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Does anyone have 'moral clarity' in the Hamas-Israeli war?

In some ways it has been reassuring to see so much concern about "moral clarity" from some U.S. political leaders on the question of whether American colleges and universities have permitted or even encouraged expressions of antisemitism in light of the Hamas-Israel war.

Arab-israeliOne problem is that a shocking percentage of the American electorate in this putridly divisive political era seems to have lost track of what constitutes moral clarity. How else to explain how a man twice impeached and now defending himself in several courts on charges ranging from a sexual attack to insurrection against the U.S. has been, by far, the leading contender to be nominated for president by one of our country's two main political parties?

If the democratic process has a serious flaw it's the willingness of voters to support knaves and fools. Which is not to say that knaves and fools don't sometimes get things right -- sort of like a stopped watch that's right twice a day. Or that they don't at least sometimes ask the right question.

For instance, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R.-N.Y.), who has been criticized repeatedly for lacking moral clarity, did recently manage to ask a good and important question (never mind her motives for asking it) about antisemitism and the encouragement of genocide that could have been adequately answered with just one word, "yes."

As no doubt you know, in a Congressional hearing, Stefanik asked the now-resigned Harvard University president, Claudine Gay, whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" violates Harvard's rules prohibiting bullying and harassment. Gay said, in response, that it "depends on the context" and added that "antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct, it amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation."

Gay later apologized for her fuzzy, wimpy, silly answer, saying, “I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable.” But by then it was too late to save her job, especially when charges of plagiarism in her academic work were added to her troubles.

Stefanik, who continues to want to elect as president a man with no moral compass whatever, somehow managed to ask a good question that anyone with any sense of history should have answered simply this way: Calling for the genocide of Jews is always and everywhere a moral failing. Gay paid for her failure to say that by having to resign her job -- as she should have -- even though the result may well be a furious and damaging controversy about academic freedom on college campuses across the country.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch put it this way: "This will be used by the very worst people to make higher education worse, not better. It will be used to cut funding, end diversity, stifle academic freedom."

(Another university president who also testified to the congressional committee, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, has resigned her post, too. So far, Sally Kornbluth, the third university president to testify that day, has not resigned as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kornbluth, who is Jewish, has been the target of both criticism and admiration, as this Jewish Telegraph Agency article notes.) 

All of this comes at a time when, as Axios reported a few weeks ago, "The vast majority of Jewish college students say they have seen or experienced antisemitism on their campus since the start of the school year, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International published Wednesday."

As this Taz report, by Gunther Jikeli of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, shows, on campus after campus in the U.S., some students, in showing support for the Palestinian people, have ignored or downplayed the stark and brutal terrorism by Hamas in its initial Oct. 7 attack -- an attack for which there can be no defense.

So the Hamas-Israeli war, obviously, has contributed a lot to all of this. And it should be clear to everyone that Israel's response has at times moved beyond what was necessary and humane and, instead, degenerated into actions that its morally compromised president, Benjamin Netanyahu, simply will not be able to defend. Indeed, I'd hoped that President Joe Biden would have been more critical of Netanyahu than he has been. More than 75 years after modern Israel's creation, it's way past time for regional and world leaders, working directly with both the Palestinians and the Israelis, to find a stable two-state solution that values everyone.

All of this shows that one-dimensional thinking can miss some of the complications and nuances of things. For instance, should it be possible to criticize policies of the Israeli government without that criticism being antisemitic? Yes. Should it be possible to want a better, safer future for the Palestinian people without that desire being seen as support for Hamas, clearly a terrorist organization? Of course.

So I can hope only that wiser heads -- if there are some -- can have a bigger influence on domestic and world events than they seem to have had in 2023, a year that despite offering times of joy for many individuals, left the building without much applause. And deservedly so.

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OH, THE TIMES SEEM TO BE CHANGING IN CATHOLICISM

There are more Vatican stirrings about changing practices in the Catholic Church. Just weeks after Pope Francis said that priests could bless same-sex couples (but not gay marriage), a top Vatican official suggests it's time to change the rule that requires priests to be celibate. As this Guardian story reports, "A senior Vatican official has said that the Roman Catholic church should revise the requirement for priests to be celibate, while acknowledging that some will view the idea as 'heretical.'

"Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, who is based in the Vatican’s doctrinal office and is an adviser to Pope Francis, said: “If it were up to me, I would revise the requirement that priests have to be celibate. Experience has shown me that this is something we need to seriously think about.” One of the forces leading to a call for change is the growing shortage of priests.

Sometimes change happens in institutional religion this way: A modest change creates pressure for more changes. The serious work of that religion when that happens is to be open to useful changes that don't tear apart the core of what that religion teaches or stands for. That can be a delicate business, and history is full of examples of how religions failed to get it right. Both the Protestant Reformation, which began in the early 1500s, and the Great Schism of 1054, which divided the church into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, are examples.

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