INTELLECT AND VIRTUE California’s legislature now has it in for St. Junípero Serra, who has long been considered the founding father of the Golden State. Authorities let an angry mob tear down the Franciscan missionary’s statue in Los Angeles. Now they aim to lay at his feet all the offenses of the Spanish Empire and […]
John Garvey: Sweeter than the honeycomb
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE I’m certainly not the first person to observe that the tone of our civic discourse has gotten increasingly angry. I have recently come to realize, though, that some people actually like it that way. This is not a sentiment confined to one end of the political or religious spectrum. Aristotle says in […]
John Garvey: Not so fast
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE I probably shouldn’t admit this in front of my grandchildren, but I am a fan of McDonald’s fish sandwiches. When I was a young lawyer in San Francisco, my firm’s office was right across Market Street from a McDonald’s, and every day for a year, I had two fish sandwiches and a […]
John Garvey: Holy mother church
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE I’ve been having some trouble lately with the Nicene Creed. The First Council of Constantinople in 381 added the sentence, “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” It’s the holy part, as you might expect, that’s bothering me. The Pennsylvania grand jury report released in August disclosed years of unholy […]
John Garvey: What’s so funny?
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE Our youngest daughter is living at home while her husband finishes his medical residency. One of the many blessings of this old-fashioned arrangement (several generations under one roof) is that we have two babies to pass around. The youngest is just 5 months old. She doesn’t have much to say yet, but […]
John Garvey: Making and renewing vows
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE Last week a friend invited my wife and me to join her in celebrating the 50th anniversary of her perpetual vows. It was a simple but moving ceremony. There was a Mass with guests and members of her religious community. At the offertory she renewed her vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and […]
John Garvey: The company of good people
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE St. Bonaventure says, in his little treatise “Bringing Forth Christ,” “Seek the company of good people. If you share their company, you will also share their virtue.” With this thought in mind, we used to pay close attention to who our children’s friends were. We encouraged them to invite kids to our […]
John Garvey: The ‘trolley’ problem
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE There is a thought experiment in moral philosophy, made famous by Philippa Foot, called the trolley problem. Imagine you are the driver of a runaway trolley that you can steer but not stop. Up ahead, the track forks in two. On the left, there are five men working. If you go that […]
John Garvey: Politics and the court
INTELLECT AND VIRTUE Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg caused quite a stir this month by saying what was on her mind about Donald Trump to the New York Times. “I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” she said. If her husband were alive, she continued, he […]
John Garvey: You shall not oppress an alien
Donald Trump has been saying that Ted Cruz can’t be president because he was born in Canada, and the U.S. Constitution limits eligibility to natural born citizens. I thought at first that Trump was just slinging mud because Cruz had pulled ahead in the Iowa polls. But it fits too well with what is becoming a leitmotif of the Republican primaries.