6/24/24

 Monday, June 24, 2024

1967 Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus

1982 Supreme Court ruled that a president can't be sued civilly for actions in office

2022 US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade

In bed at 9 and awake at 2, up with back pain and difficulty at 2:10.  Lilly came out to the TV room at 3235, breathing hard, and lying down on her mattress, not asking to be let out until 2:55 when the temperature was 62° and my CGM was 151.  I fell asleep on the recliner at some point and slept until 5:15 when Geri let Lilly out again and then fell asleep again till about 7:30.

Prednisone, day 43, 15 mg., day 7.  I took my pills at 5:30 while the oatmeal was cooking.  Weight loss: I cracked 200 this morning for the first time in decades.  I think most of the relatively recent weight loss has been due to the long-suffering with PMR, but it is attention-demanding in light of the voracious eating I went through during the first month on prednisone.  I'm wondering too whether some of the weight loss is muscle mass rather than fat and generally whether the weight loss is good news or bad news.  BP at 11:10 a.m., 1 hour post meds, = 134/81.

Anniversaries.  First, Paul's encyclical, "Priestly celibacy" reaffirmed the Church's historic teaching that priests must be celibate and unmarried.  The "reasoning" supporting the teaching comes down to the fact that Jesus was supposedly unmarried and celibate though (1) the Gospels don't say this (could he have been a widower?) and, (2) it would be VERY unusual and indeed scandalous for a Jewish man in the first century C.E. to be unmarried.  For a long time, I have been inclined to disbelieve Jesus' lifetime bachelorhood and celibacy both because of Jewish cultural expectations of the time and because of Jesus' wisdom teachings which seem to spring from years of experience as a family man who has experienced profound losses rather than a life as a bachelor.  In any case, by the late 80s and early 90s, the child sex abuse scandal was receiving great attention and the opposition to priestly celibacy was growing within the Church, enough so that Pope John Paul II, on Pentecost Sunday 1994,  issued a follow-up to Paul VI's encyclical, an "apostolic letter" cited as Ordinatio Sacerdotalis or 'Priestly Ordination."  He was clearly disturbed by the movement within the Church to permit married priests and sought to crush even the discussion of the issue:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

Of course, and Deo gratias, his demand was ignored widely within the Church, at least in Western Europe and the U.S., but it and Paul VI's encyclical, remain as impediments to any change.   

Second, in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982), the Supreme Court ruled in a 5/4 opinion, that U.S. presidents are immune from civil damage suits for any official actions they took while in office.

 Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justices William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor.

Associate Justice Byron R. White's dissenting opinion, which labeled the majority ruling "tragic" and "bizarre," was joined by Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Harry A. Blackmum.

In language sure to be cited in Donald Trump's immunity case currently pending in the Court, Justice Powell wrote:

" . . .  "a President must concern himself with matters likely to arouse the most intense feelings.  Yet, as our decisions have recognized," he continued, "it is in precisely such cases tha there exists the greatest public interest in providing an official the maximum ability to deal fearlessly and impartially with the duties of his office. This concern is compeling where of officeholder must make the most sensitive and far-reaching decisions entrusted to any official under our constitutional system."

 In his dissenting opinion, Justice White disagreed with the analysis.

"Attaching absolute immunity to the office of the President, rather than to particular activities that the President might perform, places the President above the law," Justice White continued. "I t is a reversion to the old notion that the king can do no wrong."

I sort of expected Trump's immunity decision would be handed down today, on the anniversary of the Nixon case.

Lastly, it was 2 years ago that Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center was handed down, placing other decisions based on a constitutional right to privacy in doubt.

The expected call from Mary Fran.  Ed died last night.  I emailed Tom, Bill, and Jerry and texted Anne.  I got a telephone call from Tom Devitt later and had a good chat for about 15 minutes.

Bill Wiseman has died.  I got an email from Tom Hammer informing me.