Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage (2): GOP Will Form a Commission to Determine Whether Michelle Obama Plagiarized Melania Trump's Speech

More from the Catholic birdcage today as last evening's . . . GOP thing . . . is being discussed today at National Catholic Reporter: this is Agni Ashwin speaking:

The GOP will form a commission to determine whether Michelle Obama in 2008 plagiarized Melania Trump's 2016 speech.

Robert Reich on the Upside-Down Morality of the Religious and Political Right

Robert Reich takes a close look at the moral concerns energizing the Republican base (and many Catholics, since Santorum and Gingrich are, after all, Catholic) in this and every recent election cycle, and finds that the Republicans have morality upside down.  While Republican candidates (and many Catholics) constantly decry what they see as the breakdown of private morality, the breakdown of public morality is gutting our democratic society in one way after another--and the Republicans front for the very economic elite whose lack of morality is producing social decay:

Political Commentary: Voter Disenfranchisement and "Severe Conservatism"

In other political news today: at New York Times, Alexander Keyssar offers a valuable survey of the ongoing attempt of elites in the U.S. over the course of American history to suppress one group of voters or another at various moments for various reasons.  The one constant in this sordid history, Keyssar notes, is the following: 

Culture War Issues Back Big-Time as 2012 Elections Approach

In the news today: they're baaaack.  The culture wars are back in a big way as the Republican party seeks to anoint a presidential candidate, and as signs that the economy may be mending slightly under the current Democratic president dishearten the Republicans and their allies, who are desperately seeking to change the subject from the economy to 1) the gays, 2) uppity women, 3) contraception, 4) religious freedom, 5) Obama's war on religion/Catholics, etc.  Take your pick.

Arizona Judge Receiving Death Threats for Blocking Provisions of Ugly Immigration Law

Remember how Michigan representative Bart Stupak received charming pro-life threats from charming pro-lifers after he voted in support of health care reform?  He was inundated by faxes, phone calls, and threats against his family for choosing to vote really pro-life, and support health care reform.

Dandling Babes and Weeping Jesus: The Bishops Continue Talking

Another news flash from the U.S. Catholic bishops: poor of the nation, you have found a friend! It’s the men who run the U.S. Catholic church. The U.S. Catholic bishops just released a statement expressing their solidarity with those hurting financially.

"Solidarity at a Time of Economic Crisis" states, “We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We are all in this together.”

Poor of the land, the bishops are in it, too! The bishops are in it with you! The bishops are in it with us (speaking here from the vantage point of an unemployed theologian, you understand, one without any health benefits.)

I trust that what the bishops say about their solidarity with the poor of the land will be heart-warming news for struggling Americans, because this statement comes from those who are, after all, not without resources. They come from men positioned not just to talk, but to help. Resources aplenty, in fact: rings, episcopal palaces, fine artwork and good china and cutlery by the truckload.

Mind you, the bishops don’t exactly say that they intend to translate their resources into actual physical assistance to families in need. In fact, they tell their “hurting, anxious or discouraged” brothers and sisters that they’ll pray for us.

But they surely wouldn’t have spoken of solidarity if they didn’t mean solidarity, would they? Real solidarity, the kind that that comes with a price, and demands our own involvement in addressing the needs of those with whom we are in solidarity.

So, poor of the land, those now struggling to make ends meet, hope is on the horizon: hie thee to the nearest episcopal palace. You’ll find solidarity there. Rings and artwork aplenty, waiting to be hocked or sold as a statement of solidarity with you. Hurry fast, before they give it all away in their haste to be in solidarity with the wretched of the earth.

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Meanwhile, key bishops are working hard to spin the election of Barack Obama as all about the economy and not about values (as if the two are ever distinct!) (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/11/obama-was-elected-on-economy-not-on.html). Both Cardinals George of Chicago and Cardinal O’Malley of Boston have recently made statements suggesting that the mandate the new president has received touches on economic rather than “values” issues such as gay marriage or abortion.

In that special land that only bishops occupy, one suspects, the bishops are now whispering among themselves about the need for people of faith to assure that the new president governs from that mythical “center-right” perspective so beloved of mainstream media types. And bishops. And the evangelical theocrats, with emphasis on “right” rather than “center.”

Get us out of the economic mess. But for pete’s sake, leave our “values” alone!

Look for more of this nonsense—a lot more—in coming days, from all those with whom the bishops have allied themselves in recent years around “values” issues that are somehow distinct from economic ones—you know, the issues that the current administration was somehow supposedly pursuing while it let the economy fall to shambles. The issues about which we have never seen any movement in the direction the bishops want, while they keep telling us to vote for those who at least talk about the issues. Even if they do nothing about them.

I couldn’t—God help me—avoid thinking of U.S. Catholic bishops and their failed leadership—today when I read Chris Hedges’ “Forget Red vs. Blue” essay at Alternet. Especially his chilling conclusion,

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying.

Reading that makes me wonder what kind of Catholic values we’d see at play in the public square if the bishops had given priority in recent years to teaching people to think, make sound moral judgments about complex issues, dissenting when good critical judgment and common sense tell us something is wrong, separating truth from lies, dealing with nuance.

Instead, they have followed the authoritarian path, have supported a catechetical approach of spoon-feeding “truths” and “Catholic answers” to the flock, have suppressed theological inquiry and all dissent about “non-negotiable” issues. And have colluded with political leaders who never in the slightest degree intended to serve Catholic values.

Meanwhile, with sign upon sign indicating that American Catholics are, on the whole, so fed up with this betrayal of pastoral leadership that most of us are simply no longer listening, the bishops promise to challenge Mr. Obama. (As they challenged his predecessor, you understand.)

Oh, and in really important news that zings to the heart of the leadership crisis and pastoral needs of the flock, they have passed a new proper of the seasons and spent time debating the use of the word “gibbet” in the liturgy. And since it’s never inappropriate to dandle babies when one wants to divert attention from failed leadership, they have also decided to bless babies—in the womb and out of it.

Just not getting it . . . . Surely Jesus weeps.

The World Stands on Truth, Justice, and Peace

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel tells us that the world stands upon three things: truth, justice, and peace (Pirkei Avot, 1:18). In Jewish thought, these three qualities are not ideals: they are the precondition for all social life.

Unless people relate to one another with the intent to tell each other the truth (and the belief that truth is being spoken to us), then social life is impossible. It is impossible because the belief that others are speaking truth to us is what binds us together in civil society. Without that belief, we cannot have the confidence that is indispensable to building anything together, to collaboration in any social project.

When lying becomes endemic, when people of the lie prevail, when we expect to be lied to and when we lie to others with no compunction, things fall apart. A society founded on lies is founded on sand, and the sand covers a fathomless pit. Once it gives way—once the accumulated weight of lie upon lie causes the foundations to collapse and all that is built on sand to fall—nothing is left except the pit, which swallows up the mass of corruption riddled by lies.

Justice and truth are closely connected in the social contract. When we live seeking truth, we constantly recognize that, just as our society comprises lies that we are obliged to combat and expose, it also comprises taken-for-granted injustice that troubles all of us, since there cannot be justice at all if injustice is allowed to thrive anywhere.

The taken-for-granted injustice with which we all too often live is founded on lies, on the big lie. It is founded on the lie that we live separate from each other, that I can ignore the burning of my neighbor’s house because surely the burning of his house will never become the burning of my own house, that my salvation is independent of the salvation of everyone else, since I exist apart from them and have no connection to them.

Social injustice is founded on the lie that they are not like me, that their humanity is somehow less than mine, that they do not feel pain as I would feel it if lied to and denied justice, that they do not understand that they are being demeaned as I would understand I was being demeaned when lied to and denied justice. Social injustice rests on the big lie that some of us deserve more in life than others do: more respect, more humanity, more deference, more security, more consideration, more justice and truth.

In the thought of Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, truth and justice are practical virtues rather than ideal ones: they are virtues we are obliged to live daily, in every interaction we have with others, precisely because we have an investment in keeping civil society alive for everyone, including ourselves. The healing of the world is not an obligation imposed on sombobody else, in Jewish thought: it is an obligation imposed on me, and it is imposed daily, everytime I invoke the name of God. Truth, justice, and peace are not ideals to achieve at the end of history, when we have reached the goal of human striving. They are necessary to the maintenance of any society here and now.

Without truth and justice there can be no peace. Peace is not the absence of war. It is the condition that happens between human beings and in society at large when truth prevails and people are accorded justice—when we accord justice to others because we desire to live in fidelity to the truth that they are just like us, that they deserve justice every bit as much as we do, that their humanity is no less than ours. Peace flows naturally when people strive to embody truth and justice in their dealings with each other; strife and discord prevail when we refuse to deal honestly with others and to accord others justice.

For years, everywhere I have worked, I have had in my office a poster depicting a table/altar with bread on it. Since Steve is working full-time now and I am not (well, since he is gainfully employed and I am not, and he has an official office), it now hangs in his office.

The inscription on the poster reads, “At the table of peace will be bread and justice.” I have always kept this poster in my workplace because it serves as a daily reminder to me that providing people bread and not stones—that is to say, giving them justice rather than injustice—is daily business. It is as daily as bread. It is as necessary to everyday life as eating is.

If I expect to eat daily bread, then I must also expect to deal truly and justly with each person I meet, every time I encounter another person. There are no exceptions, no moral clauses that permit me to practice quasi-truth or quasi-justice in dealing with others, precisely because there is no such thing as quasi-peace (or quasi-bread). The only peace worth having in life, the kind that makes forward movement together possible, the kind that makes us confident we can build for the future because we are building on solid ground, is the peace that comes from truth and justice lived daily.

I like the poster and the reminder it gives me because it reminds me, too, that religious observance is never sequestered. It never occurs in isolation from the daily. When we try to cloister our religious observance, to pretend that the sacred is detached from the secular, we forget that daily bread and Bread of Life are one and the same. We cannot hunger for the Bread of Life if we refuse to provide daily bread for those around us, those in whose lives our decisions make a difference.

We cannot commune with the Lord at the table the Lord sets when we refuse to commune with our brothers and sisters, by acknowledging the truth that “we are all care of one another,” that we are connected, that what I do affects you. We cannot commune with the Lord when we refuse justice to others by refusing to acknowledge our interconnection, the truth that my decisions affect your life, and when we permit ourselves to be implicated in decisions that deprive others of their daily bread.

As Pope Paul VI put the point, “If you want peace, work for justice.” In our political life, in the workplace, in our family life, in society at large, every decision we make, every encounter with each other, has the potential either to build a better (a more peaceful) society, insofar as we embody truth and justice in our dealings with others. Or it has the potential to do the opposite, insofar as we betray truth and withhold justice.

No decision we make—including our decision about how to cast our ballots—is removed from these considerations about the practical, foundational virtues of truth, justice, and peace. We cannot lament the absence of peace from our troubled society without recognizing the role we play in creating that absence, by our failure to live truthfully and justly in each and every encounter we have with others, each and every day. And we cannot claim to be values voters if we ignore the indispensable foundational practical virtues of truth, justice, and peace in our everyday lives.

The Nonsense Is Over

Well.

I guess we've been told.

Steve Schmidt, senior campaign adviser to John McCain,informed the media today that there will be no further statements from the McCain campaign about the vetting process for Sarah Palin (www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/mccains-new-palin-strateg_n_123527.html).

Schmidt's written press release states, "This nonsense is over."

And here, silly me, I had been under the impression it had just started.