The recent three-hour program on “Professional Responsibility and the Religious Traditions” at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (“AALS”), sponsored by the Section on Professional Responsibility and co-sponsored by the Section on Law and Religion, represents a milepost in the history of the religious lawyering movement and offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on that history. In 1998, only eight years ago, one of us defined the religious lawyering movement as “an emerging force” in legal ethics. In that short time, the movement has expanded dramatically and has received greater attention within the academy and the bar. It has developed the first institutional vehicles for disseminating and promoting conversations about religious lawyering, both among lawyers of the same faith and among lawyers of different faith traditions. Now the religious lawyering movement is increasingly confronting more complex and more difficult religious, legal and ethical issues; and is extending the religious lawyering conversation internationally.
Within the vibrant life of the Catholic Church today, many currents of spirituality and specific projects can shed light on the encyclical's themes and provide examples of what its principles might look like in practice. This note focuses on how Chiara Lubich's spirituality of unity might offer a helpful way for people to understand how to live these principles in their everyday lives. It also discusses how the "Economy of Communion" and other concrete projects and practices of Focolare, the movement Lubich founded, foster economic justice and human development.
Coming out of a church whose marks of identity include unity, holiness, and universality, it is ironic—and painful—that the “Catholic vote” has become a “metaphor” for polarization in United States culture and politics. As one reporter described the scene in the weeks before the 2004 presidential election: Some rail against their own bishops, while others cheer what they see as a long-awaited stand of conscience. The tension seemed to reach a peak yesterday, when the Vatican felt compelled to publicly dismiss the claims of a Catholic lawyer who said he had Vatican support to seek [Senator] Kerry's excommunication.Tensions have also manifested themselves in the variety of Catholic “voter's guides.” Some list a limited number of “non-negotiable” issues—particular actions that are identified in Catholic moral theology as “intrinsic evil” and suggest that candidates be evaluated according to their stand on these particular issues. For example, the Catholic Answers Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics, first distributed prior to the 2004 election, named “five non-negotiables”: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning and homosexual marriage. As these moral principles “do not admit of exception or compromise,” the Guide reasoned that political consequences should be clear: “You should avoid to the greatest extent possible voting for candidates who endorse or promote intrinsically evil policies.”In the interim between the 2004 and 2006 elections, a few organizations congealed to formulate competing guides. Others rallied around Faithful Citizenship, the United States Bishop's long-standing official commentary on the nexus between the principles of Catholic social teaching and political participation. Others directly challenged the Catholic Answers guide as a distortion of Catholic social teaching and argued that its partisan activities were a potential threat to the Roman Catholic Church's tax-exempt status.
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