Historical Note - The Catholic Neocons of the 1990's-early 2000's on Donald J. Trump

Documenting for personal sake Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus (1936-2009), George Weigel, Michael Novak (1933-2017) and William F. Buckley (1925-2008) of the National Review insofar as where they had stood on the topic of Donald Trump.

Father Richard John Neuhaus passed on January 8, 2009. Reflecting on Neuhaus' death in 2021, Fr. Raymond de Souza noted:

Father Richard’s engagement in political activism never led him to messianic politics. He died after Barack Obama’s election but before his inauguration, and long before the current president came down the escalator at Trump Tower. He was suspicious of the messianic dimension of Obama’s candidacy and would have been troubled by those who regarded Donald Trump as having some kind of messianic anointing.

Father Richard would have been dismayed at the apocalyptic tone of politics today. The future of the republic does not hang on a presidential election, let alone a senate election in Georgia. Elections have consequences, sometimes, grave consequences, but electoral politics does not heal a corrupt culture.

“Moral progress is far from being self-evident,” Father Richard wrote. “We should at least be open to the possibility that we are today witnessing not moral progress but a dramatic moral regression.”

George Weigel in 2016 joined the likes of Robert P. George, Robert Royal, Ryan Anderson, Francis Beckwith, Eduardo Echeverria, Gerard Bradley, John P. Hittinger in "An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics" (National Review), asserting that

... there are candidates for the Republican nomination who are far more likely than Mr. Trump to address these concerns, and who do not exhibit his vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance, and — we do not hesitate to use the word — demagoguery.

Mr. Trump’s record and his campaign show us no promise of greatness; they promise only the further degradation of our politics and our culture. We urge our fellow Catholics and all our fellow citizens to reject his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination by supporting a genuinely reformist candidate.

Due credit for taking a stand against the tide. Weigel would go on to add that Trump "is an immoral man both in his public life and in his private life. And then it is not credible in the management of power. As I can not vote for Clinton, so I will never vote for him."

Michael Novak broke with Weigel and the authors of "An Appeal to our Fellow Catholics", expressing his relief after Trump's first election that Hillary would never be president (Silver-Linings for Never-Trumpers First Things 11/15/16). For an explication of Novak's own perspective I would refer to the excellent survey Michael Novak’s ‘Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics’ in the Trump Era, by Jesse Russel. (American Spectator January 5, 2019).

Michael Novak passed in 2017, and even so, I wonder whether he would have continued in his guarded support for Trump -- especially on or after Trump's refusal to concede the election of 2020, his trafficing in outright falsehoods and conspiracy theories contesting the election, his vocal encouragement of those who staged an attempted coup on the nation's capitol on January 6, 2021 -- and his current promise as president-elect to pardon those currently convicted for doing so.

William F. Buckley -- a Catholic conservative, howbeit not of the "neocon" persuasion -- made his displeasure known in a sharply critical editorial on Trump's narcissism and demagoguery in an article for Cigar Aficionado:

... So there we have the one problem--the encouragement given to demagogues by undiscriminating voters. The procedure here is to attract support to finance a campaign. But does the term demagogue fit in other circumstances? What about the aspirant who has a private vision to offer to the public and has the means, personal or contrived, to finance a campaign? In some cases, the vision isn't merely a program to be adopted. It is a program that includes the visionary's serving as President. Look for the narcissist. The most obvious target in today's lineup is, of course, Donald Trump. When he looks at a glass, he is mesmerized by its reflection. If Donald Trump were shaped a little differently, he would compete for Miss America.

But whatever the depths of self-enchantment, the demagogue has to say something. So what does Trump say? That he is a successful businessman and that that is what America needs in the Oval Office. There is some plausibility in this, though not much. The greatest deeds of American Presidents--midwifing the new republic; freeing the slaves; harnessing the energies and vision needed to win the Cold War--had little to do with a bottom line.

Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square, by Randy Boyagoda

Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square
by Randy Boyagoda.
Image (February 10, 2015). 480 pgs.

Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) was one of the most influential figures in American public life from the Civil Rights era to the War on Terror. His writing, activism, and connections to people of power in religion, politics, and culture secured a place for himself and his ideas at the center of recent American history. William F. Buckley, Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith are comparable -- willing controversialists and prodigious writers adept at cultivating or castigating the powerful, while advancing lively arguments for the virtues and vices of the ongoing American experiment. But unlike Buckley and Galbraith, who have always been identified with singular political positions on the right and left, respectively, Neuhaus' life and ideas placed him at the vanguard of events and debates across the political and cultural spectrum. For instance, alongside Abraham Heschel and Daniel Berrigan, Neuhaus co-founded Clergy Concerned About Vietnam, in 1965. Forty years later, Neuhaus was the subject of a New York Review of Books article by Garry Wills, which cast him as a Rasputin of the far right, exerting dangerous influence in both the Vatican and the Bush White House. This book looks to examine Neuhaus's multi-faceted life and reveal to the public what made him tick and why.
"Boyagoda dispassionately describes this fascinating and active life, and he manages to blend skills as a folksy storyteller, researcher and unbiased historian, providing a biography that is balanced, interesting and relevant. A useful, provocative spotlight on one of the leading lights of the 20th century." – Kirkus
“Faith, it is correctly observed, while intensely personal, is never private. In North America, nobody recently has more effectively defended and encouraged bringing religion into the public square than Richard John Neuhaus. And up until now, no one has offered a more credible, careful, and colorful biography of this convert to Catholicism—in the line of Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker and Thomas Merton—than Randy Boyagoda.” – Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, author of True Freedom
"A Lutheran pastor who became a Catholic priest, labeled sometimes as liberal and other times as conservative, Neuhaus was truly a "sign of contradiction" in our times, a man whose constant affiliation in life was of belonging to God and striving to draw ever nearer to Him. Thorough, vivid, and keenly understanding of the interplay of personality, faith, and cultural context, Boyagoda's biography of Neuhaus does justice to this man of faith who became a type of "grace to be reckoned with," becoming a culture-altering tour de force. As Americans continue to explore the challenge of living one's faith in the public square, this book is an enriching testament to a man who blazed that trail in his own lifetime, fearless of everything but God Himself." – Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus

Interviews

• Randy Boyagoda on the Thought and Character of Richard John Neuhaus, by Mark Bauerlein, Randy Boyagoda. Interview with First Things. 05/07/15.
• Biography of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus 'Neither Hagiography Nor Hatchet Job' Interview with Randy Boyagoda. Zenit News. 3/20/15.
• Recalling Richard John Neuhaus: Author Q&A with Randy Boyagoda, with Sean Salai, SJ. America 01/21/15.
• Book Discussion: Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square C-SPAN BOOK TV. Randy Boyagoda, Russel Reno and Sam Tanenhaus.
• Randy Boyagoda on the Thought and Character of Richard John Neuhaus: A Podcast, by Mark Bauerlein. First Things 03/23/15.

Reviews and Discussion

• Neuhaus Described, If Not Explained, by William Gould. The University Bookman Spring 2015. "In short, what we have here is a good, helpful biography of Richard Neuhaus, but a more substantial account and evaluation of his intellectual contribution remains to be written."

• Life in the Public Square CBC Radio. Discussion with host Paul Kennedy, author Randy Boyagoda, Catholic thinker and Ideas contributor Michael W. Higgins and historian of religion, Molly Worthen (University of North Carolina). May 5, 2015.

  • The Neuhaus Legacy, by R.R. Reno. First Things 05/06/15: "While listening to Worthen's comments I was again reminded of how difficult it is for many, perhaps most, liberals to fathom reasons why someone (Neuhaus, for instance) would think American-style conservatism the best way to promote the common good."

• Burning Fr. Neuhaus’s Diary, by Joseph Bottum. Weekly Standard May 18, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 34.:

  Reading the new biography by Randy Boyagoda, seeing the clips of Fr. Neuhaus on websites discussing the book, I’ve had that day come back to mind recently—replaying, this time in doubt, the decision I made to destroy his diary. Certainly Boyagoda’s work would have been considerably easier if he’d had the diary to guide him. Substantially different, too, I suspect, Richard’s internal narrative shaping in entirely different ways the external actions of his life. ...

• The Vision of Father Neuhaus, by William Doino Jr. First Things 3/23/15:

  ... Because Neuhaus was such a prominent figure, and so involved in the major political debates of his time, he is often criticized for having compromised his faith. But those who say Neuhaus was more politician than priest miss the mark. Fr. Neuhaus always saw himself—first and foremost—as a pastor and parish priest. The source and summit of his life was celebrating the Mass, hearing confessions, and attending to the needs of his flock. He loved to write, yes, but he did so in hopes that people would espouse the good—and by doing so, to turn toward their Savior.

• Understanding Father Neuhaus, by Alan Jacobs. Snakes and Ladders 03/13/15:

  ... here’s (a simplified version of) my reading of Neuhaus’s political transformation: Over time he came to believe that the American left had effectively abandoned its commitment to “the least of these,” had decided that, in Boyagoda’s clear formulation, “private rights — made possible by and indeed protecting implicit race and class privileges — trumped responsibilities for others.” The moral language that he had learned from his Christian upbringing and pastoral training and experience simply had no purchase in a party dominated by a commitment solely to the “private rights” of self-expression, especially sexual self-expression. He turned to those who showed a willingness to hear commitments expressed in that moral language, who appeared to be open to being convinced. In return he gave them his loyalty, his public support, for the rest of his life.
  It may well be that this was a devil’s bargain, one that Neuhaus should never have made. ...
  But I think we have strong documentary evidence that Father Neuhaus made his bargain out of a genuine and deeply compassionate love — a love that pulled him all his life — for those whom the world deems worthless. In trying to realize this love in the medium of politics, that cesspool of vainglory and vanity, he sometimes befouled himself. But we all befoul ourselves; few of us do it in such a noble cause.
  

• How Father Neuhaus Found GOP, by Geoffrey Kabaservice. The American Conservative 03/17/15.
• Neuhaus in his time, by George W. Rutler. National Review 03/09/15.
• New biography captures spirit of the of the great Catholic intellectual, by Russel Saltzman. Aleteia. 02/19/15. "Boyagoda found the Neuhaus I knew, complete with all the man’s winsome qualities and not a few of his contradictions. Not surprisingly, he also revealed facets of the man I could never guess. ... Boyagoda has given us a meat-and-potatoes biography. I regard that as a good thing to say."
• Preaching to the White House, by Phillip Marchand. National Post 02/25/15:

  Boyagoda makes no sweeping pronouncements on this unresolved issue of Neuhaus’s legacy. Certainly things were not as they once were when Neuhaus could claim intimacy with President Reagan and Pope John Paul II. But Boyagoda’s luminously intelligent study of the man makes clear that Richard John Neuhaus — however one regards his politics — deserved his place in a long line of memorable American preacher politicians.

• The story of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, an extraordinary Christian man, by Gregory J. Sullivan. Catholic World Report 03/13/15. "a reliable and readable biography."
• The American Life of Richard John Neuhaus, by Matthew Walther. The Washington Beacon 03/14/15.
• Richard John Neuhaus and the perils of theologically motivated hyper-partisanship, by Damon Linker. The Week 03/13/15.

Contra Stoker Bruenig. On Pope Francis and His Critics

Francis Agonistes, by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig. The New Republic 03/01/15. "The Pope is engaged in a struggle to bring the Church into the modern age. And American conservatives are fighting him every step of the way."

Responses

• Who Are Pope Francis’s Critics?, Ross Douthat. New York Times 03/12/15. "... analyzing this debate mostly through the lens of American movement conservatism (I’m pretty sure Limbaugh would be fine with the Kasper proposal!) and American politics, or conjoining the two the way Bruenig’s essay sometimes does, misses the bigger picture for this pontificate and the future of the Catholic Church."
• Did The New New Republic Even Fact-Check Its Cover Story On Pope Francis?, by J. Arthur Bloom. DailyCaller 3/12/15.
• Foundless Francis Fantasies, by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille. Catholic World Report 03/06/15. "Young leftist Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig is the latest breathless fan cheering madly at the 2015 running of the Ultramontane Sweeps."
• Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig contra "fearful" Catholics, by Gabriel Sanchez. Opus Publicum 03/02/15.

Hobby Lobby - A Roundup

Required Reading

• What Hobby Lobby Means: How We Got Here, Where We're Headed, by Robert P. George. First Things 07/01/14:

  Hobby Lobby and the Greens, represented by attorneys from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued that the abortifacient mandates (1) substantially burden the practice of their faith; (2) are not supported by a compelling interest; and (3) do not represent the least restrictive means of pursuing the government’s objective of supplying these products to women. The Obama administration contested these claims and denied that RFRA protections apply at all to for-profit businesses (as opposed to religious organizations).

  The decision’s most important feature is its rejection of that contention. The five justices in the majority—Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy—explicitly reject it, thus establishing as a matter of law the proposition that RFRA protections can apply to for-profit businesses, and do apply to closely held corporations. It leaves open the question, which is probably purely theoretical, whether RFRA protections apply to large, publicly traded companies. Two of the four dissenting justices—Breyer and Kagan—decline to reach or opine on the question of whether RFRA protects for-profit businesses—pointedly refusing to join this aspect of the dissent filed by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor who, alone, contend that for-profit businesses do not enjoy RFRA protections.

• Ashley Macguire on Five False Perceptions About The Hobby Lobby Case (The Federalist 07/01/14).

• The Republic of Gilead is Not Nigh, by Julian Sanchez. Cato.org. 06/30/14 -- offering a libertarian perspective on the ruling, and the possible motives of those disappointed in it:

  In light of this, the outraged reaction to the ruling ought to seem a bit puzzling. If what you are fundamentally concerned about is whether women have access to no-copay contraception, then there’s no obvious reason to invest such deep significance in the precise accounting details of the mechanism by which it is provided. [Cut the hysterics already]. You might even be heartened by a ruling that so centrally turns on the premise that accomodation for religious objectors is required when no women will lack such coverage who would have enjoyed it under a mandate.

  The outrage does make sense, of course, if what one fundamentally cares about—or at least, additionally cares about—is the symbolic speech act embedded in the compulsion itself. In other words, if the purpose of the mandate is not merely to achieve a certain practical result, but to declare the qualms of believers with religious objections so utterly underserving of respect that they may be forced to act against their convictions regardless of whether this makes any real difference to the outcome. And something like that does indeed seem to be lurking just beneath—if not at—the surface of many reactions. The ruling seems to provoke anger, not because it will result in women having to pay more for birth control (as it won’t), but at least in part because it fails to send the appropriate cultural signal. Or, at any rate, because it allows religious employers to continue sending the wrong cultural signal—disapproval of certain forms of contraception—when sending that signal does not impede the achievement of the government’s ends in any way.

• About that matter of companies "denying contraception" to their employees... There has been plenty a-wailing and gnashing of teeth about companies "denying contraception", but it ain't necessarily so. Even Hobby Lobby "lavishes contraception coverage on its employees", covering 16 different types in its health plan.

  (Catholics may object to the offering of contraceptives in principle, but this is a Protestant organization -- and Protestants have generally been open to a wide range of contraception since the 1930's). What (some) Protestant and Catholic Christians share is the belief that life is sacred, and life begins at conception (the latter being not so much a "belief" as sound biological fact).

  So what Hobby Lobby (and seventy one other companies are actually objecting to paying for four specific contraceptives that are deemed abortifacients due to their capacity to either kill human beings when they are fertilized eggs, or prevent them from implanting themselves in utero, whereupon they die. This is what they deem morally objectionable on religious grounds.

  Functionally speaking, no employee of Hobby Lobby would be denied the normal range of contraceptives under their health plan, and Hobby Lobby employees are free to purchase emergency contraception of their own accord, just not on the company's dime.

• Yes, but isn't it hypocritical that Hobby Lobby "invests millions in companies that manufacture the very products they want to be exempt from covering in their employee health plans–products they believe cause abortions?" -- This is the counterargument advanced by Rick Ungar (Forbes.com), Grant Gallicho (Commonweal) and Molly Redden (Mother Jones). To this it may be rightfully objected that . Ryan Ellis (Forbes.com) makes short work of Ungar and Redden's criticism here, by pointing out that 401k plans are made by employees, not employers:

  Plan administrators contract with select mutual fund companies to provide basic investment products diversified by sector, asset class, duration, risk, etc. This is the primary goal of diversification of fund choices, not socially-conscious investing. Besides, it’s the employees who call the shots. They may not share the same values as the Hobby Lobby owners, and might have a very different idea of what a “socially responsible” fund would invest in…

  What does Mother Jones’ or Mercury Public Affairs’ 401(k) plan look like? Those are the employers of Redden and Ungar, respectively. Surely those 401(k) plans invest in stocks of oil and gas companies, defense contractors, private equity firms, and other evil conservative power bastions. Have Redden and/or Ungar done a forensic investigation of the mutual funds they are invested in? Should I call them hypocrites for daring to invest in a 401(k) which invests in a mutual fund which invests in a multinational company which happens to own an oil company? If not, consider that the Hobby Lobby employers have one more degree of separation even from Redden and Ungar. Our two intrepid reporters affirmatively chose to invest in merchants of death when they picked out their 401(k) choices. All Hobby Lobby is doing is providing the platform for employees to make those same choices themselves in partnership with plan administrators.

  Ben Domenech, The Federalist poses the challenge:

  The secular left needs to think bigger than just driving Christians out of the ability to practice their faith as business owners or allow their employees to invest in the stock market. They should start by noting it’s impossible for those who claim to be “pro-life” to live and work in certain states without being a hypocrite. Since the Hyde Amendment applies only to federal funds, states like New York, New Jersey, and California use state taxpayer dollars – a not insignificant amount of them – to pay directly for abortions. What this effectively means is that any of Ungar’s colleagues at Fox News who live in New York are thorough hypocrites if they pay their taxes. And yet they continue to do so! It is almost as if they are willing to render unto Caesar, even as they fight in courts and in the public square to change Caesar’s policies. Heck, Hobby Lobby itself even pays taxes in these states, where it does business! How stunning that these people are even allowed to be Americans, a country which was built by slaveowners and racists.

• Lastly, I concur with Bonchamps (The American Catholic), that this decision is something of a pyrrhic victory:

  [In the event of a Hobby Lobby win] my celebration will be muted and limited, however, because a legal victory will not address the underlying philosophical and cultural divide that brought this case before the court to begin with. Contrary to what some may believe, law is not the foundation upon which society rests; it is rather the adhesive we use to patch up broken pieces of society. The more laws, precedents, mandates, rulings and decisions we require to defend our basic interests and assert our rights, the greater indication we have of a society that is almost literally tearing itself apart.

• Murray's Mistake, by Michael Baxter. America 09/23/13:

  ‘It has been a greatly providential blessing,” John Courtney Murray, S.J., observed in We Hold These Truths, “that the American Republic never put to the Catholic conscience the questions raised, for instance, by the Third Republic. There has never been a schism within the American Catholic community, as there was among Catholics in France, over the right attitude to adopt toward the established polity.”

  However much this statement was true in 1960, it is not true today. Now the politics of the American Republic does raise questions of conscience for Catholics. Now a schism has arisen within the Catholic community in the United States over the proper attitude toward the established polity. The schism is between those Catholics in the United States who identify with liberal politics and those who identify with conservative politics in the secular sphere. The division is pervasive and deep, and it is tearing the U.S. Catholic community apart.

• Response by Rick Garnett Mirror of Justice 09/13/13:

  For my own part, I think almost everything Baxter says is correct, and cannot avoid the force of what I take to be his implicit challenge to folks (like me) who think that Murray's "dualistic" theory regarding religious and political authority still has a lot to offer. That said, and agreeing entirely with Baxter (and MacIntyre) that the hard work of building authentic human communities has to focus on non-state and / or local and / or pre-political associations, spaces, and activities, I do not see it as a plausible alternative for Catholics to simply walk away from engagement with the modern state (even if Murray was overly optimistic about our place in the "consensus" about how that state should operate).

Robert P. George vs. Steve Shiffrin on the Kennedy legacy

If you weren't tuned in to the Catholic legal blog Mirror of Justice over the weekend, you missed several rounds between Robert P. George and Steve Shiffrin on the legacy of John and Ted Kennedy. Some highlights:

• Was Kennedy's speech an effort to privatize religion? asks Robert P. George:

  Although John F. Kennedy declared that he believed in an America where the separation of church and state is "absolute," I doubt that he (or Ted Sorenson, for that matter) had any very firm views on the most significant issues about the proper role of religion in civic life. The point of the Houston speech was to reassure Protestants---especially those whose views had been shaped by Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power, and the mentality that produced that unfortunate polemic---that he would govern in accordance with American principles, not Catholic dogma. He wanted Protestants and others to rest easy in the confident belief that the Pope would not be dictating U.S. policy in a Kennedy administration. From our perspective today, it's amusing to think of people worrying that John F. Kennedy (or his father Joe or his brother Ted) would be taking orders from the Pope . . . about anything. As Hadley Arkes has remarked, Kennedy evidently regarded his religion as so private a matter that he refused to impose it even on himself.

• Steve Shiffrin rises to Kennedy's defense ("I do not believe that cheap humor about the role of religion in people’s lives is amusing or charitable.")

• Steve Shiffrin, "Cheap Humor," and the Kennedys - George comes back swinging:

  I disagree with Steve Shiffrin's claim that Hadley Arkes's remark amounts to "cheap humor." On the contrary, it is humor that makes a telling and important point. Joseph P. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy (until public revelations of his conduct made it no longer possible) each depicted himself, or permitted his political machinery to depict him, as a man who was loyal in belief and practice to Catholic teaching. They used their professed Catholicism to paint a false picture of themselves for political purposes. They sought to deceive the voting public, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, about the kind of men they were, and they exploited the image they created of themselves as dedicated Catholics who lived by the teachings of the Church. ...

  I do not share what I take to be Steve's view that [Ted] Kennedy was a champion of social justice, though I can see why he does. Kennedy's determined efforts to keep abortion legal and largely unrestricted, to pay for it with public funds, and to make it more widely available and easily accessible were, in my view, grave violations of justice and human rights. Ditto for his work to promote and publicly fund biomedical research in which nascent human beings are deliberately destroyed and dissected in the embryonic stage of development to produce pluripotent stem cells. There were, to be sure, some human rights issues, especially in the international field, on which Kennedy got it right in my view, and I would not withhold praise for him for those. I cannot, however, join Steve (if I've understood him correctly) in characterizing Kennedy as someone whose overall record is to be praised from a social justice perspective.

  

  On Joseph P. Kennedy's profound contempt in practice for teachings of the faith he purported to hold dear, see Ronald Kessler, The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty he Founded. Readers who do not know much about the elder Kennedy will likely be shocked not only by his unremitting philandering, but also by his cruelty, dishonesty, personal viciousness, and anti-semitism. On JFK's conduct, one need not turn to authors who are especially critical of him. All one needs to know to assess the validity of Arkes's pointed remark can be found in material contained in An Unfinished Life : John F. Kennedy, 1917 - 1963, by Kennedy supporter Robert Dallek. (If you are interested in reading what more critical biographers have to say, see A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy by the historian Thomas Reeves and The Dark Side of Camelot by journalist Seymour Hersh.) Like his father, JFK was not merely a man who occasionally gave in to temptation but then repented, sought forgiveness, and tried to live uprightly. He really did, as Arkes puts it, refuse to impose his religion on himself---or even to try.

• Steve Shiffrin protests:

  ... to telescope a man’s life into a sinful episode 40 years ago, and to portray it as the way Kennedy lived his life as a Catholic is indefensible.

  Similarly to catapult one’s disagreements with Kennedy over abortion and stem cell research (my views by the way on these subjects are more complicated than George assumes) into a claim that Kennedy did not impose religion on himself is cheap exaggeration.

• George with a smashing rebuttal:

  Ted Kennedy's conduct at Chappaquiddick was, as Steve himself says, and as I'm sure all Catholics and other men and women of good sense would agree, reprehensible. But, as my article with Professor Quinn makes clear, his bad behavior in the matter was not confined to what happened on the evening of the accident and on the morning that followed. Nor, as the historical record shows, did his immoral conduct (in which I personally would include the calumniation of Robert Bork, though perhaps Steve will disagree about that) begin or end with Chappaquiddick. Steve says, "to telescope a man's life into a sinful episode 40 years ago, and to portray it as the way Kennedy lived his life as a Catholic is indefensible," Happily for purposes of resolving the questions in this debate (though quite unhappily in every other way), there is plenty of evidence in the record to show that Kennedy's misconduct was frequent and often scandalous (quite literally so, especially for his sons and nephews---people who are familiar with Kennedy's own testimony in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial will know all about that). The details are available in amply documented published accounts. If, to sustain his accusation that what I've said about Ted Kennedy is "indefensible," Steve wants to claim that there is no evidence beyond "a sinful episode 40 years ago" for Kennedy's blatant disregard for Catholic moral principles, I would urge him to have a look at even so sympathetic a review of Kennedy's life as Adam Clymer's recent Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography. Clymer, the New York Times writer once unflatteringly characterized by George W. Bush when the then newly elected President didn't realize the microphone was still on, admires Kennedy and likes his politics, giving him high marks for his career in the Senate. But even this work dispels what might be called the "single episode 40 years ago" thesis. (Needless to say, less sympathetic writers leave the thesis utterly in tatters.)

On a related note, see Archbishop Chaput's momentous address at Houston Baptist University, "The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life". Delivered March 1, 2010:

Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He had one purpose. He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive. Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected. And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life. And he wasn’t merely “wrong.” His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage. [more]

Charles Carroll -- America's Catholic Founding Father

Charles Carroll of Carrollton was a delegate to the Continental Congress and later United States Senator for Maryland. He was also the only Catholic to have signed the The Declaration of Independence. One of the wealthiest men in the colonies, it is reported that -- upon fixing his signature,

a member standing near observed, "There go a few millions," and all admitted that few risked as much, in a material sense, than the wealthy Marylander.

(The Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 1737-1832, by Kate Mason Rowland).

A new biography, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll (Lives of the Founders) (ISI) will be published in February 2010. (Tip of the hat to Carl Olson). The author, Dr. Bradley J. Birzer, was recently interviewed by the Washington Times:

Q: Carroll was the last of the signers to die. What did he have to say about America at the end of his life?

A: He was so critical of what happened to the republic after the founding. He's very critical of the democratic element in the American republic - he's worried that self-interest and greed are replacing republican virtue. So from the late 1700s, Carroll starts being called "the hoary-headed aristocrat." He starts to be seen as a relic of an older age. But after Carroll dies, there's a resurgence of his reputation. All across the country, the headlines read, "The last of the Romans is dead."

And he was one of Alexis de Tocqueville's main informants. So there are moments in de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (Penguin Classics) when he is being critical of the democratic spirit, and it seems very clear to me that he is taking that from his interview with Carroll.

Q: What does history get wrong about Carroll?

A: I'm always amazed at how much our own history, especially [in] our textbooks, tends to portray the founders as merely enlightened figures. And there's no doubt they were. But the vast majority were Christian - Franklin and Jefferson being the exceptions that so many focus on. And the American people were intensely religious, mostly Protestant, at the time of the founding. I think it's dangerous that we secularize the founding so much. We need to know the context - we need to know what inspired them to fight for liberty.

Read the whole thing.

This would make the second book published recently about the Catholic founding father, the first being Scott McDermott's Charles Carroll of Carrollton: Faithful Revolutionary (Scepter Publications, 2001).

McDermott, a circulation librarian at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, writer and convert, began studying about Carroll after he came into the Church -- In 2005, Zenit News interviewed him about his biography and Carroll's influence on the founding fathers (Part I | Part II).

* * *

I concur with the observation that the religiousity of many of our founding fathers is sadly overlooked and much neglected. Michael Novak made an important contribution to restoring a proper recognition to the religious roots of America's founding with his On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (2001), followed by Washington's God, a study of the religious faith of the pre-eminent 'Father of our Country'.