The Democrats for Life have been the movers behind proposals for abortion-reducing policies both nationally (with the Pregnant Women Support Act) and in states. I haven't mentioned before that the national organization's website has a document, for which I took the main drafting role, detailing various policy proposals in the so-called 95-10 Initiative and some of the evidence supporting them. The document is from a while back (among other things it contains a contraception-policy element that has since been removed), and it's likely to be revised and updated. But it still contains (IMHO) helpful information on this policy approach that offers some possibilities for consensus.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Reducing-Abortions Information
Updated Call for Papers: "Christian Realism and Public Life: Catholic and Protestant Perspectives"
November 20-21, 2009
The Terrence Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas will sponsor a conference titled "Christian Realism and Public Life: Catholic and Protestant Perspectives," on November 20-21, 2009, in Minneapolis.
An examination of “realism” in religious and political thought is timely indeed. The term has been at the forefront of recent American foreign-policy debates over the role of moral values and the use of force. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken in several contexts of a “Christian realism” that offers a more sober and solid hope for social life than do alternative views. And President Obama has identified the Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr as among his chief philosophical influences. Niebuhr’s approach was in several ways distinctively Protestant. But it is evident that the impulse for Christian public theology to be realistic—to be based in a clear-headed assessment of facts about God, human beings, and the world—cuts across Catholic and Protestant thinkers, although the themes and the definitions of realism vary.
The goal of the conference is to explore the role and meaning of “realism” in a Christian ethic of public life, with attention to topics of interest to both Catholics and Protestants. Committed plenary speakers include Jean Bethke Elshtain (social and political ethics-Chicago), Robin Lovin (social ethics-Southern Methodist), David Skeel (law-U Penn), John Carlson (just war thought-Arizona State), William Cavanaugh (theology-St. Thomas), James Turner Johnson (just war thought-Rutgers), and Jeanne Heffernan Schindler (Catholic social thought-Villanova).
- Theological assessments of human nature and its relevance to public policy
- Categorical approaches to moral reasoning vs. pragmatic approaches
- Loci of hope: for example, the extent to which it rests in the church or the world
- Assessments of Niebuhr or other thinkers who have emphasized realism
- The foundations or details of just-war thought
- Realism in Christian approaches to economic matters
- The place of Christianity in American public life
Abstracts of proposed papers should be one page and should include the author’s name, affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. The deadline for submission of proposals is Monday, June 30, 2009. Notification of acceptance will be sent by July 20, 2009. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail to murphyinstit[at]stthomas.edu or by first-class mail to
Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy
Re: Christian Realism Conference
University of St. Thomas
MSL 400
1000 LaSalle Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403-2015
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty Issues in Connecticut
The Connecticut legislature is taking up a bill to implement the state supreme court's October 2008 decision in Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health requiring the recognition of same-sex marriage. The bill currently contains only a narrow religious-liberty exemption protecting clergy from having to solemnize a same-sex marriage "in violation of [their free exercise] right[s]" -- in contrast to the exemption in Vermont's recent statute that protects religious conscientious objections to same-sex marriage in other contexts as well. These issues are plainly among the most important religious liberty matters in our nation right now.
Here are a couple of letters to the speaker of the Connecticut house arguing for meaningful religious liberty exemptions in the bill. One is from four religious liberty scholars, including Robin Fretwell Wilson (Washington and Lee, drafter), Carl Esbeck (Missouri), and MOJ's own Rick Garnett and Tom Berg, proposing a text of a broader exemption. The other is from Professor Doug Laycock, explicitly supporting both same-sex marriage and religious liberty and endorsing the text in our letter.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Costa Rica in the News
I'm paying particular attention to Costa Rica these days because my son, a budding ecologist, will be going there on a trip. So I was interested this weekend to see both Thomas Friedman's Times column describing the country's intense policy commitment to biodiversity and renewable energy sources -- "[m]ore than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together" -- and the Pope's commendation of its pro-life constitution and other policy positions. I'm not saying we should call Costa Rica a model of "pro-life progressivism" ... but it's interesting to see anti-abortion policies and strong (and pretty successful and stable) environmentalism together as majority policies, rather than held by different, clashing parties as they tend to be here.
UPDATE: Oh well ... The Pope's commendation was back in 2007. (I let myself be misled by a collection of Zenit links organized by topic rather than current-ness.) And there are reports that abortion incidence is rising quickly there despite the criminal laws.
Church Autonomy Cases in Europe
As we deal with questions about the scope of church autonomy over employment decisions here in America, similar questions are in play in Europe, where several cases from Germany are now before the European Court of Human Rights. This page, from the Strasbourg Consortium, has information on the cases, which involve the dismissals of pastors, Salvation Army officers, a Catholic parish organist/choirmaster, a Protestant parish school kindergarten teacher, and a Mormon Church public-affairs official -- some of them dismissed for sexual misconduct, some for manifesting conflicting religious beliefs, some just for doing their jobs poorly. The Strasbourg Consortium is a joint project of several law-religion-studies centers in Europe and America, and their website looks like a great overall resource for comparative religious-freedom issues.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Gay Marriage and Religious Liberty
With the recent developments in Iowa and Vermont, gay marriage has now been instituted in four state supreme court decisions and one legislative vote (and civil unions are authorized in other states). One of the court decisions has been overturned narrowly by the voters, but the ease of California's amendment-by-initiative process suggests that may be unlikely to happen elsewhere. In none of these instances did the decisionmaker simultaneously resolve the significant questions that arise about the effect recognizing gay marriage will have on religious liberty. Courts, of course, can't do so; they only decide the case before them and leave further questions for another day. Vermont's bill does not address most of the religious-liberty questions.
The primary religious-liberty concern is not the one dealt with in the Vermont statute: that objecting clergy or houses of worship would have to perform or host same-sex marriages. That prospect seems extremely unlikely anyway. Attacks on the tax-exempt status of traditionalist churches are more likely, but still doubtful. But recognition of gay marriage will definitely make it more likely that religious schools and social services, even those with religious content throughout their programs, will be punished if they refuse to hire openly gay people as teachers or counselors or to pay benefits to their partners. It may do this in several ways: (1) Most obviously, directly triggering the obligation to pay spousal benefits. (2) Depriving religious organizations of the (sometimes successful) argument that they discriminate against all extramarital sex and not on the basis of sexual orientation. See CLS v. Walker, 453 F.3d 853, 860 (7th Cir. 2006). (3) Strengthening the gay-rights argument that there is a compelling governmental interest against sexual-orientation discrimination, overriding a constitutional religious freedom claim, in virtually every context -- not just marriage but also hiring and other associational decisions by private religious organizations. See, e.g., Bob Jones Univ. v. U.S. (allowing stripping of tax exemption on ground that prohibition of race discrimination in numerous other contexts shows a "firm national policy" and a compelling, overriding interest).
It may be time for defenders of traditional opposite-sex marriage to shift some attention from trying to stop gay marriage to trying to secure religious liberty protections, at least in states where there is a significant prospect that the courts or the legislature will recognize gay marriage. Once that decision of recognition has happened, the traditionalist religious organization is on much weaker strategic ground in seeking protection to continue to pursue its vision of marriage in its employment and other decisions. As Doug Laycock suggests in the conclusion to the excellent book of essays Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty, there is opportunity at the front end to secure legislative compromises in which any recognition of same-sex marriage is accompanied by significant exemptions. The exemptions should cover not just churches refusing to perform ceremonies -- symbolically important, in practice not a live issue -- but also religious schools and social services in their employment, leadership, and membership decisions. But if traditionalists fight all the way to the mat on stopping gay marriage altogether, they may lose opportunities to secure such protection.
Tom
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Leslie Green on Law as a Means, not an End
Leslie Green of Oxford (who was my tutor there many long years ago) has posted a very interesting looking paper "Law as a Means." I'm inclined to think that in certain forms, the view that law is most fundamentally a means to achieving ends is quite consistent with Christian thought. It will be interesting, among other things, to pursue Green's reference to Aquinas:
This article defends legal instrumentalism, i.e. the thesis that law is distinguished among social institutions more by the means by which it serves its ends, than by the ends it serves. In Kelsen's terms, '[L]aw is a means, a specific social means, not an end.' The defence is indirect. First, it is argued that the instrumentalist thesis is an interpretation of a broader view about law that is common ground among theorists as different as Aquinas and Bentham. Second, the following familiar fallacies that seem to stand in the way of accepting the thesis are refuted: (1) If law is an instrument, then law can have no non-instrumental value. (2) If law is an instrument, then law always has instrumental value. (3) For law to be an instrument, there must be generic end that law serves. (4) If law is an instrument, law must be a neutral instrument. These claims are all wrong. In passing, the instrumentalist thesis is distinguished from other, unrelated, views sometimes associated with instrumentalism, including Brian Tamanaha's diagnosis of the vices of American law, and the views of those who think that jurisprudence is an instrument in the service of social ends.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Muslim-Catholic Dialogue in Twin Cities
If you're in the Twin Cities, you might be interested in this program, “A Muslim-Catholic Dialogue on Faith and Reason,” on March 18 at 7:30 p.m. on the University of St. Thomas's St. Paul campus. The two participants are of global status and recognition: Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's nuncio and permanent observer at the United Nations; and Professor Ibrahim Kalin of Georgetown University, a planner and key participant in the Catholic-Muslim Forum that met for the first time in November 2008 in Vatican City to discuss issues arising out of Pope Benedict's 2006 Regensburg speech on the need for both reason and faith in religion. The event is sponsored by St. Thomas's Murphy Institute on Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
State Financing for Catholic Schools
The Acton Institute's Rome office put on a good conference recently on state financing for Catholic schools (and did an excellent job, I must add, providing hospitality for speakers). The issue is heating up again in Italy. Both Acton's own Dr. Sam Gregg and I gave papers emphasizing the complexity of the question and the fact that seeking state funding has the downside of inviting increased regulatory strings, a perspective perhaps more typical in American than European Catholic circles. Zenit reported on the conference and on Sam's paper:
[W]hat needs to be done to secure permissible state financing for Catholic schools while helping such institutions remain faithful to the magisterium? Gregg believes the whole issue needs to be rethought in ways consistent with magisterial teaching. He then presented two possible options. One would be for Catholic schools to opt out of public funding altogether. He believes that would show how much some schools are reliant on such funding rather than faithful support of other groups. It would also reduce bureaucracy and re-engage the laity on how to best educate their children.
A second option would be to shift from direct subsidies to a policy of tax breaks, whereby Catholic parents could nominate a particular school they would like their taxes to go to. That, argued Gregg, would create "major incentives" to educators to pay more attention to parental wishes rather than "the whims of state officials and politicians pushing politically correct agendas."
I presented my own position, which is that the increased ability in the U.S. (at least in theory) to access funding, permitted by recent cases like Zelman and Mitchell, is "a positive development, ... although a highly qualified one" because of the conditions that come with funding. "It is better that legal rules offer the funding option. [It's true that c]onditions on the funds can affect the schools’ integrity and mission. But so too ... can the financial disadvantage of being excluded from assistance that competing schools (and their students) receive."
The effect that financial pressures (intensified by a rule of no funding) can have on religious schools' integrity and mission was dramatized just before the conference by the announcement of a plan to "save" several distresased Catholic schools in New York City by turning them into public charter schools. As I put it, "The change would permit them to receive funds but would require them to eliminate their religious components entirely—not just in selected classes as [earlier] Supreme Court decisions [reading the Establishment Clause broadly] had required. That scarcely advances the cause of pluralism in education."
(See also this report from Vatican Radio.)
Saturday, February 14, 2009
When in Rome ... Stop by a Conference on School Funding
There may not be a lot of MOJ readers in Rome (or maybe there are -- and at the highest levels?) ... Anyhow, there is a conference this Monday in Rome on "State Financing of Catholic Schools," held at the Pontifical University Antonianum, and co-sponsored by the university's canon-law faculty and the Acton Institute. I'll be speaking along with Acton's president Fr. Robert Sirico and its research director Dr. Sam Gregg. I'll speak on America's pattern of refusing funding to K-12 religious schools and on whether that tradition can be consistent with an appreciation for institutional pluralism.
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