Incentives

The screenshot is from instapundit.com, though depending on when you access this it may have disappeared from the top page.

Seething Midwest Explodes Over Lombardi Cartoons

This may only make sense to those of us from the Midwest, but I'll put it up here nonetheless...

Green Bay, WI - Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny’s and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.

The spark igniting the latest tailgate hibachi of unrest: a Texas newsletter's publication of caricatures of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi.

Read the whole thing at Iowahawk.

Politics from the Pulpit--legal or illegal?

This article is from Opposing Views, a website that debates every controversial topic imaginable. I realize that this article is extremely biased, but the topic fits well with our class discussions, and the information is relevant to our required field work. The issue at hand is religious endorsement of political candidates. The article tells us that, "federal tax law bars campaign intervention by houses of worship and other nonprofits that claim exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code." So, after reading the article, do you think places of worship and other nonprofit organizations should have the freedom to endorse the political candidates of their choice?

Politics from the Pulpit--legal or illegal?

Submitted by Samantha H.


[Related news--Ed.]

The Archbishop of LA calls on Catholic voters to vote with their religious beliefs in fairly specific terms (Full statement here).  For example:

When Catholics go to the voting booth, he said, there are non-negotiable aspects of Catholic social teaching that they should recall. Abortion and euthanasia, and families based on a marriage between a man and a woman are among those non-negotiables. These issues cannot be disagreed about among Catholics who have formed their consciences with the Church, he said.

 But many issues are debatable among Catholics who have well-formed consciences. Archbishop Gomez pointed to issues such as taxes, government spending, how to deal with immigration and helping the poor as examples of topics that are matters of prudential judgment.

 In these areas “sincere and faithful Catholics are always going to have legitimate differences of opinion over how best to apply the Church’s moral principles,” he wrote.

In light of this year's campaign rhetoric (Romney wages 'war on women' & the Dem. Convention was a 'Carnival of Abortion'), is Archbishop Gomez's statement in effect a "religious endorsement of a candidate or party?

Countering the argument in my last post

This essay appears in the LA Times, from someone (a lawyer, presumably?) at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.   For her, the issue seems to turn on the intent of the film's creator.

A bit about blasphemy law

In a Congressional hearing last week, an official from the Department of Justice held open the possibility that the DoJ would criminalize blasphemy.  Much uproar followed.  Obviously, the DoJ is not the final authority on this, the Supreme Court is.   Some searching turned up the controlling precedent here, a case from 1952, in which the New York state censor banned the English translation of an Italian firm that portrayed Joesph impregnating a mentally confused Mary (instead of the Virgin Birth, obviously).  Reading through the actual decision (here's the link for all you prospective lawyers), I found what seems to be the key section, near the end.

New York's highest court says there is "nothing mysterious" about the statutory provision applied in this case:

It is simply this: that no religion, as that word is understood by the ordinary, reasonable person, shall be treated with contempt, mockery, scorn and ridicule. . . . [n15]

This is far from the kind of narrow exception to freedom of expression which a state may carve out to satisfy the adverse demands of other interests of society. [n16] In seeking to apply the broad and all-inclusive definition of "sacrilegious" given by the New York courts, the censor is set adrift upon a boundless sea amid a myriad of conflicting currents of religious views, with no [p505] charts but those provided by the most vocal and powerful orthodoxies.

Question 1: In America, the most vocal religious group is the religious right.  To those of you who (last Wednesday) felt that the controversial anti-Islam film should not be made/shown, the Supreme Court says that the end of the road for that idea is that the Religious Right (along with Middle Eastern Muslims, presumably) will get to decide what you can and cannot see in American films and art.  Are you okay with that?

New York cannot vest such unlimited restraining control over motion pictures in a censor. Cf. Kunz v. New York, 340 U.S. 290 (1951). [n17] Under such a standard the most careful and tolerant censor would find it virtually impossible to avoid favoring one religion over another, and he would be subject to an inevitable tendency to ban the expression of unpopular sentiments sacred to a religious minority. Application of the "sacrilegious" test, in these or other respects, might raise substantial questions under the First Amendment's guaranty of separate church and state with freedom of worship for all.

Question 2: I regularly hear (from students on both ends of the political spectrum) that the government has no business mucking around with religious idea about marriage.  A) if you believe that, can you make the case that the government does have business mucking around with religious ideas about speech?   B) If you don't believe that, does it follow that the government absolutely does have business restricting religious speech?

[n18] However, from the standpoint of freedom of speech and the press, it is enough to point out that the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures. [n19]

As a side-note, this case also foreshadowed the decision in Citizens v United about corporate speech rights.  This 1952 decision said:

It is urged that motion pictures do not fall within the First Amendment's aegis because their production, distribution, and exhibition is a large-scale business conducted for private profit. We cannot agree. That books, newspapers, and magazines are published and sold for profit does not prevent them from being a form of expression whose liberty is safeguarded by the First Amendment. [n11] [p502] We fail to see why operation for profit should have any different effect in the case of motion pictures.

Question 3: All of that said, we now have the spectacle of the Attorney-General of the United States personally calling for the investigation of a private citizen on the pretext that he might have violated probation terms by using a computer.   In a similar vein, some of you in class suggested that he be prosecuted for "inciting violence."  Does that mean that now the government gets to arbitrarily decide who it wants to punish for blasphemy?  Is that an example of what the Supreme Court warned of as an "inevitable tendency to ban the expression of unpopular sentiments sacred to a religious minority" that would lead to unequal treatment of religions by the state?

Cardinal Dolan at the Conventions

In case you didn't hear, the same person gave the closing benedictions at both the RNC and the DNC--Cardinal Dolan.*  What makes that even more interesting is that the Catholic Vote--historically Democratic--is increasingly trending Republican.  Certainly a demographic that both parties want to capture this election.  Not only that, but (as you can read in this week's readings), Dolan and an assortment of Catholic bishops & hospitals are suing Obama's government over a requirement in the Health Care Law that they provide abortion-related insurance.

Apparently, his benediction at the two conventions was almost the same, but not quite.  The differences are interesting.

Cardinal Dolan's Two Benedictions

PS: this post is from getreligion.org, which is devoted to reviewing journalistic coverage of religious issues, just the thing for a "writing about politics and religion" class.  We'll be seeing more of it.


*For the non-Catholics, "Cardinal" means a really big cheese in the Church hierarchy.  Cardinal Dolan heads up the Catholic Church in the United States.

Beardly Theology

Yes, beards...

Amish beards and hate crimes, Nidal Hasan's trial and "good grooming," and beards as a "...as a sacramental symbol is (to paraphrase the Book of Common Prayer) a visible sign of an invisible ideology."