Conscience or Convenience?
The Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) has made a name for itself by promising to invest the funds of religious groups in ethical and socially redeeming causes. For example, ICCR pledges not to invest in companies doing business in South Africa, nor in companies that pollute the environment.
Thomas Strohbar, one of our readers who heads a group called Pro Vita Advisors, decided to investigate the attitude of ICCR toward abortion. After all, ICCR has 242 groups which each pay $1,750 a year to belong. The vast majority (220 out of 242) of these groups are Catholic religious orders, dioceses, and pension funds. And of course there are few moral issues more important to Catholics than abortion.
To his astonishment, Strohbar found ICCR did not consider the abortion issue at all in making investments. Strohbar approached some Catholic ICCR members, and they expressed similar coolness.
For example, Brother Gerard Frendreis of the Christian Brothers Investment Services in New York, who directs several hundred million dollars of Catholic money, said that while his group eschewed specific abortion providers, it would not worry about companies which make contraceptives or the Pill, even though Frendreis admitted the Pill could cause abortion “in maybe one percent of the cases.” Of course, a one-percent investment would be enough to disqualify a company doing business in South Africa from Brother Frendreis’ list.
When Strohbar raised the question whether Christian Brothers should invest in companies which donate to Planned Parenthood, Frendreis became very uncomfortable, saying he did not want to do anything that would discourage corporate giving—as though it was the fact of the gifts, rather than what they are given for, that matters most in terms of social consciousness. Faced with embarrassing data about Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics and founder Margaret Sanger’s eugenics views, Frendreis tactfully changed the topic to what he called “stewardship of the environment.”
Strohbar next approached Brother Bernard Ploeger, who is in charge of finances for the Catholic University of Dayton. Ploeger was emphatic about his support for divestment from South Africa. But when the abortion issue came up, Ploeger demurred. “I don’t know if we should be trying to fight something that is legal in this country.” The problem with this logic is that apartheid is legal in South Africa. Homelessness is legal in America. The criteria for conscience-based investing is supposed to be morality, not legality.
Sister Judith Metz, who handles finances for Sisters of Charity, an ICCR member group, said bluntly that “I don’t think it would be very popular” to raise the issue of pro-life investments before the ICCR. She admitted that this was unfortunate, since Catholic members outnumber non-Catholics by 10 to 1, and if ICCR was not a proper forum for this discussion, what was?
Strohbar concludes that, in many cases, it is fashion and not ethics which dictates the policies of the so-called conscience investors such as ICCR. Catholics should be vigilant in investigating where their money goes because even some of our stalwart institutions, for reasons of ignorance or dissent, cannot be trusted.
The Rap on Rap
We suspect that the rap albums whose lyrics continue to make the papers are actually part of a grand Ku Klux Klan recruitment program. What could be more hateful than holding up these scenes as typical of black life: “Mind of a Lunatic,” about a psychotic rapist and murderer; “Assassins,” in which the narrator kills a number of women and his father, a crack addict; and “Trigga Happy Nigga” about robbing a liquor store and killing a stool pigeon (“Where was the cops when I was rippin’ off dividends/ Out writing tickets to hard-working citizens”). After accepting for release the Geto Boys record on which these songs appear, Geffen Records actually listened to the album, canceled its distribution, and excused this unprogressive action with a feeble piece of understatement: “the extent to which the Geto Boys album glamorizes and possibly endorses violence, racism, and misogyny compels us to encourage Def American to select a distributor with a greater affinity for this musical expression.”
The Cholesterol Bogeyman
The latest chapter in the ideologizing of science concerns that great American bogeyman, cholesterol. We now read in the New York Times that those scientists who have long been skeptical of the obsession with lower cholesterol have yet another argument against tofu and oat bran. Reviewing the major studies on cholesterol in animals and humans, researchers have found that “while lower cholesterol levels reduce the risk of death from heart disease, they do not reduce overall mortality.” Why? Because the lesser incidence of heart disease is “offset by an increase in the number of deaths from accidents, suicides, and homicides.” No one’s certain, but apparently lowering your cholesterol level also lowers the brain levels of another chemical, the lack of which is connected to the aggressiveness that leads to accidents, suicides, and so on.
The interesting spin to all this news is that the scientists who push lower cholesterol aren’t fazed. Federal health officials, for instance, refuse to reconsider their recommendation that all Americans older than two drastically lower their cholesterol. This despite evidence suggesting that only middle-aged men with extremely high cholesterol levels benefit much from lower cholesterol; even then there is only tenuous evidence that any lives are extended. Yet the barest hint that bodily existence may be slightly prolonged is desperately clutched, no matter the consequences, and not just by some scientists but also by all those infected with nuts-and-berries disease.
This bizarre emphasis on the body over any spiritual concern combines puritanism, hedonism, and scientism in a distinctly modern way, and as usual with modern nostrums, children’s interests are likely to be sacrificed. The sensibly skeptical scientists say they are “particularly concerned with the potential effects of lowering cholesterol for children, who suffer less heart disease than adults but suffer more deaths from accidents.” We can only take comfort in the knowledge that lower cholesterol doesn’t bring anyone nearer to immortality. It seems there is not even any material salvation in self-obsession.
The Open Door
The U.S. Congress is considering legislation to increase legal immigration from current levels of about 500,000 a year to between 650,000 and 1 million. According to a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, doubling immigration levels would create approximately a million new jobs for the economy, reduce the deficit by $90 billion over the course of the new immigrants’ lifetimes because of the taxes they would pay, boost the Social Security tax fund by $70 billion for the same reason, and improve American competitiveness because immigrants tend to be a self-selected group of enterprising and skilled people.
Economist Julian Simon puts it best when he argues that people are the true “capital” or “resources” of a nation—not machines, not goods, not even much-vaunted technology. Protectionist policies are no less reprehensible when they apply to people than to foreign commodities. It is especially ironic that, as communist and Third World countries adopt more liberal policies allowing their citizens to leave if they want, industrialized democracies such as the United States don’t show a corresponding willingness to permit freer movement of people seeking a better life.
Missing Spirituality
Catholics are not leaving the Church for Protestant denominations primarily because the Protestants engage in “deceptive practices,” according to a recent article by Catholic charismatic leader Ralph Martin in New Covenant magazine. Rather, most Catholics switch because “they meet co-workers, friends, home visitors, neighbors, or a preacher at a church service or revival who offers them a fuller experience of Christ and a more personal connection in their lives than they were experiencing in the Catholic Church.”
Martin observes that “while the Catholic tradition is indeed rich, the fact is that many Catholics’ normal experience of their Church is as a rather weak and impersonal institution rather than as a place where they can encounter life with the risen Lord, life in the Holy Spirit, and a sense of mission.” Because of recent trends, notably a considerable politicization of the faith, Martin writes that “even more disturbing is the fact that so many Catholics have found the Catholic institutions they have contact with to be places where religion and morality are weakened.”
A few months ago, Robert Sanchez, Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, adopted an argument similar to Martin’s and maintained that Catholics would do well to avoid whining about defections to Protestantism. “Perhaps we should regard this challenging phenomenon not as a threat but rather as a catalyst which will capture our attention and turn us away from our indifference and false satisfaction.”
I Can Do No Other
Editor’s note: The following is a letter sent by Richard John Neuhaus to Lutheran friends and clergy explaining his decision to convert to Catholicism.
On Saturday, September 8, 1990, the Nativity of Mary, I was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. In the months ahead I will be preparing to enter the priesthood of the Catholic Church. With the full support of my bishop, John Cardinal O’Connor, I will continue to serve as director of the Institute on Religion and Public Life and as a member of the Community of Christ.
This decision is the result of many years of prayer, reflection, study, conversation, and, I firmly believe, the leading of the Holy Spirit. Especially over the last five years, I have resisted with great difficulty the recognition that I could no longer give an answer convincing to others or to me as to why I was not a Roman Catholic.
Over the last 20 years and more, I have repeatedly and publicly urged that the separated ecclesial existence of Lutheranism, if it was once necessary, is no longer necessary; and, if no longer necessary, such separated existence is no longer justified. Therefore, cooperating with other evangelical catholics who shared my understanding of the Lutheran destiny and duty according to the Augsburg Confession, I devoted myself to the healing of the breach of the sixteenth century between Rome and the Reformation. This meant and means ecclesial reconciliation and the restoration of full communion with the Bishop of Rome and the churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome. That is a consummation for which I continue to pray, and to which I earnestly hope my present decision will contribute.
At the same time, I have been brought, reluctantly but surely, to the recognition that this understanding of the Augsburg Confession and the Reformation has been rejected—in institutional fact, and frequently in theological principle—by the several jurisdictions of the Lutheran communion. With respect to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America of which I was a pastor, the evidence compelled me to the conclusion that its operative understanding of the Church is informed not by the ecclesiology of the New Testament, nor by that of the Fathers, nor by that of the Augsburg Confession, but by American denominationalism. I can no longer persuade myself that Lutheranism is an evangelical catholic movement of Gospel reform within and for the one Church of Christ. It now seems to me that Lutheranism is a Protestant denomination among Protestant denominations, and is determined to remain so.
I have always understood that, as I was baptized into Christ, so was I baptized into His one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. It was therefore my desire and duty, as a western Christian formed by the Reformation tradition, to be in full communion with the fullest and most rightly ordered reality of that Church through time. I am persuaded that that reality subsists in the Roman Catholic Church. I can readily attest that, in the words of the Second. Vatican Council, “many elements of sanctification and of truth can be found outside the Church’s visible structure.” Lumen Gentium continues, “These elements, however, as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, possess an inner dynamic toward Catholic unity.” The inner dynamic of the catholic substance I knew in Lutheranism has compelled me to become a Roman Catholic.
I know well the claim of some Lutherans that separated ecclesial existence is necessary for the sake of the Gospel—as the Gospel is understood in terms of justification by grace through faith because of Christ. I beg such Lutherans to consider that that Gospel can be proclaimed today in the Roman Catholic Church, and in fact is so proclaimed. Moreover, it is by no means evident that the Lutheran denomination of our time does, as a matter of fact, bear witness to that Gospel.
The Reformers rightly insisted that the Church lives from the Gospel and for the Gospel. Lutheranism, however, has not understood that the Church is an integral part of the Gospel. The Church is neither an abstract idea nor merely a voluntary association of believers, but a divinely commissioned and ordered community of apostolic faith, worship, and discipleship through time. “I delivered to you what I also received,” said St. Paul a COL 15). Under the guidance of the Spirit promised to the Church, apostolic Scripture is joined to apostolic order in the faithful transmission and interpretation of revealed truth. The Gospel is the proclamation of God’s grace in Christ and His body in the Church. It is for the sake of that Gospel, and the unity of the Church gathered by that Gospel, that I am today a Roman Catholic.
I cannot begin to express adequately my gratitude for all the goodness I have known in the Lutheran communion. There I was baptized, there I learned my prayers, there I was introduced to Scripture and creed, there I was nurtured by Christ on Christ, there I came to know the utterly gratuitous love of God by which we live astonished. For my theological formation, for friendships beyond numbering, for great battles fought, for mutual consolations in defeat, for companionships in ministry—for all this I give thanks and know that I will forever be in debt to the church called Lutheran. Most especially am I grateful for my 30 years as a pastor. There is nothing in that ministry that I would repudiate, except my many sins and shortcomings. My becoming a priest in the Roman Catholic Church will be the completion and right ordering of what was begun 30 years ago. Nothing that was good is rejected, all is fulfilled.
I have been left in no doubt that many Lutherans, and perhaps others, will be grievously disappointed and even angered by this decision. I cannot ask them to share my joy at this time; I do ask them to try to understand. As God permits, I will at some future time give a fuller explanation of why I have done what I had to do. Those who know my writings know that I am aware of the problems to be encountered also in the Roman Catholic Church, But for now it is enough, it is beyond all deserving, that I have been brought this far. To those of you with whom I have travelled in the past, know that we travel together still. In the mystery of Christ and His Church, nothing is lost, and the broken will be mended. If as I do believe, my communion with Christ’s Church is now the fuller, then it needs be that my unity with all who are in Christ is the stronger.
I do not presume to think that I could ever repay those who, over the months and years, have borne with me through the studies, conversations, arguments, and doubts of this decision’s making. I am most particularly grateful to my former bishop, William Lazareth, and my new bishop, John Cardinal O’Connor, for their friendship, understanding, counsel, and constant support.
There is now a great peace, but I know it will not always be peaceful. I ask you, of your goodness, to pray for me.
Misfits Retreat
The comedy of religious and social activists retreating from Nicaragua in the aftermath of the Sandinista defeat continues. In a recent article, the New York Times profiled the selective commitment to social justice of these soi-disant Western idealists. Lynda Sharp of the Solidarity Network of Greater New York reflected on Daniel Ortega’s defeat: “The only thing I can compare it to is the day Kennedy was shot.”
Morally and politically discredited, many of these groups are now losing contributions. Witness for Peace has canceled several of its Potemkin Village tours to Nicaragua, one spokesman saying that there was no longer any peasant paradise to see. Recently the New York Nicaragua Construction Brigade shut down its offices—apparently poverty is no longer a serious problem when the Marxists are no longer in charge. In Chelsea, New York, a group which established a “sister city” arrangement with El Jicaral in Nicaragua has announced that it will no longer send food and other forms of aid.
For years the National Catholic Reporter and other organs of the Catholic left have championed these “political pilgrims” (Paul Hollander’s term), yet the election results, and the embarrassing response in the social justice community, have brought no apologies, no regrets, not even introspection. As the novelist Saul Bellow once put it, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”
Lucy Harris, a Witness for Peace coordinator, now says that many members “find themselves moving to other countries where there is a lot of conflict, like the Middle East and South Africa.” Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ortega—the search goes on for the left-wing utopia. And Guadalupe Landaverde of the Chelsea group said that as bad as the morale of the Nicaragua lobby may be, “You should see the groups that are in solidarity with the people of Eastern Europe. They are in real trouble.”
Film Stars for Life
We have grown wearily accustomed to Hollywood figures surfacing to agitate for the latest fashionable cause—Sissy Spacek testifying on farm subsidies, Ed Asner hyping Marxist rebels in El Salvador, Norman Lear opposing Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and so on.
In a curious twist, the Spanish newspaper Diario de Navarra recently published an interview with actress Mia Farrow in which she takes a strong pro-life stand. “Abortion is an issue that transcends all else. Life is life, and to kill is to kill, that’s all.” Farrow also added that Woody Allen used to be pro-choice “from lack of adequate information,” but now shares her views.
Among the other Hollywood figures said to be pro-life: Charlton Heston, Mel Gibson, Helen Hayes, Brooke Shields, Kirk Cameron, Robert Blake, Kevin Costner, Tom Selleck, and (we hesitate to add) Madonna.
Catholic-Jewish Pact
In an impressive joint statement, Catholic and Jewish leaders have declared that denominationalism and religious differences among groups should not keep moral education out of the public schools.
The Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs committee of the bishops’ conference and the Interreligious Affairs Committee of the Synagogue Council of America issued the declaration. “Regardless of religious and cultural background,” it said, “there is a broad consensus among Americans” on the importance of teaching such virtues as “honesty, compassion, integrity, tolerance, loyalty, and belief in human worth and dignity.”
For many years now, educators have expressed reluctance to teach simple moral virtues on the grounds that such pedagogy may violate the separation of church and state. This view has contributed to the popularity of such trends as “values clarification,” which holds that students should be encouraged to define and affirm their values, regardless of what those values might be.
The Catholic-Jewish statement rejects this philosophy and argues instead that there is remarkable agreement on principles of human dignity and cooperation contained in “the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, much of the world’s greatest literature, all major religions, and ethical business practices.”
Adam Smith Conquers Latin America
Remember how certain theologians—echoing the governments of most developing countries—long took on faith the notion that trade between the U.S. and developing nations is inherently detrimental? Well, Jaime Serra-Puche, Mexico’s Minister of Trade and Industry, now tells the Wall Street Journal that “President Bush’s initiative concerning a hemispheric free-trade zone has caught the imagination of Latin America.” Serra-Puche and his ministerial counterparts across Latin America insist that they want nothing more, in the words of one, than to “insert” themselves into the global economy.
Colombia’s finance minister, for example, says “experience shows that human well-being benefits from the effective practice of free trade.” He adds that for 50 years the Latin American countries’ development “has been delayed by a social ideology that has made them accept an outrageous level of inefficiency for the sake of a vague but vehement nationalism.” Brazil’s finance minister, like Mexico’s, declares that her nation, too, “has been carrying out a tremendous effort to reform its economy” to facilitate “a greater integration with the world economy.”
“We are enthusiastic” about the initiative, says Antonio Erman Gonzalez of Argentina, while Chile’s finance minister asserts that “there is a growing awareness throughout Latin America that having an open, trading economy is the surest path for pulling our economies out of the poverty trap.” In short, “a free-trade agreement in the Americas would ultimately benefit every country in the hemisphere, rich or poor.” Zero-sum, anti-enterprise thinking is as obsolete in Latin America as it is in Eastern Europe. Now the only worry is what to do with all those unemployable professors.
When Sweet Things Turn Sour
When the National Catholic Reporter interviewed James Cameron recently, he was his usual, unpredictable self, and NCR may have got a bit more than they bargained for: “I recall the story of Pope Paul VI and Yves Congar having dinner together and Paul asking Congar, ‘What’s going to happen when we both die?’ I’m afraid there’s no successor to that generation, and I’m not very impressed by the new radical thinkers, especially in the United States—just a lot of sloganizing, bad theology.”
Cameron admitted to “puzzlement about myself and my generation of Catholics, everyone between 60 and 80 who came through” Vatican II “and was cheered enormously by it… and suddenly we don’t feel happy anymore. What causes this I don’t know—why things we thought were going to be so exciting are somehow not totally exciting. Things we thought were really very sweet have turned out to be sour. Like the vernacular liturgy I was once so much in favor of…. I used to think liturgy was boring because of the perfunctoriness of the clergy. Now I wish they were more perfunctory, less histrionic.”
Shrinking the Gap
Many cheer the lessening of inequality in any area. We wonder how they view this news: the National Center for Health Statistics has just announced a narrowing of the black/white gap in premarital sexual experience. Over 72 percent of all women 15 to 44 reported in 1988 that they first had sex outside of marriage. In 1982, the comparable figure was 65 percent; researchers said the sharp rise was mainly due to the changing behavior of white women, who earlier had reported lower rates of premarital sex.
The same survey also reported an overall drop in age at first intercourse and an increase in the time between first intercourse and marriage. In somewhat better news, the National Opinion Research Center announced that 82 percent of sexually active adults in 1988 said they had had only one sexual partner, married or unmarried, the previous 12 months.
Signs of the Time
June is a popular time for reunions. One such reunion took place this year at an all-girls Catholic high school in the Washington, D.C. area. This reunion was for the graduates of the class of 1960 who numbered about 125; of those, about 85 could still be accounted for and 60 attended the reunion.
In 1960 Catholic schools were almost completely manned by nuns. Divorce was stigmatized and very much frowned upon. If you absolutely had to divorce, you could never get married again in the eyes of the Church. At this reunion, there were a number of women who had been married and divorced and remarried; one was in between husbands after having had two. She admitted to presently recruiting for a third.
The reunion commenced with a luncheon at the school. Prizes were handed out during the luncheon to those having the longest marriage to the same partner, the most number of children, and the most number of grandchildren. A special prize was also given for “the most interesting job.” The winner was the alumna who had written that she was “looking for a third husband.”
As one alumna went around to say hello to some of the others, she encountered one whom she still recognized from high school days. This alumna was conservatively dressed, wearing a pleated skirt, white blouse, and dark blue blazer jacket; her greying hair was cropped short in a boyish bob. The first alumna noticed that she was wearing a small wooden cross pinned to her dark blue blazer, and, as most women do not wear crosses on their clothing as an embellishment, the first alumna hesitantly asked, “Are you a nun?” The woman’s eyes rolled back in her head, and after a few tch!-tchs! she breathed in exasperation, “Yessss, I am a nun!” As the first alumna was saying goodbye, she casually remarked to the nun that she assumed she wouldn’t be seeing her at the party that evening. The nun shot back, “Damn right I’ll be there.”
At the party that evening the nun was wearing a T-shirt that read: “How much can I get away with and still get to heaven?” The innocent alumna casually remarked that in retrospect she thought Vatican II had brought problems in its wake. The nun turned livid, and her eyes widened as she shouted, “Vatican II saved the Church!” The alumna then asked: “But what’s happened to all the priests and nuns, then? There are so few of them. Who’s going to guide the Church?” The very upset nun towered over the cringing alumna, shook her finger at her, and screamed, “you! You, the LAY, will run the Church!”
Each alumna was given a book with an updated thumbnail sketch of each graduate. A statistical count showed that 66 were listed as presently married, and eleven were listed as “divorced.” But of the 66 who were listed as “married,” nine had children older than their stated marriage dates. This means one of two things: they had children out-of-wedlock, or they had children by a previous marriage. (They do not say what happened to their former husbands.) Two were separated, and one was recently widowed, but she admitted to that being her second marriage, the first one ending in divorce.
One had become a nun and was still a nun; another said she had been “a member of the Sisters of St. Dominic” from 1960 to 1978. She continued: “Since 1978, I’ve sold lamps at Bloomie’s; done home shows for Trans-Art….”
Under “Occupation” one listed herself as “Director of Religious Education of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Roanoke.” Another listed her occupation as “Pastor’s wife, mother, counselor, evangelist, missionary, and teacher.” She went on to say: “My life as a born-again Christian in the past 18 years has brought total healing… as I have continued to have a deep, personal relationship with Jesus…. Our family is blessed that in May of this year Bill was ordained as a Baptist pastor.”
Under “Other Comments” one wrote that because her husband was Jewish, she had been able to study the Old Testament in depth. Another, a kindergarten teacher, remarked, “We are still political liberals and proud of it!” An alumna who was director of a day care and pre-school wrote that her most interesting job was “writing a book about metaphysics based on the psycho-social sciences; an attempt to synthesize science and faith—God and evolution.” Heavy stuff for preschoolers.
Of the nuns who taught the graduates of 1960, at least one was known to have left the order. Another, after 33 years of teaching, wrote to say that she had “retired to a waterfront home… and am busy… gardening, traveling, and selling waterfront real estate with a local company.”
At the end of the book were some comparisons between the years 1960 and 1990. In 1960 there were 16 sisters and four lay teachers on the faculty; in 1990 there were 45 full-time and three part-time teachers but only two sisters.
There were some enlightening comments in the book. Under “Most Interesting Trip Taken” an alumna remarked: “Mediterranean cruise’s stop in Istanbul. As I walked alone across the bridge connecting Europe and Asia, it occurred to me I had not seen another woman in the mass of humanity hurtling along. I then thanked God for being raised in the Western culture and the freedoms gained thereby.” She continued: “We’ve been gifted with values and literacy we took for granted when those gifts were bestowed. And a gift isn’t one till you give it away, so pass it on before time runs out.”
One of the most refreshing comments was made by an alumna who had been married to the same husband since 1964, with two children. As “Most Interesting Job” she wrote “being a mother.” She continues: “Some of you may know and remember that I married my high school sweetheart. It was a good move. Our lives are simple.” It is interesting to note that of the alumnae who were married only once and still married, and had one or more children, under “Most Interesting Job” most of them responded in one fashion or another “being a wife and mother.”
G.Y.