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, July 2, 2010

Chicago's (Catholic) Mayor Daley

By Rick Garnett

I'm happy to join Michael Perry in lamenting gun violence, though I'm not sure why we should consign to Hell a group that exists to protect what the Supreme Court has told us (and since they've told us, it must be true, right?) is a fundamental individual right.  Michael asks God to bless "Chicago's (Catholic) Mayor Daley" for his resolute support for (probably unconstitutional, in the Court's view) restrictions on gun ownership and, as a fan of Chicago, I am also happy to join Michael in hoping that God blesses Mayor Daley with more wisdom than the (Catholic) mayor has shown in, say, restricting the speech of pro-life activists and counselors:   

Daley is a Catholic, who happens to be pro-choice. But, unlike several of the dissenting aldermen, the mayor said he draws a line between religion and politics.

“My religion is very personal. …Religion does not play a part when I make a decision on behalf of the people of Chicago. It is a decision I have to make as mayor, not as a Catholic. …That is separate for me,” he said.

The amendment to Chicago’s disorderly conduct ordinance was championed by Ald. Vi Daley (43rd) at the behest of Planned Parenthood.

Perhaps God's blessing on Daley will include the grace necessary to stand up to Planned Parenthood, as well as the NRA.

Congrats to John O'Callaghan

By Rick Garnett

My colleague (and MOJ-friend) John O'Callaghan has been appointed to the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas.  (He is, I gather, one of only 4 American members.) 

Established in 1879 by Pope Leo XIII to promote the study of the thought of St. Thomas and to bring it into engagement with contemporary culture, the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas has 50 members. O’Callaghan, an associate professor of philosophy at Notre Dame whose scholarship concerns medieval philosophy and Thomistic metaphysics, is one of four academy members from the United States.

“We Thomists don’t study Aquinas merely because we find his thought historically interesting, although it is,” O’Callaghan said. “We study it because we think lasting truth is to be found there. Notre Dame is nearly unique for the resources it devotes to continuing the study of, and promoting the relevance of St. Thomas and medieval philosophy to contemporary philosophy in the English speaking world. So I think this honor acknowledges the importance of philosophy in the Catholic tradition at Notre Dame as much as it honors me.”

Congratulations, John!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

The news concerning the scandal is unrelenting and bad

By Michael Perry

NYT, July 2, 2010

Amid Church Abuse Scandal, an Office That Failed to Act
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID M. HALBFINGER

In its long struggle to grapple with sexual abuse, the Vatican often cites as a major turning point the decision in 2001 to give the office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the authority to cut through a morass of bureaucracy and handle abuse cases directly.

The decision, in an apostolic letter from Pope John Paul II, earned Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, a reputation as the Vatican insider who most clearly recognized the threat the spreading sexual abuse scandals posed to the Roman Catholic Church.

But church documents and interviews with canon lawyers and bishops cast that 2001 decision and the future pope’s track record in a new and less flattering light.

The Vatican took action only after bishops from English-speaking nations became so concerned about resistance from top church officials that the Vatican convened a secret meeting to hear their complaints — an extraordinary example of prelates from across the globe collectively pressing their superiors for reform, and one that had not previously been revealed.

And the policy that resulted from that meeting, in contrast to the way it has been described by the Vatican, was not a sharp break with past practices. It was mainly a belated reaffirmation of longstanding church procedures that at least one bishop attending the meeting argued had been ignored for too long, according to church documents and interviews.

The office led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had actually been given authority over sexual abuse cases nearly 80 years earlier, in 1922, documents show and canon lawyers confirm. But for the two decades he was in charge of that office, the future pope never asserted that authority, failing to act even as the cases undermined the church’s credibility in the United States, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, an outspoken auxiliary bishop emeritus from Sydney, Australia, who attended the secret meeting in 2000, said that despite numerous warnings, top Vatican officials, including Benedict, took far longer to wake up to the abuse problems than many local bishops did.

“Why did the Vatican end up so far behind the bishops out on the front line, who with all their faults, did change — they did develop,” he said. “Why was the Vatican so many years behind?”

[The rest of this quite long article is here.]

God bless Chicago's (Catholic) Mayor Daley -- and to Hell with the NRA

By Michael Perry

Here.

"A Dictatorship of Relativism"?

By Michael Perry

Leslie Green, Professor of Philosophy of Law, Balliol College, Oxford University, takes on Benedict XVI, here.

[HT:  Leiter Reports:  A Philosophy Blog.]

A new blog: Distinctly Catholic

By Michael Perry


Distinctly Catholic, a blog by Michael Sean Winters that examines politics, religion and the estuary where the two meet, all from a distinctively Catholic point of view. The blog is small "c" catholic as well as big "C" Catholic, examining a wide range of issues but always from the perspective of Catholic history and theology.  Read More

The Limits of Episcopal Authority

By Michael Perry

COMMONWEAL

June 30, 2010

Web Exclusive

The Limits of Authority

When bishops speak about health-care policy, Catholics should listen, but don't have to agree

Richard R. Gaillardetz

The aftershocks of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to certain elements of recent health-care legislation are still being felt in the church months later. Religious communities that supported the legislation are being subjected to harsh and unwarranted punitive measures and the Catholic Health Association, whose support of the legislation was crucial to its passage, is being maligned by right-wing groups like the Catholic News Agency.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, current president of the USCCB, contends that the dispute is fundamentally a matter of ecclesiological principle. In a recent interview with John Allen, the cardinal said that the disagreement with the Catholic Health Association over health-care legislation was “about the nature of the church itself” and was therefore a disagreement “that has to concern the bishops.” This was a disagreement about the nature, limits, and proper exercise of episcopal authority. But there is a second, closely related matter at stake—namely, the character of Christian participation in public life. It may be helpful to begin there.

[Read the rest, here.]

CLS v. Martinez and the case for same-sex marriage

By Rob Vischer

I noted earlier that the Martinez Court invoked Lawrence in rejecting Christian Legal Society's attempt to distinguish between status (homosexual orientation) and conduct (a refusal to acknowledge homosexual conduct as immoral).  Apparently I'm not the only one who noticed.

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