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In hope we are saved--NEW papal encyclical Photo by Fausto Fernos |
Abortion
statistics released over Thanksgiving: The Centers for Disease Control released its annual abortion statistics on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, the slowest news moment of the year, as has been the custom since President Bush entered office in 2001. As in the past, these statistics (for 2004) are a poor representation of national trends because they are dependent on reporting to state health departments, and do not include any data from three states (including California, which is responsible for 20-25% of all abortions in the US). No mainstream media carried stories about the statistics during the first five days after they were released. Conservative media trumpeted the results as showing the lowest abortion number since 1973, though statistics gathered at that time were even less reliable since the number of illegal abortions at that time were substantially higher. The 2004 numbers show a slight decrease of 1.1% from the 47 reporting states, excluding New York City and the District of Columbia. But not mentioned is the increased abortion rate, from 15/1000 women of reproductive age in 2003 to 16/1000 in 2004. The decline of 1.1% represents half the rate of decline during the Clinton Administration. The abstract of the study glosses over the increase in the abortion rate in 2004 by stating that it was "relatively unchanged" from 1998 to 2004. No mention is made in the abstract of ethnic demographics, showing that African-American women have abortion rates roughly five times those of white women. Meanwhile, new
data from the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher
Insititute, published in October 2007 in the British Medical Journal,
the Lancet, demonstrated a nearly 9% decline in abortion rates worldwide
between 1996 and 2003. The US rate is substantially lower than the
rate across all developed countries (16 vs 26), but still somewhat
higher than Canada and most Western European countries. Perhaps
most strikingly, the abortion rate in developing countries (29/1000)
remained somewhat higher than in the developed world, despite being
illegal in many of those countries. The authors concluded that illegality
may have no effect on the total number of abortions, while resulting
in substantial morbidity and mortality to the mothers. 26
Nov 2007 Bush
vetoes SCHIP bill: Gov Eliot Spitzer on the illogic (and moral cowardice) of this SCHIP veto ~ ~ ~ LA
Times reports death of innocents: ~ ~ ~ The
real story behind the invasion: ~ ~ ~ Senate discounts Geneva Convention prohibitions on torture, and gives Bush virtually unrestrained power over detainees The Senate approved legislation this week entitled the “Military Commissions Act of 2006” that must be viewed as a severe affront to anyone with Catholic sensibilities. The new law allows the president to identify anyone, including an American citizen, as an “enemy combatant”; to imprison them indefinitely; and to torture them if he chooses, without any oversight by any court. The law gives Mr. Bush wide-ranging power to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, and strips the courts of any jurisdiction to challenge his interpretation. Jesus himself was the victim of this kind of treatment, and people of conscience must stand in opposition to it. The term “enemy combatant” has now been defined down from someone “captured in battle” to anyone who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." As William Pitt has pointed out, “One dark-comedy aspect of the legislation is that senators or House members who publicly disagree with Bush, criticize him, or organize investigations into his dealings could be placed under the same designation. In effect, Congress just gave Bush the power to lock them up.” The same could apply to anyone who writes a critical letter to a newspaper, protests in public, or advocates Mr. Bush’s impeachment. A very public confrontation between three Republican senators, who refused to allow Mr. Bush to use “waterboarding” on detainees, seemed to be clearly resolved in the final compromise. But many observers expected the White House to reassert in a “signing statement” Mr. Bush’s right to do whatever he wants. The Congress and the Administration essentially ignored calls by the US Bishops’ Conference on September 15 “to reject any proposed legislation that would call into question America’s commitment to Common Article 3” of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “cruel treatment and torture” as well as “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” Orlando Bishop Thomas Wenski, chairman of the USCCB International Policy Committee, wrote to Senators, “Prisoner mistreatment compromises human dignity. A respect for the dignity of every person, ally or enemy, must serve as the foundation of security, justice and peace. There can be no compromise on the moral imperative to protect the basic human rights of any individual incarcerated for any reason.” He went on to say, “In the face of this perilous climate, our nation must not embrace a morality based on an attitude that ‘desperate times call for desperate measures,’ or ‘the end justifies the means.’ The inherent justice of our cause and the perceived necessities involved in confronting terrorism must not lead to a weakening or disregard of U.S. or international law.”
We support our bishops in opposition to any laws that allow our
government to violate basic human dignity by depriving our enemies—and
indeed even us—of the right to confront our accuser, to expect
freedom from torture, and to appeal one’s case beyond the
authority of politicians whose own professional fortunes are served
by appearing “tough on terrorism” at the expense of
others. Christ asks us to stand with the victims of the world, but
never by becoming victimizers ourselves. 30
Sept 2006 Remembering 9/11, and judging our response September 11 is a day of remembrance that evokes a sense of utter empathy for the suffering of individuals and families, a natural outrage toward the perpetrators, and a wide spectrum of feelings toward our government’s response on our behalf these past five years. President Bush responded to our grief by waging two wars, doubling expenditures on our military, and significantly sharpening public perceptions of the danger of the modern world. Remembrance of 9/11 has been the rallying cry for war, high end tax breaks, and the election of conservatives. But the word “remembrance” means something very special to Catholics. At each Mass the priest repeats, not once but twice, Jesus’ essential words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” He was speaking specifically about body broken, and blood spilled, for the wellbeing of others. Contrast his words with new reports suggesting that a minimum of 62,000 people have been killed by both sides directly as a result of our American “war on terror,” and probably closer to an upper estimate of 180,000. Refugees are now estimated at 4.5 million people. The newest war appropriation this past week by the US Congress has pushed funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $500 billion--money that might have been used to develop new energy technology to end dependence on Mideast oil, eliminate global poverty, or provide health security for all Americans. Is all this death and displacement what Jesus had in mind, when he commanded us, “Do this in remembrance of me?” On the domestic front in the United States, life has taken a significant turn for the worse on several fronts. Three recent polls by the Pew Research Center, Peter D. Hart Research, and Lake Research Partners found evidence of deep pessimism among American workers about the likelihood that their wages would keep up with inflation or that their children would do better economically than had they. The Pew poll found that 69% of workers said they suffered more job stress than a decade ago, 62% felt less job security, and 59% said Americans had to work harder just to stay even. The economic response of some in Congress has been to aggressively pursue extension of tax cuts for America’s wealthiest, with a devotion to the idea of trickle down economics that will “lift all boats.” Is this what Jesus meant, when he said, “Do this in remembrance of me?” Violent crime in the United States has increased sharply this past year, according to new FBI statistics showing the murder rate up almost 5% over 2004. Robberies and assaults have also risen around the country. Meeting in August, mayors and police officials from around the country cited the escalating number of weapons on the streets and looser firearms laws as the principal reasons for the new surge in violence. But no fewer than five bills are currently under consideration in Congress to weaken existing gun laws, all being aggressively pushed by the gun lobby and conservative lawmakers who otherwise promote themselves as advocates of “family values.” Is weakening our gun laws, and contributing to increased violent crime what Jesus sought when he said, “Do this in remembrance of me?” As Catholics, we understand that Jesus set an example for us, indeed one which is virtually impossible to achieve—he allowed himself to be tortured to death in defense of those on earth who have no voice. He identified strictly with the victims of the world, and he responded solely with love. “Do this in remembrance of me,” he said. Now as we gather to console one another about what we’ve been through over the past five years as a nation, will we continue to fool ourselves into thinking that more violence can end the current violence? That a greater disparity of wealth in the United States can create a more widespread sense of economic security? That more guns will make anyone safer on our streets? When Jesus
said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he was calling
us to selflessness like his, to creativity like his, and to love
like his. Catholics and people of true faith will increasingly see
that we can only make progress in our injured world if we seek the
kind of self-sacrificing remembrance to which Jesus himself called
us, when before long the tenth anniversary of September
11 comes around. The culture of death expands: As Israeli and Hezbollah missiles came raining down on innocent civilian populations, the Bush Administration refused last week to help bring the bloodshed to an end. As he did when he took office in 2001, Mr. Bush publicly washed his hands of any responsibility for brokering a ceasefire, largely because the Administration has refused to deal directly with Iran, Hezbollah, or Syria on issues of regional security. Behind the scenes, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams and Assistant Secretary of State David Welch were dispatched to begin low-level discussions with Israeli and Palestinian officials as the pointless cycle of violence escalated. The question of who started the violence seemed increasingly irrelevant as the real potential rose for a wider conflict across the Middle East. Sunday a Lebanese missile killed eight people in Israel’s third largest city, Haifa, and Israel retaliated by dropping bombs in Beirut and across southern Lebanon that killed at least 40 people. An Iraqi Shiite cleric responded by vowing new attacks on US soldiers in Iraq. The Associated Press quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying, “If the occupying regime of Jerusalem attacks Syria, it will be equivalent to an attack on the whole Islamic world and the (Israeli) regime will face a crushing response.” Each Hezbollah missile builds enmity among Israelis toward Iran and Syria, and each Israeli bomb leads to more hatred across the Arab world toward America. As Fr. Bargil
Pixner has pointed out, Christians were the majority population
in the Holy Land for most of the last 2000 years. Now the tables
have turned, and Christians are a small minority, as in the days
following Jesus’ Resurrection. How easily we forget that Jesus
was a Jew, preaching peace among his people and seeking to persuade
his countrymen that no amount of repression was worth taking the
life of another human being. The architects of the militarization
of our Holy Land—President Assad’s Syria, President
Ahmadinejad’s Iran, and President Bush’s America—must
engage one another immediately. The people there are too precious
to allow us the luxury of sitting by idly while hatred extinguishes
their lives with the tools that foreigners have provided.
17 July 2006 Supreme Court Voids Military Tribunals: The court indicated that the Geneva Conventions’ Common Article 3 applies to the Bush “war on terror,” by virtue of the fact that it prohibits torture and even “outrages upon personal dignity.” Under US federal criminal law, violators of Article 3 can explicitly be subject to imprisonment and even the death penalty. While the Bush Justice Department is unlikely to pursue such charges against its own, a future administration could do just that. When the Administration decided to submit the prisoners in its custody to torture, their lawyers knew full well that Mr. Bush may be surrendering any capability to try those individuals in a court of law for the threat they had posed to the lives of Americans. Rather than hold the Administration accountable for this gross error of judgment undermining national security, Republican Senators John Warner and Arlen Specter scheduled hearings to craft new legislation codifying the Administration’s intent to hold military trials. Enabling the Administration’s flawed plan indicated that these senators had completely missed the point of the Court’s ruling. Congress could respond to the ruling by adopting penalties for the 2005 McCain legislation banning torture, which if applied to future detainees would avoid the threat to national security created by the Administration’s use of torture toward these prisoners. As Christians,
we are called to use persuasion rather than coercion to reach for
the Kingdom of the Lamb that Jesus has described for us. The Supreme
Court ruling invites members of the Administration to reconsider
their use of torture and their willingness to operate outside of
US law in confining human beings indefinitely in Guantánamo,
the prison camps of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the CIA’s secret
gulags around the world. “When I was in prison, you visited
me” said Jesus. And no matter how bad the accused in our prisons
may be, we are similarly called in Matthew 25 to treat them humanely.
2 July 2006
The DaVinci Code controversy: Conservative groups have reacted around the world with righteous indignation at the opening of the film adaptation for Dan Brown’s dramatically compelling, but poorly-written novel, “The DaVinci Code.” Calls for a boycott of Sony Pictures are reminiscent of the knee-jerk response to the 1989 Martin Scorcese film, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” when Catholic protests against the film drove up attendance to the great satisfaction of the producers. Catholic conservatives are insuring that more people than ever will see Ron Howard’s film this year. So if their intent is to limit the fallout for the already battered reputation of our Church, the effect of their efforts will be exactly the opposite of their intent. What most fail to realize is that putting up fisticuffs in response to some seeming insult, like a story that uses Jesus as a simple character in a typical Hollywood mystery, plays into their failure to comprehend the central message that Jesus brought to us in the Gospels: love your enemies. The sententious Bill Donohue, who uses the Catholic League to dress up the Heritage Foundation’s pro-Republican agenda in Catholic language, blurted out threats to the film’s director in a press release in advance of the film’s release: “Had he done what other directors have done before him and put in a disclaimer, the risks to his reputation would have been minimal. Now it’s show time for Mr. Howard, and not just his movie.” But Christianity is not
about threats, or beating up on its adversaries, or intimidating
others into believing its message. True Christianity is about living
the Gospel, and letting others judge the power of the message for
themselves. People of Mr. Donohue’s ilk who do not acknowledge
the brokenness of their Christianity, when it fails to grapple with
things like the Bush Administration’s ongoing sponsorship
of murder in Iraq and their un-Christian threats against Iran and
Syria, can only be stuck tinkering around the edges of evangelization
while someone like Ron Howard wins the hearts of Christians with
simple fiction. The belligerence of the conservatives, more than
anything else, makes that fiction ring vaguely true for the millions
who have already read the book.
The immoral devotion to pre-emptive war is alive and well in the Bush White House Christianity in America took a blow to the solar plexus Thursday as the Bush Administration reiterated its commitment to the fundamentally anti-Christian notion of preemptive war. “Love your enemies,” are the three words that all scripture scholars agree were spoken by Jesus himself. But there was no evidence of these important words anywhere in the 49-pages of the new National Security Strategy released in advance of a speech by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Meanwhile, a much-publicized attack on the Iraqi city of Samarra, billed as the biggest air assault since the invasion, turned out to be mostly a publicity stunt. The 101st Airborne Division was said to have launched airstrikes against the central Iraqi city of Samarra and neighboring towns, employing hundreds of armored vehicles and 50 aircraft that included Black Hawk and Chinook transport helicopters and Apache attack helicopters. But in the end, local commanders acknowledged that no munitions were discharged and no rebel leaders were found. This comes as a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 50% of Americans favor withdrawing all US troops from Iraq in the next 12 months. A vast majority think Mr. Bush is “losing ground” in Iraq, and the word “incompetent” was the most commonly cited descriptor volunteered by respondents in the poll to describe his leadership. In violation of a 1986 law compelling annual disclosure of the National Security Strategy, the Administration finally released its report--four years after the last version proved to be the initial bombshell of a philosophical underpinning for their unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Emblematic of what conservative pundit Kevin Phillips has called "a national Disenlightenment,” the exceptionalism of the Administration’s approach to military intervention is littered throughout the document. “No country should ever use preemption as a pretext for aggression,” warned the statement, despite Mr. Bush’s having used preemption in Iraq as a pretext for his aggression there in 2003. “Under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack,” continued the document, oblivious to the deaths of more than 100,000 people in Iraq as a result of the Administration’s miscalculations there about weapons of mass destruction and ties to the September 11th hijackers. “The place of preemption in our national security strategy remains the same. We will always proceed deliberately, weighing the consequences of our actions. The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just." Some commentators reflected on the inability of Republican leaders to learn not only the lessons of Vietnam, but of the reaffirmation of the law of unintended consequences playing out before our eyes today in Iraq. Preemptive war has brought untold suffering on every child in Iraq, every family of US military personnel there, and all those Americans deprived of the services that would have been purchased with the $300 billion dollars that have been wasted so far chasing the report’s astoundingly naïve “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Meanwhile, the religious apologists were busy rewriting the Gospels in defense of President Bush’s moral failures. Fr. Richard Neuhaus, a favorite of right wing Catholic supporters of Mr. Bush and editor of the monthly journal First Things, bent over backwards to defend preemptive killing in an interview on National Public Radio. Speaking of Mr. Bush, he said, “The action that he took is morally defensible in principle,” adding that because the invasion was a result of mistaken judgement rather than evil intent, it may be morally justifiable. “Yes, you can make that case (for attacking Iraq) if one understands preemptive war as a response to a plausibly threatening aggression,” he said. “If you have reason to believe that someone coming into your office intends to do you violence—you think they have a gun in their pocket that they’re pointing at you or whatever—that informs and supplies a moral rationale for the moral response you might make.” But Fr. Neuhaus was flummoxed when the interviewer corrected him and asked if the aggression was still justified if the attacker was sitting in his own living room without having actually done anything provocative. Reflecting now on the two million deaths in Southeast Asia as a result of the mistaken 1960s prediction that communism would overrun all the countries there, one is struck by the nimble moral calculus that makes such destruction on a massive scale morally justified as long as the political leaders thought in good faith that there was some type of real threat. We now know that the political scientists were completely wrong in Vietnam, because the communists won the war and no dominoes subsequently fell. The same lesson should apply in Iraq. Paul Pillar, the former CIA officer who led U.S. intelligence efforts in the Middle East, has written in the current issue of Foreign Affairs (quoted in the Washington Post), "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized." The multiplying bodies
and charred psyches of today’s combatants testify to the similarity
between the miscalculations in Vietnam and those ongoing in Iraq.
But the Administration blithely blunders along with a new National
Security Strategy that puts in writing its determination to learn
nothing from its mistakes. Perhaps more significantly, it also shows
how blind our government has become to the most poignant legacy
left us by Christ and our Old Testament heritage: those who live
by the sword can expect only the sword in return.
State of the Union hides increased abortion, ongoing torture and killing in Iraq, and budgets hurting the most vulnerable Mr. Bush delivered a State of the Union message that was superficially hopeful, but reinforced all the same policies that have led to continued increases in the deficit, in the deaths of both military and civilians in Iraq, and in the first increases in US abortion rates since 1990. His speech was a stew of contradictions. He referred to the “dark vision of hatred and fear” among America’s adversaries, combated by a “hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change.” But he made no reference to the dark vision of hatred and fear that he and his vice-president perpetrated in a cavalcade of color-coded “terror alerts” that mysterious ended just before the presidential election in 2004. In the daily killing of both American military and innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, it is difficult to see where “peaceful change” comes into the Bush/Cheney strategy. His condemnation of Iran’s nuclear ambitions made no reference to his own nuclear ambitions: to break the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, by reinitiating nuclear tests, and by supporting the design of two new forms of tactical nuclear weapons that ostensibly are intended for use against Iran. On the domestic front, he advocated permanent unbalanced decreases in the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans like himself and Mr. Cheney, while trivializing devastating cuts in domestic programs for medical research, food stamps, college loans, and healthcare for the poor and elderly. He euphemistically described these cuts as an effort to “reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities.” He again falsely projected that he would cut the deficit in half, this time by the year 2009. Even allowing for the failure of Mr. Bush’s efforts last year to impose huge new financial demands on government revenues by putting Social Security taxes in private accounts, no serious economist thinks that there is even a remote chance of cutting the deficit in half while making permanent the huge projected tax cuts to America’s wealthiest heirs and investors. On the premier issue that Republicans have exploited to portray themselves as protectors of America’s moral life, Mr. Bush apparently chose to ignore data from the CDC showing increased abortions during his second year in office. He stated, “There are fewer abortions in America than at any point in the last three decades, and the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row.” He failed to point out that new CDC data now show the first increases in abortion since his father was in office 16 years ago, demonstrating the impotence of the four laws passed in the first Bush term that sought to label the Democrats as being “pro-abortion.” To give him the benefit of the doubt, he may have been alluding to Planned Parenthood-sponsored data released last year that included abortions in California (excluded from the CDC analysis). But depending on continued positive abortion trends in a state led by a pro-choice Republican governor and demonized by Republicans for its liberal political culture is an ironic form of salvation for Mr. Bush’s unrealized promises to “protect the unborn.” The reality remains that the decreases in abortion cited by Mr. Bush in his speech were almost entirely attained under President Bill Clinton’s two administrations. The statement about teen pregnancies served to hide the fact that teen abortions per 1000 live births to teenagers (the abortion ratio) actually rose in each of the two years of the Bush presidency for which CDC data are available (from 363 in 2000, to 368 in 2001, and 369 in 2002). To his credit, Mr. Bush spoke of relieving suffering in the developing world from AIDS and malaria, and he called on Congress to pass funding for the Ryan White Act that would improve accessibility to HIV drugs for infected Americans. But one must be suspicious of the motives here, given the construction of legislation authorizing both the PEPFAR initiative to provide AIDS drugs in Africa and the new Medicard Part D drug benefit for seniors. Both programs have resulted in huge transfers of taxpayer dollars to pharmaceutical companies that played a key role in writing the legislation, and which subsequently hired the Republicans who designed these programs. All-in-all,
the State of the Union message failed to take responsibility for
a legislative program that has resulted in hatred toward Americans
around the world, new threats to peace and stability, huge new expenditures
on the military while cutting healthcare for America’s most
vulnerable, and the first increases in abortions since 1990 despite
all the rhetoric claiming to stand up for “the most vulnerable
among us.” Catholic social teaching urges us to greater compassion
in our public lives, and actions in this regard speak much louder
than words.
The CDC numbers prove the lie of the Republican rhetoric, with abortion now climbing under Bush Published again in the dark of night, on the Friday after Thanksgiving with virtually no press coverage, the verdict is now in regarding Mr. Bush's effect on abortion in America: the number of abortions rose in 2002 for the first time in 13 years (See the CDC report, 11/25/05). The increases were small, representing a clear inflection point in the long-standing trend under President Clinton that significantly decreased the total number of abortions in the US. But the populations that experienced the most significant increases were teenagers and poor women. The teen population has been at the receiving end of information-free sex education classes across America. The number of poor people in the United States has climbed dramatically during the five years of the Bush Administration. Meanwhile, the crowds gathered again in Washington DC, recalling the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision shifting authority on the issue away from individual states. The concern for the unborn is real in the hearts of many, but the focus is completely misplaced. As abortion rates dived below where they were before Roe v Wade, in the vicinity of 20 per 1000 women of reproductive age per year, is this landmark decision really relevant anymore to the abortion phenomenon in America? Surprisingly, law turns out to have little in common with morality, as demonstrated by the fact that none of the Ten Commandments are actually written into law. Even killing is considered acceptable in all sorts of special circumstances: for instance, the state-sponsored killing that has been condemned by our Bishops, or the dozens of people who are being killed every day in Iraq by our military. Drunkeness (the leading preventable cause of mental retardation and of road deaths), divorce, and greed come to mind as examples of sins that no one is trying to outlaw. Mark Harrington, director of the “Center for Bioethical Reform” in the Midwest, wrote last week to his supporters, “Ending legal abortion has always been the main goal of the pro life movement. This battle is about changing hearts and minds on the morality of abortion one person at a time. Outlawing abortion will never ‘zero’ its frequency of occurrence, but it will reduce its frequency of occurrence to the irreducibly minimal level that can be achieved through vigorous enforcement of the law.” Mr. Harrington is apparently unaware of the failures of similar previous crusades, and people like him make four demonstrably false assumptions: First, Republicans have given credence to the assumption that reversing Roe-v-Wade, indeed even making abortion illegal, would have any effect on the number of abortions. But the widespread support for abortion rights makes any legislation against it guaranteed to cause a huge rent in the social fabric. One has to look no further than the Constitutional amendment imposing Prohibition, which was never enforceable because it was never accepted by a large segment of the American population. Anyone who thinks that making abortion illegal, even with tough enforcement, will have any effect on abortion rates is fooling themselves. One has but to look at the ubiquity of marijuana use across the country, despite the hundreds of thousands of people serving in state and federal prisons, to see that law often has little capacity for controlling drug use. And make no mistake, abortion will be an illegal drug problem in any state that succeeds in outlawing it. This is because in the future, surgical abortions will be increasingly less common and will be replaced by abortion-inducing drugs. The easiest to use is the anti-ulcer drug, misoprostol (which costs pennies to make, and is currently sold for hundreds of dollars). Second, illegal does not equal immoral, and vice-versa. The ubiquity of speeding, despite the fact that it kills people, does not equate with immorality in most people’s minds. In fact, most people have an intuitive sense of the immorality of something that seems to have nothing to do with law. Invading other countries and killing scores of thousands of people is apparently legal, but most Christians recognize the immorality of it. Third, there is a widespread assumption that making abortion illegal is the only way to deal with the problem. The fact is that the crusade to make abortion illegal is, practically-speaking, an excuse to do nothing that actually decreases abortions. Republican control of all three branches of government has been associated with more abortions than had been projected during the period of dramatic declines experienced under the Clinton Administration. The Bush Administration will never seek a Constitutional Amendment outlawing abortion, because it would be counterproductive to them politically. Better to harness the passion (and dollars) of people who care about the unborn, while continuing to do nothing about the underlying factors leading to abortion--like poverty, and racial disparities in education and health care access. Finally, to those who think that making abortion illegal is the "moral" solution to the problem—think again. Jesus would never have advocated using the coercive power of the state to compel anyone to a moral decision of any kind. Law may be a practical solution to many problems, like compelling the payment of income taxes, but it is never the “moral” solution for people of faith. And as indicated above, overturning Roe-v-Wade may have no effect on abortion rates at all. Restrictive laws in Mississippi have had no effect on the abortion rates there. When one considers that something approaching half of all current abortions in the world are done illegally, there is no evidence that illegality would have any practical effect on the abortion rates. Thus overturning the decision cannot be described either as a practical solution, or a "moral" solution, to the problem of abortion. Ohio Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan has fashioned legislation that, if enacted, could dramatically lower abortion rates. Republican Congressmen are rushing to join Rep. Ryan in sponsoring this legislation, because of their concern about the unborn, right? Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. The four "anti-abortion" bills enacted during the first Bush Administration didn't even pretend to have any effect on the abortion rates, but were rather all about "labeling" the Democrats as the "pro-abortion party." The last thing Republicans want is anti-abortion legislation that Democrats can support, even if it might actually decrease the number of abortions. But back on the subject of Roe-v-Wade, in contrast, the law of unintended consequences suggests that illegality would lead to dramatic increases in the birth defects associated with misoprostol use, increases in late-term abortions, and increased feelings of isolation and despair among young single women. The statistics now show just how wrong the whole coercion-based Republican approach to abortion has been. Jesus preached a religion of love, one that invites rather than punishes, and those who preach a different religion are misleading themselves when they invoke the name of Jesus to support overturning Roe-v-Wade. 30 January 2006
House votes to oppose Bush position on torture How long will it take President Bush to realize that his immoral assault on the dignity of the individual must be given up? The House of Representatives voted December 14 by an overwhelming margin of 308 to 122 to endorse Senator John McCain’s legislation forbidding all forms of torture by any agency of the US Government. 107 Republicans endorsed the measure, which was sponsored by Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha. The Senate had previously voted 90-9 in favor of adding the torture prohibition to the $453 billion defense appropriation bill. Mr. Bush quietly responded the following day by reversing his previous threat to veto the defense bill if this amendment was included. But he offered no admission that he was wrong. Indeed, news also emerged the same week that the Administration had launched a secret re-writing of the Army Field Manuel, with specific indications for allowed procedures. Some insiders described it as a preemptive end-run around the McCain/Murtha amendment, essentially allowing torture by redefining it with the lowest possible bar. Why has the Administration clung to a universally condemned position like this on the issue of torture? Perhaps it’s because their whole case for war in Iraq has been slipping away as more and more information comes to light about the ineptitude of their “tough guy” approach to foreign policy. At the heart of the justification was the oft-repeated link between Iraq and the 9-11 hijackers, which turned out to hinge almostly entirely on the torture-elicited testimony of Al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. He was captured in Pakistan in 2001, subjected to rendition by US authorities, and approvingly tortured by the Egyptian security services. Vice President Cheney and President Bush repeatedly cited the false information elicited in that torture chamber as justification for attacking Iraq. Thus the Administration’s torture policy had the perverse effect of not only failing to make Americans safer, but of causing what Mr. Bush has now acknowledged were the deaths of at least 30,000 Iraqis and more than 2100 American service personnel. Meanwhile, the US Government continues to hold large numbers of people hostage in a string of gulag-like interrogation facilities around the world with no accountability to anyone. December 9 the State Department announced that it would continue to deny any Red Cross access to these people to assess their physical wellbeing or any history of torture. This position is in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions, to which the United States was a founding signatory. The December 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is headlined with an essay by Dr. Susan Okie offering her reflections on a medical mission to the Guantanamo Prison Camp in Cuba. She goes into some detail about the circumstances surrounding the hunger strike by 131 of the 500 prisoners earlier this fall, and forced feeding of 22 of them through naso-gastric tubes. Anyone who considers themselves a follower of Christ and a supporter of this Administration should read this essay and reflect on the central message of our faith this Christmas. The Bush Administration’s treatment of human beings in Guantanamo and in their secret prisons around the world is inimical to everything we believe as Christians and must be brought to an immediate end. The overwhelming approval of Senator McCain’s legislation in the House and Senate shows that Mr. Bush and his advisors were the last holdouts supporting this assault on this most fundamental of human sensibilities. Their reversal on the veto threat will not be credible until they come out and admit that they previously sanctioned torture, and have had a true change of heart. Sunday, Dec 18, 2005
Falsifying the case
for War in Iraq: President Bush spoke publicly after Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced five indictments of Vice-President Cheney’s closest aide for lying and obstruction of justice. Mr. Bush said, “Scooter (Libby) has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and sacrificed much in the service to this country. He served the vice president and me through extraordinary times in our nation's history.” Nowhere in his remarks was any reflection of the fact that two years ago he indicated that he wanted to “get to the bottom of this” outing of CIA agent Valery Plame Wilson, and would personally hold accountable anyone who was involved. What is now completely clear is that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney themselves were fully complicit from the beginning in the effort to humiliate their critic, Joseph Wilson, and then falsely pleaded ignorance when this issue threatened Mr. Bush’s reelection prospects. Like their case for war in Iraq itself, their response to the Plame issue was illustrative of their lack of reverence for the truth. The fact that possibly hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of their dishonesty is what’s really at the heart of this case. The real tragedy is that every Republican in Washington knew that the intelligence was being overhyped to launch a war of greed in Iraq, and none raised their voice in protest. Even now, many of them continue to defend the killing in Iraq, the policies promoting torture (see this week’s Washington Post editorial), and the colonial-style exploitation of that country’s natural resources. These actions are all anathema to Catholics and other people of conscience. Senator John
Kerry spoke for many when he said, “Today’s indictment
of the vice president’s top aide and the continuing investigation
of Karl Rove are evidence of White House corruption at the very
highest levels, far from the ‘honor and dignity’ the
president pledged to restore to Washington just five years ago.”
A Tale of Three Gulfs:
The Catholic Democrats have joined forces with religious leaders across the country in calling on Congress to turn back from pending legislation meant to punish the poor in America for the costs of the pending Gulf Coast reconstruction. Rep. Roy Blunt and nearly 200 of his Republican colleagues in the House have indicated their willingness to gut Medicare (healthcare for the elderly and disabled) and Medicaid (care for the poor), food stamps, and student loan programs in order to pay for more than $100 billion of new tax cuts and the ongoing budgetary black hole of the war in Iraq. The House leadership sought to bypass the normal deliberative process and to rush through these devastating and immoral budget cuts, but were forced to postpone voting due to universal Democratic opposition. Religious leaders across the country have reacted with outrage. Presiding Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold issued a statement: "Congress and the President must come together and focus on poverty that exists across the nation, and not exacerbate poverty…Nothing could be clearer in the Gospel than Jesus' identification with the poor. 'When I was hungry you gave me food. When I was naked you clothed me, sick you cared for me, truly I tell you, what you did for the least of these, you did (it) for me.' And so for a nation to declare itself under God and neglect the poor in its midst is tantamount in my mind to blasphemy." At its recent meeting, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church in America passed a resolution calling on Congress “to pass a budget that does not pit one group in need against another and calls for more money overall to care for the country's most vulnerable residents.” The National Council of Churches, representing Baptists, Friends, Evangelical Lutherans, Greek Orthodox, and Presbyterians among others, issued a statement: “As leaders of America's major faith communities, we write to you at a moment of great moral urgency for our nation when hundreds of thousands of our most vulnerable citizens are at risk. We urge you to put aside partisan politics and pass a federal budget that reflects the moral priorities of the wide majority of Americans. We urge you to work for, not against, the common good of all of America's citizens and not just a privileged few.” At a time when the Bush Administration is making threatening statements against Iran and Syria, failing to offer any reassurance that they do not intend permanent military occupation of Iraq, and initiating new programs for the renewal of nuclear testing and the weaponization of space, the idea of stealing funds from poor Americans to pay for all this militarism is the height of immorality. As Catholics, in support of our Church’s significant contributions to care for the poor in America, we denounce efforts in Congress to rush through legislation that mendaciously exploits the Gulf Coast hurricanes to cut the social safety net for all those who have been confined to or pushed into poverty by the economic policies of the current administration. Protesting the evil fruits of the Bush utopianism: US forces responsible for most death, and continued torture, in Iraq People of many faiths are gathering this weekend in Washington DC to protest the ongoing killing in Iraq, with religious services on Sunday and lobbying on Monday. A new analysis has suggested that at least 45,000 Iraqi civilians are now being killed each year. Despite press reports playing up suicide bombings as the primary culprit for all the destruction in Iraq, these calculations suggest that most deaths are still caused directly by American military forces. With 600 traffic checkpoints in Baghdad alone, and the doors kicked down on 2000 private Iraqi homes a day, the daily life of average people in Iraq is unspeakably grim. It is impossible for us as Americans to imagine ourselves and our children living under these kinds of daily threats to our lives and our mental health. But the astounding irony is that it is being done by Americans, who pride themselves in being protectors of civil rights, in the name of freedom from fear, which is unimaginable for average Iraqis in the foreseeable future. Attempts to demonize the opposition have also come under new scrutiny. An article in the Christian Science Monitor cites the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) for new findings suggesting that US and Iraqi authorities have knowingly propagated a “myth” that foreigners are fueling the Iraqi insurgency. CSIS suggests that the true number is less than 10% of the estimated 30,000 insurgents. Meanwhile, new allegations have been published of US Military abuse of prisoners in Iraq by officers of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army. Three former soldiers gave evidence last week to Human Rights Watch and to Republican Senators John Warner and John McCain alleging widespread use of blunt trauma with the intent to break limbs, exposure to extremes of temperature, and malicious sleep deprivation at “Camp Mercury” near Falluja. President Bush’s well-calculated effort to paint his torture policies as the result of “a few bad apples” are now proving that it is George Appleseed himself who bears the full moral responsibility for the inhumane treatment of these thousands of people in their own country. How can we as Catholics tolerate the perpetuation of torture in our name; of killing without end, for purposes of a heretofore unexplained Administration imperative for permanent occupation of Iraq; of military adventurism dedicated to maintaining an oil-based economy that is driving the indisputable fact of global climate change, even as the number and intensity of hurricanes around the world is spiraling upward? The good men and women of the US Military have dutifully complied with orders from the top, and our continued support for the civilian leadership places moral responsibility for all the killing squarely on our own shoulders. Are "preserving our way of life" or "defending American credibility" reason enough to stay one more day in Iraq? As St. Paul writes this weekend so beautifully in Philippians 2, “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.” 24 Sept 2005
American casualties pile up in Iraq, while we pay the price at home for ignoring global warming Amidst the disaster of dueling hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, the American public is increasingly numb to the ongoing catastrophe in Iraq. US casualties surged past 1900 this week as a result of another roadside bomb, and virtually unnoticed was the destruction of another Iraqi city--Tal Afar, near the Syrian border. How many civilians were killed there? How many people's homes and livelihoods destroyed? Does anyone have any illusions that this cycle of destruction will result in peace someday? Meanwhile, little noticed amidst President Bush’s rare mea culpas about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was an acknowledgement of that most fundamental of Christian dogmas: we need each other. Mr. Bush went to the United Nations last week with a desperate plea for others to help the US in Iraq, and to thank all the nations that had come to our assistance in responding to the hurricane. It was a far cry from the unilateralist message brought by unconfirmed Ambassador John Bolton, who sought last minute to ram through hundreds of changes in the reform resolutions meant for the signatures of all the world’s leaders. Most particularly, Mr. Bush was forced to repudiate one of his central strategic aims of just two weeks ago, namely the neutralization of the Millennium Development Goals to significantly impact world poverty. Mr. Bolton had sought to eliminate all references to the MDGs, but Mr. Bush ultimately reaffirmed them in general terms in his remarks to the General Assembly. Remarkably, he said, “To spread a vision of hope, the United States is determined to help nations that are struggling with poverty. We are committed to the Millennium Development goals. This is an ambitious agenda that includes cutting poverty and hunger in half, ensuring that every boy and girl in the world has access to primary education, and halting the spread of AIDS -- all by 2015.” The one huge inconsistency is the Administration’s having sabotaged international efforts to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush said Thursday, “We must send a clear message to the rulers of outlaw regimes that sponsor terror and pursue weapons of mass murder: You will not be allowed to threaten the peace and stability of the world.” This remark must be viewed currently as one of total hypocrisy, as the US seeks to weasel out of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to restart the production of fissile plutonium in Idaho, to design a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons for first use on the battlefield, and to plant such weapons in space. It is our responsibility to take Mr. Bush at his word, and to prevent him from being “allowed to threaten the peace and stability of the world” through all these initiatives. Otherwise, the sentiments now emerging from the Administration this week offer a glimmer of Christian hope, from this often values-free presidency: expressing remorse for hurting people with federal disaster management policies; asking for help and acknowledging our limitations, when he said, “The world is more compassionate and hopeful when we act together”; finally, recognizing that constructive solutions are more productive than threats at accomplishing laudable goals. He dwelt at length on international negotiations over farm subsidies, saying, “The United States is ready to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free flow of goods and services as other nations do the same. This is key to overcoming poverty in the world's poorest nations. It's essential we promote prosperity and opportunity for all nations. By expanding trade, we spread hope and opportunity to the corners of the world, and we strike a blow against the terrorists who feed on anger and resentment.” After years of belittling and hobbling the United Nations, Mr. Bush began his remarks with the remarkable and unexpected words, “Thank you for your dedication to the vital work and great ideals of this institution.” Perhaps a light has finally appeared in Washington, as a public policy of destruction stumbles briefly aside and for the moment allows a new spirit of constructive thinking to enter in. The proof will be found ultimately in how they back down from all the killing in Iraq, and from the mindless talk of developing new generations of nuclear and space-based weapons. Now that we've seen real threats to our national security, in the form of this cavalcade of hurricanes that must be related to global warming, the real test of national leadership will be to stop killing for oil in Iraq and start conserving energy to arrest global warming here at home. 21 September 2005
How Sept 11 Might Have Been Remembered It is the human instinct to seek revenge. Thus after September 11, 2001, a stunned country found itself in the thrall of a few politicians who played to the nation's lowest instincts. Things could easily have been different. A more mature political response might have been one in which a president stood up and said that the United States would not sucumb to fear and stoop to the methods of terrorists, but would seek to use all of the tools of the modern age for the alleviation of poverty and for the heightening of international understanding. Such would have been the Christian response, as is made manifestly clear in the Catholic scriptural readings for September 11, 2005. Instead, we have witnessed four years of non-stop mutual recrimination and violence. It is worth asking whether the invasion of Afghanistan, which most everyone hailed as a logical consequence of Sept 11, has really made us any safer. The largely unseen consequences include monumental resurgence of heroin production, severe internecine violence, and daily injury to US Military personnel. Meanwhile, the number of international terrorist incidents has escalated four-fold since the US invasion of Afghanistan. If we thought that taking over that distant country would make us safer, we have been proven wrong. The terrorists have also won at a more personal level. The massive redirection of financial and human resources away from problems like the protection of New Orleans is a testament to how much bin Laden has changed our lives. But more profoundly, our population has been hyped into a sense of anxiety over terrorism not seen since the 1950s. Can anyone truly say that the threats we face now as a nation match those of the Cold War, when nuclear weapons constantly targeted all our major cities? The wholesale exploitation of Sept 11 to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, with the hundreds of thousands of deaths and the resultant catastrophe of psychological injury to the children and adults there, is yet again a validation of Jesus' central message that violence begets only violence. There was a time when American presidents were embarrassed to wear their Christianity on their sleeve. They recognized that the perceived need to use violence in service of the national interest created an intrinsic contradiction with allegiance to Jesus' command of love toward our enemies. Now we have an Administration which, under the cover of the Christian name, has made violence its raison d'etre. As we remember those innocent souls who lost their lives four years ago, let us also remember the more than one hundred people who have since died in the name of each victim of September 11. May we have the courage to awaken as a nation to the realization in Christ's name that the only path to "national security" is, in the words of Pope John Paul II, "War no more." No nation state can hope to achieve this perfection to which Jesus has called us, but all Christians should be able to agree that we should be part of the solution and not the devil at the heart of the problem.
Why are the loudest Catholic voices in the Supreme Court fight from the least Catholic wing of our Church? The death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist is guaranteed to heighten the culture war among an evenly divided electorate. With religious issues at the heart of much of the Supreme Court controversy, it is fascinating how much bile tinges the accusations of both sides—but particularly those who fashion themselves to be more religious by dint of their membership in the Republican Party. Election polling last year suggested that frequent church attenders among Catholics were more likely to be Republican supporters. This has been taken to mean that someone wearing the “faithful Catholic” label, such as Judge John Roberts, will faithfully reinforce the Republican agenda. The Catholic vote is so important to future Republican political success, don’t be surprised if the nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is a Catholic woman. But are “faithful Catholics” truly faithful to our Catholicism? A new study in the journal Foreign Affairs indicates that church attendance is among the strongest single predictors of whether someone supports the Bush War in Iraq, despite our late Pope’s having labeled this conflict “a defeat for humanity.” Gallup polling data also suggests strong support among this group for the death penalty, with 60% of practicing Catholics in favor of it. Catholic women are 40% more likely to seek abortions compared to Protestant women, according to data published in 1999, despite the Bishops’ fervent opposition to abortion. We clearly have a tremendous amount of work to do among ourselves with regard to discovering the central tenet of our faith: that Jesus preached exclusively a gospel of love and self-sacrifice. Defenders of the use of violence, like the Heritage Foundation-affiliated Catholic League, will argue that we need more violence-accomodating people (like them) on the Supreme Court. The jury is still out in this regard on Judge Roberts, who in his last Appellate Court decision enabled the sham trials that are about to commence under military auspices at Guantanamo Bay. Conservative Catholics may hope for someone who shares their harsh and simplistic view of abortion, but will these nominees have the strength of character to combat all the other occasions where fellow Catholics continue to advocate elements of a culture of death? Will they have the courage to stand up to the cruelty of the death penalty, which society imposes almost exclusively on those who cannot afford legal representation? Will they have the courage to compel the Bush Administration to end its policies of hiding tortured detainees from Congress and from the Red Cross? Will they have the courage to hold the Federal Government accountable for its vast underfunding of special education across the country? The simultaneous replacement of Chief Justice Rehnquist compels us to ask some truly important questions of both nominees, in the wake of the dramatically consequential Bush v Gore decision over which Rehnquist presided. Regardless of one’s political stripe, we must all agree that decision-making cannot be allowed that dispenses with the central principal of the Court’s authority, namely the requirement that they provide a meaningful and generalizable rationale for their decisions (missing in Bush v Gore). “Because we say so” simply isn’t good enough. In Bush v Gore, the Court never explained why it had the jurisdiction to stop the vote counting in Florida. The criminal conflict of interest of one justice, himself a Catholic whose wife was an employee of the Bush Campaign, has never been addressed by this Court. Deciding the Florida election for Mr. Bush in a 5-to-4 decision turned out to be one of mammoth consequences, in its empowerment of the advocates of violence who have brought us hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq. Now we are faced with the prospect of possibly hundreds or thousands of deaths in New Orleans because of the absence of needed National Guard troops (many in Iraq) that would have evacuated all the hospitals and poor neighborhoods there after the flood. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the five Supreme Court justices who put Mr. Bush in office in 2000 bear significant responsibility for ignoring the law of unintended consequences that has led to all these deaths. Pope John Paul
II said just before the launching of the failed Bush War in Iraq,
"Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of man."
We really will have accomplished something if we end up with two
new Supreme Court justices who could ratify a judgement like that.
Pat Robertson, President Bush, and the meaning of our Christianity At some level, all Christians understand that God is love. This is why the Rev. Pat Robertson, granted special authority to speak on matters of religion, made news with his televised remarks last month calling for the murder of the democratically elected leader of Venezuela. The loudest voices in American religion, the Heritage Foundation-associated Catholic League and Focus on the Family, were completely silent on this opportunity to explore the central imperative of our Christian faith—the call to love, rather than to hate. Somehow it seems fitting that the Administration’s response has been a similar collective eye-rolling rather than rejection. The White House website says nothing. Mr. Bush and his press secretary have not commented on the matter. A State Department spokesman merely labeled Mr. Robertson’s remarks “inappropriate.” Secretary Donald Rumsfield responded to them by saying, “Certainly it’s against the law. Our department doesn’t do that type of thing.” The fact of the matter, however, is that Mr. Robertson and Mr. Bush share an advocacy for assassination. Mr. Bush's press secretary called in October 2002 for killing Saddam Hussein, stating, "Regime change is welcome in whatever form that it takes." In November that year, Mr. Bush assassinated an American citizen and five other people in their car in Yemen, using a CIA drone-fired missile. On March 19, 2003 Mr. Bush ordered a cruise missile assassination attempt against Hussein and his family, which was unsuccessful. Thus, Secretary Rumsfield’s remarks this week about targeted killing were false; add possibly hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq, and killing that putatively advances US petroleum interests appears to have become official US policy. Like the Middle East, Venezuela currently provides a significant chunk of US oil imports, and Mr. Bush's distaste for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is well-known. In the final analysis, Mr. Bush and Mr. Robertson are both ‘ends-justify-the-means’ Christians, perfectly comfortable with violence and killing when it suits their purposes. But as the Biblical scholar John L. McKenzie wrote, “No reader of the New Testament, simple or sophisticated, can retain any doubt of Jesus’ position toward violence directed to persons, individual or collective, organized or free enterprise: He rejected it.” Pope Benedict spoke in a German synagogue last month about “neo-paganists” who purported to follow Christianity, but had no qualms about killing. The anguished cry of a Cindy Sheehan and 1900 other American families will help us to clarify our thinking regarding the faulty notion that launching wars is the way to solve our problems. But perhaps we need the Robertsons of the world to reveal the hypocrisy that now prevails, and to put the Christ back into Christianity on this most central issue: the value of every life.
New Republican initiative to block Administration torture policies One of the most stunning political realities of the past five years has been the voting cohesion of the Republican ranks in both the House and Senate at a time of truly radical change in the direction of our government. Despite the self-destructive nature and intellectual weakness of so many Bush initiatives—the ‘war on terror’ that makes everyone feel less safe and the private accounts campaign to ‘save Social Security’ that almost completely defunds it, to name two—a whole generation of Republican legislators have gamely signed on. Finally, a glimmer of conscience on the Republican political landscape: Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA), John Warner (R-VA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) have proposed amendments to a $442 billion Defense Appropriation Bill in an effort to force the Administration to change course on its torture policies around the world. Senator McCain, a former POW who endured years of torture in Vietnam, has announced his intention to establish legislative standards for the treatment of detainees in order to prevent torture. Senator Graham has been working to define the legal status of enemy combatants being held in Guantanamo so that they cannot be imprisoned and tortured indefinitely without legal due process. Perhaps most importantly, Senator Specter has led efforts to bar the holding of "ghost" detainees whose names are not disclosed to Congress or to international human rights agencies. Vice President Cheney rushed last month to Capitol Hill to try and quash this effort, and threatened to have Mr. Bush veto the whole appropriations bill rather than submit the Administration to rules of law governing the use of torture. Their position on this issue was further illustrated by a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Timothy Flanigan to be the second ranking official in the Justice Department. He and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales helped author the Administration’s policies on the treatment of detainees prior to the Iraq invasion. Mr. Flanigan was asked about a Bush memo from their Office of Legal Counsel at the White House, which very narrowly defined torture as being only those practices that cause “death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.” He said he was reluctant to comment on whether several techniques, including near-drowning and mock executions, should be proscribed or even whether they represented torture. Even senior military lawyers were opposed to these kinds of practices, according to new documents released this week. They warned in early 2003 that the torture policies outlined by an Administration legal task force could ultimately result in international prosecution of Army personnel for war crimes. The judge advocate general (JAG) of the Air Force advised the task force that the “more extreme interrogation techniques, on their face, amount to violations of domestic criminal law,” according to an account in the NY Times. Meanwhile, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and other Democrats have been pushing for an independent commission to examine the Defense Department’s and CIA’s ongoing use of torture around the world, an effort that has caused cataplexy in the Bush Administration. In a week that saw the Administration finally win congressional approval of its Energy Bill, handing over billions in tax incentives to oil companies, the real reasons for the War in Iraq and the permanent US occupation there came into further sharp focus. As Bob Herbert wrote last week on the New York Times Op-Ed page, “It’s the oil, stupid!” Approaching 1800 US military deaths, the struggle to control Iraq’s oil reserves is increasingly being played out against a backdrop of stunning $60-per-barrel runaway profits by the oil companies. The ConocoPhillips Company, for example, announced this week that its second quarter profits had soared 51%, with a 34% increase in revenues over the same period last year. As Catholics, we are called to stand up to the prizing of wealth over individual life. This week marked the first meeting of the Catholic Democrats of Pennsylvania, and it was not lost on all those in attendance that their senior Senator Specter has become a ray of hope, while their Catholic junior Senator Santorum continues marching in lock step with the pro-violence policies of Mr. Bush. That Senators Specter, Warner, McCain and Graham have finally said ‘enough’ to the wholly unconscionable torture policies of this Administration is cause for a little celebration at this critical political moment for all people of conscience. 6
August 2005
Moving beyond Roe v Wade in the debate over a new Supreme Court Justice President Bush has nominated Judge John G. Roberts Jr., a Catholic, to replace Justice Sandra O’Connor on the Supreme Court. Judge Roberts attended a Catholic high school in Indiana and completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard in 1976, graduating summa cum laude in just three years. He was an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, clerked under Justice Rehnquist, and worked in the Reagan Administration. His nomination is sure to be opposed by progressive groups because of a legal brief he signed in 1991 as Deputy Solicitor General under the elder President Bush. "We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled," said the brief, which argued in favor of a regulation banning abortion-related counseling by federally-funded family planning programs. The spotlight will certainly be intensely focused on the issue of the legality of abortion in America in general, and the sustainability of Roe v Wade in particular. We believe this is an utter mistake, both for conservatives and for liberals. Those people who have made overturning Roe the litmus test for the morality of one’s stance on abortion have vastly overstated the effect this ruling has had on abortion rates in America. Not even accounting for speculative estimates of the number of illegal abortions that occurred prior to 1973, the national abortion rates now (16/1000 women/year in 2001 according to the CDC) are lower than they were prior to Roe v Wade. One study has estimated that there were 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions in the US in 1967 alone; the total legal abortions in 2002 were 1.29 million, with a population that was 40% larger. Overturning Roe is no Holy Grail when it comes to decreasing abortion in America. Studies on abortions in Mississippi, which has among the most restrictive laws in the country and only a single abortion provider, have shown that the overall number of Mississippi women having abortions has remained unchanged. Such laws appear simply to have resulted in 60% of that state’s women seeking abortions out-of-state. With the dramatic increases in non-surgical abortions in recent years (up 173% between 2000 and 2001, according to the CDC), any effort to outlaw abortion will likely result in substantial numbers of these procedures being done illegally with drugs like misoprostol that can be produced for pennies and sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars on the black market. No one disputes how poorly federal and state governments have succeeded in combating the use of illegal drugs in the United States. In other words overturning Roe v Wade, with an anticipated change in a few state laws making abortions illegal, may have no effect on the number of abortions in America. It would serve primarily to give some social conservatives the satisfaction of knowing that “someone was being punished” for abortion—with substantial costs in maternal deaths, induced birth defects, and penal system dollars expended—without actually doing anything to reduce or stop the practice. There is no theological basis for using the threat of state power to impose a solution to any moral problem. Jesus never advocated using the coercive power of the state to accomplish what each of us must do in our own hearts. Many Democrats who care both about the wellbeing of women and of their babies have been suckered into believing that Republican leaders are really opposed to abortion. A recent Guttmacher report begins, “With an Administration deeply opposed to abortion…” (http://www.alanguttmacher.org/pubs/ib_5-03.pdf), indicating an assumption that appears to have no basis in fact. The stated Republican opposition to abortion appears to be strictly tactical and rhetorical. Careful analysis of the four major pieces of legislation passed during the Bush years shows that none has had any measurable effect on abortion rates in the United States. The Administration has done no studies to understand why women choose to end their pregnancies. The data gathered by the CDC are typically almost three years late, poorly funded and incompletely gathered, and routinely released with no press coverage the night before the Thanksgiving holiday. This Administration fears that people will recognize what a straw man their expressed opposition to abortion really is. If anything, the evidence suggests that the Republican leadership is addicted to the dollars and political polarity that the abortion debate brings, and have a vested interest in never seeking any real solutions to the problem. The rapid declines in abortion incidence during President Clinton’s Administration were almost certainly a consequence of three factors: changing sexual practices in the era of HIV-transmission, the improved economic status of women, and changing social mores regarding abortion. These declines have substantially slowed under President Bush, according to new data published this summer by the Guttmacher Institute (http://www.alanguttmacher.org/media/nr/2005/05/19/index.html). Furthermore, analysis published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last Thanksgiving (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5309a1.htm) have shown an increase in teenage abortions in the US during the first year of the Bush Administration. Democratic Party
Chairman Howard Dean said at the 2005 Massachusetts Democratic Convention,
“I don’t know anyone who is pro-abortion.” As
Catholics, advocating for both children and the parents who bear
and raise them, we are working with Chairman Dean to construct a
legislative and social program that truly does address the problem
of abortion. Perhaps the debate over Judge Roberts’ confirmation
will help clarify how little the Republicans have done, by focusing
exclusively on Roe v Wade, to address the angst that many people
of conscience—perhaps especially we Catholics—feel about
the continuing high rates of abortion in America. Perhaps it’s
too much to hope that additionally there will come a new appreciation
of how little our society does to support young mothers today. Senator Santorum equates ideology with morality, and demonstrates how far some Republicans will go to exploit our Church Catholic Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, responding to questions from a reporter, repeated remarks he made three years ago attacking the people of Boston, and its universities in particular, for a supposed role in the national child abuse crisis that came to wide attention in 2002. A fellow Catholic, Senator Edward Kennedy, responded on the floor of the Senate by stating the obvious, namely that the aggressiveness of the people of Massachusetts in responding to this problem was, if anything, a tribute to their moral rectitude. Senator Santorum
responded to these remarks somewhat immaturely, saying, “I
am for proper formation, something I would challenge Sen. Kennedy
to be for. Proper orthodox formation within the teachings of the
Vatican. I don't think Sen. Kennedy would follow that very closely.”
Ignoring what Senator Kennedy had actually said, Mr. Santorum added,
“I don't think Ted Kennedy lecturing me on the teachings of
the church and how the church should handle these problems is something
I'm going to take particularly seriously.” Below are Senator Kennedy's remarks in response to the comments of Senator Santorum and his spokesman: Rick Santorum
owes an immediate apology to the tragic, long-suffering Senator Santorum
has shown a deep and callous insensitivity to the victims Three years
ago, Senator Santorum said “While it is no excuse for this
Apparently Senator
Santorum has never heard of the enormous contributions of Harvard and
MIT have produced 98 Nobel laureates whose work has made an Their graduates
contribute to industries, to government, to our communities Their research
keeps our nation secure. The Pentagon, the CIA, the And their research
into cancer, children's health, housing, community More than a
dozen current U.S. Senators were educated in Boston. Senator Senator Santorum’s
self righteousness also fails to take into account the They started
the Massachusetts Childhood Hunger Initiative, working with Boston's Children's
Hospital has been ranked first in the nation every year The quality
of life for Boston and its families is rated third in America. Massachusetts
ranks in the top ten states in the nation when it comes to Boston gave
birth to America's liberty. The values that sparked our The men and
women of Boston have served honorably in our armed forces. They
The abuse of
children is a horrible perversion and a tragic crime, and I am On behalf of
all of the victims of abuse and the people of Boston and
An eye for an eye until the whole world is blind, says Bush to the FBI about the London bombings The bombings in London have revealed once again how far removed the Rove/Cheney/Bush Administration is philosophically from the Christian creed to which so many of their supporters want to be devoted. Mr. Bush made remarks the beginning of this week in Quantico, Virginia that made clear how little he respects Jesus’ message of love for friends and enemies. Mr. Bush said, “These kind of people who blow up subways and buses are not people you can negotiate with, or reason with, or appease. In the face of such adversaries there is only one course of action: We will continue to take the fight to the enemy, and we will fight until this enemy is defeated.” In other words, there is no use trying to reach out to aggrieved peoples in the Middle East and beyond, who have had their petroleum resources excavated by companies and governments that provide so little to the common people in those parts of the world. The words of Mr. Bush’s speech writers are meant to reinforce a perception of insanity and total evil on the part of the adversary, thus supporting the Administration’s policy of pursuing more killing in more countries rather than understanding and responding to root causes. Mr. Bush added, “The terrorists remain dangerous, but from the mountains of Afghanistan to the border regions of Pakistan, to the Horn of Africa, and to the islands of the Philippines, our coalition is bringing our enemies to justice, and bringing justice to our enemies. We will keep the terrorists on the run until they have no place left to hide.” The problem is evident in the words written for him: violence in all these places, which seems to be spreading further every year, represents the most predictable of human responses. Violence begets violence. The United States is far less safe now than it was before the invasion of Iraq. As widely reported, Iraq has become a training ground for those who hate the US, in a way it never was prior to the invasion. Jesus got this one right. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “It is not those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ that enter into the Kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father.” (Matthew 7:21). And what is the Father’s will? “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34). Even the pragmatists among us must now accede that Jesus’ advice is also the practical solution to our problems in the Middle East. Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged as much in his remarks to Parliament contemporaneous to Mr. Bush’s speech to the FBI. Mr. Blair sought conciliation with the Muslim world. He recognized that bombings like those in the London transport system cannot be stopped with intimidation and more killing in Iraq. As Catholic
Christians, we have a duty to tell the truth and to remind the world
that one cannot claim to be a Christian while denying the central
tenet of our faith. But even at a practical level, as long as the
cycle of hatred is fueled by Manichean extremists like Rove, Cheney
and Bush, the suffering will not only continue but will expand.
Amidst Tragedy in Britain, an Impetus for Hope in Dealing with World Poverty and Environmental Destruction Horrific bombings during London's morning rush hour serve to emphasize again how the innocents are victimized by those who seek to solve the world's problems with violence. To his credit, Mr. Tony Blair has been hosting a G8 Summit in Scotland dedicated to addressing two of the world's most compelling problems: poverty in Africa and global warming, man-made disasters that threaten the wellbeing of all humanity. Sadly, the headlines coming from Scotland emphasize how Mr. Bush has sought to thwart consensus on both these pressing issues. The Bush Administration had made a good start in dealing with the AIDS disaster in Africa, budgeting up to $3 billion per year to help dull the suffering there. But if recent history is any indicator, this Administration will react to the bombings in London not by seeking constructive ways to move the world away from conflict, but by seeking to budget even more money for "military solutions." In the wake of the bombings, the New York Times quoted Mr. Bush as saying, "The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who have got such evil in their hearts that they will take the lives of innocent folks. The war on terror goes on." His answer to the killing is to carry on with more killing, and to do it in the name of human rights and human liberty. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a heroic champion of Christianity's central tenet of non-violent love for friends and enemies, spoke to this issue again last Sunday. Excerpts of his homily follow, taken from the website of the National Catholic Reporter (http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/peace). Our scriptures today (Matthew 10:37-42) continue what we began to reflect on last week, that is, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, what it means to be called to carry out the work, the mission of Jesus and to transform our world into as close an image of the reign of God as possible. It's very challenging to be a disciple, to be one of those Jesus calls to carry on his works. I thought for our reflection today, I might use as a framework part of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops' pastoral letter from 1983, which you may remember was called "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response." In the fourth section of that letter, which we called "The Pastoral Challenge and Response," there is a very clear description of what it means, or should mean at least, for any of us if we want to follow Jesus and be his disciple. First of all, this passage reminds all of us who we are in the church. The church is not just an institution. It's not just a huge international organization. It's a community of people, a community of disciples. After describing the church this way the bishops say, "In the following pages we should like to spell out some of the implications of being a community of Jesus' disciples." Then they point out a special thing: "In a time when our nation is so heavily armed with nuclear weapons and is engaged in a continuing development of new weapons together with strategies for their use ..." So we're being asked to look at ourselves as disciples of Jesus at this moment in human history, as citizens of the United States, a nation heavily armed. The armaments of our nation get larger and larger all the time. What does it mean to be a disciple in that situation? Then Jesus says -- and this can be very challenging -- "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than they love me isn't worthy of me. If you love your son or daughter more than me you're not worthy of me." What he's telling us is that for his disciples, Jesus has to come first. You know, in Luke's translation it even says you must "hate" your father or mother or you're not worthy. Well, that's really not correct. Matthew's translation is better: you must put Jesus first. When I think about this, especially in the context cited by the bishops in that pastoral letter -- here we are in a nation heavily armed with nuclear weapons and plans to develop more of them and plans to use them -- what have we put first? Do we really put Jesus first or do we love or nation, our fatherland, our motherland more than we love Jesus? Think about the war we've been engaged in for, I would say, since 1991 because it has been all one violent attack against Iraq since January of 1991. Before this second Persian Gulf War the bishops of the United States, the pope in Rome, bishops in Europe, all said this war could not be just, can't be just if you preempt. You're not under attack. You choose to attack. What happens after the war starts? We don't hear that anymore. Now it's, "Get behind our troops. Get behind our government." Whom do we love more? Jesus? Or do we have an exaggerated sense of nationalism, loving our nation and our government more than we love Jesus? This is a very challenging part of Jesus' call. We must put Jesus first -- his words, his teachings. Our president tells us we're going to wage a war against terrorism, and we're going to win that war, and it's going to go on indefinitely. Can we continue to follow that leadership when Jesus says so clearly if you want peace work for justice. "If you want peace," John Paul II said, "it has to be built on the pillars of justice and love." Not on violence and killing. Who are we going to follow? Are we going to listen to Jesus and be faithful disciples or do we love our nation and our government more and follow them? Then Jesus tells us, "If you want to be my disciple you must take up your cross and follow me." And in the pastoral letter the bishops say, "To set out on the road to discipleship is to dispose one's self for a share in the cross, and we must regard as normal even the path of persecution and the possibility of martyrdom." Imagine! To be a disciple of Jesus you must set out on the path of Jesus picking up your cross and accept as normal the path of persecution and the possibility of martyrdom. Does that really happen? Well, I remind you of a woman in Brazil, who on Feb. 12 this year was shot to death. Do you know why? Because she was proclaiming God's word and as the pastoral says, "to become true disciples we have to be doers of the words as well as proclaimers of the words." And that's what she was. Sr. Dorothy Stang was her name. She was working in one of the poorest parts of Brazil. She was helping people to get titles for their land. She was helping them to form cooperatives. She was helping them to do farming that enhances the environment rather than destroy it. But there were people who were opposed to her. They were the loggers and the cattlemen. They wanted that land for themselves, a few people. She kept standing up to them, against them, so she was shot to death on Feb. 12. To be a disciple of Jesus, it's necessary to take up your cross, follow him, even if it means on the path of persecution and martyrdom. Probably not many of us are going to go that far on the path, but we have to really be committed to proclaiming the word of Jesus, living the word of Jesus, doing the word of Jesus no matter what the cost. That's what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. So this morning as we reflect on this missionary discourse of Jesus, I hope -- and the pastoral letter of the bishops suggests this too -- that the call of Jesus is something very personal. You hear Jesus say, deep in your own heart, "Follow me." It has to be a personal call from Jesus. We have to open our hearts and our spirit to hear that call from Jesus and I'm sure each of us will hear it, if we open ourselves in prayer and listen. You will hear Jesus saying, "Follow me." But then I hope also that we will have the courage and conviction to say, "Yes, I will follow Jesus whatever the cost. I will carry on his work to change our world into the reign of God." In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Expect more killing in Iraq, says Mr. Bush Mr. Bush spoke to the nation Tuesday night about the war in Iraq. He offered no new solutions and he reaffirmed his belief that the best response to hatred and violence is more hatred and violence. The most critical questions remain unanswered: did the Bush Administration invade this country in order to establish US control over Iraq’s natural resources, and to transfer billions of dollars from US taxpayers to selected military contractors? Again in these remarks, Mr. Bush steadfastly refused to reassure Iraqis and the world that permanent occupation is not his aim. He again sought to conflate his war in Iraq with the Al-Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001. Five times he reiterated that killing people in Iraq was necessary because of Iraq’s relationship to 9/11. It was as if the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional inquiries hadn’t long ago conclusively demonstrated that there was no relationship between these conflicts. He said, “Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.” No evidence was offered that killing insurgents in Iraq makes Americans any safer anywhere. By seeking to conflate all the enemies that Mr. Bush has made into followers of a single irrational and hateful ideology, he has done what all invaders through the ages have done: dehumanize the opponent and legitimize killing them. He insisted, “We are fighting against men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons who are capable of any atrocity. They wear no uniform; they respect no laws of warfare or morality. They take innocent lives to create chaos for the cameras. They are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11, 2001.” Mr. Bush seemed to forget the extent to which he had himself broken all the laws of warfare and morality by unilaterally invading and occupying a country that posed no imminent threat to the citizens of the United States, despite the united and unprecedented protests of tens of millions of people around the world. He acknowledged that his war had become a cause celebre for Arabs from many nations, and that what started out as a quest to remove a single foreign leader has now turned into a bellicose effort to take on all comers. He said, “Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others.” The stunning thing that no one seems to acknowledge is that a willingness of these opponents to leave the comfort of their homes and to die signifies an extraordinary belief in the rightness of their cause. Mr. Bush has repeatedly and explicitly ruled out any efforts by our government to discern what these grievances might be. Why are so many people clearly willing to surrender their lives with no benefit to themselves, to redress their grievances against the occupying power? The key issue seems clearly to be a perception that no true “transfer of sovereignty” has occurred. The orders of US interim Administrator Paul Bremer still preclude any litigation against American contractors for the wrongful death of Iraqi citizens. Judging by Mr. Jaafari’s responses at his joint news conference with Mr. Bush last week, the Iraqi administration appears to view itself as completely dependent on Mr. Bush’s military decisions and financial largesse. In response to a question about timetables for withdrawal, Mr. Bush said, “There's not going to be any timetables. I mean, I've told this to the Prime Minister. We are there to complete a mission, and it's an important mission.” The implication was that Mr. Bush gives the orders, and Mr. Jaafari follows. Does Mr. Bush in fact intend permanent US occupation of Iraq? On this subject, he said weakly, “Sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave.” This was probably the largest intimation he’s ever offered that occupation may not be permanent. But his actions betray his words, in the current expansive construction of permanent US bases and the selective engagement of US contractors to invest in the energy-harvesting infrastructure. The investments of these US companies will not be abandoned anytime soon. From a Catholic standpoint, the use of violence to accomplish any desireable end is a violation of Jesus’ most fundamental teaching: “Love your enemies.” When Mr. Bush states unequivocally, “We'll fight them there, we'll fight them across the world, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won,” how can he possibly square this attitude with Jesus’ unflinching rebuke to those who kill, torture, and humiliate? Many people
will respond to this faithful interpretation of Jesus’ words
as being impractical, in essence that God didn’t really know
what He was talking about when He told us to work our miracles with
love rather than coercion. We are told repeatedly that we are dependent
on the use of force for civilization to persist in our world. What
goes mostly unexplored is the question of whether the violent men
from whom we are being protected are any worse than those who currently
have the power and use violence to defend it.
Who is my neighbor? Reaching beyond our borders to achieve the Millennium Development Goals As Catholics, we are called to live first for the wellbeing of others. Particularly because we are Americans, living in a land of plenty, our membership in the Catholic faith community obligates us to look beyond our borders to assist those who are suffering so gravely all over the world. Jesus’ invocation in Matthew 25 compels us to look into Africa and see our own sons and daughters in the faces of those beset there by poverty and illness. The director of Catholic Democrats, Dr. Patrick Whelan, spoke last week at the United Nations on the biology of human interdependence, and how such an understanding obligates us to help attain the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These eight shared aims, endorsed by the UN General Assembly last year, might well have come straight out of the Gospels: they emphasize our shared responsibility to meet the most basic of human needs for all God’s children:
More information is available at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals. Endorsing goals like these is the kind of creative example that we as fathers and mothers are called to set for our children. It almost goes without saying that we must become exemplars of creativity in solving the problems in our lives, and not be teaching our children by example that violence or anger are acceptable means toward achieving a better world. The Millennium Development Goals deserve our individual attention. Let us reaffirm the notion of a stewardship in this world that magnifies the Lord, rather than the pursuit of selfish aims that indiscriminately hurt others in the process—to chose creative solutions over destructive ones, life over death.
Republicans further advance their control over the Catholic Church in America On May 20, hundreds of Republican loyalists gathered in Washington for the “Second Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast." The event had the aura of a mainstream affirmation of Catholic faith. Hidden just beneath the surface, however, was the true aim of this assembly: labeling the Republican political agenda as consonant with our Catholic beliefs. Although there were vague references to defending children before birth, none of the initiatives by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops received any significant attention. Sr. Margaret Mary Jerousek from the Little Sisters for the Poor spoke briefly about their important work with the elderly. More important than what was said, however, was the fact that there was no discussion of the wrongness of unilateral invasion, no discussion of cutting US international food aid administered by Catholic Relief Services, no discussion of state-sponsored killing across America, and no discussion of Mr. Bush’s sabotaging the British initiative to eliminate poverty in Africa. It is not difficult to understand the lure of power, which is as great for Catholics as for any other religious group. This was a blatantly partisan event, as demonstrated by the skewed membership of its board of directors: Leonard Leo, former executive vice president of the Federalist Society and head of "Catholic Outreach" for the Republican National Committee; Jacqueline Halbig, who has served as government relations representative for the Christian Coalition; Joseph Cella, founder of a pro-Republican political action committee called the “Ave Maria List”; Austin Ruse, a leading advocate for making the pro-death penalty Antonin Scalia Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; and Bill Saunders, an attorney affiliated with the pro-Republican Family Research Council. Despite its highly partisan nature, the organizers succeeded in luring several bishops and a cardinal to participate. There were many honorable people in the audience, and Mr. Bush was the featured speaker. He was saluted in an opening prayer by Washington Auxiliary Bishop Martin Holley, who said, "In a very special way, we pray for our most honored guest, our President, George W. Bush, and for his many important works and great leadership that he provides for our country." Mr. Bush made self-deprecating remarks that brought lots of laughter and applause. He saluted Cardinal McCarrick and Pope Benedict. In a remarkably subtle way, he defended his war in Iraq by saluting a Catholic chaplain who had been injured there. Ironically, in the next breath he conflated the nobility of the war in Iraq with his signature vague references to life, presumably alluding to abortion, and suggesting that Pope John Paul was on board with both. He said, “Catholics have made sacrifices throughout American history because they understand that freedom is a divine gift that carries with it serious responsibilities. Among the greatest of these responsibilities is protecting the most vulnerable members of our society. That was the message that Pope John Paul II proclaimed so tirelessly throughout his own life.” It was almost enough to make one forget that our dear late pope condemned the barbarity of both the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent systematic implementation by the Bush Administration of torture there. Neither Mr. Bush, nor anyone else at the gathering, spoke about the horror of American bombs exploding in the residential neighborhoods of Baghdad, of children watching their parents gunned down at roadside checkpoints, or of the Administration’s failure to fess up to responsibility for the worldwide torture of detainees on its watch. Setting aside Administration efforts to undermine Medicare, sabotage Social Security, and expand use of the death penalty, Archbishop Charles Chaput offered a view of Mr. Bush that seemed representative of the audience’s feelings: “Americans re-elected President Bush because most voters saw him, and see him, as a man of dedication and a leader deserving of our respect.” Archbishop Chaput closed his remarks with a forceful invocation, “Only God is God, and only Jesus is Lord. When our actions finally follow our words, then so will our nation, and so will the world.” But listening to Mr. Bush’s remarks, one couldn’t help but wonder what it will take to reveal the very dishonesty of which the Very Reverend Archbishop was speaking: offering words about “protecting the most vulnerable members of our society,” and then cutting their medical care. Proposing an initiative labeled “Clear Skies,” and then undermining environmental regulations and EPA funding in a way that has been projected to cause 20,000 excess deaths across the US each year. Speaking with respect about the sacrifices of military personnel like Fr. Vakoc, but leaving our troops in harm’s way on an infinite time horizon. Condemning torture by “a few bad apples,” but then appointing the architects of the torture policies to positions like Secretary of Homeland Security, Attorney General, and Representative to the United Nations. Perhaps we should start by recognizing the myriad ways that Republican operatives are using our Church and our episcopal hierarchy to hide a legislative agenda that might best be characterized as “the preferential option for the rich,” at the expense of our country’s fiscal health, America’s reputation in the world, and—oh yes—the poor. 3 June 2005
Lawlessness becoming routine for Bush Administration treatment of war prisoners Amnesty International released its annual report on human rights around the world, and our US Government is specifically listed as a human rights abuser. Using the term "gulag" to refer to the Guantanamo Bay prison, where 500 men have been held for more than three years without criminal charge, Amnesty has done what we as a Church have failed to do: speak truth to power about abuses of human dignity at our expense that no Christian or American citizen should tolerate. Only the Red Cross has been granted access to these prisoners, but the US Government has countless other people in custody around the world in "secret locations" with no accountability to anyone. If these prisoners are guilty of some wrong-doing, let our government publicly accuse them of it and expose the charges to public scrutiny. The wrongness of what the our government is doing is further elevated by the false premises under which it is being done. The release in Britain in April of information showing that the American and British governments had pledged to invade Iraq as early as April 2002 now makes it clear that there was criminal intent on the part of these Administrations. Before seeking any international input, before giving weapons inspectors a chance, the Bush and Blair Administrations had determined that certain self-interests were served by displacing the Iraqi government and imposing Western control over the economy there. The further release of British government legal counsel documents indicates that Mr. Blair was informed that invading a sovereign country for purposes of overthrowing its government was illegal under international law. Mr. Kofi Annan had the courage to acknowledge the illegality of this action last fall, and nearly lost his job for his honesty. Anti-American protests broke out across South Asia and into the Middle East in May. Mr. Bush blamed them on a single short reference to defamation of the Koran that appeared in Newsweek magazine. But similar accusations have appeared in scores of periodicals over the past three years, and the indignities visited on US prisoners' physical and emotional wellbeing is now well-documented. The Administration may succeed in scapegoating Newsweek for these protests, but the underlying truth of the abuse of American power across the Middle East is not going away anytime soon. These protests are only the beginning. In our churchs, millions of Americans earnestly pray for peace each week. We must realize that we have it within our own power to answer those prayers by holding the Bush Administration accountable for the abuses imposed on those they have kidnapped (neither criminals, given the absence of charges, nor acknowledged as prisoners of war), and the populations all around the world from which these political prisoners come. 25 May 2005
"Faith, Hope and Love--these three abide. But the greatest of these is Love." by Marla Ruzicka (April 12th, 2005)
In a news conference at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in March 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks said, "We don't do body counts." His words outraged the Arab world and damaged the U.S. claim that its forces go to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties. During the Iraq war, as U.S. troops pushed toward Baghdad, counting civilian casualties was not a priority for the military. However, since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations over and the U.S. military moved into a phase referred to as "stability operations," most units began to keep track of Iraqi civilians killed at checkpoints or during foot patrols by U.S. soldiers. Here in Baghdad, a brigadier general commander explained to me that it is standard operating procedure for U.S. troops to file a spot report when they shoot a non-combatant. It is in the military's interest to release these statistics. Recently, I obtained statistics on civilian casualties from a high-ranking U.S. military official. The numbers were for Baghdad only, for a short period, during a relatively quiet time. Other hot spots, such as the Ramadi and Mosul areas, could prove worse. The statistics showed that 29 civilians were killed by small-arms fire during firefights between U.S. troops and insurgents between Feb. 28 and April 5 ? four times the number of Iraqi police killed in the same period. It is not clear whether the bullets that killed these civilians were fired by U.S. troops or insurgents. A good place to search for Iraqi civilian death counts is the Iraqi Assistance Center in Baghdad and the General Information Centers set up by the U.S. military across Iraq. Iraqis who have been harmed by Americans have the right to file claims for compensation at these locations, and some claims have been paid. But others have been denied, even when the U.S. forces were in the wrong. The Marines have also been paying compensation in Fallujah and Najaf. These data serve as a good barometer of the civilian costs of battle in both cities. These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The military should also want to release this information for the purposes of comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year. It suggested that since the U.S.-led invasion there had been 100,000 deaths in Iraq. A further step should be taken. In my dealings with U.S. military officials here, they have shown regret and remorse for the deaths and injuries of civilians. Systematically recording and publicly releasing civilian casualty numbers would assist in helping the victims who survive to piece their lives back together. A number is important not only to quantify the cost of war, but as a reminder of those whose dreams will never be realized in a free and democratic Iraq. Marla Ruzicka was killed four days after writing this op-ed
piece, along with her close friend and colleague Faiez Ali Salem,
in a car bombing near Baghdad. As the founder of Campaign for Innocent
Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), she had worked with Senator Patrick
Leahy to help secure $20 million in funding to assist victims of
war in Afghanistan and Iraq. At her funeral Mass at St. Mary's Catholic
Church in Lakeport CA, she was repeatedly championed as a living
example of Jesus' commission to the unconditional love of friends
and enemies.
"Everything falls apart without truth." Pope Benedict XVI has been selected to lead our Church, and proclaim anew Jesus' message of love for friends and enemies. He chose a name associated with the striving for peace; Pope Benedict XV risked his Papacy in efforts to reconcile all the combatants of World War I. The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany has been a champion of resistance against the forces of materialism that have sought to overtake Christian spirituality. The Pope famously condemned in 1988 those who believe that Salvation can be attained here on Earth, through violence and utopian schemes that emphasize the principal that "the ends justify the means." In his own words: "Morality does not lie in present existence but in the future. Man has to fashion himself. The only moral value there is lies in the future of society when we will get everything we do not have now. Morality in the present consists in working for the sake of this future society. The new standard of morality says, then: whatever serves the bringing about of this new society is moral. And what serves it can be determined by the scientific methods of political strategy, psychology, and sociology. The ‘moral’ becomes the ‘scientific’: morality no longer has a ‘phantom’ goal - heaven - but a realisable phenomenon, the new age. In this way the moral and the religious have become realistic and ‘scientific’. Blessings upon Pope Benedict as he leads our Church forward to a new recognition of Christ's truth in this violent world. 19 April 2005
Centesimus
Annus John
Paul II ~~~ It is only when hatred and injustice are sanctioned and organized by the ideologies based on them, rather than on the truth about the human person, that they take possession of entire nations and drive them to act. Rerum Novarum opposed ideologies of hatred and showed how violence and resentment could be overcome by justice. May the memory of those terrible events guide the actions of everyone, particularly the leaders of nations in our own time, when other forms of injustice are fueling new hatreds and when new ideologies which exalt violence are appearing on the horizon. While it is true that since 1945 weapons have been silent on the European continent, it must be remembered that true peace is never simply the result of military victory, but rather implies both the removal of the causes of war and genuine reconciliation between peoples. For many years there has been in Europe and the world a situation of non-war rather than genuine peace. Half of the continent fell under the domination of a Communist dictatorship, while the other half organized itself in defense against this threat. Many peoples lost the ability to control their own destiny and were enclosed within the suffocating boundaries of an empire in which efforts were made to destroy their historical memory and the centuries-old roots of their culture. As a result of this violent division of Europe, enormous masses of people were compelled to leave their homeland or were forcibly deported. An insane arms race swallowed up the resources needed for the development of national economies and for assistance to the less developed nations. Scientific and technological progress, which should have contributed to man's well-being, was transformed into an instrument of war: science and technology were directed to the production of ever more efficient and destructive weapons. Meanwhile, an ideology, a perversion of authentic philosophy, was called upon to provide doctrinal justification for the new war. And this war was not simply expected and prepared for, but was actually fought with enormous bloodshed in various parts of the world. The logic of power blocs or empires, denounced in various Church documents and recently in the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, led to a situation in which controversies and disagreements among Third World countries were systematically aggravated and exploited in order to create difficulties for the adversary. Extremist groups, seeking to resolve such controversies through the use of arms, found ready political and military support and were equipped and trained for war; those who tried to find peaceful and humane solutions, with respect for the legitimate interests of all parties, remained isolated and often fell victim to their opponents. In addition, the precariousness of the peace which followed the Second World War was one of the principal causes of the militarization of many Third World countries and the fratricidal conflicts which afflicted them, as well as of the spread of terrorism and of increasingly barbaric means of political and military conflict. Moreover, the whole world was oppressed by the threat of an atomic war capable of leading to the extinction of humanity. Science used for military purposes had placed this decisive instrument at the disposal of hatred, strengthened by ideology. But if war can end without winners or losers in a suicide of humanity, then we must repudiate the logic which leads to it: the idea that the effort to destroy the enemy, confrontation and war itself are factors of progress and historical advancement. When the need for this repudiation is understood, the concepts of "total war" and "class struggle" must necessarily be called into question. Among the many factors involved in the fall of oppressive regimes, some deserve special mention. Certainly, the decisive factor which gave rise to the changes was the violation of the rights of workers. It cannot be forgotten that the fundamental crisis of systems claiming to express the rule and indeed the dictatorship of the working class began with the great upheavals which took place in Poland in the name of solidarity. It was the throngs of working people which foreswore the ideology which presumed to speak in their name. On the basis of a hard, lived experience of work and of oppression, it was they who recovered and, in a sense, rediscovered the content and principles of the Church’s social doctrine. Also worthy of emphasis is the fact that the fall of this kind of "bloc" or empire was accomplished almost everywhere by means of peaceful protest, using only the weapons of truth and justice. While Marxism held that only by exacerbating social conflicts was it possible to resolve them through violent confrontation, the protests which led to the collapse of Marxism tenaciously insisted on trying every avenue of negotiation, dialogue, and witness to the truth, appealing to the conscience of the adversary and seeking to reawaken in him a sense of shared human dignity. It seemed that the European order resulting from the Second World War and sanctioned by the Yalta Agreements could only be overturned by another war. Instead, it has been overcome by the non-violent commitment of people who, while always refusing to yield to the force of power, succeeded time after time in finding effective ways of bearing witness to the truth. This disarmed the adversary, since violence always needs to justify itself through deceit, and to appear, however falsely, to be defending a right or responding to a threat posed by others. Once again I thank God for having sustained people s hearts amid difficult trials, and I pray that this example will prevail in other places and other circumstances. May people learn to fight for justice without violence, renouncing class struggle in their internal disputes, and war in international ones. Recalling a day 25 years ago when the Pope brought America closer to Christ, as we look to the future of our Church The coming of spring in the Northern Hemisphere conveys new hope as we contemplate the future of our Church. Pope John Paul II set a high standard as a peacemaker, heroically standing up to the advocates of war, torture, and indifference to the plight of the poor. One day 25 years ago, he brought to America a newly urgent sense of Christ's message, which is more relevant than ever today. In the autumn of 1979, he stood on the Boston Common in a downpour, smiling and bathed in light as he gave his impassioned homily from a brilliant white stage in the darkness. People had camped on the Common the night before to get the best places, many staking out their blankets with little fences or ropes. Venders were everywhere selling all manner of Pope-abilia, from buttons to portrait-bearing commode covers. And then the most remarkable thing happened. The skies opened up, and a downpour seemed to catch everyone by surprise. All the venders disappeared, and all the blankets came up off the muddy ground. People clustered together beneath the few umbrellas, and suddenly the Pope appeared in his little car, rolling slowly and serenely through the crowd. His first words were, "I greet you, America the beautiful." The crowd screamed with delight. Hope filled the wet air, and everyone there seemed so proud of both Catholicism and Christianity. The gospel that day was from Matthew 19:13-22, the story of the young man who had followed all the Commandments, but was discouraged at the prospect of having to sell all he had in order to follow Christ. When the Pope began his homily, he appealed specifically to the young people in this university city and across America. He said, "The sadness of the young man makes us reflect. We could be tempted to think that many possessions, many of the goods of this world, can bring happiness. We see instead in the case of the young man in the Gospel that his many possessions had become an obstacle to accepting the call of Jesus to follow him. He was not ready to say yes to Jesus, and no to self, to say yes to love and no to escape...In its precise eloquence this deeply penetrating event expresses a great lesson in a few words. It touches upon substantial problems and basic questions that have in no way lost their relevance. Everywhere young people are asking important questions - questions on the meaning of life, on the right way to live, on the scale of values: 'What must I do…?' 'What must I do to share in everlasting life?'… To each one of you I say therefore: heed the call of Christ when you hear him saying to you: 'Follow me!' Walk in my path! Stand by my side! Remain in my love! There is a choice to be made: a choice for Christ and his way of life, and his commandment of love.'" With a rhythmic cadence which elicited ever increasing excitement, he exhorted the crowd thick with college students to reject the selfishness of the world and choose "the option of love." Repeatedly he uttered the words, "Follow Christ!" "You who are married: share your love and your burdens with each other; respect the human dignity of your spouses; accept joyfully the life that God gives through you; make your marriage stable and secure for your children's sake. Follow Christ! You who are single or who are preparing for marriage. Follow Christ! You who are young or old. Follow Christ! You who are sick or ageing, who are suffering or in pain. You who feel the need for healing, the need for love, the need for a friend - follow Christ! "The message of love that Christ brought is always important, always relevant. It is not difficult to see how today's world, despite its beauty and grandeur, despite the conquests of science and technology, despite the refined and abundant material it offers, is yearning for more truth, for more love, for more joy. And all of this is found in Christ and in his way of life...It is part of your task in the world and the Church to reveal the true meaning of life where hatred, neglect or selfishness threaten to take over the world...Faced with problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility: escape in selfishness, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. But today, I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape. If you really accept love from Christ, it will lead you to God. Perhaps in the priesthood or religious life; perhaps in some special service to your brothers and sisters: especially to the needy, the poor, the lonely, the abandoned, those whose rights have been trampled upon, or those whose basic needs have not been provided for. Whatever you make of your life, let it be something that reflects the love of Christ." In an era when every statesman wanted to be seen with the Pope, but few had the courage to renounce violence as Jesus insisted we must, the beginnings of a new Papacy offer us a chance for reflection on our own convictions. When others treat us with disrespect, do we respond in anger? When someone isn't listening to us, do we shout to force their attention? When someone possesses something we covet (like the world's second largest known petroleum reserves), is "preserving our way of life" an adequate reason to claim these things as our own at all costs? We pray now for our next pope and for the one who has left us. But our focus must remain on Christ himself. We pray that the Holy Spirit will steer our Church away from the temptation to cozy up to the princes of this world. Moreover may the Spirit restore all of us to a true sense of Christ's vision for the unconditional love of friends and enemies, about which John Paul spoke so richly on that October evening 25 years ago. 9 April 2005
Protecting life, in more than just name Terri Schiavo now rests in the arms of a loving God. May she rest in the eternal grace of God and her family find peace and solace to replace the political and media circus that so exploited her suffering. Terri’s death raises grave questions concerning the true commitment of our leaders to consistently protect life, despite their having forcefully coopted the language of the Catholic Church in all their statements to the press. On the day of her death, President Bush spoke again in purely Catholic language, stating: “I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others. The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life." As Catholics, we are appalled at the straight-faced hypocrisy of these words. It is now clear that his Administration gladly "takes a stand" on "life issues," like end-of-life care and abortion, but has not spent any meaningful funds in alleviating these problems. One can only conclude that the Republican stands on these issues are pure window dressing, and that shouting about these problems is more valuable to them than actually solving them. Perhaps the eeriest foreshadowing of the manipulation to come was evident in remarks made Thursday in Congress by House Majority Leader Tom Delay. He said, "We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president...We will look into that." His office released a statement, saying, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today." Mr. Delay appears to be preparing the groundwork for using the Schiavo family's situation to make the argument that Bush judicial nominations must be approved in order "to protect innocent, vulnerable people from being preyed upon." Federal court nominations, and eventually Supreme Court selections, will become a "moral battleground" for the Right, possibly viewed as so important that the Senate filibuster must be eliminated to win the battle. We predict that Terri Schiavo's plight will become the rallying cry for dismantling nearly 200 years of Senate protocol. But what does a “presumption of life” mean when 300,000 people and counting have died in the Darfur Region of the Sudan as our country stands idly by? What does a “presumption of life” mean when 40,000 children die every day around the world from hunger, disease and violence? Will Bush and Delay interrupt vacations and gather their faithful in Washington anytime soon to address the increased mortality among over 45 million Americans without healthcare? Being “Pro Life” means protecting all life, not just those who can afford it or those who will attract the most media attention. Like Bush and Delay, some Catholics such as Priests for Life's Fr. Frank Pavone, the Catholic League’s William Donohue, and Senator Rick Santorum have exploited Terri Schiavo’s suffering to promote an extremist agenda. They are essentially “cafeteria Catholics,” pursuing a vindictive and counterproductive campaign to criminalize abortion, helping drive further increases in military spending, and obsessed with more tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% as social services to the poor are slashed. Their narrow definition of “the sanctity of life” shows substantial ignorance of the Catholic Church’s clear teaching on a consistent ethic of life. Their misrepresentation of the Catholic Faith to promote their extremist agenda hurts us all, and devalues the moral standing of our Church in the world. Mr. Bush’s words about Terri Schiavo ring very hollow, when he and his ideological soulmates completely sidestep all the killing in Iraq, the bloodbath of gun violence on our own streets, the domestic suffering that will result from the impending cuts in Medicare and Social Security, and any truly effective action to protect the unborn. They may use Catholic language, but they are completely ignoring the Catholic Church’s clear teaching on a consistent ethic of life. 31 March 2005
Shouting 'Schiavo!' Republicans quietly shred the social safety net “This people pays me lip service but their heart is far from me.” Jesus, quoting Isaiah 29, in Matthew 15:8 Adopting the language of the Catholic Church, Mr. Bush and Congressional leaders this week sought to exalt themselves as champions of a “culture of life” as the legal remedies to prolong the life of Mrs. Terri Schiavo were gradually exhausted. We are united now in praying for this Catholic woman and her faithful long-suffering family. But Mrs. Schiavo has fallen further victim to a stunning political bait-and-switch, as politicians who trumpeted her cause were simultaneously looking for ways to cut health services that sustain the lives of millions of our poorest citizens. Furthermore, the tragedy in Minnesota this week served to highlight the cost in lives of political inaction by these same conservatives in the service of the Gun Lobby. Perhaps most starkly revealing of the true Administration stance on the “sanctity of life” has been Mr. Bush's unsuccessful effort to persuade the Supreme Court to allow continued executions of minors and the mentally retarded, in direct violation of Catholic doctrine. When it came to investing dollars in upholding the “sanctity of life,” or losing contributions from wealthy constituencies, politicians on the right couldn’t abandon the “culture of life” quickly enough. Republican House leaders sought to slice $14 billion from the Medicaid budget that supports nursing home care for the indigent, including Mrs. Schiavo. A six-month-old baby named Sun Hudson was taken off life support last week in Houston because the prognosis of his developmental disorder was poor and his grief-stricken mother had no money. His death was enabled by a 1999 “futile care” statute signed into law by then-Governor George Bush. This past week’s issue of the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation is dedicated to documenting the significantly greater burden of cardiovascular disease among our minority communities, and the health care disparities that in part contribute to their substantially increased mortality compared to other Americans. Rather than working to fix this unconscionable disparity, the Bush Administration is selling it as a reason to pour Social Security money into private accounts. Now comes special federal legislation, rushed through Congress in the middle of the night and focused on the fate of Mrs. Schiavo alone. This law signed by Mr. Bush explicitly excluded similar legal remedy for anyone else in the same situation. These three legislative acts—slicing Medicaid funding in our federal budget, protecting Texas hospitals from charity care expenditures, and creating a privileged status for Mrs. Schiavo’s life—send a message that the lives of the poor matter much less than the well-to-do, unless they can be used as political symbols that mask this double standard. In the one most concrete case of a loss of life that Congress could immediately correct, we continue to see total indifference to the spread of gun violence in America. Highly publicized gun massacres have now occurred three times in the past two weeks. But the Congressional leadership has directly sabotaged renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban, sought to repeal gun laws in our national capital, and offered sweeping legal immunity to those who profit the most from gun sales. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, guns kill more than 30,000 people annually in the US, and African-Americans are more than twice as likely as others to be killed by guns. This past week the Catholic Bishops issued a statement reaffirming our Church’s unequivocal opposition to the death penalty. Politicians of every stripe have long pandered to the general public’s fear of crime by seeking to execute the poorest and least well-represented criminals. This Administration even argued in the Supreme Court for the continued execution of minors and the mentally retarded, but thankfully from a Catholic perspective those arguments were ultimately rejected. As Catholics,
we are called to pay more than lip service to our respect for life.
If the right-wing politicians want to stand up for the “sanctity
of life,” let us see a truly consistent ethic that recognizes
the increased likelihood of death among poor Americans resulting
from cuts to the federal healthcare budget, massive political contributions
by the gun industry, and the continued addiction of weak politicians
to the injustices of the death penalty in America. Terri Schiavo
has helped us all, particularly we Catholics in this Easter Season,
to contemplate again the fragility of life and to reject the selective
valuing of one life over another. A Creeping Sense that the United States Condones Torture “Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” --Romans 8:9 As we enter Holy Week, Christians recall that the central fact of our faith was the brutal death of Jesus at the hands of torturers who thought they were helping to keep order in the world. News continued emerging this month of the extent to which the Bush Administration encouraged torture as a matter of US policy, and the lengths to which they have gone to avoid holding accountable anyone in a position of authority. Despite reports of torture in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Afghanistan, the Administration has acknowledged that they were contemplating transferring hundreds of prisoners from Guantánamo back to these and other countries. The reason in part appears to be their inability to bring formal criminal charges against most of these men, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision last June ruling that US law applies to the Guantánamo concentration camp and allows prisoners there to challenge their detention in federal court. A further fly in the Bush ointment was the ruling last summer by a federal district judge that the Geneva Conventions apply to Guantánamo prisoners and that Mr. Bush’s “special military commissions” to try these men were unconstitutional. New details also emerged about the extent of abuse, which is now known to involve US facilities in Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq and possibly others. The NY Times reported that in 2002, two Afghan prisoners were kicked and beaten to death in US custody after being chained to the ceiling. Both of these deaths were originally attributed to “natural causes.” A crowd of enlisted men are being held accountable for these and other abuses. Meanwhile, a military investigation has cleared a top American intelligence officer of responsibility for the abuse of detainees under her watch at Abu Ghraib, and she has been promoted to commander of a national Army Intelligence Center in Arizona. The message of official sanction for torture is perhaps clearest in the drumbeat of nominations, as a parade of torture advocates are steadily placed in the highest government offices. First it was Alberto Gonzales, who provided legal cover for the Bush torture policy, taking over as the nation’s highest law enforcement officer. Then Michael Chertoff was advanced as Secretary of Homeland Secretary. As head of the Criminal Division at the Justice Department in 2002 and 2003, Mr. Chertoff advised the CIA on the limits to which they could go in torturing suspects. He apparently indicated that it was acceptable to induce near-drowning as an interrogation technique, and referred the CIA to a memorandum from the Justice Department Office of Legal Council that gruesomely dumbed down the definition of "torture" to only those acts that induced pain at a level tantamount to organ failure or imminent death. Mr. Bush then nominated John Negroponte, the former UN ambassador, as the first Director of National Intelligence. Mr. Negroponte was a key player in facilitating US support of widespread government-sponsored murder in Central America during the 1980s under the Reagan Administration. New information emerged this week that the killing of an Italian intelligence officer by the US military occurred at a “floating checkpoint” set up to clear the Baghdad airport road so Mr. Negroponte could have dinner with a US military commander there. Now the Administration has nominated John Bolton to follow in Mr. Negroponte’s footsteps at the UN. A leading apologist for the US support of official torture and death in Chile during the 1970s, Mr. Bolton has been a leader in the Administration's efforts to undermine the International Criminal Court that might some day hold the Bush Administration accountable for the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the killing of scores of thousands of people there, and the economic control US companies have taken of the oil resources there. How many people have to die in Iraq--500,000, a million, ten million?--before we all come to the realization that war is not the solution to the world's problems? Mr. Bush, and those who support him and his war, have rejected Christ’s imperative for love of both friends and enemies. Indeed, they have thrown in their lot with that of the Roman torturers, somehow deaf to the central message of our Christianity that hangs on the fact of Jesus' death at the hands of those who believed violence could solve all their problems. Imagine if it was any one of us being detained without charge for years, or being tortured just shy of a threshold for organ failure, or watching as our child was burned to death by a US offensive “aimed at insurgents.” If you can judge someone by the company they keep, then the elevation of torture advocates like Gonzales, Chertoff, Negroponte and Bolton appears to represent the true contempt that Mr. Bush has for individual human dignity. In the words of St. Paul, Mr. Bush does not belong to Christ, and increasingly neither do we if we continue to support the pro-death policies of this Administration. 19 March 2005
Dr. Howard Dean, new Democratic Party chief, seeks the views of Catholics and people of faith With the election of Dr. Howard Dean as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, our party has an opportunity for new beginnings on many fronts. In some ways, Dr. Dean’s election is a true victory for moral conduct in public life. As an ardent opponent of the war in Iraq, he showed that he was willing to stand up for the value of life against an Administration that cares nothing for the individual lives being lost on both sides of that conflict. Dr. Dean has invited us to submit our views on the future of our Party, and the Nation. We would strongly urge all our supporters to write and tell him how important it is not to let the Republicans get away with hijacking Christianity in America to advance their radical economic vision for a government that does not insure a secure retirement, retreats from advancing biomedical research for healthier lives, and shifts the tax burden to those least able to pay it. You can write to Dr. Dean at http://www.democrats.org/chair/feedback/index.html?psc=front. Beyond the central moral issue of war, Dr. Dean has indicated his commitment to working with religious leaders of many faiths to provide aid and comfort to committed Catholics who have felt they were without representation in the current political arena. At the recent DNC meeting, Dr. Dean told a caucus of advocates for women’s issues, “People of faith are in the Democratic Party, including me.” As quoted in Christianity Today, he went on to say, "We are not pro-abortion! There is not anyone I know who is pro-abortion." For once Catholic Democrats have a public advocate who attacked the Bush Administration for overseeing an increase per capita in abortions, reversing the positive trend that had taken hold under President Bill Clinton. He pointed out that Mr. Bush has made vague gestures indicating opposition to abortion, while guiding public policies that actually increase the number of abortions. Under former chairman Terry McAuliffe, the DNC has embraced new efforts to work with Catholic leaders across the country—in part to illustrate the ways that the Democratic Party continues to be the standard bearer for Catholic values like the wellbeing of the poor, absolute opposition to the insane notion of preventive war, the random and race-based implementation of the death penalty in America, and the despoilment of God’s creation. We look forward
to working with Dr. Dean to bring our Catholic values front and
center to the public debate, in our efforts to stem the immorality
that has characterized the Bush tenure in Washington.
Mr. Bush drags the world to a more violent place It was in the Garden of Gethsemani that Jesus uttered his most prophetic words, “All those who take up the sword will perish by the sword,” as he rebuked Peter for injuring Malchus, the servant of the High Priest. The Bush Administration began in the fall of 1999 to undermine South Korea’s “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with North Korea, which had no nuclear weapons at that time. Family exchanges, travel links, and increased economic contacts then had raised the specter of beginning talks leading to Korean unification. But Candidate Bush began condemning North Korea as a threat, and using the supposed threat as a rationale for justifying huge new military expenditures on an internationally destabilizing missile defense system. Now Mr. Bush is receiving considerable criticism for having stood by idly, wielding only menacing rhetoric, while North Korea announces this week that it has in fact secured nuclear weapons “to defend itself against the United States.” It is increasingly clear that this was precisely what the Bush Administration wanted. Now they can proceed unimpeded with restarting the world arms race that was so profitable for the Defense Industry, pointing to North Korea and pouring tens of billions of dollars into missile defense. The principled opposition to missile defense will now be paralyzed by the fact of real North Korean nuclear armaments. This is much like the “social security crisis”—a very expensive non-solution to a problem that didn’t exist until the Bush Administration created it. Meanwhile, news emerged this week about the extent of Bush Administration efforts to develop new, heavier nuclear weapons of our own. They have indicated their intent to work toward suspending the international ban on nuclear testing. Is our world more peaceful because our president threatened North Korea, and compelled them to develop a nuclear capability? Will it be more peaceful once Iran has done the same? Will restarting the international nuclear arms race make us more safe or much less safe? The one thing Mr. Bush fears is personal accountability. Even as he was undermining the successful Clinton Administration policy on North Korea, he began condemning the International Criminal Court. Having watched as his father killed 5000 innocent people in Panama City in December 1989, while sending the Marines in to “arrest” the country’s president, he had a very real personal interest in making sure the first President Bush could never be prosecuted as a war criminal. This was further amplified in the waning days of the first Gulf War when Bush the elder ordered the slaughter of an estimated hundred thousand retreating Iraqi conscripts forced into military service when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Now Bush the younger has his own reasons to fear the International Criminal Court: 100,000-200,000 people killed in Iraq, widespread torture as a matter of US policy, and plans to militarize other disagreements around the world. The one thing of which Mr. Bush is deathly afraid is accountability before the world. Even as he advocates the death penalty for Saddam Hussein, he fears the judgment of others. This militarism is the sword, writ large, that Jesus condemned. We owe it to our deepest principles to oppose this spiral into increased violence into which the Bush Administration is leading us. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, wrote poignantly about this issue last February 10 in the New York Times: "The United States so mistrusts the International Criminal Court that President Bush has instead proposed that the African Union and the United Nations create a Sudan tribunal based at the war-crimes court run by the United Nations in Tanzania. "We don't want to be party to legitimizing the I.C.C.," Pierre-Richard Prosper, the United States ambassador for war crimes issues, said in late January. That's an about-face from the American stance in 2002, when Mr. Prosper criticized the very same United Nations ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia that he now hails. Citing "problems that challenge the integrity of the process," like a lack of professionalism among staff, Mr. Prosper demanded that the interminable proceedings at those courts be wrapped up by 2008, regardless of who was left at large. Justice at these courts, he said, "has been costly, has lacked efficiency, has been too slow, and has been too removed from the everyday experience of the people and the victims." Temporary courts suffer other disadvantages next to the permanent International Criminal Court. Because their mandates are finite, they tend to rush indictments and arrests, disregarding their potentially destabilizing effects on societies still reeling from conflict. The permanent court, by contrast, can time its arrests to advance both justice and peace. Moreover, creating a court from scratch takes months, or even years. A new statute would need to be devised, staff members and judges would need to be recruited, and the African Union, which has never before overseen criminal trials, would need a crash course. The ad hoc court could cost as much as $150 million annually. By contrast, the supposedly bloated international court, which is already investigating multiple crises simultaneously, will cost roughly $87 million in 2005. Couldn't that same $150 million be better spent on arming and transporting African Union peacekeepers into Darfur to prevent the massacres from being committed in the first place? Skeptics say that international courts will never deter determined warlords. Musa Hilal, the coordinator of the deadly Janjaweed militia in Darfur, gave me a very different impression when I met with him soon after the Bush administration had named him as a potential suspect. He had left Darfur and was living in Khartoum, courting journalists in the hopes of improving his reputation. Almost as soon as I sat down with him, he began his defense. Like his victims, he had only one place on his mind. "I do not belong at the Hague," he said. Surely President Bush doesn't want to find himself on the side of someone his administration considers a killer." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/opinion/10Power.html?
Mr. Bush's truthful moments President Bush's State-of-the-Union Address featured much crowing about how well things are going in Iraq, with the U.S.-imposed elections now over. Good news or bad, his highly optimistic pronouncements have remained virtually unchanged for the past two years. To give him the benefit of the doubt, the Pentagon was prepared to sustain tens of thousands of American casualties at the time of the invasion. The military was also prepared to spend vastly more money, and continues to argue regularly for “emergency appropriations” to cover these mammoth expenses. By any objective criteria, however, Iraq has been a cesspool of mayhem. 13 million children there have suffered unimagineable psychological harm. Nearly 1500 American families will never see fathers, mothers, or children again, and new studies have suggested that over 15% of returning troops are suffering from serious psychological damage. Elections aside, why has Mr. Bush been so happy for so long about Iraq? His supporters have frequently touted honesty as one of his central character traits. One month after September 11, he proclaimed, “Parents should teach their children by word and deed to understand and live out the moral values that we hold, such as honesty, accepting responsibility for our actions, and loving our neighbors as ourselves." At the White House last August 5, he said, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” Another verbal gaffe? Perhaps it’s time to take Mr. Bush at his word. The occasion was the signing of the Defense Appropriations Act, funding the military for fiscal year 2005 and shattering the $400 billion mark for the first time. Given that we have no major military adversaries, and that we now support two Defense Departments (the other is Homeland Security), this is a staggering sum of money. That law represents one of the most successful efforts in our history to transfer wealth from all Americans to thousands of military contractors that are increasingly an extension of Mr. Bush and his Party. Why were they prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of American lives, and to spend hundreds of billions in Iraq when their war rationale was so flimsy? What Mr. Bush discussed only obliquely in his State-of-the-Union are all the cuts in funding for early education and ultimately for the Social Security benefits of all Americans. No plan was put forward to care for 11 million American children without health insurance. Instead, hundreds of billions will be siphoned out of domestic programs into new and continuing military operations. Who benefits from all these precious dollars going into Iraq and elsewhere? It’s not just the direct transfer of our taxes to these contractors. Elections aside, our Coalition Provisional Authority has permanently locked in American economic dominance in Iraq for years to come. From this standpoint, Mr. Bush’s two years of optimism rings completely true. Of course he’s happy with how things are going in Iraq. Another $80 billion is soon headed from us to some of Republican Party's biggest supporters. Every American child and adult will pay $150 this year for Mr. Bush’s Iraqi transfer-of-wealth scheme. A hundred thousand Iraqis dead, according to the medical journal The Lancet? The Pentagon refuses to even study the issue. Thousands of devastated American families? Mr. Bush attends none of their funerals, and pays a death allowance of only $12,000 apiece. So perhaps
we should be grateful for moments of candor, like that day last
August when Mr. Bush uttered his famous remark, “Our enemies…never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people,
and neither do we.” This brief honesty is so refreshing, when
it squeeks out from behind the din of misrepresentations that typify
most pronouncements by this Administration--such as the total mischaracterization
in Mr. Bush's speech Wednesday night about the financial future
of Social Security (For instance, see Prof. Paul Krugman's recent
dissection of this dishonesty at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_020105E.shtml).
When it comes to the wellbeing of average Americans, and indeed
the current victims of the misuse of American power around the world,
this President needs somewhat more education regarding his other
utterance, namely the part about "accepting responsibility
for our actions, and loving our neighbors as ourselves."
George W. Bush's Inaugural Address (Excerpts, 21 January 2005)... "We have seen our vulnerability and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder, violence will gather and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. He has seen reigning on the earth tyranny, crime, and imposture. He sees at this moment a whole nation, grappling with all the oppressions of the human race, suspend the course of its heroic labors to elevate its thoughts and vows toward the great Being who has given it the mission it has undertaken and the strength to accomplish it. Is it not He whose immortal hand, engraving on the heart of man the code of justice and equality, has written there the death sentence of tyrants? Is it not He who, from the beginning of time, decreed for all the ages and for all peoples liberty, good faith, and justice? America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government because no one is fit to be a master and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery, and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power. He created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue. It is He who implanted in the breast of the triumphant oppressor remorse and terror, and in the heart of the oppressed and innocent calmness and fortitude. It is He who impels the just man to hate the evil one, and the evil man to respect the just one. It is He who adorns with modesty the brow of beauty, to make it yet more beautiful. It is He who makes the mother's heart beat with tenderness and joy. It is He who bathes with delicious tears the eyes of the son pressed to the bosom of his mother. It is He who silences the most imperious and tender passions before the sublime love of the fatherland. It is He who has covered nature with charms, riches, and majesty. All that is good is His work, or is Himself. Evil belongs to the depraved man who oppresses his fellow man or suffers him to be oppressed. The Author of Nature has bound all mortals by a boundless chain of love and happiness. Perish the tyrants who have dared to break it! This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way. The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations. The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it. America's influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom's cause. Republicans, it is yours to purify the earth which they have soiled, and to recall to it the justice that they have banished! Liberty and virtue together came from the breast of Divinity. Neither can abide with mankind without the other. O generous People, would you triumph over all your enemies? Practice justice, and render the Divinity the only worship worthy of Him. O People, let us deliver ourselves today, under His auspices, to the just transports of a pure festivity. Tomorrow we shall return to the combat with vice and tyrants. We shall give to the world the example of republican virtues. And that will be to honor Him still. My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people from further attacks and emerging threats. Some have unwisely chosen to test America's resolve, and have found it firm. We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies. We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America's belief in human dignity will guide our policies. Yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty. Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty—though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt. Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals. It is wisdom above all that our guilty enemies would drive from the republic. To wisdom alone it is given to strengthen the prosperity of empires. It is for her to guarantee to us the rewards of our courage. Let us associate wisdom, then, with all our enterprises. Let us be grave and discreet in all our deliberations, as men who are providing for the interests of the world. Let us be ardent and obstinate in our anger against conspiring tyrants, imperturbable in dangers, patient in labors, terrible in striking back, modest and vigilant in successes. Let us be generous toward the good, compassionate with the unfortunate, inexorable with the evil, just toward every one. Let us not count on an unmixed prosperity, and on triumphs without attacks, nor on all that depends on fortune or the perversity of others. Sole, but infallible guarantors of our independence, let us crush the impious league of kings by the grandeur of our character, even more than by the strength of our arms. Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it…We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner Freedom Now they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty. When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, It rang as if it meant something. In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength, tested but not weary we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom. You war against kings; you are therefore worthy to honor Divinity.
Being of Beings, Author of Nature, the brutalized slave, the vile
instrument of despotism, the perfidious and cruel aristocrat, outrages
Thee by his very invocation of Thy name. But the defenders of liberty
can give themselves up to Thee, and rest with confidence upon Thy
paternal bosom. Being of Beings, we need not offer to Thee unjust
prayers. Thou knowest Thy creatures, proceeding from Thy hands.
Their needs do not escape Thy notice, more than their secret thoughts.
Hatred of bad faith and tyranny burns in our hearts, with love of
justice and the fatherland. Our blood flows for the cause of humanity.
Behold our prayer. Behold our sacrifices. Behold the worship we
offer Thee." ...with apologies to Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre, speech to the Convention, Committee on Public Safety, 7 June 1794, six weeks before he was arrested and executed for his role in the French Reign of Terror.
A time to remember that for which we stand Mr. Bush’s inauguration is an occasion for introspection for most soulful Democrats. So much passion and so much money invested in bringing some civility back to our country, and now so much triumphalism to suffer as the Republicans once again take office. But as Catholics and Christians, we are no strangers to adversity. The earliest Catholics risked their lives for what they believed. We are called now only to persevere in fighting the tyranny of the present moment. The Administration continues laying the groundwork for a perpetual military presence in Iraq, no matter how many people may be killed in the process, and we must fight it. News stories emerged this week about plans to undermine the government of Iran militarily, and we must fight this reliance on the use of force as the first resort to conflict resolution. On the economic front, a new CBS/NY Times poll shows 50% of Americans have bought into Mr. Bush's lie that Social Security is in crisis today because of a shortfall that may or may not happen 50 years from now. Meanwhile, the Administration prepares to permanently extend tax cuts heavily weighted to the top 1%--money that will largely come from a Social Security surplus, headed toward $3.5 trillion, disproportionately built up with our payroll taxes. For all the tax-cutting ardor on Capitol Hill, you'll never hear a Republican advocate cutting payroll taxes for the working poor. Job insecurity is as great as ever. Disposable income for working Americans is declining. The number of people without health insurance will continue to climb as health costs soar unimpeded. A self-deluded 43% of respondents said they thought most abortion would be illegal by the time Mr. Bush leaves office, even as the statistics show a sea change toward more abortions under Mr. Bush after years of declines. Here in Massachusetts, our governor has sought to reinstate a death penalty that has so many safeguards that virtually no one would ever qualify for it—thus a purely symbolic use of state-sponsored death, and to what end? As Catholic Democrats, in solidarity with our Bishops, we will stand ardently opposed to those who seek to kill a few convicts as a balm for the collective guilt over violence in our society. We will search for ways to fight abortion that actually prevent abortion, without further dividing our society over the question. We will fight efforts to impoverish the elderly by cutting their Social Security. We will seek new solutions to care for those with illness as Jesus urged us to do, and to protect our environment. We will fight to end the holocaust of preventable disease in the developing world. And we will tell truth to power as Mr. Bush seeks to install the apologists for his killing and torture in Iraq in new positions of authority in our government. A voice cries
out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. What other choice
do we have? Fortunately, God has given us the gift of one another,
and a deep-seated call to answer.
Holding accountable those who say they follow Christ Imagine someone saying that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was his favorite philosopher, and then watching that person unilaterally launch a war that would kill scores of thousands of people and consume hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been used to cure preventable disease abroad, insure the uninsured, and lift millions of unemployed out of poverty. The sad truth of our American life today is that everyone recognizes that Dr. King stood for non-violence, but the words of Jesus--"love your enemies"--are largely forgotten by the powerful among us. How indebted we are today for the message of Dr. King, who attributed his single-mindedness to his discipleship for Christ. May the same be true for us as we fight to prevent the next war being planned by our current government, as documented in a new story published this week by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact). An editorial appearing on Martin Luther King day in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune emphasizes this message in a beautiful way (http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/5187690.html ): "I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.... I want you to say that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity...." From the Rev. Martin Luther King's sermon, "The Drum Major Instinct," originally delivered Feb. 4, 1968 With programs, services and marches today, this nation honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. primarily as one of America's greatest civil and human rights leaders. His "I have a dream" and "content of character, not color of skin" remarks will be oft-repeated as reminders of the kind of America we still strive to be. Yet as this country remains engaged in a questionable war in Iraq, it seems fitting to also remember King the antiwar activist -- one of the first national leaders to courageously speak out against the war in Vietnam. Surely, if King were alive today to celebrate what would have been his 76th birthday, he would make the same arguments against the Middle Eastern conflict that has taken thousands of Iraqi and American lives. During the last years of his life, King was a strident opponent of American militarism and once said that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government." He also said that a nation that continues to "spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." Although President Bush is a born-again Christian and advocates "faith-based" social programs, he still plunged headlong into an unjustified (and many argue immoral) war. Bush's government can find billions to wage armed conflict, but can't find a way to fully fund special education or its own ambitious K-12 education plan. And now it is trying to weasel out of the federal commitment to a Social Security safety net for elderly citizens. King, and other peace activists of his time, would lament that the lessons of the Vietnam War and of the war on poverty have fallen on deaf contemporary federal ears. So today as we remember King, celebrate his life, work and the progress made based on his efforts, consider what remains to be done on his goals of eliminating racism, poverty, hunger, unfair incarceration, discrimination and inequities in education, housing and employment. And don't forget
his dedication to peace. On that topic his words of several decades
ago ring true today: "Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate."
American Catholics Respond to the South Asia Disaster With casualty estimates having surpassed 100,000, the December 26 disaster in the Indian Ocean has led to an international outpouring of aid pledges. Governments have taken the lead, with Japan having pledged $500 million, the Bush Administration a planned commitment of $350 million, and other nations small and large contributing to a balance currently estimated at $2 billion. Catholics have taken a leading role in driving private philanthropy, with Catholic churches across America having taken up special collections this past weekend to support work by Catholic Relief Services (CRS). In total, CRS has committed $25 million this week to recovery efforts in the twelve affected countries of South Asia. With 4,000 committed staff in 94 countries around the world, CRS should be a source of pride for all American Catholics, and indeed all Americans, in their efforts to address the combined consequences of war, poverty and disease among the world’s poorest citizens. In a statement circulated this week, CRS President Ken Hackett said, "I am overwhelmed and deeply touched by the immediate and magnificent outpouring of generosity shown by donors from around the world. The response proves that we do live in a global community bound by compassion and an inspiring solidarity. The needs are still tremendous but I am inspired by those of you have found it in your heart to make such vital donations. I hope you will read the donor stories on our website so you will get an insight into the true goodness of the humanity. Thank you." When natural disasters of this magnitude occur, many of us feel helpless to respond individually in a meaningful way. We applaud the willingness of the Bush Administration to rise to the occasion on our behalf. The USS Abraham Lincoln and a convoy of ships have arrived to provide supplies and logistical capabilities, in addition to airlifts from a US military facility in Thailand. The Administration cannot be faulted for its initial underestimation of the relief needs brought on by the gargantuan earthquake and resulting tsunami. Nonetheless, it is worth reflecting for a moment on our government’s response to the incredible need in South Asia through the lens of our national commitments in Iraq, and our responsibility for the parallel suffering there. Estimates from last October by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Columbia Universities estimated that more than 100,000 Iraqis had been killed to that point as a result of Mr. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. This places the Iraq War in the same ballpark as the South Asian tsunami in terms of the magnitude of the total casualties inflicted, with both situations imposing incalculable emotional suffering on the affected populations. The Administration’s current stated commitment to relief in South Asia, which Mr. Bush indicated this week would be expended over a period of years, represents slightly more than two days’ worth of the current American expenditures in Iraq—a stunning $1 billion per week, or more than $150 per year for every child, man and woman in the United States. The major difference of course is that most of the money in Iraq is leading to the infliction of more suffering and more animosity, while US Ambassador John Negroponte sits on $18 billion in allocated but unspent Iraqi relief funds. This is a striking study in contrasts, with the US Military being exploited on the one hand by a civilian authority to wreak havoc in Iraq, and on the other hand demonstrating its unalloyed capacity to accomplish good in the Indian Ocean basin. By this standard,
the comparatively small amount being dedicated by governments around
the world to the assistance of more than five million affected people
in South Asia will nonetheless be welcome as emblematic of what
collective action can do to help desperate people reconstruct their
homes and livelihoods. We as Catholics have an opportunity to encourage
our government to do more, in part by writing with thanks and encouragement
to Mr. Bush (president@whitehouse.gov). We also have an opportunity
to donate directly to relief efforts being carried out by Catholic
Relief Services, by going to this link: http://www.catholicrelief.org Pope John Paul's World Day of Peace message: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." New polls appearing this week in Time and Newsweek Magazines indicate that the vast majority of Americans consider themselves to be Christians, and remarkably share even doctrinal orthodoxies such as a belief in the virgin birth of Jesus. What their surveys fail to measure is whether we have maintained any fidelity to the fundamental message of our Christianity, namely our recognition of the centrality of love toward strangers and even toward our enemies. A recent catechism entitled, “Catholicism for Dummies,” does not even mention the words “Love your enemies,” the central tenet of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This Christmas we are faced with the tragic reality that our Christianity is being emptied of its meaning, turned into a cultural construct that pays lip service to the name of Christ but denies His most fundamental teachings. Tens of thousands being killed with the approval of the Sudanese government, and similar numbers being killed with US tax dollars in Iraq. Three million AIDS deaths anticipated again next year in Africa because treatments costing only $100 a year per person are not available to 99% of HIV victims there, and similar numbers of children still dying of malaria and diarrheal disease for lack of treatments costing pennies. Pope John Paul II, in his World Day of Peace message for 2005, has called all of us to a renewed recognition that being a Catholic Christian is fundamentally about renouncing violence as a means of resolving conflicts—at any level—and that the gospels call us to boundless personal generosity, rather than self-satisfied greed. The Pope writes: …How can we not think with profound regret of the drama unfolding in Iraq, which has given rise to tragic situations of uncertainty and insecurity for all? To attain the good of peace there must be a clear and conscious acknowledgment that violence is an unacceptable evil and that it never solves problems. "Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity. Violence destroys what it claims to defend: the dignity, the life, the freedom of human beings"(John Paul II, Homily at Drogheda, Ireland, 29 September 1979) . What is needed is a great effort to form consciences and to educate the younger generation to goodness by upholding that integral and fraternal humanism which the Church proclaims and promotes. This is the foundation for a social, economic and political order respectful of the dignity, freedom and fundamental rights of each person. The Pope concludes: The same is true in the social and political spheres. In this regard, Pope Leo XIII wrote that those charged with preserving peace in relations between peoples should foster in themselves and kindle in others "charity, the mistress and queen of all the virtues"(Rerum Novarum: Acta Leonis XIII 11, 1892). Christians must be convinced witnesses of this truth. They should show by their lives that love is the only force capable of bringing fulfillment to persons and societies, the only force capable of directing the course of history in the way of goodness and peace. Full text available
at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20041216_xxxviii-world-day-for-peace_en.html
The disgrace of Bush policy on torture: blame someone else when accusations arise, but keep the torture going An unknown number of "enemy combatants" are being held by the United States government in undisclosed locations around the world, with no accountability to the Red Cross or anyone else. The assumption that the "War against Terror" somehow dwarfs other struggles in American history has been accepted as a reasonable justification for an Administration policy that can best be described as "the ends justify the means." On the subject of the torture of human beings, no Christian or secular ethics system allows the kind of behavior instigated by the Bush Administration worldwide and recently documented at Guantanamo Bay in a report by the International Red Cross. Apparently Mr. Bush believes that accountability to God is all that matters, but we as Catholics must stand up courageously to this kind of thinking and put these heinous policies to an end. This subject was addressed in a compelling way in a copyrighted story appearing in the New York Times on Saturday 12/4/04 by their religion writer, Peter Steinfels: BELIEFS There is another celebrated story, however, this one grim rather than delightful, connected with the persecution by Antiochus and the saga of the Maccabean revolt. The story of Hannah and her seven sons appears in various sources but most extensively in the Second Book of Maccabees, a Greek translation of a Hebrew text eventually incorporated into the Christian Bible and found in Roman Catholic Bibles today although not included in Hebrew scriptures or, later, in Protestant Bibles. As part of Antiochus's campaign to break the fidelity of the Jews to their way of life, Hannah and her sons are ordered to eat swine. When they refuse, each of them, one by one and in view of the others, is successively subjected to gruesome mutilations, scalding in oil, and death. All modern English translations feature, in these passages, one of the ugliest words in the language: "torture." It is a reminder that torture opens one of the greatest chasms in morality. In even the most morally unsophisticated forms of popular storytelling, it is certainly not violence in itself, not even killing, that unmistakably separates good guys from evil ones. It is torture. Heroes may kill; villains torture - Nazi commanders, soulless drug dealers, despots on this planet or in outer space. In debates among contemporary ethicists about the notion of acts that qualify as "intrinsically evil," torture has always been a prime candidate. Within Roman Catholicism, the discussion of intrinsic evils has recently focused on abortion and euthanasia. But when Pope John Paul II weighed in on the question in his 1993 encyclical "The Splendor of Truth," the list of other actions he described as evil "in themselves, independently of circumstances" included, along with genocide and slavery, "physical and mental torture." But, really, is this a topic to bring up on the eve of a season of sparkling candles, childlike exuberance and family gift-giving? One could reply that the issue is posed by the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales, who as White House counsel helped frame the administration's policies about treatment of prisoners of war. Or that it is posed, more recently, by the International Committee of the Red Cross's newly reported findings that practices "tantamount to torture" have continued at the United States' prison at Guanatánamo Bay. But is this a topic that anyone wants to examine ever? Last April, the photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shocked the world and put the treatment of prisoners in the headlines for several weeks. Then, Congressional hearings faded, military investigations were begun in all directions, a few individuals were tried without great publicity - and attention shifted to the presidential campaign, where no one was going to touch the issue. As Mark Danner points out in his book "Torture and Truth" (New York Review Books), in the end the lurid photos may have deflected the central question of what role torture may have played, or yet be playing, in American policy for waging a war on terror into the question of individual indiscipline and sadism - "Animal House on the night shift," as former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger called the Abu Ghraib atrocities. Mr. Danner's book is valuable because to the 50 pages of articles he originally wrote for The New York Review of Books, the volume adds hundreds of pages of the relevant Justice and Defense Department memorandums, the photos, prisoners' depositions, Red Cross reports and the military's own major investigations of Abu Ghraib. Motivated readers can judge for themselves. Although the question of torture has justly become part of the debate about the war in Iraq, the question cannot be reduced to differences over that war. The Guantánamo prisoners, after all, were captured in Afghanistan, in a military action that had overwhelming support from the citizenry. Gathering intelligence is clearly crucial to the entire war on terror. Long before the invasion of Iraq, voices here and there began to ask about the legitimacy of torture, sometimes treading a fine line where it is hard to tell whether the aim is to uphold a moral precept or undermine it. It became imperative to define what constituted, in government talk, "aggressive interrogation" or "exceptional techniques" and what was, in blunt talk, torture. In this regard, the documents in "Torture and Truth" seem to operate on three levels. At the highest level, the thrust of the Justice Department memorandums seems entirely toward giving interrogators maximum leeway rather than worrying about setting limits. At the middle level, the Defense Department spells out permissible methods of increasingly aggressive interrogation with a degree of detail, benign examples and insistence on safeguards that mostly suggest approaches definitely this side of torture. At the lowest level, however, the appalling reports from the field give an entirely different picture of what "sleep adjustment," "stress positions," "environmental manipulation," "removal of clothing" and "increasing anxiety by use of aversions" can mean in practice. In an analysis of the torture question written this week for Religion News Service, David Anderson notes that "nearly absent from the three major administration reports on the abuse at Abu Ghraib is any discussion of the ethical issues involved." The report from Mr. Schlesinger's panel has eight appendices, the last of them rightly described by Mr. Anderson as "a cursory 2 1/3 pages on ethical issues." The panel calls for more "ethics education programs" without suggesting what their substance might be. Mr. Danner notes how much of the 9/11 commission's much-admired reconstruction of the World Trade Center plot depended on information from high-level Qaeda conspirators held in places and interrogated in ways that no one, apparently even top officials of the government, wants to know more about. The most disturbing
aspect of "Torture and Truth" is not anything it reveals
that has been hidden but how much it reveals that is not hidden
- but that the nation chooses not to look at.
Death and destruction continue in Iraq December arrived with news that the Bush Administration was sending more troops to Iraq, to an estimated total of 150,000. Roughly 20,000 are currently stationed in Afghanistan, with escalating insurgent violence there despite the recent elections. Families across America have now been thrust into a new state of anxiety as their loved ones have deployments extended or are being newly pushed into harm's way just before the Christmas holidays. The Administration continues its silence on the issue of whether U.S. troops will be permanently deployed in Iraq, enlarging international suspicions that their primary motivation for invading Iraq was for the extended economic exploitation of the country. Elections are supposedly scheduled for less than eight weeks from now, but there is no free press and apparently only one presidential candidate--a former CIA employee reasonably characterized as a one-time "terrorist," given his history of killing in Iraq as a political expatriot during the Hussein era. Catholic Democrats calls on Congress to embrace new legislation compelling the Administration to scientifically track how many people are dying in Iraq. With the conclusive demonstration that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and represented no imminent threat to the United States, the war justification evolved to 'Saddam was a bad guy who killed lots of his own people.' But now that the U.S. is responsible, under the Geneva Conventions, for the safety of the Iraqi people, American concern for the unjust deaths of these people seems to have evaporated. The latest casualty estimates from the Lancet study in October suggest that Mr. Bush and his father are now collectively responsible for upward of 400,000 deaths in Iraq, which puts them well beyond Saddam Hussein in terms of culpability for numbers of Iraqis killed. Last month's assault on the 300,000 people of Falluja, postponed until after the American election so as not to tarnish the so-called "pro-life" message of the Bush Campaign, claimed at least 1000 lives of Iraqis and more than 54 US military personnel (with 425 American wounded). How many civilians were killed will never be known, because the Administration again refuses to assess the "collateral damage" of their war operations in Iraq. A city the size of St. Louis has now been virtually destroyed by the US taxpayers. When Senator Kerry intoned that a Bush win would be "more of the same" in Iraq, his words acquired new prescience as Iraqi rebels launched new offensives in Mosul and Ramadi while Falluja was being leveled. The painful lesson Jesus taught us 2000 years ago, that violence begets more violence, continues to be ignored by a Republican Administration that basked in the flagrantly false perception that they were somehow more faithful to Christ than their Democratic opponent.
Catholics prove to be pivotal in presidential election A review of CNN exit poll data following last month's presidential election showed that the candidate who carried the Catholic vote in the eight largest swing states also carried that state. So Catholics probably proved to be pivotal in this election. Senator Kerry suffered six months of unprecedented personal attacks, including those by a few bishops who chose to use their office to assert their own political views in the presidential race. These attacks were leveled in very personal terms, as if Mr. Kerry alone was responsible for the tragedy of abortion in America. The reality is that his views are shared by a huge swath of believing Catholics, who are convinced that there are far more Christian (and effective) ways to prevent abortions than by putting hundreds of thousands of pregnant women in prison. The CNN exit data showed that only 15% of all respondents (not sorted by religion) said abortion should always be illegal. Another 26% felt it should be legal with some restrictions. The effectiveness of the Bush Administration in dealing with abortion will become somewhat clearer when they finally release their first abortion surveillance data (for 2001), planned for the day after Thanksgiving. We may begin to see whether Bush social and economic policies have indeed boosted the number of abortions in the US as early data have suggested. Exit polls suggested that the Catholic vote was crucial. CNN reported that self-identified Catholics represented 27% of all voters. Mr. Bush appears to have carried the majority, with 51% voting Republican and 48% for Mr. Kerry. Among those who said they attended Mass weekly, 55% appeared to have voted for Mr. Bush, but this was not consistent across the country. In California, 62% of weekly Mass attenders favored Senator Kerry, compared to only 36% for Bush. Overall, Mr. Kerry carried a majority of Catholics who said they attended less often than weekly (52%). Senator Kerry won the Catholic vote in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Mr. Bush's margin of victory among Catholics was especially striking in the two key states of Ohio and Florida, where he won 55% and 57% of the Catholic vote, respectively. Given the unusual involvement of the St. Louis archbishop in the presidential race, it was notable that Mr. Bush merely edged Mr. Kerry among Catholics there, 50 to 49%. The fallout from this election for our Church may be huge. Many people who have written to us about pastors who advocated from the pulpit for Mr. Bush are questioning their allegiance to parishes that seemed to have become vehicles for Republican political maneuvering. Many of us shudder at the way thousands of Republican organizers were deployed into Catholic parishes in this election cycle. Although Mr. Bush may be the winner in this presidential race, we and our Church are the losers. The 2008 presidential election is likely to see a far vaster exploitation of churches in general, and ours in particular, which will make 2004 look like a time of virtuous separation of church and state in comparison. |
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