Sun Rises, World Continues on Its Way: Things That Continue, from Today's Newsfeed

Cardinal Burke continues to emangelize.*

Ms. Palin Supplants Mr. Whitman As the Bard of the Common Man and Woman: "You Rockin' Rollers! And Holy Rollers! Proud Clingers of Our Guns!"

Really, who needs fusty old Walt Whitman any longer, when we have Ms. Palin creating her brilliant word-salad paeans to the American common man and common woman? It's poetry, I tell you! It's poetry, the speech that Ms. Palin gave yesterday in support of that monumental champion of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Six Packs, and Mr. Whitman's work can't hold a candle to it:

Abby Zimet on How "Fabulous Media Success" of "American Sniper" Story Highights America's Moral Failings

On Tuesday, I linked to Chris Hedges's powerful statement about how "American Sniper" lionizes what is worst in American culture — "the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a 'Christian' nation to exterminate the 'lesser breeds' of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression."

Brief Takes from Week's News: Palin and Baptism, Brendan Eich and Double Standards, Churches and the Gays, Etc.

Brief takes from the week's news on Sarah Palin and her comparison of water-boarding to baptism, on Brendan Eich and double standards, and on the gays, the churches, and Fox news:

In the News: Sarah Palin Does Not Heart Pope Francis, Etc.

Articles/statements that catch my eye as I scan the news this morning:

Fading Palin and Boehner and the GOP: Number 1 or Number 2?

Two new cartoons featured today at the Truthdig site remind of that frustrating vision test the ophthalmologist always gives. Remember it? She shifts from lens 1 to lens 2 and then asks, as she holds up a little cue card, "Which is better, number 1 or number 2?"

Political Newsflash: Sarah Palin Loves Fried-Chicken Sandwiches!

Sarah Palin is loving her some fried-chicken sandwiches.  (Or do I mean Michelle Bachmann?  Anyhow, that's the photo of the lady in question, above.)

Frank Bruni on Sarah Palin's Religious Worldview: Wanted No Part of Sin, Plunged into Politics Nonetheless

Well, in the never-mind category: I'm so sorry I conflated Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann in what I say below--after I had thought I'd read Frank Bruni's article.  I'm leaving the mistake as is, with this preface, as a reminder to myself of how wildly wrong my brain-finger connection can be sometimes, when it thinks one thing and then types another.  I'm very sorry for the silly mistake.  Palin has been on my mind due something I mention in the final sentence.  Thanks to those who pointed out the mistake.

Frank Bruni is another writer I've learned to like (I'm echoing the opening of my posting just a moment ago about Thomas Harrington).  I've followed his op-ed pieces at the New York Times with interest after having discovered his autobiographical work Born Round a few years ago.  As someone who went from being so slight as a boy that I was sometimes described as no bigger than a bar of soap, to someone who began to round out with puberty and who has struggled to constrain the roundness ever since, I can sympathize with Bruni's account of his battle to maintain his weight, especially as a food maven. 

Darin Murphy on the Palin-Obama Performance: Win for Obama

Darin Murphy's analysis of Ms. Palin's post-Tucson performance is, to my ear, pitch-perfect, both in its understanding of her intent in pre-empting Mr. Obama's own performance, and in the failure of Palin's attempt at theater.  As Murphy notes, Palin had a chance to lead by granting absolution to members of her party whose fierce reaction against criticism following the Tucson shootings reveals deep, unresolved, and unacknowledged feelings of guilt.

Pawlenty Situates Himself for Post-Tucson Presidential Run

The developing (and sleazy, to my mind) playbook of Republicans trying to situate themselves for a presidential run, after Sarah Palin went up in flames (or may have done so) with her response to the Tucson shootings:

Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin's Reponse to Tucson Events: "Something Menacing"

Andrew Sullivan's conclusion, as he assesses Sarah Palin's gigantic failure to be a leader (or even a decent human being) in response to the Tucson events, is chilling.  And absolutely correct.  

Sullivan writes,

Rashad Robinson on Dr. Laura's Pity Party: Free Speech Is About Taking Responsibility

Rashad Robinson at Huffington Post on the claim of Dr. Laura Schlessinger that she is a victim of those trying to curb her free speech after she went on one final bias-fueled tirade on her radio show:

What Schlessinger, Palin, and so many others fail (or refuse) to comprehend is that "freedom of speech" is not "freedom from the consequences of speech." If a figure who has put him or herself in the public eye uses speech to harm others, he or she must held accountable. Critics have the responsibility to exercise THEIR freedom of speech in order to educate the public when false and hurtful information is being spread. We learned in the late 90s how "Dr. Laura" feels about LGBT people. We now know how "Dr Laura" feels about race. The public has a right to know whether her sponsors agree with her, and Schlessinger's advertisers have every right to drop their support.

Yes, Schlessinger, Palin and others of their ilk do refuse to understand that with their free speech goes responsibility for what they incite through through their words.  Their rule of thumb is clearly, Responsibility for others.  For libs and progressives.

People of Faith Speak Out: Stop Demonization of Islamic People in Ground-Zero Controversy

And, as a good counterpoint to what I posted today about the silence of the official spokespersons for several religious groups re: the "ground-zero mosque" controversy, I want to mention an article I'm just now seeing at National Catholic Reporter.  The article, jointly composed by Religion News Service and NCR staff, notes that more than forty religious leaders have issued a statement condemning the attempt to demonize Muslims and supporting the right of the Islamic community to construct a community center near the ground-zero site.

Sarah Keeps Tweeting: Now Attacking Obama's Support of Ground-Zero Mosque

Sarah Palin is sniping away at President Obama with tweeted questions about his support for the right of the Islamic community to build a mosque near the ground-zero site.  She's been working this angle for some time now, since she tweeted that a mosque at the site would "stab hearts."

Best Headline of Day: Andy Borowitz on Sarah Palin Memoirs

My vote for the best headline of the day: Andy Borowitz at HuffPo, "Palin's Memoir Due in November; English Edition to Follow."

Notes in the Wake of Dr. GeorgeTiller's Murder: On the Considerable Shortcomings of Mainstream Media Coverage of Religious Issues

Some observations in the wake of the murder of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in Wichita on Sunday:

▪ It’s interesting to note how quickly the mainstream media are seeking to bury all follow-up to this story in articles hidden off the front page, and how little interest the media are showing in probing the background to this murder—in particular, the ideological and religious motivations, as well as the history, of Scott Roeder, the man charged with the murder.

▪ The media’s immediate relegation of follow-up articles about this story to inner and back pages of newspapers suggests the continuing domination of our mainstream media by the political and religious right, and, in particular, by the economic interest groups the political and religious right serve.

▪ One does not have to be pro-abortion to be intently concerned about the contradictions between pro-life rhetoric and murder (indeed, one has to be concerned about those contradictions, if one expects to be a credible pro-life spokesperson). Nor does one have to be pro-abortion to be intently concerned that a strong hidden undercurrent of violence runs through our culture, targeting those who support or provide abortions, gays and lesbians, and others that the religious and political right consider transgressive and susceptible to violent repression.

▪ Fascinating first-hand testimony from Lindsey Roeder, Scott Roeder’s former wife, in a New York Times piece today by Susan Saulny and Monica Davey—testimony that does deserve analysis and follow-up:

“‘The man I married disappeared into this other person,” Ms. Roeder, shaken and puffy eyed, said of Scott Roeder . . . . ‘He wanted a scapegoat,’ Ms. Roeder said. ‘First it was taxes — he stopped paying. Then he turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion.’”

▪ He wanted a scapegoat: that observation speaks volumes about what underlies much anti-abortion (and anti-feminist and anti-gay) ideology in our society. The need of angry heterosexist men to find a scapegoat when they feel control of everything is slipping out of their hands . . . . Which, of course, radically calls into question the claims of many of those who represent the “pro-life” stance that they are actually primarily concerned about the value of life and about protecting pre-natal life: it’s not really about that at all, in much of the pro-life movement.

▪ And so the churches—above all, the Catholic church, which has led the charge here—are making a very unholy alliance, when they ally themselves, under the guise of promoting respect for life, with groups whose ultimate goals have nothing at all to do with respect for life, and which are, in fact, quite counter-life in clearly discernible, shocking ways.

▪ Bruce Wilson’s investigation of the ties between proposition 8 supporter Lou Engle of TheCall, the Army of God, and the New Apostolic Reformation at Talk2Action today provides hair-raising evidence in support of what I have just said.

Engle (who campaigned actively against gay marriage in the proposition 8 battle in California), calls for “acts of Christian martyrdom” by those who oppose abortion. In Wilson’s view, “. . . through TheCall Lou Engle has quietly mainstreamed language that was, during the 1990's and up through 2001, to be found mainly coming from the militant wing of the antiabortion movement associated with the antiabortion terrorist movement known as the Army Of God.”

Wilson notes that Engle's rhetoric parallels that of Army of God members who maintain that a civil war will be necessary to atone for the “blood-debt curse” they believe God has placed on America because of abortion. In December 2007, Engle announced a doctrine he called “The Doctrine of the Shedding of Innocent Blood,” which maintains that “surely blood requires blood in God's judgment.” (And this bloody rhetoric, with its aberrant theological stance that is far from Catholic orthodoxy, is now being echoed in the Catholic anti-abortion movement.)

▪ Wilson also notes that Engle belongs to the New Apostolic Reformation movement, which also claims Sarah Palin as a member and which is tied to white-supremacist militia groups as well as to Christian Zionist cells.

▪ All of which should be all through mainstream media news coverage of the murder of Dr. Tiller, but is not there and will not appear there. It is wonderful that good journalists covering religious issues, like Bruce Wilson, are probing these ties. It is deplorable (and irresponsible, unprofessional, and unethical) that the mainstream media are not probing them.

And Now the Bishops Meet

Beginning with this open letter to the U.S. Catholic bishops on 10 October, I have blogged repeatedly about the opening to violence that hateful campaign rhetoric—especially at rallies of Sarah Palin—has now created in our society (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/10/open-letter-to-us-catholic-bishops-on.html). I have repeatedly called on the U.S. Catholic bishops as a body to address and condemn such rhetorical violence, and to remind people of good will that rhetorical violence fuels actual violence.

The bishops have remained silent. Since they are now meeting in Baltimore, I renew my appeal to them.

Today, Tim Shipman reports in the London Telegraph that the Secret Service has now released information that they “warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks” (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/sarahpalin/3405336/Sarah-Palin-blamed-by-the-US-Secret-Service-for-death-threats-against-Barack-Obama.html). Shipman notes that Palin’s attacks on Obama “provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling ‘terrorist’ and ‘kill him’ until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.”

During the campaign, two plots to assassinate Mr. Obama were broken up. Others remain under investigation. The Secret Service has warned Obama that he “is a high risk target for racist gunmen.”

Once again: the hate rhetoric that fanned the flames of potential violence walked hand in hand with pro-life rhetoric in the recent campaign. As leaders of a religious community that accentuates the need to respect life, the bishops have an obligation to speak out on behalf of life values and against violence.

Unambiguously, strongly, clearly. Though the campaign is over, when demagoguery begins to elicit violence, people of faith and their leaders have an exceptionally strong responsibility to speak out repeatedly—against violence and for life. And to distance ourselves from those using pro-life rhetoric who simultaneously foment violence and hate.

As one small voice in a large flock, I continue to call on the U.S. Catholic bishops to offer pastoral leadership to the flock. And to offer the nation the moral guidance on which the Catholic community prides itself. The bishops’ voice needs to be heard, particularly when a member of their body, Bishop Rene Gracida of Corpus Christi, released a radio statement during the campaign speaking of Mr. Obama as Barack Hussein Obama as he instructed Catholics to vote against Mr. Obama (www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=30221, www.crossleft.org/node/6606).

This is inflammatory rhetoric. It deserves to be roundly condemned by the bishops as a body. It should be repudiated in a way that makes clear to the American public that the bishops reject violence as a Catholic value.

And on the subject of the pastoral leadership of the bishops—another topic I have repeatedly addressed on this blog—I want to note an 8 November article of Peter Steinfels in the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/us/politics/08beliefs.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink). Steinfels asks,

By appearing to tie their moral stance on abortion so closely to a particular political choice, have they [i.e., the U.S. Catholic bishops] in fact undermined their moral persuasiveness on that issue as well as their pastoral effectiveness generally?

In my view, the answer to that question is an indubitable yes. Particularly when there are undeniable indicators of a growing collusion between those using outright hate rhetoric and those who claim to promote the bishops’ pro-life stance. I have documented that link in detail on this blog as the campaign unfolded, and will not repeat what I have said about it.

As I have also noted, a percentage of bishops perhaps greater than in any previous election played overt partisan politics in this campaign, making statements that were either outright endorsements of Mr. McCain (as was Bishop Gracida’s), or were obvious endorsements wearing a disguise so thin no one was in doubt of what lay underneath the scant vestments. Steinfels notes the estimate of 50-60 such partisan bishops that was circulating as the election ended, an estimate I have cited several times from Rocco Palma’s Whispers in the Loggia Blog.

As I have also noted, given the partisan statements of such a significant number of bishops—and the silence of their brother bishops as these statements came forth—the public now has a strong perception that the bishops as a body were strongly partisan in this election.

For many Catholics, it no longer suffices to suggest that the bishops oppose single-issue voting and recognize a range of values and issues that ought to merit Catholic attention. As Steinfels notes,

Many Catholics may understandably feel that the bishops are talking out of both sides of their mouths: Catholics are not supposed to be single-issue voters, but, by the way, abortion is the only issue that counts. The bishops do not intend to tell Catholics how to vote; but, by the way, a vote for Senator Obama puts your salvation at risk. Catholics are to form their consciences and make prudential judgments about complex matters of good and evil — just so long as they come to the same conclusions as the bishops.

Given the now widespread perception of Catholics and the public at large that the bishops play partisan politics as a body, and that their real judgment about the Democratic party and its candidate are clear no matter how carefully some church leaders parse political statements, Steinfels wonders how the bishops will confront their apparent defeat in the election, as they gather in Baltimore.

Steinfels’ emphasis on the (self-created) threats to the bishops’ pastoral leadership is well-placed. The real question that ought to be front and center in the bishops’ minds as they meet now is how to deal with their failed pastoral leadership of the American Catholic people.

News of the Week: Sally's Baaack; Church of the Two Kevins, etc.

Strands that connect to topics I’ve discussed earlier this week:

There’s a lot more evidence of (and commentary about) the hate now bubbling around through the Palin-McCain rallies this past week. I won’t link to the articles, since readers can easily retrieve them through web searches.

In a way, I’m conflicted about even giving attention to them. A superstitious part of me feels that noticing rising social hatred, and pointing out its possibility to elicit actual violence, actually help feed the hatred.

On the other hand, when the sub rosa hatred that is always there in any society claims an open hearing in the rhetoric of people vying for the highest offices in the land, how can one justify not speaking out? There are too many clear historical precedents that show us how little it takes to produce actual physical violence, once such hate unmasks itself and comes out into the open,

If now is not the time to speak out, when will that time be?

+ + + + +

Connecticut legalized gay marriage yesterday. It is now the third state to recognize the right of gay citizens to marry. Commentary on the state supreme court decision to equalize marriage rights in Connecticut notes that the majority opinion recognizes that the decision to withhold marriage rights from gay citizens is inherently discriminatory (www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/connecticut-gay-marriage_n_133605.html). Withholding the right of marriage from gays continues historic structures of discrimination that turn gays into second-class citizens. The court notes that the tendency of American jurisprudence is to keep extending rights over the course of history to groups shut out of the structures of participatory democracy by unjust discrimination, including people of color and women.

I’m disappointed to hear that Republican governor M. Jodi Rell disagreed with her state’s supreme court decision, noting, "I do not believe their voice reflects the majority of the people of Connecticut.” In looking at Rell’s biography, I find she was born in Virginia in 1946. She was educated in Virginia.

She’s roughly my contemporary. Like me, Governor Rell came of age in a Southern state during the Civil Rights crisis. It cannot have escaped her attention that the majority of citizens in her state, as in mine, as in all Southern states, bitterly resisted the rights of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.

We had to be brought kicking and screaming into the land of liberty and justice for all. We had to be forced to do the right thing. It took the U.S. Supreme Court to make us begin to reconsider our longstanding history of discrimination.

Equal rights for all should not be determined by popular vote. They should be determined by fundamental principles that are essential to the constitution of a humane body politic. They should be defended by courts even when those rights are not popular with the majority—defended because it is right to defend equality in a society based on the contention that all people are created equal.

Governor Rell should know this, from her experience growing up in the South in the Civil Rights period. I am disappointed that she defends a denial of equal rights in the case of gay citizens that I doubt she would any longer defend in the case of African-American citizens.

+ + + + +

Two more U.S. Catholic bishops have come out this week. That is, have come out overtly for the Republican ticket in the coming election.

Whispers in the Loggia blog today reports on a joint pastoral letter released yesterday by the bishops of Dallas-Ft. Worth, Kevin Farrell and Kevin Vann (http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com). The two Kevins argue that a “vote for a candidate who supports the intrinsic evil of abortion or 'abortion rights' when there is a morally acceptable alternative would be to cooperate in the evil -- and, therefore, [is] morally impermissible."

As American Catholics have learned, this is codespeak for, “Good Catholics vote Republican.” I’ve long been appalled that Catholic bishops are willing to pimp for candidates who in key respects betray central Catholic values. The “pro-life” record of the candidates some bishops have promoted in election after election is abysmal. It completely contradicts the claim that the party being endorsed by the bishops is authentically pro-life.

Since we have sufficient evidence now that the candidates for whom some bishops have been pimping have absolutely no intent to be pro-life, why do bishops like the two Kevins keep up the pro-Republican game? Sadly, I’ve come to the conclusion that they do so because some of the “values” of the candidates they’re promoting—including some of the most dubious of those candidates’ “values”—are actually more in line with what bishops like the two Kevins really want than are gospel values. “Values” like the subordination of women to men. “Values” like the subordination of secular society to church control. “Values” like the racism that is at the dark heart of those screams to kill Obama at recent Palin rallies.

To say I am disappointed in bishops like the two Kevins would be an understatement. I’m repulsed by them. Ultimately, I am repulsed most of all because they are willingly informing a large number of good, conscientious Catholic voters that we are not welcome in the Church of the Two Kevins. That Church is Republican, thank you very much. Democrats need not apply.

+ + + + +

I reported earlier this week that the city of Orlando has just extended benefits to partners of city workers living in same-sex unions. I also reported (in my posting about “Camp Out”) about one church that is seeking to provide safe places, sanctuary, in which LGBT youth can deal with questions of sexual orientation without fear.

As a follow-up to both of those postings, I’m happy to note an article in today’s Daytona Beach News Journal which highlights a gay-affirming fraternity at Embry Riddle University (www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD02101108.htm). The article reports that Delta Phi Lambda fraternity on the campus of this Florida aeronautical school welcomes gay members.

Embry Riddle’s decision to allow safe spaces for LGBT students is not without a price. As the report indicates, after news of the fraternity broke (as well as news that the school had begun a Gay-Straight Alliance and had celebrated National Coming Out Week), at least one angry parent called to say that he/she did not want “gay things” going on at the university.

Despite the anger of that parent, the school’s administrators continue to support these gay-affirming developments on the campus. I applaud their courage. During the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, it was often not easy to do the right thing. It is not easy today, in the midst of the struggle for equal rights for gay Americans. When university administrators defend the core values of civil society in the face of prejudiced pressure groups, they deserve our admiration and support.

The right thing remains right, even when people exert pressure to make us betray our instinct for fundamental human decency. Young people moving towards adult identity deserve safe spaces in which to claim their adult identity. They deserve good adult role models to guide and counsel them. This is a large part of what college education is about: adult role models helping emerging adults find their way in the world, their unique identities, their calling in life.

Just as universities provide countless support groups for students of every background imaginable, they have a responsibility to offer support and safety to LGBT students. After all, parents who do not want such support offered to their youth can always find universities that still engage in overt discrimination. Church-owned schools have tested their legal right to discriminate on religious grounds in the courts. Surely there are such schools around for those angry Embry Riddle parents to find, if an environment of discrimination is what they want for their young people.

+ + + + +

Speaking of discrimination, I haven’t mentioned Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern in a while. As readers will recall, Kern was in the news earlier this year when someone attending a secret meeting she held with supporters leaked audiotape of the meeting to the media. The tape has Kern stating that gay people are a greater threat to America than terrorists.

Kern is back in the news. This week, she held a debate with opponent Ron Marlett, in which she sticks to her guns (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7500). She continues to promote her claim that gay citizens pose a greater threat to the United States than terrorists. She backs this astonishing claim with statistics: terrorists have 3,000 people in the U.S. in the last 15 years; gays have killed 100,000.

Kern is, readers will recall, the wife of a Baptist minister. And she’s an educator. Her opponent Ron Marlett finds her ideas “chilling.”

Indeed. Question for Governor M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut: after listening to Sally Kern, do you have second thoughts about wanting to submit the rights of some marginalized citizens to popular vote? Question for the bishops of the Church of the Two Kevins: is this kind of hatefulness—in the name of Christ—really what you want us to support by our votes?

As always, just asking.

An Open Letter to the U.S. Catholic Bishops on the Rise of Violence in American Political Discourse

Dear Bishops,

As I watch the latest developments in our national presidential campaign, I am intently concerned. And I find your silence baffling. Your silence concerns me as much as do some of the alarming incidents in the political sphere in the past two weeks.

I am speaking in particular of the transparent fear-mongering and hate-fomenting tactics of the pro-life candidates Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin in recent days. I am intently concerned, in particular, about the violence Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin’s rhetoric is inciting, and about their seeming refusal to curb or even address that violence.

Credible news reports from many sources state that at recent rallies, after these candidates have dishonestly labeled their opponent a terrorist, those hearing the rhetoric have shouted, “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” Not only did Mrs. Palin (at whose rallies these shouts are said to have occurred) not condemn these hateful anti-life cries when they took place, but to the best of my knowledge, neither she nor Mr. McCain has taken any responsibility for inciting hate that may well lead to acts of outright physical violence against one of our presidential candidates.

I cannot recall a presidential campaign in my lifetime in which such overt hate-mongering, with overt attempts to stir violence among citizens, has taken place. The rage-distorted faces I see on my computer or television screen at these political rallies frighten me. They frighten me for the future of my country.

We are at a precarious moment in our history as a democratic nation. Yesterday, the world markets took another precipitous nosedive. History demonstrates that in difficult economic times, people look for scapegoats. They look for someone to target, to blame, to hate. Demagogues know how to twist and turn this hatred to serve their own goal of gaining power over a troubled populace.

Such social hatred, fed by economic uncertainty, led to the rise of National Socialism in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. You know what bitter fruit that movement bore. You also surely know how muted, how diffident, how ineffectual the response of the German and Austrian bishops to what happened in Nazi Germany was.*

To this day, the church and its pastoral leaders contend with well-deserved guilt because far too many bishops stood by in silence as the fires of hatred began to burn out of control in Europe. Too many actually stoked those fires, to the eternal discredit of the church—just as many pastoral leaders did in the Spanish Civil War and in the conflicts in Latin America in the latter part of the 20th century.

You have told American voters to make the protection of life paramount as we go to the polls. I see a very stark pro-life issue at stake in what has happened in the past week at some American political rallies.

I grew up in the American South in the middle of the Civil Rights struggle. From the formative experiences of my youth and adolescence, I know well that it is entirely possible for hate groups to target and even to kill those who represent alternative visions of the future that the hate group will not tolerate. I have seen violence used as a tool of terror to try to stop necessary social change.

I remember the assassination of Dr. King vividly. I recall as well the murder of Medgar Evers. I will never forget the lynchings of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner in 1964, and the shameful length of time it took to bring one of the killers, Rev. Edgar Ray Killen, to justice for these murders in 2005.

I remember what happened to Violet Liuzzo, as I also recall the countless other scenes of ugly violence from that period, the burnt churches in which children died, the dogs turned on peaceful civil rights marchers, the fire hoses. I will never forget pictures of the faces of those in my hometown of Little Rock who lined the sidewalks to keep African-American students from integrating Central High School, or the stories I heard as a child of lunch trays dumped on the heads of those students when the school finally integrated.

From these formative experiences, I know that it takes very little to tip a culture in the direction of social violence and outright murder, when there is fear of change, or economic disturbance. I also know how easy it is to remain silent.

My conscience will not permit me to be silent now, as I read about the cries for violence at political rallies of candidates who call themselves pro-life, and who appear to have the endorsement of many of you as bishops. My conscience has been formed by the church, and it instructs me to speak out when I see social violence threatening to escalate, lest I become complicit in that violence through my tacit consent to it.

One of the reasons I left my childhood church and became Catholic in a small south-Arkansas town in the 1960s was that this church appeared to be the sole “white” church in my town that welcomed members of all races. I was impressed with the priests and nuns I saw marching in Civil Rights marches in the 1960s, placing themselves in positions in which they might pay the price that others paid, when they asked our nation to live up to its historic ideals of liberty and justice for all.

I am profoundly disappointed by your silence now, in the face of the shouts to kill Mr. Obama, in the face of the silence of Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin as these appeals for violence take place among their supporters. I find it difficult to believe in your commitment to pro-life policies, when you remain silent about this shocking breach of civil discourse in our national political life.

I have to confess that I even entertain the thought that some of the rage-distorted faces I have been seeing at these rallies in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin are Catholic faces, people who believe they are following your lead as pastors. When I look at some of the faces of fellow Catholics who appear to be entertaining violence, when I read their political comments on blogs or in letters to the editor, I wonder what has happened to our church. These comments are all too often full of venom and the desire to punish others.

I wonder how it happens that, though you have drummed into our heads the principle of voting on the basis of life and life alone, so many Catholics who claim to value life seem intent on allying themselves with movements that are clearly destructive to life. If you will permit my saying so, your pastoral strategies in recent decades seem to me to have failed.

They have failed because you have not connected the ethic of life to the entire range of political and cultural issues in which principles of life are at stake. The alacrity with which many citizens today—among them those most strongly committed to what they see as Christian pro-life values—are willing to speak of violence against those who disagree with them suggests to me that your teachings about life have not reached deep into believers’ consciences. To the extent that you have focused solely on the issue of abortion, and have over-simplified that issue and also allowed it to be used to stir social hatred, you have not fulfilled your calling as good shepherds.

Nor will you do so now, if you remain silent about what is happening in our political life at present. You will certainly not do so if you appear to endorse candidates who incite violence while claiming to be pro-life.

My voice is certainly not an important one, bishops. I doubt it is one you will hear. I speak out not because I imagine I have influence among you or anyone else. I do so because I must. I cannot live with myself if I remain silent when I see signs that our culture is tipping towards the kind of violence that occurred in my adolescence—or in Nazi Germany, in Spain as Franco rose to power, and in Latin America in the latter half of the 20th century.

I speak because, as your brother bishop Thomas Gumbleton noted in his homily this past Sunday,

Clearly it seems to me, if we're listening to the gospel today, Jesus is saying to you and to me, “We must challenge our leaders, call them to be the leaders God has ordained them to be.” Jesus did it and paid a terrible price, and perhaps we would have to pay a price, but it is our task, I think, if we want to follow Jesus, to challenge sometimes, even those who are in positions of leadership.

Bishop Gumbleton’s homily makes plain that he considers the church’s pastoral leaders among those we the people of God have a gospel-determined responsibility to challenge, when we see our pastoral leaders failing to be good shepherds.

Your flock needs to hear your voice now, bishops. Will you speak out as unambiguously about the need of our political leaders to stop inciting violence as you have against abortion? This is a moment in which a strong pro-life voice is imperative. The future of our nation may depend on hearing that voice. Your credibility as pastoral leaders surely depends on it.

*For a recent Jewish perspective on these events and their echoes in the violence now entering our political discourse, see Jesse Kornbluth’s open letter to Joe Lieberman’s rabbis at www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/a-yom-kippur-letter-to-jo_b_133262.html.

More on Failed Leadership and Character

My apologies for chattering today, but it's impossible not to be fascinated by some of the commentary about leadership in our nation as the campaign unfolds.

The following is from an article by Mitchell Bard at Huffington Post, on how smears of others' character is the ultimate resort of failed leaders (www.huffingtonpost.com/mitchell-bard/mccains-desperate-smears_b_132617.html):

If Americans want any hope of changing the culture of failed leadership that the United States has endured for the last eight years, they have to reject a candidate who has allowed himself to fall into the gutter, and who has displayed an acute lack of understanding of what is needed in a challenging time.

Absolutely true, it seems to me. When the only weapon in a "leader's" arsenal is to smear others, then that leader reveals a serious character flaw. Good leadership depends on a leader's strength of character--demonstrated character. The diversionary tactic of smearing the character of others to draw attention away from one's own lack of character only underscores the emptiness of the one going on the attack.

+ + + + +

Well, I can't stop. The more I read, the more I find. I highly recommend Baratunde Thurston's "Silence in the Face of Hate Makes McCain-Palin Unfit to Lead" on Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/baratunde-thurston/silence-in-the-face-of-ha_b_132660.html).

Excerpts:

Everything we need to know about John McCain and Sarah Palin is summed up by their reaction to these incidents [i.e., to the hate rhetoric spewed at their recent rallies]. Their positions on health care no longer matter. Their tax policies are irrelevant. Their talking points have been made moot. Not only do they bring out the worst in people, but they feed the worst in people. They are basing their campaign on painting Obama as a terrorist and monster. They are cultivating prejudice, racism, fear and ugliness.

America has been down this path before, and it is the exact opposite of what this country needs right now. . . .

We can be a better nation than this, and we deserve better leaders than these.

Amen. And if we don't stop it--we who stand by in silence as it's being done--then we'd better be preparing for the fire next time.