On Thursday, October 6, the good folks at the Lumen Christi Institute are holding what looks to be a really good event.
Cardinal George at the University of Chicago, Symposium on “God, Freedom, and Public Life”
Thursday, October 6, 4pm-6pm:
Mandel Hall
1131 East 57th Street
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Social Thought
The Lumen Christi Institute is pleased to co-sponsor a symposium at the University of Chicago entitled “God, Freedom, and Public Life” on the occasion of the publication of Francis Cardinal George’s book God in Action: How Faith in God can Address the Challenges of the World.
The symposium will feature contributions from Amitai Etzioni (George Washington University), Hans Joas (University of Chicago), Martin Marty (University of Chicago), and Francis Cardinal George, OMI (Archbishop of Chicago). Jean Bethke Elshtain (University of Chicago) will chair the event.
Amitai Etzioni is University Professor and Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is also Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. Etzioni is the author of twenty-four books. His most recent books are My Brother’s Keeper: A Memoir and a Message; From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations; and How Patriotic is the Patriot Act?
Hans Joas is a Permanent Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and Professor of Sociology and a Member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Joas has taught at many institutions as a visiting professor, most recently in Berlin, and has published several books on social theory, most notably The Creativity of Action.
Martin Marty, an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he taught for 35 years and where the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion has since been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. The author of over fifty books, Marty has written the three-volume Modern American Religion as well as Politics, Religion and the Common Good.
Francis Cardinal George, OMI is the first Chicago native to become Archbishop of Chicago. A member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, George is the sixth Cardinal to lead the 2.3 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago. He has assumed a prominent position among U.S. Cardinals, serving as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010. In addition to his most recent book, he is also author of The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion and Culture.
My colleague at Notre Dame, Robert Audi, has a new book out called Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State. Here is the description, from OUP:
Democratic states must protect the liberty of citizens and must accommodate both religious liberty and cultural diversity. This democratic imperative is one reason for the increasing secularity of most modern democracies. Religious citizens, however, commonly see a secular state as unfriendly toward religion. This book articulates principles that enable secular governments to protect liberty in a way that judiciously separates church and state and fully respects religious citizens.
After presenting a brief account of the relation between religion and ethics, the book shows how ethics can be independent of religion-evidentially autonomous in a way that makes moral knowledge possible for secular citizens-without denying religious sources a moral authority of their own. With this account in view, it portrays a church-state separation that requires governments not only to avoid religious establishment but also to maintain religious neutrality. The book shows how religious neutrality is related to such issues as teaching evolutionary biology in public schools, the legitimacy of vouchers to fund private schooling, and governmental support of "faith-based initiatives." The final chapter shows how the proposed theory of religion and politics incorporates toleration and forgiveness as elements in flourishing democracies. Tolerance and forgiveness are described; their role in democratic citizenship is clarified; and in this light a conception of civic virtue is proposed.
Overall, the book advances the theory of liberal democracy, clarifies the relation between religion and ethics, provides distinctive principles governing religion in politics, and provides a theory of toleration for pluralistic societies. It frames institutional principles to guide governmental policy toward religion; it articulates citizenship standards for political conduct by individuals; it examines the case for affirming these two kinds of standards on the basis of what, historically, has been called natural reason; and it defends an account of toleration that enhances the practical application of the ethical framework both in individual nations and in the international realm.
Interestingly, one of the claims advanced in another, recent book -- one that is likely familiar to MOJ readers -- "God's Century", by Toft, Philpott, and Shah -- is that the recent "wave" of democratization is both facilitating and reflecting a resurgence in religious belief and practice. Anyway, Audi's book (like "God's Century") should be of interest.
The legal profession as we know it today was born between the 12th and 13th centuries in Europe, and
most especially at the University of Bologna. The new lawyers practiced in church courts -- indeed, as James Brundage notes in his magnificent study, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts (Chicago Press 2008):
[P]rofessional lawyers first emerged in the courts of the medieval church. Practitioners in civil courts that employed the procedural system of the ius commune [the common, learned law] quickly followed suit and adopted procedures that resembled those already introduced in the ecclesiastical courts. Development of a professional identity among the canonists thus seems to have supplied a model that other professional groups, such as English common lawyers and university-trained physicians, adapted to their own needs and purposes. (3)
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