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.

Friday, June 4, 2004

LA County, the EU, and the Naked Public Square

By Rob Vischer

Once again I'm struck by the stark difference in the public expression of religious sentiment in Europe and the United States. The democractically elected heads of state in Europe have repeatedly rejected the Vatican's requests to include a descriptive reference to the continent's Christian heritage in the new EU Constitution. It is obvious that those heads of state would be subject to immediate recall votes if they took that stance over here, as evidenced by the public outrage over Los Angeles County's decision to remove a barely visible cross from the county seal in the face of a (groundless, in my view) lawsuit threat from the ACLU. Of course, expecting countries like France to allow the collective expression of a particular religion's positive contribution to history may be a pipe dream, since the French won't even allow individual students to express a particular religion's contribution to the make-up of their own identities.

Rob

"Once and Future Islam"

By Rick Garnett

Here is an article, over at Slate.com, about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's new book, What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. Here's the first paragraph:

"Many observers in both the Muslim world and the West say the real battle underway now isn't a clash of civilizations but rather a struggle for the soul of Islam that pits the vast majority of moderate Muslims against their militant co-religionists. Of course only Muslims can decide what their faith is going to look like in the future, but it is equally true that the West as a whole, and the United States in particular, has a lot riding on the outcome. It is vital to U.S. security interests that Muslim moderates rout their opponents, and Americans need to do whatever they can to help that happen. In What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West, Feisal Abdul Rauf explains how both the American government and private citizens, non-Muslim and Muslim, can take the initiative."

Rick

Interview with Sarah Gordon, re: "The Mormon Question"

By Rick Garnett

Here is an interesting interview with Professor Sarah Gordon, author of the very helpful and enlightening book, The Mormon Question (dealing with the experiences of the LDS Church at the hands of the United States in the Nineteenth Century). Thanks to our friends at Times and Seasons.

I had occasion to use Professor Gordon's book for a paper I am working on, concerning government efforts to cause revisions in religious doctrine.

Rick

"How To Drive Pat Buchanan insane"

By Rick Garnett

We've often discussed, on this blog, the difficulties facing believing Catholics who are engaged in politics (given that the "Catholic" view probably does not map neatly onto the platform and practice of either party). Here's an entertaining observation from the blog, "Evangelical Outpost," on a recent decision by a federal district court judge in Missouri to block deportation of a pregnant Mexican woman, noting that her unborn child is a "person", in light of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act:

"Pundit, journalist, and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is both strongly pro-life (“I will use the Bully Pulpit to defend the sacred rights of the unborn to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”) and vehemently against illegal immigration (“We will stop the illegal immigration in its tracks.”). So imagine what he must think about this recent ruling:

A U.S. District judge in Missouri has temporarily prohibited the deportation of a pregnant Mexican woman who falsely claimed U.S. citizenship, saying that her fetus is a U.S. citizen and may be protected under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004.

I almost wish Buchanan were still running for office just so we could find out what he thinks about this dilemma. I suspect that either his head would explode or that he’d shut down like the computer at the end of War Games. Either way, it would be fascinating to see him tussle with which of his dogmatic priorities would take precedence in this situation."

Rick

Exchange on Stem-Cell Research

By Rick Garnett

Here's a worthwhile exchange on embryonic stem-cell research, between writers for the National Review (link) and the New Republic (link).

Rick

Thursday, June 3, 2004

Lessons of Catholic Civic Engagement

By Rob Vischer

The project American Catholics in the Public Square has produced a new collection of essays, American Catholics, American Culture: Tradition and Resistance. The opening essay by John McGreevey concludes with two lessons drawn from Catholicism's history of civic engagement in the United States:

The first lesson bears directly on the question Steve asked as to whether "any theory of constitutional interpretation that validates Roe v. Wade constitutes material cooperation with evil." McGreevey cautions that "Catholics eager to engage the issues of the day must not reflexively dismiss reforms or programs that seem to spring from suspicious sources. The anti-Catholicism of many American abolitionists, precisely because they held views about individual autonomy antithetical to powerful Catholic traditions, was real. But those same abolitionists also understood the inhumanity of slavery more profoundly than all but a few Catholics." Where possible, our criticism of the validity of political or legal theories must be a separate endeavor from our responses to the particular problematic (or noble) practices the theories are used to justify.

The second lesson highlights a primary source of the discomfort that many of us have with the bishops' pronouncements on pro-choice politicians and communion. McGreevey argues that "[t]he most effective Catholic witness to Christian values in the public sphere has come through placing single issues in a more systematic framework. In this regard I find Cardinal Bernadin's 'consistent ethic of life' compelling, and not, as is frequently alleged, a way for liberal Catholics to dodge the wrenching issue of abortion. Instead, such a framework -- and again the contrast with discussion about birth control is stark -- may ultimately persuade a vast, skeptical and largely non-Catholic public that the Catholic social and sexual ethic does not rest upon opposition to women's equality."

By appearing to elevate abortion as the singular determinant of an individual's standing within the faith community, the bishops leave themselves wide open to charges of crass election-year politics. I realize that the issue has in many ways been forced upon them given the religious identity and public positions of the election-year candidates, but the middle way alluded to by Michael may have been more within reach if the bishops had responded to the predicament with a broader acknowledgment and invocation of relevant Church teaching; this may have minimized the rampant cynicism that has greeted the bishops' narrowly focused and admittedly GOP-friendly pronouncements.

Rob

The Role of Law in a Fallen World

By Steve Bainbridge

Last month's First Things, now available online, included a very interesting article by George Weigel on Catholic international relations theory. It's not remotely my area of expertise, so I leave assessing it to others who have studied these questions. Yet, I wanted to call attention to a particular passage that struck my eye:

Law is not self-vindicating or self-enforcing. Catholic international relations theory in the twenty-first century must take that into account in thinking through the relationship between “hard power” and “soft power,” and between the rule of law and the use of armed force, in international public life.
Being an adult convert, I come to Catholicism with the baggage of my Evangelical upbringing, which includes a strong emphasis on the Fall. As I observed in my article on Law and Economics in Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought, the Fall of Man tells a coherent story about the nature and origins of human preferences in an unredeemed world. I further argued that:
To be sure, Christians are called to a higher standard of behavior than that of fallen man. If the purpose of economic analysis is to predict how people will respond to changes in legal rules, however, can we assume Christian behavior by the masses of a secular and God-less society? No realistic social order can assume “heroic or even consistently virtuous behavior” by its citizens. A realistic social order therefore must be designed around principles that fall short of Christian ideals. In particular, the rules must not be defined in ways that effectively require every citizen to be a practicing Christian. Christian visions of Justice therefore cannot determine the rules of economic order. Instead, legal rules and predictions about human behavior must assume the fallen state of Man, which is precisely what I have tried to suggest Economic Man permits us to do.
Even since I crossed the Tiber, I have been planning on pursuing the Catholic version of the Fall and its corollary perspective on the perfectibility of Man, but haven't gotten around to it. What struck me about Weigel's statement thus was its apparent consistency with my own rather pessimistic view about the perfectibility of human nature and the resulting role of law in an unredeemed world. Perhaps the baggage of my Evangelical upbringing is not quite as irrelevant as I sometimes think.

A Response to Greg’s Response to Father Radcliffe

By Amy Uelmen

I am chewing on the line from Greg's response to Father Radcliffe: “To fully achieve the joy and fellowship of full membership in the Catholic Church, we likewise must accept the responsibilities that accompany that affiliation.” Points well taken that an overly indulgent approach to Church teaching risks emptying it of its life-giving challenge – but I wonder if it might help to think about the joy and fellowship of full communion (in every sense of the word) not so much as an achievement – but as a gift? Perhaps the deeper point is that an atmosphere of love may be the most hopeful path for creating an environment in which people are able to fully welcome the challenge of the truth – because in this context, it becomes an encounter with Jesus himself, who does leave one “untroubled and unafraid” – not because of any achievement of one’s own, but because he himself is love. I don’t know if you all have been following John Paul II’s recent repeated exhortations to the US Bishops that the hope for the Church’s renewal is in cultivating a “spirituality of communion” (see, e.g., Zenit.org 5/28/04). His description in Novo Millennio Ineunte n.43 is really quite striking, and I think speaks deeply to the recent debates:

"To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God's plan and respond to the world's deepest yearnings. But what does this mean in practice? Here too, our thoughts could run immediately to the action to be undertaken, but that would not be the right impulse to follow. Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed, wherever ministers of the altar, consecrated persons, and pastoral workers are trained, wherever families and communities are being built up. A spirituality of communion indicates above all the heart's contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity dwelling in us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers and sisters around us. A spirituality of communion also means an ability to think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of the Mystical Body, and therefore as "those who are a part of me". This makes us able to share their joys and sufferings, to sense their desires and attend to their needs, to offer them deep and genuine friendship. A spirituality of communion implies also the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only as a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly, but also as a "gift for me". A spirituality of communion means, finally, to know how to "make room" for our brothers and sisters, bearing "each other's burdens" (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust and jealousy. Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, "masks" of communion rather than its means of expression and growth."

Perhaps the best model to follow is Mary – who gave Jesus to the world not so much through her own “achievements” as through a radical and complete openness to God’s gifts, God’s plans, God’s grace – and in this she is not only “Mirror of justice” but also “Refuge of sinners” and “Queen of love.”

More on the Nuncio's Comments in Spain

By Michael Perry

[Thanks to Conor Dugan for calling this to my attention: http://es.news.yahoo.com/040503/4/3e3fb.html

Now, how do we square what is reported below with what is reported in The Tablet?]

El Nuncio dice que la legalización de las uniones homosexuales está totalmente en contra de la doctrina de la Iglesia
MADRID, 3 (EUROPA PRESS)

El Nuncio del Papa en España, monseñor Manuel Monteiro de Castro, dijo hoy que la legalización de las uniones homosexuales está totalmente en contra de la doctrina de la Iglesia. Con esta declaración salió al paso de lo declarado por el Forum Alsina de sacerdotes diocesanos de Gerona, que se ha mostrado a favor de la legalización de uniones de personas del mismo sexo.

Poco después de asistir a la inauguración de la Asamblea Plenaria de la Conferencia Episcopal, Publicidad

monseñor Monteiro manifestó a un grupo de periodistas que "las uniones homosexuales son totalmente contrarias a la doctrina de la Iglesia. Tal postura (la legalización de estas uniones) está claramente en contra de la línea de la Iglesia".

Monseñor Monteiro insistió que la familia está constituida por un hombre y una mujer , tal como está reconocida en los Códigos de Derecho Civil de España y de los restantes países de Europa. "El matrimonio --puntualizó-- es entre un hombre y una mujer. Las otras formas de convivencia está bien que sean reconocidas, pero no es la misma cosa. Es decir, el matrimonio es para lo que se conoce desde siempre como matrimonio y las otras formas no han de tener este nombre". No obstante, el Nuncio mostró su aprecio por estas personas (los homosexuales), a los que dijo que la Jerarquía de la Iglesia procura ayudar también en su vida espiritual.

Wednesday, June 2, 2004

Greg's Response to Timothy Radcliffe

By Michael Perry

Greg's response is precisely the response that needed to be made, in my judgment. After one has read Timothy Radcliffe's statement and then Greg's response, the next--and obvious--question is whether there isn't a "middle way". (A middle way that, I suspect, Radcliffe, Dominican that he is, would on reflection endorse. But that's not important.) Two points of departure in thinking our way through to a middle way: (1) The magisterium of the Church has sometimes been quite wrong--embarassingly so--in the positions it has taken. (2) There are positions as to which there is an enduring consensus among Catholics and other Christians--a consensus so settled and enduring as to be moral-theological bedrock for us.

So: It is easy to conclude that one cannot plausibly think that one is in communion with the Church--or, more broadly, with one's brothers and sisters in Christ--if one is a racist or an anti-semite. But it is not only not easy to conclude, it is implausible to conclude, in my judgment, that one is *not* in communion with the Church just because one rejects the magisterium's teaching on contraception or same-sex unions. (What *is* the magisterium's position on same-sex unions? See the statement I posted yesterday by the Vatican's nuncio to Spain.) Obviously, there is no consensus among us Catholics as to the magisterium's teaching on contraception or same-sex unions--much less a consensus so enduring as to be moral-theological bedrock for us.

I have taken some steps in the direction of developing a middle way in my book, Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge 2003). If you're interested, take a look at chapter 5: "Catholics, the Magisterium, and Same-Sex Unions: An Argument for Independent Judgment". (I notice that Mark Sargent has posted his review of my book on this blog.)

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