The late Richard John Neuhaus used to emphasize that the priest sexual abuse scandal was about "fidelity, fidelity, fidelity," and George Weigel makes the same point now. At one level, I agree. On another level, though, "fidelity" is too simplistic. Most of my sins stem less from a deliberate lack of faithfulness, and more from a failure to come to grips with my own tendencies to justify my behavior through mental gymnastics that in the end amount to self-delusion. Giving myself a pep talk every morning about "being more faithful" only goes so far. That's why relationships of accountability are so important.
My guess is that most of the bishops who ended up facilitating abuse by keeping serial abusers secret, mobile, and working as priests would never have identified their decisions as a failure of fidelity. They may have been naive, but a clearer focus on faithfulness to their calling would not have done a whole lot to avoid the crisis. I think it's important to identify the blind spots that allowed the bishops to mistake their decisions for fidelity, and to persist in that mistaken belief for years and years without correction. Yes, it is about evil decisions that individual priests made. Yes, it is about horrible decisions that individual bishops made. But it is also about the entire Church -- not in the sense of playing "gotcha" journalism to try and bring down Pope Benedict -- but in the sense of asking, what are the Church's blind spots, how did those blind spots contribute to this crisis, and do those blind spots continue to compromise the Church's witness to the world?
A few more specific questions come to mind along these lines: 1) in an age of greater institutional transparency, to what extent does a continued emphasis on secrecy threaten the Church's witness and the well-being of its members? What are the implications and limitations of a more transparent Church? 2) if women bring a complementary set of gifts, inclinations, and sensibilities to our shared life, what is the cost of excluding them from leadership roles in the Church -- i.e., might these abuse cases have turned out differently if women were part of the conversation? (I think Lisa has asked this question before) and 3) why was the Church slower than much (but certainly not all) of the rest of society in recognizing the gravity of child sexual abuse and the limitations of therapy? Are there other areas where Church practices fall behind the sociological and scientific reality?
Thoughts? Other questions that need to be asked?
RELIGIOUS LEGAL THEORY CONFERENCE: RELIGION IN LAW AND LAW IN RELIGION
Center for Law, Religion, and the Global Community
St. John’s University School of Law
New York
November 5, 2010
This annual symposium, to be shared among different law schools and now in its second year, addresses a broad range of topics. This year’s theme, “Religion in Law and Law in Religion,” encompasses papers on traditional religion/state questions as well as papers that discuss the concept of law in different religious traditions. Possible topics include: coherence and incoherence in American Religion Clause jurisprudence; comparative approaches to religion/state issues; doctrine and precedent as legal and religious concepts; and the role of authority in law and religion. Confirmed plenary speakers include Steven H. Shiffrin (Cornell) and Steven D. Smith (San Diego).
Please submit abstracts (500 words) and inquiries to Professor Mark Movsesian ([email protected]; 718-990-5650) by May 24, 2010. Accepted speakers will be notified by mid-June. For presenters, group rates at a hotel in Manhattan will be available; conference meals and transportation between Manhattan and the St. John’s Queens campus will be provided. There will be an opportunity for presenters to publish papers in a forthcoming issue of the St. John’s Law Review.
This year’s conference is being hosted by the Center for Law, Religion, and the Global Community at St. John’s University School of Law. The conference is being planned by Professor Movsesian and Professor Marc DeGirolami ([email protected]; 718-990-6760).
"New York Recognition of a Legal Status for Same-Sex Couples: A
Rapidly Developing Story"
New York Law School Law Review, Vol. 54, 2009/10
NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09/10 #24
ARTHUR S. LEONARD, New York Law
School
Email: [email protected]
In New York State as of the beginning of 2010, same-sex couples cannot get
married but can be married. The state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals,
construed the state’s marriage law in 2006 to prohibit state officials from
issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but said nothing in that decision
about whether same-sex couples married outside the state would be considered
married when they were in the state. In February 2008, an intermediate appeals
court in Rochester ruled that New York’s marriage recognition law supported
extending comity to a same-sex marriage performed in Canada, and several other
appellate courts have reached similar conclusions, but the Court of Appeals
avoided deciding the issue in a 2009 case, instead resolving the questions
presented on narrower grounds of standing and statutory construction. Although
the State Assembly has twice approved a bill to allow same-sex couples to marry
in the state, it was defeated in the State Senate shortly after the Court of
Appeals ruling. This article provides the history of this issue in New York.
[Download here.]
Paul Moses, who teaches journalism at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate School of
Journalism, responds to Weigel at dotCommonweal, here. An excerpt:
"I don’t agree with his analysis. The reason goes back to something I
told the U.S. bishops when I was invited to address them at a closed
session of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Pittsburgh in
the late 1990s: that journalists aren’t especially interested in
individual cases of sexual abuse, but are very interested in stories
about cover-ups in powerful institutions. In other words, the best
course for the bishops was to be truthful.
This is what has made clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church the
subject of so many scathing reports, whether from the news media or
grand juries: that a cover-up occurred at high levels in many dioceses.
When a scandal of this proportion is uncovered, journalists will
naturally want to see how far it goes – the basis for the latest round
of stories. To say that sexual abuse in other churches or other sectors
of society does not get the same media attention misses the point. The
issue isn’t that Catholic priests are allegedly prone to commit sexual
abuse, but that a small percentage of them were freed to do so, again
and again, due to gross mismanagement, secrecy and lack of
accountability on the part of church authorities. However dated most of
the sexual abuse cases are, this story still calls out to be covered
because some of those who failed to stop repeat abusers remain in
positions of authority."
Alright, sure . . . Duke is the greatest college basketball program, and Coach K. is the best coach in college basketball. No room for (what my friend Michael Perry would call) "reasonable" disagreement there. But . . . sometimes Duke University (or parts of it) makes such an (institutional) idiot of itself. Volokh has the report.:
Duke University’s Women’s Center has canceled an event about motherhood because the sponsor was engaging in pro-life expression elsewhere on campus. A Women’s Center representative told Duke Students for Life (DSFL) that “we have a problem” and an ideological “conflict” with the event, which was supposedly canceled to protect Duke women from encountering the event during the group’s “traumatizing” pro-life “Week for Life.” ...
As part of a “Week for Life” series of events held at Duke over March 15–19, DSFL had reserved a Women’s Center space for a “Discussion with a Duke Mother” on March 18. A Duke student and mother was to speak about motherhood and the challenges of being in both roles. But the day before the event, the reservation was abruptly canceled in a voicemail to the group.
Meeting with the group on March 18, Duke Women’s Center Gender Violence Prevention Specialist Martin Liccardo said that because the event was associated with the Week for Life and DSFL, the event could not be held at the Women’s Center.
Liccardo told the group that the prospect of holding a pro-life event in the Women’s Center during Week for Life was too upsetting for some students: “We had a very strong reaction from students in general who use our space who said this was something that was upsetting and not OK. So based on that, we said, OK, we are going to respond to this and stop the program.” .. .
Monday, March 29, 2010
By CHARLIE SAVAGE 5:48 PM ET
Members of a Christian militia were indicted on sedition and weapons
charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement
officers.
