Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Friday, July 4, 2008

"The Least of These Sisters and Brothers of Mine"

By Michael Perry

From clearing excrement to New York modelling
By Salim Rizvi, New York

Walking down the catwalk in front of the great and the good in New York is a far cry from using your hands to clean up human excrement for a living.

But this week a group of such women - known in India as scavengers - have been doing just that. They have been attending a United Nations conference here and doing some modelling at the same time.

In all, 36 scavengers from India have been invited by the UN to attend a conference to mark the UN's International Year of Sanitation.

The women were brought up from early childhood for the demeaning work.

Scavengers are invariably from the lower-caste, "untouchable" (Dalit) community. They carry the human excrement in pots on their heads. They can also be found clearing rubbish from the streets and open drains outside homes.

'Humilitation'

Usha Chomar is one of these women. Walking along the corridors of the UN headquarters, she was ecstatic by the respect and honour showered on her by dignitaries and the movers and shakers of the world.

Thirty-year-old Chomar gave up scavenging in 2003. She says she finally feels like a human being. "I have always done the work of scavenging and have faced humiliation all my life.

"So I had never imagined that I would ever have been honoured like this. I am very happy at last to be treated like a normal person."

The women got the opportunity to hit the catwalk during a fashion show called Mission Sanitation where they appeared alongside top models from India and other countries. Some of the designer clothes worn by the models were embroidered by the women .

The ceremony was especially poignant for Usha Chomar, because she was unofficially crowned as princess of sanitation workers.

Among the various organisations taking part in the activities was the India non-governmental organisation, Sulabh International, which was invited by the UN to work with other groups around the world in the struggle to provide better sanitation.

"This is the dream coming true of Indian independence hero Gandhiji (Mahatma Gandhi)," said Bindeshwar Pathak, the head of Sulabh International.

"In India scavengers have been looked down upon for centuries. But those who have abandoned that work are... being treated with respect which they deserve. I am over the moon with happiness."

Huge task

Usha Chomar said that she hoped that other disadvantaged women could derive inspiration from her story. "I tell all scavenging women that it is not impossible for them to change their lives and command just as much respect as any other human being."

Official statistics in India say that there are still around 340,000 scavengers working in villages and small towns.

The UN aims to reduce by half the number of people without basic sanitation by 2015.

But in India alone they face a huge task.

It's estimated that around 700 million Indians do not have access to safe and hygienic toilets.

Experts say that scavenging in India is most prevalent in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

They warn that because they work in such nasty conditions, many suffer from acute health problems. They say that the stench that goes with the job forces many scavengers to hold their breath for long periods of time, which in turn causes respiratory problems.

The Indian government banned manual scavenging in 1993, but the law is not widely implemented.

 
 

E Pluribus Unum: Being Catholic and Being American

By Michael Scaperlanda

My good friend, Fr. Bruce Nieli, CSP, has an excellent July 4th reflection at Busted Halo:

In a cultural climate such as the United States —where the sense of polarization along social, economic, political and religious lines seems to be the default posture— maintaining unity amidst great diversity has become a profound challenge.  As this division grows it can become increasingly difficult to hold onto one's identity while being open to the values, beliefs, and cultures of others.


How can I be a free person while living in community?  This question is a practical application of the age-old philosophical problem of maintaining unity amidst diversity.  How can I retain my uniqueness while belonging to others is a question faced by every family, every neighborhood, every village, and every nation, but it is by no means a new challenge. 

As we celebrate our nation’s independence it is important to remember how this same issue was faced by our forefathers who, during the Continental Congress of 1776, appointed Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to create a seal and motto for the newly declared United States of America.  The thirteen colonies, with a highly diverse population, were to be one nation, one free people. The motto Franklin, Jefferson and Adams arrived at was e pluribus unum, the Latin phrase meaning "out of many, one" which can still be found today on the reverse side of the one dollar bill, within the Great Seal of the United States, on the ribbon carried by the bald eagle.


The opening of the “Pauline Year” on June 29, 2008 by Pope Benedict— celebrating the 2000 years since St. Paul’s birth—also reminds us that this same concept of unity out of diversity was taken up by Saint Paul 1700 years earlier. His model of the Church as the Body of Christ is ingenious: "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and have all been made to drink of the one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12: 13)

More recently, those seemingly diverse strains of thought—America’s and the Catholic Church's—found their convergence in the thinking of the "Yankee Paul," Father Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-1888) the founder of the Paulist Fathers. Hecker’s insight— radical for his day—was that Catholicism and the American experience weren’t mutually exclusive, in fact they complemented each other quite well. …

Isaac Hecker, whose cause for sainthood was recently opened, had grappled with this e pluribus unum issue as a twenty-something New Yorker fresh out of the utopian Transcendentalist communes of Brook Farm and Fruitlands.  …  Hecker, in his idealism, would see in his newly embraced Catholicism a spirituality of e pluribus unum when, on July 14, 1844, he wrote in his diary:  "The Catholic Church has preserved unity without encroachment on individual liberty, and has preserved individual liberty without the loss of perfect unity."

For the rest of his essay, click here.

Thurgood Marshall Centennial

By Susan Stabile

I just realized we let July 2 pass without mention the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thurgood Marshall.  However 4th of July is a pretty good day to reflect on a couple of his thoughts.

"A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi...has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States.  It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.  We got here becuase somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped up pick up our boots."

"In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Building Community in a Big City

By Amy Uelmen

Still in response to Rick's post on the assisted suicide story in Germany, it made me think of how many opportunities there are to reach out to people who are alone in our cities, not only to take care of their material needs, but also to help them feel that they are a part of a community in which they are both loved and needed.  I had a tiny experience recently that reinforced this for me.  Some time ago a friend of mine and I noticed that one the elderly ladies who attends daily mass had holes in her shoes.  We asked if she needed a new pair, and after we had collected a bit of money, my friend went with her to the shoe store to pick out what she needed.  Some time later she brought us a beautiful “thank you” card, and then we began to sit next to each other in the very large church where usually folks tend to keep quite a bit of distance.  A few weeks ago we shared a picnic lunch (she brought the drinks), which was a chance to get to know her better as a person, and especially to discover how much time she spent in prayer.  During the picnic we asked if we could entrust to her all of the people who had recently asked for our prayers.  I can’t describe how her face lit up when today I brought her the list of people and situations to pray for… and that look on her face that made me think, who knows how many zillions of opportunities I have missed not only to help, but also to connect and be enriched?  It was a chance to ask forgiveness for the modern sin of constant busy-ness, and for the grace to pay more attention.  Amy

A Ray of Hope

By Amy Uelmen

In response to Rick’s sadness over the assisted suicide case in Germany, on a more hopeful front, today Zenit reported that Pope Benedict authorized the promulgation of a decree recognizing that together with seven others, Servant of God Chiara Badano lived a life of heroic virtue.  One of the Focolare youth, she died in 1990 at the age of 18, of a particularly painful form of bone cancer, after leaving an extraordinary witness of light and faith, accompanied and sustained by the whole community and especially friends of her same age who lived the spirituality of unity together with her.  More about her life here and here.  In a world where the sick are often marginalized and profound isolation and loneliness often lead to desperation, her life shines as a ray of hope, and perhaps even helps to illumninate a path for healing the cultural maladies that lead to assisted suicide as well.  Amy 

The South Dakota abortion case

By Rick Garnett

Emily Bazelon writes here, at Slate, about South Dakota's "unbelievable" abortion law which, among other things, "requires doctors to give patients who come for an abortion a written statement telling them that 'the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.'"  "If you care about doctors' freedom of speech," she writes, "or their responsibility to give accurate information to patients, the South Dakota statute looks pretty alarming."

I'm not sure what to think about the free-speech objection.  It seems to me that all kinds of reasonable, easily justifiable regulations of the practice of medicine are going to involve requiring doctors to communicate some information to patients and forbid them to say some things to patients.  The free-speech objection, then, appears to piggy-back on the "accurate information" objection.  So, is it, or is it not, the case that an abortion "terminate[s] the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being"?  Well, the statute in question defines "human being" as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation."  Bazelon thinks this is just cheating; is she right?

Here's the key paragraph of her piece:

But what's more distressing, because the majority's reasoning is so strained, is the assertion that by defining a phrase one way, a state can erase its ambiguity and the variety of perceptions people bring to it. It's one thing to say—as the case law the majority relies on here does—that a statutory definition binds judges and their interpretation of language. It's another entirely to say that when doctors tell women they are carrying a human being, that women will think, Oh, right, that means only the long, convoluted thing that the state says it does. Most patients won't think that, because they won't necessarily define "human being" the way the statute does. As Yale law professor Robert Post says in a 2007 article (PDF) in the University of Illinois Law Review, "If South Dakota were to enact a statute requiring physicians to inform abortion patients that they were destroying the 'soul' of their unborn progeny, and if it were explicitly to provide in the statute that 'soul' is defined as 'human DNA,' the evasion would be obvious." Instead, South Dakota has co-opted human being and attached its own meaning to it.

I was intrigued by the use of the word "co-opted."  Did the legislature really "attach it's own meaning" -- some kind of strange, esoteric, secret-knowledge meaning?  It strikes me that the objections to the statute reflect a worry that, by requiring doctors to remind women contemplating abortions that unborn children are "human beings", the law might make complicate the decision to end these human beings' lives.

"Thou Shalt Not Annoy" at WYD 2008

By Rick Garnett

World Youth Day 2008 is being held this summer in Sydney, Australia.  According to the event's official web site, "[o]rganised by the Catholic Church, WYD brings together young people from around the globe to celebrate and learn about their faith on a more regular basis.  WYD08 will be the largest event Australia has ever hosted. It will attract over 125,000 international visitors - more than the 2000 Olympics.  WYD08 will mark the first visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Australia."  (During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, these events were huge, and quite formative, I'm told, for many young Catholics.)

Well, if you put on a big Catholic jamboree, with the Pope in attendance, in a free country, you are going to stir up conversation, debate, disagreement . . . and some protest (some of it, no doubt, malicious and offensive).  And so, local authorities have enacted a new, temporary set of regulations that "will allow police to arrest and fine people for 'causing annoyance' to World Youth Day participants."  In response, as this headline puts it, "Catholics are split on [the] freedom to annoy":

[The] prominent Catholic priest and lawyer Frank Brennan has condemned new police powers for World Youth Day as a "dreadful interference" with civil liberties and contrary to Catholic teaching on human rights.

Any thoughts?  What free-speech rule or principle (if any) should control this situation, and others like it?  I tend to be a free-speech libertarian, even though I'm uncomfortably aware that a lot of libertarian free-speech rhetoric rings hollow.  Would those who object to the "don't annoy" rule object as strongly if the event in question were not World Youth Day but some other, perhaps more "progressive", group?  Readers might want to check out this post, at the Commonweal blog (where I got the story) and also the comments.

Assisted suicide in Germany

By Rick Garnett

The New York Times reports on a recent doctor-assisted suicide in Germany, by an elderly woman who was not ill:

Ms. Schardt, 79, a retired X-ray technician from the Bavarian city of Würzburg, was neither sick nor dying. She simply did not want to move into a nursing home, and rather than face that prospect, she asked Mr. Kusch, a prominent German campaigner for assisted suicide, for a way out.

Her last words, after swallowing a deadly cocktail of the antimalaria drug chloroquine and the sedative diazepam, were “auf Wiedersehen,” Mr. Kusch recounted at a news conference on Monday.

It was hardly the last word on her case, however. Ms. Schardt’s suicide — and Mr. Kusch’s energetic publicizing of it — have set off a national furor over the limits on the right to die, in a country that has struggled with this issue more than most because of the Nazi’s euthanizing of at least 100,000 mentally disabled and incurably ill people.

Not that the Times wants to be judgmental.  After all . . .

While Ms. Schardt was not suffering from a life-threatening disease, or in acute pain, her life was hardly pleasant, Mr. Kusch said. She had trouble moving around her apartment, where she lived alone. Having never married, she had no family. She also had few friends, and rarely ventured out.

In such circumstances, a nursing home seemed likely to be the next stop. And for Ms. Schardt, who Mr. Kusch said feared strangers and had a low tolerance for those less clever than she was, that was an unbearable prospect.

You know, I joke sometimes that some "less clever" people's remarks make me "want to kill myself" . . . but, it's a joke.

Meanwhile, a push for "death with dignity" in Washington.  Don't worry, though . . . Oregon's "safeguards work."

David Skeel on Obama's Faith-Based Initiative Proposal

By Michael Perry

Skeel's comments, here, are well worth reading.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Catholics and the Responsibility of Citizenship

By Robert John Araujo, SJ

First of all, I wish to thank in great abundance my Mirror of Justice friends who have been contributing to the thread on Catholics and the upcoming election. I shall not speak about any party or any group’s efforts to capture the “Catholic vote.” But, it does appear that many Catholics in the United States find themselves in conflict over their faith and their role in public life. While some of us are trained in the law, we all have a role in its development. The principal objective of this posting is to identify and examine the relationship between Catholic faith and the duties of each Catholic in public life, as either office holder or citizen.

I contend here that there is nothing in the civil law and associated regulations to preclude the Catholic office holder or citizen from adhering to the teachings of the Church in the exercise of one’s respective public duties. Each Catholic retains the obligation to be faithful to the Church’s teachings if he or she is to be an effective, contributing Christian member of the commonwealth. This means that the Catholic who exercises a role in American democracy simultaneously participates in the exercise of discipleship by applying in this world the substance and content of communion with Jesus Christ and other disciples. I have addressed this subject matter in greater detail elsewhere. But I would like to offer a more concise presentation that could be of assistance to others as we approach the November election.

In the first place, we need to take stock of the fact that through our baptism and the exercise of the faith, we are disciples of Jesus Christ. This element of my discussion is rooted in the story of Cleopas and his friend—two disciples who, on their way to the village of Emmaus, encounter the resurrected Jesus. Something prevents them from recognizing Jesus until they dine together and Jesus, after having said the blessing, breaks bread with them and, in doing so, shares communion with them. When Jesus quickly disappears from their sight, they then recognize who he is, and they are energized with the breaking of the bread and communion with Jesus to continue his work mindful that the “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all the nations.” By being in communion with the Lord, they are restored to active and vibrant discipleship and respond to the call to serve in his name. Without the communion with Jesus, they seemed to have no direction in their lives but were “downcast.” They needed him to do the work they were called to do, and with him they were fortified to labor in his name. Through their communion with Jesus, they maintained right relation with God and with their neighbor. Being in communion with God, His Son, and the Church is essential to anyone’s discipleship regardless of whether one lived in the time of Jesus in Palestine or in the United States at the present time. We are fortified in the Lord calling us, “Come, follow me!” And, this is the challenge the Second Vatican Council placed to all faithful.

In a powerful voice, the Council challenged us to remember what Jesus taught: “As long as you did it for one of these least of my brethren, you did it for me.” The Church and its members have a duty to combat whatever is “opposed to life itself” by identifying murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, willful self-destruction, or anything else which “violates the integrity of the human person.”

Catholics are citizens of two cities who are called to discharge civic responsibilities with the exercise of a Christian conscience inspired by the Gospel. Nevertheless, we are often reminded of the address given by Governor Mario Cuomo at Notre Dame University in September of 1984 entitled “Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective” in which he raised and addressed the question of the relationship of his Catholic faith and his politics—are they separate or related? For prudential and other reasons, the Governor counseled against imposing views based on Catholic teachings on others which these citizens find unacceptable. He spoke of the “American-Catholic tradition of political realism” in which the Church has avoided settling into a “moral fundamentalism” mandating “total acceptance of its views.” But that is not what the disciple is called to do. The disciple, as John Paul II judiciously explained, proposes to the community rather than imposes upon it. And one cannot propose unless one is willing to speak, even against the grain.

It is through reasoned discourse that the genuine contribution of the disciple can be made for the betterment and benefit of all rather than just some of humanity. It is the example of a way of life that is suitable for making the propositions consistent with God’s truth contained in the Church’s teachings. And, it is these teachings and the authority upon which they are based that serve as an antidote to the cynical and sinister in this world that God has given His disciples as one of our two cities.

Thus, we are reminded that while the harvest is plentiful, the laborers may be few. God needs laborers to follow His son, for the harvest is great, but the workers seem to be few in number. As Pope John Paul II kept reiterating in his post-Synodal apostolic exhortation, Christfideles Laici, “you go into my vineyard, too.” The rest is up to us: do we accept the challenging invitation or not? Instilled with the mission of discipleship, we are called to be God’s conscious instruments in a world often plagued with exaggerated autonomy that ignores both the neighbor and God and sees only the isolated self. By remaining in contact with the Church and her teachings, we become a light to the world illuminating the minds and spirit of those who might otherwise be overwhelmed by the darkness of evil. In this regard, we need to take account of what John Paul II stated in his last World Day of Peace message issued in 2005, by recalling the words of St. Paul, “do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is a noteworthy appeal to the disciple who labors in the fields of law and politics.

            When considering particular challenging topics that today’s disciple must confront, we turn to St. Paul who reminds us about the duties of citizenship and how discipleship and citizenship are designed to be complementary rather than separate and independent of one another. But Paul also cautions that the civil authority also must be mindful of its duties and properly exercise its power for it is supposed to be an instrument of God as well. Citizens as disciples and the political, social, and economic structures in which they live and work are all responsible for being the keepers of our brothers and sisters whoever they may be.

            Civic duty—be it of the office holder or citizen—is compatible with, not contrary to, discipleship. The two are not mutually exclusive but, for the Catholic, inextricably related. The disciple must be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove and recognize that some will reject the role of the disciple-citizen. For when Church authorities and citizens speak out on issues from the Catholic persona, they might be challenged, albeit on dubious grounds, that this “preaching” is prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. But, do these same critics, especially when they have access to mass media outlets that welcome their strongly secularist or other views, exercise similar restraint? It often appears that the result is dependent on who is doing the preaching and whose Gospel is being preached. Whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers and sisters, that which you do unto me. It is a well-formed Christian conscience [see my earlier posting HERE] that richly contributes to the public debate by adding alternatives that reflect genuine pluralism and diversity and is not subjugated by the monolithic view of a culture that is antagonistic to the religious viewpoint—not by “imposing” but by “proposing.”

If one assumes the title of disciple, does not one also assume certain risks that go along with the vocation? In answering this question, we need only recall the names of all those disciples in the Roman canon who were martyred for their beliefs and the exercise of their conscience. There are indeed risks of proclaiming the truth, the Good News that some treat as unwelcome, but there is the moral obligation not to give into bullying or pressure, subtle or otherwise. Sound prudential judgment may dictate when this obligation is exercised in a public fashion, but it does not mandate avoidance of the obligation in perpetuity.

            Disciples of today, be they the electors or the holders of office, shoulder duties in the name of God and His Son. There are occasions when these disciples need not fear the decisions they take in the public square so long as those decisions sufficiently coincide with the views of the secular components of society; however, there may be occasions when the situation is otherwise. It is clear that if the disciple, be that person office holder or exerciser of the franchise, may not be able to eliminate that which is evil entirely. That is understandable, but the disciple has the continuing obligation to ensure that the evil in this world that is of human manufacture at least be reduced if it cannot be eliminated at present.

            

Those who consider themselves good citizens and good disciples seem to be neither when it comes to some of today’s difficult issues such as euthanasia, abortion, same-sex marriage, or certain kinds of stem cell research requiring the creation and inevitable destruction of human embryos. They may assert: “I cannot legislate morality” or “I cannot impose my religious views on others who do not share my faith” as Governor Cuomo opined. It may seem odd that when the matter under debate involves some aspects of civil rights or criminal legislation addressing, for example, sexual assault or welfare reform or increasing medical benefits for the underinsured or uninsured or the protection of civil rights, the reservations toward the religious perspective tend to be silent. But why do they surface when the matter involves the conscious destruction of human life—the most precious right of all, for without it, all others wither? When these events take place and chill the words of deeds of the disciple in contemporary life, we find ourselves on the decline and must ask: why we did not do something to stop the spread of evil.

            

Being silent with regard to the vital issues confronting the human family is not always golden. The exercise of silence can be prudent and sometimes offers a useful delay to consider the best manner of addressing a grave problem. But, when all is said and done, silence is rarely a solution to difficult problems that must ultimately be addressed. It can be, in some of today’s political debate, a form of weakness and fearfulness or cooperation (material or formal) in perpetrating and continuing evil. That is why the disciple of today must be willing to embrace the exhortation of John Paul II—“Be not afraid!”

The fact that a source of the citizen’s truth may be the teachings of the Church does not disqualify the Church from teaching that which may be used by the citizen nor the citizen from using that which the Church teaches regarding the moral issues affecting law and politics. The Church does not interfere with the State’s proper function, but it does retain and must exercise its proper role to provide instruction on moral truth that can be appropriated and used by the citizen in his or her participation in the exercise of self-determination of the democratic process.

It would be problematic to insist that the citizen must observe an unnatural dichotomy in his or her life insulating the spiritual and moral from the public and the political. In this context the Johannine text of Jesus farewell: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit...” Those who would insist on defeating this participation by the disciple-citizen would deny legitimate and authentic pluralism and would impose a regime of intolerant secularism.

            As I suggested earlier, we are citizens of two cities. Each of us is one person who holds and exercises various duties through this dual citizenship—we are the branches who remain tied to Christ, but we also exist and act in the temporal world. This fact should not deter us from embracing what Thomas More said when he declared his allegiance to both sovereigns, but to God first. Let us not be afraid to declare our allegiance likewise regardless of what the Sirens of the present age beckon us to do.

RJA sj

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