Mirror of Justice

Catholic Universities and Outside Groups

I have followed with great interest the discussion among several MOJ contributors regarding the Georgetown University Ministry decision regarding the Protestant ministry office. I do not have answers to the questions posed by Rick and Susan about Georgetown. I did, however, find the justification offered for the decision not to rely on "outside groups" to be rather thin. My reason for stating this is based on an examination of several Jesuit tradition university campus ministry websites, including Georgetown's. With hyperlinks from these sites, one can discover varying degrees of connections with many outside groups when it comes to a variety of programs including "social justice" volunteer opportunities. These links would apply to students of all faiths at these universities. In this category, one will come across links to the ACLU and Amnesty International. Some of these two organizations' existing programs or new programs under consideration challenge Catholic teachings on important subjects. Yet, these outside organizations are institutions to whom Catholic students are referred directly and indirectly by the Catholic chaplaincy offices. I wonder if anyone at Georgetown or other Jesuit tradition schools has considered the effects that such organizations could have on their Catholic students? Or, Protestant students? As I said, earlier, I really don't have answers to Susan's and Rick's questions. Rather, I have some new issues that may intensify discussion on this topic.    RJA sj

Skeel on Christian Legal Theory

In Books & Culture, Penn law prof David Skeel reviews The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics and Human Nature (a volume to which MoJ-er Patrick Brennan contributed) and notes the growing interest in exploring the intersection of Christianity and law:

From the early 20th century until the 1940s, evangelical Christians disengaged from American public life. Law schools were hostile territory, generally to be avoided. As a result, the few evangelical legal scholars tended to operate under cover, assiduously separating their faith and their scholarly life. By the 1970s, Presbyterian minister and apologist Francis Schaeffer and other evangelical leaders, building on the efforts of predecessors such as Carl Henry and Harold Ockenga, had begun asking why there weren't more Christian lawyers, doctors, and businessmen. The evangelical re-engagement that followed has spread to academic circles, but more slowly than to business and the professions. Even now, it is an unusual law school that has more than one or two scholars who identify themselves as Christians, and whose faith explicitly informs their scholarship.

The publication of The Teachings of Modern Christianity, and the major Pew Charitable Trust funding that launched the project, signifies the major change underway. With the visible influence of Catholic intellectuals and evangelical leaders on the current White House, there suddenly is a deep interest in perspectives on religion, politics, and law. Legal scholars are not oblivious to these developments, as reflected in the increasing numbers of law review articles with "Christianity" in the title. Much of the new scholarship, too much perhaps, emphasizes philosophy and philosophical theology at the expense of other methodologies. The bias is understandable. For a generation chastened by Mark Noll's brilliant indictment, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, it's hard to resist the assumption that philosophy must be the truest and highest scholarly end.

Read the whole thing here.

Rob

Responding to Abortion

The rape and resulting pregnancy of an eleven year-old girl presents one of the more sympathetic cases for abortion rights.  Nevertheless, the Catholic Church in Columbia has responded by excommunicating anyone involved in the girl's abortion, including the judges, legislators, politicians, and parents who made it possible. (HT: Open Book)

Rob

UPDATE: Hold on.  The prelate denies saying that the parties involved will be excommunicated.  But another interesting wrinkle emerges regarding a professional's right of conscience:

In May, Colombia's constitutional court legalized abortion in cases where fetuses were severely malformed, the pregnancy was the result of a rape or incest, or the mother's life was in danger.  Initially, doctors refused to perform abortions, wary of later facing prosecution. But the court issued a ruling compelling doctors to abide by its decision if the woman's case fell within the criteria.

Where U.S. News Fears to Tread . . .

If you, like me, have been intrigued by the prospect of someday supplementing your legal education with graduate work in theology, you'll find R.R. Reno's informal ranking of theology programs very helpful.

Rob

California's new anti-discrimination law

Professor Friedman reports:

Bainbridge on Wal-Mart

In the blogs and on the op-ed pages, it looks like the "Wal-Mart Debate" is heating up.  Our own Steve Bainbridge has some interesting thoughts on the matter, here.

Church autonomy

In a case called New York City v. Fifth Ave. Presbyterian Church, No. 06-163, the City has filed a cert. petition which includes, according to U.S. Law Week, the following Question Presented:

> "Did the holding of Second Circuit that church's maintaining of nightly
> encampment on its steps is constitutionally protected religious conduct err
> by failing to consider that church's failure to provide security, toilets
> and sanitary facilities, and shelter from elements stands in direct
> contravention to religious doctrine of serving needy, which church cites as
> basis for maintaining encampment?"

Wow.  "Please tell the Second Circuit to tell the church that it is wrong about its religion."  (Thanks to Walter Weber for the news.)

Remembering Katrina

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a heartbreaking compilation of individuals' recollections of the day Katrina hit.

Rob

"The Taxman goes to church"

This Wall Street Journal piece reports that "[o]ver the past two years scores of organizations have faced scrutiny [from the IRS] for allegedly mixing their political convictions with their religious ones.  And this summer the IRS expanded a program it first launched in 2004 to take direct aim at political advocacy inside houses of worship."  It continues:

The new crackdown, which the IRS calls the Political Activity Compliance Initiative, has so far put some 15,000 nonprofits--mostly churches--on notice that preaching politics puts them at risk of audits, fines or, in some cases, the loss of tax-exempt status. The IRS has also announced it will no longer wait for complaints to come in, but will instead take action "to prevent violations." It will be reviewing the content of sermons, it says, as well as the financial books of religious organizations. The free exercise of religion could now come with a hefty bill.

I wrote a few months ago, in USA Today, that:

Religious leaders and activists have always spoken provocatively — and even prophetically — about faith's implications for citizens, candidates, policies and elections. Not surprisingly, these reminders often prompt criticism and resistance in the pews, the news media and the public square. But we should neither demand nor expect our faith commitments or religious ministers to tell us only what we want to hear, or always to assure us that we and the status quo are doing just fine. What's more, it should not be the place of government officials or IRS agents to impose and enforce a line between pastors' stirring sermons and partisan stump speeches. . . .

It is the regulation of the churches' expression, and not their expression itself, that should raise constitutional red flags. Religious institutions are not above the law, but a government that respects the separation of church and state should be extremely wary of telling churches and religious believers whether they are being appropriately "religious" or excessively "political" or partisan. Churches and congregants, not bureaucrats and courts, must define the perimeter of religion's challenges. It should not be for the state to label as electioneering, endorsement, or lobbying what a religious community considers evangelism, worship or witness.

Of course, there are good reasons — religious reasons — for clergy to be cautious and prudent when addressing campaigns, issues and candidates.

Reasonable people with shared religious commitments still can disagree about many, even most, policy and political matters. It compromises religion to not only confine its messages to the Sabbath but also to pretend that it speaks clearly to every policy question. A hasty endorsement, or a clumsy or uncharitable political charge, has no place in a house of worship or during a time of prayer — not because religion does not speak to politics, but because it is about more, and is more important, than politics.

See also this paper I wrote a while back, "A Quiet Faith?  Taxes, Politics, and the Privatization of Religion":

The government exempts religious associations from taxation and, in return, restricts their putatively “political” expression and activities. This exemption-and-restriction scheme invites government to interpret and categorize the means by which religious communities live out their vocations and engage the world. But government is neither well suited nor to be trusted with this kind of line-drawing. What’s more, this invitation is dangerous to authentically religious consciousness and associations. When government communicates and enforces its own view of the nature of religion­, i.e., that it is a “private” matter­and of its proper place­, i.e., in the “private” sphere, not “in politics”­ it tempts believers and faith communities also to embrace this view. The result is a privatized faith, re-shaped to suit the vision and needs of government, and a public square evacuated of religious associations capable of mediating between persons and the state and challenging prophetically the government’s claims and conduct.

Still more on Georgetown

Susan responds here to my post about the recent decision at Georgetown regarding outside Protestant ministries.  Regarding my assumption that "Georgetown's campus-ministry office has similar policies with respect to outside Catholic ministries and organizations, like Opus Dei and Regnum Christi," Susan writes that "it appears that the change in policy is one that affects only the affiliated Protestant ministries operating at Georgetown, not any Catholic ones."  I continue to suspect, though, that Georgetown's Office of Campus Ministry policies with respect to outside Catholic ministries like Opus Dei and Regnum Chrisi looks like the one recently adopted for outside Protestant ministries.  Does anyone know for sure?

Separating God and politics in Mexico

In addition to peddling a laughably superficial narrative about Church-state relations in early 20th century Mexico, the Washington Post article mentioned below quotes an angry supporter of López Obrador who is critical (as are, apparently, many protesters and demonstrators) of Cardinal Rivera for urging Mexican Catholicss to (quoting the Post) "respect a decision by a special elections court rejecting López Obrador's request for a full recount and ordering a recount of only 9 percent of polling places[.]"  According to this critic, the Cardinal is "getting into politics . . . The church is for God, not for politics."  The Post's writer similarly characterize Rivera as "blend[ing] the spiritual and the secular."

But, Lopez Obrador's entire campaign has been soaked in religious imagery and language, decorated with pictures of saints, Pope John Paul II, and the Virgin of Guadalupe.  Who is "blend[ing] the spiritual and the secular"?

Washington Post: Anti-Catholicism = "reform"

The Post today features a story on Cardinal Rivera's current unpopularity among supporters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.  According to the Post, the "tension" between Rivera and his critics "has roots in history":

Troops supported by the Catholic Church fought a bloody, three-year war against the Mexican government in the 1920s. The war, which cost more than 70,000 lives, was an unsuccessful attempt to overturn reforms that had stripped the church of its considerable influence over the government and the country's financial system.

Hmmm.  The "reforms" of the 1917 Constitution and the Calles government involved the slaughter of priests and Catholic peasants (the "Cristeros") who resisted the state's ferocious efforts to put down the Church, institute a cultural revolution worthy of Pol Pot, and thoroughly secularize Mexican society.  (It was, for a time, an offense to say "Adios.")  Religious processions were prohibited; Catholic schools, convents, and monasteries were closed; foreign priests and nuns were deported; and those priests who were not killed were required to register with the government before receiving permission to perform work in the state's puppet church.  Ah, reform!

That a news story, in one of our best papers, is -- in an article about church-state relations in Mexico -- content simply to report that "[t]roops supported by the Catholic Church fought a bloody, three-year war against the Mexican government in the 1920s" is a disgrace -- for journalism, for our schools and universities, and for the Post.

Here is a useful bibliography.  Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Locke's birthday

John Locke was born on this day in 1632.  (So were Ingrid Bergman, Charlie Parker, and Slobodan Milosevic.)

Here is Locke's Letter on Toleration (1689).  Here is a paper by Steve Smith, "Toleration and Liberal Commitments."  And, here is an interview with Stanley Fish, "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech."

Question:  Which term is more often used (or misused) in law-school classes:  "Lockean", "Kantian", or "Rawlsian"?

More on Georgetown

Rick's follow-up to Rob's post on this subject assumes that similar policies are in place regarding outside Catholic ministries and also quotes the First Things article suggesting that the decision was made in the name of the Catholic tradition of Georgetown. 

As to the first, it appears that the change in policy is one that affects only the affiliated Protestant ministries operating at Georgetown, not any Catholic ones.  (Having said that, I have no first-hand knowledge of what, if any outside Catholic ministries operate at Georgetown.) 

As to the second, there is no suggestion in the letter sent to the affiliated Protestant ministires announcing the policy that the decision had anything to do with adherence to Catholic tradition; it appears to be more an issue of how Protesant Ministry will be conducted at the University.  Scrolling to the bottom of the attached link will give you a link to a pdf file with a copy of the letter. 

The linked article suggests that the decision is about "a desire in the Protestant Chaplaincy to build the ministry from within Georgetown and its Protestant student leaders rather than rely on outside groups or fellowships.”  There may be more to it than that, but whatever that is does not appear to be about Catholic mission.

The Bible and Homosexuality

Thanks, Robby, for your comments.  (Though you needn't use Rick as an intermediary; you can simply send your comments on my postings to me, and I'll happily post them for you.)

In 2002 (which is the last time I looked), I wrote that recent pieces defending the reading of the Bible according to which homosexual sexual conduct is always immoral include:

• Charles L. Bartow, "Speaking the Text and Preaching the Gospel," in Choon-Leong Seow, ed., Homosexuality and the Christian Community at 86 (1996).
• Richard B. Hays, "Awaiting the Redemption of Our Bodies:  The Witness of Scripture Concerning Homosexuality," in Jeffrey S. Siker, ed., Homosexuality in the Church:  Both Sides of the Debate at 3 (1994).
• Ulrich W. Mauser, "Creation, Sexuality, and Homosexuality in the New Testament," in Seow, supra, at 39.
• Thomas E. Schmidt, "Romans 1:26-27 and Biblical Sexuality," in John Corvino, ed., In Same Sex:  Debating  the Ethics, Science, and Culture of Homosexuality at 93 (1997).

At the same time (2002), I wrote that recent pieces dissenting from the traditional reading in favor of a different reading--a reading according to which the Bible does not teach that homosexual sexual conduct is always immoral--include:

• Brian K. Blount, Reading and Understanding the New Testament on Homosexuality," in Seow, supra, at 28.
• Victor Paul Furnish, "The Bible and Homosexuality:  Reading the Texts in Context," in Siker, ed., at 18.
• Daniel A. Helminiak, "The Bible on Homosexuality:  Ethically Neutral," in Corvino, supra, at 81.
• Bruce J. Malina, "The New Testament and Homosexuality," in Patricia Beattie Jung with Joseph Andrew Coray, eds., Sexual Diversity and Catholicism:  Toward the Development of Moral Theology at 150 (2001).
• Choon-Leong Seow, "A Heterotextual Perspective," in Seow, supra, at 14.
• Jeffrey S. Siker, "Homosexual Christians, The Bible, and Gentile Inclusion:  Confessions of a Repenting Heterosexist," in Siker, supra, at 178.

There is--and it is undeniable that there is--an increasingly widespread, transdenominational disagreement among Christians over whether, according to the Bible, homosexual sexual conduct is invariably immoral--immoral without regard to any particularities of context.

Something Galileo Galilei wrote is worth pondering here:

The reason produced for condemning the opinion that th earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still.  Since the Bible cannot err, it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes an erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun is inherently motionless and the earth movable.

     With regard to this argument, I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth--whenever its true meaning is understood.  But I believe that nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify.  Hence if in expounding the Bible one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error.  Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies.
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More on Georgetown

Thanks to Rob for linking to the story about Georgetown's move against several outside Protestant ministries and organizations.  (I assume, by the way, that Georgetown's campus-ministry office has similar policies with respect to outside Catholic ministries and organizations, like Opus Dei and Regnum Christi).

On the one hand, I am sympathetic to the idea that a Catholic university -- one that takes seriously, in a consistent way, its responsibilities with respect to the development and formation of students -- might want to oversee and centralize, through its own campus-ministry office, the pastoral and services provided to students on campus.  Is Georgetown such a Catholic university?  I don't know. 

It seems worth noting that the decision at issue appears to have been made -- or, at least, executed -- by the University's Protestant ministry staff.  Jody Bottum, in the First Things post to which Rob links, adds:

Still, there was something odd going on last year when Campus Ministries demanded that the evangelical groups sign a statement promising not to “proselytize nor undermine another faith community.” And there was something even odder when it was done in the name of the school’s Catholic tradition—by the Protestant chaplains in the official Georgetown office.

The problem, of course, finally boils down to this: The evangelical groups represent only a few hundred students, but they are strongly pro-life and opposed to homosexual marriage. The mainline Protestant employees of Campus Ministry find such things embarrassing, and so they kick the evangelicals off campus, employing the power of the officially Catholic chaplain’s office and the rhetoric of the school’s Catholic identity.

Slavery, homosexuality, and Scripture

Responding to Michael P.'s recent post, commenting on the similarity between the 19th century Scripture-and-slavery debate and the debate today about homosexuality and the Bible, Prof. Robert George writes:

In a recent posting . . . , Professor Michael Perry says that he is struck by the similarities between our debate over homosexuality and the 19th century debate over slavery, when it comes to the use of scripture.  To my mind, the differences that are more striking.

Christians who wished to practice or justify slavery in the antebellum American south immediately faced a problem:  sacred scripture, in its opening passages, taught that each and every human being is made in the image and likeness of God.  Every human being is descended from the same original parents and, as such, are in the most fundamental sense brothers and sisters.  Opponents of slavery pressed the point relentlessly, and, as the historical record shows (see Eugene Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South), pro-slavery Christians had enormous difficulty in meeting their argument directly.  But an indirect approach was available.  The Bible at various points refers to slavery, and even proposes norms pertaining to its practice, while not condemning it as unjust or in any way immoral.  So, pro-slavery Christians asserted, those in a position to practice slavery are entitled to choose whether or not to practice it—no one may be forced against his conscience to own slaves, but anyone who chooses to own a slave does not necessarily contravene Christian moral principles by doing it.  In other words, Christians who were "pro-choice" (as we might today put it) on the slavery question, pointed to the absence of a Biblical condemnation (and even suggestions of tacit approval) of a morally controversial practice they wished to support in justifying a position that was difficult to square with the logical implications of Biblical anthropology.  (As Professor Genovese points out, the fact that the slavery they were defending was a racially-based form of chattel slavery made it especially difficult for them to justify their position even on Biblical grounds, but lay that aside for now.)

These pro-slavery Christians were wrong.  And the practice they were defending was horribly wicked—far more wicked than the practice of fornication, adultery, or sodomy.  But it must be conceded that the proponents of slavery had available to them scriptural resources for an argument, albeit an unsound and, it is now clear, deeply scandalous one, that are not available to those who wish to defend the compatibility of the choice to engage in fornication, adultery, or sodomy, with Christian anthropology and moral principles.  Unlike slavery, these and other forms of sexual immorality are the subjects of scriptural condemnations, as clear and extensive in the New Testament as in the Old.  Moreover, the idea that they may legitimately be chosen has been rejected by the firm and constant teaching of the Church---East and West – a teaching that, by its centering on what is involved and required by the marital (both for married and unmarried persons), was and is scripturally grounded in a way going far beyond mere “proof texting.”  Christians who today seek to justify deviations from traditional norms of sexual morality can do no more than attempt to explain away the scriptural condemnations of the conduct they defend.  (So, for example, some of them attempt to show that the explicit condemnation of homosexual conduct is merely a matter of ritual purity and practice, not the expression of a moral teaching.)  They cannot say about the morally controversial practices they wish to defend what the pro-slavery Christians could and did say about the morally controversial practice they defended, namely, that the Bible treats it as a normal and accepted social practice and offers no condemnation of it.

So much for the differences which strike me.  I would of course concede that there are similarities.  Most notably:  like Christian defenders of slavery, Christian defenders of sodomy (and other sexual practices condemned by historic Christian teaching) seek to show that Christianity is more permissive than their opponents say it is.  And, correspondingly, of course, Christian opponents of sodomy, like Christian opponents of slavery, see the Christian ethic as more rigorous by virtue of its excluding certain controversial forms of conduct from the universe of morally available options for choice, despite the fact that some intelligent, well-informed people do not share the conviction that the conduct is wrong.

Of course, the fact that those who argued for a more permissive view of morality in the case of slavery were wrong does not mean that those who today argue for a more permissive view of the morality of sodomy or other controversial forms of sexual conduct cannot be right.  Whether they are right or wrong will have to be judged on the quality of the arguments they advance.  My point in these comments has been only that they do not have available to them the scriptural resources that were available to, and were exploited by, those who argued that slave holding was compatible with Christian morality.  That, I think, is a striking difference.

Pope Benedict XVI corrects Katherine Harris

Well, sort of.  Katherine Harris's stupid statement about electing Christians -- aside:  why is it so hard for people who believe, as I do, that faith and public life are not and cannot be compartmentalized to avoid falling into the "separation of church and state is a myth" trap -- reminded me of this, from then-Cardinal Ratzinger's Salt of the Earth.  After observing that, in fact, it was Christianity that brought the separation of Church and state into the world, he continues:

“Until then the political constitution and religion were always united.  It was the norm in all cultures for the state to have sacrality in itself and be the supreme protector of sacrality. . . .  Christianity did not accept this but deprived the state of its sacral nature.  . . . In this sense, this separation is ultimately a primordial Christian legacy and also a decisive factor for freedom.  Thus, the state is not itself a sacred power but simply an order that finds its limits in a faith that worships, not the state, but a God who stands over against it and judges it.”

Katherine Harris Gets Serious About Theocracy

As thorny and divisive as questions of church and state can be, it's nice when someone can come along and unify all reasonable minds in opposition to a set of outlandish views.  U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, in a doomed campaign for Senate, called the separation of church and state "a lie" and said, "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin."

Rob

Georgetown Gets Serious About Mission

Showing the best side of its Catholic identity, Georgetown has kicked off campus outside Protestant ministries, including InterVarsity and Chi Alpha.  Joseph Bottum comments:

There’s an obvious irony here—employed too often to be surprising—in which people begin by protesting in the name of diversity against centralized authority, and later discover, once they’re in charge, how useful those old forms of authority can be in controlling diversity.

Rob

Summer Book Report #3

We've previously discussed the excerpted findings of Ron Sider's book, The Scandal of The Evangelical Conscience.  Evangelicals (as well as mainline Protestants and Catholics, to varying degrees) do not fare discernibly better than their non-Christian neighbors in terms of divorce, materialism, sexual morality, domestic abuse, and racism.  I read the book recently, and Sider (who previously wrote the landmark Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger), pins much of the blame on the "cheap grace" mentality that evangelicals bring to faith.  For example, he writes:

There is simply no biblical justification for saying that the glorious truth of justification by faith alone is more important than the astonishing reality that the Risen Lord now lives in his disciples, transforming them day by day into his very likeness.  Justification and sanctification are both central parts of the biblical teaching on the gospel and salvation.  To overstate the importance of the one is to run the danger of neglecting the other.  And that is certainly what popular evangelicalism has done.  Whether emphasizing simplistic slogans such as "once-in-grace-always-in-grace" or focusing on seeker-friendly strategies that neglect costly discipleship, we have propagated the heretical notion that people can receive forgiveness without sanctification, heaven without holiness.  Notions of cheap grace are at the core of today's scandalous evangelical disobedience.

  Another problem is the lack of communal accountability:

The notion -- and practice -- of an independent congregation with no structures of accountability to the larger body of Christ is simply heretical.  How can an independent "Bible church" claim to be biblical when its very refusal to submit to a larger church structure of accountability defies the essence of a biblical understanding of being the church?

Obviously, Sider's prescription for evangelicals' problems sounds curiously Catholic.  This raises a new set of questions, though.  If evangelicals mirror society's sinfulness due to their lack of communal accountability and theology of cheap grace, what excuse do Catholics have?  If there is blame to be pinned somewhere, my first guess would be the tendency to emphasize rules over personal transformation in the faith formation process.  Or maybe it's the difficulty of fostering personal accountability through faith-centered relationships in parishes where folks hurry out as soon as the mass ends (and where small-group bible studies remain rare).  Or maybe it's the music.

Rob

Sobering Economic News

This should be of concern to anyone who affirms Catholic Social Thought:

New York Times
August 28, 2006

Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and DAVID LEONHARDT   

With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

Until the last year, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by the rising value of benefits, especially health insurance, which caused overall compensation for most Americans to continue increasing. Since last summer, however, the value of workers’ benefits has also failed to keep pace with inflation, according to government data.

At the very top of the income spectrum, many workers have continued to receive raises that outpace inflation, and the gains have been large enough to keep average income and consumer spending rising.

In a speech on Friday, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, did not specifically discuss wages, but he warned that the unequal distribution of the economy’s spoils could derail the trade liberalization of recent decades. Because recent economic changes “threaten the livelihoods of some workers and the profits of some firms,” Mr. Bernanke said, policy makers must try “to ensure that the benefits of global economic integration are sufficiently widely shared.”

[The entire article is well worth a read.  Click here.]
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Bob Casey v. Rick Santorum

Mark your calendars.  Next Sunday, September 3, on NBC's MEET THE PRESS:

MR. RUSSERT: That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week as we kick off the return of our MEET THE PRESS Senate Debate series. One of the most closely watched Senate races of the year, Pennsylvania; incumbent Republican Senator Rick Santorum vs. State Treasurer Bob Casey. Santorum vs. Casey.  The debate, right here, next Sunday. If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.
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Executive clemency

This editorial, from today's Washington Post, caught my attention.  Here is the first paragraph:

WE HAVE our differences with Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). But his record on clemency, the dispensing of mercy to those convicted of crimes, is truly exemplary. Where many governors, and President Bush, wield their power to forgive with great timidity -- seeing virtually any substantial use of it as a potential political liability with no upside -- Mr. Ehrlich has been bold. In less than one term in office, his 190 pardons and commutations eclipse by far the sum of those issued in two terms each by his immediate predecessors, William Donald Schaefer and Parris N. Glendening. Other chief executives should take note.

I tend to agree that our practices today with respect to crime-and-punishment are such that executive clemency is an important means of correcting or preventing injustices and should be used freely for this purpose.  At the same time, there is always the danger that clemency, if granted haphazardly, casually, or arbitrarily, can undermine the very ends it is supposed to promote.  So, what's the solution?

Here and here are some earlier MOJ posts on the subject.

Then, Slavery and Scripture; Now, Homosexuality and Scripture

I thought of the similarity between *their* debate and *our* debate when I read this short piece on Mark Noll's new book.  (Not that we're about to have another civil war.)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 26, 2006

Slavery, Scripture: An explosive mix
John Blake - Staff

Before the Civil War was fought on the battlefield, it was fought in America's pulpits.

Southern ministers claimed Scripture sanctioned slavery. Abolitionists said it condemned the practice. The colossal political issue of mid-19th century America might have been the preservation of the Union, but it turned on a deeper question: What does the Bible say about slavery?

Those positions form the basis for author Mark Noll's "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis" (University of North Carolina Press, $29.95).

The "book that made the nation was destroying the nation," because the Bible could not provide a moral consensus on slavery, said Noll, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois.

"The political standoff that led to war was matched by an interpretive standoff," Noll writes. "No common meaning could be discovered in the Bible, which almost everyone in the United States professed to honor and which was, without a rival, the most widely read text of any kind in the whole country."

Noll, speaking by phone from his Wheaton office, said he was drawn to the subject because few writers had explored the theological conflict that preceded the Civil War. Deeply felt Christian beliefs drove participants and leaders on both sides.

"This was far and away the most religiously engaged conflict in American history," Noll said. "There's a strong religious dimension in the American Revolution ... but nothing like that of the armies and populace in the Civil War."

It may be difficult for people today to understand how Christians could use the Bible to support an institution as brutal as slavery, but Noll said the power of the pro-slavery position was its theological simplicity. The Old Testament and New Testament were filled with passages that sanctioned slavery. In a nation where most people believed in the infallibility of Scripture, those passages settled the debate.

"You had very serious people who said the Bible certainly supports slavery, and any attack on the slave system was therefore an attack on the Bible," Noll said.

The difficulty in the abolitionists' position was its nuance. They had to reject an inerrant approach to the Bible and appeal to the broad sweep of Scripture, which opposed the oppression of a group of people. Those arguments, however, never gained traction among ordinary people who were accustomed to treating the Bible as infallible, Noll said.

Noll said he grew depressed while writing the book because unprecedented reverence for the Bible led not to peace but to the bloodiest war in history.

"Once positions hardened," he said, "the Bible became a bullet rather than a book."
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Glass ceiling for women pastors

The NYT today chronicles a substantial glass ceiling for women pastors, even among the denominations that do ordain women.

Lisa

Marian Evangelicals?

There was an interesting article in our local paper today about a film coming out later this year, "The Nativity Story," telling the story of the birth of Jesus from Mary's perspective. The Protestant screenwriter, Mike Rich, says, "Not much anymore in our lives is black and white.  But this is a young woman who made a black-and-white decision:  She was willing to have the faith to follow the most remarkable of directives."

The article discusses the resurgence of interest in both the historical and the spiritual significance of Mary, not only in the Catholic Church, but also in Protestant churches.

. . . Mary, already revered in Islam as the mother of the prophet Jesus, has been finding her way into Protestant churches, too.  In recent years, many non-Catholic Christians have reclaimed parts of her tradition that once seemed too Catholic to consider.  They remember her as a witness of Jesus' crucifixion, perhaps as one of the women who found the tomb empty on Easter morning.  Many who saw the film "The Passion of the Chirst" were touched by scense of Mary remembering her son as a child."

More support for continued exploration of the Marian dimension of CLT?

Lisa 

More on Stem Cells

Over at First Things, Ryan Anderson offers some additional thoughts on the premature embrace of the new method of obtaining stem cells, including discussion of two alternatives that merit further exploration.

Rob

Jesus is Not My Home-Boy

This might speak more powerfully to those of us who emerged from the evangelical subculture, but here is a useful dissection of the exploding marketing phenomenon known as Christian kitsch.  (HT: Evangelical Outpost)  And yes, pictured below is the latest in evangelistic beach wear.

Rob

USCCB statement on stem cells

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement to clarify the media coverage of the new method of obtaining embryonic stem cells for research:

Initial news reports have misrepresented a study published August 23 in the online version of the journal Nature. The study, conducted by researchers at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, has been described as showing that a single cell can be obtained from an 8- to 10-celled embryo, and used to create an embryonic stem cell line without harming the original embryo. Some even speak of each child receiving his or her own “repair kit” of stem cells upon birth.

“The reality is very different. Researchers did not safely remove single cells from early embryos, but destroyed 16 embryos in a desperate effort to obtain an average of six cells from each one. This experiment left no embryos alive, and solves no ethical problem. From the resulting 91 cells, they still only managed to make two cell lines. Their study shows nothing about the safety of removing only one cell, which in fact is something they never did – partly because their own earlier experiment in mice indicated that “co-culturing” several cells together might be needed to develop a cell line.

Rob

Religiously arguing

As Rob reported not long ago, there has been a lively conversation in the blogosphere -- particularly in the right-leaning sectors -- about Heather MacDonalds' recent piece criticizing conservatives' use of religious arguments.  (Lots links available here).  Now, Ms. MacDonald has written an admirably charitable and thoughtful response to some of her critics, in particular Michael Novak.

Experimenting on prisoners

The New York Times reported, a few weeks ago, that "[a]n influential federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the government loosen regulations that severely limit the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations of abuse."

One of my first law review articles was about human experimentation and autonomy-based ethics.  The cite is "Why Informed Consent?  Human Experimentation and the Ethics of Autonomy," 36 Cath. Lawyer (now the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies) 455 (1996).  Here is the introduction (sorry for the long post).  I'd welcome readers' and bloggers' thoughts:

[C]onsent enjoys talismanic--if not sacramental--status in modern life and thought; it is our "master concept."  But why? Why should consenting mean so much that by comparison other ideas and ideals often mean so little?  The power of consent lies deeper than its everyday meaning of "Sure, go ahead" or "Let's do it."  It prompts more questions than it answers: May someone else say, "Sure, go ahead. Do something to him?" If I consent to something now, am I forever stuck with or bound by my choice? May I delegate my power to consent or assign my consent's moral force to someone else? May I consent to anything I wish? Can everybody provide morally meaningful consent, or only those who possess or exhibit autonomy (whatever that means)?

Such questions have always prompted frustratingly interminable discussion. But we continue to wrestle with them because consent and its mysteries have "an extraordinarily firm hold on our imagination.... [Consent] provides perhaps the single most prevalent paradigm structuring our thinking about law, society, morality and politics."  Consent also animates other cherished but nebulous concepts. It is intimately connected to our ideas of "liberty" (I may do what I choose to do, and may refuse to consent to actions in which I do not wish to be involved); "equality" (we all get to consent); "autonomy" (I and only I may make these choices and decisions); and "dignity" (I may make these decisions because of who and what I am).

Perhaps because consent is so embedded in our moral thinking, we put it to at least two different tasks. First, consent is a basic and fundamental prerequisite of our political and social institutions and of our dealings with one another.  We have lost the premodern vision of the world as an organic whole, and so consent, rather than nature or design, structures the coming together, binding together, and living together of modern masterless men.  This side of consent animates the political "consent theory" and permeates the rhetoric and myths of the American founding.  It is a necessary first condition for the legitimacy of the institution or end-state that proceeds from the act of consenting.

Consent has another job. The fact that a certain institution, result, procedure, or transaction was consented to is often pointed to as the moral justification for that institution, result, procedure, or transaction. Thus, not only is consent necessary for a moral end-state, it is also sufficient.  Consent not only legitimates, it also justifies. Not surprisingly, this is the face of consent that resonates with libertarians and libertines.  This "justifying" side of consent raises some timeless and thorny questions. What if people consent to activities and results which are repugnant, or even evil? Even John Stuart Mill worried about honoring consensual slavery.  For Mill, one who enslaved himself failed to play by the rules, "missed the point" of his freedom, and could therefore be restrained without disrespect to Liberty. Today, we wonder whether a woman's consent to appear in graphic, demeaning, or even violent pornography justifies or immunizes the pornographer.  If she appears to consent to a relationship in which she is repeatedly brutalized, does her consent stymie our efforts to stop the brutality or punish the brute?

These problems make us squirm a little, just as they did Mill. We have three ways out: We can say, first, "Yes, consent justifies whatever is consented to--you consented, so case closed;" second, "This particular consent is deficient--you did not really consent and so the result or action is not justified;" or third, "You consented, but your consent cannot justify this action or result." For example, Dr. Kevorkian apparently elicits consent from his subjects before helping them kill themselves.  We can note the consent, shrug, and be on our way. Or, we can deconstruct the consent, scrutinizing it carefully for the indicia of autonomy--was it "knowing?," was it "informed?"--that give consent its moral force. Finally, we can say that while consent is not irrelevant (it would certainly be worse if Dr. Kevorkian's subjects did not consent), the consent does not and cannot justify either Dr. Kevorkian's act or the act of his subject.

Note the subtle yet crucial difference between these three options: In the first, consent is king, while the third option assumes a moral universe shaped and governed by extra-consensual considerations. The second option, however, reflects the tension between the other two. We might block the consented-to action, but we pay lip service to consent's justifying role by assuring ourselves that had the consent been untainted, had it been "informed," it would have had moral force. In fact, we pay lip service precisely because we often silently suspect that consent cannot and does not always justify.  Therefore, in difficult situations, we declare that the decision maker did not or could not really consent, that the consent was not "informed" or "knowing" or "voluntary."  Rather than admit that the consent does not and could not justify the act, we denigrate the consent and, necessarily, the consenter as well