Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

The Glass Ceiling, Work and Family, and Catholic Thought

By Thomas Berg

The lead story in Sunday's NYTimes business section asks "Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms?" (when entry-level hiring is now pretty equal between the sexes).  There are lots of answers, including one, the "maternal wall," that ought to be of particular interest to Catholic legal and social theory:

Research conducted by the Project for Attorney Retention, a program sponsored by the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, has also identified an inflexible, billable-hours regime as an obstacle to job satisfaction for both sexes, a trend that is more pronounced among the most recent crop of law school graduates. Some veteran lawyers witness this dissatisfaction firsthand and say that it tugs more powerfully at women than men because of social expectations about household roles and child-rearing. . . .

Research conducted by the New York City Bar Association and other groups indicate that women who temporarily give up their professional dreams to pursue child-rearing or other personal goals have a difficult, if not impossible, time finding easily available on-ramps when they choose to re-enter the legal world.

Catholic social thought might well be ambivalent (or internally divided) about the idea that "household roles and child-rearing" with respect to one sex vs. another are no more than "social expectations."  But setting that aside, Catholic legal and social theory ought to have a lot of things to say about the problem of sex, family, and the workplace:  things such as (1) the proper priority of family concerns; (2) the inadequacy of having the logic and demands of the marketplace drive so much else in life; and (3) the importance of having women in positions of influence in economic and public life so as to bring distinctive contributions, meaning that it's wholly inadequate from a Catholic standpoint just to say "the domestic sphere is important and that's where women should concentrate."  (The last of these three points appears in the Times article under, among other things, the familiar rubric of the workplace advantages of "diversity.")  My St. Thomas Law colleague Lisa Schiltz, one of the few addressing these problems from a Catholic point of view, is bringing out all of the above points in what promises to be a rich series of articles.  The first, posted here, includes the following summary argument:

Catholic teachings on the role of women, particularly the powerful arguments in Mulieris Dignitatem about women's contributions to the realization of a truly humane social order, could provide support for feminist arguments for more radical restructuring of the workplace to ensure mothers' access to the public sphere. At the same time, I argue that the work of Catholic scholars on these topics could be enriched by engaging the dependency-based theories of justice being developed by the feminists, and by considering the feminist perspective that women, including mothers, have a significant role to play in the public as well as the private sphere.      

It would be good to see a number of others join Lisa in making questions like this a major focus of Catholic social and legal thought.  (I realize there are other entry points into the problem of the work-family split, for example Nicole Stelle Garnett here on home-based businesses and the zoning and other legal problems they face.) In any event, just to conclude on a provocative note:  isn't this a case where the recent trend in Catholic thought to accept (if not embrace) market logic really creates theological problems and needs to be qualified?

Tom

from Commonweal.com

By Michael Perry

This post is by Peggy Steinfels, former editor of Commonweal:

What's a magazine for?

March 19, 2006, 3:40 pm

I wonder if you'all saw this item in this week's Word From Rome: John Allen interviews the Jesuit General  Hans-Peter Kolvenbach. Among Allen's questions and Kolvenbach's responses are the following.

Allen: One early controversy of his papacy centered on Fr. Tom Reese from America magazine. What are the lessons of that episode for Jesuit-sponsored publications?

Kolvenbach: America magazine, under the competent and dynamic guidance of Fr. Tom Reese, believed that the best service to a mature Catholic public was to let the two sides of a controversial question to defend their views. … However, this orientation did not meet the approval of some pastorally concerned priests who were worried about a negative effect on the faith-growth of the Catholics. They expect that Jesuit publications will offer clear standings to meet the questions of the day, avoiding confusion and relativism. Unhappily, instead of changing his policy, Fr. Reese resigned. This episode takes us back to St. Ignatius when he speaks about sentire cum ecclesia (feeling with the church). …

Allen: Did the initial concerns about America come from the United States rather than the Vatican?

Kolvenbach? Yes, from clergy outside the Jesuits in the United States, including some in senior positions.

Steinfels: Most issues have three or four sides, not just two. How can the Catholic church and its tradition have a credible presence in U.S. culture if it can't even talk about two sides of a controversy, much less three or four.

America has, in fact, held up well under its new editor, but if the head of the Jesuits and other senior clergy, i.e., U.S. cardinals and bishops, think that debate and contestation are not among the tasks of Catholic journals and intellecutals, they're heads are deeper in the sand than I believed possible. Not to toot Commonweal's horn,  or NCR's, but there is considerable virtue in publications that are willing and able to grapple with the dark issues of the day by presenting more than one side of an issue precisely because they know there are mature Catholics reading their pages.

More than liberals or conservatives, what the Catholic church needs are wirters, editors, intelllectuals who make it their business to sustain a credible Catholicism.
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By Michael Perry

[An excerpt from a review of Kevin Phillips's new book, American Theocracy.  To read the whole review, click here.  The reviewer, Alan Brinkley, is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.]

New York Times
March 19, 2006

Clear and Present Dangers

ALAN BRINKLEY

...

Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right.

He points in particular to the Southern Baptist Convention, once a scorned seceding minority of the American Baptist Church but now so large that it dominates not just Baptism itself but American Protestantism generally. The Southern Baptist Convention does not speak with one voice, but almost all of its voices, Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.

Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing claim is significant, but not conclusive.
...

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One of those "religion in politics" moments ...

By Michael Perry

[From an e-mail message I received:]

On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at American University, was requested to testify.

At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"

Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution.  You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

The room erupted into applause.
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The responsibilities of teaching

By Robert John Araujo, SJ

Recent comments posted on MOJ by Mark, Rick and Rob have served as catalysts for this posting. Both Mark and Rick have reacted to the Joan Vennochi Boston Globe essay (dealing with “enlightened” and “liberal” Catholics, to use Ms. Vennochi’s modifiers) upon which I commented earlier in the month. Rob had a series of observations about another Boston Globe report on the Harvard Law Lambda group, Ropes & Gray, and my earlier posting on that matter. Rob presented his disagreement with the law students’ view in this case when they may have pressured the law firm to drop Catholic Charities as a client over the gay adoption issue, but he also expressed admiration for students who consider the moral dimension of legal work.

Their important postings have prompted me to reflect on a common current that I believe runs through both Globe pieces. The common theme involves those who teach the law students and those who teach people in public life, be they newspaper writers or holders of public office. A good teacher has many tasks. One is to convey information. That is the most basic task of education or instruction, but if one wishes to be a good teacher—even a great one, to borrow from Thomas More—something in addition is required. What might that be? Surely to show students how to think carefully and completely and to extend investigation beyond one’s self. When a teacher does this, he or she is far more likely to take on with students the moral issues that involve what is right and what is wrong in the world and how to make proper corrections. This teacher also makes students realize that there is something and someone beyond self interests. I am not sure the Lambda students or Ms. Vennochi understand this. The Church has an obligation to teach Christ, salvation, and redemption. It teaches about virtues and sin. It teaches about hope and being in the presence of God both now and forever. If any of the Church’s teachers fail in their office, they have no one to blame but themselves. But, if they are true to their office and its responsibilities, should they bend to the criticism of Ms. Vennochi or the Lambda law students?

Perhaps the Church’s teachers, when true to their calling, will not gain the favor of the Lambda members or Ms. Vennochi, but to have the favor of God and others, well, as More responded, “Not a bad public, that...” RJA sj

The Boston Globe makes me Gag

By Rick Garnett

Thanks to Rick for linking to the op ed by one Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe arguing that "liberal Catholics" should leave the Catholic Church. When I lived and practiced law in Boston 20 plus years ago, I loved the Globe because it had the best sports page around, which I could admire even though I was (and am) a die-hard Yankees fan. Its sports page is still excellent, but the rest of the paper makes me gag. Between the gleefulness of its coverage of the sexual abuse crisis, its patronizing suggestion of the formation of a new "catholic charities" and its publication of Vennochi's inane suggestion, it has abandoned any attempt at evenhandedness or even understanding toward the complexities of these issues, particularly the importance of religious liberty. Rick is quite right in suggesting that liberal Catholics (at least this one) would not find her argument "comprehensible," let alone appealing. After all, what is she trying to say? It seems to be that if one accepts "liberal ideology" (whatever she means by that) one should abandon the Church, because the Church persists in taking positions inconsistent with liberal ideology. Where to begin in refuting this non sequitur? First of all, what does "ideology" have to do with religious belief? "Liberals" who are Catholic are Catholic because they believe in Jesus Christ and the one holy, catholic and apostolic church. So long as one holds that core spiritual belief one does not "leave" the Church. Second, many of us who define ourselves as "liberal Catholics" are as much as odds with elements of "liberal ideology" as we are with elements of Catholic teaching, particularly the fetishization of the autonomous rights bearer and a tendency towards moral relativism. Third, we recognize that the Church is a battleground, in which doctrine changes and evolves, moral discernment by mortal humans is imperfect, and that the People of God are pilgrims struggling to find their way with the guidance of the Hoiy Spirit. We reject the awful certainty of ideologues such as Vennochi. Perhaps that is what makes us "liberal."

I will cross post this at dotCommonweal to see what my fellow blogistas there have to say.

--Mark

Saturday, March 18, 2006

"Sex Wars" and Public Life

By Thomas Berg

Daniel Henninger in Opinion Journal blames "sex wars" for the broader, and dangerous, loss of religious and serious moral influences in public life.

Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, ignited a 33-year war over sex, bowdlerized for political discourse as "privacy." [The categorization in the 2004] Pew [public opinion poll] collapses all moral life in America down to abortion and gay rights because the political class believes those issues move votes. And the result is that anything else important, like what Messrs. [Barry] Bonds or [Enron's Andrew] Fastow represent, is ignored. . . .

Our political culture's preoccupation with sexual boundaries has smothered the more important ability of religious or ethical formation to function in the U.S. Currently the most rigorous whole-person moral system resides among evangelical right--at least in terms of keeping one's earthly life in perspective. But because the religious right has "positions" on abortion and homosexuality, politics seeks to undermine its entire function in the life of the nation.

Inner-city parents desperate to use vouchers to send their children to values-forming parochial schools can't, because the reigning political calculus holds this would somehow "advantage" an abortion-resistant Catholic Church. . . .

Maybe it's time for the sex obsessives on the left and right to take their fights over abortion and gay rights into a corner somewhere and give the rest of society space to restore some ethical rootedness in an endlessly variable world.

This certainly voices the frustration I (and I think others) feel over how two or three issues have driven the whole "religion and politics" debate, distracted from the myriad crucial contributions that "conservative" religion makes every day to civil society, and led "progressives" to exalt individual autonomy and denigrate their own history of religious-moral judgments.  But what does "taking [the sex wars] into a corner" mean?  I assume that it would mean, for example, that Massachusetts would preserve Catholic Charities' contributions in placing foster children instead of giving it the boot, even though it won't place children in gay families.  Perhaps more generally, "taking the issue[s] into a corner" would mean gay-rights laws with religious exemptions?  The Religious Right would accept such laws on the ground that they don't imply "normalization" of gay behavior or that any such limited implication is overcome by the more important public value of ensuring access to jobs, public accommodations, etc.  But taking the issue into a corner means not expanding disagreement with a non-profit organization's traditional position on sex issues into punishing it or disqualifying it from providing other benefits to civil society (like Catholic Charities in special-needs adoptions, or a Catholic hospital refusing to provide abortions).

The big problem with the idea is that some contested practices concern not just sex but (in opponents' view) basic questions of human rights and civic well-being (Henninger overlooks this, as Protestants for the Common Good did concerning abortion in its statement on the Christian Right that we blogged about).  The abortion issue will resist being sent off "into a corner," whatever constitutional or pragmatic limits there are on public policies addressing it.  And even if we could agree that basic issues like abortion and same-sex marriage shouldn't expand imperialistically into others (like general health-care or adoption-placement), those basic issues will still be on the table.  Finally, of course, there are problems of reciprocity and the "prisoner's dilemma": how does one side know that, if it reduces its efforts, the other side will abide by the bargain?

Tom   

Friday, March 17, 2006

More Maritain

By Patrick McKinley Brennan

Thanks to Rick and Michael for noticing the review of Barre's Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven.  This rich book deserves and rewards careful attention.  As does the beautiful book by Rick's colleague Ralph McInerny, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life (Notre Dame, 2003).  One wonders how the various notions of "dissent" ventilated here in recent months would be judged by the charitable Maritain who cherished Merton and Alinsky.    

"Blacks in the Catholic Church"

By Rick Garnett

Here is a provocative -- yet sobering -- read, "Blacks in the Catholic Church:  Then and Now," from OpinionJournal:

As the debate continues over what to rebuild in New Orleans, the fate of the city's black Catholic community may be one of the more poignant tales of loss and uncertainty in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It is also one that points to a challenge for the wider Catholic Church in America. New Orleans, along with Baltimore and New York, is one of the precious few strongholds of black Catholics in the United States, a venerable old community facing challenges beyond the storm's toll.

Katrina dispersed much of New Orleans's Catholic population, including many African-Americans. Even now, seven months later, only half of the 350 families from the Church of St. Augustine, a parish near the French Quarter founded in 1841 by slaves and freedmen, have returned. The local archbishop wants the congregants to merge with another church.

Indeed, people outside major cities are often surprised to discover that there are black Catholics at all; for them, the church's vaunted universality is limited to a light-toned blend of European and Latino nationalities. And indeed, African-Americans make up just 3% of the nation's more than 65 million Catholics. Why should this be so?

When it comes to racial integration, the Catholic Church in America carries much of the same historical baggage as many other institutions. True, there have been remarkable black American Catholics, notably Venerable Pierre Toussaint, the Haitian immigrant and slave who bought his own freedom in the early 19th century, and then used his wealth to fund all manner of charitable efforts and help to underwrite the building of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street in New York.

Alan Jacobs on Wheaton

By Rick Garnett

In the latest First Things, Alan Jacobs (Wheaton) has a piece on the recent firing, by Wheaton, of Joshua Hochschild, who had informed the school's administration that he was entering into full communion with the Catholic Church.  He writes:

[W]hat principles or concerns should guide Wheaton’s leaders as they reflect on the options before them? It is easier perhaps to say what should not guide them. First on that list would be the all-too-common assumption that religious particularity is always a bad thing, that it amounts to “sectarianism” or violates the gospel of “diversity.”

On the contrary, there are good reasons that some colleges and universities might choose, in the interests of intellectual coherence and the promotion of fruitful conversation, or in the interests of, say, service to the Church, or out of a love for Truth itself, to confine their constituency to those who share a set of core beliefs. The wide-open doors of the modern university—even supposing that they really exist—are a good thing but not the only good thing. Certain valuable and productive conversations happen in classrooms at Wheaton or Thomas Aquinas that simply cannot happen in the classrooms of secular universities. This was a point lost on the concerned citizens of Wheaton in 1877—with their longing for the unspecifiable uplift of “moral and religious influences”—and it is equally lost on many of Wheaton’s critics today. . . .

What elements of Wheaton’s mission are aided by its faculty being confined to Protestants? This, it seems to me, is the question that matters most. I must confess that I have difficulty in saying what such elements might be. Conversely, the riches of Catholic intellectual traditions, when embodied in persons of deep Christian conviction and piety, offer great resources for the fulfillment of that mission. Wheaton has never neglected the traditions themselves, but it has chosen to pass over brilliantly gifted proponents of those traditions when those proponents have also stood under the authority of Rome. At this juncture in the history of Christianity in the West—when it is besieged in so many ways by so many opponents—I am not sure that a school like Wheaton can afford to go it alone much longer. Even if we could, would it be wise and charitable to do so? . . .

The Reformation may not be over, but many of the suspicions and hostilities that accompanied it should be. Wheaton could strike a great blow, not for insipid and vacuous “moral and religious influences,” but for true Christian unity, if it welcomed into its midst Josh Hochschild and other Catholic teacher-scholars who share his passion for Christian truth.

Update:  I missed Rob's post, below, on the same matter!  Sorry!

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