I have a short piece up at The Christian Century on why “religious progressives” should support strong religious-conscience protections even for beliefs with which they disagree. The piece takes the contraception mandate as its starting point. In the battle to protect religious freedom, I think religious progressives are a crucial opinion bloc (yes, I know the term needs more definition).
Monday, December 19, 2011
"Religious Progressives" and Religious Freedom
originalism and sex discrimination
Here is a link to an interesting Slate article on originalism and sex discrimination. The article notes that there recently has been much discussion about the original meaning of the equal protection clause. Last year, Justice Scalia expressed the view that the 14th amendment doesn't prohibit sex discrimination, a position he seemed to disavow in congressional testimony. Steve Calabresi and Julie Rickert have weighed in with a lengthy article in the Texas Law Review. That article argues that the original public meaning of the 14th amendment does ban sex discrimination. The Slate article explores some of the implications that this debate might have on the Perry litigation involving California's Propostion 8.
Richard M.
The Signaling Function of Suggested or Threatened Impeachment
The rather impetuous comments of Newt Gingrich over the weekend on Face the Nation have received some warranted scrutiny, including over at Prawfsblawg by my friend Paul Horwitz. In response to some questions by the host about his view of the Supreme Court and of courts in general, Gingrich said a few things about the secularism in evidence in the Mt. Soledad Cross case out of the Ninth Circuit as well as the "under God" Pledge of Allegiance case decided by the Ninth. Early in the interview, he also said this:
I think part of the advantage I have is that I'm not a lawyer. And so as historian, I look at the context of the judiciary and the constitution in terms of American history. The fact is, I'll just give you two examples -- Judge Biery's ruling on June 1st that he would jail the superintendent if anybody at the high school graduation used the word benediction, used the word invocation, asked for a moment of silence, asked the audience to stand, or mentioned God, he would jail the superintendent was such an anti-American dictatorship of speech that there's no reason the American people need to tolerate a federal judge who is that out of sync with an entire culture. So I have to ask the question, is there an alternative? What's the recourse? Well, one recourse is impeachment.
One interesting feature of the discussion is the move to threaten or, perhaps better in this case, to suggest, impeachment. This is, of course, nothing new. One of the first articles I wrote (and which has all the marks of an early piece) had to do with congressional threats of impeachment against federal judges; the practice is very old, indeed, in no small measure because it is so difficult to actually impeach a judge (or anybody else for that matter) -- I document some of the contexts of successful and threatened judicial impeachments in the piece.
Threats of removal against the judiciary, whether by Congress or the executive, can also, in appropriate cases, serve a kind of signaling function -- again, especially so since the prospects of actual impeachment because of disagreement with a substantive outcome are so low.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Immigration and American Exceptionalism
I'm on the "pro" side of the debate about American exceptionalism. I'm also on the "pro" side of the debate over immigration. In a lecture at Grove City College I offered an argument about the connection between the two. Here's a link to the video: http://vimeo.com/29409149
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Rhapsodizing about the benefits of marriage
I did not think I would live to see the day when an ultraorthodox social liberal such as Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus would "rhapsodize about the benefits of marriage." But, mirabile dictu, the day has come. It has been hastened by a Pew Research Center study of the baleful social and economic consequences of the decline of marriage. As social conservatives have been saying since the dawn of the modern sexual revolution, marriage really is the original and best department of health, education, and welfare. A society that fails to maintain a healthy marriage culture will always pay a heavy price---a price that will be disproportionately borne by the poor.
Commenting on the Pew Study, Ruth Marcus says: "Rhapsodizing about the benefits of marriage may have a conservative air — promoting marriage among welfare recipients was a big deal during the George W. Bush administration — but you don’t have to be a conservative to bemoan these statistics."
Here's her column: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-marriage-gap-presents-a-real-cost/2011/12/16/gIQAz24DzO_story.html
Educating Young People in Justice and Peace
A few days ago, Pope Benedict XVI issued the 2012 World Day of Peace message. [HERE] Even though these messages traditionally bear the date of January 1, they have been traditionally issued on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. This year’s message is entitled “Educating Young People in Justice and Peace.” While there is a lot to digest in this relatively short text, there are a few important points worth focusing on here since the Mirror of Justice is dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory—and surely education, justice, and peace have something to do with this project.
The Holy Father begins this message by noting that young people are gifted with enthusiasm and idealism (yet, perhaps not during final exams); therefore, they are often a source of new hope for the world. Educators have a role to exercise in helping to direct and inform this enthusiasm and idealism. In this regard the Pope points out that those who have a responsibility for the education and formation of young people (I would think this includes law professors) must acknowledge the impact they can and do have on what inspires the enthusiasm and objectives of the young. The attending obligations that educators have must then have to understand the difficulties which all face regarding hope for the future and what are the sources of these obstacles.
One of the major obligations of educators, then, concerns the need to help the young see beyond themselves. If we are truly living in an “it’s-all-about-me” culture, there is an antidote to the problems which such a taste engenders.
It is responsibility. Claims, meaning rights, are important, but there is more to the theme of rights for them to mean something that is durable and good—and that is responsibility. Without responsibility, the freedom that rights claims stimulate will be nothing more than the misguided pursuit of license to do whatever I want to do simply because I want to do it. But with responsibility guiding the way, the independence of rights will eventually enable the one exercising rights to recognize that this exercise necessitates interdependence.
And the best realization of this is the interdependence that anyone can gain in the family where the mother and father are both present and with their complementarity that exercises a sustaining love that can be passed on to the next generation regarding the challenges that the young will inevitably face. Within this exercise of love come many other facets of the education that anyone would ever need—including profound insight into what is just and what is peaceful. The external educator who is outside this family bond, including the law professor, has an important role to ensure that these educational precepts are continued in the environments where the young go. Alas, so often they are not, but there is our challenge.
I pray fervently that we are up to the challenge to see and to instill these truths about who we are and what we can do together! As Pope Benedict, relying on St. Augustine, recalls: what does the human person desire more deeply than truth? That is, truth about: who one is; who one is in community with others; and, who one is before God. If these are the questions posed by all educators, then the vital answers desperately needed for enduring justice and peace will follow—with the help of God. And there will reign justice and peace.
RJA sj
The Genealogy of Jesus
Every Advent and Lenten season, Villanova's Office for Mission and Ministry commissions a set of short reflections from faculty, staff, and students on the readings for each day (link here). Here is my assigned reflection on today's reading, Matthew 1:1-17:
Today’s gospel reading—Matthew’s account of the genealogy of the Messiah by listing the dozens of ancestors of Jesus—is usually thought of as among the most tedious in the New Testament, much dreaded by preachers, rarely put on prayer cards, and never chosen for weddings. But in it we hear at two lessons for us.
First, Christ did not come to redeem our ideas about our salvation but instead to redeem our material, bodily history itself. Christianity does not teach a myth about the way God happened to save us. Christianity preaches the reality of God’s redemption of the world in and through a human being born of the House of Israel. In the genealogy of Jesus we hear the flesh and blood history of the people of Israel through whom God revealed himself and saves us.
Second, the ancestors of the Messiah are not generally the nice, quiet, kindly people we might imagine. In fact, the central figure in the genealogy of Jesus—David—was the unlikely shepherd boy chosen to be anointed as king, whereupon he ordered the murder of the husband of a woman he impetuously fell in love with and then fathered Solomon with her. As Herbert McCabe, OP notes, “The whole story of David, the ruthlessly and highly successful bandit who, in the power of the Holy Spirit, got control of a whole confederacy of tribes, is, of course, full of intrigue and murder—successful intrigue and murder.” A reader of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus who knows the Old Testament figures recounted there would see that Jesus’ ancestors were, for the most part, sinful, corrupt, venal, murderous, and unfaithful—just like us, which is why, as McCabe concludes, Jesus “belongs to us and came to help us, no wonder he came to a bad end, and gave us some hope.”
Friday, December 16, 2011
"Tebow and the Mystery of Victory"
My friend and colleague, Jeff Pojanowski, has a nice reflection over at Patheos about the Tim Tebow phenomenon. He concludes:
Hollywood and sports culture have little patience for losers and less of an eye for ordinary grace. If Tebow's winning streak or career does not end in triumph, any continued dignity, faith, and service on his part—no matter how revolutionary—likely will not be televised. Yet the vast majority of children who order Tebow jerseys will also see their own NFL dreams evaporate. Beyond that, many will grow up to lose jobs, disappoint loved ones, be disappointed by loved ones, and experience dark nights of the soul that persist well past dawn. For those reasons, it may be Tebow's worldly defeat—if handled with grace, humility, and constancy—that could make his jersey truly worth holding on to.
I guess we wouldn't want to rush these things.....
On the plus side, here's a report that Pope Benedict XVI is set to canonize and name as a Doctor of the Church the 12th century philosopher, master gardener, musician, and mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, next October. Pope Benedict spoke about her in a couple of audiences this past September, available here and here. (Do you suppose that might lead to a rise in the popularity of Hildegard as a girl's name? I'd like to think so.)
On the minus side, John Allen's current column on Marco Politi's new book about Pope Benedict provides the following progress report on Pope Benedict's appointment of women to Vatican offices:
Politi notes that in a meeting with the clergy of Rome in 2006, Benedict said, "It is right to ask whether in ministerial service ... it might be possible to make more room, to give more offices of responsibility to women."
Yet five years after those remarks, Politi observes, the situation in the Vatican -- which is, after all, the ministerial environment over which a pope has the most direct control -- is largely unchanged. Here's what he reports:
- There are only two women at the level of "superiors," meaning decision-making roles: Salesian Sr. Enrica Rosanna, under-secretary of the Congregation for Religious, and Flaminia Giovanelli, under-secretary of the Council for Justice and Peace, a lay member of Focolare.
- In the first section of the Secretariat of State, which handles internal church business, no woman holds the role of a "head of office," and there's just one sister working at the lower administrative level. In the second section, responsible for foreign relations, it's the same -- just one woman at the basic administrative level.
- In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there's no female theologian among the consulters, and there's no woman on the commission responsible for matrimonial cases. On the International Theological Commission, which advises the congregation on doctrinal issues, there are two women among the 29 members.
Shifting Views on the Death Penalty
An interesting report from the Death Penalty Information Center, indicating that the death penalty was imposed 78 times this year. According to the report, that represents the lowest figure since 1976 (the year of Gregg v. Georgia, when capital punishment was reinstated as constitutional) and a dramatic decrease from last year alone. There are other figures worth taking a look at as well which suggest shifting attitudes toward the death penalty, though, as always, shifts in public opinion can be unpredictable.
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