Mirror of Justice

Christ the King, Ruler of our hearts

 

On this Feast of Christ the King, I wanted to share the homily delivered at my parish, St. Catherine of Siena in Norwood, Massachusetts by our holy and learned parochial vicar, Fr. Thomas Sullivan: 

The Feast of Christ the King is of fairly modern origin in the liturgical life of the Church, having been established in only 1925. Pope Pius XI had good reason to remind the world of the Sovereign Kingship of Jesus Christ. For centuries, the united Christendom that grew from the remains of the Roman Empire was fracturing along national lines. Divisions were accelerated terribly by the Protestant Reformation and greedy rulers all too willing to sever ties with Pope and Emperor for their own gain. The following centuries saw bloody wars of religion, violent revolutions hostile to Faith, and the rise of secular and atheistic regimes. Everything came to a head with The Great War, the so-called War to End All Wars, the First World War.

 

Pope Pius XI witnessed Europe’s near suicide -- nominally Christian nations tearing each other apart in an utter failure of Justice, and Mercy, and Charity. Had these Christian men heeded the Holy Father’s warnings and recalled their baptismal brotherhood, perhaps they could have avoided what was soon to follow in an even more horrifying World War. Instead, godless Communism and National Socialism wrought havoc in the ruins of Christian Civilization.

 

Ideas have consequences… and those who would impart their own brand of order on the world, disconnected from the Truth about God and the human person, wind up imposing disorder and misery. Our Lord warns us of this in his words to Pilate when he says, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the Truth.”

 

Pope Pius didn’t establish this great feast only to rebuke world powers. He provided it for the benefit of his spiritual children. The lessons of this feast apply to every human being. Christ’s kingly testimony to the truth is just as relevant to us. And we should listen attentively lest we introduce chaos into our own souls.

 

The One who comes to testify to the Truth about man is the One who created man. The One who reveals the truth about God, is God himself, incarnate in human flesh. Original sin brought with it the ultimate disorders: body separated from soul in death, and soul separated from God. Christ the King extends the scepter of his clemency to us. The King of the Universe overcomes sin and death as he mounts the throne of his cross. If we submit ourselves to his gentle rule, we will find our way into his heavenly courts.

 

What does the governance of Christ look like? As Creator he gives order to the whole universe, and everything from the stars in the sky to the smallest seed in the earth follow the course he has set for them. He writes the natural law upon our hearts, inclining man to the good, to life over death, truth over lies, and relationship over isolation.

 

Christ the King gives us Commandments to obey, laws laid down for our own happiness. Christ the King sits as Judge of the living and the dead, but as King he also extends his mercy towards us. But in his governance, Christ the King is not distant; he doesn’t rule only by dictate. Christ the King has become our exemplar. He willingly submits himself to the same rule.

 

If we were to describe the ideal earthly king, we’d speak of a man who was of high moral character, not exempting himself from the laws he enforces, just in his decisions and generous to the poor. A man of deep faith who, while occupying a high office, humbles himself before God. In war, we admire the king who leads his men in battle, fighting for a just cause and the protection of the innocent and weak. We want a king who is one of us, so we can aspire to be like him, but also a king who is greater than us, inspiring our confidence and devotion. That’s exactly who Christ is.

 

Christ the King lives what he commands; he keeps the Commandments without the slightest offense against Charity. Christ the King fights the good fight as one of us, willing to suffer in order to console the sorrowing, even laying down his life for our sake. Though he was the Son of God "he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped," and so in his human nature, Christ the King humbles himself in obeying the will of his heavenly Father. He inspires us to imitate him out of love, and gives us the grace to persevere in that likeness.

 

By virtue of our baptism, all the faithful share in the Kingship of Christ. How do you exercise that governance? As parents you raise your children to follow the commandments: loving God and giving him due worship, honoring father and mother, and loving your neighbor as your very self. In civil society, you seek to establish an order based on truth, enacting laws in harmony with the order God has put into the world, never violating human dignity. But most fundamentally of all, you exercise your share in Christ’s Kingly office by governing yourselves, by exercising virtue and avoiding sin.

 

The human soul is a battleground on which occurs a fight for your lives, eternally-speaking. If we allow Christ to rule in our hearts, we will find peace in this life and happiness in the next. If we finally cast down the idols we’ve enthroned in our hearts, then Christ will enter in and never leave us. It’s in the hearts and souls of men that Christ wishes to rule. And when such people come together in Love and Truth, a new Christendom is founded atop the old. The Kingdom of God is at hand.

 

New release this month - Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome

Robert George and RJ Snell have edited a book of interviews, set for release by TAN publishers on October 31st, entitled, "Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome." The volume includes the conversion stories of such luminaries as Bishop James D. Conley, Sister Prudence Allen, Adrian Vermeule, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, and Hadley Arkes. Honored to have my own story included too.

From the inside flap: 

In a series of fascinating interviews, a cradle Catholic (Robert P. George) and an adult convert (R. J. Snell), offer the stories of sixteen converts, each a public intellectual or leading voice in their respective fields, and each making a significant contribution to the life of the Church.

Mind, Heart, and Soul is a Surprised by Truth for a new generation. It will reinvigorate the faith of Catholics and answer questions or address hurdles those discerning entering the Church may have…by people have had the same questions and the same road.
 
While some of the converts are well-known, their stories are not. Here they speak for themselves, providing the reasons for belief that prompted these accomplished men and women to embrace the ancient faith.
 
Included are interviews with a bishop, a leading theologian and priest, a member of the International Theological Commission, a former megachurch pastor, a prominent pro-life scholar, professors from Harvard and other universities, as well as journalists and writers, novelists and scholars. Each are interviewed by another leading scholar, many of whom are themselves converts and familiar with the hesitations, anxieties, discoveries, and hopes of those who discover the Faith. 
 
These conversion stories remind us that the Catholic Church retains her vitality, able to provide answers and reasons for hope to new generations of believers, always sustained by the Holy Spirit. It is all too-easy to become discouraged in our day and age, but God never fails to call people to Himself, as evidenced by these remarkable stories.

Upcoming at Harvard: Peter Berkowitz on Mill and Education, Sr. Mary Madeline on the Wisdom of St. Catherine, and Justice Gorsuch on Christianity and the Common Good

Some exciting upcoming events at Harvard University, aptly responsive to current crises in academia, the Church, and our nation.

First, the Abigail Adams Institute's Third Annual Lecture will feature Peter Berkowitz next Thursday afternoon on "John Stuart Mill's Liberal Education." From the announcement: 

It is increasingly rare for colleges and universities to explain to students the purpose, structure, and content of liberal education, let alone provide one. John Stuart Mill's writings on liberty of thought and discussion, Socratic inquiry, and the aims and substance of liberal education provide an excellent introduction to the subject and illuminate the importance of the reform of higher education to liberal democracy. 

That same evening, the Thomistic Institute will host Sr. Mary Madeline Todd on "The Wisdom of St. Catherine in Times of Crisis." Sr. Mary Madeline is a Dominican Sister of Saint Cecilia Congregation who serves as Assistant Professor of Theology at Aquinas College in Nashville.

Finally, on October 19th and 20th, the Thomistic Institute will host a conference at Harvard Law School on "Christianity and the Common Good." Justice Gorsuch will keynote the event on Friday afternoon, followed by a full day of presentations on Saturday. Register here.

Speakers and panelists include the following:  Prof. Gerard Wegemer (University of Dallas), Prof. J. Budziszewski (University of Texas, Austin), Prof. Gladden Pappin (University of Dallas) Prof. Sarah Byers (Boston College), Fr. Dominic Legge, OP (Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception and the Thomistic Institute), Prof. Jacqueline Rivers (Harvard University) and Prof. Adrian Vermeule (Harvard Law School). 

A last gasp of support for Barrett at CNN...before all behind Kavanaugh

CNN asked me to weigh in on President Trump's pick last night. Here's the full commentary. (Glad for the many conservative voices who  know Judge Kavanaugh much better than I; and glad they asked me as a counter-weight to voices from Planned Parenthood and NARAL.)

Here's what I said: 

I have to admit it: I was hoping President Trump would choose Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Brilliant, courageous, and quick on her feet, the professionally and personally esteemed mother of seven puts to rest -- in her very person -- the central pro-choice feminist assumption that bearing and raising children impedes women's serious engagement in professional and public life.

 

She would have brought true diversity to the Court on the most rancorous constitutional issue of our day, underscoring how an intellectually astute woman need not acquiesce in the unquestioning abortion rights dogma that has held the cause for women's rights hostage for far too long now. And she would have been able to make the case the best way possible: debunking the sham legal reasoning that has upheld the putative right for decades by day and blazing an alternative path with her family by night.

 

Comparatively, President Trump played it safe: Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a legal all-star, an accomplished jurist, and a darling of the conservative judicial establishment; he can be trusted by friend and foe alike to interpret the Constitution as it is written. A solid constitutionalist, Kavanaugh will join those on the Court who are deeply skeptical of its current (internationally extreme) abortion jurisprudence. But with Kavanaugh rather than Coney Barrett, the optics do not bode nearly as well.

 

Should the President have another chance, and should that chance come in the form of the retirement of an aged Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump should pull the trigger and nominate Coney Barrett. Our country desperately needs the opportunity to debate not only abortion, but to see how the autonomy feminism Ginsburg has long represented should pass away with its most cherished leader.

 

A dignitarian feminism, by contrast, would recognize both that women and men are of equal dignity and are duly encumbered by their shared responsibilities to the vulnerable and dependent -- in their own families and in the community at large. Coney Barrett would not only serve the Constitution better than most jurists of our time; she would reveal, by the very integrity of her life, a more dignified way forward.

 

Upcoming events in DC - and Helen Alvare's new book

On Thursday, May 31st, the EPPC Catholic Women's Forum, together with the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture will host an important symposium at the Mayflower Hotel. "The #MeToo Moment: Second Thoughts on the Sexual Revolution" will include speakers Helen Alvare and Mary Eberstadt, several distinguished medical experts, Jennifer Lahl, and CUA Law professor Mary Leary. Cardinal Wuerl will open the timely event, and Carter Snead and Mary Hasson will moderate it. Read more or register for the free event here.

One expects that Helen Alvare, who will conclude the event, will offer arguments from her important new book out of Cambridge University Press, Putting Children's Interests First in U.S. Family Law and Policy: With Power Comes Responsibility. Mark Regnerus has an excellent review of the book here, and Helen is interviewed about it here.  The legal history in the book will be familiar to MOJers, but Helen's conceptualization of the trend as one of "sexual expressionism" is unique and very helpful. She defines "sexual expressionism" as "valorizing adult sexual expression, while remaining silent or indifferent regarding the adult's marital status, and to the reality that children's family structure is usually established at conception." The slim book is expensive, but worth ordering for law libraries and recommending to law and grad students. Helen continues to be one of the most courageous, intelligent, and articulate voices out there today - her new book is no exception. 

On Wednesday, June 11th, Americans United for Life will host "Women Speak 2018: A Symposium on Life Without Roe." The event will take place at the Heritage Foundation and "explore the current cultural and political paradigm that argues abortion is necessary for women's advancement in society." Speakers include Mollie Hemmingway, Catherine Pakaluk, Catherine Glenn Foster, and myself, among others. More info and register here.

 

Liberalism & Christianity conference audio is now available

Find the audio of the Thomistic Institute's excellent conference at Harvard Law last month here.

Might I recommend Fr. Thomas Joseph White's inspired closing remarks  - a mere 13 minutes of your time - to you this Holy Week? 

Timely Harvard Law Event on Human Trafficking

I had the privilege of moderating a deeply informative -- if deeply troubling -- event on human trafficking at Harvard Law School late last week. Organized by third year law student Tiernan Kane of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and co-sponsored by HJLPP, the Harvard Law Women's Association, the Harvard Law School Republicans, and the Abigail Adams Institute (where I am a research fellow), the event was perfectly timed following Congressional passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. The bill awaits President Trump's signature but has already achieved notable success.

Keynoting the event was DOJ's Assistant Attorney General Beth Williams, a Harvard College, Harvard Law, and HJLPP alum. The panel included CUA Law's Mary Leary (former Assistant US Attorney and deputy chief of the Domestic Violence Unit for the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office in Cambridge, MA, and lead author of Perspective on Missing Persons Cases); David Tubbs (award-winning professor of politics at The King's College, author of Freedom's Orphans, and currently Ann & Herbert W. Vaughn Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program); and Audrey Morrissey (associate director of My Life, My Choice in Boston, an organization that mentors commercially sexually-exploited girls). 

The moving and informative 60-minute video can be downloaded here. The forthcoming issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy will be dedicated to the topic. I will post the articles when the issue becomes available. 

Liberalism and Christianity at Harvard Law

The much-anticipated Liberalism and Christianity conference, sponsored by the Harvard branch of the Thomistic Institute, took place at the Harvard Museum for Natural History this past weekend.  Though more than a few were kept away by severe weather on Friday -- including Helen Alvare who was to give one the principal talks, and Patrick Deneen, whose new book was on the lips of many -- the conference drew more than 300 participants (including a hearty portion of really smart undergrad and graduate students who asked most of the questions). 

Remi Brague, the noted French historian of philosophy and professor emeritus at the Sorbonne, kicked the conference off with his keynote "Made Free for Freedom." His talk, inspired by St. Paul's "Christ has made us free for freedom" was a walk from biblical antiquity into modernity, with a focus on the primacy of freedom for both. The trouble with liberalism is not liberty, he said, but liberty as an 'ism' --an aim in itself. The ancients (he called upon St. Paul, Plotinus, and Augustine) understood freedom as sought for the sake of the Good. This view was not one laid out in argument (before Augustine), but substantively presumed. In modern times, of course, the Good is dropped and freedom--as liberation--becomes a goal in itself. 

This quote from T.S. Eliot's Idea of a Christian Society captures much of his talk (and was the high point, in my mind): "[liberalism] is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination..."

Fr. Dominic Legg, OP (graduate of Yale Law and incoming director of the Thomistic Institute) opened the next morning with a marvelous presentation of St. Thomas on law. He especially sought to distinguish St. Thomas' account of justice as first in God and particularly in God's divine intellect, as up and against later voluntarist conceptions of law. During the Q/A, he recommended a book that 15 years ago had changed his life (and is one of my very favorite books of all time), Servais Pinckaers' Sources of Christian Ethics. Fr. Pinckaers, also a Dominican, describes masterfully the movement from Thomas to Ockham to our current misunderstanding of freedom. This movement was the basic content of the first part of Fr. Legg's presentation.

I was especially interested to hear that Fr. Legg has discerned in Thomas a theory of individual rights. Most, he said, think the creation of individual rights is from the Enlightenment (including Deneen and Hanby, but prior to them, my teacher, Fr. Ernest Fortin). But Thomas has a such theory, even if it is a different conception of individual rights from that of the various Enlightenment thinkers. Thomas thought that what is due someone in justice is a subjective 'ius' (right) that an individual possesses and can assert. These rights, however, are never abstracted from the common good or a teleological ordering of the person and community toward God. Rights are merely a function of justice, directed to the common good, not the whole of it. But, acknowledging what is due individuals is part of what makes a city just. Rights are thus indispensable to a just regime. 

Importantly, he noted that Enlightenment thinkers (and those in their wake) may have thought they were dispensing with the "good," but that every rights claim is aiming at some conception of the good, even if smuggled in under claims of neutrality (ie, Rawls). The problem is not so much rights then but the underlying vision of the good that is is deeply contested in our society. That question -- concerning the substantive conception of the good underlying each theory (or claim) of rights -- is the real conversation we should be having. Bravo!! I will post his paper on Thomas on rights when I acquire it. 

The next portion of the day was when Helen was to have spoken, on the family no less. I think this explicit family perspective was definitely lacking, and Helen was the best person for the job. Hopefully she will publish the remarks she had prepared (and I will post). In her place, and to the great interest of participants, Harvard's Adrian Vermeule and Notre Dame's Phillip Munoz offered contrasting perspectives on liberalism, and on its influence over the American Founding. Adrian pulled from his deeply intelligent and thought-provoking review of Deneen's book in American Affairs.  (Instead of trying to summarize it in this already long post, I will just suggest strongly that you read it in full.) Phillip, in addition to stirring the audience to laughter several times (boy, is he funny), also offered evidence that the Founders did not, on the whole or in the majority, share the view of liberalism that can fairly be imputed to Hobbes and Mill. Their shared view, rather, was that natural law -- thick on the deeply Christian ground in those days -- bounds and constrains natural rights. If there was a detente between the two panelists, it was in the view that liberalism ala Hobbes is quite wrong-headed, but that perhaps the Founders were up to something else. Bravo on this score as well! 

In an effort to end this post, I'll skip Candace Vogler's talk on JS Mill and sex and gender, and head right for the final panel. Adrian was seated there too (as per original plans), joined by Rusty Reno and Princeton's Margarita Mooney. Reno offered a sophisticated response to Vogler's presentation of Mill, suggesting that though Mill wanted to encourage self-cultivation and self-possession (goods in themselves), his form of liberalism qualified by the harm principle tends to provide more advantages to the talented/well-off than the untalented and more disadvantaged otherwise. This is a theme of Rusty's and a really important one. The experiments in living that Mill endorsed (eg, alternative family structures) provide opportunities that the talented/wealthy seem to roll with, but that when embraced across society, lead to disastrous outcomes, especially for the poor. It's also one thing to redistribute economic advantages, say, through tax policy, but it is very difficult to redistribute cultural advantages. And, without a Christian impulse, the elite perhaps see no reason to sacrifice (apart from money) to the untalented. (The proof positive of this analysis can be seen in Richard Reeves' new book, Dream Hoarders.) Rusty then concluded that the true source of decadence is our unregulated sexual culture, and that we ought to engage in a moral project of cultural re-regulation. Hear, hear! [Original misspelling corrected.] 

Margarita Mooney spoke of the importance of including other -isms in our critique (social Marxism and Freudianism) which she judged, calling upon the work of Augusto Del Noce, have influenced our modern situation perhaps as much as liberalism. She also thought it essential to report on the truly positive good people are doing - building new schools, starting new movements, changing their lives. Her important practical comments were taken up in a more spiritual bent by the exquisite concluding remarks of Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. I cannot begin to do these final remarks justice, so will post when I hear they are available.  

 

Congressional Race to Watch: Jay Webber in NJ-11

Jay Webber is smart, talented, and conservative - and he's just announced he's in the race to capture the US House seat vacated Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen. Jay, a Harvard Law grad and devoted husband and father of seven, has served his district in the State House for the last ten years. He's a wonderful man and a dear friend.

Pay attention to this race - pray for him, and send monetary support if you can: [email protected]. 

Summer Seminars at the Abigail Adams Institute

The Abigail Adams Institute, founded in 2014 to serve the Harvard intellectual community, is hosting two intensive seminars for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and select professionals again this summer. Application deadline is March 15, 2018. 

The first seminar, July 22-August 4, is The American Proposition. 

The idea of American exceptionalism continues to be seen as somehow linked with the advent of American statehood. How are we to account for this connection? What are the roots of American political identity? Of American national identity? Have subsequent American developments fundamentally transformed the nature of the country, or is our destiny as a people working itself out in accord with our beginning? The writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, Orestes Brownson and Fr. John Courtney Murray offer the starting points in our exploration of the continuities and changes of these and other charged terms through American and global history.

Faculty: Thomas D'Andrea, University of Cambridge; James Nolan, Williams College; and Danilo Petranovich, Director of AAI.

The second seminar, August 5-11, is Capital and the Good Life.

Capital: what is it, how is it created, and what kind of purpose does, can, or should capital serve? What is capital's relationship to work and to the notion of productivity? How does it influence our ideas of progress? In what ways does it order our society and government? The seminar looks at a variety of perspectives on capital creation, acquisition, and use. Our approach to capital and capitalism will be less from a strictly economic and more from a philosophical perspective. Featuring the thought of Adam Smith, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Polanyi, Ludwig Lachmann, Thomas Piketty, and Robert Skidelsky.

Faculty: James Bernard Murphy, Dartmouth College; Plamen Nedeltchev, Cisco Systems; Leonidas Zelmanovitz, Liberty Fund. 

Full Disclosure: I'm a Research Fellow at the Institute while at Harvard Law.