For formal cooperation to exist, one has to be able to point at exactly what the cooperation definitely is. This Peters does not do. He simply asserts (for example) that exchanging a dirty needle for a clean needle is an act of cooperation with the evil of drug abuse.

Is the cooperation because of the needle itself? How could it be? Because of the way that needle exchange works, the needle itself is not physical matter for the cooperation. Before the exchange, the addict has a needle. After the exchange, the addict has a needle. No change there, and hence no material cooperation on that account.

We may more reasonably ask whether the fact that the addict is supplied a clean needle will make it more likely that the addict will continue to abuse drugs. If it does encourage the addict to continue, then there would be a case that the needle exchange was a formal cooperation with the addict. But at this point we have raised a question that must be answered by the use of  prudence. Perhaps it does make it more likely, perhaps it doesn’t. To answer that question we may look at the relevant statistics for populations of drug users, or we might use our judgment about a particular drug user. Circumstances can indeed make a difference.

We might also ask if the needle exchange could encourage non drug-users to become drug addicts, on the misguided idea that it will somehow not be very dangerous, or whether — to counter such ignorance — we can sufficiently publicize and explain that many other great dangers of drug abuse will not be avoided.

If, after exercising  prudence in this way, we come to the conclusion that the exchange of a dirty needle for a clean needle does not make it more likely that drug misuse is encouraged, then we can, with moral safety, go ahead with the exchange.

Hence we can see Bishop Hubbard making a prudential decision that there is no cooperation (material or emotional) with drug abuse, and approving the program. Others might use their own prudence, and disagree with the decision. But there is no definite grounds for concluding that there has been formal cooperation with drug abuse.

The teaching is most clearly found in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor #80, which says:

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”.¹³¹ The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts:

… whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit … all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator.

Why is torture wrong?

As seen in the teaching above, it is because it violates the integrity of the human person.

What does that mean: the integrity of the human person?

Each human person is intended to possess certain powers or attributes. If any of those are taken away, this is a reduction of human integrity.

Such as?

A normal human body possesses four limbs. If one of those is removed, the integrity of the human body has been damaged. Likewise, the human mind is intended to use reason; removing this ability is a reduction in integrity.

What would be a violation of human integrity?

A violation of human integrity would be a morally avoidable loss of integrity.

Such as?

If the progression of a disease threatens a human life, a doctor may choose to amputate a limb. Although this is a loss in integrity, it does not amount to a moral violation, if the doctor was faced with an unavoidable choice between life and a limb (i.e. between a greater integrity and a lesser). But someone simply choosing to amputate their limb (because, say, it will make them an object of sympathy to others) is a violation of human integrity.

When is torture permitted?

It is not permitted for any intention. As the teaching indicates, it is an intrinsece malum, an intrinsic evil.

Is torture permitted in order to save someone else’s life?

No.

Is torture permitted in order to save a city?

No.

Is torture permitted in order to save a country?

No. (Do I have to go on?)

Didn’t the Church teach the permissibility of the torture of heretics in the papal document Ad Extirpanda, written in 1252?

That document gives no list of what the civil authorities are permitted to do to force confessions. But it does forbid “membri diminutionem, & mortis periculum” — “diminishment of limbs or danger of death”. It is thus a relatively undeveloped form of the same teaching that is given in Veritatis Splendor. (The historical record will show that the practice of torture certainly tainted some Church figures. But not the teaching.)

Even given those questions and answers, we can easily still feel unsure of being able to understand what actions might or might not constitute torture. For example, one definition of torture, as proposed by Policraticus, and approved by Mark Shea, illustrates what can go wrong. Their suggested definition is that torture is:

1. violation of human dignity in the form of
2. intentional mental and/or physical harm in order to
3. use a human person as a means (or instrument) for some producible end
4. against that person’s will.

1. is immediately a puzzle, since the Church indicates that torture is a violation of integrity, so introducing dignity just confuses matters. As for 2.,3.,4., take the case of putting someone in prison for a crime. Will they be mentally harmed? Surely, as mental depression would not be at all unexpected. Is putting the person in prison a means to an end? Yes, because one of the ends is a deterrence to other criminals. Is it against the prisoner’s will? Obviously. So, based on that definition, we could conclude that putting someone in prison is a torture. But it’s not. So there is something wrong with that definition.

In search of a better definition for torture, consider two cases. In the first, we tell a convicted terrorist that unless he helps us locate his collaborators, we will be pushing pins into his fingernails. In the second, we tell a convicted terrorist that unless he helps us locate his collaborators, we will add five years to his jail time. What makes the first case torture (which I certainly think it is), whereas the second case is not torture (since an increased prison term is generally considered reasonable given the lack of cooperation of a criminal)?

We must compare the two cases by comparing how they affect the integrity of the people involved. (We know that integrity is key because the Church has told us so.) In the case of prison, the primary affect on the prisoner is that their possible range of actions is drastically curtailed, but there is no elimination of some part of their integrity. They can still reason, they can still interact with people, and so on. (Of course, if they were put in complete solitary confinement, deprived of even seeing the guards — or if they were tightly chained to a wall for extended periods of time, then we would start to think that some integrity had been lost.)

On the other hand, what is the result of pushing pins into someone’s fingernails? Great pain. And pain attracts our immediate attention and focus. With enough pain, ordinary thinking becomes impossible — the person in pain can think of almost nothing else except the pain. And that’s a loss in integrity. It’s not the pain itself that causes the loss of integrity, but the effect on the process of reasoning. (And it’s not necessarily the amount of pain that is the issue — even small amounts of pain applied regularly can end up having huge affects on our mental processes. E.g. bullying).

One of the funnier falsehood current is the claim that I “refuse to define” what torture is and that I claim that “to ask that question is to sin”.

So, let’s look at his suggestions (in bold):

A) Check the dictionary;

Dictionaries are very useful for giving several ideas as to how words may be used. They simply don’t aim to give the definition which is consistent with Catholic teaching. Thus, they give definitions that are sometimes relevant, and sometimes not. Without a way of already knowing which is which, dictionaries don’t help. (E.g. “extreme anguish of body or mind” is not the appropriate definition, whereas “the act of inflicting excruciating pain as a means of getting information” is in the right area. But if I didn’t already have a good idea of what torture referred to in the Catholic context, how could I determine this from the dictionary?)

B) Check the Army Field Manual or some reference book for police interrogators on proper treatment of prisoners.

I looked at the US Army Field Manual, and all I could find amounted to “don’t torture”. So, no definition.

C) The Interrogator’s Golden Rule seems reasonable: “Don’t do it to a prisoner if you’d consider it abuse when done to a buddy or yourself.”

I can think of lots of things that I would call abuse if applied to a buddy, which wouldn’t necessarily amount to torture. A wider set of actions can be described as abuse. So, this gets us not much closer to a definition.

D) If you are still utterly baffled, you could try paying attention to Policratus’ handy delineation of the question, which is, of course, just a regurgitation of the Church’s basic teaching:

[T]he Church defines torture formally (i.e., what makes an action torture):
1. violation of human dignity in the form of
2. intentional mental and/or physical harm in order to
3. use a human person as a means (or instrument) for some producible end
4. against that person’s will.
These are the essential features of torture, and any material action with this form is torture. And it does not take any meticulous reasoning to figure out which material acts bear this essential form.
Church sources: Veritatis Splendor 80, Gaudium et spes 27.

Clearly Policraticus is much more helpful. But the difficulty is that Policraticus has, in trying to summarize Church teaching, partly used his own wording to Church teaching, and left out some things. So we end up with something that is not precise, and thus vague in application.

For example, Policraticus says that torture is a “violation of human dignity”. In fact, when we look at Veritatis Splendor and Gaudium et Spes, it is described as a violation of “the integrity of the human person”. This certainly does not mean that torture is not also a violation of human dignity, but some of the careful wording chosen by Vatican II is lost, and this loses some help in figuring out the definition of torture.

Or, also: to use a human person as a means for some producible end is not, by itself, a problem. Looking at Veritatis Splendor, one of the things that it says are offensive to human dignity is the use of laborers as “mere instruments of profit”. The word mere is there for a reason: to make a profit from someone’s work is acceptable, but when humans are used only as a means of profit, then dignity has been lost.

So, for these and other reasons, Policraticus’ definition falls short. As written, arguably, a parent putting a child in timeout could be a form of torture, or putting someone in prison could be torture. Someone pointed out this problem to Mark Shea as: “I guess if I give my kid a swat on the bottom in order to tell me where he hid his sister’s toy, that’s torture…”, to which Mark gave the reply: “And people wonder why I think some folks are insincere in their professed bafflement.”

So, note again that Mark Shea starts his whole post by saying:

One of the funnier falsehood current is the claim that I “refuse to define” what torture is and that I claim that “to ask that question is to sin”.

Mark insists that he has defined torture. He proposes a definition. When his proposed definition in fact falls short, does he offer to tighten it up? No, he attacks the sincerity of those pointing out the problem. Hasn’t he proved the truth of what he claimed was a falsehood?

The proposed definition can be tightened up. It would be very profitable to tighten it up, because it would point out more exactly what is wrong with torture, and also make it much easier to identify forms of torture that are currently going unrecognized.

Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference. I’ve had the opportunity to take a look at your Covenant for a New America. It is filled with outstanding policies and prescriptions for much of what ails this country. So I’d like to congratulate you all on the thoughtful presentations you’ve given so far about poverty and justice in America, and for putting fire under the feet of the political leadership here in Washington.

The Sojourners’ manifesto is a good one, focusing on a Biblically-based call to reduce poverty, both in the US and the internationally.

But today I’d like to talk about the connection between religion and politics and perhaps offer some thoughts about how we can sort through some of the often bitter arguments that we’ve been seeing over the last several years.

Actually, it will take a while before Obama gets around to saying what the bitter arguments are surely about — abortion and gay marriage. Since there is no real disagreement over the need to reduce poverty it seems probable — Sojourners being a progressive organization — that Obama was talking to an audience that was friendly to his concerns, and hence personally not very bitter towards him.

I do so because, as you all know, we can affirm the importance of poverty in the Bible; and we can raise up and pass out this Covenant for a New America. We can talk to the press, and we can discuss the religious call to address poverty and environmental stewardship all we want, but it won’t have an impact unless we tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America.

This is puzzling. The Sojourners call is not particularly controversial, and wouldn’t, by itself, be cause for suspicion. Though Obama doesn’t indicate how this suspicion arises, one has to wonder if it is because any call for action from a Christian source is going to be examined carefully (again and again) by some, to see if those issues of abortion and gay marriage are somehow accompanying it.

I want to give you an example that I think illustrates this fact. As some of you know, during the 2004 U.S. Senate General Election I ran against a gentleman named Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is well-versed in the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives as both immoral and godless.

Keyes is a Catholic (Obama only mentions this later), and it takes little imagination to figure out on what issues Keyes disagreed with Obama. Though — and this is something that will recur throughout Obama’s speech — Obama describes Keyes opposition as something based in rhetoric. Perhaps Obama thinks (against all the evidence) that Keyes does not really believe what he says.

Indeed, Mr. Keyes announced towards the end of the campaign that, “Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama. Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved.”
Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.

Putting aside the uncertainty over what it would mean for Jesus to vote, Keyes is certainly making the claim that Obama’s position on those (as yet unmentioned) issues is contrary to God.

Now, I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining. And since at the time, I was up 40 points in the polls, it probably wasn’t a bad piece of strategic advice. But what they didn’t understand, however, was that I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously, for he claimed to speak for my religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths. Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian, he was saying, and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination. Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian, but supports the destruction of innocent and sacred life.

Here Obama understands precisely what Keyes’ claims center around: the knowledge of certain truths. The rest of Obama’s speech will be aimed at opposing that.

And so what would my supporters have me say? How should I respond? Should I say that a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? Should I say that Mr. Keyes, who is a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the Pope?

Obama focuses on two ways in which truth can arrive, though he states them vaguely. Truth could come from the Bible’s statements. But by what means? One way of reading the Bible is to take it as a set of literal statements, each expressing a particular truth. That method Obama regards as folly, though he does not say why. Or alternatively, truth might arrive from the teachings of particular people. That Obama also rejects, though again without any indication as to why.

Unwilling to go there, I answered with what has come to be the typically liberal response in such debates – namely, I said that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can’t impose my own religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.

Indeed that is a typically liberal response, and is just as typically unhelpful. “Thou shalt not kill” is a Judeo-Christian religious value that is imposed into the set of laws that govern the democracy of the USA. That’s because enough people, whether religious or not, see value in such a law. That its origin is religious does not disqualify the law from being accepted into a democracy. Other things might disqualify something of religious origin, but not merely its origin. That distinction Obama simply fails to address.

But Mr. Keyes’s implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me, and I was also aware that my answer did not adequately address the role my faith has in guiding my own values and my own beliefs.

Perhaps because, if other peoples values can be so quickly discarded, then what foundation would Obama use to base his own values on? Obama clearly understands that his faith is guiding his values. And just as clearly — as it seems to him — he can’t impose his values on others.

Now, my dilemma was by no means unique. In a way, it reflected the broader debate we’ve been having in this country for the last thirty years over the role of religion in politics.

Roe v. Wade was in 1973, so Obama is presumably referring to that.

For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest “gap” in party affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called Red States and those who reside in Blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don’t.

Some detailed statistics can be seen here. (For example, for the 2004 election, atheists and agnostics went 4:1 for Kerry, while evangelical Protestants went 4:1 for Bush.)

Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.

Politicians across the spectrum will try to exploit whatever they can. The wording Obama uses tends towards suggesting that something about the exploitation is not based on something real.

Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that – regardless of our personal beliefs – constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word “Christian” describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.

“Taken the bait”? That makes it sounds as though there really were some way that the particular Democrats described could avoid such reactions or claims. But it is not at all clear what would (or could) happen if the “bait” were not taken. Is the “bait” something on offer, or something already swallowed and assimilated?

Now, such strategies of avoidance may work for progressives when our opponent is Alan Keyes. But over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives — in the lives of the American people — and I think it’s time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.

To be accurate, the reconciliation is already in place: decisions are ultimately made by voting. Yet, people also have a sense that some things should not be changeable by voting. It’s the balance between changeable and unchangeable that has to be sought.

It is certainly true that religion is a source of  ideas that are held to be unchangeable. But one does not have to talk long to some on, for example, the abortion issue, to realize that appeals to the unchangeable are just as common even where there is no religious basis.

At heart, the issue is not reconciling faith with democracy: but reconciling differing versions of what is held to be unchangeable.

And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.

This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by skilled preachers or the draw of popular mega-churches. In fact, it speaks to a hunger that’s deeper than that – a hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause.

Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily rounds – dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets – and they’re coming to the realization that something is missing. They are deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough.

They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They’re looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them – that they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness.

This only identifies a partial reason for faith. Such an explanatory value, taken too far, or used in isolation, would become condescending. Does Obama take it too far?

And I speak with some experience on this matter. I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I’ve ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

Which likely means that Obama has himself experienced only one aspect of the reasons for faith. Some have faith because they have always had; they grew up with it. This is not the case with Obama. And some have faith because they have a hunger for truth and right conduct. And for some this faith is inter-personal. These aspects are not evidenced by what Obama says here.

It wasn’t until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.
I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

Obama sees loneliness as a reason for faith, perhaps because it describes his own circumstances. This is valid enough, but does mean that he may grasp with more difficulty the community that has been that way from birth, having passed on its own inheritance. And also the faith that goes with a search for truth.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well — that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And if it weren’t for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn – not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

And if it weren’t for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn – not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope

Wonderfully good, and deeply troubling. The call to change strikes a kind of universal note, but it is only seen as embedded within a single thread of the human community, and a single thread of history. Of heaven and earth, only earth is talked about in concrete terms.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship — the grounding of faith in struggle — that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts.
You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away – because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

Christ as an “ally”? Not wrong, but neither does it bring to mind any picture of authority. Obama is left searching for the truth, but with no indication of exactly how he thinks he will know he has found it. Hence the doubts can continue.

That’s a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans – evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.

And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at – to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own – then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

It’s not clear whether such an appeal will get across to progressives; more particularly, those progressives who simply take the idea of “God’s spirit beckoning me” as words actually meaning not much at all. And in any case, the continuing absence of any kind of appeal by Obama to authority and truth will mean that such progressives will still not understand the field of religious discourse. Obama cannot explain what he has never experienced.

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome – others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

Part of that is quite true — that religious views can be exploited for purely worldly political purposes. But Obama’s description of a “vacuum”, which is something empty, has that emptiness only being filled with the most insular, or the exploiters. No one else?

In other words, if we don’t reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses will continue to hold sway.

That’s right, Obama really does see no one else except what to him are the insular and the exploiters.

More fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms.

The loss of appeal to religion has left it very unclear to some progressives exactly how to appeal to morals in any way. Anyone can have an opinion about what is right and wrong, but where is an appeal of absolute correctness to be made to? Religion cam have this, but when abandoned, it leaves only impermanent substitutes behind. The most common appeal through history is simply to power. Progressives without religion must inevitably end up there.

Some of the problem here is rhetorical – if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice.

There is Obama over-focusing on rhetoric. He greatly underestimates the fact that imagery actually depends very concretely on beliefs. Different beliefs will have necessarily have differing imagery. Even if a speaker chooses to use a front of some kind of imagery that is not really his own, he will quickly be revealed for what he is when the imagery continually strikes false notes.

Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address without reference to “the judgments of the Lord.” Or King’s I Have a Dream speech without references to “all of God’s children.” Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.

Those speeches are thick with Biblical imagery, whether directly or at one remove, and taking out “Lord” or “God” would only affect them slightly.

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting “preachy” may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.

After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness – in the imperfections of man.

Solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers’ lobby – but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we’ve got a moral problem. There’s a hole in that young man’s heart – a hole that the government alone cannot fix.

All of which entirely evades the unpleasant fact that governments are themselves made up of people with imperfections. Governments can create problems just as easily as they can solve them. An appeal for “changes in government policy” raises the questions: What change? And on what basis?

I believe in vigorous enforcement of our non-discrimination laws. But I also believe that a transformation of conscience and a genuine commitment to diversity on the part of the nation’s CEOs could bring about quicker results than a battalion of lawyers. They have more lawyers than us anyway.

People’s imperfections can be solved the government and CEOs? Is this an appeal to anything more than power?

I think that we should put more of our tax dollars into educating poor girls and boys. I think that the work that Marian Wright Edelman has done all her life is absolutely how we should prioritize our resources in the wealthiest nation on earth. I also think that we should give them the information about contraception that can prevent unwanted pregnancies, lower abortion rates, and help assure that that every child is loved and cherished.

Government as parent.

But, you know, my Bible tells me that if we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not turn from it. So I think faith and guidance can help fortify a young woman’s sense of self, a young man’s sense of responsibility, and a sense of reverence that all young people should have for the act of sexual intimacy.

It would help in interpreting that if some indication was given of how that all translated into action. All too easily, a “sense of reverence” only means “make sure you use contraception”.

I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology – that can be dangerous. Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith. As Jim has mentioned, some politicians come and clap — off rhythm — to the choir. We don’t need that.

Though, with Obama’s emphasis on rhetoric, that may often be what actually happens — many references to “faith” and “values”, but no change in action.

In fact, because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they’re something they’re not. They don’t need to do that. None of us need to do that.

But what I am suggesting is this – secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Indeed so. Faith is one source of morals, but morals can be derived in other ways. As Obama knows, some really do say that personal morality can’t be imposed on others. But everyone operates with a personal morality, and everyone imposes some parts on others. Every politician who says “I can’t impose my personal morality on others”, in fact does that every time they vote on a bill. It’s simply not a general rule.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of “thou” and not just “I,” resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.

Some of this is already beginning to happen. Pastors, friends of mine like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influences to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur. Religious thinkers and activists like our good friend Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the Biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality.

Obama seems to be claiming (“some of this is already beginning to happen”) that the actions of (e.g.) Rick Warren are only because progressives reached out to him. Is this so?

And by the way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you’ve got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don’t need and weren’t even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate.

Ker-plunk! Obama’s cloth ear for alternative ideas emerges. Not everything in politics is a moral issue. Estate tax might be a good way to obtain money for the government; or it might not. Valid differing opinions could be held without transgressing any morals.

Across the country, individual churches like my own and your own are sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives, and rebuilding our gulf coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Exactly so. And similar things have been done by, at least, Christians for many, many centuries across the world.

So the question is, how do we build on these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular people of good will? It’s going to take more work, a lot more work than we’ve done so far. The tensions and the suspicions on each side of the religious divide will have to be squarely addressed. And each side will need to accept some ground rules for collaboration.

Obama skips right past another couple of important questions. Exactly what are these “partnerships”? First Obama said that these things were done by churches, and then suddenly they were in partnerships with secular people. Exactly which process is he talking about? And if the churches are doing something good, why not just let them do it?

While I’ve already laid out some of the work that progressive leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what conservative leaders need to do — some truths they need to acknowledge.

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

While the separation of church and state has certainly given a particular continuing character to the US form of democracy, it is not at all clear what role it has played in preserving it. Other countries have long-standing democracies in which church and state have been inter-twined.

Picking John Leland as an example of the support for religious liberty is extremely strange — since Leland eventually took it so far as to downplay the evils of slavery, and thought that the government should not be interfering with it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

“Sectarianism” is one of those words that have no fixed meaning. In fact, some have used it as a description precisely of a diverse set of beliefs. Exactly what Obama means is murky, as are the dangers he sees.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.

Whose Christianity should be taught in the schools? Teaching by the state should not promote any kind of Christianity. This constitutional answer does not depend at all on what percentage of the USA is Christian. Why does Obama think that it is a question that might be difficult to answer?

And why does Obama pick examples from the Bible that are, on the face of it, expressly designed to demonstrate the apparent uselessness of the Bible for practical purposes? The simplest answer is that Obama does in fact think that the Bible is useless for practical purposes — and that all religious beliefs must be passed through some undefined other kind of thinking.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

In fact, Democracy works by voting. There is no necessity for voters to translate concerns into universal values. Nor is there anything preventing anyone voting based on what they learn in their own churches. To suggest otherwise is to attack democracy head-on.

But certainly, if one attempts to gain votes from others, it will benefit me to translate my concerns into universal language, so that I can persuade others. And I can show how the teachings that I accept actually work well in the world. But democracy simply does not demand this.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

At some fundamental level, morality does not allow for compromise. It is not something limited to religion. Atheists appeal to morals, and are just as resistant to compromising them.

Then, another story aimed at opposing the practicality of  the Bible:

We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.

Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God’s test of devotion.

But it’s fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason.

“..we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees..”

Obama, unknowing, points out exactly the problem. And because we all too often do not see what Abraham — who had faith — saw, God hides such things away, just as the two young men who came with Abraham were left behind, so that they should not see, because they would not understand. This is nothing against practicality but, contra Obama, a warning that our limitations radically affect what we are capable of seeing. The whole story leads to a real practicality.

Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion.
This goes for both sides.

Even those who claim the Bible’s inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages – the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ’s divinity – are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.

There are three such distinctions: those teachings which do not vary between cultures; those teachings that at heart stay the same, but may be implemented in culturally different ways; and those teachings which are culturally specific. (This last division being being discarded at will by Jesus.)

At this point it is hardly surprising that Obama explicitly places religious teaching at a lower level than other considerations. The wisdom of politics is placed at a higher level.

But a sense of proportion should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and state. Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation – context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase “under God.” I didn’t. Having voluntary student prayer groups use school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats. And one can envision certain faith-based programs – targeting ex-offenders or substance abusers – that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problems.

All of which depends crucially on how the First Amendment is to be interpreted, which is an ongoing problem.

So we all have some work to do here. But I am hopeful that we can bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this debate. And I have faith that millions of believing Americans want that to happen. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don’t want faith used to belittle or to divide. They’re tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon. Because in the end, that’s not how they think about faith in their own lives.

That’s the sort of thing that appeals only when actual issues are kept away.

So let me end with just one other interaction I had during my campaign. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School that said the following:
“Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win. I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you.”

The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to be “totalizing.” His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of the Republican agenda.

But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my website, which suggested that I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor went on to write:

“I sense that you have a strong sense of justice…and I also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reason…Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded….You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others…I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”

Fair-minded words.

So I looked at my website and found the offending words. In fairness to them, my staff had written them using standard Democratic boilerplate language to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

It’ hard to make out exactly who is being held responsible here for Obama’s words. Not really  Obama, because his staff had written the words. Not really his staff, because it was standard Democratic language. Not really the Democrats because it was boilerplate. Ah, it finally turns out that the words are only written because of his opponents.

Re-reading the doctor’s letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in fair-minded words. Those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

So I wrote back to the doctor, and I thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position.

All fine words. But still only rhetoric. At the end of the day nothing about the issues had actually been looked at, examined, turned about in mind, and contemplated. For Obama, every issue is skin-deep: a thin layer of rhetorical cells.

In his speech, Schmidt said:

[Marriage] has always been defined as the legal union of a man and a woman

Pretty much always and everywhere, throughout history, it has been assumed, without puzzlement or contention, or precise definition, that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, whether in a legal framework or in the complete absence of one.

But Schmidt’s definition misses out a central feature of marriage — the feature that distinguishes marriage from a mere partnership of adults. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the purpose of producing and raising children. If the goal of children is missed out, the the purpose of marriage is lost. Without the goal of children, the adult partnership may be something of value, but it is not nearly the same value as a partnership that produces children. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness originates in each and every child and grows with each. To set in place a system of laws that allows this to occur, and nurtures it every step of the way is thus quite surely part of the national creed. And for that reason, the definition of marriage is central to any national creed.

Having missed out children, Schmidt’s thinking on marriage very rapidly goes astray.

it is a tradition, not a creed, or, at least, not a national creed. It is not how we define ourselves as Americans.

In the American context, it is not defined in a national creed because people took it as something whose purpose was obvious, unchallenged, and not something in desperate need of clarification. And that same context applies over worldwide history.

we should understand that traditions do change over time in every society

Well, yes. Sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse. So which is it? And decided on what grounds?

I respect the opinions of Americans who oppose marriage for gay couples on religious grounds.  I may disagree, but if you sincerely believe God’s revealed truth objects to it then it is perfectly honorable to oppose it.  But those are not the grounds on which a political party should take or argue a position.  If you put public policy issues to a religious test you risk becoming a religious party, and in a free country, a political party cannot remain viable in the long term if it is seen as sectarian.

That is rather akin to a method of thinking that is more commonly seen among Catholic Democrats who wish to vote for legalized abortion — “I personally think it is wrong, but I am not going to impose my religious beliefs on others”. But what’s believed on religious grounds may simultaneously be believed on rational grounds. For example, a firm belief that theft is wrong on religious grounds is not thereby a bar to voting for secular laws against theft — good secular non-religious reasons against theft can be found.

Certainly, what is purely a religious matter should not be imposed on others who disagree. Opposition to abortion is not a purely religious issue, and neither is support for traditional marriage. If political parties have to find support from those whose thinking is partly religious, then they will just have to live with it, for the good secular reasons.

As in fact they always have: the opposition to slavery was such an issue, partly based in religious belief and partly on rational grounds. The various political parties of the 1800s danced around that issue for quite some time. Schmidt’s line of thinking could  have the Republican party end up dancing with two partners who dislike each other, and in each alternate dance they would try to keep the other partner happy. You can keep that up for quite a while, just like the Whigs. But then they will end like the Whigs.

Here’s the reference, in Obama’s words:

Now, there's a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was soon destroyed when a storm hit. But the second is known as the wise man, for when "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."

That’s a slightly loose description of of a passage from the gospel of Matthew. Here’s the original:

"Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.  And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand;  and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it."

Since the original is not much longer than Obama’s summation, why not just quote it directly? Well, pretty obviously, Jesus was not giving remedial advice on architectural design, he was relying on his audience knowing that it was a bad idea to build on a poor foundation for a house, and using that fact to point out what a good foundation was for people: Jesus’ own words. That’s what makes it a parable: point at what’s visible and concrete, so as to point beyond it to invisible principle.

But Obama’s speech-writers then willy-nilly go on to point only at the visible, and not at any kind of principle. Why bother to bring in a gospel text if in fact you’re not going to use it in a relevant way? They could simply have said: “We need to build on a good foundation” and go on from there. We don’t need the gospels to understand how to build physical houses. The gospels speak of more than that. Obama’s reference only ends up speaking of much less than the gospel.

( The speech-writers then go on to point out five things that Obama proposes to do. They decide to call them “five pillars”, and if you google “five pillars” you’ll soon find out what other religion they wanted to bring in to the speech, so as to be all diverse.)

If the gospel is going to be brought in such an irrelevant way, perhaps there is more that we can be looking forward to? “And some fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold” could be slipped in to the next speech on agricultural policy. “And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish” would do well for recycling. “For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life” could be fitted into banking regulation.

It is currently uncertain how much Plan B — the “morning-after” pill, which is a type of emergency contraception — works because of effects that take place after fertilization (i.e. a method ethically completely unacceptable to many, since it would be viewed as destroying a human), rather than (for example) by merely inhibiting ovulation, so that no fertilization takes place.

I pointed out a while back that the scientific papers in this area are being widely misreported. This, alas,  is still continuing. A recent article on Slate by William Saletan (following up on an earlier article) complained about the Vatican’s recent document Dignitatis Personae, where it said:

In order to promote wider use of interceptive methods, it is sometimes stated that the way in which they function is not sufficiently understood. It is true that there is not always complete knowledge of the way that different pharmaceuticals operate, but scientific studies indicate that the effect of inhibiting implantation is certainly present, even if this does not mean that such interceptives cause an abortion every time they are used. …

Saletan complains that “certainly present” is not correct. And if that wording were to be taken in the sense: “utterly beyond question” or “completely verified by a wide range of  studies”, then I would agree with him. However, if it is taken in a sense such as: “current studies point to this”, then I do not.

Saletan points to a 2006 JAMA commentary (i.e. significantly not a peer-reviewed scientific article) which tries to summarize then-current research. This commentary has the same problem as many such commentaries and abstracts: although internal details of the papers referred to are themselves very cautious — because the necessary data doesn’t exist, or only exists in a poorly statistical way — nevertheless the commenter makes it sound as though there are definite conclusions to be found.

For example, the commentary says:

Evidence that would support direct involvement of endometrial damage or luteal dysfunction in Plan B’s contraceptive mechanism is either weak or lacking altogether.

But evidence can be lacking because it has been looked for in many ways, and across many studies, and not found; or it can not exist because the necessary studies are extremely difficult to do, for scientific and ethical reasons, and hence there is simply not much possibility of gathering data. In the current case, it’s the latter. Simply saying “evidence is weak or lacking altogether” fails to represent which situation applies, and thus fundamentally misreports the science. One might just as accurately pick this quote out of the commentary:

women should continue to be informed, as they are now in the Plan B labeling, that its use may affect post-fertilization events

But somehow Saletan fails to pick that quote.

A subsequent 2007 study pointed to evidence that post-fertilization effects are present, and concluded:

Either the actual clinical effectiveness is far lower than has been estimated in the literature to date or mechanisms of action other than ovulation disruption must be contributing
to the clinical effectiveness. In our opinion, both explanations are likely to be contributing to the observed discrepancy between the level of effectiveness that can be attributed to preovulatory effects and the effectiveness reported in clinical trials.

(Alas, also misreported elsewhere.)

Nothing on this is decided, nor is likely to in the near future. Until it is more reasonably decided, beware the summaries and the abstracts.

A long discussion in the comments at that blog hasn’t resolved the matter. But the claim is false, and showing why this is so helps illuminate what a moral decision must always involve.

First, two things to note about the precise teaching of Humanae Vitae: it does not teach that choosing to engage in sex that is non-procreative is necessarily morally wrong. But, precisely, it does teach that to choose to do something that changes a sexual act into a non-procreative act is wrong – an actual act must be chosen that is intended to make the sexual act non-procreative. This act can take place before, during, or after the sex. It is choosing an act that makes the sex non-procreative that is an evil choice, and not merely the choice to engage in non-procreative sex.

(In support of this precision, we can see that the CDF, in a pronouncement in 1977, ruled that it was permissible for a sterile person to marry — consistent with the idea that just by engaging in non-procreative sex someone has not necessarily chosen a moral evil.)

If someone chooses do something to become sterile, so that they will not have children, then — as taught in Humanae Vitae —  they have made an evil choice. In this case, choosing the act that makes them sterile is the evil choice. Or, as a different example, if someone chooses to wear a condom during sex, they have also made an evil choice. In that case, choosing to wear the condom during sex is the evil choice, since it makes the act non-procreative.

In each case, for a moral evil to occur, a choice had to be freely made. In the two examples, the person chose to become sterile, or chose to wear the condom.

But now consider the case of someone who chose to make themselves sterile some time previously, but has subsequently genuinely repented of that decision. When he later engages in sex, does he commit a moral evil contrary to Humanae Vitae? No, because he is not freely choosing to do anything that causes that later sex act to be non-procreative. To point to what is contrary to Humanae Vitae, one must point to an actual choice that makes sex non-procreative. The man did make such a free choice back in time, which was wrong. But in later sex, even though the sex is non-procreative, there is no later choice of an act that makes the sex non-procreative.

Without a choice being free, it does not have the possibility of being a moral choice, whether evil or good.

(One objection that needs to be covered: since the action of the repentant man is the same as that of an unrepentant man, then one might conclude that both must sin, since intentions and circumstances make no difference to the morality of the act in question (which is an intrinsic evil). But this doesn’t take into account that the repentant man and unrepentant man do not have the same capability for choosing freely. Whether a choice is free is something distinct from intentions and circumstances.)

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America contains many good things; it would be hard to contest that. And if it were contested, I could simply look out of my window and see them for myself.

America! America!

Here some seem to think that the words mean that the hymn is addressed to something non-existent thing that is an idol. But it's simply addressed to people in America.

God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

After setting out some of the good things it possesses, the writer now implores God to give grace as well to America. It's a hymn. It's a prayer. Although all those physical things mentioned at the beginning of the hymn are genuinely good, but they need to be completed, crowned, by what is most important: complete brotherhood throughout the country. And it is God that is the source of that.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!

Like good verse, more than one thing is referred to here: both the westward trek (by foot, or wagon, or train) in America's history — but, but more importantly, also the repeated voices calling for freedom ("stern", "stress", "beat").

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

But again, appeal is made to God. Flaws still exist: souls lack self-control: freedom must be embedded in the people. This is not a perfect America, and it needs God.

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife.
Who more than self the country loved
And mercy more than life!

Gaining freedom may require sacrifice, and the writer refers to John 15:13.

May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

But still God is needed to refine what good is possessed, so that success is defined as nobleness (a personal quality, and not an external possession), and gains are not physical or financial, but measured by God.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

And here the writer looks forward past any success that may be had in this world, to a future Heavenly city ("beyond the years", "undimmed by tears" as in Rev 21:1-4).

God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

Again the writer refers through but past any history of discovery in America, and asks for God-given paths through all the wilds that still exist in thinking.

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life !

Both wars are referred to, the Revolutionary and the Civil; sacrifices for freedom.

God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

And still the writer asks for flaws to be fixed, and a selfish America to be given grace.

Who could walk away from such sentiments? Would they not walk away from both America and the Church?

(Written July 4th 2007, within sight of Pike's Peak, and within sight of the amber waves, purple mountains, and fruited plains, by someone not in the slightest American.)

The Catholic social doctrine on immigration is not well understood by many. Likely that is for lack of reading, and not for any lack of writing by the Church. This present post prompted by a flawed posting in the blog The Cafeteria is Closed, but the same flawed idea could be found in many other places.

The flaw is the excessive regard for the sovereignty of a nation. The laws made by a nation are not important above all, but are themselves subject to moral requirements. The complaints made by The Cafeteria is Closed are about the ignoring of the law:

It's not the immigration policy that has created "a large underclass", it's the ignoring of the immigration policy that created it. Ignoring by, in no particular order, a) government, which doesn't have the balls to enforce the border, b) business, that continues to knowingly hire illegals and c) illegal immigrants who disrespect American sovereignty.

What's complained about in the above list of complaints is evidently law-breaking. But not even the slightest attention is paid as to whether the law is itself fully just. Because if the law is not just, then obedience is not required — in fact, for a well-formed conscience, disobedience may sometimes be required.

So we must at least ask the question: are there occasions in which a person morally must move to a different country, even if the accepting country has a law against it? What circumstances could lead to this?

Think of the fundamental unit of society: the family. The family has basic necessities: they must be fed, housed in decent conditions, given medical attention, educated, allowed to worship freely, and be protected by the law. If a family lives somewhere on the earth at point A, lacks some basic necessity, and can solve the problem by moving to point B without depriving some other family of these basic necessities, then it is just for it to move. It would be unjust to prevent the move. (Catechism #2241).

If country B has a law against such a move, then it is an unjust law. More so if country B has an excess of resources. That country has created an underclass. Those who move in order to satisfy basic necessities — which is a just move — are placed by their adoptive country in a contradictory position: their move is just, but their status is illegal.

Both the law and the requirements of migrants must be taken into account. Dessert and vegetables.

The Guide picks five "non-negotiable issues" to highlight: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and homosexual marriage. Clearly, those are important issues, but why those five issues, and not others? The reason the Guide gives is that those issues involve intrinsic evils. Actions are intrinsic evils if there is no moral way of choosing to perform them, whatever the circumstances or intentions. Thus, it is never possible to choose to vote for these intrinsic evils to be performed, and the Guide suggests ranking politicians according to their position on these issues, and selecting a vote depending on the ranking.

But the Guide's method of selecting issues is based on secondary principles, rather than on what is primary. A primary principle would have to be:

So, when selecting a candidate to vote for, first the issues should be sorted into those which are a matter of opinion, and those which are a matter of conscience.

 For example, if one candidate is in favor of building two hospitals and three schools, and the other is in favor of building three hospitals and two schools, then in most circumstances it would be a matter of opinion as to which is the best policy. You wouldn't be thinking to yourself: "Well I better decide which is truly the right policy, else I will be sinning."

However, for those who have a Catholic conscience, if one candidate is in favor of permitting abortion, and the other is not, then the choice is simple: the pro-abortion policy is unacceptable, since it is an intrinsic evil, and you would certainly be sinning to favor that policy. And likewise for all intrinsic evils.

But it's not just intrinsic evils which can affect our consciences, and allow us to choose between proposed policies. Some policies can be evil, even though they are not intrinsically evil.

For example, a government is permitted to collect taxes, even if those taxes are applied unequally to people — this is not an intrinsic evil. But if a politician suggested a policy of taxing only poor people, it could be opposed, in conscience, as being unjust.

So, since non-intrinsic evils can also be opposed to our conscience, it is entirely right to also include them in our considerations of who to support, along with intrinsic evils.

Once the issues have been sorted into those of opinion, and those of conscience, we must then follow our conscience, and use issues of conscience to rank candidates. To the extent that the Guide does not make allowance for non-intrinsic evils that may affect our consciences, it gives incomplete advice.

Try a dictionary

Well the Oxford English Dictionary offers the following as a definition: "The infliction of severe bodily pain, as punishment or a means of persuasion". That has problems: what does "severe" mean? Different people might legitimately have different subjective opinions about that, and that is incompatible with the notion of torture being something intrinsically wrong.

Consult the Geneva Conventions

But who were the people who came up with the Geneva Conventions, and why should we trust them?

Ask a cop. They have regulations which govern their treatment of prisoners.

Which cops?

Check the Army Field Manual on how to treat prisoners.

Which army, and which version of which manual, and why?

I'm of the opinion that Mark considers the definition of torture as something requiring only a limited amount of common-sense, and consequently that attempts to ask for something more precise are symptomatic of a wish to evade awkward questions about political and practical conduct. He may be right about that for some people, but not for all. In which case the lack of a definition hurts his cause (which is in fact my cause, since we share the Church's cause, and belief in its teaching). I'm extremely dubious that his approach is capable of coming up with a definition that is an intrinsic one, and not merely subjective.

I suggested an approach to an actual definition before, and would like to tune it further. I start from this principle:

It is always morally wrong to inflict pain on someone that is not to their direct benefit.

To clarify this (particularly the word "direct"), we need to consider some hypothetical cases:

• Suppose I vaccinate someone against a disease via a painful injection.  Can that be allowable? Surely so, because the direct result is that the person has received a chance of not getting the disease.
• Suppose I give someone a unwilling painful injection, with its only purpose being the intention of subsequently giving them $1000 as compensation. Is that allowable? No, because there is no direct link between the $1000 and the pain. (You could give them the $1000 without the injection, or you could change your mind after the injection.)
• Suppose I put someone in prison (after a just verdict) as punishment for a crime. Is that allowable? Yes, because it directly gives them the opportunity of redressing (in various ways) the disorder caused by the offense.

What then is torture? It would be the morally-wrong infliction of severe pain.

But doesn't such a definition leave itself open to the objection that "severe" isn't defined, and would be subjective? No, because in this case "severe" doesn't determine whether the action is morally wrong; even such actions below the level of severe are morally wrong.

The role of conscience

Besides torture being wrong, the Church has also taught (in Veritatis Splendor) that attempts to coerce the spirit are always wrong. This means attempts to coerce a person into acting against his conscience. In ordinary secular matters of crime, this is hardly ever of significance — criminals rarely steal because their conscience tells them to.

But during wars, it is much more common for conscience to be an issue. It is not unheard of for both sides in a war to be convinced that they are fighting because it is morally right to fight. In such cases, it is much easier to offend by an attempt at coercion. If I say to someone convinced of the rightness of their cause: "If you tell me your army's plans, I will give you a house and money," then I am wrongly attempting to coerce them to act against their conscience. Such cases do not get the attention necessary, though they are currently very relevant.

…the Catechism does not ban the death penalty per se. Instead, it leaves open room for the exercise of prudential judgment with respect to the question of whether, in a particular case, "bloodless means" will not be "sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons."

But that is not a sufficient summary of what is left up to prudence. For the Catechism also says:

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 definitely 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 nonexistent.

So, if someone should come up with a prudential judgment that all, or most, murderers should receive the death penalty, that would not be a legitimate use of prudence, since it would be a judgment radically at odds with the one that the Catechism teaches. The exercise of prudential judgment on this issue is thus not left wide open, but constrained by the teaching of the Catechism.

Bainbridge also says:

Cardinal Renato's pronouncements on Saddam's execution reflect his own prudential judgment, but they need not be regarded as Magisterial teachings to which the faithful are obliged to give religious assent. Instead, faithful Catholics may exercise their own prudential judgment on that issue.

Bainbridge's complaint as it relates to Cardinal Martino's pronouncements on the death penalty — where Martino had said that "no one can give death, not even the state"— is that it appears to contradict Church teaching. Now (putting aside the amazing issue as to whether Bainbridge is in fact accusing Martino of teaching against the Church, or merely coming up with some prudential judgment that Bainbridge happens to disagree with) we can look a little further into the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where it deals with the case where someone may have to be killed as a matter of self defense:

Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason.

Where someone must be killed as a matter of self-defense (which is the only reason for capital punishment allowed by the Catechism), the outcome is not a choice that has been placed in the hands of the state, but something where choice has been taken away by the actions of the aggressor. So indeed, it is not up to the state to freely choose whether to give the death penalty or not, since it is the actions of the aggressor which may necessitate the penalty. The quote from Martino is quite defensible as a part of Catholic teaching.

Now I had also asserted that Aquinas justified the "torture" as well as the execution of heretics. Paul naturally asked me to document that assertion; and of course I can't, because Aquinas never said anything about it. Yet the torture of heretics was not exactly uncommon in his day and was quite well known to Aquinas. And so my statement is really the conclusion of an argument from silence, whereby I take Aquinas' silence as consent. Admittedly, that kind of argument is pretty weak.

I asked for a reference for that assertion because I had never seen Aquinas write anything on torture, nor had I seen a quote from him mentioned in any of the numerous postings around the blogs when torture was being discussed. The issue that my question flagged is not one that requires making any kind of estimate — weak or otherwise — of what it was that Aquinas might have thought about torture. It was that your posting would give the ordinary reader the impression that Aquinas had indeed written something on this topic, and that this writing had stated that "obstinate, public heretics should be tortured". But in fact, as you say, he wrote nothing about torture, and the ordinary reader would come to the wrong conclusion about Aquinas if they accepted the statement at face value.

Also in relation to Aquinas:

it must be admitted that the Church's teaching about capital punishment has developed in the direction of much greater strictness about it. As Cardinal Dulles makes clear, that development occurred only in the latter half of the 20th century. Aquinas, for instance, wrote that …if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since "a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump" (ST IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 2).

Though, one can look at that and see only that Aquinas wrote in one set of circumstances, and current Church teaching has taken into account that fact that the techniques available to society have altered: specifically (as Evangelium Vitae says) "as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system". Because of his particular social circumstances Aquinas saw the necessity of keeping safe from dangerous and infectious people (i.e. those threatening the lives of society) as being satisfied only by their execution. But we have access to different methods. Aquinas simply does not take our possibilities into account — it would be science-fiction for him. But the fact that cutting off from society can be necessary, and the given reasons for that cutting off from society, have not changed. And in that way there is no contradiction between Aquinas and current teaching. (Take away such a penal system and techniques as we have, and what Aquinas says could become operational again.)

[Aquinas] position invokes a certain notion of social harm, such that prevention of such harm sometimes suffices to justify the death penalty. One must admit that if, as I concede, the Church's developed teaching today is binding, he went too far with that definition. Without it, he would not have justified the execution of heretics, in an era when heresy was a civil crime, as well as certain other kinds of criminals; yet as Dignitatis Humanae makes clear enough, the Church today clearly rules out the death penalty for heretics even in a Catholic state.

But Dignitatis Humanae does not absolutely rule out the death penalty for heretics. Religious rights are not absolute, but — as Dignitatis Humanae makes clear — still contingent on "just public order". If that were breached, penalties could be applied up and including the death penalty, provided that the heretics had performed actions genuinely deserving of death, with no possibility of protecting society otherwise. That may be extremely unlikely in modern circumstances, as the Pope makes clear. But circumstances can change.

I had criticized something written by Robert T. Miller in First Things, on the grounds that Miller makes an unqualified claim that empirical claims made by the Church about the state of the world can never require more than respect from Catholics. Michael thinks it obvious that:

The context of Miller's remarks make clear that he is speaking of empirical judgments in the political arena that can be reasonably disputed.

And having read Miller's remarks numerous more times, I cannot agree with Michael. If Miller is limiting his claims only to such judgments as can be "reasonably" disputed, that immediately raises the question as to what criteria Miller is using to decide whether a particular claim is reasonable or non-reasonable. But Miller never answers that question. He does indicate that intrinsic evils can't be reasonably disputed (because they plainly don't depend on empirical circumstances at all). But beyond that he gives no criteria for deciding on reasonableness.

Look at these sentences in the Catechism (#2267), that Miller quotes:

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 to 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 definitely 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 nonexistent.”

And what Miller says about them is this:

The first two sentences concern morals, but the third sentence is an empirical claim about the state of the world and so is not about morals. The first two sentences are thus, at the very least, doctrina catholica, which Catholics must accept with a religious submission of will and intellect. The third sentence, however, is not; it need only be respected and considered in forming one’s conscience.

It is plain that Miller's stated criteria is to look at a sentence in the Catechism, and if it is an empirical claim about the state of the world, then he would see that its only claim on the conscience of Catholics is that they "respect" and "consider" it. He simply gives no other criteria. However, the criteria Miller gives can't possibly apply to all empirical claims since (as I said in a previous post) that would remove the Church's canonical authority to make empirical claims about things like (e.g.) the validity of sacraments, and have that decision received by the faithful with religious assent (which is more than just respect). So what Miller writes is logically wrong. It could be the case that Miller himself says something like, in effect: "But I also intended that …". But there is, as far as I know, nothing like that.

As written, Miller's article can't be correct — you can't just look at a sentence in the Catechism and decide that if it is only an empirical claim about the state of the world then it need only be deserving of respect. That's false. Now Michael seems to propose that Miller must obviously have some other criteria in mind that limits what he says only to "reasonably disputable" claims. But I see nothing in Miller to indicate that he thinks this, and Michael also does not say what this extra criteria might be (though he seems to implicitly admit that it must exist).

Michael goes on to say:

almost the entire dispute among Catholics these days about particular instances of capital punishment hinge on whether that sentence [ed. the third sentence from the Catechism, as quoted above] is (a) true; (b) whether or not true, binding on Catholics in the sense of requiring "religious submission"; and (c) if binding, whether its application to specific cases by Church officials is also binding in that sense. Now I believe (a) and (b) and have made that clear before. So the only point of contention is when an affirmative answer to (c) is warranted.

We are in agreement on (a) and (b). As for (c), it's too open-ended a question, and I think an answer can only be given when the specific circumstances are given.

Addressing me, Michael also says:

… [Paul] seems to take for granted that the only sort of social harm that could conceivably suffice, in certain circumstances, to justify capital punishment is lethal, physical aggression by the convict himself.

But I had said nothing that limited the harm to just that. What kinds of harm to society by the aggressor did the Pope have in mind? Evidently, whatever kinds that would be prevented by placing the convict in prison — else the Pope's prudential judgment quoted above would not make any sense. (For example, if the convict's words were somehow a threat to the lives of society, keeping him incommunicado in prison would prevent this. If necessary because of circumstances, he could also be shipped to a far-distant location, or an unknown one. Modern techniques allow all kinds of possibilities, if the will is there.)

Whatever "harm" might mean, it cannot be legitimately be a definition that would be incompatible with the Pope's prudential decision.

As for what Michael quotes Cardinal Dulles saying here, it in fact goes a long way towards supporting what I have been saying. Here is the relevant paragraph from Dulles:

Capital punishment is obviously an effective way of preventing the wrongdoer from committing future crimes and protecting society from him. Whether execution is necessary is another question. One could no doubt imagine an extreme case in which the very fact that a criminal is alive constituted a threat that he might be released or escape and do further harm. But, as John Paul II remarks in Evangelium vitae (EV 56), modem improvements in the penal system have made it extremely rare for execution to be the only effective means of defending society against the criminal.

Evidently Dulles has a very similar understanding of "harm" to mine — harm that would occur if the aggressor was not confined to prison. There is no support for a wider understanding of "harm" than that.