Notre Dame history professor, Brad Gregory, recently wrote an essay, which was published in the school's newspaper, on the subjects of academic freedom at Catholic universities and whether Catholic universities can acheive greatness. The beginning ot this essay follows:
"In 2003, I left a tenured position at Stanford University, where I had taught for seven years, to come to Notre Dame. I did so partly because here, unlike at secular universities, we can engage religion in the classroom not only as a subject to be studied like any other, but as a human response to the living God. Here we can engage not only Catholic but also other religious beliefs in this way, because of Catholic imperatives to ecumenical understanding and interreligious dialogue. At secular universities, categories characteristic of revealed religions - including faith, revelation, grace, salvation, sin, prayer, miracles, the supernatural and more besides - cannot be pursued from standpoints of religious belief, without presumptive recourse to reductionist explanations dependent on secular beliefs embedded in social scientific and humanistic theories. In the classrooms of such institutions, neither students nor faculty can seriously address religiously related big questions - about life’s purpose, objective values and meaning that transcends human constructions - because the governing ideology is anti-teleological. It is antagonistic to any objective moral norms and naturalistic in its metaphysical convictions. At secular universities, a professor who in class sought to analyze prayer as a human experience of relating to God, or who sought to understand the Bible as God’s saving revelation for humanity, would quickly find herself censured. A Solemn Authority would admonish her that such notions were “inappropriate” in class and that she must keep her “personal beliefs” to herself. Secular universities restrict academic freedom because they exclude from the classroom engagement with religious beliefs precisely as religious. The secular academy thus puts itself in the curious position of excluding from non-reductionist consideration the beliefs by which the overwhelming majority of the human race lives. Such self-censorship is dangerous. Because of the sometimes threatening manifestations of religion in our world, the stubborn refusal even to acknowledge religion as religion and to study it as such amounts to an ivory-tower dereliction of intellectual duty.
Notre Dame rejects these secular restrictions on academic freedom vis-à-vis the great religions and their related ultimate questions. Hence I am much freer academically and pedagogically here than I was at Stanford - I can do everything I did as a Stanford professor and more. The same freedom applies to other faculty members at Notre Dame and, in its respective way, to students as well. As an intellectual community we have critically important academic opportunities that are lacking at higher-ranked, secular institutions and vitally needed by the wider world. . . ."
. . . is not particularly noteworthy, but it is when the challenge has nothing to do with reproductive rights. The Chicago Sun-Timesreports on a new advertising campaign in Illinois attacking Catholic hospitals for failing to earn their tax-exempt status:
The radio and television ads, paid for by Indiana-based non-profit Fairness Foundation.org, chastise Catholic hospitals, alleging they're falling short on meeting the obligations required to maintain their tax-exempt status.
"It's a sad day when the Illinois attorney general has to tell not-for-profit Catholic hospitals, among others, they aren't doing enough to earn their tax- exempt status," says the ad. It concludes: "but as with other immoral actions, apparently the church needs to be forced by lawyers to do the right thing, to be moral. How sad."
A liberal-leaning New Jersey Supreme Court could swiftly legalize gay nuptials, lawyers and scholars say.
By Kaitlin Gurney
Inquirer Trenton Bureau
TRENTON - New Jersey could become the second state to legalize gay marriage in a case that will reach the State Supreme Court this week, focusing debate in the battle that many advocates call the civil rights struggle of the 21st century.
. . . goes to Rep. Jeb Hensarling for his astounding claim on the Christian wisdom of cutting programs for the poor:
[M]any Republicans in Congress with ties to religious conservatives voted for the spending cuts and disagreed that the government should prioritize aiding the poor and marginalized.
"I believe the 'least of these' is my daughter, who's 4 years old, and my son, who's 2 years old, and all of those not born," Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said. "I believe it's unfair to saddle them with debt way into the future."
Aside from the dubious proposition that the children of a congressman should be treated as "the least of these," it's a bit misleading to suggest that generously funding programs for the poor and maintaining fiscal responsibility are mutually exclusive public policies.
One ambiguity in Will Baude's post on Catholic universities is whether he thinks that a Catholic university committed to Ex Corde Ecclesiae could even lay claim to the title of "university." Or is it that such a university could not be considered "great." He seems to have an "essence" of a university in mind that would exclude such an institution from the category of "university" altogether. Under Ex Corde, the main task of a Catholic university is to be consecrated to the cause of the truth. The essence of a university, according to Baude, is to remain ideologically neutral and to be in a state of perpetual opposition to the existing order. Under Baude's view, what is a university for?
Under Baude's thinking, is Harvard even a university? or is it only a university because no one thinks that it takes its motto ("Veritas") seriously?
Some MOJ-readers are interested in the Doctrine of Double Effect (especially as it relates to capital punishment and abortion). The following book--a collection of essays by various writers, some of whom are quite prominent--was recommended to me and certainly seems to be excellent. Some of the essays defend the doctrine; other of the essays challenge it:
P.A. Woodward, ed., The Doctrine of Double Effect: Philosophers Debate a Controversial Moral Principle (University of Notre Dame Press, 2002).
Click here to learn more about the book. _______________ mp
Two cheers for the evangelicals who disturbed the peace and drew headlines this week with the "Evangelical Climate Initiative." Why two and not three? I've often been told that if people outside the evangelical camp favor a faction inside it, this can hurt the cause. If a "secular humanist," a "mainline Protestant," or a fanatic Lutheran like M.E.M. praises certain evangelicals, there must be something wrong with them. So I'll think three cheers and utter two.
The Initiative drafters, who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, received a page in Newsweek and hundreds of column inches in newspapers for their message of commitment to stewardship of the environment. The signers, half of whom I know, are evangelical Evangelicals, not people on the fringes. To find that speaking up for care by God's people for God's created order is treated as "man bites dog" -- exceptional news -- is a comment on evangelicals. Line one of the Bible and line one of the creeds affirm Creator and creation, and are not licenses for despoiling the environment and helping make the globe uninhabitable -- as we are on course to doing.
Few believers have a good record. Mainline Protestants have probably written most and spoken out most, but two-score years ago most of them stopped knowing how to mobilize citizens. Jeffrey J. Guhin, in the Catholic weekly America, asks, "Where Are the Catholic Environmentalists?" (February 13). They have been slow comers, but are documentably doing better now. I have no space here to deal with the substance of the call to commitment; it is easy to track down. What interests me first is the evident passion of big-name popular and scholarly evangelicals (from Rick Warren to Wheaton College president Duane Litfin, from journalist David Neff and veteran activist Ron Sider to National Association of Evangelicals biggies and professors of note) who are now on the line.
Equally interesting are the attacks by other evangelical parties, some of whom, bizarrely, still cite as relevant the Genesis mandate to "subdue" or "dominate" the created order. Well, consider it subdued into a coma and dominated so much that it needs life-support. Why have evangelicals been so late in acting that their rallying cry is so newsworthy? Many reasons. They have had other priorities that crowded this one out. They've gotten two or three cheers in recent years for taking up the cause of religious liberty and human freedom in many neglected corners of the world. Yet most of their energies have gone elsewhere.
What else? Well, you can always find a Danish scientist or two and a dozen right-wing talk show hosts who tell us not to worry about global warming, the mercury in the fish we eat, or de-treeing the landscapes, and it is to the advantage of some political interests to take as a motto, "What, me worry?" Some evangelicals stood back because they thought that caring for the environment was a New Age monopoly, a fashionable preoccupation with the secular order. We are told that some apocalypticists say, "Don't think about this world; Jesus is second-coming to end it all!" I think that voice is being muffled a bit now.
So on second thought, in these times, "Three cheers!" for the ecologically-minded evangelicals. Perhaps others of us will follow.
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
A few days ago, in response to my complaints about the reponse of "the Vatican" to the outbursts of violent hysteria brought on by some anti-radical-Muslim cartoons, Fr. Araujo quite rightly pointed out to me that the Holy See's diplomatic corps has to take into account many things -- including the religious freedom and welfare of Christians in countries that are inhospitable to Christianity -- when crafting its statements and stances. Fair enough.
Still, this -- from the Vatican press office -- is infuriating, offensive (rg: No, I'm not going to burn anything), and shockingly misguided. After stating that "the right to freedom of thought and expression, sanctioned by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, cannot imply the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers" (rg: actually, the "right to freedom of thought and expression" does imply the legal right to say many things that cause offense), the statement continues:
[It] must be said immediately that the offenses caused by an individual or an organ of the press cannot be imputed to the public institutions of the corresponding country, [RG: so far, so good] whose authorities might and should intervene eventually according to the principles of national legislation. [RG: Bad. The public authority should not intervene merely because political expression "offend[s]" the "religious sentiments of believers.] Therefore, violent actions of protest are equally deplorable. [What? The "violent actions of protest" -- e.g., killing people, burning buildings, threatening beheadings, etc. -- is "equally deplorable" to cartoons that "offend[]" "religious sentiments"?] Reaction in the face of offense cannot fail the true spirit of all religion. Real or verbal intolerance, no matter where it comes from, as action or reaction, is always a serious threat to peace.
I am simply not able to imagine what felt diplomatic or political needs could justify such a ridiculous claim of equivalence.
