Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Here is a link to the decision by the 5th Circuit dismissing Norma McCorvey's (i.e., "Roe")'s Rule 60(b) motion seeking to re-open Roe. The opinion is authored by Judge Edith Jones, who also adds a separate concurring opinion noting the "iron[y]" that "the doctrine of mootness bars further litigation of this case since this case was born in an exception to mootness and brought forth, instead of a confined decision, an 'exercise of raw judicial power.'"
Rick
Monday, September 13, 2004
Blogger Amy Welborn discusses, and links to, a disturbing article by Wesley Smith about the euthanizing of disabled children in the Netherlands:
For anyone paying attention to the continuing collapse of medical ethics in the Netherlands, this isn't at all shocking. Dutch doctors have been surreptitiously engaging in eugenic euthanasia of disabled babies for years, although it technically is illegal, since infants can't consent to be killed. Indeed, a disturbing 1997 study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, revealed how deeply pediatric euthanasia has already metastasized into Dutch neo natal medical practice: According to the report, doctors were killing approximately 8 percent of all infants who died each year in the Netherlands. That amounts to approximately 80-90 per year. Of these, one-third would have lived more than a month. At least 10-15 of these killings involved infants who did not require life-sustaining treatment to stay alive. The study found that a shocking 45 percent of neo-natologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to questionnaires had killed infants.
It took the Dutch almost 30 years for their medical practices to fall to the point that Dutch doctors are able to engage in the kind of euthanasia activities that got some German doctors hanged after Nuremberg. For those who object to this assertion by claiming that German doctors killed disabled babies during World War II without consent of parents, so too do many Dutch doctors: Approximately 21 percent of the infant euthanasia deaths occurred without request or consent of parents. Moreover, since when did parents attain the moral right to have their children killed?
As lawyers and law students know, the "slippery slope" claim is simultaneously one of the most often criticized, and most often employed, forms of argument. For a fabulous article discussing and evaluating the argument, see "The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope," by law professor and uber-blogger Eugene Volokh. I'm inclined to agree with what I take to be one of Volokh's many important points, namely, that "slippery slopes" are real, and a "real cause for concern."
Rick
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Here is an interesting article from today's New York Times -- with the unfortunate, but typical, headline, "Employment by Dogma?" -- about "teachers at five Catholic schools [in Brooklyn and Queens who] insist that the church has ignored its own tenets of social justice by engaging in unfair labor practices against their union." According to the article, "New York State has backed up the charge with a complaint against the Brooklyn diocese."
According to the article, "the impasse in the Brooklyn Diocese, where about 145 other Catholic schools remain without a union, presents a problem for a church with a tradition of social justice teachings that uphold not only the right to unionize, but also an employer's duty to pay a just wage. Those ideals are bumping up uncomfortably against the economic realities of declining enrollments, shrinking budgets and closings."
No one denies, I imagine, that teachers in Catholic schools do heroic work for not-nearly-enough money (time to put more money in the weekly envelope!). The analysis in this article, though, strikes me as a bit simplistic. Here is more:
While church teachings do not mandate unions, they have supported the right to join them as a way of both ensuring the dignity of employees and giving them a level of bargaining power. Stephen J. Pope, who teaches moral theology at Boston College, said that much of it was laid out in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, whose encyclical on capital and labor, "Rerum Novarum," tried to show how capitalism could produce a just economic system. The centerpiece, Mr. Pope said, was the concept of a just wage. "A worker has to be able to support himself and his family," Mr. Pope said. "That includes not only wages now, but also an array of benefits and rights including health care, dental care, a right to occupational work safety."
I wonder if the kind of dynamics and power imbalances to which Leo XIII was speaking in 1891 -- and which still, I believe, give rise to a need for labor unions today -- are really present in the context of Catholic schools? I tend to be skeptical, generally, about extent to which teachers' unions promote the common good. Even if I weren't, though, it seems to me that the profit motive that, so the argument goes, creates incentives for "capital" to short-change "labor" is not present when we are talking about parish elementary schools. But maybe Lucia, Stephen, or others can set me straight . . .
Rick
Friday, September 10, 2004
Several weeks ago, the “communion controversy” was the subject of several postings on the Mirror of Justice, which in turn prompted our co-blogger Rob Vischer to encourage a couple of us to further develop our thoughts into articles suitable for publication in the Catholic Lawyer later this fall. Toward this end, my University of St. Thomas colleague Chuck Reid and I prepared a piece, titled “Abortion, Bishops, Eucharist, and Politicians: A Question of Communion,” a link to which is located near my name on the Mirror of Justice.
I now want to highlight for your attention a wonderful further addition to this discussion, an essay by our co-blogger Amy Uelmen, titled “The Spirituality of Communion: A Resource for Dialogue with Catholics in Public Life.” This piece, which also will be published in the Catholic Lawyer, is also accessible by a link next to the listing of Amy’s name on the Mirror of Justice.
The communion controversy, that is, the question of whether pro-abortion politicians thereby break communion with the Church such that they should either be denied or encouraged to withhold from taking the Eucharist. A crucial element of that debate, from all perspectives, concerns the appropriate pastoral response, including dialogue between the Bishop and political leaders within the diocese. Amy’s piece thoughtfully explores how that dialogue might unfold, what it would reveal, and how it can made more fruitful. More importantly, Amy’s essay emphasizes the spiritual elements of communion and John Paul II’s call to generate a life of communion in the Mystical Body in our churches and homes. In other words, Eucharist should be appreciated as “our greatest resource on the journey” and therefore a means to nurture the efforts “to build an authentic culture of life.”
Amy’s piece is not a simplistic “I’m-Okay-You’re-Okay” approach (quite the contrary, as she appreciates the need we all feel for redemption). Nor does she mean at all to deprecate the discipline of a rigorous examination of conscience before receiving communion, including an inquiry into fidelity to the Church’s moral teaching. Rather, Amy takes things to the next step. With those fundamentals in place, how do we draw upon the “precious resource” of communion, the real presence of Christ, and thereby “move beyond and transform the polarizing and paralyzing tensions that plague not only the Church, but much of the broader political discourse.”
Greg
Today's Los Angeles Times includes this story, "If Only We'd Known," about two parents who are filing a "wrongful life" lawsuit because "they were denied the opportunity to decide whether to abort the pregnancy, something they would have weighed had they known the child would be born with a disabling defect that can result in paralysis, profound learning disabilities and fluid on the brain." The articles notes, among other things, that "the rise in wrongful-life suits and the threat of legal responsibility for a child's defects puts obstetricians in the uncomfortable position of recommending, if not insisting on, abortion when there is the slightest doubt, said one physician." (Note: The LA Times requires registration).
Rick
Today's NYT features a short piece by Yale's Paul Bloom on, among other things, "the great conflict between science and religion in the last century"; "the conclusion that our souls are flesh"; our "mistaken" "common-sense dualis[m]"; and the "scientific view of mental life."
Bloom's opening paragraph is consonant with many of the discussions we've had here on MOJ:
What people think about many of the big issues that will be discussed in the next two months - like gay marriage, stem-cell research and the role of religion in public life - is intimately related to their views on human nature. And while there may be differences between Republicans and Democrats, one fundamental assumption is accepted by almost everyone. This would be reassuring - if science didn't tell us that this assumption is mistaken.
In Bloom's view, most people today -- and, in particular, religious people -- embrace a comforting but indefensible "dualism", believing that "bodies and souls [are] separate." Bloom quotes the President's Council on Bioethics report of December 2003, "Being Human": "We have both corporeal and noncorporeal aspects. We are embodied spirits and inspirited bodies (or, if you will, embodied minds and minded bodies)."
This is all wrong, says Bloom. "The qualities of mental life that we associate with souls are purely corporeal; they emerge from biochemical processes in the brain. . . . As the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker points out, the qualities that we are most interested in from a moral standpoint - consciousness and the capacity to experience pain - result from brain processes that emerge gradually in both development and evolution. There is no moment at which a soulless body becomes an ensouled one, and so scientific research cannot provide objective answers to the questions that matter the most to us."
The correct view of mental life, Bloom insists, can only overpower religion:
The conclusion that our souls are flesh is profoundly troubling to many, as it clashes with the notion that the soul survives the death of the body. It is a much harder pill to swallow than evolution, then, and might be impossible to reconcile with many religious views. Pope John Paul II was clear about this, conceding our bodies may have evolved, but that theories which "consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."This clash is not going to be easily resolved. The great conflict between science and religion in the last century was over evolutionary biology. In this century, it will be over psychology, and the stakes are nothing less than our souls.
Bloom is right in this, I think: The stakes are very high.
Rick
UPDATE: MOJ reader Matthew Festa was unimpressed with Bloom's essay, and urges us to read Edward Oakes's 1998 First Things article, "The Blind Programmer", taking on Steven Pinker. Festa also suggests (wisely, in my view) that those inclined to embrace Bloom's claims concerning the centrality of "dualism" to religious faith might benefit from a study of Aquinas's psychology.
Thursday, September 9, 2004
Brian Britt, a religious studies professor at Virginia Tech, has written a short essay for the Martin Marty Center's "Sightings" series questioning the wisdom of Locke v. Davey. Much of the essay covers what is undoubtedly familiar ground for most MoJ readers, but he offers an interesting additional perspective with his conclusion that "by upholding the law withholding scholarships from theology students, the Supreme Court has done more than assuage civil libertarians; it has reinforced the confusion between religious study and practice and perpetuated the caricature of higher education as vocational training."
Rob
My colleague Susan Stabile has posted her article, Using Religion to Promote Corporate Responsibility, on the new group blog "Biz Fems Speak!" (It's a blog of women corporate law academics.)
Rob
What do debates over the Church teaching on the death penalty, the communion controversy, and legal ethics students struggling with the implications of Enron all have in common?
Last night here at Fordham as part of our Catholic Lawyers' Program we kicked off our three-part series “Catholics & the Death Penalty” series with a discussion about the lawyers' roles - featuring Kings County DA Charles J. Hynes and the New York Capital Defender, Kevin Doyle. As Hynes has in some cases sought the death penalty, and Doyle is an outspoken opponent – and both are devoutly Catholic - I had anticipated something of a debate. Instead, they agreed, in large part, that the death penalty is bad policy and a waste of resources. Where they differed – and this was fascinating – was in how they thought about religion’s application to their professional life. Hynes’ principle reason for not applying recent Church reflections on the death penalty? The Pope’s statements haven’t been clear enough – they leave, in some sense, a “loophole” for “rare” cases. He’s waiting for a clear pronouncement of a hard and fast rule.
Similarly, I think much of the communion controversy debates have had a similar focus – on the “floor” of what crosses the line into mortal sin. Even those who respond with “single issue” concerns (eg, why peg just abortion?) are also prone to this – the focus is still on defining the negative rules.
All of this brought me back to conversations two years ago with my large legal ethics class. As they attempted to sort through the implications of Enron, what struck me was their focus on the line which is not to be crossed – and their apparent sense that as advocates they have an obligation to dance as close as possible to that line so as to obtain the maximum benefit for their clients.
Thinking about the task before us – that of developing “Catholic legal theory” – I used to think that the linchpin was simply to get folks to become familiar with the documents of Catholic Social Thought, and the implications would be evident, or would at least get a conversation going. Now I’m beginning to think that the even more challenging task is to get folks to move beyond a negative-rule-oriented lens which is focused largely on how to avoid sin (or a violation of the rules) toward some appreciation of the much larger, more positive, and certainly more constructive vision of how we can cooperate with God’s plans for humanity.
The task is formidable – and made harder by the fact that our case law and our culture are prone to define religion as another set of rule-based obligations to fulfill. (eg, take a look at the fascinating Second Circuit opinion in Seeger, 326 F.2d 846 – defining religion as “bowing to external commands”).
This is not to say that rules are not important, and that the Bishops are not right to point out what does cross the line into sinful material cooperation with evil. But if the general conversation stays there, don’t we risk losing sight of the much larger endeavor to which our faith calls us? If we’re constantly looking at the “floor” we may never even glimpse that “heaven and earth are full of your glory,” as we say in every mass.
Amy
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
[I thought that this piece, from today's New York Times, would be of interest.]
September 8, 2004
School Siege in Russia Sparks Self-Criticism in Arab World
By JOHN KIFNER
BEIRUT, Sept 8 — The brutal school siege in Russia, with hundreds of children dead and wounded, has sparked an unusual round of self-criticism and introspection in the Muslim and Arab world.
"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims," Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched Al-Arabiya satellite television station wrote in one of the most striking of these commentaries.
Writing in the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Mr. Rashed said it was "shameful and degrading" that not only were the Beslan hijackers Muslims, but also the murderers of Nepalese workers in Iraq, the attackers of residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar, Saudi Arabia, the women believed to have blown up two Russian airplanes last week and Osama bin Laden himself.
"The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim," he wrote. "What a pathetic record. What an abominable `achievement.' Does this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?"
Mr. Rashed, like several other commentators, singled out Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a senior Egyptian cleric living in Qatar who broadcasts an influential program on Al Jazeera television and who has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for the killing of American and foreign "occupiers" in Iraq, military and civilian.
"Let us contemplate the incident of this religious Sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians," he wrote. "How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?"
Mr. Rashed recalled that in the past, leftists and nationalists in the Arab world were considered a "menace" for their adoption of violence, and the mosque was a "haven" of "peace and reconciliation" by contrast.
"Then came the Neo-Muslims," he said. "An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry."
A columnist for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyassa, Faisal al-Qina'I, also took aim at Sheikh Qaradawi. "It is saddening," he wrote, "to read and hear from those who are supposed to be Muslim clerics, like Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others of his kind, that instead of defending true Islam they encourage these cruel actions and permit decapitation, hostage-taking and murder."
In Jordan, a group of Muslim religious figures, meeting with the religious affairs minister, Ahmed Heleil, issued a statement today saying the seizing of the school and subsequent massacre was dedicated to distorting the pure image of Islam.
"This terrorist act contradicts the principles of our true Muslim religion and its noble values," the statement said.
Writing in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour, a columnist, Bater Wardam, noted a propensity in the Arab world to "place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists and the American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case."
"They came from our midst," he wrote of those who had kidnapped and murdered civilians in Iraq, blown up commuter trains in Spain, turned airliners into bombs and shot the children in Ossetia.
"They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast, grow beards, demand the wearing of veils and call for the defense of Islamic causes. Therefore we must all raise our voices, disown them and oppose all these crimes."
In Beirut, Rami G. Khouri wrote in the Daily Star that while most Arabs "identified strongly and willingly" with armed Palestinian or Lebanese guerrillas fighting Israeli occupation, "all of us today are dehumanized and brutalized by the images of Arabs kidnapping and beheading foreign hostages."
Calling for a global strategy to reduce terror, he traced what he called "this ugly trek" in the Arab world to "the home-grown sense of indignity, humiliation, denial and degradation that has increasingly plagued many of our young men and women."
A Palestinian columnist, Hassan al-Batal, wrote in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Ayyam that the "day of horror in the school" should be designated an international day for the condemnation of terrorism. "There are no mitigating circumstances for the inhuman horror and the height of barbarism" at the school, he wrote.
In Egypt, the semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram called the events "an ugly crime against humanity."
In Saudi Arabia, newspapers tightly controlled by the government — which finds itself under attack from Islamic fundamentalists — were even more scathing.
Under the headline "Butchers in the Name of Allah," a columnist in the government daily Okaz, Khaled Hamed al-Suleiman, wrote that "the propagandists of Jihad succeeded in the span of a few years in distorting the image of Islam.
"They turned today's Islam into something having to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent civilians and exploding people. They have fixed the image of Muslims in the eyes of the world as barbarians and savages who are not good for anything except slaughtering people," he wrote, adding:
"The time has come for Muslims to be the first to come out against those interested in abducting Islam in the same way they abducted innocent children. This is the true Jihad these days and this is our obligation, as believing Muslims, towards our monotheistic religion."
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