Mirror of Justice

The Tradition Project, Part III: The Value of Tradition in the Global Context

Next week, the third and final conference of the Tradition Project kicks off in Rome: "The Value of Tradition in the Global Context." The conference is the product of the joint labor of three institutions: LUMSA University in Rome (with our colleague Monica Lugato taking the lead), Villanova's Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion, and Public Policy (ably stewarded by our MOJ colleague, Michael Moreland), and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John's Law School (directed by Mark Movsesian and me).

This session will feature a public address, on December 12, by Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court, and four private workshops on the conference themes, ranging over the political, cultural, and legal dimensions of the role of tradition in the world today. Rick Garnett and Adrian Vermeule will be in our number as well. Here is the program.

Perry Dane on Corporations

MOJ readers know that I'm interested in the role and rights of religious institutions. (See, e.g., this and this.)  I also think that Prof. Perry Dane (Rutgers) is one of the most interesting law-and-religion scholars working.  So, I suppose it's a bit "overdetermined", as they say, that I'm recommending this paper of his:

This essay on Corporations is a chapter in an upcoming volume on economic theology edited by Stefan Schwarzkopf.

The secular study of corporations has long regularly focused on three sets of concerns: (1) Is the idea of corporate “personhood” only a convenient shorthand for a complex set of relationships among human beings or are corporations in some important sense “real entities” with rights, duties, interests, or even intentions of their own? (2) How do the various aspects of corporate personhood differ from the qualities of human personhood? (3) What are the proper purposes or missions of for-profit and not-for-profit corporations?

This essay examines these perennial questions through a distinctive theological lens. It considers, among other topics, doctrines in Jewish and Islamic law about the religious meaning of secular corporations, debates about the spiritual worth and moral responsibilities of for-profit corporations, and ideas in several faith traditions about the ontological status of religious communities.

The essay also discusses the role of the fraught idea of “idolatry” in conversations about corporations. And it ends by looking to Buddhist philosophy, contemporary neurological research, and secular theories of public choice and group decision-making to question the reigning assumption that there is a fundamental difference between “natural persons” such as human beings and “artificial persons” such as corporations.

Sofia Carozza on Advent, neuroscience, and "Locke's Lonely Liberalism"

Sofia Carozza, a neuroscience-and-theology major at Notre Dame, has this very interesting reflection in the Church Life Journal on Advent, neuroscience, and "Locke's Lonely Liberalism."  Just a bit:

. . . Neuroscience alone shows us that our development and flourishing takes place through relationships of love. But in providing a corrective to Locke, developmental neuroscience is well supplemented by a Thomistic account of the human person. Such an account is particularly helpful when the development of the virtues is understood through the interpretive key of “second-person relatedness.”[9] This Thomistic concept, as argued by Andrew Pinset, is the idea that the “I” is formed in dialogue with the “you,” in an irreducible dialectical relationship. Second-person relatedness begins between the child and her parents, a relationship in which she starts to develop the human virtues and gain agency as a moral individual. However, Pinset argues that second-person relatedness is a continuum of relationship that extends even to the child’s connection with God. Through this divine I-Thou relationship, she experiences friendship with God and is thus bestowed the theological virtues.

This account of the human person accords well with neuroscience research. . . .

Feast of Edmund Campion and the English martyrs

Several years ago, our own Fr. Robert Araujo, S.J. (RIP) posted this, about Campion and other English martyrs:

Today, the first of December, is a special day in the liturgical calendar of the Society of Jesus—the religious institute to which I belong. It is the feast of the martyrs Saints Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, and companions. Of course the English and Welsh Church offered up a good number of members of other institutes, the secular priesthood, and the laity who would not compromise on their Catholic faith but, by the same token, did not betray their loyalty as subjects of the temporal realm. In spite of what the temporal powers demanded of them, they simultaneously remained true to the faith and their sovereign.

It could have been Campion and Southwell and their companions that Cardinal George had in mind when he recently figuratively (and, perhaps, literally) stated that he would likely die in his bed; his successor in prison; and the latter’s successor a martyr for doing what Saint Paul in the letter to Titus reminds all Christians to be their duty: to encourage others in sound doctrine and to refute those who oppose it. [Campion and some of his companions were teachers, and they understood the value of authentic academic freedom to search for and present in public fashion the truth of God.] While such talk may be dismissed as hyperbole in the present age, is it?

We do not have to look far today to see that there are still martyrs, usually folk from ordinary walks of life, who are dying for the Catholic faith and for no other reason. This has been the history of the Church since its beginning; the tradition continues because people like Campion and his fellow martyred Jesuits understood well that they joined the enterprise of the Society of Jesus for one purpose alone: to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine.

This is evident from reading Campion’s apologia which Father Campion submitted to Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy Council after his capture and before his execution. [The apologia (oft referred to as “Campion’s Brag”) is HERE] His words do not betray any disloyalty to his sovereign, but they confirm the sincerity and profundity of his faith in Christ and His holy Church. The so-called Brag is worth studying carefully, but these words stand out for me and, perhaps, others:

…The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: so it must be restored…

Saints Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, and companions: pray for us!

Don't miss the chance today to (re)read "Campion's Brag"!