As I noted in Part Thirty-three of this series:

Over the last generation, certain neo-orthodox Catholics have been building bridges to evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants. But this "bridge-building" is increasingly accomplished with roadways to the most rigid forms of Catholicism. And while some Catholics have yielded to fundamentalists opposition on the theory of evolution, socially conservative Protestants seem to be increasingly amenable to Vatican notions of natural law principles that appear in their united opposition to abortion, end of life issues and stem cell research.

Recruiting and grooming a generation of political leaders that fit this bill is an obvious necessity for the long-term viability of the Religious Right. Writing in the August 29, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, former Bush White House speechwriter Michael Gerson observed of then Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Jindal:

Jindal -- a convert to Christianity from a Hindu background -- has none of the politician's typical reticence on religion. "I'm proud of my faith," he told me in a phone interview. "I believe in God, that Jesus died and rose. I can't divide my public and private conscience. I can't stop being a Christian, and wouldn't want to for a moment of the day."

Gerson continued:

And Jindal's chosen tradition is a muscular Roman Catholicism. In an article published in the 1990s, he argued, "The same Catholic Church which infallibly determined the canon of the Bible must be trusted to interpret her handiwork; the alternative is to trust individual Christians, burdened with, as Calvin termed it, their 'utterly depraved' minds, to overcome their tendency to rationalize, their selfish desires, and other effects of original sin." And elsewhere: "The choice is between Catholicism's authoritative Magisterium and subjective interpretation which leads to anarchy and heresy."

Jindal's complete statement can be found in a 1996 article entitled How Catholicism is Different. The young governor is also not adverse to playing the "secular-as-equivalent-to-religious-hostility" card. As Jindal has written in a piece entitled Atheism's Gods:

THE wave of political correctness, which has affected universities at every level, has also infected religious and philosophical thought. Whereas Western universities once existed to train clergymen and educate others in the fundamentals of the Christian faith, modern centers of higher learning are much more secular and skeptical toward anything remotely religious. Faith is a taboo subject among many of the educated elite; indeed, persons with strong religious convictions are often viewed with scorn and disapproval. Equating all religious beliefs with the seemingly intolerant attitude of Fundamentalists, the more ardent critics of religion are so bold as to equate faith with ignorance and disparage any attempt to support faith with reason as naive.

The piece also contains a twisted attack on liberal philosopher John Rawls:

John Rawls, author of A Theory of Justice and a respected political philosopher, has single-handedly done more to retard honest discussion of issues like justice and equality than any recent writer. He has done this through his adoption of normative principles without acknowledging the necessity of underlying justification.

Multiculturalism, with its taboos against positing universally applicable principles; post-Enlightenment rationality, which claims objective transparency for itself; and other popular academic trends have found their ultimate expression in the "liberal neutrality" pioneered by Rawls and evidenced by Ronald Dworkin and other liberals. Rawls answers complicated questions of political obligation and morality with the maxim that society must maximize the advantage of its least attractive position, assessed against his list of "primary social goods."

More dangerous than Rawls's conclusion, which requires individuals to set aside their religious and other interests in the public arena, is his methodology. He refuses to admit that his initial principles are transcendental and objective truths, but instead claims to be presenting a self-evident "neutral" position from which all others must justify their departure. Unwilling to claim, and thus defend, the veracity of his position, Rawls limits his theoretical speculation to liberal Western democracies that have supposedly already accepted his premises.

Besides his blatant dissembling of Rawls(i), it is rather odd that Jindal would go after a contemporary thinker whose thought meshed with Catholic teachings on social justice, particularly an individual's reciprocal relationship between the receipt of benefits and contribution to the common good; that, besides Rawls being so heavily influenced by philosopher Immanuel Kant.

But while there is speculation that Jindal is on McCain's list of possible running mates, there are other factors to consider. He is only 36 and his lack of experience effectively neutralizes a key GOP Obama talking point. A more realistic expectation is that with his oratory skills and Indian heritage he would be a logical choice for the GOP's keynote speaker at this summer's convention in Minneapolis.

But with that in mind, Jindal is force to be reckoned with. He is fervently anti-choice, anti-gay rights and anti-embryonic stem cell research - policy positions while in step with the current Vatican hierarchy but very much out-of-step with the majority of ordinary mainstream American Catholics. Jindal meshes this set of beliefs with a laissez-faire economic outlook.

Now that's a Catholic that conservative evangelicals can get behind!

The New York Times reported:

Hot-button terms and issues are avoided. Cloning will not get state financing but also will not be criminalized, and Mr. Jindal is nowhere to be seen on the Louisiana Science Education Act, which promotes "open and objective discussion" in the schools of "evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning."

A hearing for the bill last week was packed with Christian advocates - it has already passed the State Senate unanimously - and it was proposed to its legislative sponsor by a Louisiana Family Forum member. Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University and a critic of the bill, testified that it was "designed to permit teaching intelligent design creationism in Louisiana public schools," though there was no mention of creationism or intelligent design in the bill.

But while Bobby Jindal may not be overtly arguing for such legislation, he now sits in the governor's chair ready and willing to sign such legislation when it reaches his desk.

And that is why we should be wise and wary about Jindal rising. He epitomizes a new generation of the Religious Right. On the plus side, he is also proof against retrograde punditry that has declared the religious right dead or dying so many times over the past decades you would think that resurrection might be part of their vocabulary. But never mind about that.   If the current liberal resurgence falters, Jindal's rising may well portend an actual, as well as punditcratic, resurrection of the Religious Right.

NOTES:
(i)   As Peter Berkowitz wrote in The Wilson Quarterly:

...at the end of his career of his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (2000), Rawls's most searching examination of liberalism's foundations, he provides reasons to believe that far from being the antithesis of freedom, religious faith of a certain sort may be the basis of our respect for freedom, the very thing that renders our respect rational.

The Catholic Right: A Series, by Frank L. Cocozzelli :

Part One  Part Two  Part Three  Part Four  Part Five  Part Six   Intermezzo   Part Eight   Part Nine  Part Ten   Part Eleven   Part Twelve   Part Thirteen   Part Fourteen   Second Intermezzo   Part Sixteen   Part Seventeen   Part Eighteen   Part Eighteen   Part Nineteen   Part Twenty   Part Twenty-one   Part Twenty-two   Part Twenty-three   Part Twenty-four   Part Twenty-five   Part Twenty-six   Part Twenty-seven   Part Twenty-eight   Part Twenty-nine   Part Thirty   Part Thirty-one   Part Thirty-two   Part Thirty-three   Part Thirty-four   Part Thirty-five   Part Thirty-six   Part Thirty-seven   Part Thirty-eight   Part Thirty-nine   Part Forty   Part Forty-one   Part Forty-two   Part Forty-three   Part Forty-four   Part Forty-five   Part Forty-six   Part Forty-seven   Part Forty-eight   Part Forty-nine   Part Fifty   Part Fifty-one   Part Fifty-two   Part Fifty-three   Part Fifty-four   Part Fifty-five   Part Fifty-six   Part Fifty-seven   Part Fifty-eight

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