Mirror of Justice

Building Community in a Big City

Still in response to Rick's post on the assisted suicide story in Germany, it made me think of how many opportunities there are to reach out to people who are alone in our cities, not only to take care of their material needs, but also to help them feel that they are a part of a community in which they are both loved and needed.  I had a tiny experience recently that reinforced this for me.  Some time ago a friend of mine and I noticed that one the elderly ladies who attends daily mass had holes in her shoes.  We asked if she needed a new pair, and after we had collected a bit of money, my friend went with her to the shoe store to pick out what she needed.  Some time later she brought us a beautiful “thank you” card, and then we began to sit next to each other in the very large church where usually folks tend to keep quite a bit of distance.  A few weeks ago we shared a picnic lunch (she brought the drinks), which was a chance to get to know her better as a person, and especially to discover how much time she spent in prayer.  During the picnic we asked if we could entrust to her all of the people who had recently asked for our prayers.  I can’t describe how her face lit up when today I brought her the list of people and situations to pray for… and that look on her face that made me think, who knows how many zillions of opportunities I have missed not only to help, but also to connect and be enriched?  It was a chance to ask forgiveness for the modern sin of constant busy-ness, and for the grace to pay more attention.  Amy

A Ray of Hope

In response to Rick’s sadness over the assisted suicide case in Germany, on a more hopeful front, today Zenit reported that Pope Benedict authorized the promulgation of a decree recognizing that together with seven others, Servant of God Chiara Badano lived a life of heroic virtue.  One of the Focolare youth, she died in 1990 at the age of 18, of a particularly painful form of bone cancer, after leaving an extraordinary witness of light and faith, accompanied and sustained by the whole community and especially friends of her same age who lived the spirituality of unity together with her.  More about her life here and here.  In a world where the sick are often marginalized and profound isolation and loneliness often lead to desperation, her life shines as a ray of hope, and perhaps even helps to illumninate a path for healing the cultural maladies that lead to assisted suicide as well.  Amy 

The South Dakota abortion case

Emily Bazelon writes here, at Slate, about South Dakota's "unbelievable" abortion law which, among other things, "requires doctors to give patients who come for an abortion a written statement telling them that 'the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.'"  "If you care about doctors' freedom of speech," she writes, "or their responsibility to give accurate information to patients, the South Dakota statute looks pretty alarming."

I'm not sure what to think about the free-speech objection.  It seems to me that all kinds of reasonable, easily justifiable regulations of the practice of medicine are going to involve requiring doctors to communicate some information to patients and forbid them to say some things to patients.  The free-speech objection, then, appears to piggy-back on the "accurate information" objection.  So, is it, or is it not, the case that an abortion "terminate[s] the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being"?  Well, the statute in question defines "human being" as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation."  Bazelon thinks this is just cheating; is she right?

Here's the key paragraph of her piece:

But what's more distressing, because the majority's reasoning is so strained, is the assertion that by defining a phrase one way, a state can erase its ambiguity and the variety of perceptions people bring to it. It's one thing to say—as the case law the majority relies on here does—that a statutory definition binds judges and their interpretation of language. It's another entirely to say that when doctors tell women they are carrying a human being, that women will think, Oh, right, that means only the long, convoluted thing that the state says it does. Most patients won't think that, because they won't necessarily define "human being" the way the statute does. As Yale law professor Robert Post says in a 2007 article (PDF) in the University of Illinois Law Review, "If South Dakota were to enact a statute requiring physicians to inform abortion patients that they were destroying the 'soul' of their unborn progeny, and if it were explicitly to provide in the statute that 'soul' is defined as 'human DNA,' the evasion would be obvious." Instead, South Dakota has co-opted human being and attached its own meaning to it.

I was intrigued by the use of the word "co-opted."  Did the legislature really "attach it's own meaning" -- some kind of strange, esoteric, secret-knowledge meaning?  It strikes me that the objections to the statute reflect a worry that, by requiring doctors to remind women contemplating abortions that unborn children are "human beings", the law might make complicate the decision to end these human beings' lives.

"Thou Shalt Not Annoy" at WYD 2008

World Youth Day 2008 is being held this summer in Sydney, Australia.  According to the event's official web site, "[o]rganised by the Catholic Church, WYD brings together young people from around the globe to celebrate and learn about their faith on a more regular basis.  WYD08 will be the largest event Australia has ever hosted. It will attract over 125,000 international visitors - more than the 2000 Olympics.  WYD08 will mark the first visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Australia."  (During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, these events were huge, and quite formative, I'm told, for many young Catholics.)

Well, if you put on a big Catholic jamboree, with the Pope in attendance, in a free country, you are going to stir up conversation, debate, disagreement . . . and some protest (some of it, no doubt, malicious and offensive).  And so, local authorities have enacted a new, temporary set of regulations that "will allow police to arrest and fine people for 'causing annoyance' to World Youth Day participants."  In response, as this headline puts it, "Catholics are split on [the] freedom to annoy":

[The] prominent Catholic priest and lawyer Frank Brennan has condemned new police powers for World Youth Day as a "dreadful interference" with civil liberties and contrary to Catholic teaching on human rights.

Any thoughts?  What free-speech rule or principle (if any) should control this situation, and others like it?  I tend to be a free-speech libertarian, even though I'm uncomfortably aware that a lot of libertarian free-speech rhetoric rings hollow.  Would those who object to the "don't annoy" rule object as strongly if the event in question were not World Youth Day but some other, perhaps more "progressive", group?  Readers might want to check out this post, at the Commonweal blog (where I got the story) and also the comments.

Assisted suicide in Germany

The New York Times reports on a recent doctor-assisted suicide in Germany, by an elderly woman who was not ill:

Ms. Schardt, 79, a retired X-ray technician from the Bavarian city of Würzburg, was neither sick nor dying. She simply did not want to move into a nursing home, and rather than face that prospect, she asked Mr. Kusch, a prominent German campaigner for assisted suicide, for a way out.

Her last words, after swallowing a deadly cocktail of the antimalaria drug chloroquine and the sedative diazepam, were “auf Wiedersehen,” Mr. Kusch recounted at a news conference on Monday.

It was hardly the last word on her case, however. Ms. Schardt’s suicide — and Mr. Kusch’s energetic publicizing of it — have set off a national furor over the limits on the right to die, in a country that has struggled with this issue more than most because of the Nazi’s euthanizing of at least 100,000 mentally disabled and incurably ill people.

Not that the Times wants to be judgmental.  After all . . .

While Ms. Schardt was not suffering from a life-threatening disease, or in acute pain, her life was hardly pleasant, Mr. Kusch said. She had trouble moving around her apartment, where she lived alone. Having never married, she had no family. She also had few friends, and rarely ventured out.

In such circumstances, a nursing home seemed likely to be the next stop. And for Ms. Schardt, who Mr. Kusch said feared strangers and had a low tolerance for those less clever than she was, that was an unbearable prospect.

You know, I joke sometimes that some "less clever" people's remarks make me "want to kill myself" . . . but, it's a joke.

Meanwhile, a push for "death with dignity" in Washington.  Don't worry, though . . . Oregon's "safeguards work."

David Skeel on Obama's Faith-Based Initiative Proposal

Skeel's comments, here, are well worth reading.

Catholics and the Responsibility of Citizenship

First of all, I wish to thank in great abundance my Mirror of Justice friends who have been contributing to the thread on Catholics and the upcoming election. I shall not speak about any party or any group’s efforts to capture the “Catholic vote.” But, it does appear that many Catholics in the United States find themselves in conflict over their faith and their role in public life. While some of us are trained in the law, we all have a role in its development. The principal objective of this posting is to identify and examine the relationship between Catholic faith and the duties of each Catholic in public life, as either office holder or citizen.

I contend here that there is nothing in the civil law and associated regulations to preclude the Catholic office holder or citizen from adhering to the teachings of the Church in the exercise of one’s respective public duties. Each Catholic retains the obligation to be faithful to the Church’s teachings if he or she is to be an effective, contributing Christian member of the commonwealth. This means that the Catholic who exercises a role in American democracy simultaneously participates in the exercise of discipleship by applying in this world the substance and content of communion with Jesus Christ and other disciples. I have addressed this subject matter in greater detail elsewhere. But I would like to offer a more concise presentation that could be of assistance to others as we approach the November election.

In the first place, we need to take stock of the fact that through our baptism and the exercise of the faith, we are disciples of Jesus Christ. This element of my discussion is rooted in the story of Cleopas and his friend—two disciples who, on their way to the village of Emmaus, encounter the resurrected Jesus. Something prevents them from recognizing Jesus until they dine together and Jesus, after having said the blessing, breaks bread with them and, in doing so, shares communion with them. When Jesus quickly disappears from their sight, they then recognize who he is, and they are energized with the breaking of the bread and communion with Jesus to continue his work mindful that the “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all the nations.” By being in communion with the Lord, they are restored to active and vibrant discipleship and respond to the call to serve in his name. Without the communion with Jesus, they seemed to have no direction in their lives but were “downcast.” They needed him to do the work they were called to do, and with him they were fortified to labor in his name. Through their communion with Jesus, they maintained right relation with God and with their neighbor. Being in communion with God, His Son, and the Church is essential to anyone’s discipleship regardless of whether one lived in the time of Jesus in Palestine or in the United States at the present time. We are fortified in the Lord calling us, “Come, follow me!” And, this is the challenge the Second Vatican Council placed to all faithful.

In a powerful voice, the Council challenged us to remember what Jesus taught: “As long as you did it for one of these least of my brethren, you did it for me.” The Church and its members have a duty to combat whatever is “opposed to life itself” by identifying murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, willful self-destruction, or anything else which “violates the integrity of the human person.”

Catholics are citizens of two cities who are called to discharge civic responsibilities with the exercise of a Christian conscience inspired by the Gospel. Nevertheless, we are often reminded of the address given by Governor Mario Cuomo at Notre Dame University in September of 1984 entitled “Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective” in which he raised and addressed the question of the relationship of his Catholic faith and his politics—are they separate or related? For prudential and other reasons, the Governor counseled against imposing views based on Catholic teachings on others which these citizens find unacceptable. He spoke of the “American-Catholic tradition of political realism” in which the Church has avoided settling into a “moral fundamentalism” mandating “total acceptance of its views.” But that is not what the disciple is called to do. The disciple, as John Paul II judiciously explained, proposes to the community rather than imposes upon it. And one cannot propose unless one is willing to speak, even against the grain.

It is through reasoned discourse that the genuine contribution of the disciple can be made for the betterment and benefit of all rather than just some of humanity. It is the example of a way of life that is suitable for making the propositions consistent with God’s truth contained in the Church’s teachings. And, it is these teachings and the authority upon which they are based that serve as an antidote to the cynical and sinister in this world that God has given His disciples as one of our two cities.

Thus, we are reminded that while the harvest is plentiful, the laborers may be few. God needs laborers to follow His son, for the harvest is great, but the workers seem to be few in number. As Pope John Paul II kept reiterating in his post-Synodal apostolic exhortation, Christfideles Laici, “you go into my vineyard, too.” The rest is up to us: do we accept the challenging invitation or not? Instilled with the mission of discipleship, we are called to be God’s conscious instruments in a world often plagued with exaggerated autonomy that ignores both the neighbor and God and sees only the isolated self. By remaining in contact with the Church and her teachings, we become a light to the world illuminating the minds and spirit of those who might otherwise be overwhelmed by the darkness of evil. In this regard, we need to take account of what John Paul II stated in his last World Day of Peace message issued in 2005, by recalling the words of St. Paul, “do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is a noteworthy appeal to the disciple who labors in the fields of law and politics.

            When considering particular challenging topics that today’s disciple must confront, we turn to St. Paul who reminds us about the duties of citizenship and how discipleship and citizenship are designed to be complementary rather than separate and independent of one another. But Paul also cautions that the civil authority also must be mindful of its duties and properly exercise its power for it is supposed to be an instrument of God as well. Citizens as disciples and the political, social, and economic structures in which they live and work are all responsible for being the keepers of our brothers and sisters whoever they may be.

            Civic duty—be it of the office holder or citizen—is compatible with, not contrary to, discipleship. The two are not mutually exclusive but, for the Catholic, inextricably related. The disciple must be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove and recognize that some will reject the role of the disciple-citizen. For when Church authorities and citizens speak out on issues from the Catholic persona, they might be challenged, albeit on dubious grounds, that this “preaching” is prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. But, do these same critics, especially when they have access to mass media outlets that welcome their strongly secularist or other views, exercise similar restraint? It often appears that the result is dependent on who is doing the preaching and whose Gospel is being preached. Whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers and sisters, that which you do unto me. It is a well-formed Christian conscience [see my earlier posting HERE] that richly contributes to the public debate by adding alternatives that reflect genuine pluralism and diversity and is not subjugated by the monolithic view of a culture that is antagonistic to the religious viewpoint—not by “imposing” but by “proposing.”

If one assumes the title of disciple, does not one also assume certain risks that go along with the vocation? In answering this question, we need only recall the names of all those disciples in the Roman canon who were martyred for their beliefs and the exercise of their conscience. There are indeed risks of proclaiming the truth, the Good News that some treat as unwelcome, but there is the moral obligation not to give into bullying or pressure, subtle or otherwise. Sound prudential judgment may dictate when this obligation is exercised in a public fashion, but it does not mandate avoidance of the obligation in perpetuity.

            Disciples of today, be they the electors or the holders of office, shoulder duties in the name of God and His Son. There are occasions when these disciples need not fear the decisions they take in the public square so long as those decisions sufficiently coincide with the views of the secular components of society; however, there may be occasions when the situation is otherwise. It is clear that if the disciple, be that person office holder or exerciser of the franchise, may not be able to eliminate that which is evil entirely. That is understandable, but the disciple has the continuing obligation to ensure that the evil in this world that is of human manufacture at least be reduced if it cannot be eliminated at present.

            

Those who consider themselves good citizens and good disciples seem to be neither when it comes to some of today’s difficult issues such as euthanasia, abortion, same-sex marriage, or certain kinds of stem cell research requiring the creation and inevitable destruction of human embryos. They may assert: “I cannot legislate morality” or “I cannot impose my religious views on others who do not share my faith” as Governor Cuomo opined. It may seem odd that when the matter under debate involves some aspects of civil rights or criminal legislation addressing, for example, sexual assault or welfare reform or increasing medical benefits for the underinsured or uninsured or the protection of civil rights, the reservations toward the religious perspective tend to be silent. But why do they surface when the matter involves the conscious destruction of human life—the most precious right of all, for without it, all others wither? When these events take place and chill the words of deeds of the disciple in contemporary life, we find ourselves on the decline and must ask: why we did not do something to stop the spread of evil.

            

Being silent with regard to the vital issues confronting the human family is not always golden. The exercise of silence can be prudent and sometimes offers a useful delay to consider the best manner of addressing a grave problem. But, when all is said and done, silence is rarely a solution to difficult problems that must ultimately be addressed. It can be, in some of today’s political debate, a form of weakness and fearfulness or cooperation (material or formal) in perpetrating and continuing evil. That is why the disciple of today must be willing to embrace the exhortation of John Paul II—“Be not afraid!”

The fact that a source of the citizen’s truth may be the teachings of the Church does not disqualify the Church from teaching that which may be used by the citizen nor the citizen from using that which the Church teaches regarding the moral issues affecting law and politics. The Church does not interfere with the State’s proper function, but it does retain and must exercise its proper role to provide instruction on moral truth that can be appropriated and used by the citizen in his or her participation in the exercise of self-determination of the democratic process.

It would be problematic to insist that the citizen must observe an unnatural dichotomy in his or her life insulating the spiritual and moral from the public and the political. In this context the Johannine text of Jesus farewell: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit...” Those who would insist on defeating this participation by the disciple-citizen would deny legitimate and authentic pluralism and would impose a regime of intolerant secularism.

            As I suggested earlier, we are citizens of two cities. Each of us is one person who holds and exercises various duties through this dual citizenship—we are the branches who remain tied to Christ, but we also exist and act in the temporal world. This fact should not deter us from embracing what Thomas More said when he declared his allegiance to both sovereigns, but to God first. Let us not be afraid to declare our allegiance likewise regardless of what the Sirens of the present age beckon us to do.

RJA sj

Catholics United: Beyond Partisanship and Acrimony?

Michael P.'s recent post includes a letter from "Catholics United," which offers a book designed to "help put an end to the partisanship and acrimony that have prevented progress on the important issues of our day."  "Catholics United" tells us the book is important because the "far right" is busy advancing its "narrow partisan agenda."  The book, we are told, serves as an "effective counterbalance to the far right's own plans to advance an anti-common good agenda."  Hmm!  Beyond partisanship and acrimony?

I prefer Amy's call to civil and constructive dialogue:  "As a group I think we have the capacity to bring a significant contribution to the positive articulation of how CST might inform an approach to political life."

Obama? McCain? What's a Catholic to Do?

I just received the item below by e-mail--and thought that some MOJ readers, supporters of McCain as well as supporters of Obama, would be interested in seeing it ... BOTH for its content AND for what its content signifies about the controversy among us Catholics over who to support in the general election.

Dear Michael, The November elections are just around the corner, and as in years past the Catholic vote will be crucial in determining who our nation's next generation of leaders will be. The religious far right is already hard at work making its case that faithful Catholics must vote according to a narrow partisan agenda - an agenda that leaves little concern for war, poverty, the environment, health care, and a host of other essential life issues. That's why we're thrilled to announce the publication of A Nation for All: How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America from the Politics of Division, by Catholics United director Chris Korzen and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good director Alexia Kelley. For a limited time, you can receive a copy of A Nation for All autographed by both Chris and Alexia with your $60 donation to Catholics United. For $100, we'll send you two copies. Click here to donate to Catholics United and receive your autographed copies of A Nation for All In A Nation for All, Chris and Alexia demonstrate how the values at the core of our faith - loving our neighbors, concern for the poor, and building a society that prioritizes the health and well-being of everyone, not just the few - can help put an end to the partisanship and acrimony that have prevented progress on the important issues of our day. A Nation for All is unique in that it directly challenges recent efforts by members of the far right and the Republican Party to coerce Catholics into supporting candidates who work against the common good. We show how the Catholic faith cannot be reduced to "litmus tests" or formulas designed to force the hands of Catholic voters, and confront the notion that denying Communion to candidates and voters is a legitimate and effective means of advancing the common good. Make a $60 or $100 donation today and receive your autographed copies of A Nation for All By making a $60 or $100 donation to Catholics United, you not only receive your own autographed books, you help support the important work that Catholics United will be doing in the coming months. In addition to serving as an effective counterbalance to the far right's own plans to advance an anti-common good agenda, we'll be reminding all people of faith that America works best when we work together. Thank you for your support. Sincerely, The Catholics United Team You are receiving this email because you signed up at www.catholics-united.org or because you signed the Catholics for an End to the War petition at www.catholicsforanend.org. click here to unsubscribe

Marriage Equality, Revisited

Over at The Immanent Frame, there is an interesting post this morning:  Promoting Marriage and Christianity in America.  To read the entire post, click here.  The author, Melanie Heath, "is assistant professor of sociology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her forthcoming book, One Marriage Under God: Defense of Marriage Actions in Middle America, will be published by New York University Press."

Here are some excerpts:

Following the recent California Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, National Public Radio offered a report on “the coming storm” between two “titanic” legal principles: “equal treatment for same-sex couples” and “the freedom to exercise religious beliefs.” The report gave several examples of this “collision,” which opponents cite as proof that same-sex marriage is a threat to religious liberty. The idea of an impending collision may overstate the intensity of impending legal conflicts, especially since cases of this nature have been fought for several decades following the emergence of laws prohibiting discrimination in housing, employment and education for non-heterosexuals. Still, the current portrayal of this conflict does foreground the complex relationship of marriage, religion, and the state to promote one form of marriage (white, heterosexual, monogamous). It is same-sex marriage’s (and polygamy’s) challenge to this interrelationship that provokes such anxiety among religious conservatives.

Posts by Stephanie Coontz and Tey Meadow and Judith Stacey reveal the multilayered and complex history of marriage and Christianity in Europe and America, and its culmination in what Coontz remarks was an “untraditional” shift by the state to make marriage a privileged status that is attached to a large number of social and economic benefits (and constraints). In this vein, I will turn my attention to the less-known marriage promotion movement in the United States, in order to shed further light on how state and religion work together to define and protect the boundaries of marriage, and what this movement might mean for the future of marriage equality.

. . .

While religious conservatives balk at their loss of religious liberty under an increasingly wide array of antidiscrimination laws in relation to non-heterosexuals, it is significant that government marriage promotion policies combine religion and science to extend the privileged status of marriage to white, middle-class, heterosexual couples. This analysis speaks to the demands that social justice will require of the movement for marriage equality. Even as the battle against “separate but equal” recognition of same-sex couples gains legal footing, those fighting for marriage equality must take into consideration the consequences of the movement on other forms of social inequality. On the one hand, as states move in the direction of Massachusetts and California, it will become more difficult for government, politics, and religion to unite in an effort to promote heterosexual marriage as the superior family form. On the other, as Meadow and Stacey argue in their post, it does not offer justice to those outside the boundary of marriage who are barred from accessing its socioeconomic benefits, whether straight or gay. Thus, there are good reasons to expand the fight for marriage equality to consider the option offered in the California Supreme Court decision, for the state to eliminate the term “marriage” altogether and allow religious and secular communities to offer their own “definition.” This solution will not eliminate legal conflicts over antidiscrimination and religious liberty, but it might provide for a more just world.

California's death penalty "dysfunctional"

Story here: 

The California death penalty system, plagued by backlogs in appeals that routinely delay executions by more than two decades, is "dysfunctional" and in danger of collapse, a state commission concluded Monday.

The report by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice offered a blistering indictment of the system, saying the state has fostered a "disrespect for the rule of law and weakened any possible deterrent benefits of capital punishment."

In the state that maintains the largest death row — currently 669 condemned inmates — the report determined that California could save up to $100 million a year by abolishing the death penalty. Yet the 22-member panel stopped short of recommending its elimination.

"Although outright abolition would be the cleanest, most definitive approach to death penalty reform … we recognize that, ultimately, a political judgment must be made about whether the time is right to seek a fresh electoral choice on whether California ought to have a death penalty," the report said.

Sen. McCain's response on faith-based programs

We've been talking about Sen. Obama's recent speech, in which he endorsed the pre-Bush version of the faith-based initiative, and also about the reservations many religious-freedom advocates do and will have about the proposed roll-back of protections for organizations that hire for religious mission.  Here, for what it's worth, is a short response issued by Sen. McCain: 

John McCain supports faith based initiatives, and recognizes their important
role in our communities. He has cosponsored legislation to foster improved
partnerships with community organizations, including faith-based, to assist
with substance abuse and violence prevention. He also believes that it is
important for faith-based groups to be able to hire people who share their
faith, and he disagrees with Senator Obama that hiring at faith-based groups
should be subject to government oversight.

If Sen. Obama could persuade his fellow Democrats to drop their insistence on applying the same non-discrimination norms that (appropriately) bind the government to religious organizations that engage, with some help from public funds, in providing social-welfare services, he truly would have helped to "turn a page" in our politics.

Who's the Catholic-vote "natural"?

It has been suggested that Sen. Obama is a "natural" for the Catholic vote.  Ryan Anderson argues here that, in fact, the Catholic-vote "natural" is Sen. McCain.  And around we go . . . .

Obama's Faith-Based Plan and Evangelicals

If Obama's faith-based plan was intended in part to woo evangelicals, it's going to face a major obstacle: 

Mr. Obama’s position that religious organizations would not be able to consider religion in their hiring for such programs would constitute a deal-breaker for many evangelicals, said several evangelical leaders, who represent a political constituency Mr. Obama has been trying to court.

“For those of who us who believe in protecting the integrity of our religious institutions, this is a fundamental right,” said Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. “He’s rolling back the Bush protections. That’s extremely disappointing.”

Rich Cizik is one of those centrist evangelicals who's broadened the public policy focus to include issues like global warming.  If he (understandably) finds the hiring-rights issue a deal-breaker, most evangelical leaders and social services will as well.  Of course, some evangelical voters may overlook that issue and respond positively to the general plan, and nudging a few more toward Obama may be all that his campaign expects politically.

Obama's Faith-Based Initiative

Barack Obama is giving a speech today committing to expand the federal "faith-based initiative" in terms of the amount of federal funding for religious and other community-based social services.  But unlike Bush, Obama would not allow an organization to "use [the federal] grant money" to "discriminate against ... the people [it] hire[s]" on the basis of religion.  The AP story is here; an advance text of the speech is here.

Providing greater funding to this effort than the Bush administration did is, as I've argued, a good and necessary thing.  But, as several of us here have argued, an organization hiring employees based on religion to carry out its mission should not be seen as practicing improper discrimination; and excluding those organizations is likely to undercut the breadth and effectiveness of the program.  Obama's speech also mentions that "directly" funded programs must remain secular in content.  This is a feature of the Bush initiative too; and Obama's language suggests perhaps that programs serving individuals receiving federal vouchers (i.e. programs that are "indirectly" funded) may have religious content.  More details to come, no doubt.

UPDATE: Here are the details of the plan from Obama's website; positive comments on it from former Bush faith-based czar John d'Iulio; and a critical analysis from Greg Baylor of the Christian Legal Society, which defends the right of religious organizations to hire on the basis of faith considerations.

What Teenage Girls Read

A post on the Feminist Law Professors blog reported the author's experience of looking for a book to give a 12-year old girl as a gift.  What she found in her local Barnes & Noble bookstore, "were shelves of books promoting vanity, consumerism and sex. The titles were things like Gossip Girl and Cheetah Girls. After reading the cover summaries it seems that in order to encourage reading in our teen girls we have to expose them to the promotion of celebrity worship, buying designer handbags, gossiping about your friends, and having sex to be popular."

I asked my 15-year old daughter her reaction to this.  She reports that it is the case that the bulk of books in the teen section of our local Barnes and Noble consist of things like Gossip Girl and Cheetah Girls.  Fortunately, she also reports that one can, in fact, find wonderful books the encourage and inspire girls beyond the sorts of things promoted in the teen series.  Why it takes such work to find such books is another matter.

For those looking for some good books for teen girls, I share some of Elena's suggestions: Chinese Cinderella, by Adeline Yen Mah; The Great Good Thing, by Roderick Townley; The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak; and The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King (one of Elena's favorites)

Church Autonomy and the Virginia Episcopalian Unpleasantness

          A Virginia trial judge has ruled that conservative breakaway congregations from the Episcopal Church in Virginia should keep their property.  (HT: Christianity Today)  The judge relied on and upheld the constitutionality of an 1867 Virginia statute providing that whenever church property involving a congregation is held in the name of trustees, the majority of the congregation determines who gets the property.  This, the court held, was a permissible "neutral principle of law" for resolving intra-church property disputes, of the sort approved by the Supreme Court in Jones v. Wolf, 443 U.S. 595 (1979).

          In these disputes over property arising from a schism, the issue for churches in which congregations belong to larger bodies with religious authority over them -- the Catholic Church quintessentially, but others as well -- is how to ensure that such an authority relationhip is respected by a civil court.  Jones v. Wolf had said that this was no problem because higher bodies or denominations could use general legal rules to put title in their name or create trusts in their favor.  The Episcopal Church created such an express trust for its parishes in favor of the diocese and general church.  But according to the Virginia court, trusts for religious denominations are invalid under state law.  Instead the general church should have put title in the name of the diocesan bishop, as Catholics do, or perhaps incorporate every parish.

          I'm not up on all the details of this litigation, but the decision raises several concerns.  The idea that it's no burden to be blocked from the express-trust route of maintaining control because you can put title in the bishop's name seems a dangerous restriction on churches' ability to structure themselves to reflect their religious understandings about polity.  In Virginia, the logic may force all churches to organize themselves either like Baptists (congregation wins) or like Catholics (bishop has formal title), when other churches may have religious reasons for preferring the route of local control but subject to a trust.  More generally, a restrictive rather than flexible attitude toward how religious organizations can reflect their polity in legal terms is bad for religious autonomy in general, and should be of concern to Catholics too.

          The trigger for these cases, of course, is the withdrawal of conservative congregations from the national church because of its liberal decisions, particularly but not only the ordination of an openly gay bishop.  My final worry is that theological traditionalists, cheering these property cases based on their immediate effect, will make law that is bad more generally for the autonomy of religious organizations from state restrictions.  That could well harm traditionalist Christianity more in the long run, since, as we are quite aware here on MOJ, traditionalist churches often run up against liberal- or secular-oriented regulation and look to constitutional autonomy doctrines to protect them.

          ADDENDUM:  I meant to congratulate Steffen Johnson and Gene Schaerr, my friends at Winston & Strawn, who won this case for the breakaway congregations.  They have been strong defenders of church autonomy over the years, and they made arguments that would preserve some options for higher church bodies/denominations to use legal rules to retain control over property.  But I still remain concerned about state rules that cut off certain kinds of organizational options, like trusts, for the higher body.

Justice Breyer and the "culture wars"

Orin Kerr has an interesting post, at the Volokh Conspiracy, comparing Justice Breyer's opinions in the school-voucher and gun-control cases.  In the former, remember, Justice Breyer concluded that, even conceding that the relevant legislature could reasonably have thought there were good policy reasons for school choice in Cleveland, the threat of "political divisiveness along religious lines" was too great, and so the voucher program was unconstitutional.

Contrast Breyer's Zelman dissent with his dissent in Heller. Here, the polarity of the culture wars has been reversed. And so has Justice Breyer's approach: Now he reasons that the possibility of a positive social impact of the law makes it constitutional. The political philosopher of Zelman is replaced with a careful and cautious social scientist who runs over pages and pages of statistics and scientific studies in Heller. So long as the legislature had a possible basis for thinking that restricting the constitutional right was a good idea, Breyer explains, the law should be upheld . . .

It's an interesting mirror image, I think. When the culture wars pointed one way, Justice Breyer thought that a "risk" of a "potentially harmful" adverse result was enough to strike the law down. When the culture wars pointed in the other direction, so did the burden of proof: now Justice Breyer must have his "confidence" in the reasonableness of the legislature "convincingly" "destroyed" before he would vote to strike down the law.

  To be clear, I'm not suggesting that Justice Breyer is alone in taking different approaches depending on which side of the culture wars the challenged law happens to fall. Plainly he is not. At the same time, I do think the contrast between these two dissents provides an unusually clear case of the difference.

All the more reason to think (as I've argued) that judges should not decide constitutional cases on the basis of predictions about "divisiveness".

"Methodist Retreat Against Gays"

"Civil Union Dispute Pits Methodist Retreat Against Gays Who Aided in Its Rebirth," announces the headline of this New York Times piece.  The "Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association" does not want to permit "civil union ceremonies from taking place on its property."  And so, it is being investigated by the state's Division on Civil Rights.  More:

Since 1989, Ocean Grove’s beach, boardwalk and oceanfront road have received tax-exempt status under the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Program, which was created to encourage use of privately owned space for public recreation and conservation. In its original application for the exemption — which saves the group about $500,000 a year and is up for renewal on Sept. 15, according to Bernard Haney, the Neptune Township tax assessor — the association noted that the properties were open to the public and that the pavilion had been used by outside groups.

Some see an inherent conflict between the association seeking tax-exempt status as a public open space with one state agency while suing another state agency for violating its rights as a private religious group.

This story suggests, it seems to me, that it is not unreasonable to be uneasy about, at the very least, the future tax-exempt status of religious institutions that refuse to assimilate same-sex relationships and marriages.

Babies and Europe's future

An interesting read -- "No Babies?" -- in the Times magazine this weekend.  A bit:

There is no shortage of popular explanations to account for the drop in fertility. In Athens, it’s common to blame the city’s infamous air pollution; several years ago a radio commercial promoted air-conditioners as a way to bring back Greek lust and Greek babies. More broadly and significant, social conservatives tie the low birthrate to secularism. After arguing for decades that the West had divorced itself from God and church and embraced a self-interested and ultimately self-destructive lifestyle, abetted above all by modern birth control, they feel statistically vindicated. “Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future,” Pope Benedict proclaimed in 2006. “Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present.”

Sigh.  Does the writer really think the Pope is thinking, "I feel statistically vindicated!"  This will likely ring true to many MOJ-ers:

The broad answer to the “Where are all the European babies?” question thus begins to suggest itself. Accompanying the spectacular transformation of modern society since the 1960s — notably the changing role of women, with greater opportunities for education and employment, the advent of modern birth control and a new ability to tailor a lifestyle — has been a tension between forces that, in many places, have not been reconciled. That tension is perfectly apparent, of course. Ask any working mother. But some societies have done a better job than others of reconciling the conflicting forces. In Europe, many countries with greater gender equality have a greater social commitment to day care and other institutional support for working women, which gives those women the possibility of having second or third children.

But then, a twist:

one other factor affecting the higher U.S. birthrate stands out in the minds of many observers. “There’s much less flexibility in the European system,” Haub says. “In Europe, both the society and the job market are more rigid.” There may be little state subsidy for child care in the U.S., and there is certainly nothing like the warm governmental nest that Norway feathers for fledgling families, but the American system seems to make up for it in other ways. As Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania writes: “In general, women are deterred from having children when the economic cost — in the form of lower lifetime wages — is too high. Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then re-enter the labor force.” An American woman might choose to suspend her career for three or five years to raise a family, expecting to be able to resume working; that happens far less easily in Europe.

So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted.”

Interesting.

Churches and Sprawl

Eduardo raises some interesting questions in his post, "Churches and Sprawl."  Among other things, he asks:

Would it make sense for the Church to impose a moratorium on opening new suburban parishes in an effort to avoid encouraging Catholics to move out to places where they are guaranteed to spend a lot of time driving?

As Eduardo himself notes, I suspect that, in the Catholic case, parishes are following people.  And, once Catholics are in the suburbs, it would be kind of, well, un-Catholic to tell them that they have to drive to "their" parishes for the sacraments.  Still, I'm a partisan for cities, and think the Church *does* have a role to play here.  It will not likely surprise any MOJ readers to learn that, in my view, the Church could help reduce sprawl by investing in urban Catholic schools.

The Death Penalty and Deterrence

Check out this op-ed by Cass Sunstein and Justin Wolfers on the death penalty and deterrence.  (We've discussed -- here and here, for example -- Sunstein's claims about these matters before here at MOJ.)  Here's the basic point:

A prominent line of reasoning, endorsed by several justices, holds that if capital punishment fails to deter crime, it serves no useful purpose and hence is cruel and unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment. This reasoning tracks public debate as well. While some favor the death penalty on retributive grounds, many others (including President Bush) argue that the only sound reason for capital punishment is to deter murder.

We concur with Scalia that if a strong deterrent effect could be demonstrated, a plausible argument could be made on behalf of executions. But what if the evidence is inconclusive?

We are not sure how to answer that question. But as executions resume, the debates over the death penalty should not be distorted by a misunderstanding of what the evidence actually shows.

I agree.  And, I think this is advice that those who write on crime and punishment for the Catholic bishops should take to heart.  That is -- as I explain here -- I worry about pastoral teaching on capital punishment that makes too much depend on contestible claims about deterrence.

A Breast Cancer Free Child! At What Cost?

The Sunday Times reports:

A woman has conceived Britain’s first baby guaranteed to be free from hereditary breast cancer.

Doctors screened out from the woman’s embryos an inherited gene that would have left the baby with a greater than 50% chance of developing the cancer.

The woman decided to have her embryos screened because her husband had tested positive for the gene and his sister, mother, grandmother and cousin have all had the cancer.

The couple produced 11 embryos, of which five were found to be free from the gene. Two of these were implanted in the woman’s womb and she is now 14 weeks pregnant.

For the rest of the story...

Human Dignity, the Death Penalty, and Abortion

If I were a member of Louisiana's legislature, I would vote to repeal that state's laws that permit the death penalty for rape of a child. (As an opponent of the death penalty, I would vote to repeal all laws permitting the death penalty).  I would, however, be unhappy with the Supreme Court for taking that decision from the people of Louisiana because I am not persuaded by the reasoning in Kennedy v. Louisiana.  Exploring the reasons for these two positions may be for another day.

Here, I want to mention two sentences in the majority opinion.  Echoing (if memory serves me) the death penalty dissents of Justices Marshall and Brennan, Justice Kennedy writes:  "Evolving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person, and the punishment of criminals must conform to that rule" (Slip op. at 9) and "It is an established principle that decency, in its essence, presumes respect for the individual and thus moderation or restraint in the application of capital punishment" (Id. at 25).

I pray that the Court uses this same logic in future abortion cases. 

I sometimes feel like I'm in Wonderland with Alice.  In this strange land, state legislatures are prohibited in the name of human dignity from putting those who commit heinous crimes to death.  And, those same legislators are prohibited (in the name of a false notion of dignity?) from protecting the most innocent, weak, and vulnerable human beings. 

"Can Obama Do It for Catholics?"

Interesting article in this week's The Tablet, here.