Michael Sean Winters links to a letter, signed by a number of Catholic academics, that accuses Speaker Boehner of having a your voting record that "is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings" and that professes to aim to "reawaken [his] familiarity with the teachings of your Church on matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance." Certainly, it would be a good thing if Catholic public servants -- and, for that matter, Catholic academics -- came not only to greater "familiarity with" Catholic teachings on "matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance," but also to the sincere embrace of those teachings and of the Church's authority and obligation to propose them.
Certainly, there is nothing wrong with the composition and publication of such a letter and I have no doubt that many of those signed the letter embrace sincerely the Church's social teachings and believe in good faith that the Speaker's positions regarding taxes and spending are outside the bounds of faithful, reasonable efforts to apply those teachings. I believe, also in good (and equally well informed) faith, that those who believe this are (for the most part) wrong. And so it goes.
I want to speak, instead, to something that Michael said about the letter. Distinguishing between this letter, on the one hand, and the criticisms of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama at graduation two years ago, he notes that "President Obama is not a Catholic, so his disagreement with the Church on a range of issues, including abortion, has a different quality than Speaker Boehner's disagreement with the Church on vital issues. If a university wishes to have a Jewish or Muslim or Hindu graduation speaker, and confer an honorary degree upon him or her, should they not do so because that person denies the divinity of Christ?"
While I agree (of course) that it would be silly to withhold an honor from Obama for not believing in the Real Presence, it is a different thing, I think -- given what the Church teaches abortion actually is, and why it is actually wrong -- to refuse to honor a person, of whatever religion, who errs badly on a question of fundamental justice and who supports constructing and strengthening a legal regime that entrenches, and supports, this injustice. In addition, and with all due respect, the fact that President Obama is not Catholic does not deflect the concern that Notre Dame was, given all the givens and the relevant context, likely to be understood as saying something (about abortion, and about the gravity of the President's error on this matter of basic justice) that, as a Catholic university (and, Notre Dame is a Catholic university) it should not have said.
UPDATE: Michael Sean Winters responds to this post here. He notes, among other things, that the "graduation wars" are continuing at Catholic universities and suggests that, actually, this is not a bad thing. I agree: Not every skirmish is edifying or pleasant, but at least they suggest to us an engagement with the question, "given what we are, and aspire to be, what should, and should not, we be saying-through-honoring?" Responding to my post, he writes:
I do not think it serves either the Catholic identity of our institutions nor our efforts to protect the unborn to fail to engage those whose views of what justice demands differ from our own. I am glad there was controversy about President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame. I am glad President Obama listened to Father Jenkins reiterate the Church’s concern for the unborn. I am glad that the entire country was reminded that we Catholics have not – indeed, cannot – abandon our defense of the unborn. But, that is not the only word of Christian ethics. It is only by engaging people who disagree with us that we can, with God’s grace, help them to see the error of their ways. And, a Catholic university is the perfect place for such an engagement.
To be clear -- I have no problem with, and in fact welcome, "engagement" with those who do not (yet, please God) see the injustice of our abortion-related legal regime, and agree with Michael that this engagement can and should happen at Catholic universities. My expressed concerns about the honorary degree for President Obama have always (I think) focused on (what I worried was) the "social meaning" or "expressive content" of the honor; I would not have objected, at all, to a prominent lecture by the President, on campus, notwithstanding his mistaken views on abortion (and other things).
I could, I am happy to admit, be wrong: It could be that what Notre Dame "said" when it honored President Obama was something different (e.g., "let's celebrate this wonderful step along the road to healing the damage caused to our political community by slavery, racism, and Jim Crow -- a road that was so important to Fr. Hesburgh"). But, I still have my concerns.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Joe Carter, of First Things, and of whom I am a big fan, has this essay, "The Lives Federalists Won't Save", that is -- with all due respect-- right about a lot, but also misguided about some things. Responding to Ron Paul's statement that abortion is strictly a matter for the states, Carter writes:
But as he tends to do on Constitutional issues, Paul puts his preference for procedure ahead of principle. If any level of government fails to do its duty in defending and protecting the lives of its innocent citizens, it is the obligation of the other branches to compensate for the failure in governance. Paul disagrees, preferring, when the two conflict, to defend federalism rather than the lives of the unborn.
Unfortunately, many pro-life conservatives share Paul’s libertarian view of federalism. They mistakenly assume that American-style federalism—a system that shares power between the federal government and state governments—is an inherently conservative philosophy. But federalism is a neutral philosophical position; it is neither conservative nor liberal. . . .
Readers should check out Carter's post in the entirety. My concern, in a nutshell, is that he has not separated clearly enough two questions that, in my view, need to be distinguished. The first is, "under our particular constitution, what are the powers -- that is, what are the scope and reach of the powers -- that have, in fact, been vested by We the People in the government of the United States?" The second is, "should questions about the rights and dignity of unborn children be decided at the state, or at the national, level?" It is certainly true, as Carter says, that federalism -- as a political theory, or as an institutional-design strategy -- ought not to be so fetishized as to obscure the moral obligation of a decent political community to protect the innocent and vulnerable from violence. But, to take seriously the possibility that, under *our* particular constitution, questions regarding the extent to which abortion may or should be regulated belong, generally speaking, to the states, which have the traditional police power, is not to fetishize federalism.
Carter writes, "[w]hile federalism has its place in deciding constitutional questions, its strict binary nature—either state or federal—is ultimately inferior to other principles of governmental demarcation, such as subsidiarity or sphere sovereignty." As a matter of political theory, I think Carter is quite right here. But, my own view is that when it comes to "deciding constitutional questions", we ought to consider the Constitution as positive law, and not as an occasion for philosophical competition among subsidiarity, federalism, nationalism, etc. Carter says it is a "central failing of federalism: the tendency to allow squabbles over power to trump matters of justice." With all due respect, constitutional law *is* about "power" -- it is about "who decides, and how?" It is not that questions of "procedure" are more important than "matters of justice", but it *is* the case that constitutional structure creates a framework -- a scaffolding -- for the resolution of "matters of justice."
Carter writes:
Conservatives should be for more checks and balances and limits on government, rather than a mere shifting of power from federal to state authorities. What does it reveal about our movement when conservatives (and libertarians) are defending limited government by advocating that state governments be allowed an increase in unchecked power and illegitimate authority?
Federalism can be useful in drawing up legitimate lines of Constitutional authority. But when it is allowed to transfer power to the states from other societal spheres, the philosophy merely establishes fifty separate laboratories of liberalism.
This is, or could be, an indictment of our Constitution -- that is, the indictment that, with relatively few exceptions, our Constitution (that is, We the People) leaves the police power, for better or worse, with the states, leaving them with the ability to function as "laboratories of liberalism" -- but I think Carter is begging the question when he suggests that "federalists" are proposing to merely "shift" power from the national government to the states. The "federalists'" claim, as I understand it, is that powers were, at the outset, vested here, and there, and that this vesting needs to be taken seriously (or undone).
"Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels on Thursday signed into law a plan giving Indiana the nation's most sweeping private school voucher program." More here.
In my view, the policy-, constitutional-, and social-justice-based arguments for educational-choice-expanding programs is compelling.
In this WSJ book review of "More God, Less Crime", by Byron Johnson, James Q. Wilson concludes with this:
The second story that Mr. Johnson has to tell in "More God, Less Crime" is about what happens to academics—in his case, a criminologist—who turn their attention to religion. When he was a young scholar at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis) in the mid-1980s, Mr. Johnson was told by his department chairman that none of his articles involving religion would count toward getting tenure. Though Mr. Johnson began publishing articles in academic journals about subjects other than religion, two years later he was fired. In his appeal to the dean, Mr. Johnson mentioned his publications and high student evaluations. The dean replied: "I don't need to have a reason," adding: "I can let you go if I don't like the color of your eyes."
With three small children at home, Mr. Johnson was desperate to save his job. He appealed to the provost, who told him: "You simply don't fit in here. I think you need to consider getting a job teaching at some small Christian college." The provost added, according to Mr. Johnson, that he would have "the same problem" at any other state university. Mr. Johnson then said to the provost: "If I were a Marxist we wouldn't even be having this conversation, would we?" The provost "nodded in agreement."
Mr. Johnson moved on to the University of Pennsylvania, where in the 1990s he continued to publish material on religion (even though the school is funded in large part by the state). In 2004, he took a job at Baylor University, a private Baptist institution, where he has been quite successful. His advice to young scholars: Get tenure before you start writing about religion.
This blog, "Mere Orthodoxy", might be of interest to MOJ readers:
Since 2004, Mere Orthodoxy has been working to provide intelligent and insightful discourse on all matters of faith and culture from a classically minded, conservative Christian standpoint.
The name is a fusion of the two most famous writings of C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) and G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy). Both authors exemplify the sort of intelligent approach to faith that we want to emulate, and identify what we want to conserve: an orthodoxy that is humble, confident, and vibrant. We want to see how that orthodoxy intersects with politics, film, literature, work, and every other realm of human life.
