Mirror of Justice

International Law and Religion Moot Court - Brazil 2020

The International Law and Religion Moot Court is a competition organized by the Brazilian Center of Studies in Law and Religion that will take place in Uberlandia, Brazil, between 16 and 18 of June 2020. The Competition is designed to contribute to the training of law students in subjects related to International Human Rights Law as well as Law and Religion.

Read more here.

"On the coronavirus, rapid aging, falling fertility, and Humanae Vitae"

An interesting piece by the always-perceptive John Allen:

Amid the scramble to find a cure for the coronavirus and, in the meantime, to enforce restrictive measures to try to slow down its expansion, there’s been relatively little attention to the underlying factors which may explain why some places have been harder hit, more quickly, than others.

One emerging hypothesis, however, is that there may be a correlation between declining fertility rates and rapidly rising elderly populations in many societies around the world, and the extent to which those societies have been impacted by the coronavirus.

For the Catholic Church, which has sounded alarms about declining fertility for decades, the situation could offer a grim confirmation of its diagnosis that a rapidly aging society places its future in jeopardy – though no one’s likely to celebrate that it’s required a global pandemic which, to date, has claimed more than 7,000 lives, to put the issue back on the table. . . .

Read the whole thing.

The Coronavirus Novena

I want to thank one of our loyal MOJ readers, Anne, for passing this along. 

While we face the coronavirus pandemic, let us turn to the face of God in prayer and ask for His healing, His help and His protection.  We will pray for all who are affected, for all who are sick and suffering, for all those who work in the medical profession, and for those who have died as well as for their grieving family members. 

Read more at: https://www.praymorenovenas.com/pandemic-novena

The Religious-Freedom Revolution

Even as the world, and Washington, D.C., has turned its attention to addressing the coronavirus, a slow but persistent revolution is underway in an area of policy that usually has flown under almost everyone’s radar. That issue is international religious freedom, or IRF, as we in the business call it, and the impact of this revolution could be felt for many years to come.

Full article at National Review.

Rice-Hasson Lecture Postponed

The Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School was scheduled to host our inaugural Rice-Hasson Distinguished Lecture on March 30th with our very special guest, Mary Ann Glendon. While we are disappointed that the COVID-19 public health emergency has closed our campus for the time being, we look forward to rescheduling this event for the coming fall.

Personally, this moment in our history has made me reflect on the true value of face to face interaction and how we learn best and grow together when part of a community. Our university President, Fr. John Jenkins made an excellent point recently in a video addressed to the Notre Dame community. That is, we are a community even when we are far apart geographically. That’s true. Notre Dame students will continue to learn from their professors, although remotely. Notre Dame scholars will continue to say and write important things, although many of them without the benefit and luxury of our beautiful campus with the presence of students and colleagues. I’m not sure when we will all return to campus and have the chance to gather and learn together again. But, I know I’ll never take it for granted.

RESCHEDULED: Late March Symposium on Feminism (w pro-life/pro-choice scholars) at Columbia U

Just a note for any who were interested:  due to the coronavirus threat, this event has been postponed until next fall. We'll post the date as soon as it's available.

"The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake"

It is, I realize, fashionable to roll one's eyes (or do worse!) over David Brooks's meaning-mongering, but . . . I thought this essay, "The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake", was a really good read.  (I'd also recommend Brad Wilcox's response.)  In more than a view places, Brooks touches on themes that resonate with Catholic anthropology.  For example:

As factories opened in the big U.S. cities, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, young men and women left their extended families to chase the American dream. These young people married as soon as they could. A young man on a farm might wait until 26 to get married; in the lonely city, men married at 22 or 23. From 1890 to 1960, the average age of first marriage dropped by 3.6 years for men and 2.2 years for women.

The families they started were nuclear families. The decline of multigenerational cohabiting families exactly mirrors the decline in farm employment. Children were no longer raised to assume economic roles—they were raised so that at adolescence they could fly from the nest, become independent, and seek partners of their own. They were raised not for embeddedness but for autonomy. By the 1920s, the nuclear family with a male breadwinner had replaced the corporate family as the dominant family form. By 1960, 77.5 percent of all children were living with their two parents, who were married, and apart from their extended family.

Interestingly, many "progressives" who will (reflexively?) recoil from what might seem "conservative" in Brooks's piece also tend to support a political figure, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who made many consonant points in her "controversial" 2004 book, The Two Income Trap.

 

Make the Family Great Again petition

Recently some pro-family advocates presented a petition to Professor Mary Ann Glendon in her capacity as chairing the U.S. State Department's Commission on Unalienable Rights. Although I had not signed the petition or authorized my signature to be attached to it, the organizers added my name. When I called the mistake to their attention, they promptly removed my name, although by then media coverage of the petition had mentioned me as a signatory. The error was, I have no doubt, an innocent one, since I am well-known to be in sympathy with the organizers' principal aims. I am grateful to them for promptly rectifying it.