COLUMNISTS
Does Obama Have a Friend in the Vatican?
E. J. Dionne Jr.
Here.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
CARITAS IN VERITATE
Liberalism and CST
At the risk of being a shameless self-promoter (hey . . . Rick taught me everything I know!), I would encourage anyone interested in the relationship between liberalism and Catholic legal theory to read my piece, recently published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy entitled Neutrality in Liberal Legal Theory and Catholic Social Thought, available here.
As Michael P. has pointed out, liberalism is complex. Indeed, it is a "tradition" (in MacIntyre’s sense of the term) to which many thoughtful people have contributed. So, while I acknowledge that there is no one authoritative version of liberalism, in the piece I focus on those liberal thinkers who have stressed the centrality of liberalism’s purported neutrality with respect to competing theories of the good.
Thus, I critique the work of thinkers such Ackerman, Dworkin, Larmore, and Rawls through the lens of Catholic social thought while at the same time usefully drawing on the work of Galston, Taylor, MacIntyre, Schindler, and our own Michael P. (proving that even a graduate of St. X and Georgetown and a graduate of Trinity and Notre Dame can agree on some things!). In doing so I discuss many of the topics touched upon in recent posts on MOJ including the philosophical anthropology that liberalism and CST each puts forth, the nature and place of rights and duties in the social order, and the relationship between the good and the right.
In what is perhaps the most provocative section of the article, I suggest that, to the extent liberalism claims that social life has a point or purpose, it is only a “civilization of tolerance,” which I contrast with the goal of social life set forth in Catholic social thought, namely, “the civilization of love.”
I organize my discussion around the four varieties of neutrality that Andrew Altman puts forth in his splendid defense of liberal theory – what he calls “rights neutrality,” “epistemological neutrality,” “political neutrality,” and “legal neutrality.”
An Evangelical Christian as the New Head of NIH? Please Say It Ain't So!
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Obama Chooses Francis Collins To Head NIH:
Resources on Faith and Science
President
Barack Obama has announced that he will nominate Francis S. Collins, the former
director of the Human Genome Project, to be the new director of the National
Institutes of Health. Collins, an evangelical Christian, was a featured speaker
at the Pew Forum's May 2009 Faith Angle Conference, where he spoke about why he
believes religion and science can exist in harmony.
Other Pew Forum resources on the relationship between faith and science include
a 2008 Q&A with Collins and resources on bioethics.
Well, as usual, Rick is right and I was not ...
That is, there is much that Rick and I agree about. However, there is one "really big" (cf. Ed Sullivan, if any of you are old enough to remember him) thing that Rick and I will go to our graves disagreeing vehemently about, and it's much more fundamental than anything in theology or politics: whether one should root for or, instead, against Duke in men's basketball. I'm ABD!
Agreeing with Michael P.
Not only do I also agree with Michael -- or, the Michaels -- that skepticism is appropriate regarding the "claim that every human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable can be embedded in a secular world view", I want to assure MOJ readers -- who might be worried -- that my friend Michael P. and I agree that (1) Endo's "Silence" is a great book; (2) runs along Lake Michigan are delightful; (3) one ought to root against the University of Kentucky in basketball; and much, more more.
=-)
Still more on Caritas
Here is a short blurb, by me, on the new encyclical:
It was predictable, but is nevertheless regrettable, that many pundits and partisans would respond to Caritas in Veritate not so much by engaging Pope Benedict’s profoundly Christian humanism but instead by hunting through the text for quotations they could deploy in support of their own pet policies. (The Pope, for his part, urged “all people of good will” to “liberate [themselves] from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways.”) Rather than reflecting carefully on the Pope’s central proposal, namely, that “[f]idelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom and of the possibility of integral human development,” commentators who might ordinarily roll their eyes at policy suggestions from the bishop of Rome are happy to uproot from the encyclical’s inspiring, challenging vision a few talking points about environmental stewardship, trade unionism, or the redistribution of wealth.
Caritas in Veritate is not, however, merely a papal reflection on the current economic crisis or the implications of globalization. In keeping with the Catholic social teaching tradition, and with the work of his predecessor, the letter is about the person—about who we are and why it matters. Beneath, and supporting, the various statements and suggestions regarding specific policy questions is the bedrock of Christian moral anthropology, of the good news about the dignity, vocation, and destiny of man.
To content oneself with harvesting talking points in support of this or that policy is to miss the point, and the promise, of the letter. We cannot, however high-sounding our stated intentions, expect to achieve true human flourishing through a politics that does not care about or denies the truth—and there is a truth—about the person, namely, that by creating us in his image, God has “establish[ed] the transcendent dignity of men and women and feeds [our] innate yearning to ‘be more.’ Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved.” “And now,” the Pope is challenging us to ask, “what follows?”
There are other comments at the same link.
A Thicker Liberalism
Responding to our discussion on liberalism (here, here, here, and here), Brad Lewis, a professor of Philosophy at CUA, offers a more thickly textured liberalism:
It's true that liberalism as a kind of normative philosophical theory assumes or promotes a thin anthropology. However, why should one accept that that is all there is and can be for liberalism? After all, the root of the word itself is simply "free." Liberalism as a political theory is a theory of freedom. Certainly we (Catholics, I mean) are not opposed to that. In Caritas in Veritate (as in his earlier encyclicals, and all over the place in the writings of John Paul II) Benedict links freedom to truth. The only real and authentic freedom is related to truth. It's an insight of classical political philosophy (that begins with Plato and Aristotle) that there are tensions between political life and truth, that politics is not a realm in which the truth can simply hold sway, and that politics is therefore limited--it isn't, can't be, shouldn't be, about everything. It should make possible a life devoted to the highest things, but it isn't that life. Aristotle says on Nicomachean Ethics X.7-8 that politics isn't for its own sake. This is the classical basis of the limits of the political. Christianity recontextualizes this, of course, but the notion of limits is still there: the earthly city is not the heavenly city, although many people strive to live in both. In so far as we say that liberalism is a political theory of freedom and understand human freedom in its fullest sense as connected to truth we can understand the limits of politics as following from this: liberalism is a theory of limited government by free people, free because they can govern themselves and are open to the truth that transcends politics. Liberalism on this view describes a set of political institutions and goods (limited, representative government, elections, protections for basic human rights) necessary for a decent human life in the context of modern national states. Those institutions are better and more stable when grounded in a deeper anthropology to be sure and Christianity offers precisely that. Catholic social teaching offers it. This, again, is to distinguish liberalism as a practical political theory from liberalism as an ideology.
One woman and judge’s view
This coming Sunday’s The New York Times Magazine will publish an interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg entitled The Place of Women on the Court. [HERE] In part, it offers her exhortation encouraging the confirmation to the Supreme Court of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. In part, it is a revealing insight into the kind of woman, person, and human being that are Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Inevitably, questions about abortion and the law and Constitutional issues dealing with this issue surfaced during the interview. The following exchange between Justice Ginsburg and the interviewer divulges a great deal about the kind of woman, person, and human being that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is:
Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.
Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
Q: When you say that reproductive rights need to be straightened out, what do you mean?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.
Q: Does that mean getting rid of the test the court imposed, in which it allows states to impose restrictions on abortion — like a waiting period — that are not deemed an “undue burden” to a woman’s reproductive freedom?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: I’m not a big fan of these tests. I think the court uses them as a label that accommodates the result it wants to reach. It will be, it should be, that this is a woman’s decision. It’s entirely appropriate to say it has to be an informed decision, but that doesn’t mean you can keep a woman overnight who has traveled a great distance to get to the clinic, so that she has to go to some motel and think it over for 24 hours or 48 hours.
I still think, although I was much too optimistic in the early days, that the possibility of stopping a pregnancy very early is significant. The morning-after pill will become more accessible and easier to take. So I think the side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they’re fighting a losing battle. Time is on the side of change…
I have emphasized two portions of the Justice’s response to different questions about abortion. Her two answers, in one sense, do not seem to be consistent with one another. On the one hand, she viewed Roe as the means of controlling population, “particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” I wonder what are those populations “that we don’t want to have too many of”? On the other hand, she asserts that the government has no role in making decisions about a woman’s “reproductive rights.” But, if she means that the state has no role in stopping a woman from having an abortion for any reason or no reason, then the two statements become more coherent with each other. In any case, she did not retract her views about population control and using government moneys to fund abortion—for that would not take away women’s “reproductive rights.” It seems that from her perspective, “reproductive rights” and population control may not be in conflict with one another. And, if this is indeed the case, we have learned a great deal about what kind of woman, person, and human being Ruth Bader Ginsburg is.
RJA sj
Death with Dignity (UPDATED x 2)
Recommended reading: Jane Gross, "Facing Death with Dignity," NYT, 7/9/09. The byline: "A congregation of sisters outside of Rochester offers a model for successful aging and a gentle death." An excerpt: "A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death — none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care — trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream." Read the rest, here.
UPDATE: A reader responds:
"I saw your post on 'Facing Death with Dignity.' I thought I would add a personal note that as a part-time practitioner in estate planning, I am starting to see requests for palliative care and related provisions in the health care aspects. And, even in cases where I mention the availability of such care, many are motivated to investigate the meaning of it further, and then to request it."
UPDATE #2:
At the moment, this is the most e-mailed article in today's NYT. Hmmm ...
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Michaels Agree??!!! (Updated)
Say it ain't so, Rick--er, I mean Joe. [Cf. here.]
Surely it's all downhill from here on out. God knows that Michael P. and Rick G. will never agree!
Maybe, at this moment--this mind-boggling? holy? even providential? moment--MOJ should just pack its bags and call it a day ...
UPDATE: :-)
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