Ruth Graham flags a funny problem in the essay that Matthew Cantirino shared yesterday: Originality has never been more valued in wedding ceremonies, and never harder to produce.

She and her fiance, “like just about every other betrothed couple in America . . . wanted our wedding to be ‘personal.’” But “the aesthetics of such a wedding . . . are practically set in stone: indie pop music, mason jars, white Christmas lights, wildflowers. And poetry.”

By the time of her wedding, she came to realize that there is no such thing as an entirely original wedding ceremony: “marriage means stepping into an ancient institution marked by hundreds of temporal particulars,” so your wedding’s dearth of originality is no shortcoming.

One blessing of getting married in the Catholic Church is this unoriginality. Besides sparing the bride and groom the burden of originality—writing their own vows, playing good but not overused music, finding meaningful yet not excessively obscure readings—the Catholic rite of marriage reminds the couple of a truth easily forgotten: Your wedding (like your marriage) is not only about you.

That the Rite of Marriage takes place the middle of the nuptial Mass, embedded between Scripture readings and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, is no mistake. It situates the marriage in what is, for Catholics, its broader context: its divine origin and graces, its connection to the community, its symbolism of the covenant between God and man.

But perhaps the most counter-cultural aspect of the ceremony (since, after all, most couples find some divine or transcendental meaning in marriage) is its mention of children. During the vows, couples are asked: “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?” In saying yes, the bride and groom agree together to found a new Ecclesia domestica, the domestic Church that is the family. But even that new family is not a unit unto itself; it is part of a whole community, as the community’s presence at the wedding attests.

The nuptial Mass, then, is suffused with meaning, which deepens over time as the couple matures in their marriage, settles in a community, and (God-willing) has children. Personal weddings can be nice, but I’ll take this unoriginality any day.

Commonweal has a triple feature on Thomas Nagel’s much-discussed Mind and Cosmos with contributions from philosopher Gary Gutting, biologist Kenneth R. Miller, and physicist (and First Things advisory council member) Stephen M. Barr. Here’s an excerpt from Barr’s essay:

While Nagel rejects “psychophysical reductionism,” and believes mind to be as fundamental as matter, he rejects any form of mind-matter dualism. “Outright dualism,” he says, “would abandon the hope for an integrated explanation . . . and would imply that biology has no responsibility at all for the existence of minds.”

Instead, matter and mind must be seen as parts of “a single natural order that unifies everything on the basis of a set of common elements and principles.” In his view, the evidence “favors some form of neutral monism”—the idea that there is really just one basic stuff in nature, which has both physical and mental aspects.

Nagel may be right to reject dualism, but his reasons for doing so seem weak to me.

The article is only available to non-subscribers for three days.

The jury has found Kermit Gosnell guilty on three charges of first-degree murder of babies, according to reporter J. D. Mullane, and not guilty of a fourth murder charge. (Details on those murder charges here.) Judge Jeffrey Minehart had earlier dismissed three other first-degree murder charges against Gosnell.

Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of patient Karnamaya Mongar and convicted of numerous lesser charges, including multiple counts of violating Pennsylvania’s informed consent law and twenty-one counts of abortion of unborn babies over twenty-four weeks gestation.

The verdict follows ten days of deliberations and roughly six weeks of courtroom testimony about the more than two hundred criminal charges against him.

According to background information from LifeNews, Gosnell could face the death penalty, which prosecutors are pursuing when a second jury is impaneled “to determine sentencing under the penalty phase of the trial.” Update: reports vary about whether the same jury will reconvene to decide the sentence or whether a new jury will be impaneled. Either way, the sentencing phase will begin next Tuesday, May 21.

At minimum, according to Fox News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, Gosnell will receive three life sentences to jail. Robert George last month urged pro-lifers to request that Gosnell’s life be spared in the event of his conviction.

The courtroom today was packed, according to journalist Steve Volk, in contrast to the earlier stages of the trial when few media outlets sent reporters. Volk added that Gosnell heard the verdict passively, while one prosecutor reportedly sobbed.

Gosnell’s defense attorney, according to CNN, claimed in his closing argument that “none of the infants was killed; rather . . . they were already dead as a result of Gosnell administering the drug Digoxin, which can cause abortion.”

Co-defendant Eileen O’Neill, who worked with Gosnell, was found guilty of conspiracy and theft by deception but not guilty of five other charges. Prosecutors said she “deceived patients and insurance companies by pretending to be a licensed physician and billing for those services.”

NBC reports that the twelve jury members, seven women and five men, all “said they were either pro-choice or had no opinion” about abortion. Following the verdict, J. D. Mullane reports, Gosnell attorney Jack McMahon asked that all jurors be polled; each affirmed the verdict “in [a] strong voice.”

While the prosecution had more than fifty witnesses testify, Gosnell himself never took the stand during the arguments, and McMahon “did not call either fact or character witnesses for his client.” Afterwards McMahon told reporters, “We had a chance to put out our issues, and a jury has spoken, and we respect that verdict.”

During the trial McMahon had said to jurors, “abortion—as is any surgical procedure—isn’t pretty. It’s bloody. It’s real. But you have to transcend that.”

Lengthy coverage of the trial and courtroom arguments is available from the Associated Press here.

While pro-life activists can be grateful for the conviction of Kermit Gosnell, some abortion clinics with similarly disturbing records remain fully operational.

The Journal of Medical Ethics sparked a firestorm last February when it ran the article “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” They have now devoted an entire issue, much of it open-access, to that topic. Many of its contributors will be familiar names to readers of First Things.

Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, authors of the original article, clarify their views. The pro-abortion Jeff McMahan explores the absurdities of much abortion-related legislation and the considerations that surround killing babies (born or unborn) and animals. Regina A. Rini, meanwhile, finds Giubilini and Minerva’s arguments incoherent and proposes a new framework that permits abortion but rejects infanticide.

On the pro-life side, John Finnis refutes the arguments that humans do not acquire rights until becoming conscious of themselves and that unconscious human beings cannot be harmed, and Francis J. Beckwith contests the claims that babies are merely potential persons and that the burdensomeness of a new life is morally relevant.

Charles Camosy acknowledges the similarity between unborn and newborn infants—a key point of Giubilini and Minerva’s view—but rejects the conclusion that neither group possesses a right to life. Robert P. George and Camosy then dispute whether proposing infanticide constitutes moral madness. View the whole issue here.

A recent inquiry from a college instructor in search of philosophical arguments on the morality of abortion inspired us to compile the below list of resources, which, though far from comprehensive, may be of use to pro-lifers. I’ve sorted the list by type of resource.

Free online articles:

• “Equal Rights, Unequal Wrongs” by Christopher Kaczor (First Things, August/September 2011)
• “Embryology: Inconvenient Facts” by William L. Saunders, Jr. (First Things, December 2004)
• “Dualistic Delusions” by Patrick Lee and Robert P. George (First Things, February 2005)
• “Embodied Equality: Debunking Equal Protection Arguments for Abortion Rights” (PDF via SSRN) by Erika Bachiochi (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 34, No. 3, Summer 2011)
• “Acorns and Embryos” by Robert P. George and Patrick Lee (The New Atlantis, No. 7, Fall 2004/Winter 2005)
• “Suffer the Violinist: Why the Pro-Abortion Argument from Bodily Autonomy Fails” (PDF) by Richard J. Poupard (Christian Research Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 , 2007)
• “The Wrong of Abortion” (PDF) by Patrick Lee and Robert P. George (from Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, edited by Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Wellman, Blackwell Publishers, 2005)
• “Why Abortion Is Immoral” (PDF) by Don Marquis (Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 86, April 1989)
• “Human Personhood Begins at Conception” by Peter Kreeft (originally published by the Castello Institute as a Medical Ethics Policy Monograph, 1997)
• “I Was Once a Fetus: An Identity-Based Argument Against Abortion” by Alexander R. Pruss

Books:

• Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice by Francis J. Beckwith (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf (Crossway, 2009)
• Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (second edition) by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (The Witherspoon Institute, 2011)
• The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice by Christopher Kaczor (Routledge, 2010)
• Abortion & Unborn Human Life (second edition) by Patrick Lee (Catholic University of America Press, 2010)

Scholarly articles (limited access):

• “The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion: A Reply to Judith Thomson” by John Finnis (Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2, Winter 1973)
• “Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist” by Francis J. Beckwith (International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, March 1992)

You can find more helpful resources on the blog Pro-Life Philosophy, on the blog of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, and on this page compiled by Princeton Pro-Life, all of which I used in putting together this post. And many of the people cited above have written other books or articles on abortion that I omitted here for the sake of space. Feel free to provide more suggestions in the comment box.

An art restorer at the Vatican has discovered what may be the first Western painting of Native Americans, hidden under grime in a fresco finished in 1494.

The painting is Pinturicchio’s “Christ’s Resurrection,” and the newly uncovered figures—“nude men, who are decorated with feathers and seem to be dancing”—appear in the background of the scene. Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums, says they seem to be based on Columbus’ account of his first trip to the New World. More details are available in the Telegraph.

h/t The Dish

Rorandelli Rocco for The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal ran a nice feature this weekend on the Clericus Cup, ”a [soccer] tournament that pits squads from 16 seminaries against each other in a battle for [Rome's] Catholic sports bragging rights—with the utmost humility, of course.”

The North American Martyrs—the team of American seminarians and priests from the Pontifical North American College—are the defending champions. Seminary rector Monsignor James Checchio explains that the squad took that name back in the 1980s because “we lost every game. But now, we’re winners, as the martyrs are.”

I suspect, though the Journal article doesn’t mention this, that the team name is also intended to recall the group of saints collectively known as the North American Martyrs (the most famous of whom is St. Isaac Jogues). From Fordham University’s capsule explanation:

The North American Martyrs were eight Jesuit missionaries commissioned to work among the Huron Native Americans during the mid-17th century.

By the late 1640’s, these brave missionaries were making progress in their labors with the Huron and they were said to have made thousands of converts during this time. Nevertheless, within Huron communities, these men of faith were not universally trusted. . . .

Between the years of 1642 and 1649, eight members of the Society of Jesus were killed in North America, after extreme torture by members of the Huron and Iroquois tribes.

We’ve already voiced concerns about the Obama administration’s use of drones and its dubious claims about the program. Last week, classified intelligence reports obtained by McClatchy belied the administration’s repeated assertions that drones rarely kill civilians, that they are only aimed at terrorists who pose an imminent threat to the U.S., and that they identify intended targets accurately.

As Micah Zenko (an expert quoted in the McClatchy story) notes at Foreign Policy, these revelations drastically undermine the legal justification for the program:

It is the most important reporting on U.S. drone strikes to date because [reporter Jonathan S.] Landay, using U.S. government assessments, plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama and his senior aides—that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and affiliates of al Qaeda who pose an imminent threat of attack on the U.S. homeland—is false.

Senior officials and agencies have emphasized this point over and over because it is essential to the legal foundations on which the strikes are ultimately based: the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and the U.N. Charter’s right to self-defense.

That the government is targeting people who may or may not be terrorists (and may or may not pose any threat to the U.S.) along with any nearby civilians also complicates efforts to defend the drone program under principles of just war such as discrimination of targets, proportionality, and military necessity.

Remember, New Yorkers, David Mills will be speaking at the C. S. Lewis Society tonight:

Many pro-lifers have noted mainstream news outlets’ refusal to cover the ongoing trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Today, that observation made USA Today’s op-ed page, as Kirsten Powers writes:

A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press  meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.

The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial’s first day. They’ve been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.

Let me state the obvious. This should be front page news.

She’s absolutely right, of course. But the solution for pro-life activists is not merely to complain about lack of coverage, or to share what little coverage there is, or to establish their own media outlets, however necessary all those things are. The solution is to get a job (or encourage your kids or your students to get a job) inside the mainstream media.

To be sure, working for a mainstream outlet comes with many constraints: You’ll probably be a reporter or editor rather than a columnist or editorial writer, meaning that you will not have complete independence in what topics you cover. You may be uncomfortable sharing your views with colleagues, given that journalists are more liberal than the average American.

And if you were writing a news story about abortion for a mainstream outlet, you would not be able to state forthrightly “abortion is evil.” But if there’s no pro-life journalist in the newsroom to argue that some under-reported event—the March for Life, the Kermit Gosnell trial, whatever—deserves coverage, there may not be a story at all.

The horrors continue to emerge from the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. One baby, who was likely full term, screamed after being delivered during an attempted abortion. Some women delivered their children into toilets; snipping the necks of these infants was, according to one employee, “standard procedure.”

How could Gosnell and his employees do such things? One woman explained that she called the babies “specimens,” since “it was easier to deal with mentally.” Another pleaded the Nuremberg defense, telling the jury, “I only do what I’m told to do. What I was told to do was snip their neck.”

And how did Gosnell’s clinic, which opened in 1979, get away with its crimes for so long? Because, according to the 2011 grand jury report, “the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided [in the early 1990s], for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all.” Under a new pro-choice governor, “officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions.” Though direct complaints were still supposed to be investigated, the many complaints about Gosnell were not.

As the same report points out, “even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety.” And so the tragedies and absurdities of our pro-choice regime were allowed to multiply.

When Brandon Ambrosino told his English professor at Liberty University, a conservative Christian college, that he was gay, he was surprised by her reaction:

“I love you,” she said. I stopped crying for a second and looked up at her. Here was this conservative, pro-life, pro-marriage woman who taught lectures like “The Biblical Basis for Studying Literature,” and here she was kneeling down on the floor next me, rubbing my back, and going against every stereotype I’d held about Bible-believing, right-leaning, gun-slinging Christians. . . .

When people find out I underwent therapy at Jerry Falwell’s Christian college, they assume I went through something like gay reparative therapy. But that isn’t what happened. I saw two counselors at Liberty—Dr. Reeves also had me meet with Ryan, one of his grad students, once a week—and neither of them ever expressed an interest in “curing” me. Did they have an agenda? Yes. Their goal, which they were very honest about, was to help me to like myself, and to find peace with the real Brandon.

Contrast this with the experience of “Chris,” a practicing Catholic who was attracted to other men and wanted to live chastely. He received little help from his secular college:

Like many schools, Chris’ university has an LGBTQA center (an official office supporting “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and allied” students). Had he been seeking advice on how to embrace his same-sex attractions, perform sexually as a gay man, or develop a romantic homosexual relationship, he would have been welcomed. Wanting instead help to live chastely, he found nothing. Worse than nothing, he found rejection. . . .

When he asked [the psychologist at the college's health center] for a referral to see a Catholic therapist, she all but called him crazy for refusing to give in to his nature as homosexual. In the end, his university health insurance wouldn’t cover all the cost of an outside therapist, and he obviously couldn’t turn to his parents.

At Liberty University, a gay student found love and support. At one secular college, a gay student could find that support only if he rejected traditional Christian teaching. In some instances, it seems, secular tolerance is no replacement for Christian love.

The New York C. S. Lewis Society will host our own David Mills for a lecture on the great Inkling next week here in Manhattan:

“A Writer Looks at How Lewis Wrote So Well”

Friday, April 12
7:30 p.m.
The Parish House of The Church of the Ascension
12 West 11th St, New York, NY

Details here.

Hanna Rosin argued in the Atlantic last fall that the hook-up culture, far from harming women, is actually “an engine of female progress.” Some of the research she used to make that argument, however, does not support her thesis.

The standard analysis of the hook-up culture says (in Rosin’s words) that the sexual revolution “liberated men to act as cads” and “left [women] even more vulnerable and exploited than before.” But this analysis “downplays the unbelievable gains women have lately made” and “forgets how much those gains depend on sexual liberation”:

Single young women in their sexual prime . . . are for the first time in history more success­ful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money. What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture.

In a paper delivered at a Boston University School of Law conference on Rosin’s book The End of Men, from which the Atlantic article was excerpted, law professor Katharine K. Baker contests Rosin’s interpretation of the research she cites and comes to very different conclusions about the hook-up culture. From her abstract:

(more…)

Russell Moore argues on his blog that Christians should take the time to read fiction:

The Bible doesn’t simply address man as a cognitive process but as a complex image-bearer who recognizes truth not only through categorizing syllogisms but through imagination, beauty, wonder, awe. Fiction helps to shape and hone what Russell Kirk called the moral imagination.

He continues:

My friend David Mills, now executive editor at First Things, wrote a brilliant article in Touchstone several years ago about the role of stories in shaping the moral imagination of children. As he pointed out, moral instruction is not simply about knowing factually what’s right and wrong (though that’s part of it); it’s about learning to feel affection toward certain virtues and revulsion toward others. A child learns to sympathize with the heroism of Jack the Giant Killer, to be repelled by the cruelty of Cinderella’s sisters and so on.

The article to which Moore refers appeared in Touchstone’s July/August 2009 issue, and it’s available on their website. In the essay, David Mills delves into several works of young adult fiction to examine the flawed lessons they convey and the cramped vision their authors present. While reflecting on those shortcomings, however, he also has more positive insights about how books can shape us. Read the whole thing here.

Ever wanted to discuss the articles that appear in First Things with other readers of the magazine? Looking for people in your area who share your interest in religion and public life? If so, we encourage you to check out our ROFTERS page.

ROFTERS are “Readers Of First Things” who wish to convene discussion circles based on the magazine. The groups are entirely independent and self-organized, and it is up to the convener to determine where and how often the group meets. The newest fledgling group is in the East Valley of Phoenix; other locations include thirty-some states, Canada, Spain, and the U.K.

If you would like to join a ROFTERS group, please contact the organizers. If you would like to start a branch in your area, or if you need to update or remove your group information, please contact us at ft@firstthings.com. We’re grateful for your support!

Since Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., became Pope Francis earlier this week, accusations have been flying about how and whether he collaborated with the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The Guardian and the Associated Press provide overviews of the accusations. 

I’m no expert on Argentine history, but a few factors seem to weigh in the pope’s favor. From another A.P. story, one prominent accusation against Bergoglio is undermined by facts that emerged just a few years ago:

One [human rights case] examined the torture of two of [Bergoglio's] Jesuit priests — Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics — who were kidnapped in 1976 from the slums where they advocated liberation theology, which is the belief that Jesus Christ’s teachings justify fights against social injustices.

Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work. Jalics refused to discuss it after moving into seclusion in a German monastery.

Both men were freed after Bergoglio took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them, including persuading dictator Jorge Videla’s family priest to call in sick so that Bergoglio could say Mass in the junta leader’s home, where he privately appealed for mercy. His intervention likely saved their lives, but Bergoglio never shared the details until [Sergio] Rubin interviewed him for the 2010 biography.

Bergoglio told Rubin that he regularly hid people on church property during the dictatorship, and once gave his identity papers to a man with similar features, enabling him to escape across the border.

Second, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Argentine activist Adolfo Perez Esquivel—who, as an active opponent of the dictatorship, would have little reason to defend someone who aided it—has told multiple news outlets that Bergoglio “had no ties” with the dictatorship. In an interview with Reuters, he said:

“What Bergoglio tried to do was help where he could,” said Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for defending human rights during the dictatorship.

“It’s true that he didn’t do what very few bishops did in terms of defending the human rights cause, but it’s not right to accuse him of being an accomplice,” Perez Esquivel told Reuters. “Bergoglio never turned anyone in, neither was he an accomplice of the dictatorship.”

Third, a 2011 Guardian column by Hugh O’Shaughnessy that accused Bergoglio and the Church in Argentina of collaborating with the dictatorship (and began circulating in the wake of Bergoglio’s election) has been revised this week to delete the most damning accusation it contained. The attack on Bergoglio was so baseless that the Guardian had to backtrack completely with this correction at the end of the column (emphasis mine):

In the flood of today’s news reports and blog posts on the new pope, I enjoyed these two articles on a couple of this papacy’s big “firsts.” At the Chronicle of Higher Education, historian Philip Jenkins gives some background on Pope Francis’ native country and the situation of the Church there:

The more we examine Argentina, the more perfect Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio seems as a choice, even for the more conservative Europeans. If we imagine an Italian cardinal grumbling at being forced to look overseas for a pope, it quickly becomes clear why an Argentine would be the most attractive choice. While North Americans tend to lump Latin American countries together, Argentina is in fact distinctive.

It is by far the most European nation on its continent, and specifically the most Italian. People of Italian heritage represent a large proportion of its population, and in the late 19th century it was the favored destination of those Italian migrants who did not head to the United States. . . .

Additionally, the Argentine church faces problems that are immediately recognizable from Rome or Madrid. While the country has small Pentecostal and evangelical minorities, they are nowhere near as strong as in neighboring Brazil or Chile. Instead, the greatest challenge comes from secularism; perhaps 15 percent declare themselves nonreligious, and the great majority of self-declared Catholics practice the faith minimally, if at all. Many notional Catholics spurn the church’s attempts to intervene in the public realm.

And on CNN’s Belief Blog, Fr. James Martin, S.J., reflects on what it means to have a Jesuit pope. After mentioning Pope Francis’ spiritual formation, lengthy training, and vow of poverty, Fr. Martin makes these two points:

Jesuits are asked to be, in St. Ignatius’ Spanish tongue, disponible: available, open, free, ready to go anywhere.  The Jesuit ideal is to be free enough to go where God wants you to, from the favela in Latin America to the Papal Palace in Vatican City. We are also, likewise, to be “indifferent”; that is, free enough to flourish in either place;  to do anything at all that is ad majorem Dei gloriam, for the greater glory of God.

[And] we are not supposed to be “climbers.”  Now here’s a terrific irony.  When Jesuit priests and brothers complete their training, they make vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and a special vow to the pope “with regard to missions”; that is, with regard to places the pope wishes to send us.  But we also make an unusual promise, alone among religious orders as far as I know, not to “strive or ambition” for high office.

St. Ignatius was appalled by the clerical climbing that he saw around him in the late Renaissance, so he required us to make that unique promise against “climbing.” Sometimes, the pope will ask a Jesuit, as he did with Jorge Bergoglio, to assume the role of bishop or archbishop.  But this is not the norm.  Now, however, a Jesuit who had once promised not to “strive or ambition” for high office holds the highest office in the church.

We’re still reading up on the new Holy Father, but for now, here’s a bit to get you started:

Catholic Culture has an informative story on today’s events, and Thomas L. McDonald is rounding up news and reactions as they arrive. CBS and other outlets have published the full text of Pope Francis’ brief speech. Zenit reports that the new pope has already spoken with his predecessor and will meet with journalists on Saturday.

CNN confirmed with a Vatican spokesman that “the new pope took the name Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi because he is a lover of the poor” and the new pope should be known as Pope Francis, not Pope Francis I.” CNN also quotes reporter John Allen as calling the choice of name “stunning” and “precedent-shattering.” Rocco Palmo states that when Bergoglio was made a cardinal in 2001, he “urged Argentinians not to come [to Rome for the ceremony], but donate the money they’d spend to the poor.”

John Allen’s recent article and a 2002 profile by Sandro Magister detail Pope Francis’ personal simplicity, and his Wikipedia page fills in some more biographical details. He is the author of several books and the subject of a biography called El Jesuita (The Jesuit), but if Amazon is any guide, none of those are available in English. The Associated Press quotes the biographer Sergio Rubin in its story, however, and Our Sunday Visitor has announced plans to publish an English-language biography of Pope Francis by Matthew Bunson called The New Pope.

Zenit has covered some of Pope Francis’ writings and actions as a cardinal: his 2010 letter to catechists, his 2007 celebration of Rosh Hashana, his defense of traditional marriage, and his take on bishops’ call to holiness. Dawn Eden quotes his 2001 meditation on divine mercy, and one blogger has translated some of the then-cardinal’s homilies and talks (such this year’s Lenten letter, plus 2008’s Palm Sunday and Easter Vigil homilies). Life News calls him a “staunch pro-life advocate,” citing a strongly worded 2007 speech on the subject.

George Weigel told NBC News that the new pope is “a very brave man”:

“He will be a great defender of religion around the world.”

“The papacy has moved to the New World. The church has a new pope with a new name,” he added. “I think it speaks to the church’s commitment to the poor of the world and compassion in a world that often needs a lot of healing.”

Olga Khazan of The Atlantic says “the humble, compassionate Bergoglio could be the right man for the job.” John Haldane shares his thoughts in “A New Pope for a New Chapter in an Old Story,” and Ross Douthat shares his on his New York Times blog.

Finally, Pope Francis’ episcopal motto was “miserando atque eligendo” (lowly and yet chosen)—which sounds like the feeling he must have as he ascends to the papacy.

h/t Jeffrey Pinyan, @eleysium, Michael Cecire, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and FOCUS

Patrick Deneen argued in our January issue that “the very source of the decline of the study of the great books comes not in spite of the lessons of the great books, but is to be found in the very arguments within a number of the great books.”

He also voiced skepticism of the claim that a great books curriculum imparts “not merely a way of thinking but a particular and substantive set of conclusions [about liberty and human dignity, for example] that makes the teaching of these texts essential and necessary.” Not all works categorized as “great” lead to such a desirable worldview; rather, they contradict each other, and some even attack the notion that reading the great books is worthwhile in the first place.

Several readers (whose letters we published in the March issue) objected to Deneen’s characterization. They pointed out that disagreements about the good life have always been with us; the great books are less a storehouse of knowledge than a locus of debate. That they contradict each other is a feature, not a bug. Robert Woods presents the same objection to Deneen at The Imaginative Conservative, arguing that ”the problem of contradictions and opposing worldviews ought not to trouble us.”

As it happens, Deneen has addressed such objections at some length in an earlier criticism of the great books published by Minding the Campus. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for students to encounter “a ferocious and ongoing set of disagreements about the most basic human beliefs,” but the way the great books are typically presented  is not neutral and not likely to lead students to the truths that most conservatives seek to impart: (more…)

“For viciousness of rhetoric and physical treatment of other human beings, few ages rival the early modern period,” writes our friend Nathaniel Peters on the Liberty Law blog. “In the midst of that age’s battles, Hugo Grotius, the Dutch humanist whose writings have greatly contributed to international law, sought to determine and argue for the core principles of Christianity on which all parties could agree.”

Reviewing a new edition of Grotius’ book The Truth of the Christian Religion, Peters explores Grotius’ proofs of God’s existence, eternality, omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness, as well as his defense of Christianity as the one true faith. He also gives an overview of Swiss theologian Jean Le Clerc’s supplement to Grotius’ work. Le Clerc argued that the principle of sola Scriptura would put an end to controversy and division among Christians—a prediction both proven and disproven by subsequent events, as Peters explains.

In his view, the book is “more than a marker in the history of Christian thought.” Rather:

It serves as a mirror in which to see our own society in light of the past. Indeed, it reminds us that portions of our society really are the anomaly when it comes to belief in a creator and basic principles of natural law. It tells us how we got to our own polarized age, and helps us see what the way back might be.

Read the rest here.

Cologne, Historisches Archiv, G.B. quarto, 249, fol. 68r

One more reason to dislike cats. Thijs Porck on the Medieval Fragments blog explains the scene:

 A Deventer scribe, writing around 1420, found his manuscript ruined by a urine stain left there by a cat the night before. He was forced to leave the rest of the page empty, drew a picture of a cat and cursed the creature with the following words:

Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt.

Or, in English: “Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.”

David Bentley Hart’s column “Is, Ought, and Nature’s Laws,” which appeared in our March issue, has sparked quite the online conversation over the past couple weeks. I’ve collected some responses and related posts for those interested in following along; if you know of any that I’ve missed, feel free to leave them in the comments.

National Review’s Michael Potemra says he found the article as “something like a drenching with ice-water.”

At the American Conservative, Rod Dreher applies Hart’s analysis to the same-sex marriage debate, Alan Jacobs ponders what we should do when natural law arguments fail to persuade our interlocutors, and Noah Millman asks what’s natural about natural law.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry chimes in at the American Scene pointing out that while society’s rejection of the natural law is a problem for religious people, it’s a much larger problem for the secular Enlightenment project.

Finally, in a two part feature on Public Discourse, R. J. Snell argues that Hart and Potemra misunderstand natural law and concludes that natural law is neither useless nor dangerous.

Sociologist Neil Gilbert argues that (in Sandra Tsing Loh’s Atlantic paraphrase) “financial need is not the force behind women’s shift in the past 50 years from work in the home to work in the market-place.” Rather, the driving force is “the desires of those who have made out like bandits in this new order, the tiny minority (3.5 percent in 2003) of women who earn $75,000 or more.” Loh continues:

Members of this occupational elite have created a host of cultural norms by which their far less privileged sisters—who, again, make up the vast majority of working women—feel they must abide. For . . . doctors, lawyers, judges, and professors, work has been terrific, so it’s no wonder they’ve advocated social change, imposing on society between the 1960s and the mid-1990s ‘new expectations about modern life, self-fulfillment, and the joys of work outside the home.’

It reminded me of an earlier but quite similar perspective on the same issue in Sigrid Undset’s 1932 novel Ida Elisabeth. The speaker is the lawyer Herr Toksvold:

There will never be more than a small percentage of either men or women who can create for themselves a field of work which they could not exchange for another without feeling it as a sacrifice. But because a few women have succeeded in making themselves a position which it would be a sacrifice for them to give up if they married, perhaps nine times as many are forced to go out and do a full day’s work as breadwinners, and to do the work of a mother and housekeeper the rest of the twenty-four hours, or as many of them as they can stand on their feet without dying for want of sleep. Because a few females of the middle class have discovered that it is a disgrace to be kept by a man.

I am glad I can work, but employment outside the house does not necessarily provide more dignity and fulfillment than “merely” staying at home and raising one’s kids.

Female pundits may find their work fulfilling, and that’s great. But when we’re cheering women’s rise in the workforce, we should stop acting as though every working woman—waitresses, grocery clerks, retail workers, those making minimum wage at unpleasant jobs—feels quite so optimistic. Most workers do not attain from their job the self-esteem boost and psychological satisfaction that (say) a lawyer or a company executive might. Like most human endeavors, work has its downsides, for women as well as for men.

Responding to my earlier post, Greg Forster writes:

The number of people in the world who are capable of doing a good job running Apple or Exxon or Wal-Mart is extremely small; the consequences of those companies being poorly run would be catastrophic for millions of people; therefore the tiny group of people capable of running those companies well is going to command extreme salaries. This would be true regardless of our economic system, law, policy, or what set of moral values predominated in the culture. . . .

Executive salaries were kept in check during [the post-World War II era] mostly because the executives were much less capable. They weren’t worth paying as much.

I don’t deny that society benefits from having capable CEOs, but the rise in executive pay is due to many factors, not merely to an increase in their productivity or abilities. One such factor is peer benchmarking, which (as the Washington Post explains) started as a way for companies to retain talented executives, but now boosts the pay of just about all executives, regardless of their success:

At Amgen and at the vast majority of large U.S. companies, boards aim to pay their executives at levels equal to or above the median for executives at similar companies.

The idea behind setting executive pay this way, known as “peer benchmarking,” is to keep talented bosses from leaving.

But the practice has long been controversial because, as critics have pointed out, if every company tries to keep up with or exceed the median pay for executives, executive compensation will spiral upward, regardless of performance. Few if any corporate boards consider their executive teams to be below average, so the result has become known as the “Lake Wobegon” effect. . . .

Researchers have found that about 90 percent of major U.S. companies expressly set their executive pay targets at or above the median of their peer group. This creates just the kinds of circumstances that drive pay upward.

The reason board members may be unwilling to stop using peer benchmarking is another factor in CEO pay: board members’ personal relationships with executives. From the same Post article: (more…)