[MOJ friend Gerry Whyte sends this:]
I didn't write this morning's editorial in The Irish Times but I could have as
it captures the point I made a few weeks ago about the corrupting effect of
power even on decent people within the Church.
Bishop Murray's resignation
Fri, Dec 18, 2009
THE FALL from grace of the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray, is a necessary
and inevitable consequence of the Murphy report into the cover-up of child
sexual abuse in the Dublin diocese.
But it is by no means a sufficient response to the amorality and recklessness
detailed in that grim document. Indeed, it would be grossly unfair to Dr Murray
were he to be the sacrificial lamb who must atone for the collective sins of the
Roman Catholic Church. If his departure were to be seen as the end, rather than
the beginning, of a radical process of accountability, the implication would be
that his behaviour was the exception rather than the rule. The truth is he
operated a system that seems to have been universally applied throughout the
church.
It would almost be comforting if Donal Murray’s tragedy were that of an evil
man. It is actually much more profound than that. It is the tragedy of a decent
man who was drawn into collusion with evil and who, even in his resignation
statement showed no sign of understanding or accepting the consequences of his
failures. Although he continued yesterday to try to excuse the inexcusable,
there is no evidence that he set out to be cynical or cruel or that he was, in
the ordinary course of events, indifferent to the sufferings of vulnerable
children. Were he any of those things, the church could regard him as an
aberrant and anomalous figure, a malignity in an otherwise healthy body. To
realise that, on the contrary, he most probably believed himself to be acting
properly and morally is to confront the unavoidable reality of a power structure
that distorts the most basic impulses of human decency.
It is that larger system that has to make itself accountable.The Catholic
Church is still far too deeply embedded within Irish society and retains far too
much temporal power for this to be a matter of concern to the faithful alone.
Undemocratic institutions who see themselves as answerable only to a God to
whose will they believe they have privileged access, are a danger to society as
a whole. Conversely, a complete change in the institutional church’s culture,
away from the arrogance of power and towards the humility and openness of
service, is the only way to make restitution for the terrible damage it has
done.
That change has to start with something that the church itself demands of its
flock – an honest confession. If the Pope and the Roman curia are as outraged as
they have claimed to be, they should give us a detailed and complete account of
their own dealings with child abuse cases in Ireland. They should start by
handing over all relevant archives to the Murphy commission and every serving
and retired Catholic bishop should open his own record to scrutiny.
More broadly, the Vatican and the Irish hierarchy must finally deal with an
obvious truth. They must recognise that the accumulation of temporal and
political power has ultimately not served the faith in which they purport to
believe. It has corrupted and corroded it. If they are ever to renew that faith,
they must learn how to be, not the shepherds of flocks of sheep, but the
servants of citizens.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
I just wonder what others would think about Catholic Legal Theory's response to this recent event that took place in Virginia? Is this where the "choice" argument has taken us? If so, I confidently believe that Catholic Legal Theory has something to say about it, and, I hasten to add, not in an approving manner.
RJA sj
That's the title of a piece by John Allen, published today, here.
I have just posted a new paper with the above title on SSRN. It was presented at a conference at USC a few weeks ago. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1524436
This from MOJ friend Gerry Whyte:
Pope accepts Bishop of Limerick's resignation
The Vatican confirmed this
morning that Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation
of the Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray. The story is here.
"Why does faith still have any chance at all? . . . Because it corresponds to the nature of man. . . .Man possesses an inexhaustible aspiration, full of nostalgia, for an infinite. None of the attempted answers will do; only the God who himself became finite in order to tear open our finitude and lead us into the wide spaces of his infinity, only he corresponds to the question of our being. That is why, even today, Christian faith will come to seek out man again." Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
As part of our ongoing conversation about George Weigel's recent column on the "presumption against war" in the Catholic just war tradition (for other posts in this thread, read this, this, and this), Christopher Dodson comments:
I am certainly no expert on the church’s just war teaching or its historical manifestations through the centuries. However, upon reflecting on Weigel’s column two thoughts come to mind that might contribute to the discussion.
First, Weigel appears to conclude that a presumption against war does not exist because it does not expressly appear in the traditional manifestations of the just war teaching. Just because it does not appear in those cases, however, does not mean that it does not exist or could not exist In this respect, Weigel makes the same error he made in his response to Caritas in Veritate. He fails to look at Catholic social teaching as a whole. Specifically, he fails to interpret individual portions of the teaching, such as the just war tradition, in light of the whole Ironically, Weigel missed this very point in Caritas in Veritate.:
In this sense, clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church's social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it. It is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new. It is one thing to draw attention to the particular characteristics of one Encyclical or another, of the teaching of one Pope or another, but quite another to lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpus. (No. 12)
The civil law principle of in pari materia is helpful here. Just as statutes should be construed, if possible, so as to harmonize, and to give force and effect to the provisions of each, expressions of Catholic social teaching - indeed, all Catholic teaching - should be read and interpreted with a view toward the whole and with a view toward harmonizing and giving all parts the same force and effect.
Therefore, rather than viewing the just war tradition in isolation, it should be interpreted so as to harmonize with the entire teaching of the church. As already noted in some of the posts, there is support for the presumption against war in the Compendium, scripture, and elsewhere.
Second, Weigel argues that the just war teaching begins with “legitimate public authority’s moral obligation to defend the common good by defending the peace composed of justice, security, and freedom.” That is essentially the same basis for the state’s use of the death penalty. However, as Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism make clear, those obligations of the state do not exist in isolation. We are instructed that if “non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.” (emphasis added.)
Thankfully, the Catechism points us in the direction of understanding why the “hurdle” - to use Weigel’s words - exists with regards to use of the death penalty. It’s purpose is to conform to the dignity of the human person and the common good. In practice, this is a presumption against the use of the death penalty.
Following Weigel’s logic, if the explanatory clause was not there, we would have no reason to conclude that a presumption against the use of the death penalty exists. He would, however, be wrong. Like the hurdles in the just war tradition, the hurdle for using the death penalty does not exist in isolation and without reason. We would have to discover it’s reason by interpreting the hurdle with a view toward harmonizing it with the entire teaching of the church.
I have been following the recent thread on the Magisterium as it pertains to "just war theory"/the use of force. I have been contributing to an international project concerning these matters over the last couple of years. One of my draft chapters (minus footnotes) deals with a good number of the issues presented in the recent thread. Perhaps contributors and readers of the Mirror of Justice might find some of the points I develop useful for reflection and discussion. The paper is here: Download Araujo on use of force-just war theory
RJA sj
