#449: Can Americans Elect a Moral President?

Chagrined observers of the nastiness we call “Campaign 2016” have begun to inject the character question into their coverage of the candidates. 

Even before the KKK uproar, the below-the-belt debating, and Mitt Romney’s aspersions and allegations, commentators (especially on the conservative side) were denouncing mean-spirited tactics and schoolyard taunts as evidence off the candidates’ unethical roots. 

So evangelical talk show host Michael Brown derided the willingness of voters to support candidates who lack a “solid moral base.” He wondered how they can justify voting for “someone who has a long track record of being ruthless, cruel, unchristian, immoral, profane, full of pride, greedy, and double-minded.” He bemoans that people are not looking for “men [sic] of integrity.” This is because he believes that an American president must be “a moral and ethical leader, a leader who will make godly choices.”

On the Catholic side, columnist George Weigel has lamented the anger pervading the campaign, grouping supporters of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders under the same “glandular” label.  Such anger, he claims, cannot be righteous:

Anger is a glandular thing. An angry politics is a politics of the gut. A passionate politics, informed and disciplined by reason, can be a politics of the intelligence, a politics of great ideas: a politics, if you will, of sound moral judgment. And sound moral judgment is rarely, if ever, the child of anger.

(Note that George Weigel neglects the reverse possibility: that anger can often be the righteous child of sound moral judgment--witness Jesus with the money changers!). 

Catholic politics, he says, must always be moral politics:

Catholic political theory is an extension of Catholic moral theology; or to put it another way, Catholic political theory treats politics as an arena of moral reasoning and moral judgment. The Catholic citizen, as the Church understands these things, is obliged to think, not just to feel; to judge, not just to react; to exercise prudence in weighing options among usually-imperfect alternatives, not to indulge in fantasies about simplistic quick-fixes to all that ails us and the world.

I think both men are onto something—but they  fail to go far enough.  The truth is that asking for a “moral president” is really asking for two things.

A Moral Person.  First, it is asking if the president is a moral person, a person of integrity.  Given contemporary politics (perhaps politics in general), this is asking a lot: a public official who is consistently honest, humble, dignified, unselfish, kind-hearted, willing to sacrifice, acts with sound judgment rather than blind anger.  How many past presidents could pass that test?  How many public officials today? 

In my view it is fair to pose the “personal integrity” test, although we risk having no one to vote for.  And anyhow, it may be important to look for more.

A Moral Presidency. A presidential inauguration includes a solemn oath.  In it, the new president promises, not to be a good person, but to protect and defend the Constitution.  In other words, the oath of office pertains to the president’s official duties rather than his or her private life.  And as Weigel notes, political policies are (for Catholics, at least) rooted in moral principles—or should be.

Thus we voters must hope not just for a moral president, but also for a moral presidency.

The standards for this are not rocket science.  Catholic Social Teaching, rooted in the Gospels and shaped by papal teaching since 1891, provides clear criteria for moral policymaking.  And since 2013, Pope Francis has shrewdly employed his popularity to make these criteria the stuff of headlines.  During his U.S. visit, for example, both his White House speech and his address to Congress offered us clear guidelines for a moral presidency.

Thus we can list major current issues and compare the positions of any candidate with Catholic Social Teaching.  Here are some examples. 

Climate Change.  The official Catholic position, forcefully articulated in Pope Francis’ June 2015 encyclical letter, is clear: climate change is real, is fueled by runaway consumption which breeds economic inequality, widespread resentment, and terror.  Reversing this threat to “our common home” is a moral imperative of the highest order.

We should look for candidates, then, who make this position a key plank of their platform.

Economic Inequality.  Pope Francis has called inequality “the root of all social ills,” and concluded that peace remains impossible until the problem of inequality is solved.

Since 1970 the U.S. has emerged, under both parties, as the most unequal of all major nations.  And the gap between rich nations and poor nations has also grown wider.

Which candidates call us to break with this history? 

Open Immigration.  Catholic Social Teaching acknowledges the right of governments to regulate immigration in the interest of public safety--but it also proclaims migration to be a human right, which governments cannot violate.  Which candidates stand by this human right? 

Nuclear Weapons.  Since Vatican II, Catholicism considers the production, installation, distribution, sale, threat, or use of nuclear weapons to be an unconditional evil.  A moral presidency would include aggressive efforts to remove nuclear weapons from the planet.

Weapons Sales.  The U.S. is the world’s largest arms dealer, and Catholicism teaches that arms sales not only promote war, but they also prevent the poor from escaping poverty.  Which candidates name the arms industry as a scourge on the common good?

Defense of Life.  Before the U.S. Congress, Francis called for defending life at every stage--which means opposing both abortion and the death penalty.  A moral presidency would defend this “seamless garment” of life.

Human Rights.  The Catholic definition of human rights includes the right to Health Care, to Housing, to Migration, to a Living Wage, to Education, etc.  None of these are privileges to be reserved, inherited, or rewarded. They are everyone’s birthright. A moral presidency would be committed to the government’s responsibility for securing such rights for all citizens

This list ignores both parties and personalities.  It focuses only on moral principles.

As Americans prepare to choose a president, it makes perfect sense to seek a moral person.  It makes even more sense to seek a moral presidency.

This sets extraordinarily high standards for voters to consider.  I doubt we have a single candidate who meets them all.  Our responsibility is to get beyond the personalities and parties to determine this: which candidate measures up to these standards better than any other?

Given what I have seen of this campaign, I can only think: God help us all! 

   © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#426: Getting Beyond Terror

It’s high time for some sanity and realism about terror

Barely 21 months after the Marathon bombers made “Boston Strong” a household phrase, we now have “Je Suis Charlie.” Amid a deluge of strong emotions and sloppy thinking, I offer some reflections on points that I believe we must resolve, lest our lives become permanently unhinged by “terrorism.”

We Should Define Terms.  Are “terror” and “terrorism” really helpful terms?  Too often, they are self-serving labels that mean merely “violence we do not like.” These terms can apply to so many events that we can end up wondering what they all have in common.  Think of  the lynchings of blacks across the United States 1900-1955, attacks by Zionists in mid-1940s Palestine, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing, the school attacks at Newtown and Columbine, the IRA in Northern Ireland from 1969 to the Good Friday accords, the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof, and Munich Olympic attackers in the 1970s, the death squads in El Salvador and the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s, the bombers of New York (1993), and Paris (1995 and 1996), the 9/11 attacks, the sarin gas attacks in Japan, U.S. drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, Boko Haram abductions and massacres, et cetera, et cetera. 

If we’re going to use these terms, we should define them consistently. But we seldom do.

Ends and means.  For me, terrorism is a tactic that uses violence to generate fear to gain some goal. So the goal (whenever it is) is the end, and terror tactics are the means.  Often those goals are claimed to be high-minded political or religious causes (whether it is the surrender of Japan on the establishment of Sharia law) which are “supposed” to justify the terror tactics.

But Catholicism has long taught that the ends never justify the means.  This clarifies our notion of terrorism, since we object to the means of terror regardless of the goals.  We don’t care if the attackers are capitalist or communist, Christian or Jew or Muslim.  We don’t care if they seek a classless society or the end of World War II or peace or freedom or justice or heaven on earth.  We only care that their tactics are evil.

Equal Opportunity Tactics.  This also means that anyone can be guilty of terrorism.  It can be a deranged individual like Timothy McVeigh, it can be radicalized brothers like the Tsarnaevs in Boston or the Kouachis in Paris.  It can be a tribe, a cell, a movement, a radical organization, a quasi-military militia, a political or religious party, or even a government.

By their tactics you shall know them, whether you regard them as friend or foe, good guys or bad guys. Trying to distinguish between “terrorists” and “freedom fighters” who use the same tactics—as if there is “good” terrorism and “bad” terrorism--only leads us to a double standard.

Double Standards. Even the Paris killings reflect this problem of double standards.

Few people support absolute free speech with no limits, and this can lead to a double standard. In the name of free speech, blasphemy is allowed in France, so Charlie Hebdo is honored and protected.  But “hate speech” is not allowed, so the UPI reported that:

Fifty-four people were arrested Wednesday after the French government ordered a crackdown on hate speech and the glorification of terrorism.

And the International Business Times detailed the government’s rationale:

Justice Minister Christiane Taubira said hate speech has to be fought with the "utmost vigor," urging prosecutors to act quickly against those who condone terrorism or carry out racist or anti-Semitic acts. Prime Minister Manuel Valls added that freedom of speech should not be confused with anti-Semitism, racism and Holocaust denial. 

Of course, this just heightens the hostility between Muslims and Jews (who appear to receive special treatment--it seems even Charlie Hebdo had avoided satirizing Jews). 

In fact, most “free speech” champions make exceptions that create a double standard. It is a crime in many European countries to deny the Holocaust. It is a crime in the U.S. to commit “hate speech” against gays, blacks, Jews. These exceptions to free speech reflect the history of these countries. But they are still double standards. To prohibit these forms of speech while allowing blasphemy (an offense which reflects the history of OTHER countries) is at best inconsistent and at worst hypocritical. And when such hypocrisy enables blasphemy that offends even moderates, that only undermines their moderation and makes us riper targets for fanatics willing to use terror tactics.

And there is a third double standard. It focuses on threats to the West but overlooks attacks elsewhere, as if only western lives matter.  The same week when 17 Parisians were killed, Time Magazine reported that Boko Haram “murdered up to 2,000 civilians” in Baga, Nigeria, and a few a days later “used a 10-year old girl as a suicide bomber to kill at least 16 people at a market.”  It goes without saying which tragedy commanded more attention.

Granted, we took the Paris attacks as attacks on western values that are “sacred” to us--but are we surprised if the southern hemisphere concludes that we care less about their lives?  And do we really believe that sending that message helps us fight such violence?

Blaming Religion Honors the Terrorists.  I am increasingly weary of media references to “jihadists” and “radical Islamists” etc.  Yes, these people claim to act in the name of Islam--but why do we honor their claim?  It is a false claim, and it provides them cover to rationalize their atrocities to others. At the same time, it pits people of different faiths against each other.

Thus Pope Francis has urged all religious leaders to denounce any such violence, saying “To kill in the name of God is an aberration”:

For the sake of peace, religious beliefs must never be allowed to be abused in the cause of violence and war. We must be clear and unequivocal in challenging our communities to live fully the tenets of peace and coexistence found in each religion, and to denounce acts of violence when they are committed.…

I express my hope that religious, political and intellectual leaders, especially those of the Muslim community, will condemn all fundamentalist and extremist interpretations of religion which attempt to justify such acts of violence.

Thus it is not just the violence we condemn, but also the hijacking of religion itself. No terrorists represent authentic Islam. This was made crystal clear by Malek Merabet, as the brother of Ahmed Merabet, one of the police officers killed in Paris:

Islam is a religion of peace, love and sharing. It's not about terrorism, it's not about madness…My brother was a Muslim and he was killed by people pretending to be Muslims. They are terrorists – that's it…Don’t tar everyone with the same brush; don't burn mosques – or synagogues. It won't bring our dead back and it won't appease the families.

Linking terror to Islam only increases Islamophobia, and at the same time it alienates more Muslims.  Using such terms helps the terrorists and hurts the efforts of genuine Muslims to make peace with western, secular culture. Blaming Islam is doing just what the terrorists want.

In fact, blaming Islam for terrorism, combined with our “free speech” double standard, only convinces others that we really are the enemy.

Of course, to overcome this temptation to blame religions, we must heed Francis’ answer when challenged about visiting a Buddhist temple:

The Protestants when I was a child, in that time, 70 years ago, all the Protestants were going to hell, all of them. That’s what was said. Do you know what was the first experience I had of ecumenism?...When I was four or five years old walking down the street with my grandmother, I saw two women from the Salvation Army, wearing those old-style hats, and I asked my grandmother, “Tell me, are they sisters (nuns)?” My Grandmother said “No, they are Protestant but they’re good (people).” It was the first time that I heard a person speaking well of people of another religion. At that time in the catechesis they told us that they all went to hell. I believe the Church has grown a lot in its consciousness (understanding) and in its respect (for other religions), as I said in the interreligious encounter in Colombo the other day, when we read what the Second Vatican Council about the other religions, and the values in other religions. The Church has grown a lot in these years and in respect. There have been dark periods in the history of the Church too, and we have to say that with shame. We’re all on a path of conversion, which is a grace; always from sin to grace. This inter-religiosity as brothers, respecting each other always is a grace.

No More “War On Terror.”  This unfortunate phrase has caused two problems.  First, it created a “crusading” climate that accepts too many evil tactics in a worthy cause: invasion based on lies, torture, rendition, imprisonment without charges, killing without due process, restrictions on Americans’ privacy and freedom.  Second, it deluded us into thinking that we could “win” this war--that the right strategy would bring “victory” and “end” terror. That we could kill the “last terrorist” and enjoy “victory.”

The brutal fact is that human history reveals an unending supply of people willing to employ evil tactics--even to kill the innocent--to gain their goals.  One cannot kill all the terrorists and end terrorism because one cannot uproot from human nature its potential for evil. The “last terrorist” does not exist.

Such people are criminals, and our criminal justice systems must be our main defense.  Most terrorists collaborate, and collaborating to commit crime is conspiracy, and conspiracy itself as a crime before any shot is fired, any bomb is wired, any plane is hijacked.  The best strategy against terror is the same strategy long used against organized crime: investigate, infiltrate, incriminate for conspiracy, prosecute, and punish. 

This is precisely how French Police followed up the Paris attacks, arresting four suspects believed linked to one of the gunmen involved in the attacks. They appeared before an antiterrorism judge on charges of “terrorist conspiracy to commit crimes against people.”

But the bottom line is: we will always have terrorists.  Terrorism is nothing new, and no matter how old it gets, it is not dying out. Terrorism, like poverty, will always be with us. 

But this fact points to our real hope.

The Long Term Fix.  Nearly all terror attacks of the last century reflect the attackers’ resentment for perceived injustice.  That resentment has nearly always been fueled by poverty.  Arguably, terrorism and poverty go hand in hand: the more poverty, the more terrorism--and the less poverty, the less terror.

This premise cries out for urgent consideration.  For it implies that the trillions we spend on military invasions are futile--and worse, they preclude our chance to spend such resources on reducing poverty.  If the links between terror attacks and poverty are compelling--and I believe they are (just look at profiles of suicide bombers)--then attacking poverty becomes our number one weapon, our number one hope, against terrorism.

The Prospects? These reflections do not leave me optimistic.  I fear we will continue to define “terrorism” sloppily, continue to follow hypocritical double standards, continue to blame religions and alienate others, continue to criticize people’s goals instead of condemning their tactics, continue to condemn radical parties while exempting governments, continue to pretend we can “wage war” to end terrorism, and continue to waste both money and lives in that futile pursuit.  We will continue to praise “our warriors” who “protect us.”  And we will continue blindly blundering along with strategies and tactics that will guarantee that our situation, already unmistakably worse since 9/11 due to such blundering, will deteriorate even further.

That is, it will continue to worsen unless we begin to heed the voice of reason.  But who speaks that voice today? And who is listening?

   © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2015

#253 (Reprised): Holy War Crimes

This week's news about CIA torture resurfaces a topic I've written about many times. The posting below surveys the core Catholic viewpoint:

Godard's Le Petit Soldat (1963)

 The uproar about US torture reminds me of the fortified medieval city Carcassonne. In 1998, I spent two hours wandering its double-wall ramparts, its slot-window towers, its cathedral (where St. Dominic preached against the heretical Cathars in Lent 1205). But my one souvenir is the illustrated brochure from the Museum of Torture.

I knew that Joan of Arc’s prosecutors had shown her the "instruments of torture," hoping to terrorize her into confessing and recanting her heresy, but I had never seen them myself. The brochure shows them all: rack, chair of nails, leg press, pincers, iron cage, wheel, spiked helmet. All were weapons in the Crusade to stamp out the Cathars in southern France.

We Catholics inherit a tarnished moral track record. Over the centuries our Church has justified slavery, locked Jews in ghettos, promised crusaders a heavenly prize for fighting infidels, denied non-Catholics freedom of religion, forced Baptisms, and even condemned saints to be burnt at the stake.

But one saving grace of Catholicism is its ability to learn from the errors of its ways. Over time the Church finally condemned slavery, repented its anti-Semitism, embraced religious liberty for all, and rejected holy wars. Along the way, Catholicism also renounced all torture as an offense against the dignity of human life.

 For me, this history imposes a special moral obligation. The world manifests many evils to oppose, but Catholics bear a special responsibility for evils that our own Church once promoted. Part of our penance for evils we have renounced, it seems to me, is the obligation to champion their elimination.

It turns out this applies especially to waterboarding.

 As a movie-nut and child of the 1960s, I am especially sensitive to torture, since few evils have been more powerfully portrayed on screen. First I saw the "Chinese brainwashing" scenes in the Manchurian Candidate, then the Russian roulette in Deer Hunter, the electrocutions in Day of the Jackal and State of Siege. And despite my dislike for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, I admit it bore powerful witness to this fact: the founder of our faith was himself a victim of "legal torture "!

But the images most imbedded in my brain come from Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1965) and Godard’s Le Petit Soldat (1963). Both treat the Algerian war, and both have terrifying scenes of waterboarding. And while most movies portray torture as a villain’s tool, Godard showed that even "good guys" do evil when they torture:

I thought the honest thing was to show friends, people for whom I would go and fight if necessary -- the Algerians I mean -- to show them torturing. I thought that torture could be more persuasively condemned if one saw one's own friends practicing it.

At the time I may have known that the Vatican had specifically denounced torture in all forms, but I had no idea  about waterboarding's history. 

I did not know Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) had waterboarded its victims. I did not know a US soldier had been court martialed for waterboarding a captured North Vietnamese soldier in 1968. I did not know the US prosecuted Japanese waterboarders after World War II. I did not know American soldiers had waterboarded Filipinos in the Philippine-American war (1899-1902). Above all, I did not know waterboarding’s Catholic roots in the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1574) and the Flemish Inquisition (1556-1559).

Professor William Schweiker of the University of Chicago argues that waterboarding began, not merely as an effective torture technique, but as a religious symbol:

Water as a form of torture is an inversion of the waters of baptism under the (grotesque) belief that it can deliver the heretic from his or her sins...Because of the broad symbolic meaning of 'water' in the Christian and Jewish traditions (e.g., creation, the great flood, the parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus and drowning of the Egyptians (!), and baptism as a symbolic death that gives life) the practice takes on profound religious meanings. Torture has many forms and meanings, of course, but torture by water as it arose in the Roman Catholic and Protestant Reformations drew some of its power and inspiration from theological convictions about repentance and salvation. It was, we must surely say, a horrific inversion of the best spirit of Christian faith and symbolism.( http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121394529/HTMLSTART   )

In other words, not only does waterboarding have Catholic roots—it began as an attempt to “weaponize" Baptism itself! Thank God Catholicism eventually came to its senses.

I can understand the temptation to torture, since this particular evil is often wrapped in the camouflage of good content. 

After all, torture’s victims are nearly always "the enemy," and may themselves be perpetrators of evil deeds. Generally, they are tortured on the belief they possess knowledge we need lest our enemies do us further harm. It may seem that only torture will gain us that knowledge, that only torture can avoid that harm.

Moreover, many people believe that "anything goes" in war. They are convinced that, once war breaks out, it is futile and dangerous to quibble over techniques used to defeat the enemy.

This "anything goes" ethic is not unknown in Catholic history -- it is precisely what made crusades distinct. Crusades were not "just wars" according to Catholic teaching, for just wars have strict rules of conduct. Crusades were “Holy Wars," where one fought not merely for a good cause, but to enact God's will.

The ruins of Bézier, not far from Carcassonne, remind us that when “anything goes,” mass atrocity is not far behind torture.

Crusaders besieged this small town in July 1209. When the Catholics refused to surrender their heretical Cathar neighbors for inquisition and torture, the crusaders began a mass slaughter of 10,000 to 20,000, Catholics and Cathars alike. It is said the religious commander of the crusade, Arnaud-Amaury, declared "Kill them all! God will recognize His own!"  The massacre frightened many other towns to surrender without resistance.

We have long since renounced such “anything goes” warfare. There are Catholic pacifists, and Catholics who embrace the "just war" tradition -- but the "anything goes" of Holy War is no longer a moral option for Catholics. Catholic moral teaching has firmly established this main ethics principle: the end never justifies immoral means.

For us, then, it does not matter if defeating the enemy is our noble intention. It does not matter if we seek information that will save lives. It does not even matter if torture is proven effective at acquiring such information. If torture is a crime under US law and international treaties, then good intentions or widespread political support do not make it less criminal. If torture is rationalized because "we are at war," that does not make it less crime—that makes it a war crime.

The clinching case for war crimes was, of course, the Nuremberg trials that convicted many who were "just following orders" in committing atrocities in World War II. From now on, both the international community and the Church agree, "anything goes" no longer goes. A crime is a crime is a crime. In time of war, a crime simply becomes a war crime. And even if we think our cause is God's will, the crime simply becomes a holy war crime. 

The idea of US war crimes rooted in Catholicism’s own perversion of the sacrament of Baptism appalls me. As Prof. Schweiker writes:

Baptism is the sacrament and practice of new life. In this practice the dignity of human beings as active agents of love in the world is both announced and enacted. The act of waterboarding, conversely, is a practice of death-dealing where the victim is violently deprived of his or her power to be an active force, a responsible agent, in the world. This practice is meant to induce fear and dread to the point that the victim is rendered passive, subservient, to the torturer's power…In this respect, the practice of waterboarding, despite it roots in Christian history, is, in fact, an affront to the very nature of Christian faith.

We Catholics have disavowed the very torture that some public figures now defend. It should shame Catholics that we gave waterboarding to the world, and that shame should fuel our resolve to end the shame of American torture forever.

        © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2009

#421: Would Jesus Send Them Back?

As tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors flood across our southern border, Americans face a growing moral challenge.  And this challenge touches on both our national character and on  Catholic identity itself. 

When Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick offered temporary shelter to 1000 immigrant youths, he unleashed a firestorm of protest in supposedly “liberal” Massachusetts.  Officials of the towns where Patrick proposed sending children for shelter said that their communities should not be burdened with the responsibility, explaining “we need to take care of our own.”

When Patrick compared the current crisis to the case in World War II, when a ship carrying Jewish families was refused entry to the United States (and those families mostly ended up in NAZI death camps), people howled that the comparison was inappropriate.  Letters to the editor argued that we should “send them back where they belong.” And on Saturday, July 26, thousands cheered a “Stop the Invasion” rally at the Massachusetts State House, chanting “Send them home!  Send them home!”

For many, it seems, these children are simply “illegals,” case closed.  As one rally speaker explained:

Our government sees no difference between law-abiding, freedom-loving, taxpaying citizens and lawbreaking aliens.

All this makes me fear that, as the ghost of nativism rears its ugly head, our national character might be recoiling from generations of social progress.

The fact is that hospitality to migrants in trouble is a longstanding tradition in this country.  I recall my third grade teacher announcing the arrival of Hungarian children in her hometown.  Refugees from the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, they came to the U.S., often unaccompanied, because it was not safe to stay home.

To an 8 year old like me, this announcement contained three life lessons.  First, the world beyond our borders was sometimes dangerous.  Second, our nation is seen to be--and was--a place of safe haven for “refugees” (which was a new word to me!).  Third, Americans by nature sacrifice for those who need our help.

Four decades later, my church work repeated these lessons, when some of my client parishes sponsored summer programs (offering housing, host families, recreation, and health care) for “Chernobyl Children.” These minors were fleeing the unsafe milk, crops, and spaces contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear explosion.  Despite presenting itself as a temporary relief program, “Chernobyl Children” naturally encouraged these young Russian guests to think of America as a desirable permanent home.

Catholic social teaching clearly calls for this kind of “open arms” embrace for refugees.  In fact, our tradition holds that people have a human right to migrate if their current location makes them threatened, endangered, oppressed, or destitute.

This certainly applies to at least some of the minors now flooding into the U.S..  And Catholic leaders are championing their cause. John Allen reports that Pope Francis himself sent a clear message to last week’s crisis summit in Mexico City:

Such a humanitarian emergency demands as the first urgent measure that these minors be protected and duly taken in. [They] cross the border under extreme conditions, in pursuit of a hope that in most cases turns out to be vain. (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/08/02/immigration-takes-its-place-pro-life-issue-for-catholic-church-leaders/LwwqcL3WlOhyWqMdiWtgqL/story.html)

The pope’s message echoes the consistent position of U.S. bishops, especially those from the areas most affected by border crossings.

Bishop Eusebio L Elizondo of Seattle heads the U.S. Bishops Migration Committee.  In a July 17 letter to members of Congress, he spoke against Republican efforts to roll back the legal protections for migrating children, saying “this vulnerable group is fleeing violence from organized criminal networks.”

This claim was verified by Richard Jones of Catholic Relief Services, who said:

We have seen the homicide rates grow, forced displacement increase and Mexican and Colombian drug cartels battle over who controls the moves through Central America…In El Salvador and Honduras, there are more gang members than police.

David Fiske, president of Marygrove College (a Catholic school in Detroit), issued a statement calling the situation a “classic” refugee crisis typical of “war-torn regions in which unprotected civilians will take extreme measures to reach a safe haven.”

That safe haven is, of course, the United States--yet millions of Americans (including, I fear, American Catholics) reject this historical badge of humanitarian honor in favor of “you don’t belong here” and “send them back.”

How striking is the difference between this attitude and the way Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez spoke of such migrants at a July 20 Mass held to focus attention on the crisis:

We celebrate the immigrant spirit that gives life to our great country and our great city.  As we all know, this land was built by the blood and sacrifice and the vision of missionaries and immigrants from every race of language and every nation.  Today we give thanks for all those men and women who left the places where they were born--to bring their faith and values, their talents and gifts--to create a new life and the new world here in America.  We thank God also for the spirit of our new immigrants--those  joining us every day to be our neighbors and friends and family members.

In addition to praising the migrant spirit itself, Gomez used the occasion to spell out the link between immigration policy--especially the treatment of refugees--and Catholic identity itself:

Pope Francis is right, and in the face of this emergency, our first duty must be to protect these children.  My brothers and sisters, what we are doing for these children as a church--it’s not about politics.  We all know that.  It’s about who we are as Catholics… We don’t do it because we are “social workers” or “nice people.” We do it because we are being faithful to our identity and duty as Catholics.  We do it because Jesus calls us to do it.

As a Catholic, I’m proud of my tradition’s strong and clear message that protecting migrants’ human rights reflects true gospel values.  As an American, I am troubled and even ashamed that so many citizens cannot see beyond the red tape of customs regulations and our newfangled and arbitrary immigration quotas.

Once we acknowledge that migrants in need are exercising their human rights, any talk of them as “illegals” becomes nit-picking.  It is like jailing a poor man for fishing to feed his family, just because he could not afford a fishing license.  The law is there to serve people, and for our common good.  Laws that violate a human right are unjust.  And, as Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote, unjust laws are not really laws at all--they are a form of violence.

For me, this begs two questions.

First, why are so many Americans afraid to embrace our longstanding tradition of humanitarian hospitality?  After all, any talk of who “belongs here” is just ignorant.  If “belongs here” means “was always here,” then nobody belongs here.  Even Native Americans migrated here from Asia, and that was long before Europeans and Africans migrated here, and that was long before Asians and South Americans migrated here.  Originally, all our ancestors “belonged” somewhere else--not here.

But millions of Americans continue to ignore this, or deny this, or just shut their eyes.  They prefer to believe that they have a “right” to be here while others do not--and they hide behind the law to avoid the truth.  What are they afraid of?

Second, I wonder about American Catholics.  Does ours faith impact our attitude?  Do U.S. Catholics know the Church’s position on migration and refugees?  Do we know what our traditional beliefs mean?  Do we know our own Catholic identity? 

Or are there millions of Catholics who, if they were asked “What would Jesus do?” would answer: “Jesus would send them home!”?

Pope Francis has called this response the “globalization of indifference,” and my worry is that too many Catholics believe such indifference is compatible with our faith.  I hope I am wrong.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013

#380: Dying Before Our Time?

Americans are likelier than people in other wealthy nations to think they are in good health. But they would be wrong…

In recent years, I have asserted that both scandal and mismanagement by the Catholic hierarchy have led to the loss of influence for Catholic Social Teaching. Thus one of the great sources of public wisdom in our culture ends up getting ignored or even dismissed. But no matter how badly the custodians of this tradition perform their duties, we American Catholics ignore that wisdom at our peril.

Now comes evidence that ignoring the lessons of Catholic Social Teaching is costing people their lives. A recently released study by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine (U.S. Health in International Perspectives: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health ) attempts to determine why the U.S. ranks last in life expectancy among all wealthy nations. (see http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13497&page=1)

The Gospel of John makes it clear that Christian faith and a full life are closely linked, when Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Catholic Social Teaching includes “Health Care” (one key to a full life) on its list of human rights. As one commentator explained: “Human fulfillment requires health, work, education, access, leisure, resources, security and many other things, which we define as human rights.”

But this massive study expands the reality behind these principles. Part 1 begins with this basic fact:

The United States ranks at or near the bottom on multiple measures of mortality and morbidity, in all age groups up to age 75, in males and females alike, and in virtually all other subgroups of the population. 
                                          
Then Part 2 it asks why. And Part 3 explores ideas for changing our course.

Last week’s wide media coverage of the report focused on its account of firearms deaths--the most newsworthy item, of course, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.

But this 424-page study is bigger than that. It is a landmark that offers for the first time a comprehensive answer to why Americans suffer a health disadvantage. For Catholics who believe good public health is a human right, this analysis touches not only on social justice, but on life and death.

The evidence shows that the U.S. health disadvantage is pervasive across people’s lifespan, gender, class, and even race: “Americans face shorter lives and greater illness at all ages.” In a word, we are sicker and we die sooner--even if we don’t know it.

The breadth of our health inferiority is stunning:

When compared with the average for other high-income countries, the United States fares worse in nine health domains: adverse birth outcomes; injuries, accidents, and homicides; adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; HIV and AIDS; drug-related mortality; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and disability.

Think a good medical care system is enough to guarantee “healthcare”? Think again! This pervasive disadvantage is determined by far more than our Medical Care System. The study outlines four more key areas that affect our health:

Life-styles and behaviors, social and economic circumstances, environmental influences, and public policies can also play key roles in shaping individual and community health. And a number of these factors may be critical to understanding why some high income countries experience significantly better health outcomes than the United States.

When all five are added up, the tally is bleak. This raises the question of whether our “American way of life” is killing us.

It is true that “ObamaCare” should expand the number of insured Americans, but its broad impact is to be determined.

As for personal behaviors, the study finds that 40% of all U.S. deaths are linked to tobacco, diet, inactivity, or drinking. I wonder: why are these behaviors more dangerous in the U.S. than elsewhere?

Certain important unhealthy or injurious behaviors are more common in the United States than peer countries, including high-caloric intake, drug misuse, unsafe driving practices, high-risk sex, and the use of firearms. Poverty, unemployment, and income inequality are more prevalent than in comparable countries, education has not kept pace with other countries, and social mobility is more limited.

On firearms, the data is appalling.

There is little evidence, the study says, that violent acts a more frequent here than elsewhere. Yet they cause more deaths. 48% of violent U.S. deaths (homicide, accidents, suicide) involve firearms. US citizens own 35 to 50% of all the civilian owned firearms in the world--four times as many semiautomatic and automatic weapons as the U.S. Army! Globally, 80% of the firearms deaths occur in the U.S. The U.S. homicide rate is 20 times higher than our peer countries, and 43 times higher for people aged 15-24. (Note: that’s not 20 % and 43% higher, it’s 2000% and 4300% higher).

The U.S. firearms suicide rate is 5.8 times higher than elsewhere and unintentional firearm deaths are 5.2 times higher. All these grim numbers produce a chilling conclusion:

The prevalence of firearms in the United States looms large as an explanation for higher death rates from violence, suicidal impulses, and accidental shootings.

As for social factors in the U.S. health inferiority, the study collected data on income and wealth, on education, on the occupation, and on racial and ethnic identity. Observing that, relative to other wealthy countries, the U.S. possesses a “weak social safety net,” the study finds that our decline in health and life expectancy since 1975 coincides with a 40-year decline in social conditions, and concludes we need to explain the connection:

Life expectancy and other health outcomes…in the United States began to lose pace with other high-income countries in the late 1970s, a trend that has continued to the present. During this same time…there has been a potentially important co-occurrence of worsening social conditions in the United States, notably a rise in income inequality, poverty, child poverty, single-parent households, divorce, and incarceration--all more pronounced than other rich nations.

These unsettling trends present a potentially important explanation for the U.S. Health disadvantage… An examination of these underlying causes can shed light on why the United States appears to be losing ground.

On policy, the study reviewed the nine key health factors from Part One and concluded that each factor has policy implications:

Policy is also relevant to the unfavorable social, economic, an environmental conditions identified of this report as potential contributors to the U.S. Health disadvantage. A variety of policies can contribute to high poverty rates, unemployment call-up, inadequate educational achievement, lost social mobility, and the absence of safety net programs to protect children and families from the consequences of these problems. However, identifying and implementing policy solutions is a formidable challenge.

This means that policy reform is key to longer life for Americans. Not just government policy, but also the policies of corporations and communities and nonprofit agencies and even churches. Those peer countries are ahead of us for a reason: they have instituted social systems aimed at the common good--aimed at a longer, healthier life for all their people. And they are succeeding:

In countries with the most favorable health outcomes, resource investments and infrastructure often reflect a strong societal commitment to the health and welfare of the entire population…Choices about political governance structures, and the social and economic conditions they reflect and shape, matter to overall levels of health.

The sad truth is that our health inferiority does not mean we have failed to achieve what they have achieved. Rather, the truth is this: we have not even tried! The study is clear about the consequences of doing nothing:

The consequences of not attending to the growing U.S. health disadvantage and reversing current trends are predictable: the United States will probably continue to fall further behind comparable countries on health outcomes and mortality. In addition to the personal toll this will take, the drain on life and health may ultimately affect the economy and the prosperity of the United States as other countries reap the benefits of healthier populations and more productive workforces. With so much at stake, especially for America’s youth, the United States cannot afford to ignore its growing health disadvantage. 

We Catholics claim to serve life. We inherit a moral tradition that requires an option to promote the common good. We belong to an institution that believes we all have a human right to the best health and fullest life possible.

From this viewpoint, too many of us have allowed this basic right of ours to be violated by inaction at all levels. Worse than that: we haven’t even noticed it happening. As if we were victims of mass anesthesia, we have slept through the decline in our health and our lifespan, dreaming that all was well. This study sounds a loud alarm that offers no snoozing. It is time we wake up and face the nation that is allowing its people to die before their time--before our time.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013