First Things RSS Feed - John M. Grondelski

Free Exercise, Penance, and Delaware Court

Tue, 09 Feb 2016 13:15:00 -0500

Regular First Things readers know that the late Father Richard John Neuhaus never tired of arguing that the First Amendment contains not two religion clauses but one: “no establishment” and “free exercise” are not two free-floating provisions at occasional loggerheads with each other but one. Congress is banned from establishing a religion in order to foster the free exercise of religion. Neuhaus insisted that the muddle of First Amendment jurisprudence in which the Supreme Court often finds itself is in no small measure owing to its own separation (and contraposition) of “no establishment” and “free exercise.”

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On Posner's Wards

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Richard Posner, a judge of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in a New York Times op-ed co-authored December 2 with Law Professor Eric Segall, takes Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to task for threatening America with a “majoritarian theocracy” because of his repeated dissents, since Lawrence v. Texas, against the expansion of homosexual “rights” as a matter of Constitutional solicitude. Posner’s adherence to the opposite position in these cases, with the zeal of an “evolved” convert, has been prominently on display . The pair attack Scalia for supposedly suggesting that “the Constitution cannot override the religious beliefs of many American citizens.” Scalia’s concern for religious liberty, Posner and Segall opine, would “imply . . . that religious majorities are special wards of the Constitution.”

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Why Some Refuse Even to Anesthetize the Unborn

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 12:00:00 -0400

Can we ever achieve consensus on divisive social issues? The just-concluded session of the Montana Legislature sent Governor Steve Bullock the “Montana Unborn Child Pain and Suffering Prevention Act” (HB 479), which would have set the anesthetization of any unborn child twenty weeks gestation or older prior to abortion as standard policy. State Representative Albert Olszewski, who introduced the bill, is himself pro-life, but he presented the bill as a possible consensus measure: if a fetus is a sentient biological being and might be able to experience pain, shouldn’t we do what we can to alleviate that potential pain? Wouldn’t taking the measure of anesthetizing a five month old or older fetus prior to abortion say something at least about our humanity, if not his ?

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An International Problem

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Threats to religious liberty in recent months in the United States—forcing employers to buy abortifacients, compelling professionals and tradesmen like photographers and bakers to apply their talents to support “same-sex marriage”—have perhaps diverted Americans’ focus from similar assaults on religious liberty abroad. Two recent episodes in Poland, however, merit attention.

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Barring Clergy at the Boston Bombing

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

“American Piet ” is considered one of the iconic photographs of 9/11. You’ve seen it: the photo depicts five men , amid the dust and rubble that enveloped the World Trade Center that day, carrying the dead body of Fr. Mychal Judge out of the ruins. Judge, a Franciscan priest and Fire Department of New York chaplain who had rushed to the scene of the terrorist attacks to administer the last sacraments to the dying, was killed as the building collapsed. People instinctively recognize that at life-and-death moments like this, a clergyman ought to be there. There are no atheists in foxholes.

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The Right Double Negative

Fri, 01 Aug 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Margaret Simon, my sixth grade English teacher and grammar martinet, would have been shocked by this book’s title: What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide . Back in 1970 I learned, under pain of death, never to use a double negative. But that was thirty-some years ago. Today, Miss Simon might be shocked by an even greater claim: that such basic moral principles as the Decalogue itself are believed, by many of the West’s most vocal elites, to be unknowable.

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