For a final post-script on the President’s speech at Notre Dame, I would encourage everyone to read Elizabeth Lev’s article, Obama Is No Uncle Tom, available here.She contrasts the simple but profound moral convictions of the main character from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel with the President’s very different moral and political commitments.She also comments on the de facto racial-genocidal effect of Planned Parenthood choosing to “serve” predominantly African-American neighborhoods, and on Obama’s misuse of Cardinal Bernadin’s “consistent ethic of life.”
For those of you unfamiliar with the author, Lev is a writer and art historian who lives and teaches in Rome. She is also the daughter of Notre Dame’s original choice for the Laetare Medal this year.Here is a sample from her powerful essay:
Obama, more than most, benefitted from the uncompromising and unbending principles of civil rights activists (considered by many to be "fanatics") determined to change the status quo and to end an age where blacks were considered second-class citizens. Yet he now turns a blind eye to the new class of the voiceless oppressed, the unborn. In all the gruesome tales Stowe recounts of masters' cruelty to slaves, nothing exceeds the horror of piercing an innocent child's head with scissors as it exits the womb. And yet this real-life horror story is not only tolerated, but promoted by Obama and his principal collaborators, in particular Kathleen Sebelius, his bizarre choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
Where is the Martin Luther King of the unborn? Where is the Rosa Parks? The Frederick Douglas? Unborn children have even less of a voice than the downtrodden, barely literate slaves of Stowe's novel. It has fallen to the heirs of the abolitionists and of the civil rights activists to speak for the voiceless unborn. Yet in his unctuous Notre Dame address, Obama chose to uphold the iniquitous status quo, rather than join those prophetic voices.
Recall his words, "I do not suggest the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away...the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable." Substitute the word "abortion" with "slavery" and think what would have happened had Abraham Lincoln taken this line.
As an African-American woman -- from Chicago no less -- I wanted to be delighted by the election of Barack Obama. But his disregard for both unborn human lives as well as of those who would try to protect them renders him more similar to enablers of slavery than to the noble men and women in Stowe's story. This paradoxical behavior darkens what should have been one of the greatest moments in history.
***
As a single parent who had her first child in economic hardship, ignoring constant unsolicited advice from everyone but my family to abort my child, I found resources in myself I never knew were there. I find no comfort in Obama's words about support for single mothers, since his practical actions have only been to unabashedly aid and abet abortion and its promoters, both on U.S. soil and now abroad.
I strongly encourage everyone to read the whole thing.
Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy . . .. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.
Sound advice, from Kenneth Anderson (American Univ.):
As a believer in liberty and consent, I should greatly like to share Philip Bobbitt's hopes for the market-state. It does not take a conservative to wonder, however, whether this is enough to sustain liberal democracy in the face of spiritual threats. A long tradition of what Lawrence Solum has called the "left Burkeans" -- Christopher Lasch, for example, or Zygmunt Bauman -- has argued that the market is as much socially corrosive of the values of liberal democracy as it is materially supportive. The market and democracy are both sustained by wells of social capital that stable material prosperity helps to deepen, but which are not the moral logic of the market itself.
The market of the market-state is not self-sustaining. On the contrary, it requires a form of social life that goes outside it in order to function in the long term. Honour, loyalty, sacrifice, gratitude to those who came before -- these are not the evident virtues of capitalism, but they are necessary virtues in a liberal-democratic-capitalist form of life. Without them, society eats its seedcorn, the social capital bequeathed by the past to bless the future. Even after the marvellous argumentation of this marvellous book, therefore, room remains to question whether the market-state pays sufficient attention to the spiritual habits of the heart that make the market-state -- and the willing defence of states of consent against states of terror -- over the long struggle of years in this twenty-first century even possible.
Calvin Massey has a new paper on church autonomy (here is the link). Abstract:
When the Supreme Court decided Jones v. Wolf it required courts to use secular criteria to decide church property disputes, yet there remains considerable uncertainty about the permissible latitude of those secular principles. This stems from the Court's attempt to honor three principles that are in tension with one another: 1) autonomous church governance, which the Court sees as an aspect of the free exercise of religion, 2) the need to prevent civil courts from deciding issues of religious doctrine, an aspect of the ban on governmental establishments of religion, and 3) preservation of state autonomy to decide how best to accommodate these twin goals, an aspect of federalism. There are three principal problems with this tripartite objective. First, sometimes they conflict with each other. Second, and worse, When the Supreme Court decided Jones v. Wolf it required courts to use secular criteria to decide church property disputes, yet there remains considerable uncertainty about the permissible latitude of those secular principles. This stems from the Court's attempt to honor three principles that are in tension with one another: 1) autonomous church governance, which the Court sees as an aspect of the free exercise of religion, 2) the need to prevent civil courts from deciding issues of religious doctrine, an aspect of the ban on governmental establishments of religion, and 3) preservation of state autonomy to decide how best to accommodate these twin goals, an aspect of federalism. There are three principal problems with this tripartite objective. First, sometimes they conflict with each other. Second, and worse, this framework fails to take into account adequately the interest of individuals united in local congregations of religious believers freely to exercise their religious beliefs. Finally, embedded in this framework is a generally unrecognized potential violation of the establishment clause: the provision by states of special advantages to hierarchical churches that allow them unilaterally to impose trusts for their benefit upon property held by local congregations.
This article seeks to expose these problems and present an approach that better protects the interest in religious freedom of local congregants while still preserving autonomy of church governance and limiting civil courts to adjudication of secular issues. When hierarchical churches divide into factions the principles of religious freedom embedded in the religion clauses compel civil courts to recognize the religious beliefs of a majority of the local congregation in deciding which faction of the divided church is entitled to the use of the local congregational property, absent some clear and wholly secular indication that the local congregation has given control of its property to the general church. The cost of this approach is a slight reduction in the discretion of states to specify decision rules for church property disputes, and a somewhat more controversial reduction in the degree of deference that civil courts should pay to internal church governance rules when churches divide into factions as a result of religious schism.
When the Supreme Court decided Watson v. Jones in the late nineteenth century and adopted deference to internal church governance as a standard for resolution of church property disputes, the religion clauses did not apply to the states. While the Court couched its reliance upon internal governance as an implication flowing from the ideals of religious freedom, it did not have to examine that premise critically. When in Jones v. Wolf the Court perpetuated this principle as an option for resolution of church property disputes it may have thought that deference to internal governance rules of hierarchical churches promotes religious freedom. Sometimes it does, but not always. Civil judicial interference with a hierarchical church's control of its clergy is the paradigmatic case of impermissible interference with the free exercise of religion. By contrast, permitting a hierarchical church unilaterally to impose trusts in its favor upon property held for the benefit of local congregations either creates an establishment clause violation (if secular charitable entities are denied this state-created benefit or if there is no plausible secular purpose for this benefit) or cuts deeply into the practical reality of how individual believers gathered in local communities manifest their religious conduct. This problem is exacerbated when a hierarchical church divides amid doctrinal disagreement. At that point, courts should apply a rule of local option, permitting each congregation to decide for itself which branch of the divided church will have its fealty and its property. Only by applying such a rule can a proper balance be struck between the splintered autonomy interest of a hierarchical church and the interest in religious associational freedom of local congregations and their individual members. The reflexive reliance of courts upon internal governance rules to decide property issues amid schism has obscured the interests in religious freedom that are at stake.
Adoption of the local congregational option principle leaves hierarchical churches with many avenues to secure congregational property for the benefit of the general church. First, they can avoid rupture by finding sufficient common ground in their religious doctrine to accommodate their body of believers. Second, they can insist that local congregations explicitly place their property in trust for the benefit of the general church as the price of continued affiliation with the general church. What they cannot do is create such trusts by the ipse dixit of the hierarchical church. Finally, embedded in this framework is a generally unrecognized potential violation of the establishment clause: the provision by states of special advantages to hierarchical churches that allow them unilaterally to impose trusts for their benefit upon property held by local congregations.
This article seeks to expose these problems and present an approach that better protects the interest in religious freedom of local congregants while still preserving autonomy of church governance and limiting civil courts to adjudication of secular issues. When hierarchical churches divide into factions the principles of religious freedom embedded in the religion clauses compel civil courts to recognize the religious beliefs of a majority of the local congregation in deciding which faction of the divided church is entitled to the use of the local congregational property, absent some clear and wholly secular indication that the local congregation has given control of its property to the general church. The cost of this approach is a slight reduction in the discretion of states to specify decision rules for church property disputes, and a somewhat more controversial reduction in the degree of deference that civil courts should pay to internal church governance rules when churches divide into factions as a result of religious schism.
When the Supreme Court decided Watson v. Jones in the late nineteenth century and adopted deference to internal church governance as a standard for resolution of church property disputes, the religion clauses did not apply to the states. While the Court couched its reliance upon internal governance as an implication flowing from the ideals of religious freedom, it did not have to examine that premise critically. When in Jones v. Wolf the Court perpetuated this principle as an option for resolution of church property disputes it may have thought that deference to internal governance rules of hierarchical churches promotes religious freedom. Sometimes it does, but not always. Civil judicial interference with a hierarchical church's control of its clergy is the paradigmatic case of impermissible interference with the free exercise of religion. By contrast, permitting a hierarchical church unilaterally to impose trusts in its favor upon property held for the benefit of local congregations either creates an establishment clause violation (if secular charitable entities are denied this state-created benefit or if there is no plausible secular purpose for this benefit) or cuts deeply into the practical reality of how individual believers gathered in local communities manifest their religious conduct. This problem is exacerbated when a hierarchical church divides amid doctrinal disagreement. At that point, courts should apply a rule of local option, permitting each congregation to decide for itself which branch of the divided church will have its fealty and its property. Only by applying such a rule can a proper balance be struck between the splintered autonomy interest of a hierarchical church and the interest in religious associational freedom of local congregations and their individual members. The reflexive reliance of courts upon internal governance rules to decide property issues amid schism has obscured the interests in religious freedom that are at stake.
Adoption of the local congregational option principle leaves hierarchical churches with many avenues to secure congregational property for the benefit of the general church. First, they can avoid rupture by finding sufficient common ground in their religious doctrine to accommodate their body of believers. Second, they can insist that local congregations explicitly place their property in trust for the benefit of the general church as the price of continued affiliation with the general church. What they cannot do is create such trusts by the ipse dixit of the hierarchical church.
I have not yet read the paper (I will!), but -- judging only from the abstract -- Massey's proposal strikes me as misguided, in (what seems to be) its assumption that the Constitution permits (let alone requires) courts to "take into account . . . the interest of individuals united in local congregations of religious believers freely to exercise their religious beliefs" when this "taking into account" involves intruding upon the polity of the churches that these "individuals" have (voluntarily) joined.
At "Front Porch Republic," Lew Daly asks, in this long, but very interesting, post:
So the question I ask myself is this: is there a need and a desire for a family-centered politics that marries security-oriented economic progressivism with community-oriented cultural conservatism? This is “progressive” for focusing on economic structures and power; it is “conservative” for focusing on the problem of family cohesion as a national crisis; it is “cultural” for exposing market liberalism as a danger not only to family economic welfare but to non-market family functions like care for children and elders. Is there a viable politics in cutting across such boundaries?
If there is, in fact, a need and a desire for such a politics, we will need a substantial philosophical reconstruction to create the moral framework that sets it apart from conventional partisan debate, appealing to deeply held values in a consistent if challenging way. I have ideas about how to construct such a philosophy—from elements of Catholic social thought, comparative social law, and maternal feminism. But before turning to those ideas, in a future post, I am eager to hear what others generally think about the project I begin to outline here.
Check out Regent law prof (and MoJ-friend) Mike Schutt's "Cross and Gavel" website, which is designed to be a "comprehensive resource for Christian lawyers and law students who believe that faith is central to law practice and study." He has just added the "Essential Law Student Reading List." I'm sure Mike would welcome your feedback.
I recently asked whether Anders Nygren's view of agape love is consistent with Catholic teaching. As Fr. Araujo and Mike Moreland pointed out, it's not. Josef Pieper, in his remarkable Faith, Hope, Love, takes on Nygren directly. It is well worth reading. Here is a snippet:
[Our love] never creates 'values' or makes anything or anyone lovable . . . . What comes first is the actual existence of lovability, independently presented to us. Then this existence must enter into our experience . . . 'It's good that you exist' has justification solely in the actual goodness of the beloved, that this is its basis in reality; and that this order of things applies not only to our love for material goods and our fellowmen but likewise to our love for God and still applies in the eternal life. . . . The call for an utterly disinterested, unmotivated, sovereign agape love that wishes to receive nothing, that is purged of all selfish desire, simply rests upon a misunderstanding of man as he really is.
In other words, it's all self-love, properly understood as the "desire for fullness of being."
This post, by Vox Nova's Blackadder, is well worth a read. A bit:
Conservatives who advocate originalism or textualism when in comes to interpreting the Constitution are sometimes accused of advocating a “sola scriptura” view of the Constitution. Since such charges are typically made by Catholics to Catholics, the allegation has a certain sting to it, as if holding a particular theory of constitutional interpretation someone made one a bad Catholic.
Yet there needn’t be anything inconsistent about interpreting the Constitution in one way and the Bible in another. The Bible is the inspired Word of God, given to us for the salvation of souls; the Constitution is a legal document. What’s sauce for the goose ain’t necessarily sauce for the gander in such a context. . . .
