From time to time, a number of MOJ contributors, including this author, have commented on challenges that institutions of higher education, which identify themselves as Catholic, have faced, are facing, and will likely face in the future.
It was recently brought to my attention by Mr. Dominico Bettinelli that the Boston
University
student daily, The Daily Free Press, published an article on May 1 about its neighbor on Commonwealth Avenue
, Boston
College. [HERE] While the article, entitled “Gay Professors Say BC Lags in Accepting Their Lifestyles,” concentrates on a particular element of the faculty at BC, I realized the essay’s content raises challenges to institutional Catholic identity and soul that other groups of faculty could also present. Who might be in these other groups? They could include a group of law professors who support “abortion rights” and “reproductive autonomy”; or, a group of life sciences professors who promote embryonic stem cell research; or, a group of business school professors who advocate an unregulated business economy; or, a group of education professors who assert that parents have no right to monitor and control the content of the education their children receive in public schools.
The Church has positions and moral teachings on all these issues that are frequently the subject matter of public debate these days. Drawing on The Daily Free Press article about homosexual faculty and the acceptance (or not) of their lifestyles, it is quite possible that any of the faculty members who work at Catholic institutions could promote their “need” to “overcom[e] the school’s deeply rooted religious tradition” as they champion their claims regarding lifestyle or any other matter with which they identify. As one proceeds through this article, the perspectives of 30-year, 17-year, 10-year, and 1-year veterans become revealing about the attitudes of some faculty toward the Catholic mission and identity. What becomes clear after review of this litany is that the institution has labored to maintain its identity—and its soul—in spite of the increasing challenges to them.
While faculty who identify with particular crusades that conflict with the Church’s teachings on vital issues will likely continue laboring and lobbying for their causes, it would be imperative for Catholic institutions of higher education to consider convening a seminar on Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae that could address a coordinated approach to implementing John Paul’s sound and wise principles. After all, it is not only the identity of these institutions that are at stake, it is also their mission to demonstrate to the skeptical world that faith and reason are not only compatible but inextricably linked. Otherwise, the ongoing fragmentation of learning and research that beleaguers the academy of the present age will continue and burgeon. And the souls of those institutions that call themselves Catholic will be in greater peril. RJA sj
Today's local paper carried the story of a boyfriend who hired someone to punch his six-months pregnant girlfriend in the stomach. The girlfriend is fine now (physically), but the punch caused a miscarriage, and both men have been charged with second-degree murder. The police chief commented that he had never heard of so young a homicide victim, and that the case was "heartbreaking." The county attorney said:
"I have never seen anything that sickens me quite like this . . . . What else is left in crime to disgust you? You assault a pregnant woman, the mother of your child, and you hire somebody to kill the child. This is Idi Amin stuff."
The boyfriend, who had already fathered a child with another woman, stated that he did not want another child. So if a father does not want to have a child and hires someone to end the pregnancy, he is guilty of the most disgusting crime imaginable. But if the mother does not want to have the child and hires someone to end the pregnancy, even over the father's objection, well, that's a different story. (We might even pay for it.)
The Boston Globe reports on the post-Lawrence expansion of the battle to overturn prohibitions on adult incest. Many of the arguments portrayed seem to presume that the only rationale for the prohibition is the fear of genetic abnormality. A more promising ground, in my view, is the integrity of the family structure and the danger of family members assuming incompatibile roles. In this regard, incest prohibitions are protective of individual autonomy because they maintain the family's role as a platform for a member's future autonomy. And if there's one thing we hold sacred in our legal system, it's individual autonomy. That's why, despite Lawrence's unfortunately broad language, I don't see the case as a direct threat to our incest laws. (The Ohio Supreme Court recently agreed.)
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
New York Times
May 3, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 2 — The
Justice Department has begun an internal investigation into whether a
former senior adviser to Attorney General
Alberto R. Gonzales improperly tried to fill vacancies for career prosecutors at the agency with
Republicans loyal to the Bush administration, department officials said Wednesday.
The inquiry focuses on whether Monica Goodling, formerly a top aide
to Mr. Gonzales, sought to determine the political affiliations of job
applicants before they were hired as prosecutors — potentially a
violation of civil service laws and a break with a tradition of
nonpartisanship in the career ranks at the Justice Department.
The inquiry by the department’s inspector general and the Office of
Professional Responsibility was announced on a day in which the House
and Senate Judiciary Committees advanced their broader investigations
of issues related to last year’s dismissals of eight United States attorneys.
[To read the rest of the article, click here.]
The FIRST THINGS blog ("On the Square") has a great story today by Ryan Anderson -- on Amnesty International's plans to spin and sell its just-adopted policy in favor of the complete decriminalization of abortion: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=719
I want to add a couple of words to the conversation between Rick and Eduardo about a Catholic judge's moral obligation to grant habeas relief in death penalty cases when they could do so with a technically correct legal ruling. If we're talking about a range of technically correct legal rulings, I guess it would depend whether any particular ruling is more correct than another one. If that's the case, I still don't see the basis for imposing a moral obligation on the judge to adopt the "less correct" ruling. If the grant of habeas relief follows from the "most correct" legal ruling, then every judge should be under a moral obligation to adopt that position, shouldn't they?
Catholic social thought has something to say on this subject. In a recent paper, I argue that, by upholding the law even when it conflicts with her rightly formed conscience, the Catholic judge furthers the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity, reciprocity, and the common good.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
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Is Public Reason Counterproductive?
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EDUARDO M. PENALVER
Cornell Law School
April 17, 2007
Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07-004
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Abstract:
The debate over the proper role of religion in public life has raged on
for decades and shows little signs of slowing down. Proponents of
restrictive accounts of public reason have proceeded under the
assumption that religious and deep moral disagreement constitutes a
threat to social stability that must be tamed. In contrast to this
"scary story" linking pluralism with the threat of instability, there
exists within political theory a competing, "happy story" according to
which pluralism affirmatively contributes to stability by creating
incentives for groups to moderate their demands. Whether the scary
story or happy story is a more accurate reflection of our reality is a
difficult empirical question, but one that ought to matter a great deal
to discussions of public reason. Acting as if the scary story were true
when the happy story is in fact operating will lead proponents of
public reason to stifle the healthful effects of robust pluralism,
degrading the quality of public deliberation and ultimately undermining
stability. In other words, if the happy story turns out to be the right
one, restrictive accounts of public reason may turn out to be
counterproductive, hastening the very deliberative and social harms
they aim to forestall. Click here for the download link.
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MOJ reader Jonathan Watson had these thoughtful comments on the Campell essay on Burke v. Crow that I excerpted:
I think that Ms. Campbell's final statement does not draw a careful enough line among competing "free speech" doctrines. There is a certain minimal guarantee of free speech set forth in the Constitution. Aside from whether the current legal thought on that guarantee is overbroad or overly-restrictive, there is no guarantee set out that anyone need listen to what one says, respect the content of what one says, or even avoid saying that what one says is motivated by an impermissible set of norms. The guarantee only prevents the state, state-related actors, or even private actors, from taking certain actions against one in regard to what or how one engages in speech.
Where Ms. Campbell seems to be aiming, and what needs better definition, is the implications for the philosophical marketplace of ideas, the naked public square. C.S. Lewis described the issue as one of bulverism, where one need not argue that one's opponent is wrong - just assume that he is wrong, and then spend the rest of the time showing how he came to be wrong. What has occurred with Archbishop Burke, and to a greater or lesser extent, to any Christian apologist or thinker, is precisely this. The hows of our time include arguments by anyone who embodies or holds a normative set of commitments which purport to be simultaneously religiously informed and true for all of humanity. So, then, if such an individual's conclusion (cutting Medicare is wrong) agrees with secular conclusions, there is no need to reach the second part of Lewis's bulverism. However, if the individual's conclusion disagrees with secular thought (Sen. Kerry's position on abortion is wrong), then the individual is simply assumed to be wrong because of the religious commitment, without need for further definition or argument. This has serious implications not for the legal doctrine of free speech, but for the philosophical marketplace of ideas, and for society at large.
