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.

From the Church Fathers

And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born. You shall not covet the things of your neighbor, you shall not swear, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not speak evil, you shall bear no grudge. You shall not be double-minded nor double-tongued, for to be double-tongued is a snare of death. Your speech shall not be false, nor empty, but fulfilled by deed. You shall not be covetous, nor rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor evil disposed, nor haughty. You shall not take evil counsel against your neighbor. You shall not hate any man; but some you shall reprove, and concerning some you shall pray, and some you shall love more than your own life.

Chapter Two, The Didache (c. 50-120 a.d.)

Therefore brothers, you see how perverse they are and hastening wickedness, who are immature, they seek abortion of the conception before the birth; they are those who tell us, "I do not see that which you say must be believed."

From a Sermon by St Augustine of Hippo

A Few Interesting Articles

From Life Site News more revelations about Planned Parenthood's ongoing attempts to increase its share of the death business: Planned Parenthood's 'A' Word Campaign Targets Cincinnati Teenagers

Also, a recent article from Center for a Just Society, Trying to Put Lipstick on a Pig

Planned Parenthood has begun to renovate office in our town. They picked a spot hoping to thwart protesters (no parking, small side-walk space, office at the back of a private parking lot, etc) and ultimately claimed that they won't be committing abortions "initially". We're urging a thorough environmental impact study to determine potential dangers to caused by their operations.

Then, there's Salvo Magazine's report on the de-masculinization of US boys and men. Girly Men: The Media's Attack on Masculinity

Having done some teaching over the years (junior high level), I can attest that playground activities are often strictly monitored for anything smacking of "rough housing" or other boyish behaviors. But then again, the US is also into over-medicating kids to avoid the unpleasantness of having to deal with kids being kids. I shudder to think what actions would be taken against crop of kids like those of my generation!

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 Balanced Analysis of the Russo-Georgian Conflict

MercatorNet has published an essay by George Friedman, chairman and CEO of Stratfor, a publisher of geopolitical intelligence. The essay originally appeared on the Stratfor website.

The essay, The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power, is a clear and logical analysis of the motives and decisions behind the Russian invasion of Georgia and the US and European response options. It is so worthy of your reading it that I'll not quote it. Go, read!

Christianity and Georgia

May our Lord bring peace to this suffering nation!

Prayer Request

Let us all pray for peace in the Republic of Georgia and the suffering Georgian people.

Interesting Report on Christians in Lebanon

The unusual blog Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, has a very interesting article on the plight of Christians in Lebanon entitled The Forgotten Christians of Lebanon.

Consider a few excerpts...

I am not suggesting that all Western involvement in the affairs of the Near and Middle East over the centuries has been detrimental to the region's Christians. Far from it. However, the fact remains that the West's interaction with the Middle East was always designed to serve primarily the West's interests. This includes the Protestant missionary activities of the nineteenth century, which, after failing to make noticeable headway among Muslims, turned their energies to converting the local Christians to the creeds of Europe's great Reformers. Resulting tensions and mutual misunderstandings between the native churches and the newly transplanted Protestants linger to the present.

Meanwhile, the reputed tolerance of Islam, particularly for the "People of the Book," as Jews and Christians are designated, created in reality the dhimmi system of second-class servitude, which, under the guise of toleration, was actually a system of subtle repression and dehumanization leading to gradual liquidation.

...

Back in the 1970s and '80s it became disgracefully fashionable in Western policy and media circles to put down the Lebanese Christians, particularly the Maronites. These attacks often bordered on outright racism. Similarly today it has become fashionable to lay all the blame for the Bosnian conflict on the shoulders of the Serbs. If the priorities of certain Western governments and their policy planners (Washington included) have dictated that such one-sided obfuscations serve as the basis for ethically dubious policies, the priorities of self-aware and morally critical Christians in these same Western countries ought to be markedly different.

...

Western apathy. In the hard-nosed world of realpolitik, petroleum-free Lebanon does not amount to much either strategically or economically for a country like the United States. Injecting other human and value-oriented parameters and ingredients into the policy calculus of Washington that would elevate Lebanon on the scale of foreign-policy priorities is in itself an awesome and daunting undertaking requiring prayer and patient hard work.

Read it all 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.

Sometimes...

Sometimes an image is worth a thousand words...
(This is very 'graphic')


And if words are still needed...

St John Chrysostom on Contraception

Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well…Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws?…Yet such turpitude…the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks.

Homilies on Romans, 24 - .St. John Chrysostom

Father Euteneuer on Exorcisims

Oddly enough, when I've tried to watch this, the picture has been void.

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.

Boys? What on Earth is Happening to Them?!

Hat Tip to Touchstone's Mere Comments for reference to Amanda Witt's blog featuring a fake ad to help the overactive boy. The "ad" is from Salvo Magazine. In true web-surfing fashion, I followed a link in one of the Salvo article's comments and checked out Dr Helen Smith's blog; which, in turn, led me to a "Top 10: Worst Male Bashing Ads" list over at Ask Men. {Note: I'm not very familiar with Ask Men, so don't assume I endorse the site. For example, some of the side-bar images are a bit too risque for my tastes. However, the commercials in the top ten list are certainly worth viewing.}

Altogether, these references contribute to a disturbing view of societal pressures to follow the materialistic relativism that tries to "do one better" than nature.

Ya hahram!

A Book I Missed

I just came accross Relgious Information Service of Ukraine report about a book by Bishop Paul Peter Jesep of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Kyiv-Patriarchate entitled, "Crucifying Jesus and Secularizing America -- The Republic of Faith without Wisdom".

If anyone is familiar with this book, please comment. I would like to know your opinions.

History's Mis-teries - Mistaken Misconceptions

Hat Tip to Touchstone's Anthony Esolen for a promising "part one" on "How to Tell a Barbarian" and the sited Weekly Standard article by Charlotte Allen, "A Dark Age for Medievalists".

But a few generations ago the basic "darkness" of the middle ages was the complete absence of any knowledge about the Byzantine world. The misconception about the West was whether there really were any "dark ages" as the anti-Catholic Gibbons postulated. In our post-modern "enlightened" times, anything European, Christian, or Catholic is apparently open to any sort of opprobrium available.

For real history and objective analysis, I recommend:

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods Jr

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark

Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger & Marcello Pera (Previously lauded by yours truly)

Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures by Pope Benedict XVI & Marcello Pera (Also ramblingly lauded here)

and

What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza (This book might profitably be read in conjunction with How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization as they are almost parallel projects in many ways.

UPDATE: Part II of the Barbarian Study is out.

Update Update: Part III of the Barbarian Study is now also out.

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.

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!