... involving, inter alia, MOJ-friend Robert George. Many MOJ-readers will be interested. Click here and then here.
UPDATE: here.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Sad turn of events at Princeton ...
No more "state-endorsed killing" in New Jersey
New York Times
December 17, 2007
Corzine Signs Law Abolishes Death Penalty in New Jersey
By JEREMY W. PETERS
TRENTON — Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law a measure repealing New Jersey’s death penalty on Monday, making the state the first in a generation to abolish capital punishment.
Mr. Corzine also issued an order commuting the sentences of the eight men on New Jersey’ death row to life in prison with no possibility of parole, ensuring that they will stay behind bars for the rest of their lives.
In an extended and often passionate speech from his office at the state capitol, Mr. Corzine declared an end to what he called “state-endorsed killing,” and said that New Jersey could serve as a model for other states.
“Today New Jersey is truly evolving,” he said. “I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes.”
[To read the rest, click here.]
[Does anyone know if any Republican governors have called for the abolition of the death penalty in the their states?]
Whither Women Priests?
National Catholic Reporter
December 7, 2007
Editorial
Finished playing by the rules
Given that the Vatican has banned Catholics from so much as talking about women deacons or priests, is it surprising that some women are opting to fast-forward to action? They aren’t discussing whether women should be ordained; they aren’t asking for permission to be ordained; they are just doing what, as they see it, a church crying “priest shortage” needs them to do. These are women who have faithfully served the church in many ways, putting their own wishes on hold. Until finally, they have said, “Enough.”
When even the deeply traditional Greek Orthodox church finds a way to authorize ordaining women deacons, how is it that Roman Catholic church officials get by with treating women as they do: as if they were children -- so infantile that their dreams for themselves and for the church are unworthy of even serious talk. Fortunately, numerous ordained men, even bishops, with a stronger sense of justice and more courage than the rest, have come forward to assist, assuring that these illegal women priests are validly situated in the apostolic line.
We find it fascinating that while church officials assert these “simulated” ordinations lack meaning, some of the women have received the Vatican’s highest penalty -- formal excommunication. In other cases, as in the recent St. Louis ordinations, the hierarchy has tried various tactics aimed at bringing these women to heel.
The hierarchy is rightly nervous about women declaring themselves ordained, however illegally, because these ceremonies carry a strong implicit message. Well-educated women, loyal to the church, know that the historical and theological reasoning advanced for excluding them from ordination is dangerously thin. Citing the growing number of priestless parishes worldwide, they make a compelling case for a different kind of church -- an inclusive church, in which both men and women, whether married or not, heterosexual or homosexual, can participate at all levels. They know that polls show they have significant backing, given that some 70 percent of the Catholic faithful in the United States support women priests. So, like Catholics who ignore many of the church’s other bans -- on birth control, on single-gender lifestyles, on divorce and remarriage -- because they find little in these teachings that corresponds to their own experience of what is right and good, these women, in the vein of other defiant trailblazers, are saying we are finished playing by the rules.
Whither women priests? Perhaps they will become yet another breakaway movement, as many church officials must drearily hope. Or, depending on the faithful’s response, these women could conceivably drag the church into the 21st century. We’ll pray for that.
Martin Marty on Christians and Global Warming
Sightings 12/17/07
On Global Warming
-- Martin E. Marty
The images and prophecies connected
with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the biblical book of Revelation seem
horrifying enough. But in a "you-ain't-seen-nothing-yet" spirit,
Philip Jenkins in December 10th's New Republic warns of disastrous
implications for religious conflict after studying the results of
climate-modeling by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
More than anyone else we read,
Jenkins regularly writes about global Christianity for broad publics.
He combines experiences of travel, research, and dialogues on
Christianity "north" and "south." In "Burning at the Stake: How
global warming will increase religious strife," Professor Jenkins ties
projections of Christian growth to what the IPCC foresees. If
you'd like to sleep easily tonight, don't read it at bedtime.
Rather than occupying a mere four columns upfront in a magazine,
it might merit a billboard. Jenkins, fortunately, does not waste
readers' time debating whether or when or how global warming is coming about.
Instead he anticipates the consequences and notices some new
Christian addresses to the situation.
The case? Take only the instance of changes in the water supplies and who will control what's left. In Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims are self-segregated, they might "erupt in a violent tug-of-war over limited water supplies." Coptic Christians in Egypt might be sacrificed to ethnic cleansing as resources dwindle. Uganda and Kenya could reproduce scenes made vivid in Rwanda massacres. "The ramifications for the global warming-driven destruction of equatorial nations are frightening for everyone—but they should be especially frightening for Christians," whose numbers grow explosively, precisely there.
Historian Jenkins reaches back to the "Little Ice Age" between the ninth and thirteenth centuries to show the human devastations caused by climate changes. He may be a bit speculative here, but with creative guesses and some evidence he compares foreseen changes to those that helped bring on the Great Famine (after 1315) and the Black Death (1340s), when one-third of Eurasia's population was killed. Witchcraft trials became a murderous obsession. Bigots of all religions were sure that their God was legitimating their aggressive roles. Christians in revenge against Muslim advances turned murderous. Jenkins thinks that we are heading toward a future alike in violence and horror to centuries in our past.
He sees a glimmer of light and
recognition in the West among "morally conservative churches in America [which] form relationships with
like-minded churches in the South," and are growing more sensitive to the
world's needs. Skipping past Roman Catholic and "World Council
type" Protestant and Orthodox involvements, he turns to these conservatives, as
in the National Association of Evangelicals, who are mobilizing people, forces,
energies, and resources to begin to address the situation and call attention to
it. He expects even greater involvement soon by such conservative
Christians, who are "combining the themes of world stewardship and protecting
Christian minorities," which could lead to new political action. But in the absence of such action, might global warming lead to "medieval
levels of misery and doom for the majority of Christians worldwide?"
We've been warned.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Free Exercise? Tragic Exercise!
Sightings 12/13/07
The Lord Taketh Away
-- Shawn F. Peters
[Shawn Francis Peters' latest book, When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law, was published this month by Oxford University Press. He teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.]
[Shawn Francis Peters' latest book, When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law, was published this month by Oxford University Press. He teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.]
In 1980, a four-year-old Indiana girl named Natali Joy Mudd fell victim to
a fast-growing, highly malignant tumor called rhabdomyosarcoma. Even after the
growth sprouted from near the girl's right eye and "eventually grew to the size
of her head," as one press account later put it, Natali's parents did not to
take her to a doctor for medical treatment. Instead, adhering to the tenets of
their church, the Faith Assembly, they chose to treat her malady with prayer
alone – unsuccessfully, as it turned out. After Natali died and her parents
called the police to report her passing, investigators discovered trails of
blood along the walls of the Mudd home. They surmised that the crimson stains
had been left where the nearly blind Natali, groping her way through the house,
had dragged her grotesquely disfigured head.
Harrowing incidents of religion-based medical neglect – in which devout parents like the Mudds, following the doctrines of their faiths, refuse to furnish conventional medical care to their ailing children – are not unique to a single church or a particular geographical area. Since the late nineteenth century, this phenomenon has imperiled the youngest and most vulnerable members of a variety of religious faiths in every region of the United States. From Massachusetts to California, hundreds of children have died as Natali Joy Mudd did – in agony, and aided by little more than the ardent bedside prayers of their parents and fellow church members.
It is difficult to determine precisely how many children have lost their lives in such tragic circumstances. But even the limited evidence that has been compiled on religion-based medical neglect of children is unsettling. A wide-ranging 1995 study funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect investigated whether lesser-known forms of religion-related child abuse, such as the faith-based medical neglect that proved so deadly in the case of Natali Joy Mudd, posed a greater risk to children than other, more widely publicized threats, such as ritual satanic abuse. By surveying thousands of psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers, the study's authors identified dozens of instances in which parents had withheld medical care from their children for religious reasons. The prevalence of such cases led the authors of the study to conclude that "there are more children actually being abused in the name of God than in the name of Satan."
Many such cases of abuse have resulted in criminal prosecutions of parents under manslaughter and neglect statutes. The defendants in these cases typically have claimed that the First Amendment safeguards their decision to adhere to their faiths' religious traditions and treat their ailing children solely by spiritual means, as they believe the scriptures mandate. They also claim that they possess a fundamental right as parents to direct the upbringing of their children without interference from the state. Prosecutors, however, generally have balked at the notion that constitutional protections for religious liberty provide an absolute bar to state regulation of religious conduct, particularly when that behavior puts the safety of children at risk. They also have disputed the claim that the state has no right to limit the authority of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.
Many parents who spurn medicine for prayer would agree with the assessment of John Alexander Dowie, the great Chicago-area spiritual healer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who argued that Christians should "forget about the law" as it relates to furnishing medical treatment to their children because they "are Christians first, citizens afterward." Dowie's comment cuts to the heart of the dilemma that still confronts devoutly religious parents who choose to treat their sick or injured children with prayer rather than medicine. Not only must they endeavor to safeguard the flagging health of their sons and daughters; they also must try to reconcile their devotion to God with their duties as citizens in a society that, while ostensibly honoring the principles of tolerance articulated in the First Amendment, boasts a long and sometimes checkered history of regulating the religious conduct of adherents to uncommon faiths. For spiritual healers, balancing those sacred and secular responsibilities – weighty obligations that often dramatically conflict with one another – remains no less vexing a task today than it was in Dowie's time.
Harrowing incidents of religion-based medical neglect – in which devout parents like the Mudds, following the doctrines of their faiths, refuse to furnish conventional medical care to their ailing children – are not unique to a single church or a particular geographical area. Since the late nineteenth century, this phenomenon has imperiled the youngest and most vulnerable members of a variety of religious faiths in every region of the United States. From Massachusetts to California, hundreds of children have died as Natali Joy Mudd did – in agony, and aided by little more than the ardent bedside prayers of their parents and fellow church members.
It is difficult to determine precisely how many children have lost their lives in such tragic circumstances. But even the limited evidence that has been compiled on religion-based medical neglect of children is unsettling. A wide-ranging 1995 study funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect investigated whether lesser-known forms of religion-related child abuse, such as the faith-based medical neglect that proved so deadly in the case of Natali Joy Mudd, posed a greater risk to children than other, more widely publicized threats, such as ritual satanic abuse. By surveying thousands of psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers, the study's authors identified dozens of instances in which parents had withheld medical care from their children for religious reasons. The prevalence of such cases led the authors of the study to conclude that "there are more children actually being abused in the name of God than in the name of Satan."
Many such cases of abuse have resulted in criminal prosecutions of parents under manslaughter and neglect statutes. The defendants in these cases typically have claimed that the First Amendment safeguards their decision to adhere to their faiths' religious traditions and treat their ailing children solely by spiritual means, as they believe the scriptures mandate. They also claim that they possess a fundamental right as parents to direct the upbringing of their children without interference from the state. Prosecutors, however, generally have balked at the notion that constitutional protections for religious liberty provide an absolute bar to state regulation of religious conduct, particularly when that behavior puts the safety of children at risk. They also have disputed the claim that the state has no right to limit the authority of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.
Many parents who spurn medicine for prayer would agree with the assessment of John Alexander Dowie, the great Chicago-area spiritual healer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who argued that Christians should "forget about the law" as it relates to furnishing medical treatment to their children because they "are Christians first, citizens afterward." Dowie's comment cuts to the heart of the dilemma that still confronts devoutly religious parents who choose to treat their sick or injured children with prayer rather than medicine. Not only must they endeavor to safeguard the flagging health of their sons and daughters; they also must try to reconcile their devotion to God with their duties as citizens in a society that, while ostensibly honoring the principles of tolerance articulated in the First Amendment, boasts a long and sometimes checkered history of regulating the religious conduct of adherents to uncommon faiths. For spiritual healers, balancing those sacred and secular responsibilities – weighty obligations that often dramatically conflict with one another – remains no less vexing a task today than it was in Dowie's time.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
The Church and Birth Control, Revisited
The Tablet
The International Cathoilic Weekly
December 1, 2007
Bishop wants ban on birth control lifted
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt
A popular bishop has called for an end to the Church's ban on married priests and the use of birth control, arguing that a backlog of necessary reforms is draining the Church of its strength and preventing it from asserting its presence in today's world.
In his new book, A Church with a Future: 12 essays on seemingly insoluble church problems, Bishop Helmut Krätzl, an auxiliary in Vienna, accuses the Church of having shied away from sensitive issues such as mandatory celibacy, because it considers such problems insoluble and was waiting for "God to intervene".
He cites surveys that show celibacy to be a key reason for the drastic fall in vocations to the priesthood and says he is convinced that the policy is out of step with reality, would weaken the Church, and prevent its urgently needed message from reaching the world. The bishop advocates the model of the Greek Catholic Church, which is in full communion with Rome and yet permits married men to become priests, but not bishops.
The bishop says that the issue of birth control has to be discussed openly and calls for "responsible parenthood" based on the informed conscience of the individual, which the Second Vatican Council confirmed as the final instance for moral decisions. He says the fact that the Church forbids birth control but that so many Catholics practise it has lost the Church much credibility.
Bishop Krätzl also says it is imperative to go back to the declarations of the Second Vatican Council and study not only what they said but how they came about, because they pointed the way forward on church reform. The question of centralism versus collegiality must be brought back on to the discussion table, he argues.
Bishop Krätzl also tackles the subject of remarried divorcees in Austria, where many have either left the Church or feel neglected by it, because they may not receive the sacraments or be godparents or confirmation sponsors, and are often barred from parish councils. Acknowledging that divorce is on the increase, Krätzl notes a solution practised in the Orthodox Church, where a second church marriage is possible and divorcees are not barred from the sacraments, and says something similar should be considered.
Here, as elsewhere in the book, he quotes Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who as Archbishop of Munich in 1980 wrote to all his priests and deacons advocating "greater compassion" for remarried divorcees in line with the Orthodox Churches. The bishop also called for steps to be taken towards intercommunion with the other Churches.
The Church and Human Sexuality, Revisited
THE TABLET
THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY
Founded in 1840
December 1, 2007
Editorial
An important distinction must be made about the
content of Catholic teaching and the language used
to present that teaching to a wider public. Words
like “evil” in connection with homosexuality, and
“murder” in connection with abortion, may resonate sweetly
with some of the faithful but will be heard as strident discords
by everyone else. By using such language the Church
brands itself as harsh and unworthy of serious attention.
In so far as Sir Stephen Wall’s criticism of recent church
statements (see page 12) is a criticism of this sort of inflexible
tone, it is timely. The message “watch your language”
is one that needs to be widely heard, not least in the Vatican.
Indeed, Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Christian
Unity department at the Vatican, has just publicly attacked
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the insensitive
language it used in its “One True Church” statement
in July this year. This “aroused perplexity and created
discontent” among non-Catholic Churches, with whom he
is, on behalf of the Vatican, trying to improve relations. If
he felt sabotaged, that would be entirely understandable.
Sir Stephen, a senior aide to the former prime minister
who gave up his government job to work for a time as adviser
to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, goes further
than that. He is concerned with content, not just with presentation.
In his article here he argues that the cardinal’s recent
pronouncement stating the Church’s case against the
legal approval of all-female (in effect, lesbian) parentage via
IVF was giving “pre-eminence to its concept of law and disregarding
its duty of love”. This is partly a challenge to the
traditional Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are invariably
seriously sinful. There will be many Catholics who
would go at least some way towards his position on that. But
the cardinal’s essential point was that children need parents
of either sex, and that the proposed legislation ignored that
powerful consideration – as does Sir Stephen. Nor does he
sufficiently acknowledge that his former eminent employer
moved a long way from the language of law to the language
of love in his recent joint statement (with Cardinal
Keith O’Brien of Edinburgh and St Andrews) on abortion.
As to the substance of the teaching, a new and more satisfactory
sexual ethic is unlikely to emerge simply from reversing
the old one. Church leaders must find the courage
to reopen a debate that should range over issues from contraception
to homosexuality – including lesbianism, on which
it appears to have no coherent view at all. Instead, in what
looks with hindsight almost like an attempt to justify the
extreme caricature of the Magisterium in the work of novelist
Philip Pullman – including the controversial new film
The Golden Compass – the Vatican has repeatedly and unjustly
silenced any theologian who tried to begin such a debate.
Sir Stephen’s rebuke that “as a Church beset by scandal
has become less authoritative, so it has become disproportionately
more authoritarian” is well said in this context. Authoritarians
do not listen. The witness of Catholic married
couples of all sorts, as well as Catholic homosexuals of either
sex, needs to be heard. Until the Church’s leaders really understand
what they have to say, they must expect impatient
and frustrated outbursts from even its most loyal members.
[Too read the article, by Steven Wall, to which the editorial refers, click here. These are the final paragraphs of the article:]
Above all, the Church's approach should be rooted not in power, authority and threat, but in love and understanding and, dare I say it, in acknowledging that it can be wrong or that many of life's most poignant problems raise issues of right and wrong, love and duty, pain and suffering that are not susceptible to simple answers.
The Church portrays itself as the victim of an aggressive secularism. It looks to me, rather, as if the Church is itself in danger of adopting an aggressive fundamentalism and that the secular societies it excoriates demonstrate a tolerance that is often closer to the ideal of Christian charity.
As a lifelong Catholic, I continue to be inspired by the many excellent Catholic men and women, lay and ordained, who live the spirit of the Gospels. I find hope and communion in the celebration of Mass and I believe in striving for reform from within. It is in that spirit that I hope that the window of fresh air that was Vatican II can be prised open once again.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Is the Pope Green--Or Not?
[From the NYTimes Online: The Opinionator.]
December 12, 2007, 9:29 am
News Flash: Pope Prefers People to Polar Bears
“Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology,” report the Daily Mail of London. “The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.”
(Full text of the speech, which the pope won’t give until New Year’s Day, is in English, here.)
“Did the Pope recently swing to the right?” asks Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog. “If so, you’d never know it from the actual text of his message … It seems to me that his actual words have about the same relationship to the Daily Mail’s paraphrase that weak instant coffee has to injected methamphetamine, but hey, that’s just one guy’s opinion.”
Even Allahpundit at Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air agrees that the newspaper is “overselling the force of his remarks considerably,” so he tries to dig behind the remarks: “What’s motivating this? Is the Pope really a righteous skeptic? Or, per what the Mail has to say about his warning not to privilege the lives of animals over humans, is he trying to head off the green fundies at the pass?”
Thursday, December 6, 2007
GOVERNOR ROMNEY'S SPEECH
Click here.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Hollywood and Unwanted Pregnancies
Last summer, there was Knocked Up. Now there's this, which looks to be an interesting movie:
New York Times
December 5, 2007
Seeking Mr. and Mrs. Right for a Baby on the Way
A.O. Scott
Juno MacGuff, the title character of Jason Reitman’s new film, is 16 and pregnant, but “Juno” could not be further from the kind of hand-wringing, moralizing melodrama that such a condition might suggest. Juno, played by the poised, frighteningly talented Ellen Page, is too odd and too smart to be either a case study or the object of leering disapproval. She assesses her problem, and weighs her response to it, with disconcerting sang-froid.
It’s not that Juno treats her pregnancy as a joke, but rather that in the sardonic spirit of the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, she can’t help finding humor in it. Tiny of frame and huge of belly, Juno utters wisecracks as if they were breathing exercises, referring to herself as “the cautionary whale.”
At first her sarcasm is bracing and also a bit jarring — “Hello, I’d like to procure a hasty abortion,” she says when she calls a women’s health clinic — but as “Juno” follows her from pregnancy test to delivery room (and hastily retreats from the prospect of abortion), it takes on surprising delicacy and emotional depth. The snappy one-liners are a brilliant distraction, Ms. Cody’s way of clearing your throat for the lump you’re likely to find there in the movie’s last scenes.
[Too read the rest of the (positive) review, click here.]
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