Christianity: It's Also A Political Theory

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

A common meme among extremist right-wing Islamophobes is that Islam is "different" than other religions (and thus somehow due less respect and protection) because of the extent to which it pushes a certain political message. The suggestion seems to be that religious freedom is fit for those traditions which limit themselves to internal matters, but not those which try to influence the state.

Take this article by JR Dieckmann at "Canadian Free Press." In part:

The time has come to question if Islam is protected under our First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. Yes, everyone in America has the right to freedom of religion, but Islam is not a religion. Religious faith is only a part of Islam. The rest is a socially engineered society with its own laws and customs that seriously conflict with American law.
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We must recognize that religion is only one aspect of Islam‘s Qur’an. The rest of this charter advances ideas, social behavior, and laws that are in direct conflict with American and western laws and values. Teddy Roosevelt once said that to live in America, immigrants must have undivided loyalty to America and to no one else. How is that possible for Muslims who swear loyalty to Islam where their governing laws are found in the Qur‘an?
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If Islam were just about praying to Allah and worshiping Mohammed and nothing more, we would not be having a problem with Islamism and Islamic terrorists. Islam has a global mission to take over and run the world according to Islamic Shariah law. How can we call that a religion?

Of course, Dieckmann is extreme even for the extremists. But I've seen worse, and I've seen many other apparently otherwise normal people who espouse similar nonsense.

There's much wrong with this kind of argument, and it's too much to cover in a single post. But one myth I want to put to rest is the idea that Islam is the only religion which has political goals and an aim to control the civil state. Christianity too – on some interpretations – aims to create civil law in accordance with their religious principles. Patrick Brennan's recent post is a good example:

Even many of those who grant that Christ reigns now as King take the position, implicitly or occasionally explicitly, that, like Elizabeth II, Christ reigns but does not rule. Some defend the proposition that there are zones that are not ruled by Christ, on the ground that sometimes secularity is "healthy." As I was saying the other day at the marvelous conference on "Radical Emancipation: Confronting the Challenge of Secularism" sponsored by Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture," however, the absence of the Gospel is never a good. To be absolutely clear, non-Christians must never be forced to embrace the Christian religion, but this does not entail that socio-political life should not be blessed by the leaven of the Gospel. The penetration of civil society by the principles of the Gospel is a good to be pursued -- and it is, indeed, a good that Christ the King commands. Here is what Card. Ratzinger said in 1984 on the question of the basis on which the state should be formed and shaped: "The state must recognize that a funadmental system of values based on Christianity is the precondition for its existence." (Church, Ecumenism & Politics, 207, emphasis added).
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Weigel concludes by asserting that "The state does not have the capacity to make the judgment that Christ is King." But this is patently absurd, at least taken as a statement about states as such. As I've argued before, surely a group of Catholics founding a state would be competent to install leaders who would be competent to recognize what their installers recognize, viz., the Kingship of Christ. To be sure, many states, including our own, are contingently incompetent to recognize the Kingship of Christ and its social consequences, but the fulfillment of such an unfortunate contingency does not lay a finger on the traditional Catholic teaching that Christ is King over political society. Nor does the Second Vatican Council alter that teaching. See Par. 2105 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. How could it? Jodi Bottum claims in the video that "Christ is king of we [sic] as individuals." It is by nature (and supernature) that we associate, however, and I cannot understand the claim that, when we do in fact associate in political society to achieve the natural common good, Christ pro tanto loses his jurisdiction. Bottum is right that this is an "unAmerican idea," but that's hardly a fatal condition.

Personally, I don't see anything inherently wrong with these types of religious-political traditions. I disagree with them, of course, and I find myself in frequent political opposition  to those who advance religion-imbued views, but they're no more wrong than any other ideology. Still, I don't think it's possible to consistently condemn the Muslim tradition and absolve the Christian one on this count.

Perhaps Dieckmann and the others are simply ignorant of the political aspects of Christianity. But it's more likely that their hypocrisy is based on not-so-subtle bigotry: acceptance of the familiar and rejection and fear of the new.

Addendum on Catholic Universities

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

A few days ago, I wrote a post asking whether there could be institutions which are both genuinely Catholic and genuine universities, based on a view of the relationship between doctrine and academic freedom espoused by some Catholic academics at Mirror of Justice.

Since then, Robert John Araujo has written another post which I think raises some of the same issues and is worth calling attention to.

In it, he criticizes the "More than a Monologue" project put on by Fordham, Fairfield, Yale, and Union Theological. The conference has been criticized multiple times on Mirror of Justice, primarily for being simply a monologue itself, and presenting no views strongly representing the voice of the institutional Church. To the extent that's true (I don't know enough about the conference to judge) I think it's a fair critique. Even if ideologically homogenous conferences can at times be valuable, they'll usually be less productive and interesting than those which welcome all viewpoints. (It is worth wondering, though, whether there's a lack of traditional presence because of the groups invited, or because of who was willing to attend.)

But beyond that, Araujo offers another critique that I think crosses the line between academic and doctrinal.

Although the conveners of this project asserted that they wanted “to change the conversation about sexual diversity and the Catholic Church” by presenting “the variety of viewpoints on issues of sexual diversity among Catholics,” the Archbishop of New York and the Bishop of Bridgeport expressed their concerns to the heads of two of the convening institutions regarding the appearance of the program that dissent from rather than support and defense of Catholic teachings was the nature of the presentations. However, these bishops were assured that “the conferences, while sensitive to the experiences of the participants, will not be a vehicle for dissent.” 

As I indicated in a previous posting, I heard most of the presentations delivered at Fordham, Fairfield, and Yale, and it was my initial conclusion that these conferences were, in fact and whether intended or not, a criticism or questioning of the Church’s teachings on critical matters dealing with faith and morals.

The fact that something is a "vehicle for dissent" or "criti[zes] or question[s]" an institution's teachings, should never be grounds for criticism in academic communities. It's understandable, perhaps, for the Archbishops to raise the concerns they did: they're not academics, and their concern is for institutional power and what they see as the protection of their faith. But it's disheartening to see "dissent" as a criticism of a conference raised by a man who is himself a professor.

While Araujo throughout the piece offers some actual criticism of one of the addresses at the conference (some of it more convincing than the rest), he also challenges it multiple times on the grounds that it simply "directly conflicts with the Church’s fundamental teachings." If the theory purports to not conflict, then that might be a legitimate point to raise. But Araujo seems to suggest that it is per se wrong for a Catholic academic at a Catholic university to contradict the Church. If that is the mainstream view of the relationship between doctrine and academia among Catholics, then I reaffirm my feeling that it is impossible for a genuine Catholic university to exist.

Money Is Speech

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

One of the most controversial aspects of modern free speech doctrine is the relationship between money and speech. Obviously, the two cannot be completely separated: if the government prevents me from paying money to buy advertisements and spread a political message, they are restricting my ability to speak out. But giving full free speech protections to all expenditures that are speech-related leads to some controversial results, such as Citizens United and the potential for unregulated campaign contributions.

Those who argue for the position "money is speech" usually mean it in a certain way, namely that money is one form of speech. You can speak by spending money, or in other ways – or at least, so the theory goes.

I read a post on Balkinization today that got me thinking: what if the bond between money and speech is getting tighter still? Pasquale quotes Ackerman and Benkler as saying, "In recent decisions, the Supreme Court has protected Wall Street's constitutional right to pour millions into political campaigns. But as presently construed, the First Amendment isn't an obstacle when it comes to silencing the Occupiers. . . ."

Have we gotten to the point where money is not only a form of speech, but the form of speech?

The difficulties that the Occupy movements have had in finding homes for their protest belies a saddening fact about modern America: there is little-to-no space left that is truly public, at least not anywhere near the urban centers necessary for protests. Almost every possible forum for protest is either privately owned or faux-public: tightly regulated space which do not allow for effective protests.

There are few ways to get a protest off the ground, nowadays, that don't require significant amounts of money. (Note that even the OWS protestors relied on expenditures in the form of legal assistance...) Protests either have to be able to pay for their own advertising, or else capture a news organization for free message-spreading (see, e.g., FOX and the Tea Party). The everyman protest is, effectively, dead.

If money is speech – wholly and in toto – does the government have an obligation under the First Amendment to ensure that everyone has the ability to speak? Or are monetary restrictions on speech acceptable, so long as they only target the poor who don't deserve to speak in the first place?

The Future of Higher Education

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

I think it's safe to say that there are two dueling visions for higher education at the moment. One focuses on "Return on Investment" (narrowly understood), the other on the principles of citizenship and a liberal arts education.

The former sets out to judge universities (and majors and other programs within universities) by a few simplistic metrics, including employment rates and salaries of graduates, as well as some more amorphous ideas, such as the "value to employers" of the technical "skills" developed during college.

The latter appeals to more high-minded principles, including the value of a well-read, well-rounded, intelligent citizenry and academic inquiry for its own sake.

I don't know enough to say whether this is a new fight, but it does seem to be particularly intense at the moment, due in no small part to our economic troubles.

As an example of the former view, here's Kenneth Anderson:

In that case, if you are a smart but not brilliant student in STEM, you might tell yourself until you are blue in the face that you must study STEM to be employable and have real skills. But the reality is that you will flunk out or come close to it, or be lucky to get by with Cs.
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In response to having said this in blunt, fatherly-advice terms in in earlier posts on this blog, I’ve received many well-meaning, sometimes pious comments from people saying, well, you should just suck it up in order to get genuinely educated. Here is what Dad says: sorry, but forget it. Higher education is both too expensive and the risks of failure — serious downward mobility of a kind I’ve also written about on this blog, not to universal acclaim — too great for it to be rational to put the education ahead of the credential. I wish, as an educator, a human being, and a parent, it were otherwise, but it’s not.
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As to an actual education, well, that’s nice. But not at 50k a year, when those four years are themselves simply a downpayment on the law school bet that you can get employed. At those prices it’s the credential that matters.

(Anderson's post is long, and makes some interesting arguments, so by all means read the whole thing.)

On the other hand, here's the introduction to Massimo Pigliucci's post about a curriculum controversy at CUNY:

Apologies to my readers for the seemingly parochial topic of this post, but in fact what you are about to read is part of a national trend toward dismantling liberal arts education, in the apparent conviction that our society doesn’t need intelligent and critically thinking citizens, but simply workers who are trained to do whatever the market and the reigning plutocracy bids them to do. Much more about the trend and its dangers can be found, among many other places, here, here, here, here, and here.

I think both positions make good points, and they're not totally incompatible. As the cost of education goes up, liberal arts looks more and more like an unnecessary luxury. And yet...

Can There Be Catholic Universities?

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

This is going to be a provocative post, so let me immediately step back and make a few qualifications. First, I'm not Catholic (I was raised Methodist, though I would not describe myself as Christian now) and have no direct, personal insight into Catholic doctrine. To the extent that my argument relies on 'what Catholicism is,' I'll do my best to explain those Catholics from whom I'm drawing the positions. Of course, other Catholic academics may have a different perspective on the interaction between their faith and their intellectual pursuits, and this argument may not apply to them.

I also don't mean to suggest that Catholicism is incompatible with all academic pursuits. I don't see any inherent conflict in the combination of Catholicism and mathematics, for instance, or Catholicism and physics (though I'm open to correction on the latter).

Finally, my concerns are directed less towards individual Catholic academics than towards institutions that aspire to be both Catholic and intellectual. It would be unfair to single out Catholic academics, as they're certainly not the only academics who come to their fields with strong prior commitments, and how they balance their roles is a matter of personal conscience.

With those caveats in place, I'll finally get to what I actually want to say. It seems to me that there is an unresolvable conflict between Catholic teachings on the authority of the Church and the necessity of open-mindedness and intellectual autonomy in an academic institution. That is, a university (or department) that identifies as Catholic must, as I understand it, commit to a certain view of truth that encompasses doctrinal teachings. This differs from the ideal academic institution, which devotes itself to nothing other than the methodological investigation of the truth.

Let me turn to two bits posted over at Mirror of Justice to illustrate my point. The first is by Robert Araujo from back in late August, commenting on a speech Pope Benedict gave regarding the qualities of teachers in higher education. He says, in part,

Although it is brief, the address contains some important thoughts for those of us who have dedicated our lives to tertiary and professional education. The pope’s words are all the more relevant as we begin a new academic year in which many of us wrestle with the objectives of our teaching, advising, and research. In addition, for those of us who may have the opportunity to consider new faculty hiring, the Holy Father’s words serve as a resource for considering the qualities of candidates who will be considered for faculty positions. Surely the pope’s thoughts about qualities for teaching also apply to us who are already teachers. 

What are these qualities? 

Pope Benedict begins by contending that a teacher has a responsibility to search for and disseminate the truth. For the Christian and Catholic, this truth is Jesus Christ, God incarnate. A person disposed to this has a solid chance of acknowledging and discussing with others the inextricable nexus between faith and reason. For the skeptic who may take issue with this assertion, one needs to take stock of the fact that the foundations of the great western universities of today rest on this nexus and search.

The idea that Christian and Catholic academics' search for the truth should be informed by their faith is not necessarily troubling. As I mentioned above, the interplay between intellectualism and faith at the personal level is a complicated one, and I do not think that academic integrity is threatened by that idea, held by individual researchers and teachers.

What is troubling about this passage, though, is the suggestion that institutions should make these values an integral part of their process of hiring. Araujo writes that the acceptance of Jesus Christ as a source of truth is a "quality of candidates who will be considered for faculty positions" that should play a role in the decision-making of those controlling that hiring. Doing so would impose doctrinal constraints on institutions that limit their mission to a specific subset of academic inquiry, making them less free universities or departments in the process.

More recently, Richard Myers wrote a post about the censuring of a Catholic academic by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In the case in question, the USCCB merely issued a critical statement (more on that later). But Myers' post is more worrisome in what it suggests:

This is another example of the Bishops moving away from a disciplinary approach to dealing with dissent. Sister Johnson is still on the faculty at Fordham. Daniel Maguire is still on the theology faculty at Marquette, even though the Committee on Doctrine issued a statement several years ago explaining that the views expressed by Professor Maguire were erroneous and incompatible with Church teaching. 

There is a lot to be said in favor of this kindler gentler approach. It is worth recalling, though, that Charles Curran seemed to have been largely forgotten after he left Catholic U and that one wonders whether Richard McBrien would attract as much attention if he taught at Indiana University-South Bend instead of Notre Dame.

Here are the USCCB's statements on Johnson and Maguire, and biographical background on Curran and McBrien.

Myers seems to be endorsing a view of Catholic higher education that conforms to the standard of what happened to Curran: those who do not fall within certain 'acceptable' boundaries are removed from their positions. This is a system of doctrinal enforcement, not academic freedom.

That quality – academic freedom – is in my mind an essential component of a university. Of course, it's an ideal seldom realized: whomever holds power in a university will tend to limit academic freedom somewhat based on their opinion of legitimate views. But in most academic environments, it's at least an ideal that's espoused and worked towards. Compare the two pieces above with an email I received recently from the University of Chicago's provost, in response to protests surrounding a planned appearance by Condoleezza Rice and Henry Paulson:

Over the course of this academic year, we have had, and will continue to have, many events featuring spirited debate about a variety of topics, academic and otherwise. This is in keeping with our commitment to a core value of rigorous inquiry, which has been a central feature of the University of Chicago’s distinctive culture throughout its history. 

Constant and deliberate work is required to sustain this commitment. Argument is a central means of achieving deeper understanding and creating new knowledge. In this spirit, we engage one another and welcome campus speakers with viewpoints across the intellectual and political spectrum. We must protect a speaker’s right to be heard, just as we have a responsibility to challenge their ideas with honesty, vigor, and respect. No speaker is to be expected to present all views on a subject, but as a community, we offer the possibility of additional fora for exploration of contrasting opinions, so that taken together inquiry can proceed untrammeled in the service of scholarship.

Universities can survive without a perfect track record in academic freedom. But can universities – true universities – exist in a tradition that actively denies academic freedom in favor of dogma?

Of course, the story in the Myers post is actually somewhat encouraging. The exact thing that he seems to be lamenting – the move away from a 'disciplinary approach' – is consistent with academic freedom. Criticism is an integral part of academia, and there is certainly nothing wrong with the USCCB engaging in critiques of academic work. To the extent that Myers is correct about the trend, then perhaps the Catholic power structure is moving the faith more towards the direction in which institutions which are genuinely Catholic and genuinely academic can exist. For now, though, I'm a bit skeptical.

As I said at the top, I welcome comments on this, especially by those more familiar with Catholicism than I. Is there more allowance for academic freedom at Catholic institutions than there seems to be? Is the tradition actually consistent with academic values?

When The Beltway is Wrong - Cain and Abortion

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

For various reasons, I tend to side with intellectuals over 'plain-talkers.' I'm disinclined to support politicians who score points by undermining deep-thinking in favor of shallow appeals to populism. And, of course, there's no way in hell I'll ever support Herman Cain's candidacy for the presidency.

And yet, sometimes the people who agree with me are just plain wrong.

Amy Sullivan's post on TIME's Swampland blog is a good example. In it, she takes Herman Cain to task for the way he describes his position on abortion. He "doesn't actually understand what he's talking about," she claims.

Why? Well, it seems that Herman Cain calls himself pro-life and still supports the right of women to choose in some circumstances.

Ignore the fact that opposing legal abortion but allowing an exception for rape and incest isn't exactly unheard of, and still is generally called a "pro-life" position. (Really, opinions about abortion are pretty damn complex.)

The view Cain seems to be putting forward is actually a more nuanced one than the standard pro-life/pro-choice divide allows for. He's distinguishing between personal moral views and legal requirements – and that's not a discussion that gets much play among the political elites in this country. Sticking to the insider labels in the way Sullivan seems to want really isn't a virtue in the end, when there's a chance to get past them and use them in more rational ways. If Cain's out of touch with the current political rhetoric on the issue, maybe that's a good thing. After all, the abortion rhetoric is horribly flawed and unrepresentative of any views but the most extreme.

When we get down to it, Sullivan's post is really nothing more than an insider's contentless dismissal of a challenger who refuses to play by the rules that she's succumbed to.

Disclaimer: Absolutely none of the above should be construed as the slightest support for Cain.

Life Sentence for Child Porn Possession

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

The New York Times has a disturbing story about how far into the land of insanity our current criminal sentencing culture really goes. Mr. Vilca, a 26-year-old with no criminal history, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for possession of child pornography. Not child abuse. Not any crime that involved him ever interacting with an actual person. As far as I can tell from the story, they had no evidence of him even speaking to children online.

Don't get me wrong: Vilca deserves to go to prison. For a long time. He also likely deserves mental services and help reintegrating into society. But life in prison without the possibility of parole? Unless there's far more to this story than the Times was able to dig up, that's just absurd.

Even Paul Cassell, who has made the extraordinary argument that any person who views child pornography is liable for full damages to the victimized child, has a tepid condemnation of the sentence in this case: “in the abstract, a life sentence for the crime of solely possessing child pornography would seem to be excessive.”

When I mention that I'm interested in criminal defense as a career, a common reaction is, "but what if you have to defend someone who's guilty?" Cases like this make the answer to that really easy. Our society has demonstrated that it has no problem committing crimes of its own against the convicted by sentencing them to terms far outside the bounds of even the most extreme justice. Standing up for the guilty individual against the guilty society is not that difficult a moral dilemma.