#475:Sex Abuse—From Denial to Action

In various ways, people are in denial of what it will take to finally solve the sex abuse crisis.

The Vatican Summit on Sex Abuse

Everyone wants to end the Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis once and for all.  We want abusers found and punished, we want officials who cover up held accountable, and we want concrete actions to prevent future of abuse.

But reactions to the recent Vatican summit have shown that many people are still in denial of the true nature, scope, complexity, and depth of the problem.  These denials take several forms, but they all have one thing in common: they erect barriers to action, and impede the end of the crisis.

So it becomes important to name and denounce each of these denials, for until they end the crisis will persist.

Denial #1: “We don’t have this problem.” From the start, the main focus of the Vatican summit was announced to be, not problem solving, but education.  Why?  Because many bishops remain in denial that there is a problem at all.  Especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, bishops have typically thought of—and dismissed-- sex abuse as “an American problem” or “a Western problem.” The summit aimed to correct this by informing the bishops of the cases emerging in their own regions and by the testimony of victims. 

We can only hope that bishops went home persuaded that they can no longer avoid addressing the problem in their own dioceses.

Denial #2. This is no time for Education, only Action.  The second denial comes from those who saw the summit wasting time and not proposing concrete solutions.  It’s easy to understand their disappointment, especially among the victims, who understand the problem best because they experienced it first-hand.  But they may overlook the global nature of the institution that must address this problem.

Clergy abuse has occurred on five continents and in many forms: child abuse, abuse of seminarians, abuse of young adults, abuse of women, and (especially in Africa) abuse of women religious.  Abuse will not end with one simple plan--both the problem and the church are too complex for that.  It does not help to persist in denying that many of those Bishops are themselves in denial and must first of all be persuaded to pay attention. Getting the world’s bishops on board is a real action, a first step. 

Denial #3: The Gays are to blame. A third, related denial involves denying the need for multiple solutions.  Since abuse takes different forms in different locations, “one size fits all” will not work.  Seeking one quick fix can actually hinder real solutions—and lead to false fixes that leave real problems untouched.

For example, when an observer like George Weigel claims that “In the so called developed world, the plague seem to have largely involve the sexual abuse or exploitation of young men,” he is not just wrong: he also displays a denial of the real facts. In the US crisis, the main body of victims has, in fact, been minors-- children!- -who are most vulnerable to priestly abuse of power.  Denying this reality focuses our attention on secondary issues that will lead us to false fixes.

Specifically, Weigel and those who think like him want to pin the crisis on gay priests, and argue that the simple solution is better screening and more strictly practiced celibacy. They portray the crisis as an ethical breach by gay men wrongly admitted to the priesthood. 

But this denies two central facts.  First, pedophiles are generally disordered individuals attracted to children, not homosexuals attracted other man.  These are mostly two different populations. I know many good celibate priests who are gay, and scapegoating or stigmatizing them will solve nothing.

Second, gay priests who fail to maintain a celibate life break a church rule, just like heterosexual priests who have secret mistresses. Officials who prey on students or subordinates also commit an ethical breach by abusing their authority.  But pedophiles who prey on minors of either sex commit a crime.  Thus, while in other locations clergy sex abuse may be about violating church rules and moral teachings, in the U.S. has it has been especially about violating the law. 

And bishops who enabled this may also have violated the law (just this week, French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for not going to authorities about the alleged abuse of minors by a priest).

Denying that the Church in the US and elsewhere has a problem with criminals in the clergy will only block real solutions.

Denial #4: This is mainly a problem of sexual immorality. The horrible history of bishops recycling abusers to new parishes – and thus enabling them to rape more kids– was caused precisely by bishops thinking this was about sin – a moral problem that confession, repentance, and penance would solve.  But no, that never worked, because the real problem was (1) an abuse of power by (2) pathologically disordered people.  The only solution was to strip such men of their priestly power, and (if and when treatment failed) isolate them from potential victims.

To deny this, and talk as if the abusers’ evil was about sexual immorality, prevents us from tackling the twin dangers of pathology and power.  This is not primarily about sinners who must repent; it is about criminals who must be stopped.

Denial #5:  The Pope can fix this right now.  The failure to discipline bishops who cover up abuse or simply mismanaged controlling the abusers has of course worsened the scandal.  And in some ways a cover-up is worse than the original abuses.  But both canon law and church structure give bishops a high degree of autonomy, even in relationship to the pope.  Many decry the slow speed of action from the top, and Pope Francis has probably deserved some criticism for being too slow to believe and to act on allegations against bishops.

But Andrew J. Bacevich offers another angle. Bacevich is Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, and  a retired US Army Colonel. He is also a life-long Catholic, and he recently observed that a realistic view of church structures suggests that its pace, while not up to many expectations, is nonetheless reasonable:  

Not without cause, critics have lambasted the Catholic Church (to which I belong) for being slow to address the epidemic of clergy sex abuse. Yet when it comes to acknowledging institutional failure and initiating remedial action, Rome moves with gazelle-like swiftness in comparison with the Pentagon. Pope Francis knows that he has a serious problem on his hands. In Washington, the defense secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff either haven’t noticed or don’t care that the military…has achieved a less than stellar record.

Thinking Francis can end the crisis by papal fiat only obscures the need for a systematic reform of procedures and policies that can be led by Francis but must be supported by the world’s bishops-- procedures and policies that will probably vary by region depending on the shape of abuse there and local legal systems.

Denial #6: Band-aids will do.  Thinking such reforms will prevent future trouble is yet another barrier to enabling ending the crisis, because it denies the underlying causes.  Dealing with those requires solid answers to two questions: (1) how did this horror happen in the first place?  And (2) why did it continue on unreported and unsolved for so long?

 Francis himself has suggested the answer to number (2) by saying that there will be no solution to this crisis as long as clericalism exists: “To say "no" to abuse is to say an emphatic "no" to all forms of clericalism.” (see CrossCurrents #471 “Ending Clericalism, Our ‘Original Sin’”).

And I have argued that answering number (1) requires us to examine an entire range of dysfunctions within the Church: our attitudes toward sexuality in general, our treatment of people who violate sexual rules, our pressures on people who do not fit the norms, our seminary cultures, our demand that all priests must be celibate, our myth about the asexual “purity” of ordained men, our acceptance of the clericalism, our moralization of all things sexual and our blindness about pathological disorders (see CrossCurrents #472 “How Could This Horror Happen?”).

Failure to acknowledge these two underlying issues and failure to address them will leave our Church vulnerable to future abuses of pathology and power. This crisis is not something that simply emerged in the last generation or two; the potential for this crisis has been baked into church structures for a century or more.  Unless we get to the bottom of that, we will not be finally clear of the crisis.

It is all too easy to fall into denying just how complex and profound this crisis is.  But we must fight against all such denials, for each denial blocks our path to get the Church right again.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 201

#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

#431: We Need the Right Kind of Leadership

Events in Ireland El Salvador can teach powerful lessons for the leaders of the Church in the United States. 

The recent Pew Research Center study on religious affiliation brings disquieting news: the number of American Catholics who have stopped practicing their faith has increased, especially among the millennial generation, since the last Pew study in 2007.  The Catholic Church is losing members faster than ever, and faster than any other Christian church.

But this begs the question: how can we stop, or even reverse, this trend?  I suspect there is no single answer, but last week’s events in two other countries suggest that one answer is: we need the right kind of leadership.

These countries are Ireland and El Salvador, and their contrasting experience shows the difference between two kinds of leadership: the right kind and the wrong kind.

This contrast may surprise us, since on the surface these two countries, though distant, are similar in several respects.  Both are small countries with small populations  (Ireland 4.6 million, El Salvador 6.3 million).  Both have overwhelmingly Catholic populations.  Both countries’ church hierarchies have had powerful cultural and political influence.  Both share a history of oppression at the hands of a foreign colonizer.  And both have seen grinding poverty.

Yet last week we saw sharply contrasting events.  In Ireland, the vast majority of Catholics, refusing to follow the Irish hierarchy’s opposition to same sex marriage, approved a constitutional revision legalizing civil marriage between gays.  That same week, thousands of Salvadorans attended (and millions celebrated) the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, soon to be Saint Oscar Romero.

Common sense tells us that leaders cannot lead if no one follows.  This raises a new question: why did Romero inspire such following, while the Irish hierarchy inspired rejection?  As we Americans witness so many (especially young) Catholics rejecting their Church, the question is both practical and urgent.  So the cases of Ireland and El Salvador are not just relevant, but also instructive.

One can argue that both the Irish and the Salvadoran church leaders have bad track records.  Once Ireland gained independence from Britain, the country’s clergy were among its most powerful figures (some have called Ireland at that time a Vatican colony!). Before becoming Dublin’s archbishop, John Charles McQuaid was a major architect of the Irish constitution, constructed on the principle that Irish law should reflect Catholic doctrine. The constitution specifically notes the "special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church" in national life. As Scholar Timothy White wrote:

By the time [Irish leader Eamon] De Valera wrote and Ireland enacted a new constitution in 1937, the Catholic religion was guaranteed a special role in society and the entire document adapted principles of corporatism that were popular in Church thinking at that time….De Valera’s constitution provided an effective and formal merger between the Catholic Church and the Irish nationalist elites.

Ireland was, as the New York Times wrote, “a theocracy in all but the name.” Many public institutions (like the schools) were in fact run by the Church. Several generations were thus raised by a domineering and harsh hierarchy who taught a version of Catholicism obsessed with rules and sex and guilt.  The result was not only a morally repressive culture but an appalling array of oppressive Catholic institutions (from parishes to schools to hospitals to convents to orphanages to homes for single mothers) that achieved the psychological and even physical enslavement of many Irish Catholics.

In my first parish job, in 1972, I asked the pastor and his assistant priest, both Irish nationals, why they had come to America to work.  Without hesitation or reflection, both give the same answer: “I came to escape the Irish clergy.” Since then, revelations of widespread clergy sex abuse and exploitation of girls has reinforced popular disgust with the hierarchy.

In El Salvador, the story was slightly different.  Independence from Spain left in place a moneyed elite that owned most of the country’s land and dominated its institutions, including the Church itself.  The Salvadoran clergy, as part of the country’s small educated elite, came mostly from the wealthy landowner families.  This was especially true of many Salvadoran bishops.

Thus El Salvador’s Catholic leadership maintained a longtime partnership with the ruling elite (including the military) that maintained its status by perpetuating the gap between rich and poor.  By preaching that their suffering was God’s will, the hierarchy helped keep the poor in their place.

But by Romero’s time, the hierarchy was shifting its mission, as Vatican II (1962-1965) inspired change in the Church in Latin America. At the historic Medellín (Colombia) conference in 1968, the region’s bishops decided to abandon their traditional role as defender of the status quo and to support the poor struggling for social justice.

Romero was known as a conservative, skeptical of both Vatican II and Medellín. Yet on his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, Romero became almost immediately outspoken in opposing injustice and defending the poor. He had witnessed the suffering poor and government violence even against priests in his previous role as bishop in Santiago de María, which made him distrust authorities and fear for his people.

Oscar Romero had the courage to break with bad leadership and lead another way.  He took the side of the poor, decried their oppression, and became a prophetic voice for all the marginalized and destitute of El Salvador.  But this break made him not only a threat to the elites but even a traitor to his class, and his punishment was assassination during Mass at the hands of a government-sponsored death squad.

The 1980 Funeral of Oscar Romero

Thus Romero became a blessed martyr because he championed the suffering poor against their powerful oppressors.  In this he communicated the truth of the Gospel.

But the Irish hierarchy, meanwhile, was not the partner of an elite oppressor - -it was itself the perpetrator of oppression.  And unlike Romero, it never broke from its harsh and abusive practices.  Instead, as Ireland grew more prosperous and Ireland’s links to other countries (especially the U.S.) grew stronger, the nation’s culture drifted away from the rule of bishops.  In effect, the Irish began to assert a “second independence” (first from the British, now from the Church).  The huge turnout for the gay marriage referendum and a 2-to-1 vote in favor was the result.  For many, the vote was not so much about redefining civil marriage, or about accepting gays, or even about expanding constitutional rights.  Instead, for many Irish voters, this was their “Declaration of Independence” from the Catholic hierarchy.

For me, the lessons from El Salvador and Ireland are obvious and important.  First, leadership that distorts Catholic tradition to serve some other agenda (especially the preservation power) is bad leadership, so finally people refuse to follow.  Second, defending systematic inequality as God’s will is one such distortion of our faith.  Third, rule by sexual repression is another such a distortion of faith.  Fourth, only by breaking away from such distortions and preaching the authentic Gospel message can Catholic leaders restore people’s confidence in their own leaders.  Only then will people follow the leader.

For American Catholics, these lessons invite reflection.  If we are losing members, especially young members, is our leadership somehow responsible?  Has our hierarchy championed the Gospel message?  Has it been, like Jesus, committed to “preach good news to the poor”? Has it, like Jesus, chosen “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed”?

Or has our hierarchy too often complacently accepted the growing gap between the 1% in the 99%?  Has it too often been sidetracked by its “culture wars” obsession with all things sexual?  Has it lost the trust of millions of millennials by its horrific failure to protect children and discipline their priestly molesters? 

In short, is the hemorrhage of U.S. Catholics best understood not as a crisis of faith among the young, but rather as a crisis of credibility of among our leaders?

Blessed Oscar Romero inspires millions of Catholics (in America as well as El Salvador) as a model of holy, courageous, and effective leadership.  Does he also inspire our bishops?  Can they become credible leaders like him?  If yes, perhaps more of us will be inspired to follow them.

© 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

#410: Who Wants Peace On Earth?

Pope Francis is first and foremost an evangelist, not a politician.  But Catholic Social Doctrine has always carried political implications. And the politics imbedded in Francis’ statements so far are quite clear, especially when it comes to committing ourselves to a realistic program for peace.

For Christians, peace is always a timely topic, but especially so now, as the 12 days of Christmas unfold.  The Christmas narratives themselves tell the birth of Jesus bringing the promise of “peace on earth,” and on January 1 the church also observes World Day of Peace.  In addition, Christmas 2013 ended the 50^th anniversary year of Pope John XXIII’s landmark encyclical “Pacem in Terris.”

Pope Francis thus finished his first calendar year in office by issuing a message (dated January 1) entitled “Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace.” This document, together with Francis’ November message “The Joy of the Gospel,” offers a broad view of this pope’s vision for the world, as well as a powerful challenge to the world’s leaders.

One consistent theme emerges from these documents: peace is not possible using the current political and economic models that dominate world affairs.  In this, Francis echoes every previous pope of the last 50 years.  But if he (and they) are right, it means that the price of peace is to reject those models and replace them with something better.  But who among our leaders is willing to do that--or even suggest it?  In short, we must ask: who among them really wants peace on earth, and is willing to pay the price?

Specifically, Frances proposes that we will have to pay for peace in two ways.  First, we will have to reverse inequality.  Second, we will have to establish a culture of fraternity.

Inequality. In The Joy of the Gospel, Francis calls inequality “the root of all social evils,” and argues that peace will not be possible as long as inequality continues:

Until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence…This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root…Inequality eventually engenders a violence which recourse to arms cannot and never will be able to resolve…In the end, a peace which is not the result of integral development will be doomed.

To be concrete, Francis argues further that our current system is unjust “at its root” because of its blind-faith belief that free-market growth will solve our social ills:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

In light of this, the pope calls for urgent reforms to our current models:

 The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed…As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.

Fraternity.  In his January 1 message, Francis is equally clear that fraternity is essential to peace:

A lively awareness of our relatedness helps us to look upon and to treat each person as a true sister or brother; without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a solid and lasting peace…Fraternity generates social peace because it creates a balance between freedom and justice, between personal responsibility and solidarity, between the good of individuals and the common good.

He refers once again to the danger of living in a world marked by “the globalization of indifference,” and cites Benedict XVI on the paradoxical challenge posed by the new globalized economy: “Globalization, as Benedict XVI pointed out, makes us neighbours, but does not make us brothers.”

Francis laments that “contemporary ethical systems remain incapable of producing authentic bonds of fraternity,” and cites the Biblical story of Cain and Abel:

The story of Cain and Abel teaches that we have an inherent calling to fraternity, but also the tragic capacity to betray that calling. This is witnessed by our daily acts of selfishness, which are at the root of so many wars and so much injustice: many men and women die at the hands of their brothers and sisters who are incapable of seeing themselves as such, that is, as beings made for reciprocity, for communion and self-giving.

Only by fraternity, Francis argues, will we outgrow inequality and poverty.  Noting the need for policies which can lighten an excessive imbalance between incomes, Francis invokes a teaching that has been part of Catholic tradition for seven centuries:

One also sees the need for policies which can lighten an excessive imbalance between incomes. We must not forget the Church’s teaching on the so-called social mortgage, which holds that although it is lawful, as Saint Thomas Aquinas says, and indeed necessary “that people have ownership of goods,” insofar as their use is concerned, “they possess them as not just their own, but common to others as well, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as themselves”... In this regard I would like to remind everyone of that necessary universal destination of all goods which is one of the fundamental principles of the Church’s social teaching. Respect for this principle is the essential condition for facilitating an effective and fair access to those essential and primary goods which every person needs and to which he or she has a right.

Once again, this leads Francis to conclude that our current models must change:

The succession of economic crises should lead to a timely rethinking of our models of economic development and to a change in lifestyles

All this provides much food for thought.

For one thing, Francis is the first pope from the third world, where the gap between rich and poor, and the absence of a stable “middle class,” has been widespread since the colonial era in both Latin America and Africa.  Francis himself is eyewitness to such inequality, for until his election he lived and worked in the notorious slums of Buenos Aires.  Thus his condemnation of inequality strikes close to his home.

But it also strikes close to our home too.  For among all advanced industrial countries of the so-called “first world,” the U.S. has by far the greatest inequality--hence the now-familiar references to some Americans as “the 1%” and to the rest of us as “the 99%.” In this, the U.S. resembles most third world nations more than it resembles its peers in Europe and Japan.  This is not because we never had a middle class, but because the real income of most Americans has been falling since the 1970s, while a small percentage have enjoyed astronomical increases in income.

Yet if anyone suggests aggressive measures to redistribute income, cries of “socialist!” And “Marxist!” explode on the airwaves, the Internet, and in the press.  What the new pope is making crystal clear is that his call for reform is rooted, not in political theories or parties, but in centuries of Catholic tradition.

In fact, it every pope in the last 50 years has decried growing income gaps.  Even during the Cold War, pope after pope called for less obsession with East-West conflicts and more concern about North-South relations - - since the prosperity of the first world came largely at the expense of poverty in the third world.

The call for fraternity is also deeply rooted in Catholic tradition.  Catholic social doctrine has long taught that the common good trumps private interests and profits.  Christians have always believed the gospel notion that we are, in fact, our brother’s keeper.  We believe that if privileges exclude others, then privilege must be rejected.  We believe that love of neighbor is our second commandment, and is “like the first” (love of God).  We have always believed that the poor are blessed, and that caring for the weak is a hallmark of authentic Christian faith.

We Americans are proud to proclaim ourselves the world’s champion of “freedom,” but Pope Francis is saying that this is not enough to create peace.  Freedom can allow us to exclude others, to fail in brotherly love, and to promote competitive “survival of the fittest” systems that create winners and losers (Martin Scorsese’s new film The Wolf of Wall Street depicts the excesses this can produce).

Ironically, the pope’s view reflects neither Marxist-socialist perspectives nor America’s one-eyed focus on freedom.  If we must find a political partner, recall that the French Revolution proclaimed not only “Liberty” but also “Equality” and “Fraternity.” Without arguing the merits of that revolution and its legacy, it reflects this pope’s conviction that freedom untempered by equality and fraternity cannot bring us peace on earth. Francis is first and foremost an evangelist, not a politician.  But Catholic social teaching has always carried political implications. And the politics imbedded in Francis’ statements so far are quite clear, especially when it comes to committing ourselves to a realistic program for peace.

First, Francis has positioned the Catholic Church as the largest anti-capitalist voice in the world.  Second, he has positioned the papacy as the one public office capable of commanding a global audience for his inspiring vision. Third, he has challenged us to embrace fraternity and equality as the essential foundations of a peaceful world. 

Practically speaking, this means that peace on earth will only come if we alter the current capitalist model to reverse inequality and restore concern for the common good.  And it means placing concern for others above self interest. This is precisely the plea Francis makes for the world’s leaders:

I ask God to give us more politicians capable of sincere and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots – and not simply the appearances – of the evils in our world!..I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor! It is vital that government leaders and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare.

The question is: if this is what it takes to get Peace on Earth--who wants that?

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014