Withdrawing from the World

The pro-life boycott of the Susan G. Komen Foundation is growing. There are now about a dozen (of 195) Roman Catholic Dioceses in the US that have notified Catholic organizations within their jurisdictions they should not support the Race for the Cure. As far as I can tell none of them ban individual Catholics from participation. That is left to personal conscience. Most dioceses take no official position.

The objecting bishops differ with Komen over what they consider serious moral issues, essentially maintaining that support for Komen can amount to cooperating with evil. I would counter that the boycott itself works to deprive the world of an unequivocal good (fighting cancer) to no discernable benefit.

The issues mostly have to do with Komen’s financial support for breast cancer screening and educational services provided at Planned Parenthood facilities, denial of any proven link between induced abortion and increased risk of breast cancer, and refusal to rule out stem cell research involving destruction of human embryos.

Komen responds that they have controls in place to ensure all funds go to breast cancer related purposes specified in grants. There is no evidence any of their money has gone toward morally objectionable uses. They do not warn women of abortion related cancer risk because neither the American Cancer Society nor the National Institute of Health, nor any other major health organization acknowledges such a link. And so far they have not funded any embryonic stem cell research, though some of their research is done at institutions where other projects do involve embryos.

The boycott is a mistake. It makes the pro-life community, and by extension Catholics in general, appear narrow minded and dogmatic. Some of what I see on the internet is more than just narrow minded. Much of it is not true. Some of it is slander. In singling out Komen the boycott pits us against an almost universally respected institution and one of the most widely supported charities in the country, one against whom most reasonable people would reject charges of ties to abortion. Komen is about breast cancer, not abortion. To equate the foundation with evil is over the top. Shrill voices don’t win a lot of friends.

After all, the State of Texas funds breast and cervical cancer services for eligible women through private clinics in every county. In Collin County there are three, all of them Planned Parenthood. Do I stop paying my taxes? No but I can and have lobbied elected officials to find other providers. Abortion is far more prevalent in China than here. Even forced abortion is common. Every time I turn on the lights I use electricity produced in part from wind turbines made in China. Do I sit in the dark? No but I do advocate using trade ties to pressure the Chinese to improve human rights practices.

The number of dioceses participating in the boycott remains small, but the trend is worrisome. Some dioceses haven even stopped supporting Catholic Campaign for Human Development on grounds they work with groups they don’t approve of. That’s a mistake too. The anti-poverty CCHD does a lot of good work and, like Komen, is very careful to see to it their money goes where it is intended.

The church is a powerful voice on all sorts of important social issues, including right to life, poverty, immigration reform, school choice, the family, and a host of others. To be effective we have to work in this world with people we sometimes disagree with on serious matters. Otherwise we will never accomplish much that’s worthwhile.

Seven Billion People

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, may be the greatest hero of the twentieth century that most people never heard of. Mention of the Green Revolution today would most likely conjure up images of solar panels and wind farms. But world hunger was the great social issue of the 1960s. It still is, or should be and Dr. Borlaug did more to relieve it than maybe anybody else ever did. The world of 1960 could not feed its population of 3 billion people. The world of 2011 can comfortably feed the 7 billion now on the planet. Where hunger exists today the reasons are political.

Dr. Borlaug was an agronomist doing research in Mexico during the 1940s where he developed new high yield and disease resistant varieties of wheat. The new varieties combined with improved farming techniques enabled Mexico in 20 years to go from importing more than half its wheat to a net wheat exporter. The success prompted an explosion in agricultural research funded by governments and private foundations around the world. A better diet allowed the average Japanese to grow a foot in stature in a single generation. Improved food supplies made it possible for who knows how many millions to move from subsistence farming into the middle class.

But there are still over 900 million hungry souls out there. Why so many? Poverty mostly; wars explain some of it, rampant government corruption in places like India and Africa contributes its share, and of course poverty and hunger go hand in hand in a vicious cycle. Malnourished people don’t make good workers. Hungry children don’t develop properly. They are more likely to get sick, the illnesses they get are more serious, and so it goes. My maternal grand parents both died in their 40s of tuberculosis. Their doctor thought it was because they had weak constitutions from a poor diet as a young couple, saving money so they could start a business. He may have been right.

Access to clean water and an adequate, secure food supply are probably the most important prerequisites to those most basic of Jeffersonian human rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And both are achievable, now. We can do a lot to help. It wouldn’t even have to cost us much, maybe not anything. We could start with eliminating these insane ethanol mandates. They cost us a lot of money, distort markets for grains and other food stuffs going well beyond corn prices, and have precious few benefits. That alone could shave a few million off the list of the undernourished. There are other things we could do here at home too, like make sure no child ever goes to bed hungry. We’ve made progress there, with Head Start, subsidized school lunches, and back pack programs to see to it children have food for weekends. But that food doesn’t always reach every child. We should make sure it does. The return on investment could be enormous.

We could do more with trade policy as well. Trade can be a powerful tool for encouraging foreign officials to clean up their own acts. Whatever China’s sins may be, they have had to play by certain rules to get and maintain membership in the World Trade Organization. The result has been epic economic growth for that country. A more prosperous China is not likely to tolerate the famines once common in that long suffering place. Mothers here can no longer use starving Chinese children to motivate kids to eat their vegetables. Improved trade ties with third world countries ought to be a priority in our foreign policy. A good opportunity would be to restart the stalled Doha Round of World Trade Talks. Any trade unionist raising a protectionist voice in protest ought to be sent to bed without his supper.

Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven

Most of us have forgotten why we observe Veterans Day on November 11. This might be a good year to remember. Until 1954 the holiday was called Armistice Day, a day set aside to honor the veterans of WWI. The Armistice ending the War to End All Wars was signed in French Marshall Ferdinand Foch’s railway car at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, hence the date. The word armistice connotes a cease fire serving as a prelude to a negotiated peace.

When I was a child ladies in our town would stand on street corners on Armistice Day, handing out poppies to be worn on lapels. The poppies signified the fields in Flanders where some of the most bitter fighting took place. The tradition ended with the name change after the Korean War.

The Armistice was followed in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles formally ending the war and spelling out terms for peace. The terms were harsh but Germany was in no position to resume hostilities and, facing a possible allied invasion, was forced to sign. We would soon come to regret that. Germans resented the loss of sizeable chunks of territory. They resented the forced abdication of the Kaiser. Above all they resented the infamous “War Guilt Clause,” the requirement that Germany admit to full responsibility for starting the war and make reparations far in excess of what they could actually pay. Germans felt wronged. Their army hadn’t been defeated in the field and they hadn’t started the war. A Serbian assassin in Sarajevo did that. It all contributed to the rise of Adolph Hitler 15 years later. The results were catastrophic.

Horrific as WWI was with its 8.5 million or so dead soldiers and another 21 million wounded, the next war would be far worse. We read a lot about the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million Jews, but it is estimated that between 1939 and 1945 20 million people died in Russia alone, most of them civilians and a lot of them from starvation. George Marshall’s insistence that American recovery assistance in Europe be extended to Germany and Italy, and Douglas MacArthur’s decision to treat the Japanese with dignity and conciliation during the post war occupation of Japan contributed heavily to those countries remaining essentially at peace for the next 65 years, and most likely for another 65 to come. Both men learned the lessons of a bad peace and applied them sensibly despite a lot of pressure to repeat the old mistakes. MacArthur never even got a Nobel.

WWI didn’t end war and it isn’t ended yet but that may be closer to reality than it has ever been. With the Cold War over most nations don’t face any existential threat, and none seems likely to appear. Tiny Israel does but the prospect of devastating retaliation is a powerful deterrent. The wars we have seen so far in the 21st century don’t remotely compare in carnage or scope with those of the 20th. Let’s hope they stay that way, and that they become increasingly rare.

Pope Paul VI could have been thinking of The Armistice when he famously said “If you want peace work for justice.” Veterans Day is a day to honor veterans, not to dwell on the mistakes of their leaders. But this year, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the eleventh year of the millennium, it would be worth remembering that historic day almost a century ago, and what went wrong. It would be a great time to pray for peace and justice, and for a little guidance on what we might be able to do to help bring them about.