Maher Arar

Remember him? This Syrian-born Canadian citizen was picked up by US authorities while transiting through JFK airport en route to Montreal in 2002, and sent to Syria to be brutally tortured. He spent ten and a half months in detention, and went through a horrendous ordeal. In 2006, he was cleared of all terrorism allegations by the Canadian government. The Bush administration thumbed its nose at Canada, and refused to remove Arar from its terrorism watch list.

Attorney General Albert Gonzalez scoffed at claims of torture all along, and claimed it was a "deportation", not a "rendition". And of course, the Syrians had promised he would not be tortured. Thankfully, the days when Congress would turn a blind eye to such abuses seem to be over. Recently, Senator Patrick Leahy launched an angry verbal attack on Gonzalez, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It's worth watching. Leahy asked an obvious question: how could Gonzalez say that he trusted the Syrian not to torture Arar when the official policy of the Bush administration is that the Syrians cannot be trusted at all? No, they knew exactly what would happen to Arar in Syria. And they sent him anyway.

Again, it is time to quote the list of crimes against human life and dignity spelled out so eloquently in Gaudium Et Spes, and referred to as "intrinsically evil" by Pope John Paul in Veritatis Splendour:

"Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery...."

It's all there, pure and simple...

And what many seem to forget is how the Bush administration responded to a federal lawsuit initiated by Arar in 2005. The implications go beyond Arar, and provide a mindset into how the administration views foreign nationals, and the application of human rights in general (remember their views on the "quaint" Geneva Conventions?). In this case, the administration argued that:

"Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food... aliens have at most a right against "gross physical abuse."

Charming.

Best Movies of 2006

Well, the Oscar nominations are out. I suppose it has become an annual ritual to criticize the pick, and to offer up one's own suggestions as a vastly superior alternative. Well, I will humbly follow in this tradition!

So, in no particular order, here are my selections for the best movies of 2006:

Drama:

The Prestige
The Illusionist
Apocalypto
The Devil Wears Prada
The Departed
Blood Diamond
Hollywoodland
The Last King of Scotland
All the King's Men
Bobby
The Queen
Casino Royale (token action movie!)

Comedy:

Nacho Libre
Borat
Talladega Nights

Foreign Language:

Sophie Scholl: The Last Days
Pan's Labyrinth
Curse of the Golden Flower

Documentary:

An Inconvenient Truth
Jesus Camp
This Film is Not Yet Rated
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Saint of 9/11

Errors and omissions? Comments welcome!

Richard John Neuhaus is Confused About the Past

As we all probably know, Neuhaus is a Catholic convert and priest who has done more than most to forge an alliance between Catholics and evangelicals in the public square. And, of course, the abortion issue is the deciding issue that cements to alliance. Neuhaus pens an essay on the significance of Roe v. Wade, to coincide with its anniversary, and the annual March for Life. It's worth reading.

Interestingly, Neuhaus sheds more light on the origins of the pro-life movement than perhaps was perhaps his intention. He was quite right that, at the time, "the Catholic Church stood alone in protesting the immediate evil and long-term implications of Roe v. Wade." Opposition to the "right" to abortion was seen as a curious Catholic position. What he really brings out is how evangelical fundamentalism, at the very time when it was beginning to exert some political muscle during the Nixon administration, was fully on board with Roe v. Wade. Two years prior to the decision, the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest Protestant association in the country) called for a liberalization of abortion laws. And for years afterwards, the Convention passed resolutions in favour of the "right to choose". In fact, it was not until the election of Reagan, when the evangelicals assumed greater power, that they turned against abortion.

So why the enormous shift? Of course, Neuhaus assigns a charitable interpretation to the change of heart, dealing with increasing awareness of the plight of unborn. Occam's razor suggests a more obvious solution, however. The evangelicals embraced the pro-life cause because it became politically expedient for them to do so. It allowed them to defend their conception of a patriarchal society (cultural, not theological) while hiding it behind a noble cause. It was the Trojan horse for them to push forward with a social agenda that did not have the moral clarity of abortion. And it had the added benefit of deflecting attention away from the obvious conflicts between a Christian organization and the many social and economic injustices ignored by the prevailing individualist ideology. We also cannot forget that the religious right rose to power in the south, partly in reaction to increasing racial integration. Racism became uncool, but by wrapping themselves in the pro-life mantle, a new cohort of southern politicians could actually claim the moral high ground. That would be white, male, conservative politicians...
And of course, they used this defining issue to make common cause with like-minded Catholics, leading to a deal with the devil: in return for evangelical support, Catholics will turn a blind eye to the other aspects of Catholic social teaching that would go against the individualistic and nationalistic viewpoint of many evangelicals. Neuhaus attacks the "seamless garment" concept of Cardinal Benardin. But Bernardin was right, and prescient. Bernardin knew very well that it would be a mistake to divorce abortion from other issues, and to ignore the pressing social and economic concerns that drive women to have abortions.

Bernardin was consistently denounced by the right (with Neuhaus on the front line) for supposedly engaging in moral equivalency. The charge, however, is nonsense. Bernardin never claimed that abortion was of equal importance to every other issue on the Catholic radar. No, the "seamless garment" is an well-grounded in Catholic teaching, as it recognizes the God-given dignity of every human being.

And so, here we are. The pro-life cause is still a Catholic cause, but the alliance with evangelicals has done untoward damage. Many Catholics pontificate about the moral duty to vote Republican, no matter what. Simplistic and misleading voter guides ape evangelical tactics. The weight of Catholic tradition can simply be discarded, reduced to one-dimensional slogans. Bishops are mocked and attacked, often in vitriolic terms. And people like Bill Donohue feel free to parrot fundamentalist claims about evolution.

As T.S Eliot had Thomas Becket say in his great play, Murder in the Cathedral: "The last temptation is the greatest treason; to do the right deed, for the wrong reason". Indeed.

Six Years Into Bush: United States Never More Unpopular

A new BBC poll, covering 26,381 respondents across 25 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United States) presents some bad news. Opposition to US foreign policy has reached record levels.

Overall, 29 percent think the US plays a positive role in the world, and 49 percent say negative. And only 57 percent of Americans give a positive appraisal (down 14 percent from even 2 years ago). The issues are quite clear:

War in Iraq: 73 percent disapprove (57 percent in US)

Guantanamo: 67 percent disapprove (50 percent in US)

Israel-Hezbollah: 65 percent disapprove (50 percent in US)

Approach to Iran's nuclear program: 60 percent disapprove (50 percent in US)

Global warming: 56 percent disapprove* (54 percent in US)

Approach to North Korea's nuclear program: 54 percent disapprove (43 percent in US)

* There was a big cross-country divide on this one. Developed countries like France and Germany were more opposed to the inaction on global warming than elsewhere (80 percent).

Thank you, George W. Bush.

Yet More On Abortion, War, and the Death Penalty!

I've blogged about these issues many times now. Readers are probably bored to tears! But these issues are incredibly complex, and I'm not even sure I understand them correctly. But here is my attempt to outline the relative position of Church teaching on these three key topics. The starting point must be Cardinal Ratzinger's oft-quoted comment: "There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty [but not about abortion and euthanasia]." We all know what many right-wing Catholics conclude from this! But let's actually delve deeper. This means getting into the different levels of the Church's teaching authority ("magisterium")

As I understand it, there are three basic levels of teaching.

First, infallibly defined doctrine. If you dissent from this, you cannot consider yourself Catholic, and you have embraced heresy. But before you accuse me of cheerleading for a return of the Inquisition, let's be quite clear: as Stephen Bainbridge points out, there are relatively few formally-defined infallible teachings. These mostly concern themselves with teachings pronounced by ecumenical councils (there have been 21) and by the pope acting ex cathedra (there have been 2). These doctrines comprise the deposit of faith, and as noted by Vatican II's Lumen Gentium, "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith". There is also the concept of infallibility according to the ordinary magisterium, or (in the words of Archbishop Bertone), a concept "expressed in the fact that all the Bishops (including the Bishop of Rome, who is the Head of the College) give a common witness." This requires no formal declaration, and was also set out in Lumen Gentium. What component of the ordinary magisterium is infallible or not is a subject of great controversy among theologians, and it is not something I wish to discuss (the border is, to say the least, fluid!).

Second, the category of non-infallible Church teaching in the domain of faith and morals that is nonetheless part of the ordinary magisterium. Although not infallibly defined, it does require "religious assent". Again, this is made clear in Lumen Gentium. If one dissents from these teachings, one is still Catholic. But one cannot do so, absent very good reasons.

Third, prudential judgments defined as the "application of Catholic doctrine to changing concrete circumstances" (Cardinal Dulles's language). As this is by its nature in the realm of uncertainty, one is not necessarily bound to adhere to Church statements in this area.

Now, what of my three examples: abortion, war, and the death penalty? First, I think it is fair to say that the teaching that the taking of an innocent human life is always and everywhere wrong is an infallible doctrine. That would hold for both directly-procured abortion, and in war when non-combatants are deliberately targeted (think Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki). These actions are evil in their object, and there is no need to address intent or circumstances. So far, so straightforward.

But the Church does not teach that war and the death penalty are always and everywhere wrong, or wrong in their object. Their moral licitness depends on other factors, notably intent and circumstance. We must move to the next step. Here, it is important to note that Church teachings at this step should not be understood as prudential judgments, but as part of the second category above, namely, non-infallible teaching according to the ordinary magisterium. As Zippy says, they refer to as principles governing circumstances rather than judgements about particular circumstantial facts. They are not prudential judgments. Church teaching in these does indeed attempt to carve out situations under which war and the death penalty may and may not be immoral. For war, the strict just war conditions must be followed. For the death penalty, there needs to be no bloodless way of defending society for it to be licit. These are teachings about morals, requiring "religious assent".

But many who disagree with recent Church statements on war and the death penalty claim not to disagree with the principles, only to their application to particular circumstances. For example: Do the just war principles hold in this conflict? Was the execution of this person immoral? But note something incredibly important. Many of the Church's statements on abortion are also firmly of a prudential nature. The only infallible statement is that the taking of an innocent human life is wrong. It follows that there can be no "right" to take life. So if the Church says penal sanctions must be applied by the state for abortions, it is applying infallible teaching to the concrete circumstances of abortion in modern society, and implicitly assuming that this will succeed in protecting the unborn. To deny that penal sanctions ever work might be a peculiar opinion, but it is a valid one. Many countries where abortion is illegal still have non-negligible abortion rates. And even accepting criminalization, should doctors, women, or both be punished, and why? Again, prudential judgment! Another argument is that the pro-life movement must focus all its efforts on overturning Roe v. Wade. But an equally valid prudential judgement is that while the principle underlying this case (that abortion is a right) is immoral, its overturning will have minuscule effect, as most states will retain legal abortion. And, of course, it is possible to argue that what actually works best in reducing abortion is putting into place supporting economic and social policies that facilitate the rearing of children.

So, how can we sum up?

First, some of the teachings pertaining to war and the death penalty are clearly teachings about morals under the ordinary magisterium, in particular, the underlying principles. Many who reject Church teachings on these issues, while they refer to individual circumstances, are actually implicitly rejecting principles. For example, how many of these Catholics accept the principle that the war or the death penalty should not be an instrument of vengeance? It is in this sense that Justice Scalia dissents from Catholic teaching, by refusing to adhere to the moral principles pertaining to the application of the death penalty. And when it comes to war, how many truly take concepts like "last resort" and "evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated" seriously?

Second, as noted above, while a directly-procured abortion is always intrinsically evil, dealing with it in modern society calls for prudential judgment. If you can so readily dismiss the Church's prudential judgment on issues like war and the death penalty, why are you supposed to automatically hold the prudential judgments pertaining to abortion to a higher standard? And there is another point. The idea is to try to figure out, using reasoning, whether something is right or wrong. "Prudential judgment" is not (as many claim) a license to ignore. For, as noted earlier, not all prudential judgments are equally valid. The Vatican was quite right about the Iraq war, and about the execution of Saddam Hussein. One could also contend that saying that having no laws against abortion would not affect abortion is a little bizarre. But the hypothesis that repealing Roe v. Wade will lead to fewer abortions is untested. We honestly do not know.

Moral Consistency

Sometimes, those on the Catholic right have an uncanny way of shooting themselves in the foot. If you follow discussions on the Catholic blogosphere, nothing taxes them more than the sight of pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving communion. Even when bishops like Washington's Donald Wuerl, on solid pastoral grounds, refuse to discipline people like Nancy Pelosi, their ire is not calmed. To many, this is the leading issue facing the Church today, and a convenient diversion from the deviation from sound Catholic social teaching by their favored party on issues like war, torture, immigration, poverty, and a just wage.

But, worst of all, such a strategy will backfire if the aim is to reduce the number of abortions. The aim of the Church should be quite simple: to persuade secular liberals that opposition to abortion is fully consistent with other sound liberal positions that support human dignity, such as opposition to the death penalty, war, poverty etc. In other words, it is time to return to the late Cardinal Bernardin's much-lamented "seamless garment" approach to the gospel of life. Ah, but this is outrageous moral equivalency, they will cry! But this is a straw man argument. The key is to persuade. And nobody will be persuaded by a bunch of venomous right-wingers demanding the excommunication of a bunch of Democrats, all the while giving a free pass to those on the other wide to violate Catholic social teaching as they see fit. They will charge hypocrisy. But if instead, the Church spoke with a strong clear voice, claiming that human life and human dignity are always sacred, and that is why it opposes abortion and embryonic stem cell research, then this is a different matter. It has the capacity to persuade.

Pope Benedict understands this, and nobody can accuse him of pandering to moral equivalency. Rocco Palmo points to a recent article by Russell Shaw making this point. In the context of an address to the Swiss bishops last November, Benedict reflected on the issue. He noted that issues like peace, poverty, and the environment resonate with many, especially the young. But other aspects of Church teaching do not make such an impact, especially on issues like abortion and the family. There are two ways to address this division. The American right would jump up and down, screaming loudly about how the latter teachings and more important than the first. Not Benedict. One should not discard one set of beliefs for another. In the words of the pope:

"[w]e must commit ourselves to reconnecting these two parts of morality and to making it clear that they must be inseparably united. Only if human life from conception until death is respected is the ethic of peace possible and credible; only then may non-violence be expressed in every direction, only then can we truly accept creation, and only then can we achieve true justice."

No moral equivalence there. But a rebuke to many on the US right, and a vindication of Cardinal Bernardin's foresight.

Idiocy on the Right and the Left

First off, right-wing extremist Dinesh D'Souza has written a book in which he lays much of the blame for 9/11 on American liberals, or more specifically, "the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world." This mirrors exactly comments made in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, two men still highly respected by the Republican right. D'Souza clearly does not know (or, in Bushite style, prefers not to know), that the leading grievances against the United States by citizens of the Islamic world pertain to US foreign policy. Unfortunately, these grievances have been exacerbated by the current administration's actions in Iraq, and by its gravely immoral detainee policy (including the use of torture). These are the people D'Souza needs to blame, but I don't see that happening.

And now to the left. Case in point: the cynical moral relativism that affects so many on the left. Martin Amis points to a clear case when asked what depressed him the most about the United Kingdom since his return. He opined:

"The most depressing thing was the sight of middle-class white demonstrators, last August, waddling around under placards saying, We Are All Hizbollah Now. Well, make the most of being Hizbollah while you can. As its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, famously advised the West: "We don't want anything from you. We just want to eliminate you." Similarly, when I went on Question Time the other week, a woman in the audience, her voice quavering with self-righteousness, presented the following argument: since it was America that supported Osama bin Laden when he was fighting the Russians, the US armed forces, in response to September 11, "should be dropping bombs on themselves!" And the audience applauded. It is quite an achievement. People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist, and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those that want them dead."

This is what happens when religious faith is simply discarded. When Mao destroyed the last vestiges of traditional China during the Cultural Revolution, the modern China was born without spiritual values, and wedded to crass materialism. In much of secular Europe, the basic norms of humanism are being grotesquely distorted, given the lack of belief in objective truth. And meanwhile, the exact same thing happens on the Bushite right, as facts and truth are sacrificed to ideology. Idiots all round!

Children of Men

I saw the recent movie Children of Men, and thought the premise was intriguing: in a world in which women are no longer capable of bearing children, how will society respond? According to the movie, and the book upon which it is based, the answer is clear: paranoia and extreme societal dysfunction and ultimate collapse.

The execution, though, was merely adequate. But I didn't think it warranted further comment. Then I read Anthony Sacramone's review in the conservative Catholic journal, First Things. Sacramone lambasts the treatment of the original allegory as written by P.D. James. I haven't read the book, so can't say much about the veracity of his claims. But one theme struck: Sacramone claims that the original book was infused with religious (specifically Christian) undertones and many of the key protagonists were committed Christians. A leading woman character is seen as "the new Eve, the new Mary, the hope for the salvation of the world." When reading this, I then realized why this movie had made me uneasy in the first place. The implicit themes of sin, redemption, and salvation were all there, but pretty much ignored and debased.

What have we instead? The director (Alfonso Cuarón) instead includes among the "good guys" a hodge-podge of pop-Buddhists, aging hippies, and violent revolutionaries. How passe! The left really needs to lose its fascination with a romanticized view of eastern religions and Che Guevara wannabes. It has always bugged me that it sympathizing with Stalin was considered a lesser evil than sympathizing with Hitler. And, here, in the movie, we see the most jaded of 1960s leftist canards raise its ugly head one more time.

But I don't want to let First Things off the hook either. Sacramone practically sneers at the notion that Cuarón has Bush in mind when he paints a society that denies basic liberties in the face of some nebulous attacks on "security". But since Bush has indeed curtailed basic civil liberties, imprisoned without charge, and legalized torture, Cuarón's analogy is entirely legitimate. The right also needs to let go of its Bush-fetish, even if that requires a huge mea culpa for the past few years. Criticizing the movie for wiping out all sense of religious allegory is a valid conservative criticism, attacking it for making fun of dearest Bush is not. And that is a difference lost of the First Things crowd (though they are far from alone).

Martin Luther King Day Message

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'. Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal .law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust."

-- From Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963).

New Season of 24

For most of us, a fast-paced thriller that grips us week after week, even though we know it is ridiculously unrealistic and grounded in fantasy.

But for some Bush administration defenders, a role model in how the "war on terror" should be fought. After all, Jack Bauer has no qualms about torturing people. Well, it's no less realistic than Fox News's never-ending narrative about how the Iraq was is part of the "war on terror". Next up: Sopranos tells us that killing people who betray you is fine.

The Wrong Lessons from the Second World War

Those who defend the morality and legitimacy of military actions today inevitably point to the example of World War II. The story line is simple. Hitler was a monstrous evil that was swallowing up Europe. The allied campaign was a noble cause that ended the scourge of Nazism. This leads to a certain discomfort, if not outright disdain, for certain Church statements on matters of war and peace. For example, in a German media interview last summer, Pope Benedict said that"...war is the worst solution for all sides. It brings no good to anyone, not even to the apparent victors. We understand this very well in Europe, after the two world wars." More recently, he echoed these comments when meeting with the Syrian ambassador to the Vatican: "the Church emphatically rejects war as a means of resolving international disputes, and has often pointed out that it only leads to new and still more complicated conflicts." Many on the American right in particular are dismayed by such ideas.

Of course, the pope is right, and of course he is not abrogating the traditional just war theory that underpins Church teaching. He is simply aware of the larger picture. His opponents tend to have a blinkered view of the world. Group X engages in immoral activity (say terrorism), and so the response is to attack Group X with military means. Pure and simple. Except that is rarely is so. Every conflict has a context, a history, a cultural background. Go back to World War II. Hitler did not simply appear ex nihilo to threaten Europe. His emergence was the result of an earlier conflict, and grave mistakes made in the aftermath of that conflict.

Pope Benedict XV was a staunch opponent of the first world war, which he called "the suicide of Europe". He repeatedly called for peace, to be rebuffed by all sides. This dreadful war was provoked by pompous vainglorious militarism, underpinned by a philosophy that pumped up the glory of the nation state or empire at the expense of human dignity. In an increasingly mechanistic era, soldiers became cannon-fodder on an unprecedented scale. Millions died, and some countries lost of a whole generation of young men.

In the wake of the war, the Versailles treaty explicitly attributed blame for the whole disaster on Germany, and imposed ruinous financial terms. What drove the Versailles settlement was a spirit of vengeance, not a desire for peace. The Vatican remained opposed, but was excluded from the negotiations. In any event, the terms led to hyperinflation and economic ruin in Germany, and fueled the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. The greatest economist of hie time, John Maynard Keynes, was prescient. This movement arose explicitly because the victorious powers had eschewed justice in favor of retribution.

Nobody denies that the Second World War to oust Hitler met the conditions for a just war. But, had the Versailles victors behaved differently, it could have been avoided. Yes, the war was a last resort because vengeance was the first resort. But there is another point that needs to be made. The way the war was fought was not always just. In particular, the bombings of Dresden, and the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, by targeting civilians, was highly disproportionate and thus immoral.

Europe learned its lesson. Having seen the continent devastated yet again, governments made securing peace the first priority. They founded what would eventually become the European Union. They downplayed military solutions, and placed faith in the United Nations. So when some snarky American commentator refers to Vatican voices as "euro-weenies", there is indeed a grain of truth to it. But while Europe learned its lesson belatedly, the Church throughout the 20th century was constantly calling for sanity. At the same time, America remained somewhat immune to these developments. The complicated issues of how the war could have been avoided and how it was often fought immorally was downplayed amidst the burgeoning romanticism that enveloped all discussion of the "greatest generation".

What lessons can we draw for today? The Vatican opposed Bush's Iraq war and Israel's war on Lebanon. At the time, many on the American right predictably refused to listen. Saddam Hussein was a brutal thug with genocidal ambitions. And Hezbollah continued to attack Israeli civilians from southern Lebanon. And the ephemeral "global Islamic terror" served as the great narrative arc. Influenced undoubtedly by Calvinism, there was good, and there was evil. Context there certainly wasn't.

In retrospect, of course, the Vatican was right in both instances. The Bush administration engaged in a war that was not a last resort, without the necessary UN authority, and without heed for the disproportionate evils that would inevitably emerge. Not surprisingly, Iraq has descended into an ugly quagmire of vicious civil war and bloody retaliation. And Israel's attack backfired, emboldening Hezbollah, bolstering Syria, and threatening the nascent Lebanese democracy. Another unforeseen disproportionate evil.

What the war party failed to learn from World War II was that it was a war of last resort, that the mistakes of the previous 20 years had led irrevocably to this tragic point. There was no glory in the need to go to war. As the pope said, it brings no real good, not even to the victors, because it ultimately signifies failure.

Today, we must focus intently on the "disproportionate" evils that may arise from a military action, especially one that pays little heed to underlying injustices. Yes, we should never condone terrorism, or make excuses for it, but that does not mean we should ignore the underlying conditions that fuel war and terrorism. This point was made by Pope Benedict in his recent World Peace Day speech. And eminent moralist Germain Grizes stated that "force, especially deadly force, must never be used to avenge past acts or as terrorism to prevent terrorism... Even when carried out within proper limits, deadly force against persons cannot be an adequate response to terrorism". We should make sure that any military response is truly a last resort, and does not fuel greater ills. And lastly, we should take no delight even in a war of last resort, for it is simply an admission of failure.

Prudential Misjudgment

The American Catholic right really really did not like the Vatican's statements on the execution of Saddam Hussein (see my takes here and here). Robert T. Miller at First Things, quotes approvingly of Richard John Neuhaus who claimed that "when it is not necessary for the bishops to speak on a particular subject, it is necessary that they not speak on that subject.” His argument is by now the standard one, as indeed are the examples: abortion is wrong, regardless of circumstances, whereas for the death penalty, it depends on circumstances. In particular, the Church should just stay quiet when it comes to "empirical judgments about circumstances."

This harks back to the old war horse of "prudential judgment", invoked constantly when those on the right choose to ignore certain Church teachings. And on the definition, Miller is largely correct. Avery Cardinal Dulles defines prudential as referring to the "application of Catholic doctrine to changing concrete circumstances". But if we take Miller and Neuhaus to their logical conclusion, the Church should simply not give any opinion pertaining to "changing concrete circumstances". But this makes little sense, as is pointed out by blogger Paul from Catholic Deep Fishing. He notes that the Church does indeed claim, quoting a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that certain popositions contrary some to prudential teachings are "rash and dangerous" and so should not be taught. And if you think about it for a minute, the reasoning will be obvious.

Getting back to the classic abortion versus the death penalty example, Paul challenges Michael Liccione of the Sacramentum Vitae blog who notes that Cardinal Ratzinger once wrote explicitly that "There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty [but not about abortion and euthanasia]." This does not give one a free pass to ignore Church teaching on the former subjects. It says something quite simple: if you disagree with the Church and approve of a particular abortion, the Church says you are wrong without needing to judge the circumstance. But if you disagree with the Church over a particular application of the death penalty, the circumstance must enter the picture, and "we would have to investigate the circumstances to see if it was a legitimate disagreement." To put it another way, disagreeing about facts and circumstances can have clear moral implications. It can, in fact, be wrong. Paul gives an extreme example: a government says that poor people should be executed. Clearly, disagreeing with Church teaching on this has moral implications!

And it is not only the unrealistic extreme cases that should concern us. Too often, Catholics take the term "prudential judgement" to simply dismiss the facts or circumstances that prompted the Vatican's position, even when these facts and circumstances may have serious moral implications. Why do so many Catholics disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming? Is it licit to dismiss scientific fact, on the low probability that it might be wrong? In the case that started the whole discussion, it would be hard to argue against the Church's characterization of Saddam Hussein's execution (with its untertones of tribalistic vengeance). The fiasco in Iraq results in part from legitimate Vatican concerns about proper authority, last resort, and the emergence of disproportionate evils. American Catholics like Novak and Weigel defended the war (on the grounds that one can dissent from "prudential judgments"). Who was right in retrospective? The rise of Hezbollah's power in Lebanon and the weakening of the nascent demoracy in that country is a direct implication of the Israeli invasion, which the Vatican also condemned. Again, it was right. So the key is legitimate dissent. And it is not legitimate if you refuse to consider the full range of facts, if you ignore the circumstances, or if you let a secular ideology cloud your judgment.

Gandalf on the Death Penalty

Frodo to Gandalf, in the context of Gollum:

"Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death."

And Gandalf the Wise's response:

"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

In other words, be very very careful about confusing human justice and divine justice. Now, replace "Gollum" with "Saddam" and re-read...

Global Warming: Where Are All the Catholics?

Over at Commonweal, Eduardo Penalver as a timely post on global warming. He decries the lack of Church leadership on the issue, noting how many conservative Catholics ignore something which is firmly part of the gospel of life, while spending much effort fighting gay marriage and "sodomy". Let's face it. If global warming is real, and we continue to ignore it, we are implicitly engaging in a utilitarian calculus that values future generations less than those alive today, and that is deeply immoral. It is, in a sense, the ultimate moral issue of our time.

The Church is not exactly silent on the issue. Eduardo quotes John Paul discussing the obligation to be responsible stewards of creation. And Pope Benedict mentioned it in his recent World Day of Peace address, condemning the "destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the earth's resources". Sure, it would be better if Church officials were more vocal on this issue. But the real problem is not the Church leadership, it is those American Catholics who are quite happy to dismiss the notion of global warming altogether. Every time the issue comes on in the Catholic blogosphere, you will observe a predictable cavalcade of conservative voices, parroting the energy shills and pulp fiction writers (Michael Crichton) claiming there is no global warming. I hardly need to point out at this stage that the scientific consensus says otherwise. As I noted in an earlier post, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (in the journal Science) declared that there was "no longer any substantive disagreement in the scientific community" that artificial global warming is real, and of great concern. Moreover, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared unequivocally that the scientific consensus was that climate is being altered by human activities.

The cynical Bush administration has mastered the technique of ignoring inconvenient facts if ideology is on the line. And evangelicals have little stake in defending the environment if they believe a crazy end times scenario suggesting that God will "rapture" the saved to heaven, and damn the rest. The strong voluntarist strain also downplays the rational underpinnings of faith, as the will of God trumps scientific rules and empirical regularities. But Catholics are not supposed to think that way. Faith and reason are supposed to be totally compatible. Facts matter. Science matters. Reality matters. The fact that right-wing Catholics can join in the denial game suggests yet again that the "political marriage of convenience" with the evangelicals continues to yield rotten fruit.

Mormonism in Public Life

In light the pending presidential candidacy of Republican Mitt Romney, Damon Linker has penned a provocative treatise in the New Republic, questioning whether it would be healthy for the country to have a Mormon president. While I am not going to comment on that particular question, he does raise some of the problems presented by Mormon theology. When I break it down, is seems a mix of different dubious ideas, chiefly Gnosticism, American exceptionalism, and voluntarism.

First, Gnosticism. This is not something Linker deals with in great detail, but it is there nonetheless. The premise of Mormonism is that historical Christianity is an apostate Church, and that the real truth was revealed to a small number of people (Joseph Smith and his family and friends). Moreover, the Mormon conception of God is not an uncreated Supreme Being who created everything from nothing, but "a finite being who evolved into his present state of divinity from a condition very much like our own and then merely 'organized' preexisting matter in order to form the world." And good Mormons get to inherit their own planets after death, so becoming in the future what God is today (denying a discontinuity between God and creation is a core tenet of Gnosticism). As noted by eminent scholar N.T. Wright, a danger with Gnosticism is that it plays up individualism, which can easily morph into narcissism.

Gnosticism certainly contributes to the notion of American exceptionalism that emanates from both Mormonism and certain strands of Protestantism. Gnostic elitism often views America as unique, especially blessed by God, and not constrained by the same rules and constraints as other countries. More dangerously, the dualism that underpins Gnosticism feeds the dualism that operates in much of recent American foreign policy, dividing the world into good and evil. Mormonism is especially prone to this kind of thinking, because--as Linker shows clearly-- it grants an exalted role to America. As Linker notes:

"Smith produced a 500-page document, The Book of Mormon, containing the record of an ancient civilization, descended from the biblical Israelites, that supposedly lived, flourished, and collapsed in the Americas 1,000 years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Jesus Christ visited these people after his resurrection in Jerusalem, spreading his gospel in the New World and planting the seeds of its rebirth many centuries later by Smith himself. In later revelations, Smith went even further in placing the United States--both geographically and politically--at the focal point of sacred history. The Garden of Eden, he claimed, was located in Jackson County, Missouri. The American Founders were 'raised up' by God in order to establish a free government that would allow the restoration to occur and the LDS Church to spread the restored gospel throughout the nation and the world."

Even more than this:

"The centrality of the United States to Mormon theology extends beyond the past and present to encompass the end times as well. Like many of the religious groups to emerge from the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, Mormons are millennialists who believe themselves to be living in the years just prior to the second coming of Christ; hence the words 'latter day' in the church's official title. Where the LDS differs from other communities gripped by eschatology, however, is in the vital role it envisions the United States playing in the end times. The Mormon 'Articles of Faith' teach that, when Christ returns, he will reign 'personally upon the earth' for 1,000 years, and LDS interpretations of a passage in Isaiah have led some to conclude that this rule will be directed from two locations--one in Jerusalem and the other in 'Zion' (the United States). This belief has caused Mormons to view U.S. politics as a stage on which the ultimate divine drama is likely to play itself out, with a Mormon in the leading role."

This is scary from the point of view of American foreign policy, to say the least.

And then there is voluntarism. Voluntarism is the contention that God should be seen as a force of pure will, not intelligence or reason, and that God's purposes are essentially arbitrary. In contrast, the Catholic view is that God is rational (Logos), which means that God is truth and infinite Intelligence. I've discussed the influence of voluntarism on Protestant fundamentalism and Islam on this blog before. Pope Benedict's questioning about whether the voluntarist spirit in modern Islam leads to misplaced compulsion and violence in religion was what handed him in hot water a few months ago.

Although Linker does not use this term, one of his chief criticisms of Mormon doctrine is that it is suffused by voluntarism. Not only does Mormonism follow Islam and Protestantism by seeing a book as the source of revelation, but its peculiar approach to prophecy makes it stand apart. In a nutshell, the leader of Mormonism is regarded as a prophet of God. As Linker notes: "Mormonism opens the door to prophetically inspired acts and innovations, the content of which cannot be predetermined in any way." There is simply no rationalist tradition to "check the veracity of prophetic pronouncements." Moreover, the nature of the Mormon God suggests that "there is simply no room for a natural morality in Mormon theology, since Mormonism tacitly denies that the natural world possesses any intrinsic or God-given moral purpose." Linker himself relates a frightening personal story from the days when he taught at Brigham Young University: when he asked his students how they would respond if the prophet in Salt Lake City commanded them to commit murder, numerous Mormon students said they would do so without question. Now, that is voluntarism.

I am not suggesting that Mormonism is currently a threat to the United States or to the world. But these questions certainly deserve attention if a Romney candidacy gains traction. And they are far more relevant than whether or not Romney truly believes gay marriage should be banned or not.

Krugman on Medicare

Paul Krugman has a great piece on health care in the New York Times. His basic premise is an obvious one: traditional Medicare, a single-payer system (the government pays doctors and hospitals) turns out to be a lot more efficient than private sector alternatives. The first instinct of Republicans is to turn to the market. In many cases, that can be justified as markets are often (typically?) more efficient than the government. But not with health care. There is a good reason that the United States spends far more (as a percent of GDP) than the average European country on health care, and yet gets less value for its money.

In the 1990s, the government tried to entice people to leave traditional Medicare for private plans, with the government paying a fee instead to the HMO. The idea was that the profit motive would keep costs down. But it didn't work out that way. HMOs started by engaging in adverse selection: deliberately picking on the healthiest seniors. But when this practice ended, it turned out that HMOs could simply not compete with Medicare. Why? The latter is efficiently run, with no huge overhead.

That wasn't the end. Bush came along. Bush, of course never paid much heed to the "reality-based community" and let ideology trump empirical assessment. In 2003, the administration increased payments to HMOs, and heavily subsidized them. This program now costs 11 percent more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare. Clearly, this a a direct transfer from the taxpayer to the insurance industry. Standard Bush administration practice, really.

So far so good. Now the drug companies want a piece of the action. In fact, Bush's Medicare drug coverage (Medicare Part D) is even worse: traditional Medicare is totally out of the picture, as the government does not pay directly for the drug. Instead, you join a private insurance plan, and the government then sends out the subsidy. This is appalling on two levels. First, the government is prohibited from negotiating prices with the drug companies. Of course, Republicans will tell you this is "socialist price controls" or something like it. Nonsense! It's a fair negotiation between two players in the market (technically, the government takes advantage ot is monopsony power). This, plus the skim that the insurance company takes for acting as middleman, pushes up costs dramatically. Doesn't this sound like Tony Soprano in charge of health care?

Krugman concludes with a moral point: "The costs imposed on Medicare by gratuitous privatization are almost certainly higher than the cost of providing health insurance to the eight million children in the United States who lack coverage". This is a direct transfer of resources from the poor and the uninsured to the insurance and drug industries (two of the biggest lobbyists, by the way). Then again, right-wing Catholics with scoff at this problem as the more application of "prudential judgment". See no evil.

More on Dulles, John Paul, and the Death Penalty

This is a follow-up to my previous post on the death penalty, based on further reflection on Cardinal Dulles's insightful essay. The starting point, as always, must be John Paul in Evangelium Vitae:

"It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

Although it is well established that there are (in traditional Catholic teaching) other purposes of capital punishment, especially retributive justice, some commentators interpret John Paul as concluding that only defense against the criminal matters today. One such person is none other than Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who declares "... I take the encyclical... to mean that retribution is not a valid purpose of capital punishment". With great arrogance, Scalia declares the pope to be wrong, calling for "new staffers at the Congregation for Prudence in the Vatican". But Scalia's view is also widespread among those who oppose the death penalty, as it is admirably simple and straightforward: the purpose of punishment is simply to protect society, and that can be done without shedding blood. Case closed.

But Dulles happens to think that this view is fundamentally flawed. He notes that the pope says nothing that suggests the traditional understanding was wrong, and indeed writes in Evangelium Vitae that:

"The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offence". Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom."

Punishment needs to defend public order, and public order goes beyond a narrow definition of pure protection from the criminal. In John Paul's language, the protection of society is broader than merely defending against the criminal. In particular, the need for retributive justice flows from the fact that sin requires the deprivation of some good, which has been interpreted to include temporal life. But Dulles suggests that this has been stripped of all meaning in modern secular societies where the death penalty is more likely to reflect vengeance than the divine order of justice. In other words, the death penalty becomes a mere instrument of vengeance, which is not only immoral, but can yield disproportionate evil effects.

This is a neat argument, and has the benefit of allowing continuity with Catholic teaching. Not only defense against the criminal but also retribution call for a different approach in modern society. But there is a weakness embedded in this argument: it supposes that secular leaders in times past were better motivated than the secular authorities today. I'm not sure I buy that, quite frankly. Yes, authorities in past times may have been more attuned to the concept of divine justice, but did the death penalty in practice conform to this? Could we not argue that human weakness makes it exceedingly difficult for us to ever meet the standard of true retributive justice absent all notion of vengeance, and that, for that reason, the death penalty is nearly always wrong (or at least reduced to John Paul's narrow conditions)?

This approach would treat development in the death penalty as akin to the development of doctrine on, say, slavery. It took a long time to fully realize the importance of human dignity embedded in the deposit of faith. Many have taken this approach, including Archbishop Chaput of Denver, regularly regarded as one of the more conservative churchmen in the United States. Chaput castigates Scalia for his dissent, and concludes that "humans learn the hard way, but eventually we do learn". He mentions slavery. He notes that we no longer execute horse thieves.
I think it is therefore possible to bring the Scalia position and the Dulles position closer together. We would do so by acknowledging that, in some theoretical sense, retributive justice is a purpose of punishment, and that can sometimes call for the penalty of death. But it is almost impossible to achieve this in practice, without baser motives (chiefly revenge) entering the picture. Dulles argues that it is less necessary in modern times, owing largely to the increasing irrelevance of retributive justice. But it can also be argued that a clearer understanding of human dignity meant that it was applied far too lightly in the past as well as today, based on an overly-optimistic view of the motivation of the executioners. This is also compatible with John Paul's teaching.

Ultimately, this explains the different perceptions about the death penalty in the United States and Europe. Scalia claims that since Europe has stopped believing in divine justice, the death of the body is the worst thing that can happen, rendering the death penalty a horrendous punishment. But, as Chaput notes, this misses the point. Europe is reacting to a century of "state-sponsored violence against the human person in the name of collective ideals." It is no accident that Europeans now look upon state-sanctioned retribution with horror. The amount of bloodshed witnessed throughout the 20th century led to a transformation in European thinking about war and capital punishment, a positive development that the United States lags.

Whatever position you accept, the real focus is (and should be) on vengeance, and this was clearly on the minds of the Vatican officials when they spoke about Saddam's hanging. This is true whether or not we accept Dulles's nuanced views. Various American commentators who denounced the Vatican commentators as "euro-weenies" and suchlike fail to appreciate this, and it is they (not the Vatican) who are out of step with the Catholic approach to the death penalty.

Egan Makes Sense

Rocco Palmo reports an interview with Cardinal Egan in New York in which he was asked what he thought of two potential New Yorkers (Clinton and Giuliani) running for president in 2008.

Seemingly without a flinch, Egan replied, "They're all friends of mine."To reiterate the point, the cardinal himself mentioned former New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican who's also a pro-choice Catholic, as a "friend." "Mayor Giuliani's a friend of mine, Senator Clinton is a friend of mine and whomever else you want to name," Egan said. "And I've been very, very careful, I hope you notice. Never have I got into partisan politics of any kind at all."

Now, this is the right answer. And it is the answer the vast majority of bishops would give. Unfortunately, the media gives far too much attention to that small minority (you can count them on one hand) who tell people to vote Republican.

Avery Dulles, Saddam Hussein, and the Death Penalty

Following up on yesterday's post on the the Vatican reaction to Saddam's execution, I would like to delve a little more deeply into Church teachings pertaining to the death penalty. To guide me, I will take advantage of an excellent essay by Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., entitled Catholicism and Capital Punishment from 2001 on this matter. One of the reasons for this is that some who defend the execution of Saddam (intelligently, as opposed to the blood-baying brigade), such as Stephen Bainbridge, appeal to Dulles's work.

One of Dulles's key premises is that notion of an absolute right to life among the guilty as well as the innocent finds little support from church teachings. The right of the authorities to execute criminals is pretty much taken for granted in the New Testament, and even Jesus (while never exhorting violence) never questions it. The early church, from St. Paul onwards, took a similar view. Leading theologians from Augustine to Aquinas down to John Henry Newman thought likewise.

Dulles concludes that the Church has always taught that (i) crime deserves punishment in this life as well as the next, and (ii) the state has the authority to punish, which can include the death penalty. He rejects what he refers to as the absolutist position. This is not new, as pacifist groups have existed in various manifestations throughout the history of the Church. Modern day Catholic absolutists would argue that past generations failed to fully appreciate the fact that God-given human dignity called for an unambiguous respect for life, and that this was always implicit (if a little clouded) in revelation.

But Dulles remains unconvinced, and not only because of the weight of past Church teaching. He notes that, in the modern incarnation, the opposition to the death penalty is very much a product a secular humanism, a philosophy that denies any role for the transcendent in public life.

How then should the Church judge capital punishment? Dulles starts by noting that punishment can serve four distinct purposes: rehabilitation, defense against the criminal, deterrence, and retribution. A key question is how these four roles are served by the death penalty. As far as rehabilitation is concerned, the death penalty clearly doesn't do the job, although there are cases when impending death brings about repentance (remember Dead Man Walking?). Executing a criminal surely protects society, but what if there are bloodless ways of doing the same thing? As for deterrence, Dulles is extremely cautious, noting that the Church condemns acts that deprive a person of his/her God-given dignity, such as torture, that could easily be used for purposes of deterrence.

This brings us to retribution, the trickiest and most understood of the four purposes. What does this mean? For a start, it is most certainly not vengeance and should never be construed as such. Aquinas argued that sin calls for the deprivation of some good, which in serious cases, means the good or temporal or even eternal life. By this notion, the death penalty provides the wrongdoer with a means of expiation, and allows him/her avoid punishment after death. Of course, retribution by the state is strictly limited, and can only be "a symbolic anticipation of God's perfect justice".

There are also numerous arguments that can be specifically employed against the death penalty. First, the innocent can die. Some countries use "biased or kangaroo courts". Others (including parts of the United States) often deny the poor adequate representation and counsel. And even the best system can simply make mistakes. Second, capital punishment can cheapen the value of life in general, and lead to greater ills in society. And third, the death penalty in practice is most often used a tool of revenge, not authentic justice.

So where do we stand? Weighing the pros and cons, Dulles argues that the death penalty can be justified when "it is necessary to achieve the purposes of punishment, and when it does not have disproportionate evil effects". The word necessary is carefully chosen. This brings us to his core conclusion: the Church today is opposed to the death penalty not because it believes executing criminals is always and everywhere wrong, but because "on balance, it does more harm than good". This is also is accord with past Church teaching on the subject.

In arriving at this opinion, a few key reasons stand out. First, in modern society with developments in the penal system, it is nearly always possible to secure defense against the criminal without resort to the death penalty. This is exactly what Pope John Paul was getting at in Evangelium Vitae when he wrote that "the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

Second, the notion of retribution has little meaning in modern secular society, where those who impose the death penalty do not have Aquinas's strict conditions in mind. Certainly, the "symbolic anticipation of God's perfect justice" is not on the minds of the authorities! And this can have consequences that are best avoided. As Dulles puts it, in the modern perspective, "the death penalty expresses not the divine judgment on objective evil but rather the collective anger of the group". In other words, retribution morphs into vengeance, which is always wrong. This insight, is, I believe, a crucially important argument against the death penalty in modern times, on par with John Paul's necessity principle.

So, these factors, combined with other negative consequences (such as the possibility of executing an innocent person) tip the scales decisively against the death penalty.

And what about Saddam Hussein? Stephen Bainbridge, appealing to this very same Dulles essay, defends his execution on the grounds that "the risk of a return by Saddam to power was non-negligible." This strikes me as overly-forced reasoning, and an overly-narrow view of Dulles's position. To justify the execution based on the imminent restoration of Saddam's rule is a bit of a stretch, especially in an Iraq increasing dominated by powerful and militant Shia groups. And anyway, the key to Dulles's argument is the general proposition that the death penalty does more harm than good. We need to consider all of the issues, not merely the fact that defense against the criminal might be ill-served by a potential escape. In particular, the execution of Saddam clearly reflects vengeance rather than retributive justice. In Iraq, this is Dulles's argument on steroids, and this argument alone easily tips the scales against the execution. Just look at the scene: a "dank, filthy shed", hooded Shia militia members mockingly shouting "Moqtada" after their thug of a leader, a senior Shia official accused on making a "snuff video" on his cell-phone of the execution, leaked immediately. This is as far from Thomas Aquinas as can possibly be imagined!

This is what the much-maligned Cardinal Martino was getting at when he denounced the sentence as "killing for vindication". And what the Vatican press statement meant when it noted that "The execution of the guilty party is not a path to reconstruct justice and to reconcile society. Indeed, there is the risk that, on the contrary, it may augment the spirit of revenge and sow seeds of new violence." These statements are fully consistent with the weight of past Church teaching on the death penalty, despite the contention among some on the right that they merely reflect the thinking of a bunch of effete euro-weenies. There is some parallel here between the way many on the American right cheered Saddam's execution, and the way they supported both the Iraq and Lebanon wars. What they fail to grasp is that actions can have disproportionate evil consequences, all the more so if vengeance enters the picture.

Hitchens on Saddam's Excecution

I'm not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, but this article is on the mark. Hitchens decries the tardy execution of Saddam and sees in it a pitiful augury of things to come in Iraq. It is a sad state of affairs when the most dignified person in the room is a mass murderer. Hitchens:

"The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution... How could it have come to this? Did U.S. officials know that the designated "executioners" would be the unwashed goons of Muqtada Sadr's "Mahdi Army"—the same sort of thugs who killed Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf just after the liberation and who indulge in extra-judicial murder of Iraqis every night and day? Did our envoys and representatives ask for any sort of assurances before turning over a prisoner who was being held under the Geneva Conventions? According to the New York Times, there do seem to have been a few insipid misgivings about the timing and the haste, but these appear to have been dissolved soon enough and replaced by a fatalistic passivity that amounts, in theory and practice, to acquiescence in a crude Shiite coup d'état. Thus, far from bringing anything like "closure," the hanging ensures that the poison of Saddamism will stay in the Iraqi bloodstream, mingling with other related infections such as confessional fanaticism and the sort of video sadism that has until now been the prerogative of al-Qaida's dehumanized ghouls. We have helped to officiate at a human sacrifice. For shame."

The Vatican was absolutely right. How many more evil fruits from the Bush administration's supreme folly have still to ripen?

Torture and Blasphemy

The horrors of the torture regime unleashed by the Bush administration continue to emerge, and to shock. This time, the torturers at Guantanamo manage not only to degrade Islam, but also Catholicism. As reported by the Washington Post:

"FBI agents witnessed possible mistreatment of the Koran at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including at least one instance in which an interrogator squatted over Islam's holy text in an apparent attempt to offend a captive, according to bureau documents released yesterday.... They acknowledged that soldiers and interrogators had kicked the Koran, had stood on it and, in one case, had inadvertently sprayed urine on a copy... female interrogators would sometimes wet their hands and touch detainees' faces in order to interrupt their prayers."

And then there is this:

"In a previously unreported allegation, one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to "Satanic black metal music for hours," then dressed as a Catholic priest before "baptizing" him."

Beautiful. The Bush administration is the great defender of religion, at least against Democrats during elections, but in the real world, sees no problem resorting to despicable blasphemy.

The Church and the Execution of Saddam Hussein

Back in November, when the death penalty was imposed on Saddam Hussein, the Vatican opposed it. Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, declared that "... punishing a crime with another crime, which is what killing for vindication is, would mean that we are still at the point of demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." In other words, vengeance should not guide policy. When Saddam was hanged, the director of Press Office of the Holy See, Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J., issued the following statement:

"Capital punishment is always tragic news, a motive of sadness, even when it’s a case of a person guilty of grave crimes. The position of the Catholic Church against the death penalty has been confirmed many times. The execution of the guilty party is not a path to reconstruct justice and to reconcile society. Indeed, there is the risk that, on the contrary, it may augment the spirit of revenge and sow seeds of new violence. In this dark time in the life of the Iraqi people, it can only be hoped that all the responsible parties truly will make every effort so that, in this dramatic situation, possibilities of reconciliation and peace may finally be opened."

Well spoken, indeed. The problem is, the right-wing chorus in the United States was reveling in the death of Saddam, and seemed disinclined to listen to the Vatican. No real surprise there. The continued vehement support for the death penalty in the United States in part reflects a bad Calvinist theology that holds that God divides the world into the saved and the damned, and that the latter can be disposed of without worry. But many on the Catholic right have joined the chorus. Without a trace of irony, a blogger with a site named The Cafeteria is Closed stated that "justice has been done" when the Vatican said something rather different. And Jimmy Akin, the guy who thinks that waterboarding may not be torture in a ticking bomb scenario, also claims that justice has been done, after having denounced Cardinal Martino for his earlier statement as the "sloppy language" of "European churchmen". Note the snide tone. Yes, indeed, when the Church takes a position that goes against the prevailing ethos and ideology of the United States right-wing (such as the love affair with the death penalty, or war as a solution to the world's problems), it is dismissed as the rantings of a bunch a effete euro weenies. Of course, the notion that Pope Benedict is not 100 percent behind a statement issued by his press secretary is ludicrous.

Getting back to basics, while the Church is an adamant opponent of the death penalty, it is not the case that the death penalty is always and everywhere wrong. And this is the loophole that many try to seize upon. But, upon careful reflection, this door just won't open. The Catechism (#2267) states the position:

"Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

The latter quote is taken from John Paul's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, which elaborates:

"It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

In other words, the death penalty is only licit when there is no other way to protect society from the criminal. Think of a nomadic society, for example. Perhaps the closest modern case would be a country like Somalia with no functioning state and no state monopoly on the use of force. But in modern times, these conditions are indeed "very rare, if not practically non-existent" and certainly so in the western world. In a commentary on the Catechism, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna (a close friend of the pope, and one of the leading intellectuals in the Church) notes that:

"In practice, again and again, the Pope speaks out decisively against the application of the death penalty and asks pardon for the one sentenced to death. The Church knows that crimes will take place as long as the evil of responding violently to violence persists and love of neighbor, indeed, love of enemy is not fully realized. In the light of the Gospel the Church will continue in practice, with ever greater clarity and determination, to proclaim love for one's enemies, as Jesus did, and to say No to the death penalty"

The last quote is lifted shamelessly from a thoughtful post on the issue by a blogger (Michael Joseph) on a site called Evangelical Catholicism. This puts John Paul's teachings into perspective, and gives Cardinal Martino's statement, as well as Father Lombardi's press statement, greater resonance. For Martino's statement is not "sloppy", it is in full accord with Catholic teaching on the matter. For there is little doubt that the execution of Saddam will not solve any problems in Iraq. There is little doubt that it will merely fan further the flames of sectarian hatred. And the Iraqi people would have just as safe from Saddam in prison as Saddam dead. On the latter point, Stephen Bainbridge makes the only coherent Catholic argument in favor of the execution, that in the sorry mess that is Iraq, "the risk of a return by Saddam to power was non-negligible." But this is a stretch. Sure, a Saddam-like figure may well emerge, although the likelihood is that he will be Shia rather than Sunni. But that is another story...