In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Noah Feldman has a wonderful essay about identity, belonging, and community. His starting point is his own experience being excluded from the official newsletters -- even erased from the photographs -- of the yeshiva day school he attended for twelve years because he married someone who is not Jewish. I have not experienced that sort of exclusion, but he did capture some of the disorientation I feel as an evangelical-turned-Catholic, a feeling that I don't completely escape in the evangelical or Catholic circles in which I now operate, I confess. Feldman writes: "It is more than a little strange, feeling fully engaged with a way of seeing the world but also, at the same time, feeling so far from it." You can (and should) read the whole essay here.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Orthodox Paradox
Raz on Law & Morality
Joseph Raz's paper, Incorporation by Law, was published in 2004, but it has just now been made available online. When you're Joseph Raz, you don't need to provide an abstract, so here is an excerpt from the introduction:
My purpose here is to examine the question of how the law can be incorporated within morality and how the existence of the law can impinge on our moral rights and duties, a question (or questions) which is a central aspect of the broad question of the relation between law and morality. My conclusions cast doubts on the incorporation thesis, that is, the view that moral principles can become part of the law of the land by incorporation. This way of putting the question is not meant to be neutral. Legal theorists tend to start at the other end. They do not ask how law impinges upon morality, but how morality impinges on the law. It may be natural for legal theorists, being as they are focused on the law, to start with the law and ask what room it makes for morality. I will suggest that this way of conceiving the question of the relations between law and morality has contributed to some important mistakes. A better way of motivating reflection on the relations is to start with morality.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Casting Aside the Facts
For someone who (like me) leans to the left on non-abortion issues, the Democratic presidential candidates' campaign rite of trying to outdo each other in their enthusiasm for abortion rights is always disheartening. Here is another report on the Dems' appearance before abortion rights activists yesterday in which they condemned the Supreme Court's partial-birth abortion ruling. Would anyone like to take a stab at explaining this statement by Senator Obama? He alleges that, for the new conservative Court, "When the science is inconvenient, when the facts don't match up with the ideology, they are cast aside." Is he talking about Justice Kennedy's statements about women regretting their abortions, or is there something else to which he could be referring?
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Best Christian Blogs
Joe Carter, the author of the world's most popular Christian blog, Evangelical Outpost, has compiled his list of the 100 best Christian blogs. In my evangelical upbringing, "Catholic" and "Christian" were two separate categories. Nevertheless, perhaps as a sign of the growing evangelical-Catholic synergy, MoJ has made the top 20.
Romney as Rawls
Houston law prof Leslie Griffin has posted her new paper, Political Reason. (HT: Solum) Here is the abstract:
This essay examines some of comments made about religion and politics by three of the 2008 presidential candidates - Sam [Mike?] Huckabee, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. I argue that, surprisingly, if one holds the three candidates to the standard of liberal politics, then Romney appears closest to the Rawlsian standard of public (or political) reason. The goal is not for the Mormon, or Baptist, or Church of Christ candidate to figure a secular way to lead others to his faith. That approach to politics undermines political stability and demonstrates disrespect for one's fellow citizens. Instead, politicians should employ political reason as the starting point for their decision-making on matters of law and politics.
Abstinence & Abortion
Today's New York Times has a fairly balanced overview of the state of government-funded abstinence education. Today's Chicago Tribune reports on the Democratic presidential candidates' promises of universal health care coverage, including coverage of abortion.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Is the sexual abuse of children a "Catholic problem?"
Headlines today are trumpeting the Vatican's emphasis that the sexual abuse of children is not just a problem for the Catholic Church, and that other religious organizations also need to take public steps, as the Church has done, to combat abuse within their ranks. Obviously, child abuse occurs in lots of Protestant churches and other organizations. But hasn't there been something distinctive about the Catholic Church's hierarchical structure, secrecy, and greater tendency (compared to Protestants) to defend its institutional autonomy? In this regard, isn't the institutional culpability greater in the episodes of abuse within the Catholic Church? Have there been any statements from the Vatican recognizing and/or apologizing for this dimension of the crisis (rather than the individual acts of the priests involved)? I realize that the litigation climate may not be especially welcoming to such introspection, but I also think the Church should avoid statements that sound like "everybody else does it too."
No-fault divorce
Maggie Gallagher and Douglas Allen have released a study finding that no-fault divorce laws increase the divorce rate by about ten percent, though the effect fades with time. Newsweek interviews Gallagher about the study here.
Monday, July 16, 2007
George on the Neo-Blanshardites
Robert George is troubled by the anti-Catholic reaction to the partial-birth abortion ruling, and he thanks evangelicals for being the only group to rise to Catholics' defense. An excerpt:
Had the partial-birth abortion decision come out the other way, turning on the votes of the two Jewish justices, and had a prominent conservative professor have made an issue of their religion and a conservative newspaper published a cartoon depicting them wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls, there would have been howls of outrage and loud denunciations of the bigotry on display. People across the spectrum of religious and political belief, including those who oppose partial birth abortion, would have condemned the cartoon and demanded apologies. And they would have been right. Religious prejudice should be unacceptable in American public life. Period.
But while the writings of Professor Stone and the cartoon in the Philadelphia newspaper drew a certain amount of criticism and generated discussion on some blogs, the neo-Blanshardites were not reprimanded or even criticized by prominent liberal civil rights leaders or by leading liberal civil rights and civil liberties organizations. Perhaps I missed something, but I heard no denunciations from those secular or religious liberals who have long proclaimed themselves mortal enemies of all forms of prejudice, and from whom therefore one would have expected a firm condemnation of bigotry even when manifested in support of a cause they like.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Leveling the Praying Field
Time magazine has an interesting article on the Democrats' rediscovery of religious voters. Here's an excerpt:
The Democrats are so fired up, you could call them the new Moral Majority. This time, however, the emphasis is as much on the majority as on the morality as they try to frame a message in terms of broadly shared values that don't alarm members of minority religions or secular voters. It has become an article of faith among party leaders that it was sheer strategic stupidity to cede the values debate to Republicans for so long; that most people want to reduce abortion but not criminalize it, protect the earth instead of the auto industry, raise up the least among us; and that a lot of voters care as much about the candidates' principles as about their policies. "What we're seeing," says strategist Mike McCurry, "is a Great Awakening in the Democratic Party."
The revival comes at a time when the entire religious-political landscape is changing shape. A new generation of evangelical leaders is rejecting old labels; now an alliance of religious activists that runs from the crunchy left across to the National Association of Evangelicals has called for action to address global warming, citing the biblical imperative of caring for creation. Mainline, evangelical and Roman Catholic organizations have united to push for immigration reform. The possibility that there is common ground to be colonized by those willing to look for it offers a tantalizing prospect of alliances to come, but only if Democrats can overcome concerns within their party. "One-third gets it," says a Democratic values pioneer, talking about the rank and file. "A second third understands that this can help us win. And another third is positively terrified."
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