Thursday, December 15, 2011
Simple Prayer
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Hot Topics: Cool Talk -- Balancing the Budget with Sisk and Tinucci
There's little that makes me prouder (professionally, at least) than watching one of my faculty colleauges do a great job with a presentation-- except maybe watching one of my former students do a great job with a presentation. I had the pleasure of experiencing both yesterday, as MOJ-er Greg Sisk and former UST law student Katharine Tinucci (now press secretary to Minnesota's Governor Mark Dayton) gave their contrasting perspectives on how Catholic social teachings inform discussions on the budget, as part of the Murphy Institute's "Hot Topics: Cool Talk" series. Katharine focused on the state budget, urged us to view our responsibility for intergenerational solidarity from the perspective of our duty to fund the education of the next generation, and quoted our Archbishop. Greg focused on the federal budget, urged us to view our responsibility for intergenerational solidarity from the perspective of our duty to reduce the national debt burden, and quoted our Pope and his predecessor. What fun! You can watch their talk (and see their accompanying slide shows -- Greg's characteristically thorough and informative) on line here.
Call for papers: Religious Traditions and Business Behavior
Here's an interesting call for papers:
The Center for Financial Policy at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business announces a Call for Papers and Proposals for the Henry Kaufman Conference on Religious Traditions and Business Behavior.
This conference explores two central questions in the relationship between the world’s major religious traditions and the business behavior of adherents to those traditions:
First, what do the world’s major organized religious traditions – Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism – proscribe about business and financial ethics and behavior?
Second, how and why have business and financial actors seriously compromised the leading religious traditions of their cultures?
By interrogating these two core questions, the conference will yield insights valuable to contemporary business and religious leaders about abiding questions such as: Do the scriptures and doctrines of these religions appear to have had a marked effect on financial behavior? Does religion appear to be a more potent or less potent influence than business ethics courses in fostering sound, ethical, and socially responsible financial behavior? How can religion best be promulgated to make financial behavior more sound, ethical, and socially responsible?
The conference will be in Spring 2013, with two preliminary meetings of speakers before then. Proposals are due Feb. 1, 2012.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
John Henry Newman and Mormons (again)
Once again, a Mormon law professor is making me think about John Henry Newman. The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Brainstorm” blog has an exchange between one of their bloggers, Michael Ruse, director of the program in history and philosophy of science at Florida State University, and Nate Oman, law professor at William & Mary Law School. Oman, a Mormon, is responding to an earlier post by Michael Ruse, in which he explains why he would have a hard time voting for a Mormon. This is how Oman characterizatizes Ruse’s argument; it strikes me as pretty fair:
“While I can tolerate the religious beliefs of others and in some cases may even be able to sympathize with them, I find Mormon beliefs and Mormon history so strange that I believe the mere fact of belief on the part of a Latter-day Saint reveals some basic character flaw or intellectual disability, a failing that legitimately would count as a reason for voting against someone for public office.”
Oman's response is fascinating. It reminds me of the final chapter of Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, in which Newman responds to the general accusation against the Catholic faith current in England of the time – that it is not a rational belief system, but rather a set of superstitious beliefs imposed upon people of weak will and intellect by a clergy with no respect for truth. A person who accepts claim that she cannot question certain teachings by the Church is susceptible to being misled on any matter about which the Church chooses to profess an opinion. Such a person has forfeited the right to be considered a rational person who thinks for himself. The last chapter of the Apologia consists of Newman's attempt to demonstrate why it is rational for a person to accept the authority of the Church on certain matters.
Oman’s post is just the same sort of endeavor. Some teasers:
. . . . if you are using belief in Mormonism as a proxy for a lack of critical or analytic abilities, fanatical mendacity, or the like, then you do not have to rely on the proxy. You can simply try to observe the primary phenomenon that you are interested in. What you will find is that there are many Latter-day Saints who in fact engage with the world critically and are not pursuing brutal or illiberal theocratic political agendas. To be sure, you will find some Mormons who are stupid, dogmatic, ignorant, and politically reactionary. You may even find that the distribution between the two groups in the Mormon population is different than the population as a whole, but so long as the primary phenomenon is itself observable, there is no need to rely on the proxy of belief in Mormonism to determine whether any particular Latter-day Saint suffers from critical or moral deficits.
This doesn’t imply, of course, that one cannot regard Mormonism as false and Mormon believers as mistaken. On the other hand, the mere fact of holding false beliefs is generally not taken as evidence of intellectual or moral failure. Lots of smart, thoughtful, critical, and morally decent people hold mistaken beliefs. Indeed, I suspect that they all do. The question then remains as to whether the mistaken belief represented by Mormonism is somehow different. It could be different in one of two ways. First, it might be that the mistake represented by Mormonism is qualitatively different in some way such that it really does provide some important piece of information about a person’s critical and moral apparatus. Second, it may be that given that one can identify believing Mormons who nevertheless display critical and moral competence, the persistence of their belief in Mormonism is itself sufficiently surprising—considering the “weirdness” of Mormon beliefs—to be a phenomenon demanding an explanation.
The post is really worth reading in its entirety.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Teaching & Understanding Vatican II
UST's Theology department is hosting a conference in September on "Vatican II: Teaching and Understanding the Council after 50 Years." The call for papers asks for 300-word proposals by Jan. 30, 2012, on a range of topics that may be of interest to MOJ readers:
Much has changed in our Catholic schools, colleges, and universities in the fifty years since the opening of Vatican II on October 11, 1962. Catholics still make up a significant part of the student population but now they study alongside of students from many different faith traditions and non-believers. Theology and Religious Studies courses are still part of the core curriculum for undergraduates, but who teaches, how we teach, and even what we teach have all changed dramatically over the years. The Council has also influenced how we engage other academic disciplines. Students may be just as likely to encounter Catholic Social Teaching, for example, in their Business or Social Work courses as they would in their Theology courses. Changes such as these have set the stage for renewed discussion about teaching and understanding the Council in today’s world.
“Vatican II: Teaching and Understanding the Council after 50 Years” has three interrelated objectives. First, it will examine the effects of Vatican II in shaping the methods and content of our work as educators and scholars. Second, it will consider how theological reflection on the experiences of teaching since the Council has shaped our understanding of the event itself. Third, it will look more broadly at the role of Catholic colleges and universities in educating students to be agents of the proper development of human culture for “the good of the community and of the whole society” (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes §59; see also John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae §32).
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law
I've recently posted the paper I gave at the symposium John Inazu organized at Duke Law this past September on "Theological Argument in the Law: Engaging with Stanley Hauerwas." In my article, Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law, I discuss Hauerwas' diagnosis of the inconsistencies in contemporary society's attitudes toward the disabled as evidence of the flaws of the presumptions of modern humanism around which our society is organized. I analyze Sam Bagenstos' book, Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement, as being largely consistent with Hauerwas' critique, and argue that this convergence of theological and legal arguments on this topic might provide a powerful platform for cooperation in helping shape a less contradictory -- and more inclusive -- set of practices and laws for persons with disabilities. Below is the full abstract; you can download the paper here.
The papers from this symposium will be published in Vol. 75 of the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, so any comments on this draft would be appreciated.
The theologian Stanley Hauerwas has described people with intellectual disabilities as “the crack I desperately needed to give concreteness to my critique of modernity. No group exposes the pretensions of the humanism that shapes the practices of modernity more thoroughly than the mentally handicapped.” Indeed, modern practices with respect to the mentally handicapped are undeniably puzzling. On the one hand, advances in the ability to prenatally diagnose genetic conditions that cause mental retardation are widely heralded and enthusiastically embraced, as evidenced by the declining numbers of children born with Down Syndrome worldwide, despite the fact that advancing maternal ages should be resulting in an increase in those numbers. On the other hand, laws that express a strong commitment to the equal treatment of our fellow citizens with disabilities continue to be enacted – from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, ensuring the education of children with disabilities in our public schools, to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities in public accommodations and employment, to the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in 2008, prohibiting employers or health insurers from discriminating based on information from genetic tests.
Hauerwas diagnoses these puzzling inconsistencies in contemporary society’s attitudes toward the disabled as evidence of the flaws of modern humanism. Humanism’s emphasis on rationality and capacity for reason is the most obvious target of any critique focused on people with intellectual disabilities, whose capacity for reason is, by definition, compromised to some degree. But the pretensions of the humanism on which Hauerwas focuses his critique are two different corollaries – namely, that autonomy and the ability to freely create one’s own identity constitute equally fundamental markers of humanity.
In his book LAW AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT, disability law scholar Samuel Bagenstos identifies and tries to explain a series of contemporary contradictions in disability law, including recent case law restricting the scope of the ADA and the debate about abortion after a prenatal diagnosis of a disability. A careful analysis of these arguments reveals that Bagenstos’ explanations for the contradictions he notes are compatible with many significant aspects of Hauerwas’ critique of modern humanism, although Bagenstos does not characterize his critiques that broadly. Bagenstos’ arguments could be strengthened by incorporating more completely Hauerwas’ full critique. Appreciating how Bagenstos’ arguments are underpinned by these Haeurwasian insights does more, however, than simply clarify and strengthen Bagenstos’ arguments. More significantly, it is evidence of a growing and potentially powerful convergence of theological and secular reflection on the thorny conundrum posed by contemporary society’s treatment of the significantly disabled. By joining forces, proponents of these arguments might be able to work together for the development of a less contradictory – and more inclusive – set of laws and practices for people with disabilities.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Snead & Wardle (and Newman) on Stem Cell Research
Yesterday's Murphy Institute program on "Embryo Rights and Stem Cell Research" with Carter Snead & Lynn Wardle was (not surprisingly, given the speakers) excellent. We'll be posting the video here soon. I was particularly intrigued by Lynn's discussion of the contrast between the firm and explicit statements made by LDS religious authorities on abortion, and their failure to make any sort of statement about stem cell research. His speculation about the reasons for this included an explanation of Mormon beliefs on the importance of the intellectual work that men and women are expected to do in trying to work through a particular topic before their minds are ready to receive God's revelations about that topic. Lynn suggested a number of other possible explanations, but this one particularly intrigued me -- that there might just still be too much uncertainty about the possibilities and dangers of this sort of research for us to be ready to hear (and correctly understand) what God might be trying to tell us about this topic.
The discussion made me think about the Blessed John Henry Newman's writings about the interplay between faith and reason. One of my favorites is one of his pre-conversion Oxford Sermons (Number 15), in which he precedes an exploration of the interplay between faith and reason with an introduction asserting the Virgin Mary as its paradigm. Mary, he argues, is “our pattern of Faith.” Her fiat, her complete acceptance of the truth of the Angel Gabriel’s message about the child she was being asked to bear, her absolute and total “be it unto me according to thy word,” is the paradigm of faith for all of us. She received an impression of a divine truth through a revelation more vivid and powerful than most, and she accepted it fully, almost instantaneously.
However, Newman continues, “Mary’s faith did not end in a mere acquiescence in Divine providences and revelations: as the text informs us, she ‘pondered them.’” Newman highlights the many instances in which the Scriptures explicitly note that Mary actively reflected on things that others were saying about Jesus and on Jesus’s actions – at the adoration of the shepards at the Nativity, at the finding of Jesus in the Temple arguing with the doctors, and at the wedding at Cana. In this pondering, this reflection, this application of reason to the truth of Jesus’ divine nature that she had accepted at the Annunciation, Mary is our pattern of Faith both in our reception of divine truths and in our natural response to this reception --- our reflection upon it. Newman emphasizes: "She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards . . . , yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing."
In the area of stem cell research, there seems to be so much pressure to accept the position suggested as one possiblity by Lynn -- we haven't yet figured enough out about the science, so we're not yet in a position to understand what God might be trying to reveal to us. In contrast, the Catholic position seems to be -- the more we learn from science, the more we come to understand all the ways in which the fundamental position that life begins at conception is proven to be true, again and again -- Carter's talk was a wonderful articulation of that position.
This morning I heard this story on MPR: "Scientists and security specialists are in the midst of a fierce debate over recent experiments on a strain of bird flu virus that made it more contagious. The big question: Should the results be made public? Critics say doing so could potentially reveal how to make powerful new bioweapons." It struck me as a fascinating example of a situation where the "scientific imperative" to always forge ahead with any sort of scientific research, regardless of the dangers or collateral cost -- was being seriously questioned, even by members of the scientific establishment. The possibility of millions of -- already born -- humans being killed by rogue viruses is seen as a serious threat. Too bad the reality of millions of -- not yet born -- humans being killed in the pursuit of the elusive rewards of embryonic stem cell research isn't being taken as seriously.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Carter Snead and Lynn Wardle Engaging on Embryo Rights and Stem Cell Research at UST Law
The Murphy Institute at UST is presenting a year-long series we call "Hot Topics: Cool Talk", exploring "both the Catholic positions and some challenging perspectives on major policy issues likely to be the focus of debate in the upcoming 2012 election. Each program will consist of two expert speakers respectfully engaging in one of these hot topics." Our first program was Maggie Gallagher and Dale Carpenter talking about Same Sex Marriage. (Minnesota Public Radio aired the program as part of their mid-day programming. You can watch the video here.)
Our next program is tomorrow, Nov. 16, featuring Carter Snead & Lynn Wardle talking about Embryo Rights and Stem Cell Research (4:00 -5:00, more details and registration here.)
Upcoming speakers in the series include MOJ'ers Greg Sisk on Balancing the Budget, Tom Berg on Personal Rights & Religious Freedom, and Mark DeGirolami on Punishment Theory. Other topics we'll take up include Immigration Policy, Health Care Reform, and Responsible Citizenship. We'll be posting the talks on our website, so you can catch the programs even if you're not blessed to be living in God's Country, Minnesota.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Three more days left to celebrate!
October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month! Do yourself a favor and spend some time with a friend with Down Syndrome this weekend.
Congresswoman Cathy McMorris the lucky mom of a kid with Down Syndrome, is co-chair of the Congressional Down Syndrome Caucus. Just this past Tuesday, they hosted a briefing on Down Syndrome research. The event featured six leading researchers who discussed the unique biology of Down syndrome, the status of current research, and barriers to future research. The panel also heard from two leaders of the Down syndrome community who discussed how today’s findings could improve their advocacy efforts. You can watch most of the hearing here.
David Luban and Human Dignity
Let me begin, in the spirit of the New Roman Missal, for an apology for "what I have failed to do" -- namely post in a quite a while. Here goes, "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault....."
OK, on to business. The Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy just finished hosting Georgetown's David Luban for a two-day visit. As part of our ongoing Human Dignity Lecture Series, Luban presented the draft of a new piece he's working on: "The Dignifier and the Dignified: Human Dignity from Autonomy To Relations." It's a characteristically brilliant and engaging attempt to locate a common understanding of the concept of human dignity in the practices of those who fight for human rights, focusing not on some intrinsic human property, but instead in the relationship between the dignifier and the dignified. In the tradition of this lecture series, Luban presented his work in a public lecture, followed the next morning by an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional seminar to explore the work more deeply. Our seminar this morning was attended by faculty from UST's Catholic Studies, Philosophy, and Theology departments, as well as Law School faculty including MOJ'ers Tom Berg and Rob Vischer; Brian Bix from the University of Minnesota Law School, Marie Failinger from Hamline, and Russ Panier from William Mitchell. We plan to publish all the papers in this series as a book, eventually, but in the meantime, for a bracingly non-natural law attempt to grapple with the concept of human dignity, I'd highly recommending contacting Luban for a draft (or better yet, convince him to come to your school to present it).
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