Here. We've talked a fair bit about Gregory's book here at MOJ, and so I think Milliner's piece will be of interest.
UPDATE: Howard Kaintz, at The Catholic Thing, has an engaging review of Gregory here.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Matt Milliner responds to Mark Lilla on Gregory's "Unintended Reformation."
NCR's Person of the Year: Chief Justice Roberts
Find out why here. A bit:
From federal budget debates echoing with catch phrases like "subsidiarity" and "common good," to a vice presidential contest between two members of the faith, it's clear: Catholics are engaged in the larger culture like no other time in the nation's history. We help shape national conversations and hold influential posts that affect lives across the country in profound ways.
Our choice for person of the year acknowledges this growing reality. Decisions made by him and his court, which currently includes a total of six Catholics, altered in a fundamental manner the way in which U.S. politics are conducted, ensured that a major policy goal of the U.S. church for almost a century will be implemented, and limited civil law's reach into the personnel policies of religious institutions.
For 2012, our person of the year is John Roberts, chief justice of the Supreme Court of United States of America. . . .
Our person of the year comes from the Catholic milieu, formed and educated in its institutions. He is reserved and circumspect in public, has a reputation for being a family man and an active Catholic who attends his children's sporting events. His wife, Jane, also a lawyer, is active in such nonprofits as Feminists for Life (which gave qualified approval to the court's health care ruling) and the environmental group Citizens for Affordable Energy and, in the recent past, as a member of the advisory board of the Washington Home and Community Hospices.
Roberts does not hide his religious affiliation, but he also demonstrates that while religious attachment may provide a philosophic underpinning for decisions with ethical significance in public service, it doesn't guarantee unanimity of thinking or consensus on such issues. . . .
Sunday, December 23, 2012
"Government by the intelligent part," unity, and "intended friction"
I was with Patrick, in his recent post ("Force") when he said that "[t]he use of force against adult human beings [RG: outside the football context!], though sometimes necessary and justified, means that intelligence has failed." (I assume that, if the force is "necessary and justified," then "intelligence has failed" on the part of the party against whom force is used, and not on the part of the party exercising "necessary and justified" force.) But, I think I had to get off the agreement-train when he added this:
[T]he preference for using force against force is reflected, mutatis mutandis, in our nation's principled commitment to a system of separation of powers and of checks and balances. Government by the intelligent part would reflect unity, not institutionalized division and intended friction.
This seems wrong to me -- or, at least, its rightness is eluding me. Maybe I need to know more about the work that "mutatis mutandis" is doing. It seems to me that even the most "intelligent part" might conclude that -- because even the most intelligent part will confront problems, challenges, and questions the resolution of and answers to which are not so obvious as to be unity-creating -- it makes sense to structure government in such a way that things cannot get done too quickly or efficiently. Maybe it is not a "preference for using force", then, that is "reflected" in our constitutional structure, but humility and caution?
Leap for joy!
In today's Gospel, Elizabeth reports to Mary, "at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,the infant in my womb leaped for joy." My pastor, in his (great) homily today, reminded us that this -- i.e., "leaping for joy" -- is an eminently appropriate response to the news (or, the Good News) -- the truly amazing, unfathomable news -- of the Incarnation. It's overwhelming, it's shocking, it's -- to so many, in so many places, at so many times -- a scandal . . . and yet, the response held out for emulation, on the last Sunday of Advent is to "leap for joy." Nice.
"Has Fiction Lost its Faith?"
It's a bit removed from "Catholic Legal Theory," I guess, but . . . I enjoyed this piece in the New York Times by Paul Elie -- author of the wonderful "The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage" -- on faith and fiction. I think, though (and I might have missed it), Elie left out a warranted mention of Ron Hansen, especially Atticus.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Catholics and firearms regulation: A response to Rob Vischer
Just a few quick thoughts, in response to Rob's recent post, "Catholics and gun control." I should start by disclosing that I do not own any firearms (though, growing up in Alaska, my family had several guns), am not a hunter, and do not engage in recreational shooting. My sense is that these facts put me in the same boat as post of those who support -- or, in the public debate, demand -- increased regulation of guns. And, I think it's important to be careful, when we are considering regulatory responses to serious problems or horrible events, which themselves have many and complicated causes, that we don't focus only on those responses that don't affect us or activities that we enjoy. (As others have noted around the blogosphere, it is common, in response to shocking and harmful events, to call for the "giving up" or the "limiting" of rights -- whether we are talking about the right to own firearms or the right to play violent video games -- that those doing the calling do not value very much.)
So, Rob asks, "why a Catholic worldview is consistent with the private ownership of guns designed for killing at a high rate of speed." Again, I don't have any interest in owning such guns, but my understanding is that there are people who enjoy collecting such weapons, and shooting them recreationally, and that -- while these people's hobby seems weird to most law professors -- they do so safely and without incident, and not because they are plotting mass violence. Is it un-Catholic to enjoy doing these things? I guess it could be -- again, I don't "get" the appeal of doing those things -- but my sense it isn't necessarily.
Rob also suggests that that "there is a Catholic understanding of freedom that is in considerable tension with the understanding of freedom that seems to animate the arguments of some gun rights advocates." This seems right, though there is also a "communitarian", "republican" argument (see, e.g., Sandy Levinson and Akhil Amar) for the ("embarassing") Second Amendment that might not create this tension.
John Courtney Murray emphasized the "principle of the free society," which "affirms that man in society must be accorded as much freedom as possible, and that that freedom is not to be restricted unless and insofar as is necessary. By necessary I mean the restraint needed to preserve society's very existence or—to use the concept and terms of the Declaration itself—necessary for preserving the public order in its juridical, political, and moral aspects." It seems to me that this "principle" points toward a policy with respect to the ownership and safe use of firearms under which reasonable, close regulation is both permissible and called for, but only insofar as it is "necessary" to protect people and the common good. (Actually, Murray's "necessary" probably sets the bar too high, But, some inquiry into the utility of the constraint, and the extent to which it actually accomplishes appropriate government purposes, seems called for.) Regulations that are symbolic, but extremely unlikely to have any real effect on violent crime or accidental gun deaths, and perhaps motivated primarily or facilitated by the dislike of some parts of society for the hobbies or "culture" of other parts, do not seem consistent with this principle.
New issue of "Church Life" on Catholic Social Teaching
The new issue of the (wonderful) journal, Church Life: A Journal for the New Evangelization, is available online. This issue's theme is "Catholic Social Teaching." I think a lot of the articles will be of interest to MOJ readers, especially John Cavadini's reflection on the necessary relationship between justice and charity ("Social Justice and Love in the Christian Tradition"). Enjoy!
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Great piece by Dan Philpott on the HHS mandate
My colleague, Dan Philpott, has a first-rate piece on the mandate up, at the Berkley Center's web page. The piece was written for Georgetown's Religious Freedom Project. Among other things, Dan develops the important point (which I have been trying to emphasize, in my own interventions regarding the mandate) that the religious-freedom issue (and the technical RFRA questions about "burdens") cannot be reduced to "cooperation with evil" casuistry:
The debate over cooperation with evil, however, misses what is most at stake for Christians organizations in the HHS mandate, which is much the same as what has been most at stake for the Christian church in its relationship with the state over many centuries, which in turn is what is most at stake for the church in religious freedom: their right to give witness to the truths that they believe. . . .
Following the Catholic tradition, I regard the criterion of cooperation with evil as a valid one for a wide range of moral dilemmas, including the one at hand. The debate over cooperation with evil, however, whose every thrust and parry grows increasingly complex in its distinctions regarding intentionality, causality, and directness, obscures the larger, more important issue of whether Christian organizations enjoy the freedom to give witness to their professed truths.
To witness means to proclaim or to give testimony for a truth that the proclaimer believes is maximally important. To witness is to communicate a message – in the Christian’s case, that of God’s salvation of the world through Jesus Christ. For a Catholic, this salvation is embodied in, and its meaning for the Christian believer is manifested through, the teachings of the Catholic Church, including its teachings about contraception and the sanctity of life. Many Protestant churches make parallel claims, with due variations, about the role of the church in salvation. For (many) Christians, then, salvation is achieved through corporate entities as well as the faith of individuals. Consonant with this mission, churches and their affiliated universities, schools, hospitals, and orphanages share a duty not simply to avoid cooperating with what is false but to proclaim loudly what is true. . . .
Read the whole thing. (Please.)
More on Michigan, unions, and egg nog: A response to Winters
Over at Distinctly Catholic, Michael Sean Winters kindly links to this post of mine, about unions-and-such. For starters, he says I "take[] issue with the support for unions voiced by, among other, Morning's Minion at Vox Nova, Lew Daly, and [him]." Maybe. That is, I thought I made it pretty clear in my post, first, that I agree entirely that all persons enjoy the freedom of association and (therefore) workers enjoy the right to unionize. I also said:
Civil society matters; the human person is relational and situated; work is a participation in the creative activity of God; all human persons, because they are persons, possess a dignity; workers have a right to associate, organize, and advocate (consistent with public order and the common good) for their interests; and profit-maximization is not a moral-trump. Labor unions helped bring about many good things; opponents of labor unions have often done bad things. It would be wrong for a political community to prohibit or unreasonably burden the freedom of association that workers (like the rest of us) enjoy. In other words, much of what left-leaning Catholics like Michael Sean Winters and Morning's Minion and Lew Daly have been saying about labor-related matters is true.
This doesn't strike me, really, as "taking issue" with "support for unions", and it certainly seems unfair to brush aside all this -- merely because it is accompanied by some doubts and reservations about the practices of and policies preferred by (especially public-sector) unions in America today -- as conservative "Kool Aid." (Michael Sean closes his post with the always welcome advice to "switch to egg nog", but I can assure him that advice was anticipatorily embraced.) Here, it seems to me, is the core of our disagreement. Michael Sean writes:
The fact that a union here or there may engage in bad practices does not vitiate the right to unionize anymore than the fact that some bishops covered up the crime of sex abuse vitiates the apostolic succession or Nixon's crimes vitiated the importance and value of democracy.
The "right to unionize" is not, of course, "vitiated" by unions' bad practices. But, (1) those "bad practices" are not rendered not-bad, or immune from push-back, merely because they are unions' bad practices; (2) it is not true that the "right to unionize" is violated by policies that protect non-members' rights to (for example) opt out of paying for unions' partisan political activities; and (3) public-sector unions have to be distinguished from private-sector unions (not, as I said in my post, because public employees don't have a right to associate, but because the employer-employee / "labor v. capital" dynamic is meaningfully and morally different in the two contexts).
Friday, December 14, 2012
Hart on the suffering of innocents
Here's David Bentley Hart, from his Tsunami and Theodicy (HT: Matthew Schmitz, First Things):
Famously, Dostoevsky supplied Ivan with true accounts of children tortured and murdered: Turks tearing babies from their mothers’ wombs, impaling infants on bayonets, firing pistols into their mouths; parents savagely flogging their children; a five-year- old-girl tortured by her mother and father, her mouth filled with excrement, locked at night in an outhouse, weeping her supplications to “dear kind God” in the darkness; an eight-year-old serf child torn to pieces by his master’s dogs for a small accidental transgression.
But what makes Ivan’s argument so disturbing is not that he accuses God of failing to save the innocent; rather, he rejects salvation itself, insofar as he understands it, and on moral grounds. He grants that one day there may be an eternal harmony established, one that we will discover somehow necessitated the suffering of children, and perhaps mothers will forgive the murderers of their babies, and all will praise God’s justice; but Ivan wants neither harmony—“for love of man I reject it,” “it is not worth the tears of that one tortured child”—nor forgiveness; and so, not denying there is a God, he simply chooses to return his ticket of entrance to God’s Kingdom. After all, Ivan asks, if you could bring about a universal and final beatitude for all beings by torturing one small child to death, would you think the price acceptable? . . .
I do not believe we Christians are obliged—or even allowed—to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.
As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”
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