Robby George has posted "Danger and Opportunity: A Plea to Catholics" over at the First Things blog. (Click here to read what some of the commenters at the Commonweal blog are saying about Robby's post.) Here are the opening paragraphs:
We live in a time of both danger and opportunity for the Catholic Church in the United States. The danger is that large numbers of Catholics will, as a result of clergy sex scandals and the large, highly publicized cash awards and settlements following in their train, lose confidence in the reliability of the Church as a teacher of truth, particularly in the moral domain.
Given the powerful dynamics of secularization already unleashed in American culture—dynamics whose impact was discernible even before clergy sex abuse became front-page news—the further demoralization of the Catholic faithful could all too easily result in widespread abandonment of belief in those teachings most severely under challenge from secularist ideologies dominant in universities (including Catholic universities), the print and broadcast media, and the elite sector of American culture generally. In particular, it would erode confidence in the principles of marriage and sexual morality and the sanctity of human life that are integral to the Christian understanding of human nature, dignity, and destiny.
Moreover, the loss of faith that characteristically begins with the abandonment of moral teachings cannot be restricted to such teachings. It tends to undermine belief in those doctrines of faith that require for their meaningful affirmation a sound (if ordinarily informal and implicit) understanding of the meaning and significance of the human person as embodied; these include, above all, the doctrines of the incarnation, the resurrection of the body, Christ’s own bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven, the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
A little later, there are some (I think) powerful words about transformation, conversion, and Christianity:
. . . What is in need of transformation is not the teaching of the Church but the human mind and heart to which these teachings are addressed. Christianity is a religion of transformation. No one is literally born into it; even infants at baptism are converted to it. There is not a Catholic on the planet or in the history of the Church who is not a convert.
Conversion is effected, by God’s grace, by transformative acts of the intellect and will. And the process of conversion is lifelong, whether one begins it a few days or weeks after birth or on one’s eighty-fifth birthday. Christ is constantly calling us to conversion and making available to us the divine graces that are its fundamental resources. We falter and fail; he lifts us up and puts us back on track. We grow in him, so long as we are faithful in responding to his acts of love for us by our acts of love of God and neighbor.
The Church doesn’t need fundamental transformation; it needs to be about the business of transforming us. This is a task for the whole Church: bishops, priests, and other religious, and the laity. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, this work of transformation of minds and hearts necessarily includes work of cultural transformation. For better or worse, culture is character-shaping and, thus, person-forming. That’s why the task of cultural renewal and reform is part of the Christian task—an essential part. It may not be rejected or neglected by the Church or her leadership in the name of evangelization of individuals; indeed, it is crucial to the project of evangelizing individuals. The task of evangelization is immeasurably more difficult where culture works powerfully against the witness of the Church by fostering, facilitating, and encouraging sin and undermining the efforts of religious communities and families to encourage in their members, especially young people, respect for themselves and others and fidelity to the law of God and moral truth.
I take it that inextricably linked with, and part of, the "culture" that, as Robby observes, is "character-shaping and, thus, person-forming" are law and the legal profession. Lawyering and law are, it seems, both things in-need-of-transformation and vehicles-for-cultural-transformation. Are they more one than the other?
Here is Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on "the C.I.A.'s secret interrogation program." And, here is Marty Lederman's discussion of the piece, the program, and the associate abuses.
A few items of possible interest to MOJ readers, and a favor: First, my colleagues who understand how to acquire such information have informed me that we are closing in on our one-millionth reader-hit, and also on our 5,000th post. Celebration and self-congratulation -- and also reflection, examination, and critique -- seem to be in order. In the days to come, we'll be posting some thoughts about the MOJ project so far. Have we asked the right questions? Have we answered any?
This point leads me to my second, shameless item: Please tell your friends -- go ahead, do it now -- about MOJ. E-mail the lawyers and law-students in your life -- how about now? -- and invite them to join the conversation. In particular, it seems worth observing that many of us are about to meet a few hundred new first-year law students. What a shame if they didn't all hear about MOJ!
Finally, another favor: For the last four years, we've been chugging along with pretty much the same web-site appearance. Now, none of us is particularly blog-design savvy, but some of us have been thinking that the appearance (color, font, lay-out, etc.) could, maybe, use a bit of sprucing up. So . . . any ideas?
Sunday, August 5, 2007
I saw this abstract on SSRN and thought it might be of interest to MOJ readers:
"The Pro-Life Argument from Substantial Identity and the
Pro-Choice Argument from Asymmetric Value: A Reply to Patrick
Lee"
Bioethics, Vol. 21, No. 6, pp. 329-341, July 2007
Contact: JEFFREY REIMAN
American University - Department of Philosophy
Email: [email protected]
Auth-Page: http://ssrn.com/author=635321
Full Text: http://ssrn.com/abstract=990897
ABSTRACT: Lee claims that foetuses and adult humans are phases of
the same identical substance, and thus have the same moral status
because: first, foetuses and adults are the same physical
organism, and second, the development from foetus to adult is
quantitative and thus not a change of substance. Versus the first
argument, I contend that the fact that foetuses and adults are
the same physical organism implies only that they are the same
thing but not the same substance, much as living adults and their
corpses are the same thing (same body) but not the same
substance. Against Lee's second argument, I contend that Lee
confuses the nature of a process with the nature of its result. A
process of quantitative change can produce a change in substance.
Lee also fails to show that foetuses are rational and thus have
all the essential properties of adults, as required for them to
be the same substance. Against the pro-choice argument from
asymmetric value (that only the fact that a human has become
conscious of its life and begun to count on its continuing can
explain human life's asymmetric moral value, i.e. that it is
vastly worse to kill a human than not to produce one), Lee claims
that foetus's lives are asymmetrically valuable to them before
consciousness. This leads to counterintuitive outcomes, and it
confuses the goodness of life (a symmetric value that cannot
account for why it is worse to kill a human than not produce one)
with asymmetric value.
The other day, I mentioned a wonderful book that I finished recently, Paul Elie's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage." Flipping back through it, I came across a few notes and tid-bits that might be of interest to MOJ readers:
Discussing Flannery O'Connor's reading of Maritain, and her thinking about "Christian art", Elie writes: "[Maritain] declares that there is no Christian art per se. Subject matter -- biblical themes, candles and incense, nuns and priests -- does not Christianize a work of art. . . . Christian art is simply art made by a Christian believer." Could we substitute "university" or "law school" for "art"? I don't think so, actually, but I wonder what Maritain would say.
Here's O'Connor, responding to someone who asked if she found doctrines like the incarnation "emotionally satisfying": "I must say that the thought of everyone lollying about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. . . . There are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive."
O'Connor, writing a forward to Wise Blood: "That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence."
O'Connor, responding to a correspondent "in religious anguish": "If what the Church teaches is not true, then the security and sense of purpose it gives you are of no value and you are right to reject it."
There's so much more. . . .
Friday, August 3, 2007
Speaking of summer reading, the new issue of the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies (v.46 n.1) includes an all-star MOJ line-up. For those who are interested in the nexus between Catholic spirituality and law practice, it collects a good part of the series we did here at Fordham in 2005-2006 as part of our Catholic Lawyer’s Program: “For All the Saints: How the Lives of Extraordinary Catholics Can Shed Light on the Ordinary Practice of Law.” It includes contributions by MOJ friend Gregory A. Kalscheur, S.J., Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things—Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law; Fordham Law Professor Jacqueline Nolan-Haley, Finding Interior Peace in the Ordinary Practice of Law: Wisdom from the Spiritual Tradition of St. Teresa of Avila and that MOJ super-star, Michael A. Scaperlanda, “Lawyering in the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux with Complete Abandonment and Love.” And here’s the link to my brief symposium overview.
The same issue also includes an article co-authored by Steve Bainbridge, The Bishop’s Alter Ego: Enterprise Liability and the Catholic Priest Sex Abuse Scandal (I’ll leave it to Steve to tell you more) and a terrific piece by MOJ friend Gerald Russello, Catholic Social Thought and the Large Multinational Corporation.
Thanks to the fact that my dear friend Rob has educated not only his seven-year old daughter, but also myself, about the feasibility and importance of healthy internet links, I hope that you can just press those differently-colored words and they will safely bring you to your intended destination. If you end up at some other destination it's all Rob's fault. Thanks also to Susan who while at St Johns negotiated a terrific collaboration between our Catholic Lawyer’s Program and the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, and to Mike Simons who continues to carry the flag. Amy
I think I am agreement with Robert Miller in the discussion Rick mentioned yesterday. This whole question--is there a right to do wrong--is tricky because as Miller mentions "there are many senses of the word right."
Miller mentions Dignitatis Humanae and he seems to say that that document endorses the idea that a person can have a right to do wrong. Here is my understanding. The Catechism (2108-2109), principally citing Dignitatis Humanae, 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 just referenced "must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with 'legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order.'"
So, there might be a civil immunity to do wrong in certain circumstances. But even this is limited, as the Catechism and Dignitatis Humanae make clear. All "wrongs"--immoral acts--need not be proscribed by the State, but it wouldn't be helpful to say that someone had a moral "right" to do something that the State had decided not to proscribe for prudential reasons. A state might decide not to criminalize suicide (because the state might think that an attempt to commit such an act was more often the product of depression than a "rational" choice). But that doesn't mean that it would be helpful to say that someone had a "right" to suicide.
With regard to abortion, it seems clear that there can be no "right" to such conduct. Even though one may have a civil immunity to do wrong in certain instances this wouldn't extend to abortion because this is the sort of thing that Aquinas mentions when he treats the issue of whether the law ought to prohibit all vices. The law ought to prohibit those vices when the prohibition is necessary to the maintenance of human society (Aquinas mentions murder and theft as examples, and surely this would also extend to abortion.)
I think it still fair to say that there is no right to do wrong, beyond the limited civil immunity noted above with the limits set forth by the objective moral order.
Richard M.
Picking up on Rob’s “How Much Jail Time” thread, in “Abortion as Infanticide,” Jonathan Watson raised some fascinating questions:
“I do think that abortion is infanticide. I cannot see a reasonable legal argument for assigning a different punishment for ending the life of a human being at X point versus Y point” – unless one argues that “the purpose of criminal punishment of this sort is based not on an object external norm (e.g., all killing is wrong, and therefore, killing a fetus warrants the same punishment as killing an infant, child, adult, etc.) but on internal subjective depravity ( e.g., a person should be more emotionally attached to a born infant), and therefore punished for the greater depravity of the act required to kill an infant than kill an unborn.”
Are there resources within CST which suggest “jail time” is not the only way to express the infinite value of life and respect for the dignity of another person? Within a CST vision, what else is happening within the criminal justice system? It seems that within that vision there’s much more going on that an “external objective norm” or a judgment about “subjective depravity” – there is also, as Abby Johnson had suggested, concern for both the social context of what gave rise to the crime, and for the potential for rehabilitation and change. Eg, drug use is a serious evil – but it’s not a given that putting drug addicts in jail is the best way to express society’s outrage, and certainly not the best way to help drug users rehabilitate. Prostitution is a serious evil – but there’s a whole social context which needs to be taken into account, and there are many examples that the better way to resolve the problem is to work at the roots of the problem. Before suggesting that abortion should be punished in a way which is identical to infanticide, I think we need a bit more contextual analysis and a much deeper, broader application of the CST vision of criminal law.
Amy
