Mirror of Justice

Call for Papers: Annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility

Submissions and nominations of articles are being accepted for the fourteenth annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility.  To honor Fred's memory, the committee will select from among articles in the field of Professional Responsibility with a publication date of 2023.  The prize will be awarded at the 2024 AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.  Please send submissions and nominations to Professor Samuel Levine at Touro Law Center: [email protected].  The deadline for submissions and nominations is September 1, 2023.

Smith on "Christians and/as Liberals?"

Friend of the Show Prof. Steve Smith (San Diego) has posted the article-version of a talk he gave at a Notre Dame conference last fall on "Liberalism, Christianity, and Constitutionalism." (Here is an op-ed version of the remarks I delivered at the same event.)  Here is Steve's abstract:

Recently, as part of a more general examination and criticism of liberalism, the relation between Christianity and liberalism has been much discussed. Some critics, sometimes associated with the label “integralism,” argue that Christianity and liberalism are fundamentally incompatible. Examining both consistencies and inconsistencies, this article argues to the contrary that liberalism may be, for now, for us, in our historical circumstances, the alternative that prudent Christians should prefer.

In the paper, Smith engages, inter alia, the versions of liberalism-criticism offered in recent years by Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, etc.  Here's something from the concluding pages (which, FWIW, seems right to me):

From this point of view, a properly governed and genuinely liberal regime might indeed be the best that a Christian should hope for, short of the end time when (Christians believe) the true King and Prince of Peace will rule. Liberalism might be, to borrow from Winston Churchill, the worst form of government except for all the others. In a genuinely liberal regime, people would be governed by ideals that at least derive from basic Christian beliefs, and by a regime that adopts as its central purpose protecting and promoting the ability of people (including Christians) to live and even to proselytize in accordance with their beliefs. At the same time, such a regime would not adopt the un-Christian and self-defeating tactics of using force and violence to enforce Christian beliefs that are efficacious only if sincerely and voluntarily embraced. The novelist Walker Percy, when asked why he was a Catholic, used to answer “What else is there?” Asked why he or she is a liberal, a Christian today might respond with the same question.

2009 Letter to Ugandan Christian Leaders

The following letter from Charles Colson, Robert George, and Timothy George was sent to Christian leaders in Uganda in 2009 in response to the introduction in parliament of legislation harshly punishing homosexual conduct. Such legislation has now, according to news reports, been enacted. It is being criticized by some American Christian leaders and defended by others. I continue to think that what the late Mr. Colson, Dr. Timothy George, and I said nearly a decade-and-a-half ago is correct.

 

Letter to Uganda Christian Leaders (December 5, 2009)

Beloved Christian Brothers and Sisters of Uganda,

We greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and embrace you in the spirit of his love.  As we seek to follow his path, we are inspired by your fidelity to the Gospel and by the example you provide the world of courageous discipleship.

We especially commend your witness to the timeless moral truths that are of the essence of man’s dignity as a creature fashioned by God in his own image and likeness. In the West, many of these truths are under severe attack from those who believe them to be unwarranted impositions on the freedom of the individual to seek his own satisfactions and fulfillment in his own way.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the domain of sexual morality, where actions condemned by divine authority and natural law as contrary to the dignity of the human person are celebrated as expressions of individual autonomy and even personal identity.

We know that it is with dismay that you have observed these attacks and with them a cultural erosion of moral understanding, and we are grateful to you for standing in solidarity with us as we have sought to bear witness to the truths of the Gospel and the dignity of man.  We especially appreciate your support for our work to protect and defend marriage as the life-long, exclusive, and faithful covenant uniting husband and wife.

Brothers and Sisters, we approach you today about a development in your country that is a source of grave concern for us.   We have learned that a bill has been introduced in your parliament that would penalize even a single act of homosexual conduct with life in prison.   Repeated homosexual acts and certain other specified behaviors would be punishable by death.  The harshness of these proposals is, we believe, inconsistent with a Christian spirit of love and mercy.  We urge our brothers and sisters in Uganda to follow the example of Jesus when he was presented with the woman caught in the very act of adultery.   He did not hesitate to call the woman’s offense what it was, namely, a sin; but by his powerful words our Lord prevented her life from being taken by the men who were preparing to stone her to death.  “Go,” he said to her “and sin no more.”

In a spirit of Christ-like love, let us recall that many men and women who experience same-sex attraction struggle to live chaste and holy lives.  Many succeed; yet many sometimes falter.  Is the same not true of all of us?  We are all tempted by the lure of sin, be it in the domain of sexuality or in other areas of our lives.  And none of us is perfect in resisting temptation.  All of us from time to time fall short of fulfilling God’s intention for us, and we therefore stand in need of the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness.  Surely, no one guilty of a single act of homosexual conduct (or fornication, adultery, or other sexual offense) should spend the remainder of his life in prison as a consequence of his sin.  Such harshness, such lack of mercy, is manifestly contrary to the example of our Lord and cannot be given the support of those who seek to follow Christ.  In response to a proposal to punish consensual sexual crimes with such extreme penalties the Christian must surely echo the words of Jesus:  “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.”

We recognize that the scourge of AIDS has been devastating to the people of Uganda.   Measures must be taken to encourage faithful marital love and to discourage sexual immorality of every type.   It is critical, however, that these measures be shaped in a just and Christian manner, and not in a punitive spirit.  Harshness and excess must be avoided.  Those who experience homosexual desire and yield to it should not be singled out for extreme measures or for revulsion.  Persons who experience same-sex attraction, whether they struggle to live chastely or, alas, do not, are human beings.  They are children of God made in His very image and likeness.  They are our brothers and sisters.   Christ loves them as he loves all of us.  We must love them, too, even as we encourage them and all men and women—precisely because of our love for them and concern for their well-being—to avoid sexual sins and lead lives of virtue and dignity.

Brothers and sisters, we do not reproach you or hold ourselves out as your teachers.  In so many ways today, you are our teachers.  We recognize that in view of the moral crisis of the West, we are scarcely in a position to lecture to people in Africa and other parts of the world.  We are ashamed of the pornography, promiscuity, and other manifestations of licentiousness that you (and we) find shocking and appalling.  We applaud your desire to prevent such unrighteousness from gaining a foothold in your culture.  You are right to care about the protection of public morals.  You are right to call sin by its name, just as Jesus did.  Our message is simply that the Lord’s example of gentleness and love, of mercy and forgiveness, must be followed, too.  Let all of us, as his disciples strive to be Christ-like in all things.

Yours faithfully,

Charles Colson

Robert P. George

Timothy George 

Higher Education and Institutional Pluralism

Here are some thoughts of mine ("True Campus Diversity") on higher education and institutional pluralism, which might have some relevance to conversations about Catholic higher education in particular.  A bit:

Arguments about diversity in higher education are, of course, both unavoidable and highly charged. Generally, these debates have to do with the use of race in the admissions practices of elite institutions or with the dramatically one-sided make-up of these institutions’ faculty, administration, and leadership. A crucial dimension of the diversity problem, however, is less noticed: In a nutshell, we should be concerned about not only intellectual diversity within institutions, but also meaningful diversity among institutions, that is, what John Garvey, the President Emeritus of the Catholic University of America, called “institutional pluralism.”

Steve Shiffrin, Rest in Peace

I'm very sorry to note that Professor Steve Shiffrin has died. Steve was the author of some wonderful work in law and religion and the freedom of speech, well known to many of us at Mirror of Justice and from which I learned a great deal. He was also a kind and generous man. He was, as my colleague Mark Movsesian writes, "a scholar of the first rank who remained humble and helpful to everyone. A rare combination of virtues. May he rest in peace."