“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Matt. 16:16-18. From the beginning, the matter of authority has been central to the Catholic understanding of the Church that Christ founded. So many doctrines, sacraments, teachings, and forms of worship are fundamental to our Catholic communion of believers – the Eucharist, the Communion of the Saints, Scripture, Redemption Through the Christ’s Death on the Cross, the Confession of Sins, Natural Law, the Sanctity of Human Life. No less essential is the Catholic understanding of Christ’s founding of the Church through the Apostolic Succession.
Christ Himself founded the Church by giving the Deposit of the Faith to the Apostles, led by Peter. In the second century, St. Irenaeus – who had studied under Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, who in turn had been a disciple of the Apostle John – wrote:
True knowledge is . . . the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world, and the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place, and has come even unto us, being guarded and preserved.
In the Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church (Christus Dominus), the Second Vatican Council confirmed the teaching charism of the bishops, who are to proclaim “the Gospel of Christ to men” (¶ 12.1). The role of the bishops is to present Church doctrine “in a manner that will respond to the difficulties and questions by which people are especially burdened and troubled,” and “to converse with the human society in which it lives” (¶ 13). As part of this Christ-given mission, our bishops have a responsibility to urge public authority to uphold the teachings of the natural law:
Assuredly, while sacred pastors devote themselves to the spiritual care of their flock, they also in fact have regard for their social and civil progress and prosperity. According to the nature of their office and as behooves bishops, they collaborate actively with public authorities for this purpose and advocate obedience to just laws and reverence for legitimately constituted authorities (¶ 19).
Thus, on the Mirror of Justice blog devoted to Catholic teaching as it relates to law and public policy, our ongoing discussion of Church authority is most appropriate, tightly tethered to our animating purpose, and distinctly Catholic in nature. I have enjoyed and learned much from our continuing exploration of the source and nature of Church authority, the scope of that authority, the extent to which and circumstances under which that authority is binding on Catholic believers, and the content of authoritative teaching by our bishops who are joined in unity with Peter as the Bishop of Rome.
We might also learn something by considering a counter-example, that is, a community of religious people who have boldly set aside authority and have been willing to radically reconsider traditional Christian teachings. As it happens, we need not look very far in this country to find an empirical test case and in a church structure that in many other ways resembles the Catholic Church, being led by priests and bishops, being centered on the Eucharist, etc. I am speaking of the Episcopal Church in the United States (in which I was baptized, confirmed, raised, and spent most of my adult life).
As a starting point and set of examples, consider the list of Catholic Church teachings and disciplines that Eduardo Peñalver listed as stumbling blocks for many Catholics: Married priests? The Episcopalians have had them for centuries. Women priests? The Episcopal Church authorized ordination of women some 30 years ago. Contraception? That hasn’t been much of an issue among Episcopalians since at least the sixties. Homosexuality? Many Episcopalians have resisted liberalization of sexual morality in that denomination, but the traditionalists increasingly are seceding from the national church structure. Church blessings for homosexual unions are available in many Episcopal parishes and are strongly supported by the national Episcopal Church leadership. What of other social issues, most notably abortion? There too the Episcopal Church has jettisoned traditional Christian teaching and has even joined the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
And so, just how is the ever-so-modern Episcopal Church in the United States doing? Beginning with the numbers, the Episcopal Church has been a continuing story of dramatic decline for decades. Between 1965 and 1995, the Episcopal Church lost nearly one-third of its members. (Earle E. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church 507 (1996).) And in recent years the hemorrhaging appears to be accelerating. In the past decade, the Episcopal Church has lost 10 percent of its parishioners, with a 5 percent loss coming in 2006-2007 alone. As but one poignant numerical comparison, the current Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church was formerly bishop of Nevada, an entire diocese that now has fewer members (about 4700) than many Catholic parishes.
In sum, setting aside traditional Christian moral and social teaching to appeal to a new generation does not appear to have been a recipe for growth and vibrancy in the Episcopal Church. As George Will commented in a column last fall, “as the [Episcopal] church’s doctrines have become more elastic, the church has contracted.”
But, of course, numbers tell only part of the story. The Kingdom of God is not governed by referendum, much less by the opinions of that small group of God’s people who are located in the middle latitudes of the North American continent. To be sure, numbers of religious adherents are one indication of whether people searching for meaning have found life-giving water in that community of believers. So measured, those denominations that have detached themselves from traditional Christian teachings have faltered badly. The most dynamic and growing Christian communities in this country, both Catholic and Protestant, are those that stand clearly for traditional Christian principles (regardless of popular trends) and those which challenge and make moral demands on their followers (rather than taking an “I’m okay, you’re okay” stance).
Still, we all rightly care even more about the Gospel of Christ, that is, the foundational beliefs of our Christian faith. As one of my Catholic friends says to get to the foundation, how do we respond to the Empty Tomb? In this respect, as our readers presumably do and should know, we members of Mirror of Justice, however diverse our views on many matters, are joined together in affirming the central doctrinal truths of the Catholic Church as set out in the Nicene Creed.
Turning to such first things, the sobering experience in the Episcopal Church may again be instructive for us. While emphasizing that many followers of Christ and some of the most faithful Christians that I know continue in the Episcopal tradition, the national Episcopal Church’s deliberate movement away from traditional Christian teaching on moral/social/cultural matters has often been accompanied by a similar departure on basic Christian doctrine. We regularly hear today of Episcopal priests and even Episcopal bishops who question whether or deny that Jesus was/is the Son of God, who reject the salvation through Christ’s death on the cross, who deny the authority of Scripture, who accept no Resurrection and see no Empty Tomb. For a growing segment of this denomination, and the segment that appears to be in the ascendancy, the Episcopal Church may be entering something of a post-Christian phase.
By noting what I see as an unfortunate model of an alternative approach to the question of authority in the Church, I do not mean to suggest that every Catholic must slavishly accept every jot and tittle of the non-infallible Magisterium, lest we find tomorrow that the Immaculate Conception itself has come under attack. The non-infallible Magisterium is, well, non-infallible. Faithful Catholics in full communion with the Church may, with due respect and careful deliberation, come to a different conclusion. The Mirror of Justice rightly does not have a litmus test for blogging members that tests our perfect obedience to every aspect of the Magisterium. Indeed, I suspect that nearly all of us have our doubts or questions about one or another element of that non-infallible teaching. But that is a very different thing from defining oneself by dissent from Church teaching.
Instead, I submit that the primary mission of the Mirror of Justice is for each of us to challenge others and to be challenged by Church teaching and to be constantly encouraged to ask how our concepts of law, society, culture, and politics square with what the Catholic Church calls upon us to believe. These challenges and the questions that follow may be different for political conservatives than for political liberals, for economists than for lawyers, for working men and women than for academics, etc. But we benefit from being so challenged. And we benefit as well when we join in common cause on the Mirror of Justice to find ways to reimagine solutions to problems in a manner that transcends conventional political or cultural labels.
As fallen human beings, we will find ourselves thinking from time to time that our personal concept of law, society, culture, or politics is preferable to what the Magisterium appears to be teaching on that point. When we encounter such a conflict, we usually should regard it as an occasion to reconsider our temporal and secular position in the light of Church teaching. After all, the Deposit of the Faith was entrusted by Christ to the Apostles, not to the lawyers or the professors or the politicians or, for that matter, the theologians. No Shadow Magisterium exists within the universities or the courthouses or the market-places. When we face a challenge to our personal beliefs about life, law, and politics, we should ask whether our discomfort with Church teaching is attributable to our own selfish or ideological propensities, to our desire to be well-liked by our acquaintances, or to our temptation to conform to the spirit of the age.
And, yes, on singular occasions, after searching our consciences and ensuring that our consciences are well-formed after diligent exploration and consideration of Church teaching through the centuries, we may conclude that a particular part of the Church’s non-infallible teaching is mistaken and cannot command our assent. In so reaching that conclusion, if we do so after careful study and with due humility, we do not thereby fall out of communion with the Catholic Church. At the same time, we must be careful not thereby to deny that the teaching charism of the Holy Spirit was given to the Apostolic Succession. And I would argue that we should not hone an identity around points of departure. I suggest that the greater and more valuable part of our mission as Catholic law professors and on the Mirror of Justice is to integrate Catholic teaching with our vocation to social justice through law.
Greg Sisk
Monday, January 26, 2009
In on-line news/editorials, we find two sharply contrasting perspectives on President Obama’s issuance of a presidential order lifting President Bush’s prohibition on use of United States public funds for abortion counseling and abortion “services” by family planning organizations outside of the United States.
Peter Beinart highlights President Obama’s choice to issue the order on the day after, rather than on the very day of, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, as designed to remove cultural issues from the political debate (as though divorcing culture from public discourse is either desirable or possible). Beinart quotes Obama as saying, with respect to abortion, that “[i]t’s time that we end the politicization of this issue.” (Not explained is how Obama’s approval of the use of the taxes paid by millions of Americans to pay for aborting unborn children is an effective means of “ending the politicization of this issue.”)
E.J. Dionne Jr. reports that there was “intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by Obama’s religious supporters, who asked him to put off for at least a day his executive order ending the ban on federal funds for groups involved in abortions overseas.” Dionne sees the “symbolism of the delay” as suggesting that “Obama intends to continue to poach constituencies that were once reliably Republican.” (Are people of faith now reduced to measuring progress on sanctity of unborn human life by whether new government policies promoting abortion take effect on a Friday rather than on a Thursday?)
The Vatican, however, has not been won over by Obama’s symbolic one-day delay in approving public funding for abortions overseas. Both the Times of London (here) and Time magazine (here) report that the Vatican moved quickly to condemn the action while noting that it contradicts Obama’s campaign promises to work to reduce the number of abortions. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who leads the Pontifical Academy for Life, described the presidential action as reflecting “the arrogance of those who, having power, think they can decide between life and death.” “If this is one of the first acts of President Obama,” Archbishop Fisichella said, “then with all due respect it seems to me that we are heading toward disappointment even more quickly than we thought.”
Greg Sisk
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Each inauguration of a new presidential administration is a time of new beginnings and an opportunity to commemorate the endurance of our democratic form of government. For the forty-fourth time in American history, the Executive power vested by Article II of the Constitution has been passed from one person to another. By my tally, those transitions have more often than not been across party lines (24 times). And yet, power has been transferred peacefully (not including assassinations of course) and by the rule of law, never by force of arms or dictatorial edicts. No matter how contentious our political campaigns may be or how strongly people take opposite sides on points of political divide, our commitment to the rule of law and constitutional governance runs deep.
On this day of new beginnings, most Americans are investing great hope in our new President, Barack Obama. To be sure, some of us harbor trepidations about what may come. But today let us focus on our hopes. Whatever may be the overall grade that we might give to those who have inhabited the White House in recent decades, surely we all can agree that each of them left office with some accomplishments for which they deserve praise. As but one example, even many of his fiercest critics have singled out President George W. Bush’s work to stem the plague of AIDS in Africa. When President Obama ends his term in 2013 (whether or not he is elected to a second term), for what do you think he will justly be praised?
So let me invite the members and readers of the Mirror of Justice, whatever their political preferences and however they may have cast their ballots in November, to share their most optimistic prognostications. What one or two things do you believe most likely to be accomplished by President Obama that will advance the common good as understood within the general parameters of Catholic teaching. Please suggest something on which there would be widespread consensus among faithful Catholics that the result indeed would qualify as a positive accomplishment. I do not mean to exclude suggestions on which there may be disagreement about the effectiveness of the measures likely to be adopted by President Obama to address a particular problem. Our ongoing debate about means will certainly continue. Rather, I ask only that we look today for common ground on the ends that we all as faithful Catholics would celebrate.
I’ll start the ball rolling. With respect to accomplishments and positive changes by the Obama Administration for which I am most hopeful, I am cautiously optimistic about new thinking on criminal justice that reflects a greater appreciation for the human dignity of those who are accused of crimes, particularly non-violent and first-time offenders. For decades, politicians of both parties have enthusiastically supported ever more draconian prison terms for every type of criminal trespass, thereby pounding their chests in front of their constituents to demonstrate that they are tough on crime. As a result, our prisons are filled with young men and women convicted of relatively minor drug and other offenses, while their families are wounded, their futures are damaged, and the public pays huge costs while not being made any safer.
President Obama appears to “get it” on this question, although it admittedly may require expenditure of political capital for him to do something about it. In my view, he shouldn’t be overly worried about the political reaction. During the closing days of the presidential campaign, Republicans trotted out Rudy Giuliani to argue that Barack Obama was weak on crime because he purportedly “opposes mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, drug dealers, and murderers.”
It is worth repeating again what then-Senator Obama actually said in 2004:
I think it’s time we also took a hard look at the wisdom of locking up some first-time, non-violent drug users for decades. Someone once said that ‘…long minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and-or heal people from their disease.’ That someone was George W. Bush—six years ago. I don’t say this very often, but I agree with the president. The difference is, he hasn’t done anything about it.
As I wrote back during the heat of the campaign, “Senator Obama rightly recognizes that our society is suffering from its unwise and cruel policy of imposing lengthy minimum sentences on non-violent and low-level drug offenders. And Senator Obama is quite right that the Bush Administration, to its shame, has done little or nothing to change the situation, instead falling back into the same old, unthinking approach of promoting rigid and harsh sentences without full consideration of the nature of the offense or the offender.” I hope now-President Obama and his appointees in the Department of Justice do bring change and new thinking about criminal prosecution and sentencing policies in the next four years.
Greg Sisk
Friday, January 16, 2009
Pertinent to our recent thread regarding inaugural prayers and religious diversity, Maggie Gallagher offers these tongue-in-check reflections in a column today on Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson's plans for his inaugural-related prayer:
Episcopalian Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who will pray at President-elect Obama's request on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, has been reading through inaugural prayers in history. He is "horrified" at how "specifically and aggressively Christian they were," according to The New York Times.
. . .
Bishop Robinson may have inadvertently relieved some folks' minds by making it clear that his prayer "will not be a Christian prayer and I won't be quoting Scripture or anything like that."
Robinson is ruminating on alternatives such as praying to "the God of our many understandings," a language he said he learned during his stint in alcohol rehab.
Perhaps in the future, . . . presidential prayers can be re-addressed: To Whom It May Concern.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The University of St. Thomas Law School is announcing the establishment of its Prolife Advocacy Center on January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Professor Teresa Collett will serve as Director of the Center and Professor Michael Paulsen will serve as Chair of the Board of Advisors to the Center. The center grows out of our commitment to reverse Roe v. Wade, insure legal protection for the lives of all innocent human beings, and stop the international spread of the jurisprudence of death.
At a luncheon in the Law School at 12:30 on January 22 to institute the new center, Professors Collett and Paulsen will speak, along with our Mirror of Justice colleague, Professor Elizabeth Schiltz.
Later that same day, one of the first events of the Center will be a cosponsored lecture by Professor Charles Rice of Notre Dame on how Roe v. Wade has contributed to the death of the founders’ vision of the American republic, a view he outlined in his most recent book, “The Winning Side, Why the Culture of Death is Dying.” Dr. Rice’s expertise is described on his webpage (here). The lecture will be from 3:30 to 4:30 in the Moot Court Room of the Law School, with a reception following. If you’re in the Twin Cities next week, please join us.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
In 1984, when Richard John Neuhaus published The Naked Public Square, people of faith inspired by religious principles were in grave danger of being turned away from the table of public intellectual discourse. A secularist “hold on mainstream thinking,” as Michael McConnell would later describe it, was firmly in place in the elite sectors of American society. To be sure, Americans as a whole remained a people of deep and broad-based religious faith. But the elites who dominate the worlds of academia, entertainment, news media, and government (other than elected government officials) were disproportionately non-believers or persons of marginal religious devotion.
As sociologist Peter Berger observed in the 1960s, if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden is the most secular, then the United States had become a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. And many of the “Swedes” were anything but open to invocation of religious principles as having any relevance to questions of public importance. Richard Rorty would bluntly argue that it should be regarded as “bad taste to bring religion into discussions of public policy.” In so dismissing religious faith, Rorty was simply being more candid in expressing what most others in academic and intellectual circles thought.
In his ground-breaking book, Father Neuhaus drew attention to the increasing intolerance of the intellectual elite, saying that they were acting “to strip the public square of religious opinion that does not accord with their opinion.” He argued that “we have in recent decades systematically excluded from policy consideration the operative values of the American people, values that are overwhelmingly grounded in religious belief.” He contended that the idea of America as a secular society was not only “demonstrably false” but “exceedingly dangerous” because it would lead to a decline in civic virtue.
Continue reading
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Obama watchers have been forwarding to me hat-tips and expressions of growing dismay about the various appointments to the new administration, particularly for what these choices say about the assurances we had received from Catholic supporters of the Obama campaign that the new administration would not be as unfriendly as past Democratic candidates and officials toward the claims of the unborn. A new era, we were told, was about to dawn. We need not fear major setbacks in human rights for the unborn -- or so we were promised.
Unfortunately, the record thus far confirms that NARAL and Planned Parenthood have been the farm teams for the Obama administration's domestic policy personnel choices. And openness to pro-life views appears to have ended on election day.
As examples of Obama appointments to domestic policy positions:
* Dawn Johnsen as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice (which establishes legal policy for the administration). She was the Legal Director for NARAL and part of ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. (This is the central post in the Department of Justice held by Doug Kmiec during the Reagan Administration and by Antonin Scalia during the Ford Administration.)
* Eric Holder as Attorney General. He has been a longtime supporter of "abortion rights."
* Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff. He had a 100 percent NARAL voting record as a member of Congress and a reputation as an aggressive pro-choice politician.
* Melody Barnes as Chair of the Domestic Policy Council. She has been a member of the boards of directors for both Planned Parenthood and Emily's List.
* Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health & Human Services. He is a long-time "pro-choice" Catholic and recent fundraiser for NARAL.
* Ellen Moran as White House Director of Communications. She is the current executive director of Emily's List.
* Harold Varmus, Co-Chair of White House Council of Advisors on Science and Technology . He was Director of the National Institutes of Health when it published a report calling for funding of all forms of embryo research, including the creation of embryos solely for the sake of research and work on embryos up to 21 days of development.
No word yet on appointment of anyone with pro-life views to any meaningful policy position in the forthcoming Obama administration. And also no word that any of the prominent Catholic supporters of the Obama campaign has had any positive influence on appointments in a less pro-abortion direction or has expressed disappointment about the growing trend. Heavy sigh.
Greg Sisk
