Uber-law-blogger Paul Caron has posted the latest law-blog rankings here. MOJ is doing very well, but . . . it is a bit tough to be lagging behind the Wills, Trusts, & Estates Profs blog. So, tell all your friends about MOJ, and let's make it a goal: Catch WTEP in 2009!
Friday, July 17, 2009
Blog rankings
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Blessed John Newman on Catholic universities
Thanks to my colleague and MOJ-friend John O'Callaghan for sending this along:
Here, then, I conceive, is the object of the Holy See and the Catholic Church in setting up Universities; it is to reunite things which were in the beginning joined together by God, and have been put asunder by man. Some persons will say that I am thinking of confining, distorting, and stunting the growth of the intellect by ecclesiastical supervision. I have no such thought. Nor have I any thought of a compromise, as if religion must give up something, and science something. I wish the intellect to range with the utmost freedom, and religion to enjoy an equal freedom; but what I am stipulating for is, that they should be found in one and the same place, and exemplified in the same persons. I want to destroy that diversity of centres, which puts everything into confusion by creating a contrariety of influences. I wish the same spots and the same individuals to be at once oracles of philosophy and shrines of devotion. It will not satisfy me, what satisfies so many, to have two independent systems, intellectual and religious, going at once side by side, by a sort of division of labour, and only accidentally brought together. It will not satisfy me, if religion is here, and science there, and young men converse with science all day, and lodge with religion in the evening. It is not touching the evil, to which these remarks have been directed, if young men eat and drink and sleep in one place, and think in another: I want the same roof to contain both the intellectual and moral discipline. Devotion is not a sort of finish given to the sciences; nor is science a sort of feather in the cap, if I may so express myself, an ornament and set-off to devotion. I want the intellectual layman to be religious, and the devout ecclesiastic to be intellectual.
Obama is "more Catholic than the Pope"?
The claim that Pope Benedict XVI is a "liberal" was, I thought, implausible. Now Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is upping the ante. She contends, here, that "Barack Obama represents American Catholics better than the pope does." "Notre Dame awarded the president an honorary degree," she concludes, "because it saw the need to highlight the best of Catholic teaching as applied to politics: the ability to open the eyes of those who would prefer to keep them closed, and to open the hearts of those who would prefer not to know the pain that their actions cause. The pope has a lot to learn about Catholic politics in America. Barack Obama can teach him."
Wow! (To be sure, there are those who would "prefer to keep [their eyes] closed" -- e.g., those who breezily brush aside questions about America's abortion-rights regime with quips about their "pay grade", or those who imagine that Pres. Obama is something other than a committed supporter of that regime.)
Townsend's mention of the Notre Dame honorary degree reminded me that one of the things I think was most regrettable about the decision, and the way it was defended and spun, was that the University allowed itself to be used to advance the President's (quite understandable, politically speaking) strategy of (subtly) separating American Catholics from their (not particularly popular at the moment) bishops and their authority. Maybe Townsend's piece is a preview of the next move? Having told American Catholics what the "right way" is to be Catholic (i.e., "don't be like that close-minded fuddy-duddy, Bishop D'arcy"), the President is now positioning himself as a model for what American Catholics should want in the (or, "their") Vicar of Christ. Thanks, Ms. Townsend, but I think I'll stick with the one the Holy Spirit picked.
Welcome back to "Evangelical Catholicism"
After a two-year-or-so hiatus, the very interesting blog "Evangelical Catholicism" is back. (Contributors Michael and Katerina had been blogging at Vox Nova. More here.)
Friday, July 10, 2009
Family Ties: What do we think?
Over at Prawfsblawg, Dan Markel, Ethan Lieb, and Jennifer Collins have put up their "intro freaky post" describing their recent book project, "Privilege or Punish." As much as I like the authors, I have to agree that the post -- and, indeed, the project -- is kind of "freaky." Here's a bit:
we basically claim that the state should exercise substantial caution and indeed hostility to most attempts to distribute these benefits or burdens based on one’s family status. This is a controversial stance, but we conclude that in many circumstances there are simply too many costs to the criminal justice system when it gives special treatment based on one’s family ties or responsibilities.
Moreover, even when the criminal justice system does not suffer in terms of its ability to reduce crime and to impose accurate and adequate punishment, the signals of such family ties, burdens, and benefits are often expressly denigrating the lives of those who don’t live by the rules of a heterosexual and repro-normative conception of family life. Our view is that a criminal justice system in a liberal democracy has to be especially careful about sending these messages of denigration and inequality through its most awesome instruments of power, coercion, and condemnation.
To be sure, we might think the law does a bad job, in specific instances, of taking account, in an appropriate way, the reality -- and it is a reality -- that persons are situated in families, which are themselves natural human societies. But it is not at all clear to me what it would be about any attractive conception of "liberal democracy" that should make it the case that the state not only should not, but may not, take account of, and appropriately respect and protect, this reality.
Thoughts?
Ninth Circuit rejects pharmacists' religious-conscience claims
The Los Angeles Times has the story, here:
The right to freely exercise one's religion "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability," the 9th Circuit panel wrote.
"Any refusal to dispense -- regardless of whether it is motivated by religion, morals, conscience, ethics, discriminatory prejudices, or personal distaste for a patient -- violates the rules," the panel said.
At First Things, Wesley Smith warns that (among other things) the decision "also means that all pharmacists in the state must dispense death to terminally ill patients in Washington who receive lethal prescriptions." Paul Moses, at Commonweal, weighs in here,
I wonder whether Pres. Obama's much-touted-by-some-Catholics "reasonable conscience clause" would protect these pharmacists?
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Still more on Caritas
Here is a short blurb, by me, on the new encyclical:
It was predictable, but is nevertheless regrettable, that many pundits and partisans would respond to Caritas in Veritate not so much by engaging Pope Benedict’s profoundly Christian humanism but instead by hunting through the text for quotations they could deploy in support of their own pet policies. (The Pope, for his part, urged “all people of good will” to “liberate [themselves] from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways.”) Rather than reflecting carefully on the Pope’s central proposal, namely, that “[f]idelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom and of the possibility of integral human development,” commentators who might ordinarily roll their eyes at policy suggestions from the bishop of Rome are happy to uproot from the encyclical’s inspiring, challenging vision a few talking points about environmental stewardship, trade unionism, or the redistribution of wealth.
Caritas in Veritate is not, however, merely a papal reflection on the current economic crisis or the implications of globalization. In keeping with the Catholic social teaching tradition, and with the work of his predecessor, the letter is about the person—about who we are and why it matters. Beneath, and supporting, the various statements and suggestions regarding specific policy questions is the bedrock of Christian moral anthropology, of the good news about the dignity, vocation, and destiny of man.
To content oneself with harvesting talking points in support of this or that policy is to miss the point, and the promise, of the letter. We cannot, however high-sounding our stated intentions, expect to achieve true human flourishing through a politics that does not care about or denies the truth—and there is a truth—about the person, namely, that by creating us in his image, God has “establish[ed] the transcendent dignity of men and women and feeds [our] innate yearning to ‘be more.’ Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved.” “And now,” the Pope is challenging us to ask, “what follows?”
There are other comments at the same link.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
"The Pope is a liberal"
Michael has posted -- I just knew he would! -- a link to David Gibson's "The Pope is a Liberal" piece. No doubt, the Pope's views on many questions regarding the organization and regulation of the economy put him well to the "left" of the American political center. But, the suggestion that the overall vision of society and the person presented in the new encyclical, and the letter's premises about morality, truth, duties, anthropology, are (insert here all the reservations, expressed by other MOJ-ers, about labels) "liberal", in the way that category functions in contemporary American and European politics, seems misplaced. Today's "liberalism" -- notwithstanding the community-and-solidary language that is trotted out for use in debates about economic regulation and taxation -- is very hard to separate, I would think, from the relativism, individualism, indifferentism, and atomism that the Pope criticizes with *at least* as much fervor as he calls for new spending programs.
In his piece, Gibson does not discuss the emphasis that the Pope places, in setting up his critique of some understandings of development, on Humanae vitae:
The Encyclical Humanae Vitae emphasizes both the unitive and the procreative meaning of sexuality, thereby locating at the foundation of society the married couple, man and woman, who accept one another mutually, in distinction and in complementarity: a couple, therefore, that is open to life[27]. This is not a question of purely individual morality: Humanae Vitae indicates the strong links between life ethics and social ethics, ushering in a new area of magisterial teaching that has gradually been articulated in a series of documents, most recently John Paul II's Encyclical Evangelium Vitae[28]. The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics and social ethics, fully aware that “a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.”[29]
This should be interesting. "Conservatives" are being criticized (quite snarkily, in some quarters, perhaps fairly in others) for squirming at the encyclical's social-democratic prescriptions, but one would hope that the "liberal" critics would at least consider the possibility -- as the Pope is challenging all of us to do -- that Humanae vitae has more to say about integral human development than they have hitherto appreciated.
And yes, the Pope emphasizes the importance of unions, but he also criticizes their excessive politicization and their resistance to change; yes, he talks about environmental stewardship, but he strongly criticizes the neo-pagan and anti-humanist strands in the environmental movement; yes, he talks about the need for international bodies and authorities to coordinate various efforts, but he insists that these bodies and authorities be constrained by religious liberty, subsidiarity, and rule-of-law principles. Etc. etc.
Mr. Gibson's suggestion that the Pope's approach to abortion is "Obama-esque" is, to me, not convincing. Yes, the Pope recognizes that "respect for life" is inextricably linked to economic development and child welfare. The "Obama-esque" approach to abortion, though, does not stop with this recognition, but rather proceeds to a wide range of policies that the encyclical specifically condemns, like using foreign-aid money to support or encourage abortion and contraception. It is unfortunate -- it seems out-of-character with those aspects of President Obama's vision that many find appealing -- that the centerpiece of Obama's "approach to abortion" is, in fact, the constitutionalization of a (practically speaking) unlimited right to abortion on demand, supported, to the extent possible, by public funds. One doubts that there is much in this approach that resonates with Caritas in veritate, in which the Pope says:
we need to affirm today that the social question has become a radically anthropological question, in the sense that it concerns not just how life is conceived but also how it is manipulated, as bio-technology places it increasingly under man's control. In vitro fertilization, embryo research, the possibility of manufacturing clones and human hybrids: all this is now emerging and being promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture, which believes it has mastered every mystery, because the origin of life is now within our grasp. Here we see the clearest expression of technology's supremacy. In this type of culture, the conscience is simply invited to take note of technological possibilities. Yet we must not underestimate the disturbing scenarios that threaten our future, or the powerful new instruments that the “culture of death” has at its disposal. To the tragic and widespread scourge of abortion we may well have to add in the future — indeed it is already surreptiously present — the systematic eugenic programming of births. At the other end of the spectrum, a pro-euthanasia mindset is making inroads as an equally damaging assertion of control over life that under certain circumstances is deemed no longer worth living. Underlying these scenarios are cultural viewpoints that deny human dignity. These practices in turn foster a materialistic and mechanistic understanding of human life. Who could measure the negative effects of this kind of mentality for development? How can we be surprised by the indifference shown towards situations of human degradation, when such indifference extends even to our attitude towards what is and is not human? What is astonishing is the arbitrary and selective determination of what to put forward today as worthy of respect. Insignificant matters are considered shocking, yet unprecedented injustices seem to be widely tolerated. While the poor of the world continue knocking on the doors of the rich, the world of affluence runs the risk of no longer hearing those knocks, on account of a conscience that can no longer distinguish what is human. God reveals man to himself; reason and faith work hand in hand to demonstrate to us what is good, provided we want to see it; the natural law, in which creative Reason shines forth, reveals our greatness, but also our wretchedness insofar as we fail to recognize the call to moral truth.
My own sense is that much of the commentary so far about the encyclical has -- unfortunately -- not really "got" it, and in some cases even been unworthy of it. It seems, so far, that too many are cherry-picking quotes that provide rhetorical support for their preferred policy goals, or that seem to score points for "their side" in the political / culture wars. (Yes, yes, "both sides" do this . . .) What's really animating this letter, it seems to me, are the Pope's -- the Gospel's -- anthropological claims. The document is not about the recent American elections or the stimulus package. It's about authentic, integral human development and flourishing and, therefore, it is a call to take seriously what the truth is -- there is a truth -- about the human person, namely, that he is made in the image of God and loved by Him. It is certainly not a document with which someone who thinks such questions are "above [his] pay grade" (or, indeed, any of us, including me) should feel too comfortable.
Law School and the Freedom of the Church
Over at Prawfsblawg, Howard Wasserman has what is for MOJ-ers a must-read post on church-autonomy, the ministerial exception, Catholic law schools, and the latest from Ave Maria School of Law. He asks, among other things:
3) I would love to hear from Rick and others who study Catholic legal thought and Catholic education (especially legal education) about this case. What is the link between Catholic legal education and the Freedom of the Church? At what point should the Catholic or religious nature of a law school (whose core job, of course, is to teach secular law and to train future lawyers) be deemed so pervasive that every faculty member becomes, at some level, a teacher of religious doctrine or religious ideas? Would a secular inquiry into that professor's performance thus involve evaluation of sectarian matters? In other words, imagine a prawf who teaches civil procedure, but nevertheless is obligated to bring some canon law or Church doctrine into the classroom. Does satisfaction and performance on the religious component become part of the evaluation of her teaching, such that a secular inquiry into the circumstances of any adverse employment action necessarily requires a forbidden inquiry into sectarian matters? And would it be different if that faculty member's teaching package includes Canon Law?
I wrote, in the comments section:
In my view, (i) both the church-autonomy idea generally and the "ministerial exception" specifically are vital aspects of religious freedom; (ii) from this idea and this exception it does not follow that every employee of a Catholic law school is a covered "minister" or that such a law school's contractual relationships with its employees are *all* beyond the reach and review of secular courts; (iii) a Catholic law school (or, for that matter, a University) is not merely an institution where many Catholics happen to study, teach, and write and is not merely a place that happens to offer a course or two in a "Catholic" topic; (iv) it could be true *both* that the Catholic vision appropriately inspires everything that happens in a Catholic law school *and* that tenured faculty are not all "ministers" for purposes of the ministerial exception. That is, while I understand the concern that the "exception" might "swallow the rule" if "everything is part and parcel of faith", it is not clear to me that, in order to save the rule, one has to deny that, at the end of the day, everything *is* "part and parcel of faith."
Also, with respect to the issue of using the term "jurisdictional", I see your point, Howard. At the same time, "jurisdictional" does, it seems to me, emphasize (what I think is) the fact that the immunity at the heart of the "ministerial exception" is not best regarded as a concession or accommodation by secular authority; some things really are, in an important way, beyond the law-saying reach and power of a (just) constitutional government. (Ed.: Fine, then where's the line? RG: Good question.)
Thoughts? Put them here, and at Prawfs, please!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Pope Benedict on "following the prevailing winds"
From the American Papist blog, a recent statement -- made in the context of the Year of St. Paul -- by Pope Benedict (emphasis not mine):
"Paul wants the Christian faith have a 'responsible', an 'adult faith," said the Holy Father. "The word 'adult faith' has in recent decades become a popular slogan. It is often used to refer to the attitude of those who no longer adhere to the Church and her pastors, but choose for themselves what they want to believe and not believe - a kind of do-it-yourself faith."
Benedict XVI continued: "Speaking against the Magisterium of the Church is presented as courageous. In reality, however, it does not take courage for this, since you can always be sure of audience applause."
"Rather it takes courage to adhere to the faith of the Church, even if it contradicts the 'scheme' of the contemporary world," said the Pope. "It is this non-conformism of the faith that Paul calls an 'adult faith.'"
The Holy Father gave two examples of an 'adult faith'. First, "to commit to the inviolability of human life from the very beginning, thus radically opposing the principle of violence, in defense of the most defenseless humans." And second, "to recognize marriage between a man and a woman for life as a law of the Creator, restored again by Christ."
For Paul, said Benedict XVI, "following the prevailing winds and currents of the day is childish." (LSN)
Does this statement, I wonder, tell us anything about the content of the soon-to-be-released encyclical? I've heard speculation, in some quarters, that the encyclical will be a tough critique of the modern economy; others seem to expect an elaboration of the "dictatorship of relativism" theme. We'll see. One thing is for sure, though: The New York Times will use some of the following words in its coverage: dictate, edict, dogma, conservative, hard-line, enforcer; any tension between the Pope's critique and "conservative" Catholics in America will be highlighted, as will any consonance between that critique and the positions of the Obama Administration. Challenges to market-economics will be foregrounded in the coverage; challenges to an individualistic culture and morality will be skated over. In fact, I imagine we could come up with a "Mad Libs"-style template for most press accounts! The "Get Religion" blog, I expect, will be must-reading in the days to come.
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
