June 2010 Archives

It's true enough, as Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena points out, that when the Supreme Court declines to hear a case, that cannot be taken as a pronouncement on the merits. Still, it's interesting that the court lacked four votes to take up Doe v. Holy See, the Oregon lawsuit in which an anonymous plaintiff is seeking to get the Vatican to pay damages for his having been abused years ago by a now deceased priest. The case involves a threshold issue over whether such a suit is allowable under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and you'd think that if the justices considered it a slam dunk for the defense, they would have granted certiorari rather than let the trial go forward.

Be that as it may, the question of whether priests are employees of the Holy See seems a bit more complicated than recognizing (as Lena would have it) that the Holy See does not pay their salary and benefits or exercise day-to-day control over their work. The person who does those things is the bishop, and these days Catholic bishops themselves look increasingly like Vatican employees.

Admittedly, Catholic ecclesiology does not neatly track U.S. employment law, but if the pope hires and fires bishops, and can create commissions of bishops to put a national church in order, and can order cardinals not to criticize each other, then it sure looks as though they are wholly subject to papal authority. So why exactly should the sins of these sons not be visited upon the Holy Father?

Coincidentally, the Supreme Court's decision to let Holy See proceed occurred the same week that the Vatican announced a replacement for Cardinal Walter Kaspar, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Commission for Religious Relations with Jews. When Pope Benedict was cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the two got into a spirited public debate over Kaspar's charge that the Vatican was arrogating inappropriate centralized power to itself over the authority of the bishops. Ratzinger vigorously denied it, of course, but one might see Doe v. Holy See as a Kasparian chicken coming home to roost.

Update: Interesting reflection on the issue by Anthony Ruff O.S.B. over on Pray Tell.

So Sen. Grassley plays Robert Bork's "how can you admire that activist Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak" card:

"I am troubled by the fact that you hold up Barak as a judicial role model," Grassley said. "He's been described as creating a degree of judicial power undreamed of by most U.S. justices."

Grassley quoted Barak saying "a judge has a role" in the lawmaking process and asked Kagan if she agreed.

Kagan said she did not, but also noted that Barak operated in a fundamentally different system -- one without a written constitution.

"Justice Barak's philosophy is so different from anything that we would use or would want to use in the United States," she said.

Instead, she said, she admired Barak for creating an independent judiciary in a young state surrounded by enemies.

"He is very often called the John Marshall of the State of Israel because he was central in creating an independent judiciary for Israel and in ensuring that Israel -- a young nation, a nation threatened from its very beginning in existential ways and a nation without a written constitution -- he was central in ensuring that Israel, with all those kinds of liabilities would become a very strong rule of law nation," she said.

In other words: Attack Barak and you're attacking the State of Israel. Make my day, Republicans!

Reporting on yesterday's 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the NYT's Adam Liptak described the case as a clash between "religious freedom and antidiscrimination principles." But actually it was a proxy war. Neither religious freedom nor antidiscrimination clashed as such.

At issue was the refusal of California's Hastings School of Law to recognize--i.e. provide official recognition and material support for--the Christian Legal Society (CLS), because it required all members to disavow "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle--i.e. no unrepentant gays and lesbians need apply. This violated the school's policy requiring student groups to admit all comers.

As Justice Alito's dissent points out, the school had adopted its all-comers policy out of a belief that its previous antidiscrimination policy would be harder to defend before the Court. It's hard to disagree with the Times' editorial that, whatever the tactical advantage of "all-comers," a straightforward ban on discrimination was the moral way to go. Still, "all-comers" does represent antidiscrimination policy by a kind of force majeur.

That religious freedom was only obliquely engaged is thanks to the Court's 1990 decision, Employment Division v. Smith, wherein Justice Scalia managed to get five votes to establish the rule that any "neutral law of general applicability" is sufficient to turn back a claim of religious free exercise. As Justice Ginsburg's plurality decision put it in a footnote:

In Smith, the Court held that the Free Exercise Clause does not inhibit enforcement of otherwise valid regulations of general application that incidentally burden religious conduct. Id., at 878-882. In seeking an exemption from Hastings' across-the-board all-comers policy, CLS, we repeat, seeks preferential, not equal, treatment; it therefore cannot moor its request for accommodation to the Free Exercise Clause.

Simply put, prior to Smith, CLS would have had a straight-up opportunity to argue that the Free Exercise Clause gave it a right to be exempt from Hastings' (preferably) antidiscrimination policy. It's ironic that Scalia, who signed Alito's dissent, has made it much harder for religious groups to advance their claims, and telling that the dissent cites various earlier Free Exercise cases but does not so much as mention Smith.

The latest.

Well, maybe a little bit. Gallup shows an increase in self-reported "at least once a week" or "almost every week" church attendance over the past two-and-a-half years--from 42.1 percent in 2008 to 42.8 percent in 2009 to 43.1 in the first half of 2010. Meanwhile, the Labor Department's annual American Time Use Survey (ATUS) shows an uptick in "spiritual and religious activities," from .14 hours per day per adult in 2008 to .15 hours per day in 2009--i.e from 8.4 to 9 minutes. Although the Gallup result should not be taken as accurate in itself--it's simply not the case that Americans attend church in such numbers--it does mean something that more people are reporting attendance, especially in light of the ATUS.

Gallup notes that the inching up has occurred during a period when Americans' confidence about the economy has also been increasing, That's something of a counter-intuitive result as far as Gallup is concerned. Back when the recession hit, the organization released a poll showing no increase in church attendance, opining:

It is not an unreasonable conjecture that the current recession would cause Americans to increasingly turn to religion as a surcease from their economic or personal sorrow. But that does not appear to be the case.

Actually, evidence from the Great Depression would suggest that Americans, if anything, turn away from religion during hard times. Why? Perhaps because they have bought into the old Calvinist (and new Prosperity Gospel) idea that being right with God will benefit you materially. When that doesn't work...well, maybe you've been sold a line of goods. Why go to a place that hasn't kept its part of the bargain? 

On June 29, 1106, a Jewish intellectual named Moses Sephardi had himself baptized into the Catholic church in Huesca, Spain. Taking the name Peter Alfonsi, he went on to achieve fame throughout Christian Europe as an astronomer and author. In his Dialogues against the Jews, he presents his present self arguing against his former self in the most important anti-Jewish polemic of its era.

Just as Peter Abelard (at just the same time) established the Western model of the Parisian celebrity philosopher, so Peter Alfonsi established the model of the celebrity apostate. It's a good gig because your new community treasures the special insights you have, or claim to have, into the (false) world of your old community. Moreover, you represent in your own distinguished person the triumph of the new community over the old.

The communities in question can be secular as well as, strictly speaking, religious. At the height of the Cold War, America's great apostate from Communism (aka the God the Failed) was Whittaker Chambers. These days, those hostile to Israel embrace anti-Zionist Jewish writers like Norman Finkelstein. Those hostile to Islam have a range of picks.

For example, the secularist intelligentsia have Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch activist now ensconced at the American Enterprise Institute. And the evangelicals have Ergun Caner, Dean of the Baptist School of Theology at Liberty Baptist University. Or at least they thought they did.

Caner's problem, however, is that he may be a faux apostate--not the ex-jihadi from Turkey he claims to have been but a kid born in Sweden and raised in Ohio who chose the religion of his Christian mother rather than his Turkish father. Later this month, Liberty will release a report determining whether he really is the apostate he claims to be.

In the meantime, it might be a good idea for the rest of us think about dialing back on apostates of all sorts. The trouble with apostasy is that it's too good a gig. The passion of the convert, real or faux, connects with audiences only too eager to hear the worst. That's not a healthy connection.

Update: Well, Caner's gone as president of the seminary--but is staying on as a member of the faculty. 

Will Kagan be asked? I think maybe.

...the go-to source is Joanna Brooks, over at Religion Dispatches. In the latest of her posts, Brooks explains why Mike Lee's victory in Utah's GOP Senate primary Tuesday was not the clear-cut Tea Party triumph that some--i.e. WaPo's David Weigel--imagine it to be. In Utah, Mormon roots run very deep, and you can't tell the players without a genealogical scorecard.

Bottom line: Lee's as hooked into the multi-generational Mormon past as you can be, while his opponent, Tim Bridgewater, is not. That's not to say that Lee didn't have some Tea Party support. But as Brooks points out, the movement has distinct regional variants, and in Utah it's got a strong admixture of Mormon establishmentarianism: "Call it Brigham Tea?"

Would Jewish conservatives embrace Mike Huckabee as the GOP presidential nominee in 2012? Zev Chafets--whose book, A Match Made in Heaven, deals with Jewish-Evangelical support for Israel--suggests as much in Ariel Levy's profile of Huckabee in the current New Yorker: "There's a lot of Jewish money on the right that's got to go someplace, especially if Obama continues to be perceived as unfriendly to Israel." I'm skeptical.

From what I can gather, if Jewish Republicans are lining up behind anyone at this early date, it's Mitt Romney. He strikes them as a serious guy, a businessman, and he also hails from a religious minority. As for Huckabee, while they like him personally--many people do--his evangelical roots and base of support give them the willies.

The Huckster does some whining to Levy about being pigeon-holed as The Evangelical in the field:

"I'm not one-dimensional," he told me. "I was the governor of Arkansas for ten years! The lieutenant-governor for three! To say that I stepped out of a pulpit last Sunday and said, 'Hey, I think I'll be President!' No, I've paid my dues.

Dues he's paid, but he was also present at the creation of the religious right, and his social agenda hasn't varied since. Nor was he averse to playing the religion card against his rivals--especially Romney--during the 2008 primary season. 

So far as Jewish conservatives are concerned, it's one thing to celebrate the Christian Zionism of American evangelicals. It's quite another to help one of them into the White House. Israel isn't the key to conservative Jewish money; no serious Republican candidate these days is going to be anything less than an enthusiastic supporter. Separation of church and state--government-sponsored prayer, the teaching of evolution, faith-based social services, religion in the military,etc.--is where the rubber hits the road. 

Criminality, ultra-orthodox style: Rubashkin and Ben Haim, my take.

Over at Religious Connections, Frink sticks in the shiv, so why do I have a hard time resisting the urge to let bygones be bygones? Maybe it's that lapdog eagerness for approval, on display in Jesus Camp. Maybe it was seeing him drag has disgraced butt around Arizona in Alexandra Pelosi's documentary.

The world he made just got too big for him, so now he's back to square one, with another church to grow. Now he's a little open and affirming, now a little down on the religious right. As lying hypocrites go, he seems like the boy next door, trying to make a buck the only way he knows how. His 15 minutes won him a permanent place in the rogues' gallery of American religion. Peace be with him, even if there is no peace to be had.

My response to Beliefnet colleagues.

I'm totally cool with any fan of The Blues Brothers, so if Osservatore Romano wants to claim it as a "Catholic classic," who am I to cavil?

No question, Elrod's and Jake's encounter with the Penguin (Sr. Mary Stigmata) is one of the great scenes of Hollywood Catholicism. The premise--how to save the orphanage--is an homage to the The Bells of Saint Mary's. (And the scene with Curtis (Cab Calloway) in the basement is an homage to the basement scene in Elmer Gantry, where Burt Lancaster gets a meal from a black pastor.)

That said, it's not the spiritually dessicated, guilt-based Catholicism but the ecstatic black church that provides the movie's spiritual oomph:

Curtis: Well, the Sister was right. You boys could use a little churching up. Slide on down to the Triple Rock, and catch Rev. Cleophus. You boys listen to what he's got to say!
Jake: Curtis, I don't want to listen to no jive-ass preacher talking to me about Heaven and Hell!
Curtis: Jake, you get wise! You get to church!

Rev. Cleophus is, of course, James Brown, and what follows is the all-time send-up of movieland African-American worship. Jake does see the light--"The Band...The Band." He'll save the orphanage by reconstituting their blues band.

If The Blues Brothers is a Catholic classic, it's by way of celebrating an ethno-religious urban culture peculiar to mid-20th-century Chicago, in which white Catholic immigrants from Europe met black Protestant immigrants from Mississippi. In no other city in America is it possible to imagine a couple of white kids raised in a Catholic orphanage becoming enchanted with the blues the African Americans brought north, and sallying forth to save the orphanage by playing it themselves.

So what's up with the Southern Baptist Convention deciding to take a, well, pro-regulatory stance on the oil disaster in the Gulf? Just a week ago, Richard Land, SBC public policy pooh-bah, was out there defending BP and blaming "the environmental movement." That was a far cry from the SBC's June 16 resolution calling on the government

to act determinatively and with undeterred resolve to end this crisis; to fortify our coastal defenses; to ensure full corporate accountability for damages, clean-up and restoration; to ensure that government and private industry are not again caught without planning for such possibilities; and to promote future energy policies based on prudence, conservation, accountability, and safety.

The SBC's resolutions committee chair is Southern Seminary dean Richard Moore, who has also been the Convention's point man for climate change. Heretofore he's been a vigorous opponent of things like the carbon tax, but he happens to hail from Biloxi, where the effects of BP's mess are, shall we say, hard to ignore. Back on June 1, Moore wrote a blog post that reads, in part:

For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.

We've had an inadequate view of human sin.

Because we believe in free markets, we've acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he "believes in young people."

But is it just that Moore has seen the light of day in the black blobs of oil washing up on his native shore? The SBC, desperate to attract young people to stem its ebbing numbers, may have come to the realization that the Gospel of Richard is not exactly advancing the Great Commission Resurgence. Hewing to inerrancy and the other Baptist fundamentals doesn't mean you have to sign on to the entire GOP policy agenda. Could we be witnessing the first cracks in the SBC's Landian edifice? 

h/t Peter Smith

So now we know: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cares more about its authority than being right. That's the clear import of a fine piece of reporting by NCR's John Allen on the split between the USCCB and the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) over the health care bill (which, you'll recall, the former opposed and the latter supported).

Writing from the CHA's annual meeting in Denver, Allen got Cardinal Francis George, the USCCB's current capo, on the phone from St. Petersburg, where the bishops are assembled in semi-annual conclave. The cardinal allowed as how the substance of the bill was subject to different interpretations: "different lawyers have said different things." The core issue, he insisted, was "about the nature of the church itself, one that has to concern the bishops." As in: "The bishops have to protect their role in governing the church..."This may be a narrow disagreement, but it has exposed a very large principle."

In other words, never mind that faithful and knowledgeable Catholic organizations and officials might actually do a better job of applying agreed-upon doctrines of faith and morals to a complex piece of legislation than we do. It's our way or the highway.

Amazingly, Allen managed to find one bishop who begged to differ. "I've been associated in one way or another with the episcopal conference of the United States since 1972," St. Pete Bishop Robert Lynch told him. "I have never before this year heard the theory that we enjoy the same primacy of respect for legislative interpretation as we do for interpretation of the moral law."

"I think this theory needs to be debated and discussed by the body of bishops," said Lynch, who sits on the CHA's Board of Trustees.

I wouldn't hold my breath for an open debate. But I also wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of bishops feel that the USCCB got way too deep into the legislative weeds on health care, and that there needs to be room--in line with the principles of conscience laid out in their own document on political choice, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship--for honest disagreement among those officially identified with the church.

In the meantime, it's worth bearing in mind that the USCCB has no authority to bind a single American bishop to its opinions. So let's suppose that one of them--Bishop Lynch, say--had decided to dissent from the party line and embrace the CHA's position on the health care bill (just as a few conservative bishops dissented from Faithful Citizenship). Would that have meant, under the George Theory of Episcopal Governance, that all Catholic institutions and officials in the Diocese of St. Petersburg had to support the bill too?

For some months now, folks concerned about the federal government's engagement with freedom of religion abroad have been agitating for the White House to get around to naming the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Yesterday, it finally did so, and I'm afraid they are not going to be happy.

The nominee is Suzan Johnson Cook, a Baptist pastor from the Bronx known for stirring preaching and writing spiritual self-help books. (In a short profile in the New York Times in 2002, Jane Gross described her as "Billy Graham and Oprah rolled into one.") Other than serving as a chaplain to the New York Police Department, Dr. Sujay's (as she styles herself) only government experience was as a White House fellow attached to the domestic policy council in the Clinton White House. Her international experience is, as far as can be told, nil. (She is identified as president and founder of the Worldwide Wisdom Institute, but what that is other than a line on a resume is impossible to tell from her website or anywhere else on the Web.)

Her predecessors as Ambassador-at-Large were, in the Clinton Administration, Robert A. Seiple, who came to the job having served as president for 11 years of World Vision, Inc., the huge Christian relief and development agency. In the Bush administration, it was John V.Hanford, who had spent 14 years working on international religious issues for Sen. Richard Lugar and who also played a critical role in drafting the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, which established the Ambassador-at-Large position.

The position is a tricky one. Not only does the office holder have precious little line authority but also has to deal with both the State Department's need to balance human rights against other policy priorities and the free-wheeling U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has its own funding and staff, and no qualms about taking potshots at U.S. allies with less than stellar religious freedom records.

In short, this is not a bully pulpit. Which is the one place where Johnson Cook seems to know her way around.

On Beliefnet.

Huh?

Well, take a look at the pope's response last Thursday to a request from a European priest that he "speak on 'the profundity and authentic significance of ecclesiastical celibacy' also in view of the 'worldly criticisms' to which it has been subjected," as transcribed by Rocco. Benedict begins by portraying celibacy as a way of demonstrating in this world how we will live with God in the next: "to show the reality of the future which we must live here in the present, and in this way bear witness to our faith."

He then goes on to claim that celibacy is

an act of faithfulness and trust, an act which presupposes the faithfulness of marriage, ... which is the biblical form, the natural form, of being man and woman, foundation of the great Christian culture and of other great cultures of the world. If this is lost, the roots of our culture will be destroyed. Thus celibacy confirms the 'yes' of marriage with its 'yes' to the world to come. This is how we wish to proceed and actualise this scandal of a faith which founds all of existence on God.

OK, I can see that celibacy may be considered a special kind of godliness. It's certainly an ancient Christian practice, even though it was originally just part of the monastic vocation--and though, to this day, a married priesthood is the norm in Eastern Orthodoxy. Moreover, the use of marital--to say nothing of (heter-) erotic imagery to describe the individual's relationship to Christ is longstanding and central to the Catholic imagination--cf. St. Bernard's sermons on the Song of Songs.

But it's something else again to turn celibacy's "yes" to God into an argument for the "yes" to heterosexual marriage--as if there were some kind of Great Chain of Marital Being by which heterosexual marriage is transformed into a unique metaphysical preparation for a spiritual marriage with God in heaven, about which we are enlightened by the example of thisworldly clerical celibacy.

This is hardly Pauline "better to marry than to burn" theology. Nor is it calculated to mitigate the power of clericalism in contemporary Catholicism.

Update: Sandro Magister has the official text of Benedict's response, plus he calls attention to a speech to the Curia of 2006 in which he dilates on the importance of clerical celibacy.

Check it out.

Yesterday, the Times Argus portrayed the parlous state of the Catholic church in Vermont. The article relies on Pew for the numbers. ARIS'  are comparable: A 30 percent decline in self-identified Catholics since 1990, from 37 percent of the population to 26 percent. If it's any consolation, the decline in the proportion of other Christians is even greater--38 percent, from 47 to 29 percent. The big growth--240 percent--has been among those who say they have no religion. To put it starkly, 20 years ago there were three times as many Catholics as Nones. Now there are a third more Nones than Catholics.

You'd think, under the circumstances, the chief executive would want to get out in public and make the case for his product. But Bishop Salvatore Matano doesn't speak to the press. He's offended because it has quoted David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (after paying $965,000 to settle a priest abuse case).

"Based on our past experience with your articles, and other reporters and news agencies in Vermont, I have no well-founded confidence that your article will be unbiased," the Rev. Daniel White wrote on behalf of the bishop. "In the future, please God, this confidence can be restored. Until such time, the diocese will continue to find alternative ways to speak to the faithful in Vermont and the public at large."

Feckless is as feckless does.

Like, if you were the Supreme Pontiff, how would you feel about being  in this company?

Ouch.

Not the same as subsidizing chaplains. How come?

It looks to this non-lawyer that the breakaway Anglicans in Virginia (i.e. the Convocation of Anglicans in North America--CANA) were too clever by half in removing the hem of their garment from the Episcopal Church USA (TEC) and affiliating with the Anglican Church of Nigeria. In ruling against them today, the Virginia Supreme Court held that while a division in a diocese can be ugly and contentious, only if you constitute a bona fide division of TEC are you entitled to hold on to your buildings. And you can't be a division of TEC if you belong to the Church of Nigeria. Q.E.D.

So it's back to court the parties go. Over at the Episcopal Cafe, Jim Naughton's immediate take is that this bodes very well for the Virginia diocese and TEC. That's because when it comes to deciding on the merits a property dispute involving a hierarchical church, Virginia case law is all on the side of the hierarchy. I presume that in CANA-land, there is much gnashing of teeth and regret that they didn't just create themselves as an association of dissident congregations within the diocese. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. History doesn't allow do-overs.

What's the best word for describing the Religious Left today? Judging by the three-day conference organized by Michael Lerner's Network of Spiritual Progressives starting tomorrow in Washington, the most charitable one I can come up with is "ambivalent." Entitled "Creating 'The Caring Society': A Progressive Alternative to Tea Party Extremism and Corporate domination of American Politics and Culture," the exercise seems like...well, first try to read through this stirring piece of promotional prose:

Support Obama to BE the Obama Americans Thought They Were Voting For & Resist the Corporate Takeover of America:

A Unique Strategy Conference Bringing together Religious and Spiritual Progressives with Secular Liberals and Progressives in the Age of Obama to explore strategies appropriate for the complexities of a period in which the failures of the Democrats to present a coherent progressive vision and program has created the space for the rise of a quasi-fascist and racist movement on the Right that threatens to move all of American political discourse in violent and destructive ways, and simultaneously to strengthen corporate dominance. We will address strategy both in response to the immediate crisis of 2010, and also in regard to building a long-term vision of the economic, spiritual, and ethical dimensions of a democratic society that could re-inspire people to fight for fundamental changes and societal transformation beyond the limits of "inside-the-beltway pragmatism" and "being realistic" in terms set by the corporate media.

Ah, the complexities, the complexities! 'Twere better. perhaps, to paraphrase the Bard:

To be for Obama, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the soul to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous pragmatism
Or to take up arms against a sea of realism
And by opposing end it...

The list of "speakers, presenters and workshop leaders" is not exactly star-studded, and includes only one prominent African-American pastor--former Riverside Church minister James Forbes. A Sunday demonstration in front of the White House will feature a memorial service for those who died in the Gaza flotilla fiasco. Whatever.

It's baaaack. My take.

What's the mission of the Apostolic Visitors who, the Vatican announced last week, will be parachuting into the Emerald Isle next fall? According to the official press release, they are supposed to deal with the abuse crisis:

The Apostolic Visitors will set out to explore more deeply questions concerning the handling of cases of abuse and the assistance owed to the victims; they will monitor the effectiveness of and seek possible improvements to the current procedures for preventing abuse, taking as their points of reference the Pontifical Motu Proprio "Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela" and the norms contained in Safeguarding Children: Standards and Guidance Document for the Catholic Church in Ireland, commissioned and produced by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

But according to a report in yesterday's Irish Independent, the real mission is to reestablish the auld time Irish Catholicism: doctrinal strictness, regular sacramental observance, and ancient devotional practices. Not to mention "to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests" and "counteract materialistic and secularist attitudes."

That does seem to be the approach being promoted by the Visitor responsible for seminaries, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who recently  told a gathering of Irish priests "to return to basics" and to ground their ministry in "prayer, humility and a rediscovery of identity." Not surprisingly, his talk pleased the Irish Primate, Cardinal Sean Brady, the staunchest defender of the past.
 
On the other hand, it seems profoundly out of step with the ideas of Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who has become the champion of progressive reform in the Irish church. A few days ago, he gave a talk at the Newman Club at Oxford University in which he called for greater lay participation and, indeed, leadership in the church, to challenge "any remnants of a culture of clericalism." The church, he emphasized, could not and should not expect to play its old role in Irish society.

Stressing renewal of the sacramental and spiritual dimensions of the Church does not mean that the Church intends to retreat into the sacristy. The Irish Church may once have dominated social reflection. Those days are gone and the Church must recognise that the weight of its voice in a much more secular society has changed. To return to my friend's analogy, the Church must change its clothes, not just as cosmetic change or to look more fashionable, but to have clothes which make us more agile for the task that is ours.

The Visitor for the Archdiocese of Dublin is Boston's irenic Cardinal Sean O'Malley, but whether he's there to strengthen or stay Martin's hand is hard to say. O'Malley, as Lisa Wangsness suggests in today's Boston Globe, is Rome's go-to guy when it comes to dealing with abuse-plagued dioceses. But, as Michael Rezendes also makes clear in the Globe  today, Martin's the odd bishop out in Ireland.

The Vatican can't have it both ways. So which is Ireland to have once the mess is cleaned up, a reinvigorated clericalism or a lay-led revival? You'd have to give me very good odds to bet on the latter.

Check it out.

Anyone who doubts that the U.S. Catholic bishops are willfully clueless about the media environment in which they operate should take a look at the talk given to the Catholic Press Association last week by Gavrilo Zavala, auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and Chairman of the U.S. Bishops Communications Committee. In Zavala's view, there's the Church media (diocesan newspapers, for the most part) and the secular media.

But the real action these days takes place in between: on the websites and blogs where (mostly) Catholics of all ideological hues and commitments debate, yell about, and otherwise conjure with the issues that currently engage the church and with which the church is engaged. Of that carnivalesque Catholic world, which has rendered his tidy "faithful Catholic media organizations" increasingly irrelevant, Zavala betrays no awareness. Even Rocco is appalled.

Because this is a serious blog that eschews prurience, we have refrained from taking note of the accusations of inappropriate physical relationships and one-night stands that have been swirling around one of Sarah Palin's Mama Grizzlies, Tea Party-er Nikki Haley, who bade fare to become the first Sikh to serve as governor of one of these United States; namely South Carolina. But now that a Palmetto State Solon has called Haley a "fucking raghead," like such other sober-minded religion-and-politics commentators as David Brody and David Gibson, we feel entitled to turn our attention to Mrs. Haley's suddenly parlous situation and make so bold as to suggest that such language falls outside the pale of propriety established by the Constitution's proscription of religious tests for office.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Haley, who until recently proudly embraced her South Asian heritage, has now sort of suppressed it, and is about the business of expressing her devotion to Jesus and the Methodist Church to which her husband belongs and in which her children are being raised. Which kind of confirms the point Sen. Jake Knotts was making; i.e. "She's a raghead that's ashamed of her religion trying to hide it behind being Methodist for political reasons." And which makes us wonder how they're feeling about her candidacy at the gurudwara in Columbia and elsewhere in the Sikh community that used to celebrate her progress as a politician. As for what the South Carolina voting public makes of her, we'll see on Tuesday.

On my Beliefnet blog.

At least the authoritative Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica --which, as David Gibson notes, is vetted by the Vatican Secretariat of State--does. An article in the new issue calls the new law "'a needed and long awaited beginning' of bringing greater justice to all citizens, especially the most vulnerable," according to CNS.

Gibson sarcastically wonders whether the USCCB, as it did in the case of those pesky nuns, "will rebuke the Vatican for such disloyalty and for creating divisions in the church." I'd like to hope that at least a few bishops will read the article, take a look at the critiques of their position in the current number of Commonweal, and ask themselves, "What were we thinking?"

For months and months, Harry Reid seemed about as likely to be reelected to the Senate as the Orioles are to win the American League East. But a new poll now shows him leading all three of his main Republican rivals. What gives?

As the folks over at TPM point out, the GOP candidates have done an excellent job of knocking each other down. But there may be a bit of a hidden religious factor at work as well. At the Mormon History Association meetings in Kansas City last weekend, the word was that the leadership of the LDS Church was putting out quiet signals that it would be a good thing if Reid retained his seat. No Mormon has ever held a higher position of authority, and even if virtually all of the church's general authorities (as they're called) are Republicans, keeping a Mormon Democrat as Senate Majority Leader is preferable to having him replaced with a first-term Republican.

None of the three leading Republicans are Mormons, and though a latecomer to the field, Chad Christensen, has been playing the LDS card for all it's worth, he's not given much of a chance. Anecdotally, Reid--who is an active and enthusiastic member of the church--seems to enjoy considerable LDS support.

How much of a difference does the LDS vote make in the Silver State? According to the 2008 Trinity ARIS, Mormons constitute only 5.2 percent of the population. (Thanks to emigration from California, that's down from 9 percent a decade ago.) Still, in a close election, a few percentage points matter, and turnout among Mormons is always high. 

Mitt Romney scored a huge and unexpected victory In the January 2008 Republican caucuses, racking up over 50 percent of the vote to Ron Paul's 14 percent and John McCain's 13 percent. Later that year, Obama beat John McCain handily, 55-43. With the quiet blessing of Salt Lake City, I wouldn't count Harry Reid out this year. 

Yesterday's exchange in this space, plus posts by Sarah Posner and Dan Schultz over at Religion Dispatches, suggest that the debate really comes down to the Bass-Posner-Schultz view that Democratic faith outreach has been too focused on wooing unwooable evangelicals (or selling its soul for a mess of evangelical pottage) versus the Sapp view au contraire. Either way, there's no disagreement that Obama's folks have let the effort fall apart. Will they pick up the pieces? Not unless the president himself decides to take a hand. The powers that be in the Administration are, when it comes to faith-based politics, unredeemed.

Update: Don't miss Kelly Phipps' comment below.

Because life is too long and I just don't have enough to do, I've started up a new blog on Beliefnet. It will include some posts from Spiritual Politics as well as original content. I've not exactly decided how to manage the triage, but I'll let you know what's happening over there and provide a link. For starters, I've put up a comment on Does v. Enfield Public Schools, the Connecticut case in which Federal District Judge Janet Hall enjoined the town of Enfield from holding its high school graduation ceremonies at First Cathedral, New England's largest megachurch. Oh yeah, the name of the blog is "Religion and Public Life with Mark Silk." I know, it sounds like a little like the old Saturday Night Live feature, "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy." Let's hope not.

That's pretty much the reaction of Diana Butler Bass, Sarah Posner and Daniel Schultz to Michelle Boorstein's WaPo story--at least if it's the kind of outreach done in the last couple of election cycles by the Eleison Group. The kind that resulted in the sort of blue dog Democratic congressman who votes for the Stupak Amendment and then proceeds to vote against health care reform. The way to go, if faith outreach there is to be, is to reach out to the likes of, oh, Diana Butler Bass, Sarah Posner, and Daniel Schultz--religious liberals who take a flexible view about the authorship of the Bible. I have a suspicion, however, that those three actually vote Democratic already, which suggests that their advice is to preach to the choir. Is that what you do on Sundays, Pastor Dan?

No doubt, liberals tend to get upset when they see Congresspersons they regard as DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) appearing to undermine the progressive agenda. But without knowing whose votes the Speaker has in her pocket in case she needs them, I'm not confident that they are merely Trojan horses of conservatism. Moreover, the false assumption is that having Eleison represent the odd conservative Democrat is the sum total of Democratic faith outreach. On the contrary, the issue is digitized targeting of voters by religious group. It's nuts and bolts, and it's worth it.