What’s the Going Price for the Rule of Law?

Bostonians were entertained this past week by a bizarre news story about a prominent, wealthy  – and married – businessman in his sixties out for a “last hurrah” (his words), who had spent a year and a half engaging the services of a young prostitute, and who had then begun paying hush money to the woman when she threatened to go public with the details of their relationship. This charming fellow had had quite enough by the time the woman made her third demand for cash, and so he hired a high-powered lawyer to secure the assistance of th...

Shaping the Legal Meanings of Elemental Concepts

"Where do the legal meanings of such elemental concepts as ‘birth,’ ‘death,’ and ‘family’ take shape?" she asked. "Largely in state courts.” SJC chief justice says state courts are in crisis – The Boston Globe Margaret Marshall, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, opining on the criticality of the state courts to the orderly functioning of society. This is the woman primarily responsible for fabricating the legal right for homosexual couples in Massachusetts to call their par...

Leprosy: 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

One of the themes that emerge from this week’s readings is the importance of communion, that is: the role of the Church in not only embracing all people in brotherhood, but doing so by means of bringing all people to a place of graced renewal, for the end, as Paul says in the second reading, “that they may be saved.” The device that is used to characterize this is the ancient scourge of leprosy. The first reading, from Leviticus, skips over an extensive middle section of the Biblical text on the details of the disease, including regulations on distinguis...

Y.M.C.A.

Rebecca invited me to a Father/Daughter Valentines Dance last weekend, put on by her Girl Scout group. It was nice to get out with her, even if she wasn’t feeling very well, but I have to say that I found the event disturbing in some ways. Like a lot of recent experiences, I found in it more signs of our civilization’s erosion. Not a news flash, I suppose, and open to accusations of overzealous alarmism, but I just can’t shake the sense that things are unraveling quickly. Part of it is the economic meltdown, but the pieces have been in place for qu...