“Turnaround Is Fair Play”: What If The Girl Scouts Investigated The Bishops?
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is going to investigate Girl Scouts USA because of concern over some of the Scouts’ program materials and some organizational ties, such as—cue ominous music—the Sierra Club and Doctors Without Borders!
But what if Girl Scouts USA were to turn the tables and scrutinize the bishops’ group overseeing the investigation: the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth?
After all, that committee includes the Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone, Bishop of Oakland, who publicly bemoaned the fact that former Harvard president Lawrence Summers was excoriated for suggesting that women tend to have less aptitude for science and math. “Why,” asked Cordileone, “didn’t he have a right to say something which is a perfectly legitimate observation?”
(An aside: Is there anyone who seriously thinks Lawrence Summers had no legal right to say what he said? Isn’t the issue that a whole lot of people thought he was, you know, wrong; and, further, that being that glaringly wrong in public carries the consequence of strong disagreement and professional ramifications? But hey, while we’re on the subject of people having or not having the legal right to do and say things that other people strongly disagree with: It may interest you to know that Cordileone was also one of the major driving forces behind Prop. 8 in California, which outlawed same-sex marriage.)
Also on the committee is Most Rev. George Rassas. In 2008, Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, said in a deposition that Rassas had “withheld information about abuse allegations.”
These are two of the people who will be seeing whether Girl Scouts USA meets the appropriate standards for a Catholic organizational partner. In light of this, why not ask whether the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth meet Girl Scouts USA’s standards, rather than just the other way around?
Girl Scouts USA has, after all, developed significant programming to encourage girls to pursue their interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The website even calls girls “natural scientists”! Moreover, when faced with abuse disclosures from scouts, Girl Scout volunteers are instructed to “tell her you believe her” and “report the suspected abuse to the local agency designated to investigate such cases.” As such, the actions of Bishop Cordileone and (if Cardinal George is correct) Bishop Rassas suggest that they may not share these Girl Scouts values. I suspect those are values that many of the Girl Scouts’ constituents probably also hold dear.
Of course, I doubt Girl Scouts USA will point this out. Perhaps they rightly perceive what I should probably also do a better job taking to heart: that it’s not very charitable to judge a whole group by the few cherrypicked things you most object to (polite cough). At the same time, just like a church has the prerogative not to partner with a group that violates its religious convictions—understanding that they may thereby compromise their reach—neither is an organization that works for girls’ empowerment under an obligation to compromise its core values. Should they wish to do so, Girl Scouts USA is in a position to claim the moral high ground here.
By: Sarah Morice-Brubaker, Religion Dispatches, May 17, 2012
“Look Out For Thunderbolts”: The President Dares To Defy Franklin Graham
We still don’t know for sure who if anyone is responsible for shoving 93-year-old Billy Graham back into the harness of right-wing politics after so many years of devoting himself to loftier causes, in order to marginally boost the numbers for North Carolina’s Amendment One. But this statement from his son in response to the president’s announcement of support for same-sex marriage is certainly a pretty big hint:
On Tuesday my state of North Carolina became the 31st state to approve a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. While the move to pass amendments defining marriage is relatively new, the definition of marriage is 8,000 years old and was defined not by man, but by God Himself.
In changing his position from that of Senator/candidate Obama, President Obama has, in my view, shaken his fist at the same God who created and defined marriage. It grieves me that our president would now affirm same-sex marriage, though I believe it grieves God even more.
The institution of marriage should not be defined by presidents or polls, governors or the media. The definition was set long ago and changing legislation or policy will never change God’s definition. This is a sad day for America. May God help us.”
A swift response to Franklin Graham from a fellow North Carolina minister, the Rev. Murdoch Smith, pastor of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, said it all for me: “I am always suspect when someone says that they know the mind of God.”
I understand that many sincere Christians fundamentalists believe they are submitting themselves to God and subordinating their own egos and their own self-interest by simply following in their lives what they understand to be infallible divine revelation of the Bible. Many of them, indeed, are so humble it would not occur to them to impose their views on other people, much less force them to live as they do.
If there is anything humble or self-effacing or ego-immolating about Franklin Graham, I certainly don’t see it. As Rev. Smith says, he doesn’t follow God; he knows God and speaks for him, the God that not only fully reveals his Will to Franklin Graham via Franklin Graham’s infallible interpretation of scripture, but through God’s great and characteristic conservatism, his deep and manifest satisfaction with people like Franklin Graham who defend the ways things used to be before women and gay people and other lesser breeds got all uppity.
When people like Graham presume to accuse the President of the United States of “shaking his fist at God,” they are assuming the Prophetic Stance, the Hebrew tradition of calling down divine wrath on a depraved society. Ask yourselves: what kind of prophet would look at today’s world, with its poverty and violence and gross inequality, its environmental brinksmanship, its intolerance, its sheer wastefulness and lack of charity—and decide that what merits divine wrath is gay marriage? What sort of man of God could look at all the grievous occurrences on earth, and declare, with absolutely no indication of self-doubt, that God is grieving over gay people deciding to commit themselves to each other in love?
I’m sorry, I just do not get it. Graham has confused himself with God to an extent that when Barack Obama dares take a position he doesn’t like, he’s shaking his fist at God. I think Franklin Graham’s the one who’d better look out for thunderbolts.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 11, 2012
“Saintly And Crafty”: After Papal Crackdown, We Are All Nuns
Catholic nuns are not the prissy traditionalists of caricature. No, nuns rock!
They were the first feminists, earning Ph.D.’s or working as surgeons long before it was fashionable for women to hold jobs. As managers of hospitals, schools and complex bureaucracies, they were the first female C.E.O.’s.
They are also among the bravest, toughest and most admirable people in the world. In my travels, I’ve seen heroic nuns defy warlords, pimps and bandits. Even as bishops have disgraced the church by covering up the rape of children, nuns have redeemed it with their humble work on behalf of the neediest.
So, Pope Benedict, all I can say is: You are crazy to mess with nuns.
The Vatican issued a stinging reprimand of American nuns this month and ordered a bishop to oversee a makeover of the organization that represents 80 percent of them. In effect, the Vatican accused the nuns of worrying too much about the poor and not enough about abortion and gay marriage.
What Bible did that come from? Jesus in the Gospels repeatedly talks about poverty and social justice, yet never explicitly mentions either abortion or homosexuality. If you look at who has more closely emulated Jesus’s life, Pope Benedict or your average nun, it’s the nun hands down.
Since the papal crackdown on nuns, they have received an outpouring of support. “Nuns were approached by Catholics at Sunday liturgies across the country with a simple question: ‘What can we do to help?’ ” The National Catholic Reporter recounted. It cited one parish where a declaration of support for nuns from the pulpit drew loud applause, and another that was filled with shouts like, “You go, girl!”
At least four petition drives are under way to support the nuns. One on Change.org has gathered 15,000 signatures. The headline for this column comes from an essay by Mary E. Hunt, a Catholic theologian who is developing a proposal for Catholics to redirect some contributions from local parishes to nuns.
“How dare they go after 57,000 dedicated women whose median age is well over 70 and who work tirelessly for a more just world?” Hunt wrote. “How dare the very men who preside over a church in utter disgrace due to sexual misconduct and cover-ups by bishops try to distract from their own problems by creating new ones for women religious?”
Sister Joan Chittister, a prominent Benedictine nun, said she had worried at first that nuns spend so much time with the poor that they would have no allies. She added that the flood of support had left her breathless.
“It’s stunningly wonderful,” she said. “You see generations of laypeople who know where the sisters are — in the streets, in the soup kitchens, anywhere where there’s pain. They’re with the dying, with the sick, and people know it.”
Sister Joan spoke to me from a ghetto in Erie, Pa., where her order of 120 nuns runs a soup kitchen, a huge food pantry, an afterschool program, and one of the largest education programs for the unemployed in the state.
I have a soft spot for nuns because I’ve seen firsthand that they sacrifice ego, safety and comfort to serve some of the neediest people on earth. Remember the “Kony 2012” video that was an Internet hit earlier this year, about an African warlord named Joseph Kony? One of the few heroes in the long Kony debacle was a Comboni nun, Sister Rachele Fassera.
In 1996, Kony’s army attacked a Ugandan girls’ school and kidnapped 139 students. Sister Rachele hiked through the jungle in pursuit of the kidnappers — some of the most menacing men imaginable, notorious for raping and torturing their victims to death. Eventually, she caught up with the 200 gunmen and demanded that they release the girls. Somehow, she browbeat the warlord in charge into releasing the great majority of the girls.
I’m betting on the nuns to win this one as well. After all, the sisters may be saintly, but they’re also crafty. Elias Chacour, a prominent Palestinian archbishop in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, recounts in a memoir that he once asked a convent if it could supply two nuns for a community literacy project. The mother superior said she would have to check with her bishop.
“The bishop was very clear in his refusal to allow two nuns,” the mother superior told him later. “I cannot disobey him in that.” She added: “I will send you three nuns!”
Nuns have triumphed over an errant hierarchy before. In the 19th century, the Catholic Church excommunicated an Australian nun named Mary MacKillop after her order exposed a pedophile priest. Sister Mary was eventually invited back to the church and became renowned for her work with the poor. In 2010, Pope Benedict canonized her as Australia’s first saint.
“Let us be guided” by Sister Mary’s teachings, the pope declared then.
Amen to that.
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 28, 2012
“Right Wing Opportunists”: Anti-Mormon Attacks Aren’t Coming From the Left
Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch made headlines yesterday when he claimed that Democrats will “smear” Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith during the general election.
Hatch’s claim is ridiculous. In fact, it is right-wing politicians and pundits who keep on “warning” us that Democrats will attack Romney’s faith — and then use those “warnings” as opportunities to slam Mormonism themselves.
The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, like others on the Religious Right, has continually attacked Mormons, even going so far as to say their faith shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment and claiming that a Mormon president would threaten the “spiritual health” of the nation. But Fischer warned in a column yesterday that the “the out-of-the-mainstream media” will attack “every unusual thing Mormons have ever believed or done” — helpfully listing a litany of things he deems “unusual” about Mormonism.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land has likewise claimed that progressives will make Romney’s faith a campaign issue — while he himself insists that Mormonism is “technically… a cult.”
The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody used the same tactic this week when he posted a video of a Ron Paul supporter grilling Romney on quotes from Mormon scripture — and then claiming that Democrats and liberals will be the ones to attack Romney’s faith.
The Values Voter Summit, the Religious Right’s marquee event, fell apart last year after the pastor who introduced Gov. Rick Perry repeated his claims that Mormonism is a “cult” that worships a “false god.”
Meanwhile, one of the most powerful Democrats in the country, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, hasn’t been held back by any progressive backlash to his Mormon faith.
Romney is receiving attacks on his faith. But, as much as the right-wing media is trying to spin it otherwise, those attacks are not coming from progressives.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, April 5, 2012
“Compassionless Christianity Is No Christianity”: A Kinder Mix Of Religion And Politics During Holy Week
The Easter season is a celebration of deliverance, and the liturgical calendar sets Easter Week up as a kind of catharsis.
Holy Thursday and the Last Supper have an ominous feel because they are preparation for Good Friday and the dolorous story of Jesus’s crucifixion. Yet two days later, the tale ends in triumph and resurrection. Whatever questions Christians may have about the meaning of that empty tomb, most of us have experienced a sense of joy when the words “He is risen, alleluia!” are shouted out on Easter Sunday.
Christianity, like the prophetic Judaism with which it is inextricably linked, is rooted in the idea of liberation, and I have long seen the Exodus and Easter as twin narratives involving a release from oppression and the victory of freedom. These promises have left a permanent mark on the culture outside the traditions from which they sprang.
Yet even in the Easter season, it’s hard not to notice that Christianity hasn’t been presented in its own best light during this election year because Christians have not exactly been putting forward their best selves.
My colleague Michael Gerson wrote recently about the “crude” way religion has played out in the Republican primaries, including “the systematic subordination of a rich tradition of social justice to a narrow and predictable political agenda.”
Gerson is exactly right, but I don’t propose to use his admirable column as an excuse to pile onto the religious right. Instead, I want to suggest that what should most bother Christians of all political persuasions is that there are right and wrong ways to apply religion to politics, and much that’s happening now involves the wrong ways. Moreover, popular Christianity often seems to denigrate rather than celebrate intellectual life and critical inquiry. This not only ignores Christian giants of philosophy and science but also plays into some of the very worst stereotypes inflicted upon religious believers.
What I’m not saying is that Christianity should be disengaged from politics. In fact, the early Christian movement was born in politics, in oppositional circles within Judaism fighting Roman oppression. There is great debate over how to understand the relationship between Jesus’s spirituality and his approach to politics, but his preaching clearly challenged the powers-that-be. He was, after all, crucified.
But because Christians have a realistic and non-utopian view of human nature, they should be especially alive to the ambiguities and ambivalences of politics. The philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain captured this well in reflecting on Augustine’s writings. “If Augustine is a thorn in the side of those who would cure the universe once and for all,” she wrote, “he similarly torments critics who disdain any project of human community, or justice, or possibility.”
Christians, she’s saying, thus have a duty to grasp both the possibilities and the limits of politics. This, in turn, means that the absolutism so many associate with Christian engagement in politics ought to be seen as contrary to the Christian tradition. And that’s the case even if many Christians over the course of history have acted otherwise.
Similarly, some Christians encourage a view of their faith as profoundly anti-intellectual. Faith is seen as more about experience than reason, more about loyalty than dialogue. The desire to assert The Truth takes priority over exploring productively and honestly what the truth might be.
In his important book “Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind,” the great evangelical scholar Mark Noll urges Christians down the second path. He argues that “if what we claim about Jesus Christ is true, then evangelicals should be among the most active, most serious and most-open minded advocates of general human learning.
“Evangelical hesitation about scholarship in general or about pursuing learning wholeheartedly is, in other words, antithetical to the Christ-centered basis of evangelical faith.” Noll might have added that a devotion to higher learning does not make anyone “a snob.”
So if Easter is about liberation, this liberation must include intellectual freedom. It entails a tempered approach to politics involving a steady quest for human improvement, not false promises of perfection or wild claims about the demonic character of one’s opponents. Elections, even an election as important as this year’s, should not be routinely cast as Armageddon.
Oh, yes, and a compassionless Christianity is no Christianity at all. I have always been moved by this presentation of Jesus from a Catholic Eucharistic prayer: “To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners, freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy.” To which one can say: Alleluia.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 4, 2012
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