Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Friday, December 4, 2009

A Different Voice Regarding the Apostolic Visitation

 

 

For some time several contributors, including yours truly, have addressed the Apostolic Visitation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and associated religious communities. I understand that a new website group, Sisters Supporting Apostolic Visitation, has been formed. The website is here.

In part, this group states:

Many women religious welcome the Apostolic Visitation in the hope that it might bring about an authentic renewal of religious life. Several of these sisters have been searching for a way to be in solidarity with other sisters who see the value and necessity of the Apostolic Visitation at this time in this country...

 

RJA sj

Another view on same-sex unions ... by the former Republican governor of New Jersey

It's Not the State's Role to Define Marriage
NJ.com
Christine Todd Whitman
November 29, 2009

What does government have to do with marriage?

I was brought up to believe that we had a constitutional separation between church and state -- intentionally designed by the founding fathers so they could not tell us what our churches, synagogues, and mosques could and could not do. If that is the case, why are legislators across the country, and most recently in New Jersey, agonizing over bills to define marriage?

Wouldn't it be better if government's only role were to recognize the legal relationship between two consenting adults -- something that occurs when you get your marriage license? Let's call that license something other than a "marriage" license and leave the government's role there.

If a couple wants to declare their lifelong commitment in a religious setting, and a church, mosque or synagogue will perform the service -- whether heterosexual or same-sex -- so be it.

Critics will claim I do not have an appropriate view of the institution of marriage. Quite the contrary -- I see marriage as a sacred commitment that I have happily upheld in the 35 years I have been married to my husband. Similarly, as an elder in my church, I have a deeply held view of houses of worship: I believe this country was founded with the intention of providing, and should continue to protect, our freedom to practice the religion of our choice without the intrusion of the state.

Nowhere is this liberty more important than in the fundamental structure of life and family -- the lifelong commitments that undergird our society.

Marriages should take place in a house of worship where the state is left at the door.

Aside from my view of the proper role of government in this issue, there are numerous, more pertinent issues facing our country that should be occupying our legislators' attention. It is time to put this argument behind us and get our elected representatives to focus on spending, taxes, education, health care and the myriad of other issues affecting our everyday lives.

We would all be better of if we leave the definition of marriage to our houses of worship, and make the state follow suit.

Christine Todd Whitman was governor of New Jersey 1994-2001.

The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment: "Arbitrary and Capricious"?

"Is selective empathy better than no empathy at all?"

That's one of the questions Linda Greenhouse, former NYT Supreme Court correspondent, asks in her troubling reflection on a case decided by the Supreme Court this week.

Well worth reading, here.

Happy Repeal Day!

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the undoing of that famously flawed "progressive" (and anti-Catholic) effort at social engineering.  Happy Repeal Day!

Are crisis pregnancy centers deceptive?

I've received some helpful comments in response to my earlier questions.  Matt Bowman writes:

CPCs aren't deceptive and . . . the purpose of the law is to give the impression that they are to good people like yourself. But in my view another very important point is that disclosure restrictions are always one sided. They never require Planned Parenthood to declare formally that they do not refer to CPCs, which would be the equivalent of requiring CPCs to say they don't do abortions. Doesn't the detailed accessibility of free pro-pregnancy support constitute relevant and essential information to every woman walking into Planned Parenthood? In a very similar fashion in the health care conscience context, Planned Parenthood, Alta Charo, et al. always want to require pro-life doctors to disclose that they don't to abortions, but they will never even suggest much less agree to require all doctors to disclose whether they do or do not do abortions. Ironically, such one-sided disclosure is sold based on principles of neutrality and patient information. But on those concepts there is no principled reason to apply them only to pro-life providers. Instead they are based on non-neutral assumptions about the baseline of what proper health care is, meaning that pro-life pregnancy centers and pro-life Ob/Gyns are substandard and need correction by disclosure, whereas abortionists are already up to par. So it's the people supporting partial disclosure who are not telling patients the whole truth.

Anjan Ganguly writes:

The way you frame the question seems to presume the normativity of abortion and birth control. Must the default assumption be that providing medical help to women with "crisis" pregnancies means providing abortion? Does providing sexual-health services to young people automatically implicate birth control? Should crisis pregnancy centers be making the nature of their services clear on their own[?]". From the little I know, such clinics are forthright about providing pre-natal care, counseling, adoption services, and the like; they seem to say that they do what's best for women and unborn children, which, in their view,objectively excludes abortion and birth control. Certainly people disagree strongly as to whether abortion and birth control could be in a woman's or child's best interests, but to suggest that pro-life clinics are engaging in deception by not declaring their position suggests that pro-choice clinics are the moral norm.

And John O'Herron argues that most crisis pregnancy centers are not misleading.  As for those that arguably are misleading, he writes:

[Those CPCs] would say that they are able to save more lives that way and, since they are not out outright telling a lie, then there is nothing wrong. It seems to me like they are misleading though. I guess the question would be whether misleading is wrong. If I can convince someone who is considering doing something as gravely immoral as abort their child that I can help them, only to try to change their mind, I don't know that I did something wrong. I guess I just don't think that people trying to get abortions deserve the honest services and assistance in such an endeavor at the outset. Though if there are false statements in the name, description, or consultation, even if it did save a life, it would clearly be wrong. And there may be a prudential question as well-is this is an effective way to save lives and change hearts. Though I think on that front, it is. The people who get worked up about them "lying" to vulnerable women, etc. are the same ones who think they should be passing out condoms and refering to Planned Parenthood. I'm not concerned about losing their vote.

"Constitution in 2020" video

The streaming video from the "Constitution in 2020" conference is now up.  I participated in a panel (along with MOJ-friend Paul Horwitz) on "Individual Rights", and talked about the importance of institutions -- especially religious institutions -- in the infrastructure of rights-protection.  The video of this panel is here.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Cardinal--and former New York Archbishop--Egan and the sex abuse scandal

NYT, 12/3/09

In Egan’s Depositions, a New View of a Sex Scandal

The deposition was in its fifth grueling hour. The lawyer and the witness had dueled over the meaning of common words, about whether an executive “supervises” or “administers,” about the difference between a lie and a failure to tell the truth.

Then the lawyer sprang his big question: You could have prevented someone from hurting people and you decided not to. Why?

The witness was Edward M. Egan, then the Roman Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. The question was about a priest who had been accused of sexually molesting children.

“I didn’t make a decision one way or the other,” said Bishop Egan, whom the lawyer suggested had failed to act quickly against the cleric. “I kept working on it until I resolved the decision.”

The exchange is one of hundreds recorded in a vast trove of documents the Diocese of Bridgeport made public on Tuesday after battling in court for seven years to keep them sealed. The archive — more than 12,000 pages of memos, church records and testimony — was gathered for 23 lawsuits, alleging sexual abuse of children by seven priests, that the diocese settled in 2002.

At the heart of it lies the bishop’s testimony, in two wide-ranging depositions from 1997 and 1999. Punctuated by legal parsing and frequent exasperation on both sides, transcripts of the videotaped sessions show the man who would become one of the church’s most prominent American leaders — the archbishop of New York, and a cardinal — as he navigated a budding scandal that still threatens the church’s finances and reputation.

Since 2002, when he moved to New York and nationwide attention focused on the church hierarchy’s handling of abuse complaints, Cardinal Egan has faced troubling accusations about his tenure in Bridgeport: that he allowed priests facing multiple sex abuse allegations to continue working; that he did not refer complaints to criminal authorities; and that he showed little interest in meeting with accusers.

[Read the rest here.]

Our new art

The lovely images of the Blessed Mother that now appear on this blog's banner appear courtesy of our friends at Villanova, where they are enjoying a beautiful new building and chapel.  The chapel's stained-glass window was designed by Fr. Richard Cannuli, OSA.  His website is here.

Are crisis pregnancy centers deceptive? Is that OK?

The Baltimore City Council is requiring crisis pregnancy centers to put up signs making clear that they do not provide abortions or birth control.  I do not support such a mandate from the government, but I do wonder, should crisis pregnancy centers be making the nature of their services clear on their own, or is deception part of their mission in that it gives them the best chance to gain a hearing for their pro-life message?  Should deception be a legitimate part of the pro-life cause?

ABA Journal Top 100

Mirror of Justice is among the ABA Journal's "Top 100" law-blogs -- more specifically, it's one of the 15 listed "legal theory" blogs on the list.  You can vote for your favorites here.  Please do!