Great piece on the filibuster controversy by University of St. Thomas law prof Charles Reid: very informative--and, to me, persuasive. Which means, alas, that Rick Garnett will disagree with it. :-)
You can read it here.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Recommended Reading: The Filibuster Controversy
Monday, December 3, 2012
Please pray for Fr. Araujo
Longtime MOJ-contributor, thoughtful scholar, wonderful priest, and good friend Fr. Robert Araujo, S.J., has given me permission to ask all Mirror of Justice readers to join me in praying for him as he continues what appears to be an increasingly difficult battle with cancer. Oremus!
Pope Benedict XVI: "The Church's Deepest Nature"
Rocco reports, at Whispers in the Loggia, on a very interesting new motu proprio called "The Church's Deepest Nature: On the Services of Charity." It is, as Rocco says, about "on the Catholic identity and ecclesial oversight of the church's charitable efforts." A bit:
In carrying out their charitable activity . . . the various Catholic
organizations should not limit themselves merely to collecting and distributing
funds, but should show special concern for individuals in need and exercise a
valuable educational function within the Christian community, helping people to
appreciate the importance of sharing, respect and love in the spirit of the
Gospel of Christ. The Church’s charitable activity at all levels must avoid the
risk of becoming just another form of organized social assistance
(cf. ibid., 31). . . .
Recalling the MOJ Joint Statement on "the Situation at Ave Maria"
In September of 2007, a group consisting of most of the MOJ bloggers posted this statement on "the situation at Ave Maria School of Law." In light of the piece, to which Kevin Lee linked, by Austin Ruse ("Ave Maria Born Again"), it seemed to me that the statement was (as Rick Reilly might say) again "relevant."
Kontorovich on Sex With (German) Animals
Eugene Kontorovich, whose blogging is a treat, has a wonderful post up on the new German zoophilia. The old German zoophilia was manifested in the civil right to bestiality back in 1969, and the rise of predictably associated phenomena of moral decay -- the taste for which, it seems, is on the rise. The new zoophilia champions the rights of animals to be left alone -- one might even call it a right of privacy -- in seeking to have these libertine liberties reversed (note that animal cruelty laws do not seem to be in issue, though I haven't studied the challengers' case well enough to know). The difficulty is the question of the grounding of the right, since moralistic reasons, or reasons of "legal moralism" (whatever those may be) are now widely deemed outré in Germany. Professor Kontorovich has an interesting observation about the issue of consent:
I suspect the motives behind the ban are entirely moralistic. Yet the government cannot come out and say so. Thus effort is made to distinguish the matter from Germany’s libertarian approach to sexual matters by suggesting the animals do not consent in the way consenting humans do. Yes, but they don’t consent to being bought or sold, or butchered, either, and they are not human, so consent is a red herring. This would not pass intermediate scrutiny in the U.S.
He then notes the now-common move of grounding the moralistic regulation of sexuality in arguments from social harm and public policy, but here perhaps I differ a bit with Professor Kontorovich. It was always the case that the retrograde moralizers grounded their arguments in ideas of social harm, beneficent social policy, and so on. The distinction is not of the method of argumentation now and then, but of the difference between what passes for harm now and then. These two excellent papers -- one by Bernard Harcourt (but sadly unavailable without payment) and the other by Steve Smith -- come at matters from fairly different angles but gesture toward the same larger idea.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
“One Political Party Is Dangerous and the Other Is Stupid”
In a recent article in Our Sunday Visitor, Russell Shaw (here) quotes an anonymous American cardinal: “This is the situation now . . . One political party is dangerous and the other is stupid.”
Terry Mattingly at the blog Get Religion (here) says that this very well “might be the religion-beat quote of the year.”
Mattingly praises Shaw for the depth of his post-election analysis of the Catholic electorate – an analysis that shows “why it is unwise for journalists to keep pinning current-day political labels on the foreheads of people whose lives are defined by centuries of religious doctrines.”
Shaw’s story doesn’t identity the cardinal, and the cardinal doesn’t identify which party is which – but MOJ readers might have some ideas.
So here’s the question: From a Catholic point of view, which of the two major American political parties is the “dangerous” one and which is the “stupid” one, and why? Comments open.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
An Open Letter to Austin Ruse Regarding Ave Maria School of Law
Dear Mr. Ruse,
I am writing this letter to you in reply to your recent blog post regarding the ill-fated Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which was moved to Naples, Florida several years ago. I have decided to make this an open letter in the hope of clarifying some points for readers of your blog, who I believe might be misled by your post.
I was a member of the Michigan faculty of Ave Maria. I left in 2007, having experienced first-hand the beginning to the troubles at the Law School. Mr. Ruse, you have no first-hand knowledge of the events that took place there many years ago. It doesn’t appear that you have done even basic research. If you had, you would know for example that the ABA complaint wasn't anonymous, as you state. The ABA does not accept anonymous complaints. The names were withheld from the Law School because the faculty members had been threatened with retaliation.
As it stands, the account you have given is one-sided, at best. You obviously did not reach out to talk with any of the members of the Michigan faculty who were pushed out to find out their perspectives on what happened. If you are genuinely interested in finding out what happened, I recommend Bruce Frohnen’s recent review of Tom Monaghan’s biography in the current issue of the American Conservative. It contains some details that you would have learned if you had taken the time to talk with any of us. (It will be available on-line on December 10.)
You seem to have gotten your understanding of the Michigan faculty mostly from blog posts by anonymous sources that even you admit were prone to making false and misleading statements. So, I am surprised and disappointed by your blog post, which warns of the dangers of calumny while itself making such unsubstantiated and unreliable claims.
More significantly, your post is potentially injurious to many people and most particularly to Ave Maria School of Law. As I noted, it has been many years since I left Ave Maria and several years since the Law School settled the lawsuits brought against it by faculty members who claimed to have been wrongfully denied tenure and wrongfully terminated. It is now possible, through a FOIA request to the United States Department of Education, to look at the ABA Report on Ave Maria School of Law that resulted from the faculty complaint. I have a copy of that Report. I will not go into the gory details of the ABA findings to refute the many inaccuracies of your blog post. I have no desire to rehash the case or its outcome in public. It is in no one’s interest to do that, and it is certainly not in the interest of the School of Law.
One point made by the ABA Site Investigator should be emphasized, however. In the Report he likens the situation at the Law School to “a bitter divorce.” That, I think, is in fact a sad tribute to the close and nurturing community that we once had in Michigan, before all the troubles began. It was like a family, and when it ended, it was like a family being torn apart. Having lived through the break-up, and knowing first-hand the trauma that it caused my colleagues, friends, family, and the innocent students who were its victims, I can only agree with that assessment. The Ave Maria School of Law and the Michigan faculty have parted ways, and the break-up is irreconcilable.
I think its time that both sides of this old dispute move on with their lives. Mostly we have done so. Personally, I pray daily (and I hope others do too) to find room in my heart to forgive as we are called to do as Catholics; to remember that bitter disputes among us are literally wounds in the body of our Lord. I have sought to make peace with Ave Maria and try to remember the very good things that we all did there, together as a community. I wish the Florida Ave Maria very well, indeed, as I believe that their mission of providing legal education in the Catholic intellectual tradition continues to be of vital importance.
Mr. Ruse, these events are in the past: half a decade for me and several years for the litigants. It is time for this sad chapter in Ave Maria’s history to be put to rest. That is part of the healing process when a great trauma, like the breakup of a family, has been suffered. And, as with a bitter divorce, there is little to be gained at this point by opening old wounds.
In the interest of all concerned, I respectfully request that you cease making such blog posts and public statements.
Very truly yours,
Kevin P. Lee
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