Catholicism, Rawlsian Political Liberalism, and Reciprocity: Insights from the Travails of Bishop Henry of Calgary

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-475
Author(s):  
John Soroski
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Catholic School ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
Societal Context ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractJohn Rawls contended that an overlapping consensus for “political liberalism” could be found in different ways across the range of comprehensive systems of value in western societies. Three recent conflicts concerning the relationship of church and state in Canada involving the Catholic Bishop of Calgary, Frederick Henry, provide an opportunity to consider Rawls' ideas in a specific societal context. The first of these conflicts — Henry's call for the excommunication of Catholic Prime Minister Paul Martin for legalizing same-sex marriage — suggests that the resources for a Rawlsian overlapping consensus may be difficult to find in Catholicism. The refusal of the Calgary Catholic School Board to obey Henry's order to end the use of gambling related school fund-raising, the second of the Bishop's “travails,” undercuts that conclusion, but the moral emptiness of the vocabulary of cultural liberalism, which the Board deployed in its self-justifications, suggests that too much liberalism might be almost as regrettable as too little. Henry's third travail — a call before the Human Rights Commission to answer charges of “discriminatory public speech” for his public criticisms of homosexuality — suggests the merit of recognizing an alternative to overlapping consensus as the source of Catholic recognition of Rawlsian political liberalism: reciprocity.

Voting Behavior on the United States Courts of Appeals Revisited

1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheldon Goldman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Stepwise Multiple Regression ◽  
Courts Of Appeals ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Appeals Courts ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

In an earlier study of voting behavior of U.S. appeals courts judges, attitudinal patterns were investigated along with an analysis of the relationship of judges' backgrounds to their decisions. In this revisit, the earlier findings were treated as hypotheses and tested with a new case population covering a subsequent and longer time period. In all, 2,115 cases decided nonunanimously were coded on one or more issues. Most cases could be classified under ten broad issue categories which were then utilized for most of the analyses. Although the research design was similar to that of the earlier study, a wider variety of methods was employed including nonparametric and parametric intercorrelations of voting behavior on the ten issues and stepwise multiple regression and partial correla-tion analyses of seven background variables and their relationships to voting behavior on the issues. The principal findings were similar to those found earlier but it was possible to map voting behavior with some-what more precision and to uncover some unexpected relationships such as those concerning the potency of the age variable particularly for voting on political liberalism issues.

The Concept of Property in Rawls’s Property-Owning Democracy

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilo Wesche
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Indirect Effect ◽  
Fair Value ◽  
The Political ◽  
Property Ownership ◽  
Basic Aspect ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractUnderstanding the relationship of democracy and property ownership is one of the most important tasks for contemporary political philosophy. In his concept of property-owning democracy John Rawls explores the thesis that property in productive means has an indirect effect on the formation of true or false beliefs and that unequal ownership of productive capital leads to distorted and deceived convictions. The basic aspect of Rawls’s conception can be captured by the claim that for securing the fair value of the political liberties a widespread dispersal of property in productive resources is required that minimizes the formation of delusions and therefore improves the conditions of deliberative democracy.

Political Constructivism in Rawls's Political Liberalism

1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Liberal Pluralism ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Liberal Societies ◽  
Political Constructivism ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Simpler Method

In Political Liberalism, John Rawls employs a distinctive method of “political constructivism” to establish his well-known principles of justice, arguing that his principles are suited to bridge the ineradicable pluralism of liberal societies and so to ground an “overlapping consensus.” Setting aside the question of whether Rawls's method supports his principles, I argue that he does not adequately defend reliance on this particular method rather than alternatives. If the goal of Rawls's “political” philosophy is to derive principles that are able to overcome liberal pluralism, then another and simpler method should be employed. The “method of convergence” would develop liberal principles directly from the convergence of comprehensive views in existing societies, and so give rise to quite different moral principles.

When Church and State go Abroad

Worldview ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
James A. Scherer
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Third World ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

A number of church activities in the United States and in various Third World nations bring issues involving the separation of Church and State once again to the fore. Certainly any serious inquiry into the relationship of the U.S. Government and American missionary groups abroad—particularly with regard to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—must first consider the historical record. Only after a thorough examination of the inconsistencies and constradictions between theory and practice over the nation's more than two hundred-year history can one hope to assess present policies. This, then, is just such an historical overview.

Public Theology and Interreligious Dialogue

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-312
Author(s):  
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Public Religion ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The article assesses the current intercultural and interreligious situation in Germany after the arrival of a great number of mostly Muslim refugees in 2015. It describes four approaches of interreligious dialogue and further explores the concept of Trinitarian Inclusivism. Among four different ways of defining the relationship between state and religion, the model of ‘Public Religion’ is seen as the most plausible social theoretical counterpart to such Trinitarian Inclusivism. John Rawls’ idea of an overlapping consensus provides the space for constructively exchanging strong religious or nonreligious truth claims in a lively pluralism. Finally, the article pleads for developing a public theology of the religions to contribute to the peacebuilding and reconciliatory task of the religions.

Ding Guangxun: Maintaining the Church

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloë Starr
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Church Leader ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Theological Thought ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Intense Debate

Ding Guangxun (K. H. Ting, 1915–2012) was heralded during his lifetime as the premier church statesman of the PRC era, a figure whose leadership of the authorized Protestant church and its national seminary spanned five decades and whose theological thought guided the church through much of that period. Ding’s theology is highly pragmatic in orientation, and his effect as a church leader was as important as his effect as a theologian. This chapter concentrates on the early writings of Ding Guangxun, from the 1940s and 1950s, to create a base understanding of his theological position in the first years of his ministry as comparator for later developments. The period encompassed intense debate on the relationship of church and state and includes Ding’s difficult debates with the staunchly separatist church leader Wang Mingdao—debate that precipitated the split of the Chinese Protestant church and whose ramifications are still ever-present.

The Economics of Ruler-Cult in Anglo-Saxon Law

1965 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
William A. Chaney
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
World View ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Status ◽  
Early English ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Religion ◽  
The Church

If economists have been accused, like Oscar Wilde's cynic, of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, historians, on the other hand, often know the value of everything and the price of nothing. Since value and price are historically related, however, the historian who ignores the economics which both embodies and reflects a value-system and world-view does so at his own cost. Thus, the laws of the early Germanic tribes — and of the Anglo-Saxons in particular, to whom this study is confined — are dominated by virtual tables of prices and compensations for offenses and injuries. To the general historian, and even to the medievalist, these are perhaps the least fascinating elements of the laws. Certainly the more cosmic elements of Germanic society almost vanish here beneath the weight of numbers. Nonetheless, even these apparently raw economic sources reveal, upon investigation, not only societal structure and the relationship of church and state but a concept of kingship which is the key to both. Penalties and fines in Anglo-Saxon law will be analyzed here to illuminate these aspects of the early English world.The two greatest influences on the actual codification of Anglo-Saxon law are Roman and ecclesiastical. Before the introduction of Christianity no Germanic written code is known, and the written formulation of law is largely stimulated by an attempt to cope with the new religion and with the status of its institution, the Church, in terms of Germanic society. In Kentish law, for example, dooms concerning the Church show less alliteration and consequently may be taken as newer.

Justice and the Excluded, Part 1

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-47
Author(s):  
Michael Blake
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Just World ◽  
Open Borders ◽  
Liberal Justice ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses arguments in favor of the thought that exclusion itself is incompatible with liberal justice; all borders, on this analysis, would be open in a just world. The chapter examines the concept of justice, as given in John Rawls, and then uses this concept to discuss why arguments in favor of open borders won’t work. Four arguments are discussed: the arguments from arbitrariness, from distributive justice, from coherence with existing rights, and from the injustice of coercion. None of these, the chapter concludes, pay adequate attention to the uniquely political nature of the relationship of fellow citizens.

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