Paul Horwitz has a typically thoughtful post up at Prawfsblawg on the question of "political" control of what is taught in public schools. The occasion for the post is a new law in California that requires public schools to teach about the contributions of gay and lesbian history to state and national history. Check it out.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Horwitz on public schools, politics, and First Amendment institutions
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Eamon Duffy on Norwich's Papacy
Following on Marc's post below about John Julius Norwich's new book about the history of the papacy, I recently came across a review of Norwich's book by Eamon Duffy in the Times Literary Supplement. One might have already been suspicious upon learning that Norwich devotes an entire chapter to the anti-papal satirical legend of Pope Joan, which Bill Keller highlighted in his NY Times review--it's as if a history of the American presidency included an earnest and lengthy examination of the fable of George Washington's refusal to tell a lie when he cut down his father's cherry tree. Duffy--who actually knows something about the history of the papacy and upon whose book Saints and Sinners (Yale UP, 1997) Norwich extensively relies--is not impressed (and calls to mind the scene in "A Fish Called Wanda" when Wanda has to tell Otto that "Aristotle was not Belgian" and "the principle of Buddhism is not 'every man for himself'"):
[Norwich] is not, by his own account, greatly interested in religion, and defines his book as “essentially political, cultural and, up to a point, social”. Occasionally, he warns us, “basic matters of doctrine cannot be avoided”, but as far as possible “I have tried to steer well clear of theology”. This is probably just as well, to judge by the declaration in his opening paragraph that “Roman Catholicism began with Christianity itself; all other Christian religions – and there are more than 22,000 of them – are offshoots or deviations from it”, a claim liable to trigger apoplexy in Constantinople and Cairo, Geneva and Canterbury, and which might elicit a raised eyebrow even in the Vatican. And on theological matters at any rate, errors abound: St Luke was not the author of the earliest gospel, St Peter did not write the epistles which go under his name, Athanasius was never an archbishop, Greek was not the dominant language of the Roman liturgy in the fourth century, St Peter’s Basilica was a cemetery church and never a cathedral, St Jerome was not an Italian, Constantine was not baptized by Eusebius of Caesarea, we do not know the purpose of Gregory VII’s Dictatus papae, and they were certainly never “published”.
....
The Popes is an entertaining book which tells some good stories and embraces a large historical sweep. But its overall effect is curiously trivializing. The papacy depicted here is in the end unintelligible, its power to inspire and its centrality over two millennia of Christian development reduced to a handful of vivid personalities and the to and fro of power politics. Anyone seeking to understand more of the inwardness of the world’s most enduring religious institution will have to look elsewhere.
Lund on the Ministerial Exemption
Take a look at Chris Lund's thorough and thoughtful treatment of the ministerial exemption (h/t Larry Solum). Chris has defended a comparatively muscular reading of the ministerial exemption here at MOJ in times past, and this represents a complete statement of his view.
Faith-Based Hiring Rights and Government Funding
Last month a group of civil-rights and religious organizations urged President Obama to rescind the Bush administration policies that had affirmed that faith-based organizations contracting with the government may consider individuals' religious commitments in hiring employees. Now comes an answer from a different coalition of organizations of varying faiths, providing varying educational and social services, who have written the President on why it is legitimate, not individious, for faith-based organizations to hire those with the same religious commitment, and why organizations should retain that right when receiving government funds to help them serve others. Here's a key passage:
Religious hiring by religious organizations is not a deviation from the great civil rights legacy of the United States but rather a distinctive and vital feature of it—vital because it protects the religious freedom of religious organizations. And religious organizations are a vital means by which religious individuals exercise their religious faith. To deny religious organizations the ability to be distinctively religious is to deny millions of Americans their unique religious voice. Religious diversity is enhanced when religious groups speak in distinctive religious voices rather than in a coerced monotone.
The signers include representatives from the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference, Jewish organizations, and evangelical agencies, and they range politically from the American Center for Law & Justice to the left-of-center group Sojourners. (HT: Stanley Carlson-Thies, whose Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance provides good leadership on this issue.)
My own defense of the right of funded religious organizations' to faith-based hiring is here (see pp. 37-42, 45-48, 53-56, 65-66), part of a general argument why such organizations should retain important rights of religious autonomy.
Bastille Day, the Vendee, and "genocide"
From The Telegraph, "Vendee French call for revolution massacre to be termed 'genocide'":
. . . Historians believe that around 170,000 Vendéeans were killed in the peasant war and the subsequent massacres – and around 5,000 in the noyades.
When it was over, French General Francois Joseph Westermann penned a letter to the Committee of Public Safety stating: "There is no more Vendée... According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all." . . .
Maybe I'll have some Burke (and O'Brien) with my Bordeaux today.
Remember the Vendee
Here is an article, from today's Telegraph, noting that some in France are urging, on this Bastille Day, for the anti-Catholic massacres by the revolutionaries to be recognized as "genocide." Read this essay, "Remembering the Vendee", by Sophie Masson.
Some Bastille Day reading
Here is Conor Cruise O'Brien, on Edmund Burke and his Reflections on the Revolution in France.
(Strongly) recommended reading: "Atticus"
I was late in discovering the wonderful fiction of Ron Hansen, but I'm trying to make up for the delay now. I cannot recommend highly enough his novel, "Atticus," which I read on the plane the other day. I'm more and more in agreement with this reviewer, who puts Hansen up there with Flanner O'Connor and Walker Percy.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
A Powerful Catholic Character in a New Science-Fiction Television Show -- "Falling Skies"
Taking things a little (but not entirely) off topic--and, hey, it's summer and time for some fun--I want to commend to Mirror of Justice readers a new television program this summer—“Falling Skies” on TNT on Sunday nights. Now I’m a huge sci-fi fan, so I’d be easily intrigued by this series set in the near future when civilization has destroyed by an alien invasion, most of human-kind has been wiped out, and a small band of humans continues to fight on as a guerilla movement near Boston. The story isn’t only about the aliens (who appear only occasionally) but really about people and how people respond to tragedy, fear, the loss of everything and everyone around them, and the need to simply survive from day to day.
For this Mirror of Justice audience, I want to draw your attention to a continuing character in the show who is a faithful and thoughtful Catholic. Lourdes, played by Seychelle Gabriel, is bright (she was a pre-med student at age 17 when the invasion came), young, pretty, Mexican-American, and openly and unapologetically Catholic.
In the opening episode, Lourdes explains that she had fallen behind the group as it moved to a new location because she had stopped in a church to pray (saying, amusingly, “it was Episcopalian, not Catholic, but it’s close”). Another character mocks her faith and she responds:
Karen: “Next time you get on your knees could you see if the Big Guy can get us a operational B-2 Bomber loaded with nukes?”
Lourdes: “I don't pray for God to give me things. I don't think it works like that.”
Karen: “Then what do you pray for?”
Lourdes: “I ask God to show me what I can do for Him.”
In the most recent episode, the small human community hiding in an abandoned high school is able to scrabble together the ingredients to bake bread for the first time in a long time. Lourdes leads the group at her table in prayer to “The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The camera pulls away to show the hard-bitten, cynical military commander, who lost his family in the invasion and is doubtful about allowing the civilians to accompany the fighting division, sitting at a table and facing the opposite direction, but mouthing the prayer along with them.
Lourdes is a powerful character in this series, all the more so because she is not powerful in any conventional sense. She is very young, she’s among the civilians tagging along with the military division, and she acts as a servant to others in the make-shift hospital. It is her faith that makes her come alive and touch the others.
If you’re a sci-fi fan, you really need to check this out. And even if you’re not, call up some of the earlier episodes on “On Demand” and see what you think.
Greg Sisk
Do extremely obese kids belong in foster care?
I don't think this debate will be going away anytime soon. I can't categorically rule out the removal of kids from their parents on these grounds, but I hope we're only talking about state intervention in very extreme cases -- extreme in terms of the reasonably certain negative health effects and in terms of parental unwillingness to take affirmative steps toward remedying the situation.
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