This is from Eric Miller's "Nuclear Centers," in the April 2007 issue of Touchstonemagazine:
To truly be a college requires that the educational community in question possess both social integrity -- people living together as humans should -- and intellectual integrity -- people thinking together as humans should. By taking upon itself the holy responsibility of instructing humans in living and thinking, a college community publicly obligates itself to enact those ideals for which it stands in all aspects of its life: from the way it structures its pay-scale to the way it structures its classrooms, from the attention it gives its students to the attention it gives to its food preparation.
If it fails at discerning the nature of the good life, or at integrating this understanding into its own life, it will not possess integrity and will look ridiculous -- and, indeed, it will be deserving of ridicule. The social and intellectual spheres must come together to form one philosophical, ethical, aesthetic whole: This is what the ideal of college means, and teaches. . . .
So: Are the institutions where we write, study, and teach "ridiculous"?
The MOJ "2008 rumble" is starting early! To be clear: I'm not a fan of Rudy Giuliani and would not vote for him (although, all things considered, I would prefer a Giuliani Administration to a Clinton, Obama, Edwards, or Gore Administration). That said, I think a small caveat is warranted to Eduardo's anticipatory "gotcha!" directed at "prominent Catholic voices that questioned Kerry's Catholicism and the permissiblity of Catholics voting for him[.]"
Certainly, Giuliani should be criticized by "prominent Catholics" for adopting the positions he has adopted with respect to abortion. (And, I'm confident that Eduardo and I will find that, when the times comes, he will be.) Indeed, Giuliani's abortion-related positions are (almost) as extreme as those staked out by John Kerry (and every plausible 2008 Democratic candidate). In each case, that a professed Catholic so brazenly and publicly embraces extremist pro-abortion-rights views is a scandal, and a shame.
Still, it is not clear that a Giuliani Administration would be as thoroughgoingly hostile or damaging to the pro-life cause (and to the cause of protecting religious conscience and authentic religious freedom) as a Kerry Administration almost certainly would have been. For example, it is not inappropriate, or hypocritical, for those who criticized Kerry to -- while strongly criticizing Giuliani -- take some comfort in the likelihood that Giuliani's judicial nominations might be less likely to invalidate reasonable regulations of abortion (or religion-inclusive school-choice plans) than judges appointed by Kerry would have been (or than judges appointed by President Obama probably would be).
Ryan Anderson has a review (subscribers only) of Chris Wolfe's new book, Natural Law Liberalism, in National Review. Here is an excerpt from the review:
Central to Western political liberalism is the notion that disagreement can be resolved through common deliberation and that representative constitutional democracy is the best institution for such deliberation. This makes us think that any kind of clash can be solved through rational discussion of the truths we share. At the same time, however, our modern system is founded on skepticism about the ability of people and their governments to define and enforce a universal vision of the good life. This makes us think that there aren’t any real truths to be shared.
It is in response to such worries that Christopher Wolfe has written his new book, Natural Law Liberalism. Wolfe is a Marquette University political scientist who focused his early work on constitutional interpretation and judicial activism. He founded the American Public Philosophy Institute to support the efforts of such thinkers as Robert P. George, Russell Hittinger, and Hadley Arkes, who have been working to rearticulate the natural-law foundations of political life. Natural Law Liberalism is Wolfe’s contribution to the effort.
By liberalism, Wolfe means the whole range of modern political thought, from the early Enlightenment through the American Founding the philosophical theory of government that emphasizes human equality, personal liberty, individual rights, participatory government, and the rule of law. And natural law, as Wolfe conceives it, is the long Western tradition of reflection on the nature of human flourishing and the rational principles that can guide human action and choice. His thesis is simple: If political liberalism is to justify itself at home and abroad, it must return to the classical tradition of Western thought and embrace natural-law theory as the account of its foundations.
For those in or near Chicago, this series, sponsored by Holy Trinity Church in Hyde Park, might be of interest:
Text and Truth, Spring 2007: Christian Scholars Intentionally Engaging their Disciplines
Join us Tuesdays at 12:00pm, in the South Lounge, 2nd floor the Reynolds Club, at the University of Chicago.
April 17 Jean Bethke-Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the Divinity School, University of Chicago "To Serve God Wittily in the Tangle of One's Mind"
April 24 Dr. Farr Curlin, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago "Medicine toward what ends? Conscience and clinical practice today"
May 1 Margaret Mitchell,Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Divinity School, University of Chicago "The DaVinci Code"
May 8 Tracey Meares, Professor of Law, U of Chicago, & starting Autumn, 2007, Yale Law School "Where Two or Three Come Together: the Black Church and the Police in Urban Poor Neighborhoods"
May 15 Richard Garnett, Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Visiting professor of law, U of Chicago, 2007 "Catholic Social Thought and the Law"
Any thoughts from MOJ's subsidiarity gurus on this piece, "All Church Politics Is Local," by Fr. Thomas Williams? Commenting on a recent statement by the U.S. Bishops Committee on Doctrine to the effect that two pamphlets published by Professor Daniel Maguire of Marquette University “do not present authentic Catholic teaching," Fr. Williams writes:
So why is the declaration by the bishops’ committee significant? More than simply restating traditional Catholic teaching in rebuke of a minor dissident, it represents a reanimation of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity as applied to Church governance. By offering a local solution to a local problem, the statement takes a step toward restoring a healthy balance between local and central authority.
For years, Church officials from across the political spectrum have lamented a creeping centralization within the Catholic Church. The Roman Curia has been accused of being overly interventionist and power-hungry, dipping into local problems that could be better handled at a lower level. At the same time, Curial officials have insisted that they don’t want to have to rein in every maverick theologian and doctrinal dissident, and only do so when the local church authorities either ask them to intervene or simply fail to do their job.
As Cardinal Walter Kasper wrote in the April 23, 2001 issue of Jesuit-run America magazine, over-centralization in the Catholic Church cannot be blamed exclusively on the Roman Curia. The local churches themselves promote centralization, he wrote, “whenever they abdicate their responsibility and turn to Rome for a decision — a ruse to evade their duty and find cover behind a superior order.”
John Allen asks, "why hasn't Catholicism had a more positive effect" in Latin America?
Catholicism has enjoyed a spiritual monopoly in the region for more than 500 years, and today almost half the 1.1 billion Catholics alive are Latin Americans. Moreover, Latin Americans take religion seriously; surveys show that belief in God, spirits and demons, the afterlife, and final judgment is near-universal.
The sobering reality, however, is that these facts could actually support an "emperor has no clothes" accusation against the church. Latin America has been Catholic for five centuries, yet too often its societies are corrupt, violent, and underdeveloped. If Catholicism has had half a millennium to shape culture and this is the best it can do, one might be tempted to ask, is it really something to celebrate?
I'm reminded of the scene, in Godfather III, when Michael is meeting with the future Pope John Paul I:
CARDINAL LAMBERTO
Look at this stone. It has been lying in the water for a very long time, but the water has not penetrated it.
<He breaks the stone.>
CARDINAL LAMBERTO
Look. Perfectly dry. The same thing has happened to men in Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity, but Christ has not penetrated. Christ doesn't breathe within them.
Michael P. asks, with respect to Zach O'Connor, who is described in the New York Times as having "[come] out about being gay" in the seventh grade, "what would *you* do if Zach O'Connor were *your* son? Tell him that he should be celibate for the rest of his life?" I'm going to dodge that question. Here's mine: What should we think about a cultural context in which 7th graders are expected to declare sexual orientations and embrace sexual identities, and in which (according to the Times, anyway) the model of good parenting is to encourage kids to do so even earlier? I guess I'm too busy making sure my kids aren't Carolina fans.
This quarter, I am teaching a course called "Law and the Catholic Social Tradition." (I posted the syllabus here, a few days ago.) What I thought would be a small seminar has grown quite a bit; it looks like we'll have about 30 in the "seminar."
On Tuesday, Chicago's archbishop, Cardinal George, was generous enough to join us for dinner at the Law School, and to share his thoughts on the Compendium generally, and the "CST and the law thing" more generally. On Wednesday, we had our first meeting, and I am excited and optimistic about the class. The students are a very diverse and, it appears, engaged group. I suspect that I will be sharing some of their thoughts with MOJ readers in the weeks to come, so stay tuned. . . .
Professor Paul Horwitz, who is visiting at Notre Dame this semester, is guest-bloging at the Volokh Conspiracy about his recent, excellent article on the Religious Tests clause. Check it out.
Here's an interesting post, from the "Crunch Con" blog, on the "separation of church and culture":
I heard a good talk last night by Ken Myers, the happy genius of the indispensable Mars Hill Audio Journal household. Our host was Dr. David Naugle, head of the philosophy department at Dallas Baptist University (N.B., for Dallas area readers, Ken's going to be speaking today at DBU at noon, on "Why There Really IS A War Between Science and Religion: C. S. Lewis's Vision of a 'Repentant Science'"; the lecture is free -- follow the link to Dr. Naugle's webpage for details). I've become a big fan of the Mars Hill interviews, and can't encourage thoughtful Christians interested in the intersection of faith and culture strongly enough to subscribe. So it was a treat to hear Ken speak in person. He talked last evening about how from the days of the founders, the American way of thinking about the role of religion in public life was not only to privatize it, but to individualize it. He explained how the inevitable result of this was to make Christian faith peripheral to the substantive questions in public life. Moreover, the principles behind this privatization of religion inevitably lead to the corruption of religion, because it becomes primarily a matter of expressing how individual men feel about God, rather than being an expression of how God feels about individual men, and what He calls us to do.
The upshot is that even among the most religiously enthusiastic Americans, the faith has become so inculturated that it has been turned inside out, and is no longer prophetic, but therapeutic. Ken talked about an interview he did in 2005 with sociologist Christian Smith, who had just written a book on the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. What he found was a consistent set of religious beliefs across denominations, and even traditions (i.e., Muslim teenagers told him the same thing). But it wasn't the beliefs of the particular traditions the kids came out of; rather, it was what Smith calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." It's principles, as Ken listed them, were startlingly familiar: God exists, but you really shouldn't get overly involved with Him unless you get into real trouble or something; the point of life is to be happy; it's important to be nice; good people go to heaven, and most everybody is good; et cetera. . . .
