UNLV Boyd School of Law professor Leslie C. Griffin comments on Mary Jo McConahay’s new book, Playing God: American Catholic Bishops and the Far Right, which describes how U.S. Catholic bishops have successfully implemented far-right policies at all levels of U.S. government, despite views that differ radically from the head of the Church, Pope Francis. Professor Griffin summarizes McConahay’s telling of how Catholic bishops have pushed their agenda into law and encourages readers interested in this history to read Playing God.
David S. Kemp, a professor at Berkeley Law, and Charles E. Binkley, MD, the director of bioethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, consider the implications of Pope Francis’s recently revealed statement endorsing same-sex civil unions as they pertain to a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Kemp and Binkley argue that the Pope’s statement undermines the moral legitimacy of the Catholic organization’s position and casts a shadow on the premise of its legal arguments.
