As my co-blogistas know, I have written extensively on the question of what it means for a law school to be Catholic, and presented papers on the topic at conferences and at both secular and Catholic law schools. And as many know, I have been engaged with my faculty colleagues at Villanova in an effort to discover a new Catholic identity for a "Catholic" law schol that had become, like so many others, almost entirely secular. I have been reluctant, however, to jump into the very interesting discussion on this topic that popped up recently. First of all,I imagine that most folks have heard just about enough from me on this topic. Second, as a sitting dean who is not just theorizing about this issue, but trying to actualize it, I have to be very careful about what I say. Despite these reservations, I cannot help commenting on some points that have been made.
1. Amy is correct that the narrative about Catholic legal education is not a "decline from the golden age" narrative. There never was a golden age of Catholic legal education. Before the 60's most Catholic law schools were sociologically Catholic, and served the goal of providing social mobility to the children of the immigrant church (and many Jews who suffered from similar economic and social exclusion), but there was never any attempt (with rare exceptions) to integrate the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition with the study of law. What is happening today in the two new Catholic law schools and a very small number of old ones is an attempt to find a new type of Catholic identity that never existed before.
2. I agree entirely with Amy that there is some range of possibilities or ways for law schools to be Catholic. We tend to thrust totalizing definitions of what is "Catholic" at each other in a way that is not, well, very Catholic. While I certainly respect what Richard Myers and Kevin Lee have articulated as a Catholic vision of a faith community, I do not believe that is the only way for an institution that calls itself Catholic to serve the Lord. I have written elsewhere about my concept of an "inclusive" Catholic law school, so will not belabor this point here.
3. That being said, I think I am far less sanguine than Amy about the Catholicity of the great majority of Catholic law schools, including virtually all the Jesuit ones. There are lot of ways to explain this. Anecdotally, I would like to refer to a collection of quotes from the deans of such law schools, to wit: "We are not a Catholic law school; we are a law school in a Catholic university" (showing at least a kind of Catholic capacity for abstraction);"the law school does not support the Catholic mission of the university;" "The priests leave us alone;" and "Well, the Mass schedule is posted, and there are some crucifixes around: that's pretty Catholic!" To continue anecdotally, I have had the occassion to speak to the faculties of three other Catholic law schools in the last year or so about mission. While my message was, I thought, pretty moderate, the atmosphere of hostility, fear (and rudeness) in the room was palpable. These are not places comfortable with the notion that they are or should be any more Catholic than Princeton is Presbyterian, Columia Episcopalian or Harvard Congregationalist. To move beyond anecdote, I can only point at the obvious paucity of Catholic faculty in most "Catholic" law schools and the scarcity of scholarship and teaching emanating from those schools that engages with the tradition .
4. Amy makes an eloquent argument about the need for diversity and ecumenicism in Catholic law schools, and the need for dialogue between colleagues and others, as profoundly expressive of Catholic values. I agree 100%. The problem is that in most schools there is plenty of ecumenicism, diversity and dialogue, but no or very little Catholicism! Not only does Catholicism not have any privileged or foundational position, it is entirely (or mostly)absent from the dialogue. Indeed, as I suggested above, it is usually shunned, out of fear that it will "take over." I am very fortunate that my colleagues at Villanova have been thoughtful, open-minded and courageous enough to engage positively with the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition, but that is a rare thing. In other words, I don't think a law school that is "diverse" but not committed to any kind of serious engagement with Catholicism can call itself "Catholic" simply because it is diverse!
5. Of course, the usual response is that "we are Catholic because we do clinics and pro bono, teach jurisprudence and emphasize ethics," or that " we honor the Jesuit tradition by instilling in our students a passion for justice." My usual response is that my former employer, the Univ of Maryland, says exactly the same things (and does them very well!). Does that make it Catholic? More important, is there anything in the way those schools do those things that have anything to do with Catholic jurispruidential or ethical concepts, let alone the Catholic (or Jesuit) understanding of what "justice" means? I don't think so. John Breen has written very thoughtfully about this, as have others.
Amy's generosity of spirit and tolerant heart always makes me feel a bit like Sadaam Hussein (or at least Scrooge). And I do agree that the range of models for what constitutes a Catholic law school is broader than some might believe, but I think there is a limit. A school that does not include a vibrant and sustainable collection of Catholic voices, a willingness to express and engage with the Catholic moral and intellectual traditions, and a consciousness of itself as Catholic,may be a perfectly good law school, but not one that is "Catholic" in any meaningful sense.
--Mark
I wasn't sure whether you all had seen this story, but the IRS is investigating an Episcopal parish whose pastor gave a sermon opposing the war in Iraq. Apparently, the IRS is considering whether to revoke the Church's tax exempt status. It's an interesting (and, I think, important) story. The Church's web page is here. You can read the sermon that led to the investigation. Here's the story from beliefnet.
In a way, I think this goes to some of the important questions Rick raised below about whether Catholics should feel more comfortable with the Republican or Democratic platform. I think he is aboslutely correct that the Dems have served CST very poorly of late in the areas of social justice, capital punishment, etc., though it was not always thus. I'm just not sure the Republicans do much better on their issues, as this story seems to show, and as the Alito answers on Roe v. Wade may also suggest. For all the tough Republican talk on abortion, 7 of the 9 justices of the Supreme Court were appointed by them, and Roe is still the law. In the end, I think neither party scores all that high on the CST-meter, though in the end I give the nod to the Democrats for at least not bashing the poor and being somewhat more skeptical than Republicans of capital punishment and militarism. This is admitedly a low standard, and since the Clinton presidency (whose treatment of Ricky Rector during the 1992 campaign still turns my stomach), I have not considered myself an enthusiastic Democrat.
As I've blogged about before, I have an article in the new issue of The Christian Century, on the Uniao Do Vegetal case in the Supreme Court concerning the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the scope of religious freedom in America, and the consumption of a sacramental tea containing a small amount of a hallucinogenic substance. Front page for the issue is here and the direct article link is here. Brief thesis:
Applying [RFRA's] principles vigorously is important for the religious freedom of all faiths. In the Christian tradition, the argument for accommodating religion in the face of a general law stems from the priority of conscience over government. As James Madison, trained by Calvinists at Princeton, wrote in his famous Memorial and Remonstrance, duties to God are "precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation to the claims of civil society." Government, of course, has authority to make general laws to preserve peace, welfare and others' rights, and one can even argue that there is no general constitutional right to exemptions from such laws. But a government that makes such accommodations, through means such as RFRA, should be commended for respecting its limits and treading on conscience only where necessary.
Tom
Ave Maria law prof Kevin Lee offers his typically thoughtful take on Catholic legal education, based on a talk he gave at Notre Dame this fall. Here's his conclusion:
The nature of the relationship between nature and grace, and thereby faith and natural reason, is central to the project of Catholic thinking about law. It always has been, from St. Augustine’s metaphor of the Christian as pilgrim in a hostile land, to Gregory VII’s assertion to Gelasius I’s two sword thesis, to St. Thomas’s treatise on law, the recurring question is what is the right relation of grace and nature. This cannot be answered as a Catholic without understanding the meaning of the reign of Christ. A question, wryly asked by Jaroslav Pelican in the opening of his book, Jesus Through the Ages, is whether it is possible to imagine human history without Christ. What would be left, he asks, if it were possible to draw out all references to Christ from human history, as if with some giant magnet. What would be lost? Would the Catholic intellectual heritage still maintain what is most significant and meaningful in it? That is to say, can Catholic legal education be both intellectual and Catholic without Christ? What does the Christian claim of the Lordship of Christ mean for the Catholic legal theorist today? Is it merely a platitude or an eschatological aspiration? Or does Christ’s Lordship have an earthly political meaning that is in some way necessary to rightly understand the idea of the Rule of Law? And, for those who would argue that these questions are simply conservative and orthodox, to them the burden falls of showing how can such questions can be answered without turning to theological thinking about the nature of the relationship between Christ and modern culture. Is not the assertion that Christ is irrelevant to Catholic legal education itself a theological claim?
Rob
Yale law prof Jack Balkin gave an interview to PBS for the Frontline special on abortion. Here's an excerpt:
Everybody now understands that between the two major political parties, the Republican Party is more pro-life, and there are many more pro-life people in the Republican Party. And yet the Republican Party and Republican politicians, including President Bush, really don't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. They'd like to see it narrowed. They'd like to see it made practically irrelevant in American life, but they don't want to overturn it.
Why is that? It's because American political parties are coalitions of people of very different views. The Republican coalition consists of business conservatives, suburbanites, women who are in suburbs and rural areas, libertarians who believe that the government should stay out of people's private lives, and religious and social conservatives. As long as the right to abortion is more or less protected in the United States, a lot of those people can happily stay in the Republican coalition. Libertarians can stay. Business conservatives can stay. Suburban women and rural women can stay, because they figure, basically, you can get an abortion if you need to; if you can scrape the money together, you can get an abortion.
On the other hand, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, then everything is on the table, including criminalization of abortion. And at that point, libertarians, business conservatives and lots of suburban and rural women and women in urban areas, too, will say to themselves, "I'm not sure I want to be in a party that supports criminalizing abortion." At that point, they will find the Democratic Party more attractive. And not all that many people have to bolt the Republican Party for them to lose control of Congress and the presidency, just a relatively small number. And the Republicans understand that. That's why the Republican strategy is to narrow Roe, cut back at it, weed away at it, but never officially overrule it. . . .
Assuming Balkin's perspective is accurate, can a Catholic who believes that Republican political success on a whole range of issues is more in keeping with the moral anthropology than the Democratic alternatives embrace this strategy? If there were a choice between nominating Justice X who will vote to overrule Roe and Justice Y who will vote to narrow it but never to overrule it (and their views and qualifications are otherwise equivalent), can a faithful Catholic favor the latter given the collateral political considerations?
Rob
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Today, at Notre Dame's workshop series, my colleague in the Architecture Department, Philip Bess, gave a fascinating presentation, "The Polis and the Natural Law: The Moral Authority of the Urban Transect." Although my wife, Nicole Stelle Garnett, is the property guru in our house, I have a longstanding interest in -- or maybe a wary attraction to -- the "New Urbanism". (Or, maybe just "urbanism." After all, I'm not sure Jane Jacobs needs updating.) And, we have had many discussions on cities, suburbs, planning, and religion here at Mirror of Justice. (For example, here, here, and here).
Bess pushed a few buttons by taking the urbanism / smart-growth discussion beyond aesthetics (e.g., "Annapolis looks nicer than Tyson's Corner") and NIMBY-ism, and pulling out the big natural-law-morality guns. Here's his introduction:
The Aristotelian-Thomist intellectual tradition’s understanding of natural law---which is the broad pre-modern tradition of western culture---is that there are certain foundational principles of morality that are (according to Thomas Aquinas) “the same for all, both as to knowledge and to rectitude”---in other words, principles of morality that are not only right for all human beings but knowable (and at some level known) to all human beings. These foundational principles of morality, along with their first few rings of implications, are known as the natural law.
The Urban Transect refers to that range of human habitats conducive to human flourishing within which human settlements are part of a sustainable (albeit not necessarily locally bio-diverse) eco-system. These habitats, diagrammatically depicted as Transect-zones (“Tzones”), range from less dense human settlements to more dense human settlements; but each urban T-zone denotes a walkable and mixed-use human environment wherein within each urban zone many if not most of the necessities and activities of daily life are within a five-to-ten-minute walk for persons of all ages and economic classes.
It is the thesis of this paper that, given this understanding and characterization of both natural law and the Urban Transect, the proposition “Human beings should make settlements in accordance with the Urban Transect” is generally valid for all human beings in all times and places---and therefore constitutes a natural law precept. If this is true, such a precept would be binding in conscience for---and acted upon with prudential judgment by---all persons who act in accordance with right (practical) reason; and especially for and by persons who understand themselves to be a part of the Aristotelian-Thomist intellectual tradition.
I am inclined to agree with many of the claims associated with this "tradition": It seems to me that it is meaningful to talk about "human flourishing," and also that there are some ways of arranging "settlements" that are more (or less) conducive to that flourishing. And, I suppose that governments ought to enact policies and facilitate developments that are conducive to, or consonant with, good arrangements, not bad. On the other hand, I hesitate a bit about "baptizing" what might be seen by some as just the latest development fad.
So, what do people think? The claim is (obviously) not that people who live in urban areas (or walkable sub-urban areas) are "better" or more moral than those who live in "sprawl." It is, though, that there is some strong "ought-ness" behind the claim that our "settlements" should be structured and arranged in a particular way.
I very much appreciate the comments of Amy and Father Araujo. My earlier thoughts very much reflect my current situation--where I have been blessed to be in a position with my colleagues here at Ave Maria to help build a Catholic law school from scratch. I certainly admit that others are in very different situations and that some of the things we do here are not realistic options.
I agree with almost everything Amy said. I don't think there is one model for Catholic law schools. I think that Father Araujo is correct, though, that we should think about an essence that might help us to identify when it would be appropriate to consider a school to be Catholic. For example, I know of one law school affiliated with a Catholic university that a few years ago had only one Catholic on its faculty. That school might do a lot of wonderful things. It might express a deeply rooted sense of tolerance and create space for the religious expression of its diverse student body. Yet, I don't know how a school like that could conceivably claim to be Catholic. How could that school give institutional expression to having a Catholic community, and to satisfying the other characteristics Amy quoted from Ex Corde.
A student should be able to encounter a Catholic community and to observe the witness of many Catholic scholars who are trying to integrate faith and reason. I don't know how this can be said to exist if the school has only one Catholic on its faculty or only a very few. A school with only one Catholic on its faculty might be doing much good, but it is hard to imagine that we should think of it as Catholic. As I mentioned before, Princeton is not a Catholic institution simply because Robby George is on the Politics faculty there. The Catholic label must say something about an institutional embodiment of the characteristics noted in Ex Corde, even if that embodiment might be given different expressions in different times and places.
Richard
