Guys and Gals

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting more than a little tired of seeing headlines about women’s most private body parts and hearing people (mostly men) discussing them as if they were the latest item on the NASCAR circuit.  Or ham sandwiches. Really!

How did we get to this point, in which the political airspace is jammed with increasingly careless and disrespectful chatter about such once-private matters as “transvaginal scans” and unseemly fights over the deeply sensitive issue of breast cancer support and some old guy talking about “gals” holding an aspirin between their knees as the “only form of birth control” a woman needs.

Yikes!  Even Thin Mints are in trouble.  Indiana Republican Bob Morris has written a scathing letter denouncing the Girl Scouts for having some kind of radical agenda.  In my years of camping out with the Girl Scouts, the most disturbing thing I ever experienced was letting a gigantic bug crawl up my arm in order to get a badge.  Ugh!  Closer to home, a church in Virginia has banned the Girl Scouts because of alleged ties to Planned Parenthood, which, even if it were true, would be a terrible reason to prohibit girls from wearing their badge vests proudly and participating in one of the healthiest young women’s educational programs in the world.   Here again, guys are making decisions about women’s stuff in a total vacuum of knowledge and experience.

It’s one thing to defend religious liberty, which I certainly support, and to make sure that the moral teachings of the Catholic Church are crystal clear, which is the reason why religious liberty is so important.

It’s another thing to participate in mass hysteria and downright insulting official conduct toward women.

The important cause of religious liberty, which had some shining moments in the last few weeks, becomes decidedly weaker when religion becomes a political weapon.  Many people of faith who can ardently support and live by religious teachings on life and social justice feel turned-off by the increasingly strident and pugnacious quality of the discourse.  Women of faith, in particular, want to be loyal to their church, but in return, expect the Church to show some respect for their rights and personal concerns.  Men who opine on women’s health issues without having women present at the table run the risk of losing some of the very women who could help make their case more effectively.

Church and State are separate in this country for a very good reason:  individual liberty includes the right to practice religion freely, but religion also must respect the right of citizens to live in freedom — even when such freedom means that individuals might make choices contrary to religious teachings.  That risk is the price we pay for living in a free society.

Church leaders are certainly doing their jobs when they proclaim the moral teachings of the faith, and no one should begrudge or belittle their important responsibilities in this realm.  However, those teachings become so much harder for people to hear or take seriously when the teaching methods are harsh, threatening, politically intimidating or downright disrespectful of individual rights.  Wise, effective teachers try to bring their students into the discussion with sensitivity and respect.  “My way or the highway” is generally a failed teaching method and an ineffective governance strategy.

In the same way, political leaders who display utter disregard for the people they serve invite equal disregard and even contempt for the policies and regulations they attempt to enact.  The Obama Administration’s handling of the birth control insurance regulation revealed a shocking disregard for religious interests.  Congressman Darrell Issa’s refusal to include women at the hearing he called about the Administration’s proposals was equally shocking.  The Virginia legislative proposal, now somewhat moderated, to force women to have extraordinarily invasive medical procedures was appalling.  The worthy goal of protecting life cannot also abuse life.  We can hardly advance the interests of a sensible, harmonious society of 300+ million living and working together when politicians on both sides of the aisle take actions that favor the extremes at the expense of the common ground where most Americans live.

We need leaders of uncommon dignity and genuine common sense to restore some perspective to the current debates over the right to life, religious liberty, sexual conduct and the entire realm of secular law and policy governing civic life on those important issues.  It’s very clear that Americans cannot agree on much of this, and at some point, moral challenges will defy political solutions, instead, relying on private personal conscience to make the right decisions.

And, by the way, Guys?  Show some respect for the Gals!

I’m going to find some Thin Mints.

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Our Brothers' and Sisters' Keepers

A day after nearly 400 human beings were incinerated in a horrific prison fire in Honduras, the raging headlines in various U.S. news outlets right now are:

Should New Jersey really fly flags at half staff for Whitney Houston?
Is Mitt Romney “severely conservative?”
What’s going on at Stephen Colbert’s Comedy Central?
How did Jeremy Lin do that?
Was it right that Chris Brown got to do the Grammys?
Will it be Brad Pitt or George Clooney at the Oscars?

Ok, so each story has a following.  Let Whitney rest in peace.  Let Mitt use whatever adjectives he wants.  Let Colbert be Colbert.  Admire Lin’s talent and the excitement he brings to the Asian community.  Chris Brown should slink away and those hunks are getting old.

But for a few shining moments, could we divert our attention from admiring ourselves on Twitter and Facebook to look out toward the larger world where so many of our brothers and sisters on this earth live truly miserable lives of poverty, violence and real oppression?

What happened in Honduras yesterday, and what has been happening, makes even the more serious domestic headlines seem trivial.   Has the cultural and political climate in this country become so selfishly narcissistic that we can only focus on our own endless arguments with no concern for the conditions that our brothers and sisters ensure elsewhere on this planet?

Feeling a little discomforted yet?  Here’s more:  as you change your iPad screen from “Angry Birds” to CNN.com or the washingtonpost.com home page to read more about the Honduras situation, think about the millions of Chinese workers who are suffering horrendous labor conditions to make Apple the wealthiest corporation in the world.  The New York Times has done a remarkable series on this issue.  Read it on those iPads… (and most other techno gadgets are also produced by exploited labor in far away places — it’s more than Apple’s ethical challenge…)

Children are shot to death in Syria.  In Afghanistan, girls as young as 8 years old are traded as payment for crimes committed by family elders.  Meanwhile, children are freezing to death in Kabul refugee camps as a grave humanitarian crisis spreads.

Meanwhile, back in the wealthiest nation on earth, we are watching a One Billion Dollar presidential campaign unfold with apparently little concern that even half of that amount would be too much.

Morality is a popular theme of populist politics in this presidential election year, but only insofar as some moral questions seem ripe for exploitation — those that generate votes on one side or the other.  So, matters of sex and gender (two very different topics) bring large voting blocks.

There is no voting block for poverty, no PAC for Afghanistan girls given into slavery, no massive ad campaign for Hondurans imprisoned without benefit of actual trials and convictions, held in subhuman conditions where the inevitability of mass tragedy has come home to roost once again.

Time it was that we could count on our religious leaders to mount the loudest pulpits and blaze the brightest trails to shame the world’s tragic record on human rights, relief of poverty, solidarity with exploited workers, prisoners suffering inhumane conditions.  Catholic social justice teachings call us to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers in the world, to stand in solidarity with those in need, to take the option for the poor, to defend the rights of workers against corporate exploitation.

The bedrock of Catholic social teaching is respect for human life, and the Church’s teachings on abortion, birth control and sexual conduct emanate from this foundation.  The dignity of human life, however, is much more than that important set of issues — the credibility and effectiveness of the Church’s work in those areas is significantly enhanced and strengthened when the Church is also an aggressive advocate for the full range of human life issues:  civil and human rights, relief of poverty, freedom from torture and oppression, protection of children, the rights of workers, care for the sick and suffering.

The great ministries of the Church address exactly these issues in education, health care and social service.  While voices from those many ministries often rise to proclaim the need for justice, we know there is no real substitute for the voices of powerful and prominent leaders reminding the world of the integral nature of all moral considerations across the span of human life.  “Economic Justice for All” was once one of the most provocative, widely read and quoted of all documents issued by the Catholic bishops in the U.S.

Perhaps someone is already speaking out on Honduras and I’ve missed it.  Maybe the plight of the children freezing in Afghanistan is the topic of the next pastoral letter.   Maybe this Sunday I’ll hear a message about moral responses to the excessive waste of resources going into increasingly expensive political campaigns instead of the vast needs of the people who live at the margins in our own cities.

Let’s use that religious liberty we defend to its full potential.  Lisa Miller wrote a great column in today’s Washington Post on this very idea.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has a large social justice agenda and many action committees working in a range of issues, especially immigration reform, justice and peace, domestic social development.  The work of the Church in these areas needs and deserves a lot more public attention.

But maybe we shouldn’t wait for others to speak out on these matters.  Maybe the idea that “We are the Church” should call us to action and advocacy right now.

We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.

Pray for the people of Honduras today who are suffering so much.

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Winter Break

So much news, so many possible blog topics, so much noise in the cybercafe every day…. I have this huge list of topics to blog about, but instead, I found myself drawn to the beautiful calm sounds of nature this past weekend, to places where the wild things have lovely, sometimes loud voices but nothing accusatory, condemnatory, dishonest or degrading.

Just the splash of ducks taking flight…

The distinctive “whoosh” of the giant wings of great blue heron…

Eagles in unexpected places…

While others keep watch from their aerie..

And some are just happy to sit for portraits…

For a few hours of peace, quiet and beautiful birds, visit the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County, or the Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge near Chestertown.  In just about two hours, you can regain sanity!

D.C. Schools: New Report, Old Challenges

A major new report on education (“Quality Schools:  Every Child, Every School, Every Neighborhood”) in the District of Columbia by the IFF Consulting Group paints a dismal picture of schools here in the Brookland/Brentwood/Langdon/Ivy City/Trinidad part of the city, as well as neighborhoods in Adams Morgan/Mt. Pleasant and most neighborhoods east of the river.  There’s no real news in this new report — the maps of “Tier 4″ schools that are failing have appeared before in different guises, and the failing school maps track those overlays of poverty, adult illiteracy and chronic health problems.  The graphic below is from the report and was also carried in the Washington Post:

At a meeting of educational and business leaders the other day at the Federal City Council, Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright asked for support for the initiatives that will emanate from this new report, including helping neighborhoods and families to come together around solutions.    As the largest private provider of higher education for DC residents, Trinity has a large stake in fostering a progressive, productive outcome of this effort.

I fully support Deputy Mayor Wright’s efforts to focus attention on educational improvements, and I applaud Mayor Vincent Gray’s longstanding commitment to educational attainment for the children of the District.  As discussions around this new report move forward, I hope that we can keep these sensitivities in mind so that the process leads to results, not more acrimony over school reform:

1.  Offer Hope, Reduce Negativity:  Unfortunately, the children and parents in the neighborhoods where the “Tier 4″ schools of this report live have suffered repeated bad news about their educational, economic and social conditions.  They don’t need one more group of well-meaning wonks to heap more data on their heads about how dysfunctional their schools really are.  Nor do they need the implied criticism that comes from well-meaning-but-clueless over-educated policy mavens that suggests that somehow the families are really wrong to send their children to these deficient schools.  We need to take three giant steps back to observe, listen and understand the values, relationships and motivations of parents and families in the targeted neighborhoods.  We need to honor their desires and offer hope for a future that is not harshly disruptive (e.g., closing more schools with no input) but rather, positively affirming about the opportunities that can come from effective neighborhood collaboration.

2.  Educate Parents:  parents who read to their children and take an active interest in their kids’ educational success may well be the biggest sustained factor in learning achievement.  In D.C., with an adult illiteracy rate of about 35%, the need for broad-based, effective adult education programs is huge.  Yet, to date, all school reform efforts seem to focus almost exclusively on K-12 teachers.  I continue to insist in every forum I attend that if we want to see real results, we must bring parents into their own classrooms to improve literacy, attain high school diplomas, and start on the pathway to postsecondary and lifelong learning.

3.  Effective Learning is an Integrated Life Experience:  school reformers keep talking about schools as if they are objective entities completely divorced from the student’s other life experiences.  Effective teaching and learning is a real art, not just a science, and real academic success emanates from communities that fully integrate classroom-based learning with co-curricular opportunities, church and social engagements, volunteer activism, sports and recreation, arts and culture.  No surprises there — neighborhoods like Chevy Chase or Georgetown or Takoma have high academic success rates because well-educated parents have the money and motivation to create holistic learning communities for their children.   Just “fixing the schools” in Langdon or Congress Heights or Ivy City without also revitalizing the neighborhoods and communities will result in continuing shortfalls in academic attainment.

We must improve learning outcomes for all citizens of our city, young and old, that’s for sure.  The work is hard, the trajectory for real change will be long.  Mayor Gray and Deputy Mayor Wright have long records of commitment to educational change and student success.   Trinity will work with them to do what we can to support effective initiatives to improve learning throughout the city.

Elusive Dreams

2012 Martin Luther King Day arrives on the cusp of another presidential election year.  Was it only four years ago that some commentators hailed the start of the “post-racial” era in America with the election of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States?

Political and cultural realities have right-sized that rhetoric.  Ugly, vicious racist rants can be found throughout the internet, and quite often associated with the “comments” sections of stories about President Obama.   But the not-so-latent strains of racism emerge in many parts of the popular discourse well beyond presidential politics.  Consider the nasty comments associated with stories about corruption in D.C. Politics; the writers obviously skipped class on the day they taught about politics in, say, Chicago.  Or, peer beneath the loftier parts of discussions about school reform and college access to discover less hopeful biases against the academic potential of entire sections of our population.  Or, consider the mess called immigration reform — a nation that builds a wall across the southern border while leaving the north wide open to our neighbors there shouts out its prejudices with a loud amplifier.

(See John Kelly’s column in today’s Washington Post on this same topic.)

On this day of observance in the name of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., let’s resolve to get real about the state of his dream of a truly color-blind society.  I’m not suggesting a return to anger, division and hard lines all around — though they still exist in many places — but rather, let’s stop sweeping the issues under the rug of “post-racial” fiction.

This nation’s founding ideals of freedom, justice and equality for all were, from the very start, vivid dreams that often proved elusive in practice.  The Founding Fathers, including the prominent slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, knew that the presence of slavery undermined their vision for a truly free nation, but they could not bring themselves to do the right thing — to create a nation truly based on freedom, justice and equality for all — because of their own economic interests and cultural blockades.  Six decades later, the nation erupted in Civil War because of the inability of the Founders to confront the evil they knew would threaten the nation.  Now, 150 years after the Civil War, almost 225 years after the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, 44 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this nation still struggles with those elusive dreams of freedom, justice and equality for all.

Whatever happens in this election year, whatever party you prefer, whomever you choose as your candidate, let’s resolve together to be advocates for those elusive dreams, to confront racism wherever we find it, to insist that this nation can and will be a place of freedom, justice and true equality for all.