Competition, an experience that human beings construct, is also a challenging concept to teach in a liberal education curriculum. Liberal education is, among other things, a celebration of what imaginative human beings can accomplish together with their differences and their common ground in sight. It is not self-evident, however, that such an ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility canencompass competition. Competition often unfolds as a divisive human experience. Divisiveness among certain human interests is a bedrock premise in the disciplines of economics and strategic management. Frequently, one or both of these disciplines can be found in an undergraduate curriculum alongside liberal education initiatives. The ethical aspirations that we hold for liberal education could be undermined by two disciplines in our very midst.This paper contains a defense of a curricular remedy for this threat to liberal education. With a focus on places, or sites, I create a framework with which we liberal educators can reinterpret competition as the routine practice of an ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility. This focus on sites is augmented when we set our sights photographically on places where competitors necessarily get along with one another. By re-conceiving competition in terms of the places and the sites of human togetherness, I render avoidable the intellectual disconnection between an ethics of liberal education and the divisive concept of competition. We liberal educators can claim competition-intensity, wins and losses, and all-for our educational enterprise.

There has been a conflation by many Catholics of the Church's pro-life teaching with the strategy of overturning Roe v. Wade. In this paper, I argue that there are other ways for Catholics to think about and respond to the tragedy of abortion. First, I argue that there are serious limitations to the present legal strategy of overturning Roe. Second, I tum to social scientific data to describe the conditions that lead to abortions. Third, I argue that the Catholic strategy should be mindful of the limits of the present legal strategy and should bedeveloped in accord with what the social scientific data reveals. Finally, since the multiple factors that lead to abortions demand a complex multi-faceted response, I suggest some ways Catholics should respond to the abortion problem within the Church and the wider political sphere.

"Mothers' Civil Disobedience"In this paper, I consider how the nonviolent civil disobedience of Molly Rush and Cindy Sheehan reflect the inherent ambiguity of mothering in a militaristic society. First, if a mother says nothing and does nothing about the pervasive militarism in society the very lives of her children (as well as other children) are at risk. But, if a mother speaks out against militarism or commits an act of civil disobedience, she risks scorn and imprisonment that can interfere with, or make impossible much of the work of mothering. Second, part of mothering involves raising children to be socially acceptable, but in a militaristic society that which is socially acceptable is morally unacceptable. Rush and Sheehan use their particular context to successfully challenge U.S. militarism through non-violentcivil disobedience.

This paper is a reflection on a personal journey toward nonviolence, and looks particularly at the nonviolent care of children who have been victims of emotional, sexual and physical violence. It analyzes the philosophical threads of praxis, nonviolence and how moral sense is shaped through a triad of affective, reflective and elective experience. It concludes with a MacIntyrean perspective relating to the conjoining of theory and practice in the formation of a robust nonviolent praxis.

In this essay, I examine the religious peace activists during the war in Vietnam: Catholic (Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton), Jewish (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel), Protestant (Martin Luther King, Jr.) and Buddhist (Thich Nhat Hanh) who, together with many others, constituted the greatest example of interfaith peace activism in our nation’s history. I extract from their writings principles that would enable us to create an interfaith peace movement today in a world desperately in need of such ecumenical activity. Recently the worldwide Muslim community has called upon Christian and Jewish clerics and scholars to enter into an interfaith dialogue with them for purposes of peace. “Without peace and justice between [our] two communities,” these 138 Islamic scholars and clerics wrote to their Christian counterparts in October 2007, communities that constitute 55% of the world’s population, “there can be no meaningful peace in the world.” Christian and Jewish religious leaders and scholars have responded with wholehearted enthusiasm to the Muslim initiative. Judeo-Christian reconciliation in the 1960s in the wake of the Holocaust, which accomplished what must have been judged impossible only twenty years earlier, should be the model used to bring together all the major religions in the present century. In a spirit of respect and reverence, trust and reconciliation, with recognition of the holiness of all the major religions and in opposition to exclusivist conceptions of salvation and without any desire to convert others to one’s religion, this Islamic invitation to dialogue and peacemaking must be vigorously pursued and developed within the communities of all relevant nations where interfaith groups must be established in mosques, temples, churches and synagogues, for teaching, discussion and joint good works in peace and justice activities.

Published within a year of one another, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and Justice in the World (1971) echo very similar themes, including oppression,structural injustice, and a concern for human rights and dignity. The documents also share comparable views concerning the role of schools in engenderingsocietal transformation. Both texts recommend an education which develops critical consciousness in students through a pedagogy of dialogue and praxis.Such an approach to education encourages the poor and marginalized to overcome fatalistic outlooks, which keep them subordinated, and empowers them to actively engage in their own liberation. The author shares how coupling these two texts in her college course provided a means for introducing Catholic Social Teaching into the curriculum and enriching the learning experience of her students. She explains how Pedagogy of the Oppressed might be used to foreground Justice in the World and why this exercise constitutes a useful academic endeavor. The article concludes by asserting that the principles and documents of Catholic Social Teaching possess broad cross-curricular significance and that faculty should consider incorporating them into their syllabi.

This article considers the topic of the prior parental right in the education of their children, unequivocally asserted in the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, Article 26, subsection 3). Discussion focuses upon the origins and nature of this right as it is described in Catholic Church teaching as well as the Supreme Court’s 1925 decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, both of which antedate and provide principled support for UDHR’s assertion. The purpose here is to use these principles to identify the injustice arising when a State or its agents deny parental choice in education by limiting that choice to public schools. In the United States, this action imperils the foundation of UDHR’s goal that education be “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

In this paper the author examines a new water ethos focused on sustainability within the parameters of a deep, green Christianity. The discussion begins witha brief outline of the problems facing water due to unsustainable practices and policies. At present paces the peoples, creatures, plants, and minerals of the world are at great risk of losing the nourishment of water needed to survive.The second portion begins with an overview of the complex values toward nature in the Christian tradition. The author then develops three approaches for a new water ethos to guide decisions around sustainability and water. In the third approach of deep, green Christianity, the theological basis for a water ethos involves new understandings of Holy Spirit in relation to nature. Finally the author offers a revision of Catholic Social Teachings to serve as an ethical framework for sustainability of the environment and water.

The “moral equivalence” objector—appealing only to certain moral considerations, e.g., wellbeing and consent—argues that no inherent moral significanceattaches to the distinction between intended means and foreseen side-effects: If an act of direct killing is wrong, then a morally comparable act of indirect killingis wrong as well; if an act of indirect killing is right, then so is a morally comparable act of direct killing. One secular version of double effect is vulnerable to the objection unless it can provide a principle of justice which prohibits direct but justifies indirect killing. Both the secular version and the moral equivalence view depart (in different ways) from a theological interpretation of double effect as “delegated dominion.”