Monday, May 10, 2010
Walker Percy
Walker Percy died twenty years ago today. Micah Mattix has some thoughts on the occasion, at First Things, here. A Youtube video of Percy's Laetare Medal speech at Notre Dame is here.
A Court with no Protestants . . . for real
Elena Kagan, the Solicitor General, will be nominated by President Obama to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. And, she will almost certainly be confirmed, which means that, in a few months, the Supreme Court of the United States will have no Protestant members. I have some ideas about how this happened . . . but I'm still not sure what (if anything) it means, going forward. We'll see!
Sunday, May 9, 2010
American Motherhood
A (to me) sobering thought on Mothers Day: The Pew Research Center is reporting that "[a] record four-in-ten births (41%) were to unmarried women in 2008, including most births to women in their early 20s. In 1990, 28% of births were to unmarried women." There's a lot more interesting information in the report, but this one, in particular, grabbed me. Is there anything not-gloomy to be said about this particular development? Comments open.
Avoidance Behavior. Or, "on this date in MOJ history . . ."
It's exam-grading season. And so, I am doing all kinds of interesting things like cleaning out my kids' "art drawer," organizing 10 years' worth of lessons clipped from "Guitar Player" magazine, and . . . going back to my MOJ posts around May 9 of previous years.
Six years ago, I had these thoughts about the lessons contained in my colleague Vince Rougeau's then-recent paper for the then-hot-topic Catholic Charities case:
If one understands "religion" as being about "personal spirituality", comfort, therapy, and an individual's discrete "personal relationship" with the Divine, then a law requiring entities with health-care plans to include contraceptive coverage in those plans would seem to impose little, if any, significant burdens on the freedom of "religion," so understood. After all, California is not requiring individuals to believe anything in particular, it is not requiring individuals to act in any particular way, and it is not even (directly) requiring individuals to fund conduct that those individuals might, for "personal" religious reasons, find offensive.
Nonetheless, premises grounded in a better, richer understanding of religious freedom push us toward the conclusion that the scope of California's "religious employer" exemption is deeply injurious to the Church's evangelizing and social-justice missions. The exemption decrees to be "secular" activities engaged in by the Church, and by Christians acting together, that represent the Church's efforts to be true to the Great Commission.
Five years ago, Rob. Tom, and I were talking about the Solomon Amendment, state-run law schools, and subsidiarity:
I would regard it as "vital" that we not equate state-run and private institutions, particularly educational institutions. Subsidiarity, as I understand it (and, I'm sure, as Rob does too), is about more than diffusion and mediation. Especially when it comes to education, it is -- as Tom's post suggests -- important that the sources of value and formation not all be governments.
To anticipate an objection: My point is not offered as simply a "government is bad" assertion. Still, the project of "state control over education" is not an ideologically neutral one, and is not one that we who endorse subsidiarity for reasons rooted in Catholic Social Thought should too quickly embrace. So, we should, I think, worry more about preserving the independence and distinctiveness of private law schools, even as we also worry, too, about federally imposed homogeneity among government-run schools.
On May 10, 2006 I raised my eyebrows at reports from the United Kingdom that some were questioning the ability of Labour MP Ruth Kelly, a "committed Catholic and member of the Opus Dei group," to enforce that nation's anti-discrimination laws.
Then, in May of 2007, I . . . [Ed.: For God's sake, Garnett, get back to your exam-reading!]
Cardinal DiNardo, Commencement Speaker at St. Gregory's University
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the commencement exercises at St.Gregory's University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, one of the best kept secrets in Catholic higher education. Houston's Cardinal DiNardo gave the commencement speech, which was one of the best accounts of the importance of a Catholic liberal arts education that I have heard. The music for the ceremony was provided by a quartet from Oklahoma Baptist University down the street. When the Cardinal was introduced, these four clapped politely while remaining firmly planted in their seats as the rest of the audience stood to welcome the Cardinal. After his talk, they too joined in an enthusiastic standing ovation in response to the Cardinal's explication first of the philosophical basis for a Catholic liberal arts education followed by the difference Jesus Christ makes in our whole lives, including the life of the mind. I look forward to sharing the speech with you when I get a copy or a link.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
"Immigration and Self-Governance"
My sense is that most of us here at MOJ are (at least) uneasy about Arizona's new immigration law. During a conversation with a friend (a Catholic who is a bit to the left of me politically), we spent some time thinking about this challenging question: For those of us who think that this is not the way to proceed, but who also think (as I do) that it is entirely reasonable for (a) a political community to care about securing its borders and regularizing immigration and (b) border states like Arizona to be upset that they are being asked to bear a disproportionate share of the costs and burdens (the many benefits that come with immigration are spread more diffusely, I think) associated with illegal immigration . . . what should be done? How can the costs and burdens be reduced and spread? How can the benefits still be obtained (and justice done) while also respecting (a), above?
Christopher Tollefsen has this interesting piece, "Immigration and Self-Governance", up over at Pubilc Discourse. He contends that "three issues—the right to secure borders, the moral costs of illegal immigration, and the virtues of generous neighborliness and forgiveness—must be clarified in order to address the problems of immigration reform." With respect to the "virtue of generous forgiveness," he concludes:
We are . . . a prosperous and peaceful country; we make few demands of our citizens for personal sacrifice, and few of us know true want or desperation. Our form of self-governance—the way in which we determine what kind of a people we are to be—can take the shape of a willingness to forgive, as a society, the actions of our neighbors which were taken under duress and for generally noble motives, such as the desire to care for a family. This virtue prompts support for a general amnesty policy and perhaps a fast track to citizenship for some—not as an isolated act, to be repeated serially every ten or twenty years, but in conjunction with the meeting of our obligations as regards illegal immigration. . . .
Thoughts?
Friday, May 7, 2010
Amen, Amen, Amen!
America
May 17, 2010
Pilgrim People, Part II
The Editors
Our pilgrim church, “at once holy and always in need of purification,” must constantly follow “the path of penance and renewal” (“Constitution on the Church,” No. 8). As in the United States eight years ago, in Ireland, Germany, India, and in Rome, steps are now being taken to institute strict accountability for the sexual abuse of minors. But direct efforts to correct and prevent abuse of minors are only the most obvious part of a larger healing needed in the church. The less obvious part is the reform of structures of church governance that turned a deaf ear for so long to the victims and repeatedly disparaged bishops who were seeking remedies to the problems haunting their dioceses. At all levels, right down to the parish, much of the church has proven deficient in its ability to listen and interact with adult believers. But at the center of the present crisis are found members of the Roman Curia. . . .
Sister Carol Keehan, President of the Catholic Health Association
Clapping for Sister Carol by Michael Sean Winters on May. 07, 2010 Sometimes applause is just applause. There is applause that is polite. There is the applause at the end of the singing of the National Anthem. There is the applause from members of Congress when the President says something nice about apple pie or calls attention to the First Lady.
Then there are those moments when a group of people want to express their profound admiration and love for someone and, given the context, the only manner that seems suitable to express those feelings is with applause, even though it does not come close to expressing the depth of feeling. This was the kind of applause that greeted Sister Carol Keehan at NCR’s “Washington Briefing” when she was introduced this morning. The room rose as one. The applause was loud, not to say raucous, and it was sustained.
That applause came from somewhere deep in the consciousness of the assembled Catholics, all of whom share a commitment to the Church’s social justice traditions and teaching. It came from the years of frustration as successive presidents failed to find the political calculus needed to enact universal health coverage. It came, most especially, from the recognition that we almost encountered another chapter in that catalogue of frustration. But, at the last minute, Sister Carol, with that counter-cultural combination of a wealth of knowledge and experience and the unique authenticity of one who has chosen poverty, provided the moral push that pushed health care reform across the finish line.
We had come to hear Sister Carol speak, so we stopped the applause eventually. I wish it had gone on forever.
The Priest and the People
PBS
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
May 7th, 2010
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
May 7th, 2010
CHRISTI DEEGAN (speaking to marriage workshop): So one of the topics the church talks about is living together, cohabitating…
JUDY VALENTE, Correspondent: These young Catholic couples in Chicago are attending a marriage preparation workshop required by their church.
DEEGAN: And this is always such a hard topic to talk about, because the church teaches, you know, wait to have sex until you’re married, right?
VALENTE: Despite that teaching, half these couples may already be living together.
(speaking to Catholic couples): No guilt about your decision?
MAN: No, it never really came into play for me.
WOMAN: We’re both artists, we just don’t have—we can’t support ourselves on our own.
MAN: It’s important to get to know the person as well as you can before you get married.
WOMAN: The priest didn’t say anything bad. They didn’t ever say that we shouldn’t be living together. There was no condemnation.
VALENTE: Sex outside of marriage, divorce, homosexuality. For many Catholics, these no longer hold the stigma they once did. Catholics disagree with the church on a variety of other issues. The vast majority of Catholics say women should be priests, and according to a recent survey 58 percent said abortion should be a personal decision. The bishops keep talking about these issues, but fewer Catholics seem to be listening. What’s a pastor to say to the people in the pews?
Headline Bistro and the NYT poll on Catholics' views of the Church (updated)
I came across this site, "Headline Bistro," a "service of the Knights of Columbus dedicated to bringing readers the top, daily headlines that Catholics need to know." One of the (many) pieces currently up describes a recent poll conducted by CBS and The New York Times, regarding the effects of the recent coverage of some bishops' mishandling of clergy-abuse cases on practicing Catholics' relationship with the Church. The poll (seems to me to) point in a number of different directions on a number of matters. The story's lede, though, is worth re-printing here:
A new poll conducted by CBS News and The New York Times has found that 77% of Catholics who attend Mass weekly say that “the Vatican’s handling of recent child sex abuse reports” has had no effect on how they “feel about the Catholic Church.” An additional 12% of practicing Catholics say that they have a more positive feeling about the Church as a result of the Vatican’s handling of the scandals. . . .
88% of Catholics-- practicing and non-practicing-- report that the scandal has had no effect on their dealings with priests. 82% say it will not affect their Mass attendance, 79% say it will have no effect on donations, and 87% say that it will have no effect on their children’s involvement in Church activities. . . .
It is interesting (to me) that, at a time when (we're told that) Catholics, as a group, think about contested questions of public policy and morality no differently than do non-Catholics, there is, despite the latest round of coverage -- which has, in my view, at times been unfair and misleading -- a signfiicant gap between the views of Catholics and those of non-Catholics (e.g., "only 17% of practicing Catholics, and 33% of Americans overall, believe that the Vatican is currently engaging in a cover-up"). Interesting . . . but also worrisome.
UPDATE: The America blog links to a news story which contains this:
There is a distinctly different level of anger from the public directed toward the Catholic Church over the sexual abuse of minors than toward other organizations whose leaders commit similar crimes, noted two psychologists who work in the field. . . .
Plante told Catholic News Service in a phone interview that there's a strain of anger at the institutional church that doesn't directly relate to sexual abuse itself and has no parallel in how the public has reacted to other institutions where abuse has occurred. "There are a lot of people who are very angry at the Catholic Church about all sorts of things, from the Crusades to how Galileo was treated, to the church's positions on sexual ethics, divorce and women priests," Plante said. "It's like a fire hose, all that gets funneled into the clergy abuse thing." . . .
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