In its March 5 issue, America magazine has a series of essays which fall within the caption “Religious Liberty at Risk?”. The question mark in the cover title suggests in the periodical, which bills itself as “the National Catholic Weekly”, that the issue of religious liberty at risk is a debatable one, at least for Catholics, in the United States today.
Some of the contributions in this issue of America argue that the concerns being raised these days about religious liberty by Roman Catholics, largely but not exclusively within the purview of the HHS mandate, necessitate a “balancing act” between the rights of the Church and “the rights of all.” Who the “all” are is never addressed (people who want birth control, abortion, and sterilization?), and the question surrounding what are the “rights” claimed is ambiguous in large part.
Several of the contributions rely on the thinking of John Courtney Murray, S.J. regarding the subjects of religious freedom, morality, and the law (civil). In this regard, I am sure that most folks who read carefully his work would agree that Murray, the Declaration on Religious Liberty, and international texts such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights share the same view that authentic religious freedom is simultaneously a personal and communal right with both private and public dimensions that must be protected. But I detected from time to time that some of the conclusions in portions of the America articles cannot be supported by the thought of Murray as is suggested by several contributors. To comprehend what are the contentions that misuse of Murray, one must take stock of how Murray is brought into the neuralgic issues of the day (same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception). Second, it is crucial to comprehend all of Murray rather than just some of Murray.
All of these issues of public policy involve some dimension of law promulgated by the temporal authorities of the United States. In addition, these issues also intersect reasoned moral concerns that are addressed by the Church’s teachings. It is also patent that there is polarization in the country today over what should public policy be regarding these neuralgic issues. But it would be a mistake to suggest that the polarization that exists is solely attributable to tensions and conflicts between Church teachings and public policies. Certainly the Church is not the responsible agent for there being “red” states and “blue” states. Still, there is polarization. What might be the responses of Murray to these disagreements about public life and policy which are manifest today?
First of all, Murray would have to acknowledge that while there is not identical overlap between the moral teachings of the Church and public policy that is codified in law, there is frequent intersection. One need only look at the elements of the Decalogue dealing with right-relation between people to see these precepts duplicated in public law that address theft, killing, perjury, and elder abuse. It is not the coincidence of the Church’s moral teachings (and the moral view of religion more generally) and the civil law that is the issue that is the concern in this posting. Rather, this posting deals with the issue of religious liberty today and how far should the state and its law interfere with the moral beliefs and practices of the religious person and religious communities that include the Catholic Church?
In regard to the controversy of the present moment about religious freedom, the distinction between public and private moralities is not the issue. This is an important topic that Murray was not adverse to addressing, but it has little or no application to the current debate between religious freedom and conflict with public law.
Rather, the concerns about religious freedom involve whether public law must coerce the religious believer and religious community to exercise publicly their moral teachings at their peril. The problem is not that the Church is imposing its beliefs on the temporal world. The problem is that the temporal authorities, which have secured in law morally problematic positions, are mandating that the religious believer and the religious community must be coerced into doing that which is morally unacceptable. Some thinkers and writers have recently argued that Murray asserted that for the law to be effective, there must be consensus about underlying premises if the law addresses moral issues intersecting people’s conduct. I am sure that most folks would agree that laws prohibiting theft are morally acceptable, but the fact that there exists a minority which does not agree indicates that there is not a consensus on this matter. Murray would did not argue that consensus about a moral issue was crucial to the viability of legislating on or for the moral issue. His concern about consensus took a different path.
He understood that the consensus that was essential to the foundation of the United States and its legal regime was also common to Catholic teaching. But this consensus that was crucial to our nation’s foundation seems to be in short supply today as is evidenced by the absence of appeal to ordered liberty—not just for believers and Catholics but for all Americans. What Murray did say about consensus was this: American institutions of the second half of the twentieth century, including the American academy, have “long since bade a quiet goodbye to the whole notion of an American consensus, as implying that there are truths that we hold in common, and a natural law that makes known to all of us the structures of the moral universe in such wise that all of us are bound by it in a common obedience.”
Obedience and law frequently go hand in hand. In the present context of concerns about religious freedom and conflicts with the liberty to have an abortion, to participate in same-sex marriage, or to use birth control it is not these latter “liberties” that are threatened; rather, it is religious freedom which is. What is emerging more clearly with the passage of time is the fact that good citizens who are also good Catholics are being forced to put aside their moral beliefs and embrace against their religious convictions the amoral, the immoral, and the morally compromised.
Murray was a firm believer in the natural law as the exercise of human intelligence comprehending the intelligible reality that surrounds us. What gave him concerns two generations ago was the rise of “the voluntarist idea of law as will” that could push aside the objective reason of human intelligence comprehending intelligible reality. He foresaw the day when the “noble many-storeyed mansion of democracy” would be dismantled and “levelled to the dimension of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged.”
I submit that Murray saw what was beginning to happen to the enterprise of the authentic American consensus and the vital role that religious freedom has to exercise within the forming of this consensus. He issued his warning founded on the inextricable nexus between the moral outlook and the laws that must be made by a society that calls itself democratic. Democracy for him would fail when the moral perspective was forced to embrace the morally problematic in the formation of laws and public policy. This is why the Catholic bishops today are exercising their teaching authority to remind all people of good will about the non-derogable nature of religious freedom. The debate about religious freedom today does not entail the imposition of Catholic moral teachings on the rest of society; rather, it involves the imposition of immoral and amoral views on all, even those who are protected by the right of religious freedom, a right that preceded the state which is now being manipulated to impose views antithetical to religious liberty.
In regards to the future of the American consensus, Murray stated, “it would be for others, not Catholics, to ask themselves whether they still shared the consensus which first fashioned the American people into a body politic and determined the structures of its fundamental law.” I think Murray would be of the view that the U.S. bishops are taking a course that is consistent with his notion of religious freedom.
RJA sj
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
On February 14 of this year, a group of faculty of John Carroll University in Cleveland led by Professor Lauritzen (a professor of religious studies and an individual who has disagreed with Church teachings on marriage, human sexuality, and embryonic stem cell research in the past) wrote a letter to the President of the University calling for a stand against the Church’s authority by John Carroll University and other Catholic and Jesuit universities “in the face of the bishops’ unwillingness to accept the accommodation offered by the Obama administration” regarding the HHS mandate. The faculty letter contends that the stance of the bishops regarding the HHS mandate, which in part addresses free contraception coverage, is confrontational and inflammatory given the Obama administration’s effort to accommodate both religious freedom and the “access to contraception [that] is central to the health and well being of women and children.” Via dotCommonweal, the faculty letter can be found here.
These faculty members at John Carroll claim they are committed to the freedom of conscience and religious freedom, but like many who advocate for human rights, it becomes clear that, in their views, some “rights” trump others. Notwithstanding their recognition that the “bishops have the right to proclaim Catholic teaching vigorously and loudly” (which, incidentally would imply that the clerics, religious, and faithful have the right to believe in Catholic teachings and exercise them in accordance with the law of the Church, the international order, and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution), they contend that anything (including authentic religious freedom and rights of conscience) that conflicts with “access to contraception” that “is central to the health and well being of women and children” is of lesser importance.
In short, their recognition of religious freedom—for individuals, for groups of believers, and for the Church herself—will have to be sacrificed when the issue of the “rights of reproductive health” is on the table.
First of all, there are several matters contained in the letter that necessitate comment. The first is this: why is contraception central to the health and well being of children? Is it because they would be at risk if they did not have access to contraception? But this prompts the anticipated question, why should children have access to contraception? Is sexual encounter the only thing they will do that may endanger their lives? Should we not be more concerned about pre- and post-natal care for them? For essential vaccinations? For basic and good health-care in their formative years? Why should only contraception for children be the only health-care issue which the John Carroll faculty are concerned? Perhaps the letter’s signatories had in mind something else and that the reason why children’s interests are at stake is because if contraception were not made available to adults, the children who result from the “unprotected” sexual encounters may be threatened by other factors such as a difficult life or abortion. The latter point about facing abortion is presented elsewhere in the letter when its authors state that “unplanned pregnancies harm the health of women and children and lead to more abortions.” So, the reasoning seems to be this: if contraception is not paid for by John Carroll University, children’s health will be compromised because they will be aborted if free contraception is not made available to the employees of this Catholic and Jesuit institution. Thus, why can’t John Carroll University go along with everyone else who believes in “family planning services as a part of preventive health care for women”? One answer quickly comes to mind: it is attempting to preserve its Catholic identity which is guarded by the non-derogable right of religious freedom.
But there is a second group of issues that this letter prompts about the bishops’ “resistance” to the “accommodation” and their playing “politics with women’s health.” In this second category of considerations, a central item deals with the Christian Catholic understanding of the nature of the human person. At the Second Vatican Council, the Fathers asked on occasion the fundamental question: quid est homo (what is man; what is the human person)? Is the human person first and last a corporeal entity primarily concerned with sexual encounters at any time with anyone for any or no reason? Or is the human person something else? The bishops and many Catholic faithful have argued otherwise and continue to assert otherwise. If there is a theology of the body as Blessed John Paul II spoke of so often and eloquently, there is surely a theology of the human person which addresses the person’s raison d’être: to live a good, i.e., virtuous, life in preparation for union with God—each person’s undeniable destiny as understood from the Catholic perspective. Unfortunately, the faculty letter addressed to the head of a Catholic university reveals none of this. Moreover, the text echoes the voice too often heard today in human rights discourse that sexual autonomy will always trump the long-established and non-derogable rights which include religious freedom—the right to believe in the question quid est homo and to exercise the answer that inevitably follows.
A principal hallmark of Catholic education has traditionally been that it is the place where God-given human intelligence comprehends the intelligible reality that surrounds the human person and human society so that what is good (i.e., what enables all human persons to flourish on the path to their destinies) can be pursued and what is not can be avoided. The John Carroll University faculty letter does not reveal this fundamental quality of education that employs the moniker “Catholic.” As it does not, there is reason to recall the series of addresses Archbishop Michael Miller delivered in the United States in 2005 and 2006 when he was the Secretary for the Congregation of Catholic Education and where he suggested that there might be need for a kind of “evangelical pruning” for those educational institutions which have compromised their Catholic identity, an identity that clearly and centrally is concerned with the question of what is the human person. I join the many who do not think that this is the right path for John Carroll University to take. Since the authors of the letter upon which I have been offering some comment have urged other institutions to follow their counsel, I do not think that the fruits of their advocacy constitute the proper path for any Catholic institution to pursue unless it wishes to cede its soul, its identity, by casting off the banner of Christ and accepting whatever accommodation might be offered so that “confrontation” and “inflammatory rhetoric” may be avoided.
RJA sj
Monday, February 27, 2012
I appreciate Steve posting on the JFK speech to the Houston Ministerial Association, September 1960. Many recall the significance of his speech with either their adulation or critique. However, as we consider the import of what then Senator Kennedy said in his formal remarks, we should also take stock of the answers he gave during the formal question-and-answer session that immediately followed the speech. We also need to consider the fact that this was a political speech geared not to losing votes but, more likely, to gaining them.
One of the first questions he had to contend with was whether, as a public official, he would attend a service in a church other than one that was Catholic. In this regard, Kennedy replied in the affirmative. But then he was pressed on why he cancelled an acceptance to attend the dedication of the Chapel of the Chaplains in Philadelphia in 1947. The Chapel was located in the lower level of a Protestant church and was designed as an interfaith place of prayer that commemorated the four brave chaplains (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish) aboard the USS Dorchester who gave their life vests to other service members as the ship was sinking. Kennedy’s answer was that if he were invited as a public official or simple citizen who had served in the Navy, he would have still gone to the dedication. But it appeared that he had been invited as the “Catholic spokesman,” and in this context he “did not feel [he] had very good credentials to attend” in this capacity. In the later analysis, it appears that Kennedy understood he was not in a position to speak for or bind the Catholic Church in whatever he said or did at the dedication. Moreover, as a fledgling office-holder, he indicated that his expertise was not theology and related matters.
That was a simple question—even though he was contentiously pushed with a hard follow-up question—with a relatively straightforward answer given again by Kennedy. But some of the ministers pressed on with more difficult questions. Several, seemingly encouraged by Kennedy’s position that he would not take instruction on public matters from his religious authorities, asked the senator if he would “appeal” to Catholic authorities in the US and in Rome with the plea “relative to the separation of church and state in the United States and religious freedom as separated in the Constitution of the United States, in order that the Vatican may officially authorize such a belief for all Roman Catholics in the United States.” Kennedy’s response demonstrated that he understood that the “separation of Church and State” was to benefit the Church as much as it was to benefit civil society, including the government. In his reply to this “appeal,” the senator said this:
“May I just say that as I do not accept the right of any, as I said, ecclesiastical official, to tell me what I shall do in the sphere of my public responsibility as an elected official, I do not propose also to ask Cardinal Cushing to ask the Vatican to take some action. I do not propose to interfere with their free right to do exactly what they want.”
When he was asked another question about the ability of the Catholic Church “to direct its members in various areas of life, including the political realm,” Kennedy provided a careful, prudential, and nuanced answer that indicated he understood a distinction between an “improper” influence and one that may well be proper. In this context, he may well have anticipated what Pope Paul VI was to say to the temporal leaders of the world five years later at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council when he honored and respected their authority and sovereignty:
“What does the Church ask of you today? She tells you in one of the major documents of this council. She asks of you only liberty, the liberty to believe and to preach her faith, the freedom to love her God and serve Him, the freedom to live and to bring to men her message of life. Do not fear her.”
By Kennedy reminding the audience of the facts that the United States had previously had two Catholic Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, that Canada had previously had two Catholic Prime Ministers, that France had the Catholic De Gaulle, and that Germany had the Catholic Adenauer, it might be said that the words of Paul VI had already been in place during the Presidential campaign. If there was no reason to fear the Church in these instances cited by Kennedy (two of which included the United States), there should be no reason to fear John Kennedy now in 1960 solely on the basis that he was a Catholic.
One other minister kept peppering the senator with long, partial quotations from different Catholic sources (some of which were mistakenly attributed to Leo XIII when they were probably from Pius IX, i.e., The Syllabus of Errors) and asked Kennedy if he agreed with them. Before Kennedy had much opportunity to say anything, another member of the audience shouted out, “I object to this. Time is running out!” However, the minister with the peppering questions managed to get in one question to which Kennedy responded. The question involved a statement attributed to John XXIII that “Catholics must unite their strength toward the common aid and the Catholic hierarchy has the right and duty of guiding them.” The concern of this questioner focused on the Catholic hierarchy’s “right and duty of guiding” the faithful. Kennedy gave the response of a good politician by reminding the minister that any Baptist or other minister “has the right and duty to guide his flock” in matters of morals and the faith, so why should the pope or any Catholic bishop or priest be different?
As I am currently undertaking a research project to discern the views of John Kennedy throughout his public life (1947-1963) on “the separation of Church and State,” I hope to be able to raise from time to time some of the results of this work with my friends here at the Mirror of Justice. I think it safe to say at this stage that what I discover may help us consider this issue and related matters as they apply to the current Presidential campaign and general election that we shall all face in a few months.
RJA sj
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Mirror of Justice and many other forums discussing the important issues of the day have been addressing freedom. A great deal of the recent focus has been on the claim made by many devout religious believers, including Catholics, that the HHS mandates for health insurance coverage of morally and legally problematic “services”. Of course there are some libertarians who view their perspective as the only one or the best one or the accurate one who disagree with this thought.
Virtually all speakers, sooner or later, rely on some form of the freedom argument. I think they are correct in this pursuit, especially when notions about the rule of law come into play. But what is freedom? Is it as the plurality in Planned Parenthood v. Casey argued: “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” If so, the collision course which I and others have predicted before is happening once again. In the context of the HHS mandate, we have the folks relying on “religious freedom” in direct conflict with those arguing “reproductive rights freedoms.”
But, one distinction between these two positions quickly emerges: the first group comprising advocates for religious freedom is not asking the second group to pay for their freedom; however, the second group is asking the first to pay for their freedom claim for “reproductive health services.” Should this distinction matter? Indeed, it should. But that is not why I write today. Rather, there is another, far more basic reason which rides on the meaning of freedom. What is it?
In previous postings I have drawn the distinction between the freedom “from” something and the freedom “for” something. Oftentimes the “something” is an authority. But that is not the only something. After a lot of pondering, I think the “something” is fundamentally that which permeates all human existence. The elemental reason for the distinction between the “from” and the “for” is this: there are things that are right, good, and proper for the human person to pursue because they affect many and sometimes all other members of the human family. There are also some things which the human person wants to do because they fulfill or satiate the individual will, i.e., the desires of this person, but these personal objectives do not take stock of the important interests of others. Another explanation for the distinction involves the reality of the Casey dicta: the desirable is what the individual person wants, and that’s it; there is no need to consider anybody else. This approach is a problem.
So is there some way of satisfactorily addressing this predicament?
A thought of Lord Acton offers relevant help. He once explained that authentic freedom is not that which the person wants or desires; rather, it is that which the person must do.
Note how the first element—doing what the individual wants—replicates the Casey formulation. This formulation coincides with the HHS mandate: the “freedom” of persons who want artificial birth control, abortion-inducing chemicals, sterilization, and other desires. This “freedom” is not something that ought to be done for the sake of all including the unborn and those persons with well-formed moral consciences that take stock of the “ought.”
Religious liberty is in the cross-hairs these days. I wish it were otherwise, but since it is not, let me suggest something for this web log community to consider: which of these two fundamental camps that I have identified in the HHS mandate matter is pursuing the self-serving and which is pursuing the other-serving? I submit that the distinction is clear.
RJA sj
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Within the last day, the suits against the Holy See, the Pope, and Cardinals Sodano and Bertone (past and current Secretaries of State) have been withdrawn by Jeffrey Anderson and Marci Hamilton, attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the sex abuse cases involving children at the Milwaukee-area school for the deaf during the period 1950 to 1974.
The Vatican Radio announcement about the withdrawals is here.
Plaintiffs' counsel had relied on the so-called "smoking gun" of the 1922 document Crimen Sollicitantionis; however, reliance on this document involving the seal of the confessional was unfounded. It was also problematic for plaintiffs' counsel to argue incessantly that those allegedly responsible for the torts and crimes against the children were "employees of the Vatican."
I am certain that more will be said about these withdrawals and their impact on Mr. Anderson's and Professor Hamilton's efforts to implicate the universal Church. But, for the time being, fact and reason appear to be focusing these cases where they should be.
RJA sj
