The problem is that we’re harder on our own.  (For more on this, see this brief reflection from Dan Gilgoff about his conversation with Archbishop Chaput). My girlfriend has been saying this for a long time: if you’re a pro-choice Catholic, good luck ever getting elected, even if Catholics still vote pro-choice.  Pro-choice Democracts for whom Catholics are willing to vote are kind of like the shabbat goy.  They do the stuff that we’re not alllowed to do and we might not really approve of but which we’re not wholly prepared to go without. 

Is this ultimately hypocritical?  Probably, yes.  But it’s the way quite a few Catholics roll.  They recongize that other people of different faiths might have different priorities than they do, but they are less forgiving of fellow Catholics.  All of this is reason number 7 billion it’s hard to be a Catholic in the Democractic party.

To be honest, I am a bit heterodox on this one.  (I dissent from Church Teaching.  It’s true.  It happens sometimes.)   I recognize that condoms could really help the situation in Africa, but I am with the Pope on this mostly, in that I think he is right to warn people that condoms are far from a panacea.  There need to be significant changes in Africa, and (here’s where I show my liberal stripes) most of them need to be economic.  I actually think its ironic that leftists, who are generally rightly suspicious of rational-choice individualism, think that if you just give everyone a condom the problems be solved.  There are structural problems that have to be dealt with at all levels, and to imply that giving condoms will solve them might actually be worse , if we mistake a bandage for surgery.  That said, I think the theology behind banning condoms is flawed and inconsistent.  But that’s another post.  For a smart analysis of why condoms won’t solve anything, see this post in America.

I wish that Damon were attacking a strawman here, but unfortunately there really are those so doctrinaire as to insist that a nine-year-old girl bear a child to term and, more importantly, that there is nothing complicated about this.  Of course, look, I understand why some would say that this is very sad, but the children in the girl are people too, and their lives need to be respected.  But it’s the tone thorough which this is said, and more importantly, the acknowledgment that this is a sad story all around.  Here’s what Damon says about it:

Now, I ask: Is there any morally serious human being in the world (aside from the most unthinkingly ultramontaine Catholic) who would find this grotesque position morally compelling? I doubt it. I suspect, in fact, that the conscience and reason of most human beings will lead them in the opposite direction, to the view that morality demands saving the life (and preventing the further suffering) of the nine-year-old girl. Indeed, I tend to think that even those (like me) who respect and sympathize with the Church’s pro-life position will look on the case as hopelessly tragic — as one involving an irresolvable clash of incompatible goods with no possible morally satisfactory resolution — and certainly not as one in which the nine-year-old’s mother and the doctors who saved her life deserve the harsh ecclesiastical judgment handed down by the Vatican and its heartless functionaries.

Salaten is quite perceptive on this, and he provides a useful warning:

From this uncertainty, Caplan concluded that “embryonic stem cell research ought to be generously funded and aggressively pursued.”

Why isn’t the same true of research on fetuses?

So, I think Rich is right that the moral blowhards were annoying and when there are big economic problems now, people are going to take them less seriously.  This is true.  However, I think that Rich’s analysis ties too deeply into a well-disproven “secularization thesis” and, what’s more, continues to play to this ridiculous conflation of science and religion–ridiculous from both sides.  Here’s an example:

Another highly regarded poll, the General Social Survey, had an even more startling finding in its preliminary 2008 data released this month: Twice as many Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the scientific community as do in organized religion. How the almighty has fallen: organized religion is in a dead heat with banks and financial institutions on the confidence scale.

Now, Americans have good reason not to trust organized religion, and equally good reasons to trust the scientific community. However, these both ought to be trusted (or not trusted) in their own capacities: science can tell us what works and how it works, but not what is right.  So to the extent that we trust science to tell us, say, what a stem cell can do, or what the historical or genetic components of homosexuality are, or the statistical likelihood of certain marriages having certain outcomes, that’s all well and good.  But it can’t tell us anything about “success” or “morality” not what it is nor how we ought to fall on it.

It’s true.

Fisichella stressed that abortion is always “bad.” But he said the quick proclamation of excommunication “unfortunately hurts the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy.”

The Vatican teaches that anyone performing or helping someone to have an abortion is automatically excommunicated from the church, and the Vatican prelate underlined that abortion is “always condemned by moral law as an intrinsically evil act.”

“There wasn’t any need, we contend, for so much urgency and publicity in declaring something that happens automatically,” Fisichella wrote.

Writing as if he were addressing the girl, Fisichella said: “There are others who merit excommunication and our pardon, not those who have allowed you to live and have helped you to regain hope and trust.”

Here’s the deal.  We really do hate big government.  Ask anyone, and they’ll say they do.  Which is why it’s a dumb question.  Because nobody thinks of the programs they see as important as big government.  They think of them as just really important programs.  The best analogy I can think of is to say that nobody says, sure I support cutting people open, because they don’t think of surgery as cutting people open.  That’s necessary and somehow different.  Anyways, the poll analysis here:

And yet the door doesn’t seem completely closed on that sale either. Like many surveys, this poll found more support for specific government actions than for government intervention as a broad principle. Despite the overall skepticism about government’s contribution to economic advancement, a quality education ranked just behind hard work, ambition and health when people were asked what factors contributed most to personal economic success. Even more telling, the poll found substantial majorities believed an assortment of discrete government policies could widen opportunity. Fully 81% of those polled, for instance, said policies to keep American jobs at home could be “very effective” in improving economic mobility; 75% said making college more affordable would also be very effective. Majorities of at least 60% said the same thing about reducing health care costs, expanding pre-school, widening job training, helping small business, and facilitating retirement saving-all Obama priorities. Cutting taxes, the main Republican alternative, ranked a clear step behind with just over 50% calling it very effective.

There are a few interesting articles about education in America round this ol’ internet.  First, the classic response to vouchers, which I think is the best answer one can give: how can you force public schools on someone when your kids go to a private school?

Then, this article in the New York Times about segregation within education as a means of teaching English but with negative effects as a result:

Hylton High, where a reporter for The New York Times spent much of the past year, is a vivid laboratory. Like thousands of other schools across the country, it has responded to the surge of immigrants by channeling them into a school within a school. It is, in effect, a contemporary form of segregation that provides students learning English intensive support to meet rising academic standards — and it also helps keep the peace.

In a nation where most students learning English lag behind other groups by almost every measure, Hylton’s program stands out for its students’ high test scores and graduation rates. However, at this ordinary American high school, in an ordinary American suburb at a time of extraordinary upheaval, those achievements come with considerable costs.

I’m really excited about this.  It’s a new pragmatism that I think will really work.

His agenda for public schools, laid out in a major speech Tuesday, is bolder than he promised on the campaign trail and reflects his particular interest in urban schools – and perhaps being a parent.

It also signals unilateral action by the US Department of Education that won’t rely on lawmakers, many of whom are beholden to campaign donations from powerful teacher unions.

Mr. Obama will use the carrots and sticks of billions in federal money already allocated for education this year to aim for what he calls “a complete and competitive education” for all Americans.

He wants longer school years and days. He’s asking states to lift the caps on the number of charter schools (in clear defiance of teacher unions). He wants teachers’ pay tied to the success of students. He would push states to toughen standardized tests, while also broadening their scope to include skills such as critical thinking and creativity. And much more.

Not that I know the guy, but I’ve always enjoyged reading him, and it’s nice to know that the NYTimes is going to have a serious Catholic writing editorials.  That and the man is like one year older than me.  I really need to get on the ball.