So reports CNN. I might put the matter a bit differently, and say (for example) "China tries to take over the Church". It is not the case, it seems to me -- even though I understand that those ruling China might see it this way -- that "the Vatican" and China are in-the-same-sense "outside" the Church and fighting over control "of" it. In any event, a troubling development.
Monday, November 29, 2010
China and Vatican "fight over control of the Church"
"Compromise" on abortion
We have had a number of posts, in recent weeks, regarding the relatively recent abortion-related conference at Princeton. Some of those posts included references to Will Saletan's (of Slate) "take-aways" from the conference, which took the form of "advice" for pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Commenting on these take-aways -- and, in particular, on Saletan's advice to pro-lifers that they join pro-choicers in reducing the number of abortions by endorsing contraception and sex education instead of regulation. Putting aside (a) the question whether the number of abortions is all that matters and (b) how the number of abortions are, in fact, best reduced, I think Ross Douthat makes a very good point:
For Saletan’s compromise to become plausible, Roe would have to go. For any compromise that offers anything meaningful to abortion opponents to become plausible, Roe would have to go. I’ve made this point before, but it’s worth making once again: The problem with the abortion debate in America isn’t that the anti-abortion side won’t ever consider making compromises or taking half a loaf. It’s that the structure of constitutional law is tilted so egregiously toward abortion-on-demand that any plausible compromise is a non-starter. I appreciate Saletan’s willingness to contemplate the idea of some legal restrictions on abortion. In a different, better world, it would represent a real step toward meaningful political discussion. But so long as five Supreme Court justices think that there’s an absolute constitutional right to a second trimester abortion, he’s writing checks that American politics can’t cash.
UPDATE: More from Saletan, here.
McCarthy's "secular winds"
In my view, Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest living (in-English) writers, and so I was predisposed to think very highly of this thoughtful post, by Prof. Perry Dane, at ReligiousLeftLaw:
A couple of months ago, I read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," a post-apocalyptic story that manages to celebrate the possibility of goodness and the hope of redemption even in the midst of unremitting destruction and human depravity. The religious subtext in the novel is implicit but clear. One particular passage jumped out at me, though, as it has to others:
They were crossing the broad coastal plain where the secular winds drove them in howling clouds of ash to find shelter where they could.
(P. 177) McCarthy is, of course, playing here with the multiple modern meanings of the word "secular." (He uses the word again to similar effect later in the novel: "The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular." (P. 274)) "Secular" goes back to a Latin word that meant "generation," "age," "century," or "world." Its first medieval use referred to clergy and religious institutions that were "of the world" rather than monastic. That sense of "secular" as "of the world" eventually morphed into the most common modern meanings of "secular," whose range extends awkwardly between simply "non-religious" and affirmatively "anti-religious." But there is a more technical usage, drawing on the original Latin, that is used for phenomena that are non-periodic or long-term or of indefinite duration, as in "secular inflation." The plain meaning of McCarthy's use of "secular" rests on these latter usages, as if he had said: "the constant, unremitting, winds drove them in howling clouds of ash...." Yet the word is so jarring and unexpected in this context that it must also evoke the sense of "secular" as faithless and Godless. That much is obvious. What struck me, though, was this paradox: If the "secular" realm (whether "secular priests" or "secular governments") is "of time" and "of this world," as opposed to the transcendent world-without-time, then why are "secular winds" -- in their very immanence -- unbearably changeless, even timeless? Part of the answer, I guess, is that transcendent eternity is always new, always fresh, precisely in its undifferentiated unity. And we experience that eternity in flashes, as it makes fleeting contact with our immanent reality. Religious moments are just that -- moments. Divine kenosis (self-emptying) has given us mortals a world of our own, which is important, indeed essential to human dignity. But the divine presence illuminates that world every so often. And (to inject a note only apparently at odds with the general direction of my argument here) our situatedness in the world can itself also illuminate both the demands of the world-in-time and the nature of its interaction with the divine. Thus, the holy and the profane are in constant, ideally ever-restless, dialectic. Mere, unrelieved and uncompromising, secular time, by contrast, even when it appears to be in flux (as in the hustle and bustle of the world around us), is, in a deeper sense, all of one deadly piece, not all that different from the changeless winds in McCarthy's dark fable.
This is a legal and political -- and not only a religious -- blog, so there should be (I guess) a legal and political take-away. If there is, it might go something like this, however trite: The relation of religion and the secular state, and of religion and law, must navigate between two dangers. One is that religion will be co-opted, which is to say that it will become "secularized," open to being oppressed and itself oppressive. The other danger is that religion will be entirely banished from the public realm, leaving only "howling clouds of ash."
Opposition to SSM as hate speech
Apple has pulled the Manhattan Declaration app from its App Store, apparently in response to customer complaints that the declaration amounts to hate speech. Is this part of a broader trend? See, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center's recent report, "18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda," in which the National Organization for Marriage is included as one of "a hard core of smaller groups, most of them religiously motivated, [which] have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities." To be clear, I do consider some of the rhetoric employed in opposition to SSM to amount to hate speech (under virtually any imaginable definition of "hate speech"), but I fear that we're approaching the point where opposition to SSM itself is considered hate speech, regardless of the rhetoric employed.
Not being frightened of the terrible
Pope Benedict XVI, presiding at vespers for the first Sunday of Advent in St. Peter's Basilica this past weekend, spoke movingly about the value of all human life, giving every human being: "the right not to be treated as an object to be possessed or as a thing that can be manipulated at will, not to be reduced to a pure instrument for other's advantage and interests." Further, "In regard to the embryo in the maternal womb, science itself provides evidence of its automony, capable of interaction with the mother, the coordination of biological processes, the continuity of development, the growth in the complexity of the organism. It is not a matter of an aggergate of biological material, but of a new living, dynamic and marvelously ordered being, a new individual of the human species."
I came away from the recent Princeton abortion conference last discussed on MOJ here (I think) profoundly discouraged, precisely because I was confronted with how radically we, as a society, have rejected the truth of what the Holy Father was saying last Saturday. This is demonstrated by the myriad ways in which we have organized our medical practices, our laws (or lack of laws) governing 'reproductive rights' and medical interventions in conception, and our expectations about child-bearing. It seemed to me, coming away from that conference, that the train is already so far from the station on so many fundamental issues related to the abortion debate that there is simply no way to correct course. Iwas very discouraged about the prospect of an inevitably ever-more frightening world.
The same time I read Pope Benedict's sermon, though, I also received an e-mail with this quote from Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche. Maybe it's comforting? I'm not sure, but it seems perhaps true.
In twenty years you’ll probably find a world which is even more beautiful and even more terrible, because that’s the history of humanity. There’ll be more and more people coming together across the boundaries of ecumenism and interfaith, but also more and more terrible things. So the question is not to be frightened by the terrible but to believe incredibly in yourself and to be part of the beautiful.
Long live reason! Return to the Scriptures, America!
Apparently, the American Atheists have grown tired of being falsely accused of waging a "war on Christmas," and thus have decided to do something to warrant such accusations by launching a direct attack on the holiday, erecting this billboard on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Judging by the billboard, at least, their attack is a bit toothless. I hope that every Christian will stand together in support of the billboard's claim. The notion that the Magi visited Christ as an infant in the manger is, of course, a myth. A reading perfectly compatible with "reason" is found in an ancient source often disregarded by modern-day Christians. See, e.g., Matthew 2:11 (referring to Magi visiting Mary and "child"), 2:16 ("When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi."). Thank you to the American Atheists for helping bring attention to our nation's woeful level of biblical illiteracy.
"Who Needs Marriage? Kids Do"
Attorney and commentator Jennifer Braceras has an op-ed in today's Boston Herald responding to Time Magizine's recent cover story entitled "Who Needs Marriage" and a recent Pew Study on the state of marriage and out of wedlock births in the United States. If she is correct in her assessment, as I think she is, what can be done about this crisis and what role can - should - law play?
"Secular Winds"
Perry Dane has a post on the Law, Religion, and Ethics that will be of interest to our readers.
Dane concludes:
This is a legal and political — and not only a religious — blog, so there should be (I guess) a legal and political take-away. If there is, it might go something like this, however trite: The relation of religion and the secular state, and of religion and law, must navigate between two dangers. One is that religion will be co-opted, which is to say that it will become “secularized,” open to being oppressed and itself oppressive. The other danger is that religion will be entirely banished from the public realm, leaving only “howling clouds of ash.”
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Immigration and Violence
The CQ Press recently published its annual list of of most dangerous and least dangerous cities in the United States. With the uproar over the supposed link between immigration and violence, especially on our southern border, one would expect that the most violent cities in the U.S. would be on the border and/or cities with high foreign born popolutions. But, some of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. have small foreign born populations, incuding Detroit (4.8% foreign born), Baltimore (4.6%), Memphis (12.6%), D.C. 12.6%), Atlanta (8.7%). And, some of the least dangerous cities have high foreign born populations, including El Paso, Texas (26.1%) and San Diego, Ca. (25.7%). According to CQ Press, the border cities of Brownsville, El Paso, McAllen, Texas are safer than Columbia, Missouri, Lawrence, Kansas and Lincoln, Nebraska.
HT: Mark Shea
cross posted on ImmgrationProf Blog
Recusing Judges from Judging Recusals
Just a little chiasmus that came to me upon reading this editorial in the N.Y. Times. I largely agree with the points about gift giving to judges. The first judge I worked for criticized these boondoggles as unwise. That always struck me as sensible for judges on any court.
But note how the op-ed seamlessly elides the issue of recusal based on gift giving with all recusal issues. It makes this move almost exactly as it trains its sights on the U.S. Supreme Court, observing that "[t]here is a growing consensus -- outside the court -- that the justices should change how they handle recusals: requiring a justice to explain any decision to recuse or not, and having a group of justices review each recusal decision."
Setting aside the issue whether such a "consensus" exists (I think Professor Steven Lubet has made this argument recently; I'm unaware that it has generated anything approaching "consensus," even a "growing" one), this seems to me an idea fraught with danger. There are all kinds of reasons that claimants move to recuse judges from hearing cases. Some are financial. Some are personal. Some are political. Some are ideological (and, sometimes, when ideological, they may be supported by religious convictions, Catholic and otherwise). Should (to pick just one example at random) the Defense of Marriage Act ever make it to the Court on constitutional grounds, it would very much surprise me not to see a motion for Justice Scalia to recuse himself from the case -- based on his public comments, the claimant would likely argue that Justice Scalia's impartiality could reasonably be questioned.
Suppose that Justice Scalia decides that he will not recuse himself from the case. Or suppose that he decides that he will. Per the editorial's suggestion, he provides a list of reasons. And now the question of his recusal is reviewed by his colleagues. Perhaps a 3-justice panel (whom shall we choose)? Or perhaps the full complement of 8 justices? If the latter, what happens if we get a 4-4 tie? Does a tie go to Justice Scalia? More problematic -- what happens if the 4-4 tie mirrors exactly the way in which the justices vote on the substantive issue of DOMA's constitutionality? It would seem that by opting for this procedure, the justices might be tempted to judge the merits sub silentio and a little prematurely; at the very least, the appearance of impartiality as to the entire Court might suffer more than a little.
Another thought: would we permit motions to recuse certain justices from judging the propriety of a decision not to recuse -- recusing judges from judging recusals? Could DOMA supporters move to recuse a justice who had said negative things about DOMA in the press from considering Justice Scalia's refusal to recuse himself? If we did permit those types of motions, could we also have further proceedings where a panel of judges considered a justice's decision not to recuse herself from considering the appeal of a justice who didn't recuse himself from the merits? I'd guess most people might reject that sort of review as excessive. But having proceeded down this path, what now makes this collateral review out of bounds -- one step too far?
I understand that it would be wonderful if justices recused themselves based on our own individual sense of when their impartiality could reasonably be questioned. And I also recognize that recusal standards are frustratingly vague, and that the current process gives off the whiff of unaccountability. But thoroughly politicizing the recusal process by demanding that other justices pronounce judgment on their colleagues' recusal decisions seems to me a bad idea. It is a reform that, though surely offered with good intentions, is fraught with the possibility of gamesmanship and politicized tit-for-tat strategizing. If adopted, I think it is likely to damage the judiciary, and to exacerbate problems that it already confronts.
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