Last week I wrote a number of posts about presentations at the Harvard Petrie-Flom conference on Law, Religion and Medicine. Soon, videos of all of the panels from that conference will be available. As of now, you can watch the talks given at the pre-conference program last Thursday evening, After Hobby Lobby, What is Caesar's and What is God's. The link is here.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
What is Caesar's and What is God's? (Video)
What "Catholic Women" Think
Thanks to Lisa for her sharing of Mary Rice Hasson's response to Frank Bruni's recent New York Times piece about Catholicism and women. As I read Hasson's response, along with that of Helen Alvare (reported here, along with the Bruni piece), it might be worth a reminder that "Catholic Women" is not a monolithic group. Whether it is Bruni or Hasson or Alvare or anyone else- each speaks for some Catholic women. (Helen does acknowledge in her response that "no one woman is sufficient to be the voice for all.")
There is no question that there are a significant number of Catholic women who (in Hasson's words) "love the Church, embrace her teachings, and know that their gifts are deeply important to the Church." But there are also a significant number who do not and who feel marginalized and disconnected and undervalued by their Church because of their gender. And so, while I don't disagree with criticism of the Bruni piece, we do need to remember that there is a tremendous range of views of Catholic women about the Church, its teachings and how those teachings play out in their world.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Catholic Feminists Speaking for Themselves
Mary Rice Hasson, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has an interview on National Review Online that offers a fiery response to Frank Bruni's recent NYT piece, “Catholicism Undervalues Women.” She suggests that "Bruni needs to take off his 70s-style feminist goggles, because they’re distorting his view of women and the Church."
She continues:
For decades, the Church went silent when liberals ridiculed “outmoded” teachings on the male priesthood or the immorality of contraception, for example. As Cardinal Dolan said a few years back, the Church became “gun-shy” in the face of cultural disapproval and silenced itself, suffering a self-inflicted catechetical and moral “laryngitis.” Because the Church “forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice” on issues that matter to women, the Left has controlled the narrative. They define ‘women’s issues’ and ‘what’s good for women’ on their terms. So the average Catholic woman thinks about these issues much like a secular feminist, demanding “equal access” for women to all “jobs” in the Church, including the priesthood. And it doesn’t help when some women, schooled more in secular feminism than they are in Catholic theology, encounter priests who tip over into clericalism — an attitude strongly criticized by Pope Francis.
Hasson invites Bruni to "Come meet the smart, accomplished Catholic women in my world — they love the Church, embrace her teachings, and know that their gifts are deeply important to the Church."
Hasson just edited a book called "Promise and Challenge: Catholic Women Reflect on Feminism, Complementarity, and the Church," a collection of essays by some of the Catholic women in Hasson's world: me, Hasson, Helen Alvare, Sr. Sara Butler, Sr. Mary Madeline Todd, Margaret McCarthy, Deborah Savage, Theresa Farnan, Cathy Pakaluk, Erika Bachiochi, Mary FioRito, and Mary Eberstadt. My chapter is The Promise and the Threat of the 'Three' in Integral Complementarity, addressing some of the barriers to men and women collaborating more fruitfully in the life of the Church arising out of fear of the unknown Church that might emerge from such collaboration, and lingering distrust between men and women created by the sexual abuse crisis and women’s advocacy for abortion.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
"He knows very well what he is doing"
Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, the theologian widely acknowledged to have been the lead ghostwriter of Pope Francis's much-praised apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, recently gave an interview that is remarkable for the crudity of its categories, the tendentiousness of its contentions, and, above all, what it portends for the silent lambs. The Archbishop's way of talking about the Church is so far from what one would expect from a serious theologian and vir Ecclesiae, it's difficult, for me at least, not to despair at the significance of this man's being one of the advisors on whom the Holy Father is reputed to rely the most.
The interview is here, and those who care about how we should love the Bride of Christ should be scandalized by the mentality it bespeaks and the future it all but promises. Keep in mind that its all-but-named target at one point is the recent and utterly unprecedented suggestion (here) by Cardinal Muller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that a new role for the CDF would be to provide a "theological framework" for this pontificate. As readers will recall, Cardinal Muller was one of Pope Benedict's last senior appointments in the Roman Curia.
The point Archbishop Fernandez is keenest to drive home is that there will be "no turning back:"
The pope goes slow because he wants to be sure that the changes have a deep impact. The slow pace is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the changes. He knows there are those hoping that the next pope will [] turn everything back around. If you go slowly it's more difficult to turn things back. . . .
[Interviewer] :When Francis says he will have a short pontificate doesn't this help his adversaries?
The pope must have his reasons, because he knows very well what he's doing. [SIC] He must have an objective that we don't understand yet. You have to realize that he is aiming at reform that is irreversible. If one day he should intuit [sic?] that he's running out of time and doesn't have enough time to do what the Spirit is asking him, you can be sure he will speed up.
So, to recap: The Pope will go slowly to make irreversible changes until he "intuits" that he needs to hurry up if he's to succeed in making irreversible changes.
Now, as the larger context of the interview makes unmistakable, Pope Francis of course doesn't commit the mistake of thinking that all in the Church is changeable. Acknowledged as unchangeable, in fact, are the existence of the Petrine office and of the College of Bishops. And so:
The Roman Curia is not an essential structure. The pope could even go and live away from Rome, have a disastery in Rome and another one in Bogota, and perhaps link-up by teleconference with liturgical experts that live live in Germany. Gathered around the pope, in a theological sense, is the College of Bishops in order to serve the people."
This concatenation of wild possibilities gives a new image to ultramontanism. But ultramontanist it is, despite the cultured veneers provided by a newly minted theology of papal popularity. According to Archbishop Fernandez over and over in the interview, the decisive fact is that "the people are with him" "and not with his few adversaries." "[M]ost of the People of God love Francis."
And why shouldn't they? Here comes perhaps the most breathtaking part of a tightly integrated interview that is indeed programmatic in the extreme. It comes in the explanation of why there is "no turning back:" "If and when Francis is no longer pope, his legacy will remain strong." Why, other than nostalgia?
[T]he pope is convinced that the things he's written or said cannot be condemned as error. Therefore, in the future anyone can repeat those things without fear of being sanctioned. And then the majority of the People of God with their special sense will not easily accept turning back on certain things. [emphasis in the preceding par. added]
[Interviewer:] Don't you see the risk of 'two Churches'?
No. There's a schism when a group of important people share the same sensibilities that reflect those of a vast section of society. Luther and Protestantism came about this way. But now the overwhelming majority of the people are with Francis and they love him. His opponents are weaker than what you think. Not pleasing everyone does not mean provoking a schism.
[Interviewer:] Isn't this idea of the pope having a direct rapport with the people something risky, while the Church's ecclesiastical class feels marginalized?
But the Church is the People of God guided by their pastors. Cardinals could disappear, in the sense that they are not essential. The pope and the bishops are essential. Then again, it is impossible that everything a pope does and says will please everyone. Did everyone like Benedict XVI? Unity does not depend on unanimity.
[Interviewer:] Do you think a conclave would re-elect Francis today?
I don't know, possibly not. But it happened . . . .
Yes, it happened. But the creeping infallibility asserted with arresting breadth and clarity in the quoted language should cause the faithful -- whether they consider themselves liberals, conservatives, or, better, just plain Catholic -- to sit up and pay attention and, I dare say, to object.
For example, Pope Francis has never purported to speak ex cathedra, and so how can it be that in his own view, as reported by a most-trusted advisor, nothing he has "said" -- and he says a lot -- can possibly be in error, such that what he has "said" necessarily can be "repeated" ad libitum by the "People of God."
There are changeable elements in the Church visible, and those can indeed be changed. There are unchangeable elements in the Church visible, and those cannot be changed. What, then, is the point of the "they love Francis" populism in service of a creeping infallibilism? Well, perhaps a confusing of the changeable and the unchangeable? What does it mean to "hurry up," as the Archbishop said Francis would, to make "irreversible" changes in what is, ex hypothesi, changeable? The truly unchangeable cannot be changed, even by a Pope in hurry. The authentic theology of the sensus fidelium (cf. Archbishop Fernandez's "special sense," above) is not about the success of demagoguery and Machiavellian politics in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, not about the large numbers who "love [Francis]" and how comparatively few and "weaker" are Francis's "adversaries." Nonetheless, Archbishop Fernandez is more or less content to contend as follows: "This pope first filled St. Peter's Square with crowds and then began changing the Church."
As the Archbishop insisted, Pope Francis "knows very well what he's doing."
Monday, May 11, 2015
For the "changing religion" files . . .
Hillary Clinton was in the news recently when she said, in a speech, that "deeply seated religious beliefs" "will have to be changed" in order to secure broader abortion rights, etc. Now, this story ("China orders Muslim shopkeepers to sell alcohol, cigarettes, to 'weaken' Islam") from China provides an example of a modern government seeking, for its own purposes, to weaken the hold of religious beliefs on its subjects. Here's a bit:
Chinese authorities have ordered Muslim shopkeepers and restaurant owners in a village in its troubled Xinjiang region to sell alcohol and cigarettes, and promote them in “eye-catching displays,” in an attempt to undermine Islam’s hold on local residents, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported. Establishments that failed to comply were threatened with closure and their owners with prosecution.
Facing widespread discontent over its repressive rule in the mainly Muslim province of Xinjiang, and mounting violence in the past two years, China has launched a series of “strike hard” campaigns to weaken the hold of Islam in the western region. Government employees and children have been barred from attending mosques or observing the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In many places, women have been barred from wearing face-covering veils, and men discouraged from growing long beards.
Both stories, it seems to me, are reminders that claims about government "neutrality" with respect to religion are more aspirational than historical. Governments care about religious beliefs, and always have. And, governments are not limited to heavy-handed tactics like China's -- licensing requirements, accreditation standards, spending conditions, and (as we have been reminded recently) tax exemptions are available, too. I explored this idea, a decade or so ago, in this article, "Assimilation, Toleration, and the State's Interest in the Development of Religious Doctrine":
Thirty-five years ago, in the context of a church-property dispute, Justice William Brennan observed that government interpretation of religious doctrine and judicial intervention in religious disputes are undesirable, because when "civil courts undertake to resolve [doctrinal] controversies..., the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in matters of purely ecclesiastical concern." This statement, at first, seems wise and fittingly cautious, even unremarkable and obvious. On examination, though, it turns out to be intriguing, elusive, and misleading. Indeed, Justice Brennan's warning presents "hazards" of its own, and its premises - if uncritically embraced - can subtly distort our constitutional discourse.
This Article provides a careful and close examination of the statement's premises and implications, and concludes that, far from being a "purely ecclesiastical concern," the content of religious doctrineand the trajectory of its development are matters to which even a secular, liberal, and democratic government will almost certainly attend. It is not the case that governments like ours are or can be "neutral" with respect to religion's claims and content. As this Article shows, the content, meaning, and implications of religious doctrine are and have long been the subjects of government power and policy. Secular, liberal, democratic governments like ours not only take cognizance of, but also and in many ways seek to assimilate - that is, to transform - religion and religious teaching. And, it is precisely because such governments do have an interest in the content, and, therefore, in the "development," of religious doctrine - an interest that they will, if permitted, quite understandably pursue - that authentic religious freedom is so fragile.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
So much for "extraterritorial" rights
I recalled the other day (here) Jacques Maritain's observation that "it was five hundred years ago that we began to die." Maritain made that observation in 1927 (in Primaute Du Spirituel, which was published in English in 1930 under the title The Things That Are Not Caesar's), so by now it's been nearly six hundred years since the patient began to die. Maritain promptly changed his tune from the one he sang in 1927, of course, and, without benefit of Tradition, defended throughout the rest of his long life a state no longer formed and united on the basis of "a common profession of faith" but, instead, on the basis of a "minimal unity" (Integral Humanism 262, 261 (1934-35; Eng. 1996)). Maritain supposed that such a minimal principle of unity would be more than enough to protect the human person's "extraterritorial " rights and privileges, that is, those that correspond to the rights of God. In 1966, however, reading the "signs of the times" (so to speak), Maritain cautioned that "the great reversal" of which he had been the advocate depended upon this: that "it is no longer the human which takes charge of defending the divine, but the divine which offers itself to defend the human (if the latter does not refuse the aid offered." (The Peasant of the Garonne 4 (1966; Eng. 1968)). Is it the divine defending the human that Pope Francis has in mind when he would have us genuflect before man (see here), while he himself does not genuflect or kneel before the Blessed Sacrament (at least not in public)? Can humans who do not take charge of defending the divine right anticipate that the divine will succeed in offering aid to humans, whose existential freedom of choice remains intact, after all? Even in 1934-35 Maritain recognized that "[t]he Christian knows that the State has duties to God and that it should collaborate with the Church." (Integral Humanism, 265). Does "the Christian" any longer "know[]" as much? If not, what will become of those "extraterritorial" rights and privileges? Well, just look around at how "the great reversal" is working out its own internal logic one issue (or several) at a time, more and more often in courts of law -- this "territory" at the expense of higher "territory."
A Debate on the Contraceptives Coverage Mandate Litigation
The plenary session on this second day of the Petrie-Flom Conference on Law, Religions and Medicine was a debate between Adele Keim (Becket Fund for Religious Liberty) and Gregory Lipper (Americans United for Separation of Church and State).
Keim made three points in her remarks. First, that religious diversity is good for health care and conscience protection allows that diversity to flourish. Religiously motivated health care providers continue to be part of care landscape in this country - something that is not inevitable - because they have been permitted to operate as communities of faith (e.g. being allowed to hire employees of their faith) and because historically we have been willing to work hard to avoid widespread and foreseeable conflicts of conscience, have been especially sensitive to conscientious objections to the taking of human life. This has allowed religious people to continue to provide important services.
Second, the HHS regulations assault both of those background principles, failing to respect the principle that religious nonprofits have a deep interest in preserving the character of their religious communities and coerces them to provide drug they believe involves the taking of human life. (She then spent time talking about the history of the mandate and the Hobby Lobby litigation.)
Third, the third party harm arguments used to justify the mandate are one-sided and it is reasonable to expect that one consequence of forcing compliance is that some religious organizations will close entirely. It is important when considering harms to acknowledge the lasting harm the mandate will do if entities like Little Sisters leave health care entirely.
Lipper also made three points. First, religious opposition to the contraception mandate provisions are as much about ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act itself as about religious objection. He suggests the sincerity doctrine has been underutilized in these cases and that the fact that many of the plaintiffs in the for-profit cases had been providing contracpetion coverage prior to the mandate suggest that this is about the broader political objection to health care reform.
Second, he argued that even if the objections are sincere, Hobby Lobby represents a dramatic expansion of the substantial burden doctrine and a cramped understanding of least restrictive means. On the former, if substantial burden is measured by the size of the fine there is no limiting principle. On the latter, if the government's ability to provide the benefit itself means there is a least restrictive means, virually anything can be provided by the government.
Third religious accommodation are now being wielded, not as attempt to compromise, but as a trump in way that accept no compromise. And that, he suggests will lead to evaporation of support for religious liberty, a backlash that is already being seen.
In an earlier panel this morning, Holly Lynch did an effective job defending the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby. But my biggest agreement with her is her final conclusion that Hobby Lobby lays bare the real problem of the ACA: a failure to move away from an employer based system of providing health care benefits.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Religious Beliefs and the LGBT Community
The panel on which I spoke this afternoon at the Petrie Flom Conference on Law, Religion and Medicine was titled Religious Beliefs and the Health of the LGBT Community. Shawn Cirncoli spoke about provision of health care to transgender persons and potential claims of religious exemptions. Craig Knooth spoke about sexual orientation change therapy cases, suggesting that such therapy should be viewed as a form of religious ministry, with the result that prohibiting SOCE within the scope of a licence vindicates Establishment Clause concerns.
Although recent discussions concerning religious objections to same-sex relationships have focused on the question of whether businesses can assert a religious claim that would allow them to opt out of participation in same-sex marriages, the issue I addressed in my paper for the conference relates to the training of students planning to enter counseling professions. How should graduate schools training students to become psychologists, social workers or counselors deal with students who object on religious grounds to counseling homosexuals about their relationships, or at all? Can a student’s religious opposition either to counseling homosexuals at all or to counseling them in ways that affirm their homosexual relationships can be accommodated in their graduate counseling training, and if so, how? I argued that the religious views of those who wish to enter the counseling professions can be respected in a manner consistent with the primary objective of an educational institutions in training counselors in a manner that protects the interests of those who seek counseling.
I should note that you can find a link to the Dropbox file with all of the papers from the conference here. Hopefully my short descriptions here will prompt you to do that.
The Tories and Tradition
Marc DeGirolami has called our attention to the importance of law and tradition (here and here, for example), which I was pondering last night as the Conservative Party exceeded all expectations and won a narrow parliamentary majority. Even if the British Conservatives aren't, in some respects, especially conservative (and after last night's wins by the Scottish Nationalists, not especially "British" but only English), the centuries-long enduring electoral performance of the Tories is one of the most remarkable features of Anglosphere politics. I have on my office wall two portraits: Thomas More and Benjamin Disraeli (with an autograph letter of Disraeli’s) for reasons that Russell Kirk once put well about the significance of shaping a political culture and its constitutional traditions:
Now what was it, in the ideas of Disraeli, that provided the Conservatives with spirit enough to recover from Peelism and to dominate a nation more heavily industrialized than any other in the world? What enabled the party of the country gentlemen to hold office well into the twentieth century, when they thought themselves irretrievably ruined in 1845? How did Disraeli’s theory of English history take shape as a political philosophy? The fascination of Disraeli’s personality, and the details of his long struggle against Gladstone, often obscure estimates of his accomplishment. When admirers of Lord Beaconsfield endeavor to sum up his achievements, sometimes one is confronted with a miscellaneous list of innovations--the Reform of 1867, the Factory Acts, aid to schools, commencement of a program of public housing--as if these were of themselves conservative measures. In truth, Disraeli's positive legislation sometimes was inconsistent with his theory, and in any case inferior to it. His really important achievement, as a political leader, was implanting in the public imagination an ideal of Toryism which has been immeasurably valuable in keeping Britain faithful to her constitutional traditions. The Primrose League mattered more than Suez. A foreigner who travels today through West Riding, say, from Leeds to Sheffield, or through any other densely-settled British industrial region, must be astonished that Conservative governments can exist in Britain. Yet many of the workingmen who live in these grim brick rows or in the monotony of the new council-houses vote for Conservative candidates; in the country at large, the Tories claim millions of supporters among the regular trade-union members, and many more among the laboring classes in general. Britain, which Saint-Simon thought ripe for proletarian revolution during Liverpool's ministry, was still Tory enough in 1951 to make Churchill prime minister and in 1986 to sustain a Tory lady in that office. Nowhere else in the modern world has a unified conservative party enjoyed such continuity of purpose and such enduring popular support. In great part, this is the triumph of Disraeli.
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (7th rev. ed., 1986), 271.
Law, Religion and Health Care Institutions
The second panel at the Petrie Flom Conference on Law, Religion and Health in America addressed health care institutions.
Ryan Meade argued that hospitals cannot have a conscience because they do not have an intellect and will. His interest was not in addressing what kind of religious accommodations should or should not be granted (in fact he favors religious liberty), but rather the use of language of conscience. His fear is that we lose what conscience means by imprecise use of language.
Elizabeth Sepper addressed the extent to which institutions that are no longer Catholic in their operation or ownership continue to be bound by restrictions on services through contract. Because of contract, institutions affiliated with other faiths and institutional investors devoted to the pursuit of profit assume a religious mantle. The results is that religious identity survives in "zombie form," while the justifications for its existence (the affiliation with a religious body or the religious beliefs of its founders, directors, or employees) no longer hold true. She sees no value in allowing that perpetuation.
David Craig argues that organizations can claim free exercise protection, not on the basis of individual's religious belief, but on the basis of an integrated religious mission. He suggests three ways of mission integrity: (1) Associational buy-in test: employees and customers demonstrably affirm corporate religious mission, e.g. employee training, commercial advertising. (2) Worker welfare: do employees holistically benefit from corporate religious mission e.g. through compensation, benefits. (3) Public service test: does corp advance public interests through its acts consistent with its religious mission? Based on how fully Catholic hospitals implement respect for life throughout theeir practices, he would provide accommodation to Catholic hospitals, but not to Hobby Lobby.
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