I have started several times writing a post about the horrifying recent reports coming from Philadelphia about "[a] filthy abortion mill where prosecutors say babies were delivered alive and killed with scissors".
In its report, the grand jury said failures of the Pennsylvania Department of Health and other agencies allowed Gosnell's "house of horrors" to persist for decades, with baby body parts on the shelves and clogging the plumbing, a 15-year-old high school student performing intravenous anesthesia, and Gosnell's wife, a cosmetologist, performing late-term procedures. . . .
Gosnell also kept jars of severed feet on his shelves, Williams said. Gosnell also had a taste for macabre jokes, once muttering that a nearly six-pound baby born alive to a 17-year-old who was 7 1/2 months pregnant could "walk me to the bus stop," the report said.
Under Pennsylvania law, abortions are illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy, or just under six months, and most doctors won't perform them after 20 weeks because of the risks, prosecutors said. . . .
[In fact, my understanding is that not all abortions are illegal in Pennsylvania "after 24 weeks of pregnancy". UPDATE: I checked the soundness of this understanding and it now seems to me that, in fact, Pennsylvania's "health" exception is fairly robust and so it now seems accurate to me to say that most -- if not almost all -- abortions are illegal in Pennsylvania after 24 weeks.]
What can one say? The attack in Tucson -- the "massacre", it is often and reasonably called -- on innocent public servants and bystanders by a deeply disturbed young man prompted not only hasty and unfounded partisan attacks, but also more sober reflections about (among other things) gun-control laws, legal protections for students' privacy, the mental-health system, and the "tone" of our political discourse. Will these revelations from Philadelphia prompt any similar or analogous kinds of reflection, even critical self-examination?
Professor George a few days ago rightly praised the Egyptian Muslims who protected Christians in Egypt from acts of terrible persecution. But this story reports the unfortunate decision of the highest Islamic authority in Egypt, al-Azhar, to "freeze all dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church over what it called Pope Benedict's repeated insults toward Islam."
I tend to be sanguine about conversation as an effective social lubricant to reach a modus vivendi (someone once teased me for prescribing "the talking cure" in one of my old articles). But even I wonder what talking can do if it's deemed insulting, as the story puts it, to "condemn[] attacks on churches that killed dozens of people in Egypt, Iraq and Nigeria," or to urge non-violent forms of resistance as "effective measures to protect religious minorities."
Finally, there's a legal angle so I can blog more about "Skins," MTV's infuriating new show that stakes out new territory in the realm of socially irresponsible programming for kids by portraying rampant drug use, casual sex, and general mayhem as hallmarks of the teenage experience. It seems that network executives have just realized that the program may violate child pornography laws. Funny how that happens when you aim for realistic depictions of teenage sex among actors who are, well, teenagers. The network lauds the show as being 1) realistic and 2) aimed at an adult audience. Point #2 is laughable, as evidenced by the fact that 1.2 million viewers of the first episode were under 18. Point #1 is more diabolical. Are there teenagers who use illegal drugs, engage in casual sex with multiple partners, and defy all sources of authority? Of course. The danger with this show, from what I understand, is that it normalizes the behavior. The characters are not outliers -- they represent the teenage experience. Television can reflect reality, but it also shapes reality. Even writers at Salon -- hardly a culturally conservative outfit -- remarked that the characters engaged in rampant drug use, casual sex, and general defiance suffer no repercussions for their behavior. There is no lesson to be learned. The behavior itself marks the teenage experience. Watch and learn, eighth graders!
Does hope spring eternal? It should for the Christian. However, like most people, I can enter those dark moments when hope seems far distant. But there is reason to hope about hope.
One of my current evening reading projects is to read (once again) and pray over the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, the General Examen, and the Formula of the Institute—foundational texts of the Society of Jesus. I am presently reading the edition translated by the late Father George Ganss, S.J. In his introduction to these documents, Fr. Ganss offers important historical insights that relate to my topic of seeking hope and knowing that God provides. Events of our recent times can lead us to despair, but should we not hope for deliverance? When classroom efforts and research and publication appear to be activities that offer little satisfaction, should we not hope that they are the work of discipleship—making the connection between faith and legal reasoning?
As I continue reading the Ganss edition, I came across his discussion of the hopelessness that existed during St. Ignatius’s time. His insights helped to focus my attention on why hope is and must be real for the disciple. Fr. Ganss points out that during the early sixteenth century when Father Ignatius was initiating the efforts that would lead to the order’s recognition by the Holy See, the “known” world was immersed in war; ignorance infiltrated vast percentages of the population; religious division was prevalent; few of the laity attended the sacraments; the number of priests was in steep decline. But, good disciples existed and recognized the need not only to work but to pray to God and to place hope in His mercy and His answers to prayers. Wars ended—at least for a while; religious ignorance was dispersed—at least for a while; divisions within religious communities were replaced with some reconciliation—at least for a while; vocations within the priesthood and religious life began to rise again—at least for a while.
Those responsible for aiding in the improvement of these difficult conditions appeared to have one thing in common: their hope and their trust in God. I keep thinking that this is a good tonic for us in the present age as we confront the anguish of our own time. While it may be easy to critique the times, it is also within our reach to put aside desolation and replace it with hope and trust in God. This is the work, the labor of love, of any true disciple.
On the drive to work this morning, I heard that Sargent Shriver, the founder of the Peace Corps, had died. The commentator, a biographer of the Kennedys, noted that the Peace Corps had its intellectual origins in an old essay by William James, "The Moral Equivalent of War." I know James's work in The Varieties of Religious Experience a little, as well as some of his essays in the collection that includes "The Will to Believe," but I had never read that essay and so spent some time with it this morning. Like all of James's writing, it is penetrating and powerful, whether one agrees or not (I find some claims persuasive, others beguiling). But the essay also left me wondering whether those who embrace the Peace Corps today would approve it.
James, who describes himself in the piece as a "pacifist," considers how to channel what has historically been the terrible conceptual and emotional appeal of war into "moral" pursuits. After the jump, a longish bit from the essay, where James considers the strengths and weaknesses of the "militarists'" claims and makes a creative argument for the non-martial (I think this may be more precise, though certainly less rhetorically powerful, than "moral") analogue to war:
Sunday was Religious Freedom Day and, as Charles Haynes argues in his syndicated column, religious freedom is mainly in trouble around the world. See here. Despite the Court's infamous decision in Employment Division v. Smith, religion is relatively free in the United States. Nonetheless, there are some grounds for despair even in circumstances where the case for constitutional protection is problematic. As David Gibson reports in Politics Daily, Alabama's new governor Robert Bentley stated on Martin Luther King Day that he intended to be the governor of all the people, but if anybody had not accepted Jesus Christ as personal saviour, then you are "not my brother and not my sister." It would be difficult to fault those Jews and Muslims in Alabama who believe that they have been marked out as second class citizens.
I went straight from class this afternoon to hear the keynote address, by Angela Harris (Boalt Hall), that kicked off Villanova Law's annual weeklong celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. Harris spoke eloquently and inspiringly about various currents of thought that animated Dr. King's dream, including the role of love in overcoming the effects and causes of the structural and personal sins and shortcomings that we face as individuals and as a society. In identifying the causes that must be overcome, Harris emphasized a "Hobbesian" legal culture. This caused me to sit up. Having taught Hobbes just thirty minutes earlier in the "Justice and Rights" class from which I had dashed to the lecture, I even had a copy of Leviathan in hand as Harris elaborated, to some extent, what about our way of conceptualizing, practicing, and teaching law is Hobbesian. Harris seemed to represent that law as the establishment presents and practices it is Hobbesian in inspiration, justification, and operation. Obviously, the devil here is, as always, in the particulars. To the extent we are committed to crude forms of positivism, I see Harris's point about how Hobbes is at work in the jurisprudential picture. Harris, however, seemed to be making something like the categorically different point that we as a culture view law as little or no more than established power controlling the weak. Hobbes, of course, had a different case to make overall (the normative one about how to realize the demands of an emaciated natural law), but I do understand why he is invoked in connection with the more limited positivistic thesis. What I don't see, however, is that our legal practice is accurately summarized as being broadly committed to merely accepting the results of power. Arguments from justice are cognizable in our practice of law, the more so as they are articulated through modalities of legal reasoning accepted within our legal tradition. The latter qualification may sound "conservative," but in fact it is an invitation to recognize the ways in which our legal tradition is in fact open to the incremental -- and sometimes bold -- *development* of legal institutions in the service of ordered liberty. "Conservative" doesn't begin to do justice to the aspirations of our legal system as it functions most of the time. And I don't believe we are, collectively, closet Hobbesians.
Yesterday, I attended the last day of a very interesting conference, New York Encounter, in New York City organized by "Communion and Liberation" -- a Catholic organization founded in 1954 by the late Msgr. Luigi Giussani and devoted in part to cultural education of Catholics. The panel I attended was devoted to the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi, perhaps the most important Italian poet of the 19th century and (with Petrarch) one of its two greatest lyric poets ever. Leopardi's work had, I learned, been a major source of inspiration for Fr. Giussani.
The panel was composed of Jonathan Galassi, the President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and translator of a very recent and wonderful edition of Leopardi's poetry; a very interesting Italian poet named Davide Rondoni; and law professor Joseph Weiler.
One might wonder why Professor Weiler was on the program -- and even he asked the question in his presentation. But after his talk, there was little doubt as to why. In the first place, Weiler is extremely broadly read; he was quite knowledgeable about Leopardi's life and writings. Second, Weiler has great synthetic abilities (perhaps one of the areas in which law professors have a special comparative advantage). He offered a quite close, careful, and illuminating comparison of various sections of the book of Genesis with a poem by Leopardi called, Hymn to the Patriarchs: Or of the Beginnings of the Human Race.
But beyond that, and in keeping with the synthetic nature of his talk, Weiler reflected on how one's experience of prayer is quite like one's experience of poetry. The idea was that for either of these pursuits, to enjoy and benefit from them fully, one needs to cultivate a habit of mind in which they become repeated and altogether ordinary, or regular, activities. If one only comes to pray or to read poetry occasionally -- in the exceptional or extraordinary situations of life -- then one will not be able to enjoy and be transformed by the full richness of the experience.
In some ways Leopardi was an unexpected choice for a conference such as this; he was an atheist who rebelled against what he perceived was the repressive and bourgeois Italian Catholicism of his youth, and his decidedly pessimistic Romatic orientation is not quite a perfect fit. And yet, consider what is perhaps his best known poem, "The Infinite" (after the jump):
In a recent issue of First Things, James Nuechterlein had an interesting essay called "America, America" (subscription required). In the course of more general reflections about "patriotism", and echoing a line of argument that I associate with, among others, our colleague Tom Berg, he explained helpfully (I thought) the role and importance of the "under God" language in the Pledge of Allegiance. A bit:
. . . For Christians of an Augustinian persuasion, it is finally only the city of God to which they owe unqualified allegiance, and they understand, or ought to understand, that on earth we have no abiding city. In the orthodox Christian view of things, all our cities—even the best of them—are greater or lesser Babylons in which we sojourn as strangers and pilgrims. We are alien residents, on the journey to our ultimate citizenship in the New Jerusalem.
This is not to suggest that Christians must be estranged from their own countries. But they do understand that neither politics nor patriotism is of ultimate concern. These things may engage us deeply, but our understanding of human sin and finitude—especially as manifested in collective behavior—serves to inoculate us against the utopian and salvific temptations that lie behind nationalist enormities. The very best of political arrangements, those calling for our deepest attachment, can bring only a very rough justice. That is not nothing, but neither is it worthy of total or unqualified commitment.
All this may sound, in tone if not in substance, vaguely un-American, and so, by extension, somewhat unpatriotic. But in fact it is just that off-center angle of vision that makes orthodox Christians safe for patriotism. They can love America—feel for it that gratitude, pride, and affection that it is natural for people to extend to their homeland—without being tempted to the idolatrous nationalism that has deformed so much of modern history. How can Augustinian Christians make an idol of a nation whose philosophical assumptions of enlightenment liberalism, recurring religious impulses to gnostic antinomianism, and prevailing spirit of romantic optimism stand athwart their most basic understandings? Because Christians are in a deep sense strangers in America, they can be safely at home there.
And, so long as they keep their ultimate reservations always in mind, they can be quite thoroughly at home and quite at ease in saying so. When Americans speak of the United States as a redeemer nation, or refer to it as a city on a hill, or argue that the Constitution is the nation’s bible, they are not—at least not most of them most of the time—speaking literally. They use providential and biblical language because it is for them a common idiom, not because they really think that America is the new Israel. Not every reference to God’s providence extending to America’s role in the world is an exercise in idolatry, and the declaration in the Pledge of Allegiance that we are a nation “under God” is properly understood as a plea of humility rather than an assertion of pride. . . .
