Basilica of Saint Peter by Carlo Armanni from Pixabay. Pope Francis envisions human fraternity in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti. This essay explores how “fraternal pluralism” guides the Church’s respect for personal conscience. This teaching reflects aspects of earlier Church history and the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae, and it can be illustrated by examining…
Image by David Vives from Pixabay. American politics have taken increasingly surprising turns in recent years. One of the more surprising of these has been the recovery of a nineteenth-century Catholic political theory known as integralism. Its proponents reject secular governance and free institutions (lower-case “l” liberalism) in favor of “political rule that must order…
“From the Pope’s Hand to Indigenous Lands: Alexander VI in Spanish Imperialism”Matthew P. Cavedon The following is an introduction followed by an adapted excerpt from Matt Cavedon’s new book, “From the Pope’s Hand to Indigenous Lands.” With permission from Brill Academic Publishers, 2023. In 1493, shortly after Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage to…
Image: Church Altar Pews (Pixabay) This article is part of our “Reassessing Democracy: Contemporary Perspectives” series. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. T here is no single Catholic political philosophy. Some intellectuals, like twentieth-century philosopher Heinrich Rommen, have even suggested that “Catholic political philosophy” is a contradiction in terms, given the…
Archbishop Adrian Tync. Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0 This article is part of our “200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh: Law, Religion, and Native American Lands” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Shortly before Thanksgiving 2016, Episcopalian priest John Floberg held up a copy of Pope Alexander VI’s 1493 papal bull Inter…
European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg with Flags by Cédric Puisney (CC BY 2.0). Last year, Dr. Mia Brett wrote on Canopy Forum about the ways in which American law has demonstrated insensitivity to Jewish religious liberty. I found much to criticize in her characterization of Christian involvement in the pro-life movement. But her…
Cloisters of Norwich Cathedral by Arjen Bax (CC BY-SA 2.0). Introduction: Easter with the Easterns? The Christmas season hadn’t even begun when Pope Francis announced a potential change to future Easters: if Eastern Christians unite around a single date for celebrating the holiday, he said, Catholics will adjust their calendars accordingly. This might be mistaken…
Picture by Jez Timms on Unsplash. Meatless Fridays were once one of the most visible markers of Catholic identity. For most of the American faithful, they are now observed only in the special liturgical season of Lent. US bishops should impose it as a weekly matter once again. The pastoral hopes that caused them to…
Bible, Church, Wedding (Pixabay) In the course of calling out anti-Semitism in American law – a very valid concern – Dr. Mia Brett’s recent Canopy Forum article argues that “Christian religious belief is the justification for many civil rights challenges we are seeing now.” Among them? Efforts to ban abortion, which “rest…on Christian religion.” Although legal justifications for prohibiting abortion “might pretend to have…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “The End of Conviction and Possible Beginnings for Criminal Law and Religion” Matthew P. Cavedon Conviction began just about a year ago and is now coming to an end. The premise for this series was that the intersection of criminal law and religion is an interesting, crowded place.…