WHAT EFFECT will the collapse of American Catholic moral authority have on US foreign policy? Some might dismiss that as the question of an obsessive Catholic who sees everything through the narrow lens of a parochial church problem. Indeed, the media's preoccupation with the Catholic scandal can seem a distraction from the more grievous problem of George W. Bush's warmongering . But in fact, the issues are related. American Catholicism's confrontation with its own flawed character can mitigate a broader American self-righteousness to the benefit of the world. continued here

I followed the link. And they say there isn�t a liberal bias in the media. Put that little piece from the Boston Globe on your refrigerator should you ever need a reminder.

Welcome to the forum, Mr. Carroll. If you are the same James Carroll who wrote that piece in the B. Globe, I hope you will register for this forum and drop in often to dialogue with us. I think our "regulars" are some of the best at this anywhere.

From your article: The absolutism of Catholic anticommunism was tempered by Pope John XXIII, who questioned the US reliance on nuclear deterrence and fostered US-Soviet detente. A Catholic peace movement helped end the Vietnam War, and a broad Catholic constituency for dissent emerged, with even the bishops joining in nuclear skepticism by 1983. But unnuanced Catholic moralism made a public comeback when Pope John Paul II's apocalyptic view of communism meshed with Ronald Reagan's. CIA funds went to the Contras through Catholic Church channels, for example, even as the Vatican undercut Catholics allied with Latin American liberation. US priests and nuns were ordered out of (left-wing) politics, and Catholic bishops resumed their function as mascots of the American consensus. So firmly were American Catholics again rooted in the sense of their nation's purity that not even bishops seemed to notice as John Paul II began to object to Washington's wars. The Indispensable Nation was immune to criticism from outside, incapable of self-criticism.

Mr. Carroll, there are so many sweeping generalizations here, and I doubt that some of them are even accurate characterizations. E.g., whatever Catholicism contributed to the peace movement of the 60's, it went relatively unnoticed in mostly-Catholic south Louisiana, where I grew up. In fact, we often heard homilies about our patriotic duty to join the military and help stop the spread of communism. I don't think that was as much a pro-American stance as it was an anti-communist one. I could go on, but since you are a writer, you surely know the danger of making these kinds of points, then building your case upon them.

Nevertheless, I do believe you're correct in saying that the Church's moral authority to speak out against war, the death penalty, and other evils has been compromised by the pedophilia scandal. Just how much is anyone's guess. Intelligent people know that the validity of a moral principle doesn't depend on the character of the person who proposes it. Problem is, the liberal media often spins things to make it seem that only hypocrites lead the Catholic Church, thus leading the gullible even farther down the road to ignoring Catholic moral teaching. Would that they examined the "plank in their own eyes" when pointing out hypocrisy.

Hallo and welcome Mr Carroll!

You wrote: '…the purging is right and just for the church. It can be a good thing for the nation, too. The ongoing revelations of the hierarchy's self-deceit, cruelty, and grievous crimes should remind every person that every institution is morally deficient - America included. Evil is not an axis but an orbit encircling the planet, a universal problem.'

'Evil is not an axis but an orbit encircling the planet, a universal problem' ... a problem in every human heart. So it is more than disingenuous for a politician , (a politician of all people, and a politician who is willing to strike the first blow and start a war, in breach of international law at that!) to classify whole countries as evil thus implying that his country and countries that support him are good. Jesus said that God alone is good. I think that it is better for a country/any person for that matter to let others decide whether it is good or not without claiming that title for itself/themselves.

As to US catholics and US foreign policy: since US is not the Vatican and catholics make up about ?25% of the US population, I don't know how significant is the influence the catholic church can claim to have on US foreign policy as a whole although it may have had some say on one issue or another at some time.

To discredit everything the catholic church has ever done or is doing, based simply on the basis of the pedophile scandal is absurd. There is no denying that it was wrong of the church authorities to have handled the problem as it did. But does it mean that the church does not handle anything right? It does reveal that priests are NOT infallible, that's all. If the catholic church can clarify that it considers the teachings of Jesus to be infallible and not the priests who preach them, I think there will not be such confusion and outrage on the part of the lay members of the church when things go wrong and there defintely will be less self-righteousness on the part of the priests and church authorities. (We discussed the issue of pedophilia at length on another thread in this forum. Pedophilia is a disease involving criminal behaviour and is found as commonly among lay married people. The dynamics of cover-up and victimising the victims are even more pronounced in family situations - a situation that is even less forgivable because the child is trapped helplessly in the situation and the Judas is the closest blood relative of the child on whom it is totally dependent.)

If the Bush administration DOES go to war with Iraq, on a flimsy pretext, the US does face the real prospect of becoming morally irrelevant to the rest of the world. What does the US care about the opinion of the 'bloody Lilliputian foreigners with pea brains', a pro-Iraq-war American might ask. The bloody Lilliputian foreigners with pea brains will reply: "Be the bully whenever you can get away with it, but have the decency to admit it and let the sales talk disguised as moral sermons 'it is all only for your own good' be. Let the Lilliputian foreigners with pea brains be the judge of whether the US foreign policy that affect them directly is good for them or not."

The pedophile scandals of the catholic church and the war drums of the Bush administration are in my opinion two totally different issues. But like you mentioned the lessons to be learnt are the same : The catholic church and the US foreign policy are NOT infallible. Maybe the US government can look to the catholic church as an example and learn how protest from outside about its fallible actions is forcing a change for the better.

It's important to remember that morality doesn't originate at the level of nation building (or the Vatican for that matter), but within families and communities; hence, there is less freedom on the global scale to procure the changes that reflect our moral preferences, since it is extremely difficult to legislate them in the first place. And so there could never be a political scenario for foreign or domestic affairs (religous or secular) that would adequately appeal to our personal tastes for reform; it's flawed character is an expression of a system that is unable to overcome its basic uncertainties and complex, often conflicting agendas, just as we individuals are unable to overcome our existential laments, regardless of religious affiliations. The church is a profoundly human institution, and it will continue to machinate its institutional purposes in spite of more transcendent ideals.

Please remember the example of Jimmy Carter, if the Vatican's poor sense of pastoral care isn't blatant enough for you. Carter failed miserably as president because he was so morally obsessed with imposing his refined personal character that he lost sight of the bigger, pragmatic picture, a domain where almost by definition one cannot become morally bankrupt, unless you behave like Nazi Germany. Violence is permitted on the global scale as long as you can hide it, or show it to be some means to a provisionally greater good. There is actually a very limited amount of room for the moral transformation of institutions, which shouldn't come as a shock for those who are painfully honest about the limits of their own personal transformation. Institutions of all kinds must first take care of their sheep (including the vast majority of us who sleep walk through life thinking we're awake just for all the noise we make), and have less energy and ability to accomodate the seers and prophets, who usually don't tell us what we like to hear anyway.

It isn't by accident or for lack inspiration that the world chokes on our higher sense of morality. If personal transformation is significantly limited while living in a nation where our freedoms are protected, imagine how unlikely it would be to translate those ideals into reality at the collective level?

If the Bush administration DOES go to war with Iraq, on a flimsy pretext, the US does face the real prospect of becoming morally irrelevant to the rest of the world.

Priya, as I'm sure you must know by now, this issue has been taken up by the U.N., and there seems to be a world consensus about Iraq needing to comply or face "serious consequences." This is hardly a "Bush administration" issue alone any more.

At any rate, I wouldn't count on the U.S. becoming irrelevant to the rest of the world any time in the near future, no matter what Bush decides to do.

--------

w.c., I found this a sobering thought: It isn't by accident or for lack inspiration that the world chokes on our higher sense of morality. If personal transformation is significantly limited while living in a nation where our freedoms are protected, imagine how unlikely it would be to translate those ideals into reality at the collective level?

Phil,

I wrote morally irrelevant and as far as I'm concerned there IS a difference between the moral authority of a nation that chooses to violate international law to serve its national interests and one that doesn't.

Let's not lose focus : All along the discussion has been about a UK supported US unilateral use of force on Iraq on the grounds that it was a threat to the security of the US. UN Resolution 1441 does NOT give the US the power to use force automatically or unilaterally, if there are any problems with the inspections. There would have been no room for debate on this issue at all if the US had not been pressing for its own style of policing the world unhindered by international law or the UN. Even now the world is watching how the nation that claims to want to be the world's greatest peacemaker is going ahead feverishly with its war plans although Saddam has not given any room for provocation so far. Nobody supports Saddam the dictator, people are only protesting against the prospect of breach of international law by the US. If the US chooses to remain within the limits of international law, who would complain?

Sure the US is the world's only superpower for over ten years now and it wants to ensure that it remains so. Sure in that sense it is going to remain relevant, no matter what the Bush administration does. Didn't it remain relevant after the war in Vietnam?

But for those of us who do not believe that might makes right, there is a comfort in the thought that man proposes and God disposes. So when the US turns arrogant and deceptive beyond redemption because it is the only superpower, then God is sure to find a way around it, probably through the protests and actions of its own people. After all isn't a real American the man of a particular ideal and not a member of any particular ethnic group? How many great cultures, mighty powers have come and gone in the history of mankind and all of them imagined at some time that nothing could ever destroy them! So it does not behoove the American government to wax arrogant as a bully in its relationship to other nations. Let it prove to the world that it is what it claims to be because the world has reason enough to be suspicious of its intentions as a result of this Iraq conflict.

The interesting thing here is the focus on the possible loss of moral authority by the Catholic Church. Perhaps Mr. Carroll has written other articles, but I would think the real question here, as serious as child molesting is, is has Islam lost much of its moral authority because of its association with terrorism and murder? That�s quite a step above the terribly regrettable but less serious acts the Church has been struggling to resolve.

And I find it curious that such a one-sided partisan editorial from Mr. Carroll would question the Catholic Church�s moral authority when, in framing the question the way he did, and presenting the argument the way he did, he seems to be trying to actively undermine it himself.

Obviously I do not consider his article to be a fair and well-balanced one. It's loaded with attacks on everything that is not left-wing. I think there are some legitimate concerns here but they are not aided by one-sided looks at the situation, particularly by someone who is supposed to be part of an impartial media.

SJ:

Just a pause here along the lines of policing the world: Who does Hussein have to answer to? Nobody in his region of the world. He has no internal accountability, which is a problem when you have isolated absolute power in our globalized world. He's a ruthless despote riding the crest of a totalitarian regime, harboring terrorists in the most volatile place on the planet, with most of its oil under his bloody thumb, which in the modern world is almost like controlling air and water. None of his neighbors can bridal him. The U.S. has answered to the UN counsels, not by accident, but by design, which includes the politics that are always a part of this treacherous theater.

I'm not presenting this as a spotless character profile of the U.S. with its multiple interests; such is the fate of any "bully" that has complex responsibilities for understanding, anticipating and exploiting its own interests in relation to other nations who, through globalization, share many of the same. If it weren't the U.S., somebody else would be doing their best version of the bully routine. Who would you prefer it be?

I wrote morally irrelevant and as far as I'm concerned there IS a difference between the moral authority of a nation that chooses to violate international law to serve its national interests and one that doesn't.

Were you referring to Iraq?

Let's not lose focus : All along the discussion has been about a UK supported US unilateral use of force on Iraq on the grounds that it was a threat to the security of the US.

Priya, can you see now that that was *strategy*? Not that the President won't make good on his words if he has to, but can you see how it got the U.N. to take responsibility. And if speaking of focus, the focus is now on the U.N. and inspectors, not Bush. That's where the process is. We're no longer talking about a US unilateral strike with GB. Any military action now would have a much broader coalition.

. . . Nobody supports Saddam the dictator, people are only protesting against the prospect of breach of international law by the US. If the US chooses to remain within the limits of international law, who would complain?

Where are the protests against Saddam's *actual* breaches of international law? Against the *prospect* (your term) of them possessing WMD? It's the lack of proportionality in so much of this that is perplexing, if not hypocritical. That the U.S. is viewed as the "bad guy" here instead of Iraq gives a strong hint to me of the degree of anti-Americanism prevailing in so many places around the world. I don't understand it. Thankfully, our leaders don't let it determine their policies.