Monday, October 22, 2012
Alasdair MacIntyre . . . 4 years ago
On Oct. 22, 2008, our own Michael Scaperlanda linked to this essay, by Prof. Alasdair MacIntyre, "The Only Vote Worth Casting in November."
Arbp. Chaput, in the New York Times . . . 8 years ago.
Here's a post of mine, from 8 years ago today (tempus fugit, and all that):
Here is a link to an op-ed by Denver's Archbishop Chaput, "Faith and Patriotism", in today's New York Times. He opens with this:The theologian Karl Barth once said, "To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."That saying comes to mind as the election approaches and I hear more lectures about how Roman Catholics must not "impose their beliefs on society" or warnings about the need for "the separation of church and state." These are two of the emptiest slogans in current American politics, intended to discourage serious debate. No one in mainstream American politics wants a theocracy. Nor does anyone doubt the importance of morality in public life. Therefore, we should recognize these slogans for what they are: frequently dishonest and ultimately dangerous sound bites.
I have no doubt that the "separation of church and state", properly understood, is good for -- even necessary for -- authentic religious freedom. That said, Archbishop Chaput makes a good point here, I think. He continues, later in the piece:
The civil order has its own sphere of responsibility, and its own proper autonomy, apart from the church or any other religious community. But civil authorities are never exempt from moral engagement and criticism, either from the church or its members. The founders themselves realized this.The founders sought to prevent the establishment of an official state church. Given America's history of anti-Catholic nativism, Catholics strongly support the Constitution's approach to religious freedom. But the Constitution does not, nor was it ever intended to, prohibit people or communities of faith from playing an active role in public life. Exiling religion from civic debate separates government from morality and citizens from their consciences. That road leads to politics without character, now a national epidemic.
It strikes me that Chaput's observations are valuable, wherever we might stand on the question that Michael Perry, Greg Sisk, Cathy Kaveny, Mark Roche, Gerry Bradley, and Robert George have been addressing (i.e., can faithful Catholics conclude that, all things considered, it is better for the common good to vote for John Kerry?).
And, here's a piece (thanks to Distinctly Catholic) by Arbp. Chaput (now of Philadelphia) on "Public Witness and Catholic Citizenship." A bit:
In the end, the heart of truly faithful citizenship is this: We’re better citizens when we’re more faithful Catholics. The more authentically Catholic we are in our lives, choices, actions and convictions, the more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our nation.
Does Judge Posner need a new research assistant?
In his TNR review of Akhil Amar's The Living Constitution, Judge Richard Posner writes:
THE CONSTITUTION of the United States has its passionate
votaries ... as does the Bible. But both sets of worshippers face the
embarrassment of having to treat an old, and therefore dated, document as
authoritative. Neither set’s members are willing to say that because it is old,
and therefore dated, it is not authoritative. Some say it is old but not dated;
they are the constitutional and Biblical literalists. But most of the
worshippers admit, though not always out loud, that their holy book is dated
and must therefore be updated (without altering the text) so as to preserve its
authority. They use various techniques for updating. ...
[Akhil] Amar’s method of updating, which is also the one the
Catholic Church applies to the Bible, is supplementation from equally
authoritative sources. The Church believes that a Pope receives divine
inspirations that enable him to proclaim dogmas that are infallible and thus
have equal authority with the Bible. [For example] Jesus Christ’s mother
does not play a prominent role in the New Testament, but she became a focus of
Catholic veneration, and in 1854 the Pope proclaimed the dogma of Mary’s
Immaculate Conception (that is, that she had been born without original sin).
This and other extra-Biblical Catholic dogmas, such as the Nicene Creed, which
proclaimed the consubstantiality of the Son and the Father, form a kind of
parallel Bible, equal in authority to the written one, which reached its modern
form in the third century C.E.
It would not have taken that long to check, with someone who might actually know, and see if these paragraphs actually describe what "[t]he Church believes[.]" A cautionary tale, perhaps, for those of us who think we know something about some things to not imagine that we therefore know something about all things.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
James Wood on the Book of Common Prayer
This year is the the 350th anniversary of the 1662 final version of Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. Writing in The New Yorker, James Wood, a nonbeliever, is the latest writer to try to explain why the BCP had such a powerful influence on Christian faith and English language and culture. He emphasizes its "language at once grand and simple, heightened and practical, archaic and timeless":
"Catholic Faith and Public Life" at Harvard
Mary Ann Glendon and I will be appearing this coming Monday (October 22) at 7:30 p.m. in DiGiovanni Hall at the Harvard University Catholic Center to discuss "Catholic Faith and Public Life." All are welcome.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/kevin.p.lee1/posts/329935690437519?notif_t=story_reshare
Endorsements and Theology
I am very disappointed in Rev. Billy Graham. As a Catholic, I do not share all of his theology, but I have generally held him in high regard as a Christian leader. If, as a matter of conscience, he has decided to endorse Governor Romney, that is fine. If, as a matter of theology, he holds the conviction that Mormonism is a cult (a view he has publicly maintained for decades), that is his right. However, hiding/denying the latter in order give greater credibility to the former strikes me as hypocritical. If this effective endorsement represents a shift in his theology, it would be far more meaningful to publish a statement indicating that Rev. Graham no longer believes that Mormonism is a cult.
An archived version of the characterization of Mormonism as a cult, pulled from the Billy Graham website after it became obvious that it was in tension with the effective endorsement, may be found here...
http://web.archive.org/web/20100605052727/http://www.billygraham.org/articlepage.asp?ArticleID=2072
Friday, October 19, 2012
Another Circuit Strikes Down DOMA
On October 18th, the Second Circuit struck down DOMA in Windsor v. United States. According to the majority, Section 3 of DOMA requires heightened scrutiny. Combined with similar First Circuit precedent and the Ninth Circuit's decisions related to Proposition 8, it is now even more likely that the Supreme Court will take it upon itself to resolve the split.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/us/appeals-court-rules-against-defense-of-marriage-act.html?_r=0
Call for Papers: "Intellectual Property and Religious Thought"
Tell your friends who may be interested in participating in this! -- Tom B.
+++++
CALL FOR PAPERS: “Intellectual Property and Religious Thought”
University of St. Thomas School of Law, April 5, 2013
The University of St. Thomas will hold a conference titled “Intellectual Property and Religious Thought,” on April 5, 2013, co-sponsored by the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy and The University of St. Thomas Law Journal. The conference will be held at the University of St. Thomas School of Law building in downtown Minneapolis.
The conference will bring together legal scholars, religious ethicists, religion scholars, and theologians for an interdisciplinary discussion of how religious themes, practices, and communities may inform and shape intellectual property law and policy. The time is ripe for such a conversation. The long, rich tradition of religious thought concerning property rights and obligations has only begun to be applied to the problems concerning intellectual property (IP) that are so central to the Information Age. The foundations for analyzing these issues are deeply contested culturally, as evidenced by the warring slogans “Copying is theft” and “Intellectual property is theft.” The Catholic Church and other religious bodies have issued brief but non-systematic statements on certain issues, such as biotechnology patents and access to patented medicines or seeds. Underlying cases such as Bowman v. Monsanto, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, are deep debates about social justice and the ownership of artificially created but naturally replicating things (in that case, patents on seeds)—both matters to which major religions have historically spoken. The conference and papers from it published in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal will be catalysts for this interdisciplinary conversation.
Keynote/featured speakers confirmed for the conference include (further invitations pending):
- Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, Raymond P. Niro Professor of Intellectual Property Law, DePaul University College of Law
- Paul Griffiths, Warren Professor of Catholic Theology, Duke University Divinity School
- Kevin Outterson, Associate Professor of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights, Boston University School of Law
- Audrey Chapman, Joseph M. Healy, Jr. Chair in Medical Humanities and Bioethics, University of Connecticut School of Medicine
Two broad themes provide the framework for conference papers: the idea of creativity as gift, and the idea of stewardship of property as fundamental to ownership. These are meant to be highly flexible and allow for a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:
- Creativity as a gift: its implication for particular areas in copyright, patent, or other IP laws
- Limits on patentability, of living things or natural processes, in the light of religious frameworks
- Particular moral obligations of IP rights-holders, under stewardship or other religious themes
- IP and human development in religious perspectives, under frameworks such as “the preferential option for the poor” or others
- Analyses of particular creative/innovation industries or practices under religious norms and frameworks
- The role of religious norms or communities in (a) encouraging compliance with IP rights or (b) challenging IP rights
- Religious communities’ treatment of their own IP-eligible material
Depending upon the number of accepted papers, they may be presented in plenary or concurrent sessions. Accepted papers will be considered for publication in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Abstracts of proposed papers should be one page and should include the author’s name, affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. The deadline for submission of proposals is December 3, 2012. Notification of acceptance will be made by December 13, 2012. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail to tcberg[at]stthomas.edu or by first-class mail to
Professor Thomas Berg, c/o Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy; University of St. Thomas, MSL 400, 1000 La Salle Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403-2015
The call for papers is on the web here.
Be citizens, not partisans
I posted the following comment on my Facebook page. It's generated an interesting discussion among my friends, including my wonderful former student, and Notre Dame Law School grad, Michael Fragoso (who does not quite see eye to eye with me on this one).
Conservative Friends: I know that both sides in politics take people's remarks out of context whenever doing so provides a way of making opponents look bad. Liberals do it to conservatives; conservatives do it to liberals. Democrats do it to Republicans and Republicans do it to Democrats. Republicans do it to Republicans, and Democrats do it to Democrats, in primary elections. But that doesn't make it right. The public good is not served by it, and often it is disserved. At the risk of coming off as prissy and perhaps something of a scold to boot, may I respectfully request that we not seize upon President Obama's remark about losing four men in Libya being "not optimal"? In context, the remark was not disrespectful, callous, or otherwise untoward. Honestly, it is not fair to use it to depict the President as making light of the killing of our Ambassador and those who were murdered with him. My Facebook friends know I have been very tough on the President for his handling of the Libyan affair (and for many other things). I am working hard, as I know many of you are, to defeat him. I have been extremely critical of what I believe was a grotesque lie told by the President in the most recent debate, suggesting that from the start he had identified the Libyan attack as a premeditated act by terrorists, and not merely a spontaneous attack by a mob that had been enflamed by an offensive anti-Islamic film. I believe he will pay a heavy political price for that lie. And he should. But let's criticize the President, and our political opponents generally, for what they deserve criticism for. Let's not criticize them unfairly. Let's be citizens, not partisans.
"The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era"
Last weekend, I participated (along with MOJ-ers Rob Vischer, Patrick Brennan, and Tom Berg!) in what was, I think, the most rewarding academic conference I've experienced: "The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era." Thanks and congrats to Larry Alexander and Steve Smith, of the University of San Diego, and their new Institute for Law and Religion, for organizing and hosting. Here's the conference blurb:
The Western commitment to freedom of religion, reflected in the United States Constitution and in a variety of international human rights documents, arguably descends from the medieval campaign for libertas ecclesiae—“freedom of the church.” In modern times, though, it seems that the progeny (freedom of religion) has largely displaced—and forgotten—the parent (freedom of the church). Jurists and scholars debate whether there is any constitutional commitment to freedom of the church, or church autonomy, or institutional free exercise. And they often suppose that such commitment, if there is one, must be derivative from a more fundamental commitment to freedom of religion.
The issue of freedom of the church has become urgent in recent years. Claimants sue churches in secular courts for what they perceive as abuse or discrimination. Government agencies act to compel religiously-affiliated institutions to provide goods or services such as contraceptives or abortion. In 2011 the Supreme Court considered for the first time a case raising the issue of the so-called “ministerial exemption” for churches from some federal regulatory laws. Opposing the position taken by numerous lower courts, the Obama Administration argued in that case that the Supreme Court should reject the exemption.
This conference will accordingly consider issues related to freedom of the church . . .
Micah Schwartzman and Rich Schragger presented their paper, "Against Religious Institutionalism" (discussed earlier here on Prawfs); Steve and Paul added to the body of important work they've done on the institutional dimension of religious freedom and the First Amendment more generally; I tried to update and expand my defense of "the freedom of the church" as a still important (i.e., not anachronistic) idea; Patrick Brennan challenged participants to take more seriously the Church's truth-claims about what she really is; Tom Berg urged "progressives" to better appreciate the importance of religious freedom and conscience-rights; Rob Vischer explored the possibility of free-exercise rights for commercial entities and in the commercial sphere; and a number of us did an interpretive dance-reenactment of the Canossa meeting between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV. Lots of other interesting papers were presented, and they should be out this Spring in the San Diego Law Review. Stay tuned!
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