Marquette Theologian Mark Johnson on Terrorism

Professor Mark Johnson blogs infrequently, but when he does he’s worth reading.  Most recently, he’s posted his thoughts on ISIS terrorism.

Here is just a piece of his most recent post, which might well provoke you to read the entire thing. Speaking of the beheadings that ISIS has committed, Johnson observes:

The President has spoken of them as appalling and barbaric, while others say that those who took these four lives—there will be more—are brutal and savage.

But these descriptions both mislead and fail to get to the heart of the matter. . . . Brutal things are done by brutes—lions, bears, snakes, sharks—which are animals devoid of reason. Our human reason or intelligence is the cause and hallmark of our dignity. Brute animals, by contrast, operate in the physical world of nature, red in tooth and claw, where they must kill or be killed. So they attack and kill without thinking, acting instead on the instincts given them by nature, and nature’s God. This is why we don’t put animals on trial when they kill a human being.

So also, savage things are done by savages—humans in pre-civilized cultures, we might say—who indeed are humans possessing reason, but who have not yet had the range of corrective experiences from history and religion that lift cultures to a point of fuller human living and interaction: no belief yet in individual human dignity and worth, and no system of the rule of man-made law with a right participate in their own governance, and to appeal to impartial judges.

Thus the striking thing about the behavior is ISIS is its anachronistic nature. People with access to 21st century social media, 21st century travel and 21st century weapons show a primitive worldview.

Anybody reading (say) the Book of Judges might well be appalled by the bloodshed it contains, but it recounts events over 3,000 years ago. What excuse does ISIS have?

Johnson’s conclusion is that the terrorists have simply chosen not to think. That’s a choice for which they can, and should, be held morally responsible.

A Catholic Theologian Not Enamored of Obama

While left-leaning “Catholic” theologians have signed on to support the Obama reelection campaign, other voices in the profession are not so taken with our incumbent president.

One of those is Marquette theologian Mark Johnson, who has posted a detailed deconstruction of Obama’s Democratic Convention speech.

One particularly cogent passage:

Charity, in the Catholic context in particular, is the love we have directly for God first and foremost, and for his Images (i.e., us humans) precisely in our likeness, our family resemblance, to him. It is this devotion towards God’s human creatures that commands us care for their basic needs: whatsoever you do...

But this vocabulary and these virtues I learned in church and through the myriad ​rivulets of my Catholic religion. It is not the task of government to instruct me on the proper love of God, or of God’s people. My priest does that, your rabbi or imam does that.

The President is not my pastor.​

My ultimate concern is that, in President Obama’s take on things, nothing seems to lay outside the scope and possible command of the federal government​. The federal government is in charge of protecting the American personality, of protecting “who we are” (the President’s trump card when he is at a loss in arguing for why we should not allow something: “it’s not who we are”). The federal government is the protector of charity and love. What’s left for those of us who aren’t in the government?

As Johnson is aware, Obama is guilty of the same misbegotten notion that the leftist theologians now getting signatures for a letter attacking Paul Ryan are: the notion that charity is the purview solely of the Federal government, and not other levels of government, nor the Church, nor families, nor neighborhoods nor friendship groups.

It’s a notion that embodies the “one-sided centralization” that Catholic Social Thought has always condemned.

It’s a misbegotten notion typical of secular leftists, which is what the anti-Ryan theologians are, notwithstanding any religious rhetoric they may spout.

The Decay of Marquette’s Catholic Identity: Dean Search Brought the Reality Home

From Marquette theologian Mark Johnson, and essay that explains the debacle that was the blundered deanship search that led to Jodi O’Brien (a lesbian whose opinions are sharply at odds with Catholic teaching) being offered the job.

It wasn’t, Johnson explains, a fluke of events that descended on Marquette suddenly and without warning. Rather, it was the culmination of trends going back decades.

As Catholics became more part of mainstream America—more assimilating themselves to it, perhaps, than changing it—their practices and thinking became more like it, too. As the upper-echelons of American intellectual life—the universities—gained influence in public discourse, their application of their spoken and unspoken principles had greater effect. Catholic universities, too, increasingly staffed by faculty trained elsewhere, began to speak with the dialect of secular or non-Catholic religious universities. And Catholic theologians and philosophers were eager to abandon tired scholasticism and think in new ways, which generally required them to leave the Catholic university scene and be trained elsewhere—it didn’t help that official Catholic teaching labored to sustain unpopular, if traditional, teachings, such as the indissolubility of marriage, opposition to abortion, and the primacy of children in marriage with its attendant doctrine of the integrity of the sex act. So the result was that, with the singular and important exception of Catholic social doctrine (read in terms of the distribution of wealth, perhaps, where that teaching resonates well with those who have socialist or statist leanings), much distinctively Catholic teaching, even in Catholic colleges and universities, was either disputed outright or politely just dropped.

And futher:

. . . the notion of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation evolved to mean “not different in moral legitimacy,” with the result that the variety of sexual orientations that people have are thought to be like the unobjectionable variations of eye-color; we don’t fault or praise someone for the color of their eyes, and neither should we fault or praise someone for living in accord with their sexual orientation.

Seen against this backdrop, what is so notable about the Jodi O’Brien case is not that in originally offering to her the Deanship the University was making new and brave intellectual commitments that launched it into a leadership role for the rest of contemporary American academe. Quite the contrary. Because homosexual orientation, activity, and scholarship is now so normalized in the Academy and indeed in the culture, the pursuing, interviewing and hiring of a scholar-advocate of homosexuality for an academic position, even a visible upper-administration position, is a daily occurrence. Marquette did not lead, it followed. In this sense, the original decision was so usual as to be boring: a duly appointed committee of a Catholic, Jesuit university, searching for a Dean for its College of Arts and Sciences, submits for consideration to the Provost and President a scholar in sociology whose writings entertain as liberating a wide-range of LGBT behaviors, support homosexual marriage—if there has to be marriage at all; the candidate isn’t sure—with the Provost and then the President considering then approving that submission.

We are not so sure the original decision was “boring.”

The hiring had all the earmarks of an enterprise in which certain faculty and administrators thought themselves doing something bold for “diversity,” which has now become a word that, in true Orwellian fashion, means that everybody must think the same and no dissent is allowed.

Still, says Johnson, the corruption (he doesn’t use that precise word) has proceeded so far that “people are surprised that some people were surprised” that anybody could object to the hiring of an outspoken lesbian and advocate of what the Church views as sinful behavior as a (necessarily) high-profile representative of the institution.

Johnson promises two more essays on this issue. We will most certainly watch for them on his blog.

Dean Search Fiasco: More Push-Back From Faculty Supporting Catholic Mission

While the most assertive voices among Marquette faculty have been supportive of the appointment of outspoken lesbian Jodi O’Brien to be Dean of Arts & Sciences, some significant opposition has arisen.

While the Academic Senate seemed to support her when it voted to condemn the decision to rescind her offer, doubtless a substantial number of those senators would not have selected her in the first place. as Marketing Professor Gene Lacniak admitted was the case with him.

It’s also the case that the Academic Senate doesn’t necessarily represent the attitudes of all faculty.

Still, it would be premature to say that statements like those of Bob Ashmore, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy or Associate Professor Javier A. Ibáñez-Noé represent a “silent majority” of faculty.

But add in statements like the one below, coming from two Theology faculty, and it becomes obvious that there is considerable faculty resistance to O’Brien.

Our purpose is to invite discussion on the hiring decision regarding Dr. O’Brien from the perspective of Catholic mission and identity.

In recent days there has been much consternation at Marquette University over rescinding the offer of the deanship of the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences to Dr. Jodi O’Brien of Seattle University. At a procedural level, there is little that is defensible in making an offer and then withdrawing it (though, of course, if pre-hiring decisions were mistaken, the university should not necessarily be prevented from rectifying those mistakes before it has made any contractual commitments). For many faculty members, it remains a mystery how things proceeded from the search committee’s forwarding of names to the provost, to what took place between him and the president of the university and others in making a final decision and extending an offer. Protests have been registered over these procedures, including the unfair treatment of Dr. O’Brien in the matter.

However, other substantial issues have also been raised. One letter circulated refers to “more fundamental concerns about our institutional commitment to diversity, inclusion, and academic freedom.” Many feel that the decision by Fr. Wild and Provost Pauly to rescind the offer violated these principles. Apart from the procedural issues involved and affirming these principles, we believe even more is at stake for Marquette University.

We defend the stated reasons in the Wild/Pauly letter that the primary concern for rescinding the offer had to do with Catholic mission and identity. Since this is not a regular faculty hire (where “hiring for mission” must also be taken into consideration) but a significant public leadership position at the university, it is important that the candidate be able to represent that identity and support it before constituencies on and off campus, as it is well spelled out in our official mission and identity statements, and more significantly, not oppose it in action or scholarship. There is little to dispute that Dr. O’Brien’s advocacy of “queer Christianity” (her nomenclature in her article “Seeking Normal? Considering Same-Sex Marriage”) and LGBT cultural strategies vis-à-vis the family, same-sex marriage and alternative partnering (not to mention her analysis and apparent promotion of cyberspace promiscuity-- see her article “Changing the Subject”) cannot be squared with Catholic teaching on this very public issue, which is so controverted in our society, and in Christian churches—witness its divisive effects in nearly every mainline Protestant denomination. As these viewpoints are integral to her scholarly vocation why should a Catholic university invite her to lead its “flagship college” which cultivates the arts and sciences, when from the perspective of Catholic vision and Christian humanism such advocacy undermines human flourishing?*

No doubt, many (faculty and students alike) will disagree with this Catholic vision or say that they take exception to this particular manifestation of it as it concerns theological and philosophical conceptions of the human person, of human sexuality, and of the moral life. Even many Catholics (some Jesuits included) do not accept this teaching. Nevertheless, it is not a foregone conclusion that in the interests of preserving Catholic identity -- an issue that we agree should remain dialogical -- the university somehow violates principles of the academy if it does not offer major governance positions to candidates who oppose aspects of that same identity. After all, Catholic universities exist “From the Heart of the Church,” the English title of Pope John Paul II’s 1990 Apostolic Constitution on Catholic universities, Ex corde ecclesiae. This applies not just to theology departments and campus ministries, but to all units of the university because they are at the service of truth and of Catholic intellectual life. Marquette University does state under the rubric of faith that:

As a Catholic university, we are committed to the unfettered pursuit of truth under the mutually illuminating powers of human intelligence and Christian faith. Our Catholic identity is expressed in our choices of curricula, our sponsorship of programs and activities devoted to the cultivation of our religious character, our ecumenical outlook, and our support of Catholic beliefs and values.

It is true that not all faculty members at Marquette University see themselves as agents of Catholic intellectual life, and the dialogical nature of a university invites critical discussion and disagreements over a vast array of issues with other Christians, adherents of other religious traditions, and all people of good will who can support the mission of Marquette University. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine how Dr. O’Brien’s scholarly project is consistent with “Catholic beliefs and values.” Therefore, while we regret the procedural debacle and any injustice done to Dr. O’Brien, we are grateful that in the hiring process for an Arts and Sciences dean, Catholic mission and identity became a deciding factor.

Ralph Del Colle
Associate Professor of Theology

Mark Johnson
Associate Professor of Theology

*The Catholic position on homosexuality was succinctly stated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in their 2006 statement Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care which (quoting a Vatican document) says the following:

“Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons.”

Nobody, and certainly not Del Colle and Johnson, defends the absurd process that resulted in the offer of the job to O’Brien, and then the rescinding of the offer when word got out that O’Brien was a very controversial person indeed.

But we need to know exactly what process led to an offer to a person so controversial. It’s obvious that she was pretty much the pet of some in the Administration and then of the Selection Committee long before the offer was made.