Depends what you mean by "criticize."  Deal Hudson, former editor of Crisis magazine, and now director of InsideCatholic.com, offers a qualified yes here.

Hudson: "A Catholic journalist may, therefore, criticize a bishop in editorial fashion so long as he shows respect for the office, maintains a non-offensive tone, and keeps the unity of the Church at the forefront of his mind. As stated in canon 212: 'Expressing opinion . . . should aim at the edification of the Church as a whole, not at its splintering into various groups.'

The Church does not legalistically forbid a Catholic journalist, or any qualified layman, from offering criticism of a bishop. But the Church does require that the criticism not demean the authority of the bishop or his office or create harmful divisions in the Body of Christ."

But the greater problem in the church is not simply disrespecting bishops, it is disrespecting anyone with whom you disagree. For an example of this, check out Michael Sean Winters' experience, written about in post below. Or the responses to the furor over the recent news about the Vatican's actions against Roger Haight, SJ, over at Dotcommonweal. Or, well, you can probably fill in the blanks. Too often Catholics writers, bloggers, speakers, authors, commentators forget that being Catholic also means being Christian.

James Martin, SJ

Waltz with Bashir is unlike any other film I have ever seen. Both a documentary and an animation film--it is competing for Academy awards for both best animation and best foreign film from Israel--it is a surrealistic, often harrowing and deeply thought-provoking film. I left the showing literally shaking and plunged deep in thought and a quagmire of varying emotions. The director, Ari Folman, took part, as a nineteen year old, in the First Israeli-Lebanon war in 1982. He was stationed just hundreds of yards from the Sabra and Shitilla refugee camps, where 3,200 women, children and old people were brutally massacred by the Christian Phalangists in Lebanon, with the connivance of the Israeli military top command. Eventually, the Kahane Commission in Israel found the Israel military, including Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, complicit in this horrendous, brutal war crime.

Folman seems to have suffered from some variant of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He can not remember where he was or what happened during key periods of the war when he and his comrades came under sniper fire. He has no recollection of being present close to the massacre and joining other soldiers in lighting flares in the night sky to facilitate the cruel and inhumane killings. Years after the event, he contacts comrades who served with him to try to reconstruct what happened. He undergoes therapy to facilitate the remembrance. Folman created the Israeli television series which served as the model for the HBO series, "In Treatment."

The soldiers mix actual remembrances with hallucinatory sequences which came to them during the war. One acquaintance has a recurring dream of 26 snarling, vicious dogs who come nightly to attack him. They re-create his guilt at killing 26 barking dogs, to silence their warning bark when his platoon landed in Beirut. Animation--often done in a style reminiscent of German expressionist wood-blocks--works well as a medium to link the dreams, imaginations and nightmares of the soldiers. In one sequence, from which the movie gets its title, a comrade of Folman, Schmuel Frankel wrests a machine-gun from his buddy and runs into an open square where he is both dodging sniper bullets and frantically shooting the machine-gun in what seems a spirited dance. All around the square are large posters of the assassinated Lebanese Christian Phalangist President, Bashir Geymayal. The Phalangists suspected that Palestinian terrorists were guilty of the assassination. In point of fact, later evidence lays the responsibility with the Syrians.

Nothing I have ever seen has so captured "the fog of war." What started, for the young soldiers, as a kind of lark and adventure (they sing as they ride into town, " We are Here to Bomb Bierut") turns into trauma. In one scene, soldiers, on the look-out for a red Mercedes car which they have been tipped off might carry a car bomb, panic as a car approaches at night and riddle it with bullets. In the event, they discover they had murdered innocent civilians, a family with children, whose car happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. While the soldiers are not explicitly aware that they were being used to provide cover for the war crime, they later have to live with the guilt of senseless and unjust murders. One Israeli journalist, interviewed for the documentary, said that seeing the straggling few survivors, children and the elderly, coming out from the camp reminded him of nothing so much as the survivors of Auschwitz. Many of those Folman interviewees remain rather uncertain about what really happened or what, now, lodges in their memories (often as surrealistic dreams). Twenty-five years on, the former soldiers, now grizzled, middle-aged men, either live with remnants of the trauma or fall into a kind of amnesia.

Americans, caught in two terrible and non-conventional wars of guerrilla tactics, would do well to go see the film, if for no other reason than to understand the myriad number of their own young men and women who will return--if the wars ever end-- from Iraq and Afghanistan with similar senses of blocked memories, acting out fantasies and, perhaps, complicity in the killing of innocents. The movie ends with non-animated documentary footage of the carnage and bodies and the shrieking and wailing women of the Palestinian camps, keening over their dead. The viewer feels very much that he and Folman have been embedded, much like traumatized reporters, in a vision of gruesome slaughter and a kind of hell. No one can come away from viewing Waltz with Bashir with simple bravado or jingoistic views of war. Because of the inevitable and multifarious fog of war, war can only ever be commenced as some true and tragic last resort, not, as in Lebanon 1982 or Iraq, as some supercilious "war of choice." How rare that the perpetrators of unjust war, if they win the war, ever have to pay the just price they deserve as war criminals. Sharon went on to become Prime Minister of Israel!

John Coleman, S.J.

Yesterday, a friend sent me a copy of "The Wanderer" from December 4 of last year. My posting here suggesting that Doug Kmiec be named the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican had made the front page. I am deeply honored.

"The Wanderer" is a newspaper published in Minnesota that is about as far to the right as you can get and still be in the Catholic Church. Mind you, I believe it is a big church and there is plenty of room for everybody, including the editors in St. Paul though they seem to decline to extend the same presumption of good faith to me and mine. They are among the right-wing fringe that has forgotten that the line about being "more Catholic than the Pope" is a joke.

The article quoted from my post and then from an article (to which I am unable to link) that ran in the Catholic News Agency (CNA) which is not to be confused with the Catholic News Service (CNS). CNS is a news agency dedicated to reporting about the Church but CNA appears to have more of an ideological agenda. Their reports are free from some of the vitriol one finds in "The Wanderer" but not from the bias. CNA toes a conservative line at all times and on all stories.

What struck me about both the CNA and "TheWanderer" stories was the attribution of quotes to an "an official from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State" who spoke to CNA on the condition of anonymity. The official said that Cardinal James Stafford and Archbishop Raymond Burke, both American prelates working in the curia, considered Kmiec "a traitor" and that his appointment could not happen without upsetting Carl Anderson from the Knights of Columbus.

Where I come from, calling a fellow Catholic "a traitor" evidences a lack of charity, to say nothing of ignorance of canon law: "Traitor" is not a canonical term, is it? I have never met Archbishop Burke, but Cardinal Stafford is a lovely and kind man, and I have a hard time imagining him calling anyone but Benedict Arnold a traitor. The same goes for Mr. Anderson. More to the point, this anonymous official purports to be speaking for them, but why should we believe that he has any authorization to do so? Indeed, while the Secretary of State could consult whomever he wants in determining how to respond to a potential ambassadorial appointment, I am sure that the prelates would keep such consultations to themselves.

There is an old saying: Those who know, don’t talk and those who talk, don’t know. This is not always true or Vatican reporters would be out of a job. But, I was under the impression that Vatican officials make an oath not to speak to the press about their work. Why then are these oh, so Catholic news outlets helping someone to violate his oath?

As to the merits of the argument, there is a tautology in the objections this anonymous Vatican official raises. If supporting Barack Obama is enough to get one labeled a traitor, and an appointment denied, it is difficult to see whom Obama could appoint. My guess is that the Vatican is savvy enough to understand that Obama won and he gets to appoint a supporter and that Doug Kmiec is not only a supporter with access to the incoming President, but he is a Catholic in good standing whose lifelong efforts to create a culture of life and decency commend him for this job. And, although I am not authorized to speak for either of them, I fancy Pope Benedict and Professor Kmiec would enjoy long conversations about Natural Law theory, the danger of relativism, and other topics of intellectual import to which both men have made significant contributions. You can quote me on that.

I never thought I would live to see the day. If anyone had any doubts about Barack Obama’s willingness to listen to pro-life Democrats, his selection of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to head the Democratic National Committee should settle those doubts. Obama means business.

Governor Kaine is clearly one of the president-elect’s favorite fellow politicians. He was on the short-list for the vice-presidency but his lack of foreign policy credentials was deemed an insurmountable hurdle. But, Kaine is also pro-life. There are those in the GOP who will contest the point. They correctly point out that Kaine said during his campaign that he would enforce the law and the law is Roe v. Wade. Of course, this was a mere statement of fact. The Governor of Virginia, like the Governor of any other state, must abide by the laws of the United States. We fought a great and terrible civil war, much of it on the soil of Virginia, on precisely this point.

But, Kaine said more than that he would enforce the laws. He took the time to explain his opposition to abortion and to capital punishment. In historically Republican and conservative Virginia, Kaine’s opposition to capital punishment was even more of an impediment to his election than his opposition to abortion! He explained why his Catholic views were important to him, and how he saw those views making different claims upon his conscience and upon his veto power. Most importantly, he was not afraid to admit that there is some ambivalence about how religious views intersect with the duties of public office. NARAL refused to endorse his candidacy.

It would be wrong to think that either abortion or capital punishment were the decisive issues in the 2005 Virginia gubernatorial race. Taxes and transportation funding were the main points of contention. But, Kaine’s willingness to talk about his views on traditional moral issues, to say nothing of his biography which includes a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Honduras, kept him from being tarred as a typical, ACLU-loving liberal. Having dodged the caricature, he got a hearing on the issues over which a governor really has some clout, namely, taxes and transportation. While his fellow Democrats lost all other statewide races, Kaine won a surprisingly easy victory as Governor.

So far, there has been no comment from NARAL or NOW on the selection, which has not been officially announced. It will be curious to see if pro-abortion groups take to the airwaves in protest the way gay rights groups did over the selection of the Reverend Rick Warren to give the invocation at the Inauguration. And, it will be even more curious to see how Team Obama responds. They stuck to their guns on Warren and my fingers are crossed they will do the same on Kaine.

The recent stories in the press about a new level of official recognition that soldiers bring their war traumas back with them, and often hurt themselves or others, as well as the recent articles in America about military chaplains, have put me in mind of my own work with the military.

In the fall of 1998, I met a group of Army religious educators at a conference, and was immediately taken by their vivacity, curiosity, humility, and what seemed even on cursory glance like a pretty interesting spiritual indifference to a military culture that I thought would have all but fenced them in theologically. This chance meeting led to my serving as a "trainer" and consultant for the military from 1999-2003, mostly for the Army, but a couple of times for the Air Force, too.

My first military invitation came through the Army Chief of Chaplains Office, and I was not sure that I could accept. True, I had served very briefly as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Force (that's another story) in 1990, but had never done any other military duty, and at the time was being pulled personally more and more toward the spiritualities of Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, and the Catholic Peace Fellowship. I have written about the importance of making ROTC into a theological question for Catholic campuses. On the other hand, I liked the religious educators a lot that I'd met, the challenge of learning military culture seemed intriguing (I've always been an eager participant in, and pretty aggressive at, sports; I see physical and spiritual exercises as deeply co-implicated; I wish that I had time to really get going on Parkour; and I have continually fantasized about trying to survive basic training), and did I mention that the pay was fair?

I ended up proposing that I could work for the Army if the Army would also write a check to Fr. Roy Bourgeois and School of the Americas Watch. To my surprise, the military guys actually took some time to see if that would somehow be possible. To my nonsurprise, it was not possible. But when I asked if I could make a brief statement at my first "training" event (and perhaps others--I can't remember), to the effect that a portion of my fee would go to SOA Watch, I was permitted to do so. (And when I did so that first time, after giving a training workshop for Army religious educators, several thanked me for even raising the issue at an official event.)

Later I asked for another kind of "payment" for my work with the Army, which was that I be allowed to tour the School of the Americas, and to meet with chaplains who work there. That request was also granted, and I spent an uncomfortable (because of its intense notoriety and notoriousness) but unforgettable day walking around the School and talking to some chaplains there about how they think about their work.

Over several years, I worked with many different kinds of military personnel, but mostly with chaplains and religious educators, consulting and "training" (their term for seemingly any kind of pedagogical event) around their theological interests concerning faith engaging contemporary culture, especially in regard to young adults, Catholicism, vocations, the priesthood, and mentoring.

I have no "lessons" from these experiences that I can summarize in a short blog post. Yes, I did often see a disproportionate influence of evangelical Christianity on military culture. Yes, I did see a phenomenally understaffed Catholic ministerial presence (including a very serious Catholic priest/chaplain shortage). Yes, I did meet personnel who seemed to believe in something like political and personal salvation through American militarism. On the other hand, in these chaplains, religious educators, and others in ministry, I met perhaps the largest contingent of complex, raw, and tested pastoral leaders I've ever seen in one institution, many of whom hold worlds of contradiction together in their hands each day that most of the rest of us cannot fathom. I met pastoral leaders who talked openly about the ambiguities of their own propensities to feel needed in "action" and in violence. And I heard pastoral leaders speak compassionately and knowledgeably about homoeroticism in military life.

If I now look back on those times with the military with any "lesson learned" (to borrow again from them), it is the highly "civilian" character of my own theology, and the "civilian" character of much of what we do in theology and ministry in Catholic higher education in the United States, so typically separated are we from ministry professionals in the military. I am challenged at Fordham to keep the memories of this military work somehow present in my teaching.

Tom Beaudoin
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

John Tierney's column in the N.Y. Times Science pages (12/30/08) describes the new psychological findings that people who are religiously devout have more self-control than others. It's old news that "religious people tend to do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and are generally happier." The self-discipline religious effect, however, only appears among intrinsic true believers and not among the socially conventional or extrinsically motivated religious.

Self discipline is also stronger among those engaged in religious institutions, more so than those reporting themselves to be generally "spiritual" and believing in a "spiritual force greater than any human being." But why? How do you explain the greater inner strength and self control among the more strongly engaged institutionally committed religious believers?

Psychologist Michael McCullough who has done the research, theorizes that it may be the belief that God has preferences for your personal behavior that strengthen one's ability to follow through in everyday practice. Fear of God's wrath doesn't seem to be the cause, but rather the fact that the devout internalize their faith's "sacred values." McCullough calls these institutionally "prefabricated" values, but Catholics would see them as infused with the Divine authority of Tradition.

My own explanations of the new findings focuses in on the fact that intrinsic religion involves constant efforts to stay attentively present within a loving relationship with God and neighbor. This repeated directing of my conscious attention involves imagining the Other while simultaneously imagining God attending to me.--a double consciousness that intensifies my identity as a self-in-relationship. A strong continuing consciousness of self strengthens the power of self-directed acts of will.

Consciousness of being a member of a supportive group also strengthens my capacity to act as I want to act, despite resistance. With the evolved human brain's abstract capacities, I can carry the group around with me in memory, as William James and St.Paul knew. This cloud of witnesses--present, absent, human and Divine-- strengthens my efforts to act. Always we find that small worshiping communities, and self-help groups like AA, call forth and empower an individual's power to change.

Paul writes in Galatians that "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, SELF-CONTROL." (Gal5:22-23) The more I can attend to and live in God's Spirit, the more I can receive the gift of acting on the desires God inspires me to value. The good news is that in and through Christ's saving act we too are members of the Trinity.

For his part, self professed heathen John Tierney is offering to award Mike McCullough's new book on forgiveness to the reader of his blog who can best answer the question: "Are there any religious or spiritual activities that help build your self self-control, or your child's?" What do our readers have to say?

Sidney Callahan

This morning's "Morning Edition" had a segment on writer Elizabeth McCracken and her new book about her first child who died in utero. It is the kind of story that will make pro-choice advocates re-think their position and is a perfect example of how we in the pro-life community can change the culture to better reflect the reality of pre-natal human life.

And, on today's "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, your humble political blogger was a guest discussing the leading religious stories of 2008. The show airs at different times in different markets, so check your local NPR listings. You can also listen when they post the webcast at noon EST by clicking here. 

Michael Sean Winters