Faith Complex is hosted by Jacques Berlinerblau, produced by Thomas Banchoff and sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University.
Today's interview is with the very erudite Michael Novak who, as you are about to see, was not exceedingly awed by President's Obama's speech at Notre Dame. I, by contrast, sort of liked it.
We here at Faith Complex are quite intrigued by the interaction between the White House and the nation's largest religious voting bloc. In coming episodes we are going to be closely following the Obama administration's triangular encounters with American lay Catholics (i.e., American voters), American Bishops (i.e., a group with a certain capacity to influence those voters), and the Vatican (i.e., an institution with which all Chief Executives must maintain scrupulously correct relations).
I think the big question raised by my discussion with Mr. Novak is the following: to what degree are bioethical issues the metric by which Catholics will assess the Obama administration? On abortion and human embryonic stem cell research the President is squarely in opposition to the official teachings of the Church. But on a range of other concerns such as economic justice, the environment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there is, in the words of one of my Vatican sources, "a lot to like."
Mr. Novak is no mere Beltway talking head and our discussion turned to his recent book "No One Sees God," a very well written and well reasoned invitation to dialogue with non-believers. I published a positive review of this work in the now defunct Washington Post Book World, my one major criticism being that Mr. Novak focused too much on radical anti-theism as opposed to the less belligerent developments in the thought of non-believers. In any case, I think both non-believers and believers stand to gain a lot by familiarizing themselves with Mr. Novak's arguments.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
