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In today's NRO, Michael Novak has an excellent essay dissecting the president's second inaugural address in light of the historical events sweeping the Middle East in the last month.
It is a nice rejoinder to critics like myself, who thought the address was too airy to have practical value, and tied our hands too deeply. A worthwhile read.
The latest chapter of revisionist history comes to us from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where Saints Sergius and Bacchus were recently featured for speculation that they were gay lovers.
Some gay Catholics find proof in this account that the two were lovers whose bond was recognized by the church of their day. When the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities holds community events at Twin Cities churches, the gay activist group displays an icon of Sergius and Bacchus in an effort to gain acceptance for gay marriage and gay clergy.
Though it is a relief that, for the moment, this barbaric exercise is stopped, we must realize that our languid democracy passed another milestone today on its decline into judicial tyranny with the Supreme Court’s pronouncement in Roper v. Simmons. The Court held, as expected, that executing minors is unconstitutional. According to the 5-4 majority, minors are “categorically less culpable than the average criminal,” and so executing them would violate the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That position is a rational and defensible position to take.
However, the reasoning the Court uses to get there is ominous. This decision, rife with philosophical inconsistencies and tainted by an unbecoming reference to foreign and international law, marks yet another exhibit in the imperial Court’s legislative will, and hints at the chaos that is washing over our judicial system.
First, the Court takes it upon itself to examine “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” in order to determine if execution of juveniles is cruel and unusual. This examination consists of a strange calculus of simply counting those states that permit juvenile execution and those that do not. This ignores the fact that every state allows for juveniles to be treated as adults in non-capital offenses, and that before today States had the liberty to revisit the issue. No matter. For the meat of their “consensus” argument, the Court goes to the academy, the least representative subdivision of the population. They cite numerous law review articles and academic studies in support of their assertion. The Court has no business interpreting at arm’s length the intents and underlying convictions of State legislatures. They are singularly unqualified to do this. The vaunted independence of the judiciary, which isolates them from the influences of the electorate, works both ways. As Justice Scalia points out in yet another scathing dissent, with this decision the Court “proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation’s moral standards.”
Further, the rigidity of the rule is fundamentally undemocratic. The line of 18 years is arbitrary, and simple common sense says that some 18 year olds are fully mature and others border on imbecility. The best forum for determining that is the trial court. Note that the opinion does not shy away from Roper’s actions. Indeed, he serves the Court’s purpose well in that if this demon is free from execution, any juvenile killer will be. Bear in mind that the petitioner here is not seeking to mandate juvenile execution nationwide, but only asserting that in jurisdictions where the people have approved it through their legislatures, juries should be free to weigh the brutality of the crime against the mitigating factor of possible immaturity, an individual examination that this Court has previously mandated. No more. This topic now joins the long list of questions, headed by abortion, that have now been removed from any debate in any State legislature in the land.
Finally, the tortured logic the Court embraces is dangerous. It is said to be irrefutable that minors have less conception of right and wrong, that they are more impetuous and that their characters have not been formed. This language is hauntingly familiar to the language of the greater victim culture at large. How long until a federal Court applies this logic to black males from the inner city? Because of society’s indifference to the inner city and its law of the jungle ethos, it may be soon argued, minorities have less of a conception of right and wrong. Because of society’s abandonment of minorities, an activist Court will say, their characters are not well formed. It is clear that the Court has framed capital punishment in order to set the stage for its eventual abolition by undemocratic means.
"Don't Blame Wal-Mart" is the title of an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times by former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich.
He makes the important point that while many lambast Wal-Mart for creeping into communities and running small businesses into the ground, the fault lay less on Wal-Mart and more on the consumers who shop there. You really can't blame Wal-Mart for competing in the market and playing by the rules of the game. The nature of the economy is that an entity has to continually be on the lookout for opportunities for growth in order to stay competitive. While one would hope that a company such as Wal-Mart that is oozing in excess reserves might be more discriminate in where it places its stores, the internal dynamics of the global economy have forced corporations to remain vigilant if they wish to survive.
The major problem lies in the fact that consumers desire extra low prices. We are willing to support Wal-Mart and contribute to the damage it does to small businesses and local communities, turning entrepreneurs and proprietors into wage-earners, because cheap products our the first love of our heart. This is the essence of consumerism -- elevating consumer values above all others.
The problem is one not need be materialistic to be complicit.
The Rocky Mountain News recently covered a breakfast of civic and business leaders in Denver. Here is a taste of this interesting exchange:
"Why do (religions) feel they have to impose their views on us?" asked one woman during a spirited question-and-answer session following Chaput's speech to the City Club of Denver.
"If we don't - you'll impose your views on us," Chaput shot back to murmurs from the group of about 120 business and civic leaders."
Hat tip: Open Book
This feature in the New York Times chronicles how small, midwestern towns are literally paying people to come live there. It is a reflection of how due to a number of factors, the growth of corporate farming and the information/service economy, small-town life in Mid-America is dying out. People are rapidly migrating to the cities.
I am tempted to take these folks up on the offer. However, living in community requires, to a certain degree, likeminded people with similar values. I'm not sure how many Catholic, intellectually serious (at least I'd like to think so), and culturally/socially/politically conservative folks (well, there are plenty of those, I suppose) I am going to find on the range. For better or worse, to a certain degree I am addicted to the pleasures of cosmopolitan city living. I will have to focus my search on the plethora of small, German-Catholic midwestern cities if I am to be successful. (Although, the way the boys at Southern Appeal talk about the South makes me want to hitch a trailer and move the family to Birmingham, Macon, or Charleston right now.)
A few nights back I had dinner with an important figure in the legal community who indicated that he gave up on the rigors of big-city American life and moved his family to Utah. It turns out, he loves it, and his family has flourished. Salt Lake City might not have all of the resources of Boston, but it does have them, and they are enjoyed in a less-pretensious manner. People loved the fact that he brought his small son to a Shakespeare performance. This would be taboo in Chicago, or even Minneapolis. Additionally, in smaller metropolitan areas, one can enjoy the happy medium between the big "Euro-cities" and the provincialism of a town in northwest North Dakota.
Judge McConnell, on many people's short list for the next Supreme Court vacancy, gave an excellent lecture on public virtue and disestablishment of religion at the Founding for an audience at the University of Minnesota Law School on Monday night. The event was co-sponsored by the MacLaurin Institute and the University of Minnesota Law School Federalist Society, of which I am an officer.
John Hinderaker, of the infamous Powerline blog, was in attendance and wrote this nice summary of the lecture.
Yesterday's decision in Roper v. Simmons and the revelation that the Church (I should say the USCCB) wrote an amicus curiae brief on behalf of 30 religious groups raises some particular problems that need confronting.
In regard to the decision, it held that the execution of persons who committed the crime while minors was a violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Now this is perhaps a defensible position, but the Court's rationale in the case is not.
In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy employed international standards of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as well as relying on what he considered evolving standards of decency. The problem is, Kennedy states that ultimately, it is the Court's role to decide what constitutes "evolving standards of decency." Thus, as many have claimed, controversial social questions will be decided by the instinct of nine lawyers (actually, just five).
The Harvard Crimson reports that actress Jada Pinkett Smith (wife of Will Smith) spoke at Harvard this past weekend, and made offensive comments regarding male-female relationships that some described as "heteronormative."
Pile this on to the Larry Summers flap, and Harvard looks increasingly like an institution straight out of Orwell's 1984: Good thoughts will be rewarded, bad thoughts will be punished. Here is a mind-numbing excerpt from the article:
"Calling the comments heteronormative, according to Woods, means they implied that standard sexual relationships are only between males and females.
“Our position is that the comments weren’t homophobic, but the content was specific to male-female relationships,” Woods said.
Margaret C. D. Barusch ’06, the other BGLTSA co-chair, said the comments might have seemed insensitive in effect, if not in intent.
“I think the comments had a very strong focus for an extended period of time on how to effectively be in a relationship—a heterosexual relationship,” Barusch said. “I don’t think she meant to be offensive but I just don’t think she was that thoughtful.”
In order to discuss these concerns and ensure that such a misunderstanding doesn’t occur again, Paulus said the BGLTSA and the Foundation are planning a joint breakfast later this week as well as a general discussion forum for all of the SAC member groups."
Hat Tip: Southern Appeal.
This interview with the late Msgr. Luigi Giussani chronicles the turbulent wars within the Church during the 1970s and Pope Paul VI's disillusionment with the so-called reformers.
Paul VI attempted to stop the bleeding. It would be Pope John Paul II who would cauterize the wound and set the Church on a path to recovery.
As promised, here is the reply I got from Richard Doerflinger at the USCCB:
Dear Stephen:We have jurisdiction to say something about the Supreme Court case because it is a challenge to a federal directive raised in federal court.
Local and state developments (regardless of how much national press attention they may receive) are ordinarily the realm of the local bishop and state Catholic conference, and a national bishops' conference has no authority to make decisions or statements about such cases unless it is empowered to do so by those authorities. The Holy Father and the Vatican, of course, relate to each bishop in the world directly, and they are not bound by the limits placed by our Church on the responsibilities of national bishops' conferences.
The Florida bishops spoke to the Schiavo situation again today. Their new statement is below.
Richard Doerflinger
USCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities
A former professor of mine. Dr. Christopher Thompson, had a good column on the Eucharist in the archdiocesan newspaper the other day. Here is an excerpt:
The “galactic significance of the Eucharist is affirmed in the various prayers of the Mass itself. The priest proclaims before God that, “From age to age you gather a people to yourself so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.”
Thanks to some new software we recently installed here at The Seventh Age, we have successfully eliminated about 99% of the spam comments we were receiving on old blog entries (about 100 brillant reflections on Texas Holdem and other variants of online poke every day).
As a result, we will return to unmoderated comments. Comments made on any post will now appear as soon as they are submitted, which will hopefully generate some lively discussions.
We're all for free speech as long as everyone remains charitable in their discourse. Let the commenting begin!
I got an e-mail today from the Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs at my favorite Big Ten university proclaiming the month of March a "Month of Kindness" with the tag line, "Be Kind and Pass it On." The banners are already up around campus.
But what exactly is kindness? According to the Associate Vice Provost:
The goal of this month is to unite the campus by encouraging acts of kindness that create an environment filled with goodwill, tolerance, pluralism and openness.
I suppose I should laud the sentiment, as vague and nebulous as it may be. What a strange turn the quest for the true, good and beautiful has taken.
Here is what we are up against, folks. Besides being one of the most deranged things I've seen in a while, it is just tremendously sad. What sort of poison has entered into a man's sould to make him say such things?
Amy Welborn has plenty of commentary on this travesty.
Pray, fast, and pray some more for our world.
Once again, it is good to get the Italian angle on Western intellectual currents, especially as seen through the eyes of the Holy Father in his new book, "Memory and Identity."
For those that hadn't heard about this special profiling the development of little people from conception to birth through 4-D sonograms, here is a link.
This story caught the attention of a NY Times reviewer, who wrote an interested, but skeptical review because she felt like she was being propagandized by "doctor killers." While fascinated by the science, you could tell she is interested in staying as far away from this "gruesome" phenomenon as she can.
Some average guy who was perplexed by the Shroud of Turin (admittedly skeptical that is) and was enthralled with reading Chesterton's "Father Brown" stories in all of their paradox, turned the theories of Shroud theorists on their heads. Rather than asking how the imprint was placed on the cloth, Nathan Wilson posited that in reality the image is the original color of the cloth, and everything around it has been lightened through sun-bleaching. He set out to prove his hypothesis, and came up with some results that are truly interesting.
The original article by Wilson himself chronicling his experiment can be found in Books & Culture magazine. Additionally, the Discovery Channel picked up the story and provides a nice summary. Additionally, Wilson has his own web site, ShadowShroud.com highlighting his theory.
As a big believer in the authenticity of the Shroud, Wilson's test is damning. I am interested in hearing more commentary on his hypothesis. What Wilson doesn't really get into is that his hypothetical Crusader forgers would have to be a couple of really talented and really entrepreneurial fellows. Theoretically, there should be some evidence of the Shroud's display in a famous Church during the medieval period. There is none, only that it turned up in France during the fourteenth century under the ownership of Geoffrey de Charnay, whose ancestors were Knights Templars. It didn't seem to provide the excitement that such medieval forgers would need to generate to make it worth their time. Additionally, they didn't sell it to the Church. Why not? More fascinating questions about this amazing relic that will spur debate until the Lord returns and tells us about its authenticity.
British writer John O'Sullivan has this piece in today's National Review Online.
Here is a taste:
"Thousands of pilgrims from all over the world came to St Peter's Square last Sunday to see the silent pope and hear his appeal for their prayers read by another.
"Will the millions of new Christians they represent in Asia and Africa be the vehicles of the saving grace that will rejuvenate the tired churches of Europe? And will the pope himself live to lead this renaissance as he led the last? Or will he merely glimpse from afar, like Moses, the promised land he is not permitted to enter?
Not to be in the least flippant but: God only knows."
Massive study in the UK and Ireland reveals that the main reason for the decline in Church attendance there is theological liberalism and dumbed-down liturgies/services. Yes, people wan't substance. The main culprit of this trend, according to the study, was the notion of "the universal love of God." It seems that if people know that God loves them no matter what they do, then there is no reason to go to church.
The situation for the Catholic Church in both those countries looks rather ominous. In England, the Catholic Church has resorted to an embrace of a milquetoast social gospel while at the same time falling over itself to appease the Anglicans (even though there are more practicing Catholics and the Anglican Church is imploding by the minute in all of its irrelevance). In Ireland, ordinations are down from 100 priests in 1990 to five this year. Ireland is where the U.S. church was in the 1970s: experimental masses, ecumenism everywhere, flabby apologetics. Talking to the Irish seminarians themselves (their elite ones at the Irish College in Rome - where I lived for a year), one gets the sense that they really don't believe any of it anymore.
More astounding, is the embarrassment expressed by English and Irish churchmen at the mention of G.K. Chesterton. The English view him largely as a relic of a pre-modern age, while the Irish are positively scandalized by the romantic portrayal Chesterton had of the nation in his book "Irish Impressions." Now that they are a modern European financial capital, the Irish have no time for the sheep, Guinness, and greenery stuff.
This study comes on the heels of exploding rates of growth for Islam (even among the white population) as well Eastern Orthodoxy among the intellectuals. At one point, England's disenchanted Anglican thinkers became Catholics. No more. Now they are Orthodox, and that is a pity. But those religions teach their faith without apology, and that is what our age needs.
Hat tip: Democracy of the Dead.
The ever-prescient G-Man has a nice piece skewering the justices who have rendered our Constitution moot. We are now ruled by the policy choices of 5 robed masters.
UPDATE: Here is another great piece in the Weekly Standard on the Ginsburg-Stevens tribute to Justice Kennedy in their concurring opinion from Roper v. Simmons (juvenile death penalty case).
A recent poll commissioned by the U.S. Bishops and released yesterday shows support for abortion has fallen from 57% in 1998 to 52% this year.
A Harris Interactive Poll on abortion released March 3 shows the strongest opposition to Roe v. Wade in years. The survey of 1,012 U.S. adults conducted February 8-13, 2005, shows Americans support Roe v. Wade by just a 52 to 47 percent margin, a significant change from the 57 to 41 percent margin in 1998. This weakening support for Roe is likely even more pronounced than the poll indicates because the Harris survey question understates Roe v. Wade by declaring “the U.S. Supreme Court decision making abortions up to three months of pregnancy legal.”
Raunchy heavy metal rocker Brian "Head" Welch has had a conversion to christianty, and is taking it pretty seriously.
This week he was baptized in the Jordan River, and is trying to settle in to his new found faith. He is still Brian Welch though:
He’s commemorated his new beliefs by having "Jesus" tattooed across his knuckles and "Matthew 11:28" inked right across his neck. And while we don’t like to throw around terms like "messiah complex" in the face of this guy’s newfound happiness, he’s also announced plans to release some pretty interesting solo music in the future."My songs are God saying things to me, him talking to people. He’s going to use me to heal people and people are going to be drawn to it," he told AP. "Just watch, they will be."
I know an old friend of mine used to pray daily for Madonna's reversion to Catholicism. Maybe she'll be next?
I just came across a nice short reflection on Lent by Augustine. Here is an excerpt:
I am constrained to exhort you because you owe the Lord works in harmony with the spirit of the season, works which, nevertheless, are useful not to the Lord, but to you. True, other seasons of the year ought to glow for the Christian by reason of his prayers, fasts, and almsdeeds, but this season ought to arouse even those who are sluggish at other times. In fact, those who are quick to attend to these works at other times should now perform them with even greater diligence. Life in this world is certainly the time of our humiliation as these days signify when the sufferings of the Lord Christ, who once suffered by dying for us, are renewed each year with the recurrence of this holy season.
It seems like we just had an election, but pollsters are already tossing around numbers for potential matchups in '08, and John McCain seems to be leading the pack.
Things are looking blue for the former first lady. While 39% of democrats favor her for the nomination (they threw in "democrat leaning independets" too to get her that high), if we include the red states opinion, 46% of voters would love to see Hillary give it a try, but even more (49%) are opposed to her run. 20% of Democrats think Kerry deserves another shot at it, and 15% want to give Edwards a chance.
On the Republican side Giuliani is pulling 25%, McCain 21% Condi at 14% and the Florida Bush at 7%. Of course this makes you wonder if the Republicans really understand the importance the value voters played in this past election. These aren't your mother's "building a culture of life" Republicans.
At any rate, there are enough hypothetical matchups and stats to make your head spin.
In our continuing series of articles on land use and urban development, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has this editorial extolling the virtues of the new 24-hour downtown.
A new fifty story residential complex is being built on Nicollet Mall, and looks to further transform the city into a cosmopolitan, bourgeois bohemian (BoBo) epicenter. The tower will certainly cater to the influx of DINKs (double income, no kids) couples as well young (and aging hipsters) who seek to be near the high-end shopping and avant-garde arts scene that downtown Minneapolis provides.
This appears to be a further example of the trend that is pricing the middle class out of urban living. Wealthy persons and couples with information-age jobs and lots of disposable income are driving up residential prices in the urban core and forcing families to either relocate to the suburbs, or other cities that aren't so cosmopolitan and chic like Cleveland or Milwaukee.
What does it mean that our cities are becoming more, not less homogenous because of this demographic and cultural shift? More and more, these sorts of places and developments end up excluding families from the scene because of the assault on traditional values that crops up in these new urban enclaves. The bohemian has now mixed with the consumer culture, and the non-conformists are now the ultimate conformists. Families are the new counterculture, but will there be a physical place for them to challenge the dominant paradigm of Western culture?
I don't usually agree with Andrew Sullivan on much of anything, but he has an excellent new op-ed that appeared in the Sunday Times of London.
Sullivan describes the iPod portable music device as the symbol of the ongoing balkanization and compartmentalization of American life. No longer is music a shared experience, but along with everything else in society, is completely personalized and individualized. How can society even exist, that is, how can we get together and discuss the basic problems of what it means to live together and help foster human flourishing if everyone refuses to be challenged, be exposed to new ideas, or engage others and new people in conversation?
This is an interesting phenomenon that matches the counter-phenomenon of more and more people desiring to live in a community that has shared values and a moral content. Often, this desire is attracting people to Christianity, in all its forms. Perhaps the churches can respond to the new libertarianism that subverts both human nature and culture by continuing to offer an escape from the busyness and compartmentalization of modern American culture. Some have called for a new monasticism, and that seems about right: silence, contemplation (of real things and God), fruitful labor, and fraternal charity.
Hat tip: Mirror of Justice.
The iconoclastic Will Saletan of the online journal Slate went to Rome for a bioethics conference at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum run by the Legionaries of Christ. There were a number of Jewish scholars present dialoguing with Catholic scientists about the toughest and most-cutting edge issues in biology.
His account of the event is entertaining. But most interesting were his comments about the highly-learned priest-scientists he encountered. Of course he had to make a Galileo comment (but we will forgive him of his ignorance of both the Galileo saga and the Church's birthing of modern science in the medieval period), but he really hit home on the point that it was the Church that was the defender of the ability of reason and rational discourse to arrive at real ANSWERS about the toughest problems. Whereas the Jewish panelists raised multitudes of questions and provided few answers to the questions, the Catholics were confident in the tool of reason, even though, according to Saletan, they can be criticized for being faithful to reason and letting someone die even though they could be saved by embryonic research.
Hat tip: Open Book
Europeans seem to have a problem with a paternalistic United States taking the lead in resolving disputes. President Bush is mocked and derided as a trigger happy cowboy for his administration’s decisive actions in Iraq and strong language aimed at Iran and North Korea. Western Europe, for the most part, seems to believe that it needs no stern hand from Washington destabilizing international relations, and that they could manage just fine without unwanted intrusions from the United States.
And so it is with wonder that we rampaging Americans learned this week that a federal lawsuit has been filed against our government by several European victims (or their survivors) of the December tsunami that devastated coastal areas of the Indian Ocean. It seems these people are convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not do enough to warn the victims of the danger. Never mind that NOAA is financed exclusively by US tax dollars. Never mind that, as the name suggests, this warning center is geared to monitoring the Pacific Ocean (since the US cowboy foreign policy has not established invasion forces or puppet regimes along the Indian Ocean…yet). Never mind that NOAA is the main source of tsunami data and research, and that this information is freely distributed to the international academic community.
It is clear that the United State’s status as the most successful, most influential nation on earth means for many in Europe that it owes various duties of care to the rest of the world. In the adolescent public policy of many European nations, it seems firm paternal guidance will be met with unprincipled rebellion but maternal care (in the form of global monitoring and financial assistance) will be expected as a right.
Another significant earthquake struck Iran today. This one was not as strong as the quake that killed hundreds and left over 100,000 homeless in February of 2004. And that one was small compared to the one in December of 2003 that killed an estimated 15,000 and the one in 1990 that killed an estimated 35,000. As of this afternoon, there were no known casualties, but then again, an Iraqi official noted that the region over the epicenter has “no communication equipment." Probably no running water either and certainly no sewers, hospitals or police. In fact, the vast majority of Iran’s nearly 70 million people live in third world conditions not much different from when Alexander the Great arrived .There are not many techniques available to Iranian builders to account for frequent tremors when the primary architectural material is still the mud brick. Iranian life expectancy is lowest among OPEC nations and over a quarter of their citizens are illiterate (according to statistics provided by the United Nations Development Program). All of this despite having the fourth largest oil reserves in the world at a time of record oil prices.
And human rights? Never mind.
This is the appropriate context in which to reckon with Iran’s recent hectoring rants regarding a nascent nuclear program. The geologic fault lines that run beneath Iran are not a recent development. How much national wealth and human capital has been expended by the current regime in its quest to have a nuclear program, while the masses of Iranians suffer needlessly from preventable disasters? What are they going to do with all that cheap electricity without an infrastructure to deliver it? Where will the weapons experts take refuge when the next big one hits? Even if Iran is able to acquire nuclear material and technologies from some rogue state, will they construct their reactors in caves and arm their missiles in mud huts? What happens to the enriched plutonium the next time Iran shakes violently? Given Iran’s longstanding disregard for the material well-being of its citizens, it should perhaps be no surprise that it continues into the nuclear age. But the coming disaster will far more horrific than any earthquake.
One wonders if Iran’s inferiority complex, which drives its monomaniacal quest to split the atom, would exist if its leaders did not walk every day in the shadow of their undeniable failure to secure basic standards of living. Bellowing recriminations about international equality and security perhaps helps to drown out the cries of the masses buried alive by the latest earthquake.
Hyperdulia!
This story is on the cover of Time Magazine this week. Sign of the apocalypse? I am not going to chalk this up to a slow news period.
Once again, I think we should attribute this phenomenon to the thaw in Catholic-Evangelical relations since the mid-1980s pursued by such men as Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus and Chuck Colson. The continuing conversation, which started when conservative Christians realized they needed to work together in the policy arena, has produced much fruit. Catholics are learning effective evangelization techniques, and many Protestants are rediscovering the depth and beauty of the Christian tradition in all its fulness, including devotion to the BVM. Ecumencial and Interreligious dialogue is evangelization.
To see the ongoing fruit of this coversation, read the latest statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.
While the U.S. Bishops activites in Florida are focused on reaching agreements with Taco Bell, they continue to remain silent on the case of Terri Schaivo.
The Pontifical Academy for Life, on the other hand, has chosen to speak out. As a Zenit story from today notes:
Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Academy for Life, in explaining why the Holy See is speaking out in favor of Schiavo, said Saturday on Vatican Radio that her "case goes beyond the individual situation because of its exemplary character and the importance that the media have rightly attributed to it."
"Silence in this case might be interpreted as approval, with consequences that would go well beyond the specific case," he said.
Now in all fairness to the Bishops, Cardinal Keeler did issue a statement a few days ago, but it wasn't exactly forceful:
The Holy Father added that these patients have “the right to basic health care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc.).” He reminded us that providing water and food, even by artificial means, is “morally obligatory, insofar as and until it is seen to have attained its proper finality, which in the present case consists in providing nourishment to the patient and alleviation of his suffering.”There are times when even such basic means may cease to be morally obligatory, because they have become useless or unduly burdensome for the patient. Deliberately to remove them in order to hasten a patient’s death, however, would be a form of euthanasia, which is gravely wrong
Keeler concludes, ”I join with them [the Florida Bishops] in praying that those who hold power over Terri Schindler Schiavo’s fate will see that she “continues to receive nourishment, comfort and loving care.”
Again, that's great and all, but it seems a very defeatist stance to me. Prayer is important, but so is action. Now granted, the medical evidence in Schiavo's case is a bit hard to come by due to the legal blockade Michael has errected around Terri, but there is enough funny business going on to lead most reaosnable people to believe that innocent blood is about to be spilled. Surely we can do more than pray that the activist judges we are all beholden to would show mercy. Last I checked, an unjust law need not be followed.
The above should be sang to the tune of "Maria" from "The Sound of Music."
A bit of Scalia potpourri. Three pieces on my favorite legal mind for your review:
Here is the latest word on the ground in the Terri Schiavo case:
I just got off the phone with Br. Anthony of the Franciscan Brothers of Peace -- Br. Paul and Br. Hilary report that what is MOST needed now is to call the Florida DCF to get them to take Terri Schiavo into protective custody. This is most needed because, Br. Anthony reports, that EVEN if the legislature in Florida passes in time, it must go for a "judicial review" before being able to be used in Terri's case -- and guess which judge is responsible for that judicial review? Of course - Judge Greer himself, the judge who has been solely responsible for every denial of every single effort on behalf of Terri's life and dignity.
So even if the legislature passes, which would be good and would protect innocent lives in the future, it will likely not be enough to save Terri's life by itself, unless Judge Greer has an amazing St. Paul-like conversion of heart (pray for this!).
The FBPs see the ONLY option at this point, that will directly save Terri's life, is for the Florida DCF to take her into custody while they investigate abuse.
Please contact the DCF, again and again if necessary! Only they, short of direct divine intervention, can save Terri now.
Their number is 850-488-4855.
The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture has a feature describing Christopher Dawson under its "Who Inspires Us?" section. It has links to other resources on Dawson, as well as pages dedicated to folks such as Orestes Brownson, Dorothy Day, and Jacques Maritain.
Check it out.
If you don't know anything about constitutional law or the Supreme Court (our real rulers), check out the text of Justice Antonin Scalia's recent speech at the Woodrow Wilson. It should be required civics reading and will prime you for all the major issues relating to selecting our judges and the way the Constitution should be understood. The text of this important speech follows. Do yourself, your family, and your neighbor a favor and read this if you care about the future of this country.
Justice Scalia:
With Palm Sunday tomorrow, and Holy Thursday less than a week away, it is almost time for the great annual liturgical argument, should women be allowed to have their feet washed on Holy Thursday?
An article in today's Boston Telegram noted that Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley has decided to wash the feet of both men and women this year, after consultation with the Congregation for Divine Worship. Last year he was criticized for washing the feet of 12 men.
Such is consistent with a