THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY SEPT. 23, 2013 $3.50

September 23, 2013 America 1 OF MANY THINGS P   J   U  ew chapters in America’s long when he died suddenly in the summer history are a source of greater of 1967. 106 West 56th Street New York, NY 10019-3803 Fpride for us than our decades- Contemporary critiques of the Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 long association with John Courtney Murray project suggest that his answer Subscriptions: 1-800-627-9533 Murray, S.J.; and nothing in the present was not necessarily wrong, but that www.americamagazine.org issue should be interpreted to the the compatibility question itself is twitter.com/americamag contrary. Father Murray was a friend, unanswerable, at least on the level at E  C Matt Malone, S.J. associate editor and contributor to this which Murray pursued it. An answer at review for more than 20 years. In almost that macro level requires so many levels EXECUTIVE EDITORS Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy two dozen articles he explored the of abstraction that the result is often relationship between Catholicism and an unwieldy historical, philosophical or MANAGING EDITOR Kerry Weber American democracy, seeking to show theological superstructure that cannot LITERARY EDITOR Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. not “whether Catholicism is compatible support itself. SENIOR EDITOR & CHIEF CORRESPONDENT Kevin Clarke with American democracy,” a question It is almost certain, moreover, that Murray considered “invalid as that the answer to the compatibility EDITOR AT LARGE James Martin, S.J. well as impertinent,” but to show “that question, even in its most general form, POETRY EDITOR Joseph Hoover, S.J. American democracy is compatible is neither “yes” nor “no,” but somehow ASSOCIATE EDITORS Luke Hansen, S.J., Patrick J. Howell, S.J. with Catholicism.” Father Murray’s “both.” !ere are important ways ASSISTANT EDITORS Francis W. Turnbull, S.J., Olga most persuasive answer to the so-called in which American life is and is not Segura, Joseph McAuley compatibility question was compatible with a Catholic faith. !e We Hold ART DIRECTOR Stephanie Ratcliffe !ese Truths: Catholic Reflections on the current state of the question, then, calls COLUMNISTS Colleen Carroll Campbell, John J. American Proposition, an essay collection for a new method of questioning, one Conley, S.J., Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. he published in 1960. that is narrower than Murray’s: Which Keane, John W. Martens, Bill McGarvey, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Margot Patterson, Michael Father Murray’s work is lucid, aspects of American life are compatible Rossmann, S.J. imaginative, even daring. When one with Christian faith? Which are not? CORRESPONDENTS reads We Hold !ese Truths, one is More important, is this particular John Carr –Washington, D.C. reminded on nearly every page that a historical event or choice justified in the MODERATOR, CATHOLIC BOOK CLUB great mind is at work. !at not even so light of Christian faith? Is the conduct Kevin Spinale, S.J. great a mind as Murray’s could solve the of this institution, or the impact of that EDITORIAL E-MAIL “problem” of “religion” and American public policy, or the moral character [email protected] public life suggests, however, that the of that market force, compatible with problem was and remains misconceived. the principles of Catholic faith? Our V.P. & CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER !at, at least, is the substance of the contemporary questions, therefore, Lisa Pope critique by Michael Baxter that appears should be concerned with the lived OPERATIONS STAFF Rosa Del Saz, Chris Keller, Kerry Goleski, Steven in this issue. Professor Baxter’s work, as experience of Americans. Keller, Glenda Castro, Judith Felix well as our decision to publish it, should Ultimately the compatibility ADVERTISING CONTACT be seen as part of a larger conversation question is not an intellectual exercise [email protected]; 212-515-0102 among friends who are discerning how at all, but simply the work of Christian © 2013 America Press, Inc. best to apply Father Murray’s insights to discipleship. “!e things that we love,” the contemporary United States. !ere St. !omas Aquinas says, “tell us what can be no question of ignoring Murray’s we are.” So, whom do we love? Who or work; he developed essential categories what, practically speaking, are the gods and valuable methods for the creative we worship? For what and for whom development of American Catholic are we willing to die? Do we really live thought. At the same time, we should in the hope of heaven and with the consider what aspects of the Murray possibility of hell? To put the question project, as he conceived it, are still differently: What would our country viable. !ose who knew him say that look like after we have rendered “unto Father Murray would have welcomed Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God this conversation; he himself was in the what is God’s”? Cover: John Courtney Murray, S.J. Photo from process of revisiting his earlier thought MATT MALONE, S.J. America’s archives C www.americamagazine.org VOL. 209 NO. 7, WHOLE NO. 5022 SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

ARTICLES 13 MURRAY’S MISTAKE !e political divisions a theologian failed to foresee Michael Baxter

22 A TRINITARIAN LOVE !e sacramentality of adoption Timothy P. O’Malley

C OL UMNS & DE PARTM ENTS

4 Current Comment

13 5 Editorial Whistleblower Ethics 6 Reply All 8 Signs of the Times

11 Washington Front Pursuing the Dream John Carr 25 Vantage Point End of an Illusion Timothy E. O’Connell 39 The Word Rich Man, Poor Man John W. Martens

BOOKS & CU LTURE 25 29 IDEAS !e spiritual side of Jane Austen’s novels OPINION !e Art of War BOOKS !e Dream of the Celt; Beyond War

ON THE WE B A podcast conversation on the book Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint. Plus, an archive of America articles by John Courtney Murray, S.J., and the debut of “(Un)Conventional Wisdom,” a blog on American politics. All at americamagazine.org. 29 CURRENT COMMENT

anonymity, the site too often becomes a way for “trolls” to A Good Idea? harass others blatantly, as in Criado-Perez’s case. How does A slogan from the Vietnam War era, “It became necessary Twitter handle such abuse? to destroy the town to save it,” has come to represent the According to Twitter’s rules and regulations, “Users folly of certain battlefield tactics and even of war itself. may not make direct, specific threats of violence against What looks like a good idea one day later undermines the others.” Someone who is being harassed can file a report war’s long-term strategy. with information like the abuser’s Twitter name, a link On Oct. 6, 2010, Lt. Col. David Flynn, convinced that and a description of the threat. After the Criado-Perez all the villagers of Tarok Kolache, Afghanistan, had left incident, Twitter released a statement condemning sexual but that the Taliban had seeded the houses and grounds harassment and created a “Report Abuse” button. !ese, with explosive traps, made the decision to level the village however, are not enough. Offenders should be subject to completely with rockets and bombs rather than risk arrest and punishment, and Twitter must continue to be injuring the soldiers who would have to clear the traps. vigilant, carefully monitoring the effectiveness of these In 2009 Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal told his troops that improvements and implementing further safeguards as “destroying a home or property jeopardizes the livelihood necessary. of an entire family—and creates more insurgents. We sow the seeds of our own demise.” Nevertheless, the destruction of unoccupied towns and homes was common. !e Cardinal on Colbert United States promised to rebuild the villagers’ homes and Stephen Colbert, who portrays a right-wing blowhard as compensate them—at $10,000 each—for their loss. host of the satirical “Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, Kevin Sieff, of !e Washington Post, reported (8/26) is well known for brandishing his Catholic identity. In 2006, on his recent visit to the scene—now mostly sand, in order to disclose his bias toward religion, he recited the rocks, ruins of 100-year-old dwellings and empty space. entire Nicene Creed on air. In a video on YouTube that has Some U.S.-built concrete buildings in which the former received nearly a quarter million hits, Mr. Colbert does an villagers refused to live had already begun to crack. Naiz epic (and hilariously exhausting) liturgical dance to “King of Mohammad, the district police chief and one of the few Glory.” On his show he has interviewed prominent Catholics to return, said of the residents: “After the bombing, they’ve like Garry Wills, Bill Donohue, Simone Campbell, S.S.S., become pro-Talib. !ey’re the strongest Taliban supporters Andrew Sullivan and, of course, America’s own James in Arghandab.” Colonel Flynn, now in Oklahoma, still Martin, S.J., the show’s “official chaplain.” thinks what he did was a good idea. Some day, he says, he In Mr. Colbert’s rare moments out of character, however, will revisit the village site and join its residents for tea. it is clear that his faith is no joke. A year ago he appeared onstage at Fordham University with Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Father Martin for a serious Twitter Trolling conversation about joy and humor in the spiritual life. At Caroline Criado-Perez, a feminist activist and journalist the event, Mr. Colbert said there are flaws in the church but in the United Kingdom, has recently been making also “great beauty.” headlines—but not for the reasons she had hoped. Back It seemed only a matter of time until Cardinal Dolan in July, Criado-Perez successfully campaigned for the would appear on Mr. Colbert’s stage, which finally inclusion of Jane Austen on the English banknote. !e happened Sept. 3. !e host and guest delivered, exchanging decision, however, has engendered hostile responses from quips and generating roars of laughter throughout. !ere the general public. !e journalist has received hundreds of were moments, however, when the conversation went hateful messages, most of them online, since the Bank of deeper. Cardinal Dolan spoke persuasively about the England’s decision, including threats of rape and death. She role of prayer in electing a new pope and the difference reports that the threats have left her “sick…and horrified.” between judging people and judging actions. Most notable, !reats like these are part of a larger Internet perhaps, is where this conversation took place: a venue, phenomenon known as “trolling,” in which a person outside church walls, where 1.9 million viewers gather writes an online comment designed to elicit an incendiary each night. At World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Pope response from a targeted person or group. Trolling is one Francis implored, “I want the church to be in the streets,” of the many controversial ways to attract attention on not “closed and turned within.” Mr. Colbert and Cardinal Twitter. With its quick, snappy updates and apparent user Dolan are helping us meet that challenge.

4 America September 23, 2013 EDITORIAL Whistleblower Ethics

he cases of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who prefers to be sensitive information to the media. known as Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden An individual must also be aware that Traise acute issues about the role of confidentiality the decision to leak documents could in our society and the responsibilities of individuals who lead to imprisonment. Willingness encounter disturbing information that they consider to accept legal punishment for one’s damaging to national security. In each case, an individual actions is a sign that an act of disobe- chose to divulge classified information even though dience is sincere. confidentiality agreements forbade it. Both Private Manning Prudence. Two principles stand in tension when consid- and Mr. Snowden claim they were acting in the national ering whether to make information public: the public’s right interest. !ey both chose to violate their obligations: Private to know and the right to secrecy. Both of these virtues are im- Manning to the U.S. military, Mr. Snowden to a private portant, yet neither is absolute. Some information is damaging government contractor. !ey have been called both traitors to national security and should be kept secret; at other times and heroes, and the debate about their actions promises to the government’s claims for secrecy are overblown. Weighing continue for some time. and balancing these considerations is an exercise in prudence. One question worth focusing on is the moral legitimacy Prudence also requires that individuals understand their com- of their choices. At a time when more and more government petence to evaluate the material at hand. !is calculus must information is designated as classified, and when employees also take into account the integrity of the person or institu- of all stripes are required to keep information secret, when is tion with which the material is being shared. In the case of the it justifiable for an individual to go public with certain infor- Pentagon Papers, Mr. Ellsberg was working with respected mation? !e question extends beyond debates about national news operations, with their own set of professional standards. security to the actions of financial institutions, for example. Justice and fidelity. Our society could not function if in- Could the financial collapse of 2008 have been averted if more dividuals routinely broke their agreements. Employees of all conscientious bankers had stepped forward? types owe fidelity to their employers, if not to a professional In the 1970s Daniel Ellsberg, an employee at the Rand code of conduct. !is is especially true of members of the mili- Corporation, was publicly castigated for leaking classified in- tary or people in public service. Yet it is these same people who formation about U.S. policy in Vietnam. Today there are whis- are privy to information of national interest. At times, claims tleblowers in all industries. Before their actions are judged trai- of justice may supersede the claims of fidelity. For government torous or heroic, it is worth revisiting certain moral categories. workers, one’s professional duty sometimes includes a legal and !e Catholic moral tradition offers a number of principles that moral duty to report violations of international law, especially can help guide those who face this moral challenge. if the violations are being covered up. Conscience. !e Catholic tradition strongly emphasizes When Mr. Ellsberg copied top-secret documents and the inviolability of conscience. Yet an individual must engage circulated them to reporters, he was a veteran of public ser- in a serious process of formation before taking actions based vice who made a deliberate act based on his gradual disillu- on its demands. “Following an unformed conscience is simply sionment with the Vietnam War. Today, with more private an act of recklessness,” the Jesuit ethicist James F. Keenan told contractors taking over the work of national security, more America. Individuals must consider their role within society individuals have access to classified information. Meanwhile and how it relates to the common good. For Private Manning our government continues to press for secrecy on mundane and Mr. Snowden, their roles required a high level of confiden- as well as sensitive matters. In this environment it is inevita- tiality; so to be legitimate, their decision to release documents ble that there will be more whistleblowers, who for reasons should have been a last resort. At a time when it is increasingly both selfish and noble will divulge all sorts of information to easy to share data digitally, it can be tempting to pass on sen- an increasingly confused public. !e manner in which these sitive information without sufficient deliberation. Employees individuals choose to act, and how our government chooses must consider whether there are other ways to address their to treat them, depends in large measure on the public conver- concerns, like going through official channels before divulging sation we are now having.

September 23, 2013 America 5 REPLY ALL Schüller in Washington, D.C. He third-world countries that now eat spoke at venues in 15 U.S. cities. He cattle and goats, working to improve Safety and Forgiveness was enthusiastically received wherever trash disposal. Re “Children First,” by Deacon Bernard he went, attracting large crowds, who Stop feeding, clothing and lodging Nojadera (8/12): In 1992 a priest listened intently to his message of people free on my tax dollars. Instead I knew and loved was charged with reform and renewal in the Catholic have them do useful work for decent the sexual abuse of two boys. I was Church, a church we all love and want wages. in disbelief. He was a gifted teacher to make better. JOAN HUBER and writer. He was my friend. He was !e group he founded, the Priests’ Allison Park, Pa. found guilty and incarcerated for some Initiative, is now 400 strong in Austria Spread the Word time. When he got out, he told us that and is spreading across Europe. “Revolutionary Mercy,” by William he was, in fact, guilty. Perhaps it might be a good idea to O’Brien (7/15), touched my heart Eight years earlier I had been in discuss in a future article some of his deeply, because it cut to the core of his office on a Friday, late in the after- proposals and the way we can start what is wrong with our society and noon. Two boys were sitting on their a dialogue, which would be a very our world. If only the content of this sleeping bags in the waiting area. !ey healthy thing for our beloved church. article could be shared with the wider told me they were going camping with PATRICIA S. PAONE Manhasset, N.Y. community! Father as soon as he could finish his On the other hand, we hear the work. An alarm bell went off in my Greater Awareness call of Jesus every Sunday, and then head, but it was muted by my admi- “!e Root of Evil,” by William T. too often totally ignore his call during ration and friendship for this man. I Cavanaugh (7/29), profoundly moved the week. Sadly, that is also true of dismissed the thought until 1992. Had me. He gave words to vague ideas and our legal and criminal justice system, I received safe-environment training, I impressions I’ve had, and he helped our political system and even our probably would have heeded the bell. make me aware of cultural norms I ecclesiastical system. We hear, “You Many questions remain to this day. unconsciously have transformed into broke the rules” or “We have to go by What happens long-term to priests alleged truths. I plan to share the article the rules; here’s the penalty. We can’t guilty of abuse? How can we apply our with a Muslim colleague and, hopefully, show you any mercy.” theology of restorative justice? Must continue to grow. !ank you! It’s time to practice what we preach we throw the whole man away because PAT RIZZUTO and what we hear preached to us! of his very serious crime and/or Alexandria, Va. !ank you for this awesome article. illness? Is there not some way in which RICHARD HORWITT he can still use his gifts to help build Useful Work Eldersburg, Md. the reign of God? Re “Worse !an Death” (Reply JEANETTE ARNQUIST All, 7/29): !e Rev. John Koelsch What Is Known? Tucson, Ariz. advocates a 30-year prison sentence Re “Justices Issue Seminal Decisions over death or life imprisonment. A on Marriage, Voting Rights” (Signs Well Received humane, reasonable third way is work of the Times, 7/15) and Archbishop “Upholding Vatican II?” (Signs of under supervision to benefit the world: Salvatore J. Cordileone’s comments the Times, 8/12) covered only the reforesting, clearing roadside trash, on the court’s decision on California press conference of the Rev. Helmut developing dairy industries in arid Proposition 8: I wonder how likely it is that we are seeing in our time what was seen at the time of Galileo STATUS UPDATE trespassing and so on. !en there and Pope Urban VIII. !e bishops are those violations that primarily A response to “Revolutionary Mercy,” by can claim to have deep and thorough affect the poor: having an overgrown William O’Brien (7/15): knowledge of many things, but what yard, having too many people in one can they know of the experience of What would Jesus think of our dwelling, not having an auto inspection any two persons who deeply love unforgiving penal system? !ink of sticker, prostitution. Forgiveness is not and feel committed to each other? the violations connected to being part of the equation for the poor and How would the bishops know if what homeless: “camping,” lying down in marginalized. RACHEL JENNINGS they believe is wrong? public, urinating in public (having GUY THELLIAN no toilet), loitering, panhandling, Visit facebook.com/americamag Cleveland, Ohio

6 America September 23, 2013 Critical Thinking questioning of authority. !is is what Not ‘All Right’ In “Another Diversity” (7/15), John J. we were taught to do. John XXIII was Re “!e ‘Nones’ Are Alright,” by Kaya Conley, S.J., expresses a desire for his our pope, and I had been empowered Oakes (6/17): Am I so lost back in diversity workshops to discuss diverse by Ursuline teachers at the College of the 20th century that I missed alright ideas. He says, “!e celebration and New Rochelle. entering the dictionary of accepted testing of such dueling ideas through As Father Greeley wrote, we had spelling? As I read tens of thousands vigorous debate is the very reason for been told “You are the church” so often of students’ papers from 1952 to 2010, the university’s existence.” I would that we did believe it. I still believe I tried to get it across to generations of concur with that thinking, but it it. At my 50th college reunion, I met young Americans that there is no word seems that such debate will exist in classmates who continue to serve with in the English language called “alright.” the church only if it falls within the the same spirit. While I have had my !ere are two words: “all” and “right.” parameters of what Rome will allow. ups and downs with the institutional Did I miss something? Was For example, some very pertinent church and have been disappointed in the copy editor asleep? Or is it a current issues within the church the lack of equality for women, I have Generation X or millennial joke, in today are women priests, priestly experienced a church that is relevant to keeping with the way the “nones” spell celibacy, homosexuality and bishop the needs of its people and have known these days? Oi vey! accountability. !ese issues are very leaders whom I admire and love. So I MARGERY SMITH, C.S.J. real for the young people of today. cannot give up hope. Saint Paul, Minn. !e Rev. Helmut Schüller, a Rest in peace, Father Greeley. !ere priest in good standing in Vienna, was really nothing to worry about. We Editor’s Note: You guessed it! It’s an al- Austria, spoke about some of those just wish we could have done more. lusion, provided by our Gen-X headline issues on his recent tour through the TERRY DWYER O’LEARY writer, to a 1965 song by !e Who, “!e United States. But not one Catholic New York, N.Y. Kids Are Alright.” bishop would meet with him, and Letters to the editor may be sent to America’s editorial office (address on page 2) or they would not allow him to speak in [email protected]. They should be brief and include the writer’s name, Catholic facilities. So much for open postal address and daytime contact phone number. discussion. !e elephants in the living America will also consider the following for print publication: comments posted room remain. below articles on America’s Web site (americamagazine.org) and posts on Twitter Since when is conversation and public Facebook pages. heretical? As Catholic school students, All correspondence may be edited for length and clarity. we were taught the art of critical thinking as well as proper conscience formation. Are those subjects now WITHOUT GUILE off the agenda? My granddaughter attends Loyola University Maryland, and I hope she is “testing dueling ideas through vigorous debate.” Good luck, Father Conley. ANNE KERRIGAN West Islip, N.Y.

Nothing to Fear Re “A New Breed” (Vantage Point, 7/1): When I read the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley’s article almost 50 years ago as an Extension volunteer in a barren and desolate dust bowl town in southern Colorado, I remember being puzzled. I did not understand why he was worried about graduates in the 1960s who were so concerned with Jason goes to a very progressive school. He’s taking networking, multi-tasking, personal honest, authentic, open discussion and image-building and conversational spin. CARTOON: HARLEY SCHWADRON CARTOON:

September 23, 2013 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

V ATICA N PAROLIN’S PROGRESS. Archbishop Pietro Parolin, will succeed Cardinal Tarcisio Pope Names Vatican Diplomat Bertone, 78. as Secretary of State

ope Francis has appointed Archbishop Pietro Parolin, 58, a longtime official in the Vatican Secretariat of State and nuncio Pto Venezuela since 2009, to be his secretary of state. Although Pope Francis has not been afraid to break with convention during his brief pontificate, the appointment of a seasoned member of the diplomatic corps signals a return to a longstanding tradition. On Oct. 15 Archbishop Parolin will succeed Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, 78, who came to the post in 2006 after serving as archbishop of Genoa, Italy. In the current Vatican organizational framework, the secretary of state is the pope’s closest collaborator, the one who traditionally makes sure that the pope’s policies and priorities became concrete in the work of Vatican offices. !e secretary usually is very close to the pope and meets with him often. He coordinates the work of the entire Roman Curia, overseeing the operation of the Vatican press office and newspaper, coordinating the preparation and publication of papal documents, and supervising the work of Vatican nuncios both in their relations with the Catholic communities in individual countries and with their governments. But in discussions about the reform possibility that the role of the secretary workings of the Vatican, international and the reorganization of the Curia, of state role may change. Because it church affairs and foreign relations— many observers have mentioned the is so broad—covering the internal Cardinal Bertone often was blamed,

C I V I L RIGHT S March on Washington in 1963; their clerical collars and full religious habits Remembering the March on stood out even among the black-and- white photographs of the day. Washington and M.L.K.’s ‘Dream’ To mark this anniversary, the housands walked the National Bishops’ Committee on Cultural current archbishop of Washington, Mall and stood in the shadow Diversity in the Church released a Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, partici- Tof the Lincoln Memorial in a statement marking the anniversary, pated in an interfaith prayer service on pair of events on Aug. 24 and Aug. 28 which said the bishops “rejoice in the Aug. 28 at Washington’s Shiloh Baptist to commemorate the 50th anniversary advances” of the past 50 years, yet “sadly Church. Recalling the words of Dr. of the March on Washington for Jobs acknowledge that much today remains King, Cardinal Wuerl told those gath- and Freedom. In 1963, those at the to be accomplished.” !e bishops called ered, “We have been invited to form one March on Washington were galvanized for “positive action that seeks to end great human family that walks hand by the words of the Rev. Martin Luther poverty, increase jobs, eliminate ra- in hand.” Noting that schools in the King Jr., whose “I Have a Dream” cial and class inequality, ensure voting Archdiocese of Washington were inte- speech electrified a nation and pushed rights, and that provides fair and just grated “before the Supreme Court got it, sometimes against its will, to guar- opportunities for all.” around to it,” Cardinal Wuerl said that antee civil rights to all Americans. !e presence of Catholic priests and an academically excellent and morally !e U.S. Conference of Catholic religious was unmistakable at the first based education will help future gener-

8 America September 23, 2013 !e appointment of then- led to Vietnam’s acceptance of a non- Archbishop Bertone as secretary of resident papal representative to the state in 2006 raised some eyebrows country. !e move is seen as a step because most of the time until then— toward establishing full diplomatic although not always—the position had relations. been held by a prelate who had come While at the Vatican, Archbishop up through the ranks of the Vatican Parolin also represented the Vatican at diplomatic corps. Cardinal Bertone a variety of international conferences had a background as a Salesian pastor, on climate change, human trafficking archbishop and Vatican official dealing and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with doctrinal matters. including leading the Vatican Archbishop Parolin was born Jan. delegation to the Middle East peace 17, 1955, in Schiavon, Italy, and was conference in Annapolis, Md., in 2007. ordained to the priesthood in 1980. At a press conference in 2006, He studied at the Vatican diplomatic Archbishop Parolin said Vatican academy and in 1986 began working nuncios and papal representatives play at Vatican embassies, serving in an important role “in defending the Nigeria and in Mexico before human being” and in strengthening moving to the offices of the Vatican the local churches, especially in Secretariat of State. He was named regions where Christians face poverty, undersecretary for foreign relations discrimination or other hardships. in 2002. !e Vatican’s presence around For years, Archbishop Parolin the world through its nuncios shows led annual Vatican delegations to people that the church and the pope at least by the press, when things went Vietnam to discuss church-state are always near, that Christians no wrong during the pontificate of Pope issues with the country’s Communist matter how small their numbers—are Benedict XVI. government, a process that eventually not alone in the world, he said.

ations realize Dr. King’s dream. !ere was a “Catholic conversation” Patricia said the institutional church Many African-American Catholics on the church, race and the march on has done too little recently to speak up attended the commemorative marches, Aug. 25 at the historically African- about the systems that allow racism to just as they were present a half-centu- American Holy Redeemer Catholic continue to exist. “We need to make a ry earlier. “I never thought about not Church in Washington. Patricia connection between militarism, racism being here,” declared Donna Pasteur, Chappell, S.N.D.deN., executive di- and poverty,” she said. a member of St. Augustine Parish in rector of Pax Christi USA, said Washington, at the march on Aug. 24. at the event that Catholics must STILL MARCHING. A gathering near the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28 !e issues that brought about the first stop being complacent about mil- march, in her view, stubbornly remain itarism, racism and poverty. !is today. “I see the inequality in jobs and drew applause and cries of sup- justice,” Pasteur said.“We just have too port from the audience of nearly many people out of work. We don’t 200 people. Sister Patricia called have that many good jobs.” Even so, the for the church to “go back to situation is improving compared to two Catholic social teaching” because generations ago, she said. “You pray in it clearly lays out responsibility different ways. You pray with your own to speak up in support of educa- presence, too, for jobs and justice,” re- tion, housing and job programs peating the theme of the march in 1963. that would help the poor. Sister

September 23, 2013 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES Plotter in Jesuit Slayings Sentenced NEWSN E W S BRIEFSBRIEF S An ex-Salvadoran colonel accused of helping plot the murder of Jesuit priests Mother Mary Joseph Rogers, M.M., founder of the during the country’s civil conflict in Maryknoll Sisters, will be inducted posthumously into 1989 will spend the next 21 months in UIF
/BUJPOBM
8PNFOT
)BMM
PG
'BNF
PO
0DU

t
Pope a U.S. federal prison, followed by a year Emeritus Benedict XVI emerged briefly from prayerful of supervised release, for immigration- retreat to celebrate Mass in the Vatican on Sept. 1 with related convictions. Inocente Orlando B
HSPVQ
PG
IJT
GPSNFS
EPDUPSBM
TUVEFOUT
t
ɩF
XPSMET
Islamic leaders must hear stories about the persecution Mary Joseph Montano, now 70, pled guilty to three Rogers in 1941 counts of immigration fraud and three of religious minorities in majority Muslim countries counts of perjury and was sentenced so that such incidents are not overlooked, said Mohamed Magid, on Aug. 27 by U.S. District Judge QSFTJEFOU
PG
UIF
*TMBNJD
4PDJFUZ
PG
/PSUI
"NFSJDB
PO
4FQU

t
ɩF
Douglas Woodlock. Twenty years ago number of registered members of the Catholic Church in Norway a United Nations commission said has grown from 42,000 to 110,000 over the past eight years, Bishop Montano participated in a meeting #FSOU
*WBS
&JETWJH
PG
0TMP
UPME
ɩF
/PSEJD
1BHF
t
ɩF
UPQ
QSPTFDVUPS
that planned the assassination of a in the Dominican Republic said Sept. 4 that he plans to investigate priest accused of supporting rebels and claims of sexual abuse allegedly committed by Archbishop Jozef that this led to the killing of six Jesuits, Wesolowski, who was removed as apostolic nuncio to the Dominican their housekeeper and her daughter. 3FQVCMJD
PO
"VH

t
"T
UIF
DBVTF
GPS
TBJOUIPPE
PG
UIF
Rev. Vincent In 2001 Spanish authorities indicted Capodanno, a chaplain during the Vietnam War, gathers momentum, Montano, the former vice minister he was remembered at a memorial Mass on Sept. 4 at the Basilica of the of public security, for his alleged role National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. in the killings. !e United States has not yet responded to the extradition request from Spain. Carolyn Patty banking sectors. !is shift in policy, the lenges facing Arab Christians. !e Blum of the Center for Justice and organizations argue, will offer great- Christian and Muslims leaders aimed Accountability, which is involved in er protection for the poor and middle to find a way to end the sectarian strife seeking his prosecution in Spain, said class in the United States and around threatening their people and countries. the sentence represented “a huge step the world. Signers of the letter include “We must confront extremist trends,” forward to be incarcerating him for Network, the Leadership Conference Archbishop Fouad Twal, Latin patri- anything.” Montano has denied any of Women Religious, the Conference arch of Jerusalem, told the gathering. involvement in killing priests. He of Major Superiors of Men and Jubilee He said it was the duty of religious expressed sorrow for the death of the USA Network. “Deregulation had neg- leaders and their communities to work Jesuits, adding: “!ose individuals, in ative effects on those living in poverty jointly “to get the new generation to ac- spite of their liberal mentality, were everywhere, including in countries with cept the other,” in order to “isolate these helping a lot in the peace process.” G.D.P.’s smaller than some Wall Street trends.” For decades, Arab Christians banks,” said Aldo Caliari, an econo- have been fleeing the Holy Land and mist at the Jesuit-sponsored Center of the rest of the Middle East in large Religious Seek U.S. Concern in Washington, D.C. numbers, mainly because of violence. Financial Reform Within the past two-and-a-half years, Sixty religious denominations and Challenges for some 450,000 Christians are believed communities have called upon to be among the two million people President Obama to appoint a chair Arab Christians who have fled the civil war in Syria, an for the Federal Reserve who will favor Some 70 high-ranking Arab church ancient land of historic churches and stricter regulation of the banking and leaders, together with their Western the country where St. Paul encoun- nonbanking sectors. !e groups favor counterparts and Muslim clerics gath- tered Christ on the road to Damascus. a re-establishment of the separation be- ered in Amman, Jordan, on Sept. 3-4 tween the investment and commercial for a meeting to deal with the chal- From CNS and other sources.

10 America September 23, 2013 WASHINGTON FRONT Pursuing the Dream he end of August brought we may be losing this capacity to bring the silence and stalemate on growing differing images of American religious vision and moral principles to poverty, lack of decent work and wages Tdemocracy. President Obama fundamental national choices. We may and related erosion of family life. !e called on Congress to debate the use be trading a respectful pluralism for progressive agenda seems to begin of military force against Syria, a con- a dominant secularism, which insists with same-sex marriage and resistance sultation Congress had demanded but faith is private and divisive. Powerful to any restraints on abortion. Where did not really want to face. !ey were interests, narrow agendas and left- and is the passion for economic and social unwilling to cut short their month-long right-wing individualism (“my choice, justice of Dr. King? !e right rejects a recess to decide on an act of war. It was my rights”) dominate politics. Where path to citizenship for immigrants and not an inspiring moment. (See my post will we find the ethical principles, vo- insists that cutting food stamps and “Washington and War” on America’s cabulary and values to make sacrific- taxes are roads to opportunity. Where blog In All !ings, 9/2.) On Aug. 28, a es for the common good, is compassionate con- few days earlier, the anniversary of the the next generation or the servatism? March on Washington in 1963 recalled “least of these”? Would Dr. Would Dr. Where are religious another crucial moment when people King’s call be too biblical, King’s call leaders? In fairness, these and politics came together to confront Christian and exclusive to- marches were different. a different question: how to overcome day? be Al Sharpton is not Dr. our nation’s original sin of racism. Washington this Sep- too biblical King. !e 1963 March One advance in the commemo- tember is not filled with did not feature abortion rations was the powerful voices of powerful images but with and and same-sex marriage. women, which were missing in 1963. confusion over responses exclusive Catholic leaders are !e starkest change was our African- to war crimes in Syria and struggling to be heard as American president speaking elo- human disaster in Egypt. today? they persistently work quently of the “great unfinished busi- Immigration reform may for human life and digni- ness” of poverty and inequality. For be slipping into 2014 or ty, economic justice and African-American marchers 50 years oblivion, as the House will not consid- immigration reform, religious freedom ago, the prospect of a black president er legislation approved by the Senate and peace. Parishes, charities, schools named Barack Hussein Obama was because even though it would likely and individual Catholics are pursuing as improbable as that of a Jesuit pope pass, it would do so without the votes the dream every day. But we are too from Argentina named Francis would of most Republicans. Calls to shut often distracted by partisan, ideologi- have been for Catholics in 1963. down government over “Obamacare” cal and ecclesiastical disputes. We need Another difference was diminished mask the huge challenge of imple- to renew the common commitment to religious language and leadership. !e menting the complex law Congress justice that brought so many to march March in 1963 was as much pilgrim- passed. !e employer mandate, for 50 years ago. We do not lack biblical age as rally. !e Rev. Dr. Martin Luther example, has been waived for a year, mandates or Catholic principles but King Jr.’s sermon appealed to America’s but the Health and Human Services urgency and passion. soul and conscience. Seven of 15 speak- mandate will be enforced. Washington Pope Francis’ new leadership and ers were leaders of religious groups turns to 2016. Will Hillary run? Who example offer a way forward. He calls working to make the march a success leads Republicans: the warrior Ted us to get out of ourselves and our eccle- and the Civil Rights Act possible. I fear Cruz or the pragmatist Chris Christie? sial corners and into “the streets.” Pope Martin Luther King’s unfin- Francis also has a dream, “a church JOHN CARR has served as director of justice, ished agenda languishes. !e Voting which is poor and for the poor.” If we peace and human development for the U.S. Rights Act needs repair after the U.S. truly pursue Francis’ dream, it will help Conference of Catholic Bishops and as a residential fellow at the Harvard Institute of Supreme Court struck down a key pro- realize Dr. King’s dream as well. Politics. vision. Both parties need to confront JOHN CARR

September 23, 2013 America 11 12 America September 23, 2013 EUTERS IECHEC R W TONE, ANCY S N PHOTO BY PHOTO/MIKE CNS CNS Murray’s Mistake !e political divisions a theologian failed to foresee BY MICHAEL BAXTER

t has been a greatly providential blessing,” John Courtney Murray, S.J., observed in We Hold !ese Truths, “that the American Republic never put to the Catholic conscience the questions raised, for instance, by the !ird Republic. !ere has never been a schism within the American Catholic community, as there was among Catholics in France, over the right attitude to adopt toward the ‘Iestablished polity.” However much this statement was true in 1960, it is not true today. Now the politics of the American Republic does raise questions of conscience for Catholics. Now a schism has arisen within the Catholic community in the United States over the proper attitude toward the established polity. !e schism is between those Catholics in the United States who identify with liberal politics and those who identify with conservative politics in the secular

MICHAEL BAXTER is a visiting associate professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University in Chicago.

September 23, 2013 America 13 sphere. !e division is pervasive and deep, and it is tearing under a limited government “would have satisfied the first the U.S. Catholic community apart. Whig, St. !omas Aquinas.” !e division between these groups of Catholics is a From the Whigs it was a short step, in Father Murray’s consequence of Catholics’ performing the role Father Murray mind, to the American colonists who forged a new secular assigned to them. He believed that the United States was order. !e United States of America, he noted, was based exceptional among modern states. Unlike France, it was on the principles that society and the state are subordinate founded on principles inherited from Catholic political theory. to a moral law inherent in human nature and originating in !is meant that Catholics could carry out the crucial task of eternal reason—that this nation is under God. !is idea is transforming public discourse with the principles of natural the basis of his “American consensus,” which had at its heart law and returning the nation to the consensus on which it the First Amendment, especially the articles on religion. was founded. Father Murray, a long time editor at America, !ese were “articles of peace,” not articles of faith, set forth was aware that this “American consensus” was crumbling in as a practical agreement among people of different creeds the nation as a whole, but he was confident it would remain to forge a government claiming no competence in matters intact within the U.S. Catholic community. What he did not of religion other than ensuring its free exercise. In Father foresee, however, is how this consensus would fall apart even Murray’s view, the First Amendment was a monumental among American Catholics; how, in attempting to transform achievement, marking the first time the ancient principle of the nation, Catholics would become politically divided and the freedom of the church was codified, put into writing as therefore incapable of performing their pivotal role as, in his the law of the land. Hence he described the founding of the words, “guardians of the American consensus.” Without that United States as “providential.” role, his story of Catholicism and the United States falls apart. On the basis of this partnership of Catholic political thought and the ideas behind the nation’s founding, A Providential Partnership Father Murray insisted that “Catholic participation in the John Courtney Murray’s story begins with Catholicism, American consensus has been full and free, unreserved and which has a tradition of thought “wider and deeper than unembarrassed.” !e lynchpin to this claim was natural any that America has elaborated” and a history “longer law: “the contents of this consensus—the ethical and than the brief centuries that America has lived.” A political principles drawn from the tradition of the natural Catholic understanding of politics, he held, is rooted in the law—approve themselves to the Catholic intelligence and incarnation of Jesus Christ, who established a spiritual order conscience,” he explained. “Where this kind of language is that transcends the temporal order. Accordingly, the church, talked, the Catholic joins the conversation with complete in carrying out its mission in the spiritual order, requires ease. It is his language. !e ideas expressed are native space in the temporal order. !is exigency challenged to his own universe of discourse. Even the accent, being all political power by confining its authority to temporal American, suits his tongue.” For Father Murray, the Catholic affairs. !e Incarnation was thus a divinely inaugurated and American idioms are based on the same language, the interruption in history, whereby the state is limited by the language of natural law. church’s freedom. !is newly established politics, Father But “another idiom now prevails,” Father Murray warned, Murray noted, entailed a dualistic rather than a monistic one that is alien to the natural law tradition and thus alien structure of legal power—articulated by Pope Gelasius I to the American consensus. !is alien idiom was not part in the late fifth century, when he declared, referring to the of the American consensus; on the contrary, it threatened to powers of the church and emperor, “Two there are.” subvert it, and still does, through a host of false philosophies: Father Murray’s scholarship traced this dualistic political voluntarism, naturalism, positivism, pragmatism, theory in the thought of St. Augustine, Pope Gregory materialism, individualism and (worst of all) atheism. Father VII, John of Salisbury, St. !omas Aquinas, St. Robert Murray was confident, however, that Catholics in the United Bellarmine and Pope Leo XIII, to name a few. Taken together, States could refute these erroneous ideas, for they speak the these figures developed the intellectual tradition of what he idiom inherited from their fathers—“both the Fathers of called “Western constitutionalism.” Freedom of the church, the Church and the Fathers of the American Republic.” If separation of powers, consent of the governed, limited other Americans adopt this alien idiom, he speculated, then government—these principles were forged in the Middle history would unfold with an ironic twist: “the guardianship Ages, refined by the Catholic scholastics and appropriated of the original American consensus…would have passed by the English Whigs, giving rise to the principles of modern to the Catholic community, within which the heritage was democracy. !is continuity between medieval and modern elaborated long before America was.” politics was captured by Father Murray in a quip—cribbed !is is where the role Father Murray assigns to American from Lord Acton—that the idea of a free people living Catholicism comes into play. As guardians of the American

14 America September 23, 2013 consensus, Catholics must refute these false philosophies by of docility and others countering that economic policy is injecting natural law reasoning into public debate. Father a matter of prudential judgment in which conscientious Murray himself took up this task, applying natural law Catholics may differ. As the 1960s wore on, similar political principles to the issues of censorship, tax-tuition credit, divisions emerged concerning race relations and the Vietnam foreign policy and war. In advancing these arguments, he War. But none of these divisions dislodged Father Murray’s conceded that natural law principles are under siege in picture of the U.S. Catholic community united “over the right American public discourse. For Father Murray, however, attitude to adopt toward the established polity.” this only made it all the more urgent that Catholics take up !e same has been true of Father Murray’s followers— the task of revitalizing the American consensus. “Murrayites” as some call them. Regarding the harmonious !is task Father Murray left to his successors. But in relation of Catholicism and America, they have assumed performing it, they have become politically divided. He Father Murray got the story right. All the while, the political was confident that a schism over politics would never beset divisions among American Catholics have gotten worse. !e the Catholic community in the United States, but it is well reason they do not see this problem is that they—the priests, underway. prelates, political pundits and public intellectuals invoking Father Murray’s authority—have themselves divided along Deepening Political Divisions liberal and conservative lines in American politics. !ey Father Murray was certainly aware of political divisions within propound conflicting views of America, conflicting views of American Catholicism. He knew that not every Catholic voted natural law and, alas, conflicting views of Father Murray. for John F. Kennedy in 1960 (Murray himself was a registered !is ideological divide among Murrayites crystallized in Republican). In 1961 William F. Buckley wrote in an editorial the early 1980s as the U.S. Catholic bishops prepared their in the National Review that “Mater et Magistra” must strike pastoral letter “!e Challenge of Peace” (1983). In the two- many as a “venture in triviality.” In a later issue, in an unsigned year debate over how to bring natural law principles of just section, appeared the famous quip, “Mater, si; Magistra, no,” war to bear on U.S. nuclear policy, liberal-leaning Murrayites which represented the view that John XXIII’s faulty economics like the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir and David Hollenbach, S.J., carried no doctrinal authority for Catholics. A firestorm of urged a more conciliatory posture toward the Soviet Union controversy ensued, with some decrying Mr. Buckley’s lack (no first strikes, no retaliatory strikes and no use of tactical

September 23, 2013 America 15 nuclear weapons), while Murrayites of a more conservative !is pattern has been insightfully analyzed by the so- political bent, led by Michael Novak, called for a hardline ciologist Robert Wuthnow in !e Restructuring of American stance. !e result was a compromise document that left Religion (1988), who observed that after World War II, both sides in deep disagreement. Christians came to identify less with their own denomina- A similar division emerged as the U.S. Catholic bishops tion and more with those of other denominations who share prepared yet another pastoral, “Economic Justice for All” their political and cultural concerns. Baptists with liber- (1986). Here, too, some Murrayites called for economic al politics, for example, formed alliances with Methodists, policies directly supporting the poor and working classes, Presbyterians and Episcopalians who shared the same pol- while other Murrayites called for greater freedom for itics; and political conservatives made common cause with markets to operate without governmental regulation. Both each other in the same way. In tracking these trends, Professor sides called upon Father Murray to show how they were Wuthnow noted the rise of “special purpose groups,” reli- carrying out his agenda. gious groups organized to Ironically, both were right, promote a particular cause inasmuch as both sought Murray’s Catholic version of or national agenda. !e to infuse the national unintended consequence policy debate with natural American exceptionalism blinded is that these groups, while law principles, differing him to the danger of seeking to reshape nation- only on how to apply them al politics, were reshaped to specific issues. !eir Catholics’ being absorbed by the mechanisms they common allegiance to employed, restructured by Father Murray, however, into U.S. political culture. the political culture they did not stop them from tried to transform. As lobbying bishops for government bureaucracies their competing sides, generating articles and books expanded, religious bureaucracies grew accordingly, disen- listing the errors of their opponents and in some instances gaging from their denominational bases. In the ’60s reli- crafting alternative pastoral letters. !ey held competing gious groups with liberal politics arose, like the Southern interpretations of natural law and competing prescriptions Christian Leadership Conference and Clergy and Laity of what the nation needed. Concerned About the War in Vietnam. In the ’70s and ’80s !ese divisions continued in the ’90s and into the new religious groups with conservative politics countered with century. !e political battles among Catholics were fought their own organizations, most notably the Moral Majority. in other arenas: in Catholic periodicals like Commonweal Each group set out to “Christianize America” in its own par- and First !ings, both claiming Father Murray as mentor ticular way, but this agenda divided them along politically and guide; in Catholic-led organizations like Network, the partisan lines. “social justice lobby,” and the Ethics & Public Policy Center, Catholics in the United States are not central to both dedicated to carrying out Father Murray’s agenda Wuthnow’s account (he discusses them only briefly), but of policy reform; and of course in Catholic or Catholic- Catholic journals, organizations and political-action efforts inspired political action groups. !e scenario is familiar. certainly fit his description. !e moral, philosophical and Catholics who identify with liberal secular politics call theological differences between these groups are complex for a moderate foreign policy, an end to the death penalty, and important, and I do not mean to downplay them. But the advancing the rights of women, minorities and the poor overall pattern of conflict is also important and must be not- and protecting the environment. Catholics who identify ed because it is getting deeper and shows no sign of abating. with conservative secular politics call for an end to abortion, Just watch. With campaign planning for the national elec- euthanasia, embryo-destructive research and other policies tions in 2016 already underway, we are surely in for another undermining “family values.” !inkers on both sides of the round of dramatic Catholic subplots: another distribution of partisan divide invoke the authority of Father Murray in the U.S. bishops’ “Faithful Citizenship,” more voting guides support of their politics. As national election cycles have about “non-negotiable issues” for “serious Catholics,” more lengthened, as midterm elections have become more decisive partisan-driven manifestos (the “Manhattan Declaration,” and as Catholics (who comprise one fifth of the voting “On All Our Shoulders”), the ritual scrutiny of Catholic electorate) have become more crucial in the coveted swing candidates (Mass attendance? pro-life record? social jus- states, these divisions have only worsened. It has become tice?) and probably another installment of Nuns on the Bus. a rule of thumb that as the nation at large becomes more It would be unfair to lay these familiar spectacles at politically polarized, so do American Catholics. the feet of Father Murray. But it is fair to say that they are

16 America September 23, 2013 generated from the national policy agenda that he urged century, Father Murray chipped away, often in America, at Catholics to pursue. !e problem is that in setting out to this official teaching, historicizing it, pointing out its out- transform politics in the United States, Catholics have been moded reasoning and positing scholastic distinctions to transformed by it. Like mainline Protestants, they have show how the church can embrace religious freedom without succumbed to the molding pressures of state-sponsored forfeiting its claim to teach the truths of revelation as the one, bureaucratic power—not the overt and direct power of true church. At length, his efforts were vindicated. Called to Fascism and Communism or the militant secularism of Rome as an expert during the Second Vatican Council, he European democracy (as in France), but the more subtle lobbied for revising the official teaching and helped write the workings of indirect power, which domesticates any and all “Declaration on Religious Freedom” (1965). By all accounts, subordinate groups by dissolving their ability to resist the he succeeded in dispelling from Catholic teaching the long- authority of the state and by co-opting the well-intentioned standing fantasy of resurrecting the confessional state. efforts of good people, good Catholics, into conforming to At the same time, Father Murray cleared the way for the polarized political culture of the nation. Catholics in this country to make their mark on American !e lesson to be learned is this: those who set out to politics by demonstrating—once and for all, it must have manage the modern state get managed by the modern state. seemed—that there is no conflict between being American In heeding this lesson, Father Murray’s story of Catholicism and being Catholic. !is is the part of the story that must and America will have to be revised. be revised, for Father Murray failed to foresee—perhaps his success prevented him from foreseeing—the onset of “a Genuine Political Community schism within the American Catholic community…over the At the time of his death in 1967, John Courtney Murray right attitude to adopt toward the established polity.” His was hailed as American Catholicism’s leading intellectual Catholic version of American exceptionalism blinded him light—with good reason. At the outset of his career in the to the danger of Catholics’ being absorbed into U.S. political early 1940s, church teaching on politics held that the norm culture, overtaken by its polarizing dynamics, divided is the “confessional state,” which gives public support to “true into partisan camps, dissolved into just another religious religion” and reserves the right to prohibit false religion on denomination to be managed by political elites, whether the grounds that error has no rights. Church-state separation liberal or conservative. In other words, Father Murray did was regarded as an evil to be tolerated at best. For a quarter not foresee the danger of the U.S. Catholic community

September 23, 2013 America 17 ceasing to be a united ecclesial body, ceasing to be (as we in America, disaffected with both liberal and conservative used to say) “the church.” ideologies, they have turned from state-centered, partisan Looking back almost a half century later, this danger politics and devoted themselves instead to the political should be more apparent to us. Father Murray got the story life of local communities wherein the common good may of American Catholics wrong. !e United States is not be embodied: unions, worker co-ops and neighborhood unique among modern states. It is not providentially blessed organizations; agrarian projects and charter schools; in the way he supposed. But what of the natural law tradition? ecclesial communities of prayer, friendship and works of What does eternal reason enjoin the American Catholic mercy; houses of hospitality for the poor, unemployed, community to undertake? elderly, disabled, unwed mothers and immigrant families. For several decades Alasdair MacIntyre has been arguing !e significance of these efforts was acknowledged by the on !omistic-Aristotelian grounds—the same grounds on U.S. Catholic bishops when they unanimously endorsed which Father Murray argued—that the natural law does the cause of the canonization of Dorothy Day. For almost not serve the modern state but subverts five decades Day urged Catholics to turn it, that the modern state must be resisted aside from the impersonal, bureaucratic because it is corrosive to the practices and ON THE WEB and often violent politics of the nation- An archive of articles by virtues necessary for genuine political John Courtney Murray, S.J. state in favor of constructing genuine community. Only small-scale, practice- americamagazine.org/vantagepoint political communities where it is based communities, MacIntyre argues, possible to take personal responsibility can support the kind of practical reasoning for the care of others. Perhaps now aimed at achieving the common good. Only a polis, as Catholics are ready to absorb Day’s antistatist, personalist envisioned by Aristotle and re-envisioned by Aquinas, can politics, as when she proclaimed in an editorial in !e sustain the moral and intellectual life through these dark Catholic Worker newspaper, denouncing the cold war and and difficult times. universal military conscription, “We Are Un-American: Providentially, this task of constructing local forms of We Are Catholics.” Perhaps providence will bless us community has been taken up by increasing numbers of with a revolution inspired by another—doubtless very Catholics. Troubled by a sense of political homelessness different—St. Francis. A

COMING OCT. 28 AMERICA Presents A Special Issue: Women in the Life of the Church Articles about ō:RPHQDQG the Vatican ō5HOLJLRXV/LIH ō0RWKHUKRRG ō0LQLVWU\ DQGPRUH

18 America September 23, 2013

Nourish Your Soul, Body and Heart Attend a retreat. Encourage a loved one to participate in a retreat. Give a donation to a retreat house.

BETHANY RETREAT HOUSE 2202 Lituanica Avenue, East Chicago, IN 46312 Phone: (219) 398-5047; Fax: (219) 398-9329 E-mail: [email protected]; www.bethanyretreathouse.org

A ministry of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, Bethany offers private and individually directed silent retreats, including dreamwork and 30-day Ignatian exercises, year round in a prayerful home setting. Bethany’s simple beauty, individual retreat scheduling and wholesome food provide a sacred environment and resources for prayer. Minimal daily schedule lets you follow your inner rhythms. Easy access to Chicago airports; 70 miles from Notre Dame.

JESUIT RETREAT HOUSE ON LAKE WINNEBAGO Trish Neuman, Admin./Registration 4800 Fahrnwald Road, Oshkosh, WI 54902 Phone: (920) 231-9060; Fax: (920) 231-9094 E-mail: offi[email protected]

J.R.H. fosters spiritual enrichment rooted in the Gospels, the Catholic tradition and the spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola. Men, women and couples of all faiths are welcome. Silent preached retreats are offered September through May from !ursday evening to Sunday noon. Twelve-step recovery retreats are also offered. Silent directed retreats offered June through August encourage an in-depth, five-day individual experience with God. Facility is handicapped accessible. Rooms are private, with a limited number of handicapped/special needs rooms with private bath. Online registration available 24/7 at www.jesuitretreathouse.org .Opening our new 60-room residential wing in fall/winter 2014, with private baths in every room!

LINWOOD SPIRITUAL CENTER 50 Linwood Road, Rhinebeck, NY 12572-2504 Phone: (845) 876-4178 Web site: www.linwoodspiritualctr.org

Linwood’s spacious hills overlook the majestic Hudson River in historic Rhinebeck. Current Programs: Spiritual Spa Day for Women, Sept.25; By Women/For Women, Elizabeth Anne DiPippo, SU, Oct 2; Day on Grieving and Loss, Jane Claffy, MSN, Oct. 3; Ignatian Directed Retreats, Oct. 11-18, Feb. 17-24; Professional Day for Spiritual Directors: Doorways into Prayer, Regina Bechtle, SC and Alice Feeley, RDC, Nov. 6; Advent Retreat, Dec 6-8; At the Name of Jesus, Michael O’Neill McGrath, Jan. 31- Feb 2. Visit our website or call for a listing of programs including private or directed retreats.

LOYOLA HOUSE RETREAT & TRAINING CENTRE Ignatius Jesuit Centre 5420 Highway 6 North, Guelph, ON N1H 6J2 Canada Phone: (519) 824-1250 ext 266 E-mail: [email protected]; www.loyolahouse.com; www.ignatiusguelph.ca

With an international reputation for excellence, Loyola House offers A Place of Peace for silent retreats, grounded in the spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola. We provide a welcoming space for individual and communal discernment, education,

20 America September 23, 2013 nurturing a deeper spirituality in people, leading to inner freedom. Programs include individual and directed retreats of various lengths, guided retreats, the 40-day Spiritual Exercises Institute, as well as training programs in spiritual direction and retreat ministry. We also host retreats, conferences and meetings. Our location is 45 minutes from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

MARIANDALE RETREAT AND CONFERENCE CENTER 299 North Highland Avenue, Ossining, NY 10562 Phone: (914) 941-4455 Web site: www.mariandale.org

Where the river flows, a spirit soars. Come to Mariandale, 30 miles north of New York City, to be renewed in body, mind and spirit. A sponsored ministry of the Dominican Sisters of Hope, Mariandale offers silent, guided and directed retreats on 55 beautiful acres overlooking the Hudson River. !e center has private guest rooms, dining room, chapel, labyrinth and outdoor pool. Come and soar!

REDEMPTORIST RENEWAL CENTER 7101 W. Picture Rocks Road, Tucson, AZ 85743 Toll free: (866) 737-5751; Phone: (520) 744-3400 E-mail: offi[email protected]; www.desertrenewal.org

For nearly 50 years, the Redemptorist Renewal Center has been a harmonious sanctuary of contemplative prayer, study and practice. !e Center is a Catholic retreat center; however, we welcome all denominations that seek to nourish and to sustain spiritual growth of their members. !e Center is located in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains and is available for group retreats, meetings and seminars. Private retreats, in which the individual person directs his/her retreat experience, are also available throughout the year. Contact us for various renewal programs.

SAN DAMIANO RETREAT CENTER 710 Highland Drive Danville, CA 94526 Phone: (925) 837-9141 ext. 306 E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]; Web site:www.sandamiano.org

Located 35 miles east of San Francisco, we are a premier location for those seeking retreat and vacation time in the Bay Area of California. San Damiano is a Franciscan retreat that offers a peaceful environment for rest and renewal. Private retreats, with or without spiritual direction, are available. We have meeting and retreat space mid-week for religious, nonprofit and secular groups. Upcoming retreats: five-day silent with Dan Manger, O.S.B.Cam., July 28-Aug. 2; Silent Contemplative with Cyprian Consiglio, O.S.B.Cam., Aug. 2-4.

SPIRITUAL MINISTRY CENTER 4822 Del Mar Avenue, San Diego, CA 92107 Phone (619) 224-9444; Fax (619) 224-1082 E-mail: [email protected]; www.spiritmin.org

Religious of the Sacred Heart offer year-round directed and private retreats, including the 30-day Spiritual Exercises and self-directed sabbaticals. We are one and one-half blocks from the ocean in comfortable townhouses with large private rooms and baths. Our silent house in naturally beautiful environs invites relaxation and prayer.

To advertise your retreat house, call America Press at (212) 515-0102.

September 23, 2013 America 21 A Trinitarian Love !e sacramentality of adoption BY TIMOTHY P. O’MALLEY

ne of the radical insights of the Second Vatican about the salvific nature of the married vocation when Council is the salvific character of married my wife and I adopted a newborn. If indeed marriage is life. Marriage is not a secondary vocation for sacramental, drawing all of humanity to participate in the those who are not strong enough to embrace self-gift of Christ to the church, then perhaps the process Ocelibacy, but instead offers an icon of love that the entire of adoption reveals something unique about the Christian church is called to contemplate. !e married couple’s life as a whole. Adoption is a sacramental sign that gives us self-gift, embodied in the secular activities proper to the unique insights into the wondrous design of love that God married life, offers us a glimpse of what God’s own love has for all humanity. is. Further, the married couple is divinized, taken up into God’s own life as they come to embody the same self-giving The Stigma of Adoption love manifested by Christ to the church. As one of the Before attending to the sacramentality of adoption, one prefaces for the eucharistic prayer for the rite of marriage needs to recognize that within U.S. culture there remains an dares to say, “In the union of husband and wife you give a unexamined, albeit significantly decreased stigma regarding sign of Christ’s loving gift of grace, so that the sacrament adoption. On sitcoms, older siblings continue to taunt their we celebrate might draw us back more deeply into the younger brothers and sisters, telling them that they are wondrous design of your love.” !e vocation of marriage adopted. When my wife and I decided to adopt, we were draws the entire church to participate in the logic of love surprised to learn from our social worker that many birth manifested on the cross. mothers cease considering adoption as an option when As a sacramental theologian, I have often considered their parents express disgust at the possibility that another how remarkable it is that something as ordinary as marriage couple would raise the child. could become a sign of God’s own salvific plan of love. Catholicism, a faith that is wholeheartedly pro-life, has My domestic commitment to sometimes making the bed often done too little to counteract this stigma. For years EAN GLADWELL S in the morning, to sharing meals with my wife, of taking I have attended a pro-life dinner in which the presenters / long walks in the summer, is necessary for the narrative of have addressed the need for prayer and political activism M salvation to continue to unfold in the church. I thought (often using violent rhetoric) but have remained silent regarding the promotion of adoption within the various TIMOTHY P. O’MALLEY is the director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, within the Institute for Church Life, at the University of Notre Dame faith communities of our area. Even the Catechism of the

in South Bend, Ind. Catholic Church, which speaks with poetic beauty regarding SHUTTERSTOCK.CO ART:

22 America September 23, 2013 procreation and parenthood, treats adoption as a last option she would need to; she is not healthy enough (physically for infertile couples to care for abandoned children. Such or psychologically) to carry out her role as mother. But language implies that mothers who choose to give up their at the heart of adoption, the birth mother gives her child children for adoption are performing an act of parental away as an act of love. She comes to recognize something negligence rather than witnessing to the very logic of self- that some parents never learn. Parenthood is not about gift at the heart of the church. Yet adoption is not a half-way the parent, the manner in which one’s identity or status is house between the ideal form of parenthood and infertility. affirmed by having a child. Instead, parenthood is about What eventually drew us to use Lutheran Social Services love, about caring for those most in need. And the mother as our adoption agency who gives up her child for was their recognition adoption becomes the icon that adopting a child Adoption clari!es something that of authentic parenthood. was not a last resort for She does not claim the infertile couples and is true for all Christian parenthood: child as her own. She may not a careless act by a never hear her child call her birth mother who really to have a child is always to mom. But fatherhood and should raise her own motherhood are not about child. For this agency, participate in a divine gift. such titles. !ey are about the process of adopting compassion, mercy, the gift is an act of human love, of self that a parent offers to of self-gift, between strangers who are bonded together a child. In the birth mother’s decision to put her child up for in the mystery of divine love for the very same child. And adoption, the purest form of parenthood is on display—a in this mutual self-gift, a child does not simply come into parenthood of total, self-giving love. physical existence, but instead dwells in a family of love that stretches biological bounds. The Adopting Couple !us, essential to the Christian imagination is a treatment !ose couples who have children biologically often have of adoption that gives equal weight to the manner in which close to nine months to prepare their homes and hearts for the birth mother, the adopting couple and the infant present the arrival of a child. In the case of a couple who adopts to us an icon of humanity taken up into divine life. an infant, the time may be closer to three weeks. !ere is a kind of precariousness to adopting a child, a fear that loving The Birth Mother your potential son or daughter too early will lead only to !ough the culture of celebrity has reduced pregnancy disappointment if the adoption does not go through. !e to a status symbol, to watching for the “baby bump,” adopting couple exists in a space of the doubtful, of the pregnancy should in fact elicit contemplative wonder among unknown, of the unclarified. Yet as adopting couples can Christians. !ink about how one’s entire body becomes the attest, when you hold the child to be adopted in your arms source of life for a child. Morning sickness is not merely an at the hospital, the only response you can give is the entirety illness to be treated but a visible sign that the mother now of yourself. One no longer cares about the possibility of shares every aspect of her being with another person. As a wounded heart, of a love that might be too temporary. the body changes and adjusts in preparation for a child, as Adoption is a gift for the couple who welcome the child into the mother looks at 3-D ultrasounds, she comes to imagine their home. Where before there was no child, no imminent the infant who is intimately a part of her. What will she be plans for the transformation of every aspect of your life, now like, the mother asks herself? Are the frequent movements, there is my son, my daughter. the womb aerobics, a sign of a child whose activity will be Adoption clarifies something that is true for all Christian ceaseless? parenthood: to have a child is always to participate in a divine Now imagine nine months of dwelling with these gift. While the child may share your genetic material, he or questions, with the handing over of one’s body to the growth she is never fully yours, never a “being” that you earned. !e of a child, only to give birth one afternoon and to give this love that you bestow upon a child is always precarious. A child to another couple—a couple who will learn to call your parent, whether biological or adopting, bestows love upon son or daughter theirs. Missing from Catholic reflections on a child not because of the promise that one day he or she adoption is adequate attention to the virtues of the birth will return such love in equal measure nor because the child mother. !e reasons a birth mother might have for giving will one day fulfill the hopes and dreams that we as parents up her child for adoption are myriad: she may be too young have. Such precarious love opens us up to the extraordinary to raise a child; she cannot financially care for the infant as suffering we will come to know as we watch our son or

September 23, 2013 America 23 daughter discover the bitterness of disappointment. When I look at my son, I often wonder how he will react Parenthood encourages the parent to love gratuitously, even when he learns that he is adopted. What sort of relationship in the midst of the stinginess of a world that is afraid of love might he have with his birth mother and possibly his like this. siblings? What is my hope for this conversation? When In the hospital, as I looked into the face of my son, I I imagine telling our son, I cannot help but hope that he could not help but be overwhelmed by gratitude—for the perceives the gift of love that has infused his existence from birth mother, for the nurses who lovingly made us name the very first moment. In contemporary theology, procreation our child even when we were afraid to fall too deeply in is often imagined as Trinitarian. !e self-gift of the father love before we knew if the adoption would go through. My and the mother, expressed sexually, results in the gift of own capacity for gratitude, for self-gift, increases each day a child. Likewise, my son only exists as he does right now I look into the increasingly widening eyes of my son and because of a Trinitarian love that marks his adopted life: the remember again the extraordinary gift he is. !e manner in self-giving love of his birth mother, who chose us to raise her which adopting a son has taught me gratitude beyond what son, as an act of supreme love; our love for him bestowed I thought imaginable has slowly enabled me to recognize precariously, recklessly and generously—without thought to the call to bestow precarious love like this upon all in my the fact that we do not share biological material (as if this life—my wife, my mother and father and were the primary mark of parenthood to brother, my students. Christian love, total ON THE WEB begin with). In fact, he will most likely self-gift, is always precarious. )LQGUHVRXUFHVRQ learn a truth early on, one that all children DGRSWLRQ americamagazine.org eventually need to discover. Our parents do The Adopted Child not love us because they have to, because Less than 20 years ago, it was considered they are obliged by biological necessity and anathema to tell a child of his or her status as “adopted.” legal constraints. !ey love us because they delight in our Adopted children who come to know of their identity existence, because each day they choose self-gift above self- late in life populate film and television with their often cultivation. And they are only part of a broader ecology of unsuccessful quests to meet their biological father and love that made our existence possible in the first place—an mother. Today, most adoption agencies encourage not ecology that includes grandparents and nurses and cousins simply that one tell the child early in his or her life, but also and godparents and teachers and on and on. that one consider an open adoption—including the birth Every human being, in fact, is adopted (or at least should mother or father in some way in the child’s life. My wife be) into an ecology of such love. Adoption is a sign for all and I are planning to tell our son as soon as possible, and Christians that a person’s fundamental identity is as one who we remain open to the involvement of the birth mother, if has received love: the love of God generously and precariously she would like that. poured out upon creation, the love of God manifested in Christ, who reveals to us that our humanity was made for total self-gift. !ose relationships with teachers, friends and parents, which immerse us into the logic of this sort of love, reveal to us that we are indeed beloved. A Catholic approach to adoption will cease treating adoption as the last resort for infertile couples and the abandonment of children by negligent mothers, and begin to imagine adoption as a sacramental icon manifesting to the entire world the surprising and transforming gift of divine love—a love not connected simply to biology, to the realm of expectations and roles, but a love that interrupts those limitations we put on the possibility of love. Adoption is sacramental, revealing to humanity the possibility of divine love. A

24 America September 23, 2013 VANTAGE POINT 1973 End of an Illusion

BY TIMOTHY E. O’CONNELL

rought up short by the U.S. Fourteenth Amendment. ...!is opin- astonishing. Supreme Court’s abortion de- ion of the Court fails to protect the What may be even more astonish- Bcision, the Catholic community most basic human right—the right to ing is that the most traditional brand realizes now that God and country do life. !erefore, we reject this decision of Catholic theology stands ready to not always stand together. !e myth of the Court, because, as John XXIII provide the theoretical justification for gone, the government may have lost says: ‘if any government does not ac- just such a radical statement. To log- one of its most stable and politically knowledge the rights of man or vio- ically ground the bishops’ action one beneficial allies. lates them...its orders completely lack need not turn to the popular but sus- It’s a cliché of Catholic theology that juridical force.’” pect theologians of the left. One need old concepts, irrelevant and near-for- And as if this were not strong not depend on the newest twist in the gotten, have a way of reasserting their enough, the bishops continue with “theology of liberation.” No, when the importance at unexpected times. A cli- even more emphatic statements: “We deed was done, it was good old scho- ché, a truism somehow more common find that this majority opinion of the lastic theology that explained its cor- than true, even a bit self-righteous. Court is wrong.... Whenever a conflict rectness. If the bishops’ statement was, Such statements seem out of place arises between the in an era of creative, forward-looking law of God and any theological vision. Or so we thought. human law, we are For the Supreme Court decision held to follow God’s voiding the anti-abortion laws of law.... No one is Texas and Georgia has, in spite of it- obliged to obey any self, proved the cliché quite true. !e civil law that may re- Court’s judgment has managed to quire abortion.” transform one of the hoariest, most ir- Perhaps it is relevant notions of traditional Catholic only because the is- theology into a star of contemporary sue here is abortion, but it seems in- indeed, radical, it was an exercise of the thought. And in the process, I suggest, credible that the radical tone of these “radical right.” it has also changed the status quo of declarations of the bishops has been I believe that what the bishops have the American Catholic Church in a so blithely overlooked. When before done is radical. But to appreciate that fundamental way. has the hierarchy had the audacity to fact, we must first make a quick survey On February 13, 1973, the stand eyeball to eyeball with the high- of the theology that they employed. A Administrative Committee of the est court in the land and, with not the little history, as usual, will go a long National Conference of Catholic slightest dissimulation, announce: “No way toward illuminating our current Bishops issued a pastoral message re- way”? When before has the leadership state of affairs. Scholastic theology, at sponding to the Supreme Court. !e of the American Church proclaimed: least since the 12th century, has drawn committee declared that “the Supreme “We shall not serve?” a distinction between “natural law” Court...has stated that the unborn It all sounds like some children’s and “positive law.” !e natural law, of child is not a person in the terms of the story of a far-off land: a beleaguered course, is the sum total of those obliga- Church fighting for its life against a tions which arise from the very being TIMOTHY E. O’CONNELL, a professor of ethics hostile government. But it isn’t. !e of man. !e natural law requires no at Loyola University Chicago, teaches in the Quinlan School of Business and the Institute of scene is not Moscow or Rio de Janeiro legislation: it depends upon no con-

Pastoral Studies.This article originally appeared or Johannesburg; it’s Washington. And sensus. Just because man is who he is, FILE PHOTO, 1973 in America on June 2, 1973. that is what makes the whole affair so murder is wrong; that’s all there is to it. CNS

September 23, 2013 America 25 And because man always is who he is, could quickly develop. So the question Europe from a cacophony of political there are no exceptions to the natural persisted: how should one decide if a mutations into a stable civil structure. law, no moments when it doesn’t apply, positive law obliges? But it was not a perfect answer. no situations in which it doesn’t bind. One school argued that the best And that became painfully clear after Not so with positive law. Such laws way to decide was to consider the le- the Second World War. For this con- don’t simply exist; rather they are es- gitimacy of the ruling government. If ception of positive law was cited by tablished by some “positive” act of an authority came to power justly, if many leading Germans as justification legislation. !ey are “placed” (Latin: it was duly authorized to care for the for their participation in Nazi policies. positae) in existence. !e category of common good, then it had the right to After all, the !ird Reich was a duly positive law was used in the traditional concretize the natural law for the soci- established government; it was even theology to include all those organiza- ety. Such a government had the right democratically elected. It is not the tional dictates of society that are alto- to establish positive laws and to bind citizen’s place to evaluate the particu- gether proper, perfectly appropriate, the consciences of the citizenry with lar decisions of his government. It is but not utterly inevitable. Positive laws its decisions. And those decisions, as a his place to obey. And in any case, to serve the natural law, concret- object would be tantamount izing it for a particular group. to revolution, and revolution Positive laws organize society One does not arbitrarily support is clearly immoral. in such a way that it harmo- !us, another understand- nizes with the natural law. the decisions of government ing of positive law has, partic- So, to use a standard exam- simply because they are ularly in the last twenty years, ple, traffic regulations are part become popular. In its essen- of the positive law. Natural legitimately proclaimed. tials it is also an old theory. law makes clear that automo- It can be traced, as a matter bile drivers must take care not of fact, all the way back to to kill one another on the road. !e consequence, must be presumed to be Aquinas. But its popularity is relative- state comes along and, by an exercise correct. ly recent. of positive law, facilitates observance Not a bad answer to our question. According to this theory, one does of the natural law: the state declares !is response guaranteed some social not arbitrarily support the decisions that we shall all drive on the right side stability. In an era when political units of government simply because they are of the street. Or again, natural law were rising and falling with discon- legitimately proclaimed. Rather, one dictates that man should worship his certing frequency, such a theory gave a looks to the intrinsic function of pos- Creator. !e Church, by means of pos- theological assist to the status quo by itive law. Such laws are to explicitate itive law, declares that we shall do it on granting the benefit of the doubt to the the natural law; they are actually to Sunday. actually existing government. Viewed serve the true common good of society. Positive law, then, serves the natu- this way, positive law made revolution, To the extent that laws do this, they ral law, it assists men in their attempts as a morally permissible option, almost are binding; to the extent that they do to be faithful to the demands of their unthinkable. A government would not, they are not binding. own being. But there is another side to have to be patently and continually !e citizen, consequently, does this. Namely, to the extent that posi- at odds with the common good be- not blindly obey the laws of his land. tive law fails to truly serve the natural fore one could justly refuse to obey its Rather, he evaluates the decisions of law, it is invalid and totally without dictates. Ordinarily, the citizen’s one his government, he measures them binding force. clear obligation is to cooperate with against the needs of the common good. !at much is clear. !e problem the development of the state as it now And if this individual responsibility comes when we try to apply this the- exists—without asking impertinent runs the risk of social fragmentation, ory, when we try to decide if a partic- questions. that’s just too bad. For there is simply ular positive law really serves the natu- !is, I say, was not a bad answer no alternative to personal judgment in ral law. And for centuries theologians to our question. For, among other the arena of social and political life. struggled with the question of how that things, it could be argued that such an Interestingly, this latter conception decision should be made. !ere are ob- approach to positive law played a sig- was sometimes seen as more rigorous, vious dangers present if every man is nificant role in the emergence of the not less, than the first. For under the left to his own devices (and whims?) strong, relatively permanent states we “legitimacy” theory, if a government in making that decision. Social chaos know today. Such a view helped turn came to power unjustly (by revolution,

26 America September 23, 2013 for instance) one was obliged to noth- patriotic obedience, if not exactly the many people disagreed with its con- ing that it legislated. It was an illegiti- same thing, were at least complemen- clusions. For that sort of disagreement mate ruler, it did not stand in the place tary virtues. there always has been and always will of God as the ruler of civil society, and Prominent Catholic spokesmen be room. No, the fascinating thing is thus it had no right to the citizen’s echoed the toast: “My country, right or that most Catholics, including many obedience. Under the “functionalist” wrong.” Many Catholics shouted their bishops, simply did not comprehend theory, however, even an illegitimate support. Some citizens, to be sure, ex- the line of argumentation. If Catholics government should be obeyed if its egeted the oft-quoted statement and had rejected the protestors’ comparison laws as a matter of fact functioned in found in their exegesis grounds for of Nixon and Hitler as hyperbolic, that the service of the common good. agreement. !ere is, after all, a certain would have been understandable and !us, for example, the former view sort of loyalty and affection that one open to honest debate. But many re- would hold that Cubans have no ob- should feel for one’s native land not jected it on the grounds that no analo- ligation to obey Castro’s government. only when it is right but also in the sad gy was possible, or could be possible, at !e latter view would hold that in moments when it is wrong. all. And that’s quite a different matter. those things that benefit the true com- But whether or not it was the !at our government could be mon good of man, Cuban citizens do original meaning, many also took the guilty of immorality seemed such an have such an obligation. statement another way. Rightness and outrageous assertion that an individu- In a somewhat paradoxical way, wrongness are small details of polit- al citizen should take it upon himself then, the functionalist view (the term ical life. !is country, my country, is to evaluate and pass judgment upon comes from theologian Josef Fuchs, a godly country. In matters of funda- the decisions of Washington seemed S.J.) justifies both the Nuremberg tri- mental importance it always has been so presumptuous as to be utterly un- als and recent papal efforts to achieve and always will be right. We live in a thinkable. !e ancient details of posi- detente with the Communist bloc. For nation rooted in the Declaration of tive law theology simply didn’t pertain in both cases it looks, not to how we Independence, the Constitution and in our situation. A good Catholic knew got to the present, but rather to what the Bill of Rights. We live in a land that that our government was the servant of the common good actually requires in is, from its very foundation, attuned to our God, and that’s all there was to it. the real here and now. the natural law and the common good. All this, however, was before abor- !is is the theory of positive law. And praise the Lord for this! tion. All this was in our days of civil And as I mentioned in the beginning, !en came the conscientious objec- innocence. And those days, I suggest, it has long been viewed as an anti- tors. !e land gave birth to war pro- are no more. Positive law does have per- quarian nicety of Catholic theology. testers, peaceniks and other unsavory tinence to our time and our place. Our Seminarians and college students have types. And beyond their inflammatory government is able to oppose itself to the long rebelled against its picayune con- rhetoric, these peo- natural law and the cerns. To them, the fact that it habitu- ple enunciated an ON THE WEB real common good. ally used such examples as traffic laws inflammatory and Highlights from And as the bishops and Sunday Mass obligation only cer- thoroughly unorth- America’s archives. americamagazine.org/vantagepoint said on February 13: tified that it was basically an irrelevant odox theory. !ey “Whenever a conflict and out-dated conception. Or at most, declared that the arises between the it was a theory which was of use to Vietnam War was unjust. It might or law of God and any human law, we are Catholics in unstable or atheist lands might not be legal. But even if it was, held to follow God’s law.” far away. For us it was simply of no use. it was still unjust. And unjust laws, no Apart from the immediate ramifi- Which brings us back to the matter how legitimately established, cations of the Supreme Court’s deci- Supreme Court. !e fact of the matter are not to be obeyed. One’s conscience sion, one of its major effects may be is that the average American Catholic comes before the decisions of one’s an increase of political sophistication simply did not believe that his govern- draft board. If the board does not see that politicians may soon come to rue. ment would ever do anything opposed fit to validate one’s conscience, then For in striking down the laws of Texas to the common good, to the perenni- one goes to Canada. And what is more, and Georgia, the Court has also gone a al dictates of the natural law. He be- such actions are not cowardice, they long way toward striking down one of decked his churches with Old Glory, are not ultimately unpatriotic and they the most politically beneficial myths of and symbolized thus his conviction certainly do not stand to be heretical. American life. Catholics have, by and that in the U.S.A. God and country !e really fascinating thing about large, been among the more patriotic would always stand together. Faith and the whole peace movement is not that segments of the population. !ey be-

September 23, 2013 America 27 lieved in the government. !ey believed in the Statue of Liberty, which had been the first sight glimpsed by so many of their parent-immigrants on their arrival in America. !ey believed that the po- litical order could be implicitly trusted, that it would not let them down. And that belief, to say the least, has been shaken by the Supreme Court decision. !e death of the old naïveté is prob- ably a good thing. For all the beauty of adolescent innocence, most people would agree that growing up is a good thing to do. But I don’t mean to suggest that we ought to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision. Fetal life is not some plaything to be used by theology any more than it is to be used by the polit- ical process. But I do mean to suggest that there may be something still to be gained from this sad state of affairs. We were naïve. We were foolish. Indeed, we were unfair to the civil or- der. For in our childish faith we expect- ed that order to do more than it was able. We expected it to mediate in an infallible way the will of God for our lives. We expected it to make clear and certain the moral standards by which we ought to live. We expected the gov- ernment to guarantee a comfortable meld of “Christian” and “American.” And that it just can’t do. A peculiarly Catholic sort of civ- il religion has been a fact of life in the United States for a long time. And it will not die an easy death. Indeed, it is too desirable a commodity to be will- ingly relinquished. But if the Supreme Court has not killed Catholic civil re- ligion, it has at least struck it a serious blow. I’m sorry, America, but that old, slightly quaint theology of positive law is, indeed, relevant to our situation. God and country may go together. But then again, they may not. !e Court’s abortion decision has not changed everything. But it has changed something. !e church and the state may yet bed down together once more. But things will never be quite so cozy again. A

28 America September 23, 2013 B & C

IDEAS | JULIE R ATTEY n the 200 years since the publi- cation of Jane Austen’s Pride and PRIDE AND PRINCIPLE IPrejudice, women’s rights have ris- en, empire waists have fallen and many The spiritual side of Jane Austen’s novels manners of the day have disappeared with the barouche and the bonnet. But a good love story is timeless, and Jane Austen’s novels still have a place in the hearts and on the bookshelves of readers worldwide. Romance is not the only timeless el- ement in Austen’s novels, however. Her works have a solid moral and spiritual foundation that make them as much about vice and virtue, character and con- science as about marriage and manners. !e turning points in her novels often hinge on a character’s examination of conscience, putting morality front and center. God, church and religion were an in- tegral part of Austen’s life and the society she lived in, and they influenced her work. Her novels are rife with moral commen- tary on everything from hypocrisy (Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice) to near occasions of sin (the play in Mansfield Park) to love and marriage. Speaking in Pride and Prejudice of the marriage be- tween the wayward Lydia and the deceit- ful Wickham, Austen offers: “How little of permanent happiness could belong to NY a couple who were only brought togeth- er because their passions were stronger ESOURCE, R

than their virtue, [Elizabeth] could easily RT conjecture.” A !e influence of Austen’s religious RCHIVE AT RCHIVE AT and moral worldview is seen perhaps A RT RT A

most explicitly in Mansfield Park, whose HE T heroine, Fanny Price, humbly examines HOTO: her conduct and that of others through P the lens of morality. For example, Fanny disapproves of staging the play “Lovers’ OND BROCK. Vows” at Mansfield Park partly because M it facilitates an inappropriate flirtation between the engaged Maria Bertram

Pride and Prejudice, 1895 edition and the rakish Henry Crawford. Diane CHARLES ED ART:

September 23, 2013 America 29 Capitani, a lecturer at Northwestern ities, like the gentle Jane Bennet (Pride brance...shall be regulated, it shall University and a speaker with the Jane and Prejudice), patient Elinor Dashwood be checked by religion, by reason, Austen Society of North America, calls (Sense and Sensibility) and modest Fanny by constant employment. Fanny the representation of moral law in Price (Mansfield Park), are rewarded with that novel. home and husband. !ose who often do Marianne’s reform enables her to rec- Mansfield Park also gives a positive not (the narrow-minded Mr. Collins, the ognize the merits of the worthy Colonel view of church and clergy through the preening Sir Walter Elliot) are playfully Brandon—and ultimately accept him in character of Edmund Bertram. “I cannot skewered. !ose needing some polish marriage. call [the clergyman’s] situation nothing,” (the proud Darcy, emotionally intem- Whether the parallel is intentional he says, “which has the charge of all that perate Marianne and snobbish Emma) or not, one can see in these character is of the first importance to mankind... are metaphorically thrust into the belly progressions the echo of the soul’s jour- the guardianship of religion and morals, of the whale for a sober examination of ney from sin (and thus, separation from and consequently of the manners which conscience before being spat out, chas- God) to spiritual reconciliation and sym- result from their influence.” tened and grateful, a few steps from the bolic marriage with Christ. !e journeys In Austen’s other novels, morality and altar. !eir final task is the same that of Austen’s leading characters recall the spirituality are treated somewhat less awaits the repentant sinner: confession soul’s “pilgrim’s progress” to the Celestial explicitly. !at these concerns are exam- and reconciliation. In Austen’s novels, City and its encounters with a host of ined primarily through character and ac- these are sealed with a marriage. unusual people and places on the road. tion, not high-handed preaching, recalls !e famous conversation between To the readers’ delight, this progress is Austen’s own religious upbringing. In Darcy and Elizabeth near the end of narrated with Austen’s characteristic wit, Jane Austen: !e Parson’s Daughter, Irene Pride and Prejudice, full as it is of mor- a reminder that on this journey, it doesn’t Collins notes that under the guidance of al terms like pride, vanity and ashamed hurt to laugh at ourselves along the way. her father, an Oxford-educated Anglican on one hand and kindness, generous and “I could not sit seriously down to clergyman, Austen “was encouraged...to compassion on the other, is as much a write a serious romance under any oth- make her witness in the world through confession of sins as it is a profession of er motive than to save my life;” Austen her behavior to others rather than by love. In Emma, only wrote in 1816, “and if preaching: In her writings, as in her life, after the titular char- ON THE WEB it were indispensable Ł3ULGHDQG3UHMXGLFHł she was to be typically reticent with re- acter has acknowl- LQğOPDQGFXOWXUH for me to keep it up gard to religious devotion and to concen- edged her folly and DPHULFDPDJD]LQHRUJVOLGHVKRZ and never relax into trate instead on providing examples of wrongs, and atoned laughing at myself or good and evil in people’s conduct towards for them through at other people, I am each other and in their attitude to society good works, is she a suitable life part- sure I should be hung before I had fin- at large.” Austen, says Collins, wanted her ner for Mr. Knightley. In Sense and ished the first chapter.” novels both to entertain and to have a Sensibility, Marianne’s near-fatal illness, Toward the end of Pride and Prejudice, moral purpose; contemporary reviewers partly brought on by her emotional in- Darcy speaks to Elizabeth of the faults of praised both aspects of her work. dulgence, spurs a realization of her faults his past. “Such I was...” he says, “and such and a humble confession to her more I might still have been but for you, dear- What’s in a Name? stable sister, Elinor. She expresses a pen- est, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not One need look no further than the ti- itent desire to atone to God, family and owe you? You taught me a lesson, hard tles of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and community: indeed at first, but most advantageous. Sensibility to see that the characters’ flaws By you, I was properly humbled.” and virtues are as important to the stories [M]y feelings shall be governed !rough her novels, Austen acts as as the characters themselves. Austen’s and my temper improved. !ey an Elizabeth for her readers, revealing to heroes and heroines shine brightly either shall no longer worry others, nor us our human weaknesses and making in devotion to or in reformed adoption torture myself. I shall now live sole- us—if we are humble enough to heed of the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, ly for my family.... [I]f I do mix in her implicit advice—better heroes and fortitude and temperance) and the fruits other society, it will be only to show heroines of our own real-life adventures. of the Spirit (charity, joy, peace, patience, that my spirit is humbled, my heart kindness, goodness, generosity, gentle- amended, and that I can practise JULIE RATTEY is a senior editor and writer ness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control the civilities, the lesser duties of life, at Boston University and the author of If I Grew Up in Nazareth: Take a Trip Back and chastity). with gentleness and forbearance. to the Time of Mary, Joseph & Jesus (23rd Characters who exemplify these qual- As for Willoughby,...[h]is remem- Publications).

30 America September 23, 2013 September 23, 2013 America 31 OPINION | MAURICE TIMOT HY REIDY THE ART OF WAR

ne hundred and fifty years their victims, and both bring sudden and other vehicles are richly decorated ago, the great American artist death. by their owners.) !ey are disturbingly OWinslow Homer traveled Today sharpshooters, or snipers, beautiful, an intricate patchwork with the Army of the Potomac to are a mainstay of modern warfare. of colors and patterns. In “MQ-9/ document a key military campaign in And the reasons for their ubiquity Guardian,” the belly of the drone is the Civil War. Some of his paintings are clear—aren’t they? Better to kill a decorated in blues and reds, with two were recently featured in the exhibit dangerous enemy from afar than risk haunting eyes at the center. It looks “Civil War and American Art” at the the lives of a platoon of soldiers. !e like a god hovering above, mulling the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New battles of the Civil War saw heavy ca- fate of those below. York (see “!e Real War,” an online sualties precisely because men fought Critics have called Chisty’s paint- review by Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J.). the enemy face to face. ings an exercise in One struck me not so much for the Modern artillery used re-appropriation. craftsmanship of the portrait but the in traditional military In these Drones are widely quotation that accompanies it. engagements proved feared in Pakistan, and In “Sharpshooter,” Homer focuses to be a lethal combi- paintings, she makes them more on a lone Union gunman perched in nation. Executing the beauty and familiar. A foreign a tree. He is balanced precariously, enemy while hiding agent of death is given aiming carefully through the crosshairs in a tree may not have death a uniquely Pakistani of his rifle. His target, presumably been honorable, but it stand side makeover. “I wanted a Confederate soldier, is not was better than the al- people to think may- pictured. !e painting, which resides ternative. by side. be what would happen permanently at the Portland Museum And yet Homer’s if these drones were of Art, captures in miniature a notable objection lingers. Even friendlier looking, in- military innovation of the Civil War. with the distance of stead of such hard- Reflecting later on the picture, time, one cannot dis- edged, metallic war ma- Homer expressed horror at the grim miss his argument. chines,” Chisty said in duty of the sharpshooter. It “struck me !ere is something an interview. as being as near murder as anything I unfair, unnatural Yet as gorgeous as could think of in connection with the about the sharpshoot- these paintings are, one army & I always had a horror of that er’s trade. Homer’s art cannot easily forget branch of the service,” he wrote to a helps clinch his case. why these drones were friend. In the picture, the sharpshooter sits created. Beauty and death stand side I am sure I am not the only visitor in an evergreen tree. !e contrast be- by side, just as they do in Homer’s to the Met who thought of predator tween the tranquility of the backdrop painting of the sharpshooter. drones, today’s controversial weapon of and the bringer of death is jarring. In the years of after the Civil choice. In fact, I would bet the curators Homer captures his subject just be- War, artists found inspiration in the had drones in mind when they chose fore he pulls the trigger. !e beauty American West. !e wide-open spaces that quote from Homer. Drones, too, of nature is evident, but one wonders and untouched beauty of places like allow soldiers to execute their targets how long it can survive in a country Yosemite gave people hope that perhaps from a safe distance. !e distance, of wrecked by war. the United States could experience a course, is much greater, measuring in Leaving the Met, I wondered what rebirth following war’s devastation. miles, not feet, but the anonymity of kind of art drones have inspired. A century and a half later, we are at the sharpshooter strikes me as very A quick Google search discovered war again, following the first attack much like the mystery surrounding the work of the Pakistani folk artist on American soil since the Civil War. drone pilots. Both are unknown to Mahwish Chisty. Over the last few Yet the chances of another American years she has composed a series of renewal seem faint. !e question posed MAURICE TIMOTHY REIDY is executive editor paintings of drones in the Pakistani by Homer persists: Can beauty survive of America. “truck art” style. (In Pakistan trucks in the midst of calculated destruction?

32 America September 23, 2013 September 23, 2013 America 33 BOOKS | RAYMOND A. SCH ROT H MAN OF CONTRADICTIONS THE DREAM OF THE CELT returns with the novelist’s imagination By Mario Vargas Llosa to Peru with the tragedy of a good Translated by Edith Grossman man in a corrupt state. !e novel is Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 368p $27 structured as a three-part biography (Hardcover) of Casement, each focused on a main period in his career: the Congo, I first discovered Mario Vargas Llosa Amazonia and Ireland. Each chapter in 1990 when I was in Peru to see a opens in Casement’s prison cell as he friend, climb Machu Picchu and write an article. !at was the time when Vargas Llosa, the novelist, was running for president of Peru. !e guerilla movement Shining Path was terrorizing the countryside, and the economy was falling apart. Vargas Llosa thought a renewed democracy and free market could save the country. But what made a novelist think he could cure a nation’s ills? He lost the election to Alberto Fujimori, who is now in prison. I was told then that Vargas Llosa’s 600-page novel Conversation in the Cathedral (1975), a complex group of dialogues involving a network of families during political upheaval in Peru, was a key to his political ideas. I read it, but I had to wait for his latest book, !e Dream of the Celt, to find the answer to my question. Vargas Llosa has been a political awaits the fate of his appeal and drifts activist all his life, shifting from left to back into the events that led to his life’s right with his ideas, but certain themes unraveling. hold: opposition to dictators and the Born in Ireland in 1864, son of the exploitation of the weak and poor dashing Captain Roger Casement of throughout the world. Inevitably this the Light Dragoons in India, whom led him to Roger Casement, whose life he admired, and Anne Jepson, a closet is the main focus of !e Dream of the Catholic who secretly had him baptized Celt and whom John Banville in !e at age 4, whom he adored. Casement New York Review of Books (10/25/12) lost his mother at 9; and his father, called “one of the greatest Irishmen who unhinged by grief, farmed out his four ever lived”—though his reputation has children to relatives. been smothered by the combined bile In 1884 he served his apprenticeship of his enemies and his own foolishness, as an explorer with Henry Morton which led to his being hanged by the Stanley, famous for his expedition into British for treason in 1916. the Congo to find the “lost” missionary In !e Dream of the Celt, named Dr. David Livingstone. Stanley’s later after a Casement poem, Vargas Llosa, task was to open up thousands of square who lives in Madrid, London and Peru, miles of territory in Africa for European

34 America September 23, 2013 businessmen of the International out. But at the last moment he was if it represented the tension between Congo Society, presided over by King convinced that the uprising would fail, social-political and religious life. Only Leopold II of Belgium. After 18 and he returned secretly to Ireland in a later did I learn that “Cathedral” was years’ experience in Africa, Casement German U-boat to convince the rebels the name of a pub where they talked. realized that Stanley was a cruel, to call the uprising off. Too late. !e But I was not far off. Vargas Llosa, a unscrupulous villain who deceived uprising flopped; many rebels were Nobel Prize winner in literature in the natives to hand over their land for killed or imprisoned. Casement was 2010, remains a moralist committed nothing but false promises in return arrested, tried and sentenced to death. to justice. So was Casement—though and whose whippings left a multitude Long-time English friends dropped sometimes very confused. of scarred, skinny black bodies across him; how could they even look at this At the same time that his life was the continent. In the 1890s, employed man who conspired with the enemy deteriorating, Casement was being as consul by the British Foreign Office, when their own sons were dying on the drawn, paradoxically, into the Catholic Casement worked for years building battlefields of France? Church, influenced by missionary a case against the criminal activities Meanwhile, Casement’s captured priests encountered in his travels; and of King Leopold’s government and journals revealed his homosexual he was delighted when the prison emerged, with his report in 1903, as a activity. Vargas Llosa suggests that chaplain checked his baptismal record champion of human rights. much of the sexual activity described is and convinced him he had been a In 1910, after four years in Brazil, fantasized, but the incidents described Catholic all his life. Now, for comfort, Casement carried this zeal into Peru, at are sad. He bought minutes of sex he read !e Imitation of Christ. On the the request of the British foreign secre- from “beautiful” boys as he traveled. eve of his execution two priests prayed tary, to investigate accusations of cruel- Following months of abstinence, he with him. He confessed his sins at ty by the Peruvian Amazon Company compulsively dove in again. !e one great length and wept profusely; then in the Putumayo region: floggings, young man who became a traveling they talked for hours, mostly about stocks and the rack; cut-off ears, nos- companion turned out to be a British their vocations. !e next morning he es, hands and feet; men hanged, shot, spy. Here is a man 52 years old received his first Communion, which burned or drowned under the direc- idolized as a moral hero for risking was also his viaticum. Sunlight flooded tion of Armando Normand, the dis- his life and reputation to protect the open yard. When the governor trict manager in Matanzas. Accused of victims of exploitation and torture in asked if he had anything to say, mistreating workers, Normand replied, far off jungles who has never known Casement simply murmured, “Ireland.” “You can’t treat animals like human be- love—neither romantic love nor deep !e executioner said later that Roger ings.” Casement shot back: “I’ve lived friendship—except from the mother Casement was “the bravest man” he had for twenty years in Africa and I didn’t who still appears in his dreams. ever hanged. turn into a monster—which is what When I was first drawn to Vargas you have become.” Llosa 24 years ago I was taken by the RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J., is literary Casement’s two reports on Peru title of Conversation in the Cathedral, as editor of America. made him even more famous, and he was granted a knighthood; but honors from England made LESLEY HAZLETON him uncomfortable. As he began comparing England’s treatment of OUR BEST INTENTIONS Ireland to the colonial exploitation of Africa and Latin America, he BEYOND WAR elections—2000 and 2004—are still reverted more and more to what he Reimagining American Influence considered by many to be of ques- had been born, an Irishman. An Irish In A New Middle East tionable legality and that redistrict- revolution was boiling up and he By David Rohde ing is rapidly ensuring the minority wanted to be part of it; when World Viking. 240p $27.95 status of Democratic strongholds War I broke out in 1914, he dreamed throughout the south. Is the United up a wild plan in which British army When the Egyptian military seized States even in a position to preach prisoners in Germany would team power in June, American pundits democracy—especially since, as with up with German troops “side by side” instantly rushed to preach about de- national elections, so too with foreign to invade Ireland, coinciding with the mocracy. This took some hubris, con- policy: democracy is subject to mon- Irish “uprising,” and drive the British sidering that two recent American ey and how it is spent.

September 23, 2013 America 35 This is the hard-headed reality be- the ability of the White House, State the stated goals of U.S.A.I.D. are hind the new book by David Rohde, Department, and Congress to devise clear: they include providing “eco- a two-time Pulitzer prize-winner and carry out sophisticated political nomic, development and humani- and former Taliban and development tarian assistance around the world captive, which fo- efforts overseas in support of the foreign policy goals of cuses on how the has withered.” the U.S.” U.S. government Whether Rohde For all the talk about the need for spends money is aware of it or humanitarian aid and intervention abroad, specifical- not, the problem (most recently in Syria), the reality is ly in the Middle might be encapsu- purely political. What is presented as East. It is an ar- lated in the subtitle humanitarian aid is always a matter gument for small- of his own book, of foreign policy. And American for- scale economic aid which assumes eign policy is still intensely focused rather than large- not only the exis- on George W. Bush’s “global war on scale military aid tence of American terror.” and as such is im- influence, but also The principle is that U.S. aid mensely welcome its necessity. Many should act as a stabilizing force in principle. The of his sources are against militant Islamic extrem- question is how to w e l l - i n f o r m e d ism. But the very idea of the United do it in practice. and palpably frus- States as a stabilizing force has been As Rohde writes, trated employ- thoroughly undermined by the disas- “Washington’s ar- ees of the United trous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. chaic foreign pol- States Agency for Even the best-considered foreign aid icy apparatus” and its weakened ci- International Development who are has now been rendered suspect in vilian agencies mean that “in the de- basically in conflict with both the many parts of the Middle East, es- cades since the end of the Cold War, State Department and Congress. Yet pecially when there is “a widespread perception of the American govern- ment as a finely tuned, nefarious machine, not an unwieldy cacophony of viewpoints,” and when authori- tarian control fosters an intense ru- mor mill, with conspiracy theories rampant (most recently, for instance, Malala Yousafzai as a C.I.A. plant, or American-backed Zionists as the in- stigators of the new regime in Egypt). In Egypt in particular, Rohde notes, “Washington faces an extraordinary public-policy conundrum. Decades of support for Mubarak will not be forgotten overnight.” Rohde details the conundrum country by country in a series of chap- ters, some intensively well reported (particularly on civilian contractors’ takeover of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and on the use of drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan), others (on Turkey, Libya and Tunisia) more perfunctory by comparison. But in the light of the military coup in June, the chapter on American dollars-for-

36 America September 23, 2013 peace financing and the Egyptian not literally finance the expansionist dations are accordingly small scale army’s vast business empire is partic- project, they certainly free up funds (sometimes to the level of pathos, ularly fascinating and uncomfortably that do. as in his enthusiasm for an Egyptian prescient. Even assuming the best American version of “The Apprentice”). Yet his Oddly, though, there is no chap- intentions, then, they are all too often emphasis on entrepreneurship may ter on Israel, the largest recipient interpreted as the worst. But what actually undercut his argument that of American aid. This seems to me exactly are those best intentions? trying to force Western models on tantamount to ignoring the elephant At root, this book is about other countries will backfire. And in the room, since the intense invest- America’s perception of itself. Are this is the argument that matters. ment in an Israel that seems willing we the world’s greatest do-gooders, Like Ambassador Chris Stevens only to prolong and intensify the con- distributing our largesse (and our in Libya, says Rohde, American of- flict with Palestine arms) where most ficials need to listen rather than try undermines U.S. urgently needed? to muscle their way in, whether eco- efforts elsewhere in ON THE WEB Or are we acting to $GLVFXVVLRQRIHerbert nomically or militarily. “The U.S. the region. A pret- McCabe: Faith Within Reason. secure a blinkered needs to hold its nerve as Egypt finds ty strong argument americamagazine.org/cbc and out-dated con- its way,” he writes—not the American could be made, ception of our own way, but its own way. A little respect, in fact, that U.S. interests? that is. Preach less, listen more. That support of Israel, driven by domes- Either way, as Rohde wrote in a may not be much of a “reimagining,” tic electoral politics, runs directly New York Times op-ed article in but it’s the really important message counter to its own foreign policy in- May, “We should stop thinking we of this book. terests. Inevitably, the United States can transform societies overnight.... is perceived elsewhere in the Middle Nations must transform themselves. LESLEY HAZLETON is a former Middle East as at least tolerating if not en- We should scale back our ambitions East reporter; her most recent book is The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad couraging Israel’s land grab in the and concentrate on long-term eco- (Riverhead). She blogs at The Accidental Palestinian territories; if its funds do nomics.” His economic recommen- Theologist.

September 23, 2013 America 37 editor for its award-winning bimonthly journal, diences. !is position is based in C.H.A.’s St. Louis CLASSIFIED Health Progress. As the principal architect of the office, and some travel (10 percent to 15 percent) is content and quality of C.H.A.’s journal, the editor required. Books will be a thought leader in the Catholic health min- !e successful candidate will have: significant ADULT FAITH STUDY. Faith and reason together: istry. !e editor directs the publication and adminis- experience (seven or more years) in editing/ www.WordUnlimited.com. tration of Health Progress, setting editorial philoso- publishing; three to five years in Catholic publishing phy and strategy in collaboration with the associa- or Catholic health ministry; 3-plus years’ supervisory ANOINTED FOR A PURPOSE: Confirmed for tion’s leaders; identifying current trends and related experience. A bachelor’s degree or equivalent work Life in the 21st Century, by Mary Sharon Moore topics and soliciting the best experts from relevant experience in English, communications, journalism, (Awakening Vocations, 2012). Parish and personal fields to author material for publication; editing and or related field is required. Graduate-level work in resource for R.C.I.A., Confirmation, spiritual writing; and coordinating the journal’s editorial advi- Catholic theology and history is an asset. growth at all levels, connecting sacramental anointing sory committee. Responsibilities include supervising C.H.A. is an equal opportunity employer. with the urgency of our times. Sample pages: www. journal staff, creating and monitoring the editorial Relocation expenses offered. Interested candidates awakeningvocations.com. Order: (888) 687-2046. calendar and setting standards for the publication. should send a cover letter and résumé to: Human Bulk discounts. Additional accountabilities include ensuring integra- Resources, !e Catholic Health Association, 4455 tion of C.H.A.’s mission, goals, strategies and policies Woodson Road, St. Louis, MO 63134-3797; Fax: Positions in Health Progress editorial efforts; contributing to 314-253-3560; e-mail: [email protected]. Please EDITOR, HEALTH PROGRESS. !e Catholic other communications projects of the association; reference job code HP1 and mention where you Health Association is searching for an experienced and representing C.H.A. to member and other au- found the classified ad.

THE JESUIT RETREAT HOUSE in Parma, Ohio, part of the Chicago-Detroit Province of the Society Looking for a job in the Catholic sector? of Jesus, seeks a practicing Catholic to serve as fulltime EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, beginning June 2014. Requirements include a four-year bachelor’s degree, master’s preferred, a working knowledge of Ignatian spirituality, experience in providing and participating in retreats and spiritual direction, administrative skill in managing budgets and employees, flexibility to work evenings and weekends, ability to engage in major fund-raising projects, familiarity with contemporary spirituality and theology in the development of programs for our THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY far-reaching constituency. !e successful candidate must be willing to work on our current capital campaign and its building project. !e first retreat Hiring at your church or school? Get the word out with America! center in the United States, the Jesuit Retreat House welcomes 6,000 retreatants annually to 57 acres of forest and meadow just outside Cleveland. Salary and benefits are commensurate with the position and experience. A job description is available on request. Job Listings are accepted for publication in America’s print and web editions. Candidates should send a résumé and cover letter For more information contact our advertising dept. at [email protected], with three references to Frank DeSantis at frank. Tel: 212-515-0102 or check us out at www.americamagazine.org. [email protected] by Nov. 15, 2013.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT needed to organize and help. Basic computer skills needed; good EB0909 TO SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW with organization. Willing to pay $300 per week. K New subscription K Renewal Interested person should contact: [email protected]. Yearly rates are $56 for each subscription. Add $30 for postage, handling and GST on Canadian orders. Add $54 for foreign subscriptions. Payment in U.S. funds only. Translator. K Payment enclosed K Bill me Translation into Spanish: books, articles, essays, On occasion America gives permission to other organizations to use our list for promotional purposes. If pastoral letters, ministry resources, Web sites, you do not want to receive these promotions, contact our List Manager at our New York offices. newsletters. Luis Baudry-Simon, luisbaudrysimon@ For change of address and renewal: Please attach the mailing label from the front cover when writing about gmail.com (815) 694-0713. service or change of address. Allow 3 to 4 weeks for change of address to take effect. Thank you Mail to: America Name: or call 1-800-627-9533 Wills Address:

or visit www.americamagazine.org Please remember America in your will. Our legal title is: City: State: ZIP: America Press Inc., 106 West 56th Street, New York,

E-mail: P.O. Box 293059, Kettering, OH 45429-91599 NY 10019. America classified. Ads may be submitted by e-mail to: ads@ americamagazine.org; by fax to (928) 222-2107; by postal $PHULFD ,661 LVSXEOLVKHGZHHNO\ H[FHSWIRUFRPELQHGLVVXHV-DQ$SULO-XQH -XO\-XO\$XJ$XJ$XJ6HSW6HSW'HF E\$PHULFD3UHVV,QF mail to the Classified Dept. (address on page 2). Ten-word :HVWWK6WUHHW1HZ

38 America September 23, 2013 THE WORD

tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.” If he knows Lazarus Rich Man, Poor Man by name in the afterworld, he knew TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (C), SEPT. 29, 2013 Lazarus by name when he begged for Readings: Am 6:1–7; Ps 146:7–10; 1 Tm 6:11–16; Lk 16:19–31 mercy and food in this world. But the rich man decided he had better things “The rich man also died and was buried” (Lk 16:22) to do than help the poor man at his gate. !at decision to ignore the poor, Jesus demonstrates for us, has eternal aul’s First Letter to Timothy, man has a name, which alerts us that implications. though many scholars doubt this parable may not be as simple as it Even accounting for the rich man’s PPaul wrote it, reflects the heart of seems. After all, whose name do you turning away from Lazarus, the issue the Christian hope that Paul expressed know better, Bill Gates or the of wealth still discomfits. It does seem in his letters: “Fight the good fight beggar on your corner? that there is something inherently of the faith; take hold of the eternal But here we learn that distracting about worldly riches life, to which you were called and for the poor man’s name that focus our attention on which you made the good confession is Lazarus, while earthly pleasures. In the in the presence of many witnesses.” the rich man’s name parable Abraham says, At the end of this letter, Timothy is remains unknown. “Child, remember that encouraged to imitate “Christ Jesus, Yet no one is during your lifetime who in his testimony before Pontius nameless to God. you received your good Pilate made the good confession” and We are all known by things, and Lazarus in “to keep the commandment without name, whether rich or like manner evil things; but spot or blame until the manifestation poor; and no one, in the of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is at the eyes of God, is superior to PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE coming of Christ Jesus that the fullness another. Our worth, our inherent of him “who is the blessed and only belovedness, is not based on who we Reflect on Lazarus sitting at your gate. :KHQ\RXVHHKLPKRZGR\RXZDQWWR Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord are but what we are: human beings EHIULHQGKLP" of lords” will be displayed. !is is the created in the image of God. cosmic perspective that makes kings, !ere is another point about tyrants, presidents, celebrities, nobles Lazarus’ name that is even more now he is comforted here, and you are and rich men and women seem small telling for this specific parable. !e in agony.” !is is properly frightening, or, rather, allows them to be viewed in rich man seems to be separated from for it does suggest a kind of quid pro the proper light: they are people like Lazarus and God only because of his quo, where the “good things” of this life everyone else, not inherently better, not wealth, which seems unjust, improper, equate to agony in the life to come and inherently worse, created by God for simply not fitting. Why should earthly “evil things” in this life to comfort in the “unapproachable light” of divinity, wealth condemn one to an eternal the world to come. Is this a necessary not for the passing glory, honor and life of misery? !e parable is subtle, outcome? riches of this world. however; the clue to why the rich man No, for Jesus, throughout Luke But it is hard to be humble, or to is judged is in the details. Lazarus lay and all of the Gospels, suggests that share, when you are the rich man and in misery by the rich man’s gate for a proper use of wealth can have positive your perspective is narrowed to this long time, begging for food, but his implications both for those in need world or, even narrower, to one’s own pleas were not heard. Rather, they now and for the life to come. It is desires. Jesus tells what seems like a were ignored. How do we know this? especially pertinent for those of us who simple parable in Luke 16 about a rich In the parable it is the rich man who are wealthier than we want to admit. man and a poor man. But the poor identifies Lazarus by name, when We need to be certain about what truly he calls out: “Father Abraham, have matters to us, for it matters now and it JOHN W. MARTENS is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the matters eternally. Paul, Minn. tip of his finger in water and cool my JOHN W. MARTENS

September 23, 2013 America 39