Over at First Things, Ryan Anderson laments Great Britain's requirement that the Catholic Church's publicly funded adoption agencies place children with same-sex couples. Here's an excerpt:
the Church isn’t arguing that gay parents shouldn’t be allowed to adopt, or even that the state shouldn’t place children with gay couples. As Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett points out, the Church is merely asking for an exemption—an exemption allowing it the freedom to continue to place children; an exemption that wouldn’t force it into the dilemma of either violating its own conscience or having to close its adoption programs.
In this case, the religious believers are clearly on the side of conscience and freedom, while secular liberals are promoting a state-imposed moralism that coerces everyone, at least everyone who desires to cooperate with the state for the common good. Thus, the Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York, in solidarity with their Catholic brethren, wrote to Blair: “The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning.”
They are entirely right, but, unless properly understood, their statement can be misleading. If committed homosexual relationships were true marriages, and if gay couples were equally suited to raise children, then the anti-discrimination legislation as applied to adoption would make sense. This is why Alan Johnson, the education secretary, was right when he said: “To me this is legislation to prevent discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and you cannot do that and at the same time allow discrimination in one area.” If the Church’s teaching about homosexuality and marriage is true, then the Church’s claim to the rights of conscience is valid. But if it is false, then so, too, is its claim for exemption—think back to the case of Bob Jones University and interracial dating.
I've consistently enjoyed the writing Ryan has done for First Things, but I believe he's wrong on this one. The validity of a conscience claim cannot turn on the truth of the view contained therein. Aquinas taught that even the erroneous conscience must be obeyed -- not to honor a man's conscience is to tempt him to sin because it asks him to deny his understanding of the divine command. Our focus should be on correcting the erroneous conscience through persuasion, not on coercing the erroneous conscience. The institutional conscience of Bob Jones University was not invalid because its views on race were wrong; it was simply deemed unworthy of government benefits (tax exemption) in light of our emerging societal consensus on race.
If the federal government had moved to shut down Bob Jones University because of its inter-racial dating ban, such action would pose a much bigger problem for conscience. And if the British government simply moved to cut off funding to adoption agencies that discriminate against same-sex couples, that's not nearly as problematic as shutting them down (as happened in Massachusetts, in my understanding). If our protection of conscience devolves into a battle over objective truth, the outlook for conscience is not a particularly rosy one.
UPDATE: Ryan Anderson responds to my post as follows:
You’re entirely right about the individual’s obligation to follow his own conscience, even if it objectively errs. On this I agree with you (and St. Thomas). I should have been more careful and more precise on this point in my original piece at First Things. But, I do not think our obligations to conscience necessarily entail the political implications you describe. As far as public law goes, appeals to erroneous consciences and their freedoms need not hold sway. That is, I do not think all moral paternalism is unjust.
Consider an example. Appealing to a right to freedom of conscience in the case of racial discrimination in hiring practices (based upon a deeply held, sincere belief that God told you some racial group is inferior or wicked), wouldn’t legitimize an exemption from anti-discrimination laws in business hiring. Only if the underlying belief (that the racial group is inferior, wicked, etc.) was true, would the conscience claim hold weight for public law. That is, only if the moral legislation of the state was wrong—i.e. racial discrimination is in fact legitimate but the state prohibits it—would the appeal to conscience carry the day. Of course the individual still has to follow his conscience (even if objectively erroneous), but the state may certainly penalize him for doing so (as we do in non-discriminatory hiring law, and many other paternalistic laws).
In the UK adoption case, it seems to me that if the underlying morality (and applications) of the sexual orientation anti-discrimination law is correct, then the Church’s appeal to the rights of conscience will not work. To appeal to conscience in this case would require one to argue that the law itself is misguided (in its implications for marriage and adoption, but not, as Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor put it, in its prohibition of “forms of unjust discrimination, violence, harassment or abuse directed against people who are homosexual.”) The point of the post was to say that the UK got the political theory right (especially since secular-liberals so often claim to oppose moral paternalism), but that they got the underlying morality (and the prudence of morals legislation on this question at this time) wrong. The future of our same-sex marriage discussions in the US, as Maggie Gallagher describes them, seems to be just as volatile.
As an aside, it is my understanding (but this remains somewhat unclear to me) that the British government’s proposed law is enforced via elimination of public funding. The Catholic adoption agencies—if they refused to place children with gay and lesbian couples—would lose all of their public funds. The lack of public funding is what would then force them to close. That they are so dependent on government monies is a whole other discussion, however… Nonetheless, deciding who is eligible to receive public funds to serve the public good is still a form of paternalism.
To be clear, I agree with Ryan that a conscience-based claim for exemption from an otherwise applicable law entails a claim that the law itself is misguided (at least as applied to the person/group seeking the exemption) -- i.e., that the law conflicts with a moral claim that the person/group believes to be true. But that does not mean that we must establish the objective truth of the view on which the conscience claim is based. Even if such a standard is binding in theory (which I do not believe it is), it's a non-starter in practice.
On February 15, at 4 p.m., the Lumen Christi Institute is hosting an event -- a panel discussion, part of the Institute's Yves Simon series -- in Chicago dedicated to my friend and colleague John McGreevy's recent book, "Catholicism and American Freedom." (I'm a big fan of the book. My review is here.) I and several others will be offering some thoughts on John's book. If you are in or near Chicago, check it out!
Results of a new survey regarding Americans' favorite buildings suggest (a) we're not wild about contemporary stuff and (b) we don't think there are many beautiful Catholic churches. Out of the top 150 buildings, only one (St. Patrick's in New York City) made the list. Should we care about this? That is, should we care that we have not (apparently) been building beautiful churches (or, churches that people *think* are beautiful)?
On the Migration
of Religious Ideas -- W. Clark Gilpin
The current issue of the New
York Review of Books contains a probing article by the noted author and
columnist on international relations, William Pfaff. Entitled "Manifest
Destiny: A New Direction for America," Pfaff's essay excoriates the Bush
administration for pursuing its international economic and political goals "by
means of internationally illegal, unilateralist, and preemptive attacks on other
countries, accompanied by arbitrary imprisonments and the practice of torture,
and by making the claim that the United States possesses an exceptional status
among nations that confers upon it special international responsibilities, and
exceptional privileges in meeting those responsibilities." Increasingly,
the American public is joining the international community in criticizing the
catastrophic folly of President Bush's violent efforts to impose his vision of
democratic virtue. "A claim to preeminent political virtue is a claim to
power," Pfaff rightly observes, "a demand that other countries yield to what
Washington asserts as universal interests."
For Sightings,
however, with its mandate to identify and assess the role of religion in public
affairs, another aspect of Pfaff's essay holds particular interest. How is
it, Pfaff wants to know, that President Bush's political, journalistic, and
foreign policy critics find themselves "hostage to past support of his policy
and to their failure to question the political and ideological assumptions upon
which it was built?" The ideological assumptions, Pfaff recognizes, have
deep roots in an American religious history that has generated a national myth
of exceptional mission and destiny. Pfaff locates the origins of this
national myth in the religious beliefs of the New England Puritans and
synoptically observes its later appearances in nineteenth-century ideas of
manifest destiny, Woodrow Wilson's idealism regarding the League of Nations, and
the Cold War rationale for American international involvement, "interpreted in
quasi-theological terms by John Foster Dulles."
The
myth-building energies of religious ideas are a perennial source of hope in a
world all too frequently cruel and difficult. Simultaneously, these
energies combine with the human will to power to generate many of these very
cruelties and difficulties. Theologians through the centuries have
therefore constrained and counterbalanced visions of future possibility with
more austere spiritual norms. Among the New England Puritans, for
instance, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, John Winthrop, did not simply
announce that the colony would be "as a city upon a hill" but immediately
followed with the warning that the people's failure to observe their covenant
with God would invite the wider world to "speak evil of the ways of God and all
professors for God's sake." Embarking on their mission, these Puritans
insisted that humility was the "fundamental grace" and the gateway to all the
virtues, and they agreed completely with the great Puritan poet John Milton that
the primordial sin was pride.
The "failure to question the political and
ideological assumptions" of the Bush administration, therefore, lies not only
with Congress, the media, and the foreign policy community. In addition,
the public responsibility of the theologian entails appraisal of the role of
religious ideas in the formation of ideological assumptions. When
religious vision migrates from its theological context, amidst the constraining
and countervailing spiritual norms of responsible humility and wariness of pride
as the deepest fault, its hope-engendering powers become perilous
indeed.
References:
William Pfaff's article "Manifest Destiny: A New
Direction for America" (New York Review of Books, February 15, 2007) can
be read at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19879.
W. Clark Gilpin is Margaret E. Burton Professor of the
History of Christianity and Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity
School. ----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
Thanks to an enthusiastic recommendation by Chris Eberle (Naval Academy, Philosophy), I tracked down this book, and now want to join Chris in recommending it, enthusiastically, to MOJ readers:
Allen D. Hertzke, Freeing God's Children: The Unliklely Alliance for Global Human Rights (2004).
Book Description Given unprecedented insider
access, author Allen D. Hertzke charts the rise of this faith-based
movement for global human rights and tells the compelling story of the
personalities and forces, clashes and compromises, strategies and
protests that shape it. In doing so, Hertzke shows that by raising
issues such as global religious persecution, Sudanese atrocities, North
Korean gulags, and sex trafficking the movement is impacting foreign
policy around the world.
A few weeks ago Catholic Charities announced a campaign to reduce poverty in America in half by the year 2020. My apologies if this has already been discussed here, but I honestly haven't seen much about this anywhere in the media. The announcement starts:
Catholic Charities USA today announced a new multi-year initiative to cut poverty in half by 2020, urging Congress and the Administration to give a much higher priority to the needs of the poor in budget and policy decisions on issues such as health care, housing, nutrition, and economic security.
“Poverty is a moral and social wound on the soul of our country and threatens the health and economic well-being of both families and our nation,” Rev. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, said at a briefing this morning on Capitol Hill. “We must marshal the strength and the collective will of our nation to take on this tragedy that affects 37 million people who are living in poverty in one of the wealthiest nations in the world.”
“The Campaign to Reduce Poverty in America is about who we are as a nation,” Father Snyder said. “We must no longer ignore the injustice of poverty and the extreme inequality in America and instead must seize this opportunity to advocate for changes that promote human dignity and the common good.”
Has anyone taken a look at their program? Their website contains links to their report, a study guide to the report, poverty statistics, etc. It might be a good resource for teaching.
University of Illinois law prof Larry Solum has posted his new paper, "Pluralism and Public Legal Reason." Here's the abstract:
What role does and should religion play in the legal sphere of a modern liberal democracy? Does religion threaten to create divisions that would undermine the stability of the constitutional order? Or is religious disagreement itself a force that works to create consensus on some of the core commitments of constitutionalism - liberty of conscience, toleration, limited government, and the rule of law? This essay explores these questions from the perspective contemporary political philosophy and constitutional theory. The thesis of the essay is that pluralism - the diversity of religious and secular conceptions of the good - can and should work as a force for constitutional consensus and that such a consensus is best realized through commitment to an ideal of public legal reason instantiated by the practice of legal formalism.
The case for these claims is made in six parts. After this introduction, Part II, The Fact of Pluralism in the Context of Contemporary Religious Division, explores the idea of religious division in light of an important notion in political philosophy - the idea that John Rawls calls the fact of reasonable pluralism. Part III, Public Legal Reason, argues that the fact of pluralism has important normative consequences for the foundations of normative legal theory and argues for an ideal of public legal reason. Part IV, Legal Formalism, contends that this idea is best realized in constitutional practice through a formalist approach to constitutional interpretation - one that deliberately eschews direct reliance on religious and secular comprehensive conceptions of the good. Part V, Feasibility and Positive Theory, discusses the question whether this ideal of public legal reason and corresponding conception of constitutional formalism are realistic, given the constraints imposed by democratic politics under contemporary conditions. Finally, Part VI, Religious Division Revisited: From Pluralism to Formalism, brings the discussion to a close.
Mike Jones, the former male prostitute involved with former National Association of Evangelicals leader Ted Haggard, recently visited Haggard's former church in Colorado Springs and apparently received a welcoming response. Christianity Today 's weblog reports that
Associate pastor Rob Brendle was apparently one of those who thanked him. "I told Mike, 'I don't want to impose my religious beliefs on you, but I believe God used you to correct us, and I appreciate that,'" he said. "The church's response to him was overwhelmingly warm. One of the wonderful and enduring truths of Christianity is to love people the world sets up to be your enemies."
He didn't say "love your enemies," which was a nice touch.
Well, it's good in this case that the church members didn't look on him as an enemy. But isn't "love the people the world sets up to be your enemies" somewhat less radical -- and therefore less "wonderful" -- than what Jesus actually said in the Gospels?
Rick, Rick, what can I say about your deluded belief that the UNC-Duke basketball game makes today a "big" day? I too enjoy college basketball as a mild wintertime diversion. Yesterday's Villanova-St. Joe's tilt, aka "The Holy War" here in Philly, kept me amused for a while as Villanova cruised to its inevitable triumph. But the only REALLY big day in February is the 15th-- yes, the day that pitchers and catchers report to spring training. Only 8 days til life begins again, and we can put away childish things (the Super Bowl, the BCS, basketball, luge etc.), as we watch pitchers warm up in the the Florida and Arizona,sun, worry about whether foreign players will get their visas in time, and speculate about the Rocket's return. Yes, that is THE day.
So, the elections are over, Christmas has come and gone, the BCS games are (thankfully) a fading memory, the commercial-fest -- I mean, Super Bowl -- is done . . . and so, now, finally, today we can get to what really matters: Duke and Carolina, in Cameron. Go Devils.
