Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Do you suppose they're likely to pick up The Sopranos?
Days after Pope Benedict XVI criticized the media for its "destructive" influence, the Vatican on Monday announced plans to launch its first television network by the end of the year.
H2O will broadcast news and original entertainment programming worldwide in seven languages, according to a statement. Additional details were sketchy.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Stephen Prothero, Chairman of the Religion Department at Boston University and author of a book just coming out this month, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, has an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) that appears to lay out the themes of his new book. He presents a sobering view of the state of knowledge about religion in general that we should expect of (1) our students and (2) the general public.
For the past two years, I have given students in my introductory religious-studies course at Boston University a religious-literacy quiz. I ask them to list the four Gospels, Roman Catholicism's seven sacraments, and the Ten Commandments. I ask them to name the holy book of Islam. They do not fare well.
In their quizzes, they inform me that Ramadan is a Jewish holiday, that Revelation is one of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and that Paul led the Israelites on the Exodus out of Egypt. This year I had a Hindu student who couldn't name one Hindu scripture, a Baptist student who didn't know that "Blessed are the poor in spirit" is a Bible quote, and Catholic students unfamiliar with the golden rule. Over the past two years, only 17 percent of my students passed the quiz.
He also articulates some good arguments for why religious illiteracy is a "civic problem":
One might imagine that religious illiteracy is nothing more than a religious problem — a challenge for ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams. But in the United States today, presidents quote from the Bible during their inauguration speeches, members of Congress cite the "Good Samaritan" story in debates over immigration legislation, and politicians of all stripes invoke the Book of Genesis in debates over the environment. So religious ignorance is a civic problem, too.
In an era when the public square is, rightly or wrongly, awash in religious rhetoric, can one really participate fully in public life without knowing something about Christianity and the world's other major religions? Is it possible to decide whether intelligent design is "religious" or "scientific" without some knowledge of religion as well as science? Is it possible to determine whether the effort to yoke Christianity and "family values" makes sense without knowing what sort of "family man" Jesus was? Is it possible to adjudicate between President Bush's description of Islam as a religion of peace and the conviction of many televangelists that Islam is a religion of war, without some basic information about Muhammad and the Quran?
Unfortunately, U.S. citizens today lack this basic religious literacy. As a result, many Americans are too easily swayed by demagogues. Few of us are able to challenge claims made by politicians or pundits about Islam's place in the war on terrorism, or about what the Bible says concerning homosexuality. This ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads and effectively transferring power from the Third Estate (the people) to the Fourth (the press).
But he stops short of where I think a lot of these conversations in Catholic universities tend to go, when they take place:
In recent years, George M. Marsden, a historian at the University of Notre Dame, and Warren A. Nord, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have argued for the return of "normative religious teaching" to American colleges and universities. They want professors not only to describe religious traditions but also to weigh in on their vices and virtues. Each of these scholars has also argued that it is essential for students to learn "religious perspectives" in disciplines other than religious studies — to study theological critiques of classical economics and "religious interpretations of history." "There should be room," writes Nord, for both objective analysis of religion and "normative reflection on religion."
What Marsden and Nord seem to want is to make colleges and universities (or pockets of them) into religious places once again — to resurrect the big questions of God, creation, and sin not only in departments of religion but also in courses in philosophy and economics and history and political science. My proposal is more modest and less controversial. I simply want to persuade the lords of American higher education to stop trivializing this subject. There is no reason not to expect from America's future leaders at least minimal religious literacy.
It seems to me that much of the conversation about CLT assumes agreement with the Marsden/Nord approach. Am I wrong? Is there any value to thinking about some of what we are trying to do from the Prothero approach?
Saturday, March 10, 2007
My colleague Elizabeth Brown has this to say about Blankley's column on environmental indulgences:
I don’t know who Tony Blankley is but he doesn’t know much about economics. Buying carbon emission offsets makes lots of economic sense and moral sense. It is basically applying the same idea that has been proven successful at reducing overall pollution in other areas. For example, cap and trade has been hugely successful at reducing SO2 emissions (the ones that cause acid rain). In addition, see this article about how cap and trade for greenhouse gases makes sense, particularly if the money could be used to invest in developing nations like China>. As the article below points out, carbon emission offsets provide a better and more efficient solution to a problem. What is morally reprehensible about that? The comparison to indulgences is a terribly flawed one.
Friday, March 9, 2007
I've commented before on my frustration that arguments for euthanizing or aborting people with disabilities based on "quality of life" concerns typically ignore studies showing that people living with disabilities tend to rate the quality of their lives much higher than people without disabilities would expect. Samuel Bagenstos and Margo Schlager of Washington University recently posted a fascinating paper collecting some of that research and using it to argue against the awarding of hedonic damages to individuals experiencing disabling accidents, "Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, and Disability". Here's the abstract:
This article contributes to the broad debate over "adaptive preferences" in law, economics, and political philosophy by addressing an important ongoing controversy in tort law. Hedonic damages compensate for the lost enjoyment of life that results from a tortious injury. Lawyers seeking hedonic damages in personal injury cases emphasize their clients' new status as compromised and damaged persons, and courts frequently uphold jury verdicts awarding hedonic damages to individuals who experienced disabling injuries based on a view that disability necessarily limits one's enjoyment of life. This view is consonant with a general societal understanding of disability as a tragedy and of people with disabilities as natural objects of pity. But a rich psychological literature demonstrates that disability does not inherently limit enjoyment of life to the degree that these courts suggest. Rather, people who experience disabling injuries tend to adapt to their disabilities. To be sure, the views of people with disabilities about their own quality of life are classic adaptive preferences. Accordingly, one might suggest that the legal system should disregard those views. But we argue that the legal system goes wrong by so devaluing the experience of people with disabilities. When courts award damages based on the (nondisabled person's) view that disability is tragic, they distract attention from the societal choices and stigmas that attach disadvantage to disability; they also make it harder for people with disabilities to make hedonic adjustments to their conditions. For deterrence and compensation reasons, people who experience disabling injuries should be able to recover for their physical pain; for medical expenses and the cost of assistive technology and personal assistance; for the opportunities society denies people with their conditions; and for the effects of social stigma. But they should not recover for any purported effect of disability on the enjoyment of life.
(Bagenstos is also the author of what I think is the most honest confrontation with the deeply troubling aspects of the inconsistencies of a pro-choice arguments and disability rights arguments that I have ever seen in print: "Disability, Life, Death, and Choice.")
Tony Blankley commented recently on "why the environmental movement tends to veer toward a religious, rather than a scientific, sensibility." He observes that:
the signs of religiousness are readily to be seen. Al Gore and his Hollywood coterie have almost comically manifested one aspect of their new religion in the last few weeks -- the sense of sin and the search for remission of such sin.
At the Academy Awards last month, their spokesman proudly announced that this year's show was "the first green Oscars." These vast consumers of energy -- in their 30,000-sqare-foot houses, their Gulfstream jets and even in their high-energy consumption film production process -- claimed green remission of sin by virtue of driving the last hundred yards to the Kodak Theatre in Priuses and by buying carbon credits.
Likewise, when Al Gore was revealed to be using high quantities of energy to heat and cool his large home, he claimed it was OK because he had purchased carbon offset credits. Substantively, these offsets are of dubious environmental value (see Daily Telegraph article: "Is Carbon Offsetting a Con"; BBC's "U.K. to Tackle Bogus Carbon Schemes"; Wall St. Journal's "The Political and Business Self-interest Behind Carbon Limits.")
But as, what the Catholic Church calls "indulgentia a culpa et a poena" (release from guilt and from punishment), paying carbon offset fees makes perfect religious sense. The Christian sinner pays the church for "a remission of the temporal punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the church in the exercise of the powers of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive." (Catholic Encyclopedia)
In the animistic church, any using or changing of the physical world (such as burning carbon) is a sin against the sacred, holistic, living world (the Gaia hypothesis). But as everyone uses energy (just as every Christian sins), the neo-animist church, too, must provide for a remission of sin (and also, a handy source of profit for the carbon-offset company owners -- such as Al Gore who, according to news reports, pays his indulgences to Generation Investment Management, of which he is the chairman.)
Any thoughts on this comparison to the Church's "indulgentia a culpa et a poena"?
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
ZENIT yesterday distributed an article called "Women, Work, and Family" by Father John Flynn, which began with this description of a report just issued in England:
ROME, MARCH 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Working mothers face significant discrimination in Britain's work force. This was one of the conclusions of a report published Feb. 28 by the Equalities Review, an independent body of the United Kingdom. The report: "Fairness and Freedom: The Final Report of the Equalities Review," found that women with young children are the most discriminated against at work.
In fact, women with young children face more discrimination in the workplace than disabled people or those from ethnic minorities, noted the BBC in an article on the report published the day of its release.
This report is apparently receiving much attention in the British press, as well as this reaction from the Government:
A call for more attention to women's needs, whether they work at the top or not, was made by Lord Layard, a Labor Party peer appointed by the British government to investigate the state of childhood.
Well, here on this side of the Atlantic, we may lack the ability to appoint peers or Lords to investigate, but we can convene conferences. Like the Law Journal symposium on "Restructuring the Workplace to Accommodate Family Life" to be held at UST Law in Minneapolis next Friday, March 16. Featuring keynote talks by Sr. Prudence Allen (""Analogy, Law, and the Workplace: Complementarity, Conscience, and the Common Good") and Professor Joan Williams ( "Opt Out or Pushed Out: The Real Story of Women and Work") and panels including MOJers Susan Stabile ("Can Secular Feminists and Catholic Feminists Work Together to Ease the Conflict Between Work and Family?") and Michael Scaperlanda ("Immigration, the Family, and the Workplace: A Critical Exploration of Possible Reforms").
Monday, March 5, 2007
The current issue of America has published an essay in which I compare the justification for engaging in potentially risky prenatal testing such as amniocentesis with the justification for embryonic stem cell research. The article begins:
The Disabled Jesus
I know something about hope, enough at least to know what Senator Bill Frist meant when he said during a debate on funding embryonic stem cell research: “If your daughter has diabetes, if your father has Parkinson’s, if your sister has a spinal cord injury, your views will be swayed more powerfully than you can imagine by the hope that a cure will be found in those magnificent cells, recently discovered, that today originate only in an embryo.” ...
(Unfortunately, only this beginning of the essay is available online without a subscription to America.)
In the rest of the essay, I go on to suggest that if new techniques for obtaining embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryos are ever perfected, the Church might endorse such techniques, just as it currently endorses prenatal diagnostic techniques that "do not involve disproportionate risks for the child and the mother" (Evangelium Vitae 63). However, since no such techniques currently exist, the Church correctly draws a bright line with respect to embryonic stem cell research.
Friday, February 16, 2007
It is drawing near -- only a month away, Friday, March 16, at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis -- the eagerly-anticipated Symposium exploring work/family balance issues from perspectives of all sorts -- explicitly religious, explicitly secular, feminist legal theory and the rhetoric of law, considering issues such as the impact of immigration law, the history of family wage, employment laws and the impact of poverty. Featuring not only keynote addresses by Professor Joan Williams ("Opt Out or Pushed Out: The Real Story of Women and Work") and Sr. Prudence Allen ("Analogy, Law and the Workplace: Complementarity, Conscience, and the Common Good"), but also presentations by MOJ-ers Susan Stabile and Michael Scaperlanda!
For more details and to register, just visit our web site.
Workplace Restructuring
to Accommodate Family Life
Friday, March 16, 2007
8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Through dialogue across philosophical and faith traditions, the symposium will examine the dynamics of family preservation and social justice in the workplace. Topics will include family wage structures, proposed immigration reforms, employment laws, and caring for caregivers.
Other presenters:
· Professor Gregory Acs, The Urban Institute
· Professor Katharine Baker, Chicago-Kent College of Law
· Dr. Allan C. Carlson, The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society
· Professor Kirsten Davis, Arizona State University College of Law
· Professor Marie Failinger, Hamline University School of Law
· Professor Eva Kittay, City University of New York
· Professor Michael A. Scaperlanda, University of Oklahoma College of Law
· Professor Michael Selmi, George Washington University Law School
· Professor Susan Stabile, St. John's University School of Law
Registration deadline is March 5, 2007
6 CLE credits applied for (elimination of bias)
UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center just released a study on the well-being of children in 20 developed countries in which the U.S. came in second-to-last -- after Britain. I haven't read the study, but according to an L.A. Times report on it:
UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center in Italy ranked the countries in six categories: material well-being, health, education, relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own sense of happiness.
The finding that children in the richest countries are not necessarily the best-off surprised many, said the director of the study, Marta Santos Pais. The Czech Republic, for example, ranked above countries with a higher per capita income, such as Austria, France, the United States and Britain, in part because of a more equitable distribution of wealth and higher relative investment in education and public health.
Some of the wealthier countries' lower rankings were a result of less spending on social programs and "dog-eat-dog" competition in jobs that led to adults spending less time with their children and heightened alienation among peers, one of the report's authors, Jonathan Bradshaw, said at a televised news conference in London.
"The findings that we got today are a consequence of long-term underinvestment in children," said Bradshaw, who is also professor of social policy at York University in England.
The study acknowledges that its methodology has flaws, and it's just a first cut at looking at this issues:
The study, for example, measured relative affluence by asking whether a family owned a vehicle, a computer, whether children had their own bedroom, and how often the family traveled on holidays. Some answers might depend on the quality of public transit and real estate prices, making the average child in New York's affluent areas seem equal to one in a less-developed country because of the constraints of city living.
The authors wrote that as the first attempt at a multidimensional overview of children's well-being in developed countries, the survey was "a work in progress in need of improved definitions and better data."
But they said it was nonetheless a first step in providing benchmarks for comparing countries and highlighting poor performance in otherwise rich nations.
But isn't there something very Catholic about this attempt to measure well-being not just according to the more-easily quantified financial measures of wealth, but also by the measures such as the equities of wealth distribution, social investment in children, and -- most interesting -- actual time spent relating to children?
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
From Garner's Usage Tip of the Day:
Quotation of the Day: "What are the good and useful themes? Even, often, the great themes? First, I should list the unsolvable problem of evil. . . . Second, man against himself, which is, au fond, the root of all problems: the mature, the emotionally secure, the psychologically healthy don't need the compensatory behavior mechanisms of prejudice and hate. Third, man's relationship with God, which is but a projection of his relationship with himself, greatly idealized. Fourth, the eternal warfare of the sexes, with its fitful, biologically induced truces." Frank Yerby, "How and Why I Write the Costume Novel," in Writing in America 125, 136 (John Fischer & Robert B. Silvers eds., 1960).
The first three seem to be the main themes of MOJ discourse. The fourth is perhaps an appropriate topic for reflection today, in particular. Happy Valentine's Day!
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