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.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Carolyn Forche's commencement address at the (Jesuit) University of Scranton

By Michael Perry

Do yourself a favor:  take the time to read this.  (HT:  dotCommonweal.)

The University of Illinois, Marquette University, and academic freedom

By Rick Garnett

The story out of Illinois is, as John Breen observes, "troubling."  One hopes that the wrong described in the story will be righted.  And, one hopes that the many news outlets -- especially the secular ones -- that reported earnestly on -- and often exhibited outrage over -- the decision by Marquette University's President to withdraw its dean-of-arts-and-letters offer to Seattle U.'s Prof. O'Brien (more here) will take notice, as well.  It seems clear to me that what Illinois is reported to have done conflicts far more glaringly with that University's purported mission and commitments than Marquette's does with its.  Does anyone disagree?

The Fourth Inquiry

By Michael Perry

Some issues are sufficiently complicated that a blog is a woefully suboptimal venue for doing them justice.  And yet MOJ readers are certainly entitled to wonder what I think about the questions raised by my earlier post and Robby's understandable response to it.  So, ...

The subtitle of my book The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford, 1998) is "Four Inquiries".  Four inquiries, four chapters.  The title of the fourth chapter:  "Are Human Rights Absolute?  The Incommensurability Thesis and Related Matters".  In that chapter, I comment at length on, and explain why I am skeptical about, John Finnis' position regarding moral "absolutes":  determinate moral norms that are exceptionless (unconditional).  I hope MOJ readers who are interested in pursuing the issue will take a look at what I have to say in chapter 4 (pp. 87-106)--and, if they are at all inclined, let me know where, in their judgment, my argument misfires.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Is there really "only one 'absolute'?"

By Robert George

Michael P. writes: 

Misunderstanding is predictable here, so I hesitate to say, but will say nonetheless, that in my view, there is only one invariable, only one "absolute":

"I give you a new commandment:  love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you."  John 13:34.  See also John 15:12, 17.

Well, I don't want to misunderstand Michael, so let me ask:  What about the absolute norm that forbids having sexual intercourse with a woman against her will or without her consent?  It seems to me that there are only a couple of ways Michael could go here.  One is to affirm the exceptionless norm against rape and say that it is merely a specification of the love commandment of John 13:34.  If so, fine with me.  I would then want to argue that there are many such specifications, including the exceptionless norm against the direct killing of innocent human beings at any stage or in any condition, and those against adultery, fornication, sodomy, and other intrinsically non-marital sexual acts.  Michael might disagree with me about some or all of these, but our debate would not be about whether there is only one exceptionless moral norm.  In each case, it would be a debate about whether a particular norm is exceptionless, or a valid norm at all.  The other possibility would be to say that rape is usually wrong, but not always or intrinsically wrong.  There are at least imaginable circumstances in which it could be justified, e.g. as promising to produce the net best proportion of benefit to harm overall and in the long run.  (The standard science fiction example--philosophers specialize in these--is of a kind and decent man who will be given the key to a vault filled with medicine capable of curing thousands of victims of a raging deadly plague only if he rapes a post-menopausal woman in a minimally conscious state who will feel no pain or discomfort and never know she has been raped.)  Of course, this is not fine with me.  I think that position is dead wrong.  But it would be a position that genuinely presents the question:  Is there really only one absolute?

A Troubling Development at the University of Illinois

By John M. Breen

See the story here.  Apparently Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor teaching a course on Catholicism at the University of Illinois was fired (or more correctly not retained) for teaching what the Church teaches about homosexual acts, namely, that they are contrary to the natural moral law.  One student in the class took offense at this presentation and complained to the chair of U of I's Department of Religion anonymously through an e-mail sent by a friend.  The student complained that Howell's statements about homosexuality constituted "hate speech."

"Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing," the student wrote in the e-mail. "Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another. The courses at this institution should be geared to contribute to the public discourse and promote independent thought; not limit one's worldview and ostracize people of a certain sexual orientation."

According to Howell he made clear his own belief in the teachings set forth in the course.

 "I tell my students I am a practicing Catholic, so I believe the things I'm teaching," he said. "It's not a violation of academic freedom to advocate a position, if one does it as an appeal on rational grounds and it's pertinent to the subject."

The story says that Howell also made clear that he did not demand that students agree with Catholic teaching on homosexual conduct nor did he evaluate students based on their acceptance or rejection of that teaching.

"My responsibility on teaching a class on Catholicism is to teach what the Catholic Church teaches," Howell said. "I have always made it very, very clear to my students they are never required to believe what I'm teaching and they'll never be judged on that."

This episode raises serious questions about academic freedom,  Howell should not have been fired for explaining and endorsing the views that he did.  Indeed, he should not have been fired had he advocated the opposite moral position, namely, that homosexual acts are in keeping with the natural moral law.  (Whether advocating such a position would constitute a competent presentation of what the Church really believes is another matter, about which there may be some disagreement on MOJ, but it is nevertheless distinct).

The story raises other questions about the openness of public institutions of higher learning to Catholic teaching as an academic subject.  It calls into question the willingness of public universities to engage Catholicism on its own terms, and suggests instead that these institutions may feel free to select their own version of Catholicsm to present to students where someone might take offense, that only a filtered version of Catholicism  -- with the moral teachings that challenge modern sensibilites carefully removed -- will be open for discussion in university classrooms.   As U of I's associate chancellor notes in the story, while Illinois is "absolutely committed to teaching the theory of Catholicism . . .  it's up to the department as to who teaches a class."

The story notes that in correspondence with other university administrators the department chair made clear his intention to "send a note to Howell's students and others who were forwarded his e-mail to students, 'disassociating our department, College, and university from the view expressed therein.'"

Phil Bess weighs in on the suburbs . . .

By Rick Garnett

Here's urbanist-before-it-was-"new" Philip Bess, commenting on my recent link to "A Defense of the Suburbs":

 

Poulos's full argument is more nuanced than the excerpt you have quoted; but his argument requires even more careful definition and nuance then he has provided, specifically with regard to urban and suburban form.  After all, in today's America one can live in a pedestrian accessible mixed-use city neighborhood or small town and still be free to relocate.  But an argument for suburban form is at the very least an argument for separating daily uses and making them conveniently accessible to each other only by automobile.  If Poulos is defending that, he is---in my humble opinion---nuts.

 

Some Americans have a vocation to higher things that requires them to be mobile.  Some Americans are mobile when they are young and relatively unengaged with other obligations.  But many Americans are mobile for less considered and less lofty purposes.  For raising children to become capable and confident and civic-minded adults, stability is more often a better recipe than mobility.  Poulos may be post-modern, but if he is defending mobility as the sine qua non of human flourishing, he is no conservative.  The ethos of American suburbanization---identified by Tocqueville even before America was able to have post-1945 automobile suburbs---is that America is something to be consumed for whatever our immediate purposes, often merely appetitive, may be.  Modern suburbia not only reinforces and facilitates our mobility, it requires it---whether or not we have any idea of where we're going, or why.  

 

Any beautiful and culturally sustainable human settlement has become so only because some trans-generational community of persons over time has loved it and for its sake willingly endured pains, including the occasional pains of staying put.  (Think Nietzsche's---of all people!---"long obedience in the same direction.")  As hard as I would find this to believe, perhaps Poulos sees no genuine good in such settlements, nothing particularly important about communities of place with respect to human well-being.  If so, I can only infer that he views American natural and built landscapes as raw material for transient human beings, an implicitly placeless and disembodied view of human flourishing; post-modern indeed....

 

On the whole, I think it is good for people to be free to move; about this I suspect Poulos and I agree.  But freedom, as modern popes rightly remind us, is a good to be employed in service to the good.  In America, it is communities of place---traditional towns and urban neighborhoods and agriculture---that need defending, not suburbia.  That suburbanites are our countrymen (and also a majority) means that the defense of traditional urbanism must be both rationally and rhetorically compelling as well as respectful; but if it's true that human beings learn virtue and thrive in communities, defending small towns, city neighborhoods and agriculture rather than suburbia is what conservative public intellectuals should be doing.

Response to Aidan O’Neill

By Michael Scaperlanda

In response to my question, “What gives this court the authority to determine whether a particular religious interpretation is misguided?,"  Aidan says:

I think that by using the word “misguided” the court is not suggesting that the views expressed are not in fact true expressions of the particular religious beliefs described, but rather that those religious beliefs when acted upon are morally wrong because inimical to the proper respect for individual human dignity that is incumbent upon all States and societies.  The (anti-relativist) realization that there are absolute moral values (captured in the concept of “human rights”) which are not culturally relative or religiously specific  and which States and societies and religions must protect and promote in order to have legitimacy is a post WW11/post-Nuremberg phenomenon common to the political/legal cultures of the civilised world. 

There are two problems with Aidan’s response, as I see it.  First, there is no universal –or near universal - consensus in the “civilized” world that “respect for individual human dignity” requires recognition of same-sex sexual relationships.  In the aftermath of WWII, the “civilized” world did come to recognize that certain rights were necessary to give “respect for individual human dignity,” but recognition of same-sex relationships was not among these recognized rights.  By contrast, in the asylum context, the world community recognized the right to political and religious freedom as constitutive of human dignity.   The “enlightened” West has for a long time tried to promote abortion as a fundamental right necessary to the proper respect of individual human dignity and now it is trying to promote same-sex relationships on the same ground.  But, without the same sort of consensus that came together in the aftermath of WWII, what gives this court the authority to determine whether a particular religious interpretation is misguided?  Aidan, I look forward and hope for your response.

Second, as Mary Ann Glendon pointed out in her chapter of “Recovering Self-Evident Truths:  Catholic Perspectives on American Law,” the post-WWII/post-Nuremberg consensus involved a pragmatic consensus about some important but minimal international human rights.  What they didn’t decide – and didn’t even discuss much – was the foundation for those rights.  In other words, the anthropological questions, which would have addressed “why human beings have rights and why some rights are universal” (p. 317), were rarely discussed and never resolved.  Aidan states that “An expression by the court that the actions by another State or significant religious or cultural or political non-State institutions within that state contravene fundamental human rights is very much the province and duty of the judge, and I see no usurpation of power in their so doing in this particular case.”   Hmm?  On what ground does the court presume to develop (evolve?) the list of fundamental human rights or legally binding “absolute moral values” beyond those agreed to in treaties without a guiding principle or criterion for determining what rights human beings have and what rights are fundamental.  Isn’t the court really engaged in an exercise of raw judicial power (maybe for good or maybe for ill) without some foundational premises from which to derive their specific conclusion?  Thoughts?

Where I *do* agree with Vattimo

By Michael Perry

Misunderstanding is predictable here, so I hesitate to say, but will say nonetheless, that in my view, there is only one invariable, only one "absolute":

"I give you a new commandment:  love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you."  John 13:34.  See also John 15:12, 17.

See the final paragraph of Vattimo's introduction, referring to, "in the teaching of John Paul II[,] his essential appeal to charity, to universal friendship — may have heard in him the Christian voice that will never say amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas. In comparison with charity, there is no truth worth affirming. Jesus invited us to construct an ethics, a Christian practice, on the basis of caritas — an ethics that, as I interpret him, frees us of our last idolatry: the adoration of Truth as our god."

Haaretz: Pope Pius XII saved thousands of Jews

By Rick Garnett

Haaretz reports:

New research has found that Pope Pius XII may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The research is being carried out by Dr. Michael Hesemann, a German historian who is combing through the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a U.S.-based interfaith group.

Pope Pius XII has been widely criticized for his silence during the Holocaust and his failure to explicitly denounce the Holocaust, the Nazi regime or to excommunicate Hitler.

The new research, however, shows that the perception of Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope" may be historically incorrect. . . .

The relatively recently manufactured charge that Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope" is a calumny.  (Read Ronald Rychlak's "Hitler, the War, and the Pope.")  Still, that this research is being so prominently reported is welcome.

Of blog rankings, and MOJ's "stickiness"

By Rick Garnett

Prof. Paul Caron has posted the latest law-blog rankings here, and MOJ continues to do well.  That said, I really would like to overtake the good people at the "Wills, Trusts, and Estates" blog, so everyone take a few minutes to tell some more friends about MOJ.

Caron also reports that MOJ is the third most "sticky" blog (Volokh is number one) meaning that MOJ readers spend more time engaging what they read at MOJ than at, say, Instapundit.  No doubt I contribute to this stickiness, through my obsessive (and excessive) use of parentheticals, long and hyphenated modifiers, and frequent use of set-off-by-em-dashes interrupting clauses.

Previous Articles More Articles

Recent Posts

Categories

Monthly Archive