In California-Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church v. City and County of San Francisco, (CA Dist. 1 App., May 20, 2009), a California state appellate court held that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors exceeded its jurisdiction in adopting a resolution beginning the procedure to designate First St. John‟s United Methodist Church as a landmark. The court held that state law permitting religiously affiliated organizations to exempt their noncommercial property from landmarking regulation applies even though the building is no longer being used as a place of worship. The court concluded that the purpose of the state law exclusion was to allow religious institutions to sell their dilapidated churches for a profit. BCN reported on the decision yesterday.
Source:California Law Protects Closed Church From Landmarking
In Christian Legal Society v. Eck, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 42980 (D MT, May 19, 2009), a Montana federal district court accepted a magistrate’s recommendations and upheld the University of Montana Law School’s non-discrimination and open-membership policies for recognized student groups. The court concluded that Christian Legal Society’s requirements for voting membership violate those policies and thus disqualify CLS from receiving Student Bar Association funding. CLS requires that students, in order to be voting members, sign a Statement of Faith. It also treats “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle” as inconsistent with the required Statement. The court held that the law school’s policies are viewpoint neutral and were not intended to single out or limit CLS’ rights to free expression. (See prior related posting.)
Source:Court Upholds Montana Law School's Refusal To Fund Christian Legal Society
At the request of Republican members of the Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote that was to have taken place yesterday on the nomination of Indiana district judge David Hamilton to serve on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. According to yesterday’s Indianapolis Star, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions said that Republicans needed more time to review Hamilton’s record on the district court. Sessions pointed particularly to Hamilton’s rulings holding that the opening of sessions of the Indiana House of Representatives with sectarian prayer was a violation of the Establishment Clause. (See prior posting.) Subsequently the decision was reversed on standing grounds by the 7th Circuit. Hamilton testified at his nomination hearings that the law on taxpayer standing changed between his decision and the reversal by the 7th Circuit.
Source:Republicans Delay Committee Vote On 7th Circuit Nominee Over His Establishment Clause Decisions
In In re A.D., (TX App., May 15, 2009), a 14-year old Mennonite boy challenged the 10-year sentence imposed on him for driving while intoxicated, thereby causing the death of a passenger in his SUV. The boy claims that repeated references at trial to the nature of the religious community in which he and his family reside violated his equal protection rights. He claimed that the jury assessed punishment at least in part based on the beliefs and practices of his Mennonite community. However the a Texas state appellate court concluded that failure to object to the statements at trial forfeited the right to raise them on appeal. Nevertheless, the court reversed and remanded the sentence on other grounds, finding that no evidence was presented to show that efforts were made, as required by Texas law, to prevent removing the juvenile from his home.
Source:Objections To Religious References At Trial of Juvenile Not Preserved For Appeal
Listen to podcast Pray and Read : Matthew 22:41-46 Opening thought : “Turn about is fair play.” That’s one thing my Daddy always said when somebody got a taste of what they had been doing to somebody else. He usually said it when my younger brother started doing to me what I had been doing to him to aggravate him. Another saying my Daddy has is “You can dish it out but you can’t take it.” For those of you not from the sunny South, that means you enjoy doing something, usually teasing or downright harassing, to another person, for me usually my brother, but when someone (usually the same person) does the same thing to you, you become angry and cannot handle the treatment
Read more from the original source:
Matthew 22:41-46: The Son and Lord of David
This post continues the last one, which spoke of “judging” in Scripture and the inseparability of truth and love.
In this connection I would like to look at an article of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa Theologiae, has an article on judgment in cases of doubt. The question as a whole (question 60) concerns judgment as an act of justice, as in a court, but in this article (the fourth article) he treats the more general question of judging, which concerns all people, not only judges. The question is whether we should interpret cases of doubt in the way that is more favorable to the person concerned. (Read the complete article of Aquinas: On Charitable or Favorable Judgment)
The first objection he raises against this concerns the truth of judgment. The objection is that we should judge in such a way as to be correct as often as possible. But since men are more often inclined to evil—according to Ecclesiastes 1:15 (Vulgate), “The number of fools is infinite”, and Genesis 8:21, “the imagination and thought of man’s heart are prone to evil from his youth”—we will be more often right if we interpret doubtful cases on the worse side rather than on the better side.
The second objection similarly is that we should simply judge according to the truth, and not be more inclined to one side then another.
The third objection concerns love. As far as we are ourselves are concerned, we should suppose the worst (According to Job 9:28, Vulgate, “I feared all my works”). But we should love our neighbors as ourselves, and so we should also suppose the worst of them. Therefore in doubtful cases we should be more inclined to judge on the unfavorable side.
In his response to the question and these objections, Thomas sets forth two principles. First, a false judgment by which someone thinks something bad about someone else, is contrary to love of neighbor. Secondly, (and this becomes clear in his response to the objections), a false judgment by which one thinks something good about someone, which is not actually so—e.g., when someone thinks that a person has a good motivation when he does not—is not something very bad and that we definitely need to avoid, but is only a minor evil, very slight in comparison to a false judgment about someone’s badness.
That all seems clear: easy to understand, even if not always easy to put into practice. But things get more complicated with Thomas’s response to the third objection. There he says, on the one hand, insofar as a judgment is necessary or helpful in order to improve something bad, we should rather be inclined to imagine or suppose what is worse. On the other hand, insofar as a judgment does not lead to action, we should rather be inclined to imagine or suppose what is better about a person.
In both respects the judgment is to be made in favor of love, but in one respect in favor of love in itself, so to speak, and in the other respect in favor of love as effective, as a principle of action. Love, in order to be love, must also act against what is bad and evil. In a famous passage (In Tractate 7 on the First Letter of John), St. Augustine says, “A father beats his Son, a slave-dealer caresses him…. Many things can be done that seem good, but do not spring from the root of love, and in contrast, many seem hard, aggressive, which are done for the sake of discipline, at the command of love. Once for all, therefore, a short commandment is given: Love, and do what you will.”
I believe this is more or less the direction of the entire Christian tradition. To the extent a hypothetical judgment is necessary as principle of action, one should try to judge accurately, even when the judgment is in a certain sense “against” someone or his action. But insofar as a completely definitive judgment is not necessary for that, we should make no definitive negative judgment about someone or his action, unless we cannot avoid such a judgment, because the matter is perfectly evident, which as regards interior motivations, is never the case. In this sense St. Paul says, “Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then every man will receive his commendation from God” (1 Cor 4:5).
But the question, to what extent negative judgments are necessary in order to act rightly, and how these negative judgments, which should never be definitive, are to be kept provisional, is a practical question, not one that can be solved purely theoretically, but is answered through experience, in community with others, and through the impulse of the Holy Spirit.
I made a few more comments on this, and then we discussed it. I will give some of these practical points in the next post.
Source:Judging, Part 2 (Aquinas)
The first half (sermons 1-43) of the Commentary on the Song of Songs by St. Bernard of Clairvaux is now available on this website. Thanks to the Internet Archive and Br. Sean (a monk) for the text–the text of the Song of Songs Commentary here is identical to that on the Internet Archive, except for the correction of a few typographical errors and some formatting changes. Each sermon is given as a unit.
Source:Commentary on the Song of Songs
St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, and Pope Benedict XVI on fasting.
Aquinas – Is fasting a virtue?
An action is virtuous due to its being directed by reason to a noble good. And this is true of fasting. For we fast for three purposes: (1) to restrain the desires of the flesh; (2) to raise the mind to contemplate sublime things; (3) to make satisfaction for our sins. These are good and noble things, and so fasting is virtuous.
More from Aquinas on fasting
Francis de Sales – benefit of fasting
If you are able to fast, you will do well to observe some days beyond what are ordered by the Church, for besides the ordinary effect of fasting in raising the mind, subduing the flesh, confirming goodness, and obtaining a heavenly reward, it is also a great matter to be able to control greediness, and to keep the sensual appetites and the whole body subject to the law of the Spirit; and although we may be able to do but little, the enemy nevertheless stands more in awe of those whom he knows can fast.
More from Francis de Sales on fasting
Pope Benedict XVI
Fasting represents an important ascetical practice, a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves. Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person…. The ultimate goal of fasting is to help each one of us to make a complete gift of self to God. May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor. I am thinking especially of a greater commitment to prayer, lectio divina, recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and active participation in the Eucharist, especially the Holy Sunday Mass.
More from Pope Benedict XVI on fasting
Source:On Fasting
Is it better to focus on the positive, or the negative, better to think the best, or the worst about people? I’ll be doing a post on this shortly, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video should be worth around 500,000. 
Source:Emphasizing the positive
In order to discern, we have to be detached. Why? First of all, having a pure heart, or a heart detached from temporal and limited goods, enables us to have the spiritual vision by which we can see God’s will. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” While this primarily pertains to future happiness with God–”they shall see God”–it begins also now, in the living knowledge that springs from divine love. A heart attached to temporal goods hinders this perception of divine light. St. Alphonsus says that if we want to know what state of life God wants us in, we have to pray for God to show us. But he goes on to say:
To have this light [from God], you must pray to him with indifference. He who prays to God to enlighten him in regard to a state of life, but without indifference, and who, instead of conforming to the divine will, would sooner have God conform to his will, is like a pilot that pretends to wish his ship to advance, but in reality does not want it to: he throws his anchor into the sea, and then unfurls his sails. God neither gives light nor speaks his word to such persons.
If we are set upon what we want to do, even before we begin the process of discernment, then (in most cases) we will be inclined to judge accordingly, and see our own attachment to what we want to do as an indication of God’s will. (A few persons may from the outset understand vocation as something essentially contrary to what one wants, and so be inclined to take their desire or attachment as a sign that it is not God’s will. This happens for the lesser part, and it is also unhelpful.)
Moreover, if we are attached to some way of living, we may fail to carry out what we perceive to be the will of God, and then discernment is in vain. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize?” (1 Cor 9:24) It is not enough to find God’s will, but we have to do it, and that means denying our own will, in the sense of taking God’s will over our own. “Any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mat 16:24).
Source:Detachment and Discernment