Business and Religion: Financial Ethics Found Lacking in the Vatican's Institute of Religious Works

In probing corruption leads in the Vatican Bank, Italian financial police stumbled onto a plot in July 2012 to smuggle €20 million into Italy. The alleged culprits included a monsignor, a financial broker, and a former member of Italy’s secret service. For his part, the cleric was said to have had people pretend to give him donations of €560,000 so he could furtively pay the financial broker for his role. Crime, Italian politics, and the Vatican Bank: hardly a novel discordant tune even then. That not just any bank, but that of a church, could stray so far from what would reasonably be expected from a bank whose formal name is the Institute of Religious Works still boggles the mind. 
The intersection of ethics, religion and business is fraught with complexity.  A religious verdict from ethical premises is possible nevertheless. Generally speaking, religion does not boil down to ethics. John D. Rockefeller was unethical in restraining trade when he ran Standard Oil. Yet pressing the railroads for excessive rebates and drawbacks (compensation from the railroads serving other customers) does not de-legitimate the titan’s claim to have been a Christ-figure in saving “drowning” competitors. Theological inconsistency, rather than unethical conduct, would be needed to expunge Rockefeller’s industrial-religious identity. Such inconsistency can be found in Rockefeller having forced competitors unwilling to be bought out into bankruptcy; Jesus did not inflict harm on people who refused to follow him. Human ethical systems cannot limit God, which is omnipotent.
Divine-sourced ethical principles, such as those in the Ten Commandments, are regarded as religious in nature, rather than merely soured in a human ethical system. Accordingly, were Rockefeller to have broken one of the Ten Commandments in running Standard Oil, his commercial-religious identity could be assailed. In the case of Msgr. Scarano at the Vatican Bank, his clerical, not to mention Christian, identities are vulnerable to the allegations that he bore false witness and stole money from the Vatican. That Kant concluded from his ethical system that lying can never be ethical is irrelevant. However, that Kant’s categorical imperative can be re-stated as, Treat other rational beings not just as means, but also as ends in themselves, suggests that Kant’s theory can be understood as the Golden Rule, which is binding in religious terms. Hume’s theory that determining something as unethical “just is” the psychological sentiment of disapproval finds no such corresponding theological ethic and is thus invalid in assessing the commercial-religious identities of either Rockefeller or Scarano.
As with Rockefeller, the case of Scarano begs the question, how can a person so religiously inclined so delude oneself in such matters?  If driving a car well were important to me, I would be double sure that my driving is as flawless as possible. I would ask friends to ride along or follow me from behind to assess my driving. Were one of them to tell me that my passing skills leave much to be desired, I would work on them—maybe even take a driving lesson. Of course, no one can be a perfect driver. So too, Scarano cannot be sin-free. Even so, were I to be a really bad driver and yet represent myself as highly skilled, people would naturally wonder about my state of mind. At the very least, the sustained cognitive dissidence (i.e., allowing for or ignoring hypocrisy in one’s conduct) likely in Scarano’s mind raises the question of the clerical screening process for mental health.
Moreover, that the Institute for Religious Works has been embroiled in charges of corruption time and again suggests that cognitive dissidence has come to characterize the Vatican’s culture. Considering the questionable prioritizing of avoiding a scandal over defrocking and turning in rapist priests, a pattern of cognitive dissidence can be suspected. The question is perhaps what religious works would look like. From this answer, the question would pertain to how finance could be put into service without undercutting the religious nature of the works.
In conclusion, ethical conduct, religion and finance are a tricky business not easily disentangled. A preliminary point can nevertheless be made with some certainty. Specifically, unethical conduct does not necessarily invalidate a religious identity in a person’s commercial or financial role. The ethical principle would have to be part of a divine decree, such as in the Decalogue, to contradict the assumed commercial religiousity.  A human-constructed ethical theory or principle cannot by definition limit God’s omnipotence (i.e., all-powerful), whereas God’s making of a moral divine decree cannot contradict God’s nature, or essence. Both Rockefeller and Scarano can be found culpable in religious-ethical terms bearing on Christianity even though it is possible to be both unethical and religious without contradiction.

Source: Gilles Castonguay and Liam Moloney, "Vatican Bank Probe Leads to Three Arrests," The Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2013

For more on Rockefeller's application of Christianity to his monopoly, as well as more generally the history of Christian thought on business, see my book, God's Gold, available at Amazon.

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The Russian Orthodox Church as a Political-Moral Force: A Case of Religion Overextended?

While visiting the Pskovo-Pechersky Monastery in northwestern Russia in 2000, Vladimir Putin wrote in the guest book, “The revival of Russia and growth of its might are unthinkable without the strengthening of society’s moral foundations. The role and significance of the Russian Orthodox Church are huge. May God protect you.” This statement is revealing concerning what has perhaps fueled the Russian president’s vision, at least ideally.

First, Putin may have a historical perspective, meaning that he did not come into office merely to gain power by enriching his connections (i.e., the oligarchs) and make use of Soviet authoritarian tools he had learned while working at the KGB. Rather, I suspect he looked back at the Czars who had made Russia into an empire well before the Soviets came on the scene.  

Second, Putin’s habit of being a road-block on the UN Security Council may extend beyond his embrace of the absolute or unfettered national sovereignty doctrine to exercising (or announcing) Russia’s might as one empire alongside the E.U., U.S. and China. That is to say, using the veto can effectively demonstrate might without the cost of a military show of force.

Third, Putin wanted to send a signal of his support for the Russian Orthodox Church. Not unexpectedly, the New York Times reported in 2012 on the continuance of the ascent of the Church as a political force in Russia. At the time Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov stood “at the center of a swirling argument about the church’s power and its possible influence on [Putin].” Shevkunov’s claim that Putin had saved Russia from “vulgar liberals” who nearly destroyed Russia in the 1990s  must have been music to the sitting president’s ears. Interestingly, however, when the cleric is said to have referred to modern Russian women to “a drunk girl standing by the bus stop,” Putin reportedly replied, “Father, you have gone too far.” Nevertheless, to have such a traditionalist Church on such a sort of power trip in the earthly realm can be dangerous to society in terms of what I would call moral dogmatism.

 Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, head of the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow    NYT

Putin’s identification of the Church with the “strengthening of society’s moral foundations” could lead to those foundations being narrower than simply that which is moral. In other words, a particular view of what counts as moral could delimit the contours of the moral foundation of the society. Such an approach would be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary because equally valid moral standpoints differing from the Church’s position would be excluded even though they are moral.

Moreover, to conflate religion and morals as being one and the same ignores the fact that there are many immoral acts lauded in the Bible. More abstractly still, human moral systems, unlike theological claims, are not transcendent in that moral theories are based in our domain. To be sure, religions such as the Abrahamic faiths include moral strictures among the divine commands, but even here the moral commandments are second to the theological ones (or are derived from them and stated very broadly, as in “love your neighbor”). Put another way, were specific moral claims or principles on the same level as the theological, the Book of Job would not make sense. Job was morally not at all blameworthy and yet the theological point of God’s omnipotence (all-powerful) means that the theological cannot (by definition) be limited by what we think is moral. For us to say that Job does not deserve to suffer cannot trump God’s power, as if God were limited by our moral judgments. Do Russian Orthodox lay persons really believe that God likens Russian women to drunk sluts at a bus stop just because Shevkunov happens to hold that opinion?  I doubt it. Moreover, I doubt that God would have “vulgar liberals” inserted into the Bible. For one thing, some of the more sexually “immoral” (by modern standards!) acts by some of the heroes in the text would have to be expunged. 
Sanctioning particular moral views by theological claims and then using political influence such that those views become the cement walls of society’s moral foundations unfairly excludes other moral views from being part of the moral foundation. This is particularly relevant in the case of an empire because it is by definition heterogeneous (i.e., diverse). Different cultures had been brought into Russia at least by the death of Peter the Great. Unless there are moral universals that extend to particular applications, one can expect (as fully legitimate) there to be a bricollage of moral values interlaid in the foundation.  To identify the foundation itself with a particular institution—and one that is not primarily oriented to the moral dimension—is to ask for trouble, as the moral perspectives that are dogmatically excluded must surely in their very legitimacy press their case, either formally or as mounting pressure politically.

Source:

Sophia Kishkovsky, “Russians See Church and State Come Closer,” The New York Times, November 1, 2012.

On religion as distinctly religious and yet applicable to leadership in business organizations, see Spiritual Leadership in Business, available at Amazon.

The Young Messiah: A Film Rendering Religious Meaning as Distinct

The 2016 film, The Young Messiah, admits to being an imagined year in Jesus’s childhood. To be sure, history and even Biblical passages are drawn on, but the genre of the film is fiction. This label seems too harsh, for Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, mentions Jesus, “the so-called Christ, and his brother James." Josephus was not a believer; he did not believe that Jesus Christ was (or is) the Son of God. So, given Josephus's intent to record history rather than write scriptures or, more specifically, faith narratives, scholars can conclude that at least one historical mention is made of Jesus and his brother as having lived. To be sure, the historian could have been wrong; he may have heard secondhand that Jesus and James did exist, and the teller might have had an agenda unknown to the historian. Even so, Jesus and James are mentioned in one historical account, just as the Hebrews having been in Egypt is mentioned on a historical tablet. We must be careful to distinguish these records from that which is in faith narratives concerning Jesus and Moses. We simply do not know whether that material has any bearing on the historical, as no historical accounts are (as of yet) extant. 
Very little from Jesus's childhood is in the Gospels, so the screenwriter had to use imagination to fill out the gaping holes. Crucially, they were filled with content consistent with, though not in, the Gospels. In other words, the film contains religious meanfulness that is admittedly from imagination in large part, and yet that meaningfulness is strong even so, and can be readily associated with Jesus's ministry. In other words, the film enables the viewer to see that religious meaningfulness need not be from faith narratives directly, and, furthermore, that they need not be conflated with historical accounts--something even the writers of faith and of history would not have done. How, then, can we override their intents, which are clear from their writings. Even today, theologians, for instance, do not regard themselves as historians, and vice versa.

In short, a distinctive religious meaningfulness can be separated from the domain of history without any loss, and history need not be used as a crutch. Human imagine, so informed as it will by both, can produce valid religious meaning. 

The full essay is at "The Young Messiah." 

Rosemary's Baby: The Supernatural in Religion

The film narrative centers on Satan impregnating Rosemary, a married woman in New York City. According to Roman Polanski, the film’s director, the decisive point is actually that neither Rosemary in the film nor the film’s viewers can know whether it was the devil who impregnated her. Beyond the more matter of being able to distinguish a psychosis from a more “objective” or external religious event, the importance of the supernatural to religion is also, albeit subtly, in play, according to Polanski.

The full essay is at "Rosemary's Baby."



The Gospel According to Dr. Goebbels

“What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon, National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel.”  From his diary on Oct 16, 1928.[1]

Goebbels first asks about Christianity in his day. The main problem is its outmoded rituals, so a religious reformer is needed to put new ones in their place. National Socialism, Goebbels’ “church,” has the potential to become the latest incarnation or reform of Christianity in his day if traditions and rituals could only be added by a “religious genius,” or reformer.
In referring to “the Lord,” Goebbels reveals himself as a theist and willing to do God’s will. Although Goebbels does not mention Jesus explicitly, liberation theology is clearly evinced in Goebbels’ interpretation of God’s will as liberating the oppressed (German) people from slavery. The sort he had in mind is most likely economic, for the World War I reparations being paid at the time by Germany were causing unemployment there. Like liberation theology, the economic structure itself wherein Germany was being made to pay reparations, is not only unfair, but also against God’s will. If only God’s will could be known so concretely as to be evinced in certain socio-economic structures that are presumably “sacred.” Goebbels was assuming he knew about God than he could as a finite being. This criticism applies to believers in liberation theology more generally too.
In Goebbels’ case, the assumption of God’s will being to liberate Germans from their economic poverty strangely co-existed with the assumption—presumably also part of God’s will—that Slavs, Jews, and homosexuals should be exterminated as if from natural laws that God had established. Some Christians in the last quarter of the twentieth century had no problem believing infallibly in sacred economic (e.g., the rich and poor being less unequal) and social (e.g., anti-prejudicial) structures, just as Goebbels’ had had his beliefs in God’s will being just as concrete. In both cases, the Kingdom of God was confined to earthly terms, whereas Jesus of the canonical gospels preaches of a kingdom within and giving to Caesar what is his. In other words, liberation theology errs in neglecting Jesus’s point that the Kingdom of God is not of this earth. Ignoring this point allows ideological agendas to gain more authority and force than is deserved and merited. The notion that some ideologies are better than others morally speaking is doubtlessly true, but even the best can easily become encased in self-idolatry. When such idolatry hits the sordid ideologies, the result can literally be quite dangerous.
In short, applying religious belief to economics, politics, and social structures give certain of the latter too much certainty and force at the expense of self-critique. The want of a check on the ego and its designs amplified to divine plans renders partisan platforms as sacred, and thus others as evil. The resulting imbalance is itself unstable, and yet it is entombed in ideology-made-sacred (and evil). Dr. Goebel could have been a lot less certain of the religious sanctioning of his economic and social ideologies—which would have required humility. Similarly, resisting the temptation to put God’s stamp on liberation theology by rendering certain political, social, and economic structures as inherently sacred requires a good dose of humility as well as a recognition of the sheer distance between God’s kingdom and even human finite creatures. We should not presume too much about ourselves in relation to God, including revelation.  

For quite another version of Christian leadership than that of Dr. Goebbels, see "Christianized Leadership in Business," available at Amazon. On the distinction between religion and ethics applied to leadership, see "Spiritual Leadership in Business."

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1. “The Goebbels Experiment” (2005). Film.

Risen

In Risen (2016), A Roman Tribune, Clavius, is tasked with overseeing Jesus’s crucifixion; more importantly, Pilote tasks his Tribune with making sure that no one steals the body out of the tomb so no one could claim that Jesus is arisen. This would put the Jesus movement within Judaism as much more of a threat to Pilote as well as the Jewish leaders. More than Christians can glean interesting lessons from the film. That is to say, it is by no means a remake of The Greatest Story Ever Told and Son of God.

The full essay is at "Risen."

The Evolution of Just War in Roman Catholic Social Ethics: The Case of Libya

According to The Catholic Herald, there were originally only three conditions laid down by Thomas Aquinas for a just war. According to The Catholic Herald, “The Church later added two more rules, though St Thomas usually gets the credit for them (and why not?). The first is that the conflict must be a last resort. The Catholic Herald describes the last criterion of Catholic just war theory as follows: “Lastly, the war must be fought proportionally. 

The full essay is at "The Evolution of Just War in Roman Catholic Social Ethics." 

On changing theological takes on greed in relation to money and business, see God's Gold, available at Amazon.

Christianity by State: The Religious Dimension of Federalism

According to the  2010 U.S. Religious Census of Religious Congregations & Memberships Study by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, less than 50 percent of the people living in the United States identified themselves as Christian adherents in 2010. There were more than 150.6 million out of 310 million. Even so, candidates for the U.S. presidency still felt the need to vocalize the fact that they are Christian (while the opponent doesn't quite measure up in that respect). President Obama made a point during his first two years in office to stress his Christianity as if it were the membership card to the Oval Office. It would seem that the litmus test was already antiquated and thus needlessly constrictive on potential candidates.

The full essay is at "Christianity by State."

God's Gold through the Centuries

In the wake of the financial crisis that came to a head in September of 2008, people might have been wondering if sufficient moral constraints on the greed on Wall Street are available, even possible. The ability of traders to create complex derivative securities that are difficult for regulators to regulate, much less understand, may have people looking for ethical or even religious constraints. It would be only natural to ask if such “soft” restraint mechanisms really do have the puissance to do the trick.

Here’s the rub: the tricksters are typically the last to avail themselves of ethical or religious systems, and they the wrongdoers are the ones in need of the restraint. Blankfein said of his bank, Goldman Sachs, that it had been doing God’s work. About a week after saying that, he had to walk his statement back and admit that the bankers had does some things that were morally wrong. Although divine omnipotence is by definition not limited by human ethical systems, it is hard to imagine a divine decree telling bankers to tell their clients one thing (buy subprime mortgage derivatives) while taking the opposite position on the bank’s proprietary position (shorting the derivatives, beyond being a counterparty to clients). Divine duplicity seems to represent an oxymoron on a megascale rather than a justification for greed.
As the crisis erupted and was subsequently managed by public officials in government and new managers brought in to salvage AIG, I was researching the history of Christian thought on profit-seeking and wealth. I have since published an academic text and a nonfiction book, which develops further on the treatise on the topic. As the book is too recondite for sane people (i.e., outside of academia), I am writing a non-fiction book on the topic for a broader readership.
To whet the appetites of those of you who are waiting for something more readable that a recondite thesis, I present a brief account of my original research on the topic here. Most significantly, I found evidence of a gradual shift in the thought between Aquinas and the fifteenth-century Christian Humanists (mainly in what is now Italy). Whereas early Christian thought had tended to stress the negative attitude toward riches—the camel being in extreme pain in getting through the eye of the needle—in the Renaissance Christian theologians tended to argue that being wealth is necessary for a Christian to exercise the godly practical virtues of liberality and magnificence (particularly the latter, which alone permits gifts reflective of God’s majesty).
Something had happened in the dominant Christian attitude on wealth that made the religion less of a buttress against greed because it had become possible for a Christian to be both rich and to go to heaven. Cosimo de Medici is a perfect example of a banker who was assured by the pope that a career based on usury would not necessarily bar a banker from entering heaven (assuming he gave financially to the Church).
The various Reformers can be read as efforts to pull Christianity back from being so close to incorporating love of gain, or greed. I looked at the (Standard Oil) monopolist and devout Baptist, John D. Rockefeller, to get a sense of how efficacious the Reformation was in attempting to arrest and reverse the momentum of the pro-wealth Christian paradigm.
Having sketched the shift and subsequent reactions of the Reformers, I turned my attention to trying to explain both the shift itself and the efficacy of the Reformation. I believe the increasingly commercialized environment since the Commercial Revolution does not provide enough of an explanation; I contend that one must look at the religion itself to find the roots of the shift and the results of the Reformation as concerns the religion's theological attitudes toward wealth. In other words, Christianity itself must be examined. As you read through the book, you could do worse than ask yourself: is there something deeper in Christianity at work in the historical shift in thought on wealth and profit-seeking?  You will find my theory in the conclusion. Undoubtedly, you will develop your own as you reflect as you read.
The main question I pose through the treatise is whether religion itself, as a phenomenon touching the human domain of existence, can hold us back from ourselves even when we least want it to do so. If so, then a religion operating in the human domain can operate as a wholly-other mechanism by which sins such as greed can be reduced in force or perhaps even finally extirpated. To expunge the sordid stuff from our banks and corporations, human nature itself would have to be radically changed. Perhaps the question is whether it is possible even if not probable for religion operating through human beings to accomplish this task, given that religion cannot but interact with the world.

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See related essay: "Religious Sources of Business Ethics"

The non-fiction book: God's Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth. Available at Amazon. 

Transcending Limited Notions of the Divine

When religion meets human nature, does the gravitational pull of me, me, me tend to encompass the journey downward in an all too comfortable direction? In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume proposes his theory that any religion begins with a focus on something akin to divine simplicity, but then becomes increasingly robed with anthropomorphic artifacts until the sheer weight of which brings down the tree whose inherently upward-looking striving succumbs to the increasing weight of the human.

In other words, is religion too weak to withstand the human, all too human ornaments that we conveniently adorn of our religions? The ornaments ultimate reflect ourselves, and thus are so convenient. So too is surrounding ourselves with others of like beliefs a matter of convenience. That is, religion can unwittingly become all about the self. Such religions or sects thereof can get sucked into a regular orbit of convenience without any of the congregants noticing the gradual and subtle slide.

As an antidote, transcendence, the unique and core aspect of religion and spirituality, can be utilized to get us outside of ourselves, including our concepts. The concept of God inhabiting a tree or stone relatively easy to transcend as a person looks past the image, both physical and cognitive, toward what is beyond, or through the favored image. Similarly even religious concepts that are themselves invisible, such as justice and mercy, can be transcended as a person moves on to even more basic divine concepts—even that of the One. Because the human mind is finite, even concepts revealed by a divine source are limited as they enter our cognitive atmosphere. Augustine likened this to light coming through a dark window. Accordingly, he warned that the relationship between the Father and Son should not be anthropomorphized into a human father-son relationship. St. Denis of the sixth century claimed that even Son itself as a limited human concept affixed to a divine person (of the Trinity) should be transcended in moving closer to the mystery that shrouds the divine in Christianity.

Simply stated, God lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility, and thus beyond our concepts—even those associated with divine revelation. Denis refers to the transcendence of God as the brilliant light that is in the darkness of unknowing. Hence faith is not knowledge. The latter is human, all too human, and thus must be transcended in order to transcend beyond our limited domain. Only when even the lofty religious concepts are transcended—not denied or pushed aside, but, rather, gone through them—can God be yearned for distinctly—meaning distinctly from religion being about the self, and thus a faith that is too convenient. The unknowability or ineffability of the divine is not hostile to religion, but is rather its salvation as distinguished from egoism and even selfishness.

The yearning itself, combined with transcending the religious concepts—especially those that are so very comfortable—is the best way religiously to leave the self behind. From a focus beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility, the spiritualized person returns to herself and our domain newly sensitized. When such a person looks at others, the sensitivity manifests automatically as compassion. This is more reliable, I submit, than relying on human intentionality, as in a decision to treat someone with compassion because of a religious teaching. Given the gravity of the human self, even in the religious sphere, compassion that springs automatically from the sensitivity to our world, including other people, is more reliable. Hence, paradoxically letting go cognitively of our cherished religious concepts of divine attributes can lead to transcendent religious experience—the sui generis essence of religion and spirituality—and more faithful feeling and action regarding religious ethical teachings.

Mandela’s Courage as Politicized Forgiveness

Whereas we grasp the interior sense in which Gandhi taught to forgive, the media promoted a false, politicized forgiveness as operating in Mandela’s case. I am of course impugning the aggrandizing press here, rather than Mandela himself.
In claiming that Mandela “insisted on forgiveness,” John Mahaha uses the following quote from the man himself: “To go to prison because of your convictions and be prepared to suffer for what you believe in, is something worthwhile. It is an achievement for a man to do his duty on earth irrespective of the consequences.”[1] The suffering being referred to here is neither suffering for its own sake nor suffering unnecessarily. In regard to being willing to suffer for what he believed in, Mandela had Gandhi as a role model, though (and this is crucial) Gandhi's social-moral principle of nonviolence cannot be reconciled with Mandela's prescription of violence. To the extent that advocating armed rather than non-violent resistance legitimated even just a portion of Mandela's prison time, the Father of South Africa could not have considered his own suffering in prison as strong (morally) as that of the Father of India. By moral strength, I have in mind a sort of power that had escaped Nietzsche's grasp; it is the sort of strength that Jesus evinces in the New Testament. Both Mandela and Gandhi endured great suffering to be true to their respective principles and see them realized in a more just world. This is not to say that both men forgave in the same sense, or that both deserved their respective suffering equally.
I submit that what Mahaha took in his piece to be forgiveness is actually something else. In philosophical terms, he unknowingly committed a category mistake. To be willing to suffer for one’s convictions is indeed laudable, but forgiveness is not necessarily entailed or even implied. I suspect that Mandela himself would admit that he did not feel any sense of forgiveness during the 27 years of imprisonment. I have seen video-taped footage of him on the prison-island refusing to speak with a group of people passing by while he was outdoors. His stiff glance and held silence belies any hint of forgiveness.
Lest it be claimed that Mandela forgave his former oppressors once he had regained his freedom, his second wife insisted on a television interview following her husband's death that Mandela had drew on an incredible strength of self-discipline and fortitude, rather than the interior sort of forgiveness that Gandhi preached and felt. Sadly, commentators and both print and broadcast journalists marveled in saccharine platitudes at Mandela's amazing forgiveness after suffering for nearly three decades in prison. Clearly, the journalists and pontificators had not done their research.
The research could have started with topical statements from Mandela himself. “If you want to make peace with your enemy,” he once said, “you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”[2] Insisting that such advice is none other than felt forgiveness artfully “gilds the lily,” as if dipping Mandela’s heart in gold with the benefit of hindsight. The working peace is political rather than interior; accordingly, any forgiveness would be likewise, for Mandela would not have said “you have to work with your enemy” were the enemy already forgiven. Instead, he might have said, “you must get to the point of caring about and for your enemy.” Although the term political forgiveness applies, the operative virtue here is actually closer to political courage than forgiveness. According to his second wife, Mandela used great self-discipline rather than forgiveness to resist the impulse to retaliate and instead work with the bastards.

Nelson Mandela reaching out to a former enemy. Political or religious forgiveness? (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

It takes interior courage to muster political courage, to deny oneself the convenient route politically. Mandela drew on his mighty courage in not only risking imprisonment by urging armed resistance, but also pushing himself to work with the party of his former oppressors. I suspect that humility, even if only in a political use, played a role after his arduous suffering in prison. Elongated pain has a way of resizing a man’s estimation of his own powers and proper stature. Interestingly, endured suffering may also rarify courage, for the downside is no longer of the unknown. While more difficult to unpack than saccharine forgiveness so often bandied about by dandies, tremendous self-discipline applied as courage as political forgiveness more closely fits the man who saved South Africa from itself.

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1.  John Dramani Mahama, “Mandela Taught a Continent to Forgive,” The New York Times, December 5, 2013.

2. William Welch, “South Africa’s Leader Transformed Nation, Self,” USA Today, December 27, 2013.

The Seminarian

A closeted gay student at an evangelical seminary is a contrast with a rather obvious clashing point, with the predicted ending being that the student is kicked out and must find or come into his own identity free of exterior constraints. Yet The Seminarian (2010) smartly avoids that road well-traveled. Instead, the screenwriter risks giving theology a prominent, and perhaps even central place in the film. The venture is at odds with the bottom-feeder mentality of Hollywood represented in the film, De-Lovely 2004), in which Cole Porter’s bisexuality occupies center-stage. Comparing these two films, irony drips off the screen as De-Lovely, which is patterned after a theatrical musical, looks down on Hollywood and yet has a common theme, while The Seminarian is a film through and through and yet takes the high road by supposing that the viewers can and will stay through some substantive theology, which transcends social issues and even the dramatic.

The full essay is at "The Seminarian."

A Deal with China: Did the Vatican Lose Its Soul?

In September, 2018, the Vatican and the Chinese government reached “a provisional deal” that would end “a decades-old power struggle over the right to appoint bishops in China.”[1] In regard to the power struggle itself, the deal “would mark a major victory for China.”[2] In regard to spreading Catholicism globally, the Vatican stood to gain both in terms of souls and money. Protestantism had been spreading fast in China, whereas the number of Catholics at the time was 10 to 12 million.[3] The question is therefore whether the Vatican ceded too much for the promise of access to the world’s most populous nation.
In the New Testament, Jesus advises to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Does this mean that a secular government should have the final say over who is to be a bishop in the Catholic Church? Jesus himself is portrayed in the New Testament as a religious figure who is by no means sanctioned by the Roman government. Ultimately, he is put to death for claiming to be a king, which the Roman government cannot abide. Similarly, the Chinese government could not abide bishops not approved by the government—and least of all, bishops said to be future kings. Yet a Roman Catholic bishop must be approved by the Vatican—the Pope himself—to be a Roman Catholic bishop. For a government to do so is presumptuous, even impious. It would seem, therefore, that bishops following Jesus would continue to risk arrest and persecution by worshipping in the underground churches, rather than in the “parallel structure: a state-sanctioned, state-controlled Catholic Church.”[4] Again, as Jesus says, those who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who are willing to lose their lives will save them, and thus themselves. Therefore, Pope Francis would have gone too far had he agreed to bishops being appointed above his objections. To be sure, bishops could get the nod from both parties.
In the provisional deal, “Pope Francis recognized the legitimacy of seven bishops appointed by the Chinese government. Because they had not been selected by the Vatican, they had previously been excommunicated.”[5]  This recognition solves that problem, but what about the appointment of future bishops? Which side would have the final say? Would either have a veto? The provisional deal is not clear on this point. “Neither side provided a clear answer.”[6]
At the time of the agreement, Archbishop Claudio Celli, a lead negotiator for the Vatican, said the deal provides for “the intervention of the Holy Father for sure” in the selection of bishops. The negotiator would not say, however, that the intervention could be a veto; he said only that “the Holy Father gets to say something about the appointment of bishops.”[7] Only having a say, such as in raising objections, is not sufficient, I submit, for a Roman Catholic official must pass muster with that Church in order to be Roman Catholic.
That the Vatican would have to sever relations with Taiwan raises the question of how bishops there would be selected. Moreover, in ceding this point, the pope risked being perceived as throwing out a very small country for one with a lot of potential Catholics. Was this even to save more souls or to catch up on Protestant denominations in China? Did the Vatican stand to pull in a lot of money from the expected increase in numbers in China? Even in raising these questions, I see a lot of distance from the negotiations and the relationship between Jesus preaching and the Roman government, as well as the preachments themselves—especially in regard to treasure not being of the earthly sort and to being willing to bear one’s cross rather than travel on the road of convenience; for in gaining the whole world to save itself, a religion may lose its very soul.[8]

1. Jason Horowitz and Ian Johnson, “China and Vatican Reach Deal on Appointment of Bishops,” The New York Times, September 22, 2018.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. On Christian thought on greed in relation to wealth, see Skip Worden, God’s Gold,available at Amazon. 

7 Billion People Worldwide in 2011: Catholicism's Humanae Vitae Compromising or Protecting Human Life?

According to the Huffington Post, “Amid the millions of births and deaths around the world each day, it is impossible to pinpoint the arrival of the globe's 7 billionth occupant. But the U.N. chose on October 31, 2011 to mark the day of that occupant's arrival with a string of festivities worldwide, and a series of symbolic 7 billionth babies being born.” I contend that the milestone is nothing to celebrate; rather, it should have served as a wake-up call for us all, lest the species continue undaunted to maximize itself right out of existence. Both the slope and its relative abruptness, evident in a historical perspective, ought to have given us all pause in our assumption that our species would necessarily go on without either self-regulation or a drastic correction from nature. 

                                            Source: UN Population Division

It may simply be human nature to focus on putting out individual brush fires without pausing to ask whether one person set them all and to look at the fires in a larger, historical perspective. It could be that the fires are fueled in large part by decades of built-up deadwood from "no fire" policies. In other words, it could be that we are more complicit than we know. Our presumption that absolves us of any role and our assumption that we can't be wrong may be the death of our species. Before getting to the role of religion as illustrative of this presumption and assumption as applied to over-population, I want to briefly discuss the relevance of global population to several problems facing the world so the gravity of the problem can be better grasped.

Other things equal, more people on Earth means more consumption and thus more pollution. In other words, a species that does not self-regulate its size may alter the ecosystem (i.e., climate) beyond the range of that specie’s own habitat. In academic terms, a schizogenic (maximizing) variable can breach the “ecologizing” constraint that is an ecosystem. Still less understandable, a schizogenic variable within a system can destroy that system’s homeostatic nature. In short, the 7 billion milestone (and still counting) portends baleful consequences for our species.

In addition to climate change, one could point to commodity supply, such as foodstuff and energy. The increase in the price of corn, for example, could be attributed to the increasing use of ethanol (made out of corn). Going further, an increasing population means increasing demand of both, so the explanation should not rest with “alternative energy sources” as an issue. Both food and energy can be expected to be stretched as the global population increases. Oil companies going to more high-risk extractions of oil (e.g., deep-water wells in the Gulf of Mexico) can be viewed as still another manifestation of what happens when energy supplies are relatively fixed. Fundamentally, increasing global population magnifies the disconnect between the maximizing variable and finite resource supplies. If we as a species refuse to regulate ourselves as a species, we do so at the peril of our progeny. Indeed, the transmission of human life may hang in the balance ironically as people and certain organizations enable the maximizing tendency in order to transmit human life.

As the world’s population was thought to surpass 7 billion, Eric Tayag of the Philippines’ Department of Health warned, “Seven billion is a number we should think about deeply. We should really focus on the question of whether there will be food, clean water, shelter, education and a decent life for every child," he said. "If the answer is 'no,' it would be better for people to look at easing this population explosion." I contend that Tayag was understating the problem and thus the need for corrective action at the global level. Problematically, however, some influential international organizations have priorities that exacerbate rather than solve the problem.

The Huffington Post reports that in the Philippines, “much of the population question revolves around birth control. The government backs a program that includes artificial birth control. The powerful Roman Catholic church, though, vehemently opposes contraception.” The vehemence itself may be a problem for the Vatican. The teaching itself may evince an overreach from the vantage point of a religion. As such, the foray may unnecessarily compromise the Vatican’s credibility even to the Catholic laity.

According to the Huffington Post, “The Catholic clergy opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest, stem cell research and all artificial contraception and sterilization methods, including birth control pills and condoms. But according the 2008 National Survey of Family Growth, 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women over the age of 18 have used some form of contraception banned by the Vatican. Even among more religious Catholic women, who attend Mass on a weekly basis, 83 percent use some form of contraception. In 2009, 63 percent of Catholic voters said they support health insurance coverage for contraception, including birth control pills, according to a Belden Russonello Strategists poll.” Essentially, the laity have been saying that the hierarchy has been overstepping its proper domain, given the Catholic Church is a religious organization and morality is not theology. Ironically, the overreach has diminished rather than extended the clergy’s influence. The root of the clergy’s error may be their conflation of morality and religion.

The “transmission of human life,” and, moreover, “the happiness of human beings” referred to as the basis of the humanae vitae encyclical have at best an indirect relation to religion or theology, which, being about God’s nature, transcends the human domain. In other words, the encyclical has a rather secular basis. It is at best peripheral to worshipping God. To claim the transmission of human life is somehow like God being the Creator obfuscates the human and the divine. It is thus to make a category mistake.

Even in terms of humanae vitae as an ideal, acting only when one can act in the ideal can be criticized. Indeed, this dictum is inconsistent with the very notion of ideal. For example, to say that one should ideally eat fruits and vegetables is not to say that one must never eat a cookie. Likewise, to say that a man and woman being in love and actively involved in the transmission of human life is an ideal in married life is not to say that one should limit oneself to it. Rather, it is to say that making love with the possibility of transmitting human life is better than making love in marriage without transmitting human life. It is a fallacy to go from this to claim concerning an ideal that “therefore” one should never act other than in the ideal.

It would be unfortunate if the transmission of the human species were compromised rather than sanctified by a religious organization whose clerics mistake the very notion of ideal and apply it in a domain that is only indirectly related to religion. In other words, even well-meaning maximizing (i.e., over-reaching) can function as a catalyst in the downfall of the human species. The underlying culprit may be individual self-interest, whether by individuals or organizations, that is inherently partial and thus puts the part ahead at the possible expense of the whole. Beyond the self-interest may be the intractable assumption that one cannot be wrong, for this assumption alone can blind one to the harm of which one is unknowingly complicit. The end of the transmission of human life may come down to human stubbornness and presumptousness (i.e., to human pride), ironically perhaps most strident in its own assumption of infallibility when it is in religious garb.

Sources:

Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, Paul IV.

Jim Gomez and Tim Sullivan, “World Population Hits 7 Billion: Babies Celebrated Worldwide,” The Huffington Post, October 31, 2011. 

Laura Bassett, “The Men Behind the War on Women,” The Huffington Post, November 1, 2011. 

Justice’s Last Resort: Accountability in the Roman Catholic Church Sex Scandals

A pattern of deeply violent acts of power-aggrandizement, followed by the efforts of “organizational men” to cover up the atrocities in the interest of the organization and even the offenders at the negligent expense of the offended, cannot but have ripple effects, or make waves, once the stories are revealed to the public. It is sad, very sad, when an offending institution, or “club,” refuses to enforce accountability on its offending functionaries—members of the club. In early August, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office released to the public an 884-page report finding that six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania had covered up sexual abuse—molestation and even rape—by 301 “predator priests” over 70 years in the twentieth century.[1]

With even at least one bishop (then cardinal)—Donald Wuerl--a prime culprit in covering up rapes, the lack of accountability on Wuerl by the Vatican would send a message that within a club, the big guys are essentially beyond reproach, even in such a sordid matter as covering for pedophile rapist subordinates. The sheer extent of injustice within one organization can trigger vigilante acts at justice. Hence, Rev. Basil hJ. Hutsko was thrown to the ground while praying at his church one morning—the assailant saying, “This is for all the little kids.”[2] It is sad, very sad, when justice is so imperfect as to be “accomplished” on an innocent priest. This incident thus reflects badly back on the lack of justice having been enforced by the Vatican on its own.

After the grand jury report was issued by the Attorney General, Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s upcoming appearance at a Roman Catholic conference on the family. Additionally, a Catholic High School in Pittsburgh removed mention of Wuerl from the school’s name—ostensively because Wuerl suggested that mention of his name would “detract from the purpose of Catholic education.”[3] The remaining question at the time was whether the pope would remove Wuerl from the College of Cardinals.

In line with the dictum, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, I got a snapshot of how Bishop Wuerl’s cathedral operated when I was a graduate student studying business and religion at the University of Pittsburgh. Late one weekday afternoon when the church was open, I knelt down near the low fence separating the place for the laity from the liturgical area. A janitor came up to me from behind and pushed me down, even though I was on the people side. So, interestingly, I can have a sense of how the innocent priest felt when he was pushed down from behind. At the very least, I concluded at the time that the bishop was probably a hard-ass, or at the very least he put up with some rather squalid employees. I complained at the time to the church office receptionist, but she gave it only a cursory notice. Clearly, Wuerl’s little world in Pittsburgh was not to be a part of my study of places of worship there.

My point is that the callousness and even violence one a very small scale in a religious organization can be just one sign of a broader and much deeper dysfunctional organizational culture. In such cases, accountability and justice from within are not likely; presumptuous boundary-issues are more likely. The press reported in the wake of the report that American Catholics were demanding action rather than just words in enforcing accountability; even so, I was struck by how many Catholics kept going to their same Roman Catholic church as if news of the report had not been made public. Perhaps accountability can easily be slighted by religious laity who believe that going to their church—receiving Catholic communion—is vital soteriologically even if not ethically. Yet Jesus surely would have tapped the dirt from his sandals and moved on had he been amid a religious group that covered up rapists in the group and even the cover-uppers. Great harm to others is antithetical to the Golden Rule, let alone the notion emphasized by Augustine and Calvin both that God is love. How can love of this sort overflow in an organization that covers up rapists and then the cover-uppers? We all know what Jesus thought of the hypocrites—the Pharisees.

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[1] Hayley Miller, “Indiana Priest Beaten Unconscious, Allegedly Told ‘This Is for All the Little Kids.” The Huffington Post, August 22, 2018.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Michelle Lou, “Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s Name Removed from School after Abuse Coverup,” The Huffington Post, August 22, 2018.

On the Methodist Complaint against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on an Immigration Policy

Assessing whether a Christian denomination’s formal discipline is being used for religious or politically-ideological purposes is fraught with difficulty. Certain governmental policies, such as genocide, clearly violate Christian teaching, such that government officials charged with implementing such policies could legitimately be sanctioned on religious grounds without it being thought that a political or partisan difference is the actual basis of protest. As the harm to others in a given policy lessens, the specter of ideological opposition as the actual motivator increases as a possibility. In 2018, 640 United Methodists filed a complaint to their church charging U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions with having violated the Church’s Book of Discipline, its code of laws and social principles, on account of the alleged “child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination, and ‘dissemination of doctrines contrary’ to those of the United Methodist Church.”[1] Sessions had been tasked with implementing the U.S. immigration policy of separating children from their parents at the border. At the time of the complaint, over 2,000 children of illegal aliens were being held by the U.S. Government as their parents were being prosecuted.

From a political standpoint, the separation may have served as a deterrent to potential illegal immigrants as well as a practical means by which the adults could be prosecuted. The moral harm in the separations is clear. For Christians, the morality factor must be put up against Jesus’s teachings and example. It is highly unlikely he would have supported separating children from their parents. In fact, he pointed to the innocence of children as being like the Kingdom of God.

For his part, Jeff Sessions pointed to Paul’s dictum in Romans 13 to obey civil authorities. Jesus himself said to give what is Caesar’s to Caesar. Sessions’ defense is flawed, however, because obeying the authorities would apply to the illegal immigrants who are Christian, rather than to the authorities themselves. What would Jesus say to a Christian authority concerning harm to others through a government action or policy?

The answer may depend on the grievousness or extent of the harm to others. Surely Jesus would disown any of his followers involved in perpetuating the NAZI holocaust in Germany. Separating children from their respective parents involves less harm than would killing the parents or their children, but the harm is still very significant to both parties. Sessions could point out that the parents risked this harm by crossing the border illegally. Even so, the question for the Christian is where Jesus would stand on a civil official implementing a policy of such harm. I contend that Jesus would have rebuffed such an official. How Jesus rebuffed the rich man, who would not part with his wealth to follow Jesus, can be taken as a model or indication. You can keep your power or money, but you cannot follow me if you do.

In terms of money, Jesus’s stance toward the rich man is a very strict view, which would be modified in Christianity from the Commercial Revolution on.[2]  In particular, the good use of even just part of a fortune would come to justify being wealthy. Similarly, could the good use of political power be said to legitimate holding civil power by a Christian? The difficulty especially concerning governmental power is what counts as good, for partisans have different answers, even different ideals or stressed values. The 640 Methodists may have objected to the good that Sessions saw as coming from the policy. In his view, that good is the order that comes from a nation of laws; illegal immigration hampers or detracts from such good because of the lawlessness itself as well as the associated culture of disrespect for laws. Would illegal immigrants suddenly respect and obey traffic laws in Arizona after having presumed that the immigration laws do not apply?

In short, as soon as we drift away from “What would Jesus do?” to consider the good use of political power, we open up the problem of different political ideologies, each of which can be said to have some version of the good in mind even if harm to others is in the means. What would Jesus say to Jeff Sessions? This is what his pastor should focus on, rather than wading into political waters that can easily be twisted one way or the other, and can belie legitimate religious points. From the latter perspective, the harm in the action of the policy itself is at issue. Would Jesus accept one of his followers assuming a government post that involves separating children from their parents?

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[1] Daniel Burke, “More than 600 Members of Jeff Sessions’ Church Just Charged Him with Violating Church Rules,” CNN.com (accessed June 19, 2018)

[2] Skip Worden, God’s Gold.  Available at Amazon