Fr. Drew Christiansen, S.J., has this piece in America, defending "the Holy See’s possible rapprochement with the China’s Communist government on the appointment of bishops." I'm among those who has expressed grave reservations about such a move and I continue to regard the attitudes expressed by its defenders as quite naive. To be clear: to harbor and express such reservations is not to throw in with those who criticize in various ways the papacy of Pope Francis. This is a particular decision, I think, and I'm addressing it in particular -- though it is consonant with some recent and strikingly foolish statements made by a particular bishop to the effect that China is a world leader in implementing Catholic Social Teaching. It most certainly is not.
Fr. Christiansen's piece is worth reading, but one of his several suggested defenses strikes me as quite weak:
Anti-communist Catholicism: Time for aggiornamento? It has been 55 years since St. John XXIII’s encyclical “Pacem in Terris”(“Peace on Earth”). At the time of its publication, the letter’s most controversial affirmation was its opening to dialogue with political parties of the left, including the Italian Communists. Pope John himself penned the line that distinguished between adherents of an errant ideology and the ideology (Marxism) itself. “Pacem in Terris” cleared the way for a new relationship with the Communist governments of Eastern Europe and the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in the East. But even with shifts in the policies of the People’s Republic, that opening to Communists has not been accepted by intransigent elements of the underground church. Might it not be time to apply John’s teaching to relations with the Chinese government? Why should China be an exception to world Catholicism’s aggiornamento in church-state and political relations?
This is a fuzzy misuse of Pacem in Terris and relies excessively on "communism" as an abstract. Now, I would insist that any "rethinking" of Catholic opposition to communism, both as an ideology and as a lived regime, would be a mistake. "Communism," as it has been instantiated in regimes around the world, is antithetical to Christianity. Put that aside for now. Here, the "shifts in the policies of the People's Republic" that might be relevant are not identified here. Any "shifts" that might warrant a warming on the Church's part are dramatically outweighed by the continuation (and, in some instances, the worsening) of censorship, confiscation, disenfranchisement, and persecution.
The issue is not whether or not "aggiornamento" with something called "communism", or with some people called "communists", is warranted in the abstract. The issue is the reality that the PRC is not, in fact, a "People's Republic" -- no one should use that term without scare-quotes -- but is instead a repressive, secular dictatorship -- skyscrapers and billionaires notwithstanding.
In the New York Times, Ross Douthat has a column that argues straightforwardly that we should "ban" hard-core pornography. Although the Supreme Court's precedents allow, in theory, governments to ban "obscene" material (see, e.g., Miller v. California), it seems to be the view that, practically speaking -- because of the ubiquity of and ease of accessing online pornography -- pornography is both unregulated and unregulatable (by the government).
My view of the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee tends to be the maximalist, old-school ACLU-type libertarian position -- i.e., the government may almost never regulate expression because of its content or because of the "viewpoint" it expresses. I hold this view not because I think it is compelled by the First (or the Fourteenth) Amendment's original public meaning but because, all things considered, I think it is "worth it" to endure offensive, misguided, foolish, and even dangerous speech rather than to trust officials with the task of identifying and policing, in a consistent and unbiased way, a line between speech that is permitted and speech that is not.
I admit, though, that I'm not entirely comfortable with this view (and not only because, again, it seems hard to square with what I understand to be the original meaning of "the freedom of speech"). Sometimes, those who hold this view justify it on the asserted ground that "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me." Obviously, this is not true. Speech does cause "harms," to others, to the community, and to the moral ecosystem. What's more, there is no reason to think that these harms are distributed in an equitable way or, say, borne by those who benefit the most from a libertarian speech regime. Still, my well-grounded confidence that the power to regulate speech would be abused -- e.g., that rules against "hate speech" or "unsafe speech" or "harassment" will be used to suppress "conservative", "traditional", or otherwise insufficiently right-side-of-history views on various matters -- makes me reluctant to depart from the near-absolutist position.
And yet: Pornography is harmful -- and Douthat identifies some of these harms -- and it is immoral (despite what some woke and liberated sophisticates want to tell us) to produce or to consume it. The scathing piece that Douthat wrote after Hugh Hefner's death, responding to some of the ridiculous posthumous accolades, was spot on. (He was "a pornographer and chauvinist who got rich on masturbation, consumerism and the exploitation of women, aged into a leering grotesque in a captain’s hat, and died a pack rat in a decaying manse where porn blared during his pathetic orgies.") It's increasingly difficult for me not to agree that it should be regulated more than it is -- certainly, it should be marginalized, shamed, and disapproved more than it is -- and that meaningful lines between Pornhub and, say, The Rosy Crucifixion would not be as elusive as my fellow near-absolutists warn.
At the very least: Shouldn't every Catholic university employ (in ways consistent with researchers' academic freedom) filters and the like to at least complicate their undergraduates' dorm-room access to material that, the Church has always known and the world is increasingly appreciated, undermines their development, relationships, and flourishing?
said he has decided that the Diocese of London will not apply for or accept any money from the Canada Summer Job Grants program. The program has funded an estimated 70,000 summer jobs for secondary school or college students, granting organizations the money for positions like camp counselors or landscapers. London-area organizations alone received nearly $4 million through the program last year.
This heavy-handed move by the Trudeau government seems to go beyond the kind of "compliance with nondiscrimination rules" conditions that are increasingly being tied to public funds, contracts, grants, and licenses in the United States. I'm reminded of the "law of merited impossibility" . . . .
Catholic social doctrine is built on four foundational principles: the inviolable dignity and value of every human person, the responsibility of all to exercise their rights in ways that contribute to the common good, the importance of social pluralism and civil society (and thus the rejection of totalitarianism), and the imperative of solidarity (the virtue of civic friendship that binds free societies together). Those principles helped shape the revolution of conscience that preceded and helped make possible the political revolution of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. Those principles were also in play in the democratic transformations of Latin America and East Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century. Those principles remain the core of the social doctrine of the Church today.
And in 2018, those principles are systematically denied, in both theory and practice, by the People’s Republic of China.
A few days ago, in New York, I had the pleasure and privilege of participating -- along with several other MOJ-ers -- in a (efficient and well-organized!) conference on the new Foundation casebook - "Christian Legal Thought: Cases and Materials" -- edited by our own Patrick Brennan and MOJ-friend Prof. Bill Brewbaker. I hope law professors all over the country use the book, and offer the course. And, I hope other MOJ-ers will weigh in.
My own remarks focused (predictably) on the centrality to "Christian Legal Thought" of moral anthropology, a theme that, I am pleased to report, figures prominently in the casebook.
The first panel featured Angela Carmella (Seton Hall), Michael Moreland (Villanova), and David Skeel (Penn). Angela's remarks focused on one of her own areas of expertise, i.e., church-state relations, and on the question whether there is a distinctively Christian account of those relations. Michael expounded on the often-misunderstood but crucially important idea of "subsidiarity." He clarified its content and explained its roots. And, David Skeel reflected, riffing on the "we've come a long way, baby" slogan, on changes in the landscape since the publication almost 20 years ago of the McConnell, Cochran, and Carmella volume, "Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought."
The second panel featured Randy Beck (Georgia), Patrick Brennan (Villanova), and some other guy (me). Randy reflected instructively on his own experiences teaching a Christian Legal Thought course. I threw out some Cormac McCarthy-invoking thoughts on the relevance of "who are we and why are we here?" questions for law. Finally, Patrick pulled together the various strands, responded to a range of points, and was effusively grateful. (We all prayed for Bill Brewbaker, who was not able to be present, because of a family emergency.)
I'm grateful to St. John's, and to my colleagues -- especially Marc DeGirolami and Mark Movsesian, and the great group of St. John's students! -- for an enjoyable, illuminating, and affirming time!
It's being reported that Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo said recently that (among other things) "those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese . . . You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs . . . [T]he economy does not dominate politics, as happens in the United States, something Americans themselves would say.”
This is incredibly ignorant and foolish. No, my point is not that it's foolish to see, say, democratic socialism as a sometimes effective vehicle for some aspects of the Church's social teachings, nor is it to deny the observation that China is, in some respects, different from what it was during John Paul II's pontificate, nor is it that the Church's social teachings are perfectly operationalized in democratic-market economies. But . . . China? Shame on him. It is impossible to take seriously a Vatican office ("Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences") that propagates this kind of silliness -- actually, "silliness" isn't strong enough. It's repulsive.
Let's put aside the dumb and easily falsifiable claim about "shantytowns" or about China acting for "the good of the planet"; put aside too, for now, the facts about abortion, capital punishment, censorship, lawlessness, etc. The Church's social teachings rest, foundationally, on a moral anthropology and a social ontology that are completely incompatible with either Chinese communism or "socialism with Chinese characteristics."
Notre Dame Law School's Journal of Comparative and International Law and the University's Center for Civil and Human Rights are teaming up to award a prize for Outstanding Scholarship in Catholic Social Thought and Human Rights. More information is available here.
The Ontario bar association has adopted a rule under which all lawyers “must prepare and submit a personal ‘Statement of Principles’ attesting that we value and promote equality, diversity and inclusion,” according to Bruce Pardy in the National Post, who says it’s a bad idea. . . .
But the U.S. is not so far behind. In 2016 the ABA adopted Model Rule 8.4 (g), which makes it “professional misconduct” for an attorney to engage in “conduct,” including verbal “conduct,” that “the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.” . . .
The “Test Acts” were a series of enactments in England that excluded from public office and penalized in other ways those who would not swear allegiance to the prevailing religious tenets of the day. There is no good reason to bring back their principles.
This is a troubling development, and lawyers (in both Canada and the United States) should resist it. I agree with Eugene Volokh regarding the First Amendment problems with the ABA's Model Rule. The concern, obviously, doesn't have to do with whether or not lawyers should be committed to "equality" in some sense but rather with the fact that, in contemporary discussions, both "equality, diversity, and inclusion" and "discrimination" are used in imprecise and ideologically and/or religiously loaded ways. Stay tuned . . .
As I proposed in my very first MOJ post, nearly 14 years (!) ago, and as I've contended in a few articles over the years (e.g., here and here), answering pretty much all questions about legal institutions and doctrines requires, in the end, engaging with big questions of moral anthropology, e.g., what does it mean to be a person and why does it matter that one is a person? What is the nature, and what is the destiny, of the person? These questions were, of course, at the very heart of the work and pontificate of Pope St. John Paul II. I wrote once:
“Are human beings different from meat?” A recent book review opens with the complaint that this is “[a]n example of the worst type of modern philosophical question”; a question that, “[f]or those among us who have never been invited into Socratic dialogue by, say, a porterhouse, . . . is dumb in ways rarely thought possible before.”2 The reviewer is right, of course—the question is “dumb.” Then again, we might wonder if this “worst kind” question is really all that different from the Psalmist’s own: “Lord, what is man . . . that thou makest account of him?” (Psalms 143:3) The question, it turns out, is both perennial and profound: “What is man, and why and how does it matter?”
Well, here comes news from China about the (alleged) cloning of a monkey in China, prompting the headline, "How can we be special if we're just a bundle of cells?" How, indeed?
