I would like to thank Steve and Patrick for there recent postings that rise and converge, to borrow from Teilhard, to one shared point about Catholics who are in public positions. I shall confine these brief remarks to these Catholics who hold public office, be it elected or appointed, and those who hold higher office within the Church. Steve also talks about theologians, but I will not address them in this posting—but I hope to do so at some point sooner rather than later.
I am attaching [Download araujo_essay_nd.pdf ] a brief essay that I did in the recent Notre Dame symposium on “law as a vocation” that may have some bearing on the issue and let readers know the perspective from which I come. My focus in this essay was on the public official and the obligations of discipleship that attend the Catholic public official’s exercise of civil office. I wrote this before the second letter was distributed by many of the same Members of Congress who also co-authored the first letter that was sent to Cardinal McCarrick about two years ago and to which I refer at some length in my essay. It is clear to me that in both letters, these Members of Congress have studied with some care (or at least the drafters of the letters have studied and the signatories have adopted) the obligations of Catholics who hold public office. With all respect to them, I think their understanding of their responsibilities as Catholics who hold public office is flawed as I try to point out in my essay.
It becomes clear to me that they, or their delegates, have made an effort to study what the Church teaches. In some cases those teachings are adopted by the Members of Congress who have subscribed their names to these two letters, but in other cases the Church’s teachings are put aside by these same public officials—perhaps for administrative convenience, as Master Thomas Cromwell purportedly said. It also seems that these officials, or at least some of them, believe that if they adopt many of the Church’s teachings but ignore or contravene others, they are still on solid ground as far as being faithful Catholics. I think such a conclusion is premature as will be apparent to those who read my essay. What the Church expects of them, and of all its faithful, is clear. And, it is this clarity that is obscured by their correspondence.
So what should bishops do in response? I am one of those people who likes to follow Cardinal Dulles’s wise words on such issues and assume that they, the public officials, may not know what the Church teaches. That means that its teachers, pastors and bishops in particular, have their work cut out. In short, the bishops have to make the teachings clear and direct these teaching activities specifically to these Catholic public officials.
However, these Members of Congress who have twice penned a letter have indicated that they believe they know what the Church teaches because they indicate familiarization with many of the Church’s teachings as expressed through relevant Church documents. But, their understanding of these teachings is flawed.
On one issue in particular (but maybe not the only issue), they ignore what the Church has taught about procured abortion and the duties of the Catholic public official toward this procedure that some hold to be a “Constitutional right.” The Church does not ask these influential public officials to do the impossible, but it does ask them to do the possible—to minimize or to mitigate, if they cannot repeal outright, the effect of these laws which permit this terrible and immoral procedure. These proper actions some of them refuse.
In such cases, the bishops should recognize that their teaching must continue for others. But different actions for those Catholic public officials who profess to be familiar with the Church’s teachings may well be in order when it becomes clear that they know the teachings but ignore or reject them.
So, what should the bishops do? I think they have a variety of appropriate options available. One would be to invite immediately these Catholic public officials to a personal or small group discussion that makes clear the risks of their behavior.
If their behavior continues, it is not the Church that has turned its back on them; it is they who have turned their backs to the Church. The concerned bishops must realize that it is their responsibility to take those actions that are firm, faithful, and guided by the mercy of God for all involved. The silence of bishops concerning these public office holders may be based on reasons that presently escape me, and I welcome the opportunity to be informed of what they might be. But surely any silence cannot be based on the episcopal consent to the actions of the public officials that I have briefly discussed here and in my paper.
Saint John Fisher, pray for us. RJA sj
Friday, June 16, 2006
The website of the USCCB doesn't yet report what the media are celebrating. (The aforementioned website does already include news of the Conference's denunciation of U.S. immigration policy and of the Conference's approval of the revised translation of the liturgy). The Cardinal and his collaborators have decided, after years of reflection and study and consultation, that they don't have much or anything at all to say on the question of Holy Communion and public figures who cause scandal to the faithful. The Conference has so very much to say on so very many topics, on which the pastors are not by ordination expert, but nothing or very little on "the source and summit" of the life of the Church as it concerns public figures who scandalize the people of God. (The worried voted in favor of the revised translations of the liturgy hardly shows the bishops as great shepherds of the Church's sacramental tradition. On this issue, they were most concerned lest the faithful be shocked or challenged). I'm not sure what I think the Conference should have said on the communion-to-Kerry-at-the-cathedral-during-election-season question; I'm just sure that, given their proclivity for saying things, this long-pondered silence is signal. Friends predicted that McCarrick's effort would come, by design, to nothing. Perhaps we can hope for stronger sacramental leadership from Archbishop Wuerl. Given what his history and record reveal, there is reason for hope.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Should the substance of political rights be determined before we grapple with the question of moral personhood? Glen Whitman sees an advantage in doing so. (HT: Volokh) An excerpt:
1. What beings (adults, children, fetuses, animals, aliens, etc.) are deserving of moral consideration? Call this the question of moral personhood.
2. What political rights, privileges, and powers should beings with moral personhood have? Call this the question of political status.
In intellectual circles, we usually regard moral philosophy as preceding political philosophy. We therefore address these two questions either (a) separately, or (b) in that order. We decide who constitutes a moral person – whose rights or interests therefore deserve consideration – and then we talk about the political status of such persons. But in practical politics, I think people consciously or unconsciously answer these questions using a kind of backward induction, considering political status first and then moral personhood. That is, they begin by asking what rights, privileges, and powers will be accorded to persons within a political system, and then (taking the previous answer as given) they decide who ought to be regarded as a person and to what extent.
Perhaps he is correct that, as a practical matter, the substance of the political rights at issue will affect the public's comfort level with recognizing the moral status of the rights claimant. But as a matter of principle, letting moral personhood flow from the political status that a given society is inclined to tolerate would turn the moral anthropology upside down.
Rob
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
I doubt that either Kung or Curran regard the decision of many who have left the Catholic church out of disagreement with the teachings of the Vatican to be a mortal sin (Curran says he appreciates why some Catholic women have left the church without suggesting their departure was sinful though he later says you can never really leave the church). Nor would leaving the Catholic church because of the Vatican's teachings or its treatment of women necessarily or even likely involve renunciation of the concept of sin. Moreover, Curran is quite clear that teachings of the magisterium are not necessarily teachings of the church (we, of course have discussed this at some length). He does identify core teachings that all Catholic must accept to be Catholics, but he does not think that the controversial positions about sex, women, celibacy, the force of the magisterium claimed by the Vatican (at least when not "received" by the People of God), etc., are among them). If leaving the church is a mortal sin, the question whether to leave the church answers itself. The question becomes more interesting if leaving the church is not regarded as per se sinful. Both Kung and Curran believe that staying in the church is the right thing for them to do. Their explanations for staying in the church are not the same, but they overlap and are both rich and interesting in their own right. Kung seems to believe that there is more choice involved than does Curran. Curran may overargue his position somewhat, but it is wonderfully put. Both Kung and Curran's reasons for staying in seem to have a lot more to do with reforming the pilgrim church than with avoiding mortal sin. As Curran puts it, "It is God's church which we are all trying to make more faithful to what it is called to be. The covenant people of God will always struggle the make the church a better sign of the reign of God in our midst."
As a follow-up to Patrick's post, my colleague Lisa Schiltz's paper, Motherhood and the Mission: What Catholic Law Schools Could Learn from Harvard about Women, is available here. Also note that Lisa has contributed a chapter to an important new book setting forth a view of motherhood that is increasingly counter-cultural, Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics. From the description:
This book tells the personal stories of women who have resisted medical eugenics - women who were told they shouldn't have babies because of perceived disability in themselves, or shouldn't have babies because of some imperfection in the child. They have confronted the stigma of disability and in the face of silent disapproval and even open hostility, had their babies anyway, in the belief that all life is valuable and that some are not more worthy of it than others. This is a book about women who have dared challenge the utilitarian medical model/mindset.
Rob
I read that one of Lawrence Summers's Harvard legacies will be improved institutional support of women and, lo if indirectly, their families. Harvard will be shelling out lots more for child care. Lisa Schiltz's forthcoming paper on where CST may lead on these questions, as they concern law faculties, is a must-read for those who care about where the Church's teachings invite in terms of the administration of her own institutions. Paying for child care entails trade offs, of course, and there are, of course, various other reasons that may militate in favor of leaving child care costs where they now lie. Nor do I suggest that Summers et al. are making a comprehensive moral statment. My guess is that they're after exactly the material conditions that will lead to something like numerical equality as between the sexes on the tenured or, proximately, tenure-track faculty. Still, the message from Harvard that child care is to be taken seriously by educational communities committed to the good(s) of their members should reverberate.
Steve Shiffrin's recent post got me thinking, and, alas, there is no way to raise this question without seeming quaint, stupid, or snarky. But why isn't the answer to the question, "Why don't I leave the Church?", this one: "For a person baptised into the Catholic Church to leave is to commit the mortal sin of apostasy"? To be sure, if the Church is flawed in such a way as to justify one's "departing," then one hardly need worry that there is such a reality as "sin" (and its consequences) as understood by the Church. But on the tenet, which I accept in faith, that (as I sometimes hear when travel brings me to parishes with loquacious celebrants of Holy Mass) "It is God who gathers us together as Church," can there possibly be a reason to undertake to "leave" the Church?
I am always impressed when I hear from theologians and others who feel wronged by the Church or the magisterium that they do not see leaving as an "option." Their steadfastness to the reality of the Church gives credibility to their stuggle with holding what the Church teaches. Of course, when the struggle ends and the defined faith is rejected, then one has already put oneself outside the communion that is the Church, though without the power to remove the indelible mark of baptism.
