The National Catholic Reporter is running an opinion piece by Charles Reid that he originally published at a blog called Religious Left Law, so the source itself promises left-wing bias, not objectivity. The aim of Reid's piece is to do a hatchet job on the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, while at the same time preaching the "imitatio Christi" (which he introduces in Latin and then translates into English for the benefit of his unlettered readers), which he then fleshes out as love, forgiveness, and hope. I don't know any Christian who opposes love, forgiveness, or hope, but I honestly don't see the love in Reid's piece. What I do see in the piece, however, is an unjust portrait of an exemplary bishop. Reid's piece plays on an interview of Chaput by John Allen (here), and anyone interested in objectivity should compare what Chaput actually said, in context, with the false portrait Reid paints.
The thrust of Reid's piece is that Chaput is distressed by Pope Francis's "popularity." First of all, I'm not sure why we should assume or conclude that popularity is a positive thing in a pope. The news reports from Rio kept saying that the crowds were treating Pope Francis "like a rockstar." Our Lord was not treated like a rockstar; He was crucified. It's not humanly possible objectively to judge Pope Francis's effect on the one thing that ultimately matters, the salvation of souls. We can only draw tentative inferences, but the implications of the "rockstar" phenomenon worry me. I am, however, hopeful about this pontificate. For example, I recently met Bishop Michael Barber, S.J., the new bishop of Oakland, and one of Pope Francis's first appointees. Bishop Barber's beatiful homily, which moved everyone in the small group for whom he said Mass, was about the need to approach our Lord in silence of the desert and in the sacraments. Pope Francis will do his greatest good, in my view, by appointing great bishops whose love for the Lord and for all will be attractive to all people of good will and will, in particular, attract good men to the priesthood and confirm them in the work of saving souls.
Second, anyone who knows Archbishop Chaput would recognize immediately what a distraction Reid's comparison amounts to. Chaput is all about serving the flock, even if it means being unpopular. In the places in Philadelphia where he is arguably unpopular, it's because he's having to close churches and schools that should have been closed years ago. I have great regard for his predecessor as Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Rigali, but Chaput is now bearing the brunt of doing unpopular work that Rigali refused, thus retaining a certain popularity among many of the faithful of Philadelphia.
Third, Chaput tells the truth. He is exactly correct when he observes that "conservative" Catholics "generally have not been really happy about [Pope Francis's] election." But does Chaput encourage or approve such disaffection? On the contrary, in a portion of the interview with John Allen that Reid elides, Chaput decisively counters this disaffection. He does so by stating unequivocally the following: "I think he's a truly Catholic man in every sense of the word." What better could be said about a person?
I would just add that that cannot be said of the many prelates whose lies, falsehoods, and evasions got the American Church in the current state of wide devastation. Chaput and a few other courageous bishops are rebuilding a basis for trust in the hierarchy. Cardinal Mahony talks a big game about immigration and compassion, but he also tells lies, decade after decade after decade, about children and priests and rape.
I could go on, but I'll conclude by quoting something Archbishop Chaput wrote in the Villanova Law Review: "For Christians, the trinity of virtues we call faith, hope, and charity should shape everything we do, both privately and in our public lives. . . . By love I don't mean 'love' in a sentimental sense or indulgent sense, the kind of empty love that offers 'tolerance' as an alibi for inaction in the face of evil. I mean love in the Christian sense; love with a heart of courage, love determined to build justice in society and focused on the true good of the whole human person body and soul." Chaput practices what he preaches, and I would venture to say that if we had variations on Chaput at the head of every diocese, it wouldn't take too long before the empty churches would be filling back up and the churches' ministries were again thriving.
I encourage readers to get to know the real Chaput, not the false Chaput confected by Reid and dividers of the Church who think that "left" versus "right" is a substitute for asking whether the man tells the truth. Chaput, for his part, tells the truth and the Truth. I thank God for Pope Benedict's sending him to Philadelphia.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced earlier this summer that he is running for Governor, but a neglected aspect of the coverage was that Abbott (the favorite in the race next year) would, to my knowledge, be the first Catholic to hold major (Governor or US Senator) statewide office in Texas (Lorenzo de Zavala, Vice President of the Republic for a few months in 1836, notwithstanding). While this is only one small indicator, there is a major and still somewhat unappreciated shift underway in American Catholicism away from its historic geographic core in the belt running from Saint Louis and Chicago across the Great Lakes up to Boston (with outposts in places such as New Orleans and the major cities in California), one that I think is interesting to contemplate for the future of Catholic culture (in law and otherwise) in the US. But because many of us live in the vestigal culture of American Catholicism and read media (First Things, Commonweal, and America) produced out of it, the change is easy to ignore for now.
As dioceses in Northeastern cities close parishes, sell real estate, and face financial difficulty, the Church in Texas (as Rocco Palmo pointed out last year) is booming. Galveston-Houston is now a cardinalate see (occupied by a Pittsburgher), while Detroit and Saint Louis may never be again. What will emerge is a Church different in important respects--more influenced by Latino Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism and much less dependent on large Catholic institutions. The liturgical forms of American Catholicism will likely become more mega-church than Tridentine. The massive system of universities, hospitals, and parishes of Midwest and Northeast Catholicism will probably not be replicated in Texas. Consider there are about 7.2 million Catholics in Texas and about 3.4 million in Pennsylvania (source: Pennsylvania and Texas Catholic Conferences), but Texas has seven Catholic colleges or universities and Pennsylvania has 26 (source: ACCU). While Catholics build up some institutional presence (under the presidential leadership, for example, of former Illinois and UST law dean Tom Mengler at St. Mary's in San Antonio), they will also be entrepreneurs in non-Catholic institutions, such as the outstanding Catholic campus ministry at Texas A&M. And just as Catholic social teaching in America for the last century was shaped by (and shaped) the New Deal and the Great Society, Texas is, to put it mildly, more libertarian and distrustful of the state, and this will surely affect how the Church thinks about social problems.
Now, I happen to love Texas and think this is all great (if disruptive and inevitable) for the American Church. The major institutions of higher education in Midwest and Northeast Catholicism--Boston College, Georgetown, Villanova, Notre Dame, Fordham, and so on--will endure, in part by educating the burgeoning Catholic population of Texas. But as we think about how Catholicism and its social doctrine contibute to our public life in the United States, we would do well to consider how the exuberant and "strange genius" (to lift a phrase from former Economist reporter Erica Grieder's recent book) of Texas and its religious and political culture may soon be the dominant force in the American Catholic Church.
I'm pleased to welcome to MOJ Prof. Kevin Walsh, who teaches and writes about a variety of public-law subjects at the University of Richmond School of Law (go, Fighting Spiders!). Kevin taught previously at Villanova, and blogs at the excellent "Walshlaw" blog. Welcome aboard!
My colleague, Mark Movsesian, asks me a few questions about The Tragedy of Religious Freedom over at the Center for Law and Religion Forum in our "Conversations" feature. The Q&A may be helpful as a little introduction either to induce you to buy the book, or to induce you not to.
It's the current fad among certain Catholics, among others, to complain that the Church has been too "inwardly focused" in recent decades. Depending on how the charge is understood, I agree. The Second Vatican Council, however, certainly stressed the need for missionary work, work ad extra, as here in its decree Ad Gentes:
7. This missionary activity derives its reason from the will of God, "who wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, Himself a man, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:45), "neither is there salvation in any other" (Acts 4:12). Therefore, all must be converted to Him, made known by the Church's preaching, and all must be incorporated into Him by baptism and into the Church which is His body. For Christ Himself "by stressing in express language the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:5), at the same time confirmed the necessity of the Church, into which men enter by baptism, as by a door. Therefore those men cannot be saved, who though aware that God, through Jesus Christ founded the Church as something necessary, still do not wish to enter into it, or to persevere in it."(17) Therefore though God in ways known to Himself can lead those inculpably ignorant of the Gospel to find that faith without which it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6), yet a necessity lies upon the Church (1 Cor. 9:16), and at the same time a sacred duty, to preach the Gospel. And hence missionary activity today as always retains its power and necessity.
By means of this activity, the Mystical Body of Christ unceasingly gathers and directs its forces toward its own growth (cf. Eph. 4:11-16). The members of the Church are impelled to carry on such missionary activity by reason of the love with which they love God and by which they desire to share with all men the spiritual goods of both its life and the life to come.
Finally, by means of this missionary activity, God is fully glorified, provided that men fully and consciously accept His work of salvation, which He has accomplished in Christ. In this way and by this means, the plan of God is fulfilled - that plan to which Christ conformed with loving obedience for the glory of the Father who sent Him,(18) that the whole human race might form one people of God and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit which, being the expression of brotherly harmony, corresponds with the inmost wishes of all men. And so at last, there will be realized the plan of our Creator who formed man to His own image and likeness, when all who share one human nature, regenerated in Christ through the Holy Spirit and beholding the glory of God, will be able to say with one accord: "Our Father."(19)
The Church wishes to fulfill her divine mandate to correct and transform the culture in the light of the Gospel. To remain focused only on herself, would be to deny that mandate. This is what I hear Pope Francis teaching. What is urgently needed is more missionary work, not less. Starting especially where Catholics waste time on trading accusations about who's "liberal" and who's "conservative" in the Church.
It's the whole Tradition that the Church offers. The culture needs to be saturated with the Gospel. The squabbling between "left" and "right" is an impediment to the true work of the Church.
This course invites leading law and religion scholars to make presentations to a small audience of students and faculty. The schools will be connected through video link so that students and faculty at both schools will be able to participate synchronously in a virtual classroom seminar experience. My colleague, Mark Movsesian, and I are
absolutely delighted to be working
on this project with Villanova Law School Vice Dean and Professor (and MOJ stalwart) Michael Moreland.
The following speakers have confirmed:
January 27: Michael Walzer (Institute for Advanced Study) (at St. John's)
February 10: Sarah Barringer Gordon (University of Pennsylvania Law School) (at Villanova)
February 24: Kent Greenawalt (Columbia Law School) (at St. John's)
March 17: Donald L. Drakeman (Cambridge University) (at St. John's)
March 31: Kristine Kalanges (Notre Dame Law School) (at St. John's)
April 14: Steven D. Smith (University of San Diego Law School) (at Villanova)
Topics will be announced at a future date.
For more information, or if you would like to attend the sessions, please contact the Colloquium’s co-organizers, Marc DeGirolami ([email protected]), Mark Movsesian ([email protected]), and Michael Moreland ([email protected]).
This morning, the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer published an excerpt from my new book Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism. It's from my chapter comparing the thought of John Stuart Mill with that of John Henry Newman on liberty and conscience. The Inquirer entitled the exceprt "Freedom Means Responsibility"---which does quite a good job of capturing the argument:
Recently, the Pentagon announced several measures aimed at preventing and prosecuting sexual assault cases in the military. These changes were apparently supported by many members of Congress, but fall short of what many members continue to demand.
While I am pleased that the military is taking some action to respond to this problem, and pleased that Congress may be pushing the Pentagon to do more, I find much of this discussion about sexual assaults in the military has a certain "Captain Renault – esque" ring to it ("I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"). One must wonder how these actors can be surprised that staggering numbers of women (and men, but my focus today is women) are being perceived as objects by men to be used regardless of whether the women consent.
Consider the culture the military tacitly endorses. It has long been the case that outside many military bases are thriving sex industries. Not only are these industries problematic for women, in their modern day form they are understood to be staffed largely by trafficked women. Although military regulations have been passed to forbid purchasing women for sex, these trafficking industries continue to prosper and it has been reported the regulations are rarely enforced. While one might seek comfort in the fact that recently, as in just this summer, the Military Exchange stores stopped selling "adult" magazines, do not be too impressed. The reason for the change according to the Army spokesman was not enlightenment:
"Along with other magazine sales, sales of adult sophisticated titles at [Army and Air Force Exchange Service] stores have declined 86 percent since 1998," said an Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Antwan C. Williams. "Like their civilian counterparts, exchange shoppers' increased reliance on digital devices to access content virtually has resulted in a sustained decrease in demand for printed magazines."
To appreciate my point I encourage you to go to this link to this news story and see the juxtaposition of an official army spokesman calling these publications "adult sophisticated titles" and the picture of the cover pages of these "titles" which includes "headlines" such as: "Fatal Attraction: 9 Deadly Fetishes." I am sorry, I thought "adult sophisticated titles" were Jane Austen novels.
Is it any wonder, therefore, the result? The military has created a climate in which it tacitly endorses "industries" whose very function is to objectify women as sexual objects for men's use. It has a climate in which its official spokesman refers to violent "deadly fetish" images that objectify women as "sophisticated adult titles." It is a climate with regulations but then fails to investigate hundreds of Department of Defense employees who violate the regulations. Is it any wonder that the people within this climate receiving these messages actually start acting consistently with the messages? Is it any wonder that they actually start to believe that women exist to be their objects to be used regardless of consent? I think not. The only shocking thing here is that the military is surprised.
While it is a positive step that the military and Congress actually have noticed this plight, nothing will change until they acknowledge the elephant in the room. That elephant is the climate they have allowed to thrive on and off base which sends a repeated message about the objectification of women- about denying the inherent dignity of women. Until that is included in the discussion on how to move forward, the climate endorsing this perception of women as objects will continue…and so will the assaults.
The ABA Journal trumpets Attorney General Holder's announcement of a change in prosecutorial behavior toward those charged with drug crimes as a "Sweeping reversal of the War on Drugs" (here).
Rather than something new or novel, however, this simply heralds the return of something old and long-neglected: prosecutorial discretion.
As reported by the ABA Journal, speaking to the ABA House of Delegates, Mr. Holder addressed the problem of over-incarceration for non-violent offenses by outlining a new program:
The new "Smart on Crime" program will encourage U.S. attorneys to charge
defendants only with crimes "for which the accompanying sentences are
better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison
terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins," said
Holder.
A few nay-sayers (see here) already have attacked the proposal as another example of the Obama Administration's overreaching in unilaterally revising laws with which it disagrees or aspects of which it finds inconvenient. But this episode is nothing like the more dubious actions of the administration in delaying the statutory deadlines for implementation of various aspects of Obamacare or specially excepting members of Congress and their staffs from being covered by the insurance exchanges in Obamacare as the statute requires -- changes made by administrative fiat without approval by Congress. (For George Will's cogent summary of the case against the administration on its lawlessness as to Obamacare, see here.)
No legal, moral, or professional obligation requires a prosecutor -- wielding the awesome power of government to subject a person to captivity -- to charge someone whenever a plausible case can be made that he or she has committed a crime, much less to seek the highest charge (with the highest attendant sentence) that the facts could support. Indeed, there was a time when a prosecutor, as a matter of wise discretion, would choose not to file a charge at all, when the circumstances were extenuating or a criminal solution was not in the best interests of all of those involved in an episode.
In other words, there was a time when the exercise of prosecutorial discretion fairly and impartially was thought to be essential to the promotion of justice (just as was the regular exercise of executive clemency to ameliorate the harshness of the law -- but the story of this administration's failure to exercise that power belongs to another day). (For a five-year-old Mirror of Justice posting on prosecutorial discretion, see here.)
Attorney General Holder is to be commended for taking this step as leader of the nation's federal prosecutors. And in doing so, he is supported by a broad and bipartisan coalition, including Senators Leahy and Durbin, on the Democratic side, and Senators Lee and Rand and former Attorney General Ed Meese, on the Republican side. While there will be (and already are) those who will castigate this move away from the past policy as a left-wing assault on law and order, a growing number of my fellow conservatives are awakening to the disaster of a policy that has made the United States the world leader in percentage of its citizens being held in custody.
I only wish that Attorney General Holder would apply this new ethos of prosecutorial discretion beyond the low-level drug offender -- and he need look no further than the 15-year sentence recently imposed on Edward Young of Kentucky, who had committed small-time property crimes, for inadvertently possessing seven shotgun shells that he found when helping the neighbor widow dispose of her husband's belongings. And that irrational charge and sentence was obtained by one of Mr. Holder's United States Attorneys. The Young case is now on appeal -- and so there is still time for the Justice Department to do the right thing in that case.
I'm also proud to say that my colleague here at the University of St. Thomas
School of Law, Nekima
Levy-Pounds, has long been one of those decrying prosecutorial
overzealousness, mandatory minimum sentences, and the foolish,
debilitating, and bankrupt policy of over-incarceration of young, non-violent
offenders. In Professor Levy-Pounds's scholarly work, she has emphasized
that current drug-sentencing practices disparately impacts poor women of
color and children. For example, she reports that excessive incarceration of
African-American women who had a peripheral role in drug offenses wreak
havoc on the family and leave children parentless, setting the stage for
the next generation of offenders and another cycle of incarceration.
You can read her work here, here, and here. It is gratifying to see her work and that of so many other scholars, attorneys, and public officials of faith and compassion has borne fruit in the new federal prosecution policy.
I have learned much from Michael Novak over the years, but consider the logic of the following passage: “In a genuine pluralistic
society, there is no one sacred canopy.
By intention there is not.
At its spiritual core, there is an empty shrine. That shrine is left empty in the
knowledge that no one word, image, or symbol is worthy of what all seek
there. Its emptiness, therefore,
represents the transcendence which approached by free consciences from a
virtually infinite number of directions. . . . Such an order calls forth not only a new theology but a new
type of religion.” Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
53, 69 (1982, 1991). Novak wants to rewrite theology and create "a new type of religion" in order to prop up pluralism. The importance of instantiating pluralism is so transcendent in Novak's eyes, in fact, that he is willing to compel all of us to be arrayed around an "empty shrine." I look in vain in the theology of the Catholic religion for support for worship at an "empty shrine." The tomb was in fact empty on Easter morning, but that was because Christ had risen from the dead. Now He is to be worshipped and obeyed and loved. Pluralism is a fact about our world, to be sure, but not a reason to invent a new religion. Pluralism requires prudent action and lots of toleration, but not the intentional fabrication of an "empty shrine.". And, by the way, is it true that Christ is, as Novak contends, "not worthy of what all seek?" Not all people of good will acknowledge Christ as their redeemer and king, and, within the limits of the common good, individuals should be free to practice even false religions. But justice requires me to resist the suggestion that Christ is somehow "not worthy." Quite the reverse, "Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum . . . ." This prayer that was prayed six times in the Usus Antiquior is prayed only once in Pope Paul's new Mass, and in that, I am afraid, there can be no cause for surprise. New theology, new religion? It wasn't my idea.
