Wednesday, November 7, 2012
I thought it might be a good time to review our own Michael Scaperlanda's series of posts, from Nov. 2008, "Beyond Politics." The first installment is available here:
Now that the election is past, I’d like to encourage us to move beyond politics (at least for two years but maybe longer) and to think more creatively about how MOJ and the development of Catholic Legal Theory can contribute its small part to the transformation of our culture. . . .
Paul Horwitz has a typically thoughtful post up, at Prawfsblawg, about religion and politics -- including, specifically, the efforts by the Catholic bishops to focus attention on threats to religious freedom -- and the election. In the comments, responding to the report that many Catholics apparently believe that the Church should focus more on social-justice matters and less on "social issues" like abortion, I wrote that "while I don't think it's realistic to expect Catholic bishops to retreat from their public witness on the abortion question -- it is, for them (as it is for me) a foundational 'social justice' question -- it is essential that this witness not be perceived as (because, in fact, it is not) merely partisan." Yes, this witness will be criticized, as "partisan", whether it is or not, by partisans, but . . . it must not be.
There will be lots of triumphalism, and lots of despair, around the blogosphere, and also in its Catholic neighborhoods -- I voted for the other guy, and really wish, for the good of the country and the future of my children, that he had won -- and lots of "what if's?" and "here's what really happened" diagnoses. Two thoughts from this amateur-at-best observer: First, to me, it appears -- and, I admit, this makes me very sad -- that the HHS mandate, the "war on women" nonsense, the foregrounding of Planned Parenthood, and the association of Republican candidates generally with a few candidates' mis-statements on abortion "worked" for the Democrats. Apparently, the country has not moved as much in a pro-life direction as I had hoped. Next, it also appears that the party that is, and that is likely to remain, the party that better advances the causes of legal protections for the unborn, education reform, and religious freedom is getting only negligible support from African-Americans and Latinos. This cannot -- for the sake of those causes, and also because none of us should tolerate a situation in which party identification is so racially polarized -- continue.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
My own sons are 11 and 3 mos., so I won't have the occasion to write such a note for a while, but I thought this letter, from LawBlogKing Paul Caron to his son, who just played his last college soccer game, was beautiful.
Update: A reader, Peter Meringolo, sent me a similar, and similarly moving, essay, published not long ago in Notre Dame Magazine.
Friday, November 2, 2012
From Jeffrey Smith, a good read at First Things. Smith reviews the late Cambridge scholar Emile Perreau-Saussine's final book Catholicism and Democracy, which "advances the thesis that the French Revolution determined the outcomes of both Vatican I (1869-1870) and Vatican II (1962-1965), and that 'the adaptation of the church to the democratic world order came in two stages, at the two councils.'”
Wesley Smith writes, at First Things, about our "dangerous obsession with health." Using the upcoming assisted-suicide-legalization vote in Massachusetts as a starting point, Smith notes, among other things, that "[w]hen eliminating suffering becomes the overriding purpose of a society, people can easily come to perceive that it is proper to accomplish the goal by eliminating the sufferer" and "[e]levating 'health' to the ultimate purpose of society turns it into something other than health."
I certainly hope that the voters in Massachusetts reject euthanasia, as some "liberal" observers, as well as the expected pro-life "conservative" voices, are urging them to do. And, "liberals" should oppose physician-assisted suicide. As then-Chief Justice Rehnquist recognized, 15 years ago, in his Glucksberg opinion, the danger is very real that the legalization of euthanasia exposes the disabled, the vulnerable, and the inconvenient to marginalization and abuse. We do not allow doctors to assist in the suicides of healthy, young people, and we should not exclude from the law's protection those who are elderly or disabled.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
From Nov. 1, 2006:
Happy All Saints Day! Here's the Pope:
The indissoluble link between the Church and sainthood was remembered today by Benedict XVI in a quotation by Alessandro Manzoni. "Today," said the pope in the words of the author of the novel 'The Betrothed', "the Church is celebrating its dignity as mother of saints, the image of the supernal city," and added: "it manifests its beauty as the immaculate spouse of Christ, source and model of every saintliness." To explain the meaning underlying All Saints Day, celebrated this morning in the Vatican with a solemn mass, the pope chose to quote St Bernard. "Our saints," he said, using the words of the saint, "do not need our honours and nothing is granted them by our worship. I must confess that, when I think of the saints, I burn with grand desires." For the pope, this means looking "at the luminous example of the saints," to "reawaken in ourselves the grand desire for sainthood." "We are all called upon to follow a life as saints," said Pope Ratzinger, stressing that "to be a saint does not necessarily mean carrying out extraordinary actions and deeds, nor having some type of special charisma." But, he went on, "it is only necessary to serve Jesus, to listen to him and follow him without losing hear when faced with difficulties." .
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Michael Perry links here to my friend Fred Gedicks's "Policy Brief", done for the American Constitution Society, on the HHS mandate. I think the world of Fred and his work, but his policy brief misses the mark in a number of important respects. (I wonder if Michael agrees with Fred's arguments?)
Obviously, the paper is intended to be a "policy brief", and so there's no reason to expect it to deal comprehensively with the matters covered. But, Fred is too quick to conclude -- indeed, he is wrong to conclude -- that the mandate does not impose a substantial burden on the religious exercise of at least some religious employers who are currently subject to the mandate. And, he is wrong in asserting that requiring these employers to provide the coverage in question is, within the meaning of RFRA, the least restrictive means of achieving the government's interest. And, he is wrong (though this is obviously a "deeper" question) in his assertion / assumption that "access to contraception" -- when "access" means "provision at someone else's expense", as opposed to "legal access" -- is a "fundamental" right or liberty.
What's more, it is a mistake to contend, as Fred does, that a religious employer seeking to exercise its religious-freedom right not to provide the coverage in question is burdening the religious liberty of employees who (i) desire the coverage and (ii) have no moral or religious objection to contraception or sterilization.
I have elaborated on these points in various places, and won't impose them on readers again. But, I do regret being on the other side -- the correct side, in this case, but still the other side -- from Fred on this one.
Monday, October 29, 2012
From John O'Callaghan (Philosophy, Notre Dame), and following up on my earlier post, comes this response to Tom Friedman's recent piece on being "pro-life":
[MOJ readers might be interested in this] video of this feeding
clinic in Evansville, Indiana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvxbAYmS2XI as
a kind of visual refutation of Friedman's slander against the pro-life
movement—that it does not care for anyone after birth. If we may be so
bold as to suggest that the Catholic church is the largest institutional
pro-life voice in the country, notice the crucifix on the wall, and the name of
the clinic. It's a Catholic hospital. The first formally constituted Catholic hospitals date from at least the early part of the 4th century. Apparently Julian the Apostate was so concerned about these philanthropic enterprises of the Christian church that served everyone, Christian and pagan alike, that he directed that institutions of the empire should be set up to rival them, and
perhaps even undermine them. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07480a.htm)
Plus ca change… The Federal government has been involved in a
serious way in health care for what, maybe less than a century? But we
know no more than 223 years at the conceivable best. Businesses began
providing health insurance to employees in the latter half of the last century
as a competitive market advantage for acquiring labor over competitors. And Tom Friedman only lately heard about sugary drinks from the mayor of New York. All these exemplars of being pro-life. But Christians and the
Catholic Church have been caring for people throughout their lives, feeding
them, clothing them, educating them, visiting them in prisons, comforting them
in death for 2000 years, whether those they cared for were Christians or not.
And Tom Friedman would have the federal government tell Catholic
institutions they aren't Catholic enough or pro-life enough. Nice.
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