Pence: Why Catholics should rally behind the Mormon patriarch

Despite the petulance and hair-pulling of a sizable number of conservatives, do you have any doubt that Mitt Romney will be the strongest nominee to go toe-to-toe with Mr. Obama?

Pence: Governor Romney has an authoritative presence, can speak coherently, and has acted as an executive. He has a map in his head of the world; and is self-disciplined intellectually, emotionally, and morally. He is not an adequate candidate -- he is a great one.

What assures you that the 2012 campaign will not be a reprise of Bob Dole (who lost by more than eight percentage points to President Clinton) or John McCain (more than seven points)?

Pence: My son has a Martian test he applies in picking presidential winners. He says turn off the sound and watch the two candidates. Pretend you are a man from outer space, and ask which man looks and gestures like the commander-in-chief of a nation of 300 million. Do the test. We are in a lot better shape this time.

Romney is a man with five sons, and he has been married to the same woman for forty years. How big a difference does that make?

Pence: Six years after Bob Dole and Bill Clinton ran against each other for the presidency, both their wives were US Senators from states they adopted for career enhancements. Bob Dole, John McCain, and George Bush all had wives anxious to show their feminist credentials culturally. Mrs. Romney is of a different cloth. I thought the image of Barrack Obama with his intact family was very powerful and important for American culture. I think the image of a father with obedient and strong sons is such a missing icon of biblical patriarchy in American public life that Romney and his sons will be even more inspiring.

The patriarchal Mormon religion changed its policy in 1978 about allowing black men to receive the priesthood. Better late than never?

Pence: The Mormons could change because they have an ordered hierarchy with authority. It was a crucial recognition spurred by the international character of the Mormon mission and revealed in communal prayer. What a great religious resonance with the American deepening of the civic fraternal bonds of duty between black and white men that was forged in Harry Truman’s order to integrate the military services.

Would Romney as president be more open to America protecting Christians in the Mideast?

Pence: I hope so, but I had also hoped that Barack Obama might cut the interracial civil-rights movement from the feminist/ homosexual pretenders. Romney, like John Kennedy, has a very strong understanding that his ecclesial body is distinct from his political community. They both came from church traditions that could not be confused with the American nation. That may help Romney see the providential role of the nation in protecting the communal right to worship elsewhere in the world. American Protestant presidents have not tended to think of the persecution of Eastern Orthodox or Catholic Christians as their battle. Romney is of a very different tradition, so he might see more clearly a national mission to protect different expressions of the Christian obligation to worship. What an irony if the religion we most disagree with theologically could produce the best practical protector of persecuted Christians.

Mr. Romney seems hawkish on Iran as is Mr. Santorum -- a blessing or a curse?

Pence: Our ally Israel sees Iran as an existential threat. This is our concern too. The protection of Israel, however, must be tied to the protection of Christians in the Mideast and alliances with Muslim nations who insure the liberty of worship to their citizens. It is freedom of worship and fruitful marriages -- not freedom for abortion and sodomy -- which are the protected sacred rights of human nature. We will know we are having a real foreign policy discussion when we hear much more about the Shia/Sunni split within Islam and the emerging nations. We cannot make coherent policy about Iran without a much fuller strategic discussion questioning our alliance with Saudi Arabia and our suicidal fascination with a separate Palestinian state. Isn’t a Lebanon which insures Christian protection and freedom a more pressing call than the fantasy of a separate secular Palestine?

As the U.S. moves into the future, you argue that seeing reality as analogical becomes even more important. What exactly does that mean?

Pence: The social order is a reflection of the sacred order. Our social order is presently set against the sacred ordinances of natural law. When people are confronted with the natural forms of human agreement and social protection they will experience a deep resonance. Watching John McCain and Sarah Palin argue for the "leadership of mavericks" was exactly the adolescent posturing which we are trying to replace with the traditional order of the President and his men protecting the country, while a mother and her children fill the home. A leader may make certain propositions which are alien theologically, but he also teaches if the form of his life is deeply orthodox. The nation is an analogical form to the church, not an enforcer of its propositions.

Mrs. Romney told an interviewer that she and her husband "both came from immigrant families." She comes from Welsh miners; and Mitt's father George was among those in the American colony in Mexico ejected by Pancho Villa. She says, "They came with nothing." (George remarked that "we were the first displaced persons of the 20th century.") The struggles of families like the Romneys and Obamas and Kennedys are what make America great, right?

Pence: Absolutely!

Would President Romney exert himself in uniting Mormons, Evangelicals, black Christians, conservative Catholics, and Muslims?

Pence: He has a way to do it: as a robust religious masculine definition of the American nation. He has to talk to the men of all these different traditions as "fellow American countrymen." The father and his five sons steeped in the socialization customs of the Mormon public male priesthood have the best chance of calling up our common fraternity since the older Kennedy brothers did it fifty years ago. About 90% of America’s 2.5 million inmates are males. The great godless feminist inversion has not worked. Masculine order can set the prisoner free only if it provides an even more reliable structure of masculine order in which a man will participate in the protection and work of communal life. Mormons figured this out amidst the priestless confusion of the "burned-over districts" of Protestant evangelization during the Second Great Awakening.


[Go here for a review of the Romney biography written a few years ago by Hugh Hewitt, radio host and strong Evangelical].

"His architecture was not in stone but in nations"

The 13th century was the highest of the High Middle Ages.  Saint Francis of Assisi died in 1226; the previous year baby Thomas -- the future Angelic Doctor -- was born to the Count of Aquino.

Far to the East, Genghis Khan was coming to the end of his long career of conquering.  He had founded the Mongol Empire in 1206 (would endure for a couple centuries) -- which at its height was twice as large as the Roman Empire, spanning 6000 miles.

Prime Minister Nehru of India called Genghis Khan [1162 - 1227] "the greatest military genius and leader in history... Alexander and Caesar seem petty before him."  The Mongol Khan believed in "the unchangeable law for ever and ever, and no one could disobey it.  Even the emperor was subject to it."

It is fascinating to browse through Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford (2004).  All the folks today who loudly lament the demise of the American Indian should take a break from their sentimental dancing with wolves, drop their 'dream-catchers,' and pick up this book.  Genghis was a leader of noble savages worthy of high acclaim.

The Mongol army overran everything from "the Indus River to the Danube, from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea... Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus [knelt] before the dusty boots of illiterate young Mongol horsemen."

"The Mongol was ideally suited to travel long distances; each man carried precisely what he needed, but nothing more... Each squad of ten carried a small tent.

The movement and formation of the Mongol army were determined by two factors that set them apart from the armies of every other traditional civilization.  First, the Mongol military consisted entirely of cavalry, armed riders without a marching infantry...

The second unique characteristic of the Mongol army was that it traveled without a commissary or cumbersome supply train other than its large reserve of horses that always accompanied the soldiers.  As they moved, they milked the animals, slaughtered them for food, and fed themselves from hunting and looting.  Marco Polo [who worked for Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis] alleged that the Mongol warriors could travel ten days without stopping to make a fire or heat food...

The decimal organization of Genghis Khan's army made it highly mutable and mobile... The only permament structures he erected were bridges... They sought not merely to conquer the world but to institute a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all languages.

Crushing the will of the enemy was always the top priority... [Trying through propaganda] to win the battle before the first arrow was shot across the battlefield, to defeat the enemy by first creating confusion and then instilling fear to break his spirit...

Above all else, Genghis Khan waged war with this strategic purpose in mind: to preserve Mongol life... On and off the battlefield, the Mongol warrior was forbidden to speak of death, injury, or defeat... Winning by clever deception or cruel trickery was still winning and carried no stain on the bravery of the warriors...

As lifelong nomads, the Mongols learned early to fight on the move... It mattered not at all whether he killed the enemy while attacking toward him or fleeing from him."

Russia's defeat in the mid-19th century Crimean War

"More than any other power, the Russian Empire had religion at its heart."

Orlando Figes is a young London professor who has written extensively on Russia. In his book on the Crimean War, he refuses to marginalize religion. "The tsar, Nicholas I, the man more than anyone responsible for the war... above all believed he was fighting a religious war, a crusade to fulfill Russia's mission to defend the Christians of the Ottoman Empire."

Figes treats as crucial what most historians dismiss in a footnote -- the long tradition of Russian pilgrimages and stewardship of the Holy Land -- resulting often in pitched battles between Eastern and Latin monks for control of shrines and churches such as the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Russia was "a civilization built upon the myth of Orthodox succession to the Byzantine Empire... [with dreams] of the conquest of Constantinople and its resurrection as the Russian capital." Russians felt deeply betrayed by the decision of France and England to ally themselves, not with another Christian state, but with the Turkish Muslims. Dostoevsky (a soldier at the time) portrayed this as the 'crucifixion of the Russian Christ.'

Maybe we in America have shut our ears to the Holy Spirit's challenge to start a religious initiative to Russia, to unite as protectors of beleaguered Christian minorities around the world -- and for both nations to do all in their power to steer China and India to become Christ-bearers. (Francis Fukuyama on today's China: "The regime no longer has any guiding ideal around which it is organized.")

One of the consequences of the Crimean War was the decision of the Tsar to emancipate the serfs in 1861. Professor Figes says:

"Freedom of a sort, however limited it may have been in practice, had at last been granted to the mass of the people, and there were grounds to hope for a national rebirth. Writers compared the Edict to the conversion of Russia to Christianity in the tenth century."

[From a British newspaper story a few days ago:

"It's become something of a Christmas tradition: the annual ecclesiastical punch-up at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This year the Palestinian riot police had to be called in after it all kicked off again, with a hundred or so Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks bashing seven bells out of each other with brooms..."]

Protecting Our Lady by punishing Judas

Pence writes:

"Guidelines, therapeutic counseling, statute of limitations" --  none of this is our language. Catholics use a biblical language of sin, repentance, metanoia, acceptance of punishment and penance -- all of these must accompany a firm purpose of amendment not to sin again.

Waiting for civil authorities to find crimes, asking victims if they wish to press charges -- none of this is the practice of our own justice system. We have neglected the duty to punish, as Pope Benedict said.  Our inquisitorial justice system provides (Canon 1430) that a promoter of justice be appointed for cases which can endanger the public good. Such a promoter functions as our investigator and public prosecutor.  What diocese in America could not use such a special prosecutor? The churchmen who have done crimes against the liturgy, the creed and morality are NOT the Church. We must never say “the Church has sinned” or “the Church must repent” or “our Diocese is sorry and we are all sad.”

"Look not on our sins,” we ask God, “but the faith of thy Church.” Now too many bishops say, “Look not on my faults but the sins of the Church." The personal-injury lawyers want to sue the Church, not the criminal who betrayed both the victim and Holy Mother Church. The Church and the particular dioceses are on the wrong side of these cases. She too has been aggrieved. She too cries for justice. The Church is Mary; she is spotless. The local Church is Christ’s Body, and He once again has been betrayed.  The offending churchman is Judas. He has sinned and the prosecutorial offices of the Petrine Church are meant to wash out the Judas priest and the Judas bishop from the apostolic bond. This is not an optional task, but the Mandatum of Christ issued to Peter and the remaining ten apostles on the evening when the priesthood and Eucharist were instituted.

After the mid-sixties, however, it [ecclesiaistical penal law] was simply not applied any more. The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather, a Church of love; she must not punish. Thus the awareness that punishment can be an act of love ceased to exist. This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people.

Today we have to learn all over again that love for the sinner and love for the person who has been harmed are correctly balanced if I punish the sinner in the form that is possible and appropriate. In this respect there was in the past a change of mentality, in which the law and the need for punishment were obscured. Ultimately this also narrowed the concept of love, which in fact is not just being nice or courteous, but is found in the truth. And another component of truth is that I must punish the one who has sinned against real love.”

(Pope Benedict XVI,  Light of the World interview 2010)

Friday BookReview: Lynch on Dinesh D'Souza

Andrew Lynch at 'Orate Fratres' blog offers this analysis of one of the books by the president of King's College in New York City:

Dinesh D’Souza is best known for going head-to-head with atheists in public debates. This Catholic scholar from India, however, also has a knack for connecting faith to global affairs, foreign policy, and cultural reform on the domestic front. Indeed D’Souza’s book, The Enemy at Home, struck a cord among liberals and conservatives alike, calling out the secularists and making the case that our own moral depravity, sponsored by the secular Left, was the root cause of 9/11. D’Souza argues that conservatives have missed a perfect opportunity to link the culture war with the war on terror – that radical Muslims do not hate democracy, free markets, or new technology, but rather our permissive culture. Contrary to the Left, no Middle Easterner believes America is seeking a new hegemonic, territory-based imperialism. What struck fear into bin Laden was the new “cultural imperialism” of the radical Left which poses an existential threat to Islam.

As a native of India with a long history of relations with Indian Muslims, D’Souza quickly rids us of the liberal-conservative dichotomy which laces our discussions on politics, culture, and religion. Islam is not made up of liberals and conservatives but rather of traditionalists and radicals. The traditionalists are neither moderates nor conservatives; they simply live out the core beliefs of Islam, have high moral standards, and raise strong families. On the flip side, neither “Islamo-fascism” nor “fundamentalism” adequately describes the radicals, for the former term is only an attempt to recycle World War II imagery, painting Muslims as modern Nazis, while the latter term could describe any Muslim who follows the fundamental five pillars of Islam – none of which include terrorism. In the end, the ally we need to defeat the radicals is neither secular France nor the radical liberals in America.

The Enemy at Home argues that we need to win over the Islamic traditionalists.

D’Souza warns us, however, that the radicals are trying to win over the traditionalists as well, and the way they are doing it is by showing the traditionalists the moral bankruptcy of America and Europe. While the vast majority of traditional Muslims have never been to America or Europe, it is noteworthy that almost all the leaders of radical Islam were born here, lived here, or were educated here. As D’Souza says: “The Muslims who hate us the most are the ones who have encountered Western decadence… their hatred was not a product of ignorance but of familiarity; not of Wahhabi indoctrination but of firsthand observation.” It is here that pious Muslims witness radical individualism as the worship of the self, the renunciation of moral standards, and the celebration of those who frequently exercise a “right” to blaspheme God...
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