I am currently teaching a seminar in “Catholic Social Thought and Economic Justice.” Over the past few years I have re-vamped the syllabus, cutting down the number of topics I try to cover so as to have more time to discuss applications and the mesh with legal topics and structures. I am increasingly enamored of including film – at the moment, the Dorothy Day story, “Entertaining Angels” (1996, Paulist Pictures, with Martin Sheen); and “Romero” (1989 Paulist Pictures, starring Raul Julia).
Two snapshots of what I am learning from my students’ interaction with “Entertaining Angels”: First, really interesting observations about the tensions and ambiguities in Dorothy Day’s approach to single-mother parenting, as she raised her young daughter in the midst of the somewhat chaotic instability of the first Catholic worker house. This brought us into a fascinating discussion of how one’s commitment to working for justice (or any cause) impacts those closest; and how you think through those choices. It also gave me a glimpse of how much anxious pressure this generation feels to create an “ideal” setting for their children – which is making me think that as we move into Laborem Exercens I need to give some significant space to talking through a concept of “vocation” (both personal and professional) which allows plenty of room for human limitations, failures and frailty – as well as plenty of room (and permission) to work through the inevitable sufferings of life.
Second, there’s a fabulous culminating scene in which Day emerges from her own dark night in the community’s founding – which included tensions over whether to focus on the dissemination of ideas through the paper; or the day-to-day direct work with the extremely vulnerable and demanding homeless and poor. The turning point is through Day’s an encounter with Maggie, the alcoholic prostitute who was attempting to steal the community’s rent money. In response to Maggie’s sobs, “hit me,” Day responds: “I can see the light in you . . . the courage and the love … You are very beautiful . . . I love you.” What emerged in the class discussion was how this resolved the seeming tension between “contact” and “concepts” - as Peter-Hans Kolvenbach put in in his 2000 talk on the promotion of justice in Jesuit higher education -– “solidarity is learned through ‘contact’ rather than through ‘concepts.’” For me, Day’s “I can see the light in you” – leading to an attraction to the beauty of the encounter with Christ in the other – regardless of their external circumstances – captures what it means to find a powerful synthesis in a vision that fully contains both.
As many of you know, for me the last several months have been beautiful – but intense. This past year the Focolare community in the US celebrated its 50th anniversary, and I went into hibernation to put together (with co-author Tom Masters) a book for the occasion, which responds to some of the "frequently asked questoins" about its approach and its mesh with local church and parish structures, and which discusses how its work fits into the framework of American culture: Focolare: Living a Spirituality of Unity in the United States (New City Press 2011).
Right after those festivities I spent six weeks teaching (in italian!) in the Focolare’s relatively new interdisciplinary master’s program near Florence – the Sophia University Institute – a fantastic experience. The summer then brought a major change – a move from the Bronx Focolare community house to the house in Washington DC, and from Fordham to a new job as a visiting lecturer at Georgetown Law School – where I am teaching seminars in "Catholic Social Thought and Economic Jutice" this fall, and "Religion and the Work of a Lawyer" in the spring. Hopes are high that I will now have a little more time to blog! Amy
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Here (HT: Grant Gallicho) is a letter, signed by a number of Catholic scholars and activists, called "A Catholic Call to Abolish the Death Penalty." I agree with the letter's call. That said, two quick thoughts: First, my sense is that many death-penalty opponents are over-stating the matter when it comes to Troy Davis's factual guilt, and the "Georgia executed an innocent man" charge. I do believe that our executive-clemency and other post-conviction review procedures are inadequate, but I am not sure it is warranted to charge massive and unfair breakdowns in this particular case. The case, including the claimed new evidence, was carefully reviewed, several times. (My own thinking is closer to Chuck Lane's, here.) Of course, there is nothing remotely controversial or difficult about opposing the execution of innocent people; the challenge is to bear witness to the dignity of every human person by opposing the execution of people who are guilty of serious, awful crimes, as I still believe Troy Davis was (and as, for example, Timothy McVeigh was).
Second, I appreciate the fact that the theologians' letter calls specifically for legislative action to reform post-conviction procedures and abandon capital punishment. As I've said elsewhere with respect to this issue, although I want our legislatures to end capital punishment, and have worked to bring about that end, I don't think the Supreme Court should presume to strike down capital punishment as unconstitutional.
In Iran, "Execution for Apostasy Seems Imminent." More here.
Prof. Michael Baur sends in this response (below) to a recent blog-contribution by Prof. Hadley Arkes:
In Book IV of his Republic (at 435a), Plato suggests that it is only through the jostling or rubbing together of our varying ideas and conceptions (much like the rubbing together of two dry sticks) that we can ignite the spark of insight and arrive at a true understanding of things. I am deeply grateful for Professor Arkes’s thoughtful dialogical jostling, through which some very significant questions have emerged. Let me now try to repay at least part of the debt that I owe. . .
[UPDATE: I've added Prof. Arkes's response at the end of Baur's post, after the jump]
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It isn't too often that the subject of mens rea and mistake of fact and law appear in mainstream media accounts, but this piece in the Wall Street Journal is an exception. The piece's main point is the erosion of mens rea in various new federal laws. I have reservations about the current 'too-many-laws' trope. I very much agree that some new laws are unnecessary and I also am generally uncomfortable with punishment practices which do not depend on a healthy dose of moral culpability as their primary justification. But I think that there are pockets of under-criminalization as well as over-criminalization and that one needs to take the claim of over- or under-criminalization case by case.
The article also mixes together a number of issues which make the over-criminalization claim appear stronger than it is. For example, it tells the story of a person who was convicted of possession of a weapon by someone previously convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense. The article says that this person "hadn't been told of the new law" and presents this fact as somehow unfair and further evidence of a new problem of over-criminalization. But this is wrong. It has long been the case that mistake of law is generally not a defense: ignorance of the law is no excuse. There are exceptions to the rule, such as where a person is charged with a specific intent crime -- e.g., willfully failing to file tax returns. In those circumstances, a mistake about whether the law applies to one's conduct does excuse, because the law itself requires a person to act "willfully." But this is not such a crime. It's simply possession of a gun, a general intent offense. People are not required to be informed that specific laws exist which might apply to them (the law must be published, of course, to give them notice); they are required to make efforts to find out about the law on their own, and that is a perfectly sensible rule. The fact that this guy didn't know about the law is his fault, and certainly not an indication of over-criminalization.
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