Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

K-Lo on NRO today:
Doc Hollywood on the Campaign Trail
What Michael J. Fox learned while on Spin City.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

First it was Missouri, today it is Maryland. Michael J. Fox has entered the political fray in both states’ hotly contested Senate races, taping commercials for the Democrats running there, Claire McCaskill and Ben Cardin, respectively. In the ads, while touting his candidates’ support for “stem-cell research,” Fox by implication furthers the most prevalent myth about stem-cell research: that those who oppose embryo-destroying research are against stem-cell research.

In the Maryland commercial for Cardin, Fox, the actor (he played teenage Republican Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties) who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, takes aim at both Republican Lieutenant Governor (and Republican nominee for Senate) Michael Steele and George W. Bush. Fox says:

Stem cell research offers hope to millions of Americans with diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

But George Bush and Michael Steele would put limits on the most promising stem cell research.

Fortunately, Marylanders have a chance to vote for Ben Cardin.

Cardin fully supports life-saving stem cell research. It’s why I support Ben Cardin.

And with so much at stake, I respectfully ask you to do the same.

Even in an emotionally wrenching package — you see Fox very visibly suffering from his disease as he unnervily jerks back and forth — these claims are familiar and disingenuous. George W. Bush, Jim Talent, Mitt Romney … any politician who has taken any kind of lead in opposing embryonic-stem-cell research (and cloning, which is rarely spoken of, but is a necessary element of much of what embryonic-stem-cell advocates want to do) is all too often portrayed as being against stem-cell research — and hope. In truth, President Bush was the first president of the United States to authorize federal funding for any embryonic-stem-cell research. In correcting a writer from The New Republic back in 2004, my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out, “Actually, Bush provided funding for the first time. Congress had essentially banned funding, the Clinton administration issued preliminary regulations getting around the ban, and then Bush imposed a policy of funding with restrictions.”

Further, embryonic-stem-cell research is currently legal and completely unrestricted in both Maryland and Missouri, and in the vast majority of other states. It is largely personal and institutional ethics that keeps scientists from cloning research. The debate we’re having is almost always about government funding or radical measures like the one currently on the ballot in Missouri (Amendment 2), which would write a right to cloning into the state constitution.

Additionally, embryo-destroying stem-cell research is by no means the only or the most promising stem-cell research. Alternative research — including cord-blood research and adult-stem-cell research — is already working, unlike the embryonic-stem-cell research we’re all focused on as if it were a proven cure-all. As Princeton professor Robert P. George, who sits on the president’s bioethics commission, tells National Review Online:

the ads exaggerate the therapeutic potential of embryonic stem cells beyond anything that Michael J. Fox or anyone else has reasonable grounds to believe they can be used to accomplish. Adult stem cells — stem cells that can be obtained harmlessly from umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, fat, and other sources — have actually been used successfully to treat people. They have been used to improve people’s lives. Embryonic stem cells have not helped anyone. No one knows when, if ever, embryonic cells will be used in therapies at all. Indeed, not a single embryonic-stem-cell-based therapy is even in stage one of clinical trials. That is because the tendency of embryonic stem cells to produce tumors makes it unethical to use them in human beings — even in experimental treatments. By contrast, there are more than 1,000 adult-stem-cell-based therapies in clinical trials. In his ads, Michael J. Fox hides these crucial facts, thus creating an appallingly false impression and slandering candidates against whom the ads are directed.”

Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum, a candidate in another hot race this season, is also — like Bush and Steele and Talent — pro-stem-cell research, but opposed to embryo-destroying research. In the Senate earlier this year, Santorum teamed up with his pro-choice, very pro-embryonic-stem-cell-research Pennsylvania colleague Arlen Specter to sponsor a bill that would fund research to find cells with embryo-like qualities. At the time, Santorum explained:

While there are different and passionate opinions on stem cell research, Senator Specter and I have come to an agreement that we can intensify pluripotent stem cell research without creating or destroying human embryos for research purposes. We are hopeful that additional funding in this area will open the door to significant advances in the medical and scientific communities.

Stem-cell research, while dramatically divisive — largely thanks to misleading emotional messages (i.e., the Fox commercials) — actually offers potentially fruitful opportunities for coalition building. That is, unless you’re of the embryos-or-nothing position. Unfortunately, instead of embracing non-controversial research earlier this year, Democratic Leader (soon to be Senate Majority Leader?) Harry Reid dismissed the Santorum efforts as “meaningless.” Proponents of embryonic-stem-cell research — those we’re supposed to believe really care about sick people — rejected, not for the first time, a chance to embrace non-ethically troublesome research; instead they said We only want embryonic-stem-cell research.

Political commercials are not known for their honesty or subtlety, but these Fox ads hit home in a particularly painful way; their blatant dishonesty does a terrible disservice to those whom they pretend to want to help and malignantly contribute to an already confusing and frustrating debate about basic issues of life and death. Claire McCaskill, Ben Cardin, and anyone else who chooses to play on voters’ emotions with these misleading ads (Fox has filmed one for Democrat Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, and he will be appearing at events for Democrats Sen. Robert Menendez and Tammy Duckworth, who is running for the House from Illinois, according to the Washington Post) ought to be ashamed of themselves.

As Professor George elucidates:

I have great sympathy for Mr. Fox and other victims of Parkinson’s and similarly horrible diseases. I understand how desperately he hopes for a cure for what afflicts him and so many others. I have seen members of my own family suffer, and I too want to hasten the day when the great engine of science conquers the diseases that cause so much suffering. But the fact that Mr. Fox is a victim is not a license for him to mislead or manipulate the public. The truth — the whole truth — must be told. Those politicians who, for political gain, have run these ads in which the truth is distorted and people are misled deserve the most severe of reprimands. Win or lose, they have brought upon themselves disgrace.”

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

Fr. Neuhaus in First Things with a piece on those troublesome sixteen words…

Richard John Neuhaus writes:

Those sixteen words have taken a terrible beating in the past fifty years. For most of our history, they occasioned little controversy. That was when our culture and our polity seemed to be on more or less amicable terms. There are several possible datings of the change, but I think we can settle on the Supreme Court decision of 1947 Everson v. Board of Education, as the beginning of what would later come to be called the culture wars. That’s when the Court decided that ours is a secular society and began, by pitting the polity against the culture, a determined effort to create a naked public square.

The sixteen words, of course, have to do with the first freedom of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Religion Clause—note that it is one clause with two provisions, no-establishment and free exercise—has been turned upside down, with the result that free exercise, which is the entire purpose of the clause, is again and again trumped by no-establishment. In recent years, the Supreme Court has been increasingly candid about the incoherence of its Religion Clause decisions, admitting that they are riddled through with contradictions. There is reason to believe that the Court just may be ready to return to the original meaning of the text, which is to protect the free exercise of religion.

Meanwhile, however, the battles continue. Just yesterday, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that religious institutions must cover contraception services in their employee health plans. The appeal of Baptist and Catholic groups for an exemption was denied. The ruling clearly burdens the free exercise of religion for those who believe that paying for artificial contraception is complicity in evil. Defenders of the decision say the decision only marginally inhibits the free exercise of religion. But free exercise means free exercise. When the exercise of religion is inhibited, it is not free exercise.

Last week the New York Times ran for four days in a row front-page stories, followed by two full inside pages each day, attacking religious exemptions from taxes and government regulation and control. The stories were written by Diana B. Henriques, and she has another big story on the same subject in Friday’s business section. This is an extraordinary amount of space for the Times to devote to anything. Under executive editor Bill Keller, this is known as the “blast” or “barrage” tactic when the Times understands itself to be launching a major campaign. This campaign is a take-no-prisoners assault on tax and other exemptions that historically have been deemed essential to the free exercise of religion.

The focus of the stories is on real or alleged abuses of religious tax exemptions. There is no shortage of such abuses, religion being as prone to scams and chicanery as any other human enterprise. But the Times is clearly after more than the correction of abuses. It is the very idea of religious exemptions that is under attack. Among the targets of the stories is the “faith-based initiative” of the Bush administration whereby, according to the Times, exemption from taxes and government regulation give religious organizations an unfair advantage.

The first director of the faith-based initiative, John DiIulio, writes in The Weekly Standard:

Times readers might be invited to imagine an America in which all of those ostensibly favored faith groups disappeared tomorrow. Who would suffer the most, and who would have to pay to replace the social services that they now provide? For instance, pick ten big cities, and ask how many low-income non-Catholics (Title I students, Medicaid-eligible patients, etc.) are served by Catholic elementary schools, high schools, colleges or universities, and hospitals? Next, try to figure out who is subsidizing or “accommodating” whom: How much would it cost to provide the same services without religiously mobilized volunteers and institutions in the mix? Studies being conducted by me and others at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University aim to estimate the “replacement value” of such Catholic “civic assets.” Stay tuned. . . .

Similarly, while federal funds finance much art and architecture that is patently offensive to many religious believers, and while federal dollars routinely pay to preserve other historically or architecturally significant properties, grand old churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious properties must go begging. Hurricane Katrina destroyed many sacred places frequented by religious people who were the first to supply basic services to the region’s victims. Still, in 2005, Congress barely passed new legislation providing funding to Catholic and other religious schools that had selflessly opened their doors to elementary and secondary students who had been displaced by the floods.

And, as I know from my own travels, in many cities, faith groups that seek to open after-school programs, run shelters, or otherwise serve their needy neighbors are still often kicked to the civic curb by local public housing authorities, state judges, and other government officials. The politics behind these actions is not always pretty. Big secular nonprofits and well-positioned for-profit firms–professional service delivery organizations that for decades have “won” government contracts while avoiding independent performance audits–suddenly be come interested in church-state issues when their oligopolies are threatened by competition from local faith groups. In many cases, the faith groups have been doing the work all along in return for public-funding crumbs from the “professional” groups’ tables. Much the same game has too often, and for too long, been played against grassroots religious groups by large private foundations’ favorite grantees.

In addition to the practical and political questions of elementary justice addressed by DiIulio, there are deeply principled reasons why religious exemptions are essential to our constitutional order. A classic text here is Dean Kelley’s 1977 book, Why Churches Should Not Pay Taxes. The power to tax is the power to control. The practical applications of exemption are necessarily monitored by IRS and other government agencies, but the principle of exemption is deeply entrenched in law, and it is not likely that the Times campaign will change that. But it will not be for lack of trying.

The editorial purpose glaringly evident in the “news” section of the paper is backed up by the page that is admittedly editorial. “Religious institutions should be protected from excessive intrusion by government,” the editors say (i.e., Congress shall make no law respecting an excessive prohibition of religion). But the existing system of exemption, they continue, “amounts to an enormous subsidy for religion, in some cases violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment.” The editors are also exercised that religious institutions are exempt from regulations having to do with religious and gender discrimination in hiring and promotion. But the key point, invoked over the years by opponents of free exercise, is that tax exemption is actually a government subsidy.

The underlying, and nascently totalitarian, assumption is that everything in the society belongs to the state and should be under state control. Government exemptions from tax and control are a privilege granted, not a right respected. From which it follows that an exemption is, in fact, a subsidy. This is a long way from the Founders’ understanding of the independent sovereignty of religion that the government is bound to respect.

The editors write, “Like most special-interest handouts, these privileges exist in large part because the majority is not aware, or is not being heard.” No, these are not privileges but rights, and the majority, I expect, is aware and approving of the government’s respect for the free exercise of religion. Again, where free exercise rights are abused, the abuses should be remedied. The courts and legislatures are regularly involved in addressing these questions. But make no mistake about it: The Times is committing its considerable resources and influence to an all-out assault on the free exercise of religion.

One may reasonably assume that this would not be the case without the full support of executive editor Bill Keller. It is hardly incidental that Keller has, by his own admission, a religion problem. He calls himself a “collapsed Catholic,” and in a 2002 article in the Times (subscription required) he rails against the Church for having “replicated something very like the old Communist Party.” He says, “The Vatican exists first and foremost to preserve its own power.” The pope “has carefully constructed a Kremlin that will be inhospitable to a reformer.” Seminaries have been turned “into factories of conformity.” “What reform might mean is something I leave to Catholics who care more than I do.” But Mr. Keller obviously cares very much about the struggle “between the forces of tolerance and absolutism” in “the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition.” It is not surprising that “a fraternity of aging celibates” opposes “the equality of women, abortion on demand, and gay rights.” He ends by wondering “how long faith withstands such a corrosive rain of hypocrisy.”

There is no anti-Catholic venom like the anti-Catholic venom of a collapsed Catholic. As I say, the Times’ campaign against the first freedom of the First Amendment is not likely to have much effect. It is yet another instance of the paper’s penchant to pander to the prejudices of a readership perplexed by the vibrancy of religion in American life. If the Times was half as important as it thinks it is, it would be twice as important as it is. Nonetheless, some attention must be paid.

Good news on the ecumencial/social issues front:

Catholic and Evangelical leaders who have issued a joint statement declaring that care for the vulnerable in society is an essential requirement of authentic Christianity which must reject any deliberate taking of innocent human life as murder.

“The direct and intentional taking of innocent human life in abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and embryonic research is rightly understood as murder,” the document That They May Have Life declares, from Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

Published in the October issue of the Catholic magazine First Things, the statement identifies the biblical foundations of the call to protect and care for the unborn, ill and dying in the Divine command to “love your neighbor.”

“The love for the neighbor begins…with respect for the neighbor’s right to be, by honoring the gift of God that is the neighbor’s life. Thus the most basic commandment of neighbor-love is ‘You shall not kill’ …rightly understood as ‘You shall not murder,’” the statement declares.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First Things and a participant in drafting the document, said there was “intense” debate over the use of the term “murder,” in reference to abortion, in an interview with the Ledger.

“But we tried to be very precise, namely that any direct and deliberate taking of innocent human life is in ordinary language — and certainly in the language of the Western moral tradition — properly called murder,” he said.

The purpose of the statement is to “explain to our communities why we believe that support for a culture of life is an integral part of Christian faith and therefore a morally unavoidable imperative of Christian discipleship,” the authors write. “We believe it is of utmost importance that everyone involved in the public discussion of these questions understand the unbreakable connection between a Christian worldview and the defense of human life.”

“It is not the case that we wish to ‘impose’ our moral convictions on our fellow-citizens or, as some recklessly charge, to establish a ‘theocracy.’ Our intention is not to impose but to propose, educate and persuade in the hope that, through free deliberation and decision, our society will be turned toward a more consistent respect for the inestimable gift that is human life.”

The statement refutes the argument of compassion frequently used by those who promote abortion and euthanasia, saying:

“While we can sympathize with those who view their own life or the life of another as a burden and not a gift…there can by no moral justification for murder.

“We are determined to employ every legal means available to protect, in law and in life, the innocent and vulnerable members of the human community.”
The statement’s authors plead with the Christian community to recognize the central place of respect for human life within the beliefs of the Church, and call for a “reasonable deliberation” with those who disagree, in an attempt to move beyond “culture wars.”

“Our churches do not simply support the pro-life movement as a social cause. Because the gospel of life is integral to God’s loving purpose for his creation, the Church of Jesus Christ, comprehensively understood, is a pro-life movement continuing God’s mission until the end of time.

“We cannot and would not impose this vision of a culture of life upon others. We do propose to our fellow Christians and to all Americans that they join with us in a process of deliberation and decision that holds the promise of a more just and humane society.”

Catholic leaders who endorsed the statement include Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Fordham University, Fr. Francis Martin, a foremost Catholic theologian and member of Mother of God Community, and Mr. George Weigel, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Evangelical leaders included Mr. Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, pastors Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, with the Willow Creek Community Church and Saddleback Church, respectively, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Read the full statement from Evangelicals and Catholics Together in First Things magazine.

(This article courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.)

From Catholic Exchange…goes well w/ Amy’s post from yesterday:
http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=2&art_id= 33869

We pro-lifers are often accused on not paying attention to the woman in the abortion scenario. Here’s a good CE article that talks about that:

http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=2&art_id= 34841

For those of you who want to read Mark’s piece, here’s the link:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/201/story_20191_1.html

From Amy Welborn:

Bishops to Vote on Norms for Hymns at Mass

10/23/06

The US bishops will vote to establish norms for hymns at Mass during their annual November meeting in Baltimore.

The new norms, which will require a two-thirds vote by the bishops and subsequent recognition by the Holy See, are to ensure that liturgical songs will be doctrinally correct, based in the scriptural and liturgical texts and relatively fixed.

The norms are part of a new Directory for Music and the Liturgy for Use in the Dioceses in the United States of America. The directory responds to a recommendation of Liturgiam authenticam, the fifth Vatican instruction on correct implementation of liturgical renewal called for by the Second Vatican Council.

Specific norms state that

The approval of liturgical songs is reserved to the Diocesan Bishop in whose diocese an individual song is published. He is supported in his work by this directory and by the USCCB Secretariat on the Liturgy.

The Diocesan Bishop is assisted in his review of individual texts through the formation of a committee for the review of liturgical songs consisting of theologians, liturgists, and musicians. The committee shall assure that each text is suitable for liturgical use based on the principles articulated in this directory.

Within three years, the Committee on the Liturgy will formulate a Common Repertoire of Liturgical Songs for use in all places where the Roman liturgy is celebrated in the United States of America. While songs outside the core repertoire may also be used in the Liturgy, this core repertoire will be included in all worship aids used in the dioceses of the United States of America.
The directory is to serve not so much as a list of approved and unapproved songs as a process by which bishops might regulate the quality of the text of songs composed for use in the liturgy.
According to the proposed directory, theological adequacy may be judged in two ways:

• Individual songs should be consonant with Catholic teaching and free from doctrinal error.

• The repertoire of liturgical songs in any given place should reflect a balanced approach to Catholic theological elements.
The directory warns of doctrinal compromise. For example, it notes:

• Liturgical songs must never be permitted to make statements about the faith which are untrue.

• The doctrine of the Trinity should never be compromised through the consistent replacement of masculine pronominal references to the three Divine persons.

• Any emphasis on the work of the members of the Church should always be balanced by an appreciation of the doctrine of grace and our complete dependence of the grace of God to accomplish anything.

• The elimination of archaic language should never alter the meaning and essential theological structure of a venerable liturgical song.
The document also emphasizes that care should be taken that hymns and songs should take their inspiration and vocabulary chiefly from the Scripture and Liturgy.

The document said that the large number of liturgical songs that exist in the United States have benefited the liturgy, but also said that “a certain stable core of liturgical songs might well serve as exemplary and stabilizing factor.”

More information on the November meeting can be found at www.usccb.org.

He responds to a post:

Responding to Mark
Though I’m trying to move on past my monster post on leaving Catholicism for Orthodoxy, Bnet has posted a link to it on the front page today, and my friend Mark Shea has kindly written a companion piece in response. In it, Mark says some things that I really must respond to, because I don’t want to leave the impression that I agree with his interpretation of my words. To wit:

Mark:
For instance, I don’t believe that the personal charisma—or lack thereof–of a bishop is sufficient reason to leave the Catholic Church, just as I don’t believe the sins of bishops and priests somehow de-legitimate the nature of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church any more than Judas’ or Peter’s did.

I can’t figure out why some folks get the idea that I changed my church because Archbishop Dmitri is a lovely man. When I wrote about him presiding over the feast in his humble cottage like a “grandfatherly Gandalf,” I was trying to paint a picture of a wise old man who acted not as a CEO but as the head of a family. The material modesty in which he lives is plain, and it told me something about his character. Likewise, he is quite close to his flock, and relates to them in a way that I’d never seen before. I presume this has more to do with him than with Orthodoxy itself, but I could be wrong. The point is, what I saw in him, and in the congregation, was a family — and that’s what Julie and I were so hungry for. I had reached the limit of where abstract reasoning could take me, and I was completely burned out. What I needed was a family. And God showed me one.

Mark:
Like Rod, I converted to the Catholic Church as an adult. Like Rod, I was grieved and appalled by the sex scandals. Yet despite the despicable acts of Catholic priests and their episcopal defenders that have been uncovered in recent years, I don’t buy the proposition that my children are in continual mortal danger from predator-priests and that the only way to protect them is to leave the church. The chances of any individual child’s encountering an abusive minister in the Catholic Church are about the same in any Christian communion: which is to say remote. The notion that going to Mass or Sunday school is an act analogous to throwing your child into a pit of ravening wolves or sending him on a forced march through a spiritual desert is much closer to hysteria than to reality. Indeed, we Sheas have found the Church to be a rich fountain of living water–and in the highly troubled and frequently heterodox Archdiocese of Seattle no less!

I’m sorry, but this is very far from what I actually said. I have never believed that going to Sunday mass with my children was risking their abuse, though certainly the close encounter with the priest who had been put quietly into active service in the conservative parish (against diocesan rules, and without telling the bishop) was a breaking point for us. No, leaving the Catholic Church for the sake of my children was primarily about the spiritual protection of my children. You get to a point in which you realize having to tell your kids on the way home from mass that what Father (or Deacon) said in the pulpit is not actually true (that is, not what the Church teaches) is undermining their faith. More importantly, you come to understand, perhaps, that they are not actually being taught much in the parish other than that being a Christian is little more than a matter of going through the rituals and feeling good about yourself. And specific to my own situation, my constant anger over not only the sex-abuse scandal, but other things going on in the Church forced me to confront the fact that I was becoming a poor teacher-catechist for my children, or rather, that my anger and despair and near-complete mistrust of the Church that we actually lived with (as distinct from the Church that lives in books), was teaching my kids by example that the Christian life is primarily a source of anxiety and anger. For that, some fault lies with me, and I accept that. But I still had Christian children to raise, and after fighting this war inside myself for three years or so, I bailed. Anyway, to say — as some Catholics have, and as Mark does here — that I left because I thought Father Freakydeak was going to lie in wait in the confessional for my boys creates a straw man.

Mark:
Likewise, I never thought Rod was realistic to demand, as he did in a op-ed essay a few years ago for the Wall Street Journal, that the pope remove and replace a huge portion of the American episcopacy “with the stroke of a pen,” or to declare himself “let down” when the late John Paul II did not comply. If Rod had really listened to the author of Ut Unum Sint, John Paul’s encyclical on the role of the papacy in the life of the church, he would have realized he was talking about a pope who had a more “Eastern” conception of his office than any pope in a thousand years: one who took seriously the notion that bishops are not just disposable middle management for the Vatican. In this, Orthodoxy fully concurs, which is why I don’t see the sense of demanding an impossibility from the Holy Father and then joining an Orthodox communion that would have condemned the Holy Father for acting “unilaterally” if he had met Dreher’s demands.

This is not a bad point, certainly, but the fact is, the Pope does have the power to do those things, and the fact that he couldn’t even bring himself to speak about this horrible scandal, except obliquely (”the mystery of iniquity”), was to me, debilitating. If he had simply chastised them severely and publicly, that would have worked wonders, at least to my own morale. John Paul sure got rid of the French bishop Jacques Gaillot early in his papacy for teaching heresy, and it’s a good thing the Pope did so, too. But look, if he can can a bishop for teaching error, why can’t he can a bishop for allowing children to be raped? You know? [And yes, I don't expect the Orthodox bishops and priests to have clean hands either, but it is my hope that going into life as an Orthodox with a sadly more realistic idea of what I can expect from hierarchs will keep me from setting myself up for a great fall, as happened to me in Catholicism.]

Mark:
Finally, when Rod wonders if his revised view of the papacy—that the pope can never speak infallibly—is just an ex post facto justification for a choice made mostly on emotional grounds, I have to say, “Yeah.” Because I don’t buy Rod’s notion that something about Catholic teaching has suddenly been shown to be false. The fact is, the overwhelming bulk of Rod’s testimony regarding his Catholic-to-Orthodox conversion is not about his questions regarding the truth or falsity of Catholic teaching, but about ringing changes on how the sins and “self-satisfied” average-ness of Catholics drove him and his family to distraction and how the various comforts and beauties of Orthodoxy made them feel.

Two points here: 1) I agree that my choice was primarily emotional, and that my intellectual reasons were flimsy (but let me say that I strongly believe there can be strong intellectual grounds for leaving RCism for Orthodoxy, though they did not apply to me in my particular case). I found in the filioque controversy, and later in papal infallibility, reason to doubt seriously what I had once believed as a Catholic. I didn’t go into that in my long post because these reasons ultimately weren’t determinative. Regarding emotion, I don’t apologize for that. We are not Vulcans, but human beings, and living in a constant state of anger, anxiety, distrust and crushing spiritual depression had finally taken its toll on me. And the formulas and syllogisms no longer served to dispel them.

I do get really tired, though, of this canard that I’m some sort of snob who hates the “averageness” of Catholics, so had to rush to Orthodoxy. What I despaired of was the sense of alienation that I often had at mass, that we were all here because we had nowhere else to go. I despaired not because I was so good, but precisely because I know how bad I am. I needed people who shared my beliefs to help me find my way to being a better man. I needed spiritual headship and counsel. I needed a reverent, beautiful liturgy to lift me out of the everyday and put me in closer touch with God. Suddenly I find myself being accused of snobbery because I could no longer carry on in a parish where you couldn’t tell who actually believed in Catholicism, and it didn’t seem to matter to the clergy whether or not anybody believed, or learned, just as long as the process kept moving along.

I perfectly well know that the family I’ve now become a part of is, like any family, flawed and broken. I don’t expect perfection, and I won’t be disappointed not to find it. What I have found is a beautiful and holy liturgy, serious spiritual guidance and teaching, and a family. I didn’t have that before. I do now. And it makes a big difference. Thanks be to God. If you find that in Catholicism, God has blessed you too.

On voting…

The Bishops Speak

Title: Religion, Reason, Voting
Author: Cardinal Francis George — Archdiocese of Chicago
Date: Tuesday, October 17, 2006

I wrote the last column to explain what I understood Pope Benedict to have said during his visit to Germany last month: that the path to genuine peace is marked by dialogue between faith and reason in every religion and in every culture on the planet. In our country, the dialogue between faith and reason becomes focused every couple of years in the decisions we make for choosing our elected officials.

The social teaching of the Catholic Church is based on divine revelation and on our understanding of the common good. Scripture tells us that we must love our fellow citizens and all others, even our enemies. Reason tells us that we love others by helping them participate in all the goods that are necessary for a fully human life: free exercise of religion, freedom from violence, access to the truth, productive work, leisure to play and to reconstitute our forces, opportunities for friendship and community and the like. The sum total of social conditions that allow people access to full participation in these goods is called the common good.

Conscience is not an excuse for doing something irrational. We are to form our consciences according to the social teaching of the Church and use that formation to make political choices. This is not easy, because principles are clear but practice often is clouded by confusion of fact and the distraction of various forms of self-interest. The first and most essential principle of Catholic social teaching is the dignity of every human person and one’s basic right to life from conception to natural death. Respect for human dignity is the basis for the fundamental right to life. This is a non-negotiable principle that is supported by our beliefs but is logically independent of our faith. Many non-Catholics think a society dedicated to the common good should protect its weakest members.

A Catholic politician who excuses his or her decision to allow the killing of the unborn and of others who can’t protect themselves because he or she doesn’t want to “impose Catholic doctrine on others” seems to me to be intellectually dishonest. The protection of every innocent human being’s right to life is a principle of reason, even though it is also a stand supported by Catholic moral teaching. Everyone understands, by way of example, that the state should protect property by forbidding stealing. This is a matter of the common good. It is not imposing Catholic morality on anybody, even though the Church teaches that stealing is a sin. Our present legal system protects stocks and bonds, as well as dogs and cats, more than it protects unborn human beings. This is contrary to the common good.

Other principles of Catholic social teaching are similarly based on both divine revelation and human reason. “The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” published by the Holy See in 2004, starts with God’s love for us and the dignity of the human person, and then sets out in about three hundred pages the full range of principles informing the Church’s social teaching: the common good, the universal destination of goods, the principle of subsidiarity, participation in society, the principle of solidarity, the fundamental values of social life — truth, freedom, justice.

I admit to a sense of frustration as I contrast this beautiful teaching with the political, economic and social order in which we now live. In the long run, God governs creation and the ideals of Catholic social doctrine are therefore possible of accomplishment. In the short run, we have to vote in a few weeks. The Catholic Bishops of Illinois are publishing a short statement on elections, conscience and the responsibility to vote. Its intention is to be of some help to Catholics who want to take seriously both their faith and their responsibility to the common good of our society.

It’s important to vote in a democratic society, even though much of our life is governed by decisions of unelected bureaucrats and judges and editors and economic players whose names we do not recognize unless there is a scandal of some sort. May each of us do the best we can, using the dialogue between faith and reason that takes place in our hearts, guided by the Church’s social doctrine; and may God protect us and our country. God bless you.

K-Lo from Boston last night…I’m thinking I might be a Romney girl:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGRiYzcxNmQ1MTZhN2YyODF kYTVjMDRiMzM3ZTM0OTc=

A good tidbit:
And what about the much talked about “Mormon problem”? Speaking to the British Times recently, when asked if his religion would be a problem if he chose to run for the White House, Romney said: “People used to wonder whether a divorced actor could be elected … or whether a Mormon could win Massachusetts, a state that is 55% Catholic.”

He continued, “There was probably a time when people cared which church you went to, but that’s past. People today look to see a person’s faith in the way they live in their home with their family.”

If Liberty Sunday in Boston is any indication, there may be something to Romney’s optimism — there may, in fact, be no Mormon problem. To put it less than Christianly: It’s the issues, stupid. Perhaps, despite polls and chatter suggesting hesitancy among evangelicals or others to vote for a generic Mormon, once they see that the Mormon is a politician with a in-sync record who gives a stirring speech, singing the right tune, at an already rockin’ black evangelical church, the so-called Mormon problem may be a moot point.