For starters, my Duke Blue Devils lost to some alleged higher-education institution from a place called "Tallahassee," and now I learn that Mirror of Justice got shut out of the "2006 Catholic Blog Awards." Curses.
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Something's not right . . .
Titles?
Vatican City - Pope Benedict has dropped one of his nine official titles, giving up "Patriarch of the West" in a discreet step apparently intended to help promote closer ties with the Orthodox churches of the East.
Benedict will retain titles such as Vicar of Jesus Christ and Servant of the Servants of God, but the patriarch title will not appear in the Vatican's annual directory due out later this month, Roman Catholic Church officials said on Wednesday.
The Pope has stressed his desire to improve ties with the Orthodox churches, which split from Rome in 1054, and a Vatican aide said scrapping the patriarch title was meant to help that.
"In the past, the patriarchate of the West was contrasted with that of the East," Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, former head of the Vatican office for eastern rite churches, told the Italian news agency ANSA.
"I think the Pope wanted to remove this sort of contrast and his act is intended as a spur to ecumenical progress."
Some Vatican observers were not so sure this would help.
The daily Corriere della Sera said the Orthodox churches "could see this papal innovation as an indirect affirmation of himself as a 'universal patriarch'".
Vatican relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of these churches, have been strained because the Moscow hierarchy suspects the Catholic Church of trying to win new members there following the fall of communism in 1991.
Orthodox leaders could see the move as a Vatican bid to ignore geography and rise above the ancient structure of Christianity as centred in the five main patriarchates of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.
Rome is the centre of the Roman Catholic Church while Istanbul, the former Constantinople, is home of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, symbolic head of the Orthodox churches. The others play much lesser roles in Christian affairs.
Benedict will visit Bartholomew in Istanbul in November.
The Pope's remaining eight titles are Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Province, Sovereign of Vatican City and Servant of the Servants of God.
Policy Debates, Principles, and Prudence: Conference Reminder
To the excellent recent exchanges over the relative importance and "categorical" nature of various Catholic social teachings, I'd like to respond for now only by ... plugging our conference of the Murphy Institute at St. Thomas on April 7-8 concerning "Public Policy, Prudential Judgment, and the Catholic Social Tradition." An excerpt from the conference description (full text here; speakers include MOJ's own Rob Vischer, with plenary addresses by John McGreevy (History, Notre Dame) and Christopher Wolfe (Political Science, Marquette)):
In recent years a number of public policy questions, such as the permissibility of the death penalty, the morality of the war in Iraq, and the justice of welfare reforms, have provoked controversy among Catholics. Advocates of very different policies have claimed that their positions follow from the Catholic social tradition and, at times, some have even insisted that their positions alone are faithful to this tradition. These controversies highlight enduring questions about the proper relationship between moral principles and prudential judgment.
In much the same way, controversies have also accompanied some of the formal positions adopted by the American bishops and even the Vatican on questions of public policy. Here again there has been an indistinct line between direct inference from moral principles and sound prudential judgment, where the former invites commitment and the latter tolerates disagreement.
Because of the importance of prudential judgment in public policy matters, the time is ripe for a careful and comprehensive discussion of the topic.
Tom
Response to Rick
I didn't intend to leave the impression that partisanship is a one-sided risk. But I don't think that was Michael's point either. It's too easy for Catholic Democrats to leave it to Catholic Republicans to take on Kerry or Clinton or whoever on abortion. By the same token, however, it is too easy for Catholic Republicans to leave it to others to question the bona fides of this administration on an obviously recurrent problem with torture. The most powerful Catholic witness will come when each side is willing to tackle its own preferred party's shortcomings. This is exactly why it is not sufficient for George to sit back and wait for others to condemn torture while he takes on the lonely task of criticizing abortion (a task that is not so lonely, I'm guessing, in his political circles). I'm sure we all fall short of this ideal. I know I do. But, truth be told, I don't think Catholic Republicans are accustomed to grappling with the contradictions to the same degree as Catholic Democrats, who can't seem to go a day without being reminded about them. Seriously. I took Michael's post to be a challenge to ALL of us to do better.
Statement of Principles-- House Democrats
Fifty-five Democratic members of the US House of Representatives who identify themselves as Catholic have just issued a Statement of Principles. The statement is relatively brief and is HERE . A quick perusal indicates that similar points in more elaborate form were made in the letter sent to Cardinal McCarrick almost two years ago. I plan to study this new statement in greater detail, but you will see that the one issue upon which they concentrate is abortion, which they "do not celebrate." They state that they seek the Church's guidance, but they also assert "the primacy of conscience." They do not indicate if they will take the route which Pope John Paul II drew in Evangelium Vitae and reiterated by the CDF in its own text. From what I see, that direction of these texts does not seem to be the position that they endorse. They conclude by stating that as the "people of God" they "have a claim on the Church's bearing as it does on ours." Please forgive my brief commentary at this point, but I thought MOJ contributors and readers would like to see the statement as quickly as possible. RJA sj
Response to Eduardo
Eduardo correctly understood my post, in which I observed that "torture" -- which, Eduardo and I agree, is absolutely wrong -- is not "self-defining, and that a government lawyer or administration is not immoral or corrupt for trying to find a definition of that term that is both workable and legally and morally defensible." I did not intend to offer a defense, or an interpretation, of the now-withdrawn "torture memos," but only to state a fact -- one that, I think, the administration's critics have not always accepted -- that any administration would have had to define "torture" in order to make meaningful a ban on torture.
Eduardo and I (and -- obviously -- John Finnis and Robert George) agree that using "physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to the respect for the person and for human dignity," (CCC 2297), and also that "every procured abortion" is a "moral evil" (CCC 2270). We agree that detainees have been immorally treated in some cases. We do not agree, though -- that is, I do not think -- that "this administration affirmatively supports torture as state policy." It is clear, though, that the Kerry Administration would have supported, as "state policy," an abortion license under which abortion at any time, for any reason, and in any manner would not only be legally protected by publicly funded.
I share Eduardo's concern about the widespread "impression" that the "Church is increasingly partisan in a way that has not been true in the past," but I believe the impression is unjustified. That is, it seems to me that the Church's emphasis, in more recent years, on the importance of reminding Catholic voters and officials about the need to protect unborn children is of a piece with -- and is no more partisan than -- the clear and powerful critiques, in the 1980s, of what the American bishops thought were the wrong policies of the United States in economic and national-defense matters. (See, e.g., "Economic Justice for All" (1986); "Pastoral Letter on War and Peace" (1983)).
I agree that it would be a bad thing if "partisan loyalties [were] playing a decisive role in shaping Catholic political discourse," but tend to think that it is at least as likely -- and just as unfortunate -- that the "partisan loyalties" of left-leaning Catholics are shaping their understanding and public application of Church teaching as it is that the "partisan loyalties" of right-leaning Catholics are shaping theirs. It is a challenge for me, and for all of us, to try hard to reverse the direction of this "shaping." MOJ is valuable to me for many reasons, one of which is that it reminds me of, and helps me with, this challenge. I am sure that my fellow bloggers, and MOJ readers, feel the same way.
Jurisprudential Legacy of Pope John Paul II
I've mentioned before the upcoming (March 23-24) conference sponsored by St. John's University School of Law on the Jurisprudential Legacy of Pope John Paul II. A number of MOJ'ers will be participating as paper presenters or commentators. The full conference brochure and schedule is linked here.
Freedom and Consumerism
One of the new blogs at National Review Online is the (at first blush, anyway) very un-National Review "Crunchy Cons" blog, inspired by Rod Dreher's new book of the same name. The posts in recent days have included some fascinating and provocative critiques -- denunciations, really -- of consumerism, and of its elevation to civil-religion status in the United States. In a similar vein is this piece from Sunday's New York Times, "Is Freedom Just Another Word for Many Things to Buy?":
In today's America, everyone from President Bush to advertising executives to liberal activists appears to agree that freedom is about having choices and that having more choices means having more freedom. Choice, even in mundane matters, embodies the larger ideal of the individual as arbiter not just of what tastes or feels good but also of what is good. . . .
But this "wisdom" is suspect for two reasons. First, most Americans do not think that freedom is about exercising more and more choice. And second, even for those who do equate freedom with choice, having more choice does not seem to make them feel freer. Instead, Americans are increasingly bewildered — not liberated — by the sheer volume of choices they must make in a day. . . .
. . . While the upper and middle classes define freedom as choice, working-class Americans emphasize freedom from instability. These perspectives echo the distinction between freedom to and freedom from made by Franklin Roosevelt and by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin half a century ago. For all our red-versus-blue rancor, most Americans agree that ours is a free country. But what freedom is, and where it should be nurtured and where constrained, are hotly contested issues.
Peter Steinfels on the new abortion case
"Abortion Returns to Center Stage," writes Peter Steinfels in the New York Times. In the piece, he describes the Democrats for Life's " "95-10 initiative":
. . . a bundle of measure meant, the organization says, to "reduce the number of abortions by 95 percent in the next 10 years."
These measures include expanded support and permanent tax credits for adoption; new government insurance coverage for low-income pregnant women and newborns; a federal study on why women choose abortions; grants to school districts needing money for "effective, age-appropriate pregnancy prevention education"; prohibitions on obstacles to health insurance for pregnant women; support for free ultrasound exams; new efforts combating domestic violence related to crisis pregnancies; parental notification requirements and restrictions on transporting minors across state lines for abortions; and greater financing of the federal WIC program, which provides nutrition aid for women, infants and children.
At the same time, Steinfels writes, "the moral question, it seems, will not go away and still has to be taken into account."
Against torture
Michigan law professor Joseph Vining, a Catholic, has written against the degraded lawyering in the torture memo. Unfortunately for present purposes, his characteristically insightful, elegant, and elevating essay is part of the volume After Authority, which I edited and is now under consideration for publication. Other contributors to the volume, while I'm at it, include (among others) Avery Cardinal Dulles, Russell Hittinger, Steve Smith, Michael J. White, Tom Kohler, Glenn Tinder, and J. Budziszewski. We can hope that the outside readers will hurry.
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