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.

Monday, December 24, 2007

When Might Becomes Human Right

By Michael Scaperlanda

“When Might Becomes Human Right:  Essays on Democracy and the Crisis of Rationality.”  It is probably too late to put this book under the tree for Christmas but perhaps visitors from the East could bring it on January 6. 

Mary Ann Glendon describes both the author and the book:  “Janne Haaland Mátlary has devoted her life to questions of ethics and politics. This preoccupation has become extraordinarily relevant to many of the issues that dominate the contemporary political agenda; particularly in Europe where the debate over relativism, human rights and majority tyranny has become a vital concern to very many of its citizens. Combining academic research with an active political life as a diplomat serving both her native Norway and the Holy See, Janne Haaland Mátlary is able to offer us profound insights into the importance of human dignity and human rights in current politics. This book is essential reading for all who are concerned with issues of rationality, law, human rights, politics and religious freedom in European democracy today. As an academic, studying political science, her work has concentrated on security and foreign policy. She makes a strong case that foundations for human rights can be found through human reason, specifically, through retrieving and reanimating the classical tradition of rationalism that was once the pride of western civilization . She builds her analysis of politics with far more promising materials than the instrumental rationality and the radically individualistic concept of the person that have prevented the human rights movement thus far from reaching its full potential.”

Janne Haaland Matláry is Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science of the University of Oslo, Norway, and Senior Adjunct Researcher in Security Policy at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. She was State Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Deputy Foreign Minister) of Norway 1997-2000, representing the Christian Democratic Party in the Bondevik government. Her main academic fields are the European Union and international security policy. She has published very widely and played significant roles in a number of international and consultative bodies. In April 2007 she was awarded Il Premio San Benedetto. Her biographical narrative of conversion to the Catholic Church, Faith Through Reason, is also published by Gracewing.

HT:  Zenit

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Margaret Farley: A Throwback to the 1960's

By Michael Scaperlanda

At Michael P.'s suggestion, I read Margaret Farley's book "Just Love."  As you might expect, he and I have a different assessment of her work.  Here is my Amazon review of her book:

Much of this book is devoted to the history of sexual and marital practices in the West and to a cross-cultural comparison in an attempt to develop a framework for a contemporary Christian sexual ethic. Although the picture she paints is far from complete (she does not, for example, cite or engage John Witte's important work on the development of marriage in Christianity), Farley does provide enough of a picture to draw three conclusions: Throughout history and across cultures, societies have regulated the sexual passions, channeling them mostly into heterosexual marriage involving either monogamy or polygyny; in both patrilineal and matrilineal socities, women were often subordinated to men; and polygyny presents special dangers to women's equality.

Against this backdrop, Farley provides a framework for "just sex" centering it around seven criteria: do no unjust harm, free consent, mutuality, equality, commitment, fruitfulness, and social justice.

But, how to apply this framework in the concrete reality of people's lives? It is here that Farley sounds like a broken record from the 1960's or 1970's. For her, "commitment" is conditional and contingent because life is often too hard and full of unexpected surprises to live a permanent and unconditional commitment. Instead of offering an ethic that provides tools and understanding so that we can strengthen our commitment, she prefers to dilute the whole idea of commitment. She sees the pain of young girls who "hook up" in uncommitted sex "because they want relationships, though they seek them in vain in the practices that make relationships unnecessary." (p. 234) And, she sees young men ("who appear to enjoy these practices more than girls") taking advantage of "sexual partners almost without limit" with no need for commitment. (Ibid.). Yet, the most she can offer them is that we try to teach them the principles of sex that is just.

Today's young people who have suffered through their parents' broken commitments and who know the alienation and loneliness of the "hook up" culture, want more, need more, and should demand more from those who propose to guide them into adulthood. Those who believe that "just sex" and "just relationships" are possible, should read Karol Wojtyla's groundbreaking work "Love and Responsibility" with, or better yet, instead of, Farley's book. My college age children asked me to read "Love and Responsibility" earlier in the year. Since reading it, I have come to believe that it will provide the foundation for Christian sexual ethics in the 21st century.

Congratulations to Sister Margaret Farley!

By Michael Perry

[As is well known, Margaret Farley's moral positions on several issues regarding human sexuality--including homosexuality--differs from that of the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. In my judgment, Farley's (dissenting) moral positions are compelling.]

The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 6, 2007

Yale Scholar Wins Grawemeyer Award in Religion

[Sister of Mercy Margaret Farley] has won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for her views on sexual ethics, the University of Louisville announced this evening.

Margaret A. Farley, an emeritus professor of Christian ethics [at Yale Divinty School] and a Roman Catholic nun, will receive the prize, which carries a $200,000 award, in recognition of her efforts to promote fairness in sexual relationships. In her 2006 book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (Continuum International Publishing Group), Ms. Farley argues that justice is the quality that forms, guides, and protects loving relationships.

Susan Garrett, director of the award program, said in a written announcement that Ms. Farley’s argument “is an important message in light of all the confusion surrounding sexuality today.”

The award in religion is one of five annual Grawemeyer prizes presented in recognition of achievements in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Ms. Farley is the third Yale scholar to receive a Grawemeyer this year. On Wednesday two psychologists from the university, along with a professor at Fordham University, were named the winners of the award in education. The winners of the awards for music, psychology, and “ideas improving world order” were announced earlier this week.

The awards were established in 1984 by H. Charles Grawemeyer, an industrialist and University of Louisville alumnus. More information about the Grawemeyer Awards and the Grawemeyer Foundation at the University of Louisville is available on the organization’s Web site. —Jason M. Breslow

[Click here to read the announcement posted by Yale Divinity School.  An excerpt from that announcement follows:]

Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, is a widely known Christian ethicist who was on the faculty of YDS from 1971 to 2007. During the course of her career, she has been a progressive theological voice in a broad range of areas including feminist theology, medical and sexual ethics, the role of women in the church, homosexuality and the church, and religious perspectives on the environment. Not infrequently, her views have been seen as a challenge to those of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.       

"I am deeply honored to receive this award, and humbled,” said Farley. “It is an author's greatest hope that her work will be well received not only by scholars but by general readers who seek insights into human experience and activity. The Grawemeyer Award in Religion has been so important for writers like myself who try to explore human relationships, including relationships with the divine. I am extremely grateful to be included in a long line of religious authors selected for this Award over many years."      

In his nomination of Farley for the Grawemeyer Award, Yale Divinity School Dean Harold Attridge wrote, “ Just Love is a carefully nuanced work that demonstrates the synergies of science and religion; how coupling religious awareness with other forms of knowledge can serve to elucidate matters fundamental to the human condition; and how customs particular to diverse religious traditions can each contribute to the process of discernment despite differences.”

The decisive question posed in Just Love is, “With what kinds of motives, under what sorts of circumstances, in what forms of relationships, do we render our sexual selves to one another in ways that are good, true, right, and just?” Farley's answer rests on the fundamental notion that morally appropriate sexual relationships, heterosexual as well as same-sex, must be characterized by justice.       
“It's an important message in light of all the confusion surrounding sexuality today,” said Susan Garrett, a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in a Dec. 6 announcement from the seminary. Garrett, who directs the award program, added, “The religious right issues stark decrees while the entertainment industry tells us ‘anything goes.' People are confused about what's right.”

For Farley, “just love” requires consideration for the autonomy of persons, recognizes the uniqueness and equality of partners, and does no harm to self or others. Individual differences should be respected, but each individual must be treated as having unconditional value. In the book, Farley uses that framework to challenge traditional— and frequently negative—views of homosexuality, masturbation, divorce, and remarriage after divorce.       

“As a Catholic ethicist,” Attridge said, “Farley grounds her analysis in Christian theology and tradition. But she underscores the importance of enlisting the best information available—across a broad range of intellectual fields and religious/cultural traditions—to examine this complex aspect of life that is so connected to feelings of meaning and purpose.”

Indeed, in Just Love Farley declares, “In sexual ethics, the relevant disciplines will include not only philosophy but biology, medicine, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even history, literature, and art. . . Insofar as these disciplines give us a kind of ‘access' to reality – to the world and the universe, to human persons and the meanings of sexuality, to tragic or beneficial consequences of action – they are necessary for the doing of sexual ethics.”       

Reviews of Just Love praised it as a valuable contribution to ongoing discussions of topics so difficult that they threaten the unity of the church. Writing in The Christian Century magazine, William C. Placher said, “Margaret Farley has the guts and the clarity of mind to give us a third alternative to ‘narrowly constituted moral systems and rules' on the one hand and sexual chaos on the other.” And Dolores L. Christie, in Catholic Books Review , wrote, “No topic more than sexuality needs to be treated in a dispassionate manner . . . Farley has, in her usual fashion, covered the topic with impeccable scholarship, practical wisdom, and a compassion and acceptance for the existential reality of human beings in a sexual world.”

Blaine Amendment case in New York

By Michael Scaperlanda

Readers following Blaine Amendment cases will be interested in following New Horizon Church Ministry v. Spitzer, which was filed in federal court this past October.  For more on the Blaine Amendments, click here.

HT:  Kris Tate

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Pagans & Christians, Rejoice!

By Michael Perry

First Dec. 25 Xmas Tied to Pagan Shrine

ROME (AP) -- The church where the tradition of celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 may have begun was built near a pagan shrine as part of an effort to spread Christianity, a leading Italian scholar says.

Italian archaeologists last month unveiled an underground grotto that they believe ancient Romans revered as the place where a wolf nursed Rome's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.

A few feet from the grotto, or ''Lupercale,'' the Emperor Constantine built the Basilica of St. Anastasia, where some believe Christmas was first celebrated on Dec. 25.

Constantine ended the frequent waves of anti-Christian persecutions in the Roman empire by making Christianity a lawful religion in 313. He played a key role in unifying the beliefs and practices of the early followers of Jesus.

In 325, he convened the Council of Nicaea, which fixed the dates of important Christian festivals. It opted to mark Christmas, then celebrated at varying dates, on Dec. 25 to coincide with the Roman festival celebrating the birth of the sun god, Andrea Carandini, a professor of archaeology at Rome's La Sapienza University, told reporters Friday.

The Basilica of St. Anastasia was built as soon as a year after the Nicaean Council. It probably was where Christmas was first marked on Dec. 25, part of broader efforts to link pagan practices to Christian celebrations in the early days of the new religion, Carandini said.

''The church was built to Christianize these pagan places of worship,'' he said. ''It was normal to put a church near these places to try to 'save' them.''

Rome's archaeological superintendent Angelo Bottini, who did not take part in Carandini's research, said that hypothesis was ''evocative and coherent'' and ''helps us understand the mechanisms of the passage from paganism to Christianity.''

Bottini and Carandini both said future digs could bolster the link between the shrine and the church if structures belonging to the ''Lupercale'' are found directly below the basilica.

The Basilica St. Anastasia was the first church to rise not on the ancient city's outskirts, but on the Palatine Hill, the palatial center of power and religion in imperial Rome, Carandini said. Though little known today, at the time of Constantine it was one of the most important basilicas for Christians in Rome, he said.

The ''Lupercale'' shrine -- named after the ''lupa,'' Latin for she-wolf -- is 52 feet below ground. So far, archaeologists have only been able to see it by inserting probes and cameras that have revealed a vaulted ceiling decorated with colored marble and a white imperial eagle.

Though some experts have expressed doubts that the grotto is in fact the mythological nursery of Romulus and Remus, most archaeologists believe the shrine fits the descriptions found in ancient texts, and plans are being drawn up to excavate the structure further.

 

Who's Correct--Edwards or Romney? Recommended Reading

By Michael Perry

New York Times
December 23, 2007

Age of Riches

2 Candidates, 2 Fortunes, 2 Views of Wealth
By David Leonhardt  

By the final weeks of 1984, well before either turned 40, John Edwards and Mitt Romney had already built successful careers. But the two men were each on the verge of an entirely new level of financial success.

Mr. Edwards, then making a nice salary as a lawyer at a small North Carolina firm, spent early December staying at the Inn on the Plaza in downtown Asheville. Scattered around his room were legal documents relating to his first big malpractice case, a lawsuit filed by a man named E. G. Sawyer, confined to a wheelchair after his doctor had overprescribed a drug. On Dec. 18, at the courthouse opposite the hotel, a jury awarded Mr. Sawyer $3.7 million.

In Boston, Mr. Romney had risen to become a vice president at Bain & Company, an upstart management consulting firm, and had recently been chosen to run a spinoff investment firm known as Bain Capital. He spent the end of 1984 flying around the country — in coach class, to save money and to show his investors how serious he was about turning a profit — visiting companies and deciding whether to invest in them.

In the decade that followed, Mr. Edwards would win one big verdict after another, and Mr. Romney would oversee a series of hugely profitable investments.

Like thousands of other Americans in a global, high-technology economy in which government was pulling back and wealth was being celebrated, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney used talent, hard work and — as both have suggested — luck to amass multimillion-dollar fortunes. They became a part of a rising class of the new rich.

Whether this class is a cause for concern — whether it deserves some blame for the economic anxiety felt by many middle-class families — has become a central issue in the 2008 presidential race. And Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney are basing their candidacies in large measure on the very different lessons each has taken from his own success.

[This balanced article is well worth reading ... here.]

 

Tony Blair received into the Catholic Church

By Michael Scaperlanda

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was received into the Catholic Church yesterday.  Here is an earlier article on his 30 year journey to Rome.

Mary Ann Glendon confirmed

By Robert John Araujo, SJ

A while back, several of us commented on the nomination of Professor Mary Ann Glendon to be the next Ambassador of the United States to the Holy See. On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed her nomination. I don't believe any date has yet been set for her to present her credentials, but I am sure many of us can join in a hearty and sincere round of congratulations! As the folks in Rome would say: Auguri!    RJA sj

Begging to Differ

By Thomas Berg

At the Pajama Guy blog, LA Guy (a longtime friend of mine) takes me to task on a matter of phrasing.  In the recent discussion here about religion and constitutional history, I wrote:

To me, though, this begs a further question: why was [Justice] Black able to draw so much on history about religion?

LA Guy comments:

So Tom has gone over to the other side. "Beg the question" originally meant assuming what's needed to be proved (a usage he's certainly aware of), but he thinks it's okay to use it as "leading to the question."

I admit that I vaguely assumed that "leading to the question" was the original meaning for the phrase (and proper as well) because it fits the words more literally than does the meaning "assuming what's needed to be proved" (although the latter is almost always the way I use it).  I assumed that the latter meaning was a subsequent development that kind of took over.  But LA Guy is right about the chronology, as this site explains:

The fallacy ["assuming what needs to be proved"] was described by Aristotle in his book on logic in about 350BC. His Greek name for it was turned into Latin as petitio principii and then into English in 1581 as beg the question. Most of our problems arise because the person who translated it made a hash of it. The Latin might better be translated as “laying claim to the principle”.

Because I'm a big believer in linguistic distinctions to avoid ambiguity and preserve nuance, I'll concede that we should all stick to the original meaning, "assuming the thing that needs to be proved."  But let me point out that I wrote "begs a further question," an alteration which made, and was intended to make, my meaning clear: you wouldn't refer to "the thing to be proved" as "a further" question.

This lesson on usage is another of the many ways in which we edify you at MOJ.  It plainly invites the question "What does this have to do with Catholic legal theory?"  In response I claim the reference to Aristotle.

Tom

Friday, December 21, 2007

Professor Tamanaha’s Second Mistake?

By Robert John Araujo, SJ

As a follow-up to Patrick’s recent post, Professor Tamanaha appears to makes a second mistake. What if the believer and the unbeliever have very different moral justifications for their political decision on some specific issue, e.g., abolition of the death penalty, but they concur that capital punishment should be abolished. However there is a distinction that is to be kept in mind about their concurrence: the believer, in this case a Christian, relies on moral formation based on faith, but the non-believer cannot base personal moral choices on the inspiration of faith but on something else that relies exclusively on human resources.

I have read Professor Tamanaha’s thoughtful post, to which Rob refers, in its entirety, but it seems there is a limit to the claim Professor Tamanaha makes when he asserts the following:

However, if Christians make political decisions by the lights of Christian doctrine, and it turns out that there is no God or that Christianity is wrong about the nature of things (two distinct possibilities), then Christians will have inflicted their false religious beliefs on others, with immediate consequences.

What is the non-believer to do in this case in order to avoid the “immediate consequences” inflicted by “false religious beliefs”? Convert to a stance in favor of capital punishment? I don’t think this is what Professor Tamanaha has in mind, but it would appear that there is another limitation inherent in that portion of his argument, which I have reproduced above.    RJA sj

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