Mirror of Justice

The Next Generation of Catholic Leaders.... in action at Georgetown?

John Allen recently published an interesting article called "The Next Generation of Catholic Leaders", on a  topic that we've addressed on MOJ in the past -- the nature of a perceived generational shift in attitudes toward the Church.  He writes:

Most empirical data has pegged this cohort of young priests, religious and lay activists as more "conservative," and there's a good deal of truth to that claim. In general, they're more attracted to traditional modes of devotion and prayer, less resistant to ecclesiastical authority, and less inclined to challenge church teaching and discipline.

Yet, I argued, slapping the label "conservative" on all this is potentially misleading, because it assumes an ideological frame of reference, as if younger Catholics are picking one side or the other in the church's version of the culture wars. My sense is that these young people are not so much reacting to (or against) anything in the church, but rather secular culture. In a nutshell, they're seeking identity and stability in a world that seems to offer neither.

Proof of the point comes when you drill with these young Catholics. You'll find they often hold views on a wide variety of issues -- such as the environment, war and peace, the defense of the poor and of immigrants, and the death penalty -- which don't really fit the ideological stereotype.

These observations are hardly unique to me, of course, but I included them because I wanted to issue a plea to Catholics my age and older.

This new generation seems ideally positioned to address the lamentable tendency in American Catholic life to drive a wedge between the church's pro-life message and its peace-and-justice commitments. More generally, they can help us find the sane middle between two extremes: What George Weigel correctly calls "Catholicism lite," meaning a form of the faith sold out to secularism; and what I've termed "Taliban Catholicism," meaning an angry expression of Catholicism that knows only how to excoriate and condemn. Both are real dangers, and the next generation seems well-equipped to steer a middle course, embracing a robust sense of Catholic identity without carrying a chip on their shoulder.

The students at Georgetown Law Center offer an example that demonstrates that this interest in breaking down "ideological stereotypes" is not necessarily limited to Catholic youths.  The Georgetown Progressive Alliance for Life and the Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice are co-hosting a symposium on Friday, November 13, titled:  "A New Abortion Debate:  Emerging Perspectives on Choice, Life, and Law."  Both Susan Stabile and I will be moderating panels at this program.  Here's the description:

The long-standing debate over the legality of abortion in the United States can often be politically divisive and can drain resources and attention from other issues that affect the health and well-being of women and families. The goal of this symposium is to bring together pro-choice and pro-life scholars and activists who are interested in new and emerging ideas about the abortion debate, and the role that it plays in the U.S. and abroad. This includes both scholars working on "common ground" policy or philosophical scholarship, as well as other individuals who are seeking to broaden the scope of the abortion debate to non-legal and non-constitutional themes.

Robby George on "Natural Law, God and Human Dignity"

The Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas invites all readers to a lecture by MOJ's own Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and founder and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, next Wednesday, October 21. The lecture, entitled "Natural Law, God and Human Dignity" will be at 4:00 in the Moot Courtroom, University of St. Thomas School of Law, 1000 LaSalle Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Professor George will be presented at that time with the University of St. Thomas School of Law's Dignitatis Humanae Award.  RSVP by e-mail to murphyinstit@stthomas.edu.

This lecture launches an ongoing series of lectures sponsored by the Murphy Institute to examine the meaning of human dignity.  The next lecture in the series, in the fall of 2010, will be by David J. Luban, Fredrick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center, whose publications include "Legal Ethics and Human Dignity" (Cambridge 2007). 

The Choice Myth

In addition to Steve and Amy's reassurances, another thing that should help me sleep easier is my conviction that the Church has for decades been way ahead of most feminist legal theorists in recognizing that the urgency in issues related to workplace restructuring to accomodate family life does NOT arise from the situations for whom decisions about working or parenting are truly a matter of choice, but rather the situations of those without choices. 

Among the "revelations" in an op ed by Judith Warner in today's New York Times called "The Choice Myth":

Last week, The Washington Post ran a front-page story that said most stay-at-home moms aren’t S.U.V.-driving, daily yoga-doing, latte-drinking white, upper-middle-class women who choose to leave their high-powered careers to answer the call to motherhood. Instead, they are disproportionately low-income, non-college educated, young and Hispanic or foreign-born; in other words, they are women whose horizons are greatly limited and for whom the cost of child care, very often, makes work not a workable choice at all.

These findings, drawn from a new report by the Census Bureau, really ought to lead us to reframe our public conversations about who mothers are and why they do what they do. It should lead us away from all the moralistic bombast about mothers’ “choices” and “priorities.” It should get us thinking less about choice, in fact, and make us focus more on contingencies — the objective conditions that drive women’s lives. And they should propel us to think about the choices that we as a society must make to guarantee that the best possible opportunities are available for all families.

. . .

Why this matters — and why opening this topic up for discussion is important — is very clear: because our public policy continues to rest upon a fictitious idea, eternally recycled in the media, of mothers’ free choices, and not upon the constraints that truly drive their behavior. “If journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution,” is how E. J. Graff, the associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism once put it in the Columbia Journalism Review. “If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that’s a private decision. But … [i]t’s a public policy issue if schools, jobs and other American institutions are structured in ways that make it frustratingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, for parents to manage both their jobs and family responsibilities.”

It looked, not so long ago, as though things were going to change. Barack Obama made increasing women’s work/life choices and providing more supports for working families a cornerstone of his campaign. All those lofty ideals, though, seem to have been forgotten in the realities of this recession, where plans to expand universal pre-K, paid family leave and subsidies for child care have gone the way of state budget revenues. Even workfare, The Times reported this week, is being scrapped in California in favor of old-style no-work welfare, because it’s been deemed too costly to give poor mothers job skills while providing decent child care.

In Fresno County, one of the first places in California where welfare recipients are being told about the policy change, which is voluntary for now, the new regulations aren’t being viewed as good news.

“Especially when you have kids, you can’t just sit around and collect checks,” one mother told The Times. For now, 90 percent of beneficiaries in Fresno County are choosing to keep working and receiving child care subsidies.

When mothers can choose, they choose self-empowerment. Because they know that there is no true difference between their advancement and the advancement of their children. Why do we so enduringly deny them the dignity of choice?

Who is Contributing to Sexualization of Children?

One of the most disturbing and unpleasant things I've had to do in a long time was to spend three hours on a Monday evening at a training program for volunteers at our parish school.  This training program is mandated by our Archdiocese -- along with a criminal background check -- for anyone who wants to volunteer at the school, even parents like me whose volunteering is limited to two or three stints a year as recess monitor, field trip chaperone, or helper at a school party.  For three hours, I watched videos in which victims of child sexual abuse talked about the experience of being abused, abusers described about their techniques for getting children into situations in which they could be abused, and experts told me how to protect my child, and all children, from such abuse.

Now, I'm going to describe my reaction to this experience, not because I think my reaction is necessarily a justified reaction, but rather because my reaction causes me to wonder whether we need to seriously question the extent to which the Church -- and its lawyers  (our students?) -- are contributing to the sexualization of children.   Can all of the blame for the sexualization of children can be placed on those who it's always easiest to blame -- in the words of Robby's recent post:  "mainstream advertisers, . . .the entertainment industry, and . . .  sex "educators."" ? 

For three hours, I was forced to think about my child -- indeed, all children -- as sexual objects.  Of the many emotions evoked by that experience -- disgust, sadness, pity, fear, hopelessness, horror -- the overwhelming emotion I felt was anger.  But, quite honestly (and again, I freely admit this may not be justified, but it's what I honestly felt), it wasn't anger at the abusers.  It seems to me that people with tendencies to abuse children have always been around and will always be around in our fallen world.  I was mostly angry at the Church, which by its initial mismanagment of the sexual abuse crisis, got us to the point where parents have to be forced to sexualize their children before they can volunteer in their children's schools.  I understand the "lawyering perspective" here -- the Church has been financially devasted by these lawsuits and has a financial incentive to build as strong a buffer as possible against future legal liability.  But these attempts at insulation from future lawsuits come at a significant cost.  Some parents will simply not volunteer.  Those who do are forced to do so with the mandate (the strong message from the training session) that we should be constantly aware of our children's identities as sexual objects, because we are all responsible for making sure no child is sexually exploited on our watch.

Is that really what's necessary to protect our chldren?  Or is it overkill by a Church that's being over-protected by its lawyers?  I honestly, truly, do not know the answer to that question.  Any thoughts on this? If increasing the awareness of our children as sexual objects is, indeed, necessary to protect them, then I frankly think we're going to have a tough time with any larger social campaign against the sexualization of children. 

More on the Sexualization of Children

On the topic of the sexualization of children, one particularly passionate and articulate defender of children, Mary Leary at Catholic, has just posted a new paper:  "Death to 'Child Erotica'".  From the abstract:

The world of child sexual exploitation is a complex one including many crimes. Research and caselaw indicate that child pornography often is found intertwined with other sexual material demonstrating a sexual interest in children. Such material includes, but is not limited to, sexualized pictures of nude or semi-nude children; surreptitiously recorded videos of children focusing on their breasts or genitals; writings on the most successful methods of facilitating child molestation, etc. That child pornography producers and collectors can often possess some such material is perhaps of no surprise. That criminal courts are referring to such material with the artistic term of “child erotica,” suggesting validation, is problematic. Its use must cease.

Within the last decade there has been a significant international movement to replace the term “child pornography” with the label “child abuse images.” This change is motivated by a realization that the latter term more clearly identifies the content of the material, and avoids the suggestion that such victimization is analogous to possessing adult pornography. This paper proposes a second step to this movement, removing from our language the term “child erotica” and replacing it with descriptive norms or, when labels are necessary, the more precise terms of “child exploitation images” and “child exploitation paraphernalia.”

Just as the term “child pornography” has been replaced in research and legal circles,” the use of the term “child erotica” should be reclaimed and replaced. The term is troubling for three main reasons. First, linking the words “child” and “erotica” is misleading. Using an artistic label incorrectly suggests it references a genre of art. Second, it validates the material to which it refers. Such a term contributes to the social phenomenon known as the normalization of the sexual objectification of children, as it suggests there are circumstances when the sexual objectification of children by adults is appropriate and socially valued. Third, that the misnomer is emerging in legal opinions compounds the problem. The term has been improperly incorporated by the criminal courts. Divorced from its roots in art and literature, it claims to reference anything, no matter if sexually exploitive or truly artistic, that fails to meet the legal definition of child pornography or child abuse images. When courts are reviewing evidence, they need precise labels to most effectively make determinations. By grouping all legal material together under one inaccurate label: “child erotica,” courts can miss the relevance of some of the evidence, thereby risking improper outcomes. . . .

Language matters. Labels matter. Socially, language and labels matter because they can reflect cultural norms and values. In criminal litigation, labels matter because inaccurate labels can contribute to inaccurate assessment of evidence which can cause inaccurate results. At times, terms are so inaccurate and misleading, they become damaging. “Child erotica” is such a term and it must be replaced.

Background from a Reader with Experience on the Lay Governance Issue

Here's some interesting background on this issue from a reader (who incidently has an interesting post on the geographical distribution of the 7 deadly sins at his blog):

I have had some experience as a lay brother in a clerical religious order, and can perhaps provide some insight into the dynamics of lay leadership and priestly leadership.

 

First, the fact that a lay brother is being cassated as a major superior of a clerical congregation (Maryknoll is, at root, an association of priests) has nothing to do with the broader governing authority of the laity. It simply means that, in a society whose mission is clerical the governing authority should be held by a cleric. Now, in other congregations and orders, such as monasteries in the Benedictine tradition, or the various Franciscan orders, the mission of the order is not clerical and ordination is not (theoretically) the norm; so a non-ordained members have and continue to be made superiors and major superiors. Further, there are no requirements for lay associations, such as the Legion of Mary, to have clerics involved in governance. For organs of the Church whose mission is essentially lay in character, the governing authority is appropriately held by (and sometimes restricted to) the laity.

 

Now, perhaps the Maryknoll Missioners should re-write their foundational documents to reflect the changes in their membership and sense of mission; but unless they do so, they remain essentially a clerical congregation, and appropriately require major superiors to be clerics.

 

I would note that this also extends to the office of Pastor in a parish. The purpose of the parish is essentially a clerical one: to unite the faithful in the sacramental presence of Christ. So an ordained person is rightly required as the highest authority in the parish. But, in this country, we have tended to associate the parish (or the diocese) with the whole of the Church. There are many acts of the Church, works of charity and service and education and so on, which are not properly the acts of a parish. These are, appropriately, led by lay persons or non-ordained religious.

 

Moreover, the entire governance of the secular sphere is the appropriate realm of the laity. To this end, ordained clerics are forbidden to hold secular political office.

 

In short, the question is not one of a "restrictive view of the role of lay persons," but one of the nature of the governance required by a given organization.

I'm not sure that this explanation of the governance documents answers some of the larger questions Susan and I have about Church attitudes toward the role of the laity, but it does help explain this particular situation.

More On the Leadership Role of Laity

 A reader had these comments on the lay leadership discussion:

Like yourself, and Prof. Stabile, I'm puzzled by the lack of support for lay leadership of religious institutes that have established lay membership.  I find it particularly puzzling in light of the attention paid in recent pontificates to how the laity can lead lives of heroic virtue (see Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, St. Joseph Moscati, St. Gianna Beretta Molla).  Presumably if you can do that, you can lead.  So I put the question to a seminarian friend of mine, who attributed it to, at least in part, the formation of those presently in leadership roles.    He noted that this is likely to change (I think JPII's reflections on the laity will help), and pointed to the increasing use of laity (both men and women) as chancellors of dioceses as evidence that the shift was already occurring.

Lay Authority

I share Susan's puzzlement over why restricting the governance authority of the laity is considered necessary to "preserve the distinctiveness of the ordained priesthood."  Why are attempts to strengthen the authority of lay people in the Church almost invariably seen as challenges to the distinctiveness of the priesthood?  Are challenges to the "authority" of priesthood necessarily challenges to its "distinctiveness"?  While they might often be, in practice, I don't think they necessarily always are.  Like Susan, I have trouble understanding why this election is perceived as a threat to the distinctiveness of the priesthood.

As I was thinking about this today, I just happened to come across this quote from Hans Urs von Balthasar, in a footnote to an article I'm editing right now.  Seems pertinent to this discussion:

The realized Idea of the Church comes at the beginning; everything subsequent, even ecclesiastical office with its sacred functions, is secondary, if not unimportant, in comparison.  After all, the Church exists to serve the ransom and retrieval of the sinful world.  In Mary, the Church is embodied even before being organized in Peter.  The Church is first -- and this first is permanent -- feminine before she receives a complementary male counterpart in the form of ecclesial office.

(The Marian Mold of the Church, in Mary: Church at the Source (1997), at p. 49.

St. Cory?

From John Allen's column today (Disclosure:  I chose St. Joan of Arc as my confirmation saint.):

When former President Corazon "Cory" Aquino of the Philippines died from colon cancer on August 1, she was hailed as a popular saint for having led the 1986 "People Power" uprising that toppled the regime of Ferdinand Marco, and then guiding her country into democracy.

At least one former Aquino aide, and a devout Catholic, believes that she deserves the formal kind of sainthood too.

William Esposo, a Filipino journalist who ran Aquino's media operation during the People Power uprising and her presidential campaign, has called her the "Joan of Arc of Asia" and believes that church officials ought to launch a formal canonization process. (I met Esposo, a longtime member of Focolare, some years ago during a Focolare event in Italy. He's a serious Catholic, so his proposal is not some casual journalistic conceit.)

Writing in The Philippine Star, Esposo said that "Like the Maid, Cory electrified her nation into patriotic passion and vanquished the tyrants of the land."

Aquino's central contrast with Joan of Arc, Esposo suggested, is one that almost makes Aquino the more attractive candidate for sainthood: "Cory would only accede to non-violent political activism … Cory discouraged armed struggle and preferred to entrust her fate and that of her people to the love and justice of God."

Esposo's bottom line: "Cory C. Aquino was just about the closest, if not the perfect specimen, that the world of politics will produce that could qualify to be a saint."

It's too early to know whether the Filipino church will indeed set the wheels in motion. Yet given how much emphasis the Vatican is placing these days on the relationship between faith and politics, Aquino could be a powerful role model -- sort of a cross, if Esposo will permit me to extend his image, between Joan of Arc and Thomas More. Needless to say, bestowing such an honor upon a lay woman would also have its own significance.

I'd vote for canonizing Cory, if for no other reason than that the image of thousands of yellow-clad Filipinos flooding St. Peter's Square ought to be a sight to see.

On the top of any list of least-popular alliances......

..... has to be this alliance of arguably the two most-despised sectors of the U.S. economy these days -- banks and health care providers.  Lori Swanson, Minnesota's Attorney General has just filed suit against a local chiropractic clinic for fraudulent issuance of health care credit cards.

Her consumer alert memo on this trend among health care providers explains:

Some clinics aggressively promote health care credit cards to make more money. Banks often encourage dentists, medical clinics, chiropractors, cosmetic and eye surgeons, weight loss programs, hearing aid dispensers, and other providers to offer health care credit cards to their patients as a way to make more money for the clinic. When a patient charges services on a health care credit card, the clinic is paid right away by the credit card company, even if the services are to be delivered in the future. Some patients report feeling pressured by their clinics to enroll in health care credit cards to pay for care that they do not need or want or cannot afford.

Patients should remember that clinics have an incentive to aggressively promote these credit cards as a guaranteed way for the clinic to get paid promptly but that the cards may not always be in the patient's best interest. Do not let your clinic pressure you into taking out a credit card you do not want. Do not sign up for anything without asking to read the fine print.

Beware of interest-free promotions. Health care credit cards are now offered by many of the nation's largest lenders, including GE Money Bank, JP Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, and Capital One. Across the country, health care companies like UnitedHealth Group and Humana have also gotten into the mix by offering credit cards.

Many lenders try to entice patients into signing up by offering credit cards that have a zero percent interest rate if the balance is paid off within a promotional period (often 12 or 18 months) and if, during the promotional period, the consumer makes all monthly payments on time. If the balance is not paid off within the promotional period or if the patient misses a monthly payment, however, interest rates can quickly jump to as much as 29.99 percent retroactively. Before being tempted by a zero-interest offer, be absolutely sure that you can pay the balance in full during the interest free period and that you can make all your monthly payments in full and on time. If you can' t, you may end up being responsible to pay off your health care bills at double-digit rates that you cannot afford and may also be responsible for hefty late fees.

Maybe what we really need is some sort of omnibus health and financial system reform bill.