Thanks to Amy Welborn, here is a fascinating read re: the Schiavo case, by once-uber-hip pop-culture-pulse-taker Joan Didion
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Didion on Schiavo
Gorsuch on Assisted Suicide
Eugene Volokh has posted a recently published article by Neil Gorsuch on the experiments in Oregon and the Netherlands with legalized assisted suicide.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The CDF's position on same-sex unions
Those interested in the Church's position on the matter of same-sex unions should read a document prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during Cardinal Ratzinger's tenure. The document, which was issued on the Feast of St. Ignatius, was approved by Pope John Paul the Great. The document is available here.
Richard
Postmodernism as Myth
The Evangelical Outpost has a good post on the myth of postmodernism, with a priceless intro:
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and... Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten? Nigel Tufnel: Exactly. Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder? Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Marty DiBergi: I don't know. Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven. Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder. Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.-- From the movie, This is Spinal Tap (1984)
If zeitgeists were sound equipment, postmodernism would be Nigel Tufnel’s amp. While the prefix “post” implies the ushering in of an age that is after “modernism”, the fact is that postmodernism is nothing more than a form of hyper-modernism -- modernism put up to eleven.
As Talbot philosophy Professor William Lane Craig explains when asked whether his students have a tendency to react to the “rational approach” with “postmodern resistance”:
Frankly, I don’t confront many students who are postmodernists. For all the faddish talk, I think it’s a myth. Students aren’t generally relativistic and pluralistic, except when it comes to ethics and religion. But that’s not postmodernism, that’s modernism. That’s old-style verificationism, which says things that are verifiable through the five senses are factual, but everything else is just a matter of taste (including ethics and religion). I think it’s a deceit of our age to say that modernism is dead.
Craig's point reflects my own experience in the classroom, but I still disagree with the Evangelical Outpost's broader point because I believe that postmodernism has brought meaningful difference in our society's openness to personal narrative instead of an exclusive focus on universal, rational discourse (which can be a good thing for Christianity, on balance). But the brilliant invocation of Spinal Tap makes me much more sympathetic to the argument.
Rob
Monday, May 23, 2005
LEGAL RECOGNITION OF SAME-SEX UNIONS
[Those familiar with my work will not be surprised to learn that I believe that what the American Psychiatric Association did yesterday in my home town (Atlanta) was appropriate and indeed overdue. See Perry, Under God: Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy 55-97 (Cambridge, 2003); Perry, Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives 85-96 (Oxford, 1997).
Note that the APA "is addressing same-sex civil marriage, not religious marriages."]
The New York Times
May 23, 2005
Psychiatric Group May Make a Stand for Gay Marriage
By the Associated Press
ATLANTA, May 22 (AP) - Representatives of the nation's top psychiatric group approved a statement on Sunday urging legal recognition of same-sex marriage.
If approved by the association's directors in July, the measure would make the group, the American Psychiatric Association, the first major medical organization to take such a stance.
The statement supports same-sex marriage "in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health."
It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological Association last year, three decades after that group removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
The psychiatric association's statement, approved by voice vote on the first day of its weeklong annual meeting in Atlanta, cites the "positive influence of a stable, adult partnership on the health of all family members."
The resolution recognizes "that gay men and lesbians are full human beings who should be afforded the same human and civil rights," said Dr. Margery Sved, a psychiatrist from Raleigh, N.C., who is a member of the assembly's committee on gay and lesbian issues.
The statement says that the association is addressing same-sex civil marriage, not religious marriages. It takes no position on any religion's views on marriage.
Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage.
Eighteen states have passed constitutional amendments outlawing
same-sex marriage.
_______________
mp
Sunday, May 22, 2005
CLASS IN AMERICA
[This piece, from yesterday's Boston Globe, surely gives Catholic social theorists food for thought. Mark? Steve?]
A Steeper Ladder for the Have-Nots
Derrick Z. Jackson
It is stunning to see the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times simultaneously devote a series to the American class divide. The Journal reported last Friday, "Despite the widespread belief that the US remains a more mobile society than Europe, economists and sociologists say that in recent decades the typical child starting out in poverty in continental Europe or in Canada has had a better chance at prosperity."
In an echo, the Times wrote vitually the same thing, adding that in America,
a child's economic background is a better predictor of school performance than
in Denmark the Netherlands or France. The
best that could be said was that class mobility in the United States is "not as low as in developing
countries like Brazil,
where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but
frozen in place."
Oh joy. This is what we have come to? Comparisons to developing countries?
Another odd thing about the series is that the mainstays of the mainstream
press are making a big deal out of the divide after years in which many
economists warned that our policies were plunging us straight toward Brazil.
For years, groups like the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy and the
Institute for Policy Studies sent up smoke signals that should have been a
smoking gun.
In 1973, the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay was 43 to 1. By 1992, it was 145
to 1. By 1997, it was 326 to 1. By 2000, it hit a sky-high 531 to 1. The post
9/11 shakeouts and corporate scandals of recent years on the surface narrowed
the gap back to 301 to 1 in 2003. But a much worse parallel global gap is
emerging in the era of outsourcing. United for a Fair Economy published a
report last summer that found CEOs of the top US outsourcing companies made
1,300 times more than their computer programmers in India and 3,300 more than
Indian call-center employees.
Such groups say if the minimum wage kept up with the rise in CEO pay, it
would be $15.76 an hour instead of its current $5.15. Looking at it another
way, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, another often written-off
liberal think tank, published a report last month that in the last three years,
the share of US national income that goes toward corporate profits is at its
highest levels since World War II, while the share of national income that goes
to wages and salaries is at a record low.
This completes a perfect storm over the last quarter century of corporate
welfare for those with the most among us and vilification for those with the
least. Americans have been seduced by simplistic notions of rugged
individualism to vote more to punish people (welfare mothers, prison booms, and
affirmative action in the 1990s, and gay marriage in 2004) than for programs
and policies that might lead to healing the gaps (national healthcare and
revamped public schools).
It is obvious that Americans believed that none of the inequalities long
endured by the poor (because it's all their fault, right?) would seep into our
lives. We were wrong. With suburban schools slashing their budgets, healthcare
costs rising, retirement funds in doubt, and the next generation facing a drop
in their life span from obesity and diabetes, the nation is sliding into a
dangerous place.
A quarter century of a "mine, all mine" ethos continues to work
for CEOs and the upper class. The rest of America finds the ladder taller and steepening. Much of the nation is now one
catastrophic injury away from falling into poverty. It should be a national
emergency that stratification in the richest nation in the world has us fading
from the relative mobility of Europe and sinking toward
the discouragement in developing countries.
It is no wonder why politicians who protect the
wealthy scream "class warfare" every time someone talks about
inequity. It is a diversion to keep those who vote against their own interests
from realizing they are victims of friendly fire.
_______________
mp
SENATOR RICK SANTORUM
There is a very interesting story about United States Senator Rick Santorum--it's the cover story--in today's New York Times Magazine. Sen. Santorum, as many MOJ readers know, is a pro-life Republican senator--two-term senator--from Pennsylvania. In November 2006, Pennsylvania voters will have to choose between Santorum and the pro-life Democratic senatorial candidate, Robert Casey Jr., the son of the late, pro-life Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey Sr. To read the article, titled The Believer, click here.
Herzog on Trujillo on Catholic public officials
Here is an interesting and provocative post, from the "Left2Right" blog, by Don Herzog, "Egging on the Conscientious Public Official." Herzog is addressing a recent statement by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, of the Pontifical Council for the Family:
All Christians, including state employees, have a duty to avail themselves of conscientious objection because the law of which we are speaking inflicts a deep moral wound on the Christian faith.
Cardinal Trujillo was reacting, apparently, to the impending enactment of same-sex marriage in Spain. Herzog writes:
I don't mind if the Church instructs its priests not to perform same-sex marriages. That, obviously, is a religious judgment it's free to make. (If you think it should be up to the priests or parishes, you're pretending the Church is quite Protestant.) For the same reason, I would mind very much if Spain's government tried to coerce any church into performing such ceremonies. I don't mind if public officials who are legally required to marry gay and lesbian couples balk and resign their posts. I don't much mind if they conscientiously refuse and then try to stay in office. What should the government do if they refuse? It could fire them. Or it could blink and ignore the refusal, figuring there's no point trampling on their consciences when other officials will do their duty and no couple will be seriously inconvenienced. But a government that looks like it's giving into bullying — even bullying of the most principled sort, from a hugely dignified Church — is in trouble. . . .
Relax, no one in Spain's government is asking my advice. But I'd tell them that if they can't figure out a persuasive way of suggesting that permitting conscientious objection is very much their own decision, they should promptly fire every single public official who refuses to perform his allotted legal duties. Yet the Church's posture means that Spain will almost surely look like it's climbing down under pressure if it lets the refractory mayors refuse to perform the wedding ceremonies.
This is not an argument about the overwhelming value of same-sex marriage. It is an argument about jurisdiction, driven by my worry that the Church has just exceeded its own rightful sphere of authority. . . . Older readers will recall that in the American presidential election of 1960, JFK had to persuade anxious audiences that he would not take his marching orders from the Vatican. I'd like to think we're long past the time when devout Catholics running for office would trigger such anxieties. But whether we are is in part up to the Church.
Read the whole thing. One quick question, or doubt, comes to mind: I am inclined to think Herzog is right to point out that Catholic public officials who refuse (in the absence of some kind of conscientious-objector provisions) to comply with the law (even a law they regard as unjust or unwise) probably cannot reasonably expect to keep their jobs. That said, I'm not sure Herzog is right that "the Church has just exceeded its own rightful sphere of authority." While Herzog and I agree, I'm sure, that the Church lacks authority to enact or rescind civil laws, I wonder if Herzog really thinks that the Church "exceed[s] its own rightful sphere of authority" by doing what Trujillo has done, namely, advise Catholics as to (what he regards as) the content and implications of their professed Catholic faith -- specifically, as to their "duty to avail themselves of conscientious objection."
Rick
Saturday, May 21, 2005
PETER STEINFELS ON JOHN NOONAN
'A Church That Can and Cannot Change': Dogma
By PETER STEINFELS
FOUR decades ago, Roman Catholics were hit over the head by revisions of church teaching and practice authorized by the world's bishops at the Second Vatican Council. If the language of the Mass, prohibition of meat on Friday and, most striking, the church's unrelenting contrast between its truths and the errors of every other religion could be altered, what couldn't be? Doctrine on contraception? Divorce and remarriage? Capital punishment? Same-sex relationships? Ordination of women?
If religions are alive, as Catholicism surely is, they change. But while some changes may reflect a justifiable, even necessary, adaptation to new knowledge or circumstances, others may be a trimming of religious truth. How do you tell the difference? It is a question brought into sharp focus again with the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI.
Historically, Catholicism solved the problem of change simply by denying it. Understandings of the Trinity, the priesthood, the papacy, the Mass and the sacraments that emerged over a long time were projected back into New Testament texts. Theologians joked that when a pope or other official circuitously introduced a modification of church teaching, he would begin, ''As the church has always taught. . . .''
Such denial, still widespread, means that examining change in official teaching -- or what became known in the 19th century as ''development of doctrine'' -- poses two challenges: first, to establish that alterations -- some more than minor -- have unquestionably occurred; and second, to show how they can be reconciled with the church's claim to preach the same essential message Jesus and his disciples did 2,000 years ago, presumably deriving criteria that can help distinguish legitimate evolution in the future from deviations or betrayals.
Among American Catholics, John T. Noonan Jr. is specially situated for
this pursuit. He is a distinguished law professor; a judge on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and the author of
many books on jurisprudence, legal history and ethics, and church law.
In the 1960's, when a papal commission re-examined Catholic teaching on
contraception, a magisterial 1965 study by Noonan, tracing the history
of the doctrine, was widely used to support change. In the 70's, in
equally learned arguments, he criticized the Supreme Court's ruling for
a right to abortion and campaigned for a constitutional amendment to
protect the unborn. On the appeals court since 1986, he is known for
granting stays of execution to death-row prisoners. So he is impossible
to place in the polarized geography of liberals and conservatives --
Catholic and non-Catholic.
. . .
[John Courtney] Murray declared 40 years ago that development of doctrine ''is the underlying issue'' of Vatican II. It remains fundamental for Catholicism, Islam and other faiths too. What Noonan brings to it in this invaluable book is unblinking honesty about the record of the church to which he is deeply devoted. That is a standard for anyone wishing to pursue the conversation.
[To read the rest--and it's certainly worth reading (on slavery, etc.)--click here.]
_______________
Michael P.
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