ReligiousLeftLaw.com

John Courtney Murray, SJ

2012-02-25T03:13:14-08:00

Yesterday, I posted a passage from Father Murray's "Memo to Cardinal Cushing on Contraception Legislation" (here). Earlier today, I posted a link to an editorial in AMERICA that reflects Murray's strong influence (here). Now I see that one of Murray's foremost intellectual heirs--David Hollenbach, who is, as Murray was, a Jesuit priest--has published a reflection on Murray's work in the inaugural issue of a promising new periodical: Religious Freedom, Morality and Law: John Courtney Murray Today, 1 Journal of Moral Theology 69-91 (2012). The article is available in full here. David Hollenbach holds the University Chair in Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, where he is a member of the Department of Theology. See also David Hollenbach & Thomas A. Shannon, A Balancing Act: Catholic Teaching on the Church's Rights--and the Rights of All, AMERICA, March 5, 2012 (here)."

Policy, Not Liberty

2012-02-25T02:00:08-08:00

That's the title of the editorial in the new issue of AMERICA: The National Catholic Weekly (which is a Jesuit publication). An excerpt: "By stretching the religious liberty strategy to cover the fine points of health care coverage, the campaign devalues the coinage of religious liberty. The fight the bishop’s conference won against the initial mandate was indeed a fight for religious liberty and for that reason won widespread support. The latest phase of the campaign, however, seems intended to bar health care funding for contraception. Catholics legitimately oppose such a policy on moral grounds. But that opposition entails a difference over policy, not an infringement of religious liberty. It does a disservice to the victims of religious persecution everywhere to inflate policy differences into a struggle over religious freedom. Such exaggerated protests likewise show disrespect for the freedom Catholics have enjoyed in the United States, which is a model...

That was then (contraception), this is now (same-sex marriage) ...

2012-02-24T11:50:29-08:00

"[T]he practice [contraception], undertaken in the interests of 'responsible parenthood,' has received official sanction by many religious groups within the community. It is difficult to see how the state can forbid, as contrary to public morality, a practice that numerous religious leaders approve as morally right. The stand taken by these religious groups may be lamentable from the Catholic moral point of view. But it is decisive from the point of view of law and jurisprudence . . ." —John Courtney Murray, SJ, “Memo to Cardinal Cushing on Contraception Legislation” (n.d., mid-1960s), http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/murray/1965f.htm.

Faith, Bad Faith, and Petroleum Prices

2012-02-24T07:36:55-08:00

Republican politicians' desires at present appear, on the surface at least, to be incoherent in the way many children's are. On the one hand they would certainly abuse the President were he not pressing upon Iran's nuclear ambitions with sanctions and threats of worse to come. Yet then on the other hand they abuse him when those sanctions have their effect, removing Iranian petroleum from world markets and temporarily driving up global prices. The President, most economists, and other adults seem to realize something that current Republican politicians and very young children do not - namely, that most benefits, including that Republican-defined benefit which is the curtailing of 'rogue' regimes' nuclear ambitions, come at some cost even if sometimes but temporary cost. The sooner that Republican politicians grow up to recognize this, one might hope, the sooner we might address our many national challenges - including longterm budget and tax...

Another District Court Finds DOMA Unconstitutional

2012-02-23T17:26:30-08:00

Yesterday, Disctrict Court Judge Jeffrey White granted the plaintiff's summary judgment motion and ordered OPM to enroll the same-sex spouse of a federal court employee in its benefit program in a 43-page opinion finding DOMA to be unconstitutional on equal protection grounds. White was a George W. Bush appointee. See http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017573133_gaymarriage23.html and --- F.Supp.2d ----, 2012 WL 569685 (N.D.Cal.)

Bradley Manning, Solitary Confinement and Occupy 4 Prisoners

2012-02-23T06:09:19-08:00

Today US Army Private Bradley Manning is to be formally charged with numerous crimes at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Icelandic Parliament, is charged with releasing hundreds of thousands of documents exposing secrets of the US government to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. These documents exposed lies, corruption and crimes by the US and other countries. The Bradley Manning defense team points out accurately that much of what was published by Wikileaks was either not actually secret or should not have been secret. The Manning prosecution is a tragic miscarriage of justice. US officials are highly embarrassed by what Manning exposed and are shooting the messenger. As Glen Greenwald, the terrific Salon writer, has observed, President Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers for espionage than all other presidents combined. One of the most outrageous parts of the treatment of Bradley Manning...

HHS vs. OWS: Of First Amendment Prudence and Jurisprudence

2012-02-22T10:57:58-08:00

One of the loveliest upshots of that Friday and weekend work with the New York Fed that I mentioned two days ago has been the opportunity that it has afforded to spend time with, get to know, and ultimately join some of the banking and economic policy committees of the OWS movement. (Zuccotti Park is but two blocks from the Fed and my little Wall Street apartment.) In this connection, like very many people across America and the world, I thought Mayor Bloomberg's 'crackdown' on the movement this past November wrong-headed. One upshot of that conviction was this OpEd published in the New York Daily News at the time, a longer rendition of which was posted on Dorf on Law here. It strikes me now that there is an instructive analogy to be drawn between that case and the case of the first rendition of the HHS's mandate - 'Mandate...

Assisting Families by Preventing Avoidable Home Foreclosures: The Home Mortgage Bridge Loan Assistance Act of 2012

2012-02-21T15:22:14-08:00

Here is another post prompted in part by Michael's kindly getting us back to the matter of social justice this week... As some of our readers might know, I moonlight on Fridays and weekends at the New York Fed, an involvement which stems from my academic involvement in monetary and financial law both domestically and globally considered. A large part of that bailiwick, in turn, is occupied these days by attention to the all-important mortgage markets - and, less coldly and bloodlessly, the families that owe mortgage debt in those still troubled markets. In the wake of the bubble and burst that culminated in 2008, as we know, many American families have been left with mortgages that are 'under water.' That is to say that their debts, denominated as they are at fixed rates, have not plummetted as have the variable rates of their market-valued homes. This in turn means...

Are Downton Abbey and the Help Mirrors of Reality?

2012-02-21T05:14:50-08:00

For doubts, see http://www.alternet.org/story/154201/%27downton_abbey%27_and_%27the_help%27--what_their_nostalgic_portrayals_of_domestic_service_get_wrong

Advaita Vedānta Philosophy: An Introduction & Basic Reading Guide

2012-02-21T00:03:38-08:00

Introduction [subscript diacritic dots unavailable] Advaita Vedānta: one of the six ‘orthodox’ (from āstika, one who accepts the normative revelatory status of the Veda) schools (better: darśanas, philosophical viewpoints) of Indic philosophy that emerged in the early centuries of the Common Era. Advaita (Absolute Non-Dualism) is perhaps the best known of the sub-schools within Vedānta, which counts Viśistādvaita (Qualified Non-Dualism, or Non-Dualism of the Qualified) and Dvaita (Dualism) among the most important. Advaita Vedānta formally commences with commentaries on the Brahmasūtras (‘Holy Power Aphorisms’) (c. 300 BCE to 300 CE) of Bādārāyana (also known as Vyāsa, the ‘Arranger’). The main focus is on the relation between ātman (the soul/Self) and Brahman (the One, Ultimate Reality). In the Upanisads we find the claim that, in some sense, ātman and Brahman are ‘One,’ a claim endorsed by Śankara (8th century), the great religious philosopher whose commentaries (bhāsya) on the Brahmasūtras and the...

'Insource' the Shareholding of 'Outsourced' Employees

2012-02-20T13:05:44-08:00

Thank goodness that Michael has now steered us back to the matter of social and economic justice, which one wishes that some of those who have been on about the HHS mandate might also concern themselves with. Quite a bit of what I do in my 'other' life as a scholar of domestic and international economic law is try to figure out ways in which we might improve local and global economic arrangements in manners that might render them more just. And as Michael's post reminds us, one of the principal sources of economic injustice, at least within the 'developed' world, is the way in which trade liberalization has been used to 'undo' many of the gains made by labor, through heroic struggle, in the 'developed' economies over the course of the 20th century. A dilemma presented by trade liberalization to those of us who are concerned about this form...

Reports from the economic front don't get much more sobering/disturbing than this

2012-02-20T00:01:24-08:00

Take a few minutes to read Thomas Edsall's "Is This the End of Market Democracy?" in the online edition of today's NYT, here. An excerpt, quoting MIT economist David Autor: Overall, Autor has found that the combination of three trends — automation; the emergence of a trade-based international labor force; and the movement of jobs offshore — has polarized the job market. There is growth at the high and low ends, but the middle collapses: Concretely, employment and earnings are rising in both high education professional, technical and managerial occupations and, since the late 1980s, in low-education food service, personal care and protective service occupations. Conversely, job opportunities are declining in both middle-skill, white collar clerical, administrative, and sales occupations and in middle-skill, blue-collar production, craft and operative occupations. The decline in middle-skill jobs has been detrimental to the earnings and labor force participation rates of workers without a four-year...

Mandates, Moral Agency, and Magisterial Messaging

2012-02-19T09:11:58-08:00

It's the day of rest so I ought perhaps not to be doing this, but I simply cannot bear to see nothing new on our weblog today. What I'd like to do, then, is just quickly to direct such of our readers as might be interested to what seems to me an engaging discussion concerning the two renditions of HHS's recent mandate. The first entry in the discussion is a very arresting and vigorously argued article by Robert George and Sherif Girgis, titled Morals and Mandates ('MM'). This piece provides what might be the most compelling philosophical justification available for continuing skepticism, on the part of the US Catholic Bishops and others, in face of the White House's recent 're-do' of the original HHS mandate. There then follow three interconnected entries by yours truly, each focussed on one question raised in my poor addled brain by MM. The upshot of...

The Idolaters and the Iconoclasts

2012-02-18T05:45:11-08:00

I am a fan of Susan Stabile’s daily reflections at Creo en Dios. See here. Today, she reviewed a book by Christopher West that I do not plan to read, but she does call attention to an interesting section involving West’s discussion of idolatry and iconoclasm: “West suggests that without a new way of seeing, we tend to lean in the direction of either “worshiping the physical world as idolaters, or rejecting the physical world as iconoclasts.” He explains “’The full-blown idolater views sensual pleasures as man’s be-all and end-all and dives in headfirst. The full-blown iconoclast views all that is sensual with suspicion and flees into a “safe” dis-incarnate “spirituality.” The idolater seeks his comfort in “mere flesh.” The iconoclast in “mere spirit.”’ “West’s discussion of both the temptations toward, and the dangers of, imbalance in either direction is very good. I also think he is correct that, as...

Is Contraception Always Moral?

2012-02-16T21:01:47-08:00

The leaders of the Catholic Church take the position that contraception is immoral in all or virtually all circumstances. Famously, this view is not widely shared. Indeed, its position has undermined its authority with most Catholics. In sharply disagreeing with the Catholic Church, many too easily slide to the conclusion that in a marriage the practice of contraception raises no moral issues. But there is a middle ground between the positions that contraception is always immoral or always moral. In 1930, the Lambeth Conference expressed “its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.” In the same vein, Boston College theologian Richard Gaillardetz asked in a facebook comment the other day: "’What if’ Paul VI had adopted a more personalist approach to the issue of contraception, one that focused on the need for marital couples to be genuinely open...

Margaret Farley lecturing at Yale on February 23, 28, & March 1

2012-02-16T16:33:14-08:00

Margaret Farley to deliver Taylor Lectures on “Freedom, Obligation, and Love” Margaret Farley, the Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School, will deliver the 2012 Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectures on Feb. 23, 28, and March 1 on the topic “Freedom, Obligation, and Love.” All lectures, free and open to the public, begin at 5:30 pm in Niebuhr Hall on the YDS campus, 409 Prospect St., New Haven. Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, is a widely known Christian ethicist who was on the faculty of YDS from 1971 to 2007. During the course of her career, she has been a progressive theological voice in a broad range of areas including feminist theology, medical and sexual ethics, the role of women in the church, homosexuality and the church, and religious perspectives on the environment. In 2008 she received the Louisville Grawemeyer...

"Birth Control, Bishops and Religious Authority"

2012-02-16T03:14:44-08:00

[Gary Gutting, a philosopher at Notre Dame, has this to say in the online edition of the New York Times:] The Obama administration’s ruling requiring certain Catholic institutions like hospitals and universities to offer health insurance covering birth control prompted a furious response from the Catholic bishops. The bishops argued that this was a violation of conscience since birth control is contrary to teachings of the Catholic Church, as expressed in Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” What interests me as a philosopher — and a Catholic — is that virtually all parties to this often acrimonious debate have assumed that the bishops are right about this, that birth control is contrary to “the teachings of the Catholic Church.” The only issue is how, if at all, the government should “respect” this teaching. As critics repeatedly point out, 98 percent of sexually active American Catholic women practice birth control,...

Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes? Part II

2012-02-15T06:02:41-08:00

In appreciation for Michael's post below, I want to add a bit of biblical back-up for that great theologian Chico Marx! This week we read at Morning Prayer John 9, the story of the man born blind. It is, in many ways, the classic text for an empirical theological mode. While fear of losing power (the Pharisees in the story), or fear of being thrown out of the synagogue (the blind man's parents) prevent those around him from seeing what is right before their eyes, the newly cured blind man expresses his incredulity at their (newly acquired) blindness: "The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes!' This, it seems to me, is one place to start in distinguishing what I would call the tradition of 'religious left' theology, the kind of progressive theology that we see...

"Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

2012-02-15T05:18:44-08:00

--Chico Marx, Duck Soup. Check this out, including the video: "A Widow's Wisdom". An excerpt: "SEATTLE – Every once in a while the unconvincing, bristly language of the culture wars gives way to a genuine plea from the heart. And it’s in these rare moments, when words are freed from their ideological captors, that the politics of these issues are shown to be so hollow. We had one of these public cris de coeur here in the remarkable run-up to Washington’s legalizing same-sex marriage this week. A middle-aged, heterosexual legislator, Maureen Walsh, who is a conservative Republican from the small town of Walla Walla, rose to explain why she would be bucking her party on one of the most contentious social issues of the day. . . ." By the way, there is some interesting polling data in this morning's NYT: "Gay marriage is another debate in which the Catholic...

Legal Personhood for “Autonomous Artificial Agents”

2012-02-13T15:28:25-08:00

I wanted to alert our readers to an intriguing online symposium that has begun today* at Concurring Opinions (although the announced schedule was February 14—16) on Samir Chopra and Laurence F. White’s book, A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011). I’ve yet to read the book (it’s on order). In the announcement to the symposium I made a few preliminary comments (as did the other longstanding CO commenter, A.J. Sutter), to the last of which Professor Chopra responded as follows: “Patrick: I think there might be one fundamental point of disagreement between us might be my refusal to consider human intentionality and morality some sort of singularity in the natural order, the attainment of which lies entirely beyond non-carbon based entities.” [….] This is indeed a fundamental point of disagreement. I’m considerably more than a wee bit concerned when concepts and categories...