Saturday, October 24, 2009
A few moments ago Pope Benedict appointed Peter Kodwo Appiah Cardinal Turkson, currently the archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana, as the new President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The announcement is [HERE], and the appointment is effective immediately. It is also an appointment that had been rumored about for some time. The Council also received its new Secretary (the number 2 post in this dicastery) a few days ago.
RJA sj
Friday, October 23, 2009
For those Mirror of Justice friends and contributors who may be interested in matters John Courtney Murrayish and may be in Chicago on November 10, scroll down to that date here.
RJA sj
Yesterday morning we left our Albergue in Foncebadon (resident population 2) about 8:30 am in near total darkness with fog and mist. About a kilometer later we were facing driving sleet and rain. After a slight and unintended detour on a logging road we made it to La Cruz de Ferro where we laid our burdens down. La Cruz de Ferro is the highest point on the Camino Frances in Spain. Marking the spot is an iron cross and stones brought by pilgrims from around the world. We added our stones in gratitude as a symbolic gesture to the One who relieves our burdens. A few kilometers later, we arrived in Manjarin, a small mountain village whose only resident is Tomas who calls himself the Last Templar. His Albergue certainly provided protection for these cold pilgrims as we warmed ourselves by the fire and drank hot coffee by candlelight. After a half and hour or so we were on our way without the sleet.
For the past three days we have had rain for much of each day, but our spirits are good and our rain gear is doing its job. We have developed a good pattern of alternating periods of conversations and silence with one of us often hanging back for our own quiet time. The evening in Manzarife, now several days past was accentuated by a communal meal centered around potatos given to us by a local farmer (and of course, wine, which is incredibly inexpensive here). 10 of us cooked, ate, and cleaned with our German friend playing his guitar in the kitchen while others cooked. In Astorga, Mark, Bill, and I ate tapas after evening mass, and the past two nights we have eaten the traditional pilgrim menu with pilgrims from Spain, Slovakia, Germany, and Austria. Two nights ago after dinner, Bill (a doctor) was busy tending to another pilgrim´s feet. Today, we hope to make it to Pereje - hopefully without rain.
The past few days have provided wonderful scenery from the last of the mesata to beautiful mountain views as the clouds broke for parts of the day. We have walked through crumbling mountain villages and larger cities with beautiful churches, Roman ruins, and a Templar Castle.
Please continue to keep us in pray. We hope to arrive in Santiago in 9 days. My walk was offered for an unknown intention on Tuesday, for a special person and all others undergoing chemo or radiation on Wednesday, and all those suffering in the cold without heat. Today, I walk for the development of Catholic Legal Theory (also catholic to include other religious groups) project.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Readers might be interested in this conference on Christian Realism, to be held at St. Thomas's law building in Minneapolis November 20-21, and sponsored by the Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy. (You can register at the link.) Plenary and concurrent speakers include Jean Elshtain, Gerry Bradley, David Skeel, and our own Michael Scaperlanda, Susan Stabile, and Rob Vischer, among many others. Here's an excerpt of the description in Call for Papers:
An examination of “realism” in religious and political thought is timely indeed. The term has been at the forefront of recent American foreign-policy debates over the role of moral values and the use of force. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken in several contexts of a “Christian realism” that offers a more sober and solid hope for social life than do alternative views. And President Obama has identified the Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr as among his chief philosophical influences. Niebuhr’s approach was in several ways distinctively Protestant. But it is evident that the impulse for Christian public theology to be realistic—to be based in a clear-headed assessment of facts about God, human beings, and the world—cuts across Catholic and Protestant thinkers, although the themes and the definitions of realism vary.
“Religious Legal Theory: The State of the
Field”
Seton
Hall University School of Law
Newark,
New Jersey
Thursday-Friday,
November 12-13, 2009
Seton Hall Law School will host Religious Legal Theory: The State of the Field, a conference to
assess the state of the field of religiously-informed legal theory and its
contributions.
Through presentations and in-depth discussions,
presenters and participants will help consolidate the advances and chart new
directions for religious perspectives on law and public policy. The conference
will feature five plenary speakers [including MOJ's Amy Uelman and Rob Vischer], and twenty-four presentations of papers by
legal scholars representing a wide range of religious traditions.
Visit http://law.shu.edu/religiouslegaltheory
for the full program and registration information.
For more information, please contact Professor David Opderbeck at [email protected] or Professor Angela Carmella at [email protected].
Lombardi Vallauri v. Italy (application no. 39128/05)
CATHOLIC
UNIVERSITY OF MILAN
SHOULD HAVE GIVEN REASONS FOR REFUSING TO EMPLOY A
LECTURER
WHO HAD NOT BEEN APPROVED BY THE ECCLESIASTICAL
AUTHORITIES
Violation
of Articles 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) and 10 (freedom of
expression)
of
the European Convention on Human Rights
Read about it here.
[Thanks to MOJ's Italian friend Pasquale Annicchino for the pointer.]
Notre Dame's new Institute for Advanced Study announces its inaugural annual conference, on "Beauty", to be held on Jan. 21-23, 2010, here. Note also the "call for Fellows." I hope a number of Catholic legal scholars will apply! Here's some info on the IAS:
Contemporary scholarship has advanced our understanding of specific disciplinary questions. But the need remains to ask ultimate questions, to reflect morally, and to integrate fact and value. The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) favors research that extends beyond analyzing particular problems to the examination of larger, frequently ethical questions that modern academic disciplines often do not explicitly address. Such questions can be addressed wherever the human intellect flourishes. But a Catholic university that aspires to integrate the normative and the descriptive and to foster the unity of knowledge across disciplines is duty bound to nurture that project.
The NDIAS focuses on three major topics: Traditions — Sciences — Modernities. The modern world has been created by using science to reshape traditional life-worlds, often dominated by religious beliefs. Whereas ancient science was mostly disconnected from technology, the essence of modernity is the combination of science, technology, and capitalism. Any understanding of the formative categories of traditions, sciences, and modernities must recognize the pluralism within each of them. Just as different conceptions of modernity and of science compete with one another, so the traditions that have informed our current understanding are diverse.
The NDIAS welcomes scholars who, in addition to pursuing specific disciplinary questions, also seek to integrate into their research overarching questions, such as: What different types of modernities have arisen in the last centuries? How do these competing modernities use science and engineering in varying ways? How do these modernities relate to the traditions of the pre-modern world? In addition, investigations into the moral dimensions of the world are welcome, including questions such as: What in the process of modernization is morally justified, even obligatory, and what is not? Can we envisage a modernity that is able to maintain the obvious advantages of scientific modernity, such as increased life-expectancy, without having to pay the price, such as increased environmental destruction? What must we change in order to help us bridge the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be?
At the NDIAS these and related questions, including their broad reach and moral import, are based in a vision of Catholicism that full-heartedly accepts the basic ideas of modernity as a legitimate step in the history of humankind, while at the same time embracing a moral interpretation of the world. Interdisciplinary and integrative research in the twenty-first century can find inspiration in the search for the unity of knowledge characteristic of Catholic thinkers and writers as well as of other thinkers — often pre-modern — even as this research seeks to take account of the diversity of contemporary sciences and concepts of modernity.
Thanks to Rob for linking to the AP piece, which quoted me, on Catholic judges. I also think, I should say (and did say, to the author of the piece) that a Catholic judge -- like, I would think, any judge -- has a moral duty to avoid doing evil. So, if playing conscientiously the role of a judge ever put one in a position of having to do or cooperate culpably with evil, I think that one (Catholic or not) should quit the role.
As for Justice Scalia, I have always figured that he was too quick to say -- perhaps he was after dramatic effect? -- that (something like) he was glad that the death penalty was not, in fact, immoral in Church teaching because, if it was, he would have to resign. I do not think the death penalty's immorality requires faithful judges (or any morally sensitive judges) to quit entirely cases involving or touching on the penalty's application. As John Garvey and Amy Coney Barrett explained, a while back in a law-review article, it's complicated.
UPDATE: Over at America, Michael Sean Winters pushes back against Justice Alito (and me), and insists that there should be a Catholic difference, even for judges. I agree entirely that the faith should (must!) make a difference for legislators, and do not deny that it inevitably (if taken seriously) will make a difference to judging, at least in some contexts. But, judging is not legislating, and a worthy judge -- including a Catholic judge -- is one who is sensitive to the fact that, in a democracy that aspires to the rule of law, he or she should regard the enforceable content of legislation and constitutional provisions (we are not talking about "common law" judging here) as other-given, not self-made.
The AP reports on a speech given by Justice Alito yesterday in which he expressed frustration regarding persistent questions about having six Catholics on the Supreme Court. Our own Rick Garnett is quoted in the article expressing support for Alito's conviction that Catholic justices can be trusted to do their jobs. Rick says, "It's not the calling of a Catholic judge to enforce the teachings of the faith. It's the calling of a Catholic judge, as well as he or she can, to interpret and apply the laws of the political community." I agree with Rick's view, but I don't think everyone does. Roy Moore, Robert Cover, and Antonin Scalia (at least on the death penalty) come to mind.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
I feel confident that there's better coverage available elsewhere, but here is the BBC:
A broad cross-section of Spanish society were represented, says the BBC's Steve Kingstone in Madrid - old and young, parents with babies, priests, nuns, immigrant families and organised groups coached in from all over the country.
They gathered in the heart of Madrid under an enormous blue banner the height of a two-storey building emblazoned with the simple message: "Every life matters."
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