In the early 1990s, I was fortunate to be a student of the great Catholic scholar, Wallace Fowlie. Professor Fowlie's particular area of expertise was French symbolist poetry, in particular Rimbaud and Mallarmé (he has an important set of translations of the former). But he was also deeply interested in the work of the symbolist-influenced Catholic poet, Paul Claudel and the (complicated) philosopher, Henri Bergson.
I took various classes on Dante and Proust with Professor Fowlie. I also remember visiting with him on several occasions in his home (at that time, in a quiet retirement community; he was already quite advanced in age) and chatting with him about his extraordinary life. On one memorable occasion, in 1995, just before I graduated, I recall driving him to a wonderful and simple Easter service.
I thought about Professor Fowlie, who passed away in 1998, twenty years ago, in reading a little pamphlet of his published in 1994 titled, "Dante Today: A Personal Essay." Here is a passage of it for Lent, concerning an encounter in his youth with T.S. Eliot:
The year was 1932-33, when Eliot came to Harvard to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures. These were public lectures in the evening. They were published in book form in 1931: The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. In addition to these public lectures, Eliot gave a course on "English literature from 1830 to 1930," to fifteen students. Fourteen of these students were English majors. I was the fifteenth, just barely admitted since I was a French-Italian major.
I had two good friends in that class which was held on the second floor of Sever Hall. Before Eliot arrived in Cambridge, we had worked hard on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915) and on "The Wasteland" (1922). When I first read "Ash Wednesday" in 1930, it seemed to me a religious poem, a poem of peacefulness finally reached after the earlier poems of man's human dilemmas. We were proud to have Eliot there and hear him speak to us each week. We became almost childishly curious about him, about his life, and we developed the outrageous habit of following him in the street to see where he walked, where he ate, what he ate. If he went into the Coop, what did he buy? He had announced his allegiance to the Anglo-Catholic branch of the Episcopal Church, and we suspected that he attended Sunday services in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, on the back of Beacon Hill in Boston. That turned out to be true.
When Christmas Eve came, the three of us decided to attend midnight Mass at St. John's where the singing was Gregorian chant, directed by a skilled organist, Mr. Titcomb. We hoped, of course, that Eliot would be there. He was there in the first row, seated beside his colleague-friend Theodore Spencer. We took our places in the sixth row behind them. It is a small church, and that evening it was filled. It was snowing outside. The ladies wore fur coats. The liturgy was performed slowly and reverently, and the Mass was beautifully sung by the Cowley Fathers, an Anglican monastic order.
At the end of the service, the congregation stood and filled immediately into the one aisle that led to the entrance. The three of us decided to wait in our row until Eliot and Spencer passed us. Then we took our places somewhat behind them. Between us and Eliot, we noticed in the very slow moving crowd, a tall fellow we had seen in the Harvard yard. He was a graduate student. The church was quiet and we filed out. Suddenly, this student, whom we did not know, opened his mouth and recited in a strong voice a line in Italian, which he obviously directed at Eliot. We could see Eliot cringe and try to move faster in order to get out of the church. When we finally got outside, Eliot and his friend had disappeared into the falling snow, and the graduate student also had disappeared.
When I returned to college after the Christmas holiday, I ran into the student one day in the yard. I spoke to him then. "Excuse me. After midnight Mass on Christmas eve, I heard you recite a line of Italian. You seemed to direct it to Mr. Eliot. May I ask you what that line was? Possibly Dante?" He looked at me in a somewhat scornful way, and asked: "Haven't you read Guido Cavalcanti?"
"No, I haven't read Cavalcanti."
"Well, let me recite it to you and translate it. Perch'io non spero di tornar giammai. 'Because I do not hope to turn again.' Do you recognize the translation?"
This time I was able to answer in the affirmative. And I said, "Yes, it's the first line in Eliot's Ash Wednesday." "But," I continued, "Why did you do that in the quiet of that church? It disturbed Eliot."
"I wanted to tell that Old Possum that I knew he had stolen his first line from the first line of a Cavalcanti poem."
Abruptly he left me then. And I, both shocked and somewhat amused, made my way to Widener.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
On Friday, March 23, in Minneapolis, the Law Journal at St. Thomas is sponsoring a symposium on "Religious Freedom and the Common Good." In past work, I've explored the idea that common-good-related arguments can be an important, overlooked ground for religious freedom in a society that needs to be persuaded of the importance of that principle. This conference will push that exploration further.
The program will bring together (1) social scientists who measure the contributions of religion to society and (2) legal scholars, advocates, and policy analysts interested in religious freedom--for an interchange on how the two disciplines can learn from each other in the service of productive initiatives. Co-organizer is the Baylor University Institute for Study of Religion (ISR).
So far just a Facebook link, so I'll post at a bit of length. Speakers include:
- Brian Grim (lunchtime speaker), founder of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, whose widely-reported study quantifies the socio-economic value that religion contributes in the US as $1.2 trillion yearly
- Byron Johnson, director of the Baylor ISR and one of the leading sociologists on the empirical contributions of religious organizations
- Anthony Picarello, general counsel and associate general secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (which has made "freedom to serve others" an important part of its religious-freedom advocacy)
- Jackie Rivers, an expert on the social role and contributions of African-American churches
- Melissa Rogers, now at Brookings, who handled issues concerning faith-based institutions for the Obama White House
- Sahar Aziz, Rutgers Law School, an expert on Muslim organizations, anti-terrorism efforts, and religious-freedom issues
- Stanley Carlson-Thies, founder, Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance
- Angela Carmella, Seton Hall Law School, an expert on Catholic social thought and religious freedom
- Mark David Hall, political scientist at George Fox U., expert on the framers' understanding of religion and the common good
- Dana Mataic (with Prof. Roger Finke, Penn State U.): on the causes and consequences of religious-freedom restrictions around the world
- Yours truly
Here's a fuller description:
Continue reading
For readers in and about Chicago: The theology department at Loyola U. is sponsoring a program on "The Question of Religious Freedom," on Monday, March 12 (evening keynote), and Tuesday, March 13 (day-long) at the downtown campus. Speakers include Barry Hudock, author of Struggle, Condemnation, Vindication: John Courtney Murray’s Journey toward Vatican II; Robin Lovin, one of the nation's most distinguished mainline Protestant social ethicists; and three legal scholars, Kathleen Brady, Leslie Griffin, and yours truly.
From the description:
In recent times, religious freedom has reemerged as a key and controversial issue within the United States and around the world. With a desire to contribute to this essential conversation, we have invited prominent scholars to discuss and analyze religious freedom as it relates to issues of social polarization, peaceful coexistence, non-discrimination and the common good. We also will look back to the contribution of John Courtney Murray, S.J. to Dignitatis Humanae, the groundbreaking document on Religious Freedom issued in [1965] by the Second Vatican Council.
I'm looking forward to the program: an examination of Murray's legacy on this issue, a wide-ranging set of current perspectives, an important set of themes ("social polarization" et al. above), and ample time allocated for the speakers and audience to air and explore those themes thoroughly.
Monday, February 19, 2018
As Michael Perry noted a few days ago, the USCCB filed an amicus brief in the Janus case, which does not -- contrary to the suggestion in the USCCB's brief -- present the question whether right-to-work should be constitutionalized in the private sector, but instead asks the Court to decide whether the First Amendment permits governments to condition public employment (employment that is, collective bargaining aside, heavily regulated and protected) on affiliating with a political association (i.e., a public-sector-employee union) whose activities and expression one opposes.
In my view -- and I've gone through my reasons here at MOJ many times (Ed.: Talk about an understatement!) it is a mistake both to (a) think that strong support rightly expressed in Catholic Social Thought for the dignity and rights of workers means that Catholics should support the policy agenda of today's unions (e.g., opposing school choice) and (b) to fail to distinguish between the labor-capital dynamic, on the one hand, and the taxpayer/government/party/public-employee dynamic, on the other. But, I understand, many intelligent Catholics disagree with me, though I cannot help being frustrated that some persist in the tired and inaccurate claim that my view is somehow "libertarian" or (shudder) "neo-liberal." In any event, and notwithstanding my huge admiration for the General Counsel, I think the challengers' legal arguments are the stronger ones. And, here (in City Journal) is a helpful and, in my view, compelling analysis of the case.
All that said, here is a statement from Bishop Thomas Paprocki (Springfield), responding to the USCCB's brief.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Princeton University, where I have had the privilege of teaching for more than thirty-two years, recently received a black eye in the media when Anthropology professor Lawrence Rosen cancelled his course "Cultural Freedoms: Hate Speech, Blasphemy, and Pornography" after several students were offended by his saying--purely and unmistakably for bona fide pedagogical purposes--a racially derogatory word. Here's an update from Reason magazine on the matter.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/14/princeton-professor-cancels-hate-speech
I stress that Professor Rosen's mentioning of the word, which he did several times (as he had done in previous classes on culture and free speech with no adverse reaction), was pedagogical. No one was in any doubt about that. No one could possibly have been in any doubt about it. The idea that Lawrence Rosen, whom I have known since I arrived at Princeton in 1985, is a racist is beyond risible. He is a person of decency and upright character in every way. There isn't the slightest trace of animus in the man. He treats all of his colleagues and students with respect. As it happens, he is also one of the Princeton's most brilliant and eminent social scientists. He is MacArthur genius award winner, among countless other distinctions. It is painful for me personally, as I know it must be in even greater degree for him, to see his name dragged through the mud for allegedly (as some media misleadingly put it) "using a racial slur."
It is important for people to know another thing about the incident. Princeton did not pressure or even ask or encourage Professor Rosen to cancel his class. No pressure was placed on him by colleagues or administrative officials of the Department or the University. Princeton's president, Christopher Eisgruber, strongly defended Professor Rosen against the smears to which he was subjected and expressly and forcefully supported his right to use the words he deemed necessary and suitable to accomplish his pedagogical mission in teaching about hate speech and related issues. The same is true of Professor Carolyn Rouse who chairs Princeton's Department of Anthropology. Neither President Eisgruber nor Professor Rouse deserves to be counted among those college and university administrators around the country who have brought shame on themselves and their institutions by caving in to demands for speech policing and the curtailment of academic freedom. Quite the contrary. Both deserve high praise for standing up for freedom of expression on campus and other core academic values.
Why did Professor Rosen elect to cancel his course? I do not know the whole story, but I do know that he made the decision in light of his judgment that cancellation was in the interests of the students who had enrolled in the course. I do not know how that could be, but I haven't the slightest doubt that this was in fact Professor Rosen's sincere judgment and motivation. He is not a coward and would never yield to intimidation tactics. I know that some students who privately told Professor Rosen they wanted the course to continue were too afraid to speak out publicly. Evidently they feared being defamed as "racists" or "bigots." That makes me sad. As Professor Rosen told his students, the surest way to lose freedom is to remain silent in the face of efforts to squash it.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
My colleague, Mark Movsesian, and I are pleased and honored to announce the fourth biennial (how many years is that?) Colloquium in Law and Religion, to be hosted at St. John's in fall 2018. This seminar invites leading law and religion scholars and judges to share their work in law and religion before a small audience of students and faculty. Here is the slate of speakers:
September 17: Professor Robert Louis Wilken (University of Virginia, Emeritus)
October 1: Professor Philip Hamburger (Columbia Law School)
October 15: Professor John Inazu (Washington U. St. Louis School of Law)
October 29: Professor Micah Schwartzman (University of Virginia School of Law)
November 12: The Honorable Diane S. Sykes (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit)
November 26: Professor Vincent Phillip Muñoz (University of Notre Dame)
To read more about past colloquia, please see these links:
For more information about the 2018 colloquium, please contact me at [email protected] or Mark at [email protected].
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
We can't serve dishes made with quick-melting Ched-O-Bit any more, so I'll be running out later today to pick up some tomato soup instead. No need to wait, though to enjoy Amy Welborn's "Gallery of Regrettable Lenten Food."
A taste of the advertising copy: "Is Lent a Problem? 'No!' ... says Chef Ernest Cuony of New York's Fashionable Hotel Barclay. 'You've shown me, Mrs. America, that it's not necessary to sacrifice deliciousness and flavor in order to 'toe the mark' during Lent. As a matter of fact, your pure, wholesome, delicate-flavored WESSON OIL gives--how you say it?--'oomph' to even every-day dishes.'"
