Report on DC's Mulieris Dignitatem Conference

The two days of the "Conference Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of Mulieris Dignitatem:  On the Dignity and Vocation of Women," proved to be one of the most powerful demonstrations I've ever seen about the importance of Catholic law schools, the power of Catholic legal thought, and the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation.  The conference was a joint effort of two Catholic law schools -- Ave Maria School of Law and The Catholic Unversity of America's Columbus School of Law.  The two organizers were Jane Adolphe of Ave Maria, and Helen Alvere, formerly at Catholic, now at George Mason Law School.  Jane and Helen did an absolutely magnificant job of pulling together an international, indisciplinary gathering of scholars exploring the theological, philosophical, moral, AND legal dimensions of Pope John Paul II's challenge to apply the "dignity and vocation of women" to today's pressing social problems.

The presentations were all of exceptionally high quality, and the ways in which the different disciplines represented at the conference reinforced each other and illuminated different aspects of the topics addressed was extraordinary.  It's truly impossible me to even identify "highlights", because of the uniformly high quality of the presentations.  Among the legal scholars applying Catholic thought on women and men, filtered through the insights and challenges of Mulieris Dignitatem, were Helen Alvare (George Mason), Katherine Spaht (Louisiana State Law Center), Howard Bromberg (University of Michigan), and Fr. John Coughlin (Notre Dame) all dealing with different aspects of family law;  Gerald Bradley (Notre Dame) discussing the concept of equality under Constitutional jurisprudence; me (with some general reflections on what Mary's role in the Incarnation and the founding of the Church reveals about the specific vocation of women in the law), Mary Leary (Catholic Law School) talking about the regulation of pornography and the dignity of the soul, Fr. Joseph Isanga (Ave Maria) addressing domestic violence, and Jane Adolphe (Ave Maria) on Amnesty International's abortion policies. 

For a broader perspective, we heard Keynote Addresses from Maguerite Peeters, Director of the Institute for Intercultural Dialogue Dynamics, providing a sobering view of the international dimension of the situation of women, and Monsignor Grzegorz Kaszak, the Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family, with the view from the Vatican.   We also heard from economists (Maria Sophia Aguirre, Catholic U.), sociologists (W. Bradford Wilcox, U of Virginia), philosophers (including one of my personal heroines, Sr. Prudence Allen), and theologians.  Unfortunately, I had to leave before the very end, to catch my plane, so I had to miss how Helen Alvare and Teresa Collett (UST) were going to give us all our marching orders on future scholarship and other plans of action.....

I've never participated in a conference before where I have so urgently wanted to see all of the finished papers.  They'll be published in Ave Maria Law Review.  This is going to be a truly ground breaking collection of articles.  Such scholarship simply would not exist if we didn't have Catholic law schools with the commitment to putting on conferences like this, Catholic scholars willing to dedicate the time and effort to applying their faith to their scholarship, and energetic and capable people like Jane Adolphe and Helen Alvare with the vision and energy to bring them all together!