One last comment on the Edith Stein Project. The conference organizers received financial and non-financial support from various sources. During the past two years MOJ's Elizabeth Kirk - through Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture - provided invaluable support and guidance to the project.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Edith Stein Conference and Elizabeth Kirk
The Edith Stein Project and Catholic Legal Theory
I am humbled in the face of a conference like the Edith Stein Project for a number of reasons. (I’ll mention two).
First, the profound insights of these young women (and men) in their late teens and early twenties leaves me awestruck. (not to mention organizational ability to pull off a major conference). At their age, I was an observant Catholic but my mind was 1) less developed, 2) less serious, and 3) more secular. With these young people, we see the fruits of John Paul the Great as these young people take their places in the world as part of what has been dubbed the JP II generation.
Second, the major work of cultural transformation and renewal will NOT come (IMHO) from the part of the vineyard that I have been given to till (my vocation in the law) but from changing hearts and minds in the broader culture. To be sure, we in the law have much work to do. Some of us are involved in a sort of rear guard action, defending against legal attempts to further marginalize the religious voice from the public square and/or defending the Church from those who would impose currently fashionable secular norms on the life of the Church. Others are involved in critiquing secularist (agnostic or a-theistic) legal thought. Still others are imagining a legal system that took seriously the integral humanism proposed by the Church (and others). But, the seeds we plant will not bear fruit unless the soil of our culture has been tilled by those working outside the law.
Edith Stein Project: Report 2
The dynamism of this conference came from a blending of academic discourse, reports on direct action, and personal testimony. Even the more academic talks had components of either direct action or personal testimony. The direct action and personal testimony allowed us (the participants) to descend from the ivory tower with hope that the ideas presented could be implemented.
- Jennifer Kenning and Brandi Lee explored the problems associated with the false image of the “ideal” woman portrayed in women’s magazines like Cosmo, Seventeen, etc. In addition to the critique, they shared with the audience their responses, which are aimed at helping transform and heal the culture.
- Jennifer, an ND grad, used her senior project - a pilot issue of “Wirl,” a magazine for teenage girls, as a positive and healthy alternative to the fare available at the grocery store checkout counter.
- Brandi’s talk, “Young Women & the Media: Fighting Back Against a Beauty Obsessed Culture” and her commercially successful “True Girl” magazine are powerful examples of how each of us can use our unique gifts to heal a wounded culture.
- Beth Bauer, who works with Rachel’s Vineyard post-abortive healing ministry spoke on “Trauma and Healing after Abortion: ‘Neither Do I Condemn You.’”
- Caitlin Shaughnessy, a recent ND grad who helped plan the 2006 Edith Stein Project, works at the Women’s Care Center of South Bend and spoke on “Healing Our Culture: Planting the Seed.”
- Cathy Nolan, also of the Women’s Care Center, spoke on “The Healing of the Feminine, A Case in Point.”
- Danielle Haley who is at home with her one year old spoke on “Calling All Homegirls: Exploring True Femininity and True Friendship.
Perhaps the most moving talks at the conference came from several Notre Dame students who were courageous enough to speak about brokenness and healing in their own lives. A panel of young women discussed the experience of being raped and the painful process of healing afterwards. Two young women spoke about their eating disorders and the importance of community - family and friends - in the struggle to overcome the problem and to begin to face and heal the underlying cause of the disorder. And, two young men spoke about the destructive effects of pornography in their own lives (one of the students had overcome an addiction to pornography), and the problems associated with the relative silence (as compared to alcohol and assault) about the issue on college campuses.
One of this year’s conference organizers wrote that she felt “tremendously blessed to have, quite literally, stumbled across the Edith Stein conference last year.” “Fascinated by the personalistic-norm paradigm,” she “dove excitedly into planning” the 2007 conference. Drawing from the Edith Stein Project, this same young woman is currently piloting an outreach initiative for high school aged girls in her the South Bend-Ft. Wayne Diocese.
My hat’s off to this group of 19 to 22 year old women and men for a fantastic job in putting on such a rich and thought-provoking conference.
Roberts' Rules
In an exclusive interview, Chief Justice John Roberts says that if the Supreme Court is to maintain legitimacy, its justices must start acting more like colleagues and less like prima donnas.
Roberts' Rules
HT: Chris Scaperlanda
This looks interesting ...
"Finding Interior Peace in the Ordinary Practice of Law: A
Teresian Approach to Contemplation"
Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 962807
Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, Spring 2007
Contact: JACQUELINE M. NOLAN-HALEY
Fordham University School of Law
Email: [email protected]
Auth-Page: http://ssrn.com/author=190534
Abstract: http://ssrn.com/abstract=962807
ABSTRACT: This article focuses on some of St. Teresa of Avila's
writings, as part of a symposium series that examines how the
lives of extraordinary Catholics can inform the practice of law.
Against the background of Rambo litigation hoopla and the
excesses of adversarial justice, scholars in the Catholic legal
community such as Maryann Glendon and John Noonan have written
powerfully about the need to humanize the practice of law and
demonstrate greater civility in lawyering. Professional reform
projects have developed at a rapid pace and we have witnessed the
growth of new directions in lawyering, all aimed ultimately at
helping lawyers find an interior peace that will have positive
spill-over effects in their professional lives. Some of the more
prominent correctives include humanistic movements such as
holistic lawyering comprehensive law, therapeutic jurisprudence,
preventive law, restorative justice, collaborative lawyering,
transformative and narrative mediation, and mindfulness
meditation.
Given the multiple legal reform projects currently underway, one
might reasonably ask - why focus on a reformer of religious
congregations? What could a 16th century Castilian Catholic
female mystic possibly add to this reform regime? In this article
I suggest that Teresa's writings on self-knowledge and humility
offer a rich reservoir from the Catholic mystical and meditative
tradition that have to potential to provide a deeper, fuller and
more grounded foundation for transformation than the generic
spirituality offered by current efforts to resolve the legal
profession's vocational crisis.
I've never seen an episode of "24" ...
... but some of you have. Moreover, I recall that "24" has been the subject of a posting or two here at MOJ. So the following item may be of interest:
Sightings 3/1/07
King of Pain: The Political Theologies of "24"
-- Jerome Eric Copulsky
Like several million other Americans, I am a "24" fanatic. For an hour each week, I willingly relinquish myself to the action-packed world of the Counter Terrorist Unit of the hit FOX television series.
Yet I do so with a somewhat guilty conscience. Early on, I hit upon the show's secret: "24" is a sustained lesson in controversial jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt's decidedly illiberal concept of sovereignty. "Sovereign is he who decides upon the exception," Schmitt proclaimed at the beginning of his 1922 treatise Political Theology. To have this power is to stand outside the law, to decide upon the state of exception, when the normal rules do not apply. If we follow Schmitt's claim that "significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts," the human sovereign is the political analogue of the omnipotent God.
-- Jerome Eric Copulsky
Like several million other Americans, I am a "24" fanatic. For an hour each week, I willingly relinquish myself to the action-packed world of the Counter Terrorist Unit of the hit FOX television series.
Yet I do so with a somewhat guilty conscience. Early on, I hit upon the show's secret: "24" is a sustained lesson in controversial jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt's decidedly illiberal concept of sovereignty. "Sovereign is he who decides upon the exception," Schmitt proclaimed at the beginning of his 1922 treatise Political Theology. To have this power is to stand outside the law, to decide upon the state of exception, when the normal rules do not apply. If we follow Schmitt's claim that "significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts," the human sovereign is the political analogue of the omnipotent God.
What better description could there be of
counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, the hero of "24"? Bauer is no
by-the-book agent. But when he operates beyond the law and conventional
morals in order to interrogate a suspect -- employing brute force or torture to
obtain crucial information -- we understand he is doing what is necessary to
fulfill his patriotic duty. And when bureaucrats and politicians wring
their hands or quibble about Bauer's methods, the show suggests that they are
naïve or lack the will to do what is "necessary" to stop America's
enemies. In the world of "24," Jack Bauer is clearly the
sovereign.
Recently the political theology of "24" has taken another turn. At the beginning of this season, a haggard Bauer, long-haired and bearded, his back bearing the scars of his ordeal, is released by his Chinese captors to his former counter-terrorist colleagues, only to be told that he was about to be delivered to a group of fanatics in exchange for what is believed to be critical intelligence about the location of a terrorist mastermind. Resigned to his fate, Bauer is satisfied that he is going to die for a reason: "Do you know the difference between dying for nothing and dying for something? That's why I'm still alive.... Today, I can die for something."
Like a lamb to the slaughter, Bauer is led to further torture and seemingly certain death in order to save his countrymen from annihilation. The symbolism is clear: Federal agent Bauer is a Christ-figure.
This symbolism -- and the other religious references that emerge throughout "24" -- would be the stuff of high school literature classes, if not for the fact that the show has become a lens through which many think about America's current political predicament. In Jane Mayer's bracing New Yorker article, Joel Surnow, the co-creator and executive producer of "24" and self-described "right-wing nut job," is quoted as saying that "America wants the war on terror fought by Jack Bauer. He's a patriot."
Perhaps. We want him to fight the "war on terror" because the show is set up so that we know that Bauer is almost always correct, because the narrative and moral arguments are stacked in his favor, because we trust his intuitions, intentions, and judgments, and because the show takes the extreme case of an imminent threat, the so-called "ticking time bomb," and makes it the norm. For an hour a week, we gladly consent to Bauer's "sovereignty."
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Brian M. Carney celebrated the show's "realistic moral tone," its ability to expose contemporary ethical dilemmas. "You don't need to watch '24' as a kind of primer on moral philosophy," he opined, "but you should."
Unlike Carney, I am not so confident that watching "24" will help us think more deeply about moral problems or fight the war on terror in a responsible manner. Those actually doing the fighting do not operate in the conditions of "24," but in places where the utilitarian calculus is not so clear cut, where the danger is not the imminent threat of a ticking time bomb, and where torture is less likely to produce useful intelligence. Yet, viewing "24" as a kind of training manual, some American soldiers have come to regard torture as a justifiable practice, and Bauer an exemplar to be imitated. Indeed, experienced American military leaders have expressed misgivings about the show's deepening influence on those under their command, worrying, as Mayer reports, that "the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers."
Recently the political theology of "24" has taken another turn. At the beginning of this season, a haggard Bauer, long-haired and bearded, his back bearing the scars of his ordeal, is released by his Chinese captors to his former counter-terrorist colleagues, only to be told that he was about to be delivered to a group of fanatics in exchange for what is believed to be critical intelligence about the location of a terrorist mastermind. Resigned to his fate, Bauer is satisfied that he is going to die for a reason: "Do you know the difference between dying for nothing and dying for something? That's why I'm still alive.... Today, I can die for something."
Like a lamb to the slaughter, Bauer is led to further torture and seemingly certain death in order to save his countrymen from annihilation. The symbolism is clear: Federal agent Bauer is a Christ-figure.
This symbolism -- and the other religious references that emerge throughout "24" -- would be the stuff of high school literature classes, if not for the fact that the show has become a lens through which many think about America's current political predicament. In Jane Mayer's bracing New Yorker article, Joel Surnow, the co-creator and executive producer of "24" and self-described "right-wing nut job," is quoted as saying that "America wants the war on terror fought by Jack Bauer. He's a patriot."
Perhaps. We want him to fight the "war on terror" because the show is set up so that we know that Bauer is almost always correct, because the narrative and moral arguments are stacked in his favor, because we trust his intuitions, intentions, and judgments, and because the show takes the extreme case of an imminent threat, the so-called "ticking time bomb," and makes it the norm. For an hour a week, we gladly consent to Bauer's "sovereignty."
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Brian M. Carney celebrated the show's "realistic moral tone," its ability to expose contemporary ethical dilemmas. "You don't need to watch '24' as a kind of primer on moral philosophy," he opined, "but you should."
Unlike Carney, I am not so confident that watching "24" will help us think more deeply about moral problems or fight the war on terror in a responsible manner. Those actually doing the fighting do not operate in the conditions of "24," but in places where the utilitarian calculus is not so clear cut, where the danger is not the imminent threat of a ticking time bomb, and where torture is less likely to produce useful intelligence. Yet, viewing "24" as a kind of training manual, some American soldiers have come to regard torture as a justifiable practice, and Bauer an exemplar to be imitated. Indeed, experienced American military leaders have expressed misgivings about the show's deepening influence on those under their command, worrying, as Mayer reports, that "the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers."
It's not necessarily a bad thing to detect the strains of political theory or to be confronted with somewhat heavy-handed religious symbolism in a popular television series. But after we spend an hour in the thrall of Jack Bauer, Schmittian sovereign and secular savior, we should be sure to remind ourselves that entertainment which exploits our fears and strokes our hopes of simple solutions will not provide the means to our salvation, political or otherwise.
References:
Jane Mayer's article "Whatever It Takes: The politics
of the man behind '24,'" (New Yorker, February 12, 2007) can be read
online at:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070219fa_fact_mayer.
Brian M. Carney's article "Jack Bauer's Dilemmas -- and Ours: Watching '24' as a primer on moral philosophy" (Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2007) can be read online at:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110009580.
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. By George Schwab (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Jerome Eric Copulsky is Assistant Professor and
Director of Judaic Studies at Virginia Tech.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
O'Malley and deterrence
I agree with Rob, of course, that the "step one" question about the death penalty -- i.e., is it a morally permissible punishment -- should not be answered in terms of its deterrence-related benefits. And, while I do think that Gov. O'Malley's position and arguments have been (imperfectly) formed by Catholic teaching on the dignity of the human person, I agree with Rob that it would have been better had O'Malley made it more clear what "work" the deterrence-claims are doing in his argument. He could have said, for instance, "Reasonable people can disagree about whether the death penalty, as a general matter, is consistent with our commitment to the dignity of the human person. That said, even if the death penalty is sometimes justifiable, surely its costs -- financial and other costs -- and its lack of deterrence benefits -- weigh in favor of abolition."
Deterrence and the Death Penalty
In posting a thoughtful op-ed by Maryland's governor on the morality of the death penalty, Rick suggests that the governor's analysis seems to have been informed by Catholic teaching. That may be right, but one central feature of the analysis struck me as quite un-Catholic: Governor O'Malley appears to place a lot of weight (as Rick notes) on the deterrent effect of the death penalty as an indication of its moral status. I'm not any sort of expert on this issue, but I would think that questions of deterrence are irrelevant to the Church's moral analysis of the death penalty because deterrence-based justifications adopt an instrumentalist view of human life -- i.e., we can kill him because that will convince other people not to kill. Am I wrong -- is deterrence a relevant consideration?
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
San Diego declares bankruptcy
Last night San Diego became the largest diocese (so far) to declare bankruptcy. (HT: Open Book) The first trial of 150 lawsuits alleging abuse by 60 priests was set to begin today. San Diego joins Tucson, Spokane, Portland (Ore.), and Davenport (Iowa).
Edith Stein Project: Report 1
For the third year in a row, a group of undergraduate students at Notre Dame planned and organized a major conference (a list of great speakers and over 200 registered attendees) promoting the development of the new feminism. This year’s theme was “Toward Integral Healing for Women and Culture.” In their Mission Statement for this year’s conference (which was held last weekend), the organizers say:
“We all live in a world where women have been hurt by practices, attitudes and cultural norms that are often taken for granted. Healing is needed on an individual level for those who have been victimized by real violence, and on a cultural level for all who are negatively impacted by a society where eating disorders, pornography, sexual assault, and attacks on women’s sexual health are common concerns. These issues directly affect men and women, and we believe that their involvement in these types of healing and change is essential.
“In celebrating women’s unique gift to be an instrument of empathy and healing, the conference will focus on the specific problem issues that require healing, as well as seek to provide a forum for discussing means to achieve this healing.
“Edith Stein, our patron saint, writes, ‘the capacity for empathy with others and their needs and the capacity and docility for adaptation are more developed in the nature of woman. She (woman) has a profound need to share her life with another and, consequently, a capacity for unselfish love, for commitment, a capacity to transcend the self. Furthermore, her inclination towards maternity draws her to all living and personal things and to a type of more specific, contemplative knowledge. Her nature as mother and companion illuminates the essence of personal relationship. Gifted with the capacity for carrying life, as the continuation of Eve called ‘mother of all living,’ she is also responsible for preparing ‘the restoration of life.’”
The mission statement then sets out the specific goals of the conference, and I am here to testify that they met and exceeded what they set out to do.
Unique in an academic setting, the conference included academic presentations, personal testimony, and reports on direct action. The line-up included:
- Wendy Shalit, author of “A Return to Modesty” and the forthcoming “Girls Gone Mild” opened the conference with a talk entitled “Modesty: The Last Taboo.”
- Economist Jennifer Roback Morse spoke on her book, “Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-Up World.”
- Theologian Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel, O.P., spoke on “Women, Imagination, and the Cultivation of the Feminine Spirit in the Works of Cervantes and Edith Stein.”
- MOJ friend and alum, Paolo Carrozza, used examples from his work on the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in his lecture entitled “Human Rights, Violence against Women and Reflections on Deus Caritas Est.
- Kathleen Gibney, formerly of the Notre Dame psychology department, spoke on “Awakening the Spirit of Women: Gifts of Personal Reflection and Social
Action.” - Economist Catherine Ruth Pakaluk spoke “Splitting the Baby: Creative Solutions for Mothers in a Second-Best Economy.”
- Ethics professor Janet Smith talked on “Contraception: A Women’s Friend or Foe.”
- Theologian Pia de Solenni spoke on “Renewing the Feminine Image.”
- Philosopher Maria Fedoryka spoke on “Edith Stein and the Vocation to Love”
- Deirdre MacQuade, the U.S.bishops spokesperson on pro-life issues tied the conference together in her banquet speech, which reminded all of the call to prayer.
All of these talks were excellent, giving us fruitful information, ideas to chew on, and a basis for grounding human dignity and the new feminism in our nature as creatures created in God’s image. The conference would have been worth it just to feast on the wisdom and knowledge of these thoughtful women (and man). But, the conference was so much more than this. Students addressed real life problems of sexual assault, eating disorders, and sexual addiction. And, other speakers, from magazine publishers to direct service providers spoke about their work in healing a wounded culture.
My next post will reflect on these aspects of the conference.
Also, I invite other attendees to email me their reflections on the conference, which I will attempt to post.
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