I just read, in The Weekly Standard, an interesting review of two new-ish books on the "decline of cities" and urban policy. (I'm very interested in this topic, about which my wife, Nicole Stelle Garnett, and our co-blogger Vince Rougeau write and teach).
As described by the reviewer, Harry Siegel, Douglas Rae's City: Urbanism and Its End, analyzes the process and causes of New Haven's fall "from a working-class manufacturing center to a cluster of dilapidated housing projects." This fall -- which, believe me, is real -- took place notwithstanding the fact that New Haven was the "flagship city of the Great Society's 'Model Cities' program" and "received far more federal dollars per capital than any other city."
E. Michael Jones's book, "The Slaughter of the Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing," offers, Siegel reports, a "paranoid and disturbing perspective": Jones's argument is that "a WASP elite that ran the federal government used southern blacks as its unwitting pawns in a vast 'psychological warfare campaign' against unassimilated white ethnics, particularly urban Catholics and their parishes." Siegel makes it clear that Jones's arguments are uncautious, and often offensive -- particularly in his apparent insistence that urban Catholics who resisted integration were blameless victims, and not racists. With that caveat, though, Siegel suggests that "Jones is onto something significant": "The destruction of the working class," he says, "homeowning urban neighborhoods was not . . . just the necessary outcome of economic and demographic changes but also the result of ill-considered government policies written by urban planners often contemptuous of Catholics and patronizing towards blacks."
I have not read the books, and so cannot endorse them. Still, it strikes me that their subject -- and the ideas raised in Siegel's review -- are relevant to "Mirror of Justice" readers for at least two reasons: First, I kept thinking, as I read the review, about several exchanges we've had, over the past few weeks, about "subsidiarity," and what it really means. Next, and more generally, I'd love to hear others' thoughts about what CST has to say about "urbanism" -- not only about criminal justice, welfare policy, housing policy, etc., all of which affects life in our cities, but about "urbanism" more generally. Do Catholic claims about the person have any implications for how we *ought* to structure our cities and communities?
Rick
UPDATE: I received an e-mail from Tom Messner, a student of mine (who also contributes to the Christus Victor blog), commenting on this post. He writes:
I think Jones’ reflection on the disasters of urban/social planning . . . suggests we should . . . rephrase (your) question to read: "What we ought NOT to do in structuring our cities and communities, in light of Catholic Social Teaching?" I don’t know that much about subsidiarity, so I’ll use this definition: “As a person with an eternal destiny, man cannot find his fulfillment in the state or in any temporal order. From this arises the principle of subsidiarity, which denies the claim of the state to total competence.” (C. Rice). If ever the state has proved itself totally INCOMPETENT, surely it has done so in its “structuring of cities and communities” in certain neighborhoods in Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston (the four cities on which Jones focuses). So I think maybe one of the most basic things subsidiarity might "mean” with respect to urban planning is a very MINIMAL role for the state: it’s got a bad track record. This may be too obvious and simplistic; but maybe it’s not, at least not as some sort of baseline.
Tom also observes that "the purpose of civil society and of human law is to promote the common good, which is ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.’" He then goes on to offer some thoughts about what this statement means in the context of urban development and policy.
I've encouraged Tom to post his thoughts over at Christus Victor.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Another Notre Dame law student (and blogger) has noted her disagreement with Tom's take (supra) on CST and urban planning. Check out "View From the Dome," here. It sounds like VFTD would apply CST principles to the story described by Rae and Jones in a very different way. I'd love to hear more.
One quick observation: VFTD mentions her views on the "prudence of deregulation of housing." I take it that Rae and Jones are not discussing so much the question whether habitability rules, rent control, etc., actually help or hurt low-income persons and families, but broader issues of "urbanism," city planning, zoning, etc. That is -- and perhaps VFTD agrees -- one could believe (as I, tentatively, do) that many so-called urban-renewal policies have been disastrous in their aesthetic, social, economic, and moral effects, while *still* opposing the "deregulation of housing," or without also believing that, say, many features of landlord-tenant and housing-code law lead to the (unintended) consequence of shrinking the pool of housing available to poor people.
I log onto our blog, and have a few thoughts and some reactions - why can’t I bring myself to really jump in and post? At first I thought it was because up until recently I have been too busy to take the time to sufficiently think out my reactions. But now it’s Spring Break, and I do have some time. Perhaps I am overly cautious… Usually before I publish something I ask at least five or six friends to read it over and react, and then I usually make a heap of changes. The thought of “publishing” onto the anonymous world-wide-web what still feel like random thoughts goes against my cautious grain.
But then, musing a bit more, I realized my hesitation was even deeper than that. Perhaps the specific person to whom my thoughts may be addressed won’t have time for a while to listen - someone else may jump in, and the person to whom my thoughts were originally addressed may get lost in the shuffle. Or maybe my response is based on a misunderstanding of what the other person was trying to say - and the blog feels like an awkward and somewhat too public forum to work towards understanding one another.
And who know how else my approach to the conversation is shaped by the thought that other nameless folks may read our exchange? Then I realized what was bothering me was that it all had a sort of “reality-TV” feel - am I really talking to a specific person, or to an anonymous mass? If an anonymous mass is present, can we really have a conversation without being too self-conscious?
I’m sure I am over-thinking this… but perhaps it is a more feminine reaction to the medium. Before I talk to someone, I want to make sure they are ready to listen, and if not, I’d rather wait. (for this reason, I like personal email - it can wait). I want a personal connection - a chance to apologize if perhaps I wasn’t listening well enough, and ask more questions, get further clarification on your thoughts - all dimensions which seem to require a not-too-public forum. Then, when I publish something for a broader community, I hope what I write reflects an effort to think carefully about the audience and the anticipated questions, the need for further explanations and backgrounds, etc. - a process which strikes me as a very different forum than a personal exchange. So I’m having a lot of trouble with the way the blog medium merges the two.
Please don’t take this as a criticism - I think the blog is a wonderful idea as a way to keep each other informed about scholarship and events - and genuinely do want to understand how this kind of technology can further the conversation and exchange. But I just haven’t yet been able to put together how to use this kind of technology and still maintain a hoped for personal dimension and personal connection.
If anyone can help me with this (or has similar thoughts) I am all ears.
Here's an insightful response from Gerald J. Russello to my query as to whether there's a double standard if we insist that Gonzaga recognize the Christian Legal Society chapter, but don't insist that Seton Hall recognize the gay student group:
The difference between Gonzaga and Seton Hall, to my mind, is that between "old fashioned" liberalism and something new. Seton Hall presents the traditional academic freedom dilemma: should a Catholic institution allow students to advocate on an issue in a school-approved group that is not compatible with its self-understanding as a Catholic institution. I believe Seton Hall is right not to permit such groups, because from a Catholic perspective that issue has been discussed and a conclusion reached. The issue can be discussed in a classroom, but not treated as an "expression" equivalent with other approved student groups. (We had similar debates when I was a student at Georgetown over pro-choice student groups).
With Harvard and InterVarsity, the issue is different. The "expansive view of non-discrimination" you rightly identify as the motivating force here conditions the identity of the participants in the debate. The particular issue is, in some sense, irrelevant. In other words, the discrimination against InterVarsity is not because of the point of view (advocating Christian legal principles in law), but because of the internal structure of the group itself (restricting leadership to Christians). Harvard may publicly proclaim that it has no "bias" against Christianity, but it believes all groups should reflect the student body, i.e., Christian groups should be subject internally to non-discrimination as a condition to recognition, even if the self-understanding of the group does not permit such non-discrimination. The secular ideology controls the way groups can understand themselves, even if (as in the case with a secular university) it disclaims any interest in the outcome of the debate. If this analysis is right, I think we can develop a principled distinction between the way we approach these two forms of pluralism.
As to your point on liberalism-as-religion, I disagree, not because it is not true, but primarily because liberals do not see it that way. From the perspective of liberalism, there is no "religious level" truth except tolerance, which cannot press its own truth claims. Crediting liberalism with the conviction of religion imports our own religious values to a system that, while deeply held, cannot come to conclusive answers to ultimate questions.
Last weekend, we here at the University of St. Thomas sponsored a symposium on “Understanding the Intersection of Business and Legal Ethics,” in which, among many others, our co-blogger Stephen Bainbridge made an important contribution and all presentations of which will be published in the University of St. Thomas Law Review.
During the course of that event, in which many of the speakers addressed the various scandals arising in the business world – the Savings & Loan crisis of several years ago, Enron, Martha Stewart, etc. – in which lawyers failed in their role as moral counselor, I could not help but be disturbed by the painful parallel with the recent scandals of the American Catholic Church, Inc. Of course, the Catholic Church is not, or at least should not be, a business enterprise. And indeed a large part of the priest abuse problem was that the Church often conceived of itself as such. As Ralph McInerny says, some “bishops acted like CEOs rather than shepherds.”
Given the nature of the UST symposium, which looked not only to business ethics but also to the ethics of lawyers advising businesses, my more immediate focus was on the behavior of those lawyers retained by the Church either as general counsel or to represent it with respect to lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of minors by priests. Given the nature of this weblog on Catholic Social Thought and the law, the proper role of lawyers as Catholics, that is, people of faith who are in the legal profession, in proper counseling is directly pertinent.
The report of the National Review Board appointed by the bishops issued just a couple of weeks ago. It includes a section titled “Reliance on Attorneys,” a title that is meant to indicate not something salutary but rather delineate yet another of the multiple errors made by the bishops. In other words, when the bishops sought the advice of members of our profession, they went astray. Ouch.
Consider the details of the grievous errors outlined in the National Review Board report, which, while levied against the bishops in the first instance, encompass their lawyers as well: Attorneys used “tactics [that] often were inappropriate for the Church, and which tended to compound the effects of the abuse that already had been inflicted.” These tactics included defenses that “could be construed as blaming the victim,” arguing that the Church had no responsibility for priests by claiming they were “independent contractors,” and “in general adopting an overly adversarial approach.”
Moreover, the report says that “certain lawyers recommended, and certain bishops insisted, that the victims sign confidentiality agreements, which stifled their ability to discuss their experiences openly and thwarted awareness by the laity of the problem.” In addition, lawyers counseled Church leaders not to meet with or apologize to victims, even when the abuse was clearly substantiated. Not only does the report correctly say that this approach undermined the primary pastoral mission of the bishops, but it suggests that it ultimately led to greater legal liability as many victims said they would not have filed suit had someone heard their complaints and apologized.
The report says this problem was caused by “disastrous pastoral decisions” in selecting lawyers based on “friendship [with bishops] and a misguided perception of the lawyers’ loyalty to the Church.” As a consequence, the lawyers chosen “failed to adapt their tactics to account for the unique role and responsibilities of the Church.”
To be sure, as another part of that report states, “[t]he first role of a bishop or any Church leader must be to act as a pastor to the Catholic faithful.” Thus, the bishops have primary responsibility here, and cannot avoid that responsibility by alluding to the advice of counsel. Or as the report puts it, “the Church should not hide behind its lawyers.” That much is a given.
Nonetheless, is it not sad that counsel from their lawyers is cited as a problem, rather than as one of the means toward a solution? Is it not a scandal to us in the legal profession that, rather than assisting Church leaders in finding a morally superior means of responding to the sex abuse problem, Church lawyers are said to have exacerbated it? Now I am sure there were exceptions to this sorry pattern and perhaps we may hear at some point encouraging stories about individual lawyers who were part of the solution rather than the problem. And perhaps many of these lawyers did in fact provide moral counseling but because of confidentiality expectations have not been able to so reveal it publicly (although the bishops presumably waived any such confidentiality when cooperating with the investigation by the national review board). Nonetheless, it cannot be gainsaid that, on the whole, the involvement of lawyers made this serious problem a greater disaster.
What can we learn from this about our role as lawyers? To begin with, the growing revival in professional responsibility scholarship and education of attention to the foundational role of lawyers as moral as well as legal counselors needs to be heard and emphasized just as much among the Church’s lawyers as the rest of profession. One would have thought that the Church’s own legal representatives, with the full encouragement of their clients the bishops, would have been at the forefront of the movement to enhance ethical lawyering and moral counseling. Instead, the National Review Board report suggests they were among the last to get the message. How can we help ensure that this never happens again? As the bishops now seek to restore confidence in the Church among the faithful, how can we restore confidence in lawyers of faith as committed to partnership with Church leaders in providing legal advice that serves a greater moral purpose?
There is some appeal to Rick's suggested approach (posted below) to the specter of a double standard when it comes to Gonzaga rejecting the Christian Legal Society student group versus Seton Hall rejecting the gay student group. We could support Seton Hall's action, but not Gonzaga's action, with an eye toward the Catholic identity of the institution.
But that approach is of limited help when it comes to non-Catholic institutions. Many schools, including Harvard, have resisted InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's official presence on campus because the group limits leadership to Christians. Most of us probably think Harvard should allow such groups to operate in a way that is consistent with the group's own religious identity. But if schools like Harvard have any core identity these days, it's arguably an identity rooted in an expansive vision of non-discrimination. So isn't InterVarsity's Christian-only leadership requirement inconsistent with Harvard's identity, just as a gay student group's mission is (arguably) inconsistent with Seton Hall's identity? Do we think secular schools are obligated to embrace a more robust form of pluralism than Catholic schools?
I certainly don't pretend to have an easy answer to this, but it seems that if we're going to invoke principles of pluralism and liberty to second-guess institutional decision-making shaped by a secular worldview that cuts against religious groups, we also have to invoke it when institutional decision-making shaped by a religious worldview cuts against non-religious groups. (I'm not speaking in constitutional terms here, just as a matter of public argument.) Either that, or we have to offer a double standard for pluralism and associational liberty depending on whether the school has a secular or religious worldview, and I'm not sure how to defend that, especially given that many tenets of modern liberalism have risen to the level of religious belief in the eyes of many adherents, especially in the realm of higher education.
Eugene Volokh (here) and Nate Oman (here) have posted new, interesting thoughts about the use of religious arguments in the public-policy arena.
Nate asks, in light of a reason PETA ad, "is it proper to use religious arguments to persuade a religious believer when you yourself do not accept the religion in question?" He discusses, among other things, "television journalists [who] started lecturing the world about how the terrorism was really inconsistent with Islam and how the Koran doesn't really require this sort of thing"; "gay marriage activists who quote the New Testament at opponents of same sex marriage"; and the "attempts of westerners to persuade Muslims that Islam, properly understood, is not really inconsistent with modern liberal democracy."
Eugene explains why a particular "trope" -- "Those fundamentalist Christians are trying to force their religious opinions on us" -- bothers him. In his view, "that's what most lawmaking is -- trying to turn one's opinions on moral or pragmatic subjects into law."
Rick
UPDATE: Volokh has more to say about his post, and reactions to it, here.
Over at Slate.com, Steven Waldman of Belief.net has posted an even-handed, non-polemical article called "By Their Fruits: How to be a Catholic President in the 21st Century." In light of earlier exchanges, the article might be of interest.
Rob raises an excellent point (below), asking whether there is "any principled reason for supporting the students trying to create a Christian Legal Society chapter at Gonzaga, but not the student trying to create a gay student group at Seton Hall?" In my view, there probably is.
As Rob says, the decision by the SBA leadership at Gonzaga (and again, to be clear, I do not know all the facts) to deny recognition of the CLS appears to be not only an effort to "impose a collective, identity-squelching anti-discrimination norm on its student groups," but also an effort to impose a norm (i.e., a certain notion of anti-discrimination) that (in my view) runs counter to Gonzaga's character as a Catholic law school. Seton Hall's decision, on the other hand, is -- arguably -- in the service of its character as a Catholic law school, and -- arguably -- reflects a norm appropriate to that character. Certainly, I am a "fan" of associational integrity and freedom, I would want the state to treat both the CLS at Gonzaga and the gay-rights group at Seton Hall in an even-handed fashion. In each case, for instance, I would want the State to defer to the groups' own decisions about membership and leadership. I guess I have been approaching these cases, though, with an eye toward how these two (private) law schools should act.
Still, I'm not entirely satisfied with my own answer, and I welcome others' reactions to these two cases.
Yesterday a student filed suit against Seton Hall University after the school rejected his request to establish a gay student group on campus. I'm not sure as to the details of the student's request or the school's denial, but it raises an interesting point to follow up on Rick's post about Gonzaga. To the extent we value expressive liberty and associational identity, whose identity and expression should we support: the student group's or the university's? If the Gonzaga student government is trying to impose a collective, identity-squelching anti-discrimination norm on its student groups, isn't Seton Hall doing the same thing when it tries to enforce standards based on the Church's teaching? Besides the fact that we might favor the substance of one collective norm over the other, is there any principled reason for supporting the students trying to create a Christian Legal Society chapter at Gonzaga, but not the student trying to create a gay student group at Seton Hall?
Here's a link to an interesting story I've been following at the Gonzaga University School of Law. (Note: The link is to the website of an advocacy organization, "Foundation for Individual Rights in Education," with which I am familiar and which I, generally speaking, endorse). The School's Student Bar Association has refused to recognize the "Christian Legal Society" -- just as, a little while ago, it refused to recognize the "Christian Pro-Life Caucus" -- because the SBA president concluded that the group's requirement that its leadership be Christian is "discriminatory."
In my view, based on what I know, the decision by the Gonzaga SBA is quite unfortunate. For "Mirror of Justice" purposes, though, it strikes me that this incident points to a confusion about what we really mean -- or should mean -- about terms like "diversity" and "discrimination." Is it really meaningful to complain that the "Christian Legal Society," by requiring that its leadership be Christian (so as to preserve its expressive integrity), is "discriminating" against non-Christians? Or, do such complaints undermine the "purchasing power" of anti-discrimination arguments -- arguments that, I assume, we want to retain moral force? By refusing to recognize expressive groups like the CLS, on the ground that they fail to mirror in every respect the political norms of liberal democracy, is the Gonzaga SBA really serving "diversity"? Or, is the SBA undermining meaningful diversity by excluding from Gonzaga's "civil society" groups with a distinctive identity and message?
It seems to me that the debate about the treatment of the CLS at Gonzaga connects in interesting ways with discussions many of us have had -- and in which Mark Sargent has prominently participated -- about the place of distinctively Catholic law schools in the legal academy. It should also remind law teachers, I think, that we need to challenge our students and each other to think carefully about what discrimination *is*, given that the task of eradicating invidious discrimination (as opposed to religious associations) is one that we, as lawyers, are particularly called to perform.
