Michael Novak's Commencement Address at Franciscan University of Steubenville

Knowing the Unknowable God: How Most People Know the Presence of GodDelivered at Franciscan University of Steubenville on May 9, 2009

Distinguished Presidors and guests, Remarkable Faculty, graduates of “0-9” – and all your amazing parents!

I know with extremely high probability that you of the graduating class of 2009 have changed immensely in the last four years. I know your parents have seen it in you. You yourself recognize it: you are no longer who you were in high school.

… Myself, I know that you have learned good mental and moral discipline, know how to work hard, carry a lot of information in your heads, and think clearly. I know this because during the last twenty years I have worked with a good number of graduates from this great Catholic University. I was skeptical at first, but learned to admire their high quality and sound preparation, their enthusiasm, and their can-do attitude.

They also know how to laugh, and how to party. I’ve seen that, too.

Above all, graduates from this place are distinguished by their intelligent grasp of the Catholic faith and its best spirit of affection and enthusiasm. Graduates of Franciscan Steubenville seem to have learned the happy openness of their great Patron from Assisi, and married it to the intellectual searching of St. Bonaventure. One senses that happy marriage of temperaments in a remarkable number of you. Praise God! It is a rare and wonderful combination to encounter.

Let my second word of congratulations today go to your parents and families. This day is for parents! Today is a tremendous step in the life of your daughter or son. It is the crowning day of an enormous gift that you have given them—a university education. That is a privilege only a tiny fraction of the parents who have ever lived on earth have been able to give their children—the best gift, next to life itself, next to the faith.

And, dear parents, today also means one less year of tuition payments! … My wife and I will never forget the discovery we made the month after our last child had completed university–discretionary income! We had forgotten what it was like.

But today belongs especially to the graduates of the class of “aught 9.” You are the ones God chose to launch the next thousand years of Christian history.

What a difference you are going to make in the world! We don’t yet know where. We don’t yet know how. But still … During the four years of your stay here, thousands of young men and women your age have offered their bodies to bring freedom to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of them gave the rest of their lives, young as they were, and some came home badly hurt. All of them together performed one of the great military feats in the history of American arms. They rescued some 80 million human beings from tyranny and torture. They have given two nations a shot at building stable democracies…given them a chance, not a guarantee.

Some of you may do even greater things. There are countless restless souls to be healed, families to be started and nourished to maturity, discoveries to be made, businesses and new technologies to be started, young minds to be taught and inspired, the sick to be cared for, the poor to be lifted up. – And graduating seniors with big debts to pay off!

What I really want to talk to you about today is the center of your lives –about God, and how people know Him, even without faith.

Let me begin with a little story about my daughter Jana, who has written two books with me: “My daughter, the agno-theist,” I call her. Years after her high school years, she told me that she had actually become an atheist at that time. Then, when she went to one of the best secular universities in America, she discovered she really couldn’t be an atheist. She saw a contradiction in the thinking of her atheist professors, who said there was no “meaning” to things, because the world came to be by chance, without reason. At the same time, they insisted that the only way to come into contact with “reality” is by scientific method, rigorous logic, and the uprooting of prior prejudices. She couldn’t accept the contradiction between a world to be understood as springing wholly from chance, and a world to be understood through a rigorous use of science.

Besides, there was a moral chilliness – except in political matters – that she didn’t much approve of, either. So she stopped calling herself an atheist. She concluded that she is, after all, a theist. (By the way, I am a great believer in encouraging our young to question everything, to keep raising questions. The drive to question endlessly is the best way to gain an experience of the infinite – and to be restless, until one rests in the Infinite.)

Still, in college, Jana was not at all sure what the existence of God meant for her. Why did God care about her? Maybe God is just impersonal, like the frightening powers of nature. She was pretty sure there is a God, but she was very unsure what God is. So she called herself an “agno-theist.”

I’ll bet that there are at least some here today – perhaps many – who are rather unclear about what goes through their head when they say – or hear – the word “God.” Certainly the New Atheists have sold going-on two million books questioning what Christians and Jews mean by God, making fun of self-contradictions, finding no evidence of God’s existence even. The New Atheists sure expend a lot of hatred on a God they say does not even exist. Nonetheless, a lot of people now seem troubled by the question, What do I mean by “God”?

The main point I want to put before you is that God is not, and cannot be, reached by our poor human equipment. He is on an altogether different frequency. Apart from the God-man Jesus Christ we cannot find Him through out senses. We cannot smell Him. We cannot reach out and touch Him. We cannot taste Him, or hear Him. We cannot see Him. Or picture Him in our imagination. Or recall Him in memory. And even in regard to Jesus, most people who encountered him during his life on earth did not see God in him. God no one can see.

Only little children think they can picture God. Kindergarten. Sister Heloise comes up behind Ellen in a drawing class. “What are you drawing, Ellen?” Ellen hunches her shoulders over her paper, and says: “Drawing a picture of God.” -- Sister Heloise: ‘But no one knows what God looks like.” Entirely unabashed, Ellen replies: “Now they will.”

Or Sister Margaret in catechism class. “Where is God?” she asks the class. Maureen in the second row waves her hand wildly. “Maureen,” says the Sister. “He’s in the bathroom,” Maureen insists confidently. “Maureen!” says Sister Margaret. “Well,” little Maureen defiantly insists. “Every morning when my sister and I are in the bathroom, daddy knocks on the door, and says ‘God, are you still in there?’”

Back to the world of adults. “No one sees God,” St. John’s Letter tells us. Philosophy tells us the same thing. Our senses are inadequate for reaching God. He is beyond the range of our imagination. We can shoot concepts up toward Him like so many arrows, but they all fall back to earth without quite hitting their target. God is simply too great for our minds or senses to penetrate through to Him.

Yet the truth is that nearly all human beings in history, from the beginning until now, have been aware that they are in God’s presence. Atheists hardly appeared in prior history, before the last two centuries. Only in the twentieth century did there appear a significant number of atheists in high positions, able to sway the public culture.

In the United States, recently, only two percent of the population declared themselves Atheists in the large Pew Poll, and only six percent more as Agnostics. Quite stunningly, half the Agnostics admitted that they did believe in a great Intelligence underlying all things, and a great force or energy moving this cosmos. So did twenty percent of the Atheists. In other words, a majority of Atheists and Agnostics also believe in God, at least a God rather like the God of Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus, Cicero, Seneca, and virtually all the philosophers down until modern times.

What today’s Atheists and Agnostics seem to reject is the Jewish God and the Christian God. That is the God in whom they do not believe.

Among common people, by comparison, the default position of most of the human race is that they know that God is all around them, and in almost all things—they know they are in the presence of God. I say they ‘know’ this. But they do not, of course, know it through sense knowledge, or by imagination, or memory. They know it in a kind of darkness. They know what they cannot directly see. In fact, for most of human history, it was almost unknown in human experience not to know it. It took work to become an atheist, and it was not easy, as Jean-Paul Sartre explained in his autobiography Words, to remain consistent about it. He often found himself on a particularly beautiful day thanking God. He said it took a lot of vigilance every minute to be an atheist all the way through.

In fact, one of the hardest things about being an atheist, by their own testimony, is not having anyone to thank for the marvels they run into every day.

Now it is important for Christians and Jews to be able to give a reasoned account of what they believe. This is because the God of the Muslims may be pure, naked Will, more powerful than any law, but the God of Jews and Christians is the God of mind, and logic, and law, and probabilities, and surprises and creations and serendipity – but He is to be thought of first as a Word, that is, an Insight – “In the beginning was the Word.” The Word generated by the Source of all Insight, the Father, and communicated through all of creation by the Holy Spirit generated by the brilliant light of the overpowering love of Son for Father, and Father for Son.

A Jewish friend of mind once asked me, sitting at lunch with me high in the Rockies of Colorado, “Michael, what goes through your mind when you say the word Trinity. I don’t get it.” I wasn’t ready for that. But the woman he was very happily wed to was sitting with him. I asked him, an old experienced man, what was the best thing he had known in his life? What was the thing he might say was “divine,” almost too good for human beings. His love for Esther, his kids, his sisters?

Isn’t it true that the best thing you, too, have ever known in life, the most divine thing, is love – or, maybe better, communion? That’s how we Christians hold to our notion of Trinity. Our God isn’t just a solitary being, icy, and isolated, and alone. The most divine of all human experiences is love, love that is requited, love that is a circle binding all within it. The communion achieved by a man and woman who love each other so much they have committed themselves to each other for all eternity, and their communion with their sons and daughters who are the fruit of their own original communion?

That is why we think of our God as a Communio Divinarum Personarum, a communion of divine persons. Looking at it this way, we learn to respect both the singleness of every person, and the communion in which each reaches its own full happiness.

Nonetheless …my main subject today is not Christian or Catholic faith. It concerns most human beings of all time, even without Christian faith. Here are three of the signs, I think, by which most of them become aware of the presence of God… all through this universe -- and in themselves.

First, the path of beauty. The beauty of so many sunsets, and even sunrises… the breathtaking beauty of standing on a peak in the Rockies, purple mountain ranges beyond dark blue ranges, and grey-green ones… the beauty of Mozart’s sonatas, and J.S. Bach’s “The Saint Matthew Passion.” ... The incredible fragility and beauty of the ear of a newborn son or daughter, held in the palm of one’s hand for the first time… the beauty of a snowflake caught on a dark blue mitten in the seconds before it melts… the beauty in the flashing eyes of the one you love in young love … There is just so much beauty in the world, so beautifully and surprisingly ordered that it seems more like the masterpiece of a novelist, a master of surprise, a creative artist, than like an irrefutable chain forged by a logician. From beauty, the heart rises in wonder, gratitude and upward aspiration.

Second, the path of goodness. There is so much goodness in the world, even among us poor and weak and will-bent human beings. So many daughters and sisters stay with elderly parents and nurse them through awful cancers and other torments of age, with great love and solicitude and generosity. If a mother runs into a burning home to rescue her three-year-old we don’t even think of it as special heroism, it is the sort of thing that mothers do. How much immense good there is. How much suffering is borne nobly. How much self-sacrifice there is … All these things make a suffering God seem credible to us. They point somehow to the divine.

Third, the communion of souls. When Anton Scharansky was suffering the agonies of solitary confinement in the Gulag, his chief interrogator tried to plant the idea in him that, even if he told the lies they wanted from him, no one would know, they would just go into the rows and rows of files they had stacked up by the millions. “You are going to tell me anyway. Why not make it easier for both of us?"

Then the interrogator devilishly employed the example of Galileo, a hero of Scharansky the physicist. After all, he said, Galileo did not tell the whole truth to his interrogators. “Still, for you and for millions, Galileo is a hero.”

This line stunned Scharansky, but then gave him an insight. Galileo had been dead for more than 400 years, but his partial betrayal of truth was supposed to influence Scharansky to do the same. Then Scharansky’s case would be used to weaken a long chain of others. In other words, the inner life of every human being is linked to the falls of other human beings. In our heroism and in our falls, there is a secret communion of souls.

So there we have it: Beauty, Goodness, Communion,

Beauty by surprise, not exactly beauty by design. The overwhelming beauty of the universe, as seen through the Hubble telescope (brilliant stars strewn like sand, exploding in glorious colors), and seen also in shiny grains of sand in the palms of our hands. Ours is not so much a God of Predetermined Five-Year Plans, as this God: the Artist, using serendipity and schemes of probabilities and sudden turns in the plot.

And the heroic examples of so many good persons, humble persons, unknown persons down the ages. Think of them, the saints in your own family and circles of friends.

And in both good and bad alike, the community of souls down the ages. So that the Psalms of King David sing through our hearts as though springing unbidden from eternal depths, for us as for him.

Beauty, goodness, communion: All these three things praise God.

And so should you – so will you – in everything you do in your lives. God bless all of you, and God bless your parents. … And all your teachers … and officers of this miracle-doing University.

Jack French Kemp 1935-2009

'Kemp' means warrior, and he was the most joyous warrior of our generation. He was generous, happy, ebullient — I never saw a mean note in his heart. He was a great, enthusiastic teacher. He was the one who first showed me the openness and joy in economics — in seizing opportunity, in building a better life for one's family and community. Every time he joined Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail in 1980, you could see the Gipper's face light up. They were magic, those two.

Why Did God Command Evil Deeds?

Two different persons have told me recently that they cannot accept a God who commanded Moses and others to do evil. One challenge came by email, and the other came from my fifteen-year old granddaughter. They asked me to explain how I can accept a God who commanded Moses and others in the Old Testament – good people – to do bad things? Among many examples, God ordered Moses and his army to execute the Midianites, not only the men, but the women and male children. The virgin girls they are to keep for themselves. Initially, the Israelites resisted this command, and Moses had to give the harsh order again. Does this mean that following this God forces me to abandon compassion and reason, respect for human rights and the value of every human life? Both my correspondent and my granddaughter abhor the implied glorification of lawless will. My correspondent wrote: “I take this episode as expressing the idea that God’s authority is absolutely without limit, that there are no values apart from God’s will, thus man has no dignity or rights on his own account. If he wishes us to slaughter one another, we are in no position to question or to disagree.” To follow this God, he implies, is to abandon one’s humanity.

I am no specialist in biblical studies. I do not know how Jewish rabbis have explained these texts down the centuries. Still, I have always read the stories of the Jewish testament – from the polygamy of Abraham to the commands of Yahweh to bash the heads of captured infants against stones – as a description of the way things once were on earth, everywhere, whereas in the Bible there was a slow unfolding of humane, even godly, values. This unfolding was slow, although not nearly so slow as the eons of Darwinian evolution so many enlightened people today find acceptable.

As I recall, even the wisest of the Greek philosophers allowed for the killing and/or enslavement of captured populations. They killed so that threatening peoples would not soon again be a threat. They enslaved, to free up more Athenian and Spartan warriors for battle. They approved of infanticide among their own people. Further, both Plato and Aristotle thought slavery a natural institution, and held that most humans have the souls of slaves, and deserve to be slaves. They did not believe in human equality; quite the contrary. Some men are made of bronze, some of silver, only a few of gold.

What my email correspondent described as compassion, reason, human rights and human dignity entered slowly into human history as yeast into dough. It took a long time for a new way of viewing human individuals to emerge; even today, compassion and respect for the dignity of every human being (in the womb, in helpless old age) are hardly established in universal practice.

Certain characteristics that we now hold to mark a fully “humane” person emerged only slowly through time. (In fact there are still parts of the human race that have not heard of them, or appropriated them as their own.) Forgiveness, compassion, and a sense of all humans as equals in the sight of God are in historical perspective late blooms. Another relatively recent and important characteristic is the responsibility of the human individual to follow his own conscience (and the inner Light that illumines his conscience).

As I read the Old Testament, it consists of books that tell the history of the education of a privileged part of the human race in the Creator’s high standards for all of humanity. Not all is revealed at once. Many existing evils are not immediately uprooted. Slowly and spiraling up and down through the centuries, though on a slightly upward tendency, Israel is taught that God wishes to be approached not in subservience but in friendship, and that our proper approach to him is not self-abasement but love.

Israel is also commanded that humans should love one another. God’s commandments outline the basic social code – not to dishonor one’s parents, kill another human, steal, bear false witness, lie, commit adultery or fornication, covet, etc. This code turns out to be very close to what the natural law of human experience also teaches disparate peoples outside the circle of God’s Covenant with Israel – it teaches by painful trial and error. Peoples that violate this basic social code slowly destroy themselves. People who follow this code prosper, and establish mutual trust and cooperation.

My sincere and respectful questioner has helped me catch sight of a profound irony. Now that he has learned from the Bible a very high standard of virtue, conscience, judgment and aspiration, he rejects the Author Who taught him those moral advantages. Why? Because that Author did not reveal everything at once.

My correspondent rejects God by the standards that God – and God alone – taught us to observe: not only the Ten Commandments (which all may learn), but also the Love of God and Neighbor, Compassion, Forgiveness, the Dignity of every single conscience, the immortal Worth of everyone (we alone made in the image of the Creator), and the human rights that follow therefrom.

Somehow, my correspondent’s path does not seem right to me.

I think it admirable that God has been patient in schooling us, and in schooling us still.

Published in The Catholic Thing May 4, 2009

Amazing Growth in Opposition to Abortion

By Michael Novak and Mitch Boersma

The latest Pew Research survey (April 30) shows an amazing drop in support for legal abortion since August 2008, and a corresponding jump in numbers of those who now hold that abortion should be made illegal in most or all cases. This trend shows an astonishing rise in resistance to abortion among people of all ages, and an eye-catching jump in opposition to abortion among moderate and liberal Republicans.

The overall picture shows a virtual tie between those who want to make abortion illegal in most or all cases (44%) and those who maintain that it should be legal in most or all cases (46%). According to Pew: “The decline in support for legal abortion has come entirely in the share saying abortion should be legal in most cases (from 37% to 28%); 18% say abortion should be legal in all cases, which is virtually unchanged from last August (17%).”

This shift within the moderate positions is highlighted by a 24 point drop among moderate and liberal Republicans in the judgment that abortion should remain legal in most or all cases (down from 67% to 43%) and an 18 point increase in opposition to abortion in most or all cases (up from 31% to 49%).

Opposition to abortion in most or all cases has increased among all age groups.

When Obama won the nomination in August of 2008, young people aged 18-29 were in favor of legalized abortion 52% to 45%. In the most recent poll the numbers have reversed: those opposed to legalized abortion are on the upper end of a statistical tie, 48% to 47%.

The overall survey also shows a current statistical tie. This shift took place, Pew finds, mostly amongst men–falling from 53% to 43% in favor of legal abortion and growing from 42% to 46% opposed to legal abortion in most or all cases–but even the percent of women who now want abortion to be legal has dropped 5 points from 54% to 49%.

Read the entire report here.

Published in The Enterprise Blog May 1, 2009

Notre Dame Disgrace

Notre Dame Disgrace and the Kmiec/Kaveny embarrassments Did the University of Notre Dame invite Sen. Stephen Douglas of nearby Illinois to receive an honorary degree in 1858? That was the year Douglas was defending the principle of choice: the right of western territories to make a choice between permitting slavery and maintaining liberty. His opponent in the most famous of American debates was Abraham Lincoln, also of Illinois. There and elsewhere, Lincoln made a simple point based on natural law and natural right: No man is in a position to will himself into slavery, so no one can commit another to slavery. On top of that, the Union itself cannot survive half-slave and half-free. Finally, the Declaration of Independence makes it brilliantly clear that every human being is endowed by his Creator with an inalienable right to liberty.

Lincoln hoped that the dreadful institution of slavery would die away, state by state. He argued that slavery is incompatible with natural rights, and the United States is a natural-rights republic.

Natural Rights: From Slavery to Abortion

What the question of slavery and the question of abortion have in common is their basis in natural right. Just as every human being is endowed by his Creator with the natural right to liberty, even more so is he endowed by his Creator with the right to life.

Almost 40 years ago (during the presidential campaign of 1972), journalists were arguing on the press bus. Some said that having an abortion is no different from having an appendix taken out or tonsils removed. Others said that science was on the side of those who were in favor of permitting abortions.

Alas, even then they were out of date. The famous cover of Life magazine with photos of the developing infant in the womb had appeared in 1965. Since then, public discussion of basic embryology has only made the reality in the womb much more vivid — older siblings now see photographs of the budding sister or brother within their mom on the refrigerator — what embryology had long taught: viz., that from the moment of conception, the organism growing in the womb of its mother is human. It is not the embryo of a cocker spaniel, or a camel, or a donkey. Also, not only is it the embryo of an indisputably human being, its DNA gives it a unique, individual identity. It comes not only from its father, and not only from its mother. It is a distinct human embryo — distinct in its identity from both its parents. Today, science is on the side of those who say that from the first moment of conception abortion takes away a human life. The Declaration of Independence insists that every individual human being has a natural right to life.

There are some people who still claim that what is aborted is so small and so without human form that it may be treated as a thing, merely discarded. For them, the choice of the mother takes precedence over the choice of the individual, just as under the Douglas plan the choice of the state takes precedence over the liberty of the individual.

* * *

I doubt very much whether the University of Notre Dame would ever give an honorary degree to a slave owner or a propagandist for slavery. Until recently, I used to doubt that Notre Dame would ever give an honorary degree and its highest platform — its commencement address — to someone who was one of the nation’s strongest proponents of abortion. In the eleven weeks since he became president, Barack Obama has opened up every avenue to abortion presented to him. He has begun razing every obstacle put up against the spread of this evil institution in the past — beginning with the Mexico City ban, and accelerating with extreme pro-death-in-the-womb nominees to key offices, promises to kill the Hyde Amendment, and other actions.

Pro-abortion advocates are now pressing the president to repeal the ban against a horrific practice, partial-birth abortion, and also the Born-Alive Act. Both of these acts have had tremendous impact on the public consciousness of what abortion actually is. Nothing has done so much to make the public aware of the ones who are aborted — their visible shape, survivability, and acute pain. Infants assaulted in the womb in an attempt to kill them, who somehow survived, were discarded in the garbage, left to shiver and die alone. In the whole country, no more than 15 percent dare to support killing infants alive, whether in the breech a moment before birth, or after a botched abortion. The Democrats in Congress went along with the Born-Alive Act without making an issue of it.

Often, doctors and nurses have been tormented by the incompatibility of two tasks in which they have been required to engage: In one room, they work all night to save the life of a baby in the early stages of development; in the next room just afterwards, they are asked to help kill a baby not a day further along in its mother’s pregnancy. Apart from the shock to their raw consciences, this shock to their emotions seems too much to ask of anyone. The conscience clause now protects doctors and nurses whose consciences revolt against abortions. Just as abolitionists once revolted against slavery, so do the irrepressible emotions of many doctors and nurses scream in protest against abortion at any stage in a child’s development.

President Obama has said he will repeal this protection for the consciences of doctors and nurses.

Douglas Kmiec and Notre Dame’s Cathleen Kaveny are among the Catholic professors who told us that President Obama would actually lower the number of abortions. I hope that they are counting. It is certainly difficult at this point to see any obstacle to abortion that President Obama will allow to stand. The Kmiec/Kaveny tangle of illusions underlies Notre Dame’s rationale for inviting the most extreme proponent of abortion in American presidential history to receive the university’s highest honor.

A defense of slavery would have barred him. His support of harsh offenses against human beings in the womb does not disqualify him?

Poverty and Abortion

Profs. Kmiec and Kaveny used to argue that President Obama’s reductions in poverty will bring abortions down. That proposition does not seem empirically valid. Even the poorest households in our big cities spend much more money each year than they report as income. They have far more money at their disposal than the poor of two generations ago, when abortions were far more rare. Poverty is not so acute today, but abortions in some sizeable areas — in Washington, D.C., for example — now exceed live births.

Moreover, existing abortion statistics in America are skewed by the fact that black women make up about 11 percent of the national female population, but have more than 36 percent of all abortions in America. Put another way, of the 47 million children aborted since 1973, some 16 million have been black. If those children had been allowed to live, the black population would today be about 50 percent larger than it is — about 49 million blacks instead of 33 million.

Think of the talents that have been lost. Think about the lost contributions to their own families and to the nation. Think how much stronger our Social Security funds would be today, if all those 47 million aborted (of all races) had come of age, and were creating new wealth, and paying into Social Security.

Taking the black abortion rate and abortion numbers out of the equation, it would be interesting to check the hypothesis that a reduction in poverty reduces abortion. Is it poverty that makes the difference? Or out-of-wedlock pregnancies? Or something else?

What proportion of abortions among whites and Asians, for example, coincides with poverty? Have the numbers or proportions of abortion among the middle and more highly educated class gone up since 1973? Do fairly well-off women at Boston College or the University of Notre Dame have more abortions today than they did three decades ago? Getting people out of poverty, while good for many other purposes, does not necessarily decrease abortions.

Yet even if there were evidence of a relationship between a reduction of poverty and a reduction of abortions, President Obama plainly does not have as his primary priority reducing poverty. That is not the direction in which his economic actions point. Quite the reverse; every economic move he has made since his inauguration seems to point to the constriction of economic activity, loss of entrepreneurial confidence, and punishment for job-creators, investors, and entrepreneurs. There can be no new employees, alas, without employers; no new jobs without new capital investments.

Again, one of President Clinton’s great achievements was to sign the Welfare Reform Act, which set time limits to welfare benefits and demanded work from the fit and the able. Welfare rolls soon dropped precipitously in most states (down by one-third or more). Morale among the newly working population, observers noted, was far higher than before. Those who previously felt no pride in being on welfare experienced real pride in their new economic independence.

President Obama promises to have that act repealed. And that will help morale, reduce dependency, and lower the number of abortions? Reason and experience counsel skepticism.

The War in Iraq

Another argument the Kmiec/Kaveny school produced in support of Obama is that he will end the war in Iraq, which they seem to think was illegal and, on balance, evil. Well, as far as the facts go, it appears that President Bush’s war in Iraq produced a hard-won victory (not necessarily long-lasting) over the die-hard followers of Saddam, “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” Iranian infiltrators, and other assorted Yemeni and Syrian homicide bombers and terrorists. The depredations these fascist forces committed against democratic Iraqis finally ignited revulsion among their victims. A fierce rebellion against al-Qaeda caught fire among their former allies. These rebels joined with the largely Shiite democratic parties and supported the Americans in the final stages of this precarious victory.

On top of that, the much-derided “surge” worked magnificently. Gen. David Petraeus turned out to have a better grasp of Iraqi reality than Senators Reid, Clinton, and Obama, to name but three.

Most impressively of all, Iraqi democracy seems to be growing slowly but steadily from strength to strength. Violence in Baghdad is at lower levels than in Chicago — although, granted, Chicago does not experience bomb attacks killing 20 or 30 at a time.

Iraq today boasts the largest functioning democracy among the Arab states. It is certainly far ahead of Iran, Syria, and others of its neighbors — even Egypt across the Mediterranean. There is new hope for the protection of human rights, the liberation and education of women, and a new level of religious liberty.

Now that he has been fully briefed on the available intelligence on terrorism, on Iraq, and on Iran, President Obama has been pushed by facts into positions quite close to those of President Bush. This has dismayed many on the left. But it is a tribute to the facts, honestly studied. The gains in Iraq are too hard-won to squander. President Obama has now acknowledged that a contingent of 50,000 Marines and soldiers will remain in Iraq (as in South Korea) until the beginning of 2012. One may doubt that he will remove them during that election year.

Abortion is Not Like War and Capital Punishment

Finally, Cardinal Ratzinger cut through the Kmiec/Kaveny argument about the relative moral importance of the issues of war, poverty, capital punishment, and abortion, in his famous letter to the American bishops during the 2004 campaign:

Not all moral issues have the same weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

I respect Doug Kmiec, Cathleen Kaveny, and others for publicly putting themselves on the line to support Obama, based on their position regarding the war in Iraq and their preferred strategy and tactics for reducing abortions in the United States and around the world. But their arguments are not very persuasive.

Even weaker have been the arguments by the leadership of the University of Notre Dame. It may be that President Obama is looking for a chance at Notre Dame to announce a new position in favor of life and against death. But that seems wildly naïve. It may be that Notre Dame is hoping for an argument, a discussion, an engagement, a dialogue on the side of life. Yet it seems that this is not the time nor the place for that — not at a commencement address, not given the glowing citation for the honorary degree, not with so much going at on at graduation. This is a time to shower the president of the United States with praise.

President Obama would feel perfectly entitled to use this honor from Notre Dame as leverage in favor of his full-tilt support for the falsely named “Freedom of Choice Act,” whose real point is not freedom, but the suppression of all consciences that find abortion an evil like slavery.

Published in National Review Online April 9, 2009

For Those Who Desperately Need Organ Donations

Within the next month or so, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) will introduce a bill in the Senate that does two things: (1) Closes off a loophole in the existing law that permitted “transplant tourism”—desperate Americans seeking transplants overseas in often substandard medical conditions; and (2) distinguishes between “buying and selling organs,” which is a felony, and the non-transferable “benefits” under the legislative authority of the individual states. (The federal government had never intended to criminalize non-transferable benefits.). In 1994 the Pennsylvania legislature voted a bill into law, signed by Governor Casey that would enable the state to offer a funeral benefit; that is, an in-kind reward not transferable to anybody but the donor. It permitted donors to receive burial benefits; that is, an in-kind incentive not transferable to anybody but the donor. It is not a commercial transaction, but it does provide a modest incentive for potential donors.

Other nations such as Israel have permitted non-transferable benefits, so that donors can choose from tax credit/deductions, comprehensive health care for life, life insurance policies, and free admission to natural parks for life. This law too bans the buying, selling, and bartering of organs.

Why do I judge Senator Specter’s carefully crafted bill a major step forward for “the culture of life”? Let me tell the story.

A colleague of mine, whom I admire very much, faced a harrowing challenge a few years ago when she learned she had kidney failure. Her options were to get a transplant or go on dialysis—an often debilitating treatment with a guarantee of premature death. Even when she learned of potential donors, and her hopes rose, medical incompatibilities (or simply cold feet) ruled them out.

My colleague, a medical doctor herself, was one of the lucky ones. Another scholar, activist, and writer volunteered one of her kidneys. That transplant has been a complete success, thanks to the donor’s amazing generosity.

The wider problem is that now over 100,000 Americans need an organ transplant just to stay alive. Of those, 6,000 died last year awaiting a new liver, heart, lung, or kidney. The arithmetic is deadly. Those whose lives could have been saved have perished, often in a sort of despair as possibility dies out. Fifty-three percent of those in need are racial or ethnic minorities.

Pope Benedict XVI made note of this very problem in his 2008 address to participants at an international congress organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life:

The problem of the availability of vital organs to transplant, unfortunately, is not theoretic, but dramatically practical; it is shown by the long waiting lists of many sick people whose sole possibility for survival is linked to meager offers that do not correspond to the objective need.

Just a year or so ago, I took part in a debate at the American Enterprise Institute on the morality of offering incentives to help hesitating volunteers to come forward. I pointed out what everybody already knew: that such a straight cash system could lead to awful abuses—a market for organs in which the poor and vulnerable would be victimized by “harvesters,” who would make money by using intimidating techniques. Impoverished people might also feel driven to sell their organs for money. Further, I argued that the voluntary sector—the churches, benevolent societies, and the like—had not yet given enough attention to this matter. We who favor that sector have not really done our best to encourage donors to come forward. We have not taught that such generous giving is an exercise in love—a principle that Jews, Christians, and humanists recognize as the central ethical reality.

The more I faced the facts, however, the clearer it has become to me that voluntarism is not meeting the desperate need. Today, almost 80,000 need a new kidney. In 2007, only about 6,000 volunteers stepped forward to offer a healthy kidney to a loved one; about 7,000 donated their own kidneys after death. In other words, fewer than one in six who needed a kidney got one that year. In major cities the waiting list is as long as five to eight years. Scores of thousands of the needy count the minutes and days, as the clock ticks inexorably.

It is shameful that people whose lives could be resumed in their fullness stare for months into the eyes of death—hoping, waiting, mostly in vain. The Roman Catholic Church has deservedly won a reputation for careful thinking about these matters. Attentive to new technologies and new possibilities, it is also unblinking about the moral hazards and weaknesses of humanity. Slippery slopes await us all around. An intellectual error made early becomes all too soon a monstrous practice; and the logic of that error is applied to other matters (e.g., the logic of ending life through abortion has applications in ending life through euthanasia).

In the matter of organ transplants, the Church tenaciously rejects complicity in making a market in organs, of a sort that could be easily abused—at the expense of the vulnerable, and to the profit of the cynical. But the Church has also become aware through empirical evidence that while its teaching finds the voluntary and freely considered donation of human organs admirable, and highly approves of it when appropriate, the number of needy patients far outstrips the current levels of donors.

Pope John Paul II made a point of writing a few years back that finding ways to invent incentives that might raise the frequency of donations is a worthy step, provided that potential abuses are detected and blocked in advance. Transplants are “a great step forward” he said, “in science’s service of man.” He added:

It must first be emphasized, as I observed on another occasion, that every organ transplant has its source in a decision of great ethical value: “the decision to offer without reward a part of one’s own body for the health and well-being of another person.” Here precisely lies the nobility of the gesture, a gesture which is a genuine act of love.

The Pope then warned against a potential for abuse:

Any procedure which tends to commercialize human organs or to consider them as items of exchange or trade must be considered morally unacceptable, because to use the body as an “object” is to violate the dignity of the human person.

A key aspect of ensuring dignity, he says, is

the need for informed consent . . . the human “authenticity” of such a decisive gesture requires that individuals be properly informed about the processes involved, in order to be in a position to consent or decline in a free and conscientious manner.

In this light, Senator Specter’s legislative action does two necessary things: (a) it blocks potential abuses by commercialization and international (or even intra-national) trafficking; and (b) it allows individual states to make concrete judgments about non-transferable, non-cash benefits to potential donors, providing these incentives fall within moral guidelines. Senator Specter’s legislation establishes that the 1984 federal law prohibiting the commercialization of organs (that is, a sale between individuals or through a broker) does not apply to state governments, when they encourage organ donation through non-transferable incentives. These incentives are not “compensation,” and they are not tradable.

Senator Specter’s legislation is a limited step forward; it commands nothing, it finances nothing. Essentially it clarifies the legal situation of voluntary donation, and it adds new heft to legal obstacles to trafficking. It calls for legitimate, constitutional experiments in the invention of donor benefits, in order to narrow the gap between the large number of those in need, and those who freely rescue them by giving of themselves.

We need to change our mindset. What Specter’s bill does is frame government benefits for donors as what they really are: gifts from the government in appreciation for the generosity of the donor. They are not intended inducements to donate. For John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the invention of appropriate incentives for more frequent donations of organs is a noble endeavor. The U.S. Congress and the several states should take thought about this important task.

Michael Novak holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

Published in First Things Online April 1, 2009

George Washington Urged American Governors to Imitate Christ

(CNSNews.com) — At the close of the American Revolution in 1783, Gen. George Washington composed a circular letter to the governors of all the states urging them to imitate “that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion.” He was, in fact, asking the governors of the nascent United States to imitate Jesus Christ. Indeed, Washington told the governors that if Americans failed to imitate Christ’s “example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.”

In “Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country,” scholar Michael Novak and his daughter Jana Novak have illuminated the religious life and sentiments of America’s first president and preeminent Founding Father.

The book is based on a careful and thorough reading of Washington’s own writings, both personal and public. These words, consistent the length of Washington’s life, paint an unmistakable picture of a quiet, reserved, yet steadfast Christian.

Novak, who won the 1994 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, visited CNSNews.com recently to discuss “Washington’s God” in an episode of “Online with Terry Jeffrey.” Here is a transcript of the conversation.

Terry Jeffrey: Welcome to Online with Terry Jeffrey. Our guest for this episode is Ambassador Michael Novak. Novak served President Reagan as ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission and as ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He is a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, Syracuse, State University of New York, and Notre Dame. He has written numerous books, including the “Universal Hunger for Liberty,” and the one we are going to talk about today, “Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country,” which he co-authored with his daughter, Jana Novak.

Ambassador Novak, thank you very much for coming in to talk to us.

Michael Novak: Hi. How are you, Terry.

Jeffrey: In your book, you write about--I know there are a couple of apocryphal events that people believe happen, or some people believe did happen in regard to George Washington and his religious experience. But in your book you write about a couple of very real experiences that I think affected his life. One was in July 1755, when as a young officer he went with General Braddock’s British army towards where Pittsburgh is today. What happened on that march?

Novak: Well, you have to remember that Washington had already explored that territory by himself and was one of the most famous men in America by that time because he wrote a diary that was published in Europe. So, anyway, he had unsurpassed knowledge of that area from having trekked through it so many times. And Braddock had him with him. And Braddock was marching along toward Pittsburgh two miles a day, because he insisted on clearing the trees and building a road. He didn’t have scouts up on the hills or anything. And Washington kept telling him: You can’t fight like that here.

Jeffrey: And these are British lobster backs with redcoats on?

Novak: They are great troops out in the open. They can get in rank and lay down a curtain of fire—you know, one and then another and then another. They can stop anybody.

Jeffrey: But here they are sort of crawling through the Appalachian Mountains, through dense forest, trying to move their wagons?

Novak: To make a long story short, Washington finally persuaded him to break his unit in two, and send a faster group—1,200 men—ahead and let the rest of the army come on slower, and then bring up supplies as they needed them. Well, it happened that there was a spy party, a scouting party for the Indians—French and Indians--and they caught sight of this smaller group of Braddock’s men, before Braddock and Washington’s group did. And they were surprised. They weren’t looking for them exactly. They thought they were back with the army. And they laid into them. And, soon, every officer fell--every officer on horseback was shot off his horse. Washington was shot off his horse twice, ended up the day with four bullet holes in his jacket.

Braddock was wounded, seriously wounded. Then they slowly began to retreat--finally they ordered a retreat--and slowly began to retreat.

At a certain point along the way, Braddock died. And Washington then, in effect, took over—though he was a colonial. He ordered Braddock buried right in the middle of the road, and had all the wagons go over it on their way out of the woods, so there would be no sign of a fresh grave. Because he was afraid the body could be dug up and scalped and so forth.

Jeffrey: You say there were four bullets that actually pierced Washington’s clothing?

Novak: Yeah.

Jeffrey: But they didn’t hit his body?

Novak: No. And later there was an Indian chief of a small band who lived there who later reminisced about that battle with Washington and some of his colleagues, too, and said how he himself had 17 clear shots at Washington and couldn’t get him.

Jeffrey: And Washington wasn’t a small target.

Novak: No, and Washington was not a small target. He was one of the biggest men out there—at six-foot-three, six-foot-four, something like that. And he thought he must be protected by a greater power from that day forward. And he so told his men.

Jeffrey: A pagan Indian believed that?

Novak: Yes.

Jeffrey: What did Washington believe?

Novak: You know I think Washington deep down thought that might happen. He thought—I am answering to the great man part. He certainly thought he was protected by Providence. In fact, he wrote after words to his brother that he had heard there was a report out that he had been killed, and even a report about what his dying words had been. And he said he would like to step forward and say that never happened: My horse was twice shot out from under me. I had four bullet holes in my jacket. But by the hands of a Good Providence I am here.

Jeffrey: Washington thought he had been protected by God on that day?

Novak: Yes, that’s not the only time in his life. Later, he said twice later, that no man in America had a greater reason to rely on Divine Providence than he did.

Jeffrey: That was 1755. Twenty-one years later, George Washington is the commander of the Continental Army. The British have come to New York. They’ve had the Battle of Boston. The British evacuated there. Washington brings his army down, and he makes a stupid move. He places them on Long Island.

Novak: Yep.

Jeffrey: Across the East River from Manhattan.

Novak: That’s right.

Jeffrey: What happened then?

Novak: Well, what he forgot is the British had the ships. They had 300 some ships in New York harbor, and they just out-flanked him, up the bottom of Long Island, and landed inland and then pressed toward Washington’s troops from the other side from where he expecting. And he didn’t catch wind of it until the last day. He found this column marching down on him to roll up his flank. So he gave orders to buy and steal every boat they could locate on Long Island, and he started getting his men off—some barges--and get his men off. And he had good New England men to take the ships over. They were from Marblehead and were very good at handling the boats. So, all night they labored to get the men across. Daylight came and only half the men were off. They had kept the fires going down the line, so the British didn’t know they were evacuating.

Jeffrey: So they are sitting ducks on the water—to the British Navy.

Novak: They were sitting ducks. And a huge fog rolls in, a thick yellow fog. You could only go by keeping your hand on the shoulder of the fellow in front of you onto the barges. But the fog lasted for between five and six hours, almost until noon time. By the time it lifted, they were all gone. So Washington, again, took that as a sign of a beneficent Providence.

I want to point out, though, he didn’t always think Providence was beneficent, because in that earlier case with Braddock, his line of reflection went like this: This is how Providence works. This tiny accident to this small group--discovering us when they didn’t expected to--and they won an incredible victory they never even dreamed of, and there are other times when it looks like success is yours and it is taken away by a small little incident.

Jeffrey: At one point, he actually quoted Alexander Pope, did he not, that “whatever is, is right”?

Novak: Yes. Washington didn’t have a formal education but he read widely. He maybe felt self-consciously about his education. He collected some 900 books in his own personal library, a lot of them on agriculture--every aspect of agriculture that he could possibly read to improve his orchards and his other crops and his vineyards.

Jeffrey: This was a man who not only was familiar with the practical science of agriculture but also with 18th century English poetry.

Novak: Yes.

Jeffrey: We know that Washington understood there was a God who cared for him as a young man when he was serving as a colonial with the British army. How was he raised? Was he baptized a Christian, for example?

Novak: Yes. He was baptized. His mother was a very devote Anglican. He came from a line including Anglican preachers, back into their roots in England. After he was dead—now, he didn’t have children of his own---but Martha’s children went on to produce yet another Anglican divine. So, he was a member of the Church of England all this time.

Jeffrey: From birth.

Novak: Yes.

Jeffrey: He was baptized as an Anglican?

Novak: Yes.

Jeffrey: His early education--would he have been taught some form of catechism?

Novak: At his mother’s knee--and she was an imperious woman. Practically as soon as he could, he moved out of the house. I mean, she had the face of the Statue of Liberty in New York. She was one of those women who are severe. She knows where she’s going, she knows where you’re going.

Jeffrey: He didn’t get along with her very well.

Novak: No, not real well. But he did in a certain way adore her. Because he took very seriously, she gave him from a very early age a set of prayer books and readings, and the meaning of faith and so forth. You can see little under linings. You can still see the copies up in the Athaeneum in Boston, where all his books ended up. A group of good citizens in Boston bought the books before the British could buy them.

Jeffrey: So, quite literally, as a young boy, George Washington was reading religious books and learning about his Anglican faith--

Novak: He was—and about Providence. He collected sermons on Providence, too. There were many given during the war, and he collected them. This was maybe the theme of religion that maybe most grabbed his imagination because of its immediacy. You know, even today, Terry, tests have been done of different American elites, and the ones who are most religious in the sense of having a sense of Providence—these small little things that can turn events--are athletes, the military and businessmen. The least religious, I don’t have to tell you, are journalists and lawyers--

Jeffrey: And some politicians.

Novak: Yeah.

Jeffrey: So, George Washington as a boy was trained in an understanding of a particular expression of Christianity, and this happened to be the Anglican denomination that he learned from his mother and from attending church also.

Novak: Great historians, like Joe Ellis, describe him as a lukewarm Anglican. But, hey, that’s what an Anglican is supposed to be. It’s against the Anglican middle way to show too much enthusiasm.

Jeffrey: In terms of his public expression?

Novak: Well, yeah, but even you are supposed to be self-contained, and keep it private, and not show too much fervor or devotion, even if you feel it—even if you feel it very deeply. Let the river run deeply inside, but nobody else should know

Jeffrey: He wasn’t trained to be an Evangelist.

Novak: No, not at all.

Jeffrey: He was trained to be a devout Anglican.

Novak: The best argument that he isn’t an Evangelist is that he soon created the largest still in all of North America and sold more whiskey than anyone else.

Jeffrey: Which was perfectly in keeping with his religious beliefs.

Novak: Yes, it was.

Jeffrey: And he attended church?

Novak: Well, he did. He attended church. In fact, he attended two. There was the Christ Church in Alexandria, not so very far from where we are filming this—wonderful little church. And then one out closer to Mount Vernon, but still about seven miles from his home, where they went. They didn’t go every Sunday, but then there wasn’t a minister there every Sunday. The minister came about every second Sunday. And that is almost the frequency with which they attended there. He would drive Martha. Or she would go in the wagon, and he would go on his horse.

Jeffrey: And later he eventually became a member of the vestry of that church?

Novak: Yes, when they decided to move the church and build a new one, he was the layman who, in a sense, took as much charge of the move as anybody else. Because he was the kind of man, his pastor said, the kind of parishioner you really hope for, that takes the responsibility and is regular in his service.

Jeffrey: He was deeply involved in the management and the affairs of his personal parish?

Novak: Of the church, yes. And lots of little gifts to the church--to both churches--to help their altar embroideries and things of that sort.

Jeffrey: Thanks to the Supreme Court over the last 70 years, and the modern liberal understanding, we have this view of separation of church and state that, I think, is quite different from what George Washington had. You, in your book--

Novak: Well, let me put it this way: He certainly didn’t want the state—well, I have to be careful: Because in Virginia there was an established church.

Jeffrey: Right, which was the one he belonged to.

Novak: Yes, it was the one he belonged to. But so did Madison, and Madison and Jefferson were two of the chief instruments of disestablishing the church. And that was fine with Washington. But he did believe in the importance of religion. He didn’t want the state to do what the church should do, or the church to do what the state should do. But he didn’t think a government like ours could survive unless the people had the qualities, the virtues, the character, which Judaism and Christianity tried to develop.

Jeffrey: Which, of course, he discussed in his Farewell Address. But before we get to that: You have in your book a number of orders he issued when he was general of the Continental Army. Let me just read you one. This was a general order of May 15, 1776.

Novak: He had to write that out by hand.

Jeffrey: He personally wrote this?

Novak: Yeah. The orders were written out—he may dictate them to his aide, but a permanent record is kept of those. So, you can always trace what happened day by day through these

Jeffrey: And there is no doubt that these are legitimate orders that Washington is giving to his army.

Novak: Right.

Jeffrey: Let me read you one from May 15, 1776, that you have in your book: “The General commands all officers, and soldiers, to pay strict obedience to the Orders of the Continental Congress, and by their unfeigned, and pious observance of their religious duties, incline the Lord, and Giver of Victory, to prosper our arms.” So, he’s actually ordering his troops to practice their religion?

Novak: Yeah. And he’s even giving an order about their inner life—that they should do it with sincerity, unfeigned. His idea here was a very simple one, that, look, if you don’t have a munitions factory on this side of the ocean, you don’t have an army, you don’t have a navy, and you are facing the greatest army and the greatest navy in the world with a bountiful supply of munitions coming over in these great ships, you better have faith in Divine Providence, because you’re really outmatched. As they argued in the Continental Congress, a number of the representatives: This is a foolish war for us to get in. How can we beat a power that nobody in Europe can beat?

But Washington thought and others thought that there are special advantages here and great disadvantages for the king. We think the king is on our side—I’m paraphrasing their thoughts—and maybe if we could only awaken him. We’re his subjects. We don’t belong to the parliament. If only he could awaken to what it is we want, and what we are doing. We’re not rebels. We are a united force wanting to remain loyal to him but with the rights of Englishmen, full rights of Englishmen. We don’t want Parliament to treat us like slaves. Of course, they never got through to the king. But that is the way they approached it, anyway.

Jeffrey: But here you have in this one year of 1776, Washington’s army escaping in this mysterious fog from Long Island back to Manhattan.

Novak: By the way, it doesn’t have to be a miracle.

Jeffrey: It doesn’t have to be.

Novak: If you’ve ever lived on Long Island, you get a lot of those fogs. But the timing was exquisite. That’s one thing that Washington believed about Providence: It wasn’t necessarily miraculous, but events conspired together to bring about a surprising thing.

Jeffrey: And at that very same time, this same general is telling his troops in orders that he thinks there might be a connection between their religious life and their virtue and how they live and whether or not the American cause succeeds.

Novak: Yes. How can they expect to have God bless America, how can they expect it, if they don’t live worthy of God? It’s empty words.

Jeffrey: Somehow, Ambassador Novak, I don’t think they are teaching this image of George Washington in our public schools today.

Novak: By the way, the used to until well into the 20th century. Washington was regarded by the vast majority of writers as a very religious man. It’s only as the 20th century went on that the balance of reporting tipped the other way.

Jeffrey: There has been a revisionist understanding of George Washington as modern liberalism and its antagonism toward religion has progressed?

Novak: But even Madison and Jefferson, both men were far more religious than the normal university professor is today.

Jeffrey: Even though they would have been on the religious left in terms of the spectrum of their day?

Novak: Well, Jefferson particularly was as much of an outlier. You take the 100 top Americans of the time, all those who signed the Constitution and the Declaration and a few others besides, Jefferson was the far most to the left, or to the right, whatever you want to call it, outside the consensus. He couldn’t even count on moving Virginia with him all the time, let alone Massachusetts and the other states.

Jeffrey: And he ended up being a rival of George Washington in many ways.

Novak: Yeah.

Jeffrey: At the end of the war, General Washington in 1783 wrote a circular letter to the states that you wrote about in your book.

Novak: Yes, a lovely letter.

Jeffrey: Let me quote from it: “I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.”

Novak: Now, I wonder who the Divine Author of our religion is?

Jeffrey: Who is He?

Novak: Any hint there about mercy and charity and love for one another, humility. There’s a few clues there as to just who it might be. It is not Thor.

Jeffrey: It’s not Thor.

Novak: It’s not Zeus.

Jeffrey: Well, it’s clearly Jesus Christ.

Novak: Of course it is.

Jeffrey: And he’s asking--This letter went out to the governors of the states?

Novak: Yes.

Jeffrey: And he’s asking them to imitate Jesus Christ?

Novak: Yes.

Jeffrey: This is the Founding Father, George Washington.

Novak: But that’s where he was. He later said to Delaware chiefs—To understand this, you have to see that because the Americans were various. Some were a new group, just beginning to form and grow large, the Baptists. Many were Anglicans, but many in New England were not Anglicans, they were dissidents from the Anglican Church. They were Puritans, the Church of Christ they later became. There were Presbyterians. There were Methodists—or beginning to be Methodists. And they all spoke of God a bit differently. And, thus, Washington, he’s the first one, even in his twenties, to govern a body of four hundred men from the frontier--rough people, unchurched usually because there were no churches out there--and he had to find some way to bring them together in psychology and moral and discipline. And here he would find nothing else that would work as well as Christian religion. So, he asked the assembly of Virginia to send him a chaplain for each unit. And throughout the war he kept that up. Every day they had to pray together. He thought that was extremely important.

Jeffrey: This common Christian faith was binding America together as a nation.

Novak: There were some reasons he gave why he liked his faith, why he found it so helpful to him. It’s not that it was an instrument for him, but it was reality, a greater reality, to which we paid deference and in return sought the help of that Providence. We may not get it. To be on the side of Providence is not necessarily to be on the side of the winners in the end.

Jeffrey: And Washington willingly accepted suffering when it came?

Novak: Oh, gosh, he took defeat after defeat after defeat and he still didn’t lose his trust in Providence. I was about to say that Providence is with you in defeat, so you shouldn’t be cast too low. And Providence is with you in victory, so you shouldn’t get to uppity. You shouldn’t let it go to your head. You should come down to the ground again. You should try to find your balance, your ballast, and try to do the will of God. He believed, as all the Americans believed, that God has to be on the side of liberty because the reason God created the world at all is so that somewhere in it there would be women and men who could freely accept his call to walk in friendship with him. That is the whole point of the universe. You may think it’s crazy. But that is why they thought they had a chance to beat the British.

Jeffrey: One the thing I found remarkable about this circular letter: I assume that he sent this out to the leaders of the states. This is the general that led their armies, he’s asking the political leaders to imitate Christ. And if they imitate Christ, we will be a happy nation. But we can’t hope to be a happy nation unless we do. The people who received this letter did not take this as odd or unusual or some sort of--

Novak: No, it’s the way one governor talks to another.

Jeffrey: In 1783.

Novak: Yeah, it’s not necessarily what they would expect from a leader on the battlefield, but on the other hand it’s not unexpected either.

Jeffrey: Later that decade they made this person the first president of the United States.

Novak: In a way you can look at that Circular Letter as the last Farewell Address—you know, from his service in the military. Well, that’s not quite right, he’s just giving a report to Congress.

Jeffrey: But it’s at the end of the hostilities, really.

Novak: Yes.

Published on CNSNews.com March 31, 2009

Help Us Choose the First Twenty Selections for the Catholic Family Classics Series

Catholicism is not just a “belief system” but a whole culture to be lived, a culture universal in time and range, an inexhaustible store of rich human living and reflecting, immensely creative and leavening among all other world cultures. For more than a decade, Ralph McInerny and I have been trying to find a publisher for a vital series of books that illuminate this cultural heritage. Tens of millions of Catholics do not know their own intellectual and artistic heritage and those who want to remedy the situation have pitifully little guidance. We believe this is a series that ought to be found in every Catholic home, school, and university library. We have finally found a publisher, Transaction Press, and preparing the first twenty volumes. Each volume will have a fresh introduction to help readers learn about the author, the setting, and the importance of the work. The series will be especially helpful for young people just beginning their intellectual inquiries, and for older adults who somehow missed out on these treasures.

Some might object to titles we are already choosing; others might wish to suggest others not here on our initial lists. Obviously, other editors might choose titles quite different from our choices. However, Ralph and I have experimented with many lists, taken titles off, putting other titles on. The decisions weren’t easy but we used the following criteria in making our choices:

(1) Each volume should bring pleasure, and in a fairly direct and clear way. Every user of the series should get a taste of some of the more difficult classics-but no so much as to turn them against the whole series. On the whole, the series must be accessible and inviting.

(2) Every short sequence in the series ought to include a variety of literary form-biography, fiction, poetry, philosophy-as well as providing a variety of experiences-some questioning of Catholic beliefs, some nourishment for the soul, and practical hints about how to deepen one’s mind and one’s faith.

(3) Those who use the series should feel they have been amply rewarded by the reading and that they have taken yet one more step in understanding the depth and breadth of the traditions of their Church’s history.

The following is a tentative list of the first twenty choices (we plan on expanding it to fifty) of our “Catholic Family Classics.” Please help us to amend it, and to strengthen it by helping us select competing alternatives. What books or selections would you include? Who would you want to see edit each volume and which authors should write the introductions?

We will gladly consider volunteers. The pay will not be great, but the service to Catholic history will be immeasurable. Please contact us at www.michaelnovak.net.

Catholic Family Classics - The First Twenty Selections

1. Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset
2. The Best of Charles Peguy (God Speaks, Night, Mysticism & Politics)
3. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
4. The Inferno, Dante Aligheiri
5. Integral Humanism, Jacques Maritain
6. The Making of Europe, Christopher Dawson
7. The Best of John Henry Newman (selections from The Idea of the University, Essay on the Development of Doctrine, and The Grammar of Assent)
8. The Best Catholic Mystery Writers, edited by Ralph McInerny
9. The Best of St. Augustine (selections from The Confessions, On the Trinity, On Time, The Two Cities)
10. The Best of Thomas Aquinas (selections from his Hymns, On Prudence, On Love and Charity, On the Bodily Senses and Imagination, On Beauty, On Law, on Reason and Faith, and Commentaries on Scripture)
11. The Best of St. Teresa of Avila
12. The Greatest Catholic Poems, edited by Dana Gioia
13. The Best of Georges Bernanos
14. The Best of St. Therese of Lisieux
15. The Best of G.K Chesterton
16. The Best of Gabriel Marcel
17. The Best of Alexis de Tocqueville (Religion and Democracy, Liberty and Equality, the French Revolution, Voluntary Associations, et al.)
18. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
19. The Best Catholic Short Stories, edited by Joseph Bottum
20. The Best of Lord Acton (Notes on the First Vatican Council, On the History of Liberty)

Published in First Things Online March 27, 2009

The Lord God In Embryo

For the Feast of the AnnunciationBy Michael Novak

“Mary?... Mary!” The Angel said, pursuing. “Did I catch you musing? Hail, Mary. Do not be afraid, I bring you news: The Lord God of Hosts Has chosen you –

(Creator of the Sun and moon and all the stars! Of angels, saints, and men And lovely maids like you.)

In your case, full of grace – There is no sin in you. The Lord God has chosen you, And asks you, Mary, To bear His only Son, The Redeemer of the world.

Do not be afraid. Do not be ashamed. Before Time was, He knew you, Mary, And made you for this holy joy. Blessed are you, Mary, And blessed is His boy within you—

Emmanuel, Born of the House of David, Brought to birth by you For the saving of the world. (To bring all children home.)”

“Yes,” she said.

And the Spirit of the Lord Poured Light in her, The Father’s seed Took root In Embryo.

Among all women, Mary, He has chosen you. Before Time was He chose you And made you for this holy joy Blessed are you, Mary! And blessed in you is His little boy.

Ashes to Ashes

  At the heart of Christianity are sinners. It is a matter of simple self-knowledge that we have done things we know we ought not to have done, and have not done the things we know we should have done. The only honest thing to do is to repent. And try to do better.

Lent feels like the stern winds of March, testing the barren branches, snapping off the dead ones, chilling the live ones to the inner juices of spring, calling them to awaken.

The Good News is that God is not only the immense power of the hurricane and the swollen turbulent rolling seas. He is not only the Source of all good, attracting all things by His Beauty, as Plato conceived of Him (Aristotle, too).

The Good News is that He invites poor humans, alone of all creatures, to walk with Him as friends — if we choose. No liberty, no real friendship.

To accept being a friend of the Almighty Who rules the seas and the explosions of stars, the coming to be and the dissolution of vast galaxies — there is a destiny difficult to believe. It is obviously one of which we are in no way worthy. It is fear-causing, stunning us into silence.

For this reason, too, all around this hurtling Earth, Christians today wear ashes on our foreheads, in repentance for our many sins and in wonderment.

The able ones fast lightly and abstain from eating meat, to break from normal routines, as if to feel the cutting winds of this season calling the dead greens back toward life.

Read the entire symposium here.

Published in National Review Online February 26, 2009