Regarding the question of how to pursue questions of Catholic social thought in the law classroom, I should have mentioned my current effort earlier this semester. I am for the first time teaching a seminar titled "The Metaphysics and Jurisdiction of Sovereignty." Over nearly ten years of teaching Federal Courts I discovered more and more deeply the (obvious) fact that through doctrines of sovereign immunity exceedingly profound questions are being asked and answered in quotidian rules of jurisdiction and suability. And the Court is today re-writing those rules and thus giving those questions new answers. Those new answers include (to me) startling claims on behalf of the "dignity," even the sovereign dignity," of the states. The Federal Courts course did not provide a proper forum for tracing and probing the political science, history, theology, and philosophy that are at work here (or should be at work). The new seminar allows students to see how -- pace the rhetoric one sometimes hears-- even "mere" rules of jurisdiction and suability have deep theoretical content and philosophically challengeable consequences. The readings include the leading S.Ct. cases in sovereign immunity and the 11th amendment, and these span more than two centuries. Other decisions of the Court bearing on sov. imm. are also included; e.g., Ex parte Young. The secondary sources include Bodin, Hobbes, the Federalist, James Wilson, O. v. Gierke, J. Maritain, H. Laski, W.J. Stankiewicz, Judge Noonan, C. Pierson, E. Young, R. Fallon, A. Althouse, P. Kahn, J. Resnik, and S. Sherry. The bringing together of such varied perspectives on the relations among rights, remedies, and "the state" (a "public service corporation" (Laski) or an entity possessed of "sovereign dignity" (SCOTUS)) has so far proved productive of very engaged discussion. Claims of dignity get and sustain attention -- which, of course, is the Court's point, and mine too. We'll see how the rest of the semester goes.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Dignity in the classroom
Monday, October 17, 2005
Charitable Donations and Individual Responsibility
The Christian Century reports:
As Americans set new records for charitable giving in response to Hurricane Katrina, some fund-raisers are seeing a principle confirmed: when the sufferers are perceived as innocent victims, donors respond generously.
But giving patterns suggest that donors are losing interest in chronic problems such as poverty, in which suffering is arguably exacerbated by questionable individual choices. Private donations are shrinking for homeless shelters, AIDS-related services and programs for troubled youth, to cite just a few examples.
Read the full story. If this trend is true, it seems to me that it reflects a failure to make an important distinction between (1) a program that helps people with problems and suffering that are in part the result of their own individual irresponsibility or bad habits, and (2) a program that helps people with such problems and suffering but doesn't work at changing the irresponsible habits. I'm quite happy to happy to say that we should be leery of supporting programs in category #2 because they're not likely to produce long-term changes. The issue there is long-term effectiveness. But it is a different matter to withhold support even from programs that do try to help change individual habits, simply because the individual needing help got himself/herself into the situation in part irresponsibly. The reason for withholding support to that category of programs, it seems to me, is not a desire for effectiveness; it's a simple inclination to punish. (And unless the persons' past acts have been criminal, punishment is not the appropriate, or the Christian, tack to take.)
Tom
Natural Law and the Minnesota Vikings
I never thought I'd have the occasion to use that headline, but Jonathan Watson has given me the perfect opportunity with his response to my earlier post on the Vikings' "love boat" exploits:
Natural law is ineradicable. The disgust and / or horror caused by descriptions of such events is an innate reaction, which I would argue is true to our status as created beings. It fades because individuals are taught in this culture that it is "natural" for people to engage in such actions, and proceed to argue themselves out of their own feelings on the matter. The media, sensing the loss of interest, quickly drops the topic and seeks other fascinations (the opposite of the early media's yellow journalism and muckraking, I would add).
The "poor role model for children" argument is consistently raised when public figures engage in sexual misconduct, and I suggest that it is through the inability to describe the reaction I previously noted. As you mentioned, religious, moral / theological, and / or philosophical language (in no particular order) provides the best mode to convey such feelings, and the majority of the public has lost the ability to communicate effectively in this manner. Therefore, "for the children" being a common argument for engaging in all sorts of activity (including, but by no means limited to, abortion), it seems to be used as the base mode of verbal expression.
Watson also recommends Kathryn Jean Lopez's timely article on Outrage on NRO.
Rob
Martin Marty on Harriet Miers, the Supreme Court, and All That
Sightings 10/17/05
Running the Show
Martin E. Marty
This is not a column about who should be on the U. S. Supreme Court. It is about how various religious groups in pluralist America, this time particularly the agents of the Christian Right, conceive their contributions and hoped-for payoffs. It is occasioned by the stream of reports in print and voicings on talk radio from enraged members of this Right, who feel betrayed because they did not all get a candidate who would declare him- or herself on controversial Court issues.
David D. Kirkpatrick in the New York Times quoted a friendly expert, Professor David Green, who said of Christian conservatives that "they kind of expect to be betrayed. They see themselves as an embattled minority. They feel the culture is moving in the wrong direction ... they half expect to lose" ("The Crisis of the Bush Code," October 9). Marvin Olasky, editor of an evangelical magazine, says that "a whole lot of evangelical conservatives were eager for a rumble, to really fight it out with the devilish Dems," and now instead they have to fight each other about strategies and their place and fate.
The perception that Christian conservatives are an "embattled minority" will strike many as strange. In contrast to all other religious minorities, they "have" the Senate and the House, the White House and many agencies of foreign policy, and want to have -- and almost do have -- the Supreme Court. Can Catholics, mainline Protestants, African-American Protestants, Jews, Mormons, or any others match them for influence? We may be seeing in their frustration the education of this largest, most potent "minority" as it comes to understand the limits of its still very, very strong influence.
A history lesson: Catholics got "their" president in 1960, but got little out of it. Their bishops issue forthright statements on nuclear arms, the economy, and capital punishment, and get zero response. And they haven't gotten to "run the show" under the national political tent. African Americans and other racial minorities won much in the Civil Rights movement, 1954-1965, but the Kennedy brothers and Lyndon B. Johnson most of the time moved grudgingly and trudgingly; African Americans did not get to run the show. Jews, through lobbies, have tremendous influence in foreign policy respecting Israel, but not on any other parts of their programs. They don't get to run the show. Mainline Protestants might have run the show in an earlier century -- but even while, in their mid-twentieth-century prime of activism, they may have contributed to change, they were easily overlooked and bypassed in the halls of power, and were not able to run the show.
"Running the show" is a way of saying that a religious group seeks to call the tunes, hold the vetoes, overwhelm other religious groups (and "secular" forces), and have their religious motifs privileged in public places, etc. In the nineteenth century there was an earlier "Christian Party in Politics," but it, too, was frustrated. James Madison pretty well described an America in which no interest, faction, or sect would get to run the show (see References, below). If a group reached too far, others would thwart it.
Lord Acton's cliché about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely still has relevance. Though "others" have not organized against the "embattled minority," pluralism itself may act as a check.
References:
James Madison, Federalist Paper X: "A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy [meaning the federal republic]; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source"; Federalist Paper LI: "In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects."
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Men Behaving Badly
Is it possible to have a scandal based on consensual sex in a culture where consensual sex is deemed inherently non-scandalous? Apparently it is, but it's not clear why. NFL fans have undoubtedly heard news of the Minnesota Vikings' recent "sex party." For those who live around the Twin Cities, the story has dominated local news for a full week. The public and media reactions to the party have been pure outrage -- how could these well-paid professionals engage in this sort of conduct?
What's intriguing to me is that no one really explains why this is so outrageous in today's culture. We know something is wrong with what happened, but it's difficult to put into words when those words have been largely jettisoned by society. A local columnist noticed today that "[e]veryone sputters with outrage, but no one really articulates why. When pressed, people generally mutter something about the Vikings being poor role models for our kids."
A group of professional football players chartered boats stocked with liquor and may have hired prostitutes for a party closed to the public. Laws may have been broken, but that has limited explanatory power, as athletes' drunk driving convictions and domestic violence arrests fall quickly off the media radar. No one was forced to engage in sexual conduct. No children were involved. Booze, sex, and consenting adults -- outside the Vikings' party boat, that's the recipe for success for many current cultural phenomena, ranging from hugely popular television shows to vacation destinations. Who are we to complain now? More particularly, what exactly are we complaining about?
Rob
Euthanasia in New Orleans
This report (CNN.com) certainly is troubling:
Three days after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, staff members at the city's Memorial Medical Center had repeated discussions about euthanizing patients they thought might not survive the ordeal, according to a doctor and nurse manager who were in the hospital at the time.
The Louisiana attorney general's office is investigating allegations that mercy killings occurred and has requested that autopsies be performed on all 45 bodies taken from the hospital after the storm.
This part of the story caught my attention:
[Fran] Butler [a nurse manager] also told CNN that a doctor approached her at one point and discussed the subject of putting patients to sleep, and "made the comment to me on how she was totally against it and wouldn't do it."
Butler said she did not see anyone perform a mercy killing, and she said because of her personal beliefs, she would never have participated.
I am confident that I share Ms. Butler's "personal beliefs," and I am glad that they would have prevented her from participating in euthanizing patients. Still, it is interesting that Ms. Butler cited her "personal beliefs," rather than the homicide laws of Louisiana.
Vatican education secretary to speak at ND
This should be good:
Archbishop J. Michael Miller, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, will present the 2005 Terrence Keeley Vatican Lecture at 8 p.m. Oct. 31 (Monday) in the Hesburgh Center
auditorium at the University of Notre Dame.
Sponsored by Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the lecture, titled “Reflections: The Relationship between the Vatican
and American and European Catholic Universities,” is free and open to the public.
Archbishop Miller, who is the Vatican’s chief authority on issues of higher education in the world, will address Notre Dame’s concerns and provide insight into Pope Benedict XVI’s recent statements about the growing dangers of secularization in Europe.
Archbishop Miller formerly served as president of the University
of St. Thomas in Houston. Before assuming the presidency in 1997, he served as chair of the university’s Department of Theology, dean of the School of Theology, and vice president of academic affairs. He has been a member of the Basilian Fathers since 1965.
Guest-bloggers debate same-sex marriage
The Volokh Conspiracy is hosting Maggie Gallagher (con) and (lawprof) Dale Carpenter (pro) for guest-blogging stints on same-sex marriage.
Rick
Sunday, October 16, 2005
"Crunchy-Cons"
I cannot help it . . . I am intrigued by, and attracted to, this book (by Rod Dreher) and its thesis (and, I admit, its title): "Crunchy-Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)." I'm too lazy to home-school (even though I think it's probably best), I think "organic" is code for "covered with small bits of fecal matter," I hate the smell of Patchouli (which I associate with Birkenstocks); I love Starbucks, the Cheesecake Factory, and the mass-marketing of good beer; but I think that Dreher is on to something.
Here is a Dreher essay, from three years ago, introducing the "crunchy cons" idea. And, here is an excerpt from the book:
Kim Anderson (not her real name) lives with her petroleum-engineer husband and their eight homeschooled children in Midland, Tex., the hometown of President Bush. They are serious Calvinists who get their crunchy-con marching orders from the first principle of the Westminster Catechism: The purpose of a man's life is "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Says Anderson, "That enjoyment of God is not just for when we get to heaven. What are we to do with ourselves while we're here? We don't have a longing to return to the Fifties, or some past era. We just long for God and His ways, and are trying to figure out how to live our lives to go along with that."
For the Andersons, taking faith seriously means living and raising children in a more radical way than most churchgoers. It is no accident that they are converts to a more rigorous form of Presbyterianism. As you talk to religious crunchy cons, you find a surprising number who are religious converts of one sort or another, many of them to traditional Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. What they have in common is a craving for an older, more demanding kind of religion, a faith with backbone that stands against the softness of bourgeois Christianity. . .
The crunchy cons, religious or not, share a belief that something has gone seriously wrong in contemporary mass society, and are grasping for "authenticity" (a word you hear often from this group) amid a raging flood of media-driven consumer culture. . .
A view of the material world as fundamentally flawed but fundamentally good, and therefore to be revered, embraced, and celebrated within limits, is a key crunchy-right concept. Crunchy cons, even the non- religious ones, take this sacramental idea seriously, which leads them to beliefs and attitudes (stereo)typically associated with liberals. . . .
In the crunchy-con view, right-wing indifference to natural beauty extends to the man-made world. Today's conservatives don't say enough about the importance of aesthetic standards. Ugly suburban architecture, lousy food, chain restaurants, bad beer, and scorn for the arts are defended by many rank-and-file Republicans as signs of populist authenticity, as opposed to the "elitist" notion that aesthetics matter. In previous generations, it was taken for granted among conservatives that cultivating taste was a worthwhile, even necessary pursuit in building civilization. Nowadays, talking like that in front of a number of right-wingers will get you denounced as a snob. . .
Though they share with many liberals a critical interest in aesthetics and the environment, a key difference between crunchy cons and the Left is the emphasis placed on these issues. Leftists tend to absolutize their tastes and convictions, look upon people who don't share them as morally deficient, and seek to impose them on an unwilling community. Crunchy cons, on the other hand, are more inclined to think simply that they've found a neat way to live, and want only to propose it to others. . . .
While crunchy cons would stop well short of imputing moral inferiority to those who don't share their own tastes in architecture, trees, or foodstuff, they would also say that it's a serious mistake to think of these issues as mere matters of taste. A child who grows up in a neighborhood built for human beings, not cars, may think of man's relation to his world differently from one raised amid the throwaway utilitarianism of strip-mall architecture. One's sensitivity to and desire for beauty, and its edifying qualities of order, harmony, "sweetness and light," has consequences for the character of individuals and ultimately for civilization. It's perilous to forget that.
You may be saying, "God save us from these Brie-eating bobos, who have the money to indulge their snobbish tastes and want to inflict them on the rest of us." But most crunchy cons are different from bobos — David Brooks's bourgeois bohemians — in part because they tend not to have a lot of money. Which brings us to the fourth big area that sets crunchy cons apart: their ideas about family.
Many religious crunchy cons have large families because they believe large families are a positive good. This usually means the mother, who is often highly educated, forgoes a career to stay home with the children — and possibly even homeschools them. . .
One does find that most crunchy cons are at least uneasy being fully open with both right-wing and left-wing friends. Some say they avoid talking about politics with liberal friends, because sooner or later someone will say, "How could a nice fellow like you be such a fascist?" On the other hand, to discuss the case for regulating sprawl or the deep pleasures of Humboldt Fog cheese around many conservatives is to set yourself up for knee-jerk mockery. Crunchy cons wish their fellow Republicans would show tolerance for diversity within their own ranks.
"I don't want a McExistence bought in a strip mall and a mega-mart, but that doesn't mean I disparage those who like the comfort and regularity of suburbia. The problem is many GOPers view anything not embraced by the GOP mainstream as suspect," says Kerry Hardy, 33, a D.C. libertarian. "Western civilization is not threatened by people eating tofu or wearing tie-dye, and if the GOP mouthpieces stopped acting as if it were and stopped a priori judging those who do to be liberals, they might find that many of them are on their side."
And not only on their side, but ready with something to teach them about ways to live more fully within the conservative tradition. . .
Rick
THE STEM CELL CONTROVERSY
[This is well worth reading.]
New York Times
October 16, 2005
Scientists Devise Stem Cell Methods to Ease Concern
By NICHOLAS WADE
In a development that may shift the political debate over embryonic stem cells, researchers have devised two new techniques designed to alleviate ethical concerns.
In one, the cells are derived without the need to destroy an embryo, the principal objection of abortion opponents who have strenuously opposed federal financing of the research. The other technique makes skin cells revert to the embryonic state in a way that prevents the embryo from implanting in the uterus. Both are described in today's online edition of Nature.
The technique for making embryonic stem cells without compromising the embryo was developed in mice and has yet to be adapted to humans, but the two species are very similar at this level of embryonic development. "I can't think of a reason why the technique would not theoretically work" in people, said Brigid M. Hogan, an embryologist at Duke University.
If it does work in people, the technique could divide the pro-life movement into those who accept or reject in vitro fertilization, because the objection to deriving human embryonic stem cells would come to rest on creating the embryos in the first place, not on their destruction.
"This gets around all of the ethical arguments except for that small minority of the pro-life community that doesn't even support in vitro fertilization," said Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, whose Web site describes him as "a pro-life legislator."
Until now, the only way of deriving human embryonic stem cells has been to break open the embryo before it implants in the uterus, a stage at which it is called a blastocyst, and take out the inner cell mass, whose cells will form all the tissues of the future infant.
Although the blastocysts used in the procedure are ones that fertility clinics have rejected for implantation, opponents of abortion say destruction of any embryo is wrong. Congress has forbidden the use of federal funds for any such research, and federally supported scientists can work with only a small number of existing lines of embryonic stem cells that have been exempted from this stricture by President Bush.
Robert Lanza and colleagues at Advanced Cell Technology, a biotechnology company in Worcester, Mass., have now developed an alternative way of generating embryonic stem cells that leaves the embryo viable.
At the eight-cell stage, reached by a fertilized mouse egg after its third division and just before the blastocyst is formed, they removed one cell. They then coaxed that cell, known as a blastomere, into growing in glassware and forming cells that have all the same essential properties as embryonic stem cells derived from the inner cell mass, Dr. Lanza's team reported.
The seven-cell embryo was implanted in the mouse uterus and grew successfully to term. That part of the procedure is known to work with humans too, because it is the basis of a well-established test known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. In the test, one cell is removed from each of a set of embryos and tested for any of 150 genetic defects, giving the parents the choice of implanting an embryo that is disease free.
Dr. Lanza's technique is likely to be welcomed by many in the middle of the debate, although it has not won over the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Richard M. Doerflinger, its deputy director for pro-life activities, dismissed the technique, saying that pre-implantation genetic diagnosis itself is unethical. The technique "is done chiefly to select out genetically imperfect embryos for discarding, and poses unknown risks of future harm even to the child allowed to be born," he said in an e-mail message.
Only a procedure that generated embryonic stem cells without creating or destroying embryos "would address the Catholic Church's most fundamental moral objection to embryonic stem cell research as now pursued," Mr. Doerflinger said in testimony last December to the President's Council on Bioethics.
. . . Markus Grompe, a leading stem cell scientist and a Roman Catholic who supports the church's teaching on the unacceptability of destroying embryos, praised the Lanza approach, provided that the extracted blastomere could not develop into an embryo all by itself. "I find it clearly less objectionable than the outright destruction of the embryo," said Dr. Grompe, who studies liver stem cells at the Oregon Health and Science University.
In response to Dr. Grompe's reservation, Dr. Lanza said that individual human blastomeres had never been shown to create viable embryos. The reason is that by the eight-cell stage, each blastomere is probably committed to becoming either the outer shell of the blastocyst, which later forms the placenta, or the inner cell mass, which forms the fetus. Only the fertilized egg and the two-cell and perhaps four-cell stages retain the ability to form all the placental and embryonic tissues, Dr. Lanza said.
[There's more. To read the whole article, click here.]
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