Notre Dame will play Michigan this Saturday in Ann Arbor in the first-ever night game at Michigan Stadium, the largest football stadium in the world. Why is this pertinent to Catholic legal education? Because both schools were founded by Catholic priests—the University of Michigan by Father Gabriel Richard in 1817 and Notre Dame by Father Edward Sorin in 1842. Both were fascinating figures in their own right--Richard, for example, was the first priest to serve in Congress and published the first newspaper in Detroit. So although I will be cheering for the Fighting Irish (my undergraduate alma mater), I’d like to think that every Notre Dame-Michigan game is a celebration of the role of Catholics in the history of American higher education.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Notre Dame-Michigan and Catholic Education
Monday, September 5, 2011
Constitution Day at Villanova with Philip Hamburger
Anyone in the Philadelphia area on Friday, September 16, will want to come to Villanova's Constitution Day Lecture, which will be delivered this year by Philip Hamburger, Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and author of the splendid books Separation of Church and State (Harvard UP, 2002) and Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard UP, 2008). Professor Hamburger will be speaking at 3:00pm that afternoon on "Censorship and Death," and Amy Wax, Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, will respond. Details here.
Robby George at GOP Debate in South Carolina
How many other law prof blogs have a blogger asking questions at a presidential debate? As noted in this story, our own Robby George will be part of the panel tonight at a Republican presidential debate in South Carolina:
How candidates respond to George’s queries, which will focus on the political and philosophical, could shake up a primary season that, so far, has been dominated by platitudes. The race for the GOP nomination, he says, is often cast as a scramble for the highly coveted but nebulous tea-party crown. But few voters, he laments, have a sense of how leading Republicans interpret the principles that inspire tea-party activists.
George aims to clarify the often blurry positions of Republican candidates on issues of political, moral, and philosophical importance. If they give him a stock or evasive response, he will follow up with sharper questions. It won’t be a fishing expedition for red-hot quotes, he emphasizes, but a quest for paragraph-length answers about America’s founding principles in an office-hours-type setting.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Family "Fragmentation," Economic Disparity, and Catholic Schools
In a column on the front-page of the Sunday editorial section of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Mitch Pearlstein of the Center of the American Experiment writes about the “fragmentation” of American families as “the explanation for economic disparity that we too readily sweep under the rug.”
The statistics for Hennepin County, which is Minneapolis and its suburbs, are deeply depressing: 18.3 percent of white children are born out of wedlock (which is hardly reassuring), while 84.3 percent of African-American children are born to a single parent. To be a black child in Minneapolis living with both parents is truly to be a minority. How ineffably sad! And the social science research confirms how powerful is the negative impact on economic progress, individual opportunity, educational gains, future marriage prospects for children, etc. As Pearlstein says:
Simply put, so long as fragmentation rates remain as huge as they are, enormous numbers of children will keep doing inadequately in school (and, as a result, in economic life) –- no matter how much money we spend, no matter how boldly politicians lead and no matter how passionately teachers teach.
What can we do? We of course need to address the decline of marriage, which is not helped by the ongoing depreciation of marriage into an expression of self-fulfillment for adults rather than as a stable home for a mother and father in which to raise children. The Catholic Church must maintain its moral stance on marriage, while somehow making that teaching more present and practically meaningful to a new generation living in a moral-cultural abyss. The outrageous statistics of family broken-ness may provide a starting place for the discussion. The current sad state of affairs is a testament to the dangers that follow radical changes in fundamental social structure, which began in the 1960s but continue today. The Catholic message is an answer to that crisis.
In the meantime, how do we help those who are trapped in the cycle of family fragmentation, that is, children who grow up without two parents and who too often are left without the educational benefits and discipline and healthy attitudes that adhere to children growing up in a stable and unbroken family? Spending more money on welfare programs or public schools or this or that social experiment hasn’t been working and certainly cannot do all of the work.
Pearlstein says the answer is educational choice. And I read him as focusing less on the academic quality of private schools than on the different culture and community that a private school can foster, supplying the very things that at-risk children need. The research confirms that private school options for children from single parent homes bears fruit by making progress and maturity into adulthood sustainable over the years:
I asked this principal of a Catholic elementary school in the Twin Cities what her institution's mission was. “To manifest God’s love in every child,” she said, or words close to that. As educational mission statements go, this was one of the briefest yet meatiest ever drafted.
We on the Mirror of Justice have posted regularly about the importance of our Catholic schools and why we as Catholics should support them. Creating opportunities and building a support system for those at risk by family fragmentation is one more reason to maintain and strengthen our Catholic schools.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Scruton on Icons, Brands, the Sacred, and the Profane
Roger Scruton is one of my favorite writers on aesthetics. In this piece, he discusses a new book on icons, "From Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon," by Martin Kemp. Perhaps channeling a little Mircea Eliade, Scruton writes that the difference between icons and brands is in the "sacredness" of the object. A bit from the essay below. (x-posted CLR Forum)
Things become sacred when sacrifices on behalf of the community have been distilled in them, as the sacrifices of generations of soldiers, sailors and airmen are distilled in the American flag. And sacred things are invitations to sacrifice, as is the flag in time of war. Sacred things create bridges across generations: they tell us that the dead and the unborn are present among us, and that their “real presence” lives in each of us, and each of us in it. The decline of religion has deprived us of sacred things. But it has not deprived us of the need for them. Nor has it deprived us of the acute sense of desecration we feel, when facetious images intrude at the places once occupied by these visitors from the transcendental.
The Holy See’s Response to the Irish Cloyne Report and Statements Made by Irish Officials
A few hours ago the Holy See released it “Response to Mr. Eamon Gilmore, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade of Ireland, Concerning the Cloyne Report, 03.09.2011.” [HERE] The text of the Holy See reply addresses a number of issues of interest to us at the Mirror of Justice. To mention a few: (1) Church-State relations and affairs; (2) Religious freedom and libertas ecclesiae; (3) the relation between Canon Law and Civil Law; and, (4) the responsibility of Church representatives and others for the care and protection of children and young people.
As you will see, this long response does two principal things: first of all, it demonstrates many areas of agreement between the Holy See and the Irish Government and its laws (which have a bearing on relations with other States); second, it specifies important issues where the rhetoric of some Irish officials did not accurately reflect the contents of (1) the Cloyne Report and of (2) the reality of situations addressed by some Irish officials. In these instances, the Holy See’s response clarifies these matters and notes fundamental disagreements with statements presented by the Irish Government.
RJA sj
Friday, September 2, 2011
The Libyan Revolution
Early on during President Obama's decision to intervene (by air) in Libya, when he was taking shots from both left and right, I offered my thanks on this blog for his decision to avert a massacre by the malignant Gaddafi regime. More recently, I've been much less sanguine about the consistency and principled nature of Obama's foreign policy. But I stand by my belief that he made the right call in Libya (even if he later offered implausible arguments for why American military action there did not implicate the War Powers Resolution). Recent events in Libya confirm the wisdom of President's Obama choice here, as well as that of Secretary of State Clinton who had urged the President to take action.
In the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristoff's encouraging report best sums it up, with important qualifications as well; herewith a couple of excerpts:
Americans are not often heroes in the Arab world, but as nonstop celebrations unfold here in the Libyan capital I keep running into ordinary people who learn where I’m from and then fervently repeat variants of the same phrase: “Thank you, America!”
* * *
President Obama took a huge political risk, averted a massacre and helped topple an odious regime. To me, the lesson is not that we should barge into Syria or Yemen — I don’t think we should — but that on rare occasions military force can advance human rights. Libya has so far been a model of such an intervention.
Catholic teaching cautions us to be careful about the use of military force. Catholic writers and thinkers too often extend that to opposing every use of military force. Acknowledging that "military force can advance human rights" needs to be part of that discussion.
Woman sues for Medicaid coverage for her unborn child
On the University Faculty for Life blog, Professor Teresa Collett writes:
A Nebraska woman who is not eligible for state medical assistance because of her immigration status has sued the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services for denying coverage to her unborn child under SCHIPS. According to local news accounts:
“Nebraska state government officials were sued in a similar case last year for cutting off prenatal care to more than 1,500 low-income pregnant women when they ended a program this year that provided Medicaid coverage for unborn children.
The class-action suit, also filed by the Nebraska Appleseed, alleged that the state acted outside its authority when ending the two-decade-old program.
More than 800 illegal immigrants and 700 legal residents lost Medicaid coverage in March 2010 after state officials said they were forced by the federal government to eliminate the one-of-a-kind policy because it broke Medicaid rules.
It allowed unborn children, not just their mothers, to qualify for Medicaid. That meant women who didn’t qualify for Medicaid — such as illegal immigrants — were allowed to get Medicaid-covered prenatal care.”
The case is Sarah Roe v. the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Resources et. al, CI- 11-3608, Lancaster County Dist. Ct.
Horwitz on the Possible Jurisprudence of Laws Designating a Fetus as a Human Being
Readers will, I think, be interested in this very good post by Paul Horwitz on putative state laws which would designate a fetus as a person, and the jurisprudential possibilities that would attend this move. I'll just say briefly that a number of states (New York is one -- see, e.g., section 125.45 of the NYPL) have specific provisions proscribing abortional homicide. How these new laws would affect those sorts of older laws is opaque to me.
The Fall Conference: "Radical Emancipation"
The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture is holding its 12th (time flies!) annual Fall Conference on Nov. 10-12, 2011, on the University's campus. The theme this year is "Radical Emancipation: Confronting the Challenge of Secularism." (More info here). This conference is always one of the highlights of the academic year at Notre Dame and this year's line-up is, as per usual, a great one, and includes Alasdair MacIntyre, Timothy Shah, Christian Smith, and many others. Be there!
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