Month: July 2005

The news from the war makes my regular summer break untimely, but, hey, my niece and nephew are arriving soon for a vacation with their uncle and I have a book to write. This year, though, I won’t be leaving the site empty. I’m particularly relieved that next week, as news from the war front continues to perplex and concern, I’ve persuaded one of my favorite – but lesser known – bloggers on the Middle East to guest-blog for a week. She’s Judith Apter Klinghoffer, a senior research associate in the department of Political Science at Rutgers University. I regularly check in on her blog at the History New Network. She is the co-author of “International Citizens’ Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights” and the author of “Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East: Unintended Consequences.” She’ll be blogging all of next week in this space. I may occasionally drop by for a quick post, but otherwise, she’s running the show; and the focus will be on the war. Please be courteous to our guest. Reserve your hate-mail for me.

THE FOLLOWING THREE: I’ll fully introduce the next three guest bloggers when their turn comes. But expect a really diverse and talented crowd. The week of August 1, The New Republic’s star writer, Frank Foer, will be blogging; the week of August 8, Dan Savage, editor of the Stranger and author of several books and the legendary sex advice column, Savage Love, will be stirring things up; he’ll be followed by Walter Kirn, one of the best novelists and critics of his generation. I’m really grateful to these newcomers to blogging for daring to take the plunge for a week or so. I told each of them that they should not in any way feel constrained to agree with me on anything; as when I edited The New Republic, my basic philosophy is the more diverse and interesting the arguments the better, regardless of ideology. I may drop by from time to time to post something pressing, but I’ll be back full-time August 22.

“While I agree with you that the Vatican’s ban on ordaining women stems from different theological arguments than the threatened ban on ordaining gay men, there is, I think, a link rooted in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. In this way of thinking, men and women are seen as equal but ‘complementary,’ in that each sex brings distinctive qualities to social interaction that are strongly tied to physical sex: here is how it’s expressed in then-cardinal Ratzinger’s May 31, 2004 ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World’:

‘Furthermore, the importance and the meaning of sexual difference, as a reality deeply inscribed in man and woman, needs to be noted. ‘Sexuality characterizes man and woman not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual, making its mark on each of their expressions. It cannot be reduced to a pure and insignificant biological fact, but rather ‘is a fundamental component of personality, one of its modes of being, of manifestation, of communicating with others, of feeling, of expressing and of living human love’. This capacity to love – reflection and image of God who is Love – is disclosed in the spousal character of the body, in which the masculinity or femininity of the person is expressed.’

For example, Ratzinger says women notably have a ‘capacity for the other,’ linked to the female role of giving birth. He argued that women make an important, even essential, contribution to human social institutions exactly because of these distinctively feminine qualities. He then goes on to say that denying women ordination does not violate this principle, because such a role does not belong to the ‘genius of women,’ because women are brides, not bridegrooms. In sum, in this way of thinking, sex determines social roles, and people ought to behave in ways that reflect their biological nature.

Early in this document, Ratzinger decries any attempt to question the strong duality, including the rise of the use of the term gender (which is culturally determined,) rather than sex, and says that such a stance ‘has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.’

A long build-up to a short connection: John Paul’s Theology of the Body is part of a trend on the part of the magisterium to underscore the importance of the sex of the human person in determining social roles. This teaching is seen as a bulwark against any blurring of sexual lines, such as in homosexuality, and also serves to justify the continued exclusion of women from priestly ministry. So why can’t gay men be priests? Because instead of giving up their natural role as husband and father for ecclesiastical fatherhood, they give up only a disordered drive to behave as though anatomical complementarity did not determine social roles. In short, it’s the old notion that male homosexuality is repugnant because gay men assume the sexual role of women, (or at least are unclear as to their own properly masculine role,) now dressed up in fancy phenomenological philosophy.

The question that is never raised in the magisterial teaching on these questions, however, is that raised by you and some of your correspondents: what about vocation? In examining a candidate for priestly ministry, why is sex or sexual orientation more important than the call of God to service in the Church? In this, I think gay priests and women called to priesthood – and all Catholics who believes that it is the Holy Spirit who makes priests, not sex or orientation – should stand together on this one.”

This is how the world turns? A religious death cult bombing city after city from Baghdad to Egypt to London? John Burns’ analysis from Iraq makes for even grimmer reading.

GUARDIAN MELTDOWN: Clive Davis follows developments.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “There is no more ‘us’ and ‘them’ It is all ‘we’. When London, Beirut and Sharm el-Sheikh are all attacked in less than 48 hours, there is no more Muslim or Christian or Jew. There is no more believer or infidel. There is no more East or West When the dead in Sharm el-Sheikh included Britons, Dutch, Egyptians, French, Kuwaitis, Spaniards, and Qataris, it is all we and we are all in this together. For just one example of how small the world has become and how nowhere is immune from terrorism anymore, look no further than London policeman Charlie Ives who survived the bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh. He was on holiday in the Egyptian resort after dealing with the aftermath of the July 7 London bombings.” – Mona Eltahawy, in Asharq Alawsat.

Why the latter helps prevent the spread of the former.

A few weeks ago, I predicted on the Chris Matthews Show that more photographs of the Abu Ghraib abuses and torture would be released by the end of last month. After all, a judge had ruled in favor of the ACLU’s request for the materials. The government obeys the law of the land, doesn’t it? Not in this administration, which has, by presidential memo, declared the president above the law in fighting the war on terror. Now they have deployed one last, desperate tactic to keep the real truth about Abu Ghraib from reaching the public. The Bush administration first argued that dissemination of the photos would violate the Geneva Conventions. Ahem. When that failed, they argued in a sealed brief to the court that the photos “could result in harm to individuals.” Like the soldiers and commanders responsible for abusing prisoners? Or the political masters who made such abuse legal? Look: I know we are at war and these photographs could inflame passions further. But they could also give the lie to the administration’s claim that the prison was only the site for a handful of rogue soldiers making up rules on the night shift. They could give the lie to the notion that what happened at Abu Ghraib was merely “frat-house rough-housing.” They could show rape and murder and torture – with legal cover sanctioned by White House memos. They could finally force someone to take responsibility for what happened, and for the policies that are still in place allowing for abusive treatment of prisoners. We can fight a war and remain a humane, law-abiding culture as well. We’ll soon see if we still live in a country in which the president is subject to the law.

It’s going to be a battle of wills – between decent conservatism and the lawless, government-knows-best policies of Cheney and Bush. Senator John McCain, who is an implacable foe of terrorism but also knows a thing or two about torture, wants to introduce legislation to regularize and clarify military detention policies. His proposed amendments to military appopriations bills would

set uniform standards for interrogating anyone detained by the Defense Department and would limit interrogation techniques to those listed in the Army field manual on interrogation, now being revised. Any changes to procedures would require the defense secretary to appear before Congress.

It would further require that all foreign nationals in the custody or effective control of the U.S. military must be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross — a provision specifically meant to block the holding of “ghost detainees” in Iraq, in Afghanistan or elsewhere…

Another McCain amendment prohibits the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in the custody of the U.S. government. This provision, modeled after wording in the U.N. Convention Against Torture — which the United States has already ratified — is meant to overturn an administration position that the convention does not apply to foreigners outside the United States.

Why would the Bush administration want to retain the option to use “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of detainees? They don’t support torture, do they? The amendment would simply bring order and law to what has been a free-wheeling and disastrously inept detention policy, made up by Bush officials as they went along. It beggars belief that, after Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Gitmo and the dozens of deaths in interrogation that the administration wouldn’t want some way out of its own impasse. But no: as so often, it sticks its heels in, and refuses to acknowledge an obvious and terrible mistake in the war. I look forward to the hard right describing McCain as a leftist or unpatriotic because he wants to restor America’s reputation as a country that acts ferociously but always humanely in its own defense.