It's never too early to pre-order Legal Affinities: Explorations in the Legal Form of Thought, a volume (which I co-edited with Jeff Powell and Jack Sammons) that explores and celebrates the pathbreaking work of Joseph Vining, the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law emeritus at the University of Michigan Law School. I do not know of a better phenomenology of law than the one Vining has offered us, and that's just the beginning of what the book's chapters cover. There are chapters by (among others) MOJ-friend Steve Smith, Judge Noonan, Jeff Powell, Jack Sammons, and James Boyd White. Check it out.
This is from the book's jacket:
"This book is about what makes law possible. A stranger to contemporary legal practice might think such a book unnecessary, but the eight authors of this book share the view that what makes law possible is under siege today. The authors also share the hope that by exploring how law is a humanistic practice that involves whole persons, the siege will be reversed. The pathbreaking work of University of Michigan Law professor Joseph Vining provides the authors' focus for their varied analyses of how law works not through force but, instead, through affinity.
"Vining's four books and other writings, spanning four decades, reveal the hidden connections by which men and women freely create and sustain a world of meaning through the phenomena we associate with law. Drawing on legal philosophy, theology, musicology, and other humanistic disciplines, the authors join Vining in discovering how law is, as Vining has written, ''evidence of view and belief far stronger than academic statement or introspection can provide.'' Law as Vining and the other authors reveal it is evidence of our better selves, not of the totalizing and brutalizing selves humans are capable of becoming, sometimes even under cover of law."
"[With respect to] your outrage that the U.S. Army has placed the Catholic Church alongside al Qaeda....isn't the Army, actually, right? That is, once you realize that, from the perspective of the State, the issue is not whether the Church and al Qaeda are morally equivalent, but whether they are able and willing to contest the State's pursuit of its own interests,then of course the Church and al Qaeda are equivalent.
"I actually take pleasure in the Army's slip of tongue, as it were, since it helps us get rid of the illusion that our State has any conception of justice that does not reduce to the pursuit of its own economic and political advantage. In any case, perhaps it will awaken certain Catholics from their dream that the somewhat militarist civil religion of America is compatible with what the claims of Catholicism actually entail.
"So be of good cheer! George Bernanos saw this coming, what, sixty years ago?"
___________________
My correspondent (whom I do not know personally) makes a profound point. Our current predicament was not only predicable but, in fact, predicted.
At the risk of being told again to "dial it down," I am reminded of something Pope St. Pius X wrote in "Notre Charge Apostolique" (1910):
"Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO."
There is no surprise in the fact that our government, at whatever level, cannot think straight, least of all about the Church.
Yesterday, I called attention to the *fact* (and no one disputes the *fact*, even if it was reported by the Washington Timesinter alia) that the U.S. Army, in an official publication, placed the Catholic Church in the same category as al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. I continue to think that this gross and pernicious falsehood is worthy of outrage, condemnation, and protest. I have been criticized for being "militant." I resemble that remark, because I do indeed believe that the Church here on earth is *called* to be militant. But, as any educated person knows, the Church is called to be militant not in the ways of terrorists but, instead, by faithful preaching and living of the Gospel and by the ardent and devout celebration of the sacraments. A culture that appropriates the Gospel and exudes the graces of the sacraments will be one in which the peace of Christ reigns, and it doesn't get better than that.
I readily admit that I continue to be impressed by the lack of *outrage* that the Army is not being held accountable for this lie. This is easy to analyze, despite what some of my critics say. Either the categorization came, as the Army implausibly contends, from *outside* of the chain of command, or it came from within the chain of command. If the former, then we should be outraged at the lawlessness in the Army. If, as is overwhelmingly more likely, from within, then the question is this: *where* in the chain of command was this allowed? encouraged? required? *Wherever" it came from, it should be condemend and repudiated from the top. Bureaucratic government, such as we have, is not an excuse for lies and falsehoods. There must be accountability. One might speculate -- and it is only speculation -- that this bureaucratic categorization was launched as a trial balloon.
And this brings me back, finally, to the issue of the bishops' silence. Our Church is under attack (and not just by the Army), and the Church militant, led by the hierarchy, must respond and defend the rights of Christ's Church. But if the hierarchy can't be bothered, then the lay faithful at least must insist that the U.S. government -- whether in the Constitution, statutes, or bureaucratic action -- not lie about the nature of the Church. Is that too much to ask?
The thief comes in the night, which is why I am unimpressed and unmoved by Bob Hockett's instruction to "dial it down."
No one can honestly deny (the evidence precludes the possibility) that the U.S government officially equated al Qaeda and the Catholic Church (and others) in establishing a military policy against "extremism." Let me underscore the point: the evidence (the slide on the Army's website, which didn't get there by accident) puts the Church in the same driving category as al Qaeda. It demonstrates that our government was/is formulating policy based on a postulated *functional* equivalence between al Qaeda and the Church. Consider this command: "Do unto the Church as you do unto al Qaeda"?
Robert Hockett has offered an objection to what I wrote. He doesn't remotely touch the substance of my particular question, viz.: Why are people not OUTRAGED that our government has DEMONSTRABLY lumped Catholics (and other Christians) together with al Quaeda (and other bad actors) for equal treatment as "extremists.'
Look, Bob (sic), I do denonce our (does the posessive adjective discomfit you?) goverment's lumping the Church (sic) and bad guys together. Why don't you denounce it? Please tell. I do indeed hold the view (convict me of it) that the Gospel and those who serve it should transform and correct the culture -- including NOW the culture that equates al Qaeda and the Church.
Call me whatever you want for my believing and praying that the Gospel will correct and transform all. Call me even "extreme" (as you did this very night). The Gospel enters the world through GOSPEL human action (thanks to the action of the sacraments). I love the extremes of the Gospel.
Good luck with a "res publica" (a fine concept) that doesn't receive and absorb the Gospel.
The Jews retreated further and further into their ghettos in Poland and Germany, hoping that their getting out of the way would "solve" the "problem" they represented to their approaching enemy. Will Catholics do the same in the United States? Retreat into growing ghettos to get out of the way of the march of their own government? The time has come to find out.
The U.S. Army has now categorized Catholics as "extremists" alongside such groups as al Qaeda, Hamas and the KKK. You can read about it here . I have been saying for some time that the position of much of the U.S. hierarchy is that all the Church asks is to be let alone, and I have said that because that is *exactly* what many U.S. bishops and the USCCB itself have said, as I demonstrate in the paper linked above. Where are the bishops when Catholics are now being lumped in with al Qaeda? You can search the USCCB's prolix website in vain. The Army has apparently now removed the document in which the categorization appeared, but that is surely cold comfort, as is the fact that the Army asserted that the source of the characterization was "not in the chain of command." Surely decisions about what the U.S. Army considers "extremism' -- and deserving of military treatment as such -- should be made at the core of the chain of command.
Catholics should be expressing loud outrage at their own govenment's falsely accusing Catholics of the characteristics and aims that mark al Qaeda and the KKK, but all I hear is the sound of crickets chirping. This silence, especially in its studied, even "principled" form, is an example of an ideology I have castigated here at MOJ before: the liberal's militant insistence that "the Church be sufficiently nothing so as to live at peace with the rest of the world" (Louis Veuillot). The Church can indeed live in a *true* peace with the world if, but only if, she is allowed to go about her work of freely preaching the Gospel and correcting and transforming culture. No true peace is purchased by reducing the Church to sufficiently nothing that her voice is silenced. It is the U.S. state that today is the unjust agressor as it targets the Church; in response, the Church must insist upon her freedom to teach the world the peace of the Gospel, the peace that the world knows not. The Church's ways are not those of al Qaeda and the KKK, and Catholics must now insist upon as much to a U.S. government that demonstrably cannot think clearly enough not to equate the Church and al Quaeda.
In a paper I wrote last Fall, I offered some respectful criticism of things that not a few U.S. Catholic bishops and others were saying about the HHS mandate. In particular, I questioned the "just let us [Catholics] alone" defense stategy, and I did so by contending that the Church is (as I put it) "not a bomb shelter." The Church's much-dicussed "liberty" is not justified on the ground that Catholics have a right to stay inside unmolested by the culture. The Church's right to liberty is grounded in the Church's being Christ's own mystical body continued in the world by divine command. Christ's mystical body is to be present and active in the world in order to correct and transform that world so as to save souls. I was especially thankful, therefore, to hear Archbishop Charles Chaput just now, in his powerful homily at today's Chrism Mass in Philadelphia, take up this theme that has been so strong and clear in the recent preaching of Pope Francis. The Church is grievously failing when she is merely self-referential. In a word, the sacristy is a starting point, not an ending point. Which is why the person who translated "Ite, Missa est" as "Go, the Mass is ended" should do hard time in purgatory. The "Ite" is in fact a priestly command to go forth and transform the world according to the truths of the Gospel.
I was among those who were most disappointed by Pope Benedict's abdication. I am in no way disappointed by the preaching and living of the Gospel that I see here. I am inspired by it, challenged by it, rebuked by it, encouraged by it. Take fourteen minutes to watch the linked interview with the man who is now Pope Francis. It's no wonder that "left" and "right" are scrambling to get their heads around what the Holy Spirit just gave the world in Pope Francis. Pope Francis makes unmistakable -- as did Pope Benedict, in a slightly different idiom -- that everything must be subordinated to Christ. Much has been said about Pope Francis's humility. I do not doubt the depth and authenticity of his humility. Pope Benedict's humility was masked by his fidelity to the Church visible, and for that sacrifice on his part I am deeply grateful. No one who met Ratzinger on the street in Rome could doubt that his is a truly humble soul.
The excitement and hope surrounding the election of Pope Francis make this an especially good time to renew our understanding of the papacy itself. One resource for doing so is this book, Pope or Church? It addresses many of the errors, which one reads almost everywhere as people speculate about where Pope Francis is going to "take the Church," concerning the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium of the Church. It's good to recall that Magisterium is a neuter noun.
I was quite moved by Paul Horwitz's reaction to Eugene Volokh's paean to hatred. The moral emotions are complex phenomena and not always under our control. Proper love of self, however, requires that, when we have suffered an offense, we try to overcome the hatred we understandably feel with love in the form of forgiveness, and without precondition. Forgiveness does not entail reconciliation, and sometimes proper self-love will preclude reconciliation with the forgiven offender. I have defended the obligation of unconditional forgiveness from a Thomistic virtue-theoretic perspective here . Forgiveness is not supine. It is an act no one can perform for us, and it is an act that conforms us to what we have received from the God who has forgiven us our trespasses and debts.
"[T]he liberal constitutional State is completely confused with respect
to its character and behavior. It cannot reason. It cannot hear the messages of
nature spoken by organic corporations. It cannot see society’s final spiritual end
or justly coordinate men as they actually are, body and soul. It has no effective
head to administer its accidental, arbitrary, and willful laws. Lacking
intelligence, it must increasingly resort to force to survive, even though this
unintelligent use of force must contribute mightily to its own destruction. If it
tries to appeal to the support it has from 'the majority' of traditional-minded
people, it is nonetheless not appealing to justice, but only to force of numbers, a
force indeed that a party can manipulate better than the State can. In point of
fact, the history of liberalized constitutional states is one of helplessness, lack of
confidence, and paralysis, making any decisive action, whether just or
arbitrary, impossible." John Rao, available here , at page 58.
Does the situation of helplessness and of ever-increasing resort to force described by Rao remind you of our nation's present predicament? Maybe just a litte? Guns, murders, budgets, "fiscal cliff," bickering . . . .
