[I suspect some MOJ-readers will be interested in this.]
New York Times
November 18, 2005
Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that
''intelligent design'' isn't science and doesn't belong in science
classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter
the evolution debate in the United States.
The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican
Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of
evolution in school programs was ''wrong'' and was akin to mixing
apples with oranges.
''Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be,''
the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a
conference in Florence. ''If you want to teach it in schools,
intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history
is taught, not science.''
His comments were in line with his previous statements on
''intelligent design'' -- whose supporters hold that the universe is so
complex that it must have been created by a higher power.
Proponents of intelligent design are seeking to get public schools
in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum.
Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism -- a literal
reading of the Bible's story of creation -- camouflaged in scientific
language, and they say it does not belong in science curriculum.
In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne
reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the
history of the universe.
''If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best
of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from
the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who
made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.''
Rather, he argued, God should be seen more as an encouraging parent. ''God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that
reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to
greater and greater complexity,'' he wrote. ''He is not continually
intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves.''
The Vatican Observatory, which Coyne heads, is one of the oldest
astronomical research institutions in the world. It is based in the
papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome.
Last week, Pope Benedict XVI waded indirectly into the evolution
debate by saying the universe was made by an ''intelligent project''
and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was
without direction or order.
Questions about the Vatican's position on evolution were raised in July by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn. In a New York Times column, Schoenborn seemed to back intelligent design and dismissed a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II
that evolution was ''more than just a hypothesis.'' Schoenborn said the
late pope's statement was ''rather vague and unimportant.''
Thursday, November 17, 2005
I blogged a few weeks ago about a legislative proposal in Massachusetts, sponsored by Sen. Marian Walsh, that would (according to the Boston Globe) "requir[e] religious organizations to disclose their finances." In fact, the proposal purports to authorize intrusive and entangling review by state officials not simply of "finances", but of a wide range of religious and pastoral decisions about ministry and resource-allocation. Boston College's John Garvey has explained, succinctly, why the bill is an affront to religious liberty and unconstitutional. In a nutshell, some Catholics -- frustrated (reasonably) with the Church -- have enlisted legislators to employ the state in order to promote what these Catholics regard as much-needed reform and openness in the Church. But, as Garvey points out:
[I]t is not the government's business to take sides in internal church disputes. You can imagine a legal system where it does. British courts supervise the way churches use their members' money. But the Church of England is controlled by the government. Our First Amendment forbids any such arrangement. When we talk about separation of church and state, this is what we mean -- that it is none of the state's business to say how churches are run. . .
. . . The Constitution favors an arrangement that leaves churches financially independent: The government does not support them; it should not inhibit their efforts to support themselves, and it should not get involved in reviewing how they spend their money. That is a matter for churches and their members to resolve among themselves.
Apparently -- thanks to some help from the Massachusetts Council of Churches -- a dispositive vote on the church-disclosure bill has been put off. That the Senate approved the bill 33-4, though, is deeply troubling. Stay tuned . . .
In addition to a book review (by me) of three new law-and-religion books, the current issue of Commonweal has this reasonable, sober editorial, "Alito & Armageddon" about Judge Alito's nomination and the state of things on the Supreme Court. (I admit, though, that I could do without the scare-quotes around the word "originalist.") One minor slip -- the editors ask:
Will he be a radical in the mode of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both of whom can be described as “activist” justices eager to overturn much of the Court’s recent jurisprudence?
The claim is no more true for being often repeated -- It is simply false that Justices Thomas and Scalia are "eager to overturn much of the Court's recent jurisprudence." They are (Thomas more than Scalia) willing to consider overruling (a few) wrongly decided cases, but there is nothing particularly "radical" about that. The editors make a good point, I think, when they state that "[e]xcept in the most exceptional circumstances, the Supreme Court best serves the nation and justice by moving the law by degrees rather than turning established practice upside down." Still, it is simply not the case that a decision like Lopez (often cited as "activist" by critics) comes even close to "turning established practice upside down." What's more, when it comes to cases that badly misinterpreted the Constitution (e.g., Roe), as opposed to statutory-interpretation cases, it would seem that stare decisis concerns should not foreclose reconsideration and correction.
Tom Berg has posted his (very interesting) contribution, "John Courtney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr: Natural Law and Christian Realism," to the Journal of Catholic Social Thought's forthcoming symposium issue on John Courtney Murray's work and its influence. Here is the abstract (thanks to Larry Solum):
During the two decades after World War II, two Christian theologians of public life appeared on the cover of Time magazine: Reinhold Niebuhr in 1948 and John Courtney Murray in 1960. As their appearances suggest, during this time Murray the Catholic and Niebuhr the Protestant were America's most prominent Christian theologians concerning the relationship between religion, morality, and politics. Niebuhr inspired not only two generations of Christian clergy and activists, but also numerous secular statesmen and thinkers who admired his hard-nosed policy and cultural analyses, and some of whom dubbed themselves Atheists for Niebuhr. Murray, of course, set forth the most prominent account of how faithful Catholics could affirm the American political system and laid the intellectual groundwork for the Church to embrace equal religious freedom as a moral ideal at Vatican II.
Murray and Niebuhr each engaged in polemics directed at the other's writings or school of thought. Niebuhr criticized the Catholic natural-law tradition for rigidity and for elevating contingent features of pre-modern societies into the supposedly universal standards of human reason. Murray, in defending the universal propositions of natural law, blasted Niebuhr's Christian realism as a theory that sees things as so complicated that moral judgment bcomes practically impossible.
The thesis of this paper, though, is that Murray and Niebuhr, natural law and Christian realism, are not as far apart as they seemed, for the reasons following. (Indeed, the philosophically deepest aspects of the American founding reflect elements both of natural-law reasoning (as Murray emphasized) and realist concerns to structure institutions so as to counter the inevitable tendencies to self-aggrandizement (as Niebuhr emphasized).)
First, Niebuhr was more of a natural-law theorist than he admitted. Although Christian realism emphasizes how moral-political assertions are typically tainted by partiality and self-aggrandizement, Niebuhr himself set forth a universal theory about the perennial dynamics of human nature, and he affirmed the universal validity of certain moral-political concepts sich as equality. Second, although Niebuhr criticized natural-law theory for elevating historically contingent propositions to universal status, recent natural-law approaches have given much greater attention to historical contingencies and differences in the application of general principles. I show how Murray exhibited this historical consciousness and often relied on arguments of prudence and pragmatics that a Christian realist should appreciate. Third, although Niebuhr's appreciation for ambiguity and tension made him reluctant to rely on absolute rules in political matters, later Christian realists affirmed the need for rules precisely to limit the human propensities for self-aggrandizement.
Natural law and Christian realism both assert that moral-political principles and institutions should rest on assessments of human nature and what will promote human flourishing in the light of that nature. Both recognize real, objectively valid moral-political principles - grounded ultimately in God the creator - but both can recognize also that these universal principles tend to be general in nature and that applying them to concrete contexts will produce varying specific rules. There remain many differences between natural-law and Christian-realist approaches, but often the differences complement each other, so that a full vision of Christian political ethics can benefit from both approaches. A combination of natural law and Christian realism suggests that a moral-political principle or institution is most solid when its justification rests on both the possibilities of human nature and on its negative tendencies. For example, the most powerful case for democracy, in Niebuhr's words, is that man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, and man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
I close the paper with a brief discussion of why the common project that Murray and Niebuhr shared remains of value in America today. Among other things, both Murray and Niebuhr articulated their arguments in terms that others could access and evaluate without having already adopted the premises of the Christian faith. Although I do not believe there is any general legal or moral obligation to present political arguments in such terms, nevertheless in a society characterized by religious disagreement, such arguments are more likely to be effective in political debate and lead to productive deliberation about political choices.
Rick
