Archbishop Chaput’s article on the First Things homepage deserves broad dissemination. It’s a welcome follow-up to the issue that I blogged about last week.

When I reviewed John DiIulio’s new book in National Review, I closed with this:

The health of America’s religions lies precisely in their independence from government. This is one reason religious leaders should be wary of faith-based partnerships: The more they depend on government funds, the less freedom they will enjoy to minister, even for social purposes, in the way they see fit. Consider how Boston’s Catholic Charities was forced either to leave the adoption business or to violate its firm conviction that every child deserves a mother and a father. With government money comes government meddling.

And might faith-based initiatives simply create ever more entitlements, swelling an already strained welfare state while also weakening civil society? Since one of the most important checks on government is a robust, independent civic sphere, we should be concerned when private organizations sup at the teat of Uncle Sam. Furthermore, as DiIulio notes, since the 1950s the federal government has assumed responsibility for problems that were previously considered outside its purview. DiIulio thinks this is good. Many do not. For if seeing a panhandler on the sidewalk causes you to say “government should do something about that,” then you already suffer from the morally corrupting consequences of the welfare state. This also applies to foundering faith-based organizations whose first response is to turn to the government, not the faithful. Wouldn’t it be better if all of the vital organs of civil society that DiIulio admits best serve the poor were sustained directly by their benefactors? Might faith-based initiatives encourage the opposite? If government is responsible for fixing the poor, then I’ve done my part by paying my taxes — especially if they leave me with little for private donations.

We’re seeing this play out in Colorado right now. If you were a cynic, it seems that you could describe the situation in this way:

The State claims to have the institutional wherewithal–and the moral duty–to provide for those in the “shadows of life” (to quote Hubert Humphrey). Of course the State is nothing without taxpayers, so to fulfill its mandate to care for the poor the State levies taxes. The State then discovers that it, in fact, isn’t all that good at serving the poor. It discovers that faith-based groups, like Catholic Charities, do a much better job–they get better results, serve tougher cases in rougher neighborhoods, and do it all on a much smaller budget. But these faith-based groups can’t even keep their small coffers full–possibly as a result of the burden that the faithful have simply in meeting their obligations under welfare-state taxation. So the State, in her overflowing generosity, partners with faith-based social-service providers: We’ll give you the money that we collected by taxation (money which could have gone directly to you if people really understood that you were better than we were at serving poor, and money that people would have to donate if we didn’t tax them so much), and you’ll serve the poor for us. Then, as the forces aligned against religion (or, purportedly, simply against religion in the public square) gain control of the levers of power, they create rules demanding that those who accept State money must abide by State non-discrimination laws–including religious non-discrimination (i.e. religious identity and the free exercise of faith-based groups).

What a racket.

Lent is not especially known for its music, but Allegri’s Miserere captures the season’s grace, sorrow, and repentance better than any other. More information about the music can be found here, including a translation of the Vulgate text. The clip below contains all but one of the verses, and is sung by King’s College Choir under the direction of Stephen Cleobury. (Notice how the boy soprano soars to the high C with almost no visible effort.)

But not all Lenten music need be somber. Some find joy in their mourning: A few years ago a friend of mine sent me these lyrics, which can be sung to the tune of “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.”

Sackcloth and ashes and days without eating,
Mortification and wailing and weeping,
A hair shirt that scratches, a nettle that stings –
These are a few of my favorite things!

Penitence, flagellants, memento mori,
Spending nights sleeping on rocks in a quarry,
The sound of a cloaked solemn cantor who sings –
These are still more of my favorite things!

Tossing and turning and yearning, I’m spurning!
Passions aflame like an ember-day burning,
Corpus and carnis and wild drunken flings –
Forsaken are they for my favorite things!

When it’s Christmas,
When the tree’s lit,
When the cards are sent…
I simply remember my favorite things –
And then I can’t waaaaaaaaait ’til Lent!

Suppose you’re having an intellectual discussion with someone, and just when you have completely demolished his position, he says something like, “You know, civility should be a guiding principle here. It’s apparent that this discussion is becoming very divisive. We must learn to disagree respectfully and without judgment.” What would you think? I’d think the fellow knows he has lost the argument on the merits and is trying to avoid admitting it by changing the topic and raising a bunch of silly accusations about civility.

There’s a certain organization in Washington—it styles itself Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good—that tried this tactic recently. You can determine the ideological drift of the organization from its press releases: President Bush should reverse his positions on war, “torture,” climate and poverty; Bill O’Reilly should stop complaining about department stores that forbid employees to say “Merry Christmas”; the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq; Congress should override President Bush’s veto of the SCHIP legislation, etc. As for abortion, CACG suggests Catholics send this letter to their local newspapers:

As a Catholic, I consider abortion a grave affront to the sanctity of human life. The polarized abortion debate in this country, however, has often been reduced to slogans and rancorous political rhetoric that has done little to reduce the number of abortions. If we are serious about making abortion a relic of the past, we must address the economic and social factors that are often at the heart of the painful decision to end a pregnancy. Research shows that women are less likely to have abortions when they have access to quality pre-natal care, children’s health insurance, jobs that pay living wages, and a strong safety net of social services.

In other words, we shouldn’t outlaw abortion; we should reduce the number of abortions by increasing government spending. It’s thus pretty clear what CACG is: a reliably far-left organization that is about as Catholic as Nancy Pelosi and that aims at influencing people too dim-witted to write their own letters-to-the-editor.

Now, when an organization like this issues a statement saying that Catholics need to start speaking more civilly in the public square, which issue do you think it has in mind? Does it want Catholics to stop saying that the war in Iraq “is an immoral and unjust war … [and] has been a moral and humanitarian disaster”? No, that’s not it. Should Catholics stop saying that people favoring stricter enforcement of immigration laws “demonize immigrants” and want “a punitive approach to detentions and deportations”? No, certainly not. Does CACG want Catholics to stop saying that “the gap between rich and poor has reached Depression-era standards” so that people who don’t favor minimum wage legislation must be motivated by “private interest and partisan gain”? No, that’s not it either. For, as you may have guessed, CACG says all these things itself. But I’ll stop wasting your time, because we both know which issue it is that CACG wants Catholics to shut up about: it’s abortion.

This becomes clear reading CACG’s statement, for besides platitudes about treating respectfully those with whom we disagree, there is no point to this statement except the following:

As lay Catholics we should not exhort the Church to condemn our political opponents by publicly denying them Holy Communion based on public dissent from Church teachings. An individual’s fitness to receive communion is his or her personal responsibility. And it is a bishop’s responsibility to set for his diocese the guidelines for administering communion.

So CACG wants pro-life Catholics (organizations like CACG make such pleonastic expressions necessary) to lay off pro-choice Catholic politicians. In particular, those uncouth pro-lifers shouldn’t embarrass the politicians by saying that they are denying dogmas of the Catholic faith, might be “obstinately persisting in manifest grave sin,” and so ought to be denied communion under canon law (CIC 915-916).

On his canon-law blog, Professor Edward Peters made very short work of CACG’s position from a canonical point of view in ways that I couldn’t possibly improve upon, and last week a group of Catholic public intellectuals—including John Baker, Robert Bork, James Hitchcock, Fr. Joseph Koterski, Peter Kreeft, William May, Michael Novak, Robert Royale, Austin Ruse, and Fr. Robert Siroco—responded to CACG’s statement pointing out its hypocrisy and general fatuity.

Given the low style of argumentation that CACG seems to favor, you can look for CACG to say that the authors of this response are against civility. That, of course, would not be true, but in an effort to make the crime fit the punishment, I’d like to go on record as saying that civility is overrated.

When you’re having dinner with your in-laws, graciously downplaying disagreements about politics and religion is the thing to do, for such discussions usually lead nowhere and often engender bad feelings. It should be different, however, among people who make their living by speaking and writing about issues of public concern, among professors and pundits and politicians. These people voluntarily enter the public square in order to contribute to the common good by persuading their fellow citizens about what that good really is. There are important things at stake here—with abortion, for example, the issue really is one of life and death—and so it’s absurd to say that we should minimize our differences or agree to disagree or fail to bring forward our best and toughest arguments against our opponents lest we hurt their feelings. Quite the contrary, we should state as clearly as possible what we think and why we think it—including why we think our opponents are wrong. We owe this to the public we are seeking to persuade and even to our opponents themselves, for, as Aristotle says, in philosophy we must love the truth more than our friends.

W.V. Quine, arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, once said that philosophers want to be right, but ordinary people want to have been right. Just so, or, at least, this is how philosophers—and public intellectuals generally—ought to behave. Once a person chooses to speak in the public square, he should welcome criticism of his views, even the sharpest criticism. If the criticisms are unjustified, he will in no way be harmed by them, and at least he’ll learn why certain arguments against his views fail. If, on the other hand, the criticisms are justified, then he will have been saved from error and learned something important. The wise man never takes offense when people tell me him what he has said is wrong, even when they do so quite bluntly. When people tell him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he recognizes that they might be right, for, on a wide range of things, he really might be ignorant and uninformed. In most cases, critics will find that he has already considered and rejected the arguments people bring against his views, but every once in a while he hears a new argument and will have to change his mind. His feelings aren’t hurt when this happens. On the contrary, he is grateful to such people and considers himself in their debt. Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be wiser still (Prov. 9:8–9). This, I think, should be the attitude of everyone involved in public life.

So here’s my answer to CACG or anyone else who thinks that, when we are discussing issues of public concern in the public square, the disinterested pursuit of the truth should be sacrificed for the protection of anyone’s feelings: if you can’t take an intellectual punch, don’t play in the public square. You’re only getting in the way of the adults.

Nathaniel, I’m not so sure about your post on college endowments. Maybe it’s just because I’m dull (a thesis, admittedly, that has floated about this office on more than one occasion), but the questions whose answers you think should be “obvious” seem legitimate to me. You concluded with this:

As I suspected when I first began following this story, the fight over endowments is, at its heart, a fight over private property. It brings up questions whose answers should be obvious. Of course the money that the taxpayer has earned is his own. Of course private institutions have the right to reap the benefits of sound investing, even if they do so better than others. And of course Americans have the right to give their money to private institutions that they think will educate the country’s best and brightest. This should all be common sense, but, of course, it is not. And so the drum beats on.

Sure. But the questions here don’t seem to have to deal with “rights.” The question has more to do with regulation, public policy, and how our political community wants to shape its tax policies to promote higher education. Currently, the donation you make your alma mater is tax deductible. And the interest income that your alma mater earns on its endowment investments is also tax free. These are tax breaks that individuals who spend their money otherwise and institutions dedicated to other ends do not enjoy. They exist because our political community has decided to assist non-profits, particularly academic non-profits, through beneficial tax schemes. But there’s no reason to think that the current tax scheme is best, especially if the political community decides that the goods it had hoped to serve in the first place are no longer being served. So, if Congress decides that institutions of higher learning that make over a certain amount of money a year in donations or interest earnings need to pay tax on them, I don’t see why that is wrong in any “obvious” sense. If congress decides that the tax-monies they collect from the colleges bringing in the largest donations will be used to help other schools—in order to best serve (as Congress sees it) the common good of a more widely educated public—then, again, the problem doesn’t seem “obvious.” If Congress decides that any institution that accepts the tax breaks has to play by Congress’ rules, again, I don’t see how “rights” to “private property” are “obviously” violated. I’m not saying I’d necessarily agree with these changes, just that they’re legitimate questions to be asking.

The supreme irony, of course, is that we’re talking about redistributive taxation: eliminating the tax breaks for the rich colleges and transferring some of their money to the poor schools. When it comes to redistributive taxation of wealthy businessmen, corporations, and Wall Street banks, the elites at Harvard and Yale seem more than pleased. But when it comes to redistributive taxation of Harvard and Yale, they suddenly become the functional equivalent of supply-siders. We’re also talking about welfare—white-collar welfare. Conservatives typically oppose welfare, but when it comes to helping their alma maters, they suddenly develop bleeding hearts. Why shouldn’t Harvard and Yale pay taxes on their endowment income? And if Harvard and Yale continue to get tax breaks, then why shouldn’t Congress be able to regulate how they use that money? The answers to these questions seem anything but “obvious.”

Some of the most poignant devotional poetry in English comes from a seventeenth-century country parson, George Herbert. I came across the following little-known verses last night and was immediately struck by their limping discordance—a stark contrast to Herbert’s usually fluid eloquence, but so fitting for this Lenten prayer. As today’s psalm pleads: Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness . . . O Lord, open my lips!

Denial

When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears;
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse:
My breast was full of fears
And disorder:

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,
Did fly asunder:
Each took his way; some would to pleasures go,
Some to the wars and thunder
Of alarms.

As good go any where, they say,
As to benumb
Both knees and heart, in crying night and day,
Come, come, my God, O come,
But no hearing.

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To cry to thee,
And then not hear it crying! all day long
My heart was in my knee,
But no hearing.

Therefore my soul lay out of sight,
Untuned, unstrung:
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipped blossom, hung
Discontented.

O cheer and tune my heartless breast,
Defer no time;
That so thy favors granting my request,
They and my mind may chime,
And mend my rime.

–George Herbert

Oh wait, we don’t say that anymore… It’s Ash Wednesday, which means Lent is upon us. Lent, of course, is a time for penance and self-denial. Fasting and abstinence (from meat, that is), almsgiving, increased devotions. But many Christians, especially from my generation, aren’t quite sure how to understand these practices. Rereading the Pope’s Lenten Message may shed some light. So will this article, originally in the Homiletic & Pastoral Review, reprinted here in Ignatius Insight. In “Lent: Why the Christian Must Deny Himself,” Brother Austin G. Murphy, O.S.B., explains in simple but profound terms the rationale behind many of our traditional lenten practices and the spirit with which we should approach them. Some snippets:

What, then, is the reason for fasting? To answer this let us first clarify what fasting entails. It involves more than the occasional fast, such as on Good Friday. To be effective, fasting requires disciplined eating habits all the time. There are certainly days when a person should make a greater effort at abstaining from food and drink. These are what we usually consider days of fasting and they must be practiced regularly. But, still, there are never days when a person is allowed to abandon all restraint. A person must always practice some restraint over his appetites or those periodic days of fasting arc valueless. Always keeping a check on his desires, a person develops good habits, which foster constancy in his interior life. So, in addition to practicing days of fasting on a regular basis, a person should continuously restrain his desires, such as those that incline him to eat too much, to be too concerned with what he eats, or to eat too often.

We might, then speak of the discipline of fasting in order to avoid the impression that fasting is sporadic. The operative principle behind the discipline of fasting is simple: to limit yourself to only what is necessary for your physical and psychological health–no more, no less. St. Augustine puts it concisely when he teaches: “As far as your health allows, keep your bodily appetites in check by fasting and abstinence from food and drink.” So, fasting is meant only to keep a person’s unnecessary wants in check. A person is not– nor is he permitted–to deny himself what is necessary for his health. The discipline of fasting instead asks a person to check his desires for what is superfluous and not necessary.

…

Fasting actually does good for the body by helping it realize its well-being. The body needs to be in conformity with the spirit and this requires such disciplines as fasting. In this way, the body is like a child. Children would never realize their true well-being if their parents never told them “no,” but gave in to every one of their desires. In the same way, if a person never says “no” to his bodily desires, his body will never realize its true well-being. That is, the body needs such discipline to be brought into conformity with the spirit. For otherwise, it cannot share in the spiritual blessings of Christ.

This makes perfect sense when we consider that the human person is not just a soul, but is matter as well. A person’s body, too, is to be renewed in Christ. Fasting is one way that a person brings about a harmony between body and soul, so that being made whole he can be one with Christ.

The Christian belief that the body is intimately united to the soul should also make a person suspicious of the opinion that fasting is merely external. External acts stem from the desires of the heart within, as Our Lord says in the Gospel. So, a person’s external acts are linked to his interior desires. The external act of abstaining from food and drink, therefore, clearly affects a person internally. It does not permit his desires within to reach fulfillment. Thus fasting has the ability to keep interior desires in check, which is important for improving a person’s interior life.

…

This provides one answer to the question, “Why must we fast?” (and, by extension, to the question, “Why should one practice self-denial?”). Since, by fasting, a person no longer seeks after the joys of food and drink, the heart is set free to focus more completely on God. By turning away from his concerns for the pleasures of eating, he can turn more wholeheartedly to God. And this, we know is what continual conversion is all about.

…

Moreover, this service to his neighbor through fasting is an imitation of Christ. He offered himself on the Cross for others. A person too, in union with Christ, offers himself through the sacrifice of fasting. In fasting, he has the opportunity to join Christ in offering himself for the sake of others. Thus, even if a person’s heart were pure and always free from selfish inclinations–as was Christ’s–he should still fast–as did Christ. Through Christ he has the chance of helping others through voluntary acts of self-denial. Christian love is, indeed, eager for such chances to serve others.

There is much more in the article, and it’s well worth reading in full.

For an eye-opening discussion of what the elimination of communal lenten practices has meant for the Church, you should check out Eamon Duffy’s 2005 article for First Things. One taste:

The ritual observance of dietary rules—fasting and abstinence from meat in Lent, and abstinence from meat and meat products every Friday, as well as the eucharistic fast from midnight before the reception of Communion—were as much defining marks of Catholicism before the council as abstention from pork is a defining characteristic of Judaism. The Friday abstinence in particular was a focus of Catholic identity which transcended class and educational barriers, uniting “good” and “bad” Catholics in a single eloquent observance. Here was a universally recognized expression of Catholicism which was nothing to do with priests or authority.

But instead of seeing this as one of its greatest strengths, it was often used as an argument against Friday abstinence. Bad or badly instructed Catholics—who it was thought drank their wages or beat their wives, yet who were nevertheless punctilious in eating fish on Fridays—were adhering to the mere externals, it was claimed, while ignoring the essence of “real” Christianity. What was needed was a more spiritual sort of religion that offered no such crutches to lame practice.

So fasting is now confined to a derisory two days of the year, and compulsory Friday abstinence has been replaced by a genteel and totally individualistic injunction to do some penitential act on a Friday—an injunction, incidentally, that most Catholics know nothing about. What had been a corporate mark of identity has been marginalized into an individualistic option.

Why did it happen?

Read the rest of the article to find out.

Although the beginning of Lent calls us to more important matters, it’s worth spending a moment to consider some of the results from yesterday’s Super Tuesday voting.

Everyone understands the big contours of the results: McCain the presumptive nominee, Romney in flames, Clinton a mild favorite over Obama in a race that should go the distance. So let’s zero in on one bit of minutia–how Catholic voters went.

(Four years ago Jody proposed that the “Catholic vote” had become somewhat mythical and no longer represented much of a distinctive political presence. If you’re only going to read one thing about Catholic voters this morning, skip this post and go read Jody’s piece.)

I won’t drag you through all 22 of the states that voted yesterday, so let’s take six of the more important ones–CA, IL, MO, MA, NJ, NY. (I’m picking them because they’re the 6 largest Catholic populations and are 6 of the 8 largest states from yesterday. All exit data can be found at CNN’s site. And I’m leaving Huckabee numbers out only to simplify my life, not to slight him. He had a great night.)

California: Clinton won 52% to 42%. Catholics made up 32% of the Democratic vote. Clinton won them by more than 40 points.

McCain took 42%, Romney 34%. Catholics made up 27% of the GOP vote. McCain won them by about 12 points.

Illinois: Obama won 65% to 33%. Catholics made up 33% of the Democratic vote. Obama had a slight edge (51 to 48) among Catholics who attend church weekly; Clinton had a slight edge (51 to 46) among Catholics who attend less regularly.

McCain took 47%, Romney 29%. Catholics made up 31% of the GOP vote. McCain won them by just under 20 points.

Missouri: Obama won 49% to 48%. Catholics made up 19% of the Democratic vote. Obama won them quite narrowly; he was +8 among weekly churchgoers and +2 among the rest.

McCain took 33%, Romney 29%. Catholics made up 20% of the GOP vote. Big split in the Catholic returns: McCain won weekly church attendees 54 to 20; Romney won less-often attendees 44 to 33.

Massachusetts: Clinton won 56% to 41%. Catholics made up 45% of the Democratic vote. Clinton was a bit more than +30 among them.

Romney took 51%, McCain 41%. Catholics made up 41% of the GOP vote. Romney won Catholics 55 to 39.

New Jersey: Clinton won 54% to 44%. Catholics made up 27% of the Democratic vote. Clinton won them by 40 points.

McCain took 55%, Romney 28%. Catholics made up 57% of the GOP vote. McCain won Catholics by about 26 points.

New York: Clinton won 57% to 40%. Catholics made up 37% of the Democratic vote. Clinton won them by about 35 points.

McCain took 51%, Romney 28%. Catholics made up 45% of the GOP vote. McCain won Catholics by more than 27 points.

Over at the New Liturgical Movement blog, Gregor Kollmorgen notes that the Vatican Secretariart of State will issue a note today regarding the prayer Pro Judeis to be used in the Good Friday liturgy in the rite of Bl. John XXII, i.e., the 1962 Missale Romanum. Kollmorgen writes:

The following from tomorrow’s edition of the Osservatore Romano (first the original, then my [i.e., Kollmorgen’s] translation):

Nota della Segreteria di Stato
Con riferimento alle disposizioni contenute nel Motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum”, del 7 luglio 2007, circa la possibilità di usare l’ultima stesura del Missale Romanum, anteriore al Concilio Vaticano II, pubblicata nel 1962 con l’autorità del beato Giovanni XXIII, il Santo Padre Benedetto XVI ha disposto che l’Oremus et pro Iudaeis della Liturgia del Venerdì Santo contenuto in detto Missale Romanum sia sostituito con il seguente testo: Oremus et pro Iudaeis Ut Deus et Dominus noster illuminet corda eorum, ut agnoscant Iesum Christum salvatorem omnium hominum. Oremus. Flectamus genua. Levate. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui vis ut omnes homines salvi fiant et ad agnitionem veritatis veniant, concede propitius, ut plenitudine gentium in Ecclesiam Tuam intrante omnis Israel salvus fiat. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. Tale testo dovrà essere utilizzato, a partire dal corrente anno, in tutte le Celebrazioni della Liturgia del Venerdì Santo con il citato Missale Romanum. Dal Vaticano, 4 febbraio 2008.

Translation:

Note by the Secretariat of State:

With reference to the dispositions contained in the Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum” of 7 July 2007, regarding the possibility to use the last version of the Missale Romanum prior to the II Vatican Council, published in 1962 by authority of Blessed John XXIII, the Holy Father Benedict XVI has decided that the Oremus et pro Judæis of the liturgy of Good Friday contained in said Missale Romanum be substituted by the following text:

Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may enlighten their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Saviour of all men. Let us pray. Let us bend our knees. Rise. Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and attain the knowledge of the truth, propitiously grant that as the fulness of the Gentiles enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

This text must be used, beginning in the current year, in all celebrations of the Liturgy of Good Friday according to the said Missale Romanum.

From the Vatican, 4 February 2008