Over at the wonderful Get Religion blog, Mollie Ziegler comments on recent news coverage of churches' struggles over what to do with child molesters in their congregations. Here's the opening:
It seems to me that the only crime for which there is no forgiveness in our society is child molestation. It is certainly horrible to assault a helpless child, and I’m glad that the practice is shunned. . . . But when I consider the shunning from the perspective of the child molester, I wonder how they’re able to even try to get better. Their picture, name and address are publicly available for all people to investigate. They have limitations on where they can live. They live in a society that tends to think improvement in this area is impossible, or only possible through castration and complete abstention from all contact with children.
Congregations do not turn a blind eye to child molesters in their midst, given the obvious safety concerns. One of the churches profiled is the United Church of Christ, which prides itself on inclusiveness. In this case, though, "the sex molesters are not only considered sinful by some congregants — but perpetually and possibly irretrievably so."
I recommend reading Patrick Brennan's article in the current Journal of Catholic Legal Studies titled Harmonizing Plural Societies. Of particular interest to me is his criticism of my past explications of subsidiarity. I have written that:
If we claim that subsidiarity renders localization in a particular context valid only to the extent that the local body’s approach contributes to the common good, as defined by the truth claims of the moral anthropology [of the Church], we have emptied subsidiarity of its real-world meaning. If localization’s validity is measured against a standard derived from a contested vision of the good, subsidiarity becomes a simple prop, justifying whatever vision of the good happens to hold sway in the political and legal spheres.
Patrick counters that:
As understood in the tradition of Catholic social thought subsidiarity is not a principle that justifies subversion of claims on behalf of universal truths about the good for human and group persons. Magisterial Catholic social thought affirms plural societies and their respective authorities, and it does this on the ground that each possesses a munus proprium, a share in the divine rule, which, as the ontological principle subsidiarity attests, is irreducibly its own in concert with other genuine societies. . . . Any genuine authority is a share in divine providence, and the legitimacy of its exercise depends upon its being ordered to the good of individuals, group persons, and the common good.
I'm in no position to quibble with Patrick's reading of the Magisterium, but his criticism prompts one comment and two questions.
First, I don't read subsidiarity to justify the subversion of any truth claims; rather, I read subsidiarity to justify a degree of hesitation before imposing truth claims on unwilling subcommunities. Maybe this is a function of prudence, not subsidiarity, but I guess I have a hard time separating subsidiarity in operation from judgments grounded in prudence.
Second, if subsidiarity only contemplates the devolution of authority to the extent that the authority is exercised in keeping with the Church's understanding of the common good, of what practical relevance is subsidiarity? To me, subsidiarity is helpful because it calls for local empowerment, even if the local bodies refuse to abide by the majority's norms. Catholic social thought aims to bring the majority's norms in line with the moral anthropology, but if we succeed in that endeavor, then is subsidiarity no longer a pressing concern? In other words, we'll invoke subsidiarity to justify excusing ourselves from conforming to unjust societal norms; but once we render the societal norms just, subsidiarity is no longer a justification for subcommunities who disagree with our norms?
Third, if the Second Vatican Council was right on the question of religious liberty -- not just as a matter of prudence, but as a substantive vision of the good -- why shouldn't the good also encompass the freedom of subcommunities to pursue their own erroneous conceptions of the moral life? For example, I believe that Massachusetts is wrong, based in large part on the principle of subsidiarity, to force Catholic Charities to provide adoption services to same-sex couples. If the policy was reversed and Catholic Charities was allowed once again to discriminate, should the Church turn around and seek to ban a secular non-state agency from including same-sex couples in their services? Assume, for the sake of the argument, that the only evidence of "harm" resulting from same-sex adoption is that children will grow up less likely to believe that homosexuality is immoral. In other words, assume that there is no evidence that the children's well-being is negatively impacted other than well-being as defined in the Church's own (contested) moral claims. Just as religious liberty facilitates "harm" -- it allows children to be raised without any exposure to the Gospel, for example -- why shouldn't subsidiarity facilitate "harm" -- allowing subcommunities to pursue lives in defiance of the Church's moral teaching? To make a rambling inquiry (hopefully) more concise: why does Truth limit subsidiarity's operation, but not religious liberty's operation?
When James Dobson talks, it makes me think that maybe John Rawls' "public reason" requirement is not such a bad idea. Dobson is skeptical of Fred Thompson's possible presidential run because:
"Everyone knows he's conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for," Dobson said of Thompson. "[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, took issue with Dobson's characterization of the former Tennessee senator. "Thompson is indeed a Christian," he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ."
In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson's claim. He said that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless "has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith." "We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians," Schneeberger added.
In the Weekly Standard, David Blankenhorn has an article on same-sex marriage based on his new book, The Future of Marriage. He argues that:
When it comes to the health of marriage as an institution and the legal status of same-sex unions, there is much to be gained from giving up the search for causation and studying some recurring patterns in the data . . . . It turns out that certain clusters of beliefs about and attitudes toward marriage consistently correlate with certain institutional arrangements. The correlations crop up in a large number of countries and recur in data drawn from different surveys of opinion.
Dale Carpenter responds here and here. Though Carpenter describes Blankenhorn's book as "deeply wrong," he also calls it "probably the best single book yet written opposing gay marriage."
Last week Michael P. posted an op-ed by Susan Jacoby arguing that religious believers too often mistake disagreement for discrimination. Jonathan Watson responds here. On the Washington Post's website, Jacoby has a post exploring a similar theme, but focused more particularly on the "phony issue" of anti-Catholicism. An excerpt:
The accusation of anti-Catholic discrimination, like the labeling of all critics of Israel as anti-Semitic, is a cover for what is essentially a dispute between conservatives and liberals (both within and outside the Catholic Church). I wouldn't vote for a Catholic like [Bill] Donohue, but then I wouldn't vote for an atheist, a Jew, a Muslim, a Protestant or (what was it?) a believer in "Tibetan Buddhist deities" who shared Donohue's views.
A Catholic wit, looking back on the certitudes of American Catholicism in the fifties, once remarked that "it was the only THE church." Not any more. And never, thankfully, in America. Catholicism, like every other religion, enjoys no immunity from secular criticism in our nation.
Christians have rightly expressed skepticism toward prenatal screening, particularly since it is often used to provide information to justify abortions. But what if the screening is used to remedy disorders, and what if the "disorder" in question is homosexuality? Leading evangelical Albert Mohler suggested that such screening would be a good thing. Now (former) Ave Maria University provost Fr. Joseph Fessio says:
“Same-sex activity is considered disordered. If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb, and a way of treating them that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science.”
Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, recently asserted that “Public reason is not possible in a culture that is dominated by the ‘dictatorship of relativism,' for a very simple reason: Relativism is a dogma and therefore it a priori rejects rational argumentation, even toward itself. . . . Relativism [denies] a capability of reason to argue truth . . . [and so] prevents the use of public reason.” Villanova law prof Robert Miller shows here and here why this assertion is wrong. Read his whole analysis, but here's a taste:
Crepaldi, like many Catholic thinkers, tends to lump together under the rubric of “relativism” several quite different moral doctrines, all of which differ from Catholic teaching and have become prominent in the twentieth century, but none of which (other than perhaps the emotivism of the logical positivists) involves a wholesale rejection of rational argumentation on normative issues.
German authorities have taken a girl into state custody after her parents removed her from public school. It's seen as either another example of Germany's war against homeschoolers or as a prudent step taken for the child's own well-being, or both. Here is a collection of news stories on the controversy.
I've posted a new paper titled Solidarity, Subsidiarity, and the Consumerist Impetus of American Law. This is my contribution to a forthcoming book put together by my colleague Teresa Collett and MoJ-er Michael Scaperlanda titled Recovering Self-Evident Truths: Catholic Perspectives on American Law. In the paper, I try to connect solidarity and subsidiarity in a way that offers a response to the recent push to empower consumers and marginalize the moral agency of providers.
Perhaps I'm posting this now because I really need reader feedback; perhaps I'm posting this now because I really need to push Mark's dropping of the "F-bomb" off the main page before my dear grandmother figures out how to make use of the internet connection at her nursing home. In any event, here is an excerpt:
Catholic social teaching speaks truth to the power of the liberal state by bearing witness to solidarity’s vision of the human person, realized within subsidiarity’s framework for the ordering of society. In the context of a free market economy, the practice of solidarity requires that service providers honor the dignity of the consumer, which is not coextensive with the autonomy of the consumer. Solidarity, then, can be realized only to the extent that service providers are empowered to meet needs in ways that diverge from, or even defy, the overarching norms of the collective—that is, solidarity is not possible absent a legal system that accepts the premise of subsidiarity.
