Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Because the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling is 90 pages long, I thought I'd ask about a less controversial issue. What do folks think about Georgetown Law School's recent announcement of a Drinan Chair in Human Rights? Do you think that we will witness a protest like the one we saw at Boston College this spring over the controversial award of an honorary degree?
Richard M.
The New Jersey Supreme Court has held:
Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.
Rob
Lisa asks if "the silence of contemplation" is possible in the life of a working parent? For me the answer has been yes, with a lot of cooperation from my husband and daughter.
Perhaps at least in part becuase I returned to Catholicism some years ago after spending a number of years as a Buddhist (almost two years of which were spent living essentially in a monastic environment), time for contemplation is as necessary for me as the air I breathe. And so for at least the last five or six years or so (i.e., beginning when Elena, now 13, was 7 or 8 or so), I take the first 30-45 minutes of each day in quiet prayer. It took a while for my daughter to respect that time - in the beginning there were all sorts of important things that just couldn't wait from her perspective....then she shifted to standing in my doorway saying something like, "I'm not interrupting your prayer, I'm just waiting to see if you are finished." But for some time now, if I'm sitting and the door is closed there is no interruption.
My husband's faciliation has been even more instrumental. Every year I go off for at least one 8-day retreat and sometimes a second shorter one. Although I'm sure the period of single parenting is not convenient, he happily does so. (And the retreat periods are in addition to putting up with lots of trips for academic travel as well as weekends spent at the Jesuit retreat house of which I am a member of the adjunct staff.)
Ultimately, I think our goal as Christians is to live our lives out of a contemplative stance - to be contemplatives in action. However, I think contemplative prayer is necessary in order to develop that ability.
As Michael suggests. learning to shift from telling God to "listen[ing] with [our] hearts to God who speaks" takes time.....perhaps more time for those of us who are used to being the speakers (and writers) during the rest of our day.
I have posted under my name at the side a draft of my Scarpa Conference essay, “Reconciling Evangelization and Dialogue through Love of Neighbor.” It begins with a brief analysis of the controversy generated by Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address, and then proceeds to explore one of the tensions with sparked such intense reactions—the difficulty in reconciling robust focus on Christian identity (evangelization) with a careful attention to the sensitivities and sensibilities of people of other religions (dialogue). Drawing on elements in John Paul II’s “missionary spirituality” as outlined in Redemptoris Missio (1990), it explores the extent to which evangelization and dialogue might be reconciled through the imitation of the self-emptying, universal and concrete love of Christ. It then describes a few “witnesses” of this kind of love in action in politics and law. I’d welcome your feedback (and many many thanks to several of you for taking the time for in depth conversations about the draft). It will be published by the Villanova Law Review together with the essays by Rick Garnett, Patrick Brennan and Avery Cardinal Dulles. Thanks again to Patrick for putting together such a terrific event. Amy
Yes Lisa, at some stage in the parenting process it is possible to engage in "the silence of contemplation." I am glad you used the word "possible" because it turns out that I would rather speak (to God or others) and write my "lofty" thoughts rather than listen. Even though the kids have all gone off to college, I still find the silence of contemplation extremely difficult. But, I have hope that God will increasingly grant me the grace to be still and know that He is God.
Did anyone else react with wistful longing to these words of Pope Benedict to the students of the pontifical universities in Rome?
Benedict XVI told the students: "In-depth reflection on Christian truths and the study of theology or other religious disciplines presuppose an education in silence and contemplation, as it is necessary to be able to listen with the heart to God who speaks.
"Only if they proceed from the silence of contemplation can our words have a certain value and usefulness and not fall into the inflation of the world's speeches which seek the consensus of public opinion.
"Therefore, whoever studies in an ecclesiastical institution must be disposed to obedience and truth, and cultivate a certain asceticism of thought and word."
I know this is good advice for all of us. But could someone with older kids assure me that "the silence of contemplation" is, indeed, possible to achieve at some stage in the life of a working parent?
Lisa
Thanks to Rick for posting the essay, The End of Education, authored by Alasdair MacIntyre. I would like to offer several observations in an effort to reply to Rick’s question about whether this essay has anything to say about law schools and legal education. I think that it does, especially in the light of Archbishop Miller’s September 11 presentation at Boston College (in which he also spoke about the “fragmentation of education” and the need for Catholic colleges and universities to lead all universities in the search for knowledge and truth) and comments made by Judge Harry T. Edwards of the DC Circuit about twenty years ago.
Let me begin with Judge Edwards’ concerns. In 1992 in the Michigan Law Review he wrote a challenging essay entitled The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession in which he argued:
“I fear that our law schools and law firms are moving in opposite directions. The schools should be training ethical practitioners and producing scholarship that judges, legislators, and practitioners can use. The firms should be ensuring that associates and partners practice law in an ethical manner. But many law schools—especially the so-called ‘elite’ ones—have abandoned their proper place, by emphasizing abstract theory at the expense of practical scholarship and pedagogy. Many law firms have also abandoned their place, by pursuing profit above all else. While the schools are moving toward pure theory, the firms are moving toward pure commerce, and the middle ground—ethical practice—has been deserted by both...This article is my response to...legal academicians who disdain law teaching as an endeavor in pursuit of professional education. My view is that if law schools continue to stray from their principal mission of professional scholarship and training, the disjunction between legal education and the legal profession will grow and society will be the worse for it.” [Italics in the original]
These are words written by a lawyer who attended prestigious universities, practiced law in a large law firm, became a public servant, was a law professor at two “elite” law schools, and was subsequently appointed to the Federal Bench in the late 1970s. Judge Edwards later went on to defend his position against critics and clarify his positions. But his words of concern tie in with those of Professor MacIntyre and Archbishop Miller: is something missing from higher education, including legal education, and is this deficiency evident in Catholic institutions as well? The point I would like to make is this: might law schools, which in some form or another, identify themselves as having a role in ethical professional education have an opportunity to respond to the challenges which Edwards, MacIntrye, and Miller have raised? I believe they do.
But, in order to meet this challenge, they have to overcome a false inferiority complex: the perceived “need” of having to be like other schools. This, of course, assumes that other schools—or, as Judge Edwards says, the “elite” ones—really are elite, really do offer superior education, really provide first-rate education, and really serve as a model for other institutions when it comes to instilling ethical values including those from the Catholic realm.
The challenge for the Catholic law school is, if I may borrow from scripture and Pope John Paul II, not to be afraid of being different from the “elites.” I realize this is hard to do since so much of the evaluation of any school is done in comparison with the “standards” established by the “elites.” Still, the desire to provide sound professional and ethical instruction, and an atmosphere conducive to both that includes public discussion and faculty scholarship, ought to remain strong for the law school which wishes to use the modifier “Catholic.” The manner in which some lawyers practice law today indicates that Judge Edwards was correct in his prediction: the profession and society are the worse for what it does because of the manner in which many lawyers were educated. I am confident that the disjunction can be overcome, but it will take the efforts of those who are not afraid to do so. RJA sj
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
My Notre Dame colleague, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, has this provocative essay ("The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University") in the latest issue of Commonweal magazine. The piece opens with this:
What should be the distinctive calling of the American Catholic university or college here and now? It should be to challenge its secular counterparts by recovering both for them and for itself a less fragmented conception of what an education beyond high school should be, by identifying what has gone badly wrong with even the best of secular universities. From a Catholic point of view the contemporary secular university is not at fault because it is not Catholic. It is at fault insofar as it is not a university.
(Cf., e.g., Marty Peretz.) Notwithstanding this initial focus on the Catholic university, the piece has a lot to say about universities, and university education, generally. I wonder, does it have anything to say about law schools and legal education?
Also, this paragraph seems worth keeping in mind, as we reflect on the recent op-ed by Notre Dame's Provost and President on Harvard's plans to institute a religion-class requirement:
Yet the major Catholic universities seem unlikely to accept this calling, if only because their administrative leaders are for the most part hell-bent on imitating their prestigious secular counterparts, which already imitate one another. So we find Notre Dame glancing nervously at Duke, only to catch Duke in the act of glancing nervously at Princeton. What is it that makes this attitude so corrupting? What has gone wrong with the secular university?
Sandy Levinson and Jack Balkin have posted their new paper, Law and the Humanities: An Uneasy Relationship. From the abstract:
In 1930 legal professionals like Judge Learned Hand assumed that law was either part of the humanities or deeply connected to them. By the early twenty-first century, this view no longer seems accurate, despite the fact that legal scholarship has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Instead law has moved closer to the social sciences. This essay discusses why this is so, and why the humanities exist in an uneasy relationship with law and contemporary legal scholarship.
And from the paper itself:
To the extent that law school is like a school of divinity, law professors believe in the enterprise of law (including those suspensions of disbelief necessary to separate what is deemed “law” from what is deemed “politics”). Many will practice law or give legal advice to others, and all will seek to inculcate in their students the techniques of arguing to legal decisionmakers who are also internal to that enterprise. However, to the extent that law schools are “departments of law,” law professors need not practice law and may not particularly care whether one case or another is rightly decided from an internal perspective. Rather, their goal is to study law as a literary, cultural, economic, or social phenomenon. If, on occasion, they make arguments about what the law should be, reasoning will be largely from the standpoint of what would be good policy as distinct from what the law commands or requires.
Rob
ZENIT is posting the transcript of a debate between Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion", and David Quinn, an Irish columnist, that was recently aired on Irish public radio. Part 1 is on the ZENIT site now. I can't link to it directly, but you should be able to find it easily enough (ZE06102321). Part 2 will be posted later today, I think.
Lisa
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