Are those who work prudently and persistently "to impress the divine law on the affairs of the earthly city" culture warriors? The task in the quotation marks is one the Second Vatican Council assigns to the laity. (See Gaudium et spes no. 43. See also Lumen gentium no. 31). The Council fathers were of course aware of the fact of moral disagreement in the modern world to which they were speaking.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Culture warriors?
Saturday, November 28, 2009
the false dilemma of "authority (= the authoritarian) vs. the Holy Spirit"
Discussion of the topic of the Apostlic Visitation of congregations of women religious in the U.S. can tempt one to side for or against based on the indefensible idea that one side (the women religious) stands for charism (= the Holy Spirit) and the other (the Holy See [aka "the Vatican"]) for authority (= authoritarianism or the like). The false dilemma must be avoided. Neither side is pure.
The triangulating insights of Eamon Duffy (in chapter 9, "Who Leads the Church?", of Faith of Our Fathers (2004)) seem helpful here: "In Pope Innocent [III], Francis, and Dominic, are embodied the three major forms of Christian leadership -- institutional, charismatic, intellectual; or, to put it in other terms, structure, spirit, theology -- the kingly, the priestly and the prophetic dimensions. The Church needs structure and order if it is to survive; it needs fire, ardour, heart, if it is not to become a prison for the spirit; it needs intellectual rigour and commitment to the truth if it is to have a gospel to preach. A Church in which one or the other of these elements dominated or was unchallenged by the others would be intolerable -- rule-bound, or in retreat from ordinary life, or with no truth to proclaim. Innocent III was the unquestioned head of the Church over which he presided, and both Francis and Dominic sought papal approval for their movements. But the papacy was the means of anchoring those movements within the Church, not their initiator or inspirer: the spiritual and intellectual leadership of the Church in the age of Innocent III lay in Assisi, Tolouse, and in the University of Paris, not in Rome."
The Holy See has asked women religious, most (though by no means all) of whom are members of congregations that are by any reasonable account members of congregations that are dwindling to the point of disappearing, voluntarily to answer some questions that pertain to the heart of their lives as individual religious, as congregations, and as corporate members of the Church. Is the refusal to answer the questions a demonstration of charism? Of vitality? What does it mean to be "self-defining religious agents?" See http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/11/us-religious-women-closing-door-on.html Why won't the religious reveal the mean age of the members of the their respective congregations? What is the theology behind this lack of "transparency?" Surely it concerns the whole Church what the size and longevity of its institutional members are? Would Francis or Dominic defend the defiant, angry opting out a dialogue that the Holy See has asked (not demanded) to have with members of congregations already recognized by the Holy See?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
"You're not the boss of me"
My subject line was the unofficial title for the symposium held yesterday at Villanova Law: "Sovereignty's Seductions: Reconciling Conflicting Claims to Govern." The symposium grew out of a conversation my wonderful colleague Ann Juliano and I carried on, over several years, about whether it makes sense to try to decide any important politico-legal issues in terms of "sovereignty." I was skeptical, but Ann, who teaches Indian Law, made lots of good points about why sovereignty is indeed what one should call what tribes should be seeking from the U.S. government. Our goal in convening the symposium was to bring into a common conversation people who talk about sovereignty in a wide range of generally disjointed areas. Because of scheduling difficulties, a couple of the perspectives we had hoped to include (international, theology proper) weren't in the end represented. But that didn't get in the way of a fabulously successful discussion of a topic about which (to paraphrase one of the presenters) "there is still amazingly much to say."
The day was supposed to begin with remarks by Kevin Gover, director of the Smithonian's Museum of the American Indian and former Assistant Sectretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, but at the last minute illness prevented him from attending. Doug Endreson, a pracitioner of Indian law in D.C. and an adjunct at Columbia Law School (and, like Kevin Gover, formerly my colleague at ASU) started us off with a masterful account of the phases and direction of Indian law in the U.S. Doug emphasized that even during periods when Indian interests have not succeeded in the Supreme Court, many tribes have made huge strides forward in terms of effective self-governance and community prosperity. Kate Struve, of Penn Law, went next, and she offered a rich account the myriad consequences of tribes' frequently having their interests determined in the courts of another sovereign. Hope Babcock, of Georgetown Law, spoke third, and her focus was the use, since John Marshall's trilogy of Indian law cases, of legal fictions to fix the place of Native interests in American law. This presentation offered lots of insights, coming out of Lon Fuller's work, on the broader place of fact and fiction in forming legal doctrine and practice. Where Endreson is optimistice, Babcock is straightforwardly pessimistic. The contrast couldn't have been sharper or better articulated. The fourth speaker was Don Doernberg, of Pace Law, and he developed the fascinating theme that because knowledge is power, putative sovereigns are having a harder time of it in this world of Twitter (where "Twitter" stands for all the instantaneous communication that dominates our lives). The instant availability of knowledge is making government more accountable to the governed, which, Doernberg argued, defeats claims to "sovereignty." Responsible and responsive governors are not the stuff of which Leviathan is made! MOJ's own Greg Sisk went last (but was not least), and he developed a strong account of why the common good calls for -- rather than, as I tend to think, forbids (or counsels against) -- federal sovereign immunity. For me, the principal issue is that when the the governor (I won't call him "sovereign") disobeys the law (and then claims immunity from suit under that law), this is inconsistent with the governor's showing the positive law the respect it deserves (as, by hypothesis, an ordinance of reason, for the common good, promulgated by one who has care of the community). Sisk's way around my objection, as I see it, is to take an ontologically lighter view of the status of the positive law. While I don't assume that judges have the power to craft remedies for violations of the positive law (that is itself a question of positive law, not of the natural law), I do take the (natural law) position that the positive law governs -- that is, its preceptive force holds with respect to-- even the behavior of the one who posits it (unless and until he withdraws it). I hope Greg will add his two or three cents not only the issues but on the tenor and topics of the whole day. Thanks to all who participated!
The five papers will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Villanova Law Review. I look forward to reading them with the care they deserve.
As an aside, I would add that this strikes me as event that exemplifies some of the distinctive contribution "Catholic law school" can make. I don't make the silly suggestion that this conversation could not have occurred at Rutgers or Iowa. Of course it could have. We had similar conversations at ASU during my eight years there, thanks in part to the presence there of the estimable Michael J. White. But in this case it occurred at Villanova, and it did so in part because of the intellectual space provided for the purpose of introducing Catholic views into the conversation. The symposium grew out of an organic intellectual inquiry and disagreement in which the Catholic view (as I understand it: "God alone is sovereign," as Maritain said) was in dialogue with a view in which God is not available (to be sovereign or anything else). "Catholic law schools" are uniquely positioned, through their faculty members who ask and answer the questions that define and guide the Catholic tradition, to test and try the other views that are on offer in the culture at large. This can happen sporadically in other institutions. It should be a defining feature of and regular occurrence in the life of a Catholic law school. Why is that so controverisal (or, as the case may be for others, negligible)?
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Brennan on self-love and forgiveness
Our own Patrick Brennan has this interesting paper up on SSRN:
Forgiving is not pardoning, excusing, condoning, forgetting, or reconciling, nor is forgiving just about a change in emotions on the part of a victim. This paper pursues a virtue-theoretic account of the human person in the context of the theology of Thomas Aquinas, arguing that human forgiveness is the form love takes by an offended toward her offender. The paper argues, first, for the priority of the offended person's self-love and, second, for such self-love's extension into love of the offender as another self. The paper explores in depth the challenges of seeing one's enemy as "another self." Forgiving, the paper argues, is the most important act a person performs, because it is an act no one else can perform for us. This has negative implications for its possibility in the criminal law. The argument is developed, in part, in dialogue with contemporary theorists such as Jeffrie Murphy, Joanna North, Charles Griswold, Timothy Jackson, and Gaelle Fiasse.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Forgiveness
I have just posted a new paper in which I try to develop a Thomistic account of interpersonal forgiveness. Aruging that forgiveness is the form love takes on the part of a person who has been offended, I resist the claims of those who would assimilate forgiveness to a conditional act such as reconciliation. My account of forgiveness begins in natural human teleology and proceeds to consider what grace adds in terms of our ability to love ourselves and then our offenders. Comments would be welcome.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
"there must be a lot of Catholic law schools where"
So says (Georgetown Law's) David Luban here in explaining his voting in Leiter's recent survey concerning "which philosophers have had the most impact on legal scholarship." Must there? "I found myself placing Aristotle and Aquinas high on the list because there must be a lot of Catholic law schools where the Thomistic influence lingers even if the recent decades have seen their faculties become far more secular." Please. Why "must [must] there be" what by no reasonable account obtains at Luban's own nominally Catholic home institution? Where are these sub silentio Thomists who "must" exist? I would like to see the relevant data -- and be able to draw the conclusions.
UPDATE: Prof. Luban is on leave "spring 2007".
Saturday, June 13, 2009
papers
I have recently posted at SSRN a new paper titled The Place of "Higher Law" in the Quotidian Practice of Law: Herein of Pratical Reason, Natural Law, Natural Rights, and Sex Toys. It can be viewed here. Though the paper itself is in final form, comments would be a welcome help to one of my next projects, which will pursue in greater depth several of the topics of the current paper. I would also welcome comments on another recent paper, Equality, Conscience, and the Liberty of the Church: Justifying the Controverisale per Controversialius. My hope is that Jimmy Page will make an appearance in one of my next papers.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Enacting FOCA -- for whom?
Reading Patrick Deneen here, one cannot but feel grave about where "we" are and where "we" are going next. But there are signs of hope, if not about the economy then about whether we should should distinguish as a matter of law between life birth and death. It now seems that only nine percent of Americans would favor the regime that the FOCA would make a reality.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
For whom the question matters in the first place
Michael Moreland and I would suggest that our friend Amy's response (here) is question-begging. She assumes there is some cohort of "politically homeless" Catholics who would like to enact the principles of CST into politics but don't have an easy home in either of the major political parties. We don't disagree as such, but the point of our post is that that number, from all available evidence, is breathtakingly small. Furthermore, Amy's comments might have the causal chain backwards--rather than Catholics receding into the background of American politics on account of their homelessness, we would suggest that think it's more plausible to say that the disregard of Catholic thought -- in all of its richness -- by both parties (folks will disagree about which side falls shorter) reflects the small number of Catholics for whom the question matters in the first place. That it apparently matters so little to so many is a fact to be reckoned with.
Voters voting in the tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine and Moral/Political Theology and Philosophy? The clear consequences of lack of catechesis
My colleague Michael Moreland and I note Michael Perry's sharing (here) to a NY Times blog post indicating that, based on exit poll data, Senator Obama carried the Catholic vote 54-45 (in 2004, President Bush carried Catholics 52-47). But those of us who care about how the Catholic community contributes to American politics should note that, basically, the Catholic vote is merely tracking the vote of the rest of the population. Whether on account of a generation of failed catechesis or a more general lack of formation in Catholic institutions (parishes, high schools, colleges and universities), the number of Catholic voters whose vote is informed by their faith is a small slice of the national electorate. Catholics behave politically like their neighbors--the partisan breakdown of white working class Catholics, white suburban Catholics, or Latino Catholics is just about what one would predict based on their economic and cultural location. As this perceptive op-ed in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/features/religion/la-oe-rutten29-2008oct29,0,2918246.column) pointed out a few weeks ago:
"What we're seeing in these three swing states [Missouri, Colorado, and Pennsylvania] is the end of the Catholic vote, as conventional political strategists traditionally have expected it to behave -- in part because it's now so large it pretty much looks like the rest of America; in part because of its own internal changes. National polls have shown for some time that, although Catholics are personally opposed to abortion, they believe it ought to be legal in nearly identical percentages to the rest of America. Moreover, as a survey by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found earlier this year, only 18% of Catholics "strongly" agree with the statement: "In deciding what is morally acceptable, I look to the church teachings and statements by the pope and bishops to form my conscience."
....
What all this suggests is that, in this and coming election cycles, we may see a new model for the Catholic vote, one whose participation more closely resembles that of Jews, 75% of whom are overwhelmingly pro-Democratic, while a devout minority, the Orthodox, tends more strongly Republican. If you break the Catholic vote down in roughly the same pattern, you get something that looks like the current national spread. According to most reliable data, slightly less than one in four Catholics now assist [sic] at weekly Mass and are more open to GOP policies, while the overwhelming majority of their co-religionists have cast their lot with the Democrats' domestic and foreign policies."
Or as Joseph Bottum put it (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/818vklel.asp) reviewing George Martin's book on the American Catholic vote in the pages of the Weekly Standard four years ago:
"Add it all up, and it's hard to see any place that Catholicism makes a difference in American political life. In the ballots Catholic voters cast, in the positions Catholic politicians take, in the pieces Catholic writers publish--in what Catholics do, and what they fail to do--they are ordinary Republicans and Democrats; their faith seems invisible. They are utterly indistinguishable from the general run of citizens. In his famous talk to Protestant ministers in Houston during the 1960 campaign, John Kennedy said he didn't want to be a Catholic president; he wanted instead to be a president who happened to be Catholic. Catholicism in America seems to have since become entirely a Church of little John Kennedys.
....
The fact that Catholic voters are invisible feels wrong to me, somehow--a theological error, a philosophical mistake. The uniqueness of the Catholic vote wants to be true, if only because American history and intellectual consistency alike seem to demand that being Catholic make a difference in how one behaves in the public square. But accurate political analysis, like well-directed pastoral teaching, needs to begin with the truth: The Catholic voter is, alas, a myth."
Of course, those of us who teach at Catholic institutions and write about matters Catholic want there to be a ready audience for this blog, in our classrooms, and in the pages of Commonweal, America, and First Things for an informed and enriching dialogue between faith and politics. But wishing doesn't make it so.
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
