Thanks to John O'Callaghan who blogs at the Ethics and Culture Forum for passing along this moving account of a young Karol Wojtyla.
Friday, April 8, 2005
A Moving Account of a young seminarian
Thursday, April 7, 2005
A Reader's Analysis of Cahill
Rob Driscoll writes:
"Thank you for posting that article by Thomas Cahill today.
I found it interesting that in the same breadth he poured words of praise upon the modernizing tendencies of the Church “after the regressive policies of Pius IX,” and then laments the pews on Sundays which are “now sparsely populated with gray heads.” Does it not seem odd that as “modernizing” tendencies have taken hold and attacks on traditional Church moral doctrine (such as abortion, birth control, etc) have become more accepted, that attendance at Mass has declined? Even homosexuality can be right even though the Bible says explicitly otherwise, why pay attention to the rest of the Bible? Why attend Mass? Why learn the Church’s teachings? Modernity, and Post-Modernity is akin to Relativism. If modernity attacks the very basis of the Church; that is, the existence of timeless principles, then its no wonder people cease to attend Mass.
Cahill seems to want it both ways. He likes modernization, but does not like the fact that people no longer are as faithful as they once were. Yet he ignores that Catholics, in America at least, were remarkably devout even in the Dark Ages Cahill describes: that is, before the 1960’s. Isn’t it odd to say it is a mere coincidence that as the Church liberalized, the Church also lost influence among the faithful?
One other point: while he rightly praises John Paul II for bringing down communism, he also criticizes him for insisting that the clergy not have a hint of Marxism in it. It seems that Cahill has the old romantic notion of Marxism that the blood of millions of Russians, Chinese, Cambodians, etc. has not washed from his imagination."
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
An Angry Thomas Cahill on John Paul II
And, now for something completely different. In an op-ed today, Thomas Cahill, author of "How the Irish Saved Civilization," "Pope John XXIII" and, most recently, "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter," writes:
"John Paul II ... will surely be remembered as one of the few great political figures of our age, a man of physical and moral courage more responsible than any other for bringing down the oppressive, antihuman Communism of Eastern Europe. But he was not a great religious figure. How could he be? He may, in time to come, be credited with destroying his church."
For the full article, click here.
John Paul II's Legacy: M.J. Akbar's View
M.J. Akbar, editor of the Asian Age, an Indian, and a Muslim, recently wrote about John Paul II's legacy.
The Vicar
M.J.Akbar
Karol Jozef Wojtyla … became convinced of his destiny not when he became Pope on 16 October 1978 after the sudden death of John Paul I, but after an assassin’s bullet failed to kill him on 13 May 1981. Vatican Rome Soviet Union Poland Soviet Union
The strange story goes back to another 13 May, during the First World War. On 13 May 1917, the Virgin Mary … appeared in a vision to three peasant children in a Portuguese village called Fatimah, and told them three things about the future. … The third revelation was considered so volatile that it was kept secret in the archives of the
On 13 May 1981, a Turk called Mehmet Ali Agca, in the pay of the Soviet bloc, fired twice at the Pope in
When Karol Wojtyla became Pope, Yuri Andropov, the celebrated chief of the KGB and later head of the
He was a believer in the classic mould, without private doubt or cynicism. His crusades were against atheism, rather than another faith. He made no secret of his antipathy to Godless communism…
Faith is such a rarity now even among the faithful…
village of Fatimah
Personally speaking, and without meaning to hurt any sentiment, Pope John Paul’s contribution to the edifice of the international Church that was his parish is less important than his contribution to the idea of faith. The battle between faiths has been superseded by the battle for faith against the spreading triumph of rationalism. … Faith believes that there are limits to man’s knowledge: he can, for instance, understand how he is born, but not why. He must leave the why to God. As the verse from the Quran that is recited during a funeral ("Inna li-llahi wa inna ilay-hi raji’un") puts it, we belong to God, and we return to God. In an age that raises intellect to the power of prophecy and science to the status of a religion, John Paul believed in a faith that could move mountains. He did move one whole range of mountains, when he took on the Soviet empire. He was never ashamed of the tears shed in prayer. A sufi would have understood this. You do not have to agree with Pope John Paul in order to respect him.
For a believer the strange tale of the prophecy of the Holy Mother in the
Pope John Paul II believed in miracles. He lived beyond the age of reason.
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Flags at Half Staff
Yesterday, as I drove from Norman through Oklahoma City to Edmond (about 30 miles), I was awestruck by the dozens of flags at half staff. If it is possible to be both humbled and proud at the same moment and for the same reason, I was as I gazed at those flags lowered at government buildings in a secular state and car dealerships and banks in a state overwhelmingly populated by Protestants, all in honor of John Paul the Great.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Language, Diologue, and the Problem of Calling Something Evil
Rob raises an important in his post Gay Marriage as an "Ideology of Evil," in which he says "In today's culture, my fear is that such labels close off any further potential conversation on a key societal trend ... as these labels produce headlines that support a caricature of the Church as an unthinking, anachronistic institution." I agree with Rob that this presents a problem, but I suspect that those who want to support a caricature of the Church will be able to do so no matter what language is used because any sophisticated and nuanced argument will provide fodder for those who a) disagree and b) don't want to expend the time or the energy to engage in thoughtful dialog.
The Church (including the current pontiff) teaches that every person has a right to emigrate and that country's that can handle immigration should allow generous immigration. Yet, in Laborem Excercens, Pope John Paul II suggests that "emigration is in some aspects an evil." In what sense is it evil? Is it a physical evil? Is it a moral evil? In all circumstances or only in some? If it is a moral evil in at least some circumstances, what is the culpability of the emigrant in a given circumstance. The use of the language is shocking for modern ears that think of evil in terms of the holocaust.
With Rob, I would welcome more discussion on this issue of language. How can the Church with its 2000 years of finely tuned language dialog with a culture that a) is often unfriendly to its message, b) is used to arguments being made in 30 second increments, c) and receives its information through the filter of a media quick to caricature (whether intentionally or out of ignorance), especially where the precise language doesn't resonate with modern common understanding of that language?
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Michele Pistone, CST, and the Migration of Skilled Workers
Our own Amy Uelmen as director of Fordham's Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer's Work organized a terrific conference titled "Immigration Law & Policy in Light of Religious Values. At the conference, which took place yesterday, Michele Pistone continued to develop her work on the benefits to sending countries of what has traditionally been known as "brain drain." Although the CST recognizes a right to emigrate, it has also discouraged emigration of highly skilled workers from developing countries on the assumption that these highly skilled workers can best contribute to the development of their countries by staying put. Michele challenges this assumption, suggesting (backed with data) that emigration of highly skilled workers (what she calls STEP OUT migration) actually can aid in the development of the sending country.
Michele's project is important, I think, on two levels. First, if CST's teaching on brain drain/step out migration is based on faulty assumptions, it ought to be corrected to reflect the actual effect of such migration. Second, Vatican II expressly acknowledges the sphere of lay experts in working within CST. Much of this work will be directed outward by engaging the world in a prudential manner with this rich tradition. But, as Michele suggests, some of this work will be to inform the church of the economic, sociological, and legal realities, correcting false assumptions if need be. Any comments? Michele, do you want to add anything?
Michael
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Zenit Interview: Catholic Legal Theory
Today the Catholic News Service, Zenit, published an interview with me on Catholic Legal Theory. I welcome comments and criticism from my fellow bloggers and from our readers.
Catholic Legal Theory
Michael Scaperlanda on a Person-Centered System
NORMAN, Oklahoma, FEB. 13, 2005 (Zenit.org).- For almost 100 years, secular schools of legal philosophy -- especially legal realism and legal positivism -- have been dominant within the legal academy and the judiciary.
These have led to laws and practices inimical to religious practice and traditional morals. But now, Michael Scaperlanda and a growing number of lawyers and law professors are developing a response to this phenomenon through something called Catholic legal theory.
Rooted in the dignity of the human person and respect for the common good, it is a reapplication of the Catholic intellectual tradition to a new context.
Scaperlanda holds the Edwards Family Chair in Law and is associate dean for research at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
He is the co-editor of a forthcoming book exploring Catholic perspectives on areas of American law. His latest book, co-authored with his wife, María, is "The Journey: A Guide for the Modern Pilgrim" (Loyola).
Q: What is Catholic legal theory?
Scaperlanda: Catholic legal theory is an ongoing project of Catholic law professors, legal philosophers and others to participate in drawing on the Catholic intellectual tradition to build a culture that values the dignity of the human person, sees the community as indispensable for human flourishing, and seeks authentic freedom for the person within the community.
Catholic legal theory focuses, as you might imagine, on the ways that law and legal systems can aid or impede the building of a culture of life. At this level of abstraction, Catholic legal theory exists as a unified body.
When we move from the abstract to the concrete, I suspect that several Catholic legal theories will emerge as different scholars -- with various ideologies and prudential judgments -- attempt to work out the role of the state and its relation to the person in the formation and policing of the community.
Q: Is it different from natural law theory?
Scaperlanda: Catholic legal theory is broader than natural law theory.
Natural law theory uses philosophical reason, apart from Revelation, to attempt to arrive at the range of right answers about the good of the person in community.
Since, as St. Paul says in Romans 2:15, every person has the law written on their heart, a Catholic legal theorist can rely on the use of natural law to reason together with non-Christians on how society's laws and legal systems ought to be structured for the good of the person. Catholic legal theory certainly uses natural law concepts as part of its project.
Catholic legal theory also uses divine Revelation -- sometimes explicitly, sometimes not -- as a critical component in the attempt to reflect on how the law and legal systems can serve humanity. I would argue that Paragraph 22 of "Gaudium et Spes" provides the key text: "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. ... Christ ... fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear."
The Catholic legal theorist must grapple with the question of how the law and legal systems can best serve the development and flourishing of this creature -- the human person -- who is created in God's image and revealed to us in the person of Christ.
Q: Isn't it imprudent or impolite to make an appeal to divine Revelation when talking about law in a pluralistic society and to secular audiences?
Scaperlanda: The Catholic legal theorist should act prudently and with charity, but the exercise of these virtues does not require strict separation of God-talk from law-talk.
Robust pluralism requires allowing each person to engage the broader community in dialogue from the very core of her being. Only an impoverished and superficial pluralism would mandate that the religious person ignore the central part of her being as the price for full admission to the society.
Of course, merely providing proof texts from the Bible or the Church's magisterium will be ineffective when talking with those who reject the authority of these texts.
Buried deep beneath the corrupting influence of original sin and further covered beneath a lifetime's accumulation of sin and hurt, there is within each of us some glimmer of that original goodness. Since Catholicism proposes that Christ -- the Way, the Truth and the Life -- reveals the human person to himself, Catholic legal theory can gain currency among some non-Catholics and nonbelievers because it appeals to this original goodness by proposing a more human way of constructing law and legal theory.
Q: Why is there a need for Catholic legal theory?
Scaperlanda: Western society currently is engaged in a dangerous move, attempting to build a civilization with a thick conception of rights upon a foundation that insists on a very thin conception of the human person. This is a house built on sand if there ever was one, and the unstable structure is bound to collapse.
What do I mean by this? The founding generation in the United States recognized as self-evident the right of human persons to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These rights were viewed as inalienable because they were endowed not by men, but by the Creator.
The founding generation also knew that this magnificent creature was easily susceptible to corruption and so they devised a system of separation of powers and checks and balances to minimize the potential for mischief among the governing class.
They had what I call a thick -- or thicker -- conception of the human person.
Western society today correctly sees that the human person is worthy of dignity and liberty. And, in positive ways, we enjoy a greater equality of rights and liberties today than when the United States was founded.
At the same time, our society is currently engaged in an experiment to see if we can maintain this thicker concept of liberty while denying its source and foundation. Marginalizing God and an understanding of the person as a creature created in God's image, the current narrative privatizes conceptions of the human person and human goods. Instead of a public narrative about our origins, purposes and destiny, each individual becomes a sovereign self-creator.
This anthropology was articulated by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey in the infamous "sweet mystery of life" passage found in the opinion: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
Under this regime, it is a violation of the individual's liberty for the community to draft laws reflecting its own thick conception of the human person.
The experiment cannot succeed. A house cannot stand without a foundation. Secularist liberal theory is attempting to build more rooms onto the house while simultaneously destroying its foundation.
This is not the case of shoring up a cracked foundation or moving the house to a new location with a different foundation. There is no pretense of a foundation at all, just a naive optimism that the house will not fall.
Catholic legal theory offers a powerful corrective lens through which to see the fatal defects in the secularist liberal project, while offering a reasonable alternative for the development of a secular legal system in a pluralistic society.
Q: Is Catholic legal theory a new phenomenon?
Scaperlanda: Yes and no.
No, in the sense that our Western legal tradition is built upon a Catholic synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem as developed in Catholic cultures throughout Europe over the last 2,000 years. Protestant reformers, Enlightenment thinkers, moderns and postmoderns were all working within this synthesis.
Yes, this is a new phenomenon in the sense that at this particular time in history and probably in reaction to the radical secularization experiment described above, there seems to be a renaissance of Catholic legal thought.
Catholic legal theorists are currently working in several Catholic and secular institutions. On an institutional level, a few Catholic law schools in the United States are renewing their commitment to the Catholic intellectual tradition, and two new Catholic law schools have recently been created with this mission in mind.
Additionally, Villanova University recently inaugurated the Journal of Catholic Social Thought and last year a number of legal scholars started a Web log, "Mirror of Justice," which is devoted to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Q: How can Catholic lawyers aid academics in helping foster Catholic legal thought within the profession and the legal system?
A: First, by doing the things that a Catholic lawyer would normally do. Prayerfully and faithfully putting Christ at the center of one's life; excelling as a lawyer and viewing a legal career as a vocation given by God; living a life of integrity in the practice; befriending clients and challenging them to live lives of integrity.
Many clients want to do the right thing and just need a little nudge. Catholic lawyers should spend some time representing the poor and the marginalized. Solidarity with society's "throwaways" can be transformative in unimagined ways.
Second, practicing lawyers can foster Catholic legal thought and the building of a culture of life by making themselves more fully aware of the profoundly destructive effects of the secularist anthropology that has thoroughly saturated our legal system.
Lawyers who are firmly rooted in a Catholic understanding of the human person, the community, and the good can work, often in small and seemingly insignificant and incremental ways, to put our civilization on a firmer foundation.
By way of example, the lawyers who attacked the injustice of apartheid in the United States didn't make a frontal attack on segregation laws at first. By challenging wage disparities between black and white teachers and by challenging racial discrimination in graduate schools, these lawyers pushed the conversation slowly toward a new understanding of equality and an end to segregation.
Lawyers practicing in most any area of the law can make arguments designed to nudge the law and the legal system toward a more human foundation, at least so long as the arguments are consistent with the rightful goals of the client.
Friday, February 11, 2005
Catholic Contributions to Understanding "The Mystery of Human Life"
Continuing the conversation begun with the insightful posts of Rick, Rob, and Steve on the relevance of Catholic Legal Thought, I'll contribute a few thoughts.
Our project (and I assume we are all in agreement on this) is not about viewing liberty as "the right to define one's concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Instead, our project is about discovering the meaning of our existence, of the universe, and the origins, purposes, and destination of human life. As we enter ever more deeply into these mysteries and give ourselves completely to Christ, "the presence at the center of all things" (Morris West), we will receive authentic freedom or liberty.
It seems to me that our methodology, which is the opposite of the prevailing methodology, makes a tremendous difference, even if we reach the same policy conclusions as our secular colleagues or our even our own previous conclusions based on secular reasoning before we put our reasoning through the Catholic wringer, as Mark would say.
And, sometimes, filtering our own views through the teachings of the Church will cause us to shift our conclusions. This happened to me with respect to immigration law and policy. For a long time, I was in agreement with my secular liberal colleagues who find it hard to justify immigration restrictions and therefore favor immigration policies bordering on open borders. While I agreed with them, I thought I was doing so on different grounds, filtering my views through Catholic teaching. Recently, and this will be the subject of part of a talk I will give later this month at Fordham, I have come to realize that my Catholic view was filtered (unbeknownst to me) through liberalism's lens that viewed the would be immigrant as an autonomous seeker of a better life, unconnected to the family, culture, and history of her country of origin. I don't know where this realization leaves me with respect to how open or restrictive our immigration policy ought to be, but I now see more fully the cost and the tragedy of e/immigration. I'll post my paper on the blog after the conference.
Michael S.
Professor Klick Responds
Responding to Rob's post and my speculation about his paper, Salvation as Selective Incentive, Jonathan Klick writes:
Thanks for the attention your blog is giving to my old (in working paper form at least, though it just now made it into an econ journal) paper “Salvation as a Selective Incentive.” The econometric design does control for the possibility of larger Catholic families (though, truth be told, during the relevant time period Catholic families were not systematically larger than Southern Baptist families or AOG families, which are also in the dataset, but are larger than the other two denominations in the dataset – Presbyterians and Lutherans) in earlier years and does control for income/wealth directly as well.
The stronger alternative hypothesis to the one I argue for is that there is simply a very strong difference between those Catholics who had their formative years before Vatican II and after Vatican II and that drives my results. I provide some indirect evidence against this possibility such as discussion of others people’s work that suggests “formative years” type analyses (especially wrt Catholics and Vatican II) do not explain other kinds of religious data. Also, in my sample, my “near death” category of Catholics (those aged > 75) look substantially different in their giving behavior than do those in the next oldest groups (65-70 & 70-75 controlling for income, demographic, etc differences) even though all members from those groups would have had their formative experiences pre Vatican II (the data are from a 1993 survey).
However, I cannot directly rule out the possibility because as of yet we do not have any very old Catholics whose formative years occurred after Vatican II to create a sufficient control group.
Thanks again for the attention. As a fellow Catholic law prof, I visit the blog from time.
Jon
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