Over at the First Things blog, Jody Bottum has some thoughts on Cardinal Arinze's recent remarks in which he appeared to called for state censorship of The Da Vinci Code. Bottum responds also to Eugene Volokh's post, criticizing Arinze, on "censorship envy." Check it out.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Bottum on "Censorship Envy"
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Allen on the Church & Islam
John Allen's recent "Word from Rome" column asks, among other things, "what would a coherent Catholic approach to Islam look like," and discusses the recent conference in Vienna, "where Cardinal Christoph Schönborn hosted a gathering of American and European intellectuals to discuss the challenge posed by George Weigel in his book The Cathedral and the Cube, where Weigel expresses a rather dim view about the cultural prospects for contemporary Europe." Interesting stuff. (Allen also takes about the Holy See's headaches regarding China's continued insistence on picking bishops.)
UPDATE: Here is a related piece, by an Egyptian Jesuit, on "How Benedict XVI Sees Islam".
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Religion in Prisons
Check out the comments section of my "Religion in Prisons" post over at Prawfsblawg. Marty Lederman, in particular, raises some really important questions. And, he has explicitly invited MOJ-ers and readers to weigh in, there and here.
UPDATE: Also, check out Marty's post (and invitation to comment) at Balkinization.
Monday, April 3, 2006
Hostility to Atheists?
Ilya Somin, at the Volokh Conspiracy, has some thoughts here, here, and here on "hostility to atheists as the last socially acceptable prejudice." Philip Jenkins, though, wrote a book recently on "The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice," as did Fr. Mark Massa. Catholics and atheists unite!
Monday, February 27, 2006
Carozza on "Secularity or Secularism"
Here is a link to a helpful and thoughtful piece by MOJ-friend Paolo Carozza (Notre Dame), called "Free Church and Limited State," on how "[t]he religious character of American culture and the role of the Church in public debate reveal why a concordat between Church and State is superfluous in the USA." Here is a bit:
Our law respects and protects that central role that religion has played in our collective life. We have a capacious understanding of freedom of religion, which recognizes that an important part of the liberty of religious communities is the capacity to speak and act publicly on questions of common concern. At the same time, the dominant American notions of freedom of speech are substantially more unrestricted than the prevailing European ones. Much of our tolerance for the presence of religiously informed views on controversial social issues is the consequence of the idea that all speech is given space to be heard in the public square, even if it is unpopular or offensive to some others. This is especially important given the great pluralism of religious identity and commitment among Americans. It is not the role of the state to be the arbiter of what is acceptable as public discourse, and so the law protects the liberty of all to express their views–even, or perhaps especially, those whose views are informed by their religious convictions.
Here there is a close connection between American views of the place of religion in public and American views of the state. While the legacy of nineteenth-century constitutional theories in continental Europe emphasizes the monopoly of the state as the embodiment of the public interest, the United States belongs to a constitutional tradition much more inclined to see the state as a limited actor in the social fabric. From this side of the Atlantic, a Concordat appears to be a response to the need to establish certain protections for the Church against the state’s claim of exclusive and ultimate power and authority. But in a context such as ours, where the freedom of the Church is largely guaranteed by the structural limitations of the state to interfere in her affairs, a Concordat seems to be superfluous. To give a specific example: there is no need for a special agreement ensuring the right of the Church to establish its own educational system, because the state does not have a monopoly of power over education to begin with and so cannot prohibit the creation and operation of religiously affiliated schools.
Monday, December 12, 2005
"Everything that is most hateful about religion"
We've been hearing about the "Christmas wars" . . . now here come the "Narnia wars." Recently, in the Guardian, Polly Toynbee wrote ("Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion"):
Most British children will be utterly clueless about any message beyond the age-old mythic battle between good and evil. Most of the fairy story works as well as any Norse saga, pagan legend or modern fantasy, so only the minority who are familiar with Christian iconography will see Jesus in the lion. After all, 43% of people in Britain in a recent poll couldn't say what Easter celebrated. Among the young - apart from those in faith schools - that number must be considerably higher. Ask art galleries: they now have to write the story of every religious painting on the label as people no longer know what "agony in the garden", "deposition", "transfiguration" or "ascension" mean. This may be regrettable cultural ignorance, but it means Aslan will stay just a lion to most movie-goers.
Can it really be true that "43% of people in Britain . . . couldn't say what Easter celebrated"? Or, am I off-base in being so surprised? In any event, after re-capping the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Toynbee says (among other . . . bracing things):
Over the years, [many] have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".
Hmm. I wonder why Ms. Toynbee is so confident that Christ should "surely" be no lion. (In any event -- and she might not know this -- there is "lamb" imagery in the third Narnia book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). By the way, there is (I think) a "law point" here: As we see time and again, one challenge in enforcing a constitutional prohibition on "endorsements" or "establishments" of religion is identifying precisely what it is that certain symbols or symbolic acts mean, and to whom? But back to Toynbee:
[H]ere in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. . . . The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.
Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, "There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory." Well, here's my huff.
Lewis said he hoped the book would soften-up religious reflexes and "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life". Holiness drenches the Chronicles. When, in the book, the children first hear someone say, mysteriously, "Aslan is on the move", he writes: "Now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had enormous meaning ..." So Lewis weaves his dreams to invade children's minds with Christian iconography that is part fairytale wonder and joy - but heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.
Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass. Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan.
I suppose it is always good to encounter and engage views that seem so alien (and, to me, mean-spirited). I'm one of those who loved (and loves) the Narnia stories. (And, I prefer -- I admit -- Aslan to the cheesy "Jesus as my baseball teammate" pictures that some kids had when I was growing up). But, it is clear that I read very different books -- beautiful, evocative, mysterious, romantic, life-affirming, humanist books -- than did Ms. Toynbee.
For a different take, by the way, check out Michael Nelson's piece in The Chronicle Review ("For the Love of Narnia"), which responds to Pullman and other Narnia-critics.
Friday, February 6, 2004
Law and "Moral Anthropology"
One of our shared goals for this blog is to -- in Mark's words -- "discover[] how our Catholic perspective can inform our understanding of the law." One line of inquiry that, in my view, is particularly promising -- and one that I know several of my colleagues have written and thought about -- involves working through the implications for legal questions of a Catholic "moral anthropology." By "moral anthropology," I mean an account of what it is about the human person that does the work in moral arguments about what we ought or ought not to do and about how we ought or ought not to be treated; I mean, in Pope John Paul II's words, the “moral truth about the human person."
The Psalmist asked, "Lord, what is man . . . that thou makest account of him?” (Ps. 143:3). This is not only a prayer, but a starting point for jurisprudential reflection. All moral problems are anthropological problems, because moral arguments are built, for the most part, on anthropological presuppositions. That is, as Professor Elshtain has put it, our attempts at moral judgment tend to reflect our “foundational assumptions about what it means to be human." Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Dignity of the Human Person and the Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries, 14 JOURNAL OF LAW AND RELIGION 53, 53 (1999-2000). As my colleague John Coughlin has written, the "anthropological question" is both "perennial" and profound: "What does it mean to be a human being?” Rev. John J. Coughlin, Law and Theology: Reflections on What it Means to Be Human, 74 ST. JOHN’S LAW REVIEW 609, 609 (2000).
In one article of mine, "Christian Witness, Moral Anthropology, and the Death Penalty," I explore the implications for the death penalty of a Catholic anthropology, one that emphasizes our "creaturehood" more than, say, our "autonomy." And, my friend Steve Smith (University of San Diego) has an paper out that discusses what a "person as believer" anthropology might mean for our freedom-of-religion jurisprudence that fleshes out excellent article. I wonder if any of my colleagues have any thoughts on these matters?
Rick
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