Mirror of Justice

Survey of religion at America's colleges and universities

First Things is taking a survey (online) about the state of religion on America's campuses both private and public.  If you are intersted please click here and fill out the survey.

Health Care Debate

Thank you Fr. Araujo for linking us to Peter Singer's article on health care.  I hope to have more to say on that later.  Denise Hunnell, who has a certification in health care ethics with the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, has posted some interesting thoughts on the health care question at her blog where you can read her full post.  Here is the beginning:

President Obama is ready to drop over one trillion dollars on a health care reform initiative. Let me be clear. Every human being is entitled to basic health care. Our current health care system is not doing an adequate job of providing basic health care to every American. However, I am not an impulse shopper. I want to know what I am getting for my money. We do not know what we are getting with this health care initiative, because the health care is yet to be determined by a Benefits Advisory Council. Let me clarify what we do know and more importantly what we do not know. ...

"The Government Want YOU .... to stay in Love .... What?"

MOJ friend and alum, Helen Alvare, has a thoughtful post on the Culture of Life Foundation website.  It begins:

Several columns ago, I addressed the worry that our country’s nearly 40% out of wedlock birthrate might represent some sort of tipping point for marriage, for  children’s well-being and for our society’s shared future.  I reviewed in-depth interviews with single moms which revealed nearly bottomless wells of mistrust regarding the men who fathered their children. The men’s behavior did not seem to merit better. This past Father’s Day, President Obama spoke to an aspect of this mistrust: he asked the fathers to step up to their fathering responsibilities. (See http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11094.html)  He explicitly discussed his own fatherless upbringing and the hole it left in his life. Good for him, and for the young men there in the Rose Garden. And good for the country too. A robust father-child bond is a crucial piece of the puzzle of that is a healthier future for U.S. children.

"But President Obama’s message, like a host of other attempts over the past several decades to ameliorate the situation of the children of lone-parents, is incomplete.

What’s missing? Or rather, Who is missing? The mother, as well as the father’s relationship to her. Advocating fathering of the children is great, but forgetting that everything related to fathering begins with the mother is foolish.

Read the rest here.

Institute of Bioethics

Check out the Institutue for Bioethics at Franciscan University.  Patrick Lee is the director of the Institute and many of his articles and lectures are available here.

Bring it on Breen!

You and Barack and your fellow Democrats can have the White Sox and their success.  But, the truly Catholic (and catholic, BTW) baseball team in Chicago is the Cubbies.  With our crucifixes, Catholics remember and embrace Good Friday everyday in our homes and sanctuaries as we contemplate Jesus up on the cross.  And, Cub's fans have experienced one long Good Friday.  John, don't you know that World Series championships and such are for the next life, not this.  Psalm 146 (from morning prayer this morning) puts it perfectly:

Put no trust in baseball franchises,

in mortal players in whom there is only disappointment.

Take there breath, they return to clay

and there plans that century come to nothing.

Distributivist ideas on the current economic crisis

Allan Carlson reports on an interesting conference organized by the G.K. Chesterton Institute and held last weekend in Oxford, England.  Carlson's report is well worth the read: here.

Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award winner nominated for Surgeon General Post

From Whisper in the Loggia:

...the President drew further from the US church's diverse ranks this morning with the nomination of his Surgeon General -- this time, an African-American Catholic.

Founder of a rural Alabama health clinic for the poor that was devastated three times (twice by hurricanes, once by fire) since its founding in 1990, Dr Regina Benjamin was reelected to a second term on the board of the US' Catholic Health Association at its yearly assembly last month in New Orleans. Even more notably, though, Benjamin's work both at home and nationally were recognized in 2006 when Pope Benedict awarded her the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice ("For the Church and the Pontiff") -- the Roman accolade reserved for laity, religious and permanent deacons who've given distinguished service to the church.

The first African-American woman to lead a state medical association, the 53 year-old nominee -- whose grandmother helped found a Black Catholic parish, its first Masses offered in her living room -- must be confirmed by the Senate before she can become the nation's "top doc." ...

"The Audacity of the Pope"

Yesterday’s New York Times ran a thought provoking op-ed by Ross Douthat  on Caritas in Veritate and the need for political re-imagination.  Here are parts of it:

Papal encyclicals are supposed to be written with one eye on two millenniums of Catholic teaching, and the other on eternity. But Americans, as a rule, have rather narrower horizons. As soon as the media have finished scanning a Vatican document for references to sex, the debate begins in earnest: Is it good for the left, or for the right? For Democrats, or for Republicans?

*    *    *

Benedict’s encyclical is nothing if not political. “Caritas in Veritate” promotes a vision of economic solidarity rooted in moral conservatism. It links the dignity of labor to the sanctity of marriage. It praises the redistribution of wealth while emphasizing the importance of decentralized governance. It connects the despoiling of the environment to the mass destruction of human embryos.

This is not a message you’re likely to hear in Barack Obama’s next State of the Union, or in the Republican Party’s response. It represents a kind of left-right fusionism with little traction in American politics.

But that’s precisely what makes it so relevant and challenging — for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

*    *    *

Catholics are obliged to take seriously the underlying provocation of the papal message — namely, that our present political alignments are not the only ones imaginable, and that truth may not be served by perfect ideological conformity.

So should all people of good will. For liberals and conservatives alike, “Caritas in Veritate” is an invitation to think anew about their alliances and litmus tests. ...

Any thoughts?

A Thicker Liberalism

Responding to our discussion on liberalism (here, here, here, and here), Brad Lewis, a professor of Philosophy at CUA, offers a more thickly textured liberalism:

It's true that liberalism as a kind of normative philosophical theory assumes or promotes a thin anthropology.  However, why should one accept that that is all there is and can be for liberalism?  After all, the root of the word itself is simply "free."  Liberalism as a political theory is a theory of freedom.  Certainly we (Catholics, I mean) are not opposed to that.  In Caritas in Veritate (as in his earlier encyclicals, and all over the place in the writings of John Paul II) Benedict links freedom to truth.  The only real and authentic freedom is related to truth.  It's an insight of classical political philosophy (that begins with Plato and Aristotle) that there are tensions between political life and truth, that politics is not a realm in which the truth can simply hold sway, and that politics is therefore limited--it isn't, can't be, shouldn't be, about everything.  It should make possible a life devoted to the highest things, but it isn't that life.  Aristotle says on Nicomachean Ethics X.7-8 that politics isn't for its own sake.  This is the classical basis of the limits of the political.  Christianity recontextualizes this, of course, but the notion of limits is still there: the earthly city is not the heavenly city, although many people strive to live in both.  In so far as we say that liberalism is a political theory of freedom and understand human freedom in its fullest sense as connected to truth we can understand the limits of politics as following from this: liberalism is a theory of limited government by free people, free because they can govern themselves and are open to the truth that transcends politics.  Liberalism on this view describes a set of political institutions and goods (limited, representative government, elections, protections for basic human rights) necessary for a decent human life in the context of modern national states.  Those institutions are better and more stable when grounded in a deeper anthropology to be sure and Christianity offers precisely that.  Catholic social teaching offers it.  This, again, is to distinguish liberalism as a practical political theory from liberalism as an ideology.

Hold the Presses, the Michaels Agree

Michael P. says, "I have expressed skepticism, in much of my work over the past several years, that the claim that every human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable can be embedded in a secular world view."  I too am similarly skeptical. 

Which bring us to Steve Shiffrin's thought provoking comment and question: "I wonder about the utility of arguing that Catholic social thought is politically (as opposed to theologically) superior to all forms of secular liberalism. Does such a claim contradict the claim of Catholic social thought to appeal to all human beings?"  Some initial thoughts.  First, the various forms of secular liberalism will have kernals of truth (otherwise they wouldn't be attractive), and the Catholic ought to be open and willing to learn from the secularist.  Second, to the extent that the Catholic Church has a realistic anthropology, the claims of CST and Catholic legal theory ought to be accessable to non-believers through freflection and experience whether or not we assert its superiority.