Over at the liberal Catholic Commonweal blog, Cathleen Kaveny, who once labeled me and her then-Notre Dame Law School colleague Gerard Bradley “Rambo Cathlolics,” goes after me again in a post under the charmingly intolerant title “A Catholic Mullah, Now?” Continue Reading »
The Industrial Revolution, as we know it, could have occurred five centuries earlier. While Europeans were living short, subsistence-level lives, the rest of the world was witnessing an explosion in technology and trade coming out of Ming China. Continue Reading »
Harvard’s Cass Sunstein rearticulated criticisms of “originalism”—the theory that judges should construe legal texts using the original public meaning of its words—in a Bloomberg op-ed piece last week. While critical of conservative originalism, Sunstein does not reject the entire approach outright. Sunstein, like Jack M. Balkin in his 2011 book, Living Originalism, seeks to wrest the idea originalism from the proprietary hands of conservative legal authorities like U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Continue Reading »
Let’s consider a hypothetical case. Imagine that a Muslim middle school—let’s call it Zaytuna Academy—hires Mr. Khalil as its Vice Principal. Mr. Khalil is an effective administrator and is very popular with teachers and students alike. Now, Mr Khalil happens to believe that the prohibition of alcohol consumption in Islam is wrong. So he doesn’t honor that teaching in his personal life. Continue Reading »
I admire the Archbishop of Montreal, Christian Lépine, for speaking out against the new euthanasia program that our politicians have sanctified by calling “medical aid in dying.” Rumour has it that he was forced to buy his own space to do so, inasmuch as Quebec papers proved . . . . Continue Reading »
Here is the latest evidence of the clash between contemporary human rights norms and traditional religions. Last week, the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child reported on the Vatican’s compliance with an international treaty, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention, which virtually every UN member, including the Holy See, has ratified (though not the US), lists universal rights of children, including the right to be protected from discrimination; the right to be free from violence, including sexual abuse; the right to health and welfare; and so on. Continue Reading »
Though Abraham Lincoln was neither baptized nor joined a church of any kind, he was the most spiritually minded president in American history. His faith was wrought on the anvil of anguish, both personal and national, and because of this he has much to teach us in our own age of anxiety.Some historians interpret Lincoln as a proto-secularist, not only because he never professed Christian faith in a public way but also because he made a number of skeptical comments about Christian teaching in his early years. But it’s well to remember that even great people of faith, including Mother Teresa, experience dark nights of the soul. John Calvin once said that all true faith is tinged by doubt. Continue Reading »
On Saturday Eric Holder announced he will apply the recent Supreme Court Windsor ruling as widely as possible. “In every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States, they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law.” Continue Reading »
Since Jack Kevorkian first made headlines in 1990, the media have touted assisted suicide by the dying and severely disabled in positive, sometimes even glowing, terms. Continue Reading »
This is rather silly. Inside Higher Ed reports that the International Studies Associationu2014according to its website, “the most respected and widely known scholarly association dedicated to international studies”—has proposed a ban on personal blogging by editors of its journals. The proposal would allow editors to blog only at official sites affiliated with their journals. The ISA’s President says the association is concerned about the lack of professionalism at many academic blogs and that it doesn’t want readers to confuse editors’ personal posts with the association’s official products. Continue Reading »
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