In my view, this First Things essay by Kenneth Woodward is a delightful read, and also highly relevant to the question of "Catholic legal theory", in this way: The Catholic moral anthropology, cultural vision, and sensibility are, it is often said, more "communitarian" (while never losing focus on the dignity and destiny of every individual person) than some others. Woodward's essay depicts a time, and context, when thick Catholic communities were instantiated, lived realities, and not just ideas.
This part struck me:
In the fifties half of all American Catholic kids attended parochial schools, a figure unequalled before or since. Nancy and Bill and I were three of them. First grade was more than just the beginning of formal education. It was above all an initiation into a vast parallel culture.
As I have already noted, every religious group formed its own subculture, some more closed to the outside world than others. Lutherans, Adventists, and some (mostly Orthodox) Jews also operated their own religious schools, and in Utah, as in much of the South, Mormon and Southern Baptist majorities effectively determined the religious ethos of public classrooms. But at mid-century only Catholics inhabited a parallel culture that, by virtue of their numbers, ethnic diversity, wide geographical distribution, and complex of institutions mirrored the outside “public” culture yet was manifestly different. We were surrounded by a membrane, not a wall, one that absorbed as much as it left out. It was, in other words, the means by which we became American as well as Catholic.
Catholic education was the key. Through its networks of schools and athletic leagues, the church provided age-related levels of religious formation, learning, and belonging that extended through high school and, for some of us, on into college. Church, therefore, always connoted more than just the local parish: kids experienced it anywhere, including schools, where the Mass was said. In this way, Catholicism engendered a powerful sense of community—not because it sheltered Catholic kids from the outside world, as sectarian subcultures try to do, but because it embraced our dating and mating and football playing within an ambient world of shared symbolism, faith, and worship. In my adolescent years, for example, St. Christopher’s transformed its basement on Saturday nights into the “R Canteen” where teenagers from all over Cleveland’s West Side danced to juke-box music; a muscular young priest from the parish roamed the premises to prevent fights and keep the drunks at bay. Yes, Catholics felt like hyphenated Americans, but nothing in human experience, we also came to feel, was foreign to the church. . . .
Half of all Catholic kids were in Catholic schools!
A cautionary reminder about government involvement with, and support for, religious (?) schools, over at Sightings:
Sweden, by some standards one of the world’s most secular countries, passed a new education law stipulating that public schools must teach their subjects in a “non-confessional” and “objective” manner. The law applies to all schools, including independent Christian and Muslim schools, because they, too, receive funding from the state. . . .
There has been, in relatively recent months, a fair bit of discussion around the Catholic and legal sections of the blogosphere about the Natural Law and its role / place / content / foundations. This lecture, delivered by Judge O'Scannlain at Fordham in November of 2010, is well worth a read. Judge O'Scannlain engages, inter alia, natural-law-thinker Hadley Arkes (Amherst) and Justice Scalia.
For some other MOJ posts -- including, specifically, thoughts by Patrick Brennan -- on the question of the natural law and American constitutional doctrine, go (e.g.) here, here, here, and / or here.
Among other things, Judge O'Scannlain explains why he "as a judge, [does not] have the authority to strike down a statute, simply because I think it violates the natural law." At the same time, the natural law is "relevant to judging" [that is, relevant to exercising the power given to federal courts by our Constitution] "in two major ways: one rather technical, and the other more abstract."
Our own Rob Vischer gets a great shout-out from National Jurist as one of 23 law professors "you should take before you die." Heck, no need to wait that long. . . .
Tom Neven asks the question, at First Things. (Please read the piece before writing an outraged "of course not!" comment.) He concludes with this:
[I]t is out of my deep respect for human life, created in God’s image, that I think the only just punishment for a cold-blooded murder is that that life be avenged as God commands. But being human and fallible, I urge the greatest caution and certainty before doing so.
My view is that political communities should reject capital punishment, in part because such a rejection can (though we should not pretend it always, or even usually, does) provide a witness to the dignity of the human person. I do not think, though, the question is an easy one.
Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, has been working to expand school-choice in Indiana. Good for him. Here's a link to an interview with him about it. Indiana's teacher-unions, though, are strongly opposing these efforts. Too bad.
Returning to a matter that stirred up a lot of interest a few weeks ago: Prof. George Wright (Indiana) has posted this interesting-looking paper on SSRN:
This Article, prompted by recent criminal cases involving alleged false claims to have been awarded particular military medals, addresses broad questions of lying and freedom of speech.
The Supreme Court has held that false assertions of fact – let alone outright lies – have no value for free speech purposes. With more nuance, the Court has also said that as a realistic matter, courts should protect some false speech in order to provide “breathing space” for, or to avoid inhibiting, good faith speech on important matters.
This Article argues, however, that lies can actually have substantial, direct, and independent free speech value. Such lies can, under given circumstances, uniquely promote one or more of the standard reasons for protecting speech. While this may initially seem paradoxical, the Article considers in particular two kinds of extreme cases: first, lying in the context of fugitive slave cases, where the lie is told either by the fugitive slave, or by someone assisting the fugitive slave; and second, lying, especially to officials, by threatened Jews, or by others seeking to protect them, in Nazi-controlled territories. The alternatives to lying in such cases are carefully considered as well.
The Article then considers less extreme cases, and concludes that in particular circumstances, lying, on any reasonable definition, may distinctively promote any or all of the standard free speech values. Whether a particular lie, or kind of lie, should ultimately be constitutionally protected will of course depend upon an appropriate judicial free speech test.
For the past few years, I have been a "Project Council" member for an interdisciplinary research program, funded generously by the John Templeton Foundation, of the Arete Initiative at the University of Chicago, on "A New Science of Virtues." My duties have involved, basically, reading piles of fascinating proposals by really smart people, and then learning from these smart people as they proceed through their funded projects. (The program is being headed up by Jean Bethke Elshtain, who I greatly admire, and whose recently published Gifford Lectures, "Sovereignty: God, State, and Self", are a must-read.)
The funded projects are, to put it mildly, diverse -- from studies involving slices of rat brain and dopamine to meditations on aging, mercy, and forgiveness. (I'll confess to considerable skepticism about whether we really learn much about "virtue", as I understand it, from research with hard-core "mind-is-brain" reductionist premises. At some point, it seems to me, "virtue" thinking requires the embrace of a richer moral anthropology.)
One of the funded projects -- the "Stuck with Virtue" conference series -- is being coordinated by a wonderful thinker and writer, Peter Augustine Lawler, author of (inter alia), "Aliens in America: The Strange Truth about our Souls." The project is really interesting. (There was a write-up on one of the events, here, at the First Things blog. Learn more here.) I suspect that many MOJ readers -- especially those with any attraction to / interest in the whole "postmodern conservative" / crunchy-Catholic / Wendell Berry / Walker Percy / Front Porch Republic thing -- will be interested in "Stuck with Virtue" and the associated events. I'd also welcome any thoughts readers have about the larger "Science of Virtues" project.
