Over the past week or so several of my friends here at the Mirror of Justice have been posting thoughtful presentations regarding some of the hot button issues of the day (such as same-sex marriage) and the Church’s role or lack of it concerning public policies and the formulation of legal norms—be they statutory or constitutional—addressing these policies and laws.
It is clear that within the community of persons who identify themselves as Catholic there is a wide range of opinions about issues such as marriage; sexual orientation and gender identity; autonomy; and the rights and liberties of the individual person. To discuss and debate these issues is a very American thing. Of course robust disputations are not restricted to Americans or to lawyers since they often occur in other political and legal cultures around the world. However, in the United States, they often exercise a prominent role in public life. A number of us here at the Mirror of Justice have defended the right of the Church to participate in these deliberations. After all, she has a distinctive teaching role that often contributes to advancement of positions which many, if not most, people of good will share.
For example, when the Church, through her principal teachers (the bishops), enter discussions about economic reforms that advance the common good, immigration reforms that are designed to improve the legitimate interests of the sovereign state and the migrant person, or the promotion of racial equality, most folks applaud the involvement of the Church. However, when it comes to neuralgic subjects like “reproductive rights” or same-sex marriage, the scenario changes dramatically especially when members of the hierarchy who, in the proper exercise of the ecclesiastical responsibilities, take positions that conflict with some of the other participants in the political and legal debates. Some of these folks insist that the Church, through her bishops, is violating the “separation of church and state.”
But in fact, there is no such constitutional principle. The constitutional principles which do exist regarding religious matters prohibit an establishment of religion and protect the free exercise of religion. The latter includes the right of religious persons and groups, including the Catholic Church, to enter public life and express their views and seek the implementation of their proposals that advance the common good.
It is clear that Michael Bayly (blogger of The Wild Reed—Thoughts and Reflections from a Progressive, Gay, Catholic Perspective), the individual whose position on same-sex marriage conflicts with that of the Twin Cities archdiocese and whom Susan brought to our attention earlier today, has a right to advance his views.
But so does Archbishop Nienstedt.
In addition, the archbishop has a duty to do so which is in part based on his Profession of Faith and his taking the Oath of Fidelity. When a man is called to orders in the Catholic Church, he is obliged to make the profession and offer the oath. Whether every person called to orders in the Catholic Church does this with a sincere, personal commitment is a question I cannot answer. But it is evident that the archbishop has taken his profession and oath earnestly. So do I. This is a fact that others must take stock of as they enter the field of debate on the important issues of the day.
It does seem that in a number of influential circles, the Church and her teachers should not be permitted to engage others in the public square on matters that are of interest to society; however, it would be anathema if the members and representatives of these same circles were forbidden to enter the arguments of the day and express their views.
Should the Church and her perspectives be denied participation in any public debate on the vital issues involving the making and enforcing of law and the development of public policies, this great country, her institutions, and the right to participate in public life will be endangered. Then we as a political and legal society will be another step closer to a totalitarian regime that presents itself to the world as a democracy.
RJA sj
Michael Gerson writes, in this op-ed, about former Sen. Santorum and "subsidiarity" here.
. . . In this view, needs are best served by institutions closest to individuals. When those institutions require help or protection, higher-order institutions should intervene. So when state governments imposed Jim Crow laws, the federal government had a duty to overturn them. When a community is caught in endless economic depression and drained of social capital, government should find creative ways to empower individuals and charities — maybe even prison ministries that change lives from the inside out.
This is not “big government” conservatism. It is a form of limited government less radical and simplistic than the libertarian account. A compassionate conservative approach to governing would result in a different and smaller federal role — using free-market ideas to strengthen families and communities, rather than constructing centralized bureaucracies. It rejects, however, a utopian belief in unfettered markets that would dramatically increase the sum of suffering. . . .
As Rob Vischer and Patrick Brennan (and many others) could explain better than I'm able, subsidiarity is not entirely about the "local v. central / big v. small" question; it is, as I understand it, more importantly a principle about pluralism, and "social ontology." Still, I'm happy to have the idea discussed in the Washington Post and elsewhere.
As many people doubtless are aware, there will be an amendment on the ballot in Minnesota this November to amend the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Minnesotans appear to be deeply divided on the issue; a poll conducted in November found 48 percent of Minnesotans in favor and 43 percent opposed to it.
In the Twin Cities, Archbishop Neinstedt has been strongly supporting the amendment. In October 2010 he sent a video to all Catholic households in Minnesota advocating for the amendment. (Rob discussed reaction to that here.) Over the past several months he has taken a number of steps, including directing parishes to appoint committees to garner support for the initiative and proposing a prayer to be read at all masses for the passage of the amendment.
Most recently, the Archbishop sent a letter to the priests and deacons of the Archdiocese reiterating the importance of supporting the amendment and stating his expectation that priests and deacons who have personal reservations on the issue not express those publicly. In relevent part it reads:
It is my expectation that all the priests and deacons in this Archdiocese will support this venture and cooperate with us in the important efforts that lie ahead. The gravity of this struggle, and the radical consequences of inaction propels me to place a solemn charge upon you all — on your ordination day, you made a promise to promote and defend all that the Church teaches. I call upon that promise in this effort to defend marriage. There ought not be open dissension on this issue. If any have personal reservations, I do not wish that they be shared publicly. If anyone believes in conscience that he cannot cooperate, I want him to contact me directly and I will plan to respond personally.
Not surprisingly, there has been some criticism of the Archbishop's letter to priests and deacons. Whatever else one thinks, the reference to ordination vows to defend Church teaching equates one's position on whether the State constitution should be amended with Church doctrine. Church teaching on marriage is clear, but is it really self-evident that whether the state constitution be amended is a matter of Church doctrine?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
A deeply interesting looking book by the brilliant French historian and political theorist Émile Perreau
-Saussine, who died tragically young at 37 years old, Catholicism and Democracy: An Essay in the History of Political Thought (Richard Rex trans.) (Princeton University Press 2012). I have read some of Perreau-Saussine's reflections on the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and they are truly excellent -- so far as I know, his superb intellectual biography of MacIntyre has not been translated. That ought to be rectified immediately. English readers would appreciate his thoughtful and penetrating remarks -- an illuminating take on MacIntyre that is distinctively French in certain ways (I believe, but am not certain, that Pierre Manent was a teacher, or at least a colleague, of Perreau-Saussine, and it seemed to me that one could sense the influence here and there). Here is Princeton's description of this book:
Catholicism and Democracy is a history of Catholic political thinking from the French Revolution to the present day. Emile Perreau-Saussine investigates the church's response to liberal democracy, a political system for which the church was utterly unprepared.
Looking at leading philosophers and political theologians--among them Joseph de Maistre, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Charles Péguy--Perreau-Saussine shows how the church redefined its relationship to the State in the long wake of the French Revolution. Disenfranchised by the fall of the monarchy, the church in France at first embraced that most conservative of ideologies, "ultramontanism" (an emphasis on the central role of the papacy). Catholics whose church had lost its national status henceforth looked to the papacy for spiritual authority. Perreau-Saussine argues that this move paradoxically combined a fundamental repudiation of the liberal political order with an implicit acknowledgment of one of its core principles, the autonomy of the church from the state. However, as Perreau-Saussine shows, in the context of twentieth-century totalitarianism, the Catholic Church retrieved elements of its Gallican heritage and came to embrace another liberal (and Gallican) principle, the autonomy of the state from the church, for the sake of its corollary, freedom of religion. Perreau-Saussine concludes that Catholics came to terms with liberal democracy, though not without abiding concerns about the potential of that system to compromise freedom of religion in the pursuit of other goals.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Civil unions have become popular in Europe, and now they're making headway in the U.S. Designed to provide a non-marriage alternative to same-sex couples, they're being embraced by opposite-sex couples who reject marriage. A recent study based on Cook County's civil union law raises some concerns, as John Culhane reports:
Many of the other straight civil union pioneers have also said no to marriage—for themselves and as an institution. The evidence is in a report that the Cook County Clerk’s Office recently issued on the nation’s first opposite-sex couples who civilly united. It found dissatisfaction with the institution of marriage because of concerns with its historical assignment of roles, its connection to religion, and its unfairness to gay and lesbian couples. My own interviews with some of these same couples, who have rejected marriage and plunged into the shallower, murkier pool of the civil union, reflect a cohort prepared to take the wrecking ball to marriage itself.
The numbers in the study are quite limited, and for all we know, those who choose civil unions may never have chosen marriage anyway. But many defenders of traditional marriage have viewed civil unions as a way to grant legal legitimacy to same-sex unions while maintaining the integrity of marriage. In the end, will civil unions end up undercutting marriage?
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
On December 27th, the world of philosophy lost one of its most brilliant and eminent figures---Michael Dummett, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University. I got to know Professor Dummett and his wife Ann in the early 1980s when I was a lecturer in Jurisprudence in New College, to which the Wykeham chair was attached. He was a friendly, jovial man, with an impressive mane of white hair and a roar of a laugh. He originally made his reputation as an interpreter of Frege, and went on to make important contributions in the fields of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics. He was also an expert on the theory of voting and (of all things) tarot.
Michael was a faithful Catholic, having converted to the faith at age 19 before beginning his undergraduate studies at Oxford. He had a special devotion to the Eucharist, of which he wrote a famous defense ("The Intelligibility of Eucharistic Doctrine" in William J. Abraham and Steven W. Holzer, eds., The Rationality of Religious Belief: Essays in Honour of Basil Mitchell, Clarendon Press, 1987). He and Ann were tireless campaigners against every form of racism, and they were among the few pro-life leftists in Britain. (Pro-lifers are hardly in abundance even among political conservatives in Britain.) He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1999.
But there is more sad news. Only days after Professor Dummett's death, we lost another outstanding Catholic philosopher and I lost another friend: Alfonso Gomez-Lobo of Georgetown University. Professor Gomez-Lobo, who was born in Chile, was also an interpreter (and translator) of Frege, though his most important scholarly contributions were in ethics and on the thought of ancient philosophers, especially the Greeks. He was the Ryan Family Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Georgetown.
Alfonso and I became close friends when we served together on the President's Council on Bioethics, under the chairmanship of the great Leon Kass, beginning in 2002. He was a wonderfully kind man and a guilelessly charming one. He was admired and respected even by those members of the Council who did not share his perspective or views on the ethics of human embryonic stem-cell research and "therapeutic" cloning. (Alfonso and I were co-authors of an addendum to the Council's report Human Cloning and Human Dignity, available here: http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5550&printer_friendly=1.) He was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Life.
Requiem Aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetuae luceat eis. Requiescant in pace.
Whitley Kaufman (U. Mass. Lowell, Philosophy) has posted a generous review of the volume on retributivism edited by Mark White (to which I contributed a chapter) on the Law and Politics Book Review run by the University of Maryland.
