See the story here. Apparently Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor teaching a course on Catholicism at the University of Illinois was fired (or more correctly not retained) for teaching what the Church teaches about homosexual acts, namely, that they are contrary to the natural moral law. One student in the class took offense at this presentation and complained to the chair of U of I's Department of Religion anonymously through an e-mail sent by a friend. The student complained that Howell's statements about homosexuality constituted "hate speech."
"Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing," the student wrote in the e-mail. "Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another. The courses at this institution should be geared to contribute to the public discourse and promote independent thought; not limit one's worldview and ostracize people of a certain sexual orientation."
According to Howell he made clear his own belief in the teachings set forth in the course.
"I tell my students I am a practicing Catholic, so I believe the things I'm teaching," he said. "It's not a violation of academic freedom to advocate a position, if one does it as an appeal on rational grounds and it's pertinent to the subject."
The story says that Howell also made clear that he did not demand that students agree with Catholic teaching on homosexual conduct nor did he evaluate students based on their acceptance or rejection of that teaching.
"My responsibility on teaching a class on Catholicism is to teach what the Catholic Church teaches," Howell said. "I have always made it very, very clear to my students they are never required to believe what I'm teaching and they'll never be judged on that."
This episode raises serious questions about academic freedom, Howell should not have been fired for explaining and endorsing the views that he did. Indeed, he should not have been fired had he advocated the opposite moral position, namely, that homosexual acts are in keeping with the natural moral law. (Whether advocating such a position would constitute a competent presentation of what the Church really believes is another matter, about which there may be some disagreement on MOJ, but it is nevertheless distinct).
The story raises other questions about the openness of public institutions of higher learning to Catholic teaching as an academic subject. It calls into question the willingness of public universities to engage Catholicism on its own terms, and suggests instead that these institutions may feel free to select their own version of Catholicsm to present to students where someone might take offense, that only a filtered version of Catholicism -- with the moral teachings that challenge modern sensibilites carefully removed -- will be open for discussion in university classrooms. As U of I's associate chancellor notes in the story, while Illinois is "absolutely committed to teaching the theory of Catholicism . . . it's up to the department as to who teaches a class."
The story notes that in correspondence with other university administrators the department chair made clear his intention to "send a note to Howell's students and others who were forwarded his e-mail to students, 'disassociating our department, College, and university from the view expressed therein.'"
Here's urbanist-before-it-was-"new" Philip Bess, commenting on my recent link to "A Defense of the Suburbs":
Poulos's full argument is more nuanced than the excerpt you have quoted; but his argument requires even more careful definition and nuance then he has provided, specifically with regard to urban and suburban form. After all, in today's America one can live in a pedestrian accessible mixed-use city neighborhood or small town and still be free to relocate. But an argument for suburban form is at the very least an argument for separating daily uses and making them conveniently accessible to each other only by automobile. If Poulos is defending that, he is---in my humble opinion---nuts.
Some Americans have a vocation to higher things that requires them to be mobile. Some Americans are mobile when they are young and relatively unengaged with other obligations. But many Americans are mobile for less considered and less lofty purposes. For raising children to become capable and confident and civic-minded adults, stability is more often a better recipe than mobility. Poulos may be post-modern, but if he is defending mobility as the sine qua non of human flourishing, he is no conservative. The ethos of American suburbanization---identified by Tocqueville even before America was able to have post-1945 automobile suburbs---is that America is something to be consumed for whatever our immediate purposes, often merely appetitive, may be. Modern suburbia not only reinforces and facilitates our mobility, it requires it---whether or not we have any idea of where we're going, or why.
Any beautiful and culturally sustainable human settlement has become so only because some trans-generational community of persons over time has loved it and for its sake willingly endured pains, including the occasional pains of staying put. (Think Nietzsche's---of all people!---"long obedience in the same direction.") As hard as I would find this to believe, perhaps Poulos sees no genuine good in such settlements, nothing particularly important about communities of place with respect to human well-being. If so, I can only infer that he views American natural and built landscapes as raw material for transient human beings, an implicitly placeless and disembodied view of human flourishing; post-modern indeed....
On the whole, I think it is good for people to be free to move; about this I suspect Poulos and I agree. But freedom, as modern popes rightly remind us, is a good to be employed in service to the good. In America, it is communities of place---traditional towns and urban neighborhoods and agriculture---that need defending, not suburbia. That suburbanites are our countrymen (and also a majority) means that the defense of traditional urbanism must be both rationally and rhetorically compelling as well as respectful; but if it's true that human beings learn virtue and thrive in communities, defending small towns, city neighborhoods and agriculture rather than suburbia is what conservative public intellectuals should be doing.
In response to my question, “What gives this court the authority to determine whether a particular religious interpretation is misguided?,"Aidan says:
I think that by using the word “misguided” the court is not suggesting that the views expressed are not in fact true expressions of the particular religious beliefs described, but rather that those religious beliefs when acted upon are morally wrong because inimical to the proper respect for individual human dignity that is incumbent upon all States and societies. The (anti-relativist) realization that there are absolute moral values (captured in the concept of “human rights”) which are not culturally relative or religiously specific and which States and societies and religions must protect and promote in order to have legitimacy is a post WW11/post-Nuremberg phenomenon common to the political/legal cultures of the civilised world.
There are two problems with Aidan’s response, as I see it.First, there is no universal –or near universal - consensus in the “civilized” world that “respect for individual human dignity” requires recognition of same-sex sexual relationships.In the aftermath of WWII, the “civilized” world did come to recognize that certain rights were necessary to give “respect for individual human dignity,” but recognition of same-sex relationships was not among these recognized rights.By contrast, in the asylum context, the world community recognized the right to political and religious freedom as constitutive of human dignity.The “enlightened” West has for a long time tried to promote abortion as a fundamental right necessary to the proper respect of individual human dignity and now it is trying to promote same-sex relationships on the same ground.But, without the same sort of consensus that came together in the aftermath of WWII, what gives this court the authority to determine whether a particular religious interpretation is misguided?Aidan, I look forward and hope for your response.
Second, as Mary Ann Glendon pointed out in her chapter of “Recovering Self-Evident Truths:Catholic Perspectives on American Law,” the post-WWII/post-Nuremberg consensus involved a pragmatic consensus about some important but minimal international human rights.What they didn’t decide – and didn’t even discuss much – was the foundation for those rights.In other words, the anthropological questions, which would have addressed “why human beings have rights and why some rights are universal” (p. 317), were rarely discussed and never resolved.Aidan states that “An expression by the court that the actions by another State or significant religious or cultural or political non-State institutions within that state contravene fundamental human rights is very much the province and duty of the judge, and I see no usurpation of power in their so doing in this particular case.”Hmm?On what ground does the court presume to develop (evolve?) the list of fundamental human rights or legally binding “absolute moral values” beyond those agreed to in treaties without a guiding principle or criterion for determining what rights human beings have and what rights are fundamental.Isn’t the court really engaged in an exercise of raw judicial power (maybe for good or maybe for ill) without some foundational premises from which to derive their specific conclusion?Thoughts?
Misunderstanding is predictable here, so I hesitate to say, but will say nonetheless, that in my view, there is only one invariable, only one "absolute":
"I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you." John 13:34. See also John 15:12, 17.
See the final paragraph of Vattimo's introduction, referring to, "in the teaching of John Paul II[,] his
essential appeal to charity, to universal friendship — may have heard in
him
the Christian voice that will never say amicus Plato sed magis amica
veritas.
In comparison with charity, there is no truth worth affirming. Jesus
invited us
to construct an ethics, a Christian practice, on the basis of caritas
—
an ethics that, as I interpret him, frees us of our last idolatry: the
adoration of Truth as our god."
New research has found that Pope Pius XII may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday.
The research is being carried out by Dr. Michael Hesemann, a German historian who is combing through the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a U.S.-based interfaith group.
Pope Pius XII has been widely criticized for his silence during the Holocaust and his failure to explicitly denounce the Holocaust, the Nazi regime or to excommunicate Hitler.
The new research, however, shows that the perception of Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope" may be historically incorrect. . . .
The relatively recently manufactured charge that Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope" is a calumny. (Read Ronald Rychlak's "Hitler, the War, and the Pope.") Still, that this research is being so prominently reported is welcome.
Prof. Paul Caron has posted the latest law-blog rankings here, and MOJ continues to do well. That said, I really would like to overtake the good people at the "Wills, Trusts, and Estates" blog, so everyone take a few minutes to tell some more friends about MOJ.
Caron also reports that MOJ is the third most "sticky" blog (Volokh is number one) meaning that MOJ readers spend more time engaging what they read at MOJ than at, say, Instapundit. No doubt I contribute to this stickiness, through my obsessive (and excessive) use of parentheticals, long and hyphenated modifiers, and frequent use of set-off-by-em-dashes interrupting clauses.
Regular MOJ readers know that I, and a number of MOJ-friends, are interested in questions of urbanism, and of the connection between the built environment and authentic Christian community. That said, check out this post, "In Defense of the Suburbs", by James Poulos:
. . .The suburbs aren't perfect. No type of residential institution can perfect us. And none can ruin us -- only we can do that.
We restless Americans can ruin ourselves with our restlessness. But we know that we are never really at home in the world, at the same time that we know all of America, in the most important way, is our home. We Americans move constantly, and it is our relocation and our picking up and putting down stakes that gives the suburbs their true character. Some suburbs can be cold, anonymous, unfeeling -- like some cities and rural areas. I can attest however that some suburbs are among the warmest, most neighborly places on earth: even if you are a new arrival, even if you are a stranger, even if you are only passing through. Our suburbs reflect -- because they have created, and manage to maintain -- a brilliantly American way of pulling strangers constantly in motion out of the narrowness of their individual peregrinations and into a broader public life. If you do not like the suburbs, I suspect it is because you do not like the American propensity, deeper than even custom and habit, to move, and move, and move, and move.
But that is us. Even with families, that is us, although families -- as I can also attest -- inspire American hearts and minds to settle down in a way as consonant as possible with the flourishing of those families. No matter the depths of our love for our families, it is a democratic love that rightly places the destiny of our children above any aristocratic love for the soil. It's not that the two cannot be reconciled for long stretches of time. Assuredly they can, and assuredly there are plenty of places in America where we can find and achieve such lives in concert with the like-minded. But that is an option, not a rule of nature, and it is not at the heart of the American character. Precisely because we are not, in any Aristotelian sense, here to stay, our suburbs are.
Michael has kindly posted something "for Rick" written by Gianni Vattimo. I'm afraid, though, I'm in the position of the person who opens a gift but is not quite sure what it is. I'd be grateful to Michael if he would help me to appreciate fully his present by explaining it, in his own words. I'd also like to hear more about whether, and why, in Michael's view, what Vattimo writes is correct. (What the latter writes does not move me to think that my own "take" on Ratzinger's "relativism" talk is not better than his.) Paragraphs like this do not inspire confidence (on my part):
[I]nvectives against relativism may well be inspired by a secret nostalgia for youth, or perhaps I mean adolescence. . . . Perhaps it is not coincidental that both John Paul II and (though a bit less, it seems) Benedict XVI turn their attention so regularly from us prudent and more skeptical elders toward the uncontrollably zealous young. . . .
Neither does this:
If we genuinely believed what Cardinal Ratzinger told us about truth, about helping others accept the same truths as Catholics do, we would have to obstruct by any means the propagation of false theories (through censorship) and enact laws in contravention of natural human rights (rights that the church now maintains). We would need laws against the free exercise of Protestant and non-Christian practices, against the display of non-Christian religious symbols, against the education of non-Catholic children in non-Catholic schools, against construction of mosques, synagogues, temples, Protestant chapels.
So argues Stephen Prothero (Boston University) here:
. . .I know that persons of goodwill are supposed to pretend that the world's religions are different paths up the same mountain. To say otherwise is to invite religious warfare and to label yourself illiberal. But we can do better than pretend pluralism. True pluralism does not insist on remaking Islam in the image of Christianity or Christianity in the image of Islam. It recognizes the deep diversity across the great religions and inside each of them. . . .
But God is not one. Or to put it more carefully, the world's religions differ on matters as central as the mathematics of divinity. Many Buddhists affirm zero gods, and many Hindus affirm many. Moreover, the character of divinity varies widely from god to god. No infant would mistake Hinduism's Kali for Christianity's Christ. Why should we?
Perhaps I am missing something, but I have yet to find a view of interreligious unity that does not reek of colonialism and empire. And as long as we insist on the dogma that all religions are essentially the same we are bound to imagine that all religions are essentially like our own. This approach blinds us to the unique beauty in each religion, and prevents us from making sense of religious conflict worldwide. . .
[An excerpt from Gianni Vattimo's introduction to the symposium I referenced in an earlier post. (On Gianni Vattimo, here.)]
Several contributions to this symposium question the definition of relativism
that the homily implies. But if Ratzinger’s intention had been precision of
philosophical vocabulary, he would surely have achieved it. He was not
referring to philosophical relativism so much as to vaguer social phenomena
that cluster around the adage “everything’s relative.” His reference was to
kinds of liberal tolerance for the other’s “lifestyle” that can easily become interest
in, fascination with, or attraction to it, then participation or conversion. His
special objection, judging by tone, was less to permanent conversions than to temporary
ones — temporary, that is, until something more fascinating, attractive, and
fashionable comes along.
It is this vaguer sort of relativism that, in introducing this
symposium, I want briefly to address. I have only one question to raise: is
relativism, as Ratzinger’s homily depicts it, really so great a risk for
civilization, for religion, for social cohesion? I mean, is it as great a risk
as other risks with which (qua risk) it is in competition? In
particular, I wonder if the laid-back, somewhat noncommittal, to-each-his-own,
I’ll-try-anything-once attitude of the pope’s relativists is anything like so
dangerous as the enthusiasm that certainty inspires. Take the fervor of the
Crusaders (“God wills it”), the zeal of the American “theo-cons” exporting democracy
to Iraq, the scientistic certainty with which Hitler organized the extermination
of “inferior” races (“for the betterment of humanity”) — none of these was a
consequence of any loss of faith in truth or timeless values....
[I]nvectives against relativism may well be inspired by a secret
nostalgia for youth, or perhaps I mean adolescence. Oswald Spengler, in his Decline
of the West, theorized that civilizations are creative when young (falling
in love, producing epic poetry, thirsting for battle). As civilizations age, they lose their surging force and at
best grow in girth, declining into imperialism. Perhaps it is not coincidental
that both John Paul II and (though a bit less, it seems) Benedict XVI turn
their attention so regularly from us prudent and more skeptical elders toward
the uncontrollably zealous young.
