Every so often, I spend the whole day cooking. Generally it's Italian cuisine, though occasionally I will venture off as far as the hinterlands of France. Yesterday was a day in the kitchen: a Bolognese sauce, a lobster bisque, and the beginnings (to be finished today) of a wild forest mushroom risotto -- oysters, morels, and porcini mushrooms. And all of this with appropriate libationary accompaniments.
Whenever I have days like this, my thoughts turn routinely and as a matter of natural and quite obvious course to religion. Lately I've been waiting for the decision of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Lautsi v. Italy -- the case dealing with the permissibility of displaying the crucifix in Italian public schools. The decision of the full chamber is, according to the ECtHR's web page, coming this Friday the 18th. (Here is a translation of the original decision from the French by "The Humanist Federation").
I've been anticipating it, but not with much optimism that the Grand Chamber will do anything to rectify the inadequate opinion that it had issued earlier. And so, in my high state of readiness, I thought I'd share the best criticism I have read of the earlier opinion: this elegant rumination from last June by Professor Joseph Weiler emphasizing the uniqueness of the histories and cultures of each individual Western European nation, and the need for the ECtHR to be sensitive to those special and specific qualities in discussing these issues.
I may have mentioned before at MOJ that food metaphors are frequently illuminating, and this affair is no exception. Consider the hegemony of garlic. Insisting on the domination of "laique," or secular, neutrality to the exclusion of all other values is like insisting on the domination of garlic over all other tastes in one's cuisine. Of course, garlic's crude appeal will draw in and placate the broadest range of palates; just about everybody has a taste for the potently thick-booted allure of garlic, and, oh great, it's healthy too! That is why restaurants that don't know what they're doing frequently mask their ineptitude by loading up on the garlic -- it disguises lack of depth and the complications of culinary tradition with an easily appealing, eminently recognizable little taste.
But the trouble with garlic is that it overpowers everything with which it comes into contact. Garlic is the suffocating equalizer of the kitchen. And demanding that garlic be prominent in every dish, no matter the provenance or the particular, local flavor, will kill the dish -- it will destroy that which is distinctive, and uniquely pleasurable, about it. Whatever it is that renders Italian and French cooking the grandes dames of gustatory delight (as they are) is choked off and flattened out by the common, acrid banality of garlic.
More and related thoughts, Lucullian and otherwise, on the 18th.
For the past few years, I have been a "Project Council" member for an interdisciplinary research program, funded generously by the John Templeton Foundation, of the Arete Initiative at the University of Chicago, on "A New Science of Virtues." My duties have involved, basically, reading piles of fascinating proposals by really smart people, and then learning from these smart people as they proceed through their funded projects. (The program is being headed up by Jean Bethke Elshtain, who I greatly admire, and whose recently published Gifford Lectures, "Sovereignty: God, State, and Self", are a must-read.)
The funded projects are, to put it mildly, diverse -- from studies involving slices of rat brain and dopamine to meditations on aging, mercy, and forgiveness. (I'll confess to considerable skepticism about whether we really learn much about "virtue", as I understand it, from research with hard-core "mind-is-brain" reductionist premises. At some point, it seems to me, "virtue" thinking requires the embrace of a richer moral anthropology.)
One of the funded projects -- the "Stuck with Virtue" conference series -- is being coordinated by a wonderful thinker and writer, Peter Augustine Lawler, author of (inter alia), "Aliens in America: The Strange Truth about our Souls." The project is really interesting. (There was a write-up on one of the events, here, at the First Things blog. Learn more here.) I suspect that many MOJ readers -- especially those with any attraction to / interest in the whole "postmodern conservative" / crunchy-Catholic / Wendell Berry / Walker Percy / Front Porch Republic thing -- will be interested in "Stuck with Virtue" and the associated events. I'd also welcome any thoughts readers have about the larger "Science of Virtues" project.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Folks, I am back. First, just a word to say how much our prayers are with the people of Japan, and especially all of those who have lost loved ones.
As many of you know from when I have come out of my cave for brief intervals to try (and miserably fail) to keep up with email, I have spent large parts of the past year in hibernation to complete (together with my co-author Tom Masters) a book to mark the 50th anniversary of the Focolare Movement’s presence in the United States — Focolare: Living a Spirituality of Unity in the Unites States, just released by New City Press.
For me, this project was the chance to fulfill a long-time dream—to write a book which helps to make the Focolare spirituality and ideas accessible for a US audience. After sketching the Focolare’s history and development, it describes (with lots of stories and examples) how its spirituality of unity is lived in daily life, the structures that sustain its members in their commitments, the various vocational paths within the community, the shape the spirituality gives to their social and cultural projects, and its relationship with the Catholic Church. The last part—which brought bubbling to the surface all of my “American Studies” brain cells!—addresses how the Focolare’s ideas, structures and ways of communicating intersect with four “quests” in American culture: the search for financial security and personal identity, the quest for freedom, the search for community in a pluralistic society, and the search for the common good in a polarized political culture.
John Allen gave us a nice plug in his recent blog, “Memo to a Divided Church: Meet the Focolare” — which features an extensive interview with the current president, Maria Voce, who arrives to our shores at the end of the month for the anniversary festivities.
As next week is our spring break, I’ll try to play some catch up blogging, to make up for my long silence. Thanks for your patience!
With the adoption of civil union legislation in Illinois, religious organizations (including Catholic Charities) that operate foster care agencies may lose state funding if they refuse to place children with same-sex couples:
If they are found in violation, Lutheran Child and Family Services, Catholic Charities in five regions and the Evangelical Child and Family Agency will have to license openly gay foster parents or lose millions of state dollars, potentially disrupting more than 3,000 foster children in their care.
Though Illinois legislators championing the civil union bill earlier this year insisted that religious institutions would not be forced to bless same-sex unions, it said nothing about same-sex parents.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Dante put usurers right on the border between the seventh circle of Hell (for those who commit sins of violence) and the eighth circle (for those who commit sins of fraud). Dante considered usury to be violence against the natural order of God's design for human productivity -- charging money for the use of money was considered an unnatural profit from another's need, an unnatural rendering of something sterile in itself (money) into something fertile (profit).
Of course, the Church gradually came to see interest as reasonable compensation for the risk of not being repaid. But what do you suppose Dante would have made of the companies now lobbying in some states for exemptions from state usury statutes for loans that fund people's personal injury lawsuits?
Linda Greenhouse has this "opinionator" column about Justice Scalia's dissents, wondering what Justice Scalia could "think[] his bullying accomplishes" with dissenting opinions which use strong and sometimes highly critical language. Greenhouse doesn't think that his dissents win over anybody on the current court and only alienate his peers. In my view, she also engages in some regrettable amateur psychology, suggesting that on "his 75th birthday" "fear as well as anger [is] palpable" and the Justice is feeling frustrated because he realizes that he "has accomplished surprisingly little." Philip Roth would approve.
In response, Orin Kerr writes that Justice Scalia knows exactly what he is doing: he is writing for future generations of "bored" law students reading opinions in casebooks -- and of course for the lawyers and judges of the future -- who may perhaps agree with him.
Both of these accounts of judicial opinion writing take an instrumental view of the practice: the worth of judicial opinions is their influence on others. Language ought to be chosen which is most effective in converting the great unwashed to one's view -- whether the unwashed are one's unenlightened colleagues or future readers. "Overheated" language does not (Greenhouse), or may (Kerr), persuade, and therefore it ought not/ought to be used.
I want to suggest a different way to understand the use of intense and even acerbic language. Strongly worded opinions stake out depth of disagreement. They indicate not only difference with respect to one case, or one issue, but more extensive, thicker, and perhaps unbridgeable divides. They are, in this way, more honest, truer. If they really do reflect profound differences, then they have more integrity than opinions which, for perceived (short or long term) strategic reasons, paper over or mask those differences for the sake of winning an extra vote here or there. Strongly worded opinions are not necessarily intended to persuade anyone. They are a mark for posterity -- that the Justice stood here, at this moment in history, and that the place where others stood was deeply, irremediably, wrong.
People who have a responsibility for the shape and direction of the law often map out shrewdly how their views can win friends and influence people; that is certainly a part of this line of work. But when they write without regard for those aims, even (especially) when using astringently heart-felt language, when their writing reflects the full scope of their real views, they are to be admired for performing another kind of crucial function -- they are acting with integrity in shooting the world straight.
Sara Miles reports today in Episcopal Cafe of the bringing of ashes to the streets of the Mission District in San Francisco at Ash Wednesday last year. Those who distributed the ashes had set up signs saying "More forgiveness" and "Life is very, very, very short." The people receiving ashes said "Thank you, including a mother whose baby in the receipt of the ashes ("You are dust, and to dust you shall return") was also told of inevitable death. Miles reflects upon why it is appropriate for people to be grateful for this. A compelling account. Well worth reading.
For a wonderful companion reflection, see the post of Susan Stabile.
