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    • E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil. – E. Christian Brugger is a Senior Fellow of Ethics and Director of the Fellows Program at the Culture of Life Foundation in Washington, D.C. and the J. Francis Cardinal Stafford Professor of Moral Theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado. He has Master degrees in moral theology and moral philosophy from Seton Hall, Harvard and Oxford Universities and received his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Christian ethics from Oxford in 2000.  Christian has published over 200 articles in scholarly and popular periodicals on topics in bioethics, sexual ethics, natural law theory, as well as the interdisciplinary field of psychology and Christian anthropology.  He lives on a farm in Evergreen, Colorado, with his wife Melissa and five children.
    • Helen Alvaré, J.D. – Helen Alvaré, J.D. is Honorary Fellow in Law at the Culture of Life Foundation.   Helen is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia where she teaches and publishes in the areas of property law, family law, and Catholic social thought. Professor Alvaré serves as Consultor for the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute where she chairs the Conscience Protection Task Force, is President of the Chiaroscuro Foundation and most recently Editor and Co-Author of Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves.From 2000 to Spring 2008, Professor Alvare taught at the Catholic University Columbus School of Law. Professor Alvare also lectures widely in the United States and Europe on matters concerning marriage, family and respect for human life. She is a consultant to ABC News and to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Marriage and Pro-Life Committees. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI named Professor Alvare a Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity.From 1987-2000, Professor Alvare was an attorney with the USCCB’s General Counsel Office and director of information and planning for the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. In these positions, she testified before the…
    • Jennifer Kimball Watson, Be.L. – Jennifer Kimball Watson joined Culture of Life Foundation as Executive Director in November of 2007. She is an Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at the Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, F.L.. Previous to her work with the Culture of Life Foundation Jennifer was a Wilbur Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal located in Michigan. Jennifer earned a Licentiate in Bioethics from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum School of Bioethics in Rome.  Her prior undergraduate studies were in International Administration and Government Policy at the Evergreen State College in Washington State.Jennifer’s areas of specialization include Eugenics in Artificial Reproductive Technologies, Heterologous Adoption and Transfer of Embryos, The Womb in Reproductive Technologies, and the Role and Significance of The Medical Act. She interviews with National Conservative and Christian Radio Syndicates as well as several foreign and secular reporters. Jennifer has spoken on the dignity of women and women’s social issues to various audiences since 1999 and has spent several years in advocacy work with various international organizations in the field of life sciences. From 2000 to 2006 she recruited and coordinated grass-roots social policy efforts that consisted of a public and private sector network of professionals and academics…
    • Margaret Datiles Watts, J.D. – Margaret Datiles Watts, J.D., is Culture of Life Foundation’s Associate Fellow in Law. Maggie is member of Washington, D.C. and Maryland bar associations.  She holds a B.A. in Philosophy (Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude) and a Certificate in Classical Philosophy from the University Honors Program at The Catholic University of America. She earned a Juris Doctorate from Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, where she served as a Research Fellow at CUA Law’s Marriage Law Project. She also studied Roman Law and EU Law at Magdalene College, University of Oxford, England.A former Fellow and Staff Counsel for Americans United for Life, Datiles co-authored an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in the landmark partial birth abortion case, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, et al., companion case to Gonzales v. Carhart (2007). She also advised legislators, policy groups and the media (radio and newspapers) on abortion and bioethics laws and drafted pro-life model legislation.Her areas of research and/or publication include legal issues surrounding abortion, government funding restrictions for abortion, contraception, healthcare rights of conscience, stem cell research, artificial reproductive technology, population decline, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage.She currently publishes articles…
    • William E. May – William E. May is Senior Research Fellow of the Culture of Life Foundation and emeritus Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he taught the academic years from 1991 through 2008 after teaching for 20 years at The Catholic University of America. He is the author of more than a dozen books. The 2nd edition of his Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life was published by Our Sunday Visitor (2008), and a substantively revised 3rd edition is scheduled for publication in 2013. In 2003 Our Sunday Visitor published a revised and expanded edition of his Introduction to Moral Theology. Among his other books are: Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995; 2nd revised edition, 2009)); and, with Ronald Lawler OFM Cap and Joseph Boyle, Catholic Sexual Ethics (rev. and enlarged ed. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1998; 2nd rev. edition, 1998; a 3rd edition, substantively revised by May alone, was published in 2011); Theology of the Body: Genesis and Growth (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2010) He has published more…
    • Frank J. Moncher, Ph.D. – Dr. Frank Moncher received his Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina in 1992, following which he spent several years on faculty of the Medical College of Georgia, with a focus on Adolescent Intensive Services. In 2000 he moved to the Washington, DC area to teach at a graduate school of psychology which had a mission of integrating the science of psychology in the context of the Catholic Christian view of the human person. Concurrent with this, over the past 12 years he has consulted with 11 different religious orders and 4 dioceses to provide psychological evaluations of aspirants and candidates, as well as consulting with different diocesan marriage tribunals.His research interests include the integration of Catholic thought into psychotherapy, child and family development issues, and integrated models of assessment of candidates for the priesthood and religious life. Frank is published in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, Adolescence, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Edification, and the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, as well as contributing to several book chapters on children, families, and religious issues.Since 2010, Dr. Moncher has worked for the Diocese of Arlington and Catholic Charities as a psychologist and consultant.  His…
    • Steve Soukup – Fellow in Culture and Economy Steve Soukup is the Vice President and Publisher of The Political Forum, an “independent research provider” that delivers research and consulting services to the institutional investment community, with an emphasis on economic, social, political, and geopolitical events that are likely to have an impact on the financial markets in the United States and abroad. Mr. Soukup has followed politics and federal regulatory policy for the financial community since coming to Washington in 1996, when he joined Mark Melcher at the award-winning Washington-research office of Prudential Securities. While at Prudential, he was part of the Washington team that placed first in Institutional Investor magazine’s annual analyst survey for eight years in a row. Mr. Soukup left Prudential with Mr. Melcher to join Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2000 and stayed there for two years, before leaving early in 2003 to become a partner at The Political Forum. While at Lehman, Mr. Soukup authored macro-political commentary and followed policy developments in the Natural Resources sector group, focusing on agriculture and energy policy. He also headed Lehman’s industry-leading analysis of asbestos litigation reform efforts. At The Political Forum, Mr. Soukup was initially the editor and junior partner,…
    • Dr. Pilar Calva, M.D. – Dr. Calva is a medical doctor specializing in Human Genetics with a Cytogenetics subspecialty from The University of Paris, France. In Paris, she was the under-study to the world-renowned Professor Jerome Lejeune, who is considered by some to be the father of modern genetics. In 1958, Lejeune discovered that an extra 21st chromosome is responsible for Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21. Lejeune dedicated his life tirelessly and unfailingly to defend the unborn, especially those with Down syndrome, testifying before scientific conferences and lawmakers. He was appointed by Pope John Paul II as the first President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. In Dr. Calva’s own words: When I arrived in France, I lived a life divided between faith and reason. I thought that from Monday to Saturday, I put on my white coat for my scientific tasks, and Sunday was the day I took off the white coat, put on my crucifix and dedicated myself to my religious duties. Professor Lejeune truly converted me, making me see that one can wear the white coat and the cross, at the same time. That is, one can fly with the wing of faith and the wing of reason. Inspired by the life…
    • Elyse M. Smith – Elyse M. Smith is an associate attorney with a northern Virginia law firm working in nonprofit and church law, estate planning, and civil litigation. Ms. Smith graduated magna cum laude from Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida, where she served on Law Review and was published in the Ave Maria International Law Journal. She was named “Most Dedicated Editor” for her work on Law Review. Ms. Smith earned her bachelor’s degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.  
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  >  Issue Briefs  >  Blog  >  The Vatican vs. Doonesbury

The Vatican vs. Doonesbury

Posted: April 30, 2015
By: Steve Soukup
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As we have noted before in these pages, American Catholics and non-Catholics alike tend to view the Holy Father, Pope Francis, as a liberal, or a “leftist,” given his penchant for scolding the rich and powerful and defending the worth, dignity, and human rights of even the lowliest and most wretched of men.

We disagree with this assessment.  In fact, we would argue that traditional political labels are of little or no value in assessing men like Pope Francis, whose job is to protect and evangelize the truth, without regard to one political ideology or another.

Recently, Pope Francis pursued this end in a speech denouncing genocide in all its forms and all its recent manifestations, including the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Turks during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.  The Pope’s pointed comments were made at a mass celebrated in the Armenian Catholic rite at St. Peter’s and in front of the Armenian President and several members of the Armenian clergy.  The Holy Father not only condemned the Turkish acts as “genocide,” but gently chided the current Turkish leadership for continuing to deny the reality of the evil perpetrated against the largely-Christian Armenians.  “Concealing or denying evil,” the Pope declared, “is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.”

For his trouble, the Holy Father was roundly condemned by the Turks, in particular by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who not only excoriated him for his comments but also recalled the Turkish ambassador to the Vatican in protest.  You see, the Turks not only deny the size of the Armenian carnage, but deny that it should be called “genocide.”  Turkey has long insisted that anyone who applies that term to the Armenian “issue” is insulting the Turkish people and is therefore a pro-Christian, anti-Muslim provocateur.  Erdogan has now added Pope Francis to that list.

Frankly, we doubt that the Pope is terribly troubled by the Turks’ collective reaction.  He knew well what he was doing, what he was saying, and how the Turks – and perhaps Muslim people more generally – would interpret his comments.  And yet he feared not.  Pope Francis is quite clearly upset by, and frustrated with, the global political consensus that has chosen to turn a blind eye to the slaughter of Christians throughout the Muslim world.  The Pope has asked – and asked, and asked, and asked – for the powers that be to denounce these horrors occurring throughout the Muslim world, from Iraq to Nigeria to makeshift boats in the Mediterranean.  His comments on the Armenian genocide were directed, specifically and personally, to the Armenians whose ancestors suffered under Turkish oppression.  But they were made against the backdrop of the ongoing butchery against Christians by Muslim extremists.

Now, contrast, if you will, the Pope’s comments with those made the week before by Garry Trudeau, the formerly-famous illustrator of the formerly-relevant Doonsebury cartoon.  Trudeau became the first cartoonist ever to receive the prestigious George Polk lifetime award and, as befits a man of his preoccupations, he used the occasion of his acceptance speech to blame his fellow cartoonists at the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo for their own murders at the hands of Muslim extremists.

“Charlie Hebdo,” Trudeau, began, “which always maintained it was attacking Islamic fanatics, not the general population, has succeeded in provoking many Muslims throughout France to make common cause with its most violent outliers.  This is a bitter harvest.”

Never mind the chauvinistic presumption that the poor “general population” of Muslims simply couldn’t control themselves when confronted by the big ol’ meanies at Charlie Hebdo.  Trudeau, quite clearly, believes that the satirists at Charlie Hebdo, through the exercise of free speech, were responsible for their own deaths because they “provoked” Muslims into murdering them.  This is shameful, to say the very least.  Unfortunately, it was but the tip of the proverbial iceberg for Trudeau.  He continued:

Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable.  Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful.  Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule.  Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny — it’s just mean.

By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech.

Our instincts here are to dismiss Trudeau’s ramblings as both ignorant and amoral.  After all, Islam will soon be the world’s most populous religion, giving lie to Trudeau’s presumptions about “disenfranchised minorities.”  Moreover, a religious sect capable of inciting as much violence, as much warfare, and as much fear in its enemies as radical Islam has can hardly be considered “powerless.”  To the casual observer, Trudeau’s moral pronouncements based on this bizarre and parochial notion of “punching down” against one of the most feared and aggressive geopolitical forces of the last half-century might seem stupid, or worse yet, insane.  But they are neither.  They are, at least in Trudeau’s construction, perfectly expressive of the true moral condition.

To the contemporary Left – of which Trudeau is a shining example – traditional conceptions of right and wrong are not sufficient to capture the nuance of human experience.  “Good” and “evil” are mere terms expressing power relationships and serve no purpose save to facilitate the abuse and oppression of one group by another.  Or, to put it more simply:  to a postmodern, post-religious Leftist like Trudeau, Muslims are and ever shall be “oppressed” by the white Christian aggressors who exploit and dominate the “other” in global society for their own benefit.  Radical Muslim terrorists cannot be morally contemptible, therefore, since they are merely fighting back against the manipulation of power used against them by a cruel and domineering culture.

In his account of Pope Francis’s comments on the Armenian genocide, the inimitable Walter Russell Mead asked if the Pope “reads Huntington,” referring to Samuel Huntington, the Harvard scholar who posited that the 21st century would be dominated by a “Clash of Civilizations,” pitting, among others, Western Civilization against Islam.  We understand Mead’s point, but believe his comment to be somewhat facetious.  More to the point, we believe that the Pope and his comments on genocide are far more representative of a different clash, the clash of moral codes within Western Civilization—a clash with traditional morality on one side and contemporary, post-modern moral relativism on the other.

Pope Francis was, as we noted, unafraid to challenge evil and to call it by name.  He was unwilling to condone evil because of the cultural status of its perpetrators.  Evil, he proclaimed, is always and everywhere evil.

Garry Trudeau, by contrast, refused to acknowledge, much less condemn, evil because he feels that power relationships mitigate evil acts.  He suggested, in short, that evil is relative and cannot simply be evaluated equally or universally.  Some people – in this case radical Muslims – are less capable of evil, given their position in the power relationship.

Unfortunately, Trudeau represents the ascendant belief system in the West today, and his refusal to call Muslim terrorism evil is echoed throughout Western political culture.  The President of the United States, for example, won’t even call the perpetrators of Islamic terrorism “Islamic,” for fear of assessing blame for monstrous acts to otherwise oppressed people.

In this sense, then, Pope Francis – the man who challenged the Turks and who calls the slaughter of Christian peoples “evil,” whether it occurred yesterday or a century ago – not only stands with his predecessors, but also stands athwart history (and contemporary culture) yelling “Stop!”

Pope Francis may not be as conservative as some of us may like.  And he may like to talk more about climate change and the potential evils of the market economy than we see fit.  However, he is anything but a contemporary “liberal,” which is to say that he has nothing in common with the likes of Garry Trudeau.

The Holy Father defies and transcends political labels, but he is, without question, a stanch and courageous defender of the traditional moral code.  A “man of the Right” he may not be, but a moral “conservative” he is unquestionably.

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