At Michael P.'s suggestion, I surfed over to the Commonweal blog for David Gibson's post on "abortion and the Catholic voter". I have to admit, I'm not sure there's all that much to be said or done, or much movement to be expected, on the "Catholic voter" question. We are where we are, and that's where I expect we'll stay. Still . . .
It seems to be a premise of many of these "for whom should Catholics vote?" discussions that "on every issue that matters, other than abortion, the election of Sen. Obama will actually yield meaningful policy actions that are edifyingly in concert with the Church's social teaching, while the election of Sen. McCain will actually yield meaningful policy actions that are distressingly in conflict with the Church's social teaching." But, this premise is false.
It is false because it ignores, or at least downplays, the political, social, cultural and economic realities that will almost certainly prevent dramatic changes with respect to most matters, and so it overestimates the "good" stuff about an Obama administration that, it is proposed, outweighs the "bad" stuff. It is also false because Sen. McCain's views (or, more precisely, the policies likely to be pursued by his administration) on a number of matters -- not just abortion -- are, in terms of consonance with the Church's social teaching, preferable to Sen. Obama's. Or, so a faithful, reasonable, informed, non-duped, non-Republican-hack, Commonweal-and-First Things-reading Catholic could conclude. It's a sad thought, but . . . I'm not sure that productive conversations -- even among friends -- are possible so long as this false premise is assumed.
David Gibson's post is a discussion of this New York Times piece -- read my colleague Gerry Bradley's analysis of the piece, here -- which quotes my longtime friend Doug Kmiec as urging Catholics to ask, "not ‘Can I vote for him?’ but ‘Why shouldn’t I vote for the candidate who feels more passionately and speaks more credibly about economic fairness for the average family, who will be a true steward of the environment, and who will treat the immigrant family with respect?’”? (I assume Doug is not talking here about Gov. Romney, the previous object of his enthusiasm? Sorry. Couldn't resist.) Put aside, but just for now, the facts that it is not at all obvious that Sen. Obama's "feel[ings]" -- on anything -- are more admirable than Sen. McCain's, that Sen. McCain's record on environmental "stewardship" is a responsible and reasonable one, and that Sen. McCain -- who has taken real political risks supporting fairness for immigrants, while Sen. Obama (feelings and all) has not yet served out a full term in the Senate -- would not "treat the immigrant family with respect". For what it's worth, here's a possible answer to Doug's question: Because Sen. Obama voted against a law banning the killing of infants that survive abortions, he voted to filibuster Justice Alito (in a context where the leading arguments against the nominee involved his vote upholding abortion regulations) and would probably nominate judges and justices who, though entirely competent and decent, would have misguided views on religious-freedom and church-state matters, he opposes school choice, he would roll back the faith-based initiative, and his election means the certain passage into law of the awful Freedom of Choice Act. He looks great when he raises his chin, and some of what he says -- when he is not thundering in support of abortion rights -- sounds nice, but that's just not enough. For me. For what it's worth. . . .
On an entirely different matter . . . I've been vacationing in the Pacific Northwest, am returning to "Michiana" tomorrow, and can report that (a) Whistler is beautiful and (b) the Kautz route up Mt. Rainier was -- for this aging law prof, anyway -- too hard. Back to the drawing board . . . .
Monday, August 4, 2008
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -- who was sent to the camps for referring to Stalin as the "man with the mustache" -- died on Sunday night. (Here is the very thorough NYT obit.) We here at MOJ talk, think, and write about "conscience"; Solzhenitsyn, in my view, really showed us how it's done. His work and witness shamed all those who, from the comfort of western salons, romanticized the Soviet Union. What the Times calls his "hectoring jeremiads" -- his speech at Harvard, for example, "A Warning to the West" -- were, it seems to me, also important. R.I.P.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
As the piece in The Tablet, to which Michael linked the other day, suggests, it appears that most "practising Catholics" "ignore" the Church's longstanding teaching on contraception and think that it should be "revised." (In my own experience, it is not always entirely clear that Catholics who "ignore" the teaching have ever been challenged, encouraged, and helped to embrace it, but let's put that aside for a minute.)
As Jody Bottum discusses, here, it also appears that Pope Paul VI's predictions, regarding the social and cultural effects of the widespread practice of contraception, and the views, premises, and attitudes that would accompany this practice, have proved prescient. Todd Zywicki considers these predictions, at the libertarianish Volokh Conspiracy, here.
So . . . what? Should it matter -- and if so, how -- that most Catholics are not willing to act in accord with the teaching of the Catholic Church on this matter? (Most of us fail to live in accord with teachings like "love thy neighbor", after all, but I don't think revision is in the offing.) Should it matter -- and if so, how -- that the universal given-ness of contraception in our society has, arguably, had some negative social effects?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
From ZENIT:
The chairman of the U.S. bishops pro-life committee says an issue is being discussed by members of Congress that should be a matter of agreement between "pro-lifers" and "pro-choicers": respect of conscience. . . .
Cardinal Rigali said the issue "should be a matter of agreement among members [of Congress] who call themselves 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice': the freedom of health care providers to serve the public without violating their most deeply held moral and religious convictions on the sanctity of human life." . . .
The cardinal's final point called into question the logical soundness of abortion-supporters' arguments.
He explained that "efforts to protect rights of conscience are being attacked by critics as a threat to women’s 'access' to abortion arid birth control. This is an interesting charge. For many years, pro-abortion groups have insisted that abortion and related services are 'basic' and mandatory aspects of health care."
"They have opposed conscience clauses, dismissively calling them 'refusal clauses,' claiming that they protect an irrational 'refusal' by a tiny minority of religious zealots to comply with this supposedly objective medical standard," the cardinal continued. "Now they have reversed their stand, claiming that conscientious objection to these procedures is so pervasive in the health care professions that policies protecting conscience rights will eliminate access to them."
"Obviously these two claims cancel each other out," Cardinal Rigali affirmed. . ..
Nat Hentoff, as MOJ readers probably know, is a very interesting commentator. How many civil-libertarian, atheist, pro-life columnists are out there these days, after all? Anyway, here is a piece he did on Sarah Palin, the governor of my original home state of Alaska. A bit:
Last December, this mother of four children, Mrs. Palin, four months' pregnant, found she was going to have a child with Down syndrome — a condition characterized by moderate-to-severe mental retardation. A school friend of one of my sons had Down syndrome; I have also known functioning adults with the extra chromosomes of that syndrome.
However, as a longtime reporter on disability rights, I have discovered that many fetuses so diagnosed have been aborted by parents who have been advised by their doctors to end the pregnancies because of the future "imperfect quality of life" of such children.
Mrs. Palin's first reaction to the diagnosis was to research the facts about the condition, since, as she said, "I've never had problems with my other pregnancies." As a result, she and her husband, Todd, never had any doubt they would have the child.
"We've both been very vocal about being pro-life," she told the Associated Press. "We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential." In an age when DNA and other genetic-selection tests increasingly determine who is "fit" to join us human beings, we are witnessing the debate between sanctity of life vs. quality of life being more often decided in favor of death. This is a result welcomed by internationally-influential bioethicist Peter Singer. He is now a celebrated Princeton University professor, who, in July 1983, wrote in Pediatrics, the official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics: "If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication, and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant." And there are bioethicists who point to the continuing costs of rearing a "defective infant."
By inspirational contrast, Mrs. Palin, says of her new son, Trig: "I'm looking at him right now, and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?"
Over at Prawfsblawg, there have been a number of interesting posts -- by Paul Horwitz, Jason Solomon, Gordon Smith, etc. -- about religiously affiliated law schools. MOJ-ers might want to weigh in, here or there. For my own part, I wrote:
this might not be the forum for thinking-out-loud about what a “Catholic law school” should be, what precisely should be its distinguishing features, etc. In my view, the project of building such a law school — an engaged, open, critical, and distinctively Catholic law school — is not an exercise in nostalgia, reaction, or retrieval. The project is, in my view, a new one.
It’s also, I think, an exciting and worthy one, and I’m inclined to think that it should be regarded as such by the legal academy generally, not just by co-religionists and the like. It is not just “not a bad thing”, it is a good thing, that there be distinctive law schools. Our commitments to diversity need not, and should not, lead us to insist on homogenization at the level of institutions. Quite the contrary — the same commitments that push us to respect and learn from diversity in many academic settings might also push us — and the AALS, and the ABA — to stay our hand from requiring that each institution look and act in precisely the same way.
Garvey fleshes out a number of reasons — reasons that I find persuasive — why we might think that institutional pluralism in the academy is a good thing. It seems to me that we ought not to resist, but instead should welcome, not only law schools that have focused on serving underserved populations, or law schools with a particular strength in a specific subject-matter area (for example, Lewis & Clark in environmental law), or even law schools with a particular animating point-of-view (Law & Economics at George Mason?), but also law schools that are distinctive in being meaningfully animated by a shared — even if contested — religious tradition.
Paul Horwitz's post, I think, is particularly thought-provoking. (Paul visited at Notre Dame law year.) He writes:
. . . I do mean to suggest that one of the great and perhaps underlooked qualities of the religiously affiliated law schools is a profound sense of shared mission that unifies faculty and students alike. That common cause can, in the best instances, be deeply tied to a questing intellect and a sense of underlying values, and can thus provide the kind of mystical marriage between practical skills, ethical values, and intellectual rigor that we keep hoping for in the best of our law schools. And none of it need be the kind of warmed-over bien-pensant liberalism that I see, somewhat over-simplistically, as the result of the usual attempts to mix values and intellect at the top secular law schools. . . .
Go over to Prawfs, and join the conversation!
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Today, in an opinion written by law-and-religion scholar (and Notre Dame honorary-degree recipient) Michael McConnell, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that Colorado violated the Constitution when it refused, on the ground that the school is "pervasively sectarian", to permit otherwise-qualified students to use publicly funded scholarships at Colorado Christian University. Here is a link to the opinion. Here's the key sentence:
We find the exclusion unconstitutional for two reasons: the program expressly
discriminates among religions without constitutional justification, and its criteria
for doing so involve unconstitutionally intrusive scrutiny of religious belief and
practice.
More later . . . .
