Yesterday, October 22 (also my wedding anniversary!), was the feast day for Blessed Pope John Paul II. What a gift to the Church and an inspiration to the world! Go re-read, if it's been awhile, his Redemptor Hominis.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Blessed Pope John Paul II
Monday, October 22, 2012
Alasdair MacIntyre . . . 4 years ago
On Oct. 22, 2008, our own Michael Scaperlanda linked to this essay, by Prof. Alasdair MacIntyre, "The Only Vote Worth Casting in November."
Arbp. Chaput, in the New York Times . . . 8 years ago.
Here's a post of mine, from 8 years ago today (tempus fugit, and all that):
Here is a link to an op-ed by Denver's Archbishop Chaput, "Faith and Patriotism", in today's New York Times. He opens with this:The theologian Karl Barth once said, "To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."That saying comes to mind as the election approaches and I hear more lectures about how Roman Catholics must not "impose their beliefs on society" or warnings about the need for "the separation of church and state." These are two of the emptiest slogans in current American politics, intended to discourage serious debate. No one in mainstream American politics wants a theocracy. Nor does anyone doubt the importance of morality in public life. Therefore, we should recognize these slogans for what they are: frequently dishonest and ultimately dangerous sound bites.
I have no doubt that the "separation of church and state", properly understood, is good for -- even necessary for -- authentic religious freedom. That said, Archbishop Chaput makes a good point here, I think. He continues, later in the piece:
The civil order has its own sphere of responsibility, and its own proper autonomy, apart from the church or any other religious community. But civil authorities are never exempt from moral engagement and criticism, either from the church or its members. The founders themselves realized this.The founders sought to prevent the establishment of an official state church. Given America's history of anti-Catholic nativism, Catholics strongly support the Constitution's approach to religious freedom. But the Constitution does not, nor was it ever intended to, prohibit people or communities of faith from playing an active role in public life. Exiling religion from civic debate separates government from morality and citizens from their consciences. That road leads to politics without character, now a national epidemic.
It strikes me that Chaput's observations are valuable, wherever we might stand on the question that Michael Perry, Greg Sisk, Cathy Kaveny, Mark Roche, Gerry Bradley, and Robert George have been addressing (i.e., can faithful Catholics conclude that, all things considered, it is better for the common good to vote for John Kerry?).
And, here's a piece (thanks to Distinctly Catholic) by Arbp. Chaput (now of Philadelphia) on "Public Witness and Catholic Citizenship." A bit:
In the end, the heart of truly faithful citizenship is this: We’re better citizens when we’re more faithful Catholics. The more authentically Catholic we are in our lives, choices, actions and convictions, the more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our nation.
Does Judge Posner need a new research assistant?
In his TNR review of Akhil Amar's The Living Constitution, Judge Richard Posner writes:
THE CONSTITUTION of the United States has its passionate
votaries ... as does the Bible. But both sets of worshippers face the
embarrassment of having to treat an old, and therefore dated, document as
authoritative. Neither set’s members are willing to say that because it is old,
and therefore dated, it is not authoritative. Some say it is old but not dated;
they are the constitutional and Biblical literalists. But most of the
worshippers admit, though not always out loud, that their holy book is dated
and must therefore be updated (without altering the text) so as to preserve its
authority. They use various techniques for updating. ...
[Akhil] Amar’s method of updating, which is also the one the
Catholic Church applies to the Bible, is supplementation from equally
authoritative sources. The Church believes that a Pope receives divine
inspirations that enable him to proclaim dogmas that are infallible and thus
have equal authority with the Bible. [For example] Jesus Christ’s mother
does not play a prominent role in the New Testament, but she became a focus of
Catholic veneration, and in 1854 the Pope proclaimed the dogma of Mary’s
Immaculate Conception (that is, that she had been born without original sin).
This and other extra-Biblical Catholic dogmas, such as the Nicene Creed, which
proclaimed the consubstantiality of the Son and the Father, form a kind of
parallel Bible, equal in authority to the written one, which reached its modern
form in the third century C.E.
It would not have taken that long to check, with someone who might actually know, and see if these paragraphs actually describe what "[t]he Church believes[.]" A cautionary tale, perhaps, for those of us who think we know something about some things to not imagine that we therefore know something about all things.
Friday, October 19, 2012
"The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era"
Last weekend, I participated (along with MOJ-ers Rob Vischer, Patrick Brennan, and Tom Berg!) in what was, I think, the most rewarding academic conference I've experienced: "The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era." Thanks and congrats to Larry Alexander and Steve Smith, of the University of San Diego, and their new Institute for Law and Religion, for organizing and hosting. Here's the conference blurb:
The Western commitment to freedom of religion, reflected in the United States Constitution and in a variety of international human rights documents, arguably descends from the medieval campaign for libertas ecclesiae—“freedom of the church.” In modern times, though, it seems that the progeny (freedom of religion) has largely displaced—and forgotten—the parent (freedom of the church). Jurists and scholars debate whether there is any constitutional commitment to freedom of the church, or church autonomy, or institutional free exercise. And they often suppose that such commitment, if there is one, must be derivative from a more fundamental commitment to freedom of religion.
The issue of freedom of the church has become urgent in recent years. Claimants sue churches in secular courts for what they perceive as abuse or discrimination. Government agencies act to compel religiously-affiliated institutions to provide goods or services such as contraceptives or abortion. In 2011 the Supreme Court considered for the first time a case raising the issue of the so-called “ministerial exemption” for churches from some federal regulatory laws. Opposing the position taken by numerous lower courts, the Obama Administration argued in that case that the Supreme Court should reject the exemption.
This conference will accordingly consider issues related to freedom of the church . . .
Micah Schwartzman and Rich Schragger presented their paper, "Against Religious Institutionalism" (discussed earlier here on Prawfs); Steve and Paul added to the body of important work they've done on the institutional dimension of religious freedom and the First Amendment more generally; I tried to update and expand my defense of "the freedom of the church" as a still important (i.e., not anachronistic) idea; Patrick Brennan challenged participants to take more seriously the Church's truth-claims about what she really is; Tom Berg urged "progressives" to better appreciate the importance of religious freedom and conscience-rights; Rob Vischer explored the possibility of free-exercise rights for commercial entities and in the commercial sphere; and a number of us did an interpretive dance-reenactment of the Canossa meeting between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV. Lots of other interesting papers were presented, and they should be out this Spring in the San Diego Law Review. Stay tuned!
A "Catholic Economic Vision"?
Some worth-reading posts by George Weigel (First Things), David Cloutier (Catholic Moral Theology), Anna Williams (First Things), and Naomi Schaefer Riley (Philanthropy Roundtable) about the content (and possibility) of what Williams calls a "Truly Catholic Economy." More conversations like this, please.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Brad Lewis on religious freedom, the common good, and the mandate
Here's Prof. Bradley Lewis (CUA), in the Oxford Journal of Law Religion, on "Religious Freedom, the Good of Religion, and the Common Good: The Challenges of Pluralism, Privilege, and the Contraceptive Services Mandate":
The right to religious freedom is properly grounded in religion’s status as a fundamental and irreducible human good, which is nevertheless related to other goods and social in character. Its protection for persons and groups is therefore also a component of the common good of political society. After arguing for these propositions on broadly Thomistic philosophical grounds, the article discuses and answers three recent challenges. The first is based on a perceived conflict between recognition of the good of religion and pluralism and I argue that this objection can be met by distinguishing between different kinds of pluralism, most of which pose no problem to the thesis. A second objection comes from those outside the Thomistic tradition, who either reject the status of religion as a good deserving of explicit legal recognition and protection or accept it on inadequate grounds. The objections, I argue, are based on accounts of religion that are inadequate to the role it plays in sound practical reason. Finally, I discuss an argument from those within the Thomistic tradition who accept some limitations on religious freedom in the name of the common good. This third challenge is linked to the current controversy over the application of the US federal government’s insurance mandate to religious organizations and the US Catholic bishops’ response to it as an issue of religious freedom. Here I argue that the objection is based on a misunderstanding and misapplication of Aquinas’s account.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Confusion about separation
This blog post, "Of Babies and Beans," at The New Yorker, has already been noted at both First Things and Commonweal. In the post, Adam Gopnik says some strikingly wrongheaded things (in addition to a variety of offensive and snarky things about various politicians he doesn't like) about abortion ("It is conscious, thinking life that counts"), but also characterizes as "disturbing and scary" Rep. Ryan's (I would have thought) unremarkable observation that “I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do.” Here's Gopnik:
That’s a shocking answer—a mullah’s answer, what those scary Iranian “Ayatollahs” he kept referring to when talking about Iran would say as well. Ryan was rejecting secularism itself, casually insisting, as the Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan put it, that “the usual necessary distinction between politics and religion, between state and church, cannot and should not exist.” . . .
. . . Our faith should not inform us in everything we do, or there would be no end to the religious warfare that our tolerant founders feared.
Of course, Ryan did not say that the "distinction between politics and religion" or the distinction (which is different) between "church and state" "should not exist"; and there is nothing mullah-ish about the statement that faith "informs" people's public lives. He didn't say that the positive law should enforce religious teachings or require religious practices, and there's nothing contrary to "secularism" (properly understood) in his statement.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Tomorrow night's big debate!
No, not that one. More like this one, only it's my pal Andy Koppelman and I on the question, "Is Religious Freedom in America at Risk," at the University of San Diego's Institute for Law and Religion. (I get a teleprompter, Andy doesn't.) More information is available here. In or near San Diego? Come say "hello"!
Brague, "There's No Such Thing as a Secular Society"
On Thursday, at the University of Notre Dame, Remi Brague will be giving a public lecture, "There Is No Such Thing as a Secular Society," on Thursday, at 5:00 p.m., in the Hesburgh Library's Carey Auditorium.
Professor Brague is the recipient of the 2012 Ratzinger Prize (nicknamed the “Nobel of Theology”) and a veritable rock star of the academic world. He is a professor emeritus at the Sorbonne and the Romano Guardini Chair at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. . . . The Nanovic Institute has been working to invite him to Notre Dame for several years, and this visit worked out on very short notice with the help of a graduate student in the right place at the right time.
This should be great! More information is available here.
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