Mirror of Justice

Building the City of Mary

I am just back from a Focolare’s northeast summer gathering held at the University of Scranton, “Mariapolis” (city of Mary) where about 400 people of all ages and from an amazing variety of ethnic and social backgrounds, came together for three days to delve into the Focolare’s spirituality of unity and live it together.  (This year translations were in Spanish, Korean and Chinese).  The theme, “love generates wisdom” dug into some of the challenges that people are facing today. 

A workshop on economic life opened a space for discussion about how efforts to love might inform the approaches to the recession, with examples of living through a layoff, and helping small children to participate fully in a family’s efforts to discern wants from needs.  Another on family life explored how to find time to communicate in the midst of a frenetic pace; and how to maintain unity in situations when the couple finds they have different approaches to parenting.  The youth put together for everyone else a workshop on how they try to let love inform their efforts to navigate the media and means of communication (social networking, text messaging, etc.) in order to build solid and respectful relationships. 

The CST insight?  I think it might have something to do with how the communal effort to love and be open to receiving love creates a social space of total inclusion in which people can fully participate, giving the gift of themselves.  Like the man in the scooter-wheelchair who formed a deep bond with a group of kindergartners, who were delighted to take rides on the scooter, and “race” him; and then together they formed an amazing team to help clear the tables in the dining area and put the dishes on the conveyer belt.  Or the profoundly autistic teenager, unable to communicate verbally, who was clearly happy and comfortable dancing with the other young people at the end of the program, and the youth were clearly focused on her and the priority of creating a space to include her just as she was. 

On our way back to the Focolare house in the Bronx, my friends and I stopped at an ATM machine, where there was an older man obviously struggling with finding the right buttons, and taking quite a while.  Realizing that he had forgotten his glasses and needed help, we were able to create enough trust, even at a NYC ATM machine, to give him a hand.  I am normally prone to impatient “sidewalk rage” with anyone slower than the usual NYC pace, but the “Mariapolis” spirit had made a dent on that, enabling us to bring something of the “city of Mary" into the Bronx, too.

Healing Polarization & Focolare’s Economy of Communion

A few thoughts on John Allen’s “gut check for American Catholicism.”  I know you will all be shocked to read that I’d agree with his assessment that among the “winners” in the encyclical is Focolare and its Economy of Communion project, as “the lone initiative singled our for praise” in Caritas in Veritate.

 

I’d see a further connection within Allen’s roundup: I think the Economy of Communion project and the Focolare spirituality generally also hold much promise for the work of healing the tendency that Allen describes for pro-life and peace-and-justice Catholics to move in separate circles, create their own echo chambers, and as Allen puts is, “travel down separate paths, having separate conversations and investing their time and treasure in distinct, sometimes even opposing efforts.” 

 

Last week I was reflecting on the group of people involved with the Economy of Communion project.  Some of us have been in conversation almost from its inception in 1991.  And as I went through the list of these friends, I realized that for many I could not remember if they were Republicans or Democrats.  I am sure the role of the state and political models has come up in our conversations over the years, but the focus – a common commitment to a concrete project in service to the poor, in the conviction that Gospel values can completely permeate an approach to business life -  has formed such a deep non-ideological bond that political alliances have been completely relativized and accepted among the normal differences in any group.

 

Similarly, what draws people to the Focolare spirituality is not a particular political agenda, but the spirituality of unity, which is grounded in the prayer of Jesus, “that all may be one,” and the conviction that this can permeate their everyday lives.  Especially during presidential campaign seasons, local Focolare communities have not been immune to the political tensions, and have had to work very hard to keep open the lines communication across political differences.  But the common bond in the spirituality lays a foundation for building the kinds of relationships of listening, love and trust that can bridge the political divide. 

 

Before the 2008 election season, in the New York area we did a formation program that we called “Citizens for a United World,” which started, like all Focolare gatherings, with a “pact” of mutual love.  Over the course of studying Catholic social teaching, many were able to recognize the ways in which they may have mischaracterized the “other” (political) side, see that our pro-life and peace-and-justice leanings were all integral to the work of building up the body of Christ, and move toward healing the relationships in tension, within the Focolare community, and also within their families, parishes, and other circles.

 

I agree with Allen that one of our big challenges in the life of the Church here is bring our pro-life and peace-and-justice energies into alignment so as to “breathe with both lungs.”  And I have the sense that in addition to Focolare, other ecclesial movements may have had analogous experiences of creating the kind of non-ideological space that can help to heal the divide.  These may be rare, but perhaps not as rare as we think.

Investigation of Women Religious: A Reader Responds

A reader responds to the posts on the investigation of women religious:  

“I have read with interest the posts on MOJ about the Vatican investigation of women's religious orders.  I have noticed that some of the nuns who have commented on the issue, as well as R. McBrien, take the position that the Vatican is acting in bad faith and is pursuing these investigations in order to put women back into the role they had in the 1940s, or as a witch hunt, or as a means of diverting attention from the sexual abuse scandal.  Of course, they have no evidence to support these claims; they just presume to know the intentions of the Vatican I think, out of charity, we should do better and at least presume that the Vatican officials are acting in good faith until we have demonstrable proof that they are not.”

Thoughts?  My own reaction to the New York Times Francis Clines piece is that it might be painting with an overly broad brush to imply that the Vatican is specifically targeting the creative efforts of women religious to meet concrete social needs such as those of mothers in prison.  My guess is that there might be widely varying situations in different communities, and even different convents within the same communities, and that we might need finer instruments to get a picture of the complexity.

Horizontal Catholicism & the Economy of Communion

Thanks, Michael P., for the link to John Allen’s latest, in which he discusses, among other things, John Coleman’s analysis of the “paradox” that “Roman Catholicism should be the religious actor best positioned to engage the issues raised by globalization, but aside from debt relief, its impact so far has been marginal” and set out the theory that official Church structures "may lack the inner organizational flexibility for rapid and networked response to global issues as they arise," and surmises that "semi-autonomous and more local Catholic sub-groups will be the major actors in activist global networks."

Allen wonders about the role of what he calls "horizontal Catholicism" – “a host of movements, associations, ad-hoc networks, and religious communities, engaged in the issues raised by globalization in a staggering variety of ways. These malleable, rapid-response forms of Catholicism will exercise a steadily more important role in framing Catholic social activism as the century unfolds.”

I think that Allen is on to something.  Having followed the developments in the Focolare Movement’s “Economy of Communion” project since its inception in 1991, I sense that one of the reasons its framework is so solid it that it is able to combine a flexible and responsive local presence with a unified international vision and cultural approach, as I have discussed here, here and here.

Development needs within local communities are assessed within a framework of a broader commitment on the part of everyone – both those who share and those who receive material resources – to live a “culture of giving.”  The sharing of material resources is always linked to the commitment to build a true sense of family within the community, a place to share stories about how God’s loving intervention has come to meet material needs, and inspired further efforts to be a “gift” for others in a variety of ways.  These stories, in turn, foster continued commitment in the part of those who operate the Economy of Communion businesses throughout the world.  The structure is flexible and responsive not only in a practical sense, but also in its capacity to build authentic human relationships, which then serve as a foundation for social and economic development.

Based on this somewhat anecdotal experience, I think there’s much for us to mine in Allen’s statement, “The experience and insight of this horizontal Catholicism might also become a fertile locus teologicus, meaning a valuable foundation for new trajectories in Catholic social doctrine.”

Caritas in Veritate & the Trinity as a Social Model

Over at the America magazine blog, Austen Ivereigh takes issue with George Weigel's system for parsing Caritas in Veritate, and surmises that there might have been at least one other major influence in the drafting: Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement.  He points out three parallels in the discussion of fraternity and gift, in the "economy of communion," and in the link between poverty and isolation.  I'd like to suggest a fourth, which might contain all the rest, and which might even help us push beyond our liberal-conservative debate: the Trinity as a social model.  

54.  The theme of development can be identified with the inclusion-in-relation of all individuals and peoples within the one community of the human family, built in solidarity on the basis of the fundamental values of justice and peace. This perspective is illuminated in a striking way by the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity within the one divine Substance. The Trinity is absolute unity insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality. The reciprocal transparency among the divine Persons is total and the bond between each of them complete, since they constitute a unique and absolute unity. God desires to incorporate us into this reality of communion as well: “that they may be one even as we are one” (Jn 17:22). The Church is a sign and instrument of this unity. Relationships between human beings throughout history cannot but be enriched by reference to this divine model. In particular, in the light of the revealed mystery of the Trinity, we understand that true openness does not mean loss of individual identity but profound interpenetration.

Or as Lubich put it: “Jesus shows us that I am myself, not when I close myself off from the other, but rather when I give myself, when out of love I lose myself in the other. . . . In the relationship of the three divine Persons, each one is love, each on is completely, by not being: because each one is, perichoretically, in the other Person, in eternal self giving.”  (Lubich, Essential Writings, 211-212).

 

The Trinity as a “social model” has been common parlance in the circles of Focolare scholars for several years now, and these conversations have served as the foundation for much of my own work and scholarship (eg, Toward a Trinitarian Theory of Products Liability). 

 

Much of the work so far has been published in Italian, but there’s a new book just out in English by Thomas J. Norris (an Irish priest and professor of systematic theology), The Trinity: Life of God, Hope for Humanity—Towards a Theology of Communion(2009), which also includes a chapter on the connection between the Trinitarian model and the Economy of Communion.

 

It might be interesting to explore further whether the life of the Trinity as set out in number 54 might be something of a literary key for the entire encyclical—for example, it might be the paradigm which helps us to make sense of the discussion of the need for “gratuitousness” in economic life; and of the importance of safeguarding individual and cultural identities while at the same time helping people and peoples to forge bonds of communion with each other and across borders.

 

Michael S & Michael P: Categories

Seems like there are two things going on in your exchange: first, the need to acknowledge that much of our political, social and legal landscape is working with these categories (liberal-conservative, right-left), and so we do need to watch for how they are at work in the discourse, and in particular in the conversation about and critique of CST; and second, the desire especially as we engage each other to enter into the complexity of each other's thought, and the complexity of the broader discourse, both as part of the effort to not box each other in, but also make sure we genuinely understand the nuance in each others' thinking.  So can we all agree that the categories are simultaneously real and reductive?   

Caritas in Veritate & The Economy of Communion

It's rare for a specific project to get a shout-out in a papal enclyclical, but here's an exception:  As John Allen connects the dots here and here, this paragraph of Caritas in Veritate: 

46. When we consider the issues involved in the relationship between business and ethics, as well as the evolution currently taking place in methods of production, it would appear that the traditionally valid distinction between profit-based companies and non-profit organizations can no longer do full justice to reality, or offer practical direction for the future. In recent decades a broad intermediate area has emerged between the two types of enterprise. It is made up of traditional companies which nonetheless subscribe to social aid agreements in support of underdeveloped countries, charitable foundations associated with individual companies, groups of companies oriented towards social welfare, and the diversified world of the so-called “civil economy” and the “economy of communion”. This is not merely a matter of a “third sector”, but of a broad new composite reality embracing the private and public spheres, one which does not exclude profit, but instead considers it a means for achieving human and social ends. Whether such companies distribute dividends or not, whether their juridical structure corresponds to one or other of the established forms, becomes secondary in relation to their willingness to view profit as a means of achieving the goal of a more humane market and society. It is to be hoped that these new kinds of enterprise will succeed in finding a suitable juridical and fiscal structure in every country. Without prejudice to the importance and the economic and social benefits of the more traditional forms of business, they steer the system towards a clearer and more complete assumption of duties on the part of economic subjects. And not only that. The very plurality of institutional forms of business gives rise to a market which is not only more civilized but also more competitive. 

is referring specifically to the Focolare Movement’s “Economy of Communion” project.  For more information about the Economy of Communion project, here is a link for an overview essay I co-authored with Italian economist Luigino Bruni, who has written extensively about the project, and here is the Economy of Communion's international website.  The July 2009 issue of the Focolare's monthly magazine, Living City includes a series of articles about the project. 

 

A Literary Key to the New Encyclical

John Allen's latest, A Key to Reading Benedict's Social Encyclical looks like a super-helpful guide and warmup for the release of Caritas in Veritate, due out this Tuesday.

Thoughts about the Catholic Legal Theory Project on the Feast of the Sacred Heart

When I went to mass this morning, and heard the readings to celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart, I was taken by the beauty of the selection from the letter to Ephesians 3:8-12.14-19.  Here’s a snippet: “…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” 

 

The Gospel (John 19:31-37) then drove home just how fleshy is the whole endeavor: “But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.”

 

What I like about the questions of our thoughtful practicing-lawyer friend is that they seem to be a call for a deeper sense of the connectedness of the whole project.  I wonder if the idea of a “root” and a “ground” – specifically in love – might be an interesting starting point in answering the question of what is the point of spending time working out a theoretical framework, but in a way that does not become disconnected from the lived experience, and in particular, the lived struggles and sufferings of humanity (including lawyers) around us – so as to ultimately surpass knowledge, and in some way touch the fullness of the experience of God. 

 

I also thought it was interesting that so many of our practicing-lawyer-friend’s questions rang true for me, but I would have framed them not as a tension between practice and theory, but as a more feminine critique of the inaccessibility of theoretical abstractions; or in some contexts, as came up in our discussion of the documents, as a North-American critique of European tendencies to high (for me inaccessible) levels of abstraction. 

 

I am a big believer in the importance of taking time to spin out a theoretical ground and framework for our scholarship.  For me the highlight of the Conference on Catholic Legal Thought last week was the help that I received in working out what could be a fairly abstract argument about the relationship between law and morality as a grounding for my summer work in progress on duty to rescue.  We wrestled quite a bit with the question of whether the underlying story we tell about rescue makes a difference, regardless of the legal outcome.  But I do think that our practicing lawyer friend is right, that in the work of theory, we do need to keep in mind the “questions and needs of real people” – and perhaps having this as a focal point (or to put it another way, being “rooted and grounded in love”) might be the ultimate key to comprehension in any meaningful sense.

 

Finally, over the past week I have spent some time thinking about the journey of the CCLT since the initial 2006 brainstorm.  At that initial gathering we faced a fork in the road: whether to focus more intensively and purposefully on projects to form the next generation of legal scholars in the Catholic intellectual tradition; or more on building an intentional community of mutual encouragement and support among those who are working in the field, with the secondary goal of initial and continued formation in the tradition.  While the first remains a vitally important project and piece of unfinished work, we chose to take the second path. 

 

As Susan and Rob already mentioned, the group includes a very diverse span of perspectives and approaches to the tradition.  My Fordham colleague and others who were there for the first time were impressed to find in an academic environment such an encouraging, accepting atmosphere where one finds what I think is a rather extraordinary capacity to listen to and welcome each other across and within differences.  As our culture, the blog world, and the church itself face the risks of increasing polarization, perhaps one of the real beauties of the CCLT project is the priority that it gives to building these kind of relationships, the space it fosters to be “grounded and rooted in love,” and in this way, to nourish an exchange which is all the richer because of the real differences in our theoretical, practical and experiential perspectives, perhaps even giving us a taste of the “breadth and length and height and depth” of God’s love.

Lawyers and Vacations

      Check out this brief ABA Journal piece, “Vacation or Not, Lawyers Should Be Available via E-mail, Cleary Partner Says.”  “An ‘out of office’ auto-reply saying that an attorney is unavailable is acceptable only in rare circumstances, such as when a lawyer is on an international flight in a different time zone and a colleague, for some reason, is unable to cover...”  This is followed by a survey with three possible responses to the question of whether lawyers should be reachable by email while on vacation: 1) I can always be reached; 2) I’ll check a couple times a day; 3) no, cutting myself off from work is the whole point.

    What strikes me about the clip and the survey is that there is zero attention to context: the attorney’s level of responsibility, the type of cases one is working on and the extent to which they are time sensitive (eg, contrast work on a preliminary injunction with work on fairly slow-paced and predictable appellate briefs or document review); not to mention the particularities of one’s family situation.  Absent context, it’s very difficult to tell whether this sense of 24/7 availability has anything to do with client service at all.

     My first summer in practice at a large firm I stupidly giving up the chance to be present at a three-day retreat which had always been important to me because I assumed that as the most junior on the totem pole I should make myself available to “cover” the case while a large chunk team was out in August.  Later I realized that I was responding not to realistic client needs (the litigation was fairly slow paced), but my own fears about firm expectations, which in that case were ungrounded.  I probably should have been reading a little more Laborem Exercens or Dies Domini for a better sense of perspective.