The Dish

Pace Glenn Reynolds, I don’t think and have never said that we’re in the grips of a “theocracy.” We live in a constitutional democracy. Iranians live in a theocracy, and I am aware of the difference. But one element of our politics – one that happens to have a veto on Republican social policy – does hold that religion should dictate politics, and that opposition to a certain politics is tantamount to anti-religious bigotry. They’re very candid about that, as we saw last Sunday. As Bill Donahue put it: “The people on the secularist left say we think you’re a threat. You know what? They are right.” Very senior Republicans echo the line that there is a filibuster against “people of faith.” This isn’t just about gays, although we’ve felt the sting of the movement more acutely than most. It’s about science, stem cell research, the teaching of evolution, free access to medical prescriptions, the legality of living wills, abortion rights, censorship of cable and network television, and so on. The Schiavo case woke a lot of people up. I was already an insomniac on these issues. Maybe I’d be more effective a blogger if I pretended that none of this was troubling, or avoided the gay issue and focused on others. But I’m genuinely troubled by all of it, and by what is happening to the conservative tradition. I’d like to think that a qualified doctor like Bill Frist could say on television that tears cannot transmit HIV. But he could not – because the sectarian base he needs to run for president would not allow it. I’m sorry but that’s nuts. I’m glad Glenn is now calling attention to all of it.

THE BRITISH ELECTION: Only a quarter of British voters now trust Tony Blair. He’s responding by all but ditching the idea of joining the euro – once one of his key objectives. A brutal campaign impugning his integrity by the Tories appears to be gaining traction, and the prime minister looks rattled. To make matters worse, someone in the government leaked confidential legal advice from 2003 telling the prime minister that the war in Iraq might not be legal. Blair had declared in public that the advice had said otherwise. If these polls are accurate, he’ll still win. But low turnout could create some surprises. I wish the Tories were presenting a real alternative. But they have failed, like the Republicans, to persuade people that less government actually means more freedom and better essential services. I also fear that the battering of Blair means a future Brown government will keep increasing spending and so hamper Britain’s post-Thatcher renaissance. I’d happily vote Tory this time on those grounds alone. Of course, no one on the Labour left in Britain is proposing the kind of government spending that Bush Republicans are engaged in. In that sense, Bush is far to the fiscal left of anyone in current British politics. What an irony. We used to think that even British Tories were more liberal than America’s Democrats. But Bush’s and DeLay’s massive spending and borrowing makes Blair look like a born-again Thatcherite.

A reader asks:

Do you mean to say that the war is being used as political cover to push a theocratic agenda (sounds about right), or that the reason we undertook the war was as cover for a theocratic agenda (sounds cynical and hysterical)?

I mean the former. I’m sorry if I confused anyone. Or more simply: many people voted for Bush on national security grounds, a position with which I have much sympathy, and decided that fretting about the religious right was overblown. My position was that the national security differences between Bush and Kerry were not so great as to risk the domestic Kulturkampf that the religious right would unleash if Bush were to win. Others believed I was “hysterical” and concentrating too much on the gay issue. I think events since the election have buttressed my case. Gays could see this more clearly because we were so often the convenient target for the far right in the first term (although they have even more ambitious plans to curtail gay freedom in the second). But the religious right’s agenda is far more ambitious than merely stripping gays of civil rights or even minimal privacy. It’s about controlling the bodies and behaviors of all Americans to more faithfully conform to Biblical absolutes. Hence Schiavo; hence the need to purge the judiciary of any opposition; hence the abolition of a threatened judicial filibuster; hence the political alliance with the new papacy; hence “Justice Sunday.” These people are no longer merely one Republican faction. They control the GOP. We are now seeing that more clearly, while the war – understandably – obscured that a little. With Iraq less in the headlines, the domestic agenda of the new big government sectarian GOP is far clearer. My “hysteria” may eventually be seen as clarity – even to anti-anti-religious right contortionists like Mickey Kaus.

Instapundit has just discovered that the Republican party may actually be controlled by the religious right. Alleluia. Then he says:

The Republicans’ weakness is that people worry that they’re the party of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. They tried, successfully, to convince people otherwise in the last election, but they’re now acting in ways that are giving those fears new life.

Well, let’s say they successfully convinced some people in the last election that they weren’t the party of James Dobson and Rick Santorum, i.e. the ones with wool pulled firmly over their eyes, the ones who preferred to peddle (without fully endorsing) smears about John Kerry’s war service than look at the radical attack on liberty that the new Republicans were determined to advance. I’d like to think that bringing the evangelical right along was part of building a coalition to fight the war. I’m certainly not impugning Glenn’s good reasons for voting for Bush on those grounds. But in my darker moments, I wonder whether the war wasn’t a cover to persuade good, open-minded folk like Glenn to enable the theocratic impulses of the Republican base. Of course, Glenn can wait and see. Gay couples who have had basic rights taken away from them since November, might feel more aggrieved. My take on the fundamentalist threat to the conservative coalition can be read here.

THE LEFT SINKS LOWER I: Norm Geras, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last week when he was in D.C., has a suitably jaundiced view of the Euro and british left’s hatred of Blair, of the U.S. and indeed of all Western-led liberations from Islamist or Baathist tyranny. Here’s his post on the latest anti-Blair tirade in the Guardian.

THE LEFT SINKS LOWER II: The air-brushing of Rachel Corrie has now become near sanctification. A new play in London perpetuates the myth. Tom Gross explains.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “If I did everything the Pope said, I wouldn’t have my two beautiful daughters: one brought into this world via IVF, and the other via IUI (think turkey baster). I sincerely doubt God is going to hold it against my wife or I that we had to do it this way, irrespective of pronouncements of the Panzer Pope. Keep up the fight.”

DEEPER DATING: The trend toward coupling among gay men continues – and of better ways of meeting compatible potential mates. Bears now join the trend. Some of this is doubtless spurred by the possibility of marriage. And no doubt social conservatives are appalled. Gay men settling down? Or seeking intimacy and commitment? I’m sure Stanley Kurtz and Maggie Gallagher are horrified. Don’t gays realize that our role is to be forever marginalized, in bath-houses or alone? How else will straights keep their social structures healthy if they cannot point to “sick” gay people as psychological reinforcement? I’m also struck by a new wave of clubs and events for gay men, events that do not seem to me to be driven by harder and harder techno that sounds like car alarms but by great music enjoyed by a variety of more masculine-oriented gay men, old and young, fat and thin, hairy and smooth. D.C.’s “Blow-Off” is taking off. There are similar versions in New York City and London. Gay men, ever flexible and creative, are remaking their world.

NEUHAUS AND SHARPTON: An interesting observation from a reader:

More evidence of the alarming trend towards post-modernist epistemology in the wrong-headed right.
Neuhaus disclaims any ability to tell what actually occurred decades ago (i.e., what ordinary people used to call “the facts”). But he can tell that the accusers are malicious, so they must be bearing false witness, so he can be “morally certain” that what they say is false. And so his “moral certainty” trumps the small question of what actually occurred. It’s “true for him”, you see, and that’s what matters–if it’s true for the abusers that their lives were ruined, well, everyone has their own perspective, and surely there’s no truth beyond that.
Every question reduced to “he said she said”. No interest in the truth, just in perceptions of the truth and how they can be spun. Yes, Clinton and his enablers bear some of the blame for it. But Rove and his gang have elevated it to the standard epistemological stance of the radical right.
And then they say that liberals are to blame for relativism?

The truth is what Neuhaus or Ratzinger say it is. Period. Our job is not to question but to accept.

Fun and fear in the British election. My favorite quote: “They are intelligent and furious young conservatives, driven by hatred of Western liberalism in all its forms, and absolutely convinced they are being viciously persecuted by the ‘infidel’ state. It is very hard to engage them in a political dialogue that makes sense.” Just to clarify: The guy is talking about some fanatical British Muslims, not the fine fellows at the Family Research Council.

MACIEL’S DEFENDERS: In fairness, I should point to Richard John Neuhaus’ defense of Father Maciel, the prelate credibly charged with condoning and practising the sexual abuse of boys and teens in his care:

Forty and fifty years after the alleged misdeeds, there is no question of criminal action. Even were there any merit to the charges, which I am convinced there is not, the statute of limitations has long since run out. And what can you do to an eighty-two-year-old priest who has been so successful in building a movement of renewal and is strongly supported and repeatedly praised by, among many others, Pope John Paul II? What you can try to do is to filch from him his good name. And by destroying the reputation of the order’s founder you can try to discredit what Catholics call the founding ‘charism’ of the movement, thus undermining support for the Legionaries of Christ… A cardinal in whom I have unbounded confidence and who has been involved in the case tells me that the charges are ‘pure invention, without the slightest foundation.'”

Hmmm. And what cardinal may that have been? Neuhaus dismisses the National Catholic Reporter as a “left-wing tabloid,” and says he has thoroughly investigated the charges himself:

I can only say why, after a scrupulous examination of the claims and counterclaims, I have arrived at moral certainty that the charges are false and malicious. I cannot know with cognitive certainty what did or did not happen forty, fifty, or sixty years ago. No means are available to reach legal certainty (beyond a reasonable doubt). Moral certainty, on the other hand, is achieved by considering the evidence in light of the Eighth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” On that basis, I believe the charges against Fr. Maciel and the Legion are false and malicious and should be given no credence whatsoever.

If that sounds tortured, you should read the entire defense. It is somewhat undermined, I’d say, by the fact that Pope Benedict XVI recently re-opened the investigation. The Legion of Christ has its own defense of Maciel as well. It can be read here. This may be a defining early issue of Benedict’s papacy. Except by reopening the investigation, he imposes complete silence on everyone involved. Expect the same kind of process that the White House and military have deployed on prisoner abuse and torture. Other bloggers comment here. It seems to me that this is a story that the blogosphere should keep on stressing.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I think Goldwater would be doing quite well with the Republicans right now, as are many who would agree with the statement of his that you posted. I’m a religious person, probably more than you could really imagine (that doesn’t mean I’m perfect, but I am trying), but I agree very much with Barry’s comments, and I know many others who feel the same way. In fact, I think most of the so-called Religious Right would agree with him, despite the portrayal in the media.
I don’t want a religion running the government, here or anywhere else. We’ve seen that happen too many times, and with too many dire results – some of them quite recent – to want to do that again. On the other hand, I do think it is fair for people to allow their religions to guide their lives. I might prefer that my governmental officials vote or act in certain ways, and sometimes those ways are because of my religious beliefs, but that’s something that everyone does. Separating our religious beliefs from our moral beliefs from our ethical beliefs from whatever other sort of beliefs we have is just not generally possible. Examples of this are too numerous to completely enumerate, but I’ll mention two:
The desire, often attributed to liberals, to care for the poor and the disadvantaged is based upon the belief that it is the right thing to do. Is that a religious belief? A moral one? An ethical one? Well, whatever it is, it is someone’s value and that person is entitled to it. If the majority of the people share those values – for whatever reason – then it is fair that those values be reflected in the law.
Some people feel strongly that the death penalty is wrong, while others believe it is right. To hold either position is to have some sort of belief about it, and many people on both sides attribute it to their religious beliefs. I don’t believe it is improper for them to hold their views or to attempt, through legislation, to have their views enacted into law, even if the reason for their beliefs is because of religion.
This, by the way, is why I have a problem with too much judicial activism. It is the imposition of the morals of the judge (or judges) on the rest of society. Such matters should be decided by a majority of the people or their representatives, else we are again looking at something of a theocracy. It is rarely called such because the judges don’t usually phrase their arguments in religious terms. (Former California Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird is a good example of this: she opposed the application of the death penalty in every case. She tried to hide it behind legalisms but eventually she was too outspoken and it became known that she was personally opposed to the death penalty. The public came to believe that she was not following the law but imposing her own moral values, so she was removed. She might have denied that her values were religious, but whatever she might have called them the effect was the same.)
And that, finally, is why Goldwater wouldn’t have much trouble in the Party today. He would not want people to use their religions to impose controls upon him, but he would also recognize that people on the other side were just doing the same thing (and not calling it religion). He was an independent man and would maintain his independence against both sides, but he was also a conservative man and that wouldn’t change, either. He would be right, I believe, to fight a religious takeover of the Rebublican Party, but this is a constant battle in both parties and he knows that.”

They’ve been giving microphones to hecklers at rallies with the Tory leader, Michael Howard. Of course, they’re unbiased.

OOPS: Another Britney cover- this time by Max Rabbe, in the style of Weimar Berlin.

LOVED IT: I take it all back. The Nationals-Phillies game was great fun at RFK last night. Vile but irresistible hot dogs; a new foodstuff known as dippin’ dots; occasional flashes of excitement interrupted by really hot guys with guts spitting into the grass; and, the piece de resistance, Karl Rove down front, chatting on his cell-phone. We had a blast.

QUOTE OF THE DAY I: “However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.'”- Barry Goldwater, September 16, 1981. I wonder if Goldwater could even exist within today’s Republican establishment.

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “I remember the joie de vivre of the local lads, firing their gun salutes – which was their way of welcoming Christ as a head of state, the Head of State, the Lord of the world, present on their streets and in their village.” – Pope Benedict XVI, reminiscing about his bavarian Catholic childhood, in “The Feast of Faith,” 1986. Christ as the Head of State. It doesn’t get more explicit than that.

I promise I won’t pull one of those butcher-than-thou pundit commentaries about baseball and DC. I feel about baseball the way many neocons feel about religion: good for the masses but not quite my cup of tea. Still, with an open mind … off to RFK.

ABC News has the footage of then-Cardinal Ratzinger slapping the wrist of ABC News reporter Brian Ross when he inquired about the suppressed investigation of alleged sex abuser, father Maciel. The video is revealing.

My extended take on the current conflicts within conservatism can be read here.

THE MACIEL TIME BOMB: Now, this is interesting. Why on earth would then-Cardinal Ratzinger re-open an investigation of Father Marcial Maciel’s alleged child-sex racket last December, having suppressed any kind of inquiry for many years? A critical piece of television footage – which I was surprised wasn’t aired over the last week – shows then-Cardinal Ratzinger prissily slapping the wrists of an ABC News reporter who dared to confront him over the issue in public. Maciel founded a crucial ultra-conservative order, the Legion of Christ, which was given special recognition by John Paul II. Maciel was also a very close friend of John Paul II. The evidence for a pattern of wide-scale sex abuse under Maciel is voluminous. The Vatican was sent a frank and angry dossier of accusations in 1997. John Paul II and then-Cardinal Ratzinger did nothing. There are a few possible explanations for last December’s volte-face: that it took seven years for Ratzinger to appreciate the scale of the scandal and that he gets it now (the new Vatican spin); that Ratzinger knew all along that Maciel was guilty but also knew that John Paul II would never allow his friend to be brought to justice; or that, last December, Ratzinger knew that the Maciel case could explode on the Vatican, and that if he didn’t initiate the investigation, he would be implicated in the cover-up as well. But, of course, Benedict XVI had already been deeply involved in the cover-up; and even re-opening the investigation cannot expunge that record. London’s Independent newspaper reports that Ratzinger once said that “one can’t put on trial such a close friend of the Pope’s as Marcial Maciel.” I’ve never read that before and don’t know the source. But if true, it’s a pretty damning statement.

BENEDICT = LAW? The critical queston, then, is: what is the difference between Cardinal Law and Pope Benedict XVI? Benedict never had the kind of administrative authority over parish priests that Law had. But he did have authority over the Maciel matter; it was reported to him; he ignored it and suppressed investigations. The personal connection to Maciel is crucial – and Maciel is also integral to the new ultra-conservative establishment. His running a gay teen sex abuse ring was not encouraged by liberal theological deviation (as it might have been elsewhere). It was old-style Catholic sex abuse: highly conservative closeted gay priests, psychologically crippled by decades of self-loathing and struggle against their homosexual orientation, acting out their stunted sexual development by abusing their clerical power over younger men and boys. And this pattern has long been known – and accepted – by much of the Church hierarchy. While they excoriated openly gay lay couples struggling honestly and openly with how to live moral lives as Catholics, they protected closeted, psychologically damaged gay priests who engaged in sex abuse. Benedict is therefore caught between two very difficult places – blaming John Paul II for protecting Maciel for too long; or admitting that he too turned a blind eye to investigating credible claims of sexual abuse. Last December’s decision suggests to me that Benedict knows what’s coming. And he’s doing what he can simply to control and stay ahead of the damage.

BENEDICT AND THE SEX ABUSE CRISIS: More damaging revelations. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger asserted in a 2001 letter that the Church had the right to investigate all sex abuse cases in complete secrecy and that its jurisidiction “begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age” and lasts for a decade. Those who believe and hope that Benedict will be the man to cope with the problem of the Church’s cover-up of sex abuse will soon have to concede that Benedict himself has been a central part of the problem. Will Church conservatives give Benedict a pass?

Louis Armstrong channels Britney Spears. Hey, it’s Friday afternoon.

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.” – president John F. Kennedy. At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn’t the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn’t Bill Frist see president Kennedy as an enemy of “people of faith”? Just asking.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “I worry that Pope Benedict sees liberal Catholics primarily as products of the worst excesses of the ’60s and not as people who are genuinely grateful for the Catholic tradition and the Church’s efforts since Pope John to interpret it anew for our times. Many of us know that modernity urgently needs criticism and agree with the new Pope on the importance of asserting that truth exists. We remain Catholic precisely because we think that the Church’s emphasis on the sacramental and the communal provides a corrective to a culture that overemphasizes the material and lifts up the narrowest forms of individualism.
But we also think that not all that is new is bad. Our Church was soft on slavery. It was terribly slow to embrace democracy. It still does not seem to understand that the desire of women for power in the Church reflects legitimate–and, yes, Christian–claims to justice, not weird ideological enthusiasms. Those who say that change in the Church is simply capitulation to a flawed culture must explain whether they really think the Church would be better off if it had not come to oppose slavery, endorse democracy, and resist anti-Semitism and other forms of religious intolerance.” – E. J. Dionne. Amen to that. I am tired of being told that we have two options: complete submission to everything Pope Benedict believes or moral nihilism. That’s a false choice. Modern Catholics are not relativists or nihilists. But we have seen in our own evolving lives some moral truths: that women deserve equal dignity in work and society, that gay people can construct moral relationships, that contraception can support marriage and the family, that respectful discussion is not the same as doctrinal nihilism. We have a Catholic duty to bear witness to these truths. And we will.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I am a 67 year old gay man (born in the reign of Pius XI and have suffered under 5 popes – John XXIII being a breath of clean air – and Benedict XVI promises to continue the tradition of the others). I read and sympathize with your agony; may I offer some advice?
1) If you want to be a Catholic, be one. Let no one define your Catholicity for you. Conservative Catholics, alternating between crowing and fulminating, do not speak for the whole church as it has marched down through the ages. (Think Dorothy Day, Bernadette Soubirous, Francis of Assisi, the fathers Berrigan, GK Chesterton, to name but a few.) Although I don’t have precise figures, my guess is that, in the Western hemisphere, they are in the minority. In America, they make “majority” noises because they have united with evangelical Protestants to vote for the Bush Imperium. It is a dangerous liaison; to the fundamentalists, the Church of Rome has always been the Whore of Babylon.
2) Decide why you want to remain a Catholic and pay attention to that.”

ONE MORE PLUG: For my 1988 essay on Ratzinger’s theology.

TWO DAYS LATE: Why 4.20? A formal explanation.