Happy 4th of July!

Yes, happy 4th of July! According to the calendar of the Church, July 4th’s real significance is that it is the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (1271-1336), a patron Saint of peacemakers.

The sad fact, however, is that if you were to attend Mass on this day, the chances of your priest mentioning this feast are slim to none. Instead, you are likely to participate in a Eucharist which has been transformed into a syncretistic ritual of american civil religion. Thank God that, despite the sectarian tendencies of the american Church, the transnational Church calls us Catholics to be a peculiar people who mark time differently than the rest of the world, and the rest of our nation.

St. Elizabeth, pray for us, that we american Catholics may truly take our place in the one, transnational Body of Christ that resists the dismemberment caused by our tendency to cling to national allegiances. And on the day that the rest of the united states celebrates its foundational myth of violence and the sacrifices of soldiering which parody the Cross, let us be ever more formed by the words of Jesus in the Gospel reading for July 4th: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Electing not to vote?

Great post today, M.Z., which gives some perspective on the positions of various VN contributors in the face of continuing accusations from around the Catholic blogosphere. I did want to clarify one thing, though:

Henry Karlson, Michael Iafrate (Catholic Anarchist) and Policraticus have clearly stated they aren’t supporting the two major party candidates.

Just to be clear, I have not defined my intentions as clearly as, say, Policraticus. I am not supporting either candidate in the sense that I will not endorse either one of them. This does not necessarily mean that, when push comes to shove, I will not vote for one of them, or for a third party candidate. I have said, and I still believe, that not voting is a valid position for a Catholic, especially for those of us concerned about the pseudo-religious insistence on the “duty to vote” for whatever reason (usually the romanticized “self-sacrifice” of soldiers). Had Clinton won the Democratic nomiation, I was firmly committed to abstain from the absurdity that that lineup would have represented.

But I am not, nor have I ever been, an absolutist when it comes to voting. I find both positions problematic: to insist one has a duty to vote or to insist that Christians may never vote is to elevate voting to a level of importance that it does not deserve. Indeed, voting is mostly just a game. Rhetoric of “change” is simply that: rhetoric. As the saying (sometimes attributed to Phillip Berrigan) goes, if voting could really change anything, they would make it illegal.

Cuba unveils new lung cancer vaccine

Here’s a story for those among us who uncritically accept as a truism that capitalist medicine automatically results in innovation while more humane health care systems automatically result in lower quality care. This just in, from AlertNet.org:

Cuban scientists said on Tuesday the first vaccine to extend lives of lung cancer patients has been approved by Cuban authorities for use and is available in the island’s hospitals.

The drug, CimaVax EGF, has been shown to increase survival rates on average four to five months and much longer in some patients, they said in a news conference at Cuba’s Center of Molecular Immunology. In contrast to chemotherapy, the traditional treatment for lung cancer, they said CimaVax EGF has few side effects because it is a modified protein that attacks only cancer cells. They said it was the first lung cancer vaccine to be approved anywhere in the world, although there are others currently being tested. “It’s the first vaccine for lung cancer registered in the world,” said Gisela Gonzalez, who headed the development of the vaccine, begun in 1992. The drug is in various stages of clinical trials in a number of other countries and is most likely to be approved next in Peru, where it could be publicly available by year’s end, Gonzalez said.

[...]

“It’s possible to provide this vaccine to any patient, because it’s available in Cuba, it’s approved by the Cuban drug agency so we can market the vaccine in Cuba and we can receive patients from outside,” she said. The exception would probably be Americans, she said, who are restricted from Cuba travel by the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba in place since 1962. “Even though there is a new therapeutic tool approved in Cuba they probably wouldn’t be able to come to Cuba to receive it because of the embargo,” Crombet said. The drug has been approved for clinical trial in the United States, but its possible use there is at least two to three years away, Gonzalez said.

Social welfare and anarchism

Countless discussions have taken place here at Vox Nova about health care, revisiting debates about whether or not it should be provided, in any way, by the government. When I have expressed the view that, under these current (and probably collapsing) political arrangements, the government should see to it that all persons have access to health care, I’ve been charged with “not really being an anarchist.” The reasoning is that if I oppose the existence of the state, this means I should therefore believe that health care should be provided by “private” entities.

This mistaken assumption reveals to some degree the differences between anarchism and libertarianism, the latter of which tends to be the source of criticism of my intuitions with regard to health care. Anarchism has traditionally been more communitarian, where libertarianism is liberalism taken to its extreme. Both anarchists and libertarians oppose the state — actually, its debatable how much libertarians actually oppose the state — but they oppose the state for very different reasons.

Here are a few excepts from an article I found recently on an anarchist approach to social welfare. It might help to clarify some mistaken assumptions, and I am sure it will help to generate discussion. I am of the mind that the approach described here is very “Catholic.”

Cheney, Appalachian humor, and American imperial logic

Dick “Don’t Let the Door Hit Ya” Cheney made headlines yesterday after he made a joke at the expense of West Virginians in front of the National Press Club, a joke centering around the oh-so original image of Appalachian incest. West Virginia’s Democratic governor Joe Manchin promptly slammed Cheney for disrespecting his state and his people, demanding an apology — funny, coming from a politician whose eerily Republican policies have done more harm to West Virginians than any demeaning joke ever could.

But Cheney’s joke — and subsequent apology — is but the latest in a recent string of demeaning references to Appalachia in the media, set off by Hillary Clinton’s recent victories in Appalachian states such as West Virginia and Kentucky. The Appalachian Front Porch blog focused recently on the way the media — especially the so-called “progressive” media such as Jon Stewart, Grist, and the New York Times — reacted to Obama’s “Appalachia problem.”

But c’mon — Jeff Foxworthy, Jon Stewart, Dick Cheney — they’re all just making harmless jokes, right?

Iraq’s death toll may be ‘above highest estimates’

From the Inter Press Service:

The real number of the dead is far higher than even the highest declared in death tolls, many Iraqis say.

A study by doctors from the Johns Hopkins School of Health in conjunction with Iraqi doctors from al-Mustanceriya University in Baghdad, published in the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006, estimated the number of excess deaths as a result of the occupation at above 655,000.

Just Foreign Policy, an independent organisation “dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy” offered an updated total of 1,213,716 at the time of this writing.

On Sep. 14, 2007, Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent polling agency located in London, produced a figure of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the invasion.

These estimates are above any official figures from Iraq, but they do consider the reported official figures.

Iraqis believe that the authorities are hiding these figures. “The U.S. military benefits from hiding the real totals,” said a political analyst who declined to give his name because of the atmosphere of fear within Iraq. “And the Iraqi government is a puppet of the Americans, so their figures are ridiculously low as well.”

The report published in The Lancet did not take into account many circumstances of death, say residents in Baquba, capital of Diyala province 40km north of capital Baghdad.

“All people know that a large number of bodies are dropped into the Diyala river,” said a local resident. “I was kidnapped and taken to a village called Huwaider, which is completely Shia and located on the Diyala River. Sunnis there are killed and dropped in the river by militiamen, but I was freed by the U.S Army.

“People in all the villages on the river have gotten used to seeing bodies floating in the river,” he added.

Don’t stay out of politics, Father

An accusation that we see thrown around a lot, especially around election time, is the charge that Father So-and-So is “being too political,” and that he should “stay out of politics.” The charge is made from either side of the aisle, sometimes directed toward priests who speak out strongly against war, or sometimes against priests and bishops who refuse communion to “pro-choice” politicians. The latest target of this charge, of course, is Fr. Michael Pfleger, whose ministry has been criticized for being “too political” for a variety of reasons, from his specific comments about the current presidential campaign to his supposed “hatred” for America and his fiery comments about racial privilege.

The Pfleger incidents — and the uproar that accompanies it — give Catholics a good opportunity to pause and to clear up some sloppy thinking on the whole notion of priests “being too political.” Frankly, Catholics usually accuse priests of “being too political” simply when they disagree with the priest’s politics. And in giving voice to this disagreement they typically insist that the Catholic position “transcends” politics.

U.S. soliders trying to convert Iraqis to Christianity

From Democracy Now!:

In Iraq, residents of Fallujah are claiming US soldiers are handing out Bible-themed coins aimed at converting them to Christianity. According to the McClatchy Newspapers, the coins quote passages from the New Testament. Fallujah was the site of two bloody US assaults in 2004 that killed scores of Iraqis and left tens of thousands displaced. Sunni groups have called on the US military to crack down on soldiers handing out the coins.

Vox Nova at the Library: The Kings and Their Gods

Although still active in the Plowshares Movement and protests against the U.S.-led war in Iraq, legendary American Jesuit peace activist and poet Daniel Berrigan places his body on the line with less regularity these days. This fact hardly suggests that Berrigan has toned down his radical nonviolent witness, and his latest book The Kings and Their Gods: The Pathology of Power, a commentary on 1 and 2 Kings, proves it.

Berrigan has already gifted the Church with a series of books on the prophets Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah which combine biblical and social commentary in a poetic style that brings these scriptures to life and reveals their relevance for today’s world, a world not so different from the one the Hebrew prophets critiqued. Berrigan takes us through the stories the kings of Israel, reading them as a “diagnosis of the pathology of power,” a litany of death-dealing episodes of assassination, accumulation of riches, and above all, war-making, in which king after king is tempted to measure up to the “manhood” of previous kings through the use of power and violence.

Theology and the political imagination

[My aim is] to put theology into conversation with political theory in an attempt to expand our current political and pluralist imagination. Political theory is nothing if not an exercise of imagination, offering new or different pictures of collective life in the hopes of remolding, refashioning, or altogether altering contemporary political arrangements. Indeed, the success or popularity of a political theory could be said to depend upon the extent to which it offers a picture of political society and life that is more attractive and persuasive than that of the status quo. To take but one example, imagination was crucial in fostering the move to organize collective life into nations, for nations are, as Benedict Anderson shows, imagined political communities. Yet today, the concept of nationhood is so entrenched that, according to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “the nation becomes the only way to imagine community! Every imagination of a community becomes overcoded as a nation, and hence our conception of community is severely impoverished. This is where theology can play a subversive role, challenging the givens of our current political situation by presenting an alternative picture of political community and social reality. This is to think of imagination as Walter Brueggemann defines it, as “the human capacity to picture, portray, receive, and practice the world in ways other than it appears to be at first glance when seen through a dominant, habitual, unexamined lens.” By applying a Christian imagination to the question of difference, we have an opportunity to be critical of social reality and to undertake the ethical task of creating alternative pictures of communal and political life. By ensuring that this undertaking is primarily theological, we offer, as William Cavanaugh puts it, “a different kind of political imagination, one that is rooted in the Christian story,” but one that can nevertheless help augment the political imagination of contemporary political theory and pluralist society.

Kristen Deede Johnson, Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 22-3.

memorial day

Our newer readers might be interested in a piece I wrote for memorial day last year, as well as a shorter post on where I believe the focus of Catholic patriotism should be and a classic piece by Servant of God Dorothy Day about why Catholics should be “un-American.”

Rethinking the “givenness of the united states”

“[S]ocial justice activists as well as U.S.-based liberation theologians often criticize U.S. policies, but they do not critically interrogate the contradictions between the United States articulating itself as a democratic country, on the one hand, while simultaneously founding itself on the past and current genocide of Native peoples, on the other hand. That is, even progressives tend to articulate racism as a policy to be addressed within the constraints of the U.S. nation-state rather than understanding racism and genocide as consitutive of the United States. However, since the United States could not exist without the genocide of Native peoples, Native feminist interventions call us to question why we should assume the givenness of the United States in our long-range vision of social justice. These interventions provide a starting point for theological reflection on what exactly is a just form of governance, not only for Native peoples but also for the rest of the world.”

Andrea Smith, “Dismantling the Master’s House with the Master’s Tools: Native Feminist Liberation Theologies,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 22.2 (2006), 85-121.

Taking Appalachia seriously: implications for theology and the Church

Appalachia was on the radar of participants of the Theology in the Americas conference in Detroit — a gathering of Latin American and North American liberation theologians — in the summer of 1975, just months after the promulgation of the Appalachian pastoral letter This Land is Home to Me, and was included in those discussions as one of many particularized theologies in the U.S. that need to be in dialogue with one another. And while impressive grassroots activity was inspired by the pastoral letter, in recent years the excitement and sense of Appalachian identity has dwindled, and with few exceptions, very little theology has been done from an Appalachian perspective. A theology which takes Appalachia seriously would pose a challenge for theology in the United States, even for U.S. liberation theologians, as well as the Church in general.

Theology in the U.S. largely remains locked in a particular Western mode which is detached from reality.[1] One bit of personal evidence for this is the fact that some fellow theology students were puzzled that I would bother attending a conference like the Appalachian Studies Association conference which met this past month. Much work is left to be done to encourage theologies that are incarnate, that make the “option for reality” in Leonardo Boff’s terms.[2] In particular, attention to Appalachia would challenge conceptions of Catholic social teaching which rely on abstract principles such as the “common good,” which have been used to justify destructive practices like mountaintop removal mining and assumptions about the role of the state as the “keeper of the common good.” William Cavanaugh has critiqued the way Catholics think about the nation-state, arguing that its main function is not the promotion of the common good, but for the benefit of elites.[3] Eve Weinbaum’s ethnographic research on Appalachian politics in the book To Move a Mountain: Fighting the Global Economy in Appalachia confirms this is the case.[4]

Religious intolerance in the military

Robyn Blumner of the Salt Lake Tribune contributes a great piece on religious intolerance in the u.s. military, namely the harassment of atheist soldiers by Christian ones:

[Army Spc. Jeremy] Hall, 23, served two combat tours in Iraq, winning the Combat Action Badge. But he’s now stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., having been returned stateside early because the Army couldn’t ensure his safety.

There is something deeply amiss when we send soldiers on a mission to engender peaceful coexistence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, yet our military doesn’t seem able to offer religious tolerance to its own.

Hall recounts the events that led to his marginalization in a federal lawsuit he filed in Kansas in March. He is joined by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group devoted to assisting members of the military who object to the pervasive and coercive Christian proselytizing in our armed forces.

Hall’s atheism became an issue soon after it became known. On Thanksgiving 2006 while stationed outside Tikrit, Hall politely declined to join in a Christian prayer before the holiday meal. The result was a dressing down by a staff sergeant who told him that as an atheist he needed to sit somewhere else.

Vox Nova at the Library: Beyond Homelessness

A few weeks ago I turned in the final version of the index for Brian Walsh and Steven Bouma-Prediger’s new book, Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement. Compiling an index for a book is tough work, but one of the benefits, of course, is that you get to read the book several times before anyone else gets to. I know several of my readers over at CatholicAnarchy.org know Brian Walsh’s work very well, and you won’t be disappointed with this one. Rumor has it that he and Sylvia Keesmaat are working on a book on Paul’s letter to the Romans, similar in style to their popular Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire.

Here is the description of Beyond Homelessness from the Eerdman’s website:

This book goes far beyond covering the subject of homelessness as the social problem we all recognize in our cities. Mass emigrations, displaced families, and human alienation from the earth all mark our times. In critiquing contemporary North American culture, Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian Walsh discuss various forms of homelessness — socioeconomic, ecological, and psycho-spiritual — and creatively show how biblical attentiveness and Christian faith can heal the profound dislocations in our society.

Ending each of their chapters with a moving biblical meditation, the authors also interact throughout with characters and themes from current literature and popular culture — from Salman Rushdie to Barbara Kingsolver, from the Wizard of Oz to Bruce Cockburn.

Beyond Homelessness is due out at the end of May.

Quote of the evening (and of the war on terror): Daniel Berrigan, SJ

“Does war alter our ‘grammar of assent’?

In times of peace, do we see ourselves as Christians (a solid, sure noun) who happen to be American (adjective, of secondary import)? Which is to suggest: we could be Christians who ‘happen to be’ Afghan or Iraqi. An alteration in our self-understanding, to be sure: but the center and pivot, “Christian,” would stand firm, the task and blessing accorded to peacemakers. And this, whether we live amid victims or victimizers: small matter, same vocation.

Wartime. And we are subtly or overtly urged: Alter the sense of who you are in the world. Lines are drawn; the culture of war exerts a huge, central claim. The cultural enlistment is a curse; we are urged to ignore the central teaching and example of Christ. ‘For the duration,’ we are to be Americans first and foremost — Americans who happen to be Christians.”

(Daniel Berrigan, The Kings and Their Gods: The Pathology of Power [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008])

Clinton: “If I’m the president, we will attack Iran”

From Agence France Presse:

Democratic presidential Hillary Clinton has threatened to “obliterate” Iran if it launches a nuclear attack against Israel as she fights for her own political survival.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Senator Clinton told ABC News, asked what she would do as president were Iran to launch a nuclear attack on Israel. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

[...]

Senator Obama’s camp yesterday accused Senator Clinton of trying to scare voters, as she rocked their White House race with a dark campaign ad featuring images of al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.

The ad uses pictures of Pearl Harbour, bin Laden and the devastating 2005 hurricane that swamped New Orleans, mirroring the “3am phone call” spot credited with helping Senator Clinton to win in Texas and Ohio last month.

“You need to be ready for anything - especially now, with two wars, oil prices skyrocketing and an economy in crisis,” the male narrator intones.

“Who do you think has what it takes?”

Both Democrats have vowed to defend Israel against any Iranian attack, but they differ on how to engage the Islamic republic over its nuclear ambitions.

Read the rest here.

Appalachian lobbyists against mountaintop removal

NPR ran a pretty good segment on All Things Considered about lobbyists from Appalachia working to fight environmental injustice in their communities:

Lobbyists are everywhere on Capitol Hill. But it’s not always high-priced professionals that get lawmakers’ attention. A cadre of Appalachian residents has come to lobby for environmental protections from coal-mining waste. For many, it was their first trip to Washington, D.C.

Listen to it here.

March 24 - Servant of God Oscar Romero of the Americas

Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Servant of God Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, his future feast day. Here is an excerpt from a homily he gave on August 14, 1977:

You heard today in the first reading the accusations: “Death to that Jeremiah! He’s demoralizing the soldiers and all of the people with those speeches. That man doesn’t promote the people’s good, but their harm.”

See how the accusations against the prophets of all times are the same. When the prophet bothers the consciences of the
selfish, or of those who are not building with God’s plans, he is a nuisance and must be eliminated, murdered, thrown into a pit, persecuted, not allowed to speak the word that annoys.

But the prophet could not tell them anything else. Read in the Bible how Jeremiah often prays to God, “Lord, take this cross away from me. I don’t want to be a prophet. I feel my insides burning because I have to say things even I don’t like.”

It’s always the same. The prophet has to speak of society’s sin and call to conversion, as the church is doing today in San
Salvador: pointing out whatever would enthrone sin in El Salvador’s history and calling sinners to be converted, just as Jeremiah did.

For more of Romero’s homilies and reflections, check out this free ebook, The Violence of Love.

The Episcopal Church has provisionally approved the commemoration of Romero on this day, and offers the following prayer:

Almighty God, you called your servant Oscar Romero to be a voice for the voiceless poor, and to give his life as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope: Grant that, inspired by his sacrifice and the example of the martyrs of El Salvador, we may without fear or favor witness to your Word who abides, your Word who is Life, even Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be praise and glory now and for ever. Amen.

Palm Sunday peace message from Pope Benedict

From UPI:

Pope Benedict XVI took time during Palm Sunday mass in Rome to denounce the war in Iraq, calling for an immediate end of the conflict.

The pope completed Sunday’s ceremony by blaming the disruption of regular Iraqi life on the international conflict and his plea for an end to the war was met with thunderous applause at St. Peter’s Square, the Voice of America reported.

“Enough with the slaughters, enough with the violence, enough with the hatred in Iraq,” the spiritual leader of the world’s Roman Catholics told the thousands of people in attendance.

The pope’s comments not only came during the official start of the church’s Holy Week celebrations, but came days after the body of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was found in Mosul, Iraq.

The pope called his killing an inhuman act of violence.

The pope has plans to honor the slain religious leader with a memorial service at the Vatican Monday, the Voice of America said.

Letter urges Pope to protest war during U.S. visit

I received the following beautiful, hopeful press release in my email inbox today:

A letter with over 1250 signatures has been delivered to Pope Benedict XVI in advance of his scheduled April visit to the United States. Encouraged by the Pope’s public statements “that there were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war in Iraq,” the letter asks that refuse to visit President Bush at the White House as a sign of his protest. In the event that the meeting takes place, the letter asks that he speak “as a prophet should - issuing a warning and an invitation to repentance.”

The letter makes special note of the fact that Pope Benedict will be in the United States on his birthday, and reminds him of the many children of Iraq who will not live to celebrate theirs as a result of the current war.

Those signing the letter reflect an extraordinary range of individuals - Catholic and non-Catholic, religious and lay people, academics and activists - united in their expectation that the Pope will not let the war pass in silence

[text of letter and signatures below]

Bookshelf etiquette

John McGreevy at dotCommonweal points us to a piece regarding bookshelf etiquette: What percentage of the books on your shelf have you actually read? Does this percentage matter? Is one’s bookshelf meant to display, for the most part, books that you have read, or books that signify the type of person one wants to be?

Definitely something this theology graduate student has thought about. McGreevey also asks, List one book on your bookshelf that you bought and thought you would read but never got more than a couple pages into.

I would answer Hardt and Negri’s Empire.

While we’re doing confessions, what book have you checked out of the library a couple times, but never got more than a few pages into? For me, John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory.

Stanley Hauerwas: “Your salvation is in doubt”

Not sure how many Vox Nova readers are familiar with Duke theologian/ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, but I am sure that more of them should be. Ecumenical blogger Inhabitatio Dei passes along the following classic Hauerwas episode, an excerpt from a talk he gave for Princeton’s Forum on Youth Ministry:

“I assume most of you are here because you think you are Christians, but it is not all clear to me that the Christianity that has made you Christians is Christianity. For example:

How many of you worship in a church with an American flag? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.

How many of you worship in a church in which the fourth of July is celebrated? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.

How many of you worship in a church that recognizes Thanksgiving? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.

How many of you worship in a church that celebrates January 1 as the “New Year”? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.

How many of you worship in a church that recognizes “Mother’s Day”?  I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.”

The blogger comments Hauerwas’ words and their relevance for the sense evangelicals have (or do not have) of the keeping of liturgical time:

Hauerwas will always be able to deliver the great lines to shock the unsuspecting and comfortable Christians that may cross his path. However, one of the very interesting things about his litany of everyday church heresies is the fact that with the exception of the issue of the flag, they are all issues related to the calendar. Perhaps this goes to the crucial point that how we mark time is, in the fullest sense an indicator of where our true allegiance lies. To my mind this is just another reason why an emphasis on the liturgical year must be recovered in evangelical churches.

Of course, even with our own Catholic tradition’s emphasis on the liturgical calendar, our own peculiar form of American Catholicism gets its liturgical calendar mixed up with the American liturgical calendar all the time, as I have pointed out before. Of course, the marking of time relative to this (s)election year is yet another indicator of the “ultimate concern” of American Catholics. (For more on elections as religious rituals, see Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle’s fantastic book Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag.)

Roman Catholics in the United States need to hear the warnings of Stanley Hauerwas, and they need to hear them now. His brief but powerful article called “America’s God,” from the Fall 2007 issue of Communio would be a great place to start.

Why Archbishop Williams is not a “liberal”

James K. A. Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, contributes a refreshing post on why Archbishop of Canterbury is not a “liberal.” This may come as a shock to folks like Gerald Augustinus and his followers who have mindlessly made a habit of referring to Williams as “the hyper-liberal arch-druid.” An excerpt:

One often finds the talking heads on the BBC and op-eds in various papers referring to the “sharia row” as another indication of Rowan Williams’ “liberal” tendencies (surely one of the slipperiest and equivocal epithets we have in religious circles). But if one actually attends to his argument–and his corpus–I think one finds that Williams’ is, in fact, a critic of liberalism. Indeed, the kernel of his argument at the Royal Courts of Justice was calling into question the liberal monopoly of identity that characterizes the (supposedly) “secular” state. One of the hallmarks of liberalism (fostered here in England, as well as the States, by John Locke) is a secularization of the “public” sphere of politics, economics, and the common good, along with a corresponding privatization of religious identity as an affair of the heart–a private and interior matter of one’s “personal relationship” to God. In other words, religion is fine for the weekends, “if you’re into that.” But don’t bring it to work. Don’t let it affect how you function “in public.” In short, you’re welcome to let religion be one of your private pursuits, a kind of hobby. It’s fine to let religion be “part” of who you are, but that religious faith can’t shape or influence you in such a way that it would make a difference in how you pursue life in public.

[...]

I hear in Williams’ argument a refusal of these two aspects of liberalism: a “secular” democratic monopoly on identity along with its corresponding privatization (and therefore triviliazation) of religious faith. In short, the Archbishop is no “liberal.”

Smith’s post is also relevant to discussions we have had here at Vox Nova about the problems that arise when we carelessly throw around the word “liberal.”

For those still in doubt about whether Williams is “one of them,” do check out some of his writings. You can start with a lecture he gave here in Toronto this past April: “The Bible: Reading and Hearing.”

EDIT: I missed one of Gerald’s recent rants about Williams. Check out its liberal use of the word — um — “liberal” (as well as the word “wimp”) here.

Catholics to deliver ashes to White House on Ash Wednesday

H/T to the Christian Radical blog, a Catholic Worker information service run by the CW community of Vancouver.

Washington, DC- On Ash Wednesday, February 6th Catholics for an End to the War in Iraq (CEWI), the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, TASSC and Jonah House will commemorate the day by praying for forgiveness and depositing ashes at the White House. “The use of ashes at the White House is a sign of atonement for President Bush’s war in Iraq, his continued support of torture and for his squandering of our nation’s moral leadership in the world.,” said James Salt, Organizing Director for CEWI.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a time when Catholics pray for forgiveness in preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Catholics believe that Jesus’ death was an act of atonement for personal and social sins.

Fr. Joe Nangle OFM, a Catholic priest serving at Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington, will be present to bless the ashes. “The use of ashes is an ancient and sacred sign that we are ultimately accountable to a higher power. If anyone needs this pastoral advice, it is President Bush,” said Fr. Nangle.

In his final year in office, Americans are evaluating President Bush’s moral legacy. “President Bush’s standing in the Catholic community is compromised by his decision to wage war in Iraq,” said James Salt, Organizing Director of Catholics for an End to the War in Iraq. “The Catholic community is very clearly against war and torture. On this day of fasting, our nation must make amends by ending the war and speaking out against torture.”

The event at the White House is part of a broader effort in the Catholic community to organize against the Iraq war during the Lenten season. CEWI is inviting Catholics to pray for peace and working to bring more Catholics into the anti-war movement. In the past six months, CEWI has collected 20,000 signatures from American Catholics calling for an end to the war. Organizers have a goal of collecting 30,000 signatures by Easter.

What: Ash Wednesday Prayer Service at the White House
Where: North Entrance of the White House near Lafayette Park
When: Procession beginning at St. Matthews Cathedral at 12:00 and arriving at the White House at 12:30

Catholics for an End to the War in Iraq, www.catholicsforanend.org is a coalition of Catholic organizations working to end the war in Iraq. The coalition works to increase the visibility of Catholics working for an end to the war in Iraq and has a petition effort that has generated over 20,000 signatures.

Bonhoeffer’s birthday

Halden contributes a nice, succinct post in honor of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the 102nd anniversary of his birth, urging contemporary Christians to remain within the discomfort of the contradictions of his life and writings:

Bonhoeffer’s life, like his theology makes it harder, not easier to talk about God, and attempts to enlist Bonhoeffer’s witness in the service any theological or political agenda is bound to fail.  The fact that Bonhoeffer’s untidy witness defies closure and complicates the task of talking about God is a testimony to the radical commitment to faithfulness that inheres in his life and theology.  As Rowan Williams has reminded us, the task of the theologian is to complicate the task of talking about God.  Bonhoeffer, on this score then can only be evaluated as one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century.  None of us who aspire to be theologians of the church of Christ can dare to be done with Bonhoeffer.  Like the saints of old, “he died, but through his faith he still speaks…” (Heb. 11:4)

“Mission accomplished”

Reuters reports that new research indicates about one million Iraqi human beings have been killed to date in the Iraq War.

A reading from the First letter of Paul to the Americans

I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you agree in what you say,
and that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.
For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters,
by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries among you.
I mean that each of you is saying,
“I belong to Weigel,” or “I belong to Chittister,”
or “I belong to Neuhaus,” or “I belong to Christ.”
Is Christ divided?
Was Bill Donahue crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of John Dear?
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel,
and not with the wisdom of human eloquence,
so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.

New Jesuit superior general on relations with Rome

The obedience, affection and common mission binding the Society of Jesus to the pope are solid, unchanging and the reason why differences can be so painful, said the new superior general of the Jesuits.

Father Adolfo Nicolas, elected Jan. 19 to head the world’s largest Catholic men’s order, told reporters, “The Society of Jesus has always been, from the beginning, and always will be in communion with the Holy Father, and we are happy to be so.”

Meeting journalists Jan. 25, he said, “If there are difficulties, it is precisely because we are so close.”

Like a married couple, he said, the Jesuits and the pope are bound to one another and committed to working together for the good of the church and the world.

“Only those who love each other can hurt each other,” he said.

From time to time difficulties arise, “but this is normal,” he said.

Read the rest of the brief interview here. 

Canada: From peacekeeper to combatant

Lest any of our readers think that I have an uncritical attitude toward the nation-state that I currently call home, here is a fantastic piece in the new Adbusters magazine about Canada’s transition, under the Harper government, from a peacekeeping nation to an ally in the U.S.-led “War on Terror.” An excerpt:

This certainly pleases Washington, which is delighted to have a well-regarded country like Canada as an active ally as it ramps up its confrontation with the Islamic world. And pleasing Washington appears to be the main reason – perhaps the only real reason – that Canada is fighting in Afghanistan, despite occasional suggestions by Ottawa that it’s concerned about promoting democracy or helping Afghan women.

The positioning of Canada as a team player in the US “war on terror” has been part of a larger campaign orchestrated by the Harper government and the Canadian military to wean Canadians off their longstanding attachment to peacekeeping, and get them excited instead about a more combat-oriented military.

This would involve a significant change in the Canadian psyche. Canadians have strongly identified with the notion of Canada as a leading peacekeeping nation, ever since former foreign affairs minister (and future prime minister) Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in averting war in the Middle East by helping establish the first real UN peacekeeping intervention in the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Historians fear MLK’s legacy being lost

From AP:

Nearly 40 years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., some say his legacy is being frozen in a moment in time that ignores the full complexity of the man and his message.

[...]

King was working on anti-poverty and anti-war issues at the time of his death. He had spoken out against the Vietnam War and was in Memphis when he was killed in April 1968 in support of striking sanitation workers.

King had come a long way from the crowds who cheered him at the 1963 March on Washington, when he was introduced as “the moral leader of our nation” - and when he pronounced “I have a dream” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

By taking on issues outside segregation, he had lost the support of many newspapers and magazines, and his relationship with the White House had suffered…

[...]

But he took on issues of poverty and militarism because he considered them vital “to make equality something real and not just racial brotherhood but equality in fact”…

[Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University] believes it’s important for Americans in 2008 to remember how disliked King was before his death in April 1968.

“If we forget that, then it seems like the only people we can get behind must be popular,” Harris-Lacewell said. “Following King meant following the unpopular road, not the popular one.”

Read the rest here.

Jesuits elect new Superior General

From the U.S. Jesuit Conference:

After four days of prayer and personal conversation known as murmurationes, the 217 Jesuit electors gathered in Rome from around the world have chosen Adolfo Nicolás, SJ as the 30th Superior General of the Society of Jesus.  He was the President of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania and the former Provincial of Japan. He is now Father General to nearly 20,000 Jesuits worldwide, including 2,900 in the United States, and the 29th successor to St. Ignatius Loyola who founded the Jesuits in 1540.

Also check out the report at Time.com.

Canada puts U.S. on torture watch list

From Democracy Now!:

The Canadian government has put the United States on a watch list of countries that could practice torture. The mention is made on a secret Canadian government document not intended for public release. The document cites the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and lists U.S. interrogation techniques including “forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation.” Other countries on the list include Israel, Syria, China, Iran and Afghanistan.