Monday, December 19, 2005
The Evangelical Outpost is hosting an on-line symposium exploring the perspective(s) offered by Christian ethics on the claim that torture is morally permissible under certain circumstances. You can read my contribution to the symposium here. I'd welcome feedback from co-bloggers and readers.
Rob
Saturday, December 17, 2005
It appears that Archbishop Levada will be asked at his deposition whether the doctrine of "mental reservation" allows a Catholic to lie under oath. From what I can tell (and I'm no expert), the Church teaches that lying is always wrong, but in limited circumstances the requirements of justice trump the requirements of veracity. Can the requirements of justice ever trump the obligation of truth-telling in court? If not, is it only because an oath was taken, or because the law's expectation of truth-telling enhances the ordinary obligation of truth-telling?
(HT: Open Book)
Rob
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Jack Balkin has posted his article, "Deconstruction's Legal Career," in which he attempts to set the record straight on what legal deconstruction is and is not:
First, legal deconstruction does not assert that legal texts have no meaning or that their meanings are indecipherable. Rather, it argues that texts are overflowing with meanings that point in different directions and emerge over time. Second, one deconstructs conceptual oppositions not to show that legal concepts have no boundaries, but that their boundaries are fluid and appear differently as the conceptual opposition is placed into new interpretive contexts. Legal deconstruction asserts that legal distinctions are nested oppositions - conceptual oppositions whose terms bear a relation of mutual dependence and differentiation; this complicated relationship is revealed as interpretive contexts change. Ideological drift, in which concepts change their political valance as they are repeatedly invoked at different points in history, is a special case of this phenomenon. Third, instead of asserting that legal doctrine is radically indeterminate, legal deconstruction suggests that social construction places ideological constraints on legal decisionmaking and helps produce the sense that some arguments are better than others. Finally, far from denying the existence of fundamental human values, legal deconstruction presupposes a transcendent value of justice which law attempts to express but always fails fully to articulate.
I've never thought of our project as deconstructionist, but as described, isn't this what we're trying to do in exploring points of critical engagement between American law and the moral anthropology embodied in the Catholic intellectual tradition?
Rob
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Brian Leiter has posted John Martin Fischer's overview of the current debate(s) within philosophy about free will and moral responsibility. This seems to be the sort of extralegal academic conversation that should be central to the Catholic legal theory project.
Rob
Friday, December 9, 2005
On MoJ we've often discussed the tendency of American society to elevate the nuclear family over broader conceptions of community. I don't mean to belabor the story of megachurches closing for Christmas Sunday, but I can't resist after reading the New York Times coverage. First, the granddaddy of all evangelical megachurches, Willow Creek outside Chicago, seems to be reveling in its ability to think outside the box:
Staff members at Willow Creek said they had had few complaints from members about the church closing on Christmas. Said the Rev. Mark Ashton, whose title is pastor of spiritual discovery: "We've always been a church that's been on the edge of innovation. We've been willing to try and experiment, so this is another one of those innovations."
Second, even the churches who have simply cut back on the number of services offered on Christmas are offering some perplexing explanations:
"We're encouraging our members to do a family worship," Bishop Long said. "They could wake up and read Scripture and pray and sometimes sing a song, and go over the true meaning of what Christmas is, before opening up their gifts. It keeps them together and not running off to get dressed up to go off to church."
His church offers streaming video of the Sunday service, and Bishop Long said he expected a spike in viewers this Christmas. "They have an option if they want to join their family around the computer and worship with us," he said.
So the church is just a convenient collection of worshipping family units? If the technology allows it, there's no reason why one worshipping family needs to go to the hassle of assembling with other worshipping families. I guess someone should tell the Christians in China that their lives would be a lot easier if they started being more "innovative."
Rob
Thursday, December 8, 2005
New York magazine has the story of a loose network of women in New York who house out-of-state women who have come for late-term abortions (HT: Open Book). The story is really disturbing, and reflects a pro-choice mentality that not only should abortion be legal, but entirely disconnected from any moral calculus, much less condemnation. Those who house the women admit to struggling with the obvious question, "Why didn't you have an abortion earlier?," but can't look for an answer because, in the words of one host:
“I had to tell myself, ‘Every abortion is the choice of the woman having the abortion. This is about somebody else’s body. It’s not President Bush’s body, but it’s not mine, either,’ ” she says. “Being pro-choice is a morality that takes you morally out of the picture.”
Rob
Beliefnet has a fascinating interview with Richard Dawkins. An excerpt:
You criticize intelligent design, saying that "the theistic answer"--pointing to God as designer--"is deeply unsatisfying"--presumably you mean on a logical, scientific level.
Yes, because it doesn’t explain where the designer comes from. If they’re going to emphasize the statistical improbability of biological organs—"these are so complicated, how could they have evolved?"--well, if they’re so complicated, how could they possibly have been designed? Because the designer would have to be even more complicated.
Now I'm sure I lack half the brain power of Richard Dawkins, but this seems to be a distinctly unsatisfactory answer. Of course the designer would have to be more complicated. And of course we cannot explain where the designer comes from. The notion of God, it seems to me, flows from our conviction that there must be an entity that stands over everything, above, beyond, and prior to it all. Nature is not nearly as satisfying as the ultimate source of everything because nature cannot not stand above and beyond itself; if the first appearance of the natural universe has a cause (and how could it not?), it makes much more sense (to me) to identify it as a supernatural designing force beyond comprehension than as a random natural occurrence beyond comprehension.
Another excerpt:
Obviously, a lot of people find the theistic answer satisfying on another level. What do you see as the problem with that level?
What other level?
At whatever level where people say the idea of God is very satisfying.
Well, of course it is. Wouldn’t it be lovely to believe in an imaginary friend who listens to your thoughts, listens to your prayers, comforts you, consoles you, gives you life after death, can give you advice? Of course it’s satisfying, if you can believe it. But who wants to believe a lie? . . . .
How would you feel if your daughter became religious in the future?
Well, that would be her decision and obviously she’s her own person, she’s free to do whatever she likes. I think she’s much too intelligent to do that, but that’s her decision.
This exchange gives some grounding to Gregg Easterbrook's charge that:
Dawkins complains . . . that so many people believe things about science that are off the wall--for example, that early humans co-existed with dinosaurs--because their science educations are poor. He’ll get no argument from me on that. But I suspect one reason so many Americans have a poor understanding of evolutionary theory is that overbearing figures such as Dawkins talk down to them and act contemptuous of their religious beliefs. So people respond--perhaps quite rationally--by screening out the views of scientists whose motives they distrust. In this regard, it is telling that polls show Americans overwhelmingly accept many findings of modern research, such as the theories of relativity and of cosmic expansion. The scientists who favor these ideas generally aren’t in the habit of mocking peoples’ faiths, and so they are believed by the general public. If Dawkins’s professional goal is “public understanding of science,” he is a flop, seemingly trying his best to make worse what he is supposed to fix.
Rob
Wednesday, December 7, 2005
On the topic of allowing the surrounding culture to define what it means to be the body of Christ, here is reason #312 why I do not attend a "seeker-sensitive" megachurch.
Rob
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Rick asks whether Kant's "persons are ends, not means" dictum really works as a basis for opposing cloning without the assistance of religious arguments. I agree that a religious worldview provides a much richer foundation for opposing cloning, but for those who do not accept the premises of a religious worldview, Kant may be the only game in town. And if the only viable choices in the public discourse over cloning are a religious worldview and a well-intentioned utilitarianism, I'm afraid that the latter may come out on top more often than not. I'd welcome Kantian secularists to the conversation with open arms.
This leads to a broader question regarding the benefit we gain from establishing the shallowness of non-religious foundations of human rights. (And thus may best be directed at Michael Perry and others who have thought more deeply than I have about this area.) I see the obvious benefit if the religious voices are being deprived of a place at the table, but absent that, don't we want to ensure that the table is open to as many foundational premises as possible, religious and non-religious alike, provided that they are advocating for views that embody Kant's dictum?
Rob
UPDATE: Oglethorpe University politics prof Joe Knippenberg has sent me his fascinating essay, "Liberalism and Religion: The Case of Kant," in which he argues that:
Kant’s [work suggests] that if liberalism is to avoid overweening and prideful “Prometheanism,” there must be some sort of insistence upon human finitude. Human beings who are unaware of their fallibility and finitude might place too much stock in their own efforts to transform nature and human nature. In so doing, they might (in Kantian terms) be tempted to regard others merely as means to their own ends. Thus if liberalism is not to give way to what was once called the totalitarian temptation, it must pay heed in theory and in practice to this human fallibility and finitude. Kant’s treatment of religion is . . .a finely tuned attempt both to insist upon human finitude and to avoid the despair and lassitude that might accompany that recognition.
If anyone would like a copy of the essay, please contact me and I'll forward it to you.
Thursday, December 1, 2005
Jonathan Watson joins our ongoing conversation on homosexual priests:
There is one thought on MOJ which has shown itself in bits and pieces, but which is never outrightly discussed, and that is the question of this document being both a warning to seminaries and a reaction-by-confirmation to the scandals involving homosexual priests. This is the elephant in the closet to which MOJ commentators haven't spoken.
Father Richard John Neuhaus writes: "[T]he Church pastorally cares and prays for people who struggle with disordered desires. But she should not jeopardize the mission of the priesthood by ordaining those who are thought likely to succumb to such desires." Nor, I suspect, those who hold that such desires are normal and normative (supporting a "gay" culture). It should also be noted that gay culture in the majority of the world is not supportive of monogamy in any real way, and so supporting that culture would be to promote promoscuity.
Canon 1029 of the Code of Canon Law states on the ordination of priests that: "Only those are to be promoted to orders who, in the prudent judgment of their own bishop or of the competent major superior, all things considered, have integral faith, are moved by the right intention, have the requisite knowledge, possess a good reputation, and are endowed with integral morals and proven virtues and the other physical and psychic qualities in keeping with the order to be received." I suspect that under physical and psychic qualities falls not only homosexuality, but also sexual addictions, and other things which the Church considers to be disorders.
I remember vaguely the journal articles and discussions spurred by selective fertilization by blind and deaf individuals seeking to have a blind or deaf child. The danger with normalizing that which is not normal is that the individuals who do need help will not receive it. The Vatican, clearly in the minority in this world, believes that supporting a gay culture is trying to do precisely that - normalizing something inherently unnatural. Doing so might prevent homosexuals from receiving treatment or assistance otherwise needed.
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