A man to watch

John DiIulio Jr., director of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, is dedicated, smart, talkative and outspoken. Especially outspoken.

The other day, he came out against the repeal of the estate tax, one of President Bush’s favorite proposals. He told The New York Times that repeal could undercut another administration priority: encouraging private contributions to charities to help the poor. Wealthy people now can reduce the bite of the estate tax by making generous charitable contributions. Without the tax, this incentive would be gone.

He also came out against the death penalty, although he once praised it as “a substantive tool of crime control.” But that was five years ago, when he was calling for harsh punitive measures against unruly youth, which he called “a new generation of street criminals” and “superpredators.”

Mr. DiIulio says he had “an epiphany, a conversion of heart, a conversion of mind.” He reversed course and dedicated himself to helping troubled youth. He went on leave from his professorship at the University of Pennsylvania to take the White House assignment.

The day after his appointment, Mr. DiIulio attended a public discussion of the new “faith-based” venture at the National Press Club in Washington. The meeting was organized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. A 27-page transcript, available on the Internet (at www.pewforum.org), shows how he dealt with criticisms.

He started out by rattling off federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, sex or disabilities including visual impairment and HIV infection. “Those things are a good part of the law, and no one’s talking about changing those. If they were, I wouldn’t be here.”

A representative of the American Jewish Committee objected to a provision that would permit religious organizations to hire only people who agree with their ideologies. He said that when public money is involved and an institution says no Catholics or no Jews need apply, that amounts to using government money to support religious discrimination.

A Baptist press reporter wanted to know how the new office would decide whether to give money to the Branch Davidians, Wiccans or National of Islam. Also, would a church get into trouble for refusing to hire an atheist?

A Muslim woman asked how the new office would deal with religious groups that know nothing about dealing with the government, applying for grants and making connections.

A skeptical congressman asked how the new program could avoid subsidizing proselytization.

Still another question was about the government oversight that comes with government dollars. Wouldn’t this intrusion into affairs of religious organizations amount to “exactly the type of entanglement between religion and state against which the Constitution guards”?

Mr. DiIulio lumped the questions together and had several answers:

First, such problems would come up only 10 percent of the time. Along with considering the objections, let’s spend the same energy on pulling together to “cross-lace religious and secular, public and private organizations” to “achieve an important civic objective that we’re not now achieving.”

Second, Washington is really just “kind of a big check-writing machine,” and most of the policy decisions are made by state and local governments.

Third, the way Americans settle disputes is to sue each other. “So we ought to sue each other until we drop. But when the suing is over, let the message go forth that at this time, the start of the 21st century, we found a way to find common ground, to stand together.” Ouch and amen.