My eagle-eyed colleague, Elizabeth Brown, caught what may simply be a mistake in the coverage about Pope Benedict's visit to the U.S., but what may, instead, be a subtle sign of a Vatican shift in policy on the priesthood. Take a look at the caption to this photo. What do you think? http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Pope-Benedict-visits-US-Pool-Yonkers2C-New-York-Pope-Benedict-XVI/ss/events/wl/033002pope/im:/080421/photos_ts/2008_04_20t101142_450x343_us_pope_usa/
Monday, April 21, 2008
On a lighter note....
Benedict XVI's Visit with Youth with Disabilities
My favorite part of Pope Benedict's pilgrimage to the U.S. was his visit with the group of young people with disabilities, which I was lucky enough to watch live on Saturday afternoon. The visual contrast between this visit and the Mass at St. Patrick's earlier that morning was quite something. At St. Pat's, I was struck by how neat and orderly everything looked when the camera panned the whole crowd. The order was accentuated by the fact that groups of men and women from different orders were all sitting together, so the high overhead shots showed neat, orderly, patterns of groups of people in identical habits. Everything was beautifully choreographed, and from what I saw, there were no flaws in the execution of any part of the ceremony.
In the equally ornate room in which the Pope visited with the young people with disabilities and their parents, in contrast, the high overhead shots showed chaos -- clumps of people clustered around wheelchairs, papers (presumably programs) strewn all over the floor. You could just sense that this was a room in which a group of parents had been fighting a losing battle in keeping their high-spirited kids in check for the (probably) hours they had to be there before the Pope's arrival.
When Pope Benedict plunged into the group to shake hands, share kisses and blessings, there was just as much chaos and disorder, but so, so, much love and tenderness. The kids looked mostly nonchalant, but pleased, but the parents were just radiant. I'm sure every one of those kids was coached on proper Papal etiquette, yet I distinctly saw one young fellow with Down Syndrome belt out "Hi, Pope!" when Benedict came close. And the Pope was beaming, too, obviously enjoying himself. His remarks (included below) were almost incidental to the visual manifestation of the Pope and these beautiful young people showing us how "our faith helps us to break open the horizon beyond our own selves in order to see life as God does."
Friday, April 11, 2008
Noonan on Benedict
As usual, Peggy Noonan manages to capture more of the beauty in Church events than any other commentator I know in her latest column, a reflection on some of the contrasts between Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
2008 Conference on Catholic Legal Thought in Seattle
Conference on Catholic Legal Thought
2008 Summer Institute
May 28, 29 & 30, 2008
Seattle University School of Law, Seattle, Washington
Last June, at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and the previous year at Fordham University School of Law, Catholic law professors from all over the country met for three days to explore ways to foster the development of the emerging body of “Catholic Legal Thought” (“CLT”), rooted in Catholic social thought and teaching.The law schools represented at those meetings included Ave Maria, Boston College, Catholic University, Campbell University, Duquesne University, Fordham University, Loyola University Chicago, Loyola University Los Angeles, Notre Dame, University of Oklahoma, St. John’s University, Seattle University, Seton Hall University, Texas Wesleyan University, the University of St. Thomas and Villanova University. At the initial Fordham meeting, we named our coalition of scholars the “Conference on Catholic Legal Thought.” We decided to organize annual meetings to support the development of CLT, to be hosted on a rotating basis by different law schools around the country. These annual meetings are directed both at those who are just beginning the enterprise of integrating Catholic thought into their teaching and scholarship and at those who are more experienced. This year’s meeting will be hosted by the Seattle University School of Law in Seattle, Washington. The first day will include an introduction to basic aspects of Catholic social teachings and begin a deeper discussion of authority, led by Fr. Frank Sullivan, one of the preeminent authorities on magisterial authority. The second and third days will consist of interactive workshops exploring particular topics through the lens of CLT, or the application of fundamental principles of Catholic thought to the development of CLT in general. The workshops will offer combinations of lectures, debates, and discussions by members of the Conference, as well as outside experts from other disciplines and other faith traditions. The four topics for this year will be:
- Teaching and Our Pastoral Role. Teaching CLT in a law school setting presents myriad occasions to make our own "the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties" of the students of our times. This panel discussion will explore some of the pastoral issues that may arise in the course of our teaching, and will explore some practical ideas for a faith-informed response. Questions will include how to present CLT when students lack formation in Catholic or Christian traditions and teaching; and how to approach CLT topics such as abortion, divorce, and sexual identity knowing that for some students these issues have been a source of "grief or anxiety" for themselves, family members or close friends.
- Catholic Thought and Legal Theory. The body of CLT that has been developed over the last century-plus defies easy categorization; it is neither "liberal" nor "conservative." This session will focus on several of the concepts/judgments that set CLT apart from other social theories; it will also focus on the question of what concepts/judgments give CLT an internal unity and make it a coherent body of thought.
- Scholarly Career Planning as a Christian. This panel will discuss scholarship in CLT from both theoretical and practical perspectives with the hopes of encouraging a discussion of the ways in which conference participants may contribute to the developing body of scholarship in this field. Speakers will discuss those areas in CLT that deserve additional attention, the gaps that exist in current scholarship and the contributions that law professors (often not theologically-trained) can make to this field. More practically, this panel will also offer the opportunity to discuss how junior faculty may develop a scholarly agenda in this area, how scholarship on religious themes may be received in the tenure process (especially at secular schools), how to find mentors in the field, and how to combine this scholarship with more traditional legal scholarship.
- Works in Progress. This session provides an opportunity for presenting new scholarship related to CLT. Contact Russ Powell if you are interested in presenting.
The conference will also offer time for communal prayer and reflection, a field trip to the famous Pike Place Market, and plenty of opportunity for fellowship with like-minded legal scholars. There will be no fee to attend any of these events, but participants will be responsible for their own travel, lodging, and expenses.
If you are interested in attending or would like more information, please fill out the attached registration form and e-mail it to: Russ Powell: [email protected] (http://www.law.seattleu.edu will eventually provide updates.)
Detail, Schedule, and Registration form are included below.
Heartwarming Update
The rainstorm is turning to sleet right now in Minneapolis, and they're predicting a major winter storm overnight. It's been a long, long winter..... So here's a heartwarming update to a heartwarming story I shared about a year ago about a struggling urban Catholic school.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Call for Papers: "The Feminine Genius in the Pursuit of the Common Good"
Clear your calendars for next October! It will be the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of Mulieris Dignitatem, Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter on the dignity and vocation of women. As Rob pointed out recently, Ave Maria and Catholic Law School are co-sponsoring a fantastic "Celebration of the Twentieth Anniversary of Mulieris Dignitatem" in D.C. at the beginning of the month (Oct. 3--4).
At the end of the month (Oct. 23-24) here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis & St. Paul, a conglomerate of departments and institutes at the University of St. Thomas are sponsoring two consecutive, thematically-related one-day conferences exploring the contributions women are called to make in the pursuit of the common good. The first conference is Mulieris Dignitatem and the Church's Social Vision: The Feminine Genius in the Pursuit of the Common Good, co-sponsored by the Murphy Institute for Law and Public Policy, the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, the Center for Catholic Studies, the John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Departments of Philosophy and Theology. The second is Visions of Woman's Leadership, co-sponsored by the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership and the UST School of Law.
The organizers are issuing a call for paper proposals for the first conference. Here's the call:
The first conference is in honor of the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of the Apostolic Letter, Mulieris Dignitatem. Its aim is to engage scholars and practitioners in a consideration of several questions: What is the feminine genius and how can its existence be verified? Within which philosophical or theological categories can it be included? What is the role of the feminine genius in the world? What is its relationship to the complementarity of men and women? Should the feminine genius be more explicitly enlisted in the effort to make life more “human” for all, and if so, how? What are the indispensable contributions of women?
We invite papers that treat these questions in relation to both their philosophical and theological foundations and in light of five categories that, according to scholar Michael Schuck, emerge in a historical study of the Catholic Social Tradition: the religious, political, familial, economic, and cultural dimensions of community life, In addition, we are interested in papers that investigate the public policy implications that follow from these categories and that reflect on the ways that women can make a particular and concrete contribution to the pursuit of the common good.
Proposals should be sent by June 30, 2008 to Dr. Deborah Savage at: [email protected]
More details about both conferences, and the Call for Papers, are available below.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Good questions by Kaveny
AS usual, Cathy Kaveny raises some really good questions in her recent Commonweal article that was the subject of Rob's post and Richard M.'s comments. I've just posted in the sidebar a link to short article in UST Law's first alumni magazine, Catholic Feminism: An Oxymoron or 'Deeper Truths?' .(Can you believe we've been around long enough to have an alumni magazine?) In it, I explain that it was precisely Cathy's types of questions that have pulled me away from banking law scholarship the past few years. I first read Mulieris Dignitatem just a few years ago, because of:
. . . my nagging desire to assess honestly whether my own career path – involving decades of juggling a career and raising my four children – was consonant with the Catholic Church’s notion of the vocation of motherhood.
My explorations of this issue have led me to the conclusion that there is, indeed, much in Church teachings to assuage my concerns, but also that more work needs to be done to address Cathy's type of questions. I agree with Richard M. that there has been significant evolution in the Church's teachings since the 1912 encyclopedia; I go into this development in some detail in this article published in Catholic L. Rev last year.
But I do agree with Cathy that there is more work to be done in fleshing out the notion of complementarity. That's one of the things I'm working on right now. My favorite scholar on this to date is Sr. Prudence Allen. She's done incredible work in two volumes of The Concept of Woman tracing the philosophical roots of the concept of complementarity that plays such an important role in JPII's theology. Quoting myself again, from that alumni magazine article, this is what I'm finding and exploring these days:
My search for an authentically Catholic feminist legal theory also has led me to philosophical theories of gender identity, particularly the theory of complementarity, which posits that men and women are fundamentally different, yet fundamentally equal. This theory has its roots in a Thomistic affirmation of the unity of body and soul; it was developed by a group of predominantly Catholic philosophers who rejected the Cartesian dualism underlying most post-Enlightenment philosophy – phenomenologists such as Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand and St. Edith Stein, and personalists such as Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and Gabriel Marcel. These schools of thought can provide vocabulary, arguments and frameworks for a feminist legal theory that are consonant with my faith beliefs, but do not depend on tenets of faith for their logical integrity.
The more I study, the more I discover traces of agreement with some of the basic ideas underlying complementarity in the writings of philosophers who do not share my faith traditions, such as the Jewish philosopher Leon Kass and the socialist feminist Alison Jaggar.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
In Gratitude.... for C.U.A.'s Symposium
I want to echo Patrick's praise of the incredible conference organized by Bill Wagner's Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture at Catholic University last week. I am, frankly, still reeling from the experience of hearing, seeing, and learning from so many of the brilliant writers & theologians whose work I've been reading for years now, all addressing different aspects of one of MOJ's central questions -- IS there a "common morality", is there a language or mode of thought in which persons of different or no faiths can even argue about fundamental issues of morality?
CUA has generously posted streaming video of the entire conference in their electronic calendar. You can see the program for the conference here, and choose the date and time for whatever talk you'd like to watch.
Some of my personal highlights were (of course) Patrick Brennan's elegant and trenchant response to Kathryn Tanner's talk about socio-cultural practices that keep us open to moral insight; listening to and watching the interaction between Gilbert Meilaender and Stanley Hauerwas; Robert George's defense of a natural law theory of human rights; Jean Bethke Elshtain's exploration of the application of the just war theory under Christian theology's claim that the distinction between justice owed to those inside the "polis" differs from justice owed to those outside ought to be abolished; and the contrasts and commonalities in Michael Sandel's arguments about the morality of engineering children and Hadley Arkes' comparison of the intellectual move to define "personhood" to exclude slaves in the 18th century with the current application of the concept of personhood to fetuses and disabled infants.
I found the most fascinating thread running through so many of these talks to be the theme of the Conference's subtitle: "In Gratitude for What We Are Given." Thomas Hibbs' exploration of the connection between Aquinas' metaphysics of creation and his account of the virtue of gratitude laid out for me most clearly what I think is a very serious question about the project of the conference (and MOJ). Underlying the most robust notions of justice and equality is some element of gratitude -- some recognition that all we have is a GIFT, that we've done nothing to earn the most significant aspects of our particular situations in life -- the age or country or family into which we are born, our genders, our capacities, our races, etc. But, (paraphrasing Hibb's account of Aquinas, from my hastily-scribbled notes) in the absence of some understanding of the "giver", it is hard to talk about gift. My question is, if we don't share some common notion of that giver -- of God -- can we really share an understanding of our lives as gift? If not, what does that mean for some of our equality-based theories of justice?
These papers will be an extraordinary resource, but if you have some time, do yourself a HUGE favor and make some time to watch some of those talks. This was really an incredible conference.
Monday, March 24, 2008
"The Many Shapes of Personhood"
I rarely let myself click on YouTube videos, because the temptation to spend hours and hours on detours through that pit of inane, but utterly captivating, amusements is too great. But here's one you should NOT miss. I'm even presenting it in a format, though an article from Wired.com linked here, that doesn't directly expose you to all the browsing temptations of YouTube.
The article features Amanda Baggs, a young woman with autism. Her video first shows a few minutes of her interactions with her environment, and then provides a "translation" of her interactions, though the aid of an augmentative communications devices that lets her type (which she does at 120 words a minute) and then speaks the typed words for her. Her commentary on how "we" judge intelligence and personhood is haunting. Her closing words are: "Only when the many shapes of personhood are recognized will justice and human rights be possible."
Friday, March 21, 2008
Pope Benedict's Upcoming Visit
One of the reasons I'm looking forward to Pope Benedict's upcoming visit to the U.S. is the hope that I can comfortably watch the evening news with my seven-year old daughter again. That's not been possible lately, between Spitzer, his gubenatorial successor, and Rev. Wright. John Allen's latest column is a handy "One-Stop-Shopping Guide" to the Pope's visit.
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