Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Monday, May 2, 2005

Breen and Uelmen on Catholic Legal Education

By Rick Garnett

I want to commend to everyone who cares about the subject the article on Catholic legal education by our co-blogista, John Breen, that he blogged recently and posted under his name in the sidebar. He demolishes the claim that Catholic schools are effectively Catholic (or Jesuit) because they offer clinics or teach jurisprudence. He is equally devastating on the argument that law schools should not hire for mission. John shows clearly that the vast majority of Catholic law schools are not engaged with the Catholic (or Jesuit) intellectual and moral traditions in any serious way. An important, if depressing article.

I also wanted to comment briefly on Amy Uelmen's characteristically thoughtful post on this topic in which she responded to some previous posts. She argued that a Catholic law school must be characterized by an openness to other ways of thought and belief. I could not agree more; such openness is the characteristic of what I have been calling for years now the "inclusive", non-sectarian Catholic law school. The irony, however, is that in the real world of Catholic legal education there is no problem with openness to other (ie, non-Catholic, non-religious) ways of thought and belief; it is openness to Catholic ways of thought and belief that is lacking. I consider myself very lucky that my colleagues at Villanova have shown themselves extraordinarily willing to create a space for Catholic and other faith-based discourse in our intellectual community.

-Mark

Supreme Court grants review in military-recruiter case

By Rick Garnett

The Supreme Court announced today that it will review the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit barring enforcement, on First Amendment grounds, of the Solomon Amendment, which requires the cutoff of federal funds to colleges that refuse to give military recruiters equal access to their students.  (Thanks to Lyle Denniston, of SCOTUSBlog, for this report).

We've discussed this case here at MOJ a few times before:  Rob suggested, for example, that the Third Circuit's decision could be seen as a win for the subsidiarity principle.  (See also here).  I expressed doubts on Rob's "take" here and here (and in Commonweal magazine).

Rick

Eberle on "The Presumption Against War"

By Rick Garnett

Philosopher Chris Eberle -- whom Notre Dame has been fortunate to host this academic year -- has written an interesting response to an exchange in a recent issue of First Things between Paul Griffiths and George Weigel on the "presumption against war" in just-war theory.  With Chris's permission, here it is:

. . .  Paul Griffiths expresses perplexity as to why some advocates of the Just War Tradition reject the claim that there is a “presumption against war,” and purports to provide an unimpeachable argument in support of that claim.  George Weigel rejects that argument and insists that there isn’t a presumption against war.  Both authors stumble badly:  Griffiths’ argument is anything but unimpeachable, Weigel’s denial that there is a presumption against war is deeply implausible.

Griffiths begins with the assertion that a person can be morally permitted to perform certain actions in some circumstances but not in others: she can drive after reaching the age of 15 but not before.   But if it’s the case that a person is not permitted to perform a particular action in some circumstances, then that person can’t just willy nilly perform that action whenever she wants – she has to have adequate reason to perform that action in the circumstances in which she finds herself.  That is, she shouldn’t perform that action without adequate justification.  Now it’s sometimes permissible to engage in war, sometimes not.  Hence, those who engage in war must have adequate reason to engage in war.  But that’s just what’s meant by there being a presumption against war – you can’t wage war without having the appropriate reasons to show that, in the circumstances, war is licit.  And, of course, the Just War Tradition specifies what those reasons are.

We should reject this argument, for it has entirely implausible implications – as Weigel happily points out.  Consider: I am morally permitted to snore loudly in some circumstances but not in others – for example, when I’m attending Professor Griffith’s public lecture on the Just War Tradition.  Does that imply that there is a presumption against snoring?  Hardly – snoring is a harmless activity and so there is neither a presumption for or against it, in spite of the fact that there are circumstances in which snoring is impermissible. 

But this objection to Griffith’s rather impeachable argument indicates a much better argument – one that I fancy is unimpeachable.  For unlike snoring, it’s not the case that waging war is a harmless activity. It’s unnecessary to detail the excruciating pain, dispossessed populations, and flying bits of human bone and flesh, that the waging of war does in fact inevitably involve.  Wars destroy human lives, the lives of persons with great moral worth.  Surely – surely – we should not destroy human lives unless we have very powerful reasons to do so.  And as a consequence, there is a presumption against waging war.  Weigel provides no good reason to deny anything of the sort.

He does provide a number of bad reasons – a surprisingly large number, given the limited space available to him.  Here is one such reason: those who adopt the claim that there is a presumption against war have been consistently wrong in their estimation of the justice of recent wars.  The U.S. bishops, for example, got the dynamics of the cold war wrong in their pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace.”  Other religious leaders and intellectuals falsely predicted disaster in the first Gulf War and the recent Iraq War.  These misjudgments are to be attributed to the reality-distorting claim that there is a presumption against war.  In fact, Weigel suspects those who adopt the presumption against war position – “that the use of even proportionate and discriminate force is, at the outset of moral analysis, presumptively deplorable – of smuggling in a “pacifist premise.”  It’s no wonder that they fail to recognize a just war when they see one. 

But Weigel’s argument is confused.  The claim that there is a presumption against war is exactly the kind of claim a pacifist should not make.  After all, a presumption – if it really is only a presumption – must be overridable by sufficiently weighty considerations.  So a dictator who uses his military power to eradicate a segment of his population is doing a really bad thing, and it might very well be the case that, if waging war on that dictator is the only feasible way to stop him from succeeding, then we ought to wage war on him.  That is, we should wage war against him even though doing so might very well involve inflicting great pain and suffering on large numbers of people and so even though there is a very powerful presumption against waging war against him.  Once we get clear that presumptions can be overridden, there is no reason whatever to believe that adopting the presumption against war position must provide aid and comfort to pacifism. 

Why is the presumption against war position important?  Not least because it’s the sober moral truth: if there isn’t a presumption against war, with all its attendant suffering, then there isn’t a presumption against anything.  But also because adopting that position distinguishes the advocate of the just war tradition from those who glorify war, who seem to regard the waging of war as an intrinsically worthy pastime, and so who need, not a reason to go to war, but to refrain from waging war.  The latter position, an all too common human failing, is corruption and the claim that there’s a presumption against war captures that judgment.

Rick

Catholics (and Other Believers) in Politics

By Michael Perry

Sightings  5/2/05

This Side of Theocracy
-- Martin E. Marty

In last week's U.S. News & World Report, Michael Barone reassured readers that the United States is not "headed toward a theocracy ....  [W]hether the United States is on its way to becoming a theocracy is actually a silly question" ("Faith in Our Future?" April 25, 2005).  He went on to claim that religion is a more up-front public and political item than it was a few years ago -- something Sightings consistently points out.  He then delivers a low blow, charging that secular liberalism in Europe produced non-benign offspring, namely, "fascism and communism [which] destroyed millions of lives before they were extinguished."  Meanwhile, "we" are religious and therefore benign.  That verbal swing aside, Barone is correct: We are probably not destined to become the predominantly secular society that liberals foresaw.

Among the reflexive minimizers of threats to a long-vibrant republic, I am also cautious about applying the term "theocracy" to where we are directly headed, but not assured by Barone's word that "no religion is going to impose laws on an unwilling Congress or the people of this country."  Is that how it would work?  For example, the vast majority of Americans want more legislation against assault rifles and other military-level armament now easily available.  But one of America's religions, ritualized and represented by the National Rifle Association, effectively lobbies and controls legislatures, "imposing laws."  Why?  Few running for office want to risk losing 10 percent of their potential supporters over guns.

That's how the system works, and it's quite legal.  What the people who whisper or shout "theocracy!" worry about is the power of religious minorities to lobby, form political combinations, gain access to legislators, and the like -- to "impose laws."  Again, this is all basically legal.  What does one do in the face of this potential, which is short of theocracy but acts "in the name of God" -- a God whose will such factions clearly know, and on whose claims they have a monopoly?

One response comes from deep in our past, in the optimistic Madisonian Federalist Paper X: "... a religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; 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 asserts: "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.  The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects ....."

In recent months, voices have risen from others among "the multiplicity of sects" -- "others" referring to those who are less often heard and seen in headlines and on prime-time than those who really do pitch for a theocracy as their ultimate goal.  The revived responders had been passive, caught off guard, perhaps weary from their battles decades ago when they had a voice and used it.  If they now reenter the fray, this mix of many Catholics, Jews, Protestants, evangelicals, and religious experimenters who are so often written off as "secularists" may help pose a more representative array of religious voices -- and, be assured, they will take their knocks.  That's politics, still this side of theocracy.

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Freud and Christians' Moral Choices

By Rob Vischer

Brian Leiter has an interesting post speculating that the high rate of pornography consumption among conservative Christians is best explained in terms of Freud's theory of "reaction formations."  Is this theory more broadly useful in helping explain the persistent failure of American Christians to make meaningfully different moral choices than their non-Christian neighbors?

Rob

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Catholic Legal Education Redux

By John M. Breen

Back in January, several participants on MOJ began a thread which took up the question of what it means to be a Catholic law school.  I very much wanted to participate in the discussion at the time but resisted doing so because I knew that I had an article coming out on the subject in the very near future.  I thought that it didn’t make any sense to simply repeat on the blog what I was about to say in print.  Recently, and perhaps providentially, a new but related thread has begun on the blog which discusses the place of a law school in a Catholic university, just as my article has come to print.  I have collected the posts from these threads in a file Download catholic_legal_education.doc .

The article is entitled “Justice and Jesuit Education:  A Critique” and it appears in the right column  of MOJ under my name.  The piece is part of special faculty symposium issue of the

Loyola

 

University

 

Chicago

 Law Journal on the subject of “justice.”  The entire issue is available online here.

In the piece I note that Jesuit law schools seek to distinguish themselves from other schools by defining their special mission as “the promotion of justice.”  References to this goal and the related goal of forming “men and women for others” litter the mission statements and other self-descriptions of these institutions.

The problem is that these schools almost invariably point to the clinical opportunities that they make available to students as proof of their commitment to justice and the fulfillment of their mission.  As I understand it, clinical legal education is a necessary component of Jesuit identity, but not a sufficient one.  Clinical education is in many ways peripheral to the academic enterprise.  At most, only one of every three law students goes through some sort of clinical program, thus it cannot be the means whereby justice is promoted throughout the student body.  Further, if clinical education is the defining feature of Jesuit legal education, then the identity of Jesuit law schools is in no way distinctive since every law school in the country offers some such program, and indeed, many secular schools are superior to their Jesuit counterparts in the clinical opportunities they afford to students.

Moreover, I argue, that to the extent that students do learn about justice in clinical settings they learn that justice is something to be felt and intuited rather than something which can be thought and reasoned and argued about.  They learn either that justice is an emotional response to a set of facts or a collection of ad hoc preferences in favor of this case or that.  Thus, judged by the very criteria for Jesuit identity that Jesuits set for themselves, Jesuit legal education must be judged a failure, not as legal education but as Jesuit education.

In its place, I argue that the one essential, non-negotiable 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.  This must be done both in the classroom through the law school’s curriculum and in the research and other intellectual work supported by the school.  A law school is, after all, part of a university, and a university is an intellectual enterprise.  Every academic unit which makes up the university must contribute to this enterprise through its particular discipline.

In this regard, it was surprising for me to learn in reviewing the curricular requirements for each of the country’s fourteen Jesuit sponsored law schools that none of them require a course in jurisprudence.  Indeed, it is entirely possible for a student to graduate from a Jesuit law school without ever having thought seriously about the nature of justice and its meaning. One might argue that a thorough and rigorous encounter with these questions can take place even absent such a course, but such a claim strikes me as disingenuous:  Like those law schools who claim that teaching a course in legal ethics is unnecessary because students learn legal ethics through the “pervasive method,” being exposed to it in every substantive course offered by the school.

Even better, I would suggest that we ask our students what their experience of Jesuit legal education has been and the role that serious discussions about the nature of justice has played in that experience.  From my own experience, I strongly suspect that the answer will not be what the authors of Jesuit law school promotional literature want to hear.

I would, however, enjoy hearing from you what you think about the article.

John

"Charitable Choice" and Religious "Discrimination"

By Rick Garnett

A friend at the Times and Seasons blog was kind enough to point me to this very detailed post, by Professors Vikram Amar and Alan Brownstein (both very reasonable and respected scholars), about H.R. 27, the "Job Training Improvement Act" recently passed by the House.  "If enacted into law," they write, "this bill will allow religious organizations that receive federal funding to provide social services to the needy to discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring employees to staff these federally-funded programs."

They continue:

H.R. 27 - like previous job training bills -- includes a civil rights provision prohibiting grantees who receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis or race, gender, religion and other listed characteristics. But the bill then adds an exception to this provision, permitting religious providers to discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring.

In doing so, H. R. 27 builds on a relatively new policy trend permitting religious discrimination in hiring in government-funded programs.

Amar and Brownstein believe that H.R. 27 violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, "as that Clause has been construed by the Supreme Court."  (That is, not the *real* Establishment Clause.  Sorry.  I couldn't resist.)  "It is unconstitutional for the government to allow religious providers receiving direct grants to discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring, when the employees who are being hired are paid out of public funds to provide public services and benefits in government-funded programs."

I'm open to the argument that, as Amar and Brownstein contend, H.R. 27 is hard to square with Justice O'Connor's opinion in the Mitchell v. Helms case, where she insisted that, notwithstanding the neutrality of a particular funding program, grants of direct aid simply cannot be used for religious purposes.  That said, I'm not sure what this conflict tells me -- if anything -- about the wisdom or morality of permitting religious institutions that deliver federally funded social services to "discriminate" on the basis of religion (or, as one might put it, to "protect and maintain their own integrity and identity while at the same time delivering a service that promotes the common good").

I suppose my primary, and perhaps more pedestrian, concern has to do with the use of the word "discrimination" to describe "religious-mission-sensitive hiring" by religious institutions.  I recognize that, in a sense, the word fits; at the same time, particularly in the context of civil-rights legislation (like H.R. 27), the word "discrimination" almost always carries with it the implied modifier, "invidious."  The premise of Amar's and Brownstein's claims, it seems to me, is that H.R. 27 would permit federally funded agencies to do something "bad" with federal money.  And, that would be bad. 

But why, exactly, is it "bad" for religious institutions to engage in religious-mission-sensitive hiring?  Putting aside Justice O'Connor's views and the state of Establishment Clause doctrine for the moment, why should the possibility that a religious institution -- which is, let us assume, providing a social service efficiently and effectively, and in a "non-discriminatory" way, to the needy among us -- might want to retain, as it provides this valuable service to the common good, its religious identity and integrity bother us at all?

Rick

Friday, April 29, 2005

Ritual Tea and Religious Freedom

By Thomas Berg

The freedom of religion case in which the Supreme Court just granted review -- Gonzalez v. O Centra Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal [UDV] -- is an extremely important one for the freedom of all faiths in America.  The case concerns the interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), in which Congress required that before a law can be applied to "substantially burden" sincere religious conduct, that application must be justified by a "compelling" governmental interest and be the "least restrictive means" of achieving that interest.  RFRA was a response to Supreme Court precedent stating that a law that is "neutral and generally applicable" can be applied to suppress religious conduct no matter how serious the burden on religion and how minimal the need for regulation.  Under the principle that RFRA reversed, a dry county in Oklahoma could prohibit the mass, no questions asked, and generally applicable sex-discrimination laws could be applied to force the Catholic Church to ordain women as priests.  Although RFRA was struck down in 1997 as applied to state and local laws, it remains valid as a limit on federal laws and regulations that restrict religious freedom.

In UDV, the government sought to prohibit the consumption and importation of a tea used in the central ritual act of UDV worship services, on the ground that the tea contained a hallucinogenic substance listed under federal drug laws.  The UDV, the tiny American offshoot of an established Brazilian religion, obtained an injunction against the government's actions, based on evidence that the use of the tea would not create dangers of health hazards or drug trafficking, because (among other things) the church insisted that members limit their use to the worship service and because the unpleasant taste of the drug made it unattractive to recreational users.  These very same features are true of sacramental use of peyote by Native Americans, which has led numerous states and the federal government to exempt such peyote use from their drug laws.  The role of the RFRA statute is to ensure that when a similar claim, such as UDV's, cannot get a legislative hearing because the group is less familar or less adept at lobbying, the courts will declare an equal right to free exercise for that faith.  (In sharp contrast is the uncircumscribed use of marijuana, a widely trafficked drug, by other groups claiming religious freedom; these claims always lose, even under the higher standard of RFRA.)

The federal government does not challenge the validity of the RFRA statute; the Bush administration wants to be able to defend religious freedom when it is more popular.  Instead, the government offers an interpretation of the statute that would gut its effectiveness.  The government argues that the mere listing of a drug on the schedule of controlled substances proves that there is a "compelling" reason to prohibit it in any and all circumstances -- without regard to the kind of evidence described above concerning the limited risks from the UDV's use.  Essentially, the government says that the mere existence of a law is proof that it serves a compelling interest in all cases.  Although the government tries to limit this argument to drug cases, its implications go much further.  As Judge Michael McConnell -- a Bush appointee, and no wild-eyed radical -- argued in the court of appeals decision ruling for UDV:

Congress’s general conclusion that DMT is dangerous in the abstract does not establish that the government has a compelling interest in prohibiting the consumption of

hoasca under the conditions presented in this case. . . .

RFRA requires

the government

to "demonstrate[]" that application of a challenged federal law to religious exercise satisfies strict scrutiny under RFRA. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(b). The term "demonstrates" is defined as "meet[ing] the burdens of going forward with the evidence and of persuasion." Id., § 2000bb-2(3). Obviously, Congress contemplated the introduction of "evidence" pertaining to the justification of "application" of the law in the particular instance. If such a burden of proof could be satisfied by citing congressional finding in the preambles to statutes, without additional evidence, RFRA challenges would rarely succeed; congressional findings invariably tout the importance of the laws to which they are appended.

If the government's position prevails in UDV, then potentially almost any claim of religious freedom as against a generally applicable law would fail.  Amish parents were allowed to remove their teenagers from high school in lieu of informal vocational education (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972)) because, even though education in general is an important state interest, a couple extra years of formal education was not shown to be crucial to the development of Amish children.  Formal teacher credentials are generally important for the public-school and private-school teachers handling significant numbers of students, but that does not mean they have to be applied rigidly to home-schooling parents who have close relationships with a small number of students, their children.  These and numerous other successful religious-freedom claims would fail under the standard that the federal government advocates in UDV.  (For input from several Christian organizations that are theologically light years from the UDV but support its right to practice its faith, see this amicus brief.)

This case concerns far more than just a tiny group practicing an unfamilar faith and consuming a hallucinogenic substance.  It concerns far more than drugs and the war on them.  It will affect the freedom of religions across the spectrum when they come in conflict with the huge range of federal laws and regulations. 

Tom Berg

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Charles Curran and Cathleen Kaveny on Benedict XVI

By Michael Perry

Both of these pieces--the first by Charles Curran, the second by Cathleen Kaveny--are from the May 6th issue of  Commonweal.  I have provided a link to each piece below.

A Call for Dissent
My argument with Joseph Ratzinger            

Charles E. Curran    

Habemus papam. I heard these words in St. Peter’s Square as a young seminarian on October 28, 1958. My first impression of Pope John XXIII was disappointing. Pope Pius XII was an austere and ascetic figure, but John XXIII was a roly-poly Italian who was waving to the crowd even before he finished his first blessing.

Fast-forward to the present: The intervening years saw John XXIII’s and Vatican II’s call for renewal and reform; the unexpected condemnation of artificial contraception in Paul VI’s Humanae vitae (1968); the ups and downs in his Hamlet-like papacy; and then the long restorationist papacy of John Paul II.

I sat in a television studio on April 19, 2005, and once again heard the words habemus papam-Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. My disappointment was much greater than it was fifty years earlier. As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Ratzinger concluded a seven-year investigation of my theological writings in 1986 with the judgment, approved by John Paul II, that “one who dissents from the magisterium as you do is not suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology.”

I maintained that my dissent was not from core tenets of Catholic faith, but from noninfallible church teachings. In fact, the U.S. bishops in their 1968 pastoral letter Human Life in Our Day recognized the legitimacy of such dissent if there are serious reasons for it, if the teaching authority of the church is not impugned, and if scandal is not given. My dissent satisfied those criteria. So I asked Cardinal Ratzinger, “Is theological dissent from noninfallible church teaching ever permitted; and, if so, under what conditions is it permitted?” He refused to answer.

[To read the whole piece, click here.]

My Meeting With Cardinal Ratzinger            

Cathleen Kaveny    

I have met Pope Benedict XVI only once. It was seventeen years ago, when I was a graduate student at Yale. Richard John Neuhaus had organized an invitation-only conference in New York on biblical interpretation. Among the invited guests were Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Raymond Brown, the widely respected biblical scholar, and the eminent Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck, my dissertation adviser, who had been a delegated observer at the Second Vatican Council. With the breezy temerity of youth, I wrote Neuhaus (then still Lutheran), and asked to be the “observer from the next generation” at the conference. Much to my amazement, he acceded to my request.

During the first break, Lindbeck introduced me to Cardinal Ratzinger. The conversation went something like this: Lindbeck said, “Your eminence, I would like to introduce to you Cathleen Kaveny, a Catholic studying moral theology at Yale.” I smiled and said hello. Ratzinger smiled at me and responded, “A Catholic studying moral theology at Yale? You’d better be careful or you’ll have the Congregation after you.” I couldn’t believe my ears. After all, I had just heard, while wide awake, what Cardinal Ratzinger--the Grand Inquisitor--would say to me in a nightmare, which naturally would also include a stake, a match, a heap of kindling, and a long, flowing white dress (à la Cecil B. De Mille’s The Story of Joan of Arc). He was joking, of course, as I realized almost immediately. Nonetheless, my face must have turned as pale as Joan’s dress. The cardinal quickly understood the problem: “With whom are you studying?” he asked. And not quite able to speak again, I pointed mutely to Lindbeck. Ratzinger said, “Well, then, that’s all right...you’re in good hands.”

After the break, Neuhaus invited me to sit at the table for the remainder of the conference. But there was only one open seat, right next to Ratzinger himself. I took it with some trepidation. What sort of being was this man? Gradually, I relaxed, as I realized that by virtue of my undergraduate and graduate training, I was already quite familiar with the universal type, if not this particular German model. He was a real academic, delighting in the world illumined by his beloved texts, which conveyed a reality that seemed to be more vivid to him than the reality conveyed by his own senses. In his discussion with Lindbeck and Brown, I saw immense mutual respect, significant mutual challenge, and not a trace of condescension or rank-pulling on his part. I also got the distinct impression that Ratzinger was relishing the intellectual exchange, much as a professor swamped with departmental administrative responsibilities relishes the all-too-rare opportunity to participate in colloquium on a key topic in his or her own academic field. He also seemed quite shy, in the peculiar, nonretiring manner that many academics are shy: they fearlessly present the contents of their minds for public examination while closely guarding the paths of their hearts.

[To read the whole piece, click here.]
_________________________

Michael P.

More on Benedict XVI and Economic Life

By Thomas Berg

What is Pope Benedict XVI's attitude toward economic life, and is he "to the left of" his predecessor on such matters?  An early search of some statements by then-Cardinal Ratzinger:

From a 2004 interview:

Rome, May. 07, 2004 (CWNews.com) - "The world economy is totally dominated by materialist principles," according to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (bio - news).

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in an interview with the Italian Catholic agency SIR, said that world economic affairs are driven by a form of economic liberalism which "specifically excludes the heart." More important, he continued, this outlook also excludes "the highest faculty of human intelligence," which is "the possibility of seeing God, of introducing the light of moral responsibility, love, and justice into the worlds of work, of commerce, and of politics."

Much attention has been given to the 1984 Instruction on Certain Aspects of "Liberation Theology" (available in full here), in which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Ratzinger, criticized many features of liberation theology.  A few key passages:

The present Instruction has [as its purpose] to draw the attention of pastors, theologians, and all the faithful to the deviations, and risks of deviation, damaging to the faith and to Christian living, that are brought about by certain forms of liberation theology which use, in an insufficiently critical manner, concepts borrowed from various currents of Marxist thought.

This warning should in no way be interpreted as a disavowal of all those who want to respond generously and with an authentic evangelical spirit to the "preferential option for the poor." It should not at all serve as an excuse for those who maintain the attitude of neutrality and indifference in the face of the tragic and pressing problems of human misery and injustice. It is, on the contrary, dictated by the certitude that the serious ideological deviations which it points out tends inevitably to betray the cause of the poor. More than ever, it is important that numerous Christians, whose faith is clear and who are committed to live the Christian life in its fullness, become involved in the struggle for justice, freedom, and human dignity because of their love for their disinherited, oppressed, and persecuted brothers and sisters. More than ever, the Church intends to condemn abuses, injustices, and attacks against freedom, wherever they occur and whoever commits them. She intends to struggle, by her own means, for the defense and advancement of the rights of mankind, especially of the poor. . . .

The acute need for radical reforms of the structures which conceal poverty and which are themselves forms of violence, should not let us lose sight of the fact that the source of injustice is in the hearts of men. Therefore it is only by making an appeal to the 'moral potential' of the person and to the constant need for interior conversion, that social change will be brought about which will be truly in the service of man. [33] For it will only be in the measure that they collaborate freely in these necessary changes through their own initiative and in solidarity, that people, awakened to a sense of their responsibility, will grow in humanity. The inversion of morality and structures is steeped in a materialist anthropology which is incompatible with the dignity of mankind. . . .

The class struggle as a road toward a classless society is a myth which slows reform and aggravates poverty and injustice. Those who allow themselves to be caught up in fascination with this myth should reflect on the bitter examples history has to offer about where it leads. They would then understand that we are not talking here about abandoning an effective means of struggle on behalf of the poor for an ideal which has no practical effects. On the contrary, we are talking about freeing oneself from a delusion in order to base oneself squarely on the Gospel and its power of realization.

But in addition to this substantially critical letter, the CDF under Ratzinger issued a second document in 1986, the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, which sets forth a positive vision on, among other things, economic matters.  To keep this post from reaching unacceptable length, I'll post passages from that document separately.

Tom Berg

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