MOJ-friend Philip "I was urbanist before it was cool" Bess passes on this City Journal essay, by Catesby Leigh. Among other things, it is noted that "the New Urbanists are to fulfill their movement’s vast potential as a force for cultural renewal, though, they must do a better job of addressing the public. One obstacle is their insular mentality." I would add, "they must do a better of job of incorporating the experience and insights of faith traditions, and of purging any even-implicitly anti-religious elements from their proposed vision."
Monday, April 21, 2008
Interesting essay on New Urbanism and "cool"
"Who Will Save Catholic Schools?"
Every generation lives off the cultural inheritance of its predecessors. Among that inheritance for today’s American Catholics is a network of parochial schools built by their immigrant forebears, which served both to teach the faith and ground the community. . . .
But it’s worth noting that the men and women, religious and lay, who built America’s Catholic schools did so not to educate the poor but to educate Catholics. Catholic schools were formed as a means of passing down the faith to Catholic children and were a self-conscious attempt in the early to mid-1900s to wall off children from a mainstream culture that was considered hostile to Catholics. Given this fact—and given that, contrary to Fordham’s hopes, religious charter schools are not likely to become a reality anytime soon—perhaps it’s not too ungenerous to ask whether it is entirely fair to ask Catholics to shoulder the burden of educating the urban poor? . . .
On a similar note, I was struck, in Pope Benedict's address to Catholic educators (about which several of us have blogged already), the focus was not only on universities, but on the achievements and mission of Catholic schools generally.
And, for what it's worth, I think the report of the Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education (on which I served) had a lot of helpful suggestions to offer.
The President, I am pleased to note, is hosting a White House summit on Catholic schools this week:
President George W. Bush said his concern about the growing loss of urban Catholic schools was a prime reason he was convening a summit on inner-city and faith-based schools the week of April 21. Speaking to the fifth annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast April 18, Bush said the summit would highlight the lack of educational options low-income urban students are facing. "I am concerned about the loss of a major national asset, and that is the decline of Catholic schools, particularly in inner-city America," he told an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000 gathered at the Washington Hilton hotel. The summit is expected to draw educators, clergy, funders and business leaders to begin discussing options for public, private and parochial urban schools. Bush said the goal was to urge Congress to develop "reasonable legislation" and practical solutions to "save these schools and, more importantly, to save the children." Citing the long history of Catholic education in the U.S., Bush commended those in the audience who are working to preserve Catholic education.
I hope the President's successor will share his appreciation for the importance of Catholic schools.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Understanding the PBA decision
A student of mine at Notre Dame Law School has posted an interesting paper, here, on the Supreme Court's decision upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortion. Here's a bit:
Gonzales v. Carhart represents a seismic shift in our nation's abortion jurisprudence. Upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, despite the lack of a health exception, it signals the end of what can be termed the physician veto. This veto can be globally defined as the placing of dispositive weight in our nation's abortion jurisprudence on the autonomy and judgment of physicians who favor abortion rights, at the expense of undergoing the more difficult and deeper process of engaging issues of women's liberty and equality vis-à-vis the nature of the unborn fetus and of abortion itself. From Roe until the more recent Carhart decision, this dispositive weight - the veto - has shielded the right to abortion in a manner that approaches the absolute through the erection of an impenetrable wall of deference to physician autonomy and judgment in this area of their practice.
This Note chronicles the life and death of the physician veto as it has been used to shield the right to abortion ever since Roe. This Note is not meant to be a critique or support of Carhart in terms of the substantive abortion issue at question. Neither is it intended to be an in-depth analysis of the intricacies of the Court's holdings in its abortion cases, as this has been exhaustively achieved elsewhere. Rather, it is an attempt to understand the precedential value of how Carhart will affect future abortion jurisprudence. In doing so, it exposes for future academic and legal discussion the plain fact that Carhart invites society to engage the abortion debate in a new way. Our jurisprudence is now invited to consider the abortion right - with its attendant philosophical and medical questions concerning women's liberty, equality and health, and the fetus' life and nature - without abbreviating the discussion through unqualified deference to the judgment of a physician who supports abortion rights.
The Pope's U.N. Address
Here is the Pope's U.N. address. It covers a lot of terrain. Here's just a bit, about the Declaration, and human dignity:
This reference to human dignity, which is the foundation and goal of the responsibility to protect, leads us to the theme we are specifically focusing upon this year, which marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document was the outcome of a convergence of different religious and cultural traditions, all of them motivated by the common desire to place the human person at the heart of institutions, laws and the workings of society, and to consider the human person essential for the world of culture, religion and science. Human rights are increasingly being presented as the common language and the ethical substratum of international relations. At the same time, the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights all serve as guarantees safeguarding human dignity. It is evident, though, that the rights recognized and expounded in the Declaration apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the person, who remains the high-point of God’s creative design for the world and for history. They are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations. Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks. This great variety of viewpoints must not be allowed to obscure the fact that not only rights are universal, but so too is the human person, the subject of those rights.
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Senate's resolution
It looks like the Senate managed to pass a resolution (co-sponsored by Sens. Casey and Brownback), honoring and welcoming Pope Benedict XVI. What was the hold-up? Sen. Boxer didn't like language about the sanctity of life and religion-in-public-life. Here's what had to be cut out:
"that neither attempts to strip our public spaces of religious expression nor denies the ultimate source of our rights and liberties";
"Whereas Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out for the weak and vulnerable, witnessing to the value of each and every human life"
Thursday, April 17, 2008
From the "Hell in a Handbasket" files . . .
This just in, from Yale:
Art major Aliza Shvarts 08 wants to make a statement.
Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself as often as possible while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock, saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion. . .
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Report from the Pope's South Lawn Welcome
I had the chance this morning to go to the welcome ceremony (just me and 12,000 or so of my closest friends!) for Pope Benedict XVI at the South Lawn of the White House. What a beautiful day in D.C.! Kathleen Battle was amazing. My favorite moment was -- during a brief lull, right after the Pope came out and met the President -- when a bunch of people (I think it was a cluster of Dominican sisters) started singing "Happy Birthday", and the whole (huge) crowd joined in. (Later, there was an "official" rendition.) The President's remarks were, I thought, appropriate. A bit:
Here in America you'll find a nation of compassion. Americans believe that the measure of a free society is how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us. So each day citizens across America answer the universal call to feed the hungry and comfort the sick and care for the infirm. Each day across the world the United States is working to eradicate disease, alleviate poverty, promote peace and bring the light of hope to places still mired in the darkness of tyranny and despair.
Here in America you'll find a nation that welcomes the role of faith in the public square. When our Founders declared our nation's independence, they rested their case on an appeal to the "laws of nature, and of nature's God." We believe in religious liberty. We also believe that a love for freedom and a common moral law are written into every human heart, and that these constitute the firm foundation on which any successful free society must be built.
The biggest applause line was this one:
In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred, and that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved" -- (applause) -- and your message that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary."
The Pope's talk (scroll down) was brief, but bursting with great content, about freedom, truth, and solidarity. I particularly liked this:
As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find in their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more human and free society.
Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience -- almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate.
In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in Eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows time and again that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation," and a democracy without values can lose its very soul. Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the Pope's talk at CUA, about Catholic education.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Pope and the Would-Be Presidents
I agree with Michael, certainly, that it is "worth pondering" Mr. Nichols' suggestion that President Bush "might want to listen to what this particular pope has to say about global warming, fighting poverty and, above all, promoting peace", and should not merely use this visit to "bask in the papal glow." Does Mr. Nichols think -- if he doesn't, I think it is worth pondering why he does not -- that Sen. Obama, etc., (who issued a gracious welcome message to the Pope) ought not to merely "bask in the papal glow" (around his own environmental proposals, for example) and should, instead, "listen to what this particular pope has to say about" prioritizing an abortion-on-demand regime that cannot even admit of a ban on partial-birth abortion or a requirement to save children who manage to survive abortions?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
"The American Pope"
From Time magazine:
A survey of the 80-year-old Pontiff's writings over the decades and testimonies from those who know him suggests that Benedict has a soft spot for Americans and finds considerable value in his U.S. church, the third largest Catholic congregation in the world. Most intriguing, he entertains a recurring vision of an America we sometimes lose sight of: an optimistic and diverse but essentially pious society in which faiths and a faith-based conversation on social issues are kept vital by the Founding Fathers' decision to separate church and state. It's not a stretch to say the Pope sees in the U.S.--or in some kind of idealized version of it--a civic model and even an inspiration to his native Europe, whose Muslim immigrants raise the question of religious and political coexistence in the starkest terms. . . .
Ratzinger's next American exposure came during the momentous Second Vatican Council in Rome, from 1962 to '65. Then in his early 30s, Ratzinger was a theological wunderkind who made his name behind the scenes. The U.S. delegation, meanwhile, was embroiled in a contentious debate over religious freedom. Conservatives opposed it: states must sponsor faith, and the faith should be Roman Catholic. The Americans argued that religious liberty was morally imperative and--from experience--that in a multireligious state, Catholicism could best thrive when the government could not play favorites. The council sided with them, and Ratzinger, anticipating a world composed of jostling religious pluralities, heartily approved. In a 1966 analysis, he wrote, "In a critical hour, Council leadership passed from Europe to the young Churches of America and [their allies]," who "were really opening up the way to the future." . . .
Abortion = "pap smear"?
I'm going to be judgmental . . . this, from Amanda Marcotte (remember her?), is a really horrible, morally obtuse thing to say:
The anti-choice movement tries like hell to erase women’s existence, or at least our individuality, and the T-shirt undermines that. It also clarifies that abortion is nothing to be ashamed of. For me, “I had an abortion” should be as morally loaded as “I had a Pap smear”. The underpinnings of the moral angst about abortion—the idea that a woman has no right to pry loose a flag a man has planted in her (even if he agrees with her decision, as most men in this case do), or that she should be punished for having sex—offend me to the core, and that many women go through anguish over getting abortions depresses me. They shouldn’t feel bad for having sex or having autonomy. In fact, they should be proud of themselves for taking care of themselves despite all the misogynist messages out there that women don’t have a right to take care of ourselves. People balked at the idea that the “I had an abortion” T-shirts smacked of that mortal female sin of pride, but I applaud it. Women should be proud of doing right by themselves in a world where that’s socially disavowed.
(HT: Althouse).
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