I was pleased to see Dean John Garvey's op-ed on the Catholic Charities / adoption issue in Massachusetts; thanks to Rob for the link. Unlike Rob, though, I do see this as, at its core, a religious-liberty issue. The state has decreed that Catholic Charities may not engage in what is, for Catholic Charities, an act of Christian ministry and witness, not because Catholic Charities proposes to do anything that might cause any harm to a third party, but because the state objects to the moral constraints under which Catholic Charities believes itself to be operating. Rob asks, do we "want a marketplace of moral norms when it comes to the adoption of children?" Well, I suppose everyone would agree that the public authority may and should insist that parents who adopt children are fit and may impose some kind of a uniform standard of "fitness." That said, I see no problem with a "marketplace" of adoption providers, who act in accord with different moral norms, consistent with the baseline requirement of child welfare. That Catholic Charities refuses to facilitate certain adoptions does nothing to threaten the requirement that it promote and protect child welfare in the context of those adoptions is does facilitate.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Garvey's op-ed
Purim
During this week, Jews celebrate Purim. David Kopel has a nice post about the holy day, its meaning, and its origins, here. In the interest of ecumenism and charity, we might all take to heart this particular feature of the holy day:
On Purim, Jews are supposed to drink until they can no longer distinguish "Blessed be Mordecai" from "Cursed be Haman." Some people say that this means a person should drink until he can no longer do the mathematical calculations with the Hebrew letters showing that Mordecai and Haman each add up to the same value, namely 520. (All Hebrew letters have a numeric value.)
Other people say that because the blessing of Mordecai and the cursing of Haman both manifested God's goodness, a person should drink until he realizes the fundamental similarity of God's superficially diverse good works.
Gay Adoption and Religious Liberty
Boston College law dean John Garvey has weighed in on the gay adoption controversy in today's Boston Globe. An excerpt:
The issue is not whether the Church or the state has the better of the debate over gay families. When freedom is at stake, the issue is never whether the claimant is right. Freedom of the press protects publication of pornography, blasphemy, and personal attacks. Freedom of religion is above all else a protection for ways of life that society views with skepticism or distaste.
I appreciate the argument, but I'm not sure that religious liberty gets us all that far in this context. We're not talking about the protection of religious speech or a community's internal affairs. An organization's selection of adults to serve as parents for children with whom they have no natural relationship seems a prime target for the enforcement of public norms. And while I often defend the flourishing of plural moral norms, even in the public sphere, through a marketplace approach, do we really want a marketplace of moral norms when it comes to the adoption of children? (I don't intend that as a rhetorical question -- I'm honestly not sure.)
Rob
The Federal Register's Growth: The Numbers
If you ever want to cite the federal government's expansion through the growth in the Federal Register (which turned 70 yesterday), here are some numbers.
Tom
Bush's Speechwriter on Christianity and Politics
Rob pointed me to this recent New Yorker profile of Michael Gerson, Bush's speechwriter, evangelical Episcopalian, and a vigorous proponent (though with limited success) of a serious "compassionate conservatism" in the White House. It's full of ideas about the relation between Christianity and politics, idealism and realism.
Gerson told me that Bush finds no policy prescriptions in Christianity, but he believes that God’s desires helped to shape the ideas at the core of [his] second Inaugural [address]. “The President’s views about the universal appeal of liberty come in part from the fact that he is kind of marinated in the American ideal,” Gerson said. “They come in part from a view that human beings are created in the image of God and will not forever suffer the oppressor’s sword, that eventually there’s something deep in the human soul that cries out for freedom. That doesn’t mean he believes that God blesses this particular foreign policy or that particular foreign policy.”
There's a lot of exploration of "the distance between rhetoric and accomplishment in the Bush Presidency," especially the difficulties in the goal of replacing tyrannies with democracies around the world. But the article omits perhaps the most striking disconnect between morals and reality: the abuse of prisoners. It would have been interesting to hear the speechwriter who crafted the President's moral argument for war in Iraq answer the challenge that the Administration was at best far too lax on this issue, both ahead of time and afterward, in a way that has crippled the nation's moral credibility around the world.
Gerson is also described as "somewhat apologeti[c]" and resigned "about faith-based [social service] programs, to which even some conservatives have argued that the Administration is insufficiently committed." He says there's insufficient money in the budget to do much; but he also defends the high-income tax cuts with supply-side arguments about promoting economic growth. On the other hand, the article describes Gerson's success in promoting and defending U.S. assistance to combat AIDS in Africa. Finally, there's discussion of the recurring theme about Christian principle and political prudence:
I once asked Gerson to describe the role that the Sermon on the Mount plays in his own life, and in Bush’s life. (The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr calls the Sermon an “impossible ethical ideal” for human behavior.) “The Gospel stands in judgment of all human institutions and ideologies. It’s not identical with any one of them,” Gerson said. There is a danger, though, in “proof-texting”—searching the Bible for policy instruction. “You can’t find the justification for anti-sodomy laws in the Book of Matthew,” he said. “There is this idea that you can know what Jesus would think about missile defense or S.U.V.s, but it’s wrong. . . . I don’t have any moral qualms about saying that free-market economics are the single best way to take millions of people out of poverty that the world has ever seen,” but he added that he didn’t learn this from the Bible.
Tom
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
"Rioting Over the Riots"
Christianity Today offers a sobering reminder to counter the simple idea that "Christianity worked off its tendencies to violence a long time ago, but Islam is only doing it now."
The riots were as inexplicable as they were deadly. Outraged youths marched through the streets, armed with guns, machetes, and nail-laden boards. They destroyed houses of worship and businesses owned by religious minorities. At roadblocks, they demanded to know the religion of each passerby. Those who answered incorrectly were beaten to death, then decapitated, dismembered, and burned in the streets. The victims—more than 100—had nothing to do with what had supposedly sparked the outrage. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Muslims rioting over the publication of Muhammad caricatures? Sadly, no. These were Nigerian Christians rioting over the riots.
The editorial also takes to task pugnacious Christian groups in the U.S. who have advocated publishing the Muhammad cartoons more widely and have called decisions not to publish "appeasement":
[Deciding not to publish so as to avoid offense] echoes Paul's instruction to the Corinthians: "Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved."
Tom
Private Prisons and Just Punishment
UCLA law prof Sharon Dolovich's new paper, State Punishment and Private Prisons (via Solum), appears relevant to our recurring conversation evaluating the American system of punishment from the perspective of Catholic legal theory:
[I]f our penal policies and practices are to be legitimate, they must be consistent with two basic principles: the humanity principle, which obliges the state to avoid imposing punishments that are gratuitously inhumane; and the parsimony principle, which obliges the state to avoid imposing punishments of incarceration that are gratuitously long. After sketching the foundation for this legitimacy standard, I then apply it to the case of private prisons. Approaching the issue of private prisons from this perspective helps to reframe the debate in two ways, both long overdue. First, it allows for a direct focus on the structure and functioning of private prisons, without being derailed by premature demands for comparison with public-sector prisons. It thus becomes possible to assess directly the oft-heard claim that the profit incentive motivating prison contractors will distort the decisions taken by private prison administrators and lead to abuses. Second, it makes it possible to see that the state’s use of private prisons is the logical extension of policies and practices that are already standard features of the penal system in general, thus throwing into sharper relief several problematic aspects of this system that are currently taken for granted. In this sense, the study of private prisons operates as a "miner's canary," warning that not just the structure of private prisons, but also that of American punishment practices more broadly, may need reconsideration.
Rob
Dancing with Chaperones
I begin by thanking Rob for his posting on Faculty Chaperones and Catholic Identity and by taking him up on his invitation for reactions, insights, and recommendations dealing with the present situation at the University of Saint Thomas and the objection by some faculty to the school’s position on faculty chaperones.
I will respond to his open invitation if not with insights or a recommendation, then with a reaction. Mine begins with the beginning of today’s first psalm from the Divine Office’s Morning Prayer:
Defend me, O God, and plead my cause against a Godless nation.
From deceitful and cunning men rescue me, O God.
I appreciate and support Rob’s position on why he could not co-sign the letter issued by some faculty criticizing the University in its stand against non-married faculty bringing heterosexual or homosexual domestic partners on University-sponsored trips where faculty serve as chaperones or excursion leaders. I have also read with great interest the March 3 letter signed by some faculty against the University and its Administration. I lament their position and the manner in which they expressed their views.
My reaction really is a series of questions for faculty members who signed this letter and hold the view that the University has been “unfair” to them and the several faculty members affected by the University’s decision.
My questions begin with an assumption that when these faculty were hired they were neither asked by the University nor did the University inquire through other means about their domestic relationships if they, in fact, existed at the time of hiring. My assumption goes further in that I suspect these faculty members did not volunteer information about their private lives and relationships when they were hired. But now these private matters have become of legitimate public concern to the University when the faculty members made their private affairs a public business.
With this prelude, I share Rob’s concerns about the rhetorical style which the faculty letter employs. It is harsh. It is disrespectful of the University. It is not conducive to civility and civil discourse. I suppose tenure for some of its holders provides a sense of having the right to say anything in any tone one wishes to employ without fear of consequences. In this line, I wonder how many untenured faculty who agree with the University and its position would consider themselves as free to respond with written disagreement against tenured colleagues who have signed the letter? But I digress.
My questions continue: who really is being unfair in this matter? Who initially chose to remain silent on these matters of vital interest to a University that represents itself to the world as a Catholic institution? Has the University in fact condemned those with whom it disagrees or has it simply stated its disagreement and asserted that it will not support the relationships of the affected faculty members? Has the University in reality denied its openness and commitment to diversity conducive to an institution that claims to be Catholic? Has the University really been deceitful in this matter? Did the University conceal some previous institutional policy that there was nothing wrong with heterosexual and homosexual domestic partnerships becoming a part of the University’s identity? Has not the University tried to be true to its Catholic identity—a challenge to institutional integrity in this present age? Has the University exhibited hypocrisy?
Might it just be that the University in honoring its heritage, mission, and institutional integrity chosen the correct path in this matter? This last question takes into account the important address Archbishop Michael Miller, Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, delivered at Notre Dame this past fall in which he talked about the current challenges to Catholic identity of colleges and universities. As the Archbishop stated, the time may have come to exercise “evangelical pruning” toward those institutions which no longer adhere to Catholic identity. Is it possible that the University of Saint Thomas has chosen to remain true to its identity rather than to become a candidate for evangelical pruning—not out of fear but out of the exercise of its academic freedom to be true in a very public fashion to the identity it claims?
It is relevant to note that not once in their letter do the faculty who issued this condemnation mention the Catholic nature of the institution. Not once. This omission says much, however.
I shall conclude my reaction to Rob’s posting with another stanza from today’s Divine Office:
O send forth you light and your truth; let these be my guide.
Let them bring me to your holy mountain to the place where you dwell.
It may just be that someone at Saint Thomas is also mindful of the Divine Office and what its words mean. It also appears that there are those at the same University who are unfamiliar with its wisdom. RJA sj
Monday, March 13, 2006
"The Right to Offend"
Here is an interview I did with the Catholic news service, ZENIT, on the freedom of speech and the "right to offend."
Faculty Chaperones and Catholic Identity
For an example of the struggle to articulate and maintain a university's Catholic identity that does not involve the Vagina Monologues, check out the storm caused here at the University of St. Thomas by the administration's practice of not allowing unmarried partners to travel with faculty on student trips. A sampling of the coverage can be found here, here, and here, and the protest letter signed by (some) faculty and staff is here.
Rob
UPDATE: After I posted this, I was asked why my name is not on the protest letter. There are several reasons, including the fact that accusing the administration of being "hypocritical" and displaying a "lack of integrity" are unlikely to facilitate a healthy resolution of a difficult issue. Also, the resolution currently before the faculty senate suggests that a faculty chaperone could choose whatever travel partner they wish without limitation. Here are my original comments in response to that resolution:
I would be more sympathetic to [this] resolution if it simply called for travel privileges for same-sex partners who are in long-term, committed relationships and are legally precluded from pursuing more formal recognition of those relationships. That proposal would still stand in tension with the school’s Catholic identity, but it would raise a different set of considerations than the broader and, in my view, more radical suggestion that a faculty member’s choice of travel partner is none of the school’s business. The implicit presumption is that faculty members are teachers by instruction, but not by the behavior they model – or at least that the modeling function is limited to circumstances chosen by the faculty member.
If I paid tuition for my child to attend any college, Catholic or not, and the faculty chaperone on a trip abroad slept with a different partner at every stop on the journey, for example, I would certainly complain to the administration. And if the administration responded to my complaint with “that’s none of our business,” I would wonder what sort of formation process is contemplated at that institution. If I go out for drinks with students one evening and end up getting falling-down drunk, that’s no longer just my personal business; I’ve made it the school’s business by modeling my behavior for students.
The resolution should strike us at the law school as especially problematic because we’ve set out a distinct mission of educating the whole person, which puts the burden on us to know that we’re being watched, not just listened to. If folks want to have a conversation about what sorts of relationships are legitimate models for students on university-sponsored trips, that’s one thing. But to suggest that our choice of travel partners is irrelevant to the formation of students that occurs – intentionally or not – on such trips, that’s quite another.
I'm not sure how other schools have handled this issue, but I'd welcome any reactions, insights and recommendations.
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