No doubt the Board and senior administration speaks for Notre Dame. But on
faith and morals, they may (and may be expected to or required to) take their
guidance from the bishops. There is no doubt what the Church’s teaching is, and
no doubt that teaching is sincere. What I said was that Notre Dame’s leadership
may sincerely feel obliged to follow that teaching in their official capacity
as leaders of a Catholic institution, whatever they may do in their private
life.
Douglas Laycock
Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Virginia Law School
580 Massie Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
434-243-8546
From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of hamilto...@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 3:14 PM
To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Notre Dame-- where's the complicit "participation"? Sincerity
Is Doug correct as a legal matter that the bishops speak for Notre Dame, as
opposed to its officials, and the officials' actions are irrelevant? And that
the actions of its co-religionist officials are irrelevant to proof of the
organization's beliefs? Why don't the practices of Notre Dame's officials
prove insincerity in this case? (I'm assuming that they don't have the 10-20
children
typically incident to not using birth control and that they follow the vast
majority of American Catholics in rejecting the belief against contraception).
How can they claim
a right not to provide contraception for their employees/students in their
health plan because of complicity if they are using it themselves?
To provide an analogy: In the prison cases, you can test a prisoner's
sincerity when he demands kosher food (because it's better than the usual fare),
and claims a conversion to Judaism, but they find pork rinds in his cell, it is
assumed he is not sincere and does not receive the accommodation (a state
prison general counsel provided this example for me)
Marci
Marci A. Hamilton
Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Yeshiva University
55 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10003
(212) 790-0215
_______________________________________________
To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see
http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.
Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can
read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the
messages to others.
