Denver Newsroom, Oct 4, 2020 / 05:11 pm (CNA).- The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court would make her, if confirmed, the sixth Roman Catholic on the nine-person court.
While this is deeply concerning to some – and a reason to celebrate for others – both canon and civil lawyers told CNA that the Catholic legal tradition has much to offer the United States.
The Catholic Church has already contributed much to the United States’ legal system – including “the whole idea of law in general,” Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, told CNA.
Fr. Pietrzyk practiced corporate and securities law in a large Chicago law firm before joining religious life, and he currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation. He is also a canon lawyer and professor at St. Patrick’s Seminary & University in Menlo Park, California.
“It’s the development of canon law (the law that governs the Church) that gives both the United States and Europe their modern notions of law,” he said.
While aspects of canon law were present since the early days of the Church, the use of the term ‘canon law’, as rules and laws governing ecclesial matters rather than civil ones, started around the 12th century, according to New Advent. While the code of canon law has been updated numerous times, it is the longest still-functioning rule of law in the West.
“Even the idea of a professional legal class, that is of lawyers, finds its root in the professionalization of law and the development of the Church’s canon law, in the 12th century. Just the fact that there is a legal profession is something that is owed to the Church,” Pietrzyk said.
More generally, he added, the Catholic tradition has always understood that faith and reason work together. They are, as Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Stephen Payne, dean of the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, said it is this emphasis of reason in the Catholic tradition that makes Catholics good lawyers and judges.
“God is the creator of reason and law is an important field in which human beings seek to apply reason for the common good,” he said.
“It’s that commitment to reason that is an especially important contribution Catholic judges and lawyers…can make in today’s environment, in which many people on both sides of the political spectrum seem to prefer to decide important questions by sheer force of power guided by appetite, or emotional sentiment, through a process that involves attacking other people and attempting to undermine their God-given dignity,” Payne added.
Pietryzk said that the Catholic Church has also always strongly prized education, because of its understanding of how faith and reason work together.
“Education is something that’s very important, particularly the United States. When a new group would come from whatever country to America as Catholics, they built the church and built the school, usually together,” he said.
There are many aspects of the U.S. law and the legal process that also find their roots in canon law, Pietrzyk said, such as the idea in corporate law that entities sometimes have rights like persons would, or the idea of due process.
“People condemn the Inquisition, but the Inquisition was a step above the civil courts because there was real, procedural due process with the Inquisition that just didn’t exist in secular law,” he said.
Payne said he sees a Catholic influence in U.S. law with respect to some issues of social justice, especially as they are treated in Pope Leo XII’s encyclical, “Rerum Novarum” and other works by the three most recent popes.
Their writings on social justice have had “a significant influence on how many people, at least in our country, think about social justice, especially in such arenas as helping the poor, healthcare, immigration, abortion, end of life, workers’ rights, the death penalty, and so on,” he said.
Payne added that the U.S. legal system also includes ideas that come from natural law, a concept emphasized in the Catholic tradition that has roots in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and even further back to Aristotle.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, natural law is “present in the heart of each man and established by reason….It expresses the dignity of the human person and forms the basis of his fundamental rights and duties.”
“Our break with King George III was justified on natural law grounds, and many of our constitutional rights and much of our common law was founded in and flows from natural law and natural rights,” Payne said.
Furthermore, Payne said, “the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic social teaching have a great deal to say about the common good and the dignity of the human person. And a significant part of that focuses on the natural law, and how seeking the common good enables individual human beings to flourish in community.”
In a way, Pietrzyk said, the Catholic understanding of human dignity is reflected “in the Declaration of Independence. ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and they’re endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.’”
“This is a very Christian idea,” he said. “As much as we talk about the common good, there’s still a reality to the individual value and the dignity of the person and that the person has rights. Not simply because he’s a citizen of a particular country, but simply because he’s human and that human nature itself, whether born or unborn, endows that person with rights. Modern progressivism in some ways assumes that without understanding it.”
Modern progressivism “collapses” as a philosophy, Pietrzyk said, because it lacks “a coherent sense of a human person. It’s really just this sort of naked kind of freedom, or I would say autonomy.”
Conor Dugan is a Catholic attorney who practices in Michigan. He said the conflict between the Catholic understanding of the human person and the modern progressive understanding of the individual is due to the U.S. founding fathers, who mostly held Enlightenment principles and ideas, such as those from English philosopher John Locke.
The American legal system takes a Lockean view of people as individuals with rights, “which doesn’t necessarily nestle the person in a community,” Dugan told CNA.
On the other hand, Catholics understand the human person as someone who is always in relationship – to God, to others, to himself – and therefore while a person has rights, he also has responsibilities, Dugan said.
“It’s almost like the individual becomes atomized” in the U.S. legal system, he said, and “an individual who is cut off from all those things just has a packet of rights and no responsibility.”
Pietrzyk said an example of this Lockean understanding of the individual can be seen in U.S. law under the 2015 Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
That decision demonstrated “a strong belief in an individual’s rights to marry whomever he wants, regardless of the nature of the institution or the nature of the person. It’s this raw exercise of will, but disconnected from any reality or any nature or anything like that,” he said. “It has no rational core to it.”
The concept of the common good, while mentioned in passing by some U.S. lawmakers, is another area where Catholic lawyers and judges may be able to have an impact, Dugan noted.
“I wonder if that’s something that Catholics can do, is try to bring about a deeper understanding of the common good,” he said.
“None of the Constitution makes sense, unless we have (human dignity and the common good) as a background assumption. And maybe we should make it more explicit at times so that people understand that that’s what the law is for – it’s to protect and to foster the common good, and to protect and ensure the dignity of human persons.”
Pietrzyk noted that it is law that makes a common good possible.
“Pope Francis has talked about this…the importance of the common good, which law helps to preserve. We don’t define our individual good over and against the common good as if the two are in opposition to each other, but our individual good is able to flourish…is only able to reach its fullness with the common good, and that includes the law,” he said.
“We as human beings cannot flourish outside of a society with the common good. And we cannot flourish outside of society that does not have law. It’s law that makes freedom possible. It’s law that makes liberty possible. And it’s precisely within the Church’s legal tradition, that the charismatic side, that is the side of grace, can really flourish.”
Because the United States was not founded explicitly on Catholic principles, Dugan said it makes sense that Catholic lawyers and judges would feel a tension between their religious beliefs and the law of the land.
“I think Catholics in America, and especially Catholic lawyers should feel a tension at times between their faith and the law,” he said.
“And that that’s not necessarily a bad tension. It can help us to offer the contribution [of the Catholic legal tradition] to the world. Because I think we can fill out and make more robust, the good things that are there in the American Constitution, or we can help [them] serve and fulfill their promise,” he said.
Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholicism has been a point of criticism since her 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nomination hearing in 2017, when she was accused of “the dogma living loudly” within her, to recent articles debating – and debunking – whether People of Praise, the charismatic movement to which Barrett belongs, was the inspiration behind the dystopian novel and T.V. series, The Handmaid’s Tale.
Payne said he was not sure why there has been such a sharp focus on Barrett’s religious convictions as a possible problem, since everyone in the field of law brings their own personal views or values to the table.
“I’m not sure why, from an objective point of view, there should be such a focus on the religious commitments of the candidates, especially in a country whose constitution is so clear about the human value of religious liberty,” Payne said.
“Belief in God is well supported by reason, though many in our culture think it’s contradicted by it. In any event, many people who are not religious hold the values they do have very securely and apply them to important decisions in their lives and in their work.”
Pietryzk said that rather than recusing themselves from pertinent cases, it should be the role of Catholic judges or lawyers to bring their understanding of the human person and the common good into their work.
“As Catholics, we understand that human beings are created with a nature, created by God with a nature,” he said. “And discerning what the proper rules are for human beings given that nature is historically part of the work of judges.”
He added that while he does not know Barrett personally, they have many friends in common.
“I do know lots of people who know her and every good thing you hear about her reputation, I’ve heard for a long time,” he said. “She is just an extraordinary woman by everybody’s account.”
Dugan, a former student of Barrett’s, said he thinks that as Catholics and as Americans, “we’ve hit the jackpot” with her nomination to the Supreme Court.
“It’s hard for me to imagine anyone having a negative thing to say about her,” he said.
“I went back and looked at some emails we exchanged over the years, giving me career and family advice, how to navigate the tensions of a busy practice with family and things like that…I just think we’ve gotten a real gift in this nomination. I hope she’s confirmed.”
[…]
The essay of Bishop Poprocki disingenously and indirectly accuses Cardinal McElroy is just imprudent of him. He should have wise and prudent people read his essay before he published it. Paprocki’s public display of episcopal animosity in this essay spotlights deep divisions in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy marked by open disagreement and strident rhetoric among bishops that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI would not have tolerated. There wouldn’t have been this kind of discussion under John Paul II because the Vatican would have shut it down. Pope Francis has encouraged open discussion on sensitive issues such as figuring out new ways to accompany LGBTQ Catholics and same-sex couples. Cardinal McElroy was carrying this out and anti-Pope Francis bishops like Poprocki just don’t like it. They’re trying to shut it down by using this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, even against cardinals. Paprocki should know better as a canon lawyer than to accuse someone of heresy is a formal charge. Canon 751 specifically defines heresy as the “obstinate denial or obstinate doubt… of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith. What Paprocki has done is running together statements and teachings of different levels of authority in the church, and claiming that any disagreement with any of them amounts to heresy is just false. As for the Cardinal’s essay in America, McElroy’s point is not that that homosexual acts are not sinful, rather he’s saying that they don’t automatically rise to the level of a mortal sin, which is the kind of development in our tradition that could take place. The underlying question in all of this is whether development in church doctrine can take place. Bishop Poprocki should read John Henry Newman on this, and look at the history of the church’s teachings, like on usury, which evolved over time as the church grew deeper in its understanding of matters in the light of scripture and tradition.
Taylor, with all due respect, you’re wrong.
You wrote: “McElroy’s point is not that that homosexual acts are not sinful, rather he’s saying that they don’t automatically rise to the level of a mortal sin…”
McElroy specifically called for the blessing of “same-sex unions” by the Church.
I’m sure you will agree that the Church does not — can not — bless sin, whether deadly or not.
McElroy’s position — that there’s a conflict between God’s “radically inclusive” love and the “judgementalism” of traditional Catholic teaching — is a false dichotomy.
Yes, God’s love for humanity is infinite.
But it is precisely because of that fact that God does not accept sin, encouraging us to love one another instead of sinning.
Because sin causes pain, suffering, disorder and death.
While loving others leads to a joyful, fulfilled, meaningful life.
The McElroys and Hollerichs who preach about “radical inclusiveness” — i.e., the acceptance of sinful acts as natural and acceptable — are advocating for the acceptance of evil by the Church.
They are sowers of pain, suffering, disorder and death.
Which is why I agree that the term, “heretic,” seems most apropos when applied to them.
The shoe is on the other foot…
The distinction between “grave” and “mortal” sin (grave matter plus knowledge plus free will) applies to individual cases, not entire categories of (politicized) persons. See CCC 2352 addressing the individual “subject’s (!) moral responsibility” and taking “into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that can lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.”
Rather than a predisposing gay gene, genome research points instead to non-genetic factors— such as environment, getting locked in by early sexual experimentation, upbringing, absentee or abusive fathers, sexual abuse, personality, nurture – which are far more significant in influencing a person’s choice (!) of sexual partner, just as with most other personality, behavioral and physical human traits. https://news.yahoo.com/no-gay-gene-study-finds-180220669.html
Evangelizing and healing the current culture back onto the track of human flourishing and even holiness–and serving its victims truly–calls for something better and surely less expedient than simply redefining “marriage” and sexual morality, or the endorsing/blessing of non-binary/non-complementary liaisons, as with Batzing, Hollerich, McElroy & Co.
Individuals for whom the millstone scenario in Luke 17:2 seems to loom unmitigated—but who am I to judge?
Heterodox bishops like McElroy and his ilk can make the most outrageously heterodox statements and get a definite pass from those in the protestant wing of the Catholic Church. The Vicar of Christ in Rome can even venerate a false idol of Pachamama in the Vatican Gardens but when two Austrian men threw the idol into the Tiber, some in our Church went after them for doing so. But let one bishop stand up for the faith and he’ll soon be be having coals heaped on his head by a few.
One thing for certain: the Father of Lies is never timid nor does he ever relax his efforts to sow lies.
Deacon: I think the slander first spread by Taylor Marshall should be stopped. In cahoots with those Austrians they staged and stole the image from the church before throwing it to the Tiber. That image was presented by the indigenous people attending the Synod representing their own Our Lady of the Amazon. That was displayed in Church as a cultural artifact and was not worshipped to (which would be idolatry). It was the leading papal slanderer ex-Protestant (who somehow still thinks and behaves like one) Marshall who first named it Pachamama and the anti-Pope Francis social media world quickly spread it such that even the Pope used the term when he later talked to the press about the incident as the false narrative was already in full swing. Stop repeating this lie and falsehood.
The bishops and the pope called the statue Pachamama. If the bishops leading the Amazon synod wished to honour our Lady then a statue of our Lady of Guadalupe would have been the obvious choice. Unfortunately, that was not their intention.
Plagiarism from a National Catholic Reporter opinion piece. Please acknowledge your sources when you cite them.
Taylor Gordon:
Unity with Jesus and his apostles, which includes faithful obedience to Jesus’ commands about sexual morality, and the teaching of his apostles, are essential Catholic and Christian beliefs.
Unity with apostate Bishops and Cardinals is not essential, nor is it desirable, because they do not abide in Jesus. “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
Bishop Paprocki is a good shepherd. “Eminence” McElroy is a false shepherd, and such men are condemned by the very words of Jesus.
McElroy’s recent comment that the synod would mark the final chapter in the revolution of the church started by the liberals at Vatican 2 is more than enough to discredit both. Period.
It is imprudent of someone to add words to an essay to make a point that deviates from the author’s original intention. I read Bishop Paprocki’s essay. Perhaps you should do the same. If you had read it before your comment you should consider a more careful reading.
Why doesn’t Paprocki follow his analysis to its logical conclusion? If McElroy, Hollerich, Marx, and Cupich, to name only several cardinals, are heretics (as indeed they are), how can one avoid the logical conclusion that the one who identified, selected, and appointed them as cardinals from all the tens of thousands of priests and bishops in the world because they embody and exemplify his own faithlessness is also a heretic? As Paprocki himself has said, the time for polite private conversations is over.
To this same point, why is it that Bergoglio has never had the question directly put to him: “Are you a homosexual? Have you, or do you now, engage in homosexual acts?” No normal heterosexual male, much less a practicing and orthodox Catholic, and beyond question no priest or bishop striving for holiness in his personal life would ever associate himself routinely, invariably, and even daily with active sodomites, catamites, effeminates, and, most incredibly, transgendered prostitutes. When is the elephant in the room finally going to be recognized and Bergoglio asked face-to-face about his apparent homosexuality?
Important questions that need to be asked, today.
Thank you.
As for the Cardinal’s essay in America, McElroy’s point is not that that homosexual acts are not sinful, rather he’s saying that they don’t automatically rise to the level of a mortal sin, which is the kind of development in our tradition that could take place.
Nonsense. Perennial Church teaching holds that there are three ingredients in a mortal sin: (1) grave matter, (2) full knowledge, and (3) deliberate consent. No amount of “development” can change that, and to suggest otherwise is to put oneself beyond the doctrines of the Church.
Vatican II opened the door to this heresy.
George, the documents of Vatican II are readily available.
Please cite the passages that advocate in favor of same-sex “marriage” or female priests or any of the rest of it.
You can’t, because they’re not there.
I challenge you to read the documents. Many solid Catholics who have found them to be inspiring and true.
Until you do, you should stop bearing false witness.
I think George meant that liberalism potential was unleashed with II
Pertinax, the Latin word applied in canon 751 is translated into English as obstinate, which means persevering, a word that encompasses a belief or position that is held with consistency. As such Bishop Paprocki may have a case against a cardinal who can be proved obstinate in his heretical position.
CNA safely assumes Paprocki refers to Card McElroy and his essay published by America Mag. If the Cardinal were to continue without ambiguity in the alleged position regarding homosexual acts as sinless, the unrestricted access to the Holy Eucharist over a sufficient period, and remained unrelenting after taken to task he should be censured as a heretic, if unrepentant excommunicated. That’s a drastic action that may apply to growing numbers of clergy.
CNA notes the clandestine nature of the bishop’s complaint and his unwillingness to name McElroy. Nevertheless everyone understands who the accused is. Furthermore, Paprocki acknowledges a dilemma, that only a pope can censure a cardinal. And if, nevertheless someone, presumably McElroy were excommunicated Latae sententiae due to heresy, voting in a papal conclave is “an unseemly prospect”. How might this be responded to?
Bishop Paprocki’s concern is hypothetical, and ignites myriad speculation since there are myriad ifs. John Paul and Benedict both considered such a papal election scenario in which, if there were doubt of canonical lawfulness. Both, despite Pascendi Dominici gregis Pius X 1907 Universi Dominici gregis John Paul II 1996 opined that the result remain valid if not lawful.
Similar to 2013 when Austen Ivereigh, an intimate of Westminster Card Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, an alleged key player and informant, revealed in his 1st edition of The Great Reformer that Murphy-O’Connor said cardinals were canvassed prior to the election [Ivereigh when aware of his blunder redacted and reissued the 2nd edition]. Many still argue Francis is therefore not the true pope, that issue never confirmed, nor its unlikely adjudication now moot.
Underlining this issue raised by Bishop Paprocki is the final say of the bishop of Rome. There’s no indication he will intervene if heresy became evident as pertinax or persistent since he indicates by his own words his own, if not as consistent, nevertheless coherence with McElroy.
Our prelates who remain faithful to Christ and what he revealed cannot remain silent, even if canonical options are limited. As such Bishop Paprocki raising the issue whether hypothetical nevertheless identifies the major moral dysfunction afflicting the Church. That alone has value.
Obedience, chastity, poverty.
When Christ is first in our lives we want to be obedient to His word. Marriage to the church is a noble calling, we must honour those who have chosen that route. When we are in Christ, we are never impoverished.
To lift up in prayer and encourage the leaders in the church is our responsibility. Let us not overburden these special servants of Christ, but to walk in peace with them.
John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
1 Peter 1:14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
Acts 5:29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Proverbs 22:2 The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the Maker of them all.
2 Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
Blessings to God’s faithful servants
As a cradle Catholic, raised in the post Vatican II church and philosophy who is gay, I find the entire discussion on homosexuality ignorant and annoying. That I am a sinner, through no fault of my own, makes all of the arguments proposed here useless. The pervasive ignorance of gender and sexuality, promulgated on the philosophical basis of natural law, that identifies only males and females as designated at birth, sex for reproduction, and negation of a reality that homosexuality could also be created by the same Creator who made heterosexuality is basically fear,ignorance, need for control, bigotry, misogyny, and who knows how many other despicable human conditions. Rather than arguing why it’s so damn wrong, why don’t you put your heads together and read a book not written by a Catholic theologian, perhaps one that accepts human psychology, and that allows all humans to be their authentic human self. The choice a gay person has is the choice of finding another partner to love. The ongoing ignorance based in premises that are so archaic and designed to only consider what’s only ever been considered is malignant. Read some new material! Actually, learn something new about being human! Revisit where your arguments at the point of premise are WRONG! The argument that heterosexual is better than homosexual is wrong! They are equal. When you figure out how to support this equality as your premise, you actually might get somewhere. Until then, all this blustering is ridiculous! I have no use for the narrow mindedness of those who fail to allow me to be created in the image and likeness of God. And because of that, you have lost this former church musician, former parish liturgical director, and potential donor… Keep your pews empty with this stupidity!
Sexual desire and love are neither the same nor are they functionally related. Any sex worker can tell you that. Sexual desire is not an inherently good thing that needs to find full expression in order for a person to be whole, any more than the desire for food is inherently good, even for those of us whom God has apparently given a good appetite. And unfortunately for us but fortunate for the advertising business, a lot of sexual desire is not invariably directed to the one loved. Love, on the other hand, is not a desire at all. Love is an attitude, an attitude of wanting the very best for the one loved, which means wanting them to become what God calls them to become, not what they think they are or what they think they want to be. We do not get to decide what kind of “authentic” person God made us to be, nor did God intended us to stay the way we were “made.” If we were intended to stay the way we were made, we wouldn’t teach children to say “thank you,” to share with others, to wait their turn, to not hit. The reality is that from the standpoint of behavior we aren’t “made” very nice.
From the standpoint of biology, organs have purpose. God did not create man with a recreation center between his legs, nor is its use his own business. We are “made” with complete circulatory systems, complete skeletal systems, complete nervous systems. But we’re only made with half a reproductive system, and there isn’t another person of the same sex on the planet who can make it complete. No reproductive biologist, looking at two persons of the same sex copulating, would say, “Yeah, that makes sense, that’ll work just fine.” Persuading yourself that God wants for you what you want for yourself is idolatry. God’s call is to be more than a biological organism, more than a high-functioning animal. God’s call is to be holy even as God is holy.