Another interesting post, here.
Friday, April 11, 2008
David Skeel on "Good and Bad Pro-Life Arguments"
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Bill Stuntz on Prohibition and Abortion
Interesting, provocative post, here.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Bono and U2 on MLK, Jr.--"In the Name of Love"
Teachers Strike at 10 Catholic Schools By JOHN ELIGON
NYT, 4/5/08
Nearly 200 teachers at 10 Catholic schools throughout the Archdiocese of New York went on strike Friday, saying that the archdiocese has hindered their efforts to obtain a new health insurance plan, said Mary-Ann Perry, the president of the Federation of Catholic Teachers, a union.
The strike could continue next week, Ms. Perry said, if the archdiocese does not give the teachers the information they need to obtain a new health care plan through Local 153, the Office and Professional Employees International Union.
A spokesman for the archdiocese criticized the strike, saying it was merely a bargaining chip on the part of the Catholic teachers’ union and that the archdiocese had already handed over a stack of documents that stood about a foot high.
At one school affected by the strike Friday, Our Lady Queen of Angels elementary school in East Harlem, some students watched videos and others played games.
The archdiocese and the union began negotiating a new contract last May. The contract expired on Aug. 31 without a new deal. In November, the archdiocese made a final offer. The deal included an increased premium for health insurance that the union said was too high, so a few weeks later it began seeking a new health care plan from an outside group, Ms. Perry said.
That group agreed to do a feasibility study, Ms. Perry said, but told the union it needed to provide information from its previous plan. While the archdiocese has provided a lot of information, Ms. Perry said, it has yet to turn over one of the most vital pieces: the actual cost of running the plan, known as the utilization cost, from 2007. The union has repeatedly asked for these figures since last December, Ms. Perry said, but the archdiocese has provided years-old information.
“The cost of health care makes it difficult for people to make ends meet,” Ms. Perry said. “This strike is an unfair labor practice strike in order to get the information.”
But Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the archdiocese was preparing those documents and had been planning on turning them over to the union within the next few days.
“First, we have to wait for all the figures to come in,” Mr. Zwilling said. “Then, we have to break them out for 217 schools, 3,200 teachers. It takes time.
“They’re just using this tactic to try and waste time, I think, rather than coming to an agreement. This is not going to improve the offer one bit. The only thing they’ve done is cost themselves a day’s pay.”
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Bill Stuntz's Cancer
This is worth reading--and pondering: here. Bill Stuntz's faith is such a gift, not merely to him, but to us all.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Catholic Voters and the Presidential Election
"Trying to Vote in Good Conscience
ELIZABETH F. BROWN, University of
St. Thomas, St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN - School of Law
Email: [email protected]
[ABSTRACT:] In November 2007, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued "Forming
Consciences for Faithful Citizenship - A Call to Political Responsibility from
the Catholic Bishops of the United States." This statement by the American
Catholic Bishops provides guidance to Catholic voters on how to execute their
responsibilities in accord with Catholic social teaching.
Despite some
flaws, "Forming Consciences" has three major virtues that will aid American
Catholics as they try to vote in good conscience. First, it reaffirms the need
for American Catholics become more familiar with and to apply the broad range of
Catholic social teachings when voting and exercising their other civic duties.
Second, it explicitly rejects the notion that Catholics should be single issue
voters. Third, Forming Consciences encourages, but certainly does not require,
American Catholics to adopt a holistic ethical approach when evaluating
candidates and issues. Such a holistic approach tends to provide better
solutions, certainly on economic and environmental issues, than the narrow
definition of issues and problems currently used in politics.
This essay
comments on how useful the document is in actually helping the average American
Catholic, who is not already an expert in Catholic social teachings, discern how
to vote. As part of this assessment, it focuses on how much weight Catholics
should give to economic and environmental issues based upon the guidance
provided by the Bishops' statement. These issues were chosen because they are a
growing areas of concern both for Americans and for the Vatican.
This
essay was written for the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies Symposium issue on
"Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship - A Call to Political
Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States."
[To download/read the paper, click here.]
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Martin Marty on Jeremiah Wright
The Chronicle Review
issue dated April 11, 2008
Prophet and Pastor
To his former professor, congregant, and friend, Jeremiah Wright has been both
Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher, reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently completed a 36-year ministry.
Images of Wright's strident sermons, and his anger at the treatment of black people in the United States, appear constantly on the Internet and cable television, part of the latest controversy in our political-campaign season. His critics call Wright anti-American. Critics of his critics charge that the clips we hear and see have been taken out of context. But it is not the context of particular sermons that the public needs, as that of Trinity church, and, above all, its pastor.
In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations. He came to Chicago to study not long after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in 1968, the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1969, and the shooting of students at Kent State University in 1970.
Wright, like the gifted cohort of his fellow black students, was not content to blend into the academic woodwork. Then the associate dean of the Divinity School, I was informally delegated to talk to the black caucus. We learned that what Wright and his peers wanted was the intense academic and practical preparation for vocations that would make a difference, whether they chose to pursue a Ph.D. or the pastorate. Chicago's Divinity School focuses on what it calls "public ministry," which includes both conventional pastoral roles and carrying the message and work of the church to the public arena. Wright has since picked up numerous honorary doctorates, and served as an adjunct faculty member at several seminaries. But after divinity school, he accepted a call to serve then-struggling Trinity.
Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African Christianity. The four S's charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don't stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home.
Yes, while Trinity is "unapologetically Christian," as the second clause in its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, "unashamedly black." From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience. That its members and pastor are, in their own term, "Africentric" should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be "Judeocentric" or that Chicago's Irish parishes be "Celtic-centric." Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace.
To the 10,000 members of Trinity, Jeremiah Wright was, until just a few months ago, "Pastor Wright." Metaphorically, pastor means shepherd. Like members of all congregations, the Trinity flock welcomes strong leadership for organization, prayer, and preaching. One-on-one ministry is not easy with thousands in the flock and when the pastor has national responsibilities, but the forms of worship make each participant feel recognized. Responding to the pastoral call to stand and be honored on Mother's Day, for instance, grandmothers, single mothers, stepmothers, foster mothers, gay-and-lesbian couples, all mothers stood when we visited. Wright asked how many believed that they were alive because of the church's health fairs. The members of the large pastoral staff know many hundreds of names, while hundreds of lay people share the ministry.
Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were pastoral — my wife and I have always been awed to hear the Christian Gospel parsed for our personal lives — they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark, half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake, the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the prophets Hosea and Micah did. But the Book of Jeremiah, written by numbers of authors, is so full of blasts and quasi curses — what biblical scholars call "imprecatory topoi" — that New England preachers invented a sermonic form called "the jeremiad," a style revived in some Wrightian shouts.
In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope, and that note of hope is what attracts the multiclass membership at Trinity and significant television audiences. Both Jeremiahs gave the people work to do: to advance the missions of social justice and mercy that improve the lot of the suffering. For a sample, read Jeremiah 29, where the prophet's letter to the exiles in Babylon exhorts them to settle down and "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile." Or listen to many a Jeremiah Wright sermon.
One may properly ask whether or how Jeremiah Wright — or anyone else — experiences a prophetic call. Back when American radicals wanted to be called prophets, I heard Saul Bellow say (and, I think, later saw it in writing): "Being a prophet is nice work if you can get it, but sooner or later you have to mention God." Wright mentioned God sooner. My wife and I recall but a single overtly political pitch. Wright wanted 2,000 letters of protest sent to the Chicago mayor's office about a public-library policy. Of course, if we had gone more often, in times of profound tumult, we would have heard much more. The United Church of Christ is a denomination that has taken raps for being liberal — for example for its 50th anniversary "God is still speaking" campaign and its pledge to be open and affirming to all, including gay people. In its lineage are Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, America's three most-noted theologians; the Rev. King was much at home there.
Friendship develops through many gestures and shared delights (in the Marty case, stops for sinfully rich barbecue after evening services), and people across the economic spectrum can attest to the generosity of the Wright family.
It would be unfair to Wright to gloss over his abrasive — to say the least — edges, so, in the "Nobody's Perfect" column, I'll register some criticisms. To me, Trinity's honoring of Minister Louis Farrakhan was abhorrent and indefensible, and Wright's fantasies about the U.S. government's role in spreading AIDS distracting and harmful. He, himself, is also aware of the now-standard charge by some African-American clergy who say he is a victim of cultural lag, overinfluenced by the terrible racial situation when he was formed.
Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet.
Martin E. Marty is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His most recent book is The Christian World: A Global History (Modern Library, 2008).
Friday, March 21, 2008
Valparaiso and the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War
[The author of what follows, professor of law Ed Gaffney, Jr., is, as some MOJ readers know, co-author with Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., of Religous Freedom: History, Cases and Other Materials on the Interaction of Religion and Government (Foundation Press 2001).]
University Community
Marks Fifth Anniversary of Iraq War
Edward McGlynn
Gaffney, Jr.
Professor of Law
On Tuesday, March 18, the
Iraq War turned five years old. That is longer than the Civil War, longer than
the American involvement in World War I, and longer than the American
involvement in World War II. And far more costly to taxpayers than the
expenditures for all three of these wars combined: more than a trillion
dollars. It was not an early Church Father, but President Dwight David
Eisenhower – former commander of the Allied forces in Europe in World War II –
who called military expenditures on this scale “a theft from the poor.”
Members of the faculty,
staff and student body of Valparaiso University observed the fifth anniversary
of the Iraq War with a panel discussion at Christ College in the afternoon. In
the evening, the Chapel of the Resurrection was the venue for a solemn
commemoration of the dead, the wounded, and those who have suffered from this
war.
The afternoon program
had the feel of a Vietnam-era “teach-in.” The most notable difference was the
graying of those in attendance. Chaired by Professor Sy Moskowitz of the School
of Law, a panel of professors gave differing perspectives on the war.
Professor Beth Gingerich
of the Business College suggested that – no matter who is elected to succeed
President George W. Bush next January – it will probably take much more time to
achieve full troop withdrawal than the 60 days bandied about in the current
presidential campaign.
Professor Gus Sponberg,
Chair of the American Studies Department, offered a parodic way out of the
current chaotic condition: America should offer to airlift millions of Iraqis
to our country and to provide them all with resettlement in a portion of the
country suffering from a drop in population: the Plains states from the Dakotas
in the north to Texas and Louisiana in the south. Sponberg’s “modest proposal” was quickly
dubbed the “Fallouja to Fargo” plan. Its
total cost, Sponberg noted, would be a small fraction of the enormous cost of
the war in its first five years.
Noting that the price of
a barrel of oil climbed past $110 per barrel recently, Professor Chuck
Schaefer, Chair of the History Department, gave an introduction to the history
of Western – first British and then American – interests in the oil resources
of Iraq as a major signifier in this war.
Professor Brent Whitefield, another VU historian, offered a contrasting view. He urged restraint on withdrawal of troops from Iraq, on the view that the orderly transfer of authority matters more than a “cut and run” policy like the policy adopted by the Clinton administration in Somalia. He suggested that the American occupation of Japan offers a model for producing an amicable partnership that has endured long after the Allies forced Japan to abandon its conquest of the Pacific rim.
“We set out to illustrate diverse perspectives on this war,” Moskowitz stated, “and we achieved this goal.”
In the evening gathering
at the Chapel of the Resurrection, the focus was more on the human costs of the
war: less on the expenditure of our treasure and more on the shedding of our
blood and loss of life by almost 4,000 of our own soldiers and by a vast number
of Iraqi dead (at least 60,000 and perhaps as many as a half million), with at
least two million displaced and homeless refugees.
The civic event featured
Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders. Pastor Joseph Cunningham, Dean of the
Chapel, welcomed all the participants to the gathering. Rabbi Shoshana Feferman
of Temple Israel in Valparaiso, and Imam Mongy El-Quesny of the Islamic Center
in Merrillville offered a reflection from their traditions. Dr. Fred Niedner,
Chair of the Theology Department, read a poem by Wendell Barry that the farmer-poet
wrote during the Vietnam War, but that could have been written yesterday about
the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The names of all of the
American soldiers and pilots, sailors and marines, who have died in Iraq were
constantly being flashed up on the north wall of the Chapel, casting an eerie
light on the sanctuary’s red bricks. Several members of the faculty and staff
and local civic leaders – Jane Bello-Brunson, Lorri Cornett, Mary Ann and Joe
Crayton, Stacy Hoult and Dan Saros, Tim Malchow, Carlos Miguel-Pueyo, and Tim Taylor – pronounced slowly and reverently the name of
each member of our armed forces from Indiana who was killed in Iraq.
Professor Lorraine
Brugh, Director of Chapel Music, led the Kantorei in an acapella rendition of a
blessing from the Book of Numbers, “The Lord bless thee and keep thee.”
After hearing a brief
part of John Donne’s famous 1623 sermon (“Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris”)
– “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – the
respectful crowd listened to the tolling of the Chapel bells for five full
minutes that seemed an eternity.
Then we went silently
into the night, as moist rain fell softly over the living and the dead.
China, Tibet, and Freedom
New York Times
March 21, 2008
During Visit, Pelosi Offers Support to Dalai Lama
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
DHARAMSALA, India — As far as visits by American politicians go, it would be hard to stage a warmer reception.
Buddhist nuns waved American flags and the Dalai Lama ordered his followers to offer a standing ovation Friday morning as Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, came to Dharamsala, the emotionally charged headquarters of Tibetan exiles, and seized the opportunity to stick a finger in the eye of China.
“If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, told an overwhelmingly Tibetan audience of around 2,000 people in the courtyard of the town’s main temple, Tsulakhang.
The visit by Ms. Pelosi, accompanied by nine other members of Congress, most of them Democrats, was arranged some time ago as part of a visit to India. As it happened, though, it came on the heels of the largest protests in Tibet in nearly two decades, followed by a broad crackdown by China, and almost nonstop demonstrations in solidarity in this city, where the Tibetan government in exile has its base.
The timing could not have been better, at least for the Americans. It was unclear what the visit would yield for Tibetans or even for the Dalai Lama, other than a symbolic boost. Certainly Ms. Pelosi’s visit received more coverage from the news media than it might otherwise have; the protests in Tibet have brought reporters from around the world to this small Indian hill town.
On Friday morning, Ms. Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, descended the stairs of the temple to huge applause, with the Dalai Lama sandwiched between them, holding their hands.
“We are here at this time to join you in shedding bright light on what is happening inside Tibet,” Ms. Pelosi said.
Throughout her speech, which lasted less than 10 minutes, the Dalai Lama sat in a stuffed chair, clasping his hands, rocking side to side, a smile on his lips.
“Little did we know we would be coming at such a very sad time,” she continued. “Perhaps it is our karma, perhaps it is our fate we be with you at this time.”
The prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, said just before Ms. Pelosi arrived that his administration had no specific requests of the American politicians. “That she will suggest,” he said.
The winding road to the temple was lined with flags — of the United States, India, and the Tibetan government in exile.
One man in the audience held up a homemade placard that read “Thank you for recognizing nonviolent struggle.”
A 38-year-old monk who spent four years in a Chinese prison for participating in protests in Tibet in 1988 said he hoped Ms. Pelosi would use her visit to put concrete pressure on the Chinese government, including encouraging dialogue with Beijing and a push for international humanitarian agencies to aid those injured.
“If she doesn’t do anything and just come here, then nothing,” said the monk, who gave his name as Bagdro.
The American delegation was first accompanied by the Dalai Lama to the main prayer hall of Tsulakhang Temple. They were scheduled to have lunch at the Dalai Lama’s residence, followed by a visit to a Tibetan school and crafts center nearby.
The Dalai Lama has long enjoyed American support.
Last fall in Washington, he received the Congressional Gold Medal. Ms. Pelosi noted then that when the Dalai Lama was young, he received a gold watch from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which he carried with him when fleeing Tibet in 1959.
Her first message to the audience on Friday was to acknowledge their gift to her country.
“Thank you for your warm welcome and thank you especially for flying the American flag today,” she told them. “This is more than we could have ever dreamed of.”
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Some Interesting News
This will, I think, be of interest to many MOJ-readers.
New York Times
March 13, 2008
Priest-Cosmologist Wins $1.6 Million Templeton Prize
By Brenda Goodman
The $1.6 million Templeton Prize, the richest award made to an individual by a philanthropic organization, was given Wednesday to Michael Heller, 72, a Roman Catholic priest, cosmologist and philosopher who has spent his life asking, and perhaps more impressively answering, questions like “Does the universe need to have a cause?”
The John Templeton Foundation, which awards grants to encourage scientific discovery on the “big questions” in science and philosophy, commended Professor Heller, who is from Poland, for his extensive writings that have “evoked new and important consideration of some of humankind’s most profound concepts.”
Much of Professor Heller’s career has been dedicated to reconciling the known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God.
In doing so, he has argued against a “God of the gaps” strategy for relating science and religion, a view that uses God to explain what science cannot.
Professor Heller said he believed, for example, that the religious objection to teaching evolution “is one of the greatest misunderstandings” because it “introduces a contradiction or opposition between God and chance.”
In a telephone interview, Professor Heller explained his affinity for the two fields: “I always wanted to do the most important things, and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”
Professor Heller said he planned to use his prize to create a center for the study of science and theology at the Pontifical Academy of Theology, in Krakow, Poland, where he is a faculty member.
Professor Heller was born in 1936 in Tarnow, Poland, one of five children in a deeply religious family devoted to intellectual interests. His mother, a schoolteacher, and his father, a mechanical and electrical engineer, fled to Russia in 1939 before the Nazi occupation.
On returning years later to Poland, where Communist authorities sought to oppress intellectuals and priests, Professor Heller found shelter for his work in the Catholic Church. He was ordained at 23, but spent just one year ministering to a parish before he felt compelled to return to academia.
“It was one of the most difficult years of my life,” Professor Heller said. “This confrontation of this highly idealistic approach to life with everyday life is very painful.”
“When I was asked to attend to a dying person,” he said, “I was not prepared for life myself, so I had a difficult time to prepare someone to pass away. When you are confronted with such an immediate fact, you never think about the high goals of your life.”
The prize will be officially awarded in London by Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in a private ceremony on May 7 at Buckingham Palace.
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