The Dish

Thomas Reese describes what the church could learn from other modern institutions and proposes six reforms:

If history shows that the church has always borrowed ideas and structures from civil society, then the question arises: What are some of the best practices in civil society that can help the church today? Over the past two centuries, civil society has learned that good government calls for: the elimination of a powerful nobility, adherence to the principle of subsidiarity, and creation of a system of checks and balances. I will propose six reforms I think reflect practices that have proved successful in civil society.

Make the Vatican a bureaucracy, not a court. Most countries have found that a royal court composed of a king and his nobles is not a good way to govern. The Vatican is still as much a court as a bureaucracy, with cardinals referred to as princes of the church and bishops acting like nobles. I would recommend that no Vatican bureaucrat be made a bishop or a cardinal. One of the problems with nobles and bishops is that it is difficult to fire them even when they are incompetent or when there is a change in administrations. Such a reform would also remind the Vatican bureaucracy that it is a servant of the pope and the college of bishops and not itself part of the magisterium.

Strengthen the legislative bodies in the church. At the same time that the role of the nobility in governance was declining in civil society, the role of independent legislatures was increasing. No modern political philosophy would advise a polity to depend only on the wisdom of an executive. There is universal recognition that the synod of bishops created by Paul VI has failed to rise to expectations. I would recommend that no member of the Vatican bureaucracy be a member of the synod of bishops: they could attend the synod as experts and staff, but not as voting members. All of the members of the synod should be elected by episcopal conferences; none should be appointed. The synod should also meet on a regular basis—say, once every five years—and, of course, the synod would need committees to prepare agendas and documents between meetings. There should also be an ecumenical council at least once every generation.

Convert congregations into elected synodal committees. Vatican congregations and councils are committees of cardinals and bishops appointed by the pope. Each is responsible for a special domain within the church-such as liturgy, ecumenism, evangelization, and canon law. The Vatican cardinals are the most influential members of these committees. The chairman of each committee (called a prefect for a congregation and a president for a council) is also the head of an office of the same name. These offices advise the pope and implement church policy.

One important function of any legislative body is oversight of the bureaucracy. Members of Vatican congregations and councils should therefore be elected by synods or by episcopal conferences; that way synods and conferences can act as policy-making and oversight bodies for the Vatican bureaucracy. Vatican bureaucrats should not also be members of congregations, though they could attend meetings as experts and staff.

Create an independent judiciary. One of the most important elements in a government that operates under the rule of law is an independent judiciary. To allow the executive to indict, prosecute, judge, and sentence a defendant is today considered a violation of due process. The treatment of theologians accused of dissent by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) is one of the scandals of the church. The potential for such scandal will remain as long as the CDF continues to act as policeman, prosecutor, judge, and jury. An independent jury, perhaps made up of retired bishops, could correct the problem.

Elect bishops. The appointment of bishops by the pope is a modern innovation that follows a corporate model, whereby the pope acts as CEO and the bishops as branch managers. While this corporate model is highly centralized, successful political models teach us that local leaders need to be chosen by local citizens. Today it might be possible, and advisable, to return to the system endorsed by Pope Leo I, so that every bishop would be elected by the local clergy, accepted by the people of his diocese, and consecrated by the bishops of his province.

Strengthen episcopal conferences by making them councils. Not everything can or should be decided by a centralized government. Catholic social teaching speaks of the importance of subsidiarity in political structures and policy: what can be done locally should be done locally. In ancient times, local and regional councils of bishops played an important part in determining church teaching and discipline. Episcopal conferences need to become episcopal councils. They need to regain their independent role in establishing church policy. They should not need to have every decision and document reviewed and ratified by the Vatican. Bishops must be trusted to know what is best for the local church.

         

The whole article is here.

Hendrik Hertzberg says it well:

Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets—from Bill’s little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton “scandals” of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated—remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls “distractions.” To take the most obvious example, the former President’s social life since leaving the White House will become, if not “fair game,” big game—and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a “there” where the Democratic Party really wants to go?

Kenneth Roth makes the case against preventative detention:

The most common argument against criminal prosecutions is that they examine crimes that were already committed, whereas the threat of terrorism is said to be so dangerous that it requires preventing acts before they occur. But the crime of conspiracy is sufficient to address today’s terrorist threat because it is both backward and forward looking.

Under U.S. law, a conspiracy can occur whether or not an intended illegal act has been carried out. Much as with the French crime of association de malfaiteurs, all that must be proved is that two or more people agreed to pursue an illegal plan and took at least one step to advance it. This should cover most terrorist plans: the lone wolf terrorist is rare, and al Qaeda and its spinoffs have typically relied on numerous participants to agree on a plan and pursue it. The same intelligence that allows investigators to identify and prevent a terrorist plot should allow them to prosecute the participants for conspiracy. Similarly, the crime of providing material support to terrorists can occur even when a terrorist act is only in preparation and has not yet been committed.

Another objection to conventional prosecutions is that they make it harder for interrogators to obtain information from suspects. Under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a suspect facing criminal charges is entitled to a lawyer, who will generally tell his or her client not to talk to interrogators. But in fact, many criminal suspects with lawyers end up cooperating with interrogators because doing so can shorten the prison time they face. Moreover, the constitutional limits on a prosecutor’s ability to question a suspect without counsel need not interfere with parallel but separate questioning aimed at investigating other suspects or preventing terrorism. Even if a suspect’s right to counsel has been violated, the Constitution only prohibits prosecutors from using the information derived from the flawed interrogation at trial; it does not forbid other investigators, such as those trying to prevent future terrorist acts, from questioning the suspect without a lawyer present, so long as these investigators do not relay his or her words (or leads based on what he or she said) to the prosecution team. This division of labor may not be ideal, but it is better than resorting to preventive detention and discarding many basic due process rights.

Preventive-detention advocates also oppose criminal prosecution because many terrorism suspects have been subjected to torture and other harsh interrogation methods, the fruits of which no ordinary judge would admit at trial. This, they argue, makes criminal prosecution impossible. But it would be a perversion of justice to invoke the illegality of coercing evidence in order to justify the further trampling of suspects’ rights through preventive detention. Moreover, coerced confessions are not the only route to criminal convictions. A review of the hearings held before the Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantánamo shows that the government often possesses plenty of evidence unrelated to abusive interrogation — from computers and cell phones seized, financial records, and witnesses who have cooperated voluntarily. The U.S. government has tacitly acknowledged this point by reinvestigating the major Guantánamo suspects using allegedly "clean teams" in an effort to free prosecutions from the taint of previously coerced statements and allow them to go forward.

Advice from the 1930s:

(Hat tip: Core 77.)

This gives a new meaning to high tech jobs:

Those who don’t avail themselves of subcutaneous microchips and other implanted technology, [Professor Kevin Warwick] predicts, will be at a serious disadvantage in tomorrow’s world, because they won’t be able to communicate with the "superintelligent machines" sure to be occupying the highest rungs of society, as he explains in a 2003 documentary, Building Gods, which is circulating online.

(Hat tip: 3QD).

From Margaret Talbot’s 2002 piece against tinkering with sex selection:

The real trouble with sex selection goes beyond sex discrimination. The real trouble is that it allows us, for the first time, to use a medical procedure to select or reject a child on the basis of a characteristic that has nothing to do with life and death, that is not in any sense of the word pathological, that cannot possibly be construed as sparing a child any pain and suffering. It might sound harmless enough, maybe even kind of cute—this impulse to pick and choose, pink or blue. But if we allow people to select a child’s sex, then there really is no barrier to picking embryos—or, ultimately, genetically programming children—based on any whim, any faddish notion of what constitutes superior stock. This time the old and overused accusation would actually be true: we would be playing God—and none too well, in all likelihood, given how little we really know about what makes individual human beings the way they are. A world in which people (wealthy people, anyway) can custom-design human beings unhampered by law or social sanction is not a dystopian sci-fi fantasy any longer but a realistic scenario. It is not a world most of us would want to live in.

It’s certainly not a world I’d want to live in. But I do, don’t I?

Shoes are bad for you. There’s proof.

Michael Crowley on Barack and Iraq:

The truth is Obama has no secret plan for Iraq. Interviews with nearly two dozen foreign policy and military experts, as well as Obama’s campaign advisers, and a close review of Obama’s own statements on Iraq, suggest something more nuanced. What he is offering is a basic vision of withdrawal with muddy particulars, one his advisers are still formulating and one that, if he is elected, is destined to meet an even muddier reality on the ground. Obama has set a clear direction for U.S. policy in Iraq: He wants us out of Iraq; but he’s not willing to do it at any cost–even if it means dashing the hopes of some of his more fervent and naïve supporters. And, when it comes to Iraq, whatever the merits of Obama’s withdrawal plan may be, "Yes, We Can" might ultimately yield to "No, we can’t."

A reader writes:

How can you claim that McCain, in stating a truthful quote made by a member of Hamas regarding how he would prefer Obama to win the election, is somehow the same as associating Obama with Wright?

The successful prosecution of Islamic extremists around the world is, for many people in this country, a very important issue.

And, for many McCain supporters such as myself, it is the most significant reason why we back McCain over either alternative – particularly Obama.  When those very people whom we believe to be our enemies speaks in a positive way about Obama, how is this not relevant?  Is it not reasonable to infer that they believe that Obama, as president, will do more to advance their interests than John McCain or Hillary Clinton would?  And if they think that, then maybe, just maybe, we ought to take that as a sign of the type of signals Obama is currently sending to the heart the extreme Islam, and ask ourselves whether or not this is the message America ought to convey.

If you think that this is how the next president OUGHT to handle our confrontation with Islamic extremists and terrorists in general, mainly that appeasement and discourse is the most likely path to lead to global reconciliation or at least a peaceful resolution of the conflicts that currently exist, then make that argument and stand by it.  Or maybe you believe that members of Hamas are not truly our enemy at all.  Either way, don’t beat around the bush if this is the case.

Frankly, I don’t think that you believe either of those things.  You just don’t like the idea of people associating Obama with terrorists in any way whatsoever, and it makes your blood boil – this much is obvious.  The "Obama-is-a-muslim" meme has you freaked out, and so when you hear this you immediately associate the two.  But try, if you can, to take the claim as it was said, rather than imputing your own fears upon the statement.  If it had been some other enemy of the United States and not an Islamic extremist from Hamas, would you believe the attack to have been so "bad?"  And why?

My response is simply that honorable campaigns do not allow foreign agents, especially terrorist organizations, to insert themselves into American presidential politics. No respectable foreign governments do such a thing; and the gambits of al Qaeda, Hamas, or any other grouping to play one candidate against another should in general be ignored, not exploited.

It is, of course, a perfectly legitimate campaign issue to fight over what US policy should be toward Hamas. Are there circumstances in which we should negotiate with them? How coherent is American foreign policy when it rests on a belief that democracy should spread in the Arab world, but refuses to recognize one of the very few governments that does have some democratic legitimacy? Are we right to see Hamas as an extension of Iranian power? Etc. But you can make these arguments and talk about these issues without resorting to canards such as "the terrorists want my opponent to win." It’s a lame and cheap shot. And beneath McCain.

From Dana Gioia’s 1991 article:

…the poetry boom has been a distressingly confined phenomenon. Decades of public and private funding have created a large professional class for the production and reception of new poetry comprising legions of teachers, graduate students, editors, publishers, and administrators. Based mostly in universities, these groups have gradually become the primary audience for contemporary verse. Consequently, the energy of American poetry, which was once directed outward, is now increasingly focused inward. Reputations are made and rewards distributed within the poetry subculture. To adapt Russell Jacoby’s definition of contemporary academic renown from The Last Intellectuals, a "famous" poet now means someone famous only to other poets. But there are enough poets to make that local fame relatively meaningful. Not long ago, "only poets read poetry" was meant as damning criticism. Now it is a proven marketing strategy.

Continued here.