Mirror of Justice

A "No Brainer" for Afficianados of Catholic Social Justice?

Or not?

New York Times
December 26, 2007

Let’s Raise a Glass to Fairness
By DAVID LEONHARDT

. . .  Since the early 1990s, the federal tax on wine — $1.07 a gallon — hasn’t budged. The taxes on beer and liquor haven’t changed either, which means that, in inflation-adjusted terms, alcohol taxes have been steadily falling.

Each of the three taxes is now effectively 33 percent lower than it was in 1992. Since 1970, the federal beer tax has plummeted 63 percent. Many states taxes have also been falling.

At first blush, this sounds like good news: who likes to pay taxes, right? But taxes serve a purpose beyond merely raising general government revenue. Taxes on a given activity are also supposed to pay the costs that activity imposes on society. And for all that is wonderful about wine, beer and liquor, they clearly bring some heavy costs.

Right now, the patchwork of alcohol taxes isn’t coming close to covering those costs — the costs of drunken-driving checkpoints, of hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents and child abuse, and of the economic loss caused by death and injury. Last year, some 17,000 Americans, or almost 50 a day, died in alcohol-related car accidents. An additional 65,000 people a year die from other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role.

Mr. Cook, besides being a wine lover, has been thinking about the costs and benefits of alcohol for much of his career, and he has come up with a blunt way of describing the problem. “Do you think we should be subsidizing alcohol?” he asks. “Because that’s what we’re doing.”

What’s especially unfortunate is that several states are now considering raising their general sales tax, the one that applies to most retail items, to deal with budget problems. Last month, Maryland increased its sales tax to 6 percent, from 5 percent. Georgia and Indiana are also looking at increases.

These tax increases would raise the price of a huge array of items — winter coats, dictionaries, Ella Fitzgerald CDs, you name it — that leave no social costs in their wake. Relative to alcohol, they are already overtaxed.

There’s a better way to go, and it’s staring us right in the face. At the same time that the Maryland Legislature raised the state sales tax, it also doubled its tobacco tax, to $2 a pack. Across the country, tobacco taxes have been soaring in recent years.

The argument for higher tobacco taxes is simple enough. They help pay Medicare and Medicaid bills for tobacco-related illnesses and also lead to a decline in smoking. On average, a 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes causes about a 5 percent drop in smoking, studies show. Not even addiction, it turns out, can overcome the laws of supply and demand.

If anything, the argument for higher alcohol taxes is even stronger. Tobacco kills many more people than alcohol, but it mainly kills those who use the product. Many alcohol victims are simply driving on the wrong road at the wrong time. Many are also quite young.

Politically, though, the case for alcohol taxes is harder to make, because drinking is so much more socially acceptable than smoking. In many places — like Mr. Cook’s house and mine — a glass of wine or a beer is a standard part of dinner. Nationally, about 25 percent of people have at least one drink a day, and 40 percent drink occasionally.

Those of us in this drinking majority tend to assume that we’re not the ones who will create problems. As Jeff Becker, the president of the Beer Institute, an industry group, told me, “Most people — the vast majority of consumers — don’t impose any additional costs on anyone.”

Which may well be true. And if it were somehow possible to tax only those people who were going to drive drunk in the future, it would be a wonderful idea. (Then again, we might just want to take away their driver’s licenses.) Barring clairvoyance, though, raising alcohol taxes from their current lows seems to be the fairest solution.

Mr. Cook has written a wonderful little book, “Paying the Tab,” making this case. In it, he draws on history, political philosophy and straight economics to point out that higher alcohol taxes would fit squarely in the American tradition.

Unlike Prohibition — or stricter minimum-age drinking laws — a reasonable tax would still allow people to make their own choices about drinking. They would simply be asked to pay the true cost of the product they’re buying.

At a minimum Mr. Cook suggests raising beer and wine taxes (which are now about 7 to 10 cents a drink) to the level of liquor taxes (more than 20 cents a drink) and then indexing them all to inflation. This would be an especially good time for the change, because drunken-driving deaths — which fell rapidly after the start of public-service campaigns in the 1980’s — have plateaued.

History shows that even a modest price increase will lead to a decline in drinking. When drinking has fallen in the past, drunken driving and the incidence of cirrhosis and sexually transmitted diseases have declined, too. So a tax increase would probably save thousands of lives.

The companies making wine, beer and liquor would fight this, of course. They would argue that higher taxes would destroy jobs in their industry. That’s just a scare tactic — the money that was no longer being spent on alcohol would instead be spent on other products. Opponents might also point out that alcohol taxes fall more heavily on the poor and middle class. That’s correct, but saving lives is more important.

In any event, people who have studied the issue and don’t have a financial stake in it tend to agree with Mr. Cook. “Taxes are way too low on alcohol,” Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says. “It’s a public-policy failure.”

That sounds like grist for a 2008 resolution: I hope everyone has a happy New Year and gets a chance to drink something good Monday night, whether it’s Champagne, Prosecco or a sparkling wine from Spain, South Africa or even New Mexico. And sometime soon, I hope none of them come with such an artificial discount.

Not Heart(ing) Huckabee

For the reasons Rick mentioned a few days ago, I have a bit of a soft spot for Mike Huckabee: he appears to combine a willingness to regulate abortion out of compassion for unborn life with some compassionate attitudes on other issues from immigration to criminal punishment.  But I'm not seriously tempted to vote for him either, in significant part for a reason similar to Peggy Noonan's criticism: Huckabee's version of "compassionate conservatism" seems totally episodic and haphazard, far short of a governing philosophy.  Jonathan Chait has these comments on Huckabee's book From Hope to Higher Ground:

The reason Huckabee can so easily break from conservative ideology is that he sees everything in personal terms. He chastises conservatives: "For a kid with asthma, who is sitting on the steps of a hospital--let them have an economic policy that doesn't care about that kid." Even though his book is purportedly a public-policy blueprint, it is written in the style of a self-help book. Political manifestos are typically built around a series of policy positions. Huckabee's is built around personal advice. Every chapter ends with recommendations for what the reader can do to make America a better place, most of which have nothing to do with politics. ("Keep receipts for tax-deductible items"; "Attend ethnic festivals"; "Make a to-do list every day.") As grist for a Sunday sermon, this is perfectly nice. As the basis for a presidential campaign, it's appalling.

Second, with respect to Rick's concerns about who Huckabee is keeping company with: I appreciate and would second many of those concerns, but some of the people Rick references are the kind who have been mainstays of the Republican coalition.  It's true, as the Robert Novak column says, that Dr. Steven Hotze is associated with the Christian Reconstruction movement, whose views on applying Biblical laws, including the penal laws of ancient Israel, to America would indeed be, as Rick puts it, "deeply creepy and troubling to most Americans."  But Rick includes the Rev. Scarborough's Vision America in the same boat with the Reconstructionists, even though Vision America appears to me to be a pretty standard evangelical-Right activist group.  It has endorsements from Dr. James Dobson, the late Rev. D. James Kennedy, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, as well as (it appears) the involvement of longtime conservative activist Paul Weyrich and the American Family Association's Donald Wildmon.  I know little about Vision America, but I assume that it differs from the Reconstructionists in that it is not willing to pursue to the logical extreme the idea of literally applying Biblical law and sanctions to modern America (e.g. death or other harsh penalties for adultery, sodomy, etc.).  I gather that Vision America just calls more fuzzily for a return to "Biblical" or "Judeo-Christian" or "Christian nation" values on abortion, homosexuality, marriage, etc. -- which is a standard Religious-Right position and one to which Republicans have been appealing for many years.  Similarly, the 1986 "Manifesto for the Christian Church," which Rick cited as an example of troubling views, included among its signers only a few Reconstructionists and a large group of quite mainstream evangelical leaders, including a top official of the National Association of Evangelicals and the theologian (now a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together) J.I. Packer.  (Follow the link in Rick's post for the signers' list.)

So I'd guess there are some substantial differences between these groups.  But if the distinctions between them are hard to see -- in other words, if there's such proximity between conservative evangelical stalwarts and views that most Americans would find "deeply creepy and troubling" -- then that dramatizes the Republicans' electoral dilemma concerning the evangelical Right.  Rick (or others), I wonder if you would end up drawing the line in between these groups -- or would you still find Vision America deeply troubling even though it's different from the Reconstructionists?  And if the Republicans should so firmly disavow a group like Vision America, do you think that Neuhaus- and Murray-like arguments and coalitions can make up for the loss of conservative evangelical energy that such a disavowal would cause?

Tom

"Secularization--The Myths and the Realities"

To read a transcript of a terrific conversation (held at Fordham three weeks ago) between Peter Steinfels and Jose Casanova, one of the preeminent sociologists of religion in the world today, click here.

"Modern-day Essenes living on the Upper West Side ..."

There is a trenchant commentary on Mark Lilla's much-commented-on The Stillborn God  here.  Here's a passage:

... Lilla turns aside to the small cadre of the Enlightened who see the story for what it is: “Those of us who have accepted the heritage of the Great Separation must do so soberly. Time and again we must remind ourselves that we are living an experiment, that we are the exceptions.” Wavering between insider code and an invitation to join this inner circle of the exceptional, Lilla ends with a manifesto of inverse gnosticism: “We have chosen to keep our politics unilluminated by the light of revelation. If our experiment is to work, we must rely on our own lucidity.” “We” turns out to be the sect of modern-day Essenes living on the upper West Side, who have vowed to abstain from the illusions of the masses and consigned themselves to the cold, hard desert “reality” disclosed by reason. Lilla and his exceptionalist monastic brotherhood of enlightened “us” have girded their loins in order to make their way in the world without the comforts of faith and revelation (I’m guessing one would bump into Hitchens and Harris in the same rationalist desert after all). Where does that leave the rest of us—the us not included in Lilla’s enlightened “us?”

Love the Dutch!

New York Times
December 27, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

A Colony With a Conscience
By KENNETH T. JACKSON

THREE hundred and fifty years ago today, religious freedom was born on this continent. Yes, 350 years. Religious tolerance did not begin with the Bill of Rights or with Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1786. With due respect to Roger Williams and his early experiment with “liberty of conscience” in Rhode Island, this republic really owes its enduring strength to a fragile, scorched and little-known document that was signed by some 30 ordinary citizens on Dec. 27, 1657.

[Read the rest ... here.]

Religion, Politics, and JFK

The Kennedy Momement:
Religion and the Race for the Presidency                         

16 January 2008, 6 – 8 pm

Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
Pope Auditorium, 113 West 60th Street

Free and Open to the Public

RSVP: [email protected], 212.636.7347            

“Whatever issue may come before me as President . . . I will make my decision . . . in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictate.”
-- Senator John F. Kennedy, speaking to Houston ministers, Sept.12, 1960

For almost fifty years, President John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960 has been a key reference point for American debates about church-state relations and the place of religion in presidential campaigns. In January 2008, amid news about early primaries, a distinguished panel will reexamine the speech, its political and cultural context, its argument and rhetoric—and its relevance for the 2008 presidential election.

The Houston speech, a response of a Catholic presidential candidate to suspicions about his faith, has been widely praised as a brilliant defense of the separation of church and state and a careful delimiting of religion’s role in American politics. But the speech has been no less vigorously criticized as a politically expedient argument for quarantining personal religious and moral principles from public service and official responsibilities.  To read JFK's speech, click here.  To watch JFK's speech on C-Span, click here.

Both partisans and critics of the speech frequently quote it selectively or out of context. Bringing together publicly engaged scholars of different perspectives, this Headline Forum will explore what the Houston speech meant in 1960 and what it might mean today.

Moderator:

Peter Quinn, novelist essayist, author of Banished Children of Eve and Looking for Jimmy. He served as a speech writer for New York governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo.

Panelists:

Shaun Casey, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C. He is completing a book on the role of religion in the 1960 presidential election, including archival material on the Kennedy speech.

William Galston, Professor, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland.  He served in the Clinton administration and as an advisor in the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale and Albert Gore, Jr.

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program, Princeton University. A member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, he has advised the administration on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research.

J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. His research and writing focus on ethics and the role of religion in American society and world politics.

"Stem Cells and the President"

A good read, from Jay Lefkowitz:

. . . We do not know enough yet to say whether, or to what degree, Bush’s refusal to allow federal funding to create new embryonic stem-cell lines played a role in compelling scientists to find a different approach to the issue. We do know that, in the aftermath of last November’s announcement, several leading scientists have suddenly testified in public to having harbored the very same moral doubts that led Bush to his 2001 decision. James Thomson, the foremost stem-cell researcher in the United States, put it plainly: “If human embryonic stem-cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”

This was not, to put it mildly, a view openly expressed by the scientific community in the years between Bush’s decision and the discovery of the new method. But remarks like Thomson’s, and the fact that a scientific advance unthinkable in 2001 has rendered one of the ugliest controversies of the decade all but moot, suggest that it is time to revisit Bush’s decision to see what lessons can be drawn from it. . . .

Now that the debate seems to be over, what can we say about Bush’s policy and the long months it took for him to devise it? I think it is fair to look upon it as a model of how to deal with the complicated scientific and ethical dilemmas that will continue to confront political leaders in the age of biotechnology. Bush refused to accept the notion that we must choose between medical research and the principle of the dignity of life at every stage. He sought both to advance biomedical science and at the same time to respect the sanctity of human life. In the end he came to a moderate, balanced decision that drew a prudent and principled line. The decision was both informed and reasoned, based on lengthy study and consultation with people of widely divergent viewpoints. It was consciously not guided by public-opinion polls.

As I write these last words, I am aware that they may sound like political spin. That is far from the case. There were many other contentious issues on which I advised the President—affirmative action, gay marriage, contraception, offshore oil and gas exploration, international trade, patent protection, even veterans’ benefits. In each of these, political considerations and calculations played at least some role in the development of policy, as they always have and always will. What made our deliberations on the stem-cell issue unique was, precisely, the absence of that element. Bush knew that whatever his decision, it was bound to alienate millions of Americans. Their ranks would include both political supporters and many who, if the decision went another way, might be drawn to reconsider their aversion to him. Our discussions were focused throughout on reaching a coherent and consistent position where the President could stand with honor for as long as the facts on the ground remained as they were. We did not dwell at all on how that position would play politically.

In the coming decades, scientific advances will compel Presidents and politicians to confront vexing choices on subjects that were once solely the province of dystopian science fiction: human cloning, fetal farming, human-animal hybrid embryos, and situations as yet unimagined and unimaginable. If we are to benefit from the great promise of the age of biotechnology while preventing grave ethical abuses, we can only hope that future Presidents will be guided by the same seriousness with which George W. Bush pursued the question of stem-cell research, as well as by his stout refusal to be seduced by the siren song of political expediency.

The teaching of Christian Ethics

Several of us have been discussing the teaching of Christian Ethics in a Catholic context over the past several days. In particular, I would like to thank our two Michaels, i.e., Perry and Scaperlanda, for providing spirited catalysts to these exchanges. As I mentioned previously, I do not share Michael P.’s enthusiasm for Sr. Margaret Farley’s take on important issues of the day. Like Michael P., I realize she is “dissenting,” but I do not see how her positions or arguments in support thereof are “compelling.” I would like to offer readers some insight into the position I stake and the ground on which I rely.

Like Sr. Farley, I, too, have taught Christian Ethics, but unlike her, I did not teach at a prestigious Ivy League university but a Pontifical university in Rome, which carried certain responsibilities for me regarding the content of my classes and the nature of my publications. Unlike Sr. Farley who held a prestigious endowed professorship in Christian ethics, I simply was an Ordinary Professor of a Pontifical faculty, meaning that I held the rank of full professor in an ecclesiastical faculty with the approval not only of the university and my religious order, the Society of Jesus, but also of the Congregation for Catholic Education. Considering my rights and responsibilities that I have freely accepted in my capacity as an Ordinary Professor, I am obliged to conduct myself, my teaching, my research, and my writing in accordance with norms of the Church. One of the most pertinent sources would be Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor (1993)—the Splendor of Truth, [HERE].

It is relevant to note that John Paul prefaced his writing of this encyclical noting that circumstances existed, which demonstrate “the lack of harmony between the traditional response of the Church and certain theological positions, encountered even in Seminaries and in Faculties of Theology, with regard to questions of the greatest importance for the Church and for the life of faith of Christians, as well as for the life of society itself.” John Paul was also concerned about challenges to “the intrinsic and unbreakable bond between faith and morality, as if membership in the Church and her internal unity were to be decided on the basis of faith alone.” He concluded that it was necessary to write an Encyclical with the aim of treating “more fully and more deeply the issues regarding the very foundations of moral theology” that were and are “being undermined by certain present day tendencies.” (NN. 4-5)

It was his intention to identify clearly “certain aspects of doctrine which are of crucial importance in facing what is certainly a genuine crisis, since the difficulties which it engenders have most serious implications for the moral life of the faithful and for communion in the Church.” John Paul specified that these “certain aspects” include areas contested by some who teach “Christian ethics”, e.g., abortion, marriage, and bioethical matters including research destructive of human life. (NN. 4, 13, 47-49, 80) The Pope’s further objective was to assist those entrusted with teaching moral theology and Christian ethics “with regard to which new tendencies and theories have developed.” John Paul emphasized the role of the Magisterium, fidelity to Jesus Christ, and continuity with the Church’s tradition, which are needed to help everyone in his “journey towards truth and freedom.” (N. 27, italics mine)

John Paul realized that certain tendencies had evolved in contemporary moral theology influenced by “the currents of subjectivism and individualism” that relied on “novel interpretations of the relationship of freedom to the moral law, human nature and conscience, and propose novel criteria for the moral evaluation of acts.” (N. 34) He also understood that these tendencies either minimized or denied the relation between an individual’s freedom and the truth taught by God and knowable by the human person. This discussion introduces the problem of an exaggerated and erroneous autonomy in which some moral theologians and ethicists have made an improper distinction between an ethical order based exclusively on human resources and limited to the material world and the order of God’s salvation. As the Pope asserted, “autonomy conceived in this way also involves the denial of a specific doctrinal competence on the part of the Church and her Magisterium with regard to particular moral norms which deal with the so-called ‘human good’.” (N.37)

For John Paul II, it became necessary for the Church’s Magisterium to intervene in the sphere of faith and in the sphere of actions that bear moral concerns. It is the duty of all Catholics to be mindful of this (for we are all called to the task of salvation and evangelization), but it is the special responsibility of those who teach Christian ethics and moral theology. (N. 110) The person who exercises his or her life in a manner that conflicts with the Church, its Magisterium, and its teaching authority on these matters separates one’s self from right relation in the ecclesial communion. When this occurs, the Church has an obligation to warn the faithful of “the presence of possible errors, even merely implicit ones, when their consciences fail to acknowledge the correctness and the truth of the moral norms which the Magisterium teaches.” (Id.) The teacher of Christian ethics and moral theology has an obligation to teach with and in assent to the Magisterium’s teachings in the realms of dogma and morality in cooperation with the “hierarchical Magisterium.” (Id.)

As a man of the times, John Paul understood the importance and relevance of behavioral sciences in assisting the Church in its teaching responsibilities. However, he also understood the limitations of investigations that relied solely on the approach of behavioral science. As he indicated, “the relevance of the behavioral sciences for moral theology must always be measured against the primordial question: What is good or evil? What must be done to have eternal life?” (N. 111, italics are those of John Paul II) Should the teacher of Christian ethics and moral theology forget this, he or she has failed to comply with one’s professional and ecclesial responsibilities.

John Paul concludes his letter with these important points:

Teaching moral doctrine involves the conscious acceptance of these intellectual, spiritual and pastoral responsibilities. Moral theologians, who have accepted the charge of teaching the Church's doctrine, thus have a grave duty to train the faithful to make this moral discernment, to be committed to the true good and to have confident recourse to God’s grace. While exchanges and conflicts of opinion may constitute normal expressions of public life in a representative democracy, moral teaching certainly cannot depend simply upon respect for a process: indeed, it is in no way established by following the rules and deliberative procedures typical of a democracy. Dissent, in the form of carefully orchestrated protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God. Opposition to the teaching of the Church’s Pastors cannot be seen as a legitimate expression either of Christian freedom or of the diversity of the Spirit’s gifts. When this happens, the Church’s Pastors have the duty to act in conformity with their apostolic mission, insisting that the right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected. “Never forgetting that he too is a member of the People of God, the theologian must be respectful of them, and be committed to offering them a teaching which in no way does harm to the doctrine of the faith”.  (N. 113, italics are those of John Paul II)

I, for one, labor to be faithful to the Splendor of Truth and the need to keep together the questions, on the one hand, that address good and evil and those, on the other hand, that have to do with eternal life.     RJA sj

Obama at Newman Catholic High School, Mason City, Iowa

According to the New York Times,

Flying in from Chicago, Mr. Obama arrived here [Iowa] on Wednesday morning, where about 500 people were waiting in the gymnasium of the Newman Catholic High School in Mason City. His remarks conveyed a fresh moment of urgency in the race . . .

Who is Obama, you ask?  Check out this (seasonal) YouTube feature to find out:

Benedict XVI and the Environment, Revisited

[from NYTimes online, "The Opinionator".]

December 26, 2007,  9:11 am

The Pope on Hope (For the Environment)

By Tobin Harshaw

Tags: Environment, Pope Benedict XVI, the vatican

“Pope Benedict XVI reinforced the Vatican’s growing concern with protecting the environment in the traditional midnight Christmas Mass on Tuesday, bemoaning an ‘ill-treated world’ in a homily given to thousands of pilgrims here in the seat of the world’s billion Roman Catholics, reports The Times’s Ian Fisher from Rome.

The gang at Truthdig was impressed, adding that “He’s not just all talk: it turns out the Vatican bought carbon credits this holiday season to offset emissions. It’s just a little present to the world from the biggest little city in Italy.”

Frank Pasquale at Concurring Opinions feels the address built on the recent encyclical on hope that stated, “It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater.”

“These may seem rather dark ideas for an encyclical on hope,” notes Pasquale. “But an idea of redemption is a common thread throughout the document; ‘It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love.’ Here is to hoping that ‘progress in man’s ethical formation’ can begin approaching our technical prowess in 2008.”