Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Catholic Bishops Focus on Religious Liberty

Here is a story that should be of some  interest to those who work on and think about religious liberty.  The story, notwithstanding various slanted statements in it (the bishops did not “reorder their priorities” between the 1980s and the 1990s, all of a sudden deciding that abortion was very important to them) as well as several rhetorical lowlights (using words like “ire” and so on to describe what are religious beliefs, suggesting that Catholic beliefs have been strategically “recast” in certain ways), seems at least accurately to report a new focus of the bishops on questions of religious liberty.

The piece is another indication that John Allen had it exactly right.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

No More “Back of the Bus” in Israel

From Reuters yesterday, an article about a recent protest against segregated seating on public buses in Jerusalem. A group of women entered Bus No. 56 through the front door and sat in the front seats. The problem is that No. 56 runs through an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood that frowns on the public mixing of the sexes. In fact, until very recently, women on Bus No. 56 were told to enter through the rear door and sit in the back. Only this year, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that women traveling on public buses cannot be told to sit in the back, and signs now say that people have a right to sit wherever they want. Segregation continues, however. Whatever secular law requires, many ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem — and not only men, according to the article — believe that the Torah forbids the mixing of men and women on buses; other Torah experts dispute this. The author draws on the protest to highlight the increasingly bitter divide between secular and religious Jews in Israel. – MLM

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Albert on the Establishment Clause and the Separation of Powers

Richard Albert (Boston College) has posted a new article, The Separation of Higher Powers, on SSRN. The abstract follows. — MLM

The very first words of the very first amendment to the United States Constitution continue to frustrate the quest for constitutional clarity. The Bill of Right’s Establishment Clause commands in plain terms that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” but the legal interpretation and political implications of the Clause remain contested today as ever before. What may government require of religion? What may religion demand of government? How much of its independence must religion cede to government? And how closely may government collaborate with religion? These enduring questions admit of no definitive answers, at least not without an organizing logic that can bring coherence and purpose to the Establishment Clause. In this Article, I suggest that the concept of the separation of powers can help do just that. Using separation of powers theory, I construct a framework for clarifying the meaning of the Establishment Clause, giving political actors guidance for crafting policy pursuant to it, and making predictable its interpretation in courts.

Posted on by

Schiltz on Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law

Elizabeth Rose Schiltz (University of St. Thomas School of Law) has posted Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law. This paper was presented at the September 9, 2011 Law & Contemporary Problems symposium, “Theological Argument in Law: Engaging with Stanley Hauerwas,” held at Duke Law School. The abstract follows. – ARH

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas has described people with intellectual disabilities as “the crack I desperately needed to give concreteness to my critique of modernity. No group exposes the pretensions of the humanism that shapes the practices of modernity more thoroughly than the mentally handicapped.” Indeed, modern practices with respect to the mentally handicapped are undeniably puzzling. On the one hand, advances in the ability to prenatally diagnose genetic conditions that cause mental retardation are widely heralded and enthusiastically embraced, as evidenced by the declining numbers of children born with Down Syndrome worldwide, despite the fact that advancing maternal ages should be resulting in an increase in those numbers. On the other hand, laws that express a strong commitment to the equal treatment of our fellow citizens with disabilities continue to be enacted – from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, ensuring the education of children with disabilities in our public schools, to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities in public accommodations and employment, to the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in 2008, prohibiting employers or health insurers from discriminating based on information from genetic tests.

Hauerwas diagnoses these puzzling inconsistencies in contemporary society’s attitudes toward the disabled as evidence of the flaws of modern humanism. Humanism’s emphasis on rationality and capacity for reason is the most obvious target of any critique focused on people with intellectual disabilities, whose capacity for reason is, by definition, compromised to some degree. Read more

Posted on by

Hamoudi on The Surprising Irrelevance of Islamic Bankruptcy

Haider Ala Hamoudi (University of Pittsburgh – School of Law) has posted The Surprising Irrelevance of Islamic Bankruptcy.  This paper was first presented on September 16, 2011, at the “Religion and Bankruptcy: Perspectives Thereon and Treatment Therein” Symposium, held at St. John’s School of Law, and co-hosted by the Center for Law and Religion.  The abstract follows. – ARH

By any standard of logic, the influence of the shari’a should be far more relevant in the area of bankruptcy than it is. Understanding the sources of the broad marginalization of shari’a as it relates to modern bankruptcy law in the Muslim world tells us much about the sharply limited legal scope of Islamic revivalism as concerns economic and commercial matters and perhaps even a little bit about Islamism’s limited legal ambitions more generally.

Posted on by · 1 Comment

Benedict XVI: Message on Interfaith Understanding & Peace in the Holy Land

On November 10, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the Israeli Religious Council—a committee comprising leaders of Israel’s primary religious communities—at a Vatican meeting.  (Significantly, Benedict addressed the Council on the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht (1938).)  Among those present were Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Yona Metzger, and a delegate described as “the head imam of Israel.”  This was the first time a Pope, according to Romereports.com, has held such a summit.  (See a video report of the meeting here.)

Founded in 2007, the Israeli Religious Council is a body consisting of representatives from eighteen different communities in Israel—including Jews, Muslims, and Christians—and its purpose is to foster interfaith awareness and dialogue.

The Pope’s message emphasized interfaith understanding to the end of promoting peace, particularly in the Middle East.  He differentiated, on the one hand, between violence motivated directly by religion and, on the other, violence that is simply the consequence of modern secular society.  In Pope Benedict’s view, simple interfaith understanding—which would theoretically end direct interfaith violence—will not generate lasting peace in the world; rather, an understanding of divine love and justice will be the source of lasting reconciliation in modern society, regardless of the mediating faith through which one chooses to understand such divinity.

For excerpts of Benedict’s address, please follow the jump.

Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Vatican Statement on World Financial Crisis, Cont.

Some more information about the Pontifical Council”s recent statement on the world financial crisis, which drew attention for suggesting the need for global government. According to veteran Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister of the Italian newsweekly, L’Espresso, the Pontifical Council’s statement surprised many inside the Vatican, including Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone, who apparently did not know of the statement until shortly before its release. Magister argues that the Pontifical Council’s statement, particularly its call for a global financial authority, contradicts the  tone of Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, which endorses subsidiarity rather than centralized world government. The Vatican has not withdrawn the Pontifical Council’s statement. According to Magister, however, Cardinal Bertone will now have to approve all Vatican documents before their release. — MLM

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Christianity and Capital Markets

During the financial crisis of 2008, a cartoon appeared in a British newspaper showing two bankers earnestly puzzling over something. “I know what a ‘hazard’ is,” one says to the other, “but what does ‘moral’ mean?” The idea that capital markets are amoral — indeed, that they are immoral — is a standard critique. In a recent paper for a meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Seth Payne argues that capital markets are, in fact, a force for good that Christians and other people of faith should use “to amplify their moral, ecclesiastical, humanitarian, and pastoral duties.” The abstract follows. — MLM (Hat tip: ProfessorBainbridge.com).

The financial turmoil of the past several years has caused many to question the integrity, stability, and very purpose of financial systems which, in today’s world, represent a unique blend of primarily capitalism but also aspects of socialism and collectivism as well. A key factor contributing to this sustained period of economic upheaval has been the uncertainty surrounding capital markets – the fuel that powers all modern economies. Capital markets have, in the minds of many, come to represent the embodiment of greed, unrestrained egoism, and exploitation of the vulnerable – conceptions at complete odds with the central values of social justice as set forth in both Christian and Jewish primary sources: caring for the poor, protecting the weak, and the promotion of justice.

In this paper I argue that capital markets, rather than being a means for the powerful to exploit the weak, have in fact become a force for social good in the aggregate. Indeed capital markets are, in fact, a social contract and as such must be governed by a set of normative ethical principles – both self imposed, and imposed by government regulation. I explore the ethical difficulties that have led to the systemic problems and market failures that lead to not only this current financial crisis, but literally all financial crises over the past eight hundred years. Capital markets, left to their own devices and without both self and governmental oversight, quickly become hotbeds of manipulation and exploitation. In order for markets to function properly, principles of basic fairness must become normative. It is when capital markets become unfair and unjust, that they fail. Thus, these markets must be structured in such a way as to 1) promote Rawl’s “Justice as Fairness” principle and 2) align the interests of market participants to produce universally beneficial market efficiency and stability.

Finally, I propose concrete ways in which the power of capital markets may be harnessed to promote the central moral values of Christian tradition and be used by people of faith to promote the ideals of social justice.


Posted on by · 1 Comment

Faith and Resistance: The Catonsville Nine

Next year, Shawn Francis Peters will publish The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era (Oxford 2012).  The book chronicles the events surrounding a group of Catholic antiwar activists’—men and women, including Catholic priests—storming a Baltimore draft board and burning hundreds of selective service records in May, 1968.  These so-called “Catonsville Nine” were tried in federal court, receiving sentences of two- to three-years’ imprisonment for their actions.

Shawn Francis Peters has also studied the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution (Univ. Press of Kansas 2000), which details the persecution by the United States’ government, and American citizens generally, of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S. who refused to participate in World War II.  (Tellingly, the Nazis imprisoned 8000 Jehovah’s Witnesses and interned 2000 in concentration camps—where some 950 died—for their refusal to conform to the demands of the Third Reich.  See Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power 254–56 (2005).  Rudolf Hoess describes, with a disturbing mixture of admiration and disdain, the “fanatical” Jehovah’s Witnesses at Sachsenhausen in his memoir, Commandant of Auschwitz 88–91 (Constantine FitzGibbon trans., Phoenix 2000).)

For any male of my generation, whose eighteenth birthday was also marked by receiving his Selective Service registration card and a Gillette Mach III razor (replete with shaving gel) the book should provide an interesting perspective on religious protest against unjust war.  The publisher’s abstract follows the jump.

Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Classic Revisited: Witte, “God’s Joust, God’s Justice”

Today’s classic revisited is not so old, but it is already worthy of being designated a classic: John Witte’s God’s Joust, God’s Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans 2006).  CLR Forum readers will greatly enjoy this learned historical treatment; indeed, I cannot think of a book more at the heart of the study of law and religion than Witte’s extraordinary book.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

There are three things that people will die for — their faith, their freedom, and their family. This volume focuses on all three, including the interactions among them, in the Western tradition and today. Retrieving and reconstructing a wealth of material from the earliest Hebrew and Greek texts of the West to the latest machinations of the Supreme Court, John Witte explores the legal and theological foundations of authority and liberty, equality and dignity, rights and duties, marriage and family, crime and punishment, and similar topics. God’s Joust, God’s Justice is a lucid scholarly introduction to the burgeoning field of law and religion and a learned historical inquiry into the weightier matters of the law.