Joe Knippenberg, in addition to citing an interesting letter sent by House GOP leaders to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops insisting that the immigration bill has been misconstrued, responds to criticism of his earlier comments on Cardinal Mahony:
I probably should have softened the language a bit, arguing that the threat of civil disobedience runs the risk of turning natural law into a cover for all sorts of defiance of positive law. I stand behind the thrust of my analysis and would continue to raise the following question. Does Cardinal Mahony think it should be a crime actually to assist people to cross the border illegally, regardless of one’s motives in so doing? It’s one thing to help out immigrants, no questions asked, who present themselves at your doorstep. It’s another altogether to help them into the country.
This is an intriguing question, and perhaps other MoJ-ers have pondered this already. Certainly the Church recognizes a nation's legitimate interest in maintaining its borders, but under what circumstances would the Church call to help others enter a country illegally? I assume that there are such circumstances, but that they would not be common. The immigrant's needs, the situation in the country of origin in relation to those needs, and the stated rationale for the new country's legal exclusion of the immigrant would all be important factors. In the end, the question will be, what degree of deference do we owe to a nation's own weighing of these factors in crafting their immigration and asylum laws? How unjust must the laws be before their violation is morally warranted or compelled, and what level of injustice must be present in a particular case to justify defiance of laws that function well overall?
Rob
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Allow me to put in another quick plug for last weekend's prudential judgment conference at St. Thomas. My highlights included John McGreevy's historical overview of the evolving relationship between Catholicism and the political realm on the question of abortion, explaining how Catholic intellectual life has taken on a more sectarian tone, and why fact-based inquiries on issues like abortion rates, gay adoption, and civil unions have less space in the current "hothouse climate." My favorite panel (other than my own, of course) was an interdisciplinary exploration of economic justice. The economic perspective was provided by St. John's prof Charles Clark, the philosophical perspective by Fordham prof Joseph Koterski, S.J., and the political perspective by three-term U.S. Senator David Durenberger. One of the more interesting exchanges was Clark's explanation, in response to an audience member's question, as to why he evaluated the effectiveness of welfare reform by looking at poverty rates, rather than employment rates. The choice of statistical measure, of course, is a function of prudential judgment, and Clark explained that John Paul II's emphasis on the subjective dimension of work should not be translated into a fixation on maximizing the rate of employment in paid positions.
Rob
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Joe Knippenberg criticizes Cardinal Mahony's public pronouncements on the immigration debate, particularly his call for civil disobedience:
He’s right that, literally, the bill against which he was reacting . . . makes it a crime to “assist, encourage, direct, or induce” a person to enter or remain in the U.S., “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact” that he or she lacks legal status. While directed principally at smugglers, it could conceivably be enforced against those who provide social services to illegal aliens. But Mahony has to know that this prospect is unlikely in the extreme. Any prosecutor who brought criminal charges against religious charity workers would have to have a death wish. The Cardinal’s flamboyant gesture can serve only to dramatize and publicize his distaste for this particular piece of legislation, a move of which any ordinary political actor would be proud. Look at all the attention he and his cause received!
But a Cardinal ought not to regard himself as an ordinary political actor. Mahony ought to have thought about two other consequences of his gesture. First, by implicitly comparing the Church to those at whom the law is really directed, he gives the brazenly cynical traffickers in humanity moral and political cover. They’re simply humanitarians, they can say, just like their brothers and sisters in the Church. Second, by loudly encouraging defiance of this law, he’s undermining respect for law altogether, as well as for the regular process by which law is made. If in fact he and his colleagues recognize the rights and responsibilities of sovereign nations, then they should be careful to acknowledge and uphold the legitimate role of legislators, as well as the duty of citizens to obey the law.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to deny that there is a higher—or natural—law, in the light of which ordinary legislation can be judged. I’m quarreling with Cardinal Mahony’s cheap tactical deployment of it, and the casual defiance of law that it inevitably encourages.
Rob
I was recently interviewed by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about a struggle over the admission of a transgendered individual to a government-funded adult day care program run by a Lutheran (Missouri Synod) church. The story has two particularly curious aspects: why would the individual choose a rural, conservative church when apparently there were other options much closer to her home? Second, why would a Christian church exclude a transgendered individual from the reach of its ministry? In any event, the article (registration may be req'd) was today's front-page news.
Rob
Monday, April 10, 2006
If anyone finds themselves in the Baltimore area tomorrow hankering for a good religion-in-public-schools discussion, stop by this symposium at the University of Maryland Law School, where I'll be presenting a paper titled "The Sanctity of Conscience in an Age of School Choice: Grounds for Skepticism." An excerpt:
Teacher autonomy, and to a lesser extent student autonomy, are inconsistent with the level of school autonomy that is necessary to cultivate a system of public education that is accountable to its constituents and does not shirk from the task of value inculcation. Under a one-size-fits-all approach to public education, conscience provides a voice to individuals who do not fit. In the currently unfolding era where public education does not presume that one size will suffice, the role of conscience is considerably less clear.
For those who can't make the trek to Baltimore, I hope to post the paper and invite feedback in the next couple of weeks.
Rob
Friday, April 7, 2006
Sean Murphy, administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project, has responded to my call for a market-based approach to the pharmacist controversy. Drawing on the work of Jacques Maritain, he concludes that the state should intervene in the market not to protect access (as I suggest), but to protect conscience:
Professor Vischer is correct to insist that problems of access to drugs should be left to the marketplace (which is competent to manage the distribution of goods and services), while acknowledging the duty of the state to intervene when and to the extent necessary to ensure that minimal human needs are met. However, deprivation of freedom of conscience is a fundamental injustice, and justice is the primary concern of the state. Thus, the state acts completely within its proper sphere of competence when it intervenes to the extent necessary to protect the dignity of the human person by enacting protection of conscience legislation.
Rob
Thursday, April 6, 2006
The Christian Science Monitor examines a booming new industry in India: surrogate motherhood. Christianity Today weighs in:
This mechanical approach to procreation has been widely repudiated, and for good reason. Its logical extension would be the use of animal wombs (which could become possible), the use of an "artificial" womb (on which there has been work for many years), and indeed gestation in a man. The radical separation of biological parenting and gestation—like all efforts to sunder the genetic, birth, and social mothers of a child, three roles that should be in one woman—strikes deep into the Christian understanding of procreation.
An additional source of concern is the "exploitation inherent in the economic disparities, which are grossly underlined in the case of outsourcing to a developing country with many, many poor women," especially because "renting a womb" amounts to a "prostitution of the human body" akin to selling organs and tissues.
Rob
