Catholic Social Teaching Archives - Page 4 of 4

Posted on August 13, 2012August 13, 2012 by Mark Movsesian

Bruce on the Catholic Church and International Human Rights

As everyone who studies international human rights knows, the Catholic and, more widely, Christian tradition had a large impact on the Universal Declaration of 1948. In the last few decades, however, as issues of sexuality have come to dominate the human rights agenda, a gap has opened between the Catholic Church and many human rights advocates. Alex Bruce, a faculty member at the Australian National University (and a Buddhist monk) addresses that gap in a new piece he has posted on SSRN, Cognitive Dissonance: The Catholic Church and International Human Rights Law Discourse. The abstract follows.

On 10 December 2008, the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘the UDHR’). A formative influence on the UDHR was the Catholic social justice tradition and during his long pontificate, John Paul II described the UDHR as ‘one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time.’ John Paul II was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his emphasis on the importance of human rights.

However, after his death in April 2005, commentators began a concerted attack on the human rights record of the Church generally and John Paul II particularly. John Paul II had allegedly ‘waged a ceaseless war against human rights’, and had done ‘more to spread AIDS in Africa than prostitution and the trucking industry combined’. These attacks were deeply ironic given John Paul II’s consistently expressed fear that the liberal western democracies of North America and Western Europe were incubating a ‘culture of death’.

This article investigates the immense gap between these two positions by demonstrating how extreme cognitive dissonance has developed in characterising the contribution of the Church generally and John Paul II particularly to international human rights discourse. It will examine how critics are attempting to Read more

Posted on June 29, 2012June 29, 2012 by Mark Movsesian

Christianity and Health Care

In the Washington Post, the Witherspoon Institute’s Matthew Franck discusses fissures in American Christianity’s response to Obamacare, fissures which are bound to reopen after the Court’s decision yesterday. There is no single Christian, or even Catholic, approach to the distribution of health care, he writes. “One thing is certain. Christians will continue to argue among themselves about the gospel command to love our neighbors, and the gospel admonition, ‘as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me’ (Matthew. 25:45).” Take a look.

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Mark Movsesian

Liveblogging the Religion and Civil Society Conference: Hertzke, Elshtain, and Hittinger

This morning the conference continued with three presentations. Allen Hertzke (University of Oklahoma) gave a talk on religious advocacy in American national politics. Political advocacy by religious groups began in earnest in the aftermath of Employment Division v. Smith, when groups organized to lobby for RFRA; the networks formed at that time have continued and even expanded internationally. He discussed the findings in a recent study he did for the Pew Forum on religious groups’ lobbying operations in Washington, DC; this study revealed sophisticated, well-funded (at least $350 million annually) efforts. He ended with some questions about the future of political advocacy by religious groups; in particular, he wondered whether, by focusing on politics, some religious groups were forfeiting their role in transforming civil society.

Jean Bethke Elshtain (University of Chicago) then spoke about the false dichotomy between the terms “religious” and “secular.” She maintained that a more fruitful debate would be one between “traditionalist” and “progressive.” This debate would turn on a right conception of human nature – as between traditionalists and progressives, who would offer the more persuasive account of human nature, its good and bad features? Progressivism, she suggested, operates on the basis of a naïve anthropology that dismisses the human capacity for evil; traditionalism, at least a wise version of traditionalism, offers a better account by accepting the good and bad of human nature.

Russell Hittinger (University of Tulsa) concluded the morning session with a paper on the changing conception of the state in Catholic social theory. Since the First Vatican Council in 1870, he maintained, the Catholic Church has had a nebulous, ambiguous understanding of the state (as opposed its conception of “church,” and “family,” which have remained robust). The Church is not quite sure, he said, how to define “politics” within the broader category of “social life.” He discussed the problems that this confusion poses for church-state relations in the 21^st Century.

Posted on March 2, 2012March 2, 2012 by Kevin C. Walsh

The Limited Scope of the Catholic Bishops’ Amicus Curiae Briefs

By using the amicus curiae briefs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to define the universe of Supreme Court cases in which the Catholic hierarchy has an interest, it is possible to reveal the areas of consonance and dissonance between a leading set of views about the preferred state of the law from the point of view of Catholic social teaching (namely the Bishops’ Conference’s views) and the actual state of the law as brought about by the Supreme Court. It is also possible, as the charts in prior posts illustrate (here and here), to assess the extent to which particular Justices have voted for parties supported by the Bishops’ Conference as amicus curiae. But the Bishops’ Conference’s briefs should not be understood as presenting the Catholic position on the legal questions that they address. There is no single, correct “Catholic answer” to questions of constitutional law (or any questions of federal law, for that matter). There is, for example, a Catholic teaching about the morality of the death penalty. But there is no Catholic teaching about the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. There is, to pick another example, a Catholic teaching about the necessity for the Church to have the freedom to administer sacraments and to gather the People of God. But there is no Catholic teaching about the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. And so on. When bringing Catholic teaching to bear on questions of federal law, the Bishops’ Conference makes prudential, strategic, tactical, and legal judgments in deciding whether to file a brief and what to include in it.

Even while affirming that there is no single, correct “Catholic answer” to questions of federal law, it is important not to overemphasize this point. Catholic social teaching guides the Bishops’ Conference’s amicus briefs, and all of these briefs ask the Court to implement the insights of that teaching in some way. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine the Bishops’ Conference weighing in on the opposite side of the cases in which they file amicus curiae briefs. Take, for instance, Gonzales v. Oregon, which involved an interpretive rule issued by the Attorney General that prohibited the prescription of death-dealing drugs under federal law in certain circumstances even when state law explicitly permitted such prescriptions. As a potential amicus curiae, the Bishops’ Conference’s principal is whether to file or not; there is little doubt which side the Conference would support if it were to file.

Unlike potential amici, Catholic Justices do not have the option of sitting on the sidelines. In cases properly before them, their obligation is to render judgment. Moreover, in the course of adjudicating cases, the Justices develop broader jurisprudential commitments that influence how they approach cases–commitments that the Bishops’ Conference need not develop or adopt in a similar manner.

Gonzales v. Oregon, for example, presented both federalism and separation of powers issues about which Catholic social teaching has little to say in comparison with the ample resources for moral evaluation offered by the tradition. The Bishops’ Conference’s support of a national, one-size-fits-all approach to the particular medical and legal issues in Gonzales v. Oregon depended not only on Catholic teaching about what constitutes a “legitimate medical purpose,” but also prudential judgments about the distribution of power between the state and federal government. Those prudential judgments take on a different complexion when the relevant federal actor claiming authority to make legal judgments about medical practices, whether that be the Attorney General or the Secretary of HHS, is more hostile than sympathetic to the Bishops’ Conference’s considered moral judgments. For the Justices, by contrast, judgments about the distribution of regulatory power between the federal and state governments, and about the distribution of interpretive power between the executive and the judiciary, must be more legal than prudential. And they should, to the greatest extent possible, be consistent with the legal judgments those Justices would reach with respect to issues that have little, if nothing, to do with Catholic social teaching.

Posted on January 17, 2012April 18, 2012 by

Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought: Upcoming Supplement

In March, Scarecrow Press will publish the third, supplemental volume to its compendium, Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Michael L. Coulter et al. eds.). The new supplement updates the 848 entries of the first two volumes (2007) and contains 202 new entries from over 100 contributors.

Authors contributing to the new volume include eminent scholars Professor Robert P. George (Princeton University) and St. John’s own Dorothy Day Professor of Law, David L. Gregory (see his CLR Forum biography here). Professor Gregory contributes an entry co-authored with Ms. Daniella E. Keller—currently a third-year student at St. John’s Law—detailing the life of John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York from 1984 through 2000. In particular, Professor Gregory and Ms. Keller’s entry concentrates on the Cardinal’s emphatic support for labor rights—a focus always central to Cardinal O’Connor’s ministry. (See this New York Times account of one of the Cardinal’s final homilies, which describes his dedication to the labor movement.)

Like the encyclopedia’s first two volumes, the upcoming supplement addresses new issues of Catholic social teaching in the abstract—for example, the principles expressed in Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (2009). It additionally explores specific, real-world implementation of these principles, such as Cardinal O’Connor’s labor activism mentioned above.

Other noteworthy contributors include: Father Robert John Araujo, S.J. (Professor, Loyola University Chicago School of Law and contributor to Mirror of Justice); Father Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. (Professor, Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome); William E. May, Ph.D. (Professor Emeritus, Pontifical John Paul II Institute and Senior Research Fellow, Culture of Life Foundation); and the very well known Michael Novak (among other accomplishments, regular New York Times and National Review Online author and pundit).