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, December 19, 2007

An Uncomfortable Truth

By Michael Perry

The Tablet
Dec. 22, 2007

Lowest-paid give most to charity, Tablet survey finds
Isabel de Bertodano

PEOPLE ON the lowest incomes will be among those donating most generously to the Church and to charities this Christmas.

The results of a Tablet survey show that more than a quarter of people on salaries of less than £20,000 a year will give in excess of £100 to charity at Christmas, while 5 per cent will also give the same amount to the Church. The survey, completed by visitors to The Tablet's website and subscribers to our enewsletter, shows that the vast majority of people give a special donation to charity at Christmas. Most tend to donate a larger sum to charities than they do to collections at Christmas Masses.

Nonetheless, more than half of respondents said they would be giving at least £20 to the Church, with 20 per cent of those on large salaries giving in excess of £100. Priests rely on Christmas to boost their income, with all donations put into collections at Midnight Mass and on Christmas Day going straight to the clergy rather than into the parish coffers. Fr Tom Jordan, chairman of the National Conference of Priests, said Christmas was essential to priests but that many felt awkward about asking people to give generously. "It is the mainstay of clergy income and for our financial existence," he said. "A tradition has built up and the collections are bigger at Christmas but I'm not sure if parishioners always realise how important it is to us." However, it is to charities that people give really generously. Among respondents to our survey 40 per cent of people said they would be giving more than £100, while just over 3 per cent planned to give in excess of £1,000. Around 700 people responded to our survey, which also found that people prefer to give directly to charity at Christmas rather than buying "alternative gifts" for friends and family such as goats or latrines for the developing world.

While 57 per cent of all respondents said they were not planning to buy any alternative gifts this year, 70 per cent of these people said they would make a special donation to charity instead.

Opderbeck on "Just Passing Through"

By Rob Vischer

Seton Hall law prof David Opderbeck, an evangelical, offers this response to my "Just Passing Through" post:

This reflects an interesting tension in the evangelical community right now.  I think the "just passing through" sentiment is indeed a hindrance to environmental stewardship in the large segments of the American evangelical community that are tied into premillennial dispensational theology.  Premillennial Dispensational theology, as popularized in the "Left Behind" novels, posits distinct historical breaks in the manner in which God deals with people.  Currently, in this system, we live in a time when the Church's primary mission is evangelization.  This time will end immanently when Jesus returns to remove the Church from the earth (the "rapture").  A seven year period of judgment will follow the rapture (the "tribulation").  After the tribulation, Jesus will return again with the Church to physically reign from David's throne for 1000 years (the "millennium").  At the end of the millennium, people will again rebel and the earth will be destroyed, along with all the rest of the existing creation, to be replaced by an entirely new heavens and earth. For many premillennial dispensationalists, environmental stewardship merely distracts the Church from its primary mission of evangelization and is in any event fruitless in light of the coming tribulation.

In contrast, a growing number of American evangelials have embraced a more classically Reformed understanding of creation and eschatology.  In this view, part of the Church's present task is to participate in the redemption of all creation.  Under at least some versions of this Reformed understanding, this task will be completed at Christ's return, at which time the present earth will be transformed into its final eschatological state as the home of God's resurrected people; the "replacement" view of creation in eschatology is rejected.  Thus, "creation care" today is in some sense a way of participating in the process by which all of creation is being redeemed in Christ.  See, for example, the eschatological thrust of the "Evangelical Declaration on Creation Care" published by the Evangelical Environmental Network.

Yet another version of Christian environmentalism is rooted in process or quasi-process theological views about creation such as those promoted by Ted Peters and John Polkinghorne.  In Ted Peters' view, for example, the "omega point" of creation is the end of an evolutionary process by which God is bringing all of creation towards a harmonious telos.  You can hear echoes of Teilhard de Chardin here.  This sort of view is outside the mainstream of American evangelicalism, but some U.K. and American evangelicals involved in faith-and-science discussions are attracted to it.

Political Discourse and Christian Eschatology

By Rob Vischer

Fr. Araujo is correct that scientists recognize that earth is not eternal, but I think there is a fundamental difference between that scientific assertion and Christian teaching.  If it is true that we will one day crash into the sun, that is irrelevant at this point (because it is millions of years away), and if it ever became relevant, then our entire society would devote itself to avoiding the event's occurrence.  Christian eschatology puts the earth's demise in an entirely different light: we (theoretically) want the end of this world to come.  (e.g., Rev. 22:20: "Come, Lord Jesus!")  I know Catholics don't get pumped up about end-times talk quite as much as my evangelical brethren do, but there are public policy implications of prophecy.  For example, one of the "signs" of the end times pertains to earthquakes, storms, and other "birth pains" of the new world to come.  Is it proper for a Christian to applaud climate change as facilitating the end times process?  Or is it proper for a Christian to support a foreign policy that encourages Israel to rebuild the temple, thereby fulfilling other end-times prophecy?

My bigger question for all of us religion-in-the-public-square-advocate types is this: if I'm going to discourage my fellow Christian from basing their political positions on these grounds, should I limit my arguments to theological ones (e.g., they're misinterpreting Scripture), or should I also discourage them on political / prudential grounds (e.g., we can't contribute to the common good by basing policies on a belief that the current world's demise is an unavoidable and good thing).  In other words, are there some Christian beliefs that should be unwelcome in our political discourse?

Eberle on waterboarding and torture

By Rick Garnett

I could be wrong, of course -- and Chris Eberle can certainly speak for himself -- but . . .   With respect to Rob's recent post, "Waterboarding is (still) torture":  I did not take Chris Eberle to be suggesting otherwise.

As I see it, Rob's initial post quoted the Armed Forces Journal editors' statement that "[w]aterboarding inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death. And as with all torture techniques, it is, therefore, an inherently flawed method for gaining reliable information. In short, it doesn’t work. That blunt truth means all U.S. leaders, present and future, should be clear on the issue[.]"

In response, Chris said two things:  First, he denied the suggestion that practices which "inflict[] on [their] victims the terror of imminent death" are "inherently flawed method[s] for gaining reliable information."  He wrote:

Surely, threatening some people with the terror of imminent death works sometimes and doesn’t work other times.

Second, Chris added:

The serious moral question, I think, is whether we should torture even if doing so is an effective means of protecting innocents.

Chris's statement strikes me as both correct and important.  That is, it seems correct to say that "terror of imminent death works sometimes and doesn't work other times."  And, it is important to be clear that the morality of a particular practice does not, and should not, depend on whether that practice "works."  So, Chris is insisting -- as we at MOJ do but the editors of the Armed Services Journal might not do -- that the argument against torture is not a merely consequentialist one.

Rob also writes:

Waterboarding, in my (admittedly limited) understanding, inflicts extreme physical suffering to the point that the subject expects death to result.  It is not simply providing information to the subject that they will be killed unless they cooperate.  Waterboarding violates the person's physical integrity, inflicts extreme physical suffering, and as a product of that physical suffering, creates the perception of imminent death.  I'm open to arguments as to why that's not torture.

I didn't take Chris to be suggesting that a practice which "violates the person's physical integrity, inflicts extreme physical suffering, and as a product of that physical suffering, creates the perception of imminent death" is not torture.  His point, it seems to me, was that, if such a practice is immoral, it is not because it does not work, but because of some other, non-consequentalist consideration (one that, I'm confident, Rob would endorse).

But again, maybe I'm mis-understanding Chris's point.

Waterboarding is (still) torture

By Rob Vischer

Thanks to Chris Eberle for his thoughtful response to my posting of the Armed Forces Journal's editorial regarding waterboarding.

First, I'm not sure what his friend means by likening the AFJ to the National Enquirer.  Does he mean that the AFJ usually focuses on reporting scandalous rumors regarding the Joint Chiefs of Staff?  That their reporting is often proved false?  That their editorial opinions are shown to be biased against the Bush Administration?  I posted the editorial because, in light of the fact that I've never even contemplated stepping onto the battlefield or into the interrogation room, I welcome perspectives from folks who have. Because they are not affiliated with the military formally, does that negate any expertise the editors would have?  Are the editors actually a bunch of long-haired pacifists posing as military types?  I'm not clear on the nature of the objection.

Second, creating an apprehension of imminent death through waterboarding is entirely different, in my view, from threatening death via a pointed gun.  Waterboarding, in my (admittedly limited) understanding, inflicts extreme physical suffering to the point that the subject expects death to result.  It is not simply providing information to the subject that they will be killed unless they cooperate.  Waterboarding violates the person's physical integrity, inflicts extreme physical suffering, and as a product of that physical suffering, creates the perception of imminent death.  I'm open to arguments as to why that's not torture.

Chris Eberle on waterboarding and the Armed Forces Journal

By Rick Garnett

Responding to Rob's recent post, Chris Eberle writes:

Rob Vischer notes that he has “zero expertise on national security issues,” but cites the editors of the Armed Forces Journal, who, he says, are credible and experienced, who assert that waterboarding is torture, and so concludes that waterboarding *is* torture.  I wonder though, on several counts.

First, I asked a Marine officer whose opinion I very much respect what he thinks of the Armed Forces Journal.  He didn’t know much about it, but when I, after checking the web site, informed him that the same folks who publish the Armed Forces Journal also publish the Army, Navy and Marine Corps Times, he was, to put it mildly, dismissive.  The latter three publications have no official or unofficial affiliation with the US military, and are, from his perspective, “the National Enquirer” of their respective services.  So a word of caution: just because some journal has is entitled “The Armed Forces Journal” doesn’t imply that its editors are “credible and experienced.”  Maybe they are, but there’s at least one very experienced and intelligent officer who uses its sister publications as “fish wrap.”

Second, the substance of the editorial is, at least, unpersuasive – to me.  In fact, it’s not clear that the editors even bothered to articulate an argument for their position – they just assert that waterboarding is both torture and ineffective.  Well, there is one argument: waterboarding inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death and is “therefore” an inherently flawed method of gaining information.  This is, to say the least, not an impressive argument!  Surely, threatening some people with the terror of imminent death works sometimes and doesn’t work other times.  The serious moral question, I think, is whether we should torture even if doing so is an effective means of protecting innocents.

Third, I wonder what MOJ readers think about the case of Lt Col Allen West.  The short version: the American military learned about a local policeman who had information about a potential attack, apprehended the policeman, Col West shot a pistol past the prisoner’s head, and threatened to shoot the policeman if he refused to divulge details about the plot.  The claim is that this policeman complied and the attack was averted.  (Here’s a link to one article file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Desktop/EBERLE%20DOCUMENTS/West%20would%20make%20'sacrifice'%20again%20-%20The%20Washington%20Times%20Nation-/West%20would%20make%20'sacrifice'%20again%20-%20The%20Washington%20Times%20Nat.htm)

Did Col West ‘torture’ the Iraqi policeman?  He certainly threatened him with “the terror of imminent death.”  The question is, of course, not whether Col West acted correctly: he thought that he had acted correctly, but illegally, and so was justly punished for fulfilling his moral responsibilities to his troops.  I tend to agree with Col West.  But that’s not the question in which I’m interested.  Rather, did he torture the policemen – perhaps by virtue of threatening imminent death?  Is threatening with imminent death, as waterboarding does, always torture?  Subsidiarily, should he have been prosecuted for torture?

Continue reading

Allen on Benedict

By Elizabeth Schiltz

John Allen has an interesting op ed piece in today's NYT, about the Pope's upcoming visit to the U.N.  Some excerpts:

Moreover, Benedict undeniably has a point about relativism. From China to Iran to Zimbabwe, it’s common for authoritarian regimes to argue that rights like freedom of the press, religion and dissent represent Western — or even Anglo-American — traditions. If human rights are to be protected in a 21st century increasingly shaped by non-Western actors like China and the so-called Shiite axis from Lebanon to Central Asia, then a belief in objective truth grounded in universal human nature is critical. That’s hardly just a Catholic concern, but no one on the global scene is making the argument with the clarity of Benedict XVI.

Part of the problem is that so far, this cerebral pope has a track record of blurring such compelling arguments during his biggest turns on stage. When he visited Auschwitz in May 2006, for example, he offended some Jews by asserting that the Nazis tried to destroy Christianity too. Four months later, he set off a firestorm among Muslims with a lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor to the effect that Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman,” such as “his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” And in Brazil last May, the pope incensed indigenous people in Latin America by suggesting that Christianity was not imposed on them.

In each case, Benedict was actually trying to make a deeper point worth hearing. In Auschwitz, his contention was that objective truth grounded in God is the only bulwark against the blind will to power; his Regensburg address was devoted to reason and faith, arguing that reason shorn of faith becomes nihilism, while faith without reason ends in fanaticism and violence; and in Brazil, he argued that since Christ embraces all humanity, he cannot be foreign to anyone’s spiritual experience.

Those ideas, however, were overshadowed by a few throwaway phrases that betray a worrying insensitivity to how unfamiliar audiences are likely to hear what he says.

Thoughts on the recent Doctrinal Note: “Some Aspects of Evangelization”

By Robert John Araujo, SJ

A few days ago the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued the Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization. The Holy Father approved this Doctrinal Note on October 6. The official English text of the Doctrinal Note is HERE.

May I suggest that the Doctrinal Note is a most useful source of direction for Catholics who are called, through their baptism, to evangelize the world—often a place much in need of evangelization. It there is any doubt about this claim, the CDF begins the Doctrinal Note by reminding us of the Johannine command to the Apostles: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). But this duty of being sent is not just that of the Apostles and their successors; as the CDF reminds us, it is the duty of everyone to evangelize so that every person may hear the Good News and fulfill personal destiny, which ends in union with God.

The particular challenge to those of us disciples who are involved with the law—as developers and promoters of Catholic legal theory; as teachers; as practitioners; as citizens of two cities—is succinctly captured by this passage in the Doctrinal Note:

Therefore, human freedom is both a resource and a challenge offered to man by God who has created him: an offer directed to the human person’s capacity to know and to love what is good and true. Nothing puts in play human freedom like the search for the good and the true, by inviting it to a kind of commitment which involves fundamental aspects of life. (N. 4)

Lawyers and law teachers often speak about and advocate on behalf of human freedom. This passage just quoted provides valuable insight into the duties of those disciples entrusted with the duty of teaching about authentic human freedom. As the Doctrinal Note further states, it is not an interference with the freedom of others to propose to them the truth which God has revealed and which the Church teaches on the matters that intersect every person’s life. The text, moreover, notes that personalism and individualism, when they remain the source of “truth” for one as the famous dictum from Planned Parenthood v. Casey suggests, misdirect the person from coming to know and embrace the truth about human existence. As the Doctrinal Note states:

Spiritual individualism, on the other hand, isolates a person, hindering him from opening in trust to others—so as both to receive and to bestow the abundant goods which nourish his freedom—and jeopardizes the right to manifest one’s own convictions and opinions in society. (N. 5)

The benefits of evangelization, furthermore, assist all who are encountered by its activity in the world. Evangelization not only enriches the evangelized but also those who do the evangelizing. (N. 6). Indeed, “it is also an enrichment for… the entire Church.” As the Doctrinal Note indicates, the primary motivation for evangelization is “the love of Christ” whom we celebrate during this holy season of Advent and Christmas. (N. 8)  He is the one who came to save not just some but all. So, it is our duty to evangelize, to teach in His name without fear or intimidation by others so that all may come to know Him. In this regard, is it not possible to eschew the safe greeting of “happy holidays!” and substitute the following: “may Christ’s peace and the blessings of this season be with you”? As the Doctrinal Note points out:

The Christian spirit has always been animated by a passion to lead all humanity to Christ in the Church. The incorporation of new members into the Church is not the expansion of a power-group, but rather entrance into the network of friendship with Christ which connects heaven and earth, different continents and ages. It is entrance into the gift of communion with Christ, which is “new life” enlivened by charity and the commitment to justice. The Church is the instrument, “the seed and the beginning” of the Kingdom of God; she is not a political utopia. She is already the presence of God in history and she carries in herself the true future, the definitive future in which God will be “all in all”; she is a necessary presence, because only God can bring authentic peace and justice to the world. The Kingdom of God is not—as some maintain today—a generic reality above all religious experiences and traditions, to which they tend as a universal and indistinct communion of all those who seek God, but it is, before all else, a person with a name and a face: Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the unseen God. Therefore, every free movement of the human heart towards God and towards his kingdom cannot but by its very nature lead to Christ and be oriented towards entrance into his Church, the efficacious sign of that Kingdom. (N. 9)

The Doctrinal Note continues by challenging the disciple, who is called to evangelized, not to be paralyzed by inaction prompted by the kind of respect fro religious freedom of the other that makes the disciple “indifferent towards truth and goodness. Indeed, love impels the followers of Christ to proclaim to all the truth which saves.” (N. 10) Evangelization is not simply achieved by public proclamation of the Gospel nor only through works that have public significance; evangelization to which we are called also necessitates personal witness to whomever we meet, which is, as the Doctrinal Note reminds us, a most effective means of spreading the Gospel. (N. 11) This may be easier said than done, but may we take consolation knowing that the Holy Spirit is ever present to fortify us in this calling should we be humble enough to ask God for assistance. To all my friends at MOJ and its readers, I wish you and your loved ones Christ’s peace, and may the blessings of this holy season be with you!   RJA sj

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Authoritarian?

By Patrick McKinley Brennan

"The Catholic Church is sometimes reproached with being an 'authoritarian Church," as if the authority -- that is, the right to be listened to -- that she exercises on her faithful in seeing to the preservation of revealed truth and Christian morality were to result in fostering authoritarian trends in the sphere of civil life and activities.  May I be allowed to say that those who make such reproaches lack both in theological and historical insight.

"They lack in historical insight because . . .

"They lack in theological insight, for they do not see that the authority of the Church in her own spiritual sphere is nothing else than her bondage to God and to her mission . . . ."

"Be it noted, furthermore, that, as a matter of fact, no government is less authoritarian than the government of the Catholic Church.  It governs without police force and physical coercion . . . "

Thus Jacques Maritain (Man and the State [1951], 184-85): Surely a voice to be studied in any serious pursuit of CST. I commend the entire passage to your attention, just in case you're done with your Christmas shopping.  As almost every reader of this blog knows, no (lay) mind was more influential than Maritain's in the shaping of the Second Vatican Council's social teaching.  Maritain was a major intellectual and spiritual force at work in the Council.  Why, then, does Maritain's respect for the Church and her authority sound so alien to so many of us? 

The general repudiation of the *concept* of the natural law (and its demands) would occasion a deep sorrow for Maritain who, more than any other (I'm aware of), taught the Church (and others) that the body politic should be lay (not sacral) but bound by (inter alia) the natural law.  No scare-quotes around natural law -- not for the pope, the Council, or the faithful. 

Can the "Cathlolic legal theory" project survive the scare-quoting of "natural law" that one so often encounters even on this blog?  I doubt it.  "Human dignity" and confected "natural rights" are, I fear, too weak a fallback reed, at least for purposes of resisting the real evils that Maritain and the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were clear-sighted about.  But if one comes to the discussion table sure -- or even able to be "sure" -- that the Church's definiton of, say, marriage  is wrong . . .

The Church proposes. 

 

By Michael Perry

Uruguay OKs Gay Unions In Latin American First

New York Times
Dec. 18, 2007

MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - Uruguay's Congress legalized civil unions for homosexual couples on Tuesday in the first nationwide law of its kind in Latin America.

Under the new law, gay and straight couples will be eligible to form civil unions after living together for five years. They will have rights similar to those granted to married couples on such matters as inheritance, pensions and child custody.

Uruguay's Senate passed the bill unanimously after the lower house approved it last month, a congressional spokesman said. The country's center-left president is expected to sign it into law.

Several cities, including Buenos Aires and Mexico City, already have gay civil union laws on the books. Uruguay's law would be the first nationwide measure in Latin America, which is home to about half the world's Roman Catholics.

In Uruguay, couples must register their relationship with authorities to gain the cohabitation rights, and they will also be able to formalize the end of a union.

Gay marriage remains illegal in Uruguay, a small South American country known for its secular streak.

The Catholic Church has said its opposition to gay marriage is non-negotiable and Catholic politicians have a moral duty to oppose it.

Earlier this year in Colombia, a group of senators shot down a landmark gay rights bill at the last minute, using a procedural vote to back away from the measure.

Previous Articles More Articles

Recent Posts

Categories

Monthly Archive