Mirror of Justice

The Pope Francis interview, integration, and the lawyer's vocation

Count me among those who is disappointed by the cherry-picking, political spinning, and unattractive revelling in "the other side's" presumed discomfort that has characterized much of the coverage and commentary regarding Pope Francis's recent interview.  My understanding is that I am regarded as a "conservative" and so I gather I'm supposed to be mad -- even on the edge of schism! -- about the interview and just about everything else about Francis but -- go figure!-- I am not.  (If I thought he thinks or had said that, say, efforts to protect educational and religious freedom or increase respect for the dignity of all human life aren't that important after all, I would be disappointed, and think him naive.  But, I don't think he does or did.  I imagine we'd disagree, over Malbec, about some points of policy, but that's been true of every Pope in my lifetime.)  If his style and substance -- if the very appealing humility and care that really come through in the interview -- result in people of good will in less-faith-friendly regions of the interwebs asking themselves, "hmmm, this guy seems great . . . and he is a Catholic . . . and he was elected by a bunch of old guys who I thought were just obsessed-with-'no' reactionaries . . . maybe I should take a look, and re-visit some of the impressions I've formed -- maybe because of hostile and ignorant news coverage, maybe because of encounters with uncharitable and unjoyful Christians -- about the Church, and about the faith", then . . . good! 

Obviously, the Pope is saying things that are challenging for those of us who believe that the "conservative" side of American politics is, all things considered, the better vehicle for achieving better policies, but my view is that there's nothing wrong with that.  I hope I respond to this challenge with the humility and open-mindedness that I expect of those on the "other" side.  I don't think the Pope's admonitions and exhortations and challenges are supposed to make those on the political left of American politics feel good about themselves or abandon critical thinking about their preferred policies, either.  And, who -- left or right -- can doubt the urgency of Pope Francis's challenge that Christians do some soul-searching about the dangers of presenting to the world a Christianity that is merely a set of rules, or a social ethic, or a litany of warnings, rather than one that has at its heart the Eucharist and the person and love of Jesus.  And who -- left or right -- can think that the reaction Pope Francis is hoping to inspire is either a "thank you" from NARAL or gleeful cackling at the presumed unhappiness of Bishop Whomever?

Anyway . . . this blog is not supposed to be about "Catholic stuff generally" but about law, so . . . Two of the themes I've been hearing in the Pope's many interventions is an emphasis on the whole person (very Jesuit!  and, very John Paul II!) and also on unity, wholeness, and integration rather than partition, selectivity, dis-integration, etc., when it comes to hearing, understanding, and living out the Gospel.  As we've often discussed here at MOJ, these are themes that should also loom large in our conversations about legal education and formation, and about the practice and vocation of law.  What, I wonder, would an open-minded and open-hearted effort to really hear what Pope Francis is saying, on a variety of topics, and "put it to work" in how we teach and talk to law students about what they are doing and preparing for look like?

Liberty Fund Podcast on The Tragedy of Religious Freedom [UPDATED]

I'm grateful to Richard Reinsch of the excellent Law and Liberty blog (a project of The Liberty Fund) for discussing The Tragedy of Religious Freedom with me. If you are not familiar with the resources available at the Liberty Fund, you should check them out. I use their extensive on-line library all the time and they have many interesting essays, book reviews, and posts. 

UPDATE: And here's a review in the Law and Politics Book Review by political scientist Jesse Merriam. Here's the conclusion, which both gives a sense of Professor Merriam's (important) criticisms of the book and contains a little nice stuff too:

If DeGirolami truly is going to provide a middle-ground theory, one in which both theory and conflict can co-exist, we need to know more precisely how history and precedent can guide us. The reader will likely find that DeGirolami does not satisfy this standard. Nevertheless, DeGirolami does provide an important service in probing and pushing us closer to this understanding. And something that must be emphasized here is that he performs this service with a clarity, elegance, and intellectual depth surpassing almost every work in this field. TRAGEDY OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM is an excellent starting point for a discussion of how to arbitrate the principled conflict underlying church-state adjudication, and in starting this discussion DeGirolami does an exquisite job of defending his approach. For these reasons, it is not only an important but also an immensely enjoyable book to read.

"The First Amendment and its Global Implications" at Butler

I'll be participating in a panel discussion at Butler University's Center for Faith and Vocation -- I'm trying to resist the temptation to wear a "Duke Blue Devils National Champs" shirt -- on Tuesday.  More information is available here.  Stop by, fellow Hoosiers, and say "hello"!

An(other) brutal attack on Christians abroad

Dozens of people were killed in an attack on a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan.  This piece (by John O'Sullivan, the godfather of Candida Moss, the author of "The Myth of Christian Persecution") urges Western governments (and citizens in Western countries) to respond (as has, of course, our own Robby George).  O'Sullivan writes that "one of the main reasons for this spread of persecution is that Western governments have signaled by their inaction that they are not prepared to make a
fuss about it with governments in Arab and Muslim countries."

Sectarian blasphemy laws and violent attacks on Christians and members of other minority religions in Muslim countries continue unabated either because Muslim governments sympathize with them (arguably the Egyptian case) or because they are reluctant to spend political capital on fighting Islamist zealots and their parties (arguably the case of Pakistan).

Outside pressure seems an obvious solution. Yet Western governments resist
intervening in behalf of embattled Christians lest that mark them as sectarian
“Christian powers” or cast doubt on their status as purveyors of universal
values and human rights. There is no such reluctance on the other side. . . .

UPDATE:  A reader (burdened with what strikes me as a hair-trigger hermeneutic of suspicion) wrote to suggest that my mention of the O'Sullivan-Moss relationship might have been deviously intended to cast doubt on whether Prof. Moss would deplore such an attack.  The suggestion is ludicrous.  Of course she would (and has, as in this piece) deplore such violence.  Although I believe (based on reviews of the book and some of her popular writing) she is too quick to criticize some of the efforts of those who are defending religious liberty in our current context, my understanding (again, I have only read a part of her book) is that part of her argument is that what she regards as the misuse of the term "persecution" in the context of North American politics can have as one of its bad effects the distraction of attention from the very real suffering that many Christians are enduring abroad.  I mentioned the relationship because the piece to which I linked mentioned it, and I imagine that piece mentioned it because the piece itself talks about Prof. Moss's book, and about the interesting, and troubling, possibility that, in fact, more Christians are being killed for being Christian today that was the case during much of the Church's early history.

Vocation as a verb

At Notre Dame Law School -- and, I think, at several other Catholic law schools -- we encourage our students to see, to prepare for, and to live, their lives in the law as a "vocation."  I'd encourage all MOJ readers to read, and to share with friends -- lawyers and non-lawyers alike -- this post, "Vocation as a verb, Rather than noun," by our own Susan Stabile (from her other blog, Creo en Dios!).   

Pope Francis and Mercy

Aquinas writes that mercy is the greatest of the virtues insofar as it is proper to God and the way in which God's omnipotence is primarily made manifest (ST, II-II.30.iv). Apart from the hurly-burly of reaction to Pope Francis's interview for Jesuit publications, I think this--the primacy of mercy--is the deepest and most powerful aspect of what Francis is saying and calls all of us (as teachers, parents, colleagues, and friends) to ponder where and how we can bring about mercy in a world desperately in need of it. Over at First Things, Nathaniel Peters writes:

Like any good triage specialist, the pope knows that you give the most critical medicine first. That is why, first and foremost, he preaches the mercy of Christ. Mercy, he clarifies, is neither rigor nor laxity. It neither ends in condemnation, nor in a false sense of comfort that one is not diseased. It says what Francis says of himself: “You are a sinner, and the Lord has looked upon you with mercy.”

Since this is the heart of the gospel, all other aspects of Catholic truth presuppose and proceed from it. All the controversial parts of the faith can only be understood in light of this fundamental truth. During and before his papacy, Benedict repeated this again and again. The heart of the gospel must be understood so that the moral teachings can be understood.

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Lynn Appeal Update

Earlier this week the Pennsylvania Superior Court heard oral argument in Monsignor Lynn's appeal. A summary of the status of the case and the events of oral argument are here and here. The main argument discussed is a technical statutory one regarding the propriety of the statute utilized in the prosecution. As I have blogged earlier, this is a fascinating case on a number of levels including regarding the liability of those who perhaps were not direct abusers but who were aware of accusations. The coverage of the appeal is worth a read to understand the technical arguments.

Os Guinness on Religious Freedom Here and Abroad

Author Os Guinness, a co-signatory of the recent statement "Evangelicals and Catholics Together on Law," has a new book out on religious freedom in "the global public square."  He gives Christianity Today an interview with a bunch of worthwhile thoughts that make me want to read the book, including this:

Religious freedom is a foundational human right that should be guaranteed and protected simply for its own sake. But over and above that, numerous studies show that when religious freedom is respected, there are many social and political benefits, such as civility in public life, harmony in society as a whole, and vitality in the entrepreneurial sectors of civil society. Violations of religious freedom, such as the recent health care mandates hitting Catholic hospitals and other religious employers, are therefore not only wrong, but blind. As such requirements spread, they will cramp, if not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. One day our brave new government officials will go out in the morning and find there is no golden egg—and therefore they must spend more, and grow government even larger, to cover the gap created by the diminishing of the faith-based organizations.

I would keep making explicit (as I've detailed here) that the loss of "vitality in civil society" may well include a loss of the effective, distinctive service to the needy that religious organizations provide--a loss that those on the "secular progressive" side (and not just government officials) should worry about.  Overall, amen to Os!

A Catholic Case Against MOOCs

MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) are all the rage in many quarters of the higher education "industry."  The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article by Jonathan Malesic, a theology professor at Kings College in Pa. titled "A Catholic Case Against MOOCs:"

There is one way in which MOOCs seem to line up with a major historical goal of Catholic universities: They offer access to college-level instruction for people who have been excluded because of poverty, remoteness, or others' prejudice. But the altruistic promise of MOOCs has been empty so far.

***

Catholic organizations have known for a long time that to educate the poor, you have to go to them. In fact, to educate anyone fully—addressing their moral and spiritual development as well as their intellect—teachers and students must be present to each other.

This article drives at the heart of a debate we should be having over what is the purpose of education.  Are we selling a product that is bought by our customers - the students.  Or, is it a moral enterprise aimed at developing the whole person.

HT: Kevin Lee