Mirror of Justice

"Education's End"

In recent days, we (along with folks at America magazine, at the Commonweal blog, etc.) have been talking about ye olde topic, "the identity of Catholic universities".  Of course, it's not just those of us who are into the "Catholic university thing" who are hang-wringing about the state of our project; lovers of the university-enterprise generally are uneasy.  See, for example, the new book by my law-school teacher and former dean, Anthony Kronman:  Education's End:  Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life.

In the Yale alumni magazine, there's a short essay adapted from the book, called "Against political correctness:  a liberal's cri de coeur."  (Kronman, it should be emphasized, writes and worries as a liberal and a "secular humanist.").  Kronman writes:

[W]hen a presumptive commitment to the values of political liberalism begins to constrain the exploration of the personal question of life's meaning -- when the expectation that everyone shares these values comes to place implicit limits on the alternatives that may be considered and how seriously they are to be taken -- the enterprise itself loses much of its power and poignancy for the students involved and their teachers lose their authority to lead it. . . .

Today's idea of diversity is so limited that one might with justification call it a sham diversity, whose real goal is the promotion of a moral and spiritual uniformity instead.  It has no room for the soldier who values honor above equality, the poet who believes that beauty is more important than justice, or the thinker who regards with disinterest or contempt the concerns of political life. . . .

Can Catholics Sing?

OK, Rob and Mark, and other critics of Catholic congregational music, here's your chance.  The National Association of Pastoral Musicians is taking an on-line survey in which you can rate congregational singing in your parish, your community, and the Church in general.

Make Room for Singles

A recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Make Room for Singles in Teaching & Research" argues that

In the academy, much research and teaching is based on the outdated assumption that marriage and the nuclear family dominate adult life. As a result, people who are single, and perspectives not based on conventional marriage, are greatly underrepresented or misrepresented in scholarship and public policy.

As examples, the authors continue:

Marriage and family studies, for example, is a burgeoning, multidisciplinary field that has recently expanded to incorporate the study of nontraditional families. But single people are still likely to appear in its research and courses only if they have an important life experience in common with adults in nuclear families — for example, if they had been married, have children, or are cohabiting.

Scholars in psychology, sociology, and many other disciplines have contributed to the growing field of relationship science — which, in theory, is about all relationships and hence broader than the study of marriage and family. In practice, however, research in that field focuses on romantic and marital attachments, using "relationship" as a shorthand for conjugal ties.

The marriage-centered view of singles assumes that they are alone, and that the growth of one-person households means the nation is at risk of a national epidemic of loneliness. Research from a singles perspective by one of us — The New Single Woman (Beacon Press, 2005), by E. Kay Trimberger — and other scholars challenges such assumptions. It shows that singles have strong ties to their extended families, are adept at forming networks of friends, and are more involved in their communities than married people are.

The relationships that are important to single people, like close friendships and ties to members of the extended family, are invisible to or devalued by scholars who consider marriage the norm. Some of them might argue that singles have close friendships because they are compensating for not having a spouse. A singles perspective would generate other hypotheses — for example, that many single people prefer to maintain a diversified relationship portfolio, rather than investing most of their emotional capital in just one person.

My first impulse on reading this was to mentally retreat into what is probably a stereo-typical Catholic sort of "Oh, my heavens, look how far the assault on the family is going in our society!  We must resist this attempt to validate the sybaritic singles life-style!" 

But upon further reflection, I realized that the article isn't suggesting anything like that, and in fact taps into something that does trouble me about some of the Catholic conversations about family and men and women (including, I freely admit, some of my own work).  I don't think we give enough thought to, let alone intellectual support to, those whose  vocations call them to a life that can't include raising a family themselves -- not just religious vocations, but also those who recognize that the work they are called to do must be so absorbing that they cannot responsibly start their own families.  The discussion in Mulieris Dignatem of "spiritual motherhood" suggests a start, but it doesn't really go very far.  Is there more discussion of this issue directed at priests that I don't know about?  I think it would be very interesting to see some Catholic contributions to this kind of research. 

Cathedrals of California...

... is a fantastic photoblog documenting a project to photograph all of California's Cathedrals (Catholic and otherwise). They're so good, they even managed to make the new Los Angeles Cathedral look beautiful. Highly recommended. (HT: Sullivan)

How Much Disagreement Can We Stand?

The Tablet
September 29, 2007

Twenty-first-century sin
Julie Clague
Moral theology, once the preserve of priests, has changed profoundly. Gone are the confessors’ manuals and instead there is debate among its students and scholars about the way we live our lives. But how much division can be tolerated?

To read the article, click here.

A day of reversals

Apropos of the Georgetown Law reversal, here is some news [HERE] about Verizon's reversal of its earlier refusal to allow NARAL instant text messaging. Borrowing from popular culture of the 1960s, second verse same as the first.   RJA sj

Are Churches (Just) Like the Boy Scouts?

Here is a new paper of mine, called "Are Churches (Just) Like the Boy Scouts?", which I presented at a (great) law-and-religion conference last Spring at St. John's.  The paper talks about, among other things, the account provided by Professors Eisgruber and Sager of the church-autonomy principle; the idea of the "Freedom of the Church" (which I've tried to engage in more detail here); and an "institutional approach" to the Religion Clauses (which is also the subject of a paper I'm doing for our friends at the Villanova Law Review.)  Here is the abstract:

What role do religious communities, groups, and associations play – and, what role should they play – in our thinking and conversations about religious freedom and church-state relations? These and related questions – that is, questions about the rights and responsibilities of religious institutions – are timely, difficult, and important. And yet, they are often neglected.

It is not new to observe that American judicial decisions and public conversations about religious freedom tend to focus on matters of individuals' rights, beliefs, consciences, and practices. The special place, role, and freedoms of groups, associations, and institutions are often overlooked. However, if we want to understand well, and to appreciate, the content and implications of our constitutional commitment to religious liberty, we need to broaden our focus, and to ask, as Professors Lupu and Tuttle have put it, about the “distinctive place of religious entities in our constitutional order.” Are religious institutions special? May and should they be treated specially? If so, how? Why?

For some other, in-places-different views on the subject, see this new paper by Cass Sunstein.

Catholic Higher Education’s Future

I largely agree with Patrick’s sentiments in his posting earlier today about the future of Catholic higher education, which, of course, would include legal education. I also share some sympathy with his statement about the Catholic academy being inclusive. After all, our Lord reminded us that it is not the healthy who need the physician.

While the Miscamble, Steinfels, and McGreevy essays offer differing views about particulars and emphases, they appear to agree on the matter regarding mission-fit for hiring. One does not have to be a Catholic to endorse, support, and contribute to the Catholic intellectual tradition where faith and reason and the integration of knowledge that leads to wisdom. But, that is a crucial point essential to the success of Catholic higher education. When there is a proliferation of faculty members who do not subscribe to these elements essential to Catholic education, serious problems begin to emerge. Rick’s posting earlier today about the recent development at Georgetown University Law Center demonstrates this. As the article in The Hoya illustrates, there are, according to the correspondent, faculty who are behind the reversal that will open the door for supporting pro-abortion advocacy (and, I suspect, eventually other things incompatible with Catholic teachings). If you recall, when Georgetown University was involved in litigation regarding its Catholic identity and matters dealing with sexual orientation issues in the mid-1980s, several Georgetown Law faculty were prominently posed against the University in this lawsuit.

Another matter to keep in mind is that, today, the academy often prizes research and the development of theories that are not compatible with or sympathetic to the integration of knowledge. Narrow specialization is favored. Pope Benedict has spoken of this fragmentation of knowledge in the past and the need to counter it with integration of learning, a traditional goal of Catholic higher education. Those faculty members who are not sympathetic to the Pope’s view are often advocates for the specialization that leads to the fragmentation of learning. There is little doubt that folks in favor of increased specialization can be clever about the particulars of certain subjects, but can it be said that they are also wise? While firing-for-mission could be problematic, hiring-for-mission should not. Moreover, it is necessary and essential for the survival and the flourishing of Catholic higher education. RJA sj

If Mark Sargent were Dean of Georgetown

Rick's post about Georgetown's decision to back away from its policy prohibiting funding for students at summer internships at organizations that promote abortion rights calls to mind Fr. Richard John Neuhaus' comments on Villanova's policy in this area:

Some schools mean it when they say they are Catholic. For instance, Mark A. Sargent, dean of the law school at Villanova University in Philadelphia, writes, “Our Catholic identity is not casual, sentimental, or merely historical.” While the school has many non-Catholic faculty and students, he observes, Villanova remains a Catholic university. The occasion for clarifying all this was a fellowship program in which some students elected to work for pro-abortion organizations. The argument was made that, if the program cannot support abortion, it should just as clearly not support capital punishment. Dean Sargent’s response is marked by what might be described as uncommon lucidity: “Occasionally, we will not do something because we are Catholic. We will not do something that conflicts with our Catholic identity. Such situations are rare, but sometimes we must take a stand. We do so when the conflict is so fundamental and unambiguous that we, in effect, have no choice. Association of Villanova with advocacy for abortion rights presents one such conflict. The fellowship program provides summer stipends for Villanova law students working without pay for public interest organizations. It is funded by an auction, in which Villanova students, faculty, staff, and alumni participate. The program is not an independent student activity. Our name is associated with every aspect of it and makes it go. Our tax-exempt status is used. The auction takes place in our building. The law school administers the funds, and our staff members help organize the program as part of their jobs. Students receiving the stipends are known as Villanova Public Interest Fellows. It is indisputably a Villanova Law School program. A Villanova program obviously cannot be associated with advocacy for abortion rights. Though many individual Catholics believe that there should be some legal right to abortion, the Church’s teaching on the topic is fundamental and unambiguous. We have no choice but to ask program fellows working in our name to agree not to engage in such advocacy. They are, of course, free to take jobs outside the program doing whatever they want. But as program fellows they represent us, and they cannot represent us in advocacy for abortion rights. Some might accuse us of hypocrisy in not banning the program work with advocates of capital punishment and other causes that they believe have the same status as abortion in Catholic teaching. What they do not understand is that the status of these issues in Catholic teaching is very different from that of abortion. Take capital punishment, for example. The Pope has asked Catholics to conclude that capital punishment is insupportable. I agree with him completely. But his statements on the issue were not made with the authority that requires the faithful obedience of all Catholics and Catholic institutions, unlike the Church’s position on abortion. Indeed, many orthodox supporters of the Pope have disagreed with him on this issue and argued that the Catholic tradition does not support abolition of capital punishment. The law school is thus not compelled to disassociate itself from advocacy for capital punishment as it is from advocacy for abortion rights. This is significant, because we are reluctant to constrain our students unless we absolutely must. With respect to abortion, we must. With respect to capital punishment, it is a matter of choice. We could choose to disassociate ourselves from it on Catholic grounds because we are convinced by the Pope’s arguments. And during the next academic year we, as a community, will consider the difficult question of whether we should make that choice. To take time to think hard about what we should do regarding capital punishment is not hypocrisy, but prudence. The need to make a prudential decision about the ambiguous question of capital punishment does not make a principled decision about the unambiguous question of the Church’s teaching on abortion hypocritical.” One hopes that Dean Sargent’s argument will be read, and emulated, by leaders of other schools for whom the name Catholic is not “casual, sentimental, or merely historical.”

I guess it either wasn't read at GU or GU's Catholic name "casual, sentimental, or merely historical."

Georgetown Law reverses pro-life policy

According to The Hoya:

Administrators at the university’s Law Center reversed earlier this month a policy prohibiting funding for students at summer internships at organizations that promote abortion rights, after a widely publicized case in the spring which drew protest from hundreds of students.

Under the new policy, announced by Law Center Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff in a letter published in the Law Center’s student newspaper, the university will no longer consider the mission of each organization when determining grants provided by a student-run organization to students for summer internships.

Villanova

One of the problems (I mean, joys) of having a young baby is that all my time is pretty much accounted for.  So I'm a little late off the blocks in thanking Mark and Villanova for hosting such a great conference last week.  It was great to finally meet him, and Rob, and Susan and Pat in person after getting to know you on this site for these past couple of years.  For those of you who couldn't make it this year or haven't made it before to one of the JCST conferences, I definitely recommend it for you for next year. 

Disruption and hiring

The questions that Fr. Miscamble, Peter Steinfels, John McGreevy, and others are working through are hard, and I admire all concerned for their clear acknowledgment that something -- but what? -- needs to be done to reverse the trend according to which formerly "Catholic" universities no longer deserve that predicate. 

Approaching the issue from a slightly different angle than any I've seen in the recent discussions, I'll take Villanova, where I am privileged to work, as an example.  Villanova University is, as it has been from its founding, an aposolate of the Order of St. Augustine.  The Augustinians have chosen to allow lay men and women (along with other religious and clerics) to join with them in that apostolate at Villanova.  It would be self-defeating, indeed perverse, for those charged with this apostolate to attract to Villanova those who either don't support or are hostile to the apostolate.  Obviously, those doing the hiring at Villanova will and must look for qualities in addition to ones bearing directly on support of and contribution to the apostolate, but it's hard to see how one can justify adding folks who do not in some way further the apostolate as such -- unless by outright denying that the University should be engaged in its declared apostolate (a point to which I return below).

As a matter of fact, however, most "Catholic" colleges and universities, including Villanova, do most of their hiring without regard for apostolate or mission.  It would seem to me, therefore, that the first necessary step is to try to get agreement that support of apostolate/mission is as imporant in potential faculty hires as are intelligence, education, collegiality, and the like.  With most people in most Catholic places of higher education not even granting the legitimacy of hiring for apostolate/mission (let alone its desirability or exigence), it's no wonder we cannot begin to reach consensus on whether hiring Catholics (with a numerical goal in mind) is the way to go or hiring "for mission" is the preferred path.  In each of the several Catholic law schools I know, non-Catholics are among the biggest supporters of mission, but in most Catholic universities, including their law schools, controversy rages over whether or not to hire "for mission." 

I think it's virtually beyond serious question that, whatever has been going on over the last generation has delivered a raft of Catholic places of higher learning that are no longer meaningfully Catholic.  In my judgment, the sponsors of those institutions with charismatic and canoncial apostolates should either acknowledge as much and stop pretending the contrary or take the necessary action to renew the religiosity of their institutions.  What that action would be, I'm not entirely sure, and obviously it would to some extent vary from place to place.  It's worth bearing in mind, though, that (as Bernard Lonergan observed) extraordinary action may be required to reverse a cycle of decline.  I can understand why some people are uncomfortable, for example, with numerical goals for hiring engaged *Catholics* (rather than hiring "for mission"), but it would seem to me that the burden is on those who oppose such numerical goals to demonstrate an alternative that will likely do better.  Personnel are policy, and engaged Catholics are at least prima facie on the side of the sponsoring Catholic religious order's apostolate. 

Peter Steinels worries about a "top-down fiat [that will be] disruptive of the university community."  In my judgment, such disruption may be exactly what is needed to reverse the unhappy trend that seems to move forward with inexorable force.  But, granting Steinfels's concern, what about the "disruption of the university community" that occurs when colleagues deny that hiring for mission is even legitimate, claim that the Catholic quota is filled, or openly mock and actively subvert the religious identity of the institution?  What about this disruption that quietly but insatiably eats away at the core season after season, day after day?  I don't disagree with Steinfels that "hiring for mission" has promise, but it has to be done.  How many pro-mission faculty can one find at such "Catholic" schools as Georgetown, Fordham, Boston College, Santa Clara, and the rest?  I suspect that if the incumbents were pro-mission, hiring "for mission" wouldn't be so controversial as to be the exception rather than the rule.

Let me be clear:  In my judgment, Catholic places of higher education should  be inclusive, both at the faculty level and at the student level.  But there is no inconsistency between being authentically Catholic and genuinely inclusive.  The arms of the Church are wide.   

 

Women and the Priesthood

Over at First Things, Monica Migliorino Miller reviews a new book by Sister Sara Butler titled The Catholic Priesthood and Women:

Butler points out that Inter Insigniores and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis both insist on Christ’s sovereign freedom in his choice of male apostles. And this is an enormously important point. Indeed, much of the legitimacy of the “fundamental reasons” is based on the fact that, not only did Christ act in a certain way, thus setting up a permanent norm, but that Christ acted in freedom. History does not constrain him, culture is not a barrier, history is not a force that may dictate to Christ his choices. Christ is the Lord of history, he is the Lord of his Church. Behind the “fundamental reasons” is a christological one, and while the Church’s documents insist on Christ’s freedom, it is the theologian’s task to explain why this is important. Butler does not provide this much-needed explanation. What is at stake is the very person of Christ—the divine Logos—in a gesture by which the constitution of the entire new covenant depends. If we follow the arguments of the dissenters, we are forced to conclude that in the very founding of the Church Christ (perhaps innocently) was guilty of an act of injustice to half of the human race. This, of course, is untenable.

All of the apostles were also Jewish, of course, so gender must somehow be different, though Miller believes that Butler's explanation on this point is weak.  Miller expands it:

Arbitrary or no, Christ’s male gender, as Butler recognizes, is constitutive of the economy of salvation. But this means we are not dealing any longer with merely theological reasons for the ban on women priests. After all, Christ’s male gender is as much a historical fact, as much a willful historical choice on the part of the Redeemer, as was his choice to call only men to be among the Twelve. Thus Christ’s having called only male human beings to be apostles, having called only male human beings to share in his priestly ministry, is preceded by the fact of his own masculinity in relation to the Church. Thus the “fundamental reasons” and the “theological reasons” are closely intertwined. If the Church believes she must remain faithful to an original gesture of Christ when he called only males to be apostles, she is even less free to dismiss the male gender of Christ in the economy of salvation upon which the meaning of that gesture depends. The ban on women priests is not simply a matter of the Church remaining true to a fact—Christ only chose men—but a matter of the Church remaining faithful to the fundamental truth of the relation between the order of redemption and the order of creation—an order the Church has no power to undo.

The book seems well worth reading; perhaps it will take up the questions Eduardo asked back in March 2006.

"The Dialogue of Cultures"

The theme for this year's Fall conference at Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture is "The Dialogue of Cultures."  All the info you need is here.

The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, concerned by the deep cultural divides that characterize so much of our world, has found inspiration in Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address, and has decided to devote its eighth annual Fall conference to the theme: The Dialogue of Cultures. In interdisciplinary fashion, this conference will take up a variety of questions related to both the difficulties and opportunities involved in addressing cultural conflict. Contemporary political issues will certainly be on the table, as will philosophical and theological inquiries into the broader conception of reason of which Pope Benedict speaks, along with its relation to Christian faith. Legal theorists, also, will bring their perspective to the discussion, perhaps especially in regard to questions of natural law. And, if pattern holds, historians, literary theorists, artists, and people in business will make their own substantial contributions.

40 Days for Life

More information is available here.  (HT:  Amy Welborn.)

Culture Watch: Body Image and the Media

Reason #389 why I try not to take my daughters with me to the grocery store check-out line: the new edition of US Magazine has the screaming headline "Revenge Plastic Surgery," telling the story of a beautiful young television star who got "revenge" on boys who always teased her for being flat-chested.  Her revenge?  Why, getting breast implants, of course!  Because if there's one thing we need to teach young girls today, it's that the best way to deal with their own insecurities about how they look is to anticipate the day when they can accept their own surgically-enhanced self.

But where's the "gap"?

Thanks, Rob, for bringing this interesting NYT article to our attention.  But, personally, I think you missed the most interesting finding -- the explanation for the growing gap in happiness between men and women:

Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.

Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.

Ladies???

The happiness gap

Thirty years ago, women reported being happier than men; now, according to two new studies, the happiness levels have been reversed, but not because women are necessarily working more than they were (which is the thesis of the "second shift" theory):

[R]esearchers who have looked at time-use data say the second-shift theory misses an important detail. Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking.

What has changed — and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends — is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did (including helping their aging parents). They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.

Mr. Krueger’s data, for instance, shows that the average time devoted to dusting has fallen significantly in recent decades. There haven’t been any dust-related technological breakthroughs, so houses are probably just dirtier than they used to be. I imagine that the new American dustiness affects women’s happiness more than men’s.

Ms. Stevenson [one of the researchers] was recently having drinks with a business school graduate who came up with a nice way of summarizing the problem. Her mother’s goals in life, the student said, were to have a beautiful garden, a well-kept house and well-adjusted children who did well in school. “I sort of want all those things, too,” the student said, as Ms. Stevenson recalled, “but I also want to have a great career and have an impact on the broader world.”

Catholic Universities, Catholic Identity, John McGreevy, Etc.

Those of you who are following this discussion should, forthwith, check out what Peter Steinfels has to say over at dotCommonweal:  here.

Court to review constitutionality of lethal injection

The story is here.  This should be an interesting case.  The Court's execution-regulation strategy has, over the years, proceeded down three main tracks:  (1) regulating the fairness of the procedures through which capital sentences are handed down; (2) reducing the number of offenses for which the death penalty is a permissible punishment; and (3) narrowing the categories of offenders who may be executed.  For the most part -- notwithstanding the text of the Eighth Amendment -- there have been relatively few cases dealing with execution-methods.  We'll see . . .

McGreevy on Catholic hiring at Notre Dame

At Commonweal, my friend and colleague John McGreevy has a piece up, responding to Fr. Wilson Miscamble's recent essay on Catholic-hiring in America magazine.  I agree with much of what John says.  As I have already discussed privately with him, though, I was not sure about these few lines:

Framing the problem simply as recruiting Catholic faculty is also ungenerous. Conspicuously absent from Miscamble’s essay are other faculty-Protestants, Muslims, Jews, unbelievers-enthusiastic about the university’s mission. The History department recently hired Mark Noll, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and perhaps the nation’s leading evangelical intellectual. (It has long been the home of George Marsden, another evangelical and the Bancroft Prize-winning biographer of Jonathan Edwards.)

On Miscamble’s abacus they do not count. But they make Notre Dame not just a better university but a better Catholic university. . . .

I did not understand Fr. Miscamble, in his America piece, to be denying that wonderful non-Catholic ND scholars like Mark Noll and Christian Smith "count" as great "mission" hires, but only to be reminding us that -- as great as these scholars are -- they do not "count" toward the particular goal of maintaining a numerical preponderance of Catholics on the faculty.  Should we care about this goal?  I guess I think we should, even though it is certainly true that the mere fact a faculty member identifies as Catholic does not mean he or she will be interested in, understand, or support, the mission (broadly understood) of a Catholic university.  Numbers are not enough.  But -- I take Fr. Miscamble to be arguing -- they do matter, as a starting point.  John also writes:

[S]tudents need intellectual formation too. We can’t guarantee faith. But we can help students learn. And a test of a serious Catholic university is whether we can cultivate the intellectual abilities of our Catholic students so that they become thoughtful, reflective Catholic adults. Most of this is the ordinary hard work of teaching students to write, paint, measure, build, experiment, and think. Some of it is more specific: some students at Notre Dame enter the university unable to locate a Bible passage, much less identify Augustine. They don’t know that Thomas Aquinas immersed himself in Islamic texts, or that the work of Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo is inseparable from his Catholicism. They are unaware that American Catholics are not a majority in American society, or that American Catholics are a tiny percentage of Catholics in a global church.

Here, oddly enough, lies an opportunity that all of us concerned with Catholic education should seize. As institutions that take religion and matters of ultimate concern seriously, in an academic world often content to bracket these subjects as mere matters of opinion, Catholic universities can contribute to the wider world of learning in unusual ways. At the same time, they can attempt to nurture the future leaders that our church, and for that matter our society, so desperately need.

Here, it sounded to me like John was more in agreement than disagreement with Fr. Miscamble.  Wasn't the latter's claim -- at least, his implicit one -- that the "opportunity" John (correctly) identifies is one that a university without a mission-committed faculty -- and, more particularly, a preponderance of Catholic faculty -- can seize?  That is, in order for a Catholic university to do what John says, in these paragraphs, it should be doing, does it need (as Miscamble contends) a predominantly Catholic faculty?  This, it seems to me, is a hard, but really important, question.

Chaput nails it

Here (thanks to First Things) is a bit from a recent address, given by Archbishop Chaput, in Indianapolis:

. . . We don’t just profess belief in the Incarnation. We say we believe that God took flesh at a precise moment in time and in a definite place. Pontius Pilate and Mary are mentioned by name in the creed—and the reference to Mary, his mother, guarantees Christ’s humanity, while the reference to Pilate, who condemned him to death, guarantees his historicity.

All this ensures that we can never reduce the Incarnation to an abstract concept, a metaphor, or a pretty idea. It ensures that we can never regard Jesus Christ as some kind of ideal archetype or mythical figure. He was truly a man and truly God. And once he had a place he called home on this earth. There’s something else, too. We believe that this historical event, which happened more than 2,000 years ago, represents a personal intervention by God “for us men and for our salvation.” God entered history for you and me, for all humanity.

These are extraordinary claims. To be a Christian means believing that you are part of a vast historical project. And it’s not our project. It’s God’s. . . .

This Christianity thing?  It's about reality. It's about a real person, who lived, walked, breathed, slept, laughed, and cried in time, in a real, identifiable place.  It's not just about values, principles, commitments, and messages.  Heavy.

Velasco on CST and corporate law

Several MOJ-ers have blogged about the recent CST conference at Villanova, on markets, the state, and the law.  I asked my NDLS colleague, corporate-law scholar Julian Velasco, for a summary of the paper he presented at the conference.  Here it is:

I focused on developing some guiding principles to help me in trying to put CST into practice in corporate law in the real world.  First, we have to give due consideration to the status quo in enacting reform.  Thus, for example, if shareholders are the owners of the corporation, then we must respect those ownership rights — even if only to pay just compensation before abolishing them.  Second, “more” CST is not necessarily better.  Thus, we cannot say things like, “my plan demonstrates greater solidarity than yours and therefore is more Catholic.”  Plans that are strong in some areas of CST may well be considerably weaker in other areas.  Third, it is not necessarily the case that every aspect of CST is speaking to each society with the same urgency.  Thus, for example, it may be that, in America today, the universal destination of goods is a greater concern than the right to work.  We probably should focus our efforts accordingly.  Finally, it may be too much to expect corporate law, or even all of business law, to solve all of the world’s problems.  Maybe it is enough that they do what they can.  And CST does not necessarily say what that is.  Ultimately, CST should not be expected to provide specific solutions to complex moral problems.  Instead, it should be understood as providing important principles that are intended to be embraced and applied in good faith.

The New ProfessorBainbridge.com

I trust my co-authors will forgive me for briefly hijacking the blog to make an announcement. My personal blog, ProfessorBainbridge.com. has been transformed into a landing page that serves as a planet (a.k.a. hub) site for three content blogs:

• StephenBainbridge.com: A personal journal, focusing on politics and culture
• BusinessAssociationsBlog.com: A professional blog, focused on law and economics
• ProfessorBainbridgeOnWine.com: A wine and food blog

RSS feeds are available either for the combined set or for any one of the individual blogs. For more info, go here. We now return you to your regular programming.

ImmigrationProf blog exclusive interview with Obama

The ImmigrationProf blog is "pleased to announce that at 8 A.M. PST on Tuesday morning [Sept. 25], the ImmigrationProf blog will post an exclusive interview with Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill), one of the candidates vying for the Democratic Presidential nomination. We prepared a list of questions for Senator Obama on a range of difficult immigration issues, including immigration reform, undocumented immigration, family immigration, deportation and immigration raids, local (anti-)immigration ordinances, integration of immigrants into U.S. society, the deaths along the U.S./Mexico border, and his vote in favor of the Secure Fence Act.  Readers will see that Senator Obama's responses made for a very interesting dialogue!"

Check out the blog.

More from Frankovitch on the culture of life

A few weeks ago, I posted this and this in response to Nicholas Frankovitch's First Things post, "The Seamless Garment Reconfigured."  Frankovitch has returned to the discussion with these thoughts.  Here's a bit:

Our right to abort entails the duty to accept that others have the right to have aborted us. Now, maybe the train of thought leading to that conclusion strikes you as abstract and remote from the way most of us think about this issue in real life. “People are not that logical!” So wrote J. Budziszewski in “The Revenge of Conscience,” an essay published in First Things. “Ah,” he continued, “but they are more logical than they know; they are only logical slowly. The implication they do not grasp today they may grasp in thirty years; if they do not grasp it even then, their children will. It is happening already. Look around.”

We know what abortion does to the aborted. To the aborting it does the psychological equivalent. “Do unto others . . .” is a principle that moves along a straight and narrow path and, please note, in both directions. As I would have others do unto me, I ought to do unto them. And so if I have already done unto them, I am now committed to wishing the same for myself. If I abort my unborn child, well, that’s nothing I would deny my parents had the right to do to me.

Self-hatred is what I end up with when I carry to its logical conclusion the proposition that abortion rights are morally necessary, that justice demands them. . . .

There's more.  Check it out.

Paper Call: 2nd Ann. Conf. on MacIntyrean Philosophy

Call for Papers

Theory, Practice, and Tradition: Human Rationality in Pursuit of the Good Life

The Second Annual Conference of the International Society for MacIntyrean Philosophy

The International Society for MacIntyrean Philosophy invites submissions focusing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s accounts of theory, practice, and tradition as a foundation for ethical and political work. Diverse philosophical approaches and methodologies are welcome and the theme can be broadly interpreted. Papers should not exceed 30 minutes reading time.

Select papers may be published in a special journal for the International Society for MacIntyrean Philosophy.

The International Society for MacIntyrean Philosophy was founded by the participants of “MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Aristotelianism: Ethics, Resistance and Utopia,” a conference organized by Kelvin Knight, held at London Metropolitan University in June 2007.

The society includes professional philosophers from different traditions, experts in political theory, the social sciences, the humanities and education, as well as members of non-philosophical communities and practices, and others interested in the relevance of their commitments and professions. Please submit a 100 word abstract no later than January 10, 2008 by email.

Conference Dates: July 30 through August 3, 2008

Location: Saint Meinrad School of Theology, St. Meinrad, Indiana, USA

Website: http://macintyreanphilosophy.googlepages.com/home

Contact: Christopher S. Lutz, Conference Secretary

Email: clutz@saintmeinrad.edu

Phone: 812-357-6209

Saint Meinrad School of Theology

200 Hill Drive

St. Meinrad, IN 47579

Martin Marty on Mother Teresa

Sightings  9/24/07

 

Mother Teresa's Agony

--Martin E. Marty

 

Once when Mormon origins were being radically questioned by a man who turned out to be a forger, I asked Jan Shipps, foremost Gentile scholar of Latter-Day Saints, what if the publicized fake documents turned out to be authentic?  Wouldn't such shaking of the foundations bring down the whole edifice?  No, she reminded me:  The faithful have ways, indefinite and maybe infinite, of responding with new explanations.  Without cynicism, Shipps noted that religions do not get killed by surprises that would seem to necessitate revision.

I thought of Shipps' dictum this month when a beautifully sad or sadly beautiful book by the late Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, saw the light of day and met the glare of publicity.  Aha! was the instant and general response of well-selling a-theists:  This shows that a character on the way to sainthood was inauthentic, and her failure to experience God "proves" God's non-existence.

Not to worry, was the main literate Catholics' response.  Catholic apologists and experts on mysticism addressed Teresa's agony over her non-experience of God and her disappointment in the Jesus in whom she believed but whom she did not experience.  They scrambled to show how her story would more likely lead people to the search for faith than it would disappoint them and drive them away.  But if Mother Teresa had trouble feeling the presence of God, wrote critics, the old hypocrite should not have hung in there as a model, a self-sacrificing but not always easy to applaud rigorist.  We were told that she would be a challenge to every right-thinking and right-experiencing Catholic.

Wrong.  Her published diary is likely to sell as well as those attacking her.  From what I have read, it is a cry of the heart to a heaven evidently empty and silent to her:  "Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me?"  In response, historically informed commentators reached back to the Psalms or medieval precedent for analogies.  Those familiar with mysticism were ready with "Is this the first time you've heard of this?" or "Let's make this a teaching opportunity."  Eileen Marky in September 14th's  National Catholic Reporter laid it out well, as did colleagues in most weekly Catholic and many Protestant papers.  Most asked what any of this had to do with the existence of God.

Then followed, in most accounts, learned revisitations of believers who had doubts or were victims of what medievalists called accidie or, deeper than that, "The Dark Night of the Soul."  While few who value the experience of God's presence would envy Mother Teresa, most expressed sympathy to a now deceased figure who always offered compassion but did not always receive it.  The Jan Shipps dictum did not even have to be put to work.  Catholics and other Christians did not need to reinvent the faith--austere, threatening experiences like Teresa's are as old as faith itself.  It was asked:  If there are bright sides to this darkness or palpitations to replace the numbnesses of spirit, so that the darkness can be, conditionally, a boon, why don't believers put more energy into preparing their fellow devotionalists, showing that such silence may be in store for them, and then telling them not to fear.

[Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.]

Moreau on Catholic schools' mission

Here in South Bend, we've been celebrating the beatification of Basil Moreau, C.S.C. (the founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross).  Here is a quote that reminded me how central the distinctive mission of Catholic schools is, and should be, to Holy Cross, to Notre Dame, and to the Church:

"We shall always place education side-by-side with instruction; the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.  While we prepare useful citizens for society, we shall likewise to our utmost to prepare citizens for heaven."

Anderson on "The Commercial Society"

Greg's post, below, on economics education for religious leaders -- and also the recent posts about the latest CST-fest at Villanova -- remind me that I've been meaning to link to Ryan Anderson's recent review of a new book by Acton Institute director of research Dr. Samuel Gregg called "The Commercial Society:  Foundations and Challenges in a Global Age."  (Here's a link for the book.)  Here's a bit:

Democracies often focus so much on who is making the decisions (the people!) that they don't consider whether the state should be acting in the first place. Pierre Manent explains that "the modern idea of representation leads naturally to a continuous increase in the state's power over society, because it continually erodes the intrasocial powers that ensure the independence and solidity of this society." Citizens become slaves to the state under "the illusion that they are obeying their own will." Combine the politics of redistribution with this soft despotism and you get a government that eliminates the voluntary associations and platoons of civil society that best serve the immediate needs of the poor, while at the same time wrecking the economic institutions that best secure their long-term well-being.

For all his focus on problems posed to commercial societies, Gregg entirely ignores problems they create for human flourishing. Consider the tendency of commercial society to become commercialist society: Gregg entirely ignores the materialism so rampant in the West today, and his discussion of the pitfalls of equality-as-sameness ignores one important truth. While it is certainly the case that the poor in wealthy societies are often better off than the rich in poorer societies, Gregg forgets that much of human fulfillment is social fulfillment. The wide, and widening, gap between rich and poor is cause for concern, and man's absolute well-being (measured in material terms) is insufficient.

These quibbles aside, The Commercial Society is eminently reasonable, particularly for its closing discussion of the possibility of "forced" commercial order. While we shouldn't view humans as passive victims of history, neither should we assume that generations of habits and institutions can be reorganized overnight--or by force. Whether it is European economic and demographic stagnation, Middle Eastern political turmoil, or Latin American and African liberationist policies, culture must be the driving force of economic and legal change. This places a special responsibility on religious leaders, who must understand and communicate social values to their flocks. Many religious leaders still harbor disdain for commercial order, but The Commercial Society could go a long way to educating them in the basics. In fact, this book is important for anyone who seeks to do what Gregg's home institution, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, advocates: To "connect good intentions to sound economics."

The Commonweal Editorial: “Crisis” Averted

Once again, I’d like to thank Michael P. for his posting the excerpt from the recent Commonweal editorial. Interestingly, I had read and reflected upon the content of the editorial along with Dr. Scott Appleby’s essay on the American Modernists early yesterday morning. For what it is worth, readers of Mirror of Justice may find it useful to know that I read Commonweal, First Things, America, the two NCRs (National Catholic Reporter and National Catholic Register), The Tablet, and Crisis, amongst other periodicals. It might be said that my reading fare is catholic. But I digress.

I found several remarks in the editorial to which Michael referenced arresting. The first is the phrase “faithful Catholics” that was placed in quotation marks by the author(s) of this particular editorial to affirm, I suppose, the fidelity of those who disagree with Church teachings on subjects such as ordination, artificial contraception, and the nature of the papacy. This assertion can lead other members of the faithful to believe that the Church’s teachings on these issues, and perhaps other matters, are flexible or ambiguous. I do not think that the Church’s teachings on these topics are as accommodating or indefinite as the editorial would imply with its juxtaposition of the phrase “faithful Catholics.” While Church teachings may be more flexible or less clear on other matters, they are not on these.

This brings me to the distinction that the editorial makes between “open and respectful disagreement” and “suppression.” There is the circumstance in which the heterodox remove themselves from full communion with the Church, and it would be a mistake to conclude, as the editorial did, that their fidelity to unmistakable Church teachings is not in question. It is, but they can do something about this dilemma as I indicated in a previous posting when Steve and I engaged one another in an earlier discussion dealing with fidelity to the Church’s teachings.

A final point I would like to raise in this posting about the editorial concerns its assertion that “History, especially the history of the Second Vatican Council, tells us that disagreement is often the work of the Holy Spirit.” This is an interesting but, nevertheless, inaccurate proclamation about the Council’s work and the documents it produced. Before drafting this posting, I reviewed the texts that the Council adopted, particularly Lumen Gentium and Dignitatis Humanae, and cannot reach the same conclusion that the editorial does about history, particularly that of the Second Vatican Council, and the work of the Holy Spirit. I acknowledge the existence of a history of dissent that ignores or disagrees with Church teachings that come from the Council, but I cannot agree that this particular history is consistent with the Council’s teachings or the work of the Holy Spirit. In making this appeal, I recall Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that the faithful must, in fact, agree, avoid dissent, and be united “in the same mind and the same judgment.” Indeed, there are some matters on which we can disagree and remain faith to the Magisterium, but surely there are other items on which we can not.    RJA sj

Law and Economics Training for Religious Leaders

In the past couple of days, there have been several posts here on the Mirror of Justice about markets and economics. This past week, Villanova hosted a conference on "Catholic Social Teaching on the Market, The State and the Law," while the University of St. Thomas simultaneously held a symposium on "Peace With Creation: Catholic Perspectives on Environmental Law." Issues of economics, markets, and the wisdom of reliance on government intervention to promote social justice were themes at both events.

In this regard, our readers may be interested in a post at the Volokh Conspiracy by Ilya Somin, with the above title, and which includes a cite to an earlier post by Rick Garnett here at MoJ. Ilya Somin's post includes the following:

* * * [I]t seems to me that many religious leaders who pronounce on public policy tend to reflexively favor increasing the role of government with little consideration of ways in which the interventions they favor might