June 14, 2009
Showing the Faith Complex: Thomas Reese on Obama and the Catholic Church Video
Faith Complex is hosted by Jacques Berlinerblau, produced by Thomas Banchoff, and presented by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University.
Consider my interview with Father Thomas Reese of the Society of Jesus to be a primer in the ever-interesting, ever-complicated subject of the relation between the Obama administration and the American Catholic community.
What makes this all so interesting and complicated is the fact that whoppingly different assessments of this relation abound. How whoppingly different? Just compare Father Reese's views on the President's standing among American Catholics and the Vatican with those of theologian Michael Novak whom I interviewed a few weeks back.
As for Thomas Reese, who also blogs on this site, he has a well-earned reputation as an engaging, outspoken and impassioned public intellectual—and in our discussion he did not disappoint. Addressing the controversy over President Obama's recent Notre Dame visit he observes that "The bishops [who protested his appearance there] have been basically tricked into opposing the visit by people who are really Republican activists who work under the veil of pro-life organizations." Father Reese wonders aloud why the same Catholic groups that protested Obama's commencement invitation did not complain when Cardinal Egan hosted Obama at the Al Smith Dinner in New York.
He also drew attention to the "swing" Catholic vote, the 20% of the community that is not loyal to either political party and can be coaxed to the blue or red side of the ledger. Our guest points to a dilemma that I have noted here before. Namely, that American Catholic voters don't always vote in accordance with their bishops' teachings on issues like abortion and human embryonic stem cell research at the (a state of affairs of which must make folks in the Obama administration pretty darn happy).
Well, I have always said that the Catholic Vote is the hardest vote to understand. Hopefully this episode of Faith Complex renders it all a little less mystifying.
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.
