Mirror of Justice

Forgiveness

I have just posted a new paper in which I try to develop a Thomistic account of interpersonal forgiveness.  Aruging that forgiveness is the form love takes on the part of a person who has been offended, I resist the claims of those who would assimilate forgiveness to a conditional act such as reconciliation.  My account of forgiveness begins in natural human teleology and proceeds to consider what grace adds in terms of our ability to love ourselves and then our offenders. Comments would be welcome.

"there must be a lot of Catholic law schools where"

So says (Georgetown Law's) David Luban here  in explaining his voting in Leiter's recent survey concerning "which philosophers have had the most impact on legal scholarship."  Must there?   "I found myself placing Aristotle and Aquinas high on the list because there must be a lot of Catholic law schools where the Thomistic influence lingers even if the recent decades have seen their faculties become far more secular."  Please.  Why "must [must] there be" what by no reasonable account obtains at Luban's own nominally Catholic home institution?  Where are these sub silentio Thomists who "must" exist?  I would like to see the relevant data -- and be able to draw the conclusions.

UPDATE: Prof. Luban is on leave  "spring 2007".   

papers

I have recently posted at SSRN a new paper titled The Place of "Higher Law" in the Quotidian Practice of Law:  Herein of Pratical Reason, Natural Law, Natural Rights, and Sex Toys.  It can be viewed here.  Though the paper itself is in final form, comments would be a welcome help to one of my next projects, which will pursue in greater depth several of the topics of the current paper.  I would also welcome comments on another recent paper, Equality, Conscience, and the Liberty of the Church: Justifying the Controverisale per Controversialius.  My hope is that Jimmy Page will make an appearance in one of my next papers.

Enacting FOCA -- for whom?

Reading Patrick Deneen here, one cannot but feel grave about where "we" are and where "we" are going next.  But there are signs of hope, if not about the economy then about whether we should should distinguish as a matter of law between life birth and death.   It now seems that only nine percent of Americans would favor the regime that the FOCA would make a reality. 

For whom the question matters in the first place

Michael Moreland and I would suggest that our friend Amy's response (here) is question-begging. She assumes there is some cohort of "politically homeless" Catholics who would like to enact the principles of CST into politics but don't have an easy home in either of the major political parties.  We don't disagree as such, but the point of our post is that that number, from all available evidence, is breathtakingly small. Furthermore, Amy's comments might have the causal chain backwards--rather than Catholics receding into the background of American politics on account of their homelessness, we would suggest that think it's more plausible to say that the disregard of Catholic thought -- in all of its richness -- by both parties (folks will disagree about which side falls shorter) reflects the small number of Catholics for whom the question matters in the first place.  That it apparently matters so little to so many is a fact to be reckoned with.

Voters voting in the tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine and Moral/Political Theology and Philosophy? The clear consequences of lack of catechesis

My colleague Michael Moreland and I note Michael Perry's sharing (here) to a NY Times blog post indicating that, based on exit poll data, Senator Obama carried the Catholic vote 54-45 (in 2004, President Bush carried Catholics 52-47). But those of us who care about how the Catholic community contributes to American politics should note that, basically, the Catholic vote is merely tracking the vote of the rest of the population. Whether on account of a generation of failed catechesis or a more general lack of formation in Catholic institutions (parishes, high schools, colleges and universities), the number of Catholic voters whose vote is informed by their faith is a small slice of the national electorate. Catholics behave politically like their neighbors--the partisan breakdown of white working class Catholics, white suburban Catholics, or Latino Catholics is just about what one would predict based on their economic and cultural location. As this perceptive op-ed in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/features/religion/la-oe-rutten29-2008oct29,0,2918246.column) pointed out a few weeks ago:
"What we're seeing in these three swing states [Missouri, Colorado, and Pennsylvania] is the end of the Catholic vote, as conventional political strategists traditionally have expected it to behave -- in part because it's now so large it pretty much looks like the rest of America; in part because of its own internal changes. National polls have shown for some time that, although Catholics are personally opposed to abortion, they believe it ought to be legal in nearly identical percentages to the rest of America. Moreover, as a survey by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found earlier this year, only 18% of Catholics "strongly" agree with the statement: "In deciding what is morally acceptable, I look to the church teachings and statements by the pope and bishops to form my conscience."
....
What all this suggests is that, in this and coming election cycles, we may see a new model for the Catholic vote, one whose participation more closely resembles that of Jews, 75% of whom are overwhelmingly pro-Democratic, while a devout minority, the Orthodox, tends more strongly Republican. If you break the Catholic vote down in roughly the same pattern, you get something that looks like the current national spread. According to most reliable data, slightly less than one in four Catholics now assist [sic] at weekly Mass and are more open to GOP policies, while the overwhelming majority of their co-religionists have cast their lot with the Democrats' domestic and foreign policies."

Or as Joseph Bottum put it (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/818vklel.asp) reviewing George Martin's book on the American Catholic vote in the pages of the Weekly Standard four years ago:
"Add it all up, and it's hard to see any place that Catholicism makes a difference in American political life. In the ballots Catholic voters cast, in the positions Catholic politicians take, in the pieces Catholic writers publish--in what Catholics do, and what they fail to do--they are ordinary Republicans and Democrats; their faith seems invisible. They are utterly indistinguishable from the general run of citizens. In his famous talk to Protestant ministers in Houston during the 1960 campaign, John Kennedy said he didn't want to be a Catholic president; he wanted instead to be a president who happened to be Catholic. Catholicism in America seems to have since become entirely a Church of little John Kennedys.
....
The fact that Catholic voters are invisible feels wrong to me, somehow--a theological error, a philosophical mistake. The uniqueness of the Catholic vote wants to be true, if only because American history and intellectual consistency alike seem to demand that being Catholic make a difference in how one behaves in the public square. But accurate political analysis, like well-directed pastoral teaching, needs to begin with the truth: The Catholic voter is, alas, a myth."

Of course, those of us who teach at Catholic institutions and write about matters Catholic want there to be a ready audience for this blog, in our classrooms, and in the pages of Commonweal, America, and First Things for an informed and enriching dialogue between faith and politics. But wishing doesn't make it so.

"fundamental right"

Michael Scaperlanda is right that Professor George's exposition of Sen. Obama's position on abortion is a must-read.  Here's a sample:

But this barely scratches the surface of Obama's extremism. He has promised that ''the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act'' (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed ''fundamental right'' to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including, as Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia has noted in a statement condemning the proposed Act, ''a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined 'health' reasons.'' In essence, FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would ''sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.''

President Obama's "first act"

He desribes it here.

Those who care about reducing the number of abortions, including of the partial-birth sort, can be grateful for the candidate's occasional transparency.

The real George Will

Pace what my friend Michael Perry asserts, George Will is not a Catholic and, in fact, recently said in an interview with Stephen Colbert that he is an agnostic, though he attended an Episcopal church in the DC area for a while many years ago. None of that, of course, goes to the merits of his criticism of Senator McCain in yesterday's column, one way or the other. One might add, though, that Will has long harbored deep antagonism toward McCain on account of Will's opposition to regulation of campaign spending.

The Venn diagrams -- yet again

If you're like me and (I'm guessing) most of the rest of the US legal academy, you last week received a card "Annoucning Dean Eric A. Chiappinelli," the new dean of Creighton University School of Law.  Among Dean Chiappinelli's "priorities" for his administration is "[m]aking our successes known around the country."  What might those successes be? 

The card neither says a word nor includes an image that would suggest, let alone claim, that Creighton, or Creighton Law specifically, is or aspires to be a Catholic institution.  Under the prior regime, the Creighton Law website said this remarkable thing:  "The School of Law is an integral part of Creighton Univesity, providing professional legal education within the framework of a Jesuit University committed to a comprehensive and value-centered education.  The faculty of the School believes these commitments are compatible."  Holy Ghost! They "believe!"  And they believe that "professional legal education" is "compatible" with "value-centered" education carried on within the "framework of a Jesuit University."  Last I checked, the website continued to include this breathtaking profession of belief.  Will one of Dean Chiappinelli's "successes" be to modify this state of affairs?

The aforementioned state of affairs is especially remarkable given Creighton University's otherwise conspicuously strong commitment to its place in the Catholic Church and tradition.  The University's homepage says this (inter alia) about the whole University's commitment to the mission::  "As Catholic, Creighton is dedicated to the pursuit of truth in all its forms and is guided by the living tradition of the Catholic Church."  But, as far as the Venn diagrams are concerned, how can Creighton University accomplish its mission while the members of law-school subset of the community are busy assessing the mutual compatibility of legal education and "value-centered" education.  And what if value-centered education turns out not to be compatible with legal education?  I'm sure there's a lesson here from Dudley and Stephens.

I hope that Dean Chippianelli will join those such as Mark Sargent, John Garvey, Veryl Miles, Patty O'Hara, and Tom Mengler, who, along with their respectives faculties and administrations, are struggling to discern what Catholic legal education can and should be about today.  I have already written to Dean Chippianelli to offer our support.  The possibility of a great reawakening awaits our friends in Ohama! Or more of the same.