Although it's tempting, for me, given my love of Braveheart and my sense that things went wrong at the Battle of Culloden, to root for secession/independence in the upcoming referendum, I strongly suspect (and even Paul Krugman's agreeing with me is not enough to make me change my mind) that it would be bad, even foolish, for Scotland to try to "go it alone."
I have been thinking about the issue primarily in terms of economies, currencies, and so on. But, over at First Things, John Haldane has an interesting piece, called "Scotland on the Eve of the Referendum," which touches on another dimension of the whole debate. He notes (among other things) that "progressive secular liberals envisage an independent Scotland as the first formal embodiment of a post-religious Europe." And he discusses in some detail a "growing campaign to complete the work of secularization":
Of late it has become a significant strand in the campaign for independence. Something of the spirit of this is captured in the slogan of the Scottish Secular Society: “No deals, no priviliges, no exemptions.”
This campaign is principally aimed against the Catholic Church. The most recent target has been its opposition to same-sex marriage, but of longer standing is its animus against the existence of publicly supported Catholic Schools. Insofar as other Christian churches are less clear in their positions on abortion, euthanasia and marriage, or are liberal regarding them, and since they are not involved in denominational education, it is unsurprising that the secular attack is focused on Catholicism, or that it has intensified following the sexual scandal surrounding Cardinal O’Brien, the former Archbishop of Edinburgh and St Andrews.
But there is another reason for the focus and ferocity of the attack. This is the long tradition of Scottish anti-Catholicism originating in Protestant polemics, and continuing in responses to Catholic immigration which has been renewed in recent times by Poles, including priests sent from Poland to provide for them. As a result, the Church is now assailed on one side by liberal secular humanists in the press, in the professions, and among the political class, and on the other by a population that has grown up with a folk legend of Catholics as a priest-ridden, immigrant underclass. Perhaps only time and forgetfulness will dispel this historical myth but it contributes to a climate favorable to the second line of attack, that against Catholic schools. . . .
Read the whole thing. I think (with apologies to William Wallace and all that) I'll say a prayer for the United Kingdom.
MOJ readers are familiar (I hope!) with the important new book by Nicole Garnett and Margaret Brinig, "Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America" (U. Chicago Press). The book was reviewed, here, by Michael Sean Winters, and here by George Weigel.
If you are in or near Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia, I'd encourage you to attend an upcoming event (one in each town) that the University of Notre Dame is hosting for Garnett and Brinig and learn more about the book and their research. For the September 18 event in Philadelphia, go here. For the Sept. 17 event in Washington, D.C., go here.
Here's more from the blurbage:
In the past two decades in the United States, more than 1,800 Catholic elementary and secondary schools have closed, and more than 4,500 charter schools—public schools that are often privately operated and freed from certain regulations—have opened, many in urban areas. With a particular emphasis on Catholic school closures, Lost Classroom, Lost Community examines the implications of these dramatic shifts in the urban educational landscape. (See the full press release)
More than just educational institutions, Catholic schools promote the development of social capital—the social networks and mutual trust that form the foundation of safe and cohesive communities. Drawing on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and crime reports collected at the police beat or census tract level in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, Margaret F. Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett demonstrate that the loss of Catholic schools triggers disorder, crime, and an overall decline in community cohesiveness, and suggest that new charter schools fail to fill the gaps left behind.
This book shows that the closing of Catholic schools harms the very communities they were created to bring together and serve, and it will have vital implications for both education and policy debates.
Key Data from the Book
Catholic school closures in Chicago between 1984 and 1994 predicted substantial between-neighborhood variance in the levels of social cohesion and disorder in 1995. Using data obtained from a survey conducted by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods in 1995, the authors show that residents of neighborhoods where Catholic schools closed had less cohesive and more disorderly communities than residents of neighborhoods with open Catholic schools.
While serious crime declined across the city of Chicago between 1999-2005, it declined more slowly in police beats where Catholic schools closed. In contrast to the city-wide average of a 25 percent decline, serious crime fell by only 17 percent in police beats experiencing a school closures.
Between 1999 and 2005, the presence of an open Catholic school in a police beat was consistently associated with a statistically significant decrease in crime. Although the percentage difference varied by year, the crime rate in police beats with Catholic schools was, on average, at least 33 percent lower than in police beats without them.
I think I've mentioned here at MOJ -- if not, I should have! -- my colleague Christian Smith's new book, "The Sacred Project of American Sociology." (It's excellent.) Here is an essay in The American Conservative by another colleague, Patrick Deneen, of Smith's book (as well as Jody Bottum's An Anxious Age . . . two for the price of one!). Here's a taste:
. . . In a word, both books are stories about the “sacred” nature of what we often call “secularism.” Bottum speaks of the decline of Mainline Protestantism and its replacement by the “Post-Protestant” denizens of academe, journalism, entertainment, business, most Protestant religious outside Evangelicalism, many liberal-leaning Catholics and non-Christians, and broad swaths of “non-elites” who have been shaped by these many leaders of culture and opinion. Smith writes of one segment of this population—sociologists—who are the embodiment of what Bottum calls the Post-Protestant “poster-children.” They are what we typically call “secular.” Both these books call into question the purported a-religiosity of this “secularism,” but rather point to the specifically sectarian nature of this particular form of “secularity”—not so much “Post-Protestant,” as Bottum describes, but Protestant after God.
What struck me through my juxtaposed reading of these two books is that they together tell the story of where Protestantism went and what Protestantism became when it ceased to be a “religion.” . . .
I really enjoyed Steve Smith's review of Ronald Dworkin's, Religion Without God. In the review, Steve "argues that Dworkin misunderstands the way theists typically think God relates to 'morality' [and] essay sketches a subjectivist (or 'super-subjectivist') account of morality that arguably better fits the understanding of believers in the biblical tradition than does Dworkin’s more objectivist account." Check it out.
My friends and colleagues, John Cavadini and Christian Smith, have a new, important, and slim volume out called "Building Catholic Higher Education: Unofficial Reflections from the University of Notre Dame." Here's a blurb:
American Catholic universities and colleges are wrestling today with how to develop in ways that faithfully serve their mission in Catholic higher education without either secularizing or becoming sectarian. Major challenges are faced when trying to simultaneously build and sustain excellence in undergraduate teaching, strengthen faculty research and publishing, and deepen the authentically Catholic character of education. This book uses the particular case of the University of Notre Dame to raise larger issues, to make substantive proposals, and thus to contribute to a national conversation affecting all Catholic universities and colleges in the United States (and perhaps beyond) today. Its arguments focus particularly on challenging questions around the recruitment, hiring, and formation of faculty in Catholic universities and colleges.
You can (and should) learn more about and buy the book here.
Plaintiffs challenging Florida's longstanding school-choice program have filed a motion seeking the recusal of Judge Angelda Dempsey because . . . she is Catholic. (Here's the affidavit.) Seriously. Because of "a continuing association between Judge Dempsey and the interests in my case through her relationship with the Catholic doctrine and position on vouchers for Catholic schools; Catholic Charities; Trinity Catholic School; and as a contributor to Catholic causes.", she is "biased." Groan.
At a time when "metrics" and "assessment" are the watchwords in legal education (and elsewhere), this nice reflection (in the University of Notre Dame student newspaper) by my friend, Fr. Joe Corpora, might be helpful. A bit:
We need to know our nothingness, our lowliness and our emptiness. The more we empty ourselves of pride and worldly worth, the more God can fill us with himself. The more we humble ourselves, the more God can exalt us. It’s a complete reversal of the world’s values as we experience them day-to-day. And since we are terrified to be “nothing,” we are always looking for ways to prove that we are something.
If we are nothing, what can make us feel like we are something? Data, metrics and graphs: things that calm our fears with numerical assertions of our importance. These can make us feel like we’re somebody big and we’re going somewhere important. I lament that the Church and her institutions have become more and more addicted to data and metrics during the past 40 years. Is this addiction to data and metrics related to Mary’s fading into the background and our corresponding loss of knowing our dependence on God? . . .
Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik is speaking at Touro's Jewish Law Institute on "Jews, Christians, and the Hobby Lobby Decision" on the evening of September 4 in New York City. If you are nearby, I recommend attending. More information is available here.
Prof. Arkes' response to Prof. Miller's recent Public Discourseessay ("Prof. Arkes and the Law") is up, as is Prof. Miller's rejoinder, "What Reason Can Know and What Government Should Legislate." My own thoughts on the matters under discussion are very close to Prof. Miller's. I continue to be puzzled by some of Prof. Arkes' (and others') criticisms of RFRA or of the arguments of the lawyers and judges whose have the jobs of interpreting and applying it. If the point is simply that the RFRA regime reflects premises about "religion", "belief", etc. that connect imperfectly with the Truth, then I say, "sure, but so it goes."
Here's a bit, from the rejoinder:
In my article, I argued that conferring on public officials a general power to inquire into moral or religious truths is dangerous because such people are no better than anyone else at sorting out true beliefs from false ones and they are just as likely as everyone else to think that ideas different from their own are unreasonable or perverse. Because of this, Arkes speculates that I may have “lost confidence that there is indeed a discipline of reason that may guide and restrain judges, as it guides and retrains everyone else.” Now, I have often said that I am an Aristotelian-Thomist in morals, and so there can be no doubt that I believe that reason can determine what is moral and what is immoral. Arkes’s question is helpful, however, because it highlights what I think is the central confusion in his position.
That is, Arkes consistently runs together what reason, in some abstract philosophical sense, can know, with what we can expect from the efforts at reasoning of particular human beings. The first is a question of whether certain sound arguments exist; the second is a question of how likely particular human beings are to discover and embrace these arguments. These are very different things. . .
Prof. Robert Miller (Iowa) has a nice essay up at Public Discourse in which he responds to the argument that Prof. Hadley Arkes (and some others) has made, that is, "that the plaintiffs in Burwell v.Hobby Lobby, most of their supporters in the public square, and Justice Alito in his majority opinion in the case have adopted a mistaken and dangerous understanding of religious freedom." (I addressed this argument in this post, and Prof. Arkes responded here.)
Here is a taste (but I recommend reading the whole thing):
. . . In the law of religious freedom, the morality of the religious practices of the man who claims a right to religious freedom is relevant, but so too are many other considerations. Once again, it matters that the law is a system administered by imperfect human beings. In particular, long and sad experience has shown that legislatures and courts are not good at sorting out true religious beliefs from false ones, and majorities, whether religious or non-religious, tend to persecute religious minorities, which produces social strife and sometimes bloodshed. Even when a law is not aimed at restricting a minority’s religious practices, if the law in fact does so, such pernicious consequences often follow. This means that, sometimes, even though a certain religious practice is based on false beliefs and is morally wrong, nevertheless making a law to suppress that practice is wrong too. For just such reasons, our law includes provisions like the religion clauses in the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which limit the government’s involvement and interference in religious matters. . . .
