I just returned from the “Foundation of Freedom” conference,
held in Portland, Oregon, and co-sponsored by the University of Portland’s new Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture and Notre Dame’s Center for
Ethics and Culture. (Portand is – putting aside its difficulties with euthanasia, heavy-handed
land-use regulation, unchurchedness, and clouds – a wonderful and attractive
town.) The conference was a stimulating
and enjoyable event, and I think the Garaventa Center is going to do important
things, and facilitate much-need work and conversations, in the years to come.
The opening lecture was given by the Hon. John T. Noonan, who needs no introduction. His address, “Transparency in Theology: The
Necessary Condition for Catholic Theology,” both re-presented and expanded
upon, in an accessible way, his work – including his recent book – on the
development of doctrine. Judge and Mrs. Noonan, by the way, are wonderful people, who were nice enough to stick around for, and participate in, the full two-day conference.
The next morning, I attended one of four available
programs, Dr. Ralph McInerny’s paper, “Freedom Is Not Enough.” The talk was a real tour de force. I couldn’t
help thinking – as Professor McInerny moved from Fr. Dowling to Boswell to Dante to
Dostoyevsky to St. Thomas to Sarte to Henry James to Auden – that “they don’t make them like him
anymore.” At the heart of the rich talk
was a theme that we’ve engaged, time and again on this blog, namely, the
meaning and implications of authentic human freedom, which is, he argued, "freedom for," and not just "freedom from."
After a break, I sat in on “A Conversation with the
Presidents,” featuring Fr. William Byron, S.J. (a former president of at least
three Catholic institutions of higher education); Fr. William Beauchamp,
C.S.C., longtime senior administrator at Notre Dame and now president at the
University of Portland; and Fr. David Tyson, C.S.C., former president of the
University of Portland and now provincial for his religious community. The conversation, at first, was a bit diffuse
and tentative, but it eventually found its way to what I regard as a crucial
challenge for all those engaged in the project of building and sustaining
Catholic institutions, namely, identifying both the nature or “good” of a
university and the implications of a university’s status as, or aspiration to
be, “Catholic.”
After mass and lunch, I presented a paper, “Changing
Minds: Evangelism, Proselytism, and
Religious Freedom,” in which I try to shed some light on the “proselytism
problem” by drawing on themes running through the Supreme Court’s First
Amendment decisions and also on the work – particularly Redemptoris mission – of the late Holy Father, John Paul II. As part of the same program, Prof. David
Cochran gave a talk, “Catholicism, Pluralism, and Democracy in America" that would have warmed most MOJ hearts, focusing as it did on the claim that
true pluralism emerges not from state-enforced indifferentism or hyper-individualism,
but from a rich and diverse civil society. (Cochran is the author of "Catholics, Politics, and Public Policy: Beyond Left and Right (Orbis 2003)).
There were about a dozen more talks and papers that
afternoon, but I elected to go for a few Pacific Northwest beers with MOJ-friend and Notre Dame philosopher John O’Callaghan. Time well spent.
The evening lecture was a treat, given by Notre Dame’s Prof.
David Solomon. His paper was called
“Doctors, Death, and Democratic Culture.” After getting everyone’s attention by reminding us that “there is a lot
of killing going on in medicine today,” he turned to the question why – given that medicine has achieved
so much, and attained an amazing ability to alleviate pain and disability –
“exclusionary” and other arguments offered in justification of medical killing
enjoy such currency today? Specifically, Solomon explored some "features of liberal democratic cultures that encourage" these arguments (e.g., individualism, shallowness, and secularism).
On Saturday morning, I picked from an long menu of options a
careful and helpful presentation by Dr. Christopher Kaczor, a philosopher at
Loyola-Los Angeles (and a great dinner companion), on the recent
arguments offered by David Boonin in a widely and well reviewed book, “In
Defense of Abortion.” Kaczor offered a
critique of Boonin’s argument that personhood is a function of “conscious
desires.” During the same session, Prof.
Jude Huntz presented a paper on “restorative justice.” I respected and appreciated Huntz’s point
that we in America tend to rely excessively on incarceration, and also that our prisons and prison
programs do little either to rehabilitate offenders or to restore them to or
reconcile them with their communities. That said, I thought his claims about “retribution” were
unconvincing. Like many who (rightly)
are drawn to restorative-justice themes, Huntz seemed to conflate retributive
punishment theory with "revenge" or hate-of-criminals. He also
moved too quickly, I thought, from Pope John Paul II’s treatment of capital punishment in Evangelium vitae to the claim that
Catholic teaching has rejected retribution. In fact, retribution – properly understood – remains the primary
justification of, and a permissible purpose for, punishment. Retribution, in the work of the late Pope,
remains consistent with the dignity of the human person, and also with the love
that is appropriately directed to the person. That said, Huntz was right to remind us that a criminal-justice system
informed by Christianity will not settle for punishment that is morally
justified, but will do more to insure that punishments are designed and
distributed in a way that respects and builds up those who receive and
impose them.
Next, John O’Callaghan got everyone’s attention with his
engaging, provocative, and eminently charitable paper, “Voting and
Prudence: What’s a Catholic To Do?” MOJ readers are likely familiar with
O’Callaghan’s thoughts on this topic, both from the St. Thomas conference on Pro-Life Progressivism, and from various blog posts during the
run-up to the 2004 election. No surprise, the paper prompted lively conversation.
After a latte-and-sightseeing break, I attended a final
session, which included a sobering presentation by Dr. Fred Herron, “Consuming
Passions: Catholic Education in a
Consumer Society.” Herron reminded us
that students in Catholic schools are not immune to the contemporary, highly
aggressive onslaught of appetite-creating advertising, and urged Catholic
parents and schools alike to think about how they ought to respond to, and
counter, this onslaught. (While I’m not
sure this was the effect Herron intended, I came away even more in love than
ever with my Tivo, which makes it possible for me and my children to skip commercials!)
Finally, Dr. William Hudson, of Providence College, got my
blood boiling – but in a good way – with his paper, “President Bush, the
Ownership Society, and the Catholic Understanding of the Common Good,” in which
he tried to establish that the President’s Ownership Society agenda – e.g.,
private retirement accounts, health savings accounts, school choice – was (a)
unlikely to achieve the goods toward which it purports to aim and (b) that the
Agenda, both in theory and in its
predicted effects, is contrary to the Catholic Social Teaching principle of
solidarity and inconsistent with the preferential option for the poor. His presentation was clear, genial, and
engaging, but I came away quite unconvinced. First, it seemed to me (and still does) that Hudson was relying on a not-quite-complete understanding of the Common Good (one that
emphasized more the good of the
collective, rather than the Gaudium et
spes idea of the Common Good as a set of conditions that facilitate and
promote the authentic freedom and flourishing of persons) -- see Paolo Carozza's recent essay for a good account -- and also that he downplayed the role of subsidiarity in
evaluating the Ownership Society proposals. Second, I thought Hudson shifted back and forth from the claim that (i)
Bush’s Owndership Society agenda reflects principles that
cannot be reconciled with Catholic Social Teaching, to the (very different)
claim that (ii) although perhaps a successful
implementation of an Ownership Society agenda – along the lines of, say,
Pope Leo XIII and the English distributivists – would be something Catholics
could endorse, Bush’s proposals are not likely to succeed. Of course,
Hudson
might be right in his predictive judgment. But such a prediction is very different from the more tendentious claim
that the Agenda represents a deeply un-Catholic embrace of Randian
libertarianism. (Dr. Hudson was kind
enough to send me an electronic copy of his paper, and -- with his permission -- I'd be happy to pass it on to anyone who would like to read it).
Well . . . the weekend closed with a great dinner of Copper
River salmon with some friends and former students. Congratulations and thanks to the University of Portland, to the Garaventa Center, and to the Center for
Ethics and Culture.
Rick
