Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Facepalm: A ridiculous decision at Gonzaga
As one friend put it, Gonzaga (a Catholic university) -- citing a "nondiscrimination policy" -- has refused to recognize a Catholic group (the Knights of Columbus) because the group is Catholic. I hope the Gonzaga administrators (a) read my paper, "Religious Freedom and the Nondiscrimination Norm"; (b) reverse this blockheaded decision; and (c) apologize for the farce that was the No. 1 seed for the University's men's basketball team.
Happy 9th(!!) birthday to MOJ! On "Moral Anthropology and the Law"
It appears that I (uncharacteristically) missed a chance to bask and brag, and forgot to note that this blog marked its ninth anniversary (!!) a few weeks ago. Here's my first post, on "Moral Anthropology and the Law":
One of our shared goals for this blog is to -- in Mark's words -- "discover[] how our Catholic perspective can inform our understanding of the law." One line of inquiry that, in my view, is particularly promising -- and one that I know several of my colleagues have written and thought about -- involves working through the implications for legal questions of a Catholic "moral anthropology." By "moral anthropology," I mean an account of what it is about the human person that does the work in moral arguments about what we ought or ought not to do and about how we ought or ought not to be treated; I mean, in Pope John Paul II's words, the “moral truth about the human person."
The Psalmist asked, "Lord, what is man . . . that thou makest account of him?” (Ps. 143:3). This is not only a prayer, but a starting point for jurisprudential reflection. All moral problems are anthropological problems, because moral arguments are built, for the most part, on anthropological presuppositions. That is, as Professor Elshtain has put it, our attempts at moral judgment tend to reflect our “foundational assumptions about what it means to be human." Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Dignity of the Human Person and the Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries, 14 JOURNAL OF LAW AND RELIGION 53, 53 (1999-2000). As my colleague John Coughlin has written, the "anthropological question" is both "perennial" and profound: "What does it mean to be a human being?” Rev. John J. Coughlin, Law and Theology: Reflections on What it Means to Be Human, 74 ST. JOHN’S LAW REVIEW 609, 609 (2000).
In one article of mine, "Christian Witness, Moral Anthropology, and the Death Penalty," I explore the implications for the death penalty of a Catholic anthropology, one that emphasizes our "creaturehood" more than, say, our "autonomy." And, my friend Steve Smith (University of San Diego) has an paper out that discusses what a "person as believer" anthropology might mean for our freedom-of-religion jurisprudence that fleshes out excellent article. I wonder if any of my colleagues have any thoughts on these matters?
And, nine years ago today, Rob Vischer reflected on the charge that then-candidate Sen. John Kerry was engaging in "religious posturing for political gain."
'The Church Militant'
Well, Patrick and other friends, it seems the irony is destined to continue. The extremity of tone and temper and triumphalism in these posts will only, I'm afraid, appear to vindicate that oafish lumping of the Roman Church with theocratic 'bad guys' and 'extremists' done by those who've agitated Patrick so. Likewise leaps like the suggestion that 'the U.S. [is] establishing a military policy against' the Roman Church. Bizarre...
I am sorry, but I see no reason for militancy here, and find the rage in Patrick's 'outrage' most disturbing.
Please dial it down.
Al Qaeda = Catholic Church (for military purposes)
No one can honestly deny (the evidence precludes the possibility) that the U.S government officially equated al Qaeda and the Catholic Church (and others) in establishing a military policy against "extremism." Let me underscore the point: the evidence (the slide on the Army's website, which didn't get there by accident) puts the Church in the same driving category as al Qaeda. It demonstrates that our government was/is formulating policy based on a postulated *functional* equivalence between al Qaeda and the Church. Consider this command: "Do unto the Church as you do unto al Qaeda"?
Robert Hockett has offered an objection to what I wrote. He doesn't remotely touch the substance of my particular question, viz.: Why are people not OUTRAGED that our government has DEMONSTRABLY lumped Catholics (and other Christians) together with al Quaeda (and other bad actors) for equal treatment as "extremists.'
Look, Bob (sic), I do denonce our (does the posessive adjective discomfit you?) goverment's lumping the Church (sic) and bad guys together. Why don't you denounce it? Please tell. I do indeed hold the view (convict me of it) that the Gospel and those who serve it should transform and correct the culture -- including NOW the culture that equates al Qaeda and the Church.
Call me whatever you want for my believing and praying that the Gospel will correct and transform all. Call me even "extreme" (as you did this very night). The Gospel enters the world through GOSPEL human action (thanks to the action of the sacraments). I love the extremes of the Gospel.
Good luck with a "res publica" (a fine concept) that doesn't receive and absorb the Gospel.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Not Quite Cricket
There is what amounts, in my view, to an unfortunate irony in Brother Patrick's 'Crickets' post just below. It is that, while I would not have counted Catholics among the nation's 'extremists' prior to reading that post, I might, did I not know better, come away from that reading thinking maybe there's something to the claim after all. I accordingly urge Patrick to dial it back a bit. This does not sound in faith, hope or love, but in triumphalist entitlement and paranoia.
Paranoia? Yes. Read the story to which Patrick links and, even though published in the notoriously partisan organ that it is, it reads as no more than a familiar tale of bureaucratic cockupery in the hiring of outside speakers and 'consultants,' not military conspiracy to marginalize and then 'target' half of the population of the nation. Yet Patrick's post has us imprisoned in a latterday Warsaw ghetto, apparently called to commence our own latterday 'uprising,' since 'the U.S. state ... today is the unjust agressor.' Have you read words like this before? I have, about a decade ago from foreign shores.
Triumphalist entitlement? Yes, that too. Here is what we are told: 'the Catholic Church understands that it is its role to correct and transform society, ... the state should receive its principles from the Church, not the Church from the state.' That too reads, to me, disturbingly reminiscent of what theocrats of other traditions in other corners of the globe - those to whom Patrick objects to the Roman Church's being likened - routinely say. Is this meant to be helpful?
One clue to how one might come to think in the manner reflected in the above quotations, I suspect, as well as to what is erroneous about it, is to be found in Patrick's regularly referring to our polity as 'the state' and then naming the state 'Leviathan' - as if our res publica were some utterly alien, baleful, implacable presence, hailing from Heaven knows where, that daily confronts us as an enormous unreachable metaphysical stranger. But that is not what our polity is. It is our fellows, some of whom partake of some religious traditions, others of whom partake of others, and still others of whom partake of none. Our task is not to confront these, our fellow citizens, as aliens or as wretched benighted savages. It is to embrace, cherish, and engage them as equals.
An easy way to see just what's 'extreme' in Patrick's post is simply to replace each occurrence of the word 'state' or 'society' in the foregoing quotations, as well as in other surprising statements in Patrick's post, with one or another instance of the second person plural, then to replace each occurrence of the definite article with the first person possessive and 'Church' with 'we Catholics.' Do that and you get statements like this: 'You, fellow citizen, should receive your principles from my Church.' And: 'My Church's role is to correct and transform you.' And: 'We bring you the peace that you know not.' All, apparently, through the apparatus of that 'state' which 'the Church' is to 'teach.'
'Gee,' I hear my fellow citizen saying, 'that sounds peaceful indeed - just like the peace prior to Westphalia. Where do I sign?'
" ... if you’ve met one Jesuit, you’ve met one Jesuit.”
So, meet one Jesuit: Matt Malone, the new editor of America. Here.
"Must the Little Sisters of the Poor Implement the HHS Mandate?"
That's the title of a very good post by my friend Kevin Walsh. Kevin was involved in formulating comments on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor with respect to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking as to the HHS Mandate. Here are the succinct comments, which you should read in full, and here is a selection (footnotes omitted), which illustrates part of the difficulty faced by the Little Sisters, and perhaps by other self-insured eligible employers:
The fact that we have separately incorporated the homes in which we carry out our ministry to the elderly poor does not deprive our order’s religious exercise of its religious nature. Saint Jeanne Jugan, our foundress and the first Little Sister of the Poor, began her ministry by bringing an elderly and infirm woman into her own apartment and caring for her there. Since 1839, we have continued this tradition with our homes, which now operate in one of the most highly regulated segments of care providers. We have always done our best to comply with all government regulations that apply to our homes and with the highest standards of nonprofit financial stewardship. The Form 990 is an important tool for financial accountability in our religious charitable work, but it makes no sense to use the requirement to file it as a disqualifier for the religious employer exemption.
The Little Sisters of the Poor should receive a religious exemption based on what we believe and what we do rather than the corporate forms through which we carry out our ministry. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking observes that a church should not lose its exemption simply because it “maintains a soup kitchen that provides free meals to low-income individuals.” We agree. The same should hold true for our religious order. We should not be deprived of an exemption because we maintain homes to provide shelter and loving care to the elderly poor . . . .
Our homes provide coverage for their employees through the Christian Brothers Employee Benefits Trust. The Trust is a self-funded church plan that provides health and welfare benefits to employees of Catholic employers nationwide. As a church plan, the Trust provides benefits consistent with Catholic teachings and doctrines. The Trustees of the Christian Brothers Employee Benefits Trust have contracted with Christian Brothers Services as a third-party administrator to administer and manage the Trust. Christian Brothers Services is a nonprofit Catholic ministry that operates in accordance with Catholic teachings and doctrines.
Although our homes qualify as “eligible organizations,” the proposed accommodation in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking does not address the situation that they face under the HHS Mandate. The Notice identifies three alternative ways in which the third-party administrator of a self-insured plan might be made responsible for arranging the objectionable coverage. Each of these alternatives presupposes that the third-party administrator itself has no religious objection to arranging that coverage. But Christian Brothers Services, as another Catholic organization, shares our commitment to Catholic teaching and also objects to the HHS Mandate. Accordingly, the proposed accommodation does not offer us a path to compliance.
Comments are open, but I encourage you to comment on Kevin's site.
Retreat? Crickets.
The Jews retreated further and further into their ghettos in Poland and Germany, hoping that their getting out of the way would "solve" the "problem" they represented to their approaching enemy. Will Catholics do the same in the United States? Retreat into growing ghettos to get out of the way of the march of their own government? The time has come to find out.
The U.S. Army has now categorized Catholics as "extremists" alongside such groups as al Qaeda, Hamas and the KKK. You can read about it here . I have been saying for some time that the position of much of the U.S. hierarchy is that all the Church asks is to be let alone, and I have said that because that is *exactly* what many U.S. bishops and the USCCB itself have said, as I demonstrate in the paper linked above. Where are the bishops when Catholics are now being lumped in with al Qaeda? You can search the USCCB's prolix website in vain. The Army has apparently now removed the document in which the categorization appeared, but that is surely cold comfort, as is the fact that the Army asserted that the source of the characterization was "not in the chain of command." Surely decisions about what the U.S. Army considers "extremism' -- and deserving of military treatment as such -- should be made at the core of the chain of command.
Catholics should be expressing loud outrage at their own govenment's falsely accusing Catholics of the characteristics and aims that mark al Qaeda and the KKK, but all I hear is the sound of crickets chirping. This silence, especially in its studied, even "principled" form, is an example of an ideology I have castigated here at MOJ before: the liberal's militant insistence that "the Church be sufficiently nothing so as to live at peace with the rest of the world" (Louis Veuillot). The Church can indeed live in a *true* peace with the world if, but only if, she is allowed to go about her work of freely preaching the Gospel and correcting and transforming culture. No true peace is purchased by reducing the Church to sufficiently nothing that her voice is silenced. It is the U.S. state that today is the unjust agressor as it targets the Church; in response, the Church must insist upon her freedom to teach the world the peace of the Gospel, the peace that the world knows not. The Church's ways are not those of al Qaeda and the KKK, and Catholics must now insist upon as much to a U.S. government that demonstrably cannot think clearly enough not to equate the Church and al Quaeda.
Catholic "Traditionalists" v. Pope Francis
University of St. Thomas law professor Charles Reid has a thoughtful commentary on the phenomenon at ReligiousLeftLaw, here. I think many MOJ readers will be interested.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
"If the Church Is Serious About Welcoming Gays..."
That's the title of an op-ed in this morning's Times. MOJ readers may be interested in evaluating the authors' recommendations. Here.
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
