Religion & Law

It's exam-grading season.  And so, I am doing all kinds of interesting things like cleaning out my kids' "art drawer," organizing 10 years' worth of lessons clipped from "Guitar Player" magazine, and . . . going back to my MOJ posts around May 9 of previous years.  

Six years ago, I had these thoughts about the lessons contained in my colleague Vince Rougeau's then-recent paper for the then-hot-topic Catholic Charities case:

If one understands "religion" as being about "personal spirituality", comfort, therapy, and an individual's discrete "personal relationship" with the Divine, then a law requiring entities with health-care plans to include contraceptive coverage in those plans would seem to impose little, if any, significant burdens on the freedom of "religion," so understood. After all, California is not requiring individuals to believe anything in particular, it is not requiring individuals to act in any particular way, and it is not even (directly) requiring individuals to fund conduct that those individuals might, for "personal" religious reasons, find offensive.

Nonetheless, premises grounded in a better, richer understanding of religious freedom push us toward the conclusion that the scope of California's "religious employer" exemption is deeply injurious to the Church's evangelizing and social-justice missions. The exemption decrees to be "secular" activities engaged in by the Church, and by Christians acting together, that represent the Church's efforts to be true to the Great Commission.

Five years ago, Rob. Tom, and I were talking about the Solomon Amendment, state-run law schools, and subsidiarity:

I would regard it as "vital" that we not equate state-run and private institutions, particularly educational institutions.  Subsidiarity, as I understand it (and, I'm sure, as Rob does too), is about more than diffusion and mediation.  Especially when it comes to education, it is -- as Tom's post suggests -- important that the sources of value and formation not all be governments.

To anticipate an objection:  My point is not offered as simply a "government is bad" assertion.  Still, the project of "state control over education" is not an ideologically neutral one, and is not one that we who endorse subsidiarity for reasons rooted in Catholic Social Thought should too quickly embrace.  So, we should, I think, worry more about preserving the independence and distinctiveness of private law schools, even as we also worry, too, about federally imposed homogeneity among government-run schools.

On May 10, 2006 I raised my eyebrows at reports from the United Kingdom that some were questioning the ability of Labour MP Ruth Kelly, a "committed Catholic and member of the Opus Dei group," to enforce that nation's anti-discrimination laws.

Then, in May of 2007, I . . . [Ed.:  For God's sake, Garnett, get back to your exam-reading!]