Massimo Faggioli, of Villanova University, has a habit, and makes it a practice, of importing into Catholic matters, questions, discussions, etc., the standard (tired?) political/tribal categories and characterizations of "left", "right", "culture warrior", "progressive," etc. Because, according to his map, the lay movement "People of Praise" is "conservative", it follows, apparently, that (like all political things "conservative") it is worrisome.
This mapping is, I suspect, what explains his Politico piece defending the ongoing attacks on/criticisms of Judge Amy Barrett's affiliation with "People of Praise" and his repeated defenses of those senators who asked clumsy (at best) and bigoted (worse) questions about Barrett's Catholicism during her confirmation several years ago. (It should be noted, and regretted, that Politico -- an often valuable outlet -- has been trafficking recently in the completely silly insinuations about some imagined connection between Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" and the (utterly innocuous) use, in the past, by "People of Praise" of the scripturally inspired term "handmaid" (See Luke 1:38).
In any event, the piece is misguided. Now, it is true (quoting the headline) that politicians' and nominees' "religious beliefs" are not "off limits" to voters and senators. (If a candidate for office sincerely held a religious belief that some persons did not possess equal human dignity as other persons, that would be a good reason to vote against such a candidate.) What should be off-limits are (a) misrepresenting or wilfully misunderstanding a nominee's or candidate's religious beliefs and (b) applying, without justification or warrant, greater suspicion and skepticism to a candidate's or nominee's sworn testimony because of disagreement with that candidate's or nominee's religous beliefs or affilitations. Several Democratic senators did these things during Barrett's hearings on her Court of Appeals nomination, and too many commentators and activists are doing these things now.
All political leaders, judges, candidates, and nominees have views, commitments, ideals, attachments, loyalties, etc. We can (and do) ask them, "if you come to occupy a position of public trust and responsibility in our political community, will you exercise your responsibility, and fulfil your role, in a way that respects our political community's laws and norms?" If they say, under oath, "yes"; it is wrong -- it is just bigotry -- to say, "well, because you are a 'conservative' Catholic, we don't believe you. 'The dogma lives loudly,' and all that."
It is also, by the way, highly misleading for Faggioli to enlist Pope Francis in support of his anti-"People of Praise" and anti-Barrett insinuations. The Holy Father has praised charismatic renewal as a “current of grace” in the Catholic Church. And, in 2014, he appointed one member of People of Praise as an auxiliary bishop in Portland, Oregon.
A few years ago, a suspiciously timed and oddly sourced piece appeared in the New York Times, which also tried to hamstring Barrett's nomination with various allegations, rumors, and insinuations about "People of Praise." It's too bad that we are already seeing a reprise.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
October 2, 2020 11:00 am ET
Moderators:
Brett G. Scharffs and Jane Wise, BYU Law School
John Bernau, Shlomo Pill, and Justin Latterell, Emory Law School
Stephanie Barclay, Notre Dame Law School
Mark Movsesian, St John’s University School of Law
Michael Moreland, Villanova University
Sponsored by:
International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Brigham Young University Law School
Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University Law School
Notre Dame Program on Church, State & Society, Notre Dame Law School
Center for Law and Religion, St. Johns University School of Law
Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
https://www.iclrs.org/law-religion-and-coronavirus-in-the-united-states-a-six-month-assessment/
Monday, September 21, 2020
Happy to announce that Angela Franks and I will teach our intensive Abigail Adams summer seminar on (bi-monthly) Saturdays starting in early October. Here's a short video about the seminar and here's more info. Applications are being accepted until September 28th.
The seminar is part of the new Wollstonecraft Project at AAI. The Wollstonecraft Project aims to guide, facilitate, and support scholarly engagement in questions of sexual equality and freedom, as philosophically informed by realist metaphysics, virtue-based ethics, and a Wollstonecraftian understanding of women’s rights. We will also be awarding a $20,000 fellowship for research and scholarship in this area.
After President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to fill Justice Kennedy's seat, CNN asked me to offer a few thoughts for their roundup, In Trump's Court Pick, Who Won? Not sure I answered the question, but my contribution -- "Amy Coney Barrett Would Have Been a Better Choice" -- seems particularly relevant this week.
I don't know Judge Barrett personally (as many MOJers do), but to me she represents a powerful rejoinder to the autonomy feminism that predominates the women's movement today. I do hope she is nominated this week -- and swiftly confirmed.
Here's my short CNN contribution (omitting much of the paragraph on Kavanaugh):
I have to admit it: I was hoping President Trump would choose Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Brilliant, courageous, and quick on her feet, the professionally and personally esteemed mother of seven puts to rest — in her very person — the central pro-choice feminist assumption that bearing and raising children impedes women’s serious engagement in professional and public life.
She would have brought true diversity to the Court on the most rancorous constitutional issue of our day, underscoring how an intellectually astute woman need not acquiesce in the unquestioning abortion rights dogma that has held the cause for women’s rights hostage for far too long now. And she would have been able to make the case the best way possible: debunking the sham legal reasoning that has upheld the putative right for decades by day and blazing an alternative path with her family by night.
Comparatively, President Trump played it safe: Judge Brett Kavanaugh... [well, in retrospect, that wasn't a very good take]
Should the President have another chance, and should that chance come in the form of the retirement of an aged Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump should pull the trigger and nominate Coney Barrett. Our country desperately needs the opportunity to debate not only abortion, but to see how the autonomy feminism Ginsburg has long represented should pass away with its most cherished leader.
A dignitarian feminism, by contrast, would recognize both that women and men are of equal dignity and are duly encumbered by their shared responsibilities to the vulnerable and dependent — in their own families and in the community at large. Coney Barrett would not only serve the Constitution better than most jurists of our time; she would reveal, by the very integrity of her life, a more dignified way forward.
Friday, September 18, 2020
On Sep. 30, I'll be moderating a Murphy Institute program on the legalization of physician-assisted suicide that was originally scheduled for this past March. So much about our world has changed since then, including the social context and political landscape of debate on this topic. Please join us as we explore these issues, in a Covid-era, user friendly, free and travel-less webinar.
Hot Topics: Cool Talk - Physician Assisted Suicide
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Wednesday, September 30
3:30-5:30pm CST
This is the rescheduled date for the program, originally planned for March 18.
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Assisted suicide is currently legal in ten jurisdiction in the United States: California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Montana, Maine (starting January 1, 2020), New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Efforts are underway in many other states (including Minnesota) to enact similar laws. Join us in this extended edition of our Hot Topics: Cool Talk event series for a spirited but civil conversation about such laws between two advocates who take opposing views on this issue.
Registration is encouraged as space is limited. An email reminder along with a link to join the webinar will be sent to the address provided at registration to those who register prior to 12pm on September 30. The webinar link will also be made available on the event webpage.
2.0 CLE credit approved. This program is free and open to the public.
Speakers
John B. Kelly, Director of Second Thoughts MA: Disability Rights Advocates Against Assisted Suicide and New England Regional Director of Not Dead Yet.
Thaddeus M. Pope, Director of the Health Law Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, co-author of The Right to Die: The Law of End-of-Life Decisionmaking, and director of the Medical Futility Blog.
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Following up on Marc's post, I was very sorry to learn of the passing of Prof. Jeffrie Murphy. He was a wonderful scholar, deeply engaged with moral questions, and -- to me -- a kind and generous mentor when I started teaching Criminal Law (and since). For several years now, I've been concluding my course with his "Law Like Love" essay. Take a look. Here's the SSRN abstract:
This is a transcript of the Kharas Distinguished Lecture that was delivered in March of 2004 at Syracuse University College of Law. John Rawls has famously said that justice is the first virtue of social and legal institutions. This lecture seeks to open a discussion of the question: What would law - particularly criminal law - be like if we regarded love (agape) as the first virtue of social and legal institutions? The lecture discusses punishment - including capital punishment - in a framework of love, and critically considers the claim frequently made that love-based forgiveness is inconsistent with capital punishment and perhaps with all punishment.
Jeffrie Murphy, a wonderful philosopher of criminal law and ethics, has died. One of the many things about which he wrote insightfully and with penetration concerned the relationship of retributivism and Christianity, as in his excellent book, Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits (see the final Chapter 9) (2003).
Here is a little something from his book chapter, "Some Second Thoughts on Retributivism," in the collected volume of essays, Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Mark D. White, ed. 2011), which shows both the power and the danger of Murphy's distinctive (and, to my mind, highly persuasive) account of retributivism:
I moved away from regarding desert merely as legal guilt and also from regarding it as merely owing a debt. But I still had very strong retributivist intuitions--and was even prepared to defend some degree of vengeance and, in the book Forgiveness and Mercy that I joint authored with Jean Hampton, to defend an emotion that I called "retributive hatred." Gradually I began to realize that what had always really drawn me to retributivism was some version of Kant's idea of punishing not just wrongdoing, but human evil--vile deeds performed by people of "inner viciousness." I learned that such a notion had even found its way into American homicide law where phrases such as "cruel, heinous, and depraved" and "flowing from a hardened, abandoned, and malignant heart" occurred in statutes and in sentencing guidelines. This appealed to me.
Such a strong notion of just deserts is, of course, in some ways a secular analogue to traditional notions of divine justice--the judgment that God will administer in the Last Assizes. Indeed, Michael S. Moore (the legal philosopher, not the maker of propaganda films) defends a robust version of retributivism very like the one that I am sketching here but claims that if he believed in God, he would not be so concerned to organize secular systems of criminal law around retributive values. As an atheist, however, he sees no other way to target moral desert in punishment and regards this value as too important to leave unrealized. This analogy with divine punishment is interesting; but it should, I now believe, alert us to some dangers in thinking of secular punishment along these lines. It is not for nothing that we often find ourselves condemning people who--as we put it--"play God," and even Scripture famously teaches, "Judge not that ye be not judged."
The Living Bible, that wonderful source of unintended theological humor, once rendered (if I recall correctly) that biblical recommendation as, "Don't criticize, and then you won't be criticized." But the true point of the passage is surely not a prohibition against making any critical moral judgments at all, but is rather a caution against making final judgments of deep character to declare any fellow human being as simply vermin or disposable garbage--evil all the way down--and a legitimate object of our hatred.
Thursday, September 17, 2020
In today's Washington Post, Bishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone of the San Francisco Archdiocese calls out the government of the City of San Francisco for its discrimination against religious worship, including the Catholic Mass, in its Covid-related restrictions. The full piece is here.
Bishop Cordileone strikes just the right balance, in my estimation, noting the legitimate role of government in establishing health regulations to protect the public during the pandemic, including safety rules for churches and worship services. But he rightly objects to the city's heavier restrictions on churches and worship than on shopping and other economic activities. And he reminds of our need for spiritual nourishment in the Mass, which cannot be fully obtained virtually. As he quotes one parishioner, “Why can I spend three hours indoors shopping for shoes at Nordstrom’s but can’t go to Mass?”
Bishop Cordileone recognizes that the reason for this constitutionally invalid mistreatment of churches is less likely to be malice toward religion and more likely to result from the apathy of a secular elite that increasingly dominates in governments. Because they do not share a robust faith, they simply do not think of or regard religious worship as something important. We must strongly resist that unlawful attitude.
He concludes with this:
All we are seeking is access to worship in our own churches, following reasonable safety protocols — the same freedoms now extended to customers of nail salons, massage services and gyms. It’s only fair, it’s only compassionate, and, unlike with these other activities, it’s what the First Amendment demands.
