Tuesday, February 21, 2006
My guess is that many of those who generally oppose the introduction of a health care provider's personal moral convictions into her legally prescribed professional role will applaud this example of that same phenomenon. Is it OK for professionals to defy the wishes of the state based on their moral convictions, but not OK for professionals to defy the wishes of an individual consumer?
Rob
This week, we had a lively discussion about religious freedom and doctrinal development. In light of the discussion, and our differing takes on the issue, I invited one of my students, Tom White (who also happens to be a regular MOJ reader), to write up a post summarizing the discussion and giving his take on the questions it raised. Here's his post:
In Monday's installment of Catholic Social Teaching, we discussed Church teaching on religious freedom and its doctrinal development. For example, can Dignitatis Humanae's bold declaration that "the right to relgious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself" be reconciled with Pius IX's condemnation as error the notion "in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. (78)" Of particular interest of the class was Pope Leo XIII's statement in the Longinqua that acknowledged the growth of American Catholicism, but opined "she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority." What kind of accomodation to the American Church does Leo envision here? Is it in tension with Dignitatis Humanae? If so, does it undermine the Church's claim to infallibility in this area? One theory might be that any attempt to reconcile the Church's teachings is too much of a stretch and that we should simply embrace the change in this area. My own view, however, is that positions are not inconsistent. While some degree of establishment (i.e., "favor of the laws") has always been held out as the ideal, DH stands for the simple proposition that freedom of conscience is absolutely inviolable regardless of one's religion. To some extent this reading would adopt the Establishment-Free Exericse distinction, so long as establishment is not seen as erecting a "wall" between church and state, and free exercise is subject to the reasonable restraints of public order. It seems to me that (as Pius's condemnation shows) the "public order" proviso on free exercise is where the most significant change has occurred. In America we treat the use of peyote as proscribable because it is an offense against public order; in Pius's day, non-Catholic public worship was seen as such a threat. I would be curious to know what type of worship he had in mind when he condemned the absolute right to free exercise in public as "error." But in any event, to the extent that there has been a change in Church teaching in these areas, I think it is less radical than most suppose.
I found this article interesting in light of our discussion a few months back about discrimination and the Church's ban on gay seminarians.
Religious groups and state courts are grappling with the issue. Roman Catholic bishops in Massachusetts are seeking an exemption from state anti-bias laws to allow the church to bar gays from adopting through its social service agencies. Meanwhile, a judge in Missouri ruled last week that the state could not deny a foster care license to a lesbian.
I can't remember how exactly the conversation proceeded, but there was some discussion of whether there was some contradiction between the Church's professed opposition to discrimination against homosexuals as a class and its treatment of them as the class for the purposes of its ban on seminarians with deeply rooted gay tendencies. I don't know the back story on the Church's position on gay adoption, but it appears that the Church's opposition to discrimination against homosexuals does not preclude discrimination against homosexuals as a class when they seek to adopt. So, opposition to discrimination does not prevent categorical opposition to admission to the seminary or adoption. What else does it permit? At what point does this become generalized support for discrimination with a few exceptions?
Last week Sandro Magister gave a talk on the future relationship of Christianity and Islam in Europe at a conference convened by Archbishop Chaput in Denver. An excerpt:
A new cathedral church was built twelve years ago in Evry, to the south of Paris. It is recognized as the masterpiece of one of the most famous architects in the world, Mario Botta of Switzerland. During Sunday Mass, it is half-empty. But the nearby mosque is overflowing with the faithful. The imam of the mosque, Khalil Merroun, asserted in an interview: “The Catholic Church should not feel Europe belongs to it. The advice I give my Catholic colleagues is to ask themselves why their faithful don’t live their spirituality.”
Read the whole thing here. (HT: Open Book)
Rob
Monday, February 20, 2006
Sightings 2/20/06
Hoping in Pope Benedict XVI
-- Martin E. Marty
You don't need Sightings to find
cartoons in Denmark or hunting accidents in Texas, so let's turn this week to a
subject too small to make the front pages, namely Roman Catholicism. It's
on my mind in part because a subscriber forwarded me a critique from a friend
to whom he had forwarded a recent Sightings.
The friend dismissed that column by saying, "Of course Marty would write
that way, because he's such a firm Roman Catholic," or something to that
effect. I pushed the "delete" button at once, concerned about
identity theft, and snuggled back under my firm Lutheran roof. But for a
moment, I dreamed ....
This dream: What if not too far into the new millennium a pope would come along
and issue something important about a positive theme? What if such a
piece were de-polarizing, meaning that it would appeal not just to one faction
or another? What if the face such a figure presented were not scowling,
and the voice going with it not crabby or scolding? What if what he wrote
aspired to present something of the Christian gospel, Good News? The
public image of Catholics, evangelicals, and plenty of others shows them to be
rather brutally seeking power or defensively holding on to it. Must it
always be so?
I pinched myself to read this headline in
the February 10th issue of the National Catholic
Reporter:
"Encyclical Finds Favor in Unexpected Quarters" -- the Reporter itself being an unexpected
favorer of the encyclical, the pastoral letter from Pope Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est, "God Is
Love," is the first encyclical from the former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
who bore the tough image of an inquisitor. Most Catholics with whom the Reporter folks hang out (and non-firm
non-Catholics like M.E.M.) nursed grievances and bruises from the then-cardinal
in his earlier role. Of course, they have to keep their guards up.
"God Is Love" is only one document, one action, and there will be
many others, maybe of other kinds.
For the moment, though, John L. Allen, Jr., a reporter with a reputation for
fairness who was not "expected" to see the new pope in such a
friendly light, could cite critics like Paul Collins, an over-examined and
edged-out "victim" of Ratzinger; Andrew Sullivan, who criticizes
Catholic critics of gay priests; Hans Kueng, old
friend-turned-foe-turning-friend; and a half-dozen others marked as liberal who
are now applauding this first shot out of the encyclical cannon.
"Just what Catholicism needs, really" (Collins); "a beautifully
written document (Sullivan); "solid theological substance" (Kueng);
and from a spokesperson for a liberal Catholic group: this could be a
"human face for Christianity and for the Catholic church." Of
course, all these praisers saluted with fingers crossed. For the moment,
however, they simply enjoyed the fact that Benedict XVI chose to write about
and seek to exemplify Christianity's central but so often overlooked themes:
divine Love and the way it relates to human loves.
Deus Caritas Est takes off from and is critical of a modern classic Lutheran treatment of Agape and Eros, though the pope tries to bridge to other such interpretations of the two loves. So there is homework to be done. For the moment, however, most critics have parked their grudges at the door, and they consider with hope that Benedict XVI has set a promising tone for what will follow.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Get Religion has an intriguing post on consumer demand and the modern Christian worship experience. While it is written primarily from a Protestant perspective, much of its sentiment applies to the average Sunday mass, as reflected by a comment on one of Amy Welborn's related posts:
[I]n a world that possesses the C Minor Mass, the Icelandic Sagas, and Albrecht Durer, where does Dan Schutte, the poet of "Footprints" and Thomas Kinkade fit in? I know it's a stupid question to ask but did mediocrity exist in the Garden, or was it a consequence of the Fall of Man? Who takes the blame for Thomas Kinkade?
Rob
Click here to see a photo that may change your career ... if not your life: Church Sign.
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mp
Duquesne law prof Alison Sulentic recommends the proceedings of the November 2005 session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, titled Conceptualization of the Human Person in Social Sciences. She also recommends Wojtyla, Person and Community: Selected Essays (Catholic Thought from Lublin), which "is very useful in understanding John Paul II's view of personhood, as well as his reading of Aquinas on this point."
Rob
In response to Rob's question about a bibliography for personhood, with a focus on Catholic Legal Theory, I believe the following texts would need to be on the list: the works of de Vitoria and Suarez (they are conveniently situated in the Oxford Classics of International Law edited by James Scott Brown); Bartolome de Las Casas's In Defense of the Indians; Dred Scot v. Sanford, particularly the dissents; John XXIII's Pacem In Terris, especially N. 9; John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae; and Psalm 139, verses 13-16. The Pontifical Academy for Life also has some important texts available online at the Vatican website: www.vatican.va . My list is incomplete, but these texts would help the investigator plot a course of research interested in CLT. RJA sj
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Larry Solum periodically provides an introduction to fundamental concepts in legal theory, geared primarily toward law students. Today's topic is personhood, and the introduction only gives a hint of the concept's depth. While it's impossible to do justice to the intellectual tradition underlying "personhood" in a blog format, we could at least provide a more robust reading list. So what sources would Catholic legal theorists add to Solum's bibliography?
Rob
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