Barack's Papal Brigade

Douglas Kmiec, dean of the Catholic University law school and a former Romney adviser, thinks that Barack Obama is a closet Catholic. Or at least that Catholics are closet Obama voters. It's a confused piece on several levels (I'll get to those), but I can't say I haven't been noticing much the same thing.

First, my colleague Robert George notices something particularly "Catholic" in Obama's recent (and worth watching) speech at the Virginia Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson dinner. (My response: Catholics can't preach that well.) Then my friend Paul Snatchko says nice things about the way Obama talks about faith in public discourse. Now Kmiec. That's three times in a week. And that's a pattern.

There are other datapoints as well: Several friends of mine just joined the "we really really wish Barack Obama was pro-life" facebook group. (Sorry, guys.) The wonderful JPII memoirist Peggy Noonan, as I've noted before, seems quite taken with the guy. And is it really a coincidence that the perpetual Obama buzzword "hope" just happens to be the subject of Pope Benedict's latest encyclical? (Move over, Deval Patrick!)

Okay, so what gives?

Kmiec's policy oddities (really: if Mitt Romney had any other anti-war, open-borders, global-warming-worried advisers, he didn't tell us about them) only serve to emphasize his broader point: It's all about the rhetoric.

There's no question that Obama's a brilliant speaker, and Kmiec hints at the interesting point that his community-organizing roots have steeped him in a kind of social-justice rhetoric that's friendly toward religion generally and resonates with Catholics specifically.

Plus, he says, Obama has a kind of Reaganesque optimism too him, the kind that "makes America feel good about itself" -- and the kind that attracted the largely Catholic "Reagan Democrats" in the first place.

And that's where I get off. Kmiec may be right about the short-term politics of it all, and Obama's speeches certainly have an inspiring aura to them -- but it's not Reagan. I don't want to speak beyond my competence on this one, but it strikes me that Reagan's and Obama's optimisms come from two very different places.

Just take a look at what Obama's optimistic about: "Yes, we can"; "We are the change that we seek"; "We can build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth"; (yes, he said that). This is a contingent optimism, a hope in the future success of (Obama-led) collective political action.

That hope may -- may -- be well-founded, and it can still be inspiring; one of the appealing things about Obama's rhetoric is its constant invocation of American history (albeit, mostly the parts where collective political movements for "change" have succeeded).

But as Michelle Obama is quickly proving, that kind of "hope" can have an ugly flipside. "This is the first time in my adult life I've been proud of my country," quoth she.

What?!?

I don't want to take this too far, but I think Mrs. Obama just distilled to its essence exactly what unsettles me about all this "change" stuff in the first place. My question is not so much, "change to what?" -- it's change from what? In other words, what does this cult of "change" ultimately say about the people who cluelessly let things get so bad in the first place?

Again, I'm dealing mostly in tendencies and temptations here, but it strikes me that Obama's brand of "hope" is a very different sort than Reagan's simple trust in the good sense of the American people -- which only needed to be unlocked by the kind of policies he was advocating, not beaten into them by an endless supply of lofty rhetoric.

Think of it another way: For all of Obama's rhetorical brilliance, could you really see him giving Reagan's "Boys of Pointe du Hoc" speech? Could he speak so naturally of an America that already was and is, of ageless values that have little to do with changing our way of doing politics, as important as that sometimes is?

I haven't seen it.

UPDATE: Okay, looks like Peggy Noonan (author of the above speech, incidentally) isn't quite so enamored with Obama after all. And as one would expect, she makes my point far better than I ever could.

Johann Tetzel rolls in his grave

Jokes about this story have been flying around the office all day.

For the record: (1) I like trees, and (2) Yes, JP2 has said some wonderful and nuanced things about the Christian duty to care for the environment, an idea I'm completely on board with.

But just for the sake of snarkiness: Who at the Council of Trent would have imagined that 500 years down the road, the Chuch would actually be buying indulgences?

Sola power, anyone?

The Name above [some] names

I hesitate to attempt any intelligent commentary on this story, if only because I don't want any thoughtful points I make to detract from its all-around creepiness.

So before I go on, please take a moment to read, shudder, and pray for my Church.

Thank you.

Now, can someone please explain to me how Catholics starting to call God "Allah" would do anything to promote religious understanding? True enough, the English word "God," apart from historical context and its distinctive capitalization, doesn't do much to specify Yahweh, the God of Israel, or the Trinity of Christian understanding, and "Al Lah" (The God) is basically its Arabic translation. So it would be only natural that Arabic-speaking (and sure, why not Indonesian) Christians would call God "Allah." (Do they? If I presume wrongly, someone please educate me.)

But I wonder whether Belgium's Islamic community would appreciate the gesture. I'm no expert on Islamic theology when it comes to the name of God, but the only Muslims I've ever discussed the issue with have insisted that the name "Allah" in their understanding refers exclusively to the God of Islam, and any similarity to pre-Islamic Arab words is incidental. (Again, I'd appreciate someone with more knowledge here speaking up.)

In any case, it's highly likely that any such effort would create far more confusion than understanding, and it makes one suspicious that this is simply another example of the term "interreligious understanding" being used as Newspeak for the minimization of crucial differences in belief.

If Bishop Muskens really wants to promote understanding, his energy would be better spent articulating Christian belief, clearly, rationally, and charitably, and expecting the same of other religious leaders.

And speaking of Christian belief, the good Bishop's notion that God doesn't care what he's called is shaky at best. See, for instance, the First Commandment: Thou shalt not take my name in vain. It's true that Christians don't generally call him "Yahweh" (or YHWH) anymore, and that God has many names throughout the Bible, but each one of those many names matters in that it communicates something essential about his character.

Like his revelation to Moses: "I am the God of Abraham, the God if Isaac, the God of Jacob... I AM," which both asserts his transcendent being and defines his identity in specific relationship to the history of Moses' people. Or Jesus' "Abba, Father," a bold assertion of intimacy.

All of which means that while the name "God" is nothing fancy (although, I think, descriptive in its simplicity), why we call him what we do still matters greatly.

And "interreligious understanding" just doesn't cut it.

UPDATE: Robert T. Miller at First Things makes some similar points at greater length.