Double Standards
I don’t have much to say about the grand Catholic brouhaha over President Obama giving this year’s commencement address at my alma mater, though despite my initial reaction just to roll my eyes at all the fuss I’ve got to note that I think Bishop D’Arcy makes a pretty good case that the invitation is problematic. Wherever you come down on the controversy, however, there can be no denying that K-Lo just got pwn3d by the Dish:
But it was fine for pro-choice, pro-death penalty Condi Rice, who was part of the team that signed off on torture, to speak at Boston College. Seriously who do these people think they’re persuading any more?
Not me, surely. The question for Andrew, though, is what he’d say if the commencement speaker were Dick Cheney. Yeah, I thought so, and amen to that. But then, why do Obama’s commitments to federally-funded embryonic stem cell research and abortion on demand get a pass?
Elsewhere: Unending irony, indeed.
Filed under: abortion, education, morality, religion, torture, war
I’m puzzled by the the unending irony link. Do you think Catholics being published in National Review is analogous to honoring Obama at a commencement and conferring an honorary law doctorate?
Oh, btw, K-Lo is embarrassing as usual. But that’s not news.
I suppose I don’t think it’s an especially helpful analogy – I guess it was the “inconsistency” half of that post that I liked the most.
That said: I do think that there’s a fair case to be made that NR’s position on war, torture, etc. means that they’ve forfeited any claim they might have had to be an arbiter on matters Catholic, and that faithful Catholics concerned about such issues shouldn’t enable the magazine to put itself forward as such. This was, I take it, the core of MM’s point – though I haven’t followed all the discussion in the comments! – and it seems to me to be a reasonable one.
Comment of the week!
Fair enough, and you’re wise not to follow the comment threads unless you have a lot of time on your hands. I’d be the last to claim NR is the arbiter of faithful Catholicism. But there’s a large jump from that position to saying Catholics who have their worked published there are in the same position as Notre Dame is in honoring Obama.
I don’t think conferring an honorary degree is the end of the world, but, as you say, a case can be made that it is problematic. If it is problematic, then I don’t see why Catholics can’t go on record as saying so, even if it is in the dreaded NR without being accused of hypocrisy.
Agreed. It’s certainly not the same position, and it’s not even clear that the occasional similarities are especially helpful in helping us understand what might be wrong with the NR symposium itself.
Again, agreed – though even if publishing in NR isn’t evidence of this, many of the people making these complaints are being hypocritical; I take it we’d both agree that K-Lo is a case in point. It’s interesting to ask oneself, though, what many of the contributors to the NR symposium would say if, e.g., Commonweal or America, let alone TNR or The Nation, were to do the same thing, either concerning Obama or perhaps Rice or (hypothetically) Cheney – can’t you imagine a host of people whining about the “liberal Commonweal (America, TNR, etc.)” daring to tell the Catholic Church how to conduct its affairs? There is something unseemly about the status that National Review has in the eyes of many orthodox Catholics, and it’s crucial for anti-war, anti-torture, non-Republican Christians to do what they can to combat that.
Why are you giving attention to a neo-con obsessed loon like MM?
That’s a good point; I think the NR contributor’s responses to a similar gathering at America or TNR would be along the lines you suggest. It would be a good thing if NR had less influence among conservative Catholics, especially given the embarrassments in Iraq, torture, and, I would argue, concern for the poor (in NR parlance, ‘socialism’). I think NR fills the role it does because of the depressing dearth of faithful Catholics at many other publications (perhaps I’m ignorant, but I can’t think of a prominent Catholic at the Nation or TNR), but that’s a subject for another day. Cheers.
It’s also worth noting that the mere fact that Condi Rice is pro-choice is not as relevant as the fact that Barack Obama is because Barack Obama’s position on this issue has much more effect on the public policy regarding it. Obviously, it would be much more controversial if a Catholic school were to invite an abortionist to deliver the commencement than if they just happened to invite, say, a very successful executive who happened to be pro-choice but had never abetted the pro-abortion party by any other means than casting a ballot.
I don’t follow. In the first place, the problem with Condi Rice isn’t just that she’s pro-choice but also that her positions on other issues – including, crucially, war and torture – are wildly out of step with Catholic moral teaching. And secondly, do you really think that there would be any less of an uproar from the usual quarters if the commencement speaker were Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden?
“Again, agreed – though even if publishing in NR isn’t evidence of this, many of the people making these complaints are being hypocritical; I take it we’d both agree that K-Lo is a case in point. It’s interesting to ask oneself, though, what many of the contributors to the NR symposium would say if, e.g., Commonweal or America, let alone TNR or The Nation, were to do the same thing, either concerning Obama or perhaps Rice or (hypothetically) Cheney – can’t you imagine a host of people whining about the “liberal Commonweal (America, TNR, etc.)” daring to tell the Catholic Church how to conduct its affairs? There is something unseemly about the status that National Review has in the eyes of many orthodox Catholics, and it’s crucial for anti-war, anti-torture, non-Republican Christians to do what they can to combat that.”
This is a load of crap. Let’s face it, the torture business has some measure of legitimacy, but is mostly a quasi-issue for “sophisticated” people with various stripes of conservative sympathies to avoid supporting Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh or whoever in circumstances where it might be socially awkward.
As far as I know no at National Review, certainly no one from the symposium supports legalized torture, as surely whatever contributors The Nation could round up would support legalized abortion.
Finally, the problem with K-Lo isn’t that she’s Catholic or even wrong, but way too often she’s mind-numbingly banal. That’s unfortunate in its own right, but as the Notre Dame controversy goes, really has nothing to do with the price of tea in China.
Come again? NR and NRO have published dozens if not hundreds of articles and blog posts defending torture, and have editorialized in its defense as well. A load of crap, indeed.
Name that tune kemosabe. Ie, that torture ought to be legal, in the same way that abortion is supposed, by it proponents, to enjoy the full support of the law (and public funding for that matter).
Not sure I get what tune you’re asking me to name; writing in complete sentences might help. But if I understand what you’re asking, then the answer is that yes, the folks at NR who support torture think that it should be both legal under and given the full support of the law in the senses you mention. Of course they’d prefer not to call it “torture”, but then again defenders of abortion rights have their own class of euphemisms, too.
Sorry for the sentence fragments. In any case, you write,
“Of course they’d prefer not to call it “torture”, but then again defenders of abortion rights have their own class of euphemisms, too.”
Ok, well what defender of abortion (hypothetically being published in The Nation or somewhere) is somehow going to deny, if asked, that “terminating a pregnancy” isn’t really abortion?
That’s okay; sorry for being a jerk about it.
Suppose the answer is “None”; what’s the upshot? The fact is that a great many of the practices that many on the American Right have been defending to the hilt clearly are torture; that they’re unwilling to label them as such just shows a that their moral blindness is being served up with an equal serving of self-deception. A better comparison, I suppose, would be with refusing to admit that abortion involves killing, or “the taking of a life” if one prefers.
Well first of all, NR isn’t the arbiter of anything Catholic. It has had, and probably still has, a fair bit of influence among more orthodox American Catholics because #1, William F Buckley was its personification for decades, but also #2 because the Left is almost uniformly hostile to any of the traditional forms of Christianity so the organs of the Right are taken to be religious by default.
By contrast, the stuff about torture is (quoting myself) “a quasi-issue for “sophisticated” people with various stripes of conservative sympathies to avoid supporting Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh or whoever”
In this context, NR seems like an obvious place to publish that symposium. Where else would those contributors meet otherwise?
Agreed; indeed, my whole beef is with people – at NR or elsewhere – who treat it as if it is.
No, it’s an absolutely fundamental issue for Christians and conservatives who believe in such unsophisticated things as basic morality and the rule of law. If that means not supporting Palin and Limbaugh, so much the better, I guess.
How about Commonweal, or Mirror of Justice, or some other blog or online magazine that’s not effectively an organ of a single political party?
“No, it’s an absolutely fundamental issue for Christians and conservatives who believe in such unsophisticated things as basic morality and the rule of law. If that means not supporting Palin and Limbaugh, so much the better, I guess.”
I’m trying to think of exceptions but AFAIK the torture was not a big-ticket issue for the conservative movement since (or American political discourse in general) from say 1955 to 2005. For me at least, this leads to substantial doubt about just how “fundamental” the whole controversy is.
Yes, but that’s the importance of the qualifier: it’s fundamental for those who believe in basic morality and the rule of law. Not many of those left in the conservative movement, really.
Ahhhh, right. Conservatives (and Americans in general) just don’t believe in basic morality and the rule of law. It’s about here that you should be checking your premises. Apparently you haven’t been tempted to, which speaks quite a bit by itself.
Oh, snap. Because if most people think something, it’s got to be right, eh?
“Oh, snap. Because if most people think something, it’s got to be right, eh?”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Btw, name that tune wrt National Review still stands.
I’d be happy to play, but I’m afraid I don’t know the rules. What exactly are you asking me to do?
patience must be a christian virtue ;-)
I wasn’t meaning to address Condi Rice’s positions on torture and war. If this makes her an illegitimate speaker at a Catholic university, then so be it. The point is merely that bringing up the fact that she is pro-choice is not exactly relevant if it has not affected public policy at all. To cite an extreme example, one can imagine that there would be a much louder uproar if a university invited Hermann Goering to give a commencement address (who supported Hitler in practice) than if they invited Knut Hamsun (who supported Hitler in theory). Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is perfectly relevant to deny a forum to those who support morally atrocious practices either theoretically or practically. The point is simply that it is more relevant to deny someone that forum when his/her opinion actually affects the issue. As for the question about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, I don’t quite follow your point. Obviously, as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have been supporters of abortion in the past (both theoretically and practically), objecting to either of them would be perfectly legitimate. Of course, there probably wouldn’t be all of the brouhaha if the school had invited Bob Casey, Jr. who is pro-life. Lastly, I would like to point out that I do not think either Condi Rice or Barack Obama ought to be denied a forum at Notre Dame University. There are many policies supported by many politicians to which I object, but I don’t think that this is reason enough to scrap an invitation which–in the current case–would be quite an honor; I teach high school and, if Barack Obama could address the graduating class, I would gladly attend the ceremony and even help organize it. That being said, there are quite a few Catholics who find it objectionable to invite a pro-choice candidate to speak at a commencement ceremony and, if they are going to take this position, I think that the Church will need to articulate a hermeneutic of sorts for determining what does or does not classify a speaker’s positions as legitimate or illegitimate.
Thanks for the thoughtful response; I agree that the question of whether a politician’s views on the issues at stake have any effect on policy raises a morally relevant consideration: hence my point in suggesting Clinton and Biden was just that as Sec. of State and VP their views on abortion don’t have this sort of impact, but perhaps Madeleine Albright would have been a better example – can’t you imagine a lot of GOP Catholic types complaining about her views on abortion? Or perhaps not …
More generally: I think the rest of what you say is quite right. My biggest concern is that by treating the abortion issue in the way that … well, in the way that it deserves to be treated, the Church ends up providing de facto cover to the non-abortion-related views of any politician who isn’t pro-choice. That’s not to say that issues like war, or even torture or the death penalty, have the same status as abortion; perhaps one could argue that they do, but even if they don’t that doesn’t mean there won’t be a lot of damage done by singling out abortion as the lone undebatable issue. My own inclination is actually to say that the standard should be really high: only individuals who’ve contributed in pretty radical ways to the life of the Church should be given honors like this one. That this means that pretty much no national politician would clear the bar is, I think, one of such a proposal’s very best effects. There are countless people who teach, write books, feed the hungry, aid the sick, and otherwise do the real work of advocating for God’s justice who deserve an honorary doctorate more than Barack Obama does; that most such people are not presently famous is all the more reason to single them out.