies today from some who had, like me, strongly condemned the students. 4/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

But it’s very hard to square that second narrative with the apology from the school itself, and the Diocese of Covington, who would presumably have known, from first-hand reports and eyewitnesses, if the students’ actions had been somehow misrepresented. 5/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

Now, a third narrative has emerged, thanks to the Detroit Free Press and other sources, which reports that Mr. Phillips, the elder, interposed himself between two jeering groups, chanting to bring peace. At which point the Covington students then turned their ire on him. 6/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

Where does this leave us? First, a comment about the March for Life, which I support. The gross over-politicization of this religious event, and its increasing reliance on political figures to draw crowds, is unnecessary, irreligious and dangerous. 7/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

Second, a more practical, pastoral, concern: where were the chaperones? The idea that a group of Catholic high school students appeared to have been placed, wittingly or unwittingly, in such an incendiary situation, seems to indicate a lack of oversight. 8/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

Third, Rashomon-like, we may never know exactly what happened and the various “sides” may continue to disagree and condemn one another. But I hope the truth emerges and apologies are forthcoming. Mine will be, if necessary. If necessary, I hope the students’ will be as well. 9/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

Until then, a willingness to learn and dialogue are essential. Dialogue among Covington High School administrators. Between Covington students and Indigenous Peoples. Between that group of students and Mr. Phillips. 10/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

Another essential lesson, which transcends whatever happened in Washington this weekend: an understanding of the appalling treatment that Native Americans have endured in our country. That lesson needs to be learned regardless of what you think of Covington High School. 12/

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

This Teachable Moment can offer us, if we are both open and humble, important lessons about racism and marginalization, about dialogue and encounter, and about truth and reconciliation, during this coming week, which is, believe it or not, Catholic Schools Week. 13/13

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 20, 2019

As for me, I stand by all of my points above. Let me reiterate them again with some additional commentary:

These boys were in D.C. for the Right to Life march. They should be commended for this, but their behavior (no matter which narrative of the event you choose to believe) in this incident was not life-affirming.
These students seemed to have missed this connection. Were they harassed by the Black Hebrew Israelites? Yes. The video shows this. I do not condone the behavior or the way that this group verbally attacked the boys. But the boys (and apparently their chaperones) response seemed to be more rooted in the culture wars than in Christian teaching about turning the other cheek.
Whatever narrative of the incident you choose to follow, Covington Catholic School has failed these boys to some degree.
Whatever narrative of the incident you choose to follow, MAGA hats and shirts are offensive. They are especially offensive to people of color. The belief system behind the phrase “Make America Great Again” stands in opposition to Catholic social teaching. I made this case in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.
I thus stand by my previous statement that Trump is partly to blame for what happened here.
I stand by what I wrote above.
I stand by what I wrote above.

Let me also add that I am not interpreting this incident in the context of free speech or the First Amendment. I am interpreting it in light of Christian teaching, a set of beliefs that does not endorse certain kinds of speech when it violates the moral values that the church upholds.

Someone Failed These Boys

January 19, 2019 / johnfea / 33 Comments

If you haven’t seen it yet, here are students from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky mocking and harassing Native American Vietnam War veteran Nathan Phillips.

Some quick comments:

Ironically, these boys were in Washington D.C. for the “Right to Life” march.
Catholics believe that all human beings have dignity. This is a “life” issue for Catholics. These kids have missed that connection.
These boys have apparently not learned this lesson as part of their Catholic education. Covington Catholic High School has failed them.
The fact that these boys are wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and Trump shirts and sweatshirts speaks volumes about them, their parents, and their school.
These students seem empowered by their MAGA clothing. So yes, Donald Trump is partly to blame for this.
Trump’s adult supporters are also to blame for this. These kids see adults acting this way all the time. They are basically imitating behavior that they see at every Trump rally.
These kids represent our future.

Are Catholics the “Brains” of the Christian Right?

October 10, 2018October 9, 2018 / johnfea / 1 Comment

Check out Gene Zubovich’s piece at Aeon titled “Evangelicals bring the votes, Catholics bring the brains.” I think he is largely correct.

When evangelicals mobilised politically in the 1970s and declared a ‘culture war’ against the menace of secularism, they put aside their longstanding anti-Catholicism and reached out to Catholic conservatives. Catholics proved to be perfect partners. Unlike evangelicals, conservative Catholics could draw on research universities, law schools, medical schools, business schools and other intellectual-producing institutions in the fight against secularism. Evangelicals’ suspicion of higher education since at least the days of the 1925 Scopes trial over teaching evolution meant that they had built few institutions of higher learning. Their bible colleges and seminaries were meant to create believers and converts, not intellectuals.

One important exception was an effort by the evangelical theologian Carl Henry to build a research university in the 1950s to rival Harvard and Yale (not to mention Georgetown and Notre Dame). But Henry’s effort to raise $300 million quickly fell apart. Donors worried that the university would distract from proselytising, which they held to be far more important. They also clashed over student-conduct rules, such as whether alcohol and movies would be allowed at the new university. Evangelicals had no centralised authority to settle these disputes and, in any case, rigorous intellectual enquiry was not a priority for a tradition that argues that the basic insights of Christianity are matters of the heart more than the mind. Evangelical law schools and PhD programmes remain extremely rare in the US. Ironically, a tradition so devoted to spreading literacy saw too much learning as a potential danger.

So, Catholics contributed a disproportionate share of intellectuals and professionals for the religious Right, while evangelicals provided the bodies and the votes. Unlike the Jewish intellectuals clustered around neoconservative publications, Catholic conservatives were more reliable on cultural issues such as abortion. It is no small irony that Notre Dame has become the most important centre for the historical study of evangelicalism. In 1994, the influential historian, and evangelical, Mark Noll called the lack of rigorous intellectual activity among evangelicals a ‘scandal’. Ten years on, he celebrated ‘the increasing engagement between evangelicals and Roman Catholics’ for the ‘improved evangelical use of the mind.’

How long the Catholic-evangelical alliance in US politics will continue is hard to say, but it is still going strong. One only needs to look at the nomination of the Catholic Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Now confirmed, he replaces Anthony Kennedy, another Catholic, and keeps a five-seat conservative majority on the nine-person court (including Gorsuch, who grew up Catholic but now attends an Episcopalian church with his family). Three of the four finalists for Kennedy’s seat were Catholic.

Read the entire piece here. I made a similar case about the Supreme Court in this NPR interview.

When Pro-Lifers “Held Sway” at a Socialist Magazine

August 29, 2018August 28, 2018 / johnfea

In 1979, the progressive/democratic socialist magazine In These Times ran an anti-abortion essay. It was written by Elizabeth Moore, a Catholic right-to-life advocate, and Karen Mulhauser, a leader of NARAL.

Yesterday, the current deputy editor of In This Times wrote that the magazine was “wrong” for publishing the piece. Here is a taste of Jessica Stites’s piece “Why Did We Run an Anti-Abortion Piece in 1979?“:

In February 1979, In These Times published the debate, “Pro and Con: Does free abortion hurt the poor and minorities?” The then-newspaper was flooded with letters to the editor from a who’s who of feminists objecting to both the framing of the debate and its participants—Elizabeth Moore, a Catholic right-to-life advocate, and Karen Mulhauser, a leader of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).

The editorial decision-making process is lost to history, but this much we know: The Catholic Left held sway with ITT in the 1970s. A July 1977 editorial called for “serious dialogue with sincere ‘right-to-life’ advocates [who oppose abortion] out of genuine religious or moral concern for the sanctity of life.” ITT ran pieces by Juli Loesch, a major force in the Catholic “consistent life” movement, which wedded anti-nuclear, antiwar and anti-abortion politics. Loesch and other Catholic feminists were eventually pushed out of anti-abortion leadership by patriarchal evangelicals, who kept the Catholic leftists’ direct action tactics of clinic pickets and harassment, which escalated into murder.

Read the entire piece here.

Whatever you think of her argument (or the argument of Moore and Mulhauser in 1979), Stites’s piece reveals that the Christian Right did not have a monopoly on the anti-abortion movement in the 1970s.

Here’s a question: Can you be a socialist today and be pro-life on abortion? I once indirectly asked Bernie Sanders this question.

Michael Gerson’s Keeps Bringing the Fire

May 30, 2018May 30, 2018 / johnfea / 3 Comments

In his latest Washington Post column, Gerson continues to rail against the hypocrisy of pro-Trump evangelicals and the failure of evangelical politicians to display Christian leadership in the so-called age of Trump.

But in this particular column, Gerson is particularly hard (and rightly so) on outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Here is a taste:

At the Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said: “We see moral relativism becoming more and more pervasive in our culture. Identity politics and tribalism have grown on top of this.” Ryan went on to talk about Catholic social doctrine, with its emphasis on “solidarity” with the poor and weak, as “a perfect antidote to what ails our culture….”

It is often difficult to apply theological doctrines to public policy. But if there is one area where the teaching of the Christian faith is utterly clear, it is in the requirement to care for the vulnerable stranger. According to the Hebrew scriptures: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.” In the New Testament, Jesus employs compassion for an abused, reviled foreigner (a Samaritan) as the test and definition of neighborly love.

The dehumanization of migrants and refugees has been one of the most consistent themes of this president — including using the fact that some criminals enter the country illegally to fan a generalized hostility to Hispanic immigration. Can you imagine what would have happened if a White House staffer attending a policy meeting on family separation had said, “This is cruel. This is immoral. This is wrong”? They would have been quickly cleaning out their desk. The rejection of Christian teaching on this issue is pretty much a job requirement in the Trump administration.

And how did Ryan address the issue of Trump’s habit of dehumanization at the Catholic Prayer Breakfast? By avoidance, under a thick layer of hypocrisy. The Wisconsin Republican complained that politicians are too often in “survival mode” — trying to “get through the day,” rather than reflecting on and applying Catholic social teaching.

Ryan was effectively criticizing the whole theory of his speakership. He has been in survival mode from the first day of Trump’s presidency, making the case that publicly burning bridges with the president would undermine the ability to pursue his vision of the common good (including tax reform and regulatory relief). This, while a weak argument, is at least a consistent one. But by making the Christian commitment to human dignity relative to other political aims, Ryan can no longer speak of “moral relativism” as the defining threat of our time.

In the name of survival, Ryan has ignored and enabled the transformation of the GOP into an anti-immigrant party. This does not reflect his personal views. But it will be remembered as the hallmark of his time in office — the elevation of survival above solidarity.

Read the entire piece here.

Conservatives Debate Trump at Georgetown University

May 17, 2018May 17, 2018 / johnfea / 2 Comments

The Georgetown Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life brought together an interesting cast of conservative characters recently to talk about Donald Trump. The panel included Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru, and court evangelical and self-acknowledged “modern day Dietrich Bonhoeffer” Johnnie Moore.

Here is a taste of a report on the event published at the National Catholic Reporter:

The conversation got a little testy when Ramesh Ponnuru, a columnist and senior editor at National Review, who evinced no love for Trump in his remarks, likened the president, with his habit of consorting with porn stars, to the biblical King David.

“Look, I think a lot of people recognize the president is a lowlife and were willing to support him,” Ponnuru said, drawing applause from the crowd and a strong response from evangelical minister Johnnie Moore, an informal advisor to the Trump administration.

“That is inside the Beltway speak,” Moore shot back, later calling for an end to superficial punditry and more coming together across political divides on issues of common cause. “The response of this audience is precisely what the problem is.”

Moore praised Trump for his ongoing and what he believes to be very authentic conversation with the evangelical community even as his co-panelists remarked that Trump has not reached out to religious leaders of other faith traditions.

Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist, conservative Christian, and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, has written on religion and politics extensively since the election. He punctuated his remarks about the “hostile takeover” of the Republican Party with gallows humor about the “very upbeat” meeting he and his fellow remaining compassionate conservative had just held in a phone booth.

Lauding the if-then tradition of Catholic social teaching — if you are pro-life, for instance, then you can’t also dehumanize immigrants — Gerson expressed concern that evangelicals are making political and social calculations “from the perspective of perceived aggressions of modernity rather than looking at first principles.”

“This is why evangelicals are not just an interest group like a union,” Gerson said, while articulating the fear that the short-term gain of the Trump presidency will have a long-lasting and possibly irreversible effect on future generations of Republican voters. “They are supporting the reputation of the Christian Gospel and making decisions that alienate the young and minorities from this cause.”

Read the entire piece here.

Catholic Hoops

April 6, 2018April 5, 2018 / johnfea

Paul Moses, writing at Commonweal, argues that Catholic college basketball teams are so good because they focus on teamwork rooted in “some important, Scripture-based principles of Catholic social teaching: community, the common good, and solidarity.”

I appreciate Moses’s analysis and I have definitely seen this ethic at work at Catholic colleges and high schools. But I am also wondering just how much Catholic social teaching finds its way into big-time college basketball. Has Villanova been successful because they are Catholic? What about Georgetown in the John Thompson-Patrick Ewing era? How about Gonzaga? Marquette under Al McGuire? Seton Hall under P.J. Carlesimo?

And what about John Wooden’s non-Catholic UCLA teams? It seems they embodied the spirit of community, the common good, and solidarity more than most.

Maybe Catholic schools like Villanova or Georgetown win national championships because they have the best talent that particular year.

Here is a taste of Moses’s piece:

That is, Villanova recruits team players who have the grit and talent to win—and who will be less likely to leave early to cash in by playing professionally.

Is it churlish in this triumphant moment to note that there are spiritual pitfalls to winning? Scripture does make clear how hollow and transient earthly honors are. And if a one-for-all team spirit leads to an ethic of winning at any cost—of turning a blind eye to cheating or other wrongdoing—that would be hypocritical. This point is made—with devastating effect, in my opinion—in a play I saw on Broadway not long after I graduated from high school, Jason Miller’s That Championship Season, winner of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. It’s about the 20-year reunion of a championship Catholic high school basketball team. (There is also a 1982 film that doesn’t really do justice to the play.)

Villanova is, after all, a school in the Augustinian tradition. And who was more restless with wordly success than St. Augustine? His Confessions includes regrets about his youthful love of sport: He flouted his parents’ admonition to study “because I loved playing; I loved feeling proud when I won.”

But perhaps we can also extract some winning advice for a college basketball team from Augustine and his Confessions: “Vain-glory is the highest danger.”

Read the entire piece here.

Thoughts on Michael Gerson’s “The Last Temptation”: Part 4

March 19, 2018 / johnfea / 1 Comment

Click here for previous installments in this series. Click here to read Gerson’s article in The Atlantic.

In this piece, I reflect on Gerson’s love of Catholic Social Teaching.

Gerson writes:

For a start, modern evangelicalism has an important intellectual piece missing. It lacks a model or ideal of political engagement—an organizing theory of social action. Over the same century from Blanchard to Falwell, Catholics developed a coherent, comprehensive tradition of social and political reflection. Catholic social thought includes a commitment to solidarity, whereby justice in a society is measured by the treatment of its weakest and most vulnerable members. And it incorporates the principle of subsidiarity—the idea that human needs are best met by small and local institutions (though higher-order institutions have a moral responsibility to intervene when local ones fail).

In practice, this acts as an “if, then” requirement for Catholics, splendidly complicating their politics: If you want to call yourself pro-life on abortion, then you have to oppose the dehumanization of migrants. If you criticize the devaluation of life by euthanasia, then you must criticize the devaluation of life by racism. If you want to be regarded as pro-family, then you have to support access to health care. And vice versa. The doctrinal whole requires a broad, consistent view of justice, which—when it is faithfully applied—cuts across the categories and clichés of American politics. Of course, American Catholics routinely ignore Catholic social thought. But at least they have it. Evangelicals lack a similar tradition of their own to disregard.

A few quick thoughts:

Contra Scot McKnight, I think Gerson is correct in his assumption that ordinary evangelicals have not thought deeply about political engagement. Yes, there have been evangelical intellectuals who have articulated various approaches to the subject, but their ideas have not permeated the views of those in the pews. This is illustrated by Trump’s overwhelming support among evangelicals in 2016.

As someone who is sympathetic to Catholic social teaching, Gerson believes that government has a role to play (when local efforts fail–subsidiarity) in promoting justice and defending the weak. He is no libertarian or “2 Kingdom” theologian. He departs from James Davison Hunter’s “faithful presence” approach to engagement in To Change the World or Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option.” In this sense, he represents the view of political engagement espoused by the National Association of Evangelicals in its statement: “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.” I have some first-hand experience here. Gerson was part of an ongoing Catholic-Evangelical dialogue that met regularly at Georgetown University to discuss common ground between evangelical political engagement and Catholic social teaching. These gatherings were spearheaded by evangelical activist Ronald Sider and Catholic theologian John Borelli. I also participated in these conversations as they began to wind down.

Of all the Christian approaches to politics, the Catholic view allows for the most active role of government in promoting the common good. This is the view of government that Gerson sought to bring to the White House as a speechwriter for George W. Bush. It is also the position that the late David Kuo championed during his work with the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. According to Kuo’s book Tempting Faith: An Insider Story of Political Seduction, this approach to governing was ultimately railroaded by Bush political adviser Karl Rove.

For Catholics, Immigration is a Family Issue

January 23, 2018 / johnfea

The defense and protection of the family is one of the central tenets of Catholic social teaching. In my view, it should be one of the central tenets of all Christians. Over at The Atlantic, Emma Green has a nice piece on how Catholics are dealing with Trump’s decision to suspend Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans.

Here is a taste:

A woman fled El Salvador in fear of violence, just months before a deadly series of earthquakes destroyed many Salvadorans’ lives and homes. She settled in Maryland with her husband’s family and started to build a life. She worked first in hotel housekeeping, then as a teaching assistant at a neighborhood school. She had four children, who excelled in school. She invested deeply in her local Catholic church, serving as a catechist and usher, working with kids on Sunday mornings, and hosting a small prayer group in her home.

Now, after nearly two decades in the United States, the Trump administration may be sending her back to El Salvador, a country that still suffers from one of the world’s highest homicide rates, destabilizing gang activity, and a stalled economy. Many immigration advocates have pushed back on the decision, but perhaps none more strongly than the U.S. Catholic Church. Catholic leaders see these deportations not as a left-right political issue, but as threat to the families that make up the heart of their communities. As one local priest told me, “I see it as an assault on the body of the Church”…

And this:

The Church’s argument for protecting Salvadorans is largely focused on protecting families—a cause that conservatives often like to claim for their own. “The family is sacred,” said Jacek Orzechowski, a priest based in Silver Spring, Maryland, who works with Catholic Charities. “The prospect of deporting people into areas where there will be an imminent danger—it tramples upon family. It’s disrespect for life.” The Center for Migration Studies estimates that TPS recipients from El Salvador collectively have 192,000 U.S.-born children. These families may soon face the choice of splitting up, with formerly TPS-protected parents leaving their kids behind in the U.S., or moving together to a deeply unstable country where Americans are often targeted for kidnappings and extortions.

Read the entire piece here.

Pope Francis and the “Workers’ Church”

October 31, 2017October 31, 2017 / johnfea

As A kid I would visit my paternal grandparents just about every Sunday at the Parsippany, New Jersey house that he built with his own two hands in the 1950s. (OK, he had help from his teenage kids and extended family members who “came up” for the weekend from South Orange and the surrounding neighborhoods). We would arrive sometime after mass, have a huge meal, and retire to the living room where the adults would (usually) argue about politics while the television set blared the Giants, Jets, Mets, or Yankees.

I would sometimes listen to my grandfather pontificate about the politics of the “working man.” He usually used this phrase to describe ethnic white immigrants and their children who were members of a Union (he was a Teamster), who benefited from FDR’s New Deal, and were faithful Catholics. As I look back on all of this, it was sometimes hard to distinguish the difference between the Democratic Party and the American Catholic Church.

I thought about my grandfather today as I read John Gehring‘s piece at the American Prospect, “Francis Revives the Workers’ Church.” I think he would have liked Pope Francis.

Here is a taste of Gehrig’s piece:

As unions face an increasingly hostile political climate and grapple with fresh approaches to becoming relevant to a new generation, there are signs that an old ally is once again stepping up. The Catholic Church, which has an imperfect but long history of using its institutional muscle and moral voice to defend workers’ rights, is getting a serious pep talk from a pope who has put labor rights back at the forefront of the Church’s public agenda.

Unions are “prophetic” institutions that “unmask the powerful who trample the rights of the most vulnerable workers,” Pope Francis said in a June speech to the Confederation of Trade Unions, Italy’s equivalent of the AFL-CIO. While conservative politicians, corporate leaders, and well-funded organizations on the right have spent decades trying to dismantle the labor movement, Francis recognizes that what he calls the “dictatorship of an impersonal economy” is the result of an ideology that demonizes unions, worships individualism, and champions unfettered markets. “The capitalism of our time does not understand the value of the trade union because it has forgotten the social nature of the economy,” he said. “This is one of the greatest sins.”

Read the entire piece here.