Be sure to check out the conversation, at Public Discourse and First Things, among Robert Miller, Rusty Reno, Samuel Gregg, and others, about morality and economic freedom. Here's a bit, from one of Miller's interventions:
In my view, capitalism is consistent with Aristotelian-Thomistic moral premises, but it is not obligatory given those premises. Indeed, Aristotelian-Thomistic moral theory does not, by itself, tell us much at all about how society should be organized, either politically or economically. In principle, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are all morally permissible political systems (which is not to say that every exercise of governmental power in such systems is morally permissible), and capitalism, corporatism, and socialism are all morally permissible economic systems. Aristotelian-Thomistic moral philosophy does not, by itself, imply much about political or economic arrangements.
There is an important reason for this. Aristotelian-Thomistic morality is based on the idea that there is an objective human nature, which implies an objective final end for human beings, so that actions are morally right or wrong depending on whether they are ordered as means to that end. Being based on objective human nature, Aristotelian-Thomistic morals apply to all human beings, wherever and whenever they may be found.
This great generality comes, however, at a cost. For, leaving aside a very few actions that by their nature are incapable of being ordered to the final end of this life—human flourishing—and so are always and everywhere wrong (such as intentionally killing the innocent), all other actions are right or wrong depending on whether, in the actual circumstances in which they are to be performed, they are in fact ordered to the final end.
I have a complicated friendship with the whole "Front Porch Republic / New Urbanism / Crunchy-Con / critique of the suburbs" thing. Maybe it's "critical sympathy," maybe it's "sympathetic exasperation", maybe it's nodding-while-sighing . . . I'm not sure. The "porchers" can be smug and precious, and some of what they present as provocations seems pretty obvious (why yes, it would be good for communities if more of were involved in neighborhood organizations, etc.). Still, I agree that dense, walkable, mixed-use settlements are good things for human flourishing, I also was really influenced by Lasch, Rieff, and Schindler, and, yes, I think that Little Leagues are much preferable to "travel teams." (The proliferation of "travel teams" in youth baseball, at the expense of the traditional parks, is something that I think self-styled "true conservatives" need to complain about more, when they are complaining about Five Guys and rootlessness.)
Anyway . . . I thought Ross Douthat's recent piece, "When Place Is Not Enough", was well worth a read. Among other things, he develops the point that Americans' "rootlessness" is not simply a function of our mobility.
Cardinal Dolan was the commencement speaker at the University of Notre Dame last weekend. His speech was, I think, amazing -- both in its content and in its delivery and construction.
Highly recommended.
Michael Fragoso has an interesting essay up, at the site of the Claremont Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, called "The Unitary Papacy: What the Pope Can Learn from the American Constitution." A teaser:
The Pope has an agency problem. One clear solution to it would be for him and his study group to learn from the unitary executive model from American constitutional and administrative law. The paramount goal of curial reform must be the establishment of a bureaucracy that is responsive to the policy directives of the supreme executive, the Pope, and the unitary executive provides that. . . .
Monday, May 20, 2013
Following up on Marc's
post, and also on the posts by Eugene
Volokh and Paul
Horwitz to which he linked, a few quick thoughts: First, I think it would be a good thing if the possibility Eugene raises - i.e., that the Court might re-examine the so-called "endorsement test" -- came to pass. I think the criticisms directed at that test in Steven Smith's 1987
article had and have force. Next, even if the justices leave the "endorsement test" in place, I hope they do not follow the Second Circuit in importing that test into the legislative-prayer context. Yes, this context is an anomalous one and, yes,
Marsh was and is something of an outlier, given that it prioritized history, tradition, and practice over the "wall of separation" idea. For reasons I mention in
this very short piece, I don't think the courts are very good at deploying all-things-considered balancing tests that purport to somehow measure the effects of religious displays and the like on the feelings of hypothetical "reasonable observers" and so they probably shouldn't try. Better to either (a) rule out legislative prayers as per se unconstitutional "establishments" or (b) police the practice for discrimination in selection and leave the issue of particular prayers' content to politics and (dare we hope?) a spirit of charity.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
"Gosnell's Crimes Not Uncommon" is the title of Prof. Mark Rienzi's piece in USA Today. Here's a bit:
. . . While murder rates for almost every group in society have plummeted in recent decades, there's one group where murder rates have doubled, according to CDC and National Center for Health Statistics data — babies less than a year old. . . .
. . . Gosnell's actions are readily explainable by a culture that embraces, and in some quarters celebrates, abortion as a constitutional right. Gosnell made his living by performing legal abortions, many of them late in the pregnancy. Is it really all that surprising that he might not have seen a significant moral difference in performing the abortion a few inches inside the birth canal rather than somewhere outside?
The law can be a potent moral teacher, which is a good thing. Laws against slavery and discrimination have helped reduce prejudice. Laws requiring accommodations for people with disabilities have helped them gain visibility and greater acceptance in society. . . .
It would be naive to think that our abortion laws do not carry a similar teaching power. . . .
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
When it rains, it pours (interesting church-state scholarship, that is). Following up on my post about Paul Horwitz's new paper, here's another great offering on the same general topic, by John Inazu, called "The Freedom of the Church (New Revised Standard Version):
Significant discussion about the “freedom of church” has recently emerged at the intersection of law and religion scholarship and political theology. That discussion gained additional traction with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hosanna-Tabor v. E.E.O.C., which recognized the First Amendment’s “special solicitude” for religious organizations. But the freedom of the church is at its core a theological concept, and its potential integration into our constitutional discourse requires a process of translation. The efficacy of any background political concept as legal doctrine will ultimately stand or fall on something akin to what Frederick Schauer has called “constitutional salience.”
The existing debate over the freedom of the church obscures these insights in two ways. First, its back-and-forth nature suggests that translation succeeds or fails on the level of individual arguments. Second, its current focus on a mostly Catholic argument neglects other theological voices. The kind of cultural views that affect constitutional doctrine are less linear and more textured than the existing debates suggest. This paper adds to the discussion a Protestant account of the freedom of the church: the New Revised Standard Version. Part I briefly sketches the process of translation that any theological concept encounters in the path to constitutional doctrine. Part II summarizes the current debate in legal scholarship about the freedom of the church. Part III introduces the New Revised Standard Version through three prominent twentieth-century theologians: Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Stanley Hauerwas. Part IV assesses the possibility of translation, and Part V warns of the theological limits to translating certain theological concepts. The New Revised Standard Version reinforces some of the normative claims underlying the Catholic story, but it does so through a Protestant lens that is somewhat more familiar to American political thought. It also differs from the Catholic account in two important ways: (1) by characterizing the church as a witnessing body rather than as a separate sovereign; and (2) by highlighting the church’s freedom in a post-Christian polity.
I'm really honored that a scholar as prolific and interesting as Inazu has taken such care to respond to some of my own efforts -- and to press my arguments and claims, and to make me re-think my own views.
Much to my own (and, I'm sure, my dean's and my editor's!) disappointment, I'm a few years behind on my "Freedom of the Church" book project. On the bright side, the book will be much better for having the benefit of Inazu's and Horwitz's criticisms and improvements.
