Read about it ... here.
What does this have to do with Catholic legal theory, you ask.
I won't stoop to dignify such an ignorant question with an answer.
(But I wil tell you that Muhammad Ali, John Breen, and I share something important in common!)
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Welcome Home Ali O'Grady: Muhammad Ali made freeman of his ancestral home in Ireland
I didn't know that Michael S. was an Ayn-Randian!
Here. The old, the young, the sick, the poor--in short, "the least of these sisters and brothers of mine"--might have a hard time earning a place on the Holtz-Scaperlanda team ...
Obama & Berlusconi ... and the Vatican and the local episcopal conferences
Interesting piece here, sent to us by MOJ friend Gerry Whyte of the law faculty at Trinity College Dublin.
A long newsmagazine story about Ave Maria School of Law
Is here, in the Washington Monthly. What can one say? It's all very sad.
Of Football and Politics
As the liturgical calendar turns from Ordinary Time to College Football Time (has the Vatican approved this change yet?), I thought some of our readers might be interested in this WSJ article "Why Your Coach Votes Republican."
Here is a snippet:
Mr. Holtz, who coached Notre Dame to its last national championship in 1988, draws a parallel between the standards and rules that most coaches set for their players and the Republican vision of how American society ought to operate.
"You aren't entitled to anything. ... You get what you earn—your position on the team," Mr. Holtz said. "You're treated like everybody else. You're held accountable for your actions. You understand that your decisions affect other people on that team…There's winners, there's losers, and there's competitiveness."
Hook 'Em Horns! Go Irish! Rock Chalk Jayhawk!
Winters on SSM in DC
Over at the America blog, Michael Sean Winters has a useful post up regarding the same-sex-marriage debate in Washington, D.C., and on Archbishop Wuerl's recent statements regarding the Church's teaching, and the traditional understanding, of marriage. Particularly important, I think, is Winters's response to the canard that such statements, in the context of such a debate, threaten (or, indeed, have anything to do with) the "separation of church and state":
[T]he opposition has begun to throw out straw men and other obfuscations. "I respect the bishop for his view…but we live in a representative democracy where there is a separation of church and state. We do not live in a theocracy," councilman David Catania told the Washington Post. True enough, but no one suggested that we do transform our constitutional arrangements in a theocratic direction. Indeed, Catania’s comments are carefully chosen – and especially galling - because he and his allies are trying to prevent a referendum on the issue. Ours is a representative democracy, and Catania is a representative, but he should not so scorn the demos, the people, as to deny us a vote on the definition of an institution so central to our lives and society.
Winters's point here is consistent, I think, with the claim (which I *think* all of us here at MOJ would endorse) that there are "moral limits to morals legislation" (as our colleague Fr. Greg Kalscheur has written) and that Christians will often have good (and Christian) reasons for refusing to "legislate [Christian] morality" (as Michael Perry has written).
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Prof. Stone (again) on "our six Catholic justices"
Prof. Geoffrey Stone returns, here, to the phenomenon of "our . . . Catholic justices." A few years ago, after the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to the federal ban on partial-birth abortions, Prof. Stone had caused some controversy with his assertion that the justices in the majority -- all Catholic -- had "failed to respect the fundamental difference between religious belief and morality", a distinction that "[t]o be sure, . . can be an elusive distinction, but in a society that values the separation of church and state, . . . is fundamental."
I responded, here (see also this), and disagreed. I thought, and think, that the majority was both reasonable and correct in concluding that the Constitution permits Congress to regulate abortion in the way that it did, and that their decision did not involve the imposition of specifically Catholic "religious belief."
In his latest piece on the subject, Prof. Stone's presentation is (I think) less (to use his word) "inflammatory", and more measured, than was his earlier one. He proposes a number of arguments, grounded in data about justices' voting in abortion-related cases, intended to support, if not to "prove[]", his initial assertion that the Catholic justices' religion best explains their vote to uphold Congress's enactment.
I'll leave it to readers, for the most part, to assess these arguments, but would suggest that Prof. Stone's claims seem at least as consistent with the hypothesis that "non-Catholic justices are more likely than Catholic justices, in abortion-related cases, to give in to the temptation to impose their policy preferences and disable politically accountable actors through implausible readings of the Constitution" as with the hypothesis that "Catholic justices, in abortion cases, tend to rely on specifically Catholic beliefs and morality rather than on the Constitution's meaning." That is, the observation that Catholic justices tend to vote against the constitutionalization or expansion of abortion rights should raise not only the (in Prof. Stone's words) "awkward" question whether they are imposing their religious beliefs, but also the question, "why are the non-Catholic justices more likely to get it wrong, when it comes to abortion?"
UPDATE: Geof Stone and I have had some conversation about our respective posts, and he kindly agreed to let me share the substance of this conversation with MOJ. See below the jump . . .
Sexual Morality and Church Teaching Cont'd
Denise Hunnell, a Mirror of Justice reader who also hosts the "Catholic Mom" blog, has been following this thread and offers some thoughts on her blog. You can read the full post here, and herewith is an excerpt of her argument that a departure from sexual morality in one dimension starts us down the "slippery slope":
"Following the lead of the Episcopalians, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recently voted to allow their clergy to be in 'committed, lifelong, same-gender relationships.' This did not sit well with Reverend Debra Haffner, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. She objects to the requirement for the relationships to be committed and life-long:
* * * I've long believed that the major sexuality problem denominations face is that they are unable to acknowledge that celibacy until marriage doesn't apply to most single adults. There are more than 75 million American adults who are single -- more than at any time in history. We are marrying later, divorcing at high levels, and living longer, so more of us will be widowed. And as a whole, we're having sexual relationships when we aren't in marriages.
As Director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, Reverend Haffner thinks celibacy and chastity are overrated:
The Religious Institute has long called for a new sexual ethic to replace the traditional "celibacy until marriage, chastity after." This new ethic is free of double standards based on sexual orientation, sex, gender or marital status. It calls for sexual relationships to be consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable and protected, whether inside or outside of a covenanted relationship. It insists that intimate relationships be grounded in communication and shared values.
Denise Hunnell then notes, with well-justified alarm, that a number of Catholic clergy have endorsed this document. Are we already sliding down that "slippery slope"?
Greg Sisk
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