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!

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.

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.

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!

Articles and Posts of Interest

Sandro Magister reprints an article on a visit to the Holy Mountain. It catches the spirit of a pilgrimage with impressionistic beauty.

A representative paragraph:

There is the scent of the East, of Byzantium, at Megisti Lavra. There is the aroma of cypress and incense, the fragrance of beeswax, of relics, of ancient things mysteriously near. Because the monks of Athos don't suffer the passage of time. They tell you of their saints, of that Saint Athanasius who planted two cypresses at the center of the Megisti Lavra; who with Herculean strength built the catholikon; who shaped the monasticism of Athos; as if he had not died in the year 1000 but just yesterday, as if they had met him personally and not long ago.

The Vatican Information Service has more on the Armenian Catholicos's visit to the Holy See.

An interesting note here is that at least the English translation seems to have transferred Pentecost from Sunday to tomorrow (Saturday).

Witness the following:

After the Patriarch's greeting, the Pope addressed the assembly. Referring to tomorrow's solemnity of Pentecost, Benedict XVI affirmed that, on this day, "we will pray in a particular way for the unity of the Church. (...) If our hearts and minds are open to the Spirit of communion, God can work miracles again in the Church, restoring the bonds of unity. Striving for Christian unity is an act of obedient trust in the work of the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church to the full realization of the Father's plan, in conformity with the will of Christ".

I guess daylight savings time and a smaller environmental (read: GREEN) footprint have a way of working their own magic.

And Finally, hat tips to several websites and bloggers for picking up on the Torn Notebook blog posts by Wei-Hsien Wan. Wan has posted a three part discussion on the Church Fathers and Unity. These are accurate and thought-provoking for any serious Christian pondering the Unity of the Faith. The links are first here, and then here, here and here.

No snippets, just go and read them!

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.

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.

Several Articles Worthy of Your Time

The past few days have been rather busy, but I have noted several important articles that deserve attention and reflection.

First, Sandro Magister reports on the upcoming meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and a number of Muslim scholars. The report includes comments by Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, the text of a letter from Cardinal Bertone, a commentary on it by Samir Khalil Samir, a reply to it by prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan. Read it here.

Next up, Fr Richard John Neuhaus of First Things has an On the Square commentary entitled: The Future of Sex and Marriage.

Over at MercatorNet, Susan Reibel Moore has contributed a timely and astute discussion of children's literature and some of the "dark materials" contributing to the destruction of culture. I find her perspective fascinating, particularly as she cannot be vilified as just another Christian apologist. Read it here.

Catholic World News reports on Orthodox Russian Theologians meeting to discuss the question of Papal primacy. Read here.

And finally, while it's been available for a while, if you haven't read it yet, go to it, print it, and read it carefully. Spe Salvi, the second Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI is a must read epic (no, I don't believe I'm exaggerating). Find it at the Vatican website, here.

The Truth About Real Safe Sex ... and related issues

MercatorNet has a thought-provoking piece on a sex education that program that truthfully deals with reality. Click here for the link.


Meanwhile, Reuters reports on links between the pill and cervical cancer.

And the US House of Representatives is seeking to stifle pro-life groups by expanding "the buffer zone" around abortuaries.

And the movie you won't hear too much about in the main stream media is a beautifuly pro-life story called Bella. It's so good Roger Ebert feels compelled to claim it's not pro-life as almost a disclaimer in his positive review!

And finally, that wonderful social agency Planned Parentood is at it again!

Lord, have mercy!

Archbishop speaks on life, truth and relativism

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has written a very cogent and precise argument regarding the irrationality and dangers of secular relativism as it impacts the abortion debate in First Things: On the Square. Below are a few snippets.

For many in our culture today, tolerance and diversity have become the new absolutes. Certainly, there is much good in such values. Tolerance is an important and helpful civic virtue in a democratic society. And it is consistent with Christian teaching.

In fact, as Christians, we are called to do much more than tolerate others who may be different from us in a whole host of ways. We are called to reverence every other human being as one made in the image of God and one the Son of God deemed of such worth that he gave his life on Calvary. This does not mean, however, that every action is to be approved, much less respected. There are some actions and activities that are against the innate dignity of the human person and that infringe on the rights and dignity of others.
...
The question that needs to be posed to those who make this claim is: Why are you personally opposed to abortion? Why do so many of the pro-choice politicians even say that they want to make abortion rare? Why want to make something rare if it is truly a valid choice? The rhetoric of choice has been a very clever marketing campaign for something that is of its nature evil and repugnant.
...
In some of the inner-city neighborhoods where I served as a priest, there was a great problem with gun violence. Could you imagine anyone saying that they were personally against drive-by shootings, but if someone else wanted to do it they should have that right? Yet it is precisely that illogic that has been used now for several decades to defend the legalization of abortion—the destruction of an innocent human life.

Without the acceptance of objective truth, everything becomes negotiable. The moral conscience of society and the individual are impaired. There is confusion in the recognition of good and evil. We become uncertain about such fundamental institutions for family and society as marriage. From the denial of natural truth, a nihilism emerges that we find expressing itself today in art, literature, and films. We become confused about what is good and noble. We question what is worth devoting our life to. This confusion results in a great interior emptiness. We try to distract ourselves with more and more things, divert our attention with more and more entertainment, and numb ourselves with drugs and other addictions.

For the entire article, click here.

First Things On the Square Topic for 5 September - Relativism

On Relativism
By Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

At first glance, the expression “the dictatorship of relativism” sounds like a paradox, maybe even an oxymoron. After all, aren’t dictatorships a form of absolutism? And don’t relativists find it difficult, if not impossible, to make judgments about differing moral systems? So how can they “dictate” the behavior and thoughts of others if they can’t make judgments about what people should think and do?

...

Maybe, in fact, there are no relativists and “we’re all absolutists now,” to paraphrase a line from Nathan Glazer. Alasdair MacIntyre opened the second chapter of his famous book After Virtue with a scene we can all recognize: Debates on just war, abortion, capital punishment, and the like are echo chambers, with everyone essentially hurling absolutes at the other side of the debate. But since these absolutes are conceptually incommensurable, the shrillest debater gets the last word.

But where do these incommensurable absolutes come from? To sum up MacIntyre’s argument as briefly as possible (a longer account can be found here), the word good when applied to moral situations has changed its meaning. In Aristotle it was simply taken for granted that the word good can, with no violence to its meaning, be equally applied to a good saddle, a good horse, a good cavalryman, a good general, and a good person: The adjective properly belongs to all these nouns if each item is doing what it is assigned, or designed, to do. But with the loss of Aristotle’s equally teleological understanding of physics and biology, the moral application of good came under heavy challenge, above all from David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche: Now man no longer seems to have a purpose or function that can be assessed by easily adjudicable standards. The result of this is that, according to MacIntyre, good becomes a mere term of approval, and all contemporary debate about morality boils down to a choice between either Aristotle or Nietzsche.

...

The sexual revolution marched under the banner of freedom; feminism under that of equality. Although they went arm in arm for a while, their differences eventually put them at odds with each other, as Tocqueville said freedom and equality would always be. This is manifest in the squabble over pornography, which pits liberated sexual desire against feminist resentment about stereotyping. We are presented with the amusing spectacle of pornography clad in armor borrowed from the heroic struggles for freedom of speech, and using Miltonic rhetoric, doing battle with feminism, newly draped in the robes of community morality, using arguments associated with conservatives who defend traditional sex roles, and also defying an authoritative tradition in which it was taboo to suggest any relation between what a person reads and sees and his sexual practices. In the background stand the liberals, wringing their hands in confusion because they wish to favor both sides and cannot.

...

Amid these random observations, I’m sure I must have an argument buried here somewhere, although given the confused way absolutes and relativities rattle around inside our minds and in contemporary debate, I’m not exactly sure what that argument is or how to conclude. But I think I can at least say this: (1) everyone is an absolutist about something; (2) relativism, both in the moral and theological sense, represents the single greatest challenge to the Christian religion in our contemporary setting; (3) relativists usually have arguments, but that doesn’t mean they are not arguing for relativism, even if, like the rest of us, they are absolutist about something.

For the whole article, click here.

Magdi Allam on Life and Death Cultures - John Allen

John Allen reports in the National Catholic Reporter on Magdi Allam. Below are a few excerpts.

His most recent book is titled Viva Israele, in which Allam argues that Israel represents a culture of life, in contrast with militant Islam’s culture of death. Allam minces no words in making the point. In a recent interview with an Israeli news agency, for example, Allam was asked about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His lapidary response: “I hope that someday Israel will capture Ahmadinejad and force him to live the rest of his life between the walls of Yad Vashem.”

...

Among other things, Allam called upon Italian universities that have signed agreements for cultural collaboration with Al-Azhar to renounce them. One of those institutions is the Pontifical Oriental Institute, which is affiliated with the Gregorian University, the Jesuit-run flagship pontifical university in Rome.

His willingness to take such bold public positions has made Allam a sign of division in both the Muslim and Catholic worlds. Among Muslim radicals he’s seen as a traitor, one sign of which is that Allam is always surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards.

Among moderates in both the Muslim and Catholic camps, meanwhile, Allam is often seen as a provocateur, painting anyone who expresses sympathy with the Palestinians or with other Islamic causes as a dupe of the terrorists.

...

In Viva Israel, Allam recounts growing up as a convinced supporter of the Palestinian cause, believing that Israel was a racist state invented by the West as a compensation for the Holocaust. What turned him around, he wrote, was getting to know Yasser Arafat, which convinced him of the bankruptcy of terrorism.

For the whole article, click here.

For more information on Magdi Allam, go here, here, or here.