Monday, March 19, 2007
On this Solemnity, I thought I'd encourage people to read Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation on St. Joseph. Here. I think it is unfortunate that this document is so little known. The short section on "work as an expression of love" is valuable for those of us who toil in "secular" occupations.
Richard M.
If you're interested in an analysis of morality and the judicial role that relies on Catholic social thought to challenge the perspectives of legal luminaries like Robert Cover, Justice Scalia, and (former) Chief Justice Roy Moore, check out my new paper, Professional Identity and the Contours of Prudence. Here is the abstract:
This article was presented as part of a symposium on Catholic social thought, prudential judgment, and public policy. I use the virtue of prudence as a lens through which to analyze the relationship between conscience and professional identity, asserting that prudence requires a consideration of the context in which an actor's conscience is to be exercised. In many of our current disputes over conscience, our understanding of an actor's context will require an understanding of an actor's professional role. This article will endeavor to elucidate the relevance of prudence to professional role by comparing and contrasting the roles of judges and lawyers. In this context, at least, the contours of prudential judgment are informed by market dynamics: lawyers are market actors; judges are not. The professional's stance toward those whom they serve, and our evaluation of the way in which they serve, will turn on this distinction. The application of principles such as solidarity, subsidiarity, reciprocity, and the common good lead to sharply different conclusions regarding the prudent role of personal moral convictions in the work of a judge versus that of a lawyer.
As always, comments are welcome.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
BRASILIA, Brazil, MARCH 18, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Debate continues over so-called homophobia legislation, which seeks to criminalize anything considered a condemnation of homosexuality, including priests who speak against the practice in homilies.
Priests could face two to five years imprisonment for preaching against homosexuality. And a rector of a seminary who refuses admission to a homosexual student could face three to five years.
Thursday, Brazil's Senate declined to vote on the legislation. Instead, the senators decided to form a work group, which will organize public audiences to hear specialists on the subject.
According to ZENIT sources, a number of citizens voiced opposition to the law, motivating in part the senators to form the study group.
Specialists say the "homophobia law" would essentially imply a legal frame for religious persecution.
One source told ZENIT: "In addition to the rights established in the constitution for all people, the homosexual, by the simple fact of being homosexual, would gain privileges."
Maria das Dores Dolly Guimarães, lawyer and president of the Paulist Federation of Movements in Defense of Life, explained: "Whoever dared to criticize such behavior would be treated as a delinquent."
ZE07031828
Leif Enger's "Peace Like a River" (2001) is a wonderful novel. (I cannot believe it took me so long to read it.) It's a bit of To Kill a Mockingbird, a bit of A Hundred Years of Solitude, a bit of Shoeless Joe, a bit of Flannery O'Connor -- it's got faith, love, pain, laughs, and evil. Run, don't walk (or, click quickly) and get it. (They're making it into a movie; pray they "get it.")
Saturday, March 17, 2007
A great book for understanding our laws and political institutions is Harold Berman's Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Here is a nice review, by Victor Muniz-Fraticelli, of Berman's follow-up, Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition. Here is a bit:
Harold Berman made a significant mark in legal historiography with the first volume of Law and Revolution (hereafter LR1). In it, he challenged the standard periodization of Western history, which held that "modernity" began in the sixteenth century and that it was preceded by a long, undistinguished, and largely undifferentiated "middle age" throughout which not much of consequence occurred (LR1, p. 14). Such periodization reflected the historians' disregard for law "as an independent factor, one of the causes, and not only one of the results, of social, economic, political, intellectual, moral, and religious developments." (LR1, p. 44) To focus on the history of the Western legal tradition, Berman argued, would show that the first modern Western legal system can be traced to the end of the eleventh century. Hildebrand's revolutionary assertion of ecclesiastical independence from imperial authority in 1075 helped establish in the Roman Catholic Church a jurisdiction separate and parallel to the many secular jurisdictions of the day (LR1, p. 107ff). This newfound independence coincided with the discovery of the Emperor Justinian's compilations of the law of the Roman Empire, and their methodical study in European universities. Over the next two centuries, under the influence of Papal authority and scholarly method, the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church was systematized and transformed into the first modern legal system (LR1, p. 120-23, 253-54). By the same token, secular authorities were stripped of spiritual power and constrained to the functions of government familiar to us today: "the maintenance of peace and the establishment of justice in [the] realm" (LR1, p. 534). The Western legal tradition was born out of the plurality of jurisdictions—and, in particular, the competition between the ecclesiastical and the secular legal systems—that characterized the later part of the Middle Ages (LR1, pp. 273ff, 531ff).
If LR1 is the tale of the triumph of the Papal Revolution, Law and Revolution II (hereafter LR2) is the tale of its demise. (LR2, p. 39) The Papal Revolution had divided the spiritual jurisdiction from the secular and allowed them both to coexist; the Protestant Reformations abolished the ecclesiastical jurisdiction altogether and put many areas of spiritual law—church liturgy, marriage, schooling, moral discipline, and poor relief—back in secular hands (LR2, p. 179). The result was a dramatic transformation of the Western legal tradition. Some have characterized it as a secularization of spiritual realm, but, as Berman notes, it was simultaneously a spiritualization of the secular (LR2, p. 64).
An anti-begging law was ruled unconstitutional by the Ireland Supreme Court last week. MOJ friend Gerry Whyte (Trnity College Dublin, Law) thought the news report about the decision would be of interest to MOJ readers. Click here and then click on "Begging law struck down".
Friday, March 16, 2007
Eucharistic consistency
"83. Here it is important to consider what the Synod Fathers described as eucharistic consistency, a quality which our lives are objectively called to embody. Worship pleasing to God can never be a purely private matter, without consequences for our relationships with others: it demands a public witness to our faith. Evidently, this is true for all the baptized, yet it is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one's children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms (230). These values are not negotiable. Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature (231). There is an objective connection here with the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:27-29). Bishops are under the obligation to repeat these precepts without ceasing; for this is part of their duty toward the flock entrusted to them. (232)."
Thus Benedict's Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis on several of the questions that have been most worried on this our blog about the meaning of the Catholic religion for Catholics in public life. I couldn't be more in agreement with the contents of par. 83, of course, but one has to wonder . . . Will those who refuse to accede to the truth about the natural ends of human life, marriage, and family be moved by a magisterial pointing out of those ends' connection to a supernatural mystery of Christian faith? Perhaps we can begin by hoping that -- even now and late in the day, when most American Catholics are persuaded, or at least concvinced, that they are called upon to be principled (!) relativists in public life -- the American bishops will begin to "repeat these precepts without ceasing?" If the faithful don't hear it from their pastors, they won't hear it. And if they don't hear it, how can they be "faithful?"
On the topic of the Prothero essay, Joe Knippenberg makes the interesting point that the student's motive matters in our approach to teaching religion. If our motivation is to become a better citizen, the outcome of the exploration is going to be much different than if our motivation is to satisfy a deeper existential longing. So can a perceived need for greater civic virtue ever be a proper ground for "authentic" religious education?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The term "death-row volunteer" probably sounds strange -- do people really "volunteer" to be on death-row? -- but, nonetheless, it describes reasonably accurately a not-insubstantial number of those convicted murderers who have been executed in the United States since 1976. (For more detail on the death-row-volunteer issue, see this paper of mine from a few years ago.)
Today, the indefatigable Howard Bashman reports, the en banc United States Court of Appeals ruled that Robert Charles Comer, who was sentenced to death in Arizona, was "competent" to waive further proceedings relating to his federal habeas corpus petition and that he had, in fact, "voluntarily" waived those proceedings. In a nutshell, the Ninth Circuit ruled that, notwithstanding the possibility that legal errors had infected his capital-sentencing proceedings, Comer could prevent judicial correction of those errors by "volunteering" to be executed, in accord with his death sentence. (The court rejected the argument, advanced by Comer's counsel -- who were arguing, obviously, against Comer's stated wish to volunteer -- that Comer's "volunteering" was the product of harsh prison conditions.)
What should we think about this case? How should we think about death-row volunteers generally?
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