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.”
[…]
What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our ‘journeying together?
Encourage the Traditional Latin Mass and more Pro Life/Pro Family support from the clergy especially Pope Francis and the Vatican.
We read: “When you think about it being a 41-page document, how are we going to consult people? Are they going to read 41 pages?” Well, a good place to START might be Part I:5, Proposal “o” which reads in part:
“From the work of the Assembly, there is the call for better knowledge of the teachings of Vatican II (…).”
Indeed, this comes nearly forty years after the IDENTICAL CONCLUSION was achieved at the 20-years pulse-check following the Council, the Final Report of 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops: “[Part 1:6] It is suggested […] a new, more extensive and reception of the Council. This can be attained above all through a new diffusion of the documents themselves [….]”
Perhaps, after almost sixty years, actually read the DOCUMENTS, as contrasted with the disembodied and decapitated “spirit of the Council” as marketed by Hans Kung and two generations of freelance theologians, including many lemming synodalizers.
Two other FINDINGS in 1985 were:
“[Part II:6]…from Vatican II has positively come a new style [not exactly a new idea!] of collaboration between the laity and clerics,” AND: “[Part II:3] We cannot replace a false unilateral vision of the Church as purely hierarchical with a new sociological conception which is also unilateral [!].”
Less dense than the inventory compiled in the 2023 Synthesis Report, key themes of the 1985 Final Report might already frame the requested “EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.” Although much of the overlay of current grassroots concerns gives added and valuable definition to engagement in the world. Omitting, of course, Germania’s distracting moral, sacramental and ecclesial novelties.
“Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had noted at last month’s synod that only 1% of Catholics participated in the listening sessions.”
Is that 1% of Catholics, or 1% of Catholics who attend weekly Sunday Mass?
~ 17% of Catholics attend weekly Mass, so even if that’s 1% of Catholics, it’s still only about 5% of Catholics at Sunday Mass. And it’s not like there’s enough kids to make that an impressive number.
I am not surprised that only 1% of Catholics listened/paid attention to the Synodal conference. In the U.S., most people are too busy. Yes, some of the busy stuff is “junk”–being on X (Twitter) and other social media sites, being online on sports sites and other “fun” sites, ordering stuff from Amazon and trying to find a place to put the stuff in our homes when it arrives, working (often working overtime or more than one job), driving (can take up a lot of time depending on where you live in the U.S.), taking care of children and keeping up with teens, etc. And frankly, I didn’t want to spend time listening to a conference that seemed basically to be a meeting to talk about stuff that seems to be of little importance to many of us in our daily lives. There are so many wonderful things to learn about Jesus, the Bible, the Church, etc., and so many tasks that need to be done in my home and my parish, and so many things to talk to God about in prayer–I personally think there are better ways to spend my time than listening in on a conference that I don’t really understand the purpose of. I’ll read the “summary” when it comes out, and let the “thinkers” in the Church act (or not act) on the Synodal Way.
Drinking a six pack and staring at a turned off tv screen is a more valuble way to spend time than participating in the evil enterprise of a synod. Christians are oblighed to resist evil.
If the synod was held to hear the voices of Catholic lay people, then in my opinion, it has failed. Why even hold a synod if only one per cent of Catholics participated? Why is Francis insisting on having these synods, if the vast majority of Catholics express little to no interests? How does he know that the Holy Spirit will guide his synod in any way? To me, these synods are a waste of time, energy and money. I understand that the Vatican is not in good shape, financially. Is the Vatican able to afford these meetings?
Synod’s next step. Cancel all future meetings, give those millions of dollars to the poor and all those involved spend one month in a retreat given by Bishop Strickland entitiled: “Caritas in ecclesia”.
Yours truly humbly proposes that the needed EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of the Synthesis Report actually appears within the report itself! Not to diminish the contents of the report, but first an observation, then the very concise summary, and then a concluding question…
OBSERVATION: Curiously, the table of contents for the Report appears at the end rather than the beginning. The first impression is that this is either a formatting error, or a cross-cultural touch toward Hebrew, or Chinese, or even Egyptian hieroglyphic ways of reading, but no…this is a right-brained effort to place the “concrete” process in front and above of any synoptic or disdained “abstract” perspective.
THE SUMMARY QUOTE: Part III, n. 20—The Synod of Bishops and Ecclesial Assemblies: Convergences (a):
“Even though the experience of ‘walking together’ has been tiring, the Assembly sensed the evangelical joy of being [?] the People of God. The new experiences involved in this stage [?] of the synodal journey were generally welcomed [two thirds?]. The most obvious one included the shift [paradigm shift?] of the celebration of the Synod from an event [!] to a process [!]…”
CONCLUDING QUESTION: Event vs Process? As in “…being [?] the People of God?” Does this wording actually propose/impose, broadly and by subliminal suggestion, that experiences together displace being? That ontological being is subordinate to horizontal becoming? That what we are is reducible to what we do? That to do is the sum total of to be?
So, the process IS the message, “aggregated, compiled, synthesized” by “facilitator” bishops, more or less. AND, this message can be summarized: “Do-be-do-be-do-be-do”! The conceptual ambiguity of convergent synodality! The enabled reduction of pluriformity to pluralism. On this “backwardist” journey, which is not so new, the lay theologian Etienne Gilson reminds us:
“Philosophy always buries its undertakers.”
What’s occurring at the Synod is a circumscribed process that is light years away from the comprehension, or practical relevance to the vast sea of Catholic Christians. Mrs Sharon Whitlock’s comment expresses it well. Nor does a summary inform the reader of the rationale for getting there. That alone speaks to an exercise in futility. Unless there is a rationale to further an agenda.
Certainly this pontificate has an agenda to modernize the Gospel contextually, grounding it in cultural differences, scientific advances, anthropological, biological, philosophical, theological [recently proposed to that effect by pope Francis]. What will result is rote indoctrination of material that is otherwise unintelligible to the average Christian. Nor will the average Christian, or any Christian for that matter be able to identify continuity with the revealed Word of God.
The agenda was provided two millennia ago in the Great Commission.
However, That’s hard work, especially in these times and I suspect few if any Bishops can provide any evidence from their particular diocese of increased Mass attendance; reduced pre/non-marital cohabitation, increased conversions; the end of church closures; increased marriages.
Instead we get vainglorious soliloquys from our “Shepherds”.
Instead of looking to Rome for guidance, the bishops might save time (and sanity) by reading The Catholic Thing, Nov. 17.
Why do these bishops feel obligated to act as stupidly as entertainers?
The Bishops have an obsession with material poverty, to the exclusion of the far more pervasive and destructive moral poverty. On well, another verbose document should help.
Good point, and I believe the reason is because the first is a product of the latter which they refuse to acknowledge since it would implicate their failures.
Getting back, again, to the need to “formulate concrete plans to prepare for the final stage of the Synod on Synodality next fall”…The Synthesis is 41 pages, some 21,000 words, and was tweaked by 1,251 amendments (the devil is in the details). The term “LGBTQ+” is deleted. Deleted also is a permanent and content-free synod. The Magisterium is noted ten times rather than four in the draft report (but now whose magisterium?).
One simplifying way of preparing for 2024 might be to focus on the trees rather than the forest. That is, where are the unblended drops of cyanide in the punch bowl?
Two such possibilities:
The proposed “[16 (p)]…ministry of listening and accompaniment,” as potentially eclipsing the guardianship of the Deposit of Faith? And, “[12 (h)] Further reflection is needed on the relationship between episcopal collegiality and diversity of theological and pastoral views,” as possibly contradicting the clarity supplied in Veritatis Splendor, including “The Church [as in ‘episcopal collegiality’] is no way the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (n. 95).
Further, regarding the forced dichotomy (though much amended in the Synthesis) between progressive synodality and what is conservative, reflection reveals that there is no such thing as “conservatism” as a movement, per se, as if to counter the many historical movements of progressivism… Instead, a grounding in the fact of creation by a Creator. That is, the mystery and radical fact of “existence” (the is-ness of things) before “essence” (the thing-ness of things). With Leibniz, too, “why is there something rather than nothing”! Being above becoming, reality before ideas…
Of this conservative VISION, which should pervade any activism and even synodality, yours truly blatantly inserts, here, the vision of an unapologetic and archconservative layman, Frederich D. Wilhelmson (“Citizen of Rome: Reflections from the Life of a Roman Catholic” 1980):
“I repeat the thesis: we conservatives cannot cure the modern world: we do not hold the power, nor is it likely to pass into our hands. But if liberals–and they are in the saddle almost all over the West–will make the descent into the maelstrom of the modern soul, they will find in conservatism a diagnosis of the disease of our time. We conservatives have lost our kings and our chivalry; our craftsmen are gone, and our peasantry is fast disappearing. Our horses have been shot from under us. We have nothing to offer the world but our VISION.” Not a program at all, but a vision! The pre-modern and again awaited sacral nature of creation and of all of reality.
Does our synodal response to the “signs of the times” discount or even reject—or embrace—this broader and deeper and conservative (so-called backwardist?) “vision” …Wilhelmsen’s “rhythm [!] of being and becoming” [both]?
The exercise on discernment offers a constructive road map. “The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience” – Mahatma Gandhi