Transcript for April 16

Now to come to your question, yeah, the difference between a Supreme Court justice and a senator: A justice is precisely to have an extremely and disciplined modesty about his role. His role is not to advance his preferred policy options. It must not be that. He is the servant of the law to interpret the Constitution in accord with a certain judicial tradition of precedence, etc.

The senator or the congresswoman or congressman is in a very different position. They are there precisely to advocate what they believe is the course of greater justice and greater fairness, etc., in the society. So therefore, when you have, for example, a Catholic senator or congressperson who stands up and persistently, publicly, unapologetically, defiantly, again and again, says, “I do not believe what the church believes with regards to the moral imperative of protecting innocent, unborn human life.”

If you have a senator who says, or a congressperson who says, “Yes, I agree that the goal is and, as a Catholic, I am convinced in conscience that the goal is every unborn child protected in law and welcomed in life, but I disagree with the bishops as to how we might get to that goal,” that is a different thing and their the—his or her relationship with the church is not compromised or impaired. But when you have, as we do have, many Catholic political figures persistently defying the very teaching of the church, the most fundamental teaching of the church with regard to the dignity of the human person at every stage of development and decline, then you have a problem where the bishop is required, because the bishop’s a pastor, is required to say to that person, “Hey, we better talk, because you are compromising your relationship with the church.” It’s not a political issue; it’s a ecclesial issue. It’s an issue with regard to the integrity of the life of the church.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you agree with that, Sister?

SISTER CHITTISTER: I, I, I think the distinction is a good one. I don’t think that it’s, it’s totally accurate. Fact of the matter is that a legislator can work very, very hard for these issues that, that mean so much to, to all of us; at the same time, have to work, as Father said later, differently in that arena. At the same time, you, you have parallel situations where it’s not being applied. You have Governor Kaine from Virginia, who is a Catholic, who says that he is opposed to capital punishment, but he will maintain the law. That...

REV. NEUHAUS: But, you know, Sister, capital punishment and abortion are not at the same level of teaching weight.

SISTER CHITTISTER: Well, I don’t know that, see. I think that...

REV. NEUHAUS: Oh, really?

SISTER CHITTISTER: Yeah. I think they are at this...

REV. NEUHAUS: Oh I, I—consult the catechism.

SISTER CHITTISTER: I think they, I think that they are not at the same level of teaching weight. I’m saying I’m not sure why.

REV. NEUHAUS: Oh.

SISTER CHITTISTER: I’m not sure why they’re not at the same level of teaching weight.

REV. NEUHAUS: Ah.

SISTER CHITTISTER: Because either, either life is of value or it’s not of value. Are we saying get them all born, but you can kill them anytime afterwards and it won’t mean as much? I doubt that. I think that this is part of what I said at the beginning. These are new issues emerging. We need a lot of these good conversations, and we need a lot of awareness that, somehow or other, we’re, we’re growing into both a new country and, and a new religious network.

MR. RUSSERT: Pastor Osteen, before we take a break, are, are there criteria that a politician must meet in order to attend your church and be a member in good faith and good standing?

PASTOR OSTEEN: Well, you know, Tim, we’d like to believe that they’re going to follow the Bible and how we interpret it, but I can’t say that we give them any kind of test or anything like that and, you know, in our church, Tim, we’ve got Republicans, Democrats and all kinds of different, different people from different political backgrounds. So, you know what? We encourage them to vote, to search their own hearts, to feel their own convictions, but no, there’s not any certain criteria that they have to meet. We have, like I said, Democratic senators and Republican senators. And opening day, Nancy Pelosi was here and Governor Perry. You know, all different parties.

MR. RUSSERT: We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back with more of our discussion, Faith in America, right after this.

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MR. RUSSERT: More on our discussion, Faith in America, on this Easter Sunday morning after this station break.

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MR. RUSSERT: And we are back.

Professor Nasr, after September 11, 2001, Americans learned a lot about Islam they didn’t know. Many hear words like infidel. What does that mean?

PROF. NASR: First of all, you have two currents opposing each other. A lot of people learn a lot about Islam, but a lot of people are also misled about Islam. A great deal of misinformation came into the market of ideas, you might say, as well as, of course, authentic teachings, and this itself helped those extremists in the Islamic world who wanted to have such ideas propagated in the West about Islam. So it was kind of like yin-yang situation. One helping the other.

As far as the word infidel of co—is concerned, of course, it’s—the Latin word means “lacking faith.” The Arabic word for it is kufr, which mean to cover a truth over. And the Quran, the sacred scripture of Islam, explicitly says that those who are infidels are not only non-Muslims—in fact, Christians and Jews can go to heaven, and they can be people of faith, and there’re people among Muslims who, if they do not follow their religion, they become infidels.

The usage of infidel as a political term goes back really to the consequence of the Middle Ages, especially during the colonial period when our Muslims consider those people who were colonizing them or, during the Crusades, killing us, being infidels. But technically and theologically speaking, infidel means someone who really does not have faith in God.

MR. RUSSERT: So we are witnessing a struggle for the soul of Islam.

PROF. NASR: Yes. I think also the soul for Christianity and Judaism and everything else. But the case of Islam seems to be so much in discussion because the Islamic world is a vast world. If we were like Tibetan Buddhism with just a few million people, nobody would talk about it very much. You have unbelievable transformations taking place within the Islamic world. Tensions; at the same time, remarkable revivals of a very positive kind. And this idea of the soul of Islam, I don’t like this idea very much, because the soul of Islam is, is given by God; there’s no struggle for it. That’s a God-given revelation like Christianity or Judaism or anything like that.

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