August, 2008

Picking a Catholic to be your running mate can be a dicey proposition these days. Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is in a public fight with her bishop who has banned her from receiving communion because she vetoed a bill restricting abortion providers. Conversely, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's moderately pro-life stance would have rankled many on the left. Joe Biden shares Sebelius' pro-choice credentials without the prospect of a fight with his bishop, and like Kaine, he has woven his faith into the very fabric of his political biography.

We live in a time and culture in which genuine moral discourse is rapidly disappearing - swallowed up by partisanship, spin, politics and self-interest. By "moral discourse" I mean conversation between persons of good will about the rightness or wrongness of an action or policy, independent of all other considerations. By extension, Christian moral discourse would be conversation between Christian persons of good will about the rightness or wrongness of an action, independent of all considerations other than those deriving from our shared commitment to Jesus Christ. That applies to torture.

Both John McCain and the Democrats are giving Catholics reasons to reconsider which party can and will do more to reduce the number of abortions in America. When on August 11, McCain told the Weekly Standard that he welcomed pro-choice Republicans, he articulated openly what has been obvious for some time: the GOP uses the issue to get votes, but will not outlaw abortion. In other words, it is foolish to think that voting for Republicans is the "Catholic" thing to do. On the other hand, no less an expert than Prof. Douglas Kmiec, once professor of law at Catholic University, and a former Reagan Administration lawyer who wrote briefs for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, now says the Democrats have a stronger approach to reducing abortions.

President Bush has been embarrassed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bush had set a goal of July 31 for a security agreement with Maliki's government. The key to negotiating such an accord, for Bush, was to avoid setting a firm date for withdrawal of US combat troops. Bush has insisted that the timing and pacing of a withdrawal had to be determined solely by conditions on the ground - a mantra that GOP presidential candidate John McCain has echoed faithfully. But now Maliki is demanding a "specific deadline" for the withdrawal not only of American combat troops but of all US forces of any kind.

One of the hot topics at several convention events was whether the Democratic Party could be for abortion rights and simultaneously take the lead in reducing the number of abortions. It sounds like a contradiction, because the abortion debate has so far focused on whether there ought to be legal restrictions. Smack into the middle of this debate comes a new study commissioned by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a progressive and antiabortion group. Conducted by political science professors at Penn State and Georgetown, the study concludes that government social spending and economic conditions have a greater affect on abortion rates than restrictions like parental consent laws.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been polar opposites. One was launched to avenge the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the other under dubious and now well-documented false pretenses. The first routed an oppressive, Islamist regime; the second ousted a dictator and ushered in an army of extremists. One followed the other, but Afghanistan should have remained America's primary focus. Never more was that evident than now, as Taliban fighters and sympathizers have unleashed spectacular attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. Not one but 10 suicide bombers kicked off a ferocious, 20-hour battle at a key American base in the eastern province of Khost this week.

The debate within the U.S. church over the relationship between abortion and politics extends beyond the issue of Holy Communion for pro-choice politicians. Some bishops believe that Catholic voters should impose an abortion litmus test when they go to the polls; others argue that abortion is only one issue among many, including whether a candidate embraces the church's opposition to capital punishment and racial discrimination. The struggle among bishops over this question has resulted in a compromise election guide for Catholic voters. It declares: "As Catholics, we are not single-issue voters. ... Yet a candidate's position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support." That prudent and nuanced view could become especially important if Barack Obama or John McCain chooses a pro-choice Catholic as a running mate.

About a dozen nuns in their 80s and 90s from the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary in South Bend, Ind., arrived at their polling place in May only to be told that they could not cast ballots in that state’s primary election. Why? They did not have acceptable photo identification. Indiana now has the strictest of all voter identification laws, a matter of concern to civil rights advocates who believe that laws like Indiana’s are excluding otherwise eligible voters from exercising one of the most basic rights of U.S. citizens. Laws of this kind primarily affect low-income people, the elderly, people with disabilities and racial minorities.

Last week's announcement that minorities collectively will make up a majority of people in America by 2042 comes at a contentious moment in U.S. history. A bitter and largely negative debate about immigration roils the country.Stoked by angry politicians, the shouting rarely goes beyond variations on the theme of how to send 12 million illegal immigrants back home. Hardly anybody acknowledges that 38 million legal immigrants and their 31 million children already call America home. These people, along with other minorities, will be a powerful force in shaping America's future. Word to the wise: The future is here; get used to it.

Barack Obama has cast himself as someone who wants to forge common-ground solutions. Reporters have looked for examples from his time in the Senate and the Illinois legislature. But one need not look that far back. His latest test was over the abortion plank of the Democratic Party platform, and it’s hard to think of a more challenging political balancing act. On the one hand, he has become convinced that he has an opportunity to win large numbers of evangelicals. On the other, the abortion-rights groups are important constituencies to the party, and winning independent women will be crucial.

In terms of Faith and Values politicking, it's kind of hard to get psyched up about the prospect of Joe Biden coming aboard as Barack Obama's running mate. I can't think of any religious constituency he singularly and automatically delivers to the Senator from Illinois Come to think of it, I can' think of any constituency he singularly and automatically delivers. (Admittedly, that's not the only thing a vice-presidential candidate can bring to the table). Biden is a Catholic. He is reliably liberal. He is reliably pro-Choice. But nothing I have seen in the general election indicates that Obama has difficulties with reliably liberal, pro-Choice Catholics.

At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong. It is also un-American. For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won. Was it the nuanced, thoughtful Obama, who may have convinced a few more skeptics that he isn't a Muslim? Or was it the direct, confident McCain, who breezes through town-hall-style meetings the way Obama sinks three-pointers from the back court? The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state. The loser was America.

The ignorance of the mainstream media (and the "educated" elites from which they are drawn) when it comes to religion is astounding and, by now, unsurprising. But when it is wedded to historical ignorance, it is time to lodge a protest. This morning's Washington Post has an op-ed by Kathleen Parker, a columnist who once won the Baltimore Sun's H.L. Mencken award for "following the tradition of H.L. Mencken in attacking ignorance and stupidity with vividness and originality." Parker objects to the Saddleback Forum and many of the questions asked by Pastor Rick Warren. She goes out of her way to compliment Warren as a person, but then goes for the jugular: "But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?"

Some of the political ads on TV this summer have managed to sink to the level of the swift-boat attacks that torpedoed John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. One, authorized by the McCain campaign, depicted a grinning Barack Obama next to a gas pump as the price-per-gallon meter shot toward $5. The ad implied that the lone culprit for high gas prices (which averaged $1.20 a gallon in spring 2002 but hung around $4.10 for much of this summer) is the junior senator from Illinois. That’s because he did not initially jump to lift the ban restricting off-shore oil drilling, or support the Arizona senator’s feckless call for a federal gas-tax moratorium. That proposal was a gimmick and eventually disappeared even from McCain’s play book.

Anyone who still doubts that the evangelical Christian world is going through a political revolution was not watching Pastor Rick Warren's presidential forum this weekend. The era of reducing Christianity to a narrow set of ideological commitments is over. Just a few years ago, who would have imagined that Barack Obama and John McCain would hold a discussion of this sort in a church? Who would have thought that the session would be moderated by an evangelical pastor who was emphatic in counting both the Democrat and the Republican as his "friends"? Who would have predicted that in such a setting, the issues of abortion and gay marriage would not dominate the pastor's queries? The notion that Christianity in general and evangelicalism in particular are by nature right-wing creeds has always been wrong. How can a faith built around a commitment to the poor and the vulnerable be seen as leading ineluctably to conservative political conclusions?

Watching Barack Obama and John McCain handle pastor Rick Warren's questions about abortion, you could see the whole presidential race in miniature taking shape before our eyes. The clear answer beats the clever one any time ... unless you worry about the chaos that clarity can bring. Before a friendly but still skeptical Evangelical crowd at Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., on Saturday night, McCain won a roar of approval when Warren asked him at what point a human being gets human rights: "At the moment of conception," McCain replied. The answer was clear, unequivocal and a great relief to restless Republicans who had endured a week of indigestion on the issue. Meanwhile, Obama talked about finding the resources to help women who choose to keep their baby, and about trying to reduce the need for abortions in the first place.

In Israel, there is a village where Arabs and Jews live as neighbors. Both groups endeavor to create a just society that can be a model for peace in the region. What's it called? "Oasis of Peace." Though the town's name gives the impression that it's some sort of magical, idealistic utopia, the people living there are challenged daily and deeply by the reality of an intractable, painful, and violent conflict. Like anything worth attaining, peace comes with hard work. Much can be learned from Neve Shalom, its Hebrew name, or Wahat al-Salam as it's called in Arabic, about inter-faith relations. In the local Jewish-Arab primary school, children study one another's faiths with natural curiosity. Students break the fast together at Ramadan, share a sukkah booth at the festival of Sukkot, and exchange small gifts at Christmas. And dialogue begins, but never ends.

It has been a little over a year since I left the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but I still have trouble sleeping sometimes. On a recent restless night, I found a DVD entitled "United 93" beside the family television set. I had no idea what it was about, but I started watching. When I realized that it was about the hijacked American plane that had crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, I began to cry. It reminded me of a very simple question I had asked myself countless times during my 5 1/2 years in Guantanamo: When will humans start treating each other with respect, whatever our religion or color?

A dramatic investment in clean energy would be the most effective check on aggressive petroregimes from Moscow to Tehran. It would be the best long-term solution to global warming. And energy independence is the most effective step we can take for American families staggering under the burden of high gas prices. That's because the forces that have produced this summer's record prices are not going away. We are facing skyrocketing world demand for an ever-shrinking quantity of oil, and unless Congress figures out a way to amend the laws of supply and demand, that fundamental fact is not going to change. This is a large-scale problem, and it's going to take large-scale solutions.

Saddleback Church, and its pastor, Rick Warren, were the bigwinners of last night’s presidential forum. Warren's approach to politics is different from that of earlier evangelical leaders not only because of his style, but because of his age. 35 years on, Warren comes to politics with a desire to take a more comprehensive approach, one that includes addressing poverty as well as defending traditional marriage. The Gospels have a great deal to say about issues that would today be called social justice issues. He is certainly concerned to end abortion on demand in this country, but he is also concerned about the spread of AIDS in Africa. The questions last night reflected this broader agenda.

Some of the political ads on TV this summer have managed to sink to the level of the swift-boat attacks that torpedoed John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004. One, authorized by the McCain campaign, depicted a grinning Barack Obama next to a gas pump as the price-per-gallon meter shot toward $5. The ad implied that the lone culprit for high gas prices (which averaged $1.20 a gallon in spring 2002 but hung around $4.10 for much of this summer) is the junior senator from Illinois. That's because he did not initially jump to lift the ban restricting off-shore oil drilling, or support the Arizona senator's feckless call for a federal gas-tax moratorium. That proposal was a gimmick and eventually disappeared even from McCain's play book.

Three years have passed since Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast. The people of New Orleans felt abandoned by their country then. And while they are optimistic about their future, they feel forgotten now. In a survey of Orleans Parish released by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation this month, 65 percent of respondents said they thought "most Americans have forgotten about the challenges facing New Orleans." Sixty percent said no when asked, "Do you think the rebuilding of New Orleans is a priority for Congress and the president?" No surprise: The pace of recovery has been slow. Battles between Baton Rouge and Washington over red tape and funding have contributed to this. That doesn't mean progress isn't being made. It is. But the need for leadership and focus from Washington remains.

The draft language of the Democratic platform was released and, strangely, both pro-choice radicals and pro-life Democrats claimed victory in how the text treated abortion. How can that be? And who will be proven right? Feminist Linda Hirschman was delighted that the Democrats had removed the construction, first used by Bill Clinton, that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." Hirschman took offense to the use of "rare" because this suggests abortion is a bad thing that should be avoided, a "necessary evil" and she does not view it as such. On the other hand, long-time pro-life legal scholar Doug Kmiec views the new language in the Democratic platform as a step in the right direction because it calls for renewed efforts to lower the number of abortions.

With prospects quite good for a Democratic Congress and administration in 2009, the United States is on the brink of joining all other industrialized nations in ensuring the provision of some form of basic health care for all Americans. Reforming American health care is the single most important public-policy issue on the Democratic agenda, and policy experts are weighing in from all sides. I will confine this article to offering some practical reflections on issues that may bear on the final shape of any approved plan.

It seems to me that, on balance, if you're pro-life this platform is about the same as the 2004 platform -- slightly better in some ways and, actually, slightly worse in other ways. Where it's better: the draft platform endorses policies, such as better sex education and health care, that would "help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby reduce the need for abortions." Where it's worse: the platform actually drops the language from the 2004 platform that abortion "should be safe, legal, and rare." That breakthrough formulation, popularized by Bill Clinton, reiterated support for legal abortion but rhetorically endorsed the idea that society would be better off with fewer abortions.