Mirror of Justice

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Great news: Hasson to receive honorary degree from Notre Dame

I am delighted to pass on the news that my friend Seamus Hasson -- the founder of and inspiration for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty -- will receive an honorary degree from Notre Dame (his alma mater) at commencement this year. Hasson is, for me, a hero -- his book, "The Right to Be Wrong", is an excellent brief for religious liberty as a fundamental right for all persons, because they are persons -- and the Becket Fund is a crucial player in the struggle to vindicate and protect religious freedom.

Unfortunately, the Cardinal Newman Society -- for which Notre Dame's missteps seem to serve as never-to-be-missed occasions for direct-mail and online fundraising -- has focused instead on the person named to be the speaker at a separate (i.e., not Commencement) event for the Graduate School. (I think my bona fides as someone who cares deeply about the Catholic character of our Catholic universities are pretty well established, but I confess to being frustrated by watchdogs who notice only Notre Dame's occasional errors and challenges -- and disproportionately focus on Notre Dame's, as opposed to others' -- while ignoring its strengths, progress, and promise.)

We agree not to outlaw the Church. (How's that for a compromise?)

By Rob Vischer

Caroline Mala Corbin has posted a new paper, Expanding the Bob Jones Compromise. Here's the abstract:

Sometimes the right to liberty and the right to equality point in the same direction. Sometimes the two rights conflict. Which constitutional value should prevail when the right to religious liberty clashes with the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of race and sex? More particularly, should faith-based organizations, in the name of religious liberty, be immune from anti-discrimination law?

Bob Jones University v. United States suggests a compromise: permit faith-based organizations to discriminate on the basis of race or sex if that discrimination is religiously required, but at the same time refuse to condone or support that discrimination by denying those religious organizations any financial aid. In fact, it is already federal policy to withhold government subsidies from religious organizations that discriminate on the basis of race, and the Bob Jones Court rejected a free exercise challenge to that policy. The same policy should apply with regard to discrimination on the basis of sex. Allowing religious groups to discriminate on the basis of sex but declining to provide grants, vouchers, or tax exempt status to those that do discriminate honors both our commitment to religious liberty and our commitment to equality.

In the paper itself, we learn that "the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints . . . Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Orthodox Judaism exclude women from the ministry and other leadership positions." (pp. 14-15) Such organizations "should not receive taxpayer money." (p. 15) Indeed, "providing taxpayer money not only helps invidious discrimination flourish, but it puts the state's stamp of approval on an organization's discriminatory practices." (p. 22)

I'm not exactly sure what "receive taxpayer money" means. Certainly taxpayers are free to give their money to whatever group they choose. Tax-exempt status may mean that the government is foregoing revenue that they would receive absent such status, but that's not the same thing as receiving "taxpayer money," as though the government is directly subsidizing a church. As Justice Powell noted in his concurrence in Bob Jones, the tax exemption is not a tool with which to "reinforce any perceived 'common community conscience,'" but rather is an "indispensable means of limiting the influence of government orthodoxy on important areas of community life." (461 U.S. at 609)

As for Prof. Corbin's factual assertion that tax-exempt status conveys "the state's stamp of approval," that becomes more likely as the state becomes more selective in granting the status. I have not seen survey data, but my guess is that few Americans believe that the federal government approves (or disapproves) of the Catholic Church's all-male priesthood. That's how it should be.

In any event, how does all this amount to the "compromise" advertised in the paper's title? Apparently because Corbin refrains from "suggesting that these organizations be outlawed," noting that "arguably there are benefits to organizational diversity." (p. 15) (emphasis added) Very generous.

Colson: New Life after Watergate?

By Rob Vischer

Over at Christianity Today, Russell Moore reflects on the snarkiness of some of the Chuck Colson obituaries.

When you read those who smirk and dismiss the Chuck Colson conversion, the Chuck Colson life, don't get angry and don't be outraged. Read a subtext that belongs to all of us: the fear that the criminal conspiracy we've all been a part of will be exposed, and just can't be forgiven. Read the undercurrent of those who find it hard to believe that one can be not just pardoned, but "born again." That's indeed hard to believe. An empty grave in Jerusalem is all we have on which to base that claim, a claim that speaks louder than our own accusing hearts.

I have to believe that when Chuck Colson opened his eyes in the moments after death that he didn't hear anything about break-ins or dirty tricks or guilty consciences. I have to believe Mr. Colson heard a Galilean voice saying, "I was in prison and you visited me" (Matt. 25:36). I have to believe that he stood before his Creator with a new record, a new life transcript, one that belonged not to himself but to a Judean day-laborer who is now the ruler of the cosmos. And in that Lamb's Book of Life there are no eighteen minute gaps.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Some thoughts about Church and State

By Robert John Araujo, SJ

Over the past several weeks, questions of interest to the Mirror of Justice community dealing with the relation between Church and State have been occupying many discussions. As a consequence, I have been rereading a number of items regarding this topic. One of them is John Courtney Murray, S.J.’s 1966 article in Theological Studies where the author makes an important connection between two of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, i.e., the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) regarding Church-State matters. While noting that only religious freedom, per se, was addressed by the Council, Murray demonstrated in his important essay the obvious link with matters of Church and State relations that are very much with us at the present moment—and will be for the future.

While noting that Church and State matters in modern times were addressed by Leo XIII, the issues in the relationship dramatically changed as the twentieth century progressed. During Leo’s reign, the identity of State and Society were very close; however, as time progressed, the distinctions grew. If the Church and Society had a relationship, it too got distanced from the State. This separation of State and Society had an impact on the relation between the Church and the State.

At the root of the common ground formerly shared by Church, State, and Society was the idea of the human person. What is he or she? But with the passage of time, the State saw the person in a vast array of ways. For the Church and some elements of Society, there was a greater understanding of the notion about the dignity of the human person and the idea that there is one human family. Many States did not see or accept these understandings. Politicians and civil leaders may have offered lip service to both, but Christians tended to have a better understanding of why changes were occurring and why the Church had a clear, positive, and crucial role in all these matters dealing with dignity and rights. Why?

The State, through its civil functionaries, had varying views of the human person—quid est homo—but the Church had a universal understanding. While some civil authorities may have spoken about human rights and the dignity of the human person, the Church offered a deeper and unified understanding that went beyond serving the political interests of the moment. Murray saw the distinction first emerging in 1892 when Leo wrote his encyclical dealing with the emerging laicité in France. By the time the Second Council was in session, the insights first captured by Leo XIII were more clearly cognizable in the first half of the 1960s by Christians including the Council Fathers. To offer a counterpoint to the growing totalitarian or monolithic sense of “human rights” by States in the twentieth century, the Church saw the need to concentrate on freedom in two ways: that of the individual, and that of the community of individuals. In an ecclesial context, this meant (1) the freedom of the individual person who simultaneously has obligations and duties to all others and (2) the freedom of the community which is the Church. In furtherance of his thesis, Murray recognized that these two freedoms—these two non-derogable rights—are inextricably related.

Murray also understood that when the Council ended and Paul VI gave his exhortation to the civil authorities of the world, the Council acknowledged this twinning. As Pope Paul said in his remarks to the temporal powers, the Church “asks of you nothing but freedom—freedom to believe and to preach her faith, freedom to love God and to serve Him, freedom to live and to bring to men her message of life.”
I think that this passage of the pope is crucial to the present day examinations, discussions, and debates about religious freedom and the proper relationship between the Church and State. The fact that the Church and State are different and distinct does not necessarily imply that they cannot have a relationship. Moreover, separation is not synonymous with indifference. Why? Both the Church and the State have a critical interest in the common good and its furtherance. The American State talks about the general welfare; the Church relies on other words, but the interests, if not the same, largely overlap. It is in the interest of republican democracy, which we claim to have in the United States, to understand and embrace the differences between the Church and State but simultaneously to respect and support their common or mutual objectives.

I am not sure this is particularly well understood today as a read the ongoing discourse about Church and State matters. Murray noted that the Church sees her mission in the world of temporal affairs concentrating on the realization of human dignity, the advancement of authentic human rights, the promotion of unity within the human family, and “the sanctification of the secular activities of this world.” The transcendence of the human person, which is of major importance to the Church, is not in this particular equation for the State. So if it is not, why should the secular State (and its citizens who are of the secular persuasion) then mind having a relationship with the Church as the Council developed the concept of relationship and freedom?

RJA sj

Who is the Church?

By Robert John Araujo, SJ

I appreciated Susan’s posting on the question about who is the Church. There are folks who are puzzled by the fact that they see themselves as the Church but deny others the same opportunities they assert for themselves. In September of this year Susan’s University of St. Thomas is hosting a several day symposium entitled “Vatican II: Teaching and Understanding of the Council after Fifty Years.” I will be presenting a paper that addresses the issue which Susan and several of her commenters discuss in a variety of ways: who is the Church? In addition, I plan on exploring what the Council understood the interlinking roles of the different groups who constitute the Church, namely, the bishops, the clergy, the religious, and the laity. In order to accomplish this task, a careful and objective reading of the documents dealing with these groups along with the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) are in order. As these documents have both normative and juridical dimensions, it is my objective to demonstrate that they must be read together in order to understand in a coherent fashion who is the Church. I do not anticipate that my project will please everyone, but that is not what is important. What is important is that the case is made that the answer to the question “who is the Church” can be answered by any person of good will. I think Susan has made an important step in this undertaking.

RJA sj

Sam Brownback and the revitalization of the culture and the economy

By Michael Scaperlanda

Kansas' Governor, Sam Brownback, had an op-ed in the Topeka Capital-Journal yesterday that will be of interest to some of our readers. He says that a mural in the statehouse' west wing "Kansas' answer to the unstated question, "Freedom, yes, but to what end?"

The west wing mural depicts a Kansas farmer and his wife standing straight and tall, surrounded by their children, surveying the fruits of their labor — a barnyard full of livestock, a bountiful garden and grain gathered in the fields. In their bearing is the satisfaction of free people that is tempered with a quiet humility and gratefulness for all they have been given. In the distance, thunderclouds gather, perhaps as a testament to nature and to nature’s God, which graciously gives life and yet may test our unity in times of trouble and scarcity.

...As Kansans, we hold dear the stories and images of liberty and self-determination on the one hand and responsibility and self-sufficiency on the other. Only as we continue to see our lives as rooted in both of these stories will our experiment in self-government endure over many generations.

The men and women who settled our great state, who bled for freedom and dirtied their boots and hands to provide for themselves and their families, understood this well. An 1881 editorial in the Abilene Chronicle summarized it with typical prairie efficiency: “A man with a family, with 160 acres of land in Dickinson County (with a contented mind and a will to work) is far better off than the Astors or Vanderbilts, or even President Garfield, as far as the real substantial enjoyment of life is concerned.”

We can no longer afford to view our current economic crisis as something distinct and apart from the crisis of family and community decay. Increasing economic dependency on a deeply indebted government is not a viable long-term solution.

Likewise, economic opportunities in faraway places that entice our children to abandon the communities that nurtured them cannot be the answer.

Our economic prosperity depends on strong families and strong cultural institutions. Healthy families and communities require economic freedom. The best welfare program is a good job. The best child poverty prevention program is a stable, two-parent home. The best disaster recovery program is a community of resilient and caring neighbors and businesses. The best community revitalization happens when our towns and cities are free to create economic opportunities that stop exporting their best, brightest and hardest working elsewhere.

HT: Christopher Scaperlanda

Report on the Colloquium in Law

By Marc DeGirolami

Here is a story with some details on the Colloquium in Law law and religion seminar which my colleague, Mark Movsesian, and I taught this past semester as part of the activities of our Center for Law and Religion. The format was experimental -- demanding that the students assess a body of scholarship and zero in on the new claims being made by our presenters -- and both Mark and I thought it worked very well. Though the story does not quite say so, our students were really the stars of the course. Their questions and engagement with the speakers were direct, targeted to the specific arguments made by the speakers, and incisive. Mark and I were very proud of them.

Robby George Sworn in as Member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom

By Michael Moreland

Our own Robby George was sworn in to his new post as a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom yesterday. Justice Elena Kagan administered the oath, and Daniel Mark--one of Robby's graduate students at Princeton--held the Bible.

Anybody and Everybody

By Susan Stabile

I posted on my personal blog, Creo en Dios!, some thoughts about reactions to the CDF's recent action with relating to women religious in the United States in a post titled "Here Comes Everybody." I share them here for MOJ readers who might find them of interest:

There have been a lot of articles and other posts over the course of the last week relating to the decision of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to appoint a bishop to exercise oversight over reforms of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The CDF accuses the LCWR of "radical feminism" and "corporate dissent."

Not surprisingly, given the breadth of views within the Catholic Church, there are some who defend the action of the CDF and others who have expressed vehement criticism of the action.

One reaction caused me to pause longer than others. One of my Facebook friends wrote, "These men are not the Church."

As phrased, that is simply wrong. That is to say, the CDF alone is not the Church, none of us individually is. But a lot of people and groups fall under this large tent that is the Catholic Church. The parish I left at the end of this past year because it no longer spiritually nourished me, as well as the parish I joined. The people who share my vision of what Catholic social teaching says and the people who have a different understanding of what it means. The CDF and the rest of the institutional hierarchy and every individual Catholic - whether they go regularly to Mass or not. The people who say things that make me want to join hands and walk with them and the people who say things that make me want to cringe. We are ALL the Church.

It upsets me when some "conservative" Catholics (for lack of a better description) want to tell me I'm not the Church, suggesting I go elsewhere if I disagree with them. It upsets me equally when those at the opposite end of the spectrum suggest that those with whom they disagree are not the Church.

There is something to James Joyce' description of the Catholic Church as "Here Comes Everybody," an acknowledgement of the variety of people that make up the Church. An essential aspect of Catholicism is precisely that. I think we would all be better off if people were less quick to suggest that anybody is not part of everybody.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

A student's defense of Bishop Jenky's homily

By Rick Garnett

As I've mentioned before, I invited students in my "Catholic Social Thought and the Law" seminar to do a blog-post for MOJ. Theresa Smart, a political-theory student at Notre Dame, who is also in the seminar, shares these thoughts about the current controversy surrounding Bishop Jenky's recent homily:

Rarely does a Catholic homily reverberate through cyberspace to quite the same extent as that of the homily which Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, gave before a crowd of over 500 men from the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, on April 14. Read the full text here: http://www.thecatholicpost.com/post/PostArticle.aspx?ID=2440. Jenky gave the homily at a Mass culminating the annual diocesan men’s march, “A Call to Catholic Men of Faith.”

Jenky issued a bold call for “heroic Catholicism.” He also sparked a firestorm of controversy—including a formal complaint filed against him with the IRS by Chicago’s Anti-Defamation League—by drawing explicit parallels between the path upon which Obama’s administration seems to have embarked and those followed by Bismarck, Clemenceau, Hitler, and Stalin:

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

“Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgment seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.”

I cannot judge on the legal matter of whether Bishop Jenky’s words technically violate the IRS Revenue Ruling 2007-41 touching the political activity of 501(c)(3) organizations. But I do venture to suggest that perhaps Jenky’s words are true. How different is his message from that of Pope John Paul II in Centesimus annus?

“The root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the subject of rights which no one may violate—no individual, group, class, nation, or State…

“The culture and praxis of totalitarianism also involve a rejection of the Church. The State or the party which claims to be able to lead history towards perfect goodness, and which sets itself above all values, cannot tolerate the affirmation of an objective criterion of good and evil beyond the will of those in power, since such a criterion, in given circumstances, could be used to judge their actions. This explains why totalitarianism attempts to destroy the Church, or at least to reduce her to submission, making her an instrument of its own ideological apparatus” (¶44-45).

Serious Catholics ought to take Jenky’s suggestions seriously. Does our culture and political order affirm the transcendent dignity of the human person? Or is Jenky right to discern in recent governmental trends indications of a nascent “culture and praxis of totalitarianism”? The bishop by no means intends insensitivity towards victims of Stalin or Hitler’s abominable practices. If anything, by drawing such parallels he intends to generate a greater sensitivity towards the millions of innocent victims of abortion in America—that which has come to be known in some circles as the “American Holocaust.”

I do not think Jenky should either renounce his “incendiary statement” or be asked to resign from the Notre Dame Board of Fellows, as called for by 95 members of the Notre Dame faculty in a recent letter to the administration: http://www.pjstar.com/news/x787564497/Letter-from-Notre-Dame-faculty-demands-Jenky-apology?zc_p=1. And in fact, I think that Notre Dame, as a Catholic university, should follow his example in standing up for religious freedom and against the insidious soft despotism of relativism that pervades mainstream culture. Perhaps if more members of the clergy and scholarly communities had issued “incendiary statements” like this one, some of the gravest atrocities of the past century might have been preempted by a bolder and more conscientious citizenry.

As a final note, this editorial published by the Editor-in-Chief of Peoria’s Catholic newspaper contains some interesting ideas and helps put Bishop Jenky’s remarks in perspective: http://www.cdop.org/post/PostArticle.aspx?ID=2437.