Religion & Law

The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture is putting together its annual Fall Conference.  This year's theme is "The Summons of Freedom:  Virtue, Sacrifice, and the Common Good."  Here (Download Center CFP) is the call for papers.  And here is a bit taken from the call:

Thus I am delighted to write to you today in order, first of all, to announce the theme for the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture?s 10^th annual fall conference: The Summons of Freedom: Virtue, Sacrifice, and the Common Good. The conference will take place November 12-14, 2009, here at the University of Notre Dame.

Final confirmation of the relevance of this conference theme came when we reflected once again upon the remarks made on the South Lawn of the White House by Pope Benedict XVI during his apostolic visit to the United States last April. In those remarks the Holy Father said:

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience?almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one?s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate.

Here the Holy Father makes clear certain connections that are of utmost importance not only to us Americans, but also to anyone trying to sort through the enormous moral and political complexities of our dizzyingly globalized world. Pope Benedict underscores that freedom is both gift and summons, a call toward a particular ?cultivation? or cultural formation in the virtues, virtues that always demand sacrifice?and sometimes even the total sacrifice of one?s life?for the sake of common goods higher than the merely private goods of the self. Earlier in his remarks the Holy Father had emphasized that ?the great intellectual and moral resolve? that, in America, ended slavery and brought into being the civil rights movement, took religious belief as a ?constant inspiration and driving force,? thus reminding us of Christianity?s role as the true preserver and defender of human freedom. In saying this, the pope invoked his revered predecessor, John Paul II, who tirelessly preached that ?in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation.?

 

In taking up the theme, The Summons of Freedom: Virtue, Sacrifice, and the Common Good, our 10^th annual fall conference will reflect upon political and legal questions having to do with the very nature of the political common good, the particular conflicts that arise in trying to achieve it, and the precarious situation of freedom in the democracies of advanced modernity. But we will also welcome inquiries into social structures other than political ones?such as the arts?in which the virtues may flourish, or which are designed in such a way so as to choke off the development of genuine virtue in favor of ersatz versions. Particular focus will be placed on the analogous forms of virtuous self-discipline and sacrifice required to sustain the human network of common goods.