Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Some (perhaps) timely words from Marcus Aurelius . . .
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Movsesian, "Of Human Dignities"
My colleague and partner in crime, Mark Movsesian, has posted his paper, Of Human Dignities, which argues that the concept of dignity as a norm of international human rights is in fact beset by fundamental disagreements about its content. Here's the abstract:
This paper, written for a symposium on the 50th anniversary of Dignitatis Humanae, the Catholic Church’s declaration on religious freedom, explores the conception of human dignity in international human rights law. I argue that, notwithstanding a surface consensus, no generally accepted conception of human dignity exists in contemporary human rights law. Radically different understandings compete against one another and prevent agreement on crucial issues. For example, the Catholic Church and other religious bodies favor objective understandings that tie dignity to external factors beyond personal choice. By contrast, many secular human rights advocates favor subjective definitions that ground dignity in individual will. These conceptions clash, most notably in contemporary debates on traditional values resolutions and same-sex marriage. Similarly, individualist conceptions of dignity, familiar to most of us in the West, compete with corporate conceptions that emphasize the dignity of traditional religions — a clash that plays out in the context of the proselytism and the right to convert. Rather than try to forge agreement on a universal definition of dignity, I argue, we lawyers should commit to a more modest approach, one that accepts the reality of disagreement and finds a humane way to accommodate it.
Two passages from Edmund Burke, A Letter to William Smith, Esq., on the Subject of Catholic Emancipation
I recently had occasion to come across this letter by Edmund Burke: A Letter to William Smith, Esq., on the Subject of Catholic Emancipation.
One portion of it reminded me of a homily by Fr. Walter Burghardt, S.J., that I was privileged to hear as a graduate student. Its theme was the danger of religious indifferentism. On that topic, here's Burke to Smith:
You need make no apology for your attachment to the religious description you belong to. It proves (as in you it is sincere) your attachment to the great points in which the leading divisions are agreed, when the lesser, in which they differ, are so dear to you. I shall never call any religious opinions, which appear important to serious and pious minds, things of no consideration. Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference, which is, at least, half infidelity. As long as men hold charity and justice to be essential integral parts of religion, there can be little danger from a strong attachment to particular tenets in faith." (emphasis added)
Another portion of it reminded me of various currents in American public life today, including in our public law:
My whole politics, at present, centre in one point, and to this the merit or demerit of every measure (with me) is referable, -- that is, what will most promote or depress the cause of Jacobinism. What is Jacobinism? It is an attempt (hitherto but too successful) to eradicate prejudice out of the minds of men, for the purpose of putting all power and authority into the hands of the persons capable of occasionally enlightening the minds of the people. * * *
* * *
As the grand prejudice, and that which holds all the other prejudices together, the first, last, and middle object of their hostility is religion. With that they are at inexpiable war. They make no distinction of sects. A Christian, as such, is to them an enemy. What, then, is left to a real Christian, (Christian as a believer and as a statesman,) but to make a league between all the grand divisions of that name, to protect and to cherish them all, and by no means to proscribe in any manner, more or less, any member of our common party? The divisions which formerly prevailed in the Church, with all their overdone zeal, only purified and ventilated our common faith, because there was no common enemy arrayed and embattled to take advantage of their dissensions; but now nothing but inevitable ruin will be the consequence of our quarrels. I think we may dispute, rail, persecute, and provoke the Catholics out of their prejudices; but it is not in ours they will take refuge. * * ** * *
It is a great truth, and which in one of the debates I stated as strongly as I could to the House of Commons in the last session, that, if the Catholic religion is destroyed by the infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd idea, that this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that event. Therefore my humble and decided opinion is, that all the three religions prevalent more or less in various parts of these islands ought all, in subordination to the legal establishment as they stand in the several countries, to be all countenanced, protected, and cherished, and that in Ireland particularly the Roman Catholic religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration, and should be, in its place, provided with all the means of making it a blessing to the people who profess it, -- that it ought to be cherished as a good, (though not as the most preferable good, if a choice was now to be made,) and not tolerated as an inevitable evil. If this be my opinion as to the Catholic religion as a sect, you must see that I must be to the last degree averse to put a man, upon that account, upon a bad footing with relation to the privileges which the fundamental laws of this country give him as a subject. I am the more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion, (always, however, as secondary,) because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual barrier, if not the sole barrier, against Jacobinism. The Catholics form the great body of the lower ranks of your community, and no small part of those classes of the middling that come nearest to them. You know that the seduction of that part of mankind from the principles of religion, morality, subordination, and social order is the great object of the Jacobins. Let them grow lax, skeptical, careless, and indifferent with regard to religion, and, so sure as we have an existence, it is not a zealous Anglican or Scottish Church principle, but direct Jacobinism which will enter into that breach. Two hundred years dreadfully spent in experiments to force that people to change the form of their religion have proved fruitless. You have now your choice, for full four fifths of your people, of the Catholic religion or Jacobinism. If things appear to you to stand on this alternative, I think you will not be long in making your option. * * *
* * *
January 29, 1795. Twelve at night.
(emphases added)
Sunday, May 1, 2016
"Every serious consideration of limited war . . . ."
Michael Perry's welcome remembrance of Fr. Daniel Berrigan's witness reminded me of something John Courtney Murray wrote late in We Hold These Truths: "A friendly critic, Professor Julian Hartt of the Yale Divinity School, had this to say: 'Father Murray has not, I believe, clearly enough come to terms with the question behind every serious consideration of limited war as a moral option, i.e., where are the ethical principles to fix the appropriate limits? Where, not what?: can we make out the lineaments of the community which is the living repository (as it were) of the ethical principles relevant and efficacious to the moral limits of warfare?' This is a fair question." A fair question, indeed.
Commenting on Murray's own ensuing judgment that the "American consensus" he invoked no longer obtained, even then, Michael Baxter concludes as follows: "In the years since Murray's death, Catholic social ethicists in the United States have dedicated themselves to pursuing Murray's agenda. But the American consensus remains as elusive as it was in Murray's day; indeed, more elusive. With time, this will no longer point to the plausibility of Murray's compatibility thesis, but rather to its implausibility." A fair conclusion? One awaits countervailing evidence.
What ought "we" do while we wait for the consensus to appear? Vote in every next general election ad absurdum? The Catholic positions defended by Murray on contentious issues, such as nuclear weapons and abortion, have never prevailed in public discourse, let alone in law. The "where?" question, half-answered by Murray, looms larger as every political cycle passes and the returns thereof veto any hope of actualizing Murray's imagined consensus. The natural law never was what the consensus-mongers said it was, and meanwhile the human deficit in effective ability to implement the natural law grows greater as religion is reduced by law, at least for law's purposes, to the efficacy of incense.
"Zen Poem," by Daniel Berrigan
How I long for supernatural powers!
said the novice mournfully to the holy one.
I see a dead child
and I long to say, Arise!
I see a sick man
I long to say, Be healed!
I see a bent old woman
I long to say, Walk straight!
Alas, I feel like a dead stick in paradise.
Master, can you confer on me
supernatural powers?
The old man shook his head fretfully
How long have I been with you
and you know nothing?
How long have you known me
and learned nothing?
Listen; I have walked the earth for 80 years
I have never raised a dead child
I have never healed a sick man
I have never straightened an old woman's spine
Children die
men grow sick
the aged fall
under a stigma of frost
And what is that to you or me
but the turn of the wheel
but the way of the world
but the gateway to paradise?
Supernatural powers!
Then you would play God
would spin the thread of life and measure the thread
5 years, 50 years, 80 years
and cut the thread?
Supernatural powers!
I have wandered the earth for 80 years
I confess to you,
sprout without root
root without flower
I know nothing of supernatural powers
I have yet to perfect my natural powers!
to see and not be seduced
to hear and not be deafened
to taste and not be eaten
to touch and not be bought
But you-
would you walk on water
would you master the air
would you swallow fire?
Go talk with the dolphins
they will teach you glibly
how to grow gills
Go listen to eagles
they will hatch you, nest you
eaglet and airman
Go join the circus
those tricksters will train you
in deception for dimes-
Bird man, bag man, poor fish
spouting fire, moon crawling
at sea forever-
supernatural powers!
Do you seek miracles?
listen- go
draw water, hew wood
break stones-
how miraculous!
Listen; blessed is the one
who walks the earth 5 year, 50 years, 80 years
and deceives no one
and curses no one
and kills no one
On such a one
the angels whisper in wonder,
behold the irresistible power
of natural powers-
of height, of joy, of soul, of non belittling!
You dry stick-
in the crude soil of this world
spring, root, leaf, flower!
trace
around and around
and around-
an inch, a mile, the world's green extent,-
a liberated zone
of paradise!
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