Readers -- who know well how often we have talked, here at MOJ, about "Catholic identity" issues at Catholic universities -- might be interested in this article, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Coming Out of the Catholic Closet: Gay Professors Strive -- some more than others -- for acceptance at Roman Catholic Colleges." (Snark coming: I wonder if the Chronicle has any interest in how Catholic professors fare in their efforts to gain "acceptance" at non-Catholic colleges? Alright. Snark done. Check out the article).
Monday, December 12, 2005
"Coming Out of the Catholic Closet"
NPR on the Statute of Limitations and the Diocesan Bankruptcies
Here is a link to the NPR "Talk of the Nation" broadcast today on this topic. Penn's David Skeel, a great bankruptcy law expert with an interest in law and religion, has interesting comments on the diocesan bankruptcies in Portland, Spokane, and Tucson. The host allowed me to get out my points on the suspension of the SoL, so I won't repeat them here. The host's point of view on all this will be obvious. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5049098
--Mark
"Learning to Love Sprawl"
Here is a worth-reading review by Glenn Reynolds of Robert Bruegmann's new book, "Sprawl: A Compact History." (The Other Professor Garnett -- a property and land-use scholar -- is also working on a review, I hear . . . ). Here's how it opens:
Everybody knows some things about sprawl: It's a recent, and largely American phenomenon; it encourages wasteful use of resources; it's aesthetically unpleasant; and it benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. We also know that it could be conquered if Americans just gave up their "love affair with the automobile" and favored mass transit.
Everybody knows these things, but Robert Bruegmann's new book, Sprawl: A Compact History, argues that they're untrue.
Sprawl isn't recent, says Bruegmann. Rich people have always wanted to sprawl:
"Ancient, medieval, and early modern literature is filled with stories of the elegant life of a privileged aristocracy living for large parts of the year in villas and hunting lodges at the periphery of large cities. . . . High density, from the time of Babylon until recently, was the great urban evil, and many of the wealthiest or most powerful citizens found ways to escape it at least temporarily."
Sprawl didn't become a problem until the wealthy and powerful were joined by the hoi polloi. Thanks to greater wealth and improvements in transportation, they were able to move from teeming tenements to less-urban settings. Once this started to happen -- before the automobile hit the scene, and beginning outside the United States -- social critics began to complain that sprawl was ruining pristine landscapes, and destroying the charm of urban life.
As I have said (too) many times on this blog, I am an urbanist who agrees with Philip Bess that human beings flourish in walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods and who is put off by arguments and elitism of many urbanists and who really loves big-box retail and high-end chain restaurants. It sounds to me like Reynolds and Bruegmann are on to something . . . .
New York marriage decision
Readers might be interested in this post by Professor Althouse, commenting on a recent decision (Hernandez v. Robles) by a New York intermediate appellate court, reversing a trial court's decision that "would have authorized gay marriage in New York City." (Here is NYT coverage). Althouse writes:
Here's a key passage, showing the kind of deference to the legislature -- rather than enthusiasm for heterosexual marriage -- that pervades the opinion:
The role of the courts is "to recognize rights that are supported by the Constitution and history, but the power to create novel rights is reserved for the people through the democratic and legislative processes." Deprivation of legislative authority, by judicial fiat, to make important, controversial policy decisions prolongs divisiveness and defers settlement of the issue; it is a miscarriage of the political process involved in considering such a policy change....
Interestingly, the court at this point cites an article written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, "Speaking in a Judicial Voice," which it characterizes as "urging a measured approach in judicial decisionmaking and citing in contrast the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision, which prematurely ended the political process for legislative change on the abortion issue and resulted in protracted controversy."
Intelligent Design in the Eyes of the Jesuit Director of the Vatican Observatory
"Creationist notions of intelligent design diminish God. Instead we should see his love for the infinitely evolving universe as like that of a parent allowing a growing child to make its own choices and go its own way in life"
Check out this piece in the current issue of The Tablet [London]: click here.
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Arkes on Dershowitz on Rights
Here is a review, by Hadley Arkes, of Alan Dershowitz's latest, "Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origin of Rights" (thanks to Philip Bess for the heads-up). Arkes notes:
Professor Dershowitz has taken it, as the thesis threading through this work, that there are in fact no such moral principles that form the ground of our judgments. He claims to find the standards of practical judgment in a mix of considerations he calls "utilitarian," but he emphatically denies that there are "moral truths" that stand behind these judgments. He professes himself to be "(God forgive me) a moral relativist," and a "skeptic" in moral matters. A moral skeptic denies that there are knowable truths. The relativist denies those truths from another angle by insisting that there are no objective truths, only standards that are "relative" to persons and places. "Nevertheless," says Dershowitz, "I believe strongly in the concept of rights." A concept of "rights"—but with no supporting truths that can explain why they are rightful, and why the rest of us should respect them. . . .
Jeremy Bentham regarded natural rights as "nonsense on stilts," and Dershowitz hauls out the banner of Bentham as he, too, denies natural rights: "[H]uman beings have no singular nature…. We are creatures of accidental forces who have no preordained destiny or purpose." The founders had looked to the "laws of Nature and of Nature's God" as the source of natural rights. But Dershowitz reserves his deepest contempt for the notion that we were "endowed by our Creator with rights," for he denies insistently, stridently, the notion of a God who disclosed a scheme of moral truths. For Dershowitz these things are packed into a complete, repellent package: vast evils in the world have been carried out by those zealots who claim to know the truths disclosed by God. They claim to know absolute truths and to have a "monopoly" on the truth. They have produced religious wars and the Inquisition. Leaning on the Bible, they have defended slavery, denied the rights of homosexuals, and rejected even the right of a woman to control her body through abortion. Without a hint of doubt, without any flagging of certitude on his own part, Dershowitz flatly asserts that "there are no divine laws of morality, merely human laws claiming the authority of God." Of course, in his own writing, Dershowitz has often invoked the parables of rabbis and made much of his persona as a Jewish intellectual. But the God of Israel is the Creator who authored the laws of physics and a moral law. To deny that God the Creator is also a legislator of the moral law is essentially to deny the God of the whole, the God known to the Jews.
Dershowitz's proposal, in a nutshell is that -- because we do not (and cannot) know things that are "right" in principle -- we should (quoting Arkes) "make [our] way to moral judgments . . . by beginning with the things that are 'wrong.'" Arkes assesses the project, but concludes:
[W]e find a massive begging of the question, and a theory that is constantly chasing its own tail: rights are derived from the awareness of "wrongs." But if we have no ground for identifying rights, we have no clearer ground for knowing "wrongs." We could appeal to standards of utility, but only after we explain just who are the persons whose interests and injuries count. And if there are no grounds for insisting that all human beings count, then utility would seem to offer merely a formula for the Right of the Strong: those with the power to have their will accepted as law will decide just who, among us, have lives that count. . . .
Arkes also notes:
Alan Dershowitz is an accomplished man of the law, but it would be hard to assemble a thicker compilation of mistakes about natural law than he has brought together in this slim book, in an ongoing diatribe against natural law. Every cliché is here, every sophomoric point of cleverness, without much awareness of the way these arguments have been addressed in the literature, or with no awareness of how thoroughly wrong, or even upside down, these arguments happen to be.
There's a lot more. Check it out.
"Everything that is most hateful about religion"
We've been hearing about the "Christmas wars" . . . now here come the "Narnia wars." Recently, in the Guardian, Polly Toynbee wrote ("Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion"):
Most British children will be utterly clueless about any message beyond the age-old mythic battle between good and evil. Most of the fairy story works as well as any Norse saga, pagan legend or modern fantasy, so only the minority who are familiar with Christian iconography will see Jesus in the lion. After all, 43% of people in Britain in a recent poll couldn't say what Easter celebrated. Among the young - apart from those in faith schools - that number must be considerably higher. Ask art galleries: they now have to write the story of every religious painting on the label as people no longer know what "agony in the garden", "deposition", "transfiguration" or "ascension" mean. This may be regrettable cultural ignorance, but it means Aslan will stay just a lion to most movie-goers.
Can it really be true that "43% of people in Britain . . . couldn't say what Easter celebrated"? Or, am I off-base in being so surprised? In any event, after re-capping the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Toynbee says (among other . . . bracing things):
Over the years, [many] have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".
Hmm. I wonder why Ms. Toynbee is so confident that Christ should "surely" be no lion. (In any event -- and she might not know this -- there is "lamb" imagery in the third Narnia book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). By the way, there is (I think) a "law point" here: As we see time and again, one challenge in enforcing a constitutional prohibition on "endorsements" or "establishments" of religion is identifying precisely what it is that certain symbols or symbolic acts mean, and to whom? But back to Toynbee:
[H]ere in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. . . . The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.
Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, "There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory." Well, here's my huff.
Lewis said he hoped the book would soften-up religious reflexes and "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life". Holiness drenches the Chronicles. When, in the book, the children first hear someone say, mysteriously, "Aslan is on the move", he writes: "Now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had enormous meaning ..." So Lewis weaves his dreams to invade children's minds with Christian iconography that is part fairytale wonder and joy - but heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.
Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass. Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan.
I suppose it is always good to encounter and engage views that seem so alien (and, to me, mean-spirited). I'm one of those who loved (and loves) the Narnia stories. (And, I prefer -- I admit -- Aslan to the cheesy "Jesus as my baseball teammate" pictures that some kids had when I was growing up). But, it is clear that I read very different books -- beautiful, evocative, mysterious, romantic, life-affirming, humanist books -- than did Ms. Toynbee.
For a different take, by the way, check out Michael Nelson's piece in The Chronicle Review ("For the Love of Narnia"), which responds to Pullman and other Narnia-critics.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Capital Punishment Revisited (Again)
[Anyone interested in continuing this discussion? I posted these comments just before Thanksgiving.]
Thanks to Rick, Tom, and Patrick for their comments.
This is what I have learned from
E. Christian Brugger, who wrote his book—Capital
Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition (Notre Dame, 2003)--under the
watchful eye of no less a master than John Finnis.
1. The traditional position of the Roman Catholic Church has been that one
may never intentionally kill an *innocent* human being.
2. John Paul II’s position was more radical: One may never intentionally kill a human being. The “innocent” has dropped out.
3.
Why may one never intentionally kill any human being (according to John
Paul)? Because to do so is to act contrary to the charity we are called
to have for every human being.
5. The Church’s (i.e., the
magisterium’s) position on capital punishment is in a state of
transition—and, as it now stands, is incoherent. The
Catechism tells us that the state may use capital punishment only
if
necessary to do so for reasons of self-defense. Why incoherent?
Because to engage in a legitimate act of self-defense is never
intentionally to kill a human being, but to execute a criminal is
always intentionally to kill a human being.
As I said, this is what I learned
from Brugger’s book. I wish that Rick,
Patrick, Tom, and I—and anyone else interested—could read the book together in
a discussion group. What a fruitful
discussion that would be!
As Rick knows, my own views on
capital punishment do not presuppose that John Paul was right in his belief
that one may never intentionally kill a human being. But that’s a story for another day.
Finally, about the retributive
theory of punishment. I stand by what I
said in my earlier posting. Having read
Patrick’s posting, it seems that I stand with Michael Moore on this.
But let’s move past that point to
the following inquiry: I assume that
Rick and Patrick do not believe that the retributive theory of punishment could
justify torturing a criminal (i.e., torturing him as punishment, not as a
method of interrogation). Why, then,
should we think that the retributive theory could justify executing a criminal? Is it because torturing him necessarily
violates his inherent dignity but executing him does not? (If so, it would seem that the inherent
dignity of every human being is a limit on what would otherwise be justifiable
according to the retributive theory, yes?) But why does executing him not violate his inherent dignity?
Rick’s suggestion (in an e-mail to
me) is this: “[An adequate]
justification [for capital punishment is] supplied by the need to communicate
adequately the magnitude of [the convict’s] wrong and to redress the disorder
caused by his offense.” But I suspect
that few of us would agree that of the available punishments for even the most
depraved crimes, only capital punishment
can “communicate adequately the magnitude of the wrong and redress the disorder
caused by the offense.” Have all the
jurisdictions that have forsaken capital punishment—Michigan,
for example, or England—thereby
forsaken their only means of
communicating adequately the magnitude of the wrong and of redressing the
disorder caused by the offense? Is that
a plausioble position? Is it plausible
to believe that the only way to restore the disorder caused by some heinous
murders is by killing—executing—the murderers? Isn’t it at least as plausible to believe that killing the murderers obscures the magnitude of the wrong they
did rather than communicates it, by obscuring the value of human life—of every human life? That is the position of the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops in their recent statement of opposition to the
death penalty.
So,
I agree with Michael Moore and
disagree with Rick and Patrick on the retributive theory of punishment.
But even if I were to agree with Rick and
Patrick on that issue, I would still disagree with their claim that the
retributive
theory of punishment can justify capital punishment. I agree with the
bishops' (implicit) claim, in their recent statement, that it cannot.
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Should the Statute of Limitations on Sexual Abuse of Minors Be Suspended?
This is the big question in Philly right now after the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report produced no indictments. The criminal statute of limitations cannot be suspended; the retroactive effect would be unconstitutional. But the civil statute can, as it was in California in 2003. Here is a recent Philadelphia Inquirer story describing the possibility of a suspension here in PA:http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/13320393.htm
I will be discussing this issue on NPR's Talk of the Nation this Monday, Dec.12 around 3pm. I'll try to blog my views on this question afterwards.
This issue has been attracting a lot of attention in the popular press. A recent editorial by the Inquirer columnist, Tom Feerick, a very angry critic of the Archdiocese, offers the intriguing idea that the concern over size of potential liabilities be addressed by not permitting punitive damages in the suits brought during the suspension period. Would that help -- ie, reduce the size of potential settlements? Could the legislature attach such a condition? Thoughts welcome. Here's the editorial: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/tom_ferrick/13345073.htm
-- Mark
Friday, December 9, 2005
Closed for Christmas (part II)
On MoJ we've often discussed the tendency of American society to elevate the nuclear family over broader conceptions of community. I don't mean to belabor the story of megachurches closing for Christmas Sunday, but I can't resist after reading the New York Times coverage. First, the granddaddy of all evangelical megachurches, Willow Creek outside Chicago, seems to be reveling in its ability to think outside the box:
Staff members at Willow Creek said they had had few complaints from members about the church closing on Christmas. Said the Rev. Mark Ashton, whose title is pastor of spiritual discovery: "We've always been a church that's been on the edge of innovation. We've been willing to try and experiment, so this is another one of those innovations."
Second, even the churches who have simply cut back on the number of services offered on Christmas are offering some perplexing explanations:
"We're encouraging our members to do a family worship," Bishop Long said. "They could wake up and read Scripture and pray and sometimes sing a song, and go over the true meaning of what Christmas is, before opening up their gifts. It keeps them together and not running off to get dressed up to go off to church."
His church offers streaming video of the Sunday service, and Bishop Long said he expected a spike in viewers this Christmas. "They have an option if they want to join their family around the computer and worship with us," he said.
So the church is just a convenient collection of worshipping family units? If the technology allows it, there's no reason why one worshipping family needs to go to the hassle of assembling with other worshipping families. I guess someone should tell the Christians in China that their lives would be a lot easier if they started being more "innovative."
Rob
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