Does making babies make sense?

MercatorNet features an essay by Professor Richard Stith, who teaches at Valparaiso University School of Law, entitled "Does Making Babies Make Sense?". Let the following excerpt encourage you to read the entire essay.

In December of 2005 an op-ed piece by sociologist Dalton Conley appeared in the New York Times, stating that “most Americans... see a fetus as an individual under construction.” This widespread vision of the embryo and fetus as “under construction” is the key to understanding why good people may find pro-life arguments to be absurd or otherwise non-rational, eg, religious, particularly with regard to embryonic stem cell research.

The construction idea also may explain how Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been able to support both the right to life from the moment of conception and embryonic stem cell research.

It is a very thought-provoking essay. Read it here.

Two from Touchstone

Touchstone Magazine's blog Mere Comments today presents two posts worth pondering. Now having said that, I anticipate that some of your rambling host's readers may have strong opinions regarding one of them. Nonetheless, the argument is worth examination and meditation. The post in question is entitled Where Whores Wear Hats. The second is A Challenge From the First Century. Both posts present topics that are relevant for Christians today.

A Requiem for Solzhenitsyn Worthy of Remembrance

Today's First Things On the Square features Robert P. Kraynak reflecting on the legacy of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It accurately notes the ambivalence in the West towards those who critique not only "the other side" but also the West. Solzhenitsyn was truly a conundrum to the West in just that sense. As Mr Kraynak notes:

It is striking to read the many references to the human soul in Solzhenitsyn’s writings. He says, “Beyond upholding rights, mankind must defend its soul, freeing it for reflection and feeling”; and “the greatness of a people is to be sought not in the blare of trumpets . . . but in the level of its inner development, in its breadth of soul . . . in healing its soul.” He also warned modern people that, because of their belief in progress, “we had forgotten the human soul”; and “the destruction of our souls over three-quarters of a century is the most terrifying thing of all.” In a powerful passage, he denounces communist totalitarianism for corrupting the soul: “Our present system is unique because, over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands total surrender of our souls . . . to the conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar’s, demands still more insistently that we render to him what is God’s—that is a sacrifice we dare not make!”

These are words that tend to frighten the West since they point to the essential need to examine the soul, not just political policy.

Read the entire piece here.

Michael Novak Examines Evil and the Atheism

First Things' On the Square today features an essay by Michael Novak that is worth your attention. It's titled Atheism and Evil. Here is a snippet to whet your whistle.

Could it possibly improve things to believe that the long pain of human evolution was set in motion by chance alone? The atheist view of the world is actually rather bleaker than that of Jews and Christians: Suffering under the weight of evil is meaningless, and so is any struggle against evil. Everything in the atheist’s world begins and ends in randomness and chance.

Read the entire essay here.

Incidentally, Mr Novak also has an interesting article recently printed in USA Today and available on his website. It's entitled, Reconciling Evil with Faith.

It's high time we all did some serious meditation on evil and suffering.

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood

First Things's On the Square (one of the best daily features on the Web) speaks to California's 'no abstinence in public education' policy and the extremes to which the ACLU and Planned Parenhood are going to prevent young people from chastity.

Read it here.

Interesting Stuff from MercatorNet

Three snippets from three thought provoking essays over at MercatorNet.

We live in an age in which the media are scrupulously rigorous in self-censoring when it comes to the terrible social crime of offending women, gays, people of colour and natives. Only one identifiable group – white heterosexual men (if they’re Christian, so much the better) – is considered fair game for overt collective prejudice.

Identifying active misandry is easy. One has only to imagine the same words, image or falsehood or failure to report attached to any other identifiable group, and the imbalance becomes clear.

From Misandry is the Message.

The state must hold that mothers and fathers are completely interchangeable. Biological parents married to each other become officially equivalent to one parent plus their lover. The state will be indifferent as to whether children have any connection with their biological parents.

From Beyond Same Sex Marriage.

While “human dignity” is an idea which certainly requires extensive clarification and precise definition, “respect for persons” and “autonomy” are as squishy as a wet sponge. I would have thought that a Harvard prof would be more discerning. For instance, are dolphins or chimpanzees “persons”, too? Should Japanese fishermen be jailed for violating the person rights of minke whales? And is a sleeping person autonomous? A comatose person? A two-day-old infant?

Note: This essay's links also reward pursuit.

From Human Dignity, What a Stupid Idea!

Not For Faint of Heart - But it is True

From Priests for Life and YouTube









Step back from the emotion. Think logically. Abortion kills a human life. Biologically, there is no other rational way to say it. The only choice is to kill or not kill. Please God, may the choice be life.

From the Address to Young People

Have you noticed how often the call for freedom is made without ever referring to the truth of the human person? Some today argue that respect for freedom of the individual makes it wrong to seek truth, including the truth about what is good. In some circles to speak of truth is seen as controversial or divisive, and consequently best kept in the private sphere. And in truth’s place – or better said its absence – an idea has spread which, in giving value to everything indiscriminately, claims to assure freedom and to liberate conscience. This we call relativism. But what purpose has a “freedom” which, in disregarding truth, pursues what is false or wrong? How many young people have been offered a hand which in the name of freedom or experience has led them to addiction, to moral or intellectual confusion, to hurt, to a loss of self-respect, even to despair and so tragically and sadly to the taking of their own life? Dear friends, truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules. It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust. In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ. That is why authentic freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others (cf. Spe Salvi, 28).

Address to Young People, St Joseph Seminary, New York 19 April 2008

You Can't Handle the Truth

During Bright Week, called the Octave of Easter in the West, I try to spend much of my time reflecting on our Lord's great gift in the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Consequently, I typically don't engage in blogging. This follows my Lenten practice of using the blog to post edifying snippets from the wealth of Byzantine hymnody for my own and my readers' spiritual benefit. In both cases, this doesn't mean that I close myself off from the world, I simply exercise restraint in making choices for "blogosphere" comment.

However, I have concluded that I must comment on the recent unpleasantness regarding a fifteen minute film by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders entitled "Fitna". Fitna is an Arabic term roughly meaning "upheaval" and carries the connotation of social madness like "Bedlam" in the classical sense. The film warns of the dangers of Islamic extremism and the hatred of Western values, including democracy, shared by many Muslims. It has garnered near universal opprobrium in the world media and in political circles. It was denied access to Dutch television, banned from Dutch web services, condemned by everyone from European Muslim leaders to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Now, it is vanishing from the web altogether.

Not being one who closely follows all things Dutch, I first heard about the film two days ago. Curiosity led me to google it and watch it. Consequently, I find it fascinating that the film is being so universally vilified. It does have more than a few images of mutilated corpses that are not for delicate temperaments.

However, the criticisms do not seem to focus on the film per se. Rather, the film is characterized as "hate speech"; it offends Muslims; it represents a far right xenophobia; it stereotypes Muslims; and it is propaganda that did not even get the permission of several news outlets for the quotations used in the film.

But what I have not found is many refutations or actual dialogue on the film's assertions. While a local radio commentator in our area yesterday proclaimed that Muslim hatred for the United States and Great Britain solely originates in Western interventionism and has nothing to do with Islamic antithetism towards democracy, the film features Imams and Muslim laity adamantly proclaiming their hatred for democracy.

In the musical 1776, one of the Continental Congress delegates voting on whether to debate the question of American independence notes, "I never heard of an idea so dangerous that people can't talk about it. Hell, yes, I'm for debating it." It would seem that Fitna features ideas that many believe must not be spoken out loud. The questions people should be asking is "What ideas?" and "Who benefits from them not being discussed?"

Let me note: I have lived with Muslims and witnessed Muslim culture up close. I have been privileged to account many Muslims as friends. There are many very fine people who follow Islam. There is also an undercurrent within Islam that is most troubling from a Christian perspective and from a classical Western perspective. There is a vast difference between Muslim fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism of whatever stripe.

Fitna addresses issues that should concern Muslims and Christians alike. Arguments against Crusades should equally apply to Jihad. No one benefits from refusing to acknowledge or discuss the issue. Modern Western Relativism exposes itself to its own corrupt decay in the silence it enforces on too many issues. Fitna deals with one.

This link will take you the liveleak website where the film was available. God willing, the film may return. If so, remember there are several graphic images.

PS You will note various links in this post. I do not endorse views expressed in the linked sites; they are provided as examples and to expand options for interested readers to find the film.

PPS Thanks to Byzantine, Texas, a different video, guaranteed to make you smile!



UPDATE: The film FITNA may now be found here.

Faith - A Danger to Society... and Freedom from Faith?

It seems to me that faith education works all right as long as people are not that serious about their faith. (Emphasis added)

Barry Sheerman, chairman of the Schools Select Committee, House of Parliament, UK

Comment made in justifying the calling in of Catholic Bishops to explain why Catholic Schools should have a crucifix in every classroom and should teach chastity.

And in US news....

1 in 4 teenaged US girls have had sexually-transmitted disease: study

CHICAGO (AFP) — One in four teenaged girls in the United Sates has been infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease, according to a study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The first study to examine the combined national prevalence of common STDs among adolescent women in the United States estimates that at least 3.2 million teens aged 14 to 19 are currently infected.

Since the study only tested for the four most common sexually transmitted diseases, it is possible that the total prevalence among US teens is greater than the study's rate of 26 percent, the authors warned.

"Today's data demonstrate the significant health risk STDs pose to millions of young women in this country every year," said Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.

"Given that the health effects of STDs for women -- from infertility to cervical cancer -- are particularly severe, STD screening, vaccination and other prevention strategies for sexually active women are among our highest public health priorities."

Yet, chastity is frowned upon in the US, too.

Lord, have mercy!

First Things is On the Square Again!

First Things' On the Square today features a thought-provoking essay by R. R. Reno entitled The Offense of Piety. One paragraph follows to entice you to read the entire essay, which itself will certainly stimulate cogent reflection.

Christians should seek to enlist as many as possible in the cause of humanity. It is one of the central principles of Catholic theology that grace perfects rather than destroys nature. Faith fulfills rather than subverts reason. For this reason, the Catholic tradition (like most other Christian traditions) has never formulated sharp antagonisms between Christ and culture, between church and world, between revealed truths and the truths accessible by natural reason, or between men and women of goodwill and believers in Christ. As the Second Vatican Council made clear, we don’t all need to be believers in order to share and support a humane social order.

The essay is found here.

Overcoming the Abortuary Volunteers

About three or four times a year, I am asked to lead prayers at the local abortuary. We stand on one side of the ditch by the road and offer prayers, and on the other side, the volunteers stare at us as though at any minute we might storm the grounds and pull the expectant mothers away kicking and screaming. Usually, I offer a few words to the pro-lifers between rosaries, hymns and Byzantine Prayers of Mercy for the souls of the children killed inside (with which I always conclude our prayers).

Over time, I have come to really look forward to these occasions for the "little" miracles that occur. For example, there used to be an off-duty policeman who wandered back and forth. On several occasions I spoke with him and he eventually decided that this was a moonlighting job he did not need. But more importantly, I have witnessed women who changed their minds, persuaded by the prayers, or perhaps a moment of clarity about what they had come to have happen. These times are joyous and also fascinating as the clinic volunteers, so ostensibly devoted to the woman’s right to choose, looked positively miserable that the mother would carry her child to term.

Last year, we had an interesting season at the abortuary as we joined in a forty-day vigil to end abortion. I say it was interesting because when I came for my turn leading the prayers I was frankly amazed at how the vigil had affected the pro-death volunteers. Apparently, having gotten used to our third Saturday practice, the fact that prayers were being said twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for a whole forty day period quite unnerved them. They attempted to drown out our prayers with loud Rock music - which led to repeated visit by the local constabulary who wagged the finger and told them to turn it down. (As a note, we do not use megaphones or amplifiers; just voices in prayer, never strident or overly loud.)

We did have one officer attempt to tell us that we were not allowed to speak to the women on their way in if they parked across the street. After a brief discussion about freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, the officer decided that he'd allow this conduct as long as the women going in did not protest. No problem. He was a nice guy; he just didn’t bank on someone schooled in the ways of protest a la the 1960’s and beyond. (“Know your rights; respect the law you’re working to change; and know you’re right!”)

The next time I came, the powers that abort had set up an orange plastic mesh fence - fairly tatty-looking, actually. The volunteers attempted to show what they must have considered a more “professional” manner. They worked in pairs and showed almost military precision. On that occasion, I started out speaking about the right of the woman to make decisions for her own body. Of course, this got the attention of the volunteers, who on that day had a small group of women from the local college out to join the fun. They listened attentively as I noted agreement that no one had a right to tell a woman what to do with her body. When I then noted that what is conceived in the womb, the fetus, is not her body but another human being whose rights are being denied they seemed stunned at the thought.

Today was most interesting as it was so telling about how things stand. When I arrived our people were at their usual positions. The volunteers, however, had brought children’s musical instruments! Toy accordions, little hand bells, jingle bells, even a little triangle bell. As I began my opening talk, the accordion and other instruments began a cacophonous racket. I also noticed that they now also carried signs, one of which warned patrons of the abortuary not to open the window and take a pamphlet from a protestor.

Needless to say, we carried on, although I must admit the lullaby was slightly distracting. While we prayed and sang, several police cars came by – why, I don’t know, but it added to the almost circus-like atmosphere. The accordion “player” attempted a few slogans that seemed trite and borne out of frustration at our presence. At one point he broke into the worst “rendition” of “This Land is Your Land” imaginable. It almost drifted into “Winter Wonderland” – no, I’m not kidding. The fact that children were being killed, literally ripped apart, inside probably didn’t occur to him.

On reflection, several things came to mind about the clinic's volunteers/ "deathscorts".

Firstly, the volunteers seem to fear that they are losing the battle. The use of children’s toy musical instruments would be silly if it were not such a pathetic display.

Secondly, while they no doubt view themselves as proponents of equal rights for women they are decidedly anti-democratic. The use of the musical instruments indicates that they do not want the prayers to be heard, and the signs warning patrons against reading our ‘subversive’ materials also reflect this.

Thirdly, assuming that the volunteers were the ones who called the police, it would seem likely that they desire some sort of confrontation to develop, perhaps in the hope of getting one or more of the pro-life protestors arrested or else raising our “fear level”. In the case of these volunteers, the possibility for violence is not so farfetched. One of the larger middle-aged men, who is almost always present, has been known to grab placards and rip them up.

Fourthly, rather than intimidate us, the volunteers have actually invigorated us. After being subjected to “This Land is Your Land” we all broke into “We Shall Overcome”.

And in this regard, I consider “We Shall Overcome” entirely appropriate. As protestors fought for equal rights for black in the 1960’s, our cause is of the same cloth. It is innocent children who are being denied equal protection, who are being treated as slaves, property to be disposed of, who are deserving of our assistance in their cause.

May our Lord convict us all to end this barbaric practice soon

Religious Discourse in the Political Domain

An Argument Without Appeal to Religion

(This is an expanded version of an editorial I recently submitted to the local newspaper.)

A recent letter to the editor in the local paper took issue with political issues being aired in and by religious institutions. The writer essentially argued that it is improper. He asserted that were he to attend a church service and something he deemed political be put forward he would walk out.

But the writer did not address the question itself of whether religion does or ought to have voice in the political life of a society. True, the author of the letter and, no doubt, a large number of others would argue that it is improper, or even immoral, for a religious organization to support, endorse, or oppose particular candidates or parties. The fear is that allowing religious authority to influence a political race could lead to a despotic theocracy in which one candidate, party or position would receive divine approbation and all others divine recrimination. This fear is so pervasive in American society that charitable tax exemptions can be withdrawn if the IRS determines that a religious institution has endorsed or condemned a particular party or candidate.

I would certainly agree that it is highly improper for a religious leader to endorse or oppose particular candidates. Even when such opinions are expressed as personal opinions there remains potential for a perception of an institutional endorsement. What's more, taking such specific public positions risks linking the religious institution to one or the other party or candidate, and thus potentially alienating members of its own flock who might support the other side.

However, it is irrational to suppose that religious institutions and religious leaders should be silent regarding all things political. Indeed, it is impossible. While it would be immoral (if not illegal) for a religious institution to endorse particular candidates or parties, it would be hypocritical for a religion to proclaim certain values and then remain silent in the face of political issues that directly relate to those values. This is decidedly different from supporting or opposing candidates and political parties. To argue otherwise is ipso facto to deny to religion the right to a voice in the public sphere and the right to integrity in what it proclaims.

Every religion, and thus every religious institution, deals with matters of faith and dogma, of belief and practice. 'Practice' necessarily entails matters of ethics and morality. This is because all religions encompass a way of life and as such influence how practitioners interact with others and the way questions of ethical import are framed and resolved. Differing faiths may hold differing views, but it is axiomatic that any faith will influence its adherents in accord with the principles that faith proclaims.

The coherence between what a religion preaches and what it demands in practice constitutes its internal integrity. The charge of hypocrisy is rightly laid at adherents of a religion when their practice and behavior betrays an incongruity with what the religion believes and proclaims. When a religion itself is discovered to be fully incongruent in its practice versus its belief people rightly deem it a cult and a scam.

Inevitably, what at the micro level is the province of ethics is at the macro level a matter of politics. The principles that guide my interactions with others inform my views on decisions that relate to the larger community in which I live and the state and country of which I am a citizen. Thus if my faith informs me that a particular practice is sinful or harmful to an individual, I will also deem it harmful to the community. If a particular position holds true for my interaction with individuals I will likely also consider it valuable for the larger society. It is the natural outcome of my adherence to the way of life that is part and parcel of the religion to which I subscribe.

The movement from a believed ethical principle to the formulation of a political imperative is not in and of itself a bad thing. As ethical positions are tested against the grindstone of the larger community more extreme positions are smoothed and softened to meet the demands of applicability to the larger group. This is particularly so in a democratic republic like our own, which values religious freedom.

It is undeniable that many of the freedoms and rights Americans value and enjoy either have their origin in religious belief or are at least historically endorsed and strengthened by religious belief. Consider: religious voices were at the heart of the argument to end slavery, end suppression of equal rights on the basis of color, and fight for women’s suffrage. The argument against the death penalty is largely influenced by principles regarding the equality and dignity of human life, which also drives the pro-life movement. Ideals of concern and care for the less affluent and the needy in our society have their origin in religious principles of charity, an idea actually originating in religious teachings.

Thus, it is irrational and inconsistent to demand the silencing of the religious witness in our society. Political discourse depends on the evaluation of societal beliefs and principles, which for many people are themselves necessarily informed and guided by religious principles. The values of a society may be said to originate in and be sustained by the religious beliefs of its citizens. These religious beliefs lead citizens to promote values that enter the larger political discourse and contribute to political decisions promoting the welfare of all citizens. Again, as noted above, when religious values enter the political dialogue extreme positions are moderated and viable consensuses emerge.

That not all share the same religious convictions, or that some have no religious convictions at all, does not invalidate the value of religious input in political discourse. Indeed, it strengthens it. Politics, often defined as the art of compromise, seeks to find the common ground and the inclusion of religious principles aids in that quest. If we hold to freedom of speech, the voice of religion must be accepted as a valid contributor to the political dialogue of the nation.

Yet, some desire to silence religion from having any part in political dialogue. In recent years, religious institutions, from small communities to larger organizations, have been threatened for proclaiming positions which impact the political debate. As noted above, the threat of withdrawing a religious institution’s tax exempt status is often a powerful governmental tool, and those who wish to silence religion are increasingly apt to file complaints with the IRS in the hopes of accomplishing their goals.

This is both particularly nefarious and silly. Nefarious: because the threat that speaking out could lead to civil or criminal sanctions flies in the face of a basic democratic principle (freedom of speech). Silly: because it is illogical to think that if a religious leader actually did publically support this or that position and by extension this or that politician or party, a) the whole group of adherents would blindly vote accordingly; and b) that in the absence of such an endorsement the rank and file would be completely unaware of the institution’s particular position on the question. In other words, this assumes that religion is Svengali-like in swaying believers into zombie-like manipulation. It betrays a prejudice against religion and itself risks the rise of a despotism grounded on the charge of an opponent’s alleged or presumed despotism.

As a minister of a religion that predates this society by nearly two millennia, I cannot in good conscience remain silent. I must and will continue teaching the truths that have brought salvation and consolation to literally generations upon generations of humble believers. How I vote and for whom is no one’s business – except for God and me. But, I must proclaim my Church’s teachings on morality and ethical issues with clarity and fidelity to the Church Fathers who shed blood to pass on that Faith. From Jerusalem to Rome to Washington, DC, this Faith has produced good citizens, enriched society and contributed to the greater common good.

Firmly believing in the principles of the American Republic, I would be hypocritical if I did not proclaim the Faith I hold.

And, after all, in a world of drugs and degradation, violence and scandal, barbarity and irrational hatred, is there not room for a belief in Divine sacrificial love?

Spencer on Religion and Slavery

It should come as no suprise to anyone that I am a great fan of First Things. The journal is outstanding for its crisp analysis and challenging engagement on issues crucial in our wayard era. Today's On the Square feature will challenge the assumptions of many, and, God willing, open the eyes of many, too.

Robert Spencer examines the facts on Slavery, Christianity, and Islam. It is an article that needs to be run in every newspaper in the West, and covered by as many truth seeking blogs as possible. It's not politics, it's history and fact.

It has become a feature of today’s atheist chic to shy bricks at Christianity
for its record on slavery. This is part of a larger assault on Western history
and society, which, by accident or design, plays into the hands of those who are
today mounting on a global scale a sweeping and explicit cultural challenge to
Judeo-Christian as well as post-Christian values. The fundamentally most
misunderstood and overlooked aspect of today’s defense against the global jihad
is this challenge that Jihadists make to Western values, which are in large part
Judeo-Christian. Combine this with a historical critique that relentlessly
portrays the West as the aggressors against the rest of the world, and as
uniquely responsible for its evils, and Westerners’ will to defend something as
rotten as Western civilization begins to ebb away.

Read it all here.

Fr Oakes, Atheism and Violence

A hat tip to Amy Wellborn for referencing the On the Square article by Edward T. Oakes, S.J. over at First Things. The article is entitled, "Atheism and Violence." Here are a couple of excerpts to whet your whistle. Then go read the article.

One would think that, given their insistence that faith and violence are inextricably linked, these authors would be a bit more circumspect about their own rhetoric. As it happens, one does not have to read too far into these books to see an underlying advocacy of violence animating their venom, an advocacy made most explicit in Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, which openly avows: “Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. . . . There is, in fact, no talking to some people. … We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.” To which I can only respond with one of Blaise Pascal’s more mordant observations, “Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.” Pascal called civil war the worst of all evils and openly admitted that no evil is greater than that committed under the guise of religion. If he were living today, I am sure his response to Harris would be: yes, Mr. Harris, you’re right, and the reason atheism brings so much violence in its wake is because it is its own kind of religion—and that’s your problem: your atheism is too religious.
...
Such are the contradictions of atheism. With hope in progress gone, with the lessons of the twentieth century still unlearned in the twenty-first, with technology progressing, in Adorno’s words, from the slingshot to the atom bomb (a remark cited in Spe Salvi), with a resurgence of religiously motivated violence filling the headlines, all that the new atheists can manage is to hearken back to an Enlightenment-based critique of religion. But they find their way blocked, not so much by Nietzsche (whom, as we saw, they largely ignore) but by the ineluctable realities he so ruthlessly exposed. Not Nietzsche, but the history of the twentieth century has shown that godless culture is incapable of making men happier. All Nietzsche did was to point out that no civilization, however “progressive,” can dispel the terrifying character of nature; and once progress is called into question, the human condition appears in all its forsaken nakedness.

Find the article here.

Ajami on Huntington

Hat tip to Done with Mirrors for this New York Times essay by Fouad Ajami on Samuel P Huntington. If you don't know who Huntington is or why you should known him, go here, here, and here.

In the meantime, here's just one paragraph from Ajami's essay:

In Huntington’s unsparing view, culture is underpinned and defined by power. The West had once been pre-eminent and militarily dominant, and the first generation of third-world nationalists had sought to fashion their world in the image of the West. But Western dominion had cracked, Huntington said. Demography best told the story: where more than 40 percent of the world population was “under the political control” of Western civilization in the year 1900, that share had declined to about 15 percent in 1990, and is set to come down to 10 percent by the year 2025. Conversely, Islam’s share had risen from 4 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in 1990, and could be as high as 19 percent by 2025.

Read the entire essay here. Then email it to a friend.

Order the book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, here.

In other Patriarchal News...

From Interfax.

The Moscow Patriarchate criticizes ‘politically correct’ Christianity

Vienna, January 22, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church's representative to the European International Institutions believes it important to preserve Christian traditions in today’s liberal world.

‘Christianity, empty inside, lacking inner power, Christianity that has renounced itself, will not be able to oppose challenges of the modern world,’ Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria said at a meeting organized by the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Austria dedicated to its 50th anniversary.

The Russian Church’s representative stressed that ‘we should be afraid of giving up spiritual and moral teaching accumulated by the Christian Church for centuries and surrender to the influence of liberal ideas and secular moral standards.’

‘When some Christian communities start revising theological or moral teaching of Christianity in order to ‘update’ it or to make it more ‘politically correct’, it is a direct way to spiritual collapse,’ the bishop added.

According to him, ‘Christians are powerful only when they follow the testament of Christ rather than when they start building their life by the rules of secular world.’

Wall Street Reviews Patriarch's Book

This, from the Wall Street Journal: Patriarch Bartholomeos of Constantinople has written a book. The book may be interesting; the review is very interesting. A couple of excerpts follow:

Nowhere does the plight of Christians look so pitiful as in Turkey, nominally secular but 99% Muslim. At the turn of the 20th century, some 500,000 Orthodox Christians, mostly ethnic Greeks, lived in Constantinople, where they constituted half the city's residents, and millions more resided elsewhere in what is now Turkey. Today, Bartholomew has only about 4,000 mostly elderly fellow believers (2,000 in Istanbul) left in Turkey's 71 million-plus population. The quasi-militaristic regime of Kemal Ataturk that supplanted the Ottoman Empire during the 1920s forcibly Westernized the country's institutions but also made Islam an essential component of the Turkish national identity that it relentlessly promoted.
...
On first reading, this exercise in fiddling while the new Rome burns seems pathetic, presenting a picture of a church leader so intimidated by his country's Islamic majority that he cannot speak up for his dwindling flock even as its members are murdered at his doorstep. Bartholomew's book presents an eerie mirror image of the concerns of aging, culturally exhausted, post-Christian Western Europe, happy to blather on at conferences about carbon emissions and diversity but unwilling to confront its own demographic crisis in the face of youthful, rapidly growing and culturally antagonistic Muslim populations. The suicide of the West meets the homicide of the East.

Read the whole review here.

First Things' On the Square Pallbears

First Things today features a very insightful article in its On the Square section on Pallbears by Rev Paul Gregory Alms, a North Carolina Lutheran pastor. Rev Alms succintly reflects on pallbearing as indicative of the many communal customs and traditions that give meaning and continuity to human life. The piece is called, fittingly, On Being a Pallbearer. Below is an excerpt.

Many customs and traditions in many areas of life are disappearing from among us. Liturgy in the church, national “rites” such as the Pledge of Allegiance or taking off one’s hat at the National Anthem, and countless other shared activities are being lost. There is some advantage to the rejection of a “we’ve always done it that way” mentality. But there is also a danger. More is lost than simple habits. We become more and more isolated, more alone when we mark times and feelings such as birth and marriage and war and patriotism and death in idiosyncratic ways. It becomes “just us” and our decision. Any other greater meaning is gone. When we do things that have always been done, even when it seems antiquated or strange (such as pall bearing), we are affirming that we are not free agents who have landed on the planet in the last twenty years. We have fathers and mothers, grandfathers, great grandmothers, ancestors, who worked and gave birth and believed and raised children, and we are the beneficiaries of that struggle. We have a past to which we are connected through ritual and the shared experience those rituals bring.

Read the whole article here.

Jose Yulo on Atheism and the Beatitudes

Over at Ignatius, Dr Jose Yulo has written an article on Atheism, morality and his experiences teaching a Western Civilization class. It is well worth the time spent to read it.

Below is an excerpt.

But the topic that easily garnered the most attention in the class and generated spirited debate was a seemingly unlikely product of the Beatitudes. Christ warns His followers that they would be "persecuted for righteousness' sake," at the very least an intriguing notion. If the followers of Christ begin laying down the temptation of Agamemnon and all of those cut of the same imperial brocaded cloth, how could this lead to them being subject to ostracism, today often performed by the atheism advocate du jour?

Read the article here.