FEATURE
Father Raymond Bourgeois
speaks at a protest against the School of Americas. Photo courtesy of flickr user peaceworker46
democratically engage with everyday Catholics came to nothing. Later Pope John Paul II attempted to address women’s issues in a 1988 Apostolic Letter entitled Mulieris Dignitatem. While the letter confirms the dignity of women, it goes on to outline two dimensions of women’s vocation, namely virginity and motherhood. “From a feminist perspective, the problem is that he is defining women’s vocations solely in terms of their sexual status,” Wessinger said. “And of course, men’s vocations are not defined in that way.” But instances in which the Catholic Church proactively tries to resolve problems are exceptions to the rule. Generally, the Church reacts to outside pressures the same way it always has, by ignoring them. The grinding Church bureaucracy and the intransigent nature of its leadership have many convinced that women’s ordination isn’t happening anytime soon. “This conversation has been going on for 30 or 40 years and there’s been no progress,” said Father Thomas Reese, a religion and public policy fellow at Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center. Reese likened the lack of progress on this issue to the similarly contentious debate about allowing priests to marry. In the 1960s and 1970s, many priests, inspired by more democratic and forward thinking language coming out of the Second Vatican Council, campaigned in favor of permitting priests to marry. For historical reasons, mandatory celibacy is considered “discipline” rather than “doctrine,” and theoretically could be changed. While priests are required to obey the teachings regarding clerical celibacy as long as they remain in force, they are free to oppose and speak out against them. But the movement opposing clerical celibacy came to nothing and priests felt they were wasting precious free time that could have been better spent running their parishes. A few decades later, the Church was rocked by a widespread sexual abuse scandal that many argue could have been avoided had priests been allowed to marry. Based on the Church’s capacity to embrace popular progressive change, Reese is pessimistic about the prospects for the ordination of women priests. “The chances of the pope and the bishops changing their minds about women’s ordination are very, very, very, very slim,” says Reese. “The hier-
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archy is an elite that is totally isolated from public opinion.” Priests with even the slightest misgivings about Church policy stand no chance of ascending the ranks of the Church hierarchy. Conversely, those who most aggressively enforce compliance with Church doctrine are typically first in line for promotions. “It is hard to see how the Church’s teaching is going to change because the people in charge have been screened before being promoted... Bottom line? Don’t hold your breath.” In a February 2012 issue of America, a weekly Catholic magazine published by the American Jesuits, Patricia Wittberg wrote an article entitled “A Lost Generation?” in which she notes that, historically, women in Western society were more religious, more spiritual than men. They also tended to join the religious life in much greater numbers. But data from recent studies show that the trend is reversing. Unlike their Protestant counterparts, Catholic women of recent generations are less likely to attend weekly mass, much less enter the religious life. While women may be beating a hasty retreat from the Catholic Church, they are not the only ones. Vocations are down across the board, with parishes across the United States forced to merge or close their doors. According to data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the Catholic population is rising steadily, but the last forty years have seen a steep decline in total numbers of priests and religious women. In 2011, there were more than three thousand American parishes without resident priest pastors. In other words, the Catholic Church may soon be forced to grapple with the uncomfortable fact that women’s priesthood could be necessary for the long-term sustainability of the Church. Many women feel called to the priesthood, but the Church continues to deem their vocation illegitimate. At present, women wanting to enter the religious life are restricted to service as nuns. But if the Church were to change its policy, it seems logical that many women would take the opportunity to lead their communities as priests.
Counterpoint
“The spirit can speak to anyone it pleases,” said Sr. Rosemary Reid, a member of the Sisters of the Cenacle order. “Whether or not [women’s calling] is valid, well, right now tradition and culture say that it is not.” Reid, now 87 years old, is my great aunt. She has been a nun for more than 60 years. Her order has had its own struggles with finding young women who are interested in the religious life. I asked her about the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood. “Well, the physical argument is that we’re too weak,” she said with a chuckle. “But sometimes the men are too strong.” Reid said that while some believe that women desire to stage a coup against male privilege, others recognize that women simply want to help provide “solace and help in the service of Christ.” “We are all in the same boat here,” she said. “We are all trying to do the same thing.” Even Koturbash of the more radical Roman Catholic Womenpriests still believes in the Church’s fundamentally good nature. While discussing Womenpriests’ decision to keep the fight for women within the institutional framework of the Church, Koturbash likened the exclusion of women to an oil spill within the church. When the spill hits, members of the community do not simply pack up and leave, she explained, they stick around to try to clean up. “Otherwise,” Koturbash said, “fundamentalism can take hold.” Clearly, the women who feel called to the priesthood simply want their opportunity to serve the Church and to lead, to do good. What is it that the Catholic Church is so afraid of ? I spoke with many people who, like Sr. Reid, emphasized the Church’s capacity for good and its progressive stance on other issues. But as long as the Church continues to refuse to ordain women, it will become increasingly difficult for the organization to maintain its credibility in other areas. That Koturbash and others maintain a certain faith in the Church as a whole is impressive. One cannot help but wonder why more dissidents have not simply walked away, especially considering the Church’s continued refusal to address their grievances, a refusal that stems from the fundamentally authoritarian nature of a twenty-first century faith that remains, as Koturbash says, “a medieval institution.” Indeed, what may ultimately be at stake is the relevancy of the Church—it can either adapt to changing norms in order to maintain its credibility or stubbornly cling to the remnants of patriarchal society and traditions rooted in sexism. Facing a sexual abuse scandal, a shortage of priests, and a steep decline in women’s participation, it seems that the case for women’s ordination is stronger than ever. The alternative—staying the course by continuing to alienate women and ignoring the changing values of the faithful—could be far worse. “When you say that certain subjects are off the table, can’t be discussed, can’t be talked about, I think that leads to a dysfunctional organization,” Reese says. “That makes it real difficult for the Church to deal with problems in the twenty-first century.” CP
May 2012
REVIEWS
Eric Pilch
Criminal Injustice
A conservative legal scholar comes to radical conclusions
W
illiam J. Stuntz was dying as he composed The Collapse of American Criminal Justice. Diagnosed with cancer and resisting mind-altering pain medication, he feverishly worked to complete the manuscript before expiring in March 2011. The result of his labors is a magnificent book, which argues the American system of criminal justice has unraveled before our eyes—a phenomenon that has escaped the notice of most citizens. Speaking at a Harvard Law event that honored the life of Stuntz, Columbia Law Professor Dan Richman explained, “[The book] offers a vivid picture of a world where we have an adversarial system without trials, a world where the jails are filled with African-American men. It’s a world where sentencing is untethered to reality.” Readers of The Collapse of American Criminal Justice are transported directly to this world through a narrative that contextualizes the present moment in light of the past 150 years. America has a structural level of incarceration that shatters historical norms. We incarcerate black men at a much higher rate than the height of Stalinist repression. A nation with 3 percent of the world’s population, we have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Most distressingly, in the urban communities hardest hit by the system, a vicious cycle of absent fathers and broken homes has taken root. Unfortunately, a quick glance at the statistics underlying the criminal justice system can lead to deeply flawed conclusions. It is tempting to point to the historically low crime rate in the United States and conclude that the status quo is acceptable. Moreover, any defense lawyer will tell you the vast majority of their clients are guilty. Shouldn’t this be seen as a sign the system is working? Stuntz argues strongly against this view and in favor of a more nuanced conception of the criminal justice system. The American public appears to judge incarceration in relation to the incidence of crime, while the scholarly literature on mass incarceration Stuntz is reacting to compares the United States to other Western democracies or historical levels of American incarceration. Based on the first standard, our level of incarceration is much too low. “Out of the tens of millions of felonies that happen each year, American prosecutors convict 1.1 million felons, roughly 700,000 of whom must serve prison sentences,” Stuntz writes. Increasing the rate of conviction, so that one third of felonies were punished, would result in a fivefold increase in criminal justice expenditures— from $200 billion to a staggering $1 trillion. The higher figure is roughly comparable to all government expenditures on health care and pensions today. The second standard, reflecting the scholarly
counterpointmagazine.ORG
debate that Stuntz summarizes, reveals more. Compared to Western European peers, the United States has a lower crime rate—Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Great Britain have levels of burglary that are roughly twice as high—but ten times as many prisoners. Yet, it may still be imprudent to theorize about an incarceration ceiling based on Western industrialized peers. Crime is substantially lower in the U.S., critics might say. What these two perspectives actually reveal is that the criminal justice system inevitably involves balancing community property rights and safety concerns with the overall consequences and efficacy of criminal prosecution. This may be a distressing conclusion—since the majority of crime will not, and has not historically, led to judicial sanction—but it is inescapable based on the data presented by Stuntz. By this standard, our criminal justice system has fallen far out of balance, and the lack of awareness among the general population results from the primary targets of the system’s machinery, the urban poor. This toxic status quo is also the product of an underappreciated set of historical circumstances, according to Stuntz. Liberals laud the legacy of the Warren Court, which enshrined state appointed counsel for indigent defendants, created Miranda rights, and prevented prosecutors from using evidence obtained by illegal seizures. Stuntz argues these path-breaking reforms actually did more harm than good in the long run by inciting a conservative counter-reaction. Symbolic assaults on criminal coddling liberals by the likes of Ricard Nixon, George Wallace, and Ronald Regan eventually became more than symbolic. Politicians on the left responded by implementing ‘tough on crime’ policies. This reached a high water mark under President Clinton, who arguably implemented the most punitive criminal justice policies in the last forty years. In this environment, average sentences rose. This gave prosecutors more leverage to threaten extraordinarily high punishments and compel defendants to enter guilty pleas. Defendants—disproportionately from the inner city and generally appointed less competent counsel—faced juries composed of more affluent residents of the suburbs who did not hail from the communities dealing with violent crime. The resulting outcomes have produced the collapse we witness today. Near the end of The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, Bill Stuntz reflects on the future of our criminal justice system based on his lifetime of scholarship in criminal law and criminal procedure. The results are at once refreshing and also quite surprising. A conservative and a contributor to publications like The Weekly Standard and Christianity
Counterpoint
THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE By William J. Stuntz (Harvard University Press $35.00)
Today, Stuntz’s analysis nonetheless results in policy prescriptions more closely associated with the political left in America. Rather than focusing on punishment, the book advocates a greater investment in intelligent, preventative policing. Stuntz argues that average sentences must be reduced, public defense must be funded at a dramatically higher level, and steps must be taken to remove the overwhelming reliance on plea-bargaining. The drug war should be wound down, or at the very least de-emphasized. Yet, his prescription also has a deeply conservative element. If criminal justice is about balancing community interests and the effects of prosecution, as Stuntz would suggest, the communities dealing with high crime rates are best equipped to handle these questions. This leads Stuntz to advocate for greater federalism in the execution of criminal justice. Juries should come from the communities where crimes are taking place. For example, suburban residents of Chicago’s sprawling Cook County are poorly equipped to serve on juries dealing with inner city violence and drug crime. There is a growing awareness of the problems identified in The Collapse of Criminal Justice, in no small part due to the book’s impressive sales, coupled with the success of titles like Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Paul Butler’s Let’s Get Free. In early March, even conservative culture warrior Pat Robertson came out in favor of marijuana legalization. Yet, mass incarceration is not a phenomenon that will be easily displaced. Conservatives and liberals alike would benefit from Bill Stuntz’s beautifully argued tome from the brink of death. In the final pages, Stuntz writes, “The criminals we incarcerate are not some alien enemy. Nor, for that matter, are the police officers and prosecutors who seek to fight crime in those criminals neighborhoods. Neither side of this divide is ‘them.’ Both sides are us.” It will take a more full appreciation of this fundamentally inclusive message to overturn the scourge of mass incarceration and bring the criminal justice system back from collapse. CP
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