To re-open a debate that most of you have probably had enough of, this piece from the Chicago Tribune seems relevant to our discussion of the connection between abortion and legality. According to the Tribune:
Reaching out to more moderate, churchgoing voters with misgivings
about abortion, House Democrats plan to unveil legislation on Thursday
that sets a public policy goal of reducing abortions in America.
The proposal, to be announced at a news conference attended by the
House Democrats' national campaign chairman, Rep. Rahm Emanuel of
Illinois, would not restrict access to abortion. Instead, it promotes
such preventive measures as funding for contraceptives and expanded sex
education geared toward avoiding pregnancy as well as support for
adoption and services to new mothers, according to several people
familiar with the legislation.
First off, this seems perfectly consistent with the Democratic Platform, which says that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. It also seems consistent with a view that abortion is evil and something that we should work to eliminate, whether through legal prohibition or changing people's minds/actions, although I'm sure most of the people putting this proposal forward would not put it quite that way. But it raises some interesting questions. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the actual numbers of abortions under a system of legal prohibition would not drop significantly but would simply move underground (with predictable consequences for increases in deaths by women due to botched abortions). Let's also assume that these proposals by the Democrats would cause a substantial drop in the actual number of abortions. Setting aside questions concerning the morality of contraception (about which there's substantial disagreement on this site), would that be a reason to favor the Democratic position on abortion over the Republican position? And, if you favor the Republican position, is it because you think the assumptions are implausible or is it for some other reason? If the former, then the preference for the Republican position seems to rest on some pretty unproven empirical assumptions. If the latter, what is the basis for the assertion that abortion must be illegal (and not just, say, rare)?
My sense of the magisterium's teaching on this is that it is closer to the view that abortion must be illegal, irrespective of the consequences of that prohibition (i.e., even if its prohbition does nothing to make it more rare). And, given the clarity of the magisterium's teachings on this matter, a Catholic who favors the legal status quo but advocates strong policies that might well lead to a significant drop in the actual number of abortions (i.e., a Catholic who in good faith believes in the truth of my two assumptions) is pretty squarely outside the boundaries of permissible dissent. I have to say, though, that I have a hard time squaring that conclusion with Aquinas's and Murray's discussions of the complex relationship between moral and legal questions. (HT Daily Kos)
Pope Benedict XVI's speech at the University of Regensburg is a challenging read - it's dense and, in a way, highly technical. Yet, it rewards close scrutiny.
The simplistic view is to focus on the portion of the speech in which the Pope quotes Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus' comment that "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Predictably, certain Muslims leaders are whipping up outrage over the quotation (the same ones who whipped up the outrage over the Danish cartoons?).
No doubt the Pope had Islamic radical terrorism in mind when he elaborated that:
The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...." [PB.: I wonder what Ann "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" Coulter makes of that?]
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.
Yet, to see this speech solely in terms of a clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam would be error. Instead, the Pope is staking out a set of claims about the relationshiop of man and God that stand in opposition not only to the Islam of Ibn Hazn, but also that of the Protestant Reformers, the Jesus of History crowd, and (an area of particular concern for this pope) post-Christian Europe. The Pope is also renewing the claims of the Church Universal to have a truth that is transcendent, rather than culturally-bound:
In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures.
The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed.
True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.
At the end, however, I think the Pope does curve the discussion back to the problem of religiously motivated terror:
A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.
I read that line as a shot across the bow of post-Christian Europe - a warning that Europe increasingly lacks the tools demanded to meet the threats of the day.
Leading pro-life Democrat Bob Casey will give a speech today at Catholic University Law School titled "Restoring America's Moral Compass: Leadership and the Common Good." The speech will be webcast live at 3:00 PM (Eastern time). You can watch it here. Not everyone is happy that he is being given this platform in an election year. (HT: Open Book)
The Institute for American Values has releasedMarriage and the Law: A Statement of Principles. From the executive summary:
Family law as a discipline has increasingly tended to commit two serious errors with regard to marriage: (a) to reduce marriage to a creature of statute, a set of legal benefits created by the law, and (b) to imagine marriage as just one of many equally valid lifestyles. This model of marriage is based on demonstrably false and therefore destructive premises. Adopting it in family law as a practice or as an academic discipline will likely make it harder for civil society in the United States to strengthen marriage as a social institution.
As scholars and as citizens, we recognize a shared moral commitment to the basic human dignity of all our fellow citizens, black or white, straight or gay, married or unmarried, religious and non-religious, as well as a moral duty to care about the well-being of children in all family forms. But sympathy and fairness cannot blind us to the importance of the basic sexual facts that give rise to marriage in virtually every known society: The vast majority of human children are created through acts of passion between men and women. Connecting children to their mother and father requires a social and legal institution called “marriage” with sufficient power, weight, and social support to influence the erotic behavior of young men and women.
We do not all agree on individual issues, from the best way to reform unilateral divorce to whether and how the law should be altered to benefit same-sex couples. We do agree that the conceptual models of marriage used by many advocates are inadequate and thus contribute to the erosion of a marriage culture in the United States. We seek to work together across the divisive issue of gay marriage to affirm the basic importance of marriage to our children and to our society. We call on all the makers of family law—legislators, judges, the family law bar, and legal scholars who create the climate in which other players operate—to develop a deeper understanding of and commitment to marriage as a social institution.
You can download a free copy here (reg. req'd). Several MoJers (including me) are among the signatories. Hopefully the statement will spark meaningful and productive conversation.
The video excerpt of Matt Lauer's interview with President Bush (posted by Michael P. below) is really strange. The President's position, as far as I can tell, is that whatever our interrogators have done in secret prisons to extract information is, seemingly by definition: 1) legal; 2) not torture; and 3) necessary to protect the American people. I'm a bit suspicious that the President's firm conviction in assertion #3 is the driving force of his confidence in assertions #1 and #2. I share Andrew Sullivan's reaction to the interview:
It seems indisuptable to me that a) Bush has authorized "water-boarding"; b) he told his lawyers to come up with a formulation declaring this was legal (they did, finding Serbian precedents); c) his public strategy is to use euphemisms and make the ludicrous argument that he cannot discuss "specifics" because it could tip off the enemy. Does he really think that al Qaeda doesn't know KSM was waterboarded? It was in the New York Times, confirmed by his own aides. Lauer made a good start. Now we need a journalist to call the president on this guff and get him to answer simply whether he believes "water-boarding" is torture or not. A simple question in the abstract. And very simple for a Christian to answer.
For what it's worth, here is my own attempt to formulate a Christian perspective on torture.
According to this news story, Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput -- usually characterized in the press as a "conservative" -- has been going around the state, holding town hall meetings on immigration, and "explaining the church's immigration position as one that respects the rule of law but also believes immigrants have a right to human dignity and freedom."
MOJ readers in the Long Island area will be interested in a monthly series that commences this month at St. Ignatius Retreat House in Manhasset, entitled: Ignatian Spirituality Series: A Call to Justice. Through input, reflection, prayer and spiritual converstaion, participants in the series will explore issues of social justice in light of the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. The full schedule, as well as information regarding cost and registration, can be obtained from the retreat house's website here. The first few sessions of the series are:
The Ignatian Call to Life for the Life of the World (Presenter: David McCallum, S.J.), Saturday, September 30, 9:00a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Justice for All: Examining our Attitudes Toward the "Other" (Presenter: Susan J. Stabile), Saturday, October 28, 9:00a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
The Face of Human Trafficking - A Haunting Cry in Our time (Presenter: Sr. Helene Hayes, RGS), Thursday, Nov. 9, 7:00p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
Seeing the Face of Christ in the Poor: Economic Justice (Presenter: John Freund, C.M.) - Saturday, December 9, 9:00a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
The current issue of St. John's Journal of Catholic Legal Studies is now available online. As part of Amy Uelman's and my efforts to foster collaboration between New York City's two Catholic law schools in promoting Catholic thought, the issue includes papers from the series on Catholics and the Death Penalty held at Fordham Law School during the 2004-05 academic year. The issue can be accessed here.
I would like to thank Richard Myers for passing along Ed Lyons’ discovery of Pope Benedict’s recent address on faith, reason, and the university. I also look forward to reading again the Pope’s address along with the address that Archbishop Miller was scheduled to deliver at Boston College this past Monday, September 11.
But back to the Pope’s discourse.
I have now read it several times. It is a rich document—elaborate but clear. It contains much to be studied. It offers prayerful guidance and reflection. I would like to comment briefly on a few of its elements in this posting.
The first is the story that the Holy Father weaves throughout his address involving a discussion between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian scholar and their examination of the theme of jihad (holy war). The Pope reflects on a Koranic passage, “there is no compulsion in religion.” There are likely several reasons why the Pope introduced this into his address, but I would like to think that one involves what I like to identify as authentic academic freedom: the freedom for exploring beyond one’s self on the path to God. Indeed there is freedom from external pressures for academic inquiry to take place. But, for faith and reason to flourish side-by-side and in concert, there must also be freedom for God—to search, meet, and embrace Him. As the Psalmist says in N. 8: “what is man that you are mindful of him…” (RSV) If God’s mind is seeking encounter with the human mind, should not our minds also be pursuing this engagement? I think so.
A second element is what the Pope identifies as the “de-Hellenization” of the Christian faith that relies on the rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry. He analyzes his hypothesis that some in the universities have sought to divorce “the profound encounter of faith and reason” expressed in Greek Christian thought. His examination investigates three stages: (1) the fundamental postulates of the 16th century Reformers; (2) the 19th and 20th centuries’ distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (i.e., the separation of worship and morality); and, (3) the mood of the present day to emphasize cultural pluralism without taking stock of the inextricable link between the Greek culture and the early Christian church. This component of the Pope’s address may well include the objective of intensifying efforts to reconcile with the Orthodox Christians—a project very dear to the Pope.
A third element concentrates on the Pope’s examination of the pursuit of science that contains a self-imposed limitation on reason. The self-limitation is this: reason must be exclusively verifiable through empirical means. That approach would disallow the engagement of reason and faith and thus artificially limit human inquiry. If truth transcends the empirically verifiable, and I think it does, then the Pope is on to something. As he states, “[a] reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.” But, the Holy Father suggests that the academic enterprise, if it is true to its noblest qualities, must be courageous so that the whole scope of reason can be encountered and the denial of its grandeur may be eschewed.
