Law Commons^™

Tradition And Development In The Catholic Church's Teaching On Marriage: A Response To Cardinal Trujillo, John J. Coughlin

Journal Articles

During the twentieth century, the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on the nature of marriage remained fully faithful to ancient tradition and witnessed new developments. In his article, The Nature of Marriage and Its Various Aspects, Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo has afforded a splendid overview of both the timeless and adaptive features of the Church's teaching. In commenting on the article, I have been asked to identify obstacles to the article's reception as well as to suggest possible resolutions. My brief response to His Eminence, Cardinal Trujillo, consists of two parts. First, I suggest that an epistemological issue is …

Cultural Change And "Catholic Lawyers", Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

If there is anything that America definitely does not need, it would seem, it is more lawyers. Over the last thirty years or so, the number of lawyers practicing in the United States has almost tripled to current levels of roughly 900,000 practicing attorneys. To this number, our nation's law schools add another 35,000 attorneys annually. In spite of this, the purpose of this special inaugural law review issue is to commemorate the founding of a new school, the Ave Maria School of Law. It is an honor for me to be able to share in the joy and pride …

"They Are Our Brothers, And Christ Gave His Life For Them": The Catholic Tradition And The Idea Of Human Rights In Latin America, Paolo G. Carozza

Journal Articles

Through the language of human rights, law can both reflect and constitute some of our most basic ideas about the requirements of human dignity and the human desire for freedom. It captures certain culturally embedded understandings about the nature of the human person in society and carries them forward in time through an institutionalized discourse and practice. This is especially so in those legal traditions that have inherited Western law’s historically consistent orientation toward the individual. Law never makes those sorts of claims in a systematically theoretical way, however. Instead, it is a form of praxis, combining theory and practice, …

Divorce And The Catholic Lawyer, John J. Coughlin

Journal Articles

On January 28, 2002, Pope John Paul II focused his annual address to the officials of the Roman Rota on the topic of the indissolubility of marriage. At the conclusion of this theological and canonical analysis, the Holy Father made a few short statements cautioning civil lawyers about divorces cases. The following day, a story in The New York Times carried the headline "John Paul Says Catholic Bar Must Refuse Divorce Cases." The article construed the pope's reference as a blanket prohibition against Catholic lawyers handling divorce cases. It further questioned whether the prohibition contradicted the Pontiff's prior emphasis on …

Catholic Health Care And The Diocesan Bishop, John J. Coughlin

Journal Articles

Over the course of the last decade, the provision of health care in the United States has been undergoing a radical transformation. The days when an insurer, such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield, paid a standard fee to a physician who provided a specified service to an individual patient are passing rapidly. This fee-for-service concept, which characterized American health care from the end of World War II until the 1990s, is being supplanted by a variety of arrangements that fall under the general rubric of "managed care." The fundamental approach of managed care is to provide the patient with …

Catholic Faith And Legal Scholarship, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

The most obvious and the most personally important way in which scholarship reflects faith knows no distinction between Protestants and Catholics. For all of us who are Christians, the life of the scholar is our vocation, our contribution to the building of the Kingdom, our share in the church's mission. We did not just stumble upon this life of scholarship, or choose it because it is interesting, exciting, or fun (though sometimes it is). Rather, we discerned through prayerful reflection upon our gifts, our opportunities, and the needs of our communities that God called us to serve others by striving …

The Catholic Tradition, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

If you stand in the road near one of the on-campus Roman Catholic university law schools in the United States, you can probably see a church spire. You can squint past whatever fire wall or battlement or gothic tower there is on the law building and see the campus church. You can do this at Notre Dame, St. Louis, Creighton, San Francisco, Boston College, and San Diego. If you go inside one of these law buildings, you may find crucifixes, chapels, holy-water fonts, or a statute of Thomas More. But none of these things will tell you what those law …

Natural Law And The Marriage Of Christians, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Traditional Catholic marriage doctrine is under a good deal of pressure these days, and much of the pressure seems to come from canonists. It is not surprising that this should be the case. The ideal of Christian lovers giving themselves to one another irrevocably, and living out their commitment, with God's help, until death has lost none of its attractiveness. But as the canonists reflect on what they are doing, they become increasingly disturbed by their inability to offer a practical way out to people who have signally failed to implement the ideal in their lives.

Nevertheless, it seems to …