Monday, September 30, 2013
"Top new Law and Religion papers"
Our friends at the Center for Law and Religion Forum have posted (as they regularly do) a list of the "top new Law and Religion papers" (by SSRN downloads). Check 'em out . . . and I'm not just saying that because one of them is mine. In fact, the current leader -- Doug Laycock's reflection on "Religious Liberty and the Culture Wars" -- seems like particularly timely reading, given all the conversations among Catholics about the best way(s) to take Pope Francis's challenge and witness to heart.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Wills on the "Detachment Movement", neo-medievalism, and other fun stuff
The New York Review of Books has made available part (but not -- not yet -- all) of Garry Wills's review of a book that sounds fascinating -- it's called Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J.F. Powers, 1942–1963
A hotbed of the Detachment movement—people detaching themselves from the commercialism of the modern world—was in Minnesota around World War II. Eugene and Abigail McCarthy were part of it. So were their good friends the writer J.F. (“Jim”) Powers and his wife Betty. So were their East Coast friends Robert (“Cal”) Lowell and his wife Jean Stafford. All had been part of Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement. They were adherents of what was known, in mid-twentieth-century America, as the Catholic Renaissance.
A window into that distant world is opened by the letters of Jim Powers, published by his daughter, along with excerpts from his occasional journals and from his wife’s diary. The editor briefly adds memories of growing up in what Powers called “the Movement.” That movement had four main strands. . . .
It appears that "neo-medievalism" and "ruralism" were two of those strands. In any event, if anyone has a link to the full review, please e-mail it. Or, if anyone has read the book, please let us know!
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Happy Birthday, Edict of Milan!
The Catholic Bishops in Europe are marking the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan (and identifying it as a milestone in the history of legal protection for religious freedom). Time flies!
Catholic education and the new evangelization
Notre Dame publishes a really nice journal, Church Life: A Journal for the New Evangelization, which is edited by my friend Tim O'Malley. Here is a piece from the new issue, called "Catholic education and the new evangelization." The essay is primarily about parochial schools, but its broad points would seem to apply to the mission and work of Catholic higher education -- including legal education -- as well. And, indeed, the latest issue of Church Life includes a longer essay by O'Malley called (nice title!) "The Idea of a Catholic University."
Murray on the HHS mandate, Hosanna-Tabor, and Religious Organizations
My friend and former student, Brian Murray -- now an attorney in Pennsylvania -- has posted an adaptation of forthcoming law-review article ("The Elephant in Hosanna-Tabor") at Public Discourse. Here is a taste:
The history of the First Amendment indicates a strong preference for institutional religious autonomy. Religion remains special in the eyes of the law. This tradition of respect and deference must guide any legal framework that purports to determine whether an organization qualifies as religious under the Free Exercise Clause. Hence, the Court should consider placing a presumption of religiousness at the forefront of any test, finding its support in the divergent opinions among the founding fathers, the prevalence of unconventional religious experience throughout American history, and current precedent, which admits that religion is special--even if it is difficult to define. Such a presumption comports with the Court's inclusive language in Hosanna-Tabor.
However, this presumption cannot be the end of the analysis. Left unchecked, it could conflict with Employment Division v. Smith because an organization's self-characterization as religious is not entirely internal. . . .
Check it out.
Monday, September 23, 2013
The Pope Francis interview, integration, and the lawyer's vocation
Count me among those who is disappointed by the cherry-picking, political spinning, and unattractive revelling in "the other side's" presumed discomfort that has characterized much of the coverage and commentary regarding Pope Francis's recent interview. My understanding is that I am regarded as a "conservative" and so I gather I'm supposed to be mad -- even on the edge of schism! -- about the interview and just about everything else about Francis but -- go figure!-- I am not. (If I thought he thinks or had said that, say, efforts to protect educational and religious freedom or increase respect for the dignity of all human life aren't that important after all, I would be disappointed, and think him naive. But, I don't think he does or did. I imagine we'd disagree, over Malbec, about some points of policy, but that's been true of every Pope in my lifetime.) If his style and substance -- if the very appealing humility and care that really come through in the interview -- result in people of good will in less-faith-friendly regions of the interwebs asking themselves, "hmmm, this guy seems great . . . and he is a Catholic . . . and he was elected by a bunch of old guys who I thought were just obsessed-with-'no' reactionaries . . . maybe I should take a look, and re-visit some of the impressions I've formed -- maybe because of hostile and ignorant news coverage, maybe because of encounters with uncharitable and unjoyful Christians -- about the Church, and about the faith", then . . . good!
Obviously, the Pope is saying things that are challenging for those of us who believe that the "conservative" side of American politics is, all things considered, the better vehicle for achieving better policies, but my view is that there's nothing wrong with that. I hope I respond to this challenge with the humility and open-mindedness that I expect of those on the "other" side. I don't think the Pope's admonitions and exhortations and challenges are supposed to make those on the political left of American politics feel good about themselves or abandon critical thinking about their preferred policies, either. And, who -- left or right -- can doubt the urgency of Pope Francis's challenge that Christians do some soul-searching about the dangers of presenting to the world a Christianity that is merely a set of rules, or a social ethic, or a litany of warnings, rather than one that has at its heart the Eucharist and the person and love of Jesus. And who -- left or right -- can think that the reaction Pope Francis is hoping to inspire is either a "thank you" from NARAL or gleeful cackling at the presumed unhappiness of Bishop Whomever?
Anyway . . . this blog is not supposed to be about "Catholic stuff generally" but about law, so . . . Two of the themes I've been hearing in the Pope's many interventions is an emphasis on the whole person (very Jesuit! and, very John Paul II!) and also on unity, wholeness, and integration rather than partition, selectivity, dis-integration, etc., when it comes to hearing, understanding, and living out the Gospel. As we've often discussed here at MOJ, these are themes that should also loom large in our conversations about legal education and formation, and about the practice and vocation of law. What, I wonder, would an open-minded and open-hearted effort to really hear what Pope Francis is saying, on a variety of topics, and "put it to work" in how we teach and talk to law students about what they are doing and preparing for look like?
Sunday, September 22, 2013
"The First Amendment and its Global Implications" at Butler
I'll be participating in a panel discussion at Butler University's Center for Faith and Vocation -- I'm trying to resist the temptation to wear a "Duke Blue Devils National Champs" shirt -- on Tuesday. More information is available here. Stop by, fellow Hoosiers, and say "hello"!
An(other) brutal attack on Christians abroad
Dozens of people were killed in an attack on a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan. This piece (by John O'Sullivan, the godfather of Candida Moss, the author of "The Myth of Christian Persecution") urges Western governments (and citizens in Western countries) to respond (as has, of course, our own Robby George). O'Sullivan writes that "one of the main reasons for this spread of persecution is that Western governments have signaled by their inaction that they are not prepared to make a
fuss about it with governments in Arab and Muslim countries."
Sectarian blasphemy laws and violent attacks on Christians and members of other minority religions in Muslim countries continue unabated either because Muslim governments sympathize with them (arguably the Egyptian case) or because they are reluctant to spend political capital on fighting Islamist zealots and their parties (arguably the case of Pakistan).
Outside pressure seems an obvious solution. Yet Western governments resist
intervening in behalf of embattled Christians lest that mark them as sectarian
“Christian powers” or cast doubt on their status as purveyors of universal
values and human rights. There is no such reluctance on the other side. . . .
UPDATE: A reader (burdened with what strikes me as a hair-trigger hermeneutic of suspicion) wrote to suggest that my mention of the O'Sullivan-Moss relationship might have been deviously intended to cast doubt on whether Prof. Moss would deplore such an attack. The suggestion is ludicrous. Of course she would (and has, as in this piece) deplore such violence. Although I believe (based on reviews of the book and some of her popular writing) she is too quick to criticize some of the efforts of those who are defending religious liberty in our current context, my understanding (again, I have only read a part of her book) is that part of her argument is that what she regards as the misuse of the term "persecution" in the context of North American politics can have as one of its bad effects the distraction of attention from the very real suffering that many Christians are enduring abroad. I mentioned the relationship because the piece to which I linked mentioned it, and I imagine that piece mentioned it because the piece itself talks about Prof. Moss's book, and about the interesting, and troubling, possibility that, in fact, more Christians are being killed for being Christian today that was the case during much of the Church's early history.
Vocation as a verb
At Notre Dame Law School -- and, I think, at several other Catholic law schools -- we encourage our students to see, to prepare for, and to live, their lives in the law as a "vocation." I'd encourage all MOJ readers to read, and to share with friends -- lawyers and non-lawyers alike -- this post, "Vocation as a verb, Rather than noun," by our own Susan Stabile (from her other blog, Creo en Dios!).
Friday, September 20, 2013
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