Archbishop Charles Chaput has responded to Senator Joe Biden's recent comments about abortion.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Chaput on Biden on Abortion
Monday, September 8, 2008
Should Bristol Palin be celebrated (or stigmatized)?
Today's local paper carried a story about the impact of the Bristol Palin media coverage on other teenage mothers. As with the coverage of Jamie Lynn Spears, this cultural phenomenon could send questionable signals on the wisdom of teenage pregnancy and motherhood to an audience whose behavior is especially susceptible to being shaped by media. Palin and Spears have the economic and family resources to support themselves and their babies; many (most?) teenagers who become pregnant do not. The article notes:
Today, fewer than 1 percent of babies born to never-married U.S. women, including teens, are placed for adoption, according to the CDC. That's a sea change from the 1950s to early 1970s, when most pregnant girls mysteriously disappeared to give birth at homes for unwed mothers, their babies adopted out in closed adoptions.
I don't consider the birth of a child ever to be a "punishment," but I think it's beyond dispute that teenage motherhood is, in most cases, far from ideal for the mother's or the child's development. So here's my question: Is the loss of stigma attached to teenage pregnancy an entirely positive development? If not, are there ways that cultural norms (and law?) can stigmatize teenage sex without stigmatizing the results of sex -- i.e., discourage teenage sex while supporting and encouraging pregnant teenagers' decisions to give birth? And if cultural norms suggest that the stigmatization of teenage sex is an unrealistic goal, should Catholic legal theorists oppose more narrowly focused efforts to stigmatize unprotected teenage sex? When it comes to teenage mothers, should we be making more of a concerted effort to encourage adoption, not just instead of abortion, but also instead of keeping the baby? Does social stigma play a potentially valuable role in any of this?
Thursday, September 4, 2008
The UN First?
A reader wonders whether I pulled a bait-and-switch on Rick with my complaint about McCain's "Country First" slogan:
In your reply to [Rick's] post, you state "[B]ut I think slogans like these encourage our tendency to put "American" interests over human interests." . . . But isn't this argument a type of bait and switch on your part (and I don't mean to imply any malice)? Your original point was that the slogan was wrong because it put "country" ahead of "God." At least that is how I, and it looks like Rick Garnett, read it.
Your response brings up a different question: whether or not the system of independant, sovereign nations is the best method yet devised to advance and protect human rights. As opposed to what seems to be your preferred choice of an international bureaucracy. Those are far different issues. Indeed, I think it is playing to the anti-UN crowd. But I don't see that as problematic from a Catholic/Christian standpoint. I think its a political problem over which reasonable people can disagree. A commitment to the rights of man does not require that one decommit from national sovereignty. But again, I think that's a different issue from the one initially raised.
This is a good point, so let me clarify. I do not suggest that "Country First" should be replaced by "The UN First." Our commitments to our Creator must come first. But most of us will not be asked explicitly to place Country over God -- we're not often given the choice between bowing to the earthly ruler or facing the fiery furnace. More commonly, our commitments to God are lived out through our recognition that our fellow humans were created in God's image, and it is that recognition that is dangerously clouded by making an idol out of Country (or money, or academic prestige, or the UN). In some contexts, we should support international institutions because the nation-state system does not adequately protect human dignity. In other contexts, international institutions may pose the greater threat to human dignity. If we take subsidiarity seriously, I would submit, Christians should take a consequentialist view of national sovereignty -- is it an effective vehicle by which to protect human dignity and facilitate human flourishing? In many (most?) cases, the answer is yes. But not in all cases, and "Country First" obfuscates that fact. In its more extreme versions, it completely obliterates our commitment to human dignity by placing a greater value on American lives than non-American lives. (I do not accuse McCain of that more extreme version, but I do accuse Mitt Romney of it, and his speech last night solidified my view.)
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Why "Country First" is a dangerous slogan
I'm not so sure that the McCain campaign's embrace of the "Country First" slogan is harmless. I agree with Rick that few Americans will actually put "country" above family, faith, or friends in their day-to-day prioritizing, but I think slogans like these encourage our tendency to put "American" interests over human interests. "Country First" could have been the chant when President Bush justified the Iraq war by proclaiming, "I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein." (Instead, we opted for the certain destruction of thousands of Iraqi lives caused by a full-scale invasion.) Or when Bush explained that we should not join the International Criminal Court because we should not "join a foreign court" where "our people could be prosecuted." Or when Mitt Romney said that we should double the size of Guantanamo because we don't want detainees to have access to lawyers like they would have on our soil. More broadly, "Country First" can easily give rise to an American exceptionalism grounded in triumphalism, rather than humility, and to the belittlement of global concerns. (In the interests of bipartisanship, I'll note that President Bush's initiatives in Africa buck this trend, and the Democrats' economic rhetoric on globalization exacerbates this trend.)
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
"Country First"
I just finished watching tonight's GOP convention speeches, and I noticed that they were punctuated by plenty of "Country First" chants. I confess to cringing a bit. How should we, as Catholics, respond to the McCain campaign's embrace of "Country First" as a campaign slogan? I could understand, and fully support, "Country Before Party" or "Country is Really Important" or "Patriotism is, On Balance, a Good Thing" or "One-World Government Has a Significant Downside," and though I'm not a professional campaign strategist, I can see how those more nuanced slogans don't quite work on a t-shirt. But should followers of Christ ever get behind, much less find themselves chanting, "Country First?"
Human nature and the tattoo culture
I knew that the whole tattoo craze had really gone mainstream this summer when my 18 year-old niece was taken to get a Christian-themed tattoo on her back by her staunchly Republican grandmother. R.R. Reno has a particularly thoughtful reflection on what our deepening love for tattoos says about human nature, the conformity of individualism, and the striving for permanence.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
What is the nature of human dignity?
I'm becoming more intrigued by the possibility of articulating some widely accessible and legally relevant content within the concept of human dignity. In that vein, I was struck by this passage from David Luban's new book, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity:
"I suspect that human dignity is not a metaphysical property of individual humans, but rather a property of relationships between humans -- between, so to speak, the dignifier and the dignified. To put it another way, 'human dignity' designates a way of being human, not a property of being human."
This reminded me of the following passage from Gaudium et spes:
"God did not create man as a solitary, for from the beginning 'male and female he created them.' Their companionship produces the primary form of interpersonal communion. For by his innermost nature man is a social being, and unless he relates himself to others he can neither live nor develop his potential."
Still, does (or should) Catholic legal theory be open to approaching human dignity as a "way of being human," rather than as a "property of being human?"
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Challenging the "ordinary religion of the law school classroom"
Responding to a lot of blawgosphere debate about the law school classroom's potential to function as a collaborative community, my colleague Jerry Organ criticizes the mixed signals we send to students about competition versus collaboration, and he suggests that a better way is possible.
Should Catholic law schools "game the system?"
The Wall Street Journal has a front-page story about the debate over whether US News should start counting the credentials of part-time students in creating its law school rankings. A number of Catholic law schools are among those that place lower-LSAT/GPA students in part-time programs, then admit them to the regular program in the second year (when they no longer count for US News purposes). Some deans argue that changing the rankings will push schools to stop admitting students who might turn out to be capable lawyers. Former Toledo dean Phillip Closius, whose school skyrocketed from the fourth to the second tier, is candid: "U.S. News is not a moral code, it's a set of seriously flawed rules of a magazine, and I follow the rules...without hiding anything," he says. Larry Ribstein wonders how this is different from the businesses that "game the system" in terms of their accounting practices. Former Houston dean Nancy Rapoport recounts that managing the rankings is like “trying to meet analysts' quarterly expectations by massaging the numbers." John Steele notes that this is the most powerful kind of teaching by law schools: teaching by example.
Does a Catholic law school have a responsibility to its current students to be as highly ranked as possible, within the limits of the US News rules? (If so, does a Catholic-owned business have a responsibility to its investors to maximize profit within the limits of the law?) Should Catholic law schools be held to a higher standard when it comes to "cooking the books?" [Inescapably fallen human nature alert: I like to think that I favor the US News change because it eliminates an unfair way to avoid the spirit of the reporting rules, but perhaps it's because my current institution does not have a part-time program and thus stands to benefit from the change.]
Monday, August 25, 2008
Abortion Prosecution
John Bogart has posted his paper, Crime and Moral Condemnation. Here's the abstract:
An examination of the enforcement of California's anti-abortion statute over a 50 year period in Sacramento, focusing on particular prosecutions suggests that abortion was not treated as a serious moral wrong. The erratic pattern of enforcement and sentencing suggests prosecution under the feticide statute was part of an effort by the California Medical Association to exert greater control over medical services, not that there was any significant condemnation of abortion providers or of women obtaining abortions.
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