Jason Samuel as Judge Poser

Do you believe there's a double standard for religious beliefs?

W. K. Clifford is famous for his evidentialist thesis that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence." On this way of thinking, someone who fails to apportion belief to evidence violates the ethics of belief. Although Clifford had religious beliefs in his sights, his thesis, by its very wording, applies to every sort of belief. Why then do people tend not to apply it to non-religious beliefs? Why do they hold religious beliefs to an exceedingly stringent standard, but refuse to do the same with political beliefs, say? Why the double standard?

Read on.

Because you're a Catholic, you must be a "living Constitutionalist"

In a Boston Globe piece, Faithful Interpretations, Drake Bennett attempts to popularize Sanford V. Levinson's taxonomy relating a jurist's religiosity to his interpretive method.  Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin,  "argues that the tenets of Catholicism need not be seen merely as a competing set of dictates to be reconciled with constitutional law on fiercely contested issues like abortion, capital punishment, and sodomy."  [Der.]" Instead, he proposes using Catholic ideas about tradition and scripture as a lens through which to examine American attitudes about the Constitution, a founding document that has been venerated and fought over in much the same way that Catholics and Protestants have fought over the Bible." 

Those couple sentences peaked my interest, indeed.  I thought I'd be reading how a jurist's personal beliefs have some bearing on his interpretive method.  While not necessarily the case, I thought, perhaps, there's some correlative relationship between Originalists and Catholicism (err, Thomas and Scalia).  Instead, either though the sloppiness of the author or Levinson, the whole idea of looking to the jurist's religion to explain his interpretive method now seems like a sloppy way to explain what could be an interesting phenomenon.  Levinson's exercise can be reduced to psychologizing jurist's behavior. 

Robert P. George, a juristprudent scholar at Princeton, was quoted in the piece, but only limitedly.  I wish we could have read more of what he had to say.  There's no doubt to me that he had more to say on the topic given his extensive work in this area.  The little Bennett quotes from him, I believe, completely undermines Levinson's project.  Levinson is committing a categorical error really.  The institutions of American law and the Catholic Church are entirely distinguishable.  For that reason, George says, Levinson's project fails.  For it cannot explain how a jurist's religious belief bears on his interpretive method.

Levinson--or Bennett--admits so much in the end: "Levinson readily admits his contrast between legal ''catholics" and ''protestants" is more of a heuristic than ''a hard-and-fast scientific truth." He makes no claim that knowing how a judge spends his Sundays will explain his rulings."

The Catholic Question

Recently, but not nearly surprisingly, Senator Dick Durban (D. Il.) made an issue of Roberts' Catholicism, but not really according to the Senator. 

Wendy Long, of Bench Memos, quotes Judge Robert Bork on the relevance of the question of whether a judge's faith would matter were he not Catholic.

[We know the Democrats' scrutiny is mostly a pretext for abortion/Roe.] For a judge critical of Roe, the decision to overturn it could so easily (and reasonably) rest on the case's illogical reasoning that someone like Roberts need not be inspired by his faith to be activist.

Link: Bench Memos on National Review Online.

Chinese Bishop Jia Arrested Again

Chinese Bishop Jia Arrested Again

ZHENG DING, China, JULY 22, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Bishop Julius Jia Zhi Guo of the underground Catholic Church was arrested twice in one month by government officials, says a U.S.-based watchdog group.

The bishop was arrested July 4 when two government officials took him away from his home in the Diocese of Zheng Ding, in the province of Hebei. He was then released July 7, according to the Connecticut-based Cardinal Kung Foundation.

Last Monday, at 7 a.m., two security officials took the bishop away again, according to Joseph Kung, president of the foundation.

"We understand that the bishop has been obliged by the government to go on some sort of tour, but we do not know where he has gone or for how long," Kung added.

Bishop Jia, 71, was previously in prison for some two decades and has been under strict surveillance for many years.

As "non-official" bishop of Zheng Ding, he has headed one of the liveliest dioceses of Hebei, the province with the largest concentration of Catholics, numbering some 1.5 million.

This is the seventh time that Bishop Jia has been arrested since January 2004.

The underground Church in China, which professes loyalty to Rome, does not have Beijing's approval.

ZE05072208

Pope set to return to traditional liturgy

[Provided by UPI, so take with caution] Link: Pope set to return to traditional liturgy.

Pope Benedict XVI wants to restore the traditional ceremonial Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, with Latin instead of the vernacular and Gregorian chants.

Romanian Monk Is Indicted in Nun's Death on Yahoo! News

Link: Romanian Monk Is Indicted in Nun's Death on Yahoo! News.

A Romanian Orthodox monk has been indicted in the death of a 23-year-old nun in an apparent exorcism in which she was allegedly bound to a cross, had a towel stuffed into her mouth and left without food for three days.

The Cafeteria Is Closed: Pope Benedict on Family

Link: The Cafeteria Is Closed: Pope Benedict on Family.

Example what happens when people do whatever the hell they want: Western Europe dying out.

Here's an example I didn't think of.  Good blog by the way, I've listed it for your reference.

Reflections on Benedict's Antropology of the Family

This is the first piece of writing I have read of Benedict XVI since he was elected Supreme Pontiff. While I am aware that Zenit has only released part one today, I find myself amazed and satisfied by the Holy Father’s exaltation, but also explication, of the philosophical anthropology of the family. Part two will prove to be an equal blessing, I am sure.

Benedict begins with a caveat. Do not think of the family as you would many, if not most, other things. It’s not a mere construct, he tell us. As a sociology student, I often struggled with sociology’s method of looking at everything as ‘social construct.’ A large segment of sociology—and by this I mean much of the pervading thought—would have us believe that an idea, which may appear sacrosanct, natural, innate, or properly basic to those who accept it, is in reality an artifact of society: a social construct. This line or reasoning produces the implication that social constructs result from human choice and not something “innate,” or “natural.” We should see easily how God, in this equation, plays no role aside from too being a social artifact.

Benedict begins with disestablishing this corrupting presupposition—he later addresses how such a ‘first principle’ corrupts in how it leads to the hyper-individualist sensuality that plagues our modern-day "family." If we begin with questioning “Who am I? And this question, in turn, cannot be separated from the question about God: Does God exist? And, who is God?” we’re led to the answer that “[m]an is created in the image of God, and God himself is love.” It follows from this that God calls us to love.

[I am reminded of a letter the founder of the Legionaries of Christ and of the apostolic movement Regnum Christi, Father Marciel Maciel, LC, wrote to members of the Legion and the movement entitled “Called to Love.” Fr. Maciel pursues this question—Who am I?—through our vocation to love. As profound as this letter is, I will refrain from giving it more attention that urging you to read it.]

Our God-given composure and vocation gives our bodies, “so to speak,” says Benedict, “a theological character.” Thus, we’re not simply the corporeal. Our sexuality, then, is more than a property of our bodies, it’s responsible, in part, for defining the human person.

Benedict philosophizes that from these two bonds, “man with God” and body and spirit, arises another: the one that exists between person and institution. I wish I could explain this more, but my understanding of this step is thin.  [I welcome comments addressed especially to this point.]

When man makes a choice—particularly one of “yes”—because he lives in space and time, “man's "yes" goes beyond the present moment. . . it constitutes the area of fidelity.”

When Benedict says next, that “[t]he freedom of the ‘yes’ appears therefore as freedom capable of assuming what is definitive,” I believe he means that our free will, properly understood, is oriented to the truth. This is clarified, I too believe, in Benedict’s next statement, which acknowledges that true freedom is not in pursuit of pleasure. This isn’t to say, however, that our choices will not bring us pleasure, but rather that our “yes” is to be to what’s definitive, which in gives us true pleasure.

To form a family, a man and woman must reciprocally affirm “yes,” testifying that we do not belong exclusively to ourselves. We belong to our spouses, should that be our vocation, and to the institutions through which our humanity is realized. Marriage, of course, being one. Marriage, then, cannot be thought of as an imposition, but rather “an intrinsic exigency of the pact of conjugal love and of the depth of the human person.”

Benedict, having constructed for us an anthropology of the family, which follows from our teleological natures, he turns to aberrations of marriage. Each, insofar as it strays from what follows from our natures, offers man a corrupted experience while sometimes appearing “erroneously as man's authentic liberation.” So, what may feel ‘right’ or what may make us ‘happy,’ if it doesn’t comport with a marriage of sexual complementarity and eternal fidelity, just trivializes the body, and, in the end, man himself.

We now come full circle to Benedict’s initial warning that family is not a social construct—it flows naturally from our teleological natures. If all is socially constructed, then “man can make of himself what he likes.” In fact, if all is socially constructed, that is all man can do.

Benedict XVI on the Anthropological Foundation of the Family 1

Zenit translated an address the Holy Father made at the opening of the Ecclesial Congress of the Diocese of RomeHere, delivered Monday in the Basilica of St. John Lateran. This is part one only, part two will appear Friday. I will post it too.

Here's an excerpt:

Marriage and the family are not a casual sociological construct, fruit of particular historical and economic situations. On the contrary, the question of the right relationship between man and woman sinks its roots in the most profound essence of the human being, and can only find its answer in the latter. It cannot be separated from the always ancient and always new question of man about himself: Who am I? And this question, in turn, cannot be separated from the question about God: Does God exist? And, who is God? What is his face really like? The Bible's answer to these two questions is unitary and consequential: Man is created in the image of God, and God himself is love. For this reason, the vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of God: He becomes like God in the measure that he becomes someone who loves.

Zenit: Arrested Christians in Saudi Arabia Released

 Zenit reports that "[s]even Christians, arrested for their faith, [in Saudi Arabia] were released on condition that they renounce religious practice, which they carried out privately in their homes."