Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

status of the early human embryo

By Richard Myers

The question raised by Cathleen Kaveny is an interesting one. She suggests that the pre-implantation embryo is not a human being because of the possibility of twinning. I think it worth mentioning that we are talking about a relatively rare phenomenon and that embryologists agree that fertilization normally represents the beginning of life for an individual. Does the possibility of twinning mean that the pre-implantation embryo ought not to be treated as a human being. It seems clear that the embryo at this stage is as Robby George has stated, "a unitary, self-integrating, actively developing human organism." That it is not certain to be an individual huuman person because it might split into 2 individuals does not mean that the early embryo "is a mere clump of cells." As Patrick Lee has stated: "a distinct, living human individual comes to be with the fertilization of the ovum by the sperm; another distinct, living human individual may be generated from the cells of a single living human individual either by twinning or by cloning." A developing human organism ought to be treated as a person. Bill May's treatment of this issue is at pages 166-170 of his Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. One of Patrick Lee's statements on this issue is here. Robby George's statement on cloning addressing this issue (his statement to the President's Council on Bioethics) is here. A statement on this issue by Dr. John Hubert is here. 

Richard M. 

Thursday, March 16, 2006

2 comments on the Statement of Principles

By Richard Myers

Father Thomas Williams and Joseph Bottom have weighed in on the Statement of Principles released by 55 Catholic Democrats. The statements are here and here. They both object to the Statement's evaluation of abortion as "undesirable." Bottom closes with this sentence: "Until the Democrats find a genuine way to be pro-life, they will not be able to deploy Catholic intellectual resources--or claim the prestige of doing so."

Richard

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

response to Lauritzen on the Terri Schiavo case

By Richard Myers

I have to confess that I didn't find the essay by Paul Lauritzen on the Terri Schiavo case very convincing. His main point is that the withdrawal of food and water didn't run afoul of Catholic teaching because the withdrawal didn't necessarily aim at death. Rather, Lauritzen claims, we are adopting a "let nature take its course" position and refusing to worship the false gods of technology in pursuit of "mere existence."

Putting aside the point that the providing food and water does not involve the use of high-tech care, I don't think this is a sound argument. Lauritzen claims that people such as Terri are in fact dying because of their natural inability to chew and swallow. We don't apply this way of thinking to most people in a state of dependency (infants who have a natural inability to feed themselves). As Bill May and others have pointed out patients in a persistent vegetative state are "not in fact dying from a fatal pathology. They are simply persons seriously impaired." The "problem" is that they are "biologically tenacious"--that is, they won't die soon enough, and that is precisely the aim of the withdrawal of food and water. Courts make this error all the time. The Florida courts in the Estelle Browning thought her death was "imminent" because she'd die within a short time without food and water. I think a reading of Lauritzen's essay makes clear that he doesn't think the lives of such patients are worth very much, or perhaps not worth anything at all. He explicitly denies this but I don't think the full essay supports his denial.

A better treatment of this issue is Mark Latkovic's fine article in volume 5 (pages 503-513) of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly (Autumn 2005).

Richard    

Saturday, February 18, 2006

more on freedom and Kung

By Richard Myers

Thanks to Steve for his recent comments. Steve asks a good question on the issue of the Church teaching on religious liberty. I contributed a paper to the inaugural issue of the St. Thomas Law Journal. My paper, which was entitled "A Critique of John Noonan's Approach to Development of Doctrine," was published at 1 St. Thomas L. J. 285-306 (2003). (A link to that paper is available on the right hand side of this blog if you click on my name and then look for the paper on Judge Noonan.) In that paper, I spend 4-5 pages outlining my view that the Church has not changed Her teaching on religious liberty.

On Kung and Curran. I think Steve is correct that I may have been too sweeping in my dismissal of Kung and Curran. If Kung is responsible at least in part for Steve's return to the Church then I think we owe him a debt of gratitude.

I do think that the reason that people such Kung and Curran and lesser lights such as McBrien and Dan Maguire (at Marquette) receive a lot of their notoriety is because they are teaching at Catholic schools (or used to teach Catholic theology) and "courageously" dissenting from Church teaching. I think, and this is admittedly impressionistic, that after Curran left Catholic University that he stopped being such a big story. (I don't think that Curran and Kung were "fired." They both lost the right to teach Catholic theology from schools or programs with a specific link to the Vatican. I think Kung remained on the faculty at Tubingen (he just couldn't teach Catholic theology) and I think the same was true for Curran (although he later decided to leave CUA)). I think the same would be true if McBrien were teaching at Indiana University-South Bend of if Maguire were teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their thought is not that interesting in its own right to demand a lot of attention. Kung, I think, is in a different league from these others, although I think that after the Vatican action in the late 197s that he increasingly distanced himself from the main currents of Catholic thought. I think Kung has most recently been spending a lot of time on a Global Religions initiative. I do think that Steve is correct that Kung still attracts large crowds when he speaks. I remember, however, reading an account of one such speech recently and the author noted that the crowd seemed to be like the crowds at Call to Action gatherings (an older crowd who came of age during Vatican II) for whom Kung still has celebrity status. The energy in the Church is not with this group. The energy in the Church, the vocations for example (see the website of the Sisters of Mary--a vibrant Dominican community here in Ann Arbor), is with the Catholics who you might find at Youth Day gatherings or Right to Life marches (the most recent of which was filled with young people) or at a family conference of groups such as the Legionaries. I don't think that Kung is a big player for these folks.

Richard               

Friday, February 17, 2006

freedom for truth and Catholic education

By Richard Myers

A few words on Steve Shiffrin's recent post. I don't think it is correct to say that the Church has changed Her understanding of the nature of freedom. A major point of Veritatis Splendor was to stress the idea that freedom and truth (or the law) ought not to be regarded as in opposition. There is an essential linkage between freedom and truth. Although I realize that there is a controversy about this, I don't believe that Dignitatis Humanae changed this. The Catechism (2108) states: "The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error, but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i. e. , immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities." The limits spoken about include conformity to the objective moral order. This view of freedom is not the radical autonomy of Planned Parenthood v. Casey or Lawrence v. Texas.

I think that Catholic schools ought to contend with the best contrary arguments. I don't think, however, that Charles Curran, or Hans Kung, or Richard McBrien ought to be teaching theology at a Catholic university. Part of the reason for this is that these folks do more than engage in lofty theoretical disputes. They teach undergrads and, to perhaps oversimplify things, I think there is a truth-in-advertising issue when they present their views as legitimate options for Catholics. One of my younger sisters was in McBrien's class at Notre Dame and I think the way in which "Catholicism" was presented led to a lot of confusion. Another interesting point is that what gave folks like these their cachet (or continues to do so in the case of McBrien) was that they were teaching (or chairing the theology department) at a Catholic school. Would their views be commanding an audience if they taught somewhere else? Since their departure from Catholic universities, Kung and Curran have been almost unheard of. I suspect that the same thing would happen to McBrien.

Richard         

Monday, February 13, 2006

Baude on the nature of a university

By Richard Myers

One ambiguity in Will Baude's post on Catholic universities is whether he thinks that a Catholic university committed to Ex Corde Ecclesiae could even lay claim to the title of "university." Or is it that such a university could not be considered "great." He seems to have an "essence" of a university in mind that would exclude such an institution from the category of "university" altogether. Under Ex Corde, the main task of a Catholic university is to be consecrated to the cause of the truth. The essence of a university, according to Baude, is to remain ideologically neutral and to be in a state of perpetual opposition to the existing order. Under Baude's view, what is a university for?

Under Baude's thinking, is Harvard even a university? or is it only a university because no one thinks that it takes its motto ("Veritas") seriously?

Richard    

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

the effects of abortion on women and the demise of Roe v. Wade

By Richard Myers

I wanted to call attention to an interesting Note recently published at 90 Minn. L. Rev. 500 (2005). The title is "Meet Me at the (West Coast) Hotel: The Lochner Era and the Demise of Roe v. Wade." The author, Jason Adkins, notes Planned Parenthood v. Casey's emphasis that it was a changed understanding of the facts of economic and social life that led the Court to abandon economic substantive due process in the 1937 decision in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish. Adkins argues that the Court ought to use a similar logic and overturn Roe v. Wade because of the increasing evidence of the harmful effects of abortion on women and society. This focus on the real world consequences of abortion, as opposed to the "abortion as essential to the emancipation of women" ideology expressed in the last opinions of Justice Blackmun on this issue, is really useful.

Richard 

another review of Brokeback Mountain

By Richard Myers

Readers might be interested in this review of Brokeback Mountain. In this review, Steven Greydanus acknowledges the artistic merit of the movie. He, however, ultimately concludes with this critique: "In the end, in its easygoing, nonpolemical way Brokeback Mountain is nothing less than an indictment not just of heterosexism but of masculinity itself, and thereby of human nature as male and female. It's a juandiced portrait of maleness in crisis--a crisis extending not only to the sexual identities of the two central characters, but also to the validity of manhood as exemplified by every other male character in the film. It may be the most profoundly anti-western western ever made, not only post-modern and post-heroic, but post-Christian and post-human."

I should say that I have not seen the movie. In that regard, the movie joins the company of every other non-animated movie made in the last 17 years.

Richard   

Thursday, February 2, 2006

population stability: more thoughts

By Richard Myers

I appreciate Eduardo's further thoughts on this issue. There are at least 2 questions here. The first relates to population. I am not an expert on this by any means but I have read enough on this to agree with the writings of folks like the late Julian Simon. Simon demonstrated that most of what we "know" about population issues is wrong. A lot of his writings are available at this website.  His basic idea, backed by mounds of evidence, was that people are "the ultimate resource," and that as he put it in the title of one article on that website, "more people, greater wealth, more resources, healthier environment." This is inconsistent with what we all "know" about these issues but Simon documents the points extensively. According to Simon, "human beings are not just more mouths to feed, but are productive and inventive minds that help find creative solutions to man's problems, thus leaving us better off over the long run." The West is committing cultural suicide because many of us lack this faith and appreciation for the great gift of human life. We see human life as a threat because we have lost this faith and optimism in the value of each and every human person. So, I guess I'd reject the premise that seeking population stability is a good. Usually when people seek this goal, they (and I'm not suggesting that Eduardo falls into this camp) resort to coercive measures that violate basic human rights. The United Nations and China have been at this for quite some time.      

The second question is about permissible means, and this, as I understand it, is Eduardo's question. If we thought that population stability were a good, what means would we be entitled to use to pursue this objective. I haven't checked the Grisez reference but I suspect that he is upholding the point made by John Paul the Great in Veritatis Splendor that "it is not licit to do evil that good may come of it." The question, for Grisez and the late Holy Father, then would be about whether the morality of the means chosen. This moral question doesn't turn conclusively on "the weighing of the goods and evils foreseeable as the consequence of an action." (V.S. 77.) Grisez and Pope John Paul defend the view that there are certain acts that are objectively immoral. They would put contraception in this category, and, under this view, contraception is a means that may not be chosen, even to achieve a good (and again I think it is highly debatable that overall population stability would fall into this category).          

Richard

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

population stability?

By Richard Myers

I was wondering if Eduardo would expand on why "population stability" is the question on which we ought to focus. Even the United Nations is now admitting that the problem in the West is that birth rates are too low. As Catholics, we ought to focus on the blessings that God showers on us through our children. This is not to say that couples are required to have as many children as possible but I don't think that "population stability" ought to play much of a role in a couples exercise of responsible parenthood.   

Richard

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