When Paul
Blanshard published in 1949 his attack on the Catholic Churchunder the
title, American Freedom and Catholic Power, John Dewey praisedthe
book, saying, “Mr. Blanshard has done a difficult and necessary pieceof
work with exemplary scholarship, good judgment, and tact.” Thisrecommendation
appears on the jacket of the book and is signed, “JohnDewey, Dean of
American Philosophers.” Dewey's influence may be seenthroughout
Blanshard’s work. His two chapters against American Catholicschools
conclude with the following quotation from Dewey, arguing againstany
government support for Catholic education: “It is essential that thisbasic
issue be seen for what it is — namely, as the encouragement of apowerful
reactionary world organization in the most vital realm ofdemocratic
life, with the resulting promulgation of principles inimical todemocracy.”
Excerpt from Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J., John
Dewey — Radical Social Educator.
Dewey, the
leading philosophical influence on American secular liberalism, was a
determined critic of traditional religion. He claimed that there was “nothing
left worth preserving in the notions of unseen powers, controlling human
destiny to which obedience, reverence and worship are due.” Unlike the scientific method, which is “open and
public” and based on “continued and rigorous inquiry,”
religion is “a body of definite beliefs that need only to be taught and learned
as true.” Religion, he said, is based on the
“servile acceptance of imposed dogma.” This did not
mean that Dewey and his followers were skeptical toward all moral teaching, or
that the government should remain “neutral” toward conflicting points of view.
To the contrary, Dewey contended that the public schools have an “ethical
responsibility” to inculcate social values derived from scientific and
democratic principles.
Michael W.
McConnell, Religious Freedom at a Crossroads, 59 U. Chi. L. Rev. 115, 123 (1992)
(footnote omitted)
In his ruminations on the recent election results, Ben Stein includes these thoughts:
"It is the mark of a
genuinely great campaign that Romney and Ryan did not back down one inch on the
main moral issue of our time, the mass murders of the unborn. This is the
primary evil of our era and it may take years to make things better, but as the
saying goes, that Dr. King used to say, “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong
forever on the throne, yet that scaffold holds the future and beyond that dark
enclosure standeth God, within the shadow, keeping watch upon his own”
(paraphrased for this occasion). You can call it anything you want, but
abortion is a wicked evil and we will never be what we should be as long as we
treat is as a right. No one has the right to choose to kill an innocent human
being."
UPDATE: David Buysse points out that Dr. King's favored quote is drawn from "The Present Crisis" (c. 1844) by James Russell Lowell:
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
Humility is seldom sought and usually imposed. Once humbled, however, the wise person learns
from the experience and become more open to alternatives that previously may
have been dismissed.
As they woke up this morning, Republicans obviously had many
reasons to be humble.
Despite a struggling economy, rising debt, persistently high
unemployment, and most Americans thinking the country is going in the wrong
direction, Governor Romney managed to lose the election by a rather large margin
in the Electoral College.
With more than twice as many Democratic-held Senate seats
being on the ballot, many in “Red” states, Republicans should have taken
control of the Senate this year. Instead,
with weak candidates, a poor message, and repeated mis-steps, Republicans have
actually gone backwards and lost a couple of seats.
While it may not be so obvious today, and appears thus far to
have eluded most pundits and celebrating Democrats, Democrats have many
reasons to be humble as well.
Yes, President Barack Obama won a second term as President,
and he did so against the head winds of a weak recovery, high unemployment, and
an approval rating that always hovered below 50 percent.
But it was hardly a convincing win.
President Obama’s biggest fans pretend that he is a
transformational figure, a Democratic version of Ronald Reagan. But President Reagan was re-elected in a
landslide in which he carried 49 states and won by an increased popular vote margin
of more than 18 points.
In sharp contrast, President Obama’s popular vote margin
shrank from 7 points in 2008 to 2 points in 2012. If the present popular vote margin stands
(with nearly 99 percent of the precincts reporting nationwide), President Obama
will pass the 50 percent dividing line by only a few tenths of a percent. He becomes only the second President in
history to be re-elected with a smaller margin of the vote than in his first
election — the last one being Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
Moreover, while President Obama stays in the White House, Republicans
remain in firm control of the House of Representatives. After a “wave” election, such as we saw in
2010, things tend to move back toward balance in the next election cycle, with
representatives who had seized swing districts being removed. Instead, with several congressional races
still too-close-to-call, projections are that Republicans will have lost fewer
than half a dozen seats and thereby maintain a healthy majority in the House.
And Republicans increased their hold on state houses
yesterday. Nearly two-thirds of the
Governors are now Republicans. Then-Senator-now-President
Obama being the exception that proves the rule, the farm team for presidential candidates in the last half-century has been the state executives, not federal legislators. [Note: Sentence revised in light of comments.]
Thus, Republicans now have a leg up on the executive training for the
next generation of presidential candidates.
So both of our major political parties have ample reasons
for humility today.
In light of that, could there be a bipartisan moment? Is there any prospect during a second Obama
term for both Democrats and Republicans to come together and accomplish
something important for the common good?
William Galston of the Brookings Institute is skeptical,
saying that he doesn’t “think there is anything in this election that has
pointed a way forward.” I beg to differ — or at least to hope. I think we have a genuine
chance — to be sure, only a chance — for meaningful bipartisan progress on such
things as entitlement reform (and deficit reduction) and immigration reform. Below the break, I
further explain my cautious optimism.
We hardly need speculate as to the candidates' positions or imaginatively attribute sentiments or attitudes about the dignity of unborn human life. By his choice of a last message to send to voters in Virginia, President Obama offers his unequivocal view on Roe v. Wade and the pro-life cause and his own clear understanding of where Governor Romney stands:
Pro-life activists are blowing the whistle on President Barack Obama’s
claim during an appearance on the “Tonight Show” this week that Planned
Parenthood provides mammograms.
. . .
“Last night on the Jay Leno program, President Obama once again misled
the public and in particular women, continuing his false advertising
campaign that the nation’s top abortion provider, Planned Parenthood,
provides mammograms at its clinics,” added Lila Rose, president of the
pro-life Live Action, in a statement. “The fact is that while Planned
Parenthood, which receives almost half a billion dollars a year in
taxpayer funds, does over 300,000 abortions a year at its clinics, it
does zero mammograms. According to the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, no Planned Parenthood clinic in the country is
authorized to perform mammograms under the federal Mammogram Quality
Standards Act.”
We post on the Mirror of Justice about the vital need to restore expertise in football refereeing to the National Football League. And, within 48 hours, the lockout is ended and the veteran officials are returning to the field. Our prayers were answered, and our boycott was heard.
While the negotiators are understandably close-mouthed about what exactly went on behind closed doors after the Monday night fiasco, I am confident that the arguments about natural law, the common good, and labor solidarity raised here on the Mirror of Justice weighed heavily on each of the participants and compelled them to come together in a fair agreement.
In any event, it sure turned out to be a very short boycott.
If only the other subjects of our posts could be resolved so neatly and quickly!
From a very early age, children exhibit an innate
appreciation for equity and fairness. As
a rather powerful illustration of the natural law, a young child without
training or prompting will protest violations of the demands of simple justice:
“It’s not fair.”
To build character in our children and to strengthen their
sense of fair play, we often play games.
We teach our children that games have rules, which should be applied
evenly to all, with wisdom and discretion, and with competence. Those who play by the rules should be
rewarded. Those who do not should be
penalized.
The appeal of, some might say the obsession for, sports in
our society reflects not merely a desire for recreation and release (which are
legitimate human desires) but an internal need to see good human traits
modeled. Against the sometimes random
imposition of harms and garnishing of goods, sports at its ideal elevates
quality above mediocrity, hard work above laziness, skill above chance, and
even right above wrong.
As with any human endeavor, our ideals fall short. But if a sports activity fails to comport
with expectations of fair play on a regular basis, the pattern of inequity
undermines our sense of integrity. When
the rules are not faithfully applied, we are discouraged. If the rules are constantly flouted – or misapplied
– we are demoralized. Indeed, if those
who apply the rules lack proficiency and the outcome of the contest then is
determined by incompetent application, the effect over time can undermine
character, because the worst of human traits are then modeled.
Such is becoming the case in the National Football League. As the owners’ lockout of the officials
stretches past the third week of the regular season, the incidents of obvious
failures in application of the rules and embarrassingly poor calls continue to multiply.
Last night, the game between the Green Bay Packers and the
Seattle Seahawks was decided on a bad call by the officials that will be
remembered in football history. But not
only was the game-deciding call a travesty, it followed close on the heels of
two other questionable rulings by the officials that set the stage for the
closing errors.
Let
me offer a brief summary for those who missed the game (the closing minutes of
which are available on the embedded videos):
As the Seahawks began the final offensive possession of the game, the
Packers led by a score of 12 to 7. The
game abruptly came to what effectively should have been an early end when the
Packers intercepted a pass. But the
turn-over was then turned-over by a penalty on the Packers for roughing the
passer, a dubious call as the Packer defender was in pursuit and already in the
air to make a tackle on the Seahawk quarterback when the ball was thrown (and
the tackle was clean and certainly not a hard hit).
A few plays later came an egregious example of offensive
pass interference. As the Packer
defender turned to catch the thrown pass, the Seahawk receiver grabbed his
shoulder pad and jerked him away. But
the resulting call by the official went in the opposite direction –- defensive
pass interference. This gave the
Seahawks a first down and keeping their hopes alive.
The last play of the game, as time ran out, was the classic
“Hail Mary” pass by Seahawk quarterback Russell Wilson into the end zone. Golden Tate, committed offensive pass
interference by pushing Green Bay cornerback Sam Shields to the ground. Even the NFL’s later announcement defending
the officials acknowledged that this should have resulted in a penalty for
offensive pass interference and ended the game with a Packer victory. But the errors didn’t stop there.
Packer safety M.D. Jennings leaped up the highest, caught
the ball with both hands, and pulled it to his chest –- an obvious interception,
which also should have ended the game with a Packer victory. After Jennings had caught it and taken full
possession, Tate managed to insert a single hand on to the ball as they
wrestled to the ground. One official
came to the pile-up and signaled interception/time expired, but another
official signaled a touchdown. After review,
the later call was endorsed.
File this under “Some Things Speak for
Themselves”:
Republican Party National
Platform: The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life
Faithful to the “self-evident” truths
enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human
life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to
life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the
Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth
Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public
revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or
advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion
coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family
values and the sanctity of innocent human life. We oppose the non-consensual
withholding or withdrawal of care or treatment, including food and water, from
people with disabilities, including newborns, as well as the elderly and
infirm, just as we oppose active and passive euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Republican leadership has led the effort
to prohibit the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion and permitted
States to extend health care coverage to children before birth. We urge
Congress to strengthen the Born Alive Infant Protection Act by enacting
appropriate civil and criminal penalties on healthcare providers who fail to
provide treatment and care to an infant who survives an abortion, including
early induction delivery where the death of the infant is intended. We call for
legislation to ban sex-selective abortions -– gender discrimination in its most
lethal form -– and to protect from abortion unborn children who are capable of
feeling pain; and we applaud U.S. House Republicans for leading the effort to
protect the lives of pain-capable unborn children in the District of Columbia.
We call for a ban on the use of body parts from aborted fetuses for research.
We support and applaud adult stem cell research to develop lifesaving
therapies, and we oppose the killing of embryos for their stem cells. We oppose
federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
We also salute the many States that have
passed laws for informed consent, mandatory waiting periods prior to an
abortion, and health-protective clinic regulation. We seek to protect young
girls from exploitation through a parental consent requirement; and we affirm
our moral obligation to assist, rather than penalize, women challenged by an
unplanned pregnancy. We salute those who provide them with counseling and
adoption alternatives and empower them to choose life, and we take comfort in
the tremendous increase in adoptions that has followed Republican legislative
initiatives.
Democratic Party National
Platform: Protecting A Woman’s Right to Choose.
The Democratic Party strongly and
unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions
regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of
ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that
right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family,
her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to
get in the way. We also recognize that health care and education help reduce
the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for
abortions. We strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a
child by providing affordable health care and ensuring the availability of and
access to programs that help women during pregnancy and after the birth of a
child, including caring adoption programs.
I am just so dog-gone proud of the choice of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to be the vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket.
Yes, I am proud as a fellow Cheesehead, having grown up in Wisconsin (and, like Rep. Ryan, a diehard fan of the Green Bay Packers).
And, yes, I am proud as a Catholic to see (at long last) a Catholic on a major party ticket who respects human life and is not a cheerleader for the abortion industry. And, given that stewardship is one of our responsibilities as Catholics, I am pleased to see a political leader who rightly is worried about the suffocating federal debt that we are leaving to the next generation.
Most importantly, I am proud as a Republican to see Governor Romney make a principled choice of a man of substance, rather based on political calculations about appealing to this or that constituency or carrying this or that battleground state.
With Rep. Ryan on the Republican ticket, perhaps we can now have an adult conversation for a change in American politics. I appreciate that others on the Mirror of Justice and elsewhere, not least including the American Catholic bishops, have serious reservations about many of his specific budgetary proposals. Whatever one’s views about Rep. Ryan's proposals, this nomination now reframes the presidential election into one about ideas.
Paul Ryan has long been one of the few leaders in public life with the courage to address the tough budgetary and entitlement issues and not try to duck them until after the next election or pass them on to the next generation. The greatest threat our nation faces is the growing national debt, with deficits quadrupled during President Obama's first year in office, with a first-ever downgrading of the nation’s credit rating, with a failure of the Democratic Senate to even consider a budget, and with the national debt consuming ever larger portions of the national economy. Without a concerted and immediate reduction in the national debt, we will be guilty of strangling opportunity for the next generation.
Democratic politicians avoid the national debt issue by pretending that President Obama’s ongoing record federal spending levels -– now reaching the levels of World War II –- can be sustained by raising taxes on the wealthy. The richest are already paying most of the federal income tax -– the top ten percent of earners pay 70 percent of federal income taxes -- while 45 percent of Americans pay no income tax at all. And the United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.
And Republican politicians avoid the national debt issue by pretending that cutting wasteful spending will balance the budget, without the need to make any difficult decisions. But reductions in discretionary spending alone will make only a small dent, unless we give simultaneous attention to the massive size of entitlements,
Rep. Paul Ryan has been the grown-up in the room and forthrightly tells us that we cannot reduce the bloated national debt and put the economy back on an even keel without entitlement reform. Democrats can always be expected to demagogue Social Security and Medicare reform, saying that Republicans want to push grandma’s wheel-chair off the cliff (as in the infamous liberal campaign ad from last year) (here). In the face of real and anticipated Democratic attacks, Republicans then lose their nerve and fail to tackle the issue when they are in power. And so it goes.
Whether you agree with every aspect of it or not, Paul Ryan’s budget doesn’t pull the punches or dodge the problem. He forthrightly calls for entitlement reform that would preserve Medicare as it is for all those 55 and over and institute the necessary reforms to save it for the future.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center (here), even under his own assumptions, President Obama’s budget would do little to lower the national debt over the next ten years (and the BPC assumes the most plausible scenario is that the debt will rise upward toward 90 percent of GDP). Rep. Ryan’s budget would stabilize the national debt at about 60 percent of GDP within ten years. (And, contrary to my colleague, Rob Vischer’s post, Ryan has not proposed “massive tax cuts for the wealthy,” but rather has proposed reducing tax rates while simultaneously simplifying the complicated tax code and closing loopholes for the wealthy. We can debate whether the economic assumptions for revenue neutrality are correct, but the design is not to reduce revenues or shift tax burdens from the wealthy to the middle-class.)
Are Ryan’s proposal the right ones or the best ones? Well, that’s the debate. But it’s a debate we should have. Let’s not slide past the most important economic issues for yet another election cycle and kick the can down the road once more. By choosing Ryan, Governor Romney has asked for a great national discussion about our national debt. It’s about time!
A few days ago, I began a short series of posts on why scholarly work and scholarly impact are especially important to Catholic legal education, which I conclude with this post today.
The first point, made here, was that a meaningfully Catholic law school must be an intellectually engaged law school, which is not possible without a faculty also engaged in the quintessential intellectual activity of scholarly research and writing.
My second point, made here, was that through scholarly excellence and law school scholarly prominence, we witness to society the vibrancy of intellectual discourse by persons of faith and counter the anti-intellectual stereotype often attaching to religiously-affiliated law schools.
My third point today is that, as Catholic Christians, we have are called to share the Gospel, both directly and indirectly. The central role of scholarly research in our academic vocation is affirmed by no less a Catholic authority than Pope John Paul II the apostolic constitution for Catholic universities, Ex Code Ecclesiae: “The basic mission of a University is a continuous quest for truth through its research, and the preservation and communication of knowledge for the good of society.”
For some of us on law school faculties that directive means writing directly on Catholic legal theory and applying Christian-grounded principles to the legal and social issues of the day. For all of us it means conducting the search for the truth with integrity and dedication. The search for the truth is hard work -– and for Catholic academics that hard work requires scholarly engagement.
Turning again to the words of Ex Corde, for a Catholic university “included among its research activities, therefore, will be a study of serious contemporary problems in areas such as the dignity of human life, the promotion of justice for all, the quality of personal and family life, the protection of nature, the search for peace and political stability, a more just sharing in the world's resources, and a new economic and political order that will better serve the human community at a national and international level. University research will seek to discover the roots and causes of the serious problems of our time, paying special attention to their ethical and religious dimensions.”
Through our work –- through the excellent quality, regular production, and integrity of our work (comporting with the standards of our discipline) –- we may have a significant influence on the development of the law and of the legal culture. As my former Dean Tom Mengler emphasized (here), one of the most compelling needs for Catholics in this present age involves “the integration of Catholic social and intellectual thought into the mainstream of American legal education.”
And on the call to challenge and inform the culture, Ex Corde speaks as well to the vital importance of scholarly work: “By its very nature, a University develops culture through its research, helps to transmit the local culture to each succeeding generation through its teaching, and assists cultural activities through its educational services. It is open to all human experience and is ready to dialogue with and learn from any culture. A Catholic University shares in this, offering the rich experience of the Church's own culture. In addition, a Catholic University, aware that human culture is open to Revelation and transcendence, is also a primary and privileged place for a fruitful dialogue between the Gospel and culture.”
While our teaching in Catholic law schools advances these goal, we cannot fully participate as academics in the search for the turth without also contributing to the scholarly literature, which reaches audiences well beyond the walls of our own institution and which is preserved in medium so that we can affect the scholarly discourse long after we have departed.
What a tremendous privilege – and a grave responsibility.
