Response to Avery Cardinal Dulles.

AuthorFeerick, John D.
PositionSocial policy of the Catholic Church

I thank you, Your Eminence, on behalf of Fordham Law School, for your presence tonight and for your powerful, challenging lecture. Words cannot express sufficiently my gratitude to you for accepting our invitation to speak about Catholic social teaching and American legal practice. (1) Your lecture inaugurates Fordham Law School's Catholic Lawyers' Program of our new Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyers' Work, lodged in the Stein Center of Law and Ethics. Our appreciation to you and admiration for you run very deep.

As I shared with you last week at the opening of the photographic exhibit of your installation as Cardinal, when I first mentioned to my wife, Emalie, that I was invited to comment on your remarks, she stated: "How presumptuous of you to comment on the remarks of a Cardinal on Catholic teaching." I, therefore, tread with caution and in the spirit of the dialogue Your Eminence has encouraged.

I have given considerable thought to your remarks, which you kindly shared with me last month. I have struggled with how I might respond in a meaningful way. In fact, I have read your lecture at least a dozen times and have found something new and challenging each time I have done so. At its core is a bold and energetic social justice agenda, calling upon us to feel the pain of the poor and marginalized, and to respond with love and concrete measures.

I find the principles outlined at the core of Catholic social justice teaching to be beyond ethical challenge: the intrinsic worth of every person; the importance of collaborating for the good of all; the need to treat each other as members of an extended family with a special solicitude for those in greatest need; the importance for individuals and small groups to be free of totalitarianism; and respect for the world's environment so as to preserve it for future generations.

These fundamental principles are cherished by people of other faiths as well, and find expression in significant ways in our country's founding documents, our jurisprudence, and in lawyer conduct codes. Recently, and tragically, we bore witness to the wanton destruction that can occur when individuals and groups have no regard for human life, human freedoms, or human society.

The message of your remarks is appealing, inspiring, and irresistible. The great challenge, as you pointed out, is in the application of these principles to the concrete. The principles are sometimes in tension with each other, and the perspectives of people often differ on how the principles are best applied. The law seeks to reconcile these tensions and differences. It represents the application of these sometimes conflicting principles to, at times, vexing situations. What is the common good, and who defines it, have been and continue to be issues of great importance in the shaping of our nation.

Your point about government not associating itself with a particular religion and allowing wide freedom of worship is certainly reflected in our Constitution and jurisprudence, as is the right for religious expression to be part of the conversations in the public square. (2) Such speech may be divisive, but its place has been recognized by our courts. (3) The Supreme Court has noted that a "free-speech clause without religion would be Hamlet without the prince." (4) Catholic social teaching rejects intolerance of other religions. (5) The absence...

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