Global Communitarian Jesuits?

John Courtney Murray, S.J., and Religious Pluralism: [First speaker] "In the 1950s Murray declared that 'modernity is dead' and that his generation was entering 'a new world order.' He went on to say that a 'post-modern' America finally was escaping the individualism, materialism, and 'technologism' that had been so much part of our social history. Now, he said, the nation was entering into a communitarian age in which religions would deeply inform our public life. Catholics, Protestants, and Jews all can speak out and shape American public debates, Murray declared, though he insisted that they speak out only in the languages of natural law, not in the religious languages through which each individual community separately expressed its deepest loves, hopes, fears, and commitments. ....

    "We have been hearing these very same terms of post-modernity, common good, responsibility, and communitarianism, as well as other non-individualistic terms such as 'covenant,' in recent political writings and during the last Presidential campaign. These new-old languages of community are responses to the alleged individualism, materialism, and consumerism of the last, the 'Me,' decade.

     "...most of us would agree that our nation and our world should be more attentive to our collective responsibilities for one another. ...

     "Is there anything in Murray's and in Roman Catholic thought that might help us make another, better run at a more communitarian and just society, a society that is more intimately shaped by America's religions, including Jewish and Christian concerns for its weakest members? .....

     [Second speaker] Dr. Os Guinness, executive director of the Trinity Forum, has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Brookings Institution. He is a graduate of the University of London and Oxford and the author of The Dust of Death... and The American Hour....

     "The topic of tonight's forum asks whether we are entering into a "new era" for religious freedom in church-state relations. As a British citizen who has spent a lot of time studying religious liberty in American public life, I have concluded that very few issues generate so much heat. I do believe, however, that with this new administration we face an extraordinary moment of opportunity.

     "The public square: sacred, naked, or civil? For the last 12 years we have seen the ugliness of members of the religious right who have what we might call a "re-imposer mentality." They would like to re-impose their vision of an earlier state of things on everyone else, regardless of diversity, for the sake of assuring a so-called "sacred" public square. They represent one extreme. On the other extreme and partly as a reaction to the religious right, there are the "removers." They would like to remove every trace of faith from the public square and to produce, thereby, a "naked" public square.

     "The ideal surely is what I would call a 'civil' public square which is neither 'sacred' nor 'naked'

     "...nowhere is the crisis of the primary American values more obvious than in the public schools. I refer to the controversy and diffidence and reticence about how to teach some of the deepest civic principles of American life, including the importance of religious liberty in a pluralistic society. Most dear to Thomas Jefferson himself was educating the citizenry for democracy. ...

     "I, personally, owe a great debt to Jacques Maritain and John Courtney Murray for helping me think through the first principles of religious liberty in American public life. ...Copyright © 1993 Woodstock Theological Center

Woodstock Theological Center: "The Woodstock Theological Center is an independent nonprofit institute at Georgetown University that engages in theological and ethical reflection on topics of social, economic, business, scientific, cultural, religious, and political importance.... Drawing on the Roman Catholic tradition, the Woodstock Center is ecumenically open, multi-disciplinary, and collaborative with, among others, the business community, government, religious groups, universities, other research centers, and the media. The Woodstock Center aims to be attentive to Scripture's concern for solidarity with those most in need. Its work is a particular instance of the contemporary mission of the Society of Jesus: the service of faith through the promotion of justice."

Religion and the Renewal of Civic Society: "I will first say a word about our contending views of the role of religion in public life, most notably, "thin" liberal-philosophic rights talk that banishes religion from public reasoning and the "thick" communitarian rejoinder that civic virtue and the common good are "ineliminably religious." Drawing upon the heritage of Roman Catholic social teaching, I will then propose a way of thinking about the public role of religion that is neither thick nor thin, and conclude by showing what William James would call the "cash value" of these remarks by applying them to the Catholic Worker Movement as an exemplary "faith-based" organization. ...

     "Like King, we were seeking to overcome the enduring legacy of racism and violence besetting our neighborhood. And, like King, our rights rhetoric bore witness to its communitarian, religious roots. The spirituals of the civil rights movement were, after all, just that."

"Communitarian Lite: American Catholics & Their Politics," by William Bole, published in Commonweal, September 13, 2002: [William Bole is a freelance journalist in Massachusetts and an associate fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. This article is part of the American Catholics in the Public Square project, organized by Commonweal and supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts.]

   "...there is another Catholic strategy at play among the American bishops, though it has been rather eclipsed recently by their concerns with clergy sex scandals. The bishops have their own ideological approach that can move to the left or the right, depending on the issue. They are often seen shifting in one direction when pressing for government assistance to the needy and in another direction when advocating traditional moral norms regarding birth, death, family, and society. At the core of this approach, however, is a call to Catholics to embrace a communitarian ethic, one that seeks to curb individualistic excess in all quarters of life, from the family to the economy. ...

    "Catholics may be different, but why they would be is less easy to assess. If they are more likely than other Americans to view the world through a communitarian lens, is that because of a distinctive Catholic sensibility? Bendyna, Perl, and other CARA researchers would likely say yes. They seem partial to sociologist John E. Tropman's explanation, in The Catholic Ethic in American Society (Jossey-Bass, 1995), that there is a Catholic ethic that values sharing and mutuality above achievement and self-reliance, as well as to Greeley's Catholic-imagination thesis. Some polling (by Greeley and others) has teased this out, but Leege of Notre Dame is among those who demand harder evidence that religiosity tilts Catholics in this direction. ....

: How many are attracted to either the wall-to-wall conservatism of Republicans (with room, at least occasionally, for references to compassion), or to the bishops' more communitarian stance? From a larger point of view, the pressing question is whether the 60-million-plus Americans who call themselves Catholic make a distinct contribution to public life....Surveys conducted for the Public Square project signal what could be called a "consistent-ethic lite" or soft communitarianism among Catholics. Other research has revealed Catholics as being somewhat to the left of other Americans on bread-and-butter issues and to the right on lifestyle questions.....

"Woodstock Center Project Focuses on Globalization," published in National Jesuit News, October 1999: "The gathering at the U.S. Jesuit Conference and Georgetown University marked the beginning of a structured conversation, as part of a cooperative Jesuit initiative called the "Global Economy and Cultures Project." Directors of a dozen Jesuit social research and action centers, on five continents, attended the meeting. ....

     '"Where I come from, the people are all pro-globalization. Nobody is critical of globalization,' Father Toner said. He added, 'I accept that it’s doing a lot of harm in a lot of countries. But I don’t think it’s inevitable.' ...

     '"Fundamentally, there is something that is extremely positive about this whole movement of making the world one," said Father Ricardo Falla, S.J., who coordinates the Central American Province’s Social Apostolate Commission, in Honduras. 'It’s an expression of Creation, God’s creation. This is good. 'But as in Creation, there is also sin. This whole thing could be used to dominate' and suppress people and cultures, he said. ....'We need to look for Christ in the ambiguous, painful, exploitative situations in our economy and cultures and world. And we need to do this together, because it is a communal or corporate discernment.'"

Co-Discipleship in Action: Bishops and Laity in Dialogue : What is clear, is that there is great interest in programs dealing with lay spirituality. "That doesn't mean that that excludes business or that excludes something else," says Ms. Leckey. Spirituality must have an impact on life in the family, workplace, and church. "People are trying to get underneath it all to the source of what it is that infuses the various expressions of your one life," says Ms. Leckey. "People sense that the resources are there within the church for that and they are right. Jesuits have been doing this for people for years." Often people attracted to these programs have already been involved in "Cursillo or they maybe they have had some significant retreat or one of the movements," explains Ms. Leckey. "This looks like the next step." Others are looking for a further development in a systematic way of what began in the Renew experience. People are looking for something that will bring unity to a fragmented life. They want something that integrates the whole life: religious, work, and family. "People sense that there is some kind of split going on and they try to bridge that in some way," says Ms. Leckey.