I assume that Vatican officials have been hanging around too much with lawyers. What else can explain the Vatican's very public dispute over fees it wants to charge for the use of Pope Benedict XVI's written work? Given the Great Commission, shouldn't we be encouraging widespread piracy and unauthorized publication of papal encyclicals and other documents bringing the Good News to the masses? I understand wanting to limit scandalous mischaracterizations of the work, but why are we talking about money in this context? The Church, in my estimation, should make money in order to disseminate its teachings as widely as possible; this current debate gives the appearance (accurate or not) of disseminating its teachings in order to make money.
This early reaction to Deus Caritas Est is sound, I think. From the January 28 issue of The Tablet [London]:
Editorial The true face of Catholicism
Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical confirms him as a man of humour, warmth, humility and compassion, eager to share the love that God “lavishes” on humanity and display it as the answer to the world’s deepest needs. On his election last spring, the former Cardinal Ratzinger was widely assumed to have as his papal agenda the hammering of heretics and a war on secularist relativism, subjects with which he was associated as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Instead he has produced a profound, lucid, poignant and at times witty discussion of the relationship between sexual love and the love of God, the fruit no doubt of a lifetime’s meditation. This is a document that presents the most attractive face of the Catholic faith and could be put without hesitation into the hands of any inquirer.
Unlike his predecessor, Benedict is not instantly comfortable as the focus of a huge crowd. But John Paul II, so charismatic in the flesh, was often hard to follow when he turned to the word. His encyclicals were wonderful intellectual journeys that repaid the great effort needed to understand them. Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est is by comparison an easy read, full of well-turned arresting sentences. “The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: ‘O, Soul!’ And Descartes would reply: ‘O, Flesh!’,” the Pope remarks. “Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature.”
About the only flaw in the English text, indeed, is its non-use of inclusive language: for “man” read “man and woman”. But he makes no other sexist point; there is no attempt to distinguish female sexual love from the male version, no flirting with the madonna-whore dichotomy, no judgemental talk of what sexual love is ordained for, nor even of exploitation and sexual sin. Men and women who leave eros in the domain of their animal natures, without regard to the spiritual, are simply told that they are missing the true greatness that God intended for them; a lost opportunity rather than the road to perdition.
The second part of the encyclical, which is said to owe something to an unfinished project of the previous Pope, ties up a loose end in Catholic social teaching by addressing the question how, in a world seeking social justice, there is still room for charity. The answer is a compelling one. But this is still Ratzinger rather than Wojtyla, with his warning that it is not for the Church to take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. “She cannot and must not replace the State,” he insists. Yet at the same time she must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. Thus is a careful line drawn with regard to efforts by Catholic prelates, most notably in the United States in the last presidential election, to tell politicians which laws they may or may not pass.
This is a remarkable, enjoyable and even endearing product of Pope Benedict’s first few months. If first encyclicals set the tone for a new papacy, then this one has begun quite brilliantly. _______________ mp
[From today's online Chronicle of Higher Education:]
A glance at the January-February issue of Academe: Statements of faith
Many private colleges today make professorships contingent upon making a statement of religious faith, but are such oaths appropriate?
Supporters of the practice defend it in part by calling colleges that embrace faith statements a healthy reflection of America's pluralism, explains Kenneth Wagner, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Radford University, a public institution in Virginia. Mr. Wagner calls them "restrictions on academic freedom," though, and says that theologically conservative associations "inhibit the building of social capital and the strengthening of civil society."
In a separate article, Peter J. Hill, a professor of economics at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal-arts institution in Illinois, writes that a faith statement is an acknowledgment of a worldview, and that secular colleges embrace worldviews just as faith-based universities do. Secular colleges, though, take as a premise that "there are no moral absolutes or organizing principles for life."
"Both positions are value-laden," says Mr. Hill, "and I think both should be options for organizing academic life."
Mr. Hill adds that faith statements do not necessarily affect scholarship, and that those who make them do so voluntarily. Mr. Wagner balks at the latter of those claims, though, saying that "you need have only a basic knowledge of the academic job market to know that many new Ph.D.'s take positions with institutions whose values they might not wholly endorse." He notes that violating such statements through pedagogy, research, or activism can be grounds for punitive action, even termination.
"What of the faculty member who comes to an institution fully subscribing to the statement of faith but who then finds a different view of the truth?" he asks. "Must this person either suppress these new ideas or resign?"
Mr. Wagner's article, "Faith Statements Do Restrict Academic Freedom," is available here.
Mr. Hill's article, "My Religious College, My Secular Profession," is available here.
Michael Perry reminded us just a few days ago (link) of the ongoing genocide in Darfur in the Sudan, while the world community continues to wring its hands (despite the promise by world governments at the end of World War II to genocide of "never again").
Three recent items may be of interest to those who wonder about the Catholic response to this ongoing crime against humanity. First, in his “State of the World” annual address to the diplomatic corps assigned to the Holy See (link), Pope Benedict XVI in speaking of about peace and forgiveness, referred to “the defenceless people of Darfur, subjected to deplorable violence, with dangerous international repercussions.” While words alone are not enough, we should not underestimate the power of religious witness in awakening conscience, as we saw with the prior Pope and his prophetic words in the face of tyranny and injustice through the world and in his native Poland.
Second, Keith Cardinal O’Brien, the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, is presently on a two week visit to the Sudan, including Darfur. To make clear that he is on a religious mission, he is wearing white robes and cardinal red during the visit. The full story is here and here. We should keep his safety in our prayers, as he also has refused to wear a flak jacket during this trip.
Finally, members of the Catholic Worker movement are planning a demonstration at the Sudan Embassy in Washington, D.C. for March 29, carrying large signs appealing for an end to genocide and displaying the victims in Darfur, with some risking arrest for civil disobedience (link). While I tend to be rather critical of those who break the law, not to protest a law that is unjust in itself (the traditional justification for civil disobedience), but to draw attention through the act of lawbreaking itself, standing against genocide and doing so in a provocative manner when public interest has been too small is about as good an argument for that tactic as I’ve seen.
The published papers from the "Pro-Life Progressivism" symposium last year at St. Thomas will be out soon, in the new issue of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal -- in a couple weeks, the editors tell me. They'll include Mark's fine piece on "The Coherence and Importance of Pro-Life Progressivism," posted on the right.
To whet your appetite, I've posted my short foreword to the symposium here (with an abstract, and the paper alone to the right). It's not a substantive argument, but a summary of some of the issues and background and of the symposium papers. (If the summary sounds interesting, ask for the book! I can pass on requests to the editors.)
Like Michael, I am so pleased and inspired to hear about the response at Yale Law School to Eduardo's Catholic Social Thought class. (During my three years at Yale, there were no law-and-religion classes -- not even from Stephen Carter -- taught).
With respect to Eduardo's question about Law & Econ:
Is it appropriate to use utilitarian analysis as part of one's process of reasoning towards the common good, or does doing so inevitably involve adopting the morally problematic underpinnings of utilitarianism, which seem to me to be wholly inconsistent with a Catholic approach?
I guess my answer would be "yes." Then again, I do not share the view of many of my friends here at MOJ that Law & Econ needs to be framed as standing in opposition to a Catholic approach. Certainly, Eduardo and I agree that utilitarianism cannot supply the fundamental moral principles that constrain our treatment of one another and that should guide our pursuit of the common good, properly understood. But I think it is not only permissible, but important, to evaluate the costs and benefits of rules and policies, if only to assist us in prudential judgments about permissible options. "Efficiency" is not the controlling principle, and being "efficient" does not excuse a policy's being contrary to human dignity. That said, there is no virtue, it seems to me, in inefficiency and waste.
In light of the posts in recent days on academic freedom and the "Vagina Monologues" at Notre Dame, and the Hochschild dust-up at Wheaton, this NRO essay, "Keeping the Faith," by J. Stanley Oakes, might be of interest. He writes:
[A] religious college that sticks to its traditions is not — or at least not automatically — guilty of intolerance. Is it really intolerance . . . when Notre Dame's new president, Rev. John Jenkins, worries that almost half of the professors at his Catholic university are non-Catholic? Doesn't the institution, at some point, morph into a different school, either secular or something else, if most of its professors reject Catholic teachings? . . .
Later, after defending religious schools that seek to preserve their religious identity, he has some criticism for Hochschild, and for those who criticized Wheaton for its decision to fire him:
In 1994, while still a Yale undergraduate, Professor Hochschild wrote an elegant and perceptive article for The Yale Free Press entitled "Corpus Yalensis," in which he portrayed Yale as little more than a corpse, with its buildings bereft of its mission. "She is destroyed," Hochschild lamented, "her spirit separated from her body. Those who remember her life are left to wonder whether her spirit could survive the separation, and, if so immortal, whether the body will admit to resurrection."
If Hochschild concluded that Yale should be criticized for abandoning its ancient purpose, one might think that he would, despite losing his job over it, stand behind Wheaton for courageously affirming its commitment to its own founding principles. Unfortunately, Hochschild doesn't see it that way. He told Golden, "I see no reason why I should be dismissed from the College upon joining the Roman Catholic church." Not so long ago, he could think of one.
I appreciate RJA S.J.'s post about the defeat in Massachusetts of the proposed church-disclosure bill. This is great news. In other great news, on the same day that the House defeated the bill, it ordered to a third reading a more worthy bill, i.e., one declaring Taj Mahal the official blues musician of Massachusetts.
It is worth noting that Gov. Romney's veto threat, and active opposition from a wide range of (non-Catholic) religious organizations, were instrumental in defeating the bill.
I didn't attend Yale Law School (though I did teach there, in 1978-79). But that's about to change. After reading Eduardo's posting below, I've decided to cancel my classes for the rest of the semester, take up residence in New Haven, and audit Eduardo's CST seminar. Anyone want to join me? (Ah, if only my fantasies--some of them, anyhow--would come true!) _______________ mp
On Monday, we had our first CST class at Yale. As I suspected, the students were almost (but not quite) exclusively active Catholics, including one ordained Jesuit priest (!). (I had joked with my wife about one of the dangers of teaching at Yale being the risk of having students with doctorates in the subject you're trying to teach. I had noticed in one of the Dean's letters that one of the second year students was a Jesuit, and I joked to my wife that he would probably end up in may class. Sure enough...) We spent a bit of time at the beginning of class talking about why it might make sense to study CST in a secular law school, as an intellectual (as opposed to devotional) endeavor. One thing that came up was the dominance of law and economics analysis in the first year curriculum, and the perception by these Catholic students that the methodology of law and economics was both unsatisfying on some level and fundamentally inconsistent with their own moral commitments. I think the hope was that studying CST might give them some alternative tools of legal analysis.
Being new to this blog, I'm wondering what others think of this point. I for one find it the hegemony of law and economics in legal scholarship very frustrating. That said, I struggle when I try to come up with better ways (particualrly in the absence of moral side-constraints) to think about how to make rational policy choices at the collective level. This seems to me to be particularly relevant to discussions about the meaning of the "common good," which comes up over and over again in CST. Clearly, the "common good" is not the same as "aggregate utility." But, as Aquinas's discussion of the need for private ownership suggests, the two are not wholly unrelated either. Is it appropriate to use utilitarian analysis as part of one's process of reasoning towards the common good, or does doing so inevitably involve adopting the morally problematic underpinnings of utilitarianism, which seem to me to be wholly inconsistent with a Catholic approach?
