Reading this piece ("Yale's Agony Over Social Justice"), at First Things, made me (of course!) think of this scene, from The Princess Bridge.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Yale, "Social Justice", and The Princess Bride
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
"Diversity and Dishonesty"
Ross Douthat expressed well a point that I've wanted to make, and that I think needs to be made, here. Paraphrasing Peter Westen, it seems increasingly that the idea of "diversity" -- like "inclusive", or "open-minded", etc., etc. -- is, when it comes to views and opinions (I'm not thinking here about diversity in terms of socioeconomic or ethnic background) is not so much "empty" but entirely substantive and loaded. He writes:
I am (or try to be) a partisan of pluralism, which requires respecting Mozilla’s right to have a C.E.O. whose politics fit the climate of Silicon Valley, and Brandeis’s right to rescind degrees as it sees fit, and Harvard’s freedom to be essentially a two-worldview community, with a campus shared uneasily by progressives and corporate neoliberals, and a small corner reserved for token reactionary cranks.
But this respect is difficult to maintain when these institutions will not admit that this is what is going on. Instead, we have the pretense of universality — the insistence that the post-Eich Mozilla is open to all ideas, the invocations of the “spirit of free expression” from a school that’s kicking a controversial speaker off the stage.
And with the pretense, increasingly, comes a dismissive attitude toward those institutions — mostly religious — that do acknowledge their own dogmas and commitments, and ask for the freedom to embody them and live them out.
It would be a far, far better thing if Harvard and Brandeis and Mozilla would simply say, explicitly, that they are as ideologically progressive as Notre Dame is Catholic or B. Y.U. is Mormon or Chick-fil-A is evangelical, and that they intend to run their institution according to those lights.
His point, I think, is that institutions (including religious hospitals, schools, social-welfare organizations, etc.) are usually not "neutral" when it comes to matters that connect closely with their charism, mission, character, etc. Nor should they be, or be expected to be. But, at the same time, they should pretend otherwise.
Monday, April 14, 2014
"Micro-Christendoms"
At First Things, Peter Leithart has a very interesting essay on "micro-Christendoms" called "Rebuilding in the Ruins." Here is the conclusion:
. . . As the Yoderites and Hauerwasites have been telling us for some time, Christendom is dead. The religious right was its last, long susperation. Though there are millions of Christians in the U.S. and Europe, Christian faith no longer provides the moral compass, the sacred symbolism, or the telos for Western institutions. America’s Protestant establishment has collapsed. Neither evangelical Protestants nor Catholics nor a coalition of the two are poised to replace it. Christian America was real, but, whatever its great virtues and great flaws, it is gone, and the slightly frantic experiments have failed to revive the corpse. It’s past time to issue a death certificate.
That’s a sobering conclusion, and it’s tempting for Christians to slink back to our churches. For innovative, visionary pastors and civic leaders, though, there are hundreds of realistic, locally based, ecumenically charged opportunities to foster experiments in Christian social and political renewal.
Christendom is dead! Long live the micro-Christendoms!
Thoughts?
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Carozza, "Religious freedom is a human right . . . for family businesses, too"
An excellent piece, here, by my friend and colleague, Paolo Carozza (who is, among other thinks, Director of Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute):
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Hobby Lobby and the Green family, has made a number of strong arguments explaining why the government’s extreme position runs afoul of federal civil rights law and the First Amendment. But it not only violates our own laws, it also directly contradicts the most basic principles of international human rights. As I and many other professors of international law explained in a “friend of the court” brief we submitted to the Supreme Court, international legal norms, and the legal norms of constitutional democracies in Europe and elsewhere, affirm that the exercise of religious liberty has an inherently collective and public character. They reject the notion that there can be no corporate religious freedom and that religious liberty ends where family businesses begin. The government’s position puts us completely at odds with these universally accepted understandings of religious liberty.
Indeed, the federal government’s position runs directly counter to global trends that we ought to welcome. As we point out in our submission to the Supreme Court, other nations and international bodies increasingly emphasize that businesses should not be focused exclusively on profit, but on the real human costs to society of their operations. Corporate social responsibility means that a global business must not have an “every man for himself” attitude, but should instead act in accordance with conscience, taking into account how its actions affect others. Yet in the Hobby Lobby case the government is saying not just that a business doesn’t have a conscience, but that its owners can’t be allowed to run it in accordance with their conscience. That morally laissez-faire approach is a recipe for social disaster, which is why every human rights body in the world to address the issue has pleaded for, not rejected, greater corporate social responsibility.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
"Be Not Afraid"
"Be not afraid!" These were the words with which the heroic soon-to-be St. Pope John Paul II opened his pontificate. It is an encouraging challenge, and one that -- to me, anyway -- seems very timely.
Yesterday was the anniversary of his death. I remember, very clearly, that I was sitting in an auditorium at Indiana University, participating in a conference on the legacy and work of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, when someone interrupted to share the news that the Pope had passed away. He was, and remains, a hero of mine.
A number of MOJ bloggers contributed reflections on the legacy -- jurisprudential, theological, philosophical, political, etc. -- of Pope John Paul II. They might be worth re-reading this week (here, here, and here). And (or), it's really tough to beat Redemptor hominis (here).
Harvard conference on "Religious Accommodation in the Age of Civil Rights"
Starting tonight, and continuing through Saturday morning, a number of legal scholars -- including our own Tom Berg and I -- will be presenting at a conference, at Harvard Law School, called "Religious Accommodation in the Age of Civil Rights." Here's the conference blurb:
Current controversies over marriage equality, antidiscrimination law, and the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate have raised conflicts between religious claims, on one hand, and LGBT equality and women’s rights, on the other. The conference seeks to deepen our understanding of the competing claims by bringing together nationally recognized scholars in the fields of sexuality, gender, and law and religion.
I am hoping (and praying) for a civil and respectful set of conversations, unclouded and untainted by the unfair and uncharitable characterizations and accusations that have, unfortunately, seemed to dominate discussions about religious exemptions, public-accommodations laws, RFRA, etc., in recent weeks.
Monday, March 31, 2014
"The Mighty and the Almighty"
On Friday, I had the pleasure and privilege of hosting a roundtable conference sponsored (thanks!) by Notre Dame's Program on Church, State & Society and dedicated to Prof. Nicholas Wolterstorff's (relatively) recent book, The Mighty and the Almighty: An Essay in Political Theology, a work that one of the participants characterized as the "first work in analytic political theology." Prof. Wolterstorff is, of course, both a giant in his fields and a really good guy. The conference's conversations were engaging and rich, and it was exactly the kind of academic "event" that makes one think there is hope for academic events.
For someone, like me, who thinks about the church-state nexus primarily as a lawyer and from a perspective strongly shaped by the Catholic social tradition and thinkers like Murray, it was a challenge and a treat to work through the "big questions" with trained philosophers, historians, theologians (and lawyers!) from a variety of religious backgrounds. Among other things, we considered Wolterstorff's rejection of "perfectionism", of the Gelasian "two rules" model, and of (a version of) the retributive theory of punishment. And (natch), the group spent a fair bit of time with the whole "are religious institutions more than groups of religious individuals?" question that's been in air quite a bit lately.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Must-read from Prof. Michael McConnell on the Hobby Lobby case
Here, at the Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post. In the piece, Prof. McConnell engages four questions that came up during oral argument and that the justices will likely have on their mind as they meet in conference this morning:
(1) Could Hobby Lobby avoid a substantial burden on its religious exercise by dropping health insurance and paying fines of $2,000 per employee?
(2) Does the government have a compelling interest in protecting the statutory rights of Hobby Lobby’s employees?
(3) Would a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby give rise to a slippery slope of exemptions from vaccines, minimum wage laws, anti-discrimination laws, and the like?
(4) Has the government satisfied the least restrictive means test?
Prof. McConnell explains why the answer to each of these questions is "no."
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
"Lost Classroom, Lost Community"
I am delighted to report that the latest book by Prof. Nicole Stelle Garnett (and her co-author, my friend and colleague Prof. Margaret Brinig) is out (and available for purchase!) The book is "Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America, and it's published by the University of Chicago Press. Here's a blurb from the Press:
In the past two decades in the United States, more than 1,600 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 Communityexamines the implications of these dramatic shifts in the urban educational landscape.
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 policing policy debates.
Congrats to Nicole!
"Hobby Lobby" symposium at The Conglomerate
I cannot recommend highly enough the ongoing symposium (putting aside my own contribution) about the Hobby Lobby case at The Conglomerate. Run, don't walk, to check it out.
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