Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:38:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 Dolan Speaks on Law and Religion https://now.fordham.edu/law/dolan-speaks-on-law-and-religion/ Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:03:15 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=7950 Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan made a stop at Fordham School of Law just three-and-a-half weeks before his elevation to deliver the inaugural address at “Law and the Gospel of Life,” sponsored by the school’s Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer’s Work.

Former Archbishop Dolan was elevated to Cardinal  on Feb. 18. Photo by Chris Taggart
Former Archbishop Dolan was elevated to Cardinal
on Feb. 18.
Photo by Chris Taggart

Speaking on Jan. 24, the Cardinal (then Archbishop) said that the dignity of human life must be at the center of all man-made laws if society is to strike harmony with natural law.

He invoked Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, written 17 years ago, saying that it speaks not just to Christians, but to “all people of good will” on the contrast between a culture of death and a culture of life, the archbishop said.

In modern political and legal theory, religion has been set aside from public policy discussions and law, in favor of secular arguments that are based on shifting values, or “drifting dunes of utility, convenience, privacy, and self-interest,” he said. Such a culture constructs laws that lead to the devaluation of human life, whether it be through abortion, infanticide, contraception, war, or poverty.

This runs contrary to the concept of “natural law,” an objective truth that recognizes all human life as sacred, and thus meriting legal protection.

“In the utilitarian view that dominates our age, the principle that human life is an end in itself, not a means to an end, is always subject to a calculation that would justify harm to another—if we deem it to produce enough of a benefit to ourselves,” Cardinal Dolan said.

“Pragmatism, utilitarianism, and consumerism are fancy vocabulary words for the passionate drive forhaving and doing,” Cardinal Dolan said. “(But) life is basically about being, and the law’s most noble purpose is to safeguard the ‘being’ of life from the rawest preferences for having and doing.”

Although the Archbishop joked that he would answer questions on “anything but my income taxes,” the moderator said he would not pose the “more difficult and pointed” questions that some audience members had submitted. 

The Cardinal acknowledged the frustration that some faculty members can face when students see no place for religion in classes on topics such as bioethics.

“One of the things that is frustrating is that the natural law approach is automatically thought to be synonymous with Catholic teaching, but it is not uniquely Catholic,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Some of its greatest proponents—Aristotle, Cicero—never even heard of the Catholic Church.

“You can tap into your pedagogical toolbox and take this out of a Catholic context,” he said. “This is a human thing . . . an examination of conscience.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, presented Cardinal Dolan, a St. Louis native, with a St. Louis Cardinals hat, which he donned to unanimous applause.

The newly elevated Cardinal has promised to return to Fordham following his elevation.

“Any opportunity to visit Fordham is an occasion I relish,” he said.

Former Archbishop Dolan was elevated to Cardinal on Feb. 18.

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New York Archbishop to Launch Series on Catholic Faith and the Law https://now.fordham.edu/law/new-york-archbishop-to-launch-series-on-catholic-faith-and-the-law/ Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:15:05 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=31369 Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York, will be the keynote speaker at “Law and the Gospel of Life,” a new Fordham series designed to explore the challenges of applying Gospel values to law and social policy.

Archbishop Dolan will deliver the series’ inaugural lecture in the McNally Amphitheatre at the Fordham School of Law.

DATE: Tuesday, Jan. 24
TIME: 6 p.m.
PLACE: Fordham School of Law, 140 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023 (Event has been moved to Fordham Lincoln Center’s Lowenstein Pope Auditorium, 113 W. 60th Street, due to heavy attendance)

The event is free and open to the public. Registration information isavailable here.

Sponsored by Fordham Law’s Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer’s Work, the series will explore the intersection of Catholic Church teachings on issues of life and human dignity (as largely set out in the 1995 encyclical “The Gospel of Life”) with legal and social policies on life issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty.

It is part of the institute’s “Catholic Lawyers Program,” said Ana Renata Dias, the institute’s director.

“Many times, lawyers are faced with situations where they must make difficult decisions,” Renata Dias said. “The idea of the series is to offer a Catholic perspective and a legal perspective, to see how faith can contribute to the practice of law.”

Following the archbishop’s remarks, Fordham law professor Jacqueline Nolan-Haley and Monica McDaniel Esq. (LAW ’09) will offer their responses.

The Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer’s Work was established in 2001 with the help of William F. “BJ” Harrington (LAW ’59), a longstanding member of the law school’s board of directors and recipient of the school’s Medal of Achievement. The institute was designed to help attorneys, judges, scholars and students integrate faith values into the practice of law.

The institute is overseen by Dias and by Russell G. Pearce, the Edward and Marilyn Bellet Chair in Legal Ethics, Morality and Religion. Pearce is widely credited as a founder of the “Religious Lawyering” movement, which calls for room in the profession for lawyers of all faiths to integrate their religious perspectives into their work.

Harrington’s son, William P. Harrington (LAW ’82), a partner in the Westchester firm of Bleakley Platt & Schmidt, LLP, will moderate the evening’s discussion.

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