Imagine a congressional hearing titled, "Christianity and GLBT Hate Crimes" or "Radical Christians and the Murder of Abortion Providers." I'm guessing that many of us would feel more than a bit perplexed at the premise of those hearings, not because there has never been any relationship between Christian beliefs and those acts of violence, but because the government is heading down a very troubling road when they start to investigate -- and hold up for public shaming (?) -- the religious traditions that may provide the impetus for certain individuals to engage in the objectionable conduct. So how should we as Christians respond to Rep. King's hearings on "Radicalization in the American Muslim community?" Especially in today's climate, when anti-Muslim hysteria appears to be growing in some circles, I fear that these hearings will create more heat than light. At the same time, I don't want the government to turn a blind eye to the power of any group, religious or otherwise, to form "true believers" who will engage in evil acts. So as Catholics committed to both religious liberty and the common good, how should we advise Rep. King?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Rep. King's hearings on radical Islam are a great (or horrible) idea. Discuss.
How did the liberty of conscience become a "conservative" cause?
I have an essay over at The Public Discourse that takes up this question in the context of analyzing President Obama's conscience regulations. Feedback, as always, is welcome.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
A question that should answer itself
"May Church Be Ordered to Let in Parishioners Who Had Been Excluded from Worship Services?", is the question presented by a recent case in Texas, reports Eugene Volokh, here. A bit, from the opinion:
The First Amendment prohibits governmental action, including court action, that would burden the free exercise of religion by encroaching on a church’s ability to manage its internal affairs.... “It is a core tenet of First Amendment jurisprudence that, in resolving civil claims, courts must be careful not to intrude upon internal matters of church governance....” ...
A church has the right to control its membership without government interference, including interference by the courts. Likewise, a church has authority to determine who may enter its premises and who will be excluded without government interference....
The "Tournament of Novels" at First Things
My own mind tends to focus more on other tournaments during March but . . . the good folks at First Things are running their "Tournament of Novels" over at the First Thoughts blog. Head over and vote (early and often) for Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (and four others of your choice). My four, for what it's worth, were The Brothers Karamazov, The First Circle, Silence, and The Power and the Glory.
Book Note: Michael Oakeshott's Skepticism
Admirers of the writing of Michael Oakeshott may want to read Aryeh Botwinick's new book, Michael Oakeshott's Skepticism. I am not an Oakeshott scholar (though I have more than a passing interest in his philosophy of education), but still I am uncertain about some of the conclusions that Botwinick reaches: e.g., that Oakeshott is a "political philosophical liberal," defined as "someone who calls into question the claims to authority and knowledge advanced by devotees of both Revelation and Reason." Is John Rawls a political philosophical liberal, too, on this definition? Botwinick at one point says that Oakeshott's conception of "conversation" "can also be related to his political theory proper in ways that are evocative of Rawls, Ackerman, and Hobbes." (138) Really? Given Oakeshott's deep interest in Hobbes, that connection makes sense to me, but I am more doubtful about the link to Rawls, let alone Ackerman. This seems to me a quite liberal reading of Oakeshott's conception of conversation.
Nevertheless, the book is insightful and interesting on the subject of Oakeshott and religion. Oakeshott is not known as a religious thinker and much of his work did not explicitly concern religious subjects (some of his early work did, but he moved away from it in his mature writing). But Botwinick argues that Oakeshott's ethic of skepticism gave rise to a type of mysticism which he claims is evocative of Pascal, St. Anselm, and Nicholas of Cusa. A bit:
According to Oakeshott, we are not able to pierce through to the governing factors as to why the customs, habits, and traditions that we adhere to have the structures and contents that they do . . . . 'Tradition' on one definitional level serves as a surrogate for Revelation. It is what Revelation gets deflated into once the logical conundrums surrounding the idea of God are confronted . . . . Tradition itself, however, partakes of the inscrutability of its mysterious source in exactly the way that Nicholas projects: it irradiates us -- but we cannot unmask it as long as we continue to relate to it as tradition. (97)
Monday, March 7, 2011
Chaput on "The American Experience and Global Religious Liberty"
Archbishop Charles Chaput's keynote address, given recently at the Berkley Center at Georgetown, called "Subject to the Governor of the Universe", is available here. In my view, it's a must-read. Here's a bit:
At the heart of the American model of public life is a Christian vision of man, government and God. Now, I want to be clear about what I‘m saying here -- and also what I‘m not saying.
I‘m not saying that America is a ―Christian nation.‖ Nearly 80 percent of our people self-describe as Christians. And many millions of them actively practice their faith. But we never have been and never will be a Christian confessional state.
I‘m also not saying that our Protestant heritage is uniformly good. Some of the results clearly are good: America‘s culture of personal opportunity; respect for the individual; a tradition of religious liberty and freedom of speech; and a reverence for the law. Other effects of Reformation theology have been less happy: radical individualism; revivalist
None of these sins however – and yes, some of our nation‘s sins have led to very bitter suffering both here and abroad -- takes away from the genius of the American model. This model has given us a free, open and non-sectarian society marked by an astonishing variety of cultural and religious expressions. But our system‘s success does not result from the procedural mechanisms our Founders put in place. Our system works precisely because of the moral assumptions that undergird it. And those moral assumptions have a religious grounding.
There's a lot more. Check it out.
Graduate seminar in Catholic Political Theory at the Lumen Christi Institute
This looks very interesting:
This summer, The Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago is sponsoring an intensive week long interdisciplinary graduate seminar that focuses on the fundamental philosophical concepts that undergird Catholic political and social theory. The seminar, entitled "Catholic Social Thought: A Critical Investigation" is devoted to an interdisciplinary analysis of Roman Catholic social teaching over the course of the past century, from the ground breaking publication of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum up to the recent publication of Benedict XVI's Caritas in Veritate.
The Catholic social tradition is drawn from both reason and faith. Accordingly, it has has evolved along two fronts. First in the effort to gain clarity and wisdom by philosophical reflection upon the fundamental principles of social life themselves, and second by way of application of these principles to the contingent historical tides of social institutions. This seminar seeks to explore this thought as it is found in magisterial documents, and to discern the evolution of teaching on such issues as: the relationship between the virtues of charity and justice; the different modes of justice; the plurality of social forms and their ontological grounding; the origin and limits of human authority; the relationship between the Church, the modern state, and civil society; and the role of natural law in public discourse and political debate.
Fifteen students will be selected to participate in a five-day seminar with two-hour sessions twice daily. We encourage graduate students from a variety of disciplines to apply, including: philosophy, theology, history, political science, law, economics, and sociology. Books, lodging, and airfare or regional travel will be included, and there is no cost or stipend for attendees. The seminar will take place at Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth, RI from Monday, August 8th, 2011 to Sunday, August 14th, 2011.
Application Process:
Any graduate student in the fields listed above may apply for consideration. Applicants must submit one confidential letter of recommendation, a short writing sample (25 pages or less), and a statement of interest in the seminar. Completed applications must be received by April 15, 2011. Students will be notified of their application status by early May.
Seminar Leader:
Russell Hittinger is Professor of Philosophy, Research Professor of Law, and Warren Professor of Catholic Studies at University of Tulsa. He is author of The First Grace: Rediscovering Natural Law In A Post-Christian Age and A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory. He is a member of both the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
About Lumen Christi:
Founded by Catholic scholars at the University of Chicago in 1997, the Lumen Christi Institute aims at enriching the intellectual community of the University of Chicago by cultivating the Catholic intellectual tradition through on-campus lectures, non-credit courses and seminars, and conferences. Both Catholics and non-Catholics regularly participate and are encouraged to attend. Past lecturers and participants have included Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Tracy, Jean-Luc Marion, Louis Dupré, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Mark Murphy, and many others. More information can be found at www.lumenchristi.org. Past summer seminars have been led by Corey Barnes (Oberlin College) on “Thomas Aquinas’s Christology” and Paul Griffiths
(Duke University) on “The Later Augustine: De Trinitate and De Civitate Dei.”
Online information:
For more information, please visit the Lumen Christi website, where you can also download your applicaiton.
Lumen Christi: http://www.lumenchristi.org/
Summer Seminars (including application forms): http://www.lumenchristi.org/?p=471
"Debate" at the NYT
It would be sad if it weren't so funny (or, is it the other way around?) The Times has, as part of its "Room for Debate" series, a "debate" up called "Why Blame the Teachers?" So far as I could tell, the "debaters" consisted of seven people with pretty much the same view, and one somewhat milque-toast-y dissenter.
Sheesh. I mean, I'm a strong supporter of reforming education policy (which means, among other things, that I am deeply concerned about the excessive power and misguided positions of the teacher-unions), but I'm happy to agree that there is "room for debate" on the matter. Note to the good people at the Times: Debate, like diversity, requires differences.
Douthat on monogamy
Ross Douthat's op-ed makes the case for teenagers delaying sexual activity:
When social conservatives talk about restoring the link between sex, monogamy and marriage . . . . [t]he point isn’t that we should aspire to some Arcadia of perfect chastity. Rather, it’s that a high sexual ideal can shape how quickly and casually people pair off, even when they aren’t living up to its exacting demands. The ultimate goal is a sexual culture that makes it easier for young people to achieve romantic happiness — by encouraging them to wait a little longer, choose more carefully and judge their sex lives against a strong moral standard.
It's a very good column, though I was struck by the fact that Douthat backs off the "wait until marriage" argument and appears to embrace the more realistic (?) and widely accessible (?) "wait for somebody special" argument. I don't know how widespread this view is becoming among social conservatives, whether it's just the public adaptation of what is now seen as a primarily religious argument against all premarital sex, and/or whether the traditional argument will be increasingly seen as outdated -- even as a stated policy aspiration -- given increasing delays in marriage, etc. In any event, it's worth a read.
European Protestants Confront Global Capitalism: Different from Catholic Social Theory?
Groups within the World Council of Churches, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Lutheran World Federation are working on a position regarding global capitalism. A very strong statement appears in Tikkun Magazine in the winter 2011 issue. The statement among other things rejects "the current world economic order imposed by global neoliberal capitalism -- using both structural and direct violence. We reject every claim to an economic, political, and military empire that attempts to subvert God's order of life and whose actions stand in contrast to God's love and justice. We reject an economic system and way of life that exploits nature and propagates unlimited growth so that the conditions of life for future generations are forcibly destroyed and the survival chances of the entire earth are threatened." The statement also rejects a "a policy that through the privatization of collective and common goods produces wealth for the capital owners but scarcity and poverty for the vast majority of the world's population -- the worst kind of violence (Gandhi) -- and which exploits and even destroys nature. With particular emphasis we reject the patenting of seeds and of medicines that are necessary to meet people's basic needs. We say no to the privatization of genes as well as acts of biopiracy; no to the privatization of water and other gifts of nature; no to the privatization of services of general interest such as energy, transportation, health, education; also no to the destruction of solidarity-based social insurance systems through privatization; no to their submission to profit-oriented insurance companies and at the same time to speculative finance markets. All of this is structural violence at the service of the rich. But especially we reject the direct violence of a policy that wages wars to realize these private interests and wastes immeasurable resources on armaments."
These are just samples. The statement as a whole is well worth reading. I could be wrong, but it strikes me that the statement goes beyond Catholic Social Theory, but is not inconsistent with it. I would be interested in what those more familiar with the canon of Catholic reflection on capitalism have to say about that.
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