Mirror of Justice

Garvey on "Institutional Pluralism"

In his address at the January 2008 Annual Meeting of the AALS, the new AALS President, Dean John Garvey (Boston College) discussed "institutional pluralism."  Here is a bit from a Boston College Law School-affiliated site:

In a speech in January at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) in New York Dean of Boston College Law School and AALS President John Garvey talked about shifting the axis of the legal academy’s discussion over diversity. Instead of focusing on diversity within law schools, Garvey talked about cultivating the differences among them. . . .

. . .  “Its not clear that Mill’s argument entails protection for dissent at every level,” Garvey said, adding that “a distinctive institutional culture is not inconsistent with individual freedom of inquiry.”

“Collaboration is not control,” he stressed.

In conclusion, Garvey acknowledged the “uncertainty” in his voice about his suggestions. Still, he said that he believed that thinking more about institutional pluralism would be healthy, both for students and for the intellectual life of the academy.

Garvey concluded, “Schools don’t need to compete on the same track to succeed.”

I have not been able to find a link to the full address, but it is reprinted in the March 2008 issue of "aals news."  In the full address, Garvey spends a good bit of time discussing the distinctive mission of Catholic and other religiously affiliated law schools.

"Young Americans Revere Monogamy"

Those crazy "millennials" . . . it turns out they "have a reverence for national institutions, traditions and family values" and "overwhelmingly . . . support monogamy, marriage, the U.S. Constitution and the military[.]"  Who knew?

"Conversion and Conflict"

Next Monday (April 7), I'll be giving a lecture as part of a program, "Conversions and Conflict:  An Interreligious Discussion of Evangelization", at the University of St. Thomas's Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy.  I'm looking forward to spending time with my MOJ-colleagues at St. Thomas and, perhaps, any MOJ readers in the Twin Cities.  My remarks will be based on this paper, which I wrote a little while back, called "Changing Minds":

Proselytism is, as Paul Griffiths has observed, a topic enjoying renewed attention in recent years. What's more, the practice, aims, and effects of proselytism are increasingly framed not merely in terms of piety and zeal; they are seen as matters of geopolitical, cultural, and national-security significance as well. Indeed, it is fair to say that one of today's more pressing challenges is the conceptual and practical tangle of religious liberty, free expression, cultural integrity, and political stability. This essay is an effort to unravel that tangle by drawing on the religious-freedom-related work and teaching of the late Pope John Paul II and on a salient theme in the law interpreting the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

Running through and shaping our First Amendment doctrines, precedents, and values is a solicitude for changing minds - our own, as well as others'. Put differently, the Amendment is understood as protecting and celebrating not just expression but persuasion - or, if you like, proselytism. There are, therefore, reasons grounded in our Constitution and traditions for regarding proselytism and its legal protection not as threats to the common good and the freedom of conscience, but instead as integral to the flourishing and good exercise of that freedom. This same solicitude for persuasion and freedom pervades the writing of the late Pope, who regularly insisted that the Church's evangelical mission does not restrict freedom but rather promotes it. The Church proposes - thereby inviting the exercise of human freedom - she imposes nothing. The claim here, then, is that proposing, persuading, proselytizing, and evangelizing are at the heart of, and need not undermine, not only the freedoms protected by the Constitution, but also those that are inherent in our dignity as human persons.

Catholic Voters and the Presidential Election

"Trying to Vote in Good Conscience

ELIZABETH F. BROWN, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN - School of Law
Email: efbrown@stthomas.edu

[ABSTRACT:]  In November 2007, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship - A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States." This statement by the American Catholic Bishops provides guidance to Catholic voters on how to execute their responsibilities in accord with Catholic social teaching.

Despite some flaws, "Forming Consciences" has three major virtues that will aid American Catholics as they try to vote in good conscience. First, it reaffirms the need for American Catholics become more familiar with and to apply the broad range of Catholic social teachings when voting and exercising their other civic duties. Second, it explicitly rejects the notion that Catholics should be single issue voters. Third, Forming Consciences encourages, but certainly does not require, American Catholics to adopt a holistic ethical approach when evaluating candidates and issues. Such a holistic approach tends to provide better solutions, certainly on economic and environmental issues, than the narrow definition of issues and problems currently used in politics.

This essay comments on how useful the document is in actually helping the average American Catholic, who is not already an expert in Catholic social teachings, discern how to vote. As part of this assessment, it focuses on how much weight Catholics should give to economic and environmental issues based upon the guidance provided by the Bishops' statement. These issues were chosen because they are a growing areas of concern both for Americans and for the Vatican.

This essay was written for the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies Symposium issue on "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship - A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States."

[To download/read the paper, click here.]

Deadly Medicine

My daughter and I visited the Science Museum of Minnesota yesterday.  (A very cool science museum, by the way, for children of all ages.)  The museum is currently home to a circulating exhibit organized by the United States Holocause Memorial Museum, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race.  The exhibit details the development of Germany's efforts to "cleanse" itself of those viewed to be a "biological threat" to the its growth and prosperity.  One horrifying example of what proceeds from a failure to recognize that each human person has a dignity that comes from our creation in the image of God.  And, although there are obviously differences between what occurs by power of the government and what occurs by individual choice, it is hard to look at this and not think about decisions being made today in various ways about what lives are worth living.

I have posted more about the exhibit and my reactions on my blog here.  I highly recommend a visit to the exhibit.  For those in the Twin Cities area, it will be at the Science Museum here until May 4; future sites can be found here.

Turning the other cheek

This guy is my hero: (HT BoingBoing)

· Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.  

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.  He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife. 

"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.  As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'"  Diaz replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you're more than welcome.

"You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help," Diaz says. Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

Go read the rest.

CA Court Will Rehear Homeschooling Case

The California Court of Appeal has granted a rehearing petition in the case in which it held that home-schooling parents must have teacher credentials and rejected any constitutional right to engage in home schooling.  The Alliance Defense Fund news release is here.  Rick's earlier post on the case is here.

The usual pattern in the past with home-schooling has been that courts have rejected constitutional claims by home schoolers and then the political branches have enacted statutes or regulations protecting them.  We'll see if this case ultimately ends up in a court win.

Tom

"Forget Juno"

Slate's "Dear Prudence" has an insightful and concise column on the "national catastrophe" of out-of-wedlock births.  Here's an excerpt:

That out-of-wedlock births are a problem for society does get some political attention—the kind of attention that shows there's not a good plan for what to do about them. Mitt Romney mentioned the statistics in his presidential withdrawal speech. He cites declining religious observance, easily available pornography, and the possibility of gay marriage as the causes—a platform that seems unlikely to reverse the birth trends. Barack Obama, who grew up without a father, believes that a central reason for the ever-increasing rates is the difficult economic circumstances of the working class. In one speech on fatherhood, he talked about the need for government programs to help men become more of a presence in their children's lives and admonished fathers to take their duties seriously. But he didn't mention that one key to effective fatherhood is first becoming a husband.

Economists believe humans act rationally (a somewhat irrational belief, if you ask me), so some conclude that all this out-of-wedlock childbearing is a logical response to market forces, not the result of something as amorphous as "culture." Since many working-class men do not offer the financial stability they used to provide, women see little incentive to marry them. As Obama said, "[M]any black men simply cannot afford to raise a family." (The out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans is close to 70 percent.) I'm trying to follow the logic here. I can understand that a woman looking to get married may decide that a man is such a poor economic prospect that he's not husband material (even if a husband with a low income is better than no husband and no income). But how then is that same man, or a string of them, worthy of fathering her children?

Scholar Kay Hymowitz, author of Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age, turns the argument around and says it's not that harsh economic conditions lead to women having children without fathers, but that the decision to have children without fathers leads to harsh, and self-perpetuating, economic conditions.

In Gratitude to Chiara Lubich

I have just returned from Rome where I spent the hardest and most beautiful week of my life…. As many of you know, the founder of the Focolare Movement, Chiara Lubich, concluded her earthly journey on March 14, 2008.  I happened to be in Rome that day, at the conclusion of the tour which followed an interfaith workshop for a small group on “Love of Neighbor and the Legal Profession” held in Loppiano, the Focolare’s international community near Florence.  So I received the enormous gift of being present for the wake at the Movement’s headquarters in Rocca di Papa, and for the funeral on March 18, held at the papal basilica St. Paul Outside the Walls.

 

The church was packed, with overflow crowds (the reports run from 20,000 to 40,000) following on big screens in the courtyard, and through internet and satellite links throughout the world. 

Her coffin was adorned in the simplicity of three red carnations, in memory of the flowers she bought for a few cents to celebrate her consecration to God in 1943; and the open book of the Gospel, the guiding and revolutionary force for the beginning of the movement and throughout her life. 

The message from Pope Benedict read by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during his homily captures the sentiments of gratitude that permeated every detail of the funeral: “There are many reasons for thanking the Lord for the gift given to the Church of this woman of intrepid faith, humble messenger of hope and peace, founder of a vast spiritual family that embraces many fields of evangelization.  I would like to above all thank God for the service that Chiara has rendered to the Church: a both silent and incisive service, always in harmony with the teaching of the Church.”

Cardinal Bertone’s homily captured in a stunning way the heart of her life and her legacy: here is Zenit’s summary.  I had the challenge of being in the translation booth when the Cardinal’s own voice started to crack as he quoted one of Chiara’s own poems: “When I arrive to your door and you ask me my name, I will not say my name, I will say my name is ‘thank you’, for everything and forever.” 

If you’d like a taste of the atmosphere, here’s a snippet, and further coverage by Zenit.  And at least for the moment the entire ceremony is up on the web and accessible.  The first half an hour prior to the funeral includes tributes from representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu communities that were touched deeply by her work in interreligious dialogue, followed by moving messages from Greek Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican bishops.  The parts I found especially moving were the witness of a Buddhist monk (on the counter at about 9:06); Cardinal Bertone’s homily (at 39:45); and the concluding good-byes (on the counter, 2 hrs and 2 minutes).

Together with hundreds of thousands of other people throughout the world, I have countless reasons to be thankful for the gift that Chiara's life was for the Church and for humanity, and now simply pray for the grace to be faithful to the profound legacy of life and love that she leaves, so as to continue her work toward the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer, “that all may be one.”  Amy

Huckabee on Wright

This seems right to me:

And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

This is also why I think facile counterfactuals in which a white preacher makes a mirror image statement about black people are not at all compelling. 

Formation of the Well-formed Conscience

            The endorsement released by Professor Doug Kmiec of Senator Obama’s candidacy is a potent reminder that each of us will soon have to make his or her own endorsement, or not, of candidates for public office within the privacy of the voting booth. When he spoke before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of 1960, then Senator and Candidate John F. Kennedy (not the Catholic candidate, but the candidate of the Democratic Party who was Catholic) asserted that he would address the issues that came before him based on what his conscience informed him to be in the national interest “without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.” While then Senator, later President, Kennedy mentioned conscience, Professor Kmiec did not; therefore, I cannot comment on his exercise of conscience, but I can on John Kennedy’s.

I think Senator Kennedy was partially right but also partially wrong when he made his statement. He was correct insofar as he acknowledged the importance and relevance of conscience; however, he was wrong insofar as he concluded that religious belief was an impermissible influence in the formation of conscience. Many, if not most, of the issues that a citizen or public official must address contain both political and moral dimensions, but to exclude the moral reasoning that religious belief can offer would be a disservice to the implementation of one’s civic duties and would dishonor the exercise of religious liberty—especially when the individual in question asserts Catholic identity.

            The objective of this posting is to provide an explanation, taking into consideration Catholic teaching, on how the Catholic—either as citizen or as holder of public office—is to form personal conscience that is well-formed and, therefore, consistent with the teachings of the Church. It is essential in addressing this matter to understand that conscience is “the most secret core and sanctuary of a person. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.” [Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, N. 16]

            Conscience, its formation, and its exercise have long been important to the Church and its members. This is evident in the recent US Bishops’ statement, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship—A Call to Political Responsibility. The statement reiterates the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in the Declaration on Religious Liberty that the minds and hearts of Catholics must be formed in such a way as to promote knowledge and practice of the “whole faith”, which must necessarily include the critical, indispensable ability of Catholics to “hear, receive, and act upon the Church’s teaching in the lifelong task of forming his or her conscience.”

            The Church does not tell its members whom they should vote for or against. However, she emphasizes that a critical element of this crucial individual responsibility is that the Catholic must exercise civic duties “in light of a properly formed conscience.” Thus, local bishops have the primary duty, as apostles in union with the Pope, to inform, through their teaching responsibility, each individual’s conscience so as to assure that it is a “properly formed” one. The failure to do so would constitute an inexcusable abdication of their responsibility to the Church and those souls entrusted to their teaching authority.

            The formation of a well-formed conscience must also take into consideration the complementarity of faith and reason because it is reason, compatible with the Catholic faith, that reinforces the Church’s claim to teach and to proclaim the Gospel to the faithful and all people of good will. The well-formed conscience inexorably reflects this complementarity. But the free and well-formed conscience that accords and thinks with the Church cannot follow the problematic course of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where personal liberty is based on the ability to define one’s own concept of existence, the meaning of the universe, and the mystery of human life. The reason should be obvious: competing conceptions of liberty and conscience will inexorably lead to a collision course even within the most democratic of societies.

            What will avoid the collision? Let me suggest these tools: patience, thought, and faith. The bishops, along with those who assist in their teaching authority, have the clear and distinct obligation to instruct the faithful in fundamental moral principles that help form consciences correctly with patience, critical reason, and faith. Those charged with this teaching duty must provide the antidote to the conundrum of exaggerated subjectivism posed by the Casey method of liberty’s role in the formation of conscience. The Church provides a transcendent and objective moral order which assists persons in making distinctions between right and wrong and forming actions based on these distinctions.

From the perspective of the exercise of the Christian, Catholic conscience, self-reliance is a problem when it is the only resource used in the formation of conscience. Fortunately, the Gospel and the Magisterium come together in an organic synthesis of faith that needs to exist in each person’s discipleship that leads to the inescapable path of objective truth whose consummation is God. This is the point at which Christ’s statement, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” becomes a reality present in and of the temporal world. What a panacea this would be to the problems of our times and those that will emerge in the future that challenge our wits of civic duty.

As Americans, we place an uncompromising value on liberty, yet it is with the Church’s teachings that rely on the truth, Himself, that human conscience is expanded and liberated. For the Christian, authentic liberation comes from the fact that the individual is not truly “free” when freedom is of the sort that distances a person from the truth. When a person is free from the truth, the person often becomes enslaved either by the paralysis of exaggerated autonomy and self-centeredness or by the dictates of some external entity that is not in accord with Christ’s truth as proclaimed by the Church.

Here it is vital to take account of Fr. John Courtney Murray’s commentary on the Decree on Religious Freedom of which he was a major drafter. In his discussion of the formation of conscience, Fr. Murray observed that it would be false to conclude that a person has the “right” to do whatever his or her conscience tells the person to do “simply because my conscience tells me to do it.” Fr. Murray asserted, correctly in my view, that to follow this kind of conclusion as a proper way of proceeding would be inconsistent with Catholic teachings because it is based on “a perilous theory.” The core justification proffered by Fr. Murray is that the centrality of the peril is its reliance on the kind of subjectivism in which a person’s conscience is based on self-reliance rather than “the objective truth” which therefore determines what is right or wrong, true or false. Hence, the judge of what is right or wrong, true or false is solely the individual rather than objective certainty. This is in large part why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2002 noted that a well-formed Christian conscience imposes certain responsibilities on Catholic citizens to counter a vote for or support of a political program or legislation “which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals.”

The CDF went on to state that the faith is “an integral unity” and it would be incomprehensible for a Catholic to justify his or her action, in the name of conscience, to support a decision that is detrimental  to the whole of Catholic teachings. In essence, then, a well-formed conscience must not vote for a candidate, support legislation, or endorse a program on the basis of one particular element of evidence that would inevitably sacrifice the whole of the Church’s teachings and the entirety of its social doctrine. As wearers of the garment of Christ that we take on a baptism, we must bear the whole cloth and not that portion which is convenient for the moment. While a candidate’s positions or a party’s platform may be quilted from many fabrics, the conscience of the well-formed Catholic citizen or official must necessarily be of the whole cloth.       RJA sj

ministerial exception

I have not yet had a chance to read Greg Kalscheur's article, but I'll just offer a quick comment. I know that is hazardous, but why should that stop me. (On March 21, 2008, the Second Circuit decided a case on this issue that appears to take the subject matter jurisdiction (smj) approach advanced in the article. Here is a link to the Second Circuit case.) I want to think this through again after reading the article, but the smj approach seems wrong. In the Second Circuit case, the plainitiff brought a Title VII claim and surely the federal courts have smj over those claims. It may be that the claim fails (e.g., because the employer doesn't have enough employees to be covered by Title VII) but that doesn't mean that the federal court didn't have smj over the Title VII claim. The claim would fail on the merits.

I am sure that Greg is making a broader point about whether the courts ought to intrude on the matters raised by the ministerial exception, but I think it confuses things (here I am speaking as a Civil Procedure teacher) to think of this as a matter of subject matter jurisdiction. The distinction between the merits and subject matter jurisdiction is common, but we shouldn't extend the confusion into an issue (ministerial exception) that is complex enough. The constitutional basis for the ministerial exception, if there is such a basis, should be front and center and we shouldn't be distracted by calling the matter one of "subject matter jurisdiction."

Richard M.

Kalscheur on the Ministerial Exception

MOJ-friend and -veteran Greg Kalscheur (Boston College) has a must-read paper on SSRN, "Civil Procedure and the Establishment Clause:  Exploring the Ministerial Exception, Subject Matter Jurisdiction, and the Freedom of the Church."  Here is the abstract:

What sort of defense is provided by the ministerial exception to employment discrimination claims? The ministerial exception bars civil courts from reviewing the decisions of religious organizations regarding the employment of their ministerial employees. While the exception itself is widely recognized by courts, there is confusion with respect to the proper characterization of the defense provided by the exception: should it seen as a subject matter jurisdiction defense, or as a challenge to the legal sufficiency of the plaintiff's claim? This Article argues that articulating the right answer to this question of civil procedure is crucial to a proper understanding of the role that the ministerial exception plays as a constitutional protection for the religious freedom of churches and other religious institutions. The Article explores the ministerial exception to antidiscrimination law as a case study of the extent to which the U.S. Constitution adequately protects the freedom of the church. The ministerial exception is best understood as a subject matter jurisdiction defense, and getting the right answer to this civil procedure question is not just a matter of citing the right procedural rule in the defendant's motion to dismiss. Instead, careful attention to this question leads to a better understanding of the foundations of our constitutional order. When courts clearly and consistently treat the ministerial exception as a limitation on their subject matter jurisdiction, they make a powerful statement about the foundations of limited government - they affirm the penultimacy of the state. Yet, even though the jurisdictional approach to the ministerial exception does provide crucial protection for one dimension of institutional religious freedom, the Article suggests that the jurisdictional approach alone cannot provide an adequate constitutional foundation for robust protection of the freedom of the church.

As MOJ readers know, I believe the questions Fr. Kalscheur is asking are at the heart of the religious-freedom conversation.  Any reactions to the paper?

Boycott the Olympics?

Should political communities committed to what my friend Michael Perry calls "the morality of human rights" boycott the 2008 Summer Olympics in China?  If not, why not?  Some thoughts here.

Martin Marty on Jeremiah Wright

The Chronicle Review
issue dated April 11, 2008

Prophet and Pastor

To his former professor, congregant, and friend, Jeremiah Wright has been both

By MARTIN E. MARTY

Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher, reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently completed a 36-year ministry.

Images of Wright's strident sermons, and his anger at the treatment of black people in the United States, appear constantly on the Internet and cable television, part of the latest controversy in our political-campaign season. His critics call Wright anti-American. Critics of his critics charge that the clips we hear and see have been taken out of context. But it is not the context of particular sermons that the public needs, as that of Trinity church, and, above all, its pastor.

In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations. He came to Chicago to study not long after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in 1968, the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1969, and the shooting of students at Kent State University in 1970.

Wright, like the gifted cohort of his fellow black students, was not content to blend into the academic woodwork. Then the associate dean of the Divinity School, I was informally delegated to talk to the black caucus. We learned that what Wright and his peers wanted was the intense academic and practical preparation for vocations that would make a difference, whether they chose to pursue a Ph.D. or the pastorate. Chicago's Divinity School focuses on what it calls "public ministry," which includes both conventional pastoral roles and carrying the message and work of the church to the public arena. Wright has since picked up numerous honorary doctorates, and served as an adjunct faculty member at several seminaries. But after divinity school, he accepted a call to serve then-struggling Trinity.

Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African Christianity. The four S's charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don't stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home.

Yes, while Trinity is "unapologetically Christian," as the second clause in its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, "unashamedly black." From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience. That its members and pastor are, in their own term, "Africentric" should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be "Judeocentric" or that Chicago's Irish parishes be "Celtic-centric." Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace.

To the 10,000 members of Trinity, Jeremiah Wright was, until just a few months ago, "Pastor Wright." Metaphorically, pastor means shepherd. Like members of all congregations, the Trinity flock welcomes strong leadership for organization, prayer, and preaching. One-on-one ministry is not easy with thousands in the flock and when the pastor has national responsibilities, but the forms of worship make each participant feel recognized. Responding to the pastoral call to stand and be honored on Mother's Day, for instance, grandmothers, single mothers, stepmothers, foster mothers, gay-and-lesbian couples, all mothers stood when we visited. Wright asked how many believed that they were alive because of the church's health fairs. The members of the large pastoral staff know many hundreds of names, while hundreds of lay people share the ministry.

Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were pastoral — my wife and I have always been awed to hear the Christian Gospel parsed for our personal lives — they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark, half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake, the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the prophets Hosea and Micah did. But the Book of Jeremiah, written by numbers of authors, is so full of blasts and quasi curses — what biblical scholars call "imprecatory topoi" — that New England preachers invented a sermonic form called "the jeremiad," a style revived in some Wrightian shouts.

In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope, and that note of hope is what attracts the multiclass membership at Trinity and significant television audiences. Both Jeremiahs gave the people work to do: to advance the missions of social justice and mercy that improve the lot of the suffering. For a sample, read Jeremiah 29, where the prophet's letter to the exiles in Babylon exhorts them to settle down and "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile." Or listen to many a Jeremiah Wright sermon.

One may properly ask whether or how Jeremiah Wright — or anyone else — experiences a prophetic call. Back when American radicals wanted to be called prophets, I heard Saul Bellow say (and, I think, later saw it in writing): "Being a prophet is nice work if you can get it, but sooner or later you have to mention God." Wright mentioned God sooner. My wife and I recall but a single overtly political pitch. Wright wanted 2,000 letters of protest sent to the Chicago mayor's office about a public-library policy. Of course, if we had gone more often, in times of profound tumult, we would have heard much more. The United Church of Christ is a denomination that has taken raps for being liberal — for example for its 50th anniversary "God is still speaking" campaign and its pledge to be open and affirming to all, including gay people. In its lineage are Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, America's three most-noted theologians; the Rev. King was much at home there.

Friendship develops through many gestures and shared delights (in the Marty case, stops for sinfully rich barbecue after evening services), and people across the economic spectrum can attest to the generosity of the Wright family.

It would be unfair to Wright to gloss over his abrasive — to say the least — edges, so, in the "Nobody's Perfect" column, I'll register some criticisms. To me, Trinity's honoring of Minister Louis Farrakhan was abhorrent and indefensible, and Wright's fantasies about the U.S. government's role in spreading AIDS distracting and harmful. He, himself, is also aware of the now-standard charge by some African-American clergy who say he is a victim of cultural lag, overinfluenced by the terrible racial situation when he was formed.

Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet.

Martin E. Marty is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His most recent book is The Christian World: A Global History (Modern Library, 2008).

Kmiec Endorses Obama

Doug Kmiec's interest in Barack Obama's candidacy has already been the subject of discussion here on MoJ, but now he's made it official, endorsing Obama for President.

The Corrupting and Incendiary Danger of Words of Racial Enmity

I appreciate Eduardo Peñalver’s posting on a version of black liberation theology, which I agree provides about as good of a defense of Dr. James Cone’s rhetorical choices as could be made (while thoughtfully acknowledging that he may be needlessly inflammatory). As with others who have expressed concern here on the Mirror of Justice about recent racially-charged statements in the public square, I have been aware that some advocates of black liberation theology liberally invoke terms of violence and hatred against white people, which they then insist should be understand to refer not to human beings of a particular ethnic background but instead as proxies for opposition to oppression. But I don’t think we can give people a pass when they deliberately choose words of hate, especially in the context of race, even if they try to distance themselves from the force of those words by qualifying and explaining. Humpty-Dumpty’s claim that words may be redefined to mean whatever the speaker wishes is always a doubtful proposition, because words belong to an entire community. But the claim of facile redefinition is especially dubious when the words are used in an incendiary manner, not to be more precise in categorization, but to be provocative and confrontational.

If a person regularly speaks about the evils of “white people” and the need to work for “the destruction of the white enemy,” he or she cannot legitimately plead innocence when the words are taken in their plain meaning. In fact, I’m not convinced that every one of these speakers are really all that surprised or upset when their words are taken so plainly. In any event, a person who uses such hateful rhetoric, even if he or she begins the journey by redefining terms in a particular way, may find that resort to such language is corrupting of attitude. Let’s look again at the words by Dr. Cone that I quoted: “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. . . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.” Dr. Cone did not speak here about “whiteness” as some generic representation of an oppressive system, although the presentation as a whole spoke of oppressors (without suggesting a more narrow definition than "white people"). He spoke of opposing “white people” and then followed up by characterizing them as the “white enemy.” Whatever may have been originally intended when the theological terms were being defined in the quiet of an academic office, such rhetoric cannot be contained, especially when introduced to the public.

Moreover, am I being unfair if I worry that the explanation of precise redefinition offered to justify shocking words of hate toward “white people” may be, at least on occasion, something of a sly wink by people who are well aware of how their words are being received by the audience? Despite having said on a number of occasions that his critics have no standing because they haven’t carefully read the black liberation theology of Dr. Cone and others with the diligence he has devoted, Rev. Jeremiah Wright appears to have understood the message quite plainly, quite crudely in fact, without any clever qualifications. Pronouncing himself a serious discipline of black liberation theology, Rev. Wright then chose to rant about AIDS being created by government scientists to kill black people and white supremacist government conspiring to sell drugs in black neighborhoods to oppress minorities. If the linguistic manipulations of this version of black liberation theology lend themselves so readily to this extremist nonsense, even by a supposedly sophisticated and well-educated church leader, doesn’t that suggest this approach is dangerously irresponsible?

Greg Sisk

"The Abstinence Teacher"

Although I haven't read Tom Perrotta's novels Little Children and The Election, both made for excellent films (Tracy Flick for vice president!).  So Perrotta's new book The Abstinence Teacher, whose plot-instigating device is a high-school sex-ed controversy, might well be worth a read.

Tom

"The Many Shapes of Personhood"

I rarely let myself click on YouTube videos, because the temptation to spend hours and hours on detours through that pit of inane, but utterly captivating, amusements is too great.  But here's one you should NOT miss.  I'm even presenting it in a format, though an article from Wired.com linked here, that doesn't directly expose you to all the browsing temptations of YouTube.

The article features Amanda Baggs, a young woman with autism.  Her video first shows a few minutes of her interactions with her environment, and then provides a "translation" of her interactions, though the aid of an augmentative communications devices that lets her type (which she does at 120 words a minute) and then speaks the typed words for her.  Her commentary on how "we" judge intelligence and personhood is haunting.  Her closing words are:  "Only when the many shapes of personhood are recognized will justice and human rights be possible."

Law and Religion ... Summer ... Tuscany

That's what the University of Siena's annual International Law and Religion Summer School offers.  I taught there two summers ago, enjoyed spending the week with faculty and students from throughout Europe, and highly recommend the program and the city (including the marvelous frescoes "The Allegories of Good and Bad Government" in the medieval city hall).  From this year's notice:

[T]he International Summer School in Law and Religion will take place in Siena, Italy, from June the 18th to June the 22nd 2008.  For full information (speakers, registration, fees, deadlines) please report to the official website of the School.  This year we will be concentrating on "Women in Law and Religion". Given the importance of the subject in our times and within the international context I hope you will be interested in the event, and inform anyone you deem could be interested.

Tom B.

Evil

This is gut-wrenching.  (ht: dotCommonweal).

A "free vote" on life?

An interesting story is developing in the United Kingdom, regarding the "Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill" under consideration in Parliament.  Here is a bit:

Fertility expert and television scientist Lord Robert Winston has accused senior members of the Catholic church of lying over the controversial embryo research bill after an Easter weekend which has seen it condemned from pulpits up and down Britain.

A coalition of charities and support groups representing scientists, doctors and patients suffering from a wide range of serious conditions has written to every MP urging them to back the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which will allow the creation of part-human, part-animal embryos for medical research.

At the weekend Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien said the bill would allow "grotesque procedures" which would "attack the sanctity and dignity of human life".

Read more here.  Apparently, part of the drama concerns the question whether Catholic MPs will be given a "free vote" by the Labour Party: 

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of the Roman-Catholic Church in England and Wales, yesterday became the most senior clergyman to insist that Labour MPs should be granted a free vote.

He urged Catholic MPs - including Cabinet ministers Ruth Kelly, Des Browne and Paul Murphy - and those of other faiths to be guided by their religious convictions.

So far, Labour has refused to follow Parliamentary tradition on issues of conscience and allow MPs to vote as they wish on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, though it has in the past given free votes on issues such as hunting, reform of the House of Lords and fluoride in drinking water.

Instead, MPs will be whipped - meaning they could face disciplinary action if they refuse to support the Bill. . . .

UPDATE:  As a reader reminds me, it's not just Catholics and Catholic clergy who are worried about the Bill.  Here is Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright's Easter sermon on the issue.

"Testing Religious Freedom"

Here is an interesting story about a fairly high-profile new Catholic, and the risks he is taking in joining the Church. 

Should Sen. Obama leave his church?

Thoughts on this question from Prof. David Skeel, here.

God bless Bill Stuntz

Prof. Bill Stuntz (Harvard) is an excellent scholar and a deeply good man.  Here is an update, from his blog, on his struggle with cancer.  Oremus.

Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday is treated by many as simply the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, when we ready the churches for the Easter Vigil and shop for Easter dinner.  But, what Holy Saturday offers us is a period to reflect on a world without Jesus, a chance to let the effect of Jesus' death permeate our being.  Accepting this invitation allows us to more fully appreciate the signifiance of Jesus' rising for us.  I have a fuller reflection on Holy Saturday as "tomb day" on my blog here.

Defending James Cone

Just a word about the easy attacks on Black liberation theology and the comparison to Farrakhan.  I agree that Cone's language can seem inflammatory, and sometimes needlessly so.  But he is actually very careful about how he defines his terms.  He uses language like "black" and "white" in very specific ways, ways that do not always correspond to the way we use those terms in everyday language (sort of like the way the term "happiness" gets used in Catholic theology in very loaded ways).  When he talks about defeating whiteness, he does not mean white-skinned people, but rather a system of racially-based oppression.  And when he talks about black people, he means people who live under conditions of poverty and oppression.  This is what he means, I think, when he says that Jesus was black or that any God worth believing in must be part of the black community and against whiteness.  Given how he defines his terms, I agree.  He's not talking about skin color, but about Jesus's and God's preferential identification with the oppressed.  He uses language the way he does, I think, to be provocative and to really challenge his readers, most of whom are probably white.  The language is startling, in part because the iconography of white Christianity is so uniformly, well, white.  God is always portrayed as a white man, Jesus with flowing blonde (!) hair, etc.  Whether you think Cone's tactic works or not, it's unfair (and bordering on dishonest) for James Taranto to look at little snippets of his language and then talk about how hate-filled he is (should we expect anything better from Taranto?  Probably not, but I digress).  Greg, I suggest you go read the entire Black Theology of  Liberation and see if, at the end, you have the same impression.  I read it several years back and found it extremely prophetic, challenging and thoughtful  . . .  and not at all hate-filled.

Valparaiso and the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War

[The author of what follows, professor of law Ed Gaffney, Jr., is, as some MOJ readers know, co-author with Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., of Religous Freedom: History, Cases and Other Materials on the Interaction of Religion and Government (Foundation Press 2001).]

University Community Marks Fifth Anniversary of Iraq War

Edward McGlynn Gaffney, Jr.
Professor of Law

On Tuesday, March 18, the Iraq War turned five years old. That is longer than the Civil War, longer than the American involvement in World War I, and longer than the American involvement in World War II. And far more costly to taxpayers than the expenditures for all three of these wars combined: more than a trillion dollars. It was not an early Church Father, but President Dwight David Eisenhower – former commander of the Allied forces in Europe in World War II – who called military expenditures on this scale “a theft from the poor.”

Members of the faculty, staff and student body of Valparaiso University observed the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War with a panel discussion at Christ College in the afternoon. In the evening, the Chapel of the Resurrection was the venue for a solemn commemoration of the dead, the wounded, and those who have suffered from this war.

The afternoon program had the feel of a Vietnam-era “teach-in.” The most notable difference was the graying of those in attendance. Chaired by Professor Sy Moskowitz of the School of Law, a panel of professors gave differing perspectives on the war.

Professor Beth Gingerich of the Business College suggested that – no matter who is elected to succeed President George W. Bush next January – it will probably take much more time to achieve full troop withdrawal than the 60 days bandied about in the current presidential campaign.

Professor Gus Sponberg, Chair of the American Studies Department, offered a parodic way out of the current chaotic condition: America should offer to airlift millions of Iraqis to our country and to provide them all with resettlement in a portion of the country suffering from a drop in population: the Plains states from the Dakotas in the north to Texas and Louisiana in the south. Sponberg’s “modest proposal” was quickly dubbed the “Fallouja to Fargo” plan. Its total cost, Sponberg noted, would be a small fraction of the enormous cost of the war in its first five years.

Noting that the price of a barrel of oil climbed past $110 per barrel recently, Professor Chuck Schaefer, Chair of the History Department, gave an introduction to the history of Western – first British and then American – interests in the oil resources of Iraq as a major signifier in this war.

Professor Brent Whitefield, another VU historian, offered a contrasting view. He urged restraint on withdrawal of troops from Iraq, on the view that the orderly transfer of authority matters more than a “cut and run” policy like the policy adopted by the Clinton administration in Somalia. He suggested that the American occupation of Japan offers a model for producing an amicable partnership that has endured long after the Allies forced Japan to abandon its conquest of the Pacific rim.

“We set out to illustrate diverse perspectives on this war,” Moskowitz stated, “and we achieved this goal.”

In the evening gathering at the Chapel of the Resurrection, the focus was more on the human costs of the war: less on the expenditure of our treasure and more on the shedding of our blood and loss of life by almost 4,000 of our own soldiers and by a vast number of Iraqi dead (at least 60,000 and perhaps as many as a half million), with at least two million displaced and homeless refugees.

The civic event featured Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders. Pastor Joseph Cunningham, Dean of the Chapel, welcomed all the participants to the gathering. Rabbi Shoshana Feferman of Temple Israel in Valparaiso, and Imam Mongy El-Quesny of the Islamic Center in Merrillville offered a reflection from their traditions. Dr. Fred Niedner, Chair of the Theology Department, read a poem by Wendell Barry that the farmer-poet wrote during the Vietnam War, but that could have been written yesterday about the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The names of all of the American soldiers and pilots, sailors and marines, who have died in Iraq were constantly being flashed up on the north wall of the Chapel, casting an eerie light on the sanctuary’s red bricks. Several members of the faculty and staff and local civic leaders – Jane Bello-Brunson, Lorri Cornett, Mary Ann and Joe Crayton, Stacy Hoult and Dan Saros, Tim Malchow, Carlos Miguel-Pueyo, and Tim Taylor – pronounced slowly and reverently the name of each member of our armed forces from Indiana who was killed in Iraq.

Professor Lorraine Brugh, Director of Chapel Music, led the Kantorei in an acapella rendition of a blessing from the Book of Numbers, “The Lord bless thee and keep thee.”

After hearing a brief part of John Donne’s famous 1623 sermon (“Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris”) – “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – the respectful crowd listened to the tolling of the Chapel bells for five full minutes that seemed an eternity.

Then we went silently into the night, as moist rain fell softly over the living and the dead.

Fear the Leprechaun

The Volokh Conspiracy's Todd Zywicki (George Mason) and I made a friendly wager (here and here) on last night's basketball game between George Mason and Notre Dame.  As Stewie Griffin would say, "victory is mine."  Go Irish.  And, to paraphrase Fr. Ted Hesburgh, "God does not care who wins the game.  But, His mother does."