text:
Georges Rouault's painting "The Three Judges" (1913)…
"Judges figure repeatedly in Rouault's work, as do prostitutes and other social outcasts. The judges are not depicted in the spirit of social realism, or even of hostile political caricature, as they had been by Honoré Daumier (1808-79).
This is the work of a deeply religious man whose notion of Christianity focuses on the suffering of Christ and of the oppressed. Dressed in the distinctive robes and hats of the French Republican judiciary, the judges are presented as malevolent priests of a false religion – the worship of the state and its pitiless secular justice. Like all Rouault's subjects, they belong to a fallen humanity, without grace or beauty, but whereas his prostitutes are pitiable, his judges are threatening objects of fear. This is not an image to delight the eye, but an invitation to engage with art on a moral and spiritual plane."
From "1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die", edited by Stephen Farthing
19 July 2019
Arcimboldo's painting "The Jurist" – an unflattering portrayal of the legal profession…
"By the time The Jurist was painted in 1566, Arcimboldo had established himself as one of the leading innovative painters of his time. He treated his subjects with an ironic wit that was greatly appreciated. The artist's feelings about his jurist are clear – the countenance is composed of plucked chicken carcasses and dead fish, and his mouth is pulled down in a sneer. These clever and humorous compositions, and Arcimboldo's particular ability to create recognizable personas from composite elements, was unsurpassed. Arcimboldo's work is considered a precursor to Surrealism, and the visual pun is a device used in advertising today."
From "1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die", edited by Stephen Farthing
Mr Abel Wharton QC…
"He was certainly a man of whom men were generally afraid. At the whist-table no one would venture to scold him. In the court no one ever contradicted him. In his own house, though he was very quiet, the servants dreaded to offend him, and were attentive to his slightest behests. When he condescended to ride with any acquaintance in the park, it was always acknowledged that old Wharton was to regulate the pace. His name was Abel, and all his life he had been known as able Abe,--a silent, far-seeing, close-fisted, just old man, who, was not, however, by any means deficient in sympathy either with the sufferings or with the joys of humanity.
It was Easter time, and the courts were not sitting, but Mr Wharton was in his chamber as a matter of course at ten o'clock. He knew no real homely comforts elsewhere,--unless at the whist- table at the Eldon. He ate and drank and slept in his own house in Manchester Square, but he could hardly be said to live there. It was not there that his mind was awake, and the powers of the man were exercised. When he came up from the dining-room to join his daughter after dinner, he would get her to sing him a song, and would then seat himself with a book. But he never read in his own house, invariably falling into a sweet and placid slumber, from which he was never disturbed till his daughter kissed him as she went to bed. Then he would walk about the room and look at his watch, and shuffle uneasily through half an hour, till his conscience allowed him to take himself to his chamber."
To be continued...
From "The Prime Minister" by Anthony Trollope, Ch. 3
8 January 2019
"Mr Wharton had not married till he was forty, and his wife had now been two years dead....He had been nearly fifty years when his youngest daughter was born, and was therefore now an old father of a young child. But he was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old....He was a spare, thin, strongly made man, with spare light brown hair, hardly yet grizzled, with small grey whiskers, clear eyes, bushy eyebrows, with a long ugly nose, on which young barristers had been heard to declare that you might hang a small kettle, and with considerable vehemence of talk when he was opposed in argument. For, with all his well-known coolness of temper, Mr Wharton could become very hot in an argument, when the nature of the case in hand required heat. On one subject all who knew him were agreed. He was a thorough lawyer. Many doubted his eloquence, and some declared that he had known well the extent of his own powers in abstaining from seeking the higher honours of his profession; but no one doubted his law. He had once written a book,--on the mortgage of stocks in trade; but that had been in early life, and he had never since dabbled in literature."
To be continued...
From "The Prime Minister" by Anthony Trollope, Ch. 3
1 January 2019
Mr Abel Wharton QC…
"Mr Wharton was and had for a great many years been a barrister practising in the Equity Courts,--or rather in one Equity Court, for throughout a life's work, now extending to nearly fifty years, he had hardly ever gone out of the single Vice- Chancellor's Court which was much better known by Mr Wharton's name than by that of the less eminent judge who now sat there. His had been a very peculiar, a very toilsome, but yet probably a very satisfactory life. He had begun his practice early, and had worked in a stuff gown till he was nearly sixty. At that time, he had amassed a large fortune, mainly from his profession, but partly also by the careful use of his own small patrimony and by his wife's money. Men knew that he was rich, but no one knew the extent of his wealth. When he submitted to take a silk gown, he declared among his friends that he did so as a step preparatory to his retirement. The altered method of work would not suit him at his age, nor,--as he said,--would it be profitable. He would take his silk, as a honour for his declining years, so that he might become a bencher at his Inn. But he had now been working for the last twelve or fourteen years with his silk gown, --almost as hard as in younger days, and with pecuniary results almost as serviceable; and though from month to month he declared his intention of taking no fresh briefs, and though he did now occasionally refuse work, still he was there with his mind as clear as ever, and with his body apparently as little affected by fatigue."
To be continued...
From "The Prime Minister" by Anthony Trollope, Ch. 3
18 December 2018
"Let the clouds rain down the Just One,
and the earth bring forth a Saviour."
Responsorial psalm for the Third Wednesday of Advent
11 December 2018
"By contrast, in our country threats to religious freedom are often more subtle. They are embedded in regulations, policies, court decisions, licensing requirements, accreditation procedures, and sometimes in local ordinances. When religious belief conflicts with emerging social priorities, especially those related to the redefinition of sexuality and marriage, many opinion leaders are quick to condemn religious freedom as a mask for bigotry. In these past years, we have struggled with government mandates that would force churches to violate important moral teachings, such as the so-called contraceptive mandate and in some states, an abortion mandate. As of this date, dear friends, we are still not out of the woods on those issues. And so, in these and other ways, religious freedom truly needs to be protected.
How important that in the daily practice of your faith you strive to influence your colleagues to protect and defend religious freedom, not merely as a private right to believe and worship as one sees fit, but really as the right of believers to assemble, to organize, and to express their beliefs through public ministries that serve the common good, thus to bring faith into the public square, thus to manifest faith by works of education, health care, and charity."
Archbishop William E. Lori in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas on 28 September 2017
4 December 2018
"But allow me to suggest a specific witness which you are equipped to provide as those involved in the law and the administration of justice. I would submit you are well-positioned to urge your colleagues to consider carefully the importance of maintaining religious freedom which is increasingly threatened at home and abroad in this time of our history. These threats here in the United States are not of violence, exile, and death as in so many other parts of the world where religious persecution is rampant. And how we must pray and reach out to these brothers and sisters of ours, many of them Christians, who suffer merely because they profess their faith. By contrast, in our country threats to religious freedom are often more subtle."
Archbishop William E. Lori in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas on 28 September 2017
27 November 2018
"All of us, I would suspect, like to think of ourselves as influential. All of us have networks of colleagues, friends, and families. We strive to make a difference by what we say and do, by the way we fulfill our responsibilities and offer leadership in our professions. As St. Paul reminded us, each of us is blessed with the gifts that the Spirit imparts. We are called to employ these special gifts to influence others by our prayerful spirit, by good example, by our wisdom, by our knowledge and love of the faith, and by the contagion of virtue and integrity. Let us not underestimate the power of personal influence!
Bear with me for a few more moments as we ask one more question, and it's this: What is the "content" of our personal witness to others? Is there anything specific we need to say or do so as to move the proverbial needle at this time in our history? There are many good and correct answers to this question – I think of issues such as racial justice, immigration, the role of the family, the need to protect innocent and vulnerable human life . . . and much more."
Archbishop William E. Lori in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas on 28 September 2017
20 November 2018
"So what is this "apostolate of personal influence" which Newman commends to us?
It has a few important components. First, if our faith has any hope of influencing others, it has to be real, not just notional. What Newman means by this is that our faith is not just a matter of ideas or notions without consequence; rather, it is firmly rooted in the conviction that what we profess is real, true, and good, and utterly consequential, not just for our personal life and destiny, but indeed for the meaning of human life itself and for the destiny of the world. Only a faith that opens us to ultimate truth and to ultimate realities will have any real hope of influencing others. If it's all just a matter of conjecture, then, why bother? Indeed, no one dies for a conclusion, let alone for a private opinion or a flight of fancy! Second, our faith has to be both really real and deeply personal. We've got to keep those two things in tandem. Because the faith is objectively true, it speaks to the deepest longings of our hearts, longings for something beyond us, something at once reliable and transcendent. Newman's motto, "cor ad cor loquitur" sums this up: God's heart speaks to our hearts 'words of spirit and life', words of truth and love, which penetrate to our depths, so much so, when they hit home, they cannot be suppressed. The third component of the apostolate of personal influence is this: if our hearts are to speak to the hearts of others, then there must be a distinguishing quality about our lives, an 'undertone of truth', a life of integrity and virtue, rooted in deep convictions about God's design for the world and for our humanity, and illumined by the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). Fourth, the apostolate of personal influence can be exercised only if we prayerfully discern the Lord's will in our lives and ask for guidance in saying the right thing at the right time to any and all whose minds and hearts we hope to open to authentic truth and love."
To be continued...
Archbishop William E. Lori in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas on 28 September 2017
13 November 2018
"But how, then, do we bear witness to the Christian faith? How do you bear witness to your faith amid the duties of public life? Amid the give and take of litigation and tragic criminal cases? Amid the technicalities of corporate law, the tax code, wills and estates? Amid the rigors of academic life – teaching, researching, writing, peer reviews? How indeed do you bear witness amid the competing views and values that absorb many of your waking hours? Will you someday stand before your colleagues and preach like the Apostle Peter? Such cannot be excluded but I daresay that most of us simply won't do that.
So, we do well to take some advice for living and witnessing to our faith from Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, who was beatified in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Birmingham, England. Newman would advise us to pursue what he called "the apostolate of personal influence". " Now, Newman himself exerted an enormous personal influence in his day and he continues to do so in our day as well. His life spanned most of the 19th century. He lived roughly half his life as an Anglican and the other half as a Roman Catholic. He was a leading intellectual, a controversialist, an apologist, a poet, and a novelist. He filled some 40 volumes with his works, wrote nearly 20,000 letters, maintained a wide and close circle of friends, and is widely considered to be a forerunner of the Second Vatican Council. And while Newman's witness to the fullness of Christian truth cost him dearly, he brought many to the Church and profoundly influenced the culture of his day. So what is this "apostolate of personal influence" which Newman commends to us?"
To be continued...
Archbishop William E. Lori in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas on 28 September 2017
13 November 2018
"But how, then, do we bear witness to the Christian faith? How do you bear witness to your faith amid the duties of public life? Amid the give and take of litigation and tragic criminal cases? Amid the technicalities of corporate law, the tax code, wills and estates? Amid the rigors of academic life – teaching, researching, writing, peer reviews? How indeed do you bear witness amid the competing views and values that absorb many of your waking hours? Will you someday stand before your colleagues and preach like the Apostle Peter? Such cannot be excluded but I daresay that most of us simply won't do that.
So, we do well to take some advice for living and witnessing to our faith from Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, who was beatified in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Birmingham, England. Newman would advise us to pursue what he called "the apostolate of personal influence". " Now, Newman himself exerted an enormous personal influence in his day and he continues to do so in our day as well. His life spanned most of the 19th century. He lived roughly half his life as an Anglican and the other half as a Roman Catholic. He was a leading intellectual, a controversialist, an apologist, a poet, and a novelist. He filled some 40 volumes with his works, wrote nearly 20,000 letters, maintained a wide and close circle of friends, and is widely considered to be a forerunner of the Second Vatican Council. And while Newman's witness to the fullness of Christian truth cost him dearly, he brought many to the Church and profoundly influenced the culture of his day. So what is this "apostolate of personal influence" which Newman commends to us?"
To be continued...
Archbishop William E. Lori in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas on 28 September 2017
6 November 2018
"Let us suppose that some fine morning you walked into your law office or your chambers, sat down at your desk, began looking at your emails when suddenly the walls began to shake violently, and flames were seen darting about your person. Suppose further that, after this event occurred, you went out on a balcony and began to address passersby down below – shouting in a loud voice the words of the Gospel. I think it's fair to say that, when you came in from the balcony, your colleagues would tiptoe around you and someone would probably call security!
Yet, something not unlike this happened to the Apostles and the Virgin Mary when they were gathered in the Upper Room to pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit came upon the Apostles, they emerged as bold and fearless witnesses to the Good News of Christ's Resurrection and spent the remainder of their lives preaching the Gospel & building up the Church, expending even their lives for the sake of Christ. Listening to this evening's reading from the Acts of Apostles, we were reminded that we too have received the Holy Spirit. In that conviction, born of faith and confirmed by experience, we have gathered for this Red Mass, this Mass of the Holy Spirit, so that you and I, and all those involved in the administration of justice, will indeed welcome the influence of the Holy Spirit more robustly in our lives, …not only to strengthen and encourage us in the challenges of professional life but also to help us serve the cause of truth, freedom, and the common good. It is no small thing that we pray for."
To be continued...
Archbishop William E. Lori in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas on 28 September 2017
Ignatian spirituality for lawyers...
30 October 2018
"We've been talking tonight about Ignatius as an extraordinary Catholic whose life might shed light on the ordinary practice of the law. How should we understand the "extraordinariness" of Ignatius's life? Ignatius was neither a martyr like Thomas More, nor a missionary to foreign lands like his great friend Francis Xavier, whose 500th birthday we have just celebrated. Instead, much of Ignatius's life might have look a lot like our ordinary lives as lawyers, working away in our offices. Ignatius spent long years at a desk in Rome, refining the Spiritual Exercises, drafting the Jesuit Constitutions and administering a growing religious community. To the casual observer, his daily life and work undoubtedly looked pretty ordinary, just as our daily lives as lawyers often look pretty ordinary. Yet we can properly describe the life of Ignatius as extraordinary. The extraordinariness of his life is to be found in his constant openness to finding God hard at work and calling him forward in the midst of his everyday experience. The extraordinariness of Ignatius is found in his ability to respond to God's call with an integrity and freedom that united the instrument of his life ever more intimately to the hand of God at work in the world. This is an extraordinariness to which all of us can aspire, no matter what the nature of our individual vocation. The light shed by the life of Ignatius illuminates an extraordinary openness to finding God in everyday life. This is an extraordinary way of living in which all of us can participate in our ordinary practice of the law."
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
23 October 2018
"As we review the feelings that surface in our hearts during our review of the day, we might try to identify which of those feelings most catches our attention or stirs our hearts most deeply, and then simply speak the prayer that arises in our hearts. Ignatius recognized that those affective movements can be signs of how God is calling us in the midst of the experiences that generate those movements. Something important, something of "religious density," may well be revealed in the feelings that move us deeply as we remember the events of our day. This, for Ignatius, is how the privileged moments of our lives speak to us. The examen invites us to listen to those remembered feelings, and then speak to God simply and directly – in words of praise or petition, in words of contrition and repentence, or in words that beg for insight or healing or freedom, whichever words your heart moves you to speak.
You might bring this exercise to a close by imagining briefly what tomorrow will bring. Call to mind the appointments or meetings, the hearings or arguments, the research or depositions that fill your calendar for the day to come. Pay attention to the feelings that arise in your heart as you call those events to mind, and then speak to God the prayer that flows out of the feelings – ask for help and guidance, for hope and strength, for openness to however God will be at work in you and around you tomorrow. Ignatius was convinced that faithfulness to this kind of prayer would help us to grow in our attentiveness, reverence, and devotion; the examen helps to deepen our inner awareness of how God is always already working alongside us and inviting us to labor with him; the Ignatian examen enhances our ability to experience God's presence in the midst of all things."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
16 October 2018
"Next, in the light of the gift of God's love, we can review the events of the past day in a spirit of gratitude. If all that is, is God's gift to us, it is crucial that we root our relationship with God in grateful recognition of that truth. When we pause to review the day in the light of God's love, we can begin to see just how the day that precedes each experience of the examen is filled with incredible gifts from God. The examen invites us to use our memory to walk back through the day, naming with particularity the gifts we've encountered throughout the day. This allows us, as Michael Campbell-Johnson suggests, to dwell on, and to savor, the privileged moments of the day that we might have overlooked in the busyness of the moment. You might remember an important conversation with a colleague, an insight into the law that you received while reading an opinion, the brilliant yellow of the forsythia lighting up the gray April sky as you walked past the park, the warmth of the sun when you went out for lunch, the energy you felt as you figured out just how to frame a particular argument, a call from your spouse or your child or a friend that left you filled with sense of being loved. Name the privileged gifts and moments that reveal themselves in the light of God's love, dwell on them, savor them, and say thank you to God for them.
The next movement of the examen invites us to pay attention to the feelings that arise in our hearts as we review the events of the preceding day. The light shed by the life story of Ignatius reminds us that we can get a sense of God's presence and God's call through the affective movements in our hearts. So, if we want to align our lives with God's work and respond to God's call, we must pay attention to these affective movements. Maybe our review of the day leads us to remember an encounter with a client or a co-worker that led us to feel joy or consolation in the recognition that we were in the right place at the right time. Maybe we find ourselves remembering a meeting or a conference call that has left us angry and frustrated. Maybe we are filled with pain as we remember a messy situation that we cannot repair or that the law is making worse. Maybe in the light of God's love we are filled with sadness as we recognize choices we have made that have left us unfree or areas of complacency or blindness in our lives where we failed to align ourselves with how God has been at work. Maybe we are filled with life and energy as we recognize that a choice or decision has brought us closer to God's desires for our wholeness and fullness of life."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
9 October 2018
"Ribadeneira suggests that Ignatius engaged in this exercise on an almost hourly basis, but we might simply try to find fifteen minutes at some point in our day, whether at noontime or before going to sleep or while walking to work or whenever a quiet moment presents itself, to pause and ask God to help us to become more alert to his presence in our lives. While the roots of the practice of the Ignatian examen are found in the Spiritual Exercises themselves, Fr. Dennis Hamm has more recently outlined a helpful way of approaching the examen in an article whose title aptly captures what the examen is most fundamentally about. The article is called, "Rummaging for God: Praying Backward Through Your Day."
Fr. Hamm notes that we should begin the prayer of the examen by praying for light. We might ask God to fill our hearts with the light of His love so that we can see where God has been present and at work in us and around us today. We might pray for illumination so that we can begin to recognize more clearly where the shining light of God's love is leading us in the midst of our daily lives."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
2 October 2018
"None of this, of course, is easy or automatic. Developing a discerning heart, deepening what Howard Gray describes as our "awareness of how God moves within [our lives] and within the events that surround [us]," requires patience and practice, and it involves trial and error and recalibration. And here, too, Ignatius can share with us one final extremely practical insight with which I'll end my remarks this evening. Ignatius knew that if we really want to grow in our ability to find God in all things, then we have to take time each day to stop and ask God to help us to see how God has been at work in us and around us.
Ignatius emphasized the importance of taking time each day to look back on one's experience of the day, in order to gain deeper sensitivity into how God has been at work. Ignatius himself, throughout his life, regularly paused to pay attention to how God was moving in the events of the day. One of the first Jesuits, Pedro de Ribadeneira, reported that Ignatius was faithful to a "'habit of examining his conscience every hour, and of asking himself with careful attention how he had passed the hour.'"
I want to emphasize, however, that this examination of conscience is not the practice of identifying our sins with which we might be familiar as a way of preparing for confession. Instead, the exercise to which Ribadeneira is referring is the practice sometimes called the Ignatian examen of consciousness. The Ignatian examen is a way of praying whose function is to develop the "inner alertness" to God's presence in all things which constitutes the "heart of Ignatius' mysticism and spirituality." We can understand the examen as a way of praying that breaks down those walls we can experience separating work from faith."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
25 September 2018
"Having briefly touched on Ignatius's understanding of who God is, I want to conclude by sharing some reflections on Ignatius's method for drawing closer to God in the midst of ordinary life. Howard Gray finds in the Constitutions that Ignatius wrote for the new Society of Jesus a succinct description of a structured method by which, not just Jesuits, but all people can become contemplatives in action, habitually open to finding "God's activity, design, and direction" in the world and in their daily life experiences.
....Michael Campbell-Johnston, former provincial of the British province of the Society of Jesus, describes the dynamic in this way: "It is a question of letting privileged moments speak more deeply, of dwelling on them, savouring them, entering into them . . . . The opportunities are infinite, as varied and complex as life itself." The challenge for us is to begin to see the events of our daily lives practicing law as privileged moments that speak to us of God's presence. For example, can we be attentive to the real struggles of the client telling us his story in our office? Can we be reverent before the goodness reflected in a colleague's well-argued brief or before a judge's careful efforts to craft an opinion that applies the law to a complex human situation with clarity and sensitivity? Are we open to experiencing devotion as we recognize how God is at work in opposing counsel or in a difficult meeting or in a frustrating relationship? If more of us could come to experience the ordinary practice of the law as a privileged forum in which to encounter God at work, perhaps lawyers would have a deeper sense of meaning and value in their work. Perhaps Ignatius's method for letting God shine through life's realities can offer lawyers a more lifegiving experience of connection between their work and their desire for wholeness and integrity, their desire for a deeper experience of connection to God in the midst of their professional lives."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
18 September 2018
"The fourth point of the Contemplatio brings us briefly back to the image with which I began my remarks. Ignatius invites the retreatant to consider how all good things descend from above, just "as the rays come down from the sun, or the rains from their source." All that is, comes from God; all that is participates in God's presence. Buckley asserts that "[o]ne can find God in all things because all things descend from God and speak of God." Thus, "[t]o find God, one does not prescind from creation; one enters into it. . . . Whatever is, is God's self-revelation and communication."
Ignatius's vision of God and God's relationship with the world therefore assures us that we don't have to remove ourselves from our ordinary daily experience in order to draw closer to God. Instead, our pilgrimage toward God invites us to seek God in the midst of our ordinary daily lives and work. Ignatius offers us the hope that we can find God by letting the light of God's love illuminate our ordinary daily lives and work. If we do so, we might find God already hard at work alongside us, and we might discern the ways in which we can unite ourselves with what God is always, already doing in our midst. In the words of Howard Gray, God is "laboring within every human event to bring creation to its fullness"; the God who labors alongside us "illuminat[es] within the concrete details of [our lives] the way that Christ [can] be followed."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
11 September 2018
"I suspect that this understanding of God as one who labors, one who struggles with hard work to bring all things to life and wholeness, to freedom and integrity, may well resonate with women and men whose lives are given over to the daily labor – the hard and rigorous work – of practicing law. God, as Ignatius understands Him, is not distant from our labors in the law. Instead, we are working in the trenches alongside God who is always already at work in our midst, and the challenge for us is to try to discern more clearly how God is at work in us and around us, so that we can more fully align our labors with His.
If all of this is true of God, then, as Buckley says, there is a "religious density" to our lives as lawyers. If God is at work in all things and in all events, then there is a "religious importance" to all things and all events. In light of this pervasive religious importance, Buckley argues that it is "religiously imperative" that we try to discern just how God is laboring in our midst, so that we can "merge [our] choice and [our] actions with the workings of God." "
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
4 September 2018
"In the third point of the Contemplatio, Ignatius asks us to see God at work in all of creation. The retreatant is to consider "how God labors and works for me in all the creatures on the face of the earth; that is, [God] acts in the manner of one who is laboring." Ignatius wants us to see God laboring in all of creation, working to bring each one of us and our entire world to life and wholeness and freedom. The understanding of God set forth in this third point of the Contemplatio may in fact be the most critical part of our discussion tonight, because, again drawing on Michael Buckley, it is this understanding of God that is most distinctively Ignatian, and it is this understanding of God that "stands as the foundation for discernment."
Buckley asserts that, because God is at work in all things, because God "relates to all things as a laborer," and because "all things are effected and affected by the struggle of God to achieve human salvation, . . . [e]verything that is, is not only gift and sacred, but part of sacred history." Accordingly, our lives and our work are part of sacred history. Our ordinary practice of the law is part of sacred history."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
28 August 2018
"The distinctively Ignatian understanding of God that provides the foundation for the Ignatian spirituality of discernment is found in the exercise that I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, the Contemplatio ad amorem, or the Contemplation to Attain Love. At the heart of this contemplation, Ignatius invites the retreatant to consider four points whose purpose is to draw the retreatant into a deeper experience of how God's love is active in their lives. Taken together, these four points of the Contemplatio provide the foundation for experiencing what Fr. Michael Buckley calls "the religious density of all things within and because of the action of God." My hope is that a brief description of the four points of the Contemplatio will allow us to better appreciate the "religious density" of our everyday experience of the ordinary practice of law.
Ignatius first invites us to understand all that is as gift. Creation, redemption, along with every particular thing in our lives – everything is gift...."God in love has given everything that is, even himself. Creation is God's gift of all that is created; grace is God's gift of God….Whatever is, is gift."
In the second point, Ignatius invites us to understand God as dwelling within all created things, "especially within human beings."….Again, in the words of Fr. Buckley, everything is sacred "because God is immanent within creation"; by this indwelling, God transforms every "human life into that which is sacred." Indeed, every human life we encounter in our practice of the law is a temple, "a dwelling-place of God." The indwelling presence of God defines the nature of reality. "Whatever is, is sacred." "
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
21 August 2018
"The experience and example of Ignatius invite each of us to listen attentively to the stories of our own experience, our own hearts, our own desires, and our own lives so that we all can respond to God's call with freedom and integrity. We all know that life as a lawyer can often become stressful, hectic, compartmentalized, and dis-integrated. And we all know lawyers who seem lifeless, joyless, directionless, and unfree, following paths they haven't consciously chosen, that lead them to places they would never have chosen to go, seemingly locked in lives they haven't freely chosen to live.
The spirituality that comes to us from Ignatius illuminates a path that can help us to avoid that trap. Ignatius shows us the way to pay attention to God calling us to freedom and integrity in the ordinary experiences of our daily lives. As we reflect on our daily lives, what are the events and experiences that give us joy? When do we felt most fully alive and fully engaged with the world? When do we feel our hearts on fire with love and energy and hope-filled desires? Ignatius would say that those are the times and places where God is at work calling us to freedom."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
14 August 2018
"That's a bit of the story of the life of Ignatius, and a bit of the story of how I've experienced some of the insights of Ignatius at work in my own life. Let me be clear about one thing: I don't share my own story primarily in order to invite people to consider a path that looks like mine. Instead, by speaking about how the Ignatian understanding of discernment has helped me to grow in my own vocation, my hope is to encourage everyone in this room tonight to consider the nature of their own unique vocations, which are undoubtedly different from mine. I offer my own story as a way of prompting all of you to think about the stories of your own lives and your encounters with God in your own daily experience of the ordinary practice of law."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
7 August 2018
"I also began to think more about how I understood Jesuit priesthood and how I thought my ministry could contribute to the larger mission of the Society of Jesus at this point in the world's history. I came to understand Jesuit priesthood as a way of serving God that tries to give flesh to God's word in all the different areas of human life that engage reflective human beings, especially areas of human endeavor where God's word might otherwise not be heard, where God's presence might not be noticed. It seemed to me that the law and the contemporary law school were the sorts of human endeavors that fit that description. Similarly, part of the mission of the Society of Jesus today is to bring the Gospel into dialogue with contemporary culture. Both the legal profession and the law school as an institution are clearly important components of contemporary American culture.
….As I reflected on all this, I began to be excited by the prospect of ministering as a law professor; I had a sense that all my gifts and talents and desires could really be fully engaged by that work, and that my training and experience and background made me uniquely well-suited to meet a particular need in the world in a particularly effective way. As I imagined myself moving down this path, I experienced a deepening sense of peace and rightness, a movement toward joy and hope, the sort of movement that Ignatius would describe as consolation and that he would attribute to an experience of God's Spirit calling me forward in freedom."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
31 July 2018
"As I got closer to my own ordination, and as I reflected on various experiences that I had during my years of Jesuit formation, I became increasingly convinced that the story of my own life was leading me in the direction of ministering as a legal academic. For example, I began to see new significance in an experience that I had as second-year novice, when I was teaching a constitutional law seminar to undergrads at Georgetown. I found that I was good at it, that I had a lot of fun doing it, and that other people noticed that I was energized by it. When I would return home to the community where I was living, one Jesuit in particular would often ask me about what I had been teaching that day, and he noticed that there was lot of life and energy in me as I told him about the cases we had been talking about in class that day. On another front, both during my philosophy studies at Loyola Chicago and during my theology studies at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, I had the opportunity to do some pastoral work with law students. I found that law students had the sorts of questions about their lives and their faith that I hoped I could help people explore as a Jesuit priest, and it also became clear to me that I, as Jesuit lawyer, might be able to talk about their questions with a credibility that a pastoral minister without a legal background might not have.
I also began to think more about how I understood Jesuit priesthood and how I thought my ministry could contribute to the larger mission of the Society of Jesus at this point in the world's history. I came to understand Jesuit priesthood as a way of serving God that tries to give flesh to God's word in all the different areas of human life that engage reflective human beings, especially areas of human endeavor where God's word might otherwise not be heard, where God's presence might not be noticed.15 It seemed to me that the law and the contemporary law school were the sorts of human endeavors that fit that description. Similarly, part of the mission of the Society of Jesus today is to bring the Gospel into dialogue with contemporary culture. Both the legal profession and the law school as an institution are clearly important components of contemporary American culture."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
24 July 2018
"My experience was telling me that a part of me was not being fully utilized where I was. I wasn't as full of life and energy and joy as God desires for us. And at that point I began to think seriously again about entering the Jesuits. As I began to learn more about prayer and discernment, and as I spent more time, with the help of a good spiritual director, imagining what life as a Jesuit and a priest might be like, there was an excitement and a freedom and sense of wholeness and rightness that eventually led me to enter the Society of Jesus in August of 1992, after four years of practicing law. As I look back on this period of time in my life, I can see now that I was paying attention to my experience; I was trying to reflect on what my experience might mean and where it might be leading; and I was trying to respond to all that with love and fidelity to the truth of who I knew myself to be.
That's a bit of the story of how I came to leave legal practice to enter the Jesuits. Once I entered the Jesuits there was, of course, no guarantee that I would ever end up as a teacher at a Jesuit law school, and that was fine with me. I had lots of questions about whether life in Jesuit higher education in general and in a law school more particularly would allow me to be the kind of Jesuit that I wanted to be. For example, in the highly secularized environment of higher education, especially in the world of legal education, would I be able to speak to people about friendship with Jesus with the kind of explicitness and directness that I wanted to be part of my Jesuit ministry? Would the pastoral part of my heart stay alive in the face of the professional academic demands and secularized environment of contemporary legal education?"
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
17 July 2018
"I was a lawyer for several years before I entered the Jesuits. I finished college at Georgetown in 1985, and went immediately to law school at the University of Michigan. Up to that point in my life, I had never given any thought that I can remember to entering the Jesuits. Instead, I had what I thought was a pretty straightforward course worked out: After law school, I would do a judicial clerkship, then I would practice law for a few years in Washington, and then I would look for a teaching position in a law school. That had actually been my plan from some point fairly early in my undergraduate studies.
....I ended up having a tremendous experience clerking for Judge Kenneth F. Ripple on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The judge became a wonderful mentor for me, and he taught me a great deal about the central importance of taking seriously the real human implications of every legal decision we worked on. And as a litigator in Washington for three years I worked with some fine lawyers, and I gained some practical lawyering experience that has enabled me to have a bit of credibility teaching Civil Procedure today. But after a couple of years, even though my experience of practice was interesting and rewarding in many respects, I began to be more and more aware that a part of my heart was not fully engaged in what I was doing."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
10 July 2018
"In many ways, the most distinctive characteristic of Ignatian spirituality is rooted in a story. The story, which may be familiar to many of you already, comes from the life of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. As a soldier for the king of Spain, Ignatius suffered a horrible wound fighting against the French at a battle in the border fortress of Pamplona. During his long convalescence from that wound, Ignatius began to pay attention to the different ways in which his heart was moved as he read different kinds of books and as he imagined different ways of living his life. Up to that point Ignatius had lived his life in the world of the Spanish court. But he found that reading courtly romances and imagining a return to his former life as a courtier left his heart dry and lifeless. At the same time, when he would read about Jesus or the lives of the saints, or when he would imagine himself doing the things that St. Francis or St. Dominic did, he found his heart on fire with energy; he felt his heart filled with excitement and life. As he reflected over time on those contrasting experiences of what he came to call desolation and consolation, and as he considered the way the story of his life had unfolded, Ignatius gradually began to ground his life in the following central conviction of Ignatian spirituality: we can discern how God is calling us to lives of freedom and wholeness and integrity if we pay attention to the feelings moving in our hearts as we reflect on our own life experiences. Ignatius's own experience convinced him that all of us can grow in freedom and wholeness and integrity if we make choices that are faithful to the times when we have experienced joy and freedom and fullness of life in the ongoing stories of our own everyday lives."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
3 July 2018
"More recently, professor and former dean David Hall, of the Northeastern University School of Law, published a book calling for a spiritual revitalization of the legal profession. Professor Hall identifies a number of spiritual challenges facing lawyers today, including dissatisfaction with the practice of law; stress, loneliness, depression, and anxiety; a sense of being adrift, and, echoing Professor Granfield, a dis-integrating separation between one's inner self and one's professional self. Drawing on the work of Professor Randy Lee of Widener University Law School, Professor Hall concludes that " 'there can be no cure for the malaise afflicting the legal profession unless and until individual lawyers and the profession as a whole begin to break down the walls that have separated work from faith, and approach the practice of law as an integral part of their spiritual journey.' "
I suspect that Ignatius of Loyola would prescribe a similar cure for the spiritual crisis afflicting the contemporary legal profession. Ignatius conceived of his whole life as a pilgrimage – a spiritual journey – and he experienced God laboring in the world in a way that breaks down any walls that separate work from faith. Indeed, the life story of Ignatius and the gift of Ignatian spirituality offer powerful resources for just the sort of spiritual renewal that Professor Hall thinks our profession needs if we are "[t]o meet the challenge of today and the potential crisis of the future."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
26 June 2018
"There is abundant evidence that lawyers today could use the guidance provided by the light of Ignatian spirituality. Nearly twenty years ago, Professor David Granfield called attention to a crisis of meaning and value in the law. Granfield described the crisis in terms of the following question: Can members of the legal profession "afford to practice law as a fascinating technique for earning a living, if it remains separate from what they believe are the most vital and fundamental concerns of life?" Granfield saw this crisis as rooted in the difficulty lawyers have integrating the practice of law into the whole of their lives. Granfield feared that, if the law "remains merely a job, a prestigious wayof making a living, a sophisticated dialectical skill, or a springboard to a position of power and influence," then the practice of law could split the lawyer's life "into uncoordinated personal and professional compartments."
To be continued…
Gregory A. Kalscheur S.J. in "Ignatian Spirituality and the Life of the Lawyer: Finding God in All Things – Even in the Ordinary Practice of the Law", dated 1 May 2006 and published by Boston College Law School at lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu
19 June 2018
"The Bible is filled with the language and imagery of the law: Torah, commandment, covenant, justification, etc. It knows that human law at its best participates in the lawfulness of God and hence is in service of love and justice.
The New Testament culminates with a vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven. The climax of the Scriptural revelation is, in short, a political image, a picture of a rightly ordered city. It is fascinating to note that in the New Jerusalem there is no temple. This is not because religion has been eliminated from that lively place, but rather because the city itself has become a Temple, every activity in it dedicated to the praise of God.
May this great image spur you on and inspire you, as you labor in the fields of law and politics. You practice a noble art. Dedicate it to God."
Bishop Robert Barron in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in the diocese of Honolulu, Hawaii on 17 January 2017
12 June 2018
"But for our purposes today, I am especially interested in the deleterious effects of ideological secularism on our public life. Once the transcendent reference has been lost, law loses its dignity, for it is no longer grounded in a firm moral foundation. Untethered from an ethical and spiritual project, it becomes but a vehicle for the expression of personal desire and inclination. Unmoored from God, it no longer serves freedom in the authentic sense, but freedom in its most radical libertarian expression. If you doubt me on this score, take a good long look at the United States Supreme Court ruling in the matter of Casey v. Planned Parenthood in 1992. Adjudicating an abortion related case, the justices ruled that "it belongs to the nature of liberty to determine the meaning of life, of existence, and of the universe." This is not freedom tied to moral truth, but rather freedom determining moral truth according to the personal whim of the agent.
This has, quite obviously, opened the door to the legalization of acts that more morally informed generations would have considered ethically repugnant: same-sex marriage, unlimited access to abortion, assisted suicide, etc. But there is an even more profound danger that follows from the systematic elimination of God from our civil discourse: the tyranny of the strong. When positive law is removed from its nesting relationship with the natural law and the eternal law, it becomes a weapon in the hands of those who can commandeer power within a society, whether through intimidation, military force, or the manipulation of majority opinion. When Pontius Pilate threatened Jesus with a raw display of his authority, the Lord responded, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above." History has demonstrated, over and again, that when rulers forget that their legal authority comes from God, equality and human rights are lost in short order."
To be continued...
Bishop Robert Barron in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in the diocese of Honolulu, Hawaii on 17 January 2017
5 June 2018
"So what precisely is the ground for the extravagant claim that the equality of all people is self-evident? Jefferson gives away the secret in the use of the verb that probably slides unnoticed through our minds: "created." Though we are indeed radically unequal in practically every category of description, we remain equally children of the one God. Take the fact of creation out of the philosophical framework, and Jefferson's axiom evanesces and with it government grounded in universal equality. And if I might press the matter, what is the justification for Jefferson's assertion that we are all endowed with inalienable rights? Again, no classical political philosopher would have accepted this. Aristotle, Plato, Cicero and their colleagues would have said that certain elites, due to their unique endowments of intellectual skill or moral virtue, have societal privileges and are worthy of respect and protection. Though their underlying assumptions were far more vile than those of the classical thinkers, the avatars of the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century would have held to the same principle. Jefferson couldn't be clearer: "they are endowed by their Creator" with these rights. They come, not from the consensus of the elite, not as a gift of the government, not as a concomitant of heroic achievement, but from God as a grace. Take God out of the calculus, and a government, grounded in the respect for the rights of all, loses its foundation."
To be continued...
Bishop Robert Barron in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in the diocese of Honolulu, Hawaii on 17 January 2017
29 May 2018
"In the perhaps overly familiar formulation from the prologue to the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson writes: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." The words are so well known that we tend not to realize how strange and counter-intuitive they are.
No major political philosopher of the ancient world would have held fundamental equality as self-evident, just the contrary. They knew that we human beings are dramatically unequal in beauty, intelligence, courage, virtue, and in point of fact, they took this inequality as axiomatic in the political meditations. Hence, Plato felt that the well-ordered society rests upon the natural hierarchy that obtains among guardians, auxiliaries, and artisans; Aristotle thought that only a privileged elite of intelligent, propertied males was capable of participating in the political order. For him, it was taken for granted that the vast majority of people were destined to remain in the private sphere of the household."
To be continued...
Bishop Robert Barron in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in the diocese of Honolulu, Hawaii on 17 January 2017
22 May 2018
"Secondly, I want you to see that law, rightly formulated, is always in service of freedom. But to appreciate this, we have to distinguish between a more modern and a more Biblical sense of the term. On the modern reading, liberty is the capacity to hover above two or more options and to make a decision purely on one's own, without any internal or external compulsion. It is freedom from alien constraint so as to allow freedom for self-expression. But for the Biblical writers, freedom is not this sort of self-creating indifferentism; rather, it is a disciplining of desire to as to make the achievement of the good first possible and then effortless. Examples of this abound: learning to speak a language fluently; learning how to play a musical instrument creatively and with abandon; learning how to swing a golf club well.
On the first interpretation, law is a necessary evil at best. We will accept legal constraint grudgingly, acknowledging that it is better than the alternative. But in a perfect world, we would prefer that our liberty remain unrestricted. On the second reading, however, the law is what instructs us in excellence and what makes real joy possible. One becomes a freer player of golf the more one manages to internalize the laws of the game; one becomes increasingly rangy and free in the articulation of English the more one adapts to the laws of syntax, grammar, correct pronunciation, etc. I propose to you that the image of David dancing with reckless abandon before the Ark of the Covenant doesn't make a lick of sense on the modern interpretation of freedom but that it is eminently sensible on the Biblical construal. Though it strikes the modern reader as anomalous, the psalmist can say, with utter conviction, "Lord, how I love your law; how I meditate upon it day and night." Most moderns tend to see law as protective rather than directive, if I can put it that way. Political institutions and legal arrangements are designed to protect us against the assaults of others. But on a classical and more Biblical reading, law also has a directive function. It is meant to teach us what to desire and how to achieve excellence. What is against the law ought not to be construed simply as the arbitrarily forbidden, but rather as something inimical to human flourishing. The law, accordingly, is teaching us the form of the good life."
To be continued...
Bishop Robert Barron in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in the diocese of Honolulu, Hawaii on 17 January 2017
15 May 2018
"I am delighted indeed to be with you today for this Red Mass, celebrating the work of lawyers, judges, politicians, and paralegals. I would like my first word to you today to be one of praise and encouragement: you belong to a noble profession!
....Thomas Aquinas helps us to see the ground for this nobility. For Thomas, all positive law—everything from traffic regulations to the tax code—is rooted in the natural law, which is to say the fundamental precepts of the moral life. Thomas names them as follows: foster life, seek friendship, deepen the bonds of love, and respect human dignity. This is why, for Thomas as for Aristotle, all legislation is, finally, the legislation of morality. The contemporary concern about separating these two dimensions would have struck both philosophers as anomalous. Traffic laws are designed to protect life and hence have a moral purpose; a fair tax code is meant to instantiate justice and hence has a moral purpose.
And the moral law is grounded, furthermore, in the eternal law, which is identical to the mind and purpose of God. This is why decent and well-formulated positive laws, including the simplest regulations, are reflective of the divine mind. It is fascinating to note that Martin Luther King, in his famous Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, cited just this insight of Thomas Aquinas to argue that the unjust Jim Crow Laws of his native South were not simply morally wrong but an affront to God. This is also why Lincoln could characterize the freeing of the slaves as congruent with God's providence. So don't lose sight of this nobility of the practice of the legal and political arts as you go about your daily work."
To be continued...
Bishop Robert Barron in his homily for the Red Mass celebrated in the diocese of Honolulu, Hawaii on 17 January 2017
8 May 2018
The legendary Mum Shirl…
"Living in the Aboriginal community in Redfern, Mum Shirl learned about what her people needed. She took in many children and offered hospitality and love to many. In 1971, she co-founded Australia's first Aboriginal medical service and later the Aboriginal Legal Service, to give proper service to Aboriginal people who needed it.
Mum Shirl could not read or write but she was a powerful evangeliser who saw in her people's suffering the mystery of the 'Suffering One' Whom we worship....Often when meeting with Mum Shirl she would pull out of her handbag a small statue of St Martin de Porres, the mixed-race Dominican lay brother saint. She would take it everywhere with her in her work for mercy and justice. She was able to integrate her faith life, piety and action so wonderfully."
From "Mum Shirl – Woman of Compassion" by Br Mark O'Connor FMS, writing in "Kairos", 18-31 October 2009
1 May 2018
" 'Mum Shirl' was one of 14 children born to Aboriginal parents living on a mission in New South Wales. They named her Colleen Shirley Perry. She was not able to go to an ordinary school because she suffered from epilepsy and was taught at home by her grandfather.
At a time when her brother was in jail, Shirley began to visit the other Aboriginal people in the prison. She also went to court sometimes to support people who had been charged with crimes. People began to call her 'Mum Shirl' as, when police required her to state her relationship with the prisoner, she would answer 'I'm his mother'! "
To be continued…
From "Mum Shirl – Woman of Compassion" by Br Mark O'Connor FMS, writing in "Kairos", 18-31 October 2009
24 April 2018
The long lasting influence of Spain's Fuero Juzgo (Charter of Justice)…
"Finally, constant reference to this important document implanted a "culture of language" in the peninsula based on orderliness and principles. The way a language is conceived tends to mirror the way the law of its speakers is organized. English-speaking countries use common law, a system based on customs, canon law, parliamentary writs, and royal decree. Common law does not proceed from a code or from principles, and English itself is a disorganized tongue that follows no code.
In Hispania, the clearly defined Visigothic code no doubt inspired a desire to organize the language in which it was written. This would manifest itself not only in the Kingdom of Castile but that of Portugal as well. As we will see in the coming chapters, the Christians – who were extremely busy fighting the Arabs as well as each other – codified their language as they expanded their hold on Iberia, beginning as early as the eleventh century, four or five centuries before the French or Italians tried to do the same thing."
From "The Story of Spanish" by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, Ch. 3.
17 April 2018
"Spain's Visigothic "law of the land" was a huge departure from the rest of Europe. The Barbarian invasions in Europe had introduced Germanic law into the former Roman Empire but didn't erase Roman law. The effect was that most of Western Europe had separate laws for "Barbarians" and for "Romans." In short, it was legal chaos. If a Visigoth killed a Roman, he was judged according to Visigothic law; if a Roman killed a Visigoth, he was judged according to Roman law. The system was both unjust and impractical – for starters, courts had no idea which system to use for the offspring of mixed marriages (which were outlawed in the first place).
Although the Visigothic nobility never really learned to respect their own laws, the Visigothic law code achieved three things that had a profound impact on later Spanish culture. First, Hispania became the only place in "barbarian" Europe where the same laws applied to all (theoretically). The Fuero Juzgo, which predates the English Magna Carta by five and a half centuries, is often cited as the foundation of representative government in Europe. The code proceeded from principles rather than customs, interdicts, and obligations.
Second, the Fuero Juzgo set a standard for Vulgar Latin. The best minds on the Iberian Peninsula would read and reread it for the next seven centuries."
To be continued…
From "The Story of Spanish" by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, Ch. 3
10 April 2018
St Isidore, Bishop of Seville (c. 560-636), turns his attention to Spanish law…
"He wrote extensively on history, law, and theology, but also on language and culture. His most significant work, an encyclopedia called Etymologiae, was a massive work of 448 chapters in 20 volumes in which Isidore attempted to "account for all that was known."....Until the invention of the printing press eight centuries later, his Etymologiae would be the second most read work, after the Bible.
….Isidore also labored to create a unified set of laws for Hispania, which was a first in Europe. Isidore was a statesman obsessed with uniting Spain by means beyond the Christian faith. At the fourth Council of Toledo in 633, he went as far as preaching a famous formula: rex, gens, patria. Literally, this means "king, people, nation," but it carries the sense of "one king, one people, one nation." Isidore's point was that Romans and Visigoths had to merge into a single identity. The common link would be law. So Isidore spent his whole life compiling Roman law, a work he never finished.
Isidore did not have time to overhaul the law code before he died in 636. Less than seven years later, the next Visigothic king, Chindasuinth, created a coded legal system called the Liber Iudicorum or the Lex Visigothorum, better known by its later name, Fuero Juzgo (Charter of Justice)."
To be continued…
From "The Story of Spanish" by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, Ch. 3.
3 April 2018
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter is executed by guillotine in 1943 for refusing to join the German army…
"Franz's final letters home were heartrending, but filled with confidence in God, of his willingness to give his life for a just cause, and a plea to his wife for forgiveness. As a final word to his children, Franz wrote: "Now, my dear children, when Mother reads this letter to you, your father will already be dead. He would have loved to come to you again, but the Heavenly Father willed it otherwise. Be good and obedient children and pray for me so that we may soon be reunited in heaven…." His final letter was written on a special form provided for this sad purpose by the authorities, who would send it to the prison authorities and then to the military court. The letter would then be mailed to the family as notification that the execution had taken place.
On the night before the execution, Prison Chaplain Jochmann again visited Franz. The chaplain found Franz completely calm and prepared and without a word of complaint. On a table was a form, which, if he would sign it, would save Franz's life. Franz again refused. The next morning Franz declined to read some pamphlets the chaplain offered him and instead read for a time from the New Testament. Later, he walked calmly to the scaffold. He was thirty-six years old.
The chaplain, who witnessed the execution, commented later to a religious sister: "I can only congratulate you on this your countryman who lived as a saint and has now died a hero. I say with certainty that this simple man is the only saint that I have ever met in my lifetime."
....Although the villagers at the time did not regard Jägerstätter's actions as heroic, they eventually grew to appreciate his courage and convictions. So it was that in December 1984, responding to a nationwide petition, the president of Austria issued a special posthumous Award of Honor to Franz Jägerstätter.
....The postulator for his Cause for beatification writes that Franz Jägerstätter: "Can be considered as a martyr of faith and justice in the sense of the ecclesiastical tradition. He was faced with the alternatives: God or idol; Jesus Christ or Fuhrer.""
Joan Carroll Cruz in "Saintly Men of Modern Times". Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
27 March 2018
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter is imprisoned for refusing to join the German army in 1943…
"A parade of people - relatives, friends, spiritual advisers, even his own bishop - pleaded with Jägerstätter to change his mind. Some did not disagree with his anti-Nazi convictions or his moral stance; they simply argued he could not be held guilty in the eyes of God if he offered minimal cooperation under such duress, given the extreme alternative.
Jägerstätter, however, saw things differently. He believed Christians were called precisely to meet the highest possible standards - "be thou perfect," said Our Lord - even at the cost of one's life, if fundamental Christian principles were at stake. Serving Germany in a nonmilitary post would simply make it easier for someone else to commit war crimes. He could not participate in the Nazi death machine, even indirectly. He would not be swayed: "Since the death of Christ, almost every century has seen the persecution of Christians; there have always been heroes and martyrs who gave their lives - often in horrible ways - for Christ and their faith. If we hope to reach our goal someday, then we, too, must become heroes of the faith." Indeed, he added, "the important thing is to fear God more than man."
During his ordeal, many of Jägerstätter's neighbors considered his act unnecessary and foolish, a sentiment that remained long after his death. Zahn, who interviewed Jägerstätter's critics, examines all the explanations offered to question Jägerstätter's sacrifice - that he was selfish, reckless, spiritually vainglorious, or even disturbed - and makes a convincing case that none of them hold.
The most unfair charge is that Jägerstätter put himself above his family. "I have faith that God will still give me a sign if some other course would be better," he wrote, as he struggled to find a solution to his dilemma. Images of the Passion filled his mind: "Christ, too, prayed on the Mount of Olives that the Heavenly Father might permit the chalice of sorrow to pass from His lips - but we must never forget this part of his prayer: 'Lord, not my will be done but rather Thine.' "
William Doino Jr in "First Things", 25 October 2007. Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007. Gordon Zahn was an American author who first brought Bl. Franz's story to international attention in the 1950s.
20 March 2018
"Two weeks after his arrest he wrote: "Now it is almost time to be sowing the oats. The weather must really be glorious. Whenever you have questions about the farm, write me so that I can help with my advice. Needless to say, I am always ready to do so – though I would much rather be helping you in person." His letters speak of yearning and sadness at being unable to help at home: "If it were possible for me to get a leave to clear away some trees, you would also have the straw in the cow barn changed. If the weather stays like this, you will begin mowing the hay by Easter and will be able to have fresh feed. Yesterday we already saw apricot blossoms in our prison garden."
Probably the saddest of his letters is one in which he instructs his wife, "I think it is better for you to tell the children where their father is…." He then addresses some words to his three little daughters, Rosalie (born in 1937), Marie (born in 1938), and Aloisia (born in 1940): "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the greetings you sent me. It makes me very happy that you pray for me so often and that, as I hope, you have become better children….It would make me so happy if I could see you again – I would gather you all together so that you would soon learn not to fight among yourselves any more. Also, you must not lie, and at mealtime you should always be satisfied with what you get. Then, I believe, the Heavenly Father will grant that I can come home to you someday, even though it may not be right away….I greet you, my dear little girls. May the Child Jesus and the dear Mother of Heaven protect you until we see one another again." "
To be continued…
Joan Carroll Cruz in "Saintly Men of Modern Times". Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
13 March 2018
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter refuses to join the German army in 1943…
"At the Ennis Induction Center Franz was immediately placed under military arrest when he refused to cooperate. The following day he was taken to the military prison at Linz. He was left with the impression that his execution could take place at any time.
….During the early days of his imprisonment, he was encouraged in his position by other prisoners, and is believed to have converted two condemned men. He expressed the opinion that he could accomplish more among the bitter and disillusioned prisoners than he could ever hope to do in the army.
In another letter to his wife he wrote: "I am always troubled by the fear that you have much to suffer on my account: forgive me everything if I bring injustice down upon you." He then tells her that he declared himself ready to serve in the medical corps because he would then be performing a charitable service, but changed his decision when he realized that he would only be replacing someone else who would be doing the killing for him. His change of decision mattered little: his request for medical corps duty was denied."
To be continued…
Joan Carroll Cruz in "Saintly Men of Modern Times". Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
6 March 2018
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter refuses to join the German army in 1943…
"Franz's refusal to fight was well known in his village, and his family was subjected to severe criticism, as he had expected. Because he faced imprisonment and death for refusing to fight, some said he was neglecting his responsibility to his family.
Franz countered the criticism in one of his letters: "Again and again people stress the obligations of conscience as they concern my wife and children. Yet, I cannot believe that, just because one has a wife and children, he is free to offend God especially in all the things he would be called upon to do. Did not Christ Himself say, 'He who loves father, mother or children more than Me is not deserving of My love?' "
His critics charged that Franz was mentally deranged and was, in effect, committing suicide. Regardless of the harsh comments, and even though he was encouraged by some priests and even his mother to cooperate, Franz stood firm.
In a letter to a priest friend, Franz begs for prayers, saying that no one can dispense him from what he viewed as: "A great danger to the health of my soul that this 'gang' presents. As it is, it is so hard to come even one step closer to perfection. Is it even conceivable to try in such an outfit? Everyone tells me that I should not do what I am doing because of the danger of death (in prison); but it seems to me that the others who do fight are not completely free of the same danger of death….I believe it is better to sacrifice one's life right away than to place oneself in the grave danger of committing sin and then dying." Franz then begs for a remembrance at Mass, "as long as you are permitted to offer Mass." "
To be continued…
Joan Carroll Cruz in "Saintly Men of Modern Times". Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
27 February 2018
Conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter…
"Shortly before the Nazi invasion of Austria, Franz spoke out forcefully against the regime. After the forces of Adolf Hitler crossed the Austrian border in 1938, the people of Austria voted almost unanimously to incorporate Austria into Germany. What distressed Franz even more were the number of Catholic clergymen who actually praised the Nazi Party for its many good works, an action that influenced the people to give the Nazis the almost unanimous victory at the polls.
Although he was strongly encouraged by many, including Father Karobath [his parish priest], to vote for the Nazi Party, it is common knowledge in St. Radegund that Franz did not cast one of the "yes" votes, but is believed to have cast a "void" ballot, an action that could be traced to dissenters. To Franz, a yes vote represented a betrayal of Church and nation.
Franz refused to cooperate with the Nazis, including refusing to contribute to the "little red collection boxes," which supported many of the Nazi-sponsored welfare or patriotic organizations. The only time he did contribute was for the benefit of the police. He may have felt a need to help these defenders of law and order since he had given them trouble in the past.
In 1940, Franz was ordered to report for military training in the German army. He immediately set about seeking the advice of priests and even the bishop as to whether it was morally acceptable to fight in the Nazi organization. After prayerful consideration, he reported for training, knowing full well the act of defiance he would eventually take. Before long, and at the request of the mayor of St. Radegund, Franz was returned home to care for his family and his farm.
On March 1, 1943, Franz received a letter requiring him to report to the German army. Before he left, he wrote a letter to his wife encouraging her to accept whatever would come in the spirit of penance, relying upon the good Lord for help….Apparently, he knew the criticism she would encounter because of the action he would take: the absolute refusal to fight in what he considered an unjust war that opposed his Catholic faith and introduced National Socialism."
To be continued…
Joan Carroll Cruz in "Saintly Men of Modern Times". Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
20 February 2018
The early life of conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter…
"In the same district of upper Austria where Adolf Hitler was born (Braunau) and where Adolf Eichmann, the administrator of the infamous "final solution of the Jewish question" spent his childhood (Linz), is the village of St. Radegund, where the rebel-peasant Franz Jägerstätter lived in sharp contrast to the principles of these two promoters of evil.
Franz was the son of Franz Bachmeier, a farmer who died in World War I. The father's death left Franz's mother in an awkward situation – unmarried and pregnant. Franz's mother eventually married Herr Jägerstätter who adopted the illegitimate boy and, as was the custom, gave his farm to his adopted son when Franz came of age.
….One villager remembered that Franz had the reputation of being one of the most accomplished fighters in town in his frequent battles with young fellows of neighboring villages over the attention of the local girls. For one such fight, Franz and his opponent were arrested and spent several days in jail. The fight divided his village, and for a time Franz was banished. He returned when tempers settled.
Franz's interest in the ladies got him in deeper trouble when he was thought to have fathered an illegitimate child. Many of the villagers believed he was not the father, while his friends believed he was. Whether he was or he was not, Franz voluntarily supported the child [Hildegard], a fact confirmed years later by his widow and in letters he wrote from prison.
….When Franz was about twenty he left the village for almost three years to work in the iron mines in the Steiermark region of Austria. In the socialist environment that was quite hostile to Catholicism, Franz apparently realized how precious his faith was….After his conversion, some thought that Franz must have neglected his farming duties in order to carry out his religious activities, though his family says that after his conversion Franz reorganized his work schedule and became more efficient."
To be continued…
Joan Carroll Cruz in "Saintly Men of Modern Times". Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
13 February 2018
A thought for Ash Wednesday...
"That you may be justified when you give sentence
and be without reproach when you judge,
O see, in guilt I was born,
a sinner was I conceived.
....Make me hear rejoicing and gladness,
that the bones you have crushed may thrill.
From my sins turn away your face
and blot out all my guilt."
Ps 51:4-5, 8-9
13 February 2018
A young lawyer makes a foray into travel guide publishing…a rival to the luxury travel writer Temple Fielding…
"For all its initial grassroots success, 5 Dollars remained a newsstand novelty item and no threat whatever to Fielding. Frommer was the gnat on the hide of the Fielding elephant. For its first seven years, 5 Dollars was a summer hobby for Frommer, who toiled as a litigator at Paul, Weiss on cases like defending Lady Chatterley's Lover against the U.S. Post Office on obscenity charges. In 1962, when Frommer divined that he was not going to become an august Paul, Weiss partner, he decided to give up his day job. Assisted by his wife, an English actress whose stage name was Hope Arthur, he started living on his writing. Had he become a partner, with all its attendant prestige, he probably would have taken his place in the pantheon of Manhattan lawyers rather than searching for cheap pizza at the real Pantheon in Rome."
From "Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance in Aviation's Glory Years" by William Stadiem, Ch. 5
30 January 2018
Arthur Frommer begins his legal career at Paul, Weiss in New York in the 1940s and writes a travel guide on the side...
"The firm had the biggest entertainment practice in the city, and its chief rainmaker was distinguished former judge Simon Rifkind, who also made the firm Gotham's leader in pro bono cases. This was the firm that proudly boasted the city's first major female partner, the wife of Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas. It had the first black associate in William T. Coleman, Jr., future secretary of transportation, and it soon would have Adlai Stevenson as head partner in its Chicago office. Arthur Frommer may have been wearing wholesale pants, but whatever his attire, at Paul, Weiss, he was dressed for success.
For all the promise of his legal future, the short, boyish, bookish Frommer couldn't get the writing bug out of his head. On his first Paul, Weiss summer vacation, he flew back to Europe, tourist class, and began researching a guide that would do for civilians what he had done for GIs. The book, then still a gleam in his eye, would be called Europe on 5 Dollars a Day. It took two summers of sleeping around before he had enough material to fill a book, which, once again, he ended up self-publishing. And once again, his book caught on and sold out at the newsstands, proof that while money talked, saving money could speak just as loudly."
To be continued...
From "Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance in Aviation's Glory Years" by William Stadiem, Ch. 5
23 January 2018
A young lawyer makes an unlikely splash in travel guide publishing…a rival to the luxury travel writer Temple Fielding…
"Fielding may well have been the most envied travel writer of all time. As such, he was bound to create a backlash, and he did, in the meek persona of a New York backroom lawyer named Arthur Frommer, who chose to stake out the opposite, cheap end of the travel spectrum. It could be said that Arthur Frommer was born at a discount, in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1930. There his father worked in a low-priced pants factory named Oberman's. He grew up during the Depression, hawking newspapers on corners and dressing in wholesale pants from Oberman's. He learned from the earliest age exactly what things cost, and never to pay full price. In 1944, the Frommers moved to New York. A dedicated student, Arthur made Phi Beta Kappa at NYU and went on to Yale Law School.
....After Yale, he was drafted and, in 1954, was sent to Germany to the Army's intelligence school at Oberammergau….Amazed at how much he could do and see on his meager private's salary, Frommer decided he wanted to share his adventures in budgeteering. So, while stationed in Germany, now Berlin, he wrote a little book, more a pamphlet, of ninety pages called The G.I's Guide to Traveling in Europe.
....Back in New York, he got a cable telling him the G.I's Guide had sold out. He was flattered, but the success didn't change his life. Why should it? He had just gotten a job at one of New York's most prestigious law firms, Paul, Weiss, in 1950 the first major Wall Street firm to move uptown to Park Avenue."
To be continued…
From "Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance in Aviation's Glory Years" by William Stadiem, Ch. 5
16 January 2018
"The canonical list of filthy words was formulated by the American comic George Carlin, who in 1972 performed a monologue called "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television."
....Carlin made up that list of obscenities himself; when he insisted you can't say them on television, he wasn't reporting on the law – there was no law. But when a radio station played Carlin's "Filthy Words" routine in 1973, the Federal Communications Commission fined the station for violating public indecency statutes. The opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation gave informal precedents the force of law: the justices held that the FCC had the power to determine what constituted indecency. As it happens, Carlin's list became the de facto standard of what really couldn't be said on the public airwaves. It's a strange paradox that a foulmouthed champion of free speech should have been instrumental in writing the law prohibiting those same words in the public airwaves."
Jack Lynch in "The Lexicographer's Dilemma", Ch. 11
9 January 2018
"Reliable estimates of literacy rates are notoriously difficult to come by, because the act of reading rarely leaves traces. Historians have generally used the ability to sign legal documents as a proxy for literacy, assuming that someone who has signed a will or a contract was probably able to read as well. It's a tenuous conclusion. Since reading and writing were usually taught as separate skills, there were probably many people who knew how to read without being able to sign their names, and it's at least possible that a few people learned to sign their names without really knowing how to read. Still, the ability to sign a legal document is probably correlated with literacy, and those numbers show sharp increases in the decades after about 1660."
Jack Lynch in "The Lexicographer's Dilemma", Ch. 2
Thoughts for Christmastide and the New Year...
2 January 2018
"Trust the past to the mercy of God, the present to His love, the future to His providence"
St Augustine
27 December 2017
"When a profound silence covered all things
and night was in the middle of its course,
your all-powerful Word, O Lord,
bounded from heaven's royal throne."
Wisdom 18:14-15
19 December 2017
"A child is born for us, and a son is given to us;
his sceptre of power rests upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called Messenger of great counsel."
Isaiah 9:5
12 December 2017
The tragic downfall of medieval lawyer Piero delle Vigne, memorialized in Dante's Divine Comedy…
The editor explains the lines
"By the strange new roots of this wood, I swear to
you that I never broke faith with my lord, who was
so worthy of honor."
"These lines…are the focus of sharp disagreement. Most commentators take them as Dante's exoneration of Piero. This view is borne out by contemporary sources, most of which agree that the evidence against Piero was fabricated. Still, Piero's suicide is itself an act of multiple disobedience: its victim is immediately the body, which the soul should care for; Piero's suicide also contravenes the emperor's prerogative of determining capital punishment, written by Piero into the Constitutions of Melfi (Title 14) of 1234, and this disobedience is compounded by violation of God's law. Aquinas's discussion of suicide draws both on Deut. 32.39 and on the idea, found in both Aristotle and Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, that in suicide the soul disobeys also by failing to care for the "servant" in its charge, the body. In a certain sense, then, Piero, the new Peter, "betrays" both Frederick and Christ."
Robin Kirkpatrick in his notes on Canto 13 of "Inferno", part 1 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri
5 December 2017
The tragic downfall of medieval lawyer Piero delle Vigne, memorialized in Dante's Divine Comedy…
The editor explains the lines
"My spirit, at the taste of disdain, believing by
death to flee disdain, made me unjust against my just self."
"That is, Piero killed himself to avoid scorn and humiliation, or perhaps to avoid the contempt of his lord, Frederick, but in committing suicide he committed a crime against his own innocence. In his attack on the Stoic idealizing of suicide, to him equivalent to murder, Augustine maintains that the suicide of an otherwise innocent person is a more serious crime than that of a guilty one (City of God 1:17…)"
Robin Kirkpatrick in his notes on Canto 13 of "Inferno", part 1 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri
28 November 2017
The tragic downfall of medieval lawyer Piero delle Vigne, memorialized in Dante's Divine Comedy…
"The speaker, never named but immediately identifiable, is Pietro or Piero delle Vigne (or della Vigna), born into a modest family in Capua in southern Italy (Kingdom of Naples and Sicily) around 1190. After law studies at Bologna, Piero became in 1231 a notary in the imperial chancery, the most important noneccelesiastical bureaucracy of the period. He rose rapidly to great influence and by 1234 was a principal author of the Constitutions of Melfi or Liber augustalis, Frederick's epoch-making code of laws [Emperor Frederick II, who was based in Sicily]. Piero was famous as a jurist and judge and in 1246 was appointed protonotary (in charge of government publications) and logothete (official spokesman). He was well known as a Latin prose stylist, especially in his widely circulated letters, and wrote vernacular poetry; he is cited as an examplar of rhetorical skill in Brunetto Latini's treatise on rhetoric….In 1248 Frederick was excommunicated a second time by the pope; in the same year, Piero was implicated, probably falsely, in a conspiracy against him. Arrested in 1249, he was blinded and killed himself, apparently by dashing his head against a wall. Frederick later held up Piero as an example of corruption in office, a traitor, and a "Simon" (Simon Magus…); it is beyond dispute that Piero had reaped enormous financial gain while in office."
To be continued...
Robin Kirkpatrick in his notes to "Inferno", part 1 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri
28 November 2017
Dante encounters a lawyer in the underworld, now transformed into a branch of a thornbush…
"And the branch: "....I am he who held both the keys to the heart of
Frederick and turned them, locking and unlocking, so
that I excluded almost everyone else from his
intimacy; I kept faith with my glorious office, so
much that because of it I lost sleep and vigor.
The whore who never turns her sluttish eyes away
from Caesar's dwelling, the common death and vice of
inflamed against me all spirits; and those inflamed
inflamed Augustus so that my bright honors turned
to sad mourning.
My spirit, at the taste of disdain, believing by
death to flee disdain, made me unjust against my just
By the strange new roots of this wood, I swear to
you that I never broke faith with my lord, who was
so worthy of honor.
And if either of you goes back to the world,
strengthen my memory, languishing still beneath the
blow that envy dealt it."
To be continued...
From "Inferno", part 1 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, Canto 13, verses 55-78, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick
21 November 2017
In a dark wood Dante hears "cries of woe on every side but saw no person uttering them"…
"Then I stretched out my hand a little before me
and plucked a small branch from a great thornbush;
and its stem cried out: "Why do you split me?"
When it had become dark with blood, it began
again: "Why do you pluck me? Have you no spirit of
pity at all?
We were men, and now we have become plants:
truly your hand should be more merciful had we
been the souls of serpents."
[Dante's guide, the poet Virgil, replies:]
"O wounded soul….tell him who you were, so that as a kind of
amends he may refresh your fame in the world
above, where he is permitted to return."
To be continued...
From "Inferno", part 1 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, Canto 13, verses 31-39 & 47-54, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick
14 November 2017
The Editor explains Gratian's claim to fame…
"Francesco Graziano (Gratian) (b. c. 1090) is the Tuscan Benedictine, who is said to have founded the field of ecclesiastical or canon law with his Decretum (1140-50), which attempted to reconcile the law of the Church with civil law."
Robin Kirkpatrick in his notes to "Paradiso", part 3 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri
7 November 2017
Dante encounters a lawyer in Paradise - and the Editor explains Gratian's claim to fame…
"Francesco Graziano (Gratian) (b. c. 1090) is the Tuscan Benedictine, who is said to have founded the field of ecclesiastical or canon law with his Decretum (1140-50), which attempted to reconcile the law of the Church with civil law."
Robin Kirkpatrick in his notes to "Paradiso", part 3 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri
31 October 2017
Dante encounters a lawyer in Paradise – introduced by an unimpeachable guide…
"I was a lamb within that holy flock
that Dominic conducts along the road
where "All grow fat who do not go astray".
This one, who here is nearest on my right,
was master to me, and a brother, too –
Albert of Köln. I'm Thomas Aquinas.
And if you wish to know the rest as well,
then follow with your eyes the words I speak,
circling around this interwoven string.
The next flame blazes out from Gratian's smile.
He's loved in Paradise for having served
both civil and ecclesial courts so well."
From "Paradiso", part 3 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, Canto 10, verses 94-105, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick.
24 October 2017
The Editor explains that Justinian is referring to "his major work, which was the codification and clarification of Roman law – an achievement that was to provide a foundation for legal practice throughout the Middle Ages.
….Dante notes that Justinian's jurisprudential interest depended on a true understanding of Christ's nature as being both divine and human….It is only when Justinian abandons heresy and comes to recognize that Christ is as much a human as a divine being that he can set out with confidence on the work of legal codification. The orthodox teaching made clear to him the potential value of human existence. Justice is a means of safeguarding and of expressing that value. Properly codified, laws provide a rational and reliable basis for the conduct of our temporal lives."
Robin Kirkpatrick in his notes to "Paradiso", part 3 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri
17 October 2017
Dante encounters a famous lawmaker in Paradise…
"I, emperor once, am now Justinian.
And by the will of primal love–which I know here–
I purged our laws of emptiness and dross.
Before I set my mind upon this work,
I'd thought of Christ as single and divine –
not truly man – contented in that faith.
But then the blessed Agapetus – shepherd
supreme – led me, by words of his, aright,
to find pure faith, unsullied and complete.
I trusted him, believed him, and now see
what he in faith upheld – as clear as you,
by logic, prove one thought is false, one true.
As soon as I walked onward with the Church,
then God so pleased, through grace, to breathe in me
the great design on which I set all thought."
From "Paradiso", part 3 of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, Canto 6, verses 10-24, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick.
10 October 2017
The disreputable game of medieval tennis…
"There is clear evidence that tennis in one form or another was played avidly among English royalty and aristocracy in enclosed courts in medieval times and particularly in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Similarly there is evidence of the game's popularity among the lower classes, who played versions of it in open spaces in town and country. This is attested to by the number of edicts proclaimed against tennis and other sports and pastimes from the fourteenth century on. Such ordinances were issued to encourage the populace to practise archery rather than to waste their leisure hours on idle and frivolous pastimes. A further – and perhaps more cogent – reason was to prohibit public disturbances: these sports involved gambling and the generally quarrelsome, even riotous, behaviour that the games incited were a threat to communal peace."
Geoffrey G. Hiller in "The Bandies of Fortune: Perceptions of Real Tennis from Medieval to Modern Times", Ch. 3
3 October 2017
The law code of the Babylonian king Hammurapi...
Generally speaking, the Babylonian laws often required money payments for injuries where the Israelite laws exacted physical punishment and had a rather higher percentage of death penalties. Unlike Babylon with its large economy and customary use of money to pay for everything, Israel's laws reflect the still vibrant and proud sense of strict justice inherited from a tribal background.
Nevertheless, Babylon and other ancient Near Eastern nations shared with Israel an ideal of justice for the nation, and especially for the ruler who is responsible for just government. Hammurapi brags at the end of his law code that he has written the precious words of the law "in order that the strong might not oppress the weak, that justice might be dealt the orphan (and) the widow" (ANET 178). Some centuries later to the West, a Canannite text from Ugarit criticizes King Keret because:
You have let your hand fall into mischief,
You fail to judge the case of the widow,
Nor decide the case of the wretched;
You drive not away those who prey on the poor,
Nor feed the orphan before you,
The widow behind your back.
Israel's psalms are filled with many similar expressions:
Exult before him;
the father of orphans and the defender of widows
is God in his holy dwelling.
God gives a home to the abandoned
and leads forth the captive to prosperity" (Ps 68:6-7)."
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch 9
19 September 2017
"Like many ancient law codes, it began with a lengthy prologue describing how the high gods had appointed Hammurapi king in order to "promote the welfare of the people…to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil that the strong might not oppress the weak" (ANET 164).
Then follows the list of laws, many of them very much like those found in the Pentateuch. Thus:
Hammurapi #196-197
If a noble has destroyed
the eye of another noble,
they shall destroy his eye.
If he has broken another
noble's bone, they shall
break his bone.
Exodus 21:23-24
…If injury ensues (in a
fight), you shall give
life for life, eye for
eye, hand for hand,
foot for foot, burn for
burn, wound for wound,
stripe for stripe.
Sometimes, Israelite law is even more demanding than Babylonian. Thus, Hammurapi law #195 decrees, "If a son has struck his father, they shall cut off his hand," but Exodus 21:15 demands, "Whoever strikes his father or mother is to be put to death." This may seem harsh, but the Israelite law is humane compared to the even more drastic penalties commonly found in the Assyrian laws of the twelfth century B.C. And as a measure to end blood feuds between families and the power of the wealthy to force tenfold repayment of loans from the weak, it was a step forward."
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction, Ch 9
12 September 2017
"Archaeology has uncovered no less than seven ancient codes of law from Israel's neighbors. They range from the Sumerian code of Ur Nammu in the twenty-second century B.C. down to Babylonian codes of the sixth century B.C. The most exciting discovery of all was the black stone monument of Hammurapi (or Hammurabi, as he has commonly been called), which was found in Susa, an Elamite city, in 1901. It had been dragged there after some Elamite king had won a victory over Babylon, and although broken in three pieces, it survived the centuries. Scholars had already known the fame of Hammurapi (1732-1680) as a lawgiver through other ancient writings, so that this was an exciting confirmation of their work.
Hammurapi's code consists of 282 laws engraved on a stone pillar with a scene at the top showing the king praying before the god of justice, Shamash. It covers many legal questions, but does not include every kind of case. Scholars have often tried to determine what purpose such a partial law code would serve. Since it was on a pillar in a public square, it could not have been a secret guide for judges, but may well have served to update older laws. It may have been just a sample of good laws to prove the king's concern for justice. In this sense, it was like a modern political campaign ad for the king: he was on the side of right!"
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch 9Keanu Reeves plays one of the unlikeliest lawyers of page or screen in "Bram Stoker's Dracula"…
5 September 2017
Keanu Reeves plays one of the unlikeliest lawyers of page or screen in "Bram Stoker's Dracula"…
"The novel begins with solicitor Jonathan Harker (the memorably anguished Keanu Reeves) being sent on a mission to Transylvania to visit Count Dracula, leaving his betrothed Mina (Winona Ryder) behind in England....Harker completes his real-estate transaction with the Count but is then imprisoned in Dracula's castle for a month as he makes arrangements to transport Dracula and his strange retinue to the ruined abbey the Count has purchased on the outskirts of London. (But why, one wonders, would this prince of darkness choose to settle upon consecrated ground?) Left behind, Harker has to resist carnal seductions by three randy female vampires but finally manages to escape via the river to a convent, where he is gradually nursed back to health."
James M. Welsh in "Sucking Dracula: Mythic Biography into Fiction into Film, or Why Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula Is Not Really Bram Stoker's Dracula or Wallachia's Dracula", a chapter of "The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation", edited by Welsh and Peter Lev
29 August 2017
The fictitious legal doctrine of the rule of thumb...
"The real mystery here is how "rule of thumb," a seventeenth-century term for a rough measurement, got linked with a mythological legal doctrine. As far as we know, the expression wasn't mentioned in relation to wife beating until 1976, when the feminist Del Martin used it, apparently as a pun, in a report on domestic violence. She presented the debunked legal doctrine as if it were fact, then followed it with her unfortunate play on words. "For instance," she wrote, "the common-law doctrine had been modified to allow the husband 'the right to whip his wife, provided that he used a switch no bigger than his thumb' – a rule of thumb, so to speak."
Not long after her report was made public, other writers took Martin's wordplay seriously. They began referring to this fictitious legal doctrine as the "rule of thumb" and spreading a fictitious etymology in the process. Within a few years this myth was so entrenched that the US Commission on Civil Rights entitled its 1982 report on battered women "Under the Rule of Thumb." "
Patricia T. O'Conner in "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, Ch. 8
22 August 2017
"The phrase is believed to come from the old custom of using parts of one's body as rough units of measure. A man's foot is a foot long or thereabouts, and it's still used in a pinch to pace off the size of a room. The palm of the hand is about four inches wide, a unit once called a "hand's breadth" – even now, horses are measured in hands….And the thumb is about an inch wide, a unit once called a "thumb's breadth" and common in the textile trades. As for the "rule" in "rule of thumb," think of a ruler or measuring stick.
So how did wife beating enter the picture? Well, a husband once did have the right under English common law to "give his wife moderate correction," according to Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765). But the old right, Blackstone said, began to wane in the 1600s. He offered this rationale for the old practice: Since a husband had to answer for his wife's misbehavior, "the law thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining her, by domestic chastisement, in the same moderation that a man is allowed to correct his apprentices or children."
Thumbs didn't come up, so to speak, until 1782, when an English judge, Francis Buller, supposedly ruled that a husband could beat his wife if the rod or stick were no thicker than his thumb. There's no published record of his comments, but the judge was ridiculed in the press and viciously caricatured in cartoons that labeled him "Judge Thumb" and "Mr. Justice Thumb." In the following century, judges in three American court cases – two in North Carolina and one in Mississippi – also referred to such a doctrine. But none of the judges, on either side of the Atlantic, offered a shred of verifiable evidence that the doctrine had ever existed. (As we know, it never did.) And none of the judges actually used the expression "rule of thumb." "
To be continued...
Patricia T. O'Conner in "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, Ch. 8
15 August 2017
"When I was an editor at The New York Times Book Review, we published a glowing review of a new book on domestic violence. The distinguished reviewer called it "feminist scholarship at its best" and an important work that put the raw facts in their historical, social, and legal contexts. The fact of wife beating, the reviewer said, "was once acceptable if it conformed to the 'rule of thumb' (no rod thicker than the husband's thumb could be used)." The headline on the review was a natural: "Wife Beating and the Rule of Thumb." I didn't raise an eyebrow at the time. In fact, a few years later I tweaked a radio caller for using the sexist expression "rule of thumb" on the air. Wow, did I get an earful from another listener! And no, he didn't spare the rod.
I admit it. I helped perpetuate one of the most persistent myths of political correctness. For the record, the phrase "rule of thumb" does not come from an old English law allowing a husband to beat his wife with a rod or stick no thicker than his thumb. No one has ever found such a law on the books – not in England, not in the United States, not anywhere else. William L. Prosser, author of perhaps the leading American textbook on civil law, put his mind to this question of husband, wife, and thumb. His conclusion: "There is probably no truth whatever in the legend that he was permitted to beat her with a stick no thicker than his thumb."
To be continued...
Patricia T. O'Conner in "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, Ch. 8
8 August 2017
"The whole business of political correctness, which got out of hand in the twentieth century, has given rise to many myths about English. Before we get to them, however, consider the expression "politically correct" itself. When it was first used, back in the early days of the Republic, the phrase merely meant politically accurate. In 1793, Justice James Wilson used it in a US Supreme Court opinion to protest slipshod political language. "Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language," he wrote. Someone proposing a toast to the country will say, "The United States," not "the People of the United States," Wilson complained. "This is not politically correct."
It wasn't until the twentieth century that the phrase was used to describe people with the "right" (in this case, left) beliefs. In 1934 the British author John Strachey, a Communist firebrand who would later become a Labor MP, said Marxist writers were "more politically correct" than other leftists. In the 1970s the expression took on new life in the United States, where it meant considerate of racial, sexual, class, and other sensitivities.
….I have nothing against political correctness. Why trample on someone's feelings unnecessarily? But too often what passes for political correctness is more political than correct."
To be continued...
Patricia T. O'Conner in "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, Ch. 8
1 August 2017
" "The auctioneer's block in Maryland," said the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, "is the place to witness the heartrending cruelties of slavery." In a speech to an English audience in 1846, Douglass described a slave woman "at an auction block," her limbs "brutally exposed" for the inspection of bidders with money in their pockets. "Give us a bid, gentlemen," he quoted the auctioneer as saying, "here is a fine, able-bodied woman, capable of undertaking field or house-work, sound in wind and limb, look for yourselves." Pretty horrifying stuff. And, yes, the expressions "auction block" and "auctioneer's block" were indeed products of the slave trade.
A generation or so after slavery ended, segregationists enacted Jim Crow laws that made it impossible for most blacks to vote in the South. The laws, adopted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, established poll taxes and literacy requirements but provided escape clauses that effectively exempted whites. Anyone who could vote before freed slaves were enfranchised was exempt from the anti-black requirements, and so were his descendants: sons, grandsons, and so on. That's why the exemptions were called "grandfather clauses" – another product of our country's racist history.
Although the origins of these expressions reflect America at its worst, no one seems to find them offensive today. The term "auction block" is routinely used in news articles about the latest sales at Sotheby's or Christie's. And lawmakers just as routinely use "grandfather clause" to mean a provision that exempts an existing activity from a new regulation. Most people, of course, have no idea how we got the two expressions, and even the people who do know aren't bothered by them. Yet many words or phrases without any skeletons in their closets are unfairly accused of being racist or sexist or otherwise bigoted – that is, politically incorrect."
To be continued...
Patricia T. O'Conner in "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, Ch. 8
25 July 2017
Controversy about the meaning of the word moot...
"But as early as 1807, the doubtful aspect of "moot" led people to interpret it as meaning "irrelevant," or "of no practical value." A "moot" point or a "moot" question, therefore, was merely academic. This usage took hold two hundred years ago because it made sense then, and it still makes sense today. Modern dictionaries define "moot" as either "debatable" or "irrelevant." In the United States, the predominant meaning is "irrelevant." In Britain, it's "debatable." Who's right? That depends on whether you're in Sioux Falls or Stoke-on-Trent."
Patricia T. O'Conner in "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language"
18 July 2017
"People who don't know English quite as well as they think they do love to wring their hands over "moot." The traditional definition, they say, is "debatable" or "open for discussion," and they're dismayed when it's used to mean "irrelevant." My advice to the handwringers is to get over it. This usage isn't new and it isn't worth the fuss.
The "moot" question is more complicated than many people think. The word started life back in the eighth century as a noun for a "meeting" or "gathering." In King Alfred's day, it was often used for a judicial or legislative assembly. In the mid-sixteenth century, "moot" was used to describe a gathering of law students to argue a hypothetical case. Later in the century, it became an adjective meaning "debatable," "doubtful," or "proposed for discussion." A "moot" point, therefore, was uncertain or open to argument, and a "moot" court was a mock court."
To be continued…
Patricia T. O'Conner in "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language
11 July 2017
The Church in 13th century Norway tries to bring order to a lawless people…as a fight breaks out in a convent guestroom and young Olav, with blood on his hands, is locked up in the Sheriff's house…
"And he felt at once that he was one with such as Kolbein and his sons, if only in this – he would rather take his case against them into his own hands, set wrong against wrong, if need were. His place was among such as Kolbein and Steinfinn and Ingebjörg – and Ingunn, who had thrown herself into his arms without a thought of the law, in the warmth of her self-willed love – not among these priests and monks, whose life was passed in clear and cool regularity, who every day did the same things at the same times: prayed, worked, ate, sang, lay down to sleep, and got up again to begin their prayers. And they inquired into the laws, copied them out and discussed their wording, and disagreed among themselves and came into conflict with laymen about the laws – all because they loved this law and dreamed that by its means all folk might be tamed, till no man more would bear arms against his neighbour or take his rights by force, but all would be quiet and willing to listen to our Lord's new and gentle tidings of brotherhood among all God's children. – He felt a kind of distant, melancholy affection for all this even now, a respect for the men who thought thus – but he was not able always to bow beneath the law, and the very thought that they would slip these bonds about himself filled him with violent loathing."
From "The Master of Hestviken" tetralogy by Sigrid Undset ("The Axe", Part 1, Ch. 10), translated by Arthur G. Chater
11 July 2017
"The first thing he felt was a kind of chill. Then his rage boiled up, with a defiant, voluptuous joy – so he had paid out that unbearable Einar Kolbeinsson – and God strike him if he rued it. He cared not, whatever his hastiness might cost him! Kolbein and those – how cordially he hated them!....Kolbein had kept him under his thumb. – And now it was avenged – and he thanked God for it with all his heart. It mattered not that Bishop Torfinn and all these new friends of his said it was sinful to have such thoughts. A man's flesh and blood were not to be denied.
Olav's mind rose in revolt against all these new doctrines and thoughts he had come under in this place – ay, they were fine in a way, he saw that even now, but – no, no, they were unnatural, impossible dreams. All men could never be such saints as to consent to submit all their concerns, great and small, to the judgment of their even Christians, always being satisfied with the law and with receiving their rights – never taking them for themselves. He remembered that Haftor had said something of the same sort this evening – that these new laws were only good for the common people. And he felt at once that he was one with such as Kolbein and his sons, if only in this – he would rather take his case against them into his own hands, set wrong against wrong, if need were."
To be continued…
From "The Master of Hestviken" tetralogy by Sigrid Undset ("The Axe", Part 1, Ch. 10), translated by Arthur G. Chater
27 June 2017
The Church in 13th century Norway tries to bring order to a lawless people…as a fight breaks out in a convent guestroom and young Olav has blood on his hands…
"He heard that the Prior was speaking to him, asking if it were he who first broke the peace.
"Yes, I struck first and cut down Einar Kolbeinsson. But the peace was but frail in here the whole evening – long before I broke it. At the last Einar used such shameful speech to us that we took to our weapons –"
"'Tis true," said the lay brother. He was an old countryman who had entered the convent only lately. "Einar spoke such words that in old days any man would have judged he died an outlaw's death by Olav's hand."
Haftor was standing by his brother; he turned and said with a cold smile: "Ay, so they will judge the murder in this house – and in the Bishop's. Since these two are the Bishop's men, body and soul. But mayhap the nobles of this land will soon be tired of such dishonour – that every priest who thinks he has authority uses it to shelter the worst brawlers and law-breakers –"
"That is untrue, Haftor," said the Prior; "we servants of God will not protect any evil-doer farther than he has protection in the law. But we are bound to do our best that law-breaking be punished according to law, and not avenged by fresh unlawfulness, which begets fresh vengeance without end."
Haftor said scornfully: "I call them dirty laws, these new laws. The old were better suited to men of honour – but 'tis true the new are better for such fellows as Olav there, who outrage the daughters of our best houses and strike down their kinsmen when they call them to account for their misdeeds."
The Prior shrugged his shoulders. "But now the law is such that the Sheriff must take Olav and hold him prisoner until the matter be brought to judgment. And here we have these men whom I sent for," he said, turning to some men-at-arms who, Olav knew, lived in the houses next the church. "Bjarne and Kaare, you must bind this young lad and carry him to Sir Audun. He has struck a man a blow that may give him his death." "
To be continued...
From "The Master of Hestviken" tetralogy by Sigrid Undset ("The Axe", Part 1, Ch. 10), translated by Arthur G. Chater
13 June 2017
A bishop in 13th century Norway tries to bring order to a lawless people…
"But in the course of the night Olav [who has come to town to seek the Bishop's ruling on a family law dispute] awoke and lay thinking of all that had been told him of Bishop Torfinn. He was afraid of the Bishop after all.
Rather let ten men lose their lives than one maiden be ravished, he was reported to have said. There was a case that had been much talked about in the country round, a year before. A rich man's son in Alvheim had set his mind on a poor peasant's daughter; as he could not tempt the woman with promises and gifts, he came one evening in springtime, when the girl was ploughing, and tried to use force. Her father was below in the wood, busy with the mending of a fence; he was old and ailing, but on hearing his daughter's cries he took his woodcutter's axe and ran up; he cleft the other's skull. The ravisher was left unatoned; his kinsmen had to be content with that. But, as was natural, they tried to get the slayer to leave the country. First they offered to buy him out, but when he would not have it, they fell upon him with threats and overbearing treatment. Then Bishop Torfinn had taken the poor peasant and his children under his protection.
Then there was that case of the man at Tonstad who had been found slain in his coppice. His wife and children charged the other tenant of the farm with the murder; the man had to flee to save his life, and his wife and young children suffered affliction and cruelty without end at the hands of the murdered man's relatives. Then it came about that the dead man's own cousin confessed that he was the one who had killed his kinsman – they had quarrelled about an inheritance. But it was said that Bishop Torfinn had forced the murderer to avow before the people what he had confessed to the Bishop – saying that no priest had power to absolve him of the sin before he had shown sincere repentance and rescued the innocent who might be suffering from his misdeed."
To be continued…
From "The Master of Hestviken" tetralogy by Sigrid Undset ("The Axe", Ch 8), translated by Arthur G. Chater
6 June 2017
The legal background to a famous painting - "The Arnolfini Marriage"...
"It may well be that the financial agreement in the present case was particularly important, since this is clearly a "left-handed" marriage. The man takes the woman's hand in his left hand, not his right as was otherwise the convention. Such marriages were concluded between partners of unequal rank, and are still occasionally practised in ruling houses in our own times.
More precisely, it was always the woman who came from the lower class. She had to relinquish all rights of inheritance for herself and her children and thus could not continue the family lineage, but was guaranteed sufficient financial means to support herself in the event of widowhood. These means, or title-deeds relating to them, were originally presented on the morning after the marriage. It is from the Low Latin morganatica, meaning a gift from a bridegroom to a bride, that we derive the term more politely given to this sort of union, namely a "morganatic" marriage." "
Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, commenting on "The Arnolfini Marriage" (1434) by Jan van Eyck. From Taschen's "Masterpieces under the Microsope" calendar for 2014.
30 May 2017
"Only at the Council of Trent a good century later did the Church succeed in making the attendance of a priest and two witnesses a necessary element of the marriage ceremony. It did so not for religious reasons, but in order to clamp down on the abuse and deception possible under the old system. Even after this, however, the ceremony still did not have to take place before the altar, but at most in front of a church door.
Although witnesses are not required at the Arnolfini wedding, two are nevertheless clearly visible in the mirror. They are needed for a different reason, namely to legalize a written contract of marriage. Such contracts were common where – as here – large amounts of money were involved; they regulated financial matters between the marriage partners and had to be signed by two witnesses."
To be continued…
Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, commenting on "The Arnolfini Marriage" (1434) by Jan van Eyck. From Taschen's "Masterpieces under the Microsope" calendar for 2014.
23 May 2017
"The woman lays her right hand carefully in the man's left. There is a solemnity to this joining of hands, which the artist places in almost the very centre of the composition and which is thereby lent particular significance….For van Eyck's contemporaries, the joining of hands and the gesture of oath-taking were sure indications that two people were pledging each other their troth.
In the 15th century, you needed neither a priest nor witnesses to enter into a Christian and legal marriage. A wedding could be performed anywhere, including – as here – in a private bedchamber. The sacrament of marriage was conducted not by priests but by husband and wife themselves. To officially announce their marriage, the newly-weds would attend Communion together the following morning, although even this was not compulsory."
To be continued…
Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, commenting on "The Arnolfini Marriage" (1434) by Jan van Eyck. From Taschen's "Masterpieces under the Microsope" calendar for 2014.
16 May 2017
"The way people worked had changed radically since the formation of the Hanseatic League three hundred years previously. At the beginning, merchants travelled in person across the country or overseas to do business. They bought and sold their goods themselves, usually trading by barter. In Holbein's day, however, they stayed behind in their offices, relying on sea captains and travelling sales staff, and on business partners in other centres of trade, sometimes members of their own family. The handshake that had formerly concluded a deal was replaced by the written agreement, a contract or a letter from distant parts bearing a seal.
There are two possible explanations as to why Gisze should have half a dozen signets and seals in his office all at one time, both of which may be correct. Perhaps he gave them to members of his sales team to take with them on trips, or perhaps he himself represented a number of different companies whose seals he used when working on their behalf."
To be continued…
Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, commenting on "Portrait of the Merchant Georg Gisze" (1532) by Hans Holbein the Younger. From Taschen's "Masterpieces under the Microsope" calendar for 2014.
9 May 2017
"Next to the clock lies a signet: a die used to make seals of wax or lacquer. A second signet, more decorative in its design and attached to a ball of amber, hangs from the shelf on the left....Lying further back is a pair of scissors; these assumed a role in a certain type of contract, whose text was written out twice, once at the top and once at the bottom of the same piece of paper. Each party then received one half. In the event of a dispute, the two halves were compared to see if they fitted together
All these objects can be found in paintings by other masters, including the signet ring lying on the tablecloth in the foreground. But only Holbein painted three or four such rings within one and the same canvas. Another can be seen on Gisze's index finger, while two more are hanging from a hook on the shelf above. Four signet rings in one office? The fact that Holbein draws no particular attention to them within his composition, but includes them almost in passing, suggests that he is simply making a dutiful record of his subject. Today, however, the rings provide us with a clue to the nature of Gisze's job."
Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, commenting on "Portrait of the Merchant Georg Gisze" (1532) by Hans Holbein the Younger. From Taschen's "Masterpieces under the Microsope" calendar for 2014.
2 May 2017
A startling glimpse of litigation practices in the early 17th century…
"Unless some unavoidable necessity oblige her in conscience to become involved in public proceedings such as lawsuits, I counsel the true widow to abstain from them altogether, and to adopt that way of conducting her affairs which is most peaceable and tranquil, even though it seem not to be the most profitable. For the fruits derived from such labours and anxieties must needs be very great, to bear any comparison with the good of a holy tranquillity; quite apart from the fact that lawsuits and such disagreements distract the heart and oftentimes open the door to the enemies of chastity, because, while such things are in progress, to please those whose favour they need, persons behave themselves in a manner that is neither devout nor pleasing to God."
St Francis de Sales, "Introduction to the Devout Life", Ch. XL, translated by Allan Ross. St Francis is addressing himself to women who wish to remain widows – though, he adds, "the true widow should never blame nor censure those who marry a second time, or even a third or fourth time, for in some cases God arranges matters in this way for his greater glory".
25 April 2017
St Francis de Sales on the need for gentleness towards ourselves…
"One of the good uses that we should make of gentleness, is that whereof the subject is in ourselves, never fretting at ourselves or at our imperfections; for though reason requires, that when we commit faults we should be displeased and sorry for them, yet we must restrain ourselves from having a displeasure which is bitter and sullen, fretful and angry....these fits of anger, fretfulness and irritation, which we have against ourselves, tend to pride and have no other source than self-love, which is troubled and disquieted at seeing ourselves imperfect.
We must, then, have a dislike for our faults which is peaceable, dispassionate, and firm; for as a judge punishes the guilty much better, when he is guided by reason in passing judgement and proceeds in a spirit of tranquillity, than when he does so with impetuosity and passion, because if he judges with passion he does not punish the faults according as they are, but according as he is himself; even so we correct ourselves much better by a tranquil and steadfast repentance, than by that which is harsh, eager and passionate, because repentance made with impetuosity is not according to the gravity of our faults, but according to our inclinations. For example, he that prizes chastity will fret most bitterly over the least fault committed against this virtue, and will only smile at a gross slander which he has committed."
St Francis de Sales, in "Introduction to the Devout Life", Ch. IX
11 April 2017 - Holy Week
"The police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees who said to them, 'Why haven't you brought him?' The police replied, 'There has never been anybody who has spoken like him.' "So' the Pharisees answered 'you have been led astray as well? Have any of the authorities believed in him? Any of the Pharisees? This rabble knows nothing about the Law – they are damned.' One of them, Nicodemus – the same man who had come to Jesus earlier [by night - John 19:38-42] – said to them, 'But surely the Law does not allow us to pass judgement on a man without giving him a hearing and discovering what he is about?' To this they answered, 'Are you a Galilean too? Go into the matter, and see for yourself: prophets do not come out of Galilee.' "
John 7:45-52. After the crucifixion Nicodemus helps his fellow Sanhedrin member, Joseph of Arimathea, take away the body of Jesus, and brings myrrh and aloes to the tomb to anoint and perfume the body once the Sabbath is over (John 19:38-42). The Didache Bible comments "Their boldness, a true example of the virtue of fortitude, contrasts with the secrecy with which they had embraced the teachings of Christ for fear of reprimand from Jewish authorities."
4 April 2017
Unfair land distribution during the "long boom" of New South Wales…
"The fight to sub-divide the great squatter holdings raged between the 1860s and 1890s. Some land was prised away, but in fact the Land Acts of New South Wales achieved very little for the settlers. By 'peacocking', i.e., buying areas that included all the creek fronts and waterholes, squatters rendered the large intermediate spaces of their 'runs' useless to intruders. Similarly, by putting up their own relatives as 'dummies' when their lands were sub-divided, squatters managed to retain their wide acres. Meanwhile, as a result of the increased demand, the price of land in both town and country began to rise steadily.
….The amount of land encompassed in the pastoral leases was enormous. And because members of parliament held a further nine million acres between them, the same could not be said of government charges. The AML&F's Lake Victoria station for example, situated near Wentworth, comprised 1,400,000 acres at 1d. an acre! Similarly Connulpie Downs, a 500,000 acre run near Wilcannia was the largest station leased by the Bank of New South Wales and it was leased for two-thirds of one penny per acre."
Alan Dunstan in "Land Monopoly: Who Owned New South Wales?" in Annals Australasia, January/February 2004
Dunstan also quotes these lines from Banjo Paterson's "Man from Snowy River":
'I went to Illawarra, where my brother's got a farm,
he has to ask his landlord's leave before he lifts his arm;
The landlord owns the country side – man, woman, dog, and cat.
They haven't the cheek to dare to speak without they touch their hat…'
28 March 2017
"The almost standard historical view of New South Wales is that the years between the late 1840s and the 'Great' Depression of the 1890s, were generally prosperous with high growth. This view is supported by large increases in both the sheep and immigrant populations….Indeed so ingrained has the idea become that historians generally describe the period, somewhat loosely, as the 'long boom.'
But we might ask, just whose boom was it? All who are acquainted with town life as described by the young Henry Lawson, for example, are aware that far from living amidst 'Sunny Australia's' millions of empty acres, the working population were crushed into small rooms in the city because of the high price of land.
The seeds of this problem were planted in the first decades of the 19th century when the idea of maintaining 'Botany Bay' solely as a jail was re-jigged to create an Australian 'Virginia.' Or, more plainly, when a clique of aristocratic pastoralists were given the 'whole of the country,' so far as it had been opened up, 'to divide among themselves.' In the wake of this madness Macquarie's scheme for fostering a society of healthy yeomen was scrapped in favour of a one-product export economy based on wool.
The chief beneficiaries of the policy were initially large individual landholders like Macarthur, and thereafter, corporate landholders such as the Australian Agricultural Company (AA Co.) which, in the 1820s, was given a million-acre grant at Port Stephens. Other imperial land grant companies were the Van Diemen's Land Company, the South Australian Land Company, and the Peel River Company. This last, and the AA Co. were practically one, owned and controlled by the same men. Linked with these estates were the 'old English gentry' who, by the simple act of 'squatting,' appropriated still more millions of acres of seemingly endless pasturages."
To be continued…
Alan Dunstan in "Land Monopoly: Who Owned New South Wales?" in Annals Australasia, January/February 2004
21 March 2017
Governor Macquarie tries to reform colonial Sydney by legislative means…
"Macquarie was convinced that under his rule from 1810 to 1821 religion and morals had advanced. Commissioner Bigge in his report-card on Macquarie's administration allowed in passing that there had been 'some improvement' in religious feelings but took more notice of the governor's chaplains than the governor himself.
The chaplains believed that the convicts and ex-convicts had exhibited no permanent substantial change for the better. Bigge was impressed by the case of two emancipated convicts at Richmond whom the Reverend Robert Cartwright had pointed out as exceptional for their good conduct. These two were subsequently discovered to be horse thieves."
From "Australians and the Christian God: An Historical Study" by Hugh Jackson, Ch. 2
14 March 2017
Governor Macquarie tries to reform colonial Sydney by legislative means…
"A week later Macquarie gave an order for the introduction of patrols of constables to arrest persons idling in the streets during church services. As part of their Sunday duties the constables were to enter houses which were disorderly or noisy or in which people were drinking, and lock up disturbers of the Sabbath quiet. Further regulations regarding Sunday trading were issued in May 1813. These included a prohibition on the hiring of boats on the Parramatta River, a practice that had occasioned 'idle and disorderly scenes of dissipation, to the profanation of the Sabbath'.
In March 1817, with Macquarie in the chair, a group of leading citizens of Sydney held a meeting to establish a Bible society. The aim was to make the Scriptures more widely available in the colony. Macquarie's personal motivation for his involvement here was surely exclusively hope of moral improvement. In private life he was an infrequent churchgoer. A practising freemason, Macquarie sat lightly to anything in the Christian religion that set it apart from a generalised belief in God. Macquarie's wife, Elizabeth, on the other hand was a devout Christian, drawn to the religious and political outlook of Dr Johnson."
To be continued…
From "Australians and the Christian God: An Historical Study" by Hugh Jackson, Ch. 2
7 March 2017
Governor Macquarie tries to reform colonial society by legislative means…
"In 1809 a week before Lachlan Macquarie sailed to take up his appointment as governor of New South Wales, Lord Castlereagh gave him confidential instructions. At the top of Castlereagh's list was lifting the moral condition of the colony.
Macquarie was officially welcomed to New South Wales on the last day of 1809....On 24 February 1810 Macquarie issued a proclamation declaring that a woman who was cohabiting could not inherit if her man died intestate. He had already introduced Sunday trading regulations and ended the practice of publishing the Sydney Gazette on a Sunday. On 19 May 1810 a Government and General Order announced that a proper Sabbath observance was necessary on the part of the convicts if they were to be reclaimed from their vicious habits. To this end government gangs were to be mustered on Sunday mornings and be marched to church for worship."
To be continued…
From "Australians and the Christian God: An Historical Study" by Hugh Jackson, Ch. 2
7 February 2017
Is the Jaffa cake really a cake? A multi-million pound question in the UK…
"If the Jaffa Cake is defined as a cake, it does not have VAT added, but if it is a biscuit, because it is chocolate-covered it must carry VAT. The problem is that Jaffa Cakes come in packs like biscuits, are eaten like biscuits and are stacked on supermarket shelves next to biscuits. On the other hand, they are made from a bit of sponge cake topped in chocolate with a 'smashing orangey bit'. Fortunately for lovers of Jaffa Cakes, a ruling at the United Kingdom VAT Tribunal in 1991 decided that a Jaffa Cake was and always will be a cake. The clinching evidence was when the manufacturers showed that a Jaffa Cake when left out in the air will go hard. I find this to be a remarkable piece of research, as whenever I find myself near a Jaffa Cake that has been left out, it disappears."
Marty Jopson in "The Science of Everyday Life: Why teapots dribble, toast burns and light bulbs shine", 1st chapter, pp. 34-6
31 January 2017
"When is a biscuit a cake and when is a cake a biscuit?....Diversions aside, there is a simple way to determine what kind of bakery product you have: just leave it unwrapped on the counter top for a day or two. If it's a cake, it will dry out and become hard and brittle, whereas if it's a biscuit it will become soft.
….You may feel that being armed with the true definition of a cake and a biscuit is of trivial importance. However, the semantic difference between a biscuit and a cake is a multi-million pound question. In the United Kingdom you can buy a packet of Jaffa Cakes at any supermarket or convenience store. For the uninitiated, a Jaffa Cake is a 64-mm (2½-in) disc of Genoese sponge, topped by a smaller disk of orange-flavoured jelly that is then slathered in dark chocolate….The big and valuable question, though, is this: are Jaffa Cakes a biscuit or a cake?
In the United Kingdom, VAT, or Value Added Tax (sales tax), is not charged on the sale of cakes, nor is it charged on biscuits unless the biscuit is covered in chocolate. Why and how they concocted this rule is way beyond the scope of this book."
To be continued…
Marty Jopson in "The Science of Everyday Life: Why teapots dribble, toast burns and light bulbs shine", 1st chapter, pp. 34-6
27 December 2016
"The booklet also contains a foreword by Larry Siedentop, the author of Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, which is an essential study of how individualism and freedom have their roots in St Paul.
....As Siedentrop points out: "The understanding of justice itself began to be more closely associated with the assumption of moral equality.
For a strong case can be made that the earliest form of natural rights theory was the work of canon lawyers from the 12th to the 14th century – lawyers who transformed the idea of natural law inherited from the ancient world, by giving it a far more individualist cast.
In their hands, 'aristocratic' liberty, liberty understood as personal and corporate privileges, began to give way to a more 'democratic' conception of liberty.
"Today there is a widespread embarrassment about confronting the role of the Christian church in the formation of the Western world. The Western debt to ancient Greece and Rome is far more likely to be emphasized than its debt to Christian moral thought."
Of course this is not an isolated incident; the eradication of the Church's influence on Magna Carta is part of a wider cultural amnesia in which the Christian origins of so many ideas we now assume to be universal have been forgotten. In that sense Christianity has rather been a victim of its own success."
From "The Church's central role in Magna Carta has been airbrushed out of history" by Ed West, posted on the Catholic Herald's website, 10 June 2015
20 December 2016
"To miss the role played by the Church is to "miss a crucial part of the Magna Carta's story", he argues. "This is particularly true of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was instrumental not only in negotiating the Charter of 1215, but also in the important reissue of 1225 under Henry III, which confirmed the Magna Carta's place in history. Perhaps more important than this, however, is that a failure to acknowledge the Christian theological context within which the Magna Carta arose is to miss out on an understanding of some of the most important roots of our political and intellectual heritage." "
To be continued…
From "The Church's central role in Magna Carta has been airbrushed out of history" by Ed West, posted on the Catholic Herald's website, 10 June 2015
13 December 2016
"Archbishop Langton was perhaps intellectually the most important figure behind Magna Carta, and although he may not have written it (no one knows exactly who, although it was certainly a collaboration), according to one chronicler he played a big part in suggesting the idea by raising the subject of Henry I's 1100 coronation charter, a series of promises made by the Norman king which influenced the men of 1215.
More significant, though, as Andrew states, was the Christian intellectual tradition that led to the lasting ideas within Magna Carta, which is ignored today:
"A more nuanced position recognises that the ideas contained within the Magna Carta are part of a developing intellectual tradition. They did not emerge ex nihilo, but arose as an expression of pre-existing thought, given shape and substance in the political demands of the moment. And a key aspect of that intellectual tradition is the contribution of the Christian Church and Christian theology.
"No account of the Magna Carta can be complete without reference to the Church. Indeed, given the prominence placed on the principle of ecclesiastical liberty within the text, no account of the Magna Carta should even begin without acknowledging the Church's role in its formation. And yet popular thinking seems all too willing to ignore it altogether. While academic scholarship has produced some notable studies into the theological background of the Archbishop of Canterbury, material aimed at the general public has largely failed to recognise the contribution of Christian theology or the Church in the formation of the Magna Carta. When the British Library ran a series of events exploring the 800 year-old roots of 'Britain's struggle for freedom' the contribution of the Church was all but ignored. And as the professor of political science Cary Nederman points out, while commentators will often pay lip service to the principles of ecclesial liberty enshrined in the first clause of the Magna Carta, this is generally done with the attitude of someone fulfilling a formal requirement, before they can move on to the meatier parts of the text." "
To be continued…
From "The Church's central role in Magna Carta has been airbrushed out of history" by Ed West, posted on the Catholic Herald's website, 10 June 2015
6 December 2016
The Catholic roots of the Magna Carta...
"In particular Andrew addresses the unsung hero of Magna Carta, Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton, who played a huge part in drawing up the treaty and implementing it.
Langton was a strange and unusual choice for the role; he was the former tutor to Pope Alexander III, and was a rather otherworldly scholar who wrote page upon page of totally impenetrable commentary on the Bible. However, there was a theme in his later writing, much of which seemed to focus on the bad kings of the Old Testament who broke God's law and who therefore had terrible things done to them. Biblical kings, he wrote, had a book of laws written down by the priests; today's kings though ignore the advice of priests and rule without restraint. The archbishop gave lectures in which he attacked these modern rulers who tax not out of necessity but greed and vanity, and where he said kingship was a punishment to mankind. To a king as paranoid as John it would have been clear what he was getting at. Langton also attacked "princes who flee from lengthy sermons", which would certainly apply to King John, who was so openly bored by church he once sent three notes to a bishop presiding over Mass to hurry up so he could have lunch. (On another occasion, reminiscent of Edmund Blackadder, John took out a gold coin at collection time, fiddled with it, and then ostentatiously put it back in his purse.)"
To be continued…
From "The Church's central role in Magna Carta has been airbrushed out of history", posted by Ed West on the Catholic Herald's website, 10 June 2015
29 November 2016
"This Monday coming marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, a peace treaty between a comically cowardly drunken king and his leading barons. It mainly focused on financial disputes but it nonetheless came to become 'the Bible of the English Constitution', as William Pitt the Elder put it.
Although there is some understandable scepticism about the way that Magna Carta was romanticized by 17th century opponents of the Stuart monarchs, and the motives of the barons were almost entirely selfish, its four surviving clauses (sometimes counted as 3, as 39 and 40 were merged into one in the definitive 1297 reissue) still hold enormous weight, legally, culturally and emotionally.
But though Clause 39 – "No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land" – is well-known to educated people, it is less commonly recalled that Clause 1 states "that the English Church is to be free, and to have its full rights and its liberties intact".
More importantly, the Christian origins and influence of the Great Charter are mostly ignored, a point raised in a new Theos report by Thomas Andrew, The Church and the Charter: Christianity and the Forgotten Roots of Magna Carta."
To be continued…
From "The Church's central role in Magna Carta has been airbrushed out of history", posted by Ed West on the Catholic Herald's website, 10 June 2015
22 November 2016
"He does not judge by appearances,
he gives no verdict on hearsay,
but judges the wretched with integrity,
and with equity gives a verdict for the poor of the land.
His word is a rod that strikes the ruthless,
his sentences bring death to the wicked."
Isaiah 11
15 November 2016
The French government confiscates the Carthusian monks' Charterhouse in southern France in 1903…
"By this time, the authorities were having second thoughts. For fear of making them martyrs, after questioning the monks, the police told them that they were free. All the monks immediately went back into the Charterhouse. The Prior said, "I need no authorization to reenter my own house." They did not leave until surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. They were finally expelled on April 19, 1903. They resettled in the Italian Charterhouse in Farneta, but they had already built a double Charterhouse in England to house the monks and store the treasures they had sent ahead. The order carried on in exile without missing a heartbeat, not returning to the Grande Chartreuse until 1940, during the unsettled conditions of World War II."
From "An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order" by Nancy Klein Maguire, Ch 2
8 November 2016
"The monks unanimously decided to resist as far as they could – that is, until the soldiers violently removed them. They locked the gates of the Charterhouse and carried on their normal activities, twice refusing to even speak with the examining magistrate and his policemen.
The French government needed a battalion of infantry, fifty mounted police, two squadrons of heavily armed cavalrymen, a detachment of bomb experts, a squad of military engineers, and reinforcements of mounted police to remove twenty-three Carthusians from their Charterhouse. After breaking through the assembly of thousands of local protesters, the authorities got to the main gate, which the monks still refused to open. Once they had broken through all the outer and inner gates, the authorities found the monks praying in church. They still refused to leave. The police captain brought warrants of arrest and removed the monks amid jeers from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages."
To be continued…
From "An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order" by Nancy Klein Maguire, Ch 2
1 November 2016
"The Carthusians' unique identity resides, to a considerable extent, in the Grande Chartreuse. The psychic power of the first Charterhouse seems nearly unique, rather like the power of Jerusalem for Jews and Arabs. Rather than just being a collection of religious buildings, the Grande Chartreuse itself seems an ancient state. As early as January 30, 1132, an avalanche buried the entire Charterhouse, killing seven of the monks. In 1561, during the wars of religion, the Grande Chartreuse was plundered and burned to the ground, not for the first time. The monks reconstructed it. After it was again in perfect repair, in 1676, the Chartreuse burned for the eighth time. Perhaps the most significant Prior of the Grande Chartreuse, Dom Innocent Le Masson, rebuilt the Charterhouse, at tremendous expense, in stone. The Grande Chartreuse "Annals" record that the rebuilding was nearing conclusion in 1686. Then in 1792, the French Revolution forced the monks to flee; over the course of the revolutionary years, many things were carted away and even destroyed, such as the crosses in the cemetery and some paintings. When the monks reentered in 1816, they set about rebuilding. In 1903, during the period of anti-clerical legislation, the French government confiscated the Grande Chartreuse, but this time the monks were prepared."
From "An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order" by Nancy Klein Maguire, Ch 2
26 July 2016
Lord Atkin's Australian connection...
"Richard Atkin never did return to Queensland, but many years later, when his father's tomb had fallen into disrepair, he sent funds to restore it. That column, and a series of carved timber panels by the celebrated Queensland sculptress Daphne Mayo in the little Anglican church at Sandgate, were the only reminders of the life of a pioneer in Australian politics and journalism. Then Gerard Carney, Dean of Law in the University of Queensland, researched the family history for a monograph for the Queensland Supreme Court's history program.
This led to a visit to Queensland of the grandson and grand-daughter of Lord Atkin, who were present for the unveiling of a memorial plaque in the courtyard of the Commonwealth Courts, the site of Ellandale cottage, commemorating the birthplace of Lord Atkin of Aberdovey: "Erected 2012 on the 145th anniversary of his birth and the 80th anniversary of his most celebrated judgement in Donoghue v Stevenson."
Lord Atkin may never have returned, but through his membership of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, his influence on the law and politics of British Commonwealth countries was considerable. In 1932 he was a member of the Judicial Committee which defeated the attempt by the Lang government to abolish the New South Wales upper house. The Privy Council held that the Legislative Assembly had no power to abolish the Legislative Council or alter the constitution without first taking a referendum of electors on the matter."
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Qudrant, January-February 2015
19 July 2016
Lord Atkin's Australian connection...
"In his time as a parliamentarian and newspaper owner, Robert Atkin fought for many principled causes: electoral reform, as the first to introduce an Additional Members Bill; enfranchisement of gold miners, whose discoveries had saved the economy; the independence of the public service under a UK-style commission; a Rivers Trust for the Brisbane River; an end to "blackbirding", describing the Polynesian Labourers Act as a legalised system of kidnapping; and more migration from the British Isles and Germany to develop the colony.
Robert Atkin passed through Brisbane life like a comet, brilliantly illuminating but without leaving a lasting influence. For a few brief years his oratory and his energetic journalism captivated the town, but his ideas that politics should be principled and consistent in the interests of the common man remained alien and ignored.
What then, was his influence, if any, on his celebrated son? Obviously none, directly, since he never saw him again after the boy sailed for Britain with his mother on the Chartyce at the age of three. But Mary had been an intimate part of Robert's journalism, contributing women's articles and doing much of the proofreading of his papers. She undoubtedly would have transmitted to her boys his values, principles and sense of outrage against the oppression of vested interests. Her letters home, many written cross-hatched in the economical fashion of the nineteenth century, reveal her powerful determination to succeed in difficult times."
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
12 July 2016
"So much for the case that made Lord Atkin famous. What forces made him such a pivotal jurist? Photographs taken in the 1930s, at the peak of his career and reputation, show an avuncular figure, with a kindly smile that reflected a self-possessed contentment derived from his Christianity, his belief in civil liberties and sympathy for the working man. Much of this quality was no doubt due to the influence of his mother, growing up in his grandmother's cottage, "Pantiludw", just outside the Welsh seaside village of Aberdovey. The nineteenth-century dwelling is now a classified heritage building.
But James Richard "Dickie" Atkin had an unpromising and tragic early start to his life. He was born in Brisbane in 1867, and lost his father at the age of six. Brisbane was then a colonial village of 14,000 people. An embryonic parliament was struggling to assert Queensland's new-found independence from New South Wales, and develop a vast hinterland dominated by squatters' interests. The state had been bankrupted by the collapse of its London banks, and was using its only asset—land—in an imaginative financing system. To populate the country, the government had created a system of land orders promising land to migrants, and appointed an Agent-General of Immigration, Henry Jordan, to recruit throughout the British Isles.
One of the 20,000 people Jordan found and sent out to the new colony was Robert Travers Atkin, aged twenty-three, originally from Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland, but then living in Shropshire, with a new Welsh wife, Mary."
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
5 July 2016
"After the historic decision, the case was remitted to the Scots Court of Session to try the case on the facts. This could have proved awkward for Leechman and Donoghue. Stevenson (who had died by then) had claimed the bottle was not a type from his brewery—quite possible, due to the penny-deposit system and the common practice of using other manufacturers' bottles. May Donoghue was all for fighting on, but was persuaded to settle for £200, all of which must have gone in legal costs.
That the Scottish court did not examine the facts of the incident left a curious snail trail. In 1942, Lord Justice Mackinnon delivered his Holdsworth address, saying flippantly he detested "that snail": "It was found that there never was a snail in the bottle at all." Which created a small legal ruckus, with an objection from Lord Atkin. The Birmingham Law Librarian kindly sent me a copy of the Mackinnon speech. It contains a correction page in which Mackinnon acknowledged he had been corrected; he should have said the issue of fact was never decided.
Indeed he was corrected—by Lord Normand, who had been the leading counsel for Stevenson. He wrote to Lord Macmillan: "We had a very strong case on the facts. If the case had gone to proof, I think it would have been fought, and possibly on the issue whether there was a snail in the bottle." But the story would not die. Twelve years later in the important "Himalaya" case of Adler v Dickson which invoked the Atkin principles, Lord Justice Jenkins said, quite erroneously: "When the trial was finally held there was no snail in the bottle at all."
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
28 June 2016
"When the case finally came before the five Law Lords, sitting before a fire in a cosy committee room, dressed in ordinary suits, counsel for Mrs Donoghue argued for a new principle of responsibility—"the case of goods intended for human consumption sold to the public in a form in which investigation is impossible".
In May 1932, the five Lords rose in turn, in order of seniority, and read their judgments as speeches to the Chamber. Twenty years later, Lord Justice Denning passed his judgment on the participants: Lords Buckmaster and Tomlin were "timorous souls who were fearful of allowing a new cause of action", in contrast to Lords Atkin and Macmillan, "the bold spirits who were ready to allow it if justice so required".
Lord Atkin gladly accepted the role of demolisher of precedent. He argued two propositions—the "Neighbour Principle" which he abstracted from St Luke's Gospel and the parable of the Good Samaritan; and what he termed "sound common sense" that "a manufacturer … with the knowledge that the absence of reasonable care in the preparation and putting up of the products will result in an injury to the consumer's life or property, owes a duty to the consumer to take that reasonable care".
Nobody should have been surprised. Two years earlier, he had canvassed these ideas in his presidential speech to the Holdsworth Club, the prestigious law society of Birmingham University. He spoke of achieving convergence between morality and the law, saying, "I doubt whether the whole of the law of tort could not be comprised in the golden maxim to do unto your neighbour as you would that he should do unto you."
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
21 June 2016
"Lord Moncrieff, we might agree, got it right, and would have been the hero of this tale had not Mr Stevenson appealed to the Second Division of the Court of Session. It overturned Lord Moncrieff's decision in a three-to-one verdict. Unsurprisingly, it proved impossible for the majority of the Lords of Appeal to concede they were wrong in the Barr "mice" cases.
Mrs Donoghue's solicitor, Glasgow town councillor Walter Leechman, was a political radical. He held strong views on injustice and individual rights; it was he who had launched the two "mice" cases against A.G. Barr and was now saddling up for an even more expensive attempt to sheet responsibility home to ginger-beer brewers.
It seems this was on a "speculative fee" basis similar to today's practice of "no win, no fee" by ambulance-chasing lawyers. Shrewdly, he limited the appeal to the House of Lords to a point of law, not the facts. Later, this led to misunderstanding and the absurd claim in some high legal circles that the case was a hoax—and that there never had been a snail!"
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
14 June 2016
"It was not likely an action against the cafe owner, an Italian, Francis Minghella, would succeed, because the bottle had been delivered sealed, and he could not have been expected to spot the snail in the opaque bottle. A claim for £500 damages was therefore filed against the brewer whose name was on the bottle, David Stevenson of Glen Lane, Paisley, for shock and the gastro-enteritis which required medical consultations. He denied that he had any liability under current law, since he had no contract with Mrs Donoghue. At that time Scottish and English law provided only two grounds for liability: sale of dangerous goods or withholding knowledge of a defect in goods that could be dangerous.
The case came before Lord Alexander Moncrieff, the Lord Ordinary, in the Outer House of Scotland's Court of Session on June 27, 1930. Mrs Donoghue faced a severe legal hurdle. Only three weeks earlier, the Second Division of the Court of Session had dismissed claims in two similar cases—of mice being found in bottles of ginger beer made by a Glasgow company, A.G. Barr Ltd. The court held that negligence could not be inferred from the facts, and even if it could be proved, no duty of care was owed to the ultimate consumer.
Nevertheless Lord Moncrieff managed to find wiggle room around this. He found for Mrs Donoghue on the grounds that there was a general duty owed by the wrongdoer to the victim, and brought food products within the scope of "dangerous goods", requiring that "an ostensible food be not replaced by a latent and actual poison".
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
6 June 2016
"At 8.50 p.m. on Sunday August 26, 1928, Mrs May Donoghue (nee McAlister), having taken the thirty-minute tram ride from Glasgow to Paisley, met a friend in the Wellmeadow Cafe. Mrs Donoghue was at the time living with her brother, having separated from her husband, Henry.
....The friend bought her an ice-cream, served in a glass, and ginger beer to pour over it, making the popular Scottish ice-cream "float". After she had drunk some, the friend refilled the glass, whereupon a decomposed snail flowed out with the ginger beer, and May Donoghue very likely had a fit of the vapours. The friend, however, had the presence of mind to note the name of the manufacturer on the bottle. (Does that suggest the friend was more likely a man?)
(To interpose two historical facts: ice-cream cafes had spread like wildfire in Scotland after the First World War, as Italian migrants fled an impoverished country; ginger beer was probably the most popular drink at the time, with 3000 breweries throughout Britain. In the days before sterile filtration, it was invariably sold in brown glass or stoneware bottles to disguise the suspended sediment of the brewing process.)"
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
31 May 2016
"On Tuesday March 17, 1931, Britain's Lord Chancellor Lord Sankey, the 4th Duke of Wellington, two bishops, two marquesses, twenty-four earls, sixteen viscounts and eighty-eight barons took their seats in the House of Lords and voted to permit a Glasgow shop assistant to prosecute, as a pauper, her forlorn appeal for damages. "I am very poor, and am not worth in all the world the sum of five pounds, my wearing apparel and the subject of the said appeal excepted," May Donoghue had petitioned. Without that approval, the five Law Lords would not have heard the case of Donoghue v Stevenson, and the legal path to the consumer protection laws we enjoy today would have been very different.
Every first-year law student is familiar with the story of the snail in the bottle of ginger beer; how against all odds, a new tort of negligence was created, defining the duty of care a provider owes to the end user, thus bridging the gap in conduct between the moral and the legal. Against all odds, it introduced the "Neighbour Principle" of St Luke's Gospel into the common law.
But law schools rarely have time to probe behind the legal facts and the significance of the precedent the case created, to get to know the characters involved, or speculate on the mysteries in it, some never to be resolved. This little story may, I hope, satisfy some curiosity."
To be continued…
From "The Story Behind Lord Atkin of Snail" by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, January-February 2015
24 May 2016
"Exodus 19-24 describes a first presentation of the covenant, and Exodus 31-34 tells how it was given again after Moses broke the original tablets in anger at the people's apostasy with the golden calf. But behind this arrangement, there were originally two separate accounts of the same Sinai event, one from the E source (now in chapters 20-24) and one from the J source (now in chapters 33-34).
....Behind the mixed accounts of the making of the covenant, however, we can note the important elements of the Near Eastern treaty.
God identifies himself and his blessings to the people in Exodus 20:2 as he gives his stipulations and laws. In chapter 24, Moses brings it down for formal reading and acceptance by the people. Missing are curses and the witness of other gods, but this is understandable when we realize that there was only one God for Israel. And although there are a few threats to punish those who do not keep the commandments (cf. Ex 20:5), curses seem rare in this early covenant, unlike the long lists in the later Book of Deuteronomy (chapters 26-27). This is similar to the difference between the early Hittite treaties with their few short lists of curses, and the later, greatly lengthened curses of the Assyrians. It argues that the tradition behind the story of Mount Sinai is very old."
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch. 9.
17 May 2016
"Because there were no common courts of law to decide cases between nations, ancient treaties depended heavily on the power of the oath that each party took before the gods as witnesses, and on the conviction that the gods would in fact act to punish offenders. As a result, such a treaty demanded some form of ceremony in order to ratify it, a ritual that made the point clear. The most common form was cutting an animal in two. Thus in a Mari tablet from the eighteenth century we find a covenant sealed by cutting a donkey into two parts. Similarly, an eighth century treaty from Sefire in Syria records a number of animals cut into parts, with a curse attached to each: "As this calf is cut into two, may Mati'el be cut in two." Even Jeremiah refers to this custom when he condemns those who violated Yahweh's covenant:
The men who violated my covenant and did not observe the terms of the agreement they made before me, I will make like the calf which they cut into two, and between whose parts they passed (Jer 34:18-19).
Even the usual Hebrew expression for making a covenant employs this idea: karat berith, "to cut a covenant." Genesis 15 may make reference to this ceremony when Abraham cuts the animals in two and God passes through them in fire."
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch. 9.
10 May 2016
"The Book of Deuteronomy reveals the covenant forms much more clearly. It is written so that it resembles a formal treaty between God and Israel through the speech of Moses. It has all the elements of the classical Hittite treaties and yet shows strong connections to the later interests of the Assyrian types as well in its stress on extended blessings and curses (Dt 27-28) and on the right of inheritance of the land by Israel.
Joshua 24, under the influence of Deuteronomy, describes a renewal of the Sinai covenant under Joshua which is the closest parallel to a Hittite covenant in the Old Testament. It even includes the people as witnesses against themselves (Jos 24:22) and a public writing and deposit of the agreement in a sanctuary (Jos 24:25-26). The only part missing is the list of curses and blessings.
From another angle, the entire Pentateuch must have been influenced by the covenant format. The "story" from Abraham to the escape through the Red Sea serves as a formal preamble and prologue listing the overlord's great deeds to the vassal before the giving of the law on Sinai.
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch. 9.
3 May 2016
"The later Assyrian treaties show many of the same parts, although they sometimes lack the elaborate preamble and prologue of the Hittite types, while the list of curses and exotic punishments increases dramatically, perhaps to serve as a scare tactic to make the vassal keep the treaty. A fine example of an Assyrian vassal treaty is the seventh century agreement that King Esarhaddon forced on the small nations subject to Assyria that they would swear support for his son Ashurbanipal as his successor, and not rebel when Esarhaddon died. It lists all of the gods who back up the oath first, and then contains literally hundreds of different obligations covering all possible threats against the crown prince and his right to become king.
....It would be very pleasant to discover that the early Hittite covenants matched the early Israelite covenant at Mount Sinai, and that the later description in Deuteronomy matched the Assyrian treaties of the same period. But it doesn't work out that way. The covenant described in Exodus 19-24 is pictured very generally and does not match detail for detail the exact format of either the Hittite or the Assyrian treaties, although there are some points of similarity with the Hittite structure:
(1) Preamble and Prologue in which God gives his reasons for the covenant are seen in Exodus 19:3-6 and 20:2.
(2) The stipulations or demands are reflected in the ten commandments (Ex 20:3-17) and in the following covenant law code (Ex 20:22-23:19).
(3) The deposit of the treaty and its public nature is understood in the use of stone tablets for a permanent record.
(4) The curses and blessings and divine witnesses are naturally missing since Israel's faith made no room for other gods. But God himself backs up the obligation to obey this covenant by the signs of his powerful presence in thunder, lightning, and dark clouds (Ex 19:16-19; 20:18-20)."
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch. 9.
26 April 2016
"We can learn much about Israel's covenant with Yahweh by comparing the Old Testament descriptions with actual examples of covenants from other ancient nations.
....Let us look at a sample of an early Hittite treaty form. Since no treaty tablet has been completely preserved, the quoted illustrations are borrowed from different texts:
1. The Preamble in which the overlord, or great king, gives his name and title:
"These are the words of the Sun Mursillis, the great king, the king of Hatti-land, the valiant, the favorite of the storm-god, the son of Suppiluliumas, the great king" (ANET 203).
2. The Historical Prologue in which the great king lists his past acts of kindness to the vassal as the reason for the vassal king's obligation to obey:
"Aziras, your grandfather, and Du-Teshub, your father remained loyal to me as their lord....Since your father had mentioned to me your name with great praise, I sought after you…and put you in the place of your father" (ANET 203-204).
3. The Stipulations or Demands that the overlord binds the vassal to keep:
"If anyone utters a word unfriendly to the king or the Hatti-land before you, Duppi-Tessub, you shall not withhold his name from the king" (ANET 204).
4. Deposit of the treaty in a temple and public readings at set times:
"A duplicate of this treaty has been deposited before the sun-goddess of Arinna....In the Mitanni land, a duplicate has been deposited before Teshub....At regular intervals they shall read it in the presence of the king of the Mitanni land and in the presence of the sons of the Hurri land" (ANET 205).
5. The list of witnesses is important to any contract. But for a solemn state covenant, the witnesses are the gods of the two lands:
"We have called the gods to be present, to listen, and to serve as witnesses: the sun-goddess of Arinna…the sun-god, the lord of heaven, the storm-god, the lord of the Hatti-land…the mountains, the rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, heaven and earth, the winds and clouds" (ANET 205-206).
6. The Curses and Blessings end the treaty. The divine beings are called on to maintain the treaty in the divine courtroom by imposing rewards and penalties:
"Should Duppi-Teshub not honor these words of the treaty and oath, may these gods of the oath destroy Duppi-Teshub together with his person, his wife, his son, his grandson, his house, his land....But if he honors these words…may these gods of the oath protect him with his person, his wife, his son, his grandson, his house and his country" (ANET 205)."
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch. 9.
26 April 2016
"We can learn much about Israel's covenant with Yahweh by comparing the Old Testament descriptions with actual examples of covenants from other ancient nations. We have two major passages about the covenant in the Pentatuech: Exodus 19-24 and the Book of Deuteronomy. Luckily we also have two major sources of ancient Near Eastern covenants: the Hittite treaties from the period 1400-1200 B.C. and a series of Assyrian treaties from the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.
Since so much time divides the Hittite from the Assyrian examples, many differences can be found between the two groups. But we must also remember that nearly six hundred years separate the events in Exodus from the time of Deuteronomy (about 650 B.C.), and that we will find quite a number of differences in the biblical accounts as well.
Ancient treaties show two major types. One is a treaty between equal kings. This is generally called a parity treaty. We possess an excellent example of this kind of covenant in the peace treaty made between King Ramesses II of Egypt and the Hittite King Hattusilis to end their war in Syria about 1290 B.C. The second type is the vassal treaty, made between an overlord, a major power, and small nations that were either conquered by him or were forced to cooperate lest he take them over. The two types of treaty differ in the kind of obligations that the parties take on. In the parity treaty, each side agrees to mutual responsibilities because they have equal status and neither can force the other to carry out their obligations. But in the vassal treaty, the overlord usually does not bind himself to any particular duties beyond being kindly and protective of the vassal, but he does spell out a series of demands for the vassal to faithfully perform. This second type is the more helpful in interpreting the Sinai covenant between Yahweh, the divine overlord, and Israel, the mere creatures whom he has chosen."
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch. 9.
12 April 2016
"The first part of the Book of Exodus moves from Israel's slavery through Moses' struggle against the pharaoh to freedom and the dangerous journey to the sacred mountain of Sinai in only eighteen chapters. The remaining twenty-two chapters of Exodus, all twenty-seven chapters of Leviticus, and the first ten chapters of Numbers describe a single stay at this mountain where God made a covenant with Israel. This covenant is thus the central event of the Pentateuch [the first five books of the Bible - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy].
....The Book of Deuteronomy is written in covenant language from beginning to end, seeking a national renewal of fidelity to Yahweh in the promised land. This theme is echoed in the covenant scenes of Joshua 23-24 and the reform program of Josiah in 2 Kings 22-23. Among the prophets, Amos and Hosea echo many of the covenant ideals without mentioning Moses or Sinai, but the later prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel make constant reference to the covenant in the desert. Finally, the post-exilic reform of Ezra the scribe (around 450-400 B.C.) is centered on a covenant renewal.
....What then is this term "covenant" that it should be so central to Israelite faith? The Hebrew word berit, which is used most often to express the idea of a covenant, originally meant a "shackle" or "chain," but it came to be any form of binding agreement. It expresses the solemn contract between Jacob and Laban in Genesis 31:44, or the alliance of friendship between David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel 18:3. It describes the peace pact made by Abraham with a whole tribe of Amorites in Genesis 14:13, and the bond of marriage in Proverbs 2:17 or Malachi 2:14. And it can be a solemn treaty between kings, as is the case with Solomon and Hiram of Tyre in 1 Kings 5, or with Ahab and Benhadad of Syria in 1 Kings 20:34. But most often it is used of the special alliance between Yahweh and Israel."
To be continued…
Lawrence Boadt in "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction", Ch. 9.
5 April 2016
"If God limited himself to only justice, he would cease to be God, and would instead be like human beings who ask merely that the law be respected. But mere justice is not enough. Experience shows that an appeal to justice alone will result in its destruction. This is why God goes beyond justice with his mercy and forgiveness. Yet this does not mean that justice should be devalued or rendered superfluous. On the contrary: anyone who makes a mistake must pay the price. However, this is just the beginning of conversion, not its end, because one begins to feel the tenderness and mercy of God. God does not deny justice. He rather envelopes it and surpasses it with an even greater event in which we experience love as the foundation of true justice....God's justice is his mercy given to everyone as a grace that flows from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus the Cross of Christ is God's judgement on all of us and on the whole world, because through it he offers us the certitude of love and new life."
Pope Francis in "Misericordiae Vultus - Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy", 11 April 2015 (though the Holy Year didn't commence until 8 December 2015, the feast the Immaculate Conception).
29 March 2016
"The appeal Jesus makes to the text from the book of the prophet Hosea – "I desire love and not sacrifice" (6:6) – is important in this regard. Jesus affirms that, from that time onward, the rule of life for his disciples must place mercy at the centre, as Jesus himself demonstrated by sharing meals with sinners. Mercy, once again, is revealed as a fundamental aspect of Jesus' mission. This is truly challenging to his hearers, who would draw the line at a formal respect for the law. Jesus, on the other hand, goes beyond the law; the company he keeps with those the law considers sinners makes us realize the depth of his mercy."
To be continued...
Pope Francis in "Misericordiae Vultus - Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy", 11 April 2015 (though the Holy Year didn't commence until 8 December 2015, the feast the Immaculate Conception).
22 March 2016
"For his part, Jesus speaks several times of the importance of faith over and above the observance of the law. It is in this sense that we must understand his words when, reclining at table with Matthew and other tax collectors and sinners, he says to the Pharisees raising objections to him, "Go and learn the meaning of 'I desire mercy not sacrifice'. I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mt 9:13). Faced with a vision of justice as the mere observance of the law that judges people simply by dividing them into two groups – the just and sinners – Jesus is bent on revealing the great gift of mercy that searches out sinners and offers them pardon and salvation. One can see why, on the basis of such a liberating vision of mercy as a source of new life, Jesus was rejected by the Pharisees and the other teachers of the law. In an attempt to remain faithful to the law, they merely placed burdens on the shoulders of others and undermined the Father's mercy. The appeal to a faithful observance of the law must not prevent attention from being given to matters that touch upon the dignity of the person."
To be continued...
Pope Francis in "Misericordiae Vultus - Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy", 11 April 2015 (though the Holy Year didn't commence until 8 December 2015, the feast the Immaculate Conception).
15 March 2016
"It would not be out of place at this point to recall the relationship between justice and mercy. These are not two contradictory realities, but two dimensions of a single reality that unfolds progressively until it culminates in the fullness of love. Justice is a fundamental concept for civil society, which is meant to be governed by the rule of law. Justice is also understood as that which is rightly due to each individual. In the Bible, there are many references to divine justice and to God as "judge". In these passages, justice is understood as the full observance of the Law and the behaviour of every good Israelite in conformity with God's commandments. Such a vision, however, has not infrequently led to legalism by distorting the original meaning of justice and obscuring its profound value. To overcome this legalistic perspective, we need to recall that in Sacred Scripture, justice is conceived essentially as the faithful abandonment of oneself to God's will."
To be continued...
Pope Francis in "Misericordiae Vultus - Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy", 11 April 2015 (though the Holy Year didn't commence until 8 December 2015, the feast the Immaculate Conception).
8 March 2016
The core error in Australia's administration of Papua New Guinea – the destruction of its simple but effective legal system...
"All that changed with the removal of experienced officers from police and magisterial duties. They were replaced by officers with little or no language skills or understanding of the local customs that were the bedrock of criminal law. Following Australian practice in an era of street protests, the police introduced armed riot squads which were then seen to be contestants in any dispute rather than peacemakers.
In the courts, informality and simple procedure were replaced by begowned and bewigged barristers who had no knowledge of indigenous peoples, who had to depend sometimes upon relays of interpreters, and whose proceedings, delays and incomprehensibility contributed to a loss of respect for the law. It was a triumph of process over rational performance."
To be continued…
From "Triumph of the Bureaucrats" by Michael O'Connor, published in Annals Australasia, September 2013
23 February 2016
"A serious problem for Papua New Guinea has been the failure of sound administration and the corruption that this has engendered although, again, who is to say that we in Australia can be smug about a lack of official corruption in this country. The most basic source of administrative failure was the determination in Canberra from the mid-1960s through to independence [in 1975] to design and implement an administration that slavishly copied Australia's. Like ours, it is too complex and too ponderous. Unlike ours, it lacks the skills and traditions which allow ours to work.
Perhaps the core failure was the destruction of a simple but effective territory system of law and justice in favour of our highly specialised – and stylised – system. Judges and magistrates typically held court in the open with highly simplified rules of procedure that were accessible to everybody. The police were a community force devoted to keeping the peace rather than an Australian-style metropolitan force. In the context of tribal or clan disputation, the police were – and were seen to be – impartial and trusted."
To be continued…
From "Triumph of the Bureaucrats" by Michael O'Connor, published in Annals Australasia, September 2013
15 February 2016
From the Pope's New Year message about indifference…
"On both the individual and communitarian levels, indifference to one's neighbour, born of indifference to God, finds expression in disinterest and a lack of engagement, which only help to prolong situations of injustice and grave social imbalance. These in turn can lead to conflicts or, in any event, generate a climate of dissatisfaction which risks exploding sooner or later into acts of violence and insecurity.
Indifference and lack of commitment constitute a grave dereliction of the duty whereby each of us must work in accordance with our abilities and our role in society for the promotion of the common good, and in particular for peace, which is one of mankind's most precious goods.
....Saint John writes: "If any one has the world's goods and sees his brother or sister in need, yet refuses help, how does God's love abide in him? (1 Jn 3:17; cf. Jas 2:15-16)."
From the Message of Pope Francis for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2016
9 February 2016
"In other cases, indifference shows itself in lack of concern for what is happening around us, especially if it does not touch us directly. Some people prefer not to ask questions or seek answers; they lead lives of comfort, deaf to the cry of those who suffer. Almost imperceptibly, we grow incapable of feeling compassion for others and for their problems; we have no interest in caring for them, as if their troubles were their own responsibility, and none of our business. "When we are healthy and comfortable, we forget about others (something God the Father never does): we are unconcerned with their problems, their sufferings and the injustices they endure… Our heart grows cold. As long as I am relatively healthy and comfortable, I don't think about those less well off." "
To be continued…
From the Message of Pope Francis for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2016
2 February 2016
"Indifference to our neighbour shows itself in different ways. Some people are well-informed; they listen to the radio, read the newspapers or watch television, but they do so mechanically and without engagement. They are vaguely aware of the tragedies afflicting humanity, but they have no sense of involvement or compassion. Theirs is the attitude of those who know, but keep their gaze, their thoughts and their actions focused on themselves. Sadly, it must be said that today's information explosion does not of itself lead to an increased concern for other people's problems, which demands openness and a sense of solidarity. Indeed, the information glut can numb people's sensibilities and to some degree downplay the gravity of the problems. There are those who "simply content themselves with blaming the poor and the poor countries themselves for their troubles; indulging in unwarranted generalizations, they claim that the solution is an 'education' that would tranquilize them, making them tame and harmless. All this becomes even more exasperating for the marginalized in the light of the widespread and deeply rooted corruption found in many countries – in their governments, businesses and institutions – whatever the political ideology of their leaders." "
To be continued…
From the Message of Pope Francis for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2016
26 January 2016
"The first kind of indifference in human society is indifference to God, which then leads to indifference to one's neighbour and to the environment. This is one of the grave consequences of a false humanism and practical materialism allied to relativism and nihilism. We have come to think that we are the source and creator of ourselves, our lives and society. We feel self-sufficient, prepared not only to find a substitute for God but to do completely without him."
To be continued…
From the Message of Pope Francis for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2016
19 January 2016
"Personal dignity and interpersonal relationships are what constitute us as human beings whom God willed to create in his own image and likeness. As creatures endowed with inalienable dignity, we are related to all our brothers and sisters, for whom we are responsible and with whom we act in solidarity. Lacking this relationship, we would be less human. We see, then, how indifference represents a menace to the human family."
To be continued…
From the Message of Pope Francis for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2016
12 January 2016
"God is not indifferent! God cares about mankind! God does not abandon us! At the beginning of the New Year, I would like to share not only this profound conviction but also my cordial good wishes for prosperity, peace and the fulfilment of the hopes of every man and every woman, every family, people and nation throughout the world, including all Heads of State and Government and all religious leaders. We continue to trust that 2016 will see us all firmly and confidently engaged, on different levels, in the pursuit of justice and peace. Peace is both God's gift and a human achievement. As a gift of God, it is entrusted to all men and women, who are called to attain it."
To be continued…
From the Message of Pope Francis for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2016
29 December 2015
"The feast of Christmas will outlive all of its commercial rivals and in fact business needs Christmas. No market will be sustained in the long term by selfish people buying presents for themselves!
Christmas is a time for others and especially Christmas is a time for God…to thank God Almighty for sending his Son among us, to teach us and redeem us.
Those who accept and understand the Christ Child have genuine insight into God himself, into God's love and wisdom. This is the message of Christmas."
From "Christmas Gifts" in "Contemplating Christ with Luke" by Cardinal George Pell
22 December 2015
"It is good to try to identify what we, what the Catholic Church celebrates at Christmas. As a first step the feast clearly teaches us that human existence has a meaning beyond the material facts of life. Money is a means to either good or bad ends; it is not a value in itself. Money and possessions cannot return your love and in the long run money cannot do much against personal suffering and cannot beat death, although it can delay it.
....The Christian message is clear and provocative. Human life has truth and meaning, so much so that our loving God sent his Son to share our human condition; the highs and the lows and the humdrum.
You do not need to be a duchess or a professor to understand this. You do not even need to be a believer to be moved by the idea of God being among us as a baby in a stable, as a young man crucified on a cross."
From "Christmas Gifts" in "Contemplating Christ with Luke" by Cardinal George Pell
15 December 2015
"I always have resisted those who suggest that Father Christmas is hostile to our Christian understanding of the feast. He is a bit of a "Johnny come lately", created by Coca Cola in an advertising campaign in the 1920s, but his prototype was St. Nicholas from Turkey in the fourth century A.D., a bishop renowned for the practical help he gave to battlers and specially for the dowries he provided for three young sisters which enabled them to be married and saved them from a life of prostitution.
I hope that this type of charity is not needed among us today, but the general Christian message is clear; that at Christmas we should be thinking of others, especially those who could do with a helping hand, and not thinking of ourselves. Christmas is God thinking of us.
Recently I had dinner with a group which included a duchess from Europe. She grew up in a good Catholic family and she spoke lovingly of her father, who had a strong faith and was also a wise and loving husband and father. As they were rich, the children always had many Christmas presents, but before opening them each had to choose three to give to the poor. I am sure this caused some heartburn to the children, but it was a lesson that woman never forgot. It captures something of the real spirit of Christmas."
From "Christmas Gifts" in "Contemplating Christ with Luke" by Cardinal George Pell
8 December 2015
The Pope concludes his welcome to a congress of criminal lawyers…
"Dear friends, press on in this direction, because I understand that in it is the difference between an inclusive and an exclusive society, one which does not place the human person at the centre and disregards the leftovers that are no longer needed.
I bid you farewell, placing you in the hands of the Lord Jesus, who, during the days of his earthly life, was arrested and unjustly condemned to death, and who identifies with all those who are imprisoned, guilty and not ("in prison and you came to me" Mt 25:36). He also descended upon that darkness created by the evil and sin of man to bring you the light of justice which ennobles and exalts, in order to proclaim the Good News of salvation and conversion. May he who was unjustly stripped of everything, grant you the gift of wisdom, so your dialogues and deliberations meet with success. I ask you to pray for me, as I greatly need it."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
1 December 2015
"Contrition is the way to repentance, that favoured path that leads to the heart of God, which embraces us and gives us another chance, which always opens us to the truth of atonement and by his mercy allows us to transform.
....The manner of God, who primerea, or is there even before the human sinner, waiting and offering him his forgiveness, thus reveals a higher justice which is, at the same time impartial and compassionate, without contradiction in these two aspects. Forgiveness, in fact, neither eliminates nor diminishes the need for correction, precisely that of justice, nor does it overlook the need for personal conversion, instead it goes further, seeking to reestablish relationships and reintegrate people into society. To me, this seems to be the great challenge that we all must face together, so that the measures adopted against evil are not satisfied by restraining, dissuading and isolating the many who have caused it, but also helps them to reflect, to travel the paths of good, to be authentic persons who, removed from their own hardships, become merciful themselves. The Church, therefore, proposes a humanizing, genuinely reconciling justice, a justice that leads the criminal, through educational development and brave atonement, to rehabilitation and reintegration into the community."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
24 November 2015
"We are all sinners; Christ is the only just one. We too sometimes run the risk of being drawn by sin, by evil, by temptation. In every person the capacity for doing great good coexists with the possibility for causing great evil, even if one wants to avoid it (cf. Rm 7:18-19). And we must ask ourselves why some fall and others do not, being of the same human condition.
Crime is not infrequently rooted in economic and social inequalities, in the web of corruption and in organized crime, which seek accomplices from among the most powerful and victims from among the most vulnerable. To ward off this scourge, having just laws is not enough; it is essential to train the people who are responsible and capable of putting the laws into practice. A society supported only by the market rules and which has created false expectations and excessive needs, rejects those who do not measure up and blocks those who are slow, weak and less talented from finding opportunities in life (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, n. 209)."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
17 November 2015
"Confession is the attitude of one who recognizes and regrets his crime. If the criminal is not sufficiently helped, if he is not offered the opportunity to convert, he will end up being a victim of the system. It is necessary to do justice, but true justice is not satisfied by simply punishing criminals. It is essential to go further and do everything possible to reform, improve and educate the person, so that he matures from every point of view, does not become discouraged, addresses the damage he caused, and can reestablish his life without being crushed under the weight of his hardships."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
10 November 2015
"In this regard, the media, in the legitimate exercise of freedom of the press, play a very important role and have a great responsibility: it falls to them to accurately inform and not to raise alarm or create social panic when reporting on criminal offenses. Lives and personal dignity are in play, and must not become publicity cases, often becoming even obsession, condemning the presumed guilty party to social contempt prior to judgment, or forcing the victims, for sensationalistic motives, to publicly relive the pain they experienced."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
3 November 2015
"In our communities, we tend to think that crimes are resolved when the criminal is caught and condemned, directly in relation to the damage that he caused, or without paying enough attention to the situation in which the victim is left. However, it would be error to model compensation only on punishment, to confuse justice with revenge, which would contribute only to increasing violence, even if it is institutionalized. Experience tells us that enhancing and enforcing penalties often fails to resolve social problems, nor do they result in reducing the crime rate. Moreover this method can create serious problems for the community, such as overcrowded prisons and people held without [valid] convictions.... In many cases the offender fulfills his punishment objectively, serving his sentence but without changing inside or healing his wounded heart."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
27 October 2015
The Pope relects on the principle of compensation in criminal law…
"The Lord has gradually taught his people that there is a necessary asymmetry between crime and punishment, that one cannot apply the remedy: an eye for an eye or a tooth for a broken tooth, by breaking that of another. Justice is to be rendered to the victim, not by executing the aggressor.
The Good Samaritan can serve as a biblical example of compensation. Without giving thought to persecuting the guilty party, so that he assumes the consequences of his action, [the Good Samaritan] tends to the one severely injured on the roadside and takes care of his needs (cf. Lk 10:25-37)."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
20 October 2015
"You well know that criminal law requires a multidisciplinary focus, which seeks to integrate and harmonize all aspects, culminating in a fully humane, free, informed and responsible law. The Church would also like to speak as part of her evangelizing mission, and in fidelity to Christ, who came to "proclaim release to the captives" (Lk 4:18). Therefore, I would like to share with you a few ideas which, as part of the treasure of the Scripture, nurture the soul and share in the millennia-long experience of the People of God.
From the very earliest Christian times, the disciples of Jesus have sought to confront the fragility of the human heart, so often weak. In different ways and with various initiatives, they have accompanied and supported those who are buckling under the weight of sin and evil. Despite the historical changes, three elements have been consistent: reparation or compensation for the injury caused; confession, through which man expresses his own internal conversion; and contrition in order to reach the encounter with God's merciful and healing love."
From the Letter of Pope Francis to Participants in the 19th International Congress of the International Association of Penal Law and of the 3rd Congress of the Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology, 30 May 2014
13 October 2015
The influence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Pope John XXIII…
"One world leader who was early to recognize the Declaration's importance was Angelo Roncalli, who became Pope John XXIII ten years after he had given "encouragements" to René Cassin in Paris in the fall of 1948. Finding its principles compatible with Catholic social teaching, he adopted (to the surprise of many) its dignitarian language of rights in his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris. This new mode of speaking about freedom and social justice enabled him and his successors to break new ground in interfaith relations, by addressing themselves not only to members of their own faith, but to "all men and women of good will." René Cassin often expressed his pleasure at these developments, noting the many echoes of the Declaration in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, which he called "the very image of universality." "
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 11.
In their supplement celebrating John XXIII's canonization, Kairos describes Pacem in Terris:
"St John produced several historic encyclicals, including Mater et Magistra, on Christian social doctrine, and Pacem in Terris, issued in 1963 at the height of the Cold War, on the need for global peace and justice....Considered a highlight in Catholic social teaching the encyclical addresses universal rights and relations between states." (Kairos, Vol. 25 Issue 8)
6 October 2015
The influence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Pope John XXIII…
"René Cassin was still living on the Boulevard Saint-Michel in the same apartment he had occupied on the day he had decided to join de Gaulle in London. As a reminder of the death sentence delivered against him during the war, he kept on his door a black seal placed there by the Gestapo. In his memoirs Cassin wrote that "on a number of occasions" in the fall of 1948, "I received discreet personal encouragements from the Papal Nuncio Roncalli." Angelo Roncalli was then a popular mediator between conservative churchmen and a younger, more socially active, clergy. Ten years later, at age seventy-seven, he would be elected pope. As John XXIII he remained an advocate of social reforms to improve the lot of workers and the poor and convened the Second Vatican Council in 1962 to consider measures for renewal of the church in the modern world. There were many correspondences between his own thoughts on peace and justice and the Universal Declaration, which he praised in his encyclical Peace on Earth as "an act of the highest importance." "
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 8
29 September 2015
"The Long March through the Articles" – the painfully slow negotiation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948…
"In mid-November the provisions on social and economic rights predictably slowed the committee down. The debate was not over the principle of including these rights, but on their scope and details.
....René Cassin temporarily took the chair on November 18 to handle questions about the "new" rights. Humphrey was bemused to note that Cassin, with "one of the quickest minds that I have ever seen," was a poor chairman.
"He sometimes forgets indeed that he is in the chair," Humphrey wrote in his diary, "and the meeting goes on merrily without leadership." General de Gaulle had been similarly disappointed in Cassin's administrative skills in the summer of 1941 when he had left his legal aide in charge of the Free French operations in London while he traveled to the Middle East for talks with leaders of British and Turkish forces. The general had told Cassin to use a firm hand, but when he returned he found the office in chaos. That one incident marked a change in the relationship between the two men. From that time on, according to historian Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, "René Cassin, secure in the honor of being a founding father of Free France and its republican conscience, would never again be entrusted with first-rank political responsibilities." Despite the high legal positions he had achieved after the war, Cassin always resented his exclusion from the innermost circles of power.
In his own sphere of expertise, though, Cassin excelled. Throughout the third committee sessions, and especially in connection with the social and economic rights, he reverted to his old role of law professor, patiently explaining each article in relation to the structure of the whole document – the connections among various articles and the way the different parts of the Declaration worked to amplify or limit other parts."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 9
22 September 2015
"The Long March through the Articles" – the painfully slow negotiation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948…
"John Humphrey [a law professor from McGill University], bored to distraction, used some of the time to catch up on his correspondence. He wrote to his sister on October 14:
I am writing this letter during a session of the Third Committee of the General Assembly. I suppose I should be listening to the South American gentleman who is expounding on Article 3 of the Declaration of Human Rights, but I have heard so many of these speeches that it is only in revolt that I can hope to find sanity. We have been on this thing for 3 weeks now and have adopted 2 out of the 28 articles. When we will finish the Lord only knows. But I am really very happy about the way things have gone so far and fully expect that the General Assembly will adopt the declaration substantially as it was drafted by the Human Rights Commission....A sense of duty calls me back to work. They also serve who only stand and wait." "
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 9
15 September 2015
"The Long March through the Articles" – the painfully slow negotiation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948…
"Perhaps only someone like Malik [Charles Malik of Lebanon], from a small, newly independent country, could understand how important it was for every member state to have a sense of ownership with respect to the Declaration....Not that Malik was less determined than any of his fellow commissioners to get the Declaration to the General Assembly before its adjournment in December: when some speakers went on for too long, he reminded them in the language of the draft itself that everyone's rights are limited by the rights of others.
....Even Malik's heart must have sunk, however, when it took six days to get through Article 1. That much-revised draft article at this stage read:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed by nature with reason and conscience, and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 9
8 September 2015
"The Long March through the Articles" – the painfully slow negotiation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948…
"When the third committee turned from its general discussion to the specific provisions of the Declaration, Mrs. Roosevelt was dismayed to find that the members of that large group seemed determined to debate "every single word of that draft declaration over and over again." There was hardly any issue that the human rights commissioners had not thoroughly considered, yet the third committee, she complained, was treating each article "exactly as though it was all an entirely new idea and nobody had ever looked at it before."
To a bored and impatient John Humphrey [a law professor from McGill University], most of the speeches and proposed amendments seemed inspired by considerations of national prestige. He found the silent role of an international civil servant increasingly frustrating. "Sitting next to the Chairman, and both professionally and emotionally involved, I wished at times that I were a delegate....There were times when I felt that I must speak if only to set the record straight." "
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 9
1 September 2015
The 2 lawyers - one Canadian, one French - who were the key players in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
"To give each man his due, one might say that Humphrey's work was to Cassin's as Tycho Brahe's was to Johannes Kepler's. Just as Kepler could not have had his paradigm-breaking insight into the movements of planets without Tycho's meticulous records, so Cassin could not have produced an integrated document of worldwide applicability without Humphrey's distillation of the material he had collected. But just as Tycho was unable to see in his own data what Kepler saw, Humphrey had simply compiled a list of rights, loosely grouped into categories. Cassin's draft illuminated their meaning and relations. No one would suggest that Cassin's revisions yielded a document as elegant as the Code Napoléon, whose lucid style and lapidary phrases were so much admired by the novelist Stendhal that he kept a copy on his bedside table, but they did guarantee that the document would be more than a mere list or "bill" of rights in the Anglo-American sense. It was about this time that the committee began to use the term declaration more often than bill.
....Cassin's synthesis yielded a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. By fusing rights from an older tradition of political and civil liberty to those reflecting a more modern preoccupation with social and economic needs, by providing both sets of rights with an interpretive framework, and by declaring that all these rights belonged to everyone, everywhere, the Declaration was bringing something new into the world."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
25 August 2015
"That Humphrey wrote the first draft, and that Cassin's draft was a revision of Humphrey's, is clear from the official UN records. Some confusion resulted, perhaps, from the frequent use of the term outline to describe Humphrey's work. But the records leave no room for doubt. On June 17, 1947, the verbatim transcript finds Mrs. Roosevelt saying, "Now we come to Mr. Cassin's draft, which has based itself on the Secretariat's comparative draft." Cassin himself acknowledged in the drafting committee that "it is always the Secretariat's draft which should be considered the basic source of the Committee's work."
Unfortunately a few careless authors created the impression not only that Cassin had written the first draft, but that he was the principal architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This error not only scanted the roles of other key individuals such as Humphrey, Malik [Charles Malik of Lebanon], and Chang [P.C. Chang, delegate for pre-Communist China], but it detracted from the universality of the document.
Humphrey felt especially aggrieved when the UN itself helped perpetuate this myth by permitting the French government to organize a display of Cassin's handwritten redraft in the lobby of UN headquarters on the occasion of the Declaration's tenth anniversary. That display, without any accompanying explanation, was wounding to the hardworking and generally self-effacing director of the UN Human Rights Division."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
18 August 2015
"A comparison of Cassin's draft with Humphrey's shows that Cassin made very few substantive additions....Though the document would undergo many further changes over the next year and a half, most of the ideas in Humphrey's draft ultimately found their way into the Universal Declaration, and the "logical arrangement" contributed by Cassin held firm." "
A regrettable dispute developed many years later over the question of who had written the "first" draft of the Universal Declaration. It was not exactly a question of paternity, since neither Cassin nor Humphrey ever claimed to be the "author" of the Declaration. But when Cassin was in his seventies, he claimed in a speech that he had had "sole responsibility" for the "first draft" and dismissed Humphrey's contribution as "excellent basic documentary work". This claim, repeated in a 1968 article, was puzzling but not without historical precedent. To this day, no one has been able to explain why Alexander Hamilton, just before his death, claimed authorship of several of The Federalist Papers that were actually written by James Madison!
Cassin's more enthusiastic admirers began calling him the "father" of the Declaration. Some of them downplayed Humphrey's role to such an extent that he felt obliged to set the record straight in his memoir. In 1984 the Canadian lawyer, who by then had served with distinction for many years in the important if low-profile post of director of the UN Secretariat's Human Rights Division, presented a straightforward account of the drafting process. "In many cases," he pointed out, Cassin "merely prepared a new French version of the official United Nations translation, and when this was translated back into English the result seemed further removed from the original than it really was." "
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
11 August 2015
"Humphrey had faithfully fulfilled his assignment. But Cassin believed that if people were to make sense of how the various rights fit together, more clarity was needed in their presentation. He added a Preamble, followed by what is known in continental legal terminology as a "general part": six introductory principles to guide the interpretation of each specific provision that followed. Cassin here was imitating the structure of the Code Napoléon, whose six preliminary articles perform a similar function, by providing judges with general directions on how to apply the law.
His Preamble explained the "why" of the Declaration. His introductory provisions affirmed the equal rights of every member of the human family and embodied concepts of man and society that were neither individualist nor collectivist. The rights themselves were arranged according to the logic of the introductory articles or general principles, proceeding from those belonging to the individual as such to the rights of persons in social and political relationships. The draft that Humphrey had loosely organized by topic began to take on a more organic structure, a beginning, middle, and end. Colonel Hodgson [the Australian delegate] noticed the difference at once. Cassin's first few articles, he commented, "are in a sense, a prelude and a keynote to the actual rights themselves."
Geoffrey Wilson [the British delegate], correctly fearing that work on the Declaration was about to take priority over a binding convention, was not at all pleased. He said little in the drafting committee but wrote London that such a document, if adopted by the General Assembly, "would thereupon become morally, though not legally, binding on all members. The moral obligations it imposed would be very vague and no means whatever would be provided for enforcing them and the whole thing would be a perpetual source of mischief." "
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
4 August 2015
A working group gets to work on revising the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1947…
"It did not take long for the four-person working group to conclude that the document would have greater unity if the revisions were handled by a single drafter. Malik, Roosevelt, and Wilson then turned to René Cassin....Over the weekend of June 14-15, Cassin revised Humphrey's draft with the help of Émile Giraud, the French international lawyer who had assisted Humphrey. His redraft consisted of a Preamble, six introductory articles, thirty-six substantive articles grouped analytically under eight headings, and two concluding provisions on implementation.
Cassin preserved most of the substantive content of Humphrey's draft, but under his hand the document acquired an internal logic and achieved greater unity. Humphrey, a practical man impatient with what he called "philosophical assertions," had deliberately left out any material other than what he considered the key "justiciable" rights gathered from his varied sources. By his own account he "had had practically no experience drafting documents." Cassin, by contrast, was well versed in writing legislation, a craft that has been sorely neglected in the Anglo-American common-law countries but that was brought to high refinement in the code-based continental civil law tradition."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
28 July 2015
John Humphrey, a law professor from McGill University, prepares the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1947…
"After poring over all this material, Humphrey and his top aide, Émile Giraud, came up with a list of forty-eight items that represented, in Humphrey's view, the common core of the documents and proposals his staff had collected.
"The Secretariat," he said, "has put all this together and included every conceivable right which the Drafting Committee might want to discuss."
Humphrey's draft may not have included every conceivable right, but it provided the drafting committee with a distillation of nearly two hundred years of efforts to articulate the most basic human values in terms of rights. It contained the first-generation political and civil rights found in the British, French, and American revolutionary declarations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: protections of life, liberty, and property; and freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly. It also included the second-generation economic and social rights found in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century constitutions such as those of Sweden, Norway, the Soviet Union, and several Latin American countries: rights to work, education, and basic subsistence....The UN proudly announced in its Weekly Bulletin that it had produced "the most exhaustive documentation on the subject of human rights ever assembled". "
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4
21 July 2015
John Humphrey, a law professor from McGill University, starts work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1947…
"The drafting group was not, of course, inventing rights out of whole cloth. The Secretariat had provided them with a review of the most fundamental and widely shared principles to have emerged over humanity's long, ongoing process of reflection on freedom. Aiming for comprehensiveness, John Humphrey had instructed his staff at the UN to study all the world's existing constitutions and rights instruments, as well as the suggestions that had poured in to the Secretariat from members of the Commission, outside organizations, and even from various interested individuals.
....Humphrey was particularly impressed by two contemporary declarations: the draft of a "Pan American" declaration then in deliberation in Latin America, and the 1944 "Statement of Essential Human Rights" produced on the basis of a study sponsored by the American Law Institute (ALI), a prestigious organization of judges, practitioners, and academics dedicated to the improvement of the law. The Latin American draft, prepared for the predecessor of the Organization of American States, was an interesting document in several respects: it represented a harvest of the main elements of the continental European, as well as Anglo-American, rights traditions; it accompanied its list of rights with a list of duties; it was supranational; and it proclaimed that "the essential rights of man are not derived from the fact that he is a national of a certain state, but are based upon attributes of his human personality."
"The group sponsored by the American Law Institute had consulted experts from "Arabic, British, Canadian, Chinese, French, pre-Nazi German, Italian, Indian, Latin American, Polish, Soviet Russian and Spanish" countries and cultures in order to "ascertain to what extent there can be worldwide agreement respecting rights." "
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
14 July 2015
An exiled French lawyer broadcasts to his homeland during World War II…
"In a radio broadcast from London in April 1941, Cassin spoke of his feelings about being Jewish and French. Addressing his remarks to the Jews of Vichy France, he said: "This voice does not come to you from a rabbi nor from one of the chaplains in de Gaulle's army, nor even from one of the faithful followers of your rites. However, certain fellow feelings that slumber in times of prosperity spontaneously reawaken in time of trial....Israelites of France, you know well that the French people are not responsible for the measures the enemy and its collaborators have imposed on you....It is in vain that they strive to break the bonds among the spiritual families of France, the most precious of its strengths." Reminding his listeners that the Jews had been accorded full citizenship by the French Revolution, he concluded: "No sacrifice, none, is too great to partially repay this debt by aiding France to recover her liberty and her greatness." The following month, the Vichy government deprived Cassin of his French citizenship, and the next year a military tribunal sentenced him to death in absentia.
As General de Gaulle's chief legal adviser during World War II, Cassin had been responsible for all the documents governing the internal structure and the external relations of the Free French. When liberation approached, he prepared the ordinances that would ease the transition to republican government. Now, in 1947, Cassin held the most important legal position in France. As head of the Conseil d'État (the central organ of public administration and the highest court for public law disputes), he was responsible for reestablishing the French administrative and judicial systems and restoring the credibility they had lost under the Vichy regime."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
7 July 2015
An exiled French lawyer presents himself to Charles de Gaulle in London in 1940…
"To Cassin's surprise, he was escorted directly to the chief. In the presence of the tall young general, the older man was suddenly acutely conscious of his white hair, his limp, his old-fashioned beard, and his lack of military expertise. "General," he said, "I have come to respond to your call of June 18. I know France needs all her sons. I am a disabled infantryman from the war of 1914 to 1918. I have headed a federation of a million veterans and disabled veterans. Do you think my assistance might be useful to you?" Almost apologetically he added that he was also a law professor.
This was what de Gaulle had been waiting for. The British prime minister, Winston Churchill, had just agreed to recognize the Free French, but he had insisted that there must be a legal basis for such recognition. The loose collection of individuals that had gathered around de Gaulle had to be constituted as a legal entity – with a plausible claim to being the "real" government of France. De Gaulle badly needed a lawyer.
"Vous tombez à pic!" he told his visitor. ("You've hit the mark.") Thus began a long collaboration between two men who had little in common beyond their love of country. Cassin later wrote he had the feeling that "everything in my life had mysteriously prepared me for that moment."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
30 June 2015
Law professor René Cassin flees occupied France in 1940…
"Cassin had come of age in a society torn in two by the Dreyfus case. At the insistence of his devoutly religious mother, he had received an Orthodox Jewish education, but he was more influenced by his intensely antireligious father, from whom he imbibed the secularist spirit of the French Revolution. As a result of youthful friendships with members of Catholic social action groups, he acquired, he said, "a great respect for religion and for Christian thought."
....Though raised in an ardently Dreyfusard family, Cassin had once seriously considered a military career, believing that the army, whatever its faults, was the only means of restoring to France her lost honor and territory. He served in the French army in World War I, suffering a grievous wound that required him to use a cane for the rest of his life. On his return to civilian life he married his university sweetheart, a woman of Protestant background, rose to distinction as a professor of civil law, and became active in veterans' organizations. In 1925 he helped to found an international veterans' organization so that soldiers of former enemies could work together for peace.
In June 1940 Cassin was teaching law in Paris when he heard the news of his country's capitulation to German invasion. He confided his dismay to a friend, who told him about Charles de Gaulle's radio broadcast from London calling all Frenchmen to join the Resistance. Cassin then made a fateful decision. After driving all night, he picked up his wife, Simone, at Bayonne and the couple made their way to the port of Saint Jean-de-Luz, where they managed to catch the last departing English ship. On June 29 the fifty-three-year-old jurist showed up at the Free French headquarters on the bank of the Thames."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
30 June 2015
Lawyer René Cassin travels to New York in 1947 to work on the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights…
"France's Cassin…had missed the beginning of the first session, including the election of officers, owing to severe storms that had delayed his Atlantic crossing. Years later Cassin wrote that he had been disappointed to find on arrival that there was "no European" among the officers of the Commission; he noted that many of the commissioners had had no legal training. He seems to have been disconcerted, too, by the fact that the main common language of the commissioners was English. Though Cassin had spent the war years in London as legal adviser to General Charles de Gaulle, his English was shaky. Shortly after his arrival he mistakenly voted in favor of a procedural proposition he opposed, and later in the day he accidentally voted twice. In his memoirs he lamented, "I failed to understand, and thus let pass, proposals and resolutions that did not correspond to my own views." "
On another occasion, Cassin himself caused language difficulties…
"At one point, after French member René Cassin had spoken for fifteen or twenty minutes without pausing for translation, the interpreter broke down in tears and fled the room, leaving Mrs. Roosevelt, who fortunately was fluent in French, to summarize his remarks as best she could."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 3 and Ch. 2.
16 June 2015
John Humphrey, the lawyer who wrote the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…
"The decision to entrust the first draft to Humphrey made good sense. He and his multinational staff had been collecting and studying pertinent material from all over the world. Humphrey himself was well grounded in both civil and common law and fluent in French and English. Indeed, it was his linguistic ability that led to his appointment at the UN. During the war years he had befriended Henri Laugier, a French refugee in Montreal who spoke no English. In 1946, when Laugier became the UN's assistant secretary-general for social affairs, he recruited the idealistic Canadian to head the Secretariat's Human Rights Division.
To Humphrey, then a forty-year-old law professor at McGill University, it must have seemed an exciting opportunity. Intelligent and ambitious, he had already built a solid academic reputation as the author of several learned articles on international law and a monograph dealing with the relations among nations in the Americas. Childhood adversity and the Great Depression had given him a lively sense of empathy for the disadvantaged: as a boy of six he had lost his left arm in an accident; then, orphaned at eleven, he was placed in a boys' boarding school, where he learned to detest the abuse of authority. From an early age he had dreamed of helping to "make the world a better place." To Humphrey, as to Eleanor Roosevelt, the new international organization seemed full of hope and promise. Though he had been unable to fight in the war, he could perhaps help to shape the peace."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 3.
9 June 2015
The UN Human Rights Commission meets in 1946 to discuss the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…
"Mrs. Roosevelt took a few minutes at the start of the June 9 meeting to thank Humphrey and his staff for their prodigious efforts. [John Humphrey was a law professor from McGill University in Canada.] She had scarcely finished her encomium when Colonel Hodgson [the representative for Australia] erupted. "It seems to me there is no order in this document," he complained. In the January-February meeting, Hodgson had wanted to turn over the drafting job entirely to Humphrey and his staff, but now the colonel was in a cantankerous mood. He brusquely demanded to know what "philosophy" had guided the Secretariat's work. "I personally would like some explanation of this monumental document from the Secretariat," he said. "All I would like to know is – and I think we should know – what was the philosophy behind this paper? What principles did they adopt; what method did they follow? Is it their own idea; is it a collection of various principles?" Humphrey replied that he could not oblige Colonel Hodgson "for the simple reason that [the draft] is based on no philosophy whatsoever." As far as he was concerned, he had been asked to compile a list of rights for discussion purposes, and that was what he had done.
Geoffrey Wilson regarded the comprehensiveness of Humphrey's list as a grave defect. Wilson had arrived at the June meeting with instructions from the British Foreign Office to work for a covenant that would impose legal obligations on the states that ratified it, rather than a mere declaration that would have no legal effect. He had been supplied with a concise Foreign Office bill of familiar Anglo-American civil and political rights. The young barrister reported to his superiors in London that the Humphrey draft was "highly unsatisfactory," because many of its provisions, especially those involving social welfare, did not lend themselves to legal enforcement. It "included everything that the Secretariat had been able to cull from previous drafts, from national constitutions, and from their own imagination." The breadth of sources that made the draft so un-British was, of course, an important element of its claim to universality.
At that stage there seems to have been confusion in the minds of some members about the difference between a nonbinding declaration of principles by the UN General Assembly and instruments such as treaties, conventions, and covenants that impose enforceable legal duties on the states that sign and ratify them. Most of the human rights commissioners, after all, were not lawyers. And the precise nature of the document they were about to draft was still an open question."
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 4.
2 June 2015
The fledgling UN Human Rights Commission meets in 1946…
"Early in the first session it became evident that a discussion document could not be produced by the full eighteen-member Commission. The members thus unanimously approved a joint French, Lebanese, and Yugoslavian resolution that a "preliminary draft" of an international bill of rights should be prepared for submission at the Commission's second session by the three officers of the Commission, "with the assistance of the Secretariat."
....Tepliakov [Valentin Tepliakov, the Soviet representative] abstained from the decision on the grounds that the drafting committee was too small, while Australia's representative, Colonel Hodgson, maintained that a three-person committee was too large. Hodgson took a dim view of drafting by committee, period. The work, he believed, ought to be carried out by the UN Secretariat (that is, by Humphrey's office) under the supervision of the committee.
....In later years the scrupulous Humphrey [John Humphrey, a law professor from McGill University] took pains to acknowledge that the Declaration "had no father in the sense that Thomas Jefferson was the father of the Declaration of Independence," because "literally hundreds of people….contributed to its drafting." What a pity that Humphrey did not live to learn that the Declaration of Independence had no single author, either! Historian Pauline Maier recently revealed that Thomas Jefferson drew upon many "earlier documents of his own and other people's creation." Maier concludes in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the making of the Declaration of Independence that "considering its complex ancestry and the number of people who actively intervened in defining its text, the Declaration of Independence was the work not of one man, but of many." "
To be continued…
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 2.
26 May 2015
An Australian at the first meeting of the Human Rights Commission in 1947…
"Colonel William Roy Hodgson of Australia and Mrs. Mehta [Hansa Mehta of India] were adamant that an international bill of rights would be meaningless without some machinery for enforcement. Neither of these individuals would prove easy to ignore....Noisy Colonel Hodgson, a champion of the interests of small nations, was one of Australia's leading experts in international relations. A U.S. State Department memo noted that he demonstrated "an extremely critical attitude towards most foreign countries" and a "peppery aggressive manner" that seemed to be aggravated by consumption of alcohol. The memo conceded, however, that the Australian's "blustering and provocative approach is said often to hide a very thorough knowledge of the question under consideration." Hodgson put forward a proposal for an entirely new sort of legal institution – an International Court of Human Rights that could hear complaints from individuals that their rights had been infringed by their own governments."
From "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Mary Ann Glendon, Ch. 3. Colonel Hodgson was a diplomat, but, unlike most of the commissioners drafting the Universal Declaration, also had a law degree.
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