I am delighted that things turned out this way since I have been avoiding the bigger questions in order to try and give something more concrete. As it turns out, there seems to be a genuine desire for this kind of topic so I will try to present some thoughts that will hopefully stimulate further dialogue.
Just imagine if the internet existed in the third and fourth centuries. You hear about a Christian who submits himself to Emperor Diocletian, asking to be taken in as a soldier. Diocletian had known the young man’s father and is pleased to take in the new recruit. The man quickly finds himself advancing in rank and by his late 20s, he becomes a Tribune stationed with the Emperor in Nicomedia.
Remember, this is a Christian man who was to have a close bond with Diocletian.
What would Christians on the internet say about him? Would people accuse him of formal cooperation with evil by being a high ranking soldier in Diocletian’s army? Remember, this is Diocletian — the Roman Emperor and the leader of an empire which has long persecuted Christians and had not done anything to stop it. What exactly would be said about this man? How would he be treated? What kinds of scandals would he be implicated in? Would he deserve all the names he would be called for having such a high ranking position in an anti-Christian administration?
What exactly would you say about such a man?
Now. Who is this man? Do you know? Click on the “read the rest of this entry” to find out. Read the rest of this entry »
From Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin (from a speech in 2004):
“People expect different things from the Church in society. Leaders want to use religion…Lady Thatcher insisted the Churches should tell people they should work harder. After nine-eleven in the United States, society turned to organized religion, but there was a sense in which it was to solemnly sing “God bless America”, rather than “Holy God, we praise your name”, to worship God even in times of distress. When I imagine organized religion in the future, I imagine it then more distant from the structures of power, and thus all the more free to influence power.”
I take it as part of human nature that we interpret the world through signs and symbols, and those of us with religious faith see events and images in the world as signifying the divine. We are also dangerously prone to see signs of God where none exist and, therefore, to draw dangerously false conclusions about God. I received an email yesterday containing a picture of ruins in Haiti in which a crucifix stood unmoved and undamaged after the earthquake. A caption accompanying the picture stated that God had left this crucifix standing as a sign that he remains in control. I can fully appreciate needing to take comfort in God’s presence amidst an overburdening tragedy and needing to find great hope in small comforts, but this well-meaning caption has it all wrong.
Here is yet another example of misconduct by a u.s. soldier for those who criticize my views on the military for being based in “stereotypes” or “abstractions.” This one is reported by BBC News; you don’t need to dig very hard to find this stuff.
A US soldier has been charged with assault after allegedly waterboarding his four-year-old daughter, police in the state of Washington have said.
Sgt Joshua Tabor dunked the girl’s head in a sink full of water for not reciting the alphabet, police in the town of Yelm said.
Waterboarding is an interrogation technique that simulates drowning and has been banned as torture by the US.
Sgt Tabor is a helicopter repairer who served in Iraq from 2007-08.
Yelm police chief Todd Stancil said Sgt Tabor was arrested on 31 January.
Officers were called after Sgt Tabor was seen walking around his neighbourhood holding a Kevlar helmet and threatening to break windows, the police chief added.
The girl was then found hiding in a locked bathroom in the soldier’s home, Mr Stancil said on Monday.
Sgt Tabor posted bail of $10,000 (£6,400) on Monday and has been confined to barracks at his base in Washington state.
My suggestion for the day is this: Encourage a family member or friend who serves in the military to leave this line of work. Because — I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — america is killing its soldiers.
When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s coverage of the Tim Tebow Super Bowl commercial described the groups advocating for or against the ad, it described them as anti-abortion and pro-choice, respectively. Now, I have no problem being described as anti-abortion, but the skew here is obvious. I have long believed that the discussion around abortion would be aided by clearer labels. (I think “pro-legal abortion,” and “anti-legal abortion” are about as close to objective labels as we can find, though someone is bound to complain that being “anti-legal abortion” implies being for illegal ones.) Each group chooses its own title for itself and for the opposition. “We are pro-life, they are pro-abortion (or even pro-death).” “We are pro-choice, they are anti-choice.”
These are quite unworkable. As the pro-legal abortion folks point out, no one (or almost no one) is actually pro-abortion. Even the majority of those who think abortions should be legal admit they are a tragedy. And, as fewer people point out, everyone is anti-choice on issues of morality. Hell, I don’t even support someone’s choice to drink and drive, let alone take a life directly.
As useful as the standard labels are for identity politics, they do nothing for the actual public discussion. In fact, since words actually mean things, they cripple that discussion by leading to ad hominem attacks and fuzzy thinking. I recently came across an extremely blurry case. On its homepage, WordPress featured a piece about the Tebow situation from a blog called “Fixed Air.” Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, in the middle of a discussion, I found out how tied some people are to the promotion of their party of choice. If there is a Republican (Nixon) who says abortion is necessary for inter-racial children (indicating an inherent racism and a pro-abortion stand), he is considered less pro-abortion than a Democrat who says abortion should be a choice (Obama).
At least, I hope it is merely an issue of party ties.
Well, I recently purchased my first Apple product, the iPhone 3G, and I was pretty sure I’d like it. But I really like it. I still can’t stand iTunes. I had avoided downloading and using iTunes for any music purposes before getting the phone — for politico-cultural reasons as well as general annoyance — but now with the phone, using iTunes is a must. I can’t understand how the phone itself can be so elegant and iTunes so clunky.
Anyway, when searching for “apps” to download and try, I tried searching for “Catholic” and didn’t get very much. What I did get was mostly pretty bizarre. I’m not sure why one would want to pray the rosary on the iPhone or why one would need an encyclopedia of the popes in one’s pocket at all times. The best Catholic app I’ve seen — and really, the only one useful to me — is Catholic Calendar from Universalis, a free complete liturgical calendar that lets you access today’s, yesterday’s and tomorrow’s Hours, daily readings, and more. (The paid version allows access to the Hours in their entirety.)
Contradiction is widely seen as a sign of indecency. This makes some sense when we consider it as a matter of honesty. “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’” is very to the point. Insofar as rejecting contradiction means something like “always tell the truth,” then, it seems like a worthy problem to try to eradicate.
Things become more sticky when we begin to unravel the requisites of truth-telling. What if the truth itself is contradictory? After all, ‘contradiction’ isn’t much more than the psychological limit of the imagination. In physics this is the problem of dealing with things that don’t behave as our intuitions tells us they should. In theology this is the deep paradox of Christianity: the excessive nature of God.
Of all the legitimate complaints one could have of President Obama (such as his stand on abortion, contraception, American exceptionalism with its use of the military to enforce the desires of the United States, his placing of a US missile shield into Romania , et. al.), one of the most popular criticisms launched against him is that he uses a teleprompter. I’ve never understood this. What exactly is so wrong with this?
As I sit and wait for Washington DC to be pounded by another show storm, I am reminded of an incident during the last major snow storm in December. A major snowball fight broke out at the popular intersection of 14th and U St. Obviously there was little traffic on the road. Then a big Hummer comes along, and – understandably – becomes a snowball target. What happened next was unbelievable. The driver was a DC detective who jumped out, pulled his gun on the kids, and started threatening and pushing people. I was gratified by the reaction of the crowd, who refused to put up with this aggression, and yet did not become violent either. The whole incident is caught on the video below. See it for yourself. To me, it is no coincidence that this aggressive man both drives a Hummer and is eager to wave a gun in peoples’ faces. The aggressive gun culture and the culture that spawns macho Hummer drivers spring from the same source, a sickness in society that sees violence as an acceptable way of dealing with problems, and with enforcing the Hobbesian “rights” of individuals to defend their own little patch of turf. Step back a bit and it appears so juvenile. Ironically, a bunch of snowballing-throwing kids showed more maturity here.
Oh, I forgot to mention – Fox News reported this event as a cop dealing with a group of out-of-control anti-war protestors. Is this a surprise?
As we have just seen, Christian realism leads to the conclusion that violence is natural* and normal to man and society, that violence is a kind of necessity imposed on governors and governed, on rich and poor. If this realism scandalizes Christians, it is because they make the great mistake of thinking that what is natural is good and what is necessary is legitimate. I am aware that the reader will answer at once: “You have shown that violence is inevitable and necessary in undertakings of any kind; therefore violence is legitimate, it must be used.” This is anti-Christian reasoning par excellence. What Christ does us is above all to make us free. Man becomes free through the Spirit of God, through conversion to and communion with the Lord. This is the one way to true freedom. But to have true freedom is to escape necessity, or rather, to be free to struggle against necessity. Therefore I say that only one line of action is open to the Christian who is free in Christ. He must struggle against violence precisely because, apart from Christ, violence is the form that human relations normally and necessarily take. In other words, the more completely violence seem to be of the order of necessity, the greater is the obligation of believers in Christ’s Lordship to overcome it by challenging necessity.
This is the fixed, the immutable, and the radical basis of the Christian option in relation to violence. For the order of necessity is the order of separation from God.
Jacques Ellul, Violence (New York: The Seabury Press, 1969), 127-8.
Lord David Cecil, Melbourne (New York: Harmony Books, 1979).
Lord David Cecil, a direct descendent of Lord Melbourne (William Lamb: 1779 – 1848), and one of the Inklings, offers a very affectionate biography of the Prime Minister. One gets a sense that Lord Cecil is trying to give a balanced presentation of William Lamb, but it is also clear that his personal connection to Lord Melbourne readily leads him to a rather positive assessment of the Prime Minister and to be supportive of Melbourne’s points of view over those of his critics. This is not a bad thing, because he does not neglect the critical issues, and indeed, hindsight does help mollify much of the political intrigue which surrounded Melbourne, such as his relationship with the young Queen Victoria. Nonetheless, one should not expect a full, unbiased, exploration of the life of Lord Melbourne here, and one will want to read other biographies of the man to get a better perspective of his life and accomplishments. With that caveat, this is a great book; people interested in politics or history would be well served reading it.
This book gives us a chance to explore the concept of political scandal without being in the midst of it. Read the rest of this entry »
There are a number of things wrong in Raymond Arroyo’s interview with Marc Thiessen: the host’s happily unchallenging questioning style about a dreadfully serious moral issue, the way he uses viewer emails to set up a straw-man for his guest to brush aside, Thiessen’s strange claim that arguments against “enhanced interrogation” come from a position of radical pacifism, his failure to acknowledge the possibility of psychological torture, and his dismissal of critics’ moral comparisons of U.S. water-boarding with the water-torture done by the Khmer Rouge because “we did not submerge people in a box full of water.” I’d like to focus on Thiessen’s faulty application of the principle of double effect. Thiessen remarks:
When you kill an enemy soldier, your intent is not to kill the enemy soldier, it is to defend society. There is a double effect: the soldier is killed and society is defended. One is intended the other is not. The same is true with interrogation. When the interrogator uses a technique on KSM, he doesn’t intend to cause him harm; he intends to get information to defend society, and he doesn’t cross a moral line into torture, and so the principle is the same.
The principle of double effect does not apply in either of Thiessen’s examples. You might kill an enemy soldier intending to kill him or not intending to kill him. You might seek to immobilize him while foreseeing the consequence that he might die, or you might simply seek to kill him making every effort to cause his death. In both cases you may also intend to defend society, but having the intention to defend society doesn’t mean you don’t intend what you do in society’s defense. In the case of interrogation, the interrogator may intend to get information to defend society, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also intend to cause the one he interrogates harm. Indeed, he intends the one so that the other might follow. He intends to inflict physical or mental pain so that his prisoner will cooperate and give him information to defend society. Getting the prisoner to talk is an intended effect of the very much intended effect of pain. Double effect doesn’t work in these cases because we’re not dealing with two effects, one intended and good and the other unintended and bad. We’re dealing with two effects, both of which are intended. Arroyo fails to correct this error and so leaves his viewers with an erroneous presentation of an important principle in Catholic moral thought.
I’ve talked before about the train wreck that is Robbie George’s American Principles Project, a project that is symptomatic of all that is wrong with the American Catholic right – partisanship over principle on every issue, an America-first nationalism, a radical liberalism in the economic sphere, a selective approach to morality, the all-t0o-ready embrace of Enlightenment-era reasoning, the tendency to focus on meaningless red-flag issues that fire up the base but do nothing to benefit the culture or the common good.
And here is the latest burning issue of the day – an “action item” against repealing the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy prohibiting gays from serving in the military. Why? This is nothing to do with any argument about the morality of homosexual activity. No, is to be opposed because it would lead to the “destruction of military culture… And at a time when we are at war, no less”. No less!
The Catholic Church has spoken out against banning the veil in France. As reported on Islam Online, the New York Times, and The Daily Mail, they see it as an issue of minority rights and religious liberty. Moreover, it has been pointed out that the veil is seen as non-obligatory by French Muslims, and there is debate in France (and in Muslim nations) about its use. However, if the state were to ban it in public, it might have those women who have not taken up the veil to do so in solidarity with their fellow Muslim women, not because they agree with the veil, but because they feel those who do are being wrongly targeted by religious persecution.
This is right. Yes, we know, Christians are not given the same rights in Muslim nations, but we must remember, Muslims have not always been given the same rights in Christian ones. The failure of the Christians is what should concern us. The question is not, “What do the Muslims do,” but, “What is right?” The Christian response should always be to do what is right, even if others do not do so. We are supposed to be the salt of the earth. We are to lead by example. If we cannot do it, as Christians under grace, how can we expect others to do it?
Ross Douthat wrote a fairly innocuous column in the NY Times recently. In it, he argues what I have long held: sex education programs in schools – abstinence and otherwise – are largely ineffective. Again we are largely dealing with the clinicalization of a social problem where the remedy is more education. The idea that young women aren’t engaging in pregnancy avoidance, because they aren’t interested in avoiding pregnancy is an idea that seems completely alien. Read the rest of this entry »
To start with, we must remember that, in theory, the Pharisees were often in the right, but in practices, in actualizing their theology, they became absolutists who demanded purity of anyone but themselves. If we were to place Jesus within the first century Jewish theological debates, he had more in common with the Pharisees than anyone else. Indeed, he would often recognize their authority and that much of what they said was true (as far as what they said went). Nonetheless, he also found how they tried to apply their ideals to their society to be what was in grave error. There were three problems he found with them: they tried to create demands which were impossible to follow, they didn’t seek to follow their own rules themselves, and yet they liked to give the appearance they followed their own rules so as to receive the praises of others. Read the rest of this entry »
There is something about the internet that people feel as if they get a following, they have become legitimate authorities and their voice is the voice of truth. While the internet does provide some good, because it allows the otherwise disenfranchised to speak, we must also remember why so many of these people are disenfranchised. They speak from their heart, it is true, but it is often a heart founded on ideology. This is true all over the net. Caution is important. I would even be the first to say this is true with what I write as much as what I find elsewhere — one should consider where I am coming from and determine how and why that means my own commentary and opinions are also incomplete and imperfect.
Of course, I think there are different standards of authority and intellectual acumen; I respect honest disagreement if it is shown to be based upon actual, reasonable engagement with the questions at hand. The problem is that so many who speak for Catholics on the net become virtual authorities; they come from an ideological background which tends to be rejected by the Church. More importantly, they lack the scholarly background, the study of diverse sources, to understand the full range of possible Catholic opinion: they think their “common sense” approach to the faith is the faith, just like Martin Luther did several centuries back. They do not understand what is “common” in the “common sense” tends to be cultural, and in the United States, that culture is of Protestant individualism. That this is the foundation by which many interpret and understand Catholic concerns is readily apparent when these same virtual authorities take on anyone, including the Vatican, with no respect for the real authority possessed by the ones they are criticizing.
There are many examples of this problem, but one recent one I’ve been following is the so-called Real Catholic TV. Read the rest of this entry »
I have been more than a little disappointed with the US bishops during the healthcare debate. I do not doubt their utter sincerity, but I question their political savvy. In fact, this precedes the healthcare debate. Time after time, we have seen the US bishops acting as the cart being pulled by the pro-life horse, and I pro-life I mean the “professional” political pro-life movement that is solidly wedded to the agenda and strategy of the Republican party and the whole cult of individualism that mis-names itself conservative.
Joseph is an example Scripture gives to us of the wise ruler; he listed to what God told him and followed through with it.God showed him that in the time of prosperity, he was to work to increase Egypt’s savings. Grain was not to be saved for the sake of being rich. It was to serve a purpose: to help the needy in a time of famine. That is, in a time of decline, he was shown that he must “spend” the saving and engage in deficits for the welfare of people everywhere (and not just Egypt). The grain he saved was to be given out and sold (equitably); the savings in a time of prosperity was to be used as a kind welfare program in a time of hardship.
I wonder what people would say if our government followed Joseph’s example today? Would they complain and suggest he was a socialist? Would they ask how he dare use up all the government’s resources when there is a major deficit going on? Would they tell him he should consider putting the poor to work if they want to live? Oh, that last one was indeed what many of the Egyptians felt, and they would make sure the poor Hebrews got such jobs soon enough! And since they were given living wages, why did they complain? Their bosses were generous in giving them work to do so they could live.
Many of us are thankful tonight for the full, radical life of historian/activist Howard Zinn who passed away today from a heart attack. Check out the well-done obits from the AP and the Boston Globe. If there is anything recognizably good or hopeful in u.s. american history, Zinn pointed to it.
The island state of Singapore has a rather appealing transportation policy:
(1) Taxes – gasoline costs about twice as much as in the United States (this is fairly typical outside the United States), and cars themselves cost 2-3 times as much. SUVs are rare.
(2) Every car in Singapore is fitted with an automatic card reader. This provides the convenience of automatically charging in every single parking lot in Singapore, but is also used for congestion charging – driving into certain areas at certain hours incurs an automatic fee.
(3) People who purchase cars can receive a considerable discount (close to 20 percent, I think) for getting red license plates. These plates allow the person to drive on weekends and after 6pm on weekdays. To drive at any other time, the person makes an automatic on-line payment.
(4) The government has pledged to expand the metro system so that every Singaporean will live less than 10 minutes walking distance from a metro station.
This is just an example of what can be done when thinking about a sensible transportation policy – as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, these types of policies can facilitate a greater sense of community. Of course, Singapore’s government is fairly authoritarian, which possibly also shows the limits of democracy – and yes, recent events in the United States have some influence over this conclusion.
Facebook, of course, has its plusses and minuses. One of the much talked about plusses is the ability it gives its users to reconnect with people from their pasts. As is well known to FB users, this can also be a minus when the reconnection proves awkward.
Today I received a “friend request” from a high school friend. I went to a small Catholic high school in West Virginia and because we had a small class, we were pretty tight. Before approving his request I clicked to his (limited) profile and noted that since high school he had joined the Marines. His profile picture showed himself and a military friend showing off their (gigantic) guns. Thinking to myself, “Let’s see how this goes,” I approved the request.
As I usually do, I clicked back to his profile to see the rest of it, and saw that he had posted, approvingly, the following video. (Warning: Although it depicts cartoonish violence, the content is undeniably racist. The backing track also includes extreme language.)
Constantine the Great and Charlemagne suggest themselves for comparison. They were both religious-political actors, just as Muhammad was. All three connected their politics with religion, wrote laws and conducted wars in the name of God; all three understood religion as a practical principal, as the foundation for a sociopolitical unification of people; all three were representatives of well-known theocratic ideals, and each of them left after himself a certain theocratic organization. According to personal qualities, all three were people candidly religious, honest, and free from base vices. And the personal qualities of all three did not safeguard them from abusing the limitless power that fell to their lot. Constantine he Great committed to death his wife and innocent son; Charlemagne massacred 4,500 Saxon prisoners. These evil deeds in and of themselves are more grave than all the evil deeds of Muhammad, and beyond that one must not forget that Charlemagne belonged to a nation that had already 300 years since accepted Christianity, and was brought up in this religion; and Constantine the Great, who had himself converted to Christianity, moreover, lived in a world incomparably more educated than the cultural milieu of Muhammad. Thus comparison of the latter with religious-political heroes of the East and the West of the Christian world turns out to be in favor of the Arabian prophet; and if the Greeks canonized Constantine, and the Latin Charles, then Muslims have all the more basis to reverently esteem the memory of their apostle.
–Vladimir Soloviev, “Muhammad: His Life and Religious Teaching” in Enemies from the East? V.S. Soloviev on Paganism, Asian Civilizations, and Islam. Trans. Vladimir Wozniuk (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 209.
In loving memory of Andres Rocha (1913 – 2010). Requiescat in pace.
No le aflojes mijo. Don’t let up son. These were last words I heard my Abuelito Rocha say to me. He died a peaceful death in his home yesterday at 2 o’clock.
He was born in 1913 on a horse ranch in south Texas. He was one of the last vaqueros of the mythic American West. But his life was not a rosy myth. He worked hard for very little wages. He picked cotton in the South and vegetables in the North. He packed produce in the local packing shed. He lost his fingertips to a workplace accident.
Big Brother Bush. He was watching over us. Protecting us. Doing whatever was needed to keep us safe.
And now his advocacy of the culture of death has given him a pro-life award! As reported by LifesiteNews:
Jannuary 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Legatus, a membership organization for Catholic business leaders, will present President George W. Bush with its prestigious Cardinal John J. O’Connor Pro-Life Award at its annual Summit, Feb. 4-6, in Dana Point, Calif. Previous recipients of the award include Fr. Frank Pavone (Priests for Life), Fr. Thomas Euteneuer (Human Life International), Judie Brown (American Life League), Sen. Rick Santorum, Sen. Sam Brownback, and Rep. Henry Hyde.
This is absurd. G.W. Bush was the same president who boasted he was the first president to encourage and actually finance embryonic stem cell research! Read the rest of this entry »
Richard Kearney notes in his book On Stories that when someone asks you who you are, you tell your story, and in doing so, you narrate your identity, “you give a sense of yourself as a narrative identity that perdures and coheres over a lifetime.” We take the fragmentary moments of our life and put them into a plot, desiring to make sense of life’s events as a unity. “Every life is in search of a narrative,” Kearney says.
The narratives we create and recreate may tell of individuals or families, nations or peoples, cultures or humanity as a whole. They may be small tales of the oppressed or grand legends of the great. They may be mythical or historical, religious or scientific. Each and every narrative offers a particular and different answer to the question of who we are.
Over at Father Zuhlsdorf’s blog WDTPRS, there is an interesting discussion over Bishop Olmsted deciding the Diocese of Phoenix will require 9 months of marriage prep. As one who married outside the church, I just have to say this is insane. Additionally, a full NFP course will be on the menu. Nothing says I love you more than asking the woman you love to get married, so that you can have sex and avoid pregnancy. Read the rest of this entry »
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the leading contentious issue in the healthcare debate is community rating. This has become even clearer reading the blog of leading healthcare expert, Uwe Reinhart. Community rating basically means you charge all people in the risk pool the same amount, and not base payment on age or health status. Here is how Reinhart defines the issue:
““Community rating” refers to the practice of charging a common premium to all members of a heterogeneous risk pool who may have widely varied health spending for the year. It inevitably makes chronically healthy individuals subsidize with their insurance premiums (rather than through overt taxes and transfers) the health care used by chronically sicker individuals.”
The philosopher Paul Ricoeur compared reading a text to the execution of a musical score, an analogy that highlights the plurality of possible readings while keeping those readings situated in the text. Just as each musical performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto differs from all others, even those others performed by the same musician, while still remaining true (or false) to the score, so too will each reading of Moby-Dick differ and realize new semantic possibilities of Melville’s novel. Each reading of a text and each execution of a score involves interpretation; each interpretation brings forth more than the intended and inherent meanings of the text and sheet. What the author and composer write functions more as a guide for interpretation than a dictator of meaning. Nevertheless, the reader has no more liberty to make the text mean anything he wants it to mean than the musician has the liberty to play impromptu melodies when performing Chopin. Reading is an exercise of pluralism, not relativism. It gives birth to a surplus of meaning, not its absence.
When they were born, Sts Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Edith Stein were as different as one could be: Grand Duchess Elizabeth was born in 1864 as a princess in the House of Hesse and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria while Edith Stein was born in 1891 Breslau to a large and fairly religious merchant-class Jewish family. It is unlikely that anyone, save with a gift of prophecy, could have foreseen that they were going to die as Christian martyrs after taking religious vows.
For both of them, their martyrdom brings into question why they were killed: is it appropriate to say they were Christian martyrs? In a glance, it appears they weren’t. Grand Duchess Elizabeth’s death was, at least in part, a political assassination, and Edith Stein was killed because of her Jewish heritage. But such a simple examination of their ends fails to see what else brought them to their deaths, and when one sees that, the fundamental relationship between their faith and the way they died can be shown. They viewed themselves as Christians, and they went to their death as believers, and it was as believers they had the calm resolve to face their death as a means of embracing Christ’s suffering and sharing in his work for the salvation of the world.[1] Moreover, as one explores their lives further, one begins to see how alike Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Edith Stein were to become: they were to be converts to a new faith (Orthodoxy and Catholicism), and, years after their conversion, they were to take on the religious life. But also just as important, they were leading representatives of Christian women seeking to provide greater respect for the women of their time and place, to raise their status in life. In this way, they were feminists in the proper sense (not like the radicals who would try to denigrate all gender). Their deaths not only gave their Christian faith a voice, but it made sure their feminism would not perish — those who grew to love them would come to see their feminism was intricately related to their Christian mission, and to promote them is to promote Christian feminism. Read the rest of this entry »
A day before the anniversary of Roe vs Wade, the Supreme Court has given another major court decision: a 63 year old law which forbade corporations and unions from directly funding political campaign advertisements, as with later campaign finance reforms, was struck down on the basis that it went against the Constitution because it limited free speech. This time, many of the people who rightfully decried Roe vs Wade have applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling. The sad irony of the situation is easy to see.
Now corporations have been given the Constitutional rights of persons, while babies are denied this. The questions I have with this are all over the place, but I think the most important one is philosophical: what is this telling us about the United States and its notion of persons? Why can corporations, which do not follow any traditional definition of the person, be given the rights of a person? What exactly is a person according to the United States?
I’ve been thinking about the assumption of many people that illegal immigrants and their supporters in the United States must be anarchists who have no respect for the law. While for some of them this might be true, it would be a very small portion of them. The problem I have with this generalization is that as a culture, our history does not recognize this view. Instead, we have normally recognized that a bad law has no moral authority, and people who have a love for the law might find reasons to rebel and commit acts of civil disobedience when the law is out of order.
Is this not the way the Boston Tear Party has been portrayed? Certainly the protesters broke the law. Would most Americans suggest that they had no respect for it? Read the rest of this entry »
I am disheartened and disgusted with the current state of play with the healthcare bill. They are so close, and yet the Democrats manage to confirm all the worst suspicions about their cravenness, cowardice, and incompetence. Of course, the nihilists in the Republican party are dancing with glee, as nothing makes them happier than the failure of healthcare reform.
If I were a nihilist myself, I would say – take a lesson from the Republicans. Forget good policy. Focus only on winning and scoring political points. Pass the parts of the healthcare bill that are simple to understand, universally popular, and difficult for the Republicans to oppose. In other words, restrict insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, denying coverage, or tying premia to health status. That would be good, right?
Henry’s position on the advocacy of some pro-life groups for Scott Brown makes sense, and I tend to agree with it. For better or for worse, Brown is now a nationally known figure, and some pro-lifers and organizations participated in his ascension. Whether he decides some day to run for president is unknown, but it’s not out of the question. If he decides to run, he’ll need to appeal to the pro-lifers within the GOP, and he can now point to concrete endorsements from pro-life groups to establish his credentials. He may not even need to pull a Romney and switch his views. After all, during the previous Republican primary, Rudy Giuliani’s pro-choice views were much more accepted on the stage than Ron Paul’s anti-war views. Brown’s win enhances that acceptability. I’m not saying pro-lifers had no good reasons to support Brown over Coakley, but their victory today could undermine their cause down the road. Certain issues of the day may be black and white, but the act of voting surely isn’t. I wouldn’t celebrate yet.
“The special evil and horror of murder consist, of course, not in the actual taking of life but in the intrinsic renunciation of a basic moral norm, to sever decisively by one’s own resolution and action the connection of common human solidarity regarding the actual fellow creature standing before me, who is the same as I, a bearer of the image and likeness of God. But this resolution to put an end to a man more clearly and completely than in simple murder is expressed in the death penalty, where there is absolutely nothing apart from this resolution and carrying it out. Society only has left an animus interficiendi in absolutely pure form with respect to the executed criminal, completely free from all those physiological and psychological conditions and motives which darkened and obscured the essence of the matter in the eyes of the criminal himself, whether he committed the murder from calculation of gain or under the influence of a less shameful person. There can be no such complexities of motivation in the death penalty; the entire business is exposed here: its single goal — to put to an end to this man in order that he not be in the world at all. The death penalty is murder, as such, absolute murder that is in principle the denial of a fundamental moral attitude toward man. “
–Vladimir Soloviev, “On the Death Penalty” in Politics, Law & Morality: Essays by V.S. Soloviev. Ed. and trans. Vladimir Wozniuk (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 180-1.
"In their patriotism and in their fidelity to their civic duties Catholics will feel themselves bound to promote the true common good; they will make the weight of their convictions so influential that as a result civil authority will be justly exercised and laws will accord with moral precepts and the common good."
Second Vatican Council, Apostolicam actuositatem 14
Posted by samrocha 
Well, I recently purchased my first Apple product, the iPhone 3G, and I was pretty sure I’d like it. But I really like it. I still can’t stand iTunes. I had avoided downloading and using iTunes for any music purposes before getting the phone — for politico-cultural reasons as well as general annoyance — but now with the phone, using iTunes is a must. I can’t understand how the phone itself can be so elegant and iTunes so clunky.
