The Houston Chronicle ran a cogent analysis by Ollie Besteiro, president of AARP Texas, showing how the Texas Legislature's proposed state budget for the next biennium would "devastate older Texans" in three different ways, compounding their misery and exacerbating health care costs for everyone who is not poor. Yet another example of conservative Republicans' willingness to sacrifice the genuine needs of real human beings to their ridiculous fiscal ideology that increasing government revenue is never a good thing:
What does it say about the value that Texas places on its older citizens when we pay fast-food restaurant workers more than those who provide care for our elders?
Who will take care of our aging parents and grandparents if we keep putting up roadblocks to quality long-term care, both community-based and in nursing homes? Will the services be there for us some day if we need them?
All these are fair questions in light of recent budget proposals being bandied about at the Texas Capitol.
Under consideration is a 10 percent cut in payments to Medicaid providers — including community-based services and nursing homes - on top of a recent 2 percent rate cut that's already gone into effect for nursing homes.
AARP believes that pulling the rug out from under seniors on both ends of the long-term care service spectrum is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Why? For starters, it's a little-known fact that Medicaid helps pay for two out of three nursing home stays in Texas. Medicaid is easily the largest payer of long-term care in our state, with more than 60 percent of its dollars devoted to the care of the elderly and disabled. That's more than the program spends on low-income women and children. Plus, Medicaid brings important federal matching dollars to the state, to the tune of $1.47 for every one dollar the state puts up.
Texas currently pays the second lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates for nursing homes in the country. Further cuts would have a direct impact on the quality of care received by residents, leaving nursing homes with no option but to reduce staffing. There are volumes of research documenting the relationship between staffing levels and the quality of care. Reduced payments to nursing homes will place our most vulnerable seniors in a highly dangerous situation.
At the same time, the Legislature is proposing to reduce oversight of nursing homes by reducing the number of staff responsible for their monitoring. This would only add insult to injury when it comes to ensuring our seniors are safe.
Cutting Medicaid funding for community-based care would push more people into nursing homes, which are more expensive for the state. We also know that the vast majority of older Texans want to stay in their homes for as long as they are able. On average, nursing home care costs the state more than $3,000 per person per month. Care at home costs the state between $700 and $1,500 per person per month. Community care funds are wisely spent state dollars because they provide coverage while people are still in reasonably good health, preventing the need for more costly treatment later.
Reducing payments for community care programs will make it increasingly difficult for Texans getting help from them to find workers who are willing to care for them. These programs already pay about minimum wage, $7.25 per hour.
In a nutshell, the Legislature's approach is seriously misguided. Lowering payment rates would put the lives of nursing home residents at risk by reducing the number of facility staff. Reducing oversight of these facilities by state personnel will degrade the quality of care received by patients, potentially putting their health at risk. At the same time, reducing rates for community-based care would have the effect of pushing more people into nursing homes, which are more expensive for the state.
Wages for workers who care for clients either in the community or in a nursing home have not kept pace with the cost of living. It's essential that direct-care workers be paid a living wage in order to ensure quality care.
Rather than saving money, the proposed state budget is dangerous for our seniors as well as costly for taxpayers. Both in terms of money and human lives, it is a plan we just can't afford.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Hysteria Over Muslim Growth: A Myth Shared by Jihadists and Islamophobes Alike
The New York Times has an excellent article by religion writer Laurie Goodstein, covering a report by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life on the pace of Muslim growth globally over the next twenty years. The upshot for that time period is that even though the number of Muslims will increase at twice the rate of non-Muslims, the growth rate will level off and will occur at a rate too slow to create any drastic shift in balance among world religions.
(I learned of Ms. Goodstein's report from a reprint in the Belief section of today's Houston Chronicle. I have not been able to find an electronic link to the Chronicle's version, but it appears they published the New York Times article in full.)
The Pew Research Center has a strong track record of gathering actual facts about peoples' religious beliefs and behaviors, and of using expert analysis to dispel myths and misunderstanding. The myth in this case is a pretty much global hysteria about the pace of Muslim growth--shared, ironically, both by Jihadists who want non-Muslims to fear a Muslim tide of global dominance and by Islamophobes who feel compelled to do all in their power to stem that tide.
The Pew findings show that the tide is imaginary. As Muslim economic, education and political levels improve, birthrates in majority-Muslim countries (and among Muslims in majority-non-Muslim countries) will become more like the birthrates among non-Muslims.
The following are excerpts from Laurie Goodstein's report:
A new report forecasts that the number of Muslims around the world will grow over the next 20 years at twice the rate of non-Muslims, but that the rapid growth will level off. With more Muslim women getting educations and jobs, people migrating to cities, and living standards improving, the report says, the birthrate in majority-Muslim countries will come to more closely resemble the pattern in other nations.
Predictions that Europe will become a majority-Muslim “Eurabia” are unfounded, according to the report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, a nonpartisan research group.
Muslims in Europe made up only 6 percent of the population in 2010, and will grow to 8 percent by 2030, the report says. In France and Belgium, Muslims will be about 10 percent of the population in 20 years, and in Britain, 8 percent.
Globally, Muslims now make up 23.4 percent of the population, and if current trends continue, will be 26.4 percent by 2030. Such growth is not enough to create a drastic shift in the world’s religious balance, experts said. The world’s Christian population has been estimated in other reports to be 30 percent to 33 percent.
Amaney A. Jamal, associate professor of politics at Princeton and a consultant for Pew on global Islam, said that the report could challenge assertions by some scholars and far-right political parties about future demographic domination by Muslims.
“There’s this overwhelming assumption that Muslims are populating the earth, and not only are they growing at this exponential rate in the Muslim world, they’re going to be dominating Europe and, soon after, the United States,” she said. “But the figures don’t even come close. I’m looking at all this and wondering, where is all the hysteria coming from?”
In the United States, the report found about 2.6 million Muslims in 2010, a number projected to rise to 6.2 million in 20 years. (The 2.6 million figure is far lower than the numbers claimed by some American Muslim groups, but not out of line with some previous studies.) At that rate of growth, Muslims would still be a religious minority in 2030, 1.7 percent of the American population — about the equivalent of Jews in the United States today.
The report suggests that economic and educational factors affect population growth rates among Muslims far more than the religious factor. In Iran, which encourages family planning and birth control, the fertility rate of only 1.7 children per woman resembles that of many European countries. It has the lowest fertility rate of any Muslim-majority nation, while Niger, a poor African nation, has the highest, at 6.9 children per woman. Iranian girls receive 15 years of schooling on average; in Niger, it is four years.
(I learned of Ms. Goodstein's report from a reprint in the Belief section of today's Houston Chronicle. I have not been able to find an electronic link to the Chronicle's version, but it appears they published the New York Times article in full.)
The Pew Research Center has a strong track record of gathering actual facts about peoples' religious beliefs and behaviors, and of using expert analysis to dispel myths and misunderstanding. The myth in this case is a pretty much global hysteria about the pace of Muslim growth--shared, ironically, both by Jihadists who want non-Muslims to fear a Muslim tide of global dominance and by Islamophobes who feel compelled to do all in their power to stem that tide.
The Pew findings show that the tide is imaginary. As Muslim economic, education and political levels improve, birthrates in majority-Muslim countries (and among Muslims in majority-non-Muslim countries) will become more like the birthrates among non-Muslims.
The following are excerpts from Laurie Goodstein's report:
A new report forecasts that the number of Muslims around the world will grow over the next 20 years at twice the rate of non-Muslims, but that the rapid growth will level off. With more Muslim women getting educations and jobs, people migrating to cities, and living standards improving, the report says, the birthrate in majority-Muslim countries will come to more closely resemble the pattern in other nations.
Predictions that Europe will become a majority-Muslim “Eurabia” are unfounded, according to the report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, a nonpartisan research group.
Muslims in Europe made up only 6 percent of the population in 2010, and will grow to 8 percent by 2030, the report says. In France and Belgium, Muslims will be about 10 percent of the population in 20 years, and in Britain, 8 percent.
Globally, Muslims now make up 23.4 percent of the population, and if current trends continue, will be 26.4 percent by 2030. Such growth is not enough to create a drastic shift in the world’s religious balance, experts said. The world’s Christian population has been estimated in other reports to be 30 percent to 33 percent.
Amaney A. Jamal, associate professor of politics at Princeton and a consultant for Pew on global Islam, said that the report could challenge assertions by some scholars and far-right political parties about future demographic domination by Muslims.
“There’s this overwhelming assumption that Muslims are populating the earth, and not only are they growing at this exponential rate in the Muslim world, they’re going to be dominating Europe and, soon after, the United States,” she said. “But the figures don’t even come close. I’m looking at all this and wondering, where is all the hysteria coming from?”
In the United States, the report found about 2.6 million Muslims in 2010, a number projected to rise to 6.2 million in 20 years. (The 2.6 million figure is far lower than the numbers claimed by some American Muslim groups, but not out of line with some previous studies.) At that rate of growth, Muslims would still be a religious minority in 2030, 1.7 percent of the American population — about the equivalent of Jews in the United States today.
The report suggests that economic and educational factors affect population growth rates among Muslims far more than the religious factor. In Iran, which encourages family planning and birth control, the fertility rate of only 1.7 children per woman resembles that of many European countries. It has the lowest fertility rate of any Muslim-majority nation, while Niger, a poor African nation, has the highest, at 6.9 children per woman. Iranian girls receive 15 years of schooling on average; in Niger, it is four years.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
All Our Taxes Won't Save Texas; Leave That to the Least of Our Brothers and Sisters
Houston Chronicle political reporter Lisa Falkenberg has an excellent commentary in today's newspaper on the suicidal folly of the state budget Texas Republicans plan to enact.
Being last among the fifty states in per capita spending and health insurance coverage? That just wasn't good enough for Texas. And so, says Falkenberg, Governor Rick Perry shows us what he really means when he urges Republicans "seize the moment" and "show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis."
They will accomplish this feat by unemploying up to 100,000 educators, denying financial aid to 60,000 students, and cutting programs like Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and food stamps by $2 billion. Really something to be proud of! Go Rick!
Falkenberg's commentary follows in full:
Hey you! Teacher who's going to lose your job, stop worrying. There's no state budget shortfall.
Hey you, community college student who's going to lose your financial aid, and maybe even your campus, stop whining. There's no budget shortfall.
Hey you, kid from the poor side of town who could lose your health insurance and probably your access to pre-school, stop crying. There's no budget shortfall.
There can't be. This is Texas. And according to Gov. Rick Perry, we don't have shortfalls in Texas. And certainly not deficits.
We may have "budget challenges," as Perry termed them in his inauguration speech. They may be challenges that require more than $30 billion in cuts. Those cuts may lead to, among many other things, the elimination of nearly 10,000 state jobs and as many as 100,000 public education jobs, loss of financial aid for 60,000 students; and $2 billion in cuts to programs like Medicaid, CHIP and food stamps that keep our most vulnerable citizens alive.
But, hey, no biggie.
Lost jobs and health insurance aren't exactly urgent matters. And investing in our state's future through the education of our young people is no emergency.
No, in the great state of Texas we reserve that term "emergency" for much weightier matters.
Like cracking down on voter fraud that doesn't exist, outlawing sanctuary cities that never were, and supporting a federal balanced budget amendment that has no hope of passing.
And, of course, allowing the government to barge into a medical exam room and order a woman considering an abortion to submit to a procedure that will compound her emotional distress. You know, important stuff like that.
The governor recently bestowed upon the above issues emergency status while he was in Las Vegas peddling his book at a hunting and shooting trade show. I think this is what the governor would call "multitasking."
Like nearly every other state, Texas is required to balance its budget each session. This means we'll never rack up trillions in credit card debt like the federal government.
In lean times — doomsday times, if you read those paranoid liberal loons in the mainstream media - when there's not enough money coming in to pay the bills, when we're estimated to have only slightly more revenue than we spent in 2006-2007, despite inflation and population growth and increased demand on social services, we don't raise taxes. (Maybe a few fees that nobody will notice, but not taxes.)
We simply cut the fat. Even if there isn't any. Even if we find ourselves hacking away at bone matter.
Now, to the faint of heart, this may sound draconian, especially considering that Texas already ranks dead last in per capita state spending and first in the number of people without health insurance.
But there simply aren't any other options - except, well, it is true that Perry boasted proudly in his campaign ads last year that "today, we have billions in surplus." Indeed we do. It's called the Rainy Day Fund. But the governor has vowed to defend from frantic pillaging that $9 billion pile of your money and mine for the logical reason that if it were spent, the governor and his Republican colleagues could no longer proudly boast that today we have billions in surplus.
It really all comes down to a simple exercise in prioritization. Some things count: the governor's Enterprise "deal closing" Fund for businesses. And some things don't: Early childhood education.
It's the Texan way, the Texas Exception. And lest you take exception, take a moment to recall the prophetic words in Perry's recent inauguration speech. He called on Texans to show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis.
This, declared the governor, will some day come to be known by historians as the "Texas Century."
"This is our time, this is our place in history," according to the governor's speech. "We must seize the moment."
And so we must!
After all, the way we're headed, it could be our last.
Being last among the fifty states in per capita spending and health insurance coverage? That just wasn't good enough for Texas. And so, says Falkenberg, Governor Rick Perry shows us what he really means when he urges Republicans "seize the moment" and "show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis."
They will accomplish this feat by unemploying up to 100,000 educators, denying financial aid to 60,000 students, and cutting programs like Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and food stamps by $2 billion. Really something to be proud of! Go Rick!
Falkenberg's commentary follows in full:
Hey you! Teacher who's going to lose your job, stop worrying. There's no state budget shortfall.
Hey you, community college student who's going to lose your financial aid, and maybe even your campus, stop whining. There's no budget shortfall.
Hey you, kid from the poor side of town who could lose your health insurance and probably your access to pre-school, stop crying. There's no budget shortfall.
There can't be. This is Texas. And according to Gov. Rick Perry, we don't have shortfalls in Texas. And certainly not deficits.
We may have "budget challenges," as Perry termed them in his inauguration speech. They may be challenges that require more than $30 billion in cuts. Those cuts may lead to, among many other things, the elimination of nearly 10,000 state jobs and as many as 100,000 public education jobs, loss of financial aid for 60,000 students; and $2 billion in cuts to programs like Medicaid, CHIP and food stamps that keep our most vulnerable citizens alive.
But, hey, no biggie.
Lost jobs and health insurance aren't exactly urgent matters. And investing in our state's future through the education of our young people is no emergency.
No, in the great state of Texas we reserve that term "emergency" for much weightier matters.
Like cracking down on voter fraud that doesn't exist, outlawing sanctuary cities that never were, and supporting a federal balanced budget amendment that has no hope of passing.
And, of course, allowing the government to barge into a medical exam room and order a woman considering an abortion to submit to a procedure that will compound her emotional distress. You know, important stuff like that.
The governor recently bestowed upon the above issues emergency status while he was in Las Vegas peddling his book at a hunting and shooting trade show. I think this is what the governor would call "multitasking."
Like nearly every other state, Texas is required to balance its budget each session. This means we'll never rack up trillions in credit card debt like the federal government.
In lean times — doomsday times, if you read those paranoid liberal loons in the mainstream media - when there's not enough money coming in to pay the bills, when we're estimated to have only slightly more revenue than we spent in 2006-2007, despite inflation and population growth and increased demand on social services, we don't raise taxes. (Maybe a few fees that nobody will notice, but not taxes.)
We simply cut the fat. Even if there isn't any. Even if we find ourselves hacking away at bone matter.
Now, to the faint of heart, this may sound draconian, especially considering that Texas already ranks dead last in per capita state spending and first in the number of people without health insurance.
But there simply aren't any other options - except, well, it is true that Perry boasted proudly in his campaign ads last year that "today, we have billions in surplus." Indeed we do. It's called the Rainy Day Fund. But the governor has vowed to defend from frantic pillaging that $9 billion pile of your money and mine for the logical reason that if it were spent, the governor and his Republican colleagues could no longer proudly boast that today we have billions in surplus.
It really all comes down to a simple exercise in prioritization. Some things count: the governor's Enterprise "deal closing" Fund for businesses. And some things don't: Early childhood education.
It's the Texan way, the Texas Exception. And lest you take exception, take a moment to recall the prophetic words in Perry's recent inauguration speech. He called on Texans to show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis.
This, declared the governor, will some day come to be known by historians as the "Texas Century."
"This is our time, this is our place in history," according to the governor's speech. "We must seize the moment."
And so we must!
After all, the way we're headed, it could be our last.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
"Smoking Gun:" 1997 Letter Shows SOME Vatican Officials Tried to Obstruct Justice
Several different news outlets are carrying versions of an Associated Press article with headlines like Vatican Told Irish Bishops Not to Report Abuse.
The article says that in a 1997 letter that has not been made public before, Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, expressed Vatican misgivings about "a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits."
The article continues: "Storero wrote that canon law — which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church — 'must be meticulously followed.' He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the 'highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome."
Anti-child-abuse activists in Ireland and the United States saw the letter as "the smoking gun we've been looking for" to document that the Vatican not only sanctioned bishops' hiding pedophiles from criminal investigators but in fact ordered bishops to do so.
Not so fast, says the National Catholic Reporter's John Allen Jr. in a posting today. Allen allows that the letter documents "that in the late 1990s the Vatican was ambivalent about requirements that bishops be required to report abuse to police and civil prosecutors." Allen argues, though, that "There are three bits of context...which complicate efforts to tout the letter as a smoking gun."
The first was that one of the points of the letter was to avoid having bishops' determinations to remove sexual abusers overturned at the Vatican level on procedural grounds if the bishops did not follow the Code of Canon Law meticulously.
Second, the highest concern reflected in the letter was that reporting sexual abuse to the police could not be allowed to violate the seal of the confessional between the priest and his confessor: as long as the bishop protected the sanctity of the confessional, there was nothing to stop him from cooperating with local authorities.
Third, the letter reflected "a debate among senior Vatican officials about how aggressive the church ought to be in streamlining procedures for sex abuse cases." The letter, says Allen, reflects the position of Colombian Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, head of the Congregation for the Clergy at the time. Allen notes that Castrillón lost the argument to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose tougher stance eventually prevailed.
Allen's bits of context may nuance how the letter constitutes "a smoking gun." But they cannot fully exonerate the Vatican--or Pope John Paul II, whose cause for sainthood is very much tarnished by the Vatican's mismanagement of the entire sexual abuse crisis.
It was good for the abused and for the church that Ratzinger's position eventually trumped the Castrillón stance which John Paul II allowed to dominate for too many years. But at the very least the Vatican is criminally liable for obstruction of justice during the time before Ratzinger prevailed.
The letter undoubtedly is one of the smoking guns for that period. Everyone believes there are more. Now Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger knows that first-hand. He ought to admit it publicly--and in every court case in which the issue is raised. That is the only substantive way for the Roman Catholic institution to make amends for its criminal behavior.
The article says that in a 1997 letter that has not been made public before, Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, expressed Vatican misgivings about "a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits."
The article continues: "Storero wrote that canon law — which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church — 'must be meticulously followed.' He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the 'highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome."
Anti-child-abuse activists in Ireland and the United States saw the letter as "the smoking gun we've been looking for" to document that the Vatican not only sanctioned bishops' hiding pedophiles from criminal investigators but in fact ordered bishops to do so.
Not so fast, says the National Catholic Reporter's John Allen Jr. in a posting today. Allen allows that the letter documents "that in the late 1990s the Vatican was ambivalent about requirements that bishops be required to report abuse to police and civil prosecutors." Allen argues, though, that "There are three bits of context...which complicate efforts to tout the letter as a smoking gun."
The first was that one of the points of the letter was to avoid having bishops' determinations to remove sexual abusers overturned at the Vatican level on procedural grounds if the bishops did not follow the Code of Canon Law meticulously.
Second, the highest concern reflected in the letter was that reporting sexual abuse to the police could not be allowed to violate the seal of the confessional between the priest and his confessor: as long as the bishop protected the sanctity of the confessional, there was nothing to stop him from cooperating with local authorities.
Third, the letter reflected "a debate among senior Vatican officials about how aggressive the church ought to be in streamlining procedures for sex abuse cases." The letter, says Allen, reflects the position of Colombian Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, head of the Congregation for the Clergy at the time. Allen notes that Castrillón lost the argument to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose tougher stance eventually prevailed.
Allen's bits of context may nuance how the letter constitutes "a smoking gun." But they cannot fully exonerate the Vatican--or Pope John Paul II, whose cause for sainthood is very much tarnished by the Vatican's mismanagement of the entire sexual abuse crisis.
It was good for the abused and for the church that Ratzinger's position eventually trumped the Castrillón stance which John Paul II allowed to dominate for too many years. But at the very least the Vatican is criminally liable for obstruction of justice during the time before Ratzinger prevailed.
The letter undoubtedly is one of the smoking guns for that period. Everyone believes there are more. Now Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger knows that first-hand. He ought to admit it publicly--and in every court case in which the issue is raised. That is the only substantive way for the Roman Catholic institution to make amends for its criminal behavior.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Westboro Backs Off Protesting All Tucson Victims' Funerals, Kansas TV Station Says
KCTV Channel 5 of Kansas City, MO, reports that Fred Phelps' Kansas hate group, which masquerades as Westboro Baptist Church, has backed off plans to picket the funerals of any of the Tucson shooting victims, in exchange for air time on a local Christian radio station and a Canadian radio talk show:
A Kansas church that pickets the funerals of soldiers and blames their deaths on the country's tolerance of homosexuality now says it won't protest the funerals of any victims of Arizona's mass shooting.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, of Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church, says her church has agreed to avoid Thursday's funeral of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green in exchange for live radio interviews in Canada and Arizona.
The church also promised to not protest the funeral of U.S. District Judge John Roll or other victims of the shooting after a nationally syndicated radio show agreed to host church members Monday.
Christina and Roll were among six killed in the shooting Saturday targeting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Westboro church members picket high-profile funerals to promote their beliefs.
Judging from Google searches, other outlets confirm that the Phelps Klan agreed not to picket yesterday's funeral of nine-year old Christina Green; but KCTV seems to be virtually alone is quoting their change of heart about the funeral of Judge Roll or the other victims. It will interesting to see if KCTV turns out to be accurate.
Meanwhile, kudos to all the Tucson residents and visitors who participated in Angel Actions like the one above at the two funerals that have been held so far, as well as all those who lined streets for miles to protect the mourners and their loved ones from the Phelps's attempt to violate their religious freedom to conduct funerals without harassment from those who believe only in intolerant theocratic nonsense.
In the Crosshairs: Incite Paranoia, And the Crazies Will Do the Killing for You
Predictable. Yet still amazing. That Sarah Palin and her worshippers would disclaim any responsibility for the gun assault on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of Arizona Chief Federal Judge John Roll, along with five others who happened into the line of fire, including a budding nine-year old girl.Those gun-scope sites Palin put on her map of 20 Congressional representatives she wanted eliminated were just map symbols, the Palinistas claim. Even though Rep. Giffords herself, right after Palin published her targets, warned that such right-wing paramilitary symbolism could have very dire consequences. I'd say "hogwash" or "bullshit." But neither term is strong enough to capture the utter hypocrisy of Palin's weaseling. Perhaps the Jack Ohman cartoon above says it best.
At least Palin's lack of remorse has forced brighter minds to reflect on why most of us feel in our gut--despite assurances from all over that such feelings are unjustified--that Palin is not without blame, that at the very least she contributed to the political atmosphere in which the Tuscon shooter became increasingly deranged. The most helpful I have read was Dangerous Outcomes from a Culture of Paranoia, written by Harold Meyerson, op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.
Meyerson helps situate between more accurate limits exactly how Palin and Beck and Limbaugh and the tea partiers incite such violence. They are very careful to maintain a position of plausible deniability and not say outright that anyone should kill anybody else. But instead they paint such a paranoid picture of what their opponents are "doing to the country," and rant about it so often and so dramatically, that some troubled person somewhere is bound to think it's their patriotic duty to do something about it.
Such tactics, of course, have precedent. Consider the Nazis leading up to World War II. Consider the extremists of the pro-life movement. The pattern is the same: arouse paranoia about those you oppose, and the crazies will take them out for you. Here's Meyerson's analysis in full:
Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his radio show about the prospect of the government seizing his children if he didn't give them flu vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."
Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radio show. "We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government. . . . I dare 'em to try to come to throw me in jail. I dare 'em to. [I'll] pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door."
Do right-wing talk show commentators incite violence against the government? Feel free to draw your own conclusions - but to dwell on the rise of violent rhetoric on the right is to miss an even bigger, though connected, problem. Let's focus, rather, on the first part of Beck's and Erickson's observations: The government wants to take away Glenn Beck's (and by extension, your) kids. The government wants to take a census and will throw Erick Erickson (and by extension, you) in jail if he, and you, don't comply.
Can we see the hands of all the kids taken from their parents because they didn't get flu shots? How about all those people rotting in jail because they didn't cooperate in compiling the census?
The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today's America isn't that it incites violence per se. It's that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and conservatism's domestic adversaries.
Much of the culture and thinking of the American right - the mainstream as well as the fringe - has descended into paranoid suppositions about the government, the Democrats and the president. This is not to say that the left wing doesn't have a paranoid fringe, too. But by every available measure, it's the right where conspiracy theories have exploded.
A fabricated specter of impending governmental totalitarianism haunts the right's dreams. One month after Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Beck hosted a show that gamed out how militias in Southern and Western states might rise up against an oppressive government. The number of self-proclaimed right-wing militias tripled - from 42 to 127, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center - in 2009 (and that doesn't count those that are entirely underground).
As much of the right sees it, the government is planning to incarcerate its enemies (see Beck and Erickson, above), socialize the economy and take away everyones guns. At the fringe, we have figures like Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America, who told a rally in Washington last April that, "We're in a war. The other side knows they are at war, because they started it. They are coming for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They are coming for everything because they are a bunch of socialists."
But the imputation of lurking totalitarianism, alien ideologies, and subversion of liberties to liberals and moderates has become the default rhetoric of the right. Never mind that Obama is a Marxist, a Kenyan and an advocate of sharia law. Consider the plight of poor Fred Upton, the Republican congressman just installed as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, over considerable right-wing opposition. According to Beck, Upton is "all socialist," while Rush Limbaugh calls him the personification of "nannyism" and "statism." Upton's crime is that he supports more energy-efficient light bulbs. How that puts him in a league with Marx, Engels and Nanny McPhee, I will leave to subtler minds.
American politics and culture have a rich history of paranoia, as historian Richard Hofstadter and many others have documented. Many of the incidents of anti-government violence over the past couple of years - flying a plane into an IRS building in Texas, shooting police officers in Pittsburgh and carrying out last weekend's savagery in Tucson - came from people who, however individually loony they may have been, also harbored paranoid visions of the government that resembled, though by no means entirely, those put forth by the Becks and the Ericksons.
That doesn't make Beck, Erickson, Rupert Murdoch and their ilk responsible for Tucson. It does make them responsible for promoting a paranoid culture that makes America a more divided and dangerous land.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Westboro Fascist Church Hits New Low: Now "God Hates Catholics" Not Just Fags
CNN has been reporting for several hours on steps by the Arizona Legislature and local citizens to mitigate plans by the infamous Fred Phelps and his neo-Nazi Westboro 'Baptist' Church to picket the funerals of those killed by a deranged gunman in Tucson Saturday.
Evidently the first target of Phelps' storm troopers will be the family of Christina Green, the nine-year old girl who was the youngest of the innocents slaughtered.
Earlier postings of the CNN article said a flier on the Westboro website declared they would picket her funeral because she attended a Catholic church with her family, and “God Hates Catholics...God calls your religion 'vain,' as it's empty of His truth; you worship idols!”
At this hour the Westboro website appears to be down--so that linking to the hateful flier, or verifying it was taken down, is not possible. However, CNN has now replaced its earlier reporting with the following more generic account:
"Westboro Baptist Church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, provided CNN with a statement detailing their decision to picket the funerals. It is filled with the usual anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-divorce church members used to justify their pickets -- that God hates America because it has turned its back on what they see as God's way."
Whether the "God hates Catholics" flier is still posted or not, the fact that Phelps and company could use this terrible incident to descend from "God hates fags" to "God hates Catholics" only illustrates more vividly their complete intolerance for any religious belief but their own.
Shame on Phelps and his followers for calling themselves Baptist and sullying the Baptist Church with a message that is neither Baptist nor Christian.
And thank God there are decent people in Tucson and Arizona who are doing what they can to protect the victims' families from theocrats who are as deluded and dangerous as the man who pulled the trigger.
Evidently the first target of Phelps' storm troopers will be the family of Christina Green, the nine-year old girl who was the youngest of the innocents slaughtered.
Earlier postings of the CNN article said a flier on the Westboro website declared they would picket her funeral because she attended a Catholic church with her family, and “God Hates Catholics...God calls your religion 'vain,' as it's empty of His truth; you worship idols!”
At this hour the Westboro website appears to be down--so that linking to the hateful flier, or verifying it was taken down, is not possible. However, CNN has now replaced its earlier reporting with the following more generic account:
"Westboro Baptist Church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, provided CNN with a statement detailing their decision to picket the funerals. It is filled with the usual anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-divorce church members used to justify their pickets -- that God hates America because it has turned its back on what they see as God's way."
Whether the "God hates Catholics" flier is still posted or not, the fact that Phelps and company could use this terrible incident to descend from "God hates fags" to "God hates Catholics" only illustrates more vividly their complete intolerance for any religious belief but their own.
Shame on Phelps and his followers for calling themselves Baptist and sullying the Baptist Church with a message that is neither Baptist nor Christian.
And thank God there are decent people in Tucson and Arizona who are doing what they can to protect the victims' families from theocrats who are as deluded and dangerous as the man who pulled the trigger.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Curran on Abortion Laws: Full Text of Lecture Makes His Argument Sharper and Stronger
On November 2nd I posted an analysis of Charles Curran's October 28th lecture at Southern Methodist University on the U.S. Bishops' "flawed" approach to outlawing abortion. At the time the complete text of the lecture had not been published; so I relied on coverage by National Catholic Reporter Editor-at-Large Tom Roberts, who attended Curran's scholarly tour de force.
Finally on November 29th NCR was able to post the full text of the lecture, describing it as "an abridged version of a chapter in Fr. Charles Curran's newest book The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective, which will be published in early January by Georgetown University Press."
While the full text shows that Roberts' reporting generally was accurate, I think it also adds nuances and context which sharpen Curran's position and actually make his argument stronger. The complete lecture also recontextualizes some of the concerns that I raised in my posting.
Let me highlight three significant distinctions between the lecture and Roberts' reporting.
The first important distinction comes in the "preliminary remarks" of lecture's opening paragraph, which Roberts did not quote or reference. The first remark out of Curran's mouth is: "The paper will not address church involvement in the public and political areas from the perspective of the First Amendment."
In my November 2nd posting I spelled out why I did not believe it was possible or constructive to avoid that topic in connection with abortion legislation. And implicitly I faulted Curran for not addressing it more explicitly.
I still maintain that such a nexus is impossible to ignore; but, now I understand that Curran bracketed it out as a methodological strategy and not as a topic he would necessarily exclude under other circumstances. He did not want to muddy his critique of the bishops' public policy teaching "from within the Catholic tradition itself" with a topic which, while related enough to abortion law for Curran to mention it, has its own history and its own controversies. So while I can disagree about the wisdom of excluding it from the November 2nd lecture, reading Curran on his own terms makes it clear that he forewarned at the outset he would do so. For all I know he may well address the First Amendment in another chapter in his new book.
A second major contrast between the lecture and Roberts' reporting is the cumulative impact of the entire first half of Curran's lecture, which Roberts summarized in a few short paragraphs. Roberts says that part of the lecture "traced the narrowing of the bishops' approach to abortion since the mid-1970s" and the bishops most recent position is that their teaching on other public policy issues involves "prudential judgments" but their teaching on abortion laws does not.
This is, in fact, part of Curran's analysis. However, Roberts' summary does not articulate a more significant point Curran makes: the bishops' claim that their teaching on abortion laws does not involve "prudential judgments" is not only a narrowing of their previous approach but also a significant departure from guidance the bishops accepted from the Vatican in the 1980s.
At that time a meeting was convened by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to discuss divergent public policy teachings by various bishops' conferences. The meeting resulted in a memorandum which, in Curran's words, "called for the bishops in their letters to distinguish clearly between moral principles and their application to concrete realities that involve the assessment of factual circumstances. The authority of the bishops on prudential judgments or the application of principles does not bind all Catholics. There is room for legitimate diversity in the church in the area of prudential judgments."
Clearly this is Curran's largest point, but Roberts' summary obscures it: the bishops, unable to marshall any reliable theological grounding whatsoever, have arbitrarily exempted their teaching on abortion law from the Vatican's official guidance on public policy teachings. The rest of the lecture highlights several different ways in which prudential judgments remain endemic to the bishops' teaching on abortion laws, with Curran documenting point by point that the bishops have no leg to stand on.
A third important distinction between the lecture and Roberts' reporting is Curran's analysis of a natural-law approach to civil law versus a religious freedom approach. Here the problem was as much my overly hasty reading of Roberts' as his less-than-precise summary of Curran.
My confusion began, I think, when Roberts wrote: "Curran said that in the abortion issue, he prefers the religious freedom approach..." Curran's wording in the lecture was a lot more than expressing a preference: "The pope and the bishops have used the Thomistic approach in dealing with the legality of abortion. In my judgment the religious freedom approach is the correct approach and since the Second Vatican Council should be used by all today in the Catholic tradition."
A la Roberts, I thought Curran was mainly interested in contrasting the two approaches, but also in arguing that a religious freedom approach could accommodate either. So I launched into a counter-analysis that Vatican II's religious freedom approach had actually altered the context in which the natural law approach was now available, thereby placing the natural law approach within much more strictly defined limits. That counter-analysis remains accurate, but now it's clear that I missed another point Curran was making.
Besides contrasting the natural law and religious freedom approaches, Curran was also demonstrating how the religious freedom approach, without necessarily referencing the natural law, could be used legitimately to justify a whole range of specific approaches to abortion law. He noted, for example, that a religious freedom approach could focus primarily on an individual woman's conscience and rely on her to make conscientious decisions about abortion. But, he added, another aspect of the religious freedom approach could focus on just treatment of the fetus as a developing individual with rights appropriate to its status.
This puts Curran much closer to my counter-analysis. But it also brings us back to the discussion of the First Amendment that I started with above. As I see it, because Vatican II's religious freedom approach can lead to multiple outcomes and even incompatible outcomes, it is ultimately the First Amendment that decides for Americans which approaches are allowable and which are not. It seems to me that one approach that is clearly disallowed is for the leaders of one religious group to impose its moral teaching about abortion on those who believe otherwise. Those of us who pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States cannot support that approach.
Finally on November 29th NCR was able to post the full text of the lecture, describing it as "an abridged version of a chapter in Fr. Charles Curran's newest book The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective, which will be published in early January by Georgetown University Press."
While the full text shows that Roberts' reporting generally was accurate, I think it also adds nuances and context which sharpen Curran's position and actually make his argument stronger. The complete lecture also recontextualizes some of the concerns that I raised in my posting.
Let me highlight three significant distinctions between the lecture and Roberts' reporting.
The first important distinction comes in the "preliminary remarks" of lecture's opening paragraph, which Roberts did not quote or reference. The first remark out of Curran's mouth is: "The paper will not address church involvement in the public and political areas from the perspective of the First Amendment."
In my November 2nd posting I spelled out why I did not believe it was possible or constructive to avoid that topic in connection with abortion legislation. And implicitly I faulted Curran for not addressing it more explicitly.
I still maintain that such a nexus is impossible to ignore; but, now I understand that Curran bracketed it out as a methodological strategy and not as a topic he would necessarily exclude under other circumstances. He did not want to muddy his critique of the bishops' public policy teaching "from within the Catholic tradition itself" with a topic which, while related enough to abortion law for Curran to mention it, has its own history and its own controversies. So while I can disagree about the wisdom of excluding it from the November 2nd lecture, reading Curran on his own terms makes it clear that he forewarned at the outset he would do so. For all I know he may well address the First Amendment in another chapter in his new book.
A second major contrast between the lecture and Roberts' reporting is the cumulative impact of the entire first half of Curran's lecture, which Roberts summarized in a few short paragraphs. Roberts says that part of the lecture "traced the narrowing of the bishops' approach to abortion since the mid-1970s" and the bishops most recent position is that their teaching on other public policy issues involves "prudential judgments" but their teaching on abortion laws does not.
This is, in fact, part of Curran's analysis. However, Roberts' summary does not articulate a more significant point Curran makes: the bishops' claim that their teaching on abortion laws does not involve "prudential judgments" is not only a narrowing of their previous approach but also a significant departure from guidance the bishops accepted from the Vatican in the 1980s.
At that time a meeting was convened by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to discuss divergent public policy teachings by various bishops' conferences. The meeting resulted in a memorandum which, in Curran's words, "called for the bishops in their letters to distinguish clearly between moral principles and their application to concrete realities that involve the assessment of factual circumstances. The authority of the bishops on prudential judgments or the application of principles does not bind all Catholics. There is room for legitimate diversity in the church in the area of prudential judgments."
Clearly this is Curran's largest point, but Roberts' summary obscures it: the bishops, unable to marshall any reliable theological grounding whatsoever, have arbitrarily exempted their teaching on abortion law from the Vatican's official guidance on public policy teachings. The rest of the lecture highlights several different ways in which prudential judgments remain endemic to the bishops' teaching on abortion laws, with Curran documenting point by point that the bishops have no leg to stand on.
A third important distinction between the lecture and Roberts' reporting is Curran's analysis of a natural-law approach to civil law versus a religious freedom approach. Here the problem was as much my overly hasty reading of Roberts' as his less-than-precise summary of Curran.
My confusion began, I think, when Roberts wrote: "Curran said that in the abortion issue, he prefers the religious freedom approach..." Curran's wording in the lecture was a lot more than expressing a preference: "The pope and the bishops have used the Thomistic approach in dealing with the legality of abortion. In my judgment the religious freedom approach is the correct approach and since the Second Vatican Council should be used by all today in the Catholic tradition."
A la Roberts, I thought Curran was mainly interested in contrasting the two approaches, but also in arguing that a religious freedom approach could accommodate either. So I launched into a counter-analysis that Vatican II's religious freedom approach had actually altered the context in which the natural law approach was now available, thereby placing the natural law approach within much more strictly defined limits. That counter-analysis remains accurate, but now it's clear that I missed another point Curran was making.
Besides contrasting the natural law and religious freedom approaches, Curran was also demonstrating how the religious freedom approach, without necessarily referencing the natural law, could be used legitimately to justify a whole range of specific approaches to abortion law. He noted, for example, that a religious freedom approach could focus primarily on an individual woman's conscience and rely on her to make conscientious decisions about abortion. But, he added, another aspect of the religious freedom approach could focus on just treatment of the fetus as a developing individual with rights appropriate to its status.
This puts Curran much closer to my counter-analysis. But it also brings us back to the discussion of the First Amendment that I started with above. As I see it, because Vatican II's religious freedom approach can lead to multiple outcomes and even incompatible outcomes, it is ultimately the First Amendment that decides for Americans which approaches are allowable and which are not. It seems to me that one approach that is clearly disallowed is for the leaders of one religious group to impose its moral teaching about abortion on those who believe otherwise. Those of us who pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States cannot support that approach.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Pope Says Condoms Are a Lesser Evil Than Spreading HIV to New Victims
On 11/21/10 various news organizations carried the stunning news that Pope Benedict XVI, as part of a book-length interview with a German reporter, had done a major about-face in his position on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Only last year Benedict had raised a storm of controversy, and drawn nearly unanimous criticism from global health organizations and Western European governments, for saying that condoms did nothing to contain the spread of AIDs and that they in fact worsened it.
The 11/21 reports brought the news that the pope now has said, as MSNBC put it, "that condom use by people such as male prostitutes was a lesser evil since it indicated they were taking a step toward a more moral and responsible sexuality by aiming to protect their partner from a deadly infection."
That was followed two days later by a Vatican clarification that the pope also meant his remarks to apply to women who have HIV--even if their use of condoms also prevented a pregnancy.
In this instance, it must be said that the secular media have done a much better job of grasping and communicating how much of a "game-changer" Benedict's new position is. The Catholic press for the most part has been all too eager to assure lay Catholics that the pope is not back-tracking on Pope Paul VI's ban on "artificial contraception." What I have not seen from Catholic analysts yet is the recognition that by allowing for situations where use of condoms is less of an evil than not using them, Benedict opens the door to more exceptions than controlling HIV transmission.
For once the primary consideration shifts from use of condoms to prevent pregnancy to use of condoms to responsibly protect the health of ones sex partner, aren't there other situations where using a condom might be more responsible than not doing so? I'm thinking, for example, of situations where a woman has been advised by her physician that having more children would endanger her physical health. If the church cannot see its way clear to allow that woman to use the pill to prevent another pregnancy, couldn't it at least use Benedict's logic to say that it would be more responsible for her partner to use a condom, even to prevent pregnancy, than to endanger her life because he did not use one?
I think over time it will be discovered that Benedict has opened up several questions along these lines, especially for situations where HIV is not the threat a partner is trying to avoid, but where some other life-threatening condition is.
That is the kind of nuanced thinking on these matters that Catholic moral theologians have been urging for decades. I think it may be the most helpful development in forty years that a pope has finally grasped what they've been saying and has had the courage to agree with it. I hope Catholic analysts will get around to saying so, and soon.
Only last year Benedict had raised a storm of controversy, and drawn nearly unanimous criticism from global health organizations and Western European governments, for saying that condoms did nothing to contain the spread of AIDs and that they in fact worsened it.
The 11/21 reports brought the news that the pope now has said, as MSNBC put it, "that condom use by people such as male prostitutes was a lesser evil since it indicated they were taking a step toward a more moral and responsible sexuality by aiming to protect their partner from a deadly infection."
That was followed two days later by a Vatican clarification that the pope also meant his remarks to apply to women who have HIV--even if their use of condoms also prevented a pregnancy.
In this instance, it must be said that the secular media have done a much better job of grasping and communicating how much of a "game-changer" Benedict's new position is. The Catholic press for the most part has been all too eager to assure lay Catholics that the pope is not back-tracking on Pope Paul VI's ban on "artificial contraception." What I have not seen from Catholic analysts yet is the recognition that by allowing for situations where use of condoms is less of an evil than not using them, Benedict opens the door to more exceptions than controlling HIV transmission.
For once the primary consideration shifts from use of condoms to prevent pregnancy to use of condoms to responsibly protect the health of ones sex partner, aren't there other situations where using a condom might be more responsible than not doing so? I'm thinking, for example, of situations where a woman has been advised by her physician that having more children would endanger her physical health. If the church cannot see its way clear to allow that woman to use the pill to prevent another pregnancy, couldn't it at least use Benedict's logic to say that it would be more responsible for her partner to use a condom, even to prevent pregnancy, than to endanger her life because he did not use one?
I think over time it will be discovered that Benedict has opened up several questions along these lines, especially for situations where HIV is not the threat a partner is trying to avoid, but where some other life-threatening condition is.
That is the kind of nuanced thinking on these matters that Catholic moral theologians have been urging for decades. I think it may be the most helpful development in forty years that a pope has finally grasped what they've been saying and has had the courage to agree with it. I hope Catholic analysts will get around to saying so, and soon.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Party of Treason: Republicans Sacrifice National Security on Dump-Obama Altar
I said in March that the Republican party was "very much in danger of transitioning from the party of no to the party of treason."
At the time the context was that the Republicans, then being called a failed political party for doing absolutely nothing to repair the economy they trashed, were undermining U.S. democracy by trying to overturn the recently passed health care law and encouraging those who threatened to exterminate anyone who had voted for it.
But now the Republicans have tricked voters--except for the millions on the east and west coasts who actually pay attention to facts--into believing that "No" to anything President Obama proposes can masquerade as a policy initiative. And now they think they can continue their "No" as a strategy to deny the president re-election in 2012.
So let the conservative over-reaching begin! And let it begin, in all places, with blocking ratification of the New START (the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)--favored by every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several prominent Republicans who were once Secretary of State, and even the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In an excellent editorial The San Jose Mercury News calls the Republican tactic "a new low" and says Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for letting political posturing morph into an imminent threat to American lives. The Houston Chronicle thought so much of the editorial that it re-published it in today's print edition. The Chronicle's posting of the editorial follows:
If you doubted that Republicans could be so craven as to put their own political interests above national security, the proof was delivered Tuesday: Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl announced he will block New START, which calls for the resumption of nuclear controls that until now have had bipartisan support.
Holding our nuclear security hostage solely to embarrass President Barack Obama is a new low. Public-spirited Republicans should demand that the treaty move forward as planned.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is a consensus document. Obama went to great lengths to win the support of the military, the State Department and a broad range of Republicans and Democrats.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supports the treaty. So do other prominent Republicans including George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, James Baker and Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly backs it. The chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, has said, "I believe — and the rest of the military leadership in this country believes - that this treaty is essential to our future security."
The treaty would require that Russia and the United States cut back on nuclear arsenals and would allow the United States to resume inspecting Russia's nuclear facilities, a right that lapsed last December for the first time since the Cold War. Does anyone really want Russia shuffling its nuclear weapons around without inspections? Even a year's gap has put us in greater danger of materials falling into the wrong hands.
The intrusion of partisan politics into national security is a break with tradition. The opposition party in Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has long set politics aside so that the country could present a united front to other nations. Lacking trust, we will have fewer allies and partners. Does anyone really think we can go it alone in today's world?
Obama went to extraordinary lengths to iron out areas of disagreement with Kyl, knowing two-thirds of senators must approve the treaty. The president had no fewer than 29 meetings, phone calls or exchanges with the Arizona senator and his staff, White House documents show. The sticking point seemed to be Kyl's sense that the United States needs to go to greater lengths to modernize its nuclear arsenal (at the expense of the deficit). So the president offered to add $80 billion to the budget for that purpose, including $4.1 billion just last Friday in an effort to close the deal.
So how did Kyl respond? He disrespectfully blindsided the president, timing his announcement to embarrass Obama just before he departs to Portugal for a NATO summit.
Kyl is taking his marching orders from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who openly proclaims that Republicans' top priority for the next two years is to defeat Obama.
Unchecked nuclear weaponry in unstable Russia ultimately threatens American lives.
If that's the cost of this political game, it won't be Obama's fault. It will be McConnell's.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Good Journalism Unmasks Another Phony Story from the Purveyors of Faux News
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman applauds how CNN's Anderson Cooper unmasked the baseless rumor that President Obama's trip to India and Asia was costing U.S. taxpayers $200 million a day--a story "reported" with hysterical grandiosity by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage. When will the public learn that nothing that comes out of their mouths can be trusted?
Most of Friedman's column follows:
On Nov. 4, Anderson Cooper did the country a favor. He expertly deconstructed on his CNN show the bogus rumor that President Obama’s trip to Asia would cost $200 million a day. This was an important “story.” It underscored just how far ahead of his time Mark Twain was when he said a century before the Internet, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” But it also showed that there is an antidote to malicious journalism — and that’s good journalism.
Cooper said he felt impelled to check it out because the evening before he had had Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a Republican and Tea Party favorite, on his show and had asked her where exactly Republicans will cut the budget.
Instead of giving specifics, Bachmann used her airtime to inject a phony story into the mainstream. She answered: “I think we know that just within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting over 870 rooms in India, and these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending.”
The next night, Cooper explained that he felt compelled to trace that story back to its source, since someone had used his show to circulate it. His research, he said, found that it had originated from a quote by “an alleged Indian provincial official,” from the Indian state of Maharashtra, “reported by India’s Press Trust, their equivalent of our A.P. or Reuters. I say ‘alleged,’ provincial official,” Cooper added, “because we have no idea who this person is, no name was given.”
It is hard to get any more flimsy than a senior unnamed Indian official from Maharashtra talking about the cost of an Asian trip by the American president.
“It was an anonymous quote,” said Cooper. “Some reporter in India wrote this article with this figure in it. No proof was given; no follow-up reporting was done. Now you’d think if a member of Congress was going to use this figure as a fact, she would want to be pretty darn sure it was accurate, right? But there hasn’t been any follow-up reporting on this Indian story. The Indian article was picked up by The Drudge Report and other sites online, and it quickly made its way into conservative talk radio.”
Cooper then showed the following snippets: Rush Limbaugh talking about Obama’s trip: “In two days from now, he’ll be in India at $200 million a day.” Then Glenn Beck, on his radio show, saying: “Have you ever seen the president, ever seen the president go over for a vacation where you needed 34 warships, $2 billion — $2 billion, 34 warships. We are sending — he’s traveling with 3,000 people.” In Beck’s rendition, the president’s official state visit to India became “a vacation” accompanied by one-tenth of the U.S. Navy. Ditto the conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage. He said, “$200 million? $200 million each day on security and other aspects of this incredible royalist visit; 3,000 people, including Secret Service agents.”
Cooper then added: “Again, no one really seemed to care to check the facts. For security reasons, the White House doesn’t comment on logistics of presidential trips, but they have made an exception this time." He then quoted Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, as saying, “I am not going to go into how much it costs to protect the president, [but this trip] is comparable to when President Clinton and when President Bush traveled abroad. This trip doesn’t cost $200 million a day.” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said: “I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy and some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president’s trip to Asia. That’s just comical. Nothing close to that is being done.”
When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem. It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues — deficit reduction, health care, taxes, energy/climate — let alone act on them. Facts, opinions and fabrications just blend together. But the carnival barkers that so dominate our public debate today are not going away — and neither is the Internet. All you can hope is that more people will do what Cooper did — so when the next crazy lie races around the world, people’s first instinct will be to doubt it, not repeat it.
Most of Friedman's column follows:
On Nov. 4, Anderson Cooper did the country a favor. He expertly deconstructed on his CNN show the bogus rumor that President Obama’s trip to Asia would cost $200 million a day. This was an important “story.” It underscored just how far ahead of his time Mark Twain was when he said a century before the Internet, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” But it also showed that there is an antidote to malicious journalism — and that’s good journalism.
Cooper said he felt impelled to check it out because the evening before he had had Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a Republican and Tea Party favorite, on his show and had asked her where exactly Republicans will cut the budget.
Instead of giving specifics, Bachmann used her airtime to inject a phony story into the mainstream. She answered: “I think we know that just within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting over 870 rooms in India, and these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending.”
The next night, Cooper explained that he felt compelled to trace that story back to its source, since someone had used his show to circulate it. His research, he said, found that it had originated from a quote by “an alleged Indian provincial official,” from the Indian state of Maharashtra, “reported by India’s Press Trust, their equivalent of our A.P. or Reuters. I say ‘alleged,’ provincial official,” Cooper added, “because we have no idea who this person is, no name was given.”
It is hard to get any more flimsy than a senior unnamed Indian official from Maharashtra talking about the cost of an Asian trip by the American president.
“It was an anonymous quote,” said Cooper. “Some reporter in India wrote this article with this figure in it. No proof was given; no follow-up reporting was done. Now you’d think if a member of Congress was going to use this figure as a fact, she would want to be pretty darn sure it was accurate, right? But there hasn’t been any follow-up reporting on this Indian story. The Indian article was picked up by The Drudge Report and other sites online, and it quickly made its way into conservative talk radio.”
Cooper then showed the following snippets: Rush Limbaugh talking about Obama’s trip: “In two days from now, he’ll be in India at $200 million a day.” Then Glenn Beck, on his radio show, saying: “Have you ever seen the president, ever seen the president go over for a vacation where you needed 34 warships, $2 billion — $2 billion, 34 warships. We are sending — he’s traveling with 3,000 people.” In Beck’s rendition, the president’s official state visit to India became “a vacation” accompanied by one-tenth of the U.S. Navy. Ditto the conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage. He said, “$200 million? $200 million each day on security and other aspects of this incredible royalist visit; 3,000 people, including Secret Service agents.”
Cooper then added: “Again, no one really seemed to care to check the facts. For security reasons, the White House doesn’t comment on logistics of presidential trips, but they have made an exception this time." He then quoted Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, as saying, “I am not going to go into how much it costs to protect the president, [but this trip] is comparable to when President Clinton and when President Bush traveled abroad. This trip doesn’t cost $200 million a day.” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said: “I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy and some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president’s trip to Asia. That’s just comical. Nothing close to that is being done.”
When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem. It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues — deficit reduction, health care, taxes, energy/climate — let alone act on them. Facts, opinions and fabrications just blend together. But the carnival barkers that so dominate our public debate today are not going away — and neither is the Internet. All you can hope is that more people will do what Cooper did — so when the next crazy lie races around the world, people’s first instinct will be to doubt it, not repeat it.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Eight Deadly Meals: Does Anyone Need a Day's Worth of Calories in One Sitting?
Talk about food for thought! There's enough food here to fuel thinking for several days. Put another way, there's enough food here to make you sick--or at least to make everyone of us fatter and fatter. And maybe that should provoke a particular thought: boycott these fat factories unti
l they remove these items from their menus.
In yesterday's online postings and today's print edition the Houston Chronicle calls attention to eight restaurant meals that -- in one sitting -- provide close to "the 2,000 calories recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for an entire day's sustenance."
The Chronicle article, Chain-restaurant fare weighing down Americans, actually re-publishes a September 21st article by Washington Post Staff Writer Rachel Saslow entitled With high-calorie dishes, restaurant chains put obesity on the menu.
The article was a follow-up to the 2010 Xtreme Eating Awards, given in May by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to nine "caloric heavyweight meals"--many of them offered by the same restaurant chains Saslow spotlights, but some actually less weighty than the eight below. What follows is the last two-thirds of Saslow's article.
"Restaurants are not in the business of making people healthy," Washington dietitian Rebecca Scritchfield says . "They're trying to make money, and salt and fat are cheap ways to make food taste better."
We asked Scritchfield to give us her take on these caloric heavyweights.
All of the nutritional information below comes from the restaurants' websites, except for the Cheesecake Factory's, which is courtesy of CSPI's Xtreme Eating awards. (The chain does not publish its nutritional information online.)
Quiznos large tuna melt sub sandwich
The numbers: 1,520 calories, 101 grams of fat, 21 grams of saturated fat, 2,020 milligrams sodium. Equivalent of eating: More than a stick of butter's worth of fat. Expert evaluation: Grabbing a tuna sandwich for lunch sure sounds like a healthful decision, but not with this jumbo-size sub. "If someone hears 'tuna' and they think they should be eating more fish, they might think that's a good choice, but the portion is way too big," Scritchfield says. On top of that, "it's made with foods that have high calories, such as mayonnaise and cheese."
Chipotle's chicken burrito
Filled with rice, pinto beans, corn salsa, cheese, sour cream and guacamole, accompanied by a side of chips. The numbers: 1,750 calories, 79.5 grams of fat, 23 grams of saturated fat, 2,750 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The calories in more than nine chicken soft tacos at Taco Bell. Expert evaluation: "There are lots of ways you can make that healthier," Scritchfield says. "My top recommendation is not to get cheese and sour cream but instead get guacamole because that has the heart-healthy fat and gives you the creaminess you're going for." You could also forgo the chips and save 570 calories.
Applebee's New England fish and chips
The numbers: 1,910 calories, 137 grams fat, 24 grams saturated fat, 3,150 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The fat in almost a pound of cheddar cheese. Expert evaluation: "If you really wanted this, I'd say split it and add some veggies," Scritchfield says. "And do not touch the salt shaker; it already has more than a day's worth of sodium in it."
Chili's Big Mouth Bites
Four mini burgers topped with jalapeño ranch dressing. The numbers: 1,930 calories, 31 grams of saturated fat, 4,400 milligrams sodium. Equivalent of eating: The calories of about 25 eggs. Expert evaluation: "These are interesting because they're sold as 'mini' burgers, but it's still a high-calorie, high-fat and high-salt meal because of what's on them," Scritchfield says.
Outback Steakhouse's full rack baby back ribs
Served with Aussie fries. The numbers: 1,936 calories, 133 grams of fat, 56 grams of saturated fat, 2,741 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The fat grams in 20 tablespoons of salad dressing. Expert evaluation: "There is no color on that plate: no broccoli, no garden salad. Vegetables should be half of your dinner plate, and they're absent," Scritchfield says. Outback diners can substitute steamed green beans or seasonal veggies for the fries and slash about 200 calories and 15 grams of fat.
The following mega-meals could be shared, but Scritchfield says it wouldn't be surprising if they sometimes are consumed by just one person: "People envision what they're served as their portion."
Domino's bread bowl pasta
The numbers: One bread bowl, which Domino's nutritional information counts as two servings, contains 1,340 to 1,470 calories, 48 to 56 grams of fat, 21 to 27 grams of saturated fat, 65 to 115 grams of fiber, 1,830 to 2,860 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The fiber in about 16 to 29 servings of oatmeal. Expert evaluation: "If you get enough fiber, and 25 to 35 grams a day is the right amount, it helps keep digestion at a normal pace. But if you eat too much fiber, it actually gives you constipation," Scritchfield says.
P.F. Chang's double pan-fried noodles
With a combination of meats. Although this is one entree, the company counts it as four servings since it totals 36 ounces. The numbers: 1,820 calories, 84 grams of fat, 8 grams saturated fat, 7,692 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The sodium in 70 tablespoons of blue cheese dressing. Expert evaluation: "If four people shared this (as their entire meal), not only would the waiter be like, 'What are you doing?' but we'd leave dissatisfied," Scritchfield says. "They're breaking it down so their numbers look good."
Cheesecake Factory's pasta carbonara
The numbers: 2,500 calories, 85 grams of saturated fat. Equivalent of eating: The saturated fat in about 5 cups of half-and-half cream. Expert evaluation: "Four adult men would have to share this entree in order to each stay within a day's worth of saturated fat," Scritchfield says.
l they remove these items from their menus.In yesterday's online postings and today's print edition the Houston Chronicle calls attention to eight restaurant meals that -- in one sitting -- provide close to "the 2,000 calories recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for an entire day's sustenance."
The Chronicle article, Chain-restaurant fare weighing down Americans, actually re-publishes a September 21st article by Washington Post Staff Writer Rachel Saslow entitled With high-calorie dishes, restaurant chains put obesity on the menu.
The article was a follow-up to the 2010 Xtreme Eating Awards, given in May by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to nine "caloric heavyweight meals"--many of them offered by the same restaurant chains Saslow spotlights, but some actually less weighty than the eight below. What follows is the last two-thirds of Saslow's article.
"Restaurants are not in the business of making people healthy," Washington dietitian Rebecca Scritchfield says . "They're trying to make money, and salt and fat are cheap ways to make food taste better."
We asked Scritchfield to give us her take on these caloric heavyweights.
All of the nutritional information below comes from the restaurants' websites, except for the Cheesecake Factory's, which is courtesy of CSPI's Xtreme Eating awards. (The chain does not publish its nutritional information online.)
Quiznos large tuna melt sub sandwich
The numbers: 1,520 calories, 101 grams of fat, 21 grams of saturated fat, 2,020 milligrams sodium. Equivalent of eating: More than a stick of butter's worth of fat. Expert evaluation: Grabbing a tuna sandwich for lunch sure sounds like a healthful decision, but not with this jumbo-size sub. "If someone hears 'tuna' and they think they should be eating more fish, they might think that's a good choice, but the portion is way too big," Scritchfield says. On top of that, "it's made with foods that have high calories, such as mayonnaise and cheese."
Chipotle's chicken burrito
Filled with rice, pinto beans, corn salsa, cheese, sour cream and guacamole, accompanied by a side of chips. The numbers: 1,750 calories, 79.5 grams of fat, 23 grams of saturated fat, 2,750 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The calories in more than nine chicken soft tacos at Taco Bell. Expert evaluation: "There are lots of ways you can make that healthier," Scritchfield says. "My top recommendation is not to get cheese and sour cream but instead get guacamole because that has the heart-healthy fat and gives you the creaminess you're going for." You could also forgo the chips and save 570 calories.
Applebee's New England fish and chips
The numbers: 1,910 calories, 137 grams fat, 24 grams saturated fat, 3,150 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The fat in almost a pound of cheddar cheese. Expert evaluation: "If you really wanted this, I'd say split it and add some veggies," Scritchfield says. "And do not touch the salt shaker; it already has more than a day's worth of sodium in it."
Chili's Big Mouth Bites
Four mini burgers topped with jalapeño ranch dressing. The numbers: 1,930 calories, 31 grams of saturated fat, 4,400 milligrams sodium. Equivalent of eating: The calories of about 25 eggs. Expert evaluation: "These are interesting because they're sold as 'mini' burgers, but it's still a high-calorie, high-fat and high-salt meal because of what's on them," Scritchfield says.
Outback Steakhouse's full rack baby back ribs
Served with Aussie fries. The numbers: 1,936 calories, 133 grams of fat, 56 grams of saturated fat, 2,741 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The fat grams in 20 tablespoons of salad dressing. Expert evaluation: "There is no color on that plate: no broccoli, no garden salad. Vegetables should be half of your dinner plate, and they're absent," Scritchfield says. Outback diners can substitute steamed green beans or seasonal veggies for the fries and slash about 200 calories and 15 grams of fat.
The following mega-meals could be shared, but Scritchfield says it wouldn't be surprising if they sometimes are consumed by just one person: "People envision what they're served as their portion."
Domino's bread bowl pasta
The numbers: One bread bowl, which Domino's nutritional information counts as two servings, contains 1,340 to 1,470 calories, 48 to 56 grams of fat, 21 to 27 grams of saturated fat, 65 to 115 grams of fiber, 1,830 to 2,860 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The fiber in about 16 to 29 servings of oatmeal. Expert evaluation: "If you get enough fiber, and 25 to 35 grams a day is the right amount, it helps keep digestion at a normal pace. But if you eat too much fiber, it actually gives you constipation," Scritchfield says.
P.F. Chang's double pan-fried noodles
With a combination of meats. Although this is one entree, the company counts it as four servings since it totals 36 ounces. The numbers: 1,820 calories, 84 grams of fat, 8 grams saturated fat, 7,692 milligrams of sodium. Equivalent of eating: The sodium in 70 tablespoons of blue cheese dressing. Expert evaluation: "If four people shared this (as their entire meal), not only would the waiter be like, 'What are you doing?' but we'd leave dissatisfied," Scritchfield says. "They're breaking it down so their numbers look good."
Cheesecake Factory's pasta carbonara
The numbers: 2,500 calories, 85 grams of saturated fat. Equivalent of eating: The saturated fat in about 5 cups of half-and-half cream. Expert evaluation: "Four adult men would have to share this entree in order to each stay within a day's worth of saturated fat," Scritchfield says.
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Free of "the Democratic Politics of Capitol Hill," Maybe Obama Can Govern His Way
Like House Speaker-in-Waiting John Boehner, Washington Post columnist George F. Will wants us to see Tuesday's Republican sweep of the House of Representatives, several Senate seats and a passel of governorships as A recoil against liberalism. In today's column Will argues:This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power - are government commands and controls - superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society's spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said "yes."
Well, that may be what some of the majority said. However, David S. Broder, who has been a political reporter for the Washington Post since 1966 and is perhaps the most centrist political columnist at the newspaper, had a rather different take:
Some people may have voted against President Obama's party because they think he has not devoted enough energy toward fixing our economy, but the larger disappointment that fueled anti-Obama animus was that he allowed himself to be sucked into the Democratic Party's endless machinations to get better deals for their base and their contributors, which bloated the economic stimulus, the health care law and the failed energy bill into "a swollen, expensive and ineffective legislative monstrosity." The result for Obama?
Thus, a double setback to the hopes that had been aroused by his election. Instead of cooperation, the worst kind of partisanship returned. And instead of changing the way Washington operated, he seemed to ratify business as usual.
Broder, in other words, sees not so much a rejection of Obama's agenda (wherever on the spectrum it may be located) as an angry disappointment at his failure to achieve the kind of post-partisan leadership to which he aspired and which his campaign inspired us to believe was possible. Broder suggests that Obama's way forward is to try again to do things his way, not the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid way:
There will be a temptation to interpret the Democrats' loss of their House majority and of at least six Senate seats as a rejection of Obama's first-term agenda, the one on which he was elected in 2008.
What lessons should Obama draw? The worst mistake would be for him to abandon or reject his own agenda for government. If health care is to be repealed, let it be after the 2012 election when he will have a chance to defend his handiwork - not now.
Instead, he should return to his original design for governing, which emphasized outreach to Republicans and subordination of party-oriented strategies. The voters have in effect liberated him from his confining alliances with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and put him in a position where he can and must negotiate with a much wider range of legislators, including Republicans.
The president's worst mistake may have been avoiding even a single one-on-one meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell until he had been in office for a year and a half. To make up, the outreach to McConnell and likely House Speaker John Boehner should begin at once and continue as a high priority.
Obama tried governing on the model preferred by congressional Democrats and the result was the loss of Democratic seats and his own reputation. Now he should try governing his own way. It cannot work worse, and it might yield much better results.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Charles Curran: Abortion Law Push Lacks Certitude, Consistency and Constitutionality
Catholic Priest Charles E. Curran has been Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University since 1991.At age 76, he is certainly no newcomer to Catholic moral theology, with Doctor of Sacred Theology degrees in 1961 from two Catholic institutions in Rome: the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Academia Alfonsiana.
In fact, prior to joining SMU he was a peritus (theological expert) at the Second Vatican Council, and shortly after the council he was appointed associate professor of theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he was granted tenure and served almost continuously until 1986. (I was privileged to be a student in a couple of his classes in the 1971-1972 academic year.)
"Almost continuously" is said very much tongue in cheek. Curran was briefly fired in 1967 for his views on birth control--but quickly reinstated after a five-day faculty-led strike. He also became persona non grata with the Vatican after he joined some 600 theologians in questioning the methodology and conclusions of Humanae vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical forbidding 'artificial' birth control.
But despite his dissent and his relentless assertion that theologians and lay Catholics had every right to dissent from particular papal teachings, Curran held on to his job until after the election of Pope John Paul II--who had Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, formerly known as the Inquisition), declare that Curran was no longer eligible to teach in Catholic schools. Curran argued in a civil suit that the Catholic University had violated its own due process procedures in terminating his employment, but the court disagreed.
SMU had the academic foresight and ecumenical largess to hire him five years later, which has allowed him to continue functioning as a moral theologian regarded by his peers as the best American in his field.
I think both as a courtesy to SMU and as a means to avoid exacerbating his Roman Catholic situation Curran has laid relatively low on specifically Catholic issues in recent years. He has not been silent and he has not stopped asserting his deeply held convictions. But he has generally avoided broadsides that would raise the ire of Catholic authorities.
So I was curious when Curran told a gathering of moral theologians meeting in Trent, Italy, last July that "we cannot put our heads in the sand" in the face of current crises in the church. He was referring to people leaving Catholicism in unprecedented numbers as a result of the clergy sex abuse crisis and the bishops' attempts to cover it up, conflicting approaches to moral theology taken by theologians and the hierarchy, and the return to authoritarianism and overcentralization that has characterized the Vatican in the decades since Vatican II. I was curious above all if Curran had some more specific personal response in mind. Last week, it became clear that he did.
In a public lecture at SMU on October 28th, Curran made a newer theological issue his own: the U.S. bishops efforts to impose Catholic-based abortion laws on the citizens of the United States. As summarized by National Catholic Reporter Editor at Large Tom Roberts, Curran called the bishops' approach to such laws "flawed," for at least four reasons:
- “The speculative doubt about when human life begins;
- “the fact that possibility and feasibility are necessary aspects involved in discussions about abortion law;
- “the understanding and role of civil law;
- “and the weakness of the intrinsic evil argument.”
So far no one who has found a complete transcript of Curran's lecture online. As reported by Roberts, however, Curran is arguing under these multiple headings that the bishops' position lacks the certitude, consistency and constitutional standing to justify enacting it into law.
On the question of certitude, Curran points out that Catholic tradition, from Thomas Aquinas to the present day "recognizes speculative doubt about when the soul is infused or when the human person comes into existence." Curran acknowledges that the CDF's 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion and John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae both call Catholics to err on the side of caution: since "the presence of the soul is probable" at any given point in a pregnancy, "one cannot take the risk of killing a human person."
However, sufficient uncertainty remains that the church cannot legitimately force this belief on non-Catholics. Thus, says Curran, "The most accurate way to state the Catholic moral teaching is that direct abortion even of a fertilized ovum is always wrong, but you cannot say it is murder. There is doubt about the reality of the early embryo."
In a pluralistic and politically divided society like the United States, there is also uncertainty about the possibility and feasibility of enacting an across-the-board prohibition of abortion. Absent certitude on those issues, it is a matter of prudential judgment whether Catholics should work for such a law or support other measures that they believe would be more effective. (Curran doesn't seem to say so, but how such a law could be enforced equitably and effectively is also fraught with uncertainty.) Obviously this has a direct impact on the right of bishops to excommunicate or even discipline Catholic lay people and politicians who decline to tow the bishops' official line.
Curran also sees uncertainty on whether the role of civil law should be viewed through a natural law perspective, which would seek to protect basic human rights including the right to life, versus a religious-freedom approach, under which "one could give the benefit of the doubt to the freedom of the woman." However, because I see this more as a church-state separation issue, I think it is probably the weakest of Curran's arguments. I will say why under the discussion of constitutionality, below.
Curran sees lack of consistency in the bishops' assertion that all abortions must be outlawed because abortion is an intrinsic moral evil. Curran argues that using the term as a rationale for giving abortion preeminence over all other political issues is a faulty argument. Citing prostitution and adultery, Curran notes the Catholic tradition has not insisted that either be outlawed, even though Catholic theology calls both intrinsically evil. If abortion is to be treated inconsistently, the bishops need to explain why. So far they have failed to do so.
This also echos Curran's insistence earlier in the lecture that official church teaching on the morality of abortion is "not as certain" as the teachings on murder, torture or adultery" and that what the bishops want legislated about abortion "entails prudential judgment so that they cannot logically distinguish it from most of the other issues such as the death penalty, health care, nuclear deterrence, [and] housing."
By raising the question of religious freedom, Curran's reflections on "the understanding and role of civil law" touch on the constitutionality of outlawing abortion. However, his direct concern is the conflict in Catholic theology between a natural law approach to civil law and an approach which makes freedom of religion the dominant principle.
One possibility is to say, as Curran does, that the conflict means there is lack of certitude in Catholic theology on this issue, so that either approach can be pursued with equal validity, albeit also with requisite humility and respect for opponents' experience, motivation and rationale.
Another approach, which I favor, is to say that Vatican II's teaching on religious freedom has become the new context in which the natural law tradition is available. From a process philosophy perspective, the teaching on religious freedom has relativized the conclusions of the natural law analysis and redefined the limits under which natural law conclusions are valid and applicable. To assert natural law beyond those limits is to proclaim a falsehood.
What Vatican II's teaching on religious freedom did was to move the church's official position much closer to the separation of church and state enshrined (per Thomas Jefferson and an unbroken string of court rulings) in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Which is why I have argued since 1968, and several times here, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means that the bishops may not insist that the Catholic moral teaching on abortion be imposed on everyone else as a public law--because "everyone else" includes non-Catholics, non-Christians, nonbelievers, and even Catholics who conscientiously disagree with it. On the issue of abortion in the United States, at least, the Constitution requires that freedom of religion predominate over a natural law approach to civil law.
With that one amendment, I find Curran's arguments accurate and compelling. It may indicate that I am not alone that so many Catholic conservatives have already responded to Curran's critique not with reasoned argument but with ad hominem attacks, most focusing on the claim that he was "fired" by Catholic University in 1967--which, as Curran says about the bishops' position on the personhood of the fetus, "is accurate but not totally forthcoming." Officially he was fired for a few days, but he was quickly reinstated and held his post continuously for another 20 years. And even when the Vatican revoked his authority to teach in Catholic schools, it did not instruct him to stop functioning as a Catholic theologian.
But the conservative response may also portend that some church official somewhere is probably ready to pounce on what they will perceive as Curran's departure from orthodoxy. And that could cause the Vatican to escalate from "Thou shall not teach in Catholic schools" to "Thou shall not publicly proclaim Catholic theology anywhere," or even "Thou art no longer in communion with the Catholic Church."
I imagine that Curran preferred to avoid those risks for several years, but became convinced that given his age and the dire condition of the church, they are risks he could avoid no longer. As he said in July, "We cannot put our heads in the sand." And if moral theologians have to put their heads on the chopping block of censure or excommunication to bring the official church to its senses, who more credible to lead them than Charlie Curran?
Let me end this with the prayer from Ephesians that concludes the final chapter of my doctoral dissertation: "Glory be to him whose power, working within us, can do infintely more that we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen."
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