Apparently this is an open question at The Washington Post. Get Religion offers its usual helpful analysis.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Can a sane person oppose SSM?
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Kansas Bishops' Statement on Health Care Reform
Bishops Naumann and Finn issued a statement on health care reform last week. I am not by any stretch an expert on health care reform, but I think there is much to talk about in the document. For now, three quick points/questions:
First, I always think it's interesting to see how our worldviews, including our religious worldviews, are shaped by our surrounding culture, and I suspect that the central concerns of these bishops -- defending personal responsibility against centralization and bureaucracy -- might look strikingly American to bishops in other parts of the world.
Second, was end-of-life counseling "mandated" by any of the reform proposals, as the bishops assert, or was it just covered by the proposals?
Third, according to the bishops, "the right to health care" is merely "the right to acquire the means of procuring [health care] for one's self and family." If that explanation is accurate, what substance is left to the right? Who is denying anyone the right to acquire the means of procuring health care? Is this formulation a prudent concession to economic reality or a hollowing-out of the Catholic social tradition?
Stith on Abortion and the Causal Link
Our own Richard Stith has an excellent essay in the current First Things titled "Her Choice, Her Problem." An excerpt:
Throughout human history, children have been the consequence of natural sexual relations between men and women. Both sexes knew they were equally responsible for their children, and society had somehow to facilitate their upbringing. Even the advent of birth control did not fundamentally change this dynamic, for all forms of contraception are fallible.
Elective abortion changes everything. Abortion absolutely prevents the birth of a child. A woman’s choice for or against abortion breaks the causal link between conception and birth. It matters little what or who caused conception or whether the male insisted on having unprotected intercourse. It is she alone who finally decides whether the child comes into the world. She is the responsible one. For the first time in history, the father and the doctor and the health-insurance actuary can point a finger at her as the person who allowed an inconvenient human being to come into the world.
Richard earlier posted an earlier version of the essay, but the First Things version is now available here.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Inazu on the Right of Association
If you're interested in Catholic legal theory, any day should be a good day to talk about the right of association, but Labor Day seems like an especially fitting occasion, and John Inazu has posted a nice conversation-starter in the form of his new paper, The Strange Origins of the Constitutional Right of Association. Here's the abstract:
Although much has been written about the freedom of association and its ongoing importance to the American experiment, much recent scholarship mistakenly relies on a truncated history that begins Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984), the case that divided constitutional association into intimate and expressive components and introduced the paradigm that continues today. Roberts’s doctrinal framework has been rightly criticized. But neither the right of association nor all of its doctrinal problems start with Roberts. The Court’s foray into the constitutional right of association began a generation earlier, in its 1958 decision, NAACP v. Alabama. This Article offers a new look at the Court’s initial approach to the right of association. I highlight three factors that influenced the shaping of association: (1) the conflation of rampant anti-communist sentiment with the rise of the civil rights movement (a political factor); (2) infighting on the Court over the proper way to ground the right of association in the Constitution and the relationship between association and assembly (a jurisprudential factor); and (3) the pluralist political theory of mid-twentieth century liberalism that emphasized the importance of consensus, balance, and stability (a theoretical factor). I suggest how these factors shaped a right of association with an ambiguous constitutional anchor and an ill-defined doctrinal framework. Despite its shortcomings, the right of association quickly took hold in legal and political discourse and handed the Court a resource that has arguably become more responsive to political pressure than constitutional principle. Part of that whimsicality stems from the Court’s reformulation of the right of association in Roberts. But Roberts cannot bear all of the blame. If today’s freedom of association is less than we might like it to be, the roots of its problems may lie in the political, jurisprudential, and theoretical factors present at its inception.
John is a very promising new scholar in this area; he has contributed to my own understanding of the field, particularly of the Jaycees case.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Demonization and Hysteria as Par for the Course
Facilitating the common good requires the cultivation of a political culture in which people of opposing views can engage each other in good faith and with open minds. It took a few years for anti-Bush hysteria to work itself up into such a frenzy so as to preclude much of our national capacity to have a reasoned conversation (Theocrat! Facist! Try Him For War Crimes!); it has only taken a few months for anti-Obama hysteria to reach the same level (Un-American! Socialist! Don't Let Him Speak to Our Children!). Especially for the type of conversation that is key to pursuing the political priorities contemplated by the Church's non-partisan vision of social justice, these are not encouraging developments.
The self-created life story
This New York Times article is meant to capture the human cost of the economic downturn. It also captures the human cost of a worldview in which a person is free to rewrite their own story line as a free-floating independent agent. As the profiled subject puts it in explaining his decision to divorce his wife of 25 years, "Life is short -- you got to do what makes you happy."
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Tattooing and cannibalism
I'm reading Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) for the first time, and my favorite quote thus far is one I'll throw out there for my friends and family members (and perhaps MoJers?) who have tattoos:
Gambling is the vice of the savage. True civilization ought to outgrow it, as it has outgrown tattooing and cannibalism.
(For a more optimistic view of the tattoo craze, read R.R. Reno's thoughtful essay from last year.)
Monday, August 31, 2009
Conscience at Fordham
A while back I blogged about a lovely evening I spent at Fordham engaged in a rollicking (and eyebrow-raising) debate about conscience with Marc Stern, Nadine Strossen, and Doug Kmiec. A couple of readers had asked if a transcript of the event is available, and I now see that one has been posted here.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
What does the Christian belief in human dignity owe to Kant?
In his essay, Made in the Image of God: The Christian View of Human Dignity and Poltical Order, Colgate poli sci prof Robert Kraynak writes that Kantian philosophy
seems to match most closely the contemporary Christian concern for the rights and dignity of the person and to account most precisely for the terminology of personhood and personality that Christians now employ. The change can be seen in the new understanding of the image of God, which no longer reflects the traditional hierarchy of being and perfection with its sometimes harsh implications of judging according to created, natural, conventional, and ecclesiastical hierarchies. Instead, the image of God now means the infinite worth of every human being as a ‘person’ – and as a moral agent claiming respect as a matter of right and capable of determining his or her own identity. Consequently, the Imago Dei now includes a moral imperative to establish democratic political structures where the rights of persons are fully recognized and where all share equally in the goods of the world and indeed in the blessings of the afterlife . . . . If this account is accurate, then contemporary Christianity is essentially Kantian Christianity.
So is Kant driving the contemporary Christian understanding of human dignity? If so, does that represent a potentially dangerous corruption of Christianity, or a welcome example of the fruits of Christianity's engagement with the surrounding culture? E.g., was Maritain's genius his ability to mesh Thomism with the language and insights of Kant? Thoughts?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Is it possible to protect our kids and human dignity?
The story of Jaycee Dougard is heart-breaking and, especially for parents of young children, a source of intense anxiety. It also will shape the debate over how we treat convicted sex offenders. This morning I saw one law enforcement expert appear on television to demand a "one strike and you're out" policy, presumably meaning that one-time sex offenders should be locked up forever. As a parent, I sympathize with the "lock 'em up forever" sentiment, and undoubtedly there is something troubling about a convicted kidnapper/rapist being freed to do his despicable acts again. At the same time, I'm not sure how a commitment to human dignity comports with such a draconian measure. And the increasingly popular chemical castration option may be even worse. On that front, be sure to check out John Stinneford's excellent article. There are many layers to this story, even beyond criminal law -- e.g., what does it say about our society that three girls could be raised in a back yard for many years without anyone noticing?
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