April Fools

In the midst of a family squabble among Catholics about those bishops denouncing Notre Dame and its President for inviting President Barak Obama, #44, as its Commencement speaker, a friend asked, "Would those among you who are willing to extend compassion and understanding to Barak Obama be willing to do the same for George Bush? Just wondering."

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My Reply

Yes. But the question rising is not whether I -- me alone, not speaking for anyone else -- extend compassion and understanding to President Obama. I did extend both to President George Walker Bush, #43, on many occasions, not because I thought the poor fellow was in way over his head, but simply because he was our President. Over the years after President George Washington, # 1, we have had outstanding ones, as well as several of the other kind, each one deserving and often receiving compassion and understanding.

I liked his father, President George Herbert Walker Bush, # 41, and was strangely moved by the friendship he offered to President William Jefferson Clinton, # 42, who responded in kind. It was not faked, but real, with mutual compassion and understanding. I didn't like President Jimmy Carter, #39, or President Ronald Reagan, #40, but did not withhold compassion or understanding during their administrations.

I guess that I'm not too sure about what you are driving at with such a question. A President is a President of all the people, though elected by just a majority of them. Respect for him and for his office does not seem to have much bearing on my degrees of compassion or understanding, which, by the way go to the attacking bishops, as well. It is harder for me to understand how such men can become bishops of such a wondrous Church, but they are.

My deeper concerns are about extremely conservative bishops who embarrass our Church and our country with their rigid and oh! so very, very public posturing protestations. My views of Church and State, Religion and the Rule of Law differ from those of the bishops who are ranting about Notre Dame's invitation to the President. The bishops who I think are good and decent bishops in our Church have not issued protests to the Pope over the conduct of those bishops attacking not only the President of the United States but also the President of Notre Dame.

Try as I might, I cannot imagine a bishop I prefer issuing a public statement urging me not to step foot in a diocese run by one hostile to the program of Notre Dame's Commencement. Were I to attend that ceremony, I wonder whether such an Ordinary would block my receiving Holy Communion in his Cathedral thereafter. Granted that our polarizing bishops are pro-life, would that they were also pro-Catholic.

Roe v.Wade

Disclosure. I do not look upon me as either pro-life or pro-choice. It is an issue I have not yet studied sufficiently to make an informed judgment. I am aware of what is said to be the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. And I am aware of Roe v. Wade. They differ.

In an I-am-not-a-woman attitude, as well as the other one of I-am-not-a-judge-of-people-in-conflicting-moralities, my instinctive feeling is to wish that those facing the decision would allow the fetus to be carried to term and then adopted. But, when she's nine years old in Brazil and carrying twin fetuses conceived in continual raping by her stepfather, I do object to her mother and doctors being excommunicated for the abortion deemed necessary to save her life. There seems to be a greater need in that instance for
others than myself to heed the urgency of an answer to your question about compassion and understanding.

Long time ago, the Jewish Synagogue in Manchester, NH, asked me to be the attacking speaker of two on Roe v. Wade, then recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The praising speaker was from out of state, one of the lawyers who had presented the case before the Court. The President of our Bar Association told me a half hour before the lecture was to begin that the other speaker had been grounded in Hartford, CT, due to extreme weather, and we would have to cancel the talk. He said that he could not take that speaker's place, even though he had carefully studied the opinion, because he was deeply offended by Roe v. Wade. Noting that he would much rather give my talk, I asked him whether he could and would ex temp. He gave me a strong, "Yes." I switched to the missing speaker's side and defended the Supreme Court's decision. We both did well, but he got much louder and longer applause.

Lawyers do that, you know, in the representation of clients. Our own personal, private views do not interfere with the service we are trained, schooled, experienced in doing. A gracious woman refused to understand that, however and loudly, angrily, went after me. It was pretty vicious, since I had been introduced as Catholic and worse than that, a former Jesuit. She denounced me. I tried to use the lawyer's dodge that it wasn't me, my own private inner convictions, but an explanation of what the law on abortions is in the United States after Roe v. Wade. She yelled, "But you approve abortion."

My college classmate and close friend was in the winding down of his oral argument before our New Hampshire Supreme Court, when our Chief Justice Frank Kenison interrupted, "Counselor, you were here in that very spot last month, taking the opposite position on this same issue. Care to explain the inconsistency?"

Larry said, "Yes, Your Honor. I am an advocate. You are justices. I present. You decide."

I tried to say I neither approved nor disapproved abortion, but I did approve the law. You see, lawyers, on losing a case in which their personal emotions may clash or not clash, still know the procedures available in the law for changing the law. Legislation, selection and appointment of judges, new appeals to appellate courts seeking to overrule stare decisis -- prior opinions, amend the Constitution. I've handled all the way to our NH Supreme Court a losing case, because of a prior opinion, and won on our appeal. I've also lost quite a few.

That is neither here or there. It is, quite simply, our way of proceeding under the laws of the states and this country. America has not yet made Roman Catholic Doctrine on issues of morality the law of the State. Nor has it made the Roman Catholic Church the sole Church of State. It is said that Emperor Constantine tried to, and may have succeeded, in the Roman Empire early in the Fourth Century. The fall and decline of that empire took place soon thereafter, but possibly not because of the State Religion.

The Other Side of The Issue

There is another issue, of course. Whether the Church will change its way of proceeding on issues of doctrine or morality -- the infallible ones -- when located in a country where it is not the official religion of that State. I haven't reached a firm opinion on that one, either, yet, but I'd prefer not to see a union of Church and State, or Law synchronized with Roman Catholicism as the State's only Religion.

God's people are not the Roman Catholics alone. The nations of the world are not American democracies only. There are many serious matters arising out of our pluralities on this globe. We can try to resolve our differences, as we have done for so many centuries, by war. Or we can try by diplomacy. I prefer the latter. Some bishops, even though the school involved is Notre Dame, a prominent Catholic University, do not agree.

It is hard to compromise with infallibility. Even self-evident truths -- whether from the natural law or the latest theory of science or literature or a longing poem -- resist compromise, especially when not as self-evident to everybody.

In June, 2004, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops -- UISCCB -- issued a statement. "Catholics in Political Life" contained this:

"The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."
[http://www.usccb.org/bishops/catholicsinpoliticallife.shtml]

A lawyer would easily distinguish the last sentence by stating that Notre Dame's selection of President Obama as Commencement Speaker is not that University's judgment that it is offering to "honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." Nor is President Obama acting "in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."

Very, very few people in America could qualify for an honor on such factors so broad as to be vague and meaningless. The USCCB statement is Purple Prose, ridiculed and condemned by Horace, the poet of Rome long before bishops took over that city to spread the Word of the Gospels.

My recommendation is that we should eradicate that statement about Catholics in Political Life and replace it with one that is sound and consistent with those Gospels. Get rid of that statement as a way of proceeding and the Notre Dame/President Obama issue disappears. Academic Freedom cannot be destroyed by dictators, nor can Religion be imposed by penalizing in polarization.

We can then get down to figuring out how our way of proceeding can get along with a different way of proceeding on all the other issues facing all the Churches and all the States in all the World. With God's help..

Out of the religions of the whole world, I favor Catholicism.

Out of the nations on this planet, I favor America.

Out of the ten football teams in the PAC-10, I favor Oregon.

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