A little while back, I blogged about a new anti-death-penalty organization, based in Indiana, called INCase. Here's a news story about the organization, which was started by a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame. I like the organization's "conservative" approach, i.e., urge citizens to reject the death penalty as a wasteful, failed government program. (Disclosure: I'm going to be on the Board.)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
A new anti-death-penalty organization
Ape rights
There has been much buzz about Spain's decision to grant limited rights to apes, much of it favorable. (Stephen Colbert, it bears noting, was skeptical, insisting the new law better not give apes "the right not to wear a tuxedo and roller skates.") Two pieces appeared in the New York Times, and William Saletan chimes in on Slate. An excerpt:
Secular humanists reject this dogma [that humans have souls but animals do not]. We understand that there's something wonderful and uniquely worthy of respect in the power, richness, and subtlety of the human mind. But to us, the soul doesn't explain these wonders. It describes them. That's one reason why the destruction of human embryos doesn't torment us the way it torments pro-lifers. We don't believe in ensoulment at conception. We believe in the gradual development of mental capacities.
This puts us in an awkward position. We call ourselves egalitarians, yet we deny the equality of conceived humans. We believe that a woman deserves more respect than a fetus. A 26-week fetus deserves more respect than a 12-week fetus. A 12-week fetus deserves more consideration than a zygote. We discriminate according to ability. This is also why ape rights appeals to us. It's not a claim of equality among all animals. It's a claim that apes resemble us in ways that insects don't.
This whole issue raises lots of questions for me: Is a belief in the human soul secularly accessible? Does it need to be to justify the rejection of animal rights? Can we embrace animal rights without embracing the corresponding belief that rights are simply a function of demonstrated mental capacity? Does recognizing the ape's rights make it less likely that we'll recognize the rights of a severely disabled infant (much less fetus)? My own initial reaction is that, while I would support legislation aimed at minimizing the unnecessary suffering of apes (or other animals whose highly developed mental capacities make them especially vulnerable to pain or loneliness), I would prefer that the legislation be framed in terms of humans' stewardship responsibilities, rather than in terms of animals as rights-bearing agents. Thoughts?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Prayer and the Irish Jesuits
Many of you may know of the wonderful website managed by Irish Jesuits. http://www.sacredspace.ie/
Here is the initial reflection for the week (which is followed each day by a series of observations to meditate upon and a reading from the gospel with brief commentary)
Something to think and pray about this week
Something to think and pray about this week
There was a strong vein of anti-clericalism in Jesus to which he was
not afraid to give utterance. He denounced the scribes and Pharisees
who laid heavy burdens on others but did not move a finger to lift them
themselves. He spoke of hypocrites, of blind guides, of teachers who
cleaned the outside of the cup but left the inside filthy, worrying
more about external observance of the law than about the movements in
people's hearts. The clerical establishment was furious, and in the
end, on Calvary, thought itself vindicated.
So we have learned to
combine reverence and love for the Church with a cool appraisal of its
officials. We, the people of God, are the church. As the Spanish
proverb has it. ‘We are the people and wisdom will die with us.' The
clergy, religious, bishops, have their part to play, and we need to
keep them up to scratch. We are not astonished when we find traces of
the seven deadly sins even in those who profess greater piety. All
through the centuries the church has had this job of criticising and
reforming itself. But critics today, like the Jews who surrounded the
adulterous woman, need to heed Jesus' warning, ‘Let the one who is
without sin among you cast the first stone.' (John 8:3-11)
The Bush Administration and War Crimes, Revisited
[from dotCommonweal:]
The not-so-vast right-wing conspiracy…
July 14, 2008, 2:59 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
…to legitimate torture. Read Andrew Bacevich’s review of Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side.
In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, documents some of the ugliest allegations of wrongdoing charged against the Bush administration. Her achievement lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces. Recast as a series of indictments, the story Mayer tells goes like this: Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers.
Under the guise of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” it has succeeded, in Mayer’s words, in “making torture the official law of the land in all but name.” Further, it has done all these things as a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels of government.
Our editorial “War Crimes?” just went live on the main site.
[Don't neglect to read the editorial just mentioned.]
Some Bastille Day reading . . .
Conor Cruise O'Brien on E. Burke, here.
Colby on the Federal Marriage Amendment and Originalism
Tom Colby has posted a paper that might be of interest to MoJ readers, The Federal Marriage Amendment and the False Promise of Originalism. Here's the abstract:
This Article approaches the originalism debate from a new angle - through the lens of the recently defeated Federal Marriage Amendment. There was profound and very public disagreement about the meaning of the FMA - in particular about the effect that it would have had on civil unions. The inescapable conclusion is that there was no original public meaning of the FMA with respect to the civil unions question. This suggests that often the problem with originalism is not just that the original public meaning of centuries-old provisions of the Constitution is hard to find (especially by judges untrained in history). The problem is frequently much more fundamental, and much more fatal; it is that there was no original public meaning to begin with. It is a natural consequence of the constitution-making process that a constitutional provision addressing a deeply controversial subject can only be enacted when it is drafted with highly ambiguous language so that, rather than possessing a single original meaning, it appeals to disparate factions with divergent understandings of its terms. As such, the central premise of originalism - that, in Justice Scalia's words, the Constitution was enacted with a fixed meaning ascertainable through the usual devices familiar to those learned in the law - is often inaccurate. And for that reason, the central promise of originalism - that, by relying on an objective, discoverable, fixed constitutional meaning, originalism can prevent judges from subverting democracy and the rule of law by reading their personal values into the Constitution - is a false one.
Larry Solum and Colby debate the paper's claims here.
"We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest"
Here is Fr. Richard John Neuhaus's closing address -- "We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest" -- at the National Right to Life Committee's convention. A bit:
That is the horizon of hope that, from generation to generation, sustains the great human rights cause of our time and all times—the cause of life. We contend, and we contend relentlessly, for the dignity of the human person, of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, destined from eternity for eternity—every human person, no matter how weak or how strong, no matter how young or how old, no matter how productive or how burdensome, no matter how welcome or how inconvenient. Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us.
We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until all the elderly who have run life’s course are protected against despair and abandonment, protected by the rule of law and the bonds of love. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every young woman is given the help she needs to recognize the problem of pregnancy as the gift of life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person—of every human person.
Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman’s dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time, this convention renews our resolve that we shall not weary, we shall not rest, until the culture of life is reflected in the rule of law and lived in the law of love. . . .
. . . We go from this convention refreshed in our resolve to fight the good fight. We go from this convention trusting in the words of the prophet Isaiah that “they who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
The journey has been long, and there are miles and miles to go. But from this convention the word is carried to every neighborhood, every house of worship, every congressional office, every state house, every precinct of this our beloved country—from this convention the word is carried that, until every human being created in the image and likeness of God—no matter how small or how weak, no matter how old or how burdensome—until every human being created in the image and likeness of God is protected in law and cared for in life, we shall not weary, we shall not rest. And, in this the great human rights struggle of our time and all times, we shall overcome.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Who Wrote the Serenity Prayer?
So now the traditional attribution of Reinhold Niebuhr as author of the Alcoholics Anonymous Serenity Prayer -- "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change" etc. -- has been questioned, by a Yale Law librarian no less. But Niebuhr did say many other inspiring things, especially about religion and public life, so it's a good excuse to quote one (from The Irony of American History):
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Are You Sirius?
New York Times
July 13, 2008
For Catholics, an On-Air Mix of Sacred and Silly
By PAUL VITELLO
Mike from El Paso was on the phone line to “The Catholic Guy,” the afternoon drive-time talk program produced via the unlikely partnership of Sirius Satellite Radio (familiar to most people as “Howard Stern’s network”) and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.
“I called the other day?” said Mike. “About how much I miss confession?” This would be the Mike who was barred from the sacrament of confession under church law because he married a divorced woman whose first marriage was never annulled.
“Yes, I remember!” bellowed the host, Lino Rulli, the Catholic guy of the show’s title. “Mike the Adulterer! O.K., Mike. Are you ready to play ‘Let’s Make a Catholic Deal’?”
It seems an odd marriage of sensibilities: the rough banter of talk radio as practiced by pioneer shock jocks like Mr. Stern and Don Imus, joined at the neck to an official Catholic broadcast whose underlying mission is herding people back into the fold of a religious orthodoxy.
But the stated mission of this new enterprise known as the Catholic Channel is to offer something more than “the audio equivalent of stained glass and incense,” as Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, refers to conventional religious radio.
Since taking to the air 18 months ago — with an understanding that there would be no promotional spots for Mr. Stern’s show on any of its programs — the channel has harnessed Sirius, a subscription-only radio network made possible largely by the immense drawing power of Mr. Stern’s profane and pornography-friendly programming, to help propagate a 2,000-year-old institution that preaches against more or less every bodily impulse Mr. Stern has ever named, demonstrated or otherwise celebrated on his show.
Today, in studios down the hall from Mr. Stern’s in Sirius’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters — where Sirius generates a gigantic menu of radio catering to dozens of niche tastes including sports, gay politics, hip-hop and Martha Stewart — the Catholic Channel, No. 159 on the dial, produces a 24-hour stream of radio that reaches most of North America. The Catholic programming runs the gamut from offerings of the stained-glass kind, like Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and a weekly interview with Cardinal Edward M. Egan, to the offbeat musings of “The Catholic Guy,” which runs five days a week in the showcase 4-to-7 p.m. slot.
[To read the rest, click here.]
Friday, July 11, 2008
If it’s good for the goose, is it good for the gander?
I begin this post today by stating that I will not be commenting on any candidate for any office in the upcoming election which might imply my prejudice for or against the candidate. But I shall offer some thoughts about organizations that do offer their views, be they pro or con, regarding candidates.
Recently, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc. endorsed Senator Obama for the presidency. This organization is a § 501 (c) (4) tax exempt organization. It is separately incorporated from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. which is a § 501 (c) (3) tax exempt organization. I understand the distinction of these exemptions and what they allow and do not allow organizations to do in the realm of politics. Some might argue that one may not endorse or campaign against a candidate, but the other may because they are distinct organizations. And in one sense, I suppose they are separate juridical entities. But, if fact, are they?
According to a recent federal tax return of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., it states that it makes contributions to the non-charitable but otherwise tax exempt Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc. In one section of the same tax return, the amounts contributed are listed as $1,396,901.00, but in another part of the same tax return, contributions are listed as being in excess of $2,000,000.00. The tax return further notes that the two organizations have an overlapping board of directors; moreover, if you view their respective websites, you will see that they share a common president, Ms. Cecile Richards, the daughter of the late Texas governor, Ann Richards. Both organizations also have a common address at 433 West 33rd Street in New York City, and they have listed the same general telephone number, which happens to be 212-541-7800.
I think back to the 1980s when the Abortion Rights Mobilization, an affiliated group of abortion advocates, sued the United States Catholic Conference and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (now both combined in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) challenging the tax exempt status of the Roman Catholic Church because it, the Church, allegedly participated in politics to advance its views on abortion. The underlying litigation at one point suggested that the Church improperly expressed views for and against candidates that also violated its tax exempt status.
Ultimately, the Church prevailed in this prolonged and expensive legal challenge.
Taking into consideration the recent developments of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc.’s endorsement to which I have referred, I wonder if the Planned Parenthood Federation of America would object to the founding of a § 501 (c) (4) political action group with an address at 3211 Fourth Street, NE, Washington, D.C. 20017 and a general phone number of 202-541-3000 that would have a directorate overlapping with that of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops? But, how could they object since they do the same thing?
Let me be clear, I am not advocating for such a thing nor would I, but, as a teacher of the law, am I not entitled to dabble in a hypothetical that borrows from existing cases?
RJA sj
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