Just went thru the program for the AALS Annual Meeting, and found a couple of things worth noting:
1. On Saturday, January 7 at 1:30pm the Section on Scholarship will have a panel on "Blogging: Scholarship or Distraction?" My answer to that question is "potentially scholarship, too often distraction." Some may remember the exchange Steve Bainbridge, Brian Leiter and I had about that topic about 18 mos ago (linking to all that is utterly beyond me), where I expressed optimism that blogging could be "scholarly." I remain convinced that blogging can become a preeminent means of scholarly exchange, and that MOJ is a good case in point. Too often, however, law prof blogging is merely hallway or lunchroom conversation with an electronic megaphone: a mix of valuable discussion of law and legal theory, political argument, gossip, discussions of what I had for dinner or saw at the movies, and attempts to prove who is the smartest kid in the class. Fortunately, one staple of those conversations -- what's wrong with the dean --- doesn't usually show up in the blogosphere. The panel should, however, be very interesting. Anyone know who is speaking?
2. On Friday, Jan 6 at 4:00 pm the Section on Law and Communitarian Studies will have "A Conversation About Abortion." I have no idea what that will be like, but it is intriguing. Anyone with info might want to post it.
PS John Breen's article on Catholic law schools, mentioned by Susan below, is a very useful critique of the claims of many Catholic law schools that they are adequately serving their mission.
Newsday reports on a draft Vatican document regarding communion. Predictably, the draft cautions that "[s]ome receive Communion while denying the teachings of the church or publicly supporting immoral choices in life, such as abortion, without thinking that they are committing an act of grave personal dishonesty and causing scandal." In addition:
The paper covers a range of issues related to the Eucharist: It suggests, for example, that Latin be used during international liturgical gatherings so all priests involved can understand the proceedings, and it suggests that parishes consider using more Gregorian chants to prevent more "profane" types of music from being played.
It calls for priests not to be "showmen" who draw attention to themselves and says lay people can have an important but "minimal" presence in Masses. It says the tabernacle -- which holds the bread and wine held by Catholics to be the body and blood of Christ -- should have a prominent place in the church and not be shunted off to a corner.
Most significantly, though, the document laments the fact that fewer and fewer Catholics are going to Mass on Sundays -- in some countries, only 5 percent of the faithful attend -- and that fewer Catholics are going to confession.
As a result, many Catholics are living in a state of mortal sin when they receive Communion, it said.
I'm no expert on church growth, but I'm hoping that the primary component of the Church's reevangelization strategy is not simply to tell all the Catholics who don't attend mass that they're in a state of mortal sin if and when they do show up. Put differently, perhaps we should offer a bit more carrot, a bit less stick?
We have previously blogged on the question of what it means to be a Catholic Law School, part of the larger question of what defines a Catholic University. John Allen's NCR column this week reports on a meeting of a group of presidents, trustees, administrators and faculty from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities with Archbishop Michael Miller of the Congregation for Catholic Education as well as Allen's own discussion with Miller.
Miller suggets that "it should be possible for Catholic educators to agree on some measurable "markers" of Catholic identity" that "would provide data in trying to determine how "Catholic" a given institution actually is." These benchmarks include not only concern for social justice, but: sacramental and devotional life, curriculum, percentage of Catholics among faculty, trustees, and staff, religious and doctrinal attitudes of students over time, and practice of the faith.
Obviously there is a difference in what benchmarks one might apply at the undergraduate level and those that might apply at the law school level, but the exercise ot trying to identify benchmarks is equally valuable. Regarding law schools specifically, I just received a reprint of John Breen's "Justice and Jesuit Legal Education: A Critique," 36 Loyola Univ. Chicago L.J. (2005). John argues that "the one indispensable feature that a Catholic and Jesuit law school must have in order to be deserving of the name is to bring the Catholic intellectual tradition to bear on questions of law and justice," a conclusion that would seem equally applicable to Catholic law schools that are not Jesuit.
From Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. This will be of interest to many MOJ readers.
Religion and the Liberal Polity
Terence Cuneo, ed., Religion and the Liberal Polity, University of Notre Dame Press, 2005, 280pp, $22.00 (pbk), ISBN 0268022895.
Reviewed by John J. Davenport, Fordham University
Religion and the Liberal Polity
is a collection of innovative essays from a highly distinguished group
of authors resulting from a PEW Trust seminar with Nicholas
Wolterstorff. The book is similar in quality to an earlier collection edited by Paul Weithman in 1997. Most
of the essays are successful in finding new angles on their chosen
topics, including the question of whether it is right for citizens and
officials in democratic societies to use religious beliefs as bases for
political choices or cite religious reasons in political advocacy. This
question has become familiar in political philosophy and democratic
theory since the 1990s, when an imposing list of religious thinkers --
from Weithman and Wolterstorff to Philip Quinn, Chris Eberle, Kent
Greenawalt and several others -- challenged secular-reason requirements
defended by John Rawls and Robert Audi. These
critics were motivated both by (1) the conviction that secularist
political theory is cutting itself off from powerful strands of liberal
religious conscience that helped abolish slavery and win civil rights,
and (2) that contemporary liberal theory is undermining democracy by
restricting it to inadequate epistemic sources of justification.
[To read the whole review, click here.] _______________
Thanks to Susan for linking to Bishop Skylstad's letter to President Bush regarding Supreme Court nominees. For what it's worth, I think Amy Welborn is right: The letter does not indicate an awareness that Justices are not (or, are not supposed to be) legislators. Their job (in my view) is not, for example, to "restrain[] and end[] the death penalty" (although I would, as MOJ readers know, welcome the end of the death penalty). As I see it, the job of Justices is to decide cases raising questions about the interpretation and application of legislatively enacted statutes, democratically ratified constitutional provisions, etc.
So, while I prefer public servants who "support the protection of human life from conception to natural death" to those who do not, I would hope that Bishop Skylstad and his colleagues understand the difference between, on the one hand, the claim that Roe v. Wade was an incorrect interpretation of the Constitution and that courts should therefore uphold local governments' decisions to regulate abortion, and -- on the other hand -- the claim that, because abortion and capital punishment are immoral, Justices should for that reason invalidate some laws and uphold others.
Here, by the way, is Notre Dame law professor Gerry Bradley's reaction to the letter.
Notre Dame law student Brendan Loy has lots of links up about the terrorist attacks in London.
And, a telegram sent by Cardinal Angelo Sodano states: "Deeply saddened by the news of the terrorist attacks in central London, the Holy Father offers his fervent prayers for the victims and for all those who mourn[.] . . . While he deplores these barbaric acts against humanity, he asks you to convey to the families of the injured his spiritual closeness at this time of grief. . . . Upon the people of Great Britain, he invokes the consolation that only God can give in such circumstances[.]"
Here is a story about the arrest of Bishop Jia Zhiguo, the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Zheng Ding in Hebei province. A reminder, I suppose, about how blessed we are, in terms of religious freedom, and about what really matters in the effort to preserve and spread that freedom.
Here is the letter sent by the BIshop Skylstad, current president of the USCCB, to President Bush regarding the qualities the should be considered in selecting replacement for Justice O'Connor. Over at Open Book, Amy Welborn asks whether the letter is helpful or whether it "make[s] the bishops sound as if they think the Supreme Court is a legislative body?"
Thanks to Melissa Rogers, of Wake Forest University, for passing on this link to an "OnPoint" radio program, "Keeping the Faith," discussing Noah Feldman's new book, "Divided By God."
Christoph Cardinal Schonborn published an op-ed in today's New York Times, "Finding Design in Nature," about the teaching of the Catholic Church and "neo-Darwinism." Here is a bit:
The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.
