Thanks to Amy for starting off our conversation about John Allen's The Future Church. (Note, please, that the comments box is open. Check out her post, and share your thoughts.) Amy's description of Allen's claims and observations with respect to "A World Church" are both thorough and succinct; I have nothing to add to it.
A quick thought, though, about the observation that a “tight identification between the West and Christianity” has “disintegrated” and Catholicism has been turned “upside-down." In some senses (many, perhaps) this observation is clearly correct: Christianity is growing in the "South", and this growth would seem certain to result in (as Allen describes) "increasing attention to matters of pastoral concern in the South" and continued emphasis (I probably wouldn't use Allen's term, "turbocharging orthodoxy") on the moral dimensions of human sexuality.
I wonder, though, if Christianity is not more closely, and deeply, tied to "the West" than Allen's diagnosis and predictions suggest? I'm not talking so much about geography and am (to be clear) certainly not talking about race or ethnicity. But, what if there are certain ideas, associated with "the West" but comparatively underdeveloped in "the East" or "the South", that are not just accidentally, but essentially, connected with Christianity? Can Christianity "go South" without these ideas? Are there substitutes for them?
Amy talked about "the profound cultural differences between the European and North-American mind-frames: e.g., the European tendency to articulate highly abstract principles, and only eventually work its way down to a more concrete discussion, in tension with the more pragmatic problem-solving leanings of North-American culture", and suggests that Christianity's Southern turn could well create new "tensions" related to cultural differences. But I'm thinking -- not very well, at present, I admit -- not only about cultural differences (Christianity has wrestled with the challenge of inculturation for a long time, right?) but about the possibility that some really important (for Christianity) ideas (which, like culture, mediate our experience of the world) might not be present in those areas where Christianity is growing. What are these ideas? I'm not sure. Perhaps some who have thought about this more than I have will say, "actually, the chance for Christianity to slough off the constraining baggage of the kind of ideas you are talking about -- what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens or Rome? -- should be welcome, and will result in a clearer, more authentic and "original" Christianity." Perhaps.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Interesting:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Roy Brown seems like a rarity - a conservative who's against the death penalty.
But to Brown, a state senator and the 2008 Republican nominee for governor of Montana, the philosophy aligns perfectly with conservative ideology. He's one of the more high-profile figures reaching out to other social and fiscal conservatives, hoping to create a bipartisan movement against capital punishment.
The effort has been backed by Richard Viguerie, a fundraiser and activist considered the father of the modern conservative movement. Viguerie, in a July 2009 essay in Sojourners magazine, wrote that executions are supposed to take the life of the guilty - but noted there are enough flaws in the system to fear an innocent person has been put to death.
Viguerie noted that death row inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence, raising the prospect that prosecutors and juries made mistakes in cases without scientific evidence and in cases that predate the science.
"To conservatives, that should be deemed as immoral as abortion," Viguerie wrote.
(HT: Opinionated Catholic)
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Rob shared an (appropriately critical) post recently on Martha Fineman's new paper, Taking Children's Interests Seriously. As he (rightly) points out, the hostility toward private education and homeschooling, and Fineman's view that "public education should be mandatory and universal," rest on (to put it mildly) debatable factual premises (i.e., that public education clearly serves children's interests better than private education, religious education, or homeschooling) and on (to me) deeply troubling views about the state's authority over child-rearing, education, and formation.
Now, add to the mix this, "The Harms of Homeschooling," by Prof. Robin West. As Joe Carter reports, over at First Things, it is not a stretch to say that West's claim is that "poor, overbreeding, fundamentalist Christian families are destroying the tax base?" (Even worse, apparently, they are creating future Republican voters!)
It would be one thing -- a "same ol', same ol'" kind of thing -- if these kinds of diagnoses and prescriptions were appearing in teacher-union mailings, or the blog of the latest hipster-atheist practitioner of epater le-fundamentalists. But Profs. West and Fineman are accomplished, important scholars. Engagement, and vigilance, is warranted.
Christianity Today has
this very helpful piece about the current round of church-property-dispute cases, and their importance to religious freedom. As the article describes, these cases often involve efforts by more conservative or orthodox communities to break away -- and take the property with them -- from national "mainline" Protestant churches. It's tricky: I tend to be sympathetic to the "breakaway" communities' understanding of the implications for morality of (broadly speaking) the Christian tradition, but find myself disagreeing with my friends (some of whom are mentioned or quoted in the piece) who believe that a local community's decision should control church-property destiny. To be sure, these cases are often complicated and fact specific. But, we should be careful of uncritically imagining that a very "protestant" way of thinking about churches, and church-authority, is in fact merely a "neutral" way of resolving such disputes.
No, it's not the announcement of another season of "The Sopranos." The New York Times reports (with some regret, I imagine), that "To Lead Schools, Christie Picks Voucher Advocate," Bret Schundler. According to the report, Schunder is "[t]he man once described by teachers’ union leaders as 'the antithesis of everything we hold sacred about public education.'" So, he's got that going for him. The piece also notes:
Still, some of the ideas that made him a polarizing figure to unions and Democratic leaders have become more mainstream (RG: were these ideas ever not "mainstream"?), with even President Obama signaling interest in merit pay and promoting the expansion of charter schools. On Wednesday, the teachers’ union issued a statement that refrained from criticizing the choice.
It looks like the (Democratic) mayor of Newark, Cory Booker (one of "America's best leaders"), might have an ally.
As MOJ readers are probably aware, in a recent interview, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about her disagreements with the United States Catholic bishops concerning Church teaching. Speaker Pelosi replied, in part: “I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that we are all endowed with a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have the opportunity to exercise their free will."
As Archbishop Neiderauer points out, here, "[e]mbodied in that statement are some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom":
Catholic teaching on free will recognizes that God has given men and women the capacity to choose good or evil in their lives. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council declared that the human person, endowed with freedom, is “an outstanding manifestation of the divine image.” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 17) As the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, makes so beautifully clear, God did not want humanity to be mere automatons, but to have the dignity of freedom, even recognizing that with that freedom comes the cost of many evil choices.
However, human freedom does not legitimate bad moral choices, nor does it justify a stance that all moral choices are good if they are free: “The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything.” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1740) Christian belief in human freedom recognizes that we are called but not compelled by God to choose constantly the values of the Gospel—faith, hope, love, mercy, justice, forgiveness, integrity and compassion.
It is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft. Freedom of will is the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right. . . .
The "Notre Dame Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life" -- which I have referenced and discussed here on MOJ before -- has submitted some preliminary recommendations to the University's president, Fr. John Jenkins, which are designed to “broaden and deepen the pro-life culture in and among various constituencies in order to strengthen the Notre Dame community’s witness to Catholic teaching on life":
The preliminary recommendations include the following:
- That the University formulate and adopt a policy statement indicating its support for Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.
- That the University formulate and adopt a policy statement on charitable gifts or investments in order to avoid formal or immediate material complicity in evils such as abortion and torture.
- That the University adopt strategies to make its current supportive policies toward pregnant students better known to the student body, the faculty and other members of the Notre Dame community.
- That the president continue to witness for life through attending or sending a delegate to participate in the March for Life or a similar event focusing on the right to life beginning at conception, as well as analogous forms of witness across the spectrum of life issues.
- That undergraduate research opportunities be made available through “witness to life research opportunities” (or a similar idea), with topics in theology, law, philosophy, sociology, biology and other disciplines across the spectrum of life issues.
- That the University find ways to encourage the work of students explicitly engaged in pro-life activities across the spectrum of life issues. Further, that the University create and support educative efforts on campus – such as conferences, consultations and courses – intended to inform the campus community on issues pertaining to life, and to form an academic culture of witness to life as appropriate to any given academic venue.
- That the University encourage alumni in pro-life witness, for example, in helping them to mobilize their own parish communities in support of women in crisis pregnancies or in assisting adoptions.
- The task force, for the remainder of its charge, will serve to initiate collaborations with specific Notre Dame constituencies as appropriate in order to further the implementation of the recommendations above and consider further recommendations.
Thoughts? Reactions?
