Check out the Institutue for Bioethics at Franciscan University. Patrick Lee is the director of the Institute and many of his articles and lectures are available here.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Institute of Bioethics
Bring it on Breen!
You and Barack and your fellow Democrats can have the White Sox and their success. But, the truly Catholic (and catholic, BTW) baseball team in Chicago is the Cubbies. With our crucifixes, Catholics remember and embrace Good Friday everyday in our homes and sanctuaries as we contemplate Jesus up on the cross. And, Cub's fans have experienced one long Good Friday. John, don't you know that World Series championships and such are for the next life, not this. Psalm 146 (from morning prayer this morning) puts it perfectly:
Put no trust in baseball franchises,
in mortal players in whom there is only disappointment.
Take there breath, they return to clay
and there plans that century come to nothing.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Distributivist ideas on the current economic crisis
Allan Carlson reports on an interesting conference organized by the G.K. Chesterton Institute and held last weekend in Oxford, England. Carlson's report is well worth the read: here.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award winner nominated for Surgeon General Post
From Whisper in the Loggia:
...the President drew further from the US church's diverse ranks this morning with the nomination of his Surgeon General -- this time, an African-American Catholic.
Founder of a rural Alabama health clinic for the poor that was devastated three times (twice by hurricanes, once by fire) since its founding in 1990, Dr Regina Benjamin was reelected to a second term on the board of the US' Catholic Health Association at its yearly assembly last month in New Orleans. Even more notably, though, Benjamin's work both at home and nationally were recognized in 2006 when Pope Benedict awarded her the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice ("For the Church and the Pontiff") -- the Roman accolade reserved for laity, religious and permanent deacons who've given distinguished service to the church.
The first African-American woman to lead a state medical association, the 53 year-old nominee -- whose grandmother helped found a Black Catholic parish, its first Masses offered in her living room -- must be confirmed by the Senate before she can become the nation's "top doc." ...
"The Audacity of the Pope"
Yesterday’s New York Times ran a thought provoking op-ed by Ross Douthat on Caritas in Veritate and the need for political re-imagination. Here are parts of it:
Papal encyclicals are supposed to be written with one eye on two millenniums of Catholic teaching, and the other on eternity. But Americans, as a rule, have rather narrower horizons. As soon as the media have finished scanning a Vatican document for references to sex, the debate begins in earnest: Is it good for the left, or for the right? For Democrats, or for Republicans?
* * *
Benedict’s encyclical is nothing if not political. “Caritas in Veritate” promotes a vision of economic solidarity rooted in moral conservatism. It links the dignity of labor to the sanctity of marriage. It praises the redistribution of wealth while emphasizing the importance of decentralized governance. It connects the despoiling of the environment to the mass destruction of human embryos.
This is not a message you’re likely to hear in Barack Obama’s next State of the Union, or in the Republican Party’s response. It represents a kind of left-right fusionism with little traction in American politics.
But that’s precisely what makes it so relevant and challenging — for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
* * *
Catholics are obliged to take seriously the underlying provocation of the papal message — namely, that our present political alignments are not the only ones imaginable, and that truth may not be served by perfect ideological conformity.
So should all people of good will. For liberals and conservatives alike, “Caritas in Veritate” is an invitation to think anew about their alliances and litmus tests. ...
Any thoughts?
Thursday, July 9, 2009
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.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Hold the Presses, the Michaels Agree
Michael P. says, "I have expressed skepticism, in much of my work over the past several years, that the claim that every human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable can be embedded in a secular world view." I too am similarly skeptical.
Which bring us to Steve Shiffrin's thought provoking comment and question: "I wonder about the utility of arguing that Catholic social thought is politically (as opposed to theologically) superior to all forms of secular liberalism. Does such a claim contradict the claim of Catholic social thought to appeal to all human beings?" Some initial thoughts. First, the various forms of secular liberalism will have kernals of truth (otherwise they wouldn't be attractive), and the Catholic ought to be open and willing to learn from the secularist. Second, to the extent that the Catholic Church has a realistic anthropology, the claims of CST and Catholic legal theory ought to be accessable to non-believers through freflection and experience whether or not we assert its superiority.
Are all MOJ-bloggers proudly liberal?
Michael P. says: "there *is* an important sense in which we MOJ-bloggers are all liberals - and proudly so" in the sense that most "conservatives" and "liberals" on the US political scene today are merely two sides of the same liberal coin. I certainly believe that "our commitment to democracy ... cannot be understood except by appeal to a higher moral authority..." and that all persons are "inviolable in the eyes of God." But, are these tenets of liberal democracy?
I understand liberal democracy as a project that cares deeply protecting human rights (negative liberty) with an offshoot of liberal egalitarianism (with elements of positive liberty). And, I agree with these tenets. But, what is the foundation for this perspective on human flourishing. In liberal democracy, individuals are free to pursue their own private conception of the good, but the only public conceptions of the good are that people ought to be free to pursue their own private projects, and for liberal egalitarians, with wealth redistribution, if necessary. (Am I wrong about this?) The questions of origin, purpose, and destiny in life are privatized, leading to a very thin public conception of the person. This very thin public conception of the person means, I think, that the liberal democratic project cannot adequately answer who counts as a human being and cannot provide the intellectual foundation for its own human rights project because it cannot answer the question of why human beings count. That is why Pope Benedict is, as Rick says, making certain anthropological claims: "about authentic, integral human development and flourishing and, therefore, it is a call to take seriously what the truth is -- there is a truth -- about the human person, namely, that he is made in the image of God and loved by Him." The modern political project (whatever we may call it) is doomed to failure without a thick conception of the person - without a criterion for judging why human beings ought to be respected.
Does liberalism, as Michael P. described it, have the resources to undertake this thickening process? (I have lots of other questions but this will have to suffice for now).
Categories: Real and Reductive?
Amy asks"can we all agree that the categories are simultaneously real and reductive?" I'll give a qualified "yes" to that. They are certainly reductive and are real at least to the extent "that much of our political, social and legal landscape is working with these categories (liberal-conservative, right-left)." But, we can reject this common mentality, and I think our dialogue would be much enriched by this effort along with, as Michael P. suggests, asking for the grace to overcome our own self-righteousness.
Michael P. asks"Don't you agree that what Fr. Reese says ("that [B16] is to the leftof almost every politician in America") is accurate?" As I said above, I think our dialogue would be much enriched if we rejected the common impulse to categorize in this way. What purpose does this label serve in this context? As far as I can tell, its reductive potential greatly outweighs any probative benefits. Shouldn't we be exploring the merits of Benedict's proposals and not whether they are conservative or liberal, right or left? So to answer Michael's other question ("Um, we can't will the categories away, can we?"), I would say "yes," if we make a conscious effort. And, I am glad that the two Michaels are willing to do that "[e]xcept when posting a tongue-in-cheek comment to rock-climbing Rick."
Finally, Rick's post is brilliant!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Dear Michael P.:
That still leaves my two questions:
What constructive purpose do these categories serve in the present context? And, Michael, would you concede that even if they do serve some constructive purpose, there is the real possibility that they also have a destructive side, which boxes people in and makes dialogue more difficult? ;-)
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
