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.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Catholics in America

By Rick Garnett

An interesting homily by Archbishop Gomez (San Antonio) about being Catholic in America.  Here is a taste:

long before the United States of America was even an idea, this land was Catholic. Holy Mass was celebrated here, at that time in Latin; The Word of God, was preached in the Spanish language, and both then are part of our country’s mother tongue.

Every American today, in some way traces his or her roots to the great Hispanic-Catholic missions of the 16th and 17th centuries. We feel this deeply here in the Southwest. In other parts of our country, Americans proudly trace their roots more deeply to the early Catholic missions of immigrants from other foreign lands, France, Poland, Germany, Ireland and Italy.

But we are all of us Americans, and most of us are children of immigrants. And all of us are heirs to the legacy of the Gospel believed and preached here by our country’s first settlers.

I fear today that we’re in danger of trying to deliberately, erase our memory of this history. It’s almost as if we are that unfaithful servant in the Gospel—who out of fear buries the gifts that God has given him.

I feel that sometimes in the same way that some people would have us forget our country’s Hispanic heritage, there are powerful forces at work that want us to forget our Catholic and Christian roots, too. You know this in your work. The reason we’re always fighting over Church-state and religious freedom issues in our courts and legislatures is that there are strong pressures to suppress and privatize religion.

Thanks to Amy Welborn.

Gracious!

By Rick Garnett

Jonathan Liu reviews here Chris Hedges' new book, "American Fascists:  The Christian Right and the War on America."  Here is a bit:

Mr. Hedges gives the lie to the idea that religious moderates can fight back by simply providing an inclusive alternative to the literalists. He calls on them to denounce the very legitimacy of texts like Leviticus and especially the Book of Revelation, which anticipates a “dark conclusion to life … whether it is tucked into the back pew rack of a liberal Unitarian church in Boston or a megachurch in Florida.” Does Mr. Hedges believe that Revelation should be deleted from the New Testament altogether? If so, he has enough sense not to say so outright. Still, the criticism of “mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches, declining in numbers and influence,” anchors a book whose most pointed critiques are reserved not for the power-hungry preachers and Congressmen so much as the guardians—political, cultural and intellectual, as well as religious—of a civil society complicit in its own ongoing decimation.

“Most liberals,” Mr. Hedges warns, “will stand complacently to be sheared like sheep, attempting to open dialogues and reaching out to those who spit venom in their faces.” They succumb to “the pleasant fiction that [Christian] radicals are fundamentally decent, that they do not mean what they say …. Such passivity only accelerates the probability of evil.”

More of this, please

By Rick Garnett

From Professor Friedman:

Congress Imposes Sanctions On Belarus For Denying Religious Freedom

President Bush, last Friday, signed H.R. 5948, the Belarus Democracy Reauthorization Act of 2006. Part of the new law imposes various sanctions on Belarus until it makes significant progress in meeting a long list of desired democratic reforms. Among the conditions imposed are the release of individuals in Belarus who have been jailed based on their religious beliefs and the cessation of all forms of harassment and repression against religious organizations. The initial Findings in H.R. 5948, conclude in part: "The Lukashenka regime has increasingly subjected leaders and members of minority and unregistered religious communities to harassment, including the imposition of heavy fines, denying permission to meet for religious services, prosecutions, and jail terms for activities in the practice of their faith."

Mennonite Perspective on Immigration Reform

By Elizabeth Schiltz

My colleague, Virgil Wiebe, the Director of Clinical Education here at UST Law, has published a great article in the Mennonite publication Christian Leader about how "the Gospel's call to dual citizenship and the practice of hospitality" should inform the debate about immigration reform.  He begins with the powerful reminder that "Our ultimate citizenship lies in the kingdom of God; we are all aliens and strangers in this land."

Lisa

The Brilliant Rick Garnett

By Elizabeth Schiltz

And when I finally made it to the end of the February edition of First Things, there, in the Neuhaus Public Square column, I came across a description of the "brilliant article by Richard W. Garnett, professor of law at Notre Dame, in The Georgetown Law Review (August 2006)."  (Religion, Division and the First Amendment)  Of course, we all knew that already, but it's nice to hear again, isn't it?

Lisa

Max Lewis, "My Lovely Son"

By Elizabeth Schiltz

Rick recently posted excerpts from a Washington op-ed by Patricia Bauer on the new prenatal testing recommendations.  Bauer asks why so many people would want to hunt out & abort babies with Down Syndrome:

Among the reasons, I believe, is a fundamental societal misperception that the lives of people with intellectual disabilities have no value -- that less able somehow equates to less worthy. Like the woman in the park, we're assigning one trait more importance than all the others and making critical decisions based on that judgment. . . . .Much of what people think they know about intellectual disabilities is inaccurate and remains rooted in stigma and opinions that were formed when institutionalization was routine.

Here's an absolutely lovely story by the mother of Max Lewis, the young actor with Down Syndrome who appears in the Golden Globe nominated movie "Notes on a Scandal" with Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench.  It's chock-full of obvious and not-so-obvious illustrations of the value of the life of one person with intellectual disabilities.

Lisa

Thursday, January 18, 2007

"The Family and Human Procreation"

By Richard Myers

On June 6, 2006, the Pontifical Council for the Family announced the publication of "The Family and Human Procreation." (The document is dated May 13, 2006.) I have had a lot of trouble locating the document and recently ran across an English translation here, on the Women for Faith & Family website. The document reflects on the current threats to the family and attempts to "shed light on the anthropological foundations of family life as a place or environment for procreation and will thereby help the many people today who desire to lead a rich and fruitful family life and contribute to the social regeneration of the family in contexts where such regeneration is necessary."

The document is quite wide-ranging. I was particularly struck by its efforts to explore how the family helps to promote solidarity and to avoid the excessive individualism of much of Western culture.

Richard M.

It's never too early . . .

By Rob Vischer

By the time my daughter begins sixth grade in five years, the first-day-of-school checklist may have taken a disturbing twist.  Gym shoes?  Check.  Backpack?  Check. STD vaccination? 

Time magazine reports:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently advised parents to have their middle-school-aged daughters vaccinated against a common sexually transmitted disease closely linked to cervical cancer. But legislators in 10 states are seeking to go one step further and require vaccinations against the human papillomavirus (HPV) for all girls entering middle school.

I guess I understand the public health rationale, but doesn't even a vaccination law have a pedagogical dimension that needs to be considered?

UPDATE: Denise Hunnell, a Catholic mom and physician, alerts me that she previously addressed this issue here.

Wow!

By Rick Garnett

New, "four-dimensional" pictures of unborn children in the womb:

Bigotry and Romney, again

By Rick Garnett

I blogged a few days ago ("Taking Religion Seriously") about Damon Linker's suggestion that Americans may and should be concerned about Gov. Romney's religion when they consider his candidacy for President.  I expressed the view that we should not be too quick to respond to argument's like Linker's with the objection that such arguments are out of bounds because religion is "private":

I am sure that, in many quarters, conversations about Romney's religion (or, to go back a few months, then-Judge Roberts's Catholicism) are distorted by inaccurate understandings of Mormonism, or plain prejudice.  This is unfortunate.  That said, it strikes me that the response of religious believers to questions like Linkers' should not be to insist that religious beliefs are "private," and therefore irrelevant to public life.  An appropriate respect for religious freedom and individual conscience does not require us -- those of us who profess religious beliefs and those who do not -- to act as if religious commitments lack content and have no implications for believers’ actions and policies.  What exactly these implications are is something that, it seems to me, believers and non-believers alike should think hard -- and fairly and honestly -- about.

Consider, now, this recent op-ed by Hugh Hewitt ("The New New Bigotry").  Certainly, bigotry towards and ignorance about Mormons is widespread, and certainly many past and future objections to Romney's traffic in that bigotry and ignorance.  Still, I continue to think it is important to focus on (a) getting religious politicians' beliefs and commitments right, i.e., stating them fairly, and (b) thinking charitably and reasonably about the implications of those beliefs for public service.  I continue to think it might be a mistake to jump too quickly from arguments that focus fairly on these matters to (i) accusations of bigotry or (ii) assertions that candidates' religious views are private and therefore irrelevant to the merits of their candidacies.

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