"Professor Perry posted a letter by a law student addressing the issue of same-sex marriages within the Catholic Church. The student says, "For all of the good done by the Church, and for the strength and beauty of its tradition, I have a hard time imagining myself returning to weekly mass if the Church does not address what I feel is its immoral treatment of many people within and without its sanctuaries." He misses the point. I don't go to mass because of "the good done by the Church" but because God became man and walked among us, founded this Church, and is physically present within the Eucharist. With that starting point, two things follow: 1. I have to go to weekly mass, even if the Church is participating in something that I see as wrong and 2. I have to approach what she is saying with great humility and a great openness, with an idea that perhaps the Church is right and I am wrong.
"How do we follow the Church when we disagree with her? First, we have to ask, why do we want to follow the Church in the first place (assuming, of course, that we do)? I can't answer this question for the rest of you, but only for myself. I follow the Church because this is where I have met Christ and where, despite the faults of people in the Church, I have seen Christ most evident in my life. Christ has been evident through the Eucharist; through the Church's teachings and the way they make sense of my life; and through my friends. I follow the Church because it is the most reasonable thing for me to do. I follow Christ, and through my experience I know that the Church is one of the primary ways that Christ remains present in the world. So I follow that.
"The Church is, of course, a diverse organization/institution/people. We are the Church in a very concrete and real way. So, who do I follow when I say that I follow the Church? Honestly, on a daily basis I follow my friends because they are the way that the Church is most present to me. I have benefitted invaluably when they can explain my life to me better than I can explain it myself.Through the encounter with my friends, I am continually drawn back to the reality that is in front of me with a new perspective and a greater understanding. In following my friends, I do so with great humility due to firm belief that the “other” has something to offer. I may argue and point out areas in which the “other” seems mistaken, and I might not change, but my starting point must be a great openness to change and humility.
"I also follow the Church in a different sense. I follow her traditions, the Sacraments, that nebulous thing of "the Catholic Intellectual Tradition," and doctrine. I follow this in much the same way that I follow my friends: with great humility and openness and a belief that the Other has something to offer. My humility in regards to this aspect of the Church is even greater because it has been around for so long and has hashed out many of the same issues I sit around talking about (virtually or physically) with my friends.It has worked through many of these issues and questions over its two thousand year history with the aid of many contributing scholars and thinkers. In addition, I do think the Church is lead by Christ and protected by the Holy Spirit, despite its leadership by us fallen humans.
"In short, I trust the Church.This doesn't mean I don't question or debate, but my starting point is and, I think, must be a trust that the Church knows more than me. Sometimes I follow like Peter and the others in John 6. Jesus says, "Eat my body, drink my blood, and you will not die," and almost everyone says, "This guy is nuts, this guy is crazy, I'm outta here" and they leave. But Peter and the others, they've been following Jesus for longer, so they stay. Probably many of them are wondering if they should stay, but they stay, and Jesus asks if they want to leave. Peter answers for all of them, "Where would we go?" He doesn't understand what Jesus says any more than those who left, but he has to keep following. He's seen the evidence. He can't do anything else, go anywhere else. It would be unreasonable after all he's seen. For me, too, it would be unreasonable after all I've seen, so I continue to follow. Sometimes, like Peter and the others, I don't understand, but I keep following. For me, this means two things: Questioning and obeying simultaneously. I question because I have to, because I want to understand, and I obey, too, because I have to and I want to understand. I have to keep following Christ and the way that Christ is evident in my life (through the Church), so I obey what the Church says. Sometimes, I think, only in obeying am I able to understand. I'm not sure how well I can explain this, but just think about things you only understood abstractly, and then when you start doing them you understand them all the better.
"So, then, back to my original question: how do I follow when I disagree with the Church? I start with a great humility and ask for openness that I will be able to see what is true. I talk to those I trust within the Church and "dialogue" with those who have come before me by reading explanations for the Church's position. Since the Church’s unfolding doctrine has been developed over 2000 years, I think I can give the Church at least a year of trying to understand its position and praying for openness before I really decide I disagree. Probably, though, this period should last even longer than a year. If, after all of this, I do disagree, I would come to more concrete dialogue with those people in the Church and, again, ask why and very humbly begin to criticize. Then, perhaps, I would criticize more loudly and, yes, call for change from within. But this, too, must always be done with humility and respect, holding myself open to the possibility that I am mistaken."
Jeremy Waldron has posted his new paper, Basic Equality. (HT: Solum) Here's the abstract:
This is a three-part study and defense of the idea of basic human equality. (This is the idea that humans are basically one another's equals, as opposed to more derivative theories of the dimensions in which we ought to be equal or the particular implications that equality might have for public policy.) Part (1) of the paper examines the very idea of basic equality and it tries to elucidate it by considering what an opponent of basic human equality (e.g. a philosophical racist) might hold. It explores the idea of there being no morally significant fundamental divisions among humans (of the kind that some people insist on as between humans and others animals). Part (2) considers whether basic human equality must be based on some descriptive similarity among us (naturalistic or metaphysical); it considers the positions of a number of thinkers who have denied this. Part (3) considers John Rawls's conception of basic equality in terms of range properties. (Being in Ohio is a range property; Columbus and Cincinnati are both equally in Ohio even though even though Columbus is in the center of the state, while Cincinnati is just over the river from Kentucky.) It explores the application of this Rawlsian idea to the descriptive properties that might be thought relevant to human equality. This three part paper is a rather technical philosophical exploration. And it is just a beginning; we need much more work on the idea of basic equality. Some of the energy that has gone into discussions of equality as a policy aim (e.g. in the Dworkin/Sen literature or in the literature surrounding Rawls's Difference Principle) needs to be devoted to this more fundamental conception.
I write
to you concerning an article you posted on Mirror of Justice by Kate Childs
Graham....
I’m wondering if you feel, as I do, that room can easily be made, and
should be, for a marriage like Kate and Ariana’s within the Church. Obviously,
this would require that the “institutional Catholic Church” (as Childs Graham
put it) adopt a change to its definition of marriage. The Catechism in Paragraph
1660 refers to marriage as “an intimate communion of life and love… ordered to
the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children.”
This, to me, is very broad and seemingly could be opened to couples not
consisting of a man and a woman. Even the “generation… of children,” by virtue
of modern science, does not require a heterosexual union in order to be
effected. Perhaps more to the point, and directly on point with the sentiment of
Ms. Childs Graham’s editorial, “From a valid
marriage arises a bond between the spouses which by its very nature is
perpetual and exclusive; furthermore, in a Christian marriage the spouses are
strengthened and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and the dignity of
their state by a special sacrament.” (Catechism, Paragraph 1638)
Granted, we are provided a one-sided and biased account, but the
relationship between Kate and Ariana exhibits all of the qualities valued by the
Church in a marital union, save heterosexuality. What ill can come from such
communion based on love and dedication between two people? I know that I am
short shrifting the Church’s definition and understanding of “marriage,” but is
the position of the modern Catholic Church (emphasis on modern)
sustainable on principle? Or, is it as I fear, merely clinging to tradition and
a (possibly flawed) interpretation of Old Testament allegory?
I ... often find myself critical of the
tradition I grew up in. This is at least one of the reasons I find myself drawn
to many of your posts. (The latest by John Kavanaugh is no exception. By the
way, I think he puts easier “questions” to the pro-life extremists than those he
puts to the pro-choicers.) For all of the good done by the Church, and for the
strength and beauty of its tradition, I have a hard time imagining myself
returning to weekly mass if the Church does not address what I feel is its
immoral treatment of many people within and without of its sanctuaries. The
LGBTQ community, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, represents one group that I
believe gets such treatment from the Church. The thought-provoking columns in
your posts suggest that you may share some of this sentiment. Is there any truth
to this, or are you dedicating yourself to making sure that all voices and
viewpoints are heard from in the MOJ discussion?
Respectfully,
[a law student]
[I replied, explaining that in my judgment, the Church's teaching on homosexuality is false teaching and that the Church's position on gay and lesbian unions is unjust.]
Ross Douthat has an op-ed by this title in today's N.Y. Times. Here is a sample:
"the question isn’t whether the anti-abortion movement can change, adapt and compromise. It’s already done that. The question is whether it can afford to compromise on the national issue that keeps serious pro-lifers in the Republican fold, and requires an abortion litmus test for Republican presidential nominees — namely, the composition of the courts. And here the pro-life movement is essentially trapped — not by its own inflexibility, but by the inflexibility of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence."
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska got some of her
biggest (intentional) laughs of the presidential campaign during her
acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, when she
lambasted Senator Barack Obama's work as a community organizer. "I
guess a small-town mayor is like a community organizer," she said,
"except that you have actual responsibilities." It is hard to
understand such mocking of those who help the poor organize in order to
obtain justice and fair treatment.
The
disdain spread into the Catholic world, making a target of the Catholic
Campaign for Human Development, the church's leading organization for
fighting poverty in this country. The campaign has provided $7.3
million in grant money, spread out over 10 years, to local branches of
the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as
Acorn. On its blog, the periodical First Things called C.C.H.D.
"misbegotten in concept and corrupt in practice," argued for its
abolition, charging that it supported "pro-abortion activities and
politicians" and, for good measure, claimed that C.C.H.D. had dropped
the word "Catholic" from its name.
Wrong
on all counts. It remains the Catholic Campaign for Human Development;
its grants are given to projects in accord with Catholic teaching; and
it is a model of efficient management, providing an array of services
for the poor. Sadly, that magazine's false accusations were echoed
during the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in
November. Just as sad, the charges came before C.CH.D.'s annual
fundraising campaign.
Let's set the
record straight: C.C.H.D. does the Gospel work of feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless. (After charges of
improprieties emerged about Acorn, C.C.H.D. stopped its grants to the
group.) The importance of the kind of work done by C.C.H.D. was
underlined repeatedly by another community organizer - not one from
1990s Chicago but another fellow, from first-century Palestine.
With Catholics, Catholicism, Roman Catholics, the Church, and the Catholic
bloc having played ill-defined and indeterminate roles in the November election,
the one-fourth of the American population that they make up is ripe for
assessment. A brilliant one is tucked into an article on novelist Flannery
O'Connor, "Catholic Writing for a Critical Age", in the November 21
Commonweal. Editor-essayist-lecturer Paul Elie brings this major writer
out of the shadows of the Humanities into the public zone where we do our
sightings. We take up where O'Connor is left off, as Elie ponders public
Catholicism today.
"Catholics are better educated than ever. They buy hardcover books, know
their way around Europe, and try to send their children to good universities.
They are fluent in music, movies, Broadway, feng shui... And yet when we try to
identify the culture this people call its own, we are thrown back into the
question of what 'Catholic' culture is." Elie takes a literary run at
assessment as he reflects on a lecture O'Connor delivered in 1963, during the
time of the Vatican Council abroad and the tumults at home. "Would she have
recognized us, and our predicament, in the future that she looked forward to
with such relish? Would she have thought that a Catholic literature eventually
did emerge in this country--that our writers have made belief believable?" That
is hard to say, because church and country were changing drastically even as she
spoke. "Her work makes clear that she anticipated us. She saw us coming..." "An
identity," she said, "is made not from what passes...but from those qualities
that endure because they are related to truth." Elie's twist: "The things she
spoke of as strange are now familiar to many of us, and the things she thought
familiar are strange." The church she described "which safeguards mystery...is
remote, even unrecognizable." So is O'Connor: "We call her by her first name,
but she is [a stranger] no more familiar to us than Tobit or Tertullian."
When defining, Elie applies an insight from the classic poem "Dover Beach" by
Victorian Matthew Arnold, on "the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the sea
of faith. Elie, seizing on Arnold's distinction between "the creative age and
the critical age", contends that "Catholic culture in the United States has been
in a critical age for some time, following the creative age of the middle of the
last century." Right. The distinction he poses "gets us away from the usual
interpretive schemes of reformation and restoration...[or] of this pontificate
and that one." He names some Catholic writers of today, who "have a common
predicament. They are still surprised that their conscience puts them at odds
with the church, because their conscience was formed by the church."
Surprise: Elie thinks that perhaps the "critical age" is coming to an end,
and cites Charles Taylor, Garry Wills, Eamon Duffy, Elizabeth Johnson, Andrew
Sullivan, and Richard Rodriguez as indicators. Three events evoke a spirit of
change: 9/11 cast the question of religion and its place in a new light; "the
scandal of clergy sexual abuse, and the comportment of the bishops" symbolized
problematic developments in the institution; and "the movement north of people
from Mexico and Latin America, many of them Catholic," drastically changes the
context for the Catholic culture(s) and together portend "a new age, no less
than modernity was." Many are stuck in the old story of the last new age, "when
sex was invented, the Latin Mass gave way to mass culture, and the clan came
apart after a death in the family." Elie is almost hopeful that imaginative
Catholics, free of life in the "critical" age, might help create again.
----------
Sightings
comes from the Martin Marty
Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
In the ABA's blog popularity contest, we've been overtaken by another blog, but its not too late to vote for Mirror of Justice here. In the spirit of Chicago politics vote early and often!
Today is the last meeting of my seminar in Catholic Social Thought. We are reading and discussing (then) Cardinal Ratzinger's "Values in a Time of Upheaval". Early in the book, he observes that Jewish (and then the Christian) understanding of history represented a break with the more static, or cyclical models of the past (or of some other traditions). This observation makes me wonder, "what is the significance of the Christian understanding of 'history' for the legal enterprise, and / or for 'Catholic Legal Theory?'" To ask this is not to say, "what has been the actual history of Christian legal institutions, or Christian thinking about law?" Nor is to suggest simply that laws and legal institutions should be (and inevitably will be) shaped by, and will reflect, history context. It is to ask, given what Christians believe history *is*, are there implications for the law-thing?
Today we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception and we commemorate through prayer and the Eucharist the patroness of our nation and our efforts here at the Mirror of Justice. May we take a few moments today to ask for her intercession before her son for our needs, those of our families and friends, those of our nation, and those of the entire human family.
