The Choice of a Pope

I have held back from talking about the choice of a pope. After all, a pope is a decision to be made by and for our Catholic brothers and sisters. And it seems improper for non-Catholics to get into that issue.

Years ago, I wrote a friend, H. Jefferson Powell, at Duke, that I felt I had a stake in his winning his argument from Episcopal theology, in his great book, The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism.

Similarly, we all have a stake in the choice of a pope. The pope affects brotherhood and sisterhood across faiths. Friends in both faiths have told us that Bishop Hubbard made a very positive difference in the relation of Catholics and Jews here. His work also reflected a shift in Vatican thinking. I suspect he knew his initiatives would be supported there. Popes matter.

We Will Not Comply

Did you hear the demonstrators against New York’s new gun law chanting in unison “We will not comply!”

That’s the problem. Guns allow some of their owners to think that they can define right and wrong and everybody else has to comply. In the hands of some of their owners, guns puff up their sense of self-importance, their sense that laws are written for everybody else but that they are above the law.

Guns, Militias and Public Safety

I’d like to address the debate over guns from an angle very different than the general conversation. Most of the conversation is about whether guns increase or decrease the risk of homicide or suicide. I’m pretty well convinced that the most likely victims of guns in the house are the people in the household, just as most car accidents happen within a short distance from home. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I see another problem that I think is quite significant.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has developed a great deal of expertise and information about the existence of hate groups around the country. It has identified thirty-seven different hate groups operating around New York State, forty-seven in New Jersey, thirty-four in Pennsylvania, ten in Massachusetts, five in Connecticut, four in New Hampshire and one in Vermont. These groups spew their venom at virtually every racial group, many religious groups, and gays. They comprise a litany of despicable groups from the KKK, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups to anti-Muslim, anti-white and Holocaust deniers. Some of them just write, speak and blog, but some have been involved in criminal violence.