Monday, January 4, 2010
The Chronicle on Fr. Jenkins and Notre Dame
The Chronicle of Higher Education has (what I thought was) a positive and balanced portrait, "The Priest President," of Fr. John Jenkins and his work as the President of the University of Notre Dame. The piece identifies me as a "vocal critic" (I would have preferred "friendly critic") of the decision to honor President Obama last Spring but also quotes me as noting that Fr. Jenkins carries a "burden", as President, precisely because Notre Dame "matters." I was, all in all, impressed by the respectful way the piece presented Notre Dame's ongoing efforts to be excellent through, and in, its vocation to be an authentically Catholic university. Check it out.
A New Years Wish Revoked?
I was surprised to open MoJ and find Steve Shiffrin's December 31 post.
The day before, in a post entitled "My New Years Wish," Steve asked for the thread concerning the dispute arising out of Michael P.'s Christmas Eve post to end. Earlier that day, Michael had stated that it was time to move on and I expressed my agreement. Michael and I both expressed the view that what had been said on the competing sides was there in black and white for readers to judge for themselves. Michael posted on the issue one more time, but I remained silent, thus giving him the last word between us.
So I'm now puzzled as to why Steve, after expressly and publicly calling for the thread to end, would (after it ended) post on the matter again, and do so in a way that all but literally invites Michael's critics to respond, thus reigniting the controversy. If Steve wants to discuss the role of disgust or repugnance in moral psychology, that's fine. But his post does more than that. First, it invites a comment from Michael S. or me that would, no doubt, provoke a response from Michael P. or someone else, and on and on. It then rehearses the claim (originally advanced in an effort to blunt my criticisms of Michael's Christmas Eve post) that I have made "personal attacks" on Michael and on Cathleen Kaveny.
It was, readers will recall, Michael, not me, who introduced the question of the comparative merits of the work of Professors Kaveny and Porter, on the one side, and Grisez and Finnis on the other. Now, there was certainly nothing out of line about Michael expressing his view of the comparative merits of these scholars. Although I strongly disagreed with his assessment, I urged readers to rely on neither Michael's opinion, nor my own. My advice to people who wondered which writers were more faithful to the tradition running from Aristotle through Aquinas was to read some work by Porter, Kaveny, Grisez, and Finnis, and judge for themselves which writers are superior in analytical rigor, logical precision, interpretative soundness, and depth of insight. I continue to believe that advice to be sound I don't see how anyone could quarrel with the criteria for assessment I set out in response to Michael''s claim for the superiority of the work of the writers he prefers.
Readers who are familiar with my article "Shameless Acts Revisited: Some Questions for Professor Nussbaum" Academic Questions, 9 (1995), pp. 24-42 will understand why I asked for confirmation from Michael that he was relying on Martha Nussbaum's authority.
And with that, I (at least) will move on.
Forgetting the mission
Peggy Noonan looks back at the failures of the past decade as examples of institutions forgetting their missions, foremost among these the Catholic Church:
The Catholic Church, as great and constructive an institution as ever existed in our country, educating the children of immigrants and healing the weak in hospitals, also acted as if it had forgotten the mission. Their mission was to be Christ's church in the world, to stand for the weak. Many fulfilled it, and still do, but the Boston Globe in 2003 revealed the extent to which church leaders allowed the abuse of the weak and needy, and then covered it up.
It was a decades-long story; it only became famous in the '00s. But it was in its way the most harmful forgetting of a mission of all, for it is the church that has historically given a first home to America's immigrants, and made them Americans. Its reputation, its high standing, mattered to our country. Its loss of reputation damaged it. And it happened in part because priests and bishops forgot they were servants of a great institution, and came to think the great church existed to meet their needs.
I wonder whether a similar indictment can be leveled against American law schools, including Catholic law schools. Has the modern law professor shown a tendency to think that the law school exists to meet his or her needs? Have we let the reflected glory of the US News rankings become our raison d'etre, overlooking debt-laden students and minimizing the role we should be playing in their personal and professional formation?
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Thanks to Peter Steinfels
We shouldn't let this occasion pass without notice on MoJ: Peter Steinfels wrote his last Beliefs column on Friday. I cannot help but wonder if this leaves a void that the Times will not feel any particular pressure to fill. Read comments from America here and Get Religion here.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Congrats, and thanks, to Teresa Collett
I was delighted to receive, in my e-mail today, from Prof. Teresa Collett, the Annual Report of the Prolife Center at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Congratulations, and thanks, to her, and to the School of Law, for this important effort. Here, at the very interesting blog, "Law Social Justice", is her reflection on the Center's first year:
I write this blog entry during Advent – a holy season observed by many Christians in remembering the Lord’s first coming as a baby born in Bethlehem, and in the “joyful hope” of His coming again. This season focuses our thoughts and prayers on the great gift of children and the generosity of those who undertake the duties of parenthood. Pope Benedict, during his Advent reflections in 2007, reminds us “Every child born is a sign of trust in God and man and a confirmation, at least implicit, of the hope in a future open to God’s eternity that is nourished by men and women.”
The Pope’s simple meditation explains the spiritual foundation of the Prolife Center at the University of St. Thomas School of Law – and of the school’s emphasis on social justice more generally. Each new life represents a unique creative act by God, or put more simply “a baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.” The person that comes into being bears the indelible image of God and is precious in His sight. No matter how tarnished and obscure that image may become – sometimes due to the person’s sinful choices and sometimes due to our own blindness to the beauty within others – as believers we owe respect to the image of God which is reflected in every person. This is why there are no “throw away” people – not the criminal, the immigrant, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, or the unborn child. Each was willed into being by God, and it is not properly within our power to gainsay God’s decision.
Yet many in our society seek to do exactly that. Abortion is justified on the basis that the child will be born handicapped, or was conceived through an act of violence, or will be poor and must struggle for survival from the very beginning. Each of these reasons suggests that we are wiser than God, and that His decision to create this unique human being was wrong. We presume that we can know the future of the child, with a certainty superior to that of God’s. Thus the intentional taking of a human life becomes an act of mercy rather than injustice. Yet it is an odd mercy that kills the subject of its concern, and a strange faith that elevates the time-bound and particular judgments of man over the deliberate creative act of God.
The work of the Prolife Center at St. Thomas is grounded in this simple truth – God does not make mistakes in his creation of any person. It is my prayer that this simple truth increasingly guides each of us during this holy season of Advent when we reflect upon the Lord’s coming as a newborn babe.
Right on.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Mary, Table of Intellectual Faith
Happy New Year everyone!
Fr. Araujo rightly observes the tension between the types of rationality that dominate contemporary legal reasoning and the types of reasoning that Catholics see as harmonious with faith. His question for us points deeper into the nature and structure of legal reasoning and the values that it advances.
John Paul II was particularly aware of the tensions between scientific rationality and the faithful Catholic life. In Fides et Ratio, he wrote that Mary, the Seat of Wisdom, is the “sure haven for all who devote their lives to the pursuit of wisdom.” (108) The encyclical interprets her “unqualified yes to Gabriel’s message as a leap of faith that made possible the salvation of all persons.” It is this parable of Mary that illustrates the proper relation of faith and reason that Catholic philosophers should seek to emulate. Just as she put aside her worldly concerns so that “the Word might take on flesh and become one of us,” so too should the faithful Catholic philosopher offer natural reason in the service of the divine. The encyclical notes that the “ancients” saw Mary as the “table of intellectual faith. In her they saw a suitable image of true philosophy and realized that they must be philosophizing with Mary.” Taken in this light, Catholic thought is engaged in the pursuit of true wisdom when it thinks like Mary thought.
Imagine the full human range of reason and emotion that Mary would have experienced. The feelings of joy, fear, confidence, self-doubt, pride, humility, triumph, wonder, awe, and mystery. What were Mary’s self-understandings? Surely, her heart and mind were united in her affirmation of her role in God’s plan. Mary knew what the modern world has only recently begun to re-discover, that rationality and affectivity are inseparable (see for example, Antonio Damasio’s Descartes' Error).
The reduction of the fullness of human reason to the dispassionate discursive rationality of scientific inquiry is particularly troublesome for lawyers. In her interesting book, The Language of Law School, the linguistic anthropologist, Elizabeth Mertz, suggests that legal education, particularly in the first year, promotes objective, dispassionate modes of legal analyses, which denude the student of moral intuitions and empathetic emotion. What’s more, this sort of disengagement from moral feeling may be necessary for the professional formation of the contemporary America lawyer. Nonetheless, when legal education and legal reasoning obscure the fullness of human wisdom in favor of instrumentalism, consumerism, and fanciful conceptions of autonomy, we should rightly be aghast, because as St. Augustine taught, the emotional detachment of the Stoic is fundamentally incompatible with a faithful Christian life.
The Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God
Over the past several days the Mirror of Justice has hosted a spirited debate on a variety of themes that have offered perspectives of colleagues and friends on matters that are important to the law and, therefore, Catholic Legal Theory.
One of themes addressed in recent postings has been the role of reason. Reason and how it is utilized has a definite bearing on the law and how the law addresses or should address issues including homosexuality, same-sex marriage, sexual/reproductive autonomy, and abortion.
As has been observed by other members of the Mirror of Justice family, reason is crucial to the law and, therefore, Catholic Legal Theory. Of course the natural law tradition, so much a part of the Catholic understanding of legal matters, places an emphasis on right reason in this endeavor. But as Time Magazine in its essay on John Courtney Murray rhetorically asked almost fifty years ago, whose reason is right? What makes reason right? What is vital to its method?
Let me offer a few suggestions in this regard.
The first would be this: I consider that most people have the ability to exercise right reason. They are born and equipped with the intellectual capacity to think about issues, events, happenings, etc. in such a way as to see more clearly what is at stake and what is involved. Of course, this task requires patience: patience with one’s self and patience with what is being considered and studied. The exercise of right reason does not require the distinctive and super-human acumen of Professor Ronald Dworkin’s Judge Hercules. It does require, however, fidelity to a thoughtful and objective process, and patience is a virtue needed to facilitate this process.
A second matter deals with how a person conducts one’s self in the intellectual enterprise of reasoning that brings together observation, consideration, and evaluation (both normative and moral). Initially, we all see and think about the universe that surrounds us from a personal perspective. Hence we begin our reasoning from a subjective point, but this does not mean that we should stay there throughout the entire process in which we exercise reason. Our subjective perspective must sooner or later be tempered by objectivity. I know some of my Mirror of Justice friends are likely to challenge me on this because they have done so in the past. Let me present the point once again: objectivity is that ingredient that enables the individual who exercises reason to transcend the familiar, the desirable and get closer to the truth.
Ah, yes, the truth. This is the third matter which I wish to raise today in what may well be but an installment in the project of our ongoing discussion and possible debate. Is there truth about anything? One may insist that he or she knows the truth, but in fact confuses the familiar that is comfortable to or desired by this person with what is beyond the known, the familiar, the desirable. For the Catholic, be he or she legal theorist or otherwise, there is one Truth, who is God. The closer we become to God, the closer we become to the truth that enables us to see what is right and what is wrong with the positions we hold and assert. As we acknowledge that some positions are right and some are wrong, our reasoning is more inclined to be associated with the modifier right. As one long-involved with the process called legal reasoning, I don’t often see the case made for including in it the Truth who is God. So be it. But if one professes or asserts that his or her legal reasoning is a part of the Catholic world, then God as Truth is indispensable to his or her participation in the process of legal reasoning.
Indeed, rigorous thought and exhaustive evidence gathering are a part of the process of legal reasoning, too. For many but not all, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness are also essential elements. But so is the ability to hone those skills necessary to distinguishing right from wrong, truth from falsehood.
I look forward to what my friends here at the Mirror of Justice might have to say about these thoughts.
In the meantime, a blessed New Year to you all! May God who is mercy and truth be with us, and may Mary, Seat of Wisdom and Mirror of Justice, pray for us. Amen.
RJA sj
May it not be so in 2010
Wendell Berry once wrote:
Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of the manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal; they are growing useless like our ‘marginal land' because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.
Here is to healthy bodies, minds, and spirits in 2010.
Happy New Year!
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