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 The Vatican has not withdrawn the Pontifical Council’s statement.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
English High Court Rules Catholic Priest Is Diocesan Employee, Raises Possibility of Vicarious Liability for Clergy Sex Abuse
A judge on the High Court of England and Wales ruled this week that a Catholic priest qualified as an employee of his diocese, thus exposing the diocese to vicarious liability for clergy sex abuse. The decision came in a case brought by a woman who claims that a priest abused her when she was a child. Although the priest did not have an employment contract with the diocese, the judge ruled, the diocese trained him, appointed him to his position, and held him out to the public as its representative. It provided “the premises, the pulpit, and the clerical robes” and sent the priest out into the community.
This is apparently the first time a court in the UK has held a priest to be an employee of his diocese. Dioceses usually lack day-to-day supervisory authority over priests; for this reason, courts often hold that priests are not employees, but independent contractors. The plaintiff’s victory may be less valuable than it appears, however. Vicarious liability exists where the employee commits torts while acting within the scope of his employment, and assaulting parishioners obviously falls outside a priest’s job description. The judge gave the diocese extended leave to appeal the decision. – MLM
Messiaen’s Quartet For the End of Time
Perhaps not quite strictly law and religion-related, but my son Thomas and I went to a concert of Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” this afternoon. Messiaen is a wonderful 20th century French composer who created the quartet in 1941 as a POW in a German camp. Messiaen met a clarinettist, a violinist, and a cellist in the camp; the only guy who had his instrument was the clarinettist, but they managed to get hold of the other instruments and debut the piece in the prison.
The quartet, in 8 movements, is deeply informed by Messiaen’s abiding Catholicism. It is “for the end of time” in two senses. Messiaen takes the Book of Revelation as his inspiration. His point of departure is Chapter 10, where the seventh angel descends and announces that “time shall be no longer” — the end of Time as the end of past and future and the beginning of eternity. Messiaen’s time signatures are also iconoclastic in the piece; in fact, sometimes there is no definite rhythm at all (I don’t understand how the players were able to be in unison), and it was in this sense too that Messiaen wanted to convey the end of the usual 3/4 and 4/4 measured time in Western classical music. Time is characterized throughout the piece as sad and weary, to be contrasted with the lively music of heaven. The piece was challenging, but just great.
Then, Thomas and I came home to watch our Patriots lose, as Time expired. — MOD
Italian Cultural Catholicism
Here’s an opinion piece from a few weeks ago in one of the leading Italian newspapers, Il Corriere Della Sera, by Ferruccio de Bortoli, titled, “The Mission of Catholics.” The piece is a nice example of the power of cultural Catholicism as an intellectual and political force in Italy — and the demands that are being made of Catholicism in a country whose political, cultural, and economic fortunes are under threat (or, at least, are so perceived). The piece is in Italian, so I will try to summarize.
De Bortoli, who is a non-believer, calls on Catholics to reinvigorate the Italian political culture. “The country needs Catholics,” he says: “Civil and moral reconstruction will not be possible without their diverse and renewed political work.” But de Bortoli is not talking about the revival of Christian parties, let alone the failed Christian Democratic Party. Neither does he want a return to what he calls the fractured and “bi-polar” situation in which some Catholics defended the state’s values and others searched for the core of Christianity in everyday, non-political life.
What does he want?
It would be enough if [Catholics] set for themselves some simple but ambitious goals: reviving community spirit and the desire to participate, and to throw the seed of duty [“impegno”] to others . . . . In his essay on the Geography of Catholic Italy, Roberto Cartocci writes that ‘the Catholic tradition appears as the most ancient glue [“collante” — a binding, cohesive agent], the most solid path of continuity among the diverse components of the country.’ Not only this: it [Catholicism] is the bringer of an inclusive culture, which does not divide and destroy society. It has the sense of the limits of political action and the presence of the state in people’s private lives. These are important qualities. Appreciated by everyone. Even we non-believers.
What is interesting to me about these sentiments is not as much the substance as the turn to Catholicism itself. De Bortoli talks about Catholicism as a conversation stimulator — a kind of conciliating interlocutor and Charlie Rose-type figure among different political/cultural traditions. Not much more than a word in this piece (apart from the comments about the limited state) about Catholics’ substantive and policy views. Desperate times surely call for desperate measures, and Italians do seem to be in desperate times. But I wonder whether de Bortoli has quite taken the measure of what it is that Catholicism has to offer Italy. — MOD
Catholic Church v. Obama Administration
This is an interesting article in the Washington Post from two days ago about the increasing conflict between the Obama Administration and the Catholic Church. The story specifically discusses the withdrawal of the anti-human-trafficking contract that I discussed here. The article reports that apparently there was some internal dissent within the Department of Health and Human Services from career staffers about the politicization of the decision, based in part on a very favorable neutral report on the Church’s prior administration of the contract. There is some suggestion that the USCCB would sue the Administration, though I wonder what the suit would allege. — MOD
Byrnes on Transnational Religious Communities and US Foreign Policy
Timothy Byrnes (Colgate) has published Reverse Mission: Transnational
Religious Communities and the Making of US Foreign Policy (Georgetown University Press 2011). The publisher’s description follows. – MLM
Many Catholic priests, nuns, and brothers in the United States take a strong interest in US policies that affect their “brothers and sisters” abroad. In fact, when the policies of their native government pose significant dangers to their people internationally, these US citizens engage actively in a variety of political processes in order to protect and advance the interests of the transnational religious communities to which they belong. In this provocative examination of the place of religion in world politics, Timothy A. Byrnes focuses on three Catholic communities—Jesuit, Maryknoll, and Benedictine—and how they seek to shape US policy in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Based on years of fieldwork and on-the-ground interviews, Reverse Mission details the transnational bonds that drive the political activities of these Catholic orders.
The Display of Catholic Images at The Catholic University of America
It is hard to know what to make of this story (h/t Professor Bainbridge). What is most curious about it to me is the allegation by Professor Banzhaf that Muslims were compelled to “perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism — e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.”
It seems to me that there are two issues: (1) are there rooms on the CUA campus which do not contain such images or items (and, I suppose, were students prevented from gathering to use them for prayer)?; and (2) is the reference to these items’ “inappropriateness” one which is specifically limited to their inappropriateness as places of Muslim prayer, or is it a more general sense that displaying these images and items at CUA is inappropriate per se?
As to the first question, in my wonderful year at the law school at CUA, I can think off-hand of several rooms which did not display the complained-of images and items. Indeed, I can even think of a few such rooms at the Salesian house near campus where I was lucky enough to sleep. It does not seem to me that it would be difficult to find such a room on the CUA campus, though perhaps the claim is that the University willfully barred the students from access to these rooms.
As to the second question, I can understand that Muslims might not want to pray in a room bedecked with Catholic images. On the other hand, if the claim is that these images are “inappropriate” for display tout court, I am not sympathetic to that claim. — MOD
UPDATE: Please see this story, which reports that not a single Muslim student at CUA has complained either to the University or to Banzhaf. At this point, as Banzhaf says, the complaint is written on Banzhaf’s behalf alone despite his attempt to solicit CUA students to sign on. The standing requirements for filing a complaint like this must be quite generous.
Movsesian To Address Guild of Catholic Lawyers
CLR Director Mark Movsesian will be the speaker at the Guild of Catholic Lawyers First Friday program on Friday, November 4. His talk on the legal situation of Christians in the Middle East will begin at 8:15 am at the Church of Our Saviour, 59 Park Ave. (at 38th St.). For details, please contact Robert E. Crotty at Kelley Drye & Warren, LLP.
Another Augsburgian Interlude
This one from eminent constitutional scholar and historian Michael
McConnell (Stanford law school):
The idea of civil control over the Church was difficult to maintain during the days of a single universal Catholic Church with its headquarters in Rome. Church-state relations in those days almost inevitably consisted of conflict and negotiation between two institutionally separate authorities: the Church in Rome and the civil power, usually the monarch, in various nations of Europe. Neither could completely control the other. With the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, however, governmental power over each national church became more feasible. Indeed, with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the principle that the prince had authority to determine the religion for his nation (“cuius regio, eius religio”) became a staple of international relations.
Michael W. McConnell, Establishment and Disestablishment at the Founding, Part I: Establishment of Religion, 44 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2105, 2191 (2003). — MOD
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’s Note on Financial Reform
This is a powerfully expressed statement by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on the current financial maladies facing the world. All of the recommendations warrant sustained thought, and most are well beyond my capacity to assess.
One thing that I did not remember is the call of Pope John XXIII in Pacem in Terris for a “true world political authority” to emerge to serve the common good of humanity. This vision is taken up by the Council, which talks about the need for “a supranational Authority” to take charge of these matters in light of what is seen as a movement toward greater globalization. The Council’s recommendations are cautious in this respect, but they are striking nevertheless. It also seemed to me, especially after Mark’s post below, that thoughts about a global authority reflect a quite Catholic way to envision the issue of human authority, to be contrasted with the more Protestant view of state sovereignty described and championed by Vattel and others. These old fights never really die. — MOD