This is a belated comment on some of the recent exchanges.
I agree wholeheartedly with John Breen's article on Jesuit legal education. I think it is beyond argument that some law schools affiliated with universities that were founded by Catholic religious orders or Catholic dioceses can not honestly claim to be offering something distinctive. That is, they are indistinguishable from their secular counterparts.
Possible remedies for this situtation--if one assumed that this state of affairs was a problem and that one wanted to foster a Catholic identity (by complying with Ex Corde Ecclesiae, for example)--are extremely difficult to implement. A law school with only one or two Catholics on its faculty, for example, is going to have a very hard time trying to do this in any serious way. I have some ideas about this but I think it is profitable to think about what a Catholic law school might look like if one had the freedom to begin from scratch. Due to God's providence, I and several colleagues were blessed to be in that situation a few years ago. Here are a few thoughts about what we at Ave Maria tried to do, although I don't want to suggest by any means that what we've done is the only way to build a Catholic law school.
We began with Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and I think that is the place to start. The school ought to view itself as "born from the heart of the Church." It should not be thought of as a bridge between the Church and legal education more generally. An important part of this is that the school ought to be an "authentic human community animated by the spirit of Christ." Of necessity, that community must contain many Catholics, particularly on its faculty. These Catholics ought to be people who embrace their identity as faithful sons and daughters of the Church, and in particular who embrace the Catholic intellectual tradition. It is certainly not enough that the school have a few Catholics like this, or Harvard would be a Catholic law school because Mary Ann Glendon is on the faculty there. It is not enough to have a few Catholics to add to the pluralistic conversation in the law school. It bears noting, I think, that most law schools are not terribly diverse. When I taught at a secular law school that was pretty typical of US law schools I was the only regular member of the faculty who would, for example, defend the pro-life side in public discussions of abortion or euthanasia.
The school ought to have a rich liturgical life--daily Masses, frequent Confession, Eucharistic Adoration, the Rosary, etc.
Non-Catholics would be welcome of course, but as Ex Corde states they would be expected to understand and respect the Catholic identity of the school.
A Catholic law school ought to be distinctive in the types of conferences it sponsors, the speakers it brings to campus, and the persons upon whom it bestows honorary degrees.
With regard to the curriculum, I think that the faculty in general ought to be scholars who reject the "dictatorship of relativism" that Pope Benedict warned about. There ought to be certain distinctive courses so that students would encounter the richness of Catholic social thought. At Ave Maria, we do this in several required courses. These courses include Moral Foundations of the Law (a first year course that emphasizes the connection between law and morality), Jurisprudence (a course that we expect will acquaint students with a knowledge of the natural law tradition), and Law, Ethics, and Public Policy (a third year course in which students examine in detail a current issue in light of Catholic social thought). But perhaps just as importantly students ought to encounter Catholic social thought throughout the curriculum. So, for example, a Constitutional Law class might consider Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae when the students considered the concept of freedom articulated in Casey and Lawrence.
There is a lot more that could be said, but this sketch of a few ideas is probably already too long. I only wanted to add that I agree that Catholic law schools ought not strive to be "conservative" or "liberal." They ought to be faithful to the vision expressed in Ex Corde.
Richard
Thursday, April 7, 2005
I thought I'd offer some personal reflections on Pope John Paul the Great. I have three points.
First, I've always been struck by Pope John Paul's evident holiness. This was most clearly expressed by his ability to pray deeply, even in the midst of thousands of people. The Pope certainly had a rich interior life. For the Pope, this seemed to be most fostered by the Rosary and by prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. (See his letter on the Rosary and his last, very moving encyclical on the Eucharist.) Importantly, this prayer was not simply a matter of personal piety. His prayer seemed devoted to forming an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, who in the words of Gaudium et Spes that the Pope quoted many times, fully reveals man to himself. This prayer life, then, had its fruit in the Pope's following of Christ, particularly in following Christ on the Cross.
Second, I have always been grateful for the Pope's exercise of his teaching function. I attended Catholic schools in the wake of the Council, and there was a lot of confusion about what the Church taught. Perhaps most distressing was that, at least in my experience, the task of forming Catholics in the faith seemed to have been abandoned. The Pope's writings seemed to be devoted to the task of re-presenting to the modern world the entire body of Church teaching. This is perhaps best evidenced by the Catechism. But this is also evident in his encyclicals and other major teaching documents, which systematically articulate the full body of the Church's teaching. I am thinking of the great Trinitarian encyclicals, the 3 encyclicals on the Church's social teaching, the encyclicals on moral theology and the Gospel of Life, the encyclical on Mary and on the Church's missionary role, and the great encyclical on Faith and Reason. Other documents, too, were truly inspiring, and instructive to me and others who had been shortchanged in the Catholic education that was provided to us. Consider the exhortations on the role of the laity, on the family, and on reconciliation and penance. His letters on the family and on the meaning of suffering (a document that he lived out in his last years), and his talks on the theology of the body could not have been more timely. This body of work is astounding and I think it will take us many years to fully appreciate it.
Third, the Pope was very influential to the people who worked on founding Ave Maria School of Law. We were greatly influenced by Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and by three encyclicals--Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and Fides et Ratio. In fact, we took our motto from that last encyclical. All of these documents emphasized the importance of Truth. In order to fully understand human nature and freedom one had to emphasize truth. And, the Pope emphasized, truth was not simply a set of abstract doctrinal propositions. First and foremost, the Truth is a person--Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
There is, then, a clear link between my first point--the Pope's rich interior life centered on Jesus--and my third point--the need to center our intellectual pursuits on Christ and the Truth He proclaimed.
Richard
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Recent posts by Steve, Rob, and Michael have raised the important issue of the development of doctrine. Michael's post mentioned John Noonan's new book on the issue, which I have not yet had the chance to read.
The inaugural issue of the St. Thomas Law Journal (which was devoted to the work of Judge Noonan) contained several papers on development of doctrine. The authors who addressed this topic included Joseph Boyle, Cathy Kaveny, Bob Kennedy, and James Megivern. My own contribution, which is at 1 St. Thomas L. J. 285-306 (2003), is a critique of Noonan's position.
One of the points I made is that people too frequently reach the conclusion that the Church has changed Her position on a disputed issue. Sometimes the conclusion that the Church has changed Her teaching on one issue seems directed at an effort to argue that the Church ought to change Her position on some second issue. So, it is interesting to note that Noonan's book on Usury took the position that the Church had not changed Her position on this issue. As Germain Grisez pointed out, Noonan's charge that Church teaching on usury had in fact changed surfaced years later when the controversy over contraception was raging.
On the issue of religious liberty raised by Rob, I think people too quickly reach the conclusion that Church teaching has changed. Some of the statements from 19 century Popes seem inconsistent with Dignitatis Humanae. Yet what is necessary here is careful analysis to see if this is in fact the case. In my paper, cited above, I summarized the argument (elaborated at length by scholars such as Father Brian Harrison, Father Mullady OP, and Father Kevin Flannery SJ) that Church teaching on religious freedom has not in fact changed.
I don't think it is a good way to begin these discussions to ask "how faithful do I need to be to Church teaching?" (Think about our reaction if someone began their marriage wondering how faithful they needed to be to their spouse.) As Steve pointed out, all Catholics, not just scholars, owe assent to Church teaching. But, as he suggested, it is necessary to speak precisely about what it is the Church teaches authoritatively. Not every statement on the minimum wage carries the same weight as more authoritative statements in the Catechism or in encyclicals such as Veritatis Splendor or Evangelium Vitae.
On issues where the Church has spoken clearly, e.g., the teachings on abortion or euthanasia or contraception, Catholics owe a submission of intellect and will. I think it is useful to begin discussions about the appropriate stance towards clear, authoritatively expressed teachings of this sort with a healthy dose of humility about the fallibility of our own judgment.
Richard
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Father Johansen has just published an excellent article on the Terri Schiavo case. See here. Father Johansen will be discussing the Terri Schiavo at the University Faculty for Life annual meeting, which will be held at Ave Maria School of Law from June 3-5, 2005. I will post more details about that conference when the conference schedule is available. The UFL website, which is here, contains information about that conference.
Richard
